Masters of the Maze (2 page)

At one point the road rises high and sheers close to a drop where the land falls away abruptly and far, and shows, off in the middle distance, the river bending like a bow. Here, on the other side of the road, are set two one-story houses and one two-story house, and the ground floor of the latter is occupied by a small general store which sells beer and gasoline as well.

Quite early one afternoon in the late spring of the year the sound of an automobile was heard by three men lounging around in the store.

“Who’s
that
, I wonder?” asked a stumpy-looking man with a seamed face.

“You ought to know, George, it’s your store.” Amused by his wit, the speaker, a fattish older fellow dressed in greasy lumber-jacket, overalls, and a dirty union suit, spread his almost toothless mouth in hissing laughter.

George ignored him. “Coming up from town, it sounds like,” he said, addressing the third person there. “Wonder … Hey, Jack?” Jack was about thirty, with a dark, brooding face. He made no answer. After a moment he got up and moved to the door. George followed him, and, when the noise of the motor had grown louder, so did the heavy old man. Something came into sight and showed where the road curved across a fold in the hill.

“Yep … coming up from town,” said George.

Prefacing his remarks with a few heavy breaths, the oldster said, “Nicky Flint drove down this morning. Didn’ he, Jack? But that ain’t never his car. Hey Jack?” The dark young man said nothing. The older man scratched his armpit comfortably. “Nicky Flint drove down this morning, I says. Didn’ he, Jack?”

“Where Major Flint goes is none of your business.”

The old man laughed again, hissing and showing his toothless gums like a fat old lizard. Then the car itself passed by, long and sleek and luminous. “Jesus Montgomery Christ!” exclaimed George, deeply impressed. “Would you look at that thing!”

Jack’s face was bright. The old man pursed his lips and scratched the dirty white stubble on his jowls. “Lookst a me like a one a them, oh, now, I saw one years ago in the city, hey now, yeah. A Roolds-Royst.”

Before he had altogether finished, Jack said, quickly, “It’s a Bentley.”

“I’d ‘a’ said you was right, Jeff — ”

“No, it’s a Bentley, George — ”

“Lookst a me,” Jeff repeated, stubbornly wagging his head, “like a Roolds-Royst.”

“It’s more or less the same make of car, only — ” The automobile vanished from their sight. The curtain descended on Jack’s face, the brooding look returned.

“Wonder who that could
be
,” the proprietor said. “Was that your boss in the car, could you see, Jack? I think there was a good four people there.”

The dark man said nothing, but old Jeff had a point or two of comment. “Say, you know all about them makes of cars, don’t you, Jack. I didn’ think you was interested. I thought all you was interested in was women and jack-lighting deer.” He paused. “Hey Jack?” He picked at his nose. “Speaking of which, how is your new woman? Your new-est one, I sh’d say.”

Jack shrugged. “Good enough. They all got the same thing.”

“Yeh-es,” Jeff nodded, judiciously. “But some of ‘m’s got more of it than others … If I had me a new woman, young one, say, I shouldn’ like to be leaving her alone all night whiles I was setting at the bottom of a mineshaft … unless she was setting there with me….”

Jack threw him a look in which a thin flash of his teeth showed. Instantly Jeff seemed to become much older, sillier, devoid of possibility of harmful intention. He breathed steamily, waddled back to his chair.

George, still thoughtful, said, “Suppose, maybe, some
land
syndicate could be interested in maybe putting up a big hotel or a lot of cottages … or something … no …” He shook his head.

Jeff smacked his knee loudly. “Hey now, I know what it is! Why sure. ‘Mineshaft,’ that’s what put it into my head. Bet you a penny to a pot of peas that Nicky Flint is trying to interest another sucker in that old piss-worthless mine of his! Hey?”

George slowly cut himself a slice of headcheese and nibbled on it. “Mmm … That could be, I suppose. He’s had investors out there before, I believe. But … worthless? If it was worthless, how come they’ve held onto it, all these years?”

The old man slid forward about an inch. “How come is right. Keep the fences mended and all. And keep guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. Tell what it is you’re guarding down there, hey Jack? Gold? Dye-muns? You-ranium?”

His mind seemingly mostly on other things, Jack mumbled, “Guarding the pit-props, keep some dirty old jackass like you from stealing them for firewood.”

