Collected short fiction, p.418
Collected Short Fiction, page 418
Glenn’s hazel eyes blinked heavily. He shook his tousled, curly dark head. Once more Barbee felt that warm, inexplicable flood of confidence and kinship.
Glenn shrugged in the splendid robe. His calm, deep voice said: “No, we can’t do that?”
“But he’s dead!” Barbee shuddered. “My friend—”
“If there is no corpse,” Glenn said, “the police would be troubled for nothing. If there is one, they would wonder how you knew about it. I am a strict materialist—but the police are brutal materialists.”
Barbee’s teeth chattered. “Do you think—I really killed him?”
“By no means,” Glenn said smoothly. “But I see an interesting alternative possibility.” His sleepy eyes blinked. “You have been trying to solve the mystery surrounding Mondrick and his associates. Consciously you have failed. But the unconscious, remember, is keener than we often give it credit for being.”
Deliberately, he placed his long brown fingers together.
“Unconsciously. Barbee,” he said gravely, “you may have suspected that Nick Spivak would be thrown out of a window tonight.”
“Nonsense!” Barbee stiffened angrily. “Only Sam was there—”
“Exactly.” Glenn’s dark, curly head made a slight I-told-you-so nod. “Your conscious mind rejects the possibility that Sam Quain is a murderer—it may be because unconsciously you want him to die for murder.”
Barbee clenched a trembling fist.
“By Heaven,” he choked hoarsely, “I won’t have it!” He thrust himself forward and gulped for his voice. “That . . . that’s diabolical. It’s insane. I tell you, man, Sam and Nora are my best friends!”
Softly Glenn asked: “Both of them?”
Barbee opened his sweaty fist, clenched it.
“Shut up!” he gasped. “By Heaven, you can’t say that to me!”
Glenn retreated hastily with a disarming smile.
“Just a suggestion,” he said. “Your violent reaction indicates that it reaches a pretty tender spot. But suppose we forget it for tonight and go back to bed?”
Barbee caught an uneasy breath and thrust his hands in his pockets.
“All right, doc.” His voice was shaken. “I’m sorry.” In a low, savage voice he added: “But you’re dead wrong. The woman I love is April Bell.”
With a faint sardonic smile, Glenn closed the door.
Barbee walked slowly back through the night to the dormitory. It was somehow strange to be moving on two awkward legs, seeing only formless shapes with a man’s dull eyes, unaware of all the sounds and odors of his dreams.
Glenn was a fool. It was true that he once had loved Nora. Perhaps he had seen a good deal of her in the years of Sam’s absence., But Glenn’s revolting conclusion was absurd. Sam was as dear to him as Nora.
About calling the police, though, Glenn was right. Any call would prove him either a lunatic or a murderer. He clenched his clammy fists again and gulped a great breath of the chill night air. If Nick were really lying dead on the walk, and Sam likely to be suspected of murder, he had to do something. And there was one thing he could do.
He hurried back into the dormitory. Nurse Hellar rather fearfully let him use the office telephone, and he called Nora Quain. She answered quickly, as if she had been awake, and her voice was sharp with apprehension.
“What is it, Will?”
“Sam has a phone in the lab?” he said. “Please call him right away. Wake him up. I believe that something has happened to Nick. Sam’s in danger because of it.”
With a choked, frightened cry, Nora hung up.
Barbee went wearily back to his room. This was surely enough for one night. Perhaps the white wolf would let him sleep.
THE SUN was shining when he woke again, but the building was still silent. Nurse Hellar, of the glorious hair and super-dynamic physique, was sitting at her desk downstairs. She hastily attempted to conceal an actual-confessions magazine and told him that breakfast would be served in two hours. Her manner was cautiously watchful, and Barbee was amused to notice a large rat trap set beside her desk. She didn’t know if the morning paper had come, but he could look.
