Masters of the Maze by Avram Davidson

described, exposed, and refuted. Preached by Mr. Macdougal at the Scottish Free Presbyterian Chapel in Gold-beaters’ Lane. Printed by Jno Piggott at the Old Blackamore’s Head, Mitre Court, 1723
    The men (they were all men) on the list of visits came in a considerable variety of ages and shapes and types. As the year went on, though, Bellamy was able to observe certain features which they had in common. Had each been seen in a crowd, he might not have stood out; had all been met rapidly, nothing might have been noticed about any. Young Bellamy possessed perhaps not the keenest mind around, but with the powerful hint which consisted in their all being in some way connected with his older kinsman, he was not too long in noticing the signs. There was a certain chilliness about them, for one thing, a degree of tenseness, a kind of sublimated fatigue. They were inclined to be bookish, pale, and sedentary. And there was a … a something else, on which he was a long time settling.
    He thought he had it, at one point, toward the end of the first quarter of his year’s tour. Mr. Gottfried Schtoltz gave the impression of having made his money in beer or perhaps sausages — and of having conscientiously and frequently sampled his own goods in order to assure of their being wholesome. He was also given to grunting as a conversational aid. Schtoltz shook Joe’s hand, giving it a distinctive and peculiar pressure, and holding it a moment. Then he released it.
    “Mmpf. You haf no mother,” he said.
    “Why … yes … I do. Mother is very much alive. Why — ?”
    “I mean, you haf not travelt.”
    “On the contrary, I’ve traveled considerably.”
    Schtoltz ceased to speak in mysteries. “I mean,” he said, slowly and distinctly, “you are nodt, mmph, a vreemazon.”
    “Oh. No.”
    “Your ungle iss a vreemazon.”
    To this Joe had nothing to say, except that he believed that this was so. His host made one or two remarks which seemed equal
non sequiturs,
then began to discourse on the duty which man as an individual owed to man as a race — remarks rather similar to those made by the few other men already visited. Then he turned the conversation to music and the phonograph. Was Mr. Joseph Bellamy fond of both? Mr. Joseph Bellamy had not given the matter much thought? He would do well, then (mmpf), to give it much thought — and to build up a collection of phonograph records of good music … one could grow tired of books, said Gottfried Schtoltz.
    The subject (not phonography) came up again. And it came up again. Finally, more than a bit bemused by this whole enforced caravan, and determined to seize hold of the one bit of tangible evidence — something which could be measured and scrutinized — he paused to purchase a number of books, most of them embossed on the cover with the design of a compass and a square. He read them as his train sped across the plains, alternately impressed … amused … and, once again, confused. The aims of fraternity, philanthropy, benevolence, seemed certainly unobjectionable. The oaths, or, as they seemed to be called,
obligations,
with their frightful penalties of physical mutilation, appeared more in keeping with a gang of boys playing cowboys and Indians than with an organization supposedly dating back to Hiram, the Master Craftsman of Tyre (according to one view); or to the cult of the dying god (according to another).
    “You are not a freemason, I take it,” said Major Jack Gans, by and by, when the year was half over.
    “I have begun to think about becoming one. People have asked me if I were one, but no one has actually asked me to become one.”
    “The craft does not solicit. It is solicited.”
    And so Joseph Bellamy solicited. And was sent, with a letter, to a man not on his uncle’s list. A man not at all like those who were — thus destroying Joe’s theory that perhaps another thing they had in common was an awareness of belonging to the same society — a warm, hearty,