“No, even before that. Tell me everything. It might be important.”
Father Joseph settled his thin body back into the chair, and I could almost see his mind going back to those days that were almost, but not quite, forgotten.
“Well, I was the head of the mission school at Ying-Far, in a remote corner of China. Ours was one of the very first places to fall to the Chinese Communists. I need not tell you what happened after that.”
“I wish you would,” Simon said.
“Well, there were four of us who were captured by the Communists. Father Michael, Father Mark, myself…and Father Paul. For a time, we had no complaints at all. Though we were under house arrest, we were allowed to say Mass every day, and were treated quite well. Then, after nearly a year of this, we were transferred to a prison near the coast. It was a great, dank place that had once been used to confine pirates from the China Sea. Our…cells were in the basement, little rooms only half as large as this, with no light and poor ventilation. We were so near the water, that sometimes when there was an extra-high tide, a few drops would come into our cells.” He paused a moment and then went on, “We were there for five years. …”
I looked away and thought about the trees outside, because I could not look into the face of this man before us. Dimly, from a great distance, I heard Simon Ark asking, “What else?”
Father Joseph cleared his throat. “The usual things. You’ve seen them all in the newspapers, I’m sure. In all those five years, we never saw each other more than once or twice, though sometimes we managed to get messages to each other. Mostly, we saw only one other human being, our Communist jailer—a man named Ho Su. Once a day he brought us food, just enough to keep us alive. Sometimes he beat us, when he was drunk.”
“Three of you came back,” Simon Ark said. “What happened to this Father Paul?”
Father Joseph closed his eyes. “It was after we’d been there nearly four years. The other three of us were by this time sick in body and spirit, but Father Paul refused to be broken. One night, when Ho Su was even more drunk than usual, he had Father Paul taken out of his cell. They took him upstairs to a room where they kept a large bell that served the prison as an alarm system. Then Ho Su locked him in the room and started ringing the bell. We heard it ringing all night.”
Father Joseph opened his eyes again. In one of them a tear formed and trickled down his cheek. “I spent the night on my knees praying for him. At dawn, Ho Su came to my cell to tell me Father Paul had thrown himself out of the tower to escape the maddening ringing of that bell.”
I glanced quickly at Simon Ark, but there was no hint of an expression on his features.
“We always doubted,” Father Joseph continued, “or wanted to doubt, that Father Paul had been driven to suicide. But whatever happened up there in that bell tower, he died, and his blood was on Ho Su’s hands. Shortly thereafter, Communist policy began to change. We were released from our cells and given more food and better treatment. We never saw Ho Su again after that night, and when the Communists came to release us they said he’d been executed for killing Father Paul. However, knowing the Communist mind, it’s much more likely he was simply transferred to another post.”
He finished his story with the air of a man exhausted, and the strain of those bitter memories was actually visible on his thin face. Simon Ark cleared his throat and asked, “Just when did you meet Brother Ling?”
“He’d been with the order in Hong Kong, and he met us when we reached that city after our release. He was anxious to come to America, and finally the Order was able to arrange it. The four of us arrived here last year.”
Simon Ark studied his fingers for a moment and then said, “Brother Ling wrote to me a few days ago, and said he believed his life was in danger. Do you know anything about that?”
Father Joseph frowned. “Nothing at all. I still find it impossible to believe that one of us here had anything to do with his death.”
Simon rose from his chair. “Thank you for your assistance, Father. We must go now. There are others to see, and the time is short.”
The thin man rose, too, and led us out of the room. “I must go also. There is work to be done in the fields.” We watched him as he went down the stone steps and into the great fields beyond the monastery. Some twelve or fifteen of the monks were already out there, working among their small vegetable gardens or going about other daily duties under the hot August sun. It seemed almost as if the death of Brother Ling had been forgotten, but of course it hadn’t.
It was in the mind of every person here, and it would not soon be forgotten. Here was real tragedy, among a group of holy men, and I wondered how Simon Ark would ever be able to reach a satisfactory solution to Brother Ling’s death without bringing an everlasting disgrace to the monastery of Saint John of the Cross. …
We went then to the tower, to the winding stairway that led upward to the high bell. It was the bell that summoned the monks to prayer, and looking at its great glistening metal sides I was reminded of that other bell, far away someplace on the coast of China, that had taken the life of Father Paul.
“There’s nothing up here,” Simon Ark said. “Brother Ling must have been standing by the edge when he saw us in the crowd below—we stood out clearly among the monks’ robes. He called to me, and at that instant someone pushed him over the edge.”
There was a sound behind us and I looked around to see a little monk mounting the steps. “You are Simon Ark?” he asked me.
“No, that’s my friend here.”
“Oh. I am Father Mark. …”
Simon held out his hand in greeting. “Yes, Father. We were coming to talk to you soon.”
“I was speaking to the Abbot General and he told me you’d found one of our white tassels in poor Brother Ling’s hand after he fell.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, I’m missing one here,” he said, holding up the ends of the white cord that bound him at the waist. “I thought I ought to tell you. …”
I looked at Simon Ark in the dimness of the bell tower and wondered what he was thinking. Certainly the priest before us seemed the perfect picture of innocence, and yet the tassel of his corded belt was missing.
