THE SAPPHIRE SIREN by Nictzin Dyalhis...................................... 3
Copyright, 1934, by the Popular Fiction Publishing Company, for "Weird
Tales Magazine".
JACK-IN-THE-BOX by Ray Bradbury.................................................
28
Copyright, 1947, by Ray Bradbury, for Dark Carnival. By permission of Arkham
Hou.sc.
THE NOTICEABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR
CHADD by G. K. Chesterton..........................................................
42
From "The Club of Queer Trades" by Gilbert K. Chesterton. Copyright, 1905, by Harper
& Brothers. Copyright, 1933, by Gilbert Keith
Chesterton.
THE PINK CATERPILLAR by Anthony Boucher...........................
56
Copyright, 1945, by Popular Publications, Inc., and by Anthony Boucher. Reprinted by permission
of Willis Kingsley Wing.
THE PHANTOM DICTATOR by Wallace West...............................
65
Copyright,
1935, by Street &. Smith Publications, Inc. By permission
of the author.
THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY by
H. P.
Loi'ecraft and E. Hoffmann Price
76
Copyright, 1934, by Popular
Fiction Publishing Company; copyright 1939 and 1947, by August Derleth and
Donald Wamlrci. By permission of Arkham Mouse.
THE BOOKSHOP by
Nelson Bond....................................................... 104
Copyright, 1946, by Nelson Bond. Reprinted by permission of
the author.
ONE-MAN GOD by
Frank, Owen........................................................... Ill
Copyright, 1951, by Avon Novels, Inc.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SARGASSO by William Hope
Hodgson 119
From "Men of the Deep
Waters" by William Hope Hodgson. Copyright, 1913, by
William Hope Hodgson. Reprinted by permission of
Lissie S. Hodgson.
avon fantasy reader no. 17 copyright, 1951, by avon novels, inc printed in u. s. A.
THE SAPPHIRE SIREN by
Nictzin Dyalhis
A surprisingly large
section of the populare believes in the existence of another world,
invisibly about us, having its
own rides and laws, populated with
individuals and beings of varying
degrees oj
monstrosity. I refer to the occultists, those who
conjure tip ghosts and talk
learnedly of elementáis. So it should
require no stretch of
the imagination
io conceive of
a world
invisible to us, but
all about
us, in
which men and women live
and in which live also those
other "things" occultists
speak of. Nictzin Dyalhis has written
an exciting
and fantastic
adventure story of a
man who
lived a dual life, one
in this
world and one in "that" one. Those who know
this author
only through
his classic interplanetary novelette,
When the Green Star Waned, will find
him equally
exciting in this different ultramundane
sphere.
SUICIDE as a means of escaping trouble never
appealed to me. 1 had studied the occult, and knew what
consequences that course involved, afterward.
But I was fed up on life. I was destitute,
and had no friends who might help, even were I to appeal to them. At
forty-eight, one does not easily regain solvency. And, gradually, I'd lost all
ambition. Not even hope remained.
It only there were some other road out—a
door, for example, into the hypothetical region of four dimensions ... it certainly couldn't be worse there
than what I'd borne in the last three years. Well, I could try. . . .
I
seated myself cross-legged on the floor. If I concentrated hard enough, perhaps
the miracle might occur ... at least
I should have tried ... a last resort. . . . Gradually a vague
state ensued wherein I was not unconscious, for I still knew that I was ; yet a queer detachment was mine— there was a world,
but of it I was no longer a part. . . .
Click!
Like a movable panel a section of the wall
opened, revealing a most peculiar corridor—a strange Being
stood smiling at me. It did not speak, yet I caught (he challenge: "Dare
you?"
With a single movement
I rose
and stepped
into the
opening. . . .
Oh, the agonizing,
excruciating torment of that transition!
Every nerve, tissue and fiber flamed
and froze
simultaneously. My brain
seethed like a superheated cauldron. My
blood turned to corrosive, searing
acid. Tears suffused my aching eyes.
I choked,
unable to utter the groans
my sufferings
constrained me to emit.
. .
.
Had 1 landed in Hell?
It certainly
seemed so! . . .
Then abruptly
it was
all over. I was
still , yet
vastly different. I was free—and
with senses
above the dull senses of Earth,
with power
beyond Earth's muscular strength. I
realized that I was
in a
different realm where the Laws
were strange
to me,
and that I must
be careful
lest I
be caught
in some
trap from
whence escape might not be so
easily achieved. But where, I
wondered, was the Being who
had dared me? .
. .
"Here!"
"But—you seem not
the same
. .
. there
was a
vague, misty, red haze— now you
are distinct.
. .
."
"Many high-speed
light-waves formed a veil through
which earthly eyes can not see
clearly."
"Hence—the agony during
transition?"
"Precisely! The
vibrations altered your atomic structure.
But you
are still
your true self."
"Perhaps," I assented. "But
who are
you, and
why did
you make
it possible
for me
to come?"
"I am Zarf; and your, subjects
need you,
to say
naught of------ "
We were interrupted
by a
most discordant
howling, and abruptly some two dozen
hideous dwarfs surrounded us. They
bore long
straight swords, were clad in iridescent
scale armor, stood about five
feet in
height, and had the ugliest faces
I ever
saw.
"King Karan
of Octolan—and
the commander
of his
bodyguard, Zarf!" Their voices were shrill with maniacal
glee. Evidently they considered our
capture a big event.
I did not
like their
looks. I did not approve
of their
air of
insolent triumph. Back on
Earth I had lost all
material ambitions, but suddenly I
regained one, and proceeded
to realize
it.
With all my
new strength,
I drove
my clenched
right fist into the face
of a particularly
burly dwarf standing about two
feet away.
His head
snapped back, he went limp; I
snatched his sword from him
and set
to work.
Once and again I struck, caught
the true
balance of the weapon and
saw a
head leave its body—shouted:
"A sword for
you, Zarf!"
Before the blade
touched ground he caught it,
then set his
back against
mine. ... A wild
delight filled me, yet through
it I
felt a
vague wonder— where had
learned
swordsmanship? For never on Earth
had I
held one
in my hand!
Those dwarfs
fought like fiends from Hell.
More than
once I
felt the stinging kiss of dwarf steel. Once I heard
Zarf gasp as a sword bit deep, and once he groaned in agony. It was a wild
melee while it lasted; and never did I enjoy myself more. . . . Through a red haze of slaughter I saw that only two dwarfmen remained facing my blade.
Lunge—slash—parry—slash and lunge again—but one left—I gathered myself—dimly
saw another blade than mine pass through that last dwarf—heard Zarf as from a far distance crying exultantly:
"Lord
King, you fight even better than in the other days! It is well—for you will
have many a fight ere you sit once more on the Chrysolite Throne of your race."
Then I slid to a limp heap on the ground,
exhausted from loss of blood —I could not speak—heard Zarf cursing furiously,
virulently; then all consciousness flickered out. . . .
I regained my senses slowly. I lay on a
pallet, a hand's breadth off a hard-packed earthen floor.
A feeble lamp barely showed walls of stone chinked with moss and mud. Obviously a hut—but where? Then I saw Zarf. He sat on a low
stool, chin on fist, elbow on knee, head bandaged, and his left arm in a sling. Looking at myself, I saw I was swathed worse than he in bandages.
"Zarf," I said
weakly. "We look as if we'd been in a fight!"
"We
have been," he nodded at cost of a twinge of pain. "But none of those
Vulmins will ever take part in another—while we were just getting a little practise!"
"Zarf,"
I demanded, insistent. "Who are you, and why did you call me Master?
Surely there is some mistake. You know that I am but an Earth-man upon whom you took pity and opened for him a
door into this realm of Space. . . ."
Somberly he stared at me;
then:
"King
Karan, what pity was in the hearts of those Vulmin dwarf-devils when they
strove to cut us into gobbets for their cook-pots? Yet they knew you and named
you 'Karan of Octolan, Zarf's royal
Master'. Is it possible you have no memory of the past—no knowledge of who and
what you are? Do you not remember the rebel sorcerer, Djl Grm, who blasted your
body and drove your self through a bent corridor down to the Earth, where you
acquired a new body as an Earthbabe? Have you no recollection of your Imperial
Consort? Shall that regal lady—so loved by all in your far-flung realm that she was deemed a goddess—be unavenged?
"What
disposal that accursed sorcerer made of her, none knows. It is known that he sought to seduce her, and when
she withstood him in that, she vanished! Yet sure I am he did not force her to
the Earth, for then you twain might have found each other, and so defeated his
major purpose. Nay, King Karan, she is here! In
the nights her spirit whispers to mine:
" 'Zarf, 1 am still your Queen. Find my lord, wheresoever he be . . .
watch over
him .
. .
whenever possible, open for him
a door.
He will
find me—free me—out of his love.
. .
.'
"King Katan, must
that regal
lady's spirit wait in vain,
believing Zarf a traitor and you
a recreant
spouse?"
"I can not remember," I groaned.
I was convinced—believed
Zarf fully;
and oh! the anguish
that was
mine in
that moment!
Amnesia, it is called back on Earth, this inability
to remember,
with its
concomitant of lost identity. . .
. Then
in the
gloom of my mind, one
insurmountable objection reared its ugly
head, "If this sorcerer blasted
my body,
and drove
my self down to the Earth,
where through the medium of
birth I regained a body and
grew to
my present
stature—how shall any here recognize
me as
Karan the King of
Oclolan? Zarf, 1 still say you must be
mistaken."
"My King," he replied pityingly, "you
are sore bemazed! On Earth
your body was shapen by parental
influence: but here—when the agony
shook you, the body reassembled about the self in
its true
semblance and substance. Nay! Karan of
Octolan you are, and none
who ever
saw you
during your reign would deny your
identity, albeit there be many
would gladly slay you to prevent
you from
regaining your throne.
"Lord, evil
rules where once was good—and
a fair,
happy land has be-
come a veritable antechamber of Hell.
Vampyr and ghoul prey on
the bodies
of your people. Foes assail them
from without,
and devils
plague them from
within the borders. Your
subjects, afraid, disheartened, hopeless, have
fallen
from their allegiance to
the Karanate
Dynasty. Scarce may we find
a hundred
loyal souls in all
the eight
provinces of Octolan.
I myself
am but
a fugitive;
and rich is the
reward Djl Grin would pay
for the
head of
Zarf the
Pro-
scribed! And as for
our gracious
Queen, Mehul-Ira---- "
He groaned in
heaviness of spirit; and I
felt two
scalding tears run adown my cheeks.
"I can not remember," I wailed.
"Karan I may be, but
I have
not his
memory! A great King
would I be, and a
wondrous leader—with Kuan's body and an
Earthman's mind!'' And I sank
back on
my bed
all atremble
from sheer, impotent fury
at myself.
Zarf pondered
for an
interminable while; then:
"Lord, it would
seem that
Djl Grm,
ere he
drove your self to the
Earth, laid an inhibition on your
memory-coil. And if so, we
may be
sure he
will never release it. But, Lord,
it comes
to my
mind that
afar from
here dwells
another magician—Agnor Halit—fully as evil as Djl
Grm, and
also fully
as powerful. It may
well be
that he
can restore
your memory—but
it remains
to be seen if he will.
It is
said that
they hate
each other
as only
two sorcerers
can hate. And in
that lies
our hope.
I think
we would
do well
to start
as soon as we are fit
to travel,
seek out
this Agnor
Halit, and try to enlist
his aid."
"So be it,"
I assented. "Only,
we start
at dawn.
Are we
women, that we should lie at
ease because
of a
few scratches?"
"But you
are weak
from your
wounds," he objected.
"No more so than are you," I
retorted. "As I say, we start at dawn. If I am indeed your King, it is for
me to command—yours to obey! But for tonight, we sleep—if it be safe to sleep
here."
"You
will never be safe," he replied, "waking or sleeping, until you are
once again on the Chrysolite Throne, surrounded by your own bodyguards. Still,
we can take some small precautions to prevent a complete surprise."
He
picked up a metal basin and two sticks, with which he rigged a device against
the door, which would fall and make a noise were the door tampered with.
"There," he
grunted. "Now we can sleep—and we need it!"
Hie clatter of the falling basin awoke me. I came
erect, sword in hand, although I was wavering on my feet. Zarf looked at me in
pity, but said naught. Slowly the door swung open, and a most grotesque visage
peered in. Zarf audibly sighed his relief.
"Come in, good Koto," he invited
soothingly, as one might speak to a
timid child. "King Karan will do you no harm. Nor will I."
And out of
the corner of his mouth Zarf muttered—"Koto owns this hovel. He is a
Hybrid, born of a lost woman of the Rodar race and an Elemental of the
Red Wilderness. Yet Koto is very gentle and timid. Nor is he such a fool
as he looks, for when I told him your identity, the poor creature wept be-
cause his hovel was no fit abode for royalty, even in distress. All his life
long, Koto will be proud-------- "
"These
'Rodars'?" I
asked, softly. "And this 'Red Wilderness?"
"The Rodars? Gigantic savages, running
naked. Gentle enough, and with child-like brains; and the Red Wilderness
is a vast and dreary desert, all yours, but totally worthless."
"Enter,
good Koto," I commanded. "I, Karan, King of Octolan, bid you enter
and kneel before me."
With
a snivelling howl the poor wretch of a Hybrid blundered in awkwardly and flopped asprawl before me. He grasped his head in both apelike
paws, looked at Zarf out of terror-filled eyes, opened his ugly gash of a
mouth, and emitted a raucous howl. In a perfect paroxysm of fright he gabbled:
"I knew il! I knew it! This
hut is unfit for King Karan the Splendid!
And now he will cut off Koto's head with his sword—cut off Zarf s head,
too, King Karan! He made me take you in--------- "
"But
you are mistaken, good Koto," I assured the poor fellow. "I have no
intent to cut off your head—nor Zarf's."
Then I tapped him on the shoulder with the
flat of my blade.
"Rise,
Baron Koto, Lord of the Red Wilderness and of all the Rodar-folk that therein
dwell. Thus I, Karan, reward your service in giving us succor in our
need!"
Zarf became angry at the audacity of my act.
To him it was nigh to an insult to the entire order of knighthood. Then,
abruptly, he laughed.
"Lord," he gasped, "had
another than yourself wrought thus, I'd slay him with
my own hand. But such pranks were ever your wont in the other days. Mad as is
this one, still it may yet serve you well. You are too weak to travel, despite
your bold heart, and we needs must wait in this castle of Baron Koto's until
strength returns to us both. Perchance by then Koto may be able to secure for
us riding-beasts on which we may travel taster than on our own legs."
At
that last argument I capitulated. It was a good reason for waiting. But then I
began to question Zarf about our intended journey.
"What
manner of territory must we traverse, once we start? What sort
of inhabitants dwell along our ways? Savage, or civilized? Wild, tame? Hostile or friendly?
And will our swords be sufficient lor our protection?"
"It
will be a long and dangerous trip," he replied soberly. "Our way lies
across this same Red Wilderness you just presented to Koto; thence across the
Sea of the Dead, where evil ghosts arise from the foul waters; then over the
Hills of Flint to the Mountains of Horror, where demons and vampyrs abound ;
and thence onward again to a city of devils who adore the lord of all devils.
There, if we are fortunate, we may hope to find the sorcerer we seek."
"Cheerful prospect!" I commented acridly. "But are these
assorted Hell-spawn sufficiently solid to be cut with good steel, or are they
immune to injury ?"
"Some
are solid enough, while others are intangible, yet dangerous for all that. And
there be various tribes of savages, none friendly to strangers. Oh, we may
anticipate a most enjoyable trip!"
"Zarf,"
I demanded abruptly, thinking longingly of the guns and pistols of
Earth—"Can you return me to Earth for a brief visit, and then bring me
back here, together with certain heavy bundles? Also, can you provide me with
gold or gems in quantity?"
"Lord,"
he mourned, "naught have I to give you saving my life and my love. Nor
gold nor gems do I possess, or you should have all with no need of asking. Nor
can I return you to Earth—but why do you so suddenly wish to go?"
I
explained, and he understood, but reiterated his inability to do as I requested.
'"J
hose 'ghunz,'" he marveled, enviously—"What a pity we have them not.
Throwing-spears and knives arc our nearest approach."
"Koto,"
I interrupted Zarf, a new idea arising in my mind. "Do you have a wood
that will do like this, when seasoned?" I drew my sword, bent it in an
arc, and let it spring swiftly back.
Koto
nodded, then shambled from the hut. I heard sounds of
wood be-in?, split, and presently Koto was back with a
long strip of hard wood which he handed me deprecatingly. I was overjoyed, lor
it was precisely what I needed.
"Bows and arrows," I exulted.
"Now I feel better! Zarf, we have reason to remain here for a while."
Rapidly
I explained, using a pointed stick to make clear my meaning, by drawing in the
dirt of the floor. I had been an archery enthusiast on Earth, and knew my
subject, even if I had never handled a sword.
Despite my earlier urgency, it was three
weeks before we three men set forth from Kolo's castle on (lie edge of the Red
Wilderness. Three men, because Koto had protested with
lugubrious howls that he wasn't going to be left behind. I'd made him a
Baron, he claimed, and it was his right to ride with me when I went forth to
war! Zarf chuckled in grim approval, and I, too,
endorsed Koto's claim.
We
rode the queerest steeds imaginable. Huge birds they were, more like enormous
game-cocks than aught else I can compare them to; with longer, thicker spurs
and bigger beaks. Ugly-tempered, too. Zarf said they'd
fight viciously whenever it came to close quarters. And how those big birds
could run!
I
asked Koto where he got them, and he replied that he'd gone out one dark night
and taken them from a flock kept by a petty lordling some distance away. When
I laughed and called him a thief, he said seriously he was no such thing:
"Was
not Karan the King in need of them? And did not the kingdom and all that
therein was belong to the King?"
So
we rode forth, all three mounted and armed with short, thick, powerful bows
and thit k, heavy arrows. Zarf and I had the swords we had taken from the
Vulmins, and Koto bore a ponderous war-club lashioned from a young tree having
a natural bulge at the big end. Into tin's bulge he had driven a dozen bronze
spikes all greenish with verdigris—a most efficient and terrible weapon, il he had the courage to use it in hand-to-hand fighting.
Zarf maintained that Koto would be so anxious to please me that he'd fight like
a maniacal fiend, should the opportunity present.
The crossing oi that Red Wilderness was no pleasure jaunt. There were dust storms and blistering heat
by day, and an icy wind o' nights that howled like all the devils ot Hell let loose. But in time we came to the shore of the
Sea of the Dead; and a most fitting name it was for that desolate body ot putrescent water.
Dull
grayish-greenish water, sullenly heaving and surging to and fro sluggishly and
greasily; beaches of dull grayish-brownish sands; and huge dull
grayish-blackish boulders and rocks—oh! a most
nightmarish picture, takea all in all.
"Zarf," I shuddered, "may it
not be possible to ride around this Sea5" "Perhaps,"
he returned, dubiously. "But we can cross it in one quarter of
the time it would take to ride around."
"But," I queried skeptically,
"how shall we cross? I see no boats, nor any
way of making any."
"I
have heard of a tribe hereabouts," he replied slowly, "and it may be
that we tan barter for, seize, or compel them to make for us a craft that will
bear us over this pestilential sea. But now we had best think about making camp
for the night."
We
rode back from the beach until the sea was lost to view—and smell. A pleased
cry from Koto finally caused us to halt. Where a mass of boulders had been
piled up by some ancient cataclysm, there was a cave-like recess sufficiently
large to afford safe refuge for all three of us and our mounts.
What
had pleased Koto particularly was the presence of a lot of lumps resembling
amber, but of a queer red color. After he had collected sufficient to satisfy
his ideas, he laid a line of the stuff across the entrance, and set fire to
them. They burned like coal or gum, and gave off a clear pale white flame, and
a most pleasant odor, with no smoke.
"This
region is infested with devils at night," Koto said seriously. "But
no devil will ever dare pass that line of fire."
He
was right. No devil did pass, but after darkness came, a lot of them tried.
Failing in that laudable attempt, they drew anigh the opening, and stared in
avidly at us. . . .
We divided the night into three watches. Zarf
and I wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and slept, nor did aught disturb our
rest. But Koto, when he wakened me, said he had seen plenty of devils moving
about beyond the line of fire. Then he rolled himself up, and so became
immovable. But I, hearing no snores, grew suspicious of such somnolence,
considering that he had snored like a thunderstorm incarnate since we started
from his castle. Finally I tricked him into betraying himself. With a jerk of
my head 1 summoned him to my side.
"Koto, do you think
your King unfit to keep guard, that you lie awake?"
"Lord,"
he replied, "there be many devils about, and some be
very dangerous—tricky, too. I know their ways better than you do, and can
better cope with them. Also, I await the greatest one of all, for I would talk
with him on a certain matter."
"Your
father, Koto?"
"Yes,
my King. Koto sent him word by a lesser devil, and he will surely come."
"Koto," I demanded sternly,
"would you betray your King?" "Nay, I
seek to serve my Master." He stared at me in hurt surprise. Ashamed of my
suspicion, I made amends.
"I thank my Baron!
Koto, have I your permission to see this father of
yours?"
"So
be it," he assented, after pondering the matter for a while. "But
first I must tell him, or he will be angry."
A
long interval passed. Out of the blackness beyond the fire two enormous
crimson eyes glared balefully. Koto calmly arose, stepped across the glowing
line of the Fire of Safety, and walked off in the darkness toward those glowing
orbs. A thousand misgivings assailed me. I strained my eyes, but could see
naught. Even the crimson eyes had vanished. Only one comfort did I have—if
harm came to Koto, his howls would surely apprise me of his danger. So I
strained my ears, but no faintest whisper came. Then, after an eon of suspense,
Koto calmly returned, and muttered:
"Now
if King Karan wishes to see Koto's father—come! He is very terrible to behold,
but he has promised Koto that King Karan shall be unharmed. But do not awaken
Zarf—yet!"
It
took all the hardihood I could muster to step across the line of fire and walk
out into that fiend-infested dark. Koto minded it far less than I. There was
evil in the very air. Strange, terrible faces stared at me, half-heard voices
moaned and gibbered in my ears, clammy hands grasped at my arms and clothing, yet could not hold. Once a pair of icy cold lips
kissed me full on my mouth; and oh! the foul effluvium
of that breath! . . . Abruptly, Koto halted. A huge mass of black seen against
the murky blackness of the night barred further progress. We stood immovable,
waiting—for what? After a bit 1 grew impatient, weary of standing like a rock,
and reached for my sword.
"Well,"
I demanded of Koto. "What is this holding us here? And where is this mighty
father of yours? I am minded to try my sword on this black barrier and find out
if it be impassable."
Before
he could reply—the black barrier was not! Only, two eyes that were crimson
fires of hellishness were staring into mine from a distance of mere inches ... no face, no form . . . just vacant
air—and two eyes. With a snort of disgust, I turned my back to the phenomenon.
"Koto,"
I said severely, "I am Karan, rightful King ot Octolan. I am not
interested in child's play, nor am I to be frightened by any Elemental, devil,
goblin, or fiend in all my realm. I am their King as well as yours! Let this father of yours show respect, or we
return to our shelter. . . ."
A
Being stood facing me! It was taller than Koto or I, albeit no giant. Yet I
knew that an Elemental was capable of assuming, at will, any form it might
choose. Its features were wholly nonhuman; at the same time its expression was
in nowise repulsive, nor was it fear-inspiring. But there was unmistakable
power and mastery stamped thereon and shining in its great, glowing eyes.
It
was staling at me coldly, impersonally, with no sign of hostility, friendliness,
or even curiosity; and I stared back at it with precisely the same attitude. If
it sought to overawe me, it was badly mistaken. Then I realized it was
tclepathically reading my soul. And strangely, I began to grasp some insight
into its nature, likewise.
"Truly,
you arc King Karan of Octolan, returned to regain your own. And I, to whom
past, present and future are one and the same, tell you that you will succeed
in all you undertake. Aye! And more than you now dream. And because you have
treated Koto as a man, and will eventually make of him one of whom I may yet be proud1, I will transport you, Koto, that grim Zarf
of yours, and your mounts as well, across the Sea of the Dead, and beyond the
Hills of Flint. But across the Mountains of Horror you three must fight your
own way. Certain powers of Nature I control,
and naught do I fear; but there is an ancient pact between
that magician whom you seek, and me. Therefore I will not anger him by taking you into his realms, uninvited.
"Yet
this I tell you for your further guidance—he will demand of you a service. Give
it, and all shall go well with your plans. Refuse it, and all the days of your
life you will regret that refusal. At dawn, be in readiness, and 1 will carry out my promise. Fear not, whatever happens, for my ways are
none that you can understand, even were I to
explain them. And now, farewell till dawn!"
And
with that—I stood, facing nothing! Koto's father had simply vanished.
Returning
to the cave, we found a badly worried Zarf awake and cursing luridly. But he
became considerably mollified when I explained, although he shook his head
dubiously regarding Koto's father and his proffered assistance.
"His
aid will more likely get us in trouble than help us out of it," he
grumbled. "Still, as no better course presents, I suppose we will have to
accept and run all chances."
At
the first flush of dawn we were mounted and waiting. We noted that the air held
a peculiar quality, indescribable, yet familiar, somewhat like the odor caused
by a levin-bolt striking too close for comfort. Also, there came a strange,
murky tinge in the air—a faint moan—icy winds—a howling, shrieking, roaring
fury like all the tormented souls in Hell voicing their agonies—sand, dust and
small pebbles tore past us—the world abruptly vanished, together with my
companions, so far as I knew—naught remained —I was choked by dust and my eyes were blinded—I was dizzy and be-mazed—I knew
not for certain if I were alive or dead and buried—acute misery was the sole
thing I was conscious of.
My
mount stumbled and fell asprawl. I lurched to my feet, gasped, retched
violently, and presently felt better. I stared about me, bewildered. Zarf and
Koto were just scrambling to their feet, and facing us was Koto's father. And
the great Elemental had a smile on his lips, and in his eyes a light of actual
friendliness.
"Lord
Karan, back of you are the Sea of the Dead and the
Hills of Flint; and before you lie the Mountains of Horror. I have kept my
promise to the King my son follows and honors. Farewell."
And
before I could voice my gratitude, he was
gone"—as seemed a habit with him. One instant visible, then—vacancy!
"I
know much about my
father," Koto said slowly. "But 1 never knew he could do this."
A faint trail ran down into a wide valley, on
the far side of which loomed the mighty ramparts of the Mountains of Horror.
And they merited the appellation. They were evil, and evil dwelt in them.
Soon
the dim trail became a wide road, albeit ancient and in dire need of repair. I
do not believe it had been traveled for ages, until we came; the natural
conclusion being that whatever race built it had passed into oblivion, leaving
their handiwork to mark their passing.
As
the day drew to its close, the road led us into the ruins of an ancient city.
Not one stone stood atop of another. We decided to camp there for the night,
and while Koto pitched camp and prepared a meal, I strolled about the ruins.
Everywhere
I looked were slabs that were covered with petroglyphs. Whatever the race, they
had had a written language, and moreover, they had been prone to embellishment.
They must have been, like the old Egyptians, dominated by a
priesthood, to judge by the character of the many pictures illustrating
the graven text. But if those same pictures were aught to go by, their gods
must have been born from a union of a nightmare and a homicidal maniac's
frenzy! It gave me the chill creeps just to look at those pictures, so foul and
unholy were the rites and acts depicted.
It was during my watch. My companions snored
in a most inharmonious concert; and while I was in nowise asleep, I had drifted
into a sort of revery. Slowly I became aware of a pair of eyes gleaming with
opalescent lights, staring across the fire at me. Thinking it might be Koto's
father, I spoke low-voiced in greeting. But as no reply came, I grew angry and
asked who it was and what it wanted. Again no reply, so I
snatched up my short bow and drove an arrow beneath those glowing orbs.
A
silvery laugh was my only reward. A hard-driven arrow is no laughing matter,
but anything could happen in this accursed land, I decided.
"The
little death-wand has no power to harm me," a voice asserted in those same
silvery tones. "Nay, O Stranger; how may you slay one who died ages
agone—but who still lives—and rules?"
"So
that little 'death-wand' may not slay you," I snarled. "Well, we'll
see what this will do!" And my sword leaped in a whistling cut across the
tiny fire. Had there been a head and body there, they must have parted company!
But the blade encountered—air!
Across
the fire, smiling indulgently, as might one tolerantly amused by the tantrums
of an otherwise interesting child, there sat a resplendently beautiful woman, a
vivid, gorgeous brunette, with a slightly greenish tinge shimmering over her
slender gold-bronze hued body. Her attire, a merest wisp of some pearly
glimmering gossamer fabric, accentuated every personal charm of her exquisite
form.
"Who are you?" I
demanded.
"A
Princess of Hell I am, yet having dominance here on this region, likewise. Ages agone I ruled in this city when it was in its height
and glory.
14
NICTZ1N DYALHIS
But there arose among the priests a mighty
magician whose power became greater than mine. Quakes and fire and flood he
loosed upon me and my people—and we became that which no more is—yet destroy us
wholly he could not.
"So
it is but a city of ruins you now behold, wherein, as ghosts, my people dwell;
and I, a ghost, too, abide with them part of my time, and rule over a ghostly
people and a wrecked city."
"If
you are a ghost, you look like an extremely tangible one," I stated
bluntly.
"Yes?"
and she laughed in derision. "Was it an 'extremely tangible' ghost against
which you tried two different death-wands? Still you are correct, in part. I
am tangible enough now, as you may prove lor yourself, should you care to do
so. I build my body as I need it, or revert it to vapor when its use is over.
Child's play, to my magic, O Stranger. . . . You disbelieve? See!"
She
arose, a vision of alluring loveliness, passed deliberately through the fire,
and seated herself at my side so closely that I could sense the magnetic
radiations of her.
"You
may touch me, take me in your arms if you will, kiss
my lips till your blood is aflame, and cool your ardor in my embrace, nor shall
you find me unresponsive!" .
Her rounded arms stole
about my neck like soft, satiny serpents.
"So," she murmured. "Am I not
tangible? Desirable, too? Take me, and I
will be to you as no other, woman, or spirit, or ghost, fiend, devil, or angel
in all the universe can ever be! Power and wisdom and rulership will I
place at your command . . . love and passion undreamed hitherto---- "
I
had sat immovable, silent up to that point—but suddenly I made up for lost
time. A violent shove sent her asprawl, squarely into the fire; and from my
lips came a word so descriptive that Earth's vilest would have blushed in
outraged modesty had that epithet been applied.
But
the seductively lovely Princess of Hell evidently took the word as a
compliment. And if she were angry at being shoved into the fire, she showed no
sign thereof. Out from the flames she glided, more alluring than ever; not a
hair of her dusky tresses disturbed ; with never a
blemish on her gold-bronze skin; and with a provocative smile on her curving
lips.
"What you have called me—I would be even
that, for you," she sighed
languorously. "You and I were meant for each other since ever Eternity
began----- "
But
at that, I exploded! Meant for that she-devil? 1? My hand shot out, seizing her slender throat in a vise-like grip,
mercilessly.
"You----- !" The word was even worse than the first
epithet I had used.
"Since
arrow and sword fail, let's see what choking will do!"
I
tightened my clutch, putting forth all my strength. Eor good measure, I drove
my fist into her face—and nearly dislocated my arm! For the Princess ol Hell, she-fiend—£host—woman—or whatsoever she really was. or had been, simply wasn't there! In fact, I wondered if she'd ever been there, or had I dozed, and dreamed? . . .
"It was no dream, King Karan!"
The
voice was full, sonorous, pleasant. Glancing up, I saw
a tall, stately old man, bareheaded, smiling in amity.
"Zarf! Koto! Up!" I shouted, leaping to my feet, sword in hand. The old man raised his
hand in protest.
"Nay,
King Karan, they will sleep unless release them from their slumber. That
she-fiend put them into a trance from which only someone with power greater
than hers can arouse them. Nor will I do so until after you and I confer on a
matter of mutual benefit."
"Who
are you?" I demanded. "And what devilment do you plan against me and
my comrades?"
"Yon
sleeper—Zarf—told you of a magician; and you set forth to seek that one, did
you not? Well, I am he whom you seek, and your journey is at an end, King
Karan. Knowing of your coming, I was prepared to greet you as soon as you
entered my domains—and this ruined city marks my borderline. So, I am here!
"King Karan, you are naught to me, nor I to you. But we have a common enemy—Djl Grm! Between him and me there lies an ancient feud. You he has
wronged. There is a service—I get that from your mind—which you hope I can and
will render you.
"Karan,
King afar from your crown, throne, and kingdom, you are a bold and resourceful
man, and your two companions are worth an army of ordinary folk. Render me one
service, faithfully, without evasion or quibble, and I will release your locked
memory! Well?"
"Arouse
Zarf and Koto," 1 commanded. "If you be
the one I seek, they will identify you, nor will they harm you. I,
Karan, give you protection!"
He
actually laughed at that, although there was more of admiration than derision
in his laugh.
"Bold
as ever, King Karan," he complimented. "As you have said, so will I do." He made a slight gesture, murmuring
something I could not catch. "Now, speak, in a whisper if you will, and
see if they be asleep."
As
I complied, they came abruptly to their feet, fully alert . . . they took one
look ... on Koto's ugly face came
such an expression of ghastly fear that I hastened to assure him he was in no
danger. Zarf bowed in respect, albeit he showed no fear. Our visitor spoke, in
a courteous manner:
"You know me, Zarf? You, too, Baron Koto?"
"You
are Agnor Halit, the mighty magician I persuaded my King to seek," Zarf
responded gravely.
Koto
nodded vehemently. "My father says you have more power than the devil
himself, O Agnor Halit."
"Is King Karan
satisfied?"
"I am," I confirmed. "But why
do you meet me here, rather than making me journey all the way to your
abode?"
"for this reason—the service I ask, if I am to release your
inhibited memory, will take you back on your path, even to the near shore of
the Sea of the Dead. And so, I save you many long, weary days of travel,
hardship and danger."
"And
this service?"
"Give heed,
then, and I will explain. There is a treasure 1 would fain
possess. There be good reasons why I may not go after it myself, yet those
reasons would not affect you. Truth to tell, it is hidden in the territory
ruled
by another magician who knows not it is there. The one who hid this treas-
ure is another magician . . . long ago he hid the priceless thing for some
dire reason of his own. It is the statue of a naked, beautiful female; yet it
is
an enormous jewel—a flawless sapphire, a trifle over half life-size----- "
"No
sapphire in all the worlds was ever that big," I objected. But Agnor Hal
it merely smiled as he assented:
"True!
But magic works wonders, King Karan. Your throne is made of a huge chrysolite, albeit not in all the worlds was a chrysolite ever that big! Still are you King Karan of the Chrysolite
Throne.' Magic made your throne from certain substances, yet a trader in gems
would tell you it is genuine chrysolite! . . .
"This
sapphire statue was made from flesh and blood by enchantment. It is the actual
body of a witch who dared withstand a great magician, long ago, until he
conquered her by treachery. For punishment he transmuted her to sapphire,
reducing her size to that of a half-grown child, and so leit her a beautiful
image in which her soul is still prisoned. But once I have that image in my
possession, I will have a hold upon him. . . .
"He
hated her so greatly that after turning her to crystal, he could in nowise
abide to look upon her constantly; wherefore he hid her in a submerged cavern
near this shore of the Sea of the Dead. But that cavern can be entered—at
times."
"And if I bring to you this statue------ "
"Then
will I release the bonds that hold your memory in abeyance. So be it that you
release the Sapphire Image to me, without any reservation or quibble—your
memories of all the past will be perfect. I, Agnor Hal it, magician, do pledge
you this, Karan of Octolan. And my pledges I do keep to the last atom. I have
wrought every known sin, and many nameless evils— but of one thing is Agnor
Halit thus far guiltless—a broken promise!"
"It
is well," I answered. And not to be outdone by him, a dealer in all
unholiness, I gave pledge in return: "I, Karan, will deliver to you that
treasure if I succeed in carrying out my venture, nor will I claim
part or parcel in it. For aught I care, you may shatter it to blue slivers the
moment I deliver it to you."
A
demoniacal light flickered momentarily in that dark sorcerer's eyes as he said
vindictively:
"I may do an even stranger thing than
that, once the thing is in my possession !"
"I
am not concerned with your mysteries," I shrugged. "All I need to
know about you is that you and I have an agreement which we both intend to
keep. Now, tell me all you can, that I may surely find that place where the
Sapphire Image is hidden."
So
for the rest of the night we three sat listening while that gentle-seeming old
man told us in detail all he knew about our course—while at the same time he
warned us frankly that we were going direct into the worst antechamber of Hell
when we reached the entrance to the cavern. And, as we later found out for
ourselves, he understated. . . .
"Lord Karan," Koto said, pointing—"unless
Agnor Halit lied, yon place is the entrance to the cavern we seek."
We
dismounted after one glance, for the marks were unmistakable. Five huge
boulders indicated the angles of a pentagon; in the center, a pool, evidently
tilled with water from the Sea of the Dead through some underground channel.
