by Otto Penzler
“There’s a—a wall in my mind,” I said forlornly. “In Chicago all I could remember was the name of Father Orion. I asked the police and— and they put me on the airplane.”
“Quite right,” Paige approved. “Strangers might have taken advantage of you. Remember any more now?”
“No.” And I groaned: “It’s terrible being like this!”
Paige dropped his hand on my arm. “You’re with friends, Brother. Perhaps we’d better make sure you haven’t any identifying papers on you. Let’s see your billfold.”
He parked at the curb, and I let him have the billfold and watched closely while he looked inside. Paige whistled softly at the hundreds and five hundreds Brophy had reluctantly turned over to me.
“A lot of money to be carrying around, Brother.”
“There was more,” says I vaguely. “The safe deposit box was almost full. I think I always keep money ready in the deposit box. But I—I can’t remember where the box is. Will Father Orion tell me?”
“The Master knows all Truth,” Paige stated. “Were you bringing this money, Brother, as a Love Offering?”
“I can’t remember,” I told him helplessly as I reached for the billfold.
So there we were without any secrets, as we rolled into the high wooded hills beyond Hollywood …
Lew Ryster had prepared me for Orion’s Shrine. But Lew hadn’t told all. Maybe Lew wouldn’t have believed it himself. A side road led us to stone gate towers flanked by a high, close-meshed fence topped by strands of barbed wire.
“The top wire is electrified,” Paige remarked casually as we paused in the glare of floodlights on the gate posts.
A guard unchained the gates and, as we rolled through, called: “Welcome, Brothers!”
And I gandered at the fellow and moved up another notch on the Hollywood nut tree. That big guard wore sandals on bare feet and a white cloak resembling a Roman toga. He had a curly brown beard and the bulging muscles and build of a ham wrestler. And the air of a wild-eyed fanatic.
The whole lay-out was getting a little more unbelievable as I came closer to Father Orion.
“Electricity?” I mumbled.
“Lots of electricity, Brother,” Paige assured me cheerfully.
“But—but—”
“The Shrine, Brother, is guarded from desecration by all unbelievers and scoffers.” Paige delivered the statement with a solemn manner and a deeper voice.
I said: “Ahhhh …”
Paige said nothing. The silhouette of his face was sterner, as if his manner at the station had been for the outside world.
There was nothing screwball about the muscles of that guard at the gate and the electrified fence. It made you wonder what would happen if Father Orion decided not to like a pilgrim. The eight grand cash inside my coat was folding money in any language. And if there did just happen to be murder in the background and Mike Harris stubbed his toe and got in bad— then what?
I’d have felt better with a gun tucked under my armpit or inside my shirt. But it wouldn’t have looked kosher for Brother Amnesia to show up packing a rod. So I sat watchful and wary as we rolled up the winding driveway to the Shrine.
Here were broad smooth lawns and narrow paths to small rustic outbuildings haphazardly scattered back against the trees. A few dim bulbs on poles showed the paths and the driveway, and made clear and startling the big white, templelike building that dominated the center of the broad lawns.
They called it a shrine and it looked like a pillared temple, with softly lighted windows and a wide flag-stone terrace all around. Our headlights picked out several figures on the terrace clad in the flowing white togas.
Paige turned the big car into a narrow side drive that skirted the trees and the small outbuildings. We stopped before one of the small buildings.
“You will live here, Brother,” Paige said, getting out.
Not so bad. It was a snug little cabin built of peeled cedar logs, with screened windows, flower beds and a trellised vine.
“Is Father Orion here?” I wanted to know doubtfully.
“Father Orion,” Paige said as he entered the cabin and switched on a light, “is now supervising the Evening Circle of Felicity. After you change into your robe and sandals, I’ll take you into the Circle.”
“Robe?” says I, eyeing the white garment Paige took from a hook and tossed on a narrow bed.
“I’ll change also and come back for you,” Paige nodded.
“B-but I’m dressed,” I protested weakly.
