One day the nurse, who was a relative of Hokeis’ wife, was wheeling the child around the walks of Hampstead Heath, when they wandered within the precincts of a gipsy encampment, and the girl was persuaded to have her own and the child’s fortune told. The complexion and features of the twain led to remarks on their nationality, and by skillful manœuvering the gipsy woman ascertained that the couple before her were Guebres by birth, and had been by religion. The mummery over and the fee paid, the girl went home with her charge. They were followed, and on that very night, while the nurse slept, the child was stolen. Search was made for the gang of gipsies—the abduction having been clearly traced to them, by reason of a note left behind by the robber, stating that the child would be well cared for—but in vain, for on the very next day the whole gang, thirty in number, had sailed in a packet from the London Docks, for America.
Many years rolled by, when one day, as the disconsolate father was walking in the garden of the same house whence the child was stolen, he was accosted by an old beldame, who asked him what he would pay in gold in return for information respecting his child. It is needless to narrate the successive steps taken. Suffice it that within twenty-four hours the father and the gipsy were on the ocean, going as fast as steam would carry them toward the Western World.... The child, now a regal woman, was found, and father and daughter lived with each other for a time in New York, where a fine property had been bought; for the old gentleman so liked the New World that he determined to settle there for life, after his daughter had been properly cultured in Europe, whither he soon took her, and then, after transmitting the bulk of his fortune to America, went on a final visit to his people in Persia, his friends and co-religionists in the East. I had met with him as already stated, when on his return from Egypt to France.
This brings us to the night of my arrival in Paris. It being impossible to join his child that night, Hokeis and myself drove to a hotel in the Palaise Royale, and were at the satisfactory end of a supper, when a person who was totally unknown to either of us entered the salle à manger, and, making a profound obeisance to us both, said: “Salute! I come to tell you, Im Hokeis, that you will not quit Paris to-morrow. But at the hour of four you will take your daughter to the house that is last but one on the left ascending the Boulevart de Luxembourg. You will ask me no questions, but will obey. My authority I thus give you,” and he whispered three words in the ear of Hokeis, that caused the latter to start as if he had been shot. He had received the secret countersign of the priests of fire! Then turning to me, he said, “You will go early in the morning to the Hotel Fleury. There you will find Beverly, your friend, join him; go where he goes, and quit him not for an instant for the next two days—his salvation depends upon it! Now I go. Forget not the words of the Stranger.”
I was thunderstruck. Hokeis and I talked much that night before we slept. What we spoke of is easily to be conceived.
This brings me to my next meeting with Beverly, whose fortunes we will now follow.
It will be remembered that Ravalette had given him a paper just before they parted in Belleville, and that Vatterale had also left something for him at his hotel. Bearing this in mind, observe what followed.
In a bold, strong hand was written these words in the note placed by Ravalette in the hands of Beverly when they parted in Belleville—“When you need me—when you are ready to become one of us—when you have given up all hope of ever probing the mystery of my existence and your own—then seek me in the house that is last but one on the left ascending the Boulevart de Luxembourg.—Ravalette.”
