“Although I am delighted that you have sought me out, and eager to hear why,” Machen said, “I’m afraid I am late for an appointment.”
“In that?” Rebecca said, glancing at the papier-mâché mask he held in his hand.
“Given the occasion, it is de rigueur.”
“A costume party?”
“Oh, much more than that. Twice a year, we observe the Eleusinian Mysteries at Crowley’s townhouse. I will be making some preparatory remarks.”
Rebecca could hardly believe her luck. “So that’s where you’re going now?”
“Yes.”
“Then take me with you.”
Machen appeared dubious. “It’s not—how shall I put this—a safe event for the uninitiated.”
“Then you shall initiate me on the way over.”
“Why? After what might have happened to you the last time you were there, why would you want to run that risk again?”
“I will explain in the cab, if you will explain these mysteries to me.”
“If I do take you, you mustn’t go astray there, or wander off on your own.”
“I won’t,” Rebecca said, knowing full well that that was exactly her intention.
“And whatever you witness, you must not publish. Too many reputations are at stake.”
Her curiosity grew with every word. “I won’t.” Another promise she would probably not keep.
Machen still looked unsure if he could trust her, but after she offered him her most beseeching look, he relented, and said, “You’ll need to look less conspicuous. Wait right here.”
Leaving her under the watchful eye of the black cat, now perched atop a dusty bookcase, he disappeared into a back room and when he came back out, carried a white robe with a golden belt, a wreath of silken flowers, and a pair of delicate Greek sandals. “Put these on.”
“To be less conspicuous?”
“We haven’t time to debate. Do as I say.”
“Where did you come by such things?”
“I haven’t always been a wretched old bachelor,” he replied. “But hurry, or we’ll be late.”
As he stood by the window with his back turned, she took off her coat.
“As you no doubt know,” he declaimed to the cat and the curtains, “the ancient Greeks explained the changing seasons through the myth of Demeter, the goddess of nature and the harvest, and her beautiful daughter, Persephone, the maiden who signified springtime.”
The robe she was able to pull on over her dress, though it snagged in her hair.
“When the lustful god Hades first spotted Persephone, he decided he had to have her as his queen. He abducted her, and dragged her down to the underworld. Her mother looked everywhere for her, wandering the whole earth in search of her lost child. But in her despair, Demeter neglected her responsibilities. She left the crops to wither and die, the trees to become bare, the fields fallow and sere. Famine descended upon all mankind.”
The robe was so long that Rebecca had to hike it up and cinch it with the golden belt below her breasts. “Go on,” she said, though the outlines of the myth were familiar to her.
“It was only when Zeus, the king of all the gods, intervened, that his younger brother Hades was finally forced to relinquish his unwilling bride, who had, quite wisely, refused all food and drink from his hand. In her joy at the reunion, Demeter, who had tarried in the town of Eleusis, allowed the earth to thrive again.”
The sandals would leave her feet cold, but they were otherwise comfortable.
“Hades, however, had been clever. After agreeing to return her to her mother, but just before she had set foot above ground again, he had persuaded Persephone to eat four pomegranate seeds. Because she had done so, she was obligated to return for four months of every year to the underworld—a time when her mother grieves again.”
The wreath settled upon her brow like a tiara.
“That’s why we have winter,” Machen said, almost as if he believed the story himself. “The rites we observe tonight are both a celebration of life and an acknowledgment of death, a recognition that it is all one journey, with its own attendant joys and miseries all along the way. Are you done dressing?”
“Yes,” she replied, feeling ridiculous in the outfit.
He turned around, with one more item in hand, and said, “Put this on when we get there, and never remove it until we are gone.”
It was a gray mask, made of clay. She slipped it into the pocket of her coat, which she threw on over the rest of the getup.
Outside, they had to walk several blocks in search of a cab, and in the sandals, her feet were indeed freezing. In this downtrodden part of the city, cabs were not as plentiful as in more affluent districts, and she felt that the two of them—an elderly man in an old-fashioned coat, and a young woman with a wreath in her hair—stood out to some of the more menacing characters they passed on the street. Once or twice, she even turned to see what looked suspiciously like a man in a slouched-down hat ducking into a doorway, before they were finally able to hail a taxi.
