"Why—-what the deuce?—it's nothing but a window-screen," I answered.
"Ah, but it is made of copper," he informed me, as though explaining something of inordinate importance.
"Well "
"Well? Pardieu, I shall say it is well; it is very exceedingly well, my friend. Observe him, how he works."
From his kit bag he produced a reel of insulated wire, an electrical transformer and a set of tools. Working quickly, he passe-partouted the screen's wooden frame with electrician's tape, then plugged a wire into a near-by lamp socket, connected it with the transformer, and from the latter led a double strand of cotton-wrapped wire to the screen. This he clipped firmly to the copper meshes and led a third wire to the metal grille of the heat register. Last of all, he filled a bulb-syringe with water and sprayed the screen from it, repeating the dousings till the woven copper sparkled like a cobweb in the morning sun. "Now, Monsieur le Revenant. I damn think we are ready for you," he announced, surveying his handiwork with every sign of satisfaction.
We waited quietly for something like an hour; then de Grandin rose and bent above the bed where Arabella slept.
"Madame!"
The girl stirred faintly, murmuring some half-audible response, and:
"In half an hour you will rise," he told her in a low, insistent voice. "You will put on your robe and stand before the window, but on no account will you go near it or lay hands on it. Should anyone address you from outside, you will reply, but you will not remember what you say or what is said to you."
He motioned me to follow him, and we left the room, taking station in the hallway just outside.
How long we waited I have no idea. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps less; at any rate, the silent vigil seemed unending, and I raised my hand to stifle a tremendous yawn, when:
"Yes, Uncle Warburg, I can hear you," we heard Arabella saying softly in the room beyond the door.
We tiptoed to the entry: Arabella Tantavul stood before the window, looking fixedly at its darkened square, and beyond her, framed in the window-casing as a masterpiece of horror might be framed for exhibition, glared the face of Warburg Tantavul.
It was dead, there was no doubt about it. In the sunken cheeks, the pinched-in nose and the yellowish-gray skin there showed the evidence of death and early putrefaction, but dead though it was, it was also animated with a dreadful sort of life. The eyes were glaring horribly, as though illuminated with some inward phosphorescence, and they bulged forward in their sunken sockets as though a throttling hand were clutching at the dead thing's throat. The lips were red—■ red as rouge—but they were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with fresh blood.
"You hear me, do ye?" he demanded, and the ruddy, foam-flecked lips writhed across his yellow teeth. "Then listen, girl; you broke your bargain with me,
WEIRD TALES
now I'm come to keep my threat: Every time you kiss your husband"—a shriek of bitter laughter cut his words, and his staring, starting eyes half closed with hellish merriment—"or the child you love so well, my shadow will be on you. You've kept me out thus far, but some day I'll get in, and "
Once more the foam-dyed lips writhed across the gleaming teeth, and the lean, dead jaw dropped downward, then snapped up, as though it champed on living flesh; then, suddenly, the whole expression of the corpse-face changed. Surprize, incredulous delight, anticipation, as before a feast, were pictured on it. "Why"—its cachinnating laughter sent a chill down my spine—"why, you're window's open now! You've changed the screen, and I can enter!"
Slowly, like a child's balloon stirred by a vagrant wind, the dreadful face moved closer to the window, and I noted with a nauseated start that it was bodiless. Closer, closer to the screen it came, and Arabella Tantavul gave ground before it, shuddering with nameless dread, putting up her hands to shield her eyes from the laughing thing which menaced her.
"Sapristi," swore de Grandin softly, his fingers clenched about my elbow till they numbed my arm. "Come on, my old and evil one; come a little nearer; only one so little tiny step, and "
The dead thing floated closer. Now its mocking mouth and shriveled, pointed nose were pressing against the screen; now they seemed to filter through the copper meshes like a wisp of fog
There came a blinding flash of blue-white flame, the cracking, sputtering gush of fusing metal, a wild, despairing shriek which ended ere it fairly started in a sob of mortal torment, and the sharp and acrid odor of burned flesh!
"Arabella—darling—is she all right?"
