Ten years the judge had said. Ten years at hard labor. And the warden took him at his word. No office work, no soft duties for this killer who but for wealth and influence might be waiting for the final summons from the death house. The rock pile, the machine shop, and the laundry, these were his portion while the sands of time piled slowly to a pyramid of ten long years. Then they set him free, a ticket to the city in the pocket of his prison-made ill-fitting suit, and the mark of the ex-convict on him. A slight, lean man of thirty-six who looked fifty, gaunt-featured, pewter haired, with the empty, lusterless eyes of a dead man walking.
Millicent had divorced him. Served the papers on him in the penitentiary. With a grim smile he recalled her accusations: ‘—assault with a deadly weapon—conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude——’ He let the case go by default. Everything she said was true. Once he had tried to kill her; he loved her then, loved her so he’d rather see her dead than gone with Bob Houghton. No matter now. When one is quits with life what difference does it make whether he is married or divorced?
He’d seen her yesterday down on the Avenue, gray eyes aglint beneath the crisping curls of auburn hair, a smart small hat trimmed with cock feathers, a double cross fox scarf draped negligently across her shoulders. She’d passed him by as if he were a bit of wind-blown street-trash, and he had wondered idly that the sight of her stirred neither longing nor resentment in him, that he could look so calmly in that coldly lovely face and feel no quickening of the pulses as he passed within hand’s reach of this woman who had vowed to cleave to him through sorrow and adversity while they both lived.
‘But,’ he reflected bitterly, ‘she kept her bargain. One of us is dead; dead legally—civiliter mortuus.’
The moonlight glinted on a spot of brightness in the walk before his house, and Fullerton grinned as he marked it. His neighbor up the street, the small dark man who’d moved into the vacant house three doors away, had put that bright tile in his sidewalk the same day he took possession of the premises. Fullerton had noticed it as he went out upon his daily morning walk, a square of brightly finished porcelain, not white nor yet quite green, but a sort of combination of the two, noticeable in the dull-gray of the paving blocks as a cardinal in a flock of blackbirds. It had a figure on it, too, a man with a jackal’s head, like the figures of Anubis he’d seen in the museums. Odd that he should have set a bright tile like that in the gray-stone walk. But then——
Last night was Halloween, and boys in South Brooklyn were like their kind the world over. Out ringing doorbells, stealing trash-cans, blowing beans at unprotected windows. Among their pranks had been the transplantation of the bright tile from his neighbor’s walk to his. Tomorrow he must take it back. Only the diffidence that made him shrink from meeting people had kept him from restoring it that morning.
He put his hand up to the curtain cord, but delayed pulling it. Freedom to open or shut doors and windows was still a luxury to be savored. ‘Old Lovelace hadn’t served a hitch in the big house when he wrote
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage.”’
he said ironically, speaking naturally to himself as lonely men have done since time’s beginning. ‘If he had—what the deuce?’ He ended on an interrogatively rising note as a light delivery van crawled down the street, the driver leaning far out of the cab to scan the sidewalks bordering the roadway.
Opposite his door the car came to a halt, and the driver jumped down, crossed the strip of parking, and bent down to examine the bright tile. Satisfied with his inspection, apparently, he called to his helper, and walked back to the vehicle, where he began to unlatch the chains holding up its tail gate. In a moment they had drawn out a long packing case and were lugging it up his walk.
‘You must have made a mistake,’ Fullerton insisted as they beat upon his front door with a thunderous knock. ‘I haven’t ordered anything—who’s this for?’
The driver and his helper had regained their seats in the car, and looked back at him surlily. ‘For a man,’ replied the driver. ‘See?’
‘No, I don’t. What’s his name and address?’
‘Dunno, Mister. Our orders wuz to put that box down at th’ door o’ th’ house wid a fancy tile in its front walk. Didn’t have no name or number; just a house in dis block wid a fancy tile. If you ain’t the’ party it’s just too bad, for we ain’t luggin’ that crate back. See?’
