He was in the tower with Pan Andrew on this same night that Peter and his caravan of merchants were encamped in their carts in the market place below the church. The moon was at its full and the shadows of the church towers fell far across the street and market. Down in front of the church doors a watchman with lantern and halberd paced to and fro calling out, as was his custom, the hours as they were sounded from the tower.
He had already called out the first hour when Peter of the Button Face, watching from a cart across the square, decided to make his first move.
“Michael,” he called in a loud whisper, “Michael.” And at that a man in a suit of leather with hat to match and thick sandals slid out of the next cart. He had already divested himself of the round turban and blankets that he wore as an Armenian merchant, and his body seemed to move in a constant succession of quiverings and glidings—in fact he had always been known in the Ukraine as the Snake—and he stood for a moment by his chief’s wagon to receive a whispered command in one ear.
Then, true to his name, he wriggled beneath a dozen carts and past the flank of an outhouse near the church to take refuge behind a tree that grew at this corner of the Rynek. Doubled up here he waited until the watchman should pass in front of the church. He had not long to wait.
Out from the shadows at the base of the church emerged suddenly a man carrying a lantern that threw a star-shaped light about it. This man tested the door to the stairs leading to the trumpeter’s tower, found it securely locked, yawned, and struck the paving stones several times in front of the door with his long halberd as if he were weary of doing nothing. The Snake’s eyes sized up this man as his opponent. He was a man perhaps past middle age, clad in a garment of leather over which was a very light chain armor, poorly woven; this fell like a skirt with pointed edges just below the knees. Above the waist the links of armor were a bit heavier extending over the shoulders and back into long sleeves clear to the wrist, and up past the neck to a kind of head covering like a cowl, over which he wore a pointed helmet of rough metal. Outside the armor he wore a very short leather vest caught with a belt from which hung a short sword, and across the shoulders just below the neck another belt with a buckle at the left where the halberd could be secured and balanced.
He passed from the front of the church to the south side, looked about carefully to see if there were any signs of life in the street or square, and, finding none, turned away from the church and entered the churchyard at the south where the moonlight fell brightly upon the old gravestones. Squatting down behind one of these, and crossing himself as if in excuse to the people buried there for disturbing their slumbers, he laid his halberd on the ground at his right side and the lantern at the left. Then reaching into a wallet which he wore at his girdle, he took out a crust of bread and a huge portion of meat. These he began to eat with no suspicion of any interruption.
In this conduct he was justified, for he had been doing this same thing over and over again for many years; there had been no serious duties about the church save perhaps on a holy day when youth on mischief bound would play some trick upon the watchman, and them he could easily dispatch about their business. Thieves seldom troubled churches in this period and the cemetery itself was guard enough against marauders in a period full of superstition. Up above him the trumpeter kept a much stricter vigil, and all about the town, the watch tried house doors and questioned late passers-by.
“Oh-ho-hum!” he yawned. Such a quiet thing was life!
But—flattened against the church wall behind him was one whose intention might have disturbed those weary thoughts had the watchman been able to discern it. The Snake had sized up this situation with rapidity and had taken advantage of the moment that the watchman turned his back upon the square to dart into the projecting shadow of a buttress. Edging along the wall, he moved cautiously until he was but a few yards from the tombstone by which the watchman sat.
Plof! The Snake had pounced like a hawk on a mouse.
There was not even a scuffle, so prepared was the intruder and so taken by surprise was the victim. Down went the watchman on his back by the side of the grave and in a second the deft Michael had bound his scarf tightly about the man’s mouth, so that he could not utter a sound. It was the work of a moment as well, to secure the hands and feet with short bits of rope that he carried in his jacket—he was at first minded to cut the man’s throat with his own sword, but he feared lest he might make one last dying cry and upset all their plans.
Inside the victim’s leather vest he found a huge brass key. This he cut loose from the short chain which held it and thrust it into his own belt.
Then making sure that the bonds were secure, he leaped back into the shadow of the church and stole back to the wagon of his chief as deftly as he had come.
“I have bound and gagged the watchman behind yon gravestone,” he reported, “and here is the key to the tower door.”
A whispered command traveled along the line of carts. Then there was a general doffing of blankets and turbans and the band of Peter, in leather jackets and hats, high hose and tall soft boots, stood ready behind their carts to follow the leader into his excellently planned enterprise.
It was but a short distance from the carts to the tower, and Peter led the way, keeping close to the ground in the shadow cast by the tower. They stood at length, about twenty of them, within the shelter of the angle which the tower made with the church.
