by Fritz Leiber
Then Sid came pounding up. He’s the first finished, since the fight ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache head of him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.
Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the same time in breathy little rushes.
Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.
And all this while the stranger was saying, “What may this mean? Can such things be? Are all the seeds of time…wetted by some hell-trickle…sprouted at once in their granary? Speak…speak! You played me a play…that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have you disjointed the frame of things…to steal my unborn thoughts? Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King’s Lynn…singed by time’s fiery wand…sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth…aye, and perchance hell too…Speak, I charge you!”
And with that he put his hands on Sid’s shoulders, half to shake him, I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.
He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the stranger’s narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, himself following.
The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth’s head to Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she skittered past me to say, “Hi Gret, great you’re back,” and patting my temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid’s dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid’s reserve makeup box.
“The lights, Martin!” he called.
Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.
I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, “Siddy, you can’t fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don’t care how much he shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes—Siddy, that was Shakespeare!”
“Aye, girl, I think so,” he told me, holding my wrists together. “They can’t find dolls to double men like that—or such is my main hope.” A big sickly grin came on his face. “Oh, gods,” he demanded, “with what words do you talk to a man whose speech you’ve stolen all your life?”
I asked him, “Sid, were we ever in Central Park?”
He answered, “Once—twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came for Erich. You flipped.”
He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.
Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid’s reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he kneeled before the thing—Major Maintainer, I remembered it was called.
“When now? Where?” Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.
“The forty-fourth year before our Lord’s birth!” Sid answered instantly. “Rome!”
Beau’s fingers danced over the dials like a musician’s, or a safe-cracker’s. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.
“There’s a storm in that vector of the Void.”
“Circle it,” Sid ordered.
“There are dark mists every way.”
“Then pick the likeliest dark path!”
I called through the dark, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, Siddy?”
“Aye, chick,” he answered me. “‘Tis all the rule we have!”
SPIDER MANSION
Originally published in Weird Tales, September 1942.
A tremendous splash of lightning gave us our first glimpse of the pillared front of the Old Orne House—a pale Colonial mask framed by wildly whipping leaves. Then, even before the lightning faded, it was blotted out by a solid sheet of muddy water sloshing up against the windshield.
“But I still don’t like midgets,” Helen said for the third time, “and besides—”
Close thunder, like thick metal ripping, drowned out the rest.
“It’s gotten beyond a question of your or my personal taste in heights,” I argued, squinting for a sight of the road between mud splashes. “Sure Malcolm Orne’s a midget, but you don’t know how slippery the road is ahead or how deep those Jersey salt marshes are on either side of it. And no garages or even houses for miles. Too risky, in this storm. Anyway, we figured all along we might visit him on the way. That’s why we took this road.”
“Yes, this lonely, god-forsaken road.” Helen’s voice was as strained and uneasy as her face, pallidly revealed by another lightning flash. “Oh, I know it’s silly of me, but I still feel that—”
Again cracking thunder blanketed het words. Our coupe was progressing by heaves, as if through a gelatinous sea. I spotted the high white posts a little ahead, and swung out for the turn-in.
“Still really want to go on?” I asked.
Maybe it was the third blast of thunder, loudest of the lot that decided her against further argument. She gave me a “You win” look, and even grinned a little, being a much better sport than I probably deserve for a wife.
The coupe slithered between the posts, lurched around squishily on a sharp slippery rise, made it on the last gasp, and lunged toward the house through a flail of lasting, untrimmed branches.
The windows in front were dark and those to the right were tightly shuttered, but light flickered faintly through the antique white fanlight above the six-paneled Colonial door. Helen hugged my arm tight as we ducked through the drenching rain up onto the huge porch, with its two-story pillars. I reached for the knocker.
Just at that moment there came one of those brief hushes in the storm. The lightning held off, and the wind stopped.
I felt Helen jump at the ugly rustling, scraping sound of a branch which, released from the wind’s pressure, brushed against a pillar as it swung back into place. I remember noting that the paint was half-peeled away from the pillar.
Then things happened fast. Groping for the knocker, I felt the door give inward. There was a deafening blast from inside the house. A fagged semi-circle of wood disappeared from the jamb about a foot from the ground. Splinters flew from a point in the floor eight inches from my shoe. The door continued to swung slowly open from the first push I had given it, revealing a Negro with grizzled hair and fear-wide eyes, clad in the threadbare black of an outdated servant’s costume. Despite his slouching posture he still topped six feet. Smoke wreathed from the muzzle of the shotgun held loosely in his huge pink-palmed hands.
