by Ron Weighell
Further attempts to speak to Holmes were pointless. He settled in front of the picture and stared at it, as though his vision might bore right through the canvas and reveal its secret.
Hours passed, during which Holmes did not move a muscle. We settled into a strained silence, aware that some unguessable process must be going on, and loath to disturb it.
Dawn rose over London and we pulled back the blinds and extinguished lamps. The changing light lent to the picture a hundred fleeting aspects. Holmes stirred, clapped his hands, and laughed aloud. Crossing over to the table on which he conducted his chemical experiments, he cleared a space, placed two metal bowls a few inches apart, and propped the picture up against the wall behind them.
‘Loyolla has stated that if one adopts the posture of prayer, the desire to pray will eventually follow. I have placed this picture in the position, just behind the two braziers, that it occupied in the temple. Let us see if it reveals its hidden character to us.’
Saying this he crossed to the fireplace, and, with the tongs, carried burning coals over to the bowls.
‘We have no braziers, but these will serve.’ When he had piled enough red coals into the bowls be stood back and waited.
The sight that gradually unfolded was the most eerie I have ever seen. Before our eyes a darkly hooded figure appeared in the foreground of the picture. Then another was suddenly standing to its left. Like ghosts manifesting before our eyes, a host of cowled figures began to fill the central area of the picture. All were positioned so that they looked in, towards the centre, and there a shape was forming, like smoke, in the air. Second by second the rough texture and dull coloration of stone formed out of nothing, until the focus for the attention of that ghostly multitude stood revealed. The whole middle section of the picture from top to bottom was filled by a tall slender column of gnarled stone.
‘The solution lay not with the picture, but with the two braziers,’ explained Holmes. ‘I asked myself why two of them? Not for the burning of incense, as Mycroft pointed out. One would have been sufficient in any case. For light then? This is clearly not their intended purpose, and in any case there were other sources of light. What else could they do, aside from producing smoke and light? The only possible answer was heat.
‘I think that Zoffer ore was used, disolved in aqua regia. Dilute it and paint it onto a blank surface, and it will remain invisible until heated, when it turns rich green. When the surface cools, it vanishes. If you were to dilute the same ore in, say, spirits of nitre, you could achieve the same effect in red. Combine them and you get other colours. The braziers were there to heat up the surface of the picture, so that the pillar and the host of figures appeared “by magic”.’
‘If this picture represents the cult gathered around a standing stone,’ offered Mycroft, ‘it must be somewhere of special significance to them. Somewhere they might actually gather.’
‘The position it occupied in their temple would lead me to conclude as much,’ replied Holmes.
‘Presumably it is somewhere far from London,’ I said, ‘or they would not need a pictorial representation of it for their rituals.’
‘So do we agree that this stone must be a real topographical feature?’ asked Mycroft.
Holmes nodded. ‘We must certainly explore that possibility. Whether our modest library contains the information we need is quite another question.’
‘The Diogenes Club has a fine collection of archaeological works,’ said Mycroft. ‘I will go and see what I can find.’
‘We will search here,’ replied Holmes. ‘Our reference books may tell us something.’
Even as Mycroft departed, we set to, searching the volumes on the shelves. Apart from his notebooks and scrapbooks, Holmes had accumulated a great mass of reference material on a hundred obscure subjects, from the study of the human skull to a history of writing implements, but, as I had surmised, he had not thought it necessary to collect anything on the subject of standing stones.
‘It is a fault, Watson, definitely a fault. Nothing is too obscure or abstruse to be of assistance in our kind of work. As I have said before, and will no doubt have bitter cause to say again, a consulting detective must know everything and remember everything.’
In an hour we had reduced the rooms in Baker Street, which were never the tidiest, to a state of book-strewn chaos. It was our misfortune that Mrs Hudson chose this moment to enter, stood in silence, then left speechless, her lips and knuckles white. We had given up the search when Mycroft returned, his face flushed with exertion and, I at once suspected, success.
