Half in Shadow

by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

  Mr. Sproull gasped, looking first at the dead youth’s angry friend, then at his grieving sister.

  “Oh! Oh no!” he protested. “My dear young people, you surely don’t accuse me of…? You’re upset. Who wouldn’t be? It’s the curse,” he said quietly. “Remember, I did my best to warn you…”

  “To plant your story, you mean!” the young man snarled. Glaring at him furiously, he lead the girl toward the door. “Come on, darling, I might have known we’d get no satisfaction out of this…this cold-blooded old ghoul!… But let me tell you,” he threw back furiously at the antique dealer, “when I locate the engraver who changed that inscription, or find out how you learned Alan’s birth date…I’ll come back here and kill you!”

  The door slammed with an agitated jingle of the little bell. Mr. Sproull stood for a moment, wringing his hands miserably. He had liked those three light-hearted young people on sight, and would not for the world have wished harm to befall any of them. But…there were forces a crippled old man could not combat! Forces older than any item in his musty little shop. Older than logic. Older than time…

  “Oh, dear heaven!” the hunchback moaned, “Why didn’t I tell them to give those other two spoons away? Melt them down, bury them—anything! If that diary had only toldhow Van Grooten died, perhaps I could have warned them to avoid.… But there were only hints! The writer never did come out and say.… But that young man is intelligent. Perhaps he could come to some conclusion that I’ve missed…!”

  He turned and ran for the telephone directory, leafing through it hastily to find the names Fentress or Milam, the signature on the young man’s check. For an hour he clung to the phone, calling every Fentress and Milam in the book—but there was no “Robert” Milam. Mr. Sproull tried the hotels, then the funeral homes to trace the dead brother, Alan. Finally he hung up, defeated, concluding that they were all from out of town. He sat staring at the telephone then, wringing his wrinkled old hands in the helpless anguish of one who can only wait…wait…for disaster.

  But the period of waiting was not long.

  Three days later, just at noon, the doorbell tinkled again. Mr. Sproull looked up from a six-branched candelabra he was polishing, to see a disheveled figure swaying a few feet from him. It was Bob Milam, his face drawn and covered with a stubble of beard, his eyes bloodshot and puffy from drinking. In his hand he held an ugly little automatic.

  Mr. Sproull caught his breath, and stood very still. Then, despite his own fear, he burst out: “Oh, my poor young friend! The…the second spoon? Your…fiancee?” The blond man’s mouth twisted with pain and bitterness. For reply, he flung another of the monkey spoons at the old dealer’s feet. Mr, Sproull stooped to pick it up. He paled, and nodded. The tiny oval seal on the handle was engraved to read: Marcia Fentress

  Born April 17, 1927

  Died November 6, 1949

  At the old man’s nod, Bob’s eyes narrowed. He said not a word, but the ominous click of the safety catch on his gun was eloquent enough. Yet there was more pity than terror in Mr. Sproull’s face.

  “Ohh!” His murmur of shocked sympathy had a genuine ring. “H-how did she…?” “My fiancee,” the young man grated bitterly, “was terribly grief-stricken at her brother’s death—you figured on that, too, didn’t you? You insane, twisted…!” His voice broke on a sob of impotent rage. “Alan and Marcia were inseparable; we three were, in fact. Marcia couldn’t sleep, so last night she took a big dose of sleeping pills. While…” He gulped, then plunged on miserably, “While she was drugged, a…a very large beauty pillow on her bed fell over her face, somehow. She… It wasn’t the sleeping pills; she…smothered to death! The coroner called it an accident,” he lashed out. “But I call it murder! You murdered Alan, too! I can’t prove it, but I surely as hell can…!” With a sob he leveled the gun at the old antique dealer’s heart, his mouth working with hate and grief. At sight of his tortured young face, Mr. Sproull dabbed at his eyes, oblivious to his own danger.

  “My poor, unfortunate young friend!” he murmured pityingly. “You can’t believe I would cause such tragedy, for a few paltry dollars? I did not change those seals—but I can not hope to persuade anyone as matter-of-fact as yourself to believe in…in the supernatural. The diary recounts that…that, when each guest at Van Grooten’s Dood Feest died,their spoons changed, too! Mrs. Haversham’s seal altered also—the lawyer found it later among her effects, but assumed it to be the grim jest of some house-servant…”

  Bob Milam snorted derisively. But the murderous anger in his eyes ebbed slowly, and the gun in his hand wavered.

