Half in Shadow

by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

  after a time, perhaps he would forgive her. They could build a life together, even with the memory of her having run off with that handsome guide standing like an impenetrable wall of jungle between them. It wouldn’t, really. Harbin’s smile became peaceful, almost eager. He was a civilized man, he told himself. The daily sight of his wife’s smiling face would not, as Murika predicted, "drive him into madness.” Probably, after he forgave, her for this outrageous escapade, she would love him all the more, really love him.

  "Acu!” one of the Chavantes in the river-shallows was shouting; he had evidently speared a pirara—or else been bitten on the bare leg by a man-eating piranha, those murderous little fish that could strip a man's skeleton in a few minutes. "Acu!" they were forever shouting, these savages—the word meaning "Hello!,” or "Hooray!,” or merely "Ouch!" according to the events of the moment. Harbin smiled at their simplicity.

  Sighing, settling himself to wait and to forgive, the archaeologist drifted into a restless slumber, with the Chavante boy plying his giant fern once more timidly. His eyes on Harbin’s sleeping face were wide and shocked, and warily respectful now.

  All night Sir Cedric dreamed of his lovely wife. All the next day, and the next two following, he lay docilely on his cot, taking the last of the quinine and eating what was brought him without a murmur. A hundred times, sentimentally, he made up speeches to chide Diana, ever so understanding, for her unfaithfulness. She would cry, then fling her arms around his neck and beg him to forgive her. Which he would. Harbin told himself wearily, humbly. All he wanted was to have her back, smiling at him, smiling in the old way as if none of this had ever happened. A small prickle of conscience nagged him now and then, thinking of the Urubu’s gesture when he spoke of Mario. Suppose Diana loved the blighter? Had he any right to—? But what sort of life would she lead with a jungle guide? Harbin snorted. Whatever the rotter was going to get, he richly deserved! Killing a man, or having him killed, for seducing your wife was the accepted thing, here in hot-tempered Brazil. Besides—Sir Cedric gave a. hard laugh—he could say he hadn’t really given that order to the Urubu chief; that the Indian had misunderstood him.

  On the fifth day after the Vulture Men had set out, old Murika walked silently into his tent. He stood for a moment, staring curiously at the supine white man, then walked slowly over to him.

  "Capitao," he said softly, "you have given an order to the Urubu men, and it is not good. The Senhor stood at the forked trail, and he has taken the wrong turning.”

  Harbin started. Had the old blighter been hovering outside his tent, eavesdropping? He scowled, ordering the Brujo to leave with an impatient gesture. Arrogant old devil! Give them an inch and they’d take a mile!

  But Murika did not leave. His large vague eyes were troubled, and again they had that faraway look. Again Harbin’s nose wrinkled as he smelled the acrid odor of ayahuasca, from the Brujo's pipe. Murika . was staring at him—and through him.

  "I see . ." the mellow voice intoned.

  " I see... a Lost City, which the jungle has eaten. There are great blocks of stone, carven with strange writing. The Smiling One stands before it, while the man takes her picture.”

  "The devil you say!” Sir Cedric pulled himself erect, glaring. "So the rotter’s not only stolen my wife, but he’s jumped the gun on my expedition, eh? Going to claim the credit for finding my—” His eyes glittered coldly. "Well, then—it’s good enough for him, whatever they’ll do to him!” he muttered under his breath. "I’m glad I sent them! I’m glad!”

  Murika said nothing, but shook his head very slowly.

  “They are but children,” he said quietly. "Do not condemn the forest people. Capitao, if they do not understand. They go only to do the Senhor’s bidding.”

  Harbin nodded impatiently, eyes narrowed. “All right. So I told them to kill him! What’s it to you, you shriveled-up old fool?” he snapped, waving Murika from his tent. "Get out of here! They should be back here with my wife by tomorrow at sundown—and that’s all I want!” he muttered. "I—I’ll never let her out of my sight again, and that’s certain! Romantic child. Doesn’t know her own mind.”

