Part 39 (1/2)

”Seward has gone ahead,” she explained. ”I told him that a friend had introduced you, that you had studied the occult abroad. I trust you to carry it out.”

Kennedy rea.s.sured her.

The curtains were drawn and we could see nothing outside, though we must have been driven several miles, far out into the suburbs.

At last the cab stopped. As we left it we could see nothing of the building, for the cab had entered a closed courtyard.

”Who enters the Red Lodge?” challenged a sepulchral voice at the porte-cochere. ”Give the pa.s.sword!”

”The Serpent's Tooth,” Veda answered.

”Who are these?” asked the voice.

”Neophytes,” she replied, and a whispered parley followed.

”Then enter!” announced the voice at length.

It was a large room into which we were first ushered, to be inducted into the rites of Satan.

There seemed to be both men and women, perhaps half a dozen votaries.

Seward Blair was already present. As I met him, I did not like the look in his eye; it was too stary. Dr. Vaughn was there, too, talking in a low tone to Madame Rapport. He shot a quick look at us. His were not eyes but gimlets that tried to bore into your very soul. Chatting with Seward Blair was a Mrs. Langhorne, a very beautiful woman. To-night she seemed to be unnaturally excited.

All seemed to be on most intimate terms, and, as we waited a few minutes, I could not help recalling a sentence from Huysmans: ”The wors.h.i.+p of the Devil is no more insane than the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d. The wors.h.i.+pers of Satan are mystics--mystics of an unclean sort, it is true, but mystics none the less.”

I did not agree with it, and did not repeat it, of course, but a moment later I overheard Dr. Vaughn saying to Kennedy: ”Hoffman brought the Devil into modern life. Poe forgoes the aid of demons and works patiently and precisely by the scientific method. But the result is the same.”

”Yes,” agreed Kennedy for the sake of appearances, ”in a sense, I suppose, we are all devil wors.h.i.+pers in modern society--always have been. It is fear that rules and we fear the bad--not the good.”

As we waited, I felt, more and more, the sense of the mysterious, the secret, the unknown which have always exercised a powerful attraction on the human mind. Even the aeroplane and the submarine, the X-ray and wireless have not banished the occult.

In it, I felt, there was fascination for the frivolous and deep appeal to the intellectual and spiritual. The Temple of the Occult had evidently been designed to appeal to both types. I wondered how, like Lucifer, it had fallen. The prime requisite, I could guess already, however, was--money. Was it in its wors.h.i.+p of the root of all evil that it had fallen?

We pa.s.sed soon into another room, hung entirely in red, with weird, cabalistic signs all about, on the walls. It was uncanny, creepy.

A huge reproduction in plaster of one of the most sardonic of Notre Dame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything--a terrible figure in such an atmosphere.

As we entered, we were struck by the blinding glare of the light, in contrast with the darkened room in which we had pa.s.sed our brief novitiate, if it might be called such.

Suddenly the lights were extinguished.

The great gargoyle shone with an infernal light of its own!

”Phosph.o.r.escent paint,” whispered Kennedy to me.

Still, it did not detract from the weird effect to know what caused it.

There was a startling noise in the general hush.