Complete weird tales of.., p.1312
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 1312
“Kemper!” I shouted. “He’s got a third eye! He’s one of them! Knock him flat with your riflestock!” And I seized a shot-gun from the top of the baggage bundle on the ground beside me, and leaped at Grue, aiming a terrific blow at him.
* * *
“‘Kemper!’ I shouted.... ‘He is one of them! Knock him flat with your riflestock!’”
* * *
But the glassy eye in the back of his head was watching me between the clotted strands of hair, and he dodged both Kemper and me, swinging his heavy knife in circles and glaring at us both out of the front and back of his head.
Kemper seized him by his arm, but Grue’s shirt came off, and I saw his entire body was as furry as an ape’s. And all the while he was snapping at us and leaping hither and thither to avoid our blows; and from the corners of his puffed cheeks he whined and whimpered and mewed through the saliva foam.
“Keep him from the water!” I panted, following him with clubbed shot-gun; and as I advanced I almost stepped on a soiled heap of foulness — the dead buzzard which he had caught and worried to death with his teeth.
Suddenly he threw his knife at my head, hurling it backward; dodged, screeched, and bounded by me toward the shore of the lagoon, where the pretty waitress was standing, petrified.
For one moment I thought he had her, but she picked up her skirts, ran for the nearest boat, and seized a harpoon; and in his fierce eagerness to catch her he leaped clear over the boat and fell with a splash into the lagoon.
As Kemper and I sprang aboard and looked over into the water, we could see him going down out of reach of a harpoon; and his body seemed to be silver-plated, flashing and glittering like a burnished eel, so completely did the skin of air envelope him, held there by the fur that covered him.
And, as he rested for a moment on the bottom, deep down through the clear waters of the lagoon where he lay prone, I could see, as the current stirred his long, black hair, the third eye looking up at us, glassy, unwinking, horrible.
* * *
A bubble or two, like globules of quicksilver, were detached from the burnished skin of air that clothed him, and came glittering upward.
Suddenly there was a flash; a flurrying cloud of blue mud; and Grue was gone.
* * *
After a long while I turned around in the muteness of my despair. And slowly froze.
For the pretty waitress, becomingly pale, was gathered in Kemper’s arms, her cheek against his shoulder. Neither seemed to be aware of me.
“Darling,” he said, in the imbecile voice of a man in love, “why do you tremble so when I am here to protect you? Don’t you love and trust me?”
“Oo — h — yes,” she sighed, pressing her cheek closer to his shoulder.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, passed them without noticing them, and stepped ashore.
And there I sat down under a tree, with my back toward them, all alone and face to face with the greatest grief of my life.
But which it was — the loss of her or the loss of Grue, I had not yet made up my mind.
* * *
THE IMMORTAL
* * *
I
As everybody knows, the great majority of Americans, upon reaching the age of natural selection, are elected to the American Institute of Arts and Ethics, which is, so to speak, the Ellis Island of the Academy.
Occasionally a general mobilization of the Academy is ordered and, from the teeming population of the Institute, a new Immortal is selected for the American Academy of Moral Endeavor by the simple process of blindfolded selection from Who’s Which.
The motto of this most stately of earthly institutions is a peculiarly modest, truthful, and unintentional epigram by Tupper:
“Unknown, I became Famous; Famous, I remain Unknown.”
And so I found it to be the case; for, when at last I was privileged to write my name, “Smith, Academician,” I discovered to my surprise that I knew none of my brother Immortals, and, more amazing still, none of them had ever heard of me.
This latter fact became the more astonishing to me as I learned the identity of the other Immortals.
Even the President of our great republic was numbered among these Olympians. I had every right to suppose that he had heard of me. I had happened to hear of him, because his Secretary of State once mentioned him at Chautauqua.
It was a wonderfully meaningless sensation to know nobody and to discover myself equally unknown amid that matchless companionship. We were like a mixed bunch of gods, Greek, Norse, Hindu, Hottentot — all gathered on Olympus, having never heard of each other but taking it for granted that we were all gods together and all members of this club.
