Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  I was more shaken than I can describe, for the whole fantastic affair fitted in too well with certain formless vague sensations concerning the cairn which had already lingered at the back of my mind, to be dismissed as an unusually vivid dream. I felt the need of a glass of wine, and remembered that Ortali always had wine in his room. I hurriedly donned my clothes, opened my door, crossed the corridor and was about to, knock at Ortali’s door, when I noticed that it was partly open, as if someone had neglected to close it carefully. I entered, switching on a light. The room was empty.

  I realized what had occurred. Ortali mistrusted me; he feared to risk himself alone with me in a lonely spot at midnight. He had postponed the visit to the cairn merely to trick me, to give himself a chance to slip away alone.

  My hatred for Ortali was for the moment completely submerged by a wild panic of horror at the thought of what the opening of the cairn might result in. For I did not doubt the authenticity of my dream. It was no dream; it was a fragmentary bit of memory, in which I had relived that other life of mine. Grey Man’s Headland — Grimmin’s Headland, and under those rough stones that grisly corpse in its semblance of humanity. I could not hope that, imbued with the imperishable essence of an elemental spirit, that corpse had crumbled to dust in the ages.

  Of my race out of the city and across those semidesolate reaches, I remember little. The night was a cloak of horror through which peered red stars like the gloating eyes of uncanny beasts, and my footfalls echoed hollowly so that repeatedly I thought some monster loped at my heels.

  The straggling lights fell away behind me and I entered the region of mystery and horror. No wonder that progress had passed to the right and to the left of this spot, leaving it untouched, a blind back-eddy given over to goblin-dreams and nightmare memories. Well that so few suspected its very existence.

  Dimly I saw the headland, but fear gripped me and held me aloof. I had a. vague, incoherent idea of finding the ancient woman; Meve MacDonnal. She was grown old in the mysteries and traditions of the mysterious land. She could aid me, if indeed the blind fool Ortali loosed on the world the forgotten demon men once worshipped in the North.

  A figure loomed suddenly in the starlight and I caromed against him, almost upsetting him. A stammering voice in a thick brogue protested with the petulance of intoxication. It was a burly longshoreman returning to his: cottage, no doubt, from some late revel in a tavern. I seized him and shook him, my eyes glaring wildly in the starlight.

  “I am looking for Meve MacDonnal! Do you know her? Tell me, you fool! Do you know old Meve MacDonnal?”

  It was as if my words sobered him as suddenly as a dash of icy water in his face. In the starlight I saw his face glimmer whitely and a catch of fear was at his throat. He sought to cross himself with an uncertain hand.

  “Meve MacDonnal! Are ye mad? What would ye be doin’ with her?”

  “Tell me!” I shrieked, shaking him savagely. “Where is Meve MacDonnal—”

  “There!” he gasped, pointing with a shaking hand, where dimly in the night something loomed against the shadows. “In the name of the holy saints, begone, by ye madman or devil, and rave an honest man alone! There, there ye’ll find Meve MacDonnal — where they laid her, full three hundred years ago!”

  Half heeding his words, I flung him aside with a fierce exclamation, and, as I raced across the weed-grown plain, I heard the sound of his lumbering flight. Half blind with panic, I came to the low structure the man had pointed out. And floundering deep in weeds, my feet sinking into the musty mould, I realized with a shock that I was in the ancient graveyard on the inland side of Grimmin’s Headland, into which I had seen Meve MacDonnal disappear the evening before. I was close by the door of the largest tomb, and with an eerie premonition I leaned close, seeking to make out the deeply carven inscription. And partly by the dim light of the stars and partly by the touch of my tracing fingers, I made out the words and figures, in the half-forgotten Gaelic of three centuries ago: Meve MacDonnal — 1556-1640.

  With a cry of horror, I recoiled and, snatching out the crucifix she had given me, made to hurl it into the darkness — but it was as if an invisible hand caught my wrist. Madness and insanity — but I could not doubt: Meve MacDonnal had come to me from the tomb wherein she had rested for three hundred years to give me, the ancient, ancient relic entrusted to her so long ago by her priestly kin. The memory of her words came to me, and the memory of Ortali and the Grey Man. From a lesser horror I turned squarely to a greater, and ran swiftly toward the headland which loomed dimly against the stars toward the sea.

