Rim of the pit, p.9
Rim of the Pit, page 9
Ogden looked up, startled, and then stared down at his glass. Slowly the color which the fiery liquid had forced into his face drained away. A muscle twitched in his cheek.
“There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just that . . . I don’t feel very well.”
Ambler gave Sherry no time to digest this seemingly contradictory statement. He coughed and said, “We’ve had enough excitement for one evening, but it’s over now and time we were all in bed. I confess I’m tired.” He caught the guide’s eyes on Barbara and added, “Madore, if Mr. Ogden will let you come back to the lodge with us, there’s something about which I’d like your advice.”
Madore laughed. “M’sieu Ogden he no stop me if me wan’ to go. Not’ing stop Madore.”
Ogden showed no sign of resenting the man’s arrogance. Instead he turned to Ambler.
“You’re not going back to the lodge tonight?”
The guide laughed again. “M’sieu Ogden hees scare. Madore not scare’. I show you.”
He strode to the door. As his hand touched the latch, Ogden started up in protest, then cowered back on the sofa, knuckles pressed against his teeth in an agony of apprehension.
The party from the lodge bade the others good night and followed Madore. As they passed through the vestibule, some of the half-breed’s bravado oozed out of him. He clutched his medal in his fist and muttered a prayer under his breath. Then he opened the outer door a mere slit and turned his flashlight in all directions before venturing further.
Latham followed on the guide’s heels. Jeff caught Ambler’s arm and growled in his ear.
“What’s the idea of leaving the girls like this?”
“Think a minute. If we had stayed, they would have wanted to know why. We couldn’t have given a logical reason, so they would have jumped to the conclusion that we were holding something back. Miss Daventry doesn’t seem to have a nerve in her body, but it wouldn’t take much to throw Miss Ogden into a panic. Besides, if we’d stayed, Madore would have stayed, too.”
“If he had, I’d have taken him apart,” Jeff declared grimly. “Did you see the way he looked at Babs?”
“I did. I wasn’t pleased by his attitude toward his employer, either. I don’t think we were more than five minutes from a fight, which wouldn’t have improved Miss Ogden’s nerves—or ours.”
“The professor’s right,” Rogan put in. “This way we get Madore away from Cabrioun. If he speaks out of turn we can dissect him.”
Jeff gave in. “O.K., but he’s mine first.”
With that the talk died. The wind had risen and filled their tracks with drifting snow almost as fast as they were made. Rogan, glancing down, had an uncomfortable realization of how easy it would be to get lost. Even his own back trail could not have been followed far.
Thor padded soundlessly. Except for an occasional clink of his license against his collar he might have been a shadow. Then, as they left the cleared space and passed under the trees, he disappeared entirely. It was inky black. Even the bare branches were enough to shut out the little light that came from the sky. Madore seemed to find his way by instinct, for he used his flash sparingly. Jeff used his more often, shining it over his shoulder. He was at some pains to explain that he did this only because he “wanted to get a look at the thing Mr. Ogden saw, and find out what it really was.”
Rogan paid little attention to his companions. His own dislike of the wild had returned and was intensified by the darkness. He tried to shake off the feeling and concentrate on seeking a rational explanation of the apparition. There seemed no way to formulate any theory in terms of a living agency. The thing had been carried too far to have been a mere hoax on Barbara’s part. Rogan’s original suspicion that someone might have created the ghost to get around Mrs. Ogden’s refusal to have Onawa logged would no longer hold water. That point had been settled and still the phenomena went on. He could think of no third possibility.
He struggled fruitlessly with the problem until the dark bulk of the lodge loomed through the trees. They stamped in, but even when Jeff had closed the double doors behind him and bolted them, there was no relaxation of tension. The lodge had its own electrical system, and the bright glow of its lights was welcome after the gloom of Cabrioun. Under normal conditions the living room was a pleasant place. Its low ceiling and its rambling L-shape gave it a coziness that was entirely lacking in the high house Désanat had built for his bride. But tonight its homely magic had no effect. Rogan’s wariness refused to leave him. He caught himself thinking: “Nothing has happened here—yet.”
