Michael stared at the white-bearded man standing before him.  He couldn't believe what he had just heard the man say.

"Dad!" younger Michael stage-whispered into his father's ear.  "Wasn't 'Kern Driveling' an anagrammatic joke back in chapter 8?"

"Uh, yes, it was," his father stage-whispered back, unable to tear his eyes from the man.

"Honey?" Michael's wife called from the bathroom door down the hall.  "Do we have company?  Who's here?"

"It's, um... it's a man and a woman," he answered.  "The man's name is... um... Kern Driveling."

"'Kern Driveling'?" she stage-whispered.  "Wasn't that an anagrammatic joke back in chapter 8?"

"Yeah," he stage-whispered back, "at least, I thought it was."  Michael motioned to his son Graham.  "Graham, go get Mommy her bathrobe."  He still couldn't look away from the stranger.

"Okay," Graham said, running into the bedroom to retrieve a bathrobe for his mother.  By this time Jeff had left his room and walked into the front room.

"Dad," he asked, "who's here?

"This is, um..." Michael stammered, "this is... Kern Driveling."

"'Kern Driveling'?" Jeff stage-whispered.  "Wasn't that..."

"Yes!" Michael said out loud, no longer bothering to pretend not to be heard by the two strangers.  At that moment the timer on the oven began beeping, indicating that the pizzas were ready.  "Jeff," he said to his oldest son, "get the pizzas out of the oven and then... you and the other kids... take them outside to eat on the deck."

"Okay," Jeff said, walking into the kitchen and opening the oven door.

"Aww," Emily said, "do we have to eat outside?"

"Yes," Michael replied firmly, "you have to.  Mommy and I need to talk with... Mr. Driveling."

The five kids made their way through the kitchen to the back door, Jeff following behind with the pizzas and some paper plates.  They opened the door and filed out onto the deck, shutting the door behind them, then immediately ran around to the back windows so that they could look in and see what was happening.  Michael, oblivious to his kids' spying, turned back to face the man and the woman.  Bev entered the front room, her bathrobe pulled tight around her.

"Hello," she said, greeting the strangers.  "I'm Bev.  My I offer you some coffee?"

"That would be very nice, thank you," the man replied.  "Yes, please," the woman added.  Bev walked into the kitchen, where the coffee machine had just finished brewing a pot full.

"So, um," Michael said uncomfortably, "you're... Kern Driveling."

"The Reverend Kern Driveling, to be precise," the man answered, an air of self-satisfaction in his voice.  "And this lovely young woman at my side," he added, bringing a shy smile to the woman's face, "is my personal assistant, Ms. Darwish."

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Brooks," she said pleasantly, extending her hand.

"Um, yes," Michael said, taking her hand and shaking it gently in greeting.  "Pleased to meet you, too..."

"And, your and your family's stage whispers notwithstanding," the man continued, that odd smile still on his face, "I am far more than an anagrammatic joke from chapter 8, as you may have already surmised."

"Um... yes," Michael replied, his face turning red.  For once he didn't have any idea of what was going on.

"So..." Michael finally said after an awkward pause, "you say that... Ryan Waldron... sent you."

"Yes, Mr. Waldron did," he affirmed.  "The Grand Master of the People of the Southwind himself."  He leaned closer to Michael, looking him directly in the eye.  "And I suppose you and your wife are curious as to why?"

Michael looked at Bev, who had just walked into the front room carrying four cups of coffee on a tray.  She flashed him an uncomfortable look at Driveling's words.  "Y-yes," Michael said, "we had... wondered... about that."

Driveling chuckled.  "Mr. Waldron sent me," he said, pausing dramatically, "...to test you."

"To test me?" Michael replied, arching an eyebrow.  "To test me for what?"

"To see if you were worthy," Driveling answered, sitting down on the sofa.  The woman sat down next to him.  Michael sat down in a rocking chair on the right side of the couch as Bev offered the two strangers their cups of coffee, which they accepted.  "Worthy of the secret," Driveling continued, taking a sip.  "The secret of the Holy Grail."

