Weird Tales volume 31 number 03

by Wright, Farnsworth, 1888–1940

  Step by step Jed advanced. If only Ezekiel did not see him! If only the cow did not sense his presence and turn unexpectedly! Step by step further—Jed was tense with excitement. There was no midday sun this time to blind his eyes and fill his soul with a nameless fear. Nor would he be unnerved by the twilight stillness; it was always still at sunset, here in these mountains. . . .

  Ten feet now. The milk still swished into the pail uninterruptedly, the steady grinding of the cow's molars never ceased.

  Suddenly Jed tugged at his belt and leapt forward.

  "Got you!" he shouted aloud.

  But the exultant cry died suddenly into a moan of horror. The arm bearing the knife poised high for the blow, Jed felt something like an electric shock course through its length. Instead of swinging forward to strike the man in front of him, the knife turned in his hand, his wrist and elbow bent at a crazy angle, and the razor-edge steel ripped through the cords of his neck.

  Staggered more by his realization of the awful consequences than by present pain, Jed sank to the grass, while gouts of blood spurted from a torn jugular. His first mad terror past, he became aware that Ezekiel was standing over him, scorn darkening his features.

  "So it was you, Tolliver. Abner warned me—about you."

  "I'd have got you too — only Abner "

  "Abner was a good brother. He told me—weeks before he died—that if anything happened, he'd—guard me."

  Jed felt himself weaker. His head was strangely without weight, and objects around swam lazily in the pale twilight. He lay back on the grass.

  "Should have got you, Ezekiel— shouldn't have—missed," he murmured sleepily as the shadows gathered.

  He raised his head slightly to listen. Was that a light mocking laugh he heard in the grass beside him? He listened again, before the darkness came down. No—he could not be sure. . . »

  Vhe

  V.

  eakwood Box

  By JOHNS HARRINGTON

  San Pedro Joe found the secret that was contained in that intricately carved Oriental box

  '"■""% ETTER pay the cash," snarled

  B™^ sallow San Pedro Joe into the -■-^ telephone mouthpiece. The speaker jerked his head to one side and glanced from the cramped phone booth into the almost-deserted drug store, checking to see whether his conversation had been heard. It was late afternoon—a sultry and stuffy summer day.

  "That teakwood box don't mean much to me," Joe continued in a hoarse tone. "And if you want it pretty bad, I'll sell it—otherwise the thing gets chucked out, see?"

  Mrs. Floyd Wright's tiny, ill-painted cottage in a smelly Los Angeles suburb had been ransacked a few days previously, leaving bedding overturned, furniture stuffings tumbling everywhere. The teakwood box, to the fidgety old woman, far overshadowed in importance the amount of cash and the few pieces of silver which had also been stolen. Oddly carved and strangely arresting, the prize had been a gift to Mrs. Wright from her husband, recently killed in a factory explosion where he had been night watchman. He had purchased the box during a vagabond trip to China in his boyhood days.

  The teakwood container had never been opened by either Mrs. Wright or her husband. "Betty," he used to say while dozing in the parlor and studying the box, "that thing is jinxed, just like I was told. It's dangerous, leave it alone. There is a dreadful native curse on it.

  "I got the box from a streetpeddler in

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  Shanghai, who told me he bought it from a priest; he said there was a dire curse to anyone who opened the box, but that it would bring power and good luck to the owner as long as he did not try to do so. I always have said that the box was most likely stolen from a temple by the peddler, or by some other member of the street-scum parade," Wright would conclude.

  It would have been difficult to open the box, even if someone did want to pry into it, because its lid was apparently operated by a complex series of springs and pivoting levers. The singularity of the object, its weirdness and strange delicacy, gave it a curious value. When it had been made and by whom—what exotic sights the container had witnessed—were unanswered queries which added to the living personality of the teakwood box. An evil power, dull and half asleep, yet again glowing, awakening, seemed inclosed within the meticulously decorated teakw r ood. Though the Wrights had been almost afraid of the box from the start, they had nevertheless believed that the spirit which might lie within it would not hurt them if they did not molest it. for they had lived good lives.

