The Rebel Angels

"I'm not a fool, Madame. I have spent twenty years circling round and round the sort of thing we are talking about now. I've examined it in the best and most objective way the scholarly world makes possible. But I haven't swallowed it wholesale. My present problem turns my mind to it, of course, and you are right – I do want to invoke some special means of getting what I want, and if that brings harm to my professional rival, I suppose that is inevitable. But don't talk to me of magic in simple terms. I know what it is: that's to say, I know what I think it is. Magic – I hate the word because of what it has come to mean, but anyway – magic in the big sense can only happen where there is very strong feeling. You can't set it going with a sceptical mind – with your fingers crossed, so to speak. You must desire, and you must believe. Have you any idea how hard that is for a man of my time and a man of my training and temperament? At the deepest level of your being you are living in the Middle Ages, and magic comes easily – I won't say logically – to you. But for me it is a subject of a study, a psychological fact but not necessarily an objective fact. A thing some people have always believed but nobody has quite been able to prove. I have never had a chance to experiment with it personally because I have never had what is necessary – the desire and the belief.

"But now, for the first time in my life – for the very first time – I want something desperately. I want that manuscript. I want it enough to go to great lengths to get it. I've wanted things before, things like distinctions in my professional work, but never like this."

"Never wanted a woman?"

"Not as I want that manuscript. Not very much, I suppose, at all. That kind of thing has meant very little to me."

"So the first great passion in your life has its roots in hatred and envy? Think, Hollier."

"You simplify the whole thing in order to belittle me."

"No. To make you face yourself. All right; you have the desire. But you can't quite force yourself to admit you have the belief."

"You don't understand. My whole training is to suspend belief, to examine, to experiment, to try things out, to test them."

"So, just for an experiment, you want a curse on your enemy."

"I never spoke of a curse."

"Not in words. But to my old-style ears, that inform my old-style mind, you don't have to use the old-style word. You can't say it because you want to leave yourself a way out; if it works, so – and if it doesn't work, it was all Gypsy bunk anyway, and the great professor, the modern-style man, is still on top. Look; you want this book. Well, get somebody to steal it. I can put you on to a good, clever thief."

"Yes; I've thought of that. But –"

"Yes – but if you stole it and then wrote about it, your enemy would know you stole it. No?"

"That had occurred to me."

"Ho! Occurred to you! So let's face the facts as you have already faced them inside your heart, and as you won't admit to me, or even admit straight out to yourself: if you are to have this book or whatever it is, and be safe to use it, the fellow who has it now must be dead. Are you prepared to wish somebody dead, professor?"

"Thousands of people wish somebody dead every day."

"Yes, but do they really mean it? Would they do it if they could? So: why not get him murdered? I won't find you a murderer, but Yerko might be able to tell you where to look."

"Madame, I didn't come here to hire thieves and murderers."

"No, you are too clever; too modern. Suppose your murderer gets caught; they are often very clumsy, those fellows. He says, 'The professor hired me,' and you are in trouble. But if you are found out and say, 'I hired an old Gypsy woman to curse him,' the judge laughs and wags his finger at you for a big joker. You are a clever man, Hollier."

"You are treating me like a fool."

"Because I like you. You are too good a man to be acting like this. You're lucky you have come to me. But why did you come?"

"At Christmas you read my fortune in the Tarot, and it has proved true. The obsession and the hatred of which you spoke have become terrible realities."

"Making trouble for you and somebody near to you. Who is that?"

"I had forgotten that. I don't know who it could be."

"I do. My daughter Maria."

"Oh yes; of course. Maria was to work with me on the manuscript, if I can get it."

"That's all about Maria?"

"Well, yes, it is. What else could there be?"

"God, Hollier, you are a fool. I remember your fortune well. Who is the Knave of Coins, the servant with a letter?"

"I don't know. He hasn't appeared yet. But the figure in your prediction that has brought me back to you is the Moon, the changeable woman, who speaks of danger. Who can that be but yourself? So naturally I turn to you for advice."