I cried. “Think! Why, it’s the most marvelous thing that the hands of man ever made! What is that stone? Jade?”
“I’m not sure,” said Herndon. “But come here. Stand just in front of me.”
He switched out the lights in the room. He turned another switch, and on the glass oposite me three shaded electrics threw their rays into its mirror-like oval.
“Watch!” said Herndon. “Tell me what you see!”
I looked into the glass. At first I could see nothing but the rays shining farther, farther—back into infinite distances, it seemed. And then.
“Good God!” I cried, stiffening with horror. “Jim, what hellish thing is this?”
“Steady, old man,” came Herndon’s voice. There was relief and a curious sort of joy in it. “Steady; tell me what you see.”
I said: “I seem to see through infinite distances—and yet what I see is as close to me as though it were just on the other side of the glass. I see a cleft that cuts through two masses of darker green. I see a claw, a gigantic, hideous claw that stretches out through the cleft. The claw has seven talons that open and close—open and close. Good God, such a claw, Jim! It is like the claws that reach out from the holes in the lama’s hell to grip the blind souls as they shudder by!”
“Look, look farther, up through the cleft, above the claw. It widens. What do you see?”
I said: “I see a peak rising enormously high and cutting the sky like a pyramid. There are flashes of flame that dart from behind and outline it. I see a great globe of light like a moon that moves slowly out of the flashes; there is another moving across the breast of the peak; there is a third that swims into the flame at the farthest edge—”
“The seven moons of Rak,” whispered Herndon, as though to himself. “The seven moons that bathe in the rose flames of Rak which are the fires of life and that circle Lalil like a diadem. He upon whom the seven moons of Rak have shone is bound to Lalil for this life, and for ten thousand lives.”
He reached over and turned the switch again. The lights of the room sprang up.
“Jim,” I said, “it can’t be real! What is it? Some devilish illusion in the glass?”
He unfastened the bandages about his chest.
“The claw you saw had seven talons,” he answered quietly. “Well, look at this.”
Across the white flesh of his breast, from left shoulder to the lower ribs on the right, ran seven healing furrows. They looked as though they had been made by a gigantic steel comb that had been drawn across him. They gave one the thought they had been ploughed.
“The claw made these,” he said as quietly as before.
“Ward,” he went on, before I could speak, “I wanted you to see—what you’ve seen. I didn’t know whether you would see it. I don’t know whether you’ll believe me even now. I don’t suppose I would if I were in your place—still—”
He walked over and threw the hood upon the Dragon Glass.
“I’m going to tell you,” he said. “I’d like to go through it—uninterrupted. That’s why I cover it.
“I don’t suppose,” he began slowly—“I don’t suppose, Ward, that you’ve ever heard of Rak the WonderWorker, who lived somewhere back at the beginning of things, nor how the Greatest Wonder-Worker banished him somewhere outside the world?”
“No,” I said shortly, still shaken by the sight.
“It’s a big part of what I’ve got to tell you,” he went on. “Of course you’ll think it rot, but—I came across the legend in Tibet first. Then I ran across it again—with the names changed, of course—when I was getting away from China.
“I take it that the gods were still fussing around close to man when Rak was born. The story of his parentage is somewhat scandalous. When he grew older Rak wasn’t satisfied with just seeing wonderful things being done. He wanted to do them himself, and he—well, he studied the method. After a while the Greatest Wonder-Worker ran across some of the things Rak had made, and he found them admirable—a little too admirable. He didn’t like to destroy the lesser wonderworker because, so the gossip ran, he felt a sort of responsibility. So he gave Rak a place somewhere—outside the world—and he gave him power over every one out of so many millions of births to lead or lure or sweep that soul into his domain so that he might build up a people—and over his people Rak was given the high, the low, and the middle justice.
“And outside the world Rak went. He fenced his domain about with clouds. He raised a great mountain, and on its flank he built a city for the men and women who were to be his. He circled the city with wonderful gardens, and he placed in the gardens many things, gome good and some very—terrible. He set around the mountain’s brow seven moons for a diadem, and he fanned behind the mountain a fire which is the fire of life, and through which the moons pass eternally to be born again.” Herndon’s voice sank to a whisper.
“Through which the moons pass,” he said. “And with them the souls of the people of Rak. They pass through the fires and are born again—and again—for ten thousand lives. I have seen the moons of Rak and the souls that march with them into the fires. There is no sun in the land—only the new-born moons that shine green on the city and on the gardens.”
“Jim,” I cried impatiently. “What in the world are you talking about? Wake up, man! What’s all that nonsense got to do with this?”
I pointed to the hooded Dragon Glass.
“That,” he said. “Why, through that lies the road to the gardens of Rak!”
The heavy gun dropped from my hand as I stared at him, and from him to the glass and back again. He smiled and pointed to his bandaged breast.
He said: “I went straight through to Peking with the Allies. I had an idea what was coming, and I wanted to be in at the death. I was among the first to enter the Forbidden City. I was as mad for loot as any of them. It was a maddening sight, Ward. Soldiers with their arms full of precious stuff even Morgan couldn’t buy; soldiers with wonderful necklaces around their hairy throats and their pockets stuffed with jewels; soldiers with their shirts bulging treasures the Sons of Heaven had been hoarding for centuries! We were Goths sacking imperial Rome. Alexander’s hosts pillaging that ancient gemmed courtezan of cities, royal Tyre! Thieves in the great ancient scale, a scale so great that it raised even thievery up to something heroic.
“We reached the throne-room. There was a little passage leading off to the left, and my men and I took it. We came into a small octagonal room. There was nothing in it except a very extraordinary squatting figure of jade. It squatted on the floor, its back turned toward us. One of my men stooped to pick it up. He slipped. The figure flew from his hand and smashed into the wall. A slab swung outward. By a—well, call it a fluke, we had struck the secret of the little octagonal room!
“I shoved a light through the aperture. It showed a crypt shaped like a cylinder. The circle of the floor was about ten feet in diameter. The walls were covered with paintings, Chinese characters, queer-looking animals, and things I can’t well describe. Around the room, about seven feet up, ran a picture. It showed a sort of island floating off into space. The clouds lapped its edges like frozen seas full of rainbows. There was a big pyramid of a mountain
