“Tar!”

“Yes. But I have never seen such a sample with my own eyes. I only find evidence of its existence in coins-counterfeit guineas of a level of quality such that I myself am sometimes deceived by them!”

“So, ’twould appear that whoever has this gold, has hoarded it, and used to spend it, in the form of plates stained with tar. But from time to time he will deliver some of it up to a coiner-”

“Not a coiner but the coiner. Jack. Jack the Coiner. My Nemesis, and my prey, these last twelve years.”

“Jack sounds like an interesting chap,” Daniel allowed, “and I ween I shall learn more of him from you anon-but is it your hypothesis that he has a hoard of these gold sheets somewhere, and coins them from time to time?”

“No. They’re of no use to him hoarded. If he had a hoard, he would coin every last ounce of it, as fast as his coiners could do the work. No, it is my hypothesis that Jack knows the owner of the hoard, and that from time to time that person, wanting some money to spend, takes some plates out, and brings them to Jack.”

“Do you have any notion as to who the hoarder might be?”

“The answer is suggested by the tar, and the scrapes. It is coming from a ship.”

“There is a vague association between tar and ships, but beyond that, I don’t follow you,” Daniel said.

“The information you are wanting is that, among sailors and officers of the French Navy, there is a legend-”

“Ah, in truth I have heard it!” Daniel exclaimed. “But I failed to draw the connexion. You refer to a legendary ship whose hull was plated with gold.”

“Indeed.”

“But ’twould seem that in your view this is no legend.”

“I have studied it,” Isaac announced. “I can now trace the descent of King Solomon’s Gold from the pages of the Bible, down through the ages, to the hull of that ship, and thence to the samples that I have assayed in my laboratory in the Tower of London.”

“Pray tell me the tale then!”

“Most of it is no tale at all. The Islands of King Solomon lie in the Pacific. There his gold rested, undisturbed by men, until round the time that you and I were young, and Huygens’s clock began to tick. A Spanish fleet, driven by a typhoon far off the charted sea-lanes that join Acapulco to Manila, dropped anchor in the Solomons, and took on board certain provisions, including earth to pack round the galley-stoves to protect the planks of the ship from fire. During the voyage home to New Spain, the heat of the fire melted gold-or something that looked like it-out of the sand, and it pooled to form nuggets of astonishing fineness, which were discovered when the ships broke bulk in Acapulco. The Viceroy of New Spain, then just beginning a twenty-five-

year reign, was not slow to send out ships to the Solomons to extract more of this gold, and bring it back to Mexico to be piled up in his personal hoard. At the end of his reign, he caused the Solomonic Gold to be loaded aboard his private brig, which sailed back to Spain in convoy with the Spanish treasure-fleet. They made it safe as far as Cadiz. But then the little brig foolishly sailed alone up to Bonanza, where the Viceroy had caused a villa to be built, in which he phant’sied he would enjoy a wealthy retirement. Before she could be unloaded, she was set upon in the night by pirates, dressed as Turks, and led by the infamous criminal known to us as Half-Cocked Jack, the King of the Vagabonds, and to the French as L’Emmerdeur. The gold was stolen and spirited away in long stages to Hindoostan, where most of it fell into the possession of a heathen potentate, an Amazon pirate-queen, black as char-coal, who had not the faintest understanding of what she had netted. But on those shores, Jack and his confederates used their ill-gotten gains to build a pirate-ship. And from some Dutch shipwrights they had the notion-which was in no way a faulty one, as e’en a stopped Clock is correct twice daily-that if the hull of this ship were cladded, below the waterline, with sheets of smooth metal, she would afford no purchase for barnacles, and repel the attacks of the teredo.”

“ ’Tis a wholly reasonable idea,” Daniel said.

“ ’Twas a good idea, most strangely executed! For, vain and extravagant man that he was, this Jack decreed that the metal be wrought out of solid gold!”

“So the tale told by those French mariners was in no way fanciful,” Daniel concluded.

“I should rather say, ’twas none the less true, for being fanciful!” Isaac returned.

“Do you know where that ship is now?” Daniel asked, trying not to sound nervous; for he knew.

“It is thought that she was christened Minerva. But this is not known with certainty, and is of little use, even if true, as hundreds of ships answer to that name. But I suspect that she still roams the seas, and calls at London from time to time, and that some commerce plays out between Jack the Coiner, and those who sail her. Plates of gold are taken out of her bilge-for make no mistake, they were stripped from her hull and replaced with copper, probably in some unfrequented Caribbean cove, many years ago-and delivered to Jack, who coins them into excellent guineas, with which he poisons Her Majesty’s stock of money. That is the tale of Solomon’s Gold, Daniel. I hoped you would find it a diverting yarn. Why do you look so distracted?”

“I find it very odd that the prize you have sought your entire life, should happen to rest in the hands of the man you describe as your Nemesis.”

“My Nemesis, where Mint work is concerned. In other fields, I have other foes,” Isaac reminded him shortly.

“That is beside my point. Why shouldn’t the hoard of Solomonic Gold lie in a vault in Seville, or at the Vatican, or the Forbidden City of Peking? Of all the places in the world where this gold might have ended up, why should it be in the possession of Jack the Coiner-the one man you’d most like to see being dragged on a sledge to Tyburn?”

“Because its density exceeds that of gold, it is valuable to a counterfeiter.”

“It is more valuable to an Alchemist. Do you suppose Jack knows as much, and do you suppose he is aware that you, Isaac, are an Alchemist?”

“He is a mere criminal.”

“Yes, and a very cosmopolitan one, from the sounds of it.”

“I assure you he has not the faintest comprehension of matters Alchemical.”

“Neither do I. And yet I understand that you desire this gold!”

“What does it matter? He knows that I wish to hunt him down and bring him to justice-that is enough.”

“Isaac, you have a habit of under-estimating the intelligence of anyone who is not you. Perhaps this Jack is using the Solomonic Gold to bait you.”

“What matters it if a mouse baits a lion?”

“Depends on whether the lion is being baited into single combat with that mouse, or into a pit-fall with sharpened stakes at the bottom.”

“I do not think your analogy is applicable. But I am grateful for your expression of concern. Now let us end all tedious disputes about Jack, by ending Jack!”

“Did you say ‘us’?”

“Yes! Yes, I did. As there are only two men in this room, I can only have meant, you and I. As we shared a room, and worked together, at the beginning of our lives, so shall we do now, as we near their ends.”

“What possible use could I be in helping to apprehend Jack the Coiner?”

“You have come from America on a mysterious errand. You have traveled in the company of a notorious weigher, and I am told that you are up to some occult doings in a hole in the ground in Clerkenwell.”

“Not true, unless you count real estate development as one of the black arts.”

“If you were now to announce yourself, to the criminal underworld of London, as a weigher, in possession of gold from America-”

“I beg your pardon, but I really do not wish to announce myself to the criminal underworld as anything!”

“But supposing you did, why, you might be able to establish contacts with Jack’s subtile net-work of informants and Black-guards.”