  Some day, the spirit would awaken and strike, but it would not be at a time when they were about. Death, red, grinning, and yellow-fanged, was a part of the exotic treasure; it was not the death of Godfearing men and women, but the bloody, merciless deity of those who belonged in the realm of evil. The little wooden

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  ghouls which stuck forth from the sides appeared to be tireless, unearthly sentinels, waiting, watching for a suitable offering for their drooling master within.

  The stick-bodied widow, shut off in a little comer impervious to the noisy streets around her, had prized the six-inch-high box much more than anything else she owned, because of the eccentric affection her husband had placed on it when he was alive. Though he always feared the box, he would sit and watch it for hours, without uttering mpre than a phrase. One time when his wife had returned from shopping, she found him standing in the little yard, blanched and trembling.

  "Never, never, can we sell or dispose of that box!" he cried. "The devil inside told me so; if we did, he would do something horrible!"

  Mrs. Wright wondered whether her husband had concentrated for so long on the object that his imagination had given him that message, but because of the frightened look in his eyes she accepted what he said and did not question him about it. Wright never spoke about the teakwood box after that, but he sat with it oftener than before; his face, rather than appearing curious, had a grim, hypnotized look as he gazed in silence upon the treasure.

  Carefully dusted several times a week, and kept glistening with polish, the curio had rested in a place of honor on the living-room mantelpiece, where it sometimes glowed a mysterious, uncanny luster when a few stray rays of the sun penetrated to it from the curtained windows.

  But Mrs. Wright could not comply with the ransom demands of the thief who had snatched it and realized the esteem placed on the box by its

  owner, because of the obvious care with which it was kept. The old woman was sniffling softly into a tiny, lace handkerchief which she clutched in thin, ivory-colored hands.

  "One hundred and fifty bucks or noth-in'!" sneered San Pedro Joe. These old people got on his nerves. They were so damned irritating and slow.

  "But I can't—can't get that much money," trembled Mrs. Wright, her fingers tightening around the phone receiver.

  "You're out of luck then, old woman,'" deridingly returned the thief, and hung up. Ordinarily, he would have dickered to get the best price possible for the stolen object, even though it was lower than he first demanded. But in this case, it gave him a feeling of satisfaction to crush brutally the faltering woman's happiness. San Pedro Joe slowly stepped out of the phone booth, and quickened his pace as he neared the store entrance. He spat at the curbing.

  His pasty, selfish face was set off by thin, twisting lips. The black suit he wore was ill-kept, bulging in the wrong places. It was young Joe's habit to drum his fingers on any surface convenient when he was uneasy, and that was most of the time. His watery, cold blue eyes were continually shifting, weighing people he encountered. Joe specialized in robbing ill-kept, run-down homes; there was nearly always something worth his troubles, and then his victims seldom could afford to have much investigation concerning their losses. He was like a cunning spider feeding on bewildered, fluttering moths caught in his net.

  In half an hour Joe arrived at his apartment, located in a battered, two-story stucco in the southwest part of Los Angeles. A brief stretch of yellow, dry grass ran between th
e sidewalk and the

  WEIRD TALES

  plaster-chipped structure. Light from the disappearing sun was shining on the cheerless front windows. Leaving his poorly-kept coupe at the curb, he stepped quickly across the withered lawn and up the cement steps of the building to his rooms.

  After a snack of cold beans and white bread, gulped with some warmed-over coffee, joe brought the teakwood box out from the place where he had hidden it under the messy sink. Darkness had come and the moon had not yet risen. Billows of black, angry clouds were' scattered in the sky. Putting the box on the kitchen table, he stood back and regarded the thing. It appeared ominous and resentful on the scarred table-top under the white ceiling light. Joe thought he sensed a feeling of unearthly life in the booty before him. Someone down the hall was coughing hoarsely, and the thief felt chilled.

