by Jack Mann
He saw MacMorn’s eyes dilate momentarily at that accusation, and knew he had not been intended to realize the passing of the lost time. “And how do I know what you did in that hour, or what instructions you gave the woman we have just seen? For all I know, she may be one of your shadows made visible, not flesh and blood at all.”
“No.” MacMorn was still smiling. “She is not yet a shadow.”
“You mean you would — take that life?” Gees almost gasped.
“To convince you that I have no need of Helen Aylener,” MacMorn answered, “there” — he pointed back at the room they had just left — “you saw for yourself is greater vitality, life more intense — ”
“But you’re contemplating murder!” Gees broke in. “This is the twentieth century, not the fifth — ”
“Are you sure it is not the fifth, inside these walls?” MacMorn interrupted in turn. “Or a thousand years before the fifth? And to weld another life to my own is not murder. I tell you, you are blinded by modernity, though enough of memory of things past survives in you to waken in you the knowledge of the old language — as I wakened it in the hour that you forget. And tomorrow, if you or any other make the accusation against me that you make now, I shall laugh.”
“Where is Helen Aylener?” Gees demanded grimly.
“How can I tell?” MacMorn evaded the question, and still smiled. “Go back to The Rowans — when I let you go — and ask there.”
“What do you mean — when you let me go?” Gees fired out sharply.
“You came here in your own time, you go in mine,” MacMorn told him. “Your knowledge is too great — I cannot let you go till my time of renewal is past. Your will is too strong for me to break, but in the hour I took and you forget, I bound it — bound you! See for yourself if I did not — strike me, full in the face, as your will bids!”
He leaned forward, his wax-white face within easy reach, and Gees wanted to strike at the point of his chin and smash him to the floor. But he stood as still as stone; he could not lift his hand.
“You see?” MacMorn spoke with quiet confidence, not mockingly or as if he wished to vaunt his superiority.
“What is this — a madhouse or a dream?”
“I should have wakened more of your memory,” MacMorn said. “Man, you might be one with me, not an enemy! No one thing you know or have, could give you such a summit of life as I gave you in one little drink, and I can take you up to greater summits, set you on the way to powers and pleasures such as your little modern self has not dreamed. I will open gates for you — ”
“And the price?” Gees interrupted him.
“Is for others to pay. Come with me, and see!”
Not because he willed it, but because some power greater than his will impelled him, Gees followed past the door behind which he had left Kyrle, and turned left at the angle of the outer wall to find that the inner, old wooden wall continued the corridor along to the back of that house.
A kilted figure — the man Partha, he guessed — vanished at the far end of this second corridor as Gees turned into it, but MacMorn did not go as far as the end. He turned inward, to the middle of the house, through even deeper gloom until he opened a door and revealed daylight striking down into a circular, central court, open to the sky, round which the house had been built.
Overhead, the wind roared, but the upward slant of the roofs prevented it from striking down to their level, and Gees stood beside MacMorn and knew he was looking at one of the altars of a very old people, the exact center of the ring of standing stones.
An oblong of basalt, twice the height of a tall man in length and of a width half as great, rose a foot or more above the ground. The floor was a crazy pavement of granite blocks, originally rough-hewn, but worn smooth by the many who had trodden about the altar since it was laid, bedded on a block of granite which extended beyond its edges for a foot and more.
There was a shallow channel in the granite, extending all round the black stone, and continuing at a slight upward angle to the edge of the wall, opposite the point at which MacMorn and Gees stood. It appeared that some fluid was intended to flow down and circle round the basalt block, but only the rain that fell thinly wetted the channel now.
The circular wall, some forty feet in diameter, was of weathered planks to a height of ten feet or so, and then of stone to the level of the roof, and in the planking were two more doorways, one toward the front of the house and one giving on the back.
“Little enough to see,” Gees observed, keeping his voice level. For he knew the significance of the stone, and knew too, beyond question, that MacMorn had seen and shared in the sacrifices made here, and that all the blood shed on such altars was no more than a cupful by comparison with the floods that had drained away from this terrible stone. Still more, at the very fount and center of the shadow magic he was conscious of thronging presences, a host of shadows pressing in on him, though outside the range of mortal sight.
“They are shadows. I live,” MacMorn said, with a note of exultation. “They, not I, paid the price.”
“I will not pay, and none shall pay for me,” Gees told him, and found that he had difficulty in speaking his defiance. “You have me in one way, but my soul is still my own.” He would have added: “Which makes me your master,” but kept back the words.
“So,” said MacMorn. “You will not enter my kingdom? I offer you entry, new life with me with the new moon today.”
“And I refuse. Take off this spell of yours and let me go.”
“After my hour is past — after sunset,” MacMorn rejoined calmly. “You see, I do you the honor to be a little afraid of you.”
“Then take me back to Kyrle.”
MacMorn faced about without replying, and led into the corridor they had left. The door which gave access to the circle closed of its own accord as soon as they had passed it, and, since MacMorn made no apparent move to close it, the secret of these uncanny doors was still outside Gees’ knowledge.
