Masks of the Illuminati (38 page)

“The obvious alternative is that Jones and Verey were working together all along. Verey tells you, first by mail and then in person, a series of frightening tales well calculated to fill you with dread, and Jones produces the alleged ‘newspaper’ clipping that seemingly confirms these yarns.”

Einstein paused to re-light his pipe. “To proceed,” he said, “if Jones and Verey are co-conspirators, we begin to clear away some of the other dark mysteries in this most mysterious business. For instance, I believe that coincidences can multiply at an astonishing rate—especially in the perceptual coordinate system of a man trained to
look
for them, regarding them as occult signals or omens. But your tale, Sir John, has altogether
too
many coincidences for any sane universe. I refer in particular to the insistent and terrifying way that details from your dreams and astral visions—the latter of which you must permit me to consider a species of half-waking dreams—come to life in the real world as your involvement with Verey and his problems increases. So I ask myself: How could these Superabundant Coincidences have been accomplished?

“There is only one answer,” Einstein said. “
One man
had access to your ‘Magick Diary.’
One man
looked at it every month, as you have told us, to guide you in your spiritual progress.
One man
, George Cecil Jones, could
have collaborated with Verey in creating the impression that these dream-terrors were manifesting in the physical universe. George Cecil Jones, who somehow knew Verey was a hunchback when he allegedly had never met him.”

“My God,” Babcock said again.

“Let us return to the newspaper clipping,” Einstein continued. “I think that without that clipping, you would eventually have begun to notice that you had only Verey’s word for this whole story, patently borrowed from the Gothic horror school of fiction in general and Arthur Machen and Robert W. Chambers in particular. The newspaper clipping, then, was planned all along, like the conversation with ‘Inspector McIntosh,’ to prevent such suspicions from entering your head.”

“But,” Babcock said, “as reasonable as all this sounds, I still find it hard to believe that a Christian clergyman like Verey—even if he had the multiple split personality suggested by Mr. Joyce—could collaborate with so vile a creature as Crowley.”

Einstein grinned. “Let us look into that a bit. Joyce has suggested that ‘Arthur Angus Verey’ never existed, that Charles Verey wrote the whole of
Clouds Without Water
. Let us turn that around, and try the alternative. Suppose ‘Charles Verey’ never existed and the whole book was written by ‘Arthur Angus Verey.’”

“But I met Charles Verey!” Babcock exclaimed.

“No,” Einstein said. “To be parsimonious in our conceptualizing, you met and received letters from a man who
alleged
he was named Charles Verey. A man with a hunchback, which is so striking a feature that it generally captures the attention entirely. Very few people, I believe, could describe a hunchback accurately: they would remember the hunch so centrally that the other features would be vague, quickly forgotten. One other fact about ‘Verey’ did stick with you, however, and you mentioned it several times. I refer to his paleness. I was particularly
struck when you stated that, at first glance, he seemed as pale as an actor
made up
for a death scene. This is the Over-Defined Image, and it suggests theatrics. I started to think: why, with a hunchback and some makeup, I could come into this room and ask for Professor Einstein and the two of you would tell me that Professor Einstein was out.”

“The Cabalistic style!” Joyce cried. “My God, why didn’t I see it sooner! Of course!
The style is the same
. The real author of
Clouds Without Water
—both the ‘Arthur Verey’ poems and the ‘Charles Verey’ sermonettes tacked on—is Aleister Crowley.”

“Aleister Crowley, the son of a very rich brewer,” Einstein said, “and therefore capable, like many rich Englishmen, of keeping a flat in London and a fine old home in Scotland, too. Perhaps in Inverness? I think investigation would quickly reveal that such was the case.”

“And the phone number would be Inverness-418,” Joyce said, “the number ‘Verey’ called when he spoke to the alleged ‘Inspector McIntosh.’ In fact,
it was Crowley disguised as the imaginary Verey, calling his own home and staging a scene to impress Sir John.”