Paige was stern. “Father Orion only sees those who put aside all things of the world. I’ll return in fifteen minutes, Brother.”
CHAPTER III
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
He drove off and under my breath I damned Lew Ryster again. Mike Harris in one of those Roman nightgowns! If someone I knew ever caught me out in that harness I’d never live it down.
But if I balked, I’d probably get no closer to Father Orion.
Outside in the night something was softly throbbing, throbbing.
It sounded like a drum, muted, beating a lazy irregular rhythm. I switched off the light, opened the door and traced the sound to the looming mass of the Shrine off there across the lawns.
More hocus-pocus. It stopped as I buckled on the sandals and stood up in the white toga, feeling like a fool.
They’d saved the day with a roomy inside pocket where I could carry the billfold. Brophy, back in Chicago, would have had a spasm if he’d known the company his eight grand was keeping now.
I lighted a cigarette and was wondering what gives next when Paige returned. He had changed into a white toga. One look and he snatched my cigarette and stamped it under a sandaled foot.
“Tobacco would desecrate the Shrine, Brother,” he reproved. “This way.”
So I smothered an impulse to slug Brother Paige and slap-slapped after him in the leather sandals.
Dew got on my feet. The cold night air blew up my bare legs under the toga. We looked like a couple of lost ghosts as we moved toward the Shrine, crossed the terrace and passed inside.
The lazy drumming had started again, and the soft rhythm was there at the other end of a big crowded patio which we had entered.
Shaded wall lamps filled the place with soft light. Men and women were moving about and sitting on couches, backless chairs and benches. Long ones, short ones, fat and thin, young and old, talking, laughing. All wore white togas and robes. Incense curled from small braziers toward the open sky and stars overhead.
Paige led me toward a dais at the far end. A thin, mystic-faced Oriental was seated cross-legged at one corner of the dais, head thrown slightly back, eyes closed as his hand beat out that lazy, irregular rhythm from a small drum.
And then the huge, white-bearded, patriarchal old man who stood up on the dais caught all my attention.
He had been sitting on a backless couch talking to a small group of men and women. They remained seated as he drew a flowing white toga close and stepped down off the dais to meet Paige. His voice was a dreamy rumble.
“Brother, we have been waiting for you. Is this the troubled one you went to greet?”
Paige gestured solemnly toward me. “Come from the shadows to seek the Truth, Master.” And to me Paige said: “Where there is truth, there is peace. Father Orion greets you.”
So I mumbled: “Ahhhhh …”
The drummer had paused. Voices had lowered as those near us took a gander at the newcomer. And I stood there in my bare gams and wondered what one did next.
He looked older than the hills and wiser than the Encyclopedia. A big arched nose like a beak came out of the center of the beard and his eyes had a dreamy fixed stare.
He held out a hand as if expecting it to be kissed. I shook it. The big fingers were long and supple, and they returned to toy slowly with the fringes of the beard.
In that dreamy rumble which made you wonder what his shout was like, Father Orion said: “Welcome, Brother, to the House of Truth.”
“Truth,” I breathed, half-closing my eyes.
He rumbled: “Your name is?”
“The name hasn’t been remembered yet,” Paige answered for me.
A big hand lifted in a benign gesture.
“Wordly names are put aside here anyway. We shall call him Brother Rudolph.”
I started to protest and he cut me off in a dreamy chant.
“Brother Rudolph, you come seeking the great Truths of the past. The old forbidden secrets of the sacred lamas of Lhasa and the teachings of the sages long lost amid the blindness and ignorance of men. You have been seeking that which could not be found. What is it, Brother, for which you grope?”
I looked away for a moment. His manner had almost made me dizzy. I should have known that anyone who could run a show like this had something on the ball.
“My name,” I told him meekly. “I want to know my name and where can I find my deposit box?”
Father Orion looked at me like a sleepwalker. “The Truth will be opened up to you. In your heart will be peace. Join our Circle of Felicity now, Brother, and open your heart to Peace.”
