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  ‘The third of my misguided brothers, Solli (Finnegan), is also on the Mast Head. But he is not in New Orleans. He is here in Chicago at the moment, and a moment is as long as he stays in any one place. He deserted before the first shot. There is a proverb that even buzzards sometimes gag.

  ‘Number four of the secret seven is Dotty the Beautiful Barmaid. We know and love Dotty, and she is beautiful. But her talents as barmaid are not truly cosmopolitan, and extend only from the Absinthe Frappé to the Sazerac, a distance of not more than four blocks. Beyond that, it is said that she does not know a Bloody Mary from a Screwdriver. Her talents as a journalist are still more limited. She is guilty of dropping her life's savings in this and we are sorry.

  ‘Now let us take the gloves off. The other three are not nice. They are among the most disreputable figures ever to disgrace American journalism. Stein, under the name Hugo Stone, is a card-carrying Communist. The effrontery of this Communist Jew as an editor of a Catholic publication, even a ‘neo-Centrist’ one! No, I am not an anti-Semite, but Stein is. Did you know that there are Jews who are anti-Semite?

  ‘Gabrielovitch is a poisoner of the Fascist persuasion. He is an apologist for the traitor Draja Mihailovitch, one of the most evil men of our lifetime, a representative of all that is unprogressive in his sad country. Gabby has flooded the Slavic language press with comment favorable to this deadly enemy, and has repeatedly made attacks on our noble ally Tito, as well as on our major Slavic ally. He is against the rational Polish-Russian settlement and has supported the London Polish government (possibly the most evil group of men in the world); he has even challenged by implication the judgment of our own Great Dead President in this affair, an effrontery that staggers. He has favored a return to power of the pre-war Central European governments, and has grudged support to groups of a futuristic and progressive pattern. He has opposed the Pan-Slavic concept that should bring pride to every Slav of the world (I am one), and has rejected the natural leadership of the Soviet Union over the Slavs beyond the Homeland, and the need of its directive guidance in these other lands. First we have an anti-Semite Jew. Then we have an anti-Slavic Slav.

  ‘Last and least, in all things and by every count, we have Duffey. Duffey, the pig-sticker. The question is who is the pig and who is the pig-sticker. I maintain that Duffey is the pig and I will prove this thesis. Duffey was at one time connected with the Crock. The Crock will endeavor to undo what it can of his harm. To unsay a lie is hard, and proverbially it is difficult to unscramble an egg. But this is nothing to un-Duffeying a Duffey. We will go into the pig-sticking business ourselves, and Duffey is our pig.

  ‘The magazine has many axes. It is straight China Lobby. It supports the discredited Chiang (possibly the most evil man alive in the world) and sees virtue in his refusal to cooperate with the futuristic elements in his country; and it insists on a play of words which would identify these foreward elements with a doctrinaire Western Communism.

  ‘In its European view it still at this late date supports the clerical-reactionary elements in Poland, Hundary, and the Balkans. It goes so far as to call for unguided (code word ‘free’) elections in Eastern European regions, where guidance under correctly oriented leadership will be required for at least twenty years. The Bark is so naïve about this that we wonder if it is serious.

  ‘On the domestic scene, it is ‘Constitutionalist’, placing undue value on a document of solid but necessarily transitory worth and centered in a period that is largely past. We likewise think highly of the Constitution; some elements of it may be carried over into future constitutions. It is the noble ancestor of a long line of revisionist and evolvate documents which will guide us to an integrated world.

  ‘Literally it is worthless, containing some New Orleans sketches of the type that Lafcadio Hearn did better in the last century; some pretentious effluvia in the manner of Duffey; one funny story apparently written by Finnegan before he left there, and a lame review section.

  ‘For the rest, let us warn the innocent of the Bark. It is poison. It must be exterminated.’

  That was the end of the editorial. It didn't affect them much at the Pelican Press. Duffey, who had been closer to Casey than Casey's father, seemed to shrug him off easily. Gabrielovitch who did not know him personally knew only that he did not know what he was talking about in Slavic matters. What Henry thought he didn't say.

  The only one who was really stirred by it was Dotty; and she was furious.

  “Now know a Bloody Mary from a Screwdriver!” The dishonesty of this attack wounded her. Dotty had been to bartenders’ school and she knew more about mixing drinks than all the Caseys of this world will ever know.

  7.

  In those days Stein had begun to call himself a neo-Jew. “I might be the only one,” he'd say. “If there were others, we could form a group. It would be the most important group in the world. It would be the only group of any importance.” “I have some experience in being a Party of One,” Duffey said. “But, Absalom, to be a neo-Jew, isn't that just to be a Christian?”

  “Not at all. With a head the size of yours you should have more understanding. Were you also in the desert and in Egypt? Did you follow the Pillar and the Cloud? Were you in Babylon? A goy is a goy. You can't come in.”

  “You had better come in. The Church is the only place for you if you have left the Temple.”

  “It was my grandfather who left the Temple. I have not left it, though I have never personally been in it. If I have to leave the Temple to come into it, then it isn't the Church. I will stand in the middle of the Temple; and if the Church comes to me there, then it is the Church. But my genes still won't allow me to join it.”

