Fighters of Fear

by Mike Ashley

  I went to my room dead beat, for I had had no sleep and much anxiety during the past forty-eight hours, so I left a note on my mat to say that I was not to be disturbed in the morning; I felt I had fairly earned my rest, I had pulled two tricky cases through, and put my small knowledge of occultism to a satisfactory test.

  But in spite of my instructions I was not left undisturbed. At seven o’clock the matron routed me out.

  “I wish you would come and look at Mr. Winnington, Doctor; I think he has gone out of his mind.”

  I wearily put on my clothes and dipped my heavy head in the basin and went to inspect Winnington. Instead of his usual cheery smile, he greeted me with a malign scowl.

  “I should be very glad,” he said, “if you would kindly tell me where I am.”

  “You are in your own room, old chap,” I said. “You have had a bad turn, but are all right again now.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “This is the first I have heard of it. And who may you be?”

  “I’m Rhodes,” I replied. “Don’t you know me?”

  “I know you right enough. You are Dr. Taverner’s understrapper at that nursing home place. I suppose my kind friends have put me here to get me out of the way. Well, I can tell you this, they can’t make me stop here. Where are my clothes? I want to get up.”

  “Your clothes are wherever you put them,” I replied. “We have not taken them away; but as for getting up, you are not fit to do so. We have no wish to keep you here against your will, and if you want to be moved we will arrange it for you, but you will have to have an ambulance, you have been pretty bad you know.” It was my intention to play for time till this sick mood should have passed, but he saw through my manoeuvre.

  “Ambulance be damned,” he said. “I will go on my own feet.” And forthwith he sat up in bed and swung his legs over the edge. But even this effort was too much for him, and he would have slid to the floor if I had not caught him. I called the nurse, and we put him to bed, incapable of giving any further trouble for the moment.

  I was rather surprised at this ebullition as coming from Winnington, who had always shown himself a very sweet-tempered, gentle personality, though liable to fits of depression, which, however, were hardly to be wondered at in his condition. He had not much to make him cheerful, poor chap, and but for Taverner’s intervention he would probably have ended his days in an infirmary.

  When I went down to the pillar box that evening, there was Mrs. Bellamy, and to my surprise, her husband was with her. She greeted me with some constraint, watching her husband to see how he would take it, but his greeting lacked nothing in the way of cordiality: one would have thought that I was an old friend of the family. He thanked me for my care of him, and for my kindness to his wife, whom, he said, he was afraid had been going through rather a bad time lately.

  “I am going to take her away for a change, however, a second honeymoon, you know; but when we get back I want to see something of you, and also of Dr. Taverner. I am very anxious to keep in touch with Taverner.”

  I thanked him, marvelling at his change of mood, and only hoping for his wife’s sake that it would last; but drug takers are broken reeds to lean upon and I feared that she would have to drain her cup to the dregs.

  When I got back to the nursing home I was amazed to find Taverner there.

  “Why, what in the world has brought you back from your holiday?” I demanded.

  “You did,” he replied. “You kept on telepathing SOS messages, so thought I had better come and see what was the matter.”

  “I am most awfully sorry,” I said. “We had a little difficulty, but got over it all right.”

  “What happened?” he enquired, watching me closely, and I felt myself getting red like a guilty schoolboy, for I did not particularly want to tell him of Mrs. Bellamy and Winnington’s infatuation for her.

  “I fancy that Winnington tried your stunt of going subconscious,” I said at length. “He went very deep, and was away a long time, and I got rather worried. You see, I don’t understand these things properly. And then, as he was coming back, I saw him, and took him for a ghost, and got the wind up.”

  “You saw him?” exclaimed Taverner. “How did you manage to do that? You are not clairvoyant.”

  “I saw a grey, spindle-shaped drift of mist, the same as we saw the time Black, the airman, nearly died.”

  “You saw that?” said Taverner in surprise. “Do you mean to say that Winnington took the etheric double out? How long was he subconscious?”

  “About twenty-four hours.”

  “Good God!” cried Taverner. “The man’s probably dead!”

