Past Masters Forty Five
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: This anthology (45th in the series) of stray short stories is largely from Weird Tales and Tales of Mystery and Terror. Henry S Whitehead is a find: he was an Espiscopal/Anglican priest living in Fredericksted, St Croix, for a decade, beginning shortly after the USA bought the former Danish West Indian colonies and renamed the US Virgin Islands in 1917. He was keenly interested in the West Indian religious and occult beliefs, and wrote a number of stories based on them. 1: The Owl / F A M Webster 2: Menagerie / Alexander Kuprin 3: The Screen / Richard Washburn Child 4: The Sceptical Poltergeis

PAST MASTERS

FORTY-FIVE

October 2021

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1:  The Owl / F A M Webster

2: Menagerie / Alexander Kuprin

3: The Screen / Richard Washburn Child

4: The Sceptical Poltergeist / J. D. Beresford

5: Our Mr. Smith / Oswald Crawfurd

6: The Smell / Francis Flagg

7: By the Hands of the Dead / Francis Flagg

8: The Picture / Francis Flagg

9: The Tree-Man / Henry S. Whitehead

10: Bal Macabre / Gustav Meyrink

11: The Fireplace / Henry S. Whitehead

12: Black Terror / Henry S. Whitehead

13: The Projection of Armand Dubois / Henry S. Whitehead

14: The Trap / Henry S. Whitehead

15: The Napier Limousine / Henry S. Whitehead

16: The Left Eye / Henry S. Whitehead

17: Mrs. Lorriquer / Henry S. Whitehead

Cumulative Index

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1:  The Owl

F A M Webster

1886-1949

Weird Tales Aug 1933

ALISON MERCER was one of the loveliest creatures ever created by the good God. In her case, moreover, beauty was more than merely skin-deep. One came to gasp at the sheer loveliness of her pale face, and the perfect proportions of her slim body, but stayed to wonder, as the days went by, and one came to realize the greater beauties of her stainless soul.

What a girl she was! Pure gold clean through, body and soul alike, all white-hot youth and innocence, unafraid and utterly unsoilable. That was Alison Mercer.

And, because she was what she was, her friends turned up their eyes in horror when they heard of her engagement to Simeon Stroud.

Why did she accept his proposal of marriage? You’ll have to ask her father about that. You see, no one knows what passed between old Tom Mercer and Alison, that time she came back from a ski-ing holiday in Scandinavia. All Alison saw was that the old man had aged greatly in less than thirty days, and her deep, sea-green eyes went wide with worry.

"Daddy, darling,” she expostulated, "you’ve been gambling again!”

"Nothing much, m’dear— bit of a flutter,” mumbled old Tom uncomfortably.

"At least, that’s what it looked like at first. Hell! How was I to know the durned stock was going to drop twenty points in twenty-four hours?” he exploded. “A fellow gave me a sure tip, I tell you. I can’t explain how the certainty came unstuck. All I know is that the chap who landed me in the cart is willing to do the right thing by me. He’s awfully anxious to meet you, Alison!”

"Is he, Daddy? Well, I’ll try to be extra nice to him, if he’s going to help you out of your troubles.”

Tom Mercer shot a queer, sidelong look at his daughter, and his eyes were very anxious.

"You’ll find Stroud a sound sort of fellow,” he suggested.

"What is he, Daddy, a financier, or a company promoter?”

"Neither, my dear. He’s by way of being a famous archeologist and is a great authority on ancient American civilizations. He’s only just back from a big exploration in Mexico. I thought he’d know what he was talking about, or I shouldn’t have put money into Chilean nitrates.”

"Ugh,” shuddered the girl, "those old Aztecs worshipped birds and wore cloaks of feathers. I can’t bear birds, so I hope we’ll be able to keep him off that subject.”

Strangely enough, Alison’s first impression of Simeon Stroud, when he came to Horley Grange and was presented by her father, awakened in her mind all the horrors of her secret, pet obsession. Some people can’t stay in the same room with a cat; others can’t stand the sight of snakes or spiders. Alison Mercer couldn’t abide the touch of a bird, and once, when a girl friend had caught a sparrow and placed it, fluttering, in Alison’s hand, she had fainted clean away. She loved all God’s creatures— don’t let there be any mistake about that— but there was something about the smoothness of a bird’s breast and the palpitation of a bird’s wings that made her physically sick.

And Simeon Stroud was like a bird— not a decent daylight warbler, but some beastly nocturnal fowl, that flew on silent wings and peered in through sleeping people’s windows, with horrible, luminous eyes. Such night-fowls live on flesh. But there was nothing predatory about Simeon Stroud’s appearance. On the other hand, one gathered the impression that this little man was abnormally wise; but one felt, also, that his knowledge was abysmally evil. Further than that he had a quick way of turning his head sharply from side to side, and of shooting furtive, inquiring glances all over the place, while he spoke in a queer, twittering voice. His nose, set between wide, staring eyes, descended almost straight from below his forehead and ended in a sharp, under-turned point. A soft, fluffy fringe of hair, which encircled his face from one ear to the other, did not improve his appearance.

IT took a long time for Alison to become accustomed to Stroud, but he called often at the Grange and she found that in spite of his unusual looks he could be a pleasant companion. And he was by no means a fool. He sensed that the girl had no great liking for him, and, in hunting parlance, he was careful not to rush his fences.

As the weeks went by the girl grew more and more friendly with him. Old Tom Mercer watched the progress of the romance with pleasure. Stroud would be an exceedingly useful son-in-law, and he reflected ruefully that his last flutter had been little short of disastrous.

It must not be thought that Alison was in love with Stroud, but her first feeling of revulsion had died away. Stroud was a past master in the art of working on people’s feelings, and for the moment she really thought she liked him. Besides, there was her father to consider. She knew his failings well enough, she knew that he was hard-pressed financially, and she was alive to the fact that Stroud would certainly help his father-in-law out of his present difficulties. And she loved her father. That was the deciding factor. After several weeks had passed she thought that, taking everything into consideration, she could live happily with Stroud; and, anyway, marriage was always a gamble. But she failed to include in her calculations the way in which Stroud had used his smooth, persuasive tongue.

Most people in Horley referred to the newly engaged couple as "Beauty and the Beast,” but there was one knowledgeable student of mythology who likened them, artfully enough, to Pallas Athene and her owl.

Alison feared a scene when a lighthearted friend disclosed the nature of their latest nickname, for she knew the violence of her fiance’s temper. But, far from being displeased, Stroud positively preened himself, smiling oddly all the time, and finally gave himself a quick shake, for all the world like a bird ruffling up its feathers to get the dust out of them.

"After all,” he said quietly, "Pallas Athene was one of the most beautiful and virtuous of the goddesses of ancient Greece, and it is generally conceded that the owl is the wisest of birds.”

"Well, let's hope you won’t develop its nocturnal habits, after you are married, Mr. Stroud,” teased the irresponsible visitor.

When they were alone that evening, Alison looked long and thoughtfully at her future husband. He had evidently found that the cap, supplied by the nickname, was a good fit, and was well content to wear it. He really was rather like an owl, she told herself, and, for the first time, out there in the half-dark of the veranda, she noted the queer, luminous quality of his tawny-gold eyes. Then, as she continued to study him, she saw that the tops of his ears were Puckishly pointed.

An involuntary shiver ran through her, but she allowed no sign of distress to escape her when he rose presently and came to kiss her good-night. When she was alone, however, her head dropped to her folded arms and her slim shoulders heaved spasmodically. They were to be married soon, and after that there would be no blessed hours of darkness and peace and solitude to follow after that detested evening embrace. She would be the property of Simeon Stroud, body and soul, and again she shuddered at the thought; for during the last few days she began to realize that she was not so confident of the future. There broke from her lips a pitiful little cry, "I am doing it all for you. Daddy; I am doing it all for you!”

A week before Alison’s wedding was due to take place, Hugh Davenant arrived home in England. He went straight from the boat to stay with his married sister at Exton, a small village a couple of miles beyond Horley. Next morning he drove into the town to make some much-needed additions to his wardrobe, for he had worn nothing but the thinnest of garments in the American tropics, and such European suits as he had brought home with him had been purchased ready-made, and were appallingly badly cut. He had something to tell his sister upon his return at lunchtime.

"They say that the world’s a small place,” he announced, as he unfolded his dinner napkin, "and I’m beginning to believe it.”

"Did you run across a pal in Horley, Hugh?” inquired Lambert, his brother-in-law.

"God forbid that I should ever call Simeon Stroud a pal of mine,” Davenant answered piously.

"So you know our local 'lion’, do you, dear?” queried his sister. "He settled among us about twelve months ago. You’ll meet his future wife this afternoon. She’s coming over for tennis.”

Hugh put down his knife and fork hurriedly, and there was a look of real concern on his clear-cut, handsome features.

"Do you mean to say that that man is going to be married?” he queried.

"Yes, dear, and to a most charming girl. But why do you ask? He’s supposed to be tremendously rich.”

"Listen, Claudia,” said Hugh, "Simeon Stroud may be as rich as Croesus, for all I know. That doesn’t alter the fact that he’s a most unutterable swine. The Mexican Indians could tell you queer tales of his cruelties. But, apart from that, I happen to know that he got mixed up with the followers of some horrible, filthy sect out in Mexico, people who claim to be descendants of the old Aztec priests. Between them they tried to revive some ancient form of bird-worship; but, when it came to a question of permitting the sacrifice of young girls to a heathen deity, even a corrupt government stuck in its toes, and wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing.”

"My Lord! Some one ought to warn Alison’s father," broke in Lambert.

"I think you’d find it a pretty thankless task,” responded his wife. "Most people imagine that Tom Mercer has sold Beauty to the Beast.”

"That’s bad,” commented Davenant. "Is she a nice sort of girl?”

A slow smile spread over Claudia Lambert’s features. "You just wait until you see her, my lad,” she answered.

When Alison arrived at the Lamberts’ place that afternoon, the party was in full swing and Hugh was giving an amazing display of agility on the tennis court.

The girl stood quite still, and her breath ceased for an instant, as she caught sight of the players; for that lean, bronzed man who bounded agilely about the court, with wonderful athletic ease, provided the very beau ideal of all her dreams; and she knew, instinctively, that his hand was of the right size to hold her heart.

"I wonder whether you are admiring my brother’s superabundant energy, or his personal appearance most?” said Claudia softly, and Alison came out of her revery with a self-conscious start.

"He’s rather a dear,” went on Claudia, "and his fitness is perfectly amazing; for he was very badly gassed, to say nothing of being buried alive, when a land mine was blown up, during the war. By the way, Alison, he’s just come home from the part of Mexico where Mr. Stroud made all his discoveries. So you’ll have something in common to start with, when I introduce him to you presently.”

It was not, however, of Mexico that Hugh talked to Alison, when Claudia presented him at the conclusion of the ser. In point of fact he seemed, rather, to go out of his way to avoid touching upon that particular topic. When Alison asked him, point-blank, if he knew her fiancee, he replied shortly that he had met him.

AFTER that first meeting the affair developed with amazing rapidity. If one believed in the existence of such mysterious affinities as "soul-mates,” one would have said drat Alison Mercer had found hers, with her first sight of Hugh Davenant, playing tennis, like a lambent flame, on the Lamberts’ court. She fell head over heels in love with him right away. And because this was so, and because she was intensely loyal to her father and to the promise she had given to Simeon Stroud, she seemed, to Hugh, inexplicably cold at their next meeting.

It was the day after the Lamberts’ party, and Hugh had induced his sister to take him to call at Horley Grange, because he intended dropping a hint of warning in old Tom Mercer’s ear. It wasn’t an easy task to perform, for Alison’s father was most mysteriously "in funds;” wherefore, from that old reprobate’s point of view, "everything was for the best, in this best of all possible worlds.”

None-the-less, Hugh knew a great deal more about the activities in Mexico of Simeon Stroud than he had let fall at his sister’s luncheon table. He had heard tales of a temple, hidden away in the secret heart of the forest, where men made human sacrifice to a bird which, even allowing for the extravagance of native legends, must be something quite abnormal in the avian world. Once, on a hunting expedition, in that same forest, he had found the body of a young girl, frightfully and filthily mutilated, and with the eyes pecked out. On another occasion he had met a newly blinded man who ran screaming through the trees, with blood streaming from features which had been tom to ribbons by rending talons.

These things he had seen with his own eyes. And men said that it was Simeon Stroud, who had discovered the secrets of long-dead Aztec priests, selling his soul in exchange for those secrets, who had revived the awful rites attendant upon the worship of the Great Bird.

Tom Mercer laughed, but took no offense, when his young visitor hinted that he should, as a father, make further inquiries before permitting his daughter’s marriage to take place.

"You’re a sly dog, Davenant,” he chuckled, "and Alison is a wonderfully desirable girl, but I’m afraid you’re a bit too late in the field. We are under great obligations to Simeon Stroud.”

They had been pacing the terrace of Horley Grange as they talked, but now Hugh Davenant stopped suddenly in mid-stride.

Was he in love with this glorious girl who had come so suddenly into his life? Pity? Ah yes! He had pitied her from the bottom of his heart, ever since he had heard that she was destined to marry Simeon Stroud. But, even though pity is so close to love, as hate is akin to fear, the notion of loving her, himself, had never entered his head, until Tom Mercer had made his covert suggestion.

THEN, as they stood there, the girl came round the corner of the house and the man knew, recognizing the finger of Fate as clearly as the girl had done yesterday, when she had seen him for the first time upon the Lamberts’ tennis court, he loved Alison Mercer with all his soul.

The wonder and the glory of the revelation held him, however, for but the briefest instant. There was something wofully amiss with the present situation. Why were Alison’s cheeks wet with tears? What could have happened to bring to her eyes, which normally reflected nothing but the serenity of her soul, that look of sheer, naked terror that now informed them? Why was she trembling, and why came and went her breath in little frightened gasps?

Behind her stood Simeon Stroud, who might have answered all those questions.

At the sight of her parent, the last shreds of a tremendous determination, which had sustained her, deserted Alison Mercer. With a little stifled cry, half tears, half laughter, she ran to her father, drawing his protecting arms closely about her body and hiding her face upon his breast.

"Why, my precious, why now, what’s amiss?” he soothed her, and his voice was wonderfully tender.

"Oh, Daddy, it was awful, awful!” sobbed the girl. "We were watching the sunset, Simeon and I, and, although the light has not yet gone, a great white owl came flying silently out of the woods and settled on my shoulder. It was an owl, and yet it was different from any owl I have ever seen, and, oh Daddy, it was utterly evil!”

"There, there, little one, come along to old Nannie; she’ll stay with you while you lie down for a bit. Simeon, will you look after Davenant? I’ll be coming back with a shotgun shortly, for I’m not too fond of owls myself.”

"I am sorry,” Stroud answered, "but I have an important letter to write before the mail leaves. Perhaps Mr. Davenant will excuse me?”

When Mercer returned to the terrace a few minutes later he carried a loaded gun tucked under his arm, and his face was very grave.

"Davenant, my boy,” he volunteered, "I’m a bluff, John Bull sort of chap, without much imagination, probably, but I’m damned if I like this business!”

"Miss Mercer has told you what really happened, then?” Hugh asked sharply.

"Yes, it appears that Stroud got a bit amorous, round there at the back of the house. Alison swears that when she refused to allow him to kiss her in full view of the windows of the servants’ quarters, he lost his temper and uttered a most peculiar cry. Whereupon, or so she says, that great owl that scared her so badly came winging up from the woods. It may be only her imagination, of course, but she declares that the bird flew straight for her eyes, and only settled on her shoulder at a word from Stroud. I suppose you don’t think there is anything in all this business?”

Hugh did not reply. For long moments he remained, leaning against the balustrade, while he puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. Then he, in his turn, asked a question.

"One hates to work on hearsay, Mr. Mercer,” he stated apologetically, "but local gossip has it that Stroud has got you under his thumb. You can tell me to mind my own business if you like, of course; but, frankly, just how deeply are you in his debt?”

"I owe him £20,000.”

"Was the advance made after he became engaged to your daughter?”

"Yes,” said Mercer, speaking very low, and the red color which flushed his face was no reflection of the setting sun.

Hugh dropped a kindly hand upon the old fellow’s shoulder. "Transfer your debt to me,” he said. "I don’t pretend to be a millionaire, but I’d pay a good deal more than the money you owe Simeon Stroud to secure your daughter’s happiness.”

Tom Mercer looked this sudden savior in the eyes with startled delight. "Why, yes,” he breathed, "that would be one way of setting Alison free, wouldn’t it?”

The girl herself reacted strangely to the news of her release from the hateful engagement, to which she had committed herself for her father’s sake. Old Tom, who insisted upon acquainting her with the glad tidings, just as if her salvation was entirely of his own devising, wished to save her the painful task of giving her fiance his congi in person. But to this plan she would not consent

"No, Daddy,” she said firmly, "we’re treating Simeon pretty badly, anyway. The least I can do, in common decency, is to see him and tell him how sorry I am if the breaking-off of our engagement should cause him any pain.”

"Spoken like my own brave little girl,” said her father heartily. "But at least you must let me be present at the interview.”

Alison smiled as she shook her head, but she was neither smiling nor feeling particularly courageous as she took her way to the dark house where Stroud lived, deep in the woods.

SHE found him seated in a deep chair in his gloomy, book-lined library. When he rose to greet her, and would have taken her in his arms, she pushed him gently away.

"Simeon,” she said, pausing just inside the door, "I am afraid I have come to hurt you. This engagement of ours has been all a dreadful mistake. I have never loved you; and Simeon, there is something about you—something bird-like— that terrifies me. I have tried to go through with it, for my father’s sake, but, oh Simeon, I just couldn’t face it all, when it came to the final pinch.”

Stroud returned to his seat without a word, and then the girl realized, with a half-stifled gasp of horror, that a great owl had fluttered silently out of the shadows and was perched upon the high back of its master’s chair. The fascination of the moment was frightful. Man’s and bird’s alike, the two pairs of eyes glowed luminous and golden in the half-dark. Man and bird alike seemed to brood, with heads sunk forward; and the girl saw, with a shudder, that each had sharply pointed ears; but whereas those of the great bird were feathered, those of the gross man were tip-pointed with tufts of hair.

"So,” sneered Simeon, "you do not find yourself able to love me, my fair Alison?”

"Oh, please. I’m so sorry,” she broke in.

The man silenced her with never a gesture, never a movement, but only by the luminous intensity of the stare he turned upon her. And, from close beside his head, the owl stared at her too.

"I was not thinking of you or me,” he answered, in his soft, bird-like voice; "I was only pitying your father, who must suffer for this sudden folly of yours.”

Something in the covert sneer aroused the girl’s anger.

"My father will pay you back the money with which you sought to buy me,” she flared back at him.

The man rose slowly to his feet and moved toward her down the length of the room, and as he came, the owl fluttered up from the back of the chair and floated forward, not a foot above his head. Bird and man together, they presented an awful picture of incarnate evil. Alison shrank back with a low moan of fear, for Simeon Stroud’s hand was rising, each moment his eyes seemed to grow larger, and his lips were framing the strange call which, she felt sure, would unloose that grim familiar, fluttering overhead to attack her eyes.

Then the unbearable tension was broken. A sharp rap echoed from the panels and the door was flung open.

"Mr. Davenant has called for Miss Mercer, sir!” announced the man-servant, and Alison ran past him into the well-lit hall where Hugh was waiting. One last frightened look she threw back into the gloomy library. Simeon Stroud still stood there, hand half raised and somber eyes smoldering in deep sockets, but of the owl that had fluttered above his head she could see no sign.

NEXT DAY Simeon Stroud received his £20,000 from old Tom Mercer’s solicitor and from that time onward the folks of Horley saw him no more. From that time, too, Alison Mercer became a changed woman. All the carefree happiness of girlhood returned to her; she had found love and she had no fear of taking between her two hands the best of all gifts the gods may bestow upon mortals. But summer had come and gone again before Hugh returned to Horley, to ask for her hand in marriage and to receive such a joyful assent as set his whole soul singing.

They were to be married just before Christmas, and Hugh had taken an old-fashioned, furnished house at Uleswood in the lake district for their honeymoon. The place was in wild country, not far from Ullswater. There was a distinct similarity between the two names, and it never occurred to Hugh that "ule” is the old English form for "owl,” and that "Uleswood” is, therefore, "Owlswood;” otherwise he might have chosen another locality for their honeymoon. But Stroud seemed to have vanished entirely from their lives, and it is doubtful if they even gave a thought to him, until Alison received, among the last of many wedding presents, four silver pepper-casters fashioned to represent owls. No card accompanied this gift, but she entertained no doubt as to whence it had come; and yet, for some reason, which she did not even attempt to explain to herself, she did not mention the matter to Hugh. Those four silver symbols filled her with a vague dread, and perhaps she feared that mention to Hugh of her former fiance might cast some shadow upon the magic wonder of their honeymoon.

The house at Uleswood proved to be a perfect little gem of steep-gabled roofs, leaded and mullioned windows and oak-panelled rooms. The night they arrived was one of gorgeous moonlight, the bedroom was hot and close with the resinous reek of the pine logs blazing in the hearth, and Alison set the window wide open before she crept into bed.

MIDNIGHT was long past when a finger of moonlight stole softly across the floor, crept up the wall and travelled on until it rested upon two heads—one dark, the other golden—which lay so close to one another. Hugh stirred uneasily and murmured in his sleep.

"Twhitt! Twhoo!”

Hugh’s sleepy eyes opened, and he turned in search of that beauty of soul and body that the night had given entirely into his keeping.

"Twhitt! Twhoo!"

Faint and from far away the horned owl’s cry came echoing.

Hugh’s hand stretched out and touched the soft, warm curve of his bride’s breast that rose and fell so gently. The lovely warmth of living flesh comforted him, banished the vague fear which the owl’s cry had aroused in his half-wakened fancy. A small hand sought for and encircled his fingers. His head sank back upon the pillow. Sleep was returning.

"Twhitt! Twhoo!”

Louder, and nearer now. Great evil eyes, luminous and eery, glared in through the leaded panes. Wide wings were spread and a vast form floated silently toward the open casement. Hugh Davenant turned restlessly and shuddered in his sleep. The moon was gone, swallowed up by a bank of black-bellied clouds. The white mystery circled slowly above the wedded lovers slumbering in that soft warm bed. Silence, abysmal darkness. Nothing save twin lamps of fear that floated through the gloom.

Hugh Davenant dreamed that he was back in a front-line trench in Flanders. Once more the blind night rocked to the awful roar of big guns; once more the trench-lights soared, green and ghastly, toward the storm-dark skies; and yet once more the dreaded northeast gas wind came blowing out of the blackness across No Man’s Land, with death enfolded beneath the silence of its wings— its wings silent as those of an owl.

"Twhitt! Twhoo!”

The claws of the gas cloud were searching for Davenant’s windpipe; its wings descended upon his face, tearing and rending his flesh. A catch at the back of his throat — fight it off! Kill those bloody swine in the helmets who were following up the foul veils of death they had let loose.

Something was striking at his eyes now. God! if they should blind him! Then, at last, his hands closed upon living flesh. Something human to battle with— something that couldn’t kill, as the poison gas killed— a soft human throat— the shrill whistle of life’s breath crushed out by merciless hands. Dear God, if he could only see! See and exult at the sight of starting eyeballs, glimpse the black tongue protruding through snarling lips! Curse this gas helmet that was blinding him!

He released his hands to snatch it off and felt his fingers sink into soft feathers, while something tore at his face with rending agony.

"Oh Christ! Jesu Christ, save me!”

Weak and agonized, the pitiful prayer echoed in his ears and he knew, as the mists of dream-madness cleared from his brain, that it was around her throat— his wife’s throat— that his hands had been locked in the awful death-grip.

His hand stretched out toward the lamp beside the bed, but before his fingers could find the switch, something soft and feathery struck him in the face again, and again a hooked beak pecked savagely at his eyes.

"Oh! Jesu Christ, save us both from the Power of the Beast!”

Again that feeble, piteous cry for aid; and, as if in answer from overhead, a terrifying scream of baffled rage:

"Twhitt! Twhoo!”

Hugh’s fumbling fingers found the switch, the room was flooded with light, and he saw a great owl, as big as an eagle it seemed, go circling round the room for the last time.

As it vanished through the window, Hugh, heedless of the blood streaming from his features, snatched up the revolver which long habit overseas had accustomed him to placing always upon a table beside his bed, and sprang to the open casement. As he reached the window the moon sailed into sight and he saw the great owl flying fast and low above the ground as it circled toward the house for a fresh attack.

The vastness of it seemed to fill all the space of night as it rushed upon him, but the man’s nerves were steady as chilled steel, as he fired again and again, aiming with deadly deliberation to send the heavy bullets smashing into the evil brain behind those luminously glowing eyes.

And then it was over. With a last wild shriek, the awful cry of some lost soul hurled down to face everlasting damnation, the great owl heeled over and fluttered slowly to the earth.

Alison crept shakily across the room, fingering her bruised throat with tender touch. She closed and barred the casement and turned to tend the man whose handsome features had been cut to ribbons by the cruel talons of the great bird.

IN the morning, a gardener coming early to his work found beneath the window of the honeymooning couple the dead body of a man with strangely pointed ears and a fringe of soft hair encircling his features. The rest of his face was unidentifiable, for heavy bullets had smashed their way through between the eyes, and the head was almost blown to pieces.

But to whom, save Simeon Stroud, could those pointed, hair-tipped ears and that strange fringe of feathery fluff about the chin have belonged?

_________________

2: Menagerie

Alexander Kuprin

1870-1938

Telegraph (Brisbane) 28 Aug 1934

IN Johann Muiler's travelling menagerie, the keeper had not yet lit the lamps for the evening performance.  A heavy half-mist rested on everything.

The iron lattices, cages, barriers, benches, pillars supporting the roof, the tubs with water, and the boxes of sand— in the dying flicker of an autumn evening, all seemed parts of heaped up disorder.

Shivering with cold and closely snuggling against, one another, the captives were slumberlng heavily in their cages, for at this hour they could relax from the tiresome curlosity of the public.

Caesar was asleep, and like a dog in delirium softly whimpered in his slumber. One of his mighty yellow paws protruded through a slit at the bottom of the lattice, where his food was usually pushed in, and hung down carelessly on the outside. His head was hidden in his other paw which was bent down at the knee, and from above one could only see his thick dark mane. Beside him his lioness rolled herself up into a ball like a sleeping kitten.

Caesar slept uneasily, and shuddered from time, to time, the breath puffing out of his wide nostrils In volumes of hot steam. Caesar was having troublous but blissful dreams.

THE keeper lit the lamp. Its light glared into Caesar's eyes and woke him. At first the lion could not easily come to himself, for he still felt the taste of fresh blood on his tongue: But as soon as he realised where he was, he quickly jumped, to his feet and roared in a more wrathful voice than had ever yet been heard by any of the monkeys, llamas, and zebras, who always trembled at the lion's roaring. The lioness also awoke, and, lying out on the ground added her voice to his.

Caesar no longer remembered his dream, but never yet had this restricted cage, these execrable lamps, and these human figures irritated him to such an extent. He flew from corner to corner of his cage, growling spitefully at the lioness when she happened to be in his way, stopping only to give expression to a furious roar, to the impotent but terrific rage of imprisoned Caesar.

"PLE-EASE, ladies and gentlemen— the explanation of the beasts begins. Ple-ease!" — the German keeper cried at the entrance. The ladles and gentlemen, including whom were 10 or 12 ladies with children and their nurses, several schoolboys and cadets, and about 30 neatly dressed men, came nearer and, surrounded the keeper. The rest of the audience remained gazing from behind the barrier. The keeper stood with his back to the first cage, and, rapping his cane behind his back against the lattice, began the explanation:—

"Here Is the American porcuplne. He has a body armed with long, prickly needles, which he throws out at his enemies who pursue him....!"

This explanation was uttered in a trite tone, with, the most complete indifference to the porcupine.

Then came the next number.

"Here is the black panther, better known as the 'black death,' also called the grave-digger.' Disrupts graves arid devours corputes, together with the skin, bones, and even hair; make way, gentlemen. The children cannot see...."

The public stooped down to the lattice, but could see nothing except two burning green eyes in the farthest corner of the cage.

"Maybe there ain't no panther," a voice suggested from the gallery.

Then the keeper explained the hamadrille "who walks in moonlight, and if there ain't no moonlight, then without moonlight, and devours' crocodile eggs." At last the crowd stopped in front of the lion's cage.

"Here is the African lion, Caesar. He cost 26,000 marks, and his lioness cost 11,000 marks—" sang the keeper. Then in his hands suddenly appeared from nowhere a tin collection box, and, shaking the coppers inside it, he extended it to the audience.

"Now the dazzllng performance wlll begin," he said. "The taming of lions and feeding of wild, beasts. Make your donations, ladies and gentlemen, whatever you can, on behalf of the servants of the menagerie."

At the same time, with his free hand, he began ringing a handbell which was to announce the commencement of the performance and ten Jewish musicians broke into a merry march.

"CARLCHEN, the bell!" cried the neat little elderly German woman, emerging from the till, and opening the door of the dressing-room where the tamer was  dressing.

"All right!" Carlchen replied. "Please shut the door, mother. It's cold."

Brother of the proprietor of the menagerie, Carl Muller, was standing In a tiny dressing-room made of planks, in front of the looking-glass, already attired in pink tights. His older brother, Johann, was sitting near him watching Carl's toilette vigilantly, and handing him the requisite articles. Johann himself was severely lame (a tame lion had mutilated his right leg), and did not ever appear as a tamer, but, when in the cage, would hand his brother hoops, Bengal lights, and pistols.

"Here's rouge," said Johann, holding the box out to his brother. "Put on a little."

Sure enough, Carl did look pale. At the very first notes of music he felt the blood rush from his face and a hot wave gushed to his heart. His hands became chill and quivering. This trepidation, however, was not a sign of cowardice. For two years Carl had been taming lions and always experienced the same sensation— that of a bracing of nerves.

The music, the lamps, the timid and deferential curiosity of the crowd, the Bengal lights, finally the rush of will and daring during the performance in the the cage, and that terrific moral force Which he would experience all the time thrilled his whole being, and gave a fire to his glance, which could make the lion shrink timorously into  the corner.

Yet all this agitated him while he was dressing.

After putting on a coat of rouge he pencilled the lower and upper eyelids, which made his eyes become huge and appear to sparkle. Then he looked at  himself in the mirror. He saw a brave, agitated, but very handsome face with a sharp, obstinate chin, with large blue, eyes glowing with at happy smile.

"Whip," Carl ordered abruptly, adjusting , himself in front of the mirror. His elder brother hastily handed him a long lash and turned to the door, opening it widely befora, Carl's appearance. He thoughtfully felt the revolver  inhis pocket.

Carl flung the mirror on to the dressing-table and made several rapid movements with his arms and legs so as to test his suppleness.

His brother glanced at him questioingly.

Carl nodded his head and passed through the door with elastic, easy steps, out into the menagerie. Johann walked behind, ringing the bell, and the tidy little old woman behind the till furtively made the sign of the Cross over her handsome young son— her darling.

About half-way to the cage Carl was stopped by the keeper, who whispered a few words in his ears. This was bad. A tamer should never halt for a second when approaching the cage, because the beast watches him intently from the moment he leaves his dressing-room.

"Caesar frets? Snarls—?" Carl repeated the question deliberately, loudly,  posing, with his fearlessness before the people. "Oh, nonsense! He will soon be as gentle as a lamb."

Caesar stood pressing his face against the lattice watching the tamer's every movement. Carl quickly passed through the spectators who made way for him, adroitly jumped the three steps of the ladder, and found himself in the protective area, from which an iron door opened into the large cage.

Scarcely had he reached out to touch the handle when Caesar leaped in a spring to the door, leaned against it with his head, while he thundered a roar,  half-scalding Carl with his hot breath amid the aroma of meat.

"Back! Caesarl Back!" Carl shouted, and deliberately brought his face near the lattice so as to fix the beast with a steady stare. The lion ignored the stare, but would not retreat and bared his teeth. Then Carl thust his whip through the lattice and began to strike Caesar on the head and paws.

Caesar roared, held his ground, and met glance with glance.

"Stop it!" said Johann In a quiet uneasy voice, imperceptibly drawing his revolver from the pocket under, his cloak.

"No!" Carl snapped angrily and hit the lion again with all his strength on the head, again crying, "Back, Caesar, back!"

"That's enough! Stop it!" the spectators screamed, almost paralysed and unable to move from their places.

"Lights!" cried Carl.

The momentary fit of indecision which he had experienced at the lion's disobedience now gave way to anger, and he resolved to make the beast obey at any price. Johann snatched from the brazier which the keeper brought, a red-hot rod, which he handed to his brother, together with the lit stick of sparkling Bengal lights.

DAZZLED by the light, the spectators did not observe Carl's quick motion, but saw as, with a loud groan of pain, Caesar jumped away from the door and at the same instant the tamer found hlmself in the cage.  What happened afterwards? No one could clearly realise. There resounded Carl's fearful scream, a terrific roar, of Caesar and his lioness, three deafening shots, the terrified cries of the spectators and the frantic, despairing senile wail: "Carlchen! Carlchen! Carlchen!..."

Carl lay on the floor of the cage, torn end mangled, with broken arms, legs, and ribs, but still alive; behind him was the lioness whom Johann's bullet had struck in the head, and beside her— Caesar, in his last agony. Pale, scared spectators stood around the cage in dumb terror and would not move in spite of the keeper's entreaties to them to leave the menagerie.

_____________________

3: The Screen

Richard Washburn Child

1881-1935

Pictorial Review March 1921

The World's News (Sydney) 8 Jul 1922

AT ONE end of the room there was a screen. It was framed in black lacquer: it had  five panels of thin wood, and in each, upon a gold background, there had been painted, by a famous Oriental artist, a part of the picture of a mountain, seen through the branches of pine-trees.

It was now five o'clock, or perhaps a few minutes later. A Japanese man-servant moving noiselessly, came into the room and put down a tray bearing two porcelain cups and a silver pot and accessories. He then drew the curtains and turned on the light.

The interior was a pleasant one, for, although it was provided with furniture and decorations from several countries and from several periods, nevertheless it was spacious; there were not many things in it. and whatever there was represented nothing but fine examples of their kind. The Japanese nodded approvingly to the room as he withdrew, and then, as if by afterthought, went to the gold screen and rearranged its panels so that they furnished a barrier to any draught from the shaft and fire-escape in the rear.

In the hall of the apartment he was heard addressing a woman who was approaching. "I have serve tea, I go now?"

"Yes. Mr. Haig and I are dining out. You need not come back."

The woman who entered, walking through the soft lamplight to the fireplace near the tea-table, where the redder glow of the hearth embers a fell upon her gown, was not old. She was one of those whom anyone suspects of appearing even younger than her years. She had rich quantities of glossy brown hair which made a strange contrast to her active blue eyes under their somewhat heavy brows; she had a fine skin of velvety texture, and yet this was not because of sloth and artifice, because the poise of her slight figure and the spring and vitality in every one of her movements made one think of outdoor life and youth, and an energetic ancestry. She was young and happy.

She expected someone for tea; there were two cups there. Having looked, however, at the small clock which she took up in her pointed fingers and turned towards the light. she shook her head, sat down, and poured her own as if she had given up hope of sharing the hospitality of these restful minutes of after-dusk.

Slowly she turned around, in her chair. The screen with its black-lacquer frame and gold and dark green of pine-branches still covered the window in the rear of the room. It was motionless. It was non-committal. Nevertheless there lingered for a moment the unpleasant impassion that the screen had moved.

The reason for taking another look at the screen was not quite clear to her. but she did so, and then, humming a bit of a song, she put another stick of wood into the flames.

Only when she straightened her body did she smell the peculiar faint odor that comes from cigarette-stains on moist, cold fingers.

Again she glanced around the room. She raised her own hands quickly toward her nose, and then, with the calm suddenly collapsing on her face, she turned a whitened, staring face toward the screen.

A white and staring face was thrust out from behind the end panel.

Not enough light fell upon this strange, peering face of a man or of a woman. It was white. It was long and thin, and dimly showed an expression of a thin coating of anxiety as a veneer over a rather vicious countenance. It was like the cold death-mask of a warped personality.

She expected to hear the words. "Don't move or I'll kill you!"

She screamed one word, "Kaga!"

This was the name of the Japanese servant, but there was no reply, because he had gone.

And then, Just as if she were creating events by her expectations, the peering face said, "Don't do that again or I'll kill you."

"Who are you?" she said through teeth that chattered.

"Huh! So you don't know me. Amy— after all this time?"

"No. Who are you?"

The man came forward— tall, white, long-faced. and with one long-fingered hand drooped down one long black-clad thigh. If his gait was mincing and sliding, almost like a little, childlike trot. It was like the noiseless trot of Death.

"It's Just me— Tark— Tark."

"Tark!" she exclaimed in recognition.

"Look at what I've got here." he said with a low whisper, as if she were a fellow-conspirator. "I got a weapon. Don't let that frighten you."

He showed her an automatic pistol, black against his white hand.

"I haven't got anything against you, Amy— Just against him," he said. "I never thought I'd find you thisaway."

"You're sick. Tark."

"I've been in Colorado for five years, but I gave it up."

He laughed. "I thought I'd see your husband before it was too late, eh?"

Her first thoughts directed her eyes at the clock.

"It's about time," he said, following her quick glance with the agility of his own. "I've been watching a bit for a few days so as to fix it just right. He comes right prompt at live-thirty, eh? But I certainly never expected to see you. I just thought I'd wait for him to come in through that yonder door, eh? I was going to say, sharp and harsh. 'Cameron'— like that, so's he'd see me. Look here. I chilled my hands pretty bad coming up the iron rungs of that fire-escape, eh?"

"Tark Ridley!" she gasped.

"Yes'm, what's left of Tark Ridley. Maybe I've changed some since I left old Hannibal,  Missouri, eh? Why don't you ask me to come no to the fire? I'm all snaky with fever. Yes'm, every afternoon it comes on strange as horse-radish. Lord, what I been through! I bet I look over forty. Let me sit here, eh?"

"Yes— yes." she said eagerly. "Sit down. Talk; sit down."

He put the automatic weapon in his lap and rubbed his spare knees.

"Well Tark, this is a pretty piece of business—coming here like this," she said reprovingly, in an attempt to give lightness to the situation.

He twisted his lips into a ghastly grin.

She caught her breath and released it in these words. "But, Tark, you haven't anything against Cameron— against my husband."

He turned his chair around so that he faced the empty doorway, and raised the muzzle of the automatic slightly.

"Wait 'n' see," he answered. "Huh! He'll be here soon. He's late to-night, eh?"

Amy Haig stared at the doorway, listening perhaps for the sound of her husband's key in the outer hail.

"I mess you'll scream when you hear him," said Ridley. "But it won't do any good. He'll come rushing in to see what's the matter, eh?"

"I guess maybe you think I'm crazy, eh? But I ain't crazy. You said I hadn't anything against him. Well, I have. You jest listen now, Amy, and see if I haven't."

"Speak quickly," she said frantically, and looked toward the front windows.

Again he knew exactly what she was thinking, for he said, "Don't you try nothing like that, Amy. If you did I'd have to put you into yonder closet, and then where'd your young husband be? I can handle you, Amy, even if I am a gentleman. I'm wiry, I am."

The girl shivered.

"You haven't anything against him," she repeated in a breaking voice.

"I said I have, and I have I've had time enough to think, eh?   See if I'm not right. Weren't you and I pretty close— down there in Hannibal?"

"Yes," said she, indulging him. With an effort, she added. "Will you have some tea, Tark? You're shaking."

"Thanks, Amy. That's right nice. Five years ago we were pretty close, eh? Your pa was vice-president of the bank and I was owning a big apple orchard, eh? And pretty prosperous. You know about me, Amy. I was always strange and thoughtful, or, leastwise, all my folks and relatives said so, and that's what took me out of Tennessee. I could ride and I was a good shot and all, but they said I had a woman's disposition, and couldn't git along with none of 'em."

"They were good people." she said.

"I reckon they was. The best in Tennessee!  But I was strange, maybe. I never could stay in school. I was too sensitive, they said. Amy."

"Hurry, Tark!" she exclaimed impatiently.

"No. I shan't. I ain't in any hurry. I've got till he comes."

"Poor Tark!" she said, with a momentary flash of sincerity. "I used to feel so sorry for you!"

"You loved me a little!" he said accusingly. "I dragged that out of you once. You were the only one who ever knew what was underneath, eh? And you begun to love me. That's what I can't forget. No girl like you would have let me hold your hand if yon hadn't— and all of that."

She shuddered, and then protested. "I don't think it was real love, Tark: it was just pity."

"It would have been love if it hadn't been killed, Amy." he said, and then fell into a fit of coughing.

"Well, you killed it," she said.

"No. I didn't, Amy: he did it."

"No!"

"I say yes, he did. He did! That's my score with him, Amy."

"I'd never have married you, Tark. We wouldn't have been happy. Besides, if loved me then you'd love me now, and you'd go away— you'd leave now. You haven't any right to torture a woman you love."

He looked at her coldly.

"Maybe I don't love you now. Amy. Such things burn out after a while. Somebody else might get over it. Well, I did. I had to, Amy. I couldn't stand it. I had to get something else to fill the hole. And I guess it was hate of him, eh?"

"For what? He never did you any harm."

"Yes, he did. Didn't you tell me to once with your own lips? Didn't you say it that last night up on the pine bluff above the river, when there was starlight and just the stern of a steamer pulling out from the levee, and you was in that yellow-and-white dress, and I went away? Didn't you tell me that I'd made a mistake telling you how I'd kill anybody who took you away from me, and how it frightened you to hear me always talking like that— like I was crazy; and didn't you tell you had a friend who'd advised you to send me away? You was kind and nice, but the friend you spoke of was him."

"I hardly knew him then. He'd Just come from New York to lay out the drainage work, and he was calm and wise, and I asked him, and that was his advice. He'd never seen you, Tark."

"He was planning to get me out of the way," Ridley said, still shivering, and all angles like  a sitting skeleton.

"No, no, Tark," the girl protested. "He just said that any jealous man— madly jealous— was dangerous— was a dangerous man— vicious or a fool."

The visitor sat a long time staring at her. "That's what's left of my love for you, Amy. It was the only love I ever had, and it meant everything to me. That's what was left— jealousy. It's eaten away most of me. It's what the doctors couldn't find. It got worse and worse. And, looka here "

His head was nodding emphatically, to that his note, long and marble in pallor, peeked away at the air like the ivory beak of some strange bird. It was hard for her to realise that once he had been handsome; that once his eyes were calm and tender; that once his skin had been brown and ruddy, with outdoors and health, and his hair thick.

"Why, no!" she said, looking at the clock.

It was ten minutes to six. She had abandoned hope of outwitting this murderous pilgrim from the past; she was relying upon an appeal to his reason.

"No, what?" he asked.

"Why, I say that jealousy is wicked, crazy mad, Tark," she argued. "Cam—my husband—"

"What about him?"

"His love is too great for that."

"It isn't great enough. That's what I say."

"Tark!" she said sharply. "Love is truth between people. It Isn't disbelief and doubt. It's faith, and complete faith. That's love. No love comes until jealousy is gone." She hesitated. "That's the love he has for me. You couldn't love me like that. He does!"

"I wouldn't kill him if he was a better man than me. What always set me on fire was the thought he couldn't love you like I could, Amy. But I don't think a man who ain't jealous can love, eh?"

"Yes."

"No. Amy. I've thought of that a heap. Somehow, all these last few weeks it came down to that. The question was whether he ought to be killed or not, Amy. See how calm I think about it, eh? I certainly do. And it was all straight in my mind till you spoke. You don't mean you'd want a man not to be jealous?"

"I'd want perfect faith," she replied. "Absolute and perfect faith, so that  jealousy and suspicion would be impossible. Only that would be real love."

"Might be in angels, but ain't in men," he said. "It takes a big love to kill. I reckon Cameron Haig wouldn't kill for jealousy, eh?''

"He loves me too much for lack of faith— or jealousy."

A look of doubt crept down over the long, grave, white face. Ridley arose and paced up and down, his head thrust forward on a neck so thin that it appeared to be the dried and whitewashed neck of a mummy. His gait was still that same short, sliding shuffle of Death.

"I've always figured this way," he said at last. "If he loves you as much as I could have loved you, then he has a right to you, eh? I came to that decision long ago. And the question is, does he love you enough to kill because of jealousy? That's one side. And the other side— your side— is that he loves you too much to be suspicious and jealous at all."

"Yes." she said eagerly. "And you can't make up your mind?"

"No. Somehow I never figured on that phase of it."

He looked ashamed, embarrassed.

"Then you ought to wait, Tark. You can't kill when you're not sure. You're not yourself. You're thought too much. You're burning with fever."

He looked calmly at her. admiring, without personal Interest, her graceful figure, her great, frightened eyes, the hair in rich coils, which contrasted so with her unblemished skin, and the curve of her flexible, sensitive lips. Then he smiled in a manner to cause her to draw back as one draws back who has almost stepped upon a snake.

"You're not the kind of man who kills in cold blood, who brings misery and destruction with a coward's shot," she urged. "You wouldn't do it before my very eyes."

"I won't regard myself as a human being," he answered. "I regard myself like I was Fate and Justice. It hasn't anything to do with cowards or misery. I'm just a hand of Destiny."

"But you want to be right, don't you?"

"Yes'm; Amy, I do."

He spoke with a note of sadness, as if expressing for all humanity its sorrows of misjudgment and error since the world began. He stopped suddenly and listened.

"You think my husband is fit to die just because his love is too great for jealousy?" she asked.

"It ain't too great. It ain't great enough. If he was a man. he'd kill— same as I will."

"Perhaps he would," she said frantically. "Perhaps he would."

"You said he wouldn't."

" I was only guessing. Perhaps if he were put to the test—"

She stopped, because suddenly the lean and lanky Ridley— that giant skeleton, angled and articulated beneath the cold, white flesh— had thrust his pointed chin outward and raised his hand with the automatic held loosely In his bony fingers. He was listening!

"What?" she asked.

"His key— key in the lock, eh? He's come home."

"For God's sake, don't do it, Tark," she begged, trying to get near him to pluck at his sleeve. "You're not yourself. Listen to me!"

"I am myself! Yes, I am, too! Get away from me! You want a chance tor him, eh? Well, I'll give it. Quick, now! Hear what I got to say."

She was stiff with fear. She beard her husband putting his coat on the rack. With tense, agonised face she nodded to the assassin.

"Sit right there," he whispered. "Don't you move. If you do— it's all over, Amy. Keep facing this way. Don't say a word about me— not my name— nor anything. If you do—I'll drop him down."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going behind that there screen." The steps came down the hall.

Ridley, with his strange, trotting, silent feet, like the feet of Death, crossed the rug and disappeared behind the screen. Suddenly the room seemed cleared of him, as if he had never been there. The clock ticked audibly, the lire snapped and crackled, automobile horns sounded below on the avenue, the winter wind slapped sleet against the window-panes. Cameron Haig came in, rubbing his hands. He said,

"Hello, Amy, dear. All alone?"

"Yes, Cam," she said in a sprightly tone. "Why don't you go and dress for dinner?"

"No kiss? What's the rush?"

He came and put his arms around her shoulders.

"What's the matter, Amy? You're so white! You're trembling!"

"I was rather put out that you didn't come home sooner. I had to have tea— alone."

"Hello!" said be, staring at the table. "Tea? Alone, did you say?"

"Yes."

"Why the two cups, Amy? Both used!"

She imagined that the screen, with its horrible gold, its horrible pine-trees, and its horrible mountains, gave forth leer of triumph.

"Because I—"

"What?"

"Why, I drank two cups. I poured the second one— why, it was just stupidity, dear."

"You seem all tense."

"It's because of you," she answered. "Go and dress tor dinner now."

"Now? It isn't time."

He glanced again at the cups and then all about the room, sweeping into the corners with his quick thrusts of inspection. He ended by staring at the screen.

"Is it cold out?"

"Why, of course," he answered. "Awfully cold."

"What are you thinking about?"

"Why, that cup of tea— that second cup. It's extraordinarily suggestive of—"

"What?"

"Why, two people."

"Yes, isn't it?" she said, with clenched hands.

Her husband glanced at those white, clenched hands, and, jumping up, began to whistle.

"Don't!" she exclaimed. "Don't what?"

"Don't whistle."

"Who's been here, Amy?" he asked brusquely.

"Nobody. I expect you to believe me. I think— I wish you'd get me a glass of water."

'There's some right in front of you—ice and all."

She looked at it stupidly.

"Well, what's the use?" he said sternly. "Something's wrong. What is it? Who had that second cup of tea?"

"For the love of heaven, don't doubt me, Cam— don't doubt me!"

He waved his hand. He said, "Where's Kaga?"

"Gone out."

He grunted.

"You're not going to doubt me, Cam? You're not— are you?"

He appeared to be struggling within. He said at last, "No, Amy."

"Because love is faith, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And even if someone had been here, you'd know it was all right? Wouldn't you, dear?"

"You mean if you said, 'So-and-so has been here'? And you told me who? Why, of course."'

"But if I didn't tell you who, Ohm? Suppose it was just a test of your faith—your  love? Suppose I said, 'Someone has been here. Cam, but don't ask me to tell you any more; trust in me'? What then?"

"'You know I love you," he said fiercely.

"Enough to ask me no questions ?"

"But why? Why shouldn't I ask? Don't you see. Amy, how unfair it is to engage in such nonsense? I know someone has been here, Amy. Why shouldn't I know who it is?"

"I want you to love me enough to shut your eyes, your thoughts, your questionings —to put my lore for you and yours for me above all else—submerging all else."

He looked at the two teacups on the table— a quick glance, but enough to make her regret her falsehood, not because it had been a falsehood, but because she had disclosed to him that at first she had not told the truth,

Then he sat near her and put his forehead down into his upturned palms. She was staring straight at the screen, at its field of dull gold, its pine-trees, and its snow-capped mountain, at the four cracks between the lacquer-framed panels, at the evil slits that barely concealed an evil eye and the evil, black circle of a pointing gun, and the white, long-fingered, bony hand with its twitching muscles.

"For God's sake, Cam! Tell me! Say it!" the words burst out.

He looked at her and smiled. Something in his smile might have given the lie to his words, because in it there was cynicism and guile. His voice was kind, gentle, almost tender.

"Yes, I love you enough, Amy," he said. "I leave it to you. Tell me or not, I leave it to you, dear one."

"Shall I tell you?"

"No."

She turned her head slowly and fearfully toward the screen, as one turns toward an inexorable judge.

The screen answered as if it had seen the smile upon Cameron Haig's face, and there was no question, as Amy knew at once. From behind the screen there sounded faintly the metallic click of some mechanism, and then, so softly that it might have sprang from her fancy, the sound of a human chuckle ending in a muffled cough, as if a skeleton hand had been clapped over those twisted red lips.

"What are you looking at?" asked her husband.

"Nothing."

He wet his lips and said, "It was your imagination, Amy."

As he stood up, stretching his arms as one rising in the morning and yawning, she realised that the spit of fire from the screen, the nasty, darting tongue of flame, the snarl and bark and roar would topple him over on the rug, and that a little dark pool would spread out from beneath his flattened body. But she answered him with the volition of surprise.

"My imagination?"

"Yes—that the screen moved."

"Screen?"

"Yes, the screen," he said. "It did not move— though one might have imagined that it moved."

She laughed hysterically.

"We're a bit nervous," her husband said, looking at her with narrowed eyelids.

"No, no, Cam, I'm not nervous."

"I think so. You ought to have— you ought to have a taste of brandy, Amy."

Her nails scratched on the fabric of the chair-arms as she said dully, "We have no brandy, Cam. You know we have no brandy."

"Oh, yes, I've my own secrets, old girl. I've a little stowed away here in the desk."

He turned his back on the screen and walked leisurely towards the old mahogany desk in the corner. When he had pulled out the lower drawer at the side, he fumbled within, clattering about among odds and ends.

"Hello!" he said.

"What?"

"It's gone!"

"The brandy?"

"Yes."

"If you had it, no one could have taken it, dear."

"He did!"

"Who?"

"That man."

She darted a look at the screen.

"Ha!"

Her husband had caught her; she knew it. She started to rise, and fell back limply, gasping, her arms dangling beside the chair.

"Well, Amy, shall we give him a chance, eh?"

"There's nobody!"

"I'll give him a chance," he said, his face reddened and tense. "You talk to him. Amy. You tell him what I say."

"There's nobody."

"Say to him these words, 'Come out here, you sneaking coward.' "

"No— please! Cam! No."

He leaned back against the desk, half sitting on it, his hands behind him—still grinning.

"Say it!"

"You don't believe me— there's nobody there."

"Then why not say it?"

"Come out from the screen, you sneaking coward," she said with faltering voice, as if she expected to hear a pistol shot punctuate each word.

The screen gave forth no sign.

"He's there," said her husband, with his head thrust forward toward the screen. "He's afraid! So that's the kind of man you're  shielding, Amy. Why, don't you see— you've both confessed now?"

The sentence broke into the hoarseness of agony, the peculiar crackle of one who sees life and happiness crumbling, toppling over, crashing down.

"Trust me, Cam!" she begged.

"All right," he said. "You're on my side, Amy. Shall I kill him?"

"Kill him?"

"With this?"

She twisted her gaze away from the gold and lacquer, and then she saw that her husband had not engaged in his pretended search for brandy in vain. She believed at once he had done the one thing necessary to end him; he held a revolver in his fist, boring the air with it as it finding a way for its muzzle to lengthen out until it would touch the golden screen.

"Come out, you dog!" he roared. "I'll give you a chance. Come out! I'll give you a chance."

The screen was silent.

"Well, Amy which is the panel— the first, where the white stork is— the second, with the water and the mountain? Is he a tall man, Amy? Shall I allow for his crouching?"

"For God's sake. Cam! He'll—"

"Ha! So you want to save him— you love him, eh? You! My Amy!"

He raised the point of the revolver above his ear and brought the muzzle down slowly as one at target-practice.

"My Amy," he repeated ironically, and suddenly, in a chaos of passion, he crouched, grinding his teeth together, filled with the fierce and terrible joys of that poised moment.

She shut her eyes.

A single shot crashed into the world of her nerves, tearing some gigantic hole as if her senses had woven a fabric, only to wilfully pull it to shreds with a thousand rough claws stuck into it at once.

For a moment, in the utter stillness that followed, she did not dare to look. She could feel In her nostrils the tang of the smoke that had filled the room, and she opened her eyes slowly, in terrible fear.

Her husband was standing quite erect upon the rug, the smoking revolver in his hand. It was not to be believed! Yet there he was, his nostrils snapping with sharp intakes of breath, his eyes following some imaginary line to the screen, where a little black hole showed above the mountain's crest— a new decoration on that field of gold.