To substantiate this supposition, the surface of the pool heaved with the
heaving of the surges along the beach some few hundred yards distant.
Even
as we watched, the surface became violently agitated; a vortex formed, became a
miniature whirlpool, making queer sucking noises, strange gurglings and
whistling moans. This lasted for upward of an hour. After that, the surface
became level and still.
Then
abruptly came a change. In the very center a huge
bubble rose and burst, polluting the atmosphere with a most unholy stench. More
bubbles rose and the stench grew worse. Bubbles came continually, and the pool
boiled like a cauldron, filling the air with horrible odor. Then again the surface
stilled.
Now
my courage well-nigh forsook me, and without shame I admit it. For I knew I'd
have to dive into that loathly pool while the vortex pulled downward; and come
up—if ever I did come up—while the bubbles arose! And it was in nowise a
pleasing prospect. After we'd been studying the pool for some time, Zarl
evidently came to the same conclusion I had reached, for he said bluntly:
"My
King, that old devil, Agnor Halit laid a trap for you! It is well known that
King Karan does not lightly break his word. But if I, Zarf, have aught to say
about this matter, here is once Karan of Ortolan breaks a pledge, nor gives it
a second thought. To plunge into that pool is the act of a madman. If that
damned sorcerer wants that image so badly, let him come and dive for it
himself. He will only go to Flell a little sooner, through a most befitting
gateway, and this region of space will be that much improved because of his
absence!
"But my memory,
Zarf?"
"Once you've gone into that filthy hole,
you'll have no need for it, as you'll not come up to use it! Nay, let us rather go back to Koto's hut
and
plot to regain your kingdom. If successful, we can then force Djl Grm to
undo his foul sorcery "
"Not
so fast, Zarf," Koto interrupted. "My father warned our King to
comply with Agnor Halit's request, and said that if he did, all would go well
with his plans. But my father said, too, that if our King refused, he'd regret
it all his life long."
Now
Zarf and 1 looked at each other blankly, for there was truth in what Koto had
just said.
"I
wonder if there is any other way to regain that statue," I suggested
tentatively.
"I know a good way," Koto said
simply. "It is just this: Koto goes down,
and comes up with the image, or stays down there with it. And if aught goes
wrong, Koto can well be spared-------- "
"Nay, my Koto," I said huskily, for
I was deeply moved by the faithful
fellow's loyal and courageous proffer—"I can ill spare--------- "
A gurgling noise from the pool. Koto rose abruptly, said no word and gave no
sign, but dived like a trog, head first, into the center ol the rapidly forming
whirlpool. Neither Zarf nor I had been alert enough to prevent him, for he had
moved too quickly. We stared at each other, open-mouthed in amazement.
"King
Karan," Zarf's voice rang like a clarion—"when you regain your
kingdom remember that brave fool, Baron Koto of the Red Wilderness, and
sometimes think of—Zarf!"
Splash!
I stood alone, gaping stupidly at the spot
where two splendid, loyal noblemen had disappeared. The vortex was growing
weaker—it would cease ere long—then an eternity of waiting, hoping— perhaps
they would never come up—I'd be alone—never see them again—I, a King minus
crown, throne, realm, memory, wife, subjects—why! the
only subjects I knew or cared about. . . .
I took a deep full breath,
and dived.
That
vile fluid that stank so abominably hurt worse than it smelt. It was actually
corrosive. It bit! Raw potash lye is its nearest comparison. . .
. I was still head down and going deeper. I was spinning with the swirling
until I grew dizzy. My eyeballs felt as if burning out of their sockets from
that acrid solution —down, down, and down! A faint, dimly seen blue light
struck horizontally through the whirlpool—two vague, shadowy figures barely
seen as I whirled in that mad headlong dance—a powerful grip clamped fast on
one of niy ankles and I thought I was being rent apart—the vortex hated to let
go—but that mighty pull at my leg would not be denied— I looked up into Koto's
ugly face—then Zarf's voice, heavy with reproach:
"King
Karan, is this well? Go back, I pray you, as soon as the bubbles rise!"
But at that, I flatly refused, standing on my
royal dignity; and I made them yield the point, maugre their
stubborn insistence.
A
tunnel stretched away into the dim distance, and up that tunnel we
started—toward wdiat? Steadily the blue light became stronger, and in my mind arose the certitude that it emanated from the Blue Image. Demon faces peered
at us from cracks and crevices, but none of the devils of the place found
hardihood to attack us.
The tunnel debouched into a great cavern. In
the exact center, on a mound
of bleached skulls stood the source of the blue radiance—the Sapphire Witch
herself. I gasped in awed admiration at the flawless perfection of her beauty
—and suddenly, how I did hate that sorcerer Agnor Halit, to whom I'd
promised to deliver that exquisite Image of Incomparable Loveliness! Cheer-
fully would I have bartered the empires of the universe for its possession—
did I but own those empires—nor would I have considered the price exor-
bitant. I wanted it—I wanted it! And
I'd pledged--------- •
Around
that mound, in a ring on the floor of the cavern, lay many stones. Half the
size of human heads they were, round as balls, and no two were of the same
color. Every one was aglow, softly, with inward lights, as if each were afire deep inside—dark reds there were; dull orange; dusky blues, garish
greens and sinister purples. We knew they were sentient, malignant, resenting
our intrusion! Koto responded by kicking one stone that was apparently
sneering at him and radiating contempt. At the impact of Koto's foot, the
smoldering stone gave forth a metallic clang like a smitten gong, rose straight
in the air to the level of Koto's face—then hurtled straight at him with a
speed that would have cracked his skull, had not Zarf struck at the Flying
Stone with his sword and deflected its course.
A
dozen of them promptly left the floor and flew at Zarf—who as promptly turned
and fled. But he was actuated by discretion rather than fear. I saw him race
headlong "into a crack in the tunnel wall—and shortly, the devil who dwelt therein came tumbling out, well-nigh sheared in
two by Zarl's sword. Evidently Zarf preferred coping with
devils, to the Flying Stones. Koto, having the same idea, hastily retreated to
the tunnel mouth— and I went with Koto. In another moment Zarf rejoined us
there, grinning sheepishly. The Flying Stones did not follow us that far from the
Blue Statue. . . .
We
stood disconsolate, wondering how we were to pass their formidable menace—and
as if to show us how futile was our quest, of a sudden the entire ring of
Flying Stones levitated to the height of a man's shoulders and head, and
commenced to swirl about the Sapphire Witch who stood so serene on her altar of
skulls. Truly a strange goddess, and guarded by even stranger acolytes!
Fast
and faster swirled the Flying Stones, their colored lights glowing more and
more brightly—faster yet, until we could no longer distinguish any single
stone—they were merely a beautiful, gleaming blur of fire— gradually a humming
sound became audible, swelling in volume till it became a roar like the
diapason of a mighty organ—soon it became distinguishable as a chant of
warning! . . .
And
at that, a sort of madness came upon me. I had come for that image —to bear it
away—not to stand and look at it from a distance. And that image I meant to
take, forthwith! In my rage, all else faded—kingdom, wife, subjects, memory,
Agnor Halit, Djl Grm, Zarf, Koto, even my own welfare mattered not. I ran
forward shouting:
"Fools! I am Karan of Octolan! I have come for that image! It shall be mine!
Down and lie still I say!"
Now
who was I, after all. that
those Flying Stones should obey me? Yet so it was! The fiery band settled down
instantly. I walked confidently forward, picked up the image, and so, back to
where Zarf and Koto stood staring in amazed incredulity.
"Somewhat
of magic my King knows, it appears!" gasped Koto shakily. I myself could
hardly believe it. But the fact .remained that I held the
statue in my arms. And we three walked down
that tunnel, nor did aught bother us all the way to the upper world!
Once at the surface, we wiped the foulness of
the pool from the lovely image, and stood actually adoring the matchless
treasure in the clear light . . . looked suddenly up, and saw Koto's father,
and with him that utterly damned sorcerer, Djl Grm.
The
sorcerer clutched swiftly for the image, but as swiftly Zarf spun his sword in
a glittering wheel of defense in front of it—and the magician flinched back.
Then he pointed a finger—and Zarf became temporarily paralyzed. Koto snatched
up the image, and tucking it beneath his left arm, he waggled his formidable
bludgeon under the sorcerer's nose with a meaning gesture.
"Try
that trick on me!" he invited grimly. But the magician, for some reason,
declined Koto's urgent invitation. Instead, I became aware of rapid interchange
of telepathic speech between Koto's father and Djl Grm. The great Elemental
turned to Koto.
"Are you my son?"
"That,
you should know best," Koto responded with a grim smile. He seemed to know
what was coming next.
"Then,"
his father commanded—"give the Blue Image to its proper owner!"
"No!"
and Koto shook his head defiantly. "It is not seemly that my King should
carry burdens while I, his follower, go empty-handed. I carry it for him. His
it is by right of power—for he made the Flying Stones yield to him their trust,
and he bore it away from the Altar of Skulls, unmolested!"
The
Elemental grew black with rage. His eyes flamed crimson, and their awful glare
frightened Zarf and me. Koto looked perturbed, but a faint fcddish spark began
flickering in his eyes, too.
"Give that Image to Djl Gnu, I said!" The
Elemental's voice held a note of awful finality.
Koto's
arm flew back and swept forward again, and his bludgeon smashed full in his
father's face.
"My father you
are," Koto howled in fury—"but Karan is my King!"
Unharmed
by the impact, the Elemental gravely handed Koto his great club. But it was to
me he spoke:
"King
Karan, I said I might yet be proud of Koto— am!" Then to the sorcerer, sternly:
"D)l Grm, I know your power—and I know its limitations. And I
know, likewise, what you have in mind. Summon your legions if you dare and I
will summon mine. And what that will mean to us both ere all be ended, you
know, as do I! To a certain extent, I aided you in this affair, for I wished to
see how big my son had grown in the service of his King—and I am proud of his
loyalty. So long as my son shall cleave to him, Karan of Octolan is my ally and
friend. Djl Grm, is it peace—or war?''
The
magician seemed like to explode with impotent fury. Suddenly he vanished with a
scream of baffled, venomous rage. Then came a terrific
sensation, comparable only to the emotion an arrow must feel as it leaves the
string of a powerful bow.
Koto,
still holding the Sapphire Image under his left arm and his great club clenched
in his right fist—Zarf and I, still holding our drawn swords—• and Koto's
father, smiling as if pleased that he had broken openly with Djl Grm—stood
looking at each other, hardly knowing what to say. But one thing we three
realized—Koto's father had once again displayed his control of the forces of
Nature, and we were in the city of ghosts, where I had promised to meet Agnor
Halit. The Elemental said something to Koto that made him grin from ear to ear;
then it vanished.
Night. And we three sat by a brightly burning
campfire. Not one of us cared to sleep. We were taking no chances on some
unexpected treachery assailing us at the last moment. Again and again I had
tried to reach Agnor Halit mentally, bidding him come get his Blue Image and
give me my price, that I might be done with a distasteful business; because I wanted that statue for myself, and also because I liked old Agnor Halit
not one whit better than his fellow sorcerer, Djl Grm. And the sooner I was
quit of further doings with either or both of those two, the more pleased I'd
be. . . . But Agnor Halit came not. A hope dawned in my mind—perhaps he had met
with some disaster. Then Koto caught my mind and spoiled that idea.
"Nay! He lives. He will come whenever it pleases
him to come—till then —we—can—but—wait."
Koto sagged where he sat, slumped over on his
side—and snored ! Zarf, a second later, did likewise.
Amazed, I shouted at them. As well shout at two solid rocks! I grew afraid at
that, for I saw what was toward—they, of their own free wills, would never have
acted thus! Some malign power had wrought a sleep spell on them, and I was left
to face whatever might happen. And it started immediately!
The
ruined city was materializing as it was before calamity fell upon it! Stone
upon stone, tier upon tier, story upon story, tower and turret and pylon,
pinnacle, spire and dome, it grew in might and beauty, albeit the might
suggested cruelty and the beauty was wholly evil.
The
streets filled with people—men, women, and little children; and on no face did
I see aught written of good, but only all wickedness. Bet ore I could decide
what to do, of a sudden a detachment of soldiery bore down on me, surrounding
me before I could rise to my feet. Again I shouted to Zarf and Koto; and deep
as was the slumber-spell. Koto's brain must have caught, in part, my warning.
For he moved uneasily, flinging out one arm restlessly. That arm fell across
the image where it lay wrapped in my cloak.
Roughly
I was yanked to my feet. The soldiers disregarded the two others, for some
reason. Through the streets they led me, into a splendid edifice that proved to
be a temple of the loathly devil-gods I had seen depicted on the various
rock-faces among the ruins.
Seated
on a resplendent throne was the seductively lovely Princess of Hell, looking
more alluring than when first I saw her. Languidly smiling, she addressed me as
if naught but utmost amity had marked our iormer brief acquaintance.
"All
this I have wrought for your sake, O Stranger for whom I yearn. I did it that
you might have proof it is no weakling wraith who seeks your love, but one
truly great, powerful, and—if you will have it so—kindly disposed toward
you."
"What
do you really want of me?" I demanded bluntly. "I'm not a total fool,
to believe you're actually in love with me, a mere mortal nobody!"
"A mere mortal nobody?" The Princess smiled, highly amused.
"Karan of Ortolan, Lord of the Chrysolite Throne, is
hardly a mere mortal nobody. You do yourself injustice, for you are very
much a man. And not a maid in all my train but would be happy to be your
mate—and myself most of all.
"Secretly,
you regard me as a fiend. Well, I am! But
I want you to know me fully. Between such as I, and your sort, exists an almost
impassable barrier—unless one of your sort invites one of my order across the
border. You have a different magnetism, highly beneficial to us, and we delight
to bathe therein, returning in exchange a portion of our own powerful vibrations.
Thus impregnated, new powers and capacities are yours tor the wielding.
"We
'fiends' do not seek your souls! Most of your souls are not worth having, so
weak, so embryonic are they. Not good enough to attain to celestial realms, nor
wicked enough to be welcome in Hell, naught remains for most of your race but
return, life after life, to some of the material planes. But within you, Karan,
are great capacities tor absolute Evil or absolute Good, Aye, a fit mate for
even me——"
"You've said enough," I interrupted
harshly. "Mate with yon? Give
you
of my magnetic radiations—draw from you strength,
power, and capacities?
Why, you she-devil, sooner would I spend eternity adoring hopelessly---------- "
"That
Blue Witch you stole," she hissed venomously. "O Fool ten thousand
times accursed! You dare compare me to that icy cold crystal that can not move?
I would have crowned you Lord of Hell itself in a century's time, had you
accepted my offer; but since you dare to refuse me—you shall pay! . .
."
And pay I did !
In obedience to some unspoken command from
the infuriated she-fiend, a particularly malignant-appearing priest stepped forward
from amidst a group of his kind. I had never before seen a face so utterly
unhuman. His body was more ape-like than man-like.
The
priest laid one prehensile paw on my shoulder—and received a' smashing blow full in the face from my
fist. The priest did not even change expression, but my fist felt as if I had
hit a solid rock. Holding me at arm's length, he jabbed me lightly with one
finger. He knew anatomy and neurology, that devil-priest, for that light touch
wrung a gasp of agony from me, and brought the cold sweat from every pore of my
body, while it sent a terrific thrill like commingled ice and fire along every
fiber of my nervous system. That was merely a preliminary. . . .
A
vise-like grip on my temples with thumb and finger—what sort of uncanny powers
did that devil-priest control? And throb after throb of lancelike twinges tore
through my brain, each one a solid impact, each impact worse than the preceding
one; until at each twinge bright sparks burst within my skull, rending and
searing the tissues of my brain, and I, all fortitude lost, howled, moaned,
shrieked and yelled like any madman in Bedlam as those awful pulsations
continued into an eternity of anguish.
But
that became monotonous. My howls were too much alike, and wearied the Princess.
The devil-priest tried a new one. Releasing my temples, he lightly slapped me
on the chest with the flat of his hand, meantime blowing his breath on my
forehead. . . .
A
most delightful sense of surcease from torture after anguish unbearable swept
all through me, and I sighed my relief; but that devil-priest ran his thumb
along my spine, once, and the terrific agony of that caress made all I had
suffered previously seem but exquisite delight!
Stepping
back a pace, the devil-priest levelled his arm, his stiffly extended fingers
pointing straight at me, and I commenced to gyrate, at first slowly, then with
ever accelerating speed; fast and faster, and faster yet, until the
surroundings became a blur—and faster still, until the surroundings and the
blur, too, disappeared, and naught remained but myself aspin on my own axis!
Crash!
The motion was
instantaneously reversed, and what ghastly effect that simple action had upon
me can never be imagined or described. It had to be undergone to be understood,
and what little sense I'd still managed to retain thus far left me entirely. .
. .
I
awoke! I was stretched out on a couch, suffused with unreliable fatigue,
acutely conscious of agonies endured beyond all endurance. . . .
"O
my beloved! Such sufferings! But never again! In my arms, O loved man, shall
you regain strength and know bliss beyond all thinking."
Hovering over me, holding me in her arms,
shielding and protecting me
from further harm, was a superbly beautiful woman. Azure was her hair,
blue as the midsummer skies was her shimmering skin that shone with a clear
luster surpassing any gem; yet in nowise was she a stone statue, but a living,
breathing, loving, tender, soft-bodied woman of flesh and blood! I reached
up feeble arms about her neck, drawing her down to me—almost had
her lips touched mine—a lambent reddish light flickered momentarily in
her wondrous blue eyes-------
"You infernal bag!'1
It
was but a putrid corpse I held so lovingly within the circle of my arms—and in
it the worms and maggots were acrawl! . . .
The
Princess of Hell, on her gorgeous throne, gave utterance to a trill of merry
laughter at the success of that final glamorous torment of the man who had
dared refuse her proffered love. . . .
That laugh changed to a shriek of fury ere
the last silvery note of her mirth died out! Facing her where she sat
surrounded by her guards and courtiers, stood a tall, robed figure, grimly
eyeing her in a silence more fraught with menace than any words could have
conveyed.
"Agnor Hal it!" she
screamed in a paroxysm of terror, as she recognized the mighty sorcerer.
"Even
so, O Princess of Hell, Queen over a ghostly race and a ghost city that 1 shattered with my magic, ages agone. And now!
For that you have not felt the weight of my hand in the last few centuries, you
have grown overbold. You actually dared molest this man, knowing that he was at
the time engaged in serving my purpose!"
Agnor Halit drew from the breast of his robe
a most peculiar reptile, more like a short, extremely thick centipede than
aught else. He
held it up between thumb and finger. His words came
slow, heavy, laden with doom:
"Into
this vileness shall thou go, nor ever come forth from it until I, Agnor Halit,
am no more!"
He
flung the small abhorrence on the dais, before the feet of the Princess. It
remained there, immovable, its full eyes fixed on her face; and she stared back
in awe-stricken, horrified fascination.
The
sorcerer stretched out his arms, his quivering fingers aimed at the beauteous,
erotic fiend trembling in an ecstasy of fear there on her sumptuous seat. Over
guards and courtiers, priests and populace an icy terror tell; they stood staring with incredulous eyes,
immovable—I myself could scarce breathe from the suspense of that tense
waiting. . . .
The
Princess of Hell began to shrink. Small and smaller she became, dwindling
visibly before our eyes—she became as tiny as the reptile—every exquisite
feature of her loveliness remained intact, in miniature—a gray mist swirled
between reptile and Princess—they became one!
Agnor
Halil snapped finger and thumb, deliberately, insultingly contemptuous. At the
"Tshuk" he made, the entire scene vanished!
I
rubbed my eyes ... I could not
believe ... a tiny reptile, most
resembling a centipede, ran before my foot and around the corner of a boulder .
. . but facing me was the sorcerer I sought. . . .
"King
Karan, you had a narrow escape," he assured me, earnestly. "But she
is harmless now. Not even her devil-friends can enable her to work further
mischief. She will be naught but a venomous worm so long as I shall continue to
live—and as I may perish only by one method which none knows save me, she is
like to endure for ages! Her bite might prove dangerous, but the fear I
inspired in her will prevent her from trying that, even."
While
talking, we had drawn to where lay Zarf and Koto. At our arrival they sat up as
if waking from a natural nap. Zarf stared at the magician with undisguised
hostility. Koto, most surprizingly, gave the magician a wide grin of welcome;
more, he threw back my cloak and permitted Agnor Halit to see that we actually
had the image he so desired. But Koto kept nigh, with a wary eye on the
sorcerer's every move. Agnor Halit's eyes gleamed with a baleful light, his
voice held a note of repressed, unholy exultation:
"King
Karan, I am ready to fulfil my part of our pact. Once again, are you willing to
renounce all claim to this Sapphire Image, yielding it
to me to do with as may please my whim?"
"I
am," I replied briefly. "Take the thing and give my price to me—the
release of my memory. I grow weary of this magic and mystery-mongering, and
would be about my own proper affairs."
"Not
so fast," grinned Koto as the sorcerer turned eagerly to the statue.
"King Karan has shown you his part of the bargain. Touch this image, ere
you fulfil your part—which is not visible, but must be made evident to King
Karan's satisfaction—and you have the father of Koto to reckon with—and, Agnor
Halit, his power is greater than yours. If you doubt that—try conclusions with
him! Shall I, his son, summon him?"
"King
Karan," and Agnor Halit ignored Koto
completely—"your word is inviolable, nor do I break promises. Yet Baron
Koto is right. I can see your part—and you shall receive mine ere I take my
payment. Is that satisfactory ?"
"Magician,"
I exclaimed, impatient, "do more, and talk less! And you, Koto, let him
have the thing as suits him best. I have taken his word, even as he accepts
mine. Shall we quibble endlessly?"
"Yet will I do even as Baron Koto wishes,"
the sorcerer smiled. He laid his left hand on the back of my neck. The forefinger of his other hand
he pressed tightly against my forehead just between the eyebrows.
A
slight tingling flowed from that fingertip, through my brain, to the center of the
palm against my neck. A tiny spark like a distant star lit in the center of my
brain. It grew and grew, filling my entire skull with a silvery-golden
brilliance shot through with coruscations and sparkling, scintillant flashes. .
. .
CRASH!
Insofar
as I was aware of anything, my head had just exploded! . . . All the agonies I
had ever experienced were as naught compared to that! I was so absolutely
stunned I could not even fall down and die! Across immeasurable voids came a
trumpet-like voice:
"King Karan, I have
kept my promise!"
I blinked, and my dazed mind cleared. Gods mid Devils! ... In one terrific rush, I knew all! Not one
trifling detail of all the long reign in Octolan as Karan of the Chrysolite
Throne was lacking in my memory! And thereupon my soul descended into Hell even
as 1 stood facing that damnable sorcerer who
openly sneered in my very face, gloating over my mental anguish—for I knew one
thing which wrecked all benefits I had hoped to gain by my memory's
restoration. . . .
That
Sapphire Image was the actual body of my wife and Queen. Mehul-Ira, transmuted
by the hellish magic of that rebel sorcerer, Djl Grm, into a flawless jewel,
with her pure soul imprisoned within the depths of the wondrous blue
crystal—and had renounced all claim to
the image, thereby giving my royal spouse to another sorcerer quite as evil as
the one I'd rescued her from! . . .
"Karan, becozened and
bejaped King, I claim my price!"
"Take
it—you—devil!" I managed to gasp finally, albeit my soul was dying within
me, and my anguish was plainly visible to my followers. . . .
"Take the image,
magician," Koto grinned.
Almost
was I tempted to slay Koto for grinning like that when my very soul was suffering
all the agonies of dissolution without the comfort of death's release.
Agnor
Halit moved not from where he stood. Only he pointed his finger at the image. A
pink mist enshrouded the statue, turned to a deep rose-red, then to scarlet,
and finally became crimson like rich blood. Gradually it faded, and a living,
breathing woman, radiantly lovely, arose from where she lay on the hard ground,
stood erect, turned, smiling at me with an unmistakable light in her great
softly shining eyes—she stretched out longing arms—Koto flung my cloak about
her, concealing her exquisite perfection from the avid gaze of the sorcerer—she
spoke, and the music of her voice tore my heart with its sweetness:
"Karan! My Karan!
After all these dreary years! I am still all yours. . . ."
"Nay!" Agnor Halit interrupted harshly. "Karan
has renounced all his claim to you! You are mine!"
That
devilish magician, inspired by the malice common to all his
ilk, had perpetrated upon me a treachery so utterly fiendish that even the
demons in Hell must have shrieked and rocked in glee upon their white-hot
brazen seals!
He
opened his mouth to its fullest extent, and peals of gargantuan laughter
bellowed forth. In a daze, I noted dimly that Koto had stooped and now held
something in his hand—why! it looked like a short
thick worm—-or a centipede. . . .
"Agnor
Halit!" Koto spoke with a sneer more bitter than
aught the sorcerer knew how to use—"King Karan gave you the image, to do
with as pleased your whim—but he gave not his wife! Upon her you have no claim!
But I, Koto of the Red Wilderness, in her place give you—this!"
Flung
with unerring accuracy, the tiny reptile, writhing and twisting, shot from
Koto's hand, disappearing in the yawning cavity of the sorcerer's mouth.
Agnor
Halit closed his mouth with a gulp of surprize. He staggered—his face turned to
a ghastly greenish hue—the body that had so long defied the ravages of death
dashed itself to the ground, rolling in hideous torture —convulsion after
convulsion shook it—then slowly ceased—and a second later we were gazing,
incredulous, at a carrion corpse that stank most outrageously and in which the
worms and maggots were already at work.
"Somewhat
of magic Koto knows," Koto grinned. "While my body lay still, my
spirit went with my King and saw all; then, returning, I dreamed the secret
Agnor Halit deemed that none knew save himself! The Princess of Hell crawled
into my hand that I might use her, and so, she revenged herself! Agnor Halit is
now in Hell, where she can deal with him according to her fancy!"
We mounted our great birds.
My Queen sat before me, my arm steadying her. Before us, smiling pleasantly, was Koto's lather. Koto grinned at him. "Am
I your son?"
"I
myself could have wrought no better," responded the great Elemental,
generously.
"Your son is sorry his father has lost
his once mighty power." Koto's tone was lugubrious in the extreme. "Lost my power?"
"Aye! My King would rest tonight within my castle
on the far edge of the Red Wilderness, my Barony—yet here we sit on these ugly,
slow birds . . ."
Again
the fury of the elements were loosed for my benefit. .
. . We slept that night at Koto's castle!
cli-in
- lin-$3t
Hay Bradbury has
been a
hreaker of traditions
and the maker of new patterns for the start
story. This is demonstrated once again in this quite
different sort of tale, written
early in his career, in that
period when children and the ways of children
were still uppermost in
his thoughts.
Perhaps this is not a
fantasy in the sense that it contains nothing really
supernatural. But it is
a story
of a
child's psychology, of a viewpoint,
logical in itself, but utterly oul-of-lhis-world
nonetheless.
Biilw^FT US IMAGINE a Jack-in-the-box, stuffed,
compressed in upon its coiled body, its head hard against a locked lid. Oh, how
the springs ache to relax, to fling the Jack out of the box, bang! but no, all is tension and imprisonment. The lid stays
locked thirteen years on the little trapped animal. The animal within does not
know of the World, but senses it is there; not with eye, or ear, or flesh, nor
by nostril, but by a sense that grew simply because the little animal has been
jailed so long. Anyway, here is the boxed Jack, coiled and tightened and
neurotic, head crushed to loeked lid, waiting and waiting and waiting to be
shot out, as from a cannon.
Edwin
stood looking out the window. He could not see beyond the trees. The trees
surrounded the house and the house surrounded Edwin. If he
tried to find another World beyond, why the trees grew thicker in an instant,
almost, to still this odd and silly notion of his.
Edwin stared out the window
this way each morning.
Behind
him, he heard Mother's wailing, nervous breath as she drank her breakfast
coffee. She rang the emptied cup with her spoon. "Edwin, stop staring.
Come cat!"
"No," he said,
not knowing why.
There
was a stiffened rustle. Mother turned to him as if she'd been slapped.
"What do you mean? Breakfast's ready, isn't it? Or is the window
better?"
"It's better,
it's better," he said. He pressed the window with his nose,
28 eyes feverish for some life, out there. For thirteen years he had looked for lire
beyond the trees, seen none. He'd heard only vague noises. "It's belter," he whispered, once again.
But
finally he turned and went to eat the tasteless apricots and toast. He and
Mother, alone, just like five thousand other mornings. Thirteen years of
breakfasts and no movement beyond the trees and a growing curiosity.
The
two of them ate silently.
She
was the pale woman you saw in old houses in third floor cupola windows, each
morning at nine, each afternoon at one and four, each evening at eight, and,
also, if you happened to be passing at three in the morning, there she would
be, in her window, silent and white, high and alone and quiet. It was like
passing a deserted greenhouse in which one last wild white blossom lifted its
head to the moonlight.
And
her child, Edwin, was the thistle you unpodded with a breath of your mouth in
thistle-time. His hair was silken and his eyes were of a constant blue and
feverish temperature. He had a haunted look, lie
looked as if he slept poorly. He might fly all apart like a packet of
ladyfinger firecrackers it you said the right word.
So
here they were at breakfast. He with his fever in him, she with hers forever
dead in her, save for occasional sparkles.
Now
she began to talk, slowly at first, then very rapidly and angrily, almost
spitting at him. "Why must you disobey every morning?" She cried at
him. "I don't want you staring out, I don't want it, do you hear? What do
you want? Do you want to see Them?" she cried,
her fingers twitching. She was blazingly lovely, like an angry white flower.
"Do you want to see the Beasts that run down paths and crush people like strawberries! Is that it?"
Yes,
he thought, I'd like to see the Beasts, horrible as they are. He said nothing.
"Do
you want to go out there?" she asked, sharply. "Do you want to go out there like your Father
did before you were born and be killed, be run down by one of those terrible
Beasts on the road, is that what you want! Answer me!"
He
looked at the floor. "No, Ma'm."
"Isn't
it enough your Father died that way? Isn't it enough that They
killed him? Why should you want to have anything to do with those terrible
Things? How many times must I tell you?" She motioned toward the door.
"Of course, if you really want to
die—go ahead. Be killed."
She
quieted at last, but her fingers kept flexing. "Your Father built this
World, every part of it. It was good enough for him and it should be enough for
you. There's nothing beyond those trees but death and I won't have you poking
your nose out. This is the World, remember. There's no other worth
bothering with!"
He
nodded miserably.
"Don't
do it again," she said. She ate for a few seconds and then looked up.
"You're forgiven. It's silly to think there could possibly be anything
worth seeing beyond the trees. Smile now, and finish your toast."
He
ate softly, with the window reflected where he could stare secretly at it, upon
his spoon. After a long time he glanced up.
"Mom?" he asked, carefully.
"Yes?"
She was wary.
"What's—?"
He couldn't say it. He swallowed. "What's—dying? You talk about it all the
time. Is it a—feeling?"
"To
those who have to live on alter someone else, a very bad feeling, yes." She stood up, warning!)'. "Stop chattering;
you'll be late for school. Run!"
He
kissed her as he ran by with his books. "Bye!" "Say hello to
Teacher for me!" she cried after him.
He fled from her like a bullet from a gun. Up endless staircases. Along passages and
through halls, past windows that cascaded down dark gallery walls like
waterfalls. Up and up through the layer cake of the World, with the
thick frosting of Oriental rugs between and the bright candles on top.
from one
high staircase he looked down through four intervals of World.
The Lowlands of kitchen, dining room, living
room. The
two Middle Lands of music, play, pictures, and locked, forbidden rooms. And
then, here—he turned and stared about—the Highlands of
adventure, picnic, school. Here he roamed, skipped, sang lonely child songs on
the long brisk journey to his Teacher.
This
was the World. Father (or God, as Mother often called him) had raised its
mountains of wall-papered plaster long ago. There were foothills of stairs,
forested with banisters. This was Father-God's World; in which star firmaments
shone at the flick of a wall switch. And the sun was Mother, and Mother was the
sun, the center about which all the World steadfastly revolved. And Edwin, like
a small dark meteor, tore through all the carpeted and tapestried spaces of the
World. You saw him coming and going on vasl staircases, on hikes and
explorations.
This
was the World, enchanted square countries between boundaries of nailed lath
and polished wood. Unknown lands and wild lands and some lands hidden.
Sometimes
he and Mom picnicked in the Highlands, spread snow linens on red-tuffed Persian
scrolled lawns, upon the crimson carpeting of a meadow in a top plateau of (lie
house were ancient portraits of dissatisfied peoples looked dimly down upon
their eating and their revels. They drew water from silver taps in hidden tiled
niches, and trashed the tumblers against the wall in dual demonstration. They
played Hide and Seek and she found him rolled like a mummy in a window curtain
on the lourth level. Once he got lost and wandered for hours in insane
countries of dust and sheeted furniture and echoes. But she found him at last
and took him back down through the layers and stratas of countries, to the
familiar
Parlor land where each dust
particle was exact and familiar as a snow flake. He ran up a stair.
There
were doors to knock on, a thousand thousand doors, most of them locked and
forbidden. There were bottom-tempting banisters to slide on. And there were
Picasso ladies and Dali gentlemen who screamed silently at him from their
canvas asylums, their golden eyes fierce, when he dawdled.
"These
sorts of Things live out there,'' his mother told him one day, pointing to the Dali-Picasso people in
their frames.
He stuck his tongue at them
now, and ran quickly past.
He stopped running.
One of the forbidden doors
stood open.
Sunlight slanted through it
and warmed and excited him.
He
put out his hand to the knob, and stood twisting it. He looked in. Beyond the
door, a spiral staircase screwed around and up into sun and silence. His eyes
darted up like birds, flying and twining on the circular stair into forbidden,
sun-mellowed heights.
He
flung his books down without even thinking and ran in and climbed (he stairs up
and around and up around until his knees ached and his breath fountaincd in and
out, and his head banged like a bell with the effort, and at last he readied
the terrible summit of the climb and stood in a sundrenched tower to look out
upon a new World !
'It's
there!" he gasped, running from window to window in exultant discovery.
"It's there!"
He
was above the sombre tree barrier. For the first time in thirteen enclosed
years he was high over the windy chestnuts and elms and as far as his eye could
stretch he saw green and green grass and green trees and white ribbons on which
beetles ran, and the other half of the world was blue and endless, with a sun
in it like a navel, like an incredible deep blue room. It was so vast he felt
as if he were falling, and screamed, and held onto the tower ledge, and beyond
the trees, beyond the white ribbons where the beetles ran he saw things like
fingers sticking up, but he didn't see any Picasso-Dali creatures, but he did
see little red-white-and-blue handkerchiefs blowing in a slow wind on high
white poles.
He
was going to be sick. Great whitenesses moved across the eternal blue room over
him and birds flew like bullets, shrilling.
Turning, he almost fell flat down the stairs.
Slamming
the forbidden door at the bottom he heard the lock snap tight. He fell against
the door.
"You'll
go blind," he told himself, hysterically, hands to eyes. "You
shouldn't have seen. You'll go blind!"
In the hall, gasping,
staring, he waited for the blindness.
A minute later he stared from an ordinary
Highlands window, and saw only his own familiar
World. The high wall of elms, chestnuts and hickories, the
stone fence in the vast garden below. He had always taken the forest to be a wall beyond which was
nothing but terror, nothingness, and Beings. Now he knew his World didn't end
with the wall. There was more to the World than the Continent of Kitchen, the
Parlor Archipelago, the Peninsula of Learning, the Music Hall (he could hear
mother brightly speaking each of these clever names for places!). He tried the
locked door again.
Had
lie really gone up? Or was it a dream? Had he seen that half green, half blue
vastness?
What
if God had seen him now? Edwin trembled at the thought. God, who'd built this
house, timber on timber. God, who had smoked a mysterious black pipe and had a
shiny magic cane to walk with. God, who had made Edwin
and the World, and who might be watching, even now.
He
looked around. "I can still see," he told himself, thankfully. "I can still see."
Nine thirty, a good half
hour late, he rapped at the School.
The door swung open.
"Good morning,
Teacher."
Teacher Granleigh stood inside.
"You're late,
Edwin."
"I'm sorry."
Teacher
was unchanged. She wore the tall grey thick-clothed monk's robe, the cowl up
over her head. She wore the silver spectacles and the grey gloves. "Come
in," she said.
Beyond
her the land of books burned in colors from the hearth. There were walls bricked
with books, and a hearth wide enough to stand in without bumping your head, and
a blazing log for heat.
The door closed behind the
aching boy.
God
had been here. Once He had sat at that desk, there. Once He'd
walked this floor, touched these books. God had stuffed that pipe with
tobacco bits and puffed it. God had stood looking out that window. This was
God's room, and it smelled of Him; rubbed wood, tobacco leather and silver
spurs.
Edwin's face became a pale
and peaceful thing.
