George Horace Lorimer - The False Gods
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THE FALSE GODS
by
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Author of "Letters from a Self-made Merchant to His Son"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "Then ... the arms crushed him against the stone breast."]
[Illustration]
D. Appleton and Company
New York
1906
Copyright, 1906, by George Horace Lorimer
Copyright, 1906, by D. Appleton and Company
Entered at Stationer's Hall, London
Published April, 1906
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
To A.V.L.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. 1
II. 11
III. 21
IV. 33
V. 39
VI. 51
VII. 59
VIII. 69
IX. 77
X. 81
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
"Then ... the arms crushed him
against the stone breast" _Frontispiece_
"'Aw, fergit it'" 4
"'She's the Real Thing'" 24
"Suddenly she felt him coming, and turned" 56
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE FALSE GODS
I
It was shortly after ten o'clock one morning when Ezra Simpkins, a
reporter from the _Boston Banner_, entered the Oriental Building,
that dingy pile of brick and brownstone which covers a block on Sixth
Avenue, and began to hunt for the office of the Royal Society of
Egyptian Exploration and Research. After wandering through a labyrinth
of halls, he finally found it on the second floor. A few steps farther
on, a stairway led down to one of the side entrances; for the building
could be entered from any of the four bounding streets.
Simpkins regarded knocking on doors and sending in cards as formalities
which served merely to tempt people of a retiring disposition to lie, so
when he walked into the waiting-room and found it deserted, he passed
through it quickly and opened the door beyond. But if he had expected
this manoeuver to bring him within easy distance of the person whom
he was seeking, he was disappointed. He had simply walked into a small
outer office. A self-sufficient youth of twelve, who was stuffed into
a be-buttoned suit, was its sole occupant.
"Hello, bub!" said Simpkins to this Cerberus of the threshold. "Mrs.
Athelstone in?" and he drew out his letter of introduction; for he had
instantly decided to use it in place of a card, as being more likely to
gain him admittance.
"Aw, fergit it," the youth answered with fine American independence.
"I'll let youse know when your turn comes, an' youse can keep your
ref'rences till you're asked for 'em," and he surveyed Simpkins with
marked disfavor.
The reporter made no answer and asked no questions. Until that moment he
had not known that he had a turn, but if he had, he did not propose to
lose it by any foolish slip. So he settled down in his chair and began
to turn over his assignment in his mind.
That Simpkins had come over to New York was due to the conviction of
his managing editor, Mr. Naylor, that a certain feature which had been
shaping up in his head would possess a peculiar interest if it could be
"led" with a few remarks by Mrs. Athelstone. Though her husband, the
Rev. Alfred W.R. Athelstone, was a Church of England clergyman, whose
interest in Egyptology had led him to accept the presidency of the
American branch of the Royal Society, she was a leader among the
Theosophists. And now that the old head of the cult was dead, it was
rumored that Mrs. Athelstone had announced the reincarnation of Madame
Blavatsky in her own person. This in itself was a good "story," but it
was not until a second rumor reached Naylor's ears that his newspaper
soul was stirred to its yellowest depths. For there was in Boston an
association known as the American Society for the Investigation of
Ancient Beliefs, which was a rival of the Royal Society in its good work
of laying bare with pick and spade the buried mysteries along the Nile.
And this rivalry, which was strong between the societies and bitter
between their presidents, became acute in the persons of their
secretaries, both of whom were women. Madame Gianclis, who served the
Boston Society, boasted Egyptian blood in her veins, a claim which Mrs.
Athelstone, who acted as secretary for her husband's society, politely
conceded, with the qualification that some ancestor of her rival had
contributed a dash of the Senegambian as well.
[Illustration: "'Aw, fergit it.'"]
This remark, duly reported to Madame Gianclis, had not put her in a
humor to concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs.
Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it,
the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high
priestess in herself. And Boston believers were inclined to accept her
view, as it was difficult for them to understand how any soul with
liberty of action could deliberately choose a New York residence.