The professor waited until they had removed their coats before he spoke.
“Luke, I saw an old case of dueling pistols up here. May I borrow them?”
“They’re Jeff’s.”
“Sure you can borrow them,” said Jeff. “Why?”
“I noticed that the outfit included molding equipment and a powder flask.” Ambler opened the mahogany case which Jeff brought from the gun room. “Yes, everything is here. I’m going to ask Madore to mold a silver bullet for me.”
“You mak’ for keel windigo?”
“I’d like to be prepared to try.”
“We mak’ hot fire on kitchen. I show you.”
Madore turned and swaggered down a narrow passage opposite the main door. Jeff looked at Ambler.
“What’s the idea?”
“Partly anthropological curiosity—I’ve never seen a magic bullet made. Partly a desire to keep our friend busy until I’m ready to deal with him.” He took the mold and melting ladle from the case and started after the guide.
“Wait a minute.” Jeff ran after them. “I’m coming with you.”
Latham and his remaining guest strolled into the other wing. Rogan dropped on one end of the sofa and fell to examining the magnificent workmanship of the pistols.
“Jeff brought that pair up here last summer,” explained Latham. “Tried ’em out. You hear stories about the old-timers splitting cards with ’em. By golly, they could have, too. I can do it myself, twice in five shots.” He fell silent.
Rogan asked, “I’ve been wondering what you think of tonight’s happenings.”
“Most of it’s an old story to me. Breaking up séances seems to come natural to magicians. One way it’s a good thing. Mediums are a lot like the early radios. Sometimes they get messages. Sometimes they don’t. People feel like a pack of fools when they sit in the dark a couple of hours and nothing happens. Naturally the medium wants to please ’em. If she can’t get real manifestations she fakes. Human nature. Mediums do so many things that are really wonderful, the sitters reach a point where they swallow everything. I guess the magicians help keep the mediums in line.”
“Then you don’t think the fact that Vok caught Mrs. Ogden cold-decking us on the questions proves the spook we saw later was synthetic?”
“Wish I could think so. Grimaud’s up to some sort of meanness. He can be the nastiest skunk in creation when he tries. No, Irene’s cheating doesn’t prove anything. Some men steal. Doesn’t show everybody’s a thief. Doesn’t even show the thief’s dishonest all the time. Come right down to it, the fact some mediums cheat is positive proof of another world. Before a medium can fake a phenomenon that phenomenon must have happened. Can’t imitate anything that doesn’t exist.”
“If that’s true, how would you tell a sham specter from a real one?”
Latham squatted on the hearth and absently scratched Thor’s ears.
“Grimaud’s real, all right. Tell you I know the man. He’s dangerous.”
“You don’t think he’s done with us, then?”
Latham eyed his guest shrewdly. “No. Neither do you. What do you suppose he went after Frank Ogden for?”
“That’s one of the big puzzles.”
“Not to me. Frank drank that brandy, didn’t he? Something he’d never done before in his life. Drank it all in one gulp, too.”
Rogan raised one eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that Ogden is under Désanat’s control?”
Latham nodded. “I’d heard about those from the other side coming back and getting control of people over here. Never gave it much thought. When Peyton spoke about it tonight I thought he was making game of Vok. But it’s reasonable once you think of it. If a spirit’s really going to do anything, it needs a body.”
“But Ogden wasn’t possessed. I admit he wasn’t quite himself.”
“That’s it,” said Latham. “He wasn’t quite himself. Don’t guess spirits can control everybody. Frank isn’t what we call a sensitive. Grimaud couldn’t do much with him. But he did his best.”
“If Ogden wasn’t a good subject, why should Désanat pick on him?”
“Picking on Frank is the easiest way to hurt Irene.” Latham straightened, threw a log on the fire, and turned. “Do you think we’d better send Madore back to his cabin or keep him here?”
“Keep him here,” Rogan advised, “where we can watch him.”
“He’ll bear watching. I’ll put him in the back room upstairs. Want to come with me while I rustle some blankets, or don’t you mind being alone?”
