The Butterfly Collector's Club

Sebastian Gloom
Part Seven

Gloom was delighted by the key. “This unlocks a safe deposit box,” he said, “And the number will be the box number. This is undoubtedly where he put the bottle for safekeeping. There are only two banks in Manchester that perform this service, and I keep some important documents with Lloyds. This is not at all like the key I was given by them. That leaves the Bank of England, who have an office on Deansgate Road. Let's go before our good friend Father Anthony persuades Gideon to tell him, and uses the influence of the church to make the bank turn over the box.”
Two hours later, Benson and Sebastian Gloom were being shown into the vault of the Manchester branch of the Bank of England. Gloom gave the clerk the number of the account and the young man removed the metal strongbox from its alcove and placed it on the table in the centre of the room. “Please let me know if you need anything else,” he said, and Gloom assured him that he would. The clerk then left the room, leaving Gloom and Benson alone with the box.
“I must confess to a feeling of excitement and expectation,” said Gloom as he produced the key. “Compared to some cases, this one was quite easy and quickly resolved, but I still find my heart pounding at the thought of finally laying eyes on the object we have been pursuing. All our hard work paying off in a triumphant conclusion.”
“So hurry up and open it!” prompted his manservant. Gloom grinned at him, then inserted and turned the key.
Inside was a small clay bottle, shiny with varnish and bearing a small brass plaque with the name ‘Philip Cranston’ engraved on it. It had a clay stopper sealed in place with red wax. It didn't look three thousand years old, though. It looked almost brand new. “Is this the real bottle?” asked Benson with a tight feeling of apprehension in his chest. “Maybe they really did make a decoy.”
“There is only one way to find out,” replied Gloom. “Take it to Paul and he will tell us.” He closed and locked the box again, replaced it in its alcove and carefully placed the bottle in a wooden, velvet padded travelling case he'd brought for the purpose. Benson then pushed Gloom's wheelchair back out of the vault, towards the bank's entrance.
They sent a message to Edward Pick, and the very next day the man was once again in Gloom's office, the droopy top hat still on his head as he examined the bottle they had found. “This appears to be the genuine bottle,” he said with delight. “Very well done, Sir! You have done us a great service, and saved a dozen people from incarceration and death.”
“You said it was a Solomon Bottle,” said Benson, though. “That was never made by King Solomon.”
“No, very few of the originals still remain. We have the means to make our own bottles. Everyone in our organisation carries one on their person at all times, so that when we die it will capture our souls and prevent us from going to Judgement.” He reached into a pocket and produced another bottle, identical to the one they had found in the strongbox except that this one had Edward Pick’s name on the plaque.
“Is the soul conscious in there?” asked Benson, “Or does it pass the years is slumber?”
“Those demons imprisoned in such bottles are conscious,” replied Gloom, “or they would not be able to communicate with those outside. We must assume that the soul of Philip Cranston is conscious as well. Alone, unable to see or hear anything, unable to communicate with anyone. It must be its own kind of hell.”
“How much must they fear the real Hell if they think this is preferable?” said Benson in a hushed, horrified voice.
“If I guess correctly, it is not because they fear Hell,” said Gloom. “Am I right, Mister Pick?”
“I'm afraid I cannot discuss that with you,” said the small man, though. “I must leave now. This bottle must be taken to a place of safety...”
Gloom wheeled his chair to block his exit from the room. “I would like to meet Paul again,” he said. “Can you arrange a meeting with him? If my suspicious regarding the nature of his organisation are correct, it is an organisation I would very much like to join.”
“And I also,” added Benson.
Gloom turned to him. “My friend, you have no idea what you would be involving yourself in.”
“That is true,” admitted the manservant, “but it will eventually result in your soul being confined within a bottle like that, possibly for centuries, before some misfortune results in its destruction and you are freed for judgement. Is that not true?”
“Yes, I imagine that that would be the case.” Gloom looked at Pick, who nodded.
