The Devil in Manuscript And Other Tales of Forbidden Books

by Osie Turner

  "He was going to the house of Mr. Burgess Martin on Tyndall Place."

  "Burgess Martin, eh? That's interesting! Was there anything unusual about Mr. Huntington's manner—anything which would lead you to suspect that he wasn't in a normal state of mind."

  Then I did a very foolish thing—a thing which I have regretted ever since. I revealed everything to the detective, answering his questions with the candor of a child. I told him of the letter Huntington had received, of his wild words about Martin, and of his final threat. And when I had finished, my visitor thanked me heartily.

  "If other people were as willing to give evidence as you, Mr. Smithers," said he, "the work of a detective would soon dwindle down to nothing. What you say about Burgess Martin is especially interesting. Word has just come to us that he, too, is missing."

  "What?"

  "Yes, his landlady hasn't seen him in days." The detective turned toward the door. "I've got to be off on this new clew you've given me, Mr. Smithers," he called back over his shoulder. "It's just possible, if we can lay our hands on Mr. Huntington, that he'll be able to tell us something about Burgess Martin."

  When the detective had gone, I realized fully what I had done. I had branded my best friend as a murderer. I had slipped the halter about his neck. Then, for the first time, I saw clearly the significance of Wilbur's threatening words when coupled with the disappearance of Martin. Yes, I had made an ass of myself. But there was no helping that now. The damage was done I could do nothing more—only wait as patiently as possible for the results.

  Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, but the two men still remained missing. Meanwhile the newspapers made much of the mystery and soon it became the sensation of the year. It was remembered that it was through Wilbur Huntington's efforts that Martin's last book had been condemned by the government. From that fact, they argued that there was bad blood between the two men, and this gave rise to all manner of wild conjectures. Possibly they had fought a duel to the death; or perhaps it had been a suicide pact. The yellow journals knew how to make hay while the sun shone.

  Nearly two months after the detective visited me, a body was found floating in the East River. The face had been beaten into an unrecognizable condition by some heavy weapon and the corpse generally was so disfigured by its long submersion in the water, that, had it not been for a ring on the second finger of the left hand, identification would have proved impossible. This ring was engraved with the initials B. M.

  The news spread quickly through the city. Newspaper extras appeared with startling headlines. For a time excitement quickened the most feeble pulse. On all sides, one heard this question—"But where is Wilbur Huntington?'''

  On the following day the rumor was verified. Martin's tailor, a little Russian Jew who had made his clothes for many years, visited the morgue and identified the corpse's water-soaked suit by his own initials which he had sewed into the sleeve. After this there could no longer be any doubt; it was indeed Burgess Martin's body.

  But if Martin had been murdered, as the wounds on his face and head evinced, what had become of his companion, Wilbur Huntington, on the night when they had both disappeared? Had Huntington killed Martin and then fled? If he were innocent, would he not come forward and prove it?

  Questions like these appeared in all the papers. But the missing man still remained missing; the mystery was no nearer its solution than before. No doubt the chief of police at this time was pestered daily by hundreds of letters from cranks who had worked themselves up into a frenzy over this insoluble riddle. At last he wrote an article for the Gazette which ended in these words:

  "It is not possible that Wilbur Huntington, after saving the world from a thousand crimes, failed to take his own cure and fell a victim to that brain malady from which he had rescued so many others?"

  After this opinion was published, there could be but one verdict. The world regarded my friend as a murderer and a madman.

  XVI

  Several years passed and the mystery still remained unsolved. It was as though Wilbur Huntington had vanished into thin air. Although many of the leading criminal experts had taken up the search, no clue to his whereabouts was forthcoming. One by one these detectives acknowledged themselves beaten and went back to the solving of less difficult problems. Meanwhile new sensational mysteries arose to attract the attention of the public; soon the affair was practically forgotten.

  During that time, I prospered exceedingly. Each year brought me greater wealth, a larger circle of acquaintances, and more material luxuries of every kind. I had won the respect of a great many people who envied me my position in the world—people who little guessed what I had sacrificed in order to climb.

  I soon learned that the respect of the mob was of small value. The world, as a whole, judges an artist as it judges a business man—not by the excellence of his work, but by the size of his bank account. I was a symbol to them of the golden image and they prostrated themselves accordingly. Little guessing the bitter irony their words conveyed, they called me to my face "the painter who had made good." Sometimes it gave me a kind of brutal satisfaction to realize how completely I had sold the public. But now and then another thought would steal into my brain—the thought that I had not sold the public but had, in reality, sold myself. On these occasions, I was far from a happy man.

  Ten years after Wilbur Huntington's disappearance, I laid my brush aside for the last time. I was now forty and had amassed a comfortable fortune. It seemed to me that I had earned the right to play. But those years of drudgery at the easel had taken away all youthful buoyancy. My health was not what it should have been. I consulted a physician and he advised me to take a vacation in the wilds of Florida.