“I’ll be all right. These dueling pistols fascinate me.”
When Jeff returned from the kitchen he found Kincaid studying the damascening on the barrel of one of the old weapons. Rogan looked up.
“Hello. Did you make your silver bullet?”
“It’s not mine. We got it cast, though—out of a bent spoon I found in the storeroom. Mr. Ambler’s waiting for it to cool.” Jeff jerked his head toward the kitchen. “Do you think he could have anything to do with this business?”
“Ambler?”
Jeff nodded somberly. “There are a couple of queer things. To begin with, he hasn’t any business to be up here.”
“You mean he wasn’t invited?”
“He was invited all right, but he shouldn’t have come. The University doesn’t have a real Thanksgiving holiday—just the day itself. He’s taking the whole week off. Must have left Charlottesville Sunday night.”
“Professors play hooky, too—in deer season.”
“Not old Ambler. He’s a conscientious codger. He came to class for three weeks once with his leg in a cast. Besides, there’s something else. That ‘message’ Mrs. Ogden dug up for him was supposed to be from some scientific bozo whose initials were W. G. or W. Q. Well, the guy who got lost with Sherry’s father was a chemist and his name was Walter Querns.”
“Suppose it’s the same man. What does that prove?”
Jeff hunched his great shoulders. “Nothing, except that Mr. Ambler’s never said anything about knowing Querns, or the Ogdens either, for that matter. I took a couple of courses under him in college and introduced him to Uncle Luke. They got clubby, went hunting together a couple of times, and I believe Mr. Ambler bought a little stock in our company.”
“He may have heard about Querns from your uncle.”
“Maybe,” Jeff conceded, “but why would that give the old boy enough interest in Querns to ask questions about him at a séance?”
He broke off as Ambler returned. The little professor dropped in a saddlebag chair near one end of the sofa. Rogan picked up a pistol and offered it.
“Now that the ord’nance department has finished, will you charge the piece, sir?”
“The load isn’t quite ready,” Ambler informed him, smiling. “Madore’s putting the magic into it now. He wouldn’t let me watch him.”
Jeff bristled. “Wouldn’t let you . . . ? I’ll—”
“Cool off, my boy. You might make him let me stay, but I wouldn’t see anything. That’s the trouble with anthropological studies. The things that matter are done in secret. A man’s private prayers would tell you more of his real beliefs than the services at the church he goes to.”
“Speaking of beliefs,” remarked Rogan, “what’s this windigo business?”
“I’m not quite certain. I’d always thought the word applied to some vague, evil power—a sort of personification of all the terrors of the wild. Now Madore has given me a new viewpoint on the subject. He describes a windigo as if it were both a possessing spirit and the person possessed. That thought never occurred to me before, because possession is not supposed to be an Amerindian concept. Since Madore’s pointed it out, however, I realize that our ideas on the subject were mistaken. For instance, certain forms of possession by animal spirits were thought to be fairly common among the Chippewas. Madore’s suggestion goes far toward explaining the whole windigo belief.”
“Do you think there’s any real basis for it?”
“That’s hard to say. Men go mad sometimes in the isolation of the big northern snow-deserts.”
Jeff scratched his head. “You think Madore may have heard some yarn that Désanat turned crazy when he got lost, and went windigo?”
“Something like that. Perhaps after the look Madore got at Ogden’s face tonight he thinks Ogden is a windigo in embryo. I won’t say I’d find that hard to believe myself. I never saw a man so touched with terror.”
The guide strode into the room with studied insolence, juggling the silver bullet in the palm of his hand.
This, he proclaimed, was something very special, guaranteed to kill permanently any windigo at which it was aimed. He tossed the metal sphere to Rogan, who displayed it on his palm so the professor and Jeff could examine it. The ball was perhaps half an inch in diameter. Madore had scratched on it a cross and the letters J-M-J for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. There were other scratches, too. Mr. Kincaid decided that the half-breed had mixed Christian and Indian talismans with complete impartiality. The guide held out his hand.
“I put heem on pistol, yes?”
