Chapter 13
A few days after receiving this note I went to West’s house. I had been there only a few times since his departure, to make cursory inspections of the premises or to find things West asked me to send him. Before he returned, I had to decide whether to resume some association with him, or to make it clear that I no longer wanted his company. In his house I hoped to find some trace of him that would help me decide.
I wandered through the neat but lifeless rooms, ending up in his bedroom, where I had never been before. It was very simply, almost starkly furnished – a bed, a small table, a chest of drawers and a chair. The furniture was of excellent quality, although old and well-used. Feeling guilty, I slid open a few of the drawers, but found only clean, neatly folded linen, smelling of lavender. The bottom drawer contained a hinged leather case. Intensely curious, I opened it and saw a miniature painting of a woman, delicate-faced and very fair, and a young child, probably West and his mother. On the reverse was the date 1891. In that year he would have been five years old; three years later she would leave her little son and flee – to Arkham? Troubled, and feeling guiltier than ever, I replaced the thing in its case and closed the drawer.
I could not ignore the fact that West had committed at least one murder, but surely his dedicated service in Flanders and France had paid for the death of Robert Leavitt many times over. Why was it acceptable for soldiers to kill each other by the thousands in the most brutal ways imaginable, but not for West swiftly to dispatch a peripatetic engineer so that this individual could (unwittingly, it was true) donate his body to science?
I considered the letters he had written me. Some of them had been disturbing, but I had no way of knowing how much of what he had written was sheer exaggeration. What were the facts? He had pursued the same research as that with which I had gladly assisted him for several years. Some might maintain that it was macabre or disrespectful to use human corpses as experimental material, but was it evil? I thought of the miracles of reconstruction he claimed to be able to accomplish. Surely this had been worth the years of secret labour? On his return to America West would publish his spectacular results and go on to well-earned glory.
But what about the disappearance of Clapham-Lee? Had West had anything to do with it, or was this merely an erroneous intuitive leap on my part, suggested by obscure hints in his letters which meshed so disturbingly with Alma’s? He had spoken of reservations as to Clapham-Lee’s motives and of animosity between them, but he had said also that these matters had been resolved.
And yet – I remembered his absolute coolness when I had accused him of killing Leavitt. And that disquieting look of calculation he had given me as I emerged from unconsciousness after my fall.
I had run out of facts. Letting my thoughts drift, I could see him, Herbert West, walking alone along a windswept shore, sand dunes on one side, the sea on the other. I watched him in my mind’s eye, until I lost sight of him in the distance.
I finished my contemplation with two threads I had not previously woven into my tapestry. One was the letter from Augustus Quarrington. Do not abandon your friend. And finally – I could not deny the sudden leap of gladness my heart had taken when I had read that he was coming home.
Herbert West returned to Arkham on the shortest day of the year 1918. It was a raw, foggy night. The street lights were shrouded in fuzzy haloes as I drove to Arkham Station.
He was nearly the last person to leave the train. I had nearly given up, thinking that he had been delayed for some reason, when I saw yet another soldierly figure approaching. He was silhouetted against some bright lights in the distance, so I had only an impression of someone wearing a cap, long coat and tall boots. Only when he got quite close to me did I recognize him. I was surprised that he was still in uniform.
“Charles, I thought it was you,” he said.
“Welcome home, Herbert,” I said, extending my hand. I felt suddenly constrained and awkward, more so even than on our first meeting, years ago. He seemed utterly exotic, a soldier home from the wars, not someone on whom I had ever had a claim of friendship.
He took my hand, and – could it have been my imagination? – I felt once more that rush of magnetic energy. “It’s good to be back, Charles. Good to know Arkham is still here.”
“I brought a car,” I said. “I thought you would have baggage.”
“You – a car? Things have changed more than I thought.” As we passed a street light, I saw his face a little more clearly. The same smile, the same edge of sarcasm in his voice. He still wore spectacles but had grown a moustache. The strangeness diminished, but only a little.
“As for baggage,” he said, “most of it is coming later. Andre has the rest. Over here, Andre.”
For the first time I noticed that he was not alone. A few yards behind us was a man, short and stocky, also in uniform. He approached, carrying a couple of suitcases. “Charles,” West said, “this is Andre Boudreau, my servant. Andre, this is my good friend Charles Milburn.”
Andre set down the bags and bowed slightly in my direction. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Milburn,” he said. He had an accent, French, I thought, but I could not be certain.
“The car is Alma’s,” I said as we climbed in. “She thought it would be better if it was used while she was away, so she lent it to me.”
“And you dutifully learned to drive, I suppose. Well, it’s a good thing. Amazing how tired I am.”
I said little on the way to Boundary Street, wishing to concentrate on the business of driving. When I had successfully stopped the car in front of West’s house, he said,
“Surely you’ll come up? I may need you to show me around, remind me of where things are. You have no idea how peculiar this feels.”
“Actually, Herbert, I do. To me you seem so…”
“Foreign? I suppose I am, in a way. For four years I have been an honourary Canadian and spent a lot of time with Englishmen. It’s bound to have an effect.” His accent wasn’t quite an English one, but he had certainly acquired an intonation that was not Yankee.
In the apartment, West turned to Andre and gave some directions, speaking quietly in French. The man disappeared down the hall, still carrying the bags. In the sitting room, West took off his coat and draped it over the back of a chair. “Take a good look at Major Herbert F. West of the Canadian Army Medical Corps,” he said. “Because after tonight he will disappear forever.”