  "Why not come along with me to Naples?" Dr. Street suggested. "I'm going to make the trip, as usual, on the fifteenth. You'll want someone with you who knows the ropes."

  I agreed to his proposition with pleasure. I had known him long enough to realize that he would make an excellent camping companion. But, unfortunately for our plans, when the day arrived Doctor Street was detained in New York much against his will. As all my preparations were made, I decided not to wait for him. He was careful to point out the exact locality of the hotel where I should meet him a week later.

  "By the way," he said as we parted, "don't forget to hire Bill Pete when you get to the hotel. He's the best guide in all Florida. Make him take you over to his hut on the other side of the bay and give you some fishing. What you need is exercise and fresh air."

  The trip to Florida was uneventful. I got off the train at Fort Myers and engaged a dilapidated Ford to take me to Naples. The driver gave me a hand with my numerous belongings, climbed back on his seat, and we were off.

  It was a forty mile drive from Fort Myers over a road sadly needing repair. Two hours later I caught sight of the wooden structure which my driver assured me was the hotel. In spite of my natural fatigue, I warmed to the majestic scene which had appeared with the startling suddenness of a vision.

  There, stretching away as far as the eye could see, was the Gulf of Mexico, now reflecting on its slightly agitated bosom the last scattered rays of the setting sun. Already the dark shadows of approaching night stole out from the palm trees which lined the beach. The melancholy call of an owl suddenly rose on the still air and was thrown to and fro by a multitude of echoes before it was allowed to die away.

  Naples was known to only a limited number of sportsmen. There were not more than a dozen people at the hotel when I arrived. I felt fairly certain that I could secure the services of Bill Pete. After dinner I inquired about him at the desk.

  "No, he's not here now," the clerk informed me. "But he generally paddles over for his newspaper about eight o'clock. I'll let you know when he arrives."

  I nodded and, lighting a cigar, strolled out on the veranda. The moon, by now, was slowly rising over the treetops—a blood-red moon which, as it ascended, gradually lost its vivid coloring and became a pale silver. Under its m
agic touch, the surface of the water was transformed into a sea of drifting sparks. The wind had risen. Now and then the crest of a wave was illumined, becoming for an instant a curling, foam flecked lip. It was a night of ebony and silver.

  "How beautiful it is," I murmured half-aloud.

  "It may be beautiful," said a voice at my elbow, "but it is horrible as well!"

  I started, for I had thought myself alone. Now I could see the tall, dark figure of a man leaning against the railing of the veranda within arm's reach of me. How was it that I had not heard his footsteps? He had not been there a moment before; of that I was certain.

  "Horrible?" I repeated slowly. "Why is it horrible?"

  "Look!" he cried, pointing at the sky with a dramatic gesture. "What do you see? That is no smile on the moon's face, although there are fools who think it is. No, it is a grimace of despair like one sees on a death's head when the jaw drops down. And how white she is, how ghastly white! True, the moon has a round face; but it is the more terrible for that. She has the bloated look of decomposing flesh. And what have become of her eyes? Have the vultures picked out her eyes?"

  I moved my feet uneasily. What an unpleasant imagination this fellow had! How could people turn such a beautiful night into a charnel house? Probably this man was some crack-brained poet or other. There was something familiar about his voice—something which I could not account for and which irritated me.

  "It is though Nature had placed that death's-head in the heavens as a warning to all mankind," he continued solemnly. "Oh perhaps She hung it there to kindle the imagination, to beckon us on to unparalleled achievement, to blow into flame a glowing spark of curiosity. What is death and what are the sensations of death? Who can answer? And yet mankind is unwilling to learn. They hide the truth from themselves, disguising it under many different masks. They play with the moon as a baby might play with the face of its dead mother. They even write songs about her, calling her the jolly, smiling moon! And all these years that great, white face has looked down upon them in frozen horror!"

  I felt the mental itch of curiosity as I listened. Where had I heard that voice before? He had been speaking in a very low tone, but each word had a familiar ring.

  "I think I must have met you before," I said. "You're a poet, aren't you? I used to know a good many poets when I lived in Washington Square."

  "I am no poet," he said curtly.

  "But you write," I insisted. "I'm sure I've heard your voice before. I used to know several novelists. There was…"

  "I don't write," he broke in rather brusquely. "My name's Bill Pete and I've lived around here nearly all my life."

  "Not Bill Pete, the guide?" I cried in amazement.

  "The very same. The clerk told me that you were looking for me. If you want a guide, I think you'll find that I know my business. I'm familiar with every rookery in these parts and I've got a snug little cabin across the bay if you were thinking of camping out."

  "So you're Bill Pete," I muttered under my breath. "Well, you've got a most astonishing vocabulary for a backwoodsman!" Aloud, I said: "You've worked for Doctor Street?"

  "Yes, frequently. He always engages me when he comes to the hotel."

  "Then, you're the man I want. You may consider yourself engaged from now on. I think I'll use your cabin to-morrow night. Is it comfortable?"

