Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 02

by The Black Drama (v1. 1)

  "He spoke to Schaefer. 'I told you that I wanted to see you.'

  "Schaefer tried to swear at him. After all, here was a frail, pale little frosh, who didn't seem to have an ounce of muscle on his bones, giving orders to a big football husky who weighed more than two hundred pounds. But the swear words sort of strangled in his throat. Varduk laughed. Neither of you have ever heard a sound so soft or merciless.

  '"Perhaps you'd like me to come to your room after you,' Varduk suggested.

  "Schaefer turned and came slowly to the stairs and up them. When he got level with Varduk, I didn't feel much like watching the rest. As I moved away toward my room, I saw Varduk slip his slender arm through Schaefer's big, thick one and fall into step with him, just as if they were going to have the nicest schoolboy chat you can imagine."

  Davidson shuddered violently, and so, despite the warm June air, did I. Pursuivant seemed a shade less pink.

  "Here, I've talked too much," Davidson said, with an air of embarrassment. "Probably it's because I've wanted to tell this story-over a space of years. No point in holding back the end, but I'd greatly appreciate your promise-both your promises-that you'll not pass the tale on."

  We both gave our words, and urged him to continue. He did so.

  "I had barely got to my own digs when there was a frightful row outside, shouts and scamperings and scream-ings; yes, screamings, of young men scared out of their wits. I jumped up and hurried downstairs and out. There lay Schaefer on the pavement in front of the dormitory. He was dead, with the brightest red blood all over him. About twenty witnesses, more or less, had seen him as he jumped out of Varduk's window.

  "The faculty and the police came, and Varduk spent hours with them, being questioned. But he told them something satisfactory, for he was let go and never charged with any responsibility.

  "Late that night, as I sat alone at my desk trying to drive from my mind's eye the bright, bright red of Schaefer's blood, a gentle knock sounded at my door. I got up and opened. There stood Varduk, and he held in his hands that black volume. I saw the dark red edging on its pages, the color of blood three hours old.

  '"I wondered,' he said in his soft voice, 'if you'd like to see the thing in my book that made your friend Schaefer so anxious to leave my room.'

  "I assured him that I did not. He smiled and came in, all uninvited.

  "Then he spoke, briefly but very clearly, about certain things he hoped to do, and about how he needed a helper. He said that I might be that helper. I made no reply, but he knew that I would not refuse.

  "He ordered me to kneel, and I did. Then he showed me how to put my hands together and set them between his palms. The oath I took was the medieval oath of vassalage. And I have kept my oath from that day to this."

  Davidson abruptly strode back along the way to the lodge. He stopped at half a dozen paces' distance.

  "Maybe I'd better get along," he suggested. "You two may want to think and talk about what I have said, and my advice not to get in Varduk's way."

  With that he resumed his departure, and went out of sight without once looking back again.

  10. That Evening

  JUDGE PURSUIVANT and I remained sitting on the roadside bank until Davidson had completely vanished around a tree-clustered bend of the way. Then my companion lifted a heavy walking-boot and tapped the dottle from his pipe against the thick sole.

  "How did that cheerful little story impress you?" he inquired.

  I shook my head dubiously. My mustache prickled on my upper lip, like the mane of a nervous dog. "If it was true," I said slowly, "how did Davidson dare tell it?"

  "Probably because he was ordered to."

  I must have stared foolishly. "You think that-"

  Pursuivant nodded. "My knowledge of underworld argot is rather limited, but I believe that the correct phrase is 'lay off. We're being told to do that, and in a highly interesting manner. As to whether or not the story is true, I'm greatly inclined to believe that it is."

  I drew another cigarette from my package, and my hand trembled despite itself. "Then the man is dangerous- Varduk, I mean. What is he trying to do to Sigrid?"

  "That is what perplexes me. Once, according to your little friend Jake Switz, he defended her from some mysterious but dangerous beings. His behavior argues that he isn't the only power to consider."

