The Nine Unknown by Talbot Mundy

Grim and Cyprian sat face to face in silence with a shaft of sunlight streaming through the space between them. Infinitely tiny specks of dust--for Cyprian was a martinet and Manoel used cloth and broom incessantly--danced tarantella-fashion, more or less as gnats do, in the golden fairway.

"You observe them?" said Cyprian presently. "Each one of those moving specks is itself made of billions of infinitely tiny specks all in motion. That is the way the universe is made. All atoms--all in motion--in an all-pervading essence known as ether. You know that? It is in the books--the oldest of all books as well as the newest. The ancients knew about it seven thousand years ago, if we accept their heretical chronology. I have their books to prove it. These Nine Unknown are the inheritors of scientific secrets that used to form the basis of the Ancient Mysteries. Yes, that's so. That's so. There isn't any doubt of it. Not religious secrets, understand me--no, no, they are enemies of all religion! They use scientific truths to stir superstition by pretending their phenomena are miracles! Devils' work! They know--the rascals! They have knowledge! Compared to them our modern scientists are just as Julius Cesar would have been if somebody confronted him with Paine's fireworks or an eighteen-inch gun or the radio. Clever fellow, Csar. Bright as a button. He would have tried to explain it away; tried--but there would be the phenomena--effect--result of cause; you have to know the cause to understand effect. No use repudiating it. Our moderns fail exactly as Julius Caesar would have done. And the Nine Unknown laugh. Devils!