“If you consider Paul's cause to be important enough that it is worth suffering such a horrible fate, then so do I. Where you go, there I go also.”
Gloom could see that Benson was implacable in his resolve and that no argument would change his mind. “My friend, what did I do to deserve such a good and loyal servant?”
“Is that a yes?” demanded Benson.
Gloom sighed, but it was a good sigh, a happy sigh, and he was smiling as he did it. “Where I go, you go,” he agreed. He turned back to Edward Pick. “Please tell Paul that he has two potential new recruits, if he has use for them.”
“I will tell him,” replied their guest. Gloom then moved his wheelchair and allowed him to leave.

☆☆☆

Father Cleese and Father May returned to the holding house looking grim. “We found nothing,” said Cleese as he closed the door behind them. He glared at Gideon, still chained to the bare brick wall by manacles around his wrists. His face was puffy and bruised and his bare chest bore a number of small cuts and burns
“You must have looked in the wrong place!” the villain cried, his eyes flying to the racks of torture equipment beside him. “The key was in a crack in the wall between the kitchen and the bathroom, I swear it!”
“We found the crack. We looked in it but it was empty. There were plenty of other cracks and we searched them as well. We turned the whole place upside down. There was nothing there.”
Father Adrian was in the middle of his evening meal and he put down his knife and fork, pushing back his chair to stand. He thought Gideon was probably telling the truth. It had taken longer than they'd thought to make him change his story, even after they'd been to Stanley Holding’s house and satisfied themselves that he didn't have the bottle. Once he'd told them about the Strongbox, though, he’d stuck to that story no matter how much ‘enhanced interrogation’ they'd subjected him to, and it made much more sense than his original story. “Some kid could have gone in and taken it,” he mused. “We left the door unlocked. The sound of gunfire might have attracted them. Or maybe he had another associate.” He looked at Gideon and picked up a pair of pliers, turning it over and over in his fingers while Gideon's eyes widened in fear. “Someone who went there after we left.” Gideon shook his head in wild denial.
Father Anthony held the pliers up in front of Gideon’s terrified eyes, letting the man's imagination do his work for him. He hated this part of the job. He thought of himself as a good man. He helped people. He helped them stay on the path of righteousness in the face of temptation. He helped them in times of grief, reminding them of the rewards that lay in store for the faithful after death. He knew that dealing with people like Gideon also helped the good people of the world, but it still left him feeling dirty and filled with guilt and shame. He reminded himself that God Himself tortured people, and not just for a couple of days. Those sentenced to Hell were tortured for ever, and not in order to extract information or rehabilitate them. They were tortured to punish them. Just that and nothing more. Forever.
Forever. The word echoed around in his head like a shout in a deep mountain valley. The world was six thousand years old and he knew that the Last Battle would come soon, after which the Kingdom of God would last forever. What did forever really mean, though? Mathematicians used words like millions and billions and trillions. It seemed absurd to use words like that to describe a length of years, but if you took the words of the Bible literally then there was no escaping it. Did that mean that the damned souls in Hell would still be screaming in torment a million years from now? His mind shied away from the possibility in horror and he reached for his faith in desperation. If God had decreed that the damned should be tortured forever, then he had to accept that, in some way he couldn’t possibly understand, it was for the best. The very last words of the Bible came back to haunt him, though. For ever and ever. Amen. He shivered.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by Father May. “There was another man there,” he said. “One of the neighbours told us. He hid in her place while you were taking him down. Big guy, she said. Maybe a soldier, once anyway. She didn't think he was a friend of Gideon, though. Maybe he was a rival. Found out Gideon was into something big and wanted a piece of the action.”
“Maybe,” mused Father Anthony, bringing his thoughts back to the matter at hand with an effort. “Did you get a description?”
“Big, tough. Black hair, hadn't shaved recently. Nothing we can use. We could keep an eye on the bank, see who goes in and out.”