  “You’re insane,” he said heavily. “Maybe you don’t even realize you changed those seals. Maybe your twisted mind really believes all that silly guff about…some old Dutchman who…”

  His shoulders slumped all at once. He swayed, passing one hand over his bleary eyes. The gun in his other hand clattered to the floor. Suddenly he snatched the monkey spoon and flung it down the furnace grating.

  “Insane,” he mumbled. “I…I can’t shoot a crazy, crippled old man in cold blood! But… Oh, why did you do it?” he groaned, staring at the hunchback. “Why, Mr. Sproull?Why? My best friend, and then my fiancee? I’d gladly have signed over my whole bank account to you, if it was money you…!”

  “Oh, please!” the antique dealer cried out in despair. “You must believe that I had no part in… I tried to phone you, to warn you! Tried to figure out the manner of death, so you could avoid… But they all died so differently! Mrs. Haversham, asphyxiated. Your friend, drowned. And your lovely fiancee…” The old man’s eyes widened suddenly. “Ah! Now I understand! It’s true! It all ties together… Listen to me!”

  Bob Milam had turned unsteadily toward the door, but Mr. Sproull sidled after him like a small persistent crab and seized him by the arm.

  “No, no! Wait! You must listen!” he gasped. “The diary mentioned that Schuyler Van Grooten was subject to ‘sleeping fits’—a cataleptic. His intimate friends and relatives must have known that, but…but they…wait!” he begged. “Your monkey spoon, where is it? You must give it away! At once!” the old dealer insisted excitedly. “To…to some impersonal agency. The Scrap-metal Drive—yes, that’s it! Get it out of your possession, or you, too, will…! So much hate, such hunger for revenge hovers about them! Like a piece of metal that has been magnetized, they can actually draw disaster to anyone who…”

  But at that moment the blond young man jerked his arm loose and plunged out into the street, wanting only to get away from this crazy old man who had caused him so much grief in the space of a few short days. Mr. Sproull pattered after him, calling excitedly for him to wait. But by the time he reached the curb, Bob Milam had whistled down a passing cab and was climbing into it. The old hunchback hurried to the curb and strained to catch the address. But the young man was only telling the driver, wearily:

  “Drive around. Just drive. Anywhere…I don’t care.” The antique dealer’s arms dropped to his sides limply in defeat. He watched the taxi speed out of sight, then turned slowly and walked slowly, thoughtfully, back into his shop.

  The evening paper, left under his door as usual, carried the story. A taxi was ambling along 187th Street, where wreckers were busy razing an old warehouse. Somehow the dynamite charge went off sooner than was intended…and a crumbling wall of bricks and mortar fell on the cab as it passed. The cabby managed to dig his way out. But the single passenger, an intoxicated young man identified as one Robert Milam of New Jersey, could not be pulled out of the wreckage for almost an hour. He was dead when frantic workmen did finally reach him—not crushed, but trapped without air in the rear seat of the taxi cab…

  And in his pocket the police found a peculiar-looking spoon, inscribed with his name, the date of his birth—and the very date of his death!

  Mr. Sproull finished reading, then took off his square-lensed glasses and polished them with a hand that trembled. There was nothing, he mused philosophically, really nothing at all that he could
have done to save those three nice young people, who had all three died the same way—fighting for breath; smothered to death by one agency or another. Just exactly as Mrs. Haversham had died, in her exhaust-filled garage.

  And just as, centuries ago, an old Dutch patroon, one Schuyler Van Grooten, had died—clawing and screaming and gasping for breath in his coffin, awakened from one of his cataleptic trances to find that his greedy heirs had deliberately buried him alive…

  The Smiling Face

  CEDRIC HARBIN, the Brit-ish archaeologist, rolled his head from side to side irritably on the canvas cot. It was the scream of a jaguar that had waked him this time. Two hours ago it had been the chittering of night-monkeys; half an hour before that, some other weird jungle-noise.

