Not Ong for This Worls - August Derleth Read online

  “Where did you find this?” asked Sir Halstead.

  “In the library. Right among all those papers he’d been using for his book.” He took a deep breath. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t want to think,” snapped Sir Halstead.

  “But, Massingham, the shadow on the sky—the gallows-tree—the man hanging—then this. And James is in his thirty-seventh year!”

  Whatever Sir Halstead might have said was cut off by the sudden baying and howling of the dogs in the distance, at a point to which the bobbing lanterns of the searchers were slowly converging.

  “They’ve found him,” shouted Dr! Davey, and he was off. Sir Halstead was not far behind.

  Their passage over the fens was necessarily slow, but after some minutes, the men got there. Sir Hilary James was lying face downward in the long grass on a small knoll that rose out of the marshy land.

  “Has anyone touched him?” asked Sir Halstead.

  There was an unanimous shaking of heads.

  “Who found him?”

  “The hounds, sir. They made for Gallows Point right off.”

  There was a sharp exclamation from Dr. Davey, and a muttered repetition, “Gallows Point!”

  Sir Halstead affected not to notice, and went on. “Dogs strike a trail?”

  “No; the wind, sir. There was no trail.”

  Sir Halstead nodded and bent to examine the body. He looked up after a second, his face yellow in the lantern light. “Heart failure,” he said dully. “Someone go for a stretcher.”

  “Already gone, sir,” said one of the servants.

  “Very well; we’ll wait here. No one touch him, please.”

  “Dead, is ’e, sir?” came a quavering voice from the small knot of servants.

  Sir Halstead nodded.

  When the improvised stretcher came, Sir Halstead and Dr. Davey carefully arranged the body of Sir Hilary on it. Then the servants took it up and went ahead; the two specialists walked a short distance behind.

  “What are we to do?” asked Dr. Davey.

  Sir Halstead took a deep breath. “This is the very first time that I am glad of my prestige, and yours, Davey. We must do all in our power to prevent an examination of the body. We shall have to call in the necessary officials, but I am sure they will take our statements at face value. Sir Hilary James ran out upon the fens during treatment for his heart. Here his heart gave out. That must be the substance of our statement. Under no conditions must we allow anyone to see his neck.”

  “His neck!” exclaimed Dr. Davey in surprise.

  Sir Halstead grasped his companion’s wrist in a vice-like grip. “Be more discreet, Doctor. Mr. James’ neck is broken, and there is a mark there. The man has been hanged!”

  Birkett’s Twelfth Corpse

  The wall of hate that stood between the two old rivermen, Fred Birkett and Hank Room, had grown from a strange and gruesome rivalry—finding bodies of persons drowned in the Wisconsin River at Badger Prairie.

  At the time of the tragic drowning of Bud Enters, the rivermen were tied. Each had found eleven bodies in the past forty years. It was said by each of them, and repeated in Badger Prairie, that Bud Enters’ body would decide the contest.

  The sympathy of Badger Prairie was with Birkett, a kindly old man, as opposed to the sullen surliness of Room, who was somewhat younger. Birkett had always joked about his odd luck at finding bodies in the river, and still looked upon his almost uncanny way of knowing where the bodies had been taken by the swift current as more amusing than not.

  But Room had brooded upon his rival’s luck ever since Birkett had earned a five-hundred dollar reward for finding the corpse of a young student who had fallen into the Wisconsin while drunk almost a decade before. Room made no effort to conceal his violent hatred for Birkett, nor could Birkett keep down his dislike for his rival.

  Bud Enters was drowned on a warm night in July, and twenty boats put out from Badger Prairie within an hour after he went down. Fred Birkett and Hank Room were among them. Both men headed downstream, knowing by long past experiences that the swift current in midchannel, where the youth was drawn under, would quickly roll the body below Badger Prairie toward the long clay riverbank southeast of the village, which was locally known as the Yellow-banks district.

  Toward dawn, Fred Birkett found Bud’ Enters’ body, rolling along in shallow, swift water crossing a sandbar just above the Yellowbanks. The moon was out, and he had no difficulty seeing the body, which he immediately caught with a boathook and secured to the boat without removing it from the water. Then he edged his boat out of the current and headed swiftly upstream.

