Quests of Simon Ark

by Edward D. Hoch

  The Quests of Simon Ark

  And Other Stories

  Edward D. Hoch

  FOR BILL PRONZINI

  Contents

  Introduction

  Village of the Dead

  The Man from Nowhere

  The Vicar of Hell

  II

  III

  IV

  The Judges of Hades

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  Sword For a Sinner

  The Treasure of Jack the Ripper

  The Mummy from the Sea

  The Unicorn’s Daughter

  The Witch of Park Avenue

  INTRODUCTION

  “VILLAGE OF THE DEAD” was the first story i ever published. It appeared on September 26, 1955, in the December 1955 issue of Famous Detective Stories, one of the last of the old pulp magazines. I was 25 years old at the time.

  The origin of the plot for “Village of the Dead” is still fresh in my memory, though it took shape more than thirty years ago. During the summer of 1953, I was at a beach in Rye, New York with a girl I was dating at the time. The beach was at a large amusement park called Playland, and excursion boats came across Long Island Sound from nearby ports to deposit visitors for the day. As we rested on the sand in the late afternoon, I noticed that hundreds of people were making their way onto a long pier that stretched into the Sound. There was no boat in sight, and it seemed for a few moments that they were marching lemming-like to their deaths. The boat soon came, of course, and no one jumped off the pier, but the idea stuck in my mind. The pier became a cliff when research uncovered the North African cult of the Circumcellions, whose followers sometimes cast themselves off cliffs.

  For a plot like this I knew at once that I needed an unusual—almost mystical—protagonist. I chose Simon Ark, whom I’d used a year earlier in one of my scores of unpublished stories. But this time I gave him a nameless narrator to serve as a Boswell/Watson figure. The story made the rounds of mystery magazines without immediate success. In those days, long before Jonestown, the idea of a modern cult leader forcing his followers to commit mass suicide struck most editors as unbelievably bizarre. Happily, the story finally reached the desk of Robert A. W. Lowndes, then editing Famous Detective Stories and several other magazines for Columbia Publications. Lowndes was a long-time admirer of psychic detectives such as William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, Seabury Quinn’s Jules de Grandin, and Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, and perhaps he saw something in Simon Ark that reminded him of these earlier sleuths. In any event, the story was featured on the magazine’s cover and Lowndes indicated he wanted more Simon Ark adventures. My career as a mystery writer was launched.

  The earlier, unpublished Ark story became the second one to appear in Famous Detective Stories. I’ve omitted it from this collection because its third-person narration from Simon Ark’s viewpoint seems not in keeping with the series as it evolved. Other early stories in which the character was squeezed into the mold of a private detective are likewise omitted. But several more of Ark’s early adventures are here, and I hope the reader will be properly indulgent about these samples of my writing apprenticeship.

  When Columbia’s mystery magazines ceased publication, Simon Ark found a home with Hans Stefan Santesson at The Saint Mystery Magazine and The Saint Mystery Library. But by the mid-1960s the series was dormant as I turned my attention to other types of plots and series characters. Strangely enough, the memory of Simon Ark lived on with readers, and I found mention of him in fan publications—including even a letter speculating upon the meaning of the name Gidaz, the location of Simon’s first adventure. (I had just discovered Voltaire’s Zadig, and spelt the title backwards.)

  In 1971 came two paperback collections of Ark stories, and a television option. I revived the character briefly for two stories and then dropped him once again. By that time I was appearing regularly in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Ark had never been one of Fred Dannay’s favorite characters. Finally, in 1978, I came up with a plot idea that called out for Simon’s return. This time Fred Dannay agreed, and “The Treasure of Jack the Ripper” became the first Ark to appear in the pages of EQMM. The series was reborn and over the next several years appeared regularly in EQMM and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

  In this collection I have included what seem to me to be the best of the 39 Simon Ark stories published to date, dividing them between the early and later adventures. If there is a single theme that runs through them all, it is that of a quest. Sometimes it is a quest for a missing book or manuscript, or a lost treasure. Always, in the mind of Simon Ark, it is a quest for Satan and his works. The stories are not fantasies, however, and the solution to the mystery is always rational. In my mind, at least, Simon Ark owes a far greater debt to Father Brown than to Carnacki and the other occult sleuths.

  Is Simon Ark really close to 2,000 years old, as he claims? Certainly his name has a Biblical sound to it, but I make no speculations about the matter. I hope readers can enjoy the stories equally well as pure detection or as semi-fantasy. I have often felt that perhaps was one of my favorite words in the language. It is the perfect word for summing up the fiction writer’s technique, and I was overjoyed some years ago when I discovered that perhaps was the opening word in the first story I ever published.

  Is Simon Ark really 2,000 years old?

  Perhaps.

  —Edward D. Hoch

  VILLAGE OF THE DEAD

  PERHAPS, IF YOU’RE OLD enough, you remember the Gidaz Horror. At least that was the name the newspapers gave it during those early days when the story shocked the world.

