The Heads of Cerberus

by Francis Stevens

  "To-day science herself is steadily approaching the magic boundaries of those realms which were once my familiar playground. Soon she can no longer ignore the actual, material existence of the 'astral plane' as it has been misnamed by investigators who only recognize it as a Psychical possibility.

  "But I-in the flesh, I have known such adventures as only you in all the world would credit! There, ever changing, continually forming, are born the nuclei of events, conditions, inventions, ideas, which later 'break through' as it were and recreate this more stable world to which we are born. The inspiration of the poet, the philosopher, or the inventor, is no more than a flicker from that swifter, different vibration within our own.

  "And those lands have their monsters-devils, even. The spirit can at times attune itself and in our world a prophet arises. But let him beware! They are wild realms which he glimpses, neither good nor bad, but alive with their own never-ceasing, half-aimless, half-purposeful activities. I know them as no other man save Andrew Power alone. Many times have I sought him there. Many times has his name come up in some such fantastic connection at it came to you. I have seen, as it were, the shadow of his thought sketched in the tangible phantasmagoria which surrounded me. But either he eludes me purposely, or he is dead, and only his mind endures as an invisible force. But if he still lives and we meet, he can make this stuff that I can't make; I can show him the way back to our own world; and after that the door will be open for all to pass!

  "Think of the discoveries that will be hastened-the miracles that may be wrought by knowledge acquired at first hand across that threshold! I could almost kill myself for sheer rage when I think how I wasted glorious opportunities in the pursuit of mere unprofitable adventure! Why, you yourselves brought back at least one idea-the idea of matter-destroying sound waves. Had it been Andrew Power or I, we would have searched those archives until we found the formula by which the Red Bell was made. We would have brought that back, instead of the bare and useless idea!"

  "And a fine lot of good that would have been to the world!" exploded Trenmore. "I'd as soon give matches to a child and bid it go play in the nice powder mill, as turn loose the men of this world in that one we've come from, if all you say is true. This dust here I'll toss in the river, so no man shall go that road again. 'Tis not right nor decent, Mr. Scarboro, that one should so thrust oneself into the very workshop of the Almighty!"

  By the gleam in Scarboro's eye hostilities threatened.

  Drayton intervened. "Before we discuss the ultimate fate of the dust, Mr. Scarboro, won't you run over our own experience and explain a few little things? Now, in the first place you say that Andrew Power placed the powder on his tongue and disappeared! I am sure none of us even tried to taste the stuff."

  "I said," corrected Scarboro, "that it must enter the system of a living creature! It is equally effective when breathed into the lungs. That is the way every one of you went. As to what you found, Ulithia is a place, or rather a condition, which is the one invariable prelude to every adventure I have had. Its phantasmagoria are well-nigh as fixed in their nature as what we please to call 'reality.' But of the character of its inhabitants or of the laws which govern its various phenomena, I can tell you but little.

  "After living in this commonplace world of ours so many thousand centuries, mankind stands blank-faced before its greater mysteries. How can I, then, who have but one lifetime, and of that have spent but a small proportion in this other world, be expected to explain Ulithia? It is there. Every one present has seen it. We have seen its starry sky that is like our own sky; its sun that is not our sun; its moon that is a mystic gateway. While in our world the sun set once, you passed three days and two whole nights in Ulithia and the next inner world. Our astronomy is not theirs, however much it may resemble it in appearance. And we have all talked with Ulithia's ghostly, phantasmal inhabitants. Spirits? Demons? Elves? I do not know. That they are more familiar with our nature than we with theirs is certain. In Ulithia they recognize our alien passing. As the whim pleases them, they speed or hinder us. But, just as happened to all of you, one always does finally pass through there.

  "What lies beyond varies. Those worlds are real. Their matter is solid while it lasts. But the form passes. 'The hills are shadows and they flow from form to form and nothing stands. They melt like mists, the solid lands; like clouds they shape themselves and go!' That was written of earth as we know it. How much better it applies to those inner, wilder realms!

  "To one who knows the conditions, who has power to go and come at will, their perils are negligible; their wonder and delight inexhaustible. But 'woe to the stranger in the Hollow Lands!' You people were singularly fortunate. By a millionth chance, when the great Red Bell dissolved the astral vibrations, you were restored to your own. The distance which you had moved through space, even the direction was the same. In traversing Ulithia you actually traversed Philadelphia. When you went through the moon gate, you turned inward upon another plane and came back through the false city as if it were the real one. Thus, because your temple occupied the same space as the real city hall, it was there you finally found yourselves.

  "That girl who returned with you came because she was temporarily in contact with a thing of this world-the Cerberus. When contact with that particular object ceased she went. I say 'she,' but she was nothing-a phantasm-the materialized figment of a dream. All those phantasmagoria which you met, touched, which might and would have slain you had not the Red Bell been one of them-they were the changing forms of a world which may be created and recreated in a single day.

  "A prophecy of the actual future of this city and nation? Perhaps. More likely some one of the forces that rule there, for its own sardonic amusement, twisted the fluent astral matter into a distorted and mocking reflection of the real city. Oh, yes, there are forces there, as here, at whose nature we can only guess. Matter does not form or vivify itself, either in those worlds or in this.

  "As to the general moral tone of your Philadelphia in the year A.D. 2118-pardon me-but that moral tone seems to have been a distinct reflection of your own. At least, you met guile with treachery, and the inference is not hard to draw!"