Bev sat down in the rocking chair next to Michael, her eyes bouncing back and forth between the two strangers and her husband.  Everything he had told her over the past couple of days about the People of the Southwind and the cryptex and the Grail came rushing back at her.  She wasn't sure if she was happy to hear what Michael had been telling her and the kids actually confirmed by a third party.... and a stranger at that.

"Oh, I told him to choose someone else," Driveling continued.  "I had seen your postings to the PotSW mailing list over the years, and while they had promise, I still felt that you weren't quite ready.  But when Mr. Waldron pointed out to me that you yourself had named and described the various factions of the People of the Southwind back in 1999 and that you were the sole author of the Wheatheads' Creed, well," he said, shifting back on the couch, "once he told me that, I knew you were our best prospect to reveal the secret of the Grail to the world."

Bev stared at Michael.  He could feel her eyes boring into the side of his head.  "Honey," she whispered angrily, "when you were telling us earlier about the factions and the Walshian Body Worshippers and the Wheatheads' Creed, you didn't say that they had all originated with you!"

"I'll explain later," he whispered back.  If I can come up with an explanation, he thought to himself.

"So," Driveling went on, acting as if he hadn't noticed their whispered exchange, "once we had chosen you as our best prospect, I proceeded to devise a series of more specific tests... just to be sure, you understand."

Michael nodded his head.  He didn't understand.

"Oh, I had to pull quite a few strings to bring Kansas to Culpeper, didn't I, Ms. Darwish?" Driveling said, glancing toward his companion.

"Oh, yes," she replied, turning toward Michael and Bev.  "It was touch and go with arranging their tour schedule.  It almost didn't work out."

"And you were quite the sneak, Ms. Darwish, leaving that black-light message on the stage without being seen," Driveling added.  The woman laughed.

"Wait a minute," Bev said, staring at the woman.  "You... left that message?"

"Yes, she did," her companion interjected.  "She had to write it in just the right place under the scaffolding.  I'll tell you, Ms. Darwish," he said, placing his hand on her knee, "I thought I just might fall off that scaffolding the other night waiting for just the right moment to drop the dummy you had dressed up down to the stage."

"Hold on, now," Michael said.  "Are you saying that the members of Kansas knew you were there?  And that they cooperated with you in that stunt with the dummy?"

"We convinced them that it would be a nice nostalgic touch, considering that they had pulled the same kind of stunt back in 1979 when they played the song 'How My Soul Cries Out for You' during their Monolith tour," he said.

"So are you saying that the members of Kansas know about these... tests?" Michael asked.

"Oh, no," Driveling answered.  "They know nothing of our mission.  As far as they're concerned, it was just a humorous gag during the show, nothing more."  He looked at Michael.  "And then you, Mr. Brooks, you were quite resourceful in decoding 'Pop is a climbed rogue' as 'Guiseppe Arcimboldo,' whose painting Water was the cover of the album Masque.  But when you made the inferential leap to seeking out an original copy of the album at the same record store in Richmond where you had bought your own copy of the album some two decades ago, well," he continued, "that was sheer genius.  After that, your decoding of the message on its cover and unlocking the leather box to unveil the cryptex were quite anticlimactic in comparison."

"You... you know about that?" Bev asked, alarmed.  "Did you... you didn't... bug our room in Thompson Hall?"  She immediately thought of the private time she had spent with her husband the night before in that room.

"After you left for the record store earlier today," Driveling said, "I had Ms. Darwish surreptitiously slip in and wire your room for sound."  Bev breathed a sigh of relief... then realized that she didn't really feel all that relieved.

"You know," Driveling chuckled, leaning toward Michael and Bev, "even though you were the only visitors staying in Thompson Hall today, you really should have locked the doors to your rooms.  You don't want just anyone coming in."  At that moment Bev and Michael realized that Driveling must have followed them all the way back from Richmond, and quite possibly had been following them in Richmond.

