The Best of Weird Tales 1923

by Marvin Kaye

  “Oh, nuthin’ Pa, nuthin”’ whimpered the girl.

  “Then go to bed, the two of ye.”

  Next morning Hubbard started for the county seat, a ten mile drive. He returned that evening and complained that the case had been adjourned because Harper had failed to appear in court.

  The following day he went back to his field far down the road for more ploughing. Twice he was called to the roadside by passersby to discuss the disappearance of Harper.

  One morning a week later, when he came along the road with his team, he discovered the Harper child on the Eldridge premises. She was sitting at the edge of the well.

  With a surprised oath, he dropped the lines and half-walked, half-ran, to where the girl sat.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from there!” he exploded.

  The girl stared at him, but made no move, though her lips quivered. Hubbard glanced back to observe the road. Then he caught her arm.

  “Go home!” he shouted.

  He spun her roughly. She continued to stare at him as she retreated homeward.

  All that morning, Hubbard worked his horses hard. He realized that he was eager to go back by the Eldridge dwelling. Promptly at twelve o’clock, therefore, he tied his team and started up the road. A flash of relief came to him when he did not observe the little girl. It left him cold, however.

  “Eatin’ dinner,” he mumbled.

  He moved off, without looking into the well. Until four o’clock that afternoon he labored. On his way home he discovered the girl again seated by the well. She was bending over and acting queerly.

  Hurrying his horses to the roadside, he looped the lines over one of the posts in the old “snake” fence.

  As he approached, he saw her toss a piece of stone down the hole.

  Hubbard waited until he was sure of his voice.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Gripping the girl he started with her toward her home but a short distance away. When they arrived the front door was ajar. A woman, with eyes red from weeping, looked at Hubbard in silence.

  “Here!” he said gruffly. “This child ought to be kept to home. She’ll fall into the well.”

  Mrs. Harper merely reached out her arms for her daughter. Hubbard remained standing awkwardly.

  “Have you heard anything of Harper yet?” he asked.“I don’t want to talk to you,” replied the woman.

  Hubbard turned on his heel. Waiting for him by his horses, was the deputy sheriff. The two further discussed the disappearance.

  “If you yourself wasn’t so well known, Jeremiah,” finally declared the official, “they’d sure be thinkin’

  you was in it some way.”

  “Why!” grunted the farmer, as he untied the lines.

  “Well, everybody known you an’ Harper been lawin’ it for years over that boundary line.”

  Hubbard achieved a laugh.

  “I’ll tell ye where Harper is. He’s cleared out, that’s what I think—deserted his family.”

  That night, and many following nights, Hubbard did not sleep. Some weeks later a tremendous electric storm broke in the night. One particularly heavy clap so startled the wakeful Hubbard that he leaped from his bed and dressed. In the pouring rain he started out.

  Inevitably his steps took him toward the well. It was black, and he could not see at first. But another flash came, and he observed a strange thing:

  The huge oak, standing at the side of the well, had split in two by lightning, and one portion of the tree and fallen over the mouth of the hole.

  Next morning Simpson, the man with the “tin Lizzie,” stopped by at Hubbard’s place. He was a blunt-spoken, red-faced man whom Hubbard hated.

  “That was a bad storm last night.” he said. “The lightning struck the big oak tree by the well.”

  “What of it?” snapped Hubbard.

  “There was a skeleton in the center of that tree, “explained Simpson. “I was talking this morning with the sheriff over the telephone. He said seventy-five years ago a man was murdered in Ovid, and they never found his body. This skeleton must be his.”

  Hubbard cleared his throat sharply.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “The skull and one of the leg bones fell down into the well when I tried to gather them up. I want to borrow some rope so I can get down in there.”

  For a bare second Hubbard was silent.

  “What you ought to do,” he said, gathering himself, “is to fill up that hole. It’s dangerous.”

  “Yes. That’s so. But I’m goin’ to get that skull first. It’ll be a good exhibit. I’m wonderin’ whether we’ll ever find Harper’s skeleton.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Hubbard huskily, starting for the barn. “I’ll get some rope and help you.”

