'What's that thing on your shirt?' the detective asked him, motioning his head toward the Jesuit's chest.
'What thing?'
'On the T-shirt,' the detective clarified. 'The writing. 'Philosophers.' '
'Oh, I taught a few courses one year,' said Karras, 'at Woodstock Seminary in Maryland. I played on the lower-class baseball team. They were called the Philosophers.'
'Ah, and the upper-class team?'
'Theologians.'
Kinderman smiled and shook his head. 'Theologians three, Philosophers two,' he mused.
'Philosophers three, Theologians two.'
'Of course.'
'Of course.'
'Strange things,' the detective brooded. 'Strange.- Listen, Father,' he began on a reticent tack. 'Listen, doctor.... Am I crazy, or could there be maybe a witch coven here in the District right now? Right today?'
'Oh, come on,' said Karras.
'Then there could.'
'Didn't get that.'
'Now I'll be the doctor,' the detective announced to him, punching at the air with an index finger. 'You didn't say no, but instead you were smart-ass again. That's defensive, good Father, defensive. You're afraid you'll look gullible, maybe; a superstitious priest in front of Kinderman the mastermind, the rationalist'
' ---he was tapping the finger at his temple---'the genius beside you, here, the walking Age of Reason. Right? Am I right?'
The Jesuit stared at him now with mounting surmise and respect. 'Why, that's very astute,' he remarked.
'Well, all right, then,' Kinderman grunted. 'So I'll ask you again: could there maybe be witch covens here in the District?'
'Well, I really wouldn't know,' answered Karras thoughtfully, arms folded across his chest. 'But in parts of Europe they say Black Mass.'
'Today?'
'Today.'
'You mean just like the old days, Father? Look, I read about those things, incidentally, with the sex and the statues and who knows whatever. Not meaning to disgust you, by the way, but they did all those things? It's for real?'
'I don't know.'
'Your opinion, then, Father Defensive.'
The Jesuit chuckled. 'All right, then; I think it's for real. Or at least I suspect so. But most of my reasoning's based on pathology. Sure, Black Mass. But anyone doing those things is a very disturbed human being, and disturbed in a very special way. There's a clinical name for that kind of disturbance, in fact; it's called Satanism---means people who can't have any sexual pleasure unless it's connected to a blasphemous action. Well, it's not that uncommon, not even today, and Black Mass was just used as the justification.'
'Again, please forgive me, but the things with the statues of Jesus and Mary?'
'What about them?'
'They're true?'
'Well, I think this might interest you as a policeman.' His scholarly interest aroused and stirring, Karras' manner grew quietly animated. 'The records of the Paris police still carry the case of a couple of monks from a nearby monastery---let's see...' He scratched his head as he tried to recall. 'Yes, the one at Crepy, I believe. Well, whatever.' He shrugged. 'Close by. At any rate, the monks came into an inn and got rather belligerent about wanting a bed for three. Well, the third they were carrying: a life-size statue of the Blessed Mother.'
'Ah, boy, that's shocking,' breathed the detective. 'Shocking.'
'But true. And a fair indication that what you've been reading is based on fact.'
'Well, the sex, maybe so, maybe so. I can see. That's a whole other story altogether. Never mind. But the ritual murders now, Father? That's true? Now come on! Using blood from the newborn babies?' The detective was alluding to something else he had read in the book on witchcraft, describing how the unfrocked priest at Black Mass would at times slit the wrist of a newborn infant so that the blood poured into a chalice and later was consecrated and consumed in the form of communion. 'That's just like the stories they used to tell about the Jews,' the detective continued. 'How they stole Christian babies and drank their blood. Look, forgive me, but your people told all those stories.'
'If we did, forgive me.'
'You're absolved, you're absolved.'
Something dark, something sad; passed across the priest's eyes, like the shadow of pain briefly remembered. He quickly fixed his eyes on the path just ahead.
'Well, I really don't know about ritual murder,' said Karras. 'I don't. But a midwife in Switzerland once confessed to the murder of thirty or forty babies for use at Black Mass. Oh, well, maybe she was tortured,' he amended. 'Who knows? But she certainly told a convincing story. She said she'd hide a long, thin needle up her
