The Best of Weird Tales 1923

by Marvin Kaye

  “‘But the vase was taken from the Persian debris; you yourself saw it, this very morning!’

  “‘Perhaps.’

  “‘Yet you would—lie?’

  “‘Perhaps.’

  “‘But why? Can’t you grasp it? It means,’ I reiterated patiently, ‘a big discovery concerning Greek art, and Greek art is the basis of other arts. You wouldn’t keep that knowledge from the world? Oh, you’re afraid of losing—but whether the vase goes to a Greek museum or to our museum, is nothing compared to the fact it will establish. You simply don’t understand!’

  “‘It’s you,’ said Lutz softly, ‘who misunderstands. Did I neglect to tell you that I paid for the vase with a check on my own bank?’

  “‘You didn’t draw on the fund?’

  “‘No.’

  “‘Why—what—?’

  “‘So you see, old top, you haven’t been getting me quite straight: this cylix is my find!’

  “‘What do you mean?’

  “He colored then, beneath his dark skin. ‘It’s not for the college museum; it’s for—my own private museum. I mean to make it the start of the very finest private collection in the States.’ He held out his hand for my half of the cup.

  “But I drew back, hugged the fragment against my breast. ‘Do you stand there and tell me that you’re not a scientist at all, but a greedy sensualist? You will remember, Lutz, that you’re here for the college, sent by the college—’

  “‘And I’ve worked like the devil for the college!’ he broke in roughly. ‘I’ll continue to work for the college through all the regular channels. But this thing’s not regular; it’s most—irregular; and the irregularity is my own doing. I’ll keep this vase for myself, and I’ll suffer my own damnation for it. If you’ll kindly hand over that piece—’

  “Then I flared: ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. If you think you can gag me to silence—force me to sit still and blink at your dirty greed—No, I’ll keep this half as guarantee to us both that you’ll see the light of day and do the right thing!’

  “We had it hot, then. He had paid for it with his own money, had not touched a penny of the college fund; he had me there.

  “But I swore, if he insisted upon taking the fragment from me, that I should report him to Greek authorities who watched that no Greek treasures should go from the country without government

  sanction.

  “That held him. He desisted, even tried to square himself with me. Probably Lutz merely delayed the issue until we should be safely out of Greece. For myself, I was firmly resolved that I should finally prevail upon him; and I did not doubt that I should publish my article and either return the vase to Greece or hand it over to my college museum.

  “Meantime, we sailed for home, taking passage, as we had planned, on a small trading vessel that wound a leisurely circle about the Atlantic islands and certain South American ports before it brought up and dropped anchor in New York Bay. The truce still held. Each of us guarded jealously his half of the vase, and each kept aloof from the other.

  “It was a childish situation. I tried to tell myself that he was only a willful, spoiled boy, acting in character, but my secret hatred of him grew out of all proportion to the quarrel, which was serious enough, truly.

  IV

  “There was an implicit understanding between us that the reckoning would come when the ship landed us on home soil. But the ship was destined not to land.

  “We were in mid-Atlantic, some eight hundred miles off the Cape Verde Islands and bound for Porto Seguro, when the crash came. It was night, with a heavy gale blowing, and at first I thought the sudden wrench which almost jerked me from my upper berth was a particularly violent wave. Then a grinding and shuddering through all the ship’s frame and an abrupt cessation of the engine’s throbbing, pulled me stark awake. I hung over the edge of my birth:

  “‘What is it?’

  “‘Don’t know,’ yawned Lutz below, struggling from luxurious sleep. ‘Better find out—what? ‘s a damn nuisance—’

  “I groped for the light, and we got into clothes, the ship pitching now so that it was impossible to keep a footing. We spoke no further word, but Lutz paused in drawing on his trousers to take from beneath his pillow the box which contained his half of the precious vase; and I reached for my own piece, and kept it by me while I finished lacing my shoes. Each of us eyed the other suspiciously; and Lutz was quick to follow me when, with my treasure, I mounted to the ship’s deck.