“Keep close behind me,” said the leader, “when we mount the steps, and watch lest there be loose boards in the stairs beneath your feet. The boy is here this night in the tower with his father. Mount carefully, but rush and secure both father and son when I give you word.”
Here he fitted the key which Michael had stolen from the watchman, to the lock, and swung the small iron door on its hinges. He had to stoop as he went in.
“Quiet,” he whispered, “follow closely.”
In a very few minutes they were all inside. The last man following directions closed the iron door so that if a curious passer-by should inspect it, he would find it shut as it was usually.
“The task is easy,” whispered Peter when they had climbed the narrow steps that led to the stairs built in the tower scaffolding, “we have now but to bag our rabbit. But you must see to it that he is not a noisy rabbit. If he once gets his hand on a bell rope he will awaken the whole town with his ringing. He must be secured quickly.”
They went up and up, mounting quietly the stairs that wound about the heavy scaffolding, and treading ever carefully so that not a single board should squeak. At last the leader stopped.
“The light is just ahead,” he whispered.
Through the opened door of the tower room came suddenly the voice of Joseph, “You can sleep for the rest of the night, father,” he said. “I will sound the Heynal at every hour; the hourglass is plain to read and I shall make no error.”
“It was lucky to hit upon a night when they were together,” thought Peter. “We can bind the old one and make the young one show us the way to the prize.”
Joseph had just spread a manuscript before him on the table in the tower room and had moved a taper close to it to begin reading, when he heard a sudden noise just outside the door. Turning about sharply, he was just in time to see the door thrown violently open, and then three men rushed toward him before he could even assume a defensive attitude; he was absolutely powerless. One man held his arms as closely gripped as in a vise, while the two others leaped upon Pan Andrew as he rose, dazed with astonishment, from the little bed.
A fourth man stood in the doorway. His hands were at his hips and he laughed merrily. “Ho—ho—my merry singing birds,” he said. “We meet again high up above the noisy world where none can come to disturb us.” Then his brows darkened and he asked, “Do you know why I am here?”
Joseph shuddered. This man was the same that had met his father on the first day that he had seen Krakow—this was the man that had incited the crowd in the Rynek to stone his people—this was the voice that he had heard while he lay bound hand and foot in the small room of his lodgings. But at the same time he wondered what had brought the man back to the city. He had already obtained the prize, Joseph thought, after the risk and danger of the first trial. Was it, perhaps, that he wished to avenge himself upon his father for the incident of the cart?
Joseph made a motion as if to cross himself at thought of this, for here they were high up in the air above the city, and nothing would be easier than to hurl a man from the summit into the graveyard below and none would know of it until morning came and they found the lifeless victim.
Pan Andrew, however, looked at the intruder steadily. “No,” he said, very deliberately, “I do not know why you are here. But I do know you now, Peter of the Button Face, sometimes called Bogdan—it is strange that I did not recognize you that morning when you threatened me.”
Peter took notice in no way of Pan Andrew’s latter statement. He heard only the negative answer. Apparently he had not expected it.
“You do not? You lie! . . . Do you think that I do not know everything?” He pushed his way in and held the candle close to the prisoner’s face. “I say to you that I have come all this way to get what I want; I have the means for doing it, too, and I have men in this company that would rather see a dog like you dead than alive. Now come—if you value your skin. Where have you hidden the Great Tarnov Crystal?”
Joseph leaped with a thrill. This, then, was the prize that they had brought from the Ukraine—a crystal, the “Great Tarnov Crystal,” whose loss the father had not ceased to mourn. But, after all, was a crystal something that men valued so highly? If it were a diamond or a precious stone there might be some reason for so much covetousness, but a mere crystal—why, he himself knew caves in the Ukraine where one might knock rock crystals from the walls. But perhaps this had a certain significance.
“You know as well as I,” returned Pan Andrew, “that it disappeared on that same night that you attacked my lodgings. If you have it not, I know not where it is to be found.”
“It disappeared!” Peter was at first shocked, then incredulous. “You lie!” he shrieked, “you lie! You have it still. I will find a way. . . . Come here!” he called to Michael the Snake, “take this boy to the house where he lives and keep always your knife at his throat. I will stay with the old one here and if you do not return in a quarter of an hour we will put this Pole out of all trouble in this world. . . . No,” he continued, as if changing his mind, “I will go with the brat myself. While we look the house over you keep your sword close to the old fox’s throat. If the boy leads me the wrong way I’ll slit his throat, likewise if he tries to betray me. But if we do not return with the crystal in a reasonable time do as I have told you.”