Here,
his heart slowed. Here, he relaxed. Teacher's voice sang like a little harp,
telling of God, the old days, and the World when it had shaken with God's
determination and trembled at his wit. Teacher told of the days when the World
skeleton was freshly blueprinted by His fingers, a pencil slash here, a loud,
decisive word there, an argument, and, finally, timber rising, nail, plaster,
paper and crystal. God's fingerprints still lay on little pencils under glass.
Teacher never touched them. The fingerprints must be left intact! she said.
Here,
in the Highlands, Edwin learned what was expected of him and his body. He was
to grow into a Presence. He was to fit the odors of God and the voice of God,
he was one day to stand tall and dark and very malignantly pale by that window
and make the house boom with his shout.
He
was to be Cod, himself, and nothing was to stop this. Not the sky or the trees
or the Things beyond the trees.
Teacher moved like a vapour in the room.
"Why weic you late, Edwin?"
"I don't know."
"I'll ask you again," she said.
"Why were you late?"
"Because." He looked at the floor so as not to see her. "I found a door. It
was open. One of the forbidden ones."
"A door!" Teacher Granleigh sank into a large carved chair, concerned, her
glasses flashing lights off them.
Her
eyes had suddenly grown intense, as if she didn't understand, or was afraid to
understand.
Edwin
felt drops of sweat collecting in the hollows of his eyes. "Yes. I went
in!" he said, swiftly, to get the pain over.
"I
won't hurt you," she said. "I won't hurt you," she insisted.
"Just tell me which door, where, it must be locked."
They
had always been friends. Was the friendship over? Had he spoiled things? He
felt like crying.
"The door
by the Dali-Picasso people. There was sunlight and steps and I climbed up, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry," he said in deep misery. "Don't tell Mother, please,
please!"
She
sat lost in her chair, her face vanishing deep back into the hollow of her grey
cowl, the glasses making only a faint glitter. "And what did you
sec?" she asked.
"A big blue
room."
"Did you?"
"And a green one. And ribbons!" He tried to make it sound
unimportant to himself, but there was no stopping the eagerness and wonder
behind the words.
"Ribbons?"
"Ribbons with bugs running on them. Like those little ladybugs that crawl on my
hand."
"And bugs running on the ribbons," she
repeated it, as if that was the last straw.
It
made him sad, her voice. She sounded as if she'd lost a precious something. He
wanted to make her happy.
"But
I didn't stay long," he said, eagerly. "I came right down and slammed
the door and locked it myself and won't go up again!"
"You
won't?" Her lips, faintly moved in the shadowed cowl, were doubtful.
"No'm."
"But
now you've seen," she said wearily, "and you'll want to see
more." "Mam?"
She shook her head. Then she leaned forward
and asked a question to which she wanted a negative answer, he could tell by
her tone: "And— did you like what
you saw?" "Ma'm ?"
"The
blue room, the blue room, child, did you like it?" "I don't
know." He fidgeted, trying not to think. Then he thought of a solution, a
way out. "I was scared." She relaxed visibly. "Were you?"
"Yes'm. It was big!''
"It is big, Edwin, too big,
uncomfortable, not like this world, and it's very uncertain, Edwin,
remember." "Yes'm," he said, wistfully.
"But
why did you climb the stairs when you knew they were behind a forbidden door ?"
He
knew the answer, but hid it, trembling. "I don't know." "There must be a reason."
The
fire bloomed and withered and bloomed on the hearth and she waited ten long
seconds. And finally lie went to the little hiding place in his mind and took
out the reason and without looking at teacher said, very low, "Mom."
"Your mother? She makes you—unhappy?"
"I
don't know, oh, I don't know," he wailed. It was going to be good to cry,
to tell someone, to get it over with and rest. "She—she," he gasped,
and drew his knees tight to his bosom, misery embraced. "She's ail tunny, all funny."
"Nervous ?"
"Yes,
yes."
"Touchy,
unbearable, tight, tense, is that it?"
The
words were correct buttons, pushed. He let go.
"Yes!"
It was a sin to admit such things of mother and he wailed and covered his face,
got his hands all wet and sticky, biting and crying on them. But he wasn't
saying the words, now, she said them, and all he had to do was agree between
sobs. "Yes, yes, oh, yes!"
'She
runs about, funny, does she? And snaps at you and holds onto you, too tight?
And sometimes—you want to be alone?"
Yes,
to all of them! It was very sad, he loved his mother dearly!
"That's
what makes you want to run away by yourself? because she
demands all your thoughts and every thing you do?"
Teacher
was a million years old. "We learn," she said to herself, wearily.
Rousing fitfully from her chair she walked with a slow swaying, grey robes
awhisper, to a pen and paper on the desk and wrote words out. "We learn,
Oh God, but slowly, and with much pain. We think we do things right, and all
the time we're killing the plan." She looked up at him swiftly. He was
caught with wet-rimmed, curious eyes.
"You're
growing up?" she said, not as a question, but as a heavy statement of
circumstanee. She finished the note. "Take this to your mother. It tells
her to let you have two full hours to yourself every afternoon, to prowl where
you wish. Except—out there." She stopped. "Are you listening to me, child?"
He
wiped away the tears. "Teacher. Did Mom lie to
me? I mean about out there, and the Things?"
"Look
at me," she said. He looked. She moved her cowl ever so little. "I've
been your friend, and never beaten you, as your mother sometimes has had to.
Both of us are here to help you understand. We don't want you destroyed as God
was destroyed."
Color from the hearth washed her face.
Edwin gasped.
She
looked familiar. The lines were erased by the firelight and she was revealed.
She looked like his mother!
His heart leaped against his ribs.
She noticed him. "What were you going to
say?" 'The fire," he looked at the fire and back at her face and the
cowl jerked away from his gaze, the face vanished in blackness. "You look
like Mom. I guess I'm funny."
She
walked swiftly to the books on the shelves, took one down. "You know women
look alike," she said, fumbling with it. "Forget it." She
breathed harshly. "Here." She brought him a book. "Read from the
first chapter of the Diary."
Edwin
read. The fire rumbled and sucked itself brilliantly up the flue, the grey cowl
settled and nodded and quieted, the face in it like a clapper in a solemn bell.
The firelight ignited the little animal lettering on the shelved books. Those
books from wdiich pages had been razored and torn and censored, from which
certain lines had been inked or erased, from which all pictures had been
ripped, some books glued shut, or locked in bronze straps, because Edwin might
see, read, understand. He read from the Diary:
"In
the Beginning there was God. Who created the World with all its corridors and
rooms and lands. With His hands he formed for his
pleasure his loving wife and much later the child Edwin who was to be a God
himself, after a number of years. . .
Teacher nodded and Edwin read on.
Down the banisters, breathless, he slid into
the Parlor. "Mom!"
She lay in a plump maroon chair, very like
bone china. She was breathing hard as if she'd been running, and perspiring.
"Mom, you're wet!"
"Oh,
hello," she said, looking at him as if it was his fault she had been
running and was wet. "Nothing, nothing."
Then she took him and kissed his cheeks. "Forgive me, darling. I'm a
weasel. I have a great surprise for you. Your birthday is coming!"
"So
soon? But
it's only been ten months."
"Tomorrow
it is, anyway. Do us wonders. I say so.
Anything I say is true, my dear."
"And we open another
room?" Dazed.
"The fourteenth room! Fifteenth room next year, and so on to your
twenty-fust birthday when we'll open the most important room and you'll be man
of the House, God, Father, Head of the World!"
"Wheel" He tossed
his books.
They laughed. It echoed and
shook crystals in all the continents.
Edwin lay on his moonlit bed. Beyond his open
window was the World's edge. Beyond was the blue world
and the green where the Wicked Killers lived.
Tomorrow, his birthday. Why? Was he a good boy? No. Why, then? Because things were—nervous. Yes. That was it. Because they needed his birthday to cheer and calm them.
He
sensed that the birthdays would come swifter, sooner from now on. The house was
knotting up. Things were tight, like fists. Mom laughed too high and too much
and there was a wild light in her eyes.
Would
Teacher be invited? No! Mom and she'd never met. "Why not. Mom?" "Because," said Mom. "Don't
you want to meet Mom, Teacher?" "Some day," said Teacher.
Where'd
teacher go nights? To one of the secret rooms? Out into there. He looked at the wall of trees. Hardly.
His eyes closed.
Last
year, when things had got nervous, Mom had advanced his birthday then, too.
Some
night, he dreamed, I'll go to the Highlands and see if Teacher's really there all the time.
Think
of something else. God. God building
this Land. Think of the hour of His death when the metal thing on the
concrete road crushed and killed Him because it was jealous of Him.
Oh, how the World must have
rocked with His passing
One day, I'll be God, Mom
says so.
He slept.
In the morning, bright voices below. In and out doors they moved. Edwin listened
against the door that was bolted from outside; it was always bolted on festive
days until tiie voices stopped below. Edwin scowled. Whose voices? They must be God's workers. They
couldn't be Dali People from out there! Mom hated them with perfumed fury. Silence.
"Happy
Birthday!"
Mom
danced him about the party table. Cakes and ices and
strawberries and hams and beefs and pink drinks in tall glasses and his name on
a snowy white cake and his age in red numbers. He was stunned.
"Where'd it come from?"
"Where
all food comes from." sang Mom, cryptically, swirling her green party
gown. She pi inked the piano in the music room and sang him Happy Buthday to
You, Happy Birthday, Dear Edwin, Happy Birthday to—
Wild fanatical joy. Down with the drinks and on with the dance. She was afraid to stop.
Will;
a silver key she unlocked the fourteenth,
forbidden door. Hold your breath!
The door slid into the wall.
Disappointment. This fourteenth birthday room was hardly worth looking at. On his
sixth birthday it had been the school in the Highlands. Seventh
birthday? The playroom in the Lowlands. Eighth? The music room. Ninth: (he
kitchen all glittery chrome. Tenth birthday—the phonograph room where angels
sang from moving discs. Eleventh: the garden room, a grass plot with a carpet
that really grew, and had to be cut instead of swept. Twelfth and thirteenth birthdays, the wonders of Mom's cosmetic
room and a new room for himself. Now, keenly disappointed, he looked
into the fourteenth room. A dim brown closet. They
stepped in.
Mom laughed. "You
don't know how magic it is. Shut the door."
Hastily she poked red
buttons on one wall.
"Mother!" he
.screamed.
The wall slid down. The room moved.
She soothed him.
"Hush, darling."
Horrified,
he watched the wall sink down into the floor, taking the door with it. Another
door appeared and then another. The room stopped. Mother pointed at the strange
new door. "Open it."
He opened it ami stood
paralyzed.
"Where's the parlor? How'd we get here?
This is the Highlands!" "We flew! From now on, once a week, you 11
fly to school instead of taking the long way round." "Oh,
Mother, Mother!"
They idled deliciously in the sweet grass of
the garden, sipping wide saucers of apple cider, their elbows on crimson silk
cushions, their feet, with the shoes kicked off. wriggling
in the tickly dandelions. Mom jumped three times when she heard a Monster roaring beyond the trees. One of those
Monsters that had run down and killed God. "I'll protect you,"
said Edwin. "Thank you," she said, with polite uneasiness.
Beyond
the trees, Chaos waited. Metal beasts shouted mating calls. Mom shivered,
convulsed her sequin shawl with her fingers. Once, they sighted a chromium bird
thing flying through the blue rift in the trees, humming.
From
the garden, a double path ran into oblivion, between trees. Down it, mother
whispered tensely over her cider, the beasts snuffled at night, wailing to mash
Edwin.
"See?" she
pointed. "Their droppings."
He saw the oily pools like molasses between
the double tracks. Crackle, crackle, crackle. The
birthday ended like cellophane burnt to nothing.
At
sunset in the Parlor security, mother inhaled champagne with her tiny, seedling
nostrils and her little eye of a mouth. She hiccupped with a soft flourish of
her breasts. Drowsy wild, she herded the cider-sober Edwin to his room, and a
moment later on her way downstairs dropped a champagne bottle two flights.
He
undressed in wonder. This year. Next.
And which room two years, three years from now? The beasts.
Being mashed. God. Killed. What was killed? What was death? Was death a
feeling? Did God enjoy it? Was death a journey?
Below, another champagne bottle shattered.
Morning was a cool smell in the room.
Downstairs, food was probably manifesting in a finger-snap on the table.
Edwin
washed and dressed. He outlined the day in his mind. Breakfast, school, lunch,
an hour in the music room at the piano, phonograph for an hour, then perhaps an
hour or two with the electrical games that shot back at him and Mom, then tea
in the Outlands. Then— He remembered the note. He picked it up. He'd forgotten
to give it to Mom. He'd give it to her now. She'd have to let him run around
the World by himself from tea-time until supper. Then, this evening, he might
go up to School again where he and Teacher prowled the censored library
together and he'd puzzle which words and thoughts about that world out there
had been censored from his eyes.
He
opened the door. There was an unusual silence in the World. He expected to
find Mom gay, happy, relaxed, waiting for him. The hall was empty.
Down
through the dells of the World a vapour hung like a light, unmov-ing veil.
There was a silence which no footstep broke; the hills were quiet, the silver
founts did not pulse in the first sunlight, and the balustrade lifted its
sinuous neck up up the stairs like some prehistoric monster, to peer into his
room. . . .
He walked downstairs to the parlor.
From the parlor, he walked to the dining
room.
"Good morning, Mother."
Mother slept in her shining green dress on
the floor, a glass still clasped in one hand. The hearth was littered with
glass bits, nearby. "Mother ?"
Her face was pale, relaxed, and she enjoyed
some dream.
Not
wanting to disturb her he sat at the table and was shocked to find it empty.
All bis life there'd been food on it, but not this
morning. Fie looked blankly at it.
Earlier,
he'd heard a beast baying outside the kitchen door. Insistently. Why?
He went to Mother. "Mother, wake up, wake up."
She
paid no attention. She'd had spells before of stubbornness, but now she would
not move.
"Shall I go to school?
I'm hungry."
He
sat on the chair lor half an hour
waiting for the food to appear like magic. It didn't.
"Well,"
he said, finally. "You just sleep, mother. I'm going up to school."
The
Highlands were gloomy and shadowed. The white glass suns that shone in the
ceilings no longer glowed. It was a day
of sullen fog in the World, up the dark corridors, on the soft,
silent stairs, through dim, dusty rooms Edwin wandered, a sense of overwhelming wrongness seizing on him. Things were changing.
He
rapped and rapped again at the School door. The door drifted in, whining, of
its own accord.
The
school was dark. The hearth stones were cold; no fire hid in its cavern to
throw shadows on the high ceiling. The blinds were drawn at the windows. The
books sat upon the shelves. There was not a sound.
"Teacher?"
He drew the blinds.
"Teacher
Cranleigh?"
Everything
was flat and empty. A faint colony of dust particles trickled down a melancholy
shaft of sunlight that fell upon the floor.
Edwin
put out his hands as if to normalize things. He wanted the fire to crack open
like a popcorn kernel, blooming to life. He shut his eyes to give Teacher lime
to appear. He opened them and was stupefied at what he saw on the desk.
Neatly folded was the grey cowl and the grey
robe, atop which gleamed (he silver spectacles, and one grey glove. He touched
them. One grey glove was gone. There were also two pieces of some greasy chalk
that made a mark on the back of his hand when he used it.
He
drew back, staring at Teacher's emptv robe, the glasses, the
greasy chalk. His hand fell upon a doorknob
in a door which had always been locked, on the far side of the room. The door
swung open, revealing another of those small, moving rooms.
"Teacher?" He walked into it. The door slid shut.
Pressing a bulton made it move and with it
moved a slow awful coldness, of fea,r. of silence, of
the World grown so very quiet. Teacher gone, and
mother—sleeping. Down sank the room, purring like a cat, then it clashed some machinery, and another door opened
before him as he pushed the door. He stepped out. The dining room!
Behind
him was not a door, but a tall, six foot book-case from which he'd emerged.
Edwin blinked rapidly.
And
Mother lay sleeping, untouched, uncaring, upon the floor. And folded under her,
barely showing, he noticed for the first time, was one of Teacher's soft grey
gloves.
He stood over her, staring down at the grey
glove.
After
awhile he began to whimper.
The
table was bare. He shouted for it to fill with food. Tt did not. He called to
Mother. She didn't move. He ran back up to the Highlands again and the hearth
was still cold, Teacher's robe still lay folded and empty, and one grey glove
was missing. He waited. Teacher didn't come. He ran back down the Lowlands,
crying now. He sat by Mother and talked with her and felt the grey glove. The
afternoon came and he was hungry.
The
idea of hunger and loneliness engulfed him.
Teacher
must be out in the Outlands somewhere, now. If he found her, he'd bring her
back to wake mother so everything would be fine!
Through
the kitchen, out back, he found late afternoon light and the beasts hooting
beyond the rim of the World. He clung to the garden wall, not daring to let go,
and then when nothing threatened, and sunlight warmed him as the hearth fire often
had, he felt better. He heard the wind blow softly in the trees. He walked on
the path. His feet slipped on the beast droppings and he stared far clown the
tunnel between the trees. Did he dare go beyond, out there?
"Teacher?"
He
walked along the beast spoor a few yards. "Teacher!"
Over
his shoulder lay his World and its very new silence. From a distance he heard
noises, sounds, beyond the trees. His mouth widened and his eyes squinted
fiercely. He walked some more, pausing, then going on.
Behind, he was startled to see his World diminish. How small! Why? It had
always been so large! He called again and again, and everything was new. Smells
filled his nose, colors and shapes and sizes filled his eyes.
If I
go beyond the trees I'll die, he thought. Mom said so. What's dying? What is it
anyway, what's it like? Is it another room? A blue one?
A green one? There's a big green one, ahead. Oh,
Mother, Teacher.
His
feet hurried, increased their pace, knowing not why. The legs that carried him
were no longer his own; his voice, his yelling, belonged to something new. The
path rushed under him, the Universe behind dwindled and vanished. He began to
laugh. . . .
The policeman scratched his head and looked at the pedestrian.
"These kids. Honest to God, I can't figure them."
"How's that?" asked the pedestrian.
The
policeman thought it over. "A second ago a little boy ran by. He laughed
and cried all at the same time. He jumped up and down and touched things. Things like bushes and trees and
little pieces of paper, and fire hydrants and dogs, and people. Things like
sidewalks and gates and parked cars. Why, Christ, he even touched me to see if was
here, and he looked at the sky, all running tears, and he kept yelling
something funny."
"What did he yell?" asked the
pedestrian.
"He
kept yelling, 'I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm glad I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, it's good to be dead, I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm glad I'm dead!' One of them new kid's games, I guess."
^Jlie l^Joticeabie (Conduct of f-^rofeiior
C^luidd
You have undoubtedly
enjoyed many of G. K. Chômerions
clever rind
sparkling stories. As a writer
of short
mysteries with paradoxical angles and vivid
characters, he is almost unbeatable.
But did
Chesterton write any science-fiction short stories? Novels in that
vein such
as The Napoleon of Notting 11 ill are known, but locating
a short
story, typically Chesterton and clearly science-fiction, was a rare
discovery. We turned tip the
one thai
follows in a little known
volume of his, The Club of Queer Trades, published in 1905, and
not reprinted
since as far as we know.
Professor Chadd is a scientific
discoverer, but how and why make an unusual story even
for science-fiction.
ASIL
GRANT had comparatively few friends besides myself;
yet he was the reverse of an unsociable man. He would talk to any one anywhere,
and talk not only well but with perfectly genuine concern and enthusiasm for
that person's affairs. He went through the world, as it were,
«4 if he were always on top of an omnibus or waiting for a train. Most or these
chance acquaintances, of course, vanished into darkness out of his life. A few
here and there got hooked on to him, so to speak, and became his lifelong
intimates, but there was an accidental look about all of them as if they were
windfalls, samples taken at random, goods fallen from a goods-train or presents
fished out of a bran-pie. One would be, let us say, a veterinary surgeon with
the appearance of a jockey; another a mild prebendary with a white beard and
vague views; another a young captain in the Lancers, seemingly exactly like
other captains in the Lancers; another a small dentist from Fulham, in all
reasonable certainty precisely like every other dentist from Fulham. Major
Brown, small, dry, and dapper, was one of these; Basil had made his
acquaintance over a discussion in a hotel cloak-room about the right hat, a
discussion which reduced the little major almost to a kind of masculine
hysterics, the compound of the selfishness of an old bachelor and the
scrupulosity of an old maid. They had gone home in a cab together and then
dined with each other twice a week until they died. I
42
myscll
was another. I had met Grant while he was still a judge, on the balcony of the
National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words about the weather. Then we had
talked for about half an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about
the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total
stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by
resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a mustache.
One
of (he most interesting of Basil's motley group of acquaintances was Professor
Chadd. He was known to the ethnological world (which is a very interesting
world, but a long way off this one) as the second greatest, if not the greatest,
authority on the relations of savages to language. He was known to the
neighborhood of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head,
spectacles, and a patient face, the face of an unaccountable Nonconformist who
had forgotten how to be angry. He went to and fro between the British Museum
and a selection ot blameless tea-shops, with an armful
of books and a poor but honest umbrella. He was never seen without the books
and the umbrella, and was supposed (by the lighter wits of the Persian MS. room)
to go to bed with them in his little brick villa in the neighborhood of
Shepherd's Bush. There he lived with three sisters, ladies of solid goodness
but sinister demeanor. His life was happy, as are almost all the lives of
methodical students, but one would not have called it exhilarating. His only
hours of exhilaration occurred when his friend, Basil Grant, came into the
house, late at night, a tornado of conversation.
Basil,
though close on sixty, had moods of boisterous babyishness, and these seemed
for some reason or other to descend upon him, particularly in the house of his
studious and almost dingy friend. I can remember vividly (for I was acquainted
with both parties and often dined with them) the gayety of Grant on that
particular evening wdien the strange calamity fell upon the professor.
Professor Chadd was, like most of his particular class and type (the class that
is at once academic and middle-class), a Radical of a solemn and old-fashioned
type. Grant was a Radical himself, but he was that more discriminating and not
uncommon type of Radical who passes most of his time in abusing the Radical
party. Chadd had just contributed to a magazine an article called "Zulu
Interests and the New Makango Frontier," in which a precise scientific
report of his study of the customs of the people of T'Chaka was reinforced by a
severe protest against certain interference with these customs both by the
British and the Germans. He was sitting with the magazine in front of him, the
lamplight shining on his spectacles, a wrinkle in his forehead, not of anger,
but of perplexity, as Basil Grant strode up and down the room, shaking it with
his voice, with his high spirits and his heavy tread.
"It's
not your opinions that I object to, my esteemed Chadd," he was saying,
"it's you. You arc quite right to champion the
Zulus, but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the
Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but
for all that you don't
understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from
an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that
the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are
their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are
weli informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage. Live no longer under that rosy
illusion. Look in the glass. Ask your sisters. Consult the librarian of the
British Museum. Look at this umbrella." And he held up that sad but still
respectable article. "Look at it. Eor ten mortal years to my certain
knowledge you have carried that object under your arm, and I have no sort of
doubt that you carried it at the age cf eight months, and it never occurred to
you to give one wild yell and hurl it like a javelin—thus—"
And
he sent the umbrella whizzing past the professor's bald head, so that it
knocked over a pile of books with a crash
and left a vase rocking.
Professor
Chadd appeared totally unmoved, with his face still lifted to the lamp and the
wrinkle cut in his forehead.
"Your
mental processes," he said, "always go a little too fast. And they are stated without method. There is no kind of
inconsistency"—and no words can convey the time he took to get to the end
of the word—"between valuing the right of the aborigines to adhere to
their stage in the evolutionary process so long as they find it congenial and
requisite to do so. There is, 1 say no inconsistency between this concession
which I have just described to you and the view that the evolutionary stage in
question is, nevertheless, so far as we can form any estimate of values in the
variety of cosmic processes, definable in some degree as an inferior
evolutionary stage"
Nothing
but his lips had moved as he spoke, and his glasses still shone like two pallid
moons.
Grant was shaking with
laughter as he watched him.
"True,"
he said, "there is no inconsistency, my son of the red spear. But there is
a great deal of incompatibility of temper. I am very far from being certain
that the Zulu is on an inferior evolutionary stage, whatever the blazes that
may mean. I do not think there is anything stupid or ignorant about howling at
the moon or being afraid of devils in the dark. It seems to me perfectly
philosophical. Why should a man
be thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril of existence
itself? Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we
are not afraid of devils in the dark?"
Professor
Chadd slit open a page of the magazine with a bone paper-knife and the intent
reverence of the bibliophile.
"Beyond
all question," he said, "it is a tenable hypothesis. I allude to the
hypothesis which I understand you to entertain, that our civilization is rot or
may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if I apprehend you) is, or may be a
retrogression from states identical with or analogous to the state of the
Zulus. Moreover, I shall be inclined to concede that such a proposition is of
the nature, in some degree at least, of a primary ptopiosidon, and cannot adequately be argued, in the same
sense, I mean, that the primary proposition of pessimism, or the primary
proposition of the non-existence of matter cannot adequately be argued. But I
do not conceive you to be under the impression that you have demonstrated
anything more concerning this proposition than that it is tenable, which, after
all, amounts to little more than the statement that it is not a contradiction
in terms."
Basil threw a book at his
head and took out a cigar.
"You
don't understand," he said, "but, on the other hand, as a compensation, you don't mind smoking. Why you don't
object to that disgustingly barbaric rite I can't think. I can only say that I
began it when I began to be a Zulu, about the age of ten. What I maintained was
that although you knew more about Zulus in the sense that you are a scientist,
I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage. For instance, your
theory of the origin of language, something about its having come from the
formulated secret language of some individual creature, though you knocked me
silly with facts and scholarship in its favor, still does not convince me, because
I have a feeling that that is not the way that things happen. If you ask me why
I think so, I can only answer that I am a Zulu; and if you ask me (as you most
certainly will) what is my definition of a Zulu, I can answer that also. He is
one who has climbed a Sussex appletree at seven and been afraid of a ghost in
an English lane."
"Your
process of thought—" began the immovable Chadd, but his speech was
interrupted. His sister, with that masculinity which always in such families
concentrates in sisters, flung open the door with a rigid arm and said:
"James, Mr. Bingham,
of the British Museum, wants to see you again."
The
philosopher ro.^e with a dazed look, which always indicates in such men the
fact that they regard philosophy as a familiar thing, but practical life as a
weird and unnerving vision, and walked dubiously out ot the room.
"1
hope you. do not mind my being aware of it, Miss
Chadd," said Basil Grant, "but I hear that the British Museum has
recognized one of the men who have deserved well of their commonwealth. It is
true, is it not, that Professor Chadd is likely to be made keeper of Asiatic
manuscripts?"
The
grim face ot the spinster betrayed a great deal of
pleasure and a great deal of pathos also. "I believe
it's true," she said. "If it is, it will not only be great glory
which women, I assure you, feel a great deal, but great relief, which they feel
more—relief from worry from a lot of things. James's health has never been
good, and while we are as poor as we are, he had to do journalism and coaching,
in addition to his own dreadful grinding notions and discoveries, which he
loves more than man, woman, or child. I have often been afraid that unless
something of this kind occurred we should really have to be careful of his
brain. But I believe it is practically settled."
"I
am delighted," began Basil, but with a worried face, "but these
red-tape negotiations axe so terribly chancy that I really can't advise you to
build on hope, only to be hurled down into bitterness. Eve known men, and good
men like your brother, come nearer than this and be
disappointed. Of course, if it is true—"
"If
it is true," said the woman, fiercely, "it means that people who have
never lived may make an attempt at living."
Even
as she spoke the professor came into the room, still with the mazed look in his
eyes.
"Is it true?"
asked Basil, with burning eyes.
"Not a bit true," answered Chadd,
after a moment's bewilderment. "Your argument was in three points
fallacious." "What do you mean?" demanded Grant.
"Well,"
said the professor, slowly, "in saying that you could possess a knowledge of the essence of Zulu life
distinct from—"
"Oh,
confound Zulu life!" cried Grant, with a burst of laughter. "I mean,
have you got the post?"
"You
mean the post of keeper of the Asiatic manuscripts," he said, opening his
eye with childlike wonder. "Oh yes, I got that. But the real objection to
your argument, which has only, I admit, occurred to me since 1 have been out of
the room, is that it does not merely presuppose a Zulu truth apart from the
facts, but infers that the discovery of it is absolutely impeded by the
facts."
"I
am crushed," said Basil, and sat down to laugh, while the professor's
sister retired to her room, possibly to laugh, possibly not.
It was extremely late when we left the
Chadds', and it is an extremely long and tiresome journey from Shepherd's Bush
to Lambeth. This may be our excuse for the fact that we (for I was stopping the
night with Grant) got down to breakfast next day at a time inexpressibly
criminal, a time, in point of fact, close upon noon. Even to that beiated meal
we came in a very lounging and leisurely fashion. Grant, in particular, seemed
so dreamy at table that he scarcely saw the pile of letters by his plate, and I
doubt if he would have opened any of them if there had not lain on the top that
one thing which has succeeded amid modern carelessness in being really urgent
and coercive—a telegram. This he opened with the same heavy distraction with
which he broke his egg and drank his tea. When he read it he did not stir a
hair or say a word, but something, I know not what, made me feel that the
motionless figure had been pulled together suddenly as strings are tightened on
a slack guitar. Though he said nothing and did not move, I knew that he had
been for an instant cleared and sharpened with a shock of cold water. It was
scarcely any surprise to me when the man who had drifted sullenly to his seat
and fallen into it, kicked it away like a cur from under him and came round to
me in two strides.
"What do you make of that?" he
said, and flattened out the wire in front of me.
It ran: "Please come at once. James's mental state dangerous. Chadd."
"What docs the woman
mean?" I said, after a pause, irritably. "Those women have been
saying that the poor old professor was mad ever since he was born."
"You
are mistaken," said Grant, composedly. "It is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of
that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. But they don't put
it in telegrams, any more than they wire to you that the grass is green or God all-merciful. These things are truisms, and often private ones at that. If Mis* Chadd has
written down under the eye of a strange woman in a post ofiice that her brother
is oif his head, you may be perfectly certain that she did it because it was a matter of life and death, and she can think of
no other way of forcing us to come promptly."
"St will force us, of
course," I said, smiling.
"Oh yes," he replied; "there is a cab-rank near."
Basil scarcely said a word as we drove across
Westminster Bridge, through Trafalgar Square, along Piccadilly, and up the
Uxbridge Road.
Only as he was opening the gate he spoke.
"I
think you may take my word for it, my friend," he said, "this is one
ol the most queer and complicated and astounding incidents that ever happened
in London or, for that matter, in any high
civilization."
"I
confess with the greatest sympathy and reverence that I don't quite see
it," 1 said. "Is it so very extraordinary or
complicated that a dreamy somnambulant old invalid who has always walked on the
borders of tire inconceivable should go mad under the shock of a great job? Is
it so very extraordinary that a man with a head like a turnip and a soul like a
spider's web should not iind his strength equal to a confounding change of
fortunes? Is it, in short, so very extraordinary that James Chadd should lose his wits from excitement ?"
"It
would not be extraordinary in the least," answered Basil, with placidity.
It would not be extraordinary in the least," he repeated, "if the
professor had gone mad. That was not the extraordinary circumstance to which I referred."
"What," I asked,
stamping my foot, "was the extraordinary thing?"
"The
extraordinary thing," said Basil, ringing the bell, "is that he has not gone mad irom excitement."
The
tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the doorway as the
door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlor.
There was a general sense of their keeping something from view. They seemed
like three black-clad ladies in some
strange play of Maeterlinck, veiling the catastrophe from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.
"Sit
down, won't you?" said one of them, in a voice that was somewhat rigid with pain. "I think you had better be told first what has happened."
Then,
with her bleak face looking unmeaningly out of the window, she continued, in an even and mechanical voice:
"I had better state everything that
occurred just as it occurred. This morning I was clearing away the breakfast
things; my sisters were both somewhat unwell, and had not come down. My brother
had just gone out of the room, I believe,
to fetch a book. He came back again, however, without it, and stood for some
time staring at the empty grate. I said, "Were
you looking for anything I could get?' He did not answer, but this constantly
happens, as he is often very abstracted. I repeated my question, and still he
did not answer. Sometimes he is so wrapped up in his studies that nothing but a
touch on the shoulder would make him aware of one's presence, so I came round
the table towards him. I really do not know how to describe the sensation
which I then had. It seems simply silly, but at the moment it seemed something
enormous, upsetting one's brain. The fact is, James
was standing on one leg."
Grant smiled slowly and
rubbed his hands with a kind of care.
"Standing on one
leg?" I repeated.
"Yes,"
replied the dead voice of the woman, without an inflection to suggest that she
felt the fantasticality of her statement.
"He
was standing on the left leg and had the right drawn up at a sharp angle, the
toe pointing downward. I asked him if his leg hurt him. His only answer was to
shoot the leg straight at right angles to the other, as if pointing to the
other with his toe to the wall. He was still looking quite gravely at the
fireplace.
" 'James, what is the matter?' I cried, for I was thoroughly frightened. James
gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flung up the other, gave three
kicks in the air with it also, and spun round like a teetotum the other way.
'Are you mad?' I cried. 'Why don't you answer me?' He had come to a standstill,
facing me, and was looking at me as he always does, with his lifted eyebrows
and great spectacled eyes. When I had spoken he remained a second or two
motionless, and then his only reply was to lift his left foot slowly from the
floor and describe circles with it in the air. I rushed to the door and shouted
for Christina. I will not dwell on the dreadful hours that followed. All three
of us talked to him, ran after him, tried to soothe him, tried to rouse him,
implored him to speak with us with appeals that might have brought back the
dead, but he has done nothing but hop and dance and kick with a solemn, silent
face. It looks as if his leg belonged to some one else or were possessed by
devils. He has never spoken to us from that time to this."
"Where
is Professor Chadd now?" I said, getting up in some agitation. "We
ought*not to leave him alone."
"Dr.
Colman is with him," said Miss Chadd, calmly. "They are in the
garden. Dr. Colman thought the air would do him good. And he can scarcely go
into the street."
Basil
and I walked rapidly to the window which looked out on the garden. It was a
small and somewhat smug suburban garden; the flowerbeds a little too neat and
like the pattern of a colored carpet; but on this shining and opulent summer day even they had the exuberance
of something natural, I had almost said tropical. In the middle of a bright and
verdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures. One of them was a
small, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat (I presume
Dr. Colman), who was talking very quietly and clearly, yet with a nervous
twitch, as it were, in his face. The other was our old friend listening with
his old forbearing expression and owlish eyes, the strong sunlight gleaming on
his glasses as the lamplight had gleamed the night before, when the boisterous
Basil had rallied him on his studious decorum. But for one thing the figure of
this morning might have been the identical figure of last night. That one thing
was that while the face listened reposefully the legs were industriously
dancing like the legs of a marionette. The neat flowers and the sunny glitter
of the garden lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility to the
prodigy—the prodigy of the head of a hermit and the legs of a harlequin. For
miracles should always happen in broad daylight. The night makes them credible
and therefore commonplace.
The
second sister had by this time entered the room and came somewhat drearily to
the window.
"You
know, Adelaide," she said, "that Mr. Bingham from the museum is
coming again at three."
"J
know," said Adelaide Chadd, bitterly. "I
suppose we shall have to tell him about this. 1 thought that no good-fortune would ever come easily to us."
Grant
suddenly turned round. "What do you mean?" he said. "What will
you have to tell Mr. Bingham?"
"You
know what I shall have to tell him," said the professor's sister, almost
fiercely. "I don't know that we need give it its wretchc-d name. Do you
think that the keeper of Asiatic manuscripts will be allowed to go on like
that?" And she pointed for an instant at the figure in the garden, the
shining, listening face and the unresting feet.
Basil
Grant took out his watch with an abrupt movement. "When did you say the
British Museum man was coming?" he said.
"Three o'clock,"
said Miss Chadd, briefly.
"Then I have an hour belore me,"
said Grant, and without another word threw up the window and jumped out into
the garden. He did not walk straight up to the doctor and lunatic, but
strolling round the garden path drew near them cautiously and yet apparently
carelessly. He stood a couple of feet off them, seemingly counting halfpence
out of his trousers-pocket, but, as I could see, looking up steadily under the
broad brim of his hat.
Suddenly
he stepped up to Prolessor Chadd's elbow, and said, in a loud, familiar voiee,
"Well, my boy, do you still think the Zulus our inferiors?"
The doctor knitted his brows and looked
anxious, seeming to be about to speak. The professor turned his bald and placid
head towards Grant in a friendly fashion, but made no answer, idly
flinging his left leg about.
''Have you converted Dr. Colman to your
views?" Basil continued, still in the same loud and lucid tone.
Cha
Id only -hcfJci his feet and kicked a little with, the other leg, his
expression still benevolent and inquiring. The doctor cut in rather sharply.
"Shall we go inside, professor?" he said. "Now you have shown me
the •jarden. A beautiful warden. A
most beautiful garden. Let us go in," and he tried to draw die
kicking ethnologist by the elbow, at the same time whispering to Grant: "]
musl ask you not to trouble him with questions. Most risky.
