ever seen. The floor was of black polished ebony, and strewn on the
floor were priceless leopard skins and Persian rugs. There were heavy
Chinese tapestries worked in crimson and gold, Tibetan devil-masks, gold
candelabra, armour richly inlaid with precious stones, wondrous black
oak furniture.... But I can assure you, I could continue indefinitely
describing the contents of that room without giving you any adequate
idea of what it was like!
"'Hardly what you expected to see, eh?' Ombos said, and there was a
faint trace of mockery in his tone.
"I looked around me helplessly.
"'No!' I said, sinking into a most luxurious silk-cushioned divan.
'Trenches, and this! I suppose I'll wake up soon.'
"'Would you like to see my bronze statue of Albert of Cologne? It's the
gem of my collection, and has a world-wide reputation!'
"'It's rather different, you may say.' He looked full over my head as I
spoke, and following the direction of his eyes, I turned. In a dark
recess in that part of the room stood a bronze statue, some six feet in
height. It portrayed the great mystic in a long habit fashioned after a
monkish cowl, and his hair and face reminded me of a bust of Nero I had
once seen in the gallery of the Louvre. Ombos told me that the life of
Albert Magnus had been written by Dr. Sighart. This Dominican, _magnus
in magia_, _major in philosophia_, _maximus in theologia_, was
distinguished alike for his knowledge of the black art and his great
virtue, for austerity of regimen, and dislike of any form of society.
For other details of this philosopher I must refer you to Sighart's
excellent monograph and Mr. James Mew's work on _The Black Art_ from
which we learn that Albert of Cologne was accused by the vulgar of
holding illicit commerce with the devil. They believed as a matter of
course that he was aided by Beelzebub. And legends grew about him in
wild luxuriance. In particular he is credited with the creation of an
android, homunculus, or, as some say, a fair maiden--an idea which
Goethe may have copied in his celebrated play--able, according to some,
to say only 'Salve,' but, according to others, to predict with the
unerring accuracy of a Zadkiel a change of government, or the advent of
a pestilence, a royal marriage or a royal death. But all agree that
this automaton was smashed by his pupil Thomas Aquinas, who ought to
have known better than to believe it a device of the Evil One. This
story of the speaking statue may go with those other marvels of his
vision of the Holy Virgin to encourage him in theological study, and his
stupendous garden of flowers and birds and fountains in mid-winter for
William of Holland, and that gracious scent which arose after a longer
time than four days out of his sacred sepulchre, and his vision of St.
Dominic, who himself revealed to him the secret of the stone, whereby he
discharged all the debts of his bishopric.
"These bald facts about our friend Magnus must suffice. Old Ombos had a
splendid edition of his works, lately published in Paris under the
direction of a certain August Borguet; twenty large folios on all
imaginable subjects. They included chapters on hawks and adhering to
God, on meteors and the mystery of the Mass, on the healing of the leper
and the _eau de vie_.
"I was a gross Philistine in those days--still am, as a matter of
fact--and I could not appreciate the statue. A strenuous life with my
Regiment had stifled what little appreciation for such things a more
leisured existence might have fostered. I could not appreciate nor
understand the things that Ombos was saying about the bronze statue and
the strange Master of the Masters it portrayed.
"Old Ombos--you could not help but think that he had grown very much
like the statue himself; or had the statue grown like him?--held up a
candelabra which threw the details of the bronze figure into relief and
cast flickering reflections on the dark oak panelling of the recess.
"'It's an exquisite thing,' said Ombos. 'See how he rears himself on his
black granite plinth. A noble pile of mellow bronze, irregular yet
graceful.' Ombos regarded it smilingly, yet with one of his queer,
sinister looks. It would have been hard to know what he was thinking. He
was one of those tall, emaciated chaps, that make us men of ordinary
stature feel dwarfish; and as I looked at his skull-like face I wondered
at first where his eyes were hidden ... they seemed so far back in the
dark hollows on each side of his nose.
"I placed myself before Albert of Cologne--to try and appreciate it, you
know. Well, I didn't think a great deal of it, but of course I was a
Philistine. I had seen many great, heavy bronzes in the British Museum,
and they hadn't even stirred my heart, so it is not surprising that this
one failed to affect me. I told Ombos, merely to please him, that I
thought it was an extraordinary piece of work. But he very soon saw that
I was not able to appreciate old Magnus, and he drew a heavy plush
curtain back in front of him.