Neat, eh, but not obvious. Paige didn’t help it any by turning to the crowd and saying:
“I give you Brother Rudolph, a new seeker of Truth. Surround him with Felicity.”
The drumming started again. They surrounded me, long ones, and fat ones, old ones and young ones, pushing heads at me from the togas and robes, clapping me on the shoulder, beaming, smiling, calling me Brother, giving me great bunches of Felicity as I edged through and kept a hand of Brophy’s eight grand inside my toga.
And suddenly I gritted my teeth and swore under my breath as a foot kicked my bare shin bone. Then I froze as a voice cooed sweetly at my elbow.
“Welcome, Brother. Welcome, Brother Rudolph.”
You can’t guess! But I knew. Only one soft cooing little voice in all the world could set my nerves quivering like this. I looked and I was right.
Trixie Meehan stood at my elbow with a leer on her lovely little face. The others probably thought Trixie was smiling. They didn’t know the gal. They didn’t know Trixie Meehan.
And who is Trixie Meehan? Brother, Trixie Meehan also works for the Blaine Agency. Pert and sweet, soft and cuddly, harmless as a kitten and luscious-looking to all big strong men— that’s Trixie if you don’t know her.
But I knew her. Trixie was smart, shrewd, fearless and tireless on a case. And her temper would make a scorpion blush and her little tongue could peel the hide off a brass-bound monkey. And when Trixie and I crossed trails on a case, it was usually my hide that took the peeling.
Under her breath Trixie said: “Brother! Oh, Brother!” And behind her hands she giggled: “If I could only get your picture, Brother!”
A fat lady was pouring garlic-scented Felicity in my ear and inviting me to sit on a couch.
“Madam,” I said, “the young lady will tell me about Truth—and nothing but the Truth.”
She forgot Felicity and Father Orion long enough to give Trixie a dirty look and crack back: “Where I come from, they don’t call it Truth!”
But I already had Trixie’s arm and was shoving her toward the other end of the patio.
“Listen, Ape, you’re twisting my arm off!” Trixie said angrily under her breath. “And someone will see that we know each other!”
“I’d like to twist your little neck off!” I gritted. “Where did you come from?”
“We’re on the same case, Mike.”
“Who said so?”
“Lew Ryster sent me.”
“I’ll kill that doublecrossing so-and-so! He didn’t say anything about you.”
“And why should he? Let go my arm or I’ll scream.”
She would have too. The things Trixie Meehan would do if pushed hard enough would curdle your blood. I released her arm.
Trixie snapped: “Lew didn’t say anything because he knew you’d have a spasm. And if you think / cried for the chance to work with the world’s greatest ego, they haven’t slipped you the proper dose of truth yet!”
Trixie glared at me—and in the midst of it suddenly began to giggle again. “Mike, have you looked in a mirror yet?”
“I have not,” I said. “You’d fit in a Roman bath scene yourself. How long have you been here?”
“Since yesterday,” says Trixie, ducking over to a couch where we could have a little privacy. “And Mike, I’m scared.”
Trixie looked at me soberly. And I looked back, thinking that she was one of the few women in the place who looked appealing and sweet in the graveyard uniforms they issued.
“Afraid of what?” I asked.
Trixie shrugged slightly. “Nothing—and everything. This place is guarded like a prison farm.”
“So I noticed.”
“Look at them,” said Trixie. “They’re fanatical. They’ve turned their minds over to that old man.”
“How many of them had a mind to start with?”
“Scratch deep enough,” said Trixie, “and you’ll find that most of them have a bank account. They weren’t swept up out of the gutter to be loaded with Truth and Felicity.”
“Somebody has to pay for the overhead,” I said. “Look at me. I brought eight grand cash money along, and I’ve got more in a safe deposit box if I can ever recover from my attack of amnesia and think where it is.”
“Does Father Orion know about the money?” Trixie asked quickly.
“Sister, the Master—knows all!”
“I’m trying to be serious, Mike!”
“Eight grand is always serious,” I grinned. “What’s wrong with the Master?”