  The judge held a match for my cigarette. His hand was steady, and its steadiness comforted me.

  "Now then," I said, "to prevent-whatever is being done."

  "That's what we'd better talk about." Pursuivant took his stick and rose to his feet. "Let's get on with our walk, and make sure this time that nobody overhears us."

  We began to saunter, while he continued, slowly and soberly:

  "You feel that it is Miss Holgar who is threatened. That's no more than guesswork on your part, supplemented by the natural anxiety of a devoted admirer-if you'll pardon my mentioning that-but you are probably right. Varduk seems to have exerted all his ingenuity and charm to induce her to take a part in this play, and at this place. The rest of you he had gathered more carelessly. It is reasonably safe to say that whatever happens will happen to Miss Holgar."

  "But what will happen?" I urged, feeling very depressed.

  "That we do not know as yet." I began to speak again, but he lifted a hand. "Please let me finish. Perhaps you think that we should do what we can to call off the play, get Miss Holgar out of here. But I reply, having given the matter deep thought, that such a thing is not desirable."

  "Not desirable?" I echoed, my voice rising in startled surprise. "You mean, she must stay here? In heaven's name, why?"

  "Because evil is bound to occur. To spirit her away will be only a retreat. The situation must be allowed to develop-then we can achieve victory. Why, Connatt," he went on warmly, "can you not see that the whole atmosphere is charged with active and supernormal perils? Don't you know that such a chance, for meeting and defeating the power of wickedness, seldom arises? What can you think of when you want to run away?"

  "I'm not thinking of myself, sir," I told him. "It's Sigrid. Miss Holgar."

  "Handsomely put. All right, then; when you go back to the lodge, tell her what we've said and suggest that she leave."

  I shook my head, more hopelessly than before. "You know that she wouldn't take me seriously."

  "Just so. Nobody will take seriously the things we are beginning to understand, you and I. We have to fight alone-but we'll win." He began to speak more brightly. "When is the play supposed to have its first performance?"

  "Sometime after the middle of July. I've heard Varduk say as much several times, though he did not give the exact date."

  Pursuivant grew actually cheerful. "That means that we have three weeks or so. Something will happen around that time-presumably on opening night. If time was not an element, he would not have defended her on her first night here."

  I felt somewhat reassured, and we returned from our stroll in fairly good spirits.

  Varduk again spoke cordially to Pursuivant, and invited him to stay to dinner. "I must ask that you leave shortly afterward," he concluded the invitation. "Our rehearsals have something of secrecy about them. You won't be offended if-" '

  "Of course not," Pursuivant assured him readily, but later the judge found a moment to speak with me. "Keep your eyes open," he said earnestly. "He feels that I, in some degree familiar with occult matters, might suspect or even discover something wrong about the play. We'll talk later about the things you see."

  The evening meal was the more pleasant for Judge Pursuivant's high-humored presence. He was gallant to the ladies, deferential to Varduk, and witty to all of us. Even the pale, haunted face of our producer relaxed in a smile once or twice, and when the meal was over and Pursuivant was ready to go, Varduk accompanied him to the door, speaking graciously the while.

  "You will pardon me if I see you safely to the road. It is no more than evening, yet I have a feeling-"

  "And I have the same fee
ling," said Pursuivant, not at all heavily. "I appreciate your offer of protection."

  Varduk evidently suspected a note of mockery. He paused. "There are things, Judge Pursuivant," he said, "against which ordinary protection would not suffice. You have borne arms, I believe, yet you know that they will not always avail."

  They had come to the head of the front stairs, leading down to the lobby of the theater. The others at table were chattering over a second cup of coffee, but I was straining my ears to hear what the judge and Varduk were saying.

  "Arms? Yes, I've borne them," Pursuivant admitted. "Oddly enough, I'm armed now. Should you care to see?"

  He lifted his malacca walking-stick in both hands, grasping its shank and the handle. A twist and a jerk, and it came apart, revealing a few inches of metal. Pursuivant drew forth, as from a sheath, a thin, gleaming blade.