That Pan Andrew would gladly give up the crystal to save not only his own life but that of the boy, the Cossack had believed firmly. Therefore his denial of the possession of the crystal was unlooked for and baffling. However, he dismissed the matter from his mind promptly. Undoubtedly Pan Andrew had lied to him, and unless something unforeseen happened it would be but a matter of a few minutes’ time before the crystal was in his own hands. It was true that Joseph might not know the exact hiding place of the crystal; what he did know was that the men in the tower would kill his father if he did not return at once with the prize, and he and the mother would make a quick search of the house in order to find it and redeem the father. It did occur to Peter that perhaps Pan Andrew had deposited it elsewhere, but if the house did not give up its prize, then they would return and try to torture the information out of the father.
“Stay,” he said suddenly, just as Joseph’s captor delivered the boy into his hands, “the hourglass there on the table shows that the sand has fallen to the second hour. It is time that the trumpet was sounded from this place, otherwise some one may suspect that something is wrong and come up here to see. . . . You, boy—you trumpet sometimes, I know. Surprises you, does it? Peter has eyes and ears everywhere. So, before we set out to get this precious stone, take down that trumpet from the wall. . . . No, leave it there a moment, and come here.”
He led him to the bell rope outside and stood over him.
“Ring twice upon the bell, then get your trumpet and play your Heynal from the four windows.”
He watched the boy carefully, with his knife gleaming in his hands, as Joseph tugged twice at the cord that moved the hammer against the bell.
“Do as you always do, and play no tricks.”
As Joseph went back to the little room and took up the trumpet he was thinking of another young trumpeter who, standing in the old tower over this same spot, had fallen pierced by an arrow while performing his duty. And it seemed curious that he too was called upon to show his mettle in much the same way. In his heart much of the first tumult of fear had died out. There had come to him that gift of everlasting stanchness which had been one of the most characteristic qualities of the Polish people. It was perhaps the inspiration which the thought of that other trumpeter had brought, for immediately afterward and at the minute that he had thrust the trumpet through the tower opening on the west, his mind flew back to his conversation one day with Elzbietka. He had spoken in jest that day about the Heynal, but she had taken it as a childish secret—bless her!—he was sure that she would remember.
This hope increased instantly. He knew that Elzbietka was awake at the second hour; she had known that it would be at that hour that he would take his father’s place, and if the Heynal was played straight through and two or three notes were added at the end where usually the music broke off on the broken note, she would know that something was wrong. What would she do? Her uncle, lost in his experiments, would only laugh at her fancy, as he would call it. Would she dare in the night to go to Jan Kanty? If she did, it was possible that Kanty could summon the watch quickly enough to save his father’s life, for he felt in his heart that Peter meant to kill Pan Andrew after the crystal was found.
It all depended on this. Did Peter know the story of the Tartar invasion and the broken note at the end of the Heynal? God must be trusted that he did not. This prayer was on Joseph’s lips as Peter said, “Now for your music.”
Up went the trumpet.
Then it seemed to Joseph that he had once done this very thing before. The whole world changed beneath him. The great stone city had become wood, and it was everywhere in flames. Men of short stature and ugly faces were riding about furiously on little horses. Close at hand a man had descended from his horse and had drawn a bow from his shoulders and an iron-tipped arrow from a quiver. The bow bent, the arrow was notched.
He played.
Peter nodded. The Heynal was not new to him, and he knew that the boy was playing as usual—that is, he knew up to a certain point. Joseph hesitated at the place where the music ordinarily breaks off—this time he added three notes of his own which definitely finished the Heynal. It took courage to play those notes, for he knew not but that at any moment he might feel the Cossack’s dagger in his throat. At length he let the trumpet fall and looked about.
The blood surged into his head with a rush. The Cossack was nodding approval! He did not know, then!
He went to the windows at south, east, and north, successively, and played as he had already played.
“Now hurry for your lodgings!”
Peter gripped the boy’s arm and pushed him ahead all the way down the stairs, after giving final orders to the men who guarded Pan Andrew. They found no one in the square below and slunk along in the shadows toward the university district. The Cossack was exulting again that his plans were working, and as he went along he looked about him for a quiet corner where he could finish Joseph with his dagger once he had the crystal in his hands and was on the way back to the tower. Then they would settle with the father and there would be no one left to give information concerning them. A company of Armenian merchants would leave the city unhindered in the course of the following day.
Very much earlier on this same eventful night a girlish figure emerged from the door leading to Alchemist Kreutz’s lodgings on the third floor of the building where Pan Andrew lived, and stole quietly down the steps to the second floor. Here she rapped three times. In a space of perhaps a minute, the door was thrown back a little, and Joseph’s mother peered cautiously out through the crack.