They went back the way they had come, and MacMorn merely pushed at the door of the room in which they had left Kyrle. Gees entered unthinkingly, and, realizing that Kyrle was not there, turned and threw all his weight against the closed door.
It yielded no more than if he had breathed on it.
CHAPTER XVIII
the useless journey
Somewhere about that time, Miss Brandon opened the door of the flat in Little Oakfield Street and saw facing her a slender, tall girl with pale gold hair, dressed in a gray flannel costume with pinstripes, below which showed stockings more orange-hued than flesh color, and shoes of white kid patterned with black strapping.
They faced each other, slightly hostile, in silence for nearly a minute. The caller spoke first.
“A Mr. Gees said he’d like me to call here,” she said.
“Ye-es.” Miss Brandon concealed her hostility. “Is your name Betty?”
“That’s right. Then you know he was expecting me?”
Miss Brandon drew back. “Come in, please?” she asked. “I am his secretary, and he told me you might call. In that case, he said, he wanted me to interview you and hear your story of the Bristol journey.”
“Pretty rotten, it was.” Betty followed into Miss Brandon’s own room, and stood looking about. People like Miss Brandon were not in her line.
“When did you get back?” Miss Brandon asked, crisply.
“Last night. I hung about there all day, and he didn’t turn up — the gentleman that asked me to go, I mean. It all seemed a bit fishy to me, and still I think it is.”
“I hope you got your twenty pounds, though?” Miss Brandon asked.
“Oh, he handed me that when he fixed it all up with me in the beer parlor. That was — but you know that part of it, though.”
“I don’t know anything, except that Mr. Green — Mr. Gees, I mean — took you down to the pub and left you there. And that you told him about this man offering you twenty pounds to go to Bristol. So if you go on from
there — what happened after Mr. Gees left you?”
“I see. You want the whole story.” She lit a cigarette. “Mr. Gees didn’t tell me why he wanted to know about all this, but he said there’d be something for me if I came and told him. I s’pose you know about that?”
“Four ten-shilling notes — I have them here,” Miss Brandon answered coldly.
“In exchange for the full story.” She opened a notebook on the desk, and took up a pencil.
“Oh, you’re going to take it down, are you?” Betty surmised. “I don’t mind.” She smiled.
Miss Brandon’s tone was still frosty. “If you will go on please.”
“Well, it’s rather a long story. It’d be just on closing time when my gentleman comes down the stairs and across to me, but there was time for him to order more drinks when the waiter turned up, and he got me one too. And he said he wanted me to go early next morning. I told him I never got up early, hated it, and he sort of fixed me with his weird black eyes and said it wouldn’t be any trouble, I’d find. Something like that — I don’t remember his exact words, but it meant that, and I knew I’d have to get up, too.”
“Do you mean that he threatened you?” Miss Brandon ceased her rapid penciling and looked up.
“Oh, no, nothing like that! He was quite pleasant, but it was more like that what you call mesmerism, isn’t it? I just felt I had to do what he said, and not anything else. I was to have told Mr. Gees about it — come here and told him — before I started, he said, but I just couldn’t. Not only because there wasn’t time, but because I couldn’t do anything at all except what that man with the black eyes said I must. I reckon it was mesmerism, wasn’t it?”
“Will you tell me what he told you to do?”
“He’d got a parcel with him, and he said it was the clothes I was to wear, and if the shoes didn’t fit I could stop the taxi and get another pair on the way to the station out of the twenty pounds. He’d allowed time for that, he said. It got to be closing time, and I took him round to my place. There wasn’t time for him to instruct me in the beer parlor. When we got there I opened up the parcel, and he showed me how the handkerchief was to go under the fur — it looked quite a good fox fur, in that light, but I’ll never forget what it was really. Makes my flesh crawl now when I think of it — ”
“Then don’t think of it,” Miss Brandon interrupted.
“Well, I was to dress in those things, and I had to wear the gray suede shoes till I got into the taxi. He insisted on that especially. I don’t mean he said it over and over again, because he didn’t. Only once, and quite quiet he was, but somehow he made me remember every word he said till I’d done what he told me to do. Then we went out again, and he took me to Grey’s hotel.
“He showed me exactly where I was to go and stand the next morning — yesterday morning. Then I was to move forward so I could be seen from the hotel doorway and hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to Paddington so somebody could hear me give the order. As it happened, one of the hall porters from the hotel came and opened the taxi door for me, but I didn’t look at him or thank him, even, because I thought he was just being officious and wanted a tip, which I wasn’t going to give him. He told me all that, and how he’d meet me at Bristol half an hour after the train got in, and then went off and left me, just as if I mightn’t have run off with his twenty pound and nobody the wiser for it. And he couldn’t do anything to me if I had.”
“But you didn’t,” Miss Brandon suggested in the pause.
