CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT Sir Francis Bryan was, during his lifetime, one of the most notorious men in the British Isles, it is unusual that he should have become one of the forgotten men of history, overlooked by virtually every modern encyclopedia and textbook.
Since my business is publishing, it was this fact, more than any other, that took me to England that winter on a strange quest. And before my long search was ended I was to find my very life threatened by a murder that took place over four hundred years ago …
The first thing I heard, as I left the big four-motored plane at London airport, was a small portable radio playing one of Gershwin’s old tunes, “A Foggy Day.” It was indeed a foggy day in London town, and for a time there’d been some doubt about our ability to land the plane. They told me such fog was common in London during the winter months, and I guess that was supposed to settle any complaints I might have voiced.
Actually, it had just turned December by the calendar; but in a city like London, where the annual mean temperature was only around 51 degrees, anything past the middle of November could be considered winter.
Had I been planning a sight-seeing visit to the tightly sprawling city on the Thames, I’m sure I’d have picked a better month than December. But this was a business trip; and though the whole thing had been my idea in the first place, I hadn’t much choice over the time of the year.
And so there I was, in London in the middle of a mild fog, bound for a meeting with a girl bearing the unusual name of Rain Richards.
I’d first seen the name at the bottom of a letter sent to our London office, and forwarded to me in New York. Since I was a married man approaching the age of forty, I had not even considered the fact that Miss Rain Richards might be young and beautiful and intelligent. But she was all three of these—and much more besides—as I realized the moment she’d opened the thick oak door of her house in the London suburbs.
She was tall and slim, with the stature of a fashion model, and yet there was something about her that hinted at a darkness beneath the surface. “I’ve been expecting you,” she said after I’d introduced myself. “Please come in.
She led me down a narrow, dusky hall into a large room that might have been a study. Three walls were hung with a variety of small arms—guns, revolvers and automatics of all types. I judged there to be close to a hundred of them in the collection.
“Yours?” I motioned toward the walls, never dreaming that they were.
“Yes,” she surprised me by saying. “Shooting is a hobby with me.”
“Interesting. Now, about this matter, Miss Richards …”
“You can call me Rain.”
“That really is your name? I could hardly believe it when I saw the letter.”
“I was born in India during the monsoon,” she said, by way of explanation. “I guess my folks had a sense of humor or something.”
From the looks of her, I would have guessed her age to be about twenty-seven, but it was hard to tell. I might have been five years off in either direction. She lit a cigarette as she talked, and casually blew smoke out her nostrils. “But you don’t want to hear about me, of course. You’ve come about my letter.”
“That’s correct. You were quite right in saying that we’d be interested in this book you mention. Suppose you tell me a little more about it.”
She relaxed deep into the chair and began to talk, with a soft toneless voice that flowed through the room like a glistening stream.
“You’ve heard of Sir Francis Bryan? Good! Very few people have, you know. I myself first became interested in Bryan while I was at your Columbia University. One day I came across a line in Milton which refers to him as the ‘Vicar of Hell,’ and that started me searching. It was a hard, long job, because most modern historians seem to have completely forgotten Bryan. But I finally found a few facts.”
She paused long enough to take another draw on her cigarette, and then continued. “Bryan lived during the first half of the sixteenth century, and he was a friend and advisor to Henry VIII. He was also a cousin of the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, and when she was put on trial, which resulted in her execution death in 1536, he deserted her in order to remain in Henry’s good graces. This deed caused Thomas Cromwell to refer to him in a letter as ‘the Vicar of Hell,’ a name that stuck with him until his death—though some historians credit Henry with first calling him that.”
“But what about this unsolved murder you mentioned in your letter?” I asked her.
“Oh yes. Well, in 1548, James Butler—an Irishman and the Ninth Earl of Ormonde—was poisoned while visiting here in London. Because they feared that his widow might marry an enemy of the crown, and thus strengthen his land-holdings, certain highly placed persons persuaded Francis Bryan, himself a widower, to woo and marry her—for the good of the country. Bryan succeeded in this last duty for his country, and he moved to Ireland to take over his new lands. However, he lived only two years, and died mysteriously in 1550.”
“So you have two mysterious deaths on your hands—James Butler and Bryan himself.”
“Yes,” she continued, in an earnest voice that he was beginning to like. “Now my researches have turned up further information, unknown thus far to any of the historians. Sometime during the seventeenth century, about a hundred years after these deaths, there was published a large volume which claimed to give a somewhat shocking solution to these deaths. The book was immediately suppressed by the government, and all copies were seized and destroyed.”
“Then what makes you think you can turn up a copy, three hundred years later?”
She rose from the chair and began striding back and forth across the room, her long legs moving quickly beneath the tight folds of her skirt. “Two weeks ago I received a letter from a man who’d heard of my quest. He offered to obtain a copy of the suppressed book for ten thousand pounds.”
I relaxed and felt for my own American cigarettes. “So that’s why you contacted a book publisher. You expect us to put up … what? Around $30,000? Put up around $30,000 for a book that might not even exist!”
“No; I simply want you to go with me to see this man. He refused even to see me unless I brought someone along who could offer that kind of money. Actually, ten thousand pounds isn’t very much for a book that may have been written by another Boswell.”