  “The little boat wallowed there in the trough of the sea, a dead and passive thing. With its heart stilled, it seemed strangely aloof from the wild sounds of the storm and the shrill cries of men—as a clock which has stopped ticking off the time is aloof from the currents of noisy life which flow past it.

  “Apparently the crew had gone wild, and the captain, too, had completely lost his head, for we passed him sobbing on the deck, unable to give us a coherent word. The men were fighting like freshmen in a college rush over lifeboats which they were attempting to lower to the water.

  “‘No chance here,’ growled Lutz. ‘Lord, let’s get out of this mess!’

  “I trailed him forward, battling against the wind and the waves which broke over the deck. Once I stumbled over a big brute who was on his knees blubbering like a child. I shook him: “What did we hit?’

  “‘Reef. She’s a-goin’ down, sir—a goin’ down. May the good, kind Lord have mercy—’

  “Another time I might have pitied this snivelling creature who could not die like a man, but now I stepped over him, intent upon keeping an eye upon Lutz, even as he was intent upon keeping an eye upon me. Lutz was far forward, clinging to a rail, staring over the ship’s side. I reached him, clung with him, and followed his gaze.

  “There below us, close against the ship, bobbled a little white dory, looking as frail as an eggshell upon the dim, surging mass of waters; it had been launched probably in the first wild moment, and then abandoned for the heavier, more seaworthy boats.

  “‘A chance,’ spoke Lutz. ‘I’ll—risk it!’

  “He turned to me then, and his eye rested speculatively upon the pocket of my coat which held the vase.

  “‘No, you don’t!’ I said sharply. ‘I’ll take that risk with you.’

  “We stood measuring each other. It was a contest of wills that threatened any moment to degenerate into a physical struggle. ‘Oh, I see you are thinking it unlikely’—Twining’s long-fingered, nervous old hand shaded his eyes from the candlelight—‘that we two men should have stood there wrestling over a Greek vase when any moment threatened to plunge us into eternity. But if you cannot believe that, young man, then you know nothing of the collector’s passion or the scholar’s passion.

  “We measured each other, I say—oh, quietly. All about us was the terror of the storm—the same wash and slap and snarl that you hear now about this very house; and concentrating upon him, probing him, my heart filled with intense hatred of him, slowly and surely, as a jug that is held under a single stream fills with water—such a hatred as threatened to overflow—a killing hatred! There, on just such a night as this, murder was born in me—murder, I tell you!

  “The crisis passed. Unexpectedly, Lutz gave in: ‘Oh, all right; together still—for a little time—’

  “A wave drenched us. We recovered, strained into the darkness to determine whether the little dory had been swamped. But no, she still rode the sea, miraculously right side up.

  “‘Come along, then!’ snapped Lutz. ‘There’s no time to waste.’

  “Our time was indeed short. We gathered what store of things we could together, and since the decks of the ship were by this time ominously close to the water, the drop into the tossing small dory was easier than it might have been. Lutz took the oars. Some way he had maneuvered us about the bow of the ship, and now we were clear of the sinking vessel, carried swiftly away from it by the sea.

  “The rest is a blur. I recall dark shapes—bits of bobbing wreckage—and the w
hite circle of an empty life saver. I did not see the ship go down. One minute there were lights; and the next minute there was darkness over all the ocean, and the human voices had subsided into the voices of wind and water. For the sea itself claimed all my attention and held it.

  “That night was a business of separate, marching waves, with a separate prayer for each wave, that it would not break at the wrong moment. A hundred times I shut my eyes and abandoned hope, and a

  hundred times I opened them and found us safe. Lutz, an athlete in his day, hung onto the oars, but he was powerless against that surge of water. It was only a miracle which kept us afloat. Our little dory rode the waves like a cork, but she still rode them.