Now, all these things had filtered through to Naylor from those just
without the temple gates, for whatever the quarrels of the two societies
and their enemies, they tried to keep them to themselves. They had had
experience with publicity and had found that ridicule goes hand in hand
with it in this iconoclastic age. But out of these rumors, unconfirmed
though they were, grew a vision in Naylor's brain--a vision of a
glorified spread in the _Sunday Banner's_ magazine section. Under
a two-page "head," builded cunningly of six sizes of type, he saw
ravishingly beautiful pictures of Madame Gianclis and Mrs. Athelstone,
and hovering between them the materialized, but homeless, soul of Madame
Blavatsky, trying to make choice of an abiding-place, the whole
enlivened and illuminated with much "snappy" reading matter.
Now, Simpkins was the man to make a managing editor's dreams come true,
so Naylor rubbed the lamp for him and told him what he craved. But the
reporter's success in life had been won by an ability to combine much
extravagance of statement in the written with great conservatism in
the spoken word. Early in his experience he had learned that Naylor's
optimism, though purely professional, entailed unpleasant consequences
on the reporter who shared it and then betrayed some too generous trust;
so he absolutely refused to admit that there was any basis for it now.
"You know she won't talk to reporters," he protested. "Those New York
boys have joshed that whole bunch so they're afraid to say their prayers
out loud. Then she's English and dead swell, and that combination's hard
to open, unless you have a number in the Four Hundred, and then it ain't
refined to try. I can make a pass at her, but it'll be a frost for me."
"Nonsense! You must make her talk, or manage to be around while some one
else does," Naylor answered, waving aside obstacles with the noble scorn
of one whose business it is to set others to conquer them. "I want a
good snappy interview, understand, and descriptions for some red-hot
pictures, if you can't get photos. I'm going to save the spread in the
Sunday magazine for that story, and you don't want to slip up on the
Athelstone end of it. That hall is just what the story needs for a
setting. Get in and size it up."
"You remember what happened to that _Courier_ man who got in?"
ventured Simpkins.
"I believe I did hear something about a _Courier_ man's being
snaked out of a closet and kicked downstairs. Served him right.
_Very_ coarse work. Very coarse work _indeed_. There's a better
way and you'll find it." There was something unpleasantly significant in
his voice, as he terminated the interview by swinging around to his desk
and picking up a handful of papers, which warned the reporter that he
had gone the limit.
Simpkins had heard of the hall, for it had been written up just after
Doctor Athelstone, who was a man of some wealth, had assembled in it his
private collection of Egyptian treasures. But he knew, too, that it had
become increasingly difficult to penetrate since Mrs. Athelstone had
been made the subject of some entertaining, but too imaginative, Sunday
specials. Still, now that he had properly magnified the difficulties
of the undertaking to Naylor, that the disgrace of defeat might be
discounted or the glory of achievement enhanced, he believed that he
knew a way to gain access to the hall and perhaps to manage a talk with
Mrs. Athelstone herself. His line of thought started him for Cambridge,
where he had a younger brother whom he was helping through Harvard.
As a result of this fraternal visit, Simpkins minor cut the classes of
Professor Alexander Blackburn, the eminent archaeologist, for the next
week, and went to his other lectures by back streets. For the kindly
professor had given him a letter, introducing him to Mrs. Athelstone as
a worthy young student with a laudable thirst for that greater knowledge
of Egyptian archaeology, ethnology and epigraphy which was to be gained
by an inspection of her collection. And it was the possession of this
letter which influenced Simpkins major to take the smoking car and to
sit up all night, conning an instructive volume on Ancient Egypt,
thereby acquiring much curious information, and diverting two dollars of
his expense money to the pocket in which he kept his individual cash
balance.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
II
For five minutes the decorous silence of the anteroom was unbroken.
Then the door of the inner office swung open and closed behind a
dejected-looking young man, and the boy, without so much as asking
for a card, preceded the secretly-elated Simpkins into the hall.
They had stepped from the present into the past. Simpkins found himself
looking between a double row of pillars, covered with hieroglyphics in
red and black, to an altar of polished black basalt, guarded on either
side by stone sphinxes. Behind it, straight from the lofty ceiling, fell
a veil of black velvet, embroidered with golden scarabaei, and fringed
with violet. The approach, a hundred paces or more, was guarded by
twoscore mummies in black cases, standing upright along the pillars.