“Probably too late for that. Whoever it was has had plenty of time to get it.” He paced up and down in thought for a few moments. “Whoever it was may have been watching Gideon for some time. Go back and find out if anyone’s been asking questions. Strangers to the area. Maybe just hanging around looking suspicious.”
“Like the steam wheelchair guy,” said Father Cleese with a grin.
“What? Demanded Father Anthony, spinning around and fixing him with his eyes.
“Everyone in the street was talking about some guy who went trundling by the other day in a steam powered wheelchair. Some toff dressed in fine, expensive clothes, puffing his way along a working class street like it was Mayfair! Damned lucky he didn't get himself turned over!”
Father Anthony was staring at the ceiling in astonishment, though. “We were talking just the other day! He raised the subject of Solomon Bottles and I thought it was just a coincidence. I bet the Cranstons hired him to find the bottle! He was sounding me out, trying to find out if I was involved!”
“Who?” demanded Father Cleese.
“Sebastian Gloom!”

☆☆☆

Gloom got the invitation just before sunset. Among the letters and bills in the day's second postal delivery was a small white letter that had the drawing of a bottle in the bottom left hand corner. It was addressed to both Gloom and Benson. Gloom seized upon it with trembling fingers, as if he’d been both wanting it to come and hoping it would never come and couldn't have said himself which one he’d wanted more.
He cast the other letters aside to be read later and ripped it open. Inside was a short note written in a hurried scrawl. “If you are serious regarding your application for club membership, please come to our usual meeting place tonight.” It was signed Paul Freeman, chairman of the Butterfly Collectors club.
“Fire up the wheelchair!” said Gloom with a tremor in his voice, and then he coughed heavily, holding his handkerchief to his mouth. He thrust it quickly back into his pocket before Benson could see the blood. Benson frowned, but Gloom gave him a meaningful look and the manservant went off to comply. Thirty minutes later Gloom was driving down the street in the steam wheelchair, Benson walking beside him, in the direction of the Museum of Science and Industry.
“Some people with your precarious health and with your considerable wealth might be tempted to retire and enjoy their remaining years in comfort,” he said as pedestrians stood aside for their passage.
“Some might,” agreed Gloom. “If they were able to ignore the monumental injustices of the world. My conscience drives me to do this, my friend. If there is something I can do, no matter how small and hopeless, then I must do it. I've known you long enough to know that you feel the same way, but even so you do not have to...”
“Yes, I do,” interrupted Benson, “And I do not have poor health to use as an excuse. Time and again during the time of our acquaintance there have been things that have needed doing but that your handicaps have prevented you from doing for yourself. I have been glad and honoured to do these things for you. That is not going to stop now.”
“My friend, if we both end up in Hell, it won't be so bad if I have you there with me. Indeed, I would prefer that than to be in paradise without you.”
“I feel the same. If that letter had not come, though, you would have had the perfect excuse to retire from your activities and forget the whole matter.”
“If the letter had not come I would have devoted all my time and resources to tracking down this Paul Freeman and persuading him to accept me. And if he had not I would have started a movement of my own to do what I think he is doing.”
Benson nodded. “I just wanted to make absolutely sure that... That...”
“Rest assured, my friend. This is the proper path for us.”
They arrived at the Museum just after it had closed, but once again the curator let them in. “You spend a lot of time here for a man who owns a museum of his own,” he joked as he unlocked and opened the door for them. “Perhaps yours is too small and you want to move into a bigger one.”
“I'm shopping around,” replied Gloom with a smile. “It’s either this one or the cheese museum in Thistledown Street, and that place is full of mice.” Another fit of coughing took him and he had to reach for his handkerchief again.
“Terrible thing, the consumption,” said one of the cleaners, pushing a mop and bucket across the floor. “My cousin Jenny used to have it...”
“That will be enough, Doris!” warned the curator. The cleaner bent her head back to her work and carried on mopping.
“It's all right,” said Gloom, though. “She's right, it is a terrible thing, but plenty of people survive it and I have hopes of being one of them.”