He must be soothed."
Basil answered in the same
lone, with great coolness:
"Of
course your directions must be followed out, doctor. I will endeavor to do so,
but I hope it will not be inconsistent with them it you will leave me alone
with my poor friend in this garden for an hour. I want to watch him. 1 assure you, Dr. Colman, (hat I shall say very
little to him, and tliat little shall be as soothing as—as soup."
The doctor wiped his eye
glass thoughtfully.
"It
is rather dangerous lor him," he said, "to be long in this strong sun
without his hat. With his bald head, too."
"That
is soon settled," said Basil, composedly, and look off his own big hat'and
clapped it on the egglike skull of the professor. The latter did not turn
round, but danced away with his eyes on the horizon.
The
doctor put on his glasses again, looked severely at the two for some seconds,
with his head on one side, like a bird's, and (lien saying, shortly, "All
right," strutted away into the house, where the three Misses Chadd were
all looking out from the parlor window on to the garden. They looked out on it
with hungry eyes for a full hour without moving, and they saw a sight which was more extraordinary than madness itself.
Basil
Grant addressed a few questions to the madman, without succeeding
in making him do anything but continue to caper, and when he had done this he
slowly took a red notebook out of one pocket and a large pencil out of another.
He
began hurriedly to scribble notes. When the lunatic skipped away from him he
would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes again. Thus they followed
each other round and round the foolish circle of turf, the one writing in
pencil with the face of a man
working out a problem, the other leaping and playing like a child.
After
about three-quarters ot an hour of this imbecile scene, Grant put the pencil in
his pocket, but kept the notebook open in his hand, and, walking round the mad
professor, planted himself directly in front of him.
Then occurred something that even those already used to that wild morning
had not anticipated or dreamed. The professor, on finding Basil in front
of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds, and^then drew up his left leg and hung it bent in the
attitude that his sister had described as being the first of all his antics.
And the moment he had done it Basil Grant lifted his own leg and held it out
rigid before him, confronting Chadd with the flat sole of his boot. The professor dropped his bent leg,
and, swinging his weight on it, kicked out the other behind, like a man swimming.
Basil crossed his feet like a saltier cross, and then flung them apart again,
giving a leap into the air. Then, before any of the spectators could say a word
or even entertain a thought about the matter, both of them were dancing a sort
of jig or hornpipe opposite each other; and the sun shone down on two madmen
instead of one.
They
were so stricken with the deafness and blindness of monomania that they did not
see the eldest Miss Chadd come out feverishly into the garden witli gestures of
entreaty, a gentleman following her. Professor Chadd was in the wildest posture
of a pas de quatre. Basil Grant seemed about to
turn a cartwheel, when they were frozen in their follies by the steely voice of
Adelaide Chadd saying, "Mr. Bingham of the British Museum."
Mr. Bingham was a slim, well-clad gentleman with a pointed and slightly
effeminate gray beard, unimpeachable gloves, and formal but agreeable manners. He was the type of the overcivilized, as
Professor Chadd was of the uncivilized pedant. His formality and agreeableness
did him some credit under the circumstances. He had a vast experience of books
and a considerable experience of the more dilettante fashionable salons. But
neither branch of knowledge had accustomed him to the spectacle of two
gray-haired middle-class gentlemen in modern costume throwing themselves about
like acrobats, as a substitute for an after-dinner nap.
The
prolessor continued his antics with perfect placidity, but Grant stopped
abruptly. The doctor had reappeared on the scene, and his shiny black eyes,
under his shiny black hat, moved restlessly from one of them to the other.
"Dr.
Cohnan," said Basil, turning to him, "will you entertain Professor
Chadd again lor a little while? I am sure that he needs you. Mr. Bingham, might
I have the pleasure of a lew moments' private conversation? My name is
Grant."
Mr.
Bingham ol the British Museum bowed in a manner that was respectful but a
trifle bewildered.
"Miss
Chadd will excuse me." continued Basil, easily, "if I know my way about the house." And he led the dazed librarian
rapidly through the back door into the parlor.
"Mr.
Bingham," said Basil, setting a chair lor him, "I imagine that Miss Chadd has told you of this distressing occurrence."
"She
has, Mr. Grant," said Bingham, looking at the table with a sort of
compassionate nervousness. "I am more pained than I can say by tin's dreadful
calamity. It seems quite heart-rending that the thing should have happened
just as we have decided to give your eminent friend a position which falls far
short of his merits. As it is, of course—really, I don't know what to say.
Prolessor Chadd may. ot course, retain—I sincerely
trust he will— his extraordinarily valuable intellect. But I am afraid—I am
really afraid— that it would not do to have the curator of the Asiatic
manuscripts—er— dancing about."
"I
have a suggestion to
make," said Basil, and sat down abruptly in his chair, drawing it up to
the table.
"I
am delighted, of
course," said the gentleman from the British Museum, coughing and drawing
up his chair also.
The
clock on the mantel-piece ticked for just the moments required for Basil to
clear his throat and collect his words, and then he said:
"My
proposal is this. I do not know that in the strict use of words you could altogether
call it a compromise. Still, it has something of that character. My proposal
is that the government ('acting, as 1 presume, through your museum) should pay
Professor Chadd £800
a year until he stops
dancing."
"Eight
hundred a year," said Mr. Bingham, and for the first time lifted his mild
blue eyes to those of his interlocutor—and he raised them with a mild blue
stare. "I think I have
not quite understood you. Did I understand you to say that Professor Chadd
ought to be employed in his present state, in the Asiatic manuscript department
at eight hundred a year?"
Grant
shook his head resolutely.
"No,"
he said, firmly. "No. Chadd is a friend of mine,
and I would say anything for him I could. But I do not say, I cannot say, that he
ought to take on the Asiatic manuscripts. I do not go so far as that. I merely
say that until he stops dancing you ought to pay him £800. Surely you have some general fund for the endowment of research."
Mr.
Bingham looked bewildered.
"I
really don't know," he
said, blinking his eyes, "what you are talking about. Do you ask us to
give this obvious lunatic nearly a thousand a year for life?"
"Not
at all," cried Basil, keenly and triumphantly. "I never said for life. Not at
all."
"What
for, then?" asked the meek Mr. Bingham, suppressing an instinct meekly to
tear his hair. "How long is this endowment to run? Not till his death? Till the judgement-day?"
"No,"
said Basil, beaming, "but just what I said. Till he has
stopped dancing." And he lay back with
satisfaction and his hands in his pockets.
Bingham
had by this lime fastened his eyes keenly on Basil Grant and kept them there.
"Come,
Mr. Grant," he said. "Do I seriously
understand you to suggest that the government pay Professor Chadd an extraordinarily
high salary simply on the ground that he is Hinging his boots about the backyard?"
"Precisely,"
said Grant, composedly.
"That
this absurd payment is not only to run on with the absurd dancing, but actually
to stop with the absurd dancing?"
"One must stop somewhere," said
Grant. "Of course." Bingham rose and took up
his perfect stick and gloves. "There is really nothing more to be said,
Mr. Grant," he said coldly.
"What
yon are trying to explain to me may be a joke—a slightly unfeeling joke. It may
be your sincere view, in which case I ask your pardon for (he
former suggestion. But, in any case, it appears quite irrelevant to rny duties.
The mental morbidity, the mental downfall, of Professor Chadd is a thing so
painful to me that I cannot easily endure to speak of it. But it is clear there
is a limit to everything. And if the Archangel Gabriel went mad it would sever
his connection, I am sorry to say, with the British Museum Library."
He
was stepping towards the door, but Grant's hand, flung out in dramatic
warning, arrested him.
"Stop!"
said Basil, sternly. "Stop while there is yet time. Do you want to take
part in a great work. Mr. Bingham? C»c you want to
help in the glory of Europe—in the glory of science? Do you want to carry your
head in the air when it is bald or while, because of the part that you bore in
a great discovery? Do you want—"
Bingham cut in sharply:
"And if I do want
this, Mr. Grant—"
"Then,"
said Basil, lightly, "your task is easy. Get Chadd £800 a year til! he stops dancing."
With
a fierce flap of his swinging gloves, Bingham turned impatiently to the door,
but in passing out of it found it blocked. Dr. Colman was coming in.
"Forgive
me, gentlemen," he said, in a nervous, confidential voice, "the fact
is, Mr. Grant, I—er—have made a most disturbing discovery
about Mr. Chadd."
Bingham
looked at him with grave eyes. "I was afraid so," he said.
"Drink, I imagine."
"Drink!"
echoed Colman, as if that were a much milder affair. "Oh no, it's not
drink."
Mr. Bingham became somewhat agitated, and his
voice grew hurried and vague. "Homicidal mania—" he began.
"No, no," said
the medical man, impatiently.
"Think
he's made of glass," said Bingham, feverishly, "or says he's God —or.—"
"No," said Dr. Colman, sharply,
"the fact is, Mr. Grant, my discovery is of a different character. The
awful thing about hum is—" "Oh, go on, sir," cried Bingham, in
agony.
"The awful thing about him is,"
repeated Colrnan, with deliberation, "that he isn't mad." "Not
mad!"
"There
are cjuite well-known physical tests of lunacy," said the doctor, shortly,
"he hasn't got any of them.'
"But
why decs he dance?" cried the despairing Bingham. "Why doesn't he
answer us? Why hasn't he spoken to his family?"'
"The devil knows," said Dr. Colman,
coolly. "I'm paid to judge of lunatics, but not of fools. The man's not
mad."
"What
on earth can it mean? Can't we make him listen?" said Mr. Bingham.
"Can none get into any kind of communication with him?"
Grant's voice struck in sudden and clear, like a steel bell.
"I
shall be very happy," he said, "to give him
any message you like to send."
Both men stared at him.
"Give
him a message?" they cried, simultaneously, "flow will you give him a
message?"
Basil smiled in his slow
way.
"If
you really want to know how I shall give him your message—-" he began, but
Bingham cried:
"Of
course, of course," with a sort of frenzy.
"Well,"
said Basil, "like this." And he suddenly sprang a foot into the air,
coming down with crashing boots, and then stood on one leg.
His
face was stern, though this effect was slightly spoiled by the fact that one of
his feet was making wild circles in the air.
"You
drive me to it," he said. "You drive me to betray my friend. And I will, for his own sake, betray him."
The
sensitive face of Bingham took on an extra expression of distress as of one
anticipating some disgraceful disclosure. "Anything painful, of
course—" he began.
Basil
let his loose foot fall on the carpet with a crash that struck them all rigid
in their feeble attitudes.
"Idiots!"
he cried. "Have you seen the man? Have you looked at James Chadd going
dismally to and fro from his dingy house to your miserable library, with his
futile books and his confounded umbrella, and never seen that he has the eyes
of a fanatic? Have you never noticed, stuck casually
behind his spectacles and above his seedy old collar, the face of a man who
might have burned heretics or died for the philosopher's stone? It is all my fault, in a way; I lit the dynamite of his deadly
faith. I argued against him on the score of his famous theory about
language—the theory that language was complete in certain individuals and was
picked up by others simply by watching them. I also chaffed him about not
understanding things in rough and ready practice. What has this glorious bigot
done? He has answered me. He has worked out a system of language of his own (it
would take too long to explain) ; he has made up, I
say, a language of his own. And he has sworn that till people understand it,
till he can speak to us in this language, he will not speak in any other. And
he shall not. I have understood, by taking careful notice; and, by Heaven, so
shall the others. This shall not be blown upon. He
shall finish his experiment. He shall have £800 a year from somewhere till he
has stopped dancing. To stop him now is an infamous war on a great idea. It is
religious persecution."
Mr. Bingham held out his
hand cordially.
"I thank you, Mc. Grant," he said.
"I hope I shall be able to answer for the source of the £800, and I fancy
that I shall. Will you come in my cab?"
"No,
thank you verv much, Mr. Bingham," said Grant, heartily, "I think I
will go and have a chat with the professor in the garden."
The
conversation between Chadd and Grant appeared to be personal and friendly. They
were still dancing when I left.
by ^Arnthonu Voucher
The magic of
the Souili
Sen.?,
the mastery
of time,
and the ancient dread of witchcraft
arc combined
here to
make an unforgettable horror story. Anthony
Boucher, the author, started as a writer of detective
novels, and achieved a high standing
in that
field. In fact, we understand
that he
was recently
elected president of the Mystery Writers of America, a sort of trade union for the profession.
But he
has also
shown himself to be an
enthusiastic fantasist, contributing occasional stories of high merit
to the
various magazines. We found this
one in an issue of Adventure, which makes us
feel that
it will be surely new to
those fans who
prefer to look for their fantasy
exclusively in undiluted bottles.
ORM
MARKER said, "Their medicine men can do time travel, loo. At least, that's
the firm belief everywhere on the island: a tualala can go forward in time and bring back any
single item you specify, for a price. We used to spend the night watches
speculating on what would be the one best thing to order."
Norman
hadn't told us the name of the island. The stripe and a half on his sleeve lent
him discretion; and Tokyo hadn't learned yet what secret installations the Navy
had been busy with on that minute portion of the South Pacific. He couldn't
talk about the installations, of course; but the island had provided him with
plenty o( other matters to keep us entertained, sitting up there on the Top of
the Mark.
"What would you order, Tony," he
asked, "with a carte
blanche like
that on the future?" "How far future?"
"They
say a tualala goes to one hundred years from date, no more, no less."
"Money
wouldn't work," I mused. "Jewels, maybe. Or
a gadget—any gadget—and you could invent it as of now and make a fortune. But
then it
56
might
depend on principles not yet worked out. ...
Or the Gone With the Wind of the twenty-first century—but publish if now and it could lay an egg.
Can you imagine today's best sellers trying to compete with Dickens? No, it's a
tricky question. What did you try?"
"We
finally settled on Hitler's tombstone. Think of the admission tickets we could
sell to see that!"
"And?"
"And nothing. We couldn't pay the IhjIjLi's price. For each article fetched through time
he wanted one virgin from (he neighboring island. We
ielt the staff somehow might not understand if we went collecting them. There's
always a catch to magic," Norman concluded lightly.
Fergus
O'Brien said, "Uh-huh," and nodded gravely. He hadn't been saying
much all evening—just sitting there and looking out over the panorama oi the
Bay by night, a glistening joy, now that dimout was over, and taking in Norm's
stories. I still don't know the sort of work he's been doing, but it's changing
him, toning him down.
But
even a toned down Irishman can stand only so much silence, and there was
obviously a story ready on his lips. Norm asked, "You've been running into
magic, too?"
"Not
lately." Fergus held his drink up to the light. "Damned if I know why
writers always call a highball an amber liquid," he observed. "Start a cliche and it sticks. . . . Like about detectives being hard-headed
realists. Didn't you ever slop to think (hat there's hardly another profession
outside the clergy that's so apt to run up against (he tilings beyond realism?
Why do you call in a detective? Because something screwy's
going on and you need an explanation. And it there isn't an explanation.
. . .
"This
was back a ways. Back when I didn't have anything
worse to deal with than murderers, and once a werewolf. But he was a hell of a
swell guy. The murderers I used to think were pretty thorough low-lifes, but
now. . . . Anyway, this was back then. I was down in Mexico putting the finishing
touches on a case when I heard from Dan Raletti. I think you know him,
Tony—he's an investigator lor Southwest National Life Insurance, and he's
thrown some business my way now and then.
"This
one sounded interesting. Nothing spectacular, you understand, and probably no
money to speak of. But the kind ol crazy, unexplained little detail that stirs
up the O'Brien curiosity. Very simple: Southwest gets a claim from a beneficiary. One ol (heir customers died down in Mexico,
and his sister wants the cash. They sent (o the Mexican authorities for a
report on bis death and it was heart failure and that's that. Only the policy
is made out to Mr. Frank Miller and the Mexican report refers to him as Dr. V. Miller. They ask the sister and she's certain
he hadn't any right to such a title.
So 1 happen to be right near Tlichotl, where he died, and would I please kind
ol nose around and see was there anything phony, like maybe an imposture.
Photographs and fingerprints—from a civil service application he once
made—enclosed."
"Nice businesslike beginning," Norm
said.
Fergus nodded. "That's the way it
started, all very routine, yours-of-the-27th-?'. Prosaic-like.
And Tlichotl was prosaic enough, too. Maybe to a tourist it'd be picturesque,
but I'd been kicking around these Mexican mountain towns long enough so one
seemed as commonplace as another. Sort of a montage of flat houses and white
trousers and dogs and children and an old church and an almost-as-old pulquería and one that plays a hell of a guitar on Saturday nights.
"Tlichotl
wasn't much different. There was a mine near it, and just out of town was a
bunch of drab new trame
houses lor the American
engineers. Everybody in town worked in the mine—ail
pure Indians, with those chaste profiles straight off of Aztec murals that
begin to seem like the only right and normal human face when you've been among
'em long enough.
"1
went to the doctor first. He was the government sanitation agent and health
instructor, and the town looked like he was doing a good job. His English was
better than my Spanish and he was glad I like tequila. Yes, he remembered Dr.
Miller. He checked up his records, announced that Dr. M. had died on November
Second. It was January when I talked
to him. Simple death: heart failure. Fle'd had several attacks in the previous weeks, and the doctor had expected him to go any day. Al! oí a sudden a friend he hadn't seen in years showed
up in town unannounced, and the shock did it, Any little thing might have.
"The
doctor wasn't a stupid man, or a careless one. I was willing to take his word
that the death was natura!—and maybe I ought to put in here, before
your devious minds start getting ahead of me, that as lar as I ever learned he was absolutely right. Common- or garden-variety of
heart failure, and that didn't fit into any picture of
insurance fraud. Bui there was still the inconsistency of the title, and I went
on, 'Must've been kind of nice for you to have a colleague here to talk with?'
"The
doctor frowned a little at that. It seemed he'd been sort of hurt by Dr. Miller's attitude. Fle'd tried to interest him in some researches he was
doing with an endemic variant of undulant fever, which he'd practically
succeeded in wiping out. But the North American doctor just didn't give a damn.
No fraternal spirit, no scientific curiosity, nothing.
"I
gathered they hadn't been very friendly, my doctor and Dr. Miller. In fact,
Miller hadn't been intimate with anybody, not even the oilier North Americans
at the mine. Fie liked the Indians and they liked him, though they were a little
scared of him on account of the skeleton—apparently an anatomical specimen and
the first thing I'd heard of to go with his assumed doctorate. He had a good
shortwave radio and he listened to music on that and sketched a little and read
and went for short hikes. It sounded like a good life, if you like a lonely
one. The doc thought they might know a little more about him at the pulquería; he slopped there for a drink sometimes. And the widow Sanchez kept house
for him; she might know something.
"I tried the widow first. She wore a
shapeless black dress that looked as though she'd started mourning Mr. Sanchez
ten years ago, but the youngest wasn't quite walking yet. She liked her late
employer, might he rest in peace. He was a good man, and so little trouble. No,
he never gave medicine to anybody; that was the job of the sefior medico from
Mexico City. No, he never did anything with bottles. No, he never received much
mail and surely not with money in it, for she often saw him open his few
letters. But yes, indeed, he was a medico; did
he not have the bones, the esqueleto to
prove it?
"And
if the señor
interested himself so much
in el doctor Miller,
perhaps the señor
would care to see his
house? It was untouched, as he left it. No one lived there now. No, it was not
haunted—at least, not that anyone knew, though no man
knows about such things. It was only that no one new ever comes to live in
TlichotI, and an empty house stays empty.
"I
looked the house over. It had two rooms and a kitchen and a tiny patio. Dr.
Miller's things wert- undisturbed; no one had claimed them, and it
was up to time and heat and insects to take care of them. There was the radio
and beside it the sketching materials. One wall was a bookcase, well filled,
mostly with sixteenth and seventeenth century literature in English and
Spanish. The books had been faithfully read. There were a few recent volumes,
mostly on travel or on Mexican Indian culture, and a few magazines. No medical
books or periodicals.
"food,
cooking utensils, clothing, a pile of sketches—good enough so you'd feel all right when you'd done them and bad enough
so you wouldn't feel urged to exhibit them—pipes and tobacco. These just about made up the inventory. No papers to
speak of, a few personal letters, mostly from his sister (and beneficiary). No
instruments or medicines ot any kind. Nothing
whatsoever out ol the way—not even the skeleton.
"I'd
heard about that twice, so I asked what had become of it. The sons of the
mining engineers, the young demons, had stolen it to celebrate a gringo
holiday, which I gathered had been Halloween. They had built an enormous
bonfire and the skeleton had fallen in and
been consumed. The doctor Miller had been very angry; he had suffered one of
his attacks then, almost as bad as the one that gave him death, may the Lord
hold him in his kindness. But now it was time for a mother to return and feed
her brood; her house was mine, and would the señor join in her poor supper?
"The
beans were good and the tortillas were wonderful; and the youngest children
hadn't ever seen red hair before and had some pointed questions to ask me about
mine. And in the middle ot the meal something suddenly
went click in my brain and 1 knew why Prank Miller had called himself
doctor."
Fergus paused and beckoned
to a waiter.
Norman said, "Is that all ?"
"for the moment. I'm giving you boys a chance to scintillate.
There you have all the factors up to that point. All right: Why was Miller calling himself doctor ?"
"He wasn't practicing," Norman said
slowly. "And he wasn't even running a fake medical racket by mail, as
people have done fiom Mexico to avoid the U. S. Post Office Department.''
"And,''
I added, "he hadn't assumed the title (c impress people, to attain social
standing, because he bad nothing to do with his neighbors. And he
wasn't carrying on any experiments or research for which he might have needed
the title in his writings. So he gained nothing in cash or prestige. All right,
what other reason is there for posing as a doctor?"
"Answer,"
said Fergus leisurely, "he wasn't posing as a doctor. Look: you might pose
as a doctor with no props at all, thinking no one would tome in your house but
the housekeeper. Or you might stage an elaborate Iront complete with instrument cabinets and five-pound books. But you
wouldn't try it With just one prop—an anatomical skeleton."
Norman
and I looked at each other and nodded. It made sense. "Well, then?" I
asked.
The
fresh drinks came and Fergus said, "My round. . . . Well, then, the
skeleton was not a prop for the medical pose. Quite the
reverse. Turn it around and it makes sense. He called himself a doctor to account for
the skeleton."
I choked on my first sip and Norman
spluttered a little, too. Fergus went on eagerly, with that keen light in his
green eyes, "You can't hide a skeleton in a tiny house. The housekeeper's
bound to see it, and word gels around. Miller liked the Indians,
and he liked peace. He had to account for (he skeleton.
So he became a doctor."
"But
that—" Norman objected, "that's no kind of answer. That's just another
question."
"]
know," said Fergus. "But that's the first big step in detection: to
find the right question. And that's it: Why does a man live with a
skeleton?"
We
were silent for a little while. The Top of the Mark was full of glasses and
smoke and uniforms; and despite the uniforms it seemed a room set aside that
was not part of a world'at war—still less, of a work! in
which a man might live with a skeleton.
"Of course you checked
the obvious answer," I said at last.
Fergus
nodded. "He couldn't very well have been a black magician, if that's what
you mean, or white either. Not a book or a note in (lie whole place dealing
with the subject. No wax. chalk, incense or
what-have-ycu. The skeleton doesn't fit any more into a magical pattern than
into a medical one."
"The Dead Beloved? Norman suggested, hesitantly uttering the
phrases in mocking capitals. "Rose-for-Emily stuff?
A bit grisly, but not inconceivable."
"The
Mexican doctor saw the skeleton. It was a man, and not a young one."
"Then
he was planning an insurance fraud—burn the house down
and let the bones be found while he vanished."
"A, You don't burn adobe. E, You
don't let the skeleton be seen by the doctor who'll examine it Liter. C, It
was a much taller man than Miller."
"A writer?" I ventured wildly. "I've sometimes thought myself a skeleton might
be useful in the study—to check where to inflict skull wounds and such."
"With no typewriter,
no manuscripts, and very little mail?"
Norman's
face lit up. "You said he sketched. Maybe he was working on a modern Totentuuz—dancc-of-death allegory. Holbein and Durer
must have had a skeleton or two around."
"I saw his sketches. Landscapes
only."
1
lit my pipe and settled back. "All right. We've
stooged, and we don't know. Now tell us why a man keeps house with a set ot bones." My tone was lighter than necessary.
Fergus
said, "I won't go into all the details of my
investigations. I saw dunned near every adult in Tlichotl and
most of the kids. And I pieced out what I think is the answer. But you ought to
be able to gather it from the evidence of lour people.
"First,
Jim Reiliy, mining engineer. Witness deposeth and saith he was on the main
street, if you can call it that, of Tlichotl on November second. He saw Dr.
Miller walking along like in a kind of nervous haze.' He saw a stranger,
'swarthy but not a Mex,' walk up to Miller and say, 'Frank!' Miller looked up
and was astonished. The stranger said, Sorry for the delay. But it took me a
little time to get here.' And he hadn't finished the sentence before Miller
chopped dead. Queried about stranger, witness says he gave his name as Humbert
Targ. He stayed around town a few days for the funeral and then left. Said he'd
known Miller a long time ago—never clear quite where, but seemingly in the
South Seas, as we used to say before we learned to call it the South Pacific.
Asked for description, witness proved pretty useless: medium height, medium
age, dark complexion. . . . Only helpful details: stranger wore old clothes.
'Shabby?' 'No, just old.' 'Out-of-date?'
'I guess so.' Slow long ago? What kind?' 'I don't know. Just
old—funny-looking.' He had only one foot. 'One leg?'
'No, two legs just one foot.' 'Wooden peg-'' No, just empty
trouser cuff. Walked with a cane.'
"Second
witness, Father Gonzaga—and it's a funny sensation talking to a priest who wears just a plain business suit. He hadn't known Dr. Miller
well, though iie'd said a mass for his soul. But one night Miller came from the
pidqreria to the priest's house and insisted on talking to him. He wanted to know
how you could ever get right with God and yourself if you'd done someone a
great wrong and there was no conceivable way you could make it up to him. The
padre asked .why, was the injured person dead? Miller hesitated and didn't
answer. 'He's alive, then?' Oh, no, no!' 'Restitution
could surely be made to the next of kin if it were a money matter?' 'No, it's
personal.' Father's advice was to pray lor the injured party's soul and for
grace to avoid such temptation another time. I don't see much what else he
could have suggested, but Miller wasn't satisfied."
I wasn't hearing the noise around us any more. Norman was leaning forward, too, and I saw in his eyes that he, loo, was beginning to feel the essential wrongness of the ease that the detective had stumbled
on.
"Third witness, the widow Sanchez. She told me some more about the skeleton
when I came back for more beans and brought a bottle
of red wine to go with them, which it did magnificently. Miller had treasured
his skeleton very highly. She was supposed not even to dust it. But once she
lorgot and dusted it, and a finger came off. This was in October. She thought
lie might not notice a missing finger, but she knew she'd catch it it he lound
a loose one; so she burned the bones in the charcoal brazier over which she
fried her tortillas. Two days later she was serving the doctor his dinner when
she saw a pink caterpillar crawling near his plate. She'd never seen a pink
caterpillar before. She flicked it away with a napkin, but not before the
doctor saw it. He jumped up from the (able and ran to look at the skeleton and
gave her a terrific bawling-out. After that she saw the caterpillar several
times. It was about then that Miller started having these heart attacks.
Whenever she saw the caterpillar it was crawling toward the doctor. I looked at
her a long time while she finished the wine, and then I said, 'Was it a
caterpillar?' She-crossed herself and said, No.' She said it very softly and
that was all she said that night."
I looked down at the table. My hand lay there
and the index finger was tapping gently. We sat in
quite a draft, and I shuddered.
"Fourth witness, Timmy Reilly,
twelve-year-old son of fim. Ik thought it was a great lark that they'd stolen the old boy's bones
tor Halloween. Fun and games. 'These dopes down here
didn't know from nothin' about Halloween but him and the gang, they sure
showed em.' But I could see he was holding something back. I made a swap. He
could wear my detective badge (which I've never worn yet) lor a whole day if
he'd tell me v.lial else he knew. So he showed it to me: the foot that he'd rescued
when the skeleton was burned up. He'd tried to grab the bones as they toppled
over and all he could reach was the heel. He had the whole foot,
well-articulated and lousy with tarsals and stuff. So I made a belter deal: he
could have the badge lor keeps—with the number scratched out a little—it he'd
let me bum the foot. He let me."
Fergus
paused, and it all began to click into place. The pattern was clear, and it was
a pattern that should not be.
"You've got it now?" Fergus said
quietly. "All I needed to make It perfect was
Norm's story. There had to be such things as litalaliis, with such powers as theirs. I'd deduced them, but it's satisfying to
have them confirmed.
"Miller
had an enemy many years ago a man who had sworn to kill him. And Milier knew a titddla, back there in the South Seas. And when he asked himself
what would be the best single item lo bring back trom the future, he knew the
answer: bis
enemy's skeleton.
"It
wasn't murder. He probably had scruples about that. He sounded like a good
enough guy in a way, and maybe his hull at a asked a muic possible price than Norm's. The skeleton was the skeleton that would exist
naturally a hundred years from now, no matter how or when
the enemy died. But bring that skeleton back here, and the enemy can no longer
exist. His skeleton can't be two places at once. You've got the dry dead bones.
What becomes of the live ones with flesh on them? You don't know. You don't
care. You're safe. You're tree to lead the peaceful life you want with Indians
and mountain scenery and your sketcli pad and your radio. And your skeleton.
'You've
got to be careful of that skeleton. If it ceases to exist in this time, the
full-fleshed living skeleton might return. You mustn't ever take a chance on
the destruction oi a little piece. You lose a linger,
and a finger returns— a pink thing that crawls, and
always toward you.
"Then
the skelton itself is destroyed—all but one foot.
You're in mortal terror, but nothing happens. Two days go by, and it's November
second. You know what the second of November is like in Latin America? It's All
Souls Day in the churches, and they call it the Did de los dijnntos—the Day of the Dead. But it isn't a sad day,
outside of church. You go to the cemetery, and it's a picnic. There are
skeletons everywhere, same as Halloween—bright, funny skeletons that never hurt
anybody. And there are skulls to wear and skulls to drink out of, and bright
white sugar skulls with pink and green trimmings to eat. All along every street
are vendors with skulls and skeletons for every purpose, and every kid you see
has a sugar skull to suck. Then at night you go to the theater to see Don Juan Tenorio, in which the graves open and the skeletons
dance, while back home the kids are howling themselves to sleep because skulls
are so indigestible.
"Of
course, there's no theater in Tlicholl, but you can bet there'd be skulls and
skeletons, some of them dressed up like Indian gods for the Christian feast,
some of them dancing on wires, some of them vanishing down small gullets. And
there you are in the midst of skeletons, skeletons everywhere, and your
skeleton is gone and all your safety with it. And there on the street with all
the skulls dipping and bowing at you, you see him and he isn't a skull any more. He's Humbert Targ, only with just one foot and he's explaining
that it took a little time to get here.
"Wouldn't you drop
dead?" Fergus concluded simply.
My throat felt dry as I
asked, "What did you tell the insurance company?"
"Much like Norm's theory. Man was an artist, had an anatomical model,
gave out he was a doctor to keep the natives from conniption tits. The prints
they sent me fitted what I found in his home and they had to pay the sister. Collected expenses but no bonus."
Norman
cleared his throat. "I'm beginning to hope they don't send me back to the
island."
"Afraid you might get too
tempted by i tualala?"
"No. But on the island we reaily do have pink caterpillars. I'm not sure I could face
them."
"There's one thing I
still wonder," Fergus said reflectively. "Where was
Humbert
Targ while his skeleton hung at Miller's side? Or
should I say when was he? He said, 'It took a little time to get
here.' From where? From when?
And what kind of time?"
There are some questions you don't even try
to answer.
Lj Wallace Wed
Teh vision has
taken the country by storm.
What changes
it will
make in the political life of
the nation
remain to be seen. We
have had an instance already in
the recent
Kefauver Committee hearings of how
it can
concentrate a far greater public
attention on a political matter than
would have been the case
in pre-TV
days. The following story does not
deal, witli TV.
but with the
motion picture us a medium, but
its message
has an
even more
pertinent bearing on TV.
Without radio, Hitler hardly could
have achieved
the grip on the
German mind that he did.
What would
the systematic
use of
TV and
modern methods of mass suggestion
do for
a future Hitler? Wallace West,
who was
at one
time connected
with an animated-cartoon company,
writes from experience of wind could
be done
in that
medium.
mill ' CAME
BACK to New York from a six weeks' fishing trip in Canada to discover
that a new craze was sweeping the United States.
"Have you seen the
latest Willy Pan picture?"
"Don't you think Willy
Pan is just too cute for words?"
"Yeah. And do you remember what Willy Pan said when
he met the musk ox?"
"Willy Pan says------- "
Such
were the incomprehensible snatches of conversation that I overheard in Grand
Central Station, on the subway and in the lobby of my apartment building.
"—but I thought the best part was when
Willy Pan went down to Wash-
ington and showed the President how to run the government," Miss Hawk-
ins was telling a patient when I entered my office the next morning. "You
know, there was an awful lot of good sense to what he said--------- "
"Who
or what is this Willy Pan?" 1 exploded. "Never since the days when
Tsh-ka-bibble' and You're telling me' took the place
of conversation have I heard such a lot of senseless talk."
"Why, Dr. Brown," exclaimed the
nurse, opening her blue eyes im-
measurably, "do you mean to tell me you haven't seen the new motion
picture cartoon? Why, it's better than the 'Three Little Pigs.' Willy Pan
is the hero and he's just too cute for words. You should have seen him
when he met the musk ox--------- "
"Yes. Yes," I said impatiently when
she gave indications of continuing
at great length. "But there's a patient
waiting and I must get to work---------- "
"You
simply must see Willy Pan as soon as possible." Miss Hawkins fluttered her
eyelids provocatively. "His new picture is opening to-night at the theater
around the corner. Maybe we could go see it?"
"We?" I stammered,
startled by these advances from a girl who had always seemed the soul of
competence and detachment. "Well—cr—we can talk about that later." I
retreated to the consulting room.
Even
there I was not immune. Instead of reveling in a description of his symptoms,
my patient insisted on telling the story about Willy Pan and the musk ox. The
point of the tale was incomprehensible to me, but be went into gales of
laughter at the climax and seemed deeply hurt—almost insulted—when I did not
join him.
And
there was something about the man's eyes which puzzled me. They had a slightly
glassy fixation. Acting on a hunch, I tested his reflexes. He had no reflexes!
Yet, otherwise he seemed normal except for an extreme nervousness and
excitability. This development puzzled me so much that I forgot Willy Pan in
prescribing a tonic, complete rest, quiet, etc. Finally I got rid off the
fellow alter promising to see the new cartoon at the very first opportunity.
I
had a busy day, for it seemed that all of my patients were developing some sort
of nervous trouble. They arrived in a steady
stream, but to save my soul I could make no diagnoses. A psychiatrist solves
his problems by delving into the minds of those who consult him.
But
to-day I could not do that. Something was blocking the process of free
association and that something, I became convinced as the hours passed, was
nothing else but the shadowy person of Willy Pan! The situation was beyond my
comprehension and I had a first-class case of jitters myself when I put on my
hat and prepared to leave for home at the end of office hours.
But I had reckoned without
Miss Hawkins.
"Oh,
Dr. Brown," she gurgled as I passed her in the outer office. "You
haven't forgotten your promise to take me to see Willy Pan, have you?"
Good
night! Had she finally developed a complex about becoming an old maid? Then,
gazing into those wide, blue eyes, I realized that this diagnosis also was
incorrect. Miss Hawkins wasn't trying
to charm me. She was simply determined that I had to see Willy Pan, even it it
were necessary for her to drag me to the theater. There was some inner
compulsion upon her.
"Why,
of course, I hadn't forgotten," I answered, deciding to get to the bottom
of this mystery once and lor all. "Shall we have dinner before we go?"
"Oh no! We must see
the first
show." She snatched up her coat. "I
can
hardly wait."
When we reached
the theater
we found
a milling
crowd out side, fighting to get to the ticket
booth. Police lines had been
formed to control the mob.
Somehow we reached the
lobby and after standing for
an hour,
obtained seats in the last row
of the
balcony.
A feature picture
was on
the screen
at the
time but
no one
was paying
the slightest attention to
it. Instead,
a hum
of conversation
filled the dimly lighted auditorium. Every one was talking
to his
neighbors as though they had been
old friends.
At last the
feature ended with the inevitable
clinch. Immediately the theater was pervaded
by a
deathlike silence as the screen
blossomed with the title:
WILLY PAN
in
THE MAGICIAN
Produced by AMERICAN STUDIOS, INC.
Copyright 1953
"Now you'll
see him,"
whispered Miss Hawkins as a
strain of music from the "Moonlight
Sonata" filled the auditorium.
When I did
see the
cause of all this excitement
I got
a distinct
shock. Although I knew Willy
Pan to
be a
pen-and-ink creation by some master
animator, the result was
so lifelike as
lo be
uncanny.