The identical direction, and almost in the very words given by the mysterious personage to Hokeis, in the hotel of the Palais Royale on the previous night. The circumstance made a great impression on my mind, but prudence forbade all mention of it to Beverly. He seemed quite glad of this opportunity of solving the strange riddle, and, to my great delight, begged and insisted that I should spend the day with him, and in the evening we would investigate the subject together; and that I readily consented, may be easily imagined. There were several motives prompting me in this affair—curiosity, friendship, and a vague hope of baffling what Beverly regarded as his doom. Those who have read carefully what has here been written, will remember that Beverly had convinced me that there was more in the strange legend, regarding the king, the princess, the riddle, the murder, and the curse and its fulfillment, than the majority of people would be willing to concede. In short, I was decidedly inclined to believe in Dhoula Bel and the other doomed one, but I had no faith whatever in either Miakus, Ravalette, the Italian Count, or Vatterale. I did not believe all these names belonged to one person, and I finally settled down on the following theory, point by point:—1st, That there was in existence a society, having its head-quarters in Paris, the members of which were practisers of Oriental magic and necromancy, in which they were most astonishingly expert. 2d, That the organization had for its object, not the attainment of wealth or political position, but abstract knowledge, and the absolute rule of the world through the action and influence of the brotherhood upon the crowned heads and officials of the world. 3d, That this association was governed by a master-mind, and that mind was Ravalette’s. 4th, That this society had cultivated mesmerism to a degree unapproachable by all the world besides. That they had exhausted ordinary clairvoyance, and eagerly sought a brain which would admit of the most thorough magnetization, and whose natural tendency was toward the mystical, transcendental and weird, yet strong, strong-willed, logical, emulative, daring and ambitious; and that, to discover such, their agents had traversed all four continents of the globe; and that finally they had heard of Beverly, whose fame as a seer was world-wide; that they had found him, and, beyond doubt, had learned the strange particulars of his life, the legend, and his hope. They had seen him, and at once decided that, under their wonderful manipulation, he could be placed in a magnetic slumber many degrees more profound than is possible in one case in five millions, and reach a degree of mental lucidity and psycho-vision that would not only surpass all that the earth had yet witnessed in that direction, from Budha, Confucius, Zoroaster, and the Oracles of Greece, down to the days of Boehme and the Swede, since when there has been no clairvoyant really worthy of the name. True, there were semi-lucides in abundance, but these either were only capable of reading or noting material objects, and, at best, repeating the thoughts of other men, or giving the contents of books as original matter, heaven-derived—as the self-styled “great (sic) American seer” gave forth the contents of a volume written by Pierpont Greeves, mixed and muddled up with a few really sublime thoughts taken from the minds of his scribe, his mesmerizer, and the highly intellectual coterie who gathered round him during his séances. 5th, They knew that, unless Beverly’s will accorded with their desire, it would be useless to attempt to gain their ends through him; and hence, all their efforts by playing the shining bait of magic for the purpose of inducing him to consent to anything in order to gain their power. Hence, too, their gift of the secrets of the Magic Mirror, the Elixir of Life, of Youth, of Love, and a score of others equally curious and invaluable to the student of the soul. 6th, It was clear that, while these men knew much of the Rosicrucian system, they were not in full harmony or accord with that brotherhood.
Thus I reasoned, and it was easy to account for the scenes in the Boston office and at Beverly’s home—the apparent immunity Miakus enjoyed from the effects of the fire, which burnt the chair but not his thigh, I accounted for on the ground that chemistry helped him, as it had a score of “fire-kings” beside.
Thus far, I felt that my theory covered the whole ground of this clever fraternity; but when I recurred to the scenes witnessed by no less than eighteen people at the house of the Baron, I confess, candidly, that it utterly failed. Still, I totally rejected all supernaturalism as connected with the affair, and, attributing the whole to expert trickery, I determined to lay a trap to catch the performers in the very act, and flattered myself that it would be successful. “Ho! ho! Mr. Vatterale, I’ll show you!” I exclaimed, as I shook Beverly’s hand, and leaving him, to bathe, dress, and breakfast alone, I hurried out, ostensibly to go to the post-office, but, in reality, to visit the head-quarters of the Paris Police, which I did, and, when there, briefly but clearly stated my belief that a friend of mine was being victimized in the manner stated; to all of which the chief official lent an attentive ear, caused my proces verbal to be recorded, directed me how to proceed so as not to alarm the suspected parties, and promised to have a posse on hand very close to the house on the Boulevart de Luxembourg by the hour named. On my way back to the Hotel Fleury, I dropped in to see if Hokeis was home, but found only a note, informing me that he had gone to Versailles after his daughter. I rejoined Beverly.