The Infernal Device & Others: A Professor Moriarty Omnibus (12 page)

             
The guard smiled, a wide smile that showed both his teeth. "I would be glad to be of assistance," he said, giving a palms-up shrug, "but I have not the authority."

             
One of the monks produced a thick parchment, folded and creased many times, and handed it to the spokesman, who passed it through the bars to the guard. "Within here is the authority," he said.

             
The guard unfolded the parchment, holding it open with both hands, and examined the cursive writing within, first with one eye and then with the other. "I'll have to show this to the Captain of the Guard," he decided finally. "I cannot make heads nor tails from it."

             
"But certainly," the talkative monk agreed. The guard thrust the parchment out through the bars. "Come back at eight," he said. "The captain makes his rounds at eight.
"

             
"
Too bad," the monk said, shaking his head slowly. "Too bad?"

             
"We cannot wait. Tradition demands that we begin now, so we shall have to go to another prison."

             
"Too bad, indeed," the guard agreed, smiling his tooth-exhibiting smile.

             
"We shall have to pay to someone else the traditional gatekeeper's fee." The monk took a small ornate purse from his robes and shook it so the coins within jingled.

             
"The gatekeeper's fee?"

             
"The traditional gatekeeper's fee," the monk agreed. "Legend has it that Simon, our patron saint, knocked three times and was not admitted, and then he paid the gatekeeper and he was admitted. This was the gatekeeper's fee."

             
"How much is this fee—this traditional gatekeeper's fee?"

             
"Two gold
medjidié
."

             
"Two?"

             
"That is so."

             
"Gold
medjidié
?"

             
"Yes."

             
"Hold on! Wait right here. Perhaps I can ... The captain might be ... You just wait right here. I won't be long. Don't go away." The guard closed the wooden door behind the ancient iron bars and disappeared within.

             
The talkative monk turned to his four silent, brown-cowled friends. "Ah," he said, "the power of the almighty
medjidié
." Three of them nodded under their deep cowls, the fourth remained still and silent.

             
It was no more than a minute before the guard returned, bringing with him a short, surly man with a wide, bristling mustache who was busily buttoning the last few buttons on his gold-striped dark blue trousers. "Now, now," the short man said, adjusting his wide gold sash, "who are you people? What's the story I hear? Where is this document? Where are these supposed gold
medjidié
? You're not trying to bribe an officer in the performance of his duty, now, are you?"

             
"You are the Official of the prison?" the monk asked, respectfully.

             
"I am the Captain of the Guard," the captain said.

             
"We are monks of the Simonite order," the monk told him. "We celebrate a sixteen-hundred-year-old ceremony: the Shriving of the Prisoners. Every year on Shrove Friday we go to a different prison and shrive those prisoners who are Christian, or those of other faiths who wish to be shriven. We ask three times to be admitted, and then pay the traditional gatekeeper's fee. We enter and shrive the pris-oners. Then we pay the Official of the Prison one of the gold
medjidié
for each prisoner we have shriven. Please, who is the Official of the Prison?"

             
The Captain of the Guard stroked his mustache. "I am," he announced finally. "You say you have an authority?"

             
The monk handed the parchment to the captain, who spread it open and studied it. "This is an authority to visit prisons in the service of your religious practice?" the captain asked.

             
"That is correct."

             
"It is signed by Sultan Bayezid II?"

             
"Correct."

             
"Four hundred years ago?
"

             
"
Just a trifle more than that.
"

             
"
This is still good?
"

             
"
It has never been rescinded."

             
"You have, perhaps, something more recent?" the captain pleaded, seeing the promised gold dissolving before he had even a chance to taste it. "I cannot permit you to enter the Prison of Mustafa II on a four-hundred-year-old authority."

             
"Well, then," the monk said, reaching doubtfully into his robes, "there is this." He handed through the bars an official-looking document with etched red borders, stamped, sealed, notarized, embossed, impressed, and triply signed.

             
"Why, this is signed by the Grand Vizier, the Commander of Prisoners, and the Djerrah Pasha!" the Captain of the Guard said. "There'll be no trouble about your shriving the prisoners."

             
"Ah, well," the monk said, "if you prefer these recent signatures to that of a four-hundred-year-old sultan, so be it."

