Simon’s face clouded. “I wish the Abbot General had told me this earlier. Thank you, Brother Richard.”
We left the little room then, and went back along the passageways with their drab sameness. Simon Ark was silent as we walked, and the silence seemed thick and clinging.
“What does it mean, Simon?” I asked him.
But he did not answer. …
The Abbot General looked up and frowned as we entered. “I have visited them all,” he said. “None are missing a tassel except Father Mark.”
“Father,” Simon Ark said, “why didn’t you tell us about the strange things happening in your monastery? The ringing bells, the attempt to enter Brother Ling’s room. …”
Suddenly the Abbot General looked very old. “They are like my children, Mister Ark. I try to guide them, to lead them on the path to God. But sometimes…”
“What is it, Father?”
“I… I don’t know. It is evil, evil in the heart of one of them. In the heart, or in the mind.”
“Tell me,” Simon Ark insisted.
“Whichever one it is, we’re convinced he doesn’t remember what he does.”
Simon Ark nodded. “And the devil came into his mind at the Hour of None. … Come. We must put an end to this.”
The Abbot General rose from behind his desk. “No. …”
“We must, Father. We must.”
And then we left the Abbot General’s office. And outside, as night was falling, the shadows lengthened through the stone-clad halls. And all was silent except for the organ in the chapel.
We walked toward the sound, closer and closer, until it was all around us. And we saw Father Mark sitting at the great organ, playing with both hands, and gazing off into space.
“Father Mark,” Simon said, very quietly.
“Oh! Have you found out who stole my tassel yet?”
“No. Not yet. I have a picture for you to look at, Father.”
The priest’s innocent face turned toward us then, and his hands left the keys of the great organ. He looked at the small photograph in Simon Ark’s hand. “Do you recognize him, Father Mark?”
“Yes,” he said, with a voice that was far away. “Yes, that is Ho Su. He was our jailer for five years.”
Simon Ark did not speak.
Then, from above us, came the ringing of the bells once more, summoning the monks of John of the Cross to evening services.
Father Mark’s innocent face clouded.
Behind us, the monks were filing in, taking their places in the pews. I saw them all, the ones we’d met that day. Father Joseph, with his troubled memories of a prison in China. Father Michael, with his books and his vast knowledge. The Abbot General, with his simple goodness. Brother Richard, with his happy face.
They were all there, and then, all at once, they seemed to sense our presence behind them, at the organ. They turned, and looked at us.
And from above, the bell still rang.
Father Mark’s hand dropped from sight, and when it returned it held a gleaming sickle from the fields.
“Father…” Simon whispered.
“Get back,” the priest said, and his voice carried above the ringing of the bells.
The sickle glistened in the candlelight.
“Stop those bells!” Simon Ark shouted over his shoulder.
The Abbot General came up behind us, and his face was more gentle than I’d ever seen it. “Is this it, Mister Ark?”
“This is it, Father. I’m sorry, but this is it. It had to be one of them, you know.”
“But Father Mark…”
“You said the person didn’t remember doing any of these things. And you said his was the only missing tassel. But if the killer of Brother Richard didn’t remember the crime, then he couldn’t have tried to frame Father Mark for it. Father Mark himself must have done it. …”
The sickle moved an inch, and the priest before us breathed more heavily. He seemed to try to comprehend our words, but failed.
Above us, somewhere, the bells stopped ringing.
“Of course I wasn’t certain until just now,” Simon Ark continued, “when I showed him one of the photographs from Brother Ling’s room—a photo of Brother Ling taken in China. Even after years in the Orient, all Chinese looked alike to Father Mark. And in his sleeping mind Brother Ling became his jailer, Ho Su, the man who had tortured and killed Father Paul back there in that bell tower in China. …”
The Abbot General stepped forward. “Give me that sickle, my son. Ho Su is dead forever. Your work is done.”
“No. …”
“Brother Ling must have known he was going to possible death when he met Father Mark in the bell tower this afternoon. He tried to stop him, to rid him of the devils in his mind. But he failed. And in that final moment Father Mark struck out at the man who had tortured him for five long years. …”
“My son, give me the sickle. …”
Father Mark backed against the organ, and raised the gleaming, curving blade high above his head. …
And let it fall to the stone floor of the chapel. …
It was over. …
Later, much later, we left the monastery in the valley, and headed back through the rolling hills of West Virginia. And the morning was bright and sunny and very fresh and good.
And Simon Ark gazed off over the horizon and said, “Perhaps the real wonder is that only one of them cracked. The other two, Father Joseph and Father Michael, came through it, somehow.”
“With the help of God, maybe,” I said, and I was surprised to hear the words on my lips. “What will they do with him, Simon?”
“With the grace of God he will be back in a few years, back to the peace and calmness of John of the Cross. After all, in a way it was not really he who pushed Brother Ling from the tower. It was a Chinese guard named Ho Su who was the real murderer.”
“Yes,” I said. “But they were all really such good men, even Father Mark himself. …”
“As I said, my friend, Satan is never more successful than when he gains control of a holy man.”