  He reached for his gourd of matte, sipped at it, then lay still. Through the long sweltering jungle-night he lay, sleeping little, his heart pounding with eagerness. Through the steaming day he waited, trying to peruse the old magazine he had read through twice already. The pain in his ribs had subsided now; the broken ends of bone were knitting again. Well, the devil take his confounded ribs! Tomorrow he’d have the bearers lift him into the boat, and he and Diana would go back to civilization. They'd follow the river, even if it took longer. He’d not keep her here in this green hell another day longer than necessary. Back at Belem, in a decent hotel, he’d make her forget all about Mario. He’d shower her with presents, make subtle love to her.

  ABRUPTLY, a cry reached his ears. He had been straining for the sound, praying for it to come. The Urubus were back. Now, darting to the tent opening, his Chavante boy turned and nodded, wide-eyed and subdued.

  "Capitao?” he announced, in a respectful whisper; almost as he addressed the Brujo, Harbin noted with a grin of self-satisfaction.

  "Capitao? The—the Senhor Mario is not with them. The three bearers of our tribe were slain, or escaped. But—the Smiling One, they have brought back, as the Senhor ordered.”'

  “Oh? Good, good!” Sir Cedric, mopped at his face, nervous and eager. "Have they landed? Send them in here. Hurry! Hurry!” He braced himself for the sight of his wife, perhaps being dragged angrily in between two grinning Urubus. But the chief came in alone, to present him with a crumpled sheet of paper. Harbin frowned, reading it swiftly. His heart leaped. It was a note Diana had evidently been writing to him when the Vulture Men overtook them at the Lost City; a note proving her innocence, her loyalty, the love he had doubted.

  Flushing, miserably ashamed but grateful, Harbin’s lips moved, reading:

  "My darling—

  I’m sending this message back by one of the Chavantes. By now you must know we didn’t go to Matura, and never planned to go. I persuaded Mario to take me on to your Lost City, so your expedition need not be a flop. My dear, it seemed to mean so much to you, and I couldn’t bear to see you looking so disgusted with yourself. I didn’t tell you because I knew you'd stop me from trying it alone.

  Mario has taken some pictures, and I’ve copied a few hieroglyphics off the stones, also some pottery. Darling, you and Lieutenant Colonel Fawcett and your silly paper in Rio were right. There’s a sort of temple here, Inca, I believe. The altar stone, for sacrifice, is inlaid with gold and silver—I wish you could see it. But I've made maps, and we can come back after your ribs ha—"

  The note broke off, significantly. Sir Cedric raised his eyes, looking up at the grinning Urubu beaming down at him like an evil stunted child of some forest-demon. Again he nodded happily, pleased to have carried out the Capitao’s orders so well. Again he made the throat-cutting gesture— and suddenly, like a cold hand on his heart, Sir Cedric remembered what the Inspector of Indians had said about the Urubu tribe. Not a history of cannibalism. Of headhunting!

  Harbin swallowed on a dry throat. What had he caused his young wife to witness, what horrible rites? Would she ever forgive him, ever look at him again without a shiver of revulsion? Would she?

  "Rissante?” he asked hoarsely. "Where’s —where’s my wife?” He made the sign of a woman’s body in the air hurriedly, pointing to himself. "Tell her to come in! Bring her here! Quickly!”

  The Urubu grinned evilly, nodding several times like a small boy proud of the homework he was handing in to Teacher. He called out a few words of his dialect, and one of the other Indians entered, carrying a small wicker basket.

  Even before he jerked off the lid and saw the shrunken thing inside—Tips stitched together in a hideous travesty of a smile, the long blond hair unbound and carefully brushed clean of blood-flecks—Harbin began to scream...

  A Death Crown for Mr. Hapwor
thy

  JONATHAN HAPWORTHY was not long for this world, four competent doctors had assured him. (A coronary condition.) But, as he was in his seventies, this did not disturb Mr. Hap-worthy a great deal. He expected to die sometime; everyone did, and the terrors of hellfire did not frighten him. Mr. Hapworthy was an atheist—when he thought of religion at all as anything more than an interesting study in contrasts between, say, what the Buddhists and the Zoroastrians believe. He was a student of all theologies, but privately he did not for a moment believe in the hereafter.

  When the body broke down, "was his opinion, it simply stopped like a good watch that has ticked its last tick. Sometimes, rather wistfully, he wished that he did believe in a life after death; for it seemed to him that far too many people died before they were half finished living. But he had uncovered no facts in any of his studies with which he- could convince himself— and Mr. Hapworthy believed only in the known and proven; though, for amusement, he liked to dabble in the supernatural.