The screen was quite inexpressive. It gave forth no motion, no sound, no sign. It stood there as it always stood through days of happy life in the home of two young lovers. It said nothing.

Amy knew that it might speak at any second that dipped down and touched their destinies with the tip of a butterfly's wing of time; she knew also that the personality it had assumed might never speak again. She found herself whispering, within, the exact words that her husband was going to say, and he said those exact words.

"What have I done?"

He was brushing his forehead with the back of his left hand, confused, staring at the gold and green of those lacquer-framed panels, just as Amy herself stared, with unblinking eyes.

Then, as if they were those of a messenger rent from far-off worlds through the night, the fingers of the winter cold came and touched her lightly on the bare throat. She felt the almost imperceptible stirring of the air. The smoke of the revolver, drifting near the fireplace, swirled, turned from blue to grey, and then began to settle again into swaying planes at the level of her eyes.

Her husband had started toward the screen.

"Wait!" she exclaimed.

"What have I done?" he said, and, clutching the top of the black-lacquer frame, he threw he screen aside. It waltzed about as something human might reel, and, closing its panels, toppled over on to the rug.

Behind it there was nobody; behind it there was nothing.

Tark Ridley bad gone as he had come! He had given his mad judgment!

Her husband stood staring stupidly down at the floor where the screen had stood, for a moment, until a great sob shook him.

"God forgive me!" he said in a trembling voice. "Amy! Amy!"

Running to her, he tell upon his knees, clutching at her forearms.

"Amy! Amy! Do you love me? Tell me you still love me! Tell me you don't blame me. Speak to me, Amy. I was mad with jealousy, dear."

She threw her arms about his neck and held him tight, gazing into nothingness.

At last she said, "Don't ask me to talk now, dear. I never knew you loved me like that."

___________________

4: The Sceptical Poltergeist

J. D. Beresford

1873-1947

The New Decameron, 1922

THERE WAS once a time (he began) when I decided that I was a fraud; that I could not be a psychical researcher any longer. I determined to give it all up, to investigate no more phenomena nor attend another seance, nor read a word about psychical research for the remainder of my life. On the contrary, I planned an intensive study of the works of the later Victorians, of that blissful period in the history of Europe when we could believe in the comforting doctrine of materialism. "Oh!" I thought, "that one had a Haeckel or a Huxley living now to console us with their beautiful faith in the mortality of the soul!" The Neo-Darwinians failed to convince me; the works of H. G. Wells left me cold.

I will tell you the events that brought me to this evil pass.

It is not likely that anyone here will remember the Slipperton case. It attracted little attention at the time. In 1905 there was still a little sanity left in the world. A few even of the London dailies were nearly sane then, and refused to report ghost stories unless they were known to be untrue, And the Slipperton case had hardly any publicity— an inch in the Daily Mail, headed " Family Evicted by Ghosts," was the only newspaper report that I saw; though there may have been others. In these days the story would be given a couple of columns opposite the leader page; and the Sunday papers...

I was connected with the thing because Edgar Slipperton and his wife were friends of mine; quiet, old-fashioned people who believed that when you were dead you were dead, and that that was the end of it.

The phenomena that drove them out of their house at last were of the ordinary poltergeist type that date back to the days of John Wesley. The Slippertons had a fat and very stupid cook, whom I suspected of being an unconscious medium? but they were so attached to her that they refused to give her notice, as I strongly advised them to do. They told me that although she was constitutionally unable to grasp a new idea, such as the idea of a different pudding, she was entirely dependable, always doing the same things in the same way and with the same results. And while this confirmed my suspicions that she was a spiritualistic-medium, I recognised that she might have useful qualities as a cook.

The Slippertons stood it pretty well for a time. At first they were only mildly inconvenienced. Things used to disappear mysteriously, and turn up in unexpected places. Slipperton's pince-nez, for example, were lost, and found inside the piano. And Mrs. Slipperton's "false front" would be moved in the night from the dressing-table to the brass knob of the bed-post, even after she took to pinning it to the toilet cover. Things like that; irritating, but not really serious.

But the trouble increased; grew to be beyond endurance in the end. The poltergeists, with that lack of imagination which always characterises them,  started to play the old trick of pulling off the Slippertons' bed-clothes in the middle of the night— one of the most annoying of the spirits' antics. And they followed that by experimenting with the heavy furniture.

I was out of England when the trouble came to a head# and I heard nothing of the later developments until after the Slippertons had left the house. I happened to meet Slipperton by accident in the Haymarket, and he took me into his club and gave me the whole story. Naturally I was glad of the chance to investigate, although I thought it very probable that the phenomena would cease with the departure of the cook. I determined, however, to go down and spend a week in the house, alone. I was not dismayed by the fact that I should be unable to get any help with my domestic arrangements, owing to the superstitious fears of the villagers. I rather enjoyed cooking my own meals in those days.

It was fine weather in late May when I went down, and I regarded the visit as a kind of holiday rather than as a serious investigation. Nevertheless, from force of habit I carried out my inquiry in the scientific spirit that is so absolutely essential in these matters. The Slippertons' house was on the outskirts of a small town in Buckinghamshire, The shell of the house dated from the early seventeenth century (you will find it described in the Inventory of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments— the second volume of the Buckinghamshire survey.) But the inside had been gutted and replanned to suit our modern requirements, such as the need for making each bedroom accessible without passing through other bedrooms, the necessity for a fitted bathroom, and so on.

I found the house as Slipperton had warned me that I should, in a chaotic condition inside. Everything movable seemed to have been moved— without any definite intention, so far as I could see, but just for the sake of upsetting the decent order of the household. I found a frying-pan, for instance, hung on the hook that was designed for the dinner-gong, and the gong inside one of the beds. A complete set of bedroom ware had been arranged on the drawing-room table; and apparently some witticism had been contemplated with a chest of drawers, which had become firmly wedged into the angle of the back staircase. In short, the usual strange feats that characterise poltergeist phenomena,

I touched none of these misplaced things with the exception of the frying-pan, which I needed to cook the sausages I had brought with ftie; but after I had had my meal, I went through all the rooms and entered the position of every article in a large note-book, making plans of each room, besides a full list of the furniture and ornaments it contained. Later, I went up into the roof and disconnected the water supply, afterwards emptying the cistern and all the pipes. And before I went to bed I turned off the electric light at the main switch. All these precautions, as I need hardly tell you, were absolutely essential. It might appear difficult to explain the moving of a large chest of drawers by the sound of water-pipes or the fusing of an electric wire; but the critics of psychical research have essayed far more difficult tasks than that, to their own entire satisfaction.

I went up to the bedroom the Slippertons used to occupy, a little before eleven o'clock. I had with me a couple of spare candles, a new note- book, and a fountain pen. I was even at that time, I may add, a highly trained researcher in every way, and was quite capable of taking a full shorthand report of a seance. I tried my pulse and temperature before getting into bed and found them both normal. So far, there had been no sign of any phenomena; and I was not at all nervous. Indeed, I may say that I have never been nervous with spirits.

I had brought the Pickwick Papers upstairs to read in bed— it is always as well to choose some book that has no kind of bearing on the subject of one's investigation— and I was in the middle of thcoTrial Scene when my attention was caught by the sound of sometliing moving in the room. I had left both windows wide open and the curtains undrawn, and I thought at first that an unustfally large moth had flown in and was fluttering against the ceiling. I laid down my book, sat up and looked round the room, but I could see nothing. The night was very still, and the candle on the table by my bed burnt without a flicker. Nevertheless, the sound continued; a soft, irregular fluttering that suggested the intermittent struggle of some feeble winged creature. It occurred to me that a wounded bat or bird might have flown into the room and might be struggling on the floor out of sight near the foot of the bed. And I was about to get up and investigate when the flame of the candle sank a little, and I became aware that the temperature of the room was perceptibly colder.

I picked up my note-book at once and made an entry of the circumstances, and the exact time.

When I looked up again, the sound of fluttering had ceased and the candle was once more burning brightly; but I now perceived a kind of uncertain vagueness that was apparently trying to climb on to the rail at the foot of the bed. When I first saw it, it could not be described as a form. It had rather the effect of a patch of dark mist, with an irregular and changing outline, that obscured to a certain extent the furnishings of the room immediately behind it. I must confess, howewr, that my observations at this point were not so accurate as they should have been, owing to the sudden realisation of my stupidity in not having brought a camera and flashlight apparatus. The Slippertons had prepared me for poltergeists, and I was, at that moment, distinctly annoyed at being confronted with what I presumed to be an entirely different class of phenomenon. Indeed, I was so annoyed that I was half inclined to blow out the candle and go to sleep. I wish, now, that I had....

The Psychical Researcher paused and sighed deeply. Then producing a large note-book from his pocket, he continued, despondently;

I have got it all down here, and when I come to material that necessitates verbal accuracy, I should prefer to read my notes aloud rather than give an indefinite summary. In the first place, however, I must give you some idea of the form that gradually materialised; of the form, that is, as I originally saw it.

It took the shape, I may say, of a smallish man, grotesquely pot-bellied, with very thin legs and arms. The eyes were disproportionately large and quite circular, with an expression that was at once both impish and pathetic. The ears were immense, and set at right angles to the head; the rest of the features indefinite. He was dressed rather in the fashion of a mediaeval page.

(The professor was heard to murmur, "The typical goblin," at this point, but made no further interruption.)

He sat with his feet crossed on the rail at the foot of the bed and appeared able to balance himself "without difficulty. He had been sitting there for perhaps a couple of minutes, while I made various entries in my note-book before I tried the experiment of addressing him.

"Have you a message?" I asked. "If you cannot answer directly, knock once for 'No,' and three times for 'Yes,' and afterwards we can try the alphabet."

To my great surprise, however, he was able to use the direct voice. His tone was a trifle wheezy and thin at first, but afterwards gained power and clearness.

"I can hear you fairly well," he said. "Now do try to keep calm. It isn't often that one gets such a chance as this."

I will now read my notes.

Myself. "I am perfectly calm. Go on,"

Spirit. "Will you try to answer my questions?"

The Researcher looked up from his note-book with a frown of impatience after reading these two entries, and said:

But perhaps I had better summarise our earlier conversation for you. There was, I may say, a somewhat long and istinctly complicated misunderstanding between myself and the spirit before the real interest of the message begins; a misunderstanding due to my complete misapprehension of our respective parts. You see, it is unhappily true— however much we may deplore the fact and try to guard against it— that even in psychical research we form habits of thought and method,  but particularly of thought. And I had got into the habit of regarding communications from spirits as referring to what we assume to be the future life. Well, this communication didn't. The spirit with whom I was talking had not, in short, ever been incarnated. He was what the Spiritualists and Theosophists, and so on, call an Elemental. And to him, I represented the future state. I was, so to speak, the communicating spirit and he the psychical researcher. He was, I inferred, very far advanced on his own plane and expecting very shortly to "pass over," as he put it. Also, I gathered that he was in his own world by way of being an intellectual; keenly interested in the future— that is, in our present state; and that the Slipperton phenomena were entirely due to the experiments he had been carrying out ("on strictly scientific lines," he assured me) to try and ascertain the conditions of life on this plane.

Perhaps I can, now, illustrate his attitude by a few quotations from our conversation. For example:

Spirit. " Are you happy where you are?"

Myself. Moderately. At times. Some of us are."

Spirit. "Are you yourself happy ? "

Myself. "I may say so. Yes."

Spirit. "What do you do? Try and give me some idea of life on your plane."

Myself. "It varies so immensely with the individual and the set in which one lives. But we— oh I we have a great variety of what we call 'interests' and occupations,  and rnost of us, of course, have to work for our livings."

Spirit. " I don't understand that. What your livings, and how do you work for them?"

Myself. "We can't live without food, you see. We have to eat and drink and sleep; protect ourselves against heat and cold and the weather generally, which means clothes and shelter garments to wear and houses to live in, that is.

Spirit. " I have inferred something of this very vaguely from my experiments. For instance, I gather that you put on hair in the daytime, and take it off when you are— where you are at the present time. Also, I have noticed that when the coverings which at present conceal you are pulled away, you invariably replace them. Am I to deduce from that that you try to keep your bodies warm and your heads cool at night?

Myself. "Well, that's a trifle complicated. About the hair, you understand, some of us lose our hair— it comes out, we don't know why— in middle life, as mine has, and women and some men are rather ashamed of this and wear— er— other people's hair in the daytime to hide the defect."

Spirit. "Why?"

Myself. "Oh, vanity. We want to appear younger than we really are."

Spirit. "Why?"

The Researcher bent a little lower over his note-book as he said:

I seem to have written "Damnation " at this point; but so far as I can remember I did not speak the word aloud. You will see, however, that I tried my best to be patient in what were really the most exasperating circumstances. But I will miss the next page or two, and come to more interesting material. Ah! here:

Spirit. This thing you call death, or dying? Am I to understand that it corresponds to what we call incarnation?"

Myself. "We are not sure. Some of us believe that our actual bodies will rise again in the flesh; others that the body perishes and the spirit survives in an uncertain state of which we have very little knowledge; others, again, that death is the end of everything,"

Spirit. "In brief, you know nothing whatever about it?"

Myself. "Uncommonly little."

Spirit. "Do you remember your lives as elementals?"

Myself (definitely). "No!"

Spirit. Then where do you suppose yourselves to begin?"

Myself. "We don't know. There are various guesses. None of them particularly likely."

Spirit. "Such as?"

Myself. "Oh, some of us believe that the soul or spirit is a special creation made by a higher power we call God, and breathed into the body at birth. And some that the soul or spirit, itself eternal, finds a temporary house in the body, and progresses from one to another with intervals between each incarnation."

Spirit. "Then this being born is what we should call dying ?

Myself. "Quite. It makes no difference. And, as a matter of fact, the overwhelming majority of us— that is to say, all but about one in every million— never bother our heads where we came from, or what's likely to happen to us when we die, or are born, as you would call it."

I have a note here that after this we were both silent for about ten minutes.

Spirit (despondently). "I wish I could get some sort of idea what you do all the time and what you think about. I thought, when I so unexpectedly got into touch with someone in the future state, that I should be able to learn everything. And I have, so far, learnt nothing— absolutely nothing. In fact, except that I have been able to correct my inferences with regard to one or two purely material experiments, I may say that I know less now than I did before. And, by the way, those things over there— he pointed to the washstand— I noticed that at certain times you go through some ceremony with them upstairs, and as I wished to discover if there was any reason why you should not perform the same ceremony downstairs, I moved the things. Well, I noticed that the spirit who was here before you was apparently very annoyed. Can you give me any explanation of that?"

Myself. Our bodies become soiled by contact with matter, and we wash ourselves in water. We prefer to do it in our bedrooms."

Spirit. "Why?"

Myself. " We use a certain set of rooms for one purpose and another set for other purposes."

Spirit. "Why?"

Myself. " I don't know why. We do."

Spirit. "But you are sure of the fact, even if you can give no reason?"

Myself. "Absolutely."

Spirit. "I wish I could prove that. One of my fellow-scientists, who has recently been able to press his investigations even further than I have up to the present time, has recently brought forward good evidence to prove that spirits are all black, wear no coverings on their bodies, live in the simplest of dwellings, and, although they have a few ceremonies, certainly have none which in any way corresponds to that you have just described."

Myself. "He has probably been investigating the habits of the Australian aborigines."

Spirit. "What are they?"

Myself. "Men, or, as you would say, spirits, like us in a few respects, but utterly different in most."

Spirit. "Have you ever seen them?"

Myself. "No."

Spirit. "Or met anyone who has?"

Myself. "No."

Spirit. "Then this account of them tallies with nothing in your experience."

Myself. "No, but they exist all right. There's no doubt of that."

Spirit. "I question it. In any case, I could hot accept your word as evidence, seeing that you  havff neither seen them yourself nor met with anyone who has."

And so on, you know (the Researcher muttered, flicking over the pages of his note-book).

He was infernally sceptical about those aborigines. It seems that he had had a tremendous argument with the other investigator about the possibility of "spirits "being black and naked, and he was dead set on proving that he had been right. I think, as a matter of fact, that what I said tended to confirm him in his theory. He put it that if there were such spirits on this plane, I must have seen them or have had some quite first-hand evidence of tlieir existence; and when I said that I had seen black people, Indians, and so on, he cross-examined me until I got confused. You see, I had to confess that they weren't, strictly speaking, black, that they wore clothes, and washed, and lived in houses; and he got me involved in apparent contradictions— you have no idea how easy it is, when you are trying to be very lucid— and then he changed the subject with the remark that I was a very poor witness.

It was about this time that I began to lose my temper. It was after three o'clock when we got to that point, and I was getting very tired, and, strange as it may appear, curiously doubtful about my own existence. I had for some time been coming to the conclusion that he did not quite believe in my reality; and after he had dismfesed my account of the black races as being untrustworthy, he said, half to himself, that quite probably I was nothing more than an hallucination, a thought projection of his own mind. And after that I got more and more annoyed— partly, I thinks because I had a kind of haunting fear that what he had said might be true. When you have been talking to a spirit for over three hours in the middle of the night, you are liable to doubt anything.

But it was foolish of me to try and prove to him that I had a real objective existence, because obviously it wasn't possible. I tried to touch him, and my hand went through him as if he were nothing more than a patch of mist. Then I got right out of bed and moved various articles about the room, but, as he said, that proved nothing, for if he had an hallucination about me, he might equally well have one about the tilings I appeared to move. And then we drifted into a futile argument as to what I looked like.

It began as a sort of test, to try if my own conception of myself tallied with his; and it didn't— not in the very least. In fact, the description he gave of me would have done very well for the typical goblin of fairy-tale, which, as I told him, was precisely how I saw him. He laughed at that, and told me that, as a matter of fact, he had no shape at all, and that my conception of him proved his description of me was the correct one, because I had visualised myself. He said that he would appear to me in any shape that I happened to be thinking of, and naturally I should be thinking of my own. And I could not disprove a thing he said; and when I looked at myself in the cheval glass, I was not at all sure that I did not look like the traditional goblin.

Well, I assure you that I felt just then as if the one possible way left to demonstrate my sanity, my very existence, was to lose my temper j and I did it very thoroughly. I raved up and downfthe room, knocked the furniture about, chucked my boots through him, and called him a damned elemental. And although it had no more effect upon him than if I had been in another world— as I suppose in a sense I actually was— that outbreak did help to restore my sanity.

Perhaps you may have noticed that if a man is worsted in an argument he invariably loses his temper? It is the only means he has left to convince himself that he is right. Well, my temper did that for me on this occasion. I could not prove my existence to that confounded spirit by any logic or demonstration, but I could prove it to myself by getting angry. And I did.

The Researcher glared round the circle as if challenging anyone there to deny the validity of his existence, then slapped his note-book together and sat upon it.

I do not expect you to believe my story (he concluded, with a touch of vehemence). Indeed, I would much sooner that you did not believe it. I have been trying to doubt it myself for the past eleven years, and I still hope to succeed in that endeavour, aided by my intensive studyf of the comforting theories of the later Victorian scientists. But I must warn you that there was just one touch of what one might call evidence, beyond my own impressions of that night— which may have been, and probably were, a mixture of telepathy, hallucination, expectancy, and auto-suggestion that found expression in automatic writing. This rather flimsy piece of evidence rests upon a conclusion drawn from the end of my conversation with the spirit, I was still banging about the room, then, and I said that I had finished with psychical research, that never again would I make the least inquiry with regard to a possible future life, or any kind of spiritualistic phenomenon. And, curiously enough, the poltergeist precisely echoed my resolve. He said that that night's experience had clearly shown him that the research was useless, that it could never prove anything, and that, even if it did, no one would believe it. For if, as he pointed out, we who were in a manner of speaking face to face, were unable to prove our own existence to each other, how could we expect to prove the other's existence to anyone else.

It was getting light then, and he faded out almost immediately afterwards.

But it is a fact that there were no more poltergeist phenomena in that house, although the Slippertons went back to it a month or two later and still have the same cook.

_____________________

5: Our Mr. Smith

Oswald Crawfurd

1834-1909

This Holmes parody was published in the introduction to US Edition of Oswald Crawfurd's book The Revelations of Inspector Morgan (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1907).

AFTER a hard day's professional work I was sitting in my little room in Baker Street, deeply meditating on a subject never very long absent from my thoughts. Reader, you can guess what that subject is. I was considering the marvelous analytical faculty of my friend Purlock Hone, when the door opened and Purlock Hone himself appeared on the threshold. In my accustomed impulsive and ecstatic way, not unmingled with that humour which I am proud to say tempers the veneration I feel for that colossal intellect, I was beginning with the trivial phrase, "Talk of the—!" when my friend cut me short, with "Sh," and put his finger on his lips.

He sat down by the fire without a word, deposited his hat, gloves and handkerchief in the coal scuttle (I have before referred to my friend's untidy habits) and reached to the mantelpiece for my favourite meerschaum. He filled the pipe with long cut Cavendish, and, sitting with knotted brows, smoked it to the end before he spoke a word. Then he said:

"Humph!" It was little enough perhaps, but from Purlock Hone it meant volumes.

"Well?" I said. "Go on."

He did. He filled the pipe anew, and, for a second time, smoked it to the bitter end.

"Your pipe, Jobson, wants cleaning!"— and he gently threw it upon the fire, from which I rescued it before the flames had done it much injury. From any one else this action had seemed hasty, if not inconsiderate; in this gifted and marvellous being it betokened a profound train of abstract and analytical meditation. I waited patiently for some revelation of the subject of his thoughts.

I need not remind the reader that in the spring of this year the world of international politics was gravely agitated. Menacing rumours were about everywhere, the international atmosphere was electrical and mutterings of the tempest were to be heard on every side, but no one could divine where and when the storm would burst— on whom the bolt would fall.

Mysterious messages were daily passing between the Dowager Empress of China and Kaiser William; what did they portend? President Castro of Venezuela was known to be in secret communication with the Dalai Lama. Our eminent statesman, Mr. Keir Hardie, was said to have despatched an ultimatum to the Emperor of Japan and an identical document to President Roosevelt. The aged wife of the Second Commissionaire at the Foreign Office (Irish by birth and of convivial habits) had made certain compromising revelations of the policy of the government in a tavern in Charles Street, Westminster, and the Cabinet of St. James's was already tottering to its fall!

I eagerly recapitulated to my friend these various sources of disquietude to the nation, to Europe and the World, and urged him eagerly to enlighten me as to which of these great world problems he was preparing to solve. His answer was characteristic of this remarkable man, characteristic at once of his geniality, his simplicity, his wonderful self-control, his modesty, and at the same time of his refusal, even to me, to commit himself to an avowal.

"Any one of them, or none —or all; I cannot guess," said Purlock Hone.

My friend could not guess! I forbore from speech, but I smiled when I reflected that I was in the presence of the man who had more than once interposed to save a British Ministry from defeat, who had maintained the balance of power in Europe by discovering a stolen naval treaty, nay, of the man who had restored the jewelled crown of England when it had been lost for nearly three hundred years!

"A penny for your thoughts," said Purlock Hone gaily. "Or, come, you shall hear them from me for nothing."

"I defy you to know what I was thinking of," I said impulsively, but a moment later that defiance seemed to me rash, as in truth it proved to be.

"My dear Jobson," said this greatest of clairvoyants, "if you wanted me not to guess your thoughts you should not have smiled and looked towards the portrait of the late Premier. That told me, as clearly as if you had spoken, that you were recalling my little service to the late Unionist Government. I suppose you are unconscious of the fact, but you distinctly hitched the belt of your trousers as you crossed the room, with a sailor-like roll in your walk; what more was needed to tell me your thoughts were of my modest success in the matter of the lost naval treaty?"

"Amazing! And the recovery of the Crown of England?"

"You have tell-tale eyes, Jobson, and you rolled them regally as you directed them to the print of His Gracious Majesty over the mantelpiece."

"Wonderful man! Stupendous perspicacity!" I muttered.

Purlock Hone filled my rescued pipe for the third time and resumed his smoking. As in most other things, so in his taste for tobacco he resembles no other human being. I happened to know that he had not touched a pipe, a cigar, or a cigarette for a month before.

"Smoking, Jobson, is one of the world's follies. No ordinary man needs tobacco. It is poison!"

"Yet you smoke, Hone, even to excess at times," I said.

"I said no ordinary man, Jobson," retorted my friend.

I quailed under the justice of the reproof. Any other man would have pressed his victory. He generously forbore.

"I smoke only when some very heavy work is before me," he went on; "not otherwise."

Then I had guessed aright! He had some great work in hand. Never before had I seen so deep a frown between those sagacious eyes, never had the thoughtful face been so pale, the whole physiognomy so enigmatic. Never had so thick a cloud of tobacco smoke issued from between those oracular lips.

"I expect a visitor," he observed presently, between two puffs of tobacco smoke.

"Where?" I asked.

"Here," said Hone simply. "I left word at home that any one who called at my place was to come on here. Read this!" He tossed a letter across the table. I read aloud:

Dear Sir:

I will do myself the pleasure of waiting upon you between five and six to-day.

Yours faithfully,

John Smith

"A pregnant communication, Jobson, eh?"

"I dare say, but I confess I don't see anything peculiar about it." I looked again at the letter. It seemed to me as plain an epistle as any man could write. A dunning tradesman might have written it— a tax collector might have subscribed it.

"What do you make of those t's, Jobson? Does the spacing of the words tell you anything? Are those w's and l's there for nothing?"

"To me, Hone, they are there for nothing, but then— I am not a Purlock Hone."

He smiled as he regarded me with pity, and cocked his left eye, using one of those fascinating and favourite actions of his that bring him down to the level of our common humanity.

"It is a disguised hand, Jobson, and do you observe the absence of an address?"

The lucid and enlightened explanation that I expected was cut short by a ring at the door bell. Immediately afterwards the maid announced Mr. Smith. A little man with grey side whiskers, a neat black frock coat and carrying a somewhat gampish silk umbrella, entered the room.

"Be seated, Mr.— Smith." The slight pause between the last two words of Hone's sentence was eloquent.

"Which of you two gentlemen is Purlock Hone, Esquire?" The accent on which "Mr. Smith" spoke was cockney and the tone deprecating.

I looked to Hone to answer. He smiled upon the stranger. It was a smile of complete approval.

"Admirable!" said my friend. "Pray go on, sir."

The visitor was visibly taken aback.

"I asks a plain question, gentlemen, and I looks to get a plain answer."

"It does you the greatest credit, my dear sir," said Hone. "It would pass almost anywhere."

The little gentleman with grey side whiskers got red in the face and his eyes grew round. He was obviously angry, or was he only acting anger?

My friend Purlock Hone, as I think I have observed before in the course of these memoirs, often smiles, but seldom condescends to laugh.

Our visitor coloured violently and struck the end of his umbrella on the floor. "Look here," he said, "play-acting is play-acting, but I comes here on business; my name is John Smith, and I don't want none of your chaff."

"Capital! Capital! Go on, Mr.—Smith!"

"I will do so, sir, if you please!" The little gentleman put his hand in the inner breast pocket of his coat and produced therefrom a blue envelope; a quick glance at the superscription showed me that it was addressed to my friend and was written in that bold, regular, cursive hand which is characteristic of the man engaged in commercial pursuits. My interest was now strongly roused. I waited eagerly developments.

The mysterious visitor looked from one to the other of us. As you two gentlemen refuse to say which of you is Hone, Esquire, I'll make so bold as to read this communication to the two of you."

"You may do so with perfect safety, Mr. Smith. My friend is in my confidence."

The little gentleman cast a puzzled look at us both and read as follows:

" 'To Purlock Hone, Esquire, Dear Sir

Our Mr. Smith will wait on you in respect of our little account already rendered and which you have no doubt overlooked. Early attention to the same will oblige—"

The reader paused and looked at my friend. I, too, looked; his face was inscrutable, his lips were grimly closed. My curiosity— shall I say my indiscretion?— got the better of me.

"And whose Mr. Smith may you be, sir?" I asked.

The little man glibly read out the conclusion of the letter:

" 'Yours obediently, Dear Sir, Jones and Sons; Hatters; Oxford Street'. And here is the bill, gentlemen. 'To one fancy broad-brimmed silk hat-cathedral style;— To one clerical soft felt bowler; —To one slouched Spanish Sombrero; —To one...' "

Purlock Hone raised his hand, as if deprecating a list of further items, and Mr. Smith stopped and stared at him.

"What!" I thought. "Is it a real account for hats— after all! I remembered all these unusual forms of head-covering having formed parts of the various disguises in which my friend had walked the streets of London incognito. No! There must be some deep diplomatic secret behind the seemingly simple transaction!

"What is the total amount, Mr. Smith?" asked my friend in muffled tones.

"Nine, eleven, four, sir."

Without another word Hone walked across to my writing-table, took his cheque book from his pocket, sat down, and wrote and signed a cheque for nine pounds eleven shillings and fourpence.

"There you are, Mr. Smith. No— don't trouble to give me a receipt. The cheque is to order and Jones & Sons' endorsement will be as good as a receipt."

"Mr. Smith" rose quickly as my friend pronounced these, no doubt, pregnant words, bowed, and took his departure with "I wish you good morning, gentlemen." He preserved the deprecating attitude and the cockney accent of the small tradesman to the very last.

Purlock Hone preserved a pregnant silence. He slowly rilled my pipe for the fourth time with strong Cavendish tobaco. I struck a match and handed it to him. It was my tacit tribute of admiration to the skill with which this mysterious scene, of evidently the highest diplomatic tension, had been played through without a hitch by the two great actors concerned. Words would have failed me— had I attempted to use them. My friend held my wrist while he lit his pipe at my match. His hand did not tremble more than mine— indeed not so much.

"Purlock Hone!" I cried with rising enthusiasm, "if I did not know that a great thing had passed and that Mr. Smith was the emissary of some great European Power and the bearer of some deep international secret, and that you have conveyed a secret reply to some European potentate under the pretence of writing a cheque on your banker, I could have sworn that Mr. Smith was a dunning hatter's assistant, and that you had paid an overdue bill!"

"Jobson, you know I make a rule never to take you in— every one else, but not you. Mr. Smith was in point of fact an emissary, but only from Jones & Sons of Oxford Street, and I have paid their bill."

Purlock Hone is one of the few men who can afford to tell the plain truth when it is against him. He is great even in defeat!

________________

6: The Smell

Francis Flagg

(George Henry Weiss 1898-1946)

Strange Tales of Mystery And Terror Jan 1932

THE famous physician, a noted member of the Society of Psychical Research, pulled thoughtfully at his pipe.

"During all the years of my investigation of strange phenomena, have I ever run across anything that defied what we please to call natural explanation? Well, that is hard to say; I don't know. Only years ago—" he paused and lit a match.

"Perhaps I had better tell you about it."

AT THE TIME I was a young doctor practicing medicine in a small town in Nova Scotia. That was before I became a member of the Society, but not before I had become interested in spiritualism and kindred subjects. At college I had studied under Munstenburg, and witnessed some of his unique experiments in relation to hypnotism. Munstenburg also conducted some other peculiar inquiries into what is called occult or secret wisdom, but this latter fact is known to but few. It was under him I matriculated in psychology—and in some other things which colleges neither recognize nor give degrees for.

Naturally I acquired an assortment of bizarre facts and experiences, and a large library composed of other than dry treatises on medicine. It was my good fortune to possess a small income independent of my practice, and this enabled me to devote more time to reading and study than to patients. I had an office in what was called the Herald Building, and rooms at the 'Brunswick,' a rooming and boarding house of the old-fashioned type. I not only lodged at the 'Brunswick,' I took most of my meals there.

One evening I was sitting in my room after dinner, enjoying my pipe and a book of Hudson's,  A Hind in Hyde Park, when a hasty knock sounded at the door.

"Come in," I called perfunctorily, and there entered a young man of slender build, pale face and indeterminate features, with dark hair and eyes. He was a recent boarder at the "Brunswick," Lemuel Mason by name, and only a few days before the landlady had introduced me to him at the breakfast table. I gleaned the fact that he was (though he did not look it) of fisher stock down Lunenburg way. He was a graduate of a normal school, and expected, within the month after summer vacation, to take a position as teacher in a local private academy. A quiet young man, he appeared, in the middle twenties, commonplace enough.

Only with the observant eyes of a physician I had noticed at the dinner table that he looked quite ill; his pale face was unusually haggard, even distraught. His first words were startling enough.

"Doctor, tell me, am I going mad?"

"Probably not," I answered with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "Otherwise you would scarcely ask the question. But tell me, what is disturbing you?"

Almost incoherently he talked, and I studied him attentively as he did so. Afterwards I gave him a thorough examination.

"No," I said, "you are not mad; you are perfectly normal in every way. All your reflexes and reactions, both physical and mental, are what they should be. There is a little nervous tension, of course, some natural excitement from the strangeness of the experiences you say you have undergone, an experience, I again assure you, that will prove to have a simple and scientific explanation."

I said all this, being certain of nothing, but only desirous of calming my patient at the moment. I realized that it would take a longer period of observation to determine his mental condition.

"Tell me, what is your room like?" He had already informed me that he lodged in another house about two blocks away.

"It is a small room, Doctor; about as large as your ante-room out there."

"And how is it furnished?"

"With a single iron bed, a bureau, desk and two chairs."

"Tell me again of your experience, slowly."

"I took the room because it was cheap; and because of its reputation I got it for a nominal sum."

"Reputation? What do you mean?"

"I don't know exactly. Some girl died there, I believe. But I have never been a nervous individual; I don't believe in ghosts or such nonsense. So I leapt at the opportunity to be economical."

"And what did you see?"

"Nothing. That's the curious part of it." He laughed huskily.

"But I've smelt—"

"Is there any opening from your room that gives on another chamber?"

"No. Only the door and the transom above it, opening on the hall."

"Does anyone else mention smelling anything?"

"Not that I know of."

"And the window?"

"Opens on the rear garden. There is a plum tree outside the window, and a bed of flowers, pansies and rose bushes."

"Are you sure you do not smell them? On a warm sultry evening the perfume can sometimes be quite overpowering."

"No, Doctor, it was nothing at all like that. Let me describe again what happened. I moved into the room yesterday afternoon. At nine o'clock I went to bed. My window was open, of course, and the transom over the door ajar. For perhaps an hour I read— maybe longer. Even while reading I was conscious of sniffing some subtle perfume, and once or twice I got up and went into the hall, but, when I did, the smell vanished. However, it was only the suggestion of a smell; so finally I turned out the light and went to sleep.

"What time was it the smell awakened me, I do not know, but the room was full of it. It was not a fragrant smell— not the odor of damp earth and breathing flowers—but rather, of something unpleasant; something, I am sure, that was rotten. Not that I thought so at the time, for during the experience I was intoxicated by the odor. That is the ghastly part of the whole business. I tell you I lay on the bed and luxuriated in that smell. I actually rolled in it, rolling on the mattress, over and over, as you may have seen dogs rolling in carrion. My whole body seemed to gulp in the foul atmosphere, every inch and pore of it; my skin muscles twitched, and from head to foot I was conscious of such exquisite rapture and delight that it beggars description.

"All night I lay on the bed and wallowed in that delicious sea of perfume; and then suddenly it was daylight and I could hear people stirring in other rooms. The smell was gone, and I was conscious of being sick and weak; so sick that I retched and vomited and could eat no breakfast. And it was then I realized that all night I had revelled in the odor of rottenness, of something unspeakably foul, but at the time desirable and piercingly sweet. So I came to you."

HE leaned back, exhausted, and for a moment I was at a loss what to say. But only for a moment. You will remember that I was reading Hudson's book, A Hind in Hyde Park, when interrupted. If you have ever read the book, you will recollect that a portion of it deals with the sense of smell in animals. By a strange coincidence— if anything can be termed merely a coincidence— I was reading that section, and also several passages devoted to a dissertation on dreams. Taking refuge in an explanation quoted by Hudson, I said soothingly:

"The condition is evidently a rare but quite explainable one. I suppose you know something of the nature of dreams. A sleeping man pricks his hand with a pin and a dream follows to account for the prick. He dreams that he is rambling in a forest on a hot summer's day and throws himself down in the shade to rest; and while resting and perhaps dozing, he is startled by a slight rustling sound, and looking around is terrified to observe a venomous snake gliding towards him with uplifted head. The serpent strikes and pierces his arm, and the pain of the bite awakes the man. You see that the serpent's bite is the culmination in a dramatic scene which had taken some time in the acting; yet the whole dream, with its feeling, thoughts, acts, began and ended with the pin prick."

"But what has that to do with my case?" he asked.

"Everything," I replied, with more confidence than I felt. "In your case the pin prick is an odor. Some strange perfume strikes a sensitive portion of your nostril and instantly you are thrown into a dream, a nightmarish condition, to account for the smell. Since the case of the dream is an odor and not a pin prick, the time of the dream was of longer duration, that is all."

A little color came back into his face.

"It seemed to me that I was wide awake through it all," he said slowly, "but that was doubtless an illusion. Doctor, you relieve my mind of a great fear. You are sure—"

"Certain," I said briskly, feeling certain of nothing but the psychological effect of my words in calming his mind. "The weather is somewhat cool now, and you had better sleep with your window and transom closed to-night, to shut out the disturbing odor. I shall give you a prescription for a sedative to insure sound sleep. Don't worry yourself any further about it."

A queer case, I thought, as he went away, but how queer I did not realize until...

THE doctor paused and relit his pipe.

"If I had only known then what I know now! But I was young and inexperienced. It is true that I possessed the book. But much of it was a sealed mystery to me. Besides, it seemed absurd to connect.... Despite the witnessing of many queer experiments, the deep study I had already made of strange manuscripts on ancient wisdom, I did not as yet realize the terrible reality that lies behind many occult symbols and allegories. Therefore I had almost persuaded myself that Lemuel Mason's experience had indeed been the result of a nightmare, when I was startled to have him break into my rooms the next morning with a ghastly face and almost hysterical manner. I forced him to swallow a stiff whiskey.

"What is the matter?" I asked him.

"My God, Doctor, the smell!'

"What?"

"It came again."

"Go on."

"In all its foulness and rottenness. But this time I not only smelled it, I heard it, and felt—"

"Steady, man, steady!"

"Give me another drink. Oh, my God! It whispered and whispered. What did it whisper? I can't remember. Only things that drove me into an ecstasy of madness. Wait! There is one word. I remember it."

"With shaking lips he uttered a name that made me start. No, I will not say what that name was. It is not good for man to hear some things. Only I had already seen it in the book. I shook him roughly.

"And then, then..."

"I felt it, I tell you, all night. Its body was long and sinuous, cold and clammy, the body of a serpent, and yet of a woman too. I held it in my arms and caressed it.... Oh, it was lovely, lovely— and unspeakably vile!" He fell, shuddering, into a chair.

"AND now," said the doctor, "I must tell of the criminal thing I did. Yes, though I sensed the danger in which the man stood, I persuaded him to spend another night in his room. I was young, remember, and it came over me that here was an opportunity to study a strange phenomenon at first hand. Besides, I believed that I could protect him from any actual harm.

"A little knowledge," said the doctor slowly, "is a dangerous thing. I did not then know that beyond a certain point of resistance there is no safety for man or beast, save in flight and that Lemuel Mason had passed that point."

I WAS AGOG with excitement, eloquent in my determination to delve further into the matter. Lemuel Mason's one desire was to flee, to never again cross the threshold of the accursed room.

"It is haunted,' he cried, "haunted!"

God forgive me, I overcame his reluctance.

"You must face this thing; it would be madness to run away."

And I believed what I said. I fortified him with stimulants, prevailed on him to put his trust in me, and that evening we went to his room together; for I was to stay the night with him.

The house that held the room was an old one, one of a street full of ancient dwellings. People of means, of fashion had inhabited it thirty years before. But the fashionable quarter had shifted southward, the people had died or moved, and the once substantial mansion had fallen on evil days. The wide corridors were dark and gloomy, as only old corridors can be dark and gloomy; the painted walls faded and discolored, and as I followed Lemuel Mason up two flights of stairs, I was conscious of a musty odor, an odor of dust and decay.

The room was, as he had described it, at the end of a long hall, in the rear, designed doubtless for the use of a servant; it was rather small and stuffy, with nothing distinctive about it except its abnormally high ceiling. Yet was it real, or only my imagination, that something brooded in the room? Imagination, I decided, and lit all three gas jets.

IT was nine o'clock. Mason collapsed on the bed. I had administered a powerful sedative. In a few minutes he was sleeping as peacefully as a child. Seated in one chair with my feet propped up on another, I smoked my pipe, and read, and watched. I was not jumpy, my nerves were steady enough. The book that I read was the strange one by that medieval author whose symbol is the Horns of Onam. Few scholars have ever seen a copy of it. My own was given me by—but that doesn't matter. I read it, I say, fascinated by the hidden things, the incredible, yes, even horrible things hinted at on every page, and by the strange drawings and weird designs.

I heard other people mount the stairs and go to their various rooms. Only one other room was occupied on this floor, I noticed, and that was at the far end of the corridor. Soon everything became very still. I glanced at my watch, and saw that it was twelve-thirty. There was no noise at all, save the almost inaudible creakings and groanings which old houses give voice to at midnight, and the little sighing sounds the air made as it bubbled through the gas. These noises did not disturb me at all. I had watched in old houses before, and my mind automatically classified them for what they were.

But suddenly there was something else, something that... I sniffed involuntarily; I surged to my feet. The room was full of a strange odor, an odor that was like a tangible, yet invisible, presence, an insidious odor that sought to lull me, overcome my senses. But I was wide awake, forewarned of my danger. Three gas jets were burning to give me added confidence, and I fought off the influence of that smell with every effort of will.

Almost I felt it recoil before the symbol I drew in the air with my finger; but even as the odor grew faint and remote, I saw Mason straighten on the bed with a convulsive sigh, roll over and sit up. I sat by him again. His eyes were shut, but his face— Never have I seen human face express such emotions of delirious rapture and delight. And it was written not only on his face. His whole body writhed and twisted and squirmed in an abandonment of ecstasy that was horrible to watch. With a cry, I leapt to his side.

"Mason!" I shouted, "wake up! Wake up!"

But he paid me no attention. His hands went out in sensuous gestures, as if they handled something; fondled it, caressed it. I shook him roughly.

"Mason! Mason!"

"Oh," he crooned, smoothing the air, his body writhing under my touch, his lips forming amorous kisses and endearing words.

"For God's sake, man!'

"But the evil spell held him; it was beyond my frantic efforts to arouse him. The smell came in waves that rose and receded. Then, calling on every atom of occult lore upon which I depended, I drew around us the sacred pentegram. "Begone!" I cried, uttering the incommunicable name, and that name which it is tempting madness for the human tongue to utter. "By the power of Three in One, by the Alpha and Omega, by the Might of The Eternal Monad—back!" I commanded.

I felt it go from myself, but not from Mason. Still his body writhed and twisted with voluptuous ecstasy. His face radiated unhuman lust and joy, and his hands, his hands.... With a feeling of unutterable horror I realized that he was beyond the protection of any magic I could invoke to save him.

"Oh," he crooned, with that smoothing gesture. "Oh, oh, oh." He went on like that, mumbling occasionally, "The feel of your skin, the fragrance of it. Closer, beloved, closer. Whisper, whisper...."

And then in a thrilling undertone that made my scalp prickle on my head, he said, "I have felt you, heard you. Let me see you, let me see you."

But he must not see! I knew that. I must drag him beyond the room before he could see. With both hands I seized his body. Only I seemed to be dragging not only his body but another that clung to it, resisted my efforts, disputed every inch of the way to the door. My senses reeled; once again the smell poured in on me like an invisible fog.

Fear, blind, corroding fear had me in its grip. Like a man in a nightmare I struggled. Would I never reach the door? The invisible antagonist tugged, pulled. Three feet to go; two; one. With a last desperate effort I crashed against the door with the full weight of my body. Fortunately the door opened outwardly and the catch was weak. With a splintering of rotten woodwork, it gave under my lunge and I went staggering into the hall, still clinging to Mason. And even as I did so I heard him shriek terribly, once, twice, and then go limp in my hands.

All over the house doors banged, voices shouted, and the lodger in the room at the farther end of the hall came rushing out in a nightgown that flapped at his bare shanks. "For God's sake," he cried, "what's the matter here?"

But I did not answer. For staring down on the face of Mason on which was frozen a look of such stark horror that it congealed the blood in my veins, I realized that I had dragged him from the accursed room a second too late.

He had seen!

THE doctor stared at his listeners.

"Yes, he was dead. Heart failure, they called it."

"That expression on his face," said the landlady with a shudder; "it is like the look on the face of the girl who died there two years ago."

"For God's sake, woman," I cried, "tear that room to pieces! Board it up, lock it away! Never let anyone sleep there again!"

Later, I learned that in the great explosion of 1917, the house was destroyed by fire!

"And now," said the doctor, sucking at his cold pipe, "what about a natural explanation? Is the weird occurrence I have related open to one? In a sense, nothing can be unnatural, and yet... yet..." He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the ash-tray "For twenty years I have studied, pondered, dipped into the almost forgotten lore of ancient mysteries, of the truth behind the fable, and sometimes I think, I believe... that there are stranger things in heaven and earth...."

He paused. "Long ago primitive man was an animal and his sense of smell must have been highly developed. Perhaps through it he cognized another world; a world of subtle sounds and sights; a world just as concrete and real as the one we know; an inimical world. The 'garden,' perhaps, and the devil in the garden." He laughed strangely.

"Perhaps certain odors generated in that room; perhaps the invisible presence there of something alien, incredible, caused Mason (and in a lesser degree, myself) to exercise a faculty the human race, thank God, has long ago outgrown. Perhaps—"

But at sight of his listeners' faces the doctor came to an abrupt stop.

"Ah," he said; "but I see that this explanation is not natural!"

_______________________

7: By the Hands of the Dead

Francis Flagg

Strange Tales Of Mystery And Terror, March 1932

"I BELIEVE," said Porter Norton to me, "that you should tell the story as a warning to those dreamers and madmen who would dare to knock at the very portals of death and question the grim guardian of the beyond."

Perhaps Norton is right. Perhaps the terrible fate of Peter Strong was incurred because he came near to rending the veil betwixt life and death, and no man can do that and live. But I do not quite believe this. I believe....

But let me tell the story; let me put the weird, incredible facts on paper and in the end you shall know what I believe.

Norton and I met Peter Strong at one of Mrs. Tibbet's Sunday night gatherings. Mrs. Tibbet was a charming old lady who believed in spiritualism.

A spiritualist society held weekly meetings at her parlors and one saw some inexplicable things there. One night a medium— a big, fleshy woman who resembled pictures of Madame Blavatzky— gave a rather disturbing performance. The room was darkened as usual, but a veiled globe threw a faint light upon an area of floor in our midst.

We sat in a half circle, facing the cabinet, and holding hands. Suddenly the curtains of the cabinet parted and something came into the room, something abnormally broad and squat. All this time the sound of heavy breathing and occasional cries as if of pain, came from the cabinet. The thing which now undulated across the floor could not possibly be the medium, and I watched with a prickling sensation of the scalp until it reached the illuminated area. In the blacker portions of the room it had been distinguishable only as a luminous mass; but now it showed like white smoke, wreathing and churning. I felt Norton, who sat next to me, stiffen in his chair, and at that moment a woman screamed and someone snapped on the lights. The smoke vanished:

"Fake, of course," I said with a nervous laugh.

NORTON nodded his head doubtfully; but the gentleman who had sat on my right, a man I had seen at the meetings for the first time, shook his head. "No," he said quietly, "that wasn't a fake, that was one of the odd times when Mrs. Powers had enough psychic units of electricity focused in herself to allow the materialization of matter plain enough to be seen."

I looked at the man with interest. He was of average height, slim and precise looking. His face was clean shaven, that of an ascetic, a scholar; he had a high forehead and wide gray eyes— the eyes of a mystic. His age I judged to be fifty-five or sixty.

At that moment Mrs. Tibbet bustled up. "This," she said, putting her arm around the shoulders of the man, "is a very dear friend of mine, and I want you to meet him. His name is Strong— Peter Strong."

We shook hands. "You mustn't judge spiritualism," he said with a smile, "by its religious or fortune-telling aspects. As a matter of fact, the science of spiritualism has nothing to do with religion."

"The science?" said Norton.

"Yes, the science. Nothing is more exact than astronomy to-day, yet it had its roots in astrology. What you see in the spiritualist societies throughout the world, the mediums and their like, is but the primitive foundations of scientific spiritualism. It is full of quackery and fraud, just as astrology was and still is full of quackery and fraud..." He gave us his card. "If you should ever care to call on me," he said, "I would be delighted to discuss the subject further."

SEVERAL months passed, however, before we took advantage of that invitation. Mrs. Tibbet went to White Horse Canyon for the summer, and the meetings at her parlors discontinued; but except for week-end trips to Oracle, Norton and I were confined to the city. Norton as city editor of the Gazette, and I as its circulation manager, had enough to keep us busy.

One hot August afternoon when the mercury registered a hundredfour in the shade and the office was a sizzling furnace, Norton poked his head into my sanctum and waved a sticky proof. "Read this," he commanded.

I took the strip listlessly. "Tucson inventor makes machine for raising spirits," I read. "Peter Strong, local scholar and psychic research worker, announces...."

I looked up at Norton with quickened interest. "Why, this must be the fellow we met at Mrs. Tibbet's."

"I am sure it is. What do you say if we run around and see him after dinner? Might be a story in it for the paper."

I assented; and that was how we came to meet Peter Strong again and to undergo the harrowing experiences set down here.

The house was an old one, set in the southwest part of town, a two-story rambling pile built of adobe and surrounded by overgrown gardens and a stone fence. The immediate neighborhood was given over to other large houses and substantial estates; yet we approached it through the squalid Mexican quarter where dark-skinned, exoticlooking men and women gossiped or smoked in doorways, and dirty ragged children with vivid eyes and shrill cries rolled on the sidewalks and in the gutters.

As he carefully piloted the Ford, Norton told me something of Peter Strong. "I looked him up in our private morgue," he said, "and questioned the managing editor. Strong belongs to one of the oldest families in these parts. His grandfather was United States marshal hereabouts in the old days when Tucson was nothing but a cow town; and his father used to be mayor about twenty years back, before his death. Quite wealthy, I understand, but most of the family fortune was lost in the 1913-14 business slump. At that, the present Strong, the one we're going to see, isn't poverty-stricken. Lives very quietly, though, and seldom goes into society. Lived abroad for years. Wife dead. Is considered an authority on psychical phenomena and generally held to be a bit queer."

AS everyone who has lived in Tucson knows, the street lights are sparsely scattered. With some difficulty we located the desired estate and drove up a wide drive through a thick row of pepper and palm trees. The wide veranda was deserted, but the heavy front door was open, and even the screen door was flung back to admit more readily the faintly stirring evening breeze.

As Norton raised his hand to sound the brass knocker, a woman came down the stairs from the upper part of the house. She came from obscurity into the rather faint light cast by an overhead bulb in a colored shade, and I could not see her distinctly save to note the fact that she was tall and slender and clad in a skirt that reached to the floor. The woman paused at seeing us.

We both doffed our hats. "Is Mr. Strong in?" asked Norton. She did not reply, but instead beckoned us forward, and glided down the long hall, glancing over her shoulder to see if we followed. We started to do so, but at that moment a door at the end of the corridor opened, flooding it with light, and an elderly man in the quiet garb of a gentleman's servant faced us. The woman, we were both surprised to observe, had disappeared. "I beg your pardon," said Norton, in answer to the servant's suspicious looks, "but we are here to see Mr. Strong. We would have sounded the knocker, of course, but the lady—"

"The lady!" said the man, his expression subtly altering.

"Why, yes," replied Norton. "She invited us in. We would scarcely have entered otherwise. I don't know where," he said, looking about perplexedly, "she could have gone to."

The man made no reply but went to announce our presence to his master, and in a few minutes Peter Strong greeted us warmly. "This basement room," he said, leading the way to it, "is my study and workroom."

IT was a large place, and despite its cement floor, was comfortably enough furnished with rugs, easy-chairs and pictures, the one incongruous note being a work-bench set against the rear wall on which a variety of tools, odds and ends of wire, and other articles lay scattered.

"Yes," said Peter Strong, "I recollect meeting you at Mrs. Tibbet's very well. Michael," he called to the servant, "bring us something cooling to drink, will you? It's only an iced fruit beverage," he apologized, "but I never drink

We sipped our glasses appreciatively. The kitchen door opened off the room in which we sat, and through the open door I could see the servant moving silently about. Twice I surprised him casting furtive glances over his shoulder. What could be agitating the man, I wondered.

"Yes," Peter Strong was saying, "I am at work on a psychic machine. There it is near the bench."

He pointed to a contrivance I had mistaken for a radio. "But your reporter wrongly quoted what I said at the luncheon today. I did not say the machine was yet completed. As a matter of fact, I am waiting for a specially made transformer to arrive from the east before testing it out."

"But you believe it will work?" His fine gray eyes, eyes that stirred me in spite of myself, lit up with enthusiasm. "I have every reason to believe that it will. This isn't my first machine; it is the culmination of a dozen machines. For fifteen years I have been building, experimenting. And there have been results. Yes," he said softly, almost to himself, "there have been results."

HIS eyes stared fixedly beyond me, and, following the direction of their gaze, I saw the door through which we had entered quietly open, and the woman of
the hallway stand glancing in. Then she withdrew, the door quietly closed, and Peter Strong glanced back at us, a flush on his usually pale face. "Let me show you something." He took from a chest of drawers a number of cabinet size pictures. "With photographic devices in the machine preceding this one, I snapped these."

Norton and I regarded the pictures curiously. They showed vague, spiral-like bodies rising out of masses of vapor. The outlines resembled heads and shoulders as much as anything else, and in one or two profiles were clearly defined. Of course we had read about faked spiritualist pictures, but to suspect Peter Strong of knowingly perpetrating a fraud was impossible.

"With my earlier machines I received messages," Strong continued. "But I wanted more than messages. I wanted to materialize a spirit. And I wanted to materialize it under perfectly scientific conditions." He paused and regarded us tensely. The servant came in and removed the glasses and empty pitcher. "Yes," he said, "spiritualism is a scientific proposition. Not the spiritualism of the churches. Scientific spiritualism has no need of religion; no need of God. I don't," he said gently, "believe in God."

"Don't believe in God?"

"No."

"But," protested Norton, mopping his face, "something must be responsible for the world and the universe."

The servant returned with a full pitcher and clean glasses. It was very warm in the room despite the electric fan and the faint breeze blowing through the windows set high in the walls. I was conscious of the servant like a dark shadow going to and fro across the doorway. "Damn the man," I thought; "what is he so nervous about?"

PETER STRONG filled his glass. "Something is responsible, of course, and that something is pulsations of magnetism from indivisible prime units of matter."

"And the prime units," queried Norton, "what created them?"

"They were never created."

"Being the 'causeless cause' of some of the metaphysicians," I murmured.

