“Did he? Well, there’s something else that went on between your aunt and me that I’ll bet he didn’t know. Your Aunt Hannah contributed most of the money for the building of our shrine. Forty thousand dollars she gave me, and that was thirty years ago when forty thousand was a lot more money than it is now. That’s how I became acquainted with her and why at the end I wanted her to be buried in a Christian place.”

“Why did she give you all that money? She wasn’t a Catholic.”

“No, and never wanted to be, as far as I know, and I never tried to push her into it. But she did believe in Christ and His Mother, and she wanted to make atonement for some of the evil committed by a member of her family.”

“Who?”

“Her father, General Duffin Caine. He was a Satanist too.”

That shocked me into silence for a moment, but then I said, “Father, do you think that means anything? Even if what you say is true, does being a Satanist mean any more than belonging to some local lodge or college fraternity?”

Father Fogarty didn’t answer immediately but sat puffing his cigar. The room was so filled with smoke now that I found it difficult to breathe. Then he rose and shuffled to the door.

“Mrs. Guenther,” he yelled. “Oh, Mrs. Guenther!”

The housekeeper answered him from somewhere in the back of the house.

“There’s a book in the upstairs library, Ashland County in the Civil War. Fetch it for me. It’s a big book with a red cloth cover. And ask Father Jackson to step down here.”

He shuffled back to his seat. “Father Jackson would tell you ‘no’ if you asked him. No, except for the deplorable attitude of mind of the member, it doesn’t mean any more than belonging to the Masons or the Elks, or, for that matter, the Knights of Columbus.”

“But you think otherwise?”

“Yes, I think otherwise.”

There was a lapse in the conversation then while I coughed and he puffed, ignoring my coughing. Then Mrs. Guenther came in, carrying a large book. She handed it to Father Fogarty and he blew the dust off it and began leafing its pages. Mrs. Guenther opened a window.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s for him,” she said, jerking a thumb at her employer. “The doctor has warned him about smoking in a closed room.”

She went out. Father Fogarty continued to browse through the book. Then he found what he evidently wanted, a full page reproduction of a photograph. He studied it for a moment, then turned the book around for me to see.