Barbee found a damp copy of the Star on the lawn. Anxiously he scanned the box of bold-face stop-press bulletins. The paper began to shake in his hands as he read:
“CURSE” TAKES THIRD
Nicolas Outturn, twenty-eight, fellow of Clarendon University, was found dead early this morning, by special campus watchmen, beneath an open tenth-floor window in Anthropology Hall. In connection with the death, police are seeking Samuel Quain, now sole survivor of the famous “cursed” expedition headed by Dr. Paul Mondrick. Quain is missing, with the mysterious green box, which has been closely guarded since the return of the ill-fated group. Police are thought to suspect that priceless relics of a prehistoric Asian culture, in the box, have supplied a motive for three clever “accidental” murders. For details of the man hunt now being organized by city police and the county sheriff’s office, see later editions of the Star.
The paper dropped out of Barbee’s numbed fingers. Perhaps there was a murder plot. But Sam Quain wasn’t the plotter—despite Glenn’s diabolical suggestion, that was unthinkable. Sam was to be the fourth victim.
In the cold, early sunlight, Barbee shuddered. Here was a brain, cold and ruthless and malignant, killing to keep its mad secret. Here was the deadly hand of the Black Messiah. And he—he reeled to the sickening-certainty of it—had been a tool.
He caught his breath. Whatever he had done, under the power of this streamlined witch, there might be yet a chance to undo something. He must try, if he could, to help Sam. He called back to Nurse Hellar:
“Tell Glenn I’ve gone back to town.”
“Really, Mr. Barbee,” she began a protest, “hadn’t you better talk—”
“No,” said Barbee.
Somehow it pleased him to see Nurse Hellar’s awe. Her large mouth opened and closed. Her broad face turned a little pale. His threat about the rat had been remarkably effective. Without another word, she let him go.
He found his car on the gravel lot where he had parked it, and drove rapidly toward the campus. A milk truck rattled across the quiet street in front of him. He passed a belated newsboy on a bicycle. The chill autumn air had a smoky crispness. It was a perfectly normal, believable world.
But Barbee was shuddering.
THE autumn-splashed, sun-flooded landscape was just a painted veil. It concealed a silent, brooding horror that was too frightful for sane minds to think of. Even the stout man in white coveralls driving the milk truck might—just might—be the Black Messiah.
A police car was patroling the campus. Barbee grinned and honked at Sergeant Ryan and Lieutenant Green. He parked in front of Sam Ouain’s white bungalow. Nora opened the door. Her round, freckled face was pale and tear-stained and sleepless.
“Oh, Will!” Her blue eyes lighted with tired relief. “I’m glad you came. It’s been such a terrible night. The police were here for hours, grilling me about Sam. They’re still watching the house. But don’t worry—I didn’t tell them you warned us.”
Barbee followed her into the simple front room. It was cold. The shades were still drawn, the lights still burning. She was trying hard not to sob. She touched her pale, quivering lips.
“Pat’s asleep.”
“This is awful.” Barbee put his arm around her tense, trembling body. “Where’s Sam?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her blond, disheveled head hopelessly. “Oh, Will—” Agony choked her. She whispered faintly: “I’m afraid I’ll never see him again.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
She made a noisy gulp, and her tense shoulders jerked in angry defiance of her sobs.
“I called him right away,” she said huskily. “It was a long time before he answered, and his voice was sleepy. I told him what you said. He laid down the phone. In a minute he spoke again—in a terrible, desperate, frightened voice.
“ ‘My God, Nora!’ I remember his very words. ‘They’ve killed Nick, too. I’m next. I’m going to try to get away. If I make it, you’ll hear from me—somehow. Tell Pat I love her.’ Then he said good-by.”
Nora wiped her red eyes.
“That’s all, Will. He hung up before I could ask any questions.” Her frantic fingers sank into Barbee’s arm. “Who did it, Will?” she gasped desperately. “And how did you find out?”
Barbee couldn’t meet her tortured eyes.
“Just a phone call,” he lied lamely. “The usual anonymous tip.”
She clung to him, shuddering.
“Will, this is—frightful.” It was a stricken whisper. “They’ve found papers in Nick’s handwriting. They think Sam did it all for something in that green box. They say he poisoned Mondrick. And tinkered with the steering gear of the car—it was our car, you know—so that it failed and killed Rex. And murdered Nick, and threw him out of the window. They found blood in the room and a broken chair.
