Spinelli glanced down; he saw the card with the eight swords painted on it, and forgot his lethargy.
"Hell's bells! The taroc, eh? Where did you get this?"
"You recognize it?… Good! That was better than I had hoped for. I was going to ask. you whether Depping, when you knew him, ever dabbled in pseudo-occultism of this kind. I presumed he did; he had several shelves of books dealing with the more rarified forms — people like Wirth, and Ely Star, and Barlet, and Papus. But nobody seemed to know anything about his interest in such matters, if — h'mf — if he had any."
"He was a sucker for it," Spinelli answered simply. "Or for anything in the line of glorified fortune telling. He didn't like to admit it, that's all. Actually, he was as superstitious as they make 'em. And the taroc was his favorite."
Inspector Murch lumbered over and seized his notebook.
"Taroc?" he repeated. "What's this taroc?"
To answer that question, my friend, fully and thoroughly" said Dr. Fell, squinting at the card, "you would need to be initiated into the mysteries of theosophy; and even then the explanation would baffle any ordinary brain, including my own. You'll get some idea of the modest functions it is supposed to have if I tell you some of the claims they make for it. The taroc reveals the world of ideas and principles, and enables us to grasp the laws of the evolution of phenomena; it is a mirror of the universe, wherein we find symbolically the threefold theogonic, androgonic, and cosmogonic theory of the ancient magi; a double current of the progressive materialization or involution of the God-mind, and the progressive redivinisation of matter which is the basis of theosophy. It is also—"
"Excuse me, sir," said Inspector Murch, breathing hard, "but I can't write all that down, you know. If you'd make yourself a bit clearer…"
"Unfortunately" said the doctor, "I can't. Damned if I know what it means myself. I only inflicted that explanation, as I have read it, because I am fascinated by the roll and stateliness of the words. H'm. Say that according to some people the taroc is, in summo gradu, a key to the universal mechanism… In substance it is a pack of seventy-eight cards, with weird and rather ghastly markings. They use it like a pack of ordinary playing cards, for what Mr. Spinelli has called glorified fortune telling."
Murch looked relieved and interested. "Oh, ah. Like reading the cards? Ah, ay; done it meself. Me sister's cousin often reads the cards for us. And tea leaves as well. And, lu' me, sir," he said in a low earnest voice, "if she don't 'ave it right, every time…!" He caught himself up, guiltily.