I sighed, and puffed on the cigarette. “I suppose not,” I admitted. “At least it’s worth talking to this fellow.” Actually, since I’d crossed the ocean on this mission already, I had no intention of going back empty-handed. But there was no reason for letting Rain Richards know that—at least not yet.
“Good,” she said; “let me call him.”
She placed a call to a number in the Kensington Gardens section of London, “At least that’s where he told me he was located,” and waited until a man’s voice answered. “Hello? Mister Hugo Carrier? This is Rain Richards. I have an interested party over from the States. Can we get together sometime tonight? Oh …well, how about first thing in the morning? Fine…Let me jot down the address…Good, we’ll see you around ten in the morning.”
She hung up and turned back to me. “He can’t see us until ten in the morning; will that be all right with you?”
“Guess it’ll have to be. I’ll stop by here for you around nine-thirty.”
“Fine,” she replied, the hint of a smile lingering on her face. “Till then…”
I left her in the doorway and walked back toward my hotel. With the coming of night, the fog seemed even thicker, but I found Waterloo Bridge after nearly an hour of walking and hailed a cab for the remaining distance.
Back in my hotel room, I found myself preoccupied with the memory of the girl named Rain. I took out a book and started to read, but it didn’t help. I found myself comparing her with my wife, Shelly, and presently I took out my wallet and gazed at the photo of Shelly—the one I’d taken at the beach some three years ago.
Finally, unable to settle the troubled thoughts of my own mind, I climbed into bed and dropped off into a sound sleep…
The morning dawned, bright and sunny, with only a slight mist to remind me of the fog of the night before. It was almost like a morning in New York, when the canyons of Manhattan seem like valleys for the flowering river of mist.
Now that I realized just how far Rain lived from the center of London, I took a cab the entire distance. She met me at the door, looking as young and cool as I remembered her. “Come in,” she greeted me. “I’m just doing a little shooting downstairs. You may watch, if you like.”
I followed her to the basement, where I found a sandbagged area, with targets on the far wall, that apparently served as her shooting gallery. On a shelf in front of her were a number of hand guns, and I recognized a U.S. Army .45 and .25 pocket automatic, and several foreign pistols.
“This is my favorite,” she said, choosing a tiny weapon from the shelf. “A .41 caliber Derringer. Watch!”
She brought the gun up to eye level with a single sweeping motion that my eye could hardly follow. There was a deafening roar as both of its twin barrels spouted flame, and I could see the bull’s eye of one of the targets fly away at the bullets’ impact.
“You’re quite a shot.”
“I had to be. I was in Burma when the Japanese invaded; they killed my folks.”
“I’m sorry…”
“I’m over it now,” she said. “I’m back in jolly old England, where everybody’s respectable; and the war seems a long ways back. I suppose I’m lucky that my family had money back here, so I can devote myself to foolish projects like searching for lost manuscripts, and such.”
As she spoke, she traded the Derringer for a tiny Colt .25 automatic and let go with five quick shots at another target. We walked over to examine it together. Four of the bullets had circled the bull’s eye; the fifth was off to one side.
“That should have been in the center,” she complained. “Well, what say we go to see Mister Carrier? It’s nearly ten now.”
I agreed and she put away the guns. “Have to clean them later—that’s one part of it I don’t like. Here, I’ll take the Derringer with me; never can tell when it’ll come in handy.”
She dropped it into her purse and I raised my eyebrows lightly. “Do you have a permit for that?”
“The bobbies don’t carry guns around here. Somebody has to have one, or there’s no telling what would happen.”
I shrugged and followed her out. The trip to Hugo Carrier’s tiny flat on the other side of London was made in a swift little MG with Rain at the wheel. It was my first ride in one of them, but it seemed to handle well under her command.
Presently we came to a halt before a run-down block of apartments off Bayswater Road. “This is the address he gave me; he’s on the second floor.”
We climbed the shadowy stairs to the first landing, and in the dim light of a single naked bulb read the names on the doors. “Here it is,” I said. “Hugo Carrier.”
I knocked at the door and waited, but no one came. I knocked again.
“It’s only five minutes after ten,” Rain said. “He must be here.”
“Maybe he’s still asleep.” I tried the knob of the door, more as a reflex action than for any other reason. It swung open at my touch, and in that instant I already knew what we would find inside.
But I was unprepared for the horror that met our eyes. For there, pinned to the opposite wall of the room, was the body of a man. His arms were spread in a cross, and the hands pinned to the wall with long arrows through each palm. A third arrow protruded from the man’s chest.
Behind me, Rain Richards screamed…
The room seemed filled with the quiet men from Scotland Yard, popping their flashbulbs and dusting for fingerprints. We told our story for the tenth time to the inspector, who seemed to be in charge.
“You hadn’t previously met this man, Miss Richards?” he wanted to know.
“No,” she shook her head. “I’d only talked to him on the phone.”
“And have you any knowledge of this mark on the floor?” He was pointing to something that Rain and I had missed in the first shock of our discovery. It was a sort of pentagram, in a circle, drawn in red on the floor in front of Carrier’s body. There was no doubt that the design had been drawn with the dead man’s blood…
They took us down to the Yard for further questioning, but they seemed to be getting nowhere. Presently we were introduced to still another questioner, an Inspector Ashly.
