"How should I know?"
"Eleven fifty-two. Your excitement was so great that it stopped your watch. Look and see."
It was ridiculous. The shock produced by excitement has no effect on the watch of the man who experiences the excitement. Nevertheless, Vorski involuntarily took out his watch: it marked eight minutes to twelve. He tried to wind it up: it was broken.
The ancient Druid, without giving him time to recover his breath and reply, went on:
"That staggers you, eh? And yet there's nothing simpler for a Druid who knows his business. A Druid sees the invisible. He does more: he makes anyone else see it if he wants to. Vorski, would you like to see something that doesn't exist? What's your name? I'm not speaking of your name Vorski, but of your real name, your governor's name."
"Silence on that subject!" Vorski commanded. "It's a secret I've revealed to nobody."
"Then why do you write it down?"
"I've never written it down."
"Vorski, your father's name is written in red pencil on the fourteenth page of the little note-book you carry on you. Look and see."
Acting mechanically, like an automaton whose[Pg 271] movements are controlled by an alien will, Vorski took from his inside pocket a case containing a small note-book. He turned the pages till he came to the fourteenth, when he muttered, with indescribable dismay:
"Impossible! Who wrote this? And you know what's written here?"
"Do you want me to prove it to you?"
"Once more, silence! I forbid you…"
"As you please, old chap! All that I do is meant for your edification. And it's no trouble to me! Once I start working miracles, I simply can't stop. Here's another funny little trick. You carry a locket hanging from a silver chain round your shirt, don't you?"
"Yes," said Vorski, his eyes blazing with fever.
"The locket consists of a frame, without the photograph which used to be set in it."
"Yes, yes, a portrait of…"
"Of your mother, I know: and you lost it."
"Yes, I lost it last year."
"You mean you think you've lost the portrait."
"Nonsense, the locket is empty."
"You think the locket's empty. It's not. Look and see."
Still moving mechanically, with his eyes starting from his head, Vorski unfastened the button of his shirt and pulled out the chain. The locket appeared. There was the portrait of a woman in a round gold frame.
"It's she, it's she," he muttered, completely taken aback.
"Quite sure?"
"Yes."
[Pg 272]"Then what do you say to it all, eh? There's no fake about it, no deception. The ancient Druid's a smart chap and you're coming with him, aren't you?"
"Yes."
Vorski was beaten. The man had subjugated him. His superstitious instincts, his inherited belief in the mysterious powers, his restless and unbalanced nature, all imposed absolute submission on him. His suspicion persisted, but did not prevent him from obeying.
"Is it far?" he asked.
"Next door, in the great hall."
Otto and Conrad had been the astounded witnesses of this dialogue. Conrad tried to protest. But Vorski silenced him:
"If you're afraid, go away. Besides," he added, with an affectation of assurance, "besides, we shall walk with our revolvers ready. At the slightest alarm, fire."
"Fire on me?" chuckled the ancient Druid.
"Fire on any enemy, no matter who it may be."
"Well, you go first, Vorski… What, won't you?"
He had brought them to the very end of the crypt, in the darkest shadow, where the lantern showed them a recess hollowed at the foot of the wall and plunging into the rocks in a downward direction.
Vorski hesitated and then entered. He had to crawl on his hands and knees in this narrow, winding passage, from which he emerged, a minute later, on the threshold of a large hall.
The others joined him.
[Pg 273]"The hall of the God-Stone," the ancient Druid declared, solemnly.
It was lofty and imposing, similar in shape and size to the broad walk under which it lay. The same number of upright stones, which seemed to be the columns of an immense temple, stood in the same place and formed the same rows as the menhirs on the walk overhead: stones hewn in the same uncouth way, with no regard for art or symmetry. The floor was composed of huge irregular flagstones, intersected with a network of gutters and covered with round patches of dazzling light, falling from above at some distance one from the other.
In the centre, under Maguennoc's garden, rose a platform of unmortared stones, fourteen or fifteen feet high, with sides about twenty yards long. On the top was a dolmen with two sturdy supports and a long, oval granite table.
"Is that it?" asked Vorski, in a husky voice.
Without giving a direct answer, the ancient Druid said:
"What do you think of it? They were dabs at building, those ancestors of ours! And what ingenuity they displayed! What precautions against prying eyes and profane enquiries! Do you know where the light comes from? For we are in the bowels of the island and there are no windows opening on to the sky. The light comes from the upper menhirs. They are pierced from the top to bottom with a channel which widens as it goes down and which sheds floods of light below. In the middle of the day, when the sun is shining, it's like fairyland. You, who are an artist, would shout with admiration."
[Pg 274]"Then that's it?" Vorski repeated.
"At any rate, it's a sacred stone," declared the ancient Druid, impassively, "since it used to overlook the place of the underground sacrifices, which were the most important of all. But there is another one underneath, which is protected by the dolmen and which you can't see from here; and that is the one on which the selected victims were offered up. The blood used to flow from the platform and along all these gutters to the cliffs and down to the sea."
Vorski muttered, more and more excited:
"Then that's it? If so, let's go on."
"No need to stir," said the old man, with exasperating coolness. "It's not that one either. There's a third; and to see that one you have only to lift your head a little."
"Where? Are you sure?"
"Of course! Take a good look… above the upper table, yes, in the very vault which forms the ceiling and which is like a mosaic made of great flagstones… You can twig it from here, can't you? A flagstone forming a separate oblong, long and narrow like the lower table and shaped like it… They might be two sisters… But there's only one good one, stamped with the trademark…"
Vorski was disappointed. He had expected a more elaborate introduction to a more mysterious hiding-place.
"Is that the God-Stone?" he asked. "Why, it has nothing particular about it."
"From a distance, no; but wait till you see it close by. There are coloured veins in it, glitter[Pg 275]ing lodes, a special grain: in short, the God-Stone. Besides, it's remarkable not so much for its substance as for its miraculous properties."
"What are the miracles in question?" asked Vorski.
"It gives life and death, as you know, and it gives a lot of other things."
"What sort of things?"
"Oh, hang it, you're asking me too much! I don't know anything about it."
"How do you mean, you don't know?"
The ancient Druid leant over and, in a confidential tone:
"Listen, Vorski," he said, "I confess that I have been boasting a bit and that my function, though of the greatest importance-keeper of the God-Stone, you know, a first-class berth-is limited by a power which in a manner of speaking is higher than my own."