Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01

by The Hairy Ones Shall Dance (v1. 1)

"You would have if I hadn't broken your sentence in the middle," he accused, and put a generous portion of pancake into his mouth. As he chewed he twinkled at me through his pince-nez, and I felt unaccountably foolish.

  "If Susan Gird had truly killed her father," he resumed, after swallowing, "she would be more adroitly theatrical. She would weep, swear vengeance on his murderer, and be glad to hear that someone else had been accused of the crime. She would even invent details to help incriminate that someone else."

  "Perhaps she doesn't know that she killed him," I offered.

  "Perhaps not. You mean that a new mind, as well as a new body, may invest the werewolf- or ectoplasmic medium - at time of change."

  I jerked my head in agreement.

  "Then Susan Gird, as she is normally, must be innocent. Come, Mr Wills! Would you blame poor old Doctor Jekyll for the crimes of his alter ego, Mr Hyde?"

  "I wouldn't want to live in the same house with Doctor Jekyll."

  Judge Pursuivant burst into a roar of laughter, at which WilHam, bringing fresh supplies from the kitchen, almost dropped his tray. "So romance enters the field of psychic research!" the judge crowed at me.

  I stiffened, outraged. "Judge Pursuivant, I certainly did not - "

  "I know, you didn't say it, but again I anticipated you. So it's not the thought of her possible unconscious crime, but the chance of comfortable companionship that perplexes you." He stopped laughing suddenly. "I'm sorry. Wills. Forgive me. I shouldn't laugh at this, or indeed at any aspect of the whole very serious business."

  I could hardly take real offense at the man who had rescued and sheltered me, and I said so. We finished breakfast, and he sought his overcoat and wide hat.

  "I'm off for town again," he announced. "There are one or two points to be settled there, for your safety and my satisfaction. Do you mind being left alone? There's an interesting lot of books in my study. You might like to look at a copy of Dom Calmet's Dissertations, if you read French; also a rather slovenly Wicked Bible, signed by Pierre De Lancre. J. W. Wickwar, the witchcraft authority, thinks that such a thing does not exist, but I know of two others. Or, if you feel that you're having enough of demonology in real life, you will find a whole row of light novels, including most of P. G. Wodchouse." He held out his hand in farewell. "William will get you anything you want. There's tobacco and a choice of pipes on my desk. Whisky, too, though you don't look like the sort that drinks before noon."

  With that he was gone, and I watched him from the window. He moved sturdily across the bright snow to a shed, slid open its door and entered. Soon there emerged a sedan, old but well-kept, with the judge at the wheel. He drove away down a snow-filled road toward town.

  I did not know what to envy most in him, his learning, his assurance or his good-nature. The assurance, I decided once; then it occurred to me that he was in nothing like the awkward position I held. He was only a sympathetically - but why was he that, even? I tried to analyze his motives, and could not.

  Sitting down in his study, I saw on the desk the Montague Summers book on werewolves. It lay open at page 111, and my eyes lighted at once upon a passage underscored in ink - apparently some time ago, for the mark was beginning to rust a trifle. It included a quotation from Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, written by Richard Rowlands in 1605:

  . . . were-wolves are certaine sorcerers, who hauvin annoynted their bodyes, with an oyntment which they make by the instinct of the deuil; and putting on a certain inchanted girdel, do not only vnto the view of others seeme as wolues, but to their own thinking haue both the shape and the nature of wolues so long as they weare the said girdel. And they do dispose theselves as uery wolues, in wurrying and killing, and moste ofhumaine creatures.

  This came to the bottom of the page, where someone, undoubtedly Pursuivant, had written: "Ointment and girdle sound as if they might have a scientific explanation," And, in the same script, but smaller, the following notes filled the margin beside:

  Possible Werewolf Motivations

  I. Involuntary lycanthropy.

  1. Must have blood to drink (connection with vampirism?).

  2. Must have secrecy.

  3. Driven to desperation by contemplating horror of own position.

  II. Voluntary lycanthropy.

  1. Will to do evil.

  2. Will to exert power through fear.

  III. Contributing factors to becoming werewolf

  1. Loneliness and dissatisfaction.

  2. Hunger for forbidden foods (human flesh, etc.).

  3. Scorn and hate of fellow men, general or specific.

  4. Occult curiosity.

  5. Simon-pure insanity (Satanist complex).

  Are any or all of these traits to be found in werewolf? Find one and ask it.

