CREEP SHADOW - 1

CREEP SHADOW

ABRAHAM MERRITT

( INSTALMENT 1 )

CHAPTER I

FOUR SUICIDES

I unpacked my bags at the Explorers' Club gloomily enough. The singularly unpleasant depression with which I had awakened in my berth the night before had refused to be shaken off. It was like the echo of some nightmare whose details I had forgotten but which still lurked just over the threshold of consciousness.

Joined to it was another irritation.

Of course I had not expected any Mayor's Committee to welcome me home. But that neither Bennett nor Ralston had met me began to assume the aspect of a major tragedy of neglect. I had written to both before sailing, and I had looked for one of them, at least, to be on the dock to meet me.

They were the closest friends I had, and the queer current of hostility between them had often amused me. They thoroughly liked, yet as thoroughly disapproved of, each other. I had the idea that away down under they were closer each to the other than to me; that they might have been Damon and Pythias if each hadn't so disliked the other's attitude toward life; and maybe were Damon and Pythias despite it.

Old Aesop formulated their discordance centuries ago in his fable of the Ant and the Cricket. Bill Bennett was the Ant. The serious-minded, hard-working son of Dr. Lionel Bennett, until recently one of the modern, civilized world's five outstanding experts upon brain pathology. I make the distinction of modern and civilized because I have had proof that what we are pleased to call the uncivilized world has many more such experts, and I have good reason to believe that the ancient world had others much further advanced than those of the modern world, civilized or uncivilized.

Bennett, the elder, had been one of the few specialists whose mind turned upon his work rather than his bank account. Distinguished but poor. Bennett, the younger, was about thirty-five, my own age. I knew that his father had rested heavily upon him. I suspected that along some lines, and especially in the realm of the subconscious, the son had outstripped the sire; his mind more flexible, more open. Bill had written me a year ago that his father had died, and that he had associated himself with Dr. Austin Lowell, taking the place of Dr. David Braile who had been killed by a falling chandelier in Dr. Lowell's private hospital. (See Burn, Witch, Burn.)

Dick Ralston was the Cricket. He was heir to a fortune so solid that even the teeth of the depression could only scratch it. Very much the traditional rich man's son of the better sort, but seeing no honor, use, nor any joy or other virtue in labor. Happy-go-lucky, clever, generous—but decidedly a first-class idler.

I was the compromise—the bridge on which they could meet. I had my medical degree, but also I had enough money to save me from the grind of practice. Enough to allow me to do as I pleased—which was drifting around the world on ethnological research. Especially in those fields which my medical and allied scientific brethren call superstition—native sorceries, witchcraft, voodoo, and the like. In that research I was as earnest as Bill in his. And he knew it.

Dick, on the other hand, attributed my wanderings to an itching foot inherited from one of my old Breton forebears, a pirate who had sailed out of St. Malo and carved himself a gory reputation in the New World. And ultimately was hanged for it. The peculiar bent of my mind he likewise attributed to the fact that two of my ancestors had been burned as witches in Brittany.

I was perfectly understandable to him.

Bill's industry was not so understandable.

I reflected, morosely, that even if I had been away for three years it was too short a time to be forgotten. And then I managed to shake off my gloom and to laugh at myself. After all, they might not have gotten my letters; or they might have had engagements they couldn't break; and each might have thought the other would be on hand.

There was an afternoon newspaper on the bed. I noticed that it was of the day before. My eye fell upon some headlines. I stopped laughing. The headlines ran:

$5,000,000 COPPER HEIR KILLS HIMSELF

RICHARD J. RALSTON, JR. PUTS BULLET THROUGH HEAD

"No Reason Known for Act—Fourth New York Man of Wealth to Take His Life Without Apparent Cause in Last Three Months—Police Hint Suicide Club."

I read the story:

"Richard J. Ralston, Jr., who inherited some $5,000,000 when his father, rich mine owner, died two years ago, was found dead in his bed this morning in a bedroom of his house on 78th Street. He had shot himself through the head, dying instantly. The pistol with which he had killed himself was lying on the floor where it had fallen from his hand. The Detective Bureau identified the finger marks on it as his own.

"Discovery was made by his butler, John Simpson, who said that he had gone into the room about 8 o'clock, following his usual custom. From the condition of the body Dr. Peabody, of the coroner's office, estimated that Ralston must have shot himself about three o'clock, or approximately five hours before Simpson found him."

Three o'clock? I felt a little prickling along my spine. Allowing for the difference between ship time and New York time, that was precisely when I had awakened with that strange depression. I read on:

"If Simpson's story is true, and the police see no reason to doubt it, the suicide could not have been premeditated and must have been the result of some sudden overmastering impulse. This seems to be further indicated by the discovery of a letter Ralston had started to write, and torn up without finishing. The scraps of it were found under a desk in the bedroom where he had tossed them. The letter read:

"'DEAR BILL.

"'Sorry I couldn't stay any longer. I wish you would think of the matter as objective and not subjective, no matter how incredible such a thing may seem. If Alan were only here. He knows more—'

"At this point Ralston had evidently changed his mind and torn up the letter. The police would like to know who 'Alan' is and have him explain what it is that he 'knows more' about. They also hope that the 'Bill' to whom it was to have been sent will identify himself. There is not the slightest doubt as to the case being one of suicide, but it is possible that whatever it was that was 'objective and not subjective, no matter how incredible' may throw some light on the motive.

"At present absolutely no reason appears to exist to explain why Mr. Ralston should have taken his life. His attorneys, the well-known firm of Winston, Smith & White, have assured the police that his estate is in perfect order, and that there were no 'complications' in their client's life. It is a fact that unlike so many sons of rich men, no scandal has ever been attached to Ralston's name.

"This is the fourth suicide within three months of men of wealth of approximately Ralston's age, and of comparatively the same habits of life. Indeed, in each of the four cases the circumstances are so similar that the police are seriously contemplating the possibility of a suicide pact.

"The first of the four deaths occurred on July 15, when John Marston, internationally known polo player, shot himself through the head in his bedroom in his country house at Locust Valley, Long Island. No cause for his suicide has ever come to light. Like Ralston, he was unmarried. On August 6, the body of Walter St. Clair Calhoun was found in his roadster near Riverhead, Long Island. Calhoun had driven his car off the main road, here heavily shaded by trees, into the middle of an open field. There he had put a bullet through his brains. No one ever discovered why. He had been divorced for three years. On August 21, Richard Stanton, millionaire yachtsman and globe-trotter, shot himself through the head while on the deck of his ocean-going yacht Trinculo. This happened the night before he was about to set out on a cruise to South America."

I read on and on ... the speculations as to the suicide pact, supposedly entered into because of boredom and morbid thrill-hunger ... the histories of Marston, Calhoun, and Stanton ... Dick's obituary ...

I read, only half understanding what it was I read. I kept thinking that it couldn't be true.

There was no reason why Dick should kill himself. In all the world there was no man less likely to kill himself. The theory of the suicide pact was absurdly fantastic, at least so far as he was concerned. I was the 'Alan' of the letter, of course. And Bennett was the 'Bill.' But what was it I knew that had made Dick wish for me?

The telephone buzzed, and the operator said: "Dr. Bennett to see you."

I said: "Send him up." And to myself: "Thank God!"

Bill came in. He was white and drawn, and more like a man still in the midst of a stiff ordeal than one who has passed through it. His eyes held a puzzled horror, as though he were looking less at me than within his mind at whatever was the source of that horror. He held a hand out, absently, and all he said was: "I'm glad you're back, Alan."

I had the newspaper in my other hand. He took it and looked at the date. He said: "Yesterday's. Well, it's all there. All that the police know, anyway."

He had said that rather oddly; I asked: "Do you mean you know something that the police don't?"

He answered, evasively I thought: "Oh, they've got their facts all straight. Dick put the bullet through his brain. They're right in linking up those other three deaths—"

I repeated: "What do you know that the police don't know, Bill?"

He said: "That Dick was murdered!"

I looked at him, bewildered. "But if he put the bullet through his own brain—"

He said: "I don't blame you for being puzzled. Nevertheless—I know Dick Ralston killed himself, and yet I know just as certainly that he was murdered."

He sat down upon the bed; he said: "I need a drink."

I brought out the bottle of Scotch the club steward had thoughtfully placed in my room for homecoming welcome. He poured himself a stiff one. He repeated:

"I'm glad you're back! We've got a tough job ahead of us, Alan."

I poured myself a drink; I asked: "What is it? To find Dick's murderer?"

He answered: "That, yes. But more than that. To stop more murders."

I poured him and myself another drink; I said: "Quit beating about the bush and tell me what it's all about."

He looked at me, thoughtfully; he answered, quietly: "No, Alan. Not yet." He put down his glass. "Suppose you had discovered a new bug, an unknown germ—or thought you had. And had studied it and noted its peculiarities. And suppose you wanted someone to check up. What would you do—give him all your supposed observations first, and then ask him to look into the microscope to verify them? Or simply give him an outline and ask him to look into the microscope and find out for himself?"

"Outline and find out for himself, of course."

"Exactly. Well, I think I have such a new bug—or a very old one, although it has nothing whatever to do with germs. But I'm not going to tell you any more about it until I put your eye to the microscope. I want your opinion uncolored by mine. Send out for a paper, will you?"

I called the office and told them to get me one of the latest editions. When it came, Bill took it. He glanced over the first page, then turned the sheets until he came to what he was looking for. He read it, and nodded, and passed the paper to me.

"Dick's reduced from page one to page five," he said. "But I've gotten it over. Read the first few paragraphs—all the rest is rehash and idle conjecture. Very idle."

I read:

"Dr. William Bennett, the eminent brain specialist and associate of Dr. Austin Lowell, the distinguished psychiatrist, visited Police Headquarters this morning and identified himself as the 'Bill' of the unfinished letter found in the bedroom of Richard J. Ralston, Jr., after the latter's suicide yesterday morning.

"Dr. Bennett said that undoubtedly the letter had been meant for him, that Mr. Ralston had been one of his oldest friends and had recently consulted him for what he might describe roughly as insomnia and bad dreams. Mr. Ralston had, in fact, been his guest at dinner the night before. He had wanted Mr. Ralston to spend the night with him, but after consenting, he had changed his mind and gone home to sleep. That was what he had referred to in the opening sentence of his letter. Professional confidence prevented Dr. Bennett from going into further description of Mr. Ralston's symptoms. Asked whether the mental condition of Mr. Ralston might explain why he had killed himself, Dr. Bennett guardedly replied that suicide was always the result of some mental condition."

In spite of my perplexity and sorrow, I couldn't help smiling at that.

"The 'Alan' referred to in the letter, Dr. Bennett said, is Dr. Alan Caranac, who was also an old friend of Mr. Ralston, and who is due in New York today on the Augustus after three years in Northern Africa. Dr. Caranac is well-known in scientific circles for his ethnological researches. Dr. Bennett said that Mr. Ralston had thought that some of his symptoms might be explained by Dr. Caranac because of the latter's study of certain obscure mental aberrations among primitive peoples."

"Now for the kicker," said Bill, and pointed to the next paragraph:

"Dr. Bennett talked freely with the reporters after his statement to the police, but could add no essential facts beyond those he had given them. He did say that Mr. Ralston had withdrawn large sums in cash from his accounts during the two weeks before his death, and that there was no evidence of what had become of them. He seemed immediately to regret that he had given this information, saying that the circumstance could have no bearing upon Mr. Ralston's suicide. He reluctantly admitted, however, that the sum might be well over $100,000, and that the police were investigating."

I said: "That looks like blackmail—if it's true."

He said: "I haven't the slightest proof that it is true. But it's what I told the police and the reporters."

He read the paragraph over again and arose.

"The reporters will soon be here, Alan," he said. "And the police. I'm going. You haven't seen me. You haven't the slightest idea of what it's all about. You haven't heard from Ralston for a year. Tell them that when you get in touch with me, you may have something more to say. But now—you don't know anything. And that's true—you don't. That's your story, and you stick to it."

He walked to the door. I said:

"Wait a minute, Bill. What's the idea behind that bunch of words I've just read?"

He said: "It's a nicely baited hook."

I said: "What do you expect to hook?"

He said: "Dick's murderer."

He turned at the door: "And something else that's right down your alley. A witch."

He shut the door behind him.

CHAPTER II

THE DEMOISELLE DAHUT

Not long after Bill had gone, a man from the Detective Bureau visited me. It was evident that he regarded the call as waste motion; just a part of the routine. His questions were perfunctory, nor did he ask me if I had seen Bennett. I produced the Scotch and he mellowed. He said:

"Hell, if it ain't one thing it's another. If you ain't got money you wear yourself out tryin' to get it. If you got it, then somebody's tryin' all the time to rob you. Or else you go nuts like this poor guy and then what good is your money? This Ralston wasn't a bad guy at that, I hear."

I agreed. He took another drink and left.

Three reporters came; one from the City News and the others from afternoon papers. They asked few questions about Dick, but showed flattering interest in my travels. I was so relieved that I sent for a second bottle of Scotch and told them a few stories about the mirror-magic of the Riff women, who believe that at certain times and under certain conditions they can catch the reflections of those they love or hate in their mirrors, and so have power thereafter over their souls.

The City News man said that if he could get the Riff women to teach him that trick, he could lift all the mirror-makers in America out of the depression and get rich doing it. The other two morosely agreed that they knew some editors whose reflections they'd like to catch. I laughed and said it would be easier to bring over a good old-fashioned Bulgarian mason or two. Then all they need do was to get the mason a job, decoy the editor to the place and have the mason measure his shadow with a string. After that, the mason would put the string in a box and build the box in the wall. In forty days the editor would be dead and his soul be sitting in the box beside the string.

One of the afternoon men glumly said that forty days would be too long to wait for the ones he had in mind. But the other asked, with disarming naivete, whether I believed such a thing possible. I answered that if a man were strongly enough convinced he would die on a certain day, he would die on that day. Not because his shadow had been measured and the string buried, but because he believed that this was going to kill him. It was purely a matter of suggestion—of auto-hypnosis. Like the praying to death practiced by the kahunas, the warlocks of the South Seas, of the results of which there was no doubt whatever. Always providing, of course, that the victim knew the kahuna was praying his death—and the exact time his death was to occur.

I ought to have known better. The morning papers carried only a few lines to the effect that I had talked to the police and had been unable to throw any light on the Ralston suicide. But the early editions of the naive reporter's paper featured a special article.

WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR ENEMIES?

GET A RIFF GAL'S MAGIC MIRROR—OR BRING IN A BULGARIAN MASON.

Dr. Alan Caranac, Noted Explorer, Tells How to Separate Yourself Safely from Those You Don't Want Around—But the Catch Is That First You Have to Make 'Em Believe You Can Do It.

It was a good story, even if it did make me swear in spots. I read it over again and laughed. After all, I'd brought it on myself. The 'phone rang, and Bill was on the line. He asked abruptly:

"What put it in your head to talk to that reporter about shadows?"

He sounded jumpy. I said, surprised:

"Nothing. Why shouldn't I have talked to him about shadows?"

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he asked:

"Nothing happened to direct your mind to that subject? Nobody suggested it?"