As soon as I heard the name, something clicked in my mind, like the tumblers of a safe. “Ashly! Inspector Ashly!” I exclaimed. “Simon Ark told me about you once.”
Ashly’s face became alert at the mention of that name. “You know Simon Ark?”
“Very well; I met him years ago back in the States. He told me of the odd happening at Devonshire a few years back.”
Ashly was interested now. “I sometimes thought it was all a bad dream; I doubted, somehow, that the man ever really existed. It’s certainly a relief to talk to someone else who knows him.”
Ashly was a short man with a deep, booming voice, and I well remembered Simon Ark’s tale of their adventures together in the snows of Devonshire. He was much as Simon had described him, and in that moment I knew that the odd murder of Hugo Carrier was another case that called for Simon’s special talents.
“But did you know that Simon Ark was in England?” I asked him.
“No! Where is he?”
“I have no idea, but he left New York over a month ago. If we could find him, I’m sure he could help us on this case.”
Inspector Ashly frowned. “He’s not a detective, though. And there hardly seem to be any supernatural elements in this case…”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I replied. “You’ve probably heard that a pentagram was drawn in blood on the floor of the room. Isn’t that an old symbol of witchcraft and satanism?”
Ashly struck the table with his fist. “I believe you’re right. And if so, we can build up a newspaper story that’s sure to attract Simon Ark if he’s anywhere around.”
After that, we left the buildings of New Scotland Yard, and walked through the chill December air toward Westminster Abbey. Whitehall was buzzing with midday activity, and before we’d gone two blocks there was already a newsboy shouting about the “weird murder in Kensington.”
We walked on, aimlessly, until at last Rain asked, “Who is this Simon Ark you both seemed to know, anyway? Is he a detective?”
“No,” I replied, searching for the right words to explain the fantastic story. “He’s perhaps the wisest man in the world, a man with a past that may date back to the beginning of the Christian era. He’s been searching the world for a long time, perhaps for centuries, in hopes of meeting the devil in combat.”
“But…are you trying to kid me? Is he some sort of crazy man, or what?”
A double-decked bus rumbled by us, and we turned west on Victoria Street. Behind us, Big Ben was just tolling the hour of one o’clock.
“Whatever he is, he’s not crazy,” I told her. “Actually, the Comte de Saint-Germain claimed to have lived for four thousand years, and it’s possible that he did. And the German physician, Paracelsus, is once supposed to have fought bodily with Satan. Certainly Simon Ark’s story is no more fantastic than theirs.”
“But who is he? Where did he come from?”
“That’s something nobody knows. My own guess is that he was once a Coptic priest, back in the early centuries after Christ; but he never says much about it. He told me once, though, that he knew Saint Augustine, personally—which would make him well over 1,500 years old.”
Rain laughed at that and gripped my arm with hers. “I was beginning to think you were serious, but you’re just having some fun with me.”
“Believe me, I am serious.”
“Well, then you’ll have to show me this man and let me judge for myself. I saw many unusual things in India, but never a man who claimed to be over 1,500 years old.”
A breeze somewhat cooler than the rest hit us then, and she pushed closer to me. “Let’s get inside somewhere, out of this confounded cold air.”
“What we should be doing is trying to find that book Carrier had for us,” I told her. “If the book was the cause of his murder, it must be certainly worth having.”
She was excited now, with the hint of intrigue in the air. “You mean that you really think there might be a connection between the book and his murder?”
“It’s certainly possible; we should have searched the place for it.”
“Oh, the police would have found it if it were there,” she replied. “It’s a folio, you know. Hardly the thing you hide behind a picture or anything.”
“It does seem odd, though, that if all the copies were destroyed three hundred years ago, Carrier should come up with one now. Maybe the whole thing was a swindle of some sort.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “He seemed only interested in receiving payment for the book.”
We’d reached Victoria Station by this time, and we decided to hail a cab for the long trip back to Rain’s place, rather than return for the MG. Even the taxi trip across London was slow at this time of day, and it was nearly two when we reached her house.
“Let me bring in the mail,” she said. “Not that there’s ever…” She paused and ripped open an envelope that had been addressed in a quick, almost illegible scrawl.
“Look!” she exclaimed, “It’s from Carrier.”
“What? Let me see that!” I took it away from her shaking hands and read: I may not be alive tomorrow when you come. If they get me first, I will at least have cheated them of their secret. The book you seek is titled The Worship of Satan, and together with accounts of diverse crimes of the 16th and 17th centuries, it also includes the forbidden rituals of devil worship. The only copy still in existence in London is in an ancient dwelling at 65 Crashaw Place, behind the Blue Pig Pub. You will find a room there which was once a priest’s hole, during the Elizabethan persecution of the Catholics. The book is in this room, though to insure payment of the agreed sum, I cannot tell you more as to its location. I sincerely hope that my fears will prove groundless. Hugo Carrier.”
She had been reading it over my shoulder, and she said, “What’s all this about devil worship? What has that got to do with Sir Francis Bryan?”
“I don’t know, Rain; I don’t know. I just hope that we succeed in contacting Simon Ark.”
“Maybe you were right about this all being some sort of gigantic swindle.”