  “He’s nothing of the sort,” I replied. “He is alive and kicking. Kicking vigorously, in fact,” I added, remembering the scene of the morning.

  “I cannot conceive,” said Taverner, “how the etheric double, the vehicle of the life forces, could be withdrawn for so long a time without the disintegration of the physical form commencing. Where was he, and what was he up to? Perhaps, however, he was immediately over the bed, and merely withdrew from his physical body to escape its discomfort.”

  “He was in the dispensary when I first saw him,” I answered, devoutly hoping that Taverner would not need any further information as to Winnington’s whereabouts. “He followed me back to his room and I coaxed him into his body.”

  Taverner gave me a queer look. “I suppose you took the preliminary precaution of making sure that it was Winnington you had got hold of?”

  “Good Lord, Taverner, is there a possibility—?”

  “Come upstairs and let us have a look at him, I can soon tell you.”

  Winnington was lying in a room lit only by a night-light, and though he turned his head at our entrance, did not speak. Taverner went over to the bed and switched on the reading lamp standing on the bedside table. Winnington flinched at the sudden brightness, and growled something, but Taverner threw the light full into his eyes, watching them closely, and to my surprise, the pupils did not contract.

  “I was afraid so,” said Taverner.

  “Is anything wrong?” I enquired anxiously. “He seems all right.”

  “Everything is wrong, my dear boy,” answered Taverner. “I am sure you did the best you knew, but you did not know enough. Unless you thoroughly understand these things it is best to leave them to nature.”

  “But—but—he is alive,” I exclaimed, bewildered.

  “It is alive,” corrected Taverner. “That is not Winnington you know.”

  “Then who in the world is it? It looks like it to me.”

  “That we must try and find out. Who are you?” he continued, raising his voice and addressing the man on the bed.

  “You know damn well,” came the husky whisper.

  “I am afraid I don’t,” answered Taverner. “I must ask you to tell me.”

  “Why, W—” I began, but Taverner clapped his hand over my mouth.

  “Be quiet, you fool, you have done enough damage, never let it know the real name.”

  Then, turning back to the sick man again, he repeated his question.

  “John Bellamy,” came the sulky answer.

  Taverner nodded and drew me out of the room.

  “Bellamy?” he asked. “That is the name of the man who took the Hirschmann’s house. Has Winnington had anything to do with him?”

  “Look here, Taverner,” I said, “I will tell you something I had not meant to let you know. Winnington has got a fixation on Bellamy’s wife, and apparently he has brooded over it, and fantasised over it, till in his unconscious imagination he has substituted himself for Bellamy.”

  “That may quite well be, it may be an ordinary case of mental trouble, we will investigate that end of the stick by and by; but, for the present, why has Bellamy substituted himself for Winnington?”

  “A wish-fulfilment,” I replied. “Winnington is in love with Bellamy’s wife; he wishes he were Bellamy in order to possess her, therefore his delirium expresses the subconsciou
s wish as an actuality, the usual Freudian mechanism, you know—the dream as the wish-fulfilment.”

  “I dare say,” answered Taverner. “The Freudians explain a lot of things they don’t understand. But what about Bellamy, is he in a trance condition?”

  “He is apparently quite all right, or he was, about half an hour ago. I saw him when he came down to the post with his wife. He was quite all right, and uncommon civil, in fact.”

  “I dare say,” said Taverner dryly. “You and Winnington always were chums. Now look here, Rhodes, you are not being frank with me, I must get to the bottom of this business. Now tell me all about it.”

  So I told him. Narrated in cold blood, it sounded the flimsiest fantasy. When I had finished, Taverner laughed.

  “You have done it this time, Rhodes,” he said. “And you who are so straight-laced, of all people!” and he laughed again.

  “What is your explanation of the matter?” I enquired, somewhat nettled by his laughter. “I can quite understand Winnington’s soul, or whatever may be the technical name for it, getting out of its body and turning up in Mrs. Bellamy’s room, we have had several cases of that sort of thing; and I can quite understand Winnington’s Freudian wish-fulfillment, it is the most understandable thing of the whole business; the only thing that is not clear to me is the change in character of the two men; Bellamy is certainly improved, for the moment, at any rate; and Winnington is in a very bad temper and slightly delirious.”