  From the supine position in which he had been lying for eight sweltering nights already, he glared up at the young Chavante native who was fanning him with a giant fern, to keep away the mosquitoes and the tiny vicious little pium flies that swarmed about him. At his look, the boy grinned apology and began to ply the "shoo-fly” with more energy, the capivara tooth in his pierced lower lip bobbing furiously. Harbin cursed, blinking away the sweat that kept trickling' down into his eyes. He tried to sit up despite the adhesive strapped .over his bare chest like a cocoon, but sank back with a groan.

  Instantly the tent flap opened and a girl hurried in out of the humid night.

  "Darling? I thought I heard you groaning. Are you in pain?

  "Not much. Just—bored! And disgusted! Haven't you gone to bed yet?”

  Sir Cedric looked up at her wearily as she bent over him, gently mopping the sweat from his face and neck. She was small and blonde and exquisite, strikingly beautiful even in her rumpled shirt and jodhpurs. It was when she smiled, however, that one stopped seeing anything else. A quiet humor seemed to emanate from her broad sweetly-curved mouth and sparkling blue eyes, as though they invited one to share some joke that she knew and was about to tell. The Brazilian Indian boy beamed at her, visibly attracted. Harbin, her husband though he looked old enough to have been her father —caught at her hand gratefully.

  "Diana,” he sighed, "my dearest. How the devil you can be so bright and cheery, after the confounded mess I’ve made of this expedition? Walking into that boa constrictor like a—like a damned tourist who’d never set foot in the Matto Grosso interior!” He scowled in self-condemnation. "Don’t know why I ever let the Foundation talk me into this jaunt, anyhow. On our honeymoon! What was I thinking of, dragging you out into this steaming hell?”

  “Now, now, darling!” Diana Harbin laid two fingers over his mouth. She lifted his head tenderly, gave him a sip of herva matte through a bombilia stuck in a gourd, then riffled through a month-old magazine. '“Here; do try to read, and relax'. You can’t go hunting your precious Lost City with three broken ribs, and that's all there is to it. So stop fretting about it! Mario has. the situation well in hand."

  A look flashed over Sir Cedric’s middle-aged face. It was gone before his wife observed it, but she did notice a peculiar tense note in his voice.

  "Mario— Oh yes,” the archaeologist drawled."Our handsome and dashing young guide."

  "Handsome?” His wife laughed—so lightly that Sir Cedric gave her a quizzical look. "Is he? I hadn’t noticed... Why, Cedric!” She returned his look, eyes twinkling. "I do believe you’re jealous! Of Mario?” She half-closed her eyes, imitating the sultry attitude of a screen romeo.

  "Ah-h Senhora! You are like jongle orchid!” she mimicked, then burst out laughing. "Darling, he’s so corny!”

  HARBIN did not share her mirth. His gray eyes iced over, and narrowed. "The devil!” he exploded. "Did he really say that to you? Insolent half-breed swine! Send him in here; I’ll sack him right now!”

  "You’ll do nothing of the kind!”' his wife laughed, kissing him on the forehead. "Cedric, don’t be absurd. All Brazilians make passes at every North American girl they meet. It’s—it’s part of the Good Neighbor Policy!” She gave him another sip of the nutritious tea, looking fondly amused. "Mario,” she pointed out, "is a very efficient guide. He’s kept these war-happy Chavantes from traipsing off to start something with other tribes we’ve passed. He’s kept: a supply of mandioca and rapadura without trading half our equipment to get it. And he’s the only guide in Belem who had the vaguest idea how to reach that Lost City of yours—-if there is one,” she reminded dryly. "Remember, all you have as proof is that silly old paper in the Biblioteca Nacional. Mario doesn’t believe it exists.”

  "Mario!” the archaeologist snorted. "If Lt. Col. Fawcett and his sons died trying to find it in 1925, there must be something to— Oh, if only I were off this ridiculous cot!” he fumed. "We’re only two days march from the place; I’d stake my life on it!”

  "Oh well,” his pretty wife patted his arm soothingly. ''There’ll be other expeditions, dear. We’ll try again; but right now you must get well enough to be carried back to Belem. There may be internal injuries we don’t know about. Ugh, that horrible snake! Dropping on you. from that tree, crushing you—’’ She shuddered, then knelt beside him with a little sob, pressing his hand to her cool cheek. "Oh Cedric, you might have been killed!”

