Atlantis And Other Places Part 29

Braced by such satire, Dr. Walton hurried off to reclaim the luggage. Karpinski laughed and then did his best to pretend he hadn't. Even the Preacher smiled. After Dr. Walton returned, the Preacher led them out of the station. The spectacle of two well-dressed Englishmen and a uniformed sergeant of police following a sweeper in faded denim overalls might have seemed outlandish but for the dignity with which the Preacher carried himself: he acted the role of a man who deserved to be followed, and acted it so well that he certainly seemed to believe it himself.

So did the inhabitants of Thetford who witnessed the small procession. None of them appeared to be in the least doubt as to the Preacher's ident.i.ty. "G.o.d bless you!" one man called, lifting his derby. "Holy sir!" another said. A woman dropped a curtsy. Another rushed up, kissed the Preacher's hand, and then hurried away again, her face aglow. Sergeant Karpinski had not been mistaken when he alluded to the devotion the older man inspired.

The Preacher did not lead them to a House of Universal Devotion, as Dr. Walton had expected he would. In fact, he walked past not one but two such houses, halting instead at the walk leading up to what seemed an ordinary home in Thetford: one-story clapboard, painted white. "I doubt we shall be disturbed here," he murmured.

Several large, hard-looking individuals materialized as if from nowhere, no doubt to make sure the Preacher and his companions were not disturbed. None was visibly armed; the way Sergeant Karpinski's mouth tightened suggested that a lack of appearances might be deceiving.

Inside, the home proved comfortably furnished; it might have been a model of middle-cla.s.s Victorian respectability. A smiling and attractive young woman brought a tray of food into the parlor, stayed long enough to light the gas lamps and dispel the gloom, and then withdrew once more. "A handmaiden of the Spirit?" Athelstan Helms inquired.

"As a matter of fact, yes," the Preacher said. "Those who impute any degree of licentiousness to the relationship have no personal knowledge of it."

Dr. Walton was halfway through a roast-beef sandwich made piquant with mustard and an Atlantean spice he could not name before realizing that was not necessarily a denial of the imputation. "Why, the randy old devil!" he muttered, fortunately with his mouth full.

Helms finished his own sandwich and a gla.s.s of lager before asking, "And what of those who impute to you the instigation of a campaign of homicides against backsliders from the House of Universal Devotion and critics of its doctrine and policies?" Sergeant Karpinski raised a tawny eyebrow, perhaps in surprise at the detective's frankness.

That frankness did not faze the Preacher. "Well, what of them?" he said. "We lack the barristers and solicitors to pursue every slanderous loudmouth and every libeler who grinds out his hate-filled broadsheets or spreads his prejudice in some weekly rag."

"You deny any connection, then?" Helms persisted.

"I am a man of G.o.d," the Preacher said simply.

"So was the Hebrew king who exulted, 'Moab is my wash-pot, '" Helms said. "So was the Prophet Mohammed. So were the Crusaders who cried, 'G.o.d wills it!' as they killed. Regretfully, I must point out that being a man of G.o.d does not preclude violence-on the contrary, in fact."

"Let me make myself plainer, then: I have never murdered anyone, nor did any of the murders to which you refer take place at my instigation," the Preacher said. "Is that clear enough to let us proceed from there?"

"Clear? Without a doubt. It is admirably clear," Helms said, though Dr. Walton noted-and thought it likely his friend did as well-that the Preacher had not denied instigating all murders, only those the detective had mentioned. Helms continued, "You will acknowledge a distinction between clarity and truth?"

"Generally, yes. In this instance, no," the Preacher said.

"Oh, come off it," Sergeant Karpinski said, which came close to expressing Dr. Walton's opinion. "Everybody knows those fellows wouldn't be dead if you'd even lifted a finger to keep 'em breathing."

"By which you mean you find me responsible for my followers' excessive zeal," the Preacher said.

"d.a.m.ned right I do," the sergeant said forthrightly.

Turning to Athelstan Helms, the Preacher said, "Surely, sir, you must find this att.i.tude unreasonable. You spoke of previous religious episodes. Can you imagine blaming all the excesses of Jesus' followers on Him?" He spread his hands, as if to show by gesture how absurd the notion was. Both his voice and his motions showed he was accustomed to swaying crowds and individuals.

"If you will forgive me, I also cannot imagine you rising on the third day," Helms said.

"To be frank, Mr. Helms, neither can I," the Preacher replied. "But the Atlantean authorities seem so intent on crucifying me, they may afford me the opportunity to make the attempt."

"Well, if you had nothing to do with killing those blokes, how come they're dead?" Dr. Walton demanded. "Who did for 'em?" His indignation increased his vehemence while playing hob with his diction.