  At this gratuitous and unexpected insult, Drayton flushed uncomfortably, Viola drew herself up with great dignity, and Trenmore rose from the table so violently that his chair crashed over.

  "You old scalawag-"

  Just here the door was flung open. There stood Martin, panting and stammering incoherently.

  "What is it now?" demanded his employer.

  "Is it Mr. Bertram, Martin?" queried Viola, turning quite pale. A vision had flashed up of the disconsolate burglar, lying in a pool of blood, slain by his own hand in excessive grief for the loss of his phantasmal sweetheart.

  "Y-yes, ma'am! At least, I guess so. Was Mr. Bertram that other party that didn't want supper?"

  By now Viola's fears had communicated themselves to her brother and Drayton. Without pausing, all three pushed past Martin and reached the library. Bertram's chair was empty. His body was nowhere in sight.

  Trenmore turned on Martin. "Where is he, then?"

  "I don't know, sir. I'm not saying anything against a guest of yours, Mr. Trenmore, but all I know is he went upstairs a while back and I just now went to your room, sir, to lay out your pajamas, and-and the safe's open, sir-and-"

  But Trenmore waited for no more. He bounded up the stairs three steps at a time. Martin's tale proved only too true. The silk curtain was pushed back, the steel door in the wall swung wide, and the floor was as littered as that of the third-floor bedroom upon Drayton's first awakening in this much-burglarized house.

  "The money," moaned Martin, wringing his hands. "All the money I saw you put in there yesterday-it's gone!"

  Trenmore was rapidly running over the leather boxes, trays, and the like which were scattered about. He rose with a sigh of relief. "At least, he's taken nothing else. The money was only a couple of hundred that I can spare; but these trinkets of mine
I could not easily replace."

  "I don't believe it was Bertram," broke in Viola, with the eager loyalty of youth for one who has been, if not a friend, at least a companion. "He couldn't rob you, Terry, after all we've been through together!"

  "What's this?" Drayton had picked up a folded scrap of paper from the dresser. "Why it's addressed to you, Terry!"

  The Irishman took the paper, hastily opened it, and read:

  "Dear Mr. Trenmore, I heard what Mr. Scarboro said. Skidoo wasn't anything. Then I ain't anything either. I was goin' to go straight but what's the use. I need this money worse than you. Goodby. B."

  To the astonishment of all present, Trenmore's face suddenly cleared and with a whoop of joy he rushed toward the door.

  "Moral tone, is it? Wait till I show this to the old scalawag below there. Now whom will he blame for the moral tone, when he reads this letter? And I never thought of Bertram, the thievin' little crook!"

  Waving the missive triumphantly, he thundered down the stairs. Viola burst into almost hysterical laughter and Drayton was forced to laugh with her. "That shot of Scarboro's rankled," he said. "Let's go down and hear them argue it out."

  In the dining room, however, yet another surprise awaited them. Terry was there, a picture of chagrin, but no Scarboro.

  "The old villain skipped out," he said disgustedly, "while we were tearing about after the other scoundrel! And what's worse, he took the dust with him! Well, I'd not chase after either of them if 'twas to win me a kingdom."

  Very thoughtfully the three made their way to the library. Drayton picked up the crystal vial which Trenmore had flung away. One of its silver heads was dented to a yet more savage expression. Otherwise the Cerberus was unharmed. He offered it to Trenmore, but his friend waved the vial aside.

  "I don't want it," he said grimly. "Sure, Bobby my lad, I think I'll just give the thing to yourself and Viola for a wedding present-if you fear no ill luck from it."

  "A wedding present!" stammered Drayton. "See here, Terry, I–Viola, child, I love you too well to marry you! You don't know of the disgrace into which I have fallen, nor, far worse, of the infamy of which I discovered myself capable. On the edge of death and in those strange surroundings, it didn't seem to matter so much; but we are back in a real world again and-and by heaven! I think for me the other was the better place!"

  Viola went to him and with her two hands on his arm looked up into his face. "Bobby," she said, "I know what you mean. My brother told me of your sorrows and griefs, while we stood waiting for the examinations to begin, in the Green Room of the temple. He told me everything. Do you think I love you the less that you have suffered?"

  "You don't understand" he said hoarsely. Somehow he held himself from taking her in his arms. He looked to Trenmore, but that large, discreet gentleman had wandered over to the window and was staring out into the night. Drayton choked. "You might as well marry that thief Bertram!" he forced out.

  "Marry Bertram!" She laughed softly and hid the flush of her cheek against his coat. "Why, but so I would marry Bertram did I love him as I love you, Bobby, darling!"

  No attempt to persuade him of his own moral innocence could have had the least effect. That last naive assertion, however, was too much for Drayton. His arms swept about her.

  Trenmore, looking over his shoulder, grinned and hastily resumed his scrutiny of the empty pavement outside.

  "And so," he murmured, "we'll just take our worlds as we find them, Bobby, my lad! And we'll see what can be done out there in Cincinnati. The scoundrels that downed him have gold. But I've gold myself. We'll give them a chance to down a fighting Irishman. And maybe-who knows? — there's a Red Bell hung for them, too, in the Dome of Justice. Aye, we'll go spy out the land and think well and then strike hard! The way they'll be wishing they'd crept in their holes and stayed there."

  And with a smile of pleased anticipation for that Olympian battle he sniffed afar, Trenmore turned to the immediate and more difficult task of exerting his Celtic wit and eloquence to persuade Robert Drayton to let him undertake it.

  THE END

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