“Oh, Lordy,” he breathed in quaking tones. “Dat rustlin’ soun’—I t’ought it was—”
Something, then, checked my angry retort and the lunge I was about to make forward for the weapon. It was the appearance of another face—a white man’s—over the Negro’s shoulder. A saturnine face with aristocratic features and bulging forehead. Judging from the way he towered over the gigantic Negro, the second man could hardly be more than a few inches short of seven feet. But that wasn’t what froze me dead in my tracks. It was that the face was unmistakably that of Malcolm Orne, the midget.
The Negro was grasped and swung aside as if he were a piece of furniture. The gun was lifted from his nerveless fingers as if it were a child’s toy. Then the giant bowed low and said, “A thousand pardons! Welcome to Orne House!”
Helen’s scream, long delayed, turned to hysterical laughter. Then the storm, recommencing with redoubled fury, shattered the hush and sent us hurrying into the hall.
The giant’s teeth flashed in a smile. “One moment, please,” he murmured to us, then turned and seized the cowering Negro by the slack of the coat, slapped his face twice, hard.
“You are never to touch that gun, Buford!” Again the Negro’s head was buffeted by a solid blow. “You almost killed my guests. They would be well within their rights if they demanded your arrest.”
But what caught my attention was the fact that the Negro hardly seemed to notice either the words or the stinging blows. His eyes were fixed in a peculiarly terrified way on the open door, seemingly staring at a point about a foot from the floor. Only when a back draft slammed it shut, did he begin to grovel and whine.
The giant cut him short with a curt, “Send Milly to show my guests their room. Then stay in the kitchen.” The Negro hurriedly shambled off without a backward glance.
The giant turned to us again. He looked very much in place in this darkly wainscoted hall. On the wall behind him were a pair of crossed sabers of Civil War vintage.
“Ah, Mrs. Egan, I am glad to see that you are taking this deplorable affair so calmly.” His smile flashed at Helen. “And I am delighted to make your acquaintance, though just now you have every reason to be angry with me.” He took her hand with a courtly gesture. His face grew grave. “Almost—a hideous accident occurred. I can explain, though not excuse it. Poor Bufort lives in abnormal terror of a large mastiff I keep chained outside—an animal quite harmless to myself or my guests, I hasten to add. A little while ago it broke loose. Evidently Bufort thought it was attempting to force its way in. His fear is irrational and without bounds—though otherwise he is a perfect servant. I only hope you will let my hospitality serve as an apology.”
He turned to me. “Your wife is charming,” he said. “You’re a very lucky man, Tom.”
Then he seemed to become aware of my dumbfounded look, and the way my gaze was stupidly traveling up and down his tremendous though well-proportioned form. A note of secret amusement was added to his smile.
Helen broke the silence with a little laugh, puzzled but not unpleased.
“But, excuse me, who are you?” she asked.
The wavering candlelight made queer highlights, emphasizing the massive forehead and the saturnine features.
“Malcolm Orne, Madam!” he answered with a little bow.
“But I thought,” said Helen, “that Malcolm Orne was—” An, involuntary expression of disgust crossed her face.
“A midget?” His voice was silky. “Ah, yes. I can understand your distaste.” Then he turned slowly toward me. “I know what’s bothering you, Tom,” he said. “But that is a long and very strange story, which can best wait until after dinner. Milly will take you to your room. Your luggage will be brought up. Dinner in about three-quarters of an hour? Good!”
An impassive-faced Negress had appeared silently from the back of the hall, bearing, in her ebon hands a branched candlestick. There were a dozen questions hammering at my brain, but instead of asking them I found myself following the Negress up the curving stairs, Helen at my side, watching the fantastic shadows cast by the candles.
As soon as we were alone, Helen bombarded me with a dozen incredulous questions of her own. I did my best to convince her that the giant downstairs was really Malcolm Orne—there was the birthmark below his left ear and the curious thin scar on his forehead to back up the rest of the evidence—and that Malcolm Orne had been, when I last saw him, a midget who missed four feet by several inches.
I wasn’t very successful and no wonder, since I could hardly believe it myself. Helen seemed to think I was mixing him up with someone else.
“You mentioned a brother—” she said.
I shook my head doggedly. “No possibility there,” I told her. “Malcolm Orne did have an elder brother, but he died a year ago.”
“And you’re sure it’s only a year and a half since you last saw Malcolm?” she persisted. “What was the brother like?”
“He was short, though no midget. About five feet. So don’t go getting any wild theories of murder and impersonation. Marvin Orne was his name. A doctor. Made quite a reputation in New York, then came down here to start a country clinic in connection with research he was doing. Some of his work was supposed to be very important. Embryology. Cellular development. Hormones. Obscure vitamin factors. Growth processes.” There I stopped, suddenly realizing the implications of what I was saying. It was farfetched, of course, but—
“Go on, dear!” Helen prodded. “You’ve thought of something! Don’t keep me in suspense.” She looked interested and eager now, her uneasiness completely departed.