A soft breeze gently moved the limbs above our head, and I inhaled the warm freshness of the air. “You know, Simon,” I said, “it’s Sunday morning. I’d sort of like to stop at a church somewhere on the way back to New York. …”
Simon Ark looked at me and smiled. “I think that can be arranged. …”
THE WITCH IS DEAD
HER REAL NAME WAS Helen Marie Carrio, but for more years than anyone could remember she’d been known simply as Mother Fortune. She was a large, plump woman, somewhere near seventy years old, though she might easily have passed for a hundred.
As her name might have implied, Mother Fortune made her meager living by predicting the future, by peering into a mammoth crystal ball and telling you just what you wanted to hear about yourself. It was a dying profession—especially in Westchester County in the second decade of the Atomic Age—but there were still many to whom her word was almost sacred.
There were others, however, who had widely different views on the subject of Mother Fortune. There were some, in fact, who even accused her of being a modern-day witch.
And perhaps she was.
In any event, Mother Fortune died as all good witches must—in a burst of flames that would have brought cries of envy from the judges of centuries agone.
It was perhaps one of the paradoxes of life, though, that Mother Fortune’s death was to prove even more fantastic than had her life. …
It was the first week in October, and the twelfth day of an early Fall heat wave that had amazed both forecasters and suburbanites, by sending the temperatures into the high eighties. I had taken the 5:12 train from New York, as I usually did on nights when things weren’t too busy at the office.
Actually, I suppose I noticed the man in the seat ahead of me right from the very start; but it wasn’t until he left the train with me at Hudsonville that I actually caught a glimpse of his face. It had been a long time since I’
d seen him, but that heavyset, wrinkled, yet somehow handsome, face was one you didn’t forget easily.
I caught up with him in front of the tiny building that served to link Hudsonville with the New Haven Railroad, and asked him, “You’re Simon Ark, aren’t you?”
The smile came at once to his tight lips. “Of course. It has been many years. …”
It had been many years. I’d first met Simon Ark in a little western mining town years before, when I was still a newspaper reporter. I hadn’t seen him since; but since he was probably the most unusual man I’d ever know, I wasn’t likely to forget him.
I led him to a coffee shop across the street, and over two steaming cups of black coffee I told him of my life during recent years. “I’m with Neptune Books now,” I said; “one of these paperbound book publishers. Been there about three years now. It’s a lot better than chasing politicians and police cars for a living. I married Shelly Constance, you know.”
“I’d heard,” Simon Ark said. “It’s quite good to see you again after all these years.”
“You certainly don’t look any older, Simon. What have you been doing with yourself?”
Simon Ark smiled again. “The usual things. I’ve been traveling mostly. To England, and other places.”
“I hope things weren’t as bad as in Gidaz.”
“Sometimes they were worse,” he replied, and the smile was no longer on his lips. “There is evil everywhere these days, and it is most difficult to separate the man-made evil from the more ancient type. …”
I’d formed many theories about Simon Ark since our brief encounter several years back, but I could see that I was still a long way from knowing the truth about him. He’d told me once that he was searching, searching for the ultimate evil, searching for the devil himself. And there were times when the look of his face seemed to tell me that he’d been searching a long, long time.
I lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee. “Well, what on earth are you doing up in Westchester, anyway? The most evil things up here are the commuters’ trains and this current heat wave.”
He frowned slightly at that. “You perhaps have not heard then about the remarkable events at the Hudsonville College for Women, or about the old woman who calls herself Mother Fortune.”
“I guess I haven’t. Maybe I don’t want to, if they’re the kind of thing to bring you to Hudsonville.”
“I hope that I am in time to prevent anything really serious,” he said, “but it is hard to say just yet.”
“What is it that’s happening, anyway?”
“Of course there hasn’t been any public announcement of it as yet—and there probably won’t be—but it seems that this woman named Mother Fortune fancies herself as something of a modern day witch. In any event, she has cast a spell of some kind over the girl students of Hudsonville College.”
I had to laugh at that. The whole idea of a witch invading a modern girls’ college was too much for me. “You’re not serious, certainly?”
“I fear that I am,” he told me. “Three of the girls are apparently near death, and some forty others have become ill.”
“Then there must be some other explanation,” I was quick to insist. “Things like that just don’t happen any more, at least not around Hudsonville.”
“Stranger things than that have happened in this world,” Simon Ark replied. “I’m going out to the school now. You may accompany me if you wish. …”
Hudsonville College for Women was like no other institute of higher learning anywhere in the east. Sixty years of traditions, plus millions of dollars from a few lucky endowments, had made it possible to recreate in Westchester some of the great wonders of ancient Rome.
At the very entrance to the campus was a line of pillars suggesting the remains of Apollo’s temple at Pompeii, and even the students’ chapel was an exact duplicate, in miniature, of the Church of San Francesco at Assisi. The main road through the campus was called, appropriately enough, the Appian Way. And the huge assembly hall, which could never be filled by Hudsonville’s moderate enrollment, was of course patterned on the Roman Forum. There was even a small bridge over a creek that bore a remarkable resemblance to Venice’s Rialto Bridge.
