“I can’t follow all that football slang; but do explain why anyone should want to interfere with us. It’s too silly.”
“It’s only silly when you get to the very distant end of a most abstruse philosophy. On the surface it’s obvious. It’s the objection of the burglar to electric lights and bells. You can imagine him having enough foresight to vote against a town councillor who proposed an appropriation for the study of science in general. Something might turn up which would put him out of business.”
“But what is their business?”
“Ultimately, you may call it selfishness – only that’s a dreadful word, and will mislead you. We’re just as selfish; only we realise that other things beyond our own consciousnesses are equally ourselves. For instance, I try to unite myself as intimately as I can with every other mind, or body, or idea, that comes in my way. To take that cone simile, I want to be all the different curves I can, so as to have a better chance of realizing the cone. The Black Lodge magician clings to his one curve, tries to make it permanent, to exalt it above all other curves. And of course the moment the cone shifts, out he goes: pop!”
“Observe the poet!” remarked Simon Iff. “He values himself enormously; but his idea of perpetuating himself is to make the beauty that is inherent in his own soul radiate beyond him so as to illumine every other mind in the world. But your Black Magician is secret, and difficult of access; he isn’t going to tell anyone anything, not he! So even his knowledge tends to extinction, in the long run.”
“But you are yourselves a secret society!” exclaimed Lisa.
“Only to secure freedom from interruption. It is merely the same idea as that which makes every householder close his doors at night; or, better, as public libraries are guarded by certain regulations. We can’t allow lunatics to scrawl over our unique manuscripts, and tear the pages out of all our books. Shallow people are always chattering about science being free to all; the truth is that it is guarded as no other secret ever was in all history, by the simple fact that, with all the help in the world, it takes half a lifetime to begin to master even one small section of it. We guard our magick just as much and as little as our other branches of physics; but people are so stupid that, though they know it requires years of training to use so simple an instrument as a microscope, they are indignant that we cannot teach them to use the Verendum in an hour.”
“Ah, but they complain that you have never proved the use of the Verendum at all.”
“Only those who have not learnt its use. I can read Homer, but I can only prove the fact to another man by teaching him Greek; and he is then obliged to do the same to a third party, and so on. People generally acquiesce that some men can read Homer because – well, it’s their intellectual laziness. A really stout intelligence would doubt it.
“Spiritualism and Christian Science, which are either fraud or bluff or misinterpretation of facts, have spread all over the Anglo-Saxon world because there is no true critical spirit among the half-educated. But we are not willing to have our laboratories invaded by reporters and curiosity-mongers; we are dealing with delicate forces; we have to train our minds with an intensity which no other study in the world demands. Public indifference and incredulity suit us perfectly. The only object of advertisement would be to get suitable members; but we have methods of finding them without publicity. We make no secret of our methods and results, on the other hand; but only the right man knows how to discover them.
“It is not as if we were working in an old field where all the terms were defined, and the main laws ascertained. In Magick, even more than in any other science, the student must keep his practice level with his theory.”
“Don’t you ever do magick under test conditions?”
“Unfortunately, my child, creative magick, which is the thaumaturgic side of the business, depends on a peculiar excitation which objects to ‘test conditions’ very strongly. You might as well ask Cyril to prove his poetic gift, or even his manhood, before a set of fools. He will produce you poems, and infants, and events, as the case may be; but you have more or less to take his word for it that he did the acts responsible primarily for them. Another difficulty about true magick is that it is so perfectly a natural process that its phenomena never excite surprise except by their timeliness – so that one has to record hundreds of experiments to set up a case which will even begin to exclude coincidence. For instance, I want a certain book. I use my book-producing talisman. The following day, a bookseller offers me the volume. One experiment proves nothing. My ability to do it every time is the proof. And I can’t even do that under ‘test conditions’; for it is necessary that I should really want the book, in my subconsciousness, whose will works the miracle. It is useless for me to think, or pretend, that I want it. Any man may fluke a ten-shot at billiards, but you call him a player only when he can average a break of thirty or so every time he goes to the table.