“Come in, child,” she said heartily as she recognized Elzbietka’s face.
“What brings you out so late?” she inquired a moment later as she shot the heavy bolts back into place and secured the door. “Has the student Tring been troubling you or your uncle lately, or what is it? Sit there at the table where I was just finishing my sewing for the day and tell me the whole story.”
“Yes,” answered the girl, “it is the student Tring. He and uncle are in the loft now, and I am somewhat frightened—they have been talking more queerly than ever all this evening.”
“You must stay with me here this night,” the woman said. “It’s a shame that such a scholar as your uncle should have anything to do with that student, Tring. I fear that young man very much. He seems to me like one who has grown old and then become young again. When he looks at me with those great dark eyes it seems as if he were thinking of terrible things——”
“I will stay here, and gladly, mother,” she answered, for in these months of sweet acquaintanceship the affection of the woman and girl had become much like that which exists between mother and daughter, “but it is not that I fear anything, myself, from the student Tring. It is really my uncle’s conduct these few weeks that troubles me, and more especially his conduct since that night when the men came here to steal. He is so changed!”
“I have seen,” Joseph’s mother replied. “But has he ever been cruel to you?”
“Oh, no! Never that. But he is not at all as he was when we first came here to live. Then he was full of merriment, ready to talk or laugh with me, eager to go somewhere or to see something that would be of pleasure to us both. Now he does not seem to think of me, at all. He is always like one in a dream. Sometimes when I speak to him, he does not seem to hear. Other times he answers my questions queerly, saying things that I had not thought of. He is caught up in something that I fear, and something that has little good in it.”
“It’s the student Tring who has done all this.”
“Yes, I think that he has done much of it. They two are together every night, and they work together in the loft above my head. I can hear them moving about occasionally, though sometimes a terrible silence is all that there is.”
“My dear child,” the woman laid her work by for the moment, “this is always your home here. Come here when there is anything to trouble you. . . . The little bed is always yours. . . . We, too, are greatly troubled as well, as perhaps you know. Pan Andrew has not been the same since that accursed night. . . . Yet if one had but sense, we have here all that should make man happy: children, love, bread, and a house—why must men be always sighing and striving for that which they have not?”
“We were so happy before,” continued Elzbietka. “It seems to me that the student Tring has some charm over my uncle which he cannot resist.”
“Heaven help us,” exclaimed the woman, making the sign of the cross. “And have you any idea what is going on in the loft above you?”
“None.” The girl shuddered. “It is some terrible thing. To-night both men spoke in such a peculiar way that I was frightened when they first came together. And ever since that they have been speaking more wildly, I think, than ever before. My uncle keeps saying, ‘This will drive me mad,’ and Tring says to him again, ‘There is nothing of harm in it. Try once more.’ Then again there is silence and my uncle speaks shortly, mad things—and I was frightened and came here.”
“My poor child.”
“Just before I came downstairs Tring was speaking to my uncle as if he were just a common servant. And my uncle instead of being angry seemed to be trying to please the student. At last Tring said: ‘This, now, you must do. You must learn the secret which will change brass into gold. Once you have gold, then you have the power to do all that man can do. You can go about over the earth and see all that there is to see, you can study with the most famous masters and buy all that you please.’ He repeated over and over again the word ‘gold,’ and it seemed to me that while he was speaking my uncle was working at something, for he never answered a word.”
The woman shook her head. “I have known of those who sought to make gold out of baser metal. But no good ever befell them. . . .” Then thinking that she needed to draw the girl’s thoughts away from herself and her troubles, she said, “I am often lonely these nights when Joseph and his father are away. Yet I often listen for the sound of the trumpet in the church tower and I know that everything is well with them.”
“And I. Joseph begins at the second hour. We have a secret, he and I, and I always listen for him to play.”
“Bless your heart. Do you mean to say that you lie awake until the second hour?”
“I do when he is playing. For he is my best friend, and one should be loyal unto friends.”
“Can you tell when he is playing, and when the father?”
“I could easily at first. Now it is much harder, but I think that I could distinguish did I not know at what hours each played. His notes are not quite so pointed as the father’s, but they are becoming more and more like them all the time.”
The conversation ran to other matters and it grew late. Finally the woman made up a bed for the girl on a small couch which Joseph and his father had built. It was close to the outer door, and directly below the casement, over which a piece of tapestry hung; the window was open in this fair weather, and Elzbietka could easily hear noises from outside, especially the sound of the church bells and the trumpet, for the window faced in the direction of the tower. Joseph’s mother retired to the second room, where she slept when Joseph was at the church, and Elzbietka, without undressing, for she feared lest the alchemist should call her suddenly, threw herself on the couch and tried to sleep.
