Nine Times Nine

by Anthony Boucher

  As he turned to go, he could barely overhear a whispered dialogue:

  “Mary, my dear.”

  “Yes, Sister Ursula?”

  “I want you to do something very important for me.”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “I want you to stay with your aunt every minute from now until after mass tomorrow morning. Particularly you must go to mass with her.”

  “Why—why, yes.”

  Concha sounded puzzled. Matt, going off to join the Lieutenant, was no less so.

  Chapter 7

  “I wonder,” said R. Joseph Harrigan, “if it might be better if I stayed in the background during our visit to the Temple of Light.” Even in the police car he looked like a Public Figure; you expected him to tip his hat to invisible multitudes along the street.

  “Why?” Lieutenant Marshall asked, practically.

  “Need you ask, Lieutenant? After all, my face is not unknown. These miscreants will recognize me as the brother of their victim; it will put them on their guard.”

  Marshall thought it over. “No,” he said slowly. “I had considered trying a surprise attack, but on second thought it isn’t such a good idea. We’ll just confront them with the facts.”

  “You know your own business, of course,” said Joseph in tones which implied an exactly opposite opinion.

  “Question I wanted to ask you,” said Marshall after a brief pause. “Couldn’t very well in front of the family. How about women?”

  Joseph bridled noticeably. “I’m not sure that I understand your question. If you mean what I think you do, I resent it strongly. I am sure that since Marta—since his wife’s death a year ago, my brother had led a strictly celibate existence.”

  “All right. I’m not on the vice squad any more, thank God; but it wouldn’t have to be that necessarily. Any close woman friends; any possibility, maybe, of remarriage?”

  “Close friends? I should say no—and certainly no thought of remarriage. He saw Mrs. Randall, of course, and Ellen’s fellow-members in the Altar and Rosary Guild, and the nuns, and the mothers of some of Mary’s school friends; but Ellen and Mary were the only women at all close to him. Wolfe was in many ways a very lonely man, Lieutenant.”

  “He’s got plenty of company now,” said Marshall drily.

  “Doctor Magruder!”

  The lean and mild-mannered police surgeon stopped in the hallway and stared at the nun. “Sister Ursula!” he exclaimed at last. “Good Heavens! I haven’t seen you since the good old days at the clinic. Don’t tell me you’re mixed up in this business?”

  “The Harrigans are very dear friends of mine.”

  “Frightful, isn’t it?” Dr. Magruder shook his head pityingly. “Splendid man, Mr. Harrigan, to be taken off like this. You know, Sister, try as I will, I cannot accustom myself to sudden and violent death. If I could only get enough money ahead to retire to private practice. … Ah, well, we all have our dreams.”

  Sister Ursula smiled. “I’ll pray for that intention. But could I ask you two questions?”

  Magruder frowned. “Most unofficial, you know. If the Lieutenant wanted anything told, he’d tell it.”

  “I know police routine,” said the nun surprisingly. “But these are very harmless questions.”

  “In that case … Well, you may ask them. I don’t say I’ll answer, mind now.”

  Sister Ursula fingered the beads hanging from her waist and seemed to gain confidence from them. “The first is this: Were you able to determine the time of death?”

  Dr. Magruder ventured a timid smile. “You say that much more cold-bloodedly than I could, Sister.”

  “Death isn’t so horrible after you’ve worked in a charity ward, Doctor. And besides, I’m so much more certain than you are that death is swallowed up in victory. But I mustn’t proselytize now. Can you answer that question?”

  “No, I can’t. But not out of official censorship. I simply don’t know. Presumably, of course, during the twenty minutes between the time his brother spoke to him and the time the young man saw him dead, but that’s not medical evidence. The heat from the fire in that room makes it impossible to draw any exact conclusions.”

  “Thank you,” the nun replied gravely. “And the other question is this: The Lieutenant said that Mr. Harrigan had left a strange sort of dying message. Could you tell me what that was?”

  “Hm. I suppose that really … After all, it will be in tomorrow’s papers, and no harm done. Very well.” And he explained about the dart.