“But he didn’t!” Her whisper broke almost into a scream. “I know he didn’t.” She gulped and jabbed angrily at her tears. “Will—what can we do for Sam?”
His own hand trembling, Barbee stroked her tangled, golden head.
“We’ll try, Nora.” He paused to consider, abruptly lifted his head. “You know, I’ve got a hunch I can find Sam.” His voice was low and excited. “Suppose you gather up some things for me to take him. Rough clothing, boots., sleeping bag—the light equipment he had on the expedition. I’ll get some food on the way.”
On his arm, her fingers tightened desperately.
“Where is he, Will?”
“Just a reporter’s hunch,” Barbee said. “Even if I’m right, it’s better if you don’t know. The police will be here again. Why don’t you write him a note?”
Her fingers slowly relaxed, suddenly tensed again.
“The police won’t follow you?”
“A reporter has an excuse to go anywhere.” He faced her gravely. “Nora, there’s a frightful thing about to happen. We’ve got to help Sam. Not just for his own sake. But because he’s our one hope against—it.”
She nodded slowly.
“I know, Will.” Her eyes were wide and dark, and, she shuddered. “Sam wouldn’t tell-me. But I’ve known. Since the day the Clipper came in. It’s something waiting just out of sight, silent and grinning and hideous.”
BARBEE LOOKED to see that the prowl car was not on the street, and hastily carried the pack out to his car. He stopped at a market to get flour and bacon and sugar and coffee. He drove south on the river road, west on the new State highway. He turned north on a rutted dirt road toward the hills.
He knew where Sam would be.
Driving, he had time to analyze the hunch. Sam was an outdoor man. He had roughed it on three continents, and his boyhood had been spent on the ranch in these same hills. His instinct would be to seek them.
Sam had no car—his own had been wrecked on Sardis Hill, and apparently none had been stolen. Barbee calculated briefly. Starting at one thirty, and burdened with the green box, Sam couldn’t have made more than fifteen miles. He drew a mental circle—and the very spot flashed into his mind.
One Thanksgiving, when he, Rex and Sam were riding in these hills, they had glimpsed a bare, iron-reddened cliff above Laurel Canyon, and Sam pointed out the smoky streak that betrayed an Indian cave.
That was the place!
Perhaps there were flaws in the reasoning. That didn’t matter. The hunch had told him where to find Sam. The rest was just a bungling effort to explain to himself how he knew.
Twice he parked on side roads for an hour, watching and listening to be sure he was not followed. It was noon when he reached Bear Canyon. Clouds had hidden the sun, and a rising north wind promised rain. He left the car hidden and started his three-mile tramp with the pack.
Ascending Laurel Canyon, he walked boldly in the open. To attempt to stalk the cave would be surely fatal. Dull human senses brought him no information. But a sure intuition told him that Sam Quain held suspended.
“Sam!” Apprehension quivered in his hail.
“It’s Barbee, with supplies!”
He gulped a deep breath of relief when the fugitive stepped out of a red-splashed clump of scrub oak beside the trail. His haggard, bronze head was bare, his shirt muddy and torn. His hard body drooped and trembled with exhaustion, but the big revolver was steady in his hand.
“Will! What the devil are you doing here?”
“I brought some things you need,” Barbee said hastily. “Don’t worry, my trail is safe. Nora sent a note.”
Sam Quain’s drawn, red-stubbled face was hard and suspicious.
“I ought to kill you, Will.” His voice was hoarse and rusty and strange. “I should have killed you long ago. But you saved my life last night. The things you have brought may save it again.”
Barbee tramped ahead until the gun beckoned him to stop.
“Can’t you trust me, Sam?” he begged. “Won’t you tell me, so that I can help? I want to know. Yesterday I went to Glennhaven. I thought I was losing my mind. But it’s more than insanity.”
Quain’s red-rimmed eyes narrowed watchfully.
“A good deal more,” his hard voice grated.
The clouds had lowered about the peaks. Now the north wind was suddenly fresh and damp. Thunder crashed and echoed in the upper canyon. Huge raindrops spattered on the fallen leaves, splashed icily on their faces.
At last, reluctantly, Sam Quain gestured with the gun.