“You met Brother Ling in Hong Kong, I believe,” Simon began, avoiding for the moment the subject of the tassel.
“That’s correct. After our release.”
“I spoke to Father Joseph about it earlier. He… told me what happened to all of you and to Father Paul.”
“Oh, I suppose it wasn’t really too bad. There were others who had it much worse.”
“But they killed Father Paul, didn’t they?”
The little priest’s face clouded for an instant. “Oh, yes. They killed him. …”
We stood there in silence for a moment. I knew I should say something to bridge the gap, but no words came to me. Finally, Simon Ark said, “How do you think you lost your tassel, Father Mark?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even notice it was missing until after None. Is it possible that someone could have cut it off?”
Simon and I examined the frayed end of the cord. “It looks more as if it were pulled,” I commented.
Father Mark placed his hand to his wrinkled forehead. “Is it really possible that there is a murderer among us? Is it possible that even here, in this hidden place, the devil and his works have found assistance?”
“Perhaps,” Simon Ark said. “Satan has appeared in stranger places—even, long ago, within the walls of the Vatican itself. Tell me, Father Mark, what do you know about the Hour of None?”
The priest frowned. “None? Why, it comes from the Latin word for the ninth hour. It meant the ninth hour of daylight, or approximately three o’clock in the afternoon. Several religious orders, such as ours, still gather for prayers at this hour.”
Simon Ark’s eyes hardened in the familiar way I’d seen so many times before. “It is also the hour that Christ died on the Cross, and the hour He descended i
nto Hell. Amalarius wrote long ago that this was the hour at which man was most open to the devil’s temptations, and that it was the hour when Satan usually came.”
Father Mark nodded. “That is true. Perhaps Satan was here this afternoon after all. …”
“Even the number nine has always been mystical,” Simon Ark continued. “It was a number of death and mourning, and funeral services were sometimes held on the ninth day. Cardinal Bona reported the ancient belief that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise at the ninth hour—the Hour of None. …”
The priest before us continued nodding. “It is more than a coincidence that Brother Ling died at the Hour of None. There is some great evil within these walls.”
“You and Father Michael were with him in Hong Kong?”
“And Father Joseph, too. You said you talked to him.”
Simon Ark nodded. “Perhaps now we should visit Father Michael. Where might we find him?”
The little priest gazed out at the men in the fields below. “It is the working period now. Father Michael will be in his room, writing.”
“Thank you,” Simon said. “We will talk again.”
The three of us descended from the bell tower above the chapel and then separated, Father Mark going his own way.
“Well,” I offered when he was out of earshot, “he certainly wouldn’t come around and tell us about the tassel if he were the guilty one. But if he is innocent, why is the real killer trying to implicate him?”
Simon Ark shook his head. “The ways of the devil are sometimes strange indeed. Let us find Father Michael’s room.”
But as we made our way down one of the arched stone hallways, Simon suddenly pointed. “Look! A state police car. We may be too late.”
I followed him back to the Abbot General’s office, where we found the old man speaking to a tall, muscular trooper. “Well, Father,” the trooper was saying, “if there’s any hint of foul play I have to call in our Criminal Investigation Division. I realize your position here, but you should have made the facts clearer in your phone call.”
Simon Ark strode into the room and interrupted the conversation with a wave of his hand. “The police are not needed here,” he stated simply. “This is an evil of a very old sort, and I am well experienced in dealing with it.”
“Are you a detective?” the trooper asked, shifting uneasily.
“I am rather a detector,” Simon Ark corrected. “A detector of evil. Give us until tomorrow morning and I am certain we will have solved the problem.”
“I can’t do that,” the trooper tried to reason. “I have to make a report.”
“Then report only that Brother Ling fell from the bell tower; forget what else you have heard here, at least until tomorrow. After all, we have really nothing to go on ourselves except some wild guesses. Your chief would think you were crazy as we are.”
That apparently convinced him. He hesitated for another moment and then nodded. “All right. Since you’ve already moved the body, any evidence has probably been destroyed, anyhow. The undertaker should be here shortly, and I’ll drop by again in the morning. In the meantime I’ll file a report stating the death was apparently an accident.”
Simon and I watched him depart, and I remarked, “You still have a way with people, don’t you, Simon?”
He smiled slightly. “I appeal to their better nature. Now let us seek out Father Michael.” But he paused in the doorway and turned back to the Abbot General.
“We have spoken to Father Mark concerning his missing tassel. Would it be possible for you to visit each of the others in their rooms this evening and examine their cords? To see if any of the others are missing one? It certainly appears that someone is trying to frame Father Mark for this crime.”
The Abbot General nodded. “I will go shortly, as soon as I have spoken to the undertaker.”
We followed the directions to the room of Father Michael, set at the end of a dim passageway far away from the other quarters. He looked up as we entered, and the face was the same friendly one that had greeted us on our arrival.
