“Hardly anyone else would admit to having heard of the Judwali. A Coptic priest told me they were a tribe of wandering madmen, marked by the devil for his own, and that only Christ offered salvation. A Cabalist said they were cursed, that they had been trapped by their own magic; she offered induction into a secret society, for a price. I declined both.
“There were traces, though, just traces, which I kept following. One day I saw children playing in the dust. They had marked out a spiral path and moved pebbles along it. The game was called Mehem. It was a child’s game. Everyone knew it, but they said it had no significance. But Mehem is the snake in the work known as The Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld—it’s enigmatic because it is written in code. Mehem is a protector, similar to the alchemical Ouroboros, the snake which bites its tail, in the West… such were the scraps I gleaned that sustained me in the quest.
“I could not give up my mission. Money found the way. As I spent more, a network of informers and agents grew around me, spreading like the roots of a plant. They offered me interviews with madmen, trinkets inscribed with odd symbols, and mouldering books. The best of these was a work by Catholic scholars, a sustained attack on Rosicrucian book called The Mirror of Angels, itself long suppressed or destroyed. The good priests quoted or paraphrased sections of the banned work in their zeal to show its errors. They gave me the clues I needed: old Egyptian names, referring to papyri known only by reputation.
“It was an impossible quest. But I have always been lucky. My agents, fuelled by my winnings from the card table, scoured the markets and brought back the gleanings. Dry scrolls that cracked and split as they were unrolled, hieroglyphs undeciphered for millennia, and variation after variation of coiled snakes, snail shells, geometric patterns, gyres.
“I quickly grasped the elements. The hieroglyphs opened themselves to me, offered themselves, spilled meaning from the page. I knew them. I read them as easily as I read a newspaper.
“I had never considered reincarnation. But I knew this place. And I could translate texts that had baffled scholars for centuries. When I needed to refer to a passage in the Book of the Dead, it was as familiar as the Bible—no, as familiar as a flight manual. The passage of the soul through the afterlife is as simple as an engine schematic—the flow, the pistons and chambers, it was as though I was looking at engineering diagrams—so simple, so complex in elaboration.
“I was getting closer to the truth. Each time I tried to grasp it, it slipped through my fingers. Every time I thought ‘yes, now I understand it,’ the thought drained from me like water into the sand.
“By this time, the war was long over, and I was back in England. I found books—others had fragments of the Mirror of Angels, the Book of Thoth and the Book of Moons, and others, and tried to fill in the gaps in different ways. I brushed up against secret societies and queer religious sects. Odd, wild-eyed Egyptians adrift in London. Masters of sacred geometry fled from the Freemasons, desperate to babble their story to anyone who would listen and scratch out twisted gyres on café napkins. There is a whole hidden world if you look for it, and most of it half-mad, reading books that crumble into gibberish.
“Fortunately, I was with Ellen. Her project, Marie Stopes’s project, was a welcome distraction for me. I loved her sense of purpose. Ellen’s sense of mission was as strong as my own. You can disappear entirely into this sort of thing if you let yourself. Mysticism will float you out of your world. Ellen tethered me firmly in this one. There were always speeches to be typed and pamphlets to distribute. I needed the outside world to remain sane.
“In hindsight, perhaps that was why I stopped making progress. I clung on to sanity and the everyday world. If I had let it go, I could have understood more. Sanity held me back like a mooring rope. I hacked at it until I freed myself… and Ellen became alarmed, and I was committed to that place. Thanks to this Dr Nye, it seems.
“I sank into a black misery. I knew that I would never be able to get out, never be able to complete the gyre. Never fulfil my destiny.
“The doctors tried to persuade me that I was, or had been, mad. That my mission was a delusion, or an illusion. That all my gyres were confabulations, mistakes, misreadings. Sometimes I believed them. Sometimes, I did not know what to believe. It did not make any difference, though, in the end: my life was over. There was nothing for me except days of boredom and nights of terror.
“And… a temptation.
“You know the Book of the Dead? Or rather the Book of Going Forth by Day? It’s a work of magic, a set of spells that are only useful when you’re already in the other life. According to traditional Egyptian belief, once you die, you go through a series of trials, and you must get past all sorts of monsters. The book gives you the words and the tricks you need avoid them or subdue them. And to pass the final challenge, you must have your heart weighed against an ostrich feather.
“If your heart weighs more than an ostrich feather, the Necrosaceriliac, a monster called Ammit, eats it, and your soul is destroyed forever.
“That may seem harsh. But according to the arrangement in our own church everyone goes to hell, even the good ones, unless they know the right formula: ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven,’ and all that. And perhaps they are just two different versions of the same thing.
“The knowledge was originally restricted to the pharaohs alone. The pharaoh was supposed to be a god, an incarnation of Horus, replaced by another incarnation of Horus each time, though some, such as Imhotep, were identified with other gods. They were the agents on Earth of divine power… But at some point, the knowledge was shared. First the priests and then the aristocracy were let into the secret.
