As once before, since I had found myself in the Black Forest, I fought with a ghastly desire to scream—or to laugh. A mad pageant of my life passed feverishly across my brain. Alone, a solitary, appealing figure, at the end of it—Marusa… and I clenched my teeth.
Max was speaking. I retain no recollection of his words. I think he was suggesting plans. None of them, I fear, would have saved us. But Fate had designed a better plan than any of the three could have conceived.
“Stop!” Lonergan’s harsh voice definitely brought me to my senses. “I want to listen.”
Max ceased speaking. The American agent, whose hearing was more acute than that of any man I had ever known, touched my shoulder sharply.
“There’s somebody coming along the road,” he declared. “Do you hear him, Max?”
“I hear nothing,” the Frenchman replied.
“All the same there’s somebody coming—and it’s a hundred to one he’s coming here! If he opens the gate, it’s safe for us to open it. There’s maybe a neutral path through the zones. It’s up to you, Max! We’ll beat back some way and take cover.”
“Rely upon me, my friends.”
We heard light movements, and Gaston Max was gone.
“Back, Woodville! We’re all exposed here. No noise.”
I stumbled back up the slope and lay at full length beside Lonergan in clammy, choking undergrowth, waiting and listening.
At last I heard the footsteps! … Nearer they drew, and nearer—a sound of possible salvation!—until, although I could not see the road, I realized that whoever approached must be near to the camouflaged gate.
Came a sharp scuffle, an angry cry… silence… a sort of muttered conversation… silence again.
“There’s the gate!” Lonergan whispered. “Somebody coming in! Your gun handy?”
“Yes.”
I rose stealthily to my knees, prepared I thought for any human emergency. But as I did so…
Coming up the slope, a vague, gigantic outline against the dim moonlight on the roadway beyond, was a huge figure, apparently some seven feet high!
A sharp inhalation from my companion told me that he too had seen the apparition.
“It’s one of the Things in armour! Poor Max has gone! Don’t shoot till I give the word.” …
Closer, and closer yet, came the Thing—always with moonlight behind it. My trigger finger grew tense; when:
“Don’t shoot, Lonergan!” came the voice of Gaston Max. “I can see you, although you cannot see me. I have my back to the light.”
At a bound I came to my feet. Lonergan sprang upright beside me. I saw a tall fellow of the peasant class (more I could not determine in that light) upon whose broad shoulders, like the fabled Old Man of the Sea, Gaston Max was mounted, his pistol thrust against the head of his unwilling carrier!
“Suffering Moses!”
“Quick! Follow! I thought the danger might be electrical and that this one wore insulated boots—hence, my friends, the apparent clowning! He tells me it is not so. He would not lie! Follow, quickly!” …
I found myself stumbling down the slope again behind captive and captor. The gate was open and we came out upon the road.
“Cover this fellow,” said Max.
Lonergan’s pistol was rammed into the man’s ribs as Gaston Max sprang lightly from his strange perch.
“Now,” said Lonergan, “beat it to the car. It’s still touch and go!”
We ran along the lighted patch already growing narrower; and:
“For God’s sake,” groaned the prisoner, who seemed to me to be a decent type of labourer, “don’t take me with you! Don’t take me with you!”
“Keep right on!” Lonergan pushed the man before him. “You can tell us a whole lot about Felsenweir! Show a light, Woodville.”
Max sprang to the wheel. Lonergan and I with our prisoner bundled into the back of the car.
“I can tell you nothing,” the man groaned. “I can tell you nothing! It just means my death—if I speak—if I go with you! It means my death!”
Max got the engine started.
“Don’t turn her!” Lonergan shouted. “Go right ahead like blazes!”
“I go!” Max cried back.
Off we went headlong, and for three miles we raced blindly through the night. We were silent and the prisoner was strangely still.
When at last those lights marking the outskirts of the town came into view, I uttered a sigh of relief.
It was as I did so that the Voice spoke! …
“Gaston Max!”
Max pulled up the Hispano-Suiza in two lengths.
“John Lonergan!”
Dimly, over the oddly relaxed figure between us, I saw Lonergan sit rigidly upright.
“Brian Woodville!”
Max turned. I could see his eyes glaring in his pale face. Somewhere a clock began to chime the hour…
Midnight!
“Gaston Max—you shall survive for a thousand years, that future ages may look upon a clever man.… John Lonergan—you almost succeeded in deceiving me. Your reward shall be oblivion.… Brian Woodville—upon you the decision shall rest…”
Silence!
The man seated between Lonergan and myself slipped limply to the floor of the car.
“Merciful God!” Lonergan groaned.
Our prisoner’s former stillness was explained. He was dead!
“Do you realize, my friends,” said Gaston Max, “that our doom has been pronounced? We have defied the edict of the Voice. Bien! we are to pay the penalty! I am to survive for a thousand years! Appalling prospect! You, friend Lonergan, are to suffer oblivion: it is preferable, I think. But you, Woodville, are to decide…”
“What is it that you must decide?”
Behind closed shutters of my apartment we sat in conference. Lonergan took a long draught of beer. I had been studying him carefully since our return, and his genius for disguise positively amazed me. There seemed to be nothing more synthetic about the Rev. Josiah Higgins than there had been about Mr. Aldous P. Kluster.
“Let’s review the facts,” said he, “and figure out our chances. You claimed there awhile back, Max, that we weren’t constantly watched. I say what happened in the Felsenweir woods showed for sure you were wrong. That outer barrage, whatever it is, was put down after Woodville and I went through. If it had been there when we started we’d have struck it.”
“I cannot agree, my friend. In my opinion the gate is insulated—so is the path. You were lucky enough not to stray from this path.”
“We were covered!”
“From the time you approached Felsenweir, possibly.”
“What about the Voice?”
“Presently,” Max replied, “I shall ask you a question and also Woodville. If your replies are what I expect, I shall offer an explanation, fantastic perhaps, but possible, of this Voice.”
Lonergan and I stared hard at the speaker, and:
“If there’s an acceptable explanation of the Voice,” I said, “there may be one covering the bats, in which event we can rule out the supernatural element.”
“I wish I could think that way,” Lonergan growled. “But we’ve got to find some kind of answer to the question: Why did that poor devil die?”
“He died,” I replied, “because he knew things which the Voice does not intend we shall learn.”