  That was quite enough lycanthropy for the present, so far as I was concerned. I drew a book of Mark Twain from the shelf - I seem to remember it as Tom Sawyer Abroad - and read all the morning. Noon came, and I was about to ask the judge's negro servant for some lunch, when he appeared in the door of the study.

  "Someone with a message, sah," he announced, and drew aside to admit Susan Gird.

  I fairly sprang to my feet, dropping my book upon the desk. She advanced slowly into the room, her pale face grave but friendly. I saw that her eyes were darkly circled, and that her cheeks showed gaunt, as if with strain and weariness. She put out a hand, and I took it.

  "A message?" I repeated William's words.

  "Why, yes." She achieved a smile, and I was glad to see it, for both our sakes. "Judge Pursuivant got me to one side and said for me to come here. You and I are to talk the thing over."

  "You mean, last night?" She nodded, and I asked further, "How did you get here?"

  "Your car. I don't drive very well, but I managed."

  I asked her to sit down and talk.

  She told me that she remembered being in the parlor, with Constable O'Bryant questioning me. At the time she had had difficulty remembering even the beginning of the seance, and it was not until I had been taken away that she came to realize what had happened to her father. That, of course, distressed and distracted her further, and even now the whole experience was wretchedly hazy to her.

  "I do recall sitting down with you," she said finally, after I had urged her for the twentieth time to think hard. "You chained me, yes, and Doctor Zoberg. Then yourself. Finally I seemed to float away, as if in a dream. I'm not even sure about how long it was."

  "Had the light been out very long?" I asked craftily.

  "The light out?" she echoed, patently mystified. "Oh, of course. The light was turned out, naturally. I don't remember, but I suppose you attended to that."

  "I asked to try you," I confessed. "I didn't touch the lamp until after you had seemed to drop ofl'to sleep."

  She did recall to memory her father's protest at his manacles, and Doctor Zoberg's gentle inquiry if she were ready. That was all.

  "How is Doctor Zoberg?" I asked her.

  "Not very well, I'm afraid. He was exhausted by the experience, of course, and for a time seemed ready to break down. When the trouble began about you - the crowd gathered at the town hall - he gathered his strength and went out, to see if he could help defend or rescue you. He was gone about an hour and then he returned, bruised about the face. Somebody of the mob had handled him roughly, I think. He's resting at our place now, with a hot compress on his eye."

  "Good man!" I applauded. "At least he did his best for me."

  She was not finding much pleasure in her memories, however, and I suggested a change of the subject. We had lunch together, egg sandwiches and coffee, then played several hands of casino. Tiring of that, we turned to the books and she read aloud to me from Keats. Never has The Eve of St. Agnes sounded better to me. Evening fell, and we were preparing to take yet another meal - a meat pie, which William assured us was one of his culinary triumphs - when the door burst open and Judge Pursuivant came in.

  "You've been together all the time?" he a
sked us at once.

  "Why, yes," I said.

  "Is that correct, Miss Susan? You've been in the house, every minute?"

  "That is right," she seconded me.

  "Then," said the judge. "You two are cleared, at last."

  He paused, looking from Susan's questioning face to mine, then went on:

  "That rending beast-thing in the Croft got another victim, not more than half an hour ago. O'Bryant was feeling better, ready to get back on duty. His deputy-brother, anxious to get hold of Wills first, for glory or vengeance, ventured into the place, just at dusk. He came out in a little while, torn and bitten almost to pieces, and died as he broke clear of the cedar hedge."

  XI

  ''To meet that monster face to face!"

