Lord of the Hollow Dark (19 page)

“How about my question?” Sweeney demanded.

“Ah, yes: can he read our minds at a distance, so to speak? No, not that. He has some faculty for clairvoyance or thought-transference, some touch of extrasensory perception, but not more developed than such talents have been in certain other people I have known. For that matter, if you and I keep careful guard upon ourselves when face to face with him-why, he learns little more than what we tell him; I warrant you that. He may not even guess what one really is.”

Sweeney looked hard at Gerontion: a faint early suspicion of the Archvicar had recurred, with new strength. But for this hour, Apollinax was enough of a conundrum, without asking what might lie behind Gerontion’s mask. “Okay, tell me this: where did this Apollinax come from?”

“Others than the Master can compile dossiers,” the Archvicar told him, puffing a cloud of smoke about his head. “I have one such concerning Mr. Apollinax, as he styles himself now—although I’m not so imprudent as to carry the papers about with me. You’ve known him longer than I, but you have lacked curiosity until now. Very well: I give you, Apeneck, a succinct candid account of his variegated career.

“Less than twelve years ago, the person we call Apollinax was a Roman priest, in London. He had been thoroughly, perhaps abstrusely, schooled in theology. There came over him a sea-change, in some ways not unlike the deep alteration of assumptions which affected so many Roman clergy, then and later; he fancied that he had penetrated to the
sanctum sanctorum,
and had found it empty. Yet, unlike most, he was not then swept into the vortex of modernism and materialism. I do not know the whole background of his particular straying from dogmata, but in his case the change was to something new and strange-or rather, exceedingly strange, but perhaps not so new. It was as if, in the empty Holy of Holies, an invisible voice, the Grand Inquisitor’s, had proclaimed to him, ‘Everything is permitted.’

“He immersed himself in Gnostic speculations and other perennial heresies. He attracted to himself a little following so eccentric that even a most latitudinarian hierarchy found it necessary to look closely at him. Presently he renounced his vows, became a zealot for radical transformation of society, shouting, marching, demonstrating. About the same time, he took up with women-several of them, it appears, and not undesirable ones. Our Grishkin, then model and actress, has been the most enduring of these.

“Such cases, of course, have not been infrequent during the past decade.” The Archvicar seated himself again, without ceasing his discourse. Sweeney had noticed that Gerontion had not leaned upon his ebony stick while he had been standing.

“But there followed more curious modes of belief and conduct. Our Master’s adventure as a political messiah lasted less than one year. Abruptly he dropped all his Leveller connections, buried himself in the British Museum, entered upon intensive Indie studies. He had been a highly intellectual priest; now he applied a keen intellect, already disciplined in languages which few know, to esoteric inquiries. He did not lack for funds-supplied then, as now, by certain little old ladies who were moved by his luminous eyes and his strange immature face. He traveled to India and roamed elsewhere in Asia, taking Grishkin with him. In the course of more philosophical and mystical investigations, concerned in large part with the nature of Time, he acquired extensive information about the properties of sensual drugs. After those years in remote places, he returned to England.”

“Hurry it up,” said Sweeney. “We may not have much time before he comes.”

The Archvicar nodded indulgently. “The paths he followed had been trodden by others before; he came upon traces of pioneers in this dark quest, some in Britain, some in Asia and Africa. He learned with excitement, I take it, about a Lord Balgrummo, still alive during the earlier period of Apollinax’s researches, whose experiments in the occult had ruined him decades earlier—experiments closely parallel with Apollinax’s developing obsession. He tried to see this Lord Balgrummo; was refused an interview by the trustees of Balgrummo Estates, by the police, and by Balgrummo himself—the last response a cold holograph note from an exceedingly old peer; presently he learned of Balgrummo’s death under unusual circumstances.

“About this time, no doubt, our Apollinax made some study of the history of Balgrummo Lodging and the legends of what lay beneath it; and presumably it came into his head that Balgrummo Lodging was the most propitious place for the experiments upon which he was bent, Lord Balgrummo having made startling advances in such research upon this spot.”

“Where’d you get all this—from police files?”

“In part, Sweeney, yet only in part; and even that from fragmentary police reports in several countries; no one but your servant possesses all this lively data in consolidated form. Believe me, I enjoy the means... but that’s another narration.

