“That’s very good,” Fitzstephan said, smiling delightedly, “a neat reversal of the usual cult’s–the usual sect’s, for that matter–insistence on confession, public testimony, or some other form of advertising the mysteries. Go on.”
I tried to eat. He said:
“What of the members, the customers? How do they like their cult now? You’ve talked to some of them, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said; “but what can you do with people like them? Half of them are still willing to string along with Aaronia Haldorn. I showed Mrs. Rodman one of the pipes that the spooks came out of. When she had gasped once and gulped twice she offered to take us to the cathedral and show us that the images there, including the one on the cross, were made out of even more solid and earthly materials than steam; and asked us if we would arrest the bishop on proof that no actual flesh and blood– whether divine or not–was in the monstrance. I thought O’Gar, who’s a good Catholic, would blackjack her.”
“The Colemans weren’t there, were they? The Ralph Colemans?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” he said, grinning. “I must look Ralph up and question him. He’ll be in hiding by now, of course, but he’s worth hunting out. He always has the most consistently logical and creditable reasons for having done the most idiotic things. He is”–as if that explained it–“an advertising man.” Fitzstephan frowned at the discovery that I was eating again, and said impatiently: “Talk, my boy, talk.”
“You’ve met Haldorn,” I said. “What did you think of him?”
“I saw him twice, I think. He was, undoubtedly, impressive.”
“He was,” I agreed. “He had what he needed. Ever talk to him?”
“No; that is, not except to exchange the polite equivalents of ‘pleased to meet you.'”
“Well, he looked at you and spoke to you, and things happened inside you. I’m not the easiest guy in the world to dazzle, I hope; but he had me going. I came damned near to believing he was God toward the last. He was quite young–in his thirties: they’d had the coloring–the pigment–in his hair and beard killed to give him that Father Joseph front. His wife says she used to hypnotize him before he went into action, and that without being hypnotized he wasn’t so effective on people. Later he got so that he could hypnotize himself without her help, and toward the last it became a permanent condition with him.
“She didn’t know her husband had fallen for Gabrielle till after the girl had come to stay in the Temple. Until then she thought that Gabrielle was to him, as to her, just another customer–one whose recent troubles made her a very likely prospect. But Joseph had fallen for her, and wanted her. I don’t know how far he had worked on her, nor even how he had worked on her, but I suppose he was sewing her up by using his hocuspocus against her fear of the Dain curse. Anyway, Doctor Riese finally discovered that everything wasn’t going well with her. Yesterday morning he told me he was coming back to see her that evening, and he did come back, but he didn’t see her; and I didn’t see him–not then.
“He went back to see Joseph before he came up to the girl’s room, and managed to overhear Joseph giving instructions to the Finks. That should have been fine, but wasn’t. Riese was foolish enough to let Joseph know he had overheard him. Joseph locked Riese up–a prisoner.
“They had cut loose on Minnie from the very beginning. She was a mulatto, and therefore susceptible to that sort of game, and she was devoted to Gabrielle Leggett. They had chucked visions and voices at the poor girl until she was dizzy. Now they decided to make her kill Riese. They drugged him and put him on the altar. They ghosted her into thinking that he was Satan–this is serious: they did this–come up from hell to carry Gabrielle down and keep her from becoming a saint. Minnie was ripe for it–poor boogie–and when the spirit told her that she had been selected to save her mistress, that she’d find the anointed weapon on her table, she followed the instructions the spirit gave her. She got out of bed, picked up the dagger that had been put on her table, went down to the altar, and killed Riese.