For answer the Precursor slowly lifted the gold flask and replenished his own gla.s.s. "Truth in a golden flask! But, to throw a sop to your curiosity, it was a matter of native genius engineered by Providence. I don't mind admitting that when I stood on the doorstep of this house fifteen nights ago and knocked the mystic knock, I felt like a man embarking on a coffin-ship." He stopped to drain his gla.s.s.

The Prophet took a step forward.

"And then?" he said, eagerly. "Then?"

The other waved his empty gla.s.s.

"Oh, there entered the native genius of Terence Dominick Devereaux!

Under that tremendous escort I stormed the citadel--"

The Prophet smiled. "And the Mystic ears, I have no doubt."

For a third time the Precursor filled his gla.s.s.

"The tongue is mightier--and a good deal more portable--than either the pen or the sword, John," he said, sagely. "Paving your way with words has been an unrecognized work of art. But how about yourself? I have my own curiosity." He wheeled round in his seat and looked into his companion's face.

The Prophet looked away.

"Oh, I had my qualms, too!" he said, slowly. "Just for a moment the world seemed to tremble, when the old Arch-Councillor groped forward and put his hands over my face. It swept me off my feet--swept me back ten years. It was like a vision in a crystal--if such a thing could exist. I saw the whole past scene. The bare room--the old dead man--myself; the overwhelming wish to avenge my wrongs, and the sudden suggestion that turned the wish cold. I saw the long, bleak night in which I completed the colossal task of copying the Scitsym line for line; I saw the gray morning steal in across the room as I closed the book, returned it to its safe and replaced the key on my uncle's neck in preparation for the arrival of the Arch-Councillor. It all pa.s.sed before my mind, and then in a flash was gone. I ceased to be John Henderson."

The Precursor glanced quickly towards the door.

"Avoid that name. Habits grow--and so do suspicions. Your probation has been too long and too hard to permit us to run risks. Now that you've stepped into your kingdom--" He made an expressive gesture.

The Prophet laughed shortly, then suddenly turned grave again.

"You are right!" he said. "Only a man with a light conscience can skate on thin ice. To return to our original subject, what about the inner workings of this odd game? It is so curious to have lived for years on theory, and suddenly to come face to face with practice. I tell you I'm starving for facts." He stepped forward quickly and dropped into a chair that faced his companion's.

"Out with it all! To begin, who is the master-spirit? You know what I mean. The master-spirit in the true sense. Poor old blind Arian doesn't stand for much."

The Precursor looked meditatively at his empty gla.s.s.

"No," he said, thoughtfully. "You touch truth there! Michael Arian is the cipher; Bale-Corphew's the meaning. Bale-Corphew is an interesting man, John--I had almost said a dangerous man--"

The Prophet's lip curled slightly.

"Dangerous!"

"Yes; dangerous in a sense. In the sense that a personality always is dangerous. Among the six Arch-Mystics there is, to my thinking, only one _man_, and he interests me. He interests me, does Horatio Bale-Corphew!"

The Prophet leaned forward in his chair.

"I think I catch your meaning," he said. "Something of the same idea occurred to me when he rose from his seat to-night. While we spied upon them in the last six months, he always struck me as curiously un-English, with that sleek exterior and those flashing eyes of his. But in the chapel to-night he was almost aggressively alien. When he touched my arm I could literally feel him bristle."

The other nodded.

"You've said it!" he cried. "Horatio bristles! His whole queer soul is in this business--every fibre of it. He attempts no division of allegiance--except, perhaps, in the matter of the heart--"

The Prophet glanced up and smiled.

"The heart? Do my faithful Watchers permit themselves hearts? The Scitsym makes no provision for such frail organs."

The Precursor laughed again.

"Oh, we Elect are by no means free from little saving weaknesses! That's where we become dramatic. You can't have effect without contrast.

Horatio, for instance, is instinctively dramatic."

"Indeed!"

"Yes. Oh yes! I know what I'm saying. I've studied them all. More than once, when my Soul has been communing with your August Spirit, I have watched Horatio's dramatic contrast from the corner of my eyes."

Again the Prophet smiled.

"The contrast frequents the chapel then?"

"Frequents? Undoubtedly. Horatio has literally swept her into the fold.

She was here to-night to bend the knee to you."

A look of recollection crossed the Prophet's eyes.

"To-night?" he said. "Not the woman who sat beside him? The woman with the big eyes? She and Bale-Corphew! The idea is absurd!"

"Undeniable, nevertheless. I have deduced the story. The lady is a widow--no relations--too much freedom--vague aspirations after the ideal. She has sounded society and found it too shallow; sounded philosophy and found it too deep; and upon her horizon of desires and disappointments has loomed the colossal presence of Bale-Corphew--enthusiast, mystic, leader of a fascinatingly unorthodox sect. What is the result? The lady--too feminine to be truly modern, too modern to be wholly womanly--is viewing life through new gla.s.ses, and by their medium seeing Horatio invested with a halo otherwise invisible."

The Prophet remained quiet and silent; then he rose slowly from his seat and walked round the table. "Devereaux," he said, laconically, "only the Prophet is going to wear a halo here."

The Precursor's sharply marked, expressive eyebrows went up in quick comment.

"Can even a latter-day Prophet afford autocracy?"

For a s.p.a.ce the Prophet made no response; then he took a step forward and laid his hand impressively on his friend's shoulder.

"Devereaux," he said, in a new voice--a voice that unconsciously held something of the command that had marked it in the chapel--"the Prophet of the Mystics has come to rule. He has not come to follow the laws that others--that men like Bale-Corphew--have seen fit to make. He has come to be a law unto himself!"

CHAPTER V

It is astonishing in how short a s.p.a.ce of time a man of vigorous character can make his personality felt. On the night of his mysterious advent, the Prophet had found his people in a condition of mental chaos--as liable to repudiate as to accept the seeker for their confidence; but before one month had pa.s.sed he had, by domination of will, so moulded this neurotic ma.s.s of humanity that his own position had gradually and insensibly merged from suppliant into that of autocrat. Without a murmur of doubt or dissension the Mystics had proclaimed him their king.

On the last day of the thirty he sat alone in his room--the room in which he and the red-haired Precursor had held their private council on the night of his coming. The heavy purple curtains that shielded the windows were partly drawn, throwing a subdued, almost a devotional, light over the wide, imposing apartment and across the ebony table, on which rested the sacred Scitsym, surrounded by an array of smaller and more ancient books, several rolls of parchment, a number of quill pens, and a dish of ink. It was at this table that the Prophet sat; he wore the monastic white robe that he always affected in presence of his people, his arms were folded, and his face looked calm and grave, as though he appreciated the moment's solitude.

The solitude, however, was not destined to endure. The soft booming of a gong presently roused him to attention, and a moment later the door of the apartment opened and an ascetic-looking man, whose duty and privilege it was to wait upon him, entered deferentially.

He stood for a moment in an att.i.tude of profound abas.e.m.e.nt; then he stepped forward and stood beside the table.

"Master," he said, in a low voice. "The newest among us would speak with you!"