" 'There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
" 'And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that the whole imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.' "
Moriarty closed the book. "Right after that God asks Noah to build himself an ark."
"I'm sorry, Professor, but I don't follow any of that," Barnett said. "I never really paid much attention in Sunday school."
"Let me expand on it for you," Moriarty said. "And I assure you, that they did not teach you this in Sunday school. The old myths sometimes tell us a surprising amount about the human unconscious. The 'sons of God' were angels; specifically in this tale a group of angels known as the Sleepless Ones, whose particular job it was to watch over men."
"Headed by this fellow," Barnett said, tapping the medallion. "Azazel."
"Correct. Now, these Sleepless Ones observed the 'daughters of men,' and they liked what they saw. They lusted after these beautiful human women, and so eventually they came down and married them."
"Naturally."
"Angels, I would imagine, can be very persuasive. But since they were angels, their children were not human children, but the Nephilim, or giants. And these giants were unruly children. Wait a second." Moriarty went over to a bookcase and ran his fingers along the spines of the books. "Here's the one. The whole story is in the Book of Enoch. A different, and longer, version of the story from that in Genesis. 'And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men and beget us children.' "
Moriarty ran his finger down the page. "Here's more; now we get to the giants: 'And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind, and they began to sin against birds and beasts and reptiles and fish, and to devour one another's flesh and to drink the blood.' " Moriarty closed the book. "This, according to one legend, was the origin of evil on the earth."
Barnett thought this over. "That's interesting," he said, "even fascinating, but what relevance does an ancient legend have on what is happening today?"
"Think of it this way, Barnett. What sort of people would chose to use Azazel, the progenitor of evil, as their symbol? What do they say about themselves? They are either fools, or knaves, or—they are evil!"
"Evil." Barnett stared down at the medallion he held. "It is a term that doesn't seem to have direct relevance anymore, not to this day and age; but you make it seem to come alive."
"They make it come alive, not I. Any man who does not believe in the existence of evil — pure, deliberate, virgin evil — or who believes it to be a thing of the past is not truly aware of the world in which he lives. But the evil, my friend, is within us. We need no Azazel to bring it to life."
"What of these letters around the rim of the medallion?" Barnett asked.
"There is, indeed, the other half of the story," Moriarty said. "Think of the letters as Roman numbers: DCLXVI. Six hundred and sixty-six."
Barnett looked blank. "So?"
"The answer to that is, once again, in the Bible — this time in the Book of Revelation." Moriarty flipped through the last few pages of his Bible. "Here it is — Chapter Thirteen:
" 'And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.'
"And then, at the end of the chapter, after describing how evil the beast is: 'Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast — for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.' "
"What does it mean?" Barnett asked.
"Nobody is sure," Moriarty said. "The Book of Revelation is by far the most obscure book of the Bible. The most usual belief is that it somehow represents the anti-Christ through some cabalistic numbering code."
Barnett leaned back and stared at his medallion, considering the sort of people who would favor this particular symbolism on their watch fobs. He found that he was weary from his day's exertions but still eager to go on. "What's on the back?" he asked.
Moriarty flipped over the medallion he was holding. "The flowers traced around the letters are Veratrum, commonly called hellebore. In ancient times it was believed to cure madness, and the soothsayer and physician Melampus is supposed to have used it to cure the mad daughters of Praetus, King of Argos."
"You seem to know an awful lot about these medallions, Professor," Barnett said. "I am aware that you have a most impressive store of esoteric knowledge. Many's the time you've told me that there is no bit of information that is not worth knowing. But this approaches prescience. Have you ever seen one of these trinkets before?"
"You suspect me of clairvoyance?" Moriarty asked. "No, I've never seen one exactly like these, but I've been expecting to run across something similar at any time over the past fifteen years. It seemed to me inevitable that someday I'd be staring at a sigil very much like this."
"It's new to me," Barnett commented. "I assume it has some specific meaning to you. What does it signify?"
"The letters HC on the reverse tell all," Moriarty said. "It is an example of the extreme conceit of those we're dealing with that they left the initials."
"HC?"
"Hellfire Club," Moriarty said. "A new incarnation of a three-hundred-year-old disgrace."
"The Hellfire Club?" Barnett looked thoughtful. "It rings a faint bell," he said. "Sometime in the past I have come across the name before, but for the life of me I can't recollect specifically where or when."
"There's usually a line or two in the history books," Moriarty said. "An amusing sidelight to the time of the Restoration. When Charles the Second returned to England, ten years after his father lost his head, and wondered why he'd been away so long. As a reaction to ten long years of rule by the stuffy old Puritans, a bunch of the young sprigs of the nobility went around raising hell. After all, they hadn't been allowed to so much as dance while the dour old Cromwells made the rules. So they called themselves the Hellfire Club. They drank, and they gambled, and they wenched, and they rode all over other people's fields, and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves."
"Boys will be boys," Barnett murmured.
Moriarty nodded. "And it seems that some boys will be boys at forty if they haven't been allowed to at twenty. But at forty, some of them have developed very advanced ideas of raising hell.
"Gradually the Hellfire Club became something other than it had been at the beginning. I imagine it happened as the 'boys' who just wanted a chance to run around a bit and sow an occasional wild oat had their fill of the missed excitement of youth and dropped out of the club to take up more serious pursuits. Those who remained were, let us say, more seriously dedicated to the single-minded pursuit of pleasure. And the pleasures they pursued gradually became more and more selfish, illegal, and sadistic. They went in for abduction, rape, torture, and murder."
"A lovely-sounding lot. Whatever happened to them?" Barnett asked.
"They were suppressed at the direct order of King Charles himself, who was never one to confuse freedom with license. They were suppressed again by a royal commission appointed by King William. It is believed that at this time they saw the wisdom of becoming a thoroughly secret society."
"That's it, then?" Barnett asked, when Moriarty paused.