  However, disbelief in a system of rewards: and punishments after death did not give one the right, he felt, to act like a stinker while one was among the living— if only because it was a damned stupid way. to live. He believed in everyone’s doing whatever he liked, so long as it did not interfere too irreparably with the rights of others. And by that creed he lived: a tall dignified old gentleman, at the age of seventy-four; with neat mild features, carefully parted white hair, and a pedantic way of speaking that reminded one of an old-school professor. He had never married, was an orphan, had few intimate friends, and seldom fraternized with anyone other than the sad-eyed Labrador retriever that trotted at his heels always. He had but one hobby— collecting amulets and charms; and he had but one ambition—to bequeath said collection to the Smithsonian Institute, and thereby perpetuate the name of Hapworthy in the same way that Mr. Carnegie had left his name for posterity to read above library doors all over the country.

  Now, in his neat modest apartment in Washington, he sat gloating delicately over the showcases that, lined every wall. It was his habit just before lunch to work up an appetite by looking over his treasures and reminding himself that no other single individual in the world had in his possession so many authentic curios pertaining to ancient, medieval, and modern magic. It did not occur to Mr. Hapworthy to connect the fact that he had already lived three years longer than the doctors said he could, with the fact that he had in his collection every known health-amulet in existence since the history of man. Nor did it strike him as significant that, the very day he had acquired a certain odd-looking gray rock, purported to be tire immemorial "Philosopher’s Stone’’ which could turn all base metals into gold, he had come into a sizable fortune from an uncle he never knew he had. By no means did it occur to him that, ever since his purchase of a peculiar bright gem, said to have been pried from the girdle of Venus, strange women often followed him on the street and were known to smile at him unduly...

  NONE of these things occurred to Mr. Hapworthy, and he would have laughed dryly, had anyone mentioned such ideas. Like religion, contiguous magic was something other people could believe in if they liked. Jonathan Hapworthy merely collected them.

  Putting on his hat at a square angle and taking up his cane, he made one more circle of his apartment living room, flicking dust from a tray of Egyptian scarab's, examining a display of High John the Conqueror roots for signs of rot, and polishing the tarnish from a silver evil-eye charm that dated back to the Borgia era. There was nothing, Mr. Hapworthy thought proudly, that he did not have in the way of talisman purported to draw all good things to, and fend all bad things from, their possessor. One day the name "Jonathan Hapworthy’’ would be a synonym for knowledge of the supernatural, as one immediately thought "snakes’’ when one said "Ditmars.” With his collection would go the book he was writing On the subject. Perhaps Smithsonian would give him a whole room in the museum, since he planned to endow it himself.

  "Ah, well. Come along, Trevo,’’ he called to his dog. "Lunch!”

  Humming cheerfully to himself, Mr. Hapworthy strolled to the elevator and walked in. The cage did not descend at once, and he frowned in slight annoyance at the gawky hillbilly who had been hired during the illness of the regular operator. "Well? Come, come, my good lad,” Mr.

  Hapworthy prodded gently. "If I’m laid to lunch, I shan’t get a seat...."

  The boy turned, flushing in apology, and fumbled with a small candy-box he had been peering into with such absorption that he did not see his passenger enter. Now, clumsily, he tried to shut the box and start the elevator with one gesture—the. result being that box and contents tumbled to the floor at Mr. Hapworthy’s feet. Being a polite man, he bent to retrieve it... and was startled to see a large round ball of white feathers, packed tight, each feather overlaying the whole as smoothly as a bird’s wing. He reached for it, curious, but the boy cried out sharply:

  "Don’t! D-don’t touch that, mister! Not afore ye say 'Matthew, Mark, Luke, John . . I seen a man drap dead that-a-way, when I was a- young’n!"

  MR. HAPWORTHY withdrew his hand, amused, and. allowed the boy to pick up his own belongings. His bored blue eyes had brightened visibly at the other’s words, as the sad-eyed; hunting dog at his leg might have perked up at the faraway honk of a mallard.

  "What on earth is that thing?” he asked eagerly.. "Some sort of hoodoo?"