With a wheeze and rattle the old car got underway, and Fullerton was left with the unwanted parcel on his doorstep.
‘Now what?’ he asked himself. The box was oblong, made of light wood strips reinforced with cross-tied ropes. There was nothing on it to identify its consignee or consignor. In shape and size it was much like the rough box used to encase the casket at burial. Fullerton felt a slight chill of apprehension as he looked at it. What was he to do with it? The driver had said it was for the man with the bright tile in his sidewalk. That would be his new neighbor. Obviously the thing was too heavy for him to move it unassisted—— ‘But I can’t leave it out here all night,’ he told himself, ‘it may hold perishable goods.’ Tentatively he leaned down and took the nearer corners in his hands. Surprisingly, the case moved toward him easily, and he realized it had castors fitted to its lower surface. That simplified things.
Pulling, tugging, panting a little from the exertion, he drew the box across the doorsill and into the front hall. There, it would be safe till morning——
Shoving it with his foot to make a clearance way for the front door, he was astonished at the ease with which it rolled across the polished floor. Not only rolled, but cannoned into the newel post of the staircase. The crackling sound of breaking wood was followed by the tinkle of smashing earthenware, and he looked ruefully at the object exposed by the shattered crate.
Where the box had staved in he could glimpse a dull-white surface scarred by a wide crack. It was hard to make the object out. From its shape it might have been a bathtub, but who’d make a bathtub out of fragile earthenware, or encase it in a box unable to withstand a slight jar such as that which smashed this case?
‘H’m, maybe I can fix the thing,’ he muttered, putting back the broken boards. ‘Perhaps I’d better not try, but——’ He couldn’t understand it, but a curiosity greater than his powers of resistance seemed to prompt him. Plainly as if he’d heard the words pronounced he became aware that the box held something he must see—quickly.
He drew the boards away, looked down at the baked-clay case they had concealed. Six feet in length it was, and in general appearance it resembled one of those old covered soap-dishes without which no toilet set of the late nineties was complete. The top was slightly convex and seemed joined to the bottom by a tongue-and-groove joint into which some sort of plaster had been set. An inch or so below the junction of the top and body ran a border of the egg-and-dart design familiar to Greek pottery of the common sort. The whole appeared to have been baked in a brick-kiln, but not thoroughly, for in several places the rough finish had chipped off, leaving pits and indentations on the surface, as though the baking process had added more of brittleness than strength to the clay.
With his knife he dug away the soft cement that sealed the vessel. In a moment he had loosened it and lifted back the top. ‘Good Lord, what’s this?’
The light from the hall chandelier shone past him into the clay casket, and as he looked into the cavernous container he felt the breath hit hard against his teeth while a jerking, pounding feeling came into his chest beneath the curve of his left collar-bone. He was looking full into the still calm face of a dead woman.
Carefully, stepping softly with that reverence which is the instinctive due of death, he stood the casket over in the angle of the wall and looked again into the terra-cotta coffin. If what he saw was death it was a startling counterfeit of life.
She lay as easily and naturally in her clay coffin as though she slept in her accustomed bed. Tall she was and slender, perfectly proportioned as
a statue wrought by Phidias or Praxiteles, golden-haired and fair-skinned as a Nordic blonde. From tapering white throat to slender chalk-white ankles she was draped in a white robe, the simple Ionic chiton of white linen cut in that austerely modest style of ancient Greece in which the upper portion of the dress falls downward again from neck to waist to form a sort of cape, masking the outline of the bosom and leaving the entire arms and points of the shoulders bare. Save for the tiny studs of hand-wrought gold which held the gown together at the shoulders and the narrow double line of horizontal purple stripes at the bottom of the cape her dress was without ornament of any sort. There were no rings upon the long slim fingers of the narrow hands that lay demurely crossed upon her breast, her narrow, high-arched feet were bare. A corded fillet of white linen bound her bright hair in a Psyche knot.
