figure of a mythological animal, together with some nearly obliterated
letters, of which the only ones remaining legible were those forming
the word 'Has.' As a sure precaution against the loss of the gem,
another cup had been made and engraved in an exactly similar manner,
inside of which, to complete the delusion, another stone of the same
size and cut, but of comparatively valueless material, had been placed.
Sir Jocelin Saul, a man of intense nervosity, lived his life alone in a
remote old manor-house in Suffolk, his only companion being a person of
Eastern origin, named Ul-Jabal. The baronet had consumed his vitality
in the life-long attempt to sound the too fervid Maelstrom of Oriental
research, and his mind had perhaps caught from his studies a tinge of
their morbidness, their esotericism, their insanity. He had for some
years past been engaged in the task of writing a stupendous work on
Pre-Zoroastrian Theogonies, in which, it is to be supposed, Ul-Jabal
acted somewhat in the capacity of secretary. But I will give _verbatim_
the extracts from his diary:
'_June 11_.--This is my birthday. Seventy years ago exactly I slid from
the belly of the great Dark into this Light and Life. My God! My God!
it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance.
Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly--seemed to have been looking forward to
it--and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only
factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of
Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity. I informed him that
this was also my father's birthday; and _his_ father's; and repeated
the oft-told tale of how the latter, just seventy years ago to-day,
walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of _himself_
sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the
pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two huge rows of teeth.
'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription "Has" meant. I
informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.
'_June l5_.--Some new element has entered into our existence here.
Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain--a
drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
chosen child!
'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_
'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?
'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The
viperous murderer! He has stolen my gem, well knowing that with it he
has stolen my life. The stone is gone--gone, my precious gem. A
weakness overtook me, and I lay for many dreamless hours naked on the
marble floor.
'Does the fool think to hide ought from my eyes? Can he imagine that I
shall not recover my precious gem, my stone of Saul?
'_June 20_.--Ah, Ul-Jabal--my brave, my noble Son of the Prophet of
God! He has replaced the stone! He would not slay an aged man. The
yellow ray of his eye, it is but the gleam of the great thinker,
not--not--the gleam of the assassin. Again, as I lay in
semi-somnolence, I saw him enter my room, this time more distinctly. He
went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours
after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I
might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his
clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being!--he has taken
the _other_ stone from the _other_ cup--a thing of little value to any
man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I?
'_June 21_.--Merciful Lord in Heaven! he has _not_ replaced it--not
_it_--but another instead of it. To-day I actually opened the chalice,
and saw. He has put a stone there, the same in size, in cut, in
engraving, but different in colour, in quality, in value--a stone I
have never seen before. How has he obtained it--whence? I must brace
myself to probe, to watch; I must turn myself into an eye to search
this devil's-bosom. My life, this subtle, cunning Reason of mine, hangs
in the balance.
'_June 22_.--Just now he offered me a cup of wine. I almost dashed it
to the ground before him. But he looked steadfastly into my eye. I
flinched: and drank--drank.
'Years ago, when, as I remember, we were at Balbec, I saw him one day
make an almost tasteless preparation out of pure black nicotine, which
in mere wanton lust he afterwards gave to some of the dwellers by the
Caspian to drink. But the fiend would surely never dream of giving to
me that browse of hell--to me an aged man, and a thinker, a seer.
'_June 23_.--The mysterious, the unfathomable Ul-Jabal! Once again, as
I lay in heavy trance at midnight, has he invaded, calm and noiseless
as a spirit, the sanctity of my chamber. Serene on the swaying air,
which, radiant with soft beams of vermil and violet light, rocked me
into variant visions of heaven, I reclined and regarded him unmoved.
The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice,
and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which _he himself_
put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what
shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber!
'_June 24_.--No more--no more shall I drink wine from the hand of
Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body. Daggers
of lambent fever race through my brain incessant. Some fibrillary
twitchings at the right angle of the mouth have also arrested my
attention.
'_June 25_.--He has dared at open mid-day to enter my room. I watched
him from an angle of the stairs pass along the corridor and open my
door. But for the terrifying, death-boding thump, thump of my heart, I
should have faced the traitor then, and told him that I knew all his
treachery. Did I say that I had strange fibrillary twitchings at the
right angle of my mouth, and a brain on fire? I have ceased to write my
book--the more the pity for the world, not for me.
'_June 26_.--Marvellous to tell, the traitor, Ul-Jabal, has now placed
_another_ stone in the Edmundsbury chalice--also identical in nearly
every respect with the original gem. This, then, was the object of his
entry into my room yesterday. So that he has first stolen the real
stone and replaced it by another; then he has stolen this other and
replaced it by yet another; he has beside stolen the valueless stone
from the modern chalice, and then replaced it. Surely a man gone rabid,
a man gone dancing, foaming, raving mad!
