A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

24 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY “‘Think,” he said, twisting a strand of his white beard between thumb and finger, “think what Empedocles would have given to have been able to spend an hour, even ten minutes, in this place! Think what the Alexandrine monks, the Arabs under the Abbassids, even Geber himself would have suffered, to see the fruition of their labors here at last an actuality !” “Where is it, this fruition?” exclaimed the American eagerly. “‘The Elixir! Is it here?”” Weak with excitement and wild hope, he leaned for support against a table whereon an alembic was boiling. Swift little phosphorescences played over the surface of the liquid. Dennison felt a strange, shuddering uneasiness. For a moment he seemed strangling, there in that window-less, pungent-aired, glowing chamber. Unsteadily he stretched out his hand. “Where is it?” he cried again. “Let me look upon it! Let me see it—only see it! Life!” With an odd, wondering, critical ex- pression, the savant observed him. “So, my friend,” queried he, with a ghost of a smile— “‘so you become agitated here, even in the vicinity of the secret? Yet only a minute ago you wanted to know all, at once! Ah, you Americans are hard to understand!” HE TURNED away. Dennison, shak- ing all over, trying in vain to moisten his lips, with his dry tongue, watched him as in a dream. The old man made his way slowly to a steel door about eighteen inches wide by two feet high. This door, set into the solid masonry in the left wall of the chamber, was some three and a half feet above the cement floor. Like the outer door, this also was secured by a combination. Saying not a word, II Vecchio spun the knob. Dennison, breathing heavily, re- mained beside the table, staring through his glasses. The strong purple light that gushed from the vacuum-ceiling, sup- pressed all shadows. It cast an eery, un- natural radiance over everything. Save for the bubbling of the reactions and the click-click-click of the wards as II Vecchio Jabored over the combination, an unnatu- ral and deep silence drew tense between the men. Dennison’s heart was beating with dull haste. In his temples he felt the blood painfully hammering. He tried to clear his throat, in a vain attempt to speak, but made only a hoarse, unintelligible sound. Now II Vecchio had got the door open —at last! Now he was reaching inside the small, thickly padded aperture which lay within the frame of steel. Now he was taking out a strong little box of cedar- were with brass hinges and a padlocked asp. With this he turned to the American. “Come!” he bade in a deep voice. Dennison faltered nearer. “Is it—in that box?” he gasped, his voice all but inaudible. “Impatient, still?’’ chided the old man. “Yes, here it is. In a minute, now, you shall see it. Presently, presently.” From his pocket he extracted a silver ring, with many keys. “Yes, I will show you the crowning es- sence of my years of toil,” he continued, choosing the proper one and inserting it in the padlock. ‘‘The supreme result of all my study, care, and long research. Even though you may not taste, yet you may look upon it. Wait only one minute now; then you shall see!” Speaking, he unlocked the little chest and threw back the lid. “Behold the miracle of miracles!” he cried. ‘‘The solvent of death, sought by sages and scholars since the dim, nebulous beginning of things! “For this, their crucibles and furnaces burned, through all the long dim ages of antiquity. For this they labored with their adudels, their fixations, lixiviations, trans- mutations! For this they suffered, some starvation, others death by the stake, the rack, the noose. For this, for this!” Forgetting even to breathe, Dennison half-crouched there at his side, staring with wide eyes and fevered passion of eagerness at the thing that lay within. On a bed of softest white cotton-down reposed a metal flask about four and a half inches long. Curiously wrought and chased in arabesques it was; and where the graver’s tool had bitten deep, the un- mistakable luster of pure gold shone forth. Caressingly Il] Vecchio took up the flask from its bed. In his aged fingers he held it, turned it this way and that; 6)(0)©) NG Ss (C(O)