She found sleep impossible. Visions of some terrible thing happening to her uncle and the student kept her thoughts boiling like water in a kettle. She kept remembering the words that other people had said, the remarks made by other students, the whispers up and down the lane that Pan Kreutz was engaged in some terrible work of Black Magic.
It was a superstitious age, an age when people believed that powers of evil could be called upon, like human beings, to perform certain dark deeds—that souls of the dead forever haunted certain lonely places on earth and would answer a question if one but knew how to address them. If a black cat crossed one’s path, then bad luck was sure to follow; if an owl hooted at exactly midnight from the tower of some deserted church then the witches were riding through the air on brooms or branches; if a dog howled in the night it was a sign that some one living near by was about to die.
There were people who fostered such ideas for their own benefit. They were for the most part necromancers or magicians who took the gold of credulous ones for telling them of their own futures or for warding off some impending evil from them. Perhaps some few of these believed themselves honest; the greater number were thoroughly dishonest and unscrupulous, men who wore dark robes and practiced dark ways simply to frighten superstitious folk into giving them money. These magicians sold articles called “tokens” which were guaranteed to keep away certain evils. A little ball of black stone would prevent the possessor from being bitten by snakes. The little yellow, glasslike substance, created when lightning struck in sand and melted the fine particles, was greatly valued; crumbled and taken internally it would prevent stomach trouble. Worn about the neck in a small bag it would keep off lightning. Certain little bones from the bodies of cats, dogs, and hares had properties of benefit; the heart of a frog had many mystic qualities.
It was quite apparent in the case of the alchemist, Kreutz, that something was going on that was undermining his health and perhaps his reason. Such a change as had come over him was not at all normal in a man with such a strong body and mind as he possessed. And as Elzbietka lay awake thinking of one thing after another she became a prey to many strange fears, among them this one, that Kreutz was no longer the master of his own soul, that somehow the student Tring had become the master of it; that Tring had discovered something in his studies which he was working out at the expense of the man who naturally should have been his teacher and master.
The trumpet had in the meanwhile sounded the first hour, but still she was not able to sleep. Her natural thoughts of her uncle and Tring were followed by a flood of fanciful imaginings, and in them she saw the figures warped and distorted out of their natural proportions; persons who are sick and persons who carry troubles in their minds experience this frequently, at a time when the body is tired and aching for sleep and yet when the mind is overactive with worries. Her uncle at one minute of normal and ordinary size seemed at intervals to shrink or enlarge without warning; Tring was now a student of the collegiate type, now a nightmare of a thing with the head of a pumpkin that grew until the whole sky was filled with the darkness of his shadow. They were engaged in many nefarious enterprises: they were releasing great hordes of bats from baskets, bats that they had created out of old sandals; they were leaping into the air and catching huge birds like eagles which they were imprisoning under the roof of the loft; they were mixing fiery liquids that hissed and bubbled and foamed—they were doing a thousand things at once and all of them somehow of evil. For nearly an hour these phantoms of half sleep danced in her brain, and then suddenly the bell on the tower sounded twice.
“The second hour,” she exclaimed, the drowsy phantoms of her brain taking sudden flight.
The Heynal began. “That is Joseph,” she thought.
She was humming the tune, already following him note by note—she reached the place where the hymn ended, and ceased there, to wait until he began to play again from the second of the four windows. But the next second she realized to her vast amazement that Joseph had not stopped upon the broken note that came at the end of the Heynal, but had added a note or two, and brought the little hymn to an end in the way that pieces of music usually end.
Elzbietka sat upright on the bed, although she was quite certain that some trick had been played upon her by her senses. “Perhaps I was but half awake,” she thought. “I will listen more closely when he plays it the second time.”
He began to play from the south side. This time she did not hum the tune over but followed each note intently. When he had finished she realized that for the second time he had not stopped upon the broken note but had gone ahead with the additional notes which made the Heynal sound like a finished piece of music and not one that was broken off.
“He is playing it wrongly,” she repeated to herself.
He played next on the east side but the wind carried the sound away this time. When he came to the last window, the window on the north, the sound came clearly to Elzbietka’s ears. “This time I shall know,” she said.
At first she thought that he was going to stop upon the broken note, for he hesitated there, but then he went on ahead as if to say, “I know that I should stop here, but am not stopping,” and added the extra notes which finished the strain, just as the young trumpeter would probably have finished it had he not been shot down by the Tartar bowman.