  "Sword cane!" exclaimed Varduk admiringly. He bent for a closer look.

  "And a singularly interesting one," elaborated Pursuivant. "Quite old, as you can see for yourself."

  "Ah, so it is," agreed Varduk. "I fancy you had it put into the cane?"

  "I did. Look at the inscription."

  Varduk peered. "Yes, I can make it out, though it seems worn." He pursed his lips, then read aloud, very slowly: "Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine. It sounds like Scripture."

  "That's what it is, Mr Varduk," Pursuivant was saying blandly. "The King James Version has it: 'So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.' It's from Deborah's song-fifth chapter of Judges."

  Varduk was plainly intrigued. "A warlike text, I must say. What knight of the church chose it for his battle cry?"

  "Many have chosen it," responded the judge. "Shall we go on?"

  They walked down the stairs side by side, and so out of my sight and hearing.

  When Varduk returned he called us at once to rehearsal. He was as alert as he had been the night before, but much harder to please. Indeed, he criticized speeches and bits of stage business that had won his high praise at the earlier rehearsal, and several times he called for repetitions and new interpretations. He also announced that at the third rehearsal, due the next day, he would take away our scripts.

  "You are all accomplished actors," he amplified. "You need nothing to refresh good memories."

  "I'd like to keep my book," begged Martha Vining, but Varduk smiled and shook his head.

  "You'll be better without," he said definitely.

  When we approached the climactic scene, with Swithin's attempt to kill Ruthven and Mary's attempted sacrifice, Varduk did not insist on stage business; in fact, he asked us flatly to speak our lines without so much as moving from our places. If this was to calm us after the frightening events of the night before, it did not succeed. Everyone there remembered the accidental sword-thrust, and Varduk's seeming invulnerability; it was as though their thoughts were doleful spoken words.

  Rehearsal over-again without the final line by Ruthven -Varduk bade us a courteous good-night and, as before, walked out first with Sigrid and Martha Vining. I followed with Jake, but at the threshold I touched his arm.,

  "Come with me," I muttered, and turned toward the front of the lodge.

  Varduk and the two women had gone out of sight around the rear of the building. Nobody challenged us as we walked silently in the direction of the road, but I had a sensation as of horrors all around me, inadequately bound back with strands that might snap at any moment.

  "What's it about, Gib?" asked Jake once, but at that moment I saw what I had somehow expected and feared to see.

  A silent figure lay at the foot of the upward-sloping driveway to the road. We both ran forward, coming up on either side of that figure.

  The moon showed through broken clouds. By its light we recognized Judge Pursuivant, limp and apparently lifeless. Beside him lay the empty shank of his walking-stick. His right fist still clenched around the handle, and the slender blade set therein was driven deeply into the loam.

  I did not know what to do, but Jake did. He knelt, scooped the judge's head up and set it against his knee, then slapped the flaccid cheeks with his open palm. Pursuivant's eyelids and mustache fluttered.

  Jake snorted approvingly and lifted his own crossed eyes to mine. "I guess he's all right, Gib. Just passed out is all. Maybe better you go to Varduk and ask for some brand-"

  He broke off* suddenly. He was staring at something behind me.

  I turned, my heart quivering inside my chest.

  Shapes-monstrous, pallid, unclean shapes-were closing in upon us.

  11. Battle and Retreat

  I DOUBT if any writer, however accomplished, has ever done full justice to the emotion of terror.

  To mention the icy chill at the backbone, the sudden sinewless trembling of the knees, the withering dryness of throat and tongue, is to be commonplace; and terror is not commonplace. Perhaps to remember terror is to know again the helplessness and faintness it brings.

  Therefore it must suffice to say that, as I turned and saw the closing in of those pale-glowing blots of menace, I wanted to scream, and could not; to run, and could not; to take my gaze away, and could not.

