Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that, fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled, and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside-down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives’ fable. If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner:
One hot summer afternoon in the dog-days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land-speculator for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months’ indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another delay.
“My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish,” said the land-jobber.
“Charity begins at home,” replied Tom; “I must take care of myself in these hard times.”
“You have made so much money out of me,” said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety. “The devil take me,” said he, “if
I have made a farthing!”
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which neighed and stamped with impatience.
“Tom, you’re come for,” said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrank back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat-pocket and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse the lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man, he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who lived on the border of the swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder-gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and running to the window caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp toward the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunder-bolt falling in that direction seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and tricks of the devil, in all kinds of shapes, from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom’s effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burned to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all gripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak-trees, whence he dug Kidd’s money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighboring swamp and old Indian fort are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent throughout New England, of “The devil and Tom Walker.”
HIDEAWAY, by Everil Worrell
Originally published in Weird Tales, Nov. 1951.
“There is our house,” my driver said. His white teeth flashed in a wide smile that was like a gash in his dark face, and his oddly annoying laugh—something between a titter and the bray of a donkey—assailed my ears.
He braked the powerful motor of the old car sharply. We came to a standstill and I looked.
He had swung his left arm in a powerful gesture, and he was opening the door beside him preparatory to getting out. But where he pointed, I saw nothing but close serried ranks of lofty trees of some kind or other. I am not a botanist. Neither am I much of a walker by choice, and I thought grumblingly to myself: “Here’s where we walk miles over an uneven path because the man hasn’t cleared a way for his car to travel.”
The next instant I saw that there was a primitive fence of the variety known as “snake,” and that Bolo was unlocking a gate in the fence. Inside was a narrow dirt road just wide enough for a car to pass and partly grass-grown. The gate unlocked, Bolo leaped back, into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and negotiated the sharp turn with another gleam of white teeth and another wave of the hand.
The gate, however, was not left open. He felt it necessary once more to leap from the car, carefully shoot home the bolt of the padlock and of course climb back into his place again. No intrusion was to be encouraged, obviously; although what there was to tempt an intruder, I wondered.
Looking ahead I believed we were a mile short of anything resembling a human habitation, when I saw it.
“Now you see!” Bolo cried at the very instant when I did. And again the titter and the flash of white teeth, so that, feeling I was expected to laugh in my turn, I hardly dwelt then on the idea which occurred to me—that the laughing little dark man must- have studied with a scientific precision the exact distance from his house at which it became visible even when one was looking for it.
It might, in fact, have been an illusion, a shadow, some chance configuration of the growth of tree boles and bushes for just a little longer, even then. It seemed farther from us than it was; and then all at once Bolo drove the car out of the narrow shaded roadway into a comparatively sunny open space in which the shadows only played and dappled, and when we climbed out of the car and stood on the ground, we were within twenty feet of the man’s front porch.
“We are here, Dear!” Bolo called in a voice that surprisingly made of the simple, every-day epithet a hymn of praise and worship, a lofty title of respect and a humble petition for permission to approach.
I had hardly time to more than glimpse the little shack—rustic in effect, built on stilts like a house in the tropics, porch—furnished with box furniture—when a woman appeared and began tripping down the flimsy board steps to meet us.
“They live alone out there. They seem to be husband and wife, all right; but there’s a rumor that he may actually be her servant. He speaks of her sometimes in a way that has given rise to that rumor. Yet he always refers to her as ‘my wife’ and with great pride. Once he told a fellow worker in the laboratory where he is an aid that his wife was the most beautiful woman in the world.”
That had been part of my briefing in regard to the Bolos. (Bolo’s first name at the plant, by the way, was “Juan”; nobody ever called him by other than his last name, like that, without a “Mr.” It seemed to fit, and served as a plain cognomen, a mild epithet, and a pe
t name, in turn.)
The woman was graceful, as she negotiated the steps and walked to meet us. She was neither tall nor short—perhaps a shade taller than Bolo; and she was slender. Her skirts swung as she walked, but when I focused my eyes upon her face the odd light effect was gone, and I could meet her smile and take her outstretched hand.