             
The captain shook his head. "You religious people," he said tolerantly. "Wait, I will get four guards to accompany you. We cannot afford any trouble. Some of these men are desperate."

             
"Very good of you," the monk said.

             
The captain called forth four guards and then opened the gate. "Enter," he said.

             
"May we be admitted?" the monk asked. "Didn't I just tell you to enter?" the captain said. "May we be admitted?" the monk asked.

             
"What's the matter, don't you understand Turkish?" the captain said. "Now, look—"

             
"May we be admitted?" the monk asked again.

             
A great light dawned on the gate guard. "Only if you pay the fee," he said, winking at the captain.

             
"Here you are," the monk said; "two gold medjidi
é
.
"

             
"
Enter," the gate guard said. "Ah!" the captain said.

-

             
The five monks entered the prison in a close group, with two guards in front of them and two behind. The captain led the group across the courtyard and into the corridors which housed
the prisoners. Then he fell behind and watched as the group went from cell door to cell door calling in Turkish and Greek, "Are you Christian? Do you wish to be cleansed of your sins?" Occasionally the call was made in French and English, and if the captain thought that strange he said nothing. Every time a prisoner responded and the cell door was opened, he mentally added one more gold
medjidié
to the growing count.

             
Because the prisoners were bored and any activity was a welcome novelty, many of them conceived a sudden desire to be cleansed of their sins. The monks slowly worked their way down the corridor, stopping at door after door, shriving the damned. Devout Musselmen and Zoroastrians did not admit them, neither did the paranoid nor the catatonic, but most of the prisoners welcomed the monks and the diversion they represented.

             
Two or three of the monks would enter the cell when bidden by the prisoner and close the door behind them. The other monks would kneel outside the cell door and pray for the prisoner's soul. The monks spent between three and ten minutes inside each cell they entered.

             
For the first hour the guards kept a close watch on the monks, one of them going into each cell along with the shrivers; but as time passed and nothing remarkable happened, they relaxed their vigilance and grew bored, squatting together to talk when the monks entered a cell.

             
It was well along in the third hour before the Simonites reached Benjamin Barnett's cell. "Do you want to be cleansed of your sins?" came the call from the corridor.

             
Barnett, who had been dozing, woke with a start as the ghostly voice boomed through the cell: "Do you want to be cleansed of your sins?" this time in French. He looked around wildly before realizing that the voice came from someone with his mouth close up against the cell door.

             
"What do you want?" Barnett called.

             
There was a rattling and thumping, and the cell door opened to admit three men in brown robes who seemed to glide into the room joined at the shoulders. Barnett had a glimpse of another two kneeling in front of the cell before the door swung closed.

             
"Quick!" the nearest monk whispered in French. "Remove your garments!"

             
"What?"

             
"The Professor Moriarty sent us. Remove quickly your garments. We are to exit you from this place."

             
Without further discussion Barnett stripped off the few gray rags that the prison authorities had given him. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "I am chained to the wall."

             
"We have prepared ourselves for that eventuality," the monk told him. "However, we must hasten ourselves."

             
The three monks separated from each other, and an amazing thing happened; the monk in the middle silently folded up and collapsed until there was nothing left of him except a bundle of brown clothes on the floor.

             
Barnett gasped and took an involuntary step backward. He didn't know what he had expected to happen, but it surely wasn't this.

             
"Hush!" the monk on his left whispered sharply, putting his forefinger to his lips.

             
"Mon
Dieu!
but I am sorry," the other monk said. "I should have paused to realize how startling that would appear if unwarned."

             
"What happened to him?" Barnett demanded, pointing to the empty robes.

             
"Ah, but you see there was no 'him,' " the monk said. "He was merely simulated by wires in the robes artfully manipulated by my comrade here and myself. Now he and you are about to merge."

             
"No time for talk," the left-hand monk said, whipping a pocket razor out from his robes and twisting it open. "To work!"

             
The other monk took two small phials from inside his robes and handed one of them to Barnett. "This is a vegetable oil," he said. "Apply it to all parts of your beard and rub it in. This will facilitate the shaving of your face."

             
Barnett carefully and thoroughly anointed his three weeks of stubble with the oil while the monk stropped the razor on a small
piece of leather sewn to his sleeve. Then he tested the blade on the back of his hand, nodded approval, and approached Barnett. "Move not your face," he warned.