‘Post-Y-Wiber!’ he cried triumphantly. ‘The Pillar of the Serpent! And it stands in a location that would have been instantly recognisable to Mr Machen. It is a desolate, mountainous region of South Wales.’
‘There you have it,’ said Holmes, leaping to his feet. ‘The reason they were so certain that Machen had information about them. He lives in the very region where they practise their most devout rituals. We did not find him at their London headquarters because they have taken him to Wales.’
‘Sherlock, I think I can be of further assistance to you,’ said Mycroft, excitedly. ‘In my time with the Society for Psychical Research I have come to know many experts in the field. One of the leading scholars in the area of magical and mystical traditions, Mr Royston Fisher, lives in the mountains of South Wales. He has been ill in recent times, and never leaves his home, but I feel sure he would be willing to give any information you needed on this strange cult and its connections with the Pillar of the Serpent.’
‘In that case, you can speak to him while we contact the local police.’
‘Me! No, Sherlock, that is quite impossible. I am already exhausted. A trip to South Wales is out of the question. I have not travelled so far from the Diogenes Club in more than twenty years.’
‘And you will suffocate away from the rarefied atmosphere of its hallowed halls. That is a great pity, for we cannot be expected to do everything. It may prove necessary, in rescuing Machen, to leave this criminal group at large. I doubt whether they would cease their blackmail attempts, but there we are. . . .’
‘This is insufferable! What you are implying is itself tantamount to blackmail!’
‘Oh come, Mycroft, I am merely observing that our chances of success in this endeavour would be greatly increased if you were to forego temporarily your sedentary habits and join us.’
For a moment Mycroft stood in silence, going very red.
‘Very well, but under the strongest protest.’
Mycroft was still complaining in this manner when our train slipped out from beneath the graceful arches of Paddington Station; and he kept it up through most of the hundred and forty or so miles to Newport.
Holmes, on the other hand, did not speak at all, but pored over a map, as Reading, Swindon, and Bristol passed by. My mood was sinking with the train as it ran down the steep cutting into the ‘Big Hole’ of the Severn tunnel. The journey through its smoky depths, the long climb back out into the light, and the harsh racket of the Severn Marshalling Yards were hardly designed to improve the general mood. It was a sombre party that alighted at Newport.
Nor were Mycroft and I greatly comforted on our arrival to discover that Holmes had telegraphed ahead to have three horses saddled and ready for our use at a hostelry on the eastern borders of the town.
‘This is far and away the most practical method of travel in open country,’ explained Holmes. ‘These are old hunters who have covered every inch of this land in their time. And before you complain, Mycroft, I know very well that you ride better than I, and have simply chosen the armchair as your favourite mount. Go and speak to your expert on matters occult. Glean anything pertinent to the case. Ride with him, Watson, if only to keep him awake and to slap his horse from time to time. I must convince the local police that this matter is worthy of their assistance. Meet me as soon as you can at the crossroads a mile south of the Pillar of the Serpent.’
It had been some
years since either Mycroft or I had undertaken a prolonged period of riding. I soon felt tired, but he seemed exhilarated by the activity, and certainly sat his mount well. Despite Holmes’s taunts it was I who was trailing in his wake throughout most of the journey amid some darkly dramatic country. The looming mountains that hemmed us in, the dark hanging woods, and rushing waterfalls intensified the feeling of haunted isolation.
Even the drama of these surroundings did little to prepare me for the moment when we swept around a wooded bend and saw before us the dwelling place of Royston Fisher. Towering over us, stark against the bleak sky, was what I can only describe as a castle from a fairy tale, its towers and spires aglow with rainbow colours.
Trotting over the drawbridge, we entered a mediaeval courtyard. An old, quaintly dressed ostler, himself a character from Hans Andersen or Grimm, nodded at Mycroft’s urgent whisper and took our horses, gesturing us towards the great studded doors of the main building.