  The two returned to the Eldridge farm. They found there the dead man’s child. She had perched herself on the fallen tree.

  “Damn fool!” muttered Hubbard. “Her mother lettin’ her play around here!”

  A pulley was rigged over the branch and inserted with a board for a rest.

  “I’ll go down,” vouchsafed Hubbard.

  Simpson looked his surprise as he assented.

  It took Hubbard five minutes or so to retrieve the missing skeleton parts. He brought them up, the leg bone and the grinning skull. He was pale when he hauled himself over the edge.

  “I’m a-goin’ to fill up that hole myself,” he said.

  “All right,” retorted Simpson, handling the skull curiously. “Go to it.”

  Word traveled of the finding of the skeleton, and the inhabitants began driving thither to see the sight.

  Simpson, a man of some ingenuity, had wired the bleached white bones together and suspended them from one of the branches of the fallen tree. The skeleton dangled and swung in the wind.

  Hubbard, maddened by the delay and publicity, felt himself wearing away. He had become obsessed with conviction that if the hole were filled his mind would be at rest.

  The nights of continued sleeplessness were ragging his nerves, and he was by this time unable to remain in bed. He would throw himself down, fully dressed, waiting until the others were asleep. Then he would steal out.

  At first he had merely walked the roads, swinging his arms and mumbling. But as the night progressed his stride would quicken, and frequently he would take to running. He would run until his lungs were bursting and a slaver fed from his mouth. Late travelers began to catch glimpses of the fleeting figure, and the rumor grew that a ghost was haunting the locality of the well—that the skeleton walked.

  Hubbard grew haggard. But he found himself unable to continue his nocturnal prowls, some of which took him miles, but all of which invariably wound up at one place—the well.

  Here, fagged and exhausted, he would sit until the approach of dawn, staring at the swinging skeleton, mouthing incoherencies, praying, singing hymns beneath his breath, laughing. At the approach of dawn he would steal home.

  At last, after interest in the skeleton had subsided and Simpson had consented to its removal, Hubbard loaded his wagon with stones and small boulders and started for the well. That first forenoon he mane three trips, dumping each time a considerable quantity of stones.

  Next morning he worked in an additional trip. He began to experience surcease. But on the afternoon of the second day, when he made another trip, Simpson came over from his work in an adjoining field.

  “I wanted to see you yesterday,” he said, quizzically regarding Hubbard. “Mrs. Harper was here. She said her little girl was playin’ around here and dripped a pair of andirons down the well.”

  “What of it?” Hubbard jerked out.

  “You got to get ‘em out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because them andirons is relics.”

  “But you gave me permission to fill the hole.”

  “I was kiddin’ you,” laughed Simpson. “I’m only rentin’ the farm. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with the house and yard.”
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br />   Without a word Hubbard turned to his wagon. He got into the seat and drove off. In an hour he came back with the same rope that had been used to recover the missing portions of the skeleton. Also, he brought with him a farm laborer who did occasional work for him.

  Simpson regarded Hubbard amusedly as the latter adjusted once more the pulley, arranged a bucket and then hitched his team to the end of the rope.

  Patiently, bucketful by bucketful, the stones were elevated and dumped. Down below in the black interior, Hubbard labored for an hour. At six o’clock he had not found the andirons. Twice he had been compelled to come up for fresh air.

  His last trip up left him so white-faced and weak that he was forced to go home.

  That night he resorted to sleeping powders. But he lay and tossed, wide-eyed through the dark hours.

  Sometime after midnight he got up. A light was still burning in his wife’s room, and, tiptoeing down the hall, he paused at her door. In low voices the mother and daughter were conversing. To his heated imagination it seemed certain they were talking of Harper’s disappearance.

  Mumbling to himself he left the house. He ran down the lane to the highway and along this until he came to the Eldridge place. He determined not to stop, and succeeded in running by, like a frightened animal.

  His gait accelerated. It was one best described as scurrying, as he ran crouched and low. He thought he saw someone approaching. This turned him. Back he fled with the speed of the wind.

