Masks of the Illuminati (26 page)

“And the perversions coded into
Clouds Without Water
are the same as those charged against the Templars,” Sir John mused. “The continuity is undeniable, over a period of six centuries … But do they really believe that such vile and nameless practices can raise them beyond humanity to Godhood?”

“These erotic practices are central to many cults,” Jones said. “You will find them among certain Taoist alchemists in China, among the Tantrists in India, in the Egyptian and Greek mystery cults, among certain dark sects of Sufis in the Middle Ages—which is probably where this dark, diabolical side of Masonry evolved, alongside of true Masonry.”

“But,” Sir John cried, “how could a man be trained in the Golden Dawn, as this Crowley was, and deliberately turn his back on it and join this perversion of the true Craft?”

Jones sighed. “Why did Lucifer fall?” he asked. “Pride. The desire, not to serve God, but to
be
God.”

There was a long silence and each man contemplated the horror lurking behind the initials M.M.M.

Sir John spoke first. “What can we do for poor Reverend Verey and his wife?”

“There is only one thing to do,” Jones said decisively. “We must cable him at once and urge, in the strongest possible language, that he and Mrs. Verey come to London straightaway. Here, working with the Chiefs of our Order, we can create a psychic shield to protect them. If they remain in that lonely home on Loch Ness, further horrors will inevitably descend upon them.” Jones shook his head wearily. “We must make the cable as strongly worded as possible,” he repeated. “Any delay on their part might be long enough for a second tragedy to occur.”

Jones and Sir John spent nearly an hour composing the cable; it was nearly two in the morning when Sir John arrived home at Babcock Manor, totally exhausted.

If he had bad dreams again, he was unable to remember them, because his butler, Wildeblood, abruptly awakened him at seven in the morning.

“I’m most sorry, sir,” Wildeblood said, “but there is a gentleman here who is most insistent upon seeing you. He is in a terribly agitated state.”

“At this ungodly hour?” Sir John grumbled, feeling for his slippers groggily. “Who the blazes is he?”

“A clergyman, sir. He gave his name as Reverend Charles Verey.”

Sir John bolted out of bed, grabbing desperately for his robe. He knew in his bones that fresh horror had struck Inverness before the cable could have arrived. “No tea,” he said. “Coffee—very black. And eggs and bacon for two, I suppose. In the plant room.”

He washed and brushed his hair rapidly, without bothering to shave. Bat-winged monstrosities … the malign Wee People, regarded as quaint and harmless only by ignorant citified folklorists … the Thing in Loch Ness … What new abomination had finally driven old Verey from his beloved Highland hills?

Descending the stairs almost at a gallop, Sir John received two shocks at once. Rev. Verey was a hunchback (but, of course, he would be too sensitive to mention that in his letters …) and he wore the most haggard and tragic face Sir John had ever seen.

Composing his own features with great difficulty, Sir John extended a steady hand. “I am at your service, sir,” he said in a level voice.
Keep calm, keep calm
, he told himself sternly.

The old man took Sir John’s hand weakly. “You see before you a broken man,” he said hoarsely. “I am almost ready to despair of God’s goodness,” he added, choking back a sob.

“Come,” Sir John said kindly. “You must be exhausted from your trip, in addition to the evil forces you have
faced. Let us breakfast together and discuss what can be done.” Verey was so pale, he noticed, that it was almost as if his face were painted for a death scene at the Old Vic.

And so two men, both struggling for self-mastery, sat down in the plant room—where Sir John kept a cheerful collection of ferns, forsythia and morning glories, amid cages of canaries and mynah birds. It was by far the brightest breakfast room in the mansion, and Sir John had chosen it for that reason. Unfortunately, one of the mynahs had apparently picked up an indelicate phrase from one of the workmen who had installed new shelving the past weekend.

“Hold your fucking end up, Bert!” the bird shrieked, as Sir John ushered the aged clergyman to the table.

“Quiet!” Sir John burst out, forgetting that it is better to ignore a mynah at such moments.

“Hold your fucking end up, Bert!” the bird repeated, encouraged by the attention.

“I’m sorry,” Sir John said, feeling inane. “He must have picked that up from a laborer.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Verey said absently. “Annie is dead.” He stared at the tiletop table, seemingly unable to speak further.