“True enough!” cried Gaston Max. “But how did he die?”
“Let’s just log it,” Lonergan proposed, “that we haven’t the mistiest notion how he died, and then let’s get down to sawdust. He hadn’t a thing on him to prove his identity or connect him with Felsenweir.”
“I cannot agree,” Max interrupted. “He wore a steel bracelet with a kind of medal attached to it. On one face of this medal was a number, on the other an Egyptian figure. A strange ornament for a man of his class.”
Strange indeed. I, too, had seen that queer bracelet. Having driven our dead captive to a lonely spot and laid him under the trees, Max—Lonergan acting as torch bearer—had skillfully examined his possessions. It was a scene I could never forget.
“Possibly worn for sentimental reasons,” I suggested. “The man may have been a sailor at some time.”
“There’s nothing sentimental about a number,” Lonergan objected harshly. “4,396 is about as romantic as a taxicab.”
“Congratulations!” Max murmured. “This was indeed the number on the disk.”
“But if, as we have reason to believe,” I went on, “he was killed by the Voice (we know our enemy by no other name), isn’t this evidence that we were watched—even after we left Felsenweir?”
“My point exactly!” said Lonergan. “Let’s agree we were. Next—have we covered our tracks? When the poor devil’s found in the morning are we going to be arrested for murdering him?”
“If so, I was clumsy,” said Max. “But I think—no!”
“I hope you’re right,” Lonergan declared. “Let’s go ahead. We know Felsenweir is inhabited. If it isn’t, why was that poor devil climbing up there? No normal citizen of these parts would go within a mile of it at night. We know: (a)”—he ticked off the points on his fingers—“it’s haunted, or (b) guarded by men in armour—God knows what for! …
“We know it’s protected by death zones of a kind unheard of by any of us. Argument: it is, as we’re already agreed, the headquarters of somebody who doesn’t encourage interviewers and photographers. We were plainly warned to beat it. We’re still here! If you feel happy—I don’t. I’ll say that poor kite didn’t die a natural death. And if the Voice can strike down that way…”
He paused, looking from Max to myself. The latter shrugged and smiled.
“I am willing to bet,” he declared, “that the Voice cannot strike us down so easily. Otherwise he would most certainly have done so.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that this Voice is not infallible. He failed to foresee the arrival of the poor fellow by whose misfortune you escaped death in those woods! For all his strange powers, he is not yet a god. Fate plays with him as it plays with others. He is, I think, the cleverest, the most dangerous man the world has ever known. He has a wonderful brain; obedient accomplices. Let me test one of my theories about him. Let me ask these questions I spoke of.”
He turned to me.
“Have you recently lost or mislaid any object which you usually carry about with you?”
I stared, scarcely comprehending; but:
“I have,” Lonergan broke in. “I lost my cigar lighter for a whole day: posted it as missing. Then a waiter brought it back—told me he found it in the garden.”
A gleam of triumph lighted up the eyes of Gaston Max.
“If it’s any answer to your question,” I said, “my wrist watch stopped a few days after I arrived here, and I had to send it to be mended.”
Max bowed as though I had paid him a compliment. He drew out his ornate gold cigarette case; and:
“The hinge of this case became mysteriously broken,” he explained, “on the day I entered Baden-Baden. I also sent it to be mended. I was opening it, my friends, after its return, at the very moment the Voice spoke to me outside the cemetery gate!
“There are employees in this hotel who could tell us much we should like to know! There is a mysterious jeweller in the town who cleverly repairs watches, lighters, and cigarette cases!”
Lonergan had his cigar lighter in his hand and I was staring at my wrist watch as though I had never seen it before.…
“I have examined my cigarette case with the utmost care,” Max went on, “and although I do not understand its construction, I have found that a tiny, delicate mechanism—so tiny as to be almost impossible to detect—has been attached inside it!”
“Suffering Moses!”
“It is, I think, through this mechanism that the Voice speaks!” …
“Our only course,” said I, “is to apply to the German authorities and have Felsenweir raided. If possible, to-night—certainly before to-morrow morning.”
“Is that so?”
Lonergan regretfully examined an empty beer bottle.
“It is difficult,” Max murmured. “And as for my own position, the French were never really popular in Germany.”
“What’s more,” said Lonergan, “that’s where we failed back home. When the raiding party got in the ‘cupboard was bare.’ I’d be willing to lay a hundred to one that a raid of Castle Felsenweir would draw blank. It’s supposed to be empty. It’s supposed to be haunted. If we could ginger the German police to take the matter up, we’d maybe find it wasn’t haunted, but we’d surely find it was empty.”
I looked from one speaker to the other. Dimly to my apartment penetrated strains from the dance band still playing almost continuously in the ball room. Laughing voices were audible—footsteps on gravel paths. On the return journey, having dropped our gruesome passenger, we had passed more than one lighted car crammed with fancifully clad figures.
“Imagine,” Max resumed, “that we present ourselves before the chief of police. We identify ourselves. We say: ‘We want a large party of men to go and surround the grounds of Felsenweir. We want the ruins of the castle raided to-night.’ He is polite, and: ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘what evidence have you upon which I may take this action?’ ”
Max shrugged, looking from me to Lonergan.
“What do we reply? We tell a story, my friends, which no chief of police in Europe would believe. Consider what we know. I put it to you, Woodville, would any editor publish what you have to tell?”
“Frankly, I shouldn’t care to put my name to it at the moment——”
“We can prove nothing,” Lonergan broke in. “But there’s one thing we can do.”
“What?”
“We can log it! We can put the record in a safe place. We can tell London, Paris, and New York where the evidence lies. Then—if the Voice acts—we sha’n’t have died for nothing.”
“Good!” said Gaston Max. “With this I am in accord. Woodville—you shall be the scribe.” …
I wrote an account of the night’s strange work, prompted first by one, then by another. It was significantly like the act of a man who feverishly executes his last will and testament, knowing his hours to be numbered.
From moment to moment we were expecting an intrusion… the Voice.
Max’s theory had yet to be proved. Even if correct, it pointed to knowledge on the part of our opponent passing the achievements of any scientist of Europe or America.
But except for the intrusion of a waiter summoned by Lonergan to bring more beer, distant strains of dance music, voices, and vague footsteps on garden paths, my task was uninterrupted. The account completed:
“Pin these pages to your earlier notes,” Max directed. “We will all sign it.”
