“How much have you made so far?” Faustus asked.
“Well, there’s the serpent in paradise,” Belden admitted sheepishly. “I get promissory notes till Lepsy makes his return, but they’re good as cash with most of the places around here. You know, they just had an opening for a city marshal. I was thinkin’ about applyin.’”
“Why don’t you?” the Rider asked.
“You ain’t gettin’ rid of me that easy, Joe,” Belden said, putting his hand on his shoulder.
They hung a right down Fourth Street until the Grand Hotel loomed on their right. It lived up to its name, a two story affair with banks of large suites, all with their own windows.
“Wait till you see the inside of this place,” Belden said.
But again, as they went to the door, Kabede stopped outside.
“Kabede?” the Rider asked expectantly.
“We had some trouble here last time,” Belden said.
“You mean Kabede had some trouble.”
“It’s alright, Rider,” said Kabede. “I’ll wait here. Here, Rider,” he said as an afterthought, taking the scroll case from his shoulder and passing it to the Rider. “In case you need it.”
The Rider didn’t like it, but Kabede nodded encouragingly. The Rider bristled, but went inside. He remembered again why he tended to stay away from larger towns. If he hadn’t been shaved, shorn, and wearing a borrowed shirt and coat from Faustus’ vardo, they might not have allowed him inside either.
A wide, opulent red carpeted staircase with a polished banister of black walnut dominated the lobby, matching the wood of the silk cushioned furniture and the handsome front desk, behind which was manned by an affable looking older gentleman in spectacles and a fine vest and coat.
The clerk eyed the Rider and his companions with congenial impassivity as they made their way over.
“Welcome to the Grand Hotel, gentlemen. How may I help you this morning?”
“We’re here to speak to Mister Rice and Mister Spates up in room twelve,” Belden said.
The clerk slapped a bell on the desk and a diminutive man in what might have passed for an admiral’s uniform in some foreign navy appeared from the back room.
“Who shall I say is come calling?”
“Tell Professor Spates the Rider is here.”
“The Rider?”
“The Rider.”
“Very well.”
The clerk relayed the request to the bellhop, who nodded and made an expeditious ascent of the carpeted stair.
The clerk smiled and waved them over to the sofa in the waiting area.
“We’ll wait over there,” said the Rider, and went to the foot of the stairs.
They weren’t standing there long before Professor Spates appeared on the landing, looking as harried and distracted as the last time the Rider had seen him outside of Las Vegas.
He was wearing brown pinstripes, and as he came down the steps scanning the lobby, his eyes fell on their little party and his expression turned from excitement to disappointment with a twinge of anger.
“Listen here, sir,” he said, stopping midway down the stair and addressing Belden. “I’ve already told you, I will not meet with anyone other than Mister Rider himself.”
“Arthur, it’s me,” the Rider called.
Spates stopped and stared at the Rider, even going so far as to take off his glasses.
“Is it?”
“It is.”
“Well,” he exclaimed, instantly brightening. “I hardly recognize you, Rider. Please come up, come up.”
The Rider went up the stair and Spates took his hand in two of his and shook it nearly loose, grinning the whole time.
“Well. Well. How good it is to finally meet again. We’d nearly given up on you.”
“Who’s we, Arthur? I did ask for your discretion in this matter.”
“Oh well, I assure you, I’ve been totally discreet,” Spates said, as they walked into the main upper hall, which was lined with an elegant Brussels carpet. “The we besides me is my colleague from Boston, Mister Rice, the linguist I spoke to you about. After we parted in Las Vegas, I went straight to him with the letters you gave me, and wouldn’t you know it, I was right. They were indeed Tsath-yo characters. Warren, that is, Mister Rice, confirmed it straight away. He was able to complete the job in about a month, but he contacted me in New Jersey in a state of great excitement. He blackmailed me a bit, the cad, said he would only relinquish the translations personally to the man who had requested them. I told him you had asked for discretion, but Warren’s a very insistent sort, and since he paid both our fares and agreed to split accommodations and food, well…”
“You’re a windy sort, aren’t you?” Belden said, when Spates stopped to catch his breath.