  As I crossed the ridge I saw, in the starlight, the cairn, and the figure that toiled gnome-like above it. Ortali, with his accustomed, almost superhuman energy, had dislodged many of the boulders; and as I approached, shaking with horrified anticipation, I saw him tear aside the last layer, and I heard his savage cry of triumph that froze me in my trace some yards behind him, looking down from the slope. An unholy radiance rose from the cairn, and I saw, in the north, the aurora came up suddenly with terrible beauty, paling the starlight. All about the cairn pulsed a weird light, turning the rough stones to a cold shimmering silver, and in this glow I saw Ortali, all heedless, cast aside his pick and lean gloatingly over the aperture he had made — and I saw there the helmeted head, reposing on the couch of stones where I, Red Cumal, had placed it so long ago. I saw the inhuman terror and beauty of that awesome carven face, in which was neither human weakness, pity nor mercy. I saw the soul-freezing glitter of the one eye, which stared wide open in a fearful semblance of life. All up and down the tall mailed figure shimmered and sparkled cold darts arid gleams of icy light; like the northern lights that blazed in the shuddering skies. Aye, the Grey Man lay as I had left him more than nine hundred years before, without trace of rust or rot or decay.

  And now as Ortali leaned forward to examine his find, a gasping cry broke from his lips — for the sprig of holly, worn in his lapel in defiance of “Nordic superstition,” slipped from its place, and in the weird glow I plainly saw it fall upon the mighty mailed breast of the figure, where it blazed suddenly with a brightness too dazzling for human eyes. My cry was echoed by Ortali. The figure moved; the mighty limbs flexed, tumbling the shining stones aside. A new gleam lighted the terrible eye, and a tide of life flooded and animated the carven features.

  Out of the cairn he rose, and the northern lights played terribly about him. And the Grey Man changed ad altered in horrific transmutation. The human features faded like a fading mask; the armour fell from his body and crumbled to dust as it fell; and the fiendish spirit ice and fof rost and darkness that the sons of the North deified as Odin, stood nakedly and terribly, in the stars. About his grisly head played lightnings and the shuddering gleams of the aurora. His towering anthropomorphic form was dark as shadow and gleaming as ice; his horrible crest reared colossally against the vaulting arch of the sky.

  Ortali cowered, screaming wordlessly, as the taloned, malformed hands reached for him. In the shadowy, indescribable features of the Thing, there was no tinge of gratitude toward the man who had released it — only a demoniac gloating and a demoniac hate for all the sons of men. I saw the shadowy arms shoot out and strike. I heard Ortali scream once — a single, unbearable screech that broke short at the shrillest pitch. A single instant a blinding blue glare burst about him, lighting his convulsed features and his upward-rolling eyes; then his body was dashed earthward as by an electric shock, so savagely that I distinctly heard the splintering of his bones. But Ortali was dead before he touched the ground — dead, shrivelled and blackened, exactly like a man blasted by a thunderbolt, to which cause, indeed, men later ascribed his death.

  The slavering monster that had slain him lumbered now toward me, shadowy, tentacle-like arms outspread, the pale starlight making a luminous pool of his great inhuman eye, his frightful talons dripping with I know not what elemental forces to blast the bodies and souls of men.

  But I flinched not, and in that instant I fe
ared him not, neither the horror of his countenance nor the threat of his thunderbolt dooms. For in a blinding white flame had come to me the realization of why Meve MacDonnal had come from her tomb to bring me the ancient cross which had lain in her bosom for three hundred years, gathering unto itself unseen forces of good and light, which war forever against the shapes of lunacy and shadow.

  As I plucked from my garments the ancient cross, I felt the play of gigantic unseen forces in the air about me. I was but a pawn in the game — merely the hand that held the relic of holiness, that was the symbol of the powers opposed forever against the fiends of darkness. As I held it high, from it shot a single shaft of white light, unbearably pure, unbearably white, as if all the awesome forces of Light were combined in the symbol and loosed in one concentrated arrow of wrath against the monster of darkness. And with a hideous shriek the demon reeled back, shrivelling before my eyes. Then, with a great rush of vulture-like wings, he soared into the stars, dwindling dwindling among the play of the flaming fires and the lights of the haunted skies, fleeing back into the dark limbo which gave him birth, God only knows how many grisly eons ago.