My initiation into the Academy had been fixed for April first, and I was much worried concerning the address which I was of course expected to deliver on that occasion before my fellow members.
It had to be an exciting address because slumber was not an infrequent phenomenon among the Immortals on such solemn occasions. Like dozens of dozing Joves a dull discourse always set them nodding.
But always under such circumstances the pretty ushers from Barnard College passed around refreshments; a suffragette orchestra struck up; the ushers uprooted the seated Immortals and fox-trotted them into comparative consciousness.
But I didn’t wish to have my inaugural address interrupted, therefore I was at my wits’ ends to discover a subject of such exciting scientific interest that my august audience could not choose but listen as attentively as they would listen from the front row to some deathless stunt in vaudeville.
That morning I had left the Bronx rather early, hoping that a long walk might compose my thoughts and enable me to think of some sufficiently entertaining and unusual subject for my inaugural address.
I walked as far as Columbia University, gazed with rapture upon its magnificent architecture until I was as satiated as though I had arisen from a banquet at Childs’.
To aid mental digestion I strolled over to the noble home of the Academy and Institute adjoining Mr. Huntington’s Hispano-Moresque Museum.
It was a fine, sunny morning, and the Immortals were being exercised by a number of pretty ushers from Barnard.
I gazed upon the impressive procession with pride unutterable; very soon I also should walk two and two in the sunshine, my dome crowned with figurative laurels, cracking scientific witticisms with my fellow inmates, or, perhaps, squeezing the pretty fingers of some — But let that pass.
I was, as I say, gazing upon this inspiring scene on a beautiful morning in February, when I became aware of a short and visibly vulgar person beside me, plucking persistently at my elbow.
“Are you the great Academician, Perfessor Smith?” he asked, tipping his pearl-coloured and somewhat soiled bowler.
“Yes,” I said condescendingly. “Your description of me precludes further doubt. What can I do for you, my good man?”
“Are you this here Perfessor Smith of the Department of Anthropology in the Bronx Park Zoölogical Society?” he persisted.
“What do you desire of me?” I repeated, taking another look at him. He was exceedingly ordinary.
“Prof, old sport,” he said cordially, “I took a slant at the papers yesterday, an’ I seen all about the big time these guys had when you rode the goat—”
“Rode — what?”
“When you was elected. Get me?”
I stared at him. He grinned in a friendly way.
“The privacy of those solemn proceedings should remain sacred. It were unfit to discuss such matters with the world at large,” I said coldly.
“I get you,” he rejoined cheerfully.
“What do you desire of me?” I repeated. “Why this unseemly apropos?”
“I was comin’ to it. Perfessor, I’ll be frank. I need money—”
“You need brains!”
“No,” he said good-humouredly, “I’ve got ‘em; plenty of ‘em; I’m overstocked with idees. What I want to do is to sell you a few—”
“Do you know you are impudent!”
“Listen, friend. I seen a piece in the papers as how you was to make the speech of your life when you ride the goat for these here guys on April first—”
“I decline to listen—”
“One minute, friend! I want to ask you one thing! What are you going to talk about?”
I was already moving away but I stopped and stared at him.
“That’s the question,” he nodded with unimpaired cheerfulness, “what are you going to talk about on April the first? Remember it’s the hot-air party of your life. Ree-member that each an’ every paper in the United States will print what you say. Now, how about it, friend? Are you up in your lines?”
Swallowing my repulsion for him I said: “Why are you concerned as to what may be the subject of my approaching address?”
“There you are, Prof!” he exclaimed delightedly; “I want to do business with you. That’s me! I’m frank about it. Say, there ought to be a wad of the joyful in it for us both—”
“What?”