“Ah, as to your associate here, Mister Belden,” Spates said. “I do apologize. But you did ask for discretion after all, and you never mentioned him. Or you, sir,” Spates said, looking to Faustus and extending his hand. “Professor Arthur William Wallace Spates,” he gushed, when Faustus took it.
“Faustus Montague,” Faustus said slowly. “Just what’s all this about, Rider?”
The Rider explained the correspondences he had taken from Sheardown, taking care to only mention the man’s name in Spates’ presence, and not the circumstances by which he’d obtained them.
“And you say they’re written in Tsath-yo?” Faustus asked.
“You’re familiar with it?” Spates asked, as they reached room twelve.
“Intimately,” the old man said, frowning at the Rider in a you-might-have-saved-us-all-a-lot-of-trouble way.
“Well, you and Warren will have much to talk about,” Spates said, rapping once on the door, and then flinging it open.
The appointments were as regal as the rest of the hotel, with oil paintings decorating the papered walls, an inviting spring mattress on a big four poster, and a finely patterned toilet stand.
From one of the walnut chairs, Warren Carter Rice, a stocky, light haired man in a modest dark suit rose through a fog of pipe smoke and plucked its originator, a wood meerschaum, from his lips.
Spates made the round of introductions and then arranged the chairs about the room for them to sit.
“Ah,” Spates said, clearing his throa. “May I stay? Warren hasn’t been very forthcoming with any of this to his credit, and I’ve been living with the suspense for quite some time now.”
The Rider shrugged.
“Alright, Arthur. You deserve that and I can’t give you anything else.”
Belden was left without a place and contented himself with pouring a snifter of some caramel colored fluid from a carafe on the dresser.
“Mister Rider,” Warren Rice began, “let me begin by saying, I was quite skeptical about Arthur’s claim that he had obtained a set of modern correspondences written in the Tsath-yo alphabet. It’s quite an archaic system, and I could number those in the scholarly community with knowledge of it on one hand.”
Faustus sighed at this, and produced his own pipe and tobacco, and laid his hat upon the table.
The Rider knew what he was thinking. How put out would he be when they finally told him about the scroll?
Rice reached into a valise next to his chair and produced the packet of letters, laying them on the table.
“Sure enough, these are the genuine article, written by two men I had never heard of, in a region of the United States I have never visited, and demonstrating a command I did not know existed outside of my own expertise.”
“What do they say?” the Rider asked, leaning forward.
“Well sir, the contents are what induced me to impose upon Arthur to tell you myself. He had informed me that they were of a sensitive nature. That was certainly no understatement, if the veracity of these letters is to be believed.”
In his way, Rice was as long winded as Spates, but being American, in a more drawn out, deliberate way. Why didn’t he get to the point?
“Time is of the essen
ce, Mister Rice,” the Rider began.
“In that you are in the right. Now, of course I only have one half of the correspondence, but according to the Mister Lord (here the Rider paused, but of course, Rice had translated ‘Adon’ into its English equivalent, ‘Lord’), the author of these letters, you have only until September the twenty second of this year, in fact.”
The Rider and Faustus looked at each other.
“That confirms it then,” Faustus said.
It confirmed a great many things.
“You already know of this Hour of Incursion?” Rice asked.
“We know something of it,” Faustus said. And he related all they did know.
“Is it real?” Rice asked. “Is it all real? The Great Old Ones?”
“Everything is real,” Faustus said, smoking his pipe.
Rice rose then and drew out a pocket handkerchief, dabbing at his forehead.
“I’m sorry. Please, give me a moment. It’s just that, to have studied these things so long under the pretense that it may be only pseudo-science, and then to have it confirmed!”
“What do the letters say about the Hour of Incursion?” the Rider asked.
“A great deal. A great deal indeed,” said Rice. “The key to bringing it about is in a manuscript called The Infernalius.”
The Rider looked again to Faustus, who shook his head.
