The House that Stood Still

by A. E. van Vogt

  He scrambled to his feet and flung one arm around Stephens’ neck. He was a tall man, about as big as Stephens, who was on the strapping side himself. Before Stephens could brace himself, he was flung around by the other’s powerful grip, to face the room.

  “Fellows and gals,” Howland bellowed, “I want you to meet my old pal, Allison Stephens. Did this guy ever strike it rich—and I still don’t know how he did it. He’s agent for the estate that owns the whole damn country around here.”

  He waved his hand with the glass in it to take in a generous half of the world. The glass banged against Stephens’ shoulder, and the liquor in it slopped down as. far as his trousers. Howland didn’t seem to notice, but Stephens cursed him silently for a fool. The district attorney was roaring in a deep baritone voice:

  “I want everybody to understand that Stephens is my pal . . . I’m inviting him to this party, so treat him just like you would me . . . Okay, Stephens, I want to talk to you later on, but right now the place is yours . . .”

  With a grin, he shoved Stephens into a milling group of women. “He’s yours, gals, and still single.”

  They were good-natured about it. One of them took out a handkerchief, and dabbed at his coat, murmuring, “That ham actor—he used to be an actor, you know.”

  Stephens drank for a while with a small group of females of widely varying ages. When he finally broke away from them, he had no idea what the conversation had been about. He found Howland entwined with a tall, stately girl who laid herself limply down on the floor the moment Stephens pulled the district attorney’s arms from around her waist.

  “Go away!” she mumbled. “I wanna sleep.”

  She seemed to sleep immediately. The big man appeared unaware for a moment that he had been detached from his girl friend. It seemed to dawn on him suddenly, for he squirmed in Stephens’ grasp.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?” he said loudly. ‘That dame has been like an icicle ever since I took office, and just when I get myself wrapped around her, you—”

  He stopped. He blinked at Stephens, seemed to sober somewhat, and grabbed his wrist.

  “Just the man I want to see,” he said. “Got something I want you to read. Meant to show it to Tannahill, but he didn’t turn up. Came special delivery this morning.” He smirked knowingly. “Pretty smart guy, that boss of yours, but I’d give a dollar to know what his game is. Come in to my office.”

  He unlocked a drawer and took out a folded sheet. Stephens unfolded it and read frowningly. The letter was typed, but it was not signed. It said:

  Dear Mr. Howland:

  If you will open the grave of Newton Tannahill, you will find that the coffin is empty. The resemblance between the uncle and nephew is rather startling, don’t you think? Draw your own conclusions about that and about the Negro caretaker who was found dead last night.

  With pursed lips, Stephens reread the note, trying to fit it into the confused pattern of recent events. Whether or not it was true, somebody was evidently attempting to stir up trouble. From the large room outside a dozen throats burst simultaneously into drunken laughter. Somebody shouted something. Glasses clinked with a musical chiming. The babble of conversation continued.

  Stephens licked his lips and glanced at Howland. The man’s chin was sunk low on his chest and he seemed to be asleep. Howland made a sudden move, and muttered: “I can’t understand it. What would make a man pretend to die so that he could inherit his own money? Doesn’t make sense. How could he suddenly look younger?”

  He subsided. Stephens shook his head and shoved the note into the drawer from which Howland had taken it. Then he locked the drawer and put the key in the D. A.’s vest pocket. Howland did not stir.

  The shouting of the drunks followed Stephens down the staircase. It did not fade out until he had closed behind him the outer door of the building.

  He climbed into his car, and sat soberly considering his next move. “I’ve got to see Tannahill,’’ he told himself.

  He started the motor, and drove along to a newsstand. In the paper he bought, the account of the death had been cut down to a single column three inches long. It related succinctly how the body of the Negro caretaker, John Ford, had been discovered the night before in a half-filled Mayan “drowning well” by the newly arrived Arthur Tannahill. All the rest of the front page was devoted to the arrival of Tannahill in Almirante. There was a picture of a slim young man with a lean, handsome face. It was a tired looking face, but the paper explained that also. Young Tannahill had for nearly two years been a patient in an eastern hospital suffering from a serious wound in the head, the result of an accidental shooting, and he was still recuperating.