"But," argued Norton, ignoring my interjection, "why can't the uncreated be God?"

"The very idea of God is unscientific."

"And yet you believe in a future life?"

"Not in a future life," corrected Peter Strong, "but in the continuity of life. And I don't believe; I know."

"But," I exclaimed, "that is the stock statement of all mystics and religionists: they all claim to know."

"Yes," he admitted with a smile. "But they claim to know through faith, while I know through knowledge. Not through the knowledge of ancient mystical lore, but through knowledge of more recent discoveries in science. And," he added softly, "through a channel more intimate... more dear."

We sipped our beverage in silence. A shadow loomed in the kitchen doorway, the silent figure of the servant. "Consider this," said Peter Strong after awhile. "I have already told you that all life and mass owes its existence to pulsations of magnetism. Science calls this pulsation chemical affinity. But here is a copy of my theory; I typed it to read at the luncheon to-day." He passed Norton a piece of paper. We read it with care.

"So you see," said Peter Strong, "that earth life is of one electronic density and spirit life of another. When a man dies, he is just as alive as he ever was, only his ego has a body invisible to us. But if a number of people physically en rapport form a circle, or if a vital medium goes into a trance, sufficient prime units of electricity may be generated for the spirits to build bodies dense enough to be seen. Those bodies will be no denser than the amount of prime units allows them to be. That explains why most spirit bodies and photographs of them are vaporous, unformed. However, the circle or human medium as methods of materializing the dead are primitive, uncertain, and open to all kinds of fraud and quackery. It is my aim, through the machine, to put spiritualism on a scientific basis."

ON our way home that evening, Norton and I discussed our visit.

"An interesting old chap, all right," said Norton; "and he certainly can make it sound plausible; but for all that I don't believe the dead can come back."

"Neither do I. They say Edison once tried to invent a psychic machine but gave it up."

Just before Norton dropped me at my door J. mentioned what had been milling around in my mind all the time. "Damn funny about that woman," I said.

"Oh, I don't know. A maid, perhaps."

"But where did she go to?"

"Popped through some door, I expect; there was one across from us, you know."

"But it was closed, and we never heard it open or shut."

Norton grinned. "I guess our hearts were thumping too hard for us to hear anything."

"But the servant's face! You must have seen the way he looked when you mentioned seeing a lady."

"Scared," said Norton. "Yes, I noticed. But maybe he had a woman in the house unbeknown to his boss."

"No," I said. "Strong knew the woman." And I told him about his looking at her in the basement doorway. Norton had been glancing elsewhere at the time and hadn't noticed.

"Well," he said reflectively, "it's none of our business what women the old fellow has hanging around. But then again, she wasn't dressed as a maid, if that's anything."

"And that servant was stiff with fright," I said. "I was sitting where I could watch him, and the way he'd look over his shoulder..."

IT was about five weeks after the above conversation that Peter Strong invited us to be present at a demonstration of his machine. Besides ourselves and several people whom we did not know, there were present two gentlemen, both members of the society for psychic research. One was Doctor Bryson, a middle-aged man of commanding height and presence, head of a local sanitarium; the other was a professor of science at the University, Woodbridge by name, rather short and taciturn. Neither of them, it was plain to be seen, placed much stock in Peter Strong's invention. The doctor, though an interested investigator of psychic phenomena, did not believe in spiritualism. He professed to be a rank materialist.

"No one denies there are some things we cannot understand," he said, "but some day science will prove them to be but extensions of our physical powers haphazardly used."

The professor said nothing. "Conan Doyle—" began Norton.

"Doyle!" snorted the doctor. "Doyle was the most gullible man on God's earth. Why, he writes of a personal experience in London being told him through a certain medium miles away before the occurrence had time to be broadcasted. He naively asks how the medium could possibly have heard of it save through spirits. Evidently he forgot about telephones and telegrams, and the fact that most professional mediums belong to secret information bureaus with agents everywhere!"

We were sitting in what evidently had once been the main parlor, a large room almost devoid of furniture. Michael, I noticed, was the only servant visible. Indeed, discreet inquiries had elicited the information that the only other servant was a cook who came in by the day: a personable enough woman neither tall nor slim.

THE night was unbearably hot, though it had rained throughout the afternoon and was threatening to do so again. The windows were all ajar. Attracted by the glare of the lights, I could see gnats and moths fluttering against the screen. Michael brought us iced drinks. "Mr. Strong will be here in a few minutes," he announced. We sat and chatted, and everything seemed very ordinary and unimpressive. Then Peter Strong entered the room and the atmosphere subtly altered.

"Gentlemen," he said, "all of you here to-night are disbelievers in spiritualism; that is why I invited you. I do not wish believers to witness this experiment, but skeptics." He flung off a large covering from what I had supposed to be a table in the center of the room and exposed his machine to view. It resembled, as I have said before, a radio. On the face of it was set a clock-like dial. Inside the box was a heavy, finely wrapped coil of wire. I am no electrician. I can only say that the box was intricately wired in. accord with some principle evolved by its inventor; that there were two odd transformers. The whole affair rather disappointed me.

"What you are looking at," said Peter Strong, "is a mechanical medium. Connected with an electriclight socket by means of this cord extension, it is supposed to generate sufficient prime units to make materializations possible." He made the connection as he talked, but did not turn on the current. "As you all know, certain vibrations are sensitive to light, therefore the room shall be darkened. Michael, will you turn off all but the colored cluster of globes?"

"But, Mr. Strong—"

"Please, Michael!"

THE servant, whose white, agitated face I had observed hovering in the background, did so with obvious unwillingness. The room was now in a red haze. Objects blurred into almost indistinguishable masses. I heard the snap of the switch as Peter Strong turned on the current. The room became very still. The droning of the machine and the loud beating of my own heart were all I could hear.

There is a curious thing about silence and gloom. They have a ghostly effect on the nerves. Or perhaps I am more sensitive to them than are others. I felt an almost irresistible impulse to speak, to move; and in fact I did fidget. Someone coughed; I coughed. There was an epidemic of clearing throats. A chair scraped the floor. Then again everything was preternaturally still and the buzzing of the machine filled the room with a steady monotonous noise that was itself a form of silence. So we sat, for perhaps five minutes, without a thing happening. Then:

"Look!" someone whispered.

Over the machine broke a fanfare of sparks. A murmur ran through the room.

"Silence!" commanded the voice of Peter Strong. The sparks grew in intensity and from them swirled a luminous smoke. I felt the hair rise on my scalp, a chill tremor sweep up my back. It was not the sight of what I saw, no; but the sense of something evil, something inimical that brought me to my feet, tense, atar-

The sliding of chairs, the stamping of feet, apprised me that others, too, had risen. Someone's fingers bit convulsively into my arm, someone's hoarse breathing was next my ear. The luminous smoke eddied and whirled, and then suddenly it was pouring not up but down, and in the midst of it a dark shape etched itself against the luminous glow, a shape that seemed to take on form and substance even as we watched, a shape that seemed to suck into itself the pouring smoke and flashing sparks— a human shape! For a pregnant moment I saw a half-visible face leer out of the mist.

"God!" screamed someone hysterically, and then it happened.

OUT of the luminous mist lunged the human shape, menacing, deadly. Chairs crashed as terrified men surged backward, stumbling, falling.

"Miranda!" cried the voice of Peter Strong, something of horror and yet of entreaty in its note. Then, through the red gloom of that room, rang a noise that chilled the blood in our veins. Up, up, went a ghastly peal of eldritch laughter, the laughter of something insane, uncanny.

"Miran—" The voice of Peter Strong wavered, broke, into a horrible gurgle. There were sounds of a terrible struggle, of the mad threshing of forms. "For God's sake," cried someone, "turn on the lights!"

"The lights! the lights!'' babbled another.

After a moment of bedlam, the lights flashed up. The room was a wreck, the machine overturned. All this we perceived in a glance. And then we saw the body of Peter Strong stretched inertly on the floor, his face horribly congested, his tongue protruding. But not that alone. For crouching over him like something vampirish and predatory, was the slender figure of a woman, her fingers fastened on his throat, throttling him to death; and ever as she throttled him, pouring forth a blood-chilling stream of uncanny laughter.

Like men in a dream, a nightmare, we stood; like figures caught on a mimic stage by the glare of a spotlight. For perhaps a dozen seconds we stood, unmoving. Then we were roused into action by the voice of the servant, Michael. "O, my God," he cried, "she's killing him! Killing him!" And whirling up a chair he sprang forward with an oath and brought it down with a thud upon the woman's head.

It was Norton who, with some difficulty, tore the stiffening fingers from Peter Strong's throat. Together we turned over the lifeless body of the woman, and then, at sight of the staring, implacable countenance, started back with a cry of amazement; for the features upon which we gazed were those of the lady we had seen coming down the stairs on our first visit to Peter Strong!

THE servant knelt by the body of his master, tears streaming down his face. "Oh, I warned him to be careful," he cried brokenly, "but he wouldn't listen to me; he wouldn't listen."

The doctor made a hurried examination. "Both of them are dead," he announced. There was a moment's silence.

"Who is this woman?" questioned Norton.

"His wife," replied Michael.

"His wife!" exclaimed the professor. "But I thought his wife died years ago?"

"So she did," answered Michael.

"Then he remarried again?"

"No, no," mumbled the servant. "You don't understand. This is his wife... the one who died."

We stared at him. The same thought was in all our minds. Evidently horror and grief had deprived him of his wits. But he read our thoughts.

"No," he said sadly, calming himself with an effort, "I am not mad. This is the only wife my master ever had; she who was Miranda Smythe, and who died in Paris... twenty years ago."

"But, good God, man!" exclaimed the professor. "Do you realize what you are saying? How can this woman here—"

"Sir," said Michael, standing up, "there is no rational explanation to give. My master married this woman when she was young and fair to look upon, but if ever there was a devil in human shape she was one. For ten years she made his life a hell. I know. I was with him through it all... more friend than servant... and many a time.... But enough! She was unfaithful; she blackened his name; she tortured him in ways too vile and unspeakable to mention. And yet his love persisted.... And one day in a jealous rage he struck her here"—the servant laid his hand on his breast—"and from the effects of that blow she died. But not before she cursed him, and threatened to reach back... from beyond the grave... and kill... "

HE paused. The silence in the room was like a deep noise. "The affair was hushed up; but the grief of my master was terrible. It was then he took to spiritualism and was soon in communication with a spirit claiming to be his wife. Sir, there is more to this spiritualism than quackery. With my own eyes and ears I have heard and seen.... But enough! She claimed that in passing over she had won virtue and understanding, that she forgave. 'Oh, how I love you now and wish I could be with you again!' was her constant refrain. But I never believed her; one doesn't change so readily; besides there was something mocking in her tones, and several times I saw.... 'Be careful,' I warned my master. Oh, I constantly warned him. But he was adamant, sir, blinded with love and remorse, and when he discovered I was mediumistic...."

Again Michael paused. "I couldn't refuse him, of course, and it was through me—me who dreaded and hated her so—that she gave him the idea of this infernal machine." He pointed at the overturned mechanism. "You know the theory of its working. To generate enough prime units of electricity so that a spirit can build up a fleshy body with which to function on earth again. Oh, it's incredible, I know!" he cried, "but that is just what my master did. But his early machines were weak and she would wander through the house like a wraith— those gentlemen can tell you; they saw her one night in the hallway! She would wander sometimes for a week, until her electrical body dissipated, unable to harm any one, though she tried.... Oh, sir, I'm telling you that she tried hard enough! But my poor deluded master never saw. She smiled at him and melted in his arms, and he only dreamed and worked for the time when....

"And that time came," said Michael tensely. "To-night she had sufficient prime units for a complete materialization. Yes, she built herself a body of actual flesh and blood and with it reached back from beyond the grave to wreak vengeance on the man whose life she ruined, reached back with the hands of hate to strangle, to slay, to..."

He pointed blindly at the body of Peter Strong and collapsed into a chair, burying his head in both hands.

WE stared at one another with pallid faces, at the bodies on the floor, at the bowed figure of the old servant. The doctor was the first to recover, though he, too, was still dazed.

"Nonsense," he muttered uncertainly. "Nonsense. Spirits be damned. This is a case for the police. Perhaps... " he glared suspiciously at the servant.

Norton and I quickly glanced at each other. The suggestion that Michael had had anything to do with the tragedy struck us both as preposterous.

"There is a phone in the hall out there," said the professor. "One of you had better call the police station. I'm sure the authorities will clear up the mystery."

But they never did!

This much only is known: That the body of the dead woman was never properly identified; that her face certainly bore a strong resemblance to early photographs of Peter Strong's wife. But of course it was impossible for a matter-of- fact police department to admit that the dead return, and that a woman twenty years a moldering corpse could commit murder. So, after a few weeks of investigation and grilling, they closed the case by entering in their files that one Peter Strong had come to his death, through strangulation, at the hands of a crazy woman, name and antecedents unknown. The machine was broken up.

And there the matter rests.

_______________

8: The Picture

Francis Flagg

Weird Tales Feb-March 1931

THE room was in complete darkness. "O Liam Maroo," chanted the man. The blackness was like a thick velvet against his face. He spoke the words that for twenty thousand years no human voice had uttered. Far off, in an infinity of night, grew a red spot, lurid, uncanny to behold. The man shuddered. Almost he dashed to pieces the fragile contrivance that for three weeks, night after night, in this miserable room, he had brought to completion. But his will conquered. In a voice almost inaudible he said the seven necessary words and made the seven unspeakable motions. The red spot grew, expanded. In the center of the red spot formed a face, a terrible face, an unhuman face, the face of Liam Maroo, the World Ancient.

"I am here,'' said the face.

The man fought the faintness that threatened to engulf his senses. "O Liam Maroo," he whispered, "the deed has been done, the altar raised. For seven nights I have conjured you by the seven necessary words, and the seven unspeakable motions. Speak, have I not fulfilled the ancient bargain?"

"You have fulfilled," said the face. "Then by the Book of Him Who First Conjured, I call upon you to fulfill yours."

"It is well," said the face. "What is your wish?"

"Power," answered the man. "Power. I who have been weak, would be strong. I who have been poor and lowly, would be high and mighty. I who have known the contempt of men, would know their envy and servility. I who have known poverty and hunger, would know riches and plenty. Give me power."

His voice at last rang like a trumpet, growing stronger with every word uttered, and he leaned forward in his eagerness until in front of him the invisible contrivance creaked and swayed.

"Power," said the face thoughtfully. "Would it not be better to do as Suliman, and ask nothing but wisdom?"

"Nay," said the man. "Suliman was already a king, and rich. Wisdom added to power and riches made him greater. But without power even Wisdom can die in the gutter."

"True," said the face; "and by the choice you make you prove yourself already wise. You would have power, power to sway men, power to create and hold riches. It is well. Such power is yours, such power I endow you with— but at a price."

"My soul?" said the man. "It is yours; take it."

"Soul!" echoed the face. "Whom do you take me for— Mephistopheles? Only the Antagonist could barter for your soul. To me it is worthless. Not your soul."

"Not my soul," echoed the man. "Then name what you will."

The unhuman face of Liam Maroo regarded the man intently. "Power, riches, the magnetism that sways men, all these I give you, and in return you shall pay to me the woman you love."

"The woman I love! But I love no woman," said the man.

"You will," said the face. "If you accept my offer you are fated to meet her. This, then, is the price I ask, that at the time I choose you shall sacrifice to me her brain, and her heart, and—"

The man listened to the last horrid detail of the sacrificial rite and shuddered. In the deep darkness his cheeks blanched, and for a moment he hesitated. But the overwhelming ambition that had driven him to master the secret of the Book of Him Who First Conjured, that had nerved him, in spite of superstitious fears, to raise the altar, practise the awful and uncanny ritual, would not now let him retreat. What! to forego his heart's desire for a woman he did not as yet know and for whom he cared nothing?

"I accept," he said hoarsely. "The woman is yours."

Was it pity that flitted across the remote, unhuman countenance of Liam Maroo?

"Think well," said the face warningly.

"I have thought," said the man.

"Let the pact be signed," said the face.

Then followed a ceremony that can never be described in words. The red spot grew until it filled the room with its lurid glow. The troglodytes came, and the three things of which Radge Oep speaks in that book which no one now understands. The man was bound with the serpents, one of which knew Eve. He was scourged with seven whips fashioned of scorpions. Then came The Horns and pierced him in a secret spot. After that...

But it is well to be silent. In time the red light went as it had come. The room was dark. Dawn came, and the sun shone over the roof-tops and through the single window of the room and revealed its squalid meagerness. There was nothing to see, save a soap-box on end, seven pieces of shaving, a chalked diagram on the floor, and the body of a man lying heavy in sleep across a sagging bed.

ii

THE RISE of Jim James to wealth and power was phenomenal, even for that traditional land of opportunity and of startling financial successes, America. Carnegie rose from poor boy to steel magnate; Rockefeller from obscure clerk to millionaire oil baron; Henry Ford developed the cheap automobile industry and became one of the uncrowned kings of business. But sensational as were the financial successes of these men there was nothing mysterious about them.

One could follow the process of their emergence from comparative poverty to money masters, over a period of years. But at thirty-five Jim James was working as a dishwasher in the kitchen of O Come Inn restaurant on Congress Avenue, Tucson, Arizona, for twelve dollars a week. This was in the spring of 1930.

He was then a thin-faced, slender, dried-up wisp of a man weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. His chin habitually showed a stubble of dirty-black beard and he went clad in a shapeless pair of trousers, frayed at the bottoms, and in a khaki shirt, shiny on the bosom and far from clean.

Before that he had been a tramp, a bindlestiff, a laborer in the oil fields, an insignificant migratory worker whom people spoke of— if they ever spoke of him at all— as slightly cracked. He was queer, in those days something of a butt. He never resented an insult, a sneer. He went his way, silent, almost furtive. Only his eyes showed any force, any vitality; but as he never looked anyone directly in the face, few noticed them. With him he always carried a book. It was the same book; an odd yellow-looking volume he had picked up God knows where. Always, in camps, in jungles, by the side of the roads, he was reading in this book. When he thought himself alone he would sing-song certain unintelligible sentences in an alien gibberish. Also he would build strange little contrivances of sticks and stones and draw diagrams in the dust. Naturally this aroused the curiosity of his fellow hoboes. Several times men took the volume away from him and examined it, only to find the printing fine and in unintelligible characters, with weird drawings and designs on alternate pages that suggested nothing to them save that he who could be interested in such truck must be daffy. So they threw the book back to him with good-natured oaths and gibes.

Seemingly, Jim James never resented these outrages. He surrendered the book without struggle, received it back with no audible comment, and in time men ceased bothering him. So much of his life is authentic. But before that, who he was, where he came from, is shrouded in mystery. Then came the spring of 1930, the dish-washing job, and the first of the mysterious happenings which in a few weeks was to lift this vagabond, this insignificant menial and reputed daft person out of poverty and squalor and make him one of the most envied and talked-of persons in America, in time of the world.

He was late for work that morning. Usually he was at the dishpan by seven. But it was nine when he came through the cafe door. Matt Dowden, the stout, big-stomached proprietor, intended to bawl him out. But the irate words died in his throat. Even Matt Dowden could see that there was some magical change in his erstwhile dish-washer. For the first time he experienced the sensation of having Jim James look at him levelly with those strange vital eyes of his.

"I'm quitting the job, Matt," he said in soft, easy tones.

This was another surprize. Jim James had seldom spoken, but when he did he had addressed his employer haltingly, and always as "sir" or "mister." If the dog lying at the door had raised up and bellowed, "Hello, Matt," Matt Dowden couldn't have been more thunderstruck.

"You see," said Jim James conversationally, "I've struck it rich. Yes, gold. Up the street a ways. I'm on my way now to file my claim at the court-house. What do you think of that for a nugget, Matt?"

He threw on the counter a dull glittering mass the size of a large cobblestone. Matt Dowden could scarcely believe his eyes. He picked it up. The thing was surprizingly heavy.

"Keep it," said Jim James indifferently and walked out.

By noon everyone in Tucson knew that Jim James had discovered and filed on a gold mine in a downtown lot back of his lodging-house. At first there was nothing but laughter. Who ever heard of gold in the heart of town? Undoubtedly the man was crazy. But when he began to flood the local assay offices with fabulously rich nuggets, with canvas bags of almost pure gold-dust, opinion changed. In a few days one of the big mining companies had its men on the claim making tests, analyzing the soil, judging the richness of the find. Their reports were breath-taking. The mine was a regular bonanza, incredibly rich. There were millions in it— millions! The newspapers ran screaming headlines:

GOLD STRIKE IN TUCSON!

Business men forgot their business. A rush was made to file on any and everything. From all over the West foot-loose adventurers stampeded into Tucson in one of the most remarkable gold-rushes in history. The big mining company made a cash offer of two hundred thousand dollars to Jim James. Jim James said he wasn't interested. They made it a million. He laughed. "Two million," he said, "not a cent less." So inside of two weeks they bought him out, and the erstwhile bum and dish-washer was now twice a millionaire.

But no sooner was the mine sold than a strange thing happened. Gold ceased to be found on the fabulously rich claim.

True, mining engineers had sunk their shafts twenty feet into the soil, through sand and quartz almost solid gold. They had assayed this gold at staggering figures to the ton. But the day after the deal was consummated with Jim James the mine proved to contain nothing but worthless sand and rock. The gold had vanished. The experts could hardly believe their senses.

A cry was raised that Jim James had deliberately salted the claim, that he defrauded the mining company out of its purchase price. But there were reports of the chemists and engineers to disprove such charges. How could a poor dishwasher salt a claim for twenty feet into the earth? The gold taken from the claim and still existent ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, there had been gold in the claim, a small fortune in gold, but the mining experts had overestimated its extent and the lead had petered out. This became the consensus. The mining company finally pocketed its loss, the gold-seekers left town, the business men returned to their businesses. Only the newspapers were heralding the appearance, on the financial stage of the country, of the unique and even mysterious figure of one, Jim James, ex-dishwasher and migratory worker.

iii

THE startling change in the fortunes of Jim James was no more startling than the change in the man himself. Even during the two weeks of the gold rush people noticed this sudden metamorphosis in the insignificant dish-washer. He did not, of course, grow in height, but the straightening of his stooped shoulders, the erect way in which he now carried himself, gave the impression of increased stature. He was almost as self-contained, as silent as ever, but from him exuded a force, a dynamic strength, that was a revelation to those who had known him previously.

"It is incredible," muttered Matt Dowden, "incredible!"

When Jim James had need to speak he spoke softly, without hesitation, his dark eyes fixed unswervingly on those of the people with whom he spoke. When addressing persons in front of him he gave the uncanny impression of looking directly into the face of each individual at one and the same moment. Yet he made no attempt to change his manner of living, wore the same shapeless trousers and greasy shirt.

There were men who had met him on the road, shifty-eyed yeggs and gay-cats who, remembering him as he had been, thought they would blow into town and relieve the old fool of the proceeds of his lucky strike. But they departed after a few days, thoroughly mystified and no richer than when they had come. One or two old-timers he staked with a few dollars. A Mexican who had fed him from time to time was presented with a deed to the small ranch he rented. A few kindnesses of this sort Jim James performed; then one day, still clad in his disreputable clothes, but bearing on his person certain papers of value, he swung aboard an east-bound train and was gone from his old haunts.

Chicago heard of him next. In fact it was in the windy city, the metropolis on the Great Lakes, that he performed the second feat which electrified the world. This was nothing less than to discover a diamond mine in the great dumps which lie in the stockyards section of the city.

Now everyone knows that the diamond is a mineral of great hardness, consisting of crystallized carbon, and found only in certain favorable soils. But in vain diamond experts protested that it was preposterous to talk of mining the precious stone anywhere in Illinois. Jim James was now a wealthy man.

He purchased most of the dumps, including the mineral rights, surrounded his land with armed guards, and proceeded to take out diamonds in spite of the verdict of the experts. Diamonds began to appear on the local markets by the bucketful; they circulated to New York, Boston. Dealers in precious stones were dumfounded. The charge was made that the jewels were paste. But Jim James smiled at this. By every test imaginable the gems were proved genuine. Then it was asserted that they were being manufactured by a chemical process. Diamonds have been so produced, but only through extreme heat and pressure, small in size and far from perfect, and at prohibitive cost. Jim James exploded this theory by inviting chemists and jewelers to his lot and showing them the crude stones. The experts were astounded. The soil was of the kind in which diamonds had never been found, the geological conditions were all unfavorable, yet in spite of these self-evident facts stones were there in profusion, stones in such quantities as to stagger belief. Jim James was flooding the market with them. People whose fortunes were tied up in these precious gems became panic-stricken.

As is well known, diamonds are plentiful enough, but their output is regulated to maintain the price. The International Diamond Trust, the de Beers of Africa, became alarmed. All over the civilized world Jim James and his wonderful find were headline news. The price of diamonds began to drop. There was only one thing for the diamond trust to do. They dared not have an inexhaustible supply of precious gems in the hands of irresponsible people. Jim James must be brought into the syndicate or his mine purchased. The latter was what was done. The sum paid to Jim James was never made public but the newspapers placed it anywhere from ten million to fifty.

Then came another sensation. No sooner was the deal with Jim James consummated than the diamond mine petered out! The trust found itself in possession of a lot, a hole in the ground, and so much worthless rubble. Having more stones than they knew what to do with from their African and other mines, this did not altogether displease the trust officials. They were angry, of course; they figured that Jim James in some clever and incomprehensible way had bilked them; they decided it was wise to be philosophical and say little. But the newspapers went wild. They connected up the gold-mine incident of Arizona with that of Chicago and turned out sensational story after story.

"Jim James the Man of Mystery." "The Dish-washer with the Midas Touch."

So the captions ran. And while the national and international press was broadcasting wilder and wilder news to an avid reading public, turning out lurid Sunday supplement articles by the carload, there happened a third incident which never reached the papers.

There is in the city of New York a world-famous street. It is the financial center of the nation, some claim of the world. And in this street is a magnificent office building housing the offices of the most powerful banking institution ever organized. The head of the house of Dorgan was the third of this line and was called Peter—a tall, thick-set, heavy-jowled man with iron-gray hair and despotic eyes. He had been born to a king-ship more powerful and real than that of any six monarchs of Europe. His simple name was the awe of princes. His signature on pieces of paper swayed the destinies of nations. Millions of working-men, their happiness and jobs, lay under the soft but ruthless hand of this lord of banking. Wars were made, armies came and went, as his interest dictated. From the cradle up he had been educated and molded with but one purpose in view— the wielding of the autocratic power his money conferred.

He was proud with the pride of an aristocrat; strong, with the strength of an especially tempered blade; pitiless, with the cool indifference of one who had never suffered poverty or want. This gentleman, then, this Peter Dorgan, this scion of a great banking family, was seated in his private office, thoughtfully pulling on a fragrant and very expensive cigar manufactured for his exclusive consumption, when his secretary, without previous warning, ushered into his presence a man, a visitor, a personage upon whom Peter Dorgan had never before set eyes.

To understand the sheer miracle of such a thing happening, one must be made to realize the utter inaccessibility of the king of bankers. Easier would it be for a poor London cockney to win to the person of England's king in Buckingham Palace than for an ordinary man to have an audience with Peter Dorgan in his office. Even fellow bankers, men of importance in their way, governors, senators, found it next to impossible to arrange interviews with the money king.

Between him and the importunities of the world stood a whole array of henchmen; only they were called doormen, clerks, office-boys, managers, presidents, and vice-presidents. But on the morning in question there had appeared in the general offices a soft-voiced, slender man who asked to see Peter Dorgan. He was moderately well-dressed in a dark sack suit. The hat, a brown velour, he carried in one hand. But it was his smile that was remarkable; that, and his eyes. Stony-faced and remote-appearing clerks found themselves unconsciously warming toward him under the influence of both. Crusty managers forgot to repel him in their usually chilly manner. So the stranger progressed from one clerk to another, from business manager to vice-president, always coming nearer his objective, until at last he stood in the anteroom of the great magnate's sanctum confronting one last obstacle— the money king's secretary.

"It is impossible," said the secretary. "Mr. Dorgan sees few people, and then only by special appointment. I can't understand how you have reached me. Someone will be sorry for this."

He stood up crisply and for the first time looked at the person addressed. The stranger smiled gravely. "I apologize for troubling you."

"Oh, it's no trouble, I assure you," returned the secretary quickly. He found himself liking this man. "Only Mr. Dorgan has made it an invariable rule—"

"A rule," said the stranger quietly, "that doesn't apply to me."

Like one under the influence of a hypnotic spell the secretary did an unprecedented thing. Without knocking at the door or first learning the will of his employer, he ushered the stranger into the presence of the latter. Peter Dorgan was astounded. Never had such conduct occurred before.

"Bentley," he cried sharply, "what does this mean? Who is this man?"

"A gentleman to see you, sir."

"But I have no appointment with any gentleman this morning," frowned Peter Dorgan. "Certainly not with this one."

"But nevertheless, you are pleased to see me," said the stranger softly.

Peter Dorgan's imperious eyes met the level, vital ones of the stranger. At what he seemed to see in them his hard expression altered. Perhaps the cool assurance of the visitor's remark awoke his interest. Be the explanation what it may, he in turn did an unprecedented thing. He waved the secretary from the room and questioned abruptly, "What is your name?"

"Jim James," answered the stranger.

"Jim James," murmured the banker. "I have never—"

Then he gave a little start and his eyes narrowed.

"Ah," said the other quietly, "I see that you have heard of me."

"Could I help doing so when I read the papers?" smiled Peter Dorgan. "You are the man from the West, the dish-washer with the Midas touch."

"Yes," said Jim James, almost dreamily, yet with a suggestion of power that did not escape the magnate. "I have made two fortunes and can make a third and a fourth. Money? It is mine to command. Wealth? I can find it where I please. Power? I intend to have it— through you."

"Through me!"

"Yes, it is the easiest way. Without you I could still be powerful. If I wished I could wrest from you the finacial supremacy of the world. Believe me, it is far better to have me with you than against you."

"You are very confident," said Peter Dorgan.

"With the consciousness of strength," answered Jim James.

The imperious eyes of one, the level, vital eyes of the other, clashed. Peter Dorgan knew men. It was his one outstanding talent.

Besides, for the first time in his hard, self-contained life he felt himself under the sway of another's personality. He who usually dominated was being dominated; he who usually compelled others was himself being compelled. He was conscious of this sudden weakness in himself and yet felt impotent to combat it. As if he sensed the psychological moment, Jim James leaned forward and said: "Gold— it is everywhere. Look! under your hand the desk is solid gold; the walls of the room are gold; and the inkwell is a blood-red ruby!"

Peter Dorgan could scarcely credit the evidence of his eyesight. The dark, heavy-grained desk glittered yellow, the walls reflected the light in red-gold excrescences. And the inkwell? He picked it up. It lay on the palm of his hand like a great drop of blood.

"This is witchcraft," he muttered dazedly.

Jim James said softly: "Think what would happen to the world standard of wealth if gold were to be found as plentiful as sand; if gems and precious jewels became as common as pebbles. The bottom would fall out of the world market, the great financial lords would go down to ruin. What then of the House of Dorgan?" He said softly, "It would be smashed— like that."

There was silence. Peter Dorgan closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again the desk was nothing but a desk of heavy-grained wood, the walls their normal selves, and the inkwell that and nothing else.

"I suppose you know that I could have you declared insane, that—" He wavered to a stop. "What is it you desire?" he asked hoarsely. Jim James told him.

And that is how Jim James made his debut in the financial and social life of the country.

iv

THE ADVENT of Jim James on Wall Street created another sensation.

Everywhere Peter Dorgan introduced him as his partner. He sat on the boards of powerful directorates, not alone as a member, but as a dictator of policies to whom even Peter Dorgan deferred. Men realized that in the person of the ex-hobo and dish-washer, had arisen another great money lord, a titan of business. His wealth grew to be immense, his power practically unbounded. Through it all his quietness, his simplicity of manner never changed. Then suddenly, within two years, he quit active business and began to travel. He travelled like an emperor. Paris knew him, and Berlin. In his personal attire he was, alternately, the form of fashion or the picture of poverty.

If it pleased him to dress in the correct attire of a gentleman today, it also pleased him to go clad as a navvy tomorrow. But in any costume his manner never varied. That strange personality of his had the same effect whether he was clothed in broadcloth or rags.

At Monte Carlo he twelve times broke the bank, playing any and every game, and then purchased the ruined casino for the price of his winnings. For three months he ran the place, taking the gamblers' money six days of the week and distributing it among the losers on the seventh. At the expiration of that time he sold the casino for a song and went on a hunting-trip to Africa....

Jim James was now forty-one, slender, dynamic. Women, of course, he had known. A famous Polish actress had been his mistress for a few months and then shot herself when his fancy wandered. A noted Italian singer had loved him in vain. More than one beautiful woman of high birth and social position had yielded him her caresses. With a ruthlessness which promised nothing, asked for nothing but the pleasure of the moment, he had sated himself with soft arms and warm lips. But never had anything but his passing fancy been engaged. He would, he had sworn to himself, love no woman too much. Something having to do with the love of woman haunted him. It was related to that vague, terrifying dream of his; the dream he had had six years before in a desert city; the dream from which he had awakened conscious of latent forces stirring within himself. And before the dream there had been the book, the strange book over which he had pondered for years.

But he wasn't even sure of that. The book had vanished. And the dream was a recurring nightmare whose salient points ever eluded him. He was sure of only one thing: that he had been reborn in some miraculous fashion; that the timid, weak, spiritless creature who had been Jim James had given place to a dynamic, forceful one; that he who had tramped the roads, had mucked it in ditches, had servilely cringed to others and washed dishes for the right to live, was now a man of destiny; that whatever he willed would be his. Wealth, power, position— they were his for the asking, the finding. He felt it, he knew it. An inner voice spoke to him and he harkened to its counsel. The discovery of the gold mine did not surprize him; the incident of the diamond mine only made him more sure of his rapidly developing powers. At times fear of himself and his uncanny ability assailed him. That was at first. Then he began to enjoy its use. Under the dynamic drive of his will he went up and up. Men were swayed by his personality. He became a financial power. Great men were proud of his nod of recognition. Only within himself was the saving grace of something of the old Jim James, hobo, dishwasher. He remembered that old Jim James as if he had been a well-beloved but not over-respected brother. He recalled the futile dreams and wild longings of that early Jim James for wealth and position. He used to lie on the roadside with his dirty bundle of bedding and watch the sleek motor-cars of the rich glide by. And what was it that old Jim James used to do? He used to build strange contrivances of sticks and stones and mumble queer sentences. Those sentences came from the book. But there was no book. Jim James shook his head. It was useless trying to separate fact from fiction. No wonder people in those days had thought him daft. But those days were past. He was a power now. Only he did not wish to love a woman. Book or no book, danger lay in loving a woman. He swore he would never love a woman. Then at a formal function in Paris he met Margaret, Countess of Walgrave, a great English beauty with the blood, so it was said, of the unhappy Stuarts in her veins, and all his resolutions were dust.

The countess was sitting in one of the chambers opening off the ballroom surrounded by a large circle of her admirers. She had just heard an incident regarding Jim James and his eccentricities of dress and conduct. An aristocrat by birth, a stickler for all the formality and dignity of her class, she gave her opinion of him in no uncertain terms.

"The man has proved himself a boor, an ignoramus, socially impossible."

"I believe," said one of the gentlemen, "that he is expected here tonight."

"Indeed! Then I trust no one presents him to me. I haven't any desire to make the acquaintance of such canaille no matter how wealthy. Why, it is common report that not so long ago the man was nothing but a navvy!"

"Yes, madam," said a quiet voice, "and a dish-washer, too. Surely you heard of the dish-washing?"

Jim James bowed in front of her, his slim figure correctly garbed in evening dress, continental style, his dark, vital eyes fixed on the countess' face.

"You know," he said in soft conversational tones, "I once blacked shoes a whole year in the city of Los Angeles for fifteen dollars a week and tips. Tips," he said dreamily, "nickels and dimes. How servile I could be for those tips!" He smiled reminiscently.

"And there was the time," he said, "when I was scullion in the kitchen of a California millionaire. But pardon me, I am forgetting my manners, talking of myself. Don't you dance, countess? Then may I have the pleasure—"

To no one's surprize more than her own the countess rose and put her small hand on his arm. They danced. The man danced divinely. Afterward they sat in a secluded part of the conservatory and talked. She didn't like Jim James, no; but neither was he the boor she had visualized him as being. Besides that, he fascinated her.

"So you think it unpardonable of me to dress now and then as I please? But consider: have I not the right to remind myself of the depths from which I have come? As for the rest, it is the humbler, weaker part of myself paying homage to the stronger— that is all." He dismissed the subject with a shrug of his shoulders. "But let us talk of something more pleasing, of yourself. Your hair in this light, how wonderful it looks; and your eyes...."

Jim James went home that evening (or rather early morning) definitely in love, and with a gnawing pain in some secret place of his body. For the first time since his metamorphosis he felt despondent. "I will never see that woman again," he vowed. The pain bothered him, and in his sleep he dreamed, a nightmarish dream. Or had it been a dream? He drank his late morning coffee. After that he felt better. What nonsense was this about love being dangerous? When and where had he picked up such a superstition? How beautiful the countess was! Danger or no danger, he loved her. The thought of her was like a heady drink. Oh damn that dream! His nerves aaually felt jumpy. But with an effort of his powerful will he calmed them.

That afternoon he called at the countess' Parisian home only to be informed she had hastily left Paris on the morning train, en route to England. For the countess herself had passed a disturbed night. The thought of Jim James haunted her. She was afraid of the man and the look of desire she had seen in his eyes. At the same time she felt herself swayed by his personality. Whatever this man wanted he would take. If he wanted her he would take her. He was ruthlessly strong and without mercy.

All this she sensed intuitively. But she sensed more than this. He would take, not by force or violence, but with her consent. That was the terrifying reality. Better not to see him again, to flee to safety. So she passed over to England on the afternon boat, little dreaming that the great white airplane which flew over the steamer in midchannel was the private plane of Jim James bearing him to London.

The countess hadn't been in her town house twenty-four hours, when a slim man in English tweeds rang the entrance bell.

"My lady is in the morning room," said the butler. "If you will please wait until I announce you—"

But the visitor brushed past him with a pleasant smile.

"The morning room, yes. Right ahead? Do not bother, I can find it myself."

The countess looked up, startled, to see Jim James walk into the room. His coming coincided with certain thoughts of hers, for she had been thinking of him. He wasted no time on explanations. With both arms about her, his lips against her cheek (she was somewhat taller than himself), he said chidingly: "Margaret, Margaret, what is the use of running away from me?"

There was no use; she had probably always subconsciously been aware of the fact; yet she struggled in his imprisoning arms.

"You mustn't! It's impossible!"

He held her closer. "Say you love me."

"No— yes— oh, I don't know; I'm not sure..."

Six weeks later they were married.

It was a notable wedding. The groom's gift to the bride was a necklace of emeralds, each stone unrivalled for size and flawless splendor. The event revived all the dormant stories concerning Jim James. The tale of his miraculous rise to wealth and power was retold on two continents and in a thousand newspapers. Conservative estimates placed his fortune at well over a billion dollars. The richest man in the world, he was called, and Jim James alone knew for certain how true were the words.

v

AND NOW Jim James was at the very pinnacle of his stupendous career. Wealth, power, love, all were his. From the woman he loved he compelled love by the sheer force of his dynamic personality. But this compulsion of affection troubled the countess. She was not unhappy. She would have maintained— and with truth— that she loved her husband. But there were times when certain acts of his appalled her. Jim James could be uncouth in his manner. Sometimes his speech was far from grammatical. In his presence those things became negligible; but when she sat by herself she recalled them and they troubled her. As for Jim James, in spite of the fullness of his love, he was not happy.

Since the first night of meeting the countess he had been conscious of a dull gnawing pain in some secret part of his body. With the pain came a tendency to dream. Night after night he dreamed, and from those dreams wakened with the fearful impression that some unimaginable horror threatened the woman he loved. The great doctors he consulted could give him no relief. In a certain part of his body was found a curiously shaped scar. How had it gotten there? Jim James could not remember. He strove to recollect when he had incurred it. In vain. As for the dreams, he only knew that they were hideous, that they related to his past. Something sinister came when he slept and it whispered, whispered... what did it whisper? The name of his wife. Beads of perspiration stood out on his brow. It was madness! What in the name of God could threaten his wife? He stared at his face in the glass. Was he, the great Jim James, going mad? With an effort he schooled himself to be his quiet, assured self. But more frequently, when alone, the mask slipped and he gave himself over to fits of terrible depression.

At first Jim James did not understand the exact nature of what he feared. In an unostentatious way he surrounded his wife with a thousand safeguards. Trustworthy attendants went with her everywhere. Keepers with loaded rifles kept the walks and the woods of his country mansion under constant surveillance. His own secret-service men watched over his party when they travelled. Such precautions did not irk the countess nor surprize her. After all, Jim James, in his way, was a king, a powerful ruler, and she was his consort. Great personages always had armed retainers, and she was pleased with the sense of power and importance they conveyed. So things went for the first year of married life. Then happened that which helped to bring all the vague dreams and terrors of. months to a weird climax.

Toward the last of that year Jim James had grown afraid of things that glowed. He had to steel himself against the sight of flame in open fireplaces, of illumination in electric bulbs. They reminded him of a far-off spot he had once seen. Something terrible, menacing, lurked behind a red spot. Almost, at times, he could see it.

He went to bed that night in complete darkness. Even in his sleep he was conscious of the dull gnawing pain in his body. He dreamed— or was it a dream? He wakened from it as usual, sitting up in bed, his forehead beaded with perspiration. Through the window at the end of the room a yellow fragment of moon shone. Thank God, he had only been dreaming! What was it in the nightmare that had tendered him a book? But there was no book. He switched on the nightlight at the head of his bed and went to rise. Even as he did so he saw the thing which lay on the coverlet. It was a strange volume, yellow as if with time, and opened at a certain page. Like one petrified in a half-rising position he glared at the book, and as he glared a few sentences of the finely printed and hieroglyphic-like characters leapt out at him like a blow.

For he whose body has been pierced in a secret spot by the horns of Om Nam, lo, from henceforth, is he an altar, a gateway from the past to the future, for the coming of the World Ancient.

(A half-witted tramp crouching by the roadside reading a book and making strange contrivances out of sticks and stones. A dish-washer brooding over a steaming sink and washing greasy dishes. A room in a cheap lodging-house and a man raising up a strange altar. Velvet blackness against a white, terrified face, and a shaking voice intoning, "O Liam Maroo....")

It all came back. The vague, terrifying dream was a dream no longer. And in return you shall pay ... the woman you love.

"Margaret! Margaret!" screamed the man.

What fiend had ever driven him to such a bargain? For wealth, for power, whispered a voice. But weighed in the scales against the life and safety of the woman he loved, how infinitesimal were wealth and power! Before a hair of her head were injured he would die!

Die... yes, that was the solution. Even the World Ancient would be powerless to make a dead man fulfil the dread pact. He was the altar, he was the gateway, and without him—

The gleaming steel paper-knife lay on the writing-desk. He picked it up. Its sinuous length shone. With steady hand he placed the pointed metal against his heart. One steady push, one powerful thrust.... But the blade curled; it was so much paper. With a curse he flung the useless weapon to the floor and sought for the revolver in a drawer of the dresser. That would do the trick. Thank God, Margaret slept soundly. Two heavy doors were dosed between him and her. The revolver was but a toy automatic in size but no less deadly at short range. Its discharge made little noise. The sound would not alarm her. He thought of the slim whiteness of her neck and the proud pale beauty of her face. The barrel of the revolver lay cold against the spot between his eyes. One pressure of the finger....

Perhaps twenty seconds elapsed after he had pulled the trigger before he became conscious of the fact that the weapon held pressed against his forehead was an impotent thing.

Again he pulled the trigger— again— a half-dozen times. Was that laughter he heard?

Suddenly he flung the revolver from him with a stifled cry. He understood. Death was denied him. Between him and self-destruction lay a power that forbade. He was lost, lost! Margaret was doomed! For a moment he sank on the bed and surrendered to utter despair. Then summoning every last atom of his formidable strength he stood up to confront that which was coming.

For the room had darkened. Stygian gloom enwrapped him round. Even the moon had faded from the window, and the window gave no softer blackness against the prevailing gloom. Far off in the infinity of night grew a red spot, lurid, uncanny to behold. In the center of the red spot appeared a face, a terrible face, an unhuman face.

"I am here," said the face.

Jim James was on his knees, his hands outstretched.

"O Liam Maroo!" he cried, "mercy, mercy!"

The indescribable face regarded him without passion.

"The bargain was made, the pact sealed; I have come to demand of you the price."

"No, no!" cried Jim James wildly.

"The price," said the face inexorably.

Jim James threw himself on the floor.

"Sacrifice me," he cried. "My life, my body, they are yours!"

"Nay," said the face, "I did not bargain for your life. Wealth, power, the ability to sway men, create riches, all these have you had, and have found them good. In return you promised to sacrifice the heart, the brain..."

"But I did not understand," cried Jim James.

"Understand!" said the face, "When have you mortals ever understood? Gladly you paid what you had still to possess. Speak! did you not deliberately, of your own accord, weigh power and wealth against love—and choose wealth?"

"Yes, yes! But I did not know what love could be. I had never loved. In my arrogance I thought never to love. Now I know."

The words echoed through the room. Did a shade of pity flash across that unhuman face? The lurid light grew greater. Jim James stared fearfully as massive limbs wavered in a mist of fire, as great curling claws reached out. He was conscious of only one thing, that somehow, someway, he must save the woman he loved. He was shouting, screaming, "O Liam Maroo, is there no other way to pay the price?"

And the face looking down on him said, "There is a way."

Then he rose to his feet, courage pouring into his shivering body, and asked, "What is the way?"

"That your wealth and honors be stripped from you."

"They are yours."

"Nor is that all. That you sink into the depths from which you rose."

"You mean—"

"That you shall become again what you were when you sought my help. Men shall despise you. Again you shall know the bitter pangs of squalor and poverty. All your wealth and power, your palaces and servants, your mighty friends and sycophants, shall pass from you like a dream, be as if they had never been."

"And my wife?" murmured Jim James.

"Shall cease to love you. The thing in you that holds her now, that makes her real in your existence, will be gone for ever. Nothing will be left to you of the golden present— nothing but a few bitter memories. Think!" cried the face, "think well before you choose. Sacrifice the woman and all that you now have shall still be yours."

"All except the woman."

"But there are other women. Women as fair, women more complaisant."

"But not the woman."

"No, not the woman. But again I ask you to consider carefully. Sacrifice yourself, all that you are, and were the woman to meet you she would despise you. She will have another lover. While you are swining it in the ditch, she will be living for another, lost to you. Think! What is your choice?"

The face of Jim James looked agonizedly into the inscrutable, unhuman one of Liam Maroo. What! never to know the soft rapture of Margaret's arms again, never to feel the warm pressure of her lips? What! to live in poverty and want while she became the beloved of another? Never! All the burning jealousy of the man woke to life, struggled like serpents in his bosom, scored his face with debasing lines. Better to see her dead—dead!

"Ah," breathed Liam Maroo.

Jim James started as if from an evil spell. He saw the slim whiteness of his wife's neck and the pale proud beauty of her face. Then he straightened up against an oppressive weight and cried hoarsely but in a strong voice:

"All that I have of wealth and power, take them—only spare the woman!"

vi

IN THE city of Nogales, in the Mexican portion of that town which lies on the very borderline between Arizona and Sonora, there stands the American Saloon. Tourists from all over the United States visit this saloon. Within a few feet of the dry territory of Uncle Sam they can put a foot on a gleaming brass rail brought all the way from Forty-fifth Street, New York, and view themselves in a spotless expanse of mirror behind the bar. They can order small glasses of Scotch or big schooners of beer and listen to Big Pat Durfee bewail the carefree days when Manhattan was still wet and flowing over with licensed cheer. Also they can sometimes observe the person who is responsible for the gleaming polish on the brass rail and the spotlessness of the vast expanse of mirror. This is a slender, dried-up wisp of a man weighing no more than a hundred and twenty pounds. His chin habitually shows a stubble of dirty-black beard and he is clad in frayed, shapeless trousers and a khaki shirt far from clean.

This individual goes his way, silently, furtively. Few notice him. If anyone does and makes inquiries, Big Pat answers, "Just an old bum that blew in. A bit cracked in the head, I guess. We call him Crazy Jim."

____________________

9: The Tree-Man

Henry S. Whitehead

1882-1932

Weird Tales Feb-March 1931

An American Episcopal priest, and author of many occult stories, Whitehead was Archdeacon of the Episcopal Church in the American Virgin Islands for a decade from 1921 (just 3 years after the former Danish colony was purchased by the USA) until 1929. He lived in Frederiksted on Santa Cruz. At that time the town's streets retained their Danish names and Danish was still spoken. The colony had a slave-based plantation economy until an uprising in 1848 resulted in slave emancipation.

MY FIRST sight of Silvio Fabricius, the tree-man, was within a week of my first arrival on the island of Santa Cruz not long after the United States had purchased the Danish West Indies and officially renamed its new colony "The Virgin Islands of the United States."

On that occasion, which is a number of years ago, the ship on which I was travelling down to the islands came into Frederiksted Harbor, on the west coast of the island, just at dusk. I saw a half-moon of white sand-beach with the charming little town in its middle, and I was entranced. I had the feeling of "coming home," which was strange enough because it was my first sight of the island whereon my residence has been ever since except when I come north summers or spend the winter on St. Thomas, the chief island of the group where the capital town and the U. S. Naval Station are located.

In the midst of the bustle aboard ship incident to anchoring in the roadstead there came over the side an upstanding gentleman in a glistening white drill uniform with shining brass buttons. This gentleman came up to me, bowed in a manner to commend himself to kings, and said:

"I am honored to welcome you to Santa Cruz, Mr. Canevin. I am Director Despard of the police department. It is my privilege to place the police boat at your disposal when you are ready to go ashore. May I be of any assistance in seeing that your luggage is cared for?"

This was a welcome indeed, and decidedly unexpected. Beyond the fact that I was to live here for perhaps a year, had engaged a house by long-distance communication, and had notified the persons with whom I transacted this necessary business of the date of my arrival, no one, I supposed, had ever heard of me, Gerald Canevin, a young fellow quite obscure and without in those days even that evanescent recognition which comes— and goes— in the case of a writer of fiction and informative articles. I was, as you can imagine, surprized. To put it mildly, I was simply knocked off my feet by such a reception on the part of this magnificent official whose courtesy was easily matched by his aristocratic appearance.

I thanked Director Despard in carefully chosen phrases, and before many minutes, and wholly because of his solicitous kindness, my four trunks were overside, my various articles of hand-luggage were bestowed in the police-boat waiting at the ladder gangway, and I was seated beside him in the boat's stern-sheets, he holding the tiller ropes, while four coal-black convicts rowed us ashore with tremendous pulls at their long sweeps.

Through the dusk I observed that the landing-wharf was crowded with Black people. Behind these there stood half-a-dozen knots of White people, conversing together. Along the background of waterfront buildings stood, parked, some thirty or forty cars. I remarked to the Police Director:

"Is it usual for so many persons to be on the docks at the landing of a vessel, Mr. Director?"

"It is not usual," replied the dignified gentleman beside me. "It is for you, Mr. Canevin."

"For me?" said I, and again, stultified, feeling that I was like a person playing without notice a strange part in some gorgeous comedy, "What— my dear sir—certainly not for me. Why—"

"Yes, it is for you, Mr. Canevin," Mr. Despard's beautifully modulated voice reassured me. "You are Captain McMillin's great-nephew, you know, my dear sir."

So that was it: my great-uncle, who had "been a planter" on Santa Cruz, and who had been, at that moment, before Mr. Despard had enlightened me, about the last person in my mind.

Arriving smartly at the concrete jetty, Mr. Despard and I landed and in what was left of the daylight I perceived that confronting us and massed together in orderly fashion enough, were perhaps a thousand Negroes. Back of these stood the various groups of White People which I have mentioned, and which were made up, as I was to learn, of practically all the island's landed gentry.

We started along the jetty toward the thronged Negroes and I perceived that their interest— the African is usually quite naive in such affairs—was entirely genuine. I began to get some glimmerings of the quality of the community which I was now seeing for the first time....

After being received by the people who had come to meet me, I was installed in a small private hotel pending the preparations to my own hired residence. I found every house on Santa Cruz open to me. Hospitalities were showered upon me to the point of embarrassment.

Kindnesses galore, considerate bits of information, help of every imaginable kind, ushered my quasi-permanent residence as a transplanted Santa Crucian to a delightfully successful culmination as a member of the inner circle of Santa Crucian society.

I had come because our government had entrusted me with a minor mission— lying wholly outside the scope of this narrative— and I had been advised that its successful prosecution should occupy, normally, about a year. Because of the doors opening before me, the silent cooperation here, the expert, whole-hearted guidance there, this mission of mine was fulfilled at the end of precisely nine weeks from the date of my arrival on Santa Cruz.

I learned, almost at once, many details about my great-uncle, Captain the Honorable William McMillin, which information was almost entirely new to me.

IT WAS, naturally, not long after I had arrived on the island that I went to visit his estate, Great Fountain. I went with Hans Grumbach, in his Ford car, a bumpy journey occupying more than three hours, because this took us not only up hills and through ravines and along precipitous trails, but because the roads were incredibly roundabout.

All the way Hans Grumbach talked about this section of the island, now almost never visited. Hans, in his younger days, had lived up here as the last of the long line of resident managers which the old estate had known since the day, in 1879, when my relatives had sold their land. It was now, after several changes of hands, the property of the largest of the local sugar-growing corporations, known as the Copenhagen Concern, and, because of its inaccessibility, cultivation there had finally been abandoned. Then Hans Grumbach had come to live in Frederiksted; where, having married one of Mrs. Heidenklang's daughters, and so allied himself to a most respectable creole family, he had settled down to the keeping of a store in the town.

But, it appeared, Hans had wanted, for ten years, to go back. This trip toward the old place stimulated him, and he sang its praises, a process which I spare my readers. It was, according to this panegyrist, incredibly fertile at Great Fountain. One needed, according to Hans, merely "to stick some seed in the ground, anywhere," and it would "grow and flourish there" like the shamrock on old Ireland's sod!

We arrived at last. I had never, of course, seen the estate land before, but it required no sympathetic assurances on the part of my voluble guide to realize its amazing fertility.

We walked over the nearer and more accessible portions of the old estate, and, as it lay in a great cup of table-land here in the north-central hills of the island, we also looked out over its domain from various angles. The ancient estate was in a sad state of rack and ruin. The village was about half tumbled down, and even the cabins that remained were out of repair. The characteristic tropical inroads upon land "turned out," that is, out of .organized cultivation, were apparent everywhere. Everything except the sporadic cultivation of occasional vegetable patches and one good-sized grove of banana trees was overrun and choked with rank weeds. The ancient farm buildings, although soundly constructed of stone and brick, were likewise terribly dilapidated, and there was only the word of Hans and of the caretaker to account for the site of my great-uncle's Great House, the very foundations of which had disappeared.