"You're getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice puts it. But no, Bill, I brought the matter up all by myself. And no shadow fell upon me whispering in my ear—"

He interrupted, harshly: "Don't talk like that!"

And now I was truly surprised, for there was panic in Bill's voice, and that wasn't like him at all.

"There really wasn't any reason. It just happened," I repeated. "What's it all about, Bill?"

"Never mind now." I wondered even more at the relief in his voice. He swiftly changed the subject: "Dick's funeral is tomorrow. I'll see you there."

Now the one thing I won't be coerced or persuaded into doing is to go to the funeral of a friend. Unless there are interesting and unfamiliar rites connected with it, it's senseless. There lies a piece of cold meat for the worms, grotesquely embellished by the undertaker's cosmetic arts. Sunken eyes that never more will dwell upon the beauty of the clouds, the sea, the forest. Ears shut forever, and all the memories of life rotting away within the decaying brain. Painted and powdered symbol of life's futility. I want to remember friends as they were alive, alert, capable, eager. The coffin picture superimposes itself, and I lose my friends. The animals order things much better, to my way of thinking. They hide themselves and die. Bill knew how I felt, so I said:

"You'll not see me there." To shut off any discussion, I asked:

"Had any nibble at your witch bait?"

"Yes and no. Not the real strike I'm hoping for, but attention from unexpected quarters. Dick's lawyers called me up after I'd left you and asked what he had told me about those cash withdrawals. They said they'd been trying to find out what he had done with the money, but couldn't. They wouldn't believe me, of course, when I said I knew absolutely nothing; that I had only vague suspicions and had tried a shot in the dark. I don't blame them. Stanton's executor called me up this morning to ask the same thing. Said Stanton had drawn substantial amounts of cash just before he died, and they hadn't been able to trace it."

I whistled:

"That's queer. How about Calhoun and Marston? If they did the same, it'll begin to smell damned fishy."

"I'm trying to find out," he said. "Good-by—"

"Wait a minute, Bill," I said. "I'm a good waiter, and all of that. But I'm getting mighty curious. When do I see you, and what do you want me to do in the meantime?"

When he answered his voice was as grave as I'd ever heard it.

"Alan, sit tight until I can lay the cards before you. I don't want to say more now, but trust me, there's a good reason. I'll tell you one thing, though. That interview of yours is another hook—and I'm not sure it isn't baited even better than mine."

That was on Tuesday. Obviously, I was puzzled and curious to a degree. So much so that if it had been anybody but Bill who had sat me down in my little corner chair and told me to be quiet, I would have been exceedingly angry. But Bill knew what he was about—I was sure of that. So I stayed put.

On Wednesday, Dick was buried. I went over my notes and started the first chapter of my book on Moroccan sorceries. Thursday night, Bill called up.

"There's a small dinner party at Dr. Lowell's tomorrow night," he said. "A Dr. de Keradel and his daughter. I want you to come. I'll promise you'll be interested."

De Keradel? The name had a familiar sound. "Who is he?" I asked.

"Rene de Keradel, the French psychiatrist. You must have read some of his—"

"Yes, of course," I interrupted. "He took up some of Charcot's hypnotic experiments at the Salpetriere, didn't he? Carried them on from the point where Charcot had stopped. Left the Salpetriere under a cloud some years ago. Subjects died, or he was too unorthodox in his conclusions, or something?"

"That's the chap."

I said: "I'll be there. I'd like to meet him."

"Good," said Bill. "Dinner's at 7:30. Wear your dinner jacket. And come an hour ahead of time. There's a girl who wants to talk to you before the company comes, as we used to say."

"A girl?" I asked, astonished.

"Helen," said Bill with a chuckle. "And don't you disappoint her. You're her hero." He hung up.

Helen was Bill's sister. About ten years younger than I. I hadn't seen her for fifteen years. An impish sort of kid, I recalled. Eyes sort of slanting and yellow brown. Hair a red torch. Gawky when I saw her last and inclined to be fat. Used to follow me around when I was visiting Bill during college vacations, and sit and stare at me without speaking until it made me so nervous I stuttered. Never could tell whether it was silent adoration or sheer deviltry. That was when she was about twelve. Nor could I forget how she had led me, apparently innocently, to sit on a subterranean nest of hornets; nor the time when, going to bed, I had found it shared by a family of garter snakes. The first might have been an accident, although I had my doubts, but the second wasn't. I had dumped the snakes out the window and never by word, look, or gesture referred to it, having my reward in the child's bafflement at my reticence and her avid but necessarily mute curiosity. I knew she had gone through Smith and had been studying art in Florence. I wondered what she had grown to be.

I read over some of de Keradel's papers at the Academy of Medicine Library next day. He was a queer bird without doubt, with some extraordinarily arresting theories. I didn't wonder that the Salpetriere had eased him out. Stripped of their scientific verbiage, the framework of his main idea was startlingly like that expounded to me by the Many-Times-Born Abbot of the Lamasery at Gyang-tse, in Tibet. A holy man and an accomplished wonder-worker, a seeker of knowledge along strange paths, what would be loosely called by the superstitious—a sorcerer. Also by a Greek priest near Delphi whose Christian cloak covered a pure case of pagan atavism. He offered to demonstrate his hypothesis, and did. He nearly convinced me. Indeed, visualizing again what he had made me see, I was not sure that he hadn't convinced me.

I began to feel a strong interest in this Dr. de Keradel. The name was Breton, like my own, and as unusual. Another recollection flitted through my mind. There was a reference to the de Keradels in the chronicles of the de Carnacs, as we were once named. I looked it up. There had been no love lost between the two families, to put it mildly. Altogether, what I read blew my desire to meet Dr. de Keradel up to fever point.

I was half an hour late getting to Dr. Lowell's. The butler showed me into the library. A girl got up from a big chair and came toward me with hand outstretched.

"Hello, Alan," she said.

I blinked at her. She wasn't so tall, but her body had all the lovely contours the sculptors of Athens' Golden Age gave their dancing girls. The provocative dress of filmy black she wore hid none of them. Her hair was burnished copper and helmeted her small head. The heavy chignon at the nape of her neck showed she had resisted the bob. Her eyes were golden amber, and tilted delicately. Her nose was small and straight and her chin rounded. Her skin was not the creamy white that so often goes with red heads, but a delicate golden. It was a head and face that might have served as the model for one of Alexander's finest golden coins. Faintly archaic, touched with the antique beauty. I blinked again. I blurted:

"You're never—Helen!"

Her eyes sparkled, the impishness that my experience with the hornets had set indelibly in my memory danced over her face. She took my hands, and swayed close to me; she sighed:

"The same, Alan! The same! And you—oh, let me look at you! Yes, still the hero of my girlhood! The same keen, dark face—like—like—I used to call you Lancelot of the Lake, Alan—to myself of course. The same lithe, tall, and slender body—I used to call you the Black Panther, too, Alan. And do you remember how like a panther you leaped when the hornets stung you?" She bent her head, her rounded shoulders shaking. I said: "You little devil! I always knew you did that deliberately."

She said, muffled:

"I'm not laughing, Alan. I'm sobbing."

She looked up at me, and her eyes were indeed wet, but I was sure not with any tears of regret. She said:

"Alan, for long, long years I've waited to know something. Waited to hear you tell me something. Not to tell me that you love me, darling—No, No! I always knew that you were going to do that, sooner or later. This is something else!"

I was laughing, but I had a queer mixed feeling, too.

I said:

"I'll tell you anything. Even that I love you—and maybe mean it."

She said:

"Did you find those snakes in your bed? Or did they crawl out before you got in?"

I said again: "You little devil!"

She said:

"But were they there?"

"Yes, they were."

She sighed contentedly:

"Well, there's one complex gone forever. Now I know. You were so damned superior at times I just couldn't help it."

She held her face up to me:

"Since you're going to love me, Alan, you might as well kiss me."

I kissed her, properly. She might have been fooling with me about having been her girlhood hero, but there was no fooling about my kiss—nor the way she responded to it. She shivered and laid her head on my shoulder. She said, dreamily: "And there's another complex gone. Where am I going to stop?"

Somebody coughed at the doorway. Somebody else murmured, apologetically: "Ah, but we intrude."

Helen dropped her arms from around my neck, and we turned. In a way, I realized that the butler and another man were standing at the door. But all I could focus my eyes upon was the girl—or woman.

You know how it is when you're riding in the subway, or at the theater, or at a race track and suddenly one face, for some reason or no reason, thrusts itself out from the crowd, and it's as though your mental spotlight were turned on it and every other face gets misty and recedes into the background. That often happens to me. Something in the face that stirs some old forgotten memory, no doubt. Or stirs the memory of our ancestors whose ghosts are always peering through our eyes. Seeing this girl was like that, only far more so. I couldn't see anything else—not even Helen.

She had the bluest eyes I've ever seen, or rather eyes of a curious deep violet. They were big and unusually wide apart, with long curling black lashes and slimly penciled black eyebrows that almost met above her high-arched but delicately modeled nose. You felt, rather than saw, their color. Her forehead was broad, but whether it was low I could not tell, for it was coifed with braids of palest gold, and there were little ends of hair that curled up all over her head, and they were so fine and silken that the light in the hall shining through them made a queer silver-gilt aureole around her head. Her mouth was a bit large, but beautifully formed and daintily sensuous. Her skin was a miracle, white, but vital—as though moon fires shone behind it.

She was tall almost as I, exquisitely curved, deep bosomed. Her breasts echoed the betrayal of her lips. Her head and face and shoulders came like a lily out of the calyx of a shimmering sea-green gown.

She was exquisite—but I had swift understanding that there was nothing heavenly about the blue of her eyes. And nothing saintly about the aureole about her head.

She was perfection—and I felt a swift hatred against her, understanding, as the pulse of it passed, how one could slash a painting that was a masterpiece of beauty, or take a hammer and destroy a statue that was another such masterpiece if it evoked such hatred as that which I, for that fleeting moment, felt.

Then I thought:

Do I hate you—or do I fear you?

It was all, mind you, in a breath.

Helen was moving by me, hand outstretched. There was no confusion about Helen. Our embrace that had been interrupted might have been a simple handshake. She said, smiling and gracious:

"I am Helen Bennett. Dr. Lowell asked me to receive you. You are Dr. de Keradel, aren't you?"

I looked at the man who was bending over her hand, kissing it. He straightened, and I felt a queer shock of bewilderment. Bill had said I was to meet Dr. de Keradel and his daughter. But this man looked no I older than the girl—if she was his daughter. True, the silver in the gold of his hair was a little paler; true, the blue of his eyes had not the violet-purple of hers ...

I thought: But neither of them has any age! And on top of that I thought, rather savagely: What the hell's the matter with me anyway?

The man said:

"I am Dr. de Keradel. And this is my daughter."

The girl—or woman—seemed now to be regarding both Helen and me with faint amusement. Dr. de Keradel said with, I thought, curious precision:

"The, Demoiselle Dahut d'Ys," he hesitated, then finished—"de Keradel."

Helen said:

"And this is Dr. Alan Caranac."

I was looking at the girl—or woman. The name of Dahut d'Ys fingered half-forgotten chords of memory. And as Helen named me, I saw the violet eyes dilate, become enormous, the straight brows contract until they met above the nose in a slender bar. I felt the glance of her eyes strike and encompass me. She seemed to be seeing me for the first time. And in her eyes was something threatening—possessive. Her body tensed. She said, as though to herself: "Alain de Carnac ... ?"

She glanced from me to Helen. There was calculation in that glance, appraisal. Contemptuous indifference, too—if I read it aright. A queen might so have looked upon some serving wench who had dared to lift eyes to her lover.

Whether I read the glance aright or not, Helen evidently got something of the same thought. She turned to me and said sweetly:

"Darling, I'm ashamed of you. Wake up!"

With the side of her little high-heeled slipper she gave me a surreptitious and vigorous kick on the shin.

Just then Bill came in, and with him a dignified, white-haired gentleman I knew must be Dr. Lowell.

I don't know when I had ever been so glad to see Bill.

CHAPTER III

THEORIES OF DR. DE KERADEL

I gave Bill the old fraternity high-sign of distress, and after introductions he bore me away, leaving the Demoiselle Dahut to Helen and Dr. de Keradel with Dr. Lowell. I felt an urgent need for a drink, and said so. Bill passed me the brandy and soda without comment. I drank a stiff brandy neat.

Helen had bowled me off my feet, but that had been a pleasant upset, nothing that called for any alcoholic lever to right me. The Demoiselle Dahut had been an entirely different matter. She was damned disconcerting. It occurred to me that if you compared yourself to a ship bowling along under full sail, with your mind as a capable navigator and through charted seas, Helen was a squall that fitted normally into the picture—but the Demoiselle was a blow from a new quarter entirely, heading the ship into totally strange waters. What you knew of navigation wouldn't help you a bit.

I said:

"Helen could blow you into Port o' Paradise but the other could blow you into Port o' Hell."

Bill didn't say anything, only watched me. I poured a second brandy. Bill said, mildly:

"There'll be cocktails and wine at dinner."

I said: "Fine," and drank the brandy.

I thought:

It's not her infernal beauty that's got me going. But why the hell did I hate her so when I first saw her?

I didn't hate her now. All I felt was a burning curiosity. But why did I have that vague sense of having long known her? And that not so vague idea that she knew me better than I did her? I muttered:

"She makes you think of the sea, at that."

Bill said: "Who?"

I said: "The Demoiselle d'Ys."

He stepped back; he said, as though something was strangling him:

"Who's the Demoiselle d'Ys?"

I looked at him, suspiciously; I said: "Don't you know the names of your guests? That girl down there—the Demoiselle Dahut d'Ys de Keradel."

Bill said, rather dumbly:

"No, I didn't know that. All Lowell introduced her by was the de Keradel part of it."

After a minute, he said: "Probably another drink won't hurt you. I'll join you."

We drank; he said, casually:

"Never met them till tonight. De Keradel called on Lowell yesterday morning—as one eminent psychiatrist upon another. Lowell was interested, and invited him and his daughter to dinner. The old boy is fond of Helen, and ever since she came back to town she's been hostess at his parties. She's very fond of him, too."

He drank his brandy and set down the glass. He said, still casually:

"I understand de Keradel has been here for a year or more. Apparently, though, he never got around to visiting us until those interviews of mine and yours appeared."

I jumped up as the implication of that struck me. I said:

"You mean—"

"I don't mean anything. I simply point out the coincidence."

"But if they had anything to do with Dick's death, why would they risk coming here?"

"To find out how much we know—if anything." He hesitated. "It may mean nothing. But—it's precisely the sort of thing I thought might happen when I baited my hook. And de Keradel and his daughter don't exactly disqualify as the sort of fish I expected to catch—and especially now I know about the d'Ys part. Yes—especially."

He came round the table and put his hands on my shoulders:

"Alan, what I'm thinking wouldn't seem as insane to you, maybe, as it does to me. It's not Alice in Wonderland, but Alice in Devil-land. I want you tonight to say anything that comes into your head. Just that. Don't be held back by politeness, or courtesy, or conventions or anything else. If what you want to say is insulting—let it be so. Don't bother about what Helen may think. Forget Lowell. Say whatever comes into your mind. If de Keradel makes any assertions with which you don't agree, don't listen politely—challenge him. If it makes him lose his temper, all the better. Be just alcoholic enough to slip out of any inhibitions of courtesy. You talk, I listen. Do you get it?"