  The story gushed over into the inside pages, and became a sketchy history of the Tannahill family. Stephens, who had read a somewhat fuller and equally eulogistic .account at the Almirante public library finally folded the paper, and wondered, what next?

  He decided to phone the Grand House again. Sergeant Gray answered, “Nope, not back yet.”

  Stephens had dinner in a combination restaurant and cocktail lounge called contentment bar. He felt dissatisfied with his position. He wasn’t doing enough. The worst of it was, Tannahill must be unaware of the danger he was in. Nor was Stephens sure of what it was.

  He finished the meal, and drank an extra cup of coffee while he reread, carefully this time, the news account about Tannahill.

  One of the points made was that “. . . Young Mr. Tannahill is not known to his fellow townsmen, having visited here only on two occasions when he was a boy. He went to school in New York and in Europe. The bullet that injured him affected him so severely that he remained unconscious for a year and seventeen days. This does not include the period from April 24th to May 5th of this year when, apparently suffering from shock, he wandered from the hospital. His recovery has been slow, and unfortunately his memory of certain events of his life remains hazy as a result of his wound.”

  The dates given for Tannahill’s disappearance startled Stephens. “I can check that,” he thought, “now!”

  With a sense of urgency and excitement, he hurried to the door and outside. It was dark, and that pleased him; for his purpose needed the cover of night. The knowledge of his destination gave him an empty feeling, but he had to quiet the suspicion which had been planted in his mind. As the Tannahill lawyer on the scene, he had to obtain all the information he could. He made the drive to the graveyard at the northwestern part of the city in four minutes, and found a map of the cemetery on the wall of the gatehouse. Having located the Tannahill plot on it, he parked his car under a tree and headed along a dark pathway. When he came to the north fence, he turned east and knew that he was close. He began to peer at the markings on headstones. Five minutes later, he found the Tannahill plot.

  He edged along an iron fence and through a gate with an overhead trellis. The name hung down in metal letters from the trellis and even in the dark, lighted by the flashlight from his car, it made a pretty picture. Inside were nearly a dozen headstones. Stephens bent over the nearest. The lettering on it was Spanish, and the name was curiously spelled. It said:

  Francisco de Tanequila Y Merida

  febrero 4, 1709 — julio 3,1770

  The next name was still in the Spanish form. The dates were 1740-1803. The third headstone had the name in an English variation for the first time. Tannehill with an e instead of an a. That particular forefather had died in 1852. He must have witnessed the beginning of the gold-rush.

  Stephens was moving along in a quieter fashion now, the feeling of urgency gone from him. The age of the graves impressed him, the long back history of the Tannahills brought a kind of pride that he was now connected with the family. He tried to picture Francisco de Tanequila being borne down the mountain and buried here on a bright day of 1770. Before the revolution, he thought. Long and long ago. The roots of the Tannahill family were deep in this soil.

  He grew conscious of how cool the night had become. A wind was blow
ing from the sea. It rustled through the trees, and the leaves shook in their steady whispering song, the same song they had sung during all the nights since those quiet graves had been dug.

  He bent low, and peered down at the headstone of the end grave. The light silhouetted the name:

  Newton Tannahill

  Stephens reread the death date below the name to make sure, then slowly straightened. He felt the weariness of a man who has come to the end of a long trail. Newton Tannahill, the uncle, had been buried on May 3rd, last. From April 24th to May 5th, Arthur Tannahill, the nephew, had been missing from his bed in the hospital.

  Stephens was turning away from the headstone when there was a faint sound behind him. Something hard and blunt jabbed into the small of his back, and a voice said softly:

  “Careful, don’t move!”

  Stephens hesitated, and then, realizing that he had no reasonable alternative, accepted the defeat.