  Suddenly, Joe returned to himself and became intensely curious about that box. He considered what he had found out about it from Mrs. Wright, who, in her desire to get her treasure back, had breathlessly poured out the whole story when questioned. Maybe Mrs. Wright's old man had cached some precious stones or money in the container, conjectured Joe, and had fabricated the yarn about the curse in order to keep people from trying to open the box. The thief, flamed by his greed, decided the teak-wood curio deserved an investigation before he discarded it.

  At first, he picked up a hammer which was kept in one of the dish-closet drawers, but after a moment's consideration, he determined to try and open the box by its mechanism. Perhaps he could sell it to an antique-dealer after examining what might be inside. Yet had that been the real reason for his decision to use

  care? Joe wished that fool down the hall would keep quiet; for the first time in his life he felt uncertain, confused.

  San Pedro Joe was proud of his ability to do a neat job on breaking into houses, opening strong-boxes, and his conceit prompted him again to forget his forebodings and test his skill by attempting to discover the combination of the box; otherwise, being increasingly nervous, he probably would not have taken the pains which he did to open it so carefully. His fingers trembled—he licked dry, swollen lips. After working for some minutes, he roughly pushed the box from him. Joe imagined the curse, the words of evil, an idol guardian might have incanted on the one who pried into the sacred box, for perhaps it contained some treasured jewels or a temple secret, rather than being simply a hiding-place for Wright's pen-

  THE investigator eagerly, impatiently, bent over the shining teakwood again, as though suddenly possessed, and continued his manipulation of the curio's carved knobs and queer levers. For a moment, he thought he detected a slight, shrill cry, followed by a tiny, penetrating whistle. Sweat broke out on Joe's brow as he doggedly kept at his task, fascinated, now unable to pause. Shortly he-pressed an unobtrusive bump which had been revealed by sliding a ghoulish little figure ornamenting the container's front. to one side. The lid slowly raised upward, as though controlled by a hidden spring. The crook nervously pressed harder on the button he had discovered, in order to hasten the opening of the lid. He was waiting for something—his finger seemed frozen to the box, his whole body was stiffened. Sweat was trickling down his back, yet he was somehow cold.

  Suddenly, a sharp, biting flame burned

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  in his thumb, as though he had put it in a fire of hot coals. A strange numbness ran through his arm. He stared down at the table to see a neatly-concealed needle, probably hollow, slowly retreating into the side of the box; in the same glance he saw that the teakwood curio was empty, contained nothing.

  Blood was on his thumb, dripping from under the finger-nail, where seemed to be an inflamed, tiny wound. He heard a peculiar, spine-stiffening cackle, on the same penetrating high key as the whistle.

  First it came spasmodically, but broke down into a low gurgle, a sucking sound. The thief's heart seemed to bloat and swell, yet tried to beat faster; Joe clutched at his hot brow with clammy, weak hands. Young San Pedro Joe, a short time ago successful light-finger man, fell dead on the kitchen floor. The white light shone on his ill-proportioned, slight body. For a moment, there seemed a slight rustling. A dirty, filth-incrusted window banged open. But all was quiet outside in the hot, choking night air.

  o Howard Phillips Lovecraft

  Master-writer of the weird, essayist, poet, 1890-1937

  By FRANCIS FLAGG

  He lived—and now is dead beyond all knowing Of life and death: the vast and formless sdieme Behind the face of nature ever showing Has swallowed up the dreamer and the dream. But brief the hour he had upon the stream Of timeless time from past to future flowing To lift his sail and catch the luminous gleam Of stars that marked his coming and his going Before he vanished: yet the brilliant wake His passing left is vivid on the tide And for the countless centuries will abide: The genius that no death can ever take Crowns him immortal, though a man has died.

  c //ead in the Window

  (Adapted from the German of Wilhclm von Scholz)

  By ROY TEMPLE HOUSE

  What strange prescience had the bearded man of his approaching death? An odd little story

  IN THE art gallery of a North German city hangs a lurid oil painting which represents two Italians waylaying and attacking a third. I will tell you the history of the painting.