"Oh, his little chums put lilies in their fists-no doubt of that," Sergeant Karpinski said. "Proving it's a different story, or he'd've swung a long time ago."

"Perhaps the Preacher will answer for himself," Helms said.

"Yes, perhaps he will," the Preacher agreed, speaking of himself in the third person. "Perhaps he will say that it is far more likely the authorities have eliminated these persons for reasons of their own than that his own followers should have had any hand in it. Perhaps he will also say that he does not believe two distinguished English gentlemen hired by those authorities will take him seriously."

"And why the devil should they, when you spew lies the way a broken sewer pipe spews filth?" Righteous indignation filled Karpinski's voice.

"Gently, Sergeant, gently," Helms said, and then, to the Preacher, "Such inflammatory statements are all the better for proof, or even evidence."

"Which I will supply when the time is ripe," the Preacher said. "For now, though, you will want to settle in after your journey here. I understand you have reserved rooms at the Thetford Belvedere?"

"And how do you come to understand that?" Dr. Walton thundered.

"Sergeant Karpinski mentioned it as we came over here," the Preacher answered. Thinking back on it, Walton realized he was right. The Preacher continued, "I might have recommended the Crested Eagle myself, but the Belvedere will do. I hope to see you gentlemen again soon. Unless the sergeant objects, my driver will take you to the hotel."

In England, the Belvedere would have been a normal enough provincial hotel, better than most, not as good as some. So it also seemed in Thetford, which made Dr. Walton decide Atlantis might be rather more civilized than he had previously believed. If the Preacher's favored Crested Eagle was superior, then it was. The Belvedere would definitely do.

The menu in the dining room showed that he and Helms were not in England any more. "What on earth is an oil thrush?" he inquired.

"A blackbird far too large to be baked in a pie," Athelstan Helms replied. "A large, flightless thrush, in other words. I have read that they are good eating, and intend making the experiment. Will you join me?"

"I don't know." Walton sounded dubious. "Seems as though it'd be swimming in grease, what?"

"I think not. It is roasted, after all," Helms said. "And do you see? We have the choice of orange sauce or cranberry or starberry, which I take to be something local and tart. They use such accompaniments with duck and goose, which can also be oleaginous, so they should prove effective amelioratives here, too."

With a sigh, the good doctor yielded. "Since you seem set on it, I'll go along. Whatever the bird turns out to be, I'm sure I ate worse in Afghanistan, and I was bl-er, mighty glad to have it."

Lying on a pewter tray, the roasted oil thrush smelled more than appetizing enough and looked brown and handsome, though the wings were absurdly small: to Dr. Walton's mind, enough so to damage the appearance of the bird. The waiter spooned hot starberry sauce-of a bilious green-over the bird. "Enjoy your supper, gentlemen," he said, and withdrew.

To Walton's surprise, he did, very much. The oil thrush tasted more like a gamebird than a capon. And starberries, tangy and sweet at the same time, complemented the rich flesh well. "You could make a formidable wine from those berries, I do believe," Walton said. "Nothing to send the froggies running for cover, maybe, but more than good enough for the countryside."

"In the countryside, I'm sure they do," Helms said. "How much of it comes into the city-how much of it comes to the tax collector's notice-is liable to be a different tale."

"Aha! I get you." Walton laid a finger by the side of his nose and looked sly.

Only a few people shared the dining room with the Englishmen. Not many tourists came to Thetford, while the Belvedere was on the grand side for housing commercial travelers. The stout, prosperous-looking gentleman who came in when Helms and Walton were well on their way to demolishing the bird in front of them could have had his pick of tables. Instead, he made a beeline for theirs. One of Dr. Walton's eyebrows rose, as if to say, I might have known I might have known.

"Can I do something for you, sir?" Athelstan Helms asked, polite as usual but with a touch-just a touch, but unmistakable nonetheless-of asperity in his voice.

"You will be the detectives come to give the Preacher the comeuppance he deserves," the man said. "Good for you, by G.o.d! High time the House of Universal Depravity has to close up shop once and for all."

Dr. Walton ate another bite of moist, tender, flavorsome flesh from the oil thrush's thigh-the breast, without large flight muscles, was something of a disappointment. Then, resignedly, he said, "I am afraid you have the advantage of us, Mr. . . . ?"

"My name is Morris, Benjamin Joshua Morris. I practice law here in Thetford, and for some time my avocation has been chronicling the multifarious malfeasances and debaucheries of the House of Universal Disgust and the so-called Preacher. About time the authorities stop trembling in fear of his accursed secret society and root it out of the soil from which it has sprouted like some rank and poisonous mushroom."

"Perhaps you will do us the honor of sitting down and telling us more about it," Helms said.

"Perhaps you will also order a bite for yourself so we don't have to go on eating in front of you." Dr. Walton didn't intend to stop, but could-with some effort-stay mannerly.

