technical requirements in their entirety.'
`You mean that among the women neophytes there was never a virgin who could be used as an altar?'
`No, I didn't mean that. It's true that on most occasions he had to make do with young women who had already been seduced, but twice while I was there he managed to get hold of a virgin. And naturally there was no difficulty about holy wafers for desecration and that sort of thing. I was simply referring to the fact that to be one hundred per cent potent the celebrant should have been a Roman Catholic priest, and Crowley had never been ordained.'
`Quite, quite. That was a pity, but would be overlooked if suitable propitiation were made to the Prince by way of blood offerings. Did Crowley er ever achieve the apotheosis in that direction?'
`I can't say for certain. In mediaeval times life was held so cheap that adepts such as Gilles de Rais could decimate a dozen parishes for the furtherance of their magical operations, and no one powerful enough to interfere felt sufficiently strongly about it to do so. But in these days matters are very different. The Italian police must have had a pretty shrewd idea of the sort of thing that went on at the Abbaye; but they were a tolerant lot and were well bribed to keep their ideas to themselves, so they never gave us any trouble. I'm sure they would have, though, had they the least grounds to suppose that we were offering up human sacrifices. Usually Crowley used cats or goats, and once I was present when a monkey was crucified upside down. After I had left I heard rumours that one or two children had disappeared from villages round about; but I'm inclined to suppose that was simply malicious gossip put about by Crowley's enemies.'
The pale eyes of Copely Syle had a faraway look as he murmured thoughtfully, `Ah, for the culminating act in such rituals there is nothing so effacious as the warm blood of an unweaned child.'
C. B. had to bite hard on the stem of his pipe to repress a shudder; but he felt that he was now well on the way to achieving his object in going there, which was to establish such an apparent community of interests with the Canon that the latter would voluntarily give himself away. For a few moments they both sat staring silently into the fire, then the Canon said
`From all you say, Crowley must have reached at least the degree of Magus, if not Ipsissimus. What I cannot understand is how by the middle nineteen thirties, when I met him, he should have degenerated into an impotent windbag, incapable of impressing anyone except a handful of credulous old women.'
`That is easily explained. It was that unfortunate affair in Paris towards the end of the nineteen twenties. You are right in supposing that before that he ranked as an Ipsissimus, but that night he was cast right back across the Abyss. In fact, he was stripped of all his powers and afterwards the most callow neophyte could have bested him in an astral conflict.'
`What an awful thing to happen to an adept,' said the Canon a shade uneasily. `Did he then recant and offer to make a full confession in exchange for being accepted back into the Church? I imagine no other act deserving of such terrible punishment.'
`Oh no, it was nothing like that. It was simply that his ambition was so great that he over reached himself. If he could have bent Pan to his will he would have been the most powerful being on earth. With Pan's pipes playing as he directed he could have made even governments dance to his tune. He attempted to master Pan, but he wasn't quite strong enough; so he paid the price of failure: that's all.'
`I find this most interesting,' said Copely Syle in a low voice. `Do you happen to know any details of what took place?'
`Yes. As a matter of fact I was still one of his disciples, so with him at the time.' C. B. was on safer ground now, as he had actually had a first hand account of this grim affair from one of Crowley's young men, and he went on
`The attempt took place in Paris. Crowley made up a coven, so including himself there were thirteen of us; and in this instance we were naturally all males. We were staying at an hotel on the Left Bank. The proprietor was an initiate, and it was quite a small place; so we took the whole premises for the night, and all the servants were got rid of from mid day to mid day. There was a big room at the top of the house which seemed just the thing for the purpose. In the afternoon we moved out every scrap of furniture and cleaned it with the utmost thoroughness. Then in the evening all of us assisted at the purificatory rites; but fortunately as it turned out, Crowley had decided that only his senior disciple, a chap who had taken the name of McAleister, should assist him at the actual evocation.
`At ten o'clock the rest of us robed them, then left them there, and Crowley locked the door behind us. He had already issued strict injunctions that whatever sounds we might hear coming from the room, even if they were cries for help, we were in no circumstances to attempt to enter it; as such cries might be a trick of Pan's made in an endeavour to evade him, and any interruption of the ritual would render the spell abortive. We had fasted all day, so our associate, the landlord, had prepared an excellent cold buffet for us downstairs in the dining room. It wasn't a very gay meal, as all of us were aware of the magnitude of the task the Master Therion had set himself. We had great confidence in his powers, but it was probably several centuries since any adept had had the audacity to attempt to summon the horned God in person, so we were naturally a bit nervy.
`It was just on midnight when we heard the first noises upstairs. There were thumping’s and shouts, then all Hell seemed to break loose. Piercing screams were mingled with what sounded like sacks of potatoes being flung about. We had the impression that the whole building was rocking. In fact it was, as the chandelier above us began to swing, the glasses jingled on the sideboard and a picture fell from the wall with a loud crash. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake, and the room in which we were sitting had suddenly become icy cold.
`We had all been inmates of the Abbaye at one time or another and had passed pretty severe tests in standing up to Satanic manifestations, so we were by no means a chicken hearted lot. But on this occasion we were seized by abject terror, and none of us made the least effort to hide it. We just sat there, white to the gills and paralyzed by the thought that at any second the terrible Being up above might descend on us.
`After a few moments the pandemonium subsided, and we tried to pull ourselves together. With our teeth chattering from the cold, we debated whether we had better not ignore Crowley's orders and go up to find out what had happened. But the room began to get warm again and that, together with the continued silence, led us to hope that Crowley had won his battle and succeeded in binding Pan. If so, for us to have gone in then might still have ruined everything, and Crowley's rage would have been beyond all reckoning. Knowing his powers, none of us felt inclined to risk the sort of punishment he might have inflicted on us for disobeying him; so we decided to let matters be, and I for one was not sorry about that.
`We were all too scared to face the solitude of going to bed, and started to drink in an attempt to keep our spirits up; but that didn't work. Somehow we couldn't even get tight, and we sat on hour after hour, hardly speaking.
`At last that miserable night ended. Dawn came and we began to hope that Crowley would soon come down, his fat face beaming with triumph, to make our fears seem ridiculous; but he didn't. We waited till seven o'clock. There was still not a sound from the top of the house, so by then we felt that we were no longer justified in evading the issue. All the same, we didn't exactly run upstairs, as by that time we were feeling pretty apprehensive about what we might find when we got there. For a moment or two all eleven of us stood huddled on top of the landing, listening; but with the early morning noises coming up from the street we could not definitely make out any sound coming from the room. Someone suggested that after their exhausting ordeal Crowley and McAleister might still be sleeping, and the idea gave us fresh hope for the moment; but another fellow knocked hard on the door, and there was no reply. That left us with no alternative but to break down the door.'
15
Chamber of Horrors
Like the good raconteur that he was, C. B. paused to knock out his pipe. Copely Syle jerked his head forward and exclaimed in a breathless whisper, `Go on, man! Go on! What did you find?'
C. B. looked him straight in the eyes, and, certain of his facts on this final point, said quietly, 'McAleister was dead. He was stretched out on his back with his arms flung wide, absolutely rigid, just as though he had been electrocuted, and with an appalling look of stark horror on his face such as I never wish to see again. Crowley's pontifical robes were scattered in ribbons about the floor. It looked as if they had been ripped from his body by some ferocious animal. He was crouching in a corner naked. He didn't know any of us. He had become a gibbering idiot.'
The Canon took a quick gulp at his drink and muttered, `Horrible, horrible! Have you any idea what went wrong?'
