"Like the Hashishin," murmured Walton, who, from his service in the East, was steeped in Oriental lore.
La Strada looked blank. "The Assassins," Athelstan Helms glossed.
"They're assassins, all right," the inspector said, missing most of the point. Neither Englishman seemed to reckon it worthwhile to enlighten him. La Strada went on, "We aim to find a way to make them stop without outlawing them altogether. We have religious freedom here in Atlantis, we do. We don't establish any one church and disadvantage the rest."
"Er, well, despite that, we have it in England as well," Walton said. "But we don't construe it to mean freedom to slaughter your fellow man in the name of your creed."
"Nor do we," La Strada said. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be trying to stop it, now would we?" He seemed to feel he'd proved some sort of point.
"Perhaps the best way to go about it would be to arrange for a suitable divine revelation from the Preacher," Helms suggested.
"Yes, that would be the best way--if the Preacher could be persuaded to announce that kind of revelation," La Strada agreed. "If, indeed, the Preacher could be found by anyone not a votary of the House of Universal Devotion."
"Do I correctly infer you have it in mind for me to seek him out and discuss with him the possibility and practicability of such a revelation?" Helms asked.
"You are indeed a formidable detective, Mr. Helms," La Strada said. "Your fee will be formidable, too, should you succeed."
"Do you imagine the magnificent Athelstan Helms can fail?" Dr. Walton inquired indignantly.
"Several here have made the attempt. None has reached the Preacher. None, in fact, has survived," Inspector La Strada answered. "So yes, I can imagine your comrade failing. I do not wish it, but I can imagine it."
"Quite right. Quite right," Helms said. "Imagining all that might go wrong is the best preventive. Now, then--can you tell me where the Preacher is likeliest to be found?"
"Wellll..." La Strada stretched the word out to an annoying length. "He's in Atlantis. We're pretty sure of that."
"Capital," Helms said without the least trace of irony. "All that remains, then, is to track him down, eh?"
"I'm sure you'll manage in the next few days." La Strada, by contrast...
The Golden Burgher, the hotel into which La Strada had booked Helms and Walton, lay only a few blocks from police headquarters, but might have come from a different world. It would not have seemed out of place in London, though the atmosphere put Dr. Walton more in mind of vulgar ostentation than of the genteel luxury more ideally British. And few British hotels would have had so many spittoons--cuspidors, they seemed to call them here--so prominently placed. The brown stains on the white marble squares of the checkerboard flooring (and, presumably though less prominently, on the black as well) argued that there might have been even more.
The room was unexceptionable. And, when the traders went down to the restaurant, they found nothing wrong with the saddle of mutton. Walton did bristle when the waiter inquired whether he preferred his meat with mint jelly or with garlic. "Garlic!" he exploded. "D'you take me for an Italian?"
"No, sir," said the waiter, who might have been of that extraction himself. "But some Atlanteans are fond of it."
"I shouldn't wonder," the physician replied, a devastating retort that somehow failed to devastate. His amour-propre ruffled, he added, "I'm not an Atlantean, either, for which I give thanks to the Almighty."
"So does Atlantis, sir." The waiter hurried off.
Walton at first took that to mean Atlantis also thanked God. Only after noticing a certain gleam in Athelstan Helms' eye did he wonder if the man meant Atlantis thanked God that he was not an Atlantean. "The cheek of the fellow!" he growled. "Have I been given the glove?"
"A finger from it, at any rate, I should say," Helms told him.
The good doctor intended to speak sharply to the waiter. But he soon made a discovery others had found before him: it was difficult--indeed, next to impossible--to stay angry at a man who was feeding you so well. The mutton, flavorful without being gamy, matched any in England. The mint jelly complemented it marvelously. Potatoes and peas were likewise tasty and well prepared.
"For dessert," the waiter said as a busboy took away dirty plates, "we have several flavors of ice cream made on the premises, we have a plum pudding of which many of our English guests are quite fond, and we also have a local confection: candied heart of cycad with rum sauce." He waited expectantly.
"Plum pudding, by all means," Dr. Walton said.
"I'll try the cycad dessert," Helms said. "Something I'm not likely to find elsewhere." ("And a good thing, too," Walton muttered, his voce not quite sotto enough.)
The physician had to admit that his plum pudding, like the mutton, lived up to all reasonable expectations. Athelstan Helms consumed the strange, chewy-looking object on his plate with every sign of enjoyment. When he was nearly finished, he offered Walton a bite.
"Thanks, but no," the physician said. "Stuffed. Quite stuffed. I do believe I'd burst if I picked up the fork again."
"However you please." Helms finished the dessert himself. "Not bad at all. I shouldn't be surprised if what they call rum is also distilled from the cycad, although they do grow considerable sugar down in the south."
He left a meticulous gratuity for the waiter; Walton would have been less generous. They went back up to their room. Dr. Walton struck a match against the sole of his boot and lit the gas lamp.
"I say!" Helms exclaimed. "The plot thickens--so it does. I deduce that someone is not desirous of our company here."
Again, he did not need his richly deserved reputation for detection to arrive at his conclusion. Someone had driven a dagger hilt-deep into the pillow on each bed.
"No, I'm not surprised," Inspector La Strada said. "The House of Universal Devotion casts its web widely here."
"Someone should step on the spider, then, by Jove!" Dr. Walton said.
"Freedom of religion again, I'm afraid," Dr. Walton said. "Our Basic Law guarantees the right to worship as one pleases and the right not to worship if one pleases. We find that a more just policy than yours." Yes, he enjoyed scoring points off the mother country.
Dr. Walton was in a high temper, and in a high color as well, his cheeks approaching the hue of red-hot iron. "Where in the Good Book does it say assassinating two innocent pillows amounts to a religious observance?"
"What the good doctor means, I believe, is that any faith can use the excuse of acting in God's cause to perpetrate deeds those more impartial might deem unrighteous," Athelstan Helms said. Walton nodded emphatically enough to set two or three chins wobbling.
"Any liberty can become license--any policeman who's been on the job longer than a week knows as much," La Strada said. "But the Preacher has been going up and down in Atlantis for more than fifty years now. He may have forgotten."
"Going up and down like Satan in the Book of Job," Walton growled. "We need to find the rascal so we can give him a piece of our mind."
The Atlantean police officer shifted from foot to foot. "Well, sir, like I told you last night, finding him's a problem we haven't ciphered out ourselves."
"What then?" Dr. Walton was still in a challenging mood. "Shall we walk into the nearest House of Universal Devotion and ask the hemidemisemipagans pretending to be priests where the devil their precious Preacher is? The Devil ought to know, all right." No, he was not a happy man.
Athelstan Helms, by contrast, suddenly looked as happy as his saturnine features would allow. "A capital idea, Doctor! Capital, I say. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, we shall do that very thing. Beard the blighters in their den, like." He used the Atlanteanism with what struck Walton as malice, or at least mischief, aforethought.