He took the elevator down, nodding to the sleepy Negro who operated the car, and stepped out into the night. At the Seventy-second Street entrance he turned into Central Park, grateful for the relief of a cool breeze. Idly he wandered, his thoughts busy with plans. Thus Haggard did not notice the shadowy figure beside him till a low voice commanded, “Put up your hands, bud. Quick!” Instinct rather than logic made Haggard act. He whirled toward the shadow, lifting his hands in a gesture that was never finished. Something crashed against his skull, and the lights went out.
He woke up in a hospital bed. He said, “What’s happened?” and the nurse fled to return with a doctor. The latter tested pulse and temperature, and, after a while, talked to Haggard, explaining much.
“Amnesia?” the patient asked. “How long have I been here?”
“About a month. It wasn’t amnesia. Concussion. Your wife’s here.”
When Jean came in, Haggard caught the tail end of a whispered command from the doctor. He peered intently at his wife as she sat down composedly by the bedside.
“Yes. I’m fine—came out of it as suddenly as I went into it. Jean, the doctor ordered you not to tell me something. What?”
“N-nothing.”
“I’ll only worry until I know.” Haggard, through years of living with a woman he detested, had become familiar with her temperament. He used psychology on her now, and at last Jean capitulated.
“The firm—your advertising agency. It burned down the day after you were hurt.”
“It’s insured.” Only after thinking of that did Haggard ask, “Was anyone hurt?”
“No. But—” She hesitated.
“Well?”
“The insurance—lapsed. I don’t know anything about it. Russ Stone investigated; he did everything he could. You’re bankrupt.”
Haggard’s smile was like ice. “I’m bankrupt. Not the plural. Love, honor and cherish. For better or worse. Well, I’m glad you told me, Jean. You’d better go now.”
WHEN the doctor appeared, there was an argument. Haggard at last had his way. Physically he had been well for a long time, and he was completely cured. He was released from the hospital, with injunctions to be careful.
Careful? What had gone wrong? Baal’s powers were untrustworthy. Or—or had the whole thing been due to imagination? No; Haggard knew he was not the type to experience hallucinations. Well—he was bankrupt.
He taxied to look at the razed place where his advertising firm had once stood. Struck by a thought, he entered a drugstore and telephoned his brokers.
“Mr. Strang, please . . . This is Mr. Gardner . . . Yes.” Haggard had used a false name from the beginning of his dabblings in the stock market. Jean had a way of finding out too much—and Phyllis needed a good deal of money. Briefly, Haggard wondered about Phyllis, what she had thought when he failed to appear on the night following the accident. He’d phone her next. Strang was speaking.
“Gardner! For God’s sake! Where’ve you been? I’ve tried every way I knew to get in touch with you—”
“What’s wrong?”
“Can you come up here immediately?”
Haggard frowned. The brokers had never seen his face; he’d always used the mails. But this—“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll be right up.”
He found the building, entered an elevator, got off at the twenty-second floor, and walked along a marble corridor. He opened a door and walked into a reception room. The office clerk said, “Can I help you, sir?”
Haggard didn’t answer. He was staring at something behind the clerk.
It was a blue door.
The office was furnished in blue-and-tan leather. It was perfectly logical for the door to be of that hue. Beyond it—Beyond it, Haggard sat down facing a gray-haired, plump man—Strang.
“What have you to tell me?” Strangely, he was all ice now.
“Do you remember that consolidated stock—the oil field—you bought a month ago?”
“Yes.”
“The bottom dropped out of it the day after, and I tried to phone you. I was told the building had burned down. No one knew of a man named Gardner who had been there.”
“The bottom dropped out?”
“For a week. Then the drillers struck a lake of oil. In your absence I acted for you, Mr. Gardner. I had advance information. The stock you now hold is worth, roughly, one million dollars.”
There was more talk, but it meant little to Haggard. He was thinking of the blue door through which he had passed to attain his first desire.