"'Come back! Come away!' he said. 'You have not yet the understanding.
Oh, it's big! It's a big god, I tell you.'
"Ombos was very patient with me, but as he walked up and down the room
kicking the leopard skin rugs I knew he was thinking what an idiot I
was, and I just waited.
"'You have not yet the understanding,' he muttered. 'It may come to you
one day ... the doors of life and death are left ajar from time to time,
and the light of Al Tughrai's lamp of wisdom shines out upon us for a
moment between the opening and closing.' The carved ivory face of old
Ombos seemed softer when he said that.
"'Did my brother care for the old bronze? Did he love it as I do, every
curve in the lean and corded neck ...'
"And then all of a sudden he walked over to me! 'Come!' he said, putting
his hand on my shoulder and speaking in a voice which he had the trick
of making wonderfully amiable. 'Dear me, dear me! How I must bore you
with my old relics. You want some tea and muffins or something of the
kind, eh? Will you do me the honour of taking tea with me?' he said,
leading me through a door in a recess and a wilderness of corridors to a
small room, where a charming French girl presided over a steaming
tea-pot of massive silver.
"'This is Captain Crabbe,' said Ombos introducing me to her. He turned
to me. 'This is Margot, my niece,' he said with a smile.
"I made a step forward and bowed slightly; she was very pretty, this
girl, as she stood there with the rich red light from the silk lamp
shades behind her. She was one of those dark, seductive women that look
their best in a warm light; and that evening her face and figure seemed
instinct with the joy of youth.
"Never before have I tasted such hot-cakes and sandwiches, and muffins
... there could be nothing like them, nor any hot-cakes to set above
them in all Europe. The sinister look had now quite passed from my
host's face as he sat before me stirring tea and munching muffins
comfortably; he seemed goodheartedness embodied. On the table were some
wonderful lucid china bowls filled with cigarettes, Parascho and
_caporal ordinaire_, Egyptian and every imaginable kind. After tea we
pushed back our chairs and smoked. His conversation was delightful, and
showed me at once that he was a man of brilliant gifts, yet an
eccentric. I felt much as Mark Twain must have felt when he first met
Rudyard Kipling; Twain has summed up, in that inimitable way of his, the
feeling of being in the presence of an overwhelming personality. 'I
believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew
that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before--though
he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.'... That was
exactly how I felt when I was talking tea with Ombos ... his
conversation was as exhilarating as wine; his presence diffused a
stimulating atmosphere; I felt exalted by his joyous enthusiasm.
"Well (to get on), after I left him at the door of his old shop (which
was such a dingy entrance to all the luxury of the interior of the
place), and I think we were loth to part, it was agreed between us that,
should I remain in the town, we were to meet again. As I walked down the
little _pave_ street something I couldn't account for began to sweep
over me; it was not merely that the presence of Ombos had fascinated me;
there was something else. There was something that stirred in my
heart--a thing which you will not understand. If you had known Ombos you
might have understood. I wanted to go back and have another look at that
bronze statue; I was becoming desperately afraid that I had been too
hasty in my inspection of it--that I had under-estimated it. I was very
young, heedless, self-esteemed and smug, and had hardly paused to pay a
moment's tribute to it. I felt that Albert of Cologne was standing
there, absorbed, proud, erect, and defiant, waiting for me to find my
_true_ eyes.
* * * * *
"Of course, I did see the bronze statue again, or I shouldn't be
sitting here wasting your time and patience. Within a few days I went
round again to the old shop, and old Ombos was standing there amid his
Queen Anne candlesticks and piles of books just as if he had been
waiting for me.
"'Come in, come in!' he said, speaking in a voice that made me feel
honestly welcome. 'Dear me, dear me! I am very glad you have not
forgotten me.'
"'No,' I said. 'Not forgotten you or the bronze statue. It was the only
thing in your place that did not interest me when I first walked in.'
"I paused, and Ombos prompted me half unconsciously: 'Yes?'
"'Now!' I said, meeting his eyes misting my own in doing so, 'it is the
only thing I should like to see.'
"'Ah!' he said.... 'Well, I told you that he might come over you slowly;
but the gods direct rightly whom they will. I tell you that such things
as the Keys of Mercy and the Lamps of Wisdom are not gained in one swift
breath. What's gained in a few moments is not worth having. All those
who have through toil and pain entered into citizenship in the Celestial
City will tell you that. Gods do not grow in one night like mushrooms.