  Drawn by an irresistible force, he made straight for the Eldridge pathway. He came to the well, the entrance of which gaped at him. For a moment he stood, with eyes wide open, staring into the black depths.

  Then, screaming, he plunged in head-first.

  His cry, long-drawn and eerie, hung quivering on the night air.

  In the Hubbard home, a quarter of a mile away, the mother and daughter heard it. The two listened with palpitating hearts. They caught one another’s hands.

  In a hoarse whisper, the mother exclaimed:

  “What’s that?”

  JULY-AUGUST 1923

  Financial problems plagued Weird Tales throughout its “revenant” existence and the first year was no exception. The publishers cut corners by making the next issue represent two months.

  July-August 1923, designated Volume II, Number 1, is historically significant because Clark Ashton Smith’s byline first appears in it. A personal friend of H. P. Lovecraft’s and one of The Unique Magazine’s most popular writers, Smith contributed two mediocre poems, “The Red Moon” and “The Garden of Evil.”

  Besides an article on voodoo and the second of Preston Langley Hickey’s “The Cauldron,” the fifth issue contains the end of the preceding issue’s two-parter, the first half of the latest serial and fourteen other stories, including disappointing entries by Vincent Starrett and J. Paul Suter, whose earlier Weird Tales pieces were much better.

  Pickings in this issue are slim. I have selected the novelette, “The Two Men Who Murdered Each Other,” by Valma Clark, although my friend and colleague Weird Tales historian Bob Weinberg doesn’t think much of it. But despite an improbable plot, I like its evocative style and feel that Clark’s language comes closer to the spirit of poetry than the doggerel verse usually printed in Weird Tales.

  THE TWO MEN WHO MURDERED EACH OTHER

  VALMA CLARK

  It was on Cape Cod one August, while I was browsing through antique shops in quest of a particular kind of colonial andirons for one of our patrons, that I stumbled onto the Old Scholar.

  There, in a white farmhouse back from the King’s Highway, among a litter of old Cape lanterns and great bulging liqueur bottles of green and amber glass, ancient teakettles and brass door knockers and the inevitable bayberry candles, I came upon painted book ends of heavy wood on which bright orange nymphs disported themselves against a velvet-black background. A bizarre color scheme, was my first conventional reaction.

  Yet the details of face and hair were traced most delicately in brown and purple, as though a brush with a single fine bristle had been used; the work was exquisite, and on the whole the effect was charming.

  Then it struck me: Jove, it was after the manner of the old, fine, red-figured Greek vases—classic, that was it!

  The nymphs, too, were classic; this slim one was, without doubt, Nausicaa playing at ball with her maidens. There were other classical subjects: a graceful Aphrodite riding a quaintly stiff swan; nimble sileni frolicking on a seesaw…

  Pagan mythology running riot, within a small space, in this home of New England antiques—it was at least odd! Here, where one sought the genuine old colonial—though usually in vain, to be sure—to come upon this curious classical twist!

  Even as I wondered, my eye fell upon a fresh subject, and the wonder changed to genuine admiration and sharpened to a very keen curiosity concerning the artist who achieved such arresting beauty with such crude materials. It was a broken painting, like a Venus with a missing arm. It showed the head and shoulders of Pallas Athena and the head and shoulders of a youth who played to her on a double flute.

  The goddess’ head, which still bore the warrior’s helmet, was bent in a listening attitude toward the music, and her pose was one of relaxation and peace after fierce combat.

  It was a quiet thing, with quiet, flowing lines, for all the unfinished ragged edge which cut the figures off just above the waist. Somehow, it held the dignity and sincerity of great religious art. And now I noticed that there were other identical Athenas, that the fragmentary painting recurred on fully half the book ends: as though it were the motif of all his work, I thought—the one serious theme running through all these lighter themes.

  “But only a man thoroughly steeped in Greek mythology—loving it—could do that —”

  “Pardon, sir?” said the young woman who kept shop.“This! It’s rather remarkable. Who is he—tell me about him!” I begged of her impulsively.