  I think that both Susan and I fairly reeled before this news, like actors registering surprise in an old-fashioned melodrama. As for Judge Pursuivant, he turned to the table, cut a generous wedge of the meat pie and set it, all savory and steaming, on a plate for himself His calm zest for the good food gave us others steadiness again, so that we sat down and even ate a little as he described his day in town.

  He had found opportunity to talk to Susan in private, confiding in her about me and finally sending her to me; this, as he said, so that we would convince each other of our resjjective innocences. It was purely an inspiration, for he had had no idea, of course, that such conviction would turn out so final. Thereafter he made shift to enter the Gird house and talk to Doctor Zoberg.

  That worthy he found sitting somewhat limply in the parlor, with John Gird's coffin in the next room. Zoberg, the judge reported, was mystified about the murder and anxious to bring to justice the townsfolk - there were more than one, it seemed - who had beaten him. Most of all, however, he was concerned about the charges against me.

  "His greatest anxiety is to prove you innocent," Judge Pursuivant informed me. "He intends to bring the best lawyer possible for your defense, is willing even to assist in paying the fee. He also swears that character witnesses can be brought to testify that you are the most peaceable and law-abiding man in the country."

  "That's mighty decent of him," I said. "According to your reasoning of this morning, his attitude proves him innocent, too."

  "What reasoning was that?" asked Susan, and I was glad that the judge continued without answering her.

  "I was glad that I had sent Miss Susan on. If your car had remained there, Mr Wills, Doctor Zoberg might have driven off in it to rally your defenses."

  "Not if I know him," I objected. "The whole business, what of the mystery and occult significances, will hold him right on the spot. He's relentlessly curious and, despite his temporary collapse, he's no coward."

  "I agree with that," chimed in Susan.

  As for my pursuers of the previous night, the judge went on, they had been roaming the snow-covered streets in twos and threes, heavily armed for the most part and still determined to punish me for killing their neighbor. The council was too frightened or too perplexed to deal with the situation, and the constable was still in bed, with his brother assuming authority, when Judge Pursuivant made his inquiries. The judge went to see the wounded man, who very pluckily determined to rise and take up his duties again.

  "I'll arrest the man who plugged me," O'Bryant had promised grimly, "and that kid brother of mine can quit playing policeman."

  The judge applauded these sentiments, and brought him hot food and whisky, which further braced his spirits. In the evening came the invasion by the younger O'Bryant of the Devil's Croft, and his resultant death at the claws and teeth of what prowled there.

  "His throat was so torn open and filled with blood that he could not speak," the judge concluded, "but he pointed back into the timber, and then tried to trace something in the snow with his finger. It looked like a wolf's head, with fjointed nose and ears. He died before he finished."

  "You saw him come out?" I asked.

  "No. I'd gone back to town, but later I saw the body, and the sketch in the snow."

  He finished his dinner and pushed back his chair. "Now," he said heartily, "it's up to us."

  "Up to us to do what?" I inquired.

  "To meet that monster face to face," he replied. "There are three of us and, so far as I can ascertain, but one of the enemy." Both Susan and I started to speak, but he held up his hand, smiling. "I know without being reminded that the odds are still against us, because the one enemy is fierce and blood-drinking, and can change shape and character. Maybe it can project itself to a distance- which makes it all the harder, both for us to face it and for us to get help."

  "I know what you mean by that last," I nodded gloomily. "If there were ten thousand friendly constables in the neighborhood, instead of a single hostile one, they wouldn't believe us."

  "Right," agreed Judge Pursuivant. "We're like the group of perplexed mortals in Dracula, who had only their own wits and weapons against a monster no more forbidding than ours."

  It is hard to show clearly how his constant offering of parallels and rationalizations comforted us. Only the unknown and unknowable can terrify completely. We three were even cheerful over a bottle of wine that William fetched and poured out in three glasses. Judge Pursuivant gave us a toast - "May wolves go hungry!" - and Susan and I drank it gladly.