Every great masterpiece is an evolution, be it a statue, a poem, a
painting, a man--or a god. If it is ever given to you to see my Albert
of Cologne as I see him you will understand what I mean.' He turned
round to me and I gave a start, I can tell you. Never have I seen such
lurid gleams of light as those that danced from those two deep-set eyes!
I say 'lurid,' for at times, the colour of them took a blood red hue,
and changed quickly again to a glittering green. As I stared at him--it
was all over in a few seconds--the baleful glare seemed to grow in
intensity, till I felt as though I were enduring the mocking gaze of
Albert of Cologne himself; and verily, I half expected any moment to see
Ombos change into a mighty bronze demon or some appalling, devilish
shape from the under-world.
"'Er--shall we go and have a look at the statue?' I said, with a
half-conscious determination to see whether it really ever had existed
(I was beginning to think that Ombos had been using a kind of hypnotic
influence on me, thus inducing me to see visions); and also, as I
believe, with some vague wish to shut out the sight of those rolling,
glittering eyes. For the first time I felt towards him a fierce anger,
and I found myself making a resolution never to return to see him again
when once I was free of the place.
"'Ah!' he said, 'I thought you'd want to come back and see Albertus
Magnus; I want you to have a good look at him this time and tell me if
he looks quite as commonplace as he did before. Such things can only
trickle slowly into the soul, but presently, ah! they get right hold of
one--they permeate one, and then there comes a time ...'
"Ombos snatched at the heavy curtain, and the rings screeched on the
brass rod. Clothed in his monkish garb, his face furrowed and seamed;
the lustre of his eyes dimmed by the tears of centuries--there stood
Albertus. The sunken cheeks spoke of years of study and aspiration, but
the swelling muscles of his arms, the deep chest, the wonderful
hands--big, bony, horrible hands--spoke of one from whom age has taken
little toll. Here was age, wisdom, mysticalness, a subtle sense of
pensive melancholy, and a persistence that never tires.
"'Well, how do you like my statue this time?' asked Ombos.
"'Splendid!' I breathed.
"'Yes,' he said looking hard at me. 'The best of it is Albertus asks for
nothing. You can neither bribe nor buy him; your flattery will not move
him; your approbation or blame alike are vain ... he has the
self-sufficiency of the Master of Masters.'
"'Yes,' I found myself saying eagerly. 'He is the Master of Masters.'
"Suddenly he turned and threw the curtain back and took me by the arm
and led me away. 'My force is all going into Albertus--but I must not
overdo it. If I stand too long before him he drains me of all my
god-energy, you know ... that leaves me sick and exhausted. You've heard
about how Michael Angelo put all his power into his marble statue of
Moses? You've read about such things? You know the kind of gush. I met a
poor, half-crazed, devil-driven poet-fellow in Paris some years ago who
told me he had written a great poem; he had lured the crucified soul of
a murderer into his verses. Confoundedly conceited about it, too, he was
... called it _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_. Bah! It would have taken him
a lifetime to put a murderer's socks into a poem. He was a mountebank
... a posturer! And what is this winged thing men name the soul? And who
did make the stars?' Ombos turned demon-like eyes on me, and his whole
face seemed lit up with an appalling mirth.
"'Believe them not, for they are not miraculous ones. They will be lost
for ever; they will die. Their books and statues may live, but they will
die, as sure as the grass grows over graves. My force and body and soul
is passing into the Master of Masters.... I shall live and be a god, I
shall stand oblivious and indifferent to the centuries as they stalk
by.'
"'You don't mean to tell me ...'
"Ombos looked up, his red-green eyes gleaming as he answered,
"'Most certainly I do ... my soul will pass into that bronze statue when
I am ready to give it up.'
"'The war, Mr. Ombos,' I thought as I looked at his shrivelled fearsome
figure, 'has turned your head. There are certainly a few bats in your
belfry. You will find your way into an asylum before many weeks have
passed.'
"You must understand, I didn't realize what kind of a chap I was dealing
with then, I didn't know that he was all cold and calm and apart from
life ... very clever and--philosophical, _but not human_.
