Warren Murphy - The Last Alchemist

"We will speak to you about those later," said Caldwell. The young woman nodded. Apparently she wasn't even allowed to speak to Caldwell. Braun had been given that honor.

Then Caldwell's hand came forward. Braun knew exactly what his liege wanted. He took a deep breath, kissed the ring, and backed toward the door. Before he left, an aide handed him a heavy briefcase and an address a few blocks away from Wall Street.

It was the gold exchange. He was carrying at least forty pounds of gold. Was he a delivery boy now? Was Caldwell demoting him to that? He delivered the gold to the exchange, and inside, with suppressed anger, he took bar after bar of gold out of the briefcase and slammed it on the counter.

A bespectacled old man in a vest weighed each bar, chuckling.

"Caldwell gold. A good family. Always liked dealing with the Caldwells. Real bullionists, if you know what I mean."

"Of course I don't," said Francisco. "What is a real bullionist?"

"Well, you have people who get into gold just for profit, and then you have the real old houses."

"Really. How old are the Caldwells?"

"Before the founding of America," said the old man. He took another bar to the assayer's scale. Braun looked around the room with a mild contempt. The building was heavily buttressed with steel that no one had bothered to polish for decades and a mustiness had settled on the whole place. The scale itself was old and battered, and the pans that hung from the balance bar were warped and bent. Yet if one put an exact weight on one side, one could be as sure as gravity that when the other side balanced, the weights were precisely equal.

That removed the remotest possibility of cheating. "It's a pleasure to deal with the Caldwells," said the old man. "They know their gold. You see the Caldwell crest, you know you are not dealing with someone trying to skim a few ounces on a ton. The crest means a lot. It's an old crest, an old forge that one is."

Braun looked at his watch. He made this obvious, so the old coot would not babble on. But the man stopped only until Braun looked at him.

"See this crest," said the old man, pointing to an apothecary jar and a sword stamped into the gold itself. "At least twenty times today," said Braun.

"That apothecary jar is the symbol for pharmacists now, but it used to be for alchemists. Do you know what an alchemist is, young man?"

"No," said Braun. He looked at the remaining bars in the bag. There were three more to be weighed. He sighed. So the money was good. So Caldwell had been extremely shrewd. Did this make up for kissing rings and delivering parcels?

"The word 'alchemist' is the root of our modern word 'chemist,' " said the old man. "It comes from the Egyptian, 'al hemist.' "

"Fantastic. I wonder if you might be able to tell me all these wonderful things about alchemists while you continue weighing the gold?"

The old man chuckled, but he did move. "Alchemists could do everything. And did everything. Cures, potions, everything. They were so valuable that every court in Europe had one. But they got ruined. You know why?"

"Yes," said Braun. "Weigh the damned gold."

"Right. Gold. They claimed they could make gold from lead. Got them the reputation of being phonies. Soon people wouldn't hire them because they were leery of the hoodoo. You know, hocus-pocus."

"Weigh the gold," said Braun.

"And the alchemists just died off like an extinct species. But here is the strange part, and it has something to do with this crest here. Ain't a forge mark. I know forge marks."

If it is getting this bad to work for Caldwell, thought Braun, maybe it will get worse. Maybe Caldwell has a disease of the brain.

"There's those in gold today who think maybe the old alchemists really did turn lead to gold, although there's no scientific proof for it."

"Did they do it while they weighed the gold?"

"Oh, yeah, okay," said the old man, hoisting a gold bar to the empty side of the balance. The weight used as a counterbalance was made of chrome, its surface polished to perfection. If any scratches had been added to take off weight, they would show immediately.

"Well, there was this legend about the philosopher's stone. The legend was that that one stone was the secret to turning lead into gold, and it was passed along as a sort of formula. Mix lead, the stone, and some other hocus-pocus and you've got it. Presto. But, of course modern chemists proved that no stone would ever cause that kind of chemical change. Can't be done by adding any kind of a single stone."

Braun watched the bar measure the perfect troy pound.

"But you know what some people now believe that stone was? Not a secret ingredient you added to the lead, but the keeper of the secret ingredient necessary to make gold. The alchemists wouldn't put their formula to paper because paper is something that's easy to carry off. They'd only inscribe it on something so heavy that it couldn't be stolen. Like a stone-the philosopher's stone. And for all we know, that formula could have been twenty-four-karat real. I guess I am just a boring old man, eh?"

"To know thyself," said Braun, "is a virtue."

"That's why this Caldwell crest is interesting, because it has got the mark of the sword. Do you know what the sword means? It means that for some reason they were cut off from alchemy. They could have cut the ties themselves or some king might have done it for them. Who knows?"

"I know," said Braun. "I know that I do not care. Send the receipt to Mr. Caldwell. Thank you, good-bye."

"Wait a minute. It isn't his receipt," said the old man, who had worked at the gold exchange more years than anyone wanted to count. "This isn't Caldwell's gold. It's only minted by the Caldwells. It belongs to you. Mr. Caldwell has set up an account for you here at the gold exchange."

"You mean all of that is mine?"

"Absolutely. As good as gold."

"Ah," said Braun, who suddenly was most interested in the Caldwells, a fine old house among many fine old houses. The Caldwells had been dealing in gold in New York since it was called New Amsterdam, said the old man, and Francisco Braun told him to take his time and not leave out any of the details about these wonderful people.

Harrison Caldwell left his throne and allowed his new manservant to dress him in a dark business suit. He put on a neat striped tie and removed the large ring. Polished black shoes replaced the slippers that had been kissed repeatedly that day.

He could have assigned this task coming upon him now to an underling. But he knew that there were some things one assigned and some one did not. One never allowed someone else to be one's alchemist, nor did one allow someone else to be one's foreign minister. Of course, he was not a country yet, but what was Saudi Arabia but a family? A very rich one.

All he needed was some land. That would be easy. Because he was who he was, Harrison Caldwell knew what money could buy. Also because he was who he was, Caldwell understood clearly why no minister or alchemist could be trusted to help him fulfill his destiny. The Spanish throne had trusted, and the story of that transgression was much more than just history to Harrison Caldwell. It was his history.

It had almost worked. The minister had been the sword of the king. The alchemist could make gold. Unfortunately, the alchemist's feat was so expensive that it defeated its own purpose-getting the substance known as owl's teeth was so costly that to make one gold coin would cost three.

"Does the king know you can do that?" the minister asked.

"No. Not the king. I only showed it to you because you saved my daughter."

"Why not the king? He is our lord," said the minister. "Because when the kings know you can make some gold, they always want more. And that has gotten many alchemists killed. You see, kings think they can find owl's teeth. But they can't. And then they insist you use something else, and then, of course, you die."