I could do that, and I could return her greeting, which was gracious and welcoming, but for a split instant it was about all that I could do, because now I could see her face, and it shocked and startled me.
The most beautiful woman in the world? Bolo was overcompensating when he said that. Unless—surely he wasn’t laughing at his wife, making a mean little joke nastily to himself about her?
Mrs. Bolo was not beautiful. In fact she looked a bit like a witch in some old story. Her face was seamed and fallen, heavily lined as with many years which the gay little curls denied. Her eyes, I thought, were keen and honest—whether they were also good I wasn’t sure. Her mouth prejudiced me against any other features she could have had, for I’ve always been very sensitive to the beauty in a woman’s mouth—when it is there; and repulsed when it isn’t.
In this case, it wasn’t. It was mostly teeth, huge “buck” teeth, which pushed aside the rather full lips and seemed a deformity in the middle of her face. It was merely a further detail that the lady’s nose had been broken and not set straight again.
There were tables under the trees, and box-made chairs conveniently placed, and Mrs. Bolo asked me to sit with her while Bolo brought us cooling drinks.
“Men of the Orient and the Tropics love to wait upon their wives, and I think it’s a charming custom, don’t you, Mr.—?”
“Conant—” I supplied. “Miles Conant.”
It was too cruel, too unfair, I was thinking. No woman should have a deal like this one—and there had been that moment’s impression of bodily grace and sure-footedness, there was the clear directness of the gray eyes in which dwelt other qualities I couldn’t fathom.
What I couldn’t stop looking at was the poor, lady’s face. You have to look at the face of your hostess, don’t you? You couldn’t sit talking with her and avoid looking at her. You had to school your expression—in my profession that should be easy, but I wasn’t sure of my success.
I was photographing the other ravaged features. No eyebrows—actually not any. An accident—say in an automobile—might have broken the nose and done something to the eyebrows. I wished she had painted some on. The curls seemed to have slipped sideways, and I believed Mrs. Bolo wore a wig, so she shouldn’t have conscientious scruples about a little mascara.
The accident might have done something to the bony structure of the face also, and maybe the teeth were false. I decided that they were false; but if that were so, why not a better job?
She was talking to me in that rapid, social manner when Bolo brought the drinks. She had taken the initiative, it seemed, and she kept it. She was asking me just why the Government had sent me out to interview the two of them, and I was explaining—in part.
“Some of that laboratory work is important, and some of it is secret, and the plant handles some Government work,” I told her.
“I’d regard it as pretty routine in Mr. Bolo’s case. A routine loyalty check. Everybody is having them, you know. If Mr. Bolo were entrusted with the really special work, he’d have to be very thoroughly-investigated, as of course you know. As it is, it’s just a matter of routine. Nothing to worry about, at all.”
That was true, so far as it went. There had been so many disclosures of spy rings, so many spy confessions, so much accusation and counter-accusation, that it had gotten so you couldn’t trust the spies themselves. In fact the spies often seemed not to know quite what they were talking about—the head people had so many aliases and used the names of so many reputable people, that pretty often they thought the members of their gangs were named Smith in all good faith, when actually, the name might be Jones.
So when anything really had to be looked into, it was done now pretty thoroughly, and by trained people. I am about as thoroughly trained an investigator as the Government commands, and the fate of the Bolos would really be in my hands. If I found Juan Bolo to be reliable and loyal, he was due for some of that important secret work. If I found otherwise, he was on his way out.
What I wasn’t telling the Bolos was that, due entirely to the heavy veil of secrecy with which they had surrounded themselves, neither I nor my superiors expected him to get a clean bill of health from me, and what I had already seen didn’t make things look brighter for the little man.
You don’t camouflage yourself right off the face of the earth, usually, without a pretty good reason. And if Bolo and his wife were just what they seemed, they were too insignificant a couple to meed or warrant all of this. A mixed-race—yes; unless, after all, he was her servant—and that would be even stranger, wouldn’t it? None of that was reason enough for “Hideaway”—appropriately, that was what they called their place.