“Knowing it as I did—and I have the whole work off by heart—I knew how to survive the afterlife. I could get through all the tests, dodge Ammit, and get through to the other side. A door that leads to heaven, another to
metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls. Reincarnation back on Earth.
“If I killed myself, I could get through and have another go. It seemed like such a sensible idea. That was when the night terrors started. Death, the afterlife, the underworld, Ammit… It ended differently each time, but I never made it through.
“I would have killed myself, though, or I thought I would. Other men have died in those cells, I know that.
“And then, this huge fellow turns up and says I’m being rescued. And suddenly, I had a second chance in this life.”
Chapter Sixteen: Into the Gyre
Having been in the business of recovering debts, I had been to a good many banks. I have had occasion to accompany debtors when they cashed cheques, having learned long ago that this is the only way of ensuring payment.
I knew also that, while it might embarrass the party concerned, you need to accompany them closely, and not simply wait outside the bank for them to emerge with the readies. The temptation to slip out another way and make a fool of the debt collector is too strong for many to resist.
I was therefore reasonably familiar with the process of cashing a cheque, and I was equally aware that there might be some difficulty with Ross’s. The clerk, wearing a wing collar that looked even more old-fashioned on a young man, went away and came back a minute later.
“I am aware of Mr Ross’s situation,” I said. “However, his creditors are less interested in his mental condition than his financial obligations.”
“I’m afraid this account has been suspended,” said the clerk.
“Of course,” I said. “But the date on this cheque predates his regrettable lapse into being non compos mentis.”
“That is so,” he said. Of course, he knew as well as I did that the cheque might have been written yesterday.
“And, being as he was of sound mind when he wrote the cheque, I can reasonably expect it to be honoured.” I said this in as mild and unthreatening a manner as I could. I had no wish to be heavy-handed and hoped to win out by force of reason.
In truth, I did not know the legal niceties of th
e situation any more than Ross did, and the easiest way to find out was to try the experiment. While it would have been foolish for him to expose himself in such a manner, someone turning up at a bank to cash one of his cheques would be unlikely to attract much interest or set off alarm bells.
“Can you wait here?”
“Of course. I can wait all day if there’s specie at the end of it,” I assured him.
Affecting casualness, I took the letter from my pocket. Hoade had been prompt in the extreme, though his replies were characteristically terse. He dispensed with the “Dear Mr Stubbs, regarding your enquiry of the 15th…” in favour of a series of brief notes. The biographical data on Dr Nye yielded some idea of his career; what stood out was the rapid rate of his rise and the speed at which he produced new research.
I learned also that the sphinx is a mythical creature that originated in Egypt. They had the body of a lion, as human head, and sometimes the wings of an eagle and the tail of a serpent. Recumbent sphinxes guarded temples, and upright sphinxes guarded the Pharaoh, always in pairs. They were depicted on two legs or four. Sphinx is a Greek term meaning “strangler”; in Egyptian, they are known as “living images,” for reasons which were not explained. The sphinxes at Crystal Palace were exact copies of the Tanis sphinx in the Louvre, though the hieroglyphics were not on the original and were added by the artist. The goddess Hera sent the Greek sphinx, which was female, to plague Thebes, killing travellers who could not answer a riddle, invulnerable against all attempts to kill it until ill-fated Oedipus came along. The sphinx became an emblem of silent wisdom but was also feared, hence the Egyptian nickname “father of terror.”
Hoade’s notes were brief but gave me something to chew over in the twenty minutes it took for the clerk to carry out his enquiries. With an unchanged facial expression, he asked for my name and address, and whether I had any means of identifying myself. I doubted very much whether anything I could provide would pass muster, but on an impulse, I told him he could check with the solicitors Latham & Rowe. Even though I was no longer in their employ, my relations with the firm were cordial, and they would verify my identity.
The clerk went away again, and I could see him standing in a far corner, talking into a telephone and looking at me. For once, my distinctive appearance might actually count in my favour. There are not many people who can be positively and uniquely identified by a simple verbal description, but I felt I fell into that category.
Miss Bentham was the legal controller of Ross’s assets. She had said she would not give him any more assistance. If she was on the end of one of those phone calls, would she actively hinder him? I thought not; I hoped not.
Ross’s funds lay in a sort of limbo. That would have been behind the bank’s calculations. Would withholding payment be more trouble in the long run, if Ross had outstanding debts and they stood between the creditor and the money? On the other hand, what was the likelihood of anyone raising a stink if they were to make a questionable payment?
Ross and I assumed that the bank would decide to pay up. The call to Latham and Rowe should be the final link in the chain, assuming that was who he was calling.
A distinctive appearance may also be a liability. The clerk might equally well be calling the police, who would no doubt have a description of me as the attendant who had helped Ross escape. I had also unthinkingly given my real name to the bank clerk, although if I had not done so, it would have been impossible to substantiate my identity.
My brain performed a number of these loops as I waited, and I struggled to stop myself from looking round for a squad of officers coming in through the door. Technically, I did not think that I was committing a fraud myself, but I was taking a chance. If I bolted for the door, I could be away before anyone had a chance of stopping me. Staying there was a gamble that I could not afford to lose.
