down as if to rest a weary hand, and turned around to see what was keeping the others. This movement caused his gold-lined cloak to swirl around him in a flourish that could not be missed by the cowed Mint-men. As it turned out, the black-robe was right on his heels. So Jack turned again, snatched up his satchel, and carried it into the house of the Warden of the Mint.
It was abandoned. Warden of the Mint was a profitable sinecure, usually granted to some man who knew little and cared less about coining but who had places in high friends. Such a man would not dream of living in this house, even though it was provided by the government for his use. He would as like live by a knacker’s yard on the outskirts of Dublin than dwell on this smoky street in the midst of soldiers. And so most of the place went unused. But not all. Following the glimmer of lamp-light, Jack descended a stair to a vault-door, which hung open.
The vault itself was barely an arm-span in width, and the apex of the arched ceiling was scarcely high enough for Jack to stand upright. It was dank and dripping, for it was down close to the level of the moat. But it was soundly made. At the far end stood a table. On the table was a black chest with three hasps. Two of these were going unused at the moment, and opened padlocks dangled from their loops like freshly killed game from the butcher’s hook. The third hasp was still closed by a padlock the size of a man’s fist. Sitting before it on an overturned basket was a bulky man whose face was obscured by black hair hanging down. He was peering at the lock from a few inches away, gripping it in one great hand while the other manipulated its inner works with a steel toothpick. None of which was in the least remarkable to Jack, for he had expected all of these things, except for one.
“That’s it?” he exclaimed.
“This is the Pyx,” answered the man who was sitting on the basket. He spoke as if he had entered the serene trance of a Hindoostani mystic.
“You know, in any other country, they’d go to a bit of trouble, wouldn’t they, to make it be dazzling. But this is just a bloody box.”
“All objects that perform the essential functions of a box, are unavoidably boxy,” said the other. “If it makes you feel any better, the locks are excellent.”
“Those two don’t appear to have been excellent enough,” Jack remarked.
“Ah, but this one. I am guessing that the other two were those of the Comptroller and the Warden. But this is the lock of the Master.”
“Newton.”
“Yes. Some admirer—some royal sycophant from the Continent—must have given it to him.”
Jack was conscious now of de Gex breathing behind him. He said, “You of all people ought to be more alive to the passage of time.”
“But Saturn was Time’s lord, not its servant.”
“Which are you?”
“Both. For most of the day and night, time oppresses me. It is only when I am at work on the innards of a clock—or a lock—that time stops.”
“The clock stops, you mean.”
“No. Time stops, or so it seems. I do not sense its passage. Then something interrupts me—I become aware that my bladder is full, my mouth dry, my stomach rumbling, the fire’s gone out, and the sun’s gone down. But there before me on the table is a finished clock—” now suddenly a snicker from the mechanism, and a deft movement of his hands. “Or an opened lock.” Saturn could not stand in this confined space, but he sat up straight, heaved a vast sigh, then drew the padlock out of the loop of the third hasp with great care, not wanting to bang it up on the way out.
“I thought you said that Newton’s lock was something extraordinary,” Jack said.
Saturn held it up near a candle-flame so that all could admire its Baroqueness. It had been fashioned after the style of the portico of an ancient temple. The style was Classical. But the tiny figures all around were seraphim and cherubim, rather than the gods of Olympus, and the inscription on the frieze was in Hebrew. “It is the Temple of Solomon,” Saturn explained.
“There is no keyhole!” Jack said.
The front of the temple, between the pillars, was closed by a small doorway with more Hebrew on it. Saturn flicked this open