“Yes, they have. I can’t hide anymore, Honey Pie.” Sam put his arm around Evie’s shoulder, pulling her close. He kissed her on the cheek while Jericho looked on, astonished. “I’m sorry that this is the way you had to find out, cousin. We went into that office to be alone. I’m gone for her, and she’s got it bad for me. Don’tcha, doll face? We’re going to Reno for the annulment, and then we’re getting hitched. Why, I wouldn’t blame you if you socked me right here and now for what I’ve done.”
Murmurs of astonishment and judgment rippled through the assembled Pillar of Fire crowd. Hidden by the largeness of Jericho, Sam made a small fist motion, hoping that Jericho would take the hint.
Finally, Jericho’s eyes widened in understanding. “Well, that’s my wife, and you can’t have her,” he announced awkwardly. He pulled back and socked Sam, catching him across the jaw and bottom lip. Sam tottered and sank to his knees, his mouth bloody.
“Son of a—” Sam croaked.
“Oh, Sam!” Evie dropped beside Sam. She put her handkerchief to his mouth. “I never wanted this to happen.”
Mrs. White was steely-eyed. “I think you’d best leave. We are an honorable organization and want no part of your sordid city affairs.”
“An ‘honorable organization,’ ” Sam scoffed from behind the wheel as they made their way down the long drive. A welt was already rising on his cheek, and there was dried blood on his shirt. Evie dabbed at his wound and he winced. “Ow.”
“Sorry for that,” Jericho said from the backseat, but he looked pretty pleased with himself.
“That punch got us out of there. Good work, Freddie. Though next time, go easy on me, not-so-gentle giant.”
At the bottom of the drive, a group of men stood across the road, blocking their escape. Evie gripped the door handle as the men surrounded the car. Sam’s hands remained fixed on the wheel, and for the second time, Evie wished she were driving.
A broad-chested man in a straw hat leaned both arms on Evie’s open window. “You people from the city, we know what you get up to over there, and we don’t want any part of it. You understand?”
Evie nodded gravely. Her heart pounded in her chest. She kept her eyes on the road ahead.
“Don’t come back here no more. We don’t need your kind.”
One of the men angled his face close to Jericho’s. He smiled at him in a convivial way, as if they were two old friends on a fishing trip, one giving advice to the other. “If it were me, son, I’d take that one out to the woods and show him what happens to fellas what try to take what’s rightfully yours.” He took a book of matches from his pocket and struck one, watching it flare into an orange diamond, then flicked it into the front seat at Sam. Evie gave a small shriek as it landed on his pants, but he patted it out quickly. He looked terrified, though. The usual Sam swagger was nowhere to be seen. The men stepped back. The fellow in front took his hand off the hood, and Sam jerked the car forward, spraying small pebbles from the back tires as he drove. They came around the next bend so quickly that they didn’t see the man until they were nearly upon him.
“Sam, watch out!” Evie yelled.
Sam hit the brakes and the car shuddered to a stop and quit. In front of them, Brother Jacob Call had both hands up, as if waiting to be hit. He pointed a long finger at them.
“What was started long ago will now be finished when the fire burns in the sky,” he said. “Repent, for the Beast is come.”
Then he turned away, walking up the hill in long, quick strides.
It was afternoon by the time Evie, Jericho, and Sam returned to the museum and told Will of their narrow escape from the Pillar of Fire Church and their curious encounter with Brother Jacob Call.
“Do you think he could be our killer?” Jericho asked.
“I’ll certainly report it to Detective Malloy right away,” Will answered. “You did very well. This may be the break we’ve needed.”
“He said something else very curious.” Evie rested her stocking feet on a stack of books on the floor. “He said something about ‘what was started long ago would now be finished.’ What was started long ago? When?”
The phone rang and Will answered it. “William Fitzgerald. I see. Whom may I say is calling, please? Just a moment.” Will held out the receiver. “It’s for you, Evie. A Mr. Daily Newsenhauser?”
