Samuel Macgregor Mathers was tall and parched and claimed to have been in touch with the Great White Brotherhood for years. “The High Laity,” he said, “reached out to me through Europe. Through Blavatsky herself, the Lying Woman, they spoke to me, and gave into my keeping the secret ways of the world. Who are you, you Plymouth brewer’s son, you puffed-up Alexander, to say otherwise?”

The Beast 666 was fat and saturnine and looked what he was, a middle-class eccentric. He wore a brilliant, loose silk tie at his neck, in more than oriental splendor. His eyes snapped and popped and gave little away. “I am nothing,” he murmured, not quite meeting Mathers’s eyes, “certainly, but a mage and what are you against this?” He made a little spitting noise with his mouth. “You have seen the shape of the chasm but you remain on one side. You have seen the lightning and heard the thunder but what is that?”

Mathers struck him with his rod of office and cursed him. “Go! And may demons attend your days!”

“Oh, as to that,” said the Beast 666, “I am quite sure they will.”