Inside, the rooms were decorated with a blaze of vivid mediaeval paintings, tapestries, and stained glass, and were full of highly ornate and imposing furniture, painted in reds, blues, and yellows. We were led up a massive flight of stairs, past towering statuary and cascades of drapes, to the top of the highest tower of all, where Royston Fisher lived.
The fairy tale atmosphere was not diminished by the owner of this wonderful building. He greeted us in a monk’s habit, bearing a shepherd’s staff, which might have seemed an affectation in one so obviously wealthy, had it not been for the frail way he leant upon it. Gesturing us to sit, he settled down on a great throne. Precarious towers of old volumes were heaped crazily around him, and funereal looking monuments of stone and bronze crowded in around his chair, as if he had gathered about himself all his greatest and darkest treasures. His hair and beard were dark, his face weather beaten, yet his expression and posture told of long weary days of suffering, stoically borne.
‘Mycroft,’ he gasped, ‘it is good to see you. It has been many long months since I had guests.’
Mycroft introduced us, and recounted the tale of Machen’s strange experiences and abduction. Royston Fisher shook his head.
‘I am familiar with Mr Machen’s works, and I must say I am not entirely surprised that he has at last attracted unwelcome attention.’
‘Why so?’ Mycroft asked.
‘The fictional literature of the supernatural is often a means of conveying mystical knowledge. Mr Machen has paid the price for writing of forbidden things,’
‘What things?’
‘Some while ago he published a work using the title The Three Impostors. He must surely have known that he was drawing attention to one of the most dangerous secret societies in the world.’
‘You refer to The Order of the Twilight Star?’
‘Is that the name Mr Machen used? I am glad to see that he respected his oath, at least! No, I do not mean that Order, but its eternal enemy, the cult known as The Eye of Lucifer. Their Bible or sacred book, a work of ultimate blasphemy, is entitled De Tribus Impostoribus. That is to say “The Three Impostors”. It teaches that the world has been led astray by three impostors, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed. The Order is devoted to inverting the teachings of the Commandments, Jesus, and the Koran.
‘Reading the book was once severely censured by the Vatican Councils. Drawing attention to its existence alone must have provoked the “Lucifer” or leader of the Cult. Then there was the unfortunate matter of “The Pain of the Goat”. He uses this phrase in a context which could hardly be misunderstood by the initiated. It refers to an obscene survival from the Bacchic rites of the Eleusinia still practised by the Cult. Physical emblems and talismans depicting this rite exist even today in the sealed collections of the Vatican Museum. How Machen learnt of the nature of one of these and depicted it so cunningly in his work is beyond me.’
‘He claims such things are mere invention.’
‘Then that is particularly dangerous for him, because he does not seem to know how much he knows.’
Mycroft grunted.
‘This is not really relevant to our case. These people were trying to find out about something called The Black Heaven, and the word Ixaxar.’
These words had a terrible effect on Fisher. The burden of years that lay upon him seemed to double.
‘The Cult derives its name from an object of veneration, The Eye of Lucifer, which they also call Lapis Ex Coelis. It is, they believe, a stone from the heavens, like Abadir, the stone worshipped by the Phoenicians as divine.
‘The Eye of Lucifer is said to be the gemstone plucked from the crown of Lucifer by the Archangel Michael. Sixty Thousand angels had the crown made for their fallen leader. Do you not see the significance of this? These people, dangerous people capable of great evil, secretly revere a stone from the heavens connected with sixty thousand angels. They read in the works of this young man open references to a stone called The Black Heaven, and to something called The Sixty stone. Is it any wonder they would conclude that your young client is possessed of information that might bode them no good?’
I spoke up then.
‘Mr Machen compiled catalogues of occult books. He may have picked up information without realising it. But he seems sincere in his claim that he knows nothing, and that all this was made up.’
Royston Fisher smiled wearily.