“My cousin Jenny fought it off,” replied the cleaner, encouraged by his words. “Mind you, she had some help from Old Maggie, the local herb woman. She brews a concoction made from the mold that grows on Apples. Penicillin, she calls it. Everyone in our village swears by it!”
“She should be careful?” warned Gloom. “Most molds are poisonous and more likely to kill than cure.”
“She knows how to tell the difference. People come from miles around for her cures. Even Lord Roxburgh came once, on behalf of his wife the Lady Katherine who was struck down with the consumption while they were visiting family in Scotland.”
“Witchcraft!” growled the curator, crossing himself. “There’s nothing in the Bible about this magic mold of hers. Would God create a cure for the consumption and not tell anyone? If he didn't want people to be sick he wouldn’t have created the sickness in the first place!” He turned back to Gloom. “Prayer and a virtuous life are the proper way to regain your health, you mark my words.”
“They are marked,” Gloom assured him, but he fixed the cleaning lady's face in his memory along with her name, Doris, and promised himself that he would follow up on her story. Based on what he had seen of the world, he thought that creating a disease and then creating a cure for it without telling anyone was just the sort of thing God would do, and he would try Old Maggie's penicillin if he could persuade her to give him some.
Benson then pushed Gloom's wheelchair to the lift, where they descended to the basement, to the place where they had met Paul the first time. This time, though, there were half a dozen men to meet them, all wearing nondescript clothes such as any ordinary man in the streets might wear. They were all wearing masks except for Paul who came forward to greet them. “Welcome, friends!” He said, shaking their hands warmly. “Please forgive the masks, but many of our members are prominent men in society and they cannot take the risk of being recognised. The church hunts us relentlessly.”
“We understand completely,” Gloom assured them.
“Even after you have been accepted as full members, I'm afraid they will still have to conceal their identities from you, Matthew Benson. We model ourselves as a revolutionary organisation, divided into cells. The members of each cell only know the identities of the other members of their cell, except for the head of the cell. The head of the cell knows the heads of some other cells, but does not know the identities of the members of their cells. This limits the damage that can be done if one of us is captured and all that he knows becomes known to the church. Each of these gentlemen is the head of a cell. Together, we form a supercell, of which I am the head. There are other supercells and there is another level of organisation above that.”
“Philip Cranston was the head of one of these upper level cells,” guessed Gloom.
“Yes. If the Church had captured him, they would have learned the identities of the heads of five supercells. Those people would have had to go into hiding to avoid capture, and all the cells below them would have been cut off from the rest of our organisation effectively rendering them impotent. It would have been our biggest setback in twenty years.”
“How did they find out about him?”
“Yes, an important question, and one that we haven't been able to answer yet. I was thinking that that would be the first task we would set your new cell.”
“My cell? I thought we would be joining an established cell.”
“No. The two of you will form the nucleus of a new cell of which you, Sebastian Gloom, will be the head. You will be expected to recruit no more than three other members to complete your cell. Investigators like yourself, perhaps, since I expect investigation to be the main job of your cell.”
Gloom nodded. “You said that the heads of other cells would not know the identities of the members of my cell, but these gentlemen can all see my manservant standing here beside me.”
“He is an unavoidable exception to the rule. Because of your circumstances, anyone who knows of your membership will be able to guess that he is a member as well.”
“That puts him in more danger than the average member of this organisation.”
“It does. If you consider the danger to be too great you can still walk away and return to your normal lives.”
“I still want to join,” said Benson, though. “I am accustomed to danger.”
“This is danger of a different nature to that to which you are accustomed. In the army you faced only death, but if you join us and we fail to achieve our objective in your lifetime, your fate will be either centuries of isolation in a Solomon Bottle, or damnation.”
“I understand,” said the manservant. “I am still resolved on this issue.”
“You may change your mind when you learn more. That is the main purpose of this meeting. You need to know more about us, and we need to know more about you. Not about your histories or your professional activities. We have researched you rather thoroughly I'm afraid. No, we need to know more about you as people. We would like to have a conversation with you during which we will, hopefully, get a better idea of the kind of people you are, and you will get a better idea about the kind people we are, and what we are trying to do.”