  Just where Hiney’s Slough enters the Wisconsin, he met Room. He could not help boasting.

  “Just made my dozen,” he called to Hank in a gruff, yet faintly triumphant voice.

  Room turned his boat and swung across current toward him.

  Birkett rested on his oars. Unaware of the fury that consumed his rival, he went on.

  “Well, we couldn’t both find him,” he said, agreeably. “Let the best man win, I always say.” He smiled in the satisfaction of feeling himself the better of the two.

  Room said nothing. He was looking cautiously upstream and down, his eyes scanning the surface of the water for sight of any boat, his ears waiting to catch any sound that might indicate the approach of other searchers. The two boats lay in quiet water, away from the current.

  Whether or not Birkett heard Room loosen and jerk out one oar is problematical. He turned toward Room just as oar descended and dealt him a glancing blow on the side of the head.

  He toppled from his boat, turning the vessel with him.

  With a savage lunge, Room pushed Birkett’s boat out of reach of the older man, just as he came coughing and gasping to the surface of the water. With another quick movement, Room detached Enters* body from the overturned boat. He made no attempt to catch the body, knowing that the current would not carry it from this quiet water, and he could always return and find it.

  Then he shot away, unmindful of Birkett’s despairing cries, secure in the knowledge that Birkett could not swim very well. A little way upstream he paused and listened. There was no sound from below. Birkett had gone down.

  A cunning smile touched Room’s lips. Edging the boat into shallow water, he let himself fall fully clothed into the river, wetting himself thoroughly, except for his torn hat. This he threw into the bottom of the boat to give it the appearance of having been hastily torn away from his head and thrown there. Then he got back into the boat and rowed furiously toward Badger Prairie.

  The circle of boats was now further downstream, and he did not have to row up quite as far as he drifted down. He timed his entrance well, for Enters’ cap had just been found alongshore, and the searchers were excited over their find. Quite suddenly he shot from under the bridge into the yellow glow of lanterns held high above the water.

  “Birkett’s gone under,” he shouted frantically. “His boat tipped just above the Yellowbanks!”

  Anyone who might have doubted his cries was easily convinced by his bedraggled appearance. It did not require his explanation that he had gone into the water after Birkett to explain the wetness of his clothes. He told hastily that the old man fought hard, that he had had to hit him, finally, and had reluctantly let him go in order to save himself.

  He led the rowboats to a spot a hundred yards above the entrance to Hiney’s Slough, where in the quiet water the two bodies still lay. Room was enjoying the irony of the knowledge that his twelfth body would be that of his old rival. He broke into speech again, excitedly telling about the accident, and explaining that the boat had long since gone downstream, swept away by the powerful current in which it had tipped. He pointed out approximately the place where the accident had occurred, and went glibly over his story a third time. Then he left the searchers, and pulled into the current toward the dark waters where Birkett had actually gone down.

  That much Badger Prair
ie was later able to piece together. What happened after that is more obscure and fraught with horrific suggestions. It is certain that Room went downstream, and equally certain that he seemed to be heading for Hiney’s Slough, though one or two disputed this point later. Despite the moon, it was difficult to observe Room’s progress downstream, for he was soon lost in the dark, heavy shadow on the quiet water surrounding the slough’s junction with the river.

  In the babble of sound made by the searchers above the slough, Room might have called for some time and not have been heard. At any rate, during a lull in the conversation, someone picked up the sound of frantic calling. Everyone stood and listened. Once again came a sharp call, in a voice which was immediately identified as Hank Room’s. The call was heavy with horror and fear. Then another call began to sound, but was abruptly stopped, almost as if it had been rudely shut off by a hand clapped over the lips through which it came.

  The boats immediately pulled away toward Hiney’s Slough.

  At first there was nothing to be seen except the bottoms of two overturned boats, one of which was Room’s, the other Birkett’s. Then someone saw the body of Enters against one bank, apparently just washing up from deep water. Quite near it, partly submerged, they found the bodies of Hank Room and Fred Birkett.