“We can go further than that,” Einstein said. “Yesterday, we heard that the Laird of Boleskine was in Switzerland to climb mountains. We know that Crowley is a mountain-climber and now we have an Extra Mountain-Climber. Let us hypothesize that the two are Cabalistically One. And recall that the ‘devil’ Sir John saw on Bahnhofstrasse last night appeared after the arrival of this Laird of Boleskine. The package delivered tonight also suggests that Crowley is in the neighborhood. I suggest, therefore, that Crowley not only has a home in Inverness, but somehow acquired, or bestowed upon himself, a title to go with the home, and is the Laird of Boleskine. And that the ‘Reverend Charles Verey’ and the ‘Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth’ are entirely his creations.”

“Damn it all!” Babcock cried. “What an ass I have been!”

“You were deceived by masters at that art,” Einstein said gently. “The author of
The Book of Lies
is a genius in the trade of mystification.”

“But one thing is still unclear,” Joyce said. “Why does Mr. George Cecil Jones fit into this?”

“It has stared us in the face all along,” Einstein said. “Crowley has played perfectly fair—mostly, I suppose, because he is as much fascinated by lies that look like truth as he is by truth that looks like lies. At the very beginning, the first Golden Dawn lesson warned Sir John that Crowley, among others, was running a Golden Dawn order. The fact that Crowley and his particular Golden Dawn group were violently denounced is a misdirection typical of his sense of humor as we have come to know it.
Sir John was always in Crowley’s branch of the Golden Dawn
. Mr. Jones is perhaps Crowley’s second-in-command, or at least a high officer of that lodge. They have been initiating Sir John all along according to the oldest form of initiation known to anthropologists: the ordeal by terror. The Rite of Passage. It is just an enormous extension of the simpler drama staged by Crowley with his so-called ‘psychoboulometer,’ and it is even coded into the I.N.R.I. sequence Sir John was given for meditation at the beginning: the ritual of death and rebirth.”

“And that horrible recording that ‘Verey’ made …” Joyce prompted.

“I could make a recording just as impressive with the aid of a few professional actors,” Einstein finished simply.

There was a pause.

“We come now,” Joyce prompted again, “to the Miracle on Regent Street. Are we to believe that Baron Zaharov is also a co-conspirator, and that his Eastern Orthodox piety is another masquerade?”

“Well,” Einstein said, “it is certainly peculiar for an
anti-Semite whose government has been distributing the forged
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
, and who allegedly has an uncle high in the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church, to have as a middle name
Salmonovitch
. Jeem, tell Sir John the equivalent of that in English.”

“Solomonson,” Joyce said. “My God, I missed that at first. It would mean that the Baron’s father was a Jew.”

“An improbability in that government and unbelievable in that church at this time,” Einstein said. “The Clue of the Impossible Name. Crowley has been fair with us again, bestowing the hint that allows us to see behind the masquerade if we are intelligent enough.”

“And the testimony of Miss Sturgis?” Joyce asked.

“Miss Sturgis, as secretary to the notorious Isadora Duncan,” Einstein said, “obviously travels in circles that would be called bohemian, avant-garde or revolutionary, yes? It is not hard to imagine some relationship, romantic or otherwise, between her and Crowley.”

“Well,” Babcock said, “if Baron Zaharov is not a real Russian nobleman, who or what is he?”

“Oh,” said Einstein, “I think it is fairly clear that he must be Aleister Crowley again, in another masquerade.”

“But the height differences between Crowley, Verey and Zaharov,” Joyce complained. “How was all that managed?”

“Crowley is a man of medium height, Sir John informs us. With a fake hunchback and the crouch to accompany it, he could easily appear four or five inches shorter.” Einstein stood up and walked a few steps hunched over in the manner of those with curvature of the spine. “Observe: Do I not seem several inches shorter?”

“That is totally convincing,” Joyce said. “The other is not so easy to comprehend, however. Anybody can scrunch over and look a bit shorter, but how does one look a bit taller?”

“Remember that Sir John only saw Crowley,
as Crowley
,
once,” Einstein said. “Recall, also, that Crowley was not present in that garden, as himself, to provide any comparisons. Sir John saw a very short man go into the garden and then encountered there a man who seemed quite a bit taller than that. A man whose height he could not remember exactly because, as he told us, the ‘Baron’s’ manner was so overbearing he seemed perhaps taller than he was. We always remember very powerful, overwhelming, angry men as taller than they are—it is some sort of mammalian instinct which equates superior size with superiority in the herd. The large Russian fur hat, of course, also added to the ‘Baron’s’ apparent size. Relativity of Dimensions.