"Watcher gawkin' at?" demanded the youth, grinning up at the staring
Simpkins. "Lose dat farmer-boy face or it's back to de ole homestead
for youse. Her royal nibs ain't lookin' for no good milker."
"Oh, I'm just rubbering to see where the goat's kept," the reporter
answered, trying to assume a properly metropolitan expression. "Suppose
I'll have to take the third degree before I can get out of here."
The youth started noiselessly across the floor, and Simpkins saw that
he wore sandals. His own heavy walking boots rang loudly on the flagged
floors and woke the echoes in the vaulted ceiling. He began to tread on
tiptoe, as one moves in a death-chamber.
And that was what this great room was: a charnel-house filled with
the spoil of tombs and temples. The dim light fluttered down from
quaint, triangular windows, set with a checker-work of brick-red and
saffron-colored panes about a central design, a scarlet heart upon a
white star, and within that a black scarabaeus. The white background of
the walls threw into relief the angular figures on the frieze, scenes
from old Egyptian life: games, marriages, feasts and battles, painted
in the crude colors of early art. Between were paneled pictures of the
gods, monstrous and deformed deities, half men, half beasts; and the
dado, done in black, pictured the funeral rites of the Egyptians, with
explanatory passages from the ritual of the dead. Rudely-sculptured
bas-reliefs and intaglios, torn from ancient mastabas, were set over
windows and doors, and stone colossi of kings and gods leered and
threatened from dusky corners. Sarcophagi of black basalt, red porphyry
and pink-veined alabaster, cunningly carved, were disposed as they had
been found in the pits of the dead, with the sepulchral vases and the
hideous wooden idols beside them.
The descriptions of the place had prepared Simpkins for something out
of the ordinary, but nothing like this; and he looked about him with
wonder in his eyes and a vague awe at his heart, until he found himself
standing in the corner of the hall to the right of the black altar in
the west. Two sarcophagi, one of basalt, the other of alabaster, were
placed at right angles to the walls, partially inclosing a small space.
Within this inclosure, bowed over a stone table, sat a woman, writing.
At either end of the table a mummy case, one black, the other gilt,
stood upright. The boy halted just outside this singular private office,
and the woman rose and came toward them.
Simpkins had never read Virgil, but he knew the goddess by her walk. She
was young--not over thirty--and tall and stately. Her gown was black,
some soft stuff which clung about her, and a bunch of violets at her
waist made the whole corner faintly sweet. Her features were regular,
but of a type strange to Simpkins, the nose slightly aquiline, the lips
full and red--vividly so by contrast to the clear white of the skin--and
the forehead low and straight. Black hair waved back from it, and was
caught up by the coils of a golden asp, from whose lifted head two
rubies gleamed. Doubtless a woman would have pronounced her gown absurd
and her way of wearing her hair an intolerable affectation. But it was
effective with the less discriminating animal--instantly so with
Simpkins.
And then she raised her eyes and looked at him. To the first glance they
were dusky eyes, deep and fathomless, changing swiftly to the blue-black
of the northern skies on a clear winter night, and flashing out sharp
points of light, like star-rays. He knew that in that glance he had been
weighed, gauged and classed, and, though he was used to questioning
Governors and Senators quite unabashed and unafraid, he found himself
standing awkward and ill-at-ease in the presence of this woman.
Had she addressed him in Greek or Egyptian, he would have accepted it as
a matter of course. But when she did speak it was in the soft, clear
tones of a well-bred Englishwoman, and what she said was commonplace
enough.
"I suppose you've called to see about the place?" she asked.
"Ye-es," stammered Simpkins, but with wit enough to know that he had
come at an opportune moment. If there were a place, decidedly he had
called to see about it.
"Who sent you?" she continued, and he understood that he was not there
in answer to a want advertisement.
"Professor Blackburn." And he presented his letter and went on, with
a return of his glibness: "You see, I've been working my way through
Harvard--preparing for the ministry--Congregationalist. Found I'd have
to stop and go to work regularly for a while before I could finish. So
I've come over here, where I can attend the night classes at Columbia at
the same time. And as I'm interested in Egyptology, and had heard a good
deal about your collection, I got that letter to you. Thought you might
know some one in the building who wanted a man, as work in a place like
this would be right in my line. Of course, if you're looking for any
one, I'd like to apply for the place." And he paused expectantly.