I laughed and said:

"In vino veritas. But your idea is to make my vino bring out the veritas in the other party. Sound psychology. All right, Bill, I'll take another small one."

He said: "You know your limit. But watch your step."

We went down to dinner. I was feeling interested, amused, and devil-may-care. The image I had of the Demoiselle was simplified to a mist of silver-gold hair over two splotches of purple-blue in a white face. On the other hand, Helen's was still the sharp-cut antique coin. We sat down at table. Dr. Lowell was at the head, at his left de Keradel, and at his right the Demoiselle Dahut. Helen sat beside de Keradel and I beside the Demoiselle. Bill sat between me and Helen. It was a nicely arranged table, with tall candles instead of electrics. The butler brought cocktails and they were excellent. I lifted mine to Helen and said:

"You are a lovely antique coin, Helen. Alexander the Great minted you. Someday I will put you in my pocket."

Dr. Lowell looked a bit startled. But Helen clinked glasses and murmured:

"You will never lose me, will you, darling?"

I said:

"No, sweetheart, nor will I give you away, nor let anybody steal you, my lovely antique coin."

There was the pressure of a soft shoulder against me. I looked away from Helen and straight into the eyes of the Demoiselle. They weren't just purple-blue splotches now. They were the damnedest eyes—big, and clear as a tropic shoal and little orchid sparks darted through them like the play of the sun through a tropic shoal when you turn over and look up through the clear water.

I said:

"Demoiselle Dahut—why do you make me think of the sea? I have seen the Mediterranean the exact color of your eyes. And the crests of the waves were as white as your skin. And there was sea-weed like your hair. Your fragrance is the fragrance of the sea, and you walk like a wave—"

Helen drawled:

"How poetic you are, darling. Perhaps you'd better eat your soup before you take another cocktail."

I said:

"Sweetheart, you are my antique coin. But you are not yet in my pocket. Nor am I in yours. I will have another cocktail before I eat my soup."

She flushed at that. I felt bad about saying it. But I caught a glance from Bill that heartened me. And the Demoiselle's eyes would have repaid me for any remorse—if I hadn't just then felt stir that inexplicable hot hatred, and knew quite definitely now that fear did lurk within it. She laid her hand lightly on mine. It had a curious tingling warmth. At the touch, the strange repulsion vanished. I realized her beauty with an almost painful acuteness. She said:

"You love the old things. It is because you are of the ancient blood—the blood of Armorica. Do you remember—"

My cocktail went splashing to the floor. Bill said:

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Alan. That was awkward of me. Briggs, bring Dr. Caranac another."

I said:

"That's all right, Bill."

I hoped I said it easily, because deep in me was anger, wondering how long it had been between that "remember" of the Demoiselle's and the overturning of my glass. When she had said it, the tingling warmth of her had seemed to concentrate itself into a point of fire, a spark that shot up my arm into my brain. And instead of the pleasant candle-lighted room, I saw a vast plain covered with huge stones arranged in ordered aisles all marching to a central circle of monoliths within which was a gigantic cairn. I knew it to be Carnac, that place of mystery of the Druids and before them of a forgotten people, from which my family had derived its name, changed only by the addition of a syllable during the centuries. But it was not the Carnac I had known when in Brittany. This place was younger; its standing stones upright, in place; not yet gnawed by the teeth of untold centuries. There were people, hundreds of them, marching along the avenues to the monolithed circle. And although I knew that it was daylight, a blackness seemed to hover over the crypt that was the circle's heart. Nor could I see the ocean. Where it should have been, and far away, were tall towers of gray and red stone, misty outlines of walls as of a great city. And as I stood there, long and long it seemed to me, slowly the fear crept up my heart like a rising tide. With it crept, side by side, cold, implacable hatred and rage.

I had heard Bill speaking—and was back in the room. The fear was gone. The wrath had remained.

I looked into the face of the Demoiselle Dahut. I thought I read triumph there, and a subtle amusement. I was quite sure of what had happened, and that there was no need of answering her interrupted question—if it had been interrupted. She knew. It was hypnotism of sorts, suggestion raised to the nth degree. I thought that if Bill were right in his suspicions, the Demoiselle Dahut had not been very wise to play a card like this so soon—either that, or damned sure of herself. I closed my mind quickly to that thought.

Bill, Lowell, and de Keradel were talking, Helen listening and watching me out of the corner of her eye. I whispered to the Demoiselle:

"I knew a witch-doctor down in Zululand who could do that same thing, Demoiselle de Keradel. He called the trick 'sending out the soul.' He was not so beautiful as you are; perhaps that is why he had to take so much more time to do it."

I was about to add that she had been as swift as the striking of a deadly snake, but held that back.

She did not trouble to deny. She asked:

"Is that all you think—Alain de Carnac?"

I laughed:

"No, I think that your voice is also of the sea."

And so it was; the softest, sweetest contralto I'd ever heard—low and murmurous and lulling, like the whisper of waves on a long smooth beach.

She said:

"But is that a compliment then? Many times you have compared me to the sea tonight. Is not the sea treacherous?"

"Yes," I said, and let her make what she would of that answer. She did not seem offended.

The dinner went on with talk of this and that. It was a good dinner, and so was the wine. The butler kept my glass filled so faithfully that I wondered whether Bill had given him orders. The Demoiselle was cosmopolitan in her points of view, witty, undeniably charming—to use that much misused word. She had the gift of being able to be what her conversation implied she was. There was nothing exotic, nothing mysterious about her now. She was only a modern, well-informed, cultivated young woman of extraordinary beauty. Helen was delightful. There wasn't a single thing for me to grow unpleasantly argumentative about, nor discourteous, nor insulting. I thought Bill was looking a bit puzzled; disconcerted—like a prophet who has foretold some happening which shows not the slightest sign of materializing. If de Keradel was interested in Dick's death, there was nothing to show it. For some time Lowell and he had been absorbed in low-toned discussion to the exclusion of the rest of us. Suddenly I heard Lowell say:

"But surely you do not believe in the objective reality of such beings?"

The question brought me sharply to attention. I remembered Dick's torn note—he had wanted Bill to consider something as objective instead of subjective; I saw that Bill was listening intently. The Demoiselle's eyes were upon Lowell, faint amusement in them.

De Keradel answered:

"I know they are objective."

Dr. Lowell asked, incredulously:

"You believe that these creatures, these demons—actually existed?"

"And still exist," said de Keradel. "Reproduce the exact conditions under which those who had the ancient wisdom evoked these beings—forces, presences, powers, call them what you will—and the doors shall open and They come through. That Bright One the Egyptians named Isis will stand before us as of old, challenging us to lift Her veil. And that Dark Power stronger than She, whom the Egyptians named Set and Typhon, but who had another name in the shrines of an older and wiser race—It will make Itself manifest. Yes, Dr. Lowell, and still others will come through the opened doors to teach us, to counsel us, to aid and obey us—"

"Or to command us, my father," said the Demoiselle, almost tenderly.

"Or to command us," echoed de Keradel, mechanically; some of the color had drained from his face, and I thought there was fear in the glance he gave his daughter.

I touched Bill's foot with mine, and felt an encouraging pressure. I raised my wine and squinted through it at de Keradel. I said, irritatingly explanatory:

"Dr. de Keradel is a true showman. If one provides the right theater, the right scenery, the right supporting cast, the right music and script and cues—the right demons or whatnot bounce out from the wings as the stars of the show. Well, I have seen some rather creditable illusions produced under such conditions. Real enough to deceive most amateurs—"

De Keradel's eyes dilated; he half rose from his chair; he whispered:

"Amateur! Do you imply that I am an amateur?"

I said, urbanely, still looking at my glass:

"Not at all. I said you were a showman."

He mastered his anger with difficulty; he said to Lowell:

"They are not illusions, Dr. Lowell. There is a pattern, a formula, to be observed. Is there anything more rigid than that formula by which the Catholic Church establishes communion with its God? The chanting, the prayers, the gestures—even the intonation of the prayers—all are fixed. Is not every ritual—Mohammedan, Buddhist, Shintoist, every act of worship throughout the world, in all religions—as rigidly prescribed? The mind of man recognizes that only by exact formula can it touch the minds that are not human. It is memory of an ancient wisdom, Dr. Caranac—but of that no more now. I tell you again that what comes upon my stage is not illusion."

I asked: "How do you know?"

He answered, quietly: "I do know."

Dr. Lowell said, placatingly: "Extremely strange, extremely realistic visions can be induced by combinations of sounds, odors, movements, and colors. There even seem to be combinations which can create in different subjects approximately the same visions—establish similar emotional rhythms. But I have never had evidence that these visions were anything but subjective."

He paused, and I saw his hands clench, the knuckles whiten; he said, slowly:

"Except—once."

De Keradel was watching him, the clenched hands could not have escaped his notice. He asked: "And that once?"

Lowell answered, with a curious harshness: "I have no evidence."

De Keradel went on: "But there is another element in this evocation which is not of the stage—nor of the showman, Dr. Caranac. It is, to use a chemical term, a catalyst. The necessary element to bring about a required result—itself remaining untouched and unchanged. It is a human element—a woman or man or child—who is en rapport with the Being evoked. Of such was the Pythoness at Delphi, who upon her tripod threw herself open to the God and spoke with his voice. Of such were the Priestesses of Isis of the Egyptians, and of Ishtar of the Babylonians—themselves the one and the same. Of such was the Priestess of Hecate, Goddess of Hell, whose secret rites were lost until I rediscovered them. Of such was the warrior-king who was Priest of tentacled Khalk-ru, the Kraken God of the Uighurs, and of such was that strange priest at whose summoning came the Black God of the Scyths, in the form of a monstrous frog—"

Bill broke in:

"But these worships are of the far-distant past. Surely, none has believed in them for many a century. Therefore this peculiar line of priests and priestesses must long ago have died out. How today could one be found?"

I thought the Demoiselle shot de Keradel a warning look, and was about to speak. He ignored her, swept away by this idea that ruled him, forced to expound, to justify, it. He said:

"But you are wrong. They do live. They live in the brains of those who sprang from them. They sleep in the brains of their descendants. They sleep until one comes who knows how to awaken them. And to that awakener—what reward! Not the golden and glittering trash in the tomb of some Tut-ankh-Amen, not the sterile loot of some Genghis Khan, or of Attila ... shining pebbles and worthless metal ... playthings. But storehouses of memories, hives of knowledge—knowledge that sets its possessor so high above all other men that he is as a god."

I said, politely:

"I'd like to be a god for a time. Where can I find such storehouse? Or open such hive? It would be worth a few stings to become a god."

The veins throbbed in his temples; he said:

"You mock! Nevertheless, I will give you a hint. Once Dr. Charcot hypnotized a girl who had long been a subject of his experiments. He sent her deeper into the hypnotic sleep than ever he had dared before with any subject. Suddenly he heard another voice than hers coming from her throat. It was a man's voice, the rough voice of a French peasant. He questioned that voice. It told him many things—things the girl could not possibly have known. The voice spoke of incidents of the Jacquerie. And the Jacquerie was six hundred years before. Dr. Charcot took down what that voice told him. Later, he investigated, minutely. He verified. He traced the girl's parentage. She had come straight down from a leader of that peasant uprising. He tried again. He pushed past that voice to another. And this voice, a woman's, told him of things that had happened a thousand years ago. Told them in intimate detail, as one who had been a spectator of these happenings. And again he investigated. And again he found that what the voice had told him was true."

I asked, even more politely:

"And have we now arrived at transmigration of souls?"

He answered, violently:

"You dare to mock! What Charcot did was to pierce through veil upon veil of memory for a thousand years. I have gone further than that. I have gone back through the veils of memory not one thousand years. I have gone back ten thousand. I, de Keradel, tell you so."

Lowell said:

"But Dr. de Keradel—memory is not carried by the germ plasm. Physical characteristics, weaknesses, predilections, coloration, shape, and so on—yes. The son of a violinist can inherit his father's hands, his talent, his ear—but not the memory of the notes that his father played. Not his father's memories."

De Keradel said:

"You are wrong. Those memories can be carried. In the brain. Or rather, in that which uses the brain as its instrument. I do not say that every one inherits these memories of their ancestors. Brains are not standardized. Nature is not a uniform workman. In some, the cells that carry these memories seem to be lacking. In others they are incomplete, blurred, having many hiatuses. But in others, a few, they are complete, the records clear, to be read like a printed book if the needle of consciousness, the eye of consciousness, can be turned upon them."

He ignored me; to Dr. Lowell he said with intense earnestness:

"I tell you, Dr. Lowell, that this is so—in spite of all that has been written of the germ plasm, the chromosomes, the genes—the little carriers of heredity. I tell you that I have proved it to be so. And I tell you that there are minds in which are memories that go back and back to a time when man was not yet man. Back to the memories of his ape-like forefathers. Back further even than that—to the first amphibians who crawled out of the sea and began the long climb up the ladder of evolution to become what we are today."

I had no desire now to interrupt, no desire to anger—the man's intensity of belief was too strong. He said:

"Dr. Caranac has spoken, contemptuously, of the transmigration of souls. I say that man can imagine nothing that cannot be, and that he who speaks contemptuously of any belief is therefore an ignorant man. I say that it is this inheritance of memories which is at the bottom of the belief in reincarnation—perhaps the belief in immortality. Let me take an illustration from one of your modern toys—the phonograph. What we call consciousness is a needle that, running along the dimension of time, records upon certain cells its experiences. Quite as the recording needle of a phonograph does upon the master disks. It can run this needle back over these cells after they have been stored away, turning the graphs upon them into memories. Hearing again, seeing again, living again, the experiences recorded on them. Not always can the consciousness find one of these disks it seeks. Then we say that we have forgotten. Sometimes the graphs are not deep cut enough, the disks blurred—and then we say memory is hazy, incomplete.

"The ancestral memories, the ancient disks, are stored in another part of the brain, away from those that carry the memories of this life. Obviously this must be so, else there would be confusion, and the human animal would be hampered by intrusion of memories having no relation to his present environment. In the ancient days, when life was simpler and the environment not so complex, the two sets of memories were closer. That is why we say that ancient man relied more upon his 'intuitions' and less upon reason. That is why primitive men today do the same. But as time went on, and life grew more complex, those who depended less upon the ancestral memories than those which dealt with the problems of their own time—those were the ones with the better chance to survive. Once the cleavage had begun, it must perforce have continued rapidly—like all such evolutionary processes.

"Nature does not like to lose entirely anything it has once created. Therefore it is that at a certain stage of its development the human embryo has the gills of the fish, and at a later stage the hair of the ape. And, therefore, it is that in certain men and women today, these storehouses of ancient memories are fully stocked—to be opened, Dr. Caranac, and having been opened, to be read."

I smiled and drank another glass of wine.

Lowell said:

"That is all strongly suggestive, Dr. de Keradel. If your theory is correct, then these inherited memories would without doubt appear as former lives to those who could recall them. They could be a basis of the doctrine of transmigration of souls, of reincarnation. How else could the primitive mind account for them?"