I frowned and shook my head. “He sounds like an educated man, which doesn’t mean he might not have been planning a swindle—but the fact of his murder seems to bear out his honesty. In fact, he’s one of those men I sort of wish I’d met during his life.”
She lit a cigarette and dropped the letter on a table. “Are you sorta glad you met me?”
I raised my eyebrows to look at her, but she’d already gone into the kitchen in search of drinks for us. I ignored the question and said, “We should probably go to this place he mentions and look around. We might be able to turn up the book.”
She returned with two tall frosted glasses. “I’m beginning to think it’s not worth all the trouble. After all, we might end up with arrows in us, too.”
“It’s certainly a weird business,” I agreed as I sipped my drink. “Say, these are pretty good. What’s in them?”
“A secret love potion,” she murmured with a grin; “let’s have a little music.”
“I’m a married man, you know,” I told her, trying unsuccessfully to keep it sounding light.
She came to me then, with the radio behind her playing something soft by Mantovani, and the clatter of passing traffic drifting in from the street. And it was as I’d feared it would be since I first met her.
I tried to think about Shelly, and our little house in Westchester; but gradually the memories faded from my brain, and I was just a man of flesh and desire…
Later, too long later, as night drifted slowly in from the east, we left the house and started out for the address in Crashaw Place. In the night’s already deepening shadows, an occasional bird glided down from above, and it might have been a bat or a gull. I only knew it was a moving, living creature up there in the dark, and maybe I wished I was up there too.
“It’s not too far,” Rain told me, in a voice that made even a casual remark into a hint of intimacy. “We can follow the river all the way.”
The Thames was winding on its never-ending journey to the sea, and we followed along its banks, the whole of London seemed to sleep, even at this early hour. It was as if we were alone in the city, alone without the cluster of crowds and the rumble of civilization.
I paused a moment to light a cigarette, and it was then I saw two men moving in on us. “Rain!” I shouted. “Look out!”
She whirled quickly and a blow from the first man’s blackjack caught her on the shoulder. I hurled myself at him, and we went down in a heap. I tried to see where our second attacker was, but the first one was keeping me busy.
Finally I broke free and grabbed up Rain’s hand. “Come on,” I managed to shout, dragging her with me down a flight of stone steps that led to the water’s edge.
I could feel them behind us as we hurtled down the stairs, and at the bottom step I felt strong fingers of steel tear at my throat. I lost my grip on Rain and went tumbling backwards, the hulking attacker on top of me. I struggled to free myself from those murderous fingers, but already I saw one hand leave my throat and come up with a glistening knife.
“Die, damn you,” the raspy voice squeaked, and in that instant I thought I had reached the end of everything. But suddenly a roar split the air and his face seemed to fly apart before me. His dying grip relaxed on my neck, and I saw the little smoking Derringer in Rain’s steady hand.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” she sobbed; “but there was no time for a good shot.”
“Don’t worry. Where’s the other one now?”
“Up there!” She pointed to the top of the steps, where the second assassin stood outlined against the dark sky.
“Duck! He’s got a gun!” I pulled her down just as the man fired.
“It’s a .45,” she told me between gasps. “And my gun is empty.”
I glanced fearfully at the dim river a few feet away. Can you swim?
“A little, but we’d never make it to the water.”
“We’ll have to try. Come on.” He saw us the instant we made our move, and I saw his gun hand move around for a second shot at us.
Then suddenly he seemed to falter, and for the first time I saw the dim figure in the darkness behind him. The .45 slipped from his hand and clattered to the concrete below; then he followed it, diving over in a graceful arc that thudded his body against the very edge of the bank and then hurled it into the black river.
We stood rooted to the spot, looking up at the dim figure who moved down the steps toward us. And then I recognized the tall, heavy-set features of Simon Ark…
“Simon! You certainly arrived just in time. How did you ever find us?”
He smiled slightly, as he always did, and replied, “There are ways. I see you already disposed of one of them.”
We looked down at the bloody face of the man Rain’s bullets had killed. “Luckily for me,” I said. “This is Rain Richards, a most unusual girl, and a crack shot with a pistol.”
Simon Ark grunted a greeting and bent to examine the body. “Do you think this is connected in any way with the death of Hugo Carrier last night?” he asked us.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but Rain received a letter from Carrier this noon. He told us of a pub where something was hidden, and we were on our way there now.”
“Hidden,” he repeated, suddenly interested. “What is it you seek?”
“A book,” I told him. “A book called The Worship of Satan, written during the seventeenth century, but banned by the government, which destroyed all copies. The book supposedly gives the solution to the 1548 murder of Sir James Butler and the mysterious death two years later of Sir Francis Bryan.”
“Sir Francis Bryan,” Simon Ark muttered. “The Vicar of Hell…”
“You’ve heard of him,” Rain said, sounding surprised.
“I’ve heard of him…”
Simon Ark was the same as when I’d last seen him, back in the States a few months earlier. He still had the mysterious quality about him that sometimes made you wonder at the things he said. In that moment, I felt certain he’d known Francis Bryan personally, somehow in the dark past.
“Your old friend Inspector Ashly is working on the case,” I told him.
“I saw his name in the papers; he’s a brilliant man. I’ll call him now and tell him what happened here. Then we can be on our way to this pub you mentioned.”
“You’re coming with us?” Rain asked.
