The War Terror Page 22

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE DEVIL WORSHIPERS

  Tragic though the end of the young nurse, Dora Baldwin, had been, thescheme of her brother, in which she had become fatally involved, was byno means as diabolical as that in the case that confronted us a shorttime after that.

  I recall this case particularly not only because it was so weird butalso because of the unique manner in which it began.

  "I am damned--Professor Kennedy--damned!"

  The words rang out as the cry of a lost soul. A terrible look ofinexpressible anguish and fear was written on the face of Craig'svisitor, as she uttered them and sank back, trembling, in the easychair, mentally and physically convulsed.

  As nearly as I had been able to follow, Mrs. Veda Blair's story haddealt mostly with a Professor and Madame Rapport and something shecalled the "Red Lodge" of the "Temple of the Occult."

  She was not exactly a young woman, although she was a very attractiveone. She was of an age that is, perhaps, even more interesting thanyouth.

  Veda Blair, I knew, had been, before her recent marriage to SewardBlair, a Treacy, of an old, though somewhat unfortunate, family. Boththe Blairs and the Treacys had been intimate and old Seward Blair, whenhe died about a year before, had left his fortune to his son on thecondition that he marry Veda Treacy.

  "Sometimes," faltered Mrs. Blair, "it is as though I had two souls. Oneof them is dispossessed of its body and the use of its organs and isfrantic at the sight of the other that has crept in."

  She ended her rambling story, sobbing the terrible words, "Oh--I havecommitted the unpardonable sin--I am anathema--I am damned--damned!"

  She said nothing of what terrible thing she had done and Kennedy, forthe present, did not try to lead the conversation. But of all thestories that I have heard poured forth in the confessional of thedetective's office, hers, I think, was the wildest.

  Was she insane? At least I felt that she was sincere. Still, I wonderedwhat sort of hallucination Craig had to deal with, as Veda Blairrepeated the incoherent tale of her spiritual vagaries.

  Almost, I had begun to fancy that this was a case for a doctor, not fora detective, when suddenly she asked a most peculiar question.

  "Can people affect you for good or evil, merely by thinking about you?"she queried. Then a shudder passed over her. "They may be thinkingabout me now!" she murmured in terror.

  Her fear was so real and her physical distress so evident that Kennedy,who had been listening silently for the most part, rose and hastened toreassure her.

  "Not unless you make your own fears affect yourself and so play intotheir hands," he said earnestly.

  Veda looked at him a moment, then shook her head mournfully. "I haveseen Dr. Vaughn," she said slowly.

  Dr. Gilbert Vaughn, I recollected, was a well-known alienist in thecity.

  "He tried to tell me the same thing," she resumed doubtfully."But--oh--I know what I know! I have felt the death thought--and heknows it!"

  "What do you mean?" inquired Kennedy, leaning forward keenly.

  "The death thought," she repeated, "a malicious psychic attack. Someone is driving me to death by it. I thought I could fight it off. Iwent away to escape it. Now I have come back--and I have not escaped.There is always that disturbing influence--always--directed against me.I know it will--kill me!"

  I listened, startled. The death thought! What did it mean? Whatterrible power was it? Was it hypnotism? What was this fearsome, cruelbelief, this modern witchcraft that could unnerve a rich and educatedwoman? Surely, after all, I felt that this was not a case for a doctoralone; it called for a detective.

  "You see," she went on, heroically trying to control herself, "I havealways been interested in the mysterious, the strange, the occult. Infact my father and my husband's father met through their commoninterest. So, you see, I come naturally by it.

  "Not long ago I heard of Professor and Madame Rapport and their newTemple of the Occult. I went to it, and later Seward became interested,too. We have been taken into a sort of inner circle," she continuedfearfully, as though there were some evil power in the very wordsthemselves, "the Red Lodge."

  "You have told Dr. Vaughn?" shot out Kennedy suddenly, his eyes fixedon her face to see what it would betray.

  Veda leaned forward, as if to tell a secret, then whispered in a lowvoice, "He knows. Like us--he--he is a--Devil Worshiper!"

  "What?" exclaimed Kennedy in wide-eyed astonishment.

  "A Devil Worshiper," she repeated. "You haven't heard of the Red Lodge?"

  Kennedy nodded negatively. "Could you get us--initiated?" he hazarded.

  "P--perhaps," she hesitated, in a half-frightened tone. "I--I'll try toget you in to-night."

  She had risen, half dazed, as if her own temerity overwhelmed her.

  "You--poor girl," blurted out Kennedy, his sympathies getting the upperhand for the moment as he took the hand she extended mutely. "Trust me.I will do all in my power, all in the power of modern science to helpyou fight off this--influence."

  There must have been something magnetic, hypnotic in his eye.

