The Devil in Manuscript And Other Tales of Forbidden Books

by Osie Turner

  My caller proved to be Rupert Farrington. He did not wait for me to complete my ablutions, but hurried into the bathroom and handed me a telegram.

  "It came while I was at lunch," he explained. "You told me that you'd be home for dinner, so I signed the book for you."

  "I'm much obliged," I answered, drying my hands. "It's probably from Mrs. Dyer. She's been pestering, me to death about having her portrait finished before Christmas. This will be her third telegram."

  "It must be a wonderful feeling to know that one is so necessary to society at large," Rupert said unpleasantly. "You're a lucky dog, Smithers. But I've got to be going. Drop in and see me when art's not beckoning."

  I made a rather careful toilet before I opened the yellow envelope. Telegrams were no novelty to me. I had learned by bitter experience that a certain class of women send them with no more urgent reason than so many children scribbling notes behind their teacher's back.

  At last I strode back into the studio where the red light from the setting sun touched one of the canvases as though with fire. Striding to the window, I tore open the telegram and glanced at it. The next instant it fluttered from my hand to the floor.

  "Good God!" I muttered.

  Unconsciously I looked down at the piece of yellow paper which lay in a band of crimson light that seemed to stain it as though with blood. The black letters leaped up from it into my brain. Once more I read their purport:

  Paul is dead. Am bringing him home on the four-fifteen. Martin.

  "Paul is dead," I repeated. But it meant nothing to me then—nothing! It seemed as impossible as the wildest dream. Like a tongue-tied actor attempting to make his lines clear and convincing, I repeated those few words over and over again: "Paul is dead—Paul is dead."

  But still that thin partition standing between me and the realization of the truth, resisted the dull pounding of those hammer-like words. And suddenly a brain numbing fear stole over me, a fear that I could never be more than a puppet which had been wound up to repeat endlessly that meaningless phrase: "Paul is dead."

  "Come now!" I told myself. "You must make yourself realize what this telegram means. You must suffer. It is right that you should suffer. Other men would suffer in your place. Can you not understand? Paul is dead!"

  But still that thin partition was standing bravely against those hammer-like words. And wonderingly, fearfully, like a child in the dark, I looked out over the city.

  The sun was slowly setting far away over those dingy housetops which were like uneven stepping-stones above the murmur of a brook. The sky hung over them like a sea of blood dotted here and there with floating islands of ice. Somewhere in the distance the shrill voice of a siren drifted, melancholy, forlorn, tearing its way like a projectile through a muttering multitude of other sounds. Surely it was pain incarnate—pain which I sought and which evaded me.

  And as I gazed wonderingly at the passionate sky, a thought edged its way into my benumbed brain. Surely it was after five o'clock. What was it that this yellow, wrinkled piece of paper at my feet warned me of? Something which Martin was bringing home on the four-fifteen. It was already an hour past that time. But what was this inanimate thing of which he spoke? Why, it was Paul—my brother Paul, dead, already cold—Paul who had joked and laughed with me, who had fought and forgiven me—Paul!

  And like a weary swimmer who has dived from a high cliff into the sea, slowly true realization fought its way up through the dark depths. I was no longer a mere puppet, squeaking a meaningless phrase. Pain was born in an instant—blinding, unbearable pain.

  Paul was dead! I, who had known him so intimately, who had loved him so dearly, realized that fully now. Striding to and fro, quite careless of the furniture which stood in my way, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing but this unforgettable fact, I was driven back and forth by the painful lash of memory like a wild animal in its cage.

  I do not know how long I wandered aimlessly about the room. Suddenly I was brought to normal consciousness by loud knocking on the studio door.

  "Come in," I muttered. "Come in."

  The door opened and Martin strode swiftly into the room. In spite of my abnormal mental condition, I could not help noticing his altered appearance. The man seemed to have grown years older in those few short days. His face was heavily lined and as gray as a death's head; the whites of his eyes were threaded with tiny crimson veins as though from prolonged weeping; and his voice was as hoarse as the cawing of a crow.

  "How's this?" he asked. "Didn't you get my telegram?"

  I pointed mutely to where it lay on the floor and once more began to pace the room.

  "Well, why didn't you meet me?" he cried angrily. "But it's like you to dodge all your responsibilities!"

  "Where is Paul?" I asked dully.

  "I've had him taken to his apartment. Go there and you'll find him."

  "I'll go right away," I said weakly. "Wait till I get my hat."

  "Don't yqu want to know how he was killed?" he cried in a kind of rage. "I bring your only brother home dead and you treat the whole affair as a matter of course! Why, common curiosity should prompt you to ask a few questions!"

  "You don't understand me, Martin," I said with a brave attempt at dignity. "What do I care about such details now? He's dead—that's all I care to know. Later, perhaps. Poor old Paul! If I'd gone with him"

  But Martin interrupted me with a quick, authoritative gesture. "Listen, Smithers," he ordered. "It happened this way: Our guide had a gallon of whisky. Paul began drinking again heavily. You know how it was when the stuff was in reach; he simply couldn't resist it. I tried to reason with him, but it wasn't any use. After the whisky was all gone, he had an attack of melancholia. You remember how depressed he used to get after a drinking bout at college?"