“But in some branches of magick we can give proof on the spot; in any branch, that is, where the female, and not the male, part of us is concerned. The analogy is quite perfect. Thus, in my guess at your birth-hour – was not that a test? I will do it all day, and be right five times in six. Further, in the event of error, I will show exactly why I was wrong. It’s a case where one is sometimes right to be wrong, as I’ll explain one day. Then again, your own clairvoyance; I did not tell you that sort of a Thing to look for; yet you saw it under the same form as I did. You shall practise these things daily with Cyril if you like, always checking your results in a way which he will show you; and in a month you will be an expert. Then, if you feel you want to advertise, do. But you won’t.
“Besides, the real trouble is that not one person in a thousand cares for any form of science whatever; even such base applications of science as the steam-engine and all its family, from the telegraph to the automobile, were only thrust upon the unwilling people by bullies who knew that there was money in them. Who are your ‘men of science’ in the popular notion of today? Edison and Marconi, neither of whom ever invented anything, but were smart businessmen, with the capacity to exploit the brains of others, and turn science to commercially useful and profitable ends. Heigho!”
“We’re a long way from our subject,” said Cyril. “I have had a delightful morning – I have felt like Plato with the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in contemplating you three – but we have work before us. I propose in this emergency to copy the tactics of Washington at Valley Forge. We will make a direct and vehement attack on the Black Lodge: they will expect me to be in my usual position in the van – I will slip away with Lisa while the fires blaze brightest.”
“A sound plan,” said Simon. “Let us break up this conference, and put it immediately into execution. You had better not attract attention by collecting luggage, and you must certainly take no person outside the Order into your circle. So after dinner you will put on your other clothes, walk down to the Metro, cross to the Gare de Lyon, and jump into the Rome rapide. Wire me when you arrive at The Butterfly-Net!”
Chapter IX
HOW THEY BROUGHT THE BAD NEWS FROM ARAGO TO QUINCAMPOIX:
AND WHAT ACTION WAS TAKEN THEREUPON
JUST as Lord Antony Bowling turned into the Grands Boulevards from the Faubourg Montmartre, Akbar Pasha was leaving them. The Turk did not see the genially flourished cane; he was preoccupied – and perhaps he did not wish to be recognised. For he dodged among the obscure and dangerous streets of “The Belly of Paris” with many a look behind him. To be sure, this is but a reasonable precaution in a district so favourable to Apache activities. At last he came out into the great open square of the markets; and, crossing obliquely, came to a drinking den of the type which seeks to attract foreigners, preferably Americans. It bore the quite incongruous name “Au Père Tranquille”. Akbar mounted the stairs. It was too early for revellers; even the musicians had not arrived; but an old man sat in one corner of the room, sipping a concoction
of gin, whisky and rum which goes in certain circles by the name of a Nantucket Cocktail.
This individual was of some sixty years of age; his hair and beard were white; his dress was that of a professional man, and he endeavoured to give dignity to his appearance by the assumption of a certain paternal or even patriarchal manner. But his eye was pale and cold as a murderer’s, shifty and furtive as a thief’s. His hands trembled continually with a kind of palsy; and the white knuckles told a tale of gout. Self-indulgence had bloated his body; unhealthy fat was everywhere upon him.
The trembling of his hands seemed in sympathy with that of his mind; one would have said that he was in deadly fear, or the prey to a consuming anxiety.
At the Turk’s entrance he rose clumsily, then fell back into his chair. He was more than half intoxicated.
Akbar took the chair opposite to him. “We couldn’t get it,” he said; in a whisper, though there was nobody within earshot. “Oh, Dr. Balloch, Dr. Balloch! do try to understand! It was impossible. We tried all sorts of ways.”
The doctor’s voice had a soft suavity. Though a licensed physician, he had long since abandoned legitimate practice, and under the guise of homeopathy pursued various courses which would have been but ill regarded by more regular practitioners.
His reply was horrible, uttered as it was in feline falseness, like a caress. “You foul ass!” he said. “I have to take this up with S.R.M.D., you know! What will he say and do?”