Dennis Tantavul came charging up the stairs. "I thought I heard a scream "
"You did, Monsieur," de Grandin answered, "but I do not think that you will ever hear its repetition, unless you are so unfortunate as to go to hell when your earthly pilgrimage is ended."
"What was it?" began Dennis, but de Grandin stopped him with a smile.
"One who thought himself a clever jester pressed his jest a bit too far," he answered enigmatically. "Meantime, look to Madame your wife. See how peacefully she lies upon her bed. Her time for evil dreams is past, my friend. Be kind to her, do not forget that a woman loves to have a lover, even though he is her husband." He bent and kissed the sleeping girl upon the brow, and:
"Au 'voir, my little lovely one," he murmured. Then, to me:
"Come, Trowbrdige, my good friend. Our work is finished here; let us leave them to their happiness."
Jules de grandin poured an ounce or so of Couvoisier into a lotus-bud shaped brandy sniffer and passed the goblet back and forth beneath his nose, inhaling the rich fragrance of the brandy. "Morbleu, old Omar had it right," he told me with a grin; "what is it that the distillers buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell?"
"And when you get through misquoting poetry, perhaps you'll deign to tell me what it's all about?" I countered.
"Perhaps I shall," he answered. "Attend me, if you please: You will recall that this annoying Monsieur Who Was Dead Yet Not Dead appeared several times and grinned most horribly through the window? Through the window, please remember. At the hospital, where he near-
THE JEST OF WARBURG TANTAVUI
315
ly caused the garde-malade to have a fit, he laughed and mouthed at her through the glass skylight, which was tightly closed. When he first appeared and threatened Madame Arabella, he also spoke to her through the window, and "
"But the window was open," I protested.
"Yes, but screened," he answered with a smile. "Screened with iron, if you please."
"What difference did that make? Tonight I saw him force his features partway through the screen "
"Precisement," he agreed. "But it was a screen of copper; I saw to that."
Then, seeing my bewilderment: "Iron is of all metals the most earthy," he explained. "It and its derivative, steel, are so instinct with the essence of the earth that creatures of the spirit world can not abide its presence. The legends tell us that when Solomon's Temple was constructed no tool of iron was employed, because even the friendly spirits whose help he had enlisted could not perform their tasks in close proximity to iron. The werewolf, a most unpleasant sort of creature which is half a demon, can be slain by a sword or spear of steel. The witch can be detected by the pricking of an iron pin—never by a pin of brass.
"Very well. When first I thought about this evil dead one's reappearances, I noted that each time he stared outside the window. Glass, apparently, he could not pass—and glass contains a modicum of iron. Iron window-wire stopped him. 'He are not a ghost, then,' I inform me. 'They are things of spirit only, they are thoughts made manifest. This one is a thing of hate, but also of some physical material as well; he is composed in part of the emanations from that body which lies in the tomb and for which the Devil of hell and the devils of decay fight, each
for their due shares. Voila, if he have physical properties, he can be destroyed by physical means.'
"And so I set my trap. I procure a screen of copper, through which he could make entr
ance to the house — but I charged it with electricity—-I increase the potential of the current with a step-up transformer, to make assurance doubly sure—and then I wait for him to try to enter, and electrocute himself."
"But is he really destroyed?" I asked dubiously.
"As the candle-flame when one has blown on it," he replied. "He was—how do you say it?—short-circuited. No convict in the chair at Sing Sing ever died more thoroughly than that one did tonight, my friend."
"It seems queer, though, he should have come back from the grave to haunt those two poor kids and break up their marriage, when he really wanted it," I murmured wonderingly.
"Wanted it?" he echoed. "Ha, yes, he wanted it as the hunter wants the bird to step within his snare."
"But he gave them such a handsome present when little Dennis was born "
"Oh, my good, kind, trusting friend, are you, too, deceived?" he laughed.
' 'Deceived "
"But certainly. That money which I gave to Madame Arabella was my own. I put it in that envelope."
"Then what was in the message which he really left?"