“Also Apollinax’s Asiatic wanderings had taken him to Madras and the Shan States. In both regions, he had learned something about a person called Omanwallah, styling himself Archvicar in the Church of the Divine Mystery. This person had been charged with necromancy, with poisoning, and with much else. This Omanwallah—or Gerontion, as he would call himself later—was reputed to be, among other things, an accomplished pharmacist, practiced in the manufacture and use of hallucinogens. The Subcontinent having grown too hot for his health, this Omanwallah had withdrawn to the emergent Commonwealth of Hamnegri, in Africa, settling at the old slavers’ port of Haggat, where he flourished under the alias of Gerontion.

“A drug called
kalanzi,
it was rumored, could be compounded only by Gerontion, from ingredients some of which were procurable only in the Hamnegrian region of Kalidu. The effects of this rare drug, properly administered, appeared to be quite what Apollinax-we use his present alias, of course, not the name he employed then-had been seeking to advance his occult researches. He contrived to get in touch with this Archvicar Gerontion, although the two of them did not meet face to face. The supplying of
kalanzi
was arranged, for a good price, and also Gerontion was engaged to make certain rigorous tests of the drug upon human subjects—Haggat being a far more prudent place to conduct these tests than London would have been. Communication between Haggat and London was conducted through couriers, of whom you, my dear Apeneck, have been the latest. Does this hurried account suffice you?”

“No, but we’re damned lucky he hasn’t come in yet. Tell me one thing more: how in hell do you know so much about Lord Balgrummo and this house, coming from India and Africa?”

“Why, my friend, this Omanwallah or Gerontion-it is well to speak impersonally in such concerns-was the son of a rich Parsee father and an English mother. His youth was spent in Britain, where he was schooled. In his affluent and clever idleness, the devil making mischief for his hands, he fell into a circle of occultists in Edinburgh, of whom the last Lord Balgrummo was the patron. This young Omanwallah, dilettante and trifler then, amused himself at the fringes of this cult, which dissolved in panic at the disastrous unexpected catastrophe of Balgrummo’s experiments. Omanwallah had frequented Balgrummo Lodging and acquired a smattering of the practices of this occult circle; he left Britain in haste shortly after Lord Balgrummo’s Trouble. Of all the people who had any hand in Lord Balgrummo’s catastrophe here at the Lodging, Omanwallah-Gerontion is the last man still living. Gerontion’s
kalanzi
powder is devilishly useful to Apollinax, but Gerontion’s knowledge of what went on at Balgrummo Lodging is equally valuable.”

Sweeney stared in wonder at the old man. Was all this to be believed? “It’s some coincidence that Apollinax tracked you down.”

“Doesn’t it seem so?” The Archvicar removed his goggles for a moment, to polish them with a silk handkerchief; Sweeney was surprised by the eyes so revealed, very different from the eyes he had expected. “If you knew the whole of the matter, Sweeney, you’d be even more astonished at the coincidence. But we understand little about coincidence, quite as little as we understand about time. Well, I gave Apollinax something besides
kalanzi
, something besides my knowledge of mysteries at Balgrummo Lodging. For he borrowed the concept of ‘The Church of the Divine Mystery’; and it was the alias ‘Gerontion’ which inspired him to style himself Apollinax and to name the disciples and the acolytes after Eliot’s Figures.

“I never had seen the person we call Apollinax until we met here at the Lodging a few days ago. But so far as I can gather, his behavior and his personality have been in progressive alteration for some years; no longer is the Master quite the person with whom I began to correspond three years ago, nor even precisely your employer of last year. You understand me, I see. His progress has been in a regular train, but new and disturbing features develop. I suppose it was so with the last Lord Balgrummo. Something enters in...”

“Watch it!” Sweeney whispered in haste. Something literally was entering in: the pseudo-bookcase was moving again. Apollinax came through, his unfinished face with its high forehead flushed by emotion.

“We’re to look at the plans again, Master?” the Archvicar inquired, deferentially. At an impatient nod, he hobbled to a long table near the center of the library. There lay, carefully arranged, long sheets obviously sketched by Gerontion, and other sheets, somewhat yellowed, by a rather good draftsman. There were also very old papers and two parchment documents. Sweeney had been shown most of these before.