  "Don't forget what's on our side," said the judge, putting down his glass. "I mean the steadfast and courageous heart, of which I preached to Wills last night, and which we can summon from within us any time and anywhere. The werewolf, daundessly faced, loses its dread; and I think we are the ones to face it. Now we're ready for action."

  I said that I would welcome any kind of action whatsoever, and Susan touched my arm as if in endorsement of the remark. Judge Pursuivant's spectacles glittered in approval.

  "You two will go into the Devil's Croft," he announced. "I'm going back to town once more."

  "Into the Devil's Croft!" we almost shouted, both in the same shocked breath.

  "Of course. Didn't we just get through with the agreement all around that the lycanthrope can and must be met face to face? Offense is the best defense, as perhaps one hundred thousand athletic trainers have reiterated."

  "I've already faced the creature once," I reminded him. "As for appearing dauntless, I doubt my own powers of deceit."

  "You shall have a weapon," he said. "A fire gives light, and we know that such things must have darkness - such as it finds in the midst of that swampy wood. So fill your pockets with matches, both of you."

  "How about a gun?" I asked, but he shook his head.

  "We don't want the werewolf killed. That would leave the whole business in mystery, and yourself probably charged with another murder. He'd return to his human shape, you know, the moment he was hurt even slightly."

  Susan spoke, very calmly: "I'm ready to go into the Croft, Judge Pursuivant."

  He clapped his hands loudly, as if applauding in a theater. "Bravo, my dear, bravo! I see Mr Wills sets his jaw. That means he's ready to go with you. Very well, let us be off."

  He called to William who at his orders brought three lanterns -sturdy old-fashioned affairs, protected by strong wire nettings - and filled them with oil. We each took one and set out. It had turned clear and frosty once more, and the moon shone too brightly for my comfort, at least. However, as we approached the grove, we saw no sentinels; they could hardly be blamed for deserting, after the fate of the younger O'Bryant.

  We gained the shadow of the outer cedars unchallenged. Here Judge Pursuivant called a halt, produced a match from his overcoat pocket and lighted our lanterns all around. I remember that we struck a fresh light for Susan's lantern; we agreed that, silly as the three-on-a match superstition might be, this was no time or place to tempt Providence.

  "Come on," said Judge Pursuivant then, and led the way into the darkest part of the immense thicket.

  XII

  ''We are here at his mercy."

  We followed Judge Pursuivant, Susan and I, without much of a tho
ught beyond an understandable dislike for being left alone on the brink of the timber. It was a slight struggle to get through the close-set cedar hedge, especially for Susan, but beyond it we soon caught up with the judge. He strode heavily and confidently among the trees, his lantern held high to shed light upon broad, polished leaves and thick, wet stems. The moist warmth of the grove's interior made itself felt again, and the judge explained again and at greater length the hot springs that made possible this surprising condition. All the while he kept going. He seemed to know his way in that forbidden fastness - indeed, he must have explored it many times to go straight to his destination.

  That destination was a clearing, in some degree like the one where I had met and fought with my hairy pursuer on the night before. This place had, however, a great tree in its center, with branches that shot out in all directions to hide away the sky completely. By straining the ears one could catch a faint murmur of water - my scalding stream, no doubt. Around us were the thick-set trunks of the forest, filled in between with brush and vines, and underfoot grew velvety moss.

  "This will be our headquarters position," said the judge. "Wills, help me gather wood for a fire. Break dead branches from the standing trees - never mind picking up wood from the ground, it will be too damp."

  Together we collected a considerable heap and, crumpling a bit of paper in its midst, he kindled it.

  "Now, then," he went on, "I’m heading for town. You two will stay here and keep each other company."

  He took our lanterns, blew them out and ran his left arm through the loops of their handles.

  "I'm sure that nothing will attack you in the light of the fire. You're bound to attract whatever skulks hereabouts, however. When I come back, we ought to be prepared to go into the final act of our little melodrama."

  He touched my hand, bowed to Susan, and went tramping away into the timber. The thick leafage blotted his lantern-light from our view before his back had been turned twenty seconds.

  Susan and I gazed at each other, and smiled rather uneasily.