Willy himself
was eerie
enough, with his misshapen goat's
legs, pointed ears and engaging, pathetic
smile. Somehow he was reminiscent
of Charlie
Chaplin. Perhaps it was
this element
of pathos
which had so endeared him
lo a world beaten down by
the never-ending
economic depression.
But it was
the background
in which
the creature
moved that intrigued me most. Not
only was
the picture
presented in natural colors, but
by a
new advance in screen technique it
had a
lifelike three-dimensional effect.
As Willy wandered from the far
distance into the foreground he
seemed to leave the screen and
step into
the same
world with his audience.
"I told you.
He is real," exclaimed my companion,
and I
was half
convinced that she was right.
The ingratiating satyr wore a ragged
dress suit and a battered
felt hat.
Lie carried a wand which sparkled
at the
end with
varicolored, spinning lights. He revealed himself
as a
magician traveling with a bedraggled
medicine show. The first few minutes
ot the
film were highly amusing in the
best "Micky Mouse" tradition and caused the
audience to scream with laughter
as Willy proceeded to
solve world problems and extricate
himself from ridiculous and menacing
predicaments by the use of
his wand.
It was that wand which gave me a clue to the secret, but that clue came
almost too late. Unconsciously my eyes had focused on the flickering light
which blossomed at the end of the stick. As they did so I felt myself being
overcome by a pleasant lethargy which somehow seemed to lure me on
toward that strange world in which Willy had his being. It would be so
easy to let go--------
But
another part of my mind still struggled to find an explanation for some problem
which kept eluding me. as problems do when one is
overcome by fatigue or sleep. Where had I seen such a wand before—searchlights-electrical
discharges—reflections on a wet street at night?
The
answer came with such a shock that I was jerked out of my reverie as by a dash
of icy water. It had been in Vienna—years ago—when, at a convention of
psychiatrists, a delegate had used just such a glittering device to prove that
mass hypnotism was a possibility! He had not convinced the skeptics, but—these
people beside me were not skeptics!
I
gripped the arms of my seat and gasped for breath. Something evil wis going oa here. I must not—I dare not succumb!
With
a terrific effort I tore my glance from the screen and looked about me. The
members of the audience were staring straight ahead like so many wax figures. I
listened. Except for the voice from the screen, there was not a sound. For the
first time in my life I was in a theater where nobody coughed!
Leaning
over, I pinched Miss Hawkins on the arm. Although it must have hurt, she did
not respond. Not a tremor passed through her tensed body. Site was
sleeping—with open eyes.
Clenching
my teeth, I glanced back at the screen. Willy Pan had disappeared. Instead,
the sheet was covered by writhing, many-colored shadows which whirled into
strange, dreamlike conformations, like those which form under the closed
eyelids ot a person just sinking into sleep.
But Willy's slumberous
voice still tilled the auditorium.
"My
friends," it murmured, "you are asleep, but you still hear my voice.
You are bowed down by the great depression. Many of you do not have jobs. Some ot you are hungry. Others have begged a few pennies with
which to pay admission to this theater.
"Willy is going to change all that for
you. Willy is going to provide jobs
and plenty of money for everyone. Willy is going to punish the rich and
reward the poor by dividing the country's wealth. Wiily can provide an
income of five thousand dollars a year for every man, woman and child in
the United States------- "
As
the voice droned on, the whole amazing scheme was revealed to me. Someone,
somewhere, had at last perfected the trick of hypnotizing people en masse
instead of individually. Someone had rediscovered the secret of the old Hindu
rope trick. Someone was in a position to wield power sufficient to make him
master of the earth.
The voice was so compelling, so reassuring
that I was tempted for a moment to believe that such power might be wielded for
the good of humanity. Almost did I succumb to its charm.
But then, I reasoned, would anyone able to control the minds of millions oi
people use such power for their benefit instead of his own?
"In
a few days," the voice was continuing, "the new order will begin.
Heaven on earth will be at hand. Obey my wishes in this matter. I am woiIcing
only lor your good. If there is a man, woman or child
in America who has no! seen my pictures, make it your
duty to bring him to the next showing. And if anyone speaks evil of Willy P.m.
denounce him. He is your enemy and mine. Now good night, my
friends, until next week."
As tl'.e concluding strains oi the
"Moonlight Sonata" drifted from the loud-speakers the audience
stirred and sighed like an army aroused from sleep. Then came a tremendous
burst of applause interspersed with whistles and shouts of approval.
"Didn't
you just love him?" inquired Miss Hawkins as we moved with the crowd
toward the exit.
"He
was marvelous," I admitted a trifle shakily. "But what happened after
the episode where he charmed the king's crown onto his own head? I think I must
have dozed for a moment."
"Why
that was the end of the picture, silly." She laughed. "The closing
music started just alter that."
"Of course. Of course. Well,
I'm glad I didn't miss anything." Her answer had confirmee! my suspicions. The conscious mind of the
audience had not recorded a word of Willy's concluding speech. But in the
subconscious his words were having their deadly effect.
My
confirmation of this belief came next morning when newspapers blazoned forth
the information that the government had started a drive to end the depression
by making the United States entirely self-sufficient. The first concrete steps
were the taking over ol all coal mines, railroads and oilier public utilities:
the inauguration of universal conscription and the deportation of all
foreigners.
There
seemed only one thing left for me to do. I took the next train to Washington. I
would try to see the President and warn him before it was too late.
But,
despite my nation-wide fame as a psychiatrist, I made no progress at the
nation's Capitol. True, I did see the undersecretary of an undersecretary, but
when I broached (lie object of my visit he laughed me to scorn.
"Willy
Pan a menace?" he jeered as he rubbed his hands together nervously.
"Why you must be out of your mind, Dr. Brown. I've seen every one of his
pictures. They're perfectly harmless."
After
a number of similar rebuffs I changed my tactics. I called the White House for
an appointment and explained that I had devised a scheme for wider distribution
of the famous cartoons.
This time there was no delay. An hour later I
was in the presence of the great man. He was smiling and jovial, yet I noticed that his facial
muscles twitched repeatedly as though he were under great strain.
"Well,
Dr. Brown," he beamed, "I've heard of you often ami am glad to meet
you in person. They tell me you're another supporter of Willy Pan. I'm glad
that you approve of our new national hero. Now what is your plan?"
"Mr. President," I began
hesitantly, "I am, as you say, friendly to this new
diversion, but I'm afraid the people are taking it a bit too seriously. They
are
too preoccupied for good balance. The number of nervous disorders among
my patients has increased enormously-- "
"What
nonsense." He looked at me suspiciously with that telltale glassy stare.
"I've seen more Willy Pan pictures than anybody in the country except my
cabinet and members of Congress, yet I never felt better in my life."
"You
mean you've seen releases not shown to the public?" A great light was
dawning in my mind.
"Why,
yes. Dr. David Jamieson, the creator of Willy Pan, has been kind enough to make
up some cartoons which are shown only lor the amusement of government
officials. We find such shows take our minds off our troubles. They deal very
cleverly with our problems clown here, too."
"Did
they suggest the taking over of public utilities and the universal conscription
idea?" I asked guilelessly.
"Well, they did crystallize our ideas
somewhat." He laughed. "Of course,
we've known for a long time the necessity for making the United States
self-sufficient and ol obtaining new markets lor our surplus products in
South America and elsewhere, but---- "
Lie stopped and looked at me doubtfully as if
he had gone too far. "—but
I don't know why I'm discussing government affairs with you, Dr. Brown.
I understood that your visit had something to do with spreading the cheerful
philosophies of Wiily Pan, but I'm afraid you're no friend of his-- "
I
made some silly suggestion about reducing the cartoons to sixteen millimeter
size and distributing them in the home. Then, as his suspicions seemed allayed,
I asked my last question:
"Willy
has suggested sharing the nation's wealth among the people. Is that on the
Congressional program?"
"Oh,
that will come later, much later, after we have consolidated our position as
the greatest world power." Lie smiled as he bowed me out.
I returned to New York tired and depressed.
Some sinister influence was at work setting up a veiled dictatorship in (he
United Siales. I could no longer doubt that. But was it this mysterious Dr.
Jamieson or some one behind him? I did not know and there seemed no way ot finding out. Plainly, the government had fallen
unsuspectingly under the spell, lor its nationalist tactics in the last few
weeks had been entirely different from its previous pol icy.
The morning pipers again
confirmed my worst fears.
EUROPE PROTESTS AMERICAN EXPANSION IN SOUTH AMERICA
ENGLAND
PROTESTS DEPORTATION OF ITER NATIONALS U. S. WARSHIPS QUELL UPRISING IN BRAZIL
WESTERN HEMISPHERE MUST BELONG TO U. S., SAYS PRESIDENT
Such were a few of the headlines.
When
Miss Hawkins arrived for work I called
her into the consulting room and, under the pretext of treating her growing
nervousness, tried every device I knew to break the hypnotic spell under which
she labored. After several hours I gave it up as useless. Electric shocks, loud
noises, argument, even a slip in the face brought no result. Her pupillary
reflexes remained suspended; her oilier reflexes were dormant. And whenever I let her talk she revelled immediately to the topic of Willy Pan.
In
despair I sent her away and paced the room until noon. If only there were
somebody not under the influence of the spell to whom I could turn
for help—some enemy of Dr. Jamieson—some rival----------- With a whoop I
grabbed my
hat and dashed out of the office as though the devil pursued me.
J
lalf an hour later found me in the palatial offices of the Mammoth Film Cartoon
Corporation. The place was strangely quiet. Nobody sat at the reception desk,
so I marched boldly inside and sought among the maze of empty offices until I
found one marked "President."
"Come in," a
tired voice responded to my knock.
Inside
I found a florid, perspiring individual who locked as if he had just been
engaged in tearing his hair.
"I'm Dr. Brown, a psychiatrist, and I've come to ask you what you know about
Willy Pan and his creator," I began without preamble.
"I
suppose you've come to induce me to attend a showing of one of those cursed
pictures." screamed the executive. "Well, I tell you I won't go. See?
I can make better cartoons with one hand tied behind me than that faker Jamieson can. Yes, I know all the theaters have stopped showing
my pictures and replaced them with Willy Pan.
And I know that my entire staff has gone to work for [amieson. That makes me the goat, but I'll never lick that phony doctor's boots. Not Felix
Weinbrenner."
"You haven't seen any
of Jamieson's films?" My heart leaped.
"Of course not. Do you think I have to steal my ideas from a
mug who arrived in Hollywood with a medicine show.
Pretends he was once a great physician. Piiooey!"
"Now. now," I
soothed. "Don't get excited. I want you to help me expose this Dr. Jamieson." I outlined the situation in detail as I
saw it.
When
I finished, the motion picture magnate slumped into a chair and stared at me, gogglc-c}eci.
"You don't say. You
don't say," he mumbled over and over. "And we're the only people not affected. Well, how can
I help? Just give me a chance to get even with the crook who
ruined my business."
"I want you to forge a
Willy Pan cartoon," I answered.
"Me?
Felix Weinbrenner stoop to imitation?" Lie popped
up like a little balloon.
"So you can't do it?"
"Do
it? I can do anything! But—but it will take me several weeks. Have to make
thousands of drawings, you know, and all my assistants have left me." He
stared at the empty offices.
"It's
a matter of life and death for millions of people. Work night and day on it.
Kill yourself if necessary. I'll help wherever I can and tell you just what I
want done."
"O.
K., Dr. Brown. Anything you say, just so it will make me even with Jamieson.
I'll send over to the exchange for some old Willie Pan reels. Maybe we can use
some clips from them and save time."
For a fortnight we worked like dogs on the
pictorial forgery with which we hoped to reverse Willy Pan's deviltry. I was
amazed at the infinite detail required to produce one short cartoon. There was
an almost endless sequence of tinted sketches to be made, it seemed, each so
similar to the next that only an expert could detect the difference. Then there
was the problem of perspective, plus other technical quirks without number.
I
learned somehow to do a lot of the detail work and when more help was needed I
even impressed Miss Hawkins into service. I told her only that we had been
employed to aid in the production of Willy Pan cartoons, gave her entirely
disconnected duties so that sue would not know what was going on, and whenever
possible escorted her to and from work so that she would have no chance to
betray our secret.
At
last we got the silent print together somehow. It was not perfect but
Weinbrenner had done marvels and he assured me that only an expert eye could
detect the forgery.
Then
the problem of superimposing Willy's seductive voice upon the film overwhelmed
me.
"What
are you going to do about that?" I asked my fellow conspirator.
"Where can you find a voice double?"
"Don't
need to." He smiled with the conceit of superior knowledge. "I'll
just pick up the voice from the old reels we have, record the words separately
and rearrange them to follow your dialogue and fit the lip movements on the
screen. It will be plenty difficult, but not impossible."
We
worked all night on the re-recording and the next morning saw the job
completed, even to my satisfaction.
The
task had been finished not a minute too soon, the newspapers showed us. They
related that Congress had delegated all of its powers to the President and
gone home; that the entire population of the country was now garbed in green
khaki uniforms; that the fleets ol Europe were converging on our shores to stop
America's expansion and that the whole country had been regimented on a
war-time basis.
"Boy,
you'd belter get this film down to Washington right away." Wein-brenner
had been reading over my shoulder. He was as disheveled and hollow-eyed from
lack of sleep as I was, but his confidence was unshaken. It braced my waning
courage.
"We'll have to try it
out first to see whether it works."
"Nonsense. Anything I put my hand to just naturally has to work. And you haven't a
second to lose."
I
shook my head stubbornly, then as Miss Hawkins
appeared at the doorway I suggested: "Let's try it on her."
"All right," he
answered grudgingly. "Ell run the
projector."
I
ushered the unsuspecting girl into the stuffy little projection room and waited
for Weinbrenner to start the reel. The lights clicked off and the title flashed
on the screen to the accompaniment of the familiar "Moonlight Sonata"
theme.
WILLY
PAN
IN
THE
PILGRIM
Produced
by AMERICAN STUO'lOS, INC Copyright 1953
"I low cute he looks," gurgled the
nurse as Willy stepped into the picture. He was dressed in the cassock of a
penitent, with a long pilgrim's staff in his hand.
"Shlih!" I whispered. "Watch carefully."
Pot
the first lev, minutes of the picture the little satyr's antics were performed
in a hilarious fashion worthy of Jamieson at his best. Then, as the staff
twinkled and whirled and the shadows began coiling over the screen, I felt the
old pleasant lethargy stealing over me. It was only by a desperate exertion of
will power that I kept from falling under the influence of the spell I had
woven.
Leaning
over, I pinched Miss Hawkins on the arm. She continued staring straight ahead,
unaware of the pain. She was completely hypnotized! So far,
so good.
Willy's
face increased in size as it approached us until its enormous eyes seemed only
a lew feet away. Then it faded from the screen to allow the crawling shadows
full play there. But the slumberous voice still filled the room.
"My
friends," it murmured, "you arc asleep, but you still hear my voice.
Willy has been wrong in putting you to sleep. He realizes now that he told you
to do things which are not right. Willy is going to change all that. Willy
tells you to awake now and forget all that he has told you in the past. Willy wants yon to live your own lives, doing the
best you can without his help.
Willy tells you to awake and forget. Willy tells you to awake. Willy tells
you to forget "
The voice faded away as the lights went up
and the dreamy strains of the "Moonlight Sonata" filled (he room.
I looked at my companion and held my breath.
Miss Hawkins was, in tact, rubbing her eyes
as though rousing from deep
slumber. At last she turned and looked at me. Her eyes widened with astonishment.
"Why,
Dr. Brown!" she tried. "When did you get back? I thought you were in Canada. And where on earth are we? Is tins a theater? But where is the audience? Have I been asleep?"
She jumped up, blushing in
confusion.
"We've just seen a
Willy Pan cartoon," I told her.
"Willy Pan?" She frowned. "Oh,
that's the new picture. T remember
now. I came to the theater to see it. But surely
this isn't the theater-------------- "
She looked at me with charming helplessness.
As
gently as possible I explained the situation and related all that
had happened in the last two months. A; Inst she would not believe me. Her mind
was a blank for the entire period. But she was no
fool and when I brought Weinbrenner in to corroborate my
story and showed her the dales on the morning papers she struggled no longer.
"And
you say everybody in the United Stales is under the spell?" she gasped. "How dreadful. And these headlines.'
Another war coming. Oh, what can we do lo stop it?"
1 told her of the forged film she had just seen
and of our plan to take it to Washington.
"Ill go with
you," she said firmly, her blue eyes flashing. "If there's
only
three sane people in the country, we'll have to stick together."
"But there may be trouble—spies and---------- "
"I
don't care. I won't be left alone in this town with a lot of crazy sleepwalkers."
"All
right," I answered grimly. "Get your coat and hat.
You, too, Weinbrenner. We're catching (he next
plane."
The
Capitol had changed vastly since my first visit. An army was parading down Pennsylvania Avenue. Airplanes thundered overhead. Newsboys shouted war extras. "America for
Americans, ' screamed banners hung across the street. And everywhere the green
uniforms of the populace were in
evidence.
I called the White blouse
for an appointment.
"I
represent Dr.
Jameison," I explained lo the same undersecretary to whom I
had talked before. "I have a new Willy Pan release lor private showing to
the President and his cabinet."
"Thai's fine," came the answer, "Bring it right
over."
Something in the suavity of that reply
frightened me. It was too easy!
I
dropped the receiver, grabbed my hat and dashed out of the hotel room, shouting
for Miss Hawkins and Weinbrenner to follow me. What a fool I had been! At least I might have had sense enough to use a drug-store booth, where the call could not be traced so easily.
We
had only reached the lobby when a group of secret service men surrounded us.
"Dr. Matthew Brown, Felix Weinbrenner
and Mary Hawkins. You are under arrest tor high treason, charged with attempting to forge
a Willy Pan cartoon," said one, displaying his badge. "We have had
spies watching you for weeks. You walked right into the trap."
I will not go into detail regarding our
trial. What is the use? The glassy-eyed court-martial judges found us guilty as
charged. The prosecution
asked for the death penalty. Our attorney pleaded
insanity---------- He was a
good attorney.
I am
writing this in my padded cell in Matteawan. I can hear Weinbrenner cursing in
the adjoining room. He is cracking up under the strain, poor fellow. Mary,
brave little Mary Hawkins, is somewhere in the women's section. I have not seen
her since the trial.
To-day
they let me read the newspapers for the first time. The war has started and is
being fought with ghastly, soulless ferocity. Thousands—tens of thousands
killed already. My only hope is that a universal nervous breakdown of the
American people will end the carnage.
Sometimes
I wonder. Is it 1 who am insane? Is this all a madman's dream? But
1 must not think such thoughts. We three alone
are sane in a world of madmen. We must not crack. Somehow we can escape and
start again. Weinbrenner! Can you hear me, man? Don't scream like that. Take it
easy!
Mary------
I f CHAPTER 1
_gcr^N A vast room hung with strangely figured arras and carpeted with
Boukhara rugs of impressive age and workmanship, four men were sitting around a
document-strewn table. From the far corners, where odd tripods of wrought iron
were now and then replenished by an incredibly aged Negro in somber livery,
came the hypnotic fumes of ohbanum; while in a deep niche on one side there
ticked a curious, coffin-shaped clock whose dial bore baffling hieroglyphs and
whose four hands did not move in consonance with any time system known on this
planet. It was a singular and disturbing room, but well fitted to the business
then at hand. For there, in the New Orleans home of this continent's greatest
mystic, mathematician and orientalist, there was being settled at last the estate
of a scarcely less great mystic, scholar, author and dreamer who had vanished
from the face of the earth four years before.
Randolph
Carter, who had all his life sought to escape from the tedium and limitations
of waking reality in the beckoning vistas of dreams and fabled avenues of other
dimensions, disappeared from the sight of man on the seventh of October, 1928,
at the age of fifty-four. His career had been a strange and lonely one, and
there were those who inferred from his curious
76
novels many episodes more bizarre than any in his
recorded history. His association with Harley Warren, the South Carolina
mystic whose studies in the primal Naacal language of the Himalayan priests had
led to such outrageous conclusions, had been close. Indeed, it was he who—one
mist-mad, terrible night in an ancient graveyard—had seen Warren descend into a
dank and nitrous vault, never to emerge. Carter lived in Boston, but it was
from the wild, haunted hills behind hoary and witch-accursed Arkham that all
his forebears had come. And it was amid these ancient, cryptically brooding
hills that he had ultimately vanished.
His old servant. Parks—who died early in 1930—had spoken of
the strangely aromatic and hideously carven box he had found in the attic, and
oi the undecipherable parchments and cjucerly figured silver key which that box
had contained: matters of which Carter had also written to others. Carter, he
said, had told him that this key had come down from his ancestors, and that it
would help him to unlock the gates to his lost boyhood, and to strange
dimensions and fantastic realms which he had hitherto visited only in vague,
brief and elusive dreams. 1 lien
one day Carter took the box and its contents and rode away in his car, never to
return.
Later
on, people found the car at the side of an old, grass-grown road in the hills
behind crumbling Arkham—the hills where Carter's forebears had once dwelt, and
where the ruined cellar of the great Carter homestead still gaped to the sky.
It was in a grove of tall elms near by that another of the Carters had
mysteriously vanished in 1781, and not far away was the half-rotted cottage
where Goody Fowler, the witch, had brewed her ominous potions still earlier.
The region had been settled in 1692 by
fugitives from the witchcraft trials in Salem, and even now it bote a name for
vaguely ominous tilings scarcely to be envisaged. Edmund Carter had tied from
the shadow of Gallows Hill just in time, and the tales
of his sorceries were many. Now, it seemed, his lone descendant had gone
somewhere to join him!
In
the car they found the hideously carved box of fragrant wood, and the parchment
which no man could read. The silver key was gone—presumably with Carter.
Further than that there was no certain clue. Detectives from Boston said that
the fallen timbers of the old Carter [dace seemed oddly disturbed, and
somebody found a handkerchief on the rock-ridged, sinisterly wooded slope
behind the ruins near the dreaded cave called the Snake Den.
It
was then that the country legends about the Snake Den gained a new vitality.
Farmers whispered of the blasphemous uses to which old Edmund Carter the wizard
had put that horrible grotto, and added later tales about the fondness which
Randolph Carter himself had had for it wdien a boy. In Carter's boyhood the
venerable gambrel-roofed homestead was still standing and tenanted by his
great-uncle Christopher. He had visited there often, and had talked singularly
about the Snake Den. People remembered what he had said about a deep fissure and
an unknown inner cave beyond, and speculated on the chinge he had shown after
spending one whole memorable day in the cavern when he was nine. That was in
October, too—and ever after that he had seemed to have an uncanny knack at prophesying future events.
It had rained late in the night that Carter
vanished, and no one was quite able to trace his footprints from the car.
Inside the Snake Den all was amorphous liquid mud, owing to the copious
seepage. Only the ignorant rustics whispered about the prints they thought they
spied where the great elms overhang the road, and on the sinister hillside near
the Snake Den, where the handkerchief was found. Who could pay attention to
whispers that spoke of stubby little tracks like those which Randolph Carter's
square-toed boots made when he was a small boy? It was as crazy a notion as
that other whisper—that the tracks of old Benijah Corey's peculiar heeiless
boots, had met the stubby little tracks in the road. Old Benijah had been the
Carters hired man when Randolph was young; but he had died thirty years ago.
It
must have been these whispers—plus Carter's own statement to Parks and others
that the cjueerly arabesqued silver key would help him unlock the gates of his
lost boyhood—which caused a number of mystical students to declare that the
missing man had actually doubled back on the trail of time and returned through
forty-five years to that other October day in 1883 when he had stayed in the Snake Den as a small boy. When he came out
that night, they argued, he had somehow made the whole trip to 1928 and back; for did he not thereafter know of things which were to happen
later? And yet he had never spoken of anything to happen alter 1928.
One
student—an elderly eccentric of Providence, Rhode Island, who had enjoyed a
long and close correspondence with Carter—had a still more
elaborate theory, and believed that Carter had not only returned to boyhood,
but achieved a further liberation, roving at will through the prismatic
vistas of boyhood dream. After a strange vision this man published a tale of
Carter's vanishing in which he hinted that the lost one now reigned as king on
the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, that fabulous town ol turrets atop the hollow
cliffs of glass overlooking the twilight sea wherein the bearded and finny
Gnorri build their singular labyrinths.
It
was this old man, Ward Phillips, who pleaded most loudly against the
apportionment of Carter's estate to his heirs—all distant cousins—on the ground
that he was still alive in another time-dimension and might well return some
day. Against him was arrayed the legal talent of one ol the cousins, Ernest K.
Aspinwall of Chicago, a man ten years Carter's senior, but keen as a youth in forensic battles. For lour years the contest had raged, but now
the time for apportionment had come, and this vast, strange room in New Orleans
was to be the scene of the arrangements.
It
was the home of Carter's literary and financial executor—the distinguished
Creole student of mysteries and Eastern antiquities, Etienne-Laurent de
Marigny. Carter had met de Marigny during the- war, when they both served in
the French Foreign Legion and had at once cleaved (o him because of their
similar tastes and outlook. When, on a memorable joint furlough, the learned
young Creole had taken the wistful Boston dreamer to Bayonne, in the south of
France, and had shown him certain terrible secrets in the nighted and
immemorial crypts that burrow beneath that brooding, eon-weighted city, tiie
friendship was for ever sealed. Carter's
will had named de Marigny as executor, and now that
avid scholar was reluctantly presiding over the settlement of the estate. It
was sad work for him, for like the old Rhode Islander he did not believe that
Carter was dead. But what weight have the dreams of
mystics against the harsh wisdom of the world?
Around the table in that strange room in the
old French Quarter sat the men who claimed an interest in the proceedings.
There had been the usual legal advertisements of the conference in papers
wherever Carter's heirs were thought to live: yet only lour now sal listening
to the abnormal ticking of that coffin-shaped clock which told no earthly time,
and to the bubbling of the courtyard fountain beyond hall-curtained,
fan-lighted windows. As the hours wore on, die i.ues of (lie iour were halt
shrouded in the curling fumes from the tripods, which, piled recklessly with
fuel, seemed to need less and less attention from the silently gliding and
increasingly nervous old Negro.
There
was Etienne de Marigny himself—slim, dark, handsome, mus-tached, and still
young. Aspinwall, representing the heirs, was white-haired, apopletic-faced,
side-whiskered, and portly. Phillips, the Providence mystic, was lean, gray,
long-nosed, clean-shaven, and stoop-shouldered. The fourth man was non-committal
in age—lean, with a dark, bearded, singularly immobile face of very regular
contour, bound with the turban of a high-caste Brahman and having night-black,
burning, almost irisless eyes which seemed to gaze out Irom a vast distance
behind the features. He had announced himself as the Swami Chanelraputra, an
adept from Benares, with important information to give; and both de Marigny and
Phillips—who had corresponded with him—had been quick to recognize the
genuineness of his mystical pretensions. Flis speech had an oddly forced,
hollow, metallic quality, as if the use of English taxed his vocal apparatus;
yet his language was as easy, correct and idiomatic as any native
Anglo-Saxon's. In general attire he was the normal European civilian, but his
loose clothes sat peculiarly badly on him, while his bushy black beard, Eastern
turban, and large, white mittens gave him an air of exotic eccentricity.
Dc Marigny, fingering the
parchment found in Carter's car, was speaking.
"No,
I have not been able to make anything of the parchment. Mr. Phillips, here,
also gives it up. Colonel Churchward declares it is not Naacal, and it looks
nothing at all like the heiroglyphics on that Easter Island war-club. The
carvings on that box, though, do strongly suggest Easier Island images. The
nearest thing I can recall to these parchment
characters—notice how all the letters seem to hang down from horizontal
word-bars—is the writing in a book poor Harley Warren once had. It came from
India while Carter and I were visiting him in 1919, and he never would tell us anything about it— said it would be better if
we didn't know, and hinted that it might have come originally from some place
other than the Earth. He took it with him in December, -when he went down into
the vault in that old graveyard—but neither he nor the book ever came to the
surface again. Some time ago I sent our friend here—the Swami Chandraputra—a
memory-sketch of some of those letters, and also a photostatic
copy of the Carter parchment. He believes he may be able to shed light on them
after certain references and consultations.
"But
the key—Carter sent me a photograph of that. Its curious arabesques were not
letters, but seem to have belonged to the same culture-tradition as the
parchment. Carter always spoke of being on the point of solving the mystery,
though he never gave details. Once he grew almost poetic about the whole
business. That antique silver key, he said, would unlock the successive doors
that bar our free march down the mighty corridors ol space and time to the very
Border which no man has crossed since Shaddad with his terrific genius built
and concealed in (he sands of Arabia Petreea the prodigious domes and
uncounted minarets of thousand-pillared I rem. Half-starved dervishes—wrote
Carter—and thirst-crazed nomads have returned to tell of that monumental
portal, and of the hand (hat is sculptured above the keystone of the arch, but
no man has passed and retraced his steps to say that ln's footprints on the
garnet-strewn sands within bear witness to his visit. The key, he surmised, was
that for which the cyciopean sculptured hand vainly grasps.
"Why
Carter didn't take the parchment as well as the key, we can not say. Perhaps he
forgot it—-or perhaps he forbore to take it through recollection of one who had
taken a book of like characters into a vault ami never returned. Or perhaps it
was really immaterial to what he wished to do."
As de Marigny paused, old
Mr. Phillips spoke a harsh, shrill voire.
"We
can know of Randolph Carter's wandering only what we dream. I have been to many
strange places in dreams, and have heard many strange and significant things in
Ulthar, beyond (lie River Skai. I( does not appear
that the parchment was needed, for certainly Carter reentered the world of his
boyhood dreams, and is now a king in Ilek-Vad."
Mr.
Aspmwtill grew doubly apoplectic-looking as he sputtered: "Can't somebody
shut that old fool up? We've had enough of these moonings. The problem is to
divide the property, and it's about time we got lo it."
For the first time Swami
Chandraputra spoke in his queerly alien voice.
"Gentlemen,
there is more to this matter than you think. Mr. Aspinwall does not do well to
laugh at the evidence of dreams. Mr. Phillips has taken an incomplete
view—perhaps because he lias not dreamed enough. 1, myself, have done much dreaming. We in India have
always done that, just as all the Carters seem to have done it. You. Mr. Aspinwall, as a maternal cousin, are
naturally not a Carter. My own dreams, and certain other sources of information,
have told me a great deal which you still find obscure. For example, Randolph
Carter forgot that parchment which he couldn't decipher —yet if would have been
well for him had lie remembered (o lake it. You see, I have really learned
pretty much what happened to Carter after he left his car with the silver key at sunset on
that seventh of October, four years ago."
Aspinwall
audibly sneered, but the others sat up with heightened interest. The smoke from
the tripods increased, and the crazy ticking of that coffin-shaped clock seemed
to fall into bizarre patterns like the dots and dashes of some alien and
insoluble telegraph message from outer space. The Hindoo leaned back, half
closed his eyes, and continued in that oddly labored yet idiomatic speech,
while before his audience there began to float a picture of what had happened
to Randolph Carter.
CHAPTER 2
The hills beyond Arkham are full of a strange
magic—something, perhaps, which the old wizard Edmund Carter called down from
the stars and up from the crypts of nether earth when he fled there from Salem
in 1692. As soon as Randolph Carter was back among
them he knew that he was close to one of the gates which a tew audacious,
abhorred and alien-souled men have blasted through titan walls betwixt the
world and the outside absolute. Here, he felt, and on this day ol the year, he
could carry out with success the message lie had deciphered months before from
the arabesques of that tarnished and incredibly ancient silver key. He knew now
how it must be rotated, and how it must be held up to the setting sun, and what
syllables of ceremony must be intoned into the void at the ninth and last
turning. In a spot as close to a dark polarity and induced gate as this, it
could not fail in its primary functions. Certainly, lie would rest that night
in the lost boyhood lor which he had never ceased to mourn.
He
got out of the car with the key in his pocket, walking up-hill deeper and
deeper into the shadowy core of that brooding, haunted countryside of winding
road, vine-grown stone wall, black woodland, gnarled, neglected orchard,
gaping-windowed, deserted farmhouse, and nameless ruin. At the sunset hour,
when the distant spires of Kingsport gleamed in the ruddy blaze, he took out
the key and made the needed turnings and intonations. Only later did he realize
how soon the ritual had taken effect.
Then
in the deepening twilight he had heard a voice out of the past: Old Benijah
Corey, his great-uncle's hired man. Had not old Benijah been dead for thirty
years? Thirty years before when? What
was time? Where had he been? Why was it strange that Benijah should be calling
him on this seventh of October, 1883? Was he not out later than Aunt Martha had
told him to stay? What was this key in his blouse pocket, where his little
telescope— given him by his father on his ninth birthday, two months
before—ought to be? Had he found it in the attic at home? Would it unlock the
mystic pylon which his sharp eye had traced amidst the jagged rocks at the back
of that inner cave behind the Snake Den on the hill? That was the place they
always coupled with old Edmund Carter the wizard. People wouldn't go there, and
nobody but him had ever noticed or squirmed through the root-choked fissure to that great black inner chamber
with the pylon. Whose hands had carved that hint of a pylon out of the living
rock? Old Wizard Edmund's— or others that he bad
conjured up and commanded?
That
evening little Randolph ate supper with Uncle Chris and Aunt Martha in the old
gambrel-roofed farmhouse.
Next
morning he was up early and out through the twisted-boughed apple orchard to
the upper timber-lot where the mouth of the Snake Den lurked black and
forbidding amongst grotesque, overnourished oaks. A nameless expectancy was
upon him, and he did not even notice the loss of his handkerchief as he
fumbled in his blouse pocket to see if the queer silver key was safe. He
crawled through the dark orifice with tense, adventurous assurance, lighting
his way with matches taken from the sitting-room. In another moment he had
wriggled through the root-choked fissure at the farther end, and was in the
vast, unknown inner grotto whose ultimate rock wall seemed half like a
monstrous and consciously shapen pylon. Before that dank, dripping wall he
stood silent and awestruck, lighting one match after another as he gazed. Was
that stony bulge above the keystone of the imagined arch really a gigantic
sculptured hand ? Then he drew forth the silver key, and made motions and intonations whose source lie
could only dimly remember. Was anything forgotten? He knew only that he wished
(o cross (he barrier to the untrammelled land of his dreams and the gulls where
all dimensions dissolved in the absolute.
CHAPTER 3
What happened then is scarcely to be
described in words. It is full of those paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies
which have no place in waking life, but which fill our more fantastic dreams
and are taken as matters of course till we return to our narrow, rigid,
objective world of limited causation and tri-dimensional logic. As the Hindoo
continued his tale, he had difficulty in avoiding what seemed—even more than
the notion of a man transferred through the years to boyhood—an air of trivial,
puerile extravagance. Mr. Aspinwall, in disgust, gave an apoplectic snort and
virtually stopped listening-
For
the rite of the silver key, as practiced by Randolph Carter in that black,
haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. Prom (lie first gesture
and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was apparent—a sense of
incalculable disturbance and confusion in time and space, yet one which held no
hint of vhat we recognize as motion and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as
age and location ceased to have any significance whatever. T lie day before,
Randolph Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no
distinction between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter,
with a certain store of images which had lost all connection with terrestrial
scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before,
there had been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and gigantic sculptured
hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither cave nor absence ot cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was only a
flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst which the entity
that was Randolph Girter experienced perceptions or registrations of all that
his mind revolved on, yet without any clear consciousness of the way in which
he received them.
By
the time the rite was over, Carter knew that he was in no region whose place
could be told by Earth's geographers, and in no age whose
date history could fix;
for the nature of what was happening was not wholly unfamiliar to
him. There were hints of it in the cryptical Pnakotic fragments, and a
whole chapter in the forbidden Necronomicon of
the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, had taken on significance when he had deciphered
the designs graven on the silver key. A gate had been unlocked—not, indeed, the
Ultimate Gale, but one leading from Earth and time to that extension of Earth
which is outside time, and from which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads
fear-somely and perilously to the Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.
There would be a Guide—and a very terrible
one; a Guide who had been an entity of Earth millions of years before, when man
was undreamed of, and when forgotten shapes moved on a steaming planet building
strange cities among whose last, crumbling ruins the first mammals were to
play. Carter remembered what the monstrous Necronomicon had vaguely and disconcertingly adumbrated concerning that Guide:
"And while there are those," the mad Arab had written, "who have dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as guide, they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM; for it is written in the Book of Tboth how terrific is the price of a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the vastnesses transcending our world are shapes of darkness that seize and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the evil that defielh the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which growelh out of the tenants thereof-—all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE WHO guardelh the Gateway: HE WHO trill guide the rath one beyond all the worlds into the Abyss of unnamable devourers. For He is 'UMR AT-TAWIL, the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OE LITE."
Memory
and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines amidst the
seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and imagination only.