“That passage is shorter than you calculated, Gerontion,” Apollinax said, studying the drawings.

“Yes, Master, but worse clogged by rubble than I’d expected.”

“You had not told me that the inner way to the Weem was closed by a door.”

“I had no notion it was there. For all I knew, the doorway itself might have been obliterated by the old explosion.” The Archvicar pointed with a pencil to a spot on a rough sketch. “We are fortunate.”

Apollinax addressed Sweeney. The flush of excitement did not fade from the Master’s face. The man was wildly eager to get into that dead place.

“Sweeney, how much longer will it take you to make the short tunnel safe to pass through?”

“I can’t make it safe, but anybody who’ll take the risk should be able to walk through by tomorrow afternoon.” Apollinax seemed well enough satisfied, praise be. “Now, Gerontion, does that metal door open directly into the Weem?”

“Ask me what songs the Sirens sang, Master. Balgrummo’s notations don’t contain anything on that point. There may be a low passage through a mass of living rock-perhaps a natural vent enlarged centuries ago-some yards long, or longer, before one reaches the original cave. A medieval pilgrim’s account obscurely suggests that possibility.”

“An obstructed passage?”

“Balgrummo passed through, if we can believe his chart and jottings; and thus far they’ve served us accurately enough. He may have blocked it up again, all the same, as he blocked that wall at the end of the sewer tunnel. How long to clear it, if he did something of the sort? We shan’t know until we open that little door. We must bear pitfalls in mind, by the way: at least one pilgrim fell to his death, you’ll recall.”

“Sweeney, so far you have done well.” Apollinax favored him with one of those archaic smiles. “You must have the whole way clear by Wednesday noon, and sooner if at all possible. If not... But of course you shall.”

“If I don’t collapse first,” Sweeney whined. “I can’t take many more hours of this.” He needed a stimulant urgently.

The Master frowned. “You shall do it.” He turned to the Archvicar. “One thing puzzles me, Gerontion, even though it has made our way easier. I am thinking of how simple it was for us to enter the great drain from the old
necessarium
—merely a matter of taking up the flags. There must have been attempts to find the way down, since the sixteenth century, what with the Lodging being inhabited all the while. And if you’re correct in your speculation, Balgrummo may have searched in this house for twenty or thirty years before discovering the Third Laird’s entrance through the sewer. Yet Balgrummo was an intelligent man, so how could that be?”

The Archvicar, leaning upon the table with his left hand, used the stick in his right hand to indicate an area on one of the charts. “Because, Master, the drain was filled with water almost to its brim, for more than three centuries—or so I surmise. It scarcely would have occurred to anyone who lifted those flagstones in the
necessarium
that a secret way could lie beneath the black sewer water. Who’d relish such a baptism as that? And of course they had no diving equipment.

“Shall I give you my analysis of this minor mystery? Thank you, Master. Well, then: when the Fourth Laird, the Warlock’s son, attained his majority and came into possession of this property, he was sedulous to efface, so far as possible, recollections and souvenirs of his sinister father’s end. The kirk session remained suspicious of sons of warlocks. The Lodging had lain derelict, half burnt, ever since Morton’s sack; the Fourth Laird commenced its restoration. Probably he found his father’s entrance to the vestibule of the Weem from the monks’ sewer-or rather, the place where that passage had been-totally blocked by fallen rubble from the gunpowder explosion. He had a wall of masonry erected to seal off the rubble-filled passage even more thoroughly, using ashlar blocks from ruined portions of the Priory buildings. The ancient sewer itself could be dispensed with: the seventeenth century cared less about sanitation than had the thirteenth century.

“Then the Fourth Laird proceeded to drown that fresh wall of masonry by filling up the great drain with water from the burn. This must have been simple enough, for the old monks had flushed out the sewer, occasionally or regularly, by water from their pond above the dam, led underground through a subsurface lade of stone to a point near the beginning of the sewer under Nectan’s Priory. Did you happen to notice the aperture for that lade, Sweeney?”

“Maybe,” Sweeney answered, rubbing his tired eyes. “There was a hole in the sewer wall, high up, with just a trickle of water coming from it; Coriolan poked a rod into it and said it couldn’t be a passage for a man.”