De Keradel said:

"They explain many things—the thought of the Chinese that unless a man has a son, he dies indeed. The folk saying—'A man lives in his children-'"

Lowell said:

"The new born bee knows precisely the law and duties of the hive. It does not have to be taught to fan, to clean, to mix the pollen and the nectar into the jellies that produce the queen and the drone, the different jelly that is placed in the cell of the worker. None teaches it the complex duties of the hive. The knowledge, the memory, is in the egg, the wriggler, the nymph. It is true, too, of the ants, and of many insects. But it is not true of man, nor of any other mammal."

De Keradel said:

"It is true also of man."

CHAPTER IV

THE LOST CITY OF YS

There was a devil of a lot of truth in what de Keradel had said. I had come across manifestations of that same ancestral memory in odd corners of the earth. I had been burning to corroborate him, despite that excusable dig of his at my ignorance. I would have liked to talk to him as one investigator to another.

Instead I drained my glass and said severely: "Briggs—I have not had a drink for five minutes," and then to the table in general: "Just a moment. Let us be logical. Anything so important as the soul and its travels deserves the fullest consideration. Dr. de Keradel began this discussion by asserting the objective existence of what the showman produced. That is correct, Dr. de Keradel?"

He answered, stiffly: "Yes."

I said: "Dr. de Keradel then adduced certain experiments of Dr. Charcot in hypnotism. Those cases are not convincing to me. In the South Seas, in Africa, in Kamchatka, I have heard the most arrant fakirs speak not in two or three but in half a dozen voices. It is a well-known fact that a hypnotized subject will sometimes speak in different voices. It is quite as well known that a schizoid, a case of multiple personality, will speak in voices ranging from high soprano to bass. And all this without ancestral memories being involved.

"It is a symptom of their condition. Nothing more. Am I right, Dr. Lowell?"

Lowell said: "You are."

I said: "As for what Charcot's subjects told him—who knows what they had heard their grandmothers say? Stories passed down by the family—heard when children, treasured by the sub-consciousness. Built up, improvements suggested, by Charcot himself. Charcot finds two or three points true, naturally. There is none so credulous as he who seeks evidence to support his idee fixe, his pet theory. So these few points become all. Well, I am not so credulous as Charcot, Dr. de Keradel."

He said: "I read your interviews in the newspaper. I seemed to detect a certain amount of credulity there, Dr. Caranac."

So he had read the interviews. I felt Bill press my foot again. I said:

"I tried to make plain to the reporters that belief in the hokum was necessary to make the hokum effective. I admit that to the victim of his belief it doesn't make much difference whether it was hokum or reality. But that doesn't mean that the hokum is real or can affect anybody else. And I tried to make plain that the defense against the hokum is very simple. It is—don't believe it."

The veins on his forehead began to twitch again. He said: "By hokum you mean, I assume, nonsense."

"More than that," I said, cheerfully. "Bunk!"

Dr. Lowell looked pained. I drank my wine, and grinned at the Demoiselle.

Helen said: "Your manners aren't so good tonight, darling."

I said: "Manners—hell! What're manners in a discussion of goblins, incarnation, ancestral memories and Isis, Set and the Black God of the Scyths who looked like a frog? Now I'm going to tell you something, Dr. de Keradel. I've been in a lot of out of the way corners of this globe. I went there hunting for goblins and demons. And in all my travels I've never seen one thing that couldn't be explained on the basis of hypnotism, mass suggestion, or trickery. Get that. Not one thing. And I've seen a lot."

That was a lie—but I wanted to see the effect on him. I saw it. The veins in his temples were twitching more than ever, his lips were white. I said:

"Years ago I had a brilliant idea which puts the whole problem in its simplest form. The brilliant idea was based on the fact that the hearing is probably the last sense to die; that after the heart stops the brain continues to function as long as it has enough oxygen; and that while the brain does function, although every sense is dead—it can have experiences that seem to last for days and weeks, although the actual dream lasts but a fraction of a second.

"'Heaven and Hell, Inc.' That was my idea. 'Insure yourself an immortality of joy!' 'Give your enemy an immortality of torment!' To be done by expert hypnotists, masters of suggestion, sitting at the bedside of the dying and whispering into his ear that which the brain was to dramatize, after hearing and every other sense was dead—"

The Demoiselle drew a sharp breath. De Keradel was staring at me with a strange intentness.

"Well, there it was," I went on. "For a sufficient sum you could promise, and actually give, your client the immortality he desired. Any kind he wanted—from the houri-haunted Paradise of Mahomet to the angel choirs of Paradise. And if the sum were sufficient, and you could gain access, you could whisper into the ear of your employer's enemy the Hell he was going into for aeon after aeon. And I'll bet he'd go into it. That was my 'Heaven and Hell, Inc.'"

"A sweet idea, darling," murmured Helen.

"A sweet idea, yes," I said, bitterly. "Let me tell you what it did for me. It happens that it's entirely feasible. Very well—consider me, the inventor. If there is a delectable life after death, will I enjoy it? Not at all. I'll be thinking—this is just a vision in the dying cells of my brain. It has no objective reality. Nothing that could happen to me in that future existence, assuming it to be real, could be real to me. I would think—Oh, yes, very ingenious of me to create such ideas, but after all, they're only in the dying cells of my brain. Of course," I said, grimly, "there is a compensation. If I happened to land in one of the traditional hells, I wouldn't take it any more seriously. And all the miracles of magic, or sorcery, I've ever beheld were no more real than those dying visions would be."

The Demoiselle whispered, so faintly that none but I could hear: "I could make them real to you, Alan de Caranac—either Heaven or Hell."

I said: "In life or in death, your theories cannot be proven, Dr. de Keradel. At least, not to me."

He did not answer, staring at me, fingers tapping the table.

I went on: "Suppose, for example, you desired to know what it was that they worshiped among the stones of Carnac. You might reproduce every rite. Might have your descendant of priestess with the ancient ghost wide-awake in her brain. But how could you know that what came to the great cairn within the circle of monoliths—the Gatherer within the Cairn, the Visitor to the Alkar-Az—was real?"

De Keradel asked, incredulously, in a curiously still voice, as though exercising some strong restraint: "What can you know of the Alkar-Az—or of the Gatherer within the Cairn?"

I was wondering about that, too. I couldn't remember ever having heard those names. Yet they had sprung to my lips as though long known. I looked at the Demoiselle. She dropped her eyes, but not before I had seen in them that same half-amused triumph as when, under the touch of her hand, I had beheld ancient Carnac. I answered de Keradel:

"Ask your daughter."

His eyes were no longer blue, they had no color at all. They were like little spheres of pale fire. He did not speak—but his eyes demanded answer from her. The Demoiselle met them indifferently. She shrugged a white shoulder. She said: "I did not tell him." She added, with a distinct touch of malice: "Perhaps, my father—he remembered."

I leaned to her, and touched her glass with mine; I was feeling pretty good again. I said: "I remember—I remember—"

Helen said, tartly: "If you drink much more of that wine, you're going to remember a swell headache, darling."

The Demoiselle Dahut murmured: "What do you remember, Alain de Carnac?"

I sang the old Breton song—to the English words:

Fisher! Fisher! Have you seen

White Dahut the Shadows' Queen?

Riding on her stallion black.

At her heels her shadow pack—

Have you seen Dahut ride by.

Swift as cloudy shadows fly

O'er the moon in stormy sky.

On her stallion black as night—

Shadows' Queen—Dahut the White?

There was a queer silence. Then I noticed that de Keradel was sitting up oddly rigid and looking at me with that same expression he had worn when I had spoken of the Alkar-Az—and the Gatherer in the Cairn. Also that Bill's face had bleached. I looked at the Demoiselle and there were little dancing orchid sparks in her eyes. I hadn't the slightest idea why the old song should have had such an effect.

Helen said: "That's a weird melody, Alan. Who was Dahut the White?"

"A witch, angel," I told her. "A wicked, beautiful witch. Not a torched-tressed witch like you, but a blonde one. She lived twenty centuries or more ago in a city named Ys. Nobody knows quite where Ys was, but probably its towers rose where now the sea flows between Quiberon and Belle Isle. Certainly, it was once land there. Ys was a wicked city, filled with witches and sorcerers, but wickedest of all was Dahut the White, the daughter of the King. She picked her lovers where she would. They pleased her for a night, two nights—seldom three. Then she cast them from her ... into the sea, some say. Or, say others, she gave them to her shadows—"

Bill interrupted: "What do you mean by that?"

His face was whiter than before. De Keradel was looking sharply at him. I said:

"I mean—shadows. Didn't I sing to you that she was Queen of Shadows? She was a witch—and could make shadows do her bidding. All sorts of shadows—shadows of the lovers she'd killed, demon shadows, Incubi and Succubi nightmares—a specialist in shadows was the White Dahut, according to the legend.

"At last the Gods determined to take a hand. Don't ask me what Gods. Pagan, if all this was before the introduction of Christianity—Christian if after. Whichever they were, they must have believed that who lives by the sword must die by the sword and all of that, because they sent to Ys a youthful hero with whom Dahut fell instantly, completely, and madly in love.

"He was the first man she had ever loved, despite her former affairs. But he was coy—aloof. He could forgive her previous philandering, but before he would accept her favors he must be convinced she truly loved him. How could she convince him? Quite easily. Ys, it appears was below sea-level and protected by walls which kept out the tides. There was one gate which would let in the sea. Why was there such a gate? I don't know. Probably for use in case of invasion, revolution, or something of the sort. At any rate, the legend says, there was such a gate. The key to it hung always about the neck of the King of Ys, Dahut's father.

"'Bring me that key—and I'll know you love me,' said the hero. Dahut stole down to her sleeping father, and stole the key from his neck. She gave it to her lover. He opened the sea-gates. The sea poured in. Finish—for wicked Ys. Finish—for wicked Dahut the White."

"She was drowned?" asked Helen.

"That's the curious detail of the legend. The story is that Dahut had a rush of filial devotion to the heart, rushed away, awakened the father she had betrayed, took her big black stallion, mounted it, drew the King up behind her and tried to beat the waves to higher ground. There must have been something good in her after all. But—another extraordinary detail—her shadows rebelled, got behind the waves and pushed them on higher and faster. So the waves overtook the stallion and Dahut and her papa—and that was indeed their finish. But still they ride along the shores of Quiberon 'on her stallion black, at her heels her shadow pack—'" I stopped, abruptly.

My left arm had been raised, the glass of wine within it. By a freak of the light, the candles threw its shadow sharply upon the white tablecloth, directly in front of the Demoiselle.

And the Demoiselle's white hands were busy with the shadow of my wrist, as though measuring it, as though passing something under and around it.

I dropped my hand and caught hers. Swiftly she slipped them under the edge of the table. As swiftly I dropped my right hand and took from her fingers what they held. It was a long hair, and as I raised it, I saw that it was one of her own.

I thrust it into the candle flame and held it there while it writhed and shriveled.

The Demoiselle laughed—sweet, mocking laughter. I heard de Keradel's chuckle echo hers. The disconcerting thing was that his amusement seemed not only frank but friendly. The Demoiselle said:

"First he compares me to the sea—the treacherous sea. Then darkly, by inference, to wicked Dahut, the Shadow Queen. And then he thinks me a witch—and burns my hair. And yet—he says he is not credulous—that he does not believe!"

Again she laughed—and again De Keradel echoed her.

I felt foolish, damned foolish. It was touche for the Demoiselle, beyond any doubt. I glared at Bill. Why the devil had he led me into such a trap. But Bill was not laughing. He was looking at the Demoiselle with a face peculiarly stony. Nor was Helen smiling. She was looking at the Demoiselle too. With that expression which women wear when they desire to call another by one of those beautifully descriptive Old English words which the Oxford Dictionary says are "not now in decent use."

I grinned, and said to her: "It appears that another lady has put me on a hornet's nest."

Helen gave me a long comforting look. It said: "I can do that, but God help any other woman who tries it."

There was a short and awkward silence. De Keradel broke it.

"I do not quite know why, but I am reminded of a question I wished to ask you, Dr. Bennett. I was much interested in the account of the suicide of Mr. Ralston, who, I gathered from your interview in the newspapers, was not only a patient of yours but a close friend."

I saw Bill blink in the old way when he had come to some unshakeable conviction. He answered, smoothly, in his best professional manner.

"Yes, indeed, Dr. de Keradel, as friend and patient I probably knew him as well as anyone."

De Keradel said: "It is not so much his death that interests me. It is that in the account of it three other men were mentioned. His death linked to theirs, in fact, as though the same cause were behind all."

Bill said: "Quite so."

I had the idea that the Demoiselle was watching Bill intently from the corners of her lovely eyes. De Keradel took up his glass, twirled it slowly, and said:

"I am really much interested, Dr. Bennett. We are all of us physicians, here. Your sister ... my daughter ... are of course in our confidence. They will not talk. Do you think that these four deaths had anything in common?"

"Without doubt," answered Bill.

"What?" asked de Keradel.

"Shadows!" said Bill.

CHAPTER V

THE WHISPERING SHADOW

I stared at Bill, incredulously. I remembered his anxiety over my mention of shadows to the reporters, and his tenseness when I had told of the Shadows of Dahut the White. And here we were, back to shadows again. There must be some link, but what was it?

De Keradel exclaimed: "Shadows! Do you mean all suffered from identical hallucinations?"

"Shadows—yes," said Bill. "Hallucinations—I'm not sure."

De Keradel repeated, thoughtfully: "You are not sure." Then asked: "Were these shadows—what your friend and patient desired you to regard as objective rather than subjective? I read the newspaper reports with great interest, Dr. Bennett."

"I'm sure you did, Dr. de Keradel," said Bill, and there was an edge of irony to his voice. "Yes—it was the shadow which he desired me to regard as real, not imaginary. The shadow—not shadows. There was only one—" He paused, then added with a faint but plainly deliberate emphasis—"only one shadow for each ... you know."

I thought I understood Bill's plan of battle. He was playing a hunch; bluffing; pretending to have knowledge of this shadowy decoy of death, whatever the thing might be, exactly as he had pretended to have knowledge of a common cause for the four suicides. He had used that bait to lure his fish within range of the hook. Now that he thought he had them there, he was using the same bait to make them take it. I didn't believe he knew any more than when he had talked to me at the Club. And I thought he was dangerously underestimating the de Keradels. That last thrust had been a bit obvious.

De Keradel was saying, placidly: "One shadow or many, what difference, Dr. Bennett? Hallucinatory shapes may appear singly—as tradition says the shade of Julius Caesar appeared to the remorseful Brutus. Or be multiplied by the thousands which the dying brain of Tiberius pictured thronging about his death bed, menacing him who had slain them. There are organic disturbances which create such hallucinations. Ocular irregularities produce them. Drugs and alcohol spawn them. They are born of abnormalities of brain and nerves. They are children of auto-intoxication. Progeny of fever, and of high blood pressure. They are also born of conscience. Am I to understand that you reject all these rational explanations?"

Bill said, stolidly: "No. Say, rather, that I do not yet accept any of them."

Dr. Lowell said, abruptly: "There is still another explanation. Suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion. If Ralston and the others had come under the influence of someone who knew how to control minds by such methods ... then I can well understand how they might have been driven to kill themselves. I, myself—"

His fingers clenched around the stem of the wine glass. The stem snapped, cutting him. He wrapped a napkin around the bleeding hand. He said: "It is no matter. I wish the memory that caused it went no deeper."