“No, it’s doubtful you would have heard of it. I’ve never heard of it myself. It’s because it doesn’t exist,” said Rice, excitedly. “That is, not altogether.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are many grimoires that have been thought long lost to time,” Rice said, clasping his hands behind his back and pacing the room. “The Book of Eibon, the Cthaat Aquadingen, the Necronomicon…”
“So, The Infernalius is lost,” the Rider finished.
“No sir, as I say, not altogether. According to your Mister Lord, The Infernalius was dictated in antediluvian prehistory by an entity known as The Dark Man to a Hyperborean wizard called Svidren Gargalesh.”
The Dark Man again. Nyarlathotep. That creature was everywhere.
“Svidren divided the text into seven fragments which were then inserted into seven books. I have a list,” he said, digging in his pockets. He produced a crumpled scrap of paper and read, ticking off the titles on his fingers as he went, “The Book of Eibon, the Book of Karnak, the Testament of Carnamagos, the Ponape Scripture, de Vermiss Mysteriis, and the Scroll of Thoth-Amon.”
“What! De Vermiis Mysteriis?” Spates interrupted. “Didn’t Prinn write that in 1542?”
“According to Mister Lord, the fragments weren’t physically transcribed,” said Rice. “Svidren cast a spell which dispersed the seven sections into time. They came down to the authors of each of these works through the collective consciousness, or perhaps through what some call the Akashic records, whenever and wherever they lived. Sort of like one of those time-locked bank safes, set to open and diffuse their knowledge in plenty of time for September 22nd 1882. It is very likely the various authors weren’t even aware of their inclusion. Instructions for assembling the hidden book were encoded and placed within the original Arabic Necronomicon, millennia later by Abdul Alhazred.”
“Ingenious,” Spates remarked.
“Quite ingenious,” Rice agreed. “The code Svidren used is indecipherable to all but those who are actively looking for it. The inner circle of the Order of the Black Dragon.”
“What is the Order of the Black Dragon?” Faustus asked.
“This Mister Lord and Doctor Sheardown, they are conspirators in a grand plot to bring about the Hour of Incursion. Mister Lord writes of belonging to a secret tradition sworn to bring about that end. They name themselves The Order of the Black Dragon. This Doctor Sheardown, to which Mister Lord addresses all the letters, appears to be some sort of initiate, whereas Mister Lord is of a higher rank.”
Spates was bouncing his skinny knee, eager to contribute.
“The Great Old Ones are said to influence certain men through their dreams,” Spates said excitedly, “inspiring them to unbar the gates that shut them out and usher them into this world. I’ve long suspected this to be a world wide phenomenon, that there may be numerous cults all working towards the same end, each with its own secret method of doing so, each with its own patron Outer God.”
“The Order of the Black Dragon,” Rice went on, “according to Mister Lord, is dedicated to the liberation of Krefth Daal Zuur, the Blind Black Dragon. That Which Strains Against Its Chains.”
“What is Kreth Daal Zuur?” the Rider asked both men.
Spates shook his head, baffled.
“His nature is unrevealed in the letters,” Rice said, returning to his seat and spreading the letters on the table. “But Mister Lord states there is a ritual contained within The Infernalius that will somehow free the Blind Black Dragon, and cause him to rise.”
“The Treatice on the Left Hand Emanation tells about a Blind Dragon which will bring Lilith and Samael together,” the Rider said, musing. “Maybe this ritual can free Samael from his prison somehow.”
Rice looked blankly at them, but Faustus ran with the thought.
“Then Samael is instrumental in freeing this Krefth Daal Zuur.”
“Samael?” Spates repeated, grinning in his excitement. “As in, the Angel of Death? Really?”
The Rider frowned. Spates was getting too involved in this now, and he had brought this poor linguist in too. He glanced at Faustus. The old man seemed to share his sentiment.
“So we’re looking for fragments of a book?” the Rider asked Rice, ignoring Spates’ excited outburst.