I had on this visit to Great Fountain, my first experience with what has come to be known as the "grapevine" method of communication among Africans. I had been perhaps four days on the island, and it is reasonably certain that few of its people had ever so much as heard of me before; certainly none of these obscure village Negroes cut off here in the hills from others the nearest of whom lived miles away. Yet we had hardly come within a stone's long throw of the remains of the village before we were surrounded by the total population, of perhaps twenty adults, and at least as many children of all ages.

As one would expect, these Blacks were of very crude appearance; not only "country Negroes" but that in exaggerated form. Negroes in the West Indies have some tendency to live on the land where they originated, and, as it happened, most of these Negroes had been born up here and several generations of their forebears before them.

All the adult Negroes knew Grumbach from his long residence here up to ten years or so previously as manager, but to him they paid scant attention. They crowded about me in much the same way as the Negroes at the wharf at the time of my arrival, only, somehow, in a cruder, more outspoken fashion. "English" though it is, I was at that period of my residence quite unable to understand their speech. The Black people talked to me and at me in the friendliest fashion imaginable, and Hans Grumbach, when it seemed desirable for me to speak, prompted me.

I had come prepared with a double handful of small-change. This I handed over to the oldest man of the villagers, requesting him to distribute it among them all, and I was gravely blessed for this largesse. Translating the comments of the group on this present which my instinct as a member of the old Captain's family prompted me to make to the descendants of his estate-people, later, on the way home, Grumbach told me that they had compared me to my collateral ancestor!

A fter lunch, Grumbach took me to see the "fountain" from which the old estate had originally derived its title.

We walked up a ravine toward it, along a sandy stream-bed which, this being an exceptionally dry season near the end of a three-years' drought, was now a mere trickle.

The "fountain" itself was a delicate, natural waterfall, coming thinly over the edge of a high rock, source of the one unfailing stream on an, otherwise very "dry" island.

It was when we were coming back, by a slightly different route, for Grumbach wanted me to see everything possible, that I saw the tree-man. He stood, a youngish, coal-black Negro, of about twenty-five years, scantily dressed in a tattered shirt and a sketchy pair of trousers, about ten yards away from the field-path we were following and from which a very clear view of a portion of the estate was obtained, and beside him, towering over him, was a magnificent coconut palm. The Negro stood, motionless. I thought, in fact, that he had gone asleep standing there, both arms clasped about the tree's smooth, elegant trunk, the right side of his face pressed against it.

He was not, however, asleep, because I looked back at him and his eyes— rather intelligent eyes, they seemed to me— were wide open, although to my surprize he had not changed his position, nor even the direction of his gaze, to glance at us; and, I was quite sure, he had not been in that village group when we had stood among them just before our lunch.

Grumbach did not speak to him, as he had done to every other Negro we had seen. Indeed, as I turned to him for some possible comment, I saw that his face looked a trifle— well, apprehensive; and, I thought, he very slightly quickened his pace. I stepped nearer to him as we walked past the man and the tree, and then I noticed that his lips were moving, and when I came closer I observed that he was muttering to himself. I said, very quietly, almost in his ear:

"What's the matter with that fellow, Grumbach?"

Grumbach glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and my impression that he was disturbed grew upon me.

"He's listening!" was all that I got out of Grumbach. I supposed, of course, that there was something odd about the fellow; perhaps he was slightly demented and might be an annoyance; and I supposed that Grumbach meant to convey that the young fellow was "listening" for our possible comment upon him and his strange behavior. Later, after we had said good-bye to the courteous caretaker and he had seen us off down the first hillside road with its many ruts, I brought up the subject of the young Black fellow at the tree.

"You mentioned that he was listening," said I, "so I dropped the matter; but, why does he do that, Mr. Grumbach — I mean, why does he stand against the tree in that unusual manner? Why, he didn't even get his eyes to look at us, and that surprized me. They don't have visitors up here every day, I understand!"

"He was listening— to his tree!" said Hans Grumbach, as though reluctantly. "That was what I meant, Mr. Canevin." And he drew my attention to an extraordinarily picturesque ruined windmill, the kind once used for the grinding of cane in the old days of "muscovado" sugar, which dominated a cone-like hillside off to our left as we bumped over the road.

Between getting settled in my house, attending to the preliminary work of my mission, and fulfilling the almost numberless social engagements which crowded upon me, I can not say that I forgot about the tree-man, but, certainly, he and his queer behavior were anything but prominent in my mind. It was not until months later, when I had gained the confidence of Hans Grumbach, that that individual gave me any further enlightenment.

Then I learned that, along with his nostalgia for the life of an agriculturist, there was mixed in with his feelings about the Great Fountain estate a kind of inconsistent thankfulness that he was no longer stationed there! This intrigued me. I saw something of Grumbach and got rather well acquainted with him as the months passed that first year of my residence. Bit by bit, in his reluctant manner of speech, it came out.

To put the whole picture of his mind on this subject together, I got the idea that Grumbach, while always suffering from a faint nostalgia for his deep-country residence and the joys of tilling the soil, felt, somehow, safe, here in the town. If he chafed, mildly, at the restrictions of town life and his storekeeping, there was yet the certainty that "something"—a vague matter at first, as it came out—was not always hanging over him; something connected with a lingering fear.

The Negroes, up there at Great Fountain, were not, it seemed, quite like the rest of the island's Black population. No — the Great Fountain village was, somehow, at least in Hans Grumbach's dark hints, different; sui generis, "a peculiar people" as the biblical phrase runs.

They were, to begin with, almost purely of Dahomeyan stock. These Dahomeyans had drifted "down the islands" — in the general southerly direction; that is, from Haiti, beginning soon after the revolt from France in the early Nineteenth Century. They were tall, very dark-skinned, extremely clannish Blacks.

And, just as the Koromantyn slaves in British Jamaica had brought to the West Indies their Obay-i ("obeah") or herb magic, so, it seemed, had the Dahomeyans carried with them their vodu, which, properly defined, means the practises accompanying the vague Guinea worship of "The Snake."

This worship, grown into a vast localized cultus in unimpeded Haiti and in the Guiana hinterlands down in South America, is a vastly intriguing matter, very imperfectly understood even to this present day. But, its accompaniments; all the charms, ouangas, philtres, potions, talismans, amulets, "doctoring" and whatnot, have spread all through the islands and are thoroughly established in widely variant forms. Haiti is its West Indian home, of course. But down in French Martinique its extent and intensity is a fair rival to the Haitian supremacy. It is rife on Dominica, Guadeloupe, even on British Montserrat. Indeed, one might name every island from Cuba to Trinidad, and, allowing for the variations, the local preferences, and all such matters, one might say, and truly, that the vodu, generically described by the Blacks themselves as "obi," is very thoroughly established.

According to Grumbach, the handful of villagers at Great Fountain was very deeply involved in this sort of thing. Left to themselves as they had been for many years, forming a little, self-sustaining community of nearly pure-blooded Dahomeyans, they had, it seemed, reverted very nearly to their African type, and this, Grumbach alleged, was the fact despite their easy kindliness, their use of "English," and the various other outward appearances which caused them to seem not greatly different from other "country Negroes" on this island of Santa Cruz.

On the subject of Silvio Fabricius— for that was the tree-man's rather fanciful name— my information was derived directly from Grumbach. He had known the young Negro since he had been a pick'ny on the estate. He knew, so far as his limited understanding of Black People's magic extended, all about Silvio. He had been manager at the time the boy had begun his attentions to the great coconut palm. He had heard the to him "stupidness" which had attended the setting apart of this neophyte; in other words, there had been three days— and nights; particularly the nights— when not a single plantation-hand would do a piece of work for any consideration. It was, as he bitterly remembered it all, "the crop season." His employers, not sensing, businessmen as they were, any underlying reason for no work done when they needed the cane from Great Fountain for their grinding-mill, had been hard on him. They had, in Santa Crucian phraseology, "pressed him" for cane deliveries. And there, in his village, state-manager, those Blacks had danced and pounded drums, and burned flares, and weaved back and forth in their interminable ceremonies—"stupidness"—for three strategic days and nights, over something which had Silvio Fabricius, then a rising pick'ny of twelve or thirteen, as its apparent center and underlying cause. It was no wonder that Hans Grumbach raved and probably swore mightily and threatened thee estate-hands.

But— the expression of his anger and annoyance, the threats and cajolings, the offers of bonuses, "snaps" of rum, and pay for piece-work; all these efforts to get his ripe cane cut and delivered had come to nothing. The carts stood empty. The mules gravely ate the long guinea-grass. The cane-tops waved in the soft breath of the northeast trade wind, while.those three days stretched themselves out to their conclusion.

This conclusion took place in the daytime, about ten o'clock in the morning of the fourth day, and after that, which was a very brief and apparently meaningless matter indeed, the hands sheepishly resumed the driving of their mule-carts and the plying of their canebills, and the Fountain cane travelled slowly down the rutted hill road toward the factory below.

On that morning, before resuming their work, the whole village had accompanied young Silvio Fabricius as he walked ahead of them up toward the source of the perennial stream, stepped out into the field, and clasped his arms about a young, but tall and promising coconut palm which stood there as though accidentally, in solitary towering grandeur. There the villagers had left the little black boy when they turned away and filed slowly and silently back to the village and to their interrupted labor.

There, beside his tree, Grumbach said, Silvio Fabricius had stood ever since, only occasionally coming in to the village and then at any hour of the day or night, apparently "reporting" something to that same oldest inhabitant, a gnarled, ancient grandfather with pure white wool; after which brief visit he would at once, and with an unshaken gravity, return to his tree. Food, said Grumbach, was always carried out to him from die village.

He toiled not, neither spun! There, day and night, under the blazing sun, through showers and drenching downpours, erect, apparently unsleeping—unless he slept standing up against his tree as Grumbach suspected— stood Silvio Fabricius; and there he had stood, except when he climbed the tree to trim out the "cloth" or chase out a rat intent on nesting up there, or to gather the coconuts, for eleven years.

The coconuts, it seemed, were his perquisite. They were, Grumbach said, absolutely tabu to anybody else!

Grumbach's attitude toward Silvio Fabricius was, it came out, one of fear! That his "fear" of this young Negro went deep I sensed. I was, later, to see my suspicion justified!

FOR a long time I had no occasion to revisit Great Fountain. But, six years later, while in the States during the summer, I made the acquaintance of a man named Carrington who wanted to know "all about the Virgin Islands" with a view to investing some money there in a proposal to grow pineapples on a somewhat large scale. I talked with Mr. Carrington at some length, and in the course of our discussions it occurred to me that Great Fountain estate would be virtually ideal for his purpose. Here was a very considerable acreage; the land, as I well knew, was very rich; the Copenhagen Company would probably rent it out for a period of years for a very reasonable price, since it was bringing them in nothing.

I spread before Carrington these advantages, and he travelled down on the ship with me that autumn to make an investigation in person.

Carrington, a trained fruit-grower, spent a day with me on the estate, and thereafter with characteristic American energy started in to put his plan into practise. A lease was easily secured on terms mutually advantageous, the village was repaired and the fallen stone cabins rebuilt, and within a few weeks cultivating-machinery of the most modern type began to arrive on the Frederiksted wharf.

After a considerable consultation with Hans Grumbach, to whose lamentations over the restrictions of town life I had been listening for years, I recommended him to Mr. Carrington as manager of the laborers, and Hans, after going over the matter with his good wife and coming to an amicable arrangement, went back to Great Fountain, where a manager's house had been thrown up for him on the foundation of one of the ruined buildings. At Carrington's direction, Grumbach set the estate laborers at work on the job of repairing the roads, and, as the village cabins went up one after another, other laborers, enticed by the prospect of good wages, filled them up and ancient Great Fountain became once more a busy scene of simple industry.

During these preparatory works on the estate I was up there several times, because I was naturally interested in Joseph Carrington's venture being a success. I had, indeed, put several thousand dollars into it myself, not solely because it looked like a good investment, but in part for Sentimental reasons connected with my great-uncle. On these occasions, being by then thoroughly familiar with the odd native speech, I made it a point to visit the village and talk at length with the "people." They were courteous to me, markedly so; "deferential" would be a better word to describe their attitude. This, of course, was wholly due to the family connection. Only a very few of them, and those the oldest, had any personal recollection of Captain McMillin, but his memory, aided by the folksong to which I have alluded, was decidedly green among them.

In the course of my studies of Negro matters, especially African manners and customs, which had included a wide course of reading, for I wished to master that abstruse subject, I had run across the peculiar affair of a "tree-man." I understood, therefore, the status of Silvio Fabricius in that queer little Black community; why he had been "devoted" to the tree; what were the underlying reasons for that strange sacrifice.

It was, on the pan of that handful of nearly pure-blooded Dahomeyan villagers there at my great-uncle's old place, an attempt, a recrudescence perhaps—a revival, certainly— of a custom probably as old as African civilization. For— the African has a civilization. He is at a vast disadvantage when among Caucasians, competing as he necessarily must with Caucasian "cultures." His native problems are utterly different, utterly diverse, from the White Man's. The African's whole history among us Caucasians is a history of more or less successful adaptation. Place an average American businessman in the heart of "uncivilized" Africa, in the Liberian hinterland, for example, and what will he do—how survive? The answer is simple. He will perish miserably, confronted with the black jungle night, the venomous insect-life, the attacks of wild beasts, the basic problem of how to feed and warm himself; for even this last is an African problem. African nights chill to the very bone. I know. I have been on safari in Uganda, in British East Africa, and in Somaliland, and I speak from experience.

Africans, supposedly static in cultural matters, have solved all these problems. And, very prominent among these, especially as it concerns the agricultural nations — for there are, perhaps, as many Black nations, kindreds, peoples, tongues, as there are Caucasian— is, of course, the question of weather.

Hence, the "tree-man."

Introduced with the ceremonies which were ancient when Hammurabi sat on his throne in Babylon, a young boy is dedicated to a forest tree. Thereafter he spends his life beside that tree, cares for it, loves it, "listens" to it, becomes "the- brother-of-the-tree" in time. He is "set apart." To the tree he devotes his entire life, dying at last beside it, in its shade. And— this is African "culture" if you will; a culture of which we Caucasians get, perhaps, the faint reactions in the, to us, meaningless jumble of Negro superstition which we sense all about us; the "stupidness" of the West Indies; faint, incomprehensible reflections of a system which, in itself, is practical, dogmatic, and utilitarian.

These Negroes at Great Fountain were, primarily, agriculturists. They had the use of the soil bred deeply in their blood and bones. That, indeed, is why the canny French brought their Hispaniola slaves from Dahomey. Left to themselves at the old estate in the north central hills of Santa Cruz, the little community rapidly reverted to their African ways. They tilled the soil; sporadically, it is true; yet, they tilled it. They needed a weather prognosticator. There are sudden storms in summer throughout the vast sweep of the West India Islands, devastating storms, hurricanes indeed; long, wasting periods of drought. They needed a .tree-man up there. They set apart Silvio Fabricius.

That fact made the young fellow what a White man would call "sacred." Not for nothing had they danced and performed their "stupid" rites those three days and nights to the detriment of Hans Grumbach's sugar-cane. No. Silvio Fabricius from the moment he had clasped his arms about the growing coconut palm was as much a person "set apart," dedicated, as any White man's pundit, priest, or yogi. Hence the various tabus which, like the case of the green coconuts, had puzzled Hans Grumbach. He must never take his attention away from the tree. There, beside it, he was consecrated to live and to die. When he departed from his "brother the tree," it was only for the purpose of reporting something which the tribe should know; something, that is, which his brother the tree had told him! There would be drenching rain the second day following. A plague of small green flies would, the third day later, come to annoy the animals. The banana grove must be propped forthwith; otherwise, a high wind, two days hence, would nullify all the work of its planting and care.

Such were the messages that Silvio Fabricius, austere, introspective, unnoticing, his mind fully preoccupied with his brotherhood to the tree, brought to his tribe; proceeded, the message delivered, austerely back to his station beside the magnificent palm.

All this, because of my status as the great-nephew of an old Bukra (White Lord) whom he remembered with love and reverence, and because he discovered that I knew about tree-men and many other matters usually sealed books to Bukras, the old fellow who was the village patriarch, who, by right of his seniority, received and passed on from Silvio the messages from Silvio's brother the tree, amply substantiated. There was nothing secretive about him, once he knew my interest in these things. Such procedure as the securing of a tree-man for his tribe seemed to the old man entirely logical; there was no necessary secret about it, certainly not from sympathetic me, the "yoong marster" of Great Fountain Estate.

And Hans Grumbach, once he had finished with his road-work, not being aware of all this, but sensing something out of the ordinary and hence to be feared about Silvio Fabricius and his palm tree, decided to end the stupidness out there. Grumbach decided to cut down the tree.

If I had had any inkling of this intention I could have saved Grumbach. It would have been a comparatively simple matter for me to have said enough to Carrington to have him forbid it; or, indeed, as a partner in the control of the estate, to forbid it myself. But I knew nothing about it, and have in my statement of his intention to destroy the tree supplied my own conception of his motives.

Grumbach, although virtually Caucasian in appearance, was of mixed blood, and quite without the Caucasian background of superior quality which makes the educated West Indian mestizo the splendid citizen he is. Grumbach was quite devoid of the Caucasian aristocrat's tolerance for the preoccupations of the Blacks. To him such affairs were "stupidness," merely. Like others of his kind he held the Black People in a kind of contempt; was wholly, I imagine, without sympathy for them, though a worthy fellow enough in his limited way. And, perhaps, he had not enough Negro in him to understand instinctively even so much as what Silvio Fabricius, the tree-man, stood for in his community.

He chose, cannily, one of the periods when Fabricius was away from his tree, reporting to the village. It was early in the afternoon, and Grumbach, having finished his road-work several days before, was directing a group of laborers who were grubbing ancient "bush"— heavy undergrowth, brush, rank weeds, small trees— from along the winding road which led from the village to the fountain or waterfall, now feeding, for the drought was no longer plaguing the island, a tumbling stream which Carrington intended to dam, lower down, for a central reserve reservoir.

The majority, if not all, of these laborers under his eye at the moment were new to the village, members of the increasing group which were coming into the restored stone cabins as fast as these became habitable. They were cutting out the brush with machetes, canebills, and knives, and, for the small trees, a couple of axes were being used from time to time. This work was being done quite near the tree, and from his position in the roadway overlooking his gang, Grumbach must have seen the tree-man leave his station and start toward the village with one of his "messages."

This opportunity— he had, unquestionably, made up his mind about it all—was too good to be lost. As I learned from the two men whom he detached from his grubbing-gang and took with him, Silvio Fabricius was hardly out of sight over the sweep of the lower portion of the great field near the upper edge of which the coconut palm towered, when Grumbach called the two axmen to follow him, and, with a word to the rest of the gang, led the way across the field's edge to the tree.

About this time Carrington and I were returning from one of our inspections of the fountain. We had been up there several times of late, since the scheme for the dam had been working in our minds. We were returning toward the village and the construction work progressing there along that same pathway through the big field from which, years before, I had had my first sight of the tree-man.

As we came in sight of the tree, toward which I invariably looked when I was near it, I saw, of course, that Fabricius was not there. Grumbach and his two laborers stood under it, Grumbach talking to the men. One of them as we approached— we were still perhaps a hundred yards distant— shook his head emphatically. He told me later that Grumbach had led them straight to the tree and commanded them to chop it down directly, one working on either side, opposite each other, the ax-strokes to alternate with each other. Detailed instructions such as these are invariably given to such laborers in the West Indies.

Both men had demurred. They were not of the village, it is true, not, certainly, Dahomeyans. But— they had some idea, even after generations away from "Guinea," that here was something strange: something over which the suitable course was to "go stupid." Both men, therefore, "went stupid" forthwith.

Grumbach, as was usual with him, poor fellow, was vastly annoyed by this process. I could hear him barge out at the laborers, see him gesticulate. Then from the nearest, he seized the ax and attacked the tree himself. He struck a savage blow at it; then, gathering himself together, for he was stout like the middle-aged of all his class, and unused to such work, he struck again, somewhat above the place where the first ax-blow had landed on the tree.

"You'd better stop him, Carrington," said I, "and I will explain my reasons to you afterward."

Carrington cupped his hands and shouted, and both Negroes looked toward us. But Grumbach, apparently, had not heard, or, if he had, supposed that the words were directed to somebody other than himself. Thus, everybody within view was occupied, you will note— Carrington looking at Grumbach; the two laborers looking toward us; Grumbach intent upon making an impression on the tough coconut wood. I alone, for some instinctive reason, thought suddenly of Silvio Fabricius, and directed my gaze toward the point, down the long field, over which horizon he would appear when returning.

Perhaps it was the sound of the ax's impact against his brother the tree, apprehended by a set of senses for seventeen years attuned to the tree's moods and rustlings, to the "messages" which his brother the tree imparted to him; perhaps some uncanny instinct merely, that arrested him in his course toward the village down there, carrying the current "message" from the tree about tomorrow's weather.

As I looked, Silvio Fabricius, running lightly, erect, came over the distant "horizon" of the lower field's bosomed slope. He stopped there, a distant figure, but clearly within my view. Without taking my eyes off him I spoke again to Carrington:

"You must stop him, Carrington— there's more in this than you know. Stop him— at once!"

And, as Carrington shouted a second time, Grumbach raised the ax for the third blow at the tree, the blow which did not land.

As the ax came up, Silvio Fabricius reached for the small, sharp canebill which hung beside him from his trouser-belt, a cutting tool with which he smoothed the bark of his brother the tree on occasion; cut out annually the choking mass of "cloth" from its top; removed fading fronds as soon as their decay reached the stage where they were no longer benefiting the tree; cut his coconuts. I could see the hot sunlight flash against the wide blade of the canebill as though it had been a small heliograph-mirror. Fabricius was about a thousand yards away. He raised the canebill in the air and with it made a sudden, cutting, pulling motion downward.

Fascinated, I watched him return the canebill to its place, on its hook, fastened to the belt at the left side.

But, abruptly, my attention was distracted to what was going on nearer at hand. Carrington's shout died, half uttered. Simultaneously I heard the yells of uncontrollable, sudden terror from the two laborers at the tree's foot. My eyes, snatched away from the distant tree-man, turned to Carrington beside me, glimpsing a look of terrified apprehension; then, with the speed of thought, toward the tree where one laborer was in the act of falling face-downward on the ground— I caught the terrified white gleam of his rolled eyes— the other, twisting himself away from the tree toward us, the very epitome of crude horror, his hands over his eyes. And my glance was turned just in time to see the great coconut which, detached from its heavy fibrous cordage up there, sixty feet above the ground, struck Grumbach full and true on the wide pith helmet which he affected, planter-wise, against the sun.

He seemed almost to be driven into the ground by the impact; the ax flew off at an angle, past the tree.

He never moved. And when, with the help of the two laborers, Carrington and I, having summoned a cart from the near-by road-gang cutting bushes, lifted the body, the head which had been that poor devil Grumbach's, was merely a mass of sodden pulp.

We took the body down the road in the cart, toward his newly erected manager's house. And a few yards along our way Silvio Fabricius passed us, running erectly, his somber face expressionless, his stride a kind of dignified lope, glancing not to right or left, speeding straight to his brother the tree which had been injured in his absence.

Looking back, where the road took a turn, I saw him, leaning now close beside the tree, his long fingers probing the two gashes which Hans Grumbach, who would never swing another ax, had made there, about two feet above the ground; while aloft the glorious fronds of the massive tree burgeoned like great sails in the afternoon trade wind.

Later that afternoon we sent the mortal remains of Hans Grumbach down the long hill road to Frederiksted in a cart, decently disposed, after telephoning his wife's relatives to break the sorrowful news to her. It was Carrington who telephoned, at my suggestion. I told him that they would appreciate it, he being the head of the company. Such nuances have their meaning in the West Indies, where the finer shades are of an importance. He explained that it was an accident, gave the particulars as he had seen them with his own eyes—Grumbach had been working under a tall coconut palm and a heavy coconut, falling, had struck him and killed him instantly. It had been a quite merciful death....

The next morning— we were at that time sleeping at Great Fountain as we oversaw in person the carrying out of the basic works there— I walked up toward the fountain again, alone, after a sleepless night of cogitation. I walked across the section of field between the newly grubbed roadside and the great tree. I walked straight up to the tree-man, stood beside him. He paid no attention to me whatever. I spoke to him.

"Fabricius," said I, "it is necessary that I should speak to you."

The tree-man turned his gaze upon me gravely. Seen thus, face to face, he was a remarkably handsome person, now about thirty years of age, his features regular, his expression calm, inscrutable; wise with a wisdom certainly not Caucasian, such as to put into my mind the phrase: "not of this world." He bowed, gravely, as though assuring me of his attention.

I said: "I was looking at you yesterday afternoon when you came back to yon tree, over the lower end of the field— down there." I indicated where he had stood with a gesture. Again he bowed, without any change of expression.

"I wish to have you know," I continued, "that I understand; that no one else besides me saw you, saw what you did— with the canebill, I mean. I wish you to know that what I saw I am keeping to myself. That is all."

Silvio Fabricius the tree-man continued to look into my face, without any visible change whatever in his expression. For the third time he nodded, presumably to indicate that he understood what I had said, but utterly without any emotion whatever. Then, in a deep, resonant voice, he spoke to me; the first, and last, time I have ever heard him utter a word.

"Yo' loike to know, yoong marster," said he, with an impressive gravity, "me brudda"— he placed a hand against the tree's smooth trunk— "t'ink hoighly 'bout yo', sar. Ahlso 'bout de enterprise fo' pineopples. Him please', sar, yoong marster; him indicate-me yo' course be serene an' ahlso of a profit."

The tree-man bowed again, and without another word or so much as a glance in my direction, detaching his attention from me as deliberately as he had given it when I first spoke to him, he turned toward his brother the tree, laid his face against the trunk, and slowly encircled the massive trunk with his two great muscular black arms....

I ARRIVED on the island the middle of October, 1928, coming down as usual from New York after my summer in the States. Our property at Great Fountain had suffered severely in the hurricane of the previous month, and when I arrived there I found Carrington well along with the processes of restoration. Many precautions had been taken beforehand and our property had suffered because of these much less than the other estates. I had told Carrington, who had a certain respect for my familiarity with "native manners and customs," enough about the tree-man and his functions tribally to cause him to heed the warning, transmitted by the now nearly helpless old patriarch of the village, and brought in by the tree-man four days before the hurricane broke— and two days before the government cable-advice had reached the island.

Silvio Fabricius had stayed beside his tree. On the third day, when it was possible for the villagers to get as far as the upper end of the great field near the fountain, he had been found, Carrington reported to me, lying in the field, dead, his face composed inscrutably, the great trunk of his brother the tree across his chest, which had been crushed by its great weight, when, uprooted by the wind, it had fallen.

And until they wore off there had been smears of earth, Carrington said, on the heads and faces of all the original Dahomeyan villagers and upon the heads and faces of several of the newer laborer families as well.

_____________________

10: Bal Macabre

Gustav Meyrink

1868-1932

Translated from the German by Udo Rail, for whom no information is available.

Strange Tales Of Mystery and Terror Oct 1932

LORD HOPELESS had in vited me to join the party at his table, and introduced me to the gentlemen.

It was long after midnight and I have forgotten most of the names. Doctor Zitterbein I had already met before.

“You always sit by yourself. That is too bad," he had said while he shook my hand, “Why do you always sit by yourself?”

I know that we had not drunk very much very much. Nevertheless we were under the spell of that delicate barely noticeable intoxication which makes some words seem to come from far off, a condition peculiar to thoie late hours when we are lulled by cigarette smoke, the laughter of women, and cheap music.

Strange that out of such night-club atmosphere—with its combination of gipsy music, cakewalk, and champagne—should develop a discussion of things supernatural!  Lord Hopeless was telling a story.

Of a society which was really supposed to exist, of men and women—rather of corpses or apparent corpses—belonging to the best circles, who according to the testimony of the living had been dead a long time, even had grave markers and tombs with their names and the dates of their deaths, but who in reality lay somewhere in the city, inside an old-fashioned mansion, in a condition of uninterrupted catalepsy, insensate, but guarded against disintegration, neatly arranged in a series of drawers. They were said to be cared for by a jhunchback servaqnt with buckled shoes and a powdered wig, who was  nicknamed Spotted Aron. During certain nights their lips showed a weak, phosphorescent gleam, which was a sign for the hunchback to perform a mysterious manipulation upon the cervical vertebrae of his charges. So he said.

Their souls could then roam about unhampered — temporarily freed from their bodies—and indulge in the vices of the city. With a greediness and Intensity which transcended the imagination of the craftiest roue.

Among other things they knew how to attach themselves, in vampire fashion, to those living reprobates who stagger from vice to vice—sucking, stealing, enriching themselves with weird sensations at the expense of the living masses.

This club, which, by the way, had the curious name. Amanita, possessed even by-laws, and rules and severe conditions concerning the admission of new members. But these were surrounded by an impenetrable veil of secrecy.

I COULD not catch the last few words of Lord Hopeless’ talk, due to the noisy racket of the musicians and the singers who dished up the latest couplet:

"I took the whitest flow-ower

To cheer my darkest hou-our,

Tra-la tra-la, tra-la,

Tra—la-la-la—tra-la.”

The grotesque distortions of a mulatto couple, which accompanied the music with a sort of nigger cancan, added like the song to the unpleasant effect which the story had made on me.

In this night club, among painted prostitutes, slick waiters, and diamond-studded pimps the entire impression seemed to grow somewhat fragmentary, mangled-up, until it remained in my mind merely as a gruesome, half-real, distorted image.

As if time should suddenly, in unguarded moments, hurry with eager, noiseless steps, so can hours burn into seconds for one intoxicated—seconds which fly out of the soul like sparks, in order to illuminate a sickly web of curious, dare-devilish dreams, woven out of a confused mingling of the past and the future.

Thus I can still, out of the vagueness of my memory, hear a voice saying: “We should send a message to the Amanita Club."

Judging by that, it seems that our talk must have repeatedly reverted to the same theme.

In between I seem to remember fragments of brief observations, like the breaking of a champagne glass, a whistle— then, that a French cocotte settled herself on my lap, kissed me, blew cigarette smoke into my mouth, and stuck her pointed tongue into my ear.

Again later a postcard full of signatures was pushed towards me, with the request that I should sign mg name too— and the pencil dropped out of my hand—and then again I couldn't manage, because a wench poured a glass of champagne over my cuffs.

But I remember distinctly, how all of us became suddenly sober, searching in our pockets, on and below the table, and on our chairs for the postcard, which Lord Hopeless wanted to have back by all means, but which had vanished and remained vanished for good....

"I took the whitest flow-ower

To cheer my darkest hou-our,”

The violins screeched the refrain and submerged our consciousness in the darkness again and again.

If one closed one’s eyes, one seemed to be lying on a thick, black, velvety carpet, from which flamed forth a few isolated ruby-red flowers.

“I want something to eat,” I hoard someone call. "What? What? Caviar?... Nonsense! Bring me... bring me... well... bring me some preserved mushrooms.”

And all of us ate of those sour mushrooms, which were swimming in a clear, stringy liquid, spiced with some aromatic herb.

"I took the whitest flow-ower

To cheer my darkest hou-our,

Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la,

Tra—la-la-la—tra-la.”

A LL at once a strange-looking acrobat, dressed in a coverall tricot which was much too large and wabbled crazily about him, was at our table and at his right sat a masqued hunchback with a white flaxen wig.

Next to him was a woman; and they all laughed.

How in the world did he get in here—with those? And I turned around: the hall was empty, except for ourselves.

Oh, well, I thought — never mind...

The table at which we sat was very long, and most of its table-cloth shone as white as a sheet— empty of plates and glasses.

“Monsieur Phalloides, won’t you please dance for us?” said one of the gentlemen, patting the acrobat on his shoulder.

They must know each other well —it went through my head in a sort of a dream—very probably he’s been sitting here a long time already, that— that tricot.

And then I looked at the hunchback next to him, and our eyes met. He wore a mask glazed with white lacquer and a greenish, faded jacket, badly neglected and full of crude patches.

Picked up from the street!

When he laughed, it sounded like a cross between a wheeze and a rattle.

"Crotalus! — Crotalus Horridus!"

That phrase which I must have heard or read somewhere some time went through my mind; I could not remember its meaning, but I shuddered nevertheless, as I whispered it to myself.

And then I felt the fingers of that young wench touching my knees under the table.

"My name is Albina Veratrina,” she whispered to me falteringly as if she were confiding a secret to me, while I seized her hand.

She moved very close to me; and I remembered darkly that she had once poured a glass of champagne over my cuff. Her dresses exuded a biting odor; one could hardly keep from sneezing when she made a movement.

“Her name is Germer, of course —Miss Germer, you know,” said Doctor Zitterbein aloud.

Whereupon the acrobat gave a quick laugh, looked at her, and shrugged his shoulders, as if he felt obliged to excuse her behavior.

I was nauseated by him. He had peculiar epidermic scars on his neck, as broad as a hand, but all around and of a pale color, giving an effect of ruffles—like the neck of a pheasant.

And his tricot of pale flesh color hung loosely on him from neck to toe, because he was narrow-chested and thin. On his head he wore a flat, greenish lid with white dots and buttons. He had got up and was dancing with a girl around whose neck there was a chain of speckled berries.

“Have new women dropped in?” I asked Lord Hopeless with my eyes.

“That’s only Ignatia—my sister,” said Albina Veratrina, and while she said the word “sister,” she winked at me from the corner of her eye and laughed hysterically.

Suddenly she stuck her tongue out at me, and I noticed that it had a dry, long, reddish streak down its middle; and I was horrified.

It's like a symptom of poisoning, I thought. Why has she that reddish streak? It’s like a symptom of poisoning!

And again I heard the music coming from afar:

“I took the whitest flow-ower

To cheer my darkest hou-our,”

and, although I kept my eyes closed, I knew how they all wagged their heads to the music in crazy rhythm....

It is like a symptom of poisoning, I dreamed— and woke up with a chill.

The hunchback in his green, spotted jacket had a wench on his lap and jerked off her clothes in a sort of St. Vitus’ dance, seemingly to the rhythm of inaudible music.

Doctor Zitterbein arose awkwardly and unbuttoned her shoulder straps.

“BETWEEN second and second and third there is a brief interval, which does not belong to time, which belongs only to the imagination. Like the meshes of a net”— I heard the hunchback orating insinuatingly—“these intervals are. You can add them together, and they will still not result in actual time, but we think them nevertheless— once, twice, once again, and a fourth time....

"And if we live only within these limits and forget the actual minutes and seconds, never to remember them—why, then we are dead, then we live only in death.

“You live, let us say, fifty years. Of that your schooling takes away ten, leaves forty.

“And sleep steals twenty: leaves twenty.

"And ten are filled with cares: remains ten.

“Of those you spend nine years in fear of to-morrow; thus you may live one year—  perhaps!

“Why wouldn’t you rather die?

“Death is beautiful.

“There is rest, eternal rest.

“And no worry about to-morrow.

“There is the eternal, silent Present, which you do not know; there is no Before and no Afterwards.

“There lies the silent Present, which you do not know! These are the hidden meshes ’twixt second and second in the net of time.”

THE words of the hunchback were still singing in my heart. I looked up and saw that the chemise of the wench had dropped to her waist and she sat on his lap, naked. She had no breasts and no body—only a phosphorescent nebula from neck to hip.

And he reached into that nebula with his fingers, and it sounded like the strings of s bass viol, and out of this spectral body came pieces of clinkers rattling to the floor. Such is death, I felt— like a mess of slag.

Slowly the center of that white tablecloth soared upward, like an immense bubble—a chill draft swept the room and blew away the nebula. Glittering harp-strings appeared, reaching from the collarbone of the wench to her hips. A creature, half woman, half harp!

The hunchback played on it, so I dreamed, a song of death and lust, which ended in a strange

"All joy must turn to suffering;

No earthly pleasure can endure.

Who longs for joy, who chooses joy.

Will reap the sorrow which it

Who never yearns nor waits

Has never yearned for sorrow’s

And an inexplicable longing for death came over me, and I yearned to die.

But in my heart, life gave battle—the instinct for self-preservation. And death and life were ominously arrayed against each other; that is catalepsy.

My eyes stared, motionless. The acrobat bent over me, and I noticed his wrinkled tricot, the greenish lid on his head, and his ruffled neck.

"Catalepsy," I wanted to stammer, but I could not open my mouth.

As he walked from one to another and peered into their faces with a questioning leer, I knew that we were paralyzed: he was like a toadstool.

We have eaten toadstools, stewed with veratrum album, the herb which is also called white Germer.

But that is only a spook of the night, a chimera!

I wanted to shout it out loud, but could not.

I wanted to turn my head, but could not.

The hunchback with the white, varnished mask got up noiselessly, and the others followed him and arranged themselves in couples, just as noiselessly.

The acrobat with the French trumpet, the hunchback with the human harp, Ignatia with Albina Veratrina—thus they moved right through the wall in the twitching dance step of a cakewalk.

Only once did Albina Veratrina turn her face towards me, accompanying the look with an obscene gesture.

I wanted to turn my eyes sideways or close my lids, but I could not. Constantly I had to stare at the wall-dock, and at its hands which crawled around its face like thieving fingers.

And in my ears still sounded that haunting couplet:

“I took the whitest flow-ower

To cheer my darkest hou-our,

Tra-la, tra-la, tra-la,

Tra—la-la-la—tra-la,”

and like a basso ostinato it came from the depths:

"All joy must turn to suffering:

Who never yearns nor waits

Has never yearned for sorrow’s end.”

I recovered from this poisoning after a long, long time; but the Others are all buried.

It was too late to save them— so I was told— when help arrived.

But I suspect that they were not really dead, when they were buried.

________________

11: The Fireplace

Henry S. Whitehead

Weird Tales Jan 1925

WHEN the Planter's Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi, burned to the ground in the notable fire of 1922, the loss to that section of the South could not be measured in terms of that ancient hostelry's former grandeur. The days had indeed long passed when a Virginia ham was therein stewed in no medium meaner than good white wine; and as the rambling old building was heavily insured, the owners suffered no great material loss. The real loss was the community's, in the deaths by fire of two of its prominent citizens, Lieutenant-Governor Frank Stacpoole and Mayor Cassius L. Turner. These gentlemen, just turning elderly, had been having a reunion in the hotel with two of their old associates, Judge Varney J. Baker of Memphis, Tennessee, and the Honorable Valdemar Peale, a prominent Georgian, from Atlanta. Thus, two other Southern cities had a share in the mourning, for Judge Baker and Mr. Peale both likewise perished in the flames. The fire took place just before Christmas, on the 23d of December, and among the many sympathetic and regretful comments which ensued upon this holocaust was the many-times-repeated conjecture that these gentlemen had been keeping a kind of Christmas anniversary, a fact which added no little to the general feeling of regret and horror.

On the request of these prominent gentlemen, the hotel management had cleared out and furnished a second-floor room with a great fireplace, a room for long used only for storage, hut for which, the late mayor and lieutenant-governor had assured them, the four old cronies cherished a certain sentiment. The fire, which gained headway despite the truly desperate efforts of the occupants of the room, had its origin in the fireplace, and it was believed that the four, who were literally burned to cinders, had been trapped. The fire had started, it appeared, about half an hour before midnight, when everybody else in the hotel had retired. No other occupant of the house suffered from its effects, beyond a few incidental injuries sustained in the hurried departure at dead of night from the blazing old firetrap.

SOME ten years before this regrettable incident ended the long and honorable career of this one-time famous hostelry, a certain Mr. James Callender, breaking a wearisome journey north at Jackson, turned into the hospitable vestibule of the Planter's, with a sigh of relief. He had been shut up for nine hours in the mephitic atmosphere of a soft-coal train. He was tired; hungry, thirsty, and begrimed with soot.

Two grinning negro porters deposited his ample luggage, toted from the railway station in thr reasonable hope of a large emolument, promised by their patron's prosperous appearance and' the imminence of the festival season of Christmas. They received their reward and left Mr. Callender in the act of signing the hotel register.

"Can you let me have number 28?" he required of the clerk. "That, I believe, is the room with the large fireplace, is it not? My friend, Mr. Tom Culbertson of Sweetbriar, recommended it to me in case I should be stopping here."

Number 28 was fortunately vacant, and the new guest was shortly in occupation, a great fire, at his orders, roaring up the chimney, and he himself engaged in preparing for the luxury of a hot bath.

After a leisurely dinner of the sort for which the old hotel was famous, Mr. Callender first sauntered slowly through the lobby, enjoying the first fragrant whiffs of a good cigar. Then, seeing no familiar face which gave promise of a conversation, he ascended to his room, replenished the fire, and got himself ready for a solitary evening. Soon, in pajamas, bathrobe, and comfortable slippers, he settled himself in a comfortable chair at just the right distance from the fire and began to read a new book which he had brought with him. His dinner had been a late one, and it was about half-past 9 when he really settled to his book. It was Arthur Machen's "House of Souls," and Mr. Callender soon found himself absorbed in the eery ecstasy of reading for the first time a remarkable work which transcended all his previous second-hand experiences of the occult. It had, he found, anything but a soporific effect upon him. He was reading carefully, well into the book, with all his faculties alert, when he was interrupted by a knock on the door of his room.

Mr. Callender stopped reading, marked his place, and rose to open the door. He was wondering who should summon him at such an hour. He glanced at his watch on the bureau in passing and was surprized to note that it was 11.20. He had been reading for nearly two hours, steadily. He opened the door, and was surprized to find no one in the corridor. He stepped through the doorway and glanced right and then left. There were, he observed, turns in both directions at short distances from his door, and Mr. Callender, whose mind was trained in the sifting of evidence, worked out an instantaneous explanation in his mind. The occupant of a double room (so he guessed) had returned late, and, mistaking the room, had knocked to apprize his fellow occupant of his return. Seeing at once that he had knocked prematurely, on the wrong door, the person had bolted around one of the corners to avoid an awkward explanation!

Mr. Callender, smiling at this whimsical idea of his, turned back into his room and shut the door behind him.

A gentleman was sitting in the placed he had vacated. Mr. Callender stopped short and stared at this intruder. The man who had appropriated his comfortable chair was a few years older than himself, it appeared — say about thirty-five. He was tall, well-proportioned, and very well dressed, although there seemed to Mr. Callender's hasty scrutiny something indefinably odd about his clothes.

The two men looked at each other appraisingly for the space of a few seconds, in silence, and then abruptly Mr. Callender saw what was wrong with the other's appearance. He was dressed in the fashion of about fifteen years back, in the style of the late nineties. No one was wearing such a decisive-looking piccadilly collar, nor such a huge puff tie which concealed every vestige of the linen except the edges of the cuffs. These, on Mr. Callender's uninvited guest, were immaculate and round, and held in place by a pair of large, round, cut-cameo black buttons.

The strange gentleman, without rising, broke the silence in a well-modulated voice with a deprecatory wave of a very well kept hand.

"I owe you an apology, sir. I trust that you will accept what amends I can make. This room has for me a peculiar interest which you will understand if you will allow me to speak further, but for the present I confine myself to asking your pardon."

This speech was delivered in so frank and pleasing a fashion that Mr. Callender could take no offense at the intrusion of the speaker.

"You are quite welcome, sir, but perhaps you will be good enough to continue, as you suggest. I confess to being mightily puzzled as to the precise manner in which you came to be here. The only way of approach is through the door, and I 'll take my oath no one came through it. I heard a knock, went to the door, and there was no one there."

"I imagine I would do well to begin at the beginning," said the stranger, gravely. "The facts are somewhat unusual, as you wall see when I have related them; otherwise I should hardly be here, at this time of night, and trespassing upon your good nature. That this is no mere prank I beg that you will believe."

"Proceed, sir, by all means," returned Mr. Callender, his curiosity aroused and keen. He drew up another chair and seated himself on the side of the fireplace opposite the stranger, who at once began his explanation.

"My name is Charles Bellinger, a fact which I will ask you kindly to note and keep well in mind. I come from Biloxi, down on the Gulf, and, unlike yourself, I am a Southerner, a native of Mississippi. You see, sir, I know something about you, or at least who you are."

Mr. Callender inclined his head, and the stranger waved his hand again, this time as if to express acknowledgment. of an introduction.

"I may as well add to this, since it explains several matters, though in itself sounding somewhat odd, that actually I am dead."

Mr. Bellinger, at this astounding statement, met Mr. Callender's facial expression of amazement with a smile clearly meant to be reassuring, and again, with a kind of unspoken eloquence, waved his expressive hand.

"Yes, sir, what I tell you is the plain truth. I passed out of this life in this room where we are sitting almost exactly sixteen years ago. My death occurred on the 23rd of December. That will be precisely sixteen years ago the day after to-morrow. I came here tonight for the express purpose of telling you the facts, if you will bear with me and suspend your judgment as to my sanity. It was I who knocked at your door, and I passed through it, and, so to speak, through you. my dear sir!

"On the late afternoon of the day I have mentioned I arrived in this hotel in company with Mr. Frank Stacpoole, an acquaintance, who still lives here in Jackson. I met him as I got off the train, and invited him to come here with me for dinner. Being a bachelor, he made no difficulty, and just after dinner we met in the lobby another man named Turner— Cassius L. Turner, also a Jacksonian— who proposed a game of cards and offered to secure two more gentlemen to complete the party. I invited him to bring them here to my room, and Staepoole and I came up in advance to get things ready for an evening of poker.

"Shortly afterwards Mr. Turner and the two other gentlemen arrived. One of them was named Baker, the other was Mr. Valdemar Peale, of Atlanta, Georgia. You recognize his name, I perceive, as I had expected you would. Mr. Peale is now a very prominent man. He has gone far since that time. If you happened to be better acquainted here you would know that Staepoole and Turner are also men of very considerable prominence. Baker, who lives in Memphis, Tennessee, is likewise a well-known man in his community and state.

"Peale, it appeared, was Stacpoole's brother-in-law, a fact which I had not previously known, and all four were well acquainted with each other. I was introduced to the two newcomers and we commenced to play poker.

"Somewhat to my embarrassment, since I was both the host and the 'stranger' of the party, I won steadily from the very beginning. Mr. Peale was the heaviest loser, and although as the evening wore on he sat with compressed lips and made no comment, it was plain that he was taking his considerable losses rather hardly.

"NOT long after 11 o'clock a most unfortunate incident took place. I had in no way suspected that I was not among gentlemen. I had begun, you see, by knowing only Stacpoole, and even with him my acquaintance was only casual.

"At the time I mention there began a round of jack-pots, and the second of these I opened with a pair of kings and a pair of fours. Hoping to better my hand I discarded the fours, with the odd card, and drew to the pair of kings, hoping for a third. I was fortunate. I obtained not only the third king but with it a pair of eights. Thus, equipped with a full house, I considered my hand likely to be the best, and when, within two rounds of betting, the rest had laid down their hands, the pot lay between Peale and me. Peale, I noticed, had also thrown down three cards, and every chance indicated that I had him beaten. I forced him to call me after a long series of raises back and forth; and when he laid down his hand he was holding four fours !

"You see? He had picked up my discard.

"Wishing to give Peale the benefit of any possible doubt, I declared the matter at once, for one does not lightly accuse a gentleman of cheating at cards, especially here in the South. It was possible, though far from likely, that there had been a mistake. The dealer might for once have laid down his draw on the table, although he had consistently handed out the cards as we dealt in turn all the evening. To imply further that I regarded the matter as nothing worse than a mistake, I offered at once to allow the considerable pot, which I had really won, to lie over to the next hand.

"I had risen slightly out of my chair as I spoke, and before anyone could add a word, Peale leaned over the table and stabbed me with a bowie knife which I had not even seen him draw, so rapid was his action. He struck upwards, slantingly, and the blade, entering my body just below the ribs, cut my right lung nearly in two. I sank down limp across the table, and within a few seconds had coughed myself almost noiselessly to death.

"The actual moment of dissolution was painful to a degree. It was as if the permanent part of me, 'myself'— my soul, if you will— snapped abruptly away from that distorted thing which sprawled prone across the disordered table and which no longer moved.

"Dispassionately, then, the something which continued to be myself (though now, of course, dissociated from what had been my vehicle of expression, my body) looked on and apprehended all that followed.

"For a few momenfs there was utter silence. Then Turner, in a hoarse, constrained voice, whispered to Peale: 'You've done for yourself now, you unmentionable fool!'

"Peale sat in silence, the knife, which he had automatically withdrawn from the wound, still grasped in his hand, and what had been my life's blood slowly dripping from it and gradually congealing as it fell upon a disarranged pile of cards.

"Then, quite without warning, Baker took charge ot the situation. He had kept very quiet and played a very conservative game throughout the evening.

" 'This affair calls for careful handling,' he drawled, 'and if you will take my advice I think it can be made into a simple case of disappearance. Bellinger comes from Biloxi. He is not well known here.' Then, rising and gathering the attention of the others, he continued: 'I am going down to the hotel kitchen for a short time. While I am gone, keep the door shut, keep quiet, and clear up the room, leaving this (he indicated my body) 'where it lies. You, Stacpoole, arrange the furniture in the room as nearly as you can remember how it looked when you first came in. You, Turner, make up a big fire. You needn't begin that just yet,' he threw at Peale, who had begun nervously to cleanse the blade of his knife on a piece of newspaper; and with this cryptic remark he disappeared through the door and was gone.

"The others, who all appeared somewhat dazed, set about their appointed tasks silently. Peale, who seemed unable to leave the vicinity of the table, at which he kept throwing glances, straightened up the chairs, replaced them where they had been, and then gathered up the cards and other debris from the table, and threw these into the now blazing fire which Turner was rapidly feeding with fresh wood.

"Within a few minutes Baker returned as unobtrusively as he had left, and after carefully fastening the door and approaching the table, gathered the three others about him and produced from under his coat an awkward and hastily-wrapped package of newspapers. Unfastening this he produced three heavy kitchen knives.

"I saw that Turner went white as Baker's idea dawned upon his consciousness, I now understood what Baker had meant when he told Peale to defer the cleansing of his bowie knife! It was, as plans go, a very practical scheme which he had evolved. The body— the corpus delicti, as I believe you gentlemen of the law call it— was an extremely awkward fact. It was a fact which had to be accounted for, unless— well, Baker had clearly perceived that there must he no corpus delicti!

"He held a hurried, low-voiced conversation with the others, from the immediate effect of which all, even Peale, at first drew back. I need not detail it to 1 you. You will have already apprehended what Baker had in mind. There was the roaring fire in the fireplace. That was his means of making certain that there would remain no corpus delicti in that room when the others left. Without such evidence, that is, the actual body of the murdered man, there could be, as you are of course well aware, no prosecution, because there would be no proof that the murder had even been committed. I should simply have 'disappeared.' He had seen all that, and the opportunity which the fireplace afforded for carrying out his plan, all at once. But the fireplace, while large, was not large enough to accommodate the body of a man intact. Hence his hurried and stealthy visit to the hotel kitchen.

"The men looked up from their conference. Peale was trembling palpably. The sweat streamed from Turner's face. Stacpoole seemed unaffected, but I did not fail to observe that the hand which he reached out for one of the great meat knives shook, violently, and that he was the first to. turn his head aside when Baker, himself pale and with set face, gingerly picked up from the table one of the stiffening hands...

"WITHIN an hour and a quarter ( for the fireplace drew as well then as it does tonight) there was not a vestige left of the corpus delicti, except the teeth.

"Baker appeared to think of everything. When the fire had pretty well burned itself out, and consumed what had been placed within it piece-meal, he remade it, and within its heart placed such charred remnants of the bones as had not been completely incinerated the first time. Eventually all the incriminating evidence had been consumed. It was as if I had never existed!

"My clothes, of course, had been burned. When the four, now haggard with their ordeal, had completed the burning process, another clearing-up and final re-arrangement of the room was undertaken. Various newspapers -which they had been carrying in their coat pockets were used to cleanse the table. The knives, including Peale 's, were washed and scrubbed, the water poured out and the wash-basin thoroughly scoured. No blood had got upon the carpet.

"My not inconsiderable winnings, as well as the coin and currency which had been in my possession, were then cold-bloodedly divided among these four rascals, for such I had for some time now recognized them as being. There arose then the problem of the disposal of my other belongings. There was my watch, pocket-knife, and several old seals which had belonged to my grandfather and which I had been accustomed to wear on the end of the chain in the pocket opposite that in which I carried my watch. There were my studs, scarfpin, cuff-buttons, two rings, and lastly, my teeth. These had been laid aside at the time when Baker had carefully raked the charred but indestructible teeth out of the embers of the first fire."

At this point in his narrative, Mr. Bellinger paused and passed one of his eloquent hands through the hair on top of his head in a reflective gesture. Mr. Callender observed what he had not before clearly noted, that his guest possessed a pair of extraordinarily long, thin hands, very muscular, the hands of an artist and also of a man of determination and action. He particularly observed that the index fingers were almost if not quite as long as the middle finger's. The listener, who had been unable to make up his mind upon the question of the sanity of him who had presented this extraordinary narrative in so calm and convincing a fashion, viewed these hands indicative of so strong a character with the greatest interest. Mr. Bellinger resumed his narrative.

"There was some discussion about the disposal of all these things. The consensus was that they must be concealed, since they could not easily be destroyed. If I had been one of those men I should have insisted upon throwing them into the river at the earliest opportunity. They could have been carried out of the room by any one of the group with the greatest ease and with no chance of detection, since all together they took up very little room, but this simple plan seemed not to occur to them. Perhaps they had exhausted their ingenuity in the horrible task just finished and were over-anxious to depart. They decided only upon the necessity of disposal of these trinkets, and the actual disposition was haphazard. This was by a method which I need not describe because I think it desirable to show them to you."

MR. BELLINGER rose and led the way to a corner of the room, closely followed by the amazed Callender. Bellinger pointed to the precise comer.

"Although I am for the present materialized," he remarked, "you will probably understand that this whole proceeding is in the nature of a severe psychic strain upon me and my resources. It is quite out of the question for me to do certain things. Managing to knock at the door took it out of me, rather, but I wished to give you as much warning of my presence as I could. Will you kindly oblige me by lifting the carpet at this point?"

Mr. Callender worked his fingers
nervously under the corner of the carpet, and pulled. The tacks yielded after several hard pulls, and the corner of the carpet came up, revealing a large piece of heavy tin which had been tacked down over an ancient rat-hole.