The Demoiselle's eyes were on him, and there was a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. I was sure de Keradel had missed nothing. He asked:

"Do you accept Dr. Lowell's explanation?"

Bill answered, hesitantly: "No—not entirely—I don't know."

The Breton paused, studying him with a curious intentness. He said, "Orthodox science tells us that a shadow is only a diminution of light within a certain area caused by the interposition of a material body between a source of light and some surface. It is insubstantial, an airy nothing. So orthodox science tells us. What and where was the material body that cast this shadow upon the four—if it was no hallucination?"

Dr. Lowell said: "A thought placed cunningly in a man's mind might cast such shadow."

De Keradel replied, blandly: "But Dr. Bennett does not accept that theory."

Bill said nothing. De Keradel went on: "If Dr. Bennett believes that a shadow caused the deaths, and if he will not admit it hallucination, nor that it was cast and directed by a material body—then inevitably the conclusion must be that he admits a shadow may have the attributes of a material body. This shadow came necessarily from somewhere; it attaches itself to someone, follows, and finally compels that someone to kill himself. All this implies volition, cognition, purpose and emotion. These shadows? They are attributes of material things only—phenomena of the consciousness housed in the brain. The brain is material and lives in an indubitably material skull. But a shadow is not material, and therefore can have no skull to house a brain; and therefore can have no brain, and therefore no consciousness. And, still again, therefore, can have no volition, cognition, will, or emotion. And, lastly therefore, could not possibly urge, lure, drive, frighten, or coerce a material living being to self-destruction. And if you do not agree with that, my dear Dr. Bennett, what you are admitting is—witchcraft."

Bill answered, quietly: "If so, why do you laugh at me? What are those theories of ritual you have been expounding to us but witchcraft? Perhaps you have converted me, Dr. de Keradel."

The Breton stopped laughing, abruptly, he said: "So?" and again, slowly: "So! But they are not theories, Dr. Bennett. They are discoveries. Or, rather, rediscoveries of, let us say, unorthodox science." The veins in his forehead were twitching; he added, with an indefinable menace: "If it is truly I who have opened your eyes—I hope to make your conversion complete."

I saw that Lowell was looking at de Keradel with a strange intentness. The Demoiselle was looking at Bill, the little devilish lights flickering in her eyes; and I thought that there were both malice and calculation in her faint smile. There was an odd tension about the table—as of something unseen, crouching and ready to strike.

Helen broke it, quoting dreamily:

Some there be that shadows kiss.

Such have but a shadow's bliss—

The Demoiselle was laughing; laughter that was more like the laughter of little waves than anything else. But there were undertones to it that I liked even less than the subtle menace in her smile—something inhuman, as though the little waves were laughing at the dead men who lay under them.

De Keradel spoke rapidly, in a tongue that I felt I ought to recognize, but did not. The Demoiselle became demure. She said, sweetly: "Your pardon, Mademoiselle Helen. It was not at you that I laughed. It was that suddenly I am reminded of something infinitely amusing. Someday I shall tell you and you too will laugh—"

De Keradel interrupted her, urbane as before: "And I ask your pardon, Dr. Bennett. You must excuse the rudeness of an enthusiast. And also his persistency. Because I now ask if you could, without too great violation of confidence between physician and patient, inform me as to the symptoms of Mr. Ralston. The behavior of this—this shadow, if you will call it so. I am greatly curious—professionally."

Bill said: "There's nothing I'd like better. You, with your unique experience may recognize some point of significance that I have missed. To satisfy professional ethics, let us call it a consultation, even though it is a postmortem one."

I had the fleeting thought that Bill was pleased; that he had scored some point toward which he had been maneuvering. I pushed my chair back a little so that I could see both the Demoiselle and her father. Bill said:

"I'll start from the beginning. If there is anything you want me to amplify, don't hesitate to interrupt. Ralston called me up and said he wanted me to look him over. I had neither seen nor heard from him for a couple of months; had thought, indeed, that he was on one of his trips abroad. He began, abruptly: 'Something's wrong with me, Bill. I see a shadow.' I laughed, but he didn't. He repeated: 'I see a shadow, Bill. And I'm afraid!' I said, still laughing: 'If you couldn't see a shadow you certainly would have something wrong with you.' He answered like a frightened child.

"'But, Bill—there's nothing to make this shadow!'

"He leaned toward me, and now I realized that he was holding himself together by truly extraordinary effort. He asked: 'Does that mean I'm going crazy? Is seeing a shadow a common symptom when you are going insane? Tell me, Bill—is it?'

"I told him that the notion was nonsense; that in all probability some little thing was wrong with his eyes or his liver. He said: 'But this shadow—whispers!'

"I said: 'You need a drink,' and I gave him a stiff one. I said: 'Tell me exactly what it is you think you see, and, if you can, precisely when you first thought you saw it.' He answered: 'Four nights ago. I was in the library, writing—' Let me explain, Dr. de Keradel, that he lived in the old Ralston house on 78th Street; alone except for Simpson, the butler, who was a heritage from his father, and half a dozen servants. He went on: 'I thought I saw someone or something slip along the wall into the curtains that cover the window. The window was at my back and I was intent upon my letter, but the impression was so vivid that I jumped up and went over to the curtains. There was nothing there. I returned to my desk—but I couldn't get rid of the feeling that someone or something was in the room.'

"He said: 'I was so disturbed that I made a note of the time.'"

"A mental echo of the visual hallucination," said De Keradel. "An obvious concomitant."

"Perhaps," said Bill. "At any rate, a little later he had the same experience, only this time the movement was from right to left, the reverse of the first. In the next half hour it was repeated six times, always in the opposite direction—I mean, from left to right, then right to left and so on. He laid emphasis upon this, as though he thought it in some way significant. He said: 'It was, as though it were weaving.' I asked what 'It' was like. He said: 'It had no shape. It was just movement—No, it had no shape then.' The feeling of not being alone in the room increased to such an uncomfortable pitch that shortly after midnight he left the library, leaving the lights burning, and turned in. There was no recurrence of the symptoms, in his bedroom. He slept soundly. Nor was he troubled the next night. By the day following he had almost forgotten the matter.

"That night he dined out and came home about eleven o'clock. He went into the library to go over his mail. He told me: 'Suddenly I had the strongest feeling that someone was watching me from the curtains. I turned my head, slowly. I distinctly saw a shadow upon the curtains. Or, rather, as though it were intermingled with them—like a shadow cast by something behind. It was about the size and shape of a man.' He jumped to the curtains and tore them away. Nothing was behind them nor was there anything beyond the window to cast a shadow. He sat down again at the table, but still he felt eyes upon him. 'Unwinding eyes,' he said. 'Eyes that never left me. Eyes of someone or something that kept always just past the edge of my field of vision. If I turned quickly, it slipped behind me, was watching me from my other side. If I moved slowly, just as slowly did it move.'

"Sometimes he caught a flickering movement, a shadowy flitting, as he pursued the eyes. Sometimes he thought he had caught the shadow. But always it faded, was gone, before he could focus it. And instantly he felt its gaze upon him from another quarter.

"'From right to left it went,' he said. 'From left to right ... and back again ... and back again and again ... weaving ... weaving ... '

"'Weaving what?' I asked, impatiently.

"He answered, quite simply: 'My shroud.'

"He sat there, fighting until he could fight no more. Then he sought refuge in his bedroom. He did not sleep well, for he thought the shadow was lurking on the threshold; had pressed itself against the other side of the door, listening. If so, it did not enter.

"Dawn came, and after that he slept soundly. He arose late, spent the afternoon at golf, dined out, went with a party to the theater and then to a night club. For hours he had given no thought to the experience of the night before. He said: 'If I thought of it at all, it was to laugh at it as childish foolishness.' He reached home about three o'clock. He let himself in. As he closed the door he heard a whisper—'You are late!' It was quite plain, and as though the whisperer stood close beside him—"

De Keradel interrupted: "Progressive hallucination. First the idea of movement; then the sharpening into shape; then sound. Hallucination progressing from the visual field to the auditory."

Bill went on, as though he had not heard: "He said the voice had some quality which—I quote him—'made you feel the loathing you do when you put your hand on a slimy slug in a garden at night, and at the same time an unholy desire to have it go on whispering forever.' He said: 'It was unnamable horror and perverted ecstasy in one.'

"Simpson had left the lights burning. The hall was well lighted. He could see no one. But the voice had been reality. He stood for a few moments fighting for control. Then he walked in, took off hat and top-coat, and started for the stairs. He said: 'I happened to look down, and over the top of my eyes I saw a shadow gliding along about six feet ahead of me. I raised my eyes—and it vanished. I went slowly up the stairs. If I looked down at the steps I could see the shadow flitting ahead of me. Always at the same distance. When I looked up—there was nothing. The shadow was sharper than it had been the night before. I thought it was the shadow of a woman. A naked woman. And suddenly I realized that the whispering voice had been that of a woman.'

"He went straight to his room. He passed the door. He looked down and saw the shadow still those two paces before him. He stepped swiftly back and into the room, closing the door and locking it. He switched on the lights and stood with his ear against the door. He said: 'I heard someone, something, laughing. The same voice that had whispered.' And then he heard it whisper—'I will watch outside your door tonight ... tonight ... tonight ... ' He listened with that same alien mixture of horror and desire. He lusted to throw open the door, but the loathing held back his hand. He said: 'I kept the lights on. But the thing did what it had promised. It watched all night at my door. It wasn't quiet though. It danced ... I couldn't see it ... but I know it danced ... out there in the hall. It danced and weaved ... right to left ... left to right and back again and again ... danced and weaved till dawn outside my door ... weaving ... my shroud, Bill ... '

"I reasoned with him, much along your lines, Dr. de Keradel. I went over him thoroughly. I could find, superficially, nothing wrong. I took specimens for the various tests. He said: 'I hope to God you do find something wrong, Bill. If you don't—it means the shadow is real. I think I'd rather know I was going crazy than that. After all, craziness can be cured.'

"I said: 'You're not going back to your house. You're going to stay at the Club until I've gotten my reports. Then, no matter what they show, you're going to hop on a boat and take a long trip.'

"He shook his head: 'I've got to go back to the house, Bill.'

"I asked: 'Why, for God's sake?'

"He hesitated, puzzled distress on his face; he said: 'I don't know. But I've got to.'

"I said, firmly: 'You stay here with me tonight, and tomorrow you hop on a boat. To anywhere. I'll let you know about the tests and do my prescribing by radio.' He replied, still with that same puzzled look: 'I can't go away now. The fact ... ' he hesitated ... 'the fact is, Bill ... I've met a girl ... a woman. I can't leave her.'

"I gaped at him. I said: 'You're going to marry her? Who is she?'

"He looked at me, helplessly: 'I can't tell you, Bill. I can't tell you anything about her.'

"I asked: 'Why not?'

"He answered with the same puzzled hesitation. 'I don't know why I can't. But I can't. It seems to be a part of—of the other in some way. But I can't tell you.' And to every question that touched upon this girl he had the same answer."

Dr. Lowell said, sharply: "You told me nothing of that, Dr. Bennett. He said nothing more to you than that? That he could not tell you anything more about this woman? That he did not know why—but he could not?"

Bill said: "That—and no more."

Helen said, coldly: "What amuses you so, Demoiselle? I do not find anything in all this that is humorous."

I looked at the Demoiselle. The little orchid sparks were alive in her eyes, her red lips smiling—and cruel.

CHAPTER VI

KISS OF THE SHADOW

I said: "The Demoiselle is a true artist."

There was a small, tense silence around the table. De Keradel broke it, harshly:

"Exactly what do you mean by that, Dr. Caranac?

I smiled: "All true artists are pleased when art attains excellence. Story telling is an art. Dr. Bennett was telling his perfectly. Therefore, your daughter, a true artist, was pleased. A perfect syllogism. Is it not true, Demoiselle?"

She answered, quietly:

"You have said it." But she was no longer smiling, and her eyes said something else. So did de Keradel's. Before he could speak, I said:

"Only tribute from one artist to another, Helen. Go on, Bill."

Bill went on, quickly:

"I sat and reasoned with him. Betimes, I gave him several stiff drinks. I related some famous cases of hallucination—Paganini, the great violinist, who at times thought he saw a shadowy woman in white stand beside him playing her violin while he played his. Leonardo da Vinci who thought he saw and spoke with the shade of Chiron, wisest of all the Centaurs, who tutored the youthful Aesculapius—dozens of similar instances. I told him he had become a companion of men of genius and that it was probably a sign of something like that breaking out on him. After awhile he was laughing. He said: 'All right, Bill. I'm convinced. But the thing for me to do is not to run away from it. The thing for me to do is meet it and knock out.' I said:

"'If you feel you can, that's the one thing to do. It's only an obsession, sheer imagination. Try it tonight, anyway. If it gets a bit too thick, call me up on the 'phone. I'll be right here. And take plenty of good liquor.' When he left me he was quite his old self.

"He didn't call me up until next afternoon, and then asked what I had heard about the specimens. I replied that what reports I had received showed him perfectly healthy. He said, quietly: 'I thought they would.' I asked what kind of a night he had had. He laughed, and said: 'A very interesting one, Bill. Oh, very. I followed your advice and drank plenty of liquor.' His voice was quite normal, even cheerful. I was relieved, yet felt a vague uneasiness. I asked: 'How about your shadow?' 'And plenty of shadow,' he said. 'I told you, didn't I, that I thought it a woman's shadow? Well, it is.' I said: 'You are better. Was your woman shadow nice to you?' He said: 'Scandalously so, and promises to be even scandalouser. That's what made the night so interesting.' He laughed again. And abruptly hung up.

"I thought: 'Well, if Dick can joke like that about something that had him terrorized to the liver a day ago, he's getting over it.' That, I said to myself, was good advice I gave him.

"Still, I felt that vague uneasiness. It grew. A little later I rang him up, but Simpson said he had gone out to play golf. That seemed normal enough. Yes—the whole trouble had been only a queer evanescent quirk that was righting itself. Yes—my advice had been good. What—" Bill broke out suddenly—"What Goddamned fools we doctors can be."

I stole a look at the Demoiselle. Her great eyes were wide and tender, but deep within them something mocked. Bill said:

"The next day I had more reports, all equally good. I called Dick up and told him so. I forgot to say I had also instructed him to go to Buchanan. Buchanan," Bill turned to de Keradel, "is the best eye man in New York. He had found nothing wrong, and that eliminated many possibilities of cause for the hallucination—if it was that. I told Dick. He said, cheerfully: 'Medicine is a grand science of elimination, isn't it, Bill? But if after all the elimination you get down to something you don't know anything about—then what do you do about it, Bill?'

"That was a queer remark. I said: 'What do you mean?' He said: 'I am only a thirsty seeker of knowledge.' I asked, suspiciously: 'Did you drink much last night?' He said: 'Not too much.' I asked: 'How about the shadow?' He said: 'Even more interesting.' I said: 'Dick, I want you to come right down and let me see you.' He promised, but he didn't come. I had a case you see that kept me late at the hospital. I got in about midnight and called him up. Simpson answered, saying he had gone to bed early and had given orders not to be disturbed. I asked Simpson how he seemed. He answered that Mr. Dick had seemed quite all right, unusually cheerful, in fact. Nevertheless, I could not rid myself of the inexplicable uneasiness. I told Simpson to tell Mr. Ralston that if he didn't come in to see me by five o'clock next day I would come after him.