  Room was dead, yet he had not drowned. He had been strangled. For when the horrified searchers pulled him out of the water, they found Fred Birkett’s dead fingers sunk deep in the flesh of Room’s neck.

  Birkett had found his twelfth corpse.

  The White Moth

  Paul Blake took the crape band from his arm and laid it very carefully away. Then he glanced at himself in the large mirror and reflected that he looked properly grieved. He sighed with relief, and was about to turn away from the mirror when he saw Alice. She was standing just behind him, laughing silently, and the glass gave back her reflection as clearly as his own. He spun around, but there was nothing there. Nerves, he thought, and shrugged his shoulders. At any rate, Alice could not have known—when he himself was not sure. That arsenic had taken infernally long to get down to business; three years of feeding it to her, before the end came. Paul Blake felt that his relief was justified.

  As he stepped out of his chamber into the hall, he saw Alice a second time. She was walking along the hall not very far from where he stood, and as he looked at her, she turned and gave him a swift, mocking glance. He leaned weakly against the wall, and continued to lean there even after she had disappeared where her room was. When he had recovered himself sufficiently to stride away from the wall, he felt that indeed his nerves had been strained unduly, and that perhaps he had better go away for a while. And then immediately Alice was there at his side; he almost fell on the stairs, but caught himself in time.

  “You can’t get away like that, Paul,” she was saying. Oh! that was her voice, all right; there was no mistaking it.

  “Alice!” he muttered.

  “Oh, it’s Alice, right enough,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve seen you worked up for three years—that’s correct, isn’t it, three years? Dear me, how the years go on!”

  Paul took a firm hold of the banister and began to descend the stairs. It was as if he could feel Alice over his left shoulder; there was no use in trying to shake off the feeling because he could hear Alice’s voice all the time, and at the same time he was trying very hard to forget how she looked as she lay in her coffin those last few days.

  “Of course, I knew it all along,” Alice was saying. “Such infinite patience, Paul; who would ever have thought it of you? Your idea of gradually weakening me was quite good—it worked, at any rate.”

  “Alice—please—my God, Alice,” and Paul Blake found that, standing there, halfway down the stairs, there was nothing in the world he could say to Alice. There was absolutely nothing; he could only listen, and he found in one brief attempt to stop his ears that he must do that.

  “Goodness,” said Alice in a mocking voice, “you seem to be at a distinct loss for once; unusual, not, Paul?” And then, receiving no answer, she went on, “Now that I’m dead, I suppose you’ll want to see Beatrice, won’t you? You have waited quite a decent interval, at that.”

  “Is there anything…?” he managed to ask, and then thought of how ridiculous his position was—poisoning her, and then asking if there was anything he could do.

  She laughed, having read his mind with perfect ease, as he sensed immediately. “I shouldn’t advise you to see Beatrice,” she went on, and her voice seemed somehow changed, hardened almost, “because I shall consider it my duty to be there if you do. And that would be rather inconvenient, I’m afraid. You’d best be rather careful all around, because I shall manage to get through to you occasionally. At least, until you come to me. Whenever you see a white moth, think of me, Paul.”

  Then, abruptly, Paul Blake felt that Alice had gone. He went forward hesitatingly, expecting every moment to hear her voice at his ear. But there was nothing, and he slipped into his topcoat feeling somewhat more at ease. An evening at the club served to dispel his temporary depression still more.

  When, three days later, he went to see Beatrice, he felt convinced that Alice was securely and permanently dead, and he looked upon the incident of her postmortem appearance as a severe attack of nerves, or, at the least, a warning from his conscience. He was inclined to accept the latter, distasteful as it seemed, because his physician had told him there was absolutely nothing the matter with his nerves. Paul Blake looked forward with genuine enthusiasm to an evening at the opera with Beatrice.