  In the nineties of the last century, a young German painter was living in the outskirts of Rome, in an isolated little house surrounded by a vineyard. One fine, bright moonlight night, after sitting over the wine till a late hour with two or three friends down in the city, he came home about midnight. He had to walk some distance beyond the end of the street-car line, through a narrow road that ran between high walls. He never came through that lane late at night without a feeling of apprehension. He was a poor man, he never wore jewelry, his modest brown cape and dilapidated broad-brimmed hat were very much like the clothing of many of his modest neighbors, visibly not the appurtenances of a man of means, and he had had no love affairs in Rome; so that it did not seem as if any sort of ambush was likely. He thought a good deal about his fiancee back in Germany, and he almost always carried a letter from her in his left inside vest pocket, just over his heart. As he walked home he was in the habit of whistling to keep his courage up, of talking aloud to himself, bursting out every now and then with "That's certainly a fact!" or "Yes, I think that's what I'll do!" And he was likely to call out at intervals to his little dog, a Spitz who 362

  never strayed far from his master's heels. He always carried a revolver on his person, although in all the years since he had acquired it, he had never once had occasion to fire it off.

  But when he came near his garden gate, he never failed to find himself shivering with apprehension till his slightly trembling fingers had the gate unlocked. He could almost visualize a big fellow gliding around the corner and stepping out threateningly in front of him. He always had his key in his hand before he had reached the gate, and he always pushed the key into the lock with nervous haste; on dark nights he would hold his lighted cigar toward the lock with the other hand. Then he would lock the gate behind him in a great hurry, unlock his house door just as nervously, light the candle which stood waiting for him to the left of the door on the uneven tile floor, try the door which led into the ground-floor rooms, all of them unoccupied except the kitchen and utilized as lumber-rooms to store his artist's supplies, and climb the creaking stairs to the upper floor where were located his spacious studio and his little bedroom. The bedroom was scarcely more than an alcove, and it always stood wide open into the studio, so that as he lay in bed he could see the great wide window and the starry heavens outside.

  His trip home on this particular evening had not been without disquieting incidents. Nothing very definite had hap-

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  pened, and he might have attached no importance to anything that had occurred if he had not been made a little apprehensive by the eery turn the conversation
in the artist group had taken. His Spitz had stopped and barked furiously into a linden-tree alley a few hundred yards from his garden gate. It was true that the dog had a nervous streak in him and often grew excited over nothing at all. A little earlier, as the artist was getting off the street-car, a very suspicious looking and acting man in ragged work-clothes had asked him how to reach the Valle San Giorgio, a lonely little valley with a chapel in the center of it, a sort of ravine which lay behind and below the eminence on which his house was built and which no human being in his senses would have thought of visiting at that hour of the night. Then, as he came through the narrow street between the high walls, he would have sworn he heard steps on the hard ground behind him. The impression was so strong that he turned and looked back more than once. But no one was visible, and it was only while he himself was walking that he seemed to hear the steps. They must have been only the echo of his own steps in the uncanny stillness of the night.

  Finally, at a turn of the crooked little street, he had come suddenly within a few feet of a man who was going in the same direction, but more slowly. The man turned and looked at him, then walked slowly away on a path that branched off from the little street. The painter had had only an indefinite impression of the man's bearded face. But his artist eye had taken in the squat, heavy frame, which stood out plainly in the moonlight, the peculiar swing of the man's walk, and even the wavering shadow which showed rather distinctly on the wall beyond him before he turned into

  the foot-path. When he had himself come abreast the path and peered fearfully down it, the man had disappeared. There were no buildings along the path, and it was distinctly visible for some distance. It seemed as if the earth had swallowed the man. Or he might have dodged behind a clump of bushes. But why-would he have done that? It was strange.