“Hello,” he said. “How did you ever find me here? They hid me away so that the sounds of my typewriter does not disturb the others at their meditations.”
“You’re a writer?” I asked, somehow surprised.
“Of sorts.” The smile widened. “And I understand you are a publisher.”
“Of sorts.”
Father Michael beamed and produced a thick typewritten manuscript. “This,” he announced proudly, “is my Dictionary of the American Revolution, the only book of its kind ever attempted. Here are all the words, the names, the phrases, the places of the Revolutionary period. I’ve spent all my time on it since my return from China.”
“That’s really what we wanted to talk to you about,” Simon began. “About the prison and about Brother Ling.”
“They say he was murdered,” Father Michael said, with the same uncomprehending tone of voice the others had.
“It is possible,” Simon Ark admitted.
“But how? How could such a thing happen…here?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the answer lies buried in the past, in a graveyard in a Chinese prison.”
Father Michael’s eyes sharpened. “You are referring to the killing of Father Paul by the Communists?”
“I am,” Simon said. “What can you tell us about it?”
“Nothing. Nothing that you have not already heard. I imagine you know all about Ho Su and the prison.”
Simon nodded. “Was your treatment the same as the rest of them?”
“Yes. … But perhaps I came through it better. I spent the entire five years in prayer and in thoughts about my book. I outlined the entire work in my mind, over and over again, just to give me something to do.”
I nodded. “I’d be interested in discussing this book with you in greater detail.”
The priest’s eyes twinkled and his hands returned to the manuscript. “I believe it to be a great historical work. Look,” he flipped open a page at random, “how many people know that the American Turtle was the name of an early type of submarine that guarded New York harbor during the Revolution? Or that Montresor was the British soldier who gave us the account of Nathan Hale’s dying words?”
I had to agree that it was an interesting and ambitious project, perhaps a little odd for a monk to be undertaking, but still worth looking into.
Simon Ark too seemed interested, and finally he said, “Have you done any other books, Father?”
“A brief history of the Order in younger days. And a short life of John of the Cross.”
“He was quite a man,” Simon said.
“He was indeed. And perhaps if I have some mild success with my Dictionary of the Revolution, I will do a similar one dealing with religious terms.”
“It is long past due,” Simon agreed.
“It certainly is.” The priest, with twinkling eyes, turned to me. “You are an educated man, sir, but I’d be willing to bet you couldn’t tell me the difference between Manichaeism and Metempsychosis.”
They were way over my head and I admitted it. “I give up.”
“And you, Simon Ark?”
Simon smiled. “This is my line of business, so naturally I know. Manichaeism was an early religion based on Zoroastrian Dualism. Metempsychosis is a belief that a dead person’s soul enters the body of an animal.”
Father Michael clapped his hands together. “Wonderful, wonderful! It has been many years since I spoke with such a learned man.”
Simon Ark rose from his chair. “I wish we could continue this discussion, but there is much to be done. We must go.”
“God help you to find the answer to our problem,” the priest said, and the twinkle was gone momentarily from his eyes. Then it returned, and he said, “At least it’s a good thing we’re not an order of Jesuits.”
Simon laughed and we departed from the room. “What did he mean by that?” I asked.
Simon smiled. “There wa
s once a theory that Jesuits died in threes. Father Michael is a most intelligent man, with a wide knowledge of many subjects.”
I sighed and looked around at the dim stone walls. “Now what?”
“Now I would like to visit Brother Ling’s little room, I think,” Simon said. We went back downstairs, and across the courtyard in front of the chapel. Inside, someone was playing the organ, and here and there we caught glimpses of wandering monks.
“There’s Brother Richard,” I said. “Maybe he can tell us where the room is.”
The fat monk who looked like Friar Tuck came over to us at the sound of his name. “Can I help you, gentlemen? I fear the usual weekend schedule has been quite disrupted by the death of Brother Ling.”
“Yes,” Simon said. “You could show us Brother Ling’s room if you would.”
“Well… All right, come this way.”
The room he showed us was somewhat smaller than those of the priests, and it reminded me once more of the monks’ cells of old. There was a crucifix on the wall, but otherwise the room was plain of all decoration.
“Where would he have kept his personal effects?” Simon asked.
Brother Richard pulled out a small box from under the plain, flat bed. “We’re allowed only to keep a very few personal items. These are all he had.”
I watched as Simon fingered the various items in the box, letters written in Chinese, one or two snapshots of Brother Ling and his family, a few Chinese coins—all that was left of a man.
“Tell me,” Simon said, turning to the fat monk at our side, “did he ever say anything to you, or to the others? Anything about…someone possessed of the devil?”
Brother Richard thought about it, and finally he said, “No, he never said anything like that; but I could see something was bothering him, ever since he arrived here, and especially in recent weeks. I… there was something wrong here. We all knew it.” His voice dropped to a whisper at the end.
“Wrong? How wrong?” Simon wanted to know.
“Just… wrong. Ever since Brother Ling arrived with the three priests. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the chapel bell would start ringing. Once, only two weeks ago, someone tried to enter Brother Ling’s room during the night.”
The Judges of Hades Page 4
