“You tell me,” mocked the spirit. “I can only vouchsafe for the loneliness of life.”
“Then speak for yourself. My life remains cheerful.”
“Does it indeed…?” The sepulchral laugh tolled with the hollow chill of a death knell. “Is that why you guard that case like it was a loved-one’s casket? What does it contain that is so precious?”
Sir Arthur placed a protective hand on the wicker basket. “I … don’t know.”
“Don’t know, or don’t want to know?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me. I no longer have treasures to cherish.” The ghostly figure rose to its feet like a wisp of smoke drifting up from a smothered fire. “I wrote a tale once about a man on shipboard who keeps a clandestine container in his cabin.”
“ ‘The Oblong Box’ …”
“Ah, you’re familiar with my work?”
“An excellent story. But, so sad …”
“No less true, for all its pathos. How often have I wished to sink beneath the surface along with my dear departed wife.” As before, the image of the ghost began to fade; a flight of moths in the moonlight, the dust from their fluttering wings filtering down through the shadows.
“Poe, wait!” Sir Arthur implored. “Please. Stay a moment longer. There’s so much I need to ask you.”
“Alas, I have no answers …” The ghostly voice whispered. “I possess not a single truth to share with you.” Just as if the moon had slipped behind a dark storm cloud, Poe’s luminous form diminished, leaving only a trace, his vague nocturnal outline hovering in the corner. “I do know this … ,” he said, his voice a thin hiss. “The casket you guard is filled with sin. It reeks of evil. You may think yourself somehow separated from malfeasance, but you are wrong… . You are bonded to the poison… . The guilt is yours. It is … an eternal chancre … upon your soul …”
A firefly winked; the wolfs lonely cry lost on the distant wind. Poe was gone.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle felt very cold. He hugged his arms to his sides and shivered. Perhaps his conscience played tricks on him. The wicker picnic basket squatted on the table; insidious, malevolent, the bright scarlet bow bold as a harlot’s leering smile. He reached for the gaudy floral card, plucking it free from the ribbon.
“What magic is in store for me now?” he muttered, half-aloud, thinking all the while nothing would ever surprise him again.
He opened a card no longer blank. A crepe-paper rose bloomed in the fold. Below it, bright green script commanded: “Carry the basket out on deck. Walk aft to the stern rail and pluck this blossom.” It didn’t seem much of a trick. Some sort of special ink?
Sir Arthur followed the instructions to the letter. He donned a tweed coat, knowing the night air to be cold on deck. A brisk wind blew off the sea from the starboard quarter. It was dark and overcast; not a single star brightened the sky. The knight stood in the lee of a ventilator, the basket at his feet. He pulled the crepe flower off the card. A slip of paper attached to the stem bore a printed message: Look in Your Breast Pocket.
Conan Doyle harrumphed under his breath. It had to be a bluff. He hadn’t been wearing this suit on the day they departed. No possible way for Houdini to have slipped something inside when he wasn’t looking. He reached under his overcoat into the breast pocket of his Norfolk jacket. He found an envelope there.
Fingers trembling, Sir Arthur ripped open the gummed flap and extracted a plain white card. How did he do it, he wondered, straining to read in the dim light. “Throw the basket into the ocean,” it said.
All at once, the card burst into flame. Conan Doyle dropped it, instinctively putting his singed fingers in his mouth as he stamped out the tiny fire. Greatly alarmed, he looked around to see if anyone had noticed the sudden flare. Not a soul in sight. The afterdeck remained deserted.
Sir Arthur picked up the wicker basket. Five swift strides took him to the stern rail. The sea below looked black as the night. Without a moment’s hesitation, he dropped the basket overboard and it fell soundlessly into darkness.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
NEVERMORE is a work of fiction. Although several of the characters are indeed historical personages, they too are intended as fictional creations. At times, I have included as dialogue actual written or spoken opinions regarding spiritualism. In each case, the appropriate speaker is acknowledged and his words enclosed in quotation marks.
The action of the novel is set over a period of several months in 1923; however, I have taken certain liberties with actual chronology and for narrative purposes have borrowed events from both previous and later years. For example, the famous séance in Atlantic City took place in 1922, during Conan Doyle’s earlier lecture tour of America. Houdini’s underwater endurance text actually occurred in 1926 in the Shelton Hotel swimming pool. The business of the folding rule found in the medium’s cabinet involved a Boston woman named Mina Crandon in 1924.
For information on the lives and times of my characters, I am indebted to the following works
Botkin, B. A., New York City Folklore, New York, 1956.
Carr, John Dickinson, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, New York, 1949.
Christopher, Milbourne, Houdini: The Untold Story, New York, 1969.
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur, The Edge of the Unknown, New York, 1930.
Ernst, Bernard, M. L., and Hereward Carrington, Houdini and Conan Doyle, New York, 1932.
Gersham, William Lindsay, Houdini, New York, 1959.
Higham, Charles, The Adventures of Conan Doyle, New York, 1976.
Hoyt, Edwin P., A Gentleman of Broadway; Boston, 1964.
Silver, Nathan, Lost New York, New York, 1967. Silverman, Kenneth, Edgar A. Poe, New York, 1991. White, Norval, and Elliot Willensky, editors, AIA Guide to New York City, New York, 1967.
Wilson, Edmund, The Twenties, New York, 1975.
In addition, I would like to acknowledge several friends for supplying me with books, information, encouragement, and editorial advice. My thanks to Hannelore Carter, Bob Dattila, Marsha Landreth, Charles Levendosky, Christene Meyers, Bruce Nims, Lyndon Pomeroy, Paul Sandberg, and John Tauranac.
WILLIAM HJORTSBERG
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © by 1994 by William Hjortsberg
cover design by Michel Vrana
978-1-4532-4659-7
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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