The Masters of Atlantis Read Free

hands and begged that allowance be made for his short termper. He had been a very naughty boy. The only thing now was for Lamar to move into Villa Hen, where he could live in that comfort and peace so necessary to the scholar, and give instructions in this great work in the proper way.
    Lamar accepted the invitation and the next day he carried his bag up the hill to the villa. Fanny Hen, the crippled girl, was not around. He asked about her and Sydney said he had moved her into a boardinghouse down the way so that Lamar might have her room. But Lamar would not hear of this and the girl was soon restored to her room. Lamar slept in the library.
    Fanny had made no very distinct impression on him before, apart from her kindness and her game leg. Now he began to notice other things about her. She was small and dark like her brother, but there the resemblance ended. Where Sydney was moody Fanny was sprightly, and where Fanny was open Sydney was sly. She had been an army nurse and her right knee was stiff from shrapnel wounds received in the final Flanders offensive of September 1918. She wore billowy shirts with striped neckties.
    Sydney was an apt pupil, much quicker than himself, Lamar had to admit. He cut short his work at the Botanical Gardens and came home early each evening, flinging his black cape carelessly from his shoulders and quickly slipping into his red silk dressing gown, eager for another long session with Lamar in the locked library. He smoked black Turkish cigarettes and sipped Madeira. From time to time he rubbed his hands together. When he had grasped a Gnomonic point he would say, “Quite!” or “Quite so!” or “Just so!” or “Even so!” and urge Lamar to get on with it. The progress slowed somewhat when they came to the symbolic figures. Sydney found himself in a tangle with these cones and triangles. He often confused one with another and got the words slightly wrong.
    During the day Lamar enjoyed the company of Fanny Hen. They discussed their war experiences. He expressed regret that he was not free to tell her, a woman, about Gnomonism, except in very general terms, but there it was, he was under certain vows. She said she understood and that, after all, women had their little secrets too. He told her about Gary, Indiana, carefully pointing out that his people had nothing to do with the steel mills. She talked about girlhood escapades at The Grange, Little-Fen-on-Sea, which was her home. They sat at the piano and sang “Beautiful Dreamer.” They went to the harbor and watched the boats and ate Italian sausages. She made light of her “silly knee” and apologized for being such a slow walker. Slow or fast, he said, he counted it a privilege to be at her side and would consider it a great honor if she would take his arm.
    In little more than a month of intense study Sydney became an Initiate in the Gnomon Society. Within another month he was an Adept, and then, as a peer of Lamar’s, he began to speak out on things. He suggested how the course of study might be organized along more efficient lines. The ritual of investiture could be improved too. A processional was needed, a long solemn one, and more figs and more candles, and some smoldering aromatic gums. Lamar agreed that such touches were appealing. The innovations seemed harmless enough and might even be useful, but how could two Adepts presume to do such things without direct authorization from Pletho Pappus or some other Master?
    Then Sydney Hen uttered the thought that had been troubling Lamar for some weeks. It was a wild thought that he had often suppressed. “Can’t you see it, man? You’re already a Master! We’re both Masters! You still don’t see it? Robert was Pletho himself! Your Poma is the Cone of Fate! You and I are beginning the New Cycle of Gnomonism!”
    So saying, Hen produced a Poma of his own, one he had had run up in red kid, and then like Napoleon crowned