“It’s too late for that, I’m afraid,” Rice said. “Mister Lord apparently spent a great deal of resources in time, money, and manpower to track down the fragments. The Scroll of Thoth-Ammon was to be the last, and Doctor Sheardown’s purpose. Mister Lord directed him to search some heretofore undiscovered writings of Cotton Mather and a certain witch trial transcription, which he believes pointed towards the scrolls whereabouts. A Keziah Mason is mentioned as having had some part in spiriting it away, to an island on the Miskatonic River, which he refers to as Themystos. He writes in this last letter, apparently a response to news from Doctor Sheardown,” he said, rifling through the stack of yellowed correspondences quickly until he came to the page he sought.
“Congratulations, my pupil! The final piece of the puzzle is at last in your hand. You are ordered to sell the six precious boxes which contained the scroll and spare no expense in delivering it. Do not tarry. When next we meet, the Hour of Incursion will be inevitable. ”
Faustus leaned back in his chair.
“Then Adon has already found all the other pieces, and we may assume, The Necronomicon as well.”
The Rider smiled uncontrollably.
“Well, maybe not the last piece.”
Faustus narrowed his eyes at the Rider.
“What else have you kept from me?”
“Sheardown didn’t take Adon’s advice. Maybe he chintzed on the travel arrangements, decided to pocket the money. He never kept his appointment,” the Rider said. “We have the scroll. I assume the Scroll of Thoth-Amon.”
Everyone at the table sat back, breathing a relieved sigh, then chuckled at their shared reaction. Spates and Rice shook hands, first with themselves, and then with the Rider.
Even Faustus allowed a momentary laugh, but he was the first to sober.
“Then the scroll must be destroyed, now that we know its purpose.”
“I agree,” said the Rider.
“Makes sense to me,” Belden chimed in, glad to make a contribution in between gulps from the nearly drained carafe.
“But,” Rice said. “Gentlemen, you’re talking about destroying a major archaeological relic for all time. Surely not. What about posterity?”
“What posterity will there be if these maniacs get a hold of the scroll?” the Rider countered.
“Well,” Spates began,
tactfully, folding his hands and settling into his chair, “maybe there is something to be said on both sides of the argument…”
“Academics,” Faustus grumbled, knocking out his pipe in the ashtray and putting it away. He rose from his chair and put on his hat, gruffly. “You’d better say your goodbyes,” he said to the Rider.
The Rider took the old man’s meaning and reached across the table, shaking each of the two scholar’s hands once more in turn.
“Professor,” said the Rider. “Mister Rice. Thank you very much for your time and effort. I’ve got to ask you to please return home.”
“Home?” Spates and Rice echoed.
“Yes,” said Faustus, wheeling on them and fixing them with an intense stare as he put his hand to the sapphire stickpin poking out between his lapels. “Home. You’ll pack up your things, buy yourselves tickets on the next stage to Denison, and catch the train back East. Put this entire matter out of your minds.”
Spates and Rice looked at the ridiculous old man in confusion, then rose without a word. Spates went to the dresser, excused himself to Belden, and began to unpack the drawer.
Rice reached for the papers.
Faustus slapped his hand down on them.
“Not those, Mister Rice, if you please.”
“Of course,” Rice said distractedly, and went to the walnut wardrobe in the corner and pulled out a suitcase, setting it on the bed and opening it.
“What’d you do to them?” Belden asked in surprise.
“We’ve no time to argue,” said Faustus, cramming the letters into his coat pocket, “and no time for amateurs.”
“Let’s go,” said the Rider, exiting the room.
Faustus followed.
Belden took a last swig and went into the hallway.
“Adios, boys,” he said, closing the door behind him.
They descended the stairs.
“Hey Faustus, you’ve never done anything like that to me have you?” Belden asked.
“Certainly not,” Faustus said quickly. “You’d remember if I did.”
Belden opened his mouth to pursue the matter, but Faustus had turned to the Rider.
“That’s the scroll in the case Kabede gave you presume?”
Merkabah Rider: Have Glyphs Will Travel Page 39
