The Ancient Nine

by Ian K. Smith, M. D.

  A head table had been set up in the front of the room. A long line of uniformed servants dutifully stood at the ready.

  I joined Hutch at one of the long tables. A stocky, round-faced man stood with his head held back and tapped a knife against his wineglass. A hush fell over the room.

  “May I have your attention, please,” he called out in a crisp, distinguished voice. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ellsworth Stohler, class of ’79, and I’ll be serving as your toastmaster for the evening.”

  “Did you mean ’59?” someone yelled from across the hall, breaking up the gathering into fits of laughter.

  Once the noise had settled, Stohler raised his glass and said, “The dangers of my job. But I remain fearless and loyal in my service to you tonight. Now, as I was saying, my name is Ellsworth Stohler, the graduate treasurer as well as tonight’s toastmaster, and we have a great evening planned for you. The first order of business is properly welcoming the neophytes to their final dinner.” On cue, the rest of the members took to their feet with their glasses raised. Stohler then said, “In these blessed halls legions of great men have come before you and many generations shall walk in the footprints that you leave behind. You now stand on the shoulders of those brave souls of Delta Phi and claim your rightful place amongst a celebrated pantheon of yesterday’s fallen heroes, today’s carriers of the torch, and tomorrow’s leaders. Drink long and deep, my neophyte brothers, and know that you’ll always have a home at the Gas.”

  “Hear! Hear!” the crowd roared, and we celebrated our first of many Delphic toasts.

  “So, what do you think so far?” Hutch asked. He was seated to my right. “Is this great or what? Tonight, you’ll eat and drink like a king.”

  “I had no idea what to expect,” I said. “It’s a really awesome feeling to be finally sitting here.”

  Salads were served, wine and champagne glasses were noisily brought down on the tables, and just as everyone dug in, a commotion sounded across the hall. A graduate was standing on his chair, banging his knife against his glass. Swinging the knife and cursing, he fought off the members who were attempting to bring him down. His long dark hair had been tucked behind ears, his bow tie hanging over his shoulder, and his speech badly slurred.

  “That’s Clarke Meriwether,” Hutch said. “Don’t worry, he’s always out of control. Every year, he finds a way to make a fool of himself. This is my third initiation dinner, and I’ve never seen him leave one of these things sober. He walks in the door wasted.” The rest of the hall quieted as the members smartly decided to give Meriwether his space rather than risk decapitation. Meriwether announced he had a joke about three horny secretaries who were sitting in the bathroom. He started out strong, but midway through the delivery he fell apart, and the rest of what he said was completely incomprehensible. But the room still erupted into a raucous applause and Meriwether took a bow, which sent him tumbling into the arms of those standing beneath him.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Graduated ten years ago,” Hutch said. “His family has been in the club since the mansion was built. He comes from a big mining family out of Pennsylvania. His grandfather left ten million dollars’ worth of stock to the club. So, let’s just say that the trustees have ten million reasons to be very tolerant of him.”

  We feasted on Cornish game hens, steamed asparagus, and potatoes. Following dinner, an assortment of desserts was served with coffee and cappuccino and after-dinner liqueurs. Stohler stood on his chair at the head table and called for our attention. He formally introduced the rest of the graduate members seated next to him and announced their positions within the club hierarchy; then he began the tradition of post-dinner jokes. In fact, people had been telling jokes throughout dinner, all of them sexual in nature. Some of the jokes even made me uncomfortable. I wondered how the female staff felt, hearing these raunchy stories, no consideration at all that they were present.

  That’s how we spent the next forty-five minutes, drinking and telling jokes and passing around boxes of Cohiba cigars that had been illegally smuggled from Cuba through London and specially wrapped in Delphic parchment.

  Tradition dictated the final joke of the evening be told by the oldest member present, so ninety-two-year-old Wallis Cabot slowly rose to his feet with the help of two canes and the hands of the members seated next to him. His voice was weak, but his joke was strong. He delivered a flawless rendition of a story about a construction worker who accidentally walks into a sperm bank. The applause was immediate and heavy, and a gleam came to Cabot’s eyes as the magic of youth had returned, even if just for a fleeting moment.