  “And therein lies the crux of the whole problem. What do you suppose has happened to those two men?”

  “I haven’t a notion,” I answered.

  “But I have,” said Taverner. “Narcotics, if you take enough of them, have the effect of putting you out of your body, but the margin is a narrow one between enough and too much, and if you take the latter, you go out and don’t come back. Winnington found out, through you, Bellamy’s weakness, and, being able to leave his body at will as a trained Initiate can, watched his chance when Bellamy was out of his body in a pipe dream, and then slipped in, obsessed him, in fact, leaving Bellamy to wander houseless. Bellamy, craving for his drug, and cut off from the physical means of gratification, scents from afar the stock we have in the dispensary, and goes there; and when he sees you with a hypodermic syringe—for an ensouled etheric can see quite well—he instinctively follows you, and you, meddling in matters of which you know nothing, put him into Winnington’s body.”

  As Taverner was speaking I realised that we had the true explanation of the phenomena; point by point it fitted in with all I had witnessed.

  “Is there anything that can be done to put matters right?” I asked, now thoroughly chastened.

  “There are several things that can be done, but it is a question as to what you would consider to be right.”

  “Surely there can be no doubt upon that point?—get the men sorted back into their proper bodies.”

  “You think that would be right?” said Taverner. “I am not so certain. In that case you would have three unhappy people; in the present case, you have two who are very happy, and one who is very angry, the world on the whole, being the richer.”

  “But how about Mrs. Bellamy?” I said. “She is living with a man she is not married to?”

  “The law would consider her to be married to him,” answered Taverner. “Our marriage laws only separate for sins of the body, they do not recognise adultery of the soul; so long as the body has been faithful, they would think no evil. A change of disposition for the worse, whether under the influence of drugs, drink, or insanity, does not constitute grounds for a divorce under our exalted code, therefore a change of personality for the better under a psychic influence does not constitute one either. The mandarins cannot have it both ways.”

  “Anyway,” I replied, “it does not seem to me moral.”

  “How do you define morality?” said Taverner.

  “The law of the land—” I began.

  “In that case a man’s admission to Heaven would be decided by Act of Parliament. If you go through a form of marriage with a woman a day before a new marriage law takes effect, you will go to prison, and subsequently to hell, for bigamy; whereas, if you go through the same ceremony with the same woman the day after, you will live in the odour of sanctity and finally go to heaven. No, Rhodes, we will have to seek deeper than that for our standards.”

  “Then,” said I, “how would you define immorality?”

  “As that,” said Taverner, “which retards the evolution of the group soul of the society to which one belongs. There are times when law-breaking is the highest ethical act; we can all think of such occasions in history, the many acts of conformity, both Catholic and Protestant, for example. Martyrs are law-breakers, and most of them were legally convicted at the time of their execution; it has remained for subsequent ages to canonise them.”

  “But to return to practical politics, Taverner, what are you going to do with Winnington?”

  “Certify him,” said Taverner, “and ship him off to the county asylum as soon as we can get the ambulance.”

  “You must do as you see fit,” I replied, “but I am damned if I will put my name on that certificate.”

  “You lack the courage of your convictions, but may I take it that you do not protest?”

  “How the hell can I? I should only get certified myself.”

  “You must expect your good to be evil spoken of in this wicked world,” rejoined my partner, and the discussion was likely to have developed into the first quarrel we had ever had when the door suddenly opened and the nurse stood there.

  “Doctor,” she said, “Mr. Winnington has passed away.”

  “Thank God!” said I.

  “Good Lord!” said Taverner.

  We went upstairs and stood beside that which lay upon the bed. Never before had I so clearly realised that the physical form is not the man. Here was a house that had been tenanted by two distinct entities, that had stood vacant for thirty-six hours, and that now was permanently empty. Soon the walls would crumble and the roof fall in. How could I ever have thought that this was my friend? A quarter of a mile away the soul that had built this habitation was laughing in its sleeve, and somewhere, probably in the dispensary, a furious entity that had recently been imprisoned behind its bars, was raging impotently, nosing at the stoppers of the poison bottles for the stimulants it no longer had the stomach to hold. My knees gave under me, and I dropped into a chair, nearer fainting than I have ever been since my first operation.

