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It is enough if I say that he was greatly mixed up in the affairs of the Crusaders, lending his irresistible arms now to this side, now to that. The Red Cross Knights called him Shaikh-ul-Jabal the Old Man of the Mountains, that very nickname connecting him infallibly with the Ul-Jabal of our own times.
But before he leaves the house Ul-Jabal has one more work to do: once more the two eat and drink together as in "the old days of love"; once more the baronet is drunken with a deep sleep, and when he wakes, his skin is "brown as the leaves of autumn."
That point will immediately emerge into clearness, when we have sounded his motive for replacing the one false stone by the other, and, above all, for taking away the valueless stone, and then replacing it. And in order to lead you up to the comprehension of this motive, I begin by making the bold assertion that Ul-Jabal had not in his possession the real St. Edmundsbury stone at all.
Of the gown, too, we may be equally certain: for it was the procuring of this that led Ul-Jabal to the baronet's trunk; we now know that he did not go there to hide the stone, for he had it not to hide; nor to seek it, for he would be unable to believe the baronet childish enough to deposit it in so obvious a place. As for the wig and beard, they had been previously seen in his room.
I had not the courage to see Ul-Jabal to-day. I have remained locked in my chamber all the time without food or water. My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. 'July 12. I took heart and crept downstairs. I met him in the study. He smiled on me, and I on him, as if nothing had happened between us. Oh, our old friendship, how it has turned into bitterest hate!
'It now becomes evident that Ul-Jabal was one of the sect of the Assassins, and that the object of his sojourn at the manor-house, of his financial help to the baronet, of his whole journey perhaps to England, was the recovery of the sacred gem which once glittered on the breast of the founder of his sect.
The man has replaced the valueless stone in the modern-made chalice, and has now stolen the false stone from the other, which he himself put there! In patience will I possess this my soul, and watch what shall betide. My eyes shall know no slumber! 'June 24. No more no more shall I drink wine from the hand of Ul-Jabal. My knees totter beneath the weight of my lean body.
My God! it is briefer than the rage of an hour, fleeter than a mid-day trance. Ul-Jabal greeted me warmly seemed to have been looking forward to it and pointed out that seventy is of the fateful numbers, its only factors being seven, five, and two: the last denoting the duality of Birth and Death; five, Isolation; seven, Infinity.
He went up to the cabinet. Shaking the chalice in the dawning, some hours after he had left, I heard with delight the rattle of the stone. I might have known he would replace it; I should not have doubted his clemency to a poor man like me. But the strange being! he has taken the other stone from the other cup a thing of little value to any man! Is Ul-Jabal mad or I? 'June 21.
It is presumable that the chalice was not often opened by the baronet, and this would therefore have been a perfectly rational device on the part of Ul-Jabal. But assuming this to be his mode of thinking, how ludicrously absurd appears all the trouble he took to engrave the false stone in an exactly similar manner to the other.
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