"Pull up the tin, too, if you please," requested Mr. Bellinger. The tin presented a more difficult task than had the carpet, but Mr. Callender, now thoroughly intrigued, made short work of it, though at the expense of two broken blades of his pocket-knife. At Mr. Bellinger's further direction, inserting his hand, he found and drew out a packet of cloth, which proved on examination to have been fabricated out of a trousers pocket lining. The cloth was rotted and brittle, and Mr. Callender carried it carefully over to the table and laid it down, and, emptying it out between them, checked off the various articles which Mr. Bellinger had named. The round cuff-buttons came last, and as he held these in his hand, he looked at Mr. Bellinger's wrists. Mr. Bellinger smiled and pulled down his cuffs, holding out his hands in the process, and Mr. Callender again noted carefully their peculiarities, the long, muscular fingers being especially conspicuous, thus seen under the direct light of the electric lamp. The cuff-buttons, he noted, were absolutely identical.

"Perhaps you will oblige me by putting the whole collection in your pocket," suggested Mr. Bellinger. Then, smiling, as Mr. Callender, not unnaturally, hesitated: "Take them, my dear man, take them freely. They're really mine to give, you know!"

Mr. Callender stepped over to the wardrobe where his clothes hung, and placed the packet in his coat pocket. When he returned to the vicinity of the fireplace, his guest had already resumed his seat.

"I trust, " he said, "that despite the very singular— I may say, bizarre— character of my narrative and especially the statement with which I thought best to begin it, you will have given me your credence. It is uncommon to be confronted with the recital of such an experience as I have related to you, and it is not everybody who is— may I say privileged?— to carry on an extended conversation with a man who has been dead sixteen years!

"My object may possibly have suggested itself to you. These men have escaped all consequences of their act. They are, as I think you will not deny, four thorough rascals. They are at large and even in positions of responsibility, trust, and prominence in their several communities. You are a lawyer, a man held in high esteem for your professional skill and personal integrity. I ask you. then, will you undertake to bring these men to justice? You should be able to reproduce the salient points of my story. You have even proofs in the shape of the articles now in your coat pocket. There is the fact of my disappearanee. That made a furor at the time, and has never been explained or cleared up. You have the evidence of the hotel register for my being here on that date and it would not be hard to prove that these men were in my company. But above all else, I would pin my faith for a conviction upon the mere recounting in the presence of these four, duly subpenaed, of my story as I have told it to you. That would fasten their guilt upon them to the satisfaction of any judge and jury. They would be crying aloud for mercy and groveling in abject superstitious fear long before you had finished the account, of precisely what they had done. Or, three of them could be confronted with an alleged confession made by the other. Will you undertake, to right this festering wrong, Mr. Callender, and give me peace? Your professional obligation to promote justice and set wrong right should conspire with your character to cause you to agree."

"I will do so, with all my heart," replied Mr. Callender, holding out his hand.

But before the other could take it, there came another knocking on the door of the hotel room. Slightly startled, Mr. Callender went to the door and threw it open. One of the hotel servants reminded him that he had asked to be called, and that it was the hour specified. Mr. Callender thanked and feed the man, and turning back into the room found himself alone.

He went to the fireplace and sat down. He looked fixedly at the smoldering fire in the grate. He went over to the wardrobe and felt in his coat pocket in search of negative evidence that he had been dreaming, but his hand encountered the bag which had been the lining of a trousers pocket. He drew it out and spread a second time that morning on the table the various articles which it contained...

After an early breakfast Mr. Callender asked for permission to examine the register for the year 1896. He found that Charles Bellinger of Biloxi had registered on the afternoon of the 23rd of December and had been assigned room 28. He had no time for further enquiries, and, thanking the obliging clerk, he hastened to the railway station and resumed his journey north.

During the journey his mind refused to occupy itself with anything except his strange experience. He reached his destination in a state of profound preoccupation.

As soon as his professional engagements allowed him the leisure to do so, he began his enquiries by having looked up the owners of those names which were deeply imprinted in his memory. He was obliged to stop there because an unprecedented quantity of new legal business claimed his more immediate attention. He was aware that this particular period in his professional career was one vital to his future, and he slaved painstakingly at the affairs of his clients. His diligence was rewarded by a series of conspicuous legal successes, and his reputation became greatly enhanced. This heavy preoccupation could not fail to dull somewhat the sharp impression which the adventure in the hotel bedroom had made upon his mind, and the contents of the trousers pocket remained locked in his safe-deposit box undisturbed while he settled the affairs of the Rockland Oil Corporation and fought through the Appellate Division the conspicuous case of Burnet vs. De Castro, et al.

IT WAS in the pursuit of a vital piece of evidence in this last-named case that, his duties called him South again. Having obtained the evidence, he started home, and again found it expedient to break the long journey northward, at Jackson. It was not, though, until he was actually signing the register that he noted that it was the 23rd of December, the actual date with which Mr. Bellinger's singular narrative had been concerned.

He did not ask for any particular room this time. He felt a chill of vague apprehension, as if there awaited him an accounting for some laxity, a feeling which recalled the occasional lapses of his remote childhood. He smiled, but this whimsical idea was quickly replaced by a somber apprehension which he could not shake off, and which emanated from the realization that the clerk by some strange fatality had again assigned him room 28 — the room with the fireplace. He thought of asking for another room, but could not think of any reasonable excuse. He sighed and felt a positive sinking at the heart when he saw the figures written down at the edge of the page; but he said nothing. If he shrank from this room's occupancy, this room with its frightful secret shared by him alone of this world's company with the four guilty men who were still at large because of his failure to keep his promise, he was human enough, and modern enough in his ideas to I shrink still more from the imputation of oddity which his refusal of the room on no sensible grounds would inevitably suggest.

He went up to his room, and, as it was a cold night outside, ordered the fire to be made up...

When the hotel servant rapped on his door in the morning there was no answer, and after several attempts to arouse the occupant the man reported his failure at the office. Later another attempt was made, and, this proving equally ineffectual, the door was forced with the assistance of a lock-smith.

Mr. Callender's body was found lying with the head in the grate. He had been, it appeared, strangled, for the marks of a pair of hands were deeply imprinted on his throat. The fingers had sunk deeply into the bluish, discolored flesh, and the coroner's jury noted the unusual circumstance when they sent out a description of the murderer confined to this peculiarity, that these marks indicated that the murderer (who was never discovered) possessed very long thin fingers, the index fingers being almost or quite as long as the middle fingers.

___________________

12: Black Terror

Henry S. Whitehead

Weird Tales Oct 1931

I WOKE up in the great mahogany bed of my house in Christiansted with an acute sense of something horribly wrong, something frightful, tearing at my mind. I pulled myself together, shook my head to get the sleep out of my eyes, pulled aside the mosquito-netting. That was better! The strange sense of horror which had pursued me out of sleep was fading now.

I groped vaguely, back into the dream, or whatever it had been— it did not seem to have been a dream; it was something else. I could now, somehow, localize it. I found now that I was listening, painfully, to a sustained, aching sound, like a steam calliope fastened onto one high, piercing, raucous note. I knew it could not be a steam calliope. There had been no such thing on the Island of Santa Cruz since Columbus discovered it on his Second Voyage in 1493. I got up and into my slippers and muslin bathrobe, still puzzled.

Then abruptly the note ended, cut off clean like the ceasing of the drums when the Black people are having one of their ratas back of the town in the hills.

Then, and only then, I knew what it was that had disturbed me. It had been a woman, screaming.

I ran out to the semi-enclosed gallery which runs along the front of my house on the Copagnie Gade, the street of hardpounded earth below, and looked down.

A group of early risen Blacks in nondescript garb was assembled down there, and the number was increasing every instant. Men, women, small Black children were gathered in a rapidly tightening knot directly in front of the house, their guttural mumbles of excitement forming a contrapuntal background to the solo of that sustained scream; for the woman, there in the center, was at it again now, with fresh breath, uttering her blood-curdling, hopeless, screeching wail, a thing to make the listener wince.

Not one of the throng of Blacks touched the woman in their midst. I listened to their guttural Creole, trying to catch some clue to what this disturbance was about. I would catch a word of the broad patois here and there, but nothing my mind could lay hold upon. At last it came, the due; in a childish, piping treble; the clear-cut word, Jumbee.

I had it now. The screaming woman believed, and the crowd about her believed, that some evil witchery was afoot. Some enemy had enlisted the services of the dreaded witch-doctor— the papaloi — and something fearful, some curse or charm, had been "put on" her or some one belonging to her family. All that the word "Jumbee" had told me clearly.

I watched now for whatever was going to happen. Meanwhile I wondered why a policeman did not come along and break up this public gathering. Of course the policeman, being a Black man himself, would be as much intrigued as any of the others, but he would do his duty nevertheless. "Put a Black to drive a Black!" The old adage was as true nowadays as in the remote days of West Indian slavery.

The woman, now convulsed, rocking backward and forward, seemed as though possessed. Her screams had now an undertone or cadence of pure horror. It was ghastly.

A policeman, at last! Two policemen, in fact, one of them Old Kraft, once a Danish top-sergeant of garrison troops. Kraft was nearly pure Caucasian, but, despite his touch of African, he would tolerate no nonsense. He advanced, waving his truncheon threateningly, barking hoarse reproaches, commands to disperse. The group of Black people began to melt away in the general direction of the Sunday Market, herded along by Sergeant Kraft's dark brown patrolman.

Now only Old Kraft and the Black woman who had screamed remained, facing each other in the street below. I saw the old man's face change out of its harsh, professional, man-handling frown to something distinctly more humane. He spoke to the woman in low tones. She answered him in mutters, not unwillingly, but as though to avoid being overheard.

I spoke from the gallery.

"What is it, Herr Kraft? Can I be of assistance?"

Old Kraft looked, recognized me, touched his cap.

"Stoopide-ness!" exploded Old Kraft, explanatorily. "The woo-man, she haf had—" Old Kraft paused and made a sudden, stiff, dramatic gesture and looked at me meaningly. His eyes said: "I could tell you all about it, but not from here."

"A chair on the gallery for the poor woman?" I suggested, nodding to him.

"Come!" said he to the woman, and she followed him obediently up the outside gallery steps while I walked across to unfasten the door at the gallery's end.

WE placed the woman, who seemed dazed now and kept a hand on her head, in one of my chairs, where she rocked slowly back and forth whispering to herself, and Kraft and I went inside the house, where I led him through to the dining-room.

There, at the sideboard, I did the honors for my friend Sergeant Kraft of the Christiansted Police.

"The woman's screaming awakened me, half an hour early," I began, invitingly, as soon as the sergeant had been duly refreshed and had said his final "skoal," his eyes on mine in the Danish manner.

"Yah, yah," returned Kraft, nodding a wise old head. "She tell me de Obi-man fix her right, dis time!"

This sounded promising. I waited for more.

"But joost what it iss, I can not tell at-all," continued Kraft, disappointingly, as though aware of the secretiveness which should animate a police sergeant.

"Will you have— another, Herr Kraft?" I suggested.

The sergeant obliged, ending the ceremony with another "skoal." This libation, as I had hoped, had the desired effect. I will spare Kraft"s accent, which could be cut with a knife. What he told me was that this woman, Elizabeth Aagaard, living in a village estate-cabin near the Central Factory, a few miles outside of Christiansted, had a son, one Cornelis McBean. The young fellow was what is locally known as a "gallows-bird," in short a gambler, thief, and general bad-egg. He had been in the police court several times for petty offenses, and in jail in the Christiansfort more than once.

But, as Kraft expressed it, "it ain" de thievin" dat make de present difficoolty." No! It was that young Cornelis McBean had presumed beyond his station, and had committed the crime of falling in love with Estrella Collins, the daughter of a prosperous Black storekeeper in one of Christiansted's side streets. Old Collins, utterly disapproving, and his words to McBean having had no effect whatever upon that stubborn lover, had, in short, employed the services of a papaloi to get rid of McBean.

"But," I protested, "I know Old Collins. I understand, of course, how he might object to the attentions of such a young ne'er-do-well, but— a storekeeper like him, a comparatively rich man, to call in a papaloi— it seems—"

"Him Black!" replied Sergeant Kraft with a little, significant gesture which made everything plain.

"What," said I, after thinking a little, "what particular kind of ouanga has Collins had 'put on' him?"

The old sergeant gave me a quick glance at that word. It is a meaningful word. In Haiti it is very common. It means both talisman and amulet; something, that is, to attract, or something to repel, to defend the wearer. But here in Santa Cruz the magic of our Blacks is neither so clear-cut nor (as some imagine) quite so deadly as the magickings of the papalois and the hougans in Haiti's infested hills with their thousands of vodu altars to Ougoun Badagris, to Damballa, to the Snake of far, dreadful Guinea. Over even so much as the manufacture of ouangas I may not linger. One can not. The details—

"It is, I think, a "sweat-ouanga"," whispered Old Kraft, and went a shade lighter than his accustomed sunburned ivory. "De wooman allege," he continued, "that the boy sicken an' die at noon— today. For that reason she is walk into de town early, because there is no help. She desire to bewail-like, dis trouble restin' 'pon her head."

Kraft had given me all the information he possessed. He rated a reward. I approached the sideboard a third time.

"You will excuse me again, Sergeant. It is a little early in the day for me. Still, "a man can't walk on one leg!" "

The sergeant grinned at this Santa Crucian proverb which means that a final stirrup-cup is always justified, and remarked:

"He should walk goot— on three!" After this reference to the number of his early-morning refreshments, he accepted the last of these, boomed his "skoal," and became a police sergeant once more.

"Shall I take de wooman along, sir?" he inquired as we reached the gallery where Elizabeth Aagaard still rocked and moaned and whispered to herself in her trouble.

"Leave her here, please," I replied, "and I will see that Esmerelda finds her something to eat." The sergeant saluted and departed.

"Gahd bless yo", sar," murmured the poor soul. I left her there and went to the kitchen to drop a word in the sympathetic ear of my old code. Then I started toward my belated shower-bath. It was nearly seven by now.

After breakfast I inquired for Elizabeth Aagaard. She had had food and had delivered herself at length upon her sorrows to Esmerelda and the other house-servants. Esmerelda's account established the belief that young McBean had been marked for death by one of the oldest and deadliest devices known to primitive barbarism; one which, as all Caucasians who know of it will assure you, derives its sole efficacy from the psychology of fear, that fear of the occult which has stultified the African's mind through countless generations of warfare against the jungle and the dominance of his fetish-men and vodu priests.

As is well known to all students of African "magic," portions of the human body, such as hair, the clippings of nails, or even some garment long worn in contact with the body, is regarded as having a magical connection with the body itself and a corresponding influence upon it. A portion of the shirt which has been worn next the body and which has absorbed perspiration is especially highly regarded as material for the making of a protective charm or amulet, as well as for its opposite, planted against a person for the purpose of doing him harm. Blood, etc., could be included in this weird category.

In the case of young Cornelis McBean, this is what had been done. The papaloi had managed to get hold of one of Cornelis' shirts. In this he had dressed the recently buried body of an aged negro who had died a few days before, of senility. This shirt, after it had been in the coffin for three days and nights, had been cunningly put back for Cornelis to find and wear again. It had been, supposedly, mislaid. Young McBean, finding it in his mother's cabin, had worn it again.

And, as if this, in itself enough to cause his death from sheer terror as soon as he knew of it, was not sufficient, it had just come to the knowledge of the mother and son by the curious African method known as the Grapevine Route, that a small ouanga, made up of some of Cornelis' nail-parings, stubble of a week"s beard collected from discarded lather after a shaving, various other portions of his exterior personality, had been "fixed" by the Christiansted papaloi, and "buried against him."

This meant that unless the ouanga could be discovered and dug up and burned, he would die at noon. As he had learned of the "burying" of the ouanga only the evening before, and as the Island of Santa Cruz has an area of more than eighty square miles, there was, perhaps, one chance in some hundred trillion that he could find the ouanga, disinter it, and render it harmless by burning. Taking into consideration that his ancestors for countless eons had given their full and firm belief to this method of murder by mental processes, it looked as though young Cornelis McBean, ne'er- do-well, Black island gallow's-bird, aspiring admirer of a young negress somewhat beyond his station in life according to African West Indian caste systems, were doomed to pass out on the stroke of twelve that day.

That, with an infinitude of detail, was the substance of the story of Elizabeth Aagaard.

I sat and looked at her, quiet and humble now, no longer the screaming fury she had appeared to be at that morning's crack of dawn. And as I looked at the poor soul, with the dumb, distressed motherhood in her dim eyes from which the unchecked tears ran down her coal-black face, it came to me that I wanted to help; that this thing was outrageous; wicked with a wickedness far surpassing the ordinary sinfulness of ordinary people. I did not want to sit by, as it were, and allow the unknown McBean to pass out at the behest of a paid rascal of a papaloi merely because unctuous Old Collins had decided on that method for his exit from this life—a matter involving, perhaps, fifteen dollars' fee to the witch-doctor; the collection and burial of some bits of offal somewhere on Santa Cruz.

I could imagine the young Black fellow, livid with a nameless fear, a complex of ancient, inherited, unreasonable dreads, shivering, cowering, sickened to his dim soul by what lay ahead of him, three hours away when twelve should strike from the Christiansfort dock in the old tower by the harbor; writhing helplessly in his mind before the approach of the ghastly doom which he had brought upon himself because he had happened to fall in love with brown Estrella Collins, whose sleek brown father carried a collection-plate every Sunday up and down the aisle of his place of worship!

There was an element of absurdity in it all, now that I was actually sitting here looking at McBean"s mother. She had given up now, it appeared, was resigned to the fate of her only son. "Him Black!" Old Kraft had remarked.

That thought of the collection-plate in Old Collins' pudgy, storekeeper's hands, reminded me of something.

"What is your church, Elizabeth?" I inquired suddenly.

"Me English Choorch, sar— de boy also. Him make great shandramadan, sar, him gamble an' perhaps a tief, but him one-time communicant, sar."

An inspiration came to me then. Perhaps I could prevail upon one of the English Church clergy to help. It was, when one came down to the brass tacks of the situation, a question of belief. A similar ouanga, "buried against" me, would have no effect whatever, because to me, such a means of getting rid of a person was merely the height of absurdity, like the charm-killing of the Polynesians by making them look at their reflection in a gourd of water and then shaking the gourd and so destroying the image! Perhaps, if Elizabeth and her son could be persuaded to do their parts... I spoke long and earnestly to Elizabeth.

At the end of my speech, which had emphasized the superior power of Divinity when compared to even the most powerful of the African fetishes, even the dreaded snake himself, Elizabeth, her hopes somewhat aroused, I imagined, took her departure, and I jumped into my car and ran up the hill toward the English Church rectory.

Father richardson, the pastor, himself a West Indian born, was at home. To him I explained the case. When I had ended—

"I am obliged to you, Mr. Canevin," said the clergyman. "If only they would realize— er— precisely what you told the woman; that Divinity is infinitely more powerful than their beliefs! I will accompany you, at once. It is, really, the release, perhaps, of a human soul. And they come to us clergy over such things as the theft of a couple of coconuts!"

Father Richardson left me, came back in two minutes with a black bag, and we started for Elizabeth Aagaard's village along a lovely shore road by the gleaming, placid, blue Caribbean.

The negro estate-village was surprizingly quiet when we arrived. The clergyman got out at Elizabeth's cabin, and I drove the car out of the way, off the road into rank guinea-grass. I saw Father Richardson, a commanding, tall figure, austere in his long, black cassock, striding in at the cabin door. I followed, and got inside just in time to witness a strange performance.

The Black boy, livid and seeming shrunken with terror, cowered under a thin blanket on a small iron bedstead. Over him towered the clergyman, and just as I came in, he stooped and with a small, sharp pocket-knife cut something loose from the boy's neck and flung it contemptuously on the hard-earth floor of the cabin. It landed just at my feet and I looked at it curiously. It was a small black bag, of some kind of cotton material, with a tuft of black cock's feathers at its top which was bound around with many windings of bright red thread. The whole thing was about thee size of an egg. I recognized it as a protective amulet.

His teeth chattering, the cold fear of death upon him, the Black boy protested in the guttural Creole. The clergyman answered him gravely.

"There can be no half-way measures, Cornelis. When a person asks God for His help, he must put away everything else." A mutter of assent came from the woman, who was arranging a small table with a candle in the comer of the cabin.

From his black bag Father Richardson now took a small bottle with a sprinkler arrangement at its top, and from this he cast a shower of drops upon the ouanga charm lying on the floor. Then he proceeded to sprinkle the whole cabin with his holy water, ending with Elizabeth, myself, and finally, the boy on the bed. As the water touched his face the boy winced visibly and shuddered, and suddenly it came over me that here was a strange matter; again, I daresay, a matter of belief. The change from the supposed protection of the charm which the priest had cut away from his neck and contemptuously tossed away, to the prescribed method of the Church must have been, somehow, and in some obscure mental fashion, a very striking one to the young fellow.

The bottle went back into the bag and now Father Richardson was speaking to the boy on the bed:

"God is intervening for you, my child, and — God's power is supreme over all things, visible and invisible. He holds all in the hollow of His hand. He will now put away your fear, and take this weight from your soul, and you shall live. You must now do your part, if you would be fortified by the Sacrament. You just purify your soul. Penance first. Then—"

The boy, now appreciably calmer, nodded his head, and the priest motioned me out, induding the woman in his gesture. I opened the cabin door and stepped out, closely followed by Elizabeth Aagaard. I left her, twenty paces from her cabin, wringing her hands, her lips murmuring in prayer, while I went and sat in my car.

Ten minutes later the cabin door opened and the priest beckoned us within. The boy lay quiet now, and Father Richardson was engaged in repacking his black bag. He turned to me:

"Good-bye, and—thank you. It was very good of you to bring me."

"But— aren't you coming?"

"No"— this reflectively. "No— I must see him through." He glanced at his wrist-watch. "It is eleven-fifteen now. It was at noon you said—"

"I'm staying with you, then," said I, and sat down on a chair in the far corner of the little cabin room.

The priest stood by the bedside, looking down at the Black boy, his back to me. The woman was, apparently, praying earnestly to herself in another corner, out of the way. The priest stooped and took the limp hand and wrist in his large, firm white hands, and counted the pulse, glancing at his watch. Then he came and sat beside me.

"Half an hour!" he murmured.

The Black woman, Elizabeth, prayed without a sound in her corner on the hard, earth floor, where she knelt, rigidly. We sat, without conversation, for a long twenty minutes during which the sense of strain in the cabin became more and more apparent to me.

Abruptly the boy's mouth fell open. The priest sprang toward him, seized and chafed the dull-black hands. The boy's head turned on the pillow and his jaws came together again, his eyelids fluttering. Then a slight spasm, perceptible through the light covering, ran through him, and, breathing a few times deeply, he resumed his coma-like sleep. The priest now remained beside him. I counted off the minutes to noon. Nine— eight— seven—  at least, three minutes before noon. When I had got that far I heard the priest's deep, monotonous voice reciting in a low tone. Listening, I caught his words here and there. He held the boy's hand while the words rolled out low and impressively.

"...to withstand and overcome all assaults of thine adversary... unto thee ghostly strength... and that he no-wise prevail against thee." Then, dropping a note, to my surprize, the clerical voice of this most Anglican of clergymen began to declaim the words of an older liturgical language: "...et effugiat atque discedat omnis phantasia et nequitia... vel versutia diabolicae fraudis omnisque spiritus immundis adjuratis..."

The words, gaining in volume with the priest's earnestness, rolled out now. I saw that we were on the very verge of noon, and, looking back to the bed from my glance at my watch, I saw convulsion after convulsion shake the thin body on the bed. Then the cabin itself began to tremble in a sudden wind that had sprung up from nowhere. The dry palm fronds lashed back and forth outside and the whistle of the wind blew under the crazily hung door. The muslin curtain of the small window suddenly billowed like a sail. Then, suddenly, the harsh voice of the Black boy.

"Damballa!" it said, clearly, and moaned.

Damballa is one of the Greater Mysteries of the vodu worship. I shuddered in spite of myself.

But now higher, more commanding, came the voice of Father Richardson, positively intoning now— great sentences of Power, formulas interposed, as he himself stood, interposed, between the feeble Black boy and the Powers of Evil which seemed to seek him out for their own fell ends. The priest seemed to stretch a mantle of mystical protection over the grovelling, writhing body.

The mother lay prone on the dirt floor, now, her arms stretched out cross-like— the last, most abject gesture of supplication of which humanity is physically capable. As I glanced down at her I saw, in the extreme corner of the little room, something oddly shaped projecting from a pile of discarded garments.

It was now exactly noon. As I looked carefully at my watch, the distant stroke of the Angelus came resoundingly from the heavy bell of St. John's Church. Father Richardson ceased his recitation, laid back the boy's hand on the coverlid, and began the Angelus. I stood up at this, and, as he finished, I plucked his sleeve. The wind, curiously enough, was gone, utterly. Only the noon sun beat down suffocatingly on the iron roof of the frail cabin. Father Richardson looked at me inquiringly. I pointed to that comer, under the pile of clothes. He walked to the comer, stooped, and drew out a crude wooden image of a snake. He glanced accusingly at Elizabeth, who grovelled afresh.

"Take it up, Elizabeth," commanded Father Richardson, "break it in two, and throw it out of the doorway."

The woman crawled to the corner, lifted the thing, snapped it in two, and then, rising, her face gray with fear, opened the cabin door and threw out the pieces. We went back to the bedside, where the boy breathed quietly now. The priest shook him. He opened swimming eyes, eyes like a drunken man's. He goggled stupidly at us.

"You are alive— by the mercy of God," said the priest, severely. "Come now, get up! It is well past noon. Here! Mr. Canevin will show you his watch. You are not dead. Let this be a lesson to you to leave alone what God has put outside your knowledge."

The boy sat up, still stupidly, the thin blanket drawn about him, on the side of the bed.

"We may as well drive back now," said Father Richardson, picking up his black bag in a business-like manner.

As I turned my car to the right just outside the estate-village stone gateway, I glanced back toward the village. It swarmed with Blacks, all crowding about the cabin of Elizabeth Aagaard. Beside me, I heard the rather monotonous voice of Father Richardson. He seemed to be talking to himself; thinking aloud, perhaps.

"Creator— of all things— visible and invisible."

I drove slowly to avoid the ducks, fowls, small pigs, pickaninnies and burro-carts between the edge of town and the rectory.

"It was," said I, as I held his hand at parting, "an experience— that."

"Oh— that! Yes, yes, quite! I was thinking— you'll excuse me, Mr. Canevin— of my afternoon sick-calls. My curate isn't quite over that last attack of dengue fever. I have a full afternoon. Come in and have tea with us— any afternoon, about five."

I drove home slowly. A West Indian priest! That sudden wind— the little wooden snake— the abject fear in the eyes of the Black boy! All that had been merely in the day"s work for Father Richardson, in those rather awkward, large, square hands, the hands which held the Sacrament every morning. Sometimes I would get up early and go to church myself on a weekday morning, along the soft roads through the pre-dawn dusk along with scores of soft-stepping, barefooted Blacks, plodding to church in the early dawn, going to get strength, power, to fight the age-long battle between God and Satan— the Snake— here where the sons of Ham tremble beneath the lingering fears of that primeval curse which came upon their ancestor because he dared to laugh at his father Noah.

________________________

13: The Projection of Armand Dubois

Henry S. Whitehead

Weird Tales Oct 1926

SOME time before my marriage, when I was living in Marlborough House, the old mansion on the hill back of the town of Frederiksted, on the West Indian island of St. Croix,— that is to say, before I became a landed-proprietor, as I did later, and was still making a variable living by the production and sale of my tales,— I had a next-door neighbor by the name of Mrs. Minerva Du Chaillu. I do not know whether the late Monsieur Du Chaillu, of whom this good lady was the relict, was related or not to the famous Paul of that name, that slaughterer of wild animals in the far corners of the earth, who was, and may still be, for all I know, the greatest figure of all the big game hunters, but her husband, Monsieur Placide Du Chaillu, had been for many years a clergyman of the English Church on that strange island of St. Martin, with its two flat towns, Phillipsbourg, capital of the Dutch Side, and Maragot, capital of the French Side.

The English Church was, and still is, existent only among the Dutch residents, Maragot being without an English Church. Therefore, Mrs. Du Chaillu's acquaintance, even after many years' residence on St. Martin, was almost entirely confined to the Dutch Side, where, curiously enough, English and French, rather than Dutch, are spoken, and which, although only eight miles from the French capital, has only slight communication therewith, because of the execrable quality of the connecting roads.

This old lady, well past seventy at the time, used to sit on her gallery late afternoons, when the fervor of the afternoon sun had somewhat abated, and rock herself steadily to and fro, and fan in the same indefatigable fashion as ancient Mistress Desmond, my landlady. Occasionally I would step across and exchange the time of day with her. I had known her for several years before she got her courage up to the point of asking me if some day I would not allow her to see some things I had written.

Such a request is always a compliment, and this I told her, to relieve her obvious embarrassment. A day or so later I took over to Mrs. Du Chaillu a selection of three or four manuscript-carbons, and a couple of magazines containing my stories, and I could see her from time to time, afternoons, reading them. I could even guess which ones she had finished and which she was currently engaged in perusing, by the expression of her kindly face as she read.

Four or five days later she sent for me, and when I had gone across to her gallery, she thanked me, very formally as a finely-bred gentlewoman of several generations of West Indian background might be expected to do, handed back the stories, and, with much hesitation, and almost blushingly, intimated that ihe could tell me a story herself, if I cared to use it!

"Of course," added Mrs. Du Chaillu, "you'd have to change it about and embellish it a great deal, Mr. Canevin."

To this I said nothing, except to urge my old friend to proceed, and this she did forthwith, hesitating at first, then, becoming intrigued by the memories of the tale, with the flair of a quite unexpected narrative gift. During the first few minutes of the then halting recital, I interrupted occasionally, for the purpose of getting this or that point clear, but as the story progressed I quieted down, and before it was finished, I was sitting, listening as though to catch pearls, for here was my simon-pure West Indian "Jumbee" story, a gem, a perfect example, and told— you may believe me or not, sir or madam— with every possible indication of authenticity. Unless there is something hitherto unsuspected (even by his best friends, those keenest of critics) with the understanding apparatus of Gerald Canevin, that story as Mrs. Du Chaillu told it to him, had happened, just as she said it had— to her.

I will add only that I have not, to my knowledge, changed a word of it, It is not only not embellished (or "glorified," as the Black People would say) but it is as nearly verbatim as I can manage it; and I believe it implicitly. It fits in with much that is known scientifically and verified by occult investigators and suchlike personages; it is typically, utterly, West Indian; and Mrs. Du Chaillu would as soon vary one jot or tittle from the strict truth in this or any other matter, as to attempt to stand on her head,— and that, if you knew the dear old soul as I do, with her rheumatism, and her seventy-six years, and her impeccable, lifelong respectability, is as much as to say, impossible! For the convenience of any possible readers, I will tell her story for her, as nearly as possible in her own words, without quotation marks....

I HAD BEEN living in Phillipsbourg about two years; perhaps slightly longer [said Mrs. Du Chaillu] when one morning I had occasion to go into my husband's study, or office. Monsieur Du Chaillu— as he was generally called, of course, even though he was a clergyman of the Church of England— was, at the moment of my arrival, opening one of the two "strong-boxes," or old-fashioned iron safes which he had standing side by side, and in which he kept his own money and the various parish funds of which he had charge.

The occasion of my going into his office, where he received the parishoners— you know in these West Indian parishes the Black People come in streams to consult "Gahd's An'inted" about every conceivable matter from a family row to a stolen papaya— was on account of Julie. Julie was a very good and reliable servant, a young woman whose health was not very good, and whom I was keeping in one of the spare-rooms of our house. The rectory was a large residence, just next-door to the Government House, and poor Julie did better, we thought, inside than in one of the servant's rooms in the yard. Every day I would give Julie a little brandy. She had come for her brandy a few minutes before— it was about 4:30 in the afternoon— and I discovered that I would have to get a fresh bottle. Monsieur Du Chaillu was in the office and had the key of the big sideboard, and I had stepped in to get the key from him.

As I say, he was just opening one of the safes.

I said: "Placide, what are you doing?" It was one of those meaningless questions. I could see clearly what he was doing. He was opening his safe, the one in which he kept his own private belongings, and I need not have asked so obvious a question.

My husband straightened up, however, not annoyed, you understand, but somewhat surprized, because I never entered his office as a rule, and remarked that he was getting some money out because he had a bill to pay that afternoon.

I asked him for the key to the sideboard and came and stood beside him as he reached down into the safe, which was the kind that opened with a great heavy lid on the top, like a cigar-box, or the cover for a cistern. He reached into his pocket with his left hand after the sideboard key, his right hand full of currency, and I looked into the safe. There on top lay a paper which I took to be a kind of promissory note. I read it, hastily.

I was his wife. There was, I conceived, nothing secret about it.

"What is this, Placide?" I enquired.

My husband handed me the key of the sideboard.

"What is what, my dear Minerva?" he asked.

"This note, or whatever it is. It seems as though you had loaned three hundred dollars a good while ago, and never got it back."

"That is correct," said my husband. "I have never felt that I wished to push the matter." He picked up the note with his now free left hand, in a ruminating kind of manner, and I saw there was another note underneath. I picked that one up myself, my husband making no objection to my doing so, and glanced through it. That, too, was for three hundred dollars. Both were dated between seventeen and eighteen years previously, that is, in the year 1863, although they were of different months and days, and both were signed by men at that time living in Phillipsbourg, both prosperous men; one a white gentleman-planter in a small way; the other a colored man with a not very good reputation, but one who had prospered and was accounted well-to-do.

Well, my husband stood there with one note in his hand, and I stood beside him, holding the other. I did a rough sum in mental arithmetic. The notes were "demand" notes, at eight per cent, simple interest, representing, the two together, six hundred dollars. Eighteen years of interest, at eight per cent added on, it seemed to me, would cause these notes to amount to a great deal more than twice six hundred dollars, something around fifteen hundred, in fact. We were far from rich!

"But, my dear Placide, you should collect these," I cried.

"I have never wished to press them," replied my husband.

"Allow me, if you please, to take them," I begged him.

"Do as you wish, Minerva my dear," replied Monsieur Du Chaillu. "But, I beg of you, no lawsuits!"

"Very well," said I, and, carrying the two notes, walked out of the office to get Julie her brandy, out of the sideboard in the dining room.

I will admit to you, Mr. Canevin, that I was a little put out about my dear husband's carelessness in connection with those notes. At the same time, I could not avoid seeing very clearly that the notes, if still collectible, constituted a kind of windfall, as you say in the United States— it has to do with a variety of apple, does it not?— and I decided at once to set about a kind of investigation.

As soon as I had supplied Julie with the brandy which Dr. Duchesne had prescribed for her, I sent our house-boy after Monsieur Henkes, the notary of our town of Phillipsbourg. Monsieur Henkes came within the hour— he stayed for tea, I remember— and he assured me that the notes, not yet being twenty years old, were still collectible. I placed them in his hands, and paid him, in advance, as the custom is on St. Martin, and, I daresay, in Curaçoa, and the Other Dutch possessions, his fee of fifty dollars for collection, instructing him that it was my husband's desire that there should be no actual lawsuit.

I will shorten my story as much as possible, by telling you that the note which had been given by the gentleman-planter was paid, in six months, in two equal installments, and, with my husband's permission, I invested the money in some shares in one of our St. Martin Salt-Ponds,— salt, you know, is the chief export from St. Martin.

The other note, the one which had been given by the colored man, Armand Dubois, did not go through so easily. Here in the West Indies, as you have surely observed, our "colored" people, as distinct from the Black laboring class, are, commonly, estimable persons, who conduct themselves like us Caucasians. Dubois, however, was exceptional. He was only about one-quarter African— a quadroon, or thereabouts. But his leanings, as sometimes happens, were to the Black side of his heredity. Many persons in Phillipsbourg regarded him as a rascal, a person of no character at all. It seems he had heard, far back, in the days when my husband accommodated his friend, the planter, of that transaction, and had come almost at once to ask for a similar accommodation. That is why the two notes were so nearly of the same date, and perhaps it accounts for the fact that the two notes were both for three hundred dollars. Negroes, and those persons of mixed blood whose Black side predominates, are not very inventive. It would be quite characteristic for such a person to ask for the same sum as had been given to the former applicant.

Dubois made a great pother about paying. Of this I heard only rumors, of course. Monsieur Henkes did not trouble us in the matter, once the collection of the notes had been placed in his hands. It was, of course, a perfectly clear case. The note had been signed by Dubois, and it had more than two years to run before it would be outlawed,— "limited" is, I believe, the legal term. So Armand Dubois paid, as he was well able to do, but, as I say, with a very bad grace. Presumably he expected never to pay. The impudence of the man!

SHORTLY after I had placed the notes in the hands of Monsieur Henkes for collection, Julie came to me one afternoon, quite gray in the face, as negroes look when they are badly frightened. On St. Martin, perhaps yon know, Mr. Canevin, servants have a custom similar to what I have read about in your South. That is to say, they invariably address their mistresses as "Miss," with the Christian name. Why, I can not say. It is their custom. Julie came to me, as I say, very frightened, very much upset,— quite terrified, in fact.

She said to me: "Miss Minerva, on no account, ma'am, mus' yo' go to de door, if yo' please, ma'am. One Armand Dubois come, ma'am, an' is even now cloimbing de step of de gol'ry. Hoide yo'self, ma'am, I beg of yo', in de name of Gahd!"

Julie's distress and state of fright, which the girl could not conceal, impressed me more than her words. I said: "Julie, go to the door yourself. Say, please, to this Dubois, that I have nothing to say to him. For anything whatever, he must address himself to Monsieur Henkes."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Julie, and almost pushed me into my bedroom and shut the door smartly behind me. I stood there, and listened, as Dubois, who had now mounted the gallery steps, knocked, very truculently, it seemed to me,—the creature had no manners,— on the door. I could hear him ask for me, and the murmur of Julie's voice as she delivered my message. Dubois was reluctant to leave, it seemed. He stood and parleyed, but forcing his way into a house like the rectory of the English Church was beyond him, and at last he went. Several other persons, black fellows, Julie told me, had accompanied him, for what purpose I can not imagine,— it was most unusual that he should come to trouble me at all,—and these all walked down the street, as I could see through the slanted jalousies of my bedroom window, Dubois gesticulating and orating to his followers.

Julie told me something else, too,— something which quite made my blood run cold. Armand Dubois, said Julie, had, half-concealed in his hand, as he stood talking to her, a small vial. Julie was sure it contained vitriol. I was almost afraid to venture out to the street after that, and it was a long time before I recovered from the shock of it. Vitriol,— think of it, Mr. Canevin!— if indeed that were what he had in the vial; and what else could he have had?

Of course, I did not dare tell my husband. It would have distressed that dear, kind man most atrociously; and besides, the collection of the notes was, so to speak, a venture of mine, carried out, if not exactly against his will, at least without any enthusiasm on his part. So I kept quiet, and commanded Julie to say nothing whatever about it. I was sure, too, that even a person like Armand Dubois would, in a short time, get over the condition of rage in which Monsieur Henkes' visit to him must have left him to induce him to come to me at all. That, or something similar, actually proved to be the case. I had no further annoyance from Dubois, and in the course of a few weeks, probably pressed by Monsieur Henkes, he settled the note, paying seven hundred and twenty-four dollars, to be exact, with seventeen years and eight months' interest at eight per cent.

Of course, Mr. Canevin, all that portion of the story, except, perhaps, for Armand Dubois ' unpleasant visit, is merely commonplace,— the mere narrative of the collection of two demand-notes. Note, though, what followed !

IT WAS, perhaps, two months after the day when I had gone into my husband's office and discovered those notes, and about a month after Dubois had paid what he owed Monsieur Du Chaillu, that I had gone to bed, a trifle earlier, perhaps, than usual,— about half-past nine, to be exact. My aunt was staying with us in the rectory at the time, and she was far from well, and I had been reading to her and fanning her, and I was somewhat tired. I fell asleep, I suppose, immediately after retiring.

I awakened, and found myself sitting bolt-upright in my bed, and the clock in the town was striking twelve. I counted the strokes. As I finished, and the bell ceased its striking, I felt, rather than saw,— for I was looking, in an abstracted kind of fashion, straight before me, my elbows on my knees, in a sitting posture, as I have said,— something at the left, just outside the mosquito-netting. There was a dim night-light, such as I always kept, in the far comer of the room, on the edge of my bureau, and by its light the objects in the room were faintly visible through the white net.

I turned, suddenly, under the impulse of that feeling, and there, Mr. Canevin, just beside the bed, and almost pressing against the net though not quite touching it, was a face. The face was that of a mulatto, and as I looked at it, frozen, speechless, I observed that it was Armand Dubois, and that he was glaring at me, with an expression of the most horrible malignancy that could be imagined. The lips were drawn back,— like an animal's, Mr. Canevin,— but the most curious, and perhaps the most terrifying, aspect of the situation, was the fact that the face was on a level with the bed, that is, the chin seemed to rest against the edge of the mattress, so that, as it occurred to me, the man must be sitting on the floor, his legs placed under the bed, so as to bring his horrible, leering face in that position I have described.

I tried to scream, and my voice was utterly dried up. Then, moved by what impulse I can not describe, I plunged toward the face, tore loose the netting on that side, and looked directly at it.

Mr. Canevin, there was nothing there, but, as I moved abruptly toward it, I saw a vague, dim hand and arm swing up from below, and there was the strangest sensation! It was as though, over my face and shoulders and breast, hot and stinging drops had been cast. There was, for just a passing instant, the most dreadful burning, searing sensation, and then it was gone. I half sat, half lay, a handful of the netting in my hands, where I had torn it loose from where it had been tucked under the edge of the mattress, and there was nothing there,— nothing whatever; I passed my hand over my face and neck, but there was nothing ; no burns,— nothing.

I do not know how I managed to do it, but I climbed out of the bed, and looked underneath. Mr. Canevin, there was nothing, no man, nor anything, there. I walked over and turned up the night-light, and looked all about the room. Nothing. The jalousies were all fastened, as usual. The door was locked. There were no other means of ingress or egress.

I went back to bed, convinced that I must have been dreaming or sleepwalking, or something of the sort, although I had never walked in my sleep, and almost never dreamed or remembered any dream. I could not sleep, and it occurred to me that I would do well to get up again, put on my bathrobe, and go out to the dining room for a drink of water. The water stood, in earthenware "gugglets," just beside a doorway that led out to a small gallery at the side of the house,— which stood on the comer,— in the wind, so as to keep cool. You've seen that, a good many times, even here, of course. On St. Martin we had no ice-plant in those days, nor yet, so far as I know, and everybody kept the drinking-water in gugglets and set the gugglets where the wind would blow on them and cool the water.

I took a glass from the sideboard, filled it, and drank the water. Then

I opened the door just beside me, and stood looking out for a few minutes.

The town was absolutely silent at that hour. There was no moon, and the streets were lighted just as they were here in Frederiksted before we had electricity, with occasional hurricane lanterns at the corners. The one on our comer was burning steadily, and except for the howling of a dog somewhere in the town, everything was absolutely quiet and peaceful, Mr. Canevin.

I went back to bed, and fell asleep immediately. At any rate I have no recollection of lying there hoping for sleep.

Then, immediately afterward, it seemed, I was awakened a second time. This time I was not sitting up when I came to my waking senses, but it did not take me very long to sit up, I can assure you! For the most extraordinary thing was happening in my bedroom.

In the exact center of the room there stood a round, mahogany table. Around and around that table, a small goat was running, from right to left,— that is, as I looked toward the table, the goat was running away from me around to the right, and coming back at the left. I could hear the clatter of its little, hard hoofs on the pitch-pine floor, occasionally muffled in the queerest, eeriest way,—it sounds like nothing in the telling, of course,— when the goat would step on the small rug on which the table stood. I could see its great, shining eyes, like green moons, every time it came around to the left.

I watched the thing, fascinated, and a slow horror began to grow upon me. I think I swooned, for the last thing I remember is my senses leaving me, but it must have been a very light fainting fit, Mr. Canevin, for I aroused myself, and the room was absolutely silent.

I was shaking all over as though I had been having an attack of the quartan ague, but I managed once more to slip under the netting, reach for my bathrobe, and go over and turn up the night-light. I observed that the door of my bedroom was standing open, and I went through it and back to the dining room, as I had done the first time. I felt very uncomfortable, shaken and nervous, as you may well imagine, but there in the next room I knew my husband was sleeping, and my poor old aunt on the other side of the hall, and I plucked up my courage. I knew that he would never be afraid, of anything, man or— anything else, Mr. Canevin!

I found that I must have been more upset than I had supposed, for the door out onto the small gallery from the dining room, where I had stood the other time, was unfastened, and half open, and I realized that I had left it in that condition, and I saw clearly that the young goat had simply wandered in. Goats and dogs and other animals roamed the streets there, even pigs, much as they do here, although all the islands have police regulations, and on St. Martin these were not enforced nearly as well as they are here on St. Croix. So I laughed at myself and my fears, although I think I had a right at least to be startled by that goat dancing about my bedroom table, and I fastened the door leading outside, and came back into my bedroom, and fastened that door too, and went back to bed once more. My last waking sensation was of that dog, or some other, howling, somewhere in the town.

Well, that was destined to be a bad night, Mr. Canevin. I remember one of my husband's sermons, Mr. Canevin, on the text: "A Good Day." I do not remember what portion of the Scriptures it comes from, but I remember the text, and the sermon too. Afterward, it occurred to me that that night, that "bad night," was the direct opposite; a mere whimsy of mine, but I always think of that night as "the bad night," somehow.

For, Mr. Canevin, that was not all. No. I had noticed the time before I returned to bed that time, and it was a little past one o'clock. I had slept for an hour, you see, after the first interruption.

When I was awakened again it was five o'clock in the morning. Remember, I had, deliberately, and in a state of full wakefulness, closed and fastened both the door from that side gallery into the dining room, and the bedroom door. The jalousies had not been touched at any time, and all of them were fastened.

I awoke with the most terrible impression of evil and horror: it was as though I stood alone in the midst of a hostile world, bent upon my destruction. It was the most dreadful feeling,— a feeling of complete, of unrecoverable, depression.

And there, coming through my bedroom door,— through the door, Mr. Canevin, which remained shut and locked,— was Armand Dubois. He was a tall, slim man, and he stalked in, looking taller and slimmer than ever, because he was wearing one of those old-fashioned, long, white night-shirts, which fell to his ankles. He walked, as I say, through the closed door, and straight toward me, and, Mr. Canevin, the expression on his face was the expression of one of the demons from hell.

I half sat up, utterly horrified, incapable of speech, or even of thought beyond that numbing horror, and as I sat up, Armand Dubois seemed to pause. His advance slowed abruptly, the expression of malignant hatred seemed to become intensified, and then he slowly turned to his left, and, keeping his face turned toward me, walked, very slowly now, straight through the side-wall of my bedroom, and was gone, Mr. Canevin.

Then I screamed, again and again, and Placide, my husband, bursting the door, rushed in, and over his shoulder and through the broken door I could see Julie's terrified face, and my poor old aunt, a Shetland shawl huddled about her poor shoulders, coming gropingly out of her bedroom.

That was the last I remembered then. When I came to, it was broad daylight and past seven, and Dr. Duchesne was there, holding his fingers against my wrist, counting the pulse, I suppose, and there was a strong taste of brandy in my mouth.

They made me stay in bed all through the morning, and Dr. Duchesne would not allow me to talk. I had wanted to tell Placide and him all that had happened to me through the night, but at two o'clock in the afternoon, when I was allowed to get up at last, after having eaten some broth, I had had time to think, and I never mentioned what I had heard and seen that night.

No, Mr. Canevin, my dear husband never heard it, never knew what had cast me into that condition of "nerves." After he died I told Dr. Duchesne, and Dr. Duchesne made no particular comment. Like all doctors, and the clergy here in the West Indies, such matters were an old story to him!

It was fortunate for us that he happened to be passing the house and came in because he saw the lights, and could hear Julie weeping hysterically. He realized that something extraordinary had happened, or was happening, in the rectory, and that he might be needed.

He was on his way home from the residence of Armand Dubois, there in the town. Dubois had been attacked by some obscure tropical fever, just before midnight, and had died at five o'clock that morning, Mr. Canevin.

Dr. Duchesne told me, later, about Dubois' case, which interested him very much from his professional viewpoint. Dr. Duchesne said that there were still strange fevers, not only in obscure places in the world, but right here in our civilized islands,— think of it! He said that he could not tell so much as the name of the fever that had taken Dubois away.

But he said the most puzzling of the symptoms was, that just at midnight Dubois had fallen into a state of coma,— unconsciousness, you know,— which had lasted only a minute or two; quite extraordinary, the doctor said, and that a little later, soon after one o'clock, he had shut his eyes, and quieted down,—he had been raving, muttering and tossing about, as fever patients do, you know, and that there had come over his face the most wicked and dreadful grimace, and that he had drummed with his fingers against his own forehead, an irregular kind of drumming, a beat, the doctor said, not unlike the scampering footfalls of some small, four-footed animal....

He died, as I told you, at five, quite suddenly, and Dr. Duchesne said that just as he was going there came over his face the most horrible, the most malignant expression that he had ever seen. He said it caused him to shudder, although he knew, of course, that it was only the muscles of the man's face contracting ,— rigor mortis, it is called, I think, Mr. Canevin....

Dr. Duchesne said, too, that there was a scientific word which described the situation,— that is, the possible connection between Dubois as he lay dying with that queer fever, and the appearances to me. It was not "telepathy," Mr. Canevin, of that I am certain. I wish I could remember the word, but I fear it has escaped my poor old memory!

"WAS IT 'projection?' " I asked Mrs. Du Chaillu.

"I think that was it, Mr. Canevin," said Mrs. Du Chaillu, and nodded her head at me, wisely.

________________

14: The Trap

Henry S. Whitehead

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror March 1932

IT was on a certain Thursday morning in December that the whole thing began with that unaccountable motion I thought I saw in my antique Copenhagen mirror. Something, it seemed to me, stirred — something reflected in the glass, though I was alone in my quarters. I paused and looked intently, then, deciding that the effect must be a pure illusion, resumed the interrupted brushing of my hair.

I had discovered the old mirror, covered with dust and cobwebs, in an out-building of an abandoned estate house in Santa Cruz’s sparsely settled Northside territory, and had brought it to the United States from the Virgin Islands. The venerable glass was dim from more than two hundred years’ exposure to a tropical climate, and the graceful ornamentation along the top of the gilt frame had been badly smashed. I had had the detached pieces set back into the frame before placing it in storage with my other belongings.

Now, several years later, I was staying half as a guest and half as a tutor at the private school of my old friend Browne on a windy Connecticut hillside—occupying an unused wing in one of the dormitories, where I had two rooms and a hallway to myself. The old mirror, stowed securely in mattresses, was the first of my possessions to be unpacked on my arrival; and I had set it up majestically in the living-room, on top of an old rosewood console which had belonged to my great-grandmother.

The door of my bedroom was just opposite that of the living-room, with a hallway between; and I had noticed that by looking into my chiffonier glass I could see the larger mirror through the two doorways—which was exactly like glancing down an endless, though diminishing, corridor. On this Thursday morning I thought I saw a curious suggestion of motion down that normally empty corridor— but, as I have said, soon dismissed the notion.

WHEN I reached the diningroom I found everyone complaining of the cold, and learned that the school’s heating-plant was temporarily out of order. Being especially sensitive to low temperatures, I was myself an acute sufferer; and at once decided not to brave any freezing schoolroom that day. Accordingly I invited my class to come over to my living-room for an informal session around my grate-fire— a suggestion which the boys received enthusiastically.

After the session one of the boys, Robert Grandison, asked if he might remain; since he had no appointment for the second morning period. I told him to stay, and welcome. He sat down to study in front of the fireplace in a comfortable chair.

It was not long, however, before Robert moved to another chair somewhat farther away from the freshly replenished blaze, this change bringing him directly opposite the old mirror. From my own chair in another part of the room I noticed how fixedly he began to look at the dim, cloudy glass, and, wondering what so greatly interested him, was reminded of my own experience earlier that morning. As time passed he continued to gaze, a slight frown knitting his brows.

At last I quietly asked him what had attracted his attention. Slowly, and still wearing the puzzled frown, he looked over and replied rather cautiously:

“It’s the corrugations in the glass— or whatever they are, Mr. Canevin. I was noticing how they all seem to run from a certain point. Look—I’ll show you what I mean.”

The boy jumped up, went over to the mirror, and placed his finger on a point near its lower left-hand corner.

“It’s right here, sir,” he explained, turning to look toward me and keeping his finger on the chosen spot.

His muscular action in turning may have pressed his finger against the glass. Suddenly he withdrew his hand as though with some slight effort, and with a faintly muttered “Ouch.” Then he looked back at the glass in obvious mystification.

“What happened?” I asked, rising and approaching.

“Why— it—” He seemed embarrassed. “It— I— felt— well, as though it were pulling my finger into it. Seems— er— perfectly foolish, sir, but— well— it was a most peculiar sensation.” Robert had an unusual vocabulary for his fifteen years.

I came over and had him show me the exact spot he meant.

“You’ll think I’m rather a fool, sir,” he said shamefacedly, “but— well, from right here I can’t be absolutely sure. From the chair it seemed to be clear enough.”

NOW thoroughly interested, I sat down in the chair Robert had occupied and looked at the spot he selected on the mirror. Instantly the thing “jumped out at me.” Unmistakably, from that particular angle, all the many whorls in the ancient glass appeared to converge like a large number of spread strings held in one hand and radiating out in streams.

Getting up and crossing to the mirror, I could no longer see the curious spot. Only from certain angles, apparently, was it visible. Directly viewed, that portion of the mirror did not even give back a normal reflection—for I could not see my face in it. Manifestly I had a minor puzzle on my hands.

Presently the school gong sounded, and the fascinated Robert Grandison departed hurriedly, leaving me alone with my odd little problem in optics. I raised several window-shades, crossed the hallway, and sought for the spot in the chiffonier mirror’s reflection. Finding it readily, I looked very intently and thought I again detected something of the “motion.” I craned my neck, and at last, at a certain angle of vision, the thing again “jumped out at me.”

The vague “motion” was now positive and definite— an appearance of torsional movement, or of whirling; much like a minute yet intense whirlwind or waterspout, or a huddle of autumn leaves dancing circularly in an eddy of wind along a level lawn. It was, like the earth’s, a double motion— around and around, and at the same time inward, as if the whorls poured themselves endlessly toward some point inside the glass. Fascinated, yet realizing that the thing must be an illusion, I grasped an impression of quite distinct suction , and thought of Robert’s embarrassed explanation: “I felt as though it were pulling my finger into it.”

A kind of slight chill ran suddenly up and down my backbone. There was something here distinctly worth looking into. And as the idea of investigation came to me, I recalled the rather wistful expression of Robert Grandison when the gong called him to class. I remembered how he had looked back over his shoulder as he walked obediently out into the hallway, and resolved that he should be included in whatever analysis I might make of this little mystery.