“Certainly. The Worship of Satan is a most unusual book. If there is a copy still remaining, I would like to see it.”
We had climbed the steps from the river now, and in the distance I could see a police car, apparently called by some alert neighbor, bearing down upon us.
“Simon, do you really think this devil worship business is tied in with Carrier’s murder?”
He gazed out across the river, as if looking at something far away which only he could see, and then he answered. “In the year 1100, King William II was slain by an arrow in the New Forest. His death was part of a human sacrifice of a cult of devil worshipers. Today they still worship, and kill, in much the same way.”
His words sent a chill through me, and I put my arm around Rain’s slim shoulders. Then the police joined us, and Simon spoke quickly to them, in that old manner of his which could somehow convince anyone of anything. He wrote a brief message to Chief Inspector Ashly and then we departed.
“I believe this pub should be our first stop,” he said. “Do you know the way?”
Rain nodded and led us down a dark alley, away from the river. “I feel better now with you two strong men to protect me,” she said.
“I doubt if they’ll bother us further,” Simon Ark comforted her. “They must have learned from Hugo Carrier that he’d sent you the letter.”
A slight mist was beginning to gather in the streets, and I suspected we were in for more fog. “Doesn’t the fog ever lift around here?” I mumbled.
“This is the season for it,” Simon Ark said. “London has been foggy in December for as long as I can remember. The Fall is the worst time for it.”
Presently, we reached Crashaw Place and ahead of us we could make out the weather-beaten sign of the Blue Pig, “By Appointment To His Majesty King George V.” It was a rundown place that might have looked better thirty years earlier, under George’s reign. Now it was badly in need of a paint job, and I couldn’t help thinking that a bit of good old American neon would have pepped up the swaying sign.
Inside, a few obviously regular customers lined the bar, and turned as we entered, in mild expectation of seeing some of their nightly drinking companions. Rain was the only girl in the place, but none of them seemed to mind. We ordered three beers because that seemed to be the thing everyone was drinking, and carried them to a table.
Presently, when Simon Ark was certain he’d identified a stout, balding gentleman as the owner, he rose and walked over to him. “Pardon me, sir, but I’m a visitor in your country…”
“Oh,” the stout man said. “Well, we’re always happy to entertain foreigners at the Blue Pig, sir. My name is George Kerrigan. I’m the owner of this here place.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kerrigan. I’m Simon Ark, and these are my friends. We’ve been told that the rear of this building dates back to the seventeenth century, and we’re very anxious to examine it further.”
“Glad to be of service,” Kerrigan smiled at us. “Yes, sir, this here’s just about the only old building like it still standing. You know, there was that God-awful fire back in 1666, and it just about burned down the whole damned town.” He spoke as if he’d witnessed it personally, with just the right degree of awe.
“We understand,” Simon Ark continued, “that you even have a room where Catholic priests hid during the persecutions.”
“That we have, sir—or at least them’s the stories what goes with the old place. Come on back this way and I’ll show you.”
We followed him down a musty corridor which led into the rear of the pub. Here, in a house that was obviously much older than the front, he paused to unlock a door and throw it open before us. “Haven’t been in here myself in a good many months,” he told us. “Wait a minute while I get some candles.”
“No electricity?” Rain asked, somewhat startled.
“Not in this room, miss; we never use it, so we never bothered to wire it.”
He returned in a moment with a multi-branched candlestick held high, and led us into the room. It was no more, really, than an enclosed space some twenty feet square, without windows, and with only the one door through which we’d entered. An ancient, musty smell hung over the place, suggesting that even the air we were now breathing might have been several hundred years old. The walls were covered with a fantastic blaze of colored wallpaper, which even now was just beginning to fade. The only bit of furniture in the room was a huge old carved table, some ten feet long, which stood against the opposite wall. Its top had been covered with newspapers, apparently to preserve the finish.
Kerrigan was busy telling us the history of the room, from its priesthole days through the reigns of various kings and queens, but I noticed that Simon Ark was far more concerned with the ancient table. He brushed aside the dusty newspapers, which I noticed were some four weeks old, and smiled slightly when he came upon a shallow drawer in the table’s side. But the smile faded when he found the drawer empty.
I, meanwhile, had strolled over to one of the walls and was trying to decipher some patterns from the faded rainbows of color. But the paper seemed to be designed without any purpose, a weird reminder of seventeenth-century England.
Simon Ark was on his knees, examining the bottom of the long table now; but if Kerrigan thought this odd, he made no comment. He had trapped Rain in a corner and was continuing his brief history of England. “You know, miss, George III himself once visited this very pub, near the end of his reign. Of course there are those who say he was crazy at the time, but he was certainly a friendly one. My great-grandfather used to tell me about those days when I was very small…”
“Pardon me,” Simon Ark interrupted, resuming an upright position. “But if this room was once a hiding place for priests, I’m sure it has more than one exit. Suppose you show us the secret way out.”
Kerrigan never blinked an eye, but simply led us to one of the room’s corners as if he’d intended to show it to us all along. “Here it is,” he said, and gave a yank to an almost-invisible metal ring set flush with the floor. A well-oiled trap door rose out of the floor and we peered down into the darkness below.
“It simply leads to the cellar,” Kerrigan explained. “I don’t even store anything down there anymore. Too many rats.” He lowered the candles a bit so we could see that the cellar was truly empty.