  "Yes, sir," Bill Pete murmured. "I think you'll find it very comfortable."

  Once more I shot a quick look at that tall, shadowy figure beside me. I had heard him speak before; each moment I grew surer of it. When was it and where? I would find out in the course of the next two or three days—that was certain.

  "You'll pardon me if I ask a rather personal question, Mr. Pete?" I said. "You didn't get your education in the woods, did you? Your choice of words seems to be rather fine, rather—"

  I broke off suddenly. A moonbeam had touched the side of his face. I could see that his heavily bearded cheeks and chin were trembling as though from suppressed merriment, and yet his voice was quite steady when he answered me.

  "I'm a college man, sir," he replied, moving his head slightly so that his face was once more veiled in shadow. "I've had my chances and I've thrown them away. There are lots of us like that." He paused for an instant and then added: "Good night, sir. I'll paddle over for you in the morning."

  XVII

  The following morning, Bill Pete paddled me across the bay to his cabin with the deft, silent strokes of an Indian. Sitting in the bow of the canoe and facing him, I studied the man, attempting to account for the impression I had had the night before. But, try as I would, my memory failed me.

  Certainly there was nothing familiar in that bronzed, heavily bearded face. And yet there was something about Bill Pete which struck a long disused, discordant note in my breast. What was it? His eyes? They were hidden behind dark-blue spectacles which resembled the cavernous sockets in a skull. Perhaps the answer to the riddle was concealed by these spectacles. For one mad moment I was tempted to spring forward and jerk them off his nose.

  "Why do you wear those things?" I said at length.

  "What things?" he asked blankly. Although his face was half turned away from me, I felt instinctively that his eyes were boring into mine.

  "Why, those spectacles," I said testily. "They make your face look like a skull."

  "My eyes are very weak. These glasses protect them from the sun."

  "Oh, I see."

  Not another word was said till the canoe grounded on the beach. I assisted Bill Pete in moving the provisions we had brought with us into the shade; then he showed me his cabin.

  It was an ordinary woodsman's shack, built of roughhewn logs and containing two bunks. There was a crudely constructed table in the center of the single room, some pots and pans hanging on the wall, a wood stove in one corner, and a doorway without any vestige of a door. To a city bred man, no building is complete without a door. This architectural omission bothered me till I learned that no wild animal availed itself of it with the single exception of a razor-back hog that each night entered after we had gone to bed and gnawed savagely at one of the logs.

  Barely a hundred yards from the cabin, which stood on a slight rise of ground, the bay stretched out like a luminous shawl of bright spangles. Encircling it, was a dark somber army of tropical trees which stood like sentinels about a treasure. On windy nights, the lapping waves on the beach and the murmuring of the branches overhead mingled in a soothing melody which soon wafted one off to the land of dreams.

  Bill Pete proved to be a very silent man, speaking very rarely and then always to the point. A smile seldom brightened his somber face. But although he was a poor companion, he proved to be an excellent guide. He knew the woods like the creatures of the woods; his tread was so noiseless that he could creep up to within a few feet of a feeding deer before the animal sprang away in fright; and he knew with unfaltering intuition where the largest tarpon glided. Under his guidance, I had some excellent fishing.

  This healthy, outdoor life worked wonders with my shattered nerves. The long tramps through the woods, the invigorating air, the nights of unbroken repose, were fast making a new man of me. Before the week had passed I felt an entirely different individual from the broken-down portrait painter who had left New York under the doctor's orders. It is no telling how healthy I would have become, had it not been for that night of unparalleled horror through which I passed—that night when I saw a black soul stripped bare and writhing out its life alone.

  It had been a hard day's tramp through the forest. I felt deliciously tired as I lay before the log fire. Bill Pete sat a few feet from me. His corncob pipe was gripped between his teeth; his face, as usual, was veiled in shadow. The wind had been rising steadily for upward of an hour; now and then I could hear the rumble of thunder far off. Our fire would spring up fiercely at each eddying gust; and, as the bright curling fingers of flame grasped at the upper darkness, the encircling tree trunks would seem to take a long stride forward and the
n leap back again.

  "It looks as though we were going to have a stormy night," I said at length.

  Bill Pete nodded and puffed silver rings of smoke skyward. His spectacles for an instant reflected the firelight as he turned his face toward me.

  "Doctor Street will be here tomorrow," I continued in a desperate attempt to make the man talk. "You'd better paddle over to the hotel in the morning."

  Again Bill Pete merely nodded his head.

  "You remind me of a man I used to know a good many years ago," I said irritably. "Like you, he had unpleasant theories about the moon and for days together would scarcely say a word."

  "Who was he?" Bill Pete asked, with a sudden note of interest in his tone.

  "A man by the name of Martin—Burgess Martin."

  I heard something snap like a dry twig. Glancing at Bill Pete, I saw the red glowing bowl of his pipe lying on the ground at his feet. He had bitten through the stem.