Weird Tales volume 24 number 03
Page 14
"~%T ou can well imagine the eagerness X with which I scanned the first newspapers I could get hold of. But there was no account in the morning paper of a mutilated body being found, nor in the next morning's, nor the next. As the days lengthened into weeks without a single hint of the tragedy, my relief gave place to wonder, and finally to a vague, nameless fear. Had I not seen the uninjured half of Jake's body lying in the roadway, I should have dismissed the matter with the assumption that it had been completely destroyed by the explosion. But the Moor is not so utterly deserted that such an object could remain unnoticed in the public highway for any length of time. It must have been removed on the same night when the tragedy occurred. But by whom? And for what purpose? But as the months went by without a single hint or rumor of the affair being brought to light I could only come to the conclusion—a fantastic one, maybe, but the only theory that would
explain the facts—that the remains had been carried off and devoured by some prowling animal. Gradually my fears became lulled into a sense of security. Whether his remains were above ground or below, Crazy Jake was dead and unrecognizable by this time, I argued with myself, and his secret had perished with him. My fears slept so soundly that the rude shock of their awakening almost unsettled my reason.
"It happened like this: It was a night in winter, six months, almost to the very day, after the affair that I have just described. It was intensely cold, and the snow, which had fallen heavily throughout the day, lay thick upon the ground. But I was cozy enough, sitting in my easy-chair in front of a roaring fire in the library of Moor Lodge, with my pipe alight and a recently published scientific volume on my lap. My wife had retired early in consequence of a slight chill, and I was alone.
"A faint, fumbling sound at the window made me glance up, though there was nothing more in my mind than a mere idle curiosity as to the origin of the sound. But the moment I rested my eyes on the casement I felt my limbs grow stiff with stark, paralyzing terror.
"Gazing fixedly at me through the glass, his face and figure clear and unmistakable in the bright rays of the moon, ■was Crazy fake — the man whom I had last seen a hideously maimed corpse, blown literally in halves by the terrible fulmina-tor whose secret he had been about to betray!"
Professor Felger's attempts to obtain possession of the formula mae
next month's installment of this story one of many
thrills. Don't miss it.
v a
3k
ale Man
By JULIUS LONG
/4 queer little tale, about the eccentric behavior of a strange guest in a country hotel
I HAVE not yet met the man in No. 212. I do not even know his name. He never patronizes the hotel restaurant, and he does not use the lobby. On the three occasions when we passed each other by, we did not speak, although we nodded in a semi-cordial, noncommittal way. I should like very much to make his acquaintance. It is lonesome in this dreary place. With the exception of the aged lady down the corridor, the only permanent guests are the man in No. 212 and myself. However, I should not complain, for this utter quiet is precisely what the doctor prescribed.
I wonder if the man in No. 212, too, has come here for a rest. He is so very pale. Yet I can not believe that he is ill, for his paleness is not of a sickly cast, but rather wholesome in its ivory clarity. His carriage is that of a man enjoying the best of health. He is tall and straight. He walks erectly and with a brisk, athletic stride. His pallor is no doubt congenital, else he would quickly tan under this burning, summer sun.
He must have traveled here by auto, for he certainly was not a passenger on the train that brought me, and he checked in only a short time after my arrival. I had briefly rested in my room and was walking down the stairs when I encountered him ascending with his bag. It is odd that our venerable bell-boy did not show him to his room.
It is odd, too, that, with so many vacant rooms in the hotel, he should have
chosen No. 212 at the extreme rear. The building is a long, narrow affair three stories high. The rooms are all on the east side, as the west wall is flush with a decrepit business building. The corridor is long and drab, and its stiff, bloated paper exudes a musty, unpleasant odor. The feeble electric bulbs that light it shine dimly as from a tomb. Revolted by this corridor, I insisted vigorously upon being given No. 201, which is at the front and blessed with southern exposure. The room clerk, a disagreeable fellow with a Hitler mustache, was very_ reluctant to let me have it, as it is ordinarily reserved for his more profitable transient trade. I fear my stubborn insistence has made him an enemy.
If only I had been as self-assertive thirty years ago! I should now be a full-fledged professor instead of a broken-down assistant. I still smart from the cavalier manner in which the president of the university summarily recommended my vacation. No doubt he acted for my best interests. The people who have dominated my poor life invariably have.
Oh, well, the summer's rest will probably do me considerable good. It is pleasant to be away from the university. There is something positively gratifying about the absence of the graduate student face.
If only it were not so lonely! I must devise a way of meeting the pale man in No. 212. Perhaps the room clerk can arrange matters.
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1HAVE been here exactly a week, and if there is a friendly soul in this miserable little town, he has escaped my notice. Although the tradespeople accept my money with flattering eagerness, they studiously avoid even the most casual conversation. I am afraid I can never cultivate their society unless I can arrange to have my ancestors recognized as local residents for the last hundred and fifty years.