Vet he felt that it was not chance which built these things in his
consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable and undimen-sioned,
which surrounded him and strove to translate itself
into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind ol Earth may
grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulls outside
time and the dimensions we know.
There floated before Carter
a cloudy pageantry of shapes and scenes which he somehow linked with Earth's primal,
eon-forgotten past. Monstrous living things moved deliberately through vistas
of fantastic handiwork that no sane dream ever held, and landscapes bore
incredible vegetation and cliffs and mountains and masonry of no human pattern.
There were cities under the sea, and denizens thereof; and towers in great
deserts where globes and cylinders and nameless winged entities shot off into
space, or hurtled down out of space. Ail this Carter grasped, though the images
bore no fixed relation to one another or to him. He himself had no stable form
or position, but only such shifting hints of form and position as his whirling
fancy supplied.
He
had wished to find the enchanted regions of his boyhood dreams, where galleys
sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, and elephant
caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, beyond forgotten palaces with
veined ivory columns that sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon. Now,
intoxicated with wider visions, he scarcely knew what he sought. Thoughts of
infinite and blasphemous daring rose in his mind, and he knew he would face the
dreaded Guide without fear, asking monstrous and terrible things of him.
All
at once the pageant of impressions seemed to achieve a vague kind of stabilization. There were great masses of towering stone,
carven into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to the
laws of some unknown, inverse geometry. Light filtered down from a sky of no
assignable color in baffling, contradictory directions, and played almost
senticntly over what seemed to be a curved line of gigantic hieroglyphed
pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise, and surmounted by cloaked, ill-defined
shapes.
There
was another shape, too, which occupied no pedestal, but which seemed to glide
or float over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. It was not exactly permanent
in outline, but held transient suggestions of something remotely preceding or
paralleling the human form, though half as large again as an
ordinary man. It seemed to be heavily cloaked, like the shapes on the
pedestals, with some neutral-colored fabric; and Carter could not detect any
eye-holes through which it might gaze. Probably it did not need to gaze, for it
seemed to belong to an order of beings far outside the merely physical in
organization and faculties.
A
moment later Carter knew that this was so, for the Shape had spoken to his mind
without sound or language. And though the name it uttered was a dreaded and terrible one, Randolph Carter did not flinch in fear.
Instead, he spoke back, equally without sound or language, and made those
obeisances which the hideous Necronomicon had
taught him to make. For this shape was nothing less than that which all the
world has feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire
Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man. It was indeed the frightful
Guide and Guardian of the Gate— 'UMR AT-TAWIL, the ancient one, which the
scribe rendereth the PROLONGED OF LIFE.
The Guide knew, as he knew all things, of
Carter's quest and coming, and that this seeker of dreams and secrets stood
before him unafraid. There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and
Carter wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab's terrific blasphemous hints
came from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done. Or
perhaps the Guide reserved his horror and malignity for those who feared. As
the radiations continued, Carter eventually interpreted them in the form of
words.
"I am indeed that Most Ancient
One," said the Guide, "of whom you
know. We have awaited you—the Ancient Ones and I. You are wxdeome,
even though long delayed. You have the key, and have unlocked the First
Gate. Now the Ultimate Gate is ready for your trial. If you fear, you need
not advance. You may still go back unharmed, the way you came. But if you
choose to advance------- "
The
pause was ominous, but the radiations continued to be friendly. Carter
hesitated not a moment, for a burning curiosity drove him on.
"I will advance,'' he
radiated back, "and I accept you as my Guide."
At
this reply the Guide seemed to make a sign by certain motions of his robe which
may or may not have involved the lilting of an arm or some homologous member. A
second sign followed, and from his well-learned lore Carter knew that he was at
last very close to the Ultimate Gate. The light now changed to another
inexplicable color, and the shapes on the quasi-hexagonal pedestals became more
clearly defined. As they sal more erect, their outlines became more like those
of men, though Carter knew that they could not be men. Upon their cloaked heads
there now seemed to rest tall, uncertainly colored miters, strangely suggestive
of those on certain nameless figures chiselled by a forgotten sculptor along
the living cliffs of a high, forbidden mountain in Tartary; while grasped in
certain folds of their swathings were long scepters whose carven heads bodied
forth a grdtesque and archaic mystery.
Carter
guessed what they were and whence they came, and Whom they served; and guessed,
loo, the price of their service. But he was still content, for al one mighty
venture lie was to learn all. Damnation, he reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads them to condemn all
who can sec, even with a single eye. Fie wondered at the vast conceit of those
who had babbled of (he malignant Ancient Ones, as if They
could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath on mankind. As well,
he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit frantic vengeance on an angleworm.
Now the whole assemblage on the vaguely hexagonal pillars was greeting him with
a gesture of those oddly carven scepters and radiating a message which he understood:
"We
salute you, Most Ancient One, and you, Randolph Carter, whose daring has made
you one of us."
Carter
saw now that one of the pedestals was vacant, and a gesture of the Most Ancient
One told him it was reserved (or him. He saw also another pedestal, taller than
the rest, and at the tenter of the oddly curved line— neither
semicircle nor ellipse, parabola nor hyperbola—which they formed. This,
he guessed, was the Guide's owir throne. Moving and rising in a manner hardly
definable, Carter took his seat; and as he did so he saw that the Guide had
seated himself.
Gradually
and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One was holding
something—some object clutched in the outflung folds of his robe as if for the
sight, or what answered for sight, of the cloaked Companions. It was a large
sphere, or apparent sphere, of some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the
Guide put it forward a low, pervasive hall-impression of sound began to rise and fall in intervals which
seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no rhythm of Earth. There was a
suggestion of chanting—or what human imagination might interpret as chanting.
Presently the quasi-sphere began to grow luminous, and as it gleamed up info a
cold, pulsating light of unassignable color, Carter saw that its flickerings
conformed to the alien rhythm of the chant. Then all the mitered,
scepter-bearing Shapes on the pedestals commenced a slight, curious swaying in
the same inexplicable rhythm, while nimbuses of unclassifiable light—resembling
that of the quasi-sphere—played around their shrouded heads.
The
Hindoo paused in his tale and looked curiously at the tall, coffin-shaped clock
with the four hands and hieroglyphed dial, whose crazy ticking followed no
known rhythm of Earlh.
"You,
Mr. de Marigny," he suddenly said to his learned host, "do not need
to be told the particularly alien rhythm to which those cowled Shapes on the hexagonal
pillars chanted and nodded. You are the only one else—in America—wdio has had a
taste of the Outer Extension. That clock—I suppose it was sent you by the Yogi
poor Flarlcy Warren used to talk about—-the seer who said that he alone of
living men had been to Yian-Ho, the hidden legacy of eon-old Leng, and had
borne certain things away from that dreadful and forbidden city. I wonder how
many of its subtler properties you know? If my dreams
and readings be corect, it was made by those who knew much of the First
Gateway. But let me go on with my tale."
At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and
the suggestion of chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping
and motionless heads faded, while the cloaked shapes slumped curiously on their
pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with inexplicable
light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping as they had been when he
first saw them, and he wondered out of what cosmic dreams his coming had
aroused them. Slowly there filtered into his mind the truth that this strange
chanting ritual had been one of instruction, and that the Companions had been
chanted by the Most Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep in order
that their dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the silver key was a
passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were
contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute outsideness, and that
they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded.
The Guide did not share this sleep, but
seemed still to be giving instructions in some subtle, soundless way.
Evidently he was implanting images of those things which he wished the
Companions to dream: and Carter knew that as each of the Ancient Ones pictured
the prescribed thought, there would be born the nucleus oi a manifestation
visible to his earthly eyes. When the dreams of all the Shapes had achieved a oneness, that manifestation would occur, and everything he
required be materialized, through concentration. He had seen such things on
Earth—in India, where the combined, projected will oi a circle ol adepts can
make a thought take tangible substance, and in hoary Atlaanat, of which few
even dare speak.
Just
whal the Ultimate Cue was. and how it was to be
passed, Carter could not be certain: but a feeling of tense expectancy surged
over him. He was conscious o! having a kmc! of body, and of holding the fateful silver key
in his hand. The masses of towering stone opposite him seemed to possess the
evenness ot a wall, toward the center ot which his
eyes were irresistibly drawn. And then suddenly he felt the mental currents of
the Most Ancient One cease to flow forth.
Lor
the first time Carter realized how terrific utter silence, mental and physical,
may be. The earlier moments had never failed to contain some perceptible
rhythm, if only the faint, cryptical pulse of the Earth's dimensional
extension, but now the hush oi the abyss seemed to fall upon everything.
Despite his intimations of body, he had no audible breath, and the glow of
'Unit at-Tawil's quasi-sphere had grown petrifiedly fixed and unpulsating. A
potent nimbus, brighter than those which had played round the heads of the
Shapes, blazed f rozenly over the shrouded skull of the terrible Guide. ,
A
dizziness assailed Carter, and his sense oi lost orientation waxed a thousandfold.
The strange lights seemed to hold the quality of the most impenetrable
blacknesses heaped upon blacknesses, while about the Ancient Ones, so close on
their pseudo-hexagonal thrones, there hovered an air
of the most stupefying remoteness. Then he felt himself wafted into
immeasurable depths, with waves of perfumed warmth lapping against his lace. It
was as if he floated in a torrid, rose-tinctured sea; a sea of drugged wine
whose waves broke foaming against shores of brazen fire. A great fear clutched
him as he half saw lh.it
vast expanse of surging sea lapping against its far-off coast. But the moment
of silence was broken—the singings were speaking to him in a language th.it was not
oi physical sound or articulate words.
"The Man of Trnl h is beyond good and evil" intoned a voice that was not a voice. "The Man of 'Truth hits ridden to All-ls-One. The Man of Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor."
And
now, in that rise of masonry to which his eyes had been so irresistibly drawn,
there appeared the outline of a titanic arch not unlike that which he thought
lie had glimpsed so long ago in thai cave within a cave, on the far, unreal
surface of the three-dimensioned Earth. He realized that he had been using the
silver key—moving it in accord with an unlearned and instinctive ritual closely
akin to that which had opened the Inner Gate. That rose-drunken sea which
lapped his cheeks was, he realized, no more or less than the adamantine mass of
the solid wall yielding before his spell, and the vortex of thought with which
the Ancient Ones had aided his spell. Still guided by instinct and blind
determination, he floated forward—and through the Ultimate Gate.
CHAPTER 4
Randolph Carter's advance through that
cyclopean bulk of masonry was like a dizzy precipitation through the
measureless gulfs between the stars. From a great distance he felt triumphant,
godlike surges of deadly sweetness, and after that the rustling of great wings,
and impressions of sound like the chirpings and murmurings of objects unknown
on Earth or in the solar system.
Glancing backward, he saw not one gate alone, but a multiplicity of gates, at
some of which clamored Forms he strove not to remember.
And
then, suddenly, he felt a greater terror than that which any of the Forms could
give—a terror from which he could not flee because it was connected with himself. Even the First Gateway had taken something of
stability from him, leaving him uncertain about his bodily form and about his
relationship to the mistily defined objects around him, but it had not disturbed
his sense of unity. He had still been Randolph Carter, a fixed point in the
dimensional seething. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gateway, he realized in a moment
of consuming fright that he was not one person, but many persons.
He
was in many places at the same time. On Earth, on October 7, 1883, a little boy named Randolph Carter was leaving the Snake Den in the hushed
evening light and running down the rocky slope, and through the twisted-boughed
orchard toward his Uncle Christopher's house in the hills beyond Afkham; yet at
that same moment, which was also somehow in the earthly year of 1928, a vague shadow not less Randolph Carter was sitting on a pedestal among the Ancient Ones" in Earth's transdimensional
extension. Here, too, was a third Randolph Carter, in the unknown and formless
cosmic abyss beyond the Ultimate Gate. And elsewhere, in a chaos of scenes
whose infinite multiplicity and monstrous diversity brought him close to the
brink of madness, were a limitless confusion of beings which he knew were as
much himself as the local manifestation now beyond the Ultimate Gate.
There
were Carters in settings belonging to every known and suspected age of Earth's
history, and to remoter ages of earthly entity transcending knowledge,
suspicion, and credibility; Carters of forms both human and non-human,
vertebrate and invertebrate, conscious and
mindless, animal and vegetable. And more, there were Carters having nothing in common with earthly lite, but moving outrageously
amidst backgrounds of other planets and systems and galaxies and cosmic
continua; spores of eternal life drifting from world to world, universe to
universe, yet all equally himself. Some of the glimpses recalled dreams—both
faint and vivid, single and persistent—• which he had had through the long
years since he first began to dream ; and a few possessed a haunting,
fascinating and almost horrible familiarity which no earthly logic could
explain.
Faced
with this realization, Randolph Carter reeled in the clutch of supreme
horror—horror such as had not been hinted even at the climax of that hideous
night when two had ventured into an ancient and abhorred necropolis under a
waning moon and only one had emerged. No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse
the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity. Merging with nothingness is peaceful oblivion; but to be aware of
existence and yet to know that one is no longer a definite being distinguished
from other beings—that one no longer has a self—that is the nameless summit of agony and
dread.
He
knew that there had been a Randolph Carter of Boston, yet could not be sure
whether he—the fragment or facet of an entity beyond the Ultimate Gate—had been
that one or some other. His self had
been annihilated; and yet he—if indeed there could, in view of that utter
nullity of individual existence, be such a thing as be—was equally aware of being in some inconceivable
way a legion of selves. It was as though his body had been suddenly transformed
into one of those many-limbed and many-headed effigies sculptured in Indian
temples, and he contemplated the aggregation in a bewildered attempt to discern
which was the original and which the additions—if indeed (supremely monstrous
thought!) there were any original as distinguished from other
embodiments.
Then,
in the midst of these devastating reflections, Carter's beyond-thc-gatc
fragment was hurled from what had seemed the nadir of horror to black,
clutching pits of a horror still more profound. This time it was largely external—a
force or personality which at once confronted and surrounded and pervaded him,
and which in addition to its local presence, seemed also to be a part of himself, and likewise to be co-existent with all time and
conterminous with all space. There was no visual image, yet the sense of entity
and the awful concept ol combined localism and identity and infinity lent a
paralyzing terror beyond anything which any Carter-fragment had hitherto deemed
capable ot existing.
In
the face ol that awful wonder, the quasi-Carter forgot the horror of destroyed
individuality. It was an All-in-One and One-in-AlI of limitless being and
self—not merely a thing ot one space-time continuum,
but allied to the ultimate animating essence ot existences whole unbounded
sweep —the last, utter sweep which has no confines and winch outreaches fancy
and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of Earth
had whispered of as Yog-Sotholh, and which has been a deity under other names;
that which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Beyond-One, and which the
vaporous brains of the spiral nebulae know by an untranslatable sign—yet in a flash the Carter-facet realized how slight and fractional all these
conceptions are.
And now the Being was addressing the
Carter-facet in prodigious waves that smote and burned and thundered—a
concentration of energy that Wasted its recipient with well-nigh unendurable
violence, and that paralleled in an unearthly rhythm the curious swaying of the
Ancient Ones, and the flickering of the monstrous lights, in that baffling
region beyond the First Gate. It was as though suns and worlds and universes
had converged upon one point whose very position in space they had conspired to
annihilate with an impact of resistless fury. But amidst the greater terror one
lesser terror was diminished; for the searing waves appealed somehow to isolate
the Beyond-the-Gate Carter from his infinity of duplicates—to restore, as it
were, a certain amount of the illusion of identity. After a time the hearer
began to translate the waves into speech-forms known to him, and his sense of
horror and oppression waned. Fright became pure awe, and what had seemed
blasphemously abnormal seemed now only ineffably majestic.
"Randolph
Carter," it seemed to say, "my manifestations on your planet's
extension, the Ancient Ones, have sent you as one who would lately have
returned to small lands of dream which he had lost, yet who with greater freedom
has risen to greater and nobler desires and curiosities. You wished to sail up
golden Oukranos, to search out forgotten ivory cities in orchid-heavy Kled, and
to reign on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, whose fabulous towers and numberless
domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a filament alien to your Earth
and to all matter. Now, with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things.
You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but
would plunge like a man into that last and inmost oí secrets which
lies behind all scenes and dreams.
"What
you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted
eleven times only to beings of your planet—five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. 1 am ready to show you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast
a feeble spirit. Ye! before you gaze full at that last
and fust of secrets you may still wield a fret choice, and return if you will
through the two Gates with the Veil slili unrent before your eyes."
CHAPTER 5
A sudden shutting-off of the waves left
Carter in a chilling and awesome silence full of the spirit of desolation. On every hand pressed (he
illimitable vastness of the void; yet the seeker knew that the Being was still
there. After a moment he thought of words whose mental substance he flung into
the abyss: "Í
accept. I will not
retreat."
The
waves surged forth again, and Carter knew that the Being had heard. And now there
poured from that limitless Mind a flood of knowledge and explanation which
opened new vistas to the seeker, and prepared him for such a grasp of the
cosmos as he had never hoped to possess. He was told how childish and limited
is the notion of a tri-dimensional world, and what an
infinity of directions there are besides the known directions of up-down, forward-backward, right-left. He was shown the smallness and
tinsel emptiness of the little Earth gods, with their petty, human interests
and connections—their hatreds, rages, loves and vanities; their craving for
praise and sacrifice, and their demands for faiths contrary to reason and
nature.
While
most of the impressions translated themselves to Carter as words, there were others to which other senses gave interpretation.
Perhaps with eyes and perhaps with imagination he perceived that he was in a region of dimensions beyond those conceivable to the
eye and brain of man. He saw now, in the brooding shadows of that
which had been first a vortex of power and then an illimitable void,
a sweep of creation that dizzied his senses. From some inconceivable
vantage-point he looked upon prodigious forms whose multiple extensions
transcended any conception of being, size and boundaries which his mind had
hitherto been able to hold, despite a lifetime
of cryptical study. He began to understand dimly why there could exist at the
same time the little boy Randolph Carter in the Arkham farmhouse in 1883, the
misty form on the vaguely hexagonal pillar beyond the First Gate, the fragment
now facing the Presence in the limitless abyss, and all the other Carters his
fancy or perception envisaged.
Then
the waves increased in strength and sought to improve his understanding,
reconciling him to the multiform entity of which his present fragment was an
infinitesimal part. They told him that every figure of space is but the result of the intersection by a plane of some
corresponding figure of one more dimension—as a square is cut from a cube, or a circle from a sphere.
The cube and sphere, of three dimensions, are thus cut from corresponding forms of four dimensions, which men know
only through guesses and dreams; and these in turn are cut from forms of five dimensions, and so on up
to the dizzy and reachless heights of archetypal infinity. The world of men and
of the gods of men is merely an infinitesimal phase of an infinitesimal thing—the three-dimensional phase of that small wholeness
reached by the First Gate, where 'Umr at-Tawil dictates dreams to the Ancient
Ones. Though men hail it as reality,
and brand thoughts of its many-dimensioned original as unreality, it is in
truth the very opposite. That which we call substance and reality is shadow and
illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.
Time,
the waves went on, is motionless, and without beginning or end. That it has
motion and is the cause of change is an illusion. Indeed, it is itself really
an illusion, for except to the narrow sight of beings in limited dimensions
there are no such things as past, present and future. Men think of time only
because of what they call change, yet that too is illusion. All
that was, and is, and is to be, exists simultaneously.
These
revelations came with a god-like solemnity which left Carter unable to doubt.
Even though they lay almost beyond his comprehension, he felt that they must be
true in the light of that final cosmic reality which belies all local perspectives and narrow partial views; and he was familiar enough
with profound speculations to be free
from the bondage of local and partial conceptions. Had his whole quest not been based upon a faith
in the unreality of the local and partial?
After
an impressive pause the waves continued, saying that what the denizens of
few-dimensioned zones call change is merely a function of their consciousness,
which views the external world from various cosmic angles. As the Shapes
produced by the cutting of a cone seem to vary with the angles of cutting—being
circle, ellipse, parabola or hyperbola according to that angle, yet without any
change in the cone itself—so do the local aspects of an unchanged and endless
reality seem to change with the cosmic angle of regarding. To this variety of
angles of consciousness the feeble beings of the inner worlds are slaves, since
with rare exceptions they can not learn to control them. Only a few students of
forbidden things have gained inklings of this control, and have thereby
conquered time and change. But the entities outside the Gates command all
angles, and view the myriad parts of the cosmos in terms of fragmentary
change-involving perspective, or of the changeless totality beyond perspective,
in accordance with their will.
As
the waves paused again, Carter began to comprehend, vaguely and terrified!y, the ultimate background of that riddle of lost
individuality which had at first so horrified him. His intuition pieced
together the fragments of revelation, and brought him closer and closer to a
grasp of the secret. He understood that much of the frightful revelation would
have come upon him—splitting up his ego amongst myriads of earthly
counterparts—inside the First Gate, had not the magic of 'Unit at-Tawil kept it
from him in order that he might use the silver key with precision for the
Ultimate Gate's opening. Anxious for clearer knowledge, he sent out waves of
thought, asking more
of the exact relationship
be-tween his various facets—the fragment
now beyond the Ultimate Gate, the fragment still on the quasi-hexagonal
pedestal beyond the First Gate, the boy of 1883, the man of 1928,
the various ancestral
beings who had formed his heritage and the bulwark of his ego, and the nameless
denizens of the other eons and other worlds which that first hideous flash of
ultimate perception had identified with him. Slowly the waves of the Being
surged out in reply, trying to make plain what was almost beyond the reach ot
an earthly mind.
All
descended lines ot beings of the finite dimensions,
continued (he waves, and all stages oi growth in each one of these beings, are
merely manifestations of one archetypal
and eternal being in the space outside
dimensions. Each local
being—son, father, grandfather, and so on—and each
Stage of individual being—infant, child, boy, man—is merely one of the infinite phases of that same archetypal and
eternal being, caused by a variation in the angle of (he consciousness-plane
which cuts it. Randolph Carter at all ages; Randolph Carter and all his
ancestors, both human and pre-human, terrestrial and pre-terrestrial; all these
were only phases of one ultimate, eternal "Carter" outside space and time—phantom projections differentiated only by the angle at which the plane of
consciousness happened to cut the eternal archetype in each case.
A
slight change of angle could turn the student of today into the child of
yesterday; could turn Randolph Carter into that wizard, Edmund Carter who tied
from Salem to the hills behind Arkliam in 1692, or that Pickman Carter who in the year 2169 would use strange means in repelling the
Mongol hordes from Australia; could turn a human Carter into one of those
earlier entities which had dwelt in primal Hyperborea and worshipped black,
plastic Tsathoggua after flying down from Kylhamil, the double planet that once
revolved around Arcturus; could turn a terrestrial Carter to a remotely
ancestral and doubtfully shaped dweller on Kythamil itself, or a still remoter
creature of trans-galactic Stronti, or a tour-dimensioned gaseous consciousness
in an older space-time continuum, or a vegetable brain of the future on a dark,
radio-active comet of inconceivable orbit—and so on, in endless cosmic cycle.
The
archetypes, throbbed the waves, are the people of the
Ultimate Abyss —formless, ineffable, and guessed at only by rare dreamers on
the low-dimensioned worlds. Chief among such was this informing Being itself . . . which indeed was Carter's own archetype.
The glutless zeal of Carter
and all his forebears for forbidden cosmic secrets was a natural result of
derivation from the Supreme Archetype. On every world all great wizards, all
great thinkers, all great artists, are facets of It.
Almost stunned with awe, and with a kind of
terrifying delight, Randolph Carter's consciousness did homage to that
transcendent Entity from which it was derived. As the waves paused again he
pondered in the mighty silence, thinking of strange tributes, stranger
questions, and still stranger requests. Curious concepts flowed conflictingly
through a brain dazed with unaccustomed vistas and unforeseen disclosures. It
occurred to him that, it these disclosures were literally true, he might
bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the universe which
he had hitherto known only in dreams, could he but command the magic to change
the angle of his consciousness-plane. And did not the silver key supply that
magic? Had it not lust changed him from a man in 1928 to a boy in I 883, and then to something quite outside time? Oddly, despite his present
apparent absence of body, he knew that the key was still with him.
While
the silence still lasted, Randolph Carter radiated forth the thoughts and
questions which assailed him. He knew that in this ultimate abyss,he was equidistant from every facet of his archetype—human
or non-human, terrestrial or extra-terrestrial, galactic or trans-galactic;
and his curiosity regarding the other phases of his being—especially those
phases which were farthest from an earthly 1928 in time and space, or which had most persistently haunted his dreams
throughout life—was at fever heat. He felt that his archetypal Entity could at
will send him bodily to any of these phases of bygone and distant life by
changing his consciousness-plane, and despite the marvels he had undergone he
burned for the further marvel of walking in the flesh through those grotesque
and incredible scenes which visions of the night had fragmentarily brought him.
Without
definite intention he was asking the Presence for access to a dim, fantastic
world whose five multicolored suns, alien constellations, dizzily black crags,
clawed, tapir-snouted denizens, bizarre metal towers, unexplained tunnels, and
cryptical floating cylinders had intruded again and again upon his slumbers.
That world, he felt vaguely, was in all the conceivable cosmos the one most
freely in touch with others; and he longed to explore the vistas whose
beginnings he had glimpsed, and to embark through space to those still remoter
worlds with which the clawed, snouted denizens trafficked. There was no time
for fear. As at all crises of his strange life, sheer cosmic curiosity
triumphed over everything else.
When
the waves resumed their awesome pulsing, Carter knew that his terrible request
was granted. The Being was telling him of the nighted gulfs through which he
would have to pass, of the unknown quintuple star in an unsuspected galaxy
around which the alien world revolved, and of the burrowing inner horrors
against which the clawed, snouted race of that world perpetually fought. It
told him, too, of how the angle of his personal consciousness-plane, and the
angle of his consciousness-plane regarding the space-time elements of the
sought-for world, would have to be tilted simultaneously in order to restore
to that world the Carter-facet which had dwelt there.
The
Presence warned him to be sure of his symbols if he wished ever to return from
the remote and alien world he had chosen, and he radiated back an impatient
affirmation; confident that the silver key, which he felt was with him and
which he knew had tilted both world and personal planes in throwing him back to
1883, contained those symbols which were meant. And now the Being, grasping his
impatience, signified its readiness to accomplish the monstrous precipitation.
The waves abruptly ceased, and there supervened a momentary stillness tense
with nameless and dreadful expectancy.
Then,
without warning, came a whirring and drumming that swelled to a terrific
thundering. Once again Carter felt himself the focal point of an intense
concentration of energy which smote and hammered and seared unbearably in the
now-familiar rhythm of outer space, and which he could not classify as either
the blasting heat of a blazing star, or the all-petrifying cold of the ultimate
abyss. Bands and rays of color utterly foreign to any spectrum of our universe
played and wove and interlaced before him, and he was conscious of a frightful
velocity of motion. He caught one fleeting glimpse of a figure sitting alone upon a cloudy throne more hexagonal than otherwise. . . .
CHAPTER 6
As the Hindoo paused in his story he saw that
de Marigny and Phillips were watching him absorbedly. Aspinwall pretended to
ignore the narrative and
kept his eyes ostentatiously on the papers before him. The alien-rhythnied
ticking of the coffin-shaped clock took on a new and portentous meaning, while
the funics from the choked, neglected tripods wove themselves
into fantastic and inexplicable shapes, and formed disturbing combinations
with the grotesque figures of the draft-swayed tapestries. The old Negro who
had tended them was gone—perhaps some growing tension had frightened him out o!
the house. An almost apologetic hesitancy hampered the
speaker as he resumed in his oddly labored yet idiomatic
voice.
'You
have found these things of the abyss hard to believe," he said, "but
you will find the tangible and material things ahead still harder. That is the
way of our minds. Marvels are doubly incredible when brought into three
dimensions from the vague regions of possible dream. Í shall not try to tell you ninth—that would be another and very different
story. I will tell only what you absolutely have to know."
Carter,
after that final vortex ot alien and polychromatic
rhythm, had lound himself in what tor a moment he thought was his old insistent
dream. He was, as many a night before, walking amidst throngs of clawed,
snouted beings through the streets of a labyrinth of inexplicably fashioned
metal under a blaze of diverse solar color; and as he looked down he saw that
his body was like those of the others—rugose, partly squamous, and curiously
articulated in a fashion mainly insect-like yet not without a caricaturish resemblance
to the human outline. The silver key was still in his grasp, though held by a noxious-looking claw.
In
another moment the dream-sense vanished, and he felt rather as one just
awakened from a dream. The ultimate abyss—the Being—the entity of absurd,
outlandish race called Randolph Carter on a world of the future not yet
born—sonic of these things were parts of the persistent recurrent dreams of the
wizard Zkauba on the planet Yaddith. They were too persistent— they interfered
with his duties in weaving spells to keep the fright!ul
Dholes in their burrows, and became mixed up with his
recollections of the myriad real worlds he had visited in light-beam envelopes.
And now they had become quasi-real as never before. This heavy, material
silver key in his right upper claw, exact image of one he
had dreamt about, meant no good. He must rest and reflect, and consult the
tablets of Nhing for advice on what to do. Climbing a metal wall in a lane off
the main concourse, he entered his apartment and approached the rack of
tablets.
Seven
day-fractions later Zkauba squatted on his prism in awe and half despair, for the truth had opened up a new and conflicting
set of memories. Nevermore could he know the peace ot
being one entity. For ail time and space he was two: Zkauba the wizard of
Yaddith, disgusted with the thought of the repellent earth-mammal Carter that
he was to be and had been, and Randolph Carter, of Boston on the Earth,
shivering with fright at the clawed, snouted thing which he had once been, and
had become again.
The
time units spent on Yaddith, croaked the Swami—whose labored voice was beginning
to show signs of fatigue—made a tale in themselves which could not be related in brief compass.
There were trips to Stronti and Mthnra and Kath, and other worlds in the
twenty-eight galaxies accessible to the light-beam envelopes of the creatures
of Yaddith, and trips back and forth through eons of time with the aid of the
silver key and various other symbols known to Yaddith's wizards. There were
hideous struggles with tbe bleached viscous Dholes in the primal tunnels that
honeycombed the planet. There were awed sessions in libraries amongst the
massed lore of ten thousand worlds living and dead. There were tense
conferences with other minds of Yaddith, including that of the Arch-Ancient
Buo. Zkauba told no one of what had befallen his personality, but when the
Randolph Carter facet was uppermost he would study furiously every possible
means of returning to the Earth and to human form, and wotdd desperately practise
human speech with the alien throat-organs so ill adapted to it.
The
Carter-facet had soon learned with horror that the silver key was unable to effect his return to human form. It was, as he deduced too
late from things he remembered, things he dreamed, and things he inferred from
the lore of Yaddith, a product of Hyperborea on Earth; with power over the
personal consciousness-angles of human beings alone. It could, however, change
the planetary angle and send the user at will through time in an unchanged
body. There had been an added spell which gave it limitless powers it otherwise
lacked; but this, too, was a human discovery—peculiar to a spatially
unreachable region, and not to be duplicated by the wizards of Yaddith. It had
been written on the undecipherable parchment in the hideously carven box with
the silver key, and Carter bitterly lamented that he had left it behind. The
now inaccessible Being of the abyss had warned him to be sure of his symbols,
and had doubtless thought he lacked nothing.
As
time wore on he strove harder and harder to utilize the monstrous lore of
Yaddith in finding a way back to the abyss and the omnipotent Entity. With his
new knowledge he could have clone much toward reading the cryptic parchment;
but that power, under present conditions, was merely ironic. There were times,
however, when the Zkauba-facet was uppermost, and when he strove to erase the
conflicting Carter-memories which troubled him.
Thus long spaces of time wore on—ages longer
than the brain of man could grasp, since the beings of Yaddith die only alter
prolonged cycles. After many hundreds of revolutions the Carter-facet seemed to
gain on the Zkauba-facet, and would spend vast periods calculating the distance
of Yaddith in space and time from the human Earth that was to be. The figures
were staggering—eons of light-years beyond counting—but the immemorial lore of
Yaddith fitted Carter to grasp such things, lie cultivated the power of
dreaming himself momentarily Earthward, and learned many things about our
planet that he had never known before. But he could not dream the needed
formula on the missing parchment.
Then at last he conceived a wild plan of
escape from Yaddith—which began when he found a drug that would keep his Zkauba-facet always dormant,
yet without dissolution of the knowledge and memories of Zkauba. He thought
that his calculations would let him perform a voyage with a light-wave envelope such as no being of Yaddith had ever performed—a bodily voyage
through nameless eons and across incredible galactic reaches to the solar
system and the Earth itself. Once on Earth, though in the body of a clawed,
snouted thing, he might be able somehow to find—and finish deciphering—the
strangely hieroglyphed parchment he had left in the car at Arkham; and with its
aid—and the key's—resume his normal terrestrial semblance.
He
was not blind to the perils of the attempt. He knew that when he had brought
the planet-angle to the right eon (a thing impossible to do while hurtling
through space), Yaddith would be a dead world dominated by triumphant Dholes,
and that his escape in the light-wave envelope would be a matter of grave
doubt. Likewise was he aware of how he must achieve suspended animation, in
the manner of an adept, to endure the eon-long flight through fathomless
abysses. He knew, too, that—assuming his voyage succeeded—he must immunize
himself to the bacterial and other earthly conditions hostile to a body irom
Yaddith. Furthermore, he must provide a way of feigning human shape on Earth
until he might recover and decipher the parchment and resume that shape in
truth. Otherwise he would probably be discovered and destroyed by the people in
horror as a thing that should not be. And there must be some gold—luckily
obtainable on Yaddith—to tide him over that period of quest.
Slowly
Carter's plans went forward. He provided a light-wave envelope of abnormal
toughness, able to stand both the prodigious time-transition and the unexampled
flight through space. He tested all his calculations, and sent forth his Earthward dreams again and again, bringing them as close as
possible to 1928. He practised suspended animation with
marvelous success. He discovered just the bacterial agent he needed, and worked
out the varying gravity-stress to which he must become used. He artfully
fashioned a waxen mask and loose costume enabling him to pass among men as a
human being of a sort, and devised a doubly potent spell with which to hold
back the Dholes at the moment of his starting from the dead, black Yaddith of
the inconceivable future. Fie took care, too, to assemble a large supply of the
drugs—unobtainable on Earth—which would keep his Zkauba-facet in abeyance till
he might shed the Yaddith body, nor did he neglect a small store of gold for
earthly use.
The
starting-clay was a time of doubt and apprehension. Carter climbed up to his
envelope-platform, on the pretext of sailing lor the triple star Nython, and
crawled into the sheath of shining metal. He had just room to perform the
ritual of the silver key, and as he did so he slowly started the levitation of
his envelope. There was an appalling seething and darkening of the day, and a
hideous racking of pain. The cosmos seemed to reel irresponsibly, and the
other constellations danced in a black sky.
All at once Carter felt a new equilibrium.
The cold of interstellar gulfs gnawed at the outside of his envelope, and he
could see that he (bated free in space—the metal building from which he had
started having decayed years before. Below him the ground was festering with
gigantic Dholes; and even as he looked, one reared up several hundred feet and
levelled a bleached, viscous end at him. But his spells were effective, and in
another moment he was falling away from Yaddith, unharmed.
CHAPTER 7
In that bizarre room in New Orleans, from
which the old black servant had instinctively fled, the odd voice of Swami Chandraputra
grew hoarser still.
"Gentlemen,"
he continued, "I will not ask you to believe these things until I have
shown you special proof. Accept it, then, as a myth, when I tell you of the thousands of light-years—thousands of years of lime, and uncounted bill ions of miles that Randolph Carter hurtled through space as
a nameless, alien entity in a thin envelope of electron-activated metal. He
timed his period of suspended animation with utmost care, planning to have it
end only a few years before the time of landing on the Earth in or near 1928.
"He
will never forget that awakening. Remember, gentlemen, that before that
eon-long sleep he had Heed consciously for thousands of terrestrial years amidst the alien and horrible wonders of Yaddith. There
was a hideous gnawing of cold, a cessation of menacing dreams, and a glance
through the eye-plates of the envelope. Stars, clusters, nebulas, on every
hand—and at last their outlines bore some kinship to the constellations of Earth that he knew.
"Some
day his descent into the solar system may be told. He saw Kynarth and Yuggoth
on the rim, passed close to Neptune and glimpsed the hellish white fungi that
spot it, learned an untellable secret from the close-glimpsed mists of Jupiter,
and saw the horror on one of the satellites, and gazed at the cyclopean ruins
that sprawl over Mars' ruddy disk. When the Earth drew near he saw it as a thin
crescent which swelled alarmingly in size. He slackened speed, though his
sensations of homecoming made him wish to lose not a moment. I will not try to
tell you of thse sensations as I learned them from Carter.
"Well,
toward the last Carter hovered about in the Earth's upper air waiting till
daylight came over the Western Hemisphere. He wanted to land wdiere he had
left—near the Snake Den in the hills behind Arkham. If any of you have been
away from home long—and I know one of you has—I leave it to you how the sight
of New England's rolling hills and great elms and gnarled orchards and ancient
stone walls must have affected him.