On the drive, she asked why she had to wear this costume while he got away with only a mask.
“The rules, you will find, are quite different for women and men, though great latitude is afforded either way. You will see things you cannot expect.”
“What I hope to see is conclusive evidence that Dr. Anton Graf is the same veterinarian whom Silas Drummond saw visiting the Horse Guards Parade.”
“Ah, yes—the mysterious Dr. Oil.”
She nodded, taking care not to disturb the wreath.
“And that poor man Drummond,” Machen said. “Do you happen to know what happened to him once he was transported to Guy’s? I meant to inquire.”
“He died there. I witnessed it.”
“You witnessed it?” He sounded impressed. “You are an enterprising young thing, aren’t you?”
Rebecca wasn’t sure how to take that remark.
But looking out the window of the cab, Machen said, contemplatively, “So he has embarked on the next step of the universal journey. He was at death’s door when we saw him—I can’t say that I’m surprised he’s passed through it.”
The cab drove slowly through the darkened streets.
“But surely you don’t mean to go snooping around the house in the midst of all the revelry?” Machen said. “If experience is any guide, many people will be there.”
“So this should come in handy,” Rebecca said, slipping on the clay mask.
“As should this,” Machen replied, putting on his own as the cab came to a stop before the tall black townhouse. All the windows were covered, the porch lights extinguished. It looked absolutely untenanted, and Rebecca wondered if Machen had not gotten the night wrong.
That illusion was dispelled the moment they knocked and the door was swiftly opened by a hulking man in a black butler’s jacket straining at the seams. It took Rebecca a second to place him, but then she remembered his square jaw and sullen brow from the lobby of the assembly hall on the night she first heard Machen lecture.
“Heinrich,” Machen said, with a nod, and after looking them over, the giant moved to one side to let them pass.
“Leave your things in the parlor,” he growled, and there she did see a host of overcoats and hats and scarves, scattered across the divans and center table. But what puzzled her was the number of other garments, ranging from waistcoats to skirts, pants to pantaloons, neatly folded or carelessly flung about the room.
“I did warn you,” Machen said, as he draped their coats on the back of a chair. “The motto of the house prevails.”
The motto, Rebecca remembered from the chiseled words in the salon upstairs, was simple: “Do What Thou Wilt.”
The main staircase was lighted by a series of torches, in wrought-iron stands, and as Rebecca and Machen rose up the stairs, she could hear the strangest mixture of sounds—laughter, weeping, cries of jubilation, moans, exultations, whoops—all of them inextricably mingled, growing louder
, some coming from open rooms, others from behind closed doors. And music, too—what sounded like a Gypsy band, violins screeching, tambourine banging, wooden flute trilling. As she rounded the landing, a girl with nothing on but black stockings and a white-lace bridal veil raced past her, with a fat, bare-chested man in hot pursuit. Rebecca could hardly believe her eyes, though Machen seemed oddly unfazed.
What had she gotten into? She made sure her mask was tightly affixed to her face, and her wreath secured.
The long hallway, which she had gone down once before, was also torchlit, with sheaves of wheat strewn about the floor.
“Emblematic of the harvest,” Machen explained.
On either side, doors were thrown open to reveal tableaux of people—all ages, all shapes and sizes, all wearing masks or disguises of some kind, but little else—cavorting on beds, on carpets, on strange leather and metal contraptions that would not have looked out of place in a stable or a torture chamber. There was the snap of whips, the clanking of iron, the swish of silk, and the rustling of crinoline. Also, the unmistakable slap of flesh against flesh. The air reeked of perfume and patchouli, burning tar from the torches, and spilt liquor. It was, in the truest sense, a bacchanal, a wild and obscene spectacle of lust and unfettered license. Was this what humanity resorted to, Rebecca thought, when the central precept of Thelema—Crowley’s manufactured faith—was observed?