Two doors were left—
FOR the time, Haggard kept his good fortune secret. He lived quietly on in the apartment with Jean, waiting for further developments. Occasionally he saw Phyllis, though now he detected flaws in the girl that had not been apparent before. His passion for her was dying. But his hatred for Jean flamed afresh. He was too much like his wife, and egotists cannot live together.
But Haggard rented another apartment surreptitiously, with a definite purpose in mind. He furnished it carefully and one night poured blood into a bowl that stood on the carpet. Baal came.
Somehow, conversing with the demon was not unpleasant. It made Haggard realize the superiority of his own brain. Baal was like a child—no, a savage, interested in everything. He tried smoking, and tasted liquor, but liked neither. Games delighted him, though. Yet there are few games limited to two persons. It was some time before Haggard could plausibly propose the scheme he had in mind.
This was a word-association test. Baal liked it at first, but soon grew bored before Haggard had had time to lull the demon’s possible suspicions. He vanished sleepily, and Haggard cursed. He had to learn the color of the third door.
Well—it was late, yet he wasn’t sleepy. During the past few weeks he had spent less and less time at the original apartment, usually staying at his new place overnight. But somehow the place did not attract him now. A walk—
Carefully he avoided the park. He turned into a bar for a drink, and there met several friends. Influential men, who might have avoided a bankrupt had they been sober. They lived out of town and, when the bar closed at two a. m., cursed in bitter chorus.
“Hell of a time—we’re just starting—”
Haggard remembered that his own apartment was but a few blocks away. He suggested it to the others. “I’ve got plenty of Scotch there.”
So they all went to the apartment overlooking Central Park. A strong smell of paint greeted them. The elevator boy said sleepily, “They’re redecorating, Mistah Haggard. Ain’t seen you for a while, suh?”
Haggard didn’t answer. A queer, inexplicable, tight feeling was in his stomach as the elevator shot up. He glanced at his three companions. They seemed to notice nothing amiss.
They got out in the hall. Odor of turpentine and paint was strong. The color scheme, Haggard decided, was atrocious. He paused before his door. It had been repainted.
It had been repainted yellow.
Very quietly Haggard took out his key, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. He walked into the room, his companions behind him. He switched on the light.
Russ Stone stood blinking confusedly. Jean, in a blue negligee, cried out and made a futile gesture.
“Gentlemen,” Haggard said quietly. “You’re witnesses to this. Adultery is legal cause for divorce. I’ll need your evidence later—”
IT WAS as simple as that. Haggard had wanted his wife eliminated without scandal to himself, but he had wanted her to suffer. And certainly Jean’s ego would suffer horribly under the publicity that would ensue. Finally, Haggard would be free, in possession of a million dollars. He could have Phyllis without complications, if he still wanted her—a point on which he was doubtful. He faced only the future, in which the third door lay.
Phyllis was pleased when he told her. “Come over tomorrow night and we’ll have a party,” she smiled. “I’m moving—getting a better place. Here’s the address. And thanks for that last check, Stevie.”
“It’s
a date. Tomorrow night.”
Yet Haggard knew he had no time to lose. He had an appointment to keep, and kept it, the next night, in the apartment he had rented surreptitiously. Baal came in response to the blood sacrifice. He was in good humor.
“I never discuss business,” he grinned, baring the menacing fangs. “Play that record I like—the ‘Bolero.’ ” Haggard found the black disk. “You said after I passed the first two doors you’d put your seal on me. What—” Baal wouldn’t answer; he was experimenting with a magnetic toy that had always fascinated him. Haggard’s eyes narrowed. He’d have to wait.
Two hours later he proposed the word-association test and Baal agreed, not realizing its significance. Haggard had prepared a convincing set of pseudorules for the “game.” He sat with a watch in his hand, eying it intently. “Music.”
“ ‘Bolero.’ ”
Two seconds elapsed between key word and response.
“Smoke.”
“Fire.”
Two and a half seconds.
“Cigarette.”
“Water.”
Baal, Haggard remembered, had yelled for a glass of water after trying a cigarette. The time was two seconds on this.