“Well, thank you very much for the tour,” Simon told him. “I think that’s about all we wanted to see.”
He relocked the room behind us and led the way back to the pub’s main room. “Have a beer on me before you go,” he told us. “And stop by again sometime.”
“Thanks,” Rain replied. “We will.”
Soon afterwards, we departed and headed back through the gathering fog to Rain’s house. When we were a safe distance away from the Blue Pig, I asked Simon, “What do you think about it? Any idea where the book might be hidden?”
“I have ideas about many things,” he told us; “I even have ideas about the odd-looking stains on that tabletop.”
“Stains?” I wondered. “I didn’t notice any.”
Simon Ark grunted. “In any event, we have much more here than simply the mystery of the Vicar of Hell. Although certainly the death of Carrier suggests that the missing book is involved.”
By the time we reached Rain’s place, the fog had closed in completely, and visibility was down to some fifty yards. We followed her in, on her invitation to make some coffee, and settled down around the fireplace.
I tossed a couple of logs on, and before long the room was alive with the glow of leaping flames. Simon Ark settled back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began to talk.
“Although most history books merely imply that the one-eyed Sir Francis Bryan earned the title of ‘Vicar of Hell’ by deserting his cousin, Anne Boleyn, when she needed him most, it seems probable there were further reasons. And in a period when witch cults and black magic were running wild throughout England, perhaps it is not too fantastic to suspect that Bryan himself was involved in one of these cults. Certainly that, more than anything else, would have earned him the odd title.”
Rain arrived with the steaming coffee and passed it to us. “But what about the murder of James Butler in 1548? And Bryan’s own mysterious death two years later?”
“There are two possible solutions which immediately present themselves. Bryan himself could have poisoned James Butler in order to marry his wife, Joan. Then, when Joan discovered this, she herself killed her husband’s murderer.”
Rain sipped her coffee and lit a cigarette. “And I suppose you’ll say the other possibility is that Joan killed both of her husbands.”
Simon Ark smiled and nodded. “I admit that was my thought.” And then, half to himself, he added, “I only regret that I never had the honor of meeting the Vicar of Hell…”
Rain shot me a glance at that, but I was used to such remarks from Simon’s lips. I ignored it and asked instead, “Do you really think this book, The Worship of Satan, has something in it about Bryan?”
“Very possible, or else there would have been no reason for the government to ban it at the time; books on devil worship and the like were quite common. From the size of it, I would say it must also have included several large illustrations.”
We talked further on the subject, but presently, as midnight drew near, Simon Ark departed, promising to call us in the morning. “It might be a good idea to get some sleep,” he cautioned me. “Tomorrow might be a long day.”
“Why?”
“Because there will be a full moon tomorrow night,” he said, and then he was gone, into the fog.
I came back into Rain’s living room, puzzling over these words. I looked at a calendar and saw that there would indeed be a full moon on the following night. “What do you suppose he meant by that?” Rain asked me.
“I don’t know. But let’s forget about all that for now”. I walked over and sat next to her on the couch.
“Should we forget about your wife back in New York, too?”
I didn’t answer her.
Instead, my hand went out and found hers, and I drew her close to me in the flickering light from the fireplace.
Simon Ark was at my hotel room before noon on the following morning, and I was surprised to see that Inspector Ashly was with him. “Good morning,” I greeted them. “What’s up?”
“Everything, from what Simon’s been telling me,” Ashley said. “You fellows must have had a pretty busy night, shooting up would-be killers and such.”
“We’re lucky we’re even alive,” I said; “Simon arrived just in time last night.”
“He told me. He also had me check on the two dead men, and I find they both frequented the Blue Pig pub.”
“That figures,” I said, lighting a before-breakfast cigarette. “There’s something funny about that place.”
Simon Ark chuckled. “The understatement of the year, certainly. If you had been a little more observant, I’m sure you would have come to the same conclusions that I did about the Blue Pig, and its mysterious back room.”
“And just what are your conclusions?” I asked, aware that he’d already outlined his ideas to Inspector Ashly.
“I’m convinced that a Black Mass, and various other ceremonies of Satanism, are being carried on at the Blue Pig, in that very room. And I’m further convinced that there’s another meeting of the group being held this evening.”
“I’ll admit that I suspected something funny, but I think now you’re going a little over board, aren’t you, Simon?”
“He’s got me convinced,” Ashly boomed out in that deep voice which still amazed me. “Wait until you’ve heard the whole thing.”
I settled back and sighed. “O.K., Simon. Go ahead and convince me.”
“Well,” he began, “the arrow murder of Hugo Carrier hinted at some sort of ritual crime; and, as I already told you, this type of slaying has been used before by devil worshipers. The attack on you and Rain proved that Carrier’s murder was caused by his knowledge of the book, The Worship of Satan. The people who killed him did so because they feared he would reveal the location of the book. Therefore the book itself, or its location, or both, are dangerous to them.”
“All right so far,” I admitted. “But why does that make it the Blue Pig?”
“First, the men who attacked you were from the Blue Pig. Second, Carrier gave that as the location of the book. Third, George Kerrigan lied to us when we visited him last night.”
“Lied? About what?”