[“Hold your fucking end up, Bert!”]

“Annie?” Sir John asked gently. “Your wife?”

“Aye,” Verey cried. “Annie, my wife. My companion for these forty-three years. My treasure, my heaven on earth.” And Sir John looked at the tabletop himself now, not wishing to watch the old man’s struggle against tears.

“Coffee, sir,” said Wildeblood, suddenly appearing from amid the ferns. “The food will be along momentarily.”

“Here, Reverend, take it hot and black,” Sir John said. “It will stimulate and revive you. I can’t tell you how sorry I am—how my heart feels for you at this moment—there are no words …”

“Hold your fucking end up, Bert!”

“Wildeblood!” Sir John exclaimed, “take that god—… that foul bird outdoors at once!”

“Very good, sir.” Wildeblood withdrew carrying the cage. “Hello. Hello,” the bird cried as it was removed. “Wanna cracker. Hello. Wanna cracker.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Sir John began again, realizing he was repeating himself. “What, uh, happened?” he asked. “Get it off your chest, man.”

“It was the day after the inquest on Bertrán,” Verey said tonelessly.
[He’s still in shock
, Sir John thought.] “I hadn’t told Annie about the package that unhinged Bertrán’s mind—why give her more to worry about? Oh, what a fool I am, what a blind, ignorant fool … If she had known … if she had been warned …”

“Get a grip on yourself,” Sir John said gently.

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry….”
[The victims of the worst tragedies
, Sir John thought,
always apologize to others, as if guilty about the debt of pity we owe them
.] “It was another package,” Verey went on. “I didn’t notice when the post came. I was in my study, praying … asking God to intervene, to stop these diabolical beings who are afflicting my family. Like Job, I wanted to know that God did hear me and did have a reason for allowing the Adversary to heap these cruelties upon us. I don’t know … I was praying and weeping both, I think. Bertrán was one of the bravest men I have ever known, and I could not begin to imagine what could drive him to the cowardly, un-Christian act of suicide. What was that damnable book? At last, somehow, I composed myself. I said, ‘Not my will but Thine, be done, O Father,’ and resolved to hold my faith despite all.” Verey raised tormented eyes to stare at Sir John like a wounded animal. “That was when I heard that horrible sound for the second time in my life—the laughter of hysterical madness.”

Sir John clenched the old man’s humped shoulder. “Courage,” he said gently.

“I rushed to the kitchen,” Verey went on, his voice again toneless and detached, in traumatic shock. “She had thrown it into the wood stove, but I could see that it was a book. I even read the syllables THER GO on the burning cover. Oh, God—THER GO, THER GO: What can that mean? But Annie was screaming in agony by then and in one horrible instant I could see why. She had swallowed the whole contents of the iodine bottle in our medicine cabinet. The empty bottle was at her feet. I held her for a moment, as she died, and she tried to speak. I think she was attempting to say that she didn’t know suicide by iodine would be that painful….”

The old Scotsman stared into space, reliving the scene. Finally, he spoke again. “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

“Eggs and bacon, sir,” said Wildeblood, reappearing.

“THER GO! THER GO!” screamed a mynah bird.

After breakfast, Sir John and the Rev. Verey brought an extra pot of coffee into the library and discussed the entire series of terrors that had brought them together.

Babcock told what he knew about Lola Levine, Aleister Crowley, the M.M.M. and Machen’s
Great God Pan
. Verey listened with an abstracted air, as if he had supped so full on horrors that nothing further could stun him.

“The book,” Babcock said finally, “the terrible book that led to both suicides—that may be the key to the whole mystery. Those damnable syllables that you recall—THER GO—are so tantalizingly inconclusive. Can you remember no more?”

“Nothing,” Verey said woodenly, hollowly. “You must remember that I had only an instant to look into the flames, and my mind was in a state of shock at the time.”

Sir John poured more coffee, thinking of phrases like “There you go,” “There they go,” “There we go.” He suddenly had a new thought.

“At least we can avoid two obvious false leads,” he said.
“The book wasn’t either
Clouds Without Water
or
The Great God Pan
itself. Neither of those has a
ther go
in the title. Besides, you and I and others have read those books without going mad….”