"At exactly five o'clock he arrived. I felt a sharp increase of my doubt. His face had thinned, his eyes were curiously bright. Not feverish—more as though he had been taking some drug. There was a lurking amusement in them, and a subtle terror. I did not betray the shock his appearance gave me. I told him that I had gotten the last of the reports, and that they were negative. He said: 'So I have a clean bill of health? Nothing wrong with me anywhere?' I answered: 'So far as these tests show. But I want you to go to the hospital for a few days' observation.' He laughed, and said: 'No. I'm perfectly healthy, Bill.'

"He sat looking at me for a few moments silently, the subtle amusement competing with the terror in his over-bright eyes—as though he felt himself ages beyond me in knowledge of some sort and at the same time bitterly in fear of it. He said: 'My shadow's name is Brittis. She told me so last night.'

"That made me jump. I said: 'What the hell are you talking about?'

"He answered with malicious patience: 'My shadow. Her name is Brittis. She told me so last night while she lay in my bed beside me, whispering. A woman shadow. Naked.'

"I stared at him, and he laughed: 'What do you know about the Succubi, Bill? Nothing, I at once perceive. I wish Alan were back—he'd know. Balzac had a great story about one, I remember—but Brittis says she really wasn't one. I went up to the library this morning and looked them up. Plowed through the Malleus Maleficarum—'

"I asked: 'What the hell is that?'

"'The Hammer Against Witches. The old book of the Inquisition that tells what Succubi and Incubi are, and what they can do, and how to tell witches and what to do against them and all of that. Very interesting. It says that a demon can become a shadow, and becoming one may fasten itself upon a living person and become corporeal—or corporeal enough to beget, as the Bible quaintly puts it. The lady demons are the Succubi. When one of them lusts for a man she beguiles him in this fashion or another until—well, until she succeeds. Whereupon he gives her his vital spark and, quite naturally, dies. But Brittis says that wouldn't be the end of me, and that she never was a demon. She says she was—'

"'Dick,' I interrupted him, 'what's all this nonsense?' He repeated, irritably: 'I wish to God you wouldn't keep on thinking this thing is hallucination. If I'm as healthy as you say, it can't be-' He hesitated. '-But even if you did believe it real, what could you do? You don't know what those who sent the shadow to me know. That's why I wish Alan were here. He'd know what to do.' He hesitated again, then said slowly: 'But whether I'd take his advice ... I'm not sure ... now!'

"I asked: 'What do you mean?'

"He said: 'I'll begin from the time we agreed I'd better go home and fight. I went to the theater. I purposely stayed out late. There was no unseen whisperer at the door when I let myself in. I saw nothing as I went upstairs to the library. I mixed a stiff highball, sat down and began to read. I had turned on every light in the room. It was two o'clock.

"'The clock struck the half hour. It roused me from the book. I smelled a curious fragrance, unfamiliar, evocative of strange images—it made me think of an unknown lily, opening in the night, under moon rays, in a secret pool, among age-old ruins encircled by a desert. I looked up and around seeking its source.

"'I saw the shadow.

"'It was no longer as though cast against curtains or walls. It stood plain, a dozen feet from me. Sharp cut, in the room. It was in profile. It stood motionless. Its face was a girl's, delicate, exquisite. I could see its hair, coiled around the little head and two braids of deeper shadow falling between the round, tip-tilted breasts. It was the shadow of a tall girl, a lithe girl, small-hipped, slender-footed. It moved. It began to dance. It was neither black nor gray as I had thought when first I saw it. It was faintly rosy—a rose-pearl shadow. Beautiful, seductive—in a sense no living woman could be. It danced, and trembled—and vanished. I heard a whisper: 'I am here.' It was behind me dancing—dancing ... dimly I could see the room through it.

"'Dancing,' he said, 'weaving—weaving my shroud-' he laughed. 'But a highly embroidered one, Bill.'

"He said he felt a stirring of desire such as he had never felt for any woman. And with it a fear, a horror such as he had never known. He said it was as though a door had opened over whose threshold he might pass into some undreamed of Hell. The desire won. He leaped for that dancing, rosy shadow. And shadow and fragrance were gone snuffed out. He sat again with his book, waiting. Nothing happened. The clock struck three—the half-hour—four. He went to his room. He undressed, and lay upon the bed.

"He said: 'Slowly, like a rhythm, the fragrance began. It pulsed—quicker and quicker. I sat up. The rosy shadow was sitting at the foot of my bed. I strained toward it. I could not move. I thought I heard it whisper—'Not yet ... not yet ... ""

"Progressive hallucination," de Keradel said. "From sight to hearing, from hearing to smell. And then the color centers of the brain become involved. All this is obvious. Yes?"

Bill paid no attention; continued: "He went to sleep, abruptly. He awakened next morning with a curious exaltation of spirit and an equally curious determination to evade me. He had but one desire—that the day should end so that he could meet the shadow. I asked, somewhat sarcastically: 'But how about the other girl, Dick?'

"He answered, plainly puzzled: 'What other girl, Bill?' I said: 'That other girl you were so much in love with. The one whose name you couldn't tell me.'

"He said, wonderingly: 'I don't remember any other girl.'"

I stole a swift glance at the Demoiselle. She was looking demurely down at her plate. Dr. Lowell asked:

"First, he could not tell you her name because of some compulsion? Second, he told you he remembered nothing of her?"

Bill said: "That's what he told me, sir."

I saw the color drain from Lowell's face once more, and saw again a lightning swift glance pass between the Demoiselle and her father.

De Keradel said:

"A previous hallucination negatived by a stronger one."

Bill said:

"Maybe. At any rate, he passed the day in a mood of mingled expectancy and dread. 'As though,' he told me, 'I waited for the prelude of some exquisite event, and at the same time as though for the opening of a door to a cell of the condemned.' And he was even more resolved not to see me, yet he could not be easy until he knew whether I had or had not found something that might account for his experiences. After he had talked to me he had gone out, not for golf as he had told Simpson, but to a place where I could not reach him.

"He went home to dinner. He thought that during dinner he detected fugitive flittings from side to side, furtive stirrings of the shadow. He felt that his every movement was being watched. He had almost panic impulse to run out of the house 'while there was still time,' as he put it. Against that impulse was a stronger urge to stay, something that kept whispering of strange delights, unknown joys. He said—'As though I had two souls, one filled with loathing and hatred for the shadow and crying out against slavery to it. And the other not caring—if only first it might taste of those joys it promised.'

"He went to the library—and the shadow came as it had come the night before. It came close to him, but not so close that he could touch it. The shadow began to sing, and he had no desire to touch it; no desire except to sit listening forever to that singing. He told me, 'It was the shadow of song, as the singer was the shadow of woman. It was as though it came through some unseen curtain ... out of some other space. It was sweet as the fragrance. It was one with the fragrance, honey sweet ... and each shadowy note dripped evil.' He said: 'If there were words to the song, I did not know them, did not hear them. I heard only the melody ... promising ... promising ... '

"I asked: 'Promising what?'

"He said: 'I don't know ... delights that no living man had ever known ... that would be mine—if ... "

"I asked: 'If what?'

"He answered: 'I did not know ... not then. But there was something I must do to attain them ... but what it was I did not know ... not then.'

"Singing died and shadow and fragrance were gone. He waited awhile, and then went to his bedroom. The shadow did not reappear, although he thought it there, watching him. He sank again into that quick, deep and dreamless sleep. He awakened with a numbness of mind, an unaccustomed lethargy. Fragments of the shadow's song kept whispering through his mind. He said: 'They seemed to make a web between reality and unreality. I had only one clear normal thought, and that was keen impatience to get the last of your reports. When you gave me them, that which hated and feared the shadow wept, but that which desired its embrace rejoiced.'

"Night came the third night. At dinner, he had no perception of lurking watcher. Nor in the library. He felt a vast disappointment and as vast a relief. He went to his bedroom. Nothing there. An hour or so later he turned in. It was a warm night, so he covered himself only with the sheet.

"He told me: 'I do not think I had been asleep. I am sure I was not asleep. But suddenly I felt the fragrance creep over me and I heard a whisper, close to my ear. I sat up—

"'The shadow lay beside me.

"'It was sharply outlined, pale rose upon the sheet. It was leaning toward me, one arm upon the pillow, cupped hand supporting its head. I could see the pointed nails of that hand, thought I could see the gleam of shadowy eyes. I summoned all my strength and laid my hand on it. I felt only the cool sheet.

"'The shadow leaned closer ... whispering ... whispering ... and now I understood it ... and then it was she told me her name ... and other things ... and what I must do to win those delights she had been promising me. But I must not do this thing until she had done thus and so, and I must do it at the moment she kissed me and I could feel her lips on mine—'

"I asked, sharply: 'What were you to do?'

"He answered: 'Kill myself.'"

Dr. Lowell pushed back his chair, stood trembling: "Good God! And he did kill himself! Dr. Bennett, I do not see why you did not consult me in this case. Knowing what I told you of—"

Bill interrupted: "Precisely because of that, sir. I had my reasons for wishing to handle it alone. Reasons which I am prepared to defend before you."

Before Lowell could answer, he went on swiftly: "I told him: 'It's nothing but hallucination, Dick; a phantom of the imagination. Nevertheless, it has reached a stage I don't like. You must take dinner with me, and stay here for the night at least. If you won't consent, frankly I'm going to use force to make you.'

"He looked at me for a moment with the subtle amusement in his eyes intensified. He said, quietly: 'But if it's only hallucination, Bill, what good will that do? I'll still have my imagination with me, won't I? What's to keep it from conjuring up Brittis here just as well as at home?'

"I said: 'All that be damned. Here you stay.'

"He said: 'It goes. I'd like to try the experiment.'

"We had dinner. I wouldn't let him speak again of the shadow. I slipped a strong sleepmaker into a drink. In fact, I doped him. In a little while he began to get heavy-eyed. I put him to bed. I said to myself: 'Fellow, if you come out of that in less than ten hours then I'm a horse doctor.'

"I had to go out. It was a little after midnight when I returned. I listened at Dick's door, debating whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going in. I decided I wouldn't. At nine o'clock the next morning, I went up to look at him. The room was empty. I asked the servants when Mr. Ralston had gone. None knew. When I called up his house, the body had already been taken away. There was nothing I could do, and I wanted time to think. Time, unhampered by the police, to make some investigations of my own, in the light of certain other things which Ralston had told me and which I have not related since they are not directly related to the symptoms exhibited. The symptoms," Bill turned to de Keradel, "were the only matters in which you were interested—professionally?"

De Keradel said: "Yes. But I still see nothing in your recital to warrant any diagnosis than hallucination. Perhaps in these details you have withheld I might—"

I had been thinking, and interrupted him rudely enough: "Just a moment. A little while back, Bill, you said this Brittis, shadow or illusion, or what not, told him that she was no demon—no Succubus. You started to quote him—'She said she was-' then stopped. What did she say she was?"

Bill seemed to hesitate, then said, slowly: "She said she had been a girl, a Bretonne until she had been changed into—a shadow of Ys."

The Demoiselle threw back her head, laughing unrestrainedly. She put a hand on my arm: "A shadow of that wicked Dahut the White! Alain de Carnac—one of my shadows!"

De Keradel's face was imperturbable. He said: "So. Now do I see. Well, Dr. Bennett, if I accept your theory of witchcraft, what was the purpose behind it?"

Bill answered: "Money, I think. I'm hoping to be sure soon."

De Keradel leaned back, regarding Lowell almost benevolently. He said: "Not necessarily money. To quote Dr. Caranac, it could perhaps be only art for art's sake. Self-expression of a true artist. Pride. I once knew well—what without doubt the superstitious would have called her a witch—who had that pride of workmanship. This will interest you, Dr. Lowell. It was in Prague—"

I saw Lowell start, violently; de Keradel went blandly on: "A true artist, who practiced her art, or used her wisdom—or, if you prefer, Dr. Bennett, practiced her witchcraft—solely for the satisfaction it gave her as an artist. Among other things, so it was whispered, she could imprison something of one she had killed within little dolls made in that one's image, animating them; and then make them do her will—" He leaned toward Lowell, solicitously—"Are you ill, Dr. Lowell?"

Lowell was paper white; his eyes fixed on de Keradel and filled with incredulous recognition. He recovered himself; said in a firm voice: "A pang I sometimes suffer. It is nothing. Go on."

De Keradel said: "A truly great—ah, witch, Dr. Bennett. Although I would not call her witch but mistress of ancient secrets, lost wisdom. She went from Prague to this city. Arriving, I tried to find her. I learned where she had lived, but, alas! She and her niece had been burned to death—with her dolls, their home destroyed. A most mysterious fire. I was rather relieved. Frankly, I was glad, for I had been a little afraid of the doll-maker. I hold no grudge against those who encompassed her destruction—if it were deliberate. In fact—this may sound callous but you, my dear Dr. Lowell, will understand I am sure—in fact, I feel a certain gratitude to them—if they are."

He glanced at his watch, then spoke to the Demoiselle: "My daughter, we must be going. We are already late. The time has passed so pleasantly, so quickly—" He paused, then said with emphasis, slowly: "Had I the powers she had at her command—for powers she did have else I, de Keradel, would have felt no fear of her—I say, had I those powers, none who threatened me, none even who hampered me in what I had determined to do, would live long enough to become a serious menace. I am sure—" he looked sharply at Lowell, at Helen and Bill, let his pale eyes dwell for a moment on mine—"I am sure that even gratitude could not save them—nor those dear to them."

There was an odd silence. Bill broke it. He said, somberly: "Fair enough, de Keradel."

The Demoiselle arose, smiling. Helen led her to the hall. No one would have thought they hated each other. While de Keradel bade courteous farewell to Lowell, the Demoiselle drew close to me. She whispered:

"I will be awaiting you tomorrow, Alain de Carnac. At eight. We have much to say to each other. Do not fail me."

She slipped something in my hand. De Keradel said: "Soon I shall be ready for my greatest experiment. I look for you to witness it, Dr. Lowell. You too, Dr. Caranac ... you ... it will especially interest. Till then—adieu."

He kissed Helen's hand; bowed to Bill. I wondered with vague misgivings why he had not included them in the invitation.

At the door the Demoiselle turned, touched Helen lightly on the cheek. She said: "Some there be that shadows kiss ... "

Her laughter rippled like little waves as she swept down the steps after her father and into the waiting automobile.

CHAPTER VII

THE DOLL-MAKER'S LOVER

Briggs closed the door and walked away. We four stood in the hall, silent. Suddenly Helen stamped a foot. She said, furiously:

"Damn her! She tried to make me feel like a slave girl. As if I were one of your lesser concubines, Alan, whom it amused your Queen to notice."

I grinned, for it was almost exactly what I had thought. She said, viciously:

"I saw her whispering to you. I suppose she was asking you to come up'n see her sometime." She gave a Mae West wriggle.