  A piano sounded in the corner of the hall as one of the younger graduates banged away on the ivory keys. Everyone formed a circle around the room, and Stohler stood holding an enormous silver bowl with two ornately curved handles. It looked like a replica of the Wimbledon trophy.

  “What’s going on now?” I asked Hutch.

  “The cup song,” Hutch said. “We close out every dinner by singing this song as the cup is passed and we drink to brotherhood.”

  Stroll again down Linden Street

  When you’re far away,

  Just let your memories guide your feet

  And look forward to the day

  When the crowd has reassembled and the cup shall pass.

  Land or Sea,

  Wherever you may be,

  Drink a toast to the Gas.

  Chestnuts bloom on Linden Street

  With the dawn of spring

  And you’ll recall their fragrance sweet

  As you raise your glass and sing

  To the days we’ve shared together, brothers class by class,

  Land or sea,

  Wherever you may be,

  Drink a toast to the Gas.

  That simple song filled the hall, the silver cup was passed, and members took their drink for the Gas. When Cabot took the ceremonial last drink, more applause knocked against the ancient walls, and the room fell into a mass of congratulatory hugs and handshakes and another round of cigars.

  “The women should be here in about half an hour,” Hutch said. “So how about seeing your club before the party starts?”

  “Let’s do it,” I said, feeling strange hearing him call it my club.

  He took me through the entire clubhouse. The oath had been given in the library underneath original portraits of various U.S. presidents and prominent club graduates.

  A large photograph of an elegantly dressed man hung conspicuously over the mantelpiece.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “John Jacob Astor IV,” Hutch said as we walked up to the portrait. “He was a member in the late 1800s right along with J. P. Morgan. At one point, his great-grandfather was the country’s richest man, right alongside the Rockefellers. He donated many of these books from his private library.”

  There was an enormous TV room furnished with a six-foot-wide television screen and a cadre of Bose speakers scattered around the room. He continued the tour, showing me the sauna where they made us stand in the oppressive heat, the locker room where I had squeezed what was a banana in the toilet, and their own full-sized squash court. The entire time, I couldn’t stop thinking of where the chamber was hidden and if the Ancient Nine were inside it, watching our every move.

  He led me down a narrow staircase lined with commemorative posters from the early 1900s. It deposited us into a small room with a smoked birch countertop. The dim lighting and drab colors combined with the cigars brought to mind an English gentlemen’s club. The bartender, a short stocky man with a bulbous snout of a nose and meaty hands, served drinks with a flourish.

  “That’s Roscoe,” Hutch said. “He’s been here for over forty years. One night when it’s not so busy, you gotta hear some of his stories. He was here the night Kennedy and some of his friends from the Spee broke into the basement. He’s seen and heard it all.”

  Just over the liquor chest, five cards had been fr
amed against a red mat. It was a royal flush: A, K, Q, J, 10. Underneath the cards was a big signature I couldn’t read and the date April 10, 1959.

  Hutch saw me staring at the cards. “That’s the most famous poker hand in Delphic history,” he said. “Bickerstaff beat some oil heir with it for fifty thousand dollars and a new Porsche. The old-timers call it the Poker Game of the Century. One day get Roscoe to tell you about it. He was serving drinks that night.”

  Hutch pulled me into the next room, where lunches were served. It was full of long oak tables and medieval wooden chairs with stuffed leather seats. On one side of the room a fire roared in a glass-encased fireplace. A tribute had been inscribed in the panel above the mantelpiece with the years 1941–1945 and a list of graduate members who had fallen in World War II. The carved letters had been positioned between two torches and inlaid with gold leaf. An excerpt from Laurence Binyon’s poem “For the Fallen” gave it a surreal quality.

  THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD,

  AS WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD:

  AGE SHALL NOT WEARY THEM,

  NOR THE YEARS CONDEMN.

  AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN

  AND IN THE MORNING, WE WILL

  REMEMBER THEM.

