Summer Cottage from Hell
By Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin
Part of the Sinclair Narratives
4th of July 1909~Louie had just picked me up in my 1906 Stanley Steam Car from the bonfire on Lookout Hill. We were heading to Beverly to visit Roosevelt at his daughter Alice’s home. It was an experimental car that Arthur built at the General Electric plant in Lynn that could reach top speeds of 70 mph. Louie was always complaining he could not open her up around the curves heading north on Route 127. Eleonora was already causing havoc on the road and has become a regular at the district court in Salem.
“Hey, Boss! Why can’t I just let her stretch her legs a little?” Louie pleaded. Louie has been my oarsman and driver now for over 500 years, but he still does not believe me. Being immortal has some advantages over others. Most of my friends, with the exception of a few, die within normal spans of times for the average human. So it is not that Louie is another immortal, I just recognize him each time he is reincarnated. The good thing about true friends, we are pulled to each other in each life.
“Louie, you know we are going to the president’s daughter’s house, plus we are driving past the new president’s summer White House,” I said from behind the Salem Evening News, “Louie, have you heard that Evans has fallen from the house prior to Taft arriving at his summer cottage? He is not expected to survive the week. It says his wife is frantic with his fall only happening 3 days prior to the President’s arrival.”
“I prefer the reins of the steering wheel. Much safer in my opinion.” Louie spoke as if it was gospel.
As we were passing Ober Street on the way to the Evan’s estate on the Cove, the trolleys were on top of each other as pedestrians and a few horses blocked their way down the road. “Who cares about a portly president any ways! Give me our old friend any day!” Louie was going on, “I’m not embarrassed to say I bought one of those Teddy bears--and if anyone has anything to say about it I have a strong left to the nose with a bigger hammer in my right I might say!”
The crowd that normally crowded Dane Street Beach...and it seemed all points beyond, now were pushing and shoving their way toward the Evan’s residence to catch a sight of our new president who decided to move the White House and its staff here for the summer. I even had seen some of the Plummer Boys making their way through the crowd plying their trade and alleviating the wealthier set from the Farms from their overflowing wealth.
Let me not mislead you, Beverly Farms is not a poor farming community. I believe none of them would know the back end from the front end of a cow; it was a breeding ground for the wealthiest and most influential sort in the country. Which explains Taft’s choice for his summer residence.
Louie got fed up. He drove through the yard on the opposite side of the street from Ober, went around the house and came out 3 houses up back onto Route 127. Then he floored it all the way up to East Corning and was forced to slam on his brakes as the crowd spewed out from Corning Street. We made a total advance of 5 houses. While I sat in the back and Louie just cursed and waved his fist at the crowd I read further about Evan’s recent history. His American Rubber Company had just received a contract with the Wright Brothers to make tires for their planes. In another article there was a follow up of America’s possible pull out of Cuba on the heels of Panama breaking from Columbia. I wondered if we were pulling troops out of Cuba to redeploy them. Something Col. House might know about.
The crowd broke up as the police finally arrived and made way for the Trolley coming from Manchester heading south to make its way. The police were overtaxed from the various holiday celebrations in the different neighborhoods of Beverly, but if the Farms were where the lords lived, Manchester was where the Rajas and Czars of our nation controlled everything from. There was always police on hand for this crowd and their whims. Plus I thought I had seen a few Pinkertons amongst them breaking up the crowd with some heavy persuasion. Louie just jumped onto the tracks and ran behind the trolley through the gap in the crowd and ran the Stanley up to 72 miles around the tight curves forcing me to rip my paper and slide to and fro, front and back. I would have spoken out, but I know my efforts would of been all in vain.
___
We arrived at Alice’s stone home on the ocean and were met by Teddy in front of the house playing with her Wolfhounds. He just got off the ground from wrestling the larger of the two, Jameson. He brushed off his clothes and made his way for us with a grand bully greeting! Teddy had taken a break from the party that was happening in the back yard. Remond’s descendants were catering, a family business that dates back to the prior century. Charles Remond had been Frederick Douglass’ mentor on the abolitionist lecture circuit whose father started the business.
“Good to see you Henry! Come Louie park the car and join us in the back; Alice’s friend from Manhattan remembers you from the last Bacchanalian party here.” Teddy pauses and says a little withdrawn, “I just learned to let my daughter’s stories and some of her friends’ go in one ear and out the other. While I was president I could only handle her or the country; I chose the country and now I am forced to handle her. Begrudgingly though, I must add.” Teddy then grabbed my hand with a firm, but a little too much, grasp to exaggerate his stout frame and slapped me on the back with a huge toothy smile, filled with warmth, and guided me to the back.
Amidst the party goers we headed to Frank Crowninshield. Frank was better known by his friends as Keno. He had hailed from the illustrious smuggling family from Salem that bred their way to a shared fortune, which created the first millionaires in the country. Keno was one of Teddy’s Rough Riders from Cuba. So naturally once Teddy arrived again they began talking about the current state of Cuba. Teddy tried to avoid the subject, I believe he was trying to manipulate Taft and his cabinet to support the Panamanian rebels. Keno tried pushing the subject and started recalling their adventures in Cuba, when Nikola Tesla entered the conversation with his east European softness. The conversation seemed to drift to other subjects.
“Hello Henry. When will you let me study that stone of yours and its electrical properties?”
“Nikola, I would soon enough let you see Moses’ capacitor than let you see the Philosopher’s Stone.” These were some of the treasures I brought from my family’s Templar confines within Scotland to Salem a 100 years before that Italian with his Spanish crew. The Sinclair’s guarded these treasures, since de Molay’s death, at Roslyn, Scotland. I just brought the important stuff here to hide in my tunnels and the Chapel that keeps moving under the rose bushes in Salem. Tesla has of late been working on radio technologies, free supply of electricity, weather control, and a death ray to end all wars… “Is the weather to your liking today, or will you change it?”
Nikola laughed and handed me a champagne. I do wish it was a chocolate milk. “I’m sorry Henry; you just missed our friend Mr. Clemens. He said to pass on his greetings, but he went out to the sea to see the latest steamboat.” Not too long ago Samuel sent me a copy of his latest short fiction which involved the Hammonds in South Africa by what Tesla called a facsimile machine.
Alice came around the corner and took my champagne from behind and handed me a chocolate milk as she rounded to my front with a smile. “Hello Alice. You are looking as risque as usual...”
“Why thank you Henry, you rake.” This is when Teddy grabbed me by the elbow and led me to the smoking room. I just smiled over my shoulder as Alice waved back at me with a seductive grin and a laugh as she just shook her head.
___
Teddy led me and Keno to the smoking room. Nikola went to join Samuel at the boat. He said something about electric dynamos powering the boat if he could make sure they would keep dry or something. The room was filled with trophies on the wall: gazelles, rhinos, elk, caribou, and more. There was an elephant foot that held a stretched piece of an African elephant ear over wood for the table. A fist of a silver back gorilla holding up an ottoman. These were the overflow items of his home he forced his daughter to take in after bribing Col. Mann to keep her latest exploit out of his Manhattan social papers. He used this room to still impress and control the wealthy power brokers on the North Shore along this Gold Coast.
“Henry I see you have your chocolate milk; Keno a scotch?” Keno shook his head and took the rocks glass with ice. Now we noticed that we had disturbed Louie and that madam he had met prior laid out on the lion skin on the floor. The woman did not bother dressing and just winked at him over her shoulder and departed. Louie was quite embarrassed, as he only found time to unbutton his pants which he was fixing now at this moment. “Louie, stay. This will pertain to you as well. For I know you venture on many of Henry’s exploits and you will be a great hand at our latest endeavor I will propose now.”
The three of us took our seats in Alice’s nailhead leather chairs. “Now I fear Taft is about to dismantle my presidency. He is resisting my calls for moving the troops from Cuba to Panama to back the building of my canal.”
“But Ted, all we fought for in Cuba! How can you!” Keno protested.
“Keno, you know better than me that we all almost got killed charging San Juan Hill. I never have been a good leader of troops in small battalions. I proved better at bigger maneuvers of whole armies and a nation they derived from,” Teddy said as he placed his hand on his old comrades shoulder. “It is time for the canal, but Taft is trying to block it.”
At this time Nick, Alice’s husband enters the room. He has been recently dismantling Roosevelt’s Square Deal from his seat in Congress. Teddy fought all of those years to make sure children, women, and men have a fair deal to employment and wages. It seems Taft’s Yale roots were showing now. It was his father and William Russell who founded the Skull & Bones at that university. From there they continued the Federalists and Whig plans of servitude of this nation’s poor in service of their English masters. Teddy got quiet and then went into a Bully rage and kicked his son-in-law out of a room in his own house. Granted, Teddy did buy this home for his daughter.
“I believe the little he has heard will definitely make its way to Taft’s ear. Taft has not been himself for quite sometime. The weirdest thing is he has even changed the hand he writes with. Just before I left the White House, many papers had to be taken back to him to sign in front of other cabinet members.”
“How is Nellie doing? I have heard she has suffered a stroke and has not arisen yet.” Keno inquired about his old friend’s wife.
“Little word has been heard, but she has not travelled with her husband to the Evan’s and remains home in her bed.”
“That is strange, my cousin had just seen her at Kellogg’s basking in his gruel, that he calls healthy, and bathing in the mineral springs all pink and in good health.” Keno said scratching his chin.
“My intelligences have heard that there might be foul play upon Robert’s fall from the horse. Some of Taft’s bodyguards are not all from D.C. Some come from the Pinkertons. In fact those personally hired by Frick. They are quartered at his Eagle’s Nest in the Farms. There are suspicions that the horse was doped.” Teddy explains as he takes his seat with his scotch.
Now Alice, enters and takes his glass and replaces it with a chocolate milk. “Dad, you know what the doctor said.”
Teddy just looked gruff, but acquiesced with a harumph. Then he just sat up with a bolt with his chocolate milk out in front, “Plus Taft is fighting to keep the troops in Cuba.”
In time after some more conversations on more personal notes between four old friends and after Nikola joined us once again the night just waned on and we found ourselves the only ones left at the party as Alice, had escorted everyone to the door hours ago. That is what happens when good friends are joined together; time is lost, but made at the same time. Times to be remembered years down the road.
As Teddy led me out with his arm around my shoulders once more he looked at me, “You know Henry, I like your choice of drink. I just had Alice make that excuse about the doctor to save face and pretend to force this lovely concoction on me.” Teddy gave a little shrug of who cares and continued, “Now join me at the Evan’s summer cottage to meet the president on Wednesday. Then tell me your opinion on these matters we discussed tonight and I will reveal more that I know.”
___
Teddy had me picked up in his Packard Electrics car, him driving with Nikola at his side. I got into the back. He sped up English Street and squealed the wheels, almost flipping us, onto Webb Street. We went past Collins Cove to avoid the Hood milk wagons at this hour on the interior sections of Bridge Street, but we got onto Bridge Street later from Planters. Lucky for us, the drawbridge was down and we took the next right after the bridge to go past Dane Street Beach after a left up the hill. Then it was just another two rights, in quick succession, and we were on Ober. This time the trolley was not blocked, but pedestrians walked all over the road. Teddy had no patience and just sped through them casting many to the side. Some of Taft’s bodyguards tried to stop him, but they were forced to jump aside and make way for him.
We parked by the carriage house. As I exited the car, I noticed Mrs. Evans walking across the way for her driver. I paid my respects. “Thank you Henry, you are so kind. Look at this crowd!” said a woman who was at her wits end. Woodbury Point where she resided was strewn with strangers, mostly drunk, who were picnicking, cavorting, hooting and hollowing. Many came to catch a glimpse of the president, but most just came for the party atmosphere that descended on the property. Many took to ripping parts of her estate down and bringing them home as souvenirs. “I must swear, the saint my husband was, this is the worst decision he ever made while he was alive was agreeing to let Taft reside here and he is not even going to be around to bear the brunt of any of it,” she exclaimed, as one frantic and in a hurry.
As Teddy and I had watched Mrs. Evans enter her car and drive off, we went toward Taft’s residence as we left Nikola behind to examine Lucius Packard’s car. I had noticed him making subtle grunts and nods as he looked at various parts and heard the sounds of the car as Teddy drove us here.
Taft’s butler showed us into the parlor where Taft was in conference with Frick. I kept my composure. I never warmed up to Henry. Frick came in like a barnstormer and took over the Farms. I never cared for him, but ever since he hired the Pinkertons to kill labor protestors at the Homestead Massacre, I despised him. I remember Carnegie just washed his hands of the affairs. He let Frick handle his workers as he saw fit and just went to Scotland to play golf. Then his negligence at the South Fork Damn and the Johnstown Flood… Don’t get me going…
“Hello Teddy. Sinclair. Who is your friend here?” Taft asked looking at Nikola.
“Taft, this is my old friend from Serbia, Nikola Tesla the eminent inventor,” I answered.
“Pleasure sir. Now join me in the drawing room where I have some light refreshments laid out for us.”
We followed him and Frick into the room. I was the last to enter. I would never have wanted Frick behind me at anytime. Nikola, as he walked in went toward the library and started observing titles on the shelf. He was an old advocate that the only true way to get to know someone is by the books in their study versus those they have for show in the library. These are the books they draw on the most.
The conversation relied mostly on Taft and Teddy going over tales from the White House and the personalities within and from all over the world. The mood changed as Taft recalled Teddy being thrown by a Ninjutsu expert. Teddy became Gruff and he turned the subject to Cuba.
“Why won’t you pull the troops!” Teddy blurted, “They are needed in Panama!”
“Now Teddy, lets not boor our compatriots today. Plus this will not end friendly.”
Taft’s butler handed Teddy a scotch and he settled on a stiff snort of it. Probably mostly in disgust that it was not chocolate milk. Henry never took his cold stare off me. Henry Clay Frick reminded me of Stephen White who I dealt with years ago within the Joseph White murder case in Salem. White had at one time controlled John Quincy Adams as he ran for his second term, His brother-in-law Joseph Story in the Supreme Court, Daniel Webster whose son was married to his daughter, and the prestigious Henry Clay. To cap it all off he controlled the national bank at the time. Frick’s stare was as steely as the steel Carnegie and he had made. Very similar to White’s stare. Frick began talking; I just zoned out in disgust.
Teddy slapped me on the back of the head to break my stare and I heard Taft, “You all must join me on the course tomorrow at the Essex Country Club.” Teddy agreed for all us as Nikola slammed the last book he was looking at and placed it on Taft’s desk on purpose without returning it to where he found it and filled out behind me and the president.
We got back in Teddy’s car and we went our way slowly up Ober Street. We did not make it far through the fray before a woman collapsed into our tire. Teddy was the first to get out, followed by Tesla who was closest to her to help. She seemed to be in a daze. Her clothes were a strew, just thrown on hanging from her shoulders with some vital areas exposed. I have not seen anyone so much in a state since the ghost on Derby Street that possessed a woman deep in her cups to save her sister that was dying of an opium overdose in the alley next to the Derby House. That was another life time ago, for most people...
“Stay away from here! Bad things have happened! They are still happening. The Shoggoths are coming out of their frozen expanse. My body has been penetrated by things that bend the mind. Formless things. Arcane rituals. You must leave this place.” She just broke free and ran off into the crowd and we lost her.
___
I had Louie drive me to golf. I met Tesla, Teddy, and Taft at the second hole. With them was Frederick Ayers and the Hammonds. Ayers made a small fortune in patent medicine, but raked it all in on textiles in Lawrence. We were one short for me to join in for pairs, so I just joined for the walk. I always thought there was a better game to be played with a stick, two balls and a hole...Ayers played with Taft. Tesla showed as much agitation as I showed with Frick the other day.
Clemens had introduced Nikola to the Hammonds a few years ago. There was talk about starting the Tesla-Hammond Wireless Electric Company, but nothing came of it besides a few seances and some experiments in psychic powers. In fact John Hays Hammond Jr., the son of the pair, would steal some expired patents in radio technology in the future. It was bad enough Marconi just won the Nobel Peace Prize for stealing some radio technologies from Nikola this very year.
“You Can Not Reanimate the Flesh!” Nikola was in a furry.
“You heard for yourself at our estate incorporeal souls speaking to you. The intelligence can be moved from one vessel to another; for that is merely what the flesh is.” John Jr. was arguing with our friend.
“Yes, but the flesh will not rise again.”
“The ancient Chinese through acupuncture have proven a thousand years ago that electricity governs the movements and the health of the body. There is no reason after a silent death of the heart as it stills without a traumatic accident crippling the muscle and nerves that another bolt would not animate the body once more right after. Then add a consciousness once more to guide it.” Hammond said in utter confidence as if he were giving a lecture to a silent class. “In fact many of our elderly on the Gold Coast here would pay dearly for a younger vessel to have their soul transferred to.”
“That is sacrilege. I have been caught at many of your orgies of the flesh, which I quite enjoyed with the elite of Broadway on tour, but the calling on the Younger Ones and your sacrifices on the ocean, I can never partake on again for on those nights, I clasped my breast tight to prevent my own soul from being stolen.”
“You know West, was right. You felt it. You have seen it. Herbert reanimated the flesh several times, granted only the boxer lived.”
“Yes he is in Arkham Asylum now after he got caught during his cannibalistic killing spree. His brain was bashed in before death and the Doctor’s brain was dead too long before reanimation.”
“Though you just said it, the physical machines were broken. Those brains, the vessels that the soul resides in were damaged. If we can keep the machines in top shape before and after reanimation it will work. Then we apply the right current of electricity...”
At this moment a man on a horse gallops in and interjects, “Herbert West. Fine doctor. I served with him at West Point. Not much of a cavalryman, I must say,” the man is cut short as his horse rises up and throws him. John Hays Hammond Sr. spooked him by brandishing a golf club from his bag.
“You have to forgive my future son-in-law; he is a bit of a klutz, but he has a fine head. Graduated top of his class at West Point and is a potential team member of the 1912 Olympics,” Ayers explains, “But still, a klutz. Gentleman this is George Patton.”
George Stands brushing off his pants and shakes my hand. “Glad to meat you sir.”
“Henry.” I say and the rest of the introductions go around. This brought an end to the debate and George joined me in pairs for the rest of the holes. We shared Teddy’s bag.
On the way out after a light lunch Tesla asked, “What do you know of the experience of Edward Derby and his wife, Asenath? Along with some texts on the Illuminati by Morse’s father and Rev Bentley locally? I had seen a volume by Adam Weishaupt, a manuscript that is in his own hand with William Russell’s inscription just within the cover on Taft’s shelves in his library. There was also a treaties on the strange happenings of Derby and his wife compiled by the Miskatonic University. Derby was also in Arkham Asylum?”
___
A few days later I get a telegraph on my old Page Machine. Only a few friends I know still use Charles’ machine still, even though it is a far more effective tool. Tesla is one who finds it better to transfer his various radio technologies through that machine. Much more adaptive for his needs than Morse’s. Plus JP Morgan listens in on all of the telegraph messages. Morgan and Tesla had a falling out 3 years ago after Tesla had to give up his tower in Long Island because Morgan crashed the market that Tesla invested in with the funds Morgan gave him to build the tower…
Dear Henry ~ Stop.
Meet me at Mme. Zaza, occultist and palmist in nearby shop to Mason
Lodge ~Stop.
Wednesday, 4pm ~ Stop.
Nikola ~ Stop.
So Thursday came and I met Nikola and Mme. Zaza. Instantaneously I recognized Lady Jude who worked with King Mumford all those years ago. She knew me. She was not immortal, but upon her birth all of her lives would come flooding in once she becomes conscious after the first few months of life. “Henry, good to see you. It has been almost thirty years. Why have you not found me sooner. Only a bridge blocked us.”
“I can ask you the same.”
“I see you have been introduced already. Thirty years? You do not look older than 20 my dear.” Tesla exclaimed looking Zaza up and down.
“No. From another time. Henry and I met originally in the Occident as I was an Egyptian on a caravan plying my goods. I helped him remove his mother and a troublesome pregnant wife from Canaan to Egypt to avoid prosecution some 2,000 years ago. Then I had seen them safely to Marseilles, France. I taught his daughter well, in time. So much so she became a queen of the Gypsies.”
Zaza was quite talented. She had followed Fredrick Douglass up from the south and hid in Salem. She was a fugitive slave who kept changing her name and making up new histories for herself. The Remonds had helped her with a few alias before she settled in New Orleans. There she became know as Marie Catherine Laveau, the Voodoo Queen.
“There is plenty of time for that later, but there is some strange goings-on at Woodbury Point. I have seen many High members of the Hiram Lodge get off the train here and take private cars there. All alumni of the Skull & Bones and descendants of the Hartford Convention. Many from the Bohemian Grove.”
“Ah, Bohemian Grove. Clemens has mentioned that place. He went for a few years when it was for writers and artists. He said it turned dark quick. He mentioned hearing tales of Frick and Carnegie planning the Homestead Massacre there and mocking the Johnstown Flood during the Ceremony of Cremation after he stopped going from friends. I believe some of the actors who partake in the Hammonds’ debauchery are also members of the Grove. I have been caught up in many a strange events when the green fairy grabbed me and I did not have my with all to leave during their dark ceremonies. I wish I had my wits about me enough to have left and saved my soul from those marks they have placed upon it.”
“I met some of those men before in Knob Hill. Some befriended Mark Hopkins.” I said with a head shrug. In this life by the population at large, I am Edward S. Searles who married Hopkins’ widow. Some say I married the woman who was 20 years my elder for her money. From her husband she received the 33rd largest fortune in American history. When she died 18 years ago, that fortune was mine. My most intimate friends still know me by Henry.
In this life as Edward I surpassed my old friend Elias Hasket Derby Sr. who is ranked 39th, but Frick, that bastard, is the 27th just a few million short of JP Morgan. I met the Hopkins when I was decorating their Knob Hill mansion in San Francisco. After Mark’s death, me and Mary used that fortune to travel Europe with the help of François-Bérenger Saunière. We retrieved many of the most potent and dangerous religious and magical items that made their way into private collections who’s owners would have used them for destructive means. Many chapels that had others, we found safe, we let them retain those items. Now the items we did capture are safe in my Chapel under Salem. That is also a story for another date. As well are the tales Lady Jude and myself have had through the many lives we have danced together.
So gold digger? If you know my true wealth, I would be a thousand times richer than John D. Rockefeller. Not only do I have some of the most priceless items from the last 4,000 years or so, but I have been quite frugal for the last 500 years or so with compounded interest and all…
I was the one who gave Hopkins the loan to build his Central Pacific Railroad that completed the First Transcontinental Railroad. The Gold Spike was some gold from Solomon’s Temple, blessed by the man himself.
My fiends who have been reincarnated countless times and times again, know me as Henry. You probably recognize your friends too.
Have you ever had a dream of a friend where his voice is the same, but he looks completely different, even though he carries himself with the same bearing, gate, and body language. In dreams we see the soul as we first met them all of those lives ago. In fact! I just recognized George Patton as someone I knew at the Siege Of Orleans. He was in the army of Henry V when they laid waste to Agincourt, but when he returned I was Henry d’ Anjou fighting alongside Joan d’ Arc. We won that time and we had a drink afterward where he was enamored with our French Boadicea.
Henry just seems to stick through the years…
Most of the Hopkins fortune I gave to the poor in Methuen and the factory workers of Lawrence, many who worked for Ayers.
“Henry, many women have disappeared from the Bennet Street Neighborhood. The police just believe they are in the throng of the people descending upon Mrs. Evans property. No one is looking for them besides their families,” Jude tells, “Many of the dark magicians from Salem and the spiritualists who have worked with the Hammonds on the Gold Coast have been flocking there too. I have been asked, for my powers are legendary, but I can not play with any of those dark powers. My karma, I have been rebuilding since my time in New Orleans where I strayed, quite a lot from the good path.”
“That fits with the woman who bumped into Teddy’s car. She said some horrible things are happening. Something about Shoggoths...” Nikola said confused and excited.
“Shoggoths. Shackleton revived them on his expedition to Antarctica. For some time on their journey they were possessed by these formless monsters who can take you over cell by cell. As they were starving to death and carried fine silverware and crystal goblets and fine linens to spread over their diner table; none of them brought survival supplies or food for days out from their ship. Story has it that the ship got stuck in the ice beforehand, but it actually got stuck after Ernest realized that half of his crew were this monster. They could not attempt to seize him till they regained some sense and returned to where the food was to recoup. When their bodies and minds were refreshed these monsters turned on him in the skins of his closest friends. He was the one who stranded the ship and did not radio, one of your early ones I believe Nikola, for help till he killed all of these fiends with those who remained human. One or two of his crew were the monsters in disguise who made it back to civilization. I fear by what Lady Jude is saying, they made it to our shores," I explained.
___
I have been asked to meet the widow Evans, as we finally begin to call her, at the main house. Louie drives me in with a pocket of nails and a necklace of garlic around his neck… The nails I believe is some magic Zaza had mentioned to him that will keep his soul nailed to his skin so another can not jump in it. Strange for Louie, he is quiet the whole trip and is actually driving slow in our Stanley. Too slow.
We make it past the regular throng of people trespassing on the widow’s wits. We make it to the back door from the carriage house. We are invited in for some fine tea that is poured from a unique tea pot. It was exquisite blue and white hand painted porcelain with a stout cylinder-like shape, rather than a more rounded one that came over with an obscure ancestor named Kùnrǎozhe Yǒnghéng from China. I think she mentioned it was during the time that the Salem was being attacked by Chinese Vampires who hid their horrid feeding habit amongst the hypodermic deaths from the opium users in Salem.
She pours out a fine Lapsang souchong and remembers I like plenty of milk in mine so she pours only a half cup for me. Louie drove away in a hurry and did not join us.
It is when Teddy burst in that I notice that there was a third teacup in which she already poured a full cup into. “I just got done with Taft and he is talking more and more of breaking my Square Deal. Frick has persuaded him too with the Tennessee Iron and Coal deal. The Republican Party is falling into Whigs’ and Tories’ hands more and more every day as England persuades those alumni from Yale to do so,” Teddy said as he sat heavy and almost knocked over his tea, “I apologize for the spill.”
“That is OK old friend. I will clean it up.”
“So what is going on at your estate at night. I have heard rumors,” Teddy asked with true concern hoping it was not as bad as he has surmised.
“Strange goings on. Evil things. I hear all sorts of howls that can not come from beast or humans of this world that crescendo at 3am. Many people and strange shadows do I see run past my windows. I have called in many of the larger men who worked in my late husband’s factory which he trusted with his life to protect me in the night. They stand guard at all the doors and most of the windows. During the night I am a prisoner on my own property within this house. Many Federal guards and those damn Pinkertons are about. Many have sexually accosted me on several occasions and said things by dear Robert would even blush at. He must be in a terrible fit looking down at me being powerless to help,” the widow said before continuing in a very disgusted tone, “I have even went down to the beach to see Taft in the nude under the moon, all 400 pounds of him. He had more rolls than the waves rolling in the sea. That image is burned into my mind forever and will haunt me beyond this life. You would not believe what young dames he had satisfying his whims at the same time. Truly horrid!!! He acts this way with his wife who still is catatonic.”
“Would you have a sample of his handwriting; maybe from his lease?” with that Teddy produced two pieces of paper, “Here this one is the letter Taft sent accepting the position I offered him as I became president in truth. This other one is a page ripped from Weishaupt’s manuscript, that Nikola mentioned seeing, signed by William Russell.”
Mrs. Evans returned with the lease and Teddy investigated the style of the hand. It was more like Russell’s than the writing on the letter Teddy kept always in his wallet. “Strange, it is Russell’s hand. How can this be?”
“Teddy, Ephraim Waite was said to posses his daughter Asenath who was stealing Edward Derby, her husband’s, mind and body. He was forced to occupy the dead corpse of her long enough to convince his friend to kill her in his own body. Maybe Ephraim jumped bodies before the body of Edward was finished; per say in even a cat?”
“I have heard of this Waite, but he was known as Arthur Edward Waite. He had the Ryder-Waite Tarot Deck made, but in secret attributed to his coven name Kamong. He had another deck made with the qlipothic tree that could work many horrid spells, open portals between places, and even undo creation,” I explained to him.
It was many years ago I hid some of the qlipothic stones under the Earth with the Dark Fairies on a remarkable All Hallows Eve.
“Now Taft’s father, Alphonso, started the Skull & Bones with Russell. Could Russell have taken over this Waite and in time made his way to his partner’s son as he was taking over the presidency? The Waites hailing out of Gloucester have spread all over the Gold Coast and hold much influence still. Some say a very dark fishy influence...” Teddy continued.
“I know in 1830 Russell went to meet Weishaupt upon his last days and brought back many secrets of the Illuminati he created. Did Russell have Weishaupt take over his mind and body? Maybe Russell fought like Edward Derby for three years before he had to let go. In 1833 Russell and Alphonso Taft make the Skull & Bones.” I wonder out loud.
Continued on the Last Story...
Now we have had a little taste of death with a dash of the occult. Skull & Bones and fast cars. Could Evans' fall from his horse have been murder? I have always said cars were safer than horses...as my friend below can attest to.
What about the possession of Edward Derby? How does that connect to one real obese president?
THE EYES HAVE IT
RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by John Schoenherr
In a sense, this is a story of here-and-now. This Earth, this year ... but on a history-line slipped slightly sidewise. A history in which a great man acted differently, and Magic, rather than physical science, was developed....
Sir Pierre Morlaix, Chevalier of the Angevin Empire, Knight of the Golden Leopard, and secretary-in-private to my lord, the Count D’Evreux, pushed back the lace at his cuff for a glance at his wrist watch--three minutes of seven. The Angelus had rung at six, as always, and my lord D’Evreux had been awakened by it, as always. At least, Sir Pierre could not remember any time in the past seventeen years when my lord had not awakened at the Angelus. Once, he recalled, the sacristan had failed to ring the bell, and the Count had been furious for a week. Only the intercession of Father Bright, backed by the Bishop himself, had saved the sacristan from doing a turn in the dungeons of Castle D’Evreux.
Sir Pierre stepped out into the corridor, walked along the carpeted flagstones, and cast a practiced eye around him as he walked. These old castles were difficult to keep clean, and my lord the Count was fussy about nitre collecting in the seams between the stones of the walls. All appeared quite in order, which was a good thing. My lord the Count had been making a night of it last evening, and that always made him the more peevish in the morning. Though he always woke at the Angelus, he did not always wake up sober.
Sir Pierre stopped before a heavy, polished, carved oak door, selected a key from one of the many at his belt, and turned it in the lock. Then he went into the elevator and the door locked automatically behind him. He pressed the switch and waited in patient silence as he was lifted up four floors to the Count’s personal suite.
By now, my lord the Count would have bathed, shaved, and dressed. He would also have poured down an eye-opener consisting of half a water glass of fine Champagne brandy. He would not eat breakfast until eight. The Count had no valet in the strict sense of the term. Sir Reginald Beauvay held that title, but he was never called upon to exercise the more personal functions of his office. The Count did not like to be seen until he was thoroughly presentable.
The elevator stopped. Sir Pierre stepped out into the corridor and walked along it toward the door at the far end. At exactly seven o’clock, he rapped briskly on the great door which bore the gilt-and-polychrome arms of the House D’Evreux.
For the first time in seventeen years, there was no answer.
Sir Pierre waited for the growled command to enter for a full minute, unable to believe his ears. Then, almost timidly, he rapped again.
There was still no answer.
Then, bracing himself for the verbal onslaught that would follow if he had erred, Sir Pierre turned the handle and opened the door just as if he had heard the Count’s voice telling him to come in.
“Good morning, my lord,” he said, as he always had for seventeen years.
But the room was empty, and there was no answer.
He looked around the huge room. The morning sunlight streamed in through the high mullioned windows and spread a diamond-checkered pattern across the tapestry on the far wall, lighting up the brilliant hunting scene in a blaze of color.
“My lord?”
Nothing. Not a sound.
The bedroom door was open. Sir Pierre walked across to it and looked in.
He saw immediately why my lord the Count had not answered, and that, indeed, he would never answer again.
My lord the Count lay flat on his back, his arms spread wide, his eyes staring at the ceiling. He was still clad in his gold and scarlet evening clothes. But the great stain on the front of his coat was not the same shade of scarlet as the rest of the cloth, and the stain had a bullet hole in its center.
Sir Pierre looked at him without moving for a long moment. Then he stepped over, knelt, and touched one of the Count’s hands with the back of his own. It was quite cool. He had been dead for hours.
“I knew someone would do you in sooner or later, my lord,” said Sir Pierre, almost regretfully.
Then he rose from his kneeling position and walked out without another look at his dead lord. He locked the door of the suite, pocketed the key, and went back downstairs in the elevator.
___
Mary, Lady Duncan stared out of the window at the morning sunlight and wondered what to do. The Angelus bell had awakened her from a fitful sleep in her chair, and she knew that, as a guest at Castle D’Evreux, she would be expected to appear at Mass again this morning. But how could she? How could she face the Sacramental Lord on the altar--to say nothing of taking the Blessed Sacrament itself. Still, it would look all the more conspicuous if she did not show up this morning after having made it a point to attend every morning with Lady Alice during the first four days of this visit.
She turned and glanced at the locked and barred door of the bedroom. He would not be expected to come. Laird Duncan used his wheelchair as an excuse, but since he had taken up black magic as a hobby he had, she suspected, been actually afraid to go anywhere near a church.
If only she hadn’t lied to him! But how could she have told the truth? That would have been worse--infinitely worse. And now, because of that lie, he was locked in his bedroom doing only God and the Devil knew what.
If only he would come out. If he would only stop whatever it was he had been doing for all these long hours--or at least finish it! Then they could leave Evreux, make some excuse--any excuse--to get away. One of them could feign sickness. Anything, anything to get them out of France, across the Channel, and back to Scotland, where they would be safe!
She looked back out of the window, across the courtyard, at the towering stone walls of the Great Keep and at the high window that opened into the suite of Edouard, Count D’Evreux.
Last night she had hated him, but no longer. Now there was only room in her heart for fear.
She buried her face in her hands and cursed herself for a fool. There were no tears left for weeping--not after the long night.
Behind her, she heard the sudden noise of the door being unlocked, and she turned.
Laird Duncan of Duncan opened the door and wheeled himself out. He was followed by a malodorous gust of vapor from the room he had just left. Lady Duncan stared at him.
He looked older than he had last night, more haggard and worn, and there was something in his eyes she did not like. For a moment he said nothing. Then he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. When he spoke, his voice sounded dazed.
“There is nothing to fear any more,” he said. “Nothing to fear at all.”
___
The Reverend Father James Valois Bright, Vicar of the Chapel of Saint-Esprit, had as his flock the several hundred inhabitants of the Castle D’Evreux. As such, he was the ranking priest--socially, not hierarchically--in the country. Not counting the Bishop and the Chaplain at the Cathedral, of course. But such knowledge did little good for the Father’s peace of mind. The turnout of the flock was abominably small for its size--especially for week-day Masses. The Sunday Masses were well attended, of course; Count D’Evreux was there punctually at nine every Sunday, and he had a habit of counting the house. But he never showed up on weekdays, and his laxity had allowed a certain further laxity to filter down through the ranks.
The great consolation was Lady Alice D’Evreux. She was a plain, simple girl, nearly twenty years younger than her brother, the Count, and quite his opposite in every way. She was quiet where he was thundering, self-effacing where he was flamboyant, temperate where he was drunken, and chaste where he was--
Father Bright brought his thoughts to a full halt for a moment. He had, he reminded himself, no right to make judgments of that sort. He was not, after all, the Count’s confessor; the Bishop was. Besides, he should have his mind on his prayers just now.
He paused and was rather surprised to notice that he had already put on his alb, amice, and girdle, and he was aware that his lips had formed the words of the prayer as he had donned each of them.
Habit, he thought, can be destructive to the contemplative faculty.
He glanced around the sacristy. His server, the young son of the Count of Saint Brieuc, sent here to complete his education as a gentleman who would some day be the King’s Governor of one of the most important counties in Brittany, was pulling his surplice down over his head. The clock said 7:11.
Father Bright forced his mind Heavenward and repeated silently the vesting prayers that his lips had formed meaninglessly, this time putting his full intentions behind them. Then he added a short mental prayer asking God to forgive him for allowing his thoughts to stray in such a manner.
He opened his eyes and reached for his chasuble just as the sacristy door opened and Sir Pierre, the Count’s Privy Secretary, stepped in.
“I must speak to you, Father,” he said in a low voice. And, glancing at the young De Saint-Brieuc, he added: “Alone.”
Normally, Father Bright would have reprimanded anyone who presumed to break into the sacristy as he was vesting for Mass, but he knew that Sir Pierre would never interrupt without good reason. He nodded and went outside in the corridor that led to the altar.
“What is it, Pierre?” he asked.
“My lord the Count is dead. Murdered.”
After the first momentary shock, Father Bright realized that the news was not, after all, totally unexpected. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it seemed he had always known that the Count would die by violence long before debauchery ruined his health.
“Tell me about it,” he said quietly.
Sir Pierre reported exactly what he had done and what he had seen.
“Then I locked the door and came straight here,” he told the priest.
“Who else has the key to the Count’s suite?” Father Bright asked.
“No one but my lord himself,” Sir Pierre answered, “at least as far as I know.”
“Where is his key?”
“Still in the ring at his belt. I noticed that particularly.”
“Very good. We’ll leave it locked. You’re certain the body was cold?”
“Cold and waxy, Father.”
“Then he’s been dead many hours.”
“Lady Alice will have to be told,” Sir Pierre said.
Father Bright nodded. “Yes. The Countess D’Evreux must be informed of her succession to the County Seat.” He could tell by the sudden momentary blank look that came over Sir Pierre’s face that the Privy Secretary had not yet realized fully the implications of the Count’s death. “I’ll tell her, Pierre. She should be in her pew by now. Just step into the church and tell her quietly that I want to speak to her. Don’t tell her anything else.”
“I understand, Father,” said Sir Pierre.
___
There were only twenty-five or thirty people in the pews--most of them women--but Alice, Countess D’Evreux was not one of them. Sir Pierre walked quietly and unobtrusively down the side aisle and out into the narthex. She was standing there, just inside the main door, adjusting the black lace mantilla about her head, as though she had just come in from outside. Suddenly, Sir Pierre was very glad he would not have to be the one to break the news.
She looked rather sad, as always, her plain face unsmiling. The jutting nose and square chin which had given her brother the Count a look of aggressive handsomeness only made her look very solemn and rather sexless, although she had a magnificent figure.
“My lady,” Sir Pierre said, stepping towards her, “the Reverent Father would like to speak to you before Mass. He’s waiting at the sacristy door.”
She held her rosary clutched tightly to her breast and gasped. Then she said, “Oh. Sir Pierre. I’m sorry; you quite surprised me. I didn’t see you.”
“My apologies, my lady.”
“It’s all right. My thoughts were elsewhere. Will you take me to the good Father?”
Father Bright heard their footsteps coming down the corridor before he saw them. He was a little fidgety because Mass was already a minute overdue. It should have started promptly at 7:15.
The new Countess D’Evreux took the news calmly, as he had known she would. After a pause, she crossed herself and said, “May his soul rest in peace. I will leave everything in your hands, Father, Sir Pierre. What are we to do?”
“Pierre must get on the teleson to Rouen immediately and report the matter to His Highness. I will announce your brother’s death and ask for prayers for his soul--but I think I need say nothing about the manner of his death. There is no need to arouse any more speculation and fuss than necessary.”
“Very well,” said the Countess. “Come, Sir Pierre; I will speak to the Duke, my cousin, myself.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Father Bright returned to the sacristy, opened the missal, and changed the placement of the ribbons. Today was an ordinary Feria; a Votive Mass would not be forbidden by the rubics. The clock said 7:17.
He turned to young De Saint-Brieuc, who was waiting respectfully. “Quickly, my son--go and get the unbleached beeswax candles and put them on the altar. Be sure you light them before you put out the white ones. Hurry, now; I will be ready by the time you come back. Oh yes--and change the altar frontal. Put on the black.”
“Yes, Father.” And the lad was gone.
Father Bright folded the green chasuble and returned it to the drawer, then took out the black one. He would say a Requiem for the Souls of All the Faithful Departed--and hope that the Count was among them.
___
His Royal Highness, the Duke of Normandy, looked over the official letter his secretary had just typed for him. It was addressed to Serenissimus Dominus Nostrus Iohannes Quartus, Dei Gratia, Angliae, Franciae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et Novae Angliae, Rex, Imperator, Fidei Defensor, ... “Our Most Serene Lord, John IV, by the Grace of God King and Emperor of England, France, Scotland, Ireland, and New England, Defender of the Faith, ...”
It was a routine matter; simple notification to his brother, the King, that His Majesty’s most faithful servant, Edouard, Count of Evreux had departed this life, and asking His Majesty’s confirmation of the Count’s heir-at-law, Alice, Countess of Evreux as his lawful successor.
His Highness finished reading, nodded, and scrawled his signature at the bottom: Richard Dux Normaniae.
Then, on a separate piece of paper, he wrote: “Dear John, May I suggest you hold up on this for a while? Edouard was a lecher and a slob, and I have no doubt he got everything he deserved, but we have no notion who killed him. For any evidence I have to the contrary, it might have been Alice who pulled the trigger. I will send you full particulars as soon as I have them. With much love, Your brother and servant, Richard.”
He put both papers into a prepared envelope and sealed it. He wished he could have called the king on the teleson, but no one had yet figured out how to get the wires across the channel.
He looked absently at the sealed envelope, his handsome blond features thoughtful. The House of Plantagenet had endured for eight centuries, and the blood of Henry of Anjou ran thin in its veins, but the Norman strain was as strong as ever, having been replenished over the centuries by fresh infusions from Norwegian and Danish princesses. Richard’s mother, Queen Helga, wife to His late Majesty, Henry X, spoke very few words of Anglo-French, and those with a heavy Norse accent.
Nevertheless, there was nothing Scandinavian in the language, manner, or bearing of Richard, Duke of Normandy. Not only was he a member of the oldest and most powerful ruling family of Europe, but he bore a Christian name that was distinguished even in that family. Seven Kings of the Empire had borne the name, and most of them had been good Kings--if not always “good” men in the nicey-nicey sense of the word. Even old Richard I, who’d been pretty wild during the first forty-odd years of his life, had settled down to do a magnificent job of kinging for the next twenty years. The long and painful recovery from the wound he’d received at the Siege of Chaluz had made a change in him for the better.
There was a chance that Duke Richard might be called upon to uphold the honor of that name as King. By law, Parliament must elect a Plantagenet as King in the event of the death of the present Sovereign, and while the election of one of the King’s two sons, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Lancaster, was more likely than the election of Richard, he was certainly not eliminated from the succession.
Meantime, he would uphold the honor of his name as Duke of Normandy.
Murder had been done; therefore justice must be done. The Count D’Evreux had been known for his stern but fair justice, almost as well as he had been known for his profligacy. And, just as his pleasures had been without temperance, so his justice had been untempered by mercy. Whoever had killed him would find both justice and mercy--in so far as Richard had it within his power to give it.
Although he did not formulate it in so many words, even mentally, Richard was of the opinion that some debauched woman or cuckolded man had fired the fatal shot. Thus he found himself inclining toward mercy before he knew anything substantial about the case at all.
Richard dropped the letter he was holding into the special mail pouch that would be placed aboard the evening trans-channel packet, and then turned in his chair to look at the lean, middle-aged man working at a desk across the room.
“My lord Marquis,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes, Your Highness?” said the Marquis of Rouen, looking up.
“How true are the stories one has heard about the late Count?”
“True, Your Highness?” the Marquis said thoughtfully. “I would hesitate to make any estimate of percentages. Once a man gets a reputation like that, the number of his reputed sins quickly surpasses the number of actual ones. Doubtless many of the stories one hears are of whole cloth; others may have only a slight basis in fact. On the other hand, it is highly likely that there are many of which we have never heard. It is absolutely certain, however, that he has acknowledged seven illegitimate sons, and I dare say he has ignored a few daughters--and these, mind you, with unmarried women. His adulteries would be rather more difficult to establish, but I think your Highness can take it for granted that such escapades were far from uncommon.”
He cleared his throat and then added, “If Your Highness is looking for motive, I fear there is a superabundance of persons with motive.”
“I see,” the Duke said. “Well, we will wait and see what sort of information Lord Darcy comes up with.” He looked up at the clock. “They should be there by now.”
Then, as if brushing further thoughts on the subject from his mind, he went back to work, picking up a new sheaf of state papers from his desk.
The Marquis watched him for a moment and smiled a little to himself. The young Duke took his work seriously, but was well-balanced about it. A little inclined to be romantic--but aren’t we all at nineteen? There was no doubt of his ability, nor of his nobility. The Royal Blood of England always came through.
___
“My lady,” said Sir Pierre gently, “the Duke’s Investigators have arrived.”
My Lady Alice, Countess D’Evreux, was seated in a gold-brocade upholstered chair in the small receiving room off the Great Hall. Standing near her, looking very grave, was Father Bright. Against the blaze of color on the walls of the room, the two of them stood out like ink blots. Father Bright wore his normal clerical black, unrelieved except for the pure white lace at collar and cuffs. The Countess wore unadorned black velvet, a dress which she had had to have altered hurriedly by her dressmaker; she had always hated black and owned only the mourning she had worn when her mother died eight years before. The somber looks on their faces seemed to make the black blacker.
“Show them in, Sir Pierre,” the Countess said calmly.
Sir Pierre opened the door wider and three men entered. One was dressed as one gently born, the other two wore the livery of the Duke of Normandy.
The gentleman bowed. “I am Lord Darcy, Chief Criminal Investigator for His Highness, the Duke, and your servant, my lady.” He was a tall, brown-haired man in his thirties with a rather handsome, lean face. He spoke Anglo-French with a definite English accent.
“My pleasure, Lord Darcy,” said the Countess. “This is our vicar, Father Bright.”
“Your servant, Reverend Sir.” Then he presented the two men with him. The first was a scholarly-looking, graying man wearing pince-nez glasses with gold rims, Dr. Pateley, Physician. The second, a tubby, red-faced, smiling man, was Master Sean O Lochlainn, Sorcerer.
As soon as Master Sean was presented he removed a small, leather-bound folder from his belt pouch and proffered it to the priest. “My license, Reverend Father.”
Father Bright took it and glanced over it. It was the usual thing, signed and sealed by the Archbishop of Rouen. The law was rather strict on that point; no sorcerer could practice without the permission of the Church, and a license was given only after careful examination for orthodoxy of practice.
“It seems to be quite in order, Master Sean,” said the priest, handing the folder back. The tubby little sorcerer bowed his thanks and returned the folder to his belt pouch.
Lord Darcy had a notebook in his hand. “Now, unpleasant as it may be, we shall have to check on a few facts.” He consulted his notes, then looked up at Sir Pierre. “You, I believe, discovered the body?”
“That is correct, your lordship.”
“How long ago was this?”
Sir Pierre glanced at his wrist watch. It was 9:55. “Not quite three hours ago, your lordship.”
“At what time, precisely?”
“I rapped on the door precisely at seven, and went in a minute or two later--say 7:01 or 7:02.”
“How do you know the time so exactly?”
“My lord the Count,” said Sir Pierre with some stiffness, “insisted upon exact punctuality. I have formed the habit of referring to my watch regularly.”
“I see. Very good. Now, what did you do then?”
Sir Pierre described his actions briefly.
“The door to his suite was not locked, then?” Lord Darcy asked.
“No, sir.”
“You did not expect it to be locked?”
“No, sir. It has not been for seventeen years.”
Lord Darcy raised one eyebrow in a polite query. “Never?”
“Not at seven o’clock, your lordship. My lord the Count always rose promptly at six and unlocked the door before seven.”
“He did lock it at night, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
Lord Darcy looked thoughtful and made a note, but he said nothing more on that subject. “When you left, you locked the door?”
“That is correct, your lordship.”
“And it has remained locked ever since?”
Sir Pierce hesitated and glanced at Father Bright. The priest said: “At 8:15, Sir Pierre and I went in. I wished to view the body. We touched nothing. We left at 8:20.”
Master Sean O Lochlainn looked agitated. “Er ... excuse me, Reverend Sir. You didn’t give him Holy Unction, I hope?”
“No,” said Father Bright. “I thought it would be better to delay that until after the authorities has seen the ... er ... scene of the crime. I wouldn’t want to make the gathering of evidence any more difficult than necessary.”
“Quite right,” murmured Lord Darcy.
“No blessings, I trust, Reverend Sir?” Master Sean persisted. “No exorcisms or--”
“Nothing,” Father Bright interrupted somewhat testily. “I believe I crossed myself when I saw the body, but nothing more.”
“Crossed yourself, sir. Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s all right, then. Sorry to be so persistent, Reverend Sir, but any miasma of evil that may be left around is a very important clue, and it shouldn’t be dispersed until it’s been checked, you see.”
“Evil?” My lady the Countess looked shocked.
“Sorry, my lady, but--” Master Sean began contritely.
But Father Bright interrupted by speaking to the Countess. “Don’t distress yourself, my daughter; these men are only doing their duty.”
“Of course. I understand. It’s just that it’s so--” She shuddered delicately.
Lord Darcy cast Master Sean a warning look, then asked politely, “Has my lady seen the deceased?”
“No,” she said. “I will, however, if you wish.”
“We’ll see,” said Lord Darcy. “Perhaps it won’t be necessary. May we go up to the suite now?”
“Certainly,” the Countess said. “Sir Pierre, if you will?”
“Yes, my lady.”
As Sir Pierre unlocked the emblazoned door, Lord Darcy said: “Who else sleeps on this floor?”
“No one else, your lordship,” Sir Pierre said. “The entire floor is ... was ... reserved for my lord the Count.”
“Is there any way up besides that elevator?”
Sir Pierre turned and pointed toward the other end of the short hallway. “That leads to the staircase,” he said, pointing to a massive oaken door, “but it’s kept locked at all times. And, as you can see, there is a heavy bar across it. Except for moving furniture in and out or something like that, it’s never used.”
“No other way up or down, then?”
Sir Pierre hesitated. “Well, yes, your lordship, there is. I’ll show you.”
“A secret stairway?”
“Yes, your lordship.”
“Very well. We’ll look at it after we’ve seen the body.”
Lord Darcy, having spent an hour on the train down from Rouen, was anxious to see the cause of the trouble at last.
He lay in the bedroom, just as Sir Pierre and Father Bright had left him.
“If you please, Dr. Pateley,” said his lordship.
He knelt on one side of the corpse and watched carefully while Pateley knelt on the other side and looked at the face of the dead man. Then he touched one of the hands and tried to move an arm. “Rigor has set in--even to the fingers. Single bullet hole. Rather small caliber--I should say a .28 or .34--hard to tell until I’ve probed out the bullet. Looks like it went right through the heart, though. Hard to tell about powder burns; the blood has soaked the clothing and dried. Still, these specks ... hm-m-m. Yes. Hm-m-m.”
Lord Darcy’s eyes took in everything, but there was little enough to see on the body itself. Then his eye was caught by something that gave off a golden gleam. He stood up and walked over to the great canopied four-poster bed, then he was on his knees again, peering under it. A coin? No.
He picked it up carefully and looked at it. A button. Gold, intricately engraved in an Arabesque pattern, and set in the center with a single diamond. How long had it lain there? Where had it come from? Not from the Count’s clothing, for his buttons were smaller, engraved with his arms, and had no gems. Had a man or a woman dropped it? There was no way of knowing at this stage of the game.
Darcy turned to Sir Pierre. “When was this room last cleaned?”
“Last evening, your lordship,” the secretary said promptly. “My lord was always particular about that. The suite was always to be swept and cleaned during the dinner hour.”
“Then this must have rolled under the bed at some time after dinner. Do you recognize it? The design is distinctive.”
The Privy Secretary looked carefully at the button in the palm of Lord Darcy’s hand without touching it. “I ... I hesitate to say,” he said at last. “It looks like ... but I’m not sure--”
“Come, come, Chevalier! Where do you think you might have seen it? Or one like it.” There was a sharpness in the tone of his voice.
“I’m not trying to conceal anything, your lordship,” Sir Pierre said with equal sharpness. “I said I was not sure. I still am not, but it can be checked easily enough. If your lordship will permit me--” He turned and spoke to Dr. Pateley, who was still kneeling by the body. “May I have my lord the Count’s keys, doctor?”
Pateley glanced up at Lord Darcy, who nodded silently. The physician detached the keys from the belt and handed them to Sir Pierre.
The Privy Secretary looked at them for a moment, then selected a small gold key. “This is it,” he said, separating it from the others on the ring. “Come with me, your lordship.”
___
Darcy followed him across the room to a broad wall covered with a great tapestry that must have dated back to the sixteenth century. Sir Pierre reached behind it and pulled a cord. The entire tapestry slid aside like a panel, and Lord Darcy saw that it was supported on a track some ten feet from the floor. Behind it was what looked at first like ordinary oak paneling, but Sir Pierre fitted the small key into an inconspicuous hole and turned. Or, rather, tried to turn.
“That’s odd,” said Sir Pierre. “It’s not locked!”
He took the key out and pressed on the panel, shoving sideways with his hand to move it aside. It slid open to reveal a closet.
The closet was filled with women’s clothing of all kinds, and styles.
Lord Darcy whistled soundlessly.
“Try that blue robe, your lordship,” the Privy Secretary said. “The one with the--Yes, that’s the one.”
Lord Darcy took it off its hanger. The same buttons. They matched. And there was one missing from the front! Torn off! “Master Sean!” he called without turning.
Master Sean came with a rolling walk. He was holding an oddly-shaped bronze thing in his hand that Sir Pierre didn’t quite recognize. The sorcerer was muttering. “Evil, that there is! Faith, and the vibrations are all over the place. Yes, my lord?”
“Check this dress and the button when you get round to it. I want to know when the two parted company.”
“Yes, my lord.” He draped the robe over one arm and dropped the button into a pouch at his belt. “I can tell you one thing, my lord. You talk about an evil miasma, this room has got it!” He held up the object in his hand. “There’s an underlying background--something that has been here for years, just seeping in. But on top of that, there’s a hellish big blast of it superimposed. Fresh it is, and very strong.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised, considering there was murder done here last night--or very early this morning,” said Lord Darcy.
“Hm-m-m, yes. Yes, my lord, the death is there--but there’s something else. Something I can’t place.”
“You can tell that just by holding that bronze cross in your hand?” Sir Pierre asked interestedly.
Master Sean gave him a friendly scowl. “’Tisn’t quite a cross, sir. This is what is known as a crux ansata. The ancient Egyptians called it an ankh. Notice the loop at the top instead of the straight piece your true cross has. Now, your true cross--if it were properly energized, blessed, d’ye see--your true cross would tend to dissipate the evil. The ankh merely vibrates to evil because of the closed loop at the top, which makes a return circuit. And it’s not energized by blessing, but by another ... um ... spell.”
“Master Sean, we have a murder to investigate,” said Lord Darcy.
The sorcerer caught the tone of his voice and nodded quickly. “Yes, my lord.” And he walked rollingly away.
“Now where’s that secret stairway you mentioned, Sir Pierre?” Lord Darcy asked.
“This way, your lordship.”
He led Lord Darcy to a wall at right angles to the outer wall and slid back another tapestry.
“Good Heavens,” Darcy muttered, “does he have something concealed behind every arras in the place?” But he didn’t say it loud enough for the Privy Secretary to hear.
___
This time, what greeted them was a solid-seeming stone wall. But Sir Pierre pressed in on one small stone, and a section of the wall swung back, exposing a stairway.
“Oh, yes,” Darcy said. “I see what he did. This is the old spiral stairway that goes round the inside of the Keep. There are two doorways at the bottom. One opens into the courtyard, the other is a postern gate through the curtain wall to the outside--but that was closed up in the sixteenth century, so the only way out is into the courtyard.”
“Your lordship knows Castle D’Evreux, then?” Sir Pierre said. The knight himself was nearly fifty, while Darcy was only in his thirties, and Sir Pierre had no recollection of Darcy’s having been in the castle before.
“Only by the plans in the Royal Archives. But I have made it a point to--” He stopped. “Dear me,” he interrupted himself mildly, “what is that?”
“That” was something that had been hidden by the arras until Sir Pierre had slid it aside and was still showing only a part of itself. It lay on the floor a foot or so from the secret door.
Darcy knelt down and pulled the tapestry back from the object. “Well, well. A .28 two-shot pocket gun. Gold-chased, beautifully engraved, mother-of-pearl handle. A regular gem.” He picked it up and examined it closely. “One shot fired.”
He stood up and showed it to Sir Pierre. “Ever see it before?”
The Privy Secretary looked at the weapon closely. Then he shook his head. “Not that I recall, your lordship. It certainly isn’t one of the Count’s guns.”
“You’re certain?”
“Quite certain, your lordship. I’ll show you the gun collection if you want. My lord the Count didn’t like tiny guns like that; he preferred a larger caliber. He would never have owned what he considered a toy.”
“Well, we’ll have to look into it.” He called over Master Sean again and gave the gun into his keeping. “And keep your eyes open for anything else of interest, Master Sean. So far, everything of interest besides the late Count himself has been hiding under beds or behind arrases. Check everything. Sir Pierre and I are going for a look down this stairway.”
The stairway was gloomy, but enough light came in through the arrow slits spaced at intervals along the outer way to illuminate the interior. It spiraled down between the inner and outer walls of the Great Keep, making four complete circuits before it reached ground level. Lord Darcy looked carefully at the steps, the walls, and even the low, arched overhead as he and Sir Pierre went down.
After the first circuit, on the floor beneath the Count’s suite, he stopped. “There was a door here,” he said, pointing to a rectangular area in the inner wall.
“Yes, your lordship. There used to be an opening at every floor, but they were all sealed off. It’s quite solid, as you can see.”
“Where would they lead if they were open?”
“The county offices. My own office, the clerk’s offices, the constabulary on the first floor. Below are the dungeons. My lord the Count was the only one who lived in the Keep itself. The rest of the household live above the Great Hall.”
“What about guests?”
“They’re usually housed in the east wing. We only have two house guests at the moment. Laird and Lady Duncan have been with us for four days.”
“I see.” They went down perhaps four more steps before Lord Darcy asked quietly, “Tell me, Sir Pierre, were you privy to all of Count D’Evreux’s business?”
Another four steps down before Sir Pierre answered. “I understand what your lordship means,” he said. Another two steps. “No, I was not. I was aware that my lord the Count engaged in certain ... er ... shall we say, liaisons with members of the opposite sex. However--”
He paused, and in the gloom, Lord Darcy could see his lips tighten. “However,” he continued, “I did not procure for my lord, if that is what you’re driving at. I am not and never have been a pimp.”
“I didn’t intend to suggest that you had, good knight,” said Lord Darcy in a tone that strongly implied that the thought had actually never crossed his mind. “Not at all. But certainly there is a difference between ‘aiding and abetting’ and simple knowledge of what is going on.”
“Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. Well, one cannot, of course, be the secretary-in-private of a gentleman such as my lord the Count for seventeen years without knowing something of what is going on, you’re right. Yes. Yes. Hm-m-m.”
Lord Darcy smiled to himself. Not until this moment had Sir Pierre realized how much he actually did know. In loyalty to his lord, he had literally kept his eyes shut for seventeen years.
“I realize,” Lord Darcy said smoothly, “that a gentleman would never implicate a lady nor besmirch the reputation of another gentleman without due cause and careful consideration. However,”--like the knight, he paused a moment before going on--”although we are aware that he was not discreet, was he particular?”
“If you mean by that, did he confine his attentions to those of gentle birth, your lordship, then I can say, no he did not. If you mean did he confine his attentions to the gentler sex, then I can only say that, as far as I know, he did.”
“I see. That explains the closet full of clothes.”
“Beg pardon, your lordship?”
“I mean that if a girl or woman of the lower classes were to come here, he would have proper clothing for them to wear--in spite of the sumptuary laws to the contrary.”
“Quite likely, your lordship. He was most particular about clothing. Couldn’t stand a woman who was sloppily dressed or poorly dressed.”
“In what way?”
“Well. Well, for instance, I recall once that he saw a very pretty peasant girl. She was dressed in the common style, of course, but she was dressed neatly and prettily. My lord took a fancy to her. He said, ‘Now there’s a lass who knows how to wear clothes. Put her in decent apparel, and she’d pass for a princess.’ But a girl, who had a pretty face and a fine figure, made no impression on him unless she wore her clothing well, if you see what I mean, your lordship.”
“Did you ever know him to fancy a girl who dressed in an offhand manner?” Lord Darcy asked.
“Only among the gently born, your lordship. He’d say, ‘Look at Lady So-and-so! Nice wench, if she’d let me teach her how to dress.’ You might say, your lordship, that a woman could be dressed commonly or sloppily, but not both.”
“Judging by the stuff in that closet,” Lord Darcy said, “I should say that the late Count had excellent taste in feminine dress.”
Sir Pierre considered. “Hm-m-m. Well, now, I wouldn’t exactly say so, your lordship. He knew how clothes should be worn, yes. But he couldn’t pick out a woman’s gown of his own accord. He could choose his own clothing with impeccable taste, but he’d not any real notion of how a woman’s clothing should go, if you see what I mean. All he knew was how good clothing should be worn. But he knew nothing about design for women’s clothing.”
“Then how did he get that closet full of clothes?” Lord Darcy asked, puzzled.
Sir Pierre chuckled. “Very simply, your lordship. He knew that the Lady Alice had good taste, so he secretly instructed that each piece that Lady Alice ordered should be made in duplicate. With small variations, of course. I’m certain my lady wouldn’t like it if she knew.”
“I dare say not,” said Lord Darcy thoughtfully.
“Here is the door to the courtyard,” said Sir Pierre. “I doubt that it has been opened in broad daylight for many years.” He selected a key from the ring of the late Count and inserted it into the keyhole. The door swung back, revealing a large crucifix attached to its outer surface. Lord Darcy crossed himself. “Lord in Heaven,” he said softly, “what is this?”
He looked out into a small shrine. It was walled off from the courtyard and had a single small entrance some ten feet from the doorway. There were four prie-dieus--small kneeling benches--arranged in front of the doorway.
“If I may explain, your lordship--” Sir Pierre began.
“No need to,” Lord Darcy said in a hard voice. “It’s rather obvious. My lord the Count was quite ingenious. This is a relatively newly-built shrine. Four walls and a crucifix against the castle wall. Anyone could come in here, day or night, for prayer. No one who came in would be suspected.” He stepped out into the small enclosure and swung around to look at the door. “And when that door is closed, there is no sign that there is a door behind the crucifix. If a woman came in here, it would be assumed that she came for prayer. But if she knew of that door--” His voice trailed off.
“Yes, your lordship,” said Sir Pierre. “I did not approve, but I was in no position to disapprove.”
“I understand.” Lord Darcy stepped out to the doorway of the little shrine and took a quick glance about. “Then anyone within the castle walls could come in here,” he said.
“Yes, your lordship.”
“Very well. Let’s go back up.”
___
In the small office which Lord Darcy and his staff had been assigned while conducting the investigation, three men watched while a fourth conducted a demonstration on a table in the center of the room.
Master Sean O Lochlainn held up an intricately engraved gold button with an Arabesque pattern and a diamond set in the center.
He looked at the other three. “Now, my lord, your Reverence, and colleague Doctor, I call your attention to this button.”
Dr. Pateley smiled and Father Bright looked stern. Lord Darcy merely stuffed tobacco--imported from the southern New England counties on the Gulf--into a German-made porcelain pipe. He allowed Master Sean a certain amount of flamboyance; good sorcerers were hard to come by.
“Will you hold the robe, Dr. Pateley? Thank you. Now, stand back. That’s it. Thank you. Now, I place the button on the table, a good ten feet from the robe.” Then he muttered something under his breath and dusted a bit of powder on the button. He made a few passes over it with his hands, paused, and looked up at Father Bright. “If you will, Reverend Sir?”
Father Bright solemnly raised his right hand, and, as he made the Sign of the Cross, said: “May this demonstration, O God, be in strict accord with the truth, and may the Evil One not in any way deceive us who are witnesses thereto. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“Amen,” the other three chorused.
Master Sean crossed himself, then muttered something under his breath.
The button leaped from the table, slammed itself against the robe which Dr. Pateley held before him, and stuck there as though it had been sewn on by an expert.
“Ha!” said Master Sean. “As I thought!” He gave the other three men a broad, beaming smile. “The two were definitely connected!”
Lord Darcy looked bored. “Time?” he asked.
“In a moment, my lord,” Master Sean said apologetically. “In a moment.” While the other three watched, the sorcerer went through more spells with the button and the robe, although none were quite so spectacular as the first demonstration. Finally, Master Sean said: “About eleven thirty last night they were torn apart, my lord. But I shouldn’t like to make it any more definite than to say between eleven and midnight. The speed with which it returned to its place shows that it was ripped off very rapidly, however.”
“Very good,” said Lord Darcy. “Now the bullet, if you please.”
“Yes, my lord. This will have to be a bit different.” He took more paraphernalia out of his large, symbol-decorated carpet bag. “The Law of Contagion, gently-born sirs, is a tricky thing to work with. If a man doesn’t know how to handle it, he can get himself killed. We had an apprentice o’ the guild back in Cork who might have made a good sorcerer in time. He had the talent--unfortunately, he didn’t have the good sense to go with it. According to the Law of Contagion any two objects which have ever been in contact with each other have an affinity for each other which, is directly proportional to the product of the degree of relevancy of the contact and the length of time they were in contact and inversely proportional to the length of time since they have ceased to be in contact.” He gave a smiling glance to the priest. “That doesn’t apply strictly to relics of the saints, Reverend Sir; there’s another factor enters in there, as you know.”
As he spoke, the sorcerer was carefully clamping the little handgun into the padded vise so that its barrel was parallel to the surface of the table.
“Anyhow,” he went on, “this apprentice, all on his own, decided to get rid of the cockroaches in his house--a simple thing, if one knows how to go about it. So he collected dust from various cracks and crannies about the house, dust which contained, of course, the droppings of the pests. The dust, with the appropriate spells and ingredients, he boiled. It worked fine. The roaches all came down with a raging fever and died. Unfortunately, the clumsy lad had poor laboratory technique. He allowed three drops of his own perspiration to fall into the steaming pot over which he was working, and the resulting fever killed him, too.”
By this time, he had put the bullet which Dr. Pateley had removed from the Count’s body on a small pedestal so that it was exactly in line with the muzzle of the gun. “There now,” he said softly.
Then he repeated the incantation, and the powdering that he had used on the button. As the last syllable was formed by his lips, the bullet vanished with a ping! In its vise, the little gun vibrated.
“Ah!” said Master Sean. “No question there, eh? That’s the death weapon, all right, my lord. Yes. Time’s almost exactly the same as that of the removal of the button. Not more than a few seconds later. Forms a picture, don’t it, my lord? His lordship the Count jerks a button off the girl’s gown, she outs with a gun and plugs him.”
Lord Darcy’s handsome face scowled. “Let’s not jump to any hasty conclusions, my good Sean. There is no evidence whatsoever that he was killed by a woman.”
“Would a man be wearing that gown, my lord?”
“Possibly,” said Lord Darcy. “But who says that anyone was wearing it when the button was removed?”
“Oh.” Master Sean subsided into silence. Using a small ramrod, he forced the bullet out of the chamber of the little pistol.
“Father Bright,” said Lord Darcy, “will the Countess be serving tea this afternoon?”
The priest looked suddenly contrite. “Good heavens! None of you has eaten yet! I’ll see that something is sent up right away, Lord Darcy. In the confusion--”
Lord Darcy held up a hand. “I beg your pardon, Father; that wasn’t what I meant. I’m sure Master Sean and Dr. Pateley would appreciate a little something, but I can wait until tea time. What I was thinking was that perhaps the Countess would ask her guests to tea. Does she know Laird and Lady Duncan well enough to ask for their sympathetic presence on such an afternoon as this?”
Father Bright’s eyes narrowed a trifle. “I dare say it could be arranged, Lord Darcy. You will be there?”
“Yes--but I may be a trifle late. That will hardly matter at an informal tea.”
The priest glanced at his watch. “Four o’clock?”
“I should think that would do it,” said Lord Darcy.
Father Bright nodded wordlessly and left the room.
___
Dr. Pateley took off his pince-nez and polished the lenses carefully with a silk handkerchief. “How long will your spell keep the body incorrupt, Master Sean?” he asked.
“As long as it’s relevant. As soon as the case is solved, or we have enough data to solve the case--as the case may be, heh heh--he’ll start to go. I’m not a saint, you know; it takes powerful motivation to keep a body incorrupt for years and years.”
Sir Pierre was eying the gown that Pateley had put on the table. The button was still in place, as if held there by magnetism. He didn’t touch it. “Master Sean, I don’t know much about magic,” he said, “but can’t you find out who was wearing this robe just as easily as you found out that the button matched?”
Master Sean wagged his head in a firm negative. “No, sir. ‘Tisn’t relevant sir. The relevancy of the integrated dress-as-a-whole is quite strong. So is that of the seamstress or tailor who made the garment, and that of the weaver who made the cloth. But, except in certain circumstances, the person who wears or wore the garment has little actual relevancy to the garment itself.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” said Sir Pierre, looking puzzled.
“Look at it like this, sir: That gown wouldn’t be what it is if the weaver hadn’t made the cloth in that particular way. It wouldn’t be what it is if the seamstress hadn’t cut it in a particular way and sewed it in a specific manner. You follow, sir? Yes. Well, then, the connections between garment-and-weaver and garment-and-seamstress are strongly relevant. But this dress would still be pretty much what it is if it had stayed in the closet instead of being worn. No relevance--or very little. Now, if it were a well-worn garment, that would be different--that is, if it had always been worn by the same person. Then, you see, sir, the garment-as-a-whole is what it is because of the wearing, and the wearer becomes relevant.”
He pointed at the little handgun he was still holding in his hand. “Now you take your gun, here, sir. The--”
“It isn’t my gun,” Sir Pierre interrupted firmly.
“I was speaking rhetorically, sir,” said Master Sean with infinite patience. “This gun or any other gun in general, if you see what I mean, sir. It’s even harder to place the ownership of a gun. Most of the wear on a gun is purely mechanical. It don’t matter who pulls the trigger, you see, the erosion by the gases produced in the chamber, and the wear caused by the bullet passing through the barrel will be the same. You see, sir, ‘tisn’t relevant to the gun who pulled its trigger or what it’s fired at. The bullet’s a slightly different matter. To the bullet, it is relevant which gun it was fired from and what it hit. All these things simply have to be taken into account, Sir Pierre.”
“I see,” said the knight. “Very interesting, Master Sean.” Then he turned to Lord Darcy. “Is there anything else, your lordship? There’s a great deal of county business to be attended to.”
Lord Darcy waved a hand. “Not at the moment, Sir Pierre. I understand the pressures of government. Go right ahead.”
“Thank you, your lordship. If anything further should be required, I shall be in my office.”
As soon as Sir Pierre had closed the door, Lord Darcy held out his hand toward the sorcerer. “Master Sean; the gun.”
Master Sean handed it to him. “Ever see one like it before?” he asked, turning it over in his hands.
“Not exactly like it, my lord.”
“Come, come, Sean; don’t be so cautious. I am no sorcerer, but I don’t need to know the Laws of Similarity to be able to recognise an obvious similarity.”
“Edinburgh,” said Master Sean flatly.
“Exactly. Scottish work. The typical Scot gold work; remarkable beauty. And look at that lock. It has ‘Scots’ written all over it--and more. ‘Edinburgh’, as you said.”
Dr. Pateley, having replaced his carefully polished glasses, leaned over and peered at the weapon in Lord Darcy’s hand. “Couldn’t it be Italian, my lord? Or Moorish? In Moorish Spain, they do work like that.”
“No Moorish gunsmith would put a hunting scene on the butt,” Lord Darcy said flatly, “and the Italians wouldn’t have put heather and thistles in the field surrounding the huntsman.”
“But the FdM engraved on the barrel,” said Dr. Pateley, “indicates the--”
“Ferrari of Milan,” said Lord Darcy. “Exactly. But the barrel is of much newer work than the rest. So are the chambers. This is a fairly old gun--fifty years old, I’d say. The lock and the butt are still in excellent condition, indicating that it has been well cared for, but frequent usage--or a single accident--could ruin the barrel and require the owner to get a replacement. It was replaced by Ferrari.”
“I see,” said Dr. Pateley somewhat humbled.
“If we open the lock ... Master Sean, hand me your small screwdriver. Thank you. If we open the lock, we will find the name of one of the finest gunsmiths of half a century ago--a man whose name has not yet been forgotten--Hamish Graw of Edinburgh. Ah! There! You see?” They did.
Having satisfied himself on that point, Lord Darcy closed the lock again. “Now, men, we have the gun located. We also know that a guest in this very castle is Laird Duncan of Duncan. The Duncan of Duncan himself. A Scot’s laird who was, fifteen years ago, His Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the Free Grand Duchy of Milan. That suggests to me that it would be indeed odd if there were not some connection between Laird Duncan and this gun. Eh?”
___
“Come, come, Master Sean,” said Lord Darcy, rather impatiently. “We haven’t all the time in the world.”
“Patience, my lord; patience,” said the little sorcerer calmly. “Can’t hurry these things, you know.” He was kneeling in front of a large, heavy traveling chest in the bedroom of the guest apartment occupied temporarily by Laird and Lady Duncan, working with the lock. “One position of a lock is just as relevant as the other so you can’t work with the bolt. But the pin-tumblers in the cylinder, now, that’s a different matter. A lock’s built so that the breaks in the tumblers are not related to the surface of the cylinder when the key is out, but there is a relation when the key’s in, so by taking advantage of that relevancy--Ah!”
The lock clicked open.
Lord Darcy raised the lid gently.
“Carefully, my lord!” Master Sean said in a warning voice. “He’s got a spell on the thing! Let me do it.” He made Lord Darcy stand back and then lifted the lid of the heavy trunk himself. When it was leaning back against the wall, gaping open widely on its hinges, Master Sean took a long look at the trunk and its lid without touching either of them. There was a second lid on the trunk, a thin one obviously operated by a simple bolt.
Master Sean took his sorcerer’s staff, a five-foot, heavy rod made of the wood of the quicken tree or mountain ash, and touched the inner lid. Nothing happened. He touched the bolt. Nothing.
“Hm-m-m,” Master Sean murmured thoughtfully. He glanced around the room, and his eyes fell on a heavy stone doorstop. “That ought to do it.” He walked over, picked it up, and carried it back to the chest. Then he put it on the rim of the chest in such a position that if the lid were to fall it would be stopped by the doorstop. Then he put his hand in as if to lift the inner lid.
The heavy outer lid swung forward and down of its own accord, moving with blurring speed and slammed viciously against the doorstop.
Lord Darcy massaged his right wrist gently, as if he felt where the lid would have hit if he had tried to open the inner lid. “Triggered to slam if a human being sticks a hand in there, eh?”
“Or a head, my lord. Not very effectual if you know what to look for. There are better spells than that for guarding things. Now we’ll see what his lordship wants to protect so badly that he practices sorcery without a license.” He lifted the lid again, and then opened the inner lid. “It’s safe now, my lord. Look at this!”
Lord Darcy had already seen. Both men looked in silence at the collection of paraphernalia on the first tray of the chest. Master Sean’s busy fingers carefully opened the tissue paper packing of one after another of the objects. “A human skull,” he said. “Bottles of graveyard earth. Hm-m-m--this one is labeled ‘virgin’s blood.’ And this! A Hand of Glory!”
It was a mummified human hand, stiff and dry and brown, with the fingers partially curled, as though they were holding an invisible ball three inches or so in diameter. On each of the fingertips was a short candle-stub. When the hand was placed on its back, it would act as a candelabra.
“That pretty much settles it, eh, Master Sean?” Lord Darcy said.
“Indeed, my lord. At the very least, we can get him for possession of materials. Black magic is a matter of symbolism and intent.”
“Very well. I want a complete list of the contents of that chest. Be sure to replace everything as it was and relock the trunk.” He tugged thoughtfully at an earlobe. “So Laird Duncan has the Talent, eh? Interesting.”
“Aye. But not surprising, my lord,” said Master Sean without looking up from his work. “It’s in the blood. Some attribute it to the Dedannans, who passed through Scotland before they conquered Ireland three thousand years ago, but, however that may be, the Talent runs strong in the Sons of Gael. It makes me boil to see it misused.”
While Master Sean talked, Lord Darcy was prowling around the room, reminding one of a lean tomcat who was certain that there was a mouse concealed somewhere.
“It’ll make Laird Duncan boil if he isn’t stopped,” Lord Darcy murmured absently.
“Aye, my lord,” said Master Sean. “The mental state necessary to use the Talent for black sorcery is such that it invariably destroys the user--but, if he knows what he’s doing, a lot of other people are hurt before he finally gets his.”
Lord Darcy opened the jewel box on the dresser. The usual traveling jewelry--enough, but not a great choice.
“A man’s mind turns in on itself when he’s taken up with hatred and thoughts of revenge,” Master Sean droned on. “Or, if he’s the type who enjoys watching others suffer, or the type who doesn’t care but is willing to do anything for gain, then his mind is already warped and the misuse of the Talent just makes it worse.”
Lord Darcy found what he was looking for in a drawer, just underneath some neatly folded lingerie. A small holster, beautifully made of Florentine leather, gilded and tooled. He didn’t need Master Sean’s sorcery to tell him that the little pistol fit it like a hand in a glove.
___
Father Bright felt as though he had been walking a tightrope for hours. Laird and Lady Duncan had been talking in low, controlled voices that betrayed an inner nervousness, but Father Bright realized that he and the Countess had been doing the same thing. The Duncan of Duncan had offered his condolences on the death of the late Count with the proper air of suppressed sorrow, as had Mary, Lady Duncan. The Countess had accepted them solemnly and with gratitude. But Father Bright was well aware that no one in the room--possibly, he thought, no one in the world--regretted the Count’s passing.
Laird Duncan sat in his wheelchair, his sharp Scots features set in a sad smile that showed an intent to be affable even though great sorrow weighed heavily upon him. Father Bright noticed it and realized that his own face had the same sort of expression. No one was fooling anyone else, of that the priest was certain--but for anyone to admit it would be the most boorish breach of etiquette. However there was a haggardness, a look of increased age about the Laird’s countenance that Father Bright did not like. His priestly intuition told him clearly that there was a turmoil of emotion in the Scotsman’s mind that was ... well, evil was the only word for it.
Lady Duncan was, for the most part, silent. In the past fifteen minutes since she and her husband had come to the informal tea, she had spoken scarcely a dozen words. Her face was masklike, but there was the same look of haggardness about her eyes as there was in her husband’s face. But the priest’s emphatic sense told him that the emotion here was fear, simple and direct. His keen eyes had noticed that she wore a shade too much make-up. She had almost succeeded in covering up the faint bruise on her right cheek, but not completely.
My lady the Countess D’Evreux was all sadness and unhappiness, but there was neither fear nor evil there. She smiled politely and talked quietly. Father Bright would have been willing to bet that not one of the four of them would remember a word that had been spoken.
Father Bright had placed his chair so that he could keep an eye on the open doorway and the long hall that led in from the Great Keep. He hoped Lord Darcy would hurry. Neither of the guests had been told that the Duke’s Investigator was here, and Father Bright was just a little apprehensive about the meeting. The Duncans had not even been told that the Count’s death had been murder, but he was certain that they knew.
Father Bright saw Lord Darcy come in through the door at the far end of the hall. He murmured a polite excuse and rose. The other three accepted his excuses with the same politeness and went on with their talk. Father Bright met Lord Darcy in the hall.
“Did you find what you were looking for, Lord Darcy?” the priest asked in a low tone.
“Yes,” Lord Darcy said. “I’m afraid we shall have to arrest Laird Duncan.”
“Murder?”
“Perhaps. I’m not yet certain of that. But the charge will be black magic. He has all the paraphernalia in a chest in his room. Master Sean reports that a ritual was enacted in the bedroom last night. Of course, that’s out of my jurisdiction. You, as a representative of the Church, will have to be the arresting officer.” He paused. “You don’t seem surprised, Reverence.”
“I’m not,” Father Bright admitted. “I felt it. You and Master Sean will have to make out a sworn deposition before I can act.”
“I understand. Can you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Get my lady the Countess out of the room on some pretext or other. Leave me alone with her guests. I do not wish to upset my lady any more than absolutely necessary.”
“I think I can do that. Shall we go in together?”
“Why not? But don’t mention why I am here. Let them assume I am just another guest.”
“Very well.”
All three occupants of the room glanced up as Father Bright came in with Lord Darcy. The introductions were made: Lord Darcy humbly begged the pardon of his hostess for his lateness. Father Bright noticed the same sad smile on Lord Darcy’s handsome face as the others were wearing.
Lord Darcy helped himself from the buffet table and allowed the Countess to pour him a large cup of hot tea. He mentioned nothing about the recent death. Instead, he turned the conversation toward the wild beauty of Scotland and the excellence of the grouse shooting there.
Father Bright had not sat down again. Instead, he left the room once more. When he returned, he went directly to the Countess and said, in a low, but clearly audible voice:, “My lady, Sir Pierre Morlaix has informed me that there are a few matters that require your attention immediately. It will require only a few moments.”
My lady the Countess did not hesitate, but made her excuses immediately. “Do finish your tea,” she added. “I don’t think I shall be long.”
Lord Darcy knew the priest would not lie, and he wondered what sort of arrangement had been made with Sir Pierre. Not that it mattered except that Lord Darcy had hoped it would be sufficiently involved for it to keep the Countess busy for at least ten minutes.
The conversation, interrupted but momentarily, returned to grouse.
“I haven’t done any shooting since my accident,” said Laird Duncan, “but I used to enjoy it immensely. I still have friends up every year for the season.”
“What sort of weapon do you prefer for grouse?” Lord Darcy asked.
“A one-inch bore with a modified choke,” said the Scot. “I have a pair that I favor. Excellent weapons.”
“Of Scottish make?”
“No, no. English. Your London gunsmiths can’t be beat for shotguns.”
“Oh. I thought perhaps your lordship had had all your guns made in Scotland.” As he spoke, he took the little pistol out of his coat pocket and put it carefully on the table.
There was a sudden silence, then Laird Duncan said in an angry voice:, “What is this? Where did you get that?”
Lord Darcy glanced at Lady Duncan, who had turned suddenly pale. “Perhaps,” he said coolly, “Lady Duncan can tell us.”
She shook her head and gasped. For a moment, she had trouble in forming words or finding her voice. Finally: “No. No. I know nothing. Nothing.”
But Laird Duncan looked at her oddly.
“You do not deny that it is your gun, my lord?” Lord Darcy asked. “Or your wife’s, as the case may be.”
“Where did you get it?” There was a dangerous quality in the Scotsman’s voice. He had once been a powerful man, and Lord Darcy could see his shoulder muscles bunching.
“From the late Count D’Evreux’s bedroom.”
“What was it doing there?” There was a snarl in the Scot’s voice, but Lord Darcy had the feeling that the question was as much directed toward Lady Duncan as it was to himself.
“One of the things it was doing there was shooting Count D’Evreux through the heart.”
Lady Duncan slumped forward in a dead faint, overturning her teacup. Laird Duncan made a grab at the gun, ignoring his wife. Lord Darcy’s hand snaked out and picked up the weapon before the Scot could touch it. “No, no, my lord,” he said mildly. “This is evidence in a murder case. We mustn’t tamper with the King’s evidence.”
He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Laird Duncan roared something obscene in Scots Gaelic, put his hands on the arms of his wheelchair, and with a great thrust of his powerful arms and shoulders, shoved himself up and forward toward Lord Darcy, across the table from him. His arms swung up toward Lord Darcy’s throat as the momentum of his body carried him toward the investigator.
He might have made it, but the weakness of his legs betrayed him. His waist struck the edge of the massive oaken table and most of his forward momentum was lost. He collapsed forward, his hands still grasping toward the surprised Englishman. His chin came down hard on the table top. Then he slid back, taking the tablecloth and the china and silverware with him. He lay unmoving on the floor. His wife did not even stir except when the tablecloth tugged at her head.
Lord Darcy had jumped back, overturning his chair. He stood on his feet, looking at the two unconscious forms.
___
“I don’t think there’s any permanent damage done to either,” said Dr. Pateley an hour later. “Lady Duncan was suffering from shock, of course, but Father Bright brought her round in a hurry. She’s a devout woman, I think, even if a sinful one.”
“What about Laird Duncan?” Lord Darcy asked.
“Well, that’s a different matter. I’m afraid that his back injury was aggravated, and that crack on the chin didn’t do him any good. I don’t know whether Father Bright can help him or not. Healing takes the co-operation of the patient. I did all I could for him, but I’m just a charger, not a practitioner of the Healing Art. Father Bright has quite a good reputation in that line, however, and he may be able to do his lordship some good.”
Master Sean shook his head dolefully. “His Reverence has the Talent, there’s no doubt of that, but now he’s pitted against another man who has it--a man whose mind is bent on self-destruction in the long run.”
“Well, that’s none of my affair,” said Dr. Pateley. “I’m just a technician. I’ll leave healing up to the Church, where it belongs.”
“Master Sean,” said Lord Darcy, “there is still a mystery here. We need more evidence. What about the eyes?”
Master Sean blinked. “You mean the picture test, my lord?”
“I do.”
“It won’t stand up in court, my lord,” said the sorcerer.
“I’m aware of that,” said Lord Darcy testily.
“Eye test?” Dr. Pateley asked blankly. “I don’t believe I understand.”
“It’s not often used,” said Master Sean. “It is a psychic phenomenon that sometimes occurs at the moment of death--especially a violent death. The violent emotional stress causes a sort of backfiring of the mind, if you see what I mean. As a result, the image in the mind of the dying person is returned to the retina. By using the proper sorcery, this image can be developed and the last thing the dead man saw can be brought out.
“But it’s a difficult process even under the best of circumstances, and usually the conditions aren’t right. In the first place, it doesn’t always occur. It never occurs, for instance, when the person is expecting the attack. A man who is killed in a duel, or who is shot after facing the gun for several seconds, has time to adjust to the situation. Also, death must occur almost instantly. If he lingers, even for a few minutes, the effect is lost. And, naturally if the person’s eyes are closed at the instant of death, nothing shows up.”
“Count D’Evreux’s eyes were open,” Dr. Pateley said. “They were still open when we found him. How long after death does the image remain?”
“Until the cells of the retina die and lose their identity. Rarely more than twenty-four hours, usually much less.”
“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours yet,” said Lord Darcy, “and there is a chance that the Count was taken completely by surprise.”
“I must admit, my lord,” Master Sean said thoughtfully, “that the conditions seem favorable. I shall attempt it. But don’t put any hopes on it, my lord.”
“I shan’t. Just do your best, Master Sean. If there is a sorcerer in practice who can do the job, it is you.”
“Thank you, my lord. I’ll get busy on it right away,” said the sorcerer with a subdued glow of pride.
___
Two hours later, Lord Darcy was striding down the corridor of the Great Hall, Master Sean following up as best he could, his caorthainn-wood staff in one hand and his big carpet bag in the other. He had asked Father Bright and the Countess D’Evreux to meet him in one of the smaller guest rooms. But the Countess came to meet him.
“My Lord Darcy,” she said, her plain face looking worried and unhappy, “is it true that you suspect Laird and Lady Duncan of this murder? Because, if so, I must--”
“No longer, my lady,” Lord Darcy cut her off quickly. “I think we can show that neither is guilty of murder--although, of course, the black magic charge must still be held against Laird Duncan.”
“I understand,” she said, “but--”
“Please, my lady,” Lord Darcy interrupted again, “let me explain everything. Come.”
Without another word, she turned and led the way to the room where Father Bright was waiting.
The priest stood waiting, his face showing tenseness.
“Please,” said Lord Darcy. “Sit down, both of you. This won’t take long. My lady, may Master Sean make use of that table over there?”
“Certainly, my lord,” the Countess said softly, “certainly.”
“Thank you my lady. Please, please--sit down. This won’t take long. Please.”
With apparent reluctance, Father Bright and my lady the Countess sat down in two chairs facing Lord Darcy. They paid little attention to what Master Sean O Lochlainn was doing; their eyes were on Lord Darcy.
“Conducting an investigation of this sort is not an easy thing,” he began carefully. “Most murder cases could be easily solved by your Chief Man-at-Arms. We find that well-trained county police, in by far the majority of cases, can solve the mystery easily--and in most cases there is very little mystery. But, by His Imperial Majesty’s law, the Chief Man-at-Arms must call in a Duke’s Investigator if the crime is insoluble or if it involves a member of the aristocracy. For that reason, you were perfectly correct to call His Highness the Duke as soon as murder had been discovered.” He leaned back in his chair. “And it has been clear from the first that my lord the late Count was murdered.”
Father Bright started to say something, but Lord Darcy cut him off before he could speak. “By ‘murder’, Reverend Father, I mean that he did not die a natural death--by disease or heart trouble or accident or what-have-you. I should, perhaps, use the word ‘homicide’.
“Now the question we have been called upon to answer is simply this: Who was responsible for the homicide?”
The priest and the countess remained silent, looking at Lord Darcy as though he were some sort of divinely inspired oracle.
“As you know ... pardon me, my lady, if I am blunt ... the late Count was somewhat of a playboy. No. I will make that stronger. He was a satyr, a lecher; he was a man with a sexual obsession.
“For such a man, if he indulges in his passions--which the late Count most certainly did--there is usually but one end. Unless he is a man who has a winsome personality--which he did not--there will be someone who will hate him enough to kill him. Such a man inevitably leaves behind him a trail of wronged women and wronged men. One such person may kill him; one such person did, but we must find the person who did and determine the extent of his or her guilt. That is my purpose.”
“Now, as to the facts. We know that Edouard has a secret stairway which led directly to his suite. Actually, the secret was poorly kept. There were many women--common and noble--who knew of the existence of that stairway and knew how to enter it. If Edouard left the lower door unlocked, anyone could come up that stairway. He has another lock in the door of his bedroom, so only someone who was invited could come in, even if she ... or he ... could get into the stairway. He was protected.
“Now here is what actually happened that night. I have evidence, by the way, and I have the confessions of both Laird and Lady Duncan. I will explain how I got those confessions in a moment.
“Primus: Lady Duncan had an assignation with Count D’Evreux last night. She went up the stairway to his room. She was carrying with her a small pistol. She had had an affair with Edouard, and she had been rebuffed. She was furious. But she went to his room.
“He was drunk when she arrived--in one of the nasty moods with which both of you are familiar. She pleaded with him to accept her again as his mistress. He refused. According to Lady Duncan, he said, ‘I don’t want you! You’re not fit to be in the same room with her!’, the emphasis is Lady Duncan’s, not my own; Furious, she drew a gun--the little pistol which killed him.”
The Countess gasped. “But Mary couldn’t have--”
“Please!” Lord Darcy slammed the palm of his hand on the arm of his chair with an explosive sound. “My lady, you will listen to what I have to say!”
He was taking a devil of a chance, he knew. The Countess was his hostess and had every right to exercise her prerogatives. But Lord Darcy was counting on the fact that she had been under Count D’Evreux’s influence so long that it would take her a little time to realize that she no longer had to knuckle under to the will of a man who shouted at her. He was right. She became silent.
Father Bright turned to her quickly and said: “Please, my daughter. Wait.”
“Your pardon, my lady,” Lord Darcy continued smoothly. “I was about to explain to you why I know Lady Duncan could not have killed your brother. There is the matter of the dress. We are certain that the gown that was found in Edouard’s closet was worn by the killer. And that gown could not possibly have fit Lady Duncan! She’s much too ... er ... hefty.
“She has told me her story, and, for reasons I will give you later, I believe it. When she pointed the gun at your brother, she really had no intention of killing him. She had no intention of pulling the trigger. Your brother knew this. He lashed out and slapped the side of her head. She dropped the pistol and fell, sobbing, to the floor. He took her roughly by the arm and ‘escorted’ her down the stairway. He threw her out. Lady Duncan, hysterical, ran to her husband. And then, when he had succeeded in calming her down a bit, she realized the position she was in. She knew that Laird Duncan was a violent, a warped man--very similar to Edouard, Count D’Evreux. She dared not tell him the truth, but she had to tell him something. So she lied.”
Then he continued, “She told him that Edouard had asked her up in order to tell her something of importance; that that ‘something of importance’ concerned Laird Duncan’s safety; that the Count told her that he knew of Laird Duncan’s dabbling in black magic; that he threatened to inform Church authorities on Laird Duncan unless she submitted to his desires; that she had struggled with him and ran away.”
Lord Darcy spread his hands. “This was, of course, a tissue of lies. But Laird Duncan believed everything. So great was his ego that he could not believe in her infidelity, although he has been paralyzed for five years.”
“How can you be certain that Lady Duncan told the truth?” Father Bright asked warily.
“Aside from the matter of the gown--which Count D’Evreux kept only for women of the common class, not the aristocracy--we have the testimony of the actions of Laird Duncan himself. We come then to--
“Secondus: Laird Duncan could not have committed the murder physically. How could a man who was confined to a wheelchair go up that flight of stairs? I submit to you that it would have been physically impossible.
“The possibility that he has been pretending all these years, and that he is actually capable of walking, was disproved three hours ago, when he actually injured himself by trying to throttle me. His legs are incapable of carrying him even one step--much less carrying him to the top of that stairway.”
Lord Darcy folded his hands complacently.
“There remains,” said Father Bright, “the possibility that Laird Duncan killed Count D’Evreux by psychical, by magical means.”
Lord Darcy nodded. “That is indeed possible, Reverend Sir, as we both know. But not in this instance. Master Sean assures me, and I am certain that you will concur, that a man killed by sorcery, by black magic, dies of internal malfunction, not of a bullet through the heart.
“In effect, the Black Sorcerer induces his enemy to kill himself by psychosomatic means. He dies by what is technically known as psychic induction. Master Sean informs me that the commonest--and crudest--method of doing this is by the so-called ‘simalcrum induction’ method. That is, by the making of an image--usually, but not necessarily, of wax--and, using the Law of Similarity, inducing death. The Law of Contagion is also used, since the fingernails, hair, spittle, and so on, of the victim are usually incorporated into the image. Am I correct, Father?”
The priest nodded. “Yes. And, contrary to the heresies of certain materialists, it is not at all necessary that the victim be informed of the operation--although, admittedly, it can, in certain circumstances, aid the process.”
“Exactly,” said Lord Darcy. “But it is well known that material objects can be moved by a competent sorcerer--’black’ or ‘white’. Would you explain to my lady the Countess why her brother could not have been killed in that manner?”
___
Father Bright touched his lips with the tip of his tongue and then turned to the girl sitting next to him. “There is a lack of relevancy. In this case, the bullet must have been relevant either to the heart or to the gun. To have traveled with a velocity great enough to penetrate, the relevancy to the heart must have been much greater than the relevancy to the gun. Yet the test, witnessed by myself, that was performed by Master Sean indicates that this was not so. The bullet returned to the gun, not to your brother’s heart. The evidence, my dear, is conclusive that the bullet was propelled by purely physical means, and was propelled from the gun.”
“Then what was it Laird Duncan did?” the Countess asked.
“Tertius,” said Lord Darcy. “Believing what his wife had told him, Laird Duncan flew into a rage. He determined to kill your brother. He used an induction spell. But the spell backfired and almost killed him.
“There are analogies on a material plane. If one adds mineral spirits and air to a fire, the fire will be increased. But if one adds ash, the fire will be put out. “In a similar manner, if one attacks a living being psychically it will die--but if one attacks a dead thing in such a manner, the psychic energy will be absorbed, to the detriment of the person who has used it. “In theory, we could charge Laird Duncan with attempted murder, for there is no doubt that he did attempt to kill your brother, my lady. But your brother was already dead at the time!
“The resultant dissipation of psychic energy rendered Laird Duncan unconscious for several hours, during which Lady Duncan waited in suspenseful fear.
“Finally, when Laird Duncan regained consciousness, he realized what had happened. He knew that your brother was already dead when he attempted the spell. He thought, therefore, that Lady Duncan had killed the Count.
“On the other hand, Lady Duncan was perfectly well aware that she had left Edouard alive and well. So she thought the black magic of her husband had killed her erstwhile lover.”
“Each was trying to protect the other,” Father Bright said. “Neither is completely evil, then. There may be something we can do for Laird Duncan.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Father,” Lord Darcy said. “The Healing Art is the Church’s business, not mine.” He realized with some amusement that he was paraphrasing Dr. Pateley. “What Laird Duncan had not known,” he went on quickly, “was that his wife had taken a gun up to the Count’s bedroom. That put a rather different light on her visit, you see. That’s why he flew into such a towering rage at me--not because I was accusing him or his wife of murder, but because I had cast doubt on his wife’s behavior.”
He turned his head to look at the table where the Irish sorcerer was working. “Ready, Master Sean?”
“Aye, my lord. All I have to do is set up the screen and light the lantern in the projector.”
“Go ahead, then.” He looked back at Father Bright and the Countess. “Master Sean has a rather interesting lantern slide I want you to look at.”
“The most successful development I’ve ever made, if I may say so, my lord,” the sorcerer said.
“Proceed.”
Master Sean opened the shutter on the projector, and a picture sprang into being on the screen.
There were gasps from Father Bright and the Countess.
It was a woman. She was wearing the gown that had hung in the Count’s closet. A button had been torn off, and the gown gaped open. Her right hand was almost completely obscured by a dense cloud of smoke. Obviously she had just fired a pistol directly at the onlooker.
But that was not what had caused the gasps.
The girl was beautiful. Gloriously, ravishingly beautiful. It was not a delicate beauty. There was nothing flower-like or peaceful in it. It was a beauty that could have but one effect on a normal human male. She was the most physically desirable woman one could imagine.
Retro mea, Sathanas, Father Bright thought wryly. She’s almost obscenely beautiful.
Only the Countess was unaffected by the desirability of the image. She saw only the startling beauty.
“Has neither of you seen that woman before? I thought not,” said Lord Darcy. “Nor had Laird or Lady Duncan. Nor Sir Pierre.”
“Who is she? We don’t know. But we can make a few deductions. She must have come to the Count’s room by appointment. This is quite obviously the woman Edouard mentioned to Lady Duncan--the woman, the ‘she’ with whom the Scots woman could not compare. It is almost certain she is a commoner; otherwise she would not be wearing a robe from the Count’s collection. She must have changed right there in the bedroom. Then she and the Count quarreled--about what, we do not know. The Count had previously taken Lady Duncan’s pistol away from her and had evidently carelessly let it lay on that table you see behind the girl. She grabbed it and shot him. Then she changed clothes again, hung up the robe, and ran away. No one saw her come or go. The Count had designed the stairway for just that purpose.
“Oh, we’ll find her, never fear--now that we know what she looks like.
“At any rate,” Lord Darcy concluded, “the mystery is now solved to my complete satisfaction, and I shall so report to His Highness.”
___
Richard, Duke of Normandy, poured two liberal portions of excellent brandy into a pair of crystal goblets. There was a smile of satisfaction on his youthful face as he handed one of the goblets to Lor Darcy. “Very well done, my lord,” he said. “Very well done.”
“I am gratified to hear Your Highness say so,” said Lord Darcy, accepting the brandy.
“But how were you so certain that it was not someone from outside the castle? Anyone could have come in through the main gate. That’s always open.”
“True, Your Highness. But the door at the foot of the stairway was locked. Count D’Evreux locked it after he threw Lady Duncan out. There is no way of locking or unlocking it from the outside; the door had not been forced. No one could have come in that way, nor left that way, after Lady Duncan was so forcibly ejected. The only other way into the Count’s suite was by the other door, and that door was unlocked.”
“I see,” said Duke Richard. “I wonder why she went up there in the first place?”
“Probably because he asked her to. Any other woman would have known what she was getting into if she accepted an invitation to Count D’Evreux’s suite.”
The Duke’s handsome face darkened. “No. One would hardly expect that sort of thing from one’s own brother. She was perfectly justified in shooting him.”
“Perfectly, Your Highness. And had she been anyone but the heiress, she would undoubtedly have confessed immediately. Indeed, it was all I could do to keep her from confessing to me when she thought I was going to charge the Duncans with the killing. But she knew that it was necessary to preserve the reputation of her brother and herself. Not as private persons, but as Count and Countess, as officers of the Government of His Imperial Majesty the King. For a man to be known as a rake is one thing. Most people don’t care about that sort of thing in a public official so long as he does his duty and does it well--which, as Your Highness knows, the Count did.
“But to be shot to death while attempting to assault his own sister--that is quite another thing. She was perfectly justified in attempting to cover it up. And she will remain silent unless someone else is accused of the crime.”
“Which, of course, will not happen,” said Duke Richard. He sipped at the brandy, then said, “She will make a good Countess. She has judgment and she can keep cool under duress. After she had shot her own brother, she might have panicked, but she didn’t. How many women would have thought of simply taking off the damaged gown and putting on its duplicate from the closet?”
“Very few,” Lord Darcy agreed. “That’s why I never mentioned that I knew the Count’s wardrobe contained dresses identical to her own. By the way, Your Highness, if any good Healer, like Father Bright, had known of those duplicate dresses, he would have realized that the Count had a sexual obsession about his sister. He would have known that all the other women the Count went after were sister substitutes.”
“Yes; of course. And none of them measure up.” He put his goblet on the table. “I shall inform the King my brother that I recommended the new Countess whole-heartedly. No word of this must be put down in writing, of course. You know and I know and the King must know. No one else must know.”
“One other knows,” said Lord Darcy.
“Who?” The Duke looked startled.
“Father Bright.”
Duke Richard looked relieved. “Naturally. He won’t tell her that we know, will he?”
“I think Father Bright’s discretion can be relied upon.”
___
In the dimness of the confessional, Alice, Countess D’Evreux knelt and listened to the voice of Father Bright.
“I shall not give you any penance, my child, for you have committed no sin--that is, in so far as the death of your brother is concerned. For the rest of your sins, you must read and memorize the third chapter of ‘The Soul and The World,’ by St. James Huntington.”
He started to pronounce the absolution, but the Countess said, “I don’t understand one thing. That picture. That wasn’t me. I never saw such a gorgeously beautiful girl in my life. And I’m so plain. I don’t understand.”
“Had you looked more closely, my child, you would have seen that the face did look like yours--only it was idealized. When a subjective reality is made objective, distortions invariably show up; that is why such things cannot be accepted as evidence of objective reality in court.” He paused. “To put it another way, my child: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
So much murder in Arkham, we can sympathize with these tales. Not only was the Black Dahlia once a resident of Salem before her last infamous trip to California, but it is said her murderer even came to Salem killing another woman as men who were bothering cows watched. Bothering cows?
Then again, our stories showed great signs of love as well, the love that is expressed in loss, obsession, and protection. In the first tale we have seen the mourning of Mrs. Evans, as the president turns her home into the summer White House and protection in the next two stories as a father fights to protect his daughter and then a detective who protects a woman he finds guilty of killing a monster.
Were these men loving cows...Bothering?
Were these men loving cows...Bothering?
Teavanna
By Lisa Deschenes
Prologue
Morton gazed across the expanse of space before him and pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose with the index finger of his right hand, not necessarily because they required adjusting, but more akin to how a drug addict would have nervously twitched when presented with a fix that lies physically within his grasp, but not as easily accessible as it appeared. This temptation was not a tantalizing pile of cocaine, however, but rather a deceptively innocuous teapot.
The time was now; the plans, albeit as simplistic in nature as they were, had been laid. Morton just had to solidify his resolve and order his legs to start moving across the snow covered ground that separated him from retrieving the object of his desire from its resting spot atop the granite crest of the gravestone.
Morton’s affection for teapots was the quintessential example of nature versus nurture, with nurture having won out. His memories of his mother were clouded and at that they were more an image of a hulking shape covered in a pearl gray pilled blanket, than of an actual person. Morton’s mother had been a seriously ill persona in his life, although he never did learn the true diagnosis of this mysterious ailment. Maybe it had been a devastating chronic condition with a terminal outcome. Or perhaps it had been related to an incapacitating mental frailty. Whatever the cause, Morton had had very little interaction with his mother as a child.
Morton’s maternal figure had by necessity become his Aunt Althea, his mother’s sister. Althea had taken charge of Morton’s upbringing once it had become apparent that her sister was incapable. She had moved Morton and his mother into her small, tidy Salem home as his mother’s decline in health had swiftly dictated. While she did not dispense a wealth of affection, she did make sure that Morton had all of his physical cares met in a very Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs sort of manner; she clothed him, fed him, took him to doctors’ appointments, and made sure that he attended school each day.
And while not one for exhibiting any sentiment, Aunt Althea had discovered a kindred soul in Morton. Althea had a glass curio cabinet 
in her formal living room that lovingly displayed an accumulation of acquired decorative china teapots. Early in his childhood, Morton had demonstrated a keen enthusiasm in his Aunt’s interest, riveted to the cabinet, gazing fixedly at each piece for long periods of time. He would ask his Aunt questions, tucking away the knowledge as it was imparted, never repeating the same query twice.
“Where did this teapot come from, Aunt Althea? The one with the gold handle?” he would ask, or “How old is this teapot?”Aunt Althea felt that it was her role to foster young Morton’s eager interest in “the arts”, as she saw it. She would take him on weekly excursions to the Peabody Essex Museum, walking briskly holding his hand the short mile it took to get downtown where the museum was located. Althea did not believe in modes of transportation and utilized them only as necessity dictated she must.
At five foot two, Aunt Althea was not an imposing figure, but what she lacked for in stature, she made up for in her daunting no-nonsense demeanor. No shrinking violet was Althea. The only thing delicate about her, in fact, was her extensive, but selective, collection of teapots. Morton had experienced the extent of her severity on one occasion only.
They had stopped in a small shop on their way home from the museum one weekend, when Morton’s eye was caught by a miniature teapot. To be fair, Morton’s thought at that moment was a selfless one; Mothers’ Day was the very next day. And while Morton felt that the colorful tissue paper flowers that all the children had created in their kindergarten class that past week would more than suffice for the mother he hardly knew, he felt that something a bit more special was due to Aunt Althea. What better token of his appreciation than a replica of an object of which she was so fond?
While Althea was engaged in conversation with the store clerk, Morton slipped the teapot with its diminutive size quite easily into his own small coat pocket. Again, there was an innocence about Morton’s slyness; he was not secretive out of perceived guilt at what he was doing, as he had no notion that it was wrong at that time, but more so because he wanted the item to be a surprise for his aunt. Truth be told, this may actually have been a downfall of his aunt’s ministrations to his upbringing, since her attempts at education had been primarily concentrated on the arts, rather than the more basic societal norms, such as how civilized society frowned upon thievery.
Irregardless, the next morning Morton had proudly brought the tiny pretty out from its hiding place and presented it to his aunt with a smile. At first Althea had smiled in return, but quickly upon realizing how the item must have been acquired, the smile became a disapproving scowl.
In addition to their weekly Saturday trips to the museum, Aunt Althea and Morton attended Sunday mass at St. James church every Sabbath. Aunt Althea knew without doubt that the priest had included the eighth commandment in past services.
Althea looked at Morton and asked, “Morton, were you not paying attention when Father O’Brien was giving his sermons?”
Morton looked genuinely baffled by the question. “Auntie, I always pay attention in church,” he replied, “Just like you always tell me.”
Althea looked sternly at Morton, “Then did you not hear Father speak of the evils of stealing?” she asked, now equally as perplexed as her nephew.
"I did hear the Father, Auntie,” Morton answered truthfully. “But I don’t know why you are mad. I didn’t steal.”
Althea contemplated this bit of information, before she replied. Maybe he didn’t understand what stealing actually meant.
“Well Morton, stealing is when you take something that does not belong to you,” Althea explained. “The teapot did not belong to you, nor did you pay for it.”
When Morton’s eyes widened at his aunt’s explanation, Althea knew she had assessed the situation correctly.
“I’m sorry, Auntie! I didn’t know that I was stealing!” Morton cried out, sincerely regretful for his actions.
Unfortunately for Morton, his Aunt had determined that his penance would not be complete with his apology to her.
“I am glad that you understand what you did was wrong, Morton,” she stated, “but we will still have to go back to the shop so that you can return the teapot and make your apologies to the clerk.”
The very next day, as soon as Morton finished school, Althea made good on her word and marched him briskly downtown where shame-faced he returned the teapot to the shop clerk and told her that he was sorry and would never do it again. And true to his word, in all the years hence, Morton had never stolen another thing. The guilt would have been unbearable.
___
Forty-five years later, the memory of that guilt was what now stood between Morton and the teapot on the gravestone. He had first caught a glimpse of the teapot a little over a year before when he had been going for his regular walk through the cemetery near his home.
While it might seem odd for a person to be taking leisurely strolls through a graveyard on a usual basis, this particular spot was known for its beautiful pond graced by two arching fountains in the summer months and its collection of trees uncommon to New England. In addition to being a final resting place for the deceased, Greenlawn Cemetery was an arboretum of sorts. And where there are trees, there are birds. Besides being a aficionado of teapots, Morton was also an enthusiastic bird watcher, a trait he had not inherited from his Aunt Althea. Maybe in this case it was nature that had won out over nurture; Morton really didn’t know for certain, as he knew so very little about his mother. Nevertheless, birding was one of his pastimes and he would frequent the quiet solitude of the cemetery, binoculars at the handy around his neck, in search of feathered species.
It was in doing so one day, when he was in the midst of tracking a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker as it descended a Kentucky Coffeetree, that he had caught the teapot in his field of vision. Morton had lowered the binoculars immediately, as if not quite trusting the tool and rather needing proof of his discovery with his own naked eye. Sure enough, the out-of-place treasure was perched on the gravestone upon which he had seen it.
Cautiously, Morton had walked over to the gravestone, as if fearful that the teapot would take flight as the woodpecker had done. The pot was an exquisite blue and white hand painted porcelain with a stout cylinder-like shape, rather than a more rounded one. Fine fractures spider webbed through the pattern, as was common to age. Morton estimated a guess that this was a late 18th century piece from China, yet it was puzzling to him how it appeared to be in such perfect condition. He had seen much newer pieces in the Peabody Essex Museum, where he worked as a curator in the Asian Export wing, in far worse shape, safely kept behind their glass protected cases.
Over the year since his discovery, Morton had surreptitiously made his way over to the teapot at each visit to the cemetery. He had touched it, he had ran his hand over its smooth surface, he had even lifted the lid, but up until this point, he had not removed it from its resting spot. Now he stood before the grave, gathering his courage to do exactly that; remove the teapot, as he had been planning for the last year.
___
Morton’s life with his Aunt Althea had gone on uninterrupted until he had reached the summer of his thirteenth year. Little had disturbed their daily routines; even the passing of his mother had been a non-event in his estimation. It wasn’t until the summer before he was destined to go to high school that his contented existence was disrupted. Aunt Althea’s brother, Uncle Lucien, had paid the pair a visit.
Morton had only met Uncle Lucien a time or two prior to this day. Their most recent encounter had been at his mother’s funeral service two years before. He was a man of only slightly more prestigious height than his aunt and he boasted a big barrel chest under his Irish knit sweater. Morton sat quietly in the kitchen pretending not to listen as he looked through his Bird Watcher’s magazine, while brother and sister discussed his fate.
“Althea, you know the boy needs a male role model in his life,” his uncle argued. “For God’s sakes, all he does is obsess over your teapots and look at birds. I’m surprised you haven’t had him take up crocheting yet. He’s going to turn into a dandy, woman.”
“Well Lucien, I have been all the boy has had for the past thirteen years. What little time his mother spent in his life was in bed behind a closed door,” Althea countered. “I did the best I could. And if you felt so strongly that he was in need of masculine companionship, maybe you should have been more involved all these years. I don’t think the boy could pick you out of a line up if hard pressed,” she chided. “ And if you ask me, there is nothing wrong with a boy having a more gentle side.”
“Now Althea,” Lucien softened, “you know that Etty and Louisa are still on the younger side and a handful. Elma has all she can do to control them. Besides, we live all the way up in Maine. I wouldn’t have been able to spend any quality time with Morton. I know you did a great job raising the boy. All I’m saying is that you might want to consider a different avenue for his formative years in high school.”
And so it was that Morton had been sent to the Governor Dummer Academy, a private boarding school in Byfield, where he spent the next four years of his life, only coming home for Christmas once yearly.
Even though the Governor Dummer Academy boasted a dubious name, the title was not a source of bullying, since the only other children he encountered were all from the same school. But by this time Morton had been diagnosed with asthma, which enabled him to get out of gym classes, although the phys ed teacher still made him at least suit up in the Academy’s assigned shorts and t-shirt to sit on the bleachers and read during the class. He had also been prescribed with a thick lensed pair of glasses for his nearsightedness, which had been the start of his nervous habit of constantly pushing up the spectacles on the bridge of his nose, an unconscious motion which he would randomly use any of his digits to perform.
These peculiarities, along with his insistence on being called by his full name of Morton, never Mort or Morty, set him aside from his peers and caused his one run in with aggression during his time at the Academy. While changing in the locker room one afternoon following class, one of the other boys had said “Hey Mort, can you pass me that pair of sneakers?”
It may have ended there, if Morton had not found this an opportunity to correct him and had simply passed the sneakers as requested, but instead he could not resist.
Morton had taken the middle finger of his right hand and pushed up his glasses, inadvertently “flashing the bird”, as it was known, while addressing his classmate, “My name is not Mort, it is Morton,” he replied and awaited the corrected address before proceeding with the task. Instead for his efforts, he received a gut punch that doubled him over, his eyes watering at the pain. Henceforth, Morton only utilized his index finger in performing this habit.
Following his undistinguished academic career in high school, in which he was neither at the top of his class nor the bottom, Morton went on to college where he majored in art history and ancient civilizations. Eventually his degree served him well in applying to a curator position at the Peabody Essex Museum upon his graduation, which he readily received.
He was a bit melancholy that his Aunt Althea had not been there to witness either of these accomplishments, as sometime during his academic pursuits, he had received word that she had passed as a result of nothing more than the march of time. He mourned his loss, but felt that this was mitigated by the length of her life and their time together, which for the most part had been spent in harmony. He was the sole inheritor of her home and all her possessions, including the exalted teapot collection.
___
Now a war of ethics raged in Morton’s head as he still stood unmoving on the snowy ground before the grave. On the one hand, the concept of right and wrong that Aunt Althea had ingrained in him, argued that stealing was immoral.
Morton has removed all of his aunt’s teapots from the curio cabinet upon her death and arranged them lovingly on open shelves so that he could run his hand over their surfaces and even hold them from time to time, as he admired their distinct individualities. He felt that being able to touch the objects was part of the experience of enjoyment. He detested the glass cases that kept the teapots away from the touch of hands in his museum. But even so, he had never gone to the extent of removing one of them for his own personal collection, although, as curator, he possessed all of the keys to their cases.The opposing voice of debate in Morton’s head, a voice he had come to think of as the “voice of the teapot”, reasoned that it technically did not belong to anyone.
It was carelessly placed by some relative who, judging by the 1806 date on the stone,had no present connection to Kùnrǎozhe Yǒnghéng, said family member. The teapot left on the long passed ancestor’s headstone, was exposed to the harsh New England seasons and other harmful elements. It did not occur to Morton that it had already successfully survived being exposed to such intrepid jeopardy for some time now.
As if in evidence of the reality of the dangers of weather, a clump of heavy snow from an overhanging tree branch struck the headstone perilously close to the teapot. A centimeter closer, the teapot may have shattered, Morton thought. This was enough to jar him from his state of indecisiveness. He quickly made his way across the snow and carefully lifted the teapot from the granite. A tingle of electric excitement ran through his hands, much like the first time he had run his fingers over its surface. It almost felt as if the teapot were a living being.
He was staring at the long-coveted object, admiring all of its unique detail, when a noise in the trees startled him out of his reverie. He quickly identified the sound as a Great Horned Owl, but looking up also caused him to realize that daylight was quickly fading. He slipped the teapot safely into his oversized coat pocket, as he had with the miniature one those many years before, and made his way briskly back to the path.
It was only a short walk to the main gate of the cemetery and if he hurried, he would make it out before night had completely descended. The moon had already risen and could be seen peeking through the branches of the bare tree limbs that reached to the sky. A chill wind was picking up, as Morton made his way. He tucked his chin down into his coat to block out the biting cold. The moon ducked behind a passing cloud cover and his journey became darker. The crunch of the snow made a comforting sound to accompany him in the silence.
The length of time it should have taken to reach the gate seemed to be longer than usual, so Morton lifted his face to the wind once more to get his bearings. He saw that the pond was to his left, rather than to his right as it should have been, which indicated that he must have wandered down the wrong path. He sighed in frustration at his error, as it would now be that much longer before he arrived back at his warm little house where he could display his new treasure properly. But, there was nothing to do to make amends at this point other than to continue on his way.
Morton attempted to keep his head up to ensure that he stayed true this time, but the wind had built up strength and once again he tucked his face down in protection from its assault. Soon he noticed that the soft, comforting crunch of the snow under foot had changed into a harsher cracking sound. Once more Morton paused to assess his surroundings. The darkness had grown to a deeper purple hue, but he was able to discern that the trees surrounding his path had disappeared and he seemed to be in a clearing.
Just as he was pondering this change in scenery, the moon once more made an appearance, casting a pale yellow light below. Morton froze. He now understood where he had wandered, as he saw the tree lined shore of the pond. Somehow he had meandered off the path and onto the ice covered surface of the water. The cracking sound had been the ice under his feet splintering under his weight. A chill ran down Morton’s spine right before his feet broke through the pond’s frozen cover and he crashed down, stopping at his hips. Quickly he removed the teapot from his pocket, his main concern in protecting the china from the frigid water.
Morton scanned the banks of the pond which were at least ten feet away and spotted the extended branch of a willow tree that he estimated hung within his reach. Morton glimpsed the owl watching him disinterestedly, silhouetted in solitary repose high above in the willow, just as it emitted another eerie hoot that echoed across the pond.
Transferring the teapot to his left hand, Morton grasped the flexible limb with his right. As his body shifted, the icy water pulled him lower. Morton knew that he would need his other hand free to pull himself towards the shore and safety, but in order to so, he would need to release the teapot. In his mind, the choice was clear and as the weight of his increasingly sodden clothes pulled him down Morton’s resolve cemented. He would not sacrifice the teapot. Without two hands, his tentative hold on the willow branch soon slipped and his chin inevitably sunk below the surface of the ice, his teeth uncontrollably chattering as hypothermia began to set in and his breathing became labored as his asthma surfaced. While his extremities became numb, his fingers involuntarily relinquished their grasp and the teapot began its slow descent to the murky depths below. As his eyes glazed over and his lungs filled with the water that was entering both his nose and mouth, Morton’s only consolation was that he would soon be joining it, his eyes locked on its disappearing form.
Epilogue
Etty and Louisa finished boxing up the last of the contents of Uncle Morton’s house. In reality they were cousins, but his peculiar personality made him seem less entitled to the perceived camaraderie of cousin-ship, so the girls had always referred to him as ‘Uncle’.
Looking around the room, Etty commented, “He sure was an odd bird, wasn’t he?”
“Etty, don’t be so unkind,” scolded Louisa, the twin who was ninety-six seconds younger. “He was just a bit eccentric. Besides, it really was an awful way to go. The poor man. Imagine drowning in a frozen cemetery pond? I wonder what he was even doing out there in the middle of winter and at night, no less.”
Louisa snorted in response. “Well, I think we are about finished here. We should head back to Maine; we have a long ride. The Man from the Life Bridge thrift store will be by later when the realtor is here to pick up everything.”
“What about the teapots?” Louisa asked, looking at the collection packed in boxes separate from the rest.
“I contacted that museum Uncle Mort worked for and they are sending the new curator over to take a look at them,” Etty replied. “But if they aren’t interested, the thrift store can have take them.”
The girls grabbed their coats and headed to the door, but before they left, Louisa’s eye was caught by an object on the coffee table. “Hey, Etty, do you mind if we make a quick stop before we leave Salem?” Louisa asked. “I think it would be nice to put something on Uncle Morton’s grave that he would appreciate more than the funeral flowers.”
Etty shrugged, “Yeah, I don’t mind. Just let’s hurry up. I want to be back home before dark.”
Louisa carefully lifted up the white and blue china teapot, thinking to herself how it was funny that it felt almost alive in her hands. Then they left the house to deliver the teapot to its new place of rest.
Now Morton had worked for the Peabody Essex Museum. Within the Sinclair Narratives, Henry had stored many of his Templar treasures in their museum and the tunnels attached to them. Later a man named Stephen White would become their president threatening the safety of his treasures.
Not only did White take over the Peabody Essex Museum, then called the East India Marine Society, he had John Quincy Adams begin his campaign for a second term in the new building he just had built for the museum. At the time he was controlling the most powerful senator in the nation, Daniel Webster, his
brother-in-law Joseph Story in the Supreme Court, and held major shares and the control of the national bank those two were directors of. Plus he was head of John Quincy Adam’s political party.
Many of the ship captains, who were obliged to donate curiosities from their voyages, who created the museum in 1799 would of created their teapot collection from the sales of opium to the Chinese. Seventy percent of their youth at one time would become addicts.My little friend Cthulhu still thinks he has caused much more murder and madness here at home in Arkham...
The Thing on the Doorstep
by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
I.
It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman--madder than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than as I did after facing the evidence of that horror--that thing on the doorstep.
Until then I also saw nothing but madness in the wild tales I have acted on. Even now I ask myself whether I was misled--or whether I am not mad after all. I do not know--but others have strange things to tell of Edward and Asenath Derby, and even the stolid police are at their wits’ ends to account for that last terrible visit. They have tried weakly to concoct a theory of a ghastly jest or warning by discharged servants, yet they know in their hearts that the truth is something infinitely more terrible and incredible.
So I say that I have not murdered Edward Derby. Rather have I avenged him, and in so doing purged the earth of a horror whose survival might have loosed untold terrors on all mankind. There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.
I have known Edward Pickman Derby all his life. Eight years my junior, he was so precocious that we had much in common from the time he was eight and I sixteen. He was the most phenomenal child scholar I have ever known, and at seven was writing verse of a sombre, fantastic, almost morbid cast which astonished the tutors surrounding him. Perhaps his private education and coddled seclusion had something to do with his premature flowering. An only child, he had organic weaknesses which startled his doting parents and caused them to keep him closely chained to their side. He was never allowed out without his nurse, and seldom had a chance to play unconstrainedly with other children. All this doubtless fostered a strange, secretive inner life in the boy, with imagination as his one avenue of freedom.
At any rate, his juvenile learning was prodigious and bizarre; and his facile writings such as to captivate me despite my greater age. About that time I had leanings toward art of a somewhat grotesque cast, and I found in this younger child a rare kindred spirit. What lay behind our joint love of shadows and marvels was, no doubt, the ancient, mouldering, and subtly fearsome town in which we lived--witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering Miskatonic.
As time went by I turned to architecture and gave up my design of illustrating a book of Edward’s daemoniac poems, yet our comradeship suffered no lessening. Young Derby’s odd genius developed remarkably, and in his eighteenth year his collected nightmare-lyrics made a real sensation when issued under the title Azathoth and Other Horrors. He was a close correspondent of the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey, who wrote The People of the Monolith and died screaming in a madhouse in 1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary.
In self-reliance and practical affairs, however, Derby was greatly retarded because of his coddled existence. His health had improved, but his habits of childish dependence were fostered by overcareful parents; so that he never travelled alone, made independent decisions, or assumed responsibilities. It was early seen that he would not be equal to a struggle in the business or professional arena, but the family fortune was so ample that this formed no tragedy. As he grew to years of manhood he retained a deceptive aspect of boyishness. Blond and blue-eyed, he had the fresh complexion of a child; and his attempts to raise a moustache were discernible only with difficulty. His voice was soft and light, and his pampered, unexercised life gave him a juvenile chubbiness rather than the paunchiness of premature middle age. He was of good height, and his handsome face would have made him a notable gallant had not his shyness held him to seclusion and bookishness.
Derby’s parents took him abroad every summer, and he was quick to seize on the surface aspects of European thought and expression. His Poe-like talents turned more and more toward the decadent, and other artistic sensitivenesses and yearnings were half-aroused in him. We had great discussions in those days. I had been through Harvard, had studied in a Boston architect’s office, had married, and had finally returned to Arkham to practice my profession--settling in the family homestead in Saltonstall St. since my father had moved to Florida for his health. Edward used to call almost every evening, till I came to regard him as one of the household. He had a characteristic way of ringing the doorbell or sounding the knocker that grew to be a veritable code signal, so that after dinner I always listened for the familiar three brisk strokes followed by two more after a pause. Less frequently I would visit at his house and note with envy the obscure volumes in his constantly growing library.
___
Derby went through Miskatonic University in Arkham, since his parents would not let him board away from them. He entered at sixteen and completed his course in three years, majoring in English and French literature and receiving high marks in everything but mathematics and the sciences. He mingled very little with the other students, though looking enviously at the “daring” or “Bohemian” set--whose superficially “smart” language and meaninglessly ironic pose he aped, and whose dubious conduct he wished he dared adopt.
What he did do was to become an almost fanatical devotee of subterranean magical lore, for which Miskatonic’s library was and is famous. Always a dweller on the surface of phantasy and strangeness, he now delved deep into the actual runes and riddles left by a fabulous past for the guidance or puzzlement of posterity. He read things like the frightful Book of Eibon, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, and the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, though he did not tell his parents he had seen them. Edward was twenty when my son and only child was born, and seemed pleased when I named the newcomer Edward Derby Upton, after him.
By the time he was twenty-five Edward Derby was a prodigiously learned man and a fairly well-known poet and fantaisiste, though his lack of contacts and responsibilities had slowed down his literary growth by making his products derivative and overbookish. I was perhaps his closest friend--finding him an inexhaustible mine of vital theoretical topics, while he relied on me for advice in whatever matters he did not wish to refer to his parents. He remained single--more through shyness, inertia, and parental protectiveness than through inclination--and moved in society only to the slightest and most perfunctory extent. When the war came both health and ingrained timidity kept him at home. I went to Plattsburg for a commission, but never got overseas.
So the years wore on. Edward’s mother died when he was thirty-four, and for months he was incapacitated by some odd psychological malady. His father took him to Europe, however, and he managed to pull out of his trouble without visible effects. Afterward he seemed to feel a sort of grotesque exhilaration, as if of partial escape from some unseen bondage. He began to mingle in the more “advanced” college set despite his middle age, and was present at some extremely wild doings--on one occasion paying heavy blackmail (which he borrowed of me) to keep his presence at a certain affair from his father’s notice. Some of the whispered rumours about the wild Miskatonic set were extremely singular. There was even talk of black magic and of happenings utterly beyond credibility.
II.
Edward was thirty-eight when he met Asenath Waite. She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval metaphysics at Miskatonic. The daughter of a friend of mine had met her before--in the Hall School at Kingsport--and had been inclined to shun her because of her odd reputation. She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people. There are tales of horrible bargains about the year 1850, and of a strange element “not quite human” in the ancient families of the run-down fishing port--tales such as only old-time Yankees can devise and repeat with proper awesomeness.
Asenath’s case was aggravated by the fact that she was Ephraim Waite’s daughter--the child of his old age by an unknown wife who always went veiled. Ephraim lived in a half-decayed mansion in Washington Street, Innsmouth, and those who had seen the place (Arkham folk avoid going to Innsmouth whenever they can) declared that the attic windows were always boarded, and that strange sounds sometimes floated from within as evening drew on. The old man was known to have been a prodigious magical student in his day, and legend averred that he could raise or quell storms at sea according to his whim. I had seen him once or twice in my youth as he came to Arkham to consult forbidden tomes at the college library, and had hated his wolfish, saturnine face with its tangle of iron-grey beard. He had died insane--under rather queer circumstances--just before his daughter (by his will made a nominal ward of the principal) entered the Hall School, but she had been his morbidly avid pupil and looked fiendishly like him at times.
The friend whose daughter had gone to school with Asenath Waite repeated many curious things when the news of Edward’s acquaintance with her began to spread about. Asenath, it seemed, had posed as a kind of magician at school; and had really seemed able to accomplish some highly baffling marvels. She professed to be able to raise thunderstorms, though her seeming success was generally laid to some uncanny knack at prediction. All animals markedly disliked her, and she could make any dog howl by certain motions of her right hand. There were times when she displayed snatches of knowledge and language very singular--and very shocking--for a young girl; when she would frighten her schoolmates with leers and winks of an inexplicable kind, and would seem to extract an obscene and zestful irony from her present situation.
Most unusual, though, were the well-attested cases of her influence over other persons. She was, beyond question, a genuine hypnotist. By gazing peculiarly at a fellow-student she would often give the latter a distinct feeling of exchanged personality--as if the subject were placed momentarily in the magician’s body and able to stare half across the room at her real body, whose eyes blazed and protruded with an alien expression. Asenath often made wild claims about the nature of consciousness and about its independence of the physical frame--or at least from the life-processes of the physical frame. Her crowning rage, however, was that she was not a man; since she believed a male brain had certain unique and far-reaching cosmic powers. Given a man’s brain, she declared, she could not only equal but surpass her father in mastery of unknown forces.
Edward met Asenath at a gathering of “intelligentsia” held in one of the students’ rooms, and could talk of nothing else when he came to see me the next day. He had found her full of the interests and erudition which engrossed him most, and was in addition wildly taken with her appearance. I had never seen the young woman, and recalled casual references only faintly, but I knew who she was. It seemed rather regrettable that Derby should become so upheaved about her; but I said nothing to discourage him, since infatuation thrives on opposition. He was not, he said, mentioning her to his father.
___
In the next few weeks I heard of very little but Asenath from young Derby. Others now remarked Edward’s autumnal gallantry, though they agreed that he did not look even nearly his actual age, or seem at all inappropriate as an escort for his bizarre divinity. He was only a trifle paunchy despite his indolence and self-indulgence, and his face was absolutely without lines. Asenath, on the other hand, had the premature crow’s feet which come from the exercise of an intense will.
About this time Edward brought the girl to call on me, and I at once saw that his interest was by no means one-sided. She eyed him continually with an almost predatory air, and I perceived that their intimacy was beyond untangling. Soon afterward I had a visit from old Mr. Derby, whom I had always admired and respected. He had heard the tales of his son’s new friendship, and had wormed the whole truth out of “the boy”. Edward meant to marry Asenath, and had even been looking at houses in the suburbs. Knowing my usually great influence with his son, the father wondered if I could help to break the ill-advised affair off; but I regretfully expressed my doubts. This time it was not a question of Edward’s weak will but of the woman’s strong will. The perennial child had transferred his dependence from the parental image to a new and stronger image, and nothing could be done about it.
The wedding was performed a month later--by a justice of the peace, according to the bride’s request. Mr. Derby, at my advice, offered no opposition; and he, my wife, my son, and I attended the brief ceremony--the other guests being wild young people from the college. Asenath had bought the old Crowninshield place in the country at the end of High Street, and they proposed to settle there after a short trip to Innsmouth, whence three servants and some books and household goods were to be brought. It was probably not so much consideration for Edward and his father as a personal wish to be near the college, its library, and its crowd of “sophisticates”, that made Asenath settle in Arkham instead of returning permanently home.
When Edward called on me after the honeymoon I thought he looked slightly changed. Asenath had made him get rid of the undeveloped moustache, but there was more than that. He looked soberer and more thoughtful, his habitual pout of childish rebelliousness being exchanged for a look almost of genuine sadness. I was puzzled to decide whether I liked or disliked the change. Certainly, he seemed for the moment more normally adult than ever before. Perhaps the marriage was a good thing--might not the change of dependence form a start toward actual neutralisation, leading ultimately to responsible independence? He came alone, for Asenath was very busy. She had brought a vast store of books and apparatus from Innsmouth (Derby shuddered as he spoke the name), and was finishing the restoration of the Crowninshield house and grounds.
Her home in--that town--was a rather disquieting place, but certain objects in it had taught him some surprising things. He was progressing fast in esoteric lore now that he had Asenath’s guidance. Some of the experiments she proposed were very daring and radical--he did not feel at liberty to describe them--but he had confidence in her powers and intentions. The three servants were very queer--an incredibly aged couple who had been with old Ephraim and referred occasionally to him and to Asenath’s dead mother in a cryptic way, and a swarthy young wench who had marked anomalies of feature and seemed to exude a perpetual odour of fish.
III.
For the next two years I saw less and less of Derby. A fortnight would sometimes slip by without the familiar three-and-two strokes at the front door; and when he did call--or when, as happened with increasing infrequency, I called on him--he was very little disposed to converse on vital topics. He had become secretive about those occult studies which he used to describe and discuss so minutely, and preferred not to talk of his wife. She had aged tremendously since her marriage, till now--oddly enough--she seemed the elder of the two. Her face held the most concentratedly determined expression I had ever seen, and her whole aspect seemed to gain a vague, unplaceable repulsiveness. My wife and son noticed it as much as I, and we all ceased gradually to call on her--for which, Edward admitted in one of his boyishly tactless moments, she was unmitigatedly grateful. Occasionally the Derbys would go on long trips--ostensibly to Europe, though Edward sometimes hinted at obscurer destinations.
It was after the first year that people began talking about the change in Edward Derby. It was very casual talk, for the change was purely psychological; but it brought up some interesting points. Now and then, it seemed, Edward was observed to wear an expression and to do things wholly incompatible with his usual flabby nature. For example--although in the old days he could not drive a car, he was now seen occasionally to dash into or out of the old Crowninshield driveway with Asenath’s powerful Packard, handling it like a master, and meeting traffic entanglements with a skill and determination utterly alien to his accustomed nature. In such cases he seemed always to be just back from some trip or just starting on one--what sort of trip, no one could guess, although he mostly favoured the Innsmouth road.
Oddly, the metamorphosis did not seem altogether pleasing. People said he looked too much like his wife, or like old Ephraim Waite himself, in these moments--or perhaps these moments seemed unnatural because they were so rare. Sometimes, hours after starting out in this way, he would return listlessly sprawled on the rear seat of the car while an obviously hired chauffeur or mechanic drove. Also, his preponderant aspect on the streets during his decreasing round of social contacts (including, I may say, his calls on me) was the old-time indecisive one--its irresponsible childishness even more marked than in the past. While Asenath’s face aged, Edward’s--aside from those exceptional occasions--actually relaxed into a kind of exaggerated immaturity, save when a trace of the new sadness or understanding would flash across it. It was really very puzzling. Meanwhile the Derbys almost dropped out of the gay college circle--not through their own disgust, we heard, but because something about their present studies shocked even the most callous of the other decadents.
It was in the third year of the marriage that Edward began to hint openly to me of a certain fear and dissatisfaction. He would let fall remarks about things ‘going too far’, and would talk darkly about the need of ‘saving his identity’. At first I ignored such references, but in time I began to question him guardedly, remembering what my friend’s daughter had said about Asenath’s hypnotic influence over the other girls at school--the cases where students had thought they were in her body looking across the room at themselves. This questioning seemed to make him at once alarmed and grateful, and once he mumbled something about having a serious talk with me later.
About this time old Mr. Derby died, for which I was afterward very thankful. Edward was badly upset, though by no means disorganised. He had seen astonishingly little of his parent since his marriage, for Asenath had concentrated in herself all his vital sense of family linkage. Some called him callous in his loss--especially since those jaunty and confident moods in the car began to increase. He now wished to move back into the old Derby mansion, but Asenath insisted on staying in the Crowninshield house, to which she had become well adjusted.
Not long afterward my wife heard a curious thing from a friend--one of the few who had not dropped the Derbys. She had been out to the end of High St. to call on the couple, and had seen a car shoot briskly out of the drive with Edward’s oddly confident and almost sneering face above the wheel. Ringing the bell, she had been told by the repulsive wench that Asenath was also out; but had chanced to look up at the house in leaving. There, at one of Edward’s library windows, she had glimpsed a hastily withdrawn face--a face whose expression of pain, defeat, and wistful hopelessness was poignant beyond description. It was--incredibly enough in view of its usual domineering cast--Asenath’s; yet the caller had vowed that in that instant the sad, muddled eyes of poor Edward were gazing out from it.
___
Edward’s calls now grew a trifle more frequent, and his hints occasionally became concrete. What he said was not to be believed, even in centuried and legend-haunted Arkham; but he threw out his dark lore with a sincerity and convincingness which made one fear for his sanity. He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of Cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds, and in different space-time continua.
He would now and then back up certain crazy hints by exhibiting objects which utterly nonplussed me--elusively coloured and bafflingly textured objects like nothing ever heard of on earth, whose insane curves and surfaces answered no conceivable purpose and followed no conceivable geometry. These things, he said, came ‘from outside’; and his wife knew how to get them. Sometimes--but always in frightened and ambiguous whispers--he would suggest things about old Ephraim Waite, whom he had seen occasionally at the college library in the old days. These adumbrations were never specific, but seemed to revolve around some especially horrible doubt as to whether the old wizard were really dead--in a spiritual as well as corporeal sense.
At times Derby would halt abruptly in his revelations, and I wondered whether Asenath could possibly have divined his speech at a distance and cut him off through some unknown sort of telepathic mesmerism--some power of the kind she had displayed at school. Certainly, she suspected that he told me things, for as the weeks passed she tried to stop his visits with words and glances of a most inexplicable potency. Only with difficulty could he get to see me, for although he would pretend to be going somewhere else, some invisible force would generally clog his motions or make him forget his destination for the time being. His visits usually came when Asenath was away--‘away in her own body’, as he once oddly put it. She always found out later--the servants watched his goings and comings--but evidently she thought it inexpedient to do anything drastic.
IV.
Derby had been married more than three years on that August day when I got the telegram from Maine. I had not seen him for two months, but had heard he was away “on business”. Asenath was supposed to be with him, though watchful gossips declared there was someone upstairs in the house behind the doubly curtained windows. They had watched the purchases made by the servants. And now the town marshal of Chesuncook had wired of the draggled madman who stumbled out of the woods with delirious ravings and screamed to me for protection. It was Edward--and he had been just able to recall his own name and my name and address.
Chesuncook is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest belt in Maine, and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in a car. I found Derby in a cell at the town farm, vacillating between frenzy and apathy. He knew me at once, and began pouring out a meaningless, half-incoherent torrent of words in my direction.
“Dan--for God’s sake! The pit of the shoggoths! Down the six thousand steps . . . the abomination of abominations . . . I never would let her take me, and then I found myself there. . . . Iä! Shub-Niggurath! . . . The shape rose up from the altar, and there were 500 that howled. . . . The Hooded Thing bleated ‘Kamog! Kamog!’--that was old Ephraim’s secret name in the coven. . . . I was there, where she promised she wouldn’t take me. . . . A minute before I was locked in the library, and then I was there where she had gone with my body--in the place of utter blasphemy, the unholy pit where the black realm begins and the watcher guards the gate. . . . I saw a shoggoth--it changed shape. . . . I can’t stand it. . . . I won’t stand it. . . . I’ll kill her if she ever sends me there again. . . . I’ll kill that entity . . . her, him, it . . . I’ll kill it! I’ll kill it with my own hands!”
It took me an hour to quiet him, but he subsided at last. The next day I got him decent clothes in the village, and set out with him for Arkham. His fury of hysteria was spent, and he was inclined to be silent; though he began muttering darkly to himself when the car passed through Augusta--as if the sight of a city aroused unpleasant memories. It was clear that he did not wish to go home; and considering the fantastic delusions he seemed to have about his wife--delusions undoubtedly springing from some actual hypnotic ordeal to which he had been subjected--I thought it would be better if he did not. I would, I resolved, put him up myself for a time; no matter what unpleasantness it would make with Asenath. Later I would help him get a divorce, for most assuredly there were mental factors which made this marriage suicidal for him. When we struck open country again Derby’s muttering faded away, and I let him nod and drowse on the seat beside me as I drove.
During our sunset dash through Portland the muttering commenced again, more distinctly than before, and as I listened I caught a stream of utterly insane drivel about Asenath. The extent to which she had preyed on Edward’s nerves was plain, for he had woven a whole set of hallucinations around her. His present predicament, he mumbled furtively, was only one of a long series. She was getting hold of him, and he knew that some day she would never let go. Even now she probably let him go only when she had to, because she couldn’t hold on long at a time. She constantly took his body and went to nameless places for nameless rites, leaving him in her body and locking him upstairs--but sometimes she couldn’t hold on, and he would find himself suddenly in his own body again in some far-off, horrible, and perhaps unknown place. Sometimes she’d get hold of him again and sometimes she couldn’t. Often he was left stranded somewhere as I had found him . . . time and again he had to find his way home from frightful distances, getting somebody to drive the car after he found it.
The worst thing was that she was holding on to him longer and longer at a time. She wanted to be a man--to be fully human--that was why she got hold of him. She had sensed the mixture of fine-wrought brain and weak will in him. Some day she would crowd him out and disappear with his body--disappear to become a great magician like her father and leave him marooned in that female shell that wasn’t even quite human. Yes, he knew about the Innsmouth blood now. There had been traffick with things from the sea--it was horrible. . . . And old Ephraim--he had known the secret, and when he grew old did a hideous thing to keep alive . . . he wanted to live forever . . . Asenath would succeed--one successful demonstration had taken place already.
As Derby muttered on I turned to look at him closely, verifying the impression of change which an earlier scrutiny had given me. Paradoxically, he seemed in better shape than usual--harder, more normally developed, and without the trace of sickly flabbiness caused by his indolent habits. It was as if he had been really active and properly exercised for the first time in his coddled life, and I judged that Asenath’s force must have pushed him into unwonted channels of motion and alertness. But just now his mind was in a pitiable state; for he was mumbling wild extravagances about his wife, about black magic, about old Ephraim, and about some revelation which would convince even me. He repeated names which I recognized from bygone browsings in forbidden volumes, and at times made me shudder with a certain thread of mythological consistency--of convincing coherence--which ran through his maundering. Again and again he would pause, as if to gather courage for some final and terrible disclosure.
“Dan, Dan, don’t you remember him--the wild eyes and the unkempt beard that never turned white?" He glared at me once, and I never forgot it. Now she glares that way. And I know why! He found it in the Necronomicon--the formula. I don’t dare tell you the page yet, but when I do you can read and understand. Then you will know what has engulfed me. On, on, on, on--body to body to body--he means never to die. The life-glow--he knows how to break the link . . . it can flicker on a while even when the body is dead. I’ll give you hints, and maybe you’ll guess. Listen, Dan--do you know why my wife always takes such pains with that silly backhand writing? Have you ever seen a manuscript of old Ephraim’s? Do you want to know why I shivered when I saw some hasty notes Asenath had jotted down?
Asenath . . . is there such a person? Why did they half think there was poison in old Ephraim’s stomach? Why do the Gilmans whisper about the way he shrieked--like a frightened child--when he went mad and Asenath locked him up in the padded attic room where--the other--had been? Was it old Ephraim’s soul that was locked in? Who locked in whom? Why had he been looking for months for someone with a fine mind and a weak will? Why did he curse that his daughter wasn’t a son? Tell me, Daniel Upton--what devilish exchange was perpetrated in the house of horror where that blasphemous monster had his trusting, weak-willed, half-human child at his mercy? Didn’t he make it permanent--as she’ll do in the end with me? Tell me why that thing that calls itself Asenath writes differently when off guard, so that you can’t tell its script from . . .”
___
Then the thing happened. Derby’s voice was rising to a thin treble scream as he raved, when suddenly it was shut off with an almost mechanical click. I thought of those other occasions at my home when his confidences had abruptly ceased--when I had half fancied that some obscure telepathic wave of Asenath’s mental force was intervening to keep him silent. This, though, was something altogether different--and, I felt, infinitely more horrible. The face beside me was twisted almost unrecognisably for a moment, while through the whole body there passed a shivering motion--as if all the bones, organs, muscles, nerves, and glands were readjusting themselves to a radically different posture, set of stresses, and general personality.
Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion--such a freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality--that my grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me seemed less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion from outer space--some damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknown and malign cosmic forces.
I had faltered only a moment, but before another moment was over my companion had seized the wheel and forced me to change places with him. The dusk was now very thick, and the lights of Portland far behind, so I could not see much of his face. The blaze of his eyes, though, was phenomenal; and I knew that he must now be in that queerly energized state--so unlike his usual self--which so many people had noticed. It seemed odd and incredible that listless Edward Derby--he who could never assert himself, and who had never learned to drive--should be ordering me about and taking the wheel of my own car, yet that was precisely what had happened. He did not speak for some time, and in my inexplicable horror I was glad he did not.
In the lights of Biddeford and Saco I saw his firmly set mouth, and shivered at the blaze of his eyes. The people were right--he did look damnably like his wife and like old Ephraim when in these moods. I did not wonder that the moods were disliked--there was certainly something unnatural and diabolic in them, and I felt the sinister element all the more because of the wild ravings I had been hearing. This man, for all my lifelong knowledge of Edward Pickman Derby, was a stranger--an intrusion of some sort from the black abyss.
He did not speak until we were on a dark stretch of road, and when he did his voice seemed utterly unfamiliar. It was deeper, firmer, and more decisive than I had ever known it to be; while its accent and pronunciation were altogether changed--though vaguely, remotely, and rather disturbingly recalling something I could not quite place. There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbre--not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow “sophisticate”, which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive, and potentially evil. I marvelled at the self-possession so soon following the spell of panic-struck muttering.
“I hope you’ll forget my attack back there, Upton,” he was saying. “You know what my nerves are, and I guess you can excuse such things. I’m enormously grateful, of course, for this lift home.
And you must forget, too, any crazy things I may have been saying about my wife--and about things in general. That’s what comes from overstudy in a field like mine. My philosophy is full of bizarre concepts, and when the mind gets worn out it cooks up all sorts of imaginary concrete applications. I shall take a rest from now on--you probably won’t see me for some time, and you needn’t blame Asenath for it.
This trip was a bit queer, but it’s really very simple. There are certain Indian relics in the north woods--standing stones, and all that--which mean a good deal in folklore, and Asenath and I are following that stuff up. It was a hard search, so I seem to have gone off my head. I must send somebody for the car when I get home. A month’s relaxation will put me back on my feet.”
I do not recall just what my own part of the conversation was, for the baffling alienage of my seatmate filled all my consciousness. With every moment my feeling of elusive cosmic horror increased, till at length I was in a virtual delirium of longing for the end of the drive. Derby did not offer to relinquish the wheel, and I was glad of the speed with which Portsmouth and Newburyport flashed by.
At the junction where the main highway runs inland and avoids Innsmouth I was half afraid my driver would take the bleak shore road that goes through that damnable place. He did not, however, but darted rapidly past Rowley and Ipswich toward our destination. We reached Arkham before midnight, and found the lights still on at the old Crowninshield house. Derby left the car with a hasty repetition of his thanks, and I drove home alone with a curious feeling of relief. It had been a terrible drive--all the more terrible because I could not quite tell why--and I did not regret Derby’s forecast of a long absence from my company.
V.
The next two months were full of rumours. People spoke of seeing Derby more and more in his new energized state, and Asenath was scarcely ever in to her few callers. I had only one visit from Edward, when he called briefly in Asenath’s car--duly reclaimed from wherever he had left it in Maine--to get some books he had lent me. He was in his new state, and paused only long enough for some evasively polite remarks. It was plain that he had nothing to discuss with me when in this condition--and I noticed that he did not even trouble to give the old three-and-two signal when ringing the doorbell. As on that evening in the car, I felt a faint, infinitely deep horror which I could not explain; so that his swift departure was a prodigious relief.
In mid-September Derby was away for a week, and some of the decadent college set talked knowingly of the matter--hinting at a meeting with a notorious cult-leader, lately expelled from England, who had established headquarters in New York. For my part I could not get that strange ride from Maine out of my head. The transformation I had witnessed had affected me profoundly, and I caught myself again and again trying to account for the thing--and for the extreme horror it had inspired in me.
But the oddest rumours were those about the sobbing in the old Crowninshield house. The voice seemed to be a woman’s, and some of the younger people thought it sounded like Asenath’s. It was heard only at rare intervals, and would sometimes be choked off as if by force. There was talk of an investigation, but this was dispelled one day when Asenath appeared in the streets and chatted in a sprightly way with a large number of acquaintances--apologizing for her recent absences and speaking incidentally about the nervous breakdown and hysteria of a guest from Boston. The guest was never seen, but Asenath’s appearance left nothing to be said. And then someone complicated matters by whispering that the sobs had once or twice been in a man’s voice.
One evening in mid-October I heard the familiar three-and-two ring at the front door. Answering it myself, I found Edward on the steps, and saw in a moment that his personality was the old one which I had not encountered since the day of his ravings on that terrible ride from Chesuncook. His face was twitching with a mixture of odd emotions in which fear and triumph seemed to share dominion, and he looked furtively over his shoulder as I closed the door behind him.
Following me clumsily to the study, he asked for some whiskey to steady his nerves. I forbore to question him, but waited till he felt like beginning whatever he wanted to say. At length he ventured some information in a choking voice.
“Asenath has gone, Dan. We had a long talk last night while the servants were out, and I made her promise to stop preying on me. Of course I had certain--certain occult defences I never told you about. She had to give in, but got frightfully angry. Just packed up and started for New York--walked right out to catch the 8:20 in to Boston. I suppose people will talk, but I can’t help that. You needn’t mention that there was any trouble--just say she’s gone on a long research trip.
She’s probably going to stay with one of her horrible groups of devotees. I hope she’ll go west and get a divorce--anyhow, I’ve made her promise to keep away and let me alone. It was horrible, Dan--she was stealing my body--crowding me out--making a prisoner of me. I laid low and pretended to let her do it, but I had to be on the watch. I could plan if I was careful, for she can’t read my mind literally, or in detail. All she could read of my planning was a sort of general mood of rebellion--and she always thought I was helpless. Never thought I could get the best of her . . . but I had a spell or two that worked.”
Derby looked over his shoulder and took some more whiskey.
“I paid off those damned servants this morning when they got back. They were ugly about it, and asked questions, but they went. They’re her kind--Innsmouth people--and were hand and glove with her. I hope they’ll let me alone--I didn’t like the way they laughed when they walked away. I must get as many of Dad’s old servants again as I can. I’ll move back home now.
I suppose you think I’m crazy, Dan--but Arkham history ought to hint at things that back up what I’ve told you--and what I’m going to tell you. You’ve seen one of the changes, too--in your car after I told you about Asenath that day coming home from Maine. That was when she got me--drove me out of my body. The last thing of the ride I remember was when I was all worked up trying to tell you what that she-devil is. Then she got me, and in a flash I was back at the house--in the library where those damned servants had me locked up--and in that cursed fiend’s body . . . that isn’t even human. . . . You know, it was she you must have ridden home with . . . that preying wolf in my body. . . . You ought to have known the difference!”
___
I shuddered as Derby paused. Surely, I had known the difference--yet could I accept an explanation as insane as this? But my distracted caller was growing even wilder.
“I had to save myself--I had to, Dan! She’d have got me for good at Hallowmass--they hold a Sabbat up there beyond Chesuncook, and the sacrifice would have clinched things. She’d have got me for good . . . she’d have been I, and I’d have been she . . . forever . . . too late. . . . My body’d have been hers for good. . . . She’d have been a man, and fully human, just as she wanted to be. . . . I suppose she’d have put me out of the way--killed her own ex-body with me in it, damn her, just as she did before--just as she, he, or it did before. . . .”
Edward’s face was now atrociously distorted, and he bent it uncomfortably close to mine as his voice fell to a whisper.
“You must know what I hinted in the car--that she isn’t Asenath at all, but really old Ephraim himself. I suspected it a year and a half ago, but I know it now. Her handwriting shews it when she’s off guard--sometimes she jots down a note in writing that’s just like her father’s manuscripts, stroke for stroke--and sometimes she says things that nobody but an old man like Ephraim could say. He changed forms with her when he felt death coming--she was the only one he could find with the right kind of brain and a weak enough will--he got her body permanently, just as she almost got mine, and then poisoned the old body he’d put her into. Haven’t you seen old Ephraim’s soul glaring out of that she-devil’s eyes dozens of times . . . and out of mine when she had control of my body?”
The whisperer was panting, and paused for breath. I said nothing, and when he resumed his voice was nearer normal. This, I reflected, was a case for the asylum, but I would not be the one to send him there. Perhaps time and freedom from Asenath would do its work. I could see that he would never wish to dabble in morbid occultism again.
“I’ll tell you more later--I must have a long rest now. I’ll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into--something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do. I’ve been in it up to my neck, but that’s the end. Today I’d burn that damned Necronomicon and all the rest if I were librarian at Miskatonic.
But she can’t get me now. I must get out of that accursed house as soon as I can, and settle down at home. You’ll help me, I know, if I need help. Those devilish servants, you know . . . and if people should get too inquisitive about Asenath. You see, I can’t give them her address. . . . Then there are certain groups of searchers--certain cults, you know--that might misunderstand our breaking up . . . some of them have damnably curious ideas and methods. I know you’ll stand by me if anything happens--even if I have to tell you a lot that will shock you. . . .”
___
I had Edward stay and sleep in one of the guest-chambers that night, and in the morning he seemed calmer. We discussed certain possible arrangements for his moving back into the Derby mansion, and I hoped he would lose no time in making the change. He did not call the next evening, but I saw him frequently during the ensuing weeks. We talked as little as possible about strange and unpleasant things, but discussed the renovation of the old Derby house, and the travels which Edward promised to take with my son and me the following summer.
Of Asenath we said almost nothing, for I saw that the subject was a peculiarly disturbing one. Gossip, of course, was rife; but that was no novelty in connexion with the strange ménage at the old Crowninshield house. One thing I did not like was what Derby’s banker let fall in an overexpansive mood at the Miskatonic Club--about the cheques Edward was sending regularly to a Moses and Abigail Sargent and a Eunice Babson in Innsmouth. That looked as if those evil-faced servants were extorting some kind of tribute from him--yet he had not mentioned the matter to me.
I wished that the summer--and my son’s Harvard vacation--would come, so that we could get Edward to Europe. He was not, I soon saw, mending as rapidly as I had hoped he would; for there was something a bit hysterical in his occasional exhilaration, while his moods of fright and depression were altogether too frequent. The old Derby house was ready by December, yet Edward constantly put off moving. Though he hated and seemed to fear the Crowninshield place, he was at the same time queerly enslaved by it. He could not seem to begin dismantling things, and invented every kind of excuse to postpone action. When I pointed this out to him he appeared unaccountably frightened. His father’s old butler--who was there with other reacquired family servants--told me one day that Edward’s occasional prowlings about the house, and especially down cellar, looked odd and unwholesome to him. I wondered if Asenath had been writing disturbing letters, but the butler said there was no mail which could have come from her.
VI.
It was about Christmas that Derby broke down one evening while calling on me. I was steering the conversation toward next summer’s travels when he suddenly shrieked and leaped up from his chair with a look of shocking, uncontrollable fright--a cosmic panic and loathing such as only the nether gulfs of nightmare could bring to any sane mind.
“My brain! My brain! God, Dan--it’s tugging--from beyond--knocking--clawing--that she-devil--even now--Ephraim--Kamog! Kamog!--The pit of the shoggoths--Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young! . . .
The flame--the flame . . . beyond body, beyond life . . . in the earth . . . oh, God! . . .”
I pulled him back to his chair and poured some wine down his throat as his frenzy sank to a dull apathy. He did not resist, but kept his lips moving as if talking to himself. Presently I realized that he was trying to talk to me, and bent my ear to his mouth to catch the feeble words.
“ . . . again, again . . . she’s trying . . . I might have known . . . nothing can stop that force; not distance, nor magic, nor death . . . it comes and comes, mostly in the night . . . I can’t leave . . . it’s horrible . . . oh, God, Dan, if you only knew as I do just how horrible it is. . . .”
When he had slumped down into a stupor I propped him with pillows and let normal sleep overtake him. I did not call a doctor, for I knew what would be said of his sanity, and wished to give nature a chance if I possibly could. He waked at midnight, and I put him to bed upstairs, but he was gone by morning. He had let himself quietly out of the house--and his butler, when called on the wire, said he was at home pacing restlessly about the library.
Edward went to pieces rapidly after that. He did not call again, but I went daily to see him. He would always be sitting in his library, staring at nothing and having an air of abnormal listening. Sometimes he talked rationally, but always on trivial topics. Any mention of his trouble, of future plans, or of Asenath would send him into a frenzy. His butler said he had frightful seizures at night, during which he might eventually do himself harm.
I had a long talk with his doctor, banker, and lawyer, and finally took the physician with two specialist colleagues to visit him. The spasms that resulted from the first questions were violent and pitiable--and that evening a closed car took his poor struggling body to the Arkham Sanitarium. I was made his guardian and called on him twice weekly--almost weeping to hear his wild shrieks, awesome whispers, and dreadful, droning repetitions of such phrases as “I had to do it--I had to do it . . . it’ll get me . . . it’ll get me . . . down there . . . down there in the dark. . . . Mother, mother! Dan! Save me . . . save me. . . .”
How much hope of recovery there was, no one could say; but I tried my best to be optimistic. Edward must have a home if he emerged, so I transferred his servants to the Derby mansion, which would surely be his sane choice. What to do about the Crowninshield place with its complex arrangements and collections of utterly inexplicable objects I could not decide, so left it momentarily untouched--telling the Derby housemaid to go over and dust the chief rooms once a week, and ordering the furnace man to have a fire on those days.
The final nightmare came before Candlemas--heralded, in cruel irony, by a false gleam of hope. One morning late in January the sanitarium telephoned to report that Edward’s reason had suddenly come back. His continuous memory, they said, was badly impaired; but sanity itself was certain. Of course he must remain some time for observation, but there could be little doubt of the outcome. All going well, he would surely be free in a week.
I hastened over in a flood of delight, but stood bewildered when a nurse took me to Edward’s room. The patient rose to greet me, extending his hand with a polite smile; but I saw in an instant that he bore the strangely energized personality which had seemed so foreign to his own nature--the competent personality I had found so vaguely horrible, and which Edward himself had once vowed was the intruding soul of his wife. There was the same blazing vision--so like Asenath’s and old Ephraim’s--and the same firm mouth; and when he spoke I could sense the same grim, pervasive irony in his voice--the deep irony so redolent of potential evil. This was the person who had driven my car through the night five months before--the person I had not seen since that brief call when he had forgotten the old-time doorbell signal and stirred such nebulous fears in me--and now he filled me with the same dim feeling of blasphemous alienage and ineffable cosmic hideousness.
He spoke affably of arrangements for release--and there was nothing for me to do but assent, despite some remarkable gaps in his recent memories. Yet I felt that something was terribly, inexplicably wrong and abnormal. There were horrors in this thing that I could not reach. This was a sane person--but was it indeed the Edward Derby I had known? If not, who or what was it--and where was Edward? Ought it to be free or confined . . . or ought it to be extirpated from the face of the earth? There was a hint of the abysmally sardonic in everything the creature said--the Asenath-like eyes lent a special and baffling mockery to certain words about the ‘early liberty earned by an especially close confinement’. I must have behaved very awkwardly, and was glad to beat a retreat.
All that day and the next I racked my brain over the problem. What had happened? What sort of mind looked out through those alien eyes in Edward’s face? I could think of nothing but this dimly terrible enigma, and gave up all efforts to perform my usual work. The second morning the hospital called up to say that the recovered patient was unchanged, and by evening I was close to a nervous collapse--a state I admit, though others will vow it coloured my subsequent vision. I have nothing to say on this point except that no madness of mine could account for all the evidence.
VII.
It was in the night--after that second evening--that stark, utter horror burst over me and weighted my spirit with a black, clutching panic from which it can never shake free. It began with a telephone call just before midnight. I was the only one up, and sleepily took down the receiver in the library. No one seemed to be on the wire, and I was about to hang up and go to bed when my ear caught a very faint suspicion of sound at the other end. Was someone trying under great difficulties to talk? As I listened I thought I heard a sort of half-liquid bubbling noise--“glub . . . glub . . . glub”--which had an odd suggestion of inarticulate, unintelligible word and syllable divisions. I called, “Who is it?” But the only answer was “glub-glub . . . glub-glub.” I could only assume that the noise was mechanical; but fancying that it might be a case of a broken instrument able to receive but not to send, I added, “I can’t hear you. Better hang up and try Information.” Immediately I heard the receiver go on the hook at the other end.
This, I say, was just before midnight. When that call was traced afterward it was found to come from the old Crowninshield house, though it was fully half a week from the housemaid’s day to be there. I shall only hint what was found at that house--the upheaval in a remote cellar storeroom, the tracks, the dirt, the hastily rifled wardrobe, the baffling marks on the telephone, the clumsily used stationery, and the detestable stench lingering over everything. The police, poor fools, have their smug little theories, and are still searching for those sinister discharged servants--who have dropped out of sight amidst the present furore. They speak of a ghoulish revenge for things that were done, and say I was included because I was Edward’s best friend and adviser.
Idiots!--do they fancy those brutish clowns could have forged that handwriting? Do they fancy they could have brought what later came? Are they blind to the changes in that body that was Edward’s? As for me, I now believe all that Edward Derby ever told me. There are horrors beyond life’s edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man’s evil prying calls them just within our range. Ephraim--Asenath--that devil called them in, and they engulfed Edward as they are engulfing me.
Can I be sure that I am safe? Those powers survive the life of the physical form. The next day--in the afternoon, when I pulled out of my prostration and was able to walk and talk coherently--I went to the madhouse and shot him dead for Edward’s and the world’s sake, but can I be sure till he is cremated? They are keeping the body for some silly autopsies by different doctors--but I say he must be cremated. He must be cremated--he who was not Edward Derby when I shot him. I shall go mad if he is not, for I may be the next. But my will is not weak--and I shall not let it be undermined by the terrors I know are seething around it. One life--Ephraim, Asenath, and Edward--who now? I will not be driven out of my body . . . I will not change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse!
But let me try to tell coherently of that final horror. I will not speak of what the police persistently ignored--the tales of that dwarfed, grotesque, malodorous thing met by at least three wayfarers in High St. just before two o’clock, and the nature of the single footprints in certain places. I will say only that just about two the doorbell and knocker waked me--doorbell and knocker both, plied alternately and uncertainly in a kind of weak desperation, and each trying to keep to Edward’s old signal of three-and-two strokes.
Roused from sound sleep, my mind leaped into a turmoil. Derby at the door--and remembering the old code! That new personality had not remembered it . . . was Edward suddenly back in his rightful state? Why was he here in such evident stress and haste? Had he been released ahead of time, or had he escaped? Perhaps, I thought as I flung on a robe and bounded downstairs, his return to his own self had brought raving and violence, revoking his discharge and driving him to a desperate dash for freedom. Whatever had happened, he was good old Edward again, and I would help him!
___
When I opened the door into the elm-arched blackness a gust of insufferably fetid wind almost flung me prostrate. I choked in nausea, and for a second scarcely saw the dwarfed, humped figure on the steps. The summons had been Edward’s, but who was this foul, stunted parody? Where had Edward had time to go? His ring had sounded only a second before the door opened.
The caller had on one of Edward’s overcoats--its bottom almost touching the ground, and its sleeves rolled back yet still covering the hands. On the head was a slouch hat pulled low, while a black silk muffler concealed the face. As I stepped unsteadily forward, the figure made a semi-liquid sound like that I had heard over the telephone--“glub . . . glub . . .”--and thrust at me a large, closely written paper impaled on the end of a long pencil. Still reeling from the morbid and unaccountable foetor, I seized this paper and tried to read it in the light from the doorway.
Beyond question, it was in Edward’s script. But why had he written when he was close enough to ring--and why was the script so awkward, coarse, and shaky? I could make out nothing in the dim half light, so edged back into the hall, the dwarf figure clumping mechanically after but pausing on the inner door’s threshold. The odour of this singular messenger was really appalling, and I hoped (not in vain, thank God!) that my wife would not wake and confront it.
Then, as I read the paper, I felt my knees give under me and my vision go black. I was lying on the floor when I came to, that accursed sheet still clutched in my fear-rigid hand. This is what it said:
“Dan--go to the sanitarium and kill it. Exterminate it. It isn’t Edward Derby any more. She got me--it’s Asenath--and she has been dead three months and a half. I lied when I said she had gone away. I killed her. I had to. It was sudden, but we were alone and I was in my right body. I saw a candlestick and smashed her head in. She would have got me for good at Hallowmass.
I buried her in the farther cellar storeroom under some old boxes and cleaned up all the traces. The servants suspected next morning, but they have such secrets that they dare not tell the police. I sent them off, but God knows what they--and others of the cult--will do.
I thought for a while I was all right, and then I felt the tugging at my brain. I knew what it was--I ought to have remembered. A soul like hers--or Ephraim’s--is half detached, and keeps right on after death as long as the body lasts. She was getting me--making me change bodies with her--seizing my body and putting me in that corpse of hers buried in the cellar.
I knew what was coming--that’s why I snapped and had to go to the asylum. Then it came--I found myself choked in the dark--in Asenath’s rotting carcass down there in the cellar under the boxes where I put it. And I knew she must be in my body at the sanitarium--permanently, for it was after Hallowmass, and the sacrifice would work even without her being there--sane, and ready for release as a menace to the world. I was desperate, and in spite of everything I clawed my way out.
I’m too far gone to talk--I couldn’t manage to telephone--but I can still write. I’ll get fixed up somehow and bring you this last word and warning. Kill that fiend if you value the peace and comfort of the world. See that it is cremated. If you don’t, it will live on and on, body to body forever, and I can’t tell you what it will do. Keep clear of black magic, Dan, it’s the devil’s business. Goodbye--you’ve been a great friend. Tell the police whatever they’ll believe--and I’m damnably sorry to drag all this on you. I’ll be at peace before long--this thing won’t hold together much more. Hope you can read this. And kill that thing--kill it.
~Yours--Ed.”
It was only afterward that I read the last half of this paper, for I had fainted at the end of the third paragraph. I fainted again when I saw and smelled what cluttered up the threshold where the warm air had struck it. The messenger would not move or have consciousness any more.
The butler, tougher-fibred than I, did not faint at what met him in the hall in the morning. Instead, he telephoned the police. When they came I had been taken upstairs to bed, but the--other mass--lay where it had collapsed in the night. The men put handkerchiefs to their noses.
What they finally found inside Edward’s oddly assorted clothes was mostly liquescent horror. There were bones, too--and a crushed-in skull. Some dental work positively identified the skull as Asenath’s.
This was the first story that introduced Arkham Asylum. Arkham Asylum is more familiar to most people from the Batman Cycle of tales, but it was originated by Howard. Lovecraft openly inspired others to utilize his mythological creations from his tales to expand on his universe. Robert E. Howard was another author who frequently did so as well by bringing some of Lovecraft's horrid monsters into his Conan the Barbarian tales.
Arkham Asylum was based on a real place, a place in which my little friend Cthulhu has plagued many of people's minds. Many blame Romney's election to governor on him. The place that Arkham took its morbid inspiration from was known as Danvers State Hospital in what once was Salem Village, where some great horrors did in fact happen.
Originally, the hospital was built by Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee following the Kirkbride Plan which opened in 1878. Kirkbride called for staggered wings of the building forming a 'bat wing' design to promote more fresh air and sunlight for the patients' rooms. He also called for them to work on farms surrounding the buildings based on his plan to promote a feeling of usefulness with the patients while enjoying even more fresh air and sunshine.
A key feature of the Kirkbride Plan was to have a series of tunnels connecting all of the buildings together to deliver food and laundry and provide comfort of travel during the winter. Laundry and food carts utilized these underground paths, as well as steam pipes used to heat the facility.
In modern times urban explorers have entered these to find some truly disturbed art work from the abused patients that overpopulated the facility by the 1940's. Lobotomies, over medication, straight jackets, and shock treatment had overridden Kirkbride's original plan within the institution. A friend told me he brought in a group of Hells Angels into these tunnels who ran out screaming after witnessing these images along with the possible ghosts who still roam within them.
Most of the asylum was demolished in 2006; what remained has now been turned into...luxury condos. The asylum was closed to patients in 1992, which just allowed them to walk out on their own, and in some cases they even drove them to Beverly and Salem Massachusetts to let them find their own way into the world. Most just joined the growing homeless population. In time they became an interesting part of the community.
Part of the asylum was saved by John Archer who added a cupola from the building to a new addition to his mansion which is also filled with architectural details from the hospital including doors and pulls on dressers.
Derby, Pickman, and Crowninshield mentioned in the story are names from old Salem families who were smugglers who utilized three miles of tunnels. Pickmans and Crowninshields were families who entered politics and the Derbys provided America with its first millionaire and its first playboy son who wasted the fortune in two years. This prompted the son to build three miles of tunnels to help the citizens of Salem avoid paying a new duty levied on imports that Jefferson instilled.
The Miskatonic University is based on the Essex Institute which resides two houses to the left of the Crowninshield-Bentley House which is the basis for the home Edward Derby is found on the doorstep in his liquefied state. The Essex Institute provided arcane volumes, stuffed local animals, a repertoire of local and national artifacts of famous luminaires, and hosted lectures at the Salem Lyceum which, Nathaniel Hawthorne booked literary giants like James Russell Lowell, Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Lyceum also hosted Fredrick Douglass and John Quincy Adams who educated the average masses for a very low ticket price. The Lyceum was also the sight at which Graham Bell made his first public exhibition of his telephone. The Lyceum was one of many buildings in Salem that was connected to the ancient tunnel system.
The Crowninshield-Bentley House now sits on the corner of Hathorne Blvd. and Essex Street. It originally was further down Essex Street where the parking lot of the Hawthorne Hotel is now. The eminent polymath Rev. Bentley ,who was friends with John Hancock, resided in that building. The Rev. warned many of the building fear of the Illuminati. Prior to his term in that residence it was the home of Jacob Crowninshield who was the ship captain that brought the first elephant to America, on a ship that Hawthorne's father had sailed on. It is reported that he got the elephant drunk on the voyage. With its monstrous trunk it is similar to the many tentacles of various Lovecraftian monsters.
In Lovecraft's second summer journey to Salem in 1924 he would have seen the razing of the Franklin Building, in which the Parker Brothers had their first toy store in. On that spot that year the Hawthorne Hotel was built for businessman Frank Poor who was the founder of Sylvania light bulbs.
Next to the Crowninshield-Bentley House is the Gardner-Pingree House which the murder of Captain Joseph White took place within. The Parker Brothers based the game Clue on this murder. In their game they release the truth of who was the real murderer that got away with the death of his uncle. Stephen White might of also had Judge Isaac Parker killed the night of the first trial of the murder of Captain White, along with his uncle. Additionally, he might have had Jacob Crowninshield poisoned for he spitted up blood on the Congress floor and died a few days later. Stephen had his brother-in-law take his seat in Congress and eventually raised him all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1830 reported on the murder for the Salem Gazette. This was the year in which he placed the W in his name. Also, his first short fiction is published anomalously that year. On the day of the murder Joseph Smith, who frequented Salem over the years, started the Mormon Church and William Russell in that year went to meet the founder of the Illuminati to create the Skull & Bones fraternity within the next three years.
This next tale was Edgar Allan Poe's favorite story by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Dr. Heidegger Experiment
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
That very singular man old Dr. Heidegger once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--and a withered gentlewoman whose name was the widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves.
Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years and his health and substance in the pursuit of sinful pleasures which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame--or, at least, had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day, but for a long while past she had lived in deep seclusion on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen--Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew and Mr. Gascoigne--were early lovers of the widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each other’s throats for her sake. And before proceeding farther I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, as is not infrequently the case with old people when worried either by present troubles or woeful recollections.
“My dear old friends,” said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, “I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study.”
If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger’s study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with cobwebs and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor’s deceased patients dwelt within its verge and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady, but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover’s prescriptions and died on the bridal-evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned: it was a ponderous folio volume bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror, while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned and said, “Forbear!”
Such was Dr. Heidegger’s study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a small round table as black as ebony stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains and fell directly across this vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne-glasses were also on the table.
“My dear old friends,” repeated Dr. Heidegger, “may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?”
Now, Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables--to my shame be it spoken--might possibly be traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passages of the present tale should startle the reader’s faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction-monger.
When the doctor’s four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air-pump or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber and returned with the same ponderous folio bound in black leather which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor’s hands.
“This rose,” said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh--”this same withered and crumbling flower--blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder, and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?”
“Nonsense!” said the widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. “You might as well ask whether an old woman’s wrinkled face could ever bloom again.”
“See!” answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber, the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green, and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full-blown, for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.
“That is certainly a very pretty deception,” said the doctor’s friends--carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer’s show. “Pray, how was it effected?”
“Did you never hear of the Fountain of Youth?” asked Dr. Heidegger, “which Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?”
“But did Ponce de Leon ever find it?” said the widow Wycherly.
“No,” answered Dr. Heidegger, “for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase.”
“Ahem!” said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor’s story; “and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?”
“You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel,” replied Dr. Heidegger.-- "And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment.”
While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
“Before you drink, my respectable old friends,” said he, “it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!”
The doctor’s four venerable friends made him no answer except by a feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that, knowing how closely Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they should ever go astray again.
“Drink, then,” said the doctor, bowing; “I rejoice that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment.”
With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature’s dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat stooping round the doctor’s table without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.
Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party--not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine--together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.
“Give us more of this wondrous water,” cried they, eagerly. “We are younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!”
“Patience, patience!” quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the experiment with philosophic coolness. “You have been a long time growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an hour. But the water is at your service.” Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren.
While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor’s four guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks: they sat around the table three gentlemen of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.
“My dear widow, you are charming!” cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew’s compliments were not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze.
Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities--unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne’s mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present or future could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory and the people’s right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a deeply-deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle-song and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow’s-foot had indeed vanished; she examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table.
“My dear old doctor,” cried she, “pray favor me with another glass.”
“Certainly, my dear madam--certainly,” replied the complaisant doctor. “See! I have already filled the glasses.”
There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds.
It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor’s venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which the world’s successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.
“We are young! We are young!” they cried, exultingly.
Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire--the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room.
The widow Wycherly--if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow--tripped up to the doctor’s chair with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.
“Doctor, you dear old soul,” cried she, “get up and dance with me;” and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
“Pray excuse me,” answered the doctor, quietly. “I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner.”
“Dance with me, Clara,” cried Colonel Killigrew.
“No, no! I will be her partner,” shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
“She promised me her hand fifty years ago,” exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow’s cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning passions proved them so.
Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another’s throats. As they struggled to and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.
“Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!” exclaimed the doctor. “I really must protest against this riot.”
They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats--the more readily because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were.
“My poor Sylvia’s rose!” ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of the sunset clouds. “It appears to be fading again.”
And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals.
“I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness,” observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.
While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor’s snowy head and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange dullness--whether of the body or spirit they could not tell--was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger?
“Are we grown old again so soon?” cried they, dolefully.
In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine; the delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful.
“Yes, friends, ye are old again,” said Dr. Heidegger, “and, lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me.”
But the doctor’s four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.
The next story was inspired by the Joseph White murder also.
The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe
TRUE!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses--not destroyed--not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily--how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees--very gradually--I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded--with what caution--with what foresight--with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it--oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly--very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously--oh, so cautiously--cautiously (for the hinges creaked)--I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights--every night just at midnight--but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers--of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back--but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out--“Who’s there?”
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening;--just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief--oh, no!--it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself--“It is nothing but the wind in the chimney--it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel--although he neither saw nor heard--to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little--a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it--you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily--until, at length a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open--wide, wide open--and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness--all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?--now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!--do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me--the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once--once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye--not even his--could have detected any thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out--no stain of any kind--no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all--ha! ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock--still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,--for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled,--for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search--search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:--It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness--until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale;--but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased--and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound--much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath--and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly--more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men--but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed--I raved--I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder--louder--louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!--no, no! They heard!--they suspected!--they knew!--they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now--again!--hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!--tear up the planks! here, here!--It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
The End
Daniel Webster was the prosecutor in the Joseph White murder that inspired Poe's story above. Later Daniel Webster was offered to take the Parkerman-Webster Murder Case as the prosecutor, which he outright refused! Why you may ask.
The presiding Judge was Lemuel Shaw, who he had hand picked after his complicity in the death of Chief Justice Isaac Parker in the Captain Joseph White murder. Isaac Parker died on the night of the first trial. Plus the suspect in the new murder, much like the man in the tale had dismembered the corpse, was John White Webster.
Webster was a Harvard professor who was caught incinerating part of his landlord's body within the confines of the university and stuffing the rest in a tea chest. Was the man who murdered Parkerman heralding disquiet memories to Webster of the man named Parker whom he himself may have killed for Stephen White, his own son's father-in-law?
Daniel might have been a little further spooked for he may have sent a historian named Prescott to deliver a poison which was to kill president Zachary Taylor. Prescott had diner with the Harvard Professor's son right before the professor was apprehended. The professo had specialized in the effects of poison on the human body. In fact, Prescott suffered stomach pains while travelling to Washington D.C. Within a few weeks of Prescott's dinner with Taylor, Taylor will die of Typhoid poisoning.
Just as the first Whig president Webster had served as Secretary of State. The only difference was that William Harrison only survived one month in office while Taylor lasted a whole fifteen months longer before he succumbed to the same fate. Just thirteen months after x-president James Knox Polk would die from Typhoid after meeting with a doctor on a riverboat who was present at Harrison's death. Just more tales from the Flipside of a town known as Arkham.
Summer Cottage from Hell
Continued...
Teddy comes to my home on English Street. Louie lets him in. He meets me in front of my fireplace and sits on my nailhead couch, as I sit in the chair next to it. “What ails you my friend? You look horrified.”
“I just got this telegraph. It is from Nellie. She just woke from a coma. She says that Taft has been trying to occupy her mind. She can feel his presence and another strange woman fighting for her body. We have sent Zaza to help her this afternoon, but she will not get there till this time tomorrow night. We sent a message that she is coming. I hope she can hold out till then,” Teddy explained.
“I wonder who the woman is?”
“Nikola have said quite often that John Jr.s lover was a powerful spiritualist. He said he has seen her do some things that even scare Hammond.”
“It might just be her. What can we do?”
“Nikola has proposed we go by sea to the Hammond’s and scale the cliff to their home and have a look for ourselves,” Teddy says in full agreement, “ But first, we will visit Taft. He is on my Mayflower moored off Hospital Point.
___
So Teddy drives us down East Corning and across to the way down to the lighthouse. From there we climb down the stairs from the granite and field stone seawall above the cliff to a dinghy. Teddy rows us out on his own.
We are helped aboard, but Teddy does not know any of the crew. He lent his ship to Taft with a full outfit. There is not one person he recognizes. He has become a stranger on his own boat. In fact it has been repainted some awful colors to Teddy’s liking. “Taft, you painted it! Where is my crew?”
“I let them go. They were too old and frail for my liking.”
“But they were my crew!”
“Exactly, they were your crew...”
With this we were interrupted by Robert and Helen Taft, his children. Along with Helen was Junius Spencer Morgan III. I could not believe it… it was George Peabody. Peabody had a time machine within the center shaft of the Bank Plaza building in Salem. He used it to go back and forth through time to see what the market does and then capitalizes on it under various aliases. It was easy to hide withinhis business partner's family.
He has gone so far back and met the different ages of himself in various eons that in time he has become, quite fractured. His personality just keeps splitting along with his mind. The one who is in the continual process of moving forward is quite mad, but this was one of the avatars that had remained sane, at least on the surface so far.
“Mr Taft, I have noticed some dry rot within the lower decks; may I suggest a good ship carpenter? His name is Magnus Madsen. He hails from Brooklyn from the finest Norwegian sailors. He sails under my father on the Corsair.”
JS probably intercepted Teddy’s message from Nellie on his father’s eavesdropping on Atlantic Telegraph & Telephone lines and had to check things out. Probably thinking somehow there might be a dime to be made on Taft’s macabre experiments.
“Fine young man. Please send for him, I will have my Slyph sail for him in the morning.”
“Rot!!! What have you been doing to my ship??!!!”
“Don’t worry, I will have her ship shape and in fine condition.”
“Like your wife I presume!!”
Taft flinched a glare of utter hatred, or was it fear? Maybe the real Taft appeared from under Russell’s spell to show real concern and hate for him for his wife Nellie. “My wife is fine, she has just awoke from her stupor. Now I must ask you to depart.”
Teddy went in to box his ears, but the crew turned on the president on his own ship. Taft went below decks as the crew blocked the stairs. I just took Teddy by the shoulders and guided him for the dinghy.
Instead we got into the boat I had Louie procure for us for the raid on the Hammonds. Good thing because Teddy was too far besides himself to row us back. We might have gone in spirals till we hit China before he calmed down.
“I once seen my uncle as mad as you sir. He went Tuna fishing once. He had such a prize get caught in his net that it almost took his forefinger off. With quick movements he was able to maintain his finger and his catch. Now he was off for Cod, but he found himself within a school of tuna with only a gill net. So he pulled on the rope netting to reveal his surprise of tuna, but it was a young lady. Then as he got the rest of her on ship, he realized she was all fish below. My uncle being a practical man, and not being that handsome himself, threw that woman back into the sea and caught her sister who was swimming besides her. She was all woman below. From then on he stayed home from the sea and spent many hours in bed with the sister, with the lights off.” Louie told us as he captained the boat to shore.
As we climbed up the stairs from the ocean and passed the seawall we were jumped by a group of Pinkertons. I was the last up the stairs and found Teddy taking on four of the best. He might have been sickly as a young lad, but his boxing training has done him good afterward. Louie was having fun with the rest. There was none for me. So I turned on the seawall and had a seat with my back to them and took a rest as I admired the view of the sea past Marblehead.
___
Tesla messaged me once more on Page’s machine stating the time we should have Louie sail up the coast to meet Nikola behind Alice’s house. Me and Louie killed time down at the House of the Rising Sun. Lilly had passed the tavern on to her daughter, but many of the older Hibernians were there, still. These were members of my ragtag third generation Viking crew who sailed me from Scotland to Salem a hundred years before Columbus. I mention Patton to Olaf and he reminded me, by the description I told him, that Patton was that kid who ran off with the squaw after our landing that we never seen again. Olaf was also at the Siege d’ Orleans where he filled me in on what he remembered from our tavern jests after the battle with Patton. Olaf is a seiðmenn who through magic has recalled many of his lives. He goes on to refresh my memory that Joan had kicked Patton in the balls and left for the night.
I had a few chocolate milks and Louie had a few ports, for courage he said.
___
We met Tesla at the prescribed time. On the way we picked up Teddy from behind his daughter’s house and met Tesla at Stage Fort Park in Gloucester. From there we could see the Hammonds. We came in silent as a northeastern was brewing with a thick fog. There was some atmospheric discharge, but it seemed to be only emanating from above the Hammonds. The fog helped hide our approach.
Nikola was the first to throw the ropes up what looked like the foundation to a large wizard’s tower, but the top was cut off. Teddy scaled up those ropes in the lead. On the shore with Tesla was Keno who joined him; he went up the rope next. I took the rear, with Louie watching the boat.
We made it to a window looking down into the laboratory. We noticed the discharge was coming from a lunette above the window we were looking down from. In the next flash, Teddy recognized Robert Evans’ prone body on a table. Many men in robes gathered around. One seemed to shift his features continuously within a blur of what seemed like a plasm. The discharges seemed to disturbed him remaining solid. Hammond Jr. was fiddling from one apparatus to another. Some were ideas stolen from Nikola. There were large rubber cables running to and from the body of Evans. Taft we realized was in the center of the men with the robes as he disrobed once more; which was the most horrid sight that evening among many. The widow Evans was right…
With the next strike a charge runs down to Evans’ prone body and it is in a spasm. When he settles down, he was still for just a moment and then he bolts up and jumped off the table, just to fall again.
We heard from inside Hammond Sr. say, “Three is a charm,” as the men in robes place his body on the table once more and reconnect him with the shape shifter guiding them.
We heard a rattle in the bushes behind us and we found more Pinkertons soon coming our way. We make it back to the ropes in time and have Louie sail us away without being recognized.