  The boy looked pained. "Nawsuh.. Hoodoos is for negros and such! This-heah’s a holy sign, belongin’ to my Granny. She sont it to me to carry home to my maw when I go... Ain’t no mail de-livery closer’n ten mile from our cabin, and Maw she’s down in her back, cain’t walk hardly no piece...”

  Mr. Hapworthy, who was not versed in backwoods dialect, translated this with some difficulty. "Yes, but... what is it?” he persisted. "How did those feathers get packed together like that? Are they glued?"

  "Nawsuhl” The boy looked actively shocked. "You ever try to glue ary bunch o’ feathers together?... The angels done this. Mean you ain’t got nary death-crown in your family? I swannee!” He clucked his tongue in sympathy, eyeing Mr. Hapworthy with pity not unmixed with disapproval. "I reckon,” he commented, "none o’ yore folks ever got to Glory. Hit ain’t many of our’n," he admitted kindly. "Jest Grand-paw. Pap, being as he died drunk in a ditch, never had his head on nary pillow. Don’t reckon it’d a-done no good if he had, him bein’ a sinner ail his born days.”

  Mr. Hapworthy choked, but managed to keep a straight face as the elevator sank smoothly downward. "I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” he murmured. "Where do you get these... er... death crowns? Where do they come from?”

  "Out’n the. pillow where a good soul lays his head when he dies,” the mountain boy said simply. "I reckon the angels ball up the feathers that-a-way, makin’ a set o’ wings in a hurry for the sperrit to fly to Heaven. When there’s one in the pillow, it's sure a comfort to the famibly, knowin’ their kin got to Glory all right...

  Only by faking a fit of coughing was Mr. Hapworthy able to cover his mirth this time. He mopped his eyes with a silk handkerchief, polished his pince-nez, and set it firmly back on his nose. Then a canny gleam came into his eye.

  "I don’t suppose,” he asked caiitiously, “that you’d care to sell that... er... death-crown of yours? For, say, fifty dollars?”

  He saw the boy’s eyes widen at the sum mentioned,..perhaps more money than he had ever owned in his. life. But the square chin came up, lips set in stubborn defense.

  "Nawsuh. I don’t reckon anybuddy’d sell ary death-crown, out’n their fambly. ’ Why, it’s be like, like sellin’ the gravestone off’n a grave!”

  "Oh... Oh, I see.” Mr. Hapworthy looked dashed, but he had by no means given up. He had only begun to fight! He was off on the quest of a new rare amulet, surely one that Smithsonian had never even heard of; a brand new one indigenous to the Southern mountains, though possibly having its origin—like many of the old hillbilly ballads and expressions—in Old English tradition. This was
a real treasure, one he must not let escape his collection. Everyone had scarabs, fertility charms, health-amulets; but nowhere before in the learned tomes had he ever read about a death crown! A discovery of this sort could make him famous as a collector and a student of the supernatural. Mr. Hapworthy took a deep breath.

  "A hundred dollars?”

  The boy gasped, but set his jaw even more stubbornly. "Nawsuh. Not that we couldn’t use the money, with Maw ailin’ and all the young’ns to feed through the wintertime..." He hesitated, then shook his head positively. "Nawsuh. Granny wouldn’t like it a-tall. Nor Maw neither.”

  "Two hundred dollars,” murmured Mr. Hapworthy insidiously.

  THE youth cast a look at him, almost frightened. He clutched the box with its weird contents to his hollow chest, and shook his head violently. Then, as his temper started to speak again, he darted out of the elevator and vanished from sight through the service entrance, out of earshot and out of range of any further offers.

  "Oh, drat! These superstitious numbskulls!” Mr. Hapworthy exploded.

  The dog whined softly at his ankle, looking up anxiously to make sure his master’s anger was not directed at him. Mr. Hapworthy patted him absently, thinking in rapid circles.

  "I must have that thing, Trevo,” he muttered furiously. "I simply must! It’s a real find. Genuine Americana—while most of my talismans are of foreign origin. I’ve got to get that thing. By hook or by crook!”

  But frustration was his lot that afternoon, for on his return from lunch he found the old elevator man had risen from his sickbed and resumed his work. The young hillbilly, of course, had been discharged.