  "I will stop here for you," she murmured, as she almost fled from theroom.

  Personally, I cannot say that I liked the idea of spying. It is notusually clean and wholesome. But I realized that occasionally it wasnecessary.

  "We are in for it now," remarked Kennedy half humorously, halfseriously, "to see the Devil in the twentieth century."

  "And I," I added, "I am, I suppose, to be the reporter to Satan."

  We said nothing more about it, but I thought much about it, and themore I thought, the more incomprehensible the thing seemed. I had heardof Devil Worship, but had always associated it with far-off Indian andother heathen lands--in fact never among Caucasians in modern times,except possibly in Paris. Was there such a cult here in my own city? Ifelt skeptical.

  That night, however, promptly at the appointed time, a cab called forus, and in it was Veda Blair, nervous but determined.

  "Seward has gone ahead," she explained. "I told him that a friend hadintroduced you, that you had studied the occult abroad. I trust you tocarry it out."

  Kennedy reassured her.

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

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

  "Who enters the Red Lodge?" challenged a sepulchral voice at theporte-cochere. "Give the password!"

  "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 inductedinto 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 lookin his eye; it was too stary. Dr. Vaughn was there, too, talking in alow tone to Madame Rapport. He shot a quick look at us. His were noteyes but gimlets that tried to bore into your very soul. Chatting withSeward Blair was a Mrs. Langhorne, a very beautiful woman. To-night sheseemed to be unnaturally excited.

  All seemed to be on most intimate terms, and, as we waited a fewminutes, I could not help recalling a sentence from Huysmans: "Theworship of the Devil is no more insane than the worship of God. Theworshipers of Satan are mystics--mystics of an unclean sort, it istrue, but mystics none the less."

  I did not agree with it, and did not repeat it, of course, but a momentlater I overheard Dr. Vaughn saying to Kennedy: "Hoffman brought theDevil into modern life. Poe forgoes the aid of demons and workspatiently and precisely by the scientific method. But the result is thesame."

  "Yes," agreed Kennedy for the sake of appearances, "in a sense, Isuppose, we are all devil worshipers in modern society--always havebeen. 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, thesecret, the unknown which have always exercised a powerful attractionon the human mind. Even the aeroplane and the submarine, the X-ray andwireless have not banished the occult.

  In it, I felt, there was fascination for the frivolous and deep appealto the intellectual and spiritual. The Temple of the Occult hadevidently been designed to appeal to both types. I wondered how, likeLucifer, it had fallen. The prime requisite, I could guess already,however, was--money. Was it in its worship of the root of all evil thatit had fallen?

  We passed 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 NotreDame's gargoyles seemed to preside over everything--a terrible figurein such an atmosphere.

  As we entered, we were struck by the blinding glare of the light, incontrast with the darkened room in which we had passed our briefnovitiate, if it might be called such.

  Suddenly the lights were extinguished.

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

  "Phosphorescent 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.

  "Sata!" cried one of the devotees.

  A door opened and there appeared the veritable priest of theDevil--pale of face, nose sharp, mouth bitter, eyes glassy.

  "That is Rapport," Vaughn whispered to me.

  The worshipers crowded forward.

  Without a word, he raised his long, lean forefinger and began to singlethem out impressively. As he did so, each spoke, as if imploring aid.

  He came to Mrs. Langhorne.

  "I have tried the charm," she cried earnestly, "and the one whom I lovestill hates me, while the one I hate loves me!"

  "Concentrate!" replied the priest, "concentrate! Think always 'I lovehim. He must love me. I want him to love me. I love him. He must loveme.' Over and over again you must think it. Then the other side, 'Ihate him. He must leave me. I want him to leave me. I hate him--hatehim.'"

  Around the circle he went.

  At last his lean finger was outstretched at Veda. It seemed as if someimp of the perverse were compelling her unwilling tongue to unlock itssecrets.

  "Sometimes," she cried in a low, tremulous voice, "something seems toseize me, as if by the hand and urge me onward. I cannot flee from it."

  "Defend yourself!" answered the priest subtly. "When you know that someone is trying to kill you mentally, defend yourself! Work against it byevery means in your power. Discourage! Intimidate! Destroy!"

  I marveled at these cryptic utterances. They shadowed a modern BlackArt, of which I had had no conception--a recrudescence in otherlanguage of the age-old dualism of good and evil. It was a sort ofmental malpractice.

  "Over and over again," he went on speaking to her, "the same thought isto be repeated against an enemy. 'You know you are going to die! Youknow you are going to die!' Do it an hour, two hours, at a time. Otherscan help you, all thinking in unison the same thought."

  What was this, I asked myself breathlessly--a new transcendentaltoxicology?

  Slowly, a strange mephitic vapor seemed to exhale into the room--or wasit my heightened imagination?