  * * *

  THE END

  Detective Stories

  Howard disliked the formulaic nature of detective fiction and was not fond of writing in the genre, feeling compelled to do so only to further his career as a writer of popular ‘pulp’ fiction. Yet his contributions are no less entertaining for all their author’s misgivings. His tales of the private detectives Butch Gorman and Brent Kirby are in the hardboiled tradition of Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler, as are the exploits of Steve Bender, Weary McGraw and the Whale – although only one complete story featuring the latter was ever published, which did not appear until the mid-1980s. Howard’s tales of the police detective Steve Harrison are more characteristic, blending elements of the weird tale with stories of crime and police work.

  Many of Howard’s crime stories were first published posthumously in this collection from 1981

  STEVE HARRISON

  CONTENTS

  FANGS OF GOLD; OR, PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT

  NAMES IN THE BLACK BOOK

  GRAVEYARD RATS

  THE TOMB’S SECRET; OR, THE TEETH OF DOOM

  FANGS OF GOLD; OR, PEOPLE OF THE SERPENT

  First published in Strange Detective Stories, February 1934

  “THIS is the only trail into the swamp, mister.” Steve Harrison’s guide pointed a long finger down the narrow path which wound in and out among the live-oaks and cypresses. Harrison shrugged his massive shoulders. The surroundings were not inviting, with the long shadows of the late afternoon sun reaching dusky fingers into the dim recesses among the moss-hung trees.

  “You ought to wait till mornin’,” opined the guide, a tall lanky man in cowhide boots and sagging overall. “It’s gittin’ late, and we don’t want to git catched in the swamp after night.”

  “I can’t wait, Rogers,” answered the detective. “The man I’m after might get clean away by morning.”

  “He’ll have to come out by this path,” answered Rogers as they swung along. “Ain’t no other way in or out. If he tries to push through to high ground on the other side, he’ll shore fall into a bottomless bog, or git et by a gator. There’s lots of them. I reckon he ain’t much used to swamps?”

  “I don’t suppose he ever saw one before. He’s city-bred.”

  “Then he won’t das’t leave the beaten path,” confidently predicted Rogers.

  “On the other hand, he might, not realizing the danger,” grunted Harrison.

  “What’d you say he done?” pursued Rogers, directing a jet of tobacco juice at a beetle crawling through the dark loam.

  “Knocked an old Chinaman in the head with a meat-cleaver and stole his life-time savings — ten thousand dollars, in bills of a thousand each. The old man left a little granddaughter who’ll be penniless if this money isn’t recovered. That’s one reason I want to get this rat before he loses himself in a bog. I want to recover that money, for the kid.”

  “And you figure the Chinaman seen goin’ down this path a few days ago was him?”

  “Couldn’t be anybody else,” snapped Harrison. “We’ve hounded him half way across the continent, cut him off from the borders and the ports. We were closing in on him when he slipped through, somehow. This was about the only place left for him to hide. I’ve chased him too far to delay now. If he drowns in the swamp, we’ll probably never find him, and the money will be lost, too. The man he murdered was a fine, honest old Chinaman. This fellow, Woon Shang, is bad all the way through.”

  “He’ll run into some bad folks down here,” ruminated Rogers. “Nothin’ but niggers live in these swamplands. They ain’t regular darkies like them that live outside. These came here fifty or sixty years back — refugees from Haiti, or somewhere. You know we ain’t far from the coast. They’re yeller- skinned, and don’t hardly ever come out of the swamp. They keep to theirselves, and they don’t like strangers. What’s that?”

  They were just rounding a bend in the path, and something lay on the ground ahead of them — something black, and dabbled with red, that groaned and moved feebly.

  “It’s a nigger!” exclaimed Rogers. “He’s been knifed.”

  It took no expert to deduce that. They bent over him and Rogers voiced profane recognition. “Why, I know this feller! He ain’t no swamp rat. He’s Joe Corley, that razored up another nigger at a dance last month and lit out. Bet he’s been hidin’ in the swamp ever since. Joe! Joe Corley!”

