Masks of the Illuminati (27 page)

They returned quietly to the library, where Sir John finally remembered Verey’s incoherent excitement about “the postcards” before their mad rush to the telephone. When they were seated again, he raised that question.

“What were those postcards you were talking about?”

Verey shook his head with humility. “It was totally silly and absurd,” he said. “I attached no meaning at all to it until the moment you saw the thought strike me. Of course, now I’m not sure—it may just be coincidence….”

Just coincidence
, Sir John thought bitterly.
Those words will always sound idiotic or sinister to me
.

“And the postcards weren’t even postmarked London,” Verey said. “They were actually postmarked Inverness: that’s why I didn’t make the connection. But, of course, we know They have agents there, also, like that mysterious vanishing Oriental….”

“Tell me about the cards,” Sir John suggested gently.

“The first one came for Bertrán,” Verey said, “exactly
two days
before the package that provoked his suicide. It was utter nonsense—just a staff with a Hebrew letter on it.”

“Do you know which Hebrew letter?” Sir John asked intensely.

Verey thought a minute. “Bring me a pad,” he said. “I, of course, had Hebrew in seminary—but that was nigh forty long years ago now. Nonetheless, Scots education is strict, and thorough…. I think I have it.”

Sir John handed him a pad and Verey sketched rapidly. “This is what the card looked like,” he said. “Just this and Bertrán’s name.”

Sir John looked at the design:

“Yod
, is it not?” asked Verey.

Sir John blushed. “Yes,” he said,
“Yod
. It means hand or fist.” But he was recalling the opinion of certain scholars who claimed that hand and fist were late euphemisms and that
yod
originally meant spermatozoa. The whole design was disturbingly phallic. “And the next card?” he asked, suspecting it would contain
nun
, the fish, again. Another I.N.R.I.

“This came for Annie,” Verey said, “again postmarked Inverness. And, again, I didn’t see the connection—whatever connection there may be—with the tragedy that followed
two days
later.” He drew rapidly:

“I’m not certain I remember that one,” Verey admitted.

“Hé,”
Sir John said. “A window. And the first postcard design was not a staff but a wand, since this is a cup. We are getting the implements of magick, in order. Was the postcard to McPherson not a sword?”

“That is most marvelous,” Verey said. “You are absolutely right. It looked like this.” He sketched again:

“Vau,”
said Sir John. “The nail.”

Both men were pale again. “Some things one doesn’t forget, even in four decades,” Verey said with awe. “Seeing all three together, I discern what the fourth must be.”

“Yes,” Sir John said. “What we have thus far is
Yod Hé Vau
, the first three letters of the Holy Unspeakable Name of God. The fourth can only be a second Hé, making
Yod Hé Vau Hé
—YHVH, usually transliterated as ‘Jehovah’ in English. These monsters are using the most sacred name in Holy Cabala as the
leitmotif
of their chain of murders. This is blasphemy and sacrilege of the most extreme sort, the blackest of black magick. But when did McPherson receive the sword with
Vau
on it?”

“Two days
ago!” Verey gasped.

Sir John gasped. “Then the package with the book of horror should be in today’s post!”

“Blessed Saviour,” Verey whispered, eyes closed. “May the police be there before the postman….”

They both heard the phone ringing at the same moment. Afterward, Sir John could never remember if they ran or merely stumbled to the hall.

“Sir John Babcock,” he said into the speaker.

“This is Inspector McIntosh,” said the electronic voice in his ear. “Is the Reverend Charles Verey there?”

Sir John turned the telephone over to Verey and stood like a zombie as he listened to Verey’s side of the conversation: “Yes … Oh, God, no … Yes … What …? Most certainly … God pity us
all
, Inspector … I certainly shall.”

The hunchbacked clergyman looked dwarfish and shrunken as he hung up. “It happened again,” he said.

“My God! Tell me.”

“The constable who was sent round to McPherson’s found him dead already. He had cut his throat violently from ear to ear with a razor. They looked in the fireplace for the remains of a package, as in the two other cases.
The constable says there was part of a book still burning, but all he could see were the letters MO.”

“THER GO MO,” Sir John repeated. “Lunacy on top of blasphemy. God held us
all
, indeed.”

THE RADIO ANNOUNCER
: And now, folks, it’s time for our Mystery Call. Who will get the chance to win the one hundred dollars? The engineer is dialing right now … the phone is ringing … ah, I have somebody on the line. Hello, hello?

MALE VOICE
: Hello, hello? [Put down that fire engine, Brigit]

ANNOUNCER
: Hello, who is this?

MALE VOICE
: Hello, is this the Mystery Hour? [Brigit, don’t hit your brother with the fire engine!]

ANNOUNCER
: Yes, this is the Mystery Hour … and this is your chance to win one hundred dollars!! But, first, what’s your name, sir?

MALE VOICE
: James Patrick Hennesy.

ANNOUNCER
: James Patrick Hennesy!!! What a fine Eskimo name! But, seriously, I bet your folks came over from the Old Sod.

HENNESY
: No, they were born in Brooklyn. Like me.

