“As actors, Aaronia Haldorn says, she and Joseph were just pretty good, not getting on as well as they wanted to. About a year ago she ran into an old acquaintance–a one-time trouper–who had chucked the stage for the pulpit, and had made a go of it, now riding in Packards instead of day-coaches. That gave her something to think about. Thinking in that direction meant, pretty soon, thinking about Aimee, Buchman, Jeddu what’s-his-name, and the other headliners. And in the end her thinking came to, why not us? They–or she: Joseph was a lightweight–rigged up a cult that pretended to be the revival of an old Gaelic church, dating from King Arthur’s time, or words to that effect.”
“Yes,” said Fitzstephan; “Arthur Machen’s. But go on.”
“They brought their cult to California because everybody does, and picked San Francisco because it held less competition than Los Angeles. With them they brought a little fellow named Tom Fink who had at one time or another been in charge of the mechanical end of most of the well-known stage magicians’ and illusionists’ acts; and Fink’s wife, a big villagesmith of a woman.
“They didn’t want a mob of converts: they wanted them few but wealthy. The racket got away to a slow start–until they landed Mrs. Rodman. She fell plenty. They took her for one of her apartment buildings, and she also footed the remodeling bill. The stage mechanic Fink was in charge of the remodeling, and did a neat job. They didn’t need the kitchens that were dotted, one to an apartment, through the building, and Fink knew how to use part of that scattered kitchen-space for concealed rooms and cabinets; and he knew how to adapt the gas and water pipes, and the electric wiring, to his hocus-pocus.
“I can’t give you the mechanical details now; not till we’ve had time to take the joint apart. It’s going to be interesting. I saw some of their work–mingled right in with it–a ghost made by an arrangement of lights thrown up on steam rising from a padded pipe that had been pushed into a dark room through a concealed opening in the wainscoating under a bed. The part of the steam that wasn’t lighted was invisible in the darkness, showing only a man-shape that quivered and writhed, and that was damp and real to the touch, without any solidity. You can take my word for its being a weird stunt, especially when you’ve been filled up with the stuff they pumped into the room before they turned their spook loose on ou. I don’t know whether they used ether or chloroform or what: its odor was nicely disguised with some sort of flower perfume. This spook–I fought with it, on the level, and even thought I had it bleeding, not knowing I had cut my hand breaking a window to let air in. It was a beaut: it made a few minutes seem like a lot of hours to me.
“Till the very last, when Haldorn went wild, there wasn’t anything crude about their work. They kept the services–the whole public end of the cult–as dignified and orderly and restrained as possible. The hocus-pocusing was all done in the privacy of the victim’s bedroom. First the perfumed gas was pumped in. Then the illuminated steam spook was sicked on him, with a voice coming out of the same pipe–or maybe there was another arrangement for that–to give him his orders, or whatever was to be given. The gas kept him from being too sharp-eyed and suspicious, and also weakened his will, so he’d be more likely to do what he was told. It was slick enough; and I imagine they squeezed themselves out a lot of pennies that way.
“Happening in the victim’s room, when he was alone, these visions had a lot of authority, and the Haldorns gave them more by the attitude they took towards them. Discussion of these visions was not absolutely prohibited, but was discouraged. They were supposed–these spook sessions–to be confidential between the victim and his God, to be too sacred to be bragged about. Mentioning them, even to Joseph, unless there was some special reason for having to mention them, was considered in bad taste, indelicate. See how nicely that would work out? The Haldorns seemed to be not trying to capitalize on these spook sessions, seemed not to know what took place in them, and therefore to have no interest in whether the victim carried out his spook-given instructions or not. Their stand was that that was simply and strictly a concern of the victim’s and his God’s.”