  A Delphic dish rested on the mantelpiece in a holder that read:

  SET OF DELPHIC CLUB CHINA

  GIVEN BY HIS PARENTS

  IN MEMORY OF

  RALPH BLAKE WILLIAMS III ’55 1933–1963

  He pointed to an intricately carved shelf that ran along the ceiling. I noticed it as soon as we had walked into the room. “Those porcelain steins and silver tankards are a big part of the club’s history,” he said. “The two sitting in the far corner belonged to Napoléon Bonaparte before he was exiled to the island of Elba. Gifts from the Morgan family. They come down only once a year during our midwinter dinner in February. The undergraduate and graduate presidents always use them for the first toast.”

  Everything in the mansion had its own story, small pieces of history delicately woven together. We walked across the foyer and into the billiards room. A long oar hung over the double door. It had been covered with a thick coat of varnish and the words:

  UNDEFEATED CREW 1938 VARSITY BOAT RACE

  NEW LONDON, CT JUNE 24

  “Charles P. Thorpe, class of ’62.”

  I turned to find a tall man with dark, perfectly coiffed hair; a long, pointed nose; and thick black eyebrows. Hutch had struck up a conversation with another alum.

  “Spenser Collins, class of ’91,” I said.

  He threw a stiff right hand in my direction.

  “Welcome to the Gas,” he said. “You’ll relish this night and this club for the rest of your life. Except for choosing Harvard over Yale, joining the Gas was the most important decision of my life. I got into the Pork and the Fly, but I knew this was where I belonged. There’s a sense of family here the other clubs just don’t have. I haven’t missed an initiation in twenty years.”

  “Charles, old boy,” a man with the most perfect set of teeth I had ever seen called out from across the room. He held a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other.

  “Chip?” Thorpe exclaimed. He turned back toward me. “I’ve gotta run along, young man, but remember what I said. Treasure every minute you can spend here. The years will speed by, and one day you’ll look up and not know where they went.” He skipped off to embrace his old friend.

  I spent the next fifteen minutes drifting from one conversation to the next; then Oscar LaValle hailed me down and asked me to follow him to the president’s office. Situated in the back hallway, the office was full of more old photographs and club memorabilia. He opened a safe and pulled out a walnut box filled with gold, rectangular keys. Three torches had been engraved into one side of the key. The number 235 had been stamped underneath. He opened a dense book and had me sign next to the number. Next, he handed me a copy of the membership directory and explained they called it the Delphic Bible because it contained the names, addresses, places of employment, and private phone numbers of all the graduates.

  “You’ll find alumni living all over the world and working in every industry from filmmaking to garment factories,” Oscar said. “Call ’em up, tell ’em you’re a Delphic man, and they’ll take care of you. But don’t leave the book lying around where outsiders can see it. A couple of years ago, some reporter from the Crimson got ahold of a copy and ran a big story about it. They published the names of our most prominent members, calling them elitists and accusing them of hiring discrimination because they gave preferential treatment to their Delphic brothers. Our lawyers eventually made the stories go away, but the optics weren’t good for the club.”

  I tucked the directory under my arm and assured him that I would keep it well out of anyone else’s reach. He led me to the front door and showed me the elaborate alarm system and had me practice entering the security code. A white keypad had been affixed to a wall just inside the foyer, between the big blue door and an inner door. A five-digit code had to be punched twice; then within five seconds a hidden buzzer over the second door had to be pushed. Failure to enter the right code twice or pushing the buzzer after the five-second period had elapsed would trigger the alarm inside the club and one at the Cambridge Police Department. There was also an emergency button hidden underneath the mail slot. In the event a member ran into trouble at the front door, it could be pushed to set off an alarm.

  When we walked back into the club, we stepped into a whirlwind of activity. Oscar told me that they had staggered the arrival of the girls. Wellesley girls first, followed by the invited Harvard girls, and last a sorority from Simmons. The staff worked feverishly to clear the rooms as the DJ started spinning records, and a team of bartenders put the finishing touches on a champagne ice fountain. The graduates made the last of their toasts, then wished us luck on our evening conquests before leaving us to fulfill our destiny as Delphic men.