  “Thank you. Thank you and God bless you, Doctor Magruder. And let me know if ever you leave the force. We might find a patient or two for you.”

  With rapid deftness, despite the encumbering volume of her habit, Sister Ursula went to the telephone stand in the hall, wrote a brief message on the pad, tore off the sheet, folded it, and inscribed in a neat, well-formed hand: FOR LIEUTENANT MARSHALL.

  As she left to join Sister Felicitas in the waiting police car, she handed the note to the guard at the door. “Please,” she said. “Give this to the Lieutenant when he gets back. It is most important.”

  At Marshall’s command, the police chauffeur contemptuously parked the car in the yellow zone in front of the Temple of Light. No contributions to Ahasver’s parking system were going to go on the department’s expense account.

  The only Child of Light on duty in the vestibule was the cherubic youth who had greeted Matt and Wolfe the night before. At the sight of this invasion, the boy frowned and looked perturbed.

  Matt wondered why. The Lieutenant was in plainclothes; there was nothing noticeably official about him. Was Joseph’s face indeed so well known that the youth recognized him instantly? Or had the greeter known last night who Wolfe was, and remembered Matt as his companion?

  By the time the three had crossed the vestibule, the cherub’s face had settled back into its usual smile of greeting. “Good evening, friends,” he chirped cheerily. “I’m afraid you’re late for the service. It’s almost over.”

  “Good,” Marshall announced briefly. “We want to see the head man.”

  Inside the auditorium they could hear the hypnotic voice of Ahasver droning on in unintelligible syllables.

  “You mean …” (reverence crept into the young voice) “you mean Ahasver?”

  “As he’s known here, yes.”

  “Lieutenant,” Joseph broke in, “do you mean that you know who—?”

  “That’s enough,” said Marshall curtly. “Where can we see him?”

  The sound of the voice inside ceased, and the organ struck up Old Christianity.

  “That’s the end,” the cherub informed them. “The people will be coming out now. If you wait a minute, I’ll take you backstage—I mean, back to the Chamber of Contemplation.”

  “The words aren’t the same,” the Lieutenant complained as he listened to this new version of the great hymn.

  “Aren’t they beautiful? Ahasver read them once in his book. They come from the Ancients.”

  Marshall made no comment aloud.

  The last “ON!!!” rang out with such volume that Matt expected the doors to burst open. “There,” said the youth. “Now I’ll take you around. Follow me.”

  He led them into the auditorium and down a side aisle. It was hard work swimming against the current of outpouring Children of Light. Matt heard voices around him.

  “Wasn’t he wonderful tonight?”

  “It’s so nice to really know when Easter is, isn’t it? When you think how much he brings us from the Ancients …”

  “He certainly makes you think. Something’s got to be done about this country, and we’re the ones to do it.”

  “Remember last night? My, that was exciting.”

  “And I surely would like to know what’s going to happen to that dreadful man after we put the Nine Times Nine on him.”

  They were such harmless people, Matt thought, such poor innocents. But he remembered their faces last night when they uttered the Nine Times Nine, and
he remembered the size of the bills which had come from these shabby pockets; and he felt an eager desire to get back to Wolfe Harrigan’s study and get on with the work.

  “Here we are,” the cherub said, pausing before the door of a room built into the wings of the auditorium’s stage. “Master,” he announced, tapping on the door and falling into Ahasver’s own archaic idiom, “here are some would speak with you.”

  The voice rang deep from inside. “I am free, and I deny myself to none. Let them enter.”

  The cherub opened the door, and the three men stepped into a small yellow cubicle. The sheer yellowness of it over-whelmed them all for a moment. The wallpaper, the carpet, the couch, and the hassock upon which Ahasver sat cross-legged were all of the same pure yellow as his robe, forming in all such a unified mass of color that the leader’s figure was nearly invisible against it, and he seemed to be only a beard hanging in space.