"He
came down at dawn in the lower meadow ol the old Carter place, and was thankful
for the silence and solitude. It was autumn, as when he had left, and the smell
of the hills was balm to his soul. Pie managed to drag the metal envelope up
the slope of the timber lot into the Snake Den. though it would not go through
the weed-choked fissure to the inner cave. It was there also that he covered
his alien body with the human clothing and waxen mask which would be necessary.
He kept the envelope here lor over a year, till Certain
circumstances made a new hiding-place necessary.
"He
walked to Arkham—incidentally practising the management of his body in human
posture and against terrestrial gravity—and got his gold changed to money at a
bank. He also made some inquiries—posing as a tor-cigner ignorant of much
English—and found that the year was 1930, only two years after the goal he had aimed
at.
"Of
course,' his position was horrible. Unable to assert his identity, forced to
live on guard every moment, with certain difficulties regarding food, and with
a need to conserve the alien drug which kept his Zkauba-facet dormant, he felt
that he must act as quickly as possible. Going to Boston and taking a room in
the decaying West End, where he could live cheaply and inconspicuously, he at
once established inquiries concerning Randolph Carter's estate and effects. It
was then that he learned how anxious Mr. Aspin-wall, here, was to have the
estate divided, and how valiantly Mr. de Ma-rigny and Mr. Phillips strove to
keep it intact."
The
Hindoo bowed, though no expression crossed his dark, tranquil, and thickly
bearded face.
"Indirectly,"
he continued, "Carter secured a good copy of the missing parchment and
began working on its deciphering. I am glad to say that I was able to help in
all this—for he appealed to me quite early, and
through me came in touch with other mystics throughout the world. I went to
live with him in Boston—a wretched place in Chambers Street. As for the parchment—I
am pleased to help Mr. de Marigny in his
perplexity. To him let me say that the language of those hieroglyphics is not
Naacal, but R'lyehian, which was brought to Earth by the spawn of Cthulhu
countless ages ago. It is, of course, a translation—there was an Hyperborean original millions of years earlier in the
primal tongue of Tsath-yo.
"There
was more to decipher than Carter had looked for, but at no time did he give up
hope. Early this year he made great strides through a book he imported from
Nepal, and there is no question but that he will win before long.
Unfortunately, however, one handicap has developed—-the exhaustion of the alien
drug which keeps the Zkauba-facet dormant. This is not, however, as great a
calamity as was feared. Carter's personality is gaining in the body, and when
Zkauba comes uppermost—for shorter and shorter periods, and now only when
evoked by some unusual excitement—he is generally too dazed to undo any of
Carter's work. He can not find the metal envelope that would take him back to
Yaddith, for although he almost did, once, Carter hid it anew at a time when
the Zkauba-facet was wholly latent. All the harm he has done is to frighten a
few people and create certain nightmare rumors among the Poles and Lithuanians
of Boston's West End. So
far, he has never injured the careful disguise prepared by the Carter-facet,
though he sometimes throws it off so that parts have to be replaced. I have
seen what lies beneath—and it is not good to see.
"A
month ago Carter saw the advertisement of this meeting, and knew that he must
act quickly to save his estate. He could
not wait to decipher the parchment and resume his human form. Consequently he
deputed me to act for him.
"Gentlemen, I say to you that Randolph
Carter is not dead; that he is temporarily in an anomalous condition, but that
within two or three months at the outside he will be able to appear in proper
form and demand the custody of his estate. I am prepared to offer proof if
necessary. Therefore I beg that you will adjourn this meeting for an indefinite
period."
CHAPTER 8
De Marigny and Phillips stared at the Hindoo
as if hypnotized, while Aspinwall emitted a series of snorts and bellows. The
old attorney's disgust had by now surged into open rage, and he pounded the
table with an apo-plectically veined fist. When he spoke, it was in a kind of
bark.
"How
long is this foolery to be borne? I've listened an hour to this madman—this
faker—and now he has the damned effrontery to say Randolph Carter is alive—to
ask us to postpone the settlement for no good reason! Why don't you throw the
scoundrel out, de Marigny? Do you mean to make us all the butts of a charlatan
or idiot?"
De Marigny quietly raised
his hand and spoke softly.
"Let
us think slowly and clearly. This has been a very
singular talc, and there are things in it which I, as a mystic not altogether
ignorant, recognize as far from impossible. Furthermore—since 1930 I have
received letters from the Swami which tally with his account."
As he paused, old Mr.
Phillips ventured a word.
"Swami
Chandraputra spoke of proofs. I, too, recognize much that is significant in
this story, and I have myself had many oddly corroborative letters from the
Swami during the last two years; but some of these statements are very extreme.
Is there not something tangible which can be shown?"
At last the impassive-faced Swami replied, slowly and hoarsely,
and drawing an object from the pocket of his loose coat as he spoke.
"While
none of you here has ever seen the
silver key itself, Messrs. de Marigny and Phillips have seen photographs of it.
Does ibis look familiar to you?"
He
fumblingly laid on the table, with his large, white-mittened hand, a heavy key
of tarnished silver—nearly five inches
long, of unknown and utterly exotic workmanship, and covered from end to end
with hieroglyphs of the most bizarre description. De Marigny and Phillips
gasped.
"That's
it!" cried de Marigny. "The camera doesn't lie. I couldn't be
mistaken!"
But Aspinwall had already
launched a reply.
"Fools! What does it prove? If (hat's really the key
that belonged to my cousin, it's up to this foreigner—this damned nigger—to
explain how he got it! Randolph Carter vanished with the key four years ago.
How do we know he wasn't robbed and murdered? He was half crazy himself, and in
touch with still crazier people.
"Look
here, you nigger—where did you get that key? Did you kill Randolph
Carter?"
The Swami's features, abnormally placid, did not
change; but the remote, irisless black eyes behind them blazed dangerously. Fie
spoke with great difficulty.
"Please
control yourself, Mr. Aspinwall. There is another form of proof that I could give, but its effect upon everybody would not be pleasant. Let us be
reasonable. Here are some papers obviously written since 1930,
and in the unmistakable
style of Randolph Carter."
Fie
clumsily drew a long envelope from inside his loose coat and handed it to the
sputtering attorney as de Marigny and Phillips watched with chaotic thoughts
and a dawning feeling of supernal wonder.
"Of
course the handwriting is almost illegible—but remember that Randolph Carter
now has no hands well adapted to forming human script."
Aspinwall
looked through the papers hurriedly, and was visibly perplexed, but he did not
change his demeanor. The room was tense with excitement and nameless dread, and
the alien rhythm of the coffin-shaped clock had an utterly diabolic sound to de
Marigny and Phillips, though the lawyer seemed affected not at all.
Aspinwall
spoke again. "These look like clever forgeries. If they aren't, the)- may mean that Randolph Carter has been brought
under the control of people with no good purpose. There's only one thing to
do—have this faker arrested. De Marigny, will you telephone for the
police?"
"Let
us wait," answered their host. "I do not think this case calls for
the police. I have a certain idea. Mr. Aspinwall, this gentleman is a mystic of
real attainments. He says he is in the confidence of Randolph Carter. Will it
satisfy you if he can answer certain questions which could be answered only by
one in such confidence? I know Carter, and can ask such questions. Let me get a
book which I think will make a good test."
lie turned toward the door to the library, Phillips dazedly following in a
kind of automatic way. Aspinwall remained where he was, studying closely the
Hindoo who confronted him with abnormally impassive face. Suddenly, as
Chandraputra clumsily restored the silver key to his pocket, the lawyer emitted
a guttural shout.
"Fley,
by Fleaven! I've got it! This rascal is in disguise. I don't believe he's an
East Indian at all. That face—it isn't a face, but a mask! I guess his story put that into my head, but it's true. It never moves,
and that turban and beard hide the edges. This fellow's a common crook! He
isn't even a foreigner—I've been watching his language. He's a Yankee of some
sort.
And look at those mittens—he knows his
fingerprints could be spotted. Damn you, I'll pull that thing off—"
"Stop!" The hoarse, oddly alien voice of the Swami
held a tone beyond all mere earthly fright. "I told you there was another form of proof which I could give if necessary, and I warned you not to provoke me to it.
This red-faced old meddler is right—I'm not really an East Indian. This face is a mask, and what it covers is not human. You
others have guessed—I felt that minutes ago. It wouldn't be pleasant if I took
that mask off—let it alone, Ernest. I may as well tell you that I am Randolph Carter."
No one moved. Aspinwall snorted and made
vague motions. De Marigny and Phillips, across the room, watched the workings
of the red face and studied the back of the turbaned figure that confronted
him. The clock's abnormal ticking was hideous, and the tripod fumes and swaying
arras danced a dance of death. The half-choking lawyer broke the silence.
"No
you don't, you crook—you can't scare me! You've reasons of your own for not
wanting that mask off. Maybe we'd know who you are. Off with it—"
As
he reached forward, the Swami seized his hand with one of his own clumsily
mittened members, evoking a curious cry of mixed pain and surprize. De Marigny
started toward the two, but paused confused as the pseudo-Hindoo s shout of
protest changed to a wholly inexplicable rattling and buzzing sound.
Aspinwall's red (ace was furious, and with his free hand he made another lunge
at his opponent's bushy beard. This time he succeeded in getting a hold, and at
his frantic tug the whole waxen visage came loose from the turban and clung to
the lawyer's apoplectic list.
As
it did so, Aspinwall uttered a frightful gurgling cry, and Phillips and de
Marigny saw his lace convulsed with a wilder, deeper and more hideous epilepsy
ol stark panic than ever they had seen on human countenance before. The
pseudo-Swami had meanwhile released his other hand and was standing as if
dazed, making buzzing noises of a most abnormal quality. Then the turbaned
figure slumped oddly into a posture scarcely human, and began a curious, fascinated sort of shuffle toward the coffin-shaped clock that
ticked out its cosmic and abnormal rhythm. His now uncovered face was turned
away, and de Marigny and Phillips could not see what the lawyer's act had
disclosed. Then their attention was turned to Aspinwall, who was sinking
ponderously to the floor. The spell was broken—but when they reached the old
man he was dead.
Turning
quickly to the shuffling Swami's receding back, de Marigny saw one of the great
white mittens drop listlessly off a dangling arm. The fumes of the olibanum
were thick, and all that could be glimpsed of the revealed hand was something
long and black. Before the Creole could reach the retreating figure, old Mr.
Phillips laid a restraining hand on his shoulder*
"Don't!"
he whispered. "We don't know what we're up against. Thai other facet, you
know—Zkauba, the wizard of Yaddith. . . ."
The turbaned figure had now reached the
abnormal clock, and the watchers saw through the dense fumes a blurred black
claw fumbling with the tall, hieroglyphed door. The fumbling made a queer,
clicking sound. Then the figure entered the coffin-shaped case and pulled the
door shut after it.
De
Marigny could no longer be restrained, but when he reached and opened the clock
it was empty. The abnormal ticking went on, beating out the dark, cosmic rhythm
which underlies all mystical gate-openings. On the floor the great white
mitten, and the dead man with a bearded mask clutched in his hand, had nothing
further to reveal.
* *
* * #
A year passed, and nothing has been heard of
Randolph Carter. His estate is still unsettled. The Boston address from which
one "Swami Chandrapu-tra" sent inquiries to various mystics in
1930-31-32 was indeed tenanted by a strange Flindoo, but he left shortly before
the date of the New Orleans conference and has never been seen since. He was
said to be dark, expressionless, and bearded, and his landlord thinks the
swarthy mask—which was duly exhibited—looks very much like him. He was never,
however, suspected of any connection with the nightmare apparitions whispered
of by local Slavs. The hills behind Arkham were searched for the "metal
envelope," but nothing of the sort was ever found. However, a clerk in
Ark-ham's First National Bank does recall a queer turbaned man
who cashed an odd bit of gold bullion in October, 1930.
De
Marigny and Phillips scarcely know what to make of the business. After all,
what was proved ? There was a story. There was a key
which might have been forged from one of the pictures Carter had freely
distributed in 1928. There were papers—all indecisive. There was a masked
stranger, but who now living saw behind the mask? Amidst the strain and the
olibanum fumes that act of vanishing in the clock might easily have been a dual
hallucination. Hindoos know much of hypnotism. Reason proclaims the
"Swami" a criminal with designs on Randolph Carter's estate. But the
autopsy said that Aspinwall had died of shock. Was it rage alone which caused it? And some things in that story . . .
In a
vast room hung with strangely figured arras and filled with olibanum fumes,
Etienne-Laurent de Marigny often sits listening with vague sensations to the
abnormal rhythm of that hieroglyphed, coffin-shaped clock.
^Jlic
$3ooh$liop
bu Ifjedon tf^ond
Always to be
relied upon for a smooth
and pleasing
tale, Nelson Bond turns his hand
to a
theme which has subsconscioushj bothered all writers. Where do
their novels really come from?
What has
happened to the novels
which great men might have
written, and didn't? What would Shakespeare
have done
had he
lived jive more years'? It's a
perplexing thing to be a
writer, to know for a
fact that one ivill definitely produce
a novel
or a
short story two years from today,
and yet
have not
the slightest
idea of
what it
will he!
The thought always perturbs
the literary
man. Let
Nelson Bond tell you about it.
0
N THE dead sultriness of Manhattan midsummer there was no incentive
to write. Mansion's apartment was like the inside of a kiln.
Two hours ago he had stripped off his
damp shirt and sat down before his typewriter. Now, for all his labors, he had
nothing to show but a dozen crumpled balls of bond paper flung haphazardly in
and at the wastepapcr basket.
"Damn
novels!" muttered Marston. "And damn editors with deadlines. And damn this heat!"
He
swept a handful of white and yellow sheets from the tray before him, leafed
through them bitterly. It was a good idea, his plot for this novel. He read
again the three chapters he had completed. It was good work; some of the best
he had ever done, smoothly written. The Underlings. A psychological story of defeat, and of ones
wdio let themselves be defeated. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not with our stars—"
A
good theme. And so far, a good job. But—
This
heat! This overwhelming, enervating heat. He was,
Marston realized with a sudden petulant anger, ill. Actually
and physically ill. He gave up. With a final despairing giance at the
white sheet shining in the platen roll, he rose. He was shocked to find his
exhaustion so deep that as he stood up there danced before his eyes a black
vertigo, brief but frightening.
There could be only suffocation and
discomfort so long as he remained
104 here.
Out of doors it would be hot, too, but there might be a ghost of a breeze stirring in the shaded streets down by
the river. Marston put on shirt and coat, and went out.
He had not remembered the bookshop was along
this way—had, indeed, quite forgotten the little shop until suddenly there it
was, just u few paces before him. Then he recalled the
several occasions on which, before, he had seen it and planned to drop in for a
browse. Each time, circumstances had prevented his doing so.
The
bookshop was far from prepossessing in appearance. It was ancient and musty,
and its only lure was the faint aura of mystery ever attendant to dark
neglected places. How long it had been a fixture in this neighborhood, Marston
had no way of knowing. It did, apparently, but a slight business, for of the
scores wdio passed it by, none save himself so much as
turned a head to peer into its dusty window.
He
had seen it first a year ago or so—that afternoon when, with poor Thatcher, he
had been riding by here on a bus. Thatcher was a minor poet; not a very good
one, but an ardent one. He had been regaling Marston with an enthusiastic
preview of his latest masterpiece, soon to be released.
"Very soon, Marston. Just a few more stanzas and it goes to the
publisher. It . . . it's a good work, Marston. Oh, I know that sounds braggart,
coming from me. But a writer can tell when his work is good or bad. This isn't
like anything I've done before. It's poetry this time. Real poetry—"
His
tone was pathetically eager. Marston murmured, "I'm sure it is,
Thatcher."
"I
know it is. I'm calling it Songs of a New Century. It will make me, Marston. Up
to now, Eve just been a versifier. This book will give me a reputation.
See if I'm not right . . . Oh, I say!"
He
stopped suddenly. Marston, glancing up swiftly, remembered that Thatcher's
health was reportedly on the thin edge. The man didn't look at all well. His
cheeks were too pale, his eyes too dark and sunken. "What is it, old man? You all right?"
"What?"
Thatcher recovered his poise, ventured the slimmest excuse for a smile.
"Oh . . . oh, yes, quite!" But he pressed the buzzer that drew the
bus to the curb and rose, Marston thought, a little abruptly. "I'm fine,
thanks. But I just remembered a little errand. Chap I have to see. In
there."
And he pointed to the shop before which
Marston now stood.
Marston
insisted, "You're sure you feel well? Perhaps I should come along—?"
"Now,
don't you worry about me. I'll be all right. Chap's an
old friend of mine." Thatcher climbed down from the bus. He called back
over his shoulder, "See you later, Marston. Watch for the Songs—"
But he had, thought Marston regretfully, been
mistaken. On both counts. They never met again. Nor
did the new book ever appear. Poor Thatcher was not so well as
he had hopefully claimed. It was his heart. The next day Marston read his name
in the obituary column.
All of a year ago, that had been. Since then,
Marston had thought often of the little bookshop. It held a sort of macabre
fascination for him; an association of ideas Marston could not explain even to
himself. Into that little shop Thatcher had disappeared. Marston had never seen
him again. It made the bookshop a—a sort of symbol.
Silly, of course. But last winter when Marston lay ill of the
flu and tossed for restless hours in delirium, it had become almost an
obsession with him. A compulsion clung to him; he experienced an insensate
desire to climb from his sickbed and visit it. A curious
urge, but one so powerful that when finally he recovered, he did make a special trip to the little shop.
But
he had chosen a poor time. It was closed. The door was latched and bolted, and
the shades drawn tight.
Now,
however, it was not closed. The shade was up, the door an inch or so invitingly
ajar. And though the shop was small, there would be coolness in its musty
depths. The sun poured down on Marston's he"ad and pressed on his
shoulders with a ponderable strength. His head ached, and a dull nausea was
upon him.
He opened the door and went
in.
The
transition from glaring sunlight to shaded datk was abrupt; at first he could
see nothing. Somewhere in the back of the shop a bell jangled softly; ancient
silences seemed to well in upon the cheerful, tinny sound, engulfing, stilling
it.
Marston,
stumbling forward, bumped against a table. Surprise brought a small
"Oh!" to his lips, and he clung to the table, waiting for his moment
of blindness to pass. Out of the shadows before him came a quiet, sympathetic
voice.
"Did you hurt
yourself, my friend?"
Marston complained, "It's dark in here."
"Dark?" A moment's silence.
Then, "Dark, yes. It is, I suppose. But
peaceful."
Marston
could see more plainly now. He stood in the center of a small, low-ceilinged
room walled on either side with shelves of books. The table before him also was
piled high with bound volumes. Some were old and faded; others, he was
surprised to notice, were brightly new.
Beyond
the table was a tiny desk, and at the desk a quiet figure sat, im-perturbably
scratching with an old goose quill in a ledger open before him. In the ill
light Marston could not clearly see the proprietor's face, but he saw bent
shoulders, and white hair shining like a halo in the gloom. There was, he felt,
something vaguely familiar about the old man's features— something
tantalizingly near the fringes of his memory. . . .
It slipped away even as he
tried to grasp it. And the proprietor looked up.
"Is there anything in
particular, my friend?"
"Just looking," said Marston. Like all book-lovers, he loathed efficiency in the management of a bookstore. He preferred seeking, in his own good time and at his own
whim, whatever of literary interest the shop might hold for him.
The old man nodded.
"There is no need for haste," he
said, and returned to his interminable scribbling. The goose-quill pen scraped
dryly but not unpleasantly. Marston turned to the shelves.
It did not occur to him at once that there
was anything unusual about the books on which he looked. That realization came
upon him gradually; hence it came as a slow, growing wonder and not with any
deep, sharp sense of shock. There are so many books, so many authors. Their
names are legion; easily forgotten. Mansion's eyes had traveled over perhaps a
full row before there awakened in his mind the awareness that he had viewed
something strange and puzzling, something that did not ring quite true.
He
glanced back along the row. The proprietor apparently had made no effort to
separate his stock according to subject matter. Poetry, plays and novels,
essays and texts stood side by side in scrambled heterogeneity. Titles heretofore unknown by Marston. New
names and old . . . old thoughts and new.
Then he saw a thin volume, brown with age. The title, Agamemnon. And
the author . . . William Shakespeare!
Agamemnon ... by Shakespeare? Marston knew of no such title. The hot spark ever latent in the heart
of the bookworshiper leaped suddenly into blaze. One of two things: he had
stumbled across either the most amazing discovery of the century or the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated in the name of art. His pulse quickening with
excitement, Marston reached for the volume.
Then his hand, in reaching, stayed. For now
he saw, senses sharpened by his discovery, still other titles; books equally
unknown and equally amazing. Cap'n Calfwh, by
Mark Twain. The Leprechaun, by
Donn Byrne. )ohn Galsworthy's Peel of Clay, and Darkling Moors by Charlotte Bronte.
Swiftly
his gaze dropped to another shelf. He saw with a vast, incredulous
incomprehension Christopher Crump by Charles Dickens, The Gargoyle's Eye, by Edgar Allen Poe, Thackeray's Colonel Coivperlhwaile, and The Private Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
He
had heard no footsteps, but now he was aware that at his side stood the
proprietor of the little shop. There was quiet pleasure in the old man's voice.
"You admire my books,
young friend5"
Marston
could only wave a hand at the shelves. His speech was stammering, confused.
"But . . . these! I
don't understand!"
"You are Robert Marston, aren't you? Fantasy is your field. You
should appreciate these others."
Marston's
gaze helplessly followed the proprietor's gesture.
He looked upon names well known to him as his own, but at titles never before
dreamed of. The Troglodytes, by Jules
Verne, Charles Fort's What Unseen Presence?, Hanuman, the First God, by Ignatius
Donnelly, Weinbaum's Conquest of Space, and
Lovecraft's bulky Complete History of Demonology,
And under these a smaller volume; a thin, bright volume with untarnished bookjackc-t. Its title . . . Songs of a New Century, Its
author . . . David Thatcher.
It was then, suddenly, that Marston understood.
A great dull prescience filled him, and to his
host he said in a voice that was strangely tired, "I
suppose, then it—, too, is here?"
And the old man nodded gravely.
"The Underlings? Yes,
my son; it, too, is
here."
There
was but one copy, fresh and shining new as if it had
at this very moment come from the publisher's office. The dust jacket was brave and fair. Even in this shaken hour, Marston's heart
knew a swift, high lift of pride
in
this, his book.
He
reached for it—then hesitated. And of his
aged host he asked, "May I?"
"It is your book," said the old man. And Marston took it down. . . .
Oh, some changes had been made, he found, in the opening chapters. But they were minor
editings. In the main, those scenes were as he had written them. With shaking hands he turned the clean white pages. His eyes sought avidly words that
heretofore had never known the permanence of print, read thoughts that up till now had existed only in his mind.
And swiftly though he read, he knew with a fierce, bright joy that he had
not erred in claiming this his
finest work.
There
was no mediocrity in this book; no faltering, no stumbling confusion of ideas. Each sentence was perfect; no word or thought or phrase but shone with lustrous purity. This was the book Marston had
always meant to write; it was the book he had always known lay somewhere deep within him. Here was the triumphant accomplishment of his writing powers. And
Marston, who knew books, knew that this book was gtcat, and that in it, at
the end, his skill had
attained its full fruition. . . .
At the end!
He
closed the book, and its closing was a small and startling sound in the fusty
silence. He stared at his host, knowing now wherein that face and form had been familiar. A coldness was upon him, and a sudden fear, and he said
loudly, "But no! Not now, old man! Not before it is finished—"
The
old man said cjuietly, "Surely you see it cannot be finished ovei there, Marston? Nothing is ever perfect on that side. Only in this bookshop arc stories and songs high and sweet and true as their
authors dreamed them.
"There The Underlings would
be but another book—a clothbound, crippled symbol of a dream that died
aborning. Thoughts as lofty as the stars faltering on words
too weak to bear them. Tales finished over there are never truly great.
Always they lack the wings on which their authors envisioned them.
"Only
in the library of the left-undone may a story
reach the heights intended by its creator. Here—beside an epic Homer ever meant
to write, a play that Marlowe planned but did not put
into words, Galsworthy's last and greatest romance, ten
thousand tales unwritten by a thousand dreamers —here The Underlings can
take its rightful place in the imperishable library of might-have-been.
"It is the final price for perfection. And a small one."
His
voice soughed into silence like the last faint whisper of the moon-drawn tide.
And it seemed to Marston that a new sound reached his ears; it was as though
voices spoke to him from some not distant place, voices greeting him in good
fellowship, bidding him come and join their camaraderie. He heard—or thought
he did—the laughing voice of Thatcher.
"What's all the fuss, old boy? My soul, but you're making an issue of a simple mailer—"
Now the old man held out his hand to Marston.
"Are you ready, my friend?" he asked.
But—there
was the book in his hand. And suddenly there swept into Marston's brain a
thought so daring that an ague seized his limbs.
It
was not yet too late! Nor would it be until that ancient hand met his. Could he
but reach the street outside—and with this book—The Underlings might yet be given to the world in all its dreamed perfection!
A
swift decision stirred him. With a sudden cry he stepped back from the
ancient's proffered clasp, whirled and stumbled toward the doorway. The worn
knob slipped beneath his palm; the door held, and in panic desperation he
tugged, panting, at the barrier. Behind him the soft voices rose in a wailing
crescendo of dismay. A sigh whispered in his ear, "There's no escape, my
son. You but delay—"
Then
the door was open; and the sunlight, raw, hot, and heavy as the crush of a
monstrous fist, was blinding-gold in his eyes. With the precious volume
clenched in his hands, he cried aloud his triumph, staggered into the street
wildly, heedlessly.
He
did not hear the voices raised in swift warning, nor
the startled rasp of tlie klaxon, nor the screaming grind of futile brakes. He
heard only the deafening tumult ot a world flaming into oblivion . . . then the
soft peace once more, and the chiding voice of the ancient one. "You but delay, my son. Are you ready, now?"
And a cool hand meeting his
own. . . .
"Couldn't
help hittin' him!" said the truckman. "I swear to God I couldn't
help it! This guy seen it—he'll tell you. Lie come bustin' right out in front
o' me, shoutin' like he was crazy or somethin'. I tried to stop, but—"
"O.K.,"
said the big man in blue. "O.K. It wasn't your
fault. Anybody else see it happen? Where'd he come from, anyhow?"
A
witness, white of lip, lifted horror-fascinated eyes from the figure on the
asphalt. He pointed a shaking finger.
"Over
there, Officer. That vacant lot across the street. I
saw him wandering around in there, mumbling to himself.
I think he must have had a sunstroke the way he
acted. That property has been vacant for years. Why he'd want to go in
there—"
"I'll
take your name," said the policeman. "Anybody recognize him? Let's
see that book he was carrying. Maybe it's got his name in it."
Someone handed the book to
him.
He
leafed through the volume briefly, tilted back his cap, and scratched his
forehead.
"Hey, now! This is the queerest looking damn' book I ever saw! Look! Only the first three chapters printed . . . and the rest of it
nothing but blank pages!"
One-Wan Qod
bu ^ranlt Owen
It in with
pleasure that wo
present a new and hitherto unpublished Chinese
fantasy by the author of
The Wind That Tramps the
World and. The Purple Sea. Frank Owen has never been to
China but somehow he has mastered
the fragile
dreamlike atmosphere of thai
nation's legendry to perfection. China has passed through
mam periods of turbulence,
hut through
it all
has clung
to the
ideal of the ultimate
desirability of peace and tranquillity.
This is
expressed very well in
Owen's story of the Cod
of the
Scented Pine Trees.
ƒ FRAGRANT ink stick, an engraved ink stone and a few brush strokes are
all that are needed to tell the story of the God of Scented Pine Trees. Now it
must be known that this god revelled in pompous ceremony and was a glorious
dignified figure in his silk embroidered robes of sun gold, lush green and
purple splendor. Me had as many gaudy costumes as
there are hours in the round of the year, emblazoned with dragons and unicorns,
and exhaling a heady mixture of musk and myrrh and cinnamon, but he was not
happy; for alas, only one poor coolie worshipped him. Small wonder then that he
was vexed, for gods need worshippers even as men need gods to worship.
The
coolie, whose name was Fo Wen, lived in a small mud hut and his most prized
possession was a small blackened kettle in which he cooked his rice, and
occasionally a bit of turnip to cement together the bones of his emaciated
body. But he was unaware that he lacked so much of earth's riches, for each
night as he slept on the bare earth his beloved wife returned to him from the
realms of her ancestors. Once more they were young and happy because they were
together. And so they talked and laughed and were abundantly rich until the
moon met the dawn. Olttimes, Fo Wen wondered whether
the dream were the reality or reality the dream even as did Chuang Tzu who
dreamed that he was a butterfly who dreamed that he was Chuang Tzu.
Near
the hut of Fo Wen stood a stately pine tree. Me joyed to sit before his door of an evening, drinking in
the beauty of its graceful fronds against
111
the
sky. The odor of pine drifted to him and in the far distance
he could hear the tinkle of temple bells. At such times abundant peace crept
into his soul and he was rich.
But
the God of Scented Pine Trees was not happy. Though he was almost barren of
worshippers he wished to be kowtowed to in splendor. Therefore he determined to
make Fo Wen, his last suppliant, a very wealthy man.
One deep dark middle of the night, he caused a magnificent garden to appear
around the small hut of Fo Wen, surrounded by a house
of many rooms. The furnishings of these rooms which opened onto the garden were
of tine laccjuer, teakwood and ivory. The soft handwovcn rugs of rich, lush colors, might have put flowers to shame. In one room was a
collection of jewels— diamonds, pearls, jades and nephrites, wrought gold and
carved silver, turquoise, amber, jasper and carnelian. On the walls were
written pictures and landscapes dating back to the Tang dynasty. Every
conceivable luxury was in that palace, besides four slender concubines, versed
in the arts of music, dance and song.
Then
the god touched Fo Wen gently on the shoulder until he
awakened. "Blest are you among mortals," he intoned, "for I, the
sole God of Scented Pine Trees, have decided to make you rich."
Fo
Wen opened his eyes. He appeared slightly incredulous as he gazed about
sleepily.
"Rich," he repeated, "rich,
what need have I for more riches?" "As a coolie, certainly your
position was not lofty," observed the god, somewhat irritated. "I was
content."
"Is
contentment enough? Gaze about you, this magnificent house and garden is all
yours. And there are diamonds beyond price."
"What are diamonds?" asked the
coolie.
"Next to jade, the
most precious thing on earth."
"The most precious thing on earth is a
good wile," said Fo Wen.
"Wives,
faugh!" said the god. "What do they amount to? Millions
of women
in China. All chatter like monkeys. Even the worthy ones fade, shrivel
and are gone. But diamonds live forever."
"Only a fool thinks a diamond
lives!"
"They sparkle as though alive."
"But have they four souls?"
"No."
"Do they breathe?" "Who said
they did?"
"Can you use them for food when you are
starving?"
"Our coolie is becoming a
philosopher!"
"If tod makes a philosopher, then I am
one."
"You
read many books?" asked the god, who somehow felt slightly deflated. Why
should not this miserable coolie be abject before him, at the power of his
majesty?
"I like to read the graceful poems that
are flung so frequently on the walls of buildings by enthusiasts of the brush.
However, I cannot afford to buy books."
The
god brightened perceptibly. "Now you are rich, you can buy all the books
you want."
"Only
one book do I need, the verses of Lao Tzu that I committed to memory as a
youth."
The
God of Scented Pine Trees felt as though his nose was out of joint. Why had he
never thought to write a book ? What was a book,
anyway, but a mere jumble of words! He was worried almost into hysterics. It
was bad enough to have only one worshipper, without having to share his
devotion.
He
decided that he would treat the book of Lao Tzu as though it of little
importance.
"What did he write
that is so memorable?"
Fo Wen reflected lor a moment, then he
quoted, "Do not exalt wealth— Avoid treasuring
rare things."
The
God of Scented Pine Trees broke into cold sweat. Did this simple coolie realize
what he was saying? Surely he could not be so erudite
as tbus to berate him! Truly, these were difficult days in which to be a god.
He sighed so deeply that it
stirred the garden like a breeze.
"Would you like to
look through your new house?" he asked brusquely.
"My hut serves my
simple needs. Why should I desert it?"
"Because
I, thy god, command thee!"
Fo
Wen rose wearily to his feet. It had not occurred to him to stand in the
presence of the god. Perhaps it was because there was so little in his appearance
to command respect. He seemed more worried than regal,
he was too fat and gaudily overdressed.
"As you wish," he
said without enthusiasm.
"Oh,
for a few other worshippers," thought the god, "that I might put this
ingrate in his place!" But he remained civil for he badly needed this lone
worshipper even though he was so little devout.
"You shall drink from
a jade cup," he said.
Fo
Wen remained silent. What matter the vessel from which one slakes thirst?
"In
your possession will be amber trinkets in which leaves and ferns, insects and
lovely flowers are entombed; while all about your home will be gorgeous jade
flowers growing, their petals of gems of rainbow colors. The rugs beneath your
feet will be soft as moss and of a green sheen. You will bathe in a crystal
bath, the like of which may not be found the world over. You will feast on
viands of a piquance and delicacy to entice the appetite of a king."
"Rice
alone is sufficient for my needs. Possessions mean nothing to me."
"But you will be rich!" "Have I ever been poor?"
"You,
a coolie, ask that?" "My sleep is deep, my dreams are pleasant."
"Do you not thank me for this house?" "I worship you, is not
that enough?"
The
god coughed. "That is very good," he said in an effort to be offhanded,
for how good and necessary it was he did not want Fo
Wen to know.
Fo
Wen was very tired and somewhat distressed that the Scented Pine Tree God
should be so persistent. He had labored hard and now in spite of himself his
head slipped gently to the good earth and he slept. The god sighed and departed
to those realms where only gods may go.
At
sunrise, Fo Wen awakened, cooked a bowl of rice, and
then departed for his back-breaking toil from dawn till dusk. Strange, he
thought, that a god should build him a great house, he who was but one of the
countless teaming millions of coolies of China. What did it mean? What was the reason ? What need had he for so large a house now that his
wife was no longer with him and he was childless?
To
be childless, in China, is looked upon as a real calamity. Childless men
usually take unto themselves a secondary wife, or a third until the need for
progeny has been fulfilled. But not so Fo Wen. Mei Mei
was his beloved wife; even death had not separated them, for she came to him in
his dreams. He needed no other women, wanted no other woman, even as Emperor
Ming Huang had eyes for no other woman after beholding Yang Kwei-lei.
Fo
Wen was well educated though he had never attended school. His father had
taught him to read and write. The beauty of his brush strokes might have
brought envy to an artist. Nature, too, had been his teacher. From the wind in
the willows he learned sweet songs which he longed to translate into words;
from the sky at evening he drew inspiration and serenity; from the glory of
scented pine trees he drew faith. So it was but natural he worshipped their
god. That the god was all but bankrupt as far as worshippers were concerned, he
did not know.
In
the early evening, Fo Wen returned to the garden which
was surrounded by the various rooms of the magnificent house. He was deeply
troubled as he walked through the carved red gates, past the spirit screen, and
on toward his crude hut that remained an incongruous blot on the beauty of the
garden. He prepared his usual bowl of rice over a wood fire. He ate slowdy,
trying to fathom the mystery of the god's benevolence. Of what need had he for
a palace? He was a coolie, had always been a coolie, and a coolie he would
remain until his life ceased.
Had
he been endowed with this great house while his wife, Mei Mei, had walked the
earth, he would have been ten thousand times thankful for the blessing. It
would have meant jewels and silken robes for her. Now, since she had joined her
ancestors except during those glorious hours of sleep when she returned to him,
wealth meant nothing to him.
As
a majestic form stood beside him, he looked up to behold the disgruntled God
of Scented Pine Trees.
"Why
do you still live in this hovel?" he asked brusquely. "Because it is
my house," was the simple reply. "I belong here." "I have
built you a palace that even would have delighted Kubla Khan. He, too, loved
scented pine trees." "He was an emperor; I, a coolie."
"You
are a coolie no longer. Heed my words, live in the house you deserve. I have
spoken; it is the least you can do to obey."
Fo Wen found the conversation distasteful. He
was amazed that he felt so little awe in the presence of this god whom he had
worshipped for so many years. He thought of the words of Lao Tzu: Supreme
virtue is like pure water. It is beneficial to all and harmful to none. It seeks
the lowly places abhorred by men. He, too, had dwelt in the lowly places yet
the God of Scented Pine Trees wished to lift him up to the cold lonely heights
of grandeur. Possession of earthly treasures is not enough. If the mind be not
fed, what use a fat sleek body! Again he thought of Lao Tzu:
The
wise man retires quietly from the outer world. It is then that he experiences
the Divine Tao. When sotd and spirit are harmoniously united They
will ever remain one. So was it with Fo Wen and his
wife, Mei Mei. She had dwelt with him happily for years in the mud and bamboo
hut. To him it sang gently of her presence. Here she was near him. He wished no
other abode.