Elzbietka was off the bed and on her feet. . . . He had played it in such fashion deliberately! Joseph was far too good a trumpeter to make the same mistake at least three times.
But what—what—could it mean? That Joseph was in some trouble? But there was the great alarm bell, which once sounded would rouse the town in an incredibly short time. This bell was always employed in times of fire, invasion, defense, and such various events as riots, the visit of a foreign king, the declaration of war——
He certainly would not trifle with such a sacred thing as the Heynal for a mere pastime—therefore, why, why, why, did he not ring the bell?
There could be but one answer! The girl had half realized it with the very first false note of the first playing of the Heynal. This was a signal to her—to her, Elzbietka Kreutz! Joseph was in some strange, some unusual kind of distress! He counted upon her to remember the little secret that he had made in joking, he counted upon her to understand that he was in trouble. Why, perhaps he was even held by force—here her intuition actually leaped to the truth—perhaps some person was watching him so that he could not ring the bell!
Yes, it was for her ears that he was playing.
And she must act—she must help Joseph—at once—at once. Only, what was the wisest course? She could not bring herself to alarm the boy’s mother—should she call her uncle? He was still with Johann Tring in the loft—the light was there and there had been no sound of the student descending. Both, she knew, would laugh at her fears and send her back to bed. Therefore she moved quietly from the couch across the floor to the door where she threw back the bolts and drew the door open. Stepping across the threshold she closed the door and ascended to her own lodging where she procured the key to the outer door, and threw a cloak about her head and shoulders. In a very short time she was in the street.
At such an hour as this in the morning, it was dangerous for an unarmed man, and even more for an unarmed woman, to pass through the streets. Late roisterers were abroad, gamblers, drunkards, thieves, the very filth and scum of the city, were crouching in corners or picking the pockets of some man who had been struck down from behind. The city watch were preventive enough against crime if they responded in numbers large enough to cope with thieves and murderers who often worked in bands, but the law satisfied itself with treating most cruelly the few prisoners that fell into its clutches, and let the great majority of offenders go unmolested. Therefore a man’s best friend in dark city streets, particularly at such a late hour as this, was his good sword or cudgel.
Once outside the building wall Elzbietka breathed a prayer to her patron saint, the good Elizabeth, and observing in the bright light of the moon that the Street of the Pigeons was for the moment empty, kept her back close to the wall and edged her way slowly in the wall’s shadow to the cross street at the left, through which she had planned to dart for St. Ann’s Street, only a block distant. She was at the very corner and had climbed out from the sheltering buttress of the wall when there came the sound of men’s voices from the Street of the Pigeons directly behind her. Without turning about to see who was there she darted around the corner into the cross street and broke into a run over its rough cobbles.
Some one, however, had seen her. She heard a voice cry, “Who is there?” and there was the sound of feet pursuing her.
“A woman, as I live,” she heard a pursuer say as she dashed ahead. The moon seemed to hang over the very head of the cross street, so that none of the buildings threw a shadow. The pursuers had already turned the corner from the Street of the Pigeons and came flying ahead in great leaps and bounds.
She thought of Tartars and Peter of the Button Face, but it was no such folk as that who followed her. This small company of men was but a band of rags and tatters, beggars and petty thieves and filthy cozeners, seeking only to fleece some passer-by of a few grosz in order to get drinks or a hard corner in which to sleep. A girl of her age was just such prey as these wretched people sought, for they could plunder her without fear of harm, and her clothing or perhaps some bundle that she carried would bring a few coins for their need.
“Stop! Stop! We are friends,” the first of them called out. “We would not harm a woman in the street at such an hour. Listen, we will go with you where you are going.” But the tone of the voice only made Elzbietka run the harder.
Into St. Ann’s Street she turned at length, with the men close behind. Her one hope now was that Jan Kanty would answer his bell quickly, for if she did not slip inside almost immediately, the men following would catch up to her.
However, summons for help from Jan Kanty seldom waited long without an answer. He had been busy all that night with his writings, at which he worked incessantly, when he was not aiding some world-wrecked soul—writings which were to prove of inestimable value to the university and the whole world of culture after his death. Therefore the ringing of the bell took him but a few steps from his work. As he unlocked the door and flung it open the girl darted by him and into the house.
“It is I, Elzbietka Kreutz,” she said. “Good father, I come with news that needs action, I think, and that immediately. But first close the door, since there are some pursuing me.”