At the end of the hallway, the main salon was more brightly lit, by a crystal chandelier with pink shades that cast a fiery glow around the tapestried walls and the words engraved above the roaring fireplace. If the house was hell, then this was the devil’s own chamber.
And the devil was at home—seated on his throne in a purple gown, a golden goblet in one hand, a scepter in the other. Unlike so many of his guests, he wore no mask. His bald head glistened with sweat; his features were twisted into a gleeful sneer. Eyes glittering, he waved the scepter like a baton, to conduct the Gypsy players ranged against the back wall, who wore red vests, black trousers, and white blindfolds over their eyes. What was the point of acting as conductor, Rebecca wondered, if the orchestra couldn’t see you? A raven-haired girl, in a loose skirt and ropes of beads, whirled like a dervish, shaking a tambourine and banging it against her swiveling hip. Perhaps thirty or forty spectators lounged about the room, on sofas and cushions, or simply propped against the walls, drinking from earthenware jugs and pewter mugs.
But even in the midst of this maelstrom, Rebecca felt Crowley’s attention shift from the dancing girl to the one who had just entered the chamber, in her wreath and robe, sandals and stony mask. It was as if he had simply sensed her presence—and she did not welcome his notice.
“He has a nose for you,” Machen said. “Bad luck, that.”
Rising from his throne, thus revealing its backing embroidered with the crimson pentagram, Crowley clapped his hands together several times, and shouted at the band in what sounded like their native tongue. The girl, exhausted, dropped to her knees, and the musicians lowered their instruments.
“The time has come,” he declared, “to assemble for the rites of Eleusis.”
The other guests stopped whatever they were doing as word traveled throughout the house, and others drifted in, silent and respectful now, from the neighboring rooms. But she saw no sign of Dr. Anton Graf among them.
“The mysteries will be revealed,” Crowley announced, arms spread wide in the billowing sleeves, and his incisors filed to a point like fangs. “The veil between the world above and the world below shall be forever rent. Let us celebrate the wedding of Hades and Persephone!”
Looking around, from beneath her own mask, at the half-naked crowd of wastrels and wantons, their skin damp or flaccid, their eyes wet with tears of delight or satiated desire, she thought she had never seen such a ghoulish gathering. Had it not been for her mission, she’d have ripped the white gown away from her limbs, tossed away the wreath, and even in the sandals run for her life.
But she had not come this far only to fail now.
CHAPTER FORTY
“I’m telling you, it’s her.”
“Put some clothes on,” Graf said, huddled over his workbench. “I can’t talk to you like that.” He would have to remember to secure the lock at the top of the stairs, regardless of what Crowley declared to be the house rules.
Circe leaned closer, her bare breasts hovering above the tallest beaker by only an inch. “The girl with the dark hair, the one who left last week with that old man, the writer. Machen. And he’s here, too.”
Machen he could understand. The old man was a believer in much of the claptrap Crowley dished out to his followers; he was even supposed to play some part in the evening’s festivities. But the girl—Rebecca West—that was a surprise. He didn’t think she’d have the nerve to come into this house again, not after the close call she had had the last time. If Machen hadn’t shown up when he did and personally escorted her out, she might well have fallen under Crowley’s spell. Most young women did.
“She’s up to no good,” Circe said, hands planted on the table. “You should do something about it, before she spoils the party.”
Party. That was hardly what Graf would have called it. Crowley liked to bill it as an exploration of ancient Greek rituals, but that was just a cover story, as far as Graf was concerned. The Eleusinian Mysteries, meant to reveal the secrets of the soul and immortality, were just one more excuse for an orgy, fueled by mystical pronouncements and jugs of wine that Graf had helped to doctor with hallucinogenic chemicals first pioneered in the German labs at Reims. (As Crowley’s houseguest, he felt obliged to help out in whatever small ways he could.)
But Anton prided himself on two things—his bacteriological genius, and his intuition. It was the latter that had kept him alive and out of prison. And his intuition was telling him now, in no uncertain terms, that the girl—a magazine writer, no less—was here for a malignant purpose. She was nosing around, and he could not have that, not now, not when he was so close to fulfilling his plan. The prudent thing would be to deal with her, to find out what she knew—and what she was planning to do with that information—tonight.
