little, Sahib. To crystallize hypothesis into a mistake is all too easy. I prefer to distinguish between knowledge and conjecture."
"All right. Tell me what little you do know."
"It is jade undoubtedly, although I have never seen jade exactly like it—I, who have studied every known species of precious and semi-precious stone."
"Then why do you say it is jade?"
"Because I know that. I have analyzed it. It is chloromelanite, consisting of a silicate of aluminium and sodium, with peroxide of iron, peroxide of manganese, and potash. It has been broken from a greater piece—perhaps from an enormous piece. The example I have previously seen that most resembled this was found in the Kara-Kash Valley of Turkestan; but that was not nearly so transparent. That piece you hold in your hand is more fusible than nephrite, which is the commoner form of jade; and it has a specific gravity of 3.3."
"What makes you believe it was broken from a larger piece?"
"I know by the arc of the curve of the one side, and by the shape of the fracture on the other, that it has been broken by external violence from a piece considerably larger than itself. I have worked out a law of vibration and fracture that is as interesting in its way as Einstein's law of relativity. Do you understand mathematics?"
"No. I'll take your word for it. What else do you know positively?"
"Positively is the only way to know," the jeweler answered, screwing up his face until he looked almost like a Chinaman. "There was human blood on it—a smear on the fractured side, that looked as if a careless attempt had been made to wipe it off before the blood was quite dry. Also the print of a woman's thumb and forefinger, plainly visible under the microscope, with several other fingerprints that certainly were Tin Lal's. The stone had come in contact with some oily substance, probably butter, but there was too little of it to determine. Furthermore, I know, Ommonee, that you are afraid of the stone because to touch it makes you nervous, and to peer into it makes you see things you can not explain."
Ommony laughed. The stone did make him nervous.
"Did you see things!" he asked.
"That is how I know it makes you see them, Ommonee! Compared to me you are a child in such respects. If I, who know more than you, nonetheless see things when I peer into that stone, it is logical to my mind that you also see things, although possibly not the same things. Knowing the inherent superstition of the human mind, I therefore know you are afraid—just as people were afraid when Galileo told them that the earth moves."
"Are you afraid of it?" asked Ommony, shifting his cigar and laying the stone on the desk.
"What is fear?" the jeweler answered. "Is it not recognition of something the senses can not understand and therefore can not master? I think the fact that we feel a sort of fear is proof that we stand on the threshold of new knowledge—or rather, of knowledge that is new to us as individuals."
"You mean, then, if a policeman's afraid of a burglar, he's—"
"Certainly! He is in a position to learn something he never knew before. That doesn't mean that he will learn, but that he may if he cares to. People used to be afraid of a total eclipse of the sun; some still are afraid of it. Imagine, if you can, what Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great, or Timour Ilang, or Akbar would have thought of radio, or a thirty-six-inch astronomical telescope, or a Kodak camera."
"All those things can be explained. This stone is a mystery."
"Ommonee, everything that we do not yet understand is a mystery. To a pig, it must be a mystery why a man flings turnips to him over the wall of his sty. To that dog of yours it must be a mystery why you took such care to train her. Look into the stone now, Sahib, and tell me what you see."
"Not I," said Ommony. "I've done it twice. You look."
Chutter Chand took up the stone in both hands and held it in the light from an overhead window. The thing glowed, as if full of liquid-green fire, yet from ten feet away Ommony could see through it the lines on the palm of the jeweler's hand.
"Interesting! Interesting! Ommonee, the world is full of things we don't yet know!"
Chutter Chand's brows contracted, the right side more than the left, in the habit-fixed expression of a man whose business is to use a microscope. Two or three times he glanced away and blinked before looking again. Finally he put the stone back on the desk and wiped his spectacles from force of habit.
"Our senses," he said, "are much more reliable than the brain that interprets them. We probably all see, and hear, and smell alike, but no two brains interpret in the same way. Try to describe to me your sensations when you looked into the stone."
"Almost a brain-storm," said Ommony. "A rush of thoughts that seemed to have no connection with one another. Something like modern politics or listening in on the radio when there's loads of interference, only more exasperating—more personal—more inside yourself, as it were."
Chutter Chand nodded confirmation. "Can you describe the thoughts, Ommonee? Do they take the form of words?"
"No. Pictures. But pictures of a sort I've never seen, even in dreams. Rather horrible. They appear to mean something, but the mind can't grasp them. They're broken off suddenly—begin nowhere and end nowhere."
Chutter Chand nodded again. "Our experiences tally. You will notice that the stone is broken off; it also begins nowhere and ends nowhere. I have measured it carefully; from calculation of the curvature it is possible to surmise that it may have been broken off from an ellipsoid having a major axis of seventeen feet. That would be an immense mass of jade weighing very many tons; and if the whole were as perfect as this fragment, it would be a marvel such as we in our day have not seen. I suspect it to have qualities more remarkable than those of radium, and I think—although, mind you, this is now conjecture—that if we could find the original ellipsoid from which this piece was broken we would possess the open sesame to—well—to laws and facts of nature, the mere contemplation of which would fill all the lunatic asylums! I have never been so thrilled by anything in all my life."
But Ommony was not thrilled. He had seen men go mad from exploring without landmarks into the unknown. He laughed cynically.
"'We fools of nature,'" he quoted, "'so horridly to shake our disposition with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls!' I'd rather wipe out the asylums."
"Or live in one, Sahib, and leave the lunatics outside! Shakespeare knew nothing of the atomic construction of the universe. We have advanced since his day—in some respects. Has it occurred to you to wonder how this stone acquired such remarkable qualities? No! You merely wonder at it. But observe:
"You have seen a pudding stirred? The stupidest cook in the world can pour ingredients into a basin and stir them with water until they become something compounded, that does not in the least resemble any one of the component parts. Is that not so? The same fool bakes what he has mixed. A chemical process takes place, and behold! the idiot has wrought a miracle. Again, there is almost no resemblance to what the mixture was before. It even tastes and smells quite different. It looks different. Its specific gravity is changed. Its properties are altered. It is now digestible. It decomposes at a different speed. It has lost some of the original qualities that went into the mixture, and has taken on others that apparently were not there before the chemical process began.
"You can see the same thing in a foundry, where they mix zinc with