He looked taller than I remembered. I supposed it was the cap, with its unfamiliar badge, and the boots. The uniform of khaki-coloured cloth was, of course, beautifully tailored. I noticed, without comprehension of their significance, the various insignia on sleeves and lapels and the polished leather Sam Browne belt. I was not surprised that West had enjoyed the sartorial aspects of his military role.
“I’m impressed, Major West,” I said, not altogether untruthfully. “I’m certain you set a good example to all. Showed ‘em that not all Americans were reluctant to join the fray.”
“Ah, for me the fray was altogether different from the common soldiers’. Andre would be the one to tell you something about that, but he won’t because he’s a man of few words now.” He tossed the cap on top of his discarded coat and went over to the liquor cabinet. “It’s a good thing this stuff keeps indefinitely,” he said, taking out a whiskey bottle and finding some glasses.
“To your homecoming,” I said, raising my glass.
“And to the future,” said West.
“Have you made any plans?” I asked.
“I have indeed. I gave Billington notice weeks ago. He can keep the practice but has to find new premises for it. I need my office and laboratory for my new venture.”
“And what will that be?”
“I’m going to specialize – my own specialty entirely. It all comes out of my old research and the work I did in the War – restoration and reconstruction of the human body.”
“But is there much demand for that sort of thing outside of wartime? And why here in Arkham? S
urely Boston or New York would be better?”
“Arkham suits me. As for demand, you’ll be surprised. Quite apart from the usual accidents there are what you might call accidents of birth – people born with deformities of various sorts, external and internal. And people who simply want to look differently from the way they do. Wait and see.”
“You mean what that.. associate of yours wanted to do? I’ve forgotten his name.”
“Clapham-Lee. I’ve gone beyond his wildest dreams. Far beyond. I don’t waste my time thinking about him now.”
After a moment of silence which for some reason was uncomfortable, he said, “You know, of course, that my father is dead.”
I had heard of Hiram West’s death, which had been caused by a stroke several months earlier. “It was rather unexpected, I gather. Was it a shock to you?”
“Not altogether unexpected. He was over seventy, you know, and had never exercised any restraint when it came to cigars and drink. He never exercised anything except his mouth. Of course it was a shock. But it didn’t seem real, over there.”
Another a brief silence, then, “The West business empire, nicely fattened by war profits, has been divided between my brothers, but Father did set aside a rather generous portion for me. Despite our differences, I must admit that he was decent enough that way. Now I don’t have to worry about money while I get my new venture going.”
“But what about revivification?” I asked .
“What about it? I’ve finished with revivification. I’ve learned everything I can from it.”
“But I thought you had some success with it in France. You mentioned several cases.”
“I certainly did have success,” he said, with a not altogether pleasant smile. “What I mean is that I have now discovered the criteria for successful revivification. They are rather narrow, as I suspected. The corpse must be very recently dead – less than six hours, certainly – and with its major structures intact. That limits the types of deaths from which one can return, obviously. Return in a more or less functional state, that is, and for longer than a few hours. Believe me, during the War I had opportunities to create some novel… composites that fortunately were short-lived. In the interests of experimentation, you understand.” Again that less than pleasant smile.
“Returning to the successes, of the dozen or so men I revivified who are, as far as I know, still alive, fewer than half were in full possession of their faculties. The majority had some cognitive impairment, ranging from slight to serious. So the question is – is it better to be dead, or alive but diminished and often dependent on others for the most basic things? I think most people would prefer death.”
“But I’ll bet their families, the people that love them, would want them alive, however diminished,” I said.
“You romantic, Charles. Consider a woman whose husband returns to her in a quasi-vegetable state. Not only has she lost a breadwinner, she has gained, in effect, another child. A permanent child. And no widow’s pension or opportunity to remarry.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. But were they all like that?”
“No, not all. The thing is – I could not predict with any certainty the degree of cognitive impairment. Even in corpses well within the six hour limit, results varied greatly. Now, of course I knew nothing of these fellows’ level of intelligence before they died. It may be that some of them did not have far to go to attain the vegetable state. But the fact is that it would take a great deal of experimentation, involving prodigious numbers of corpses, and information as to intelligence before death, to be able accurately to predict results. Your idea of finding volunteers for the cause might be one approach, but I suspect they would be few and far between. To volunteer for such a thing would, to many people, seem to be courting death. I’m rather keen on my new area of practice, and don’t want to ruin my prospects by becoming identified as the ‘death doctor,’ or something like that.”
“Yes, I can understand that.”
“So, no more revivifications for you, Charles, with all their attendant hazards,” he said, smiling. “We can be friends rather than associates from now on.”
“Speaking of associates, who is this Andre? Your servant, you said.”
“Exactly. And a very good one. I confess that’s one thing about the life of an officer I would miss. It was a piece of luck that he was able to accompany me here.”
“But where did he come from originally? Is he French?”
“In a way. He’s from New Brunswick, Canada, but for various reasons prefers not to go back there. He was my batman and now he’ll be my servant – valet, chauffeur, butler, whatever. With the assistance of the excellent Mrs. Fisk, I’ll have everything I need. I’m quite looking forward to civilian life.”
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Part 3
THE NECROMANCER
The Friendship of Mortals Page 25