  "Yes," I muttered.

  "Well, this time it was far worse. He refused to be dragged out of the depths. One night the guide and I awoke with the sound of a gunshot in our ears. We ran out of the cabin to find Paul lying on the ground."

  "Dead?"

  "I should think so!" Martin answered brutally. "Why, he had a hole in his side that you could stick your arm into!"

  The coroner bore out Martin's statement in regard to Paul's death. There was no doubt that the poor fellow, suffering from acute melancholia, had taken his own life. Tying a piece of string about the trigger of his shotgun, he had leaned his weight upon the muzzle and discharged it by pressing his foot down hard upon the loose, dangling cord. His death must have been almost instantaneous. The heavy buckshot had ripped its way through his heart.

  My mother was prostrated by the news. Ever since father's death she had been in poor health, and this was the last straw. On the day of the funeral she was so weak that the doctor refused to allow her to leave her bed. I was the only member of the family to attend the solemn ceremony. But Wilbur Huntington, although he knew Paul only slightly, was kind enough to accompany me.

  It was one of those dismal days in late autumn, I remember—a day when all nature is solemn, melancholy, as though mourning for the wasteful abandonment of her youth. A gray drizzle of rain was falling which seemed to curtain us off from the outer world. Like strange, solemn ships, the funeral procession drifted slowly toward its goal.

  Our snail's pace through the glistening streets grated on my overtaxed nerves. I had a wild impulse to shout to the man on the box, to order him to whip up his horses and drive us faster.

  Suddenly Huntington's voice broke in upon my thoughts. "When a man takes a bitter dose of medicine, he takes it in a hurry. He doesn't sip it for the taste, does he?"

  "No," I answered, at a loss for his meaning.

  "Then why all this?" he asked, pointing at my black clothes. "And why is it that we can't rattle along the streets at a livelier pace?"

  "Custom," I explained.

  "Custom be damned! The decent, sensible thing is to hide one's inner feelings from the world—not to parade them through the streets, as we are doing now,
for the mob to gibber at. A funeral procession is a relic of barbarism; and there goes another."

  We were entering the cemetery as he spoke, and the dull tolling of a bell rang out on the still air. Like the beating of a grief-stricken heart, solemnly, sadly, it uttered its message of misery to the living. And on every side, where tiny crosses held out their weary arms, where tombstones seemed kneeling phantoms, where long flat slabs of granite crouched like lizards, a sad echo seemed to rise and steal away on noiseless wings.

  "All this," Huntington continued, "your friend Martin would very truly call toys made for the massmind. They hide true feeling and, like wine, intensify the emotions. But here we are."

  "Poor old Paul!" I murmured.

  The carriage came to a halt and we got out. Soon a number of my brother's friends assembled at the open grave and the simple service was well under way. Once, moved by an unaccountable impulse, I turned my head and saw Martin standing directly behind me. His face was as expressionless as though it had been hewn out of marble; his bloodshot eyes were staring straight at the coffin.

  At last the ceremony was over. Now two men were filling up the grave with damp earth which fell on the lid of the casket with a dismal, reverberating sound. It was at this moment that I heard Martin speak in a low, muffled voice which seemed to come from deep down underground.

  "It is done!" he murmured.

  "What is done?" I asked in a low voice. "Surely, for Paul, it is just the beginning."

  "I have buried my heart with your brother," he said.

  But there was a strange exultation in his tone which scarcely tallied with his words. I saw Huntington glance at him curiously.

  XI

  After Paul's funeral, Martin passed out of my life completely. Occasionally Rupert Farrington would refer to him in glowing terms and prophesy that he would soon startle the world with another gruesome masterpiece. But, at these times, I was careful to lend a deaf ear to his eulogies.

  Poor Farrington! I grew very attached to him as the years went by. He was one of those unfortunate mortals who have the inclination to do big things in art and yet never have the ability to perform them. A tongue-tied dreamer, he would have starved years before, if his father had not sent him a generous allowance. And it was a pitiful thing to see him circling round and round the flame of genius with no hope of gaining the inner sanctuary—a poor moth doomed to outer darkness, struggling for recognition till his wings were singed.

  Day after day he fought valiantly to compose one stirring line; day after day, bitter disappointment was his lot. Like many another man of his type, he could not criticize what he had written. To him, each poem was good—perhaps a masterpiece. The editors were at fault. They could not recognize genius when they saw it. Hatred of them had become an over-mastering obsession. He would rail against them till he grew purple in the face.

  I remember distinctly one Christmas morning, a month before Martin's second book came out. Rupert broke in on me while I was having breakfast, his eyes wild and staring, his face suffused with blood. Stamping up and down the room, he gave vent to such a blind, ungovernable fit of fury that I feared for his reason.

  "What's the trouble?" I asked when I could make myself heard.

  "Trouble?" he fairly shouted. "Trouble? I'd like to wring his damn neck!"