Despite the coolness of my reception, I have been frequently venturing abroad. In the back of my mind I have cherished hopes that I might encounter the pale man in No. 211. Incidentally, I wonder why he has moved from No. 212. There is certainly little advantage in coming only one room nearer to the front. I noticed the change yesterday when I saw him coming out of his new room.
We nodded again, and this time I thought I detected a certain malign satisfaction in his somber, black eyes. He must know that I am eager to make his acquaintance, yet his manner forbids overtures. If he wants to make me go all the way, he can go to the devil. I am not the sort to run after anybody. Indeed, the surly diffidence of the room clerk has been enough to prevent me from questioning him about his mysterious guest.
I wonder where the pale man takes his meals. I have been absenting myself from the hotel restaurant and patronizing the restaurants outside. At each I have ventured inquiries about the man in No. 210. No one at any restaurant remembered his having been there. Perhaps he has entree into the Brahmin homes of this town. And again, he may have found a boarding-house. I shall have to learn if there be one.
The pale man must be difficult to please, for he has again changed his room. I am baffled by his conduct. If
he is so desirous of locating himself more conveniently in the hotel, why does he not move to No. 202, which is the nearest available room to the front?
Perhaps I can make his inability to locate himself permanently an excuse for starting a conversation. "I see we are closer neighbors now," I might casually say. But that is too banal. I must await a better opportunity.
HE has done it again! He is now occupying No. 209. I am intrigued by his little game. I waste hours trying to fathom its point. What possible motive could he have? I should think he would get on the hotel people's nerves. I wonder what our combination bellhoo-
i.
chambermaid thinks of having to prepare four rooms for a single guest. If he were not stone-deaf, I would ask him. At present I feel too exhausted to attempt such an enervating conversation.
I axn tremendously interested in the pale man's next move. He must either skip a room or remain where he is, for a permanent guest, a very old lady, occupies No. 208. She has not budged-from her room since I have been here, and I imagine that she does not intend to.
I wonder what the pale
man will do. I await his decision with the nervous excitement of a devotee of the track on the eve of a big race. After all, I have so little diversion.
Well, the mysterious guest was not forced to remain where he was, nor did he have to skip a room. The lady in No. 208 simplified matters by conveniently dying. No one knows the cause of her death, but it is generally attributed to old age. She was buried this morning. I was among the curious few who attended her funeral. When I returned home from the mortuary, I was in time to see the pale
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375
man leaving her room. Already he has moved in.
He favored me with a smile whose meaning I have tried in vain to decipher. I can not but believe thai he meant it to have some significance. He acted as if there were between us some secret that I failed to appreciate. But, then, perhaps his smile was meaningless after all and only ambiguous by chance, like that of the Mona Lisa.
My man of mystery now resides in No. 207, and I am not the least surprized. I would have been astonished if he had not made his scheduled move, I have almost given up trying to understand his eccentric conduct. I do not know a single thing more about him than I knew the day he arrived. I wonder whence he came. There is something indefinably foreign about his manner. I am curious to hear his voice. I like to imagine that he speaks the exotic tongue of some far-away country. If only I could somehow inveigle him into conversation! I wish that I were possessed of the glib assurance of a college boy, who can address himself to the most distinguished celebrity without batting an eye. It is no wonder that I am only an assistant professor.
I AM worried. This morning I awoke to find myself lying prone upon the floor. I was fully clothed. I must'have fallen exhausted there after I returned to my room last night.
I wonder if my condition is more serious than I had suspected. Until now I have been inclined to discount the fears of those who have pulled a long face about me. For the first time I recall the prolonged hand-clasp of the president when he bade me good-bye fronuthe uni-
versity. Obviously he never expected to see me alive again.
Of course I am not that unwell. Nevertheless, I must be more careful. Thank heaven I have no dependents to worry about. I have not even a wife, for I was never willing to exchange the loneliness of a bachelor for the loneliness of a husband.
I can say in all sincerity that the prospect of death does not frighten me. Speculation about life beyond the grave has always bored me. Whatever it is, or is not, I'll try to get along.
I have been so preoccupied about the sudden turn of my own affairs that I have neglected to make note of a most extraordinary incident. The pale man has done an astounding thing. He has skipped three rooms and moved all the way to No. 203. We are now very close neighbors. We shall meet oftener, and my chances for making his acquaintance are now greater.
have confined myself to my bed during the last few days and have had my food brought to me. I even called a local doctor, whom I suspect to be a quack. He looked me over with professional indifference and told me not to leave my room. For some reason he does not want me to climb stairs. For this bit of information he received a ten-dollar bill which, as I directed him, he fished out of my coat pocket. A pickpocket could not have done it better.
He had not been gone long when I was visited by the room clerk. That worthy suggested with a great show of kindly concern that I use the facilities of the local hospital. It was so modern and all that. With more firmness than I have been able to muster in a long time, I gave him to understand that I intended to remain where I am. Frowning sullenly, he
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stiffly retired. The doctor must have paused long enough downstairs to tell him a pretty story. It is obvious that he is afraid I shall die in his best room.