This done and the signatures being blotted:
“What now?” I asked.
“Now,” said Lonergan, “we put it in a large envelope—I see you’ve got some—and we have it locked in the manager’s safe.”
The manuscript was sealed in an envelope which we all three initialled. Max and I set out for the office.
“It would be kind of better,” Lonergan explained, “if I didn’t associate myself with this matter, as I’m now Rev. Josiah Higgins. I might easily have made your acquaintance but I don’t have to be mixed up in your affairs. The Voice has got me taped but the gang mayn’t know where I am.” …
The manager was discovered. He agreed to lock the document in his safe. Gaston Max despatched a code wire to Paris, adding that it was to be transmitted immediately to Scotland Yard and cabled to New York Police Headquarters. This done:
“To-morrow,” he said, “or, rather, later to-day, in France, in England, in America it will be known that important information is lodged in the safe of this hotel. It is a precaution which may be unnecessary or may be useless, but, name of a good little man, we can do no more!”
We went back to my apartment where Lonergan was waiting.
As I turned the key and opened my door, I heard—or thought I heard—a voice. I stopped dead. It was not Lonergan’s voice! The words reached me confusedly, but they seemed to be:
“Wait—and forget!”
I turned to Max.
“You heard it?”
He shook his head.
“I heard nothing.”
I hurried into the apartment, Max close behind me.
The first thing which caught my notice was the attitude of Lonergan. He was sitting in an armchair by the writing table, staring around him in a dazed way. In other circumstances I should have supposed that he had fallen asleep and had been awakened by the sounds of our return. But with the menace which hung over us such an idea was ridiculous. Nevertheless, his manner was oddly vague. He stared dreamily. But already my attention had wandered.
The shutters were raised fully six feet! Framed in that square opening was such a nocturne as genius never painted. I saw a moon-bathed nightscape. Max spoke.
“My dear friend, why in heaven’s name did you raise those shutters?”
Lonergan stood up, staring almost angrily at the speaker.
“I thought there was somebody outside.” He spoke in an oddly mechanical way. Max stared at him very hard, crossed, and lowered the shutters.
I was mystified, irritated. But the truth was far from my mind. Would that we had realized what had occurred since Max and I had left the room! Fate ordained otherwise.
Those haggard hands which hovered, eaglesque, over the world, met with no check.
Our final conference outlasted the band. All sounds of music and of laughing voices had ceased when at last we parted. Memory of that odd expression of Lonergan’s as I had found him seated with the shutter raised haunted me from time to time. More than once I caught Max glancing shrewdly at him.
His behaviour was normal and his contributions to the conversation were characterized by all his old pungency. Nevertheless, I was uneasy. Admittedly, since the windows were open, the voice might have been that of someone in the gardens. Lonergan’s story was definite enough. Suspicion had prompted him to raise the shutter, but there had been no one on the balcony. Yet it was oddly unsatisfactory.
“This is a case,” said Gaston Max at last, “where there is no strength in numbers. If you take my advice, Woodville, you will not go to bed wearing your wrist watch! It may be useless—one cannot shoot the invisible—but it is reassuring to have a pistol under one’s pillow. And if the Voice decides to treat us as he treated that poor fellow whom we captured—well! …” He shrugged. “We have left a record of all we know.”
“You are to survive for a thousand years,” I reminded him mirthlessly. “And Lonergan is to taste of the Waters of Oblivion.…”
He shrugged again.
“What does it matter?”
And so presently I found myself alone.
Whilst I undressed I listened to that merry music of the little stream, rippling on its way so near to my window. I made a very elaborate business of brushing my teeth in the bathroom and even then lighted another cigarette and mixed myself a final whisky and soda. My wrist watch I placed on the writing table.
Since hearing Max’s ingenious theory I had had no opportunity of examining its mechanism and now I had no disposition to do so.
I was oddly reluctant to extinguish the light.
Lifting my telephone, I called up the night porter and gave orders that I should be awakened at seven o’clock. I was sorry when he wished me good-night. I found myself listening for footsteps in the gardens and calculating how long must elapse before the Prussian sergeant’s patrol led him to my windows.
The Rev. Josiah Higgins had registered, and deposited his baggage, at a modest hotel near the Trinkhalle. To-night, however, he was occupying the spare bed in that large double room on the first floor above me in which Gaston Max resided.
I carefully locked both my outer and inner door and tested the fastenings of the shutters, with which the ingenious Max had found a means of tampering. They were safe enough to-night.
Yet when at last I scrambled into bed, leaving only one lamp alight beside me, the idea of darkness had become definitely terrible.
“But, you, Woodville, are to decide…”
In short, I’m not ashamed to confess that, while nothing palpable threatened me, I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life. I had merely to close my eyes to see again the still, white, masklike face of that unknown man who had died in the car, propped up between Lonergan and myself; stricken silently.
Nor could I forget those words heard in this very room as Max and I had returned.
“Wait—and forget.” … I recalled the intonation, the muted strangeness of the tone; I tried to construe a sentence of which these three words might have formed a part.
I lingered over my whisky and soda and lighted yet another cigarette, resting on my elbow and looking toward the shuttered windows. Revellers had long since dispersed. There were no pedestrians in Lichtenthaler Allee. Faintly from the woods came the call of a night-hawk above musical chattering of the stream.
My glance was persistently drawn in the direction of the shutters. Owing to the position of the moon, bars of light shone through the slats on to the left-hand wall of the outer room. I found this pattern morbidly fascinating.
All the time I was turning over in my mind those strange words. Now, suddenly, like an inspiration, I grasped the clue. The voice had not said, “Wait—and forget,” but, “Wake—and forget!”
This I realized, dropped my cigarette in the tray beside me, and sat bolt upright… staring.
A shadow had moved across that moon-cast pattern—the magnified shape of what might have been an upraised arm!
I had my pistol out in a trice. Stripping off the sheets, I stepped silently on to the floor.
Tap, tap, tap!
Someone, or something, was rapping on the shutters!
I forced myself to advance. Barefooted, I began to cross the carpet in the direction of the windows.
Tap, tap, tap!
I was now no more than five feet away, and:
“Who’s there?” I cried.
“Mr. Woodville! Quick! Lift the shutters! Let me in!”