  Chaliapin was in the midst of Mephistopheles’ O Night Draw Thy Curtain, when Paul Blake became suddenly conscious of a small white moth fluttering about in his box. He looked at Beatrice; she had not noticed it, at any rate, for she was still absorbed in the opera. He wondered whether he could kill it without her seeing, and began to watch it covertly, hoping it would come to rest where he could strike at it. And this it presently did. He fixed his eyes on it, measuring its position, and then suddenly swept his hand outward to catch and crush it in his fingers. But the moth eluded him, though he was sure he had touched it at least, and worse, Beatrice noticed his maneuver and turned.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  He looked at her foolishly. “I was trying to catch that white moth, before it could annoy you,” and he pointed to where it was circling the fan in Beatrice’s hand.

  Beatrice looked at her fan, and back at Paul Blake with the faintest trace of annoyance on her features. “You’ll have to do better than that, Paul; how could a moth get in here?”

  “Can’t you -see it?” asked Paul, and he smiled at her in order to hide the dismay at the answer he foresaw he would get.

  “Silly. Of course not. There’s nothing there.”

  But Paul Blake could see the moth as clearly as anything else in his box, and as he looked at it, he thought he heard Alice laughing; since he did not want to recognize the thought, he contented himself with believing that it was some one on the stage, though the action at that point was anything but a matter for laughter.

  After that, he did not go to see Beatrice for almost a week, and when he did, he saw the white moth again. As he looked at it, he fancied that it had grown much larger. They were sitting in the garden, and for a moment Paul Blake wondered whether it would do any good to go into the house. But he knew it would not, and for the second time he pointed out the moth to Beatrice.

  “I think you’ve got a moth complex,” she said. “Really, I can’t see it at all. Do you really see it, or is it just a joke?”

  And at that, Paul Blake felt for the first time the irony of Alice’s appearance. If he told Beatrice he really saw the moth, she would begin to doubt his sanity, and if he passed it off as a joke—well, it was a mighty poor joke at best. In the end he grinned rather stupidly, and the matter was dropped. Paul Blake went home early, and he noticed the white moth fluttering along before him until he reached his door.

  Next day, w
hen he went to the telephone to make his apologies to Beatrice—for he felt that she deserved them—there was the white moth, fluttering about the instrument. As he came toward it, the moth settled itself on the mouthpiece. Paul Blake made a savage swipe at it, but either he had missed it completely, or the moth had fluttered up and back down again, for it was still on the mouthpiece despite his attack. For a moment he stood looking at it, and then he turned abruptly on his heel and left the room; he could telephone as well some other time. As he closed the door behind him, the sound of Alice’s mocking laughter came to him too distinctly for him to pass it off.

  Two nights later, when he left the house to call on Beatrice, the white moth, now grown much larger, appeared within a block of his door, and after a short hesitation he turned back to the house, called Beatrice and gave a sudden illness as his excuse for not coming.

  After that, he began to haunt the club. He came to suffer from long spells of melancholia, and fellow club members one by one fell away from him. He noticed their attitude, but there was nothing he could do about it. Hemingway stuck with him, and Dillon—and they’d stick for a good long while yet. There was one thing he had set his mind on: no one should know about the white moth; he would suffer in silence, no matter what happened.

  Hemingway was with him when the end came, and even he did not recognize that anything had happened to Paul Blake until the morning papers had come in. He told it later at the club.

  “If it hadn’t ended so tragically, the thing would have been funny. We were walking along the drive that night, talking about nothing in particular; it was raining just a little, but not enough for us to open our umbrellas. Just as we came out of the light of a street lamp, a rather bedraggled-looking white moth came fluttering toward us from the darkness.

  “Blake saw the moth, and since I was talking to him at the time, I had my eyes fixed on him. As he looked at the moth, his jaw dropped, and he stood stock-still as if waiting for the thing to pass. Then he began to glare at it in the most unusual fashion, so that for a moment I thought he’d gone suddenly mad. You know, that happens sometimes. I put my hand on his arm, but he shook it off. Then he gave a sort of cry—it sounded, you know, as if he were saying ‘Alice’—too bad about his wife; I’ve always felt that her death was a pretty hard blow for him—and then he aimed at the moth with his umbrella. Of course, he missed it, and it flew off into the darkness, and then, to my amazement, he began to race along after it, striking at it with his umbrella. At first I thought of going after him, but I remembered his condition and thought it would be best if I left him alone.