For a moment—or an hour, he had no way of telling, for time seemed pausing, and breathing with it—he stood looking at the lovely body confined in the baked-clay casket. Like every normal layman he had an inborn horror of death, and instinctively felt frightened in the presence of the dead, but, somehow, this did not seem death.
It was, rather, the image of slumber, of life unconscious, waiting to be waked.
Yet, despite appearances, he knew that she was dead, and had been for a thousand years and more. He had seen coffins like the one she lay in at the museums. Explorers’ spades had dug them from the Christian cemetery at Alexandria, relics of the vanished Roman Empire of the East. He recognized her simple, graceful costume, too. The narrow stripes of Tyrian dye that edged her cape bore witness to her status as a freeborn Roman citizen, the corded girdle at her waist proclaimed her a virgin. She must have lived—and died—before the rise of Islam in the seventh century.
Yet though she must have passed from life to death twelve hundred and more years ago so perfect was the mimicry of life, so absolute the counterfeit of breathing sleep, that he was afraid to move lest he waken her.
Gradually his reason reasserted itself. The old Egyptians had been skilled embalmers; he’d heard it said they knew a process whereby all appearance of mortality could be removed; not the crude pickling of mummification, but a technique which approached that practiced by embalmers of our day. Yet look as he would he could find no sign of the embalmer’s work, no wound, no slit in the smooth skin, no scar or bandage.
Reverently he bent above the dead form in the coffin. Beside the body, almost hidden by a fold of the white robe, he saw a roll of something which appeared like parchment, and bending closer he could make out letters on it. This might give a clue to her identity and explain her marvelous defiance of the natural law of dissolution.
The rolled screed crackled in his hands. It was not parchment, he discerned, but something thin and almost transparent, like row on row of library mending tissue joined skillfully together. He recognized it, he had seen its like in the museums—papyrus.
The writing on it was in square black letters strung together without break, as if the whole message were one long word. ‘What language?’ he wondered, looking idly at the characters. Egyptian? Not likely, they used picture-writing. Greek? Perhaps, but the letters didn’t look like Grecian characters. He ran his eye along the topmost line:
NOVERINTUNIVERSIPERBREVIA.
‘Gibberish!’ he told himself disgustedly, then checked in mid-breath. No! The characters were Roman capitals, like the numerals on his watch, and suddenly he recalled having heard that it was not until comparatively recent days that words were written separately for convenience in reading.
Here was a clue. He hadn’t looked inside a Latin book in almost twenty years, but—— Frowning with the effort, he bent his gaze upon the opening letters of the message:
NOV—that might be an abbreviation for nova, signifying new, but that would make the next word erin. There wasn’t any such word he remembered. Still——
Suddenly, as a figure hidden in a picture-puzzle becomes clear when it has been stared at fixedly for a time, the first sixteen letters of the line seemed to separate. There they were, in two words:
NOVERINT—UNIVERSI—Know everyone, know all men——
And the next three characters spelled P-E-R—per, meaning by——
Then BREVIA—these writs, these writings——
He was making progress now. It would be a long task, but the thing could be deciphered and translated. Plainly it was in the nature of a legal document, perhaps a statement of the dead girl’s name and parentage.
For the first time in more than ten years he smiled with eyes as well as lips. ‘I’ll know more about you in a little while, my dear,’ he told her in a whisper. Then even lower: ‘Sleep on, and pleasant dreams.’
It was almost morning when he leaned back from his desk, utterly worn out with unaccustomed work, but too astounded to be conscious of fatigue. Crumpled paper lay about him on the floor, the ashtray was piled high with cigarette stubs, but on the desk lay his translation completed:
Know all to whom these writings come that I, known to the Greeks as Philamon, but to my fellow-followers of the Old Gods’ worship as Harmichis, being of the olden blood of mighty Egypt and a sworn priest of the Old Gods, have caused the virgin Helena to fall into a deep sleep by the arts of my learning, wherefrom she shall not waken till one takes her by the hand and calls her name and bids her rise.