“I know it sounds awfully pseudo-scientific,” I began cautiously, “but I suppose it’s barely possible that, before his death, Marvin Orne discovered some serum or extract or whatever you call it, something to stimulate growth, and used it on—”
“Wonderful!” Helen interrupted, catching my idea. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said tonight. I could believe that.”
“It’s only a wild theory,” I hedged quickly. “The kind I warned you against. Better wait. Remember he hinted he’d tell us all about it after dinner.”
“Oh, but what a wonderful theory!” Helen cut in. “Just think what it would mean to a man to be changed from a pygmy into a giant almost overnight. The psychological implications—Why, if opens up all sorts of vistas. He seems to be a very charming man, you know.”
The last remark had a trace of impishness in it. I nodded though I didn’t quite agree.
When we went down to dinner, she was still flushed with excitement, and I realized for the thousandth time what a thoroughly charming woman I had married. As if in response to a challenge emanating from the high courtly halls and rich though dusty woodwork, she wore her formal black evening gown with silver trimmings. And of course she had wheedled me into putting on a somewhat travel-crumpled dinner jacket.
There was no one in the hall, so we waited at the bottom of the stairs. The storm had died away and it was very quiet.
I tried the high double doors to what was surely the living room, but they were stuck or locked. A faint but sharply nauseous stench rose to my nostrils. I noticed that Helen wrinkled her nose, and I took the opportunity to whisper, “There are some drawbacks, it seems, to ancient grandeur. Ancient plumbing, for one.”
Then we became aware of the negro, Bufort, standing uneasily at the very far end of the hall. As soon as he saw that we were looking at him, he bowed and motioned to us, then quickly turned and went out. We followed after. There was something very ridiculous about his long-distance courtesy. “I suppose he’s embarrassed because of what happened, and afraid we’re still going to have him arrested,” Helen speculated lightly. “The poor superstitious savage.”
“Just the same, it was a narrow squeak,” I reminded her. “But if Malcolm keeps the firearms safely locked up hereafter, I’ll forgive the villain.”
The dining room, where antique cut glass chandeliers glittered softly with candlelight, held another surprise.
“Tom and Mrs. Egan,” said our host, “I wish to present my wife, Cynthia.”
She was literally one of the most lavishly beautiful women I have ever seen. Really creamy skin. Masses of warmly golden hair. A Classic face, but with the Classic angularity alluringly softened and the Classic strength missing. The strapless evening gown of red velvet emphasized a narrow waist, a richly modeled bosom and perfectly rounded, almost plump shoulders. Lavish was the only word for her. More like one of Titian’s or Renoir’s models than a modern or a Greek. She was Venus to Helen’s slim Diana. There was a gleam of old gold from her hands and the pendant at her neck. Like a picture on exhibition.
She seemed a singularly reserved woman fo
r one so gorgeous, acknowledging the introduction with a smile and a little nod. Helen too for some reason did not break into the lively if artificial feminine chatter one expects at dinner parties, and the meal began in silence, with Bufort pouring the white wine and serving the seafood in crystal hemispheres set in silver. The seafood was not iced, however, and as the meal progressed other deficiencies became apparent. The grizzled Negro avoided looking at Helen or myself, as he moved softly around the table.
While the seafood was being replaced by a thick meaty soup, Malcolm Orne leaned back sipping his wine, and said to me, “Quite a surprise, to find that I was married? Well, there was a time when we too would have found it surprising, eh, dear?” The last remark was directed at his wife. She smiled and nodded quickly. I thought her throat moved as if she swallowed hard. His gaze lingered on her, his own smile becoming more expansive. “Yet things have a way of changing, or being changed, eh dear? But that’s part of the mystery which must wait until coffee.”
From then on conversation picked up, though one peculiar feature of it soon became obvious. Cynthia Orne did not join in at all, except for the most voiceless of polite murmurings—more gesture than word. Moreover, Malcolm Orne deliberately answered any questions directed at her. He did it with casual cleverness, but it was none the less apparent. For a while what was almost a verbal duel developed between Helen and him, she directing one remark after another at our hostess, he deftly or bluntly interposing. Helen was responding with mounting excitement to the atmosphere of mystery and tension.
After the soup the culinary pretensions of Buford and Milly rapidly collapsed. There followed a peppery stew, floating with fat, which sought to make up in quantity what it lacked in quality. It made a disagreeable contrast with the thick silver service and rich damask. And then I began to notice the other false notes: the great blotches of damp on the ceiling, the peeling wallpaper, the thumbmarks on the crystal, the not-quite-eradicated stains on the thick, hand-embroidered linen.