Masks of the Illuminati (23 page)

The next day brought another letter from Verey, and Sir John’s heart sank when he saw that the handwriting on
the envelope was now visibly shaky and erratic. He tore it open prepared for almost anything.

“A duplicate key,” said Albert Einstein.

Joyce raised dim eyes behind thick glasses, a slow smile dawning. “How alike we are,” he said. “That was my first thought, also.”

“It is a fairly easy process,” Einstein went on. “You wish to terrorize an aging religious fanatic such as the Reverend Verey. Obtain a few assistants and props—the dwarf, the Oriental confederate, the hypothetical bird of unusual size [which might even be a cardboard kite or a machine of some sort]; the stage is set for the wildest imaginings. Then, one dark night, very quietly, simply go to the church and pour hot wax into the lock. In a few moments, the wax has solidified. You carefully slide it out and you have a model of the key. You then take this to any competent locksmith and he will provide you with a duplicate. The stage is set for your miracle.”

Joyce, rolling a cigarette, grinned at Babcock. “Well, Sir John?”

“Well, in fact,” Sir John said, “although my beliefs are admittedly more mystical than those of you gentlemen, I am not without intelligence of my own. I also thought of the duplicate key explanation and wrote at once to suggest it to poor old Verey.”

Einstein relit his pipe, frowning thoughtfully. “Tell me his reply.”

“Well,” Sir John said carefully, “the objections are as
follows. First, the Verey property includes the church, the house and a small pasture where goats, pigs and the family horse are kept. Nobody has ever approached that establishment after dark, Verey says, without alerting the dogs, whose barking generally sets off all the other animals and creates a sufficient racket to wake the whole family—Verey, his wife, Annie, and his older brother, Bertrán.

“Now, gentlemen, stretch your imaginations to the ultimate and conceive of a professional cat-burglar so adroit that he moves with the legendary silence of the American Apache Indians. He gets through the pasture to the church and makes his wax model, as you have suggested. He is very light-footed, indeed; but I will stipulate that such an improbably skillful burglar might exist.

“Very well, then,” Babcock went on. “Our man has his duplicate key. He returns on that rainy Saturday night and again manages to get by all the animals without arousing a stir. He enters the church and does his blasphemous and brutal deed. Then he leaves. Very good. The only trouble is that Reverend Verey noted, as soon as he discovered the horror on the altar, that his own were the only tracks in the mud approaching the church door. It appears that our super-housebreaker not only moved through a lively farm without waking any of the animals, on two separate nights—when he made his model and when he returned for his Satanic sacrifice—but also, on the second occasion, crossed the yard
without leaving footprints in the mud.”
Sir John smiled thinly. “How does Free Thought explain this, my skeptical friends?”

Einstein examined his pipe thoughtfully and then began with careful fingers cleaning it. His face was impassive.

“This older brother, Bertrán,” he said, peering into the pipe ash like Sherlock Holmes looking for a clue, “all he is, so far, is a name. We know nothing of him at all.”

“Ah,” Joyce said, “you are looking for a confederate of the conspirators within the household itself. Very keen, Professor. If one brother in three may be a renegade, why not two? Reminds me of my theory of
Hamlet
, which I must tell you sometime. I can even see a possible scenario, if the house and the church are close enough to each other. The sinister Bertrán, like a Highlands d’Artagnan, crosses the roof of the house, leaps to the roof of the church, then lowers himself head downward to the door. Very athletic for the older brother of Reverend Verey, who is himself, we have heard, sixty-two years old. Implausible, but not impossible, and as Holmes himself often reminds us: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ I must sadly inform you, Professor, that I can’t believe it for a moment.”

“A balloon,” Einstein said thoughtfully, rummaging about for fresh tobacco. [A nine-pipe case, Joyce thought.] “A small balloon, filled with helium, with a carriage for one or two passengers, such as one sees at fairs. No,” he added, “don’t bother mocking me. I am, at this point, grasping at straws. The balloon is possible, but I actually find it harder to believe our intruder descended from the sky that way,
without alarming all the animals
, than to believe he walked through a solid wall. I begin to realize
that we are dealing with some diabolically clever conspirators here. Getting to the bottom of this will test all my powers of analysis.”

“If,” Joyce added morosely, “we ever do get to the bottom of it.”

“On with the narrative,” Einstein said. “We need more facts before we can form any conclusion.”

The vicar said “Gracious/If’s Brother Ignatius.”
Yes: I’m getting it finally.
Ed eran duo in uno
. Yes.

“By all means—on with the story,” Joyce said, smiling privately.

Waiting with growing impatience for Jones’ return from Paris, and waiting also with dread and foreboding for the next events at Loch Ness, Sir John began studying Crowley’s
Book Four
. It was indeed a very simple and down-to-earth explanation of the occult arts and sciences—at least in its opening chapters.

Crowley began by rejecting both Faith and Reason as ultimate answers to the mystery of existence—Faith because it may be Faith in the wrong god, the wrong church or the wrong teacher; Reason because it cannot get beyond the permutations and combinations of its own axioms. There remains only the method of Experiment, and Crowley defined every true occult system as a technique of physiological and neurological Experiment whereby consciousness is multiplied and evolution accelerated.