The whole thing was like taking a tour of all of Italy in a little over an hour; but whether it actually contributed to the task of turning out modern, cultured young ladies prepared for business and marriage was something I didn’t know. I suppose it did, however, attract a certain number of students whose mothers would otherwise have sent them up to Vassar or over to Bryn Mawr; and it had the distinction of getting regular picture stories in all the leading magazines by the simple method of staging annual pageants based on some forgotten lore of ancient Rome.
It was apparently Simon Ark’s first glimpse of the unusual campus, for he spent some minutes strolling around aimlessly before we finally headed for the administration building, which oddly enough was the only one that failed to carry out the old Roman motif. Instead, it was an ancient limestone structure that apparently dated from the college’s founding back in the mid-nineties, and had somehow survived, the Romanizing of the remainder of the college.
I’d called Shelly to tell her I’d be late for supper, though I didn’t really expect the trip to Hudsonville College to last too long. And I was still quite dubious about the whole thing when we were met at the door by a tall, scholarly-looking gentleman with a Roman nose that fitted in well with the rest of the campus.
“May I help you?” he asked quietly, and though his voice was polite I noticed that he was carefully blocking the doorway and barring our way.
“Possibly. I am Simon Ark, and this is a friend of mine. I heard that you have had some trouble here, and I thought I might be able to offer some assistance. …”
“We already have a doctor…” the tall man began.
“I’m not a doctor.”
“If you’re a newspaper reporter or anything like that, I can tell you right now we’ve nothing to say.”
Simon Ark grunted. “I’m not a reporter, either; but before I say any more could you tell us who you are?”
“Sorry,” the man said, smiling slightly. “Name’s Hugh Westwood. I’m professor of ancient history here. Now, if you could tell me your business. …”
“We…happened to hear about your troubles here, Professor Westwood. I personally specialize in the investigation of such phenomena, and I thought I might be of some little assistance.”
Westwood gazed at Simon Ark with searching eyes. “I don’t know how you found out about it, but if you mean you’ve had experience in dealing with witches, you’re certainly the man we want to see.”
“Well…” Simon Ark hesitated a moment, “I have had some small experience with witches. …”
That was all Westwood needed to hear. He led them down a long hall to his office and motioned to two chairs. In a few moments he rejoined them with an older, white-haired man and a middle-aged woman.
“This is our president, Doctor Lampton, and the Dean of Women, Miss Bagly. You said your name was…Simon Ark?”
He nodded and introduced me as his assistant. I was amazed at how quickly he seemed to be accepted by these three frightened people. Perhaps it was their fear, coupled with Ark’s compelling manner, that made them forget their aversion to publicity.
“It’s this woman…this…this Mother Fortune,” Miss Bagly began. “She’s some kind of a witch, and she’s put a spell over our girls. We…we don’t know which way to turn, Mr. Ark; we really don’t. If we reported something like this to the police, it would get into all the papers and our school would be ruined.”
Simon Ark frowned, and I knew a question was coming. “But I understand that at least a few of these girls are extremely ill. You mean to say they aren’t even receiving medical attention?”
“Oh, heavens,” Miss Bagly exclaimed, “Dr. Lampton here is a real M.D., you know. He’s been looking after them.”
“That’s correct,” the doctor said. “I h
aven’t had any private practice in a good many years, ever since I became president of Hudsonville, but I still know enough to give those girls proper attention.”
“Then just what’s wrong with them, Doctor?” Simon Ark asked.
“Well…by medical standards it’s very difficult to say. They just seem…well, weak, without energy. Several girls have fainted, and one or two are in a mild coma of some sort.”
“I imagine you’ve thought of narcotics.”
“Certainly. There’s no possibility of anything like that—not at Hudsonville!”
Simon Ark sighed. “I understand there have been letters. …”
I knew better than to wonder how he knew about the letters, because Simon Ark had ways of finding out such things. Doctor Lampton nodded and pulled them from his pocket. They looked like he’d been carrying them and studying them for weeks.
There were three of them in all, dated about a week apart and starting three weeks previous, around the first day of the Fall term. The writing was crude, intentionally crude, I thought. All three letters were identical in their wording: “To the president of Hudsonville College: Your cruel act of fifty years ago is at last avenged. I have cursed your school and every student in it. Before another moon has come your school will be a campus of the dead.” The notes were signed “Mother Fortune.”
Simon Ark studied them carefully. “This Mother Fortune is a local gypsy fortune teller, I understand. Do you have any idea just why she should be putting a curse on the college?”
Professor Westwood, who’d remained silent for some time, joined in the conversation then. “Unfortunately, yes. That reference to fifty years ago sent us looking back through the school’s old records, but we found it. The woman who calls herself Mother Fortune was once a student here. …”
This news made it a little easier for me to understand their reluctance to call in the police. It was bad enough to have an exclusive girls’ college hexed by a witch, but when it turns out the witch was once a student at the school, that’s even worse publicity.
“…Her name was Helen Marie Carrio at that time,” Westwood continued. “We found from the records that she was expelled just two weeks before she was to have graduated.”
The Judges of Hades Page 5