My heart seemed to miss a beat.
Running, a silver thread through the nightmare of my life in the Black Forest, a dream had persisted—a hope; and a prayer that it might be realized.
This was my dream come true!
Putting the pistol on the settee, I sprang to the cords. I raised the heavy shutters.
A muffled figure stood on the balcony.…
“Marusa!”
I reclosed the shutters, glanced at my disordered bed and then at Marusa who was standing by the writing table watching me.
Her fur wrap in which she had been muffled she had cast upon a chair, and I saw that she still wore her Arab costume, except that the veil was discarded. I thought of the gleaming figure with outstretched wings which had arisen from the Felsenweir tomb. Dark mediæval memories from works consulted prior to my visit to the Black Forest gave up ghostly reflections.
But, looking into those frank blue eyes, the past was forgotten. I leaped back into an eager present. My heart sang.
Whatever she was, whoever she was, Marusa in some part returned my interest. She was not indifferent. She had found it worth while to seek me out in the small hours of the night and to come to my room.
A sense of possession at once delicious and dangerous claimed me; then:
“I can’t possibly stay long,” she began, and her English schoolgirl accent added another note to the chord, the insoluble chord, struck by her unexpected arrival. “I wouldn’t have come—I wouldn’t have dared… but—” she hesitated—“I was told to-night…”
She ceased, bit her lip in agitation, and glanced aside.
“Yes!” I urged. “What were you told?”
“I was told you were in danger, and I thought that if I could save you—I ought to come.”
She leaned back against the table, resting her sun-browned hands upon its edge.
I regretted, and the regret was unfamiliar, that my mode of life had led me along paths where the wiles of women had not come my way. Resolutely rejecting a number of memories from my recent studies, memories of Bohemian and of Polish vampires who inhabited young and lovely bodies, I endeavoured to consider Marusa as what she claimed to be—an English-educated girl of mixed parentage.
“I am very grateful. But I don’t understand. You say you were told that I was in danger. Who told you?”
She watched me for a moment, and I would have staked all I owned on her honesty. Then she lowered her eyes.
“Please don’t ask me questions,” she pleaded. “If you knew what I risked to get here, you’d know that what I’ve come to tell you is serious. I mean—” she laughed in embarrassment—“it’s obvious, without the risk I spoke about.”
“I won’t ask any questions. Please sit down in the armchair until I get my dressing gown. If you’d like a cigarette there are some on the table.”
“Thanks!”
As I made myself rather more respectable, I saw her take a cigarette from the box and light it with a composure which I admired. I knew myself to be no psychologist but her behaviour definitely set my course.
“Do you mind if I smoke a pipe?” I asked.
“No, of course not. But really, I must hurry.”
She watched me filling my pipe, and:
“The truth about what’s happening here,” she went on, “must seem as incredible to you as it seems to me, and I’m taking frightful chances by talking to you about it at all. But there’s only one thing that really matters. You must leave Baden-Baden at once! I don’t mean by train in the morning—I mean now.”
“What!” I paused in the act of lighting a match.
“Truly it is so! You can easily have your things sent along later; but really”—she stood up and faced me—“I mean what I say. Your French friend has a car. He would be wise to drive you. The other one, the American, I’m told has gone.”
Marusa’s last remark interested me keenly. It would appear that Lonergan’s theory was right. Whatever the Voice might know, others had been deceived by his change of identity.
“I hate to think that you’re mixed up in this business.”
Marusa made a little gesture of impatience.
“I’m running the most appalling risks”—she laughed unnaturally—“in telling you even as much as I’ve told you already. Oh! it’s wildly absurd. How absurd, I haven’t time to explain. Since I came here to the Black Forest my life’s been just a sort of nightmare. My being here to-night and talking to you is all part of it. But I want you to make me a promise, before I say any more.”
I walked across and grasped her slender strong hands.
“What is it you want me to promise?” I asked.
“That you will never tell anyone I came here to-night, and never use anything I tell you except to save yourself.”
“I promise.”
Our glances met and my grip on the sun-browned fingers tightened.
“Please!” Marusa whispered. “I like you awfully, but it wouldn’t be fair, would it? Let me say what I came to say—then, I must go. I had to come, but I couldn’t have come if I hadn’t known I could trust you.” …
I stood by the open window listening to Marusa’s footsteps on a gravel path.
When silence fell with no sound of a challenge I returned to my apartment and lowered the shutter again.
Where had she come from? I strongly suspected, from Felsenweir. How would she return? I had no idea. I had asked her and she had evaded my question. In short, as I realized now, I knew very little more about Marusa than I had known before.
One thing I knew, however; and despite the barriers between us it was good to know—that she cared enough to risk everything.
I was in love. My respect of Marusa’s wishes, the reverence which checked my impulse to claim the right which her blue eyes admitted, told me that I not only desired but really loved.
Sitting down at my writing table, I began to make notes.
We were opposed, it would appear, to a creature who concealed his identity under the extraordinary pseudonym of Anubis. He was the chief of a secret cult or religion—Marusa was not particularly clear on the point. Their creed apparently included a belief in a great catastrophe shortly to end the world. This in itself was not new. There are many such cults.
None but subjects of Anubis would outlive the cataclysm destined to destroy humanity. Those, admitted to the secrets of the order, who betrayed them, died.
I might have been disposed to doubt the truth of the latter statement had I not personally witnessed an example of the power of the dread being referred to by Marusa as the Master.
Anubis, I was told, had power over both hemispheres. My questions regarding the Voice and the giant bats she had declined to answer. Nor would she speak of Mme. Yburg. Over and over again I questioned the ethics of my behaviour. Marusa had trusted me. That was the keystone of the interview.
Nevertheless, I realized to the full what Lonergan and Gaston Max would have said. Admittedly she was a member of the organization against which we were pitted, and plainly my duty was to have detained her.
This organization, according to Max’s theory, was already responsible for many deaths in the Pyrenees. I had therefore compromised with an enemy whose hands were red with innocent blood. Yet what could I do?
Now, every sound was a menace.
My watch, lying close beside the blotting pad on the table, I was frankly afraid to touch. If, as Gaston Max believed, it was the medium through which the Voice spoke—might it not be a medium through which the Voice struck?
How much I had failed to learn that I might have learned! Yet who can blame me? That Anubis could kill from afar silently, leaving no clue, I knew from experience.
