The first phase of his description had stuck in my mind. “A gospel for witches; and that is the book on which Sigrid must swear an oath of renunciation at the end of the play!”
Pursuivant was scowling at the flyleaf. He groped for his pince-nez, put them on. “Look here, Connatt,” he said.
I crowded close to his elbow, and together we read what had been written long ago, in ink now faded to a dirty brown:
Geo Gordon (Biron) his book
At 1 hr. befor midnt, on 22 July, 1788 givn him. He was brot to coeven by Todlin he the saide Geo. G. to be bond to us for 150 yers. and serve for our glory he to gain his title & hav all he desirs. at end of 150 yrs. to give acctg. & not be releasd save by delivring anothr as worthie our coeven.
“And look at this, too,” commanded Judge Pursuivant. He laid his great forefinger at the bottom of the page. There, written in fresh blue ink, and in a hand somehow familiar:
This 22nd of July, 1938, I tender this book and quit this service unto Sigrid Holgar.
XIV
Zero Hour
Pursuivant closed the book with a loud snap, laid it down on the table, and caught me by the arm.
“Come away from here,” he said in a tense voice. “Outside, where nobody will hear.” He almost dragged me out through the stage door. “Come along—down by the water—it’s fairly open, we’ll be alone.”
When we reached the edge of the lake we faced each other. The sun was almost set. Back of us, in front of the lodge, we could hear the noise of early arrivals for the theater—perhaps the men who would have charge of automobile parking, the ushers, the cashier.
“How much of what you read was intelligible to you?” asked Pursuivant.
“I had a sense that it was rotten,” I said. “Beyond that, I’m completely at sea.”
“I’m not.” His teeth came strongly together behind the words. “There, on the flyleaf of a book sacred to witches and utterly abhorrent to honest folk, was written an instrument pledging the body and soul of a baby to a ‘coeven’—that is, a congregation of evil sorcerers—for one hundred and fifty years. George Gordon, the Lord Byron that was to be, had just completed his sixth month of life.”
“How could a baby be pledged like that?” I asked.
“By some sponsor—the one signing the name ‘Todlin.’ That was undoubtedly a coven name, such as we know all witches took. Terragon was another such cognomen. All we can say of ‘Todlin’ is that the signature is apparently a woman’s. Perhaps that of the child’s eccentric nurse, Mistress Gray—”
“This is beastly,” I interposed, my voice beginning to tremble. “Can’t we do something besides talk?”
Pursuivant clapped me strongly on the back. “Steady,” he said. “Let’s talk it out while that writing is fresh in our minds. We know, then, that the infant was pledged to an unnaturally long life of evil. Promises made were kept—he became the heir to the estates and title of his granduncle, ‘Wicked Byron,’ after his cousins died strangely. And surely he had devil-given talents and attractions.”
“Wait,” I cut in suddenly. “I’ve been thinking about that final line or so of writing, signed with Byron’s name. Surely I’ve seen the hand before.”
“You have. The same hand wrote Ruthven, and you’ve seen the manuscript.” Pursuivant drew a long breath. “Now we know how Ruthven could be written on paper only ten years old. Byron lives and signs his name today.”
I felt almost sick, and heartily helpless inside. “But Byron died in Greece,” I said, as though reciting a lesson. “His body was brought to England and buried at Hucknall Torkard, close to his ancestral home.”
“Exactly. It all fits in.” Pursuivant’s manifest apprehension was becoming modified by something of grim triumph. “Must he not have repented, tried to expiate his curse and his sins by an unselfish sacrifice for Grecian liberty? You and I have been over this ground before; we know how he suffered and labored, almost like a saint. Death would seem welcome—his bondage would end in thirty-six years instead of a hundred and fifty. What about his wish to be burned?”
“Burning would destroy his body,” I said. “No chance for it to come alive again.”
“But the body was not burned, and it has come alive again. Connatt, do you know who the living-dead Byron is?”
“Of course I do. And I also know that he intends to pass something into the hands of Sigrid.”
“He does. She is the new prospect for bondage, the ‘other as worthie.’ She is not a free agent in the matter, but neither was Byron at the age of six months.”
The sun’s lower rim had touched the lake. Pursuivant’s pink face was growing dusky, and he leaned on the walking-stick that housed a silver blade.
“Byron’s hundred and fifty years will end at eleven o’clock tonight,” he said, gazing shrewdly around for possible eavesdroppers. “Now, let me draw some parallels.”
“Varduk—we know who Varduk truly is—will, in the character of Ruthven, ask Miss Holgar, who plays Mary, a number of questions. Those questions, and her answers as set down for her to repeat, make up a pattern. Think of them, not as lines in a play, but an actual interchange between an adept of evil and a neophyte.”
“It’s true,” I agreed. “He asks her if she will ‘give herself up,’ ‘renounce former manners,’ and to swear so upon—the book we saw. She does so.”
“Then the prayer, which perplexes you by its form. The ‘wert in heaven’ bit becomes obvious now, eh? How about the angel that fell from grace and attempted to build up his own power to oppose?”
“Satan!”