  “With the breaking of the sullen dawn, the wind died. The rain settled to a steady downpour, and the waves, as the day wore on, subsided to the long, low rollers that last for hours after such a gale. The gray sea was a vast, unbroken stretch without a trace of life; perhaps the miracle that had saved our frail boat had not held for those heavier dories…

  “Anyway, to cut it short, we drifted that day without sight of a single vessel. Wet through and numb with cold, I was glad to take a shift at the oars while Lutz slept. Our hastily gathered provisions were found to consist of half a pail of soda biscuits, a lantern without oil, some miscellaneous ropes and tarpaulins—and that was all!

  “We ate sparingly of the biscuits, drank rain water caught in the cracker pail. Our boat, we discovered, was leaking badly through seams in the bow; so we crowded as much weight to the stern of the craft as we could, and I was kept busy bailing out the water.

  “Late in the afternoon, when the situation looked worst, we perceived a black speck upon the horizon.

  The speck grew into a pile of dark rocks—bare and uninhabited, we saw, as the current carried us close.

  Somehow, we gained the sheltered side of the island, and there, in a narrow inlet, achieved a landing.

  The mass of rocks was perhaps fourteen hundred feet long and half as wide. It rose abruptly from the sea, a lonely, desolate pile. The only life was sea gulls, insects and spiders, and a few fish in the surrounding waters. We were together there on the island for four days.

  “Through all those four days, half starved and suffering from exposure as we were, Lutz and I nursed each his own half of the cylix and kept a watchful eye upon the other half. The strain of the situation grew intolerable. Now through what follows I don’t know how to account for myself; whether it was a fever working in my blood—but no, I was coldly, calculatingly sane as I laid my plans. Yet before that crisis I had never in my life been a vicious man.

  “You see, figuring our location from the ship’s map as near as I could remember it, I came to believe that this solitary rock was one visited and described by Darwin in his investigation of volcanic islands.

  If it was the island I believed it to be, then it lay off the ocean lines and was very rarely passed by ships. Our chance of being rescued, if we stayed on the island then, was slight.

  “I did not mention these deductions to Lutz. Nor, after Lutz had eaten our last cracker, did I tell him of my own small reserve supply of concentrated meat, which I carried always in my pocket at that time to save the trouble of too frequent meals. At first I did not myself comprehend the drift of my own thoughts.

  “Then, on the second night, while Lutz slept under a tarpaulin and while I fought off a twisting hunger, I saw the event quite clearly. Lutz would be the first to succumb to weakness; I would hold on longer than he could. The boat was our best risk, but in its present leaky condition it was unseaworthy for two men. Now one man, huddled back in the stern … there was just a chance. And the vase—the whole vase—in my possession; and my article secure…

  “Deliberately, I broke off a piece of the dried meat, which I had not touched until that moment.

  “Perhaps I should have weakened in my course and divided my slender provision with him—I do not know. But on the following morning Lutz, sprawled on his stomach over the rock’s edge, with his pocketknife tied to a pole, managed to spear a small fish. He did not share with me. Desperate for food, he devoured the thing raw, and the sight nauseated and hardened me.

  “I begrudged him the strength he was storing up; but I did not doubt the issue. For all his athletic build, Lutz was soft with soft living. Moreover, my will was stronger than his. So I ate sparingly of my dried meat while Lutz slept, and I maintained a patient watch over the Euphronios fragment which was not yet in my hands.

  “Meantime, I kept up some pretense of friendship and good cheer with him. He insisted upon piling up wet driftwood for a fire in case a ship should come our way, and I encouraged him to the effort; though we had no matches, he thought he might manage a spark, and while I knew that this rock was too soft to serve as flint, I agreed with him.

  “I watched him burn up energy and grow hourly weaker, and waited … waited…

  V

  “Murder was in the air between us, and since those things breed, I wondered that a murdering hatred of me did not spring up in his heart to match my own, and that he did not tackle me there on the rocks and fight it out with me.

  “But no—though I sometimes fancied he looked at me oddly, he remained amiable. Lutz was as determined as I to have his way about the vase; beyond that, he was still my friend in his loose, selfish way—my friend as much as he had ever been. As my friend, Lutz, gross and unscrupulous as he was, could never have guessed the thing that was going on in my mind. That was my great sin, the crime that makes me doubly cursed; it was my friend whom I betrayed—a man who was bound to me in

  friendship.