EXCITING events connected with that same Robert, however, were soon to chase all thoughts of the mirror from my consciousness for a time. I was away all that afternoon, and did not return to the school until the five-fifteen “Call-over”— a general assembly at which the boys’ attendance was compulsory. Dropping in at this function with the idea of picking Robert up for a session with the mirror, I was astonished and pained to find him absent— a very unusual and unaccountable thing in his case. That evening Browne told me that the boy had actually disappeared, a search in his room, in the gymnasium, and in all other accustomed places being unavailing, though all his belongings —including his outdoor clothing— were in their proper places.

He had not been encountered on the ice or with any of the hiking groups that afternoon, and telephone calls to all the school-catering merchants of the neighborhood were in vain. There was, in short, no record of his having been seen since the end of the lesson periods at two-fifteen; when he had turned up the stairs toward his room in Dormitory Number Three.

When the disappearance was fully realized, the resulting sensation was tremendous throughout the school. Browne, as headmaster, had to bear the brunt of it; and such an unprecedented occurrence in his wellregulated, highly-organized institution left him quite bewildered. It was learned that Robert had not run away to his home in western Pennsylvania, nor did any of the searching-parties of boys and masters find any trace of him in the snowy countryside around the school. So far as could be seen, he had simply vanished.

Robert’s parents arrived on the afternoon of the second day after his disappearance. They took their trouble quietly, though, of course, they were staggered by this unexpected disaster. Browne looked ten years older for it, but there was absolutely nothing that could be done. By the fourth day the case had settled down in the opinion of the school as an insoluble mystery. Mr. and Mrs. Grandison went reluctantly back to their home, and on the following morning the ten days’ Christmas vacation began.

Boys and masters departed in anything but the usual holiday spirit; and Browne and his wife were left, along with the servants, as my only fellow-occupants of the big place. Without the masters and boys it seemed a very hollow shell indeed.

THAT afternoon I sat in front of my grate-fire thinking about Robert’s disappearance and evolving all sorts of fantastic theories to account for it. By evening I had acquired a bad headache, and ate a light supper accordingly. Then, after a brisk walk around the massed buildings, I returned to my living-room and took up the burden of thought once more.

A little after ten o’clock I awakened in my armchair, stiff and chilled, from a doze during which I had let the fire go out. I was physically uncomfortable, yet mentally aroused by a peculiar sensation of expectancy and possible hope. Of course it had to do with the problem that was harassing me. For I had started from that inadvertent nap with a curious, persistent idea— the odd idea that a tenuous, hardly recognizable Robert Grandison had been trying desperately to communicate with me. I finally went to bed with one conviction unreasoningly strong in my mind. Somehow I was sure that young Robert Grandison was still alive.

That I should be receptive of such a notion will not seem strange to those who know of my long residence in the West Indies and my close contact with unexplained happenings there. It will not seem strange, either, that I fell asleep with an urgent desire to establish some sort of mental communication with the missing boy. Even the most prosaic scientists affirm, with Freud, Jung, and Adler, that the subconscious mind is most open to external impression in sleep; though such impressions are seldom carried over intact into the waking state.

Going a step further and granting the existence of telepathic forces, it follows that such forces must act most strongly on a sleeper; so that if I were ever to get a definite message from Robert, it would be during a period of profoundest slumber. Of course, I might lose the message in waking; but my aptitude for retaining such things has been sharpened by types of mental discipline picked up in various obscure corners of the globe.

I MUST have dropped asleep instantaneously, and from the vividness of my dreams and the absence of wakeful intervals I judge that my sleep was a very deep one. It was six forty-five when I awakened, and there still lingered with me certain impressions which I knew were carried over from the world of somnolent cerebration. Filling my mind was the vision of Robert Grandison strangely transformed to a boy of a dull greenish dark-blue color; Robert desperately endeavoring to communicate with me by means of speech, yet finding some almost insuperable difficulty in so doing. A wall of curious spatial separation seemed to stand between him and me— a mysterious, invisible wall which completely baffled us both.

I had seen Robert as though at some distance, yet queerly enough he seemed at the same time to be just beside me. He was both larger and smaller than in real life, his apparent size varying directly, instead of inversely, with the distance as he advanced and retreated in the course of conversation. That is, he grew larger instead of smaller to my eye when he stepped away or backwards, and vice versa; as if the laws of perspective in his case had been wholly reversed. His aspect was misty and uncertain— as if he lacked sharp or permanent outlines; and the anomalies of his coloring and clothing baffled me utterly at first.

At some point in my dream Robert’s vocal efforts had finally crystallized into audible speech— albeit speech of an abnormal thickness and dullness. I could not for a time understand anything he said, and even in the dream racked my brain for a clue to where he was, what he wanted to tell, and why his utterance was so clumsy and unintelligible. Then little by little I began to distinguish words and phrases, the very first of which sufficed to throw my dreaming self into the wildest excitement and to establish a certain mental connection which had previously refused to take conscious form because of the utter incredibility of what it implied.

I DO not know how long I listened to those halting words amidst my deep slumber, but hours must have passed while the strangely remote speaker struggled on with his tale. There was revealed to me such a circumstance as I cannot hope to make others believe without the strongest corroborative evidence, yet which I was quite ready to accept as truth— both in the dream and after waking— because of my formed contacts with uncanny things. The boy was obviously watching my face— mobile in receptive sleep— as he choked along; for about the time I began to comprehend him, his own expression brightened and gave signs of gratitude and hope.

Any attempt to hint at Robert’s message, as it lingered in my ears after a sudden awakening in the cold, brings this narrative to a point where I must choose my words with the greatest care. Everything involved is so difficult to record that one tends to flounder helplessly. I have said that the revelation established in my mind a certain connection which reason had not allowed me to formulate consciously before. This connection, I need no longer hesitate to hint, had to do with the old Copenhagen mirror whose suggestions of motion had so impressed me on the morning of the disappearance, and whose whorl-like contours and apparent illusions of suction had later exerted such a disquieting fascination on both Robert and me.

Resolutely, though my outer consciousness had previously rejected what my intuition would have liked to imply, it could reject that stupendous conception no longer. What was fantasy in the tale of “Alice” now came to me as a grave and immediate reality. That looking-glass had indeed possessed a malign, abnormal suction; and the struggling speaker in my dream made clear the extent to which it violated all the known precedents of human experience and all the age-old laws of our three sane dimensions. It was more than a mirror— it was a gate; a trap; a link with spatial recesses not meant for the denizens of our visible universe, and realizable only in terms of the most intricate non-Euclidean mathematics. And in some outrageous fashion Robert Grandison had passed out of our ken into the glass and was there immured, waiting for release.

IT is significant that upon awakening I harbored no genuine doubt of the reality of the revelation. That I had actually held conversation with a trans-dimensional Robert, rather than evoked the whole episode from my broodings about his disappearance and about the old illusions of the mirror, was as certain to my inmost instincts as any of the instinctive certainties commonly recognized as valid.

The tale thus unfolded to me was of the most incredibly bizarre character. As had been clear on the morning of his disappearance, Robert was intensely fascinated by the ancient mirror. All through the hours of school, he had it in mind to come back to my living-room and examine it further. When he did arrive, after the close of the school day, it was somewhat later than two-twenty, and I was absent in town. Finding me out and knowing that I would not mind, he had come into my living-room and gone straight to the mirror; standing before it and studying the place where, as we had noted, the whorls appeared to converge.

Then, quite suddenly, there had come to him an overpowering urge to place his hand upon this whorl-center. Almost reluctantly, against his better judgment, he had done so; and upon making the contact had felt at once the strange, almost painful suction which had perplexed him that morning. Immediately thereafter— quite without warning, but with a wrench which seemed to twist and tear every bone and muscle in his body and to bulge and press and cut at every nerve— he had been abruptly drawn through and found himself inside.

Once through, the excruciatingly painful stress upon his entire system was suddenly released. He felt, he said, as though he had just been born— a feeling that made itself evident every time he tried to do anything; walk, stoop, turn his head, or utter speech. Everything about his body seemed a misfit.

These sensations wore off after a long while, Robert’s body becoming an organized whole rather than a number of protesting parts. Of all the forms of expression, speech remained the most difficult; doubtless because it is complicated, bringing into play a number of different organs, muscles, and tendons. Robert’s feet, on the other hand, were the first members to adjust themselves to the new conditions within the glass.

DURING the morning hours I rehearsed the whole reason-defying problem; correlating everything I had seen and heard, dismissing the natural scepticism of a man of sense, and scheming to devise possible plans for Robert’s release from his incredible prison. As I did so a number of originally perplexing points became clear— or at least, clearer— to me.

There was, for example, the matter of Robert’s coloring. His face and hands, as I have indicated, were a kind of dull greenish dark-blue; and I may add that his familiar blue Norfolk jacket had turned to a pale lemon-yellow while his trousers remained a neutral gray as before. Reflecting on this after waking, I found the circumstance closely allied to the reversal of perspective which made Robert seem to grow larger when receding and smaller when approaching. Here, too, was a physical reversal— for every detail of his coloring in the unknown dimension was the exact reverse or complement of the corresponding color detail in normal life. In physics the typical complementary colors are blue and yellow, and red and green. These pairs are opposites, and when mixed yield gray. Robert’s natural color was a pinkish-buff, the opposite of which is the greenish-blue I saw. His blue coat 'had become yellow, while the gray trousers remained gray. This latter point baffled me until I remembered that gray is itself a mixture of opposites. There is no opposite for gray— or rather, it is its own opposite.

Another clarified point was that pertaining to Robert’s curiously dulled and thickened speech— as well as to the general awkwardness and sense of misfit bodily parts of which he had complained. This, at the outset, was a puzzle indeed; though after long thought the clue occurred to me. Here again was the same reversal which affected perspective and coloration. Anyone in the fourth dimension must necessarily he reversed in just this way— hands and feet, as well as colors and perspectives, being changed about. It would be the same with all the other dual organs, such as nostrils, ears, and eyes. Thus Robert had been talking with a reversed tongue, teeth, vocal cords, and kindred speech-apparatus; so that his difficulties of utterance were little to be wondered at.

AS the morning wore on, my sense of the stark reality and maddening urgency of the dream-disclosed situation increased rather than decreased. More and more I felt that something must be done, yet realized that I could not seek advice or aid. Such a story as mine— a conviction based upon mere dreaming— could not conceivably bring me anything but ridicule or suspicions as to my mental state. And what, indeed, could I do, aided or unaided, with as little working data as my nocturnal impressions had provided? I must, I finally recognized, have more information before I could even think of a possible plan for releasing Robert. This could come only through the receptive conditions of sleep, and it heartened me to reflect that according to every probability my telepathic contact would be resumed the moment I fell into deep slumber again.

I accomplished sleeping that afternoon, after a midday dinner at which, through rigid self-control, I succeeded in concealing from Browne and his wife the tumultuous thoughts that crashed through my mind. Hardly had my eyes closed when a dim telepathic image began to appear; and I soon realized to my infinite excitement that it was identical with what I had seen before. If anything, it was more distinct; and when it began to speak I seemed able to grasp a greater proportion of the words.

During this sleep I found most of the morning’s deductions confirmed, though the interview was mysteriously cut off long prior to my awakening. Robert had seemed apprehensive just before communication ceased, but had already told me that in his strange fourthdimensional prison colors and spatial relationships were indeed reversed— black being white, distance increasing apparent size, and so on.

He had also intimated that, notwithstanding his possession of full physical form and sensations, most human vital properties seemed curiously suspended. Nutriment, for example, was quite unnecessary— a phenomenon really more singular than the omnipresent reversal of objects and attributes, since the latter was a reasonable and mathematically indicated state of things. Another significant piece of information was that the only exit from the glass to the world was the entrance-way, and that this was permanently barred and impenetrably sealed, so far as egress was concerned.

That night I had another visitation from Robert; nor did such impressions, received at odd intervals while I slept receptively-minded, cease during the entire period of his incarceration. His efforts to communicate were desperate and often pitiful; for at times the telepathic bond would weaken, while at other times fatigue, excitement, or fear of interruption would hamper and thicken his speech.

I MAY as well narrate as a continuous whole all that Robert told me throughout the whole series of transient mental contacts— perhaps supplementing it at certain points with facts directly related after his release. The telepathic information was fragmentary and often nearly inarticulate, but I studied it over and over during the waking intervals of three intense days; classifying and cogitating with feverish diligence, since it was all that I had to go upon if the boy were to be brought back into our world.

The fourth-dimensional region in which Robert found himself was not, as in scientific romance, an unknown and infinite realm of strange sights and fantastic denizens; but was rather a projection of certain limited parts of our own terrestrial sphere within an alien and normally inaccessible aspect or direction of space. It was a curiously fragmentary, intangible, and heterogeneous world—a series of apparently dissociated scenes merging indistinctly one into the other; their constituent details having an obviously different status from that of an object drawn into the ancient mirror as Robert had been drawn. These scenes were like dream-vistas or magic-lantern images —elusive visual impressions of which the boy was not really a part, but which formed a sort of panoramic background or ethereal environment against which or amidst which he moved.

He could not touch any of the parts of these scenes— walls, trees, furniture, and the like— but whether this was because they were truly non-material, or because they always receded at his approach, he was singularly unable to determine. Everything seemed fluid, mutable, and unreal. When he walked, it appeared to be on whatever lower surface the visible scene might have— floor, path, greensward, or such; but upon analysis he always found that the contact was an illusion. There was never any difference in the resisting force met by his feet— and by his hands when he would stoop experimentally— no matter what changes of apparent surface might be involved. He could not describe this foundation or limiting plane on which he walked as anything more definite than a virtually abstract pressure balancing his gravity. Of definite tactile distinctiveness it had none, and supplementing it there seemed to be a kind of restricted levitational force which accomplished transfers of altitude. He could never actually climb stairs, yet would gradually walk up from a lower level to a higher.

PASSAGE from one definite scene to another involved a sort of gliding through a region of shadow or blurred focus where the details of each scene mingled curiously. All the vistas were distinguished by the absence of transient objects, and the indefinite or ambiguous appearance of such semitransient objects as furniture or details of vegetation. The lighting of every scene was diffuse and perplexing, and of course the scheme of reversed colors— bright red grass, yellow sky with confused black and gray cloud-forms, white tree-trunks, and green brick walls— gave to everything an air of unbelievable grotesquerie. There was an alteration of day and night, which turned out to be a reversal of the normal hours of light and darkness at whatever point on the earth the mirror might be hanging.

This seemingly irrelevant diversity of the scenes puzzled Robert until he realized that they comprised merely such places as had been reflected for long continuous periods in the ancient glass. This also explained the odd absence of transient objects, the generally arbitrary boundaries of vision, and the fact that all exteriors were framed by the outlines of doorways or windows. The glass, it appeared, had power to store up these intangible scenes through long exposure ; though it could never absorb anything corporeally, as Robert had been absorbed, except by a very different and particular process.

But— to me at least— the most incredible aspect of the mad phenomenon was the monstrous subversion of our known laws of space involved in the relation of the various illusory scenes to the actual terrestrial regions represented. I have spoken of the glass as storing up the images of these regions, but this is really an inexact definition. In truth, each of the mirror scenes formed a true and quasi-permanent fourth-dimensional projection of the corresponding mundane region; so that whenever Robert moved to a certain part of a certain scene, as he moved into the image of my room when sending his telepathic messages, he was actually in that place itself, on earth— though under spatial conditions which cut off all sensory communication, in either direction, between him and the present tri-dimensional aspect of the place.

Theoretically speaking, a prisoner in the glass could in a few moments go anywhere on our planet— into any place, that is, which had ever been reflected in the mirror’s surface. This probably applied even to places where the mirror had not hung long enough to produce a clear illusory scene; the terrestrial region being then represented by a zone of more or less formless shadow. Outside the definite scenes was a seemingly limitless waste of neutral gray shadow about which Robert could never be certain, and into which he never dared stray far lest he become hopelessly lost to the real and mirror worlds alike.

Among the earliest particulars which Robert gave, was the fact that he was not alone in his confinement. Various others, all in antique garb, were in there with him— a corpulent middle-aged gentleman with tied queue and velvet knee-breeches who spoke English fluently though with a marked Scandinavian accent; a rather beautiful small girl with very blonde hair which appeared as glossy dark blue; two apparently mute Negroes whose features contrasted grotesquely with the pallor of their reversed-colored skins; three young men; one young woman; a very small child, almost an infant; and a lean, elderly Dane of extremely distinctive aspect and a kind of half-malign intellectuality of countenance.

This last named individual— Axel Holm, who wore the satin smallclothes, flared-skirted coat, and voluminous full-bottomed periwig of an age more than two centuries in the past— was notable among the little band as being the one responsible for the presence of them all. He it was who, skilled equally in the arts of magic and glass working, had long ago fashioned this strange dimensional prison in which himself, his slaves, and those whom he chose to invite or allure thither were immured unchangingly for as long as the mirror might endure.

HOLM was born early in the seventeenth century, and had followed with tremendous competence and success the trade of a glass-blower and molder in Copenhagen. His glass, especially in the form of large drawing-room mirrors, was always at a premium. But the same bold mind which had made him the first glazier of Europe also served to carry his interests and ambitions far beyond the sphere of mere material craftsmanship. He had studied the world around him, and chafed at the limitations of human knowledge and capability. Eventually he sought for dark ways to overcome those limitations, and gained more success than is good for any mortal.

He had aspired to enjoy something like eternity, the mirror being his provision to secure this end. Serious study of the fourth dimension was far from beginning with Einstein in our own era; and Holm, more than erudite in all the methods of his day, knew that a bodily entrance into that hidden phase of space would prevent him from dying in the ordinary physical sense. Research showed him that the principle of reflection undoubtedly forms the chief gate to all dimensions beyond our familiar three; and chance placed in his hands a small and very ancient glass whose cryptic properties he believed he could turn to advantage. Once “inside” this mirror according to the method he 'had envisaged, he felt that “life” in the sense of form and consciousness would go on virtually forever, provided the mirror could be preserved indefinitely from breakage or deterioration.

Holm made a magnificent mirror, such as would be prized and carefully preserved; and in it deftly fused the strange whorl-configured relic he had acquired. Having thus prepared his refuge and his trap, he began to plan his mode of entrance and conditions of tenancy. He would have with him both servitors and companions; and as an experimental beginning he sent before him into the glass two dependable Negro slaves brought from the West Indies. What his sensations must have been upon beholding this first concrete demonstration of his theories, only imagination can conceive.

Undoubtedly a man of his knowledge realized that absence from the outside world if deferred beyond the natural span of life of those within, must mean instant dissolution at the first attempt to return to that world. But, barring that misfortune or accidental breakage, those within would remain forever as they were at the time of entrance. They would never grow old, and would need neither food nor

TO make his prison tolerable he sent ahead of him certain books and writing materials, a chair and table of stoutest workmanship, and a few other accessories. He knew that the images which the glass would reflect or absorb would not be tangible, tout would merely extend around him like a background of dream. His own transition in 1687 was a momentous experience; and must have been attended by mixed sensations of triumph and terror. Had anything gone wrong, there were frightful possibilities of being lost in dark and inconceivable multiple dimensions.

For over fifty years he had been unable to secure any additions to the little company of himself and slaves, but later on he had perfected his telepathic method of visualizing small sections of the outside world close to the glass, and attracting certain individuals in those areas through the mirror’s strange entrance. Thus Robert, influenced into a desire to press upon the “door,” had been lured within. Such visualizations depended wholly on telepathy, since no one inside the mirror could see out into the world of men.

It was, in truth, a strange life that Holm and his company had lived inside the glass. Since the mirror had stood for fully a century with its face to the dusty stone wall of the shed where I found it, Robert was the first being to enter this limbo after all that interval. His arrival was a gala event, for he brought news of the outside world which must have been of the most startling impressiveness to the more thoughtful of those within. He, in his turn— young though he was— felt overwhelmingly the weirdness of meeting and talking with persons who had been alive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

THE deadly monotony of life for the prisoners can only be vaguely conjectured. As mentioned, its extensive spatial variety was limited to localities which had been reflected in the mirror for long periods; and many of these had become dim and strange as tropical climates had made inroads on the surface. Certain localities were bright and beautiful, and in these the company usually gathered. But no scene could be fully satisfying; since the visible objects were all unreal and intangible, and often of perplexingly indefinite outline.

When the tedious periods of darkness came, the general custom was to indulge in memories, reflections, or conversations. Each one of that strange, pathetic group had retained his or her personality unchanged and unchangeable, since becoming immune to the time effects of outside space.

The number of inanimate objects within the glass, aside from the clothing of the prisoners, was very small; being largely limited to the accessories Holm had provided for himself. The rest did without even furniture, since sleep and fatigue had vanished along with most other vital attributes. Such inorganic things as were present, seemed as exempt from decay as the living beings. The lower forms of animal life were wholly absent.

Robert derived most of his information from Herr Thiele, the gentleman who spoke English with a Scandinavian accent. This portly Dane had taken a fancy to him, and talked at considerable length. The others, too, had received him with courtesy and good-will; Holm himself, seeming well-disposed, had told him about various matters including the door of the trap.

The boy, as he told me later, was sensible enough never to attempt communication with me when Holm was nearby. Twice, while thus engaged, he had seen Holm appear; and had accordingly ceased at once. At no time could I see the world behind the mirror’s surface. Robert’s visual image, which included his bodily form and the clothing connected with it, was— like the aural image of his halting voice and like his own visualization of myself— a case of purely telepathic transmission; and did not involve true inter-dimensional sight. However, had Robert been as trained a telepathist as Holm, he might have transmitted a few strong images apart from his immediate person.

Throughout this period of revelation I had, of course, been desperately trying to devise a method for Robert’s release. On the fourth day— the ninth after the disappearance— I hit on a solution. Everything considered, my laboriously formulated process was not a very complicated one; though I could not tell beforehand how it would work, while the possibility of ruinous consequences in case of a slip was appalling. This process depended, basically, on the fact that there was no possible exit from inside the glass. If Holm and his prisoners were permanently sealed in, then release must come wholly from outside. Other considerations included the disposal of the other prisoners, if any. survived, and especially of Axel Holm. What Robert had told me of him was anything but reassuring; and I certainly did not wish him loose in my apartment, free once more to work his evil will upon the world. The telepathic messages had not made fully clear the effect of liberation on those who had entered the glass so long ago.

There was, too, a final though minor problem in case of success— that of getting Robert back into the routine of school life without having to explain the incredible. In case of failure, it was highly inadvisable to have witnesses present at the release operations— and lacking these, I simply could not attempt to relate the actual facts if I should succeed. Even to me the reality seemed a mad one whenever I let my mind turn from the data so compellingly presented in that tense series of dreams.

When I had thought these problems through as far as possible, I procured a large magnifying-glass from the school laboratory and studied minutely every square millimeter of that whorl-center which presumably marked the extent of the original ancient mirror used by Holm. Even with this aid I could not quite trace the exact boundary between the old area and the surface added by the Danish wizard; but after a long study decided on a conjectural oval boundary which I outlined very precisely with a soft blue pencil, I then made a trip to Stamford, where I procured a heavy glass-cutting tool; for my primary idea was to remove the ancient and magically potent mirror from its later setting.

MY next step was to figure out the best time of day to make the crucial experiment. I finally settled on two-thirty A.M.— both because it was a good season for uninterrupted work, and because it was the “opposite” of two-thirty P.M., the probable moment at which Robert had entered the mirror. This form of “oppositeness” may or may not have been relevant, but I knew at least that the chosen hour was as good as any—and perhaps better than most.

I finally set to work in the early morning of the eleventh day after the disappearance, having drawn all the shades of my living-room and closed and locked the door into the hallway. Following with breathless care the elliptical line I had traced, I worked around the whorl-section with my steel-wheeled cutting tool. The ancient glass, half an inch thick, crackled crisply under the firm, uniform pressure; and upon completing the circuit I cut around it a second time, crunching the roller more deeply into the glass.

Then, very carefully indeed, I lifted the heavy mirror down from its console and leaned it face-inward against the wall; prying off two of the thin, narrow boards nailed to the back. With equal caution I smartly tapped the cut-around space with the heavy wooden handle of the glass-cutter.

At the very first tap the whorl-containing section of glass dropped out on the Bokhara rug beneath. I did not know what might happen, but was keyed up for anything, and took a deep involuntary breath. I was on my knees for convenience at the moment, with my face quite near the newly made aperture; and as I breathed there poured into my nostrils a powerful dusty odor—a smell not comparable to any other I have ever encountered. Then everything within my range of vision suddenly turned to a dull gray before my failing eyesight as I felt myself overpowered by an invisible force which robbed my muscles of their power to function.

I remember grasping weakly and futilely at the edge of the nearest window drapery and feeling it rip loose from its fastening. Then I sank slowly to the floor as the darkness of oblivion passed over me.

WHEN I regained consciousness I was lying on the Bokhara rug with my legs held unaccountably up in the air. The room was full of that hideous and inexplicable dusty smell— and as my eyes began to take in definite images I saw that Robert Grandison stood in front of me. It was he— fully in the flesh and with his coloring normal— who was holding my legs aloft to bring the blood back to my head as the school’s first-aid course had taught him to do with persons who had fainted. For a moment I was struck mute by the stifling odor and by a bewilderment which quickly merged into a sense of triumph. Then I found myself able to move and speak collectedly.

I raised a tentative hand and waved feebly at Robert.

“All right, old man,” I murmured, “you can let my legs down now. Many thanks. I’m all right again, I think. It was the smell— I imagine— that got me. Open that farthest window, please— wide— from the bottom. That’s it— thanks. No— leave the shade down the way it was.”

I struggled to my feet, my disturbed circulation adjusting itself in waves, and stood upright hanging to the back of a big chair. I was still “groggy,” but a blast of fresh, bitterly cold air from the window revived me rapidly. I sat down in the big chair and looked at Robert, now walking toward me.

“First,” I said hurriedly, “tell me, Robert—those others—Holm? What happened to them, when I— opened the exit?”

Robert paused half-way across the room and looked at me very gravely.

“I saw them fade away— into nothingness—Mr. Canevin,” he said with solemnity; “and with them— everything. There isn’t any more ‘inside,’ sir— thank God, and you, sir!”

And young Robert, at last yielding to the sustained strain which he had borne through all those terrible eleven days, suddenly broke down like a little child and began to weep hysterically in great, stifling, dry sobs.

I PICKED him up and placed him gently on my davenport, threw a rug over him, sat down by his side, and put a calming hand on his forehead.

“Take it easy, old fellow,” I said soothingly.

The boy’s sudden and very natural hysteria passed as quickly as it had come on as I talked to him reassuringly about my plans for his quiet restoration to the school. The interest of the situation and the need of concealing the incredible truth beneath a rational explanation took hold of his imagination as I had expected; and at last he sat up eagerly, telling the details of his release and listening to the instructions I had thought out. He had, it seems, been in the “projected area” of my bedroom when I opened the way back, and had emerged in that actual room— hardly realizing that he was “out.” Upon hearing a fall in the living-room he had hastened thither, finding me on the rug in my fainting spell.

I need mention only briefly my method of restoring Robert in a seemingly normal way— how I smuggled him out of the window in an old hat and sweater of mine, took him down the road in my quietly started car, coached him carefully in a tale I had devised, and returned to arouse Browne with the news of his discovery. He had, I explained, been walking alone on the afternoon of his disappearance: and had been offered a motor ride by two young men who, as a joke and over his protests that he could go no farther than Stamford and back, had begun to carry him past that town.

Jumping from the car during a traffic stop with the intention of hitch-hiking back before Call-Over, he had been hit by another car just as the traffic was released— awakening ten days later in the Greenwich home of the people who had hit him. On learning the date, I added, he had immediately telephoned the school; and I, being the only one awake, had answered the call and hurried after him in my car without stopping to notify anyone.

BROWNE, who at once telephoned to Robert’s parents, accepted my story without question; and forbore to interrogate the boy because of the latter’s manifest exhaustion. It was arranged that he should remain at the school for a rest, under the expert care of Mrs. Browne, a former trained nurse. I naturally saw a good deal of him during the remainder of the Christmas vacation, and was thus enabled to fill in certain gaps in his fragmentary dream-story.

Now and then we would almost doubt the actuality of what had occurred; wondering whether we had not both shared some monstrous delusion born of the mirror’s glittering hypnotism, and whether the tale of the ride and accident were not after all the real truth. But whenever we did so we would be brought back to belief by some monstrous and haunting memory; with. me, of Robert’s dream-figure and its thick voice and inverted colors; with him, of the whole fantastic pageantry of ancient people and dead scenes that he had witnessed. And then there was the joint recollection of that damnable dusty odor.... We knew what it meant: the instant dissolution of those who had entered an alien dimension a century and more age

There are, in addition, at least two lines of rather more positive evidence; one of which comes through my researches in Danish annals concerning the sorcerer, Axel Holm. Such a person, indeed, left many traces in folklore and written records; and diligent library sessions, plus conferences with various learned Danes, have shed much light on his evil fame. At present I need say only that the Copenhagen glass-blower— born in 1612— was a notorious Luciferian whose pursuits and final vanishing formed a matter of awed debate over two centuries ago. He had burned with a desire to know all things and to conquer every limitation of mankind— to which end he had delved deeply into occult and forbidden fields ever since he was a child.

He was commonly held to have joined a coven of the dreaded witchcult, and the vast lore of ancient Scandinavian myth— with its Loki the Sly One and the accursed Fenris-Wolf— was soon an open book to him. He had strange interests and objectives, few of which were definitely known, but some of which were recognized as intolerably evil. It is recorded that his two Negro helpers, originally slaves from the Danish West Indies, had become mute soon after their acquisition by him; and that they had disappeared not long before his own disappearance from the ken of mankind.

NEAR the close of an already long life the idea of a glass of immortality appears to have entered his mind. That he had acquired an enchanted mirror of inconceivable antiquity was a matter of common whispering; it being alleged that he had purloined it from a fellow-sorcerer who had entrusted it to him for polishing.

This mirror—according to popular tales a trophy as potent in its way as the better-known Aegis of Minerva or Hammer of Thor— was a small oval object called “Loki’s Glass,” made of some polished fusible mineral and having magical properties which included the divination of the immediate future and the power to show the possessor his enemies. That it had deeper potential properties, realizable in the hands of an erudite magician, none of the common people doubted; and even educated persons attached much fearful importance to Holm’s rumored attempts to incorporate it in a larger glass of immortality. Then had come the wizard’s disappearance in 1687, and the final sale and dispersal of his goods amidst a growng cloud of fantastic legendry. It was, altogether, just such a story as one would laugh at if possessed of no particular key; yet to me, remembering those dream messages and having Robert Grandison’s corroboration before me, it formed a positive confirmation of all the bewildering marvels that had been unfolded.

But as I have said, there is still another line of rather positive evidence—of a very different character —at my disposal. Two days after his release, as Robert, greatly improved in strength and appearance, was placing a log on my living-room fire, I noticed a certain awkwardness in his motions and was struck by a persistent idea. Summoning him to my desk I suddenly asked him to pick up an ink-stand— and was scarcely surprised to note that, despite lifelong right-handedness, he obeyed unconsciously with his left hand. Without alarming him, I then asked that he unbutton his coat and let me listen to his cardiac action. What I found upon placing my ear to his chest— and what I did not tell him for some time afterward— was that his heart was beating on his right side.

HE had gone into the glass right-handed and with all organs in their normal positions. Now he was left-handed and with organs reversed, and would doubtless continue so for the rest of his life. Clearly, the dimensional transition had been no illusion— for this physical change was tangible and unmistakable. Had there been a natural exit from the glass, Robert would probably have undergone a thorough re-reversal and emerged in perfect normality— as indeed the color-scheme of his body and clothing did emerge. The forcible nature of his release, however, undoubtedly set something awry; so that dimensions no longer had a chance to right themselves as chromatic wave-frequencies still did.

I had not merely opened Holm’s trap; I had destroyed it; and at the particular stage of destruction marked by Robert’s escape some of the reversing properties had perished. It is significant that in escaping Robert had felt no pain comparable to that experienced in entering. Had the destruction been still more sudden, I shiver to think of the monstrosities of color the boy would always have been forced to bear. I may add that after discovering Robert’s reversal I examined the rumpled and discarded clothing he had worn in the glass, and found, as I had expected, a complete reversal of pockets, buttons, and all other corresponding details.

At this moment Loki’s Glass, just as it fell on my Bokhara rug from the now patched and harmless mirror, weighs down a sheaf of papers on my writing-table here in St. Thomas, venerable capital of the Danish West Indies— now the American Virgin Islands. Various collectors of old Sandwich glass have mistaken it for an odd bit of that early American product— but I privately realize that my paperweight is an antique of far subtler and more paleologean craftsmanship. Still, I do not disillusion such enthusiasts.

_________________

15: The Napier Limousine

Henry S. Whitehead

Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror Jan 1933

THE nursemaid let go the handle of her perambulator, froze into an appearance of devastated horror and screamed.

Just what there might be about the sight of two gentlemen, dressed formally for the morning, stepping out of an impeccable town-car upon the curbstone in front of No. 12, Portman Terrace— one of an ultraconservative long row of solid family mansions in London's residential West End— to throw their only beholder into such a state of sudden, horrified terror, was a mystery. What drove home the startling implication that there was something rather dreadfully wrong, made a benumbing little chill course devastatingly up and down my spine, was the fact that I was one of them. My companion was James Rand, Earl of Carruth, back in London now after twenty years' continuous service in India as Chief of the British Government's Secret Service and armed with an experience which might well have filled the measure of life for a dozen ordinary men.

The beautifully-kept limousine had stopped with a jarless pause like the alighting of a poised hawk. Portman Terrace was empty of pedestrians with the exception of the liveried, middle-aged, sensible-looking servant with her glistening custom-built perambulator.

For my own part, if I had been alone, I suppose I should have followed my instinct, stopped, and made some attempt to restore to a normal condition this stricken fellow human being, inexplicably seized in the ruthless grasp of cold fear. But it took more than the eccentricity of a casual nursemaid to upset Lord Carruth's iron self-control. My companion glanced appraisingly at this strange disturbance of the King's Peace and led the way up the high flight of marble steps to the front doorway of No. 12, his normal expression of facial placidity altered by no more than a raised eyebrow. Still under the compulsion of our determination to meet the emergency with which we had hastened here to cope, I followed him across the broad sidewalk and ran up the steps just behind him.

CARRUTH'S finger was already on the silver doorbell-button when I came up beside him, and this circumstance gave me my first occasion to turn and look behind me. I did so, at once, because it occurred to me that the very smart, gray-haired footman whom the car's owner had addressed as "Baines," should have been there, pressing that button with an efficient black-gloved finger.

Below on the sidewalk the nurse-maid was retreating as rapidly she could walk, and, as she looked back over her shoulder, I saw that her apple cheeks had gone to a kind of oyster-gray, and that her terrified mouth hung open like a Greek tragic mask.

But the nursemaid, strange sight that she presented, got only a passing glance from me, for I brought my eyes around to the curb where we had alighted, a matter of seconds before, to see what had happened to the footman, Baines, who, like any proper footman, should, have been up the steps before us.

It seemed inconceivable that such a man should be remiss in his as duties, and yet—

I brought my eyes around, I say, and looked down there, and— there was no Baines. Neither was there any driver beside the footman in the chauffeur's seat. There was no seat. There was no car! The limousine, an old-model Napier, was clean gone. The street in front of No. 12, Portman Terrace was entirely empty and deserted....

It is hard to set down in words how very serious a jar this discovery was. I knew that the car was still there before I turned around to look for Baines.

I knew that because I had not heard the inevitable slight sounds made in starting even by the most soundless of cars, under the ministrations of the most perfectly trained chauffeur such as ours had shown himself to be on our ride from in front of St. Paul's Cathedral to Portman Terrace.

There it was, that empty street; the agitated back of the rapidly retreating nursemaid receding into the distance; the car gone, chauffeur, footman, and all! My first sense of surprise rapidly mounted to the status of a slow shock. That car must be there! I could take my oath it had not started. It could not move off without some sound. It was unthinkable that I should not have heard it. Yet—it was not there.

No. 12, Portman Terrace stands in its own grounds in the middle of a long block of solid houses. Starting with absolute noiselessness, even a racing car could not have reached the corner—either corner. And, to get to the nearer of the two corners, the car would have had to turn around. I looked up and down the broad, empty street in both directions. The Napier limousine, unmistakable in its custom-built lines, somewhat old-fashioned, conspicuous, was, simply, not there. I started to speak to Rand, but was interrupted by the opening of the door. A stout, florid, family-retainer of a butler stood there, bowing.

"The Earl of Carruth, and Mr. Gerald Canevin," said Rand, reaching for his card case, "and it is imperative that we see Sir Harry Dacre immediately, in spite, even, of his possible orders that he is engaged."

I followed Rand's motion for my card case mechanically and produced a card. The butler benignly ushered us within. He took our coats and hats and sticks. He showed us into a small drawing-room overlooking the square, just to the left of the entrance hall with its black marble paving.

"I will take your names to Sir Harry at once, m'Lord," announced the butler urbanely, and disappeared up a wide flight of stairs.

THIS errand to Sir Harry Dacre, whom neither had ever seen, but who had been of late a familiar name to the newspaper-reading public, had been thrust upon Rand and myself in a somewhat remarkable manner. I had been, as it happened that morning, to my London tailor's, whose shop is in Jermyn Street, for a fitting. Finishing this minor ordeal and emerging upon Jermyn Street, the very first person I encountered was Rand. We had been together two nights previously, at a small men's dinner at Sir John Scott's. It was at Sir John's house that I had met him several months before. Anyone met there would be apt to be worth while. Sir John Scott presides over no less an institution than Scotland Yard. I had been immediately fascinated by Rand's grasp of the subject which has always more intrigued me— that of magical beliefs and practices and the occult among native peoples.

We had talked eagerly together, absorbingly, that first evening of our acquaintance. We talked, in fact, almost too late and too continuously for courtesy to one's host, even at a men's dinner. We outstayed our three other fellow guests. A brief note, received the next day from Sir John, had expressed— to my relief— his gratification that we had found so much to say to each other, had proved to be congenial. Rand, he explained briefly— as I, an American, might not be aware— was the world's first authority on the subject I have named. He had been almost continuously away from England now for more than a score of years, serving the Empire in innumerable strange corners of its far-flung extent, but chiefly in India. A significant phrase of the note read: "It is unquestionably due to Lord Carruth's remarkable abilities that the Indian Empire is now intact." I considered that a very open admission for an Englishman, particularly one in Sir John Scott's position.

MEETING on the sidewalk that way, unexpectedly, we had stopped to chat for a moment, and, as it turned out that we were going in the same direction, we began to walk along together, arm in arm. As we came abreast of St. Paul's Cathedral, an elderly lady, very well dressed in plain black, came diagonally down the steps directly towards us, meeting us precisely as she reached the bottom. She addressed Rand directly.

"Will you be good enough to spare me a minute of your time, Lord Carruth?" she inquired.

"Assuredly," replied Rand, bowing. We paused, removing our hats.

"It is a very pressing matter, or I should not have put you to this trouble," said the lady, in a very beautiful, softly modulated voice, in which was to be clearly discerned that unmistakable tone of a class born to rule through many generations: a tone of the utmost graciousness, but nevertheless attuned to command. She continued:

"I beg that you will go at once to Sir Harry Dacre. It is number 12, Portman Terrace. My car is here at your disposal, gentlemen." She included me with a gracious glance. "It is an emergency, a very pressing affair. If you will start at once, you will perhaps be in time to save him"

As she spoke, the lady, without seeming to do so consciously, was approaching the curbstone, edging, and we with her, diagonally across the wide pavement. At the curb, as I now observed, stood a very beautifully kept and well appointed town car, a Napier of a dozen-years-ago model. The chauffeur, in a black livery, sat motionless at the wheel. A very smart-looking, alert though elderly footman— his close-cropped hair was quite white, I observed— stood at rigid attention beside the tonneau door, a carriage-rug, impeccably folded into a perfect rectangle, across his angular

The footman saluted, snapped open the door of the car, and we were inside and the lady speaking to us through the open door almost before we realized what we were doing. Her last words were significant, and spoken with the utmost earnestness and conviction.

"I pray God," said she, "that you may be in time. Lord Carruth. Sir Harry Dacre's, Baines." This last she spoke very crisply, her words carrying an unmistakable undernote of urgency. The footman saluted again, very smartly; he draped the rug with practised skill across our four knees; the door was snicked to; and the old but beautifully appointed car, glistening with polish and good care, started almost simultaneously, the elderly footman snapping into his seat beside the chauffeur with an altogether surprising agility, and coming into position there like a ramrod, his arms folded before him with stiff precision.

THROUGH London's traffic now sped the Napier, as smoothly as a new car, the driving a very model of accuracy and sound form. It was plain that the unknown elderly lady was very well and promptly served. Not a single instant was lost, although there was no slightest feeling of being hurried such as ordinarily communicates itself to a person riding in an automobile when the driver is urged for time.

I glanced at Rand beside me. His ordinarily inscrutable, lean face was slightly puckered as though his mind were working hard.

"Who was the lady?" I ventured to inquire.

"That is what is puzzling me just now," returned Rand. "Frankly, I do not remember! And yet, at the same time, I'm quite sure I do know her, or know who she is. I simply cannot place her, although her face is familiar. She knew me, clearly enough. It is very unusual for me to forget like that."

In a surprisingly short time after our start on this strange drive we had turned into Portman Terrace, stopped, had the door snapped open for us by the agile old footman and were out on the sidewalk. My last glimpse of the equipage as a whole was the salute with which the footman dismissed us. Then the strange conduct of an otherwise commonplace nursemaid, to which I have alluded, took all my attention. The nursemaid acted in her crude manner, as nearly as I can manage to describe her motivation, precisely as though we had landed— the thought struck me even at that time— in front of her from nowhere, instead of having merely, as I have said, stepped to the curbstone beside her out of a very well appointed town-car.

I COULD see that nursemaid now on the far side of the street and at some distance, as we sat in Sir Harry Dacre's small drawing-room, through the large window which looked out upon Portman Terrace. I even got up and walked to the window for the purpose. She was now talking with animation to a policeman, a big fellow. I watched with very great interest. I could not, of course, because of the distance and through a closed window, hear what she was saying, but I could follow it almost as well as though I could, from her gestures and the expressions on both their faces.

The woman pantomimed the entire occurrence for the policeman, and I got it now from her point of view, very clearly and plainly. My first impression of her possible reason for having behaved so insanely was amply corroborated. She had been placidly wheeling her charge along the walk when plop! two gentlemen, out of nowhere, had suddenly stepped on the curb in front of her! She had, of course, screamed. The gentlemen had looked at her as though surprised. They had then gone up the steps of Number 12, had rung and been admitted. These two visitors from Mars, or whatever they were, were now in Sir Harry Dacre's house. Hadn't the policeman better go and ring the area bell and make sure the silver was safe?

The policeman, a respectable-looking middle-aged man, probably accustomed to the vagaries of nursemaids, and doubtless with womenfolk of his own, sought to reassure her. Finally, not succeeding very well, he shrugged, left her expostulating and continued his dignified beat.

Learning in this way what had come over the nursemaid failed to make the mystery any clearer, however, than it had for the policeman, who had had the advantage of hearing her words. I was intensely puzzled. I turned away from the window and addressed Rand, who had been sitting there waiting in complete silence.

"HAVE you any idea what's wrong here?" said I. "Here in this house, I mean."

"You've read the papers, of course?" said Rand after a moment's consideration of my question.

"I know young Dacre's got himself rather heavily involved," I replied. "It's one of those infatuation affairs, is it not? A woman. She turns out to be mixed up, somehow, with Goddard, the impresario, or whatever he is. Isn't that about the case?"

Rand nodded. "Yes. Apparently Goddard has him on toast. Rather a beast, that Goddard person. Goddard is not his name, by the way. A very clever person in the heavy-blackmail line. The Yard has never been able to 'get anything on him,' as you Americans put it. He has his various theatrical connections largely for a cover; but his real game is deeper, and blacker. It is rumored in certain circles that Goddard has ground poor Dacre here down to the very last straw in his garret; made him sign over all his holdings to avoid a show-up. Just how far he is committed with 'The Princess Lillia' of the Gaieties, nobody seems to know. But that she is Goddard's wife, or at least that they are working together in close collusion, seems beyond question. That has not come out, of course. It is inside information."

"But," said I, "just how, if I may ask, does that give them so complete a hold on Dacre? Why doesn't he simply repudiate them, now that he must know they set a trap for him? As nearly as I can figure it out from what I've seen in the papers and what you have just now told me, it's nothing more or less than an old-fashioned attempt at blackmail. And -besides, it's had a certain amount of publicity already, hasn't it? Just what does Dacre stand to lose if Goddard does go to a show-down with

"The point is," explained Rand, "that Dacre is engaged to be married to one of the loveliest girls in England. If it should really come out that 'The Princess Lillia' is Goddard's wife, that would be off entirely. Lord Roxton would make that distinction very emphatically.

"To a man of his known views, a fine young fellow like Dacre would be more or less entitled to what Roxton would call 'his fling.' That would be typical, of course— British— to be expected. A well-to-do, unattached young man about town— and a lady from the Follies. Then the young blood really falls in love, drops his light-o'-love, is very devoted, marries, 'settles down.' But— if the lady from the Follies turns out to be the wife of Somebody, somebody as much in the public eye as Leighton Goddard, and the matter of merely discontinuing that sort of thing is complicated by a law-suit brought by the outraged husband— you can see how ruinous it would be, can you not, Canevin? The more especially when one is dealing with one of those rather narrow, puritanical old hoddy-doddies like Lord Roxton, who is so consciously upright that he positively creaks with piety when he gets up or sits down. He would never allow his daughter to marry Dacre under those circumstances. He's the President of the Evangelican League, a reformer. Incidentally, he is one of the richest men in England; has tremendously strong views on how people should behave, you know. And Dacre's financial affairs, his investments, are to a considerable extent tied up with Lord Roxton's promotions and companies."

THIS much of the background— though nothing whatever of the immediate urgency of the case which confronted us— we knew when the dignified butler returned with the announcement that Sir Harry Dacre would receive us at once. We followed the butler up a magnificent flight of stairs to the story above, and were shown into a kind of library-office, from behind whose enormous mahogany desk a handsome young fellow of about twenty-five rose to receive us. Sir Harry Dacre said nothing whatever, and I observed that his drawn face was lined and ghastly, plainly enough from the effects of lack of sleep. It was obvious to me that Lord Carruth's name alone had secured us admittance. The man whose abilities had served to keep the Indian Empire intact could hardly be gainsaid by anyone of Sir Harry Dacre's sort.

Rand went straight to the desk, and without any ceremony picked up and pocketed a .38 calibre American automatic pistol which lay directly in front of Sir Harry Dacre's chair.

"Perhaps you know I am accustomed to meeting emergencies halfway sir," said Rand, bluntly but not unkindly. "I will not ask you to forgive an intrusion, Sir Harry. I am Carruth; this is Mr. Canevin, an American gentleman visiting in London."

"Thanks," said young Dacre, dully. "I know you mean very well, Lord Carruth, and I appreciate your kindness in coming here. I have had the pleasure of reading Mr. Canevin's remarkable tales," he added, turning and bowing in my direction. We stood there, after that, in a momentarily tense, and indeed slightly strained silence.

"SUPPOSE we all sit down, now so that we are all together," said our host. We followed the suggestion, making, as we sat, a triangle; Dacre behind his great desk; I facing him, with my back to the door through which we had entered the room; Rand at my right and facing a point between Dacre and me, and so commanding a view of him and also of the door.

"We are here to serve you, Sir Harry Dacre," began Rand, without any preamble, "and, judging by this," —he indicated the automatic pistol— "it appears that you need assistance and countenance. In a case like this it is rather futile to waste time on preliminaries or in beating about the bush. Tell us, if you will, precisely what we can do, and I assure you you may count upon us."

"It is indeed very good of you," returned Dacre, nodding his head. Then, with a wry and rueful smile: "I do not see that there is anything that anybody can do! I suppose you know something of the situation. I am to marry the Lady Evelyn Haversham in a month's time. I have, I suppose, made a complete fool of myself, at least for practical purposes. As a matter of plain fact, there has been, really, nothing— nothing, that is, seriously to trouble one's conscience. But then, I'll not trouble to excuse myself. I am merely stating the facts. To put the matter plainly, this Goddard has me where he wants me— a very clever bit of work on his part. Here are the freeholds of every bit of property I own, piled up in front of me on this desk. He's coming for them this morning— eleven— should be here now. That's the price of his silence about the apparent situation, you see. 'The Princess Lillia' is his wife, it appears."

"But," Rand put in, briskly, "how about this?" Once more he indicated the pistol. The young man's face flushed a dull red.

"That was for him," he said quietly, "and afterwards"— he spread his hands in a hopeless gesture— "for me."

"But, why, why?" urged Rand, leaning forward in his chair, his lean, ascetic face eager, his eyes burning with intensity. "Tell me— why resort to such a means?"

"Because," returned Sir Harry Dacre, "there would be nothing left. On the one hand, if I were to refuse Goddard's terms, he would bring out the whole ugly business. Oh, they're clever: a case in court, one of those ruinous things, and an action for alienation of his wife's affections; a divorce case, with me as the villain-person. On the other hand— don't you see?— I'm flatly ruined. These papers convey everything I own to him in return for the release which lies here ready for him to sign. Even with the release signed and in my possession I could not go on with the marriage. I'd be, literally, a pauper. It is, well, one of those things that one does not, can not, do."

"Let me see the release," said Rand, and rose, his hand outstretched. He glanced through it, rapidly, nodding his head, and returned it to its place on the desk. "There is little time," he continued. "Will you do precisely as I say?"

"Yes," said Sir Harry Dacre laconically, but I could see no appearance of hope on his face.

"Go through with it precisely as arranged," said Rand.

A rap fell on the door, and it was opened slightly.

"Mr. Leighton Goddard," announced the butler, and I saw Rand stiffen in his chair. The look of hopeless despair deepened in the lined face of the young man behind the desk. He had, I surmised, as he had reasoned out this sordid affair, come to the last act. The curtain was about to fall....

THE man who now entered radiated personality. He was tall, within half an inch or so of Rand's height, and Rand is two inches over six feet. There was a suggestion of richness about him, sartorial richness, an aura of something oriental which came into that Anglo-Saxon room with him. One could not put a finger on anything wrong in his really impeccable appearance. Bond Street was written upon his perfect morning coat; but I would have guessed, I think, almost instinctively, that his name was not really Goddard, even if no one had suggested that to me. He glanced about the room, very much self-possessed, and with an air almost proprietary, out of shining, sloe-black eyes set in a face of vaguely Asiatic cast: a suggestion of olive under the pale skin of the night-club habitue; a certain undue height of the cheek-bones.

"Now, this isn't according to agreement, Dacre!" He addressed his host in a slightly bantering tone, almost genially, indeed; a tone underneath which I could feel depths of annoyance; of a poisonous, threatening malice. He had stopped between Rand and me.

"We merely dropped in," said Rand, in a flat voice, and Goddard glanced around at him out of the corner of his eye. Dacre picked up the hint. "This is Mr. Gerald Canevin, the writer," said he, and I rose and nodded to Goddard. As I did so, I caught Rand's eye, with warning in it. I thought I grasped his meaning. If he had formulated any definite plan for dealing with this ugly situation there had been no time to warn me of it before Goddard's rather abrupt arrival, several minutes late for his appointment. I did some very rapid thinking, came to a conclusion, and spoke quietly to Goddard in a tone of voice that was intentionally somewhat slow and deliberate.

"This is Mr. Rand," said I; and Rand flashed me a quick, commending look of relief. He did not want Goddard to know his true identity. That had been my conclusion from his warning look. Fortunately, I had struck the nail on the head that time. The two men nodded coolly to each other, and it seemed to me that suspicion loomed and smouldered in those oriental eyes.

Dacre came to the front.

"We can get our business over very easily," said Dacre at this point. "Here are the things you want, and here is the place to sign." He stood up behind the desk, holding a sheaf of legal looking documents.

Goddard walked firmly over to the desk, took across it the papers out of Dacre's hand, glanced through them rapidly, nodded as he checked each mentally, and at last relaxing his tensely held body thrust them, all together, into the inside pocket of his morning coat. He smiled quickly, as though satisfied, took a step nearer the desk, stooped over, and, still standing, reached for a pen and scrawled his name on the paper Dacre indicated.

This done, he straightened up, though still retaining his slightly stooping position, and turned away from the desk. I was watching him narrowly, and so, too, I knew, was Rand. Triumphant satisfaction was writ large on his unpleasant face. But that look was quickly dissipated. He turned away from the desk at last, and met Rand facing him, Dacre's pistol pointed straight at his heart. I, standing now behind Goddard, could look straight into Rand's face, and I do not care ever to have to look into such an expression of rigid determination and complete, utter self-confidence behind any weapon pointed in my direction.

"YOU will take those deeds out of your pocket, Wertheimer," said Rand, in a deadly, cold, quiet voice, "and drop them on the floor. Then you will go out of here without any further parley. Otherwise I shall take them from you; if necessary, kill you as you stand there; arrange the matter with Downing Street this afternoon, and so rid the world of a very annoying scoundrel. I am the Earl of Carruth. I came here without Dacre's knowledge, to deal with this situation. What you have to decide, rather quickly, is whether you will go on living on what you have already stolen, without this of Dacre's, or whether you will put me to the inconvenience of— removing you."

From my position I could not, of course, see Goddard's— or Wertheimer's— face. But I did observe the telltale hunching of a shoulder, and cried out in time to warn Rand. But Rand needed no warning, as it happened. He met the rush of the big man with his disengaged hand, now a fist, and Wertheimer, catching that iron fist on the precise point of the chin, slithered to the floor, entirely harmless for the time being.

Rand looked down at the sprawled body, then walked over to the desk and laid the automatic pistol down on the place from which he had picked it up. Then, returning to the prostrate Wertheimer, he knelt beside him and removed the packet of deeds from the man's pocket. He rose, returned to the desk, and handed them to young Dacre, who, during the few seconds occupied by all these occurrences, had remained standing, silent and collected, behind his desk.

"THE transaction, of course, was illegal," remarked Rand, looking down at the crumpled torso of Wertheimer. "You need have no compunction whatever, Dacre, my dear fellow, in retaining the release which he signed. 'Goddard' is not his name, of course. But I imagine that fact would have no bearing upon the efficacy of the release. He has gone under that name and is thoroughly identified with it here in London, Sir John Scott informs me, for the past four or five years. You heard me call him 'Wertheimer,' but even that is not his real name. He is a Turk, and his right name is Abdulla Khan ben Majpat. However, he was a German spy during the War, and in Berlin he is very well known as 'Wertheimer.' I think I may say that you are now quite free from the complication which was distressing you."

