Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  As he pulled back the partition, he made a gesture with his hand, inviting me to look at the gods, and take my choice. He appeared still too stupefied and weary and stonily depressed to use any sort of art to make a sale.

  I followed his invitation, and picked up first one god and then another, looking curiously at their Birmingham craftsmanship. Finally, I lifted a bronze goat god that had first attracted me. It is rare, and should be worth something. I glanced up at Hual Miggett, but he was not even looking at me. He seemed to be listening, with a frightened, half-desperate look on his flattish face. Then, with a muttered ex-cuse, he stepped across the shop and went behind the counter. I guessed he had heard, or fancied he had heard, a sound from his son in the mummy-case.

  While he was away, I examined the gagules, or “lines,” on the goat god. They told me many decidedly unprintable things, which were extremely interesting, though repellent to the more restrained individuality of the modern and balanced person.

  I examined the “lines” round the base of the figure, and found the old secret sign “to open,” with a chased diminishing device of double lessening circles, leading the eye towards the locations of the concealed catches. I concluded that the boss of the human ankle bone, above the goat’s foot, and the significant inturned thumb of the third hand, might be worth investigating. I pressed on the boss of the protruding ankle-bone, and pulled the thumb, first to me, then pressed it away. As I did so, the bottom of the figure fell away into my hand, and showed an opening into the god, easily big enough to contain my head; for the god is nearly three feet high, and quite two in breadth.

  There was nothing in the cavity, and I pressed back the “lid” into place, where it snapped home with a faint double click. As I did so, Hual Miggett came round the counter again into sight, looking a little less anxious. As he walked towards me, I made a certain sign to him, and he stopped and shivered a little, in bewilderment and doubt. Then he answered the sign.

  “Brother,” I said, speaking quietly in my natural voice; and I gave him a further sign. And so, in a moment, he knew me.

  I said nothing to him about the secret opening into the goat god. If Hual Miggett did not know his business well enough to read the gagules, it was to no interest of mine to teach him. I continued to turn the god about, as if examining it; but all the time I did so, I was speaking, telling him my plan.

  “Tonight,” I said, “you must give no more than a little opium to your son. In the morning I will enter with a lady on my arm. The lady and I will examine your curios. Presently she will throw off her dress and hat and veil. Underneath she, or, rather, he, for it will be a man, will appear dressed in a suit of your son’s, which you must get for me now. When all is ready we will make sufficient noise in the shop to bring out the big Chinaman with the knife, who keeps watch in you inner room. Before, however, he can reach this man, who will seem to him your son, the man (who is an athlete) will race out of your shop; run straight across to the waterside, and jump into a racing launch which will be there, with her engines running. The big man will be sure to follow him, and every one of the watchers will do the same. The man, however, will be already on his way to Oakland, across the water, and, barring accidents, should be over long before any of them are able to get another launch.

  “Meanwhile, we shall have pulled your son out of the mummy-case, and while he is behind the counter, we will get him into the woman’s dress, and put the hat and veil on him. I will then take him out of the shop, on my arm, and across to my vessel, while everyone’s attention is taken up by the escape of the trained runner they imagine to be your son.

  “Your son will be weak, with the drugging he has undergone; but he will have my arm; and the distance to my ship in not great. Am I clear?”

  “Clear as the moon, Cap’n Brother, when there are no clouds,” said the Chinaman. “Truly—”

  “One moment,” I said. “Perhaps your ecstasy may be calmed a little by learning that this business will cost you not one cent less than a thousand dollars, plus the price of your son’s passage to England. The man who takes the risk will not do it for less. I have already paid him five hundred on account, and the second five hundred I am to pay him tomorrow, if all goes well.”

  Hual Miggett made no bones about the money. He pulled a wad of bills out of his coat-robe; and counted me out one thousand dollars.

  “His passage money will run a hundred and fifty,” I said. “That’s what the company charged last trip to a German hoodoo, who took the voyage home with us.”

