“A Sign, a Sign, let there be a Sign!”
“It comes.”
“It comes.”
“It is here.”
Again the well-staged crescendo that ended, this time, in a deafening crash of cymbals followed by a dead silence.
And across that silence: bathetic, ridiculous and disturbing, broke the unmistakable bleat of a billy goat.
The smoke eddied and swirled, and there, on the altar for all the world like one of old Marie’s statuettes, it appeared, horned and shining, a silver goat whose hide glittered through the smoke. It opened its mouth sideways and superciliously bleated. Its pale eyes stared and it stamped and tossed its head.
“It’s been shoved up there from the back,” Alleyn thought. “They’ve treated it with flourescent paint. Ça s’illumine.”
Baradi was speaking again.
“Prepare, prepare,” he chanted. “The Sign is the Shadow of the Substance. The Goat-god is the precursor of the Man-god. The Man-god is the Bridegroom. He is the Spouse. He is Life. He is the Sun. Ra!”
There was a blare of light, for perhaps a second literally blinding in its intensity. “Flash-powder,” thought Alleyn. “The Egyptian must be remarkably busy.” When his eyes had adjusted themselves, the goat had disappeared and in its place the sun-burst blazed on the altar. “Car batteries,” thought Alleyn, “perhaps. Flex soldered at the terminals. Well done, Mahomet or somebody.”
“Ra! Ra! Ra!” the initiates ejaculated with Baradi as their cheerleader.
The door to the left of the altar had opened. It admitted a naked man.
He advanced through wreaths of incense and stood before the blazing sun-burst. It was, of course, Mr. Oberon.
iii
Of the remainder of the ceremony, as far as he witnessed it, Alleyn afterwards prepared an official report. Neither this, nor a manual called The Book of Ra. which contained the text of the ritual, has ever been made public. Indeed, they have been stowed away in the archives of Scotland Yard where they occupy a place of infamy rivalling that of the Book of Horus and the Swami Viva Ananda. There are duplicates at the Sûreté. In the trial they were not put in as primary evidence, and the judge, after a distasteful glance, said that he saw no reason why the jury should be troubled to look at them.
For purposes of this narrative it need only be said that with the appearance of Oberon, naked, in the role of Ra or Horus, or both, the Rites took on the character of unbridled Phallicism. He stood on some raised place before the blazing sun-burst, holding a dagger in both hands. More incense burners were set reeking at his feet, and there he was, the nearest approach, Alleyn afterwards maintained, that he had ever seen, to a purely evil being.
His entry stung the initiates into their pitch of frenzy. Incredible phrases were chanted, indescribable gestures were performed. The final crescendo of that scandalous affair rocketed up to its point of climax. For the last time the Egyptian’s drum rolled and Baradi clashed his cymbals. For the last time pandemonium gave place to silence.
Oberon came down from his eminence and walked towards the encircled pentagram. His feet slapped the tessellated pavement. His hair, lit from behind, was a nimbus about his head. He entered the pentagram and the initiates turned inwards, crouching beastily at the points. Oberon placed himself at the centre. Baradi spoke.
“Horus who is Savitar who is Baldur who is Ra. The Light, The Beginning and The End, The Life, The Source and The Fulfilment. Choose, now, Lord, O choose.”
Oberon extended his arm and pointed his dagger at Raoul.
Baradi went to Raoul. He held out his hand. In the capricious glare from the sun-burst Alleyn could see Raoul on his knees, his shadow thrown before him towards Oberon’s feet. His face was deeply hidden in his hood. Alleyn saw the gloved hand and arm reach out. Baradi took the hand. He passed Raoul across him with a dancer’s gesture.
Raoul now faced Oberon.
Somewhere in the shadows the Egyptian servant cried out shrilly.
Baradi’s dark hands, themselves seeming gloved, closed on the shoulders of Raoul’s robe. Suddenly, with a flourish, and to a roll of the drum, he swept it free of its wearer. “Behold!” he shouted: “The Bride!”
And then, in the glare from the sun-burst, where, like an illustration from La Vie Parisienne, Mr. Oberon’s victim should have been discovered; there stood Raoul in his underpants, black slippers and Ginny Taylor’s gloves.
A complete surprise is often something of an anti-climax and so, for a moment or two, was this. It is possible that Annabella Wells and Carbury Glande were too fuddled with marihuana to get an immediate reaction. Miss Garbel, of course, had been prepared. As for Oberon and Baradi, they faced each other across the preposterous Thing they had unveiled and their respective jaws dropped like those of a pair of simultaneous comedians. Raoul himself merely cast a scandalized glance at Oberon and uttered in a loud apocalyptic voice the single word: “Anathema!”
It was then that Miss Garbel erupted in a single hoot of hysteria. It escaped from her and was at once cut off by her own hand clapped across her mouth. She squatted, heaving, in the corner of the pentacle, her terrified eyes staring over her knuckles at Baradi.
Baradi, in an unrecognizable voice and an unconscious quotation, said: “Which of you has done this?”
Oberon gave a bubbling cry: “I am betrayed!”
Raoul, hearing his voice, repeated: “Anathema!” and made the sign of the cross.
Oberon dragged Miss Garbel to her feet. He held her with his right hand; in his left was the dagger. She chattered in his face: “You can’t! You can’t! I’m protected. You can’t!”
Alleyn advanced until he was quite close to them. Glande and Annabella Wells were on their feet.
“Is this your doing?” Oberon demanded, lowering his face to Miss Garbel’s.
“Not mine!” she chattered. “Not this time. Not mine!”
He flung her off. Baradi turned on Raoul.
“Well!” Baradi said in French, “so I know you, now. Where’s your master?”
“Occupy yourself with your own affairs, Monsieur.”
“We are lost!” Oberon cried out in English.
His hand moved. The knife glinted.
“Alors, Raoul!” said Alleyn.
Raoul stooped and ran. He ran out of the pentacle and across the floor. The Egyptian darted out and was knocked sideways. His head struck the corner of the altar and he lay still. Raoul sped through the open door into Oberon’s room. Oberon followed him. Alleyn followed Oberon and caught him up on the far side of the great looking-glass. He seized his right hand as it was raised. “Not this time,” Alleyn grunted and jerked his arm. The dagger flew from Oberon’s hand and splintered the great glass. At the same moment Raoul kicked. Oberon gave a scream of pain, staggered across the room and lurched against the window. With a whirr and a clatter the blind flew up and Oberon sank on the floor moaning. Alleyn turned to find Baradi facing him with the knife in his left hand.
“You,” Baradi said. “I might have guessed. You!”
iv
From the moment that the affair began, as it were, to wind itself up in Oberon’s room, it became a straightout conflict between Alleyn and Baradi. Alleyn had guessed that it would be so. Even while he sweated to remember his police training in unarmed combat he found time to consider that Oberon, naked and despicable, had at last become a negligible element. Alleyn was even aware of Carbury Glande and Annabella Wells teetering uncertainly in the doorway, and of Miss Garbel, who hovered like a spinsterly half-back on the edge of the scrimmage.