  The wounded man groaned and rolled up his glassy eyes; his skin was ashy with the nearness of approaching death.

  “Who stabbed you, Joe?” demanded Rogers.

  “De Swamp Cat!” The gasp was scarcely audible. Rogers swore and looked fearfully about him, as if expecting something to spring on them from the trees.

  “I wuz tryin’ to git outside,” muttered the Negro.

  “What for?” demanded Rogers. “Didn’t you know you’d git jailed if they catched you?”

  “Ruther go to de jail-house dan git mixed up — in de devilment — dey’s cookin’ up — in de swamp.” The voice sank lower as speech grew more difficult.

  “What you mean, Joe?” uneasily demanded Rogers.

  “Voodoo niggers,” muttered Corley disjointedly. “Took dat Chinaman ‘stead uh me — didn’t want me to git away, though — then John Bartholomew — uuuugh!”

  A trickle of blood started from the corner of his thick lips, he stiffened in brief convulsion and then lay still.

  “He’s dead!” whispered Rogers, staring down the swamp path with dilated eyes.

  “He spoke of a Chinaman,” said Harrison. “That clinches it that we’re on the right trail. Have to leave him here for the time being. Nothing we can do for him now. Let’s get going.”

  “You aim to go on, after this?” exclaimed Rogers.

  “Why not?”

  “Mr. Harrison,” said Rogers solemnly, “you offered me a good wage to guide you into this here swamp. But I’m tellin’ you fair there ain’t enough money to make me go in there now, with night comin’ on.”

  “But why?” protested Harrison. “Just because this man got into a fight with one of his own kind—”

  “It’s more ‘n just that,” declared Rogers decisively. “This nigger was tryin’ to git out of the swamp when they got him. He knowed he’d git jailed on the outside, but he was goin’ anyway; that means somethin’ had scared the livin’ daylights out of him. You heard him say it was the Swamp Cat that got him?”

  “Well?”

  “Well, the Swamp Cat is a crazy nigger that lives in the swamp. It’s been so long since any white folks claimed they seen him, I’d begun to believe he was just a myth the ‘outside’ niggers told to scare people away from the swamp. But this shows he ain’t. He killed Joe Corley. He’ll kill us if he catches us in the dark. Why, by golly, he may be watchin’ us right now!” This thought so disturbed Rogers that he drew a big six-s
hooter with an enormous length of barrel, and peered about, masticating his quid with a rapidity that showed his mental perturbation.

  “Who’s the other follow he named, John Bartholomew?” inquired Harrison.

  “Don’t know. Never heard of him. Come on, let’s shove out of here. We’ll git some boys and come back after Joe’s body.”

  “I’m going on,” growled Harrison, rising and dusting his hands.

  Rogers stared. “Man, you’re plumb crazy! You’ll git lost—”

  “Not if I keep to the path.”

  “Well, then, the Swamp Cat’ll git you, or them gators will—’’

  “I’ll take my chance,” answered Harrison brusquely. “Woon Shang’s somewhere in this swamp. If he manages to get out before I get my hands on him, he may get clean away. I’m going after him.”

  “But if you’ll wait we’ll raise a posse and go after him first thing in the mornin’,” urged Rogers.

  Harrison did not attempt to explain to the man his almost obsessional preference for working alone. With no further comment he turned and strode off down the narrow path. Rogers yelled after him: “You’re crazy as Hell! If you git as far as Celia Pompoloi’s hut, you better stay there tonight! She’s the big boss of them niggers. It’s the first cabin you come to. I’m goin’ back to town and git a posse, and tomorrow mornin’ we’ll—’’ The words became unintelligible among the dense growth as Harrison rounded a turn that shut off the sight of the other man.

  As the detective strode along he saw that blood was smeared on the rotting leaves, and there were marks as if something heavy had been dragged over the trail. Joe Corley had obviously crawled for some distance after being attacked. Harrison visualized him dragging himself along on his belly like a crippled snake. The man must have had intense vitality to have gotten so far with a mortal wound in his back. And his fear must have been desperate to so drive him.