THE GRAND SECRET?
It now devolves upon the Editor of these pages to complete the narrative
of Beverly, his friend.
I had just reached Paris from Marseilles, where I had arrived a few days
before, by way of Malta, from Alexandria. On reaching Paris it was my
intention to rest but one night there, and then pursue my way _via_
Rouen, in Normandy, to Diéppe and England, and thence home to America.
Like all other travellers, I desired to spend a week in Paris, but
business prevented, consequently I made preparations to leave the famous
city on the day following my arrival; but I resigned myself to this
necessity with all the more fortitude, for the reason that by so doing I
should be able to retain the company of a very pleasant gentleman, whose
society I had enjoyed continually from Cairo, where we first met, to
Paris, and which I might, by making no stop in the latter place,
continue to enjoy all the way home, as he intended to start just so soon
as he rejoined his daughter, who, for about three years had been
receiving her education in Paris, and whom he was about to conduct to
his home--a newly-purchased one in New York.
The history of Mr. Im Hokeis and his adventures, as related to me on
our journey, are so well worth repeating that I shall give a short
abstract, even at the risk of enlarging this chapter.
“I was born,” said he, “on the banks of the Caspian Sea, of the family
of Hokeis--a sacred family, in whom was invested the highest order of
Priesthood, and on whom devolved the care of the sacred fire, for we
were Guebres, and the fire must never be extinguished, nor had it been,
so say our records, for many thousand years, for Religion with us is
quite a different thing from what it is among the men of Islam, India,
Rome, or the West. We pride ourselves upon the purity of our faith, and
its superiority to all that is professed by the children of Adam, quite
as much as we do our Pedigree from _Ish_, the great founder of our race
and a powerful pre-Adamite king and conqueror.”
I cannot now afford time to repeat the arguments by which Im Hokeis
demonstrated the startling proposition that there _were_ other people
living on earth besides those who claimed Adam as their founder. All
this may be found elsewhere.[9] He said that he was destined from birth
to be chief priest of the Faith, and had married a woman of his tribe
and rank, at the early age of seventeen. Near the time he was about
being ordained, war had broken out between the Guebres and their Persian
tyrants. Himself and wife were captured, taken to Herat, and there
condemned to lose their eyes, from which horrible fate they were
rescued by a member of the British Embassy, with whom they remained for
nearly three years, by which time they had mastered the English
language. While in the service of the minister, Hokeis had the good
fortune to save his life, in consequence of which a friendship sprung up
between them so strong, that when the Embassy returned to Britain the
two Guebres went with it. Arrived in London, Hokeis received an
appointment as interpreter, and soon accumulated means, after which he
entered into a direct trade with Persia, and although, during the nine
years in which he was engaged therein, heaven had not sent him any
children, yet it had blessed him with abounding wealth.
[9] The argument proving the existence of the human race thousands of
years anterior to the date of Adam, may be found in “Pre-Adamite Man.”
By Griffin Lee. New York. S. Tousey. 1863.
At length, in the thirteenth year of their married life, their prayer
was answered, and it became evident that God was about to send them a
child. He did, and a beautiful girl was born, but the eyes of her mother
were closed in death at the moment it first saw the light.
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.