  He paid me this also, while I continued to revolve the goat god in my hands, as if I were really in doubts whether to buy it, or not. This was in case we were watched. Finally, I asked him seriously what he wanted for it, as I have a weakness for that kind of thing.

  As I spoke I saw the money-greed show momentarily in his eyes.

  “One t’ousand dollars,” he said.

  It was worth, perhaps, five or six hundred, and as much more as he could get for it, as per Curio Dealers’ Creed; but I did not bother to argue with him. His sudden touch of meanness, considering the trouble and risk I was taking for his sake, sickened me a bit; and I simply put the god back on the shelf without a word.

  “The suit of clothes,” I said, and Hual Miggett went out of the shop. As he did so I slipped across and looked into the box at the mummy-case. It belonged evidently to the 18th Dynasty. It was black, with crossed hands carved in relief upon the breast, and the mask was a dull red.

  I lifted the lid quickly, and looked inside, and in that moment I believed that Hual Miggett’s son was not hidden in the mummy-case at all; for instead of the living body of a young Chinaman, I found, apparently, the thoroughly dead body of a mummy, all wound round and round eternally with age-browned bandages. The head and face of the mummy were wrapped tightly with the same brown ban-dages, in a way that precluded any idea of a living, breathing being within.

  And then, as I stared, I realised that the thing was alive. The breast was stirred ever so faintly under its swathings. It gave me a simply beastly feeling, for a moment, to watch it. Then, suddenly, I saw how the whole thing had been worked and I stooped and caught at one of the tightly stretched, age-stiffened folds of the encircling bandages. I lifted, and the whole of the bandages came away, in a life-size half-model of the human body.

  Cunning Hual Miggett! I saw how he had managed this most clever method of suggesting that the figure below the bandages was really wrapped in them. You see, if you take a mummy, and, with a sharp knife, very carefully cut through the bandages down each side, working right round the mummy, from head to feet, it is possible sometimes to work the brown, ancient bandages free from the mummy so that they come away in two half-shells (back and front) which, having become stiffened by age and olden spices, are a veri-table and exact model of the mummy they have so long enwrapped.

  Clever Hual Miggett! He had cut the bandages free from what I might term their original owner, in two full length halves, then, hav-ing, as he had informed me, destroyed the mummy, he had laid his son in the lower half of the hardened shape of the wrappings, and placed the other half upon the top of him, so that it appeared to anyone looking into the mummy-case that it enclosed only an in-credibly olden figure, wrapped in bandages untouched for many and many a forgotten century.

  Breathing had been arranged for by a few hidden slits, and the mummy-case and outer box had been similarly doctored.

  No wonder the searching Chinese had never “tumbled” to his hiding-place, when they searched the shop!

  I lifted the body-shaped skin of brown bandages right out of the case, and looked in. There was a sallow young Chinese-looking man inside, lying in a heavily drugged and extremely unwashed condition. The shaped shell of bandages was long, much longer than the young Chinaman, and in the space at his feet, under a piece of fancy sacking, there was the most magnificent carving I could ever have dreamed of, in old amber, of the nameless god, Kuch, of the Blood Lust.

  There is no actua
l name for this monstrosity; which is, indeed, indicated only by a curious, ugly guttural. It is known literally as the Nameless One. There is no real equivalent in the letter sounds of any nation for the guttural which indicates this embodiment of the most dreadful of the Desires — the elemental appeal of the Blood Lust — a lust that has been atrophying through weary centuries, under the effects of the Codes of Restraint, which are more popularly termed Religion.

  As I have said, there is no symbol, or written equivalent, in any language for the indicating guttural of this truly terrible deifying of the most monstrous of the primitive Desires; so that the crudely phonetic “Kuch” has become, literally, the name by which Western writers have alluded to it, in dealing with the frightful lore which concerns this embodiment of all that is behind every brutish impulse of man.

  And here, before my eyes, was a marvelously wonderful representation of the Blood Monster, carved from one enormous lump of yellow amber; with every last detail of typified vileness, reproduced with an amazingly wonderful and horrible skill of workmanship.

