I see the plumbers, the cesspool cleaners, the colorless all-color of atheism. I am the Fate's lieutenant: I act under ardors. White, White void. Ahab's eye. Five inches from happiness, the Law of Fives, always. Ahab schlurped down, down.
"This Bavarian stuff is all bullshit," Dillinger said. "They're mostly Englishmen, since Rhodes took command in 1888. And they've already infiltrated Justice, State and Labor, as well as the Treasury. That's who you're playing ball with. And let me tell you what they plan to do with your people, the Jews, in this war they're cooking up."
"Listen," the Dutchman interrupted. "Capone would have a bullet in me if he knew I was even talking to you, John."
"Are you afraid of Capone? He arranged to have the Feds put a bullet in me at the Biograph and I'm still sassy and lively as ever."
"I'm not afraid of Capone or Lepke or Maldonado or…" The Dutchman's eyes brought back the hospital room. "I'm a pretty good pretzeler," he told Sergeant Conlon anxiously. "Winifred, Department of Justice. I even got it from the department." The pain shot through him, sharp as ecstasy. "Sir, please stop it!" He had to explain about DeMolay and Weishaupt. "Listen," he urged, "the last Knight. I don't want to holler." It was so hard, with the pulsings of the pain. "I don't know, sir. Honestly, I don't. I went to the toilet. I was in the can and the boy came at me. If we wanted to break the Ring. No, please. I get a month. Come on, Illuminati, cut me off." It was so hard to explain. "I had nothing with him and he was a cowboy in one of the seven days. Ewige! Fight… No business, no hangouts, no friends. Nothing. Just what you pick up and what you need." The pain wasn't just the bullet; they were working on his mind, trying to stop him from saying too much. He saw the goat head. "Let him harness himself to you and then bother you," he cried. "They are Englishmen and they are a type and I don't know who is best, they or us." So much to say, and so little time. He thought of Francie, his wife. "Oh, sir, get the doll a rofting." The Illuminati formula to summon the lloigor: he could at least reveal that. "A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. Did you hear me?" They had to understand how high it went, all over the world. "I would hear it, the Circuit Court would hear it, and the Supreme Court would hear it. If that ain't the payoff. Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's Commander." Eris, the Great Mother, was the only alternative to the Illuminati's power; he had to tell them that much. "Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast."
"He's blabbing too much," the one who wore the goat head, Winifred, from Washington, said. "Increase the pain."
"The dirty rats have tuned in," Dutch shouted.
"Control yourself," Sergeant Conlon said soothingly.
"But I am dying," Dutch, explained. Couldn't they understand anything?
Drake met Winifred at a cocktail party in Washington, in '47, just after the National Security Act was passed by the Senate. "Well?" Winifred asked, "do you have any further doubts?"
"None at all," Drake said. "All my open money is now invested in defense industries."
"Keep it there," Winifred smiled, "and you'll get richer than you ever dreamed. Our present projection is that we can get Congress to approve one trillion dollars in war preparations before 1967."
Drake thought fast and asked softly, "You're going to add another villain beside Russia?"
"Watch China," Winifred said calmly.
For once, curiosity surpassed cupidity in Drake; he asked, "Are you really keeping him in the Pentagon?"
"Would you like to meet him, face to face?" Winifred asked with a faint hint of a sneer in his voice.
"No thank you," Drake said coolly. "I've been reading Herman Rauschning. I remember Hitler's words about the Superman: 'He is alive, among us. I have met him. He is intrepid and terrible. I was afraid of him.' That's enough for my curiosity."
"Hitler," Winifred replied, not hiding the sneer now. "Saw him in his more human form. He's… progressed… since then."
Tonight, Drake thought, as the thunder rose to a maddening crescendo, I will see him, or one of them. Surely, I could have picked a more agreeable form of suicide? The question was pointless; Jung had been right all along, with his Law of Opposites. Even Freud knew it: every sadist becomes a masochist at last.
On an impulse, Drake arose and fetched a pad and pen from the bedside Tudor table. He began to scribble by the light of the increasing electrical storm outside:
What am I afraid of? Haven't I been building up to this rendezvous ever since I threw the bottle at mother when I was 1 1/2 years old?
And it is kin to me. We both live on blood, do we not, even if I have prettied it over by taking the blood money instead of the blood itself?
Dimensions keep shifting, whenever it gets a fix on me. Prinn was right in his De Vermis Mysteriis, they don't really participate in the same space-time as us. That's what Alhazred meant when he wrote, "Their hand is at your throat but you see them not. They walk serene and unsuspected, not in the spaces we know, but between them."
"Pull me out," the Dutchman moaned. "I am half crazy. They won't let me get up. They dyed my shoes. Give me something. I am so sick."
I can see Kadath and the two magnetic poles. I must unify the forces by eating the entity.
Which me is the real me? Is it so easy to flow into my soul because there is so little soul left? Is that what Jung was trying to tell me about power?
I see Newark Hospital and the Dutchman. I see the white light and then the black that does not pulsate or move. I see George trying to drive the Rolls in this damnable rain. I see the whiteness of whiteness is black.
"Anybody," the Dutchman pleaded, "kindly take my shoes off. No, there's a handcuff on them. The Baron says these things."
I see Weishaupt and the Iron Boot. No wonder only five ever withstand the ordeal to become the top of the pyramid. Baron Rothschild won't let Rhodes get away with that. What is time or space, anyway? What is soul, that we claim to judge it? Which is real- the boy Arthur Flegenheimer, seeking for his mother, the gangster Dutch Schultz, dealing in murder and corruption with the cool of a Medici or a Morgan, or the mad poet being born in the Newark hospital bed as the others die?
And Elizabeth was a bitch. They sang "The Golden Vanity" about Raleigh, but none could speak a word against me. Yet he received the preference. The Globe Theatre, new drama by Will Shakespeare, down the street they torture Sackerson the bear for sport.
Christ, they opened the San Andreas Fault to hide the most important records about Norton. Sidewalks opening like mouths, John Barrymore falling out of bed, Will Shakespeare in his mind, my mind, Sir Francis's mind. Roderick Usher. Starry Wisdom, they called it.
"The sidewalk was in trouble," the Dutchman tried to explain, "and the bears were in trouble and I broke it up. Please put me in that room. Please keep him in control."
I can hear it! The very sounds recorded by Poe and Lovecraft: Tekeli-li, tekeli-li! It must be close.
I didn't mean to throw the bottle, mother. I just wanted your attention. I just wanted attention.
"Okay,' the Dutchman sighed. "Okay, I am all through. Can't do another thing. Look out, mama, look out for her. You can't beat Him. Police. Mama. Helen. Mother. Please take me out."
I can see it and it can see me. In the dark. There are things worse than death, vivisections of the spirit. I should run. Why do I sit here? The bicycle and the tricycle. 23 skiddoo. Inside the pentagon, the cold of interstellar space. They came from the stars and brought their images with them. Mother. I'm sorry.