“Toy.”
“Fast.”
Logical response, Haggard thought, after a glance at the magnetic gadget. It worked that way. He went on carefully with a string of meaningless words, lulling Baal’s suspicions and establishing the normal time of response. Only twice did the demon hesitate for any noticeable period.
“Food.”
A. very long pause—ten seconds. Then: “Eat.” Baal had discarded the natural association word and substituted a harmless one—one that would reveal nothing. Had he first thought of Haggard or—the color of the third door?
“Open.”
“Book.” But five seconds had elapsed. Not quite long enough for Baal to think of a completely harmless word, but long enough to substitute a second for the first. Haggard remembered that, and presently said:
“Book.”
The seconds ticked past. Baal was silent. At last he said, “Dead.”
Haggard continued, but his mind was working furiously. The logical response to “book” would be, probably “read.” Yet Baal’s subconscious had warned him against that word. Why?
There were, of course, two ways of pronouncing it—in the present and in the past tense.
“Necktie,” Haggard threw in suddenly. He caught Baal’s startled glance at his own throat, and the demon’s pause.
“Choke.”
Haggard was wearing a red necktie.
Inwardly exulting, he threw in a few more key words to clinch the question, and finally stopped, realizing that now he knew the color of the third door. It was red. Beyond it lay doom—but Haggard would never open a red door, or go near one. Baal had lost, though the demon did not even realize it. Demoniac power was no match for applied psychology!
Haggard lost interest in the proceedings, though he disguised his feelings well. But it seemed hours before Baal yawned and vanished, with a casual nod.
THE ROOM was empty. And that was unendurable. With relief, Haggard remembered his appointment with Phyllis. He’d take her out—no, he’d bring her champagne, and they’d celebrate. Phyllis wouldn’t know the real reason, of course, but—that didn’t matter.
With two bottles of champagne under his. arm, Haggard dismounted from a taxi half an hour later. He tipped the cabman lavishly and stood for a second looking up at the purple, star-sprinkled sky. A warm wind blew on his face. A million dollars—and freedom, not to mention revenge on Jean. Haggard touched his forehead with an odd gesture. Beyond that frontal bone lay his brain, stronger than demons or their power.
“Cogito, ergo vici,” he paraphrased silently. And turned to the steps of the apartment house.
The elevator boy let him off at the third floor and gestured down the corridor. “She just moved in today, sir. Right there.”
Haggard walked along the passage, hearing the low whine of the descending elevator. 3-C. This was it. A door, he noticed, painted a soft gray. He’d be noticing such things from now on. Watching for a red one that he must never pass.
He took out the key Phyllis had given him and inserted it in the lock. Then he turned the knob and opened the door.
He looked into a bare room whose walls and ceiling and floor were green. Baal, naked and hairy, stood quietly waiting. Haggard didn’t move, yet an invisible wind bore him forward. Behind him the door crashed shut.
Baal smiled, showing his teeth. “Our bargain,” he said. “Now I shall exact the fee.”
Haggard had turned into ice. He beard himself whisper, “You didn’t keep the bargain. It was a red door—”
Baal said, “How did you learn that?
I didn’t tell you. Yes, it was a red door, the third one.”
Haggard turned around and walked a few steps. He put his finger on the gray, smooth surface of the door, incongruous in contrast with the green walls about it. “It’s not red.”
Baal was walking forward, too. “Have you forgotten the witch mark? After you passed the second door, I took a minor physical power away from you—”
He drew the back of his hairy hand across his mouth. Haggard heard the faint click of teeth and whispered, “Applied psychology—”
“I know nothing of that,” said Baal. “I have only my powers. It was part of our bargain that I deprive you of a minor physical power. The door is not gray. It is red. You are color-blind—”
THE END.
1941
DRAGON MOON
Out of the dark—out of the unknown—came Karkora . . . rotting the souls of the kings of Cyrena. For Karkora, the Pallid One, was a creature more loathsome than anything on earth. It was beyond good or evil, a Presence from the Outside—a shadow of which the "altar fires had whispered.”