Marusa had assured me that she incurred this danger by visiting me. I had let her go with a hundred things unsaid—a score of questions unasked. How much she knew I could only guess. Possibly she could have unravelled all those mysteries which had brought myself, Lonergan, and Gaston Max to the Black Forest.
Yet now, with some few facts added to my knowledge which I was not at liberty to share with them, I sat alone listening for any sound rising above the rippling of the Oos… not knowing what I expected to hear.
Death might be stalking me now! The silence became terrible. I thrust the notes into a drawer and stood up.
I determined to call Max’s room. Sleep was out of the question—solitude insupportable. Menace of poisoned arrows in the jungles of Brazil was as nothing to this fear of the invisible. I crossed to the telephone. I had almost reached it—in fact my hand was outstretched to the receiver—when for the second time that night came a loud rap on my window shutters!
I turned, my heart thumping madly.
Rap! Rap!
“Woodville! Woodville! Are you awake?”
It was Gaston Max!
I rushed across.
“Quiet as possible! But, open quickly!”
I opened.
Max leaped into the room. He wore a dark overcoat, muffler, and a soft black hat. Obviously he had dressed in haste, and his expression was rather wild.
“Quick! Get some clothes on! Anything!”
His manner drove me. I began to dress. His next remark was in the nature of a bombshell.
“Lonergan has disappeared!”
“What!”
“I fell asleep, you see, and, it would appear, so did he. Something awakened me five minutes ago.”
“What was it?”
“Unless I dreamed, it was a voice calling me by name.”
“The Voice?”
“I don’t think so. This is not my recollection. I sat up with a start and put on the lamp. Naturally, first I looked in the direction of the other bed.… It was empty! Lonergan had vanished! But the window opening on to the balcony was ajar. I ran out and looked. Nothing! I ran back and tried the room door. It was locked. I returned again to the balcony—from which, as my presence here shows, it is not difficult to climb down. By means of my pocket torch I searched about—and presently I found this!”
From his pocket he took a slip of paper and laid it on the writing table. He snapped up the lamp.
“Are you familiar with Lonergan’s writing?”
I stared down at the message. It was dreadfully simple:
Felsenweir. Follow—for God’s sake—
“Yes, this was written by Lonergan! … If he could write, why not speak—cry out—wake you?”
Max met my glance with one no doubt as blank as my own.
“I simply have not one idea on this subject! I did not wish to arouse the night porter and so I climbed down from my window to the garden. It was, I think, the route taken by our friend.”
“You propose”—fastening my shoes and grabbing a hat—“to make for Felsenweir? What we can do unless we overtake him on the road isn’t clear to me.”
“Nor to me!”
“But if you don’t intend to rouse the hotel, how are we going to get there?”
“Name of a very small dog! I am always prepared for sudden emergencies! My car is not in the hotel. No, no! I use a private garage. I have the key.”
I nodded. A sort of apathy was beginning to claim me. Wonders were wonders no longer. Resembling an athlete in training—I wore flannel trousers and a pull-over—I extinguished all lights and followed Max out on to the balcony. We lowered the shutter as far as possible. Quietly we descended the steps.
That gate which gave on to the bridge I knew was locked. But to wade the shallow stream was a simple matter, provided the night watchman didn’t see us. We crossed at a shady spot, climbed the opposite bank, and came out on the public footpath.
“Now,” said Max, “we must hurry. My garage is in Maria-Victoria Strasse.”
Clear of the hotel grounds, we took a short cut back over the public bridge and hurried through deserted streets. Once, Max stopped dead, grabbing my arm.
We stood for a moment listening intently. Not a sound could I detect to suggest that we were followed. We passed on.
The garage was a small one belonging to an empty house. Max unlocked the door and swept the interior with his torch, peering all about suspiciously. There was no evidence of an intruder and we ran the Hispano out, relocking the garage.
“We are two fools, I think,” Max declared as we headed for the hills. “Helpless as insects. Felsenweir we cannot, we dare not, penetrate. Our only chance is to overtake him on the road—if he is on the road. I have serious doubts, my friend.”
“I share them! But we can’t ignore his appeal. We can do no less than try to overtake him.”
After this, we proceeded in silence. Indeed, there was nothing to say. Mile after mile of empty road we traversed at high speed, always climbing nearer to those haunted woods.
At last came the hairpin bend which I remembered. Max checked to negotiate it, and:
“Not a sign, so far!” he said. “And here is Felsenweir.”
We had reached the base of that frowning peak upon which the castle stood. We stopped. Max cut off the lights.
Resembling a speckled ribbon, under dim starlight the highway stretched empty before us to where it disappeared at that bend which concealed the main entrance. From here the military road spoken of by Lonergan wound its tortuous way up around the mighty crag.
We sat there, staring and listening. There was no sound: nothing stirred.
“I fear we risk our lives in vain,” Max said sadly. “But we must reconnoitre. It would be craven to return, yet.”
We alighted. I held the Colt repeater. My frame of mind was one which I find myself unable now to describe. I was conscious of a sort of buzzing in my ears; but, as I have since realized, this may have been due not to nervous excitement, but to an actual atmospheric condition surrounding the woods of Felsenweir.
“I shall go forward twenty paces,” said Max, in a low voice. “Follow me slowly, so that you keep me in view. But never lose sight of the car. If you see anything or anyone, shout. I shall do the same. If you are attacked—shoot.”
In this order we commenced our second reconnaissance of Felsenweir.
I had never in my life experienced a tension similar to that which held me as I watched Gaston Max march slowly forward. I stood beside the car counting his paces.… When, looking all about as he advanced, these paces totalled twenty, he checked. Turning, he raised his hand.
He moved forward again. And I set out, keeping him in sight. On he went toward the hidden gate. On I went, twenty paces behind him. The gate reached, he checked. Turning, he gestured—indicating that I should look back to assure myself I could still see the car.
I twisted about and stared through the dusk.
The Hispano was still visible, its metalwork gleaming dully.
I saw that Max was advancing again. I followed. In this way I reached the scene of our recent miraculous escape. Ahead of me Max was approaching that dim crescent which concealed the gates.
The night was deathly still. No sound was audible—if I except the queer buzzing in my ears.
