_9. Debate and Decision_
Jager's Negro servant was quite as good a cook as promised. Lanark,
eating chicken stew and biscuits, reflected that only twice before had
he been so ravenous--upon receiving the news of Lee's surrender at
Appomatox, and after the funeral of his mother. When he had finished,
he drew forth a cheroot. His hand shook as he lighted it. Jager gave
him one of the old looks of respectful disapproval, but did not
comment. Instead he led Lanark to the most comfortable chair in the
parlor and seated himself upon the keg. Then he said: "Tell me."
Lanark told him, rather less coherently than here set down, the
adventures of the evening. Again and again he groped in his mind for
explanations, but not once found any to offer.
"It is fit for the devil," pronounced Jager when his old commander had
finished. "Did I not say that you should have stayed away from that
woman? You're well out of the business."
"I'm well into it, you mean," Lanark fairly snapped back. "What can you
think of me, Jager, when you suggest that I might let things stand as
they are?"
The frontier preacher massaged his shaggy jowl with thoughtful
knuckles. "You have been a man of war and an officer of death," he
said heavily. "God taught your hands to fight. Yet your enemies are
not those who perish by the sword." He held out his hand. "You say you
still have the book I lent you?"
From his torn pocket Lanark drew Hohman's _Long Lost Friend_. Jager
took it and stared at the cover. "The marks of fingers," he muttered,
in something like awe. He examined the smudges closely, putting on his
spectacles to do so, then lifted the book to his nose. His nostrils
wrinkled, as if in distaste, and he passed the thing back. "Smell it,"
he directed.
Lanark did so. About the slimy-looking prints on the cover hung a
sickening odor of decayed flesh.
"The demon that attacked you, that touched this book, died long ago,"
went on Jager. "You know as much--you killed him with your own hand.
Yet he fights you this very night."
"Maybe you have a suggestion," Lanark flung out, impatient at the
assured and almost snobbish air of mystery that colored the manner
of his old comrade in arms. "If this is a piece of hell broke loose,
perhaps you did the breaking. Remember that image--that idol-thing with
horns--that you smashed in the cellar? You probably freed all the evil
upon the world when you did that."
Jager frowned, but pursued his lecture. "This very book, this _Long
Lost Friend_, saved you from the demon's clutch," he said. "It is a
notable talisman and shield. But with the shield one must have a sword,
with which to attack in turn."
"All right," challenged Lanark. "Where is your sword?"
"It is a product of a mighty pen," Jager informed him sententiously. He
turned in his seat and drew from a box against the wall a book. Like
the _Long Lost Friend_, it was bound in paper, but of a cream color.
Its title stood forth in bold black letters:
THE SECRETS
OF
ALBERTUS MAGNUS
"A translation from the German and the Latin," explained Jager.
"Printed, I think, in New York. This book is full of wisdom, although I
wonder if it is evil, unlawful wisdom."
"I don't care if it is." Lanark almost snatched the book. "Any weapon
must be used. And I doubt if Albertus Magnus was evil. Wasn't he a
churchman, and didn't he teach Saint Thomas Aquinas?" He leafed through
the beginning of the book. "Here's a charm, Jager, to be spoken in the
name of God. That doesn't sound unholy."
"Satan can recite scripture to his own ends," misquoted Jager. "I don't
remember who said that, but----"
"Shakespeare said it, or something very like it," Lanark informed him.
"Look here, Jager, farther on. Here's a spell against witchcraft and
evil spirits."
"I have counted at least thirty such in that book," responded the
other. "Are you coming to believe in them, sir?"
Lanark looked up from the page. His face was earnest and, in a way,
humble.
"I'm constrained to believe in many unbelievable things. If my
experience tonight truly befell me, then I must believe in charms of
safety. Supernatural evil like that must have its contrary supernatural
good."
Jager pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and smiled in his beard.
"I have heard it told," he said, "that charms and spells work only when
one believes in them."
"You sound confident of that, at least," Lanark smiled back. "Maybe you
will help me, after all."
"Maybe I will."
The two gazed into each other's eyes, and then their hands came out, at
the same moment. Lanark's lean fingers crushed Jager's coarser ones.
"Let's be gone," urged Lanark at once, but the preacher shook his head
emphatically.
"Slowly, slowly," he temporized. "Cool your spirit, and take council.
He that ruleth his temper is greater than he that taketh a city." Once
more he put out his hand for the cream-colored volume of Albertus
Magnus, and began to search through it.
"Do you think to comfort me from that book?" asked Lanark.
"It has more than comfort," Jager assured him. "It has guidance." He
found what he was looking for, pulled down his spectacles again, and
read aloud:
"'Two wicked eyes have overshadowed me, but three other eyes are
overshadowing me--the one of God the Father, the second of God the Son,
the third of God the Holy Spirit; they watch my body and soul, my blood
and bone; I shall be protected in the name of God.'"
His voice was that of a prayerful man reading Scripture, and Lanark
felt moved despite himself. Jager closed the book gently and kept it in
his hand.
"Albertus Magnus has many such charms and assurances," he volunteered.
"In this small book, less than two hundred pages, I find a score and
more of ways for punishing and thwarting evil spirits, or those who
summon evil spirits." He shook his head, as if in sudden wrath, and
turned up his spectacled eyes. "O Lord!" he muttered. "How long must
devils plague us for our sins?"
Growing calmer once more, he read again from the book of Albertus
Magnus. There was a recipe for invisibility, which involved the making
of a thumbstall from the ear of a black cat boiled in the milk of
a black cow; an invocation to "Bedgoblin and all ye evil spirits";
several strange rituals, similar to those Lanark remembered from the
_Long Lost Friend_, to render one immune to wounds received in battle;
and a rime to speak while cutting and preparing a forked stick of hazel
to use in hunting for water or treasure. As a boy, Lanark had once seen
water "witched," and now he wondered if the rod-bearer had gained his
knowledge from Albertus Magnus.
"'Take an earthen pot, not glazed,'" Jager was reading on, "'and yarn
spun by a girl not seven years old'----"
* * * * *
He broke off abruptly, with a little inarticulate gasp. The book
slammed shut between his hands. His eyes were bright and hot, and his
face pale to the roots of his beard. When he spoke, it was in a hoarse
whisper:
"That was a spell to control witches, in the name of Lucifer, king of
hell. Didn't I say that this book was evil?"
"You must forget that," Lanark counseled him soberly. "I will admit
that the book might cause sorrow and wickedness, if it were in wicked
hands; but I do not think that you are anything but a good man."
"Thank you," said Jager simply. He rose and went to his table, then
returned with an iron inkpot and a stump of a pen. "Let me have your
right hand."
Lanark held out his palm, as though to a fortune-teller. Upon the skin
Jager traced slowly, in heavy capital letters, a square of five words:
S A T O R
A R E P O
T E N E T
O P E R A
R O T A S
Under this, very boldly, three crosses: