Chapter 10
The summer of 1914, the last before the Great War, was an extraordinarily beautiful one. Although not an outdoorsman, even I could not ignore the glorious weather. Several times Alma and I escaped Arkham and went to the seashore or to nearby Kingsport.
Kingsport is insular. There is a lively commerce between Arkham and Bolton, but Kingsport looks to itself alone, itself and outer Ocean. The narrow road that leads there from Arkham goes nowhere else and few travel it. No railroad goes to Kingsport; the sea is its only highway. Despite its remoteness and self-containment, a few outsiders find their ways there – artists, antiquarians, philosophers and seekers after curiosities. They are tolerated for the commerce they generate but are not actively encouraged.
On one occasion in late July West came with us, surprising me by accepting my invitation (for which I had prudently obtained Alma’s rather unenthusiastic approval).
Some years before, Alma’s father had made her a present of a Ford automobile. “I think he did it to make me feel guilty for deserting the parental home,” she explained. Despite this reservation, she had learned to drive the car and did so competently. On this particular day we loaded it with the usual picnic paraphernalia, picked up West at his home and headed for Kingsport.
Just before the road took a steep descent into the town, Alma turned the car sharp left, onto a dirt road that led up to the cliffs to the north. It zigzagged up a steep slope and ended at the edge of a belt of wind-twisted trees. Beyond this was the broad grassy cliff-edge.
It was a strange place, but with a pleasant strangeness, a world unto itself that cared nothing for things outside, neither town nor country, human or inhuman. We could see the roofs of Kingsport huddled below; northward, even higher cliffs blotted out the sky. In the distance behind us lay Arkham, its many steeples putting me in mind of a celestial city.
As we unpacked the lunch, Alma told us how she had come here many times as a child, on picnic parties organized by her governess. “Those days were so long and so lovely,” she said. “Each one seemed as long as a week, from the time we woke up in the morning, all excited because it was a picnic day, until we went home in the dusk, tired and gritty but mindlessly happy. Listen to me, reminiscing like an old lady! But it’s true – time passes more quickly the older one gets. I expect for old people a year must seem like a week. I wonder why?”
“There must be a law of physics, as yet undiscovered,” said West. “Someone at Miskatonic is probably doing research on it – a disciple of Professor Quarrington’s, probably. It sounds like the kind of thing he would have taken up.”
“Oh, you know Professor Quarrington?” asked Alma, looking interested. “I’ve never met him myself.”
“I took some classes from him, years ago,” West replied. He did not seem inclined to say any more and soon changed the topic.
Over lunch, our talk turned to local history and legends. Alma told us that on one of the highest cliffs there was reputed to be a strange ancient house, built on the very cliff-edge, so that the front door opened out into empty space. It was said to be inhabited by a being not entirely human.
“People hereabouts say that anyone who enters the house leaves their soul behind when they leave. When they go home they are changed forever.”
“In that case I should probably try to find the place,” said West, smiling. “Since I profess to have no soul, I should logically emerge unscathed. What do you think, Charles?”
“If anyone emerged unscathed it would be you, Herbert. Where is this house, exactly?”
“Up there,” answered Alma, pointing. “At the top of the very highest of the cliffs, and sometimes it can be seen from Kingsport. People say it’s most perilous when there are lights and music. That and when the fog comes in from the sea.”
We lazily finished off the picnic lunch, disinclined to go anywhere or do anything. We discussed the legend of the strange high house and other stories that clung to this haunted region. For once our conversation did not become a debate, with West and Alma taking opposite sides of an issue, and I trying to maintain a friendly neutrality. Perhaps it was because they were both skeptics when it came to ghosts and the supernatural. I had other ideas but lacked the energy to argue them.
I lay on my back looking up at the sky and the ever-changing clouds. West was similarly disposed a few feet away. He wore white trousers and a white linen shirt, with a panama hat partly obscuring his face. From where I lay I could just see the silvery gleam of his eyes beneath his lashes. Alma, in a blue linen dress, was looking out to sea, where the horizon dissolved into pearly mist.
I treasure this memory, for this was the last time the three of us were together.
A week or so later, as Alma and I were walking homeward from the Library, she suddenly said, “I’ve been thinking of leaving Arkham, Charles, but I can’t quite make up my mind to do it. I keep questioning my motives, for one thing.”
“And what are your motives?” I asked, trying to hide the shock I felt.
“There are so many… I don’t feel at home here as I used to, ever since that business with Papa, you know. And I’m not sure I want to be a librarian all my life. I’d like to earn a higher degree, in some area of science, perhaps. Or if I do keep working as a librarian, I’d rather be at one of the really big universities. Miskatonic is such a backwater. Or – I just don’t know. I’m restless. Maybe it’s the fall coming, and all these troubles in Europe. Somehow I feel I need a change.”
“And you would like to.. change our situation too.” I wasn’t sure whether I was making a statement or asking a question.
“Well yes, that would be one of the consequences, but it’s not a primary reason.” She smiled at me. “Now Charles, we agreed long ago that our ‘situation,’ as you so coyly term it, was never intended to be permanent. And lately – but I would miss you terribly. I can’t deny that. It’s another reason I keep vacillating. So don’t start planning my farewell party yet.”
We had reached the corner where we usually parted. A sudden rush of nostalgia flooded over me and with it something else. I laid my hand on Alma’s arm. “I’ll see you later. Would that be all right?”
She looked away, began to shake her head, then stopped and turned toward me, smiling. “All right, Charles,” she said.
West had been considering using electricity to enhance the effect of his revivifying fluid and was now absolutely committed to finding a subject to test this. “It must be soon, Charles,” he said, pacing around his study. “If not, there is another course of action I can take. But it’s by no means a straightforward one. So let’s hope our luck changes. Or that I can make it change,” he added, in a low voice, as though speaking to himself.
The following day I was in West’s cellar laboratory, compounding more of the revivifying fluid, in anticipation that a suitable subject would soon be found. I did not realize just how soon.
The final step of the procedure was the titration, which of necessity required close attention. As I watched the clear liquid fall drop by drop into the flask, ready to close the stop-cock at the precise instant the characteristic violet colour appeared, I realized that I heard sounds as of a conversation. The laboratory was nearly sound-proof, but it was possible to hear a little of what transpired on the floor immediately above. I took little notice at first. Patients and others were always coming and going during West’s office hours, but they did not usually linger to converse in the hall.
Suddenly, I heard a stranger’s voice speaking loudly, then a muffled yell and a thud. Moments later, West came running down the steps and into the room. “Quick, Charles! Come and give me a hand up there. Good, you’re finished with that.” He glanced at the apparatus, where a full flask of the violet liquid now stood.
“What do you mean?” I asked, flustered. “Who was that upstairs?” The disturbance had distracted me for a second, and I could not be certain that an extra drop or two of the activating agent had not found its way into the fluid. But Wes
t was already half way up the stairs. I resolved to mention the matter to him at the earliest opportunity.
The front hall contained only a coat rack and a table bearing a fern in a brass pot. Now, however, there was something else on the polished floor – a large sandy-haired man, lying on his back. A leather case sat next to him. He was pale and did not appear to be breathing.
“What happened to him, Herbert?” I asked. “Do you want me to telephone the hospital?” If the fellow needed medical attention, why wasn’t West supplying it?
“Too late,” said West, in a satisfied tone that seemed completely inappropriate. He locked the front door and said, “Charles, I would like you to meet Mr. Robert Leavitt, our perfect subject. Now, help me get him downstairs.”
“You mean he’s dead?”
“No, he’s having a little snooze,” answered West, sarcastically. “Of course he’s dead! He came to the door asking for directions. I thought he looked sick and invited him inside. I went to fetch a glass of water but when I came back he was on the floor. A heart attack, by the looks of things. He’s definitely dead. Unfortunate for him, but lucky for us.”
“But Herbert, we can’t just… use him! Surely someone will come looking for him.”
“Not any time soon. He’s from St. Louis, on an extended trip. He said so before he keeled over. No one’s expecting him, at least not in Arkham. He was looking for Bolton Worsted Mills. I think he’s an engineer or something of that sort, peddling machine parts, judging by the stuff in that case. Now, let’s get on with it.”
We picked up the fellow with some difficulty, because he was quite heavy, and carried him down to the laboratory, where we laid him on the table. Quickly, West began to unfasten buttons, removing the jacket, vest, necktie, shirt and undershirt, directing me to deal with Leavitt’s shoes and trousers.
I did as I was told, but without enthusiasm. The suddenness of Leavitt’s appearance and the coincidence of his having a fatal heart attack in West’s front hall made me dizzy. What was I doing, helping to undress this stranger in West’s cellar? I experienced a kind of doubling, in which I seemed to be observing myself. I did not much like the picture. The corpse was not yet cold and emitted a sweaty smell. His mouth had fallen open, showing a couple of gold teeth. His brown eyes stared into emptiness.
“Not exactly a fashion plate, was he?” West said, as he dropped the man’s clothing in a corner. “No matter, though. He’s exactly what we need – a perfectly fresh specimen, in reasonably good shape. And more or less educated too, if he’s an engineer. He ought to be fairly articulate.” He was as excited as I had ever seen him, face faintly flushed, eyes shining, like an angler who has finally landed a big one.
I set up the apparatus while West checked over the corpse, making sure it was ready for the procedure. His hands danced lightly over the still form, palpating and taking measurements. Finally, he took up a scalpel and began the business of finding the blood vessels and inserting the needles. I connected the flask of fluid I had just prepared as West made a final check of the electrical apparatus.
At a nod from West I activated the pump. The process worked flawlessly – the violet-coloured fluid flowed in as Leavitt’s blood was drawn out. Despite my familiarity with the business, I felt sick at heart. Less than an hour ago, this had been an ordinary man, looking for Bolton Worsted Mills so he could go there to sell his machine parts. Now his blood was being drained away and soon his body would be subject to the chemical orchestrations perpetrated upon him by West and myself.
Like a musician with his instrument, West hovered over the apparatus, turning a knob here, checking a connection somewhere else. His face wore the look of utter concentration I had come to know well. If someone had broken down the door of the house at the moment, I did not think he would have heard. I was distinctly nervous. I could not believe that Leavitt was entirely unlooked-for and expected a knock on the door at any moment.
Once the fluid had been pumped into the body, we prepared to apply the electric current which West hoped would enhance the revivification process. I held the electrodes in place and he activated the machine.
A faint humming sound filled the room. A few seconds later, the corpse began to vibrate gently. I knew this to be a purely mechanical effect, but it startled me nonetheless. After a few minutes West, who had been bending over the body, his stethoscope applied to the region of the heart, looked up at me with excitement.
“We have a pulse. Stop the electricity!”
I did as instructed. Already a faint colour had appeared on Leavitt’s pale face. His features remained still, the eyes sunken, but he was certainly alive. We had only to wait for signs of sentience to determine whether the brain was functioning.
I left West attending to Leavitt and went upstairs. I had remembered the case Leavitt had been carrying and intended to bring it down to the cellar. Its contents might tell me something about its owner and whoever might be concerned about his disappearance.
The case stood where I had seen it before, on the carpet near the hall table. But the table was bare except for the fern in its pot. Earlier, West had said that Leavitt had collapsed while he was getting a glass of water for him. Where was that glass? I would have expected it to be somewhere in the hall, most likely on the table. But there was no glass, full or empty, whole or broken, anywhere in the hall. I made a careful search of the floor, thinking that West might have dropped it in his haste to help Leavitt. I found no glass, but under the table, close to the baseboard, there was a hypodermic syringe. It was empty, the plunger fully depressed.
I reviewed again my conversation with West when he called me upstairs. Had he said anything about administering a drug to the man? I thought not. He had said only that Leavitt had collapsed and died while he was fetching the water. But there was no glass, hence no water. It was impossible that he would have disposed of the glass before summoning me. He had been too excited. And as far as I could remember, he had not been upstairs since we had carried Leavitt down to the cellar.
Deeply troubled, I returned to the laboratory, carrying Leavitt’s case. West looked up, clearly satisfied at the state of things. “He’s coming along nicely. I would estimate that he’ll regain consciousness in an hour or so. The damnable thing is that I can’t stay. I have to operate on a patient in half an hour. Mr. Leavitt wasn’t considerate enough to let us know he was coming. I suppose I should have waited. Two or three hours more or less probably wouldn’t have made much difference. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a really fresh corpse. Dump that case here, Charles. We’ll deal with it later. What I want you to do now is stay here and watch him until I get back. Just monitor the heart rate and respiration every few minutes. If he starts to fail, give him a shot of this – right here, in the arm. And Charles – ” he paused at the door of the laboratory, “if he says anything, anything at all, write it down. I wish like hell I didn’t have to leave!” He ran lightly up the stairs. Moments later, I heard the outer door of the house slam.
Reluctantly, I turned to our victim, for so I could not help thinking of him. His colour appeared nearly normal, and although his breathing was so slow as to be almost imperceptible, he was certainly breathing. There was no sign of fading. It appeared that West had achieved his goal at last.
The next hour passed quietly. I checked Leavitt even more frequently than West had ordered, making notes of the times and other particulars. It seemed to me that Leavitt was beginning to emerge from his unconscious state. His eyes rolled and a few times his eyelids fluttered. I was glad that we had put the restraints on him, remembering our terrible experience with the prizefighter.
When next I approached the table, Robert Leavitt was looking up at me. Despite my anticipation of this, I felt a stab of fear. This was the first time I had been alone with a subject. I knew how tenuous must be his hold on life; I knew also how much West hoped to learn from him. If I lost him through ignorance or error, West would be terribly disappointed.
I peered
into Leavitt’s eyes, trying to determine whether there was a functioning brain behind that fixed gaze. Could he really see me? Hesitantly, I spoke his name.
”Mr. Leavitt, can you hear me?”
“I hear you. Who are you?”
“My name is Charles Milburn. Mr. Leavitt, please tell me – what do you remember?
His lips moved soundlessly for a moment. “Nothing. I remember nothing… except music. I was floating through music. The angels were singing.” He smiled and closed his eyes. “I thought I was going to heaven, but they didn’t want me.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered.
“They sent me back. Pushed me out. I felt myself falling, falling through darkness. So fast – then I saw you.” He frowned and moved his head from side to side. “That other one – where is he?” He was beginning to get agitated.
“There’s no one here but me, Mr. Leavitt. Please calm yourself. You’ve had an attack and you must stay calm if you want to get better.”
“Am I in a hospital? Why is this bed so hard? And why are my arms tied down?”
“It’s to keep you from injuring yourself.” I felt desperate. “I just have to check your pulse now. Excuse me, please.”
“You’re a doctor, then?” He grew a little calmer. I performed my simple procedures, murmuring something I hoped was reassuring.
“Wait!” said Leavitt, just as I was finishing my notes. “I know there was someone else, not you. I remember now. I knocked at a door to ask for directions. The name plate said ‘Herbert West, M.D.’ He opened the door – not you, a little blond fellow… He asked me inside and told me to wait a minute while he got a map. But he came back with a needle in his hand, came at me with it! Where is he? Help! Help!”
He had grown agitated once more, his face a mottled red colour I did not like. His pulse had been somewhat rapid the last time I checked it, and that was before this outburst. I leaned closely over him and pleaded, “Mr. Leavitt, please calm yourself. You’re not in danger. The danger has passed, but you must not get agitated.”
I felt the situation slipping beyond my control. This was no passive experimental subject, but an ordinary man undergoing a terrible experience. To make matters worse, he now appeared to be having some sort of fit. His face twitched, his eyes rolled wildly and his body grew rigid, straining against the straps that held him down. I could not think what to do. The syringe containing the booster fluid lay nearby but I hesitated to administer it, since Leavitt’s symptoms were surely not those of the fading that had characterized so many of our other subjects. For all I knew, it might make him worse.
Suddenly, I heard quick, light steps behind me. West pushed me aside and bent over Leavitt. Grim-faced, he seized a different syringe, filled it from a bottle, inserted the needle into Leavitt’s chest and depressed the plunger. Leavitt’s face turned scarlet and he let out a roar that went on and on. Then he collapsed, limp and once more lifeless.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it! Too late!” West stood over the body for a long moment, his head hanging. When he straightened up he looked more discouraged than I had ever seen him. But my mind was still reeling with the enormity of recent events and I could not speak. “Well, he’s dead,” West said. “I suppose we had better start up the incinerator and burn everything. Come on, Charles, snap out of it. You look as though you’re going to faint.”
I made an effort to pull myself together but I could not bring myself to confront West with the last words of the dead man. His terrified reference to a needle and the fact that I had found such an implement at the scene of his collapse, along with the fact of the nonexistent water glass, suggested that my friend was a murderer. He was a physician who had taken the Hippocratic oath, but he had killed a man simply so that he might use him as an experimental subject. I could not ignore this, as I had previous indications of West’s unscrupulousness, but I remembered my uncertainty about the revivifying fluid I had compounded, which we had used on Leavitt. I thought I might have added too much of the activating agent, but in the excitement I had forgotten to mention this to West.
“I think it was my fault,” I heard myself saying, as though from a distance. “I made a mistake with the fluid, didn’t stop it in time. It was just when you came in to tell me about him. I meant to tell you, but I forgot.”
He looked at me for a long moment. I could not tell what he was thinking. Then he said, “This entire episode is a perfect example of why haste and experiments are not compatible. I should have waited. Right from the first I should have waited.” After another silence he shook his head slightly and said,
“Let’s take another look through Leavitt’s pockets and case. There might be something that will give us an idea of how popular he is. We must destroy him and his possessions as soon as we can. Someone might have seen him come here, but no one will ever be able to prove that he was in this house.”
“Aren’t you going to notify someone – the police, maybe – about his death? I asked. “After all, he died of natural causes. He wasn’t a corpse when he arrived here.”
West gave me an impatient look. “It would be madness to notify anyone. The next thing you know there will be hordes of policemen all over the house. And how would you explain that hole in his chest, and the incisions? Once the police develop an interest in you it’s nearly impossible to divert them from it. You have to develop a relationship with them instead, which is the last thing I want. No, we must consign Mr. Leavitt to the flames. It’s unfortunate, but the lost must stay lost this time.”
We searched through Leavitt’s belongings. There was little enough of interest in his wallet and pocket-book. The case he had carried contained mainly technical literature and samples of machinery we assumed to be used in the cloth manufacturing trade. A letter from someone at Bolton Worsted Mills indicated that he was expected to arrive at some unspecified time during the week. I was grateful for one thing – Leavitt was apparently a bachelor. His address in St. Louis was given as Dempsey’s Boarding House, hardly the abode of a married man. I was still unhappy, though. Did Leavitt perhaps have an old mother, or brothers and sisters who would never know and always wonder what had happened to him on his ill-fated trip to New England?
On two matters I insisted, to West’s intense annoyance. Before we put the body into the incinerator we replaced his clothing, so that the unfortunate man would not go on his final journey naked. With some difficulty we forced the fellow’s limbs back into his shirt, trousers and jacket. I myself re-tied Leavitt’s necktie and replaced his shoes.
“Well, are you happy now?” asked West.
“One more thing,” I said. “Do you happen to own a prayer book?”
He looked at me incredulously. “No I do not, and even if I did, this nonsense has gone far enough. Let’s get on with it.”
“No, Herbert. We’re not going to burn this man like so much trash. He had the misfortune to meet his end here and we owe him something better than disposal. So I’m going to give him a funeral service. Or would you rather I had a word with the police?”
It was the first time I had defied him. For a moment I thought he was going to strike me, but then that coldness I knew so well descended over him. “Oh, all right. Wait a minute.” He ran upstairs. I remembered, too late, the syringe I had found in the hall. Would he realize I had seen it? But when he returned a few minutes later, I could see nothing in his face but amused contempt. He tossed me a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
“All right, Reverend Milburn, do your stuff. But don’t take all day.”
Feeling foolish, I fumbled with the thick little book. The cataloguer in me noted that it had been published in New York City in 1848, by D. Appleton & Co. A faded book plate bore the name Joseph Ezekiel Derby. Unfamiliar as I was with the Episcopalian liturgy, it took me a little while to find the burial service. The thinness of the onionskin paper didn’t help; nor did West’s ill-concealed impatience. I read the prayers for the graveside. “In the midst of life we are in death…” T
he age-old words sounded strangely in Herbert West’s underground laboratory, but I hoped that they would serve to appease Leavitt’s spirit if it still lingered at the scene of his second death.
West watched me with a strange look on his face, amused scorn combined with a kind of remoteness, as though he regarded the inexplicable busyness of an alien creature. At that moment, for the first time in our association, I felt a disconcerting shift in my perspective – I was no longer part of ‘we,’ but only ‘I.’
I closed the book and laid it down. Then we carried the body down the passage to the incinerator. West opened the door and we slid into it the mortal remains of Robert Leavitt, of St. Louis.
After this I could not wait to get away. West seemed equally glad to see me go. We parted with some vague words about meeting in a few days to discuss future plans, but I did not see him again for upwards of two weeks.
Early in October, a man came to my door. He was from the Boston Police, he said, showing me an identification card. He was investigating the disappearance of Robert Leavitt of St. Louis, who was last seen on College Street near the hospital.
I had been expecting a visit of this sort and successfully maintained a calm exterior. I knew nothing of Robert Leavitt, I said. I had visited my friend Dr. West on the afternoon of September 15, but I had seen no strangers in the neighbourhood, neither at my arrival nor when I left. With this the fellow had to be content. I knew there was no evidence linking Leavitt to West. I was certain that even Leavitt’s gold teeth had been raked out of the ashes in the incinerator and deposited, together with the samples he had been carrying, into the Miskatonic River.
Why did I protect West? Many times I have asked myself this question. The answers formed a kind of circular dance in my mind which ran something like this: Once the body and other evidence was gone there was no point in telling anyone. But why didn’t I confront West immediately, or go directly to the police? Because my own position was equivocal; because, despite the doubts about West that had accumulated over the years, I was still his friend. I could not make the transition from friend to accuser as swiftly as the situation demanded, and once the body was gone… But why hadn’t I persuaded him to wait before burning everything? All right, but how could I have made sure he wouldn’t do it after I had gone? And there was my own responsibility for Leavitt’s second death, because I had forgotten to tell West that the fluid was probably defective. If we had administered a correctly prepared substance, Leavitt might have fully recovered. So it was possible that the ultimate responsibility for his death was mine…
There was not a night in those weeks when I didn’t lie awake and run all these arguments through my mind. I never reached a conclusion; my ruminations usually ended in a strange waking dream, in which I saw Leavitt approaching West’s house and ringing the bell. West admitted him and they talked. My friend’s expression was solicitous but I imagined a lurking glee in his eyes. He excused himself and returned a minute later – with death in his hand.
Did he look into Leavitt’s eyes as he depressed the plunger? I remembered them – dark grey with amber flecks, full of anxiety. Had he seen the man’s terror and carried on regardless? I could not imagine the thought process that led to the deed.
After the visit from the policeman I thought I had better talk with West. Sufficient time had passed that I could approach him without the loathing that had come over me as I looked at the syringe I had found in the hall. At the very least I wanted him to know that I no longer wished to participate in his experiments, now that he had crossed the border between iconoclasm and outright crime. But first I needed to know what had been in his mind when he jabbed that needle into Leavitt.
The following evening I knocked once more on West’s door. Almost I hoped he was not home, but forced myself to knock a second time when no answer was forthcoming after half a minute. The door opened. West wore a distracted look.
“Oh it’s you, Charles. Come in. I have a visitor, but it’s all right. Come in.” He showed me up to his private quarters. In the sitting room was a middle-aged man with dark hair and a moustache, wearing a military uniform unfamiliar to me. West introduced him as Lt.-Col. Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, of the Canadian Army’s Medical Corps.