  “Degradation,” he pronounced, as though guessing their thoughts, “and contemplation are one. This ye must learn. And therefore is my Chamber of Contemplation bedizened in the hue of my degradation.” If the faces of Matt, Joseph, or the Lieutenant occasioned any surprise in him, he concealed it magnificently. They might have been any three devout followers who chose to visit the Master. “You may go,” he added calmly to the cherub.

  “But, Master,” the youth protested, “these men are—”

  “What is it to me or to thee who they are? They have come to me, and that is sufficient. Go.”

  Reluctantly the cherub went. “Now,” Ahasver turned to his guests and waved courteously at the couch, “what is it ye would know?”

  “I would know,” said Lieutenant Terence Marshall, “where the hell you were at six o’clock this afternoon.”

  Ellen Harrigan was reading a chapter in The Imitation of Christ when Concha came into her room. Silver-backed hairbrush in hand, the child was punctiliously giving her short black hair its nightly hundred strokes.

  “Aunt Ellen,” she ventured.

  “Yes, Mary?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but would you mind … What I mean is, could I … Can I sleep in here with you tonight?”

  “Certainly, child. I must admit I shan’t mind company myself. But take care you don’t catch my cold.”

  “Colds! How can we talk like this about colds—No. I’m sorry. Don’t let me make you stop reading.”

  Ellen closed her book. “God gave us more than our own souls to look out for. If you need someone to talk to, Mary …”

  Concha sat down on the bed. “I don’t know what I need. I do need something. I need it terribly.” Mechanically she went on brushing.

  “I know, dear. But don’t worry about your father. We know what he was, and we know that all is well with him. We shall have masses said, of course, but I can’t think that your father will stay in purgatory for long.”

  “Can I go to mass with you tomorrow, Aunt Ellen?”

  Ellen Harrigan’s dry old face glowed with pleasure. “Of course, my dear. Whenever you want to.”

  “I can’t—I don’t think I ought to take communion, like you, but I do want to go. … Aunt Ellen.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “When did Father go to confession last?”

  Aunt Ellen frowned. “A week ago last Wednesday. He went to communion on Holy Thursday, just as he always—did. By why?”

  “Then that’s all right. I’d hate to have to think—”

  “Think what, dear?”

  “Nothing. … Aunt Ellen?”

  “Yes?”

  The hand holding the brush hung inactive. “You know about these things maybe … if anybody does. Tell me. Is it a sin to want something awful?”

  “It isn’t wrong to want something very badly, unless of course that something belongs to somebody else. That would be against the tenth commandment.”

  “No, no. I mean to want something to happen—something awful.” Concha’s voice was earnest and terrible.

  Ellen sat on the bed beside the girl and took her free hand. “Thoughts aren’t sins unless we entertain them willfully and dwell on them. No one can be responsible for the temptations that come into his mind, if he doesn’t yield to them. Our Lord himself was tempted.”

  “But if you do dwell on a thought—if you hate it, but just can’t help it—if you keep wanting this awful thing—is that a sin?”

  “You’d better talk to Father O’Toole next time you go to confession. Tell him all about it. But in the meantime, don’t let it worry you, child. I’m sure it isn’t anything so very dreadful.”

  “But it is.” Her young voice was pleading.

  “Don’t take on so, dear. Try to cast out these thoughts. Simply don’t think about this awful thing any more.”

  “But I have to, Aunt Ellen. Really I have to. I mean because—well, because it’s happened.”

  Ellen Harrigan drew her hand away with a little start. Wearily Concha raised her brush and resumed stroking her hair.

  In the overpowering Chamber of Contemplation, Ahasver plucked at his beard (most contemplatively) with one yellow-gloved hand. “Where I was at six o’clock this afternoon? What is that to you, and by what right do you ask it of me?”

  Marshall showed his badge silently.

  “Verily?” Ahasver smiled. “And these gentlemen?”

  “Witnesses.”

  “And whereunto may they bear witness?”

  “You’re answering the questions.”