I opened my hand and looked at what the Demoiselle had slipped into it. It was an extremely thin silver bracelet's half-inch band almost as flexible as heavy silk. Set in it was a polished, roughly oval black pebble. Incised upon its smoothed outer face, then filled in with some red material, was the symbol of the power of the ancient god of Ocean, who had many names long centuries before the Greeks named him Poseidon; the three-tined fork; his trident with which he governed his billows. It was one of those mysterious talismans of the swarthy little Azilian-Tardenois people who some seventeen thousand years ago wiped out the tall, big-brained, fair-haired and blue-eyed Cro-Magnons, who, like them, came from none knows where into Western Europe. Along the silver band, its jaws holding the pebble, was crudely cut a winged serpent. Yes, I knew what that pebble was, right enough. But what puzzled me was the conviction that I also knew this particular stone and bracelet. That I had seen them many times before ... could even read the symbol ... if only I could force remembrance ...

Perhaps if I put it around my wrist I would remember—

Helen struck the bracelet from my hand. She put her heel on it and ground it into the rug. She said:

"That's the second time tonight that she-devil has tried to snap her manacles on you."

I bent down to pick up the bracelet, and she kicked it away.

Bill stooped and retrieved it. He handed it to me and I dropped it in my pocket. Bill said, sharply:

"Pipe down, Helen! He has to go through with it. He's probably safer than you and I are, at that."

Helen said, passionately:

"Let her try to get him!"

She looked at me, grimly: "But I don't exactly trust you with the Demoiselle, Alan. Something rotten in Denmark there ... something queer between you. I wouldn't hunger after that white fleshpot of Egypt if I were you. There've been a lot of misguided moths sipping at that flower."

I flushed: "Your frankness, darling, is of your generation, and your metaphors as mixed as its morals. Nevertheless, you need not be jealous of the Demoiselle."

That was a lie, of course. I felt the vague, inexplicable fear of her, suspicion, and a lurking, inexorable hatred—yet there was something else. She was very beautiful. Never could I love her in the way I could Helen. Still, she had something that Helen had not; something which without doubt was evil ... but an evil I had drunk of long and long and long ago ... and must drink of ... again—and I knew a deep thirst that could be quenched only by that evil ...

Helen said, quietly:

"I could not be jealous of her. I am afraid of her—not for myself but for you."

Dr. Lowell seemed to awaken. It was plain that he was sunk in his thoughts, he had heard none of our talk. He said:

"Let us go back to the table. I have something to say."

He walked to the stairs, and he walked like a man grown suddenly old. As we followed, Bill said to me:

"Well, de Keradel was fair enough. He gave us warning."

I asked: "Warning of what?"

Bill answered: "Didn't you get it? Warning not to pursue the matter of Dick's death any further. They didn't find out all they hoped to. But they found out enough. I wanted them to. And I did find out what I wanted."

I asked: "What was that?"

"That they're Dick's murderers," he answered.

Before I could ask any more questions we were seated at the table. Dr. Lowell rang for coffee, then dismissed the butler. He tipped a full glass of brandy into his coffee, and drank it. He said:

"I am shaken. Undeniably I am shaken. An experience, a dreadful experience, which I had thought ended forever, has been reopened. I have told Helen of that experience. She has a strong soul, a clear brain; she is a bright spirit. Am I to understand—" he addressed Bill—"that Helen was also in your confidence this evening; that she knew in advance the facts that so strongly surprised me?"

Bill answered: "Partly, sir. She knew about the shadow, but she didn't know that the Demoiselle de Keradel had an Ys pinned on her name. No more did I. Nor had I any cogent reason to suspect the de Keradels when they accepted your invitation. Before that, I did not go into the details of the Ralston case with you because, from the very first, I had the feeling that they would revive painful memories. And obviously, until de Keradel himself revealed it, I could have had no suspicion that he was so closely connected with the dark center of those memories."

Lowell asked: "Did Dr. Caranac know?"

"No. I had determined, whether or not my suspicions seemed to be warranted, to spread Dick's story before de Keradel. I had persuaded Dr. Caranac to anger him. I wanted to watch the reactions of himself and his daughter. I wanted to watch the reactions of Dr. Caranac and yourself. I hold myself entirely justified. I wanted de Keradel to show his hand. If I had laid my own hand before you, never would he have done so. You would have been on your guard, and de Keradel would have known it. He, also, would have been on guard. It was your palpable ignorance of my investigation, your involuntary betrayal of the horror you felt over some similar experience, that prompted him, contemptuous now of you, to reveal his association with the doll-maker and to deliver his threat and challenge. Of course, there is no doubt that some way, somehow, he had discovered the part you took in the matter of the doll-maker. He believes you are terrified to the core ... that through fear of what may happen to Helen and me, you will force me to drop the Ralston matter. Unless he believed that, never would he have risked forearming us by forewarning."

Lowell nodded: "He is right. I am frightened. We are, the three of us, in unique peril. But, also, he is wrong. We must go on—"

Helen said, sharply: "The three of us? I think Alan is in worse danger than any of us. The Demoiselle has her brand all ready to add him to her herd."

I said:

"Try not to be so vulgar, darling." I spoke to Lowell: "I am still in the dark, sir. Bill's exposition of the Ralston case was luminously clear. But I know nothing of this doll-maker, and therefore cannot grasp the significance of de Keradel's references to her. If I am to enlist in this cause, manifestly I should be in possession of all the facts to be truly effective, also, for my own protection."

Bill said, grimly:

"You're not only enlisted, you're conscripted."

Dr. Lowell said:

"I will sketch them for you, briefly. Later, William, you will put Dr. Caranac in possession of every detail, and answer all his questions. I encountered the doll-maker, a Mme. Mandilip, through a puzzling hospital case; the strange illness and subsequent stranger death of a lieutenant of a then notorious underworld leader, named Ricori. Whether this woman was what is popularly known as a witch, or whether she had knowledge of natural laws which to us, solely because of ignorance, seem supernatural, or whether she was simply a most extraordinary hypnotist—I am still not certain. She was, however, a murderess. Among the many deaths for which she was responsible were those of Dr. Braile, my associate, and a nurse with whom he was in love. This Mme. Mandilip was an extraordinary artist—whatever else she might be. She made dolls of astonishing beauty and naturalness. She kept a doll-shop where she selected her victims from those who came to buy. She killed by means of a poisonous salve which she found means to use after winning the confidence of her victims. She made effigies—dolls—of these, in their faithful image, in faithful likeness to them. These dolls—she then sent out on her errands of murder—animated, or at least so she implied, by something of the vital or, if you will, spiritual essence of those whose bodies they counterfeited; something that was wholly evil ... little demons with slender stilettos ... who went forth under care of a white-faced, terror-stricken girl whom she called her niece, subject so long to her hypnotic control that she had become, literally, another self of the doll-maker. But whether illusion or reality, of one thing there was no doubt—the dolls killed.

"Ricori was one of her victims, but recovered under my care in this house. He was superstitious, believed Mme. Mandilip a witch, and vowed her execution. He kidnapped the niece, and in this house I placed her under my own hypnotic control to draw from her the secrets of the doll-maker. She died in this hypnosis, crying out that the doll-maker's hands were round her heart—strangling it ... "

He paused, eyes haunted as though seeing again some dreadful picture, then went steadily on:

"But before she died, she told us that Mme. Mandilip had possessed a lover in Prague to whom she had taught the secret of the living dolls. And that same night Ricori and some of his men went forth to—execute—the doll-maker. She was executed—by fire. I, though against my will, was a witness of that incredible scene—incredible still to me although I saw it ... "

He paused, then lifted his glass with steady hand:

"Well, it seems that de Keradel was that lover. It seems that beside the secret of the dolls, he knows the secret of the shadows—or is it the Demoiselle who knows that, I wonder? And what else of the dark wisdom—who knows? Well, that is that—and now all is to be done again. But this will be more difficult—"

He said, musingly: "I wish Ricori were here to help us. But he is in Italy. Nor could I reach him in time. But his ablest man, one who passed through the whole experience with us, who was there at the execution, he is here. McCann! I'll get McCann!"

He arose:

"Dr. Caranac, you will excuse me? William—I leave things in your hands. I'm going to my study and then to bed—I am shaken. Helen, my dear, take care of Dr. Caranac."

He bowed and withdrew. Bill began: "Now, about the doll-maker—"

It was close to midnight when he had finished that story, and I had found no more questions to ask. As I was going out, he said:

"You bowled de Keradel almost clean out when you spoke of—what was it—the Alkar-Az and the Gatherer within the Cairn, Alan. What the hell were they?"

I answered:

"Bill, I don't know. The words seemed to come to my lips without volition. Maybe they did come from the Demoiselle—as I told her father."

But deep within me I knew that wasn't true—that I did know, had known, the Alkar-Az and its dread Gatherer—and that some day I would ... remember.

Helen said: "Bill, turn your head."

She threw her arms around my neck, and pressed her lips to mine, savagely; she whispered: "It makes my heart sing that you are here—and it breaks my heart that you are here. I'm afraid—I'm so afraid for you, Alan."

She leaned back, laughing a little: "I suppose you're thinking this is the precipitancy of my generation, and its morals—and maybe vulgar, too. But it really isn't as sudden as it seems, darling. Remember—I've loved you since the hornets and snakes."

I gave her back her kiss. The revelation that had begun when I had met her, had come to complete and affirmative conclusion.

As I made my way to the club, all that was in my mind was the face of Helen, the burnished copper helmet of her hair and her eyes of golden amber. The face of the Demoiselle, if I saw it at all, was nothing but a mist of silver-gilt over two purple splotches in a featureless white mask. I was happy.

I started to undress, whistling, Helen's face still clear cut before me. I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the silver bracelet with the black stone. The face of Helen faded abruptly. In its place, as clearly cut, even more alive, was the face of the Demoiselle with her great eyes tender, her lips smiling—

I threw the bracelet from me, as though it had been a snake.

But when I went to sleep it was still the face of the Demoiselle and not the face of Helen that was back of my eyes.

CHAPTER VIII

IN DAHUT'S TOWER—NEW YORK

I woke up next morning with a headache. Also, out of a dream which began with dolls holding foot-long needles in one hand dancing with pink shadows around circles of enormous standing stones, and with Helen and the Demoiselle alternately and rapidly embracing and kissing me. I mean that Helen would embrace and kiss me, and then she would fade into the Demoiselle; and then the Demoiselle would do the same and as quickly fade into Helen, and so on and so on.

I remember thinking in that dream that this was quite like what occurred at a very unusual place of entertainment in Algiers named the "House of the Heart's Desire." It's run by a Frenchman, a hashish eater and also a truly astonishing philosopher. He and I were great friends. I won his regard, I think, by unfolding to him that same scheme for "Heaven and Hell, Inc." which had so interested the Demoiselle and de Keradel. He had quoted Omar:

I sent my Soul out through the Invisible.

Some letter of that after-life to spell:

And after many days my Soul returned.

And said, "Behold, Myself am Heav'n and Hell."

Then he had said my idea wasn't so original; it was really a combination of that quatrain and what made his place so profitable. He had a couple of renegade Senussi in his house. The Senussi are truly astonishing magicians, masters of illusion. He had a dozen girls, physically the most beautiful I've ever seen, and they were white and yellow and black and brown and intermediate shades. When one wanted to embrace "the Heart's Desire," and that was a most expensive undertaking, these twelve girls would stand in a circle, naked; a big, wide circle in a big room, hands clasped in each other's with their arms out at full length. The Senussi squatted in the center of the circle with their drums, while the aspirant for the "Heart's Desire" stood beside them. The Senussi drummed and chanted and did this and that. The girls danced, intertwining. Ever faster and faster. Until at last white, brown, black and yellow and intermediate seemed to coalesce into one supernal damsel—the girl of his dreams, as the old sentimental songs so quaintly put it, with trimmings of Aphrodite, Cleopatra, Phryne, and what not—at any rate, the girl he had always wanted whether he had realized it or not. So he took her.

"Was she what he thought her? How do I know?" shrugged this Frenchman. "To me—looking on—there were always eleven girls left. But if he thought so. Then, yes."

Helen and the Demoiselle melting so rapidly into each other made me wish that they would coalesce. Then I'd have no bother. The Demoiselle seemed to stay a moment or two longer. She kept her lips on mine ... and suddenly I felt as though I had both water and fire in my brain, and the fire was a stake upon which a man was bound, and the flames rushed up and covered him like a garment before I could see his face.

And the water was a surging sea ... and out upon it, pale gold hair adrift, wave washed, was Dahut ... eyes staring up to a sky less blue than they ... and dead.

It was then I woke up.

After a cold shower I felt a lot better. While I ate breakfast, I marshaled the events of the night before into coherent order. First, Lowell's experience with the doll-maker. I knew much about the magic of the animate doll, which is far ahead of the simple idea of the effigy into which one sticks pins, or roasts at a fire or what not. Nor was I so sure that the hypothesis of hypnotism could account for a belief of such ancient and wide-spread popularity. But more ancient still, and much more sinister, was the shadow magic that had slain Dick. The Germans might give it the more or less humorous twist of Peter Schliemel who sold his shadow to the Devil, and Barrie give it his own labored whimsicality of Peter Pan whose shadow was caught in a drawer and got torn—yet the fact remained that of all beliefs this of the sharing of his shadow with a man's life, personality, soul—whatever one may term it—was, perhaps, the most ancient of all. And the sacrifices and rites connected with propitiation or safety from shadows could parallel any for downright devilishness. I determined to go up to the library and look up shadow lore. I went to my room and called up Helen.

I said: "Darling, do you know that I love you desperately?"

She said: "I know that if you don't you're going to."

I said: "I'm going to be tied up this afternoon—but there is tonight."

Helen said: "I'll be waiting for you, darling. But you're not going to see that white devil today are you?"

I answered: "I am not. I've even forgotten what she looks like."

Helen laughed. My foot touched something and I looked down. It was the bracelet I had thrown away. Helen said: "Tonight then."

I picked up the bracelet and dropped it in my pocket. I answered, mechanically: "Tonight."

Instead of looking up shadow lore, I spent the afternoon at two unusual private libraries to which I have access, delving into old books and manuscripts upon ancient Brittany—or Armorica as it was called before the coming of the Romans and for five centuries thereafter. What I was looking for were references to Ys, and what I hoped for was to find some mention of the Alkar-Az and the Gatherer in the Cairn. Obviously, I must have read or heard those names somewhere, sometime. The only other reasonable explanation was that the Demoiselle had suggested them to me, and recalling the vividness of that vision of Carnac under the touch of her hand, I was not inclined to reject that. On the other hand she had denied it and I was as strongly disinclined to reject her denial. It had sounded like truth to me. Of the Alkar-Az I found no mention whatsoever. In a palimpsest of the 7th Century, one torn leaf, there were a few sentences that might or might not refer to the Gatherer. It read, translating freely the monkish Latin:

" ... is said that it was not because this people of Armorica took part in the Gaulish insurrection that the Romans treated them with such severity but because of certain cruel and wicked rites unparalleled in their evil by any tribe or people with whom the Romans had come in contact. There was one [several words illegible] the place of the standing stones called [two whole lines illegible] beating in their breasts first slowly [another lapse] until breast and even the heart were crushed and then when within the crypt of the center temple the Blackness began—"

Here the fragment ended. Could this "place of the standing stones" have been Carnac, and the "Blackness" that began "within the crypt of the center temple" have been the Gatherer within the Cairn? It well might be. I knew, of course, that the Romans had practically exterminated the primitive population of Armorica after that insurrection of 52 A.D., and that the survivors had fled from their wrath, leaving the country unpopulated until the 5th Century, when numbers of Celtic inhabitants of Britain, driven out by the Anglos and Saxons, emigrated to Armorica and repopulated a great part of the peninsula. The Romans, taken all in all, were a broad-minded lot with the widest tolerance for the gods of those they conquered. Nor was it their custom to deal thus savagely with the conquered. What could have been these "cruel and wicked rites unparalleled in their evil" which had so shocked them that they had so ruthlessly stamped out those who practiced them?