The scholar closed the door. If he felt astonishment at the sight of a young girl flying through the streets at such an hour, he did not show it. He was, as a matter of fact, used to all kinds of strange happenings. Even when the wretched beggars raced past the door wondering what had become of their victim, he had an impulse to go out and talk to them and eventually share his purse with them, since he knew that it was only poverty and starvation that drove them to such extremes. But recognizing the girl’s distress and her immediate need for him, he closed the door and led the way into his study.
“What has happened, daughter? Has there been a robbery again in the house or has thine uncle gotten himself into some difficulty? Something of the sort there is, I feel and know.”
She recited her story as best she could, for she was short-breathed from running and from her anxiety for Joseph. If only he would not smile! If only he would not think that she had been dreaming! But the venerable scholar was far from smiling.
“You are right,” he exclaimed spiritedly, almost before she had finished her tale. “There is no time to wait. He is in some grave danger which may the good God divert from him. Remain here where you will be safe. I will at once send a servant of the university to call the watch, and will go with them myself to the tower. I fear something of evil has happened.”
A few minutes later thirty men of the city watch, in heavy armor, were marching upon the church. They found first the church watchman securely bound in the churchyard and released him. Then they entered the tower through the unlocked door, and began silently and cautiously to climb the stairs.
In the meantime the band of Cossacks high up in the tower above had begun to grow weary of this excursion. At first the idea of an attack in mid-air, and in a church tower at that, had piqued their curiosity and aroused their thirst for adventure, since such an attack had heretofore been entirely outside their experience. And when earlier in the evening Peter had called for the ten volunteers he needed, not one man among them could be induced to remain behind.
But the affair had proved to be of a simplicity that had no appeal for men so bloodthirsty. In truth, so well had Peter’s plans been laid, and so secure from intrusion did they feel in this lofty stronghold, and so irksome was the waiting for their leader, that they had succumbed one by one to the drowsiness of the early morning hour and with the exception of the one man who stood guard over the trumpeter, they were sprawled out idly, or were dozing.
Therefore men of the city watch, when they had crept noiselessly to the top, surprised them completely. In truth they were captives before they were quite on their guard or realized what was happening. Pan Andrew’s guard himself did not have time to carry out the leader’s command—he was in fact made prisoner, as he was upon the point of delivering a deathblow.
While they were binding the last prisoner’s arms, Joseph came running and leaping up the steps and threw himself into his father’s embrace.
“Father, father,” he shouted excitedly, “it was Elzbietka who did this.” His eyes were shining as he thought about it. “Elzbietka—Elzbietka,” he kept repeating. “She heard me sound the trumpet in a different fashion from the way I usually sound it, for to-night I did not stop the Heynal upon the broken note, but played several notes more. She ran through the night alone to Jan Kanty’s and he aroused the city watch. I just met him at the foot of the stairs and he told me the whole story.”
“Bless the girl,” said the father, tears rising to his eyes. “And you, my son, how did you get free? I feared——”
“The man who was dragging me toward our home heard the watch marching through the street, and when he realized that they were going toward the church he took himself off like lightning into the darkness without another thought for me. But Elzbietka is at the scholar’s dwelling in the university building, waiting. I must go to her quickly and tell her all, and thank her that we are alive this night.”
Pan Andrew was busy with his own thoughts when the watch finally marched away with their prisoners.
The Great Tarnov Crystal! The Great Tarnov Crystal! That was what the Tartar said he had come for. Was it possible that the man had been telling the truth? For what other reason could he have surprised him thus in the tower? For what other reason the hurried expedition into the town with the boy, Joseph, and the instructions he had left with his men? If it had been revenge alone that the man was seeking, then he and Joseph would never have remained alive until now. But if the man had not obtained the crystal on the night of his attack upon his lodgings, then what in the name of heaven and earth had happened to it on that night, and where was the crystal now?
It was late one evening in April, a few weeks after the unsuccessful attack of Peter upon the tower, that the alchemist, Kreutz, and the student, Johann Tring, were sitting upon rude stools in the loft above the alchemist’s lodging, arguing with much heat some question that had arisen between them. The day had been sultry for early spring and the sun was setting red over the distant hills, flooding with its crimson the high mound called the Krakus Mound over beyond the river on the road to Wieliczka and the salt mines.
Tring sat where he could see the sunshine through the little window, but the alchemist sat within the gathering darkness of the room. Above their heads on the slanting walls vials and glass tubes of the alchemist’s craft gleamed like precious stones, and every now and then some substance lying upon the hot coals of the braziers would hiss up into a little flame and smoke, for all the world like a serpent suddenly raising its slender head and coils above a quiet patch of grass.
