Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 40
“Why all this secrecy business, then?” Northfleet inquired sceptically.
“Law of Treasure Trove, of course! If any gold plate or such-like stuff’s found and there’s no traceable owner to it the Crown steps in and grabs it. You may get something for finding it, but it’s Crown property. I don’t know whether you get a percentage for your pains or not. You certainly don’t scoop the lot. So if you bleat about it publicly—snap! in come the law officers and take it off your hands. But if you keep your mouth shut—who’s going to know anything about it, except yourself and your pals? There’s your solution, down to a dot.”
Northfleet made no reply for a full minute.
“You may have come near it,” he admitted frankly, at last. “I don’t know whether you’re right or wrong, Trent; but it would be a devil of a relief, I can tell you, if that proved to be the true solution. In more ways than one,” he added, as though musing aloud.
CHAPTER XI
THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
COLIN would have liked to demand some elucidation of Northfleet’s meaning, but his tact suggested that he should refrain. The chemist’s fined phrase pointed straight to Hazel Arrow, though her name had not been mentioned; and Colin felt that a direct question might freeze up the stream of information which had just begun to trickle. For some moment’s he sat silent, his eyes on the stretch of sea across which the white motor-launch was chipping through the waves on its way toward the western cape of Ruffa. His restraint was at length rewarded; but when Northfleet spoke again he seemed to choose a fresh topic.
“You seem to gather up out-of-the-way information, Trent. Did you ever read anything about the Philosopher’s Stone?”
Colin shook his head rather doubtfully. His store of knowledge in that field was no greater than the average man’s.
“Not much,” he admitted. “Stunt of the alchemists, wasn’t it? Something that changed lead into gold? Fake, mostly, if not entirely, so to speak. Pot of molten lead; a few powders to give a flash; a metal rod to stir up the ingredients: that was the outfit, wasn’t it? Only, the rod was really hollow, plugged with wax at both ends, and with some pellets of gold in the cavity. When they stirred the lead with that, the wax melted and the gold slipped down into the crucible. Then they could show their patrons that the lead contained gold and get a subsidy to carry on the good work. That sort of thing.”
“That sort of thing, as you say,” Northfleet confirmed. “It was a stock joke with generations of lecturers on chemistry Nobody believed in the possibility of changing one element into another. Anyone who said a word in its favour got laughed at. Then came radioactivity, and it turned out that every specimen of uranium was a bit of the Philosopher’s Stone. Know anything about recent work on the transmutation of the elements, by any chance?”
“Just what I read in the newspapers,” Colin confessed modestly. “All this stuff about splitting the atom, and so forth.”
“And what do you think of it? You’re a plain, unscientific person.”
“It doesn’t mean much in my young life, and that’s a fact,” Colin admitted. “Thrilling to you chemists, no doubt. But beyond that, it’s just a toy affair. Nothing on a big scale can come out of it’s far’s I can see.”
Northfleet smiled rather wryly.
“I expect some honest citizens of Alexandria said the same when they heard about Hero’s aeolipile. And yet it was one of the first steam engines.”
“Something in that, perhaps.” Colin’s tone showed no enthusiasm. “But, so far, this atom-splitting’s uneconomic. Uses some frightfully expensive stuffs or machinery and doesn’t yield enough gold to make a flea wink if you put the lot into its eye.”
“Like the fellow in Lamb’s essay who burned down his house every time he wanted roast pig? Yes. But according to Lamb they weren’t so very long before they found a cheaper way of doing the job, once they got the right notion into their heads. And it might be the same with gold-making. Some bright lad might strike the right method.”
Colin shook his head decidedly.
“That’s rot,” he affirmed bluntly.
“Think so?” said Northfleet. “I’m not so sure.”
“But it would have made a stir, if it had been done,” Colin objected. “It’d upset things a bit. Newspapers would be on to it like terriers after a rat.”
Northfleet made no attempt to conceal his amusement.
“Yes. And the wiseacre in the street, like you, would turn up his nose and say: ‘Fake!’ immediately. And then he’d forget it, eh? But here’s an actual case. I’m not inventing it. I read about it in an old volume of Pearson’s Magazine that was kicking about the house when I was a kid at school.”
Colin snorted contemptuously.
“Is that where you get your chemical information?” he inquired ironically. “Wish I’d taken up chemistry myself. It must be light reading.”
“All I’m trying to do is to convince you I’m not inventing,” Northfleet assured him. “You’ll find the business mentioned in Fournier d’Albe’s life of Sir William Crookes. There’s a fairly full account of it in Commander Gould’s Enigmas, too. That’s surely enough to satisfy you that I’m not trying to pull your leg.”
“All right,” said Colin; “give us the yam, whatever it is.”
“Towards the end of last century,” Northfleet began, unperturbed, “there was an American chemist by the name of Emmens. He invented an explosive called ‘Emmensite,’ which I believe was taken up by the U.S.A. Government. In 1897 Emmens gave out that he had discovered how to convert silver into gold. He started with Mexican silver dollars, and by using some machinery or other—he called it a Force Engine—he claimed that he had turned the silver