“Sir Eric has been most helpful in securing me a commission in his service,” said West. “I’ll be leaving for Ottawa in a few days, then on to England and eventually to Flanders or France.”
This was a tremendous shock to me. So far, the war in Europe had been a distant newspaper phenomenon. Everyone fully expected it to end soon. It was thought to be no concern of America’s. West had never shown the slightest military or patriotic zeal, but he had obviously sought out this Clapham-Lee for the purpose of enlisting in a foreign army.
I said little but thought much. As the others finished their business and West showed his visitor to the door, I perceived a reason for his sudden interest in foreign service. Two reasons, actually.
Feeling once more the estrangement that had descended upon me as I read the burial service over Leavitt, I was careful to have a firm hold on my composure when West returned to the room. “Well Herbert, may I offer my congratulations. I didn’t realize you had suddenly grown militaristic.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Charles. I haven’t a militaristic bone in my body. But surely you realize that this is the only way I’ll ever have anything like legitimate access to material for my experiments. Wars produce corpses, lots of them. And before they’re killed, they’re young men in good health. Governments see to that. Only the healthy need apply for the job of cannon fodder. Well, maybe a few of them will be less than dead as a result of my efforts. And in any case, I’m good at cutting and splicing. So I can be of some use to the not yet dead, too.”
And you can get away from Arkham and out of the country before the investigation into Leavitt’s disappearance picks up steam, I thought. Aloud I said, “I had a visit from a member of the Boston Police yesterday. I thought you should know.”
West seemed unconcerned. “Oh yes, he came here too. I told him I had never seen Leavitt. Case closed. What did you tell him?”
“Only that I had visited here on the day in question, but I never saw Leavitt or anyone who might have been Leavitt. That’s all.”
“Good, Charles, I knew I could count on you.” He produced one of his beautiful smiles, but for the first time it failed to charm me. A part of me was already in mourning but I could not simply give up and go away, turning my back on more than three years of friendship and close collaboration in risky enterprises. I administered my final test.
“But I could have said a good deal more, Herbert. I could have told him about what Leavitt said to me before you came back. And about the syringe I found in the hall.”
“Oh, so you and Leavitt had a little conversation, did you? I wish you had told me before. It would have been something to set against the failure. And you didn’t write it down as I asked, obviously. Well, what did he say?”
“He said you attacked him with a needle. And before that, when I went up to get his case, I found an empty syringe under the hall table.”
“Now Charles, what do you suppose our visitor from the Boston Police would have made of your story that Leavitt himself told you I murdered him? Either he was conversing with you or he was dead. You can’t usually have it both ways in this vale of tears. As for the syringe, it’s one of the tools of my trade, along with sharp knives and deadly drugs. Its presence in my house is hardly surprising, is it? If something like that turned up in your hall, now, it might be a different matter…”
He was actually laughing! There wasn’t a trace of defensiveness in his manner, never mind guilt. And what angered me more than anything was the fact that he treated me, his friend and associate, very nearly his partner in crime, the same as an ignorant, intrusive policeman. If he had at least admitted the deed, said “Yes, Charles, I killed him, but in a good cause; let it be a secret between us.” If he had said this, the old magic would h
ave done its work. Nothing would now restore Leavitt to life, but this might have saved my friendship.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter now that you’re leaving, but I came here to say… to tell you that I won’t be assisting you with your… experiments any more. Not after this. I admit that I probably contributed to Leavitt’s death – the second one, I mean. That’s why I lied to that policeman. But I can’t condone murder, Herbert. So this is the end for me. I don’t imagine I’ll see much of you after this. Oh, and good luck with the war.”
He listened with no expression on his face, his eyes focused on something behind me. I turned to go and was halfway down the stairs before he spoke again.
“Will you come to the station to see me off, Charles? Eight o’clock on Wednesday morning. Please come.”
I almost kept going without replying. But then I thought, Well, one last time, what harm can it do? “All right, Herbert. I’ll be there.”
The Friendship of Mortals Page 11