It was a very subdued Goddard-Wertheimer-ben Majpat who left the house a quarter of an hour later, after a few crisply spoken words of warning from Rand. And it was a correspondingly jubilant young man who besieged Rand with his reiterated thanks. Sir Harry Dacre was, indeed, almost beside himself. In the stimulating grip of a tremendous reaction such as he had just experienced, a man's every-day composure is apt to go to the winds. This unexpected release from his overpowering difficulties which Rand's intervention had brought about had, for the time being, caused Sir Harry Dacre to seem like a different person. There had not been any statements in the newspapers of sufficiently definite nature to injure his cause with his future wife or with his future father-in-law, the austere Lord Roxton, and now, as Rand took care to assure him, there would be no further press comment. The situation seemed entirely cleared up.

Young Dacre, looking years younger, with the lines of harassment and care almost visibly fading out of his face under the stimulation of his new freedom and the natural resiliency of his youth, would be quite all right again after a proper night's rest. He confessed to us that it was the best part of a week since he had so much as slept. His gratitude knew no bounds. It was almost effusive and really very touching. He pressed us to remain for luncheon. This we declined, but we could not very well refuse his request that we should have a Scotch and soda with him. While this refresnment was being brought by the butler, Rand stepped around to the other side of the desk and picked up a framed photograph which stood upon it.

"AND who, if I may venture to ask, is this?" he inquired.

"It was my mother's sister, the Lady Mary Grosvenor," said young Dacre. "You may remember her, perhaps. It was she, you know, who organized the Red Cross at the beginning of the War. I was only a little chap of seven or eight then."

He took the photograph from Rand and stood looking at it with an expression of the deepest affection.

"A wonderful woman!" he added, "and the best friend I ever had. Lord Carruth. She took me into her house here when I was a tiny little youngster. My own mother died when I was four. The house came to me in her will, eight years later. Dear Aunt Mary— her kindness and goodness never failed. She took me, a rather forlorn little creature, I dare say, into her care. She found time to do everything for me. She was a woman of manifold interests and activities, as you may remember, Lord Carruth, and even high in the counsels of the great, the affairs of the Empire. Cabinet members, even the Prime Minister himself, sought her advice, kept her occupied with all kinds of difficult tasks. In spite of all these engagements, she was, as I have said, and in all ways, a mother to me— yes, more than a mother. I naturally revered her."

Young Sir Harry Dacre paused, sitting there in his office-library, with his guests to whom he was thus opening his heart with sudden, wistful seriousness. When he spoke again it was in a much quieter tone than that of the little panegyric he had just ended.

"Do you know," said he, "I— I thank God that the dear soul was at least spared any knowledge of this— this dreadful affair which is— I can hardly realize, gentlemen, that it is over, done, a thing of the past."

Again he paused, sat for a moment very quietly in a natural silence which neither Rand nor I desired to break.

Then, in a hushed tone, his words coming slowly and very reverently, he spoke again.

"And if," he began, as though concluding a thought already partly uttered, "—if she has been enabled to see it all— from her place in Paradise, as one might say— she is rejoicing now, and thanking you. She would have moved Heaven and earth to help me."

Then, as I looked into the face of Sir Harry Dacre, I saw a slow flush mounting upon it. That curious sense of shame which seems common to every Englishman who allows himself to show others something of his inmost feeling, had overtaken the young man. He resumed his discourse in an entirely different and rather restrained tone.

"But that, of course, is impossible," said he. "I hope that I have not made myself ridiculous. Naturally I should know better than to bore you in this way. Reasonable people should not allow them selves to be moved by such old sentimentality. And, I— I was educated Modern Side."

"I do not think we are bored by what you have said," remarked Rand, quietly, and added nothing to that.

Dacre paused, rose, and replaced on the desk the framed photograph which he had been holding and looking at while he spoke. As yet, except from the back, I had not had a view of it. Returning to where we were seated, Dacre took a chair between Carruth and me.

"CURIOUS!" exclaimed our host, breaking a brief silence. "I mean to say, my aunt, there, was very active in the War, you know. As a matter of fact, she visited every front, and never received as much as a scratch! People used to say that she seemed to bear a charmed life. Then, back home here in England, driving one afternoon through Wolverhampton in her old town-car— it was just two days before the Armistice, in 1918— I was just twelve at the time— a bomb from a raiding German airplane took her, poor lady; and along with her old Baines, her footman— been with her thirty-four years— and the chauffeur. Killed all three, snuffed 'em right out, and there wasn't enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it! The way things happen...."

Carruth nodded, sympathetically. It was plain that young Dacre had been much moved by his recital. He must have had an extraordinarily high regard for the splendid woman who had mothered him. At this moment Dacre's butler appeared with a tray and bottles, ice, tall glasses and siphons of carbonated water.

While he was arranging these on a table, I walked over to the desk and took up the large framed photograph.

There, in the uniform of the British Red Cross, looked out at me the splendid face of a middle-aged lady, the face of a true aristocrat, of one born to command. It was kindly, though possessing a firm, almost a stern, expression, the look of one who would never give up!

I replaced the photograph, my hands shaking. I turned about quickly and walked across the room. I wanted rather urgently to be quite close to living, breathing human beings like Carruth and our host— fellow-men, creatures of common, everyday flesh and blood. I stood there among them, between Rand and Dacre, and almost touching the urbane butler as he prepared our Scotch and soda with admirable professional deftness. I confess that I wanted something else, besides that sense of human companionship which had come upon me so compellingly that I had found my hands shaking as I set the framed photograph back into its original place on Sir Harry Dacre's desk.

Yes— I wanted that high, cool, iced tumbler of Scotch whiskey and soda the butler was handing me. I barely waited, indeed, until the others had been served to raise it to my lips, to take a great, hasty drink which emptied the glass halfway to its bottom.

For— I had seen that photograph of Dacre's aunt, the Lady Mary Grosvenor, that firm gentlewoman who had, in the goodness of her noble heart, stolen precious time from the counsels of a great Empire to comfort a pathetic little motherless child; who would have moved Heaven and earth; a woman who would never give up....

old Baines, her footman— been with her thirty-four years... killed all three, snuffed 'em right out..... not enough of the old Napier town-car left to identify it...."

And I had looked at that photograph.

I FINISHED my Scotch and soda and set my glass down on the butler's silver tray. I drew in a deep breath. I was coming back satisfactorily to something like normal.

I raised my eyes and looked over at Rand. It had just occurred to me that he, too, was now aware of the identity of the lady who had sent us here in that old Napier with the two perfectly trained servants in its driving seat, to save Sir Harry Dacre. Rand had seen the photograph, too, well before I had picked it up and looked at it.

I found quite as usual the facial expression of the man who had held the Indian Empire together resolutely for twenty years— the man who had learned that iron composure facing courageously all forms of death and worse-than-death in the far, primitive places of the earth, places where transcendent evil goes hand in hand with ancient civilizations.

Even as I looked, James Rand, Lord Carruth, was turning to our host and addressed him in his firm, courteous, even voice:

"I take it that— with Mr. Canevin to corroborate what I would say, speaking as an eye-witness— you would accept my word of honor— would you not, Dacre?"

Young Dacre stared at him, almost gulped with surprise when he replied to so unusual a question.

"Of course. Lord Carruth; certainly, sir. Your word of honor— Mr. Canevin to corroborate! Of course such a thing would not be necessary, sir. Good Heavens! Of course, I'd believe anything you chose to say, sir, like the Gospel itself."

"Well, then," said Rand, smiling gravely, "if it is agreeable to Mr. Canevin, I think we shall change our minds and remain to luncheon with you. There is something I think you should know, and the period of luncheon will just give us time to tell you the circumstances behind our arrival here at about the right time for our business this morning."

RAND looked over at me, and I nodded, eagerly.

"Splendid!" said Sir Harry Dacre, rising alertly and ringing the bell for the butler. "I had, of course, been awfully keen to know about that. Hardly cared to ask, you

"My reason for suggesting that we tell you," said Rand gravely, "goes rather deeper than merely satisfying a very reasonable curiosity. If by doing so we can accomplish what I have in mind, it will be, my dear fellow, a more important service in your behalf than ridding you of that Wertheimer."

The butler came in and our host ordered the places set. Then, very soberly, he inquired:

"What, sir, if I may venture to ask, is the nature of that service?"

Rand answered only after a long and thoughtful interval.

"It may seem to you a rather odd answer, Dacre. I want to clear up in your mind, forever, the truth of what the religion we hold in common— the religion of our ancient Anglican Church here in England— teaches us about the souls in Paradise..."

_______________

16: The Left Eye

Henry S. Whitehead

Weird Tales June 1927

PIERRE GODARD was a French Canadian by descent, whose grandfather had departed the purlieus of Montreal for the good of his miserable hide in the days of Riel's Rebellion and settled in that indefinite area of scanty-soiled farmland along the western shore of Lake Champlain between Keeseville and Plattsburg.

The degenerate stock of the Godards, long impoverished since the era of its plebeian origins in France, did not recover in the descendants of the original fugitive. Pierre, the grandson, combined in his make-up the native cussedness of the lower class "canuck" with the skinflint qualities which his lifelong residence among the narrow-minded yokels with whom he consorted had readily imparted. Shiftless, furtive, mean-souled, he eked out an existence on his few barren acres of poor land which was endurable only because there was neither in his heredity nor his experience any better standard by which he could realize to the full the utter meanness of everything that conspired to make up his life's record.

At nineteen Pierre had married Katie Burton, a flat-chested, sallowfaced slattern of his own age. At the end of five years of sordid married life, four brats of their begetting littered up the dirty kitchen of Pierre's cabin through the long, cold days of the northern New York winter, and spent their summers rolling about in the dirt at the roadside and making faces at the occupants of the automobiles which passed in a wavering, irregular string, all day and most of the early evening, along the State road between Keeseville and Plattsburg.

That is, there were four brats— and Kathleen. To what ancestor of Pierre or Katie Kathleen could have been a "throw-back" is one of those obscure ethnic mysteries which are so baffling when they emerge in the families of recognized people. In Kathleen's case, it baffled no one, since there was no one in particular to remark this fairy among the ugly gnomes who pretended to be her brothers and sisters, this glorious little swan among the rough ducklings of the Godard brood.

Kathleen had always been utterly different from the rest. By the time she was six or seven, her positive characteristics were already strongly developed. She stood out from the rest of her sordid family like a new-minted gold coin among pocket-worn pennies. By natural choice, and habitually, she was dainty and neat. Dirt never stuck to her, somehow. The rest of the brood were different from each other only in the varying ugliness of their budding dispositions and the equally variant qualities of their general detestability of appearance and habit. All the rest, for example, would fight at the drop of the hat to gain possession of anything that turned up unappropriated, that even vaguely suggested value to their joint scrutiny. In these snarling contests, Kathleen, coolly aloof, was uninterested. The rest possessed in common that coarse, scrubby hair of indeterminate color which characterizes the children of outdoor-living peasants the world over. Kathleen's, a shimmering glory of delicate ringlets, shone burnished copper in the afternoon sun when she swept off the rickety back porch or daintily threw a few grains of hard corn to Pierre's scraggly hens.

At sixteen she was as coolly aloof from the blandishments of the coarse young men of her neighborhood as ever she had been to the scrambling bickerings of her family. All such advances left her wholly uninterested. What dreams and aspirations lay behind those clear blue eyes, those eyes like the blue of the Caribbean at noon, no one had ever guessed, that is, no one except the good priest, Father Tracy, who came over from one of the neighboring towns for mass every Sunday morning, and on alternate Saturday nights and before First Fridays, to hear the confessions of this outlying portion of his difficult flock. To Father Tracy it had been for some time clear that the lovely body of the little Kathleen harbored one of those rare souls, delicate and fragrant, which burn with the desire to offer themselves wholly to the Love of God. Here, the good father knew, or strongly suspected, was a budding vocation for the religious life, a vocation which it was one of his rewards to cultivate and foster.

As yet Kathleen was too young to leave her home, even if that had been feasible, and enter upon a novitiate with the good sisters at Plattsburg, or, perhaps better still, in her case, with some other good sisters much farther away from the place of her sordid origins, but for this vocation, as he watched it grow, at first weak and trembling up toward the dim light of a possible fulfilment, then later with a kind of thin, but pure and steady flame, Father Tracy said many novenas of thanksgiving. It was one of his chief sources of happiness, and, as was natural in such cases, Kathleen responded to his interest in her, and through his gentle, kindly leading of her soul, was beginning, as she fulfilled her maturity, to see the distant light more and more clearly.

This vision she cherished with all her heart, and if it begot in her an almost perceptible wistfulness, it did nothing to minimize the cheerful kindliness with which she went about the performance of her daily tasks, or the cultivated discretion with which she had laboriously learned to meet and neutralize the changeable moods of her vicious father and slatternly, loose-minded mother.

The wind-swept habitation for God which she had made of her pure little heart was rudely battered on a certain Thursday morning in the month of August in her seventeenth year.

Pierre, her father, who combined with the shiftless existence of a small peasant-fanner the more adventurous and profitable avocation of a bootlegger's runner for a Plattsburg operator, was frequently away from home at night and even for days at a time, when he was engaged in doing his part in bringing consignments of illicit merchandise down from unknown points in nearby Canada, either overland along the State road or by devious and rutted byways, or, what was an easier though somewhat less direct method much favored by "the profession," "up" the lake on dark nights, a process which was more lucrative because there were less people to bribe, and correspondingly somewhat more dangerous, as requiring a landing on the shores of Vermont across the lake, or somewhere on the New York side.

He had been away on one of these expeditions for two days, and had returned sometime during the small hours Wednesday night. On that Thursday morning, after two nearly sleepless nights, unkempt, ugly as a bear with a sore nose, he pushed his way into the kitchen about 9 o'clock and demanded something to eat.

Kathleen brought him his food and he ate in a brooding silence. She waited, sitting on the step below the open doorway, for him to finish, so that she might wash his dishes and tidy up the table after him, softly humming a tuneless little song, her mind entirely other-worldly.

Pierre, having finished his breakfast, came straight to the point of a certain matter which he had been cogitating for several weeks.

"Come here," he said.

She rose and came to the table, expecting that he required another cup of coffee or something of the sort.

"Shut the door," barked her father.

She closed the door leading into the small hallway out of the kitchen, wonderingly, and returned to her father's side.

"How old are you?" he asked, looking at her as though he were appraising her.

"Seventeen."

"Seventeen, eh?" His eyes went over her again, in such fashion that, without knowing why, she felt suddenly choked.

"Ah, seventeen. Old enough! Now listen. That is old enough. You are going to marry Steve Benham. I got that all fixed, see. Me an' him, we talk about it a lot, and Steve is all right for it."

The choking feeling nearly overcame her. The blood seemed to suffuse her whole body and then recede somewhere, leaving her icy cold and afraid. Marriage had never entered Kathleen's mind. And Steve Benham ! Benham was a brutal-faced young tough who, with greater advantages such as are offered to the denizens of great cities in their worst aspects, might have shone as a criminal of the lower type — a yegg, a killer for hire, the ready and effective tool of some brutal organized gang. As it was, he had taken advantage of such opportunities as presented themselves to his somewhat restricted field of development. He was one of Levine's crowd in the bootlegging operations, a close associate of Pierre Godard's.

"What the hell's the matter with you, now?" roared Pierre, curbing his voice slightly in view of his desire for secrecy. This was his lookout, and none of Katie's business. He could handle his own girl all by himself without his wife's having any part in it. Benham had offered him two hundred dollars to put it through for him, and that two hundred he meant to have,— as soon as possible, too.

"Steve's all right, ain't he? What's the matter with Steve ? Now cut out this blubberin'." Kathleen's lips were trembling in a colorless face, her eyes big and bright with the tears she was forcing to remain unshed. She knew the resources of this brute of a father which an inscrutably unkind Providence had inflicted upon her.

Pierre, his anger mounting by leaps and bounds, glared at her, his ugly face rendered hideous by a savage snarl, his clenched hand showing white at the knuckles as he gripped the table's edge.

"O daddy, I can't, I can't!"

Kathleen's restraint had broken down under this unexpected and crushing blow. She sank down in a chair at the side of the table, and buried her lovely head in her hands, her body shaken with convulsive sobs.

This weakening aroused all the half-latent brute in Godard. With a savage curse, he seized Kathleen by the hair, dragging her face up from the table, and with the back of the other hand dealt her several cruel and heavy blows.

She sank, as she shrank away, to the floor, a shuddering heap of misery and pain.

Pierre rose, his anger partially allayed, and looked down at her. He kicked her, but lightly, in the side.

"Get up out of that, an' get to hell out of here and clean yourself up. Steve's cornin' in about noon, an' I'm goin' to tell him it's all set for him. Don't you dast do nothin' to spoil it, neither, you hear? Now git up, an' beat it along an' get yourself prettied up."

He seized her roughly by the shoulder, dragged her to her feet, and shoved her through the door into the hallway.

Upstairs in her tiny little room, she lay across the bed, bruised and shaken, trying to collect her wits. One refuge and one only occurred to her, for even under the stress of this unexpected manifestation of her father's known brutality she had no idea of giving in to his demand and receiving Steve Benham as a suitor.

Trembling, shaken in every fiber of her delicate body, but with her almost unformulated resolve burning within her like a bright, strong flame, she dragged herself resolutely to her feet, and began painfullyto change her clothes. She had decided to go to Father Tracy for protection.

An hour later, very softly, she crept downstairs. It was past 10 o'clock, and she would have to manage to elude her mother. Her brothers and sister had not been about the house, she remembered, since their breakfast time. Her mother would be below. She had been out in the chicken-yard when her father had come into the kitchen for his breakfast. He had gone out immediately after she had come upstairs, probably to report progress to Benham! She shuddered, and crept down the stairs like a mouse.

She could hear her mother aimlessly pottering about in the kitchen. She slipped out of the seldom-used front door and out to the gate and along the road. As she turned the first corner, she met her sister Eunice, walking beside one of the town-boys.

"Where you goin' all dressed up?" enquired Eunice, her pert face alive with interest in this unexpected apparition of Kathleen in her best dress and Sunday hat. Kathleen bit her lip. This was a wholly unexpected, an entirely unavoidable, misfortune. She was utterly unused to deceit. The truth was her only resource.

"I have to go over to Villanova to see Father Tracy," she replied simply. Eunice's eyes opened wide in astonishment. She said nothing, and Kathleen, walking as rapidly as she could, passed the couple and continued on her way.

It was not until noon that Eunice arrived home, and Kathleen, with two hours' start, could not be overtaken.

GODARD, on hearing of his daughter's destination, was, for the time being, nonplussed. He would have to think this over. It was a wholly unexpected move on Kathleen's part. Cursing her in his black heart, he betook himself, accompanied by a fresh bottle of Levine's commodity, to the bam, and spent the afternoon in consultation with the bottle.

About 5 o'clock, having had a brief nap, and awaking in an uglier mood than ever, he came back to the house for another bottle, and with that he disappeared until dark. He did not come into the house for his supper, and to the summons of his son Ernest he replied only with such fervent curses that Ernest, edified, returned to the house to warn the rest of the family to leave the "old man" alone.

About 10 o 'clock, alone, he set out in his Ford car. The family heard him go, but this meant nothing to them. They were used to his blind rages and to his goings and comings at all hours.

Exercising that kind of low cunning which he had inherited from his disreputable ancestors and which had served him well in his many evasions of the officers of the law of the State of New York, he did not drive through the neighboring small village where Kathleen had met her sister walking, but took a devious way through obscure mountain roads to Villanova, the larger town which lay several miles inland from the lake shore and where Father Tracy lived.

He left his Ford several rods up a wood road at the foot of a mountain near the edge of the town, and threaded his way through the more obscure streets in the direction of the rectory.

Very few people were abroad, but when he arrived at the edge of the back-yard of the parochial residence he observed with a certain satisfaction that the house was lighted in what he supposed to be the pastor's study on the first floor.

He had brought the automatic pistol which always accompanied his professional journeys over the Canadian border, but his ride in the pure Adirondack night air, and the necessity for concentration in driving over the rough mountain roads, had dissipated the effects of the two bottles of cut whisky which he had consumed, to that degree that as he approached the house with murder in his black heart, he did so with all the native cunning he possessed keyed to the last notch, and, indeed, in a state of almost preternatural caution. But within him, unleashed, burned the evil fires of rage, disappointment, and hatred against his daughter and this good priest, which had seared and hardened his evil soul to the point where he would stop at nothing.

Under the stress of this stimulation, he decided suddenly not to use the pistol, and he looked about the yard for a suitable weapon. The devil placed one to his hand. There, near the back porch, lay an ideal club, a section of thin gas-pipe left that very day by the local plumber who had fitted a new section to the hand-pump which supplied the kitchen. He picked up the pipe, which was about two feet in length, and balanced it in his hand, a devilish grin contorting his bleared features.

Very softly he approached the house on the side which lay in shadow, and took his stand under the lighted study window. Cautiously he raised himself to a level with the lower edge of the window, and peered through the transverse aperture left by an imperfectly pulled-down shade.

Kathleen sat with her back to him, within two feet of the open window. On the other side of the table sat the priest. Kathleen was speaking. He craned his neck to listen, his teeth now, unconsciously, bared.

"I think it would be better for me to go to the convent out there in the West, Father," she was saying, "for as you say, the farther away I go the safer I would feel."

The priest made some reply, of acquiescence and approval, unintelligible to Godard, who was now busily engaged in removing with the delicate touch of a repairer of watches, the fasteners from the wire screen which separated him from his prey.

It came out in his hands without a sound, and before the priest had finished his remark, Godard was in the room. Cursing frenziedly, though still softly, for he was still under the influence of his cautious obsession, he sprang like a tiger through the window, and with one terrific blow had crushed his daughter's lovely head like an eggshell.

Father Tracy, overcome with horror and momentarily helpless in the, face of this berserk attack out of the calm mediocrity of his side-yard, was the next victim. With unspeakable blasphemies on his crusted lips, foam in the corners of his mouth, Godard was upon him, and the iron bar fell again and again until all human semblance was gone and a heap of huddled pulp on the rapidly crimsoning floor of his quiet study was all that remained mortal of the kindly priest of God.

Then, shivering under the fearful reaction of his holocaust, Godard, exercising the last remaining power of the stimulation of his low cunning, blew out the lamp, and as silently as a shadow slipped out through the opened window onto the grass beneath.

He turned back along the shadow of the house, but before he had reached the open yard behind, he bethought him abruptly of the detached wire screen which he had left leaning against the side of the house. He returned, catlike, and busied himself with refastening it. Just as he snicked home the last of the four patent fasteners, footsteps approached along the sidewalk from the farther side of the house, and he crouched like an animal against the side of the house in deep, protecting shadow. The footsteps, accompanied by two unconstrained voices, and punctuated by raucous laughs, continued past the house. Godard held his breath until it seemed to burn within his breast, and, furtively, cat-like, watched with unwinking, small eyes the two uncertainly-outlined figures pass the house. At last they were gone, and noiselessly he slipped again along the side of the house in the protecting shadow, and disappeared in the tangle of weeds at the end of the yard.

Again, by back streets, he threaded his way tortuously toward the mountain road where he had concealed his car. As he stepped cautiously out onto the main road which led into the village of Villanova, he almost ran into two large men who were standing, smoking silently, at the roadside. Involuntarily he stopped, and the two turned toward him. A blinding flash dazzled his eyes as one of the men turned the gleam of an electric flashlight in the direction of the furtive shape which had broken in upon their meditation. At once Godard was recognized.

It was the two men who had passed the rectory while he was replacing the wire screen in the window. Both hailed him by name.

"What you a-doin' 'way out here this time o' night, Pierre?" came the full bass of Martin Delaney.

"Goshamighty! Thought you was a ghost or somep'n!" It was the squeaky voice of Louis Le Grand.

Shaking in abject terror, the stimulation of his blood-lust entirely dissipated and no longer supporting him, Pierre Godard could only stand, his knees shaking and knocking, and goggle back at his interlocutors. At last, after the passage of several moments, and a new look, one of curiosity, had implanted itself on the faces of the two countrymen. Godard managed to gasp, in a dry throaty voice, not at all like his own, something about a piece of business here in Villanova; and not waiting to ascertain what effect his unusual preoccupation might have upon Delaney and Le Grand, he hastened at a kind of shambling trot down the main road toward his hidden car.

Both Delaney and Le Grand were very much mystified at Godard's unusual behavior. The two cronies, commonly bereft of all but the usual topics of local conversation, which were anything but interesting, made the most of this mild mystery. Therefore it was very firmly implanted in their rather obtuse minds that there could be only one possible author of the horrible crime which had been committed in the rectory, when the little town buzzed and seethed with it the next morning.

By 10 o'clock of that Friday, a posse was out after Godard, under the direction of a deputy sheriff and equipped with three automobiles, and had traced him as far as Willsboro Point by an imperfection in one of his tires, when the search was abruptly terminated by finding the car itself, which he had abandoned at the side of the Point road, at the intersection of another road which led down to the shore of the lake. It did not require more than the very average intelligence of deputy sheriff Maclear to come to the obvious conclusion that he had got across the lake and into Vermont, a conclusion corroborated by the statement of an irate resident camper who had been searching during the past hour and a half for a missing St. Lawrence skiff in which the camper had planned to go perch-fishing that morning, and which could nowhere be discovered.

The posse drove back to "Willsboro station, and notified the Vermont authorities at Burlington, by telegraph. Then deputy sheriff Maclear reported to his superior, who got in touch with Albany asking requisition papers on the governor of the State of Vermont for a fugitive who had, the night before, brutally murdered his own daughter and a blameless priest of God.

But the Vermont authorities, although they took due action upon the telegraphed information, which contained an exact description of Godard, failed signally to get on the track of the fugitive from justice who had left the New York shore, unmistakably, from Willsboro Point. Every usual precaution was taken, and for some time it was surmised that Godard, familiar with the lake shores from a lifetime of contiguous residence and from his professional activities as a rum-runner, had managed to land on the Vermont side and make his escape into the mountains. The greatest puzzle was what could have become of that St. Lawrence skiff which he had discovered so opportunely.

Some of the clearer-headed of those who set themselves to solve this problem came to the conclusion that Godard, desiring to conceal from his pursuers the point of his departure inland in Vermont, had scuttled the boat near the shore's edge, which he could easily have managed, either by smashing a hole or two after landing, weighting down the skiff with rocks, and shoving her out into the deep waters of the lake; or by doing the scuttling before landing, and swimming ashore. At any rate there was, on the Vermont side, no trace either of the fugitive or of the delicate little vessel in which he had left the New York side.

AS GODARD sped away from the vicinity of Villanova it required from him every particle of concentration he could summon to drive at all. He opened up his dingy little car, which had, despite its battered appearance, an excellent engine, and hitting the high spots of the twining, rough mountain roads, he concentrated every effort in the blind urge to put as many miles as possible between himself and the scene of his horrible crime.

It was only when after several miles of incredible bumping and swaying he had reached a State road, that a definite objective for his flight began to take form in his harassed and befuddled mind. As he gave fragmentary thought to this pressing problem, something of his native low-cunning reasserted itself. His evil mind began to function. It first became plain to him that he could not return to his squalid home. He had been seen, and recognized.

His one hope was that the crushed and mangled bodies of his unfortunate victims might not be discovered until morning.

There was no good reason why they should be discovered. The priest, as he knew very well, lived alone except for a superannuated old woman who was his housekeeper, and this ancient crone had unquestionably retired for the night long before his arrival in Villanova. Being ancient, and decrepit, she could be trusted to sleep through everything until morning. Barring a night-call for Father Tracy, the chances were excellent that the bodies would not be discovered until sometime the next morning. It was now a little after midnight. It would be light around 4 o 'clock. He had something like four hours to work in.

He speeded up the car along the lake shore southward. He would go "up the lake"— as the southerly direction, for some inexplicable reason, was called, locally— away from Canada. Canada had been his first lucid thought; but that, as he reasoned cunningly, would necessitate a wide detour or else passing through lHattsburg, and he wished to risk neither the loss of time, nor the dash through a good-sized city, even at 1 o'clock in the morning. Therefore he turned south, in the direction of Essex.

As he neared Willsboro, the town just north of Essex, a brand-new idea occurred to him. By abandoning his car somewhere hereabouts, he could get an earlier start for crossing the lake into Vermont. With every mile he traveled, the lake narrowed, but straight across from Willsboro it would be only four miles, and, he reasoned, he would rather be out on the lake in the dim dusk of early morning than attempting to conceal his car and steal a boat in anything approaching daylight.

Some early-morning fisherman would be sure to see him!

A little past the Willsboro railroad station, therefore, his idea having begotten another, in his cunning brain, this time something in the nature of an inspiration, he turned his ear sharply to the left, grinning evilly as he acted upon his newest hunch, and ran back, nearly at right angles with his previous course, down upon Willsboro Point. This is a peninsula, several miles in length, running northeasterly— a section of fine farmland in the center, its two shores thickly populated by summer campers, city people for the most part. No one, pursuing, would ever imagine that he had turned off, he reasoned. Besides, the city people at the camps had canoes, and in a canoe, from somewhere near the Point's end, he could, with the greatest ease, make his unseen way out to one of the Four Brother Islands, conceal the canoe in some dense thicket of underbrush, and effectually hide out. There were, too, lake-gulls' eggs in abundance on the islands, and no one would suspect, until it was too late, that he had done otherwise than attempt to make his escape, either into Canada (his own first idea) or across the lake into Vermont.

The car was his immediate problem, but there was no way of solving that. There was, as he well knew, no water along the shore deep enough to permit his sending it at full speed over the edge into the lake, and so hiding it effectually.

He left it directly in the road, and slunk down to the lake shore at his right in search of a canoe.

His luck held. At the very first camp he reached he found not only canoes but a St. Lawrence skiff, a staunch type of boat, round-bottomed, sharp-nosed at both ends, a boat capable, like a canoe, of being managed with a light paddle, but although equally fast, infinitely stauncher and less dangerous than any canoe.

Silently he launched out into the lake, and with swift, yet noiseless paddle-strokes shot his stolen skiff out into the black darkness in the direction of the Four Brothers.

These islands, "Les Isles des Quatre Vents" of the voyageurs, are old haunts of the lake smugglers. They lie, from the viewpoint of one approaching them directly from the Point shore, in the order of a mouth, nose, and two eyes, roughly speaking. The nearest, called "the mouth," was sighted after a few minutes of vigorous paddling by Godard, who passed it to the right or southerly direction. It had upon it a cabin, former residence of the keeper of the gulls, which are protected by state law. Godard was not looking for the comforts of cabins! He passed "the nose," a low-lying, swampy island, and paddled on to the island which would correspond to the left eye. This, the most rarely visited of the islands, infested with gulls, presents, like its fellow "eye," a precipitous shore all around, and is heavily forested with evergreens and thick, virgin underbrush.

Guided precisely by the noise of the gulls, which are constantly bickering, and then by his own keen eyesight, Godard carefully navigated the little island, finally landing and drawing the skiff into a tiny bay which was little more than a cleft in the guano-covered rocks. He concealed the skiff, despite the darkness, with immense cleverness, and began the difficult ascent of the cliff.

At last, bruised, spent, and befouled with guano, he reached the summit, and half walked, half crawled through the tangled underbrush toward the almost impenetrable center.

In his ascent he had disturbed countless nesting gulls, and their din, to his strained and tautened nerves, was distracting, but the increased noise did not trouble him. The gulls were always at it, day and night, and such an increase would not be heard a mile and a half away on the sleeping Point. It was, curiously enough, the spider webs that really annoyed him. Undisturbed for centuries, these midnight spinners had worked and spun and plundered the air without hindrance.

As Godard pushed his precipitous way up the rocks and then again through the almost impenetrable underbrush, he was constantly brushing away long, clinging webs, which crossed and recrossed before his face and neck, and about his scratched and bleeding hands and wrists.

As he penetrated farther and farther toward the slightly conical center of the little island, it seemed to him that both the restraining pressure and the clinging tenacity of the webs were on the increase, but his native wit assured him that this impression was due to his fatigue and the reaction from the enormous amount of bad whisky he had imbibed during the afternoon.

He was, indeed, in the very depths of reactive depression. He cursed softly and bitterly, with a despairing note of self-pity, as the webs, ever thicker and stronger, as it seemed, appeared almost to reach out after him, to bar his way to effectual concealment.

At last, trembling in every limb, the salt sweat running into his parched mouth, shaking and weak, he observed that he was stepping slightly downhill. His progress since leaving the upper edge of the cliff had been slightly ascending. He had reached the approximate center of the island.

Wearily he paused, and almost sobbing out his bitter curses, tore fretfully, with trembling fingers, at a great mass of thick, silky web that had attached itself to his mouth.

As he looked about him through the darkness, and felt with his hands for a comparatively level place on which to sit down, he almost shrieked. He had put his hand down on something feathery, soft, and yielding to the touch. He looked, horrified, at the ground. Gibbering in mortal terror, he drew a box of matches from his pocket, and, cupping his hands, cautiously drew one across the side of the box. The flare of the safety-match revealed something white. He looked closer, stooping near the ground and carefully guarding the flame of his match, and he saw that it was the body of a gull.

Something, he thought, something that seemed as big as his two fists, scampered away through the underbrush, awkwardly, a lumpish kind of thing. A mink, or weasel, his reason reassured him.

The match went out, burning his fingers, and a pall of sudden blackness fell upon him. Terrified, less moved with the caution of a lifelong habitude for concealment, now, he struck another match and examined the gull by its yellow flare.

From the bird's throat ran two thin streams of blood. The blood stained his hands as he picked it up. The gull was warm, living. It struggled, sinuously, faintly, in his hands. All about it, about its head and about its legs, and pinning its powerful wings close to its side, ran great, silken swaths of spider's web. The gull muttered, squeakingly, and writhed weakly between his hands. With a scream he could not suppress he hurled it from him and attempted to rush away from this place of horror.

But now, weakened by his exertions, his forces sapped by long debauchery, his nerves jangling from the terrific stress he had put upon them that night, he could not run.

All about him the underbrush closed in, it seemed to him, as though bent malignantly upon imprisoning him here among these nameless, silent, spinning demons which had destroyed the gull.

He had hurled his matches away with that same flinging motion begotten of his horror. It was utterly impossible to recover them now.

The thick blackness had closed down upon him again at the burning out of the second match. He could feel the blood suffuse his entire body, and then recede, leaving him cold. He shivered, as he suddenly felt the sweat cold against his sodden body. Chill after chill raced down his spine. He whimpered and called suddenly upon God, the forgotten God of his erratic childhood.

But God, it seemed, had no answer for him. A soft touch came delicately upon the back of his clenched right hand. Something soft, clinging and silky, passed around it. Suddenly he shrieked again, and spasmodically tore his hand loose. But even as he struggled to free his hand, a terrible pain seared his leg, a pain as though he had stepped under water upon a sting-ray; a pain as though a red-hot poniard had been thrust far into his calf; and then something soft and clinging fell upon his head and he could feel the thick strands of silk being woven remorselessly through his hair and about his ears....

As he sank to the ground, his consciousness rapidly waning, the first clinging, composite, deliberate strands went across his eyes. His last conscious thought was of his daughter Kathleen's soft, silky hair....

IT WAS NOT until nearly two weeks later that the skiff came to light, when four large rowboats slowly approached Les Isles des Quatre Vents from the direction of the lake side of the base of the Point. Crowded into the boats were the boys from Camp Cherokee making one of their annual boat-hikes to the four islands. Their course naturally brought them first to the island which has been called "The Left Eye."

The St. Lawrence skiff, loosened from its primitive fastenings by a heavy storm which had intervened, had slipped out several feet from its concealing underbrush.

"Oh, look! Somebody's out here already!" shouted a sharp-eyed youngster in the bow of the foremost rowboat.

"Can't we land here, Mr. Tanner?" asked one of the older boys when all eyes had sought out and discovered the skiff. "We have plenty of time. Nobody ever comes to this island, they say, and most of us saw the others last year."

Consulting his watch, his mind on lunch ashore, the counselor in charge of the boat-hike gave his consent, and the four rowboats drew in close to the spot where Godard had made his landing. Mr. Tanner looked closely at the skiff.

"I shouldn't be a bit surprized," he remarked, slowly, "if that were the skiff that was stolen from down on the Point a couple of weeks ago!"

The boys chattered excitedly while the boats lay off the shore of "The Left Eye," Mr. Tanner considering. It was not impossible that the murderer, Godard, lay concealed on this island! No one had hitherto thought of such a possibility.

Mr. Tanner came to a conclusion, after rapid thought. He would take the skiff, thus cutting off the murderer (if indeed he were concealed on the island) from any probable escape. So far it appeared a clear course.

Two reliable, older boys, placed in charge of the salvaged skiff, returned it to its owners, who promptly telephoned the sheriff.

Mr. Tanner conducted his protesting flotilla across to the island which has been called "The Mouth"— the island on which stood the hut, and where the boys' temporary camp-site had been planned. The oars moved reluctantly, for the boys wanted to land and "hunt the murderer." Mr. Tanner, whose responsibility lay in another direction than the apprehension of criminals, preferred to proceed according to schedule.

Two hours later a laden rowboat put off from the Point and approached The Four Brothers. The watching boys, thus, as it were, augmented by the authorities, could be restrained no longer.

Mr. Tanner was able to manage it so that his four rowboats followed the official rowboat to "The Left Eye." Beyond that he could not control his Indians!

The boys nearly swamped their boats in their eagerness to disembark.

In the end it was one of them who did, actually, discover Godard's remains.

"Gosh!" the rest heard him shout. "Look here, everybody! Here's a thing like a mummy!"

The spot was soon surrounded, the more agile boys distancing the slower-moving sheriff and constables.

Godard's body, easily identifiable from its clothing, lay, or, more precisely, hung, in the thickest tangle of all the tangled bushes and brush which made the central, highest point of the little island almost impenetrable. At first sight, it gave the impression of a bundle of clothes rather than a human body. It was, as the boy had cried out, virtually a mummy, though sodden through the draggled clothes (which Godard's progress through the tearing brush had greatly disarranged) by the effects of the heavy storm which had revealed the skiff.

It gave the appearance of a human body which, as though by some long process of time, had dried up to a mere fraction of its original bulk. It swayed, held free of the ground by the heavy brush, in the brisk breeze which was blowing "up the lake" from the cold north.

The grayish appearance of this strange simulacrum of a human form, which at first puzzled the men when they approached to disengage it from the tangled bushes, was found to be due to innumerable heavy strands of broad opalescent silky webbing, webbing which had been wound about the head, about the hands and arms and legs, webbing now frayed and torn in places by the wind and the friction of the bushes.

One of the constables, a heavy, rather brutal-faced person, pulled at it and rubbed it from his hands on his canvas overalls.

"Looks for all the world like spider web," he remarked laconically. "What d'you s'pose it can be, Herb?" addressing the deputy sheriff in charge.

Herb Maclear, the sheriff, pushed his way through the brush close to the body. He, too, examined the web, touching it gingerly with his finger, and then rubbing his finger as though something uncanny, unwholesome, had touched him. The boys, sensing something dreadful, fell silent. Several pushed their way toward Mr. Tanner, and stood near him.

Maclear, pale now, stooped and seemed to be looking at something near the ground. "Gimme that stick!" he ordered. One of the constables handed him what he demanded, and with it the sheriff poked at something on the ground. Their curiosity overcoming the general sense of something queer about the whole proceeding, several of the boys and two of the constables shouldered through the brush toward the sheriff, now digging with his stick, his face red again from stooping and his exertions.

Those standing nearest observed that the sheriff was enlarging a hole that ran into the ground near the heavy root of one of the bushes, a hole about which were heavy warps of the same gray, shimmering web.

The stick broke through a soft spot, and sank far into the enlarged hole.

"My God!" they heard the sheriff say.

He played delicately with the stick, as though working at something that the ground obscured. He twisted and worked it about in the hole.

At last he drew it up, still carefully, gingerly.

And on its end, transfixed, there came into the light of that morning a huge, frightful, maimed thing, of satiny, loathsome black, like the fur of a bat, with glowing salmon-colored striping showing upon its hunched back— a spider as large as a prize peach, with great, waving, now ineffective, metal-like mandibles. They saw its little burning eyes like harsh diamonds gleam once, before the sheriff, holding it on the ground with his stick, set his foot on the dreadful thing.

The wind blew cold from the north as the men, in a tight knot, half dragged, half carried the meager body of Pierre Godard hastily out through the retarding brush in silence, while a subdued and silent group of boys, closely gathered about their white-faced counselor, hurried down the declivity toward the edge of the cliff, below which they could see their boats, floating down there in the clean water.

__________________

17: Mrs. Lorriquer

Henry S. Whitehead

Weird Tales, April 1932

THE late Ronald Firbank, British author, apostle of the light touch in literary treatment, put grass skirts upon the three lady heroines of his West Indian book, Prancing Nigger, as all persons who have perused that delicate romance of an unnamed West Indian island will doubtless remember. In so dressing Mrs. Mouth, and her two attractive daughters, Mr. Firbank was only twelve thousand miles out of the way, although that is not bad for anybody who writes about the West Indies— almost conservative, in fact. I, Gerald Canevin, have more than once reassured timid female inquirers, who had heard of our climate, but who were apprehensive of living among "those savages and cannibals!"

I have always suspected that Mr. Firbank, to go back for a moment to that gentleman before dismissing him and his book, got his light-touch information about the West Indies from a winter tour aboard one of the great trans-Atlantic liners which, winters, are used for such purposes in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, and which, in St. Thomas, discharge their hundreds of "personally conducted" tourists in swarms upon our innocent, narrow sidewalks, transforming the quiet, Old World town into a seething, hectic market-place for several hours every two weeks or so during a winter's season there.

For, truth being stranger by far than any fiction, there are grass skirts— on such occasions— on St. Thomas' streets; piles and stacks of them, for sale to tourists who buy them avidly. I know of no more engaging sight in this world than a two hundred and fifty pound tourist-lady, her husband in the offing, his hand in his money-pocket, chaffering with one of our Cha-Cha women with her drab, flat face and tight-pulled, straight hair knotted at the back, for a grass skirt!

It appears that, some years back, a certain iron-visaged spinster, in the employ of a social service agency, "took up" the Cha-Cha women, seeking to brighten their lot, and, realizing that a certain native raffia grass had commercial possibilities, taught them to make Polynesian grass skirts of it. Thereafter and ever since there has been a vast plague of these things about the streets of St. Thomas whenever a tourist vessel comes into our harbor under the skilled pilotage of Captain Simmons or Captain Caroc, our pilots.

I open this strange tale of Mrs. Lorriquer in this offhand fashion because my first sight of that compact, gray-haired little American gentlewoman was when I passed her, in the very heart and midst of one of these tourist invasions, rather indignantly trying to get rid of an insistent vender who seemed possessed to drape her five feet two, and one hundred and sixty pounds, in a five-colored grass skirt, and who would not be appeased and desist. As I was about to pass I overheard Mrs. Lorriquer say, with both indignation and finality:

"But, I'm not a tourist— I live here!"

That effectually settled the grass-skirt seller, who turned her attention to the tourists forthwith.

I had paused, almost unconsciously, and found myself face to face with Mrs. Lorriquer, whom I had not seen before. She smiled at me and I smiled back.

"Will you allow another permanent resident to rescue you from this melee?" I inquired, removing my hat.

"It is rather like a Continental mardi gras, isn't it?" said Mrs. Lorriquer, taking my arm.

"Where are you staying?" I inquired. "Are you at the Grand Hotel?"

"No," said Mrs. Lorriquer. "We have a house, the Crique place, half-way up Denmark Hill. We came down the day before yesterday, on the Nova Scotia, and we expect to be here all winter."

"I am Gerald Canevin," said I, "and I happen to be your very near neighbor. Probably we shall see a good deal of each other. If I can be of any assistance—"

"You have, already, Mr. Canevin," said Mrs. Lorriquer, whimsically.

I supposed at once she referred to my "rescue" of her from the tourist mob, but, it seemed, she had something quite different in her mind.

"It was because of some things of yours we had read," she went on, "that Colonel Lorriquer and I— and my widowed daughter, Mrs. Preston—decided to spend the winter here," she finished.

"Indeed!" said I. "Then, perhaps, you will allow me to continue the responsibility. When would it meet your convenience for me to call and meet the Colonel and Mrs. Preston?"

"Come any time," said Mrs. Lorriquer, "come to dinner, of course. We are living very informally."

We had reached the post-office, opposite the Grand Hotel, and here, doubtless according to instructions, stood Mrs. Lorriquer's car. I handed her in, and the kindly-faced, short, stout, little sixty-year-old lady was whirled away around the comer of the hotel toward one of the side roads which mount the precipitous sides of St. Thomas' best residential district.

I called the following afternoon, and thus inaugurated what proved to be a very pleasant acquaintanceship.

Colonel Lorriquer, a retired army engineer, was -a man of seventy, extraordinarily well preserved, genial, a ripened citizen of the world. He had, it transpired on acquaintance, had a hand in many pieces of engineering, in various parts of the known world, and had spent several years on that vast American enterprise, the construction of the Panama Canal. Mrs. Preston, whose aviator husband had met his death a few months previously in the exercise of his hazardous profession, turned out to be a very charming person, still stunned and overburdened with the grief of her bereavement, and with two tiny children. I gathered that it was largely upon her account that the Colonel and Mrs. Lorriquer had come to St. Thomas that winter. Being a West Indian enthusiast, it seemed to me that the family had used excellent judgment. There could be no better place for them under those circumstances. There is that in the charm and perfect climate of the Northern Lesser Antilles which heals the wounds of the heart, even though, as they say, when one stays too long there is Lethe.

We settled down in short order to a more or less intimate acquaintanceship. The Lorriquers, and Mrs. Preston, were, so to speak, "my sort of people." Many mutual acquaintances developed as we became better acquainted. We found much in common.

I have set down all this preliminary portion of this story thus in detail, because I have wished to emphasize, if possible, the fact that never, in all my experiences with thee bizarre which this human scene offers to the open-minded observer, has it occurred to me to find any greater contrast than that which existed between Mrs. Lorriquer, short, stout, matter-of-fact, kindly little lady that she was, and the quite utterly incredible thing which— but I must not, I simply must not, in this case, allow myself to get ahead of my story. God knows it is strange enough not to need any "literary devices" to make it seem stranger....

The Lorriquers spent a good deal of the time which, under the circumstances, hung upon their hands, in card-playing. All three members of the family were expert Auction and Contract players. Naturally, being quite close at hand, I became a fourth and many evenings not otherwise occupied were spent, sometimes at my house, sometimes at theirs, about the card-table.

The Colonel and I played together, against the two ladies, and this arrangement was very rarely varied. Occasionally Mrs. Squire, a middle-aged woman who had known the Lorriquers at home in the States, and who had an apartment at the Grand Hotel for the winter, joined us, and then, usually, Mrs. Preston gave up her place and Mrs. Squire and I paired against the Colonel and his wife.

EVEN AFTER the lapse of several years, I confess that I find myself as I write, hesitant, reluctant somehow, to set down the beginning of the strange discrepancy which first indicated what was to come to light in our innocent social relationship that winter. I think I can best do so, best open up this incredible thing, by recording a conversation between me and Mrs. Squire as we walked, one moonlit midnight, slowly down the hill toward the Grand Hotel.

We had finished an evening at the Lorriquers, and Mrs. Lorriquer had been especially, a little more than ordinarily, rude over the cards. Somehow, I can not say how it occurred, we discussed this strange anomaly in our hostess, usually the most kindly, simple, hospitable soul imaginable.

"She only does it when she plays cards," remarked Mrs. Squire. "Otherwise, as you have said, Mr. Canevin, she is the very soul of kindliness, of generosity. I have never been able to understand, and I have known the Lorriquers for more than ten years— how a woman of her character and knowledge of the world can act as she does over the card-table. It would be quite unbearable, quite utterly absurd— would it not— if one didn't know how very sweet and dear she really is."

It was, truly, a puzzle. It had developed very soon after we had started in at our Bridge games together. The plain fact, to set it down straight, was that Mrs. Lorriquer, at the card-table, was a most pernicious old termagant! A more complete diversity between her as she sat, frowning over her cards; exacting every last penalty; enforcing abstruse rules against her opponents while taking advantage of breaking them all herself ad libitum; arguing, most inanely and even offensively, over scores and value of points and penalties— all of her actions and conduct at the card-table; with her general placidity, kindliness, and effusive good-nature under all other circumstances— a more complete diversity, I say, could never be imagined.

It has always been one of my negative principles that annoyance over the details or over the outcome of any game of chance or skill should never be expressed. That sort of thing has-always seemed to me absurd; indeed, inexcusable. Yet, I testify, I have, and increasingly as our acquaintance progressed, been so worked up over the cards when playing with the Lorriquer family, as to have to put the brakes down tight upon some expression of annoyance which I should later have regretted. Indeed, I will go farther, and own up to the fact that I have been badgered into entering into arguments with Mrs. Lorriquer at the table, when she would make some utterly outrageous claim, and then argue— the only word for it is offensively— against the massed testimony of her opponents and her partner for the evening. More than once, Mrs. Preston, under the stress of such an exhibition of temper and unreasonableness on her mother's part, has risen from the table, making some excuse, only to return a few minutes later. I believe that on all such occasions, Mrs. Preston took this means of allowing her annoyance to evaporate rather than express herself to her mother in the presence of a guest.

To say that it was annoyance is to put it very mildly indeed. It was embarrassing, too, to the very last degree. The subjects upon which Mrs. Lorriquer would "go up in the air," as Mrs. Squire once modernly expressed it, were always trivial; always unreasonable. Mrs. Lorriquer, although a finished player in all respects, was, I think, always, as a matter of fact, in the wrong. She would question the amount of a score, for example, and, upon being shown the printed penalties for such score on the cover-page of the score pad, or from one of the standard books on the game, would shift over to a questioning of the score itself. The tricks, left on the table, would be counted out to her, before her eyes, by Colonel Lorriquer. Halfway through such an ocular demonstration, Mrs. Lorriquer would interrupt her husband with some kind of diatribe worthy the mind of a person quite utterly ignorant of the game of Contract and of decent manners. She insisted upon keeping all scores herself, but unless this process were very carefully watched and checked, she would, perhaps half the time, cheat in favor of her own side.

It was, really, outrageous. Time and time again, I have gone home from the Lorriquers, after such an evening as I have indicated, utterly resolved never to play there again, or to refuse, as courteously as might be possible, to meet Mrs. Lorriquer over a card-table. Then, the next day, perhaps, the other Mrs. Lorriquer, charming, kindly, sweet-natured, gentle and hospitable, would be in such overwhelming, disarming evidence, that my overnight resdlution would be dissipated into thin air, and I would accuse myself of becoming middle-aged, querulous!

But this unaccountable diversity between the Mrs. Lorriquer of ordinary affairs and the Mrs. Lorriquer of the card-table, outstanding, conspicuous, absurd indeed, as it was, was really as nothing when compared to Mrs. Lorriquer's luck at the cards.

I have never seen anything like it; never heard, save in old-fashioned fictional tales of the person who sold his soul to Satan for invincibility at cards, of anything which could compare to it. It is true that Mrs. Lorriquer sometimes lost— a single game, or perhaps even a rubber. But, in the long run, Mrs. Lorriquer, even on the lowest possible basis for expressing what I mean, did not need to cheat, still less to argue over points or scores. She won, steadily, inevitably, monotonously, like the steady propulsive motions of some soulless machine at its mechanical work. It was virtually impossible to beat her.

We did not play for stakes. If we had, a goodly portion of my income would have been diverted that winter to the Lorriquer coffers. Save for the fact that as it was the Colonel who played partners with me, it would have been Mrs. Lorriquer, rather than the Lorriquer family, who would have netted all the proceeds!!

In bidding, and, indeed, in the actual playing of a hand, she seemed to follow no system beyond abject reliance on her "luck." I have, not once, but many, many times, known her, for example, to bid two no trumps originally, on a hand perhaps containing two "singletons," only to have her partner "go to three" with a hand containing every card which she needed for the dummy. I will not specify, beyond this, any technical illustrations of how her extraordinary "luck" manifested itself. Suffice it to say that Bridge is, largely, a mathematical matter, varied, in the case of four thoroughly trained players, by what is known as the "distribution" of the cards. It is this unknown element of "distribution" which keeps the game, in the hands of a table of experts, a "game of chance" and not merely a mathematical certainty gaged by skilful, back-and-forth, informative bidding. To put the whole matter of Mrs. Lorriquer's "luck" into a nutshell, it was this element of "distribution" of the cards which favored her, in and out of season; caused her to win with a continuous regularity; never seeming to cause her to be pleased at her success and so lend to an evening at cards with her at the table that rather unsatisfactory geniality which even a child shows when it "gets the breaks" at a game.

No; Mrs. Lorriquer was, while engaged in playing Bridge, a harridan, a disagreeable old vixen; a "pill" as, I believe, I once heard the outraged Mrs. Squire mutter desperately, under her breath!

Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to allege that as against the Colonel and me, playing as partners for many evenings, the "distribution" of the cards was adverse with absolute unformity. I should hesitate to say that, positively, although my recollection is that such was the case. But, in the ordinary run of affairs, once in a while one of us would get a commanding hand, and, immune from the possibility of the "distribution" affecting success, would play it out to a winning score for the time being. It was after one such hand—I played it, the Colonel's hand as dummy—that I succeeded in making my bid: four hearts, to a game. I remember that I had nine hearts in my hand, together with the ace, king of clubs, and "stoppers" on one other suit, and finishing with something "above the line" besides "making game" in one hand, that my first intimation of a strange element in Mrs. Lorriquer's attitude to the game made itself apparent. Hitherto—it was, perhaps, a matter of a month or six weeks of the acquaintance between us—it had been a combination of luck and what I can only call bad manners; the variety of luck which I have attempted to indicate and the "bad manners" strictly limited to such times as we sat around the square table in the center of the Lorriquers' breezy hail.

The indication to which I have referred was merely an exclamation from my right, where Mrs. Lorriquer sat, as usual, in her accustomed place.

"Sapristi!" boomed Mrs. Lorriquer, in a deep, resonant, man-like voice.

I looked up from my successful hand and smiled at her. I had, of course, imagined that she was joking—to use an antique, rather meaningless, old-French oath, in that voice. Her own voice, even when scolding over the card-table, was a light, essentially feminine voice. If she had been a singer, she would have been a thin, high soprano.

To my surprize, Mrs. Lorriquer was not wearing her whimsical expression. At once, too, she entered into an acrimonious dispute with the Colonel over the scoring of our game-going hand, as usual, insisting on something quite ridiculous, the old Colonel arguing with her patiently.

I glanced at Mrs. Preston to see what she might have made of her mother's exclamation in that strange, unaccustomed, incongruous voice. She was looking down at the table, on which her hands rested, a pensive and somewhat puzzled expression slightly puckering her white forehead. So far as I could guess from her expression she, too, had been surprized at what she had heard. Apparently, I imagined, such a peculiar manifestation of annoyance on Mrs. Lorriquer's part was as new to her daughter as it was to me, still a comparative stranger in that family's acquaintance.