  “When, on the fourth day, the rain ceased, and a hot, tropical sun blazed out and dried up the pools in the rocks which had furnished our water, I felt myself slipping. The heat on those naked rocks was worse than the chilling rain. A fever grew in me. I could not afford to wait longer. While my companion drowsed in a kind of stupor, I gathered a few things into the boat, stowed my own precious fragment in a concealed nook far up in the bow, and then moved cautiously toward Lutz.

  “A dizziness seized me … but I went on … I had rehearsed it all fifty times, you understand, so that I knew every move by heart; and though my memory of the actual events is not clear, I must have gone through with it as I had planned. I suppose I may have awakened him in shoving off the boat, for I have a hazy recollection of a fight.

  “And when I came to, alone in the dory, in a calm blue sea, I felt a soreness at my throat, and afterward I was to find black finger marks there, which I carried with me for days. Perhaps I had actually killed him, left him in a heap on the rocks—I couldn’t remember. But whether I had murdered him outright with my own hands or not, it did not matter; I had murdered him as surely by abandoning him there on that forgotten island and taking the one chance for myself. I was a murderer by intent and by cold calculation—a murderer of my friend and colleague!”

  “And your own fate?” I prompted old “Tinker” Twining gently.

  “I was picked up several days later, in a state of semi-consciousness, by a small passenger steamer, just as I had foreseen. In the long voyage home, I lived through nightmares. I felt impelled to confess the truth and to beg the Captain to turn back for Lutz, but I knew that it was now too late. I suffered alone as I deserved to suffer.

  “There were nights when I felt my fingers sinking into the flesh of his throat … other nights when I looked at my own hands and could not believe it. My half of the vase—did I tell you that I must somehow have failed to secure Lutz’s half, strong as my determination had been, since only this fragment was found in the dory, hidden under the bow where I had placed it? This piece, though I hated it in my reaction, I kept always before me as the reminder, the sackcloth and ashes of my sin.

  “The steamer landed me in Boston, and I wandered up here to the Cape. Since the Agricola had gone down with all souls reported lost, I was dead to the world. That was well, for, having murdered my friend for a piece of pot
tery, I was unfit for human society. This penalty of my crime followed as a natural sequence: to drop out of the world and the work I loved; to read no books and to take no periodicals on my own subject; in short, to give up the thing that was most vital to me. That would be prison for me—a prison worse than most criminals ever know.

  “I found this remote house, got in touch with my lawyer at home, and, having pledged him to secrecy, arranged that my small, yearly income should be paid regularly to a T. Twining at this address. I had no close relatives, and the old lawyer has long since died, leaving my affairs in the hands of an incurious younger partner. There was no hitch.

  “So I settled here, and eked out my income with this painting. Though I fixed my own terms of imprisonment, I have lived up to them. In all those forty years I have permitted myself no inquiries and I have heard no news of anyone I ever knew in the old days. I have virtually buried myself alive.

  “Ah, you are thinking it wrong of me to have buried, too, the half of this valuable cylix, since, fragment though it is, it would have been sufficient to establish the fact. Perhaps it was wrong. But, don’t you see, I could establish nothing without first revealing my identity and giving my word as a scientist that the shard came from the Persian debris? That way lay danger—the danger of being drawn back into the old life; there, too, lay honor for me who deserved nothing but contempt.

  “And always in the background there was Lorna Story. No, the temptations were too many; I could not risk it. But I have bequeathed that knowledge to posterity; I have left a written confession and a statement. Tell me—you have recently come out of the world—you don’t think it will be too late after my death, do you?”

  Though I had some shadowy idea of what extensive excavations and what far-reaching discoveries had been made in the classical world of recent years, I assured the old man that it would perhaps not be too late. I had not the heart to rob him of the little outworn theory that he hugged close.