Again Max signalled me to look back. I did so. The car remained discernible. I waved my hand, indicating that he should go on. He signalled that I should draw up closer, then went ahead slowly, and I hastened my steps in order that I might not lose sight of him.…
He had rounded the bend and for a moment become invisible before I reached that point heavily overshadowed by trees which marked one horn of the crescent.
A dim stretch of road, its form resembling a new moon, stretched before me.
Not a soul was in sight!
I stood stock still. I was unwilling to believe the evidence of my eyes. I could hear no sound—see no living thing. Whereupon, precaution forgotten:
“Max!” I cried. “Max!”
My voice was tossed back to me mockingly from the Felsenweir slopes; but no answer came!
What I should have done had I been entirely master of myself I cannot say: I know that a sense of horror settled on me like a damp cloak. But what I did do was to run forward wildly in the direction of a gap in the trees which I knew must mark the gates.
I reached it. What I saw was this:
A towering ancient iron gateway, reinforced with barbed wire, and flanked by miniature stone towers. Beyond, a rising ill-kept road, ploughed up as by passage of heavy vehicles.…
Not a soul was in sight.
Through trumpeted hands I shouted:
“Max!”
Again the word was buffeted back in mockery. That throbbing in my ears grew more intense.
I turned and doubled on my tracks. Round the horn of the crescent I raced to where star-lighted road stretched straightly.
Then I pulled up with a jerk.
I could see the car.
But between me and my goal, lurching down upon me with long ungainly strides, was a giant figure of gleaming black! …
Every man’s courage has a breaking point. I am not ashamed to confess that mine came now. Raising the Colt, I fired again and again—wildly—at that advancing horror.
If I hit or if I missed I shall never know. I emptied the magazine. But its ungainly stride, heavy with the heaviness of the inevitable, never ceased, never changed. The Thing bore down upon me like a black Fate.
“Merciful God!” I cried—and knew that I was frightened as a child.
I turned. I began to run.
Now, my knowledge of maps, upon which Lonergan had congratulated me, came to my aid. Straight on toward the ominous gates I ran, but, running, wondered if I should pass them alive! … Max!
On I raced. And I passed the gates unchallenged. There was no road and no path marked in the map for five hundred yards or more. I must skirt those deathly woods. I concentrated on the map, visualizing it as I ran.
Yes! I could see the footpath, the path which led to safety—or at least away from Felsenweir, with its black guardian horrors.
It descended steeply past a ruined church—and, came a new pang of horror, actually led to that bleak, sparsely wooded expanse which marked the site of the former village of Felsenweir—scene of Countess Adelheid’s horrible visitations!
No matter. It was a short cut to the highroad. I recalled that not a mile beyond were two or three scattered dwellings, the nearest so far as I was aware to the dreaded castle area.
Hope of assistance before this point, I had none. I well knew there was not a soul for miles around who would have approached the ruins of the ancient hold at night for anything short of a king’s ransom.
I was none too fit, and my heart seemed to be bursting; but I carried on until—at last! at last!—I glimpsed the beginning of the path, a white finger pointing to safety.
Here I had to pull up to recover my breath. Panting, I stood and looked back.
What I expected to see was the armoured figure. For this I was in part prepared. For that which I did see I was not prepared.…
A perfectly naked man of gigantic build, but so emaciated that he might have been an unwrapped mummy—his skin of a dull, lustreless yellow—was rapidly overtaking me!
I caught the gleam of sunken eyes, of a face resembling a death’s head. I saw fang-like teeth!
The Thing—I could not otherwise identify it—carried something—a scarf, a cloak, flung over one shoulder.… With gigantic strides and a wild animal agility it sped toward me.
I think I shrieked. Certainly I tried to do so. Then I turned, and literally hurled myself down the steep slope!
At times, I could not see my way. Yet I never hesitated.
Pat—pat—pat!
The bare feet were ever behind me and ever nearer! My breath coming in sobs, I burst at last through a fringe of trees. Before me lay the desolation which had been Felsenweir Village.
So much I saw. I collapsed. Mighty hands grasped me.…
My next contact with the world afforded a moment I can never forget. I opened my eyes, supposing myself to be in bed at the Regal, and wondering why I had left the lamp on.
Instantly, memory swept back—a flood of horrors.
I sat up and looked about me.…
On setting out with Gaston Max I had dressed hastily over my pajamas. I discovered that I still wore them. My outer garments were folded on a chair beside the bed. Upon a small table lay my Colt and some few other personal belongings.
The room in which I found myself was flooded with what appeared to be sunlight. Yet it possessed no window! There was no lamp, nor could I detect the presence of any lighting device whatever. Furthermore, and most staggering discovery of all, there was no door!
This amazing room was square, having a polished wood floor. Its walls were olive green at the base, this green being graduated as the walls ascended and becoming aquamarine where they joined the ceiling which, whilst of the same colour, was of even lighter shade.
Immediately facing me and in direct line with my bed, a square opening showed a narrow bathroom. I could see to the end of it and all three walls. There was no window and no door. But, like my bedroom, it appeared to be flooded with sunlight!
Physically I felt as well as I had ever felt in my life. Having taken in my astounding environment, I closed my eyes again for a few seconds and then reopened them.
Yes, it was real! And at this moment:
“Good morning, Brian Woodville!”
The Voice!…
I clenched my fists, looking sharply about me.
“Don’t be alarmed,” the Voice went on. “You are my guest and quite safe. Indeed, I am glad you have joined us, although you did so somewhat reluctantly. We shall be meeting later. But in the meantime, what attendance would you like? I can send you a Japanese manservant, an English batman, or a French valet. On the other hand, I can recommend a beautiful Circassian highly accomplished in matters of the toilet, or a Nubian girl like an ebony statue carved by a Greek master, who will prepare your bath in such a manner that it will exhilarate and rejuvenate you.”
The Voice ceased!
“Thank you,” I said, speaking as one who comments upon a radio programme—confident that his criticisms are unheard. “I can dispense with their services. I’m used to preparing my own bath.” A saving sense of humour came to my aid, and: “A cup of tea would be welcome,” I added.
“My dear Woodville,” the Voice assured me, “it shall be brought to you at once.”
I sprang out of bed.
Not only could I hear the Voice, but also… the Voice could hear me!
Could he see me? I debated my next step.