  "Whose neck?"

  "Why, Hubbard's neck—Hubbard of the Firefly."

  "What's he done to you?" I asked mildly.

  Farrington came to an abrupt halt and fixed his blazing eyes on my face. "I'll tell you what he's done," he said in a voice which he attempted to make calm but which trembled on a sob. "Do you remember my last poem, 'The Sea Gull'? Well, it was a pretty smooth' piece of work, although you didn't seem to appreciate it."

  "What has 'The Sea-Gull' got to do with Hubbard?" I inquired.

  "I sent it to him for his magazine," he answered bitterly. "That was a month ago. They've had it ever since. I thought that I'd landed something at last. What's today, Smithers?"

  "Today? Why, it's Christmas morning."

  "To be sure—Christmas morning! Well, I got it back in the first mail, tied up with red ribbons. Now maybe you think that's a joke, Smithers—a damn good joke?"

  "No, I don't," I hastened to assure him.

  "Well, I don't either," said Farrington grimly. "I've worked too hard for that. It seems to me a contemptible thing to do—a low-down, contemptible thing! To keep it so long that I had hope and then to send it back tied up with red ribbons on Christmas day! I wish I had him here, that's all! I could beat him to death without the slightest compunction. A man who would do such a thing, should be beaten to death! Why, Smithers, I tell you it"

  "But how do you know that Hubbard is responsible for this?" I broke in. "It sounds more like one of his office force to me—some silly little stenographer playing a practical joke."

  But Farrington shook his head stubbornly. "No, it was Hubbard—undoubtedly it was Hubbard. It’s his kind of humor. Have you ever seen the man? Have you ever talked to him?"

  "No."

  ''Well, he's a pompous jelly bag with a silly, secretive smile—a sly man and a cruel man, a man who sits in his office like a round-bellied spider waiting to pounce on the flies. He makes game of us, Smithers— we poor fellows who try so hard and get so little! But he and his kind are driving me too hard! There are things that I won't stand, things that"

  "I think you're mistaken, Rupert," I broke in. "Calm yourself. This magazine proposition is driving you dotty. What possible reason could Hubbard have for doing such a thing?"

  "Oh, just a little recreation," Rupert muttered. "His humor has to be tickled ever so often. But he's driving me too far, Smithers—a damn sight too far!"

  I did not see Farrington again for several days. I was called out of town on an important business engagement; and when I returned, it was to find that he had gone home for the weekend.

  One night, ten days later, I walked past his door and noticed that it was ajar. Glancing in, I saw Rupert seated in his favorite rocking chair. As usual, when alone, he wore a faded brown smoking jacket and crimson worsted slippers. But tonight there was something incongruous about the man which drew my attention. Perhaps it was the rigid way he sat, or perhaps it was natural curiosity to learn what had transpired since I had seen him last, but something prompted me to enter. Glancing at him again, as I did so, I noticed a volume bound in red morocco resting on the arm of his chair.

  "Rupert," I said, "what have you been doing with yourself?"

  But he did not answer me. Silent, immovable, he sat staring into space.

  "What's the matter with you, Rupert,” I said in a louder tone. "You're not sick, are you?" I bent forward and touched him on the shoulder.

  At that, he started and looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins on his forehead were black and bulging, his thick red lips were extended in an animal pout.

  "What's the trouble?" he said thickly. "Is that you, Smithers?"

  By this time I was thoroughly alarmed. "You're not sick, are you?" I repeated, shaking him by the arm. "What's the matter, Rupert?"

  "Matter?" he repeated dazedly, shaking his head as though to rid himself of an unpleasant thought. "There's nothing the matter, Smithers. I've been thinking, that's all."

  "You were in a kind of coma when I first came in."

  He laughed a trifle shamefacedly it seemed to me. "Thoughts carry me away sometimes," he said in a more natural tone. "They drag my ego out of my body by the hair." He paused and ran his hand across his forehead. "At least, Martin's thoughts do," he finished with a faint smile.

  "Martin's thoughts? Has his new book come out yet? Is that it?" I pointed to the red morocco volume on the arm of his chair.

  "Yes, that's his new book," Rupert answered. "This is another advance copy. I believe it is to be published in a few days."

  "What's the title?"

  "'The Confessions of Constantine.'"

  "Do you like it as well as 'Many Murders'?"
>
  "Like it?" he cried with a nervous start. "That's scarcely the word, Smithers. You can't like a book of this kind—you can only marvel at it!"

  "Own up now, Rupert," I said quickly, thinking that the man was quibbling to defend his idol. "Own up, this book has fallen below your expectations. In a word, it disappoints you."

  "Good Lord, no!" he cried almost fiercely. "If 'Many Murders' were a masterpiece, 'The Confessions of Constantine' is a super-masterpiece! It is so great that one fears it; so great that it conquers one's mind! Can there be such a thing as hypnotic writing, Smithers?"

  "Of course not," I answered irritably. "The trouble with you is that you're mentally sick. What you need is a long vacation somewhere. Why don't you go home for a month or so?"