‘Then, gentlemen, young Mr Machen seems to be possessed of the unfortunate, and perhaps dangerous, ability to write fiction that subsequently proves to be fact. I know that the Stone exists. In fact it was once held here in The Castle. It was stolen, possibly by agents of the Lucifer Cult. Its loss has been a sore blow to me. It is my dearest wish that it could be recovered. Now, I am sorry, my friends, but I am very tired. I can answer only one more question.’
He leant forward with a look of keen expectancy on his tired old face. Mycroft spoke up.
‘What is the link between this Lucifer Cult and the Pillar of the Serpent?’
Royston Fisher seemed crestfallen at the question, but he answered readily enough.
‘The Pillar is a very sacred place to The Eye of Lucifer Cult. They perform their darkest rites there. It stands on land north of Wentwood, land owned, it is whispered, by the Cult.’
‘There is our answer,’ exclaimed Mycroft. ‘We now know where we must go to rescue Machen.’
As we gave our thanks and departed, Royston Fisher was already leaning back with eyes closed, as though asleep.
We kept up a respectable pace, but darkness had fallen before we drew near the crossroads at which we had arranged to meet Holmes. The place seemed deserted, but Mycroft gave a soft call like a bird, and an answer came back. Holmes emerged from the trees.
‘You come not a moment too soon. After long and heated discussion, every available police officer has been promised to me, but they have not yet arrived, and I have reason to believe that time is running out for us.’
We apprised Holmes of Fisher’s information. At the mention of the fact that the Pillar of the Serpent stood on land owned by the Cult, Holmes smiled grimly and nodded.
‘This confirms my own findings. I am now certain that Machen is being held in a house among the trees on this hill behind me. How do I know? Well, earlier today it was visited by an old archaeologist engaged in a study of standing stones in Wales. The owner, a charming gentleman who introduced himself as Mr Prior, was kind enough to invite him in and converse on that subject for some while. Curiously, he did not mention that a magnificent example of the very object the old man sought stood within a mile of the house!
‘In fact, the poor old fellow was led to believe that there was no such object for miles, and was directed well to the east of this place. If he had believed this information, he might be walking still. Thankfully he was saved a long and fruitless journey by the fact that he knew all along where the stone stood.’
Holmes chuckled at the reminiscence.
‘My purpose in visiting the house in a beard and waterproof cape had mer
ely been to glean useful information. That one lie convinced me that I must be in the house of our enemies.
‘Progress indeed, for we now have a name for the Cult, and a face for its leader. We also have something of a quandary. Yesterday, a young girl was abducted in this area. There may be no connection, but I have seen increased movement between the house and the stone over the last few hours. It seems a ritual is imminent. We ought to wait for Inspector Evans and his officers, but goodness only knows what could have happened by the time they arrive.
‘You have your revolver, Watson? Good man; I too came armed and brought a revolver for you, Mycroft. I think we have no choice but to go in.’
Holmes led the way along a deeply rutted path and up to a pair of wrought iron gates. Beyond lay lawns dotted with urns and statues, pale in the twilight. A great house stood, brooding and dark, amid the trees. We approached by way of a stretch of treillage, and made it to the terrace that ran along the rear of the house without incident. Crouching behind a fountain, clearly once magnificent but now reduced to a sluggish trickle of green water, we waited while Holmes forced the French windows. Then we entered the house.
Instead of a house full of dangerous criminals, we found only a handful of lightly armed individuals, who were playing cards and clearly not expecting our arrival. There was a brief scuffle, during which furniture was overturned and a lamp spilled, but resistance was soon overcome.
We found Machen bound and gagged in one of the rear bedrooms. He was gasping to speak even before we had loosened the cloth at his mouth.
‘They are at The Pillar. A ritual sacrifice is in progress. We must hurry, for I think they have a local girl.’
He was already staggering downstairs, refusing all aid, and leading us out on to the terrace.