"I see. You want to be a Dissenting minister, and you're working for
your education. Very creditable of you, I'm sure. And you're a stranger
in New York, you say?"
"Utter," returned Simpkins.
Mrs. Athelstone proceeded to question him at some length about his
qualifications. When he had satisfied her that he was competent to
attend to the easy, clerical work of the office and to care for the
more valuable articles in the hall, things which she did not care to
leave to the regular cleaners, she concluded:
"I'm disposed to give you a trial, Mr. Simpkins, but I want you to
understand that under no circumstances are you to talk about me or
your work outside the office. I've been so hunted and harried by
reporters----" And her voice broke. "What I want above all else is
a clerk that I can trust."
The assurance which Simpkins gave in reply came harder than all the lies
he had told that morning, and, some way, none of them had slipped out
so smoothly as usual. He was a fairly truthful and tender-hearted man
outside his work, but in it he had accustomed himself to regard men and
women in a purely impersonal way, and their troubles and scandals simply
as material. To his mind, nothing was worth while unless it had a news
value; and nothing was sacred that had. But he was uneasily conscious
now that he was doing a deliberately brutal thing, and for the first
time he felt that regard for a subject's feelings which is so fatal to
success in certain branches of the new journalism. But he repressed
the troublesome instinct, and when Mrs. Athelstone dismissed him a few
minutes later, it was with the understanding that he should report the
next morning, ready for work.
He stopped for a moment in the ante-chamber on the way out; for the
bright light blinded him, and there were red dots before his eyes. He
felt a little subdued, not at all like the self-confident man who had
passed through the oaken door ten minutes before. But nothing could long
repress the exuberant Simpkins, and as he started down the stairway to
the street he was exclaiming to himself:
"Did you butt in, Simp., old boy, or were you pushed?"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
III
At nine o'clock the next morning Simpkins presented himself at the
Society's office, and a few minutes later he found himself in the
fascinating presence of Mrs. Athelstone. He soon grasped the details of
his simple duties, and then, like a lean, awkward mastiff, padded along
at her heels while she moved about the hall and pointed out the things
which would be under his care.
"If I were equal to it, I should look after these myself," she
explained. "Careless hands would soon ruin this case." And she touched
the gilt mummy beside her writing-table affectionately. "She was a
queen, Nefruari, daughter of the King of Ethiopia. They called her 'the
good and glorious woman.'"
"And this--this black boy?" questioned Simpkins respectfully. "Looks as
if he might have lived during the eighteenth dynasty." He had not been
poring over volumes on Ancient Egypt for two nights without knowing a
thing or two about black mummies.
"Quite right, Simpkins," Mrs. Athelstone replied, evidently pleased by
his interest and knowledge. "He was Amosis, a king of the eighteenth
dynasty, and Nefruari's husband. A big, powerful man!"
"What a bully cigarette brand he'd make!" thought Simpkins, and aloud
he added:
"They must have been a fine-looking pair."
"Indeed, yes," was the earnest answer, and so they moved about the hall,
she explaining, he listening and questioning, until at last they stood
before the black altar in the west and the veil of velvet. Simpkins saw
that there was an inscription carved in the basalt, and, drawing nearer,
slowly spelled out:
TIBI
VNA QVE
ES OMNIA
DEA ISIS
"And what's behind the curtain?" he began, turning toward Mrs.
Athelstone.
"The truth, of course. But remember," and her tone was half serious,
"none but an adept may look behind the veil and live."
"The truth is my long suit," returned Simpkins mendaciously. "So I'll
take a chance." As he spoke, the heavy velvet fell aside and disclosed
a statue of a woman carved in black marble. It stood on a pedestal of
bronze, overlaid with silver, and above and behind were hangings of
blue-gray silk. A brilliant ray of light beat down on it. Glancing up,
Simpkins saw that it shone from a crescent moon in the arched ceiling
above the altar. Then his eyes came back to the statue. There was
something so lifelike in the pose of the figure, something so winning in
the smile of the face, something so alluring in the outstretched arms,
that he involuntarily stepped nearer.
