It was the blackest possible kind of affair, quite short and entirely infamous. Baradi demanded darkness and the initiates put out their candles. Alleyn dared not look at Raoul, but knew by the delayed flicker of light that he was a little slow with this. Then Baradi urged first of all the necessity of experiencing something called “the caress of the left hand of perfection” and went on to particularize in terms that would have appalled anyone who was not an alienist or a member of Mr. Oberon’s chosen circle. The Egyptian had returned to his reed and drum and the merciless repetition of a single phrase had its own effect. Baradi began to pour out a stream of names: Greek, Jewish, Egyptian: Pan, Enlil, Elohim, Ra, Anubis, Seti, Adonis, Ra, Silenus, Ereschigal, Tetragrammaton, Ra. The recurrent “Ra” was presently taken up by the initiates, who began to bark it out with an enthusiasm, Alleyn thought, only to be equalled by the organized cheers of an American ball game.
“There are two signs,” Baradi intoned. “There is the Sign of the Sun, Ra” (“Ra,” barked the initiates), “and there is the sign of the Goat, Pan. And between the Sun and the Goat runs the endless cycle of the senses. Ra.”
“Ra!”
“We demand a sign.”
“We demand a sign.”
“What shall the sign be?”
“The sign of the goat which is also the sign of the Sun which is also the sign of Ra.”
“Let the goat come forth which is the Sun which is Ra.”
“Ra!”
The drumming was increased to a frenzy. The initiates beat on the floor and clapped. Baradi must have thrown more incense on his brazier: the air was thick with billowing fumes. Alleyn could scarcely make out the shape of the altar. Now Baradi must be striking cymbals together.
The din was intolerable. The initiates, antic figures, half-masked by whorls of smoke, seemed to have gone down on all fours and to be flinging their hands high as they slapped the floor and cried out. Baradi broke into a chant, possibly in his own language, interspersed with further strings of names — Pan, Hylaesos, Lupercus, Silenos, Faunus — names that were caught up and shouted in a fury of abandon by the other voices. Alleyn, shouting with the rest, edged round on his knees, until he could look across the pentagram to Raoul. In the glow of the braziers he could just make out the black crouching figure and the black gloved hands rising and falling like drumsticks.
“A Sign, a Sign, let there be a Sign!”
“It comes.”
“It comes.”
“It is here.”
Again the well-staged crescendo that ended, this time, in a deafening crash of cymbals followed by a dead silence.
And across that silence: bathetic, ridiculous and disturbing, broke the unmistakable bleat of a billy goat.
The smoke eddied and swirled, and there, on the altar for all the world like one of old Marie’s statuettes, it appeared, horned and shining, a silver goat whose hide glittered through the smoke. It opened its mouth sideways and superciliously bleated. Its pale eyes stared and it stamped and tossed its head.
“It’s been shoved up there from the back,” Alleyn thought. “They’ve treated it with flourescent paint. Ça s’illumine.”
Baradi was speaking again.
“Prepare, prepare,” he chanted. “The Sign is the Shadow of the Substance. The Goat-god is the precursor of the Man-god. The Man-god is the Bridegroom. He is the Spouse. He is Life. He is the Sun. Ra!”
There was a blare of light, for perhaps a second literally blinding in its intensity. “Flash-powder,” thought Alleyn. “The Egyptian must be remarkably busy.” When his eyes had adjusted themselves, the goat had disappeared and in its place the sun-burst blazed on the altar. “Car batteries,” thought Alleyn, “perhaps. Flex soldered at the terminals. Well done, Mahomet or somebody.”
“Ra! Ra! Ra!” the initiates ejaculated with Baradi as their cheerleader.
The door to the left of the altar had opened. It admitted a naked man.
He advanced through wreaths of incense and stood before the blazing sun-burst. It was, of course, Mr. Oberon.
iii
Of the remainder of the ceremony, as far as he witnessed it, Alleyn afterwards prepared an official report. Neither this, nor a manual called The Book of Ra. which contained the text of the ritual, has ever been made public. Indeed, they have been stowed away in the archives of Scotland Yard where they occupy a place of infamy rivalling that of the Book of Horus and the Swami Viva Ananda. There are duplicates at the Sûreté. In the trial they were not put in as primary evidence, and the judge, after a distasteful glance, said that he saw no reason why the jury should be troubled to look at them.
For purposes of this narrative it need only be said that with the appearance of Oberon, naked, in the role of Ra or Horus, or both, the Rites took on the character of unbridled Phallicism. He stood on some raised place before the blazing sun-burst, holding a dagger in both hands. More incense burners were set reeking at his feet, and there he was, the nearest approach, Alleyn afterwards maintained, that he had ever seen, to a purely evil being.
His entry stung the initiates into their pitch of frenzy. Incredible phrases were chanted, indescribable gestures were performed. The final crescendo of that scandalous affair rocketed up to its point of climax. For the last time the Egyptian’s drum rolled and Baradi clashed his cymbals. For the last time pandemonium gave place to silence.
Oberon came down from his eminence and walked towards the encircled pentagram. His feet slapped the tessellated pavement. His hair, lit from behind, was a nimbus about his head. He entered the pentagram and the initiates turned inwards, crouching beastily at the points. Oberon placed himself at the centre. Baradi spoke.
“Horus who is Savitar who is Baldur who is Ra. The Light, The Beginning and The End, The Life, The Source and The Fulfilment. Choose, now, Lord, O choose.”
Oberon extended his arm and pointed his dagger at Raoul.
Baradi went to Raoul. He held out his hand. In the capricious glare from the sun-burst Alleyn could see Raoul on his knees, his shadow thrown before him towards Oberon’s feet. His face was deeply hidden in his hood. Alleyn saw the gloved hand and arm reach out. Baradi took the hand. He passed Raoul across him with a dancer’s gesture.
Raoul now faced Oberon.
Somewhere in the shadows the Egyptian servant cried out shrilly.
Baradi’s dark hands, themselves seeming gloved, closed on the shoulders of Raoul’s robe. Suddenly, with a flourish, and to a roll of the drum, he swept it free of its wearer. “Behold!” he shouted: “The Bride!”
And then, in the glare from the sun-burst, where, like an illustration from La Vie Parisienne, Mr. Oberon’s victim should have been discovered; there stood Raoul in his underpants, black slippers and Ginny Taylor’s gloves.
A complete surprise is often something of an anti-climax and so, for a moment or two, was this. It is possible that Annabella Wells and Carbury Glande were too fuddled with marihuana to get an immediate reaction. Miss Garbel, of course, had been prepared. As for Oberon and Baradi, they faced each other across the preposterous Thing they had unveiled and their respective jaws dropped like those of a pair of simultaneous comedians. Raoul himself merely cast a scandalized glance at Oberon and uttered in a loud apocalyptic voice the single word: “Anathema!”
It was then that Miss Garbel erupted in a single hoot of hysteria. It escaped from her and was at once cut off by her own hand clapped across her mouth. She squatted, heaving, in the corner of the pentacle, her terrified eyes staring over her knuckles at Baradi.
Baradi, in an unrecognizable voice and an unconscious quotation, said: “Which of you has done this?”