Verey leaped up and began pacing, a tragic figure with his hunched back and white, ashy face. “The book we are speaking of is not made up of hints or codes, like
The Great God Pan
or
Clouds Without Water,”
he said. “The horror of it must be visible on every page, wherever one opens it. Both Bertrán and poor Annie reacted within two or three minutes of opening the volume. They must have been driven mad by only a few sentences … a paragraph at most….”

Babcock himself had grown pale. “I suddenly realize, Reverend, that there is one obvious remaining target for this monstrosity,” he said awkwardly. “Yourself. You must remain here, as my guest, until this whole terrible business is settled. And any packages to you, from M.M.M., must remain unopened, or at the most should be opened only by a man I know who is so advanced in occult knowledge that he might be able to deal with whatever is in this book.”

Verey stared into the fireplace. “I know you are right,” he said wearily, “although, at this point, I would hate to see anyone, however advanced in occult knowledge you may consider him, open a package from that damnable M.M.M.”

“Perhaps,” Sir John replied. “That is for Jones himself—the man of whom I spoke—to decide. But certainly neither you nor I must open such a package. If you are the obvious next target,
I
may well be the target after you. God,” he cried, “how can such things be, and the world go on in its smug materialistic blindness?”

Verey sighed. “It’s those atheists at Oxford and Cambridge,” he said. “It’s the heritage of Voltaire and Darwin and Nietzsche…. The whole intellectual climate of Eurone
rope for one hundred fifty years now has been guided by the Anti-Christ, to blind us …”

“Well, history can’t be changed,” Sir John said, “but our future is always in our own hands. I have had a telephone installed recently, and I am going to put a call through to London, to get Jones out here as soon as possible. Believe me, he is better equipped to deal with this horror than you or I.”

He rose, but stopped at the sudden look of anguish on Verey’s face.

“My God,” Verey said. “McPherson.”

Sir John whirled to confront him. “McPherson?” he exclaimed. “Who’s McPherson?”

“Reverend Duncan McPherson,” Verey said. “My partner and associate in the Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth. He received one of the postcards, too.”

Sir John felt as if the solid earth were collapsing into random atoms beneath him. “What postcards?” he cried. “You never mentioned any postcards.”

Verey was virtually jumping up and down with anguish and impatience. “I must warn him,” he said. “You have a telephone, you say. But whom do I know in all of Inverness with a telephone?”

“The police!” Sir John exclaimed. “We must call the police there and have them get in touch with McPherson! But what postcards?”

“Later, man!” Verey cried. “Where’s the telephone?”

“In the downstairs hall,” Babcock said. “But how in the world can we explain all this to a policeman?”

They were hurrying to the stairs as they exchanged these incoherent remarks. “The police know all about the suicides,” Verey explained excitedly, “and they have heard my testimony about the packages that came in the post just before the suicides—although I think they only half-believed me….”

But by the time both men were in the telephone alcove
in the front hall they were speaking fairly calmly and rationally again. Verey asked the operator to put him through to Inverness-418, and, after the usual annoying delay, he was connected.

“This is Reverend Verey,” he said when the phone was answered at the other end. “I must speak to Inspector McIntosh, in the matter of the suicides.”

Babcock found himself admiring the old man’s sense of diplomacy in the next few minutes. Verey explained only as much as a police officer might be able to understand, even improvising off the top of his head a theory that the mysterious packages from London might unleash a chemical poison that would unhinge the reason. “Under no circumstances,” the hunchbacked clergyman said sharply, “should McPherson open any package from London—or any unusual package, to be on the safe side. These villains may change their return address to catch us off guard.”

When Verey finally hung up the phone, he looked somewhat relieved. “They’re sending a constable around to McPherson’s at once,” he said. “That inspiration of mine about the delirium-producing chemical seems to have impressed him.”

Sir John nodded somberly. “It impressed me, for a moment,” he said. “But it isn’t true, of course. There is no drug with a reaction so specific as in these cases. Even belladonna, the most delirium-producing chemical known, has a wide variety of effects. Some weep hysterically; some laugh insanely; some hallucinate; others die of toxic reaction. Hasheesh is equally variable in its effects. There is nothing in that line of speculation to help us here, although it is at least enough to persuade the police to put McPherson on guard against mysterious packages….”