“Sure. We can work it any old way. Take Tyng, Tyng and Company, the typewriter people. I’d be ashamed to tell you what I can get out o’ them if you’ll mention the Tyng-Tyng typewriter in your speech—”
“What you suggest is infamous!” I said haughtily.
“Believe me there’s enough in it to make it a financial coup, and I ask you, Prof, isn’t a financial coup respectable?”
“You seem to be morally unfitted to comprehend—”
“Pardon me! I’m fitted up regardless with all kinds of fixtures. I’m fixed to undertake anything. Now if you’d prefer the Bunsen Baby Biscuit bunch — why old man Bunsen would come across—”
“I won’t do such things!” I said angrily.
“Very well, very well. Don’t get riled, sir. That’s only one way to build on Fifth Avenoo. I’ve got one hundred thousand other ways—”
“I don’t want to talk to you—”
“They’re honest — some of them. Say, if you want a stric’ly honest deal I’ve got the goods. Only it ain’t as easy and the money ain’t as big—”
“I don’t want to talk to you—”
“Yes you do. You don’t reelize it but you do. Why you’re fixin’ to make the holler of your life, ain’t you? What are you goin’ to say? Hey? What you aimin’ to say to make those guys set up? What’s the use of up-stagin’? Ain’t you willin’ to pay me a few plunks if I dy-vulge to you the most startlin’ phenomena that has ever electrified civilization sense the era of P.T. Barnum!”
I was already hurrying away when the mention of that great scientist’s name halted me once more.
The little flashy man had been tagging along at my heels, talking cheerfully and volubly all the while; and now, as I halted again, he struck an attitude, legs apart, thumbs hooked in his arm-pits, and his head cocked knowingly on one side.
“Prof,” he said, “if you’d work in the Tyng-Tyng Company, or fix it up with Bunsen to mention his Baby Biscuits as the most nootritious of condeements, there’d be more in it for you an’ me. But it’s up to you.”
“Well I won’t!” I retorted.
“Very well, ve-ry well,” he said soothingly. “Then look over another line o’ samples. No trouble to show ’em — none at all, sir! Now if P.T. Barnum was alive—”
I said very seriously: “The name of that great discoverer falling from your illiterate lips has halted me a second time. His name alone invests your somewhat suspicious conversation with a dignity and authority heretofore conspicuously absent. If, as you hint, you have any scientific information for sale which P.T. Barnum might have considered worth purchasing, you may possibly find in me a client. Proceed, young sir.”
“Say, listen, Bo — I mean, Prof. I’ve got the goods. Don’t worry. I’ve got information in my think-box that would make your kick-in speech the event of the century. The question remains, do I get mine?”
* * *
“‘Say, listen, Bo — I mean, Prof. I’ve got the goods.’”
* * *
“What is this scientific information?”
We had now walked as far as Riverside Drive. There were plenty of unoccupied benches. I sat down and he seated himself beside me.
For a few moments I gazed upon the magnificent view. Even he seemed awed by the proportions of the superb iron gas tank dominating the prospect.
I gazed at the colossal advertisements across the Hudson, at the freight trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that majestic sewer which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless flood millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which we call “up-state,” to the sea. And, thinking of disposal plants, I thought of that sublime paraphrase— “From the Mohawk to the Hudson, and from the Hudson to the Sea.”
“Bo,” he said, “I gotta hand it to you. Them guys might have got wise if you had worked in the Tyng-Tyng Company or the Bunsen stuff. There was big money into it, but it might not have went.”
I waited curiously.
“But this here dope I’m startin’ in to cook for you is a straight, reelible, an’ hones’ pill. P.T. Barnum he would have went a million miles to see what I seen last Janooary down in the Coquina country—”
“Where is that?”
“Say; that’s what costs money to know. When I put you wise I’m due to retire from actyve business. Get me?”
“Go on.”
“Sure. I was down to the Coquina country, a-doin’ — well, I was doin’ rubes. I gotta be hones’ with you, Prof. That’s what I was a-doin’ of — sellin’ farms under water to suckers. Bee-u-tiful Florida! Own your own orange grove. Seven crops o’ strawberries every winter in Gawd’s own country — get me?”