We resumed play, and, perhaps an hour or more later, it happened that we won another rather notable hand, a little slam, carefully bid up, in no trumps, the Colonel playing the hand. About half-way through, when it was apparent that we were practically sure of our six over-tricks, I noticed, being, of course, unoccupied, that Mrs. Lorriquer, at my right, was muttering to herself, in a peculiarly ill-natured, querulous way she had under such circumstances, and, my mind stimulated by the remembrance of her use of the old-French oath, I listened very carefully and discovered that she was muttering in French. The most of it I lost, but the gist of it was, directed toward her husband, a running diatribe of the most personal and even venomous kind imaginable.

Spanish, as I was aware, Mrs. Lorriquer knew. She had lived in the Canal Zone for a number of years, and elsewhere where the Colonel's professional engagements as an engineer had taken them, but, to my knowledge, my hostess was unacquainted with colloquial French. The mutterings were distinctively colloquial. She had, among other things, called her husband in those mutterings "the accursed child of a misbegotten frog," which is, however inelegant on the lips of a cultivated elderly gentlewoman, at least indicative of an intimate knowledge of the language of the Frankish peoples! No one else sensed it— the foreign tongue, I mean— doubtless because both other players were fully occupied, the Colonel in making our little slam, Mrs. Preston in doing what she could to prevent him, and besides, such mutterings were common on Mrs. Lorriquer's part; were usual, indeed, on rare occasions when a hand at Bridge was going against her and her partner. It was the use of the French that intrigued me.

A few days later, meeting her coming down the hill, a sunny smile on her kindly, good-humored face, I addressed her, whimsically, in French. Smilingly, she disclaimed all knowledge of what I was talking about.

"I supposed you were a French scholar, somehow," said I.

"I really don't know a word of it," replied Mrs. Lorriquer, "unless, perhaps, what 'R.S V.P.' means, and— oh, yes!— 'honi soit qui mal y pense!' That's on the great seal of England, isn't it, Mr. Canevin?"

It set me to wondering, as, I imagine, it would have set anyone under just those circumstances, and I had something to puzzle over. I could not, you see, readily reconcile Mrs. Lorriquer's direct statement that she knew no French, a statement made with the utmost frankness, and to no possible end if it were untrue, with the fact that she had objurgated the Colonel under her breath and with a surprizing degree of fluency, as "the accursed child of a misbegotten frog!"

It seemed, this little puzzle, insoluble! There could, it seemed to me, be no possible question as to Mrs. Lorriquer's veracity. If she said she knew no French besides the trite phrases which everybody knows, then the conclusion was inevitable; she knew no French! But— beyond question she had spoken, under her breath to be sure, but in my plain hearing, in that language and in the most familiar and colloquial manner imaginable.

There was, logically, only one possible explanation. Mrs. Lorriquer had been speaking French without her own knowledge!

I had to let it go at that, absurd as such a conclusion seemed to me.

But, pondering over this apparent absurdity, another point, which might have been illuminating if foresight were as satisfactory as "hindsight," emerged in my mind. I recalled that what I have called "the other Mrs. Lorriquer" was an especially gentle, kindly person, greatly averse to the spoiling of anybody's good time! The normal Mrs. Lorriquer was, really, almost softly apologetic. The least little matter wherein anything which could possibly be attributed to her had gone wrong would always be the subject of an explanation, an apology. If the palm salad at one of her luncheons or dinners did not seem to her to be quite perfect, there would be deprecatory remarks. If the limes from which a little juice was to be squeezed out upon the halved papayas at her table happened not to be of the highest quality, the very greenest of green limes that is, Mrs. Lorriquer would lament the absence of absolutely perfect limes that morning when she had gone in person to procure them from the market-place. In other words, Mrs. Lorriquer carried almost to the last extreme her veritable passion for making her guests enjoy themselves, for seeing to it that everybody about her was happy and comfortable and provided with the best of everything.

But— it occurred to me that she never apologized afterward for any of her exhibitions at the card-table.

By an easy analogy, the conclusion— if correct— was inevitable. Mrs. Lorriquer, apparently, did not at all realize that she was a virtually different person when she played cards.

I pondered this, too. I came to the conclusion that, queer as it seemed, this was the correct explanation of her extraordinary conduct.

But— such an "explanation" did not carry one very far, that was certain. For at once it occurred to me as it would have occurred to anybody else, her husband and daughter for choice, that there must be something behind this "explanation". If Mrs. Lorriquer "was not herself" at such times as she was engaged in playing cards, what made her that way? I recalled, whimsically, the remark of a small child of my acquaintance whose mother had been suffering from a devastating sick-headache. Lillian's father had remarked:

"Don't trouble Mother, my dear. Mother's not herself this afternoon, you see."

"Well," countered the puzzled Lillian, "who is she, then, Daddy?"

It was, indeed, in this present case, quite as though Mrs. Lorriquer were somebody else, somebody quite different from "herself" whenever she sat at the card-table. That was as far as I could get with my attempt at any "explanation".

The "somebody else", as I thought the matter through, had three known characteristics. First, an incredibly ugly disposition. Second, the ability to speak fluently a language unknown to Mrs. Lorriquer. Third, at least as manifested on one occasion, and evidenced by no more than the booming utterance of a single word, a deep, man-like, bass voice!

I stopped there in my process of reasoning. The whole thing was too absurdly bizarre for me to waste any more time over it along that line of reasoning. As to the obvious process of consulting Colonel Lorriquer or Mrs. Preston, their daughter, on such a subject, that was, sheerly, out of the question. Interesting as the problem was to me, one simply does not do such things.

THEN, quite without any warning, there came another piece of evidence.

I have mentioned our St. Thomas Cha-Chas, and also that Mrs. Lorriquer was accustomed to visit the market-place in person in the interest of her table. The St. Thomas Cha-Chas form a self-sustaining, self-contained community as distinct from the rest of the life which surrounds them in their own "village" set on the seashore to the west of the main portion of the town as oil from water. They have been there from time immemorial, the local "poor whites", hardy fishermen, faithful workers, the women great sellers of small hand-made articles (like the famous grass skirts) and garden produce. They are inbred, from a long living in a very small community of their own, look mostly all alike, and, coming as they did many years ago from the French island of St. Bartholomew, most of them when together speak a kind of modified Norman French, a peasant dialect of their own, although all of them know and use a simplified variety of our English tongue for general purposes.

Along the streets, as well as in the public market-place, the Cha-Cha women may be seen, always separate from the negress market-vendors, offering their neddlework, their woven grass baskets and similar articles, and the varying seasonal fruits and vegetables which they cultivate in their tiny garden patches or gather from the more inaccessible distant groves and ravines of the island—mangoes, palmets, sugar-apples, the strange-appearing cashew fruits, every variety of local eatable including trays of the most villainous-appearing peppermint candy, which, upon trial, is a truly delicious confection.

Passing the market one morning I saw Mrs. Lorriquer standing in a group of five or six Cha-Cha market women who were outvying one another in presenting the respective claims of various trays loaded with the small, red, round tomatoes in which certain Cha-Cha families specialize. One of the women, in her eagerness to attract the attention of the customer, jostled another, who retaliated upon her in their own familiar tongue. An argument among the women broke out at this, several taking sides, and in an instant Mrs. Lorriquer was the center of a tornado of vocables in Cha-Cha French.

Fearing that this would be annoying to her, I hastened across the street to the market-place, toward the group, but my interference proved not to be required. I was, perhaps, half-way across when Mrs. Lorriquer took charge of the situation herself, and with an effectiveness which no one could have anticipated. In that same booming voice with which she had ejaculated "Sapristi!" and in fluent, positively Apache French, Mrs. Lorriquer suddenly put a benumbing silence upon the bickering market women, who fell back from her in an astounded silence, so sudden a silence that clear and shrill came the comment from a near-by Black woman balancing a tray loaded to the brim with avocado pears upon her kerchiefed head, listening, pop-eyed, to the altercation.

"Ooh, me Gahd!" remarked the negress to the air about her. "Whoite missy tahlk to they in Cha-Cha!"

It was only a matter of seconds before I was at Mrs. Lorriquer's side.

"Can I be of any assistance?" I inquired.

Mrs. Lorriquer glared at me, looking precisely as she did when engaged in one of her querulous, acrimonious arguments at the card-table. Then her ountenance changed with a startling abruptness, and she looked quite as usual.

"I was just buying some of these lovely little tomatoes," she said.

The Cha-Cha women, stultified, huddled into a cowering knot, looked at her speechlessly, their red faces several shades paler than their accustomed brick-color. The one whose tray Mrs. Lorriquer now approached shrank back from her. I do not wonder, after the blast which this gentle-looking little American lady had but now let loose upon them all. The market seemed unusually quiet. I glanced about. Every eye was upon us. Fortunately, the market-place was almost empty of customers.

"I'll take two dozen of these," said Mrs. Lorriquer. "How much are they, please?"

The woman counted out the tomatoes with hands trembling, placed them carefully in a paper bag, handed them to Mrs. Lorriquer, who paid her. We stepped down to the ground from the elevated concrete floor of the market.

"They seem so subdued— the poor souls!" remarked Mrs. Lorriquer, whose goggle-eyed chauffeur, a boy as black as ebony, glanced at her out of the corner of a fearfully rolled eye as he opened the door of her car.

"Come to luncheon," said Mrs. Lorriquer, sweetly, beaming at me, "and help us eat these nice little tomatoes. They are delicious with mayonnaise after they are blanched and chilled." It seemed rather an abrupt contrast, these homely words of invitation, after what I had heard her call those Cha-Cha women....

"I'll come, with pleasure," I replied.

"One o'clock, then," said Mrs. Lorriquer, nodding and smiling, as her Black Hans turned the car skilfully and started along the Queen's Road toward the center of town.

We did not play cards that afternoon after luncheon, because Mrs. Lorriquer and Mrs. Preston were going to an afternoon party at the residence of the Government Secretary's wife, and Colonel Lorriquer and I sat, over our coffee, on the west gallery of the house out of reach of the blazing early-afternoon sun, and chatted.

We got upon the subject of the possibility of another isthmian canal, the one tentatively proposed across Nicaragua.

"That, as you may know, Mr. Canevin, was one of the old French Company's proposals, before they settled down to approximately the present site— the one we followed out— back in the late Seventies."

"De Lesseps," I murmured.

"Yes," said the Colonel, musingly, "yes— a very complex matter it was, that French proposal. They never could, it seems, have gone through with it, as a matter of fact— the opposition at home in France, the underestimate of the gross cost of excavation, the suspicion of 'crookedness' which arose— they impeached the Count de Lesseps finally, you know, degraded him, ruined the poor fellow. And then, the sanitation question, you know. If it had not been for our Gorgas and his marvelous work in that direction—"

"Tell me," I interrupted, "just how long were the French at work on their canal, Colonel?"

"Approximately from 1881 to 1889," replied the Colonel, "although the actual work of excavation, the bulk of the work, was between '85 and '89. By the way, Canevin, we lived in a rather unusual house there. Have I ever mentioned that to you?"

"Never," said I. "What was the unusual element about your house?"

"Only that it was believed to be haunted," replied the Colonel; "although, I must admit, I never— we never— met with the least evidence outside the superstitions of the people. Our neighbors all believed it to be haunted in some way. We got it for a song for that reason and it was a very pleasant place. You see, it had been fitted up, quite regardless of the cost, as a kind of public casino or gambling-house, about 1885, and it had been a resort for de Lesseps' crowd for the four years before the French Company abandoned their work. It was a huge place, with delightful galleries. The furniture, too, was excellent. We took it as it stood, you see, and, beyond a terrific job to get it clean and habitable, it was a very excellent investment. We were there for more than three years altogether."

An idea, vague, tenuous, grotesque enough in all truth, and, indeed, somewhat less than half formed, had leaped into my mind at the combination of a "haunted" residence and the French work on the ill-fated de Lesseps canal project.

"Indeed!" said I. "It certainly sounds interesting. And do you know, Colonel, who ran the old casino; who, so to speak, was the proprietor— unless it was a part of the Company's scheme for keeping their men interested?"

"It was privately managed," returned the Colonel, "and, queerly enough, as it happens, I can show you the photograph of riie former proprietor. He was a picturesque villain!" The Colonel rose and started to go inside the house from where we sat on the cool gallery. He paused at thee wide doorway, his hand on the jamb.

"It was the proprietor who was supposed to haunt the house," said he, and went inside.

My mind reeled under the stress of these dues and the attempts, almost subconscious— for, indeed, I had thought much of the possible problem presented by Mrs. Lorriquer's case; a "case" only in my own imagination, so far; and I had constructed tentativdy three or four connected theories by the time the Colonel returned, a large, stiff, cabinet photograph in his hand. He laid this on the table between us and resumed his Chinese rattan lounge-chair. I picked up the photograph.

It was the portrait, stiffly posed, the hand, senatorially, in the fold of the long, black surtout coat, of the sort ancidently known as a Prince Albert, of a rather small, emaciated man, whose face was disfigured by the pittmgs of smallpox; a man with a heavy head of jet-black hair, carefully combed after a fashion named, in our United States, for General McClellan of Civil War fame, the locks brushed forward over the tops of the ears, and the parting, although this could not be seen in the front-face photograph, extending all the way down the back to the neck. A "croupier's" mustache, curled and waxed ferociously, ornamented the sallow, sinister features of a face notable only for its one outstanding feature; a jaw as solid and square as that of Julius Caesar. Otherwise, as far as character was concerned, the photograph showed a very unattractive person, the type of man, quite obviously, who in these modem times would inevitably have followed one of our numerous and varied "rackets" and probably, one imagined, with that jaw to help, successfully!

"And how, if one may ask," said I, laying the photograph down on the table again, "did you manage to get hold of this jewel, Colonel Lorriquer?"

The old gentleman laughed. "We found it in the back end of a bureau drawer," said he. "I have mentioned that we took the house over just as it was. Did you notice the cameo?"

"Yes," I replied, picking the photograph up once more to look at the huge breast-pin which seemed too large in the picture even for the enormous "de joinville" scarf which wholly obliterated the shirt-front underneath.

"It is certainly a whopper!" I commented. "It reminds me of that delightful moving picture Cameo Kirby, if you happened to see it some time ago, cm the silent screen."

"Quite," agreed Colonel Lorriquer. "That, too, turned up, and in the same ancient bureau, when we were cleaning it. It was wedged in behind the edge of the bottom-board of the middle drawer. Of course you have observed that Mrs. Lorriquer wears it?"

I had, and said so. The enormous breast-pin was the same which I had many times observed upon Mrs. Lorriquer. It seemed a favorite ornament of hers. I picked up the photograph once more.

Down m the lower right-hand corner, in now faded gilt letters of ornamental scrollwork, appeared the name of the photographer. I read: "La Palma, Quezaltenango."

" 'Quezaltenango,' I read aloud. "That is in Guatemala. Was the 'gentleman of the house', perhaps, a Central American? It would be hard to guess at his nationality from this. He looks a citizen of the world!"

"No," replied the Colonel, "he was a Frenchman, and he had been, as it appears, living by his wits all over Central America. When the work of construction actually began under the French Company— that was in 1885— there was a rush of persons like him toward the pickings from so large a group of men who would be looking for amusement, and this fellow came early and stayed almost throughout the four years. His name was Simon Legrand, and, from what I gathered about him, he was a very ugly customer."

"You remarked that he was connected with the alleged haunting," I ventured. "Is there, perhaps, a story in that?"

"Hardly a story, Mr. Canevin. No. It was merely that toward the end of the French Company's activities, in 1889, Legrand, who had apparently antagonized all his patrons at his casino, got into a dispute with one of them, over a game of piquet or ecarte— one of those French games of some kind, perhaps even vingt-et-un, for all I know, or even chemin-de-fer —and Simon went up to his bedroom, according to the story, to secure a pistol, being, for the time, rather carelessly in that company, unarmed. His 'guest' followed him upstairs and shot him as he stood in front of the bureau where he kept his weapon, from the bedroom doorway, thus ending the Career of what must have been a very precious rascal. Thereafter, the French Company's affairs and that of the casino being abruptly dissolved at about the same time, the rumor arose that Legrand was haunting his old quarters. Beyond the rumor, there never seemed anything to suggest its basis in anything but the imagination of the native Panamanians. As I have mentioned, we lived in the house three years, and it was precisely like any other house, only rather cheap, which satisfied us very well!"

THAT, as a few cautious questions, put diplomatically, clearly showed, was all the Colonel knew about Simon Legrand and his casino. I used up all the questions I had in mind, one after another, and, it being past three in the afternoon, and overtime for the day's siesta, I was about to take my leave in search of forty winks and the afternoon's shower-bath, when the Colonel volunteered a singular piece of information. He had been sitting rather quietly, as though brooding, and it was this, which I attributed to the after-luncheon drowsiness germane to these latitudes, which had prompted me to go. I was, indeed, rising from my chair at the moment, when the Colonel remarked:

"One element of the old casino seemed to remain— perhaps that was the haunting!" He stopped, and I hung, poised, as it were, to catch what he might be about to say. He paused, however, and I prompted him.

"And what might that be, sir?" I asked, very quietly. The Colonel seemed to come out of his revery.

"Eh?" he said, "eh, what?" He looked at me rather blankly.

"You were remarking that one element of the old casino's influence seemed to remain in your Canal Zone residence," said I.

"Ah— yes. Why, it was strange, Mr. Canevin, distinctly strange. I have often thought about it; although, of course, it was the merest coincidence, unless—perhaps— well, the idea of suggestion might come into play. Er— ah— er, what I had in mind was that— er— Mrs. Lorriquer you know— she began to take up card-playing there. She had never, to my knowledge, played before; had never cared for cards in the least; been brought up, in early life, to regard them as not quite the thing for a lady and all that, you see. Her mother, by the way, was Sarah Langhome—perhaps you had not heard this, Mr. Canevin—the very well-known medium of Bellows Falls, Vermon. The old lady had quite a reputation in her day. Strictly honest, of course! Old New England stock— of the very best, sir. Straight-laced! Lord— a card in the house would have been impossible! Cards, in that family! 'The Devil's Bible,' Mr. Canevin. That was the moral atmosphere which surrounded my wife's formative days. But— no sooner had we begun to live in that house down there, than she developed card-sense', somehow, and she has fonnd it— er— her chief interest, I should say, ever since." The old Colonel heaved a kind of mild sigh, and that was as near as I had heard to any comment on his wife's outrageous conduct at cards, which must, of course, have been a major annoyance in the old gentleman's otherwise placid existence.

I went home with much material to ponder. I had enough to work out a more or less complete "case" now, if, indeed, there was an occult background for Mrs. Lorriquer's diverse conduct, her apparently subconscious use of colloquial French, and— that amazing deep bass voice!

Yes, all the elements seemed to be present now. The haunted house; with that scar-faced croupier as the haunter; the sudden predilection for cards emanating there; the initial probability of Mrs. Lorriquer's susceptibility to discarnate influences, to a "control", as the spiritualists name this phenomenon— the cameo —all the rest of it; it all pointed straight to one conclusion, which, to put it conservatively, might be described as the "influence" of the late Simon Legrand's personality upon kindly Mrs. Lorriquer who had "absorbed" it in three years' residence in a house thoroughly impregnated by his ugly and unpleasant personality.

I let it go at that, and— it must be understood— I was only half-way in earnest at the time, in even attempting to attribute to this "case" anything like an Occult background. One gets to look for such explanations when one lives in the West Indies where the very atmosphere is charged with Magic!

But— my inferences, and whereunto these led, were, at their most extreme, mild, compared with what was, within two days, to be revealed to us all. However, I have resolved to set this tale down in order, as it happened, and again I remind myself that I must not allow myself to run ahead of the normal sequence of events. Hie dbionement, however, did not take very long to occur.

It was, indeed, no more than two days later; at the unpropitious hour of two-fifteen in the morning—I looked at my watch on my bureau as I was hastily throwing on a few necessary dothes— that I was aroused by a confused kind of tumult outside, and, coming into complete wakefulness, observed an ominous glow through my windows and realized that a house, quite near by, was on fire.

I leaped at once out of bed, and took a better lode, with my head out the window. Yes, it was a fire, and, from appearances, the makings of a fine— and very dangerous— blaze here in the heart of the residence district where the houses, on the sharp side-hill, are built very close together.

It was a matter of moments before I was dressed, after a fashion, and outside, and running down the path to my gateway and thence around the comer to the left. The fire itself, as I now saw at a glance, was in a wooden building now used as a garage, directly on the roadway before one of Denmark Hill's ancient and stately mansions. Already a thin crowd, of negroes entirely, had gathered, and I saw that I was "elected" to take charge in the absence of any other white man, when I heard, with relief, the engine approaching. Our Fire Department, while not hampered with obsolete apparatus, is somewhat primitive. The engine rounded the comer, and just behind it, a Government Ford, the "transportation" apportioned to Lieutenant Farnum of Uncle Sam's efficient Marines. The Lieutenant, serving as the Governor's Legal Aide, had, among his fixed duties, the charge of the Fire Department. This highly efficient young gentleman, whom I knew very well, was at once in the very heart of the situation, had the crowd back away to a reasonable distance, the fire engine strategically placed, and a double stream of chemicals playing directly upon the blazing shack.

The fire, however, had had a long start, and the little building was in a full blaze. It seemed, just then, doubtful whether or not the two streams would prove adequate to put it out. The real danger, however, under the night trade wind, which was blowing lustily, was in the spread of the fire, through flying sparks, of which there were many, and I approached Lieutenant Farnum offering co-operation.

"I'd suggest waking up the people— in that house, and that, and that one," directed Lieutenant Farnum, denoting which houses he had in mind.

"Right!" said I, "I'm shoving right off!" And I started down the hill to the first of the houses. On the way I was fortunate enough to meet my house-boy, Stephen Penn, an intelligent young negro, and him I dispatched to two of the houses which stood together, to awaken the inmates if, indeed, the noise of the conflagration had not already performed that office. Then I hastened at a run to the Crique place, occupied by the Lorriquer family, the house farthest from the blaze, yet in the direct line of the sparks and blazing slivers which the trade wind carried in a thin aerial stream straight toward it.

Our servants, in West Indian communities, never remain for the night on the premises. The Lorriquers would be, like all other Caucasians, alone in their house. I had, as it happened, never been upstairs in the house; did not, therefore, have my idea of its layout, nor knew which of the bedrooms were occupied by the several members of the family.

Without stopping to knock at the front entrance door, I slipped the latch of a pair of jalousies leading into the "hall" or drawing-room, an easy matter to negotiate, stepped inside across the window-sill, and, switching on the electric light in the lower entranceway, ran up the broad stone staircase to the floor above. I hoped that chance would favor me in finding the Colonel's room first, but as there was no way of telling, I rapped on the first door I came to, and, turning the handle—this was an emergency—stepped inside, leaving the door open behind me to secure such light as came from the single bulb burning in the upper hallway.

I stepped inside....

AGAIN, pausing for an instant to record my own sensations as an integral portion of this narrative, I hesitate, but this time only because of the choices which lie before me in telling, now long afterward, with the full knowledge of what was involved in this strange case, precisely what I saw; precisely what seemed to blast my eyesight for its very incredibleness—its "impossibility".

I had, it transpired, hit upon Mrs. Lorriquer's bedroom, and there plain before me—it was a light, clear night, and all the eight windows stood open to the starlight and what was left of a waning moon—lay Mrs. Lorriquer on the stub-posted mahogany four-poster with its tester and valance. The mosquito-net was not let down, and Mrs. Lorriquer, like most people in our climate, was covered, as she lay in her bed, only with a sheet. I could, therefore, see her quite plainly, in an excellent light.

But— that was not all that I saw.

For, beside the bed, quite close in fact, stood— Simon Legrand— facing me, the clothes, the closely buttoned surtout, the spreading, flaring de Joinville scarf, fastened with the amazing brooch, the pock-marked, ill-natured face, the thick, black hair, the typical croupier mustache, the truculent expression; Simon Legrand, to the last detail, precisely as he appeared in the cabinet photograph of La Palma of Quezaltenango— Simon Legrand to the life.

And, between him as he stood there, glaring truculently at me, intruding upon his abominable 'manifestation, and the body of Mrs. Lorriquer, as I glared back at this incredible configuration, there stretched, and wavered, and seemed to flow, toward him and from the body of Mrs. Lorriquer, a whitish, tenuous stream of some milky-looking material—like a waved sheet, like a great mass of opaque soap-bubbles, like those pouring grains of attenuated plasma described in Dracula; when in the dreadful castle in Transylvania, John Harker stood confronted with the materialization of that archfiend's myrmidons.

All these comparisons rushed through my mind, and, finally, the well-remembered descriptions of what takes place in the "materialization" of a "control" at a mediumistic seance when material from the medium floats toward and into the growing incorporation of the manifestation, building up the non-fictitious body through which the control expresses itself.

All this, I say, rushed through my mind with the speed of thought, and recorded itself so that I can easily remember the sequence of these ideas. But, confronted with this utterly unexpected affair, what I did, in actuality, was to pause, transfixed with the strangeness, and to mutter, "My God!"

Then, shaking internally, pulling myself together by a mighty effort while the shade or manifestation or whatever it might prove to be, of the French gambler glowered at me murderously, in silence, I made a great effort, one of those efforts which a man makes under the stress of utter necessity. I addressed the figure— in French!

"Good-morning, Monsieur Legrand," said I, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice. "Is it too early, think you, for a little game of ecarte?"

Just how, or why, this sentence formed itself in my mind, or, indeed, managed to get itself uttered, is, to this day, a puzzle to me. It seemed just then the one appropriate, the inevitable way, to deal with the situation. Then-

In the same booming bass which had voiced Mrs. Lorriquer's "Sapristi", a voice startlingly in contrast with his rather diminutive figure, Simon Legrand replied:

"Oui, Monsieur, at your service on all occasions, day or night— you to select the game!"

"Eh bien, done—" I began, when there came an interruption in the form of a determined masculine voice just behind me.

"Put your hands straight up and keep them there!"

I turned, and looked straight into the mouth of Colonel Lorriquer's service revolver; behind it the old Colonel, his face stern, his steady grip on the pistol professional, uncompromising.

At once he lowered the weapon.

"What— Mr. Canevin!" he cried. "What—"

"Look!" I cried bade at him, "look, while it lasts, Colonel!" and, grasping the old man's arm, I directed his attention to the now rapidly fading form or simulacrum of Simon Legrand. The Colonel stared fixedly at this amazing sight.

"My God!" He repeated my own exclamation. Then— "It's Legrand, Simon Legrand, the gambler!"

I explained, hastily, disjointedly, about the fire. I wanted the Colonel to understand, first, what I was doing in his house at half-past two in the morning. That, at the moment, seemed pressingly important to me. I had hardly begun upon this fragmentary explanation when Mrs. Preston appeared at the doorwary of her mother's room.

"Why, it's Mr. Canevin!" she exclaimed. Then, proceeding, "There's a house on fire quite near by. Father— I thought I'd best awaken you andMother."

Then, seeing that, apart from my mumbling of explanations about the fire, both her father and I were standing, our eyes rivetted to a point near her mother's bed, she fell silent, and not unnaturally, looked in the same direction. We heard her, behind us, her voice now infiltrated with a sudden alarm:

"What it it ?— what is it? Oh, Father, I thought I saw-"

The voice trailed out into a whisper. We turned, simultaneously, thus missing the very last thin waning appearance of Simon Legrand as the stream of tenuous, wavering substance poured back from him to the silent, immobile body of Mrs. Lorriquer motionless on its great bed, and the Colonel was just in time to support his daughter as she collapsed in a dead faint.

All this happened so rapidly that it is out of the question to set it down so as to give a mental picture of the swift sequence of events.

The Colonel, despite his character and firmness, was an old man, and not physically strong. I therefore lifted Mrs. Preston and carried her to a day-bed which stood along the wall of the room and there laid her down. The Colonel rubbed her hands. I fetched water from the mahogany washstand such as is part of the furnishings of all these old West Indian residence bedrooms, and sprinkled a little of the cool water on her face. Within a minute or two her eyelids fluttered, and she awakened. This secondary emergency had naturally diverted our attention from what was toward at Mrs. Lorriquer's bedside. But now, leaving Mrs. Preston who was nearly herself again, we hastened over to the bed.

Mrs. Lorriquer, apparently in a very deep sleep, and breathing heavily, lay there, inert. The Colonel shook her by the shoulder; shook her again. Her head moved to one side, her eyes opened, a baleful glare in her eyes.

"Va t'en, sâle bête!" said a deep manlike voice from between her clenched teeth. Then, a look of recognition replacing the glare, she sat up abruptly, and, in her natural voice, addressing the Colonel whom she had but now objurgated as a "foul beast," she asked, anxiously:

"Is anything the matter, dearest? Why —Mr. Canevin—I hope nothing's wrong!"

I told her about the fire.

In the meantime Mrs. Preston, somewhat shaky, but brave though puzzled over the strange happenings which she had witnessed, came to her mother's bedside. The Colonel placed an arm about his daughter, steadying her.

"Then we'd better all get dressed," said Mrs. Lorriquer, when I had finished my brief account of the fire, and the Colnel and I and Mrs. Preston walked out of the bedroom. Mrs. Preston slipped into her own room and closed the door behind her.

"Get yourself dressed, sir," I suggested to the old Colonel, "and I will wait for you on the front gallery below." He nodded, retired to his room, and I slipped downstairs and out to the gallery, where I sank into a cane chair and lit a cigarette with shaking fingers.

T he Colonel joined me before the cigarette was smoked through. He went straight to the point.

"For God's sake, what is it, Canevin?" he inquired, helplessly.

I had had time to think during the consumption of that cigarette on the gallery. I had expected some such direct inquiry as this, and had my answer ready.

"There is no danger— nothing whatever to worry yourself about just now, at any rate," said I, with a positive finality which I was far from feeling internally. I was still shaken by what I had seen in that airy bedroom. "The ladies will be down shortly. We can not talk before them. Besides, the fire may, possibly, be dangerous. I will tell you everything I know tomorrow morning. Come to my house at nine, if you please, sir,"

The old Colonel showed his army training at this.

"Very well, Mr. Canevin," said he, "at nine tomorrow, at your house."

Lieutenant Farnum and his efficient direction proved too much for the fire. Within a half-hour or so, as we sat on the gallery, the ladies wearing shawls because of the cool breeze, my house-boy, Stephen, came to report to me that the fire was totally extinguished. We had seen none of its original glare for the past quarter of an hour. I said goodnight, and the Lorriquer family retired to make up its interrupted sleep, while I walked up the hill and around the corner to my own house and turned in. The only persons among us all who had not been disturbed that eventful night were Mrs. Preston's two small children. As it would be a simple matter to take them to safety in case the fire menaced the house, we had agreed to leave them as they were, and they had slept quietly throughout all our alarums and excursions!

THE OLD Colonel looked his full seventy years the next morning when he arrived at my house and was shown out upon the gallery by Stephen, where I awaited him. His face was strained, lined, and ghastly.

"I did not sleep at all the rest of the night, Mr. Canevin," he confessed, "and four or five times I went to my wife's room and looked in, but every time she was sleeping naturally. What do you make of this dreadful happening, sir? I really do not know which way to turn, I admit to you, sir." The poor old man was in a truly pathetic state. I did what I could to reassure him.

I set out before him the whole case, as I have already set it out, as the details came before me, throughout the course of this narrative. I went into all the details, sparing nothing, even the delicate matter of Mrs. Lorriquer's conduct over the card-table. Summing up the matter I said:

"It seems plain, from all this testimony, that Simon Legrand's haunting of his old house which you occupied for three years was more of an actuality than your residence there indicated to you. His sudden death at the hands of one of his 'guests' may very well have left his personality, perhaps fortified by some unfulfilled wish, about the premises which had been his for a number of years previously. There are many recorded cases of similar nature in the annals of scientific occult investigation. Such a 'shade', animated by some compelling motive to persist in its earthly existence, would 'pervade' such premises already en rapport with his ways and customs.

"Then, for the first time, the old house was refurbished and occupied when you moved into it. Mrs. Lorriquer may be, doubtless is, I should suppose from the evidence we already have, one of those persons who is open to what seems to have happened to her. You mentioned her mother, a well-known medium of years ago. Such qualifications may well be more or less hereditary, you see.

"That Legrand laid hold upon the opportunity to manifiest himself through her, we already know. Both of us have seen him, 'manifested' and in a manner exactly typical of mediumistic productions, in material form, of their 'controls'. In this case, the degree of 'control' must be very strong, and, besides that, it has, plainly, been growing. The use of French, unconsciously, the very tone of his deep bass voice, also unconscious on her part, and—I will go farther, Colonel; there is another, and a very salient clue for us to use. You spoke of the fact that previous to your occupancy of the Legrand house in the 'zone' Mrs. Lorriquer never played cards. Obviously, if the rest of my inferences are correct, this desire to play cards came direct from Legrand, who was using her for his own self-expression, having, in some way, got himself en rapport with her as her 'control'. I would go on, then, and hazard the guess that just as her use of French is plainly subconscious, as is the use of Legrand's voice, on occasion—you will remember, I spoke to him before you came into the room last night, and he answered me in that same deep voice— so her actual playing of cards is an act totally unconscious on her part, or nearly so. It is a wide sweep of the imagination, but, I think, it will be substantiated after we have released her from this obsession, occupation by another personality, or whatever it proves to be."

The word "release" seemed to electrify the old gentleman. He jumped out of his chair, came toward me, his lined face alight with hope.

"Is there any remedy, Mr. Canevin? Can it be possible? Tell me, for God's sake, you can not understand how I am suffering— my poor wife! You have had much experience with this sort of thing; I, none whatever. It has always seemed— well, to put it bluntly, a lot of 'fake' to me."

"Yes," said I, slowly, "there is a remedy, Colonel— two remedies, in fact. The phenomenon with which we are confronted seems a kind of combination of mediumistic projection of the 'control', and plain, old-fashioned 'possession'. The Bible, as you will recall, is full of such cases—the Gadarene Demoniac, for example. So, indeed, is the ecclesiastical history through the Middle Ages. Indeed, as you may be aware, the 'order' of exorcist still persists in at least one of the great historic churches. One remedy, then, is exorcism. It is unusual, these days, but I am myself familiar with two cases where it has been successfully performed, in Boston, Massachusetts, within the last decade. A salient point, if we should resort to that, however, is Mrs. Lorriquer's own religion. Exorcism can not, according to the rules, be accorded to everybody. The bare minimum is that the subject should be validly baptized. Otherwise exorcism is inoperative; it does not work as we understand its mystical or spiritual processes."

"Mrs. Lorriquer's family were all Friends— Quakers," said the Colonel. "She is not, to my knowledge, baptized. Her kind of Quakers do not, I believe, practise baptism,"

"Well, then," said I, "there is another way, and that, with your permission, Colonel, I will outline to you."

"I am prepared to do anything, anything whatever, Mr. Canevin, to cure this horrible thing for my poor wife. The matter I leave entirely in your hands, and I will co-operate in every way, precisely as you say."

"Well said, sir!" I exclaimed, and forthwith proceeded to outline my plan to the Colonel....

PERHAPS there are some who would accuse me of being superstitious. As to that I do not know, and, quite frankly, I care little. However, I record that that afternoon I called on the rector of my own church in St. Thomas, the English Church, as the native people still call it, although it is no longer, now that St. Thomas is American territory, under the control of the Archbishop of the British West Indies as it was before our purchase from Denmark in 1917. I found the rector at home and proffered my request. It was for a vial of holy water. The rector and I walked across the street to the church and there in the sacristy, without comment, the good gentleman, an other-worldly soul much beloved by his congregation, provided my need. I handed him a twenty-franc note, for his poor, and took my departure, the bottle in the pocket of my white drill coat.

That evening, by arrangement with the Colonel, we gathered for an evening of cards at the Lorriquers'. I have never seal Mrs. Lorriquer more typically the termagant. She performed all her bag of tricks, such as I have recorded, and, shortly after eleven, when we had finished, Mrs. Preston's face wore a dull flush of annoyance and, when she retired, which she did immediately after we bad calculated the final score, she hardly bade the rest of us good-night.

Toward the end of the play, once more I happened to hold a commanding hand, and played it out to a successful five no-trumps, bid and made. All through the process of playing that hand, adverse to Mrs. Lorriquer and her partner, I listened carefully to a monotonous, ill-natured kind of undertone chant with which she punctuated her obvious annoyance. What she was saying was:

"Nom de nom, de nom, de nom, de nom—" precisely as a testy, old-fashioned, grumbling Frenchman will repeat those nearly meaningless syllables.

Mrs. Lorriquer retired not long after her daughter's departure upstairs, leaving the Colonel and me over a pair of Havana cigars.

We waited, according to our prearranged plan, downstairs there, until one o'clock in the morning.

Then the Colonel, at my request, brought from the small room which he used as an office or den, the longer of a very beautiful pair of Samurai swords, a magnificent weapon, with a blade as keen and smooth as any razor. Upon this, with a clean handkerchief, I rubbed half the contents of my holy water, not only upon the shimmering, inlaid, beautiful blade, but over the hand-grip as well.

Shortly after one, we proceeded, very softly, upstairs, and straight to the door of Mrs. Lorriquer's room, where we took up our stand outside. We listened, and within there was no sound of any kind whatever.

From time to time the Colonel, stooping, would peer in through the large keyhole, designed for an enormous, old-fashioned, complicated key. After quite a long wait, at precisely twenty minutes before two a. m. the Colonel, straightening up again after such an inspection, nodded to me. His face, which had regained some of its wonted color during the day, was a ghastly white, quite suddenly, and his hands shook as he softly turned the handle of the door, opened it, and stood aside for me to enter, which I did, he following me, and closing the door behind him. Behind us, in the upper hallway, and just beside the door-jamb, we had left a large, strong wicker basket, the kind designed to hold a family washing.

Precisely as she had lain the night before, was Mrs. Lorriquer, on the huge four-poster. And, beside her, the stream of plasma flowing from her to him, stood Simon Legrand, glowering at us evilly.

I advanced straight upon him, the beautiful knightly sword of Old Japan firmly held in my right hand, and as he shrank back, stretching the plasma stream to an extreme tenuity— like pulled dough it seemed— I abruptly cut through this softly-flowing material directly above the body of Mrs. Lorriquer with a transverse stroke. The sword met no apparent resistance as I did so, and then, without any delay, I turned directly upon Legrand, now muttering in a deep bass snarl, and with an accurately timed swing of the weapon, sheared off his head. At this stroke, the sword met resistance, comparable, perhaps, as nearly as I can express it, to the resistance which might be offered by the neck of a snow-man built by children.

The head, bloodlessly, as I had anticipated, fell to the floor, landing with only a slight, soft sound, rolled a few feet, and came to a pause against the baseboard of the room. The decapitated body swayed and buckled toward my right, and, before it gave way completely and fell prone upon the bedroom floor, I had managed two more strokes, the first through the middle of the body, and the second a little above the knees.

Then, as these large fragments lay upon the floor, I chopped them, lightly, into smaller sections.

As I made the first stroke, that just above Mrs. Lorriquer, severing the plasma stream, I heard from her a long, deep sound, like a sigh. Thereafter she lay quiet. There was no motion whatever from the sundered sections of "Simon Legrand" as these lay,'quite inert, upon the floor, and, as I have indicated, no flow of blood from them. I turned to the

Colonel, who stood just at my shoulder witnessing this extraordinary spectacle.

"It worked out precisely as we anticipated," said I. "The horrible thing is over and done with, now. It is time for the next step."

The old Colonel nodded, and went to the door, which he opened, and through which he peered before stepping out into the hallway. Plainly we had made no noise. Mrs. Preston and her babies were asleep. The Colonel brought the clothes-basket into the room, and between us, and rather gingerly at first, we picked up the sections of what had been "Simon Legrand". They were surprizingly light, and, to the touch, felt somewhat like soft and pliant dough. Into the basket they went, all of them, and, carrying it between us—it seemed to weigh altogether no more than perhaps twenty pounds at the outside—we stepped softly out of the room, closing the door behind us, down the stairs, and out, through the dining-room and kitchen into the walled back-yard.

Here, in the corner, stood the wire apparatus wherein papers and light trash were burned daily. Into this, already half filled with various papers, the Colonel poured several quarts of kerosene from a large five-gallon container fetched from the kitchen, and upon this kindling we placed carefully the strange fragments from our clothes-basket. Then I set a match to it, and within ten minutes there remained nothing except small particles of unidentifiable trash, of the simulacrum of Simon Legrand.

We returned, softly, after putting back the kerosene and the clothes-basket where they belonged, 'into the house, closing the kitchen door after us. Again we mounted the stairs, and went into Mrs. Lorriquer's room. We walked over to the bed and looked at her. She seemed, someow, shrunken, thinner than usual, less bulky, but, although there were deep, unaccustomed lines showing in her relaxed face, there was, too, upon that face, the very ghost of a kindly smile.

"It is just as you said it would be, Mr. Canevin," whispered the Colonel as we tiptoed down the stone stairway. I nodded.

"We will need an oiled rag for the sword," said I. "I wet it very thoroughly, you know."

"I will attend to that," said the Colonel, as he gripped my hand in a grasp of surprizing vigor.

"Good-night, sir," said I, and he accompanied me to the door.

THE COLONEL came in to see me about ten the next morning. I had only just finished a late "tea", as the early morning meal, after the Continental fashion, is still named in the Virgin Islands. The Colonel joined me at the table and took a late cup of coffee.

"I was sitting beside her when she awakened, a little before nine," he said, "and as she complained of an 'all-gone' feeling, I persuaded her to remain in bed, 'for a couple of days.' She was sleeping just now, very quietly and naturally, when I ran over to report."

I called the following morning to inquire for Mrs. Lorriquer. She was still in bed, and I left a polite message of good-will.

It was a full week before she felt well enough to get up, and it was two days after that that the Lorriquers invited me to dinner once more. The bulletins, surreptitiously reported to me by the Colonel, indicated that, as we had anticipated, she was slowly gaining strength. One of the Navy physicians, called in, had prescribed a mild tonic, which she had been taking.

The shrunken appearance persisted, I observed, but this, considering Mrs. Lorriquer's characteristic stoutness, was, actually, an improvement at least in her general appearance. The lines of her face appeared somewhat accentuated as compared to how she had looked before the last "manifestation" of the "control". Mrs. Preston seemed worried about her mother, but said little. She was rather unusually silent during dinner, I noticed.

I had one final test which I was anxious to apply. I waited for a complete pause in our conversation toward the end of a delightful dinner, served in Mrs. Lorriquer's best manner.

"And shall we have some Contract after dinner this evening?" I inquired, addressing Mrs. Lorriquer.

She almost blushed, looked at me deprecatingly.

"But, Mr. Canevin, you know— I know nothing of cards," she replied.

"Why, Mother!" exclaimed Mrs. Preston from across the table, and Mrs. Lorriquer looked at her in what seemed to be evident puzzlement. Mrs. Preston did not proceed, I suspect because her father touched her foot for silence under the table. Indeed, questioned, he admitted as much to me later that evening.

The old gentleman walked out with me, and half-way up the hall when I took my departure a little before eleven, after an evening of conversation punctuated by one statement of Mrs. Lorriquer's, made with a pleasant smile through a somewhat rueful face.

"Do you know, I've actually lost eighteen pounds, Mr. Canevin, and that being laid up in bed only eight or nine days. It seems incredible, does it not? The climate, perhaps—"

"Those scales must have been quite off," vouchsafed Mrs. Preston.

Going up the hill with the Colonel, I remarked:

"You still have one job on your hands, Colonel."

"Wh— what is that, Mr. Canevin?" inquired the old gentleman, apprehensively.

"Explaining the whole thing to your daughter," said I.

"I daresay it can be managed," returned Colonel Lorriquer. "I'll have a hack at that later!"

____________________

Index to "Past Masters" stories, by author.

Issues 31-45

I never envisaged this series of original anthologies going into so many issues, and the ever-growing index to all issues was becoming unwieldy.  Accordingly, I have now divided the Index.  This Index commences with Past Masters 31.

The Index to Issues 1 to 30 can be found in Past Masters 30, or as a stand-alone document uploaded to the Kindle and Epub libraries at MobileRead.

The stories are arranged in Alphabetical order of Author's surname, or if the author's name is consistently a pseudonym, that pseudonym (eg "Owen Oliver").  They are then in alphabetical order of title, disregarding "A", "An" and "The".

____________

Cleve F. Adams

Frame For a Lady 38

Lewis Allen

Pinched 39

Robert L. Ahern

Murder Needs No Motive  34

Mark Allerton

The Wrong 'Un 44

Anonymous

The Lady Detective's Story 32

F. Anstey

The Talking Horse  34

Alice and Claude Askew

The Mystery of Chenholt 42

Phyllis in the Wood  40

Stacy Aumonier

Mrs. Huggins's Hun  41

The Perfect Murder  41

Lillian Bamburg

The Missing Pearls  39

Robert Barr

The Doom of London   39

Charles Beadle

The Double Scoop 39

Wolcott LeClear Beard

A Ledge of Safety 33

Frederick R. Bechdolt

The Case of Mimbres  37

Jimmy Riley's "Turn"  42

Randolph Bedford

Filamena's Hula 39

The Man Who Held the Wires  39

H Bedford-Jones

Apache Gold 31

The Arizona Callahan  37

The Devil's Fire 31

The Devil is Dead 31

The Fog at Fiddler's Green 31

The King's Pipe 34

Lady of the Evil Eye 31

Sons of Kalewa 31

J. J. Bell

Blue Blood, or, The Pride of Lady Ambrosia 44

The Message on the Sun-Dial  42

Ralph Wilhelm Bergengren

Mr Chubb's Burglar 44

J. D. Beresford

The Sceptical Poltergeist  45

Leslie Beresford

Eastern Guile 35

M. McDonnell Bodkin

The Murder on the Golf Links  41

Charles G. Booth

Not According to Text 44

Christopher B. Booth

In His Brother's Job  40

Jimmy the Lug 42

Mr Clackworthy and the Auto Rim  40

Mr Clackworthy Goes to Jail 40

Mr Clackworthy's Pipe Dream  41

Mr. Clackworthy's Return  41

The Sealed Envelope 43

The Sparrow  40

Tardy, but on Time (as by John J. Chichester)  41

George Bronson-Howard

The Steerage Passenger 44

Ellis Parker Butler

An Experiment in Gyro-Hats  37

Beating The Law 43

Eliph' Hewlitt on the Millinery Problem  44

Hats and Lilies 37

The Heckby Hill Murder 38

Mr. Marston's Chauffeurette  40

Scott Campbell

Rings of Dust 43

Egerton Castle

The Baron's Quarry 42

The Closed Door  35

Robert W Chambers

As You Choose 44

Anna Alice Chapin

By Way of Experience 40

G. K. Chesterton

The White Pillars Murder 41

Richard Washburn Child

The Screen 45

C. Langton Clarke

The Detective for the Defense 33

Sylvanus Cobb Jr

A Footlight Flash 43

Richard Connell

The Grim House  41

Dorothea Conyers

Lord Hillayton's Settlement 35

Ted Copp

Blackmail Moll 36

Oswald Crawfurd

Our Mr. Smith  45

Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey

The Bigelow Murder Mystery  40

Charles Dickens

To be Taken with a Grain of Salt  39

Captain Dingle

Homeward Bound 33

Deferred 33

George Allan England

Buzzards   38

Drugged  38

George Manville Fenn

Lady Florry's Gems  34

Francis Flagg

The Blue Dimension 33

By the Hands of the Dead 45

The Heads of Apex 33

The Picture 45

The Smell 45

J. S. Fletcher

The Manor House Mystery  41

Elliott Flower

The Elusive Ten Dollar Bill 36

A Bundle of Banknotes  43

J. M. Fry

The Ring   38

Emile Gaboriau

The Little Old Man of Batignolles 34

Charles Garvice

The Two Uncles 44

Lady Gilbert

Aurora's Treasure 35

Guy Gilpatric

The Crafty Jerko-Slovaks 32

The Ladies of Catsmeat Yard  37

One Good Tern  35

The Pearl of Panama 42

The Rolling Stone  41

Susan Glaspell

A Jury of Her Peers 44

Winifred Graham

Pan   39

C. J. Hamilton

The Luck of Barney Costello 44

Arthur P Hankins

Eyes of Blue   43

Beatrice Heron-Maxwell

The Dancer's Mascot  35

Lewen Hewitt

Gold-Bricked 42

Headon Hill

Rogue's Legacy 32

William Crawford Honeyman

The Chinese Chessmen  42

Seward W. Hopkins

Dickerson's Bag of Gold 44

J. L. Hornibrook

Captain Cronhelm's Blunder 35

Oliver Madox Hueffer

Mistrusted Sight 41

S. B. H. Hurst

The Brightest Jewel of Them All  32

Burke Jenkins

The Anti-Climax of a Bad Man 44

His Christmas Orchid 44

Twenty-Four Hours Start 44

Wimple's Fog-Piercer 44

Jerome K Jerome

The Man of Science  43

Marianne Kent

A Black Diamond  35

Otis Adelbert Kline

The Dragoman's Slave Girl 35

George L. Knapp

The Family Compact  37

Thomas H. Knight

Old City of Jade  36

Alexander Kuprin

Menagerie 45

Alun Lewis

Private Jones 39

Sumner Locke

Ragtime 44

William J Locke

Ladies In Lavender 36

Marie Belloc Lowndes

Popeau Intervenes  41

Charles J. Mansford

The Dervish of the Nile Pyramid 34

The Great Dial of the Gold-Finders 33

The Hidden Egyptian Shield  34

The Lost Fetish of Walai 35

The Veiled Idol of Kor 32

The Wizard of Swazi Swamp   37

Mrs. L. T. Meade

Beauty Dear 32

The Yellow Dragon Vases 32

Mrs L. T. Meade and Dr Clifford Halifax, M.D.

The Strange Case of Captain Gascoigne 31

With the Eternal Fires 32

The Small House on Steven's Heath 33

"To Every one His Own Fear"  34

Gustav Meyrink

Bal Macabre  45

C S Montanye

Prey  40

Trapped 43

Arthur Morrison

A Lucifo Match 36

William Chambers Morrow

The Monster-Maker 42

Clarence Herbert New

The Attack from Moscow 32

Bill Garford’s Last Play (Culpeper Zandtt) 36

The Boss (Culpeper Zandtt)  37

A Challenge to the Submarine  36

The Island of Heaven and Hell 32

The Man Who Forgot  37

The Mystery at Mulungban  (Culpeper Zandtt)  37

A Night in the Kremlin 34

The Secret of Banda Sea 34

James Jeffreys O'Brien

Queen of the Beggars 44

Owen Oliver

The Cape Conspiracy  35

A Pretty Woman 31

A Rapid Conveyance  36

Success 40

E Phillips Oppenheim

Blackman's Wood 43

Frederick C. Painton

Narcotic Man  36

What! No Imagination? 38

Max Pemberton

The Cripple at the Mill  34

Last Across 39

The Lepers Guest   37

G. G. Pendarves

The Eighth Green Man  35

Hugh Pendexter

It Might Have Happened Otherwise  32

Kingbird 33

A New Keeper of the Wampum  39

The Raven Mocker 33

Wolf Medicine 41

Ernest M. Poate

Adjudged Incompetent  43

Doctor Bentiron's Addict Case 40

Honest John's Millions 42

Plain Soda 40

The Stolen Story 42

The Third Pinprick 42

Three Alike 40

Through the Looking Glass 40

Vials of Wrath 40

Well Done  40

Lewis Ramsden

Désirée 32

C. S. Raymond

The Wireless Death 36

Robert Reeves

Alcoholics  Calamitous 39

Bail Bait  39

Dance Macabre 39

Morley Roberts

The Hut by the Lachlan 44

Morgan Robertson

The Subconscious Finnegan 36

Arthur Somers Roche

The Dayless Diamonds 32

A Flutter in Finance 32

"Illimore!" 31

The Premiere Danseuse 32

The Robbery at the Café Ravasan 31

The Victim of Amnesia 31

William Merriam Rouse

The Nitwit 36

Victor Rowan

Four Wooden Stakes  38

Leroy Scott

The Langdon Mystery  44

Mary Sharon

The Cat of Chiltern Castle  43

George Bernard Shaw

The Miraculous Revenge  43

Perley Poore Sheehan

Dead Men Talk  38

Helen Simpson

A Posteriori   41

George R. Sims

The Mystery of a Midsummer Night  42

Christopher St. John Sprigg

Death at 8.30  42

F St Mars

The Green Devil 43

Annie S. Swan

The Diplomat  38

William Alexander Taylor

Intermere 33

Guy Thorne

Sir Patrick Armagh's Knife  39

E Charles Vivian

The House Among the Pines 44

Locked In 44

Hugh Walpole

The Twisted Inn 42

Florence Warden

Grimgriffenhoof  39

Cy Warman

"Sycamore": A Ghost Story 44

F A M Webster

The Owl 45

Towards Morning 33

Carolyn Wells

The Mystery of the Jade Buddha 40

A Point of Testimony 43

The Stolen Gems 43

Albert Richard Wetjen

The Madness of Captain Jonas 44

Ethel Lina White

The Scarecrow  42

Henry S. Whitehead

Black Terror 45

The Fireplace 45

Jumbee 37

The Left Eye 45

Mrs. Lorriquer 45

The Napier Limousine 45

The Projection of Armand Dubois 45

The Trap 45

The Tree-Man 45

Raoul Whitfield

The Caleso Murders 32

Diamonds of Dread  38

Inside Job 36

The Javanese Mask 42

Rivals of the Clouds 31

Shooting Gallery  41

Silence House 36

Sinners' Paradise 33

Leonora Wodehouse

Inquest  42

William Alron Wolff

Bait, Hook and Sinker  34

May Wynne

The Tiara  44

Arthur Leo Zagat

Girl of the Goat-God  43

______________________

Table of Contents

- 1:  The Owl / F A M Webster
- 2: Menagerie / Alexander Kuprin
- 3: The Screen / Richard Washburn Child

- 4: The Sceptical Poltergeist / J. D. Beresford

- 5: Our Mr. Smith / Oswald Crawfurd
- 6: The Smell / Francis Flagg
- 7: By the Hands of the Dead / Francis Flagg
- 8: The Picture / Francis Flagg
- 9: The Tree-Man / Henry S. Whitehead
- 10: Bal Macabre / Gustav Meyrink
- 11: The Fireplace / Henry S. Whitehead
- 12: Black Terror / Henry S. Whitehead

- 13: The Projection of Armand Dubois / Henry S. Whitehead

- 14: The Trap / Henry S. Whitehead

- 15: The Napier Limousine / Henry S. Whitehead

- 16: The Left Eye / Henry S. Whitehead
- 17: Mrs. Lorriquer / Henry S. Whitehead
- Cumulative Index