The Diviners (26 page)

“Sorry for that,” Jericho said from the backseat, but he looked pretty pleased with himself.

“That punch got us out of there. Good work, Freddie. Though next time, go easy on me, not-so-gentle giant.”

At the bottom of the drive, a group of men stood across the road, blocking their escape. Evie gripped the door handle as the
men surrounded the car. Sam’s hands remained fixed on the wheel, and for the second time, Evie wished she were driving.

A broad-chested man in a straw hat leaned both arms on Evie’s open window. “You people from the city, we know what you get up to over there, and we don’t want any part of it. You understand?”

Evie nodded gravely. Her heart pounded in her chest. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.

“Don’t come back here no more. We don’t need your kind.”

One of the men angled his face close to Jericho’s. He smiled at him in a convivial way, as if they were two old friends on a fishing trip, one giving advice to the other. “If it were me, son, I’d take that one out to the woods and show him what happens to fellas what try to take what’s rightfully yours.” He took a book of matches from his pocket and struck one, watching it flare into an orange diamond, then flicked it into the front seat at Sam. Evie gave a small shriek as it landed on his pants, but he patted it out quickly. He looked terrified, though. The usual Sam swagger was nowhere to be seen. The men stepped back. The fellow in front took his hand off the hood, and Sam jerked the car forward, spraying small pebbles from the back tires as he drove. They came around the next bend so quickly that they didn’t see the man until they were nearly upon him.

“Sam, watch out!” Evie yelled.

Sam hit the brakes and the car shuddered to a stop and quit. In front of them, Brother Jacob Call had both hands up, as if waiting to be hit. He pointed a long finger at them.

“What was started long ago will now be finished when the fire burns in the sky,” he said. “Repent, for the Beast is come.”

Then he turned away, walking up the hill in long, quick strides.

It was afternoon by the time Evie, Jericho, and Sam returned to the museum and told Will of their narrow escape from the Pillar of Fire Church and their curious encounter with Brother Jacob Call.

“Do you think he could be our killer?” Jericho asked.

“I’ll certainly report it to Detective Malloy right away,” Will answered. “You did very well. This may be the break we’ve needed.”

“He said something else very curious.” Evie rested her stocking feet on a stack of books on the floor. “He said something about ‘what was started long ago would now be finished.’ What was started long ago? When?”

The phone rang and Will answered it. “William Fitzgerald. I see. Whom may I say is calling, please? Just a moment.” Will held out the receiver. “It’s for you, Evie. A Mr. Daily Newsenhauser?”

Evie took the phone and said, “I don’t need an Electrolux, and I’m already a Colgate customer, so unless you’re giving away a mink, I’m afraid—”

“Heya, Sheba. How’s the Creepy Crawly?” T. S. Woodhouse said.

Evie turned her back on Will and the boys. “Spiffing. Mr. Lincoln’s ghost just asked me to tea. I do love a polite ghost. Clever moniker.”

“Daily Newsenhauser? I thought so.”

Evie placed a hand over the receiver. “An order I placed with a salesman at B. Altman. I won’t be a minute.”

“I don’t like your appropriating the museum’s telephone for personal calls, Evangeline,” Will said, but he didn’t look up from his stack of clippings.

“I take it you can’t speak freely?” Woodhouse said.

“You’re on the trolley.”

“Maybe we could meet.”

“Not likely.”

“Come on, Sheba. Play along with your old pal T.S. Got anything for me?”

“That depends. What do you have for me?”

“A story about the museum in tomorrow’s papers. A mention of one Miss Evie O’Neill. The very comely Miss O’Neill.”

Evie smiled. “Hold on a minute. Jericho,” she called. “I need to order unmentionables. Be a dear and hang this one up for me, and I’ll take it in Will’s office.” Evie scurried past Sam, who waggled his eyebrows in response to the word
unmentionables
. Evie gave him an irritated eye-roll and raced to the phone in Will’s office. “I’ve got it, Jericho dear.” She waited for the telltale
click
, then spoke in a hushed voice. “They think the killer might be involved with the Klan. A copy of
The Good Citizen
was found with Tommy Duffy’s body.”

“No kidding? Wouldn’t put it past those pond scum.”

“I know. Why, they’re even worse than reporters.”

“I like you, Sheba.”

“And I like what you can do for me, Mr. Woodhouse.”

“What else?”

“Nothing doing. I’ll expect that article first.”

“Evie, please do say good-bye,” Will instructed from the doorway.

Evie spoke cheerfully and loudly into the receiver. “Get yourself a mustard plaster and stay in bed, Mabesie darling, and you’ll be as good as new! I have to dash now. Ta!” Evie put the phone back in its cradle and turned to Will with a heavy sigh. “Poor lamb would simply be lost without me.”

Will looked puzzled. “I thought you were speaking to a salesman at B. Altman.”

“There were two calls!” Evie lied, smiling brightly. “Oh, Unc, honestly! Didn’t you hear it ring the second time? The sound in these old mansions isn’t what it could be, I suppose. Well, no matter.
I
heard it. What did you want, Unc?”

Will threaded his arms through the sleeves of his trench coat and put on his hat. “I’ve just received word from my colleague Dr. Poblocki at Columbia. That page you discovered has proved helpful. He’s found something significant after all. Well?”

Evie grabbed her coat.