“That is what I was expecting when we came here,” replied Gloom. “I would have been rather alarmed if you had accepted us so quickly.” In fact, Gloom doubted he’d learn more about the man than he’d learned at their first meeting. Then, Paul had been terrified almost out of his wits and had accidentally let slip a great many useful clues in his choice of words and body language. Now, in contrast, he was calm and self possessed, choosing every word carefully. Gloom was pretty sure he wouldn't learn anything about the man that he didn't want him to know. As he’d reflected many times in the past, you never really know a man until you see him scared.
“There is one thing I would like to know before we go any further,” said Benson, taking a step forward. “You spoke at our last meeting of a great enemy that this organisation was formed to fight. The greatest tyrant in all creation, you said. I would like to know who this person is, and why the Church supports him.”
Paul turned to Gloom, who shook, his head. “I think I know,” he said, “but I didn't reveal my guess to Benson. I wanted to protect him in case we are not accepted into your organisation. So long as he does not know, so long as he has not named him as his enemy, the church has to reason to pursue him. He still has a chance to live a normal life.”
“My master comes perilously close to insulting me by suggesting that I might want such a life while he fights evil without me.”
“That was not my intention, my friend.”
They both looked at Paul. Benson waiting for enlightenment, Gloom for confirmation that his guess was correct. Paul nodded, then paced up and down while he chose his words. “Perhaps I should start by telling how I first came to name him as my enemy,” he said. “My father was a doctor and I followed him into the medical profession. When I was fully qualified I joined the army to be a medic. I wanted to do my part to serve the Empire. I was posted to Texas where I served as an army medic with Labyorteaux's army. I saw action during the uprising of ‘92, and that was when I met Nacoma, a citizen of the Comanche Protectorate. We became great friends. He was one of the finest men i've ever had the privilege to meet.
“He was also a doctor. Trained in London as part of the cultural uplift program. We worked together for five years in Jaynestown during the worst part of the troubles, sewing people back together, fighting cholera and smallpox. I've never met anyone more dedicated, more compassionate. He spent every waking moment looking after other people, leaving almost no time for himself. He was an inspiration to everyone who met him.” He paused and shifted uncomfortably as powerful emotions surged within him. “He caught smallpox while treating a revolutionary and died a few days later.”
“The Cherokee are sun worshippers, I believe,” said Gloom.
“Their religion is complex and contains many elements. We talked about it many times. They tried to convert him to Christianity in London but he held firmly to the religion of his ancestors. Oh make no mistake, he believed in God and Jesus Christ. The evidence is too strong to be denied, but he saw no reason why he couldn’t believe in God and worship the sun at the same time.”
“Thou shalt have no other God but Me,” said Gloom. He could see where this was going.
“Exactly. The padre made one last attempt to convert him as he lay dying, but he refused to abandon the beliefs of his ancestors, and when he’d breathed his last the padre told me of his regret that such a fine man had chosen not to embrace salvation. I punched him in the face. God would not condemn him to the fires of Hell, I told him. Not a man like that. If any man deserved Paradise, it was him. Nevertheless, I found a clairvoyant and asked him to communicate with Nacoma, to find out where his soul had gone. The man told me that Nacoma was now in Hell.”
“I'm sorry,” said Gloom, knowing how pitifully inadequate his words must sound.
Paul nodded. His fists were clenched and it took an effort to control his voice as he continued. “For as man like that to be punished so harshly, to be punished eternally, for such a trivial reason, that was the day I first came to really hate God. That was the day I decided that something had to be done, that such an injustice had to be answered. People should not be judged according to their religion. They should be judged simply according to whether they're good or bad, by their actions, not their beliefs. That is what we're fighting for. That is the purpose of our movement.”
“Then your great enemy...” said Benson, staring in astonishment and disbelief.
Paul nodded. “Our enemy is none other than God Himself.”


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