“I’m afraid of him,” Trixie said without hesitation. “Mike, these people believe in him!”
“Does Paige?”
“I don’t know.”
“Both of us are foggy then,” I admitted. “The more I see of all this, the less sure I am—” I broke off, staring across the patio, and whistled softly in amazement.
“Don’t mug,” I said under my breath. “But get a load of that thin fellow with the black hair moving along the wall over there? He was looking at us.”
“I knew talking to me this way was a fool stunt!” Trixie snapped.
“He’s easing up for a gab fest with Father Time,” I said. “Know him?”
“I’m not the local directory,” says Trixie nastily. “I’ve only been here a day myself.”
“He’s dropped some weight,” I said. “But four-five years ago in Philly he was a con-man just paroled. Eddy Voss was his name. Haggerty, who was in our Philadelphia office then, had helped send him up several years before.”
“Did he see you with Haggerty?”
“I wish I knew.”
“A stir-bird,” says Trixie under her breath. “And now he’s a crackpot with the rest of them. I don’t believe it.”
“They bait a mean hook around here for suckers, Baby.”
“Nuts,” says Trixie. “Do you see any more familiar faces?”
I was looking, and I was more uneasy about Voss than I let Trixie see. If he remembered me, what then? At the least I’d be tossed out on my ear. And I wondered what kind of dice he was throwing in this crowd.
“I can’t spot anyone else,” I told Trixie. “If you see Lew Ryster before I do, have him get Voss’ record since the parole.”
Trixie nodded.
“How did you crash the gate here?” I asked.
“I pretended I worked at the studio with Nancy Cudahy’s dead friend,” Trixie said wryly. “Nancy was loaded with Father Orion, and was telling me about him before we’d been together fifteen minutes. I asked for more. It wasn’t hard to get her to bring me here.”
“Where is the Cudahy girl?”
“Up there on the platform with Father Time,” says Trixie. “That lumpy brunette with too much weight.”
“That?” I said. “That worth two million bucks?”
“That,” Trixie said.
I decided: “For
a million bucks and a pair of smoked glasses I’d take a chance on her myself. Is she as big a fool as I hear?”
“Not as big a fool as most men who’d do anything for a pretty face or a bank account,” Trixie said acidly. “She’s bad enough. Tutors, guardians, servants and guards have insulated her from a lot she ought to know. That dumb-looking face hasn’t helped her any. In a way I’m sorry for her.”
“Poor kid.”
“Like hell,” says Trixie. “Not with millions. And don’t make any passes at her. She tells me she’s secretly engaged.”
“Who’s the lucky speculator?”
“She wouldn’t say. It’s a great big breathless secret. What are you going to do now, Mike?”
“Keep away from you and keep my fingers crossed.”
“We’ll both be happy then!” Trixie snapped. “Keeping away from you is one of life’s pleasures!”
Trixie flounced away with a swirl of her white robe.
And I sat there trying to make two and two into five. How could you tie all this into a slick murder? The dead girl hadn’t been one of this bunch. Father Orion had a neat enough racket. Why should he want anyone killed? And to add a little frosting to the cake, why was Eddy Voss here?
Meanwhile I had eight grand inside my robe and Felicity all around. And as I got up from the couch, the woman in black came in out of the night.
I was near the entrance to that big roofless patio. I was one of the first who saw that her pale face was molded in tragedy. I think I was the first to sense that her spirit was feeding on inner fires of suffering.
“Here’s trouble, Mike!” I decided—and I drifted across the patio after her to see what would happen.
She wore the somber black of mourning. She was in her thirties, plain-looking, uninteresting. Probably like the others for she seemed to be at home here.
But now she stood out sharply from the rest of the gathering. She came in slowly, one hand clutching a black purse to her bosom. She traversed the long patio toward Father Orion with the same heavy steps.
Those who became aware of her stopped talking and watched as I was watching.
A few moved toward the dais after her as I did.
Father Orion saw her. He stood up, hesitated, and stepped slowly off the dais and waited for her.
