The Scarlet Band

He left a meticulous gratuity for the waiter; Walton would have been less generous. They went back up to their room. Dr. Walton struck a match against the sole of his boot and lit the gas lamp.

"I say!" Helms exclaimed. "The plot thickens--so it does. I deduce that someone is not desirous of our company here."

Again, he did not need his richly deserved reputation for detection to arrive at his conclusion. Someone had driven a dagger hilt-deep into the pillow on each bed.

* * * *

"No, I'm not surprised," Inspector La Strada said. "The House of Universal Devotion casts its web widely here."

"Someone should step on the spider, then, by Jove!" Dr. Walton said.

"Freedom of religion again, I'm afraid," Dr. Walton said. "Our Basic Law guarantees the right to worship as one pleases and the right not to worship if one pleases. We find that a more just policy than yours." Yes, he enjoyed scoring points off the mother country.

Dr. Walton was in a high temper, and in a high color as well, his cheeks approaching the hue of red-hot iron. "Where in the Good Book does it say assassinating two innocent pillows amounts to a religious observance?"

"What the good doctor means, I believe, is that any faith can use the excuse of acting in God's cause to perpetrate deeds those more impartial might deem unrighteous," Athelstan Helms said. Walton nodded emphatically enough to set two or three chins wobbling.

"Any liberty can become license--any policeman who's been on the job longer than a week knows as much," La Strada said. "But the Preacher has been going up and down in Atlantis for more than fifty years now. He may have forgotten."

"Going up and down like Satan in the Book of Job," Walton growled. "We need to find the rascal so we can give him a piece of our mind."

The Atlantean police officer shifted from foot to foot. "Well, sir, like I told you last night, finding him's a problem we haven't ciphered out ourselves."

"What then?" Dr. Walton was still in a challenging mood. "Shall we walk into the nearest House of Universal Devotion and ask the hemidemisemipagans pretending to be priests where the devil their precious Preacher is? The Devil ought to know, all right." No, he was not a happy man.

Athelstan Helms, by contrast, suddenly looked as happy as his saturnine features would allow. "A capital idea, Doctor! Capital, I say. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we shall do that very thing. Beard the blighters in their den, like." He used the Atlanteanism with what struck Walton as malice, or at least mischief, aforethought.

"You're not serious, Helms?" the doctor burst out.

"I am, sir--serious to the point of solemnity," Helms replied. "What better way to come to know our quarry's henchmen?"

"What better way to end up in an alley with our throats cut?" Dr. Walton said. "I'd lay long odds the blackguards have more knives than the two they wasted on goosedown."

Helms paused long enough to light his pipe, then rounded on La Strada. "What is your view of this, Inspector?"

"I wouldn't recommend it," the policeman said. "I doubt you'd be murdered, not two such famous fellows as you are. They have to know we'd haul their Houses down on top of 'em if they worked that kind of outrage. But I don't reckon you'd learn very much from 'em, either."

"There! D'you see, Helms?" Walton said. "Inspector La Strada's a man of sense."

"By which you mean nothing except that he agrees with you," Helms said placidly. "To the nearest House we shall go."

* * * *

Hanover had several Houses of Universal Devotion, all of them in poor, even rough, neighborhoods. Devotion was not a faith that appealed to the wealthy, though more than a few Devotees had, through skill and hard work, succeeded in becoming prosperous. "Nothing but a heresy," Dr. Walton grumbled as he and Helms approached a House. "Blacker than Pelagianism. Blacker than Arianism, by God, and who would have dreamt it possible?"

"Your intimate acquaintance with creeds outworn no doubt does you credit, Doctor," Helms said. "Here, however, we face a creed emphatically not outworn, and we would do well to remember as much."

The House of Universal Devotion seemed unprepossessing enough, without even a spire to mark it as a church. On the lintel were carved a sun, a crescent moon, several stars, and other, more obscure symbols. "Astrology?" Dr. Walton asked.

"Freemasonry," Helms answered. "There are those who claim the two are one and inseparable, but I cannot agree." His long legs scissored up the stairs two at a time. Walton followed more sedately.

"What do we do if they won't let us in?" Walton inquired.

"Create a disturbance as a ruse, then effect an entrance will they or nill they." Athelstan Helms rather seemed to look forward to the prospect. But when he worked the latch the door swung inward on silent, well-oiled hinges. With a small, half-rueful shrug, he stepped across the threshold, Dr. Walton again at his heels.