"And now that you've seen Isis, what do you think of her?" asked Mrs.
Athelstone, breaking the momentary silence.
"She's the real thing--the naked truth, sure enough," returned Simpkins
with a grin.
"It _is_ a wonderful statue!" was the literal answer. "There's no
other like it in the world. Doctor Athelstone found it near Thebes, and
took a good deal of pride in arranging this shrine. The device _is_
clever; the parting of the veil you see, makes the light shine down on
the statue, and it dies out when I close it--so"; and, as she pulled a
cord, the veil fell before the statue and the light melted away.
[Illustration: "'She's the Real Thing.'"]
"Aren't you initiating the neophyte rather early?" a man's voice asked
at Simpkins' elbow, and, as he turned to see who it was, Mrs. Athelstone
explained: "This is our new clerk, Mr. Simpkins; Doctor Brander is our
treasurer, and our acting president while my husband's away. He left a
few days ago for a little rest." And Mrs. Athelstone turned back to her
desk.
Simpkins instantly decided to dislike the young clergyman beside him. He
was tall and athletic-looking, but with a slight stoop, that impressed
the reporter as a physical assumption of humility which the handsome
face, with its faintly sneering lines and bold eyes, contradicted. But
he acknowledged Brander's offhand "How d'ye do?" in a properly
deferential manner, and listened respectfully to a few careless
sentences of instructions.
For the rest of the morning, Simpkins mechanically addressed circulars
appealing for funds to carry on the good work of the Society, while his
mind was busy trying to formulate a plan by which he could get Mrs.
Athelstone to tell what she knew about the whereabouts of Madame
Blavatsky's soul. He felt, with the accurate instinct of one used to
classing the frailties of flesh and blood according to their worth in
columns, that those devices which had so often led women to confide
to him the details of the particular sensation that he was working up
would avail him nothing here. "You simply haven't got her Bertillon
measurements, Simp.," he was forced to admit, after an hour of fruitless
thinking. "You'll have to trust in your rabbit's foot."
But if Mrs. Athelstone was a new species to him, the office boy was not.
He knew that youth down to the last button on his jacket. He knew, too,
that an office boy often whiles away the monotonous hours by piecing
together the president's secrets from the scraps in his waste-basket.
So at the noon hour he slipped out after Buttons, caught him as he was
disappearing up a near-by alley in a cloud of cigarette smoke, like the
disreputable little devil that he was, and succeeded in establishing
friendly and even familiar relations with him.
It was not, however, until late in the afternoon, when he was called
into the ante-chamber to discover the business of a caller, that he
improved the opportunity to ask the youth some leading questions.
"Suppose you open up mornings?" he began carelessly.
"Naw; Mrs. A. does. She bunks here."
"How?"
"In a bed. She's got rooms in de buildin'. That door by Booker T. leads
to 'em."
"Booker T.? Oh, sure! The brunette statue. And that other door--the one
to the left. Where does that go?"
"Into Brander's storeroom. He sells mummies on de side."
"Does, eh? Curious business!" commented Simpkins. "Seems to rub it into
_you_ pretty hard. And stuck on himself! Don't seem able to spit
without ringing his bell for some one to see him do it. Guess you'd have
to have four legs to satisfy _him_, all right."
"Say, dat duck ain't on de level," the grievance for which Simpkins had
been probing coming to the surface.
"Holds out on what he collects? Steals?"
"Sure t'ing--de loidies," and the boy lowered his voice; "he's dead
stuck on Mrs. A."
"Oh! nonsense," commented Simpkins, an invitation to continue in his
voice. "She's a married woman."
"Never min', I'm tellin' youse; an dat's just where de stink comes in.
Ain't I seen 'im wid my own eyes a-makin' goo-goos at 'er. An' wasn't
there rough house for fair goin' on in dere last mont', just before de
Doc. made his get-away? He tumbled to somethin', all right, all right,
or why don't he write her? Say, I don't expect _him_ back in no
hurry. He's hived up in South Dakote right now, an' she's in trainin'
for alimony, or my name's Dennis Don'tknow."