The pale "man is up to his old tricks. Last night, when I tottered down the hall, the door of No. 202 was ajar. Without thinking, I looked inside. The pale man sat in a rocking-chair idly smoking a cigarette. He looked up into my eyes and smiled that peculiar, ambiguous smile that has so deeply puzzled me. I moved on down the corridor, not so much mystified as annoyed. The whole mystery of the man's conduct is beginning to irk me. It is all so inane, so utterly lacking in motive.
I feel that I shall never meet the pale man. But, at least, I am going to learn his identity. Tomorrow I shall ask for the room clerk and deliberately interrogate him.
Iknow now. I know the identity of the pale man, and I know the meaning of his smile.
Early this afternoon I summoned the room clerk to my bedside.
"Please tell me," I asked abruptly, "who is the man in No. 202?"
The clerk stared wearily and uncom-prehendingly.
"You must be mistaken. That room is unoccupied."
"Oh, but it is," I snapped in irritation. "I myself saw the man there only two nights ago. He is a tall, handsome fellow with dark eyes and hair. He is unusually pale. He checked in the day that I arrived."
The hotel man regarded me dubiously, as if I were trying to impose upon him.
"But I assure you there is no such person in the house. As for his checking in when you did, you were the only guest we registered that day."
"What? Why, I've seen him twenty times! First he had No. 212 at the end of the corridor. Then he kept moving toward the front. Now he's next door in No. 202."
The room clerk threw up his hands.
"You're crazy!" he exclaimed, and I saw that he meant what he said.
I shut up at once and dismissed him. After he had gone, I heard him rattling the knob of the pale man's door. There is no doubt that he believes the room to be empty.
Thus it is that I can now understand the events of the past few weeks. I now comprehend the significance of the death in No. 207. I even feel partly responsible for the old lady's passing. After all, I brought the pale man with me. But it was not I who fixed his path. Why he chose to approach me room after room through the length of this dreary hotel, why his path crossed the threshold of the woman in No. 207, those mysteries I can not explain.
I suppose I should have guessed his identity when he skipped the three rooms the night I fell unconscious upon the floor. In a single night of triumph he advanced until he was almost to my door.
He will be coming by and by to inhabit this room, his ultimate goal. When he comes, I shall at least be able to return his smile of grim recognition.
Meanwhile, I have only to wait beyond
my bolted door.
* # * # #
The door swings slowly open. . . ,
Doming of Abel Behenna
By BRAM STOKER
THE little Cornish port of Pencastie was bright in the early April, when the sun had seemingly come to stay after a long and bitter winter. Boldly and blackly the rock stood out against a background of shaded blue, where the sky fading into mist met the far horizon. The sea was of true Cornish hue—sapphire, save where it became deep emerald green in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the seal caves opened their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched and brown. The spikes of furze bushes were ashy gray, but the golden yellow of their flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in lines as the rock cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till finally it died away altogether where the sea winds swept round the jutting cliffs and cut short the vegetation as though with an ever-working aerial shears. The whole hillside, with its body of brown and flashes of yellow, was like a colossal yellow-hammer.
The little harbor opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and behind a
lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westward in a serpentine course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence it flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old cut out its w
ay amongst the hills. This stream was deep at first, with here and there, where it widened, patches of broken rock exposed at low water, full of holes where crabs and lobsters were to be found at the ebb of the tide. From among the rocks rose sturdy posts, used for warping in the little coasting-vessels which frequented the port. Higher up, the stream still flowed deeply, for the tide ran far inland, but always calmly, for all the force of the wildest storm was broken below.
Some quarter-mile inland the stream was deep at high water, but at low tide
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there were at each side patches of the same broken rock as lower down, through the chinks of which the sweet water of the natural stream trickled and murmured after the tide had ebbed away. Here, too, rose mooring-posts for the fishermen's boats. At either side of the river was a row of cottages down almost on the level of high tide. They were pretty cottages, strongly and snugly built, with trim narrow gardens in front, full of old-fashioned plants, flowering currants, colored primroses, wallflowers, and stonecrops. Over the fronts of many of them climbed clematis and wisteria. The window-sides and door-posts of all were as white as snow, and the little pathway to each was paved with light-colored stones. At some of the doors were tiny porches, whilst at others were rustic seats cut from tree trunks or from old barrels; in nearly every case the window-ledges were filled with boxes or pots of flowers or foliage plants.
Two men lived in cottages exactly opposite each other across the stream. Two men, both young, both good-looking, both prosperous, and who had been companions and rivals from their boyhood. Abel Behenna was dark with the gipsy darkness which the Phenician mining wanderers left in their track; Eric Sanson —which the local antiquarian said was a corruption of Sagamanson — was fair, with the ruddy hue which marked the path of the wild Norseman. These two seemed to have singled out each other from the very beginning to work and strive together, to fight for each other and to stand back to back in all endeavors. They had now put the coping-stone on their Temple of Unity by falling in love with the same girl.