“I’ll come upstairs in a few minutes,” he said. “Keep an eye on her.”
“What are you going to do?”
“That is not your concern.”
When she turned, the fringes of the long leather skirt she wore flapping round her otherwise bare body, Graf quickly attended to the items on his workbench. First, he made sure the metal canister he had been inspecting was stowed away in the viola case, and under the bed. Then, he closed and latched the lid on the makeshift tin box in which he now kept his vials and syringes; it could not hold a candle to the brass box he had lost in St. James’s Park, but it was the best Heinrich Schell had been able to fashion on such short notice. From the glass cabinet against one wall, he took out a small brown bottle of a powerful horse sedative, and very carefully loaded yet another syringe with it. One poke with this, and the inquisitive Miss West would be rendered immobile. Best of all, in the frenzied scene upstairs, once everyone was affected by the adulterated wine, her paralysis would pass unnoticed, and Graf would be able to take his time with his interrogation, in private.
But if he hoped to blend in with the crowd here to celebrate the mysteries, he would need a disguise. Fortunately, he had the laboratory goggles, large enough to fit over his spectacles, and the mask he wore over his mouth and nose whenever working with possible inhalants. Festive it was not, but utilitarian; he would be able to get right next to his victim without her recognizing him until it was too late.
Anticipating a somewhat hasty return to his underground warren, he left the door again unlocked, but warned Schell, still guarding the front entrance, to see that no one entered in his absence.
“Who would want to go to that filthy place?” Schell replied, tugging at the ill-fitting jacket that had visibly split under one arm.
“Just be sure they don’t.”
As h
e ascended to the upper floor, he heard not the sound of the Gypsy violins, but the sonorous drone of Machen’s voice, holding forth on ancient Greece and its pantheon of gods. That he could hold an audience rapt with such dull twaddle was, to Graf’s mind, the greatest mystery of all. But this was why Germany would win the war; while the English could be taken in by such nonsense, the Germans could not. The Germans revered science over superstition, fact over fancy. And when they got drunk it was with strong beer, not weak wine.
The jugs were already being passed around, and Crowley, his purple robe billowing open to reveal an exaggerated silver codpiece beneath his ample belly, was blessing each person as he or she imbibed. The women he kissed full on the mouth, nibbling with his incisors at the lips of the most beautiful, and the men he kissed on the forehead—unless they happened to be particularly young and striking. If they were, they received the same benediction as the women.
Quickly scanning the room where some of the people who had drunk first were already experiencing the mind-altering effects of the drug—slumping to the floor, or swaying unsteadily in place—he spotted Circe, standing beside a woman in a gray mask and long white robe, cinched with a golden belt. Unlike many of those around her, this woman was still attending to the speaker. Machen, dressed as always like an undertaker, had removed any mask he might have worn, the better to read some incantation from the notes he held in one hand, as he stood on the dais, before Crowley’s empty throne. He’d better finish soon, Graf thought, or his audience might, like the maenads of yore, rend him limb from limb in an intoxicated ecstasy.
Weaving his way through the crowd, Graf approached Rebecca from behind, the needle primed and protruding from his sleeve, his thumb on the plunger, ready to strike. Circe saw him coming and sidled even closer, to lend whatever aid might be needed. Her eyes shot down to the glistening needle tip, and she nodded her understanding. She slipped an arm through Rebecca’s, who cocked her head, puzzled, just as Graf came within range.
But something must have alerted Rebecca to the danger, because she turned suddenly, her eyes surprised even under the mask. He thrust the syringe at her, hoping to hit an arm, but her sudden movement threw off his aim. The needle struck her bodice instead, glancing off something hard and brittle underneath the robe. Circe tried to intervene, holding her fast as he thrust again, but this time the needle, dripping with the drug, jabbed into Circe’s wrist.
The Haunting of H. G. Wells Page 25