“I tell you that I have had enough,” the alchemist replied to some remark of the student’s. “I am ready to forswear this scientific experiment into which we have so boldly launched and go back to my old studies which are much better suited to a God-fearing man.”
Tring laughed, low but maliciously. “So that is where your courage lies,” he answered. “That is the crown of valor that you boast in exploring the wonders of the unknown world. Come,” he added after a minute, as if changing his tactics in dealing with this man who was now thoroughly in his power, or so he thought, “come and put a better complexion upon things; we are already past the hardest stretch of the road—if there is to be found the solution to that problem upon which we both have spent so much time, it will be found so much the more readily now because of the sacrifices that we have already made for it. Are the trances tiring you beyond endurance?”
The alchemist let his head sink into his hands. “I am tired—I am tired,” was all that he could say.
Tring regarded him with disgust, but held back the angry words which sprang to his lips and expressed himself more gently.
“Then if there is a fault it must lie with you, Pan Kreutz,” he said. “It is beyond my understanding that such a man as you should find exhaustion in these simple experiments that I have performed. Many another person I have put into trances similar to yours, and for longer periods of time, too, and there has been no harm, nay, nor physical exhaustion from it.”
“Alas,” the alchemist moaned as if making a confession, “I have been in trances other than those of your making, and almost continually, too.”
“What?” Tring leaped to his feet in astonishment. “What do you say? You have been in trances induced by others? Other men share our secrets, then? Who may it be that is also a master of this rare craft? I had thought that no others, save I, in this town were able to bring about such trances.” He glared at Kreutz with open hatred and let his fingers stray as well to the handle of a short knife that he carried in his belt, for although he was but a young man, he took his occult powers very seriously. There was as well an element of fear in his emotions, since the civil authorities of that day dealt usually in short and severe fashion with persons brought before magistrates on the charge of indulging in dark or occult practices. Death even was prescribed as punishment for some, although disfiguring, whipping, stocks, and banishment were the most common penalties.
Tring’s powers, though mysterious in those days, could be easily explained in ours. The so-called trances into which certain persons have the power to send others we call in these times merely hypnotic sleep. Hypnotism in the days when all men and women were to an extent superstitious was looked upon as one of the very worst works of a malignant devil upon earth. Tring possessed to some extent the ability to summon hypnotic sleep to a willing patient, and the alchemist had become a too willing patient in his endeavor to discover the secret that Tring had made appear so desirable.
And as is the case with most practitioners of hypnotism and their subjects, the hypnotist had gained, little by little, more and more power over his co-worker, until in a few months the alchemist had become merely a tool in the hands of Tring, who, knowing his ability and scholarly accomplishments, did not hesitate to use them for his own ends. He did this, however, with great caution, and enjoined ever upon the alchemist the need for the utmost secrecy, for if it had become known that such tricks were being practiced, the law would make short shrift of both.
“No man,” answered the wretched alchemist, “no man, but perhaps—devils!”
“Devils?” Tring stood motionless, thunderstruck. Was the alchemist losing his mind?
“Yes, devils. I can stand it no longer.” The alchemist rose from his stool and turned upon Tring. “You who have powers greater than man, know most of what is passing in my soul. The secrets of my craft, the sciences of actions and reactions—all these you know. But I hold from you one secret, one great secret which has bowed my shoulders with care and blackened my heart with crime. Come, watch, I will show you something that has powers beyond those of which you dream. See . . .” His accents became wilder and his voice trembled. He shuffled about the attic as if making preparations for some experiment. He set up a tripod in the very middle of the room and linked the top with chains as if he were to set a bowl upon it; he unlocked a great chest that stood in one corner under the eaves and took from it some object wrapped in black cloths, and this object he placed upon the tripod.
“Now let us have a light,” he said.
He shook some powder into a brazier full of coals which suddenly leaped into flame. As the whole room burst into existence with the illumination there appeared most prominently in it the tripod which bore the covered mystery. The alchemist whipped the cloth covering away.
It was as if he had uncovered a diamond of the finest water! Upon the brass top of the tripod gleamed in that instant a very miracle of color and light; the object itself was about the size of a man’s head. Upon this exquisite thing no artificial effort of man had been expended; it was as nature had fashioned it in the depths of some subterranean grotto where drops of water falling in steady succession for thousands and thousands of years had slowly created it. The outer layers were clear like the water of a mountain spring; as the eye fell farther and farther within the surface a bluish tint was perceptible and at the very center there was a coloring of rose. Such was its absolute beauty that whoever looked into its depths seemed to be gazing into a sea without limit.