  “Very well. It is not my place to obstruct the forces ruling this country—as yet. At six, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “At six. … As you know, officer, this is Easter Sunday. No, do not interrupt me, I pray you. You, too, are bound to the old superstitions; in time even you shall recognize the new truths, of which this is one of the smallest. Today is Easter Sunday; and to commemorate this glorious day of the ascension of one of the Ancients to the Ancient of Ancients, I called a meeting of the innermost group: the Twelve of the Nine.

  “For ye must know,” he explained with a trace of condescension, “that there have been nine great Ancients, and that each of these has had twelve apostles. For this reason my closest circle of initiates numbers one hundred and eight, in honor of those Twelve of the Nine who stood closest to the Ancients.”

  “When I want a lecture I’ll come to the regular service. Let’s hear about six o’clock.”

  “This closed meeting,” Ahasver went on imperturbably, “lasted from five o’clock until seven. It was held in the Auditorium here. I spoke for almost the full two hours.”

  “You mean you can produce a hundred and eight witnesses to swear you were in this building from 5:55 to 6:15 today?”

  “I can, though I see as yet no reason why it should be necessary. Will you tell me, officer, why I should do so?”

  Instead of answering him, Marshall turned to Matt. “How about it?” he asked.

  Matt shook his head. “I couldn’t swear. It’s the same costume all right—that much I’m sure of. But I couldn’t swear to the man.”

  “And you, Mr. Harrigan?”

  Joseph glared at the religious leader. “There stands the man who murdered my brother!” he declared dramatically.

  “Come now, Mr. Harrigan. I don’t want conclusions and opinions. I want to know if you, as a lawyer, would go into court and swear that that is the man you saw.”

  Joseph Harrigan cleared his throat and made the noise sound significant. “As a man, Lieutenant, I am morally positive of this rogue’s guilt. But if you put it to me as a lawyer, with all due regard for the rules of evidence and the credibility of the testimony of eyewitnesses, the answer—Well, Lieutenant, I regret that the answer is no. I can swear only to the costume.”

  A slow smile had spread over the cultist’s face as Joseph spoke. “Why so timorous, Mr. Harrigan? Your brother would not have permitted a trifling doubt so to confuse him. Why not go further and swear that I was the man? For I was, you know.”

  Harr
igan sprang from the couch. “How dare you!” he bellowed. “Have you the brazen insolence to squat there and tell me to my nose that you thrust an automatic into my brother’s face and foully did him to death? By God, I’ll—”

  “Easy there,” Marshall muttered. “Hold him, Duncan; he’s a-rearin’. Now look here, you; do I understand that you’re making a confession?”

  Ahasver still smiled, poised and self-assured. “You do, officer.”

  “All right. But what becomes of the Twelve of the Nine and the hundred and eight witnesses you were going to give me?”

  “That, officer, is precisely why I am making this confession. I killed Wolfe Harrigan this afternoon, and I addressed the Twelve of the Nine. For is it not written in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to Joseph:

  Know ye therefore that there be truth in all things, even where man discerneth falsehood; but it must sometimes chance that truth doth weigh against truth in even balance, and neither shall be believed.

  In this case, however, the balance is not even. Despite my reputation for truth, I fear that you will accept one hundred and eight sworn statements against my single word; and even if you should not, surely a court of law will. And this is well, because I must continue my work in freedom. That work should not cease even for that minute of eternity which the state might occupy in a vain attempt to execute me.”

  A new power seemed to have flowed into Ahasver as he made his strange confession. He was no longer merely a self-confident showman. Now he seemed an arbiter of life and death, calmly and smilingly passing immortal judgment. Lieutenant Marshall tried hard to suppress an involuntary tone of awe as he asked, “Are you trying to suggest that you were in both places at once?”

  “I am not suggesting, officer; I am stating the truth.”

  Marshall seemed near strangulation. He was red in the face as he blurted, “Go ahead. Tell us about it.”

  “Mr. Harrigan,” Ahasver went on coolly, “was a dangerous and evil man.”

  “Am I to stand here,” shouted Joseph, “and listen to such vile words about my poor brother?”

  “Sit down,” Marshall grunted. “Objection overruled. Go on.”