Jeff hissed and quivered. Next, more soberly, he said, “I wonder when the last carload of ore was took up out of that mine.
I
don’t remember it. My father didn’t remember it, neither. Old Tom Shoot, he claimed he did, but he was such an awful old liar, used to claim he was in the Rebellion and all such lies as that.”

George finished the slice of headcheese and sucked on his teeth. “They weren’t always pure lies, you know, Jeff. His mind got kind of weak a long ways before he died. He used to get mixed up between what he seen and what he’d heard told of others seeing. I know he claimed there was goblins down there and that’s why they quit mining. But he also claimed he recalled when the green timber was cut to make boats to fight the British, and I know that did happen, heard other old people tell of having heard of it.”

After a moment he added, almost reluctantly, “Tom Shoot’s great-grandmother, she was that famous white-witch-woman, so they said.”

Jeff, not smiling, said in a lower voice, “Nettie Wishert. Yes …”

In the silence following, Jack said, as though to himself and as though from a long ways off, “But I’ll have one yet. You wait and see.”

Instantly alert and keen, Jeff asked, “A Bintley?”

The dark young man’s guard was down and for a moment his expression was slack and astonished. Surprise and anger struggled in his face. Then it tightened and his eyes closed part-way down.

“I don’t get just my wages and free house and truck garden,” he said. “I get free cartridges, too. All I want.”

Jeff’s mouth pursed his absolute innocence, utter incomprehension. “Take a pile of cartridges to buy one a them Bintleys,” he piped. “Still … if Major Nick Flint told you you’d get one, why, hmmm, ymmm … He’s a great one for promises. It runs in the family. I believe the old general promised Nettie Wishert something, too. Or was it the other way round? Hey George?”

But George only wondered aloud whose car that might have been. And Jack’s eyes blazed in his dark and brooding face.

• • •

The hands of John Joseph Horn were large and immaculately groomed and thatched with colorless hair through which showed the pigmented areas which used to be called “liver spots.” The hands moved now on the velvety wool of the carriage rug covering his lap and legs, picked up a brochure, glanced into it.

… particularly the property known as The Old General Mine, which has been in the hands of the Flint family since granted by George II …

… reason to believe that the application of modern scientific methods to the refining and extractive processes would repay investment many times over and …

Horn grunted very slightly, gently but firmly laid the brochure aside, picked up a little booklet bound in leather, opened it with one finger in a gesture which somehow managed to be almost priestly, took out the blue silk ribbon marker, ran his finger down the page (foxed as the back of his hand), found the place he sought.

… maintaining that part of the Great Mysterie or Secret Tradition given through the Teutonic Knights, who brought the Teaching and Discipline of the Great White Christ to the last European pagans …

Horn thrust out his lower lip — “M-
hm
, m-
hm
” — then looked up and over at the man sitting at the opposite window, a man of approximately his own age, with a long, dark face, grizzled hair cut close to the long skull. “Major,” said Horn, “my stomach tells me it’s one o’clock. Would you be kind enough to reach down into that case and pour me a cup of what’s in that thermos bottle? I thank you. I thank you.”

He sipped, made a grateful noise in his nose. “This cup contains
milk
,” he said; “pure
milk
, with none of its essential bacteria destroyed by the murderous method of pasteurization, and made hot over a gentle flame but not boiled. It comes from one of my own dairy herds, a crossbreed of Jersey and Red Hindi which has been developed under my own supervision over a course of thirty years, and fed on purely organic fodder grown on purely organically fertilized fields. It contains a specific quantity of mildly toasted natural wheat heart produced by the same process, and a small amount of raw sugar from which none of the essentials have been extracted by so-called refining. It is, I do not hesitate to say,
the
most
healthful
food-drink available to modern man. There is another cup in the case, if you would care to try it.”

Major Flint turned his head and gazed at Horn squarely with his yellow-brown eyes. “I never drink milk,” he said.

“Drink whiskey, I suppose.”

“No. I can’t afford whiskey.”

Horn sucked back his lower lip with a little smacking sound. “I like the way you said that. No whining. No disgrace to being honestly poor, why can’t people
realize
that? instead of yelping and sniffling and begging for hand-outs? Particularly none in being lead-poor.” He drank the rest of his milk, absently held out the empty cup. After a second Major Flint took it and put it back in the case.