  “Well, that is settled, any way,” I said in a voice that sounded strange in my own ears.

  “You think so? Now I consider the trouble is just beginning,” said Taverner. “Has it struck you that so long as Bellamy was imprisoned in a body we knew where he was, and could keep him under control; but now he is loose in the unseen world, and will take a considerable amount of catching.”

  “Then you think he will try to interfere with his wife and—and her husband?”

  “What would you do if you were in his shoes?” said Taverner.

  “And yet you don’t consider the transaction is immoral?”

  “I do not. It has done no harm to the group spirit, or the social morale, if you prefer the term. On the other hand, Winnington is running an enormous risk. Can he keep Bellamy at bay now he is out of the body? and if he cannot, what will happen? Remember Bellamy’s time to die had not come, and therefore he will hang about, an earth-bound ghost, like that of a suicide; and if tuberculosis is a disease of the vital forces, as I believe it to be, how long will it be before the infected life that now ensouls it will cause the old trouble to break out in Bellamy’s body? And when Bellamy the second is out on the astral plane—dead, as you call it—what will Bellamy the first have to say to him? And what will they do to Mrs. Bellamy between them, making her neighbourhood their battleground?

  “No, Rhodes, there is no special hell for those who dabble in forbidden things, it would be superfluous.”

  JULES DE G
RANDIN IN

  THE JEST OF WARBURG TANTAVUL

  SEABURY QUINN

  Although Victor Rousseau’s stories about Ivan Brodsky had been syndicated through major city newspapers in 1909–10, and the stories about Semi Dual by John U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith had been appearing in the Munsey pulps since 1912, there had been no series about an occult detective in the specialist pulp magazines in the United States until Seabury Quinn introduced Jules de Grandin and his chronicler and co-adventurer Dr. Trowbridge in “The Horror on the Links” in the October 1925 issue of Weird Tales. There were also the Simon Iff stories by occultist Aleister Crowley, which ran in The Internationalist during 1917, and the Godfrey Usher stories by Herman Landon in Detective Story Magazine during 1918, but these are minor pieces, which scarcely qualify as genuine psychic sleuths. Iff is a magician, but the only skills he uses to resolve a mystery (which he tends to do as an armchair detective enjoying outdoing his colleagues at the Club) is from his psychoanalytical abilities. Godfrey Usher solves mundane crime by using intuition. But with Jules de Grandin we are thrown to the wolves, literally, as he and Trowbridge use all their medical and occult knowledge to battle every conceivable enemy from werewolves and vampires, human or beast, dead or alive, or any combination thereof. What’s more, whereas previous writers had produced maybe a half-dozen or so stories about their investigator, Quinn kept on writing them for over twenty-five years, resulting in ninety-three stories including one complete novel. It still stands as the longest-running occult detective series. Jules de Grandin bears some comparison with Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, although he is French rather than Belgian. Both he and Trowbridge are physicians, but de Grandin had also served with the French Sûreté and had spent years studying the occult in Asia and Africa. With a series so long, Quinn was able to experiment with a variety of subjects and ideas, as the following story shows.

  By profession Seabury Quinn (1889–1969) was a lawyer specializing in medical jurisprudence, and he edited several trade journals including the magazine for morticians, Casket & Sunnyside, from 1926 to 1937. Yet he was a prolific writer and amongst his others works, not involving de Grandin, are the novella Roads (1948—originally in Weird Tales in 1938), the erotic Egyptian fantasy Alien Flesh (1977), and the collections Is the Devil a Gentleman? (1970), Night Creatures (2003), and Demons of the Night (2009). A selection of the de Grandin stories was first collected as The Phantom Fighter in 1966, but the definitive edition runs to five volumes, The Horror on the Links, The Devil’s Rosary, The Dark Angel, A Rival from the Grave, and Black Moon (2017–19).