"I'm so sorry to have had to sneak into your room," the woman said, a look of genuine concern on her face.  "I didn't want to, but Kern said there was no other way.  I promise you I didn't take anything or go through your things."  Michael thought back to what he remembered of the room after his family had returned from the record store and to when they had packed up to come home.  He hadn't noticed anything missing or out of place.

"Well..." Bev said uncomfortably, now certain that she didn't like this man, "you took quite a risk with your 'tests,' Mr. Driveling.  Our son Jeff only just happened to notice that the dummy was still on the stage after the show.  If we had missed that, we wouldn't have found the album or the leather box or the cryptex and you wouldn't be here right now."  I wish you weren't here right now, she thought.

"That was part of the test," Driveling said.  "We had to confirm that you and your family were sufficiently inquisitive to follow up on clues that others might have completely overlooked.  How else would you have come up with the notion that 'Find Kerry Livgren' itself was an anagram for 'Kern Fry Driveling'?"

How does he know about that? Michael wondered, his ears getting warm.  Did he somehow slip spyware or a key logging program onto my computer?  "That's your full name?" Michael asked, clearing his throat to try to disguise his discomfort.  "I had thought it meant 'Fry Kern Driveling.'"

The man and his companion laughed roundly.  "Mr. Brooks," the man said after a moment, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes, "you make it sound as if I should be tossed into a skillet and fried up like a pound of bacon.  But if your only mistake was to put the anagram in the wrong word order, I can't complain too much about that."  He put back on his glasses, still chuckling.

"So," Bev said, intrigued, "the line 'Find Kerry Livgren' in that first message actually referred to... you?"

"To Mr. Livgren and myself, actually, my dear," he replied, looking Bev in the eye.  "That's the beauty of anagrams... 'All of life's wisdom can be found in anagrams.  Anagrams never lie,' as someone once said."

Michael looked at the man intently.  "So are you saying that you and Kerry Livgren... know one another?"

"Oh, no," the man said, shifting back in the couch again, "he and I have never met.  But we are two sides of the same coin, he and I.  We pursue the same goal, the same... holy quest... the same... divine mystery... a mystery to which you, Mr. Brooks, have now been chosen to become privy.  A mystery," he said, his eyes gleaming, "concealed within... the cryptex."

Bev and Michael looked at each other, then back at the man and the woman.  "May I see it, please?  The cryptex?" Driveling asked.

"Um... uh, sure," Michael said, rising from the rocking chair and heading back into the bedroom.  He walked over to the bed where he had placed the suitcase earlier, unzipped it and retrieved the leather box.  He wondered if it was a good idea to let the man see it.  Then again, maybe now we'll get some answers, he thought as he carried it back into the front room and sat back down in his chair.  The dials on the front of the box were still set to P-O-T-S-W, so Michael simply pressed the button as he had earlier when he first opened the box.  Once again the lid popped open.  Michael lifted it fully, then removed the velvet cloth from around the cryptex within.  He removed it from the box and gently handed it to the man on the sofa.

"Ah, the cryptex," Driveling said lovingly, adjusting his glasses as he examined the object in his hand.  "The key to all our hopes and dreams... the Holy Grail itself."  He absently spun a couple of the dials around its circumference.  They spun as easily as they had earlier when Michael had tried to open it.  Michael wondered just whose hopes and dreams Driveling was talking about.  Driveling continued looking over the cryptex for several seconds, turning it about in his hands, examining it from every angle.

"I take it that... you know the key to opening it," Michael said finally, hopefully.

"Oh, no, Mr. Brooks," Driveling replied.  "I don't.  In fact, not even Ryan Waldron himself knows the key."

"He doesn't?" Bev said, exasperated.  "Then how are we supposed to open it?"

Driveling leaned in toward Michael and stared at him intently.  "That's why Waldron sent me to you.  The key to opening the cryptex," he said cryptically, "is within you."  Michael started, taken aback at the unexpected reply.  "At your time of greatest need, when all seems hopeless and lost, the key will come to you.  You, Mr. Brooks," he continued, leaning in closer still, "are the key."