A pair of comfortable slippers had been placed beside the bed. Wearing these, I walked into the bathroom, which was tiled in green and gold mosaic. A Gillette razor, evidently new, with a packet of unopened blades lay upon a glass shelf, together with a shaving brush of first quality and a sealed stick of soap.
The hot water proved to be boiling; the cold water was apparently iced. A bath of light green marble looked inviting; and one wall consisted of a single mirror some nine feet high and twelve feet long.
A number of jars ranged upon a shelf contained essences and crystals of various kinds. A jade bowl the size of a cooking pot held some kind of talc powder and was topped by a gigantic puff upon which an ebony negress, possibly resembling that Nubian described by the Voice, crouched to form a handle. Sunshine warmed everything.
Yet there was no window.…
I began to shave. Odd how habits of a lifetime cling to us. I suppose a condemned man shaves for his execution. I had little more to look forward to. Yet quite automatically I began to shave. I had not dared to begin to think. Having been once over my aggressive beard, I was relathering lightly when a sound like that made by an elevator arrested me.
Dropping the brush, I hastily wiped soap from my chin and stepped to the outer room.
A section of the wall—floor to ceiling and some four feet wide—had opened.… From it stepped a gigantic figure in armour!
I clenched my teeth but uttered no sound. I watched the figure pace slowly across the room. Its armoured hands held a tray. Upon the tray I saw a bowl of fruit, rolls, butter, sugar, cream, and a teapot—also a box of my favourite cigarettes!
The armour of this incredible servant clinked faintly, metallically, as it set the tray upon a table. Then, standing upright and turning—this slowly but with military precision—the figure walked back into the opening and began to sink, apparently into the floor!
Stupid with amazement as I was, nevertheless I saw that a panel was descending correspondingly. With the disappearance of the attendant’s head below floor level, this panel closed completely. The wall became whole again.
I forgot that I had been shaving. I was tied remorselessly to the present. I dropped down upon the bed, staring at my breakfast tray.…
That I was awake and in possession of my senses was certain. That I was a prisoner in the castle of Felsenweir seemed a reasonable deduction. I ate a roll and butter and a beautifully ripened peach, and I drank two cups of excellent tea.
I completed the operation of shaving and lighted one of the cigarettes so thoughtfully provided by my invisible host.
A pair of new brushes and a comb by a Bond Street firm suggested some rearrangement of my disordered hair.
Having bathed luxuriously, I groomed myself as for a lovers’ meeting, resumed my pajama suit, added socks, shoes, the well-worn flannels, and that pull-over which had formed the hasty make-up in which I had left the Regal.
I sat down in a comfortably cushioned armchair and wondered when the master of my destiny would deign to indicate the next move.
There was perfect silence in the supernaturally sunlighted apartment. Smoking, I meditated. First, and this priority was significant, I thought of Marusa.
From that enchanting figure my ideas wandered to the armoured creature. Grotesque—abnormal. It undoubtedly corresponded to the figure photographed by Lonergan—the figure which had patrolled the battlements. It was the same as, or identical with, that black horror which had cut off my escape on the road below Felsenweir.
A possible truth intruded—an unwelcome truth.
The Thing was not human: it was an automaton! My old theories, based on mediæval superstitions, gave place to new ones. The great bats—were they susceptible of scientific explanation? Now that I had seen one of the armoured men at close quarters, I was disposed to believe, as Gaston Max had suggested, that all the mysteries that puzzled us might prove to be reducible to a reasonable explanation.
So far, so good. But a scientist capable of these achievements, one so far in advance of his generation, might further be capable of producing, not only the activities, but the appearance of humanity!
This was the new horror which obsessed me.
Marusa!
Was she a real woman or a creature of this master illusionist into whose power I had fallen?
The idea was maddening. I cursed the train of reasoning which had created it. I was beginning to ascribe powers almost godlike to my captor. This thraldom I must shake off.
I stood up and began closely to examine the walls of my apartment. If Gaston Max had formulated a theory, admittedly never substantiated, respecting the origin of the Voice, surely I could discover some explanation of why a windowless room should be flooded with sunshine.
Carefully I set to work, bringing to bear all I knew, had read, or had heard of modern lighting devices.
I drew a blank. There was no clue to the mystery. And I was about to smoke another cigarette, when:
“My dear Woodville!”
I dropped the match. I stood rigid, cigarette in hand.
It was the Voice!
“I don’t know what you are looking for. If it is a way out, you will never find it. But perhaps the source of the light intrigues you? It will be made clear in time. For the moment I am going to ask you to have a chat with a friend which may perhaps lead to a better understanding between us.” …
I heard that faint whining sound which I had heard before. My glance flashed to a part of the wall. As I watched, swiftly the wall opened. From the gap created, a man stepped out.…
At great speed the panel reclosed, its descent marked by the characteristic whine. I stared at the newcomer.
I saw a man of about my own build, wearing pajamas, slippers, and a dressing gown of bright yellow. Abundant reddish-brown hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. It was slightly gray at the temples, which added character to a square-cut, clean-shaven face.
He met my regard with a sort of glassy fixity of expression. This expression was unpleasant—in fact ghastly. It was utterly unfamiliar—as was the man’s whole appearance. But his eyes were not!
I experienced a degree of bewilderment to which I had never sunk before.
“Lonergan!” I whispered.… “Lonergan!”
“Himself!”
It was the well-known voice! Not the voice of the Rev. Josiah Higgins, but the voice which I had first associated with Aldous P. Kluster. And yet, in some odd way, it was different.
I grasped his hand.
“Thank God!” I exclaimed. “I was afraid——”
But I broke off, knowing myself to be face to face with a proposition in which stark insanity lurked immediately around the corner.
“I can guess,” said Lonergan. “It don’t matter, anyway. Whatever happened before you arrived here—just forget it.”
I stared uncomprehendingly. For some reason I could not focus his glance. He seemed to be looking through me. I struck another match and lighted my cigarette.
“What occurred after you left the note?”
Lonergan’s expression remained obtuse.
“The note,” he repeated. “What note?”
His manner resembled that of one groping for forgotten lines; or, as I realized later, listening for the voice of the prompter.
“The note telling us to follow you to Felsenweir!”
“Oh!” He seated himself upon the side of the bed continuing to stare queerly before him. “Yes. That.… Well, it was necessary.”
“Necessary?”
