The Scarlet Band

"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 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 post-mortem examination on the deceased, I assume?" 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 homicide, to use the word that seems all the rage on the Continent these days, makes the crime of passion and even murder for the sake of wealth seem clean by comparison."

"And in furtherance of a 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."

"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 assorted sordid iniquities"--he chuckled, fancying his own turn of phrase--"he must have decided he couldn't afford it, and sent his assassins 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 hell to pay when word of this gets out."

"Yes, and the Preacher to pay it," the other man said with a certain grim anticipation.

The first policeman eyed Helms and Walton. "And who the devil are you two, and where were you when this poor bastard 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 assist in the investigation of the House of Universal Devotion."