  If I do not describe the oncoming creatures-if creatures indeed they were-it is because they defied clear vision then and defy clear recollection now. Something quasi-human must have hung about them, something suggestive of man's outline and manner, as in a rough image molded by children of snow; but they were not solid like snow. They shifted and swirled, like wreaths of thick mist, without dispersing in air. They gave a dim, rotten light of their own, and they moved absolutely without sound.

  "It's them," gulped Jake Switz beside me. He, too, was frightened, but not as frightened as I. He could speak, and move, too-he had dropped Pursuivant's head and was rising to his feet. I could hear him suck in a lungful of air, as though to brace himself for action.

  His remembered presence, perhaps the mere fact of his companionship before the unreasoned awfulness of the glow-shadowy pack that advanced to hem us in, gave me back my own power of thought and motion. It gave me, too, the impulse to arm myself. I stooped to earth, groped swiftly, found and drew forth from its bed the sword-cane of Judge Pursuivant.

  The non-shapes-that paradoxical idea is the best I can give of them-drifted around me, free and weightless in the night air like luminous sea-things in still, dark water. I made a thrust at the biggest and nearest of them.

  I missed. Or did I? The target was, on a sudden, there no longer. Perhaps I had pierced it, and it had burst like a flimsy bladder. Thus I argued within my desperate inner mind, even as I faced about and made a stab at another. In the same instant it had gone, too-but the throng did not seem diminished. I made a sweeping slash with my point from side to side, and the things shrank back before it, as though they dared not pass the line I drew.

  "Give 'em the works, Gib!" Jake was gritting out. "They can be hurt, all right!"

  I laughed, like an impudent child. I felt inadequate and disappointed, as when in dreams a terrible adversary wilts before a blow I am ashamed of.

  "Come on," I challenged the undefinable enemy, in a feeble attempt at swagger. "Let me have a real poke at-"

  "Hold hard," said a new voice. Judge Pursuivant, apparently wakened by this commotion all around him, was struggling erect. "Here, Connatt, give me my sword." He fairly wrung it from my hand, and drove back the misty horde with great fanwise sweeps. "Drop back, now. Not toward the lodge-up the driveway to the road."

  We made the retreat somehow, and were not followed. My clothing was drenched with sweat, as though I had swum in some filthy pool. Jake, whom I remember as helping me up the slope when I might have fallen, talked incessantly without finishing a single sentence. The nearest he came to rationality was, "What did… what if… can they-"

  Pursuivant, however, seemed well recovered. He kicked together some bits of kindling at the roadside. Then he asked me for a match-perhaps to make me rally my sagging senses as I explored my pockets-and a moment later he had
kindled a comforting fire.

  "Now," he said, "we're probably safe from any more attention of that bunch. And our fire can't be seen from the lodge. Sit down and talk it over."

  Jake was mopping a face as white as tallow. His spectacles mirrored the fire-light in nervous shimmers.

  "I guess I didn't dream the other night, after all," he jabbered. "Wait till I tell Mister Varduk about this."

  "Please tell him nothing," counseled Judge Pursuivant at once.

  "Eh?" I mumbled, astonished. "When the non-shapes-"

  "Varduk probably knows all about these things-more than we shall ever know," replied the judge. "I rather think he cut short his walk across the front yards so that they would attack me. At any rate, they seemed to ooze out of the timber the moment he and I separated."

  He told us, briefly, of how the non-shapes (he liked and adopted my paradox) were upon him before he knew. Like Jake two nights before, he felt an overwhelming disgust and faintness when they touched him, began to faint. His last voluntary act was to draw the blade in his cane and drive it into the ground, as an anchor against being dragged away.

  "They would never touch that point," he said confidently. "You found that out, Connatt."

  "And I'm still amazed, more about that fact than anything else. How would such things fear, even the finest steel?"

  "It isn't steel." Squatting close to the fire, Pursuivant again cleared the bright, sharp bodkin. "Look at it, gentlemen-silver."