"What's the harm?" he laughed.
At his time of life, he smiled, to put himself in the hands of a charlatan, to conjure up a spirit! In this century, with the telephone by his bedside, with the electric light overhead, to patronize a mumming magician! Nothing would, could happen.
But that nothing would be his answer. It would mean that his life was free forever, purged of the foolish innuendos, the lunatic accusations of outsiders; the morbid worries of his own abnormal mind. Free to go ahead and be married, and to live happily ever after.
When the butler had come for him silently, in the big blue limousine, one fine night of stars, he had gone with a little tremor in his veins. What would Father John and the gentle nuns and his little betrothed think of this mad excursion? Well, he had thrown down a gauntlet to Fate, and he would go through with it, regardless of the empty issue. There was a witticism on his lips as he entered the apartment; but the witticism froze.
Silently the butler ushered him into a dim room lighted by tapers. In a corner, silent, were Sergius and four young men. In the middle of the floor was a strange geometric design of circles and squares.
"Your butler just came for me—" Kerrigan felt the need of saying something, no matter how banal. In a sort of awe Kerrigan noted the white garments of the former monk, and of his disciples; the white shoes embroidered in red; the white crowns with the Hebrew letters.
"Do you still wish to go ahead with this?" the Russian asked him.
"Of course," Kerrigan uttered. His own voice seemed strange in his ears.
"You are to obey me in all things." The ex-monk's voice had a terrible hidden menace in it, "and if you move out of that circle you are worse than a dead man! Follow me."
They moved forward through an opening into the strange geometric design, and behind them on silent feet came the four attendants. Kerrigan noticed in a sort of daze the sword they carried, the trumpet, the book, and the lighted taper. About him, outside the circle, were strange paper symbols that seemed to cut him off from the world of sane and living men. The Magus lit a circle of censers about the outer square. He closed the circle and lifted one on high. He swung it toward the four corners of the square. An attendant handed him a sword. He stuck it in the ground. Another handed him a trumpet. He blew it brazenly.