Evie took the phone and said, “I don’t need an Electrolux, and I’m already a Colgate customer, so unless you’re giving away a mink, I’m afraid—”
“Heya, Sheba. How’s the Creepy Crawly?” T. S. Woodhouse said.
Evie turned her back on Will and the boys. “Spiffing. Mr. Lincoln’s ghost just asked me to tea. I do love a polite ghost. Clever moniker.”
“Daily Newsenhauser? I thought so.”
Evie placed a hand over the receiver. “An order I placed with a salesman at B. Altman. I won’t be a minute.”
“I don’t like your appropriating the museum’s telephone for personal calls, Evangeline,” Will said, but he didn’t look up from his stack of clippings.
“I take it you can’t speak freely?” Woodhouse said.
“You’re on the trolley.”
“Maybe we could meet.”
“Not likely.”
“Come on, Sheba. Play along with your old pal T.S. Got anything for me?”
“That depends. What do you have for me?”
“A story about the museum in tomorrow’s papers. A mention of one Miss Evie O’Neill. The very comely Miss O’Neill.”
Evie smiled. “Hold on a minute. Jericho,” she called. “I need to order unmentionables. Be a dear and hang this one up for me, and I’ll take it in Will’s office.” Evie scurried past Sam, who waggled his eyebrows in response to the word unmentionables. Evie gave him an irritated eye-roll and raced to the phone in Will’s office. “I’ve got it, Jericho dear.” She waited for the telltale click, then spoke in a hushed voice. “They think the killer might be involved with the Klan. A copy of The Good Citizen was found with Tommy Duffy’s body.”
“No kidding? Wouldn’t put it past those pond scum.”
“I know. Why, they’re even worse than reporters.”
“I like you, Sheba.”
“And I like what you can do for me, Mr. Woodhouse.”
“What else?”
“Nothing doing. I’ll expect that article first.”
“Evie, please do say good-bye,” Will instructed from the doorway.
Evie spoke cheerfully and loudly into the receiver. “Get yourself a mustard plaster and stay in bed, Mabesie darling, and you’ll be as good as new! I have to dash now. Ta!” Evie put the phone back in its cradle and turned to Will with a heavy sigh. “Poor lamb would simply be lost without me.”
Will looked puzzled. “I thought you were speaking to a salesman at B. Altman.”
“There were two calls!” Evie lied, smiling brightly. “Oh, Unc, honestly! Didn’t you hear it ring the second time? The sound in these old mansions isn’t what it could be, I suppose. Well, no matter. I heard it. What did you want, Unc?”
Will threaded his arms through the sleeves of his trench coat and put on his hat. “I’ve just received word from my colleague Dr. Poblocki at Columbia. That page you discovered has proved helpful. He’s found something significant after all. Well?”
Evie grabbed her coat.
THE ELEVEN OFFERINGS
Evie and Will crossed the long green of Columbia, heading toward the Low Memorial Library, an enormous marble building whose ionic columns gave it the countenance of a Greek temple. To their right, the crooked-tooth rooftops of the apartment buildings of Morningside Heights stood in relief against the gray autumnal sky. Somewhere, a church bell tolled. The day was blustery, but students still sat on the library steps leading up from the green. Heads turned as Evie passed. She allowed herself to think it was because she was devastatingly pretty in her rose silk dress and peacock-patterned stockings, and not because she was one of the only girls on campus.
Dr. Georg Poblocki’s office sat at the end of a long hall in a building that smelled of old books and yearning. Dr. Poblocki himself was a large man with craggy cheeks and puffy eyes overshadowed by unruly brows that Evie had the urge to trim.
“The full story behind that drawing you sent was rather hard to find, William,” Dr. Poblocki said in a faint German accent. He smiled with an almost mischievous glee. “But find it I did.”
He drew a book from a stack and opened it to a marked page showing the familiar star-encircled-by-a-snake emblem. “Behold: the Pentacle of the Beast.”