Now to whosoever sees these writings, greetings and admonition: It is my purpose to assume a like sleep unto hers when I have finished preparations for her safekeeping, and for mine own. But haply it may fall out that we wake in divers places, and that another than myself shall summon her from sleep. Now, therefore, stranger, be ye warned. The virgin Helena is mine, and not another’s, and should thou come upon her sleeping in her coffin, thou art charged to leave her as thou findest her, for if she waken at thy bidding, and looketh on thee with favor, know that I, Harmichis, servant of the Most High Gods, and a mighty man in combat, will seek thee out and do thee mortal battle for her, and as for her, should she look on another with the eyes of love, then she shall truly die by my hand, and not awaken any more, either at the bidding of a mortal man or otherwise, for bodiless and without hope of resurrection shall she wander in Amenti forever. I have said.
The more he read the document the crazier it sounded, and, paradoxically, the crazier it sounded the more logical it seemed. His recollection of the history of the Roman Empire of the East was sketchy, but he remembered having heard that the old faith was kept alive by Coptic descendants of the original Egyptians, and that even today there are men who claim to have been initiated into the mysteries of Osiris and the lesser gods of Egypt. It seemed quite possible that this man who called himself Harmichis might have been a member of the old priesthood. There was small doubt that the Egyptian priests understood hypnotism, just as the Hindus did. That would account for the assertion that Harmichis ‘caused the virgin Helena to fall into a deep sleep by the arts of his learning’.
Evidently this had been some sort of ancient version of a lovers’ suicide pact. Harmichis, unable to marry the Greek girl, had hypnotized her—put her in a state of suspended animation—coffined her, and had her buried in the desert sands. He had then intended to hypnotize himself, or have another do it to him and be buried by her side. Then at some predetermined time he would awaken, issue from his grave, and rouse the sleeping maiden. ‘And just in case somebody beat him to it, he gave ’em timely warning to lay off,’ Fullerton ended aloud.
He lighted a fresh cigarette and bowed his head in thought. How long had the hypnotic sleep lasted? How long does it take for a hypnotically induced trance to become true death? Obviously she had not wakened in her coffin. There was no sign of a struggle. Quite as obviously she had not died of slow starvation while in a cataleptic state. She was slender, but with the slenderness of youthful grace, not the emaciation of starvation.
He shook his head and rose. If only what old Harmichis had wished were possible—if only he could take her by the hand and call on her to waken—�
��
Once more he stood above the terracotta coffin, looking in the dead girl’s calm sweet face. Good Lord, but she was beautiful! Her smoothly-flowing contours melted into lines of perfect symmetry, dark lashes swept the pure curve of her cheeks, her lips, still faintly stained with color, rested softly on each other. Unbidden, a verse from Romeo and Juliet came to his mind:
Beauty’s ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death’s pale flag is not advancèd there.
Scarcely realizing what he did he bent down and laid his fingers on one of the slim pale hands resting on the dead girl’s breast. He recoiled in surprise. The hand was warm as living flesh, firm and lovely to the touch.
‘All right,’ he murmured argumentatively to himself. ‘I’m crazy. So what? I’m going to try it, anyway.’
How did you say ‘arise’ in Latin? He thought a moment, then, his hand upon the girl’s, his lips almost against the little low-set ear that lay framed in a nest of glowing gold-bright curls: ‘Serge, O Helena!’ He wasn’t quite sure that was right. Perhaps he should have said, ‘Serge tu’, but . . . ‘O Helena, serge!’ he repeated, louder this time.
A chill, not quite of fear nor yet of pure excitement, but rather from a combination of them, rippled through him, for with the repetition of the command the fingers in his stirred, curled up to take a light hold on his hand, and the bosom of the dead girl heaved as if in respiration. The waxen-smooth blue-veined eyelids were lifted slowly from a pair of almost golden eyes, and a faint suggestion of color swept upward through her throat and cheeks like a blush. Her calm lips parted, trembled in a broken little sigh.
She met his startled gaze with a long look of gentle trust. ‘Is it truly thou, my lord?’ she asked in a soft whisper.
Night Creatures Page 20
