Captain Catspaugh turned back to the assembled throng. "Goddamn it all to hell. Chief Mate, go and get that hambone actor up here again. We have to wade through his clotted verbiage one last time. I can't read this damn thing past the first clause."

The Mate looked disgusted, but went out. While he was gone, the buzz of discussion rose, peaked, and then fell once more. In the distance, the Maid of Ohio also seemed surprisingly calm.
De Mornay was thrown, somewhat theatrically, but with not outstanding elan, into the room.

"All right, Cassius. The time has come to talk, and talk fast. We are up to the gunwales in medallions, and the pumps are failing. I have this parchment which says something so wierd even I can't bring myself to say it. If you could restrict yourself to words of 3 syllables or less, and cut back on the hypotactic sentence structure, we would appreciate it."

De Mornay looked dubious, said nothing, but shook his chains like Marley's ghost.

"Oh, all right, let him go." The Mate unlocked the chains, and de Mornay rose. "Well, before I speak, I need to know if this space is secure. I believe that all those now in the room are either holders of medallions, or have come across them in their time, and, more importantly, that you are all forces for good. Mate, would you check all corners and windows before I proceed."

The Mate did so, grumbling all the while. He nodded his head when he was done.

"The ladies," continued de Mornay, "might wish to be seated, as this will take a few moments in the telling. " Miss Fontaine and Miss Montesquieu seated themselves. Mary Green stayed vertical. The lady with the kestrel hovered.

"Well, then. The night President Lincoln, Captain, my Captain, was shot by John Wilkes Booth, I was a young understudy for the performance, and this Captain, now Captain Catspaugh, was also young and agile. On that terrible night, while the attention of the multitude was captured by the antics of Booth, Captain Catspaugh and I happened to be at an adjoining exit, where we brought down, for a brief moment, a figure whom I believe to have been the true assassin. In the struggle, before this shadowy figure was assisted by other shadowy figures, I pulled off his neck this medallion -- " de Mornay flourished the bloodstained medallion from his pocket. "Then he and his cohorts fled as the shades of night."

There was a movement forward -- de Mornay gestured them back.

"I had seen such a medallion before, once, twice. You will all recall that stirring struggle for Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, so storied in legend. As a friend and fellow rhetorician of Joshua Chamberlain's, I was upon that hill that day with the valiant sons of Maine; as the equally valiant sons of the Confederacy poured up, ultimately in vain, against us. At one point late in the hideous fight, as we were becoming fatally low on ammunition, and hand to hand combat was breaking out, I stood up at the wrong moment and found myself face-to-face with a Confederate soldier of gentlemanly demeanour, who was aiming his rifle point blank at my chest. I had but the briefest of seconds to compose myself for what I would say to William Shakespeare in Heaven, when to my shock and honest horror, I saw that soldier, as he prepared to fire, himself stabbed in the back by one of his own comrades in arms!!! I rushed forward, thoughtlessly, and caught the dying soldier in my arms. His traitorous colleague in the meantime had rushed away, not before having revealed, by a glint around his neck from the late afternoon sun, that he was wearing an ornate medallion. Imagine my surprise when I found a like medallion about the neck of his victim!!! When the conflict had died down somewhat towards evening, and the fate of the Confederacy had perhaps already been sealed, I discovered that the murdered man was a Matthew Fontaine, grandfather to Miss Fontaine here, though I only discovered this much later.

It was this event, later linked to the Lincoln assassination and other strange and unnerving episodes in our nation's history that led me to the piecing together of a strange, but I believe convincing hypothesis."

"This was finally confirmed for me in the swirling events of the last few days, but had been foreshadowed by a desperate conversation with Judge Fontaine, father of Miss Fontaine some months ago; and a wild series of seemingly unconnected forays into the Wilder West, including a trading post run near the Rockies, from which the Trapper (who has disappeared for the moment) escaped, and later recovered in the bank to which Slick Philly had entrusted what he believed to be the Fontaine medallion, and which so unfortunately was spilled out in the open for all to see here such a short time ago, and precipitated the deadly danger into which we are all plunged."

"Get on with it, Cassius, we will be in New Orleans by the time you are finished," expostulated Captain Catspaugh.

"Throughout recent years, I have become convinced that there is, and has been for many years, a deep conspiracy of evil responsible for the darkest of the dark turning points in our nation's -- and dare I say, the world's -- history. The loss of Lincoln is but one of these events. Whenever the forces of good have been poised to bring about a better world, a richer community, a peace of the just, this cabal of destroyers has wrought havoc -- a lost letter here, an assassination there, a false rumour in this ear, a catastrophe in that place, and so on. They call themselves The League of the Red Heron. Their symbol, etched on their ornate medallions, which each member receives upon entry into this select band of darkness, is the Heron."

"But --" interjected Miss Montesquieu.

"But, Miss Montesquieu was about to say, that is not what appears on these medallions. No, she is right. If you look at your medallions -- all except the one that I hold in my hand, the medallion worn by Matthew Fontaine who was the only figure of good so far to have falsely entered into the League of the Heron -- they all contain a different symbol." He paused.

"And it is here that my story enters the realm of the fantastical, but I believe it is the only explanation that fits the facts."

"As the parchment says, and I precis, the League of the Red Heron has been in existence for many centuries, at least since the days of the Crusades. But what it also says is the opposite: that while it has appeared throughout history, it is really not historical at all. Or rather it does have some historical location, which -- and here I crave your indulgence -- may be in the past, or, perhaps, and this I believe to be more likely-- in the future. That is to say, it has found a method of projecting its hideousness through time to different periods to promote maximal disruption."

"To combat this vast transhistorical conspiracy, it appears -- though I cannot be completely clear about how the parchment speaks of this -- that another group of time projectionists, or perhaps travellers, the forces of good, have also set forth. They seem to be able to take upon themselves different personal identities according to some mysterious process, perhaps akin to Mr. Morse's telegraphy in some altered form, and enter into our historical period. If you examine your medallions you will see etched upon them a lowly whiskered fish, sometimes referred to as a Mudcat. I believe that these medallions belong to the League of the Mudcat, fighters for truth and goodness through the ages. They are arrayed against the Red Heron, in mortal combat for the wellbeing of human history. I further contend that they have some mysterious relationship, perhaps ectoplasmic, to the holders of these medallions here and now. It seems to require, as I said, some kind of perhaps gas-powered crystal ball linking them all together telepathically, and allows them to project themselves. Miss Montesquieu, for example, I believe to be incorporating in some ectoplasmic fashion, an early 21st century teenager; Mr. Philadelphia, a fan of something called the Electric Light Orchestra in the same period; Miss Fontaine's future puppetmaster or mistress is not something I can discern at this moment; and so on for all of us. I believe that we are being manipulated in some occult fashion by forces from the distant future, for the greater good, and to struggle against the darkness of the League of the Red Heron. My only proof is the medallions we all hold: the parchment; and the mysterious forces that seem to be at work in this dire situation. Yet I beleive that it must be so!!!!!!!!!"

De Mornay stopped, having reached the end of his narrative. There was silence for a brief moment.

Then everyone but de Mornay started laughing, and laughing, hysterically, leaning on each other for relief!! "That is the Goddammed looniest thing I ever heard!!!!!" said Captain Catspaugh, and his comment was seconded by all those convulsed in tears about the blushing de Mornay, for once at a loss for words!!!!!!