  “I can’t tell you much. He lives alone over on the back shore, and he brings us these to sell. His name is Twining—‘Tinker’ Twining, they call him.”

  “But this broken thing—what does it mean?”

  She shook her head.

  “He never talks; only say he hasn’t the pattern for the rest, and it would be sacrilege to finish it without the true lines.”

  “Hm—reverence and a conscience,” I muttered. “Rare enough these days. I’ll take the pair of them. How much?”

  “Five dollars.”

  “And a pair of the nymphs,” I added, since it seemed absurdly cheap.

  “Sorry, but we’ve only one of these. It’s used as a door prop, you see.”

  “No, not a door prop!” I lamented. “But I’d use mine as book ends, and I’d put the Romantic Poets between them.”

  “I’ll tell you —” the girl turned suddenly helpful—“you might leave an order with us for Mr. Twining to paint you one. He’d be glad to do it.”

  “Or I might take the order to Mr. Twining myself,” I exclaimed eagerly. “I’ve a car outside and I’ve time to kill. How do I get to him?”

  “But you can’t drive. You follow the sand road to the end, and then take a narrow path across to the ocean side. It’s three miles over, the only house —”

  “No matter! I’ve a fancy to meet him. Oh, I see by your face you wouldn’t advise it.”

  “It’s only that he’s—something of a hermit,” she hesitated. “He’s a very courteous old gentleman, but no one ever visits him.”

  “Then it’s time someone started, and I’ve a faculty for getting on with hermits,” I assured her gaily.

  I thanked her, found a quiet inn, parked my car for the night, and started on a late afternoon ramble for the back shore and a Mr. “Tinker” Twining.

  II

  I followed a sand trail like a wind-white chalk line between growths of springy hog cranberry, scrub oak and pine—a most desolate and forsaken country—until at last I stepped out abruptly upon a high cliff over the Atlantic Oce
an.

  Clouds had sponged out the blue sky, and instead of the late sunlight there was a strange yellow glow over everything. All those light, bright Cape colors—turquoise blue and gay copper-gold and honey-yellow—had been dimmed.

  The sea was very still, of dull purples and greens, and the broad cream beach, below the sand scrap upon which I stood, had a grayish tinge. Above me, on the highest point of the cliff and huddled too close to its shifting edge, was one of those low, weather-beaten Cape houses. I climbed to it, and wading through beach grass and vines of the wild beach pea, came to the back door.

  The house was quiet, and I had a glimpse of a scrupulously neat, old-style kitchen—cumbersome

  flatirons in a row and a brick oven built into the chimney—as I stood there hesitating.

  Then, against a further window which framed the lowering sea and sky, I saw the profile of an old, white-haired man.

  He sat at a work bench and he held a brush poised in his hand, but he was not painting. His head was up and he was listening—it was almost as though he were listening to that strange electric-yellow that permeated all the air, was the queer thought I had. I was struck at once by the extreme delicacy and the fine-drawn suffering of the old man’s face; indeed, the lines of that tragic profile might have been traced with the single fine bristle of his own brush, in those same delicate browns and purples.

  Moreover, the setting was all wrong: the old, frail face was somehow not up to that sullen sweep of sky and ocean. It was as though an exquisite thing of beaten and fretted silver should be mounted alone upon a coarse expanse of dull burlap—a broad background that called for granite at least.

  I tapped, and the old man stirred.“Good afternoon,” I called.

  He came slowly to the door.

  “They sent me from that antique place—the Open Latch. I’d like to get you to do me another book end.”

  “Book end?” he muttered.

  “I hoped you might be willing to paint it and send it on to me.”

  “Ah, yes.” Clearly he was following me only with his eyes; with his soul he was still listening to his own thoughts.

  I found myself puzzled as to how to reach him. A baffling aroma of archaism hung about this elderly man: breathed not only from his worn black suit, which was not of this day, but also from his manner and the very inflection of his voice, which were somehow reminiscent of the old school.