  IV

  There was silence in the darkness under the trees of the graveyard. Stephens tensed to take advantage of the slightest opportunity. If they tried to bind him, he’d fight. Behind him, the soft voice said:

  “I want you to sit down, cross-legged. Nothing will happen to you if you do as I say.”

  It was the use of the first person singular that calmed Stephens. He had been intent on the thought that there were several men against him. But the “I” had a tone behind it—he couldn’t have described it—that left no doubt. This was one man. He had no intention of obeying blindly, however.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Why not talk like this?”

  There was a curt laugh. “Because you might make a sudden move. Sitting cross-legged, you’d have a hard time attacking me.” The man’s voice lost its softness. “Get down!” he said sharply.

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Get down!”

  The other’s tone was hard and convincing, and the blunt object pressed more firmly into Stephens’ back. Reluctantly, cursing under his breath, he crouched down. He sat there, still tensed, determined that he would submit to no further indignities.

  “What the hell do you want?” he said harshly.

  “What’s your name?” The voice was soft again. When Stephens had given it, the man was silent for several seconds, then: “I seem to have heard that name somewhere before. What do you do for a living?”

  Stephens told him.

  “A lawyer, eh? I think I’ve placed you now. Peeley mentioned you. I didn’t pay any particular attention.”

  “Peeley!” said Stephens. The realization flashed on him then. “My God,” he said. “You’re Tannahill!”

  “I’m Tannahill.”

  The identification took a tremendous weight from Stephens’ nervous system. He rose to his feet, saying urgently:

  “Mr. Tannahill, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  “Don’t turn!”

  Stephens stopped with his heel dug deeply into the dirt. He was astounded by the sharp hostility of the command. Tannahill went on quietly:

  “Mr. Stephens, I don’t accept anyone at his face value. So you will just remain with your back to me until we have cleared up a few points.”

  “I’m sure,” said Stephens, “I can convince you that I am the local agent of your estate, and that I am acting in your interests.” He was beginning to realize what Peeley had meant in his telegram. The Tannahill heir must be carefully handled.

  “We’ll see,” was the noncommittal reply. “You say you’ve been looking all over for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you came here?”

  Stephens could see suddenly what Tannahill was getting at. He had a brief, vivid picture of himself peering at the names on gravestones with the aid of a flashlight. His mind leaped beyond that to the reason for the presence of the other man. He realized instantly that, before he could ask any questions, he would have to explain his whole position.

  As succinctly as possible he described everything that had happened since he had left his house that afternoon. When he came to the note which Howland had shown him, he paused to remark:

  “I had a thought about that, and it brought me here to check up on a couple of dates.”

  The other man made no comment, but waited till Stephens finished his account. And even then he was silent for at least a minute before he finally said, “Let’s sit under those trees. I’ve got to talk to somebody.”

  Stephens noticed that he limped badly. There seemed to be no pain involved, for he settled down to the grass easily enough. As Stephens seated himself, Tannahill spoke again:

  “Do you think they’ll open the grave?”

  Stephens was startled. He hadn’t actually got that far, but he recognized that the question struck to the heart of the problem. He wondered if this meant the grave was empty . . . He hesitated, thinking of the fact that District Attorney Frank Howland had been dismissed as local agent of the Tannahill estate, and that, being a principal figure in the Adams-Howland-Porter machine, he was in a position to do great damage to his former employer.

  He said slowly, “I’m afraid, sir, I can’t answer that question. I’ve called Peeley, and as soon as he arrives we’ll go and see Howland and ask him if he has managed to trace the writer of that note. Have you any idea who it could be?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,’’ was the curt answer.

  Stephens bit his lip, then said, “I’ll be happy to answer all your questions, Mr. Tannahill, but I do know the local situation, and it’s possible I could get at the root of this matter very quickly.”