“I tell you I couldn’t. There was an old man there who spoilt everything, in my idea.”
“An old man?” Dr. Balloch almost dropped his hypocritical bedside voice in his rage. “Oh curse, oh curse it all!” He leant over to the Turk, caught his beard, and deliberately pulled it. There is no grosser insult that you can offer to a Mussulman, but Akbar accepted it without resentment. Yet so savage was the assault that a sharp cry of pain escaped him.
“You dog! you Turkish swine!” hissed Balloch. “Do you know what has happened? S.R.M.D. sent a Watcher – a bit of himself, do you understand what that means, you piece of dirt? – and it hasn’t returned. It must have been killed, but we can’t find out how, and S.R.M.D. is lying half dead in his house. You pig! Why didn’t you come with your story at once? I know now what is wrong.”
“You know I don’t know your address,” said the Turk humbly. “Please, oh please, leave go of my beard!”
Balloch contemptuously released his victim – who was a brave enough man in an ordinary way, and would have had the blood of his own Sultan, though he knew that the guards would cut him to pieces within the next ten seconds, for the least of such words as had been addressed to him. But Balloch was his Superior in the Black Lodge, which rules by terror and by torture; its first principle was to enslave its members. The bully Balloch became a whimpering cur at the slightest glance of the dreaded S.R.M.D.
“Tell me what the old man was like,” he said. “Did you get his name?”
“Yes,” said Akbar, “I got that. It was Simon Iff.”
Balloch dashed his glass upon the ground. “Oh hell! Oh hell! Oh hell!” he said, not so much as a curse but as an invocation. “Hear, oh hear this creature! The ignorant, blind swine! You had him – Him! – under your hand; oh hell, you fool, you fool!”
“I felt sure he was somebody,” said Akbar, “but I had no orders.”
“And no brains, no brains,” snarled the other. “Look here; I’ll tell you how to get your step in the Lodge if you’ll give me a hundred pounds.”
“Do you mean it?” cried Akbar, entirely his own man in a moment, for abject fear and obsessing ambition combined to make his advancement the tyrant of his whole tormented mind. “Will you swear it?”
Balloch made an ugly face. “By the black sow’s udder, I will.”
His whole frame trembling with excitement, Akbar Pasha drew a cheque-book from his pocket, and filled in a blank for the required sum.
Balloch snatched it greedily. “This is worth your money,” he said. “That man Iff is in the second grade, perhaps even the first, of their dirty Order; and we sometimes think he’s the most powerful of the whole damned crew. That fool Grey’s a child to him. I know now how the Watcher was destroyed. Oh! S.R.M.D. will pay somebody for this! But listen, man – you bring that old beast’s head on a charger – or Grey’s, either! – and you can have any grade you dare ask for! And that’s no lie, curse it! Why,” he went on with increasing vehemence, “the whole thing’s a plant of ours. Monet-Knott’s one of us; we use him to blackmail Lavinia King – about all he’s fit for, the prig! And we got him to drag that dago woman in front of Master Grey’s dog nose! And now they bring in Simon Iff. Oh, it’s too much! We’ve even lost their trail. Ten to one they’re safe in their Abbey tonight. Be off! No, wait for me here; I’ll bring back orders. And while I’m gone, get that son of yours here – he’s got more sense than you. We’ll have to trace Grey somehow – and astral watchers won’t do the trick when Simon Iff’s about.”
Balloch rose to his feet, buttoned his coat around him, put on a tall silk hat, and was gone without wasting another word upon his subordinate.
The Turk would have given his ears to have dared to follow him. The mystery of S.R.M.D.’s personality and abode were shrouded in the blackest secrecy. Akbar had but the vaguest ideas of the man; he was a formless ideal of terrific power and knowledge, a sort of incarnated Satan, the epitome of successful iniquity. The episode of the “Watcher” had not diminished the chief’s prestige in his eyes; it was evidently an “accident”; S.R.M.D. had sent out a patrol and it had been ambushed by a whole division, as it were. So trivial a “regrettable incident” was negligibly normal.