  * * * *

  I replaced the various covers quickly, and hurried outside the counter again; for I had heard a sound that might have been the big brute of a Chinaman moving in the inner room.

  I resumed my broken inspection of the big, bronze goat god; and presently, as I turned it this way and that, I was aware that the handle of the door of the inner room was turning quietly. Then the door slowly opened, and the enormous head of the big Chinaman came forward into the shop, staring round. He stared like a great animal; and moved his monstrous, ugly head and flat, brutish face from side to side, just as I have seen a dangerous bull swing his head, before charging.

  I had a feeling that the man reminded me of something; and suddenly I realised that his face, in some uncomfortable, unnatural way, suggested that of the god I had discovered at the feet of the man in the mummy-case. And it was just then, in that instant, that I comprehended the full extent, shape and quality of the dangerous business into which I was poking my Western nose.

  “Oh, you rotten liar, Hual Miggett!” I said to myself. “You rotten liar, to have let me in for all this!”

  It had come like a flash; but I had been pretty sure, since discovering the abnormal excitement among the Chinamen (made evident in the number and type of those who watched the house), that there was something more troubling them than what I might term pulled pigtail.

  It was this suspicion which had made me step across to the mummy-case as soon as Hual Miggett had gone for a suit of his son’s Chinese garments. The god, the Nameless One, was the real hub about which the chief excitement was twiddling. I wondered I had not seen it on the instant; but it was plain enough now — the brotherhood of the Nameless Ones; and the Nameless god! It was, at once, so obvious what the brotherhood was named after! And the representation of the “Kuch” in yellow amber was undoubtedly the amazingly valued possession of the brotherhood.

  The pulling of the President’s pigtail was all a clever but outrageous lie (oh, you liar, Hual Miggett!). The young Miggett had evidently displayed no such tonsorial learnings as his father had suggested. Burglary (preferably of valuable “godlike” curios) was evidently his forté! Being so confoundedly mixed of birth, I presume he had no special fears of a god so essentially Chinese in conception!

  And I had been hauled into the business, as a sort of édition de luxe of the Cat’s Paw…. Not much! I can understand Hual Miggett, senior, being so eager to send mummy-case, and all, abroad. But if I save his son tomorrow, the god shall certainly not come with us. I guess he deserves the worry of it!

  At this point, much to my relief, the considerably overgrown member of the brotherhood withdrew himself as noiselessly as he had intruded. I wondered what dreadful things the brute could tell of un-tellable Rites; and while I was wondering this, Hual Miggett returned.

  I took the two garments and the funny little cap from him, and nodded towards the inner door.

  “Monsieur the High Chief Executioner of the brotherhood just stuck his ugly head into the shop,” I told him.

  The man went ghastly in colour, and stared at me, as if I were something superhuman. I began to think my shot must have got a bull’s-eye.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing mixed up with people of that kind,” I told him. Then I stuffed the garments (they were very thin material) into my inside pockets, and the cap I folded small and slipped under my belt; for I was not going out of that shop, carrying any parcel of a size sufficiently large to make the watchers suspect me of being used as a vehicle for the conveying of their beastly god to some other place. I guessed I should have a bad accident, before I had gone the length of the street, if any of them got thinking that!

  “Tomorrow, about ten in the morning,” I said, and went out of the shop, without saying another word.

  They’re rum hogs, some of these mixed breeds, I thought to myself; and walked comfortably up into the city, quite pleasantly aware that a couple of the watching Chinamen were following me. They dropped back, however, near the end of the street, apparently satisfied that I was no one they were looking for.

  October 31.

  At ten o’clock this morning, I entered Hual Miggett’s shop, with a lanky-looking “female” upon my arm.

  Hual Miggett came forward; and, for a time, the “lady” and I looked at this thing and that, and bought one or two trifles. I observed that the Mixed Breed seemed enormously depressed, and scarcely spoke. He appeared to be pondering something, to the ex-clusion of everything else. Well, he certainly had enough troubles to make a man think!