However, a cool head won the day, and I stayed there, though I may not have appeared quite so relaxed. The clerk came back at last, seemingly satisfied with my bona fides.
“What denomination notes will you be requiring for payment, Mr Stubbs?”
“Ones and fives, please,” I told him, leaving him to figure out a suitable ratio.
I then realised that I did not have a suitable receptacle for the bundle of notes. As casually as I could, I folded the wad and stuffed it into my jacket pocket, as though it was no great matter and that I was used to dealing with far more significant sums.
Back at the house, Ross was elated. Everything was possible with money.
“Splendid work!” he said, fanning out the pile of money. He immediately set out on a shopping spree, conducted remotely by telephone and by messenger boys. He sent out to tailors and bootmakers and others, and insisted on including me.
“No, really,” I said, “I can send to my landlady’s if I need any more clothes.”
“Rubbish,” he said. “You lost your job at the hospital for me. It’s my treat.”
“He’s very generous,” I said later to Maggie, as she was arranging a huge bouquet of flowers, his gift to her.
“He always was,” she said. “A selfless little boy, always thinking of others. Not like some of the others Mrs Ross had—little scamps and villains, some of them!”
“And he flew in the war,” I said. It was clumsy probing, but she was oblivious. “An actual air ace.”
“He sent a picture postcard of the pyramids,” she said, and I would bet you that postcard stood on her mantelpiece in a place of honour. “We were so frightened we’d never see him again. So many boys from his squadron never did come back.” She moved some carnations.
“And that was how he met his fiancée,” I said.
“Yes,” she said and succeeded in conveying resigned disapproval in a single syllable. That seemed like a good point to end the inquisition.
I had half-wondered if Ross would change his plans once he was in possession of the money. A man who has been incarcerated for a while might want to enjoy his freedom.
“We process the gyre,” he said. “I’ve done the calculations. We’re going to do the whole damn thing, from beginning to end in one go.”
Ross had explained the ritual spiral processions and shown me diagrams. The smallest could be completed indoors; others carried on for several miles. The largest of all, the Grand Procession, took several days and nights to complete. It was best carried out in a desert or other flat, featureless area, because there could be no deviation from the path without breaking the ritual.
I found it hard to imagine how it could be done in London, or anywhere apart from the Sahara, the steppes, the Arctic or some other wasteland. “That hardly sounds possible,” I said.
“We have some advantages over the Pharaohs,” he said. “They had slaves carrying palanquins, and horses and chariots and camels. But lying in my roofless mosque, looking up at the vultures circling the rubbish tip, I knew there was an easier way.”
“Is it possible?” I asked. For the first time, I had a flicker of a doubt about Ross’s sanity. Taken individually, his ideas about the power of spirals, the ancient cult of the diagrammatists, and even the link to reincarnation, made some sort of sense. But he was pushing it to absurdity. Using an aircraft was like performing a magic trick with a telephone.
“Nobody has ever flown a gyre in an aeroplane before,” he said. “So, there’s only one way to find out if it works.”
The next afternoon found us at Croydon aerodrome. It looked like the newsreels. A big tower held several clock faces on it, all showing different times around the world. Planes were landing and taking off constantly; I imagined they were full of noted aviators and glamourous travellers, movie stars and opera singers, politicians and business tycoons. I did not see anyone famous, but Ross pointed out the hangar where Amy Johnson’s plane was stored.
Ross had bought himself an aircraft, simple as that. It was a cash deal sealed with a handshake, as easy as purchasing a second-hand bicycle. The seller was a flyer whom Ross evidently knew by reputati
on and trusted.
I was walking round with him as he inspected his new purchase.
“Of course, it’s mad,” said Ross. “Because magic is madness. That’s almost the definition of it. The ordinary mind, the sane mind, revolts at the thought of doing the impossible and cannot go further. But the magician—the madman—goes beyond that. Instead of being deflected, he matches his will against the world, and bends it. ‘Magic is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.’“
“The madmen I have encountered do not bear that theory out,” I said.
“I’m not saying that madness is magic, just that magic is madness,” he said, loosening a nut with a spanner and peering into the space behind a hatch. “You have to disconnect the part of your brain that provides common sense and reach beyond.”
“Deliberately drive yourself mad, in other words,” I said.
“If you like,” he said. “Let’s get you some overalls. I don’t think I can do this on my own.”
My lack of knowledge was no defence. Ross said all he wanted was a pair of hands, and long arms and decent muscles were a bonus. In short order, I was drafted as a mechanic’s assistant and was helping him dismantle some vital part of the engine.
Ross said it would not take more than a few minutes, but three hours later we were still at it, breaking only for tea and bacon rolls from the aerodrome canteen.
“There’s a malign influence at work in the hospital,” I said, holding a metal cover like a giant pot lid. “What my associate described as a tiger, and which may or may not have human form. It may or may not be Dr Nye himself.”
“Those two fellows who came for Ryan sounded human,” said Ross.
Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4) Page 17