  I was near Gidaz when the thing happened, and I suppose I was one of the first to reach the village. I went without sleep for forty-eight hours to get the story and then I never could use it. All these years I’ve thought about it, and I guess sooner or later I just had to tell someone.

  So this is the way it happened, that day in Gidaz …

  I was at the state capitol, covering a political story, when the flash came in. We crowded around the teletype in the press room and watched the words as they formed on the yellow paper: … THE TINY VILLAGE OF GIDAZ, IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF THE STATE, WAS THE SCENE TODAY OF AN APPARENT MASS SUICIDE. A MAIL TRUCK, ARRIVING IN THE VILLAGE THIS MORNING, FOUND THE HOUSES DESERTED, AND, AT THE BASE OF A HUNDRED-FOOT CLIFF NEARBY, SCORES OF BODIES WERE FOUND AMONG THE ROCKS …

  That was all. There was more to follow, but none of us wanted to see it. Ten minutes later we were in a car heading south, toward the village of Gidaz, eighty miles away.

  It was almost evening when we arrived, but there were no lights in the village. The streets and the few dozen houses that clustered around them were dark and silent. It was as if the entire population had suddenly vanished.

  And in a way it had.

  We found people and cars at the edge of the village, but the people were not toiling silently, as at the scene of a train wreck or a fire. They only stood at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the rocks below.

  We joined them at the edge, and I saw it, too. In the reflected glare of a dozen headlights and in the dying glow of the setting sun, I saw the bodies on the rocks below. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, men, women, and children. I could almost imagine a giant hand sweeping them over the edge to their death.

  Presently we made our way down the steep path to the bottom, and men began to set up floodlights for the long job ahead. They were piled on top of each other, among the pointed rocks that stretched upward toward the sky.

  “Think any of them could be alive?” I heard myself asking.

  “Not a chance. A hundred feet is a long way to fall, especially with rocks like these at
the bottom.”

  “Yeah …”

  And they began moving the bodies. An old man with his skull shattered by the fall, a girl with her neck broken …

  They carried them from the rocks and laid the bodies in neat rows on the ground. Soon there were only the red-stained rocks remaining. And I counted the bodies, along with the others. “Seventy-three.”

  “Seventy-three …”

  A state trooper joined the group at the foot of the cliff. “We’ve gone through every house in the village; there’s not a living thing up there …”

  “The entire village walked over the edge of that cliff sometime last night …”

  After that the deserted village of Gidaz was alive with reporters and photographers from all over the country. They wrote a million words about the Gidaz Horror. Seventy-three people, the entire population of the village of Gidaz, had committed suicide by walking off the edge of a cliff. Why? What had driven them to it? That was the question we all wanted to answer.

  But there was no answer.

  A New York paper compared it to an incident during the Napoleonic Wars, when a charging cavalry had ridden over the edge of a cliff before they realized their error. A national magazine brought up the legend of the Pied Piper, and suggested that some supernatural force had lured them to their death.

  But still there was no answer.

  The houses were searched for clues, but yielded nothing. In some places, food was still on the table. In others, people had been preparing for bed. It must have been around eight o’clock when something brought them from their houses. There were no notes or messages remaining. Apparently they had planned to return when they left their houses for the last time.

  But they had not returned …

  I was the first one to think of digging into the background of the town, and I spent most of the first night in the deserted building that had once held town meetings. There were records here—records and memories of days past, when Gidaz had been founded, by a group of settlers pushing westward. It had been named after one of them, and had grown rapidly after the discovery of gold nearby.

  I studied one of the old maps I found, and decided that the gold mines must have been almost at the spot where those seventy-three persons had plunged over the cliff to their deaths.

  It was while I was looking at the map that I suddenly became aware that I was not alone in the old building. I turned and pointed my flashlight at a dark corner, and a tall man stepped out of the shadows. “Good evening,” he said quietly.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is not important, but you may call me Simon Ark if you wish.”

  “Simon Ark?”

  “That is correct,” the stranger replied. “And now may I ask who you are?”

  “I’m a reporter, a newspaper reporter. I came down from the state capitol to cover the story.”

  “Ah, and you thought you might find something in the old records of the village? I also had a similar thought.”

  The man called Simon Ark had advanced closer now, and I could make out his features clearly in the light from my flash. He was not old, and yet his face had tiny lines of age to be seen if one looked closely enough. In a way he was perhaps a very handsome man, and yet I somehow could not imagine women ever being attracted to him.

  “Are you a writer or something?” I asked him.

  “No, I am simply an investigator; I make a hobby of investigating any strange or unexplained happenings in the world.”

  “How did you manage to get here so quickly?”

  “I was in the area, just across the state line, on another mission. I would have been here sooner, but it is very difficult to reach Gidaz by road.”

  “It certainly is. The village is almost completely cut off from the rest of the town. Ever since the gold mines died out, the place has been almost a ghost town.”