“Sure. Otherwise you’d have crashed with the rest of the world. I didn’t want that to happen—not after I knew.”
I stood in front of him looking down… but found myself quite unable to catch his eye.
“After you knew? Lonergan, I don’t understand you. What has happened?”
He looked up. But although he was staring straight at me, there was no clash of interest. He was still looking through me. It was uncanny.
“Just this, Woodville: What I came to the Black Forest looking for, I’ve found. I can explain everything. But first, you’ve got to make a decision.”
“About what?”
“About all of us. The world ends some time this week. Are we to end with it, or are we to go on?”
I experienced a keen pang. Lonergan had gone over to the enemy!
In the circumstances I determined to temporize. For how could I know what had led to his defection?
“We’ll go on.”
“That’s sane,” he replied mechanically. “I figured all along there were no bats in your belfry. You know me, and when I say you’re wise it means something. Am I right?”
“Quite right.”
“Take it or leave it, the world checks out. Neither the United States nor Britain nor France are going to mean a damn thing once the die is cast. They’ll just be swept away. Only a fool would fight for a country that’s ceased to exist except as a name—or a memory. There’s suicide. If you like to take that route, I guess it’s open to you. Short of it, there’s no choice.”
He spoke on monotonously. It was the voice of Lonergan—but not his diction, his manner. I was puzzled; horrified.
“The Deluge all over again, Woodville. For you and for me there’s just one question: not what it means to the crowd who must go under, but whether we’re shipping in the Ark or staying to be drowned. Just one question. But I’m here to say you’ve got to answer it in an hour. I had less.”
“And you chose… ?”
“The Ark, sure.”
“You were wise.” I marvelled that I had my voice in such good control.
Lonergan, who had been staring past me whilst he spoke, now looked up. For a brief moment I caught and held the fugitive glance. But that moment told me all.… Warning—entreaty—agony. These I read, and more!
Then his stare cut through mine again and became fixed on some distant spot far behind me, so that his eyes appeared to be slightly crossed.
“Have I convinced you?”
“Entirely!”
He stood up.
“We’re here,” he said with a sudden odd note of weariness. He moved in a mechanical way across the room. “And we’re safe.”
That whining noise accompanied his last words. A panel opened and Lonergan stepped through. Immediately he began to drop floorward.
“But I’m glad you’re wise, Woodville,” came as the panel closed.
Time had no existence in Felsenweir.
Endless sunshine and silence created an impression of eternity utterly beyond my powers to describe. That it was morning I had many reasons for supposing. But so far as other evidence went it might equally well have been midnight. (As a matter of fact, it was neither.)
Lonergan’s visit had appalled me. Behind those glassy eyes I had glimpsed a soul in torment.
Was he bewitched—or under the influence of a drug? A drug! Here lay a possible explanation! At last I identified a hazy impression which had haunted me during the time Lonergan had been with me. I saw in imagination the witch doctor of a tribe living far up the Rio Negro as once I had seen him in the flesh. Again I listened to his oddly mechanical speech and tried in vain to hold his glassy and oblique glance. That man had been under the influence of a drug—a drug unknown to European pharmacists, but possessing seemingly magical properties.
I stared about my prison with a new apprehension. Lonergan’s curious evasion of the point which I considered of paramount interest—namely, under what circumstances he had left the Regal—now presented itself in a new light.
Hazily, I started to formulate a theory. Purpose began to appear in what had seemed purposeless, and I saw that Max and I had walked into a cunningly laid trap.
I too had been drugged! The nude horror from which I had fled, only at last to fall a captive, had contrived in some way to drug me.…
Even now, was I really master of my own will?
Suspecting myself to be constantly watched from some hidden spy-hole, I recognized the uselessness of any exploration. This idea of sleepless espionage was definitely horrible.
I dropped in the armchair and lighted a cigarette. Come what may, I must not lose my nerve. As I did so, the Voice addressed me.
“Woodville,” came those cold tones in which I now seemed to detect a mocking note, “as I am anxious that you should understand the facts of your position, I have asked Marusa to come and talk to you.”
My heart leaped. But I succeeded in retaining immobility.
“Since you are interested in her, she can possibly make you see reason. We are a friendly company, Woodville. When you have had a chat, I shall be ready to receive you.”
Silence again!
Between horror of this proof, if proof were necessary, that Marusa was indeed a member of the shadowy group surrounding the Voice, and joy of knowing I was about to meet her again, I found myself in a chaotic frame of mind. Forces outside my knowledge and beyond my control stormed and tossed about me. Why I had been spared and what I was expected to do, I could only surmise. But, that cunning coercion would be brought to bear to influence that “decision” for which the Voice had made me responsible, I could not doubt.
I was to be offered apparently some alternative to death. Except that his behaviour was not that of one strictly compos mentis, it would seem that Lonergan had already made this decision.
What of Gaston Max?
The world was to be destroyed. This, frankly, I didn’t believe. It might be possible for that terror behind the Voice to decimate a village in the Pyrenees, to strike down one of his unhappy creatures whose evidence threatened to be dangerous. But the whole of the world presented a vastly bigger proposition.
Nevertheless, my life was certainly at stake, however great or small might be the peril of the general population.
And Marusa was coming to see me.…
Abruptly I stood up. I had heard that dim whine heralding the elevator’s approach. A section of wall slid silently upward. In the car, which was only large enough to accommodate one passenger, Marusa stood. She wore a smart walking suit and a little green hat crushed down upon her coppery hair.
Her attitude surprised me.
She held a white handkerchief outstretched against her breast. Her glance was eloquent—urgent!
My stupidity, looking back, amazes me. Thank heaven, the meaning of her pantomime at last, and in time, dawned upon me!
Written in red, probably with lipstick, upon the cambric were these words:
ALL WE SAY IS HEARD
ALL WE DO IS SEEN
Marusa, realizing that I had read and understood, crumpled up the handkerchief in her hand and stepped out of the elevator. The panel dropped down behind her.
We were alone.
“Your personal ideas of right and wrong are of no importance,” Marusa explained.
As I bent over her, lighting a cigarette which she had taken from the packet on my tray, her blue eyes were wells of unspoken eloquence.
“It’s just a question whether you prefer to survive with the few, or pass out with the many. It’s really quite simple, isn’t it?”
“Painfully simple.”
I extinguished the match and dropped it into a teacup.