ANNOUNCER
: Oh. Well, I suppose your
grandparents
came over from the Old Sod!!!!

HENNESY
: Well, one of them did. We’re Italian on the other side, though.

ANNOUNCER
: A real American family!!!! Well, Mr. Hennesy, you sent in your postcard, and now you’re on the line, and this is your chance to win the hundred dollars. So, now! For one hundred dollars!! This week’s Mystery Question is!!! Are you ready, Mr. Hennesy …? The question is: Are the suicides caused by magick, or is there some rational explanation? What do you think, Mr. Hennesy?

HENNESY
: [Stop hitting Brigit with the birdcage, Tommy.
You’re frightening the bird.] Oh, ah, uh, I think it’s magick.

ANNOUNCER
: You! think!! it’s!!! Magick!!!! Would you tell us why you think that, Mr. Hennesy?

HENNESY
: Am I right?

ANNOUNCER
: That would be
telling
, Mr. Hennesy. You’ll find out, with the rest of our audience. But tell us why you think it’s magick.

HENNESY
: Stands to reason.

ANNOUNCER
: Stands to reason, Mr. Hennesy?

HENNESY
: Well, nobody can walk through walls, right?

ANNOUNCER
: Not unless they’re very clever.

HENNESY
: Is that a hint?

ANNOUNCER
: We don’t give hints, Mr. Hennesy. You have thirty seconds more. Why is it magick?

HENNESY
: Well, it stands to reason; that’s all. Nobody can walk through walls, or, uh, drive people to suicide with a book. It must be magick, right?

ANNOUNCER
: Well, we’ll see, Mr. Hennesy. And even if you didn’t win the one hundred dollars, you’ll still receive a consolation prize of one year’s supply of Preparation H and complete instructions on how to use it! And now! Back to our show!!

    The Fräumünster chimes were striking six, and cinnamon streaks of twilight cast shadows of dying color weirdly into the room, a russet-gold witch’s glamour, Gothic as the tale Sir John told. Einstein, Babcock and Joyce had agreed with Mileva Einstein’s suggestion that they take a break for dinner. The dining room by now reeked with dead heavy smoke from Einstein’s pipe. Mileva had opened a window to freshen the air, with the uninspiring result that the clammy
Föhn
could be felt in the room now.

Einstein rose to stretch a bit and walk around thoughtfully. Joyce sat immobile in his red plush chair, his face expressionless, introspective.

“Well, Jeem,” Einstein said finally. “It seems as if all the paraphernalia of the Celtic Twilight poets you despise has landed in our laps. Even the faeries …”

Joyce nodded, smiling whimsically. “Even an appropriately eerie sunset,” he said. “It is much like the Tar Baby story of the American Negroes. You become attached to what you attack….”

Einstein stopped pacing and his playful spaniel eyes went entirely out of focus, obviously looking inward, not outward; Joyce wondered if he had stopped thinking in words and was thinking in pictures, as he said he did when he was working on a problem in physics. Babcock and Joyce exchanged the vacant glances of the Apostles at the end of one of the darker parables, both of them thinking of the Tar Baby story and how it could possibly have triggered Einstein’s
Fakir-like
trance. The more you hit a Tar Baby, the more you are stuck to it: that was the moral of the Negro legend. But what did that have to do with a book that actually drove people into suicidal mania? Did destroying the book destroy the receivers, as an allegory for censors?

“Action and reaction,” Einstein whispered, talking mostly to himself. “Good old Newton still has wisdom for us after three centuries….”

“Professor,” Babcock exclaimed, “is it possible? Are you actually beginning to see a scientific explanation of these incredible events?”

Einstein blinked and sat down again, wearily. “Well, not exactly,” he said. “But I am starting to find some scientific light in this medieval darkness … a hypothesis is beginning to dawn … but I don’t know yet….”

“At this point,” Joyce said, “any hypothesis would be welcome, however, tentative or incomplete. By God, Einstein, I spent several months, last year, writing the most gruesome and fetid sermon on Hell ever composed. I took bits from every theology class and religious retreat of my
youth, and from Jesuit textbooks, and organized it into what I hope is a truly blood-freezing, stomach-turning, hair-raising harangue which will give the non-Catholic reader some sense of the cheerful hours which my hero had to endure in the course of a pious Irish Catholic education. But, to be honest, I was having a wonderful and glorious time all the while I was writing this bloody horror, because such things no longer have the power to frighten me and I could write it all down with cold clinical documentary detachment. Listening to Babcock’s tale, on the other hand, almost puts me back into the real rancid terrors of my adolescence.”

“Of course,” Einstein said, ruddy-faced in the dying sunlight. “That is the whole point.”

“I beg your pardon?” Babcock cried.

“Wait,” Einstein said. “It is only a dim light, so far; it may be a false dawn; I am still working on it. But surely you can generalize from the man entangled with the Tar Baby to the more amusing, more interesting situation in which
two
Tar Babies are fighting with each other?”

Joyce and Babcock sat blankly, crimson statues in gathering darkness.