He bestowed upon me a loathsome wink.
“Well, it went big till I made a break and got in Dutch with the Navy Department what was surveyin’ the Everglades for a safe and sane harbor of refuge for the navy in time o’ war.
“Sir, they was a-dredgin’ up the farms I was sellin’, an’ the suckers heard of it an’ squealed somethin’ fierce, an’ I had to hustle! Yes, sir, I had to git up an’ mosey cross-lots. And what with the Federal Gov’ment chasin’ me one way an’ them rubes an’ the sheriff of Pickalocka County racin’ me t’other, I got lost for fair — yes, sir.”
He smiled reminiscently, produced from his pockets the cold and offensive remains of a partly consumed cigar, and examined it critically. Then he requested a match.
“I shall now pass over lightly or in subdood silence the painful events of my flight,” he remarked, waving his cigar and expelling a long squirt of smoke from his unshaven lips. “Surfice it to say that I got everythin’ that was comin’ to me, an’ then some, what with snakes and murskeeters, an’ briers an’ mud, an’ hunger an’ thirst an’ heat. Wasn’t there a wop named Pizarro or somethin’ what got lost down in Florida? Well, he’s got nothin’ on me. I never want to see the dam’ state again. But I’ll go back if you say so!”
His small rat eyes rested musingly upon the river; he sucked thoughtfully at his cigar, hooked one soiled thumb into the armhole of his fancy vest and crossed his legs.
“To resoom,” he said cheerily; “I come out one day, half nood, onto the banks of the Miami River. The rest was a pipe after what I had went through.
“I trimmed a guy at Miami, got clothes and railroad fare, an’ ducked.
“Now the valyble portion of my discourse is this here partial information concernin’ what I seen — or rather what I run onto durin’ my crool flight from my ree-lentless persecutors.
“An’ these here is the facts: There is, contrary to maps, Coast Survey guys, an’ general opinion, a range of hills in Florida, made entirely of coquina.
“It’s a good big range, too, fifty miles long an’ anywhere from one to five miles acrost.
“An’ what I’ve got to say is this: Into them there Coquina hills there still lives the expirin’ remains of the cave-men—”
“What!” I exclaimed incredulously.
“Or,” he continued calmly, “to speak more stric’ly, the few individools of that there expirin’ race is now totally reduced to a few women.”
“Your statement is wild—”
“No; but they’re wild. I seen ‘em. Bein’ extremely bee-utiful I approached nearer, but they hove rocks at me, they did, an’ they run into the rocks like squir’ls, they did, an’ I was too much on the blink to stick around whistlin’ for dearie.
“But I seen ‘em; they was all dolled up in the skins of wild annermals. When I see the first one she was eatin’ onto a ear of corn, an’ I nearly ketched her, but she run like hellnall — yes, sir. Just like that.
“So next I looked for some cave guy to waltz up an’ paste me, but no. An’ after I had went through them dam’ Coquina mountains I realized that there was nary a guy left in this here expirin’ race, only women, an’ only about a dozen o’ them.”
He ceased, meditatively expelled a cloud of pungent smoke, and folded his arms.
“Of course,” said I with a sneer, “you have proofs to back your pleasant tale?”
“Sure. I made a map.”
“I see,” said I sarcastically. “You propose to have me pay you for that map?”
“Sure.”
“How much, my confiding friend?”
“Ten thousand plunks.”
I began to laugh. He laughed, too: “You’ll pay ’em if you take my map an’ go to the Coquina hills,” he said.
I stopped laughing: “Do you mean that I am to go there and investigate before I pay you for this information?”
“Sure. If the goods ain’t up to sample the deal is off.”
“Sample? What sample?” I demanded derisively.
He made a gesture with one soiled hand as though quieting a balky horse.
