The Crystal Egg | Page 9

come into the hands of a bric-a-brac collector. He also wrote letters to
The Daily Chronicle and Nature, but both those periodicals, suspecting
a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before they printed, and he
was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately so bare of
supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an investigator.
Moreover, the calls of his proper work were urgent. So that after a
month or so, save for an occasional reminder to certain dealers, he had
reluctantly to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that day
to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally, however, he tells me, and
I can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons his
more urgent occupation and resumes the search.
Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin
of it, are things equally speculative at the present time. If the present
purchaser is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of Mr.
Wace to have reached him through the dealers. He has been able to
discover Mr. Cave's clergyman and "Oriental"--no other than the Rev.
James Parker and the young Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged
to them for certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply
curiosity--and extravagance. He was so eager to buy because Cave was
so oddly reluctant to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the

second instance was simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all,
and the crystal egg, for all I know, may at the present moment be
within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-room or serving as a
paper-weight--its remarkable functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly
with the idea of such a possibility that I have thrown this narrative into
a form that will give it a chance of being read by the ordinary consumer
of fiction.
My own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of Mr.
Wace. I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of
Mr. Cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable,
way en rapport, and we both believe further that the terrestrial crystal
must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from that
planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs. Possibly
the fellows to the crystals on the other masts are also on our globe. No
theory of hallucination suffices for the facts.

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