  On that point he never did break down. He remains the only one of his kind, the only one of exactly that kind. His enemies say that he is neither fish nor flesh. Margaret Stone says that he's some sort of squid (you don't know her yet).

  8.

  The Pelican did not thrive. It was a boney bird with an empty beak. It could go for a long time on a few fish-heads. The Bark shipped more water but it did not go down. Stein was shot at as a Jew, and as a renegade Jew; as a Communist, and (much worse) as an anti-Communist. The Titoists shot at Gabby, and the anti-Duffeyites shot at Duffey. The bill collectors persecuted Dotty. Everybody became tougher and they all grew up a little.

  For the next several years the group suffered a series of episodes at the hands of W, X, Y, and Z. For reasons of space, W. & Y. have been left out of this chronicle. W. was an apostate, and you have not missed much. Y. was well worth knowing, though, and it is your loss that you have missed him. Or you may already know him; he gets around the country a lot.

  Z. was Zabotski. He was a chemist and experimenter of some sort, and he had a huge glass-lined pot or crock that he had used for some distillation experiments. He brought this to Duffey, and that is all he did. But the effect is not ended yet.

  It wouldn't go into the building without taking out part of the wall. But walls are easily taken out; they are made of nothing but bricks and mortar, and furring and lathes and plaster inside. In an hour the wall was opened. And in less than a year Duffey got around to repairing it again.

  It was a thousand gallon pot or crock, and that is big. It weighed a thousand pounds empty and nine thousand pounds full, which is the weight of four giant percheron horses. Duffey rigged gas burners under it and filled it with water. He announced that he would keep the big crock boiling forever. He got a priest in from St. Katherine's to bless it.

  It is to the credit of Dotty that she didn't object to the crock at all, though she didn't understand the purpose of it at first and though she paid the water and gas bills.

  “That I be not overly blessed in giving, it is better that this come out of other pockets than mine,” Duffey said. He collected fifteen dollars from his own gang there. He went to Zabotski who had given him the pot and insisted that Zabotski give him forty-five dollars in addition. This guy Zabotski loved to get into loud s
treet arguments with Duffey, and the two of them were like an old vaudeville act when they berated each other. Zabotski had a little money, however, and he had known from the first to what use Duffey would put the crock.

  Duffey went out and begged and panhandled another forty dollars. Then he bought a hundred bushels of barley, had it hauled to the building, and shoveled it into a little alcove he had built there. It filled the alcove six feet deep.

  Duffey announced that he could now serve barley soup to the poor at a cost of a cent a bowl. He did it. He still does it. Whether the crock will keep boiling forever is known only to God, but it has now been boiling for a quarter of a century at least.

  But Duffey served only a hundred or so bowls a day at first. “There are just not enough poor people to put the crock to the test,” he said. “May God make more poor people for the salvation of the world!”

  They had a little kettle there for contributions. Dotty bonged a bell sometimes to draw people, and all of them invited the saints to the crock. Roisterers would sometimes come by late at night for bowls of the famous soup, and they would put four bits or a dollar into the collection kettle.

  Well, barley soup can become pretty flat over the years. Salt and onions were begged or freely given. Rough fish sometimes came from the markets or from the fishermen. The multiplex cousins of Henry used to send seasonal produce from the Cajun country by the intercoastal-canal boat-men. After X had made his appearance, he produced a fresh dead old horse. They ran that horse-meat through in about a week without mentioning what it was. There is an American prejudice against horse-meat which X, being European, did not understand. They got a boney old cow sometimes; they got game; they even had alligator-tail stew mixed with the barley soup. They had potato soup, they had country greens, they had turnips, and nine kinds of fish. It wasn't really very good for all the onions and leeks and garlic they were sometimes able to add. They finally got it up where they were serving about three hundred meals a day of some sort or other, and somebody managed to be on duty all twenty-four hours of the day for the many years of it.

  It was never really a big thing. Duffey's prayers for sufficient poor to test it were not answered. There never will be enough poor for the health of the world until we mend our wicked ways.

  But it was always there and it helped some people. Do you remember the time Finnegan and Dotty went on a frolic in the country and raided four bee trees and brought in seventy pounds of honey? Seventy pounds of honey dumped in will make a difference in the taste of almost anything. The Regal brewery sent over a keg of beer to Duffey every week, and this always made a difference in the stew or soup for a little while. Zabotski himself often came by for a bowl of the soup, and it always cost him a dollar. And his voice would blend with Duffey's in a raucousness that could be heard for several blocks.

  9.

  OF X, ANOTHER TOUCH OF REALITY IN A TOKEN WORLD.

  Now the total antithesis of Z was X, though they were alike in small ways. It even developed that they were of previous acquaintance. But there was a great difference.

  Uncap a beer or something for a change of pace. You now enter a different world.

  X came to them in this manner. He phoned Duffey about three AM of an unknown date, and he managed to take him unaware.

  “Hello, Doofey,” came the voice like no other.

  “This is Duffey.”

  “Doofey, I am calling you on the telephone.”

  “That much I know. Who are you?”

  “That I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Then why do you call me at three o’clock in the morning?”