"'Nonsense! How can a man's soul pass into a bronze statue?' I asked
rather testily. 'Good heavens, man, do you realize that you're trying to
make me believe that which is beyond the pale of all human possibility!'
"'Human possibility! What is human possibility? I tell you that all this
is fact; simply.' Ombos rose and began to pace to and fro over the
Persian rugs like a tiger. 'I'm not given to imagining things.'
"'Bah!' he grunted. 'Every child will tell you that the tendency of
spirits to return to the old haunts of bodily life is almost universal.
The universal laws apply ... there is no escape from the great law, the
attraction of environment.'
"'The rest is merely every-day knowledge. Have you ever heard of ancient
formula by which the grosser factors of the body may be eliminated,
leaving the ethereal portions to retain the spirit? Do you not
understand that the body may be preserved from absolute disintegration?
The old alchemists all knew that death could be indefinitely deferred
in this way. Professor Vaini left among his papers a work of two
thousand pages in which he clearly demonstrated that it was possible for
a spiritualized body to retain a modified life practically for ever. Any
doctor will tell you the hair and nails of a dead person will often grow
for years after....'
"Ombos turned his glittering eyes on me a moment inquisitively.
"'Oh, tell me all that kind of stuff if you like,' I protested
good-humouredly. 'It makes no impression on me. I'm a normal man, Ombos,
and I object to having my free imagination harrowed over things that
don't count. Behind that curtain is a bronze statue, and it never can or
will be anything else but a bronze statue, and that's about the sum and
total of it all.'
"'I was merely telling you a few cold and scientific facts,' returned
Ombos argumentatively.
"'Now, if I wished to impress you it would be easy enough. I would like
to test that sensitiveness which you boast that you don't possess. I
think I could give you a severe shaking-up! And I will begin by telling
you that I will employ mere vulgar trickery ... the trickery of any
mountebank who fools people at a country fair!'
"He looked at me with that slow smile of his--the smile of the
mystic--mocking, mysterious.
"I answered him with a weak laugh. 'You may try some of your tricks,
wizard; but you will fail to impress me, I think!'
"'I make it a habit not to fail.'
"His keen eyes flamed, and his brow was dark and hot. He started up and
walked over to the small oak escritoire. Bending down he produced a
small glass lamp, and put a light to it. It burnt with the imperceptible
flame of pure spirit of wine. He took it and vanished a moment. When he
returned, and set it before me, it gave out a keen white glare and
heavily-scented smoke. He took me by the arm and pointed to the black
velvet curtain which hid the bronze statue. 'See, there: behind--through
the curtain. Who is that?'
"While I looked, Ombos gave a strange rasping sound. Then, in a tone of
weird intensity: 'See! See!' and he laid his hand on mine ... the
curtain was no longer there, and some vague thing gathered--the statue
was dim behind it--the form of a man.
"'The veil is drawn,' said the voice of Ombos. 'Master, the veil is
drawn. See, if you will. See!'
"In a fluid light the form darkened. I saw Ombos seated before a table
with his head bowed down over a folio volume, quiet and still. The head
was ill to look at, and I knew he was dead.... All grew misty and faded
into light again.
"'The veil is drawn,' he droned. 'Look again!'
"Again a film gathered in the light and I saw the Albertus Magnus for a
moment. Then it changed to Ombos, himself.... A lean and grim form with
dim mocking features, and yellow eyes that glittered and flickered....
"And again the vision blurred and faded into light. Then Ombos dashed
the lamp aside, and the room was in red darkness ... the silence and
darkness seemed to endure for an eternity. I heard the hiss of a quick
indrawn breath at last ... it was my own breathing.... I opened my eyes.
"I was in the small room where I had taken tea with Ombos and Margot
some weeks before. Supper was laid on a superb octagon table. 'They were
good tricks, were they not?' said Ombos, with an easy laugh. His keen
eyes smote keen into mine. 'Now you will in truth be able to go away and
tell people how I tricked you, how it was plainly all a cheat.'
"At that moment Margot came in with a big apron tied about her. She
greeted me pleasantly, setting a tray down on the table.
"'We do our own work here, Captain Crabbe,' she said. 'Do you want to
make yourself useful?'
"I rose promptly. My little adventure into the occult world with Ombos
had been rather exhilarating. I was glad when she told me to follow her
out, through a long corridor into the kitchen, where she gave me a
can-opener and a tin of sardines.