“I couldn’t. I went back to my place and went to bed, and sure enough I waked up as he’d said I would. And though I just hate getting up early I got out and dressed as he’d told me to. It seemed as if I couldn’t help myself. I could almost see his uncanny black eyes boring into me and hear his voice telling me what I had to do, and I did it all as if he’d been there driving me. And the shoes nearly crippled me. I got to outside the hotel and told myself there wouldn’t be any taxis crawling at that hour of the morning, but one come along just as he said, and I stopped it and the porter opened the door, just as I told you. I got to Paddington and knew I couldn’t stand those shoes another hour, so as there was plenty of time I found a shop which was just opened and bought these I’m wearing now, and changed in the train. The others was a poor pair, and my feet being too big one of ’em begun to split across the top. Only just begun, but I left them under the seat. They were no use to me.”
She broke off and stubbed out her cigarette end.
“Are these the stockings you were wearing?” Miss Brandon asked.
“No. He said I was to wear the gray ones — this pair was in his parcel too. I wore the gray ones, but when I changed my shoes I saw they’d laddered as if I’d been through a hedge, and the shoe heel had rubbed a big hole in one, too. I changed them for these before I put these shoes on. But that wasn’t the worst of it. That beastly old fur. Ugh! I can’t forget it! I feel all crawly now.”
“Moth?” Miss Brandon suggested.
“It was after I’d finished putting on these stockings and shoes, and I was thinking how much better they looked — sort of give a finish to the outfit — the contrast, if you know what I mean — and then I felt something on the back of my neck. I reached up and grabbed it — I just thought a fly or something had got there — and it was a maggot!
“I can tell you that fur was off my neck and down on the floor before you could say Jack Robinson, and the sight of it just about made me sick. I turned it over with my foot, and the inside was fairly crawling. How it was I hadn’t felt anything before I can’t think, the state that fur was in. Maggots, and — and lice! Little white lice, dozens of ’em.
“It must have been the warmth waked ’em all up when I put the thing on. I snatched the handkerchief off my neck and looked at it, and there was lice on that top! I can tell you that window went down and the fur and the handkerchief both went out like lightning.
“Well,” she went on, “I was thoroughly disgusted, and felt half naked with this low-necked blouse I’m wearing now, and not so much as a string of Woolworth pearls round my neck, and I knew what I was going to tell that black-eyed beauty when he met me at Bristol, landing me with rotten things like that.
“Well, the train got in, and I made straight for a hotel and got a bath. I went over every inch of this costume, but you can see for yourself it’s quite new, and there wasn’t anything got on it.”
“And then?” Miss Brandon asked.
“Then I went back and looked for him as he’d told me, but there was no sign of him. I waited about there till a station policeman began to look at me all suspicious, so I went to him and asked him if he’d seen anything of my uncle who’d told me to meet him there. Of course I described him, black eyes and hair and chalk complexion, but I think that policeman had an idea I was pulling his leg. Then I went and had two double whiskies in the refreshment room, and felt a lot better, and when I come back the policeman said my uncle hadn’t turned up, but would he do instead when he went off duty? You know, they’re all alike — but no — you wouldn’t know.”
Miss Brandon’s color heightened a little. She looked up from her notebook and smiled. “So you didn’t see the uncle again, then?”
Betty shook her head. “I gave it up,” she answered. “I was near on eighteen pound and this costume and a pair of shoes to the good, and if he couldn’t keep an appointment it wasn’t my fault, was it? I hope I never see that black-eyed blighter again. There was something uncanny about him. I reckon it was mesmerism, don’t you?”
Miss Brandon opened a drawer of her desk, took out four ten-shilling notes, and handed them over. “There is a good deal of mesmerism in twenty pounds,” she said reflectively.
“Thanks for this,” Betty said coldly, “and you can think it was the money if you like. P’raps it was, some of it, but not all. The way he made me move about and do exactly what he wanted, and not think it a bit odd till I was in the train coming back. I didn’t think at all — I just acted
as he said I was to act, as if he was the ventriloquist on a stage and I was the dummy.”
“Thank you for coming,” Miss Brandon said. “I am sure Mr. Gees will be very interested in your story, which I expect I shall send on to him.”
Betty stood up, understanding the implied dismissal. Again she took in the furnishing of the room, and, for a moment, its occupant.
Then she turned and went out very quickly.
Miss Brandon went carefully over the story, in which the post-hypnotic suggestion was clearly evident — and MacMorn was a master hypnotist, at that. A chemist, too. Some compound had been used to render the shoes unwearable as soon as her feet warmed them; the stockings, too, had probably been treated so that a brief period of wear would rot their fabric. But over the fur and scarf, post-hypnotic suggestion alone had been brought to bear on the girl.
MacMorn had etched on her mind that she would see maggots and lice after she had got in the train, and feel the maggot on her neck, and she had both seen and felt, though in reality there was nothing of the sort on either of the things. Thus she had arrived at Bristol, as he had intended, so different in attire as well as in looks from Helen Aylener that, if an alarm had been given, she would have passed unquestioned.
Like Gees, Miss Brandon felt that something other than mere coincidence was working on Gees’ side, for coincidence was not enough to account for Betty’s meeting him and telling him her story. From the moment of his arrival at Brachmornalachan the first time, everything had been preposterous, unbelievable. If all that Gees had told her were to be credited, then MacMorn had had lifetime after lifetime in which to acquire and store knowledge, and had worked along lines which, although almost discredited today, resulted in powers that had produced strange effects in the past.