  “I find this hour the best time to phone. A man is home then, or he should be. He ordinarily will not have another appointment till a little later. He should have had, by then, several hours of sleep, and if so, his mind will be clear as a bell and receptive of my message.”

  “I can't hear you very well. Perhaps it is better that I can't.”

  “Of course you can't hear me very well. On the telephone I always talk through a handkerchief impregnated with rosin. And sometimes I talk through my hat literally. This disguises the voice.”

  “Is this a riddle?”

  “A lesser man has spoken of a riddle wrapped in an enigma inside a mystery. I forget which was the outer covering. I am a riddle carrying a mystery that contains the key to a labyrinth. Need I say more?”

  “You'd better. Is this Finnegan in a new dialect?”

  “No. I saw your Finnegan several days ago but he was not talking dialect. He was sleeping in happy inebriety.”

  “That's enough of an introduction. Come on over.”

  “Finnegan was only incidental. I saw one more, but I have information of the multitude. Need I go on?”

  “Come over and we'll talk. I have some Bacardi.”

  “That is for the Finnegans of the world. I create my own intoxication. Do you think I will be followed?”

  “Only by the man with the net.”

  “That is perhaps cryptic for the Fisherman from Saon? You frighten me. I thought that he eyed me with unusual interest. Could he have followed me here in three short weeks.”

  “I wouldn't have believed it myself. Come on over.”

  And in a few minutes Mr. X arrived and Duffey looked at him in the light. There was something almost too dirty about this arrival, as though he were made up for a clown. But he was a happy clown with something wistful about him. Dotty came to see what it was.

  “What have you there, Duff?” she asked.

  “I, lady, am sometimes known as Mr. X,” the arrival offered.

  “Who isn't. Well, give him a platter of milk and then put him out, Duff. You know we agreed we couldn't afford to keep pets.”

  “The gentleman invited me over and offered me Bacardi.”

  “I was fooling. The place is yours, little man. Put him on the sofa, Duff. He won't need a blanket tonight.” As though X should sleep on a sofa or anywhere. As though he ever slept.

  Mr. X had put a big black box on the table.

  “Doofey, does this box interest you? Do you know what is within?”

  “Your laundry.”

  “What I have, it is true, is inside. But there is something else.”

  “I am all ears.”

  “You do have an interesting otology. But inside this black box is a gray box. And inside the gray box, retine galorum vestrum, hold onto your hat (I translate loosely), is a brown box.”

  “Admiror audiens, I am surprised to hear it (I also translate loosely); is this a box that I have met before?”

  “Doofey, you more than anyone in the world know what is in this box, for it is the box that I have brought from Chicago to you.”

  “Oh, that one. Did Casey give it to you?”

  “You amaze me. There is something child-like about you, Doofey. Naturally he did not give it to me. I stole it from him.”

  “You shouldn't have stolen it. It is the property of the Crock, and he owns that now. He will think that I had a hand in stealing it. No, he knows me better than that. But he will pretend that he thinks I had a hand in stealing it. I will phone him in the morning and explain that I did not.”

  “If you are going to phone him, then phone him now. It is the perfect time for it. I always say that a quarter after three in the morning is the best time to phone. It is my experience that a man will usually be home then and unoccupied. And, having slept a little — ”

  “I have heard your theory, X, but charity impels me to wait. Why did you take the box.”

  “He was not properly using the material. He was going to sit on it, perhaps even warn some of those it concerns that they were tagged. He has not kept the list active even. He has added only one name to it: his own. You appreciate the irony of that?”

  “I appreciate it. Have you seen the data here?”

  “Naturally I have memorized it, as I have that of many like collections. I have added information to some of the cards. You will find them written find in
my hand with the X below.”

  “How did you get into the box?”

  “Little locks like that I open with mittens on. When I played the circuits I was billed as the Great X-Capo. This is clever. I have quite a bit of talent.”

  “I see that you have.”

  “I did not take the liberty of adding any cards. I will do so now, for there are many which interlock so completely with these that I wonder you do not know of them. It is only fair to tell you that my information is commonly taken frustu salis, with a grain of salt, which is how all information on the Infiltrates should be taken.”

  “I know it.”

  X wrote for about two hours on the file cards that Duffey furnished. X was widely known in a narrow field. He visited congressmen and Justice Department agents at midnight, and spoke in low and confidential earnestness. He received curt tips from Dutch importers and Bucharest rivermen. He heard Nostrodomus-type prophecies from Jesuit experts, and gave back to them some of his own. He was a Party member in both France and Italy under different names. He passed for anything he wished.

  Now the fact about him was that almost all his information was true. He could not evaluate, and he had no aims other than the excitement of the game. He himself had been, possibly was, and would be again, the most confounded Red of them all; and the times he had joined the Party he had done so from conviction. But his convictions were short.

  He was subject to great seasonal changes, and every Easter he would make his peace with the Church. By midsummer he would be an agnostic again, and by fall an atheist. But more and more, as the years went by, he became interested in collecting information on the Conspiracy and working for its defeat. There were many recipients of his information, and it was retained in private files and in well-indexed corners of private minds.