“You’d better let Mr. Jeff do it,” Ambler said pleasantly. “There’s a trick to these muzzle-loaders.”
Madore’s face grew surly, but the expressions of Jeff and Rogan did not encourage rebellion. Even so, an argument over the size of the charge brought them to the verge of a quarrel. When the loading was finished and Jeff offered the gun to Ambler, Madore snatched it and strode to the window.
“Now, by Gar,” he shouted, brandishing the weapon, “me ready for windigo!”
As if in answer, a shot rang out. For a moment Rogan thought the guide’s enthusiasm had carried him away. Then he realized the explosion was not loud enough for that, and the surprise on Madore’s face gave him the answer.
The shot came from the woods.
X
The Struggling Shadows
As [my father] entered I seized a fowling-piece, which I had secreted under my bed, and fired it at him. Fortunately, the charge went over his head into the ceiling.
—From the statement of a possessed person made to the REV. JOHN L. NEVIUS, D.D., who adds, “Of course [his] statements . . . of what he did when he was in a state of unconsciousness depend on the testimony of those about him. (Demon Possession)
WHILE THEY stood rigid, running feet pounded on the steps outside. Madore swung round with a startled oath and leveled his pistol at the door. Rogan knocked his arm up.
Latham clattered down the stairs, his round face tense with alarm.
“Someone’s shooting in the woods!”
Outside, fingers clawed at the latch and a voice panted, “Luke, Luke, it’s Frank! Let me in.”
Faced with a present danger, and deprived of a chance to use his weapon, Madore’s confidence drained out of him.
“Dat not Boss’ voice,” he whispered.
Jeff said, “Who cares?” He shot back the bolt and Ogden stumbled into the room. Rogan slammed the door and turned to see that the man carried an ancient flintlock.
“What happened?” demanded Latham. “Who shot at you?”
“Nobody . . . I fired.”
“That blunderbuss?”
“What were you shooting at?” Jeff asked.
“Nothing. Let me get my breath a minute.” Ogden staggered to the sofa and dropped on it. “I’ll be . . . all right . . . when I get my breath.”
He laid the musket on the floor and pulled off his heavy gloves. Something about his left hand troubled him. He stared down at it, moving the index finger as if surprised to find it still there.
“You need a drink.”
As Ambler poured it, Jeff seized Ogden’s arm.
“Has anything happened to Barbara?”
“No, no. The girls are all right.” Ogden snatched the drink and downed it. “Nothing’s happened to anyone.” He looked down at the empty glass and began to shiver. “Unless it’s happened to me.”
Latham said, “Better tell us.”
“Yes . . . I guess I had. After the others had gone to their rooms I . . . wasn’t so sure I had been in the right, so I came to the conclusion I should apologize to Irene.”
Ogden told how he had gone upstairs, but finding his wife’s door locked decided not to wake her. He had returned to the living room and taken another drink. Then he had stretched out on one of the window seats. His sleep had been troubled by terrifying dreams, of which he could remember nothing except that it had been bitter cold and that something seemed to be wrong with his left hand. He had awakened, shivering with cold and fright, to find Vok bending over him holding a match.
“What was Mr. Vok doing downstairs?” Jeff inquired.
“I asked,” Ogden replied, “but even after I lit a lamp and saw from the man’s face that something was wrong, he kept putting me off. It was five minutes before I dragged the facts out of him.”
Vok, Ogden continued, had been aroused by footsteps in the hall outside his room and heard someone try the lock on Irene’s door. He had assumed it was Ogden attempting again to make peace with his wife, but a minute later his own door opened. Vok had struck a match and was astounded to see his host standing in the opening with a gun in his hands. He aimed at Vok’s heart, and before the Czech could cry out, Ogden had pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped, but there was no explosion. However, Ogden had seemed satisfied, for he turned and left the room. It had taken Vok several seconds to collect his wits. Then he decided that Ogden was sleepwalking, and had gone in search of him for fear he should do himself an injury. Vok had found his host fast asleep on the window seat, and was bending over him to make sure he was well when Ogden awoke.
