Maleficence flowers, malevolence reigns in the ranks of The Society, a secret organization that dominates many thousands of American lives. Evidence has accrued that leaders of The Society are often the same men who hold leadership positions in this community, this state, this nation, in commerce, finance, politics, industry, and invention, and that as a way of preserving power over what they consider lesser beings, they are, in seriate accumulation, as guilty of fratricide as was Cain, as guilty of ritual murder as are the disciples of Kali, as devout in their myriad hatreds as any demon from the caverns of hell.
Whom do they hate?
Thee and me.
Which brothers do they kill?
Thine and mine.
Dirck carried on throughout with such shameless rhetorical flourishes, also interposing an appalling study of clandestine conspiracy to defraud, destroy, debase, and eliminate not only men but families and entire organizations that obstructed the aims of The Society, and to ostracize foreigners from public office, power, and lofty social position. Sudden death on a dark pier, legal theft of an iron foundry’s ownership, burning of barns, poisoning of livestock, terrorizing of immigrant and religious gatherings — all such events had been reported in the newspapers, and Dirck cited dates and places. Taken discretely, the events reflected a randomly base quality to much of human behavior. But linked by Dirck’s genius for correlation, they coalesced as the scheme of a ruthless and invisible oligarchy.
Dirck’s writing went well beyond summary of the plotted web. It also named beneficiaries and heretofore untouchable agents of the vile deeds. Even when his proof was firm but unsubstantiable, he described his targets with a partial fidelity that ensured identification; for instance: “The corrupt magistrate D— van E— of the nearby village of C—.”
The recklessness of this attack (Will was sued numerous times for libel) was a calculation that placed Will’s and Dirck’s moral positions above anything purporting to be a fair-minded rendering of reality. Damn fair-mindedness! We are in possession of dastardly truth!
The community response was swift. Committees assembled to confront The Society’s suddenly visible leaders with a cascade of shame and alarm that such secrecy had been so powerfully loosed upon the land. A spate of resignations from the order also followed in protest against the criminal revelation. Many of the accused denied The Society even existed, but sudden departures from the city by certain bankers, politicians, artisans became known, and a few notorious members of the lower classes also vanished, men known to have been available for hired thuggery. Dirck’s book was widely reprinted, or paraphrased by cautious editors, elsewhere in the nation, and Dirck, in absentia, became a hero, as did Will for publishing him.
Two known deaths ensued from what Dirck wrote. A magistrate renowned as a temperance advocate shot himself through the right eye after Dirck revealed him as the actual owner of a brothel and four grogshops; and an actors’ dresser, one Abner Green, was found hanging from a crossbeam backstage at The Museum. The City Physician rendered a report of suicide on Green, but Will believed it to be murder, for he knew Green had been one of Dirck’s informants. Green’s death convinced Will that Dirck also had been killed, for Abner Green had given Dirck certain data on the oath that members took to gain entry to The Order of the Cross, the elite group responsible for discipline within The Society. Dirck wrote:
Deprived of clothing, food, light, and the right to speak, naked in the darkness for as much as twenty-four hours, the candidates for this Order are at last given food to eat, then are told it has been befouled by human waste. The food has not been befouled, only tainted with certain odors. Yet believing it excrementalized, the candidates dutifully devour it. If they retch they must devour a new portion.
Of the oath, Dirck quoted this cautionary segment:
I will defend The Society with my life, not only its known aims, but those yet to be defined. I will punish its enemies without fear of reprisal by any man, any law. If ever I betray this oath, I agree that my stomach should be opened by a blade, and my organs and entrails exposed to the tooth and fang of ravenous rats.
Since Abner Green had not died in this manner, Will was not sure it had been a ritual murder. He distrusted all official information from the city, and so called me into his office.
“How would you like to become an actor?” he asked me.
“I would not like it at all,” I said. “I’ve never set foot in a theater. Just thinking about being onstage gives me chilblains.”
“Nonsense,” said Will. “All actors are terrified. But they overcome that and find something of themselves worth presenting to public view.”
“Not me,” said I.
“Frankly,” said Will in his forbearing tone, “I’m not interested in your lack of dramatic ambition. I only want you to go to The Museum to audition for the new show, and to keep alert for talk of Abner Green and Dirck. They won’t suspect anything of a boy your age. Tell them you can act. Tell them you can sing.”
“You want me to do this all by myself?”
“I do.”
“But I’m afraid,” I said.
“You are not afraid,” said Will.
“Oh yes I am.”
“Oh no you are not.”
“Then why do I think I am?”
“Because you are a boy who still believes in fear, and it’s time you grew out of that.”
And so, browbeaten by my elder, I took myself to The Museum, which had begun its existence more than twenty years earlier as a showplace of curiosities — a rhinoceros purportedly shot by Benjamin Franklin, a living Chinese torso without arms or legs, a wax effigy of the last man legally hanged in Albany, the unique one-hundred-and-forty-pound Amazonian rat (stuffed). The Museum, in the ’40s, had turned to melodrama, but also had seen Edwin Forrest incarnate Hamlet, Lear, and Othello on its boards. Several live-horse dramas gained popularity on its huge stage, but all were eclipsed by the success of Magdalena Colón’s sensational dancing. Since Magdalena, the audiences had been a thin gruel, and theater manager Waldorf (Dorf) Miller now hoped to woo people back with a production bridging two genres: the minstrel show and the Irish frolic. Its title: Tambo and Paddy Go to Town.
A dozen workers were in assorted forms of frenzy — sweeping, painting, doing carpentry work — as I entered. One man was sawing a huge, decrepit rhinoceros into thirds to get it out the door (its skin had been stuffed years earlier inside the theater), and onstage a cadaverous white man was shuffling to the music of two banjos and singing:
Dere’s music in de wells,
Dere’s music in de air
Dere’s music in a nigger’s
knee When de banjo’s dere.
When the singer finished, Dorf Miller, a somewhat round man in a silver leather vest, with sprouts of hair behind his ears but nowhere else on his head, told him he was hired and asked did he have a costume for the show. The man said he did not, and so Dorf nodded and pulled aside a curtain onstage, revealing people fitting costumes on performers. I went to the manager and gave my name and said I would like a role in his new show.
“A role, you say, Master Quinn?”
“Yes, sir, a role.”
“Are you an actor, Master Quinn?”
“I hope to be,” I said, a great lie that slid so easily off my tongue that I realized I must be very close to damnation. “And I sing. My mother said I had quite a good voice,” another lie that amused Dorf Miller, and he announced to all present, “Hear, hear. This boy says his mother likes his singing,” and all laughed. “What brought you to our door?” he asked me.