Of references to a great city which had sunk beneath the sea, I found many. In some it was named Ys, in others nameless. The accounts which placed its destruction within Christian times were clearly apocryphal. The city, whatever it was, belonged to prehistoric times. In almost all the references accent was put upon its wickedness; its prostitution to evil spirits; to sorcery. Largely, the legend clung closely to the resume I had given the night before. But there was one variant which interested me mightily. This said it was a Lord of Carnac who had brought about the fall of Ys. That he had "beguiled Dahut the White, Daughter of the King, even as she had beguiled many men to their destruction." It went on to say that "so great was the beauty of this sorceress that not for long could the Lord of Carnac summon resolution to destroy her and evil Ys; and she had borne a child, a daughter; and when he had opened the sea gates he had fled with this child, while the shadows of Ys thrust him on to safety even as they thrust on the waves to overwhelm Dahut and her father who pursued him."

That, in the light of de Keradel's theory of ancestral memories, rather startled me. For one thing, it gave me a clearer angle upon the Demoiselle's remarks about my "remembering." And it gave another explanation, though seemingly a preposterous one, why I had spoken those two names. If this Dahut came straight down from that Dahut, maybe I came straight down from the Lord of Carnac who had so "beguiled" her. In that event, contact might have started one of the de Keradel disks in my brain to action. I thought that the Alkar-Az and the Gatherer must have made a very strong impression upon the ancient Lord of Carnac, my ancestor, to cause the particular disk which registered them to be the first to become articulate. I grinned at the idea, and thought of Helen. Whatever the other memories, I remembered I had a date with Helen that night, and I was damned glad. I had a date with Dahut, too, but what of it?

I looked at my watch. It was five o'clock. I pulled out my handkerchief and something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the bracelet, and it lay with the black talisman staring up at me like an eye. I stared back at it with that uncanny feeling of recognition of its symbol growing stronger and stronger.

I went to the Club to dress. I had ascertained where the de Keradels were stopping. I sent Helen a telegram:

Sorry. Unexpectedly called out of town. No time to telephone. Call you up tomorrow. Love and kisses.

Alan.

At eight I was sending my card in to the Demoiselle.

It was one of those towering apartment houses overlooking the East River; sybaritic; their eastward and most desirable windows looking down upon Blackwell's Island where the outcasts, the lesser fry of criminals, those not worthy of Sing Sing's social life, Dannemora's austerity, or the honor of occupancy in similar fortresses of civilization, are penned; a catch basin for the dregs.

The apartment houses were the Zenith complacently contemplating the Nadir.

The elevator went up and up. When it stopped, its operator signaled, and after a second or two a massive door in the shaft slid aside. I stepped out into a hall that was like the ante-room of a medieval chamber. I heard the door whisper its closing, and turned. Tapestries which had been held aside by the women were dropping into place, hiding it. I took swift note of the tapestry's design, solely through force of habit—an adventurer's habit of studying landmarks along the path in event of forced retreat. It portrayed the sea—woman, the fay Melusine, being surprised by Raymond of Poitiers, her husband, during her weekly bath of purification. It was very ancient.

The men were Bretons, swarthy, stocky, but clothed as I had never seen men in Brittany. They wore loose tunics of green, tight belted and on their right breasts, in black, the red symbol of the bracelet's pebble. Their leg coverings were fawn-color, baggy, tapering below the knee and tied tightly at the ankle; like those of the Scythians and the old Celts. Their feet were sandaled. As they took my coat and hat I gave them pleasant greeting in the Breton—a noble's customary greeting to a peasant. They responded humbly, and in kind, and I saw a furtive, puzzled glance pass between them.

They drew aside another tapestry, one pressing his hand against the wall as he did so. A door slid open. I passed through into a surprisingly large, high-ceilinged room paneled with ancient dark oak. It was dimly lit, but I glimpsed carven chests here and there, an astrolabe, and a great table strewn with leathern and vellum-covered books. I turned just in time to see the door slip back in place, leaving the paneling apparently unbroken. Nevertheless, I thought I could find it again in case of need.

The two men led me across the room, toward its right hand corner. Again they drew a tapestry aside, and a mellow golden glow bathed me. They bowed, and I passed into the glow.

I stood in an octagonal room not more than twenty feet across. Its eight sides were covered with silken hangings of exquisite texture. They were sea-green and woven in each was an undersea picture—fishes strangely shaped and colored swimming through a forest of feathery kelp ... anemones waving deadly tentacles over mouths that were like fantastic flowers ... a gold and silver school of winged snakes guarding their castles of royal coral. In the center of the room a table was set with antique crystal, translucent porcelain and archaic silver gleaming under the light of tall candles.

I thrust my hand into the hanging by which I had entered, drew it aside. There was no sign of a door ... I heard laughter, like the laughter of little ruthless waves, the laughter of Dahut ...

She was at the far side of the octagonal chamber, holding one of the hangings half aside. There was another room there, for light streamed through and formed a faint rosy aureole around her head. And the beauty of her made me for a dozen heart-beats forget everything else in the world—even forget that there was a world. From white shoulders to white feet she was draped in a web-like gown of filmy green in flowing folds like the stola of the women of ancient Rome. Her feet were sandaled. Two thick braids of her pale gold hair dropped between her breasts, and through her drapings every lovely line and contour were plain. She wore no jewels—nor needed any. Her eyes both caressed and menaced me—and there was both tenderness and menace in her laughter.

She came toward me and put her hands on my shoulders. Her fragrance was like that of some strange flower of the sea, and touch and fragrance rocked me.

She said, and in the Breton tongue:

"So, Alain—you still are cautious. But tonight you go only when it is my will that you go. You taught me my lesson well, Alain de Carnac."

I asked, stupidly, still under that numbing spell of her beauty:

"When did I teach you anything, Demoiselle?"

She answered:

"Long ... and long ... and long ago." And now I thought that the menace nigh banished the tenderness in her eyes. The straight brows drew together in unbroken line. She said, absently:

"I had thought that it would be easy to say that which I have to say when I met you tonight, Alain. I thought the words would pour from me ... as the waters poured over Ys. But I am confused ... I find it difficult ... the memories struggle against each other ... hate and love battle ... "

By now I had gotten myself a little in hand. I said: "I, too, am confused, Demoiselle. I do not speak the Breton as you and that, perhaps, is why I am dull to your meaning. Could we not speak French or English?"

The truth was that the Breton was a little too intimate; brought me too close to her mind. The other languages would be a barrier. And then I thought: a barrier against what?

She said, fiercely:

"No. And no longer call me Demoiselle, nor de Keradel. You know me!"

I laughed and answered:

"If you are not the Demoiselle de Keradel, then you are the sea—fay Melusine ... or Gulnar the Sea-born ... and I am safe in your—" I looked at the hangings "-aquarium."

She said, somberly: "I am Dahut ... Dahut the White, Dahut of the Shadows ... Dahut of ancient Ys. Reborn. Reborn here—" she tapped her forehead. "And you are Alain de Carnac, my ancient love ... my great love ... my treacherous love. So—beware."

Suddenly she leaned toward me; she pressed her lips to mine, savagely; so savagely that her small teeth bruised them. It was not a kiss one could be indifferent to. My arms held her, and it was as though I held flame sheathed in fair flesh. She thrust me from her with what was almost a blow, and so strongly that I stumbled back a step.

She walked to the table and filled from an ewer two slender glasses with pale yellow wine. She said, with mockery:

"To our last parting, Alain. And to our reunion."

And as I hesitated at the toast: "Don't be afraid—it is no witch's potion."

I touched her glass and drank. We sat, and at some signal I neither saw nor heard, two other of the oddly dressed servants came in and served. They did it in the olden way, kneeling. The wines were excellent, the dinner was superb. The Demoiselle ate and drank daintily. She spoke little, at times deep in thought, at times regarding me with that blend of tenderness and malice. I have never dined tete-a-tete with a pretty girl and had so little to say—nor with one who was so silent. We were, in fact, like two opponents in some game upon which vital issues hung, studying our moves, studying each other, before beginning it. Whatever the game, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the Demoiselle knew much more about it than I—had, in all probability, made the rules.

From the great room beyond the hidden door came muted music and singing. They were queer melodies, vaguely familiar. It was as though the singers were in that room, and yet far, far away. They were shadows of song and music. Shadows of song? Suddenly I thought of Dick's description of the singing of the shadow. A creep went down my spine. I looked up from my plate to find Dahut's gaze upon me, amused, mockery in it. I felt wholesome anger begin to stir in me. The lurking fear of her vanished. She was a beautiful woman, and dangerous. That was all. But how dangerous rested with me. I had no doubt she knew what I was thinking. She summoned the servants and they cleared the table, leaving the wine. She said, matter-of-factly: "We'll go out on the terrace. Bring the wine with you, Alain. You may need it." I laughed at that, but picked up a bottle and glasses and followed her through the hangings into the room of rosy light.

It was her bedroom.

Like the other it was octagonal, but, unlike it, the top was that of a true turret—that is, the ceiling did not run straight across. It lifted in a graceful cone. In fact, the two rooms made a double tower, and I surmised that the walls were false, having been built into what had been one large chamber. In this, they were hung with the same sea-green tapestries but with no figures upon them. As I walked slowly on, their hues seemed to change and shift, darkening here into ocean depths, lightening there into the pale emerald of shallows, while constantly within them moved shadows; shadowy shapes that floated up from the depths, then loitered, then languidly sank beneath the range of sight.

There was a low, wide bed, an ancient armoire, a table, two or three low stools, a curiously carven and painted chest, a couch. The rosy light streamed down from some cunningly hidden fixture in the turret's roof. I felt again the uncomfortable sense of familiarity that had come to me when I had looked upon the black pebble of the bracelet.

A casement opened upon the terrace. I set the wine upon the table and walked out upon the terrace, Dahut beside me. The tower was at the top of the building as I had thought, and at its southeast corner. At my right was the magical night panorama of New York. Far below, the East River was a belt of tarnished silver studded with the diamonded bands of bridges. About twenty feet beneath was another terrace, plain to the view since the building was of the step-back kind.

I said to the Demoiselle, jestingly:

"Is this like your tower in ancient Ys, Dahut? And was it from a balcony such as this that your servants hurled the lovers of whom you had tired?"

This was in questionable taste, but she had invited it; and, beside, the inexplicable anger was growing within me. She answered:

"It was not so high. Nor were the nights in Ys like these. You looked up into the skies to see the stars, instead of down upon the city. And my tower looked down upon the sea. Nor did I cast my lovers from it, since in—death—they served me better than in life. And not by casting them from any tower could I have brought that to be."

She had spoken tranquilly; with evident sincerity. Whether she had spoken truth or not, I had then no slightest doubt that what she had spoken she believed to be truth. I caught her by the wrists. I said:

"Did you kill Ralston?"

She answered with that same tranquillity:

"Why, yes."

She pressed a sandaled foot on mine and leaned close to me, looking up into my eyes. Hot jealousy mingled with my wrath. I asked:

"Had he been your lover?"

She said:

"He would not have been had I met you before I met him."

"And those others? You killed them?"

"Why, yes."

"And were they too—"

"Not if I had met you—"

My hands ached to go round her throat. I tried to drop her wrists, and could not. It was as though she held them, clamped. I could not move a finger. I said:

"You are a flower of evil, Dahut, and your roots feed on hell." I said: "It was his money then that bought you, like any harlot?"

She leaned back and laughed; and her eyes laughed and in the laughter of eyes and mouth was triumph. She said:

"In the old days you cared nothing about lovers who had gone before. Why do you care now, Alain? But no—it was not his money. Nor did he die because he had given it to me. I was tired of him, Alain ... yet I liked him ... and Brittis had had no amusement for a long, long time, poor child ... if I had not liked him I would not have given him to Brittis ... "

I came back to sanity. Undoubtedly, the Demoiselle was scoring me off for those suggestions of mine about her the night before. Her method might be a bit elaborate, but certainly it had been effective. I was more than a little ashamed of myself. I dropped her hands and laughed with her ... but why and whence that anger and the devastating jealousy?

I thrust that doubt aside. I said, ruefully:

"Dahut, that wine of yours must have been more potent than I knew. I've been acting like a damned fool, and I ask forgiveness."

She looked at me, enigmatically:

"Forgiveness? Now—I wonder! I am cold. Let us go in."

I followed her into the turreted room. Suddenly I, too, felt cold, and a strange weakness. I poured some wine and drank it down. I sat upon the couch. There was a haziness about my thoughts, as though a cold fog had gathered round my brain. I poured another glass of wine. I saw that Dahut had brought one of the stools and was sitting at my feet. In her hands was an old and many-stringed lute. She laughed again, and whispered:

"You ask forgiveness—and you do not know what it is that you ask."

She touched the strings and began to sing. There was something archaic about that song—all weird, sighing minors. I thought that I ought to know that song; that I did know it; had heard it often and often—in just such a turret as this. I looked at the walls. The hues in the hangings were shifting more rapidly ... changing from malachite depths to pallid shoals. And the shadows were rising more and more rapidly; were coming closer and closer to the surface before they sank again ...

Dahut said:

"You brought the bracelet I gave you?"

Passively, I thrust my hand into my pocket, drew out the bracelet and gave it to her. She fastened it around my wrist. The red symbol on the pebble gleamed as though traced in lines of fire. She said:

"You have forgotten I gave you that ... long and long and long ago ... lover I loved above all men ... lover I have hated above all men. And you have forgotten the name it bears. Well, hear that name once more, Alain de Carnac ... and remember what you ask me to forgive."

She spoke a name. Hearing it, a million sparks seemed to burst in my brain—fireflies dissipating the cold fog that gripped it.

She spoke it again, and the shadows within the green tapestries rushed to the surface of the waves, twined arms, locked hands ...

Round and round and round the walls they danced ... faster and ever faster ... shadows of women and of men. Hazily, I thought of the dancing girls in the "House of the Heart's Desire," dancing in a circle to the drums of the Senussi sorcerers ... as these shadows were dancing to the luting of Dahut.

Faster and faster the shadows spun, and then they, too, began to sing; in faint whispering voices, shadows of voices ... and in the green tapestries the shifting colors became the surge and withdrawal of great waves, and the shadow singing became the murmuring of waves, and then their song, and then a clamorous shouting.

Again Dahut spoke the name. The shadows sprang out of the tapestries and ringed me ... closer and closer. The shouting of the waves became the roaring of a tempest, beating me down and down—out and out.

CONTINUED IN

NEXT INSTALMENT