* * * *
To shorten my story, I won the co-operation of the Bolos—at least as much as they couldn’t deny me. After all, they had to cooperate. They knew as well as I did that they had been watched, and that nobody knew quite what to make of them, and I think they were glad of a chance to show me a huge collection of papers establishing their harmlessness. Bolo kept them in a little steamer trunk; we went inside to look them over, and the place was the kind you’d expect a Malay to build. More box-furniture except for two plain iron bedsteads, everything plain, yet incongruously offset with knick-knacks, some cheap and some very fine indeed. A couple of hammered silver candle sticks, with blue shades edged with finely cut crystal dangles that tinkled if you touched them or a breeze blew through, were lovely things; a collection of dime-store love lamps which exuded perfume, and incense burners, went better with the furniture.
The papers proved Bolo to be a Malay who had applied for naturalization, who was legally married to one Eugenia Evans in New York five years ago (about the time of Bolo’s entry into the United States).
There was more, and it all hung together. I had seen the inside of Malay shacks, and the atmosphere was right. Yet, papers can be fixed in various ways, and I came back in my mind to that initial reason for doubting the Bolos were what they said they were.
They were too secret about it. And their relationship to each other; that crack he had made about his beautiful wife—had he more than one of them? His waiting on Eugenia, though, hand and foot; like a man deeply in love or—maybe like a servant.
It was on my tongue to ask some very personal questions along these lines. I began, though, a little farther from dead center, because it isn’t easy to ask a man in the presence of his wife why he had claimed her to be beautiful, if he has more than one wife, or why he behaves toward her the way he does. I asked him, instead, the name of their home.
“Hideaway!” he said boldly, laughing his strident laugh again, flashing teeth at me. “Good, that—Yes?”
“Yes—” I agreed, then suddenly caught my breath.
I had seen a picture in a silver frame. It was of a woman standing on a balcony, and it was lovely. I recognized it. It is my business to recognize things like that—faces that have been news remain on file in my memory.
This woman in the picture had been queen of a little country seldom heard of, bordering on Transylvania, the weird little territory widely associated with vampire and werewolf legends, and also with stormy political happenings. Some of these happenings had forced the sudden abdication of this young queen some half a dozen years ago, and there had been rumors (they could only have arisen in some such part of the world! ) of a tribe of devil-worshippers having threatened her life. She had disappeared suddenly, as completely as if she had dissolved into thin air, and that gave some weight to the story about the devil worshippers—not that their existence
is mere rumor, of course, since they exist in a number of countries. Anyway, interest had waned after a second rumor went around saying the Queen Maria had escaped from her kingdom with a lover, a commoner, A few speculative articles had appeared in a few Sunday magazine sections given to that sort of vaporizing, and her affair had been compared to that of the Duke of Windsor and his romance, and then the world had forgotten.
I had forgotten, too; but now I remembered. I sat staring at the picture, not able to hide my absorption in it. For I remembered that Maria had been called the most beautiful woman in the world. And I thought I remembered that her second name, almost never used and seldom heard, had been Eugenia.
And I was seeing Eugenia Bolo now in a different way than that of the eyes.
I was seeing her figure and the way she walked and moved, and remembering moving pictures I had seen of the lost, abdicated queen. I was mentally doing things with that terrible mouth—fitting teeth in it that looked as though they belonged, over which the full lips would close naturally; straightening the nose, changing it, putting those eyebrows on and a luxuriant growth of soft, fine, loose-waved hair around the face.
There remained the wrinkles, the fallen-in look. That was the thing that made her seem many years older than the dark little man whose eyes I knew, without looking at him either, were set on me in a fixed gaze that held a threat. I had let my thoughts show in my face, a thing I am seldom betrayed into. But I couldn’t stop the inward study, the concentration that was engrossing me now—nothing short of a Malay kris buried in my body was going to stop me.
I was getting somewhere now. There were ways of doing all these things to a face. There’s a plastic surgery that puffs up the flesh and lets it fall into folds and wrinkles when the wax melts. In this case, it would have been done on purpose—if my wild idea was right. Though why, for God’s sake, would a woman—
The Devils & Demons MEGAPACK® Page 10