  42

  A WEEK OF lunches and visits to the club brought me no closer to discovering the secret chamber. I found myself worrying about Brathwaite, Jacobs, and the flat-nosed man holding the gun. Where were they, and what were they plotting? I tried putting them out of my mind, but it was impossible. I noticed every shadow walking home at night from the Yard. I made sure I always left practice with a teammate, so I had company heading back over the river. Despite our fears, Dalton and I continued our search. Several times, I had climbed the rickety stairs to the third floor in the middle of the night when no one else was there. I examined every room in the mansion except for the steward’s tiny office. After flipping every switch and banging on every wall, there was no indication of a chamber. For hours on end, I hid in the dark shadows, waiting for something to happen, but there was only silence.

  One night while I was upstairs, I heard a couple of members enter the mansion and shoot a couple of games of eight-ball on the first floor, but they left within an hour. On another night, three members stopped by for a sandwich and a couple of games of backgammon in the reading room, but they left without a mention of anything unusual. None of them ever came up to the third floor.

  Then something happened. One night, on my way home from studying at Lamont, I stopped by the club to grab a snack and catch the last quarter of the UNLV–Georgetown game. I ran back to the kitchen, picked up a ham and cheese sandwich, and headed upstairs to the third-floor TV room. I noticed a streak of light breaking into the dark stairwell on the mezzanine landing.

  I continued up the stairs slowly, and when I reached the third floor, I noticed the door to the library was closed. This struck me as odd, since I had never seen the door closed. Just as I put my hand on the knob to open it, I heard several voices from within engaged in lively conversation. I withdrew my hand and rested my ear against the door. The voices were muffled, but I could tell they belonged to older men.

  I could feel my heart beating in my mouth as I knelt down and put my eye to the keyhole, straining to look inside. In the center of the floor was a circle
of middle-aged and elderly men clad in tailed tuxedos, white vests, top hats, black capes, and white satin gloves. They held up their outstretched arms, locking hands with each other. In the middle of the circle, Stanford Jacobs stood on a chair, facing another man of equal height who looked to be in his early fifties. Jacobs held a torch in one hand and an open book in the other. They were dressed like the men in the photograph Dalton had found in Uncle Randolph’s attic, the men we assumed were the Ancient Nine. It was difficult for me to see the other faces, but I recognized Charles Thorpe. I was changing my position for a better angle, hoping I might recognize some of the members I had met on initiation night, but the room fell dark. Jacobs continued to hold the torch.

  I stood up and tiptoed to the adjacent TV room, not believing my luck. This had to be the Ancient Nine. There was no other explanation. It was highly unlikely any students would be in the clubhouse that night, as we were nearing the end of the semester and everyone was stuffed into the libraries, cramming from shared class notes and old exams. So, I kept the TV room lights off and went to the corner nearest the library wall and sat on the floor. As I hoped, the grated vent carried in the faint voices from the other room.

  “My brothers, we are gathered here tonight in the name of the most noble Order of the Ancient Nine,” Jacobs said.

  “God save the King,” came the unified response.

  “We are here to induct our fellow brother, Theodore Stickney, into our most privileged circle. Let it here be known that by unanimous vote of the most noble Order, Ted shall gain the full rights and privileges of an Order Knight. Ted, upon this night, you shall become bound by a most sacred covenant, one that will follow you to your grave and follow your soul into the ever after.”

  “God save the Gas,” came the unified response.

  There was a shuffling sound, and I could hear the dragging of chairs. Jacobs’s voice returned. “Ted, please put your left hand on the Bible and raise your right hand. Repeat after me. I, Theodore Stickney, hereby accept the terms and conditions of membership into the most Noble Order of the Ancient Nine. I solemnly swear never to discuss the private affairs of this group with any nonmember of the Ancient Nine, including family, friends, business concerns, and other members of the club. These secrets I shall take with me to my grave and beyond. If I should violate this covenant, so shall my soul perish. So help me God.”