“So, then, if ‘Verey’ and the ‘Baron’ were both Aleister Crowley, there was no need for the garden to be disturbed. No person, and no masquerade props, needed to travel
horizontally
through the garden at all. The transformation was almost certainly managed
vertically
. The accessories of the Zaharov personality—chiefly the black beard, the fur hat and an overcoat—were hanging down, behind the oak tree, on a strong elastic band such as spiritualist mediums and stage magicians often use. Crowley-as-Verey dashes into the garden, grabs those props, attaches the Verey props—suit with clerical collar and hunchback built in—and unhooks the elastic band from the fence post to which it was presumably fixed. It is immediately yanked upward with the Verey props to a perch I would imagine would be high above the ordinary line of vision.

“I would also imagine,” Einstein concluded, “that the house was actually unrented at the time. The ‘Baron’ never existed aside from the brief charade in the garden and the tales Miss Sturgis recited.”

Babcock shook his head wearily. “There may be no miracles in this business,” he said grimly, “but there certainly was deviltry.”

“Was there?” Joyce said. “I don’t think you have seen
to the bottom of it yet. The professor has neatly answered
how
and
what
and
who
and
whichway
and all the physical details, but the question of
why
is still unclear. I think I begin to perceive the
why
, the psychology of initiation by terror, and I suspect that the last act of the drama is still to come. If Crowley with one hand manages the ‘good’ Cabalists, through his lieutenant Jones, and Crowley with the other hand manages the ‘bad’ Cabalists, the lesson of the masquerade seems fairly obvious to me. After all, what did the ‘bad’ Cabalists do except dramatize and bring into full consciousness the problems that were already indicated by your dreams, Sir John?”

“Damn it!” Babcock cried. “Are you justifying them?”

“I have trained myself not to judge but to understand,” Joyce said. “If you will listen to me for just a moment, about your sexual phobias, for instance….”

“I am already familiar with your libertine opinions,” Sir John said stiffly, “and I am sure they would be received with approbation by Crowley. But I know the difference between right and wrong, thank God.”

Joyce stared at the younger man in silence for a moment.

“You know the difference between right and wrong,” he repeated finally. “Man, why did you need Initiation—by the Golden Dawn, or by anybody else? You are a genius, a sage, a giant among men. You have solved the problem which philosophers have been debating since antiquity—the mystery about which no two nations or tribes have ever agreed, and no two men or women have ever agreed, and no intelligent person has ever agreed totally with himself from one day to the next.
You know the difference between right and wrong
. I am overawed. I swoon. I figuratively kiss your feet.”

“Jeem,” Einstein said softly, “there is no need to be so sarcastic. Most young men are just as naïve as Sir John.”

But Joyce had talked himself into boldness. He arose again and began pacing the room with nervous energy.

“All my life,” he said, as much to himself as to Sir John, “I have been teaching myself to observe accurately and nonjudgmentally. That is [I believe the professor would agree with me] the prerequisite of all scientific endeavor. It is also the prerequisitive of the type of literature I wish to write. Now—listen to me, Sir John—this drama through which Jones and Crowley have led you is a perfect example of how easy it is to deceive oneself. There was nothing in the whole adventure that did not exist in your fantasies first; Jones merely arranged to have those fantasies objectified, and you are missing the whole point if you do not comprehend that the source of everything that happened was your own fears and prejudices, just as the purpose of everything was to induce you to see through those fears and prejudices. I am no mystic myself, but it is obvious that this Golden Dawn contraption is a very complicated way of teaching people to see as the scientist
sees
, or as my type of artist
sees
—without filtering everything through a lens of moral and emotional prejudices.”

“There is a difference,” Sir John said coolly, “between prejudice and principles.”

“Yes,” Joyce replied. “Other people have prejudices; but I have principles. Just as other people are stubborn but I am firm, other people are egotists but I merely have self-respect, other people are drunks but I only like a drop now and then. Shall I conjugate a few more phrases like that? Other people are peculiar, but I am exotic. Other people are naïve and gullible, but I have retained a certain childish innocence. Other people are too clever by half, but I have learned to express myself with elegance. Other people are sensualists, but I am a Romantic. Other people are paranoid, but I am merely careful. Other people are pigheaded fools, but I am merely a little set in my ways.”