Akbar had no thought but of S.R.M.D. as a Being infinitely great in himself; he had no conception of the price paid by the members of the Black Lodge. The truth is, that as its intimates advance, their power and knowledge becomes enormously greater; but such progress is not a mark of general growth, as it is in the case of the White Brotherhood; it is like a cancer, which indeed grows apace, but at the expense of the man on whom it feeds, and will destroy both him and itself in the long run. The process may be slow; it may extend over a series of incarnations; but it is sure enough. The analogy of the cancer is a close one; for the man knows his doom, suffers continual torture; but to this is added the horrible delusion that if only the disease can be induced to advance far enough, all is saved. Thus he hugs the fearful growth, cherishes it as his one dearest possession, stimulates it by every means in his power. Yet all the time he nurses in his heart an agonizing certainty that this is the way of death.
Balloch knew S.R.M.D. well; had known him for years. He hoped to supplant him, and while he feared him with hideous and unmanly fear, hated him with most hellish hatred. He was under no delusion as to the nature of the Path of the Black Lodge. Akbar Pasha, a mere outsider, without a crime on his hands as yet, was a rich and honoured officer in the service of the Sultan; he, Balloch, was an ill-reputed doctor, living on the fears of old maids, on doubtful and even criminal services to foolish people from the supply of morphia to the suppression of the evidence of scandal, and on the harvest of half-disguised blackmail that goes with such pursuits. But he was respectability itself compared to S.R.M.D.
This man, who called himself the Count Macgregor of Glenlyon, was in reality a Hampshire man, of lowland Scottish extraction, of the name of Douglas. He had been well educated, became a good scholar, and developed an astounding taste and capacity for magic. For some time he had kept straight; then he had fallen, chosen the wrong road. His powers had increased at a bound; but they were solely used for base ends. He had established the Black Lodge far more firmly than ever before, jockeyed his seniors out of office by superior villainy, and proceeded to forge the whole weapon to his own liking. He had had one terrible setback.
Cyril Grey, when only twenty years of age, a freelance magician, had entered the Lodge; for it worked to attract
innocent people under a false pretence of wisdom and of virtue. Cyril, discovering the trick, had not withdrawn; he had played the game of the Lodge, and made himself Douglas’s right-hand man. This being achieved, he had suddenly put a match to the arsenal.
The Lodge was always seething with hate; Theosophists themselves might have taken lessons from this exponent; and the result of Cyril’s intervention had been to disintegrate the entire structure. Douglas found his prestige gone, and his income with it. Addiction to drink, which had accompanied his magical fall, now became an all-absorbing vice. He was never able to rebuild his Lodge on its former lines; but those who thirsted for knowledge and power and these he still possessed in ever increasing abundance as he himself decayed – clung to him, hating and envying him, as a young ruffian of the streets will envy the fame of some robber or murderer who happens to fill the public eye.
It was with this clot of perverse feelings that Balloch approached the Rue Quincampoix, one of the lowest streets in Paris, and turned in at the den where Douglas lodged.
S.R.M.D. was lying on a torn soiled sofa, his face white as death; a mottled and empurpled nose, still showing trace of its original aggressive and haughty model, alone made for colour. For his eyes were even paler than the doctor’s. In his hand was a bottle half full of raw whisky, with which he was seeking to restore his vitality.
“I brought you some whisky,” said Balloch, who knew the way to favour.
“Put it down, over there. You’ve got some money.”
Balloch did not dare to lie. S.R.M.D. had spotted the fact without a word.
“Only a cheque. You shall have half tomorrow when I’ve cashed it.”
“Come here at noon.”
Despite the obvious degradation of his whole being, S.R.M.D. was still somebody. He was a wreck, but he was the wreck of something indubitably big. He had not only the habit of command, but the tone of fine manners. In his palmy days he had associated with some very highly placed people. It was said that the Third Section of the Russian Police Bureau had once found a use for him.
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