"'Open those up and turn them into this little dish, please. And if you
have any hygienic aversion to tinned things, please forget it. Otherwise
you will have to eat some of my hot teacakes.'
"Margot was standing at the table, cleaning a crisp head of celery. The
position showed me her profile, with a little wisp of black hair
escaping near one ear.
"We sat down to one of the most cheerful meals three people have ever
enjoyed. We sat chatting there for nearly an hour. All the while I was
trying to reconcile this man Ombos who sat talking boyishly with the
student of occultism and black magic I had talked with an hour or so
before. If I had felt any resentment of the tricks he had played on me
it would have vanished utterly. Afterwards Margot made real Turkish
coffee over a dainty spirit lamp ... once--in a critical stage in the
coffee-making, too--she looked up and her eyes sought mine; then her red
lips parted in a smile. She poured out the coffee deftly, blowing out
the lamp, and put the little copper pot on a plate.
"Ombos surveyed his coffee with the air of a connoisseur, his head
turned on one side.
"Margot produced the bowls of cigarettes and reached over my shoulder to
offer me one. 'You want Egyptian?' she said smiling. 'You see I have a
good memory--you smoked them last time.'
"A warm faint perfume came from her hair.
"It was ten o'clock when I rose to leave, Ombos and Margot came out to
the front to say good night: my last glimpse, as I walked down the
_pave_ street, was of Margot--a bare-headed figure, with wistful grey
eyes, calm with the mysterious wisdom of pure womanhood. She waved her
dainty lace handkerchief to me.
"That was the last of Ombos in the flesh. The next day, after German
shells had poured on Ypres for six hours without cessation, my regiment
left the town, and we went out a mile or two to take over some trenches.
"A month later my duty took me back to Ypres, and I found myself walking
up the Rue Bar-le-Duc towards the little antique shop. Overhead the
shells whistled without cessation. It was now a city of the dead--one
could not realize that it was the same pleasant little town where I had
met with so strange an experience a few weeks back. Men, children and
horses were lying dead in every gutter.
"In due course I arrived at the shop. A large hole had been ripped in
the _pave_ road before the door, and I had to step over a dead and
twisted soldier to gain an entrance. Of course the place was empty.
Ombos, Albertus Magnus and all the wonderful contents of the spacious
old rooms had disappeared. I made a search of the house, and it was not
without a curious sensation in my heart that I entered the room where
the Master of Masters had towered in his niche. Silence--only the faint
boom of a gun far away in the French trenches--awful, ghastly silence.
Then a deafening roar and a falling of masonry as Krupp's marked down
another house in the town of sorrow. The horror of it!
"I turned dismally away, out into the Rue Bar-le-Duc, and along the
square. A few scattered lights shone feebly through the evening mist,
and over towards the Norman bridge the yellow flames from a burning
house lit up the sky with a lurid glow. At nearly every street corner
little groups of civilians had collected and were talking and
gesticulating in a terrified manner. When a big shell came with a
hoarse, rattling noise through the air, like a racing motor cycle on the
track at Brooklands, they would rush into their homes, panic-smitten. If
death winked, and passed them over, out they would creep again. And so
they lived in an inferno of shells for weeks on end.
"An ambulance wagon overturned in the middle of the road attracted my
attention. I could not repress a shudder as I looked on the
shell-shattered wreck.... It was the old type of four-horse ambulance
used by the army in South Africa; possibly it had jolted into the
shell-swept death-trap of Spion Kop, or carried men into the reeking
enteric camps of Ladysmith. Well, it had made its last journey this
time! The four dead horses had not been cut away from the traces, and
from underneath the huddled and twisted heap stuck out an arm, and in
the hand was clutched one of those short, stumpy whips which are used by
the lead driver of a gun. I can see that poor chap in my mind thrashing
and urging his team of horses into a gallop, for it was not reckoned
wise to meander about the streets of Ypres, and then--one blinding
crash.
"I swung round with a great desire to get away from the appalling scene,
and as I did so, I noticed a girl in a doorway struggling in the grip of
a powerful, swarthy-faced man of middle age. In the fading light I
caught a glimpse of her face, and I was out of the shadow and by her
side like a sky-rocket.
"'Let her go!' I said shortly. 'Before I mop out the gutter with you.'
"The man turned on me.
"'Who the devil----'
"'That's enough!'