Evie and Will crossed the long green of Columbia, heading toward the Low Memorial Library, an enormous marble building whose ionic columns gave it the countenance of a Greek temple. To their right, the crooked-tooth rooftops of the apartment buildings of Morningside Heights stood in relief against the gray autumnal sky. Somewhere, a church bell tolled. The day was blustery, but students still sat on the library steps leading up from the green. Heads turned as Evie passed. She allowed herself to think it was because she was devastatingly pretty in her rose silk dress and peacock-patterned stockings, and not because she was one of the only girls on campus.

Dr. Georg Poblocki’s office sat at the end of a long hall in a building that smelled of old books and yearning. Dr. Poblocki himself was a large man with craggy cheeks and puffy eyes overshadowed by unruly brows that Evie had the urge to trim.

“The full story behind that drawing you sent was rather hard to find, William,” Dr. Poblocki said in a faint German accent. He smiled with an almost mischievous glee. “But find it I did.”

He drew a book from a stack and opened it to a marked page showing the familiar star-encircled-by-a-snake emblem. “Behold: the Pentacle of the Beast.”

“The police should have consulted you instead of me, Georg.”

Dr. Poblocki shrugged. “I don’t have a museum.” To Evie he said, “Your uncle was my student at Yale before he started working for the government.”

“That was a long time ago.” Will tapped the page. “Tell me more about this Pentacle of the Beast, Georg. What is it? What does it mean?”

“It is the sacred emblem of the Brethren, a vanished religious cult in upstate New York.”

“I forget New York even has an upstate. Seems unnecessary after Manhattan,” Evie quipped.

“Delightful!” Dr. Poblocki smiled. “I like this one.”

“The Brethren?” Will prompted as if waiting out an unruly student.

“The Most Holy Covenant of the Brethren of God. They were formed during the Second Great Awakening, in the early nineteenth century.”

“The second what?” Evie asked.

“The Second Great Awakening was a time when religious fervor gripped the nation. Preachers would cross the country giving fiery sermons about hellfire and damnation, warning of the Devil’s temptations while saving souls during revivals and tent meetings,” Dr. Poblocki said, slipping into the sort of lecturing mode Evie imagined he used with his students. “It gave rise to new religions such as the Church of Latter-Day Saints, the Church of Christ, and the Seventh-Day Adventists, as well as this one.” Dr. Poblocki tapped the book with his finger. “The Brethren was formed by a young preacher named John Joseph Algoode. Reverend Algoode
was tending sheep—very biblical, that—when he saw a great fire in the sky. It was Solomon’s Comet coming through the northern hemisphere.”

Evie suddenly remembered the two girls handing her the flyer on the street. “The same Solomon’s Comet…”

“On its way to us now in its fifty-year return. Indeed.” Dr. Poblocki finished. He settled into a chair, wincing as he did so. “This dreadful knee of mine. Old age comes for us all, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll be old before you tell us the story, Georg,” Will pressed, and Evie felt a bit embarrassed by his rudeness.

“Your uncle. He could never wait for anything. That impatience will cost you in the end, I fear, William,” Dr. Poblocki said, peering up at Will darkly, and it seemed to Evie that her uncle looked just a bit chastened. “Pastor Algoode claimed to have had a vision: that the old churches of Europe were a corruption of God’s word. There needed to be a new American faith, he said. Only this great experiment of a country could produce believers pure and devout enough to submit wholly to God’s word and judgment. The Brethren would be that faith. They would rule the new America. The true America. They would fulfill its great promise.” Dr. Poblocki removed his glasses, fogging the lenses with his breath and wiping them clean with a cloth until he was satisfied, then settled the hooks of them over his ears again. “Pastor Algoode brought his small flock to the Catskill Mountains in 1832. They settled on fifteen acres and built a church in an old barn, where they would meet each evening for prayers by candlelight and all day on Sundays. They painted their homes and church with religious signs in accordance with their holy book, and they farmed their land. They had an odd belief system, cobbled together from the Bible—particularly Revelation—and the occult. Their Book of the Holy Brethren was believed to be part religious doctrine, part grimoire.”

“Grimoire?” Evie said.

“A book of sorcery,” Dr. Poblocki explained.

“That explains the sigils, I suppose,” Will mused.

Dr. Poblocki nodded. “Indeed. There were rumors, as there always are in such cases, that the Brethren practiced everything from unsavory sexual practices to cannibalism and human sacrifice. It’s one of the reasons they were so insular and lived up in the mountains—to escape persecution. They did have extensive knowledge of hallucinogens, most likely learned from native tribes who used such things in their religious worship to achieve transcendence. The account of a French-Canadian fur trapper visiting the area tells of ‘a magnificent smoke and a sweet wine which, when consumed, cause the mind to imagine all sorts of angels and devils.’ Now. The Brethren were an eschatology cult.”

“Is that even legal?” Evie said.

“Charming lady!” Dr. Poblocki laughed and patted Evie’s hand. “Are you certain you’re related to
that
one?” He nodded at Will, and Evie had to fight the urge to giggle.

“Eschatology,” Dr. Poblocki continued, “from the Greek
eschatos
, meaning ‘the last,’ is about the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Ah, but here is where things become quite interesting!”

Evie’s eyes widened. “More interesting than dope and sorcery?”

“Indeed! You see, the Brethren didn’t just believe that the end of the world was nigh; they thought it their God-given duty to help bring it about.”

“How did they plan to do that?” Will asked.

“By raising the anti-Christ. The Beast himself.” Dr. Poblocki paused to allow his words time to settle. Evie’s skin prickled with goose bumps.

“Why would they do that if they were Christians?” Evie asked.

“The line between faith and fanaticism is a constantly shifting one,” Dr. Poblocki said. “When does belief become justification? When does right become rationale and crusade become crime?”