"Well, perhaps I will." Morris waved for the waiter and ordered a beefsteak, blood rare. To the Englishmen, he said, "I see you are dining off the productions of the wilderness. Myself, I would sooner eat as if civilization had come to the backwoods here." He sighed. "The case of Samuel Jones, however, inclines me to skepticism."

"Samuel Jones?" Walton said. "The name is not familiar."

"You will know him better as the Preacher, founder and propagator-propagator, forsooth!-of the House of Universal Deviation." Benjamin Morris seemed intent on finding as many disparaging names for the Preacher's foundation as he could. "How many members of the House his member has sired I am not prepared to say, but the number is not small."

"He embraces his mistresses as they embrace his principles," Athelstan Helms suggested.

Morris laughed, but quickly sobered. "That is excellent repartee, sir, but falls short in regard of truthfulness. For the Preacher has no principles, but ever professes that which is momentarily expedient. No wonder his theology, so-called, is such an extraordinary tissue of lies and jumble of whatever half-baked texts he chances to have recently read. That men can become as G.o.ds! Tell me, gentlemen: has mankind seemed more G.o.dly than usual lately? It is to laugh!" Like a lot of lawyers, he often answered his own questions.

His beefsteak appeared then, and proved sanguinary enough to satisfy a surgeon, let alone an attorney. He attacked it with excellent appet.i.te, and also did full justice to an Atlantean red with a nose closely approximating that of a hearty Burgundy. After a bit, Helms said, "Few faiths are entirely logical and self-consistent. The early Christian controversies pertaining to the relation of the Son and the Father and to the relation between the divine and the human within Jesus Christ demonstrate this all too well, as does the blood spilled over them."

"No doubt, no doubt," Benjamin Morris said. "But our Lord was not a louche debauchee, and did not compose the Scriptures with an eye toward giving himself as wide a lat.i.tude for misbehavior as he could find." He told several salacious stories about the Preacher's earlier days. They seemed more suitable to the smoking car of a long-haul train than to this placid provincial dining room.

Even Walton, who did not love the Preacher, felt compelled to remark, "Such unsavory a.s.sertions would be all the better for proof."

"I have doc.u.mentary proof at my offices, sir," Morris said. "As I told you, I have been following this rogue and his antics for years, like. After supper, I shall go there and bring you what I trust will suffice to satisfy the most determined skeptic."

Having made that announcement, he hurried through the rest of his meal, drained a last gla.s.s of wine, and, slapping a couple of golden Atlantean eagles on the table, arose and hastened from the dining room.

Less than a minute later, several sharp pops rang out. "Fireworks?" Walton said.

"Firearms," Athelstan Helms replied, his voice suddenly grim. "A large-bore revolver, unless I am much mistaken." In such matter, Walton knew his friend was unlikely to be.

Sure enough, someone shouted, "Is a doctor close by? A man's been shot!"

Still masticating a last savory bite of oil thrush, Walton dashed out into the street to do what he could for the fallen man. Helms, though no physician, followed hard on his heels to learn what he could from the scene of this latest crime. "I hope it isn't that Morris fellow," the good doctor said.

"Well, so do I, but not to any great degree, for it is likely a hope wasted," Helms said.

And sure enough, there lay Benjamin Joshua Morris, with three bullet wounds in his chest. "Good heavens," Walton said. "Beggar's dead as a stone. Hardly had the chance to know what hit him, I daresay."

Sergeant Karpinski popped up out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box, pistol in hand. Athelstan Helms' nostrils twitched, as if in surprise. "I heard gunshots," Karpinski said, and then, looking down, "Great G.o.d, it's Morris!"

"He was just speaking to us of the perfidies of the House of Universal Devotion." Dr. Walton stared at the corpse, and at the blood puddling beneath it on the cobbles. "Here, I should say, we find the said perfidies demonstrated upon his person."

"So it would seem." Sergeant Karpinski scowled at the body, and then in the direction of the house where he and the Englishmen had conversed with the Preacher. "I should have jugged that no-good son of a . . . Well, I should have jugged him when I had the chance. A better man might still be alive if I'd done it."

Dr. Walton also looked back toward that house. "You could still drop in on him, you know."

Gloomily, the policeman shook his head. "Not a chance he'll still be there. He'll lie low for a while now, pop up here and there to preach a sermon, and then disappear again. Oh, I'll send some men over, but they won't find him. I know the man. I know him too well."

Athelstan Helms coughed. "I should point out that we have no proof the House of Universal Devotion murdered the late Mr. Morris, nor that the Preacher ordered his slaying if some member of the House was in fact responsible for it."

Both his particular friend and the police sergeant eyed him as if he'd taken leave of his senses. "I say, Helms, if we haven't got cause and effect here, what have we got?" Walton asked.