  “And yet,” Simon Ark said quietly, “there were seventy-three people remaining here. Why did they remain, I wonder. Why didn’t they leave this dying village?”

  “They’ve left it now,” I said; “they left it last night when they walked over that cliff.”

  “Yes …” And the man called Simon Ark left the ancient building. I followed him outside, to see where he would go.

  He was a strange man, strange in many ways. He seemed almost to be from another world or another time as he walked slowly along the dirt road that led through the center of the dead village.

  The reporters and the police had already searched the houses, but he seemed to be looking for something more …

  Soon, he had almost disappeared in the darkness, and I hurried after him. When I finally reached him, he was bending over a dark spot on the ground. I could see only by the light of the moon overhead, but he seemed excited by what he had found.

  “There has been a fire here recently,” he said, almost to himself. He pulled something from the ashes and attempted to brush it off. It looked as if it had once been a book, but in the dim light it was impossible to tell more.

  I had not realized the utter silence of the night around us until that moment, when it was suddenly shattered by the distant sound of an approaching car.

  “Someone’s coming,” I said.

  “Odd …” And a strange expression passed quickly over the face of Simon Ark.

  He pushed the remains of the charred book into his topcoat pocket and walked back toward the dirt road.

  Somewhere above, a cloud passed over the moon, and for the moment all was darkness. Then the night was broken by the gleam of two headlights moving slowly along the road.

  Simon Ark stepped in front of the car and held up both hands, like some ancient high priest calling upon the gods above. A chill ran down my spine as I watched him.

  The car, a light green convertible, came to an abrupt halt, and a girl climbed out from behind the wheel. “Are you the police?” she asked him.

  “No, only an investigator. This other gentleman is a reporter.” She noticed me then for the first time, and the tense look on her face softened.

  “I’m Shelly Constance,” she said. “I … I used to live here.”

  Simon Ark introduced himself. “You had a family still living here in Gidaz?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes … My father and brother … I …I heard on the radio what happened last night. I came as soon as I could …”

  “It would have been wiser to stay away,” Simon Ark told her. “Your father and brother are beyond all worldly aid now, and the evil of Gidaz still fills the air, mingled now with the odor of death.”

  “I …I must see them,” she said. “Where did it happen?”

  Simon Ark motioned toward the distant cliff and led the way through the darkness. “The bodies have been covered with canvas for the night,” he told her. “I believe the plans are to bury them tomorrow in a mass grave at the bottom of the cliff. Most of them, of course, have no living relatives.”

  We reached the edge, and I played my flashlight down on the rocks below, but nothing could be seen from that far up. In the light of the flash, however, I got my first good look at the girl by my side. She was young and tall and pretty in a casual sort of way. Her blonde hair hung to her shoulders, and helped to set off the lines of her face.

  “Tell me,” I asked, as we walked back to her car, “why did you ever leave Gidaz?”

  “That is a long story,” she said, “but perhaps it has something to do with this horrible thing. Come, come into my …house over here for a few minutes, and I’ll try to tell you about it.”

  Simon Ark and I followed her in silence to one of the houses just off the main road. It seemed strange entering this house that no longer belonged to the living. There were things, dishes and books and clothing and cigarettes and food, that were reminders of the people who had lived here. On the wall was a map of the gold mining area, where some of these people had continued to work until yesterday, in the futile hope of recovering the village’s lost greatness.

  It was the
n, as the girl entered this dead house that had once been home, that she seemed to go to pieces. She began sobbing, and threw herself into a big armchair to cover her face. I remained where I was and let her cry. There was no way to comfort this girl who was almost a stranger to me.

  I noticed that Simon Ark also left her to her sorrow and moved over to inspect the small bookcase in the dining room. After a moment’s hesitation I joined him and glanced at the titles on the shelves. They were mostly children’s books, with a few others that had probably served as college textbooks. One, an ancient history book, was stamped State University.

  This seemed to remind Simon Ark of the charred remains of the book he had found earlier. He removed it from his pocket and carefully examined it. A few charred pieces drifted to the floor.

  “It seems to be …” Simon Ark began, and then fell silent.

  “What?”

  “Ah, yes, The Confessions of Saint Augustine. A truly remarkable book. Did you ever read it?”

  “No, I’m not a Catholic,” I replied.

  “Augustine wrote for all men,” Simon Ark said slowly; “this is a very interesting discovery.”

  “Why should anyone want to burn it?”

  “I am beginning to fear that I know the answer to that,” he told me, and there was something in his voice that scared even me.

  He returned the remains of the book to his pocket as the girl joined us again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please forgive me.”

  “Certainly,” I told her; “we understand.”

  “I’ll see if I can fix us coffee or something,” and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Presently she returned, with three steaming cups, and as we drank she told us of her early life in Gidaz …

  “… I suppose it was about five years ago when I left to attend college. Of course, I was home for the summers, but for the first two years things seemed the same as they had always been in Gidaz. Then, in the summer following my third year at the University, I returned home to find things had changed slightly.”