___
I brought Teddy and Nikola to the Miskatonic University to meet Professor Wilmarth their folklorist and Cyrus the librarian. “Hello Henry,” then the Professor drops his tea cup, “Mr. President! It is a pleasure to meet you...Nikola Tesla! I am doubly humbled today. Please join us at our desk. My oh my, wait till Jennifer hears about this...In my library. Gosh.”
“Oh Albert! My man, get a hold of yourself. How can we help you today?” Cyrus asked.
“We need to know the whereabouts of Daniel Upton. There are strange events going on that we think he can help us with,” I tell the Professor.
“Sorry, we promised to keep his present address secret until the point of his death,” Albert interjected, “There is a cat on the prowl.”
“See he was able to fend off Ephraim Waite by locking him in a furnace within Edward Derby’s body and cremating him,” Cyrus continued.
“But. Afterward, he peered inside to make sure the body was gone,” Albert proceeded to be cut off by Cyrus, “It was almost a full five minutes after the body was ashes.”
“If he kept the door closed the full five minutes,” Albert continued.
“The cat would not have made it in before Waite’s soul would have died,” Cyrus finished.
“The Cat?” Tesla asked.
“The Cat. See a soul can reside only for 5 minutes with enough strength to float into a near by body,” Cyrus explained.
“Within the last few seconds Waite jumped into Upton’s cat before he died,” Albert chimed in.
“Last few seconds, but Waite was too weak for being without a body for almost 6 minutes and, let me finish, didn’t have the strength after its initial lunge for Upton to possess him,” Cyrus truly finished their sentence.
“It is not possible for Waite or Russell to be still in that cat; he must have jumped into some human form by now,” Teddy commented in disbelief.
“I was with Upton when he incinerated the body of Edward Derby, his great friend. Quickly I pulled out of my jacket some powerful binding amulets and performed some pretty strong spells to force Waite to remain in the body of that black cat. But alas, given enough time, I fear Waite could get out on his own or with someone’s help,” Albert explained, “I was able to take the shovel that laid upon the wall of the incinerator to bash the cat once on his head before he got away. I do believe that Waite was incapacitated until he could heal the damage to the cat’s brain.”
“A few months ago, there was some talk they found the black cat.” Cyrus informed the group of friends, “Many from the Peabody School at Yale came by train. They are anthropologists who are rumored to study an ancient text they found in Egypt to bring the body back from the dead. It detailed and explained the experiment to bring Akhenaten back after his son Tutankhamen was murdered. Moses died on top of Mount Nebo alone. He was incorporeal for sometime before a dung beetle crawled by with a ball of camel excrement.”
“Moses?” Teddy yelled.
“Yep, Akhenaten the monotheist pharaoh times up with Moses leading his people from Egypt. They buried the whole thing in the sand. Imagine. Your prophet and leader stuck in the body of an insect that rolls and gathers camel shit; so they began in secret to find ways to bring him back to a human body and this was the treaties of how they supposedly did it,” Albert filled us in.
“Damn Yale! It has been always their alumni in Congress that have tried thwarting my Square Deal at every turn, and now they have possession of Taft to do so,” Teddy dreads, “They have gotten into the mind of my old friend.”
“Teddy, maybe you can help me,” I asked, “Why would they want Evans? We have seen them trying to reanimate him.”
“It is top secret. None of you must...” Teddy said looking around with a strong finger pointing at each of us in turn as he leans in pointing his pince-nez at us and finishes, “Evans had a large contract to provide the Wright Brothers with enough rubber for the tires, fuel lines, brakes, gaskets, and almost everything on a plane for our first air division attached to the army. The Wrights are testing the planes as we speak. Evans had large plantations in Columbia producing rubber, which are now in the hands of the Panamanians. Moving the troops from Cuba was doubly important for the sake of our Navy and our new air force. Also, JS Morgan has been seen in Panama taking in the resources already. I fear what he may be up to.”
“So they are trying to control our new army of planes through Evans,” I say. I think to myself what could Peabody’s angle be on this one? Profit through using the plane for communication or far worse. Morgans have been close friends with the Rothschilds for many generations now who made their first real fortune on Passenger Pigeons, informing them of the win of Waterloo before anyone else. Communication is money. Which way is Peabody going to play this one?
___
I met Zaza at the farmers market in Elias Square in Beverly. “Henry, many secrets have come my way,” she says in a hush as she pulls my shirt to her as my head follows, “There is talk among the Eastern Star and the Rebeccas who share the Lodge with Taft’s White House. Some strange ritual is coming up soon with the waning of the moon. Many of their husbands of the wealthier set from the Farms are planning to be at Woodbury Point. You have only three days time to get your ducks in a row Henry, or something bad, real bad is going to happen to all of us.”
I regained my balance as she lets go of my shirt. “Henry. Now pass me that rutabaga.”
___
Keno, Nikola, Teddy, and myself head to visit Taft. We find many of the traveling acting troops who usually appear at the Hammonds wandering about. It is a few days before the waning moon as it sits high and quite large; almost full if it is not already. We walk past the summer cottage toward the cliff on the water. There we see a strange circle of gatherers. All in black robes. Strange lute and pan pipes fill the stillness of the air. We arrived tonight to see how much of Taft’s soul remains. Teddy has thoughts that he can not give up on. Taft was his friend. He had to put aside everything that has happened as of late and forgive him, for while he might not be in his mind, if he resided in some dark corner, he hoped he could bring him back out.
Those gathered in black were chanting some unknown tongues to us. The fire rose and spun as they danced around. There were a few other men who seemed to walk in a plasm without a solid shape, just shifting between visages of a human form. Taft was in the middle, naked once more. I was really having enough of him.
Naked women approached him and handed him a series of goblets. As he drank from them we could see Taft inside give a fight to retain his body. Taft fell flat on his back. We could feel the tremble through our feet. He cavorted. His back arched and he yelled, “Help! I am loosing this battle.” Men from the circle rushed to hold his limbs as the women prepared to pour the remaining goblets down his throat. After much yelling, only silenced by the liquid he was choking on, he became still. The men withdrew.
Russell stood up. “Why could they not elect a skinnier man president? It will take some time to get this whale of a body I am stuck in in shape. Though it must serve its purpose.”
Taft was gone.
With that realization I was jumped by a Pinkerton. Grabbed his head from behind and lost my legs pulling him down and threw a panther strike to his throat as I spun on him. The next one I got with a foot sweep as I stood up to fight the next. I had seen Teddy and Keno were standing back to back as they did on that hill in Cuba. Both men were fine boxers. I had seen Teddy lay Frick cold; unfortunately when he landed his robe rose up to show that women could not expect a large rise from him. I shivered and shook my head and one of the Pinkertons landed a solid blow. He went for the next and I caught it with my opposite hand and stepped into him on the side and leveraged his hand up as I slammed his elbow down, dislocated. Then I pulled him in past me and I moved on to kick the back of one’s knee who was fighting Keno and the three of us faced the remaining four who ran.
We turned as we seen Taft escaping in a rowboat out to the Sylph. Taft was lost to us.
As our group left, I caught the widow Evans kick back a snort or two in quick succession before she slams the door. We make our way through the throngs of people who have now started to sleep here in tents.
___
Louie was driving me home after we dropped the other two off at Alice’s. We were going up Derby Street when I had seen Caroline on Union Street. I had Louie stop. The two of us had our flirtations, but she likes the more fleshy type of the sexes. Though at times she has sampled the other fruits as well. “Henry, mind giving me a ride?” she says in that certain way that bypasses the car in front of her. “You must see the new home I acquired in your neighborhood. It is the old Ingersoll House.” Susan Ingersoll, who the house is remembered for, was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s cousin. Many times he entertained her guest with his stories. Dr Heidegger Experiment was always a favorite at her gatherings.
Susan and Caroline shared the same tastes...in women.
Though tonight she favored me. I am not sure how she got her foot stuck in the cubbyhole on the secret stairs that circled within the chimney behind the fireplace leading to the hidden room that kept the women hidden and safe during the Witch Hysteria. Nor how she kept it in place as she reached her peak 4 times in quick succession. Maybe her foot stuck that way allowed me to find a spot I never found on her before, with my incessant probing into her depths. We would of tried again… if it was not so damn hard, to get that foot free.
We did manage, however, to explore each of those seven gables that night, in a fashion you could say.
I left before morning through the tunnel to my house.
___
The next day Caroline gets an urgent call, “Mrs. Evans.” I hear through the receiver as I sit with her at lunch.
“Yes.”
“This is Mrs Evans’ maid. She asks for you to see her to the hospital today. She is raving with a fever and a headache. She keeps repeating some nonsense about someone trying to enter her head. She keeps calling for Robert; she swears he is still alive and talking to her when no one is in the room with her. Please come quick. You are her oldest friend.” The phone goes dead.
___
I join Miss Emmerton, to go to Woodbury Point. As we made our way to the car, a passerby goosed her and she laid him flat. She just fixed her dress and asked me to proceed before her as we made our way for the widow Evans door.
The maid let us in to her sun room. The widow was convulsing in a fit, wearing a white dress soaked with sweat just heaving. I think it affected Caroline more than it did me to see her there with the translucent garment writhing about. Even though…Caroline did put a blanket around her and helped her up. We managed to get her into Caroline’s car.
Along the way the Widow spoke, “That fat monster. He caught me in my garden. He tried to make nice. He tried again to have his way with me, then just brushed his hand on my thigh as if it were an accident which he never noticed. He apologized for the trifles he must have put me through. There was a strange smell emulating from a flower he had in his hand. Some hothouse variety. My mind was swooning. I almost lost my feet. I began to hear the voice of Irene. In my head. That evil witch who lives with Reynolds, but shares John Jr.’s bed. She is in my skin! She is pushing me out now.” In her hand was a note I didn’t notice until now in her balled fist. It drops.
I examine it. More proof Russell is in Taft now. Fresh ink in his script. I remember it from Teddy’s example. It was an order to have the Pinkertons drag his wife Nellie up here for Irene to control. Ensuring her body not to be damaged. Irene was from Innsmouth section of Gloucester. A Piecesian race has occupied that area for generations. A race that developed from the Ancient Ones who left the depths of the ocean after the Shoggoths forced them off Antarctica. The letter also mentioned Frick’s stupidity for having the Pinkertons drug Robert’s horse. He complained his body is almost useless with the brain and leg damage and will be difficult to reanimate as Herbert West had learned through his experiments. We also find out that John Jr. in his Junior year had been tapped by the Skull & Bones through a legacy choice.
We deliver the widow into the care of a friend of Caroline’s at Arkham Asylum. They put her in a padded room with lead lined walls. Many UFO sightings have happened for centuries here on the North Shore. Many people over time needed to be protected from Alien brain waves, this just has been the first person who needed to be protected from another human.
___
I am riding with Louie to Alice’s. Louie is going on about some ancient Native site near the Kernwood bridge and how he played with some brownies after eating some toadstool...and I just tune him out as I read the Salem Evening News.
There is a follow up on a previous article about the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company bribing some sheik in Persian. They are tied to Churchill taking his Navy off coal and onto oil. Another article follows the path of Panama’s independence since Jan. 5th. Then another article about opinions of the Federal ban on Opium that went in effect back in February. Many ‘China Traders’ in Boston are not happy about that one. I hear Russell, through the Perkins opium empire his cousin bought, had been outfitting his Skull & Bones along with his Hiram Lodge with funds from those sales. He bought property from Thomas Perkins, the founder of the Forbes fortune and the opium empire to build their crypt in New Haven on. Also the paper has leaked that Orville Wright is testing planes for the new air division of the army.
When we stopped and I have folded my paper, Louie is still talking about the native Sidhe. I just walk past and leave him not noticing I was gone as he rambles on and on.
___
“Have you heard about Jim Thorpe? That Native is one hell of player. Good for his kind, I say!”
“Teddy, I thought you would be following the Jack Johnson fight,” I comment.
“I have seats for his next fight,” Teddy lunges a few punches into my gut, “He has a mean way to work into the body. But, seriously. Did you read Jose Miguel Gomez is stirring up trouble in Cuba again. It is giving Taft an excuse to go back and not send troops to Panama. Plus there is reports that the United States Rubber Company is expected to have representatives in Panama before they begin pouring concrete for the canal next month.”
“I don’t quite understand you and Panama and Cuba completely, there must be some state secrets involved and they could be centering on whether or not Robert is alive, I suppose,” I admit my confusion.
“Don’t worry Henry, there is more, but not now.”
Keno rushes in.
“The experiment is planned for tonight. They have Harvey Hollister Bundy, Charles Seymour, George Leslie Harrison, and Harold Stanley coming to join their fellow bonesman, John Jr., tonight. These are representatives from the most powerful families in the nation. They all have elderly family relations who are dying to see this mind transference work.” Keno explains. He found most of this out from Louisa, his wife through her family Dupont’s connections.
“Bundy, I OK’d him to run a railway in Panama!” Teddy screams with his neck bulging and eye popping out of a red face.
___
Teddy, Keno, and myself jump into the president’s car. God help us. He was flooring it up Hale Street. We squealed off Hale onto the road heading to the Magnolia section of Gloucester and almost tipped over. Teddy loves racing his car. “I am thinking of signing up for that Indianapolis 500, they are looking for drivers. I wonder if the race will catch on though.” With that Teddy swerves to miss a squirrel and I almost fall out. When I straightened up, a branch hit me in the head. Out I went like a light.
“Hello Henry,” say Harvey. Harvey was a Pooka who liked to appear as a 7’ 2” rabbit. For the most part, I only see him. “You actually trust this bull dog that is driving? Imagine they gave a country to him.”
“Oh, Harvey. What is it this time?”
“So there is concern that alumni from Yale might take over the world if they can live forever. If they get Evans animated once more, his company could monopolize the progress of the air force that could keep them in power. Plus they might just open the window for the Yog-Sothoth to come through,” Harvey said as he leaned back in his seat in the car.
“That is what Teddy was hiding. Evans’ controlling interest in manufacturing the planes,” as I see light dawn on Marblehead.
“I am not sure Frankenstein actually was scarier than being in Lord Byron’s bed. I believe that castle you are going to raid tonight might be more horrifying than Byron’s Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, if not more perverse. Make sure you bring the ultraviolet light, never mind that will not be invented for some while. Just be careful of what you touch in there,” warned Harvey as he gave a little shiver while pantomiming like he just touched something disgusting he just dropped and his face went sour.
“Your concern is touching.”
“Just don’t touch anything,” Harvey warned me once again before he vanished.
I woke up again as we almost went over once more as we turned off Hesperus Ave. onto a dirt clearing off the road and slammed the brakes almost throwing us out. We were at the trail leading to Rafe’s Chasm. The trail winded through the trees into the ink night. I even had to use a lantern to make my way through. The light broke from the moon near the cliff before the ocean as the trail ended. I got to rock hop down (I love rock hopping) to Louie and Tesla waiting for us in the boat. Before them on the surf was a small navy of Gloucester fishermen made of many Finns and later day Norse. Some of the Hibernians were on those boats as well.
We sailed north up the coast. We moored on the far side of the bluff out of sight from Stage Fort Park. We scaled up the rocks. I got to rock hop again. This time we were not scurrying about, we barged in. The lightning was above the manor once again. Many blasts were following cables down into the home. As the lightning shone we saw many in their robes again intoning the language of the fiends from the other side where the Yog-Sothoth reigns. The Dark Man who had many of the judges in Salem sign his book in 1692. I began the fight as I cracked my back, saw red, lost my voice, and felt the surge of adrenaline fill my very sinews. I grabbed a punch for the face, sidestepped, and delivered a sidekick as I pulled his arm lifting him off his feet and he flew by me as I continued on.
Evans was on a table connected to the cables coming down from the tower above. With each strike he had a convulsion. Behind him pulsing within an illuminated slime green, as only things that are miles within the ocean can, was a jagged void that pulsed like a heart that got more and more excited as it grew nearer and larger with each pulse, more plasm like, never taking any real shape. I could sense an army gathering behind its secrets. These bonesmen were in for a surprise, it would not be one of them who was going to enter Robert tonight, it would be the Dark Man. That is what the Shoggoths were ensuring.
Taft was in the middle intoning leading the group into a rhythm, nude as usual. I wonder if he and Churchill belonged to some club. As the dark plasm grew, Taft crescendos the bonesmen in their black robes chanting. On the table next to Evans was Alphonso Taft, who most thought died 18 years ago. He laid naked on the table as well. He was even scarier to look at than his son. Russell in Taft’s body was trying to bring back his partner. Irene was holding the hand of Alphonso and Robert as she tried to transfer the mind of the one into the body of the other, but the plasm had engulfed the three of them and illuminated Irene from within. She let go of Alphonso’s hand.
As the fishermen and my Hibernians fought through the fray of Pinkertons alongside Louie, Keno, Nikola, and Teddy I went for Irene. Then second guessed; I needed to go beyond the plasm and find the singularity it emanated into our universe from.
Some few years ago, I received a piece of the Qliphoth that was spewed from the volcano in Collins Cove in Salem, back from the Dark Elves under the hills. I placed this on the singularity. The arrangement of these ten stones to each other could open or close dimensions, as it did this time. The shard was just enough. The pulsing sickness stopped. Irene regained her will once more and grabbed Alphonso’s hand again before it was too late as Evans jumped about on the table screaming back to life. I pulled out my sword from my cane sheaf and took Evans’ head.
As I retrieved my sword after the strike, I hit a cable grounding it to another which sent a spark which caught Evans’ body ablaze. Irene ran. Many of the men in the robes ran out of the house screaming for Hesperus Ave. By this time, most of the Pinkertons were routed. Taft was gone.
Nikola yelled. We looked toward where he was pointing. Taft made it to the depths of the house, to the water, and embarked on the Sylph. He was waving more than his hand at us as he sailed off laughing.
The following day John Hay Hammond Sr. returned with Cecil Rhodes visiting from Rhodesia to find his house scorched and windows broken and the rain falling within. Pigeons flew through the windows. Many roosted over night and relived themselves as they wished. There in the middle of it all was Irene and his son naked and hung over. They got scolded at for having a frat party with all of his bonesmen friends strewn about the place. The father never found the empty wine glasses or beer bottles though…but a black cat had seemed to sneak into the mansion.
___
The next day the widow Evans joins us for tea at Alice’s. Keno and Nikola are there. The widow was driven by Eleonora and Caroline to the home. “My I do love speed; I never thought I would. I always hated the steeple chase, but boy did I like the drive with Eleonora. I think I might just get one of these myself.”
“Thank you my dear,” Eleonora had said, “I think I am going to be at the at Indianapolis 500, in pants!”
“What a woman!” Teddy was affronted. Eleonora had participated in many sporting competitions across the nation against men and won...in pants! “No never...and if you do I will beat you!”
With that the two went out for their respected cars. We heard them peel away. Then I heard Louie driving away with my own. Louie did not want them to feel bad, so he gave them a head start. For my car could do 70. They were lucky if they could top 35.
On the Page Machine we receive a message from Dr Laszlo Kreizler of New York asking Teddy to help him with another murder. I would have rushed out to find him, but Louie had taken my car.
From the other room walks in Samuel Clemens. Nikola and he have planned to take a trolley car to the train and return to New York City. “I see you have a telegram. I used to operate one of those doohickeys on the riverboats. We did have one of those Page Machines, it did seem like a finer example of witticism, but as always it is not the cream from the cow that rises, but the crow of the rooster that raises you from your bed. It is all in the marketing!”
“Nikola has informed me of your adventures while I have been off playing with a Nathan Readesque paddle boat reproduced in Essex. Quite interesting to see the forbearer of those mighty ships I sailed on the Mississippi,” Clemens said tapping his cigar on the inside of the arch between rooms, “I think I can write a tale about this. It will be something till now I had thought was been beyond my reach, but I think I can manage what Poe is calling a mystery with a hint of his Gothic flavor.”
Alice had to chase after the ashes herself. “Samuel, now get out with that stinky thing before I box your ears.” Clemens jumped out the nearest door toward the ocean. Alice was in fact her father’s daughter. Col. Mann had printed many stories already of her laying many men flat on their backs, with their clothes still on.
Epilogue:
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. did plan to have Taft succeed him, after promising not to take another term, to keep his Square Deal alive. Taft instead joined the conservative arm of the Republican party and started to pay attention to the landed gentry within the nation instead. The rift kept growing between the two of them, leading to Teddy making the Progressive Party, or Bull Moose Party, that was the third party that split the Republican vote allowing Woodrow Wilson to rise to the presidency. After Taft, Wilson would also visit Beverly. Wilson would be manipulated by a Col. Edward House, who summered in Beverly Farms, Manchester, and Magnolia Massachusetts on the North Shore.
Taft arrived in Beverly Cove on July 4th and Robert Evans who owned United States Rubber Company was thrown from his house 3 days prior. On Taft’s second day at the Stetson Cottage within the grounds of what is now Lynch Park, Robert Evans died. His widow was left with facing the onslaught of onlookers who raided her property to catch glimpses of the president. Many of them ripped parts of her estate off as souvenirs. Taft had a series of bodyguards roam through Beverly Cove harassing locals. Taft had access to Roosevelt’s Mayflower for long trips and the SS Sylph for short trips. Taft would stay at the widow Evans summer cottage for two years before being evicted.
There is not much detail why he was evicted, but the widow had to be talked out of burning the cottage after Taft leaves. Cooler minds prevailed and she instead cut the house into sections and floated it across the harbor to Peach’s Point in Marblehead onto Keno’s (Frank Crowninshield’s) property. Louisa Dupont Crowninshield was a great preserver of architecture. On the spot where the cottage was, is now the Rose Garden within Lynch Park. On a brick pillar as you enter is a granite plaque that reads:
“Abandon hope all Ye who enter here.”
What made her believe the property was hell, who is to say...but it made great fodder for a story.
Connections between Salem and Yale stretch all the way back to Cotton Mather, Old Put, Hartford Convention, and George Peabody. Old money meeting the new money of the new century at the dawn of the nineteenth. Old Put brought the Mason Lodge to New Haven in which the Skull & Bones alumni attend.
Many on the Gold Coast were members of William Russell’s and Alphonso Taft’s fraternity. William Russell did meet the founder of the Illuminati in 1830 three years before he founded the Skull & Bones. His son, President Taft, was a bonesman too. The Philips Academy in North Andover has become a feeder school to Yale with a few alumni who went on to become bonesmen like the man who created their Addison Gallery of American Art, George Herbert Walker Bush, and George Walker Bush. John Hays Hammond Jr. and his father attended Yale.
Zaza was mentioned in an article describing people who shared offices in the Mason Building in Beverly where he first set up the official White House during the first summer in Beverly. Taft’s third and fourth summers in Beverly was in the Montserrat section on Corning Street. Not far away. Taft also enjoyed playing Golf with his close friend John Hays Hammond Sr.
Mark Twain brought world attention to the eminent hanging of Hammond in Transvaal, after a failed revolt alongside Cecil Rhodes’ brother. Cecil Rhodes had Rhodesia named after him, created apartheid, and the Rhodes Scholarship to indoctrinate all Anglo-Saxon speaking countries back under the power of England.
There was talk about making the Tesla-Hammond wireless Electric Company, but in the end it seems John Hays Hammond Jr. might have just stolen Tesla’s patents on radio and wireless electric transmission to become successful in secret radio technologies, guided torpedoes, and unmanned crafts for the military during WWI and WWII. Many believe the various black cats that appeared after Hammond’s death within his Hammond Castle was him reincarnated.
Henry Clay Frick built Eagle’s Nest on Route 127 in Prides Crossing Beverly. Frick was responsible for the Homestead Massacre he carried out for Andrew Carnegie who went to play golf in Scotland. Carnegie and Frick were negligent in the maintenance of a damn that created a lake for their sports club that burst flooding and killing many during the Johnstown Flood, which Herbert Hoover brought emergency aid to. Frick hired Pinkertons to shoot and kill union activist at Carnegie’s factory during the Homestead Massacre.
Frederick Ayers was the father-in-law of George Patton. His house is now adjoining the Myopia Hunt Club. The property was established by John Murray Forbes from the sale of opium. Patton spent many years at the Rice estate called Turner Hill. He first met the Rice’s when his car flipped in front of their property. Mrs. Rice noticed he was choking on some motor oil and saved his life. Over the years Patton would fall off a library loft ladder to the floor below, and be thrown from a horse head first into a snow bank at Turner Hill. Patton would die after the war when an ambulance rear-ended his jeep. Mrs Rice, like Robert Evans will fall off her horse and die.
Alice Roosevelt did live on Hale Street now on the grounds of Endicott College in Beverly. She was friends with Eleonora Sears who broke many gender and speed laws. Sears was a champion tennis player, race car driver, and aviator. Caroline Emmerton never married and she founded the House of Seven Gables museum to fund her Settlement House that helped women immigrants in the area. Her family, for generations were true philanthropists. Alice did appear in many articles by Col. Mann in New York for her risque behavior throughout the years. Roosevelt did say, “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.” Like Eleonora, Alice broke all of the rules that governed a woman’s behavior back then.
In 1909 ,Panama gained freedom and they began pouring the concrete for the Panama Canal. Also the Indianapolis 500 held its first race. Orville Wright was building an air force for the Army. America did begin pulling troops from Cuba.
Keno was a Rough Rider who was with Roosevelt in Cuba. He created a social club in Marblehead Ma., which he gets kicked out of for toasting the sinking of the Lusitania for revenge of the British sinking one of his family’s ships during the War of 1812. His wife paid a huge sum for the Peabody Academy of Science to remove the White name from the Gardener-Pingree House in Salem where two Crowninshields were implicated in the Joseph White Murder.
The White murder is featured in Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin’s Murder on the Common that is being released on the 290th Anniversary of the Captain Joseph White murder in April 2020. It features everyone’s favorite immortal, Prince Henry Sinclair (who you read about above), and his ragtag third generation Viking reincarnated crew as they try to solve the murder amidst a Vampire outbreak and threats of Lovecraftian monsters breaking into our dimension, as Anti-Masons and Mormons flock to Salem in 1830.
Read new installments of the story every Tuesday at http://www.salemhousepress.com/Arkham/Sinclair.html up to its release in April 2020 at the largest gathering in the world playing Clue.
Visit www.salemhousepress.com for more info.
This is Professor Wilmarth and your friendly neighborhood Cthulhu welcoming you to another journey within the world of the macabre and the strange. In this season’s issue we have several tales of murder, deceit, and possession that turn like a wheel and spiral into one another. Tales from new masters and old. We have Poe, Hawthorne, Lovecraft, and Garrett along with this generation of masters Deschenes, Dowgin, and Maguire. 