“Come on out of the storm.” It was a weary mutter. “I suppose it can’t do much harm to tell you.”
THE CAVE was invisible from below. To reach it they climbed half-obliterated steps in a water-cut chimney, where one man could hold off a hundred. It was a long, horizontal fissure, dug by the chisel of time between two strata of hard sandstone. The roof was black with smoke of ancient fires. Hidden in the deepest corner, Barbee saw the battered wooden box from Asia.
When he had got back his breath from the climb, Barbee opened the pack, made coffee on the tiny primus stove, opened a can of beans. Using the green box for a table, Sam Quain ate and drank avidly. He kept the gun in his hand, and his red, watchful eyes roved back and forth between Barbee and the slope below.
The clouds thickened as he ate. The blue-gray ceiling dropped lower about the peaks. Thunder boomed and rumbled in the gorge below, and cold raindrops splashed into the cave. He finished, and Barbee prompted:
“Now, tell me.”
“Do you really want to know?” Sam Quain’s feverish eyes scanned him. “The knowledge will haunt you, Will. It will make the world into a menagerie of horrors. It will point unspeakable suspicions at every friend you have. It may kill you.”
“I want to know,” Barbee said.
Watchfully, his hand on the gun, Sam Quain asked: “Do you remember what Mondrick was saying when he was murdered?”
“So he was murdered?” Barbee said softly. “And the means was a little black kitten—garroted?”
Quain’s pale, unshaven face went slack. His mouth hung open. His glittering, bloodshot eyes went dark with terror. The gun jerked up in his hand and he rasped hoarsely:
“How did you know that?”
“I saw the kitten,” Barbee said. “Several things happened that I don’t understand.” He drew back uneasily from the green box. “I remember the last words Mondrick said. ‘It was a hundred thousand years ago—’ ”
The hard, blue glare of lightning made the gloom of the storm seem thicker. Rain drummed on the ledge outside, and a cold mist drifted into the cave. Quain waited for the echoing crash of thunder to subside before his worn, hoarse voice resumed:
“It was a time when men lived in such settings as this.” He nodded into the smoke-blackened cave. “A time when they lived in a state of endless terror that is still reflected in our myths and our superstitions and our dreams. For they were hunted and haunted by that other, older race that Mondrick called Homo lycanthropus.”
Barbee started, muttering:
“Werewolf-man?”
“Wolf-man,” said Quain. “So named for certain distinguishing characters of skull and teeth—characters you see every day.” His hollow eyes were uncomfortably searching. “Perhaps a better name would have been witch man.”
BARBEE FELT a prickling over his skin. The cave was cold, and icy drops began dripping from the roof. Sam moved the green box.
“This older race had developed mental powers beyond those of men,” he went on. “Mondrick wasn’t sure of their precise extent. Such powers as we call telepathy, clairvoyance; prophecy. Perhaps others. There is evidence that they were able to control and destroy, at a distance, by some vital projection from their bodies. Mondrick believed, from his studies of witchcraft and lycanthropy, that they were able to take animal forms.”
Barbee shuddered. He was glad he hadn’t told Sam about his dreams. A certain intuition told him that Sam would have killed him for them. He looked uneasily into the drumming rain.
“For tens of thousands of years, the evidence shows,” Sam Quain went on, “the witch, folk were the enemies and the cruel masters of men. They were the priests and the evil gods. It was an incredible, degrading, cannibalistic oppression. You can find the details in every mythology, and in your own nightmares.
“But men revolted. The witch folk were numerous, and perhaps the ages had sapped their racial vigor. The hardier human tribes, following the retreating glaciers, escaped for a time. They domesticated the dog—a stanch ally. And somehow they devised another weapon. I have it here.”
He touched the green box, and Barbee remembered the white plaster cast of a work-cracked stone disk in his last dream, from which Nick Spivak had been working so desperately to read the inscription.
“Men won,” Quain went on. “After endless, frightful wars, the witch folk were exterminated. But the blood of the conquerors was no longer pure.” He leaned over the green box, and lightning showed the grim tension of his haggard face. “That was Mondrick’s great discovery.