“He said he never stored things in the cellar, yet the secret trap door was well-oiled. And he said he hadn’t been in the room in months, yet the newspapers covering the table were four weeks old.”
“So I’ll agree he lied. But why does it have to be devil worship? Maybe he just runs a card game in that room.”
Simon Ark closed his eyes once more. “Those were bloodstains on the table top,” he said very quietly. “It was used as an altar, for animal—or perhaps human-sacrifices…”
The three of us were silent for a moment. It was hard for me to believe that such a thing could happen in twentieth-century London. And yet I knew, from past experiences with Simon Ark, that there were things happening every day beyond human knowledge. It was sometimes as if a vast alternate world of evil were operating all the time, giving us an occasional glimpse into its horrible scenes.
“But why?” I asked. “Why, of all places, should they choose an ancient pub like the Blue Pig?”
“Because it was once a hiding place for priests, a place where actual Mass was celebrated, the next best thing to a church. And because it later became the resting place of the only existing copy of The Worship of Satan.”
“Horrible…” Inspector Ashly muttered. “Now tell us how you’re so certain they’ll meet again tonight.”
“Many strange things happen when the moon is full. Cults of devil worshipers do not necessarily, or always, meet at the time of the full moon; but when I noticed that the newspapers covering the table were just four weeks old—dated on the first day of last month’s full moon—I guessed this was the time of their previous meeting. Thus, since there is another full moon beginning tonight, I believe we’ll find them there again.”
Ashly rose to his feet. “My men will be ready to close in whenever you give the word, Simon. I know from the last time we met that your theories are usually correct.”
I lit another cigarette and began to think about the breakfast I was missing. “Since when is it against the law to carry on religious rites in a private dwelling?” I asked.
Ashly bristled slightly at my question. “This isn’t a religion; and you seem to have forgotten the poor devil they left pinned to the wall with three arrows in him.”
“I guess I did for a moment,” I admitted, feeling slightly subdued. “So—what’s our plan of action?”
“The Inspector and his men will surround the place, early in the evening, and await my signal to move in,” Simon Ark explained. “I will be in the basement, under that trap door, and you can join me if you wish.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I told him. “If you’re going to find Satan himself in that room, I want to be along, too.”
Ashly sighed. “I believe you two are crazy to risk discovery like that, but I know better than to try arguing with Simon here.”
“It might be best,” Simon said, “if you could get a gun from somewhere, though. Could you borrow one from Rain?”
“Sure could.”
“Don’t let me hear anything about this,” Ashly muttered. “In London, even the police have a difficult time getting permission to carry guns.”
“Well, you’d better have them tonight,” Simon Ark told him. “These people are very close to insanity, all of them; when cornered, they might do anything.”
After that, they left me, and then I was alone with my thoughts of the night to come. And my thoughts of Rain and of my own house in Westchester, and of Shelly who waited there for me. For the first time I wondered if I would ever go back to her…
The cab carried me through Piccadilly Circus, past the neon signs now darkened in the light of day where Gordon’s Gin and Wrigley’s Gum fought each other for the customers’ attention. And presently I was back at Rain’s place in the suburbs. “Hello, again,” she greeted me at the door. “Have a good night’s sleep?”
“Fine.” I quickly outlined the details of Simon Ark’s revelations. “How’s chances of borrowing a gun till tomorrow?”
“Sure,” she said, leading me to a cabinet. “Which one do you want?”
“I used a .45 in the Military Police. That’s the only one I’m sure of, so I’d better take one of those.”
She handed me the heavy automatic, together with an empty clip and a box of bullets. I shoved seven of them into the clip and then rammed it into the butt. “Thanks a lot, Rain. I’ll have it back in the morning.”
“Let me come with you,” she said then. “I’ll go crazy sitting home here, thinking about it.”
“Sorry; that’s out of the question. Ashly’s even worried with Simon and I on the scene. But I’ll call you as soon as it’s over.”
“Is that a promise?”
“That’s a promise.” I kissed her lightly on the lips and then went out into the street, the automatic hanging heavy in my topcoat pocket.
I took time out to cable the New York office that I expected to obtain the missing book that evening, and close the deal. Then I went to a middle-class bar in downtown London and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to think about nothing at all.
When I got back to the hotel I found an air mail letter from Shelly awaiting me. I tossed it on the bed without opening it.
I wondered, for just a second, if possibly I was going to the Blue Pig that night in some subconscious hope that death would solve my problem for me.
Because now I was convinced that I loved Rain Richards…
The basement of the Blue Pig Pub was a surprisingly easy place to enter, and it took Simon and me only a few moments to locate the door to the old cellar and place ourselves beneath the trap door.
I took the .45 from my pocket, and jacked a bullet into the chamber; after that we waited.
And waited…
Presently, when my wristwatch glowed 11:30, and I had just about given up hope, we heard some movement in the room above. At almost the same instant we caught the sound of people entering through the basement, as we had come.
We took shelter behind some musty packing cases, and watched several men and a few women entering the room through the trap door. Finally, when the sounds from above told us the ceremony had begun, we resumed our post beneath the door.
Simon Ark edged it up a fraction of an inch, and through the opening I saw a scene I’ll never forget. There, behind the long table, stood the white-robed figure of George Kerrigan, his arms outstretched toward the ceiling. On either end of the table burned dozens of long black candles, sending their dancing flames over the kneeling figures of some twenty men and women who nearly filled the small room.