'_June 28_.--I have now set myself to the task of recovering my jewel.
It is here, and I shall find it. Life against life--and which is the
best life, mine or this accursed Ishmaelite's? If need be, I will do
murder--I, with this withered hand--so that I get back the heritage
which is mine.
'To-day, when I thought he was wandering in the park, I stole into his
room, locking the door on the inside. I trembled exceedingly, knowing
that his eyes are in every place. I ransacked the chamber, dived among
his clothes, but found no stone. One singular thing in a drawer I saw:
a long, white beard, and a wig of long and snow-white hair. As I passed
out of the chamber, lo, he stood face to face with me at the door in
the passage. My heart gave one bound, and then seemed wholly to cease
its travail. Oh, I must be sick unto death, weaker than a bruised reed!
When I woke from my swoon he was supporting me in his arms. "Now," he
said, grinning down at me, "now you have at last delivered all into my
hands." He left me, and I saw him go into his room and lock the door
upon himself. What is it I have delivered into the madman's hands?
'_July 1_.--Life against life--and his, the young, the stalwart, rather
than mine, the mouldering, the sere. I love life. Not _yet_ am I ready
to weigh anchor, and reeve halliard, and turn my prow over the watery
paths of the wine-brown Deeps. Oh no. Not yet. Let _him_ die. Many and
many are the days in which I shall yet see the light, walk, think. I am
averse to end the number of my years: there is even a feeling in me at
times that this worn body shall never, never taste of death. The
chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is
lost--a mere fiction _at first_, an idler's dream _then_, but
now--now--that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of
things, and a fact among facts--no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern
as the very word of God. Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the
surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart? Nay, nay, but there is
hope. I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel,
insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I
saw a Syrian's head cleft open--a gallant stroke! The edges of this I
have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.
'_July 2_.--I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook
and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens. At times I
thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.
Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.
'_July 7_.--The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
slay my enemy, and make an end?
'_July_ 8.--Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
lie my few garments--and opened it. Ah, I have the stone--safe--safe!
He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
where I would be least likely to seek it--_in my own trunk_! And yet I
dread, most intensely I dread, to look.
'_July_ 9.--The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?
'_July 10_.--In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
vaults,--the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,--how had I
forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
might plunge it into the marrow of his back. He opened the iron door of
the first vault and passed in. If I could lock him in?--but he held the
key. On and on he wound his way, holding the lantern near the ground,
his head bent down. The thought came to me _then_, that, had I but the
courage, one swift sweep, and all were over. I crept closer, closer.
Suddenly he turned round, and made a quick step in my direction. I saw
his eyes, the murderous grin of his jaw. I know not if he saw
me--thought forsook me. The weapon fell with clatter and clangor from
my grasp, and in panic fright I fled with extended arms and the
headlong swiftness of a stripling, through the black labyrinths of the
caverns, through the vacant corridors of the house, till I reached my
chamber, the door of which I had time to fasten on myself before I
dropped, gasping, panting for very life, on the floor.
'_July 11_.--I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have
remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My
tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.
'_July 12_.--I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study.
He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us.
Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate! I had
taken the false stone from the Edmundsbury chalice and put it in the
pocket of my brown gown, with the bold intention of showing it to him,
and asking him if he knew aught of it. But when I faced him, my courage
failed again. We drank together and ate together as in the old days of
love.
'July l3.--I cannot think that I have not again imbibed some
soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.
'July l4.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,--and is gone!
'July l5.--Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
with him--the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
ebbing in my heart.'
Here the manuscript abruptly ended.
Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
round on me, and said:
'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'
'_Has_ it a meaning?'
Zaleski smiled.
'Can you doubt it? in the shape of a cloud, the pitch of a thrush's
note, the _nuance_ of a sea-shell you would find, had you only insight
_enough_, inductive and deductive cunning _enough_, not only a meaning,
but, I am convinced, a quite endless significance. Undoubtedly, in a
human document of this kind, there is a meaning; and I may say at once
that this meaning is entirely transparent to me. Pity only that you did
not read the diary to me before.'
'Why?'
'Because we might, between us, have prevented a crime, and saved a
life. The last entry in the diary was made on the 15th of July. What
day is this?'
'This is the 20th.'
'Then I would wager a thousand to one that we are too late. There is
still, however, the one chance left. The time is now seven o'clock:
seven of the evening, I think, not of the morning; the houses of
business in London are therefore closed. But why not send my man, Ham,
with a letter by train to the private address of the person from whom
you obtained the diary, telling him to hasten immediately to Sir
Jocelin Saul, and on no consideration to leave his side for a moment?
Ham would reach this person before midnight, and understanding that the
matter was one of life and death, he would assuredly do your bidding.'
As I was writing the note suggested by Zaleski, I turned and asked him:
'From whom shall I say that the danger is to be expected--from the
Indian?'