But
the God of Scented Pine Trees was urgent. Why should the welfare of one poor
coolie mean so much to him?
"Tell
me," he asked abruptly, "were you once, long ages ago, a member of
the Fo clan ?"
The
god shuddered at the mere thought of such a thing.
"I
am an immortal," he said haughtily. "Immortals belong to no
clan."
"Then
why do you bestow gifts upon me?"
"I
am your god. You worship me. You are indeed a worthy man."
"And
do you bestow gifts on all who worship you?"
That
was a poser. The god might have answered yes with more than a modicum of truth,
for Fo Wen was his only worshipper, the slender thread
that guarded his divinity.
The
God of Scented Pine Trees spoke slowly. "I have come to you because none
other is more worthy. You live righteously."
"So
do multitudes of coolies in China. He who bears gifts without reason is surely
subject to much doubt."
"Wealth
means nothing to me. See, I put out my hand and there are gold pieces in it, at
my will they appear."
"A magician!"
"In a way," the god conceded.
"However, could men live without magic —the magic of flowers, the magic of
the little rain of China gently falling, the magic of the night sky, the magic of the caress of a beloved woman,
the magic of sleep when day's work is over?"
Fo
Wen added, "And greatest of all, the magic of dreams."
"Through
all the years you have worshipped me, 1 have
heeded your prayers with compassion. When you burnt incense sticks they were
pleasant to my nostrils. I have watched over you diligently that no harm might
befall you."
"Yet the greatest
disaster struck me."
"I know nothing of
disaster."
"My wife has gone from
me to her ancestors."
"Was
that such a calamity? Why, in yonder house I have placed concubines for your
enjoyment so beautiful they put flowers to shame. They belong to you. They are
a hundred times more beautiful than your wife. Go to them."
"I
want them not. My wife was the most gracious of women. She was attuned to my
every wish. Her passing was sorrow beyond words."
The god noticed tears in
the eyes of Fo Wen.
"Weeping is for
women," he said scornfully.
"The loss of such a
woman is occasion enough for weeping."
"Bah!"
spat out the god. "Was she such a good wife; did she bear you
children?"
"She
was the best of wives. That she was childless she could not help. Even though
you are a god, say no more against her, else I may curse you."
The
God of Scented Pine Trees was in a panic. There was nothing godlike in the
manner in which he fawned over bo Wen. He repeated
over and over again that all he wished to do was to show how great was his benevolence. He wanted Fo
Wen to be a rich man since his character was so strong and noble.
Fo
Wen felt ill at ease. He disliked the god to debase himself before him. In an
effort to get out of an untenable position, he promised that that night he
would sleep in the palace. At that the god departed triumphantly, hollow
triumph though it was, for he had been very close to ignominy.
Fo
Wen walked across the garden reluctantly, to the sleeping quarters of the
master of the house, but he felt little like a master, more like a slave, the
slave of the God of Scented Pine Trees. What kind of a god was this who
insisted on controlling the actions of his worshippers? Far better was old Lao
Tzu who wrote for all within the Four Seas:
The Infinite Tao produces and sustains all
things.
It claims nothing of what it has produced.
It acts with loving wisdom, without desiring
reward,
It possesses all power
Yet
it does not seek to control.........
No wonder throughout China so many people
were Taotsts, regarding Lao Tzu with complete devotion. Truly, Lao Tzu was a
philosopher worth revering. He gave so much food for reflection and asked
nothing in return.
To please the God of Scented Pine Trees,
though with considerable reluctance, he entered the room for sleeping. It was
of an elegance that quite captured his breath. A pale lantern hung from the
azure blue ceiling like a summer moon. The green rug was as thick and soft as
dew-drenched grass at daybreak.
On
the walls were written pictures. One in exquisite brush strokes: "How cool
moonbeams drip from bamboo leaves." Another, "The color of distant
hills—oh, those chrysanthemums!" He meditated a moment before them. Their
eloquence he could appreciate. Like all Chinese he had the pro-' foundest
respect for the written character.
Quickly
he slipped out of his clothes, stretched out on the kong
and drew the silk coverlets over him, nor did he pay any attention to the large
golden dragon that was embroidered upon it. Sleep should have come to him at
once, for he was very tired, but his eyes did not close. First it was the pale
light of the lantern that annoyed him. He was used to sleeping in darkness. The
silk coverlets made him uncomfortable. The soft slinkiness was repulsive,
almost like a slimy snake's skin. And he wondered why he had permitted himself
to be flayed with words into this pretense of grandeur. He was but a coolie, a
coolie who loved poetry, flowers, sunsets, the natural
loveliness of life. What kind of a god was this God of Scented Pine Trees who
forced him into doing that which was abhorrent to him?
He
rose from the kong, put on his simple blue clothes and
returned to hut. He stretched out on the bare earth and sighed contentedly.
Sleep came to him at once. And now, in his dreams, his wile was beside him and
the night was tender with perfume and sweet music.
The
joy of peace and morning was on the land when he awakened. He walked to the
door of the hut and breathed deeply of the clear, cool air. What need had any
man for greater riches? fie thought ruefully of the
God of Scented Pine Trees whom he had worshipped for so many years. Now all that was ended. He would worship him no more, for he
was an advocate of false doctrines, fie knew nothing of the greatness of simple
things, the joy of humility. What need had he for a false god, when there was so much in nature
that was line and true?
Coming
toward him was a familiar fat figure, though not wearing his elaborate robes.
Now he was arrayed in rags. He prostrated himself before Fo
Wen and tout lied his forehead to the ground.
'.'Permit
me to worship you, O Mighty Sage," he said fervently.
"You were the sole remaining worshipper 1 had. That was why I erected this house for you. I was not satisfied with
humble devotion. I wanted to be kowtowed to by a man
of prominence. But now all this is over, and I have been flung down from the
high places of the gods and reduced to the status of mere mortal. Nor arn I dismayed,
for I shall follow your guidance and your teachings. You have shown me the
meaning of devotion. And so I prostrate myself before you in adoration."
Fo Wen felt strangely uplifted as though he
could climb to the sky and walk endlessly among the stats without fatigue. But
he checked the impulse. Better far to keep his feet deep-rooted in the earth,
even as do scented pine trees. Nevertheless,
inexplicably, a sudden change had come over the face of the morning.
His
vision was more acute, he could see far distances. Far into the deep blue sky
could he see unto realms of eternal solitude and peace.
Though the sun was well up, he could behold the moon and the stars, too,
shining with breathtaking brilliance. The air was filled with music and voices
softly singing. A hand, slim and tender touched his cheek and lie knew that his
wife was near him. This was as it should be, for death is as real as life and
occasionally more comforting.
That
day, Fo Wen did not depart for the docks to take up
his usual back-breaking toil. The ex-god went in his place. He wished as far as
possible to walk in the footsteps of the coolie who had been the last of his
worshippers. Perhaps on that path he would find that which he sought, the way
back again to the eternal mountains of the gods.
Fo
Wen repaired to the pine tree that stood a short distance outside the walls of
the palace. It was a perfect morning to give over to quiet reflection. The sun
was warm, the sky a rapturous blue. The pine trees had never been sweeter
scented. And he thought of the Emperor Ming Miang of the Tang Dynasty; how he
had fed the poor by having tubs of rice set out in the market-places for
distribution among the hungry. That is what he would like to do. At once there
was a large tub of rice standing near him, and a beggar was approaching for alms. Unto this man Fo
Wen gave a half sheng measure of rice, sufficient to keep him fed for some
time. And the beggar bent low before him, murmuring a prayer. "Thank you,
noble god, for this great gift."
Fo
Wen was warmed by his words. This was the thing he had always longed to do, had
he been able to afford it. That day he bestowed rice on many people, thereby
giving them the gift of life, for rice is the life blood of China. It is more
precious than gold, ivory or carved jade.
All
through the day, Fo Wen distributed rice to the poor,
and people came to him in ever-increasing throngs, nor did the tub ever become
empty. And all who came kowtowed before him in gratitude and prayer, for surely
this must be a god who showed such great generosity and compassion. Occasionally
Fo Wen uttered bits of verse which the people snatched
at eagerly. Thus were they doubly fed.
Day
after day, Fo Wen distributed rice under the scented pine tree, and more and
more people came to worship at his shrine—a single pine tree. Though he knew
his magical powers were increasing daily, he made no effort to disport himself
on the mountains of the gods, neither did he wear fine
raiment. Ffe still wore the blue clothes that were worn by uncounted millions
of Chinese, for he preferred to walk among men that his gifts might be used to
ease poverty. And beside him always was a slender woman whose smile was
wonderfully sweet.
^Jlie
Hfjijsteru the Sargasso
btj WJilliam J4ope J^oJnion
The original lilJe
of this
story was "The Mystery of
the Derelict" and we
changed that last word to
avoid confusion with the author's
more famous
"The Derelict." At one time the
Sargasso Sea used to be
the object
of many
novels and stories, and
the legend
of the
graveyard of lost ships gripped the
mind of
the imaginative.
This is
not a
story of that watery
cemetery—which existed only in the
minds of landlubbers—but of the real Sargasso
as seamen
knew it—a strange area
of floating
seaweed, mysterious in origin, which may
have provided
grounds for sailors' yarns such as
this one.
LL the night had the four-masted ship, Tarawak, Iain motionless in the drift of the Gulf Stream; for she had run into a
"calm patch" —into a stark calm which had lasted now for two days and
nights.
On
every side, had it been light, might have been seen dense masses of floating
gulf-weed, studying the ocean even to the distant horizon. In places, so large
were the weed-masses that they formed long, low banks, that
by daylight, might have been mistaken for low-lying land.
Upon
the lee side of the poop, Duthie, one of the 'prentices, leaned with his elbows
upon the rail, and stared out across the hidden sea, to where in the Eastern
horizon showed the first pink and lemon streamers of the dawn —faint, delicate
streaks and washes of colour.
A
period of time passed, and the surface of the leeward sea began to show —a
great expanse of grey, touched with odd, wavering belts of silver. And everywhere the black specks and islets of the weed.
Presently,
the red dome of the sun protruded itself into sight above the dark rim of the
horizon; and, abruptly, the watching Duthie saw something —a great, shapeless
bulk that lay some miles away to starboard, and showed black and distinct
against the gloomy red mass of the rising sun.
"Something in sight to looard,
Sir," he informed the Mate, who was lean-
ing,
smoking, over the rail that run across the break of the poop. "I can't
just make out what it is."
The
Mate rose from his easy position, stretched himself,
yawned, and came across to the boy.
"Whereabouts,
Toby?" he asked, wearily, and yawning again.
"There,
Sir," Duthie—alias Toby—"broad away on the beam, and right in the
track of the sun. It looks something like a big houseboat, or a haystack."
The
Mate stared in the direction indicated, and saw the thing which puzzled the
boy, and immediately the tiredness went out of his eyes and face.
"Pass
me the glasses oil the skylight, Toby," he commanded, and the youth
obeyed.
After
the Mate had examined the strange object through his binoculars for, maybe, a
minute, he passed them to Toby, telling him to take a "squint," and
say what he made of it.
"Looks
like an old powder-hulk, Sir," exclaimed the lad, after awhile, and to
this description the Mate nodded agreement.
Later,
when the sun had risen somewhat, they were able to study the derelict with more
exactness. She appeared to be a vessel of an exceedingly old type, mastless,
and upon the hull of wdiich had been built a roof-like superstructure; the use
of which they could not determine. She was lying just within the borders of one
of the weed-banks, and all her side was splotched with a greenish growth.
It
was her position, within the borders of the weed, that suggested to the puzzled
Mate, how so strange and unseaworthy looking a craft had come so far abroad
into the greatness of the ocean. For, suddenly, it occurred to him that she was
neither more nor less than a derelict from the vast Sargasso Sea—a vessel that
had, possibly, been lost to the world, scores and scores of years gone, perhaps
hundreds. The suggestion touched the Mate's thoughts with solemnity, and he
fell to examining the ancient hulk with an even greater interest, and pondering
on all the lonesome and awlul years that must have passed over her, as she had
lain desolate and forgotten in that grim cemetery ot the ocean.
Through
all that day, the derelict was an object of the most intense interest to those
aboard the Tarauak, every glass in the ship being brought into
use to examine her. Yet, though within no more than some six or seven miles of
her, the Captain refused to listen to the Mate's suggestions that they should
put a boat into the water, and pay the stranger a visit; for he was a cautious
man, and the glass warned him that a sudden change might be expected in the
weather; so that he would have no one leave the ship on any unnecessary
business. But, for all that he had caution, curiosity was by no means kicking
in him, and his telescope, at intervals, was turned on the ancient hulk through
all the day.
Then,
it would be about six bells in the second dog watch, a
sail was sighted astern, coming up steadily but slowdy. By eight bells they
were able to
make out that a small barque was bringing the wind with her; her yards squared,
and every stitch set. Yet the night had advanced apace, and it was nigh to
eleven o'clock before the wind reached those aboard the Tarawak. When at last it arrived, there was a slight
rustling and quaking ol canvas, and odd creaks here and there in the darkness
amid the gear, as each portion of the running and standing rigging took up the
strain.
Beneath
the bows, and alongside, there came gentle rippling noises, as the vessel
gathered way; and so, for the better part of the next hour, they slid through
the water at something less than a couple of knots in the sixty minutes.
To
starboard of them, they could see the red light of the little barque, which had
brought up the wind with her, and was now forging slowly ahead, being belter
able evidently than the big, heavy Tarawak to
take advantage of so slight a breeze.
About
a quarter to twelve, just after the relieving watch had been roused, lights
were observed to be moving to and fro upon the small barque, and by midnight it
was palpable that, through some cause or other, she was dropping astern.
When
the Mate arrived on deck, to relieve the Second, the latter officer informed
him of the possibility that something unusual had occurred aboard the barque,
telling of the lights about her decks,* and how that, in the last quarter of an
hour, she had begun to drop astern.
On
hearing the Second Mate's account, the First sent one of the 'prentices for his
night-glasses, and, when they were brought, studied the other vessel intently,
that is, so well as he was able through the darkness; for, even through the
night-glasses, she showed only as a vague shape, surmounted by the three dim
lowers of her masts and sails.
Suddenly,
the Mate gave out a sharp exclamation; for, beyond the barque, there was
something else shown dimly in the field of vision. He studied it with great
intentness, ignoring for the instant, the Second's
queries as to what it was that had caused him to exclaim.
All at once, he said, with
a little note of excitement in his voice:—
"The
derelict! The
barque's run into the weed around that old hooker!"
The Second Mate gave a
mutter of surprised assent, and slapped the rail.
"That's
it!" he said. "Thai's why we're passing her. And that explains the
lights. II they're not fast in the weed, they've probably run slap into the
blessed derelict!"
"One
thing," said the Mate, lowering his glasses, and beginning to fumble for
his pipe, "she won't have had enough way on her to do much damage."
The
Second Mate, who was still peering through his binoculars, murmured an absent
agreement, and continued to peer. The Mate, for his part,
* Unshaded lights arc never allowed about the
decks at night, as they are likely to blind the vision ol the ollicer ot the watch.—W. II. It.
filled and lit his pipe, remarking meanwhile to the
unhearing Second, that the light breeze was dropping.
Abruptly,
the Second Mate called his superior's attention, and in the same instant, so it
seemed, the failing wind died entirely away, the sails settling down into
runkles, with little rustles and flutters of sagging canvas.
"What's up?"
asked the Mate, and raised his glasses.
"There's something queer going on over
yonder," said the Second. "Look
at the lights moving about, and------- Did you see thai?''
The
last portion of his remark came out swiftly, with a sharp accentuation of the
last word.
"What?" asked the
Mate, staring hard.
"They're
shooting," replied the Second. "Look! There
again!"
"Rubbish!" said
the Mate, a mixture of unbelief and doubt in his voice.
With
the falling of the wind, there had come a great silence upon the sea. And,
abruptly, from far across the water, sounded the distant, dullish thud of a
gun, followed almost instantly by several minute, but sharply defined, reports
like the cracking of a whip out in the darkness.
"Jove!"
cried the Mate, "I believe you're right." He paused and stared.
"There!" he said. "I saw the flashes then. They're firing from
the poop, I believe. ... I must call
the Old Man."
He
turned and ran hastily down into the saloon, knocked on the door of the
Captain's cabin, and entered. He turned up the lamp, and, shaking his superior
into wakefulness, told him of the thing he believed to be happening aboard the
barque:—
"It's mutiny, Sir; they're shooting from
the poop. We ought to do some-
thing------ "
The Mate said many things, breathlessly; for he was a young
man; but the Captain stopped him, with a quietly
lifted hand.
"I'll
be up with you in a minute, Mr. Johnson," he said, and the Mate took the
hint, and ran up on deck.
Before
the minute had passed, the Skipper was on the poop, and staring through his
night-glasses at the barque and the derelict. Yet now, aboard of the barque,
the lights had vanished, and there showed no more the flashes of discharging
weapons—only there remained the dull, steady red glow of the port sidelight;
and, behind it, the night-glasses showed the shadowy outline of the vessel.
The Captain put questions
to the Mates, asking for further details.
"It
all stopped while the Mate was calling you, Sir," explained the Second.
"We could hear the shots quite plainly."
"They
seemed to be using a gun as well as their revolvers," interjected the
Mate, without ceasing to stare into the darkness.
For
awhile the three of them continued to discuss the matter, whilst down on the
maindeck the two watches clustered along the starboard rail, and a low hum of talk rose, fore and aft.
Presently,
the Captain and the Mates came to a decision. If there had been a mutiny, it had been brought to its conclusion, whatever that conclusion might be, and no interference from those
aboard the Tarawak, at that period, would be likely to do good. They were utterly in the dark—in more ways than
one—and, for all they knew, there might not even have been any mutiny. It (here
had been a mutiny, and the mutineers had won, then they had done their worst;
whilst if the officers had won well and good. They had
managed to do so without help. Of course, if the Tarawak had been a man-of-war with a large crew, capable of mastering any
situation, it would have been a simple matter to send a powerful, armed boat's
crew to inquire; but as she was merely a merchant vessel, undermanned, as is
the modern fashion, they must go warily. They would wait for the morning, and
signal. In a couple of hours it would be light. Then they would be guided by
circumstances.
The Mate walked to the
break of the poop, and sang out to the men:—
"Now
then, my lads, you'd better turn in, the watch below, and have a sleep; we may be wanting you by five bells."
There
was a muttered chorus of "i, i, Sir," and some of the men began to go
forrard to the fo'cas'le, but others of the watch below remained, their
curiosity overmastering their desire for sleep.
On
the poop, the three officers leaned over the starboard rail, chatting in a
desultory fashion, as they waited for the dawn. At some little distance hovered
Duthie, who, as eldest 'prentice just out of his time, had been given the post
of acting Third Mate.
Presently,
the sky to starboard began to lighten with the solemn coming of the dawn. The
light grew and strengthened, and the eyes of those in the Tarawak scanned with growing intentness that portion of the horizon, where
showed the red and dwindling glow of the barque's sidelight.
Then,
it was in that moment when all the world is full of
the silence of the dawn, something passed over the quiet sea, coming out of the
East-very faint, long-drawn-out, screaming, piping noise. It might almost have
been the cry of a little wind wandering out of the dawn across the sea—a
ghostly, piping skirl, so attenuated and elusive was it; but there was in it a
weird, almost threatening note, that told the three on the poop it was no wind
that made so dree and inhuman a sound.
The
noise ceased, dying out in an indefinite, mosquito-like shrilling, far and
vague and minutely shrill. And so came the silence
again.
"I
heard that, last night, when they were shooting," said the Second Mate,
speaking very slowly, and looking first at the Skipper and then at the Mate.
"It was when you were below, calling the Captain," he added.
"Ssh!"
said the Male, and held up a warning hand; but though they listened, there came
no further sound; and so they fell to disjointed questionings, and guessed
their answers, as puzzled men will. And ever and anon, they examined the barque
through their glasses; but without discovering anything of note, save that,
when the light grew stronger, they perceived that her jibboom had struck
through the superstructure of the derelict, tearing a considerable gap therein.
Presently, when the day had sufficiently
advanced, the Mate sung out to the Third, to take a couple of the 'prentices,
and pass up the signal flags and the code book. This was done, and a
"hoist" made; but those in the barque took not the slightest heed; so
that finally the Captain bade them make up the flags and return them to the locker.
After
that, he went down to consult the glass, and when he reappeared, he and the
Mates had a short discussion, after which, orders were given to hoist out the
starboard life-boat. This, in the course of half an hour, they managed; and,
after that, six of the men and two of the 'prentices were ordered into her.
Then
half a dozen rifles were passed down, with ammunition, and the same number of
cutlasses. These were all apportioned among the men, much to the disgust of the
two apprentices, who were aggrieved that they should be passed over; but their
feelings altered when the Mate descended into the boat, and handed them each a
loaded revolver, warning them, however, to play no "monkey tricks"
with the wapons.
Just as the boat was about to push off, Duthie, the eldest 'prentice,
came scrambling down the side ladder, and jumped for the after thwart. He landed, and sat down, laying the rifle
which he had brought, in the stern; and, after that, the boat put off for the
barque.
There
were now ten in the boat, and all well armed, so that the Mate had a certain
feeling of comfort that we would be able to meet any situation that was likely
to arise.
After
nearly an hour's hard pulling, the heavy boat had been brought within some two
hundred yards of the barque, and the Mate sung out to (he men to lie on their
oars for a minute. Then he stood up and shouted to the people on the barque;
but though he repeated his cry of "Ship ahoy!" several times, there
came no reply.
He
sat down, and motioned to the men to give way again, and so brought the boat
nearer the barque by another hundred yards. Here, he hailed again; but still
receiving no reply, he stooped for his binoculars, and peered for awhile
through them at the two vessels—the ancient derelict, and the modern sailing-vessel.
The
latter had driven clean in over the weed, her stern being perhaps some two
score yards from the edge of the bank. Her jibboom, as 1 have already mentioned, had pierced the green-blotched superstructure of
the derelict, so that her cutwater had come very close to the grass-grown side
of the hulk.
That
the derelict was indeed a very ancient vessel, it was now easy to see; for at
this distance the Mate could distinguish which was hull, and which
superstructure. Her stern rose up to a height considerably above her bows, and
possessed galleries, coming round the counter. In the window frames some of the
glass still remained; but others were securely shuttered, and some missing,
frames and all, leaving dark holes in the stern. And everywhere grew the dank,
green growth, giving to the beholder a queer sense of repulsion. Indeed, there
was that about the whole of the ancient craft, that repelled in a curious
way—something elusive—a remoteness from humanity that
was vaguely abominable.
The
Mate put down his binoculars, and drew his revolver, and, at the action, each one in the boat gave an instinctive glance to his own weapon. Then he sung out to them
to give-way, and steered straight for the weed.
The boat struck it, with something of a sog; and,
after that, they advanced slowly, yard by yard, only with considerable labour.
They
reached the counter of the barque, and the Mate held out his hand for an oar.
This, he leaned up against the side of the vessel, and a moment later was
swarming quickly up it. He grasped the rail, and swung himself
aboard; then, after a swift glance fore and aft, gripped the blade of the oar,
to steady it, and bade the rest
follow as quickly as possible, which they did, the last man bringing up the painter with him, and making it fast to a cleat.
Then commenced a rapid search through the ship. In several places about the maindeck they
found broken lamps, and aft on the poop, a shotgun, three revolvers, and
several capstan-bars lying about the poop-deck. But though they pried into
every possible corner, lifting the hatches, and examining the lazarette, not a
human creature was to be found—the barque was absolutely deserted.
After
the first rapid search, the Mate called his men together; for there was an
uncomfortable sense of danger in the air, and he felt that it would be belter
not to straggle. Then, he led the way forward, and set up on to the t'gallant
fo'cas'le head. Here, finding the port sidelight still burning, he sent over
the screen, as it were mechanically, lifted the lamp, opened it, and blew out
the flames; then replaced the affair on its socket.
After
that, he climbed into the bows, and out along the jibboom, beckoning to the
others to follow, which they did, no man saying a word, and all holding their
weapons handily; for each felt the oppressiveness of the Incomprehensible about
them.
The
Mate reached the hole in the great superstructure, and passed inside, the rest
following. Here they found themselves in what looked something like a great,
gloomy barracks, the floor of which was the deck of an ancient craft. The superstructure, as seen from the inside, was a very wonderful piece of
work, being beautifully shored and fixed; so that at one time it must have possessed
immense strength; though now it was all rotted, and showed many a gape and rip.
In one place, near the centre, or midships part, was a sort of platform, high
up, which the Mate conjectured might have been used as a "look-out";
though the reason for the prodigious superstructure itself, he could not
imagine.
Having
searched the decks of this craft, he was preparing to go below, when, suddenly, Duthie caught him by the sleeve, and whispered to
him, tensely, to listen. He did so, and heard the thing that had attracted the attention of the youth—it was a low, continuous shrill
whining that was rising from out of the dark hull beneath their feet, and, abruptly, the Mate was aware that there was an intensely
disagreeable animal-like smell in the air. He had noticed it, in a subconscious
fashion, when entering through the broken superstructure; but now, suddenly, he
was aware of it.
Then,
as he stood there hesitating, the whining noise rose all at once into a piping,
screaming squeal, that fdled all the space in which they were inclosed, with an
awful, inhuman and threatening clamour. The Mate turned and shouted at the top
of his voice to the rest, to retreat to the barque, and he, himself, after a
further quick nervous glance round, hurried towards the place where the end of
the barque's jibboom protruded in across the decks.
He
waited, with strained impatience, glancing ever behind him, until all were off
the derelict, and then sprang swiftly on to the spar that was their bridge to
the other vessel. Even as he did so, the squealing died away into a tiny
shrilling, twittering sound, that made him glance back; lor the suddenness of
the quiet was as effective as though it had been a loud noise. What he saw,
seemed to him in that first instant so incredible and monstrous, that he was
almost too shaken to cry out. Then he raised his voice in a shout of warning to
the men, and a frenzy of haste shook him in every fibre, as he scrambled back
to the barque, shouting ever to the men to gel into Ihe boat. For in that
backward glance, he had seen the wdiole decks of the derelict a-move with
living tilings—giant rats, thousands and tens of thousands of them; and so in a
flash had come to an understanding of the disappearance of the crew of the
barque.
He
had reached the lo'cas'le head now, and was running for the steps, and behind
him, making all the long slanting length of the jibboom black, were the rats,
racing after him. He made one leap to the maindeck, and ran. Behind, sounded a
queer multitudinous pattering noise, swiftly surging upon him. He reached the
poop steps, and as he sprang up them, felt a savage bite on his left calf. He
was on the poop deck now, and running with a stagger. A score of great rats
leapt around him, and hall a dozen hung grimly to his back, whilst the one that
had gripped his calf, flogged madly from side to side as he raced on. He
reached the rail, gripped it, and vaulted clean over and down into the weed.
The rest were already in the boat, and strong
hands and arms hove him aboard, whilst the others of the crew succeeded in
getting their little craft round from the ship. The rats still clung to the
Mate, but a lew blows with a cutlass eased him of his murderous burden. Above them, making the rails and half-round of the poop black and
alive, raced thousands of rats.
The
boat was now about an oar's length from the barque, and. suddenly, Dtithie
screamed out that they were coming. In the same instant, nearly a
hundred of the largest rats launched themselves at the boat. Most fell short,
into the weed; but over a score reached the boat, and sprang savagely at the
men, and there was a minute's hard slashing and smiting, before the brutes were
destroyed.
Once
more the men resumed their task of urging their way through the weed, and so in
a minute or two, had come to within some fathoms of the edge, working
desperately. Then a fresh terror broke upon them. Those rats which had missed their leap, were now all
about the boat, and leaping in from the weed, running up the oars, and
scrambling in over the sides, and, as each one got inboard, straight for one of
the crew it went; so that they were all bitten and be-bled in a score of
places.
These
ensued a short but desperate fight, and then, when the
last of the beasts had been hacked to death, the men lay once more to the task
of heaving the boat clear of the weed.
A
minute passed, and they had come almost to the edge, when Duthie cried out, to
look; and at that, all turned to stare at the barque, and perceived the thing
that had caused the 'prentice to cry out; for the rats were leaping down into
the weed in black multitudes, making the great weed-fronds quiver, as they
hurled themselves in the direction of the boat. In an incredibly short space of
time, all the weed between the boat and the barque was
alive with the little monsters, coming at breakneck speed.
The
Mate let out a shout, and, snatching an oar from one of the men, leapt into the
stern of the boat, and commenced to thrash the weed with it, whilst the rest
laboured infernally to pluck the boat forth into the open sea. Yet, despite
their mad efforts, and the death-dealing blows of the Mate's great
fourteen-foot oar, the black, living mass were all about the boat, and scrambling
aboard in scores, before she was free of the weed. As the boat shot into the
clear water, the Mate gave out a great curse, and, dropping his oar, began to
pluck the brutes from his body with his bare hands, casting them into the sea.
Yet, fast almost as he freed himself, others sprang upon him, so that in
another minute he was like to have been pulled down, for the boat was alive and
swarming with the pests, but that some of the men got to work with their
cutlasses, and literally slashed the brutes to pieces, sometimes killing
several with a single blow. And thus, in a while, the boat was freed once more;
though it was a sorely wounded and frightened lot of men that manned her.
The
mate himself took an oar, as did all those who were able. And so they rowed
slowly and painfully away from that hateful derelict, wdrose crew of monsters
even then made the weed all of a-heave with hideous life.
from
the Taratvak came urgent signals for them to haste; by which the Mate knew that the
storm, which the Captain had feared, must be coming down upon the ship, and so
he spurred each one to greater endeavour, until, at last, they were under the
shadow of their own vessel, with very thankful hearts, and bodies, bleeding,
tired and faint.
Slowly
and painfully, (he boat's crew scrambled up the side-ladder, and the boat was
hoisted aboard; but they had no time then to tell their tale; for the storm was
upon them.
It
came half an hour later, sweeping down in a cloud of white fury from the
Eastward, and blotting out all vestiges of the mysterious derelict and the
little barque which had proved her victim. And after that, for a weary day as
night, they battled with the storm. When it passed, nothing was to be seen,
either of the two vessels or of the weed which had studded the sea before the storm; for they had been blown many a score of leagues to the Westward of the spot, and so had no further
chance—nor, I ween, inclination—to investigate further the mystery of that
strange old derelict of a past time, and her habitants of rats.
Yet,
many a time, and in many fo'cas'les has this story been told; and many a conjecture has been passed as to how came that ancient craft abroad
there in the ocean. Some have suggested—as indeed I have made bold to put forth
as fact—that she must have drifted out of the lonesome Sargasso Sea. And, in
truth, I cannot but think this the most reasonable supposition. Yet, of the
rats that evidently dwelt in her, I have no reasonable explanation to offer.
Whether they were true ship's rats, or a species that is to be found in the
weed-haunted plains and islets of the Sargasso Sea, I cannot say. It may be
that they are the descendants of rats that lived in ships long centuries lost
in the Weed Sea, and which have learned to live among the weed, forming new
characteristics, and developing fresh powers and instincts. Yet I cannot say;
for I speak entirely without authority, and do but tell this story as it is
told in the fo'cas'le of many an old-time sailing ship—that dark, brine-tainted
place where the young men learn somewhat of the mysteries of the all mysterious
sea.
The
End
PARTIAL
LIST OF BEST-SELLING TITLES
AVON BOOKS
133 Meyers. . .Naughty 90's Joke Book
213
Donald H. Clarke................................ Nina
221
Ludwig Lewisohn....................... Don
Juan
222 Nelson Algren..
.Neon Wilderness 226 Jerome Weidman
Can Get It for You Wholesale!
231 John O'Hara....................... Butterfield 8
232
Donald H. Clarke........................ Alabam'
234
Tiffany Thayer................ The Old Goaf
236 Emile Zola
.... Venus of the Counting House
237 Donald H. Clarke............................ Tawny
238
D. H. Lawrence
The First Lady
Chatteiley
240 Willingham...................... End
as a Man
241
Weidman____ What's In It for Me?
243 Paul............. Mysterious
Mickey Finn
244 Shulman.................................. Cry Tough!
245 Agatha Christie................ The Big Four
246 Housman................... A Shropshire Lad
247 Aswell.............. The Midsummer Fires
250
Robert Britfault............................ Carlotta
251
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
252 Farrell................ Heil
of a Good Time
253 D. H. Clarke........................... Confidential
254 Helen T. Miller...................... FJame Vine
255
Anthology................ Tropical Passions
257
Pierre Louys ............................. Aphrodite
258 O'Hara.......................... Hope
of Heaven
259 Anthology. ..
For a Night of Love
260
Farrell....................... Yesterday's Love
262 E. Fitzgerald
The
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
266 Ward Greene
.................. Death in the Deep South
269
I. S. Young................... Jadie Greenway
270
Donald Henderson Clarke
The Chastity of Gloria Boyd
271
Emile Zola...................... Nona's Mother
272
Robert Briffault............................... Europa
273 Elmer Rice.......................... Imperial City
275
Pratt............... My Bride in the Storm
276 Emily Harvin...................... Madwoman?
279 Weidman................. The
Price Is Right
280 J.Woodford.................. Dangerous
Love
282 Huggins... .Lovely Lady, Pity Me
283
Gordon............... She Posed for Death
284
Terrall.......................... Madam
Is Dead
286
Vina Delmar...................... Kept Woman
288
Emery..................... Front for Murder
289
Lariar......................... Friday tor Death
290
Farrell.................. Gas-House
McGinfy
291
Thayer........................... Calf
Her Savage
293
John O'Hara.................................... Hellbox
294
Alphonse Daudet .......................... Sappho
296
Lawrence....................... A Modern Lover
297
Woodford.................... Untamed Darling
298
Swados............................... House
of Fury
299
Oscar Friend...................... The Round-up
300
Shulman................... The Amboy Dukes
301
Hilton....................... We
Are Not Alone
302
Francis Carco............................ Perversity
303
Sylvester............................... Dream
Street
304
Woolf................ Song
Without Sermon
305
Stuart................ God
Wears a Bow Tie
306
Thomason......................... Gone
to Texas
308 Hector France
Musk, Hashish and
Blood
309
Caldwell.... Midsummer Passions
310
Philippe... Bubu of Montparnasse
311
Anthology... Post Western
Stories
312 Agatha Christie
... The Mysterious Affair at Styles
313
Feuchtwanger. .The
Ugly Duchess
314
Van Vechten................... Nigger Heaven
317
Christie.................... Death
on the Nile
320 Dwight Babcock
The
Gorgeous Ghoul Murder Case
321 Leslie Charteris
........................ The Saint in New York
322
Weidman...................... Slipping Beauty
323 Guy Endore
The Furies in Her Body
324
A. Merritt................. The Ship of
Ishtar
325
James Hilton................................. Ill Wind
326
Dortort.................... Burial
of the Fruit
327
Thayer.............................. One
Man Show
329
W.R.Burnett.......................... Little Caesar
330
James Horan.................. Desperate
Men
331
W. Somerset Maugham........................ Trio
336 Donald Henderson Clarke
.... The Housekeeper's Daughter
337 Biggers................... The
Agony Column
343
MacDonald................ Six
Gun Melody
E101 U.S. Book of Baby and Child Care El03 Millard S. Everett
Hygiene of Marriage
MANY
MORE IN PREPARATION ON SALE AT YOUR NEWSDEALER OR DIRECT FROM AVON BOOK SALES
CORP. 575 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK 22, N. Y. ENCLOSE 25c PER TITLE PLUS 5c EACH
FOR WRAPPING AND FORWARDING.
OF SIRENS, MERMAIDS,
AND MODERN MEN
The use of siren spells and love charms to
win endearment and riches continues to attract the mind and heart of modem men
and women. For beneath the surface of our workaday world, there flows deeply
every man's desire for romantic mastery and future fruitfulness. The storied
enchantment of witchcraft—of beguiling princesses to be won by valiant deeds—is
instilled in each of us by the mankind-old lore of the past. And no matter what
the nature of our everyday occupations, the longing for mystic thrills remains
in full reign. It is no wonder therefore that fantasy, stories dealing with the
witchery of the past and the romantic mystery of the future, continues to
dominate and fascinate the discriminating reader.
This new number of
AVON FANTASY READER presents the following exciting stories:
THE
SAPPHIRE SIREN by Nictzin Dyalhis
Though
she was queen-goddess in a world of monsters and magic, she needed the strong
arm of a fighting American to save her throne and champion her heart!
THE
PHANTOM DICTATOR by Wallace West
What
was it about "Willy Pan", the screen cartoon, that
seemed to fascinate so many people? It seemed to be a drug on their very
minds—what new terror was behind it?
THROUGH THE GATES OF THE SILVER KEY by H. P.
Lovecraft & E. Hoffmann Price
The
solution of the mystery that lay hid in an ancient silver key was something
that required courage to dare the worst horrors of Hell.
And Many Others By Leading Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writers