1. Elak of Atlantis
Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night—
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?
—Chesterton
THE wharf-side tavern was a bedlam. The great harbor of Poseidonia stretched darkly to the southeast, but the waterfront was a blaze of bright lanterns and torches. Ships had made port today, and this tavern, like the others, roared with mirth and rough nautical oaths. Cooking-smoke and the odor of sesame filled the broad low room, mingled with the sharp tang of wine. The swarthy seamen of the south held high carnival tonight.
In a niche in the wall was an image of the patron god, Poseidon of the sunlit seas. It was noticeable that before swilling liquor, nearly every man spilled a drop or two on the floor in the direction of the carved god.
A fat little man sat in a corner and muttered under his breath. Lycon’s small eyes examined the tavern with some distaste. His purse was, for a change, heavy with gold; so was that of Elak, his fellow adventurer. Yet Elak preferred to drink and wench in this brawling, smelly tavern, a predilection that filled Lycon with annoyance and bitterness. He spat, muttered under his breath, and turned to watch Elak.
The lean, wolf-faced adventurer was quarreling with a sea captain whose huge, great-muscled body dwarfed Elak’s. Between the two a tavern wench was seated, her slanted eyes watching the men slyly, flattered by the attention given her.
The seaman, Drezzar, had made the mistake of underestimating Elak’s potentialities. He had cast covetous eyes upon the wench and determined to have her, regardless of Elak’s prior claim. Under other circumstances Elak might have left the slant-eyed girl to Drezzar, but the captain’s words had been insulting. So Elak remained at the table, his gaze wary, and his rapier loosened in its scabbard.
He watched Drezzar, noting the sunburnt, massive face, the bushy dark beard, the crinkled scar that swept down from temple to jawbone, blinding the man in one gray eye. And Lycon called for more wine. Steel would flash soon, he knew.
Yet the bat
tle came without warning. A stool was overturned, there was a flare of harsh oaths, and Drezzar’s sword came out, flaming in the lamplight. The wench screamed shrilly and fled, having little taste for bloodshed save from a distance.
Drezzar feinted; his sword swept out in a treacherously low cut that would have disemboweled Elak had it reached its mark. But the smaller man’s body writhed aside in swift, flowing motion; the rapier shimmered. Its point gashed Drezzar’s scalp.
They fought in silence. And this, more than anything else, gave Elak the measure of his opponent. Drezzar’s face was quite emotionless. Only the scar stood out white and distinct. His blinded eye seemed not to handicap him in the slightest degree.
Lycon waited for a chance to sheathe his steel in Drezzar’s back. Elak would disapprove, he knew, but Lycon was a realist.
Elak’s sandal slipped in a puddle of spilled liquor, and he threw himself aside desperately, striving to regain his balance. He failed. Drezzar’s lashing sword drove the rapier from his hand, and Elak went down, his head cracking sharply on an overturned stool.
The seaman poised himself, sighted down his blade, and lunged. Lycon was darting forward, but he knew he could not reach the killer in time.
And then—from the open door came the inexplicable. Something like a streak of flaming light lashed through the air, and at first Lycon thought it was a thrown dagger. But it was not. It was—flame!
White flame, darting and unearthly! It gripped Drezzar’s blade, coiled about it, ripped it from the seaman’s hand. It blazed up in blinding fiery light, limning the room in starkly distinct detail. The sword fell uselessly to the floor, a blackened, twisted stump of melted metal.
Drezzar shouted an oath. He stared at the ruined weapon, and his bronzed face paled. Swiftly he whirled and fled through a side door.
The flame had vanished. In the door a man stood—a gross, ugly figure clad in the traditional brown robe of the Druids.
Lycon, skidding to a halt, lowered his sword and whispered, “Dalan!”
Elak got to his feet, rubbing his head ruefully. At sight of the Druid his face changed. Without a word he nodded to Lycon and moved toward the door.
Collected Fiction Page 192