'From Ul-Jabal, yes; but by no means Indian--Persian.'
Profoundly impressed by this knowledge of detail derived from sources
which had brought me no intelligence, I handed the note to the negro,
telling him how to proceed, and instructing him before starting from
the station to search all the procurable papers of the last few days,
and to return in case he found in any of them a notice of the death of
Sir Jocelin Saul. Then I resumed my seat by the side of Zaleski.
'As I have told you,' he said, 'I am fully convinced that our messenger
has gone on a bootless errand. I believe you will find that what has
really occurred is this: either yesterday, or the day before, Sir
Jocelin was found by his servant--I imagine he had a servant, though no
mention is made of any--lying on the marble floor of his chamber, dead.
Near him, probably by his side, will be found a gem--an oval stone,
white in colour--the same in fact which Ul-Jabal last placed in the
Edmundsbury chalice. There will be no marks of violence--no trace of
poison--the death will be found to be a perfectly natural one. Yet, in
this case, a particularly wicked murder has been committed. There are,
I assure you, to my positive knowledge forty-three--and in one island
in the South Seas, forty-four--different methods of doing murder, any
one of which would be entirely beyond the scope of the introspective
agencies at the ordinary disposal of society.
'But let us bend our minds to the details of this matter. Let us ask
first, _who_ is this Ul-Jabal? I have said that he is a Persian, and of
this there is abundant evidence in the narrative other than his mere
name. Fragmentary as the document is, and not intended by the writer to
afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
lived. "What," he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
long-desired gem, "what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'"--the
meaning which _he_ so well knew. "One of the lost secrets of the
world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
the solution of the riddle, or else--what is more likely, in spite of
his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"--that his mind, and
the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
than the Edmundsbury Monks. But _they_ did not make the stone, nor did
they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk--they got it from
some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
someone from whom _he_ received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
of time. And consider the character of the engraving--it consists of _a
mythological animal_, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only
are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
that the figure of the _scarabaeus_ on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
that evidence alone--though there is more--that this gem was certainly
Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of "Has" vanishes:
for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But
Persian, you say, written in English characters? Yes, and it was
precisely this fact that made its meaning one of what the baronet
childishly calls "the lost secrets of the world": for every successive
inquirer, believing it part of an English phrase, was thus hopelessly
led astray in his investigation. "Has" is, in fact, part of the word
"Hasn-us-Sabah," and the mere circumstance that some of it has been
obliterated, while the figure of the mystic animal remains intact,
shows that it was executed by one of a nation less skilled in the art
of graving in precious stones than the Persians,--by a rude, mediaeval
Englishman, in short,--the modern revival of the art owing its origin,
of course, to the Medici of a later age. And of this Englishman--who
either graved the stone himself, or got some one else to do it for
him--do we know nothing? We know, at least, that he was certainly a
fighter, probably a Norman baron, that on his arm he bore the cross of
red, that he trod the sacred soil of Palestine. Perhaps, to prove this,
I need hardly remind you who Hasn-us-Sabah was. It is enough if I say
that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending
his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. He was the chief
of the heterodox Mohammedan sect of the Assassins (this word, I
believe, is actually derived from his name); imagined himself to be an
incarnation of the Deity, and from his inaccessible rock-fortress of
Alamut in the Elburz exercised a sinister influence on the intricate
politics of the day. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal
--the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting
him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times. Now three
well-known facts occur to me in connection with this stone of the House
of Saul: the first, that Saladin met in battle, and defeated, _and
plundered_, in a certain place, on a certain day, this Hasn-us-Sabah,
or one of his successors bearing the same name; the second, that about
this time there was a cordial _rapprochement_ between Saladin and
Richard the Lion, and between the Infidels and the Christians
generally, during which a free interchange of gems, then regarded as of
deep mystic importance, took place--remember "The Talisman," and the
"Lee Penny"; the third, that soon after the fighters of Richard, and
then himself, returned to England, the Loculus or coffin of St. Edmund
(as we are informed by the _Jocelini Chronica_) was _opened by the
Abbot_ at midnight, and the body of the martyr exposed. On such
occasions it was customary to place gems and relics in the coffin, when
it was again closed up. Now, the chalice with the stone was taken from
this loculus; and is it possible not to believe that some knight, to
whom it had been presented by one of Saladin's men, had in turn
presented it to the monastery, first scratching uncouthly on its
surface the name of Hasn to mark its semi-sacred origin, or perhaps
bidding the monks to do so? But the Assassins, now called, I think, "al
Hasani" or "Ismaili"--"that accursed _Ishmaelite_," the baronet
exclaims in one place--still live, are still a flourishing sect
impelled by fervid religious fanaticisms. And where think you is their
chief place of settlement? Where, but on the heights of that same
"Lebanon" on which Sir Jocelin "picked up" his too doubtful scribe and
literary helper?