"A dead man," the detective replied. "By all appearances, a paucity of witnesses to the slaying. Past that, only untested hypotheses."

"Call them whatever you want," Karpinski said. "As for me, I'm going to try to run the Preacher to earth. I know some of his hidey-holes-maybe more than he thinks I do. With a little luck . . . And I'll send my men back here to take charge of the body." He paused. "Good lord, I'll have to tell Lucy Morris her husband's been murdered. I don't relish that."

"There will be a postmortem examination on the deceased, I a.s.sume?" Helms said. When Sergeant Karpinski nodded, Helms continued, "Would you be kind enough to send a copy of the results to me here at the hotel?"

"I can do that," Karpinski said.

"He also spoke of papers in his office, papers with information damaging to the House of Universal Devotion," Walton said. "Any chance we might get an idea of what they contain?"

Now the police sergeant frowned. "A lawyer's private papers after his death? That won't be so easy to arrange, I'm afraid. I'll speak to his widow about it, though. If she's in a vengeful mood and thinks showing them to you would help make the House fall, she might give you leave to see them. I make no promises, of course. And now, if you'll pardon me . . ." He tipped his derby and hurried away.

Athelstan Helms stared after him, a cold light flickering in his pale eyes. "I dislike homicide, Walton," the detective said. "I especially dislike it when perpetrated for the purpose of furthering a cause. Ideological Ideological homicide, to use the word that seems all the rage on the Continent these days, makes the crime of pa.s.sion and even murder for the sake of wealth seem clean by comparison." homicide, to use the word that seems all the rage on the Continent these days, makes the crime of pa.s.sion and even murder for the sake of wealth seem clean by comparison."

"And in furtherance of a religious religious ideology!" Walton exclaimed. "Of all the outmoded things! Seems as if it ought to belong in Crusader days, as you told that so-called Preacher yourself." ideology!" Walton exclaimed. "Of all the outmoded things! Seems as if it ought to belong in Crusader days, as you told that so-called Preacher yourself."

"Those who have the most to lose are aptest to strike to preserve what they still have," Helms observed.

"Just so." Dr. Walton nodded vigorously. "When Mr. Samuel Jones found out that poor Morris here was conferring with us in aid of his a.s.sorted sordid iniquities"-he chuckled, fancying his own turn of phrase-"he must have decided he couldn't afford it, and sent his a.s.sa.s.sins after the man."

Two policemen, both large and rotund, huffed up. Each wore on his hip in a patent-leather holster a stout brute of a pistol, of the same model as Sergeant Karpinski's-no doubt the standard weapon for the police in Thetford, if not in all of Atlantis. "That's Morris, all right," one of them said, eyeing the body. "There'll be h.e.l.l to pay when word of this gets out."

"Yes, and the Preacher to pay it," the other man said with a certain grim antic.i.p.ation.

The first policeman eyed Helms and Walton. "And who the devil are you two, and where were you when this poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d got cooled?"

"This is the famous Athelstan Helms," Dr. Walton said indignantly.

"We were dining in the Belvedere when Mr. Morris was shot," Helms continued. "We have witnesses to that effect. We were conversing with him shortly before his death, however."

"If Mr. What's-his-name Helms is so famous, how come I never heard of him?" the local policeman said.

Because you are an ignorant, back-country lout, went through Dr. Walton's mind. Saying that to the back-country lout's face when said lout was armed and also armored in authority struck him as inexpedient. What he did say was, "Inspector La Strada of Hanover brought us from England to a.s.sist in the investigation of the House of Universal Devotion."

"About time they give those maniacs their just deserts," the second policeman said.

"Which reminds me, Helms," the good doctor said. "We were interrupted before we could attend to ours."

"I dare hope ours would require another 's,'" Helms said. He nodded to the policemen. "If you will be kind enough to excuse us . . . ?" The blue-uniformed Atlanteans did not say no. With another polite nod, Helms walked back toward the Belvedere, Dr. Walton at first at his heels and then bustling on ahead of him.

After finishing their desserts-which proved not to come up to the hopes Walton had lavished on them-the Englishmen went up to their rooms. "What puzzles me," Walton said, "is how the Preacher could have known Morris would speak to us then, and had a gunman waiting for him as he emerged."

"He would have done better to dispose of the man before we conversed," Helms replied. "If he had a pistoleer waiting for him, why not antic.i.p.ate and set the blackguard in place ahead of time?"

"Maybe someone in the dining room belongs to the House and hotfooted away to let him know what was toward," Dr. Walton suggested.

"It could be," Helms said. "I wonder what the post-mortem will show."

"Cause of death is obvious enough," Walton said. "Poor devil got in the way of at least three rounds to the chest."

"Quite," Helms said. "But, as always, the devil is in the details."