The brightly colored wallpaper had been covered in spots by hanging pictures of basilisks and other mythical monsters, and behind Kerrigan I saw a statue of Jupiter, the ancient god. “Like the one the pagans erected on Calvary, after Christ’s death,” Simon Ark whispered. “We are in the midst of evil here.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” I asked; “let’s go!”
“Be patient. There is still more to be seen.”
The kneeling figures above were swaying back and forth now, as if under the influence of some narcotic. And a low murmuring chant was slowly building up among them.
“It’s horrible,” I said, half to myself.
Simon Ark let the trap door fall into place and he said, very quietly, “Perhaps, though, the evil up there is no greater than the evil in your own heart.”
“What?” I muttered. “What do you mean?”
“Who is to say that the sin of adultery is any less serious than the sin of devil worship?” he asked, quietly. “Certainly they are both works of Satan.”
“Are you crazy, Simon? Why pick a time like this to give me a lecture on morality?”
“It is as good a time as any, my friend. I came here searching for the devil, and perhaps I have found him in the least likely of all places—inside of you!”
The chanting from above had grown louder, and it pounded at my eardrums as I listened to Simon’s words. “No…” I mumbled. “No…”
“Leave this woman, and go home to Shelly, before it is too late.”
“I…”
Suddenly, the chanting above turned to shouting, and there was a rush of movement. I lifted the trap door again and saw a startling sight. “It’s Rain! They’ve got Rain!”
Simon Ark was at my side; and he, too, saw the struggling girl in the grip of two strong men. “She must have sneaked in, and Kerrigan recognized her. The little fool!”
And I saw that the white-robed Kerrigan had already produced his deadly bow and arrows. His right hand was drawing back on the bow string and the trembling arrow was pointing through the flickering stillness at Rain’s struggling body.
I waited no longer. While my left hand slammed up on the trap door, my right hand was already bringing the heavy .45 into firing position.
George Kerrigan half-turned toward me, and the look of utter surprise was spreading over his face when my bullet tore into his shoulder.
After that, it was chaos…
I came out of it with a bloody nose and a torn sleeve, thanks mostly to the prompt arrival of Inspector Ashly and his men. My bullet had completely shattered Kerrigan’s shoulder, and he was unconscious by the time the ambulance arrived. His followers were quickly rounded up and led away, and soon only Simon and Ashly and Rain and I remained in the room.
“That bow and arrow should be enough to convict them of Carrier’s murder,” Ashly said. “I only hope the newspapers don’t get hold of this devil worship angle, or I fear they’ll have you stripped nude and about to be sacrificed on the altar, Miss Richards. These reporters are great at building up a sensational story.”
“I’m just happy to be alive,” Rain answered. “Right now I don’t care what they say about me. When I saw that arrow pointing at my chest, all I could remember was poor Carrier pinned to the wall.”
“You owe your life to your friends here,” Ashly told her.
“I know. Now I just wish Simon would tell us where the book is hidden so we could all go home.”
“That’s right, Simon,” I agreed. “Where is this elusive copy of The Worship of Satan?”
He sighed, and motioned around the room, now brightly lit by several portable police spotlights. “Right where it’s always been, my friends; it should have been obvious to you from the beginning. After all, why was it necessary to kill Carrier to keep him from telling its location? Why didn’t they simply move it to a new hiding place?”
“That’s right,” I agreed. “Why didn’t they move it?”
“Because they couldn’t; because it was the one part of this room that could not easily be disposed of or transported to another place.”
We looked around at the long table, and at the pictures, and at the statue, but we saw nothing.
“Where?” Rain asked simply.
Simon Ark closed his eyes. “During the seventeenth century, when a book was banned by a government censor, it was not always burned. If the book was a large one, like a folio, the pages were damasked into wallpaper…”
“Wallpaper!”
“Certainly. The text was blotted out by overprinting with a heavy design in bright colors, and it was used for wallpaper. Here,” he motioned around the room at the multi-colored walls, “here is the last remaining copy of The Worship of Satan, and with it is the final secret of the Vicar of Hell…”
After that, much later, I walked with Rain Richards through the mist of a cold London morning…
“I’ll get the University Laboratory to work on that wallpaper right away,” she said, “but it’ll still be months before the original printing is readable.”
“I know,” I said, “but somehow it isn’t as important as it was a few days ago. Whether Bryan was a murderer himself, or whether he was merely the second victim of his murderous wife, is something that need not concern us, really. The punishment for the crimes has been meted out long ago by a much higher court than ours.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed reluctantly. “It’s only too bad that it had to cause so much trouble and death.”
We walked further in silence, and then I said, “You know, it’s all over between us…”
“Yes, I know…”
“Simon Ark talked to me tonight, while we waited in that basement.”
“He’s quite a man, isn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose he is.”
“Remember me to your wife.”
“Yes,” I said, but we both knew that I never would.
“Goodbye…”
“Goodbye, Rain…”
I watched her as she walked away into the morning mist. I watched her until she was out of sight and then I went back to my hotel room.
The air mail letter from Shelly was still on the bed; I tore it open, and settled down in a chair to read it…