3

Suydam became a 'case' when his distant and only relatives sought

court pronouncements on his sanity. Their action seemed sudden to

the outside world, but was really undertaken only after prolonged

observation and sorrowful debate. It was based on certain odd changes

in his speech and habits; wild references to impending wonders, and

unaccountable hauntings of disreputable Brooklyn neighbourhoods.

He had been growing shabbier and shabbier with the years, and now

prowled about like a veritable mendicant; seen occasionally by humili￾ated friends in subway stations, or loitering on the benches around

Borough Hall in conversation with groups of swarthy, evil-looking

strangers. When he spoke it was to babble of unlimited powers almost

within his grasp, and to repeat with knowing leers such mystical

words or names as 'Sephiroth', 'Ashmodai' and 'Samael'.* The court

action revealed that he was using up his income and wasting his prin￾cipal in the purchase of curious tomes imported from London and

Paris, and in the maintenance of a squalid basement flat in the Red

Hook district where he spent nearly every night, receiving odd dele￾gations of mixed rowdies and foreigners, and apparently conducting

some kind of ceremonial service behind the green blinds of secretive

windows. Detectives assigned to follow him reported strange cries

and chants and prancing of feet filtering out from these nocturnal

rites, and shuddered at their peculiar ecstasy and abandon despite the

commonness of weird orgies in that sodden section. When, however,

the matter came to a hearing, Suydam managed to preserve his lib￾erty. Before the judge his manner grew urbane and reasonable, and

he freely admitted the queerness of demeanour and extravagant cast

of language into which he had fallen through excessive devotion to

study and research. He was, he said, engaged in the investigation of

certain details of European tradition which required the closest con￾tact with foreign groups and their songs and folk dances. The notion

that any low secret society was preying upon him, as hinted by his

relatives, was obviously absurd; and showed how sadly limited was

their understanding of him and his work. Triumphing with his calm

explanations, he was suffered to depart unhindered; and the paid

detectives ofthe Suydams, eorlears, and Van Brunts were withdrawn

in resigned disgust.

It was here that an alliance of Federal inspectors and police,

Malone with them, entered the case. The law had watched the

Suydam action with interest, and had in many instances been called

upon to aid the private detectives. In this work it developed that

Suydam's new associates were among the blackest and most vicious

criminals of Red Hook's devious lanes, and that at least a third of

them were known and repeated offenders in the matter of thievery,

disorder, and the importation of illegal immigrants. Indeed, it would

not have been too much to say that the old scholar's particular circle coincided almost perfectly with the worst of the organised cliques

which smuggled ashore certain nameless and unclassified Asian

dregs wisely turned back by Ellis Island.* In the teeming rookeries

of Parker Place-since renamed-where Suydam had his base￾ment flat, there had grown up a very unusual colony of unclassified

slant-eyed folk who used the Arabic alphabet but were eloquently

repudiated by the great mass of Syrians in and around Atlantic

A venue. They could all have been deported for lack of credentials,

but legalism is slow-moving, and one does not disturb Red Hook

unless publicity forces one to.

These creatures attended a tumble-down stone church, used

Wednesdays as a dance-hall, which reared its Gothic buttresses near

the vilest part of the waterfront. It was nominally Catholic; but priests

throughout Brooklyn denied the place all standing and authenticity,

and policemen agreed with them when they listened to the noises it

emitted at night. Malone used to fancy he heard terrible cracked bass

notes from a hidden organ far underground when the church stood

empty and unlighted, whilst all observers dreaded the shrieking and

drumming which accompanied the visible services. Suydam, when

questioned, said he thought the ritual was some remnant of Nestor ian

Christianity tinctured with the Shamanism of Thibet. * Most of the

people, he conjectured, were of Mongoloid stock, originating some￾where in or near Kurdistan-and Malone could not help recalling

that Kurdistan is the land of the Yezidis, last survivors of the Persian

devil-worshippers. * However this may have been, the stir of the

Suydam investigation made it certain that these unauthorised new￾comers were flooding Red Hook in increasing numbers; entering

through some marine conspiracy unreached by revenue officers a!,d

harbour police, overrunning Parker Place and rapidly spreading up

the hill, and welcomed with curious fraternalism by the other assorted

denizens of the region. Their squat figures and characteristic squint￾ing physiognomies, grotesquely combined with flashy American

clothing, appeared more and more numerously among the loafer and

nomad gangsters of the Borough Hall section; till at length it was

deemed necessary to compute their numbers, ascertain their sources

and occupations, and find if possible a way to round them up and

deliver them to the proper immigration authorities. To this task

Malone was signed by agreement of Federal and city forces, and as he

commenced his canvass of Red Hook he felt poised upon the brink of nameless terrors, with the shabby, unkempt figure of Robert Suydam

as arch-fiend and adversary.

Police methods are varied and ingenious. Malone, through unostenta￾tious rambles, carefully casual conversations, well-timed offers of

hip-pocket liquor, and judicious dialogues with frightened prisoners,

learned many isolated facts about the movement whose aspect had

become so menacing. The newcomers were indeed Kurds, but of a

dialect obscure and puzzling to exact philology.

.....

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