“Well. KLEL.” He tapped the cover of the little book as he repeated the word embossed there. “I don’t mind telling you, I was a bit dubious at first. Never heard of it, said to myself. Sounds clandestine, said to myself. But. When you told me the names of some of the other members — Governor Shank. Henry O’Dowd. Baron Fish — I checked.”

Flint looked over his shoulder at the passing countryside. Turning back, he said, stiffly, “KLEL was registered with the Grand Consistory of Rites in Paris in 1788. Naturally, during the tragic events which followed, it dropped from sight. Experience may be a bitter teacher, but She is a good one. Once the benefits of working in silence were realized, they were never forgotten. KLEL is not now and it never has been —
clandestine.
It is now, it always has been, and it will always continue to be —
selective.
”

John Joseph Horn nodded. “I know,” he said. “I checked,” he repeated. “Harry O’Dowd told me all about you. Your family’s impeccable record. Your own service — in war and peace. Your struggles to hold on to your property, your struggles to hold your own in business despite being up to your neck surrounded by Jews and Irish and Italians; well, we all know what New York is like. Your staunch support of the various constitutionalist causes, despite all evidence that you could often ill afford it. I checked, Major, I checked it all, up and down, Harry O’Dowd or no Harry O’Dowd. I might say that I was not least impressed by the fact that you never allowed any of our fellow patriots to throw business your way, refused to sharpen your personal axe on the grindstone, so to speak.”

The car sped down a low hill, toiled up a high one, rounded one curve after another. “Nothing noble about that,” growled Major Flint. “I am beholden to no one, and I intend to keep it that way. I didn’t take advantage of my privilege as the GC of KLEL to make you a member on sight just because you’re rich. There’s a man named Jack Pace, his father was one of my grandfather’s bastards, but that’s neither here nor there; Jack Pace is at the mine for $35 a week, and I made
him
one on sight.

“Rich men? My
God
!” he cried, “the
B’nai Brith
is rotten with rich men! The
Mafia
is rotten with rich men! And those damned Englishmen up there in Canada are so rotten-rich from the lumber and the ore they sell us and the wheat they sell Red China, that — that — ” His nostrils flared, he clenched his teeth.

“Why,” he said in a lower, calmer, yet even more scornful voice, “
there are rich niggers!
”

John Joseph Horn nodded slowly, sadly.

No, no, Major Flint wanted it made clear, it was not just Horn’s money alone which mattered in this thing. It was the fact that he had the right idea about the use of money. “The whole world kicks us around as they please. Communists, Catholics, taking over all around! When is it going to end? And where? We’ve got the key — KLEL. We’ve even got a keyhole — ” He gestured up ahead of him. Then his mouth twisted and he sat back in the seat.

“But it doesn’t fit,” he murmured. “It doesn’t fit.”

Some hours later the two of them sat in the bare, musty old shack which served as the “office” of the Delaware and National Mining Company. “Well, now you’ve seen it and now you know,” said Major Flint. “You’re one of the Elect, you’ve been a Knight, you’re now a Commander. According to our
Doctrines and Degrees,
any Grand Commander can — with any two other Commanders — pass himself and themselves and any others of the second degree onto the third: Lord Commander. But General Flint, the first GC, laid it down that this was not to be done until a better Gate was found. And we’ve been playing it so quietly ever since, lying so low, that we haven’t … we don’t … Well …”

Horn picked up the three pieces of gold upon the table, shook them in his hand, put them down again. “A better Gate.
Twelve gates into the City.
I suppose there must be even more than twelve.”

Flint shrugged. More than twelve million, he supposed. A bitter smile touched his long, dark face briefly. “But it seems to be a case of, You can’t get there from here. God knows we’ve tried, we’ve been trying for a hundred and seventy years, at least.”

“And it hasn’t changed? No, eh? I’m shaken, Flint. As you may suppose. No one ever saw anything like that — what you showed me. It can’t be described, it couldn’t even be dreamed of.
But it exists
! Yet … you say, You can’t get there from here.” He shoved the gold pieces with his fingers and they clinked. “
Some
one must’ve gotten there from here. And brought back … just these? Who was it?”