On Tuesday at half past five, Reverend Thomas Brothers’ taxi stopped in front of a house in St Albans. His left arm was in a sling, his overcoat rested on his shoulders, but he was in better condition than he’d anticipated, after the long journey south. The town itself pleased him, built as it was on the blood-sacrifice of a Roman: The site was propitious. “This town was known as Verulamium,” he told Gunderson, who had closed the taxi door and was now paying the driver. “It was the most important Roman town in the south of England. Named after an executed soldier, martyred as a Christian in the year 304.”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied.
Gunderson had never been the most responsive of employees. Still, he’d been surprisingly efficient, during these past months. Perhaps it was time to give him a small rise in salary.
Gunderson picked up their valises and followed Brothers up the steps, waiting as the door-bell clanged inside. The door came open, and Brothers stepped up, his right hand already out.
“We meet at last,” he said, for the man could not possibly be a servant, not in that suit. “Thank you, sir, for your longtime assistance to the cause.”
The man with the white streak in his hair replied, “Reverend Brothers, how do you do?” He took Brothers’ hand, although he still had his gloves on against the chill of the house. “Gunderson, you can leave those bags here. Come to the back, Mr Brothers, I have the fire going.”
Gunderson took the coat from his employer’s shoulders, and accepted Brothers’ hat and scarf.
When Gunderson came into the garden room, where the curtains were drawn and the air was cool despite the glowing gas fire, Brothers was well launched in his explanation of what had taken place over the past two weeks. He had claimed the chair nearest the heat, and allowed the other man to hand him coffee, accepting it as he might have from a servant. It was clear that Brothers considered himself the important person in this room, the other two mere worshippers at the altar of Thomas Brothers.
He poured out his heart to his two acolytes, blissfully unaware that heresy was in the offing.
Then he paused, and gave an embarrassed little laugh. “I have a confession to make, sir. I have to admit that I do not recall your name. I’m sure you told me, but I meet so many people, and our communications have been of the sort that names were not used.”
The man with the white streak in his hair had not, in fact, ever given Brothers his name. Nor had he shown himself to Brothers, although he’d gone to the man’s church once, early on, just to be sure that Brothers did not rave too outrageously in public. “Peter James West,” he said, putting out his still-gloved hand for another, ceremonial clasp.
“I am so glad to get this chance to talk with you, Mr West. You and Gunderson have been my faithful friends, my helpmeets, as it were, ever since I arrived in November. So I hope that you can help me find my way to understanding the events of this past week. I know we expected considerable results from the events of Friday, and I was at first deeply puzzled, even dispirited, at what appeared to be the failure of my sacrifice. However, as Testimony says, ‘The greater the sacrifice, the greater the energies loosed.’ I have had some days to meditate on it, and I should like to put before you my thoughts, to see if you are in agreement with my understanding. And also to get your thoughts about where I might go, since England looks to be a bit hot for me at the moment. I was thinking perhaps America, where they—”
“Brothers, I’m sure Gunderson is as tired of this nonsense as I am.”
Brothers gaped at him. “What was that you said?”
“You heard me. I put up with your claptrap because it made you such a useful tool. I brought you from Shanghai because of it.”
“You brought—for heaven’s sake, West, don’t be absurd!”
“Your name came to my attention last August, when I was searching for potential weak spots in a colleague. Your former wife provided a link—she’d married an artist in Shanghai, who I discovered was my colleague’s nephew. That made you useful.”
“Do you mean Damian Adler? The man has no family, he told me so himself.”
“Then he lied. However, we all know that you are in the habit of hearing only what you wish to hear, which makes your companionship, at times, most trying. So instead of your filling the air with verbiage, let me tell you a story.
“Certain government agencies keep themselves in the shadows. Some men regard this as an opportunity, others a responsibility. I work in such an agency, but I have an associate possessed by an overly grand and unfortunately archaic sense of his own importance. His presence is obstructive, for those of us concerned with this country’s ability to move into the Twentieth Century, but he is as thoroughly entrenched as Buckingham Palace itself.
“Three years ago, I discovered his flaw. Ironically enough, its very existence kept me from doing a thing about it. Then thirteen months ago, I found a wedge beneath his massive façade: I happened to see a letter he had received from Shanghai, addressing him as ‘uncle’ and referring to a service rendered years before. The nephew was writing to ask for my colleague’s assistance in establishing British citizenship, for himself and his new family.
“I immediately set into action a full investigation of this man and his wife. Which led me to you, with your small congregation of gullible spinsters and other neurasthenics. You received a letter in August from Sicily, suggesting that England was a rich but untapped bed of theological synthesis? You thought it came from Aleister Crowley, but it was, in fact, from me. I was prepared to offer further incentives, including a situation that would drive you from Shanghai under threat of arrest, but in the end, you readily seized on the idea of transplanting your harebrained theories to the land of your fathers, and were here before the Adlers arrived.
“I paved the way for you. I suggested where you could find an assistant such as Mr Gunderson here. I helped him arrange for your change of identity, your house, and hiring a church hall. And I stood by as your delusions took you over, and you began to slaughter various useless people in search of—whatever it was you imagined you would find.”
“I don’t—” Brothers said. “What do you … I mean to say, Why?”
“My … colleague has always appeared absolutely righteous, untouchably ethical, unquestionably moral. A god among lesser mortals. I’d thought at first I might use the bohemian morality of his nephew—a drugs party, perhaps, or an orgy—to lift the edges of that mask. All I needed was an event linked to my colleague that might plant a seed of doubt among his even more self-righteous superiors. One small doubt was all I needed, but you—good Lord, you gave me a harvest of them! I have to hand it to you, Brothers, I’d never expected to have it so easy—a few minor adjustments to the evidence, and the nephew became the chief suspect for Yolanda’s death. I owe you and your mad theories considerable thanks.”
“Mad! But, the Transformative—”
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Let me see your knife.”
“My—you mean the Tool?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“Mr Brothers, let me see it for a moment, please?”
The voice was so reasonable that Brothers automatically reached for his collar, to loosen his clothing and retrieve the holy object he wore always near his skin. He withdrew it from its soft, thick leather scabbard, dark with decades of his body’s sweat, and contemplated the wicked object. “I don’t know that you should touch it,” he told West. “It is an object of considerable power, and your hands are not—oh!”
The three men gazed at the ivory hilt protruding from Thomas Brothers’ shirt-front.
In no time at all, the energies of Thomas Brothers were freed to explore the Truths of the life beyond.