  Tannahill said, “Stephens, my side of this affair is very simple. I have been in a hospital for a long time, paralyzed in my left side. I was unconscious for over a year after I was wounded. Late last April, I disappeared from the hospital, and I was found on the steps on May 5th, still unconscious. I regained consciousness about a week later. Three weeks after that, I received a letter from a woman signing herself Mistra Lanett—What’s the matter?”

  Stephens had uttered an exclamation. But all he said was, “Go on, sir.”

  Tannahill hesitated, and then continued: “Miss Lanett identified herself as the secretary of Newton Tannahill, who had apparently died and been buried coincidentally with my absence from the hospital. She went on to say that I would shortly be notified that I was the sole heir to his estate. I was subsequently advised that I had inherited one of the large fortunes of California. I could have moved here then, and hired a hospital staff of my own, but I had two reasons for staying on where I was. The first reason was that I had great faith in one of the doctors at the hospital. He refused all my bribes to get him out here, but he did justify my faith; for I can walk, slowly to be sure—but walk. The other reason has to do with a vague dream-like memory of something that happened to me during the period that I was missing from the hospital. I won’t tell you anything about that, but it decided me that, when I came here, it wouldn’t be as an invalid.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Events seem to have justified that also.”

  He was silent for a long moment, then in a tone that was slightly harsher, he went on: “On the morning after I arrived here—when I was still at the hotel—I was visited by three men, one of them a small Mexican Indian with an enormous nose: They pretended to be old friends of mine and identified themselves as Tezlacodanal—that was the Indian; Cahunja, who looked like a half-breed, and a chap whose name I can’t recall, though it was given. They persisted in addressing me as Newton Tannahill, which, as you know, was my uncle’s name. I had no fear of them, but in order to gain time for private investigations of my own, I signed a letter which they presented to me.”

  “Letter?” Stephens echoed.

  “It was addressed to Peeley,” Tannahill went on, “and in it I authorized him to continue the payments he had been making to members of the Pan-American Club—that was the name. I added the clause that this authorization m
ust be reaffirmed by me every six months. They offered no objection, and in view of my ignorance of the matter I feel that I got off rather easily.”

  “You felt that your life was being threatened?”

  ‘’N-no! It was the strangeness of their identification of me as my uncle that decided me.”

  Stephens looped his mind back over what Tannahill had said about the letter. “The phrase ‘continue payments already made’ was definitely in it?” he asked finally.

  “Yes.”

  “Well—” It was relieving to be able to say it— “that seems to indicate there was previous association. We can ask Mr. Peeley about it.” He added, “But why would they think you were your uncle? He was at least twenty years older . . .”

  Tannahill did not.answer immediately. When he finally spoke again, his voice sounded far away, and there was no indication of anger in it. He said:

  “Stephens, I am subject to nightmares. In the hospital, I had strange dreams in which fantastic figures appeared. Once I seemed to be in a coffin. Another time I saw myself here in Almirante, California, looking down at the old sea. I remembered the house blurrily, as if was gazing at it through a thick haze. Of course, Peeley had sent me some books about it—there are several you know—and what I read probably colored my dreams. Awarding to the books the Grand House is old beyond the memory of white men. As you may know, its architecture is pre-Mayan. When you see the long formal steps that run the full length of the front, you get more an impression of a temple than of a house, though the inside has been very skillfully made over for living purposes. When I was in the coffin—”

  He stopped. In the darkness of the cemetery there was silence. Finally: “If you read the papers,” said Tannahill, “you know the rest.”

  Stephens said, “A little while ago you mentioned Mistra Lanett Did you say she was your uncle’s secretary?”

  “Yes.”

  Stephens pondered that in a gathering astonishment. It was one thing he’d never have suspected. The connection of the Mexican Import Company and that ruthless group with Tannahill was something he’d have to think over. It would be dangerous to drag it in now when the other was still suspicious of him. The whole thing sounded as fantastic as Tannahill’s own story. Stephens thought grimly: We could never tell anything like that to an Adams-Howland-Porter courtroom.