  HARBIN relaxed, caressing her long wheat-blond hair, the bitterness and frustration ebbing slowly from his face.

  "My dearest,” he murmured, "I’ll never understand what a lovely, little Yank like you ever saw in a crotchety, dried-up old Limey like me! But my whole outlook was changed, that night at the Explorers’ Club in Rio, when you turned away from that ass Forrester, and smiled. At me! When —when I first saw you smile, Diana, the most wonderful thing happened. It was as though the—the sun had come up for the first time in my— Oh, rubbish!” Sir Cedric broke off, embarrassed. "Never was much at expressing my feelings.”

  "You’re doing all right!” his wife whispered. "Remind me to tell you how I felt when I first met the famous Sir Cedric Harbin. Ah-ah!” She dodged his quick embrace. "Not now! After Mario and I get back from Matura with supplies. Darling, do go to sleep so I can! We’re starting at daybreak, you know.”

  Harbin returned her smile of gentle humor with a hungry possessive look. “All right. But you’ll hurry back? I mean— Oh, dash it!”

  His wife bent over to kiss him once more lightly. "Of course I will,” she whispered. "Next Thursday is our first anniversary; we’ve been married a whole month! You don’t really think I’d spend that day with Mario and a lot of grinning Tapirapes babbling 'Ticanlo! Ticanto!’—which isn’t my idea of a snappy conversation to put in my diary!” Sir Cedric chuckled and lay still, his eyes following Diana as she left the tent to complete plans for the short journey at dawn.

  The river village of Matura, he knew, was only a few miles down the Rio das Mortes, the River of Death, which had once run red with the blood of a Portuguese party of mining engineers massacred by Indians. Now it boasted a small trading post, run by a fat one-eyed Dutchman. There Diana could send a wireless message via Belem to the Foundation, saying—Harbin sighed bitterly—that he was crippled up; that he had made a complete botch of the expedition. There also Mario could replenish their dwindling stock of supplies—coffee, quinine, mandioca; perhaps even a few trinkets for the new native bearers Mario had recently added to their party. The Chavantes had not appeared to like it much, but even their capitao, their chief, Burity, could see his men could not carry both the equipment and the injured white explorer on their return trip.

  HARBIN sipped his matte, and thought about the new porters. They were ugly stunted little Indians—the four Mario has hired—their loin cloths dirty and ragged, their greasy black hair hanging long and snaky under their braided headbands. They were Urubus—Sir Cedric frowned, trying to recall what the Inspector of Indians at Belem had said about that particular tribe; the "Vulture People,” he had called them. Was it something about a history of cannibalism? Harbin could not remember. All four of the Urubus had been fully armed—with bows and five-foot-arrows, with spears, and with blowguns—w
hen the Brazilian guide had happened across their hunting party. In fact, a poisoned blowgun dart (presumably aimed at a silver and black iguana) had barely missed his shoulder, Mario had reported uncomfortably.

  "And good riddance!” Harbin muttered half-aloud, glowering up at the patched roof of the tent. "Never did trust those pretty-boys where a woman’s concerned! Not one as lovely as Diana—so young and romantic and impressionable.”

  "Hanh? Senhor speak?” The Chavante boy startled him, waving his fern rapidly and flashing white teeth in a dark brown Mongoloid face.

  "What? Oh! Nothing. Just talking to myself,” Harbin snapped. "Swat that damned tarantula over my head, will you? It’s going to drop on me.”

  "Si, senhor!!” The boy hastened to obey, his solicitude born of the fact that Diana had promised him a pair of her husband's cufflinks for his pierced ears.

  Harbin closed his eyes, now lulled by the throbbing hum of frogs and cicada, now startled awake by the moaning hiss of a near-by anaconda or the splash of an alligator in the river washing sluggishly against the sandbank where they had made camp. Presently, in spite of the pium flies, Sir Cedric drifted into a troubled slumber— and a recurrent dream in which his lovely young wife was lost in a tangle of undergrowth and looped lianas. She kept calling him, calling and laughing, somewhere just ahead, just out of' reach. And he slashed away helplessly at the green wall of jungle with a facao. a cutlass-like machete, which kept turning to flimsy rubber in his hand—