  After a few minutes, I beckoned Hual Miggett to take a look up and down the street. Then I told him to see what the big Chinaman was doing. He opened the inner door boldly, and went in, as if to fetch something. When he came back, he told me that the man with the knife was sleeping on the floor.

  “Strip off smart now, Billy!” I said to the “woman” I had brought in.

  The hat and veil came off instantly, and the very ample dress followed. The result was a typical seeming young Chinaman, but lean and exceedingly muscular.

  “Over there, behind the counter!” I said. “Smart now, before you’re seen. Keep your gun handy; but for the Lord’s sake don’t use it unless you’re absolutely cornered.”

  I had a brace of heavy Colts in my own pockets; for I was taking quite some risks myself, during the next couple of minutes.

  “Now, Miggett,” I said, “get moving, if you want any of us to come through this with a whole skin. Out with that son of yours!”

  I had the dress up, ready in my hands, and Hual Miggett literally dragged the dazed lad out of the mummy-shell. Before he was firmly on his feet, I was pulling the dress over his head. Without waiting to fasten it, I dived for the hat and veil, to get his give-away head and face hidden. In a moment I had crammed the hat onto him, and dragged the veil over and round his face; then I hurried to fasten the dress. I made my fingers fly! If we had been caught in that minute by the big Chinaman, I should certainly have had to shoot; and then there would have been fifty of the brutes into the shop in no time; and the results would have puzzled our greatest friends to identify; for the beggars have an extraordinary penchant, as I might term it, for knife-work.

  About a minute later, I was outside the counter again, still with a female-seeming creature upon my arm. A dress and a veil may cover a multitude, well not exactly a multitude; but certainly they make most things look alike!

  “Are you ready there, Billy?” I called softly to the sporting runner, crouching behind the counter.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Then look out now,” I told him. “I’m going to bring out that big brute. Just let him see you, and then get away smart, or there’ll be murder done right here. Ready?”

  “I guess so,” was the confident kind of answer that pleased me. “The bigger the guy is, the better. It’s not him I’m botherin’ about; it’s the devils in the street.”

  I t
urned to the counter, and picked up a porcelain Mallet vase, which I looked at with great interest, and suddenly let slip, with an enormous crash on to the floor, where it broke into quite some pieces. I hoped it was valuable. Anyway, it did what I meant it to do; for the inner door opened swiftly, and the great bulk of the big Chinaman filled the doorway, as he stared into the shop.

  At the exact instant Billy Johnson, the runner, glided out from below the end of the counter nearest to the street, and tiptoed noiselessly towards the door, in full view of the big Chinaman.

  There was a hideous, inarticulate bull roar from the inner doorway, and I glanced towards the great, flat, swaying face. The eyes were glaring, like two greenish slits; and a little froth had blown out over the coarse, walrus-like moustache. There was a crashing of falling gear, as he leaped forward; for he had literally ripped one of the projecting counters clean over on to its side as he made his rush. Then the huge bulk of the great Chinaman dashed past me at a speed that was amazing, considering his size. As he thundered by me, I saw that he had in his hand a great four-foot-long knife. The dull blue glint of the steel shone just for one fraction on my eye; then man and knife were out of the door, with a second crash; for his great shoulder had struck and burst one of the wooden door-posts clean off.

  But Billy Johnson was away, thirty yards ahead, running like a deer, with a swift, beautiful, strong pat, pat, pat, of entirely capable feet.

  From all sides, as we crowded in the doorway and stared, there were converging upon him ever increasing numbers of Chinamen, seeming to come literally out of nowhere.

  The huge Chinaman was still, however, nearer to Johnson than any one else, and running with a grim intentness; his great head held curiously low.

  I saw Johnson take the tracks in half a dozen swift steps, and then he was heading straight for the water-side. I heard the sudden, deep brrp! brrp! of the racing launch’s exhaust, distinct above the roar of the growing crowd.