The little Frenchman sobered suddenly. "It was a dreadful thing, that wicked jest he played on them," he told me solemnly. "The night that Monsieur Dennis left that packet with me I determined that the old one meant him injury; so, when he went, I steamed the package open and destroyed Monsieur Warburg's
WEIRD TALES
message from it. In it he made plain the things which Dennis thought that he remembered.
"Long and long ago Monsieur Tanta-vul lived in San Francisco. His wife was seven years his junior, and a pretty, joyous thing she was. She bore him two fine children, a little boy and girl, and on them she bestowed the love which he could not appreciate. His business took him often from the city, but when he went away he set a watch on her.
"Ha, the eavesdropper seldom hears good tidings of himself, and he who spies on others often wishes that he did not so. His surliness, his evil temper, his reproaches without praise, had driven her to seek release. She met and loved another man, and though she shrank from seeking freedom in that way, at last she yielded to his importunities, and was feady to escape, when Master Bluebeard-Tantavul suddenly returned.
"Eh bien, but he had planned a pretty scheme of vengeance! His baby girl he spirited away, gave her for keeping to some Mexicans, then told his wife his plan: He would bring the children up as strangers to each other, and when they grew to full estate he would marry them and keep their consanguinity a secret till they had a child, then break the dreadful truth to them. Thereafter they would live on, bound together for their children's sake, and fearing the world's censure; their consciences would cause them ceaseless torment, and the very love which they had for each other would be like fetters forged of white-hot steel, binding them in a prison-house from which there offered no release.
"When he had told her this his wife went mad, and, heartless as a devil out of hell, he thrust her into an institution, left her there to die, and took his babies with him, moving to New Jersey, and
permitting them to grow to manhood and womanhood together, ceaselessly striving to guide them toward the altar, knowing always that his vengeance would be sated when his vile design had been accomplished."
"But, great heavens, man, they're brother and sister!" I exclaimed in horror.
"Perfectly," he answered coolly. "They are also husband and wife, and father and mother."
"But—but "T stammered, utterly
at a loss for words.
"But me no buts, good friend," he bade. "I know what you would say. Their child? Ah bah; consider: Did not the kings of ancient times repeatedly take their own sisters to wife, and were not their offspring sound and healthy? But certainly. Did not both Darwin and Wallace fail to find foundation for the doctrine that cross-breeding between healthy people with clean blood is productive of inferior offspring? Look at the little Monsieur Dennis. Were you not blinded by your silly training and tradition — did you not know his parents' near relationship — you would have no hesitation in pronouncing him an unusually fine and healthy child.
"Besides," he added earnestly, "they love each other, not as brother and sister, but as man and woman. He is her happiness, she is his, and little Monsieur Dennis is the happiness of both. Why destroy this joy— le bon Dieu knows they earned it by a joyless childhood!—when I can preserve it for them by simply keeping silent?" . "But "
"But what you have learned yout learned under the seal of your profession," he warned me solemnly. "You can not tell. I will not.
"Meantime" — he poured himself another drink—"I thirst."
"Twenty—thirty years ago*-a night in the Haitian jungle—when was it?"
V"ffxiirirCHi>'->f
aked Lady
By MINDRET LORD
this is not a sex story, but is an ingenious tale of West Indian voodoo and a millionaire's strange scheme for vengeance on the actress
whom he had married
MARION VAN ORTON finished packing her dressing-case, opened her purse to make sure that her steamer tickets were still there, took one last look in the mirror and then descended the wide, polished staircase of the Van Orton mansion for the last time. Gorham, the butler, met her at the door.
"Madam will be gone for the week end?" he asked.
"Including the week end," Mrs. Van Orton amended.
The town car was waiting at the curb. He helped her into it and stood waiting at the door while she settled back comfortably. She looked up questioningly.
WEIRD TALES
"Will Madam leave any message?" Gorham asked.
"Oh," she sighed, "just say I've gone." "For an indefinite stay, Madam?" Languidly, Mrs. Van Orton motioned to the chauffeur. "No," she said. "Just say I've gone."
The purring motor drew away. Only Gorham's eyes moved as he watched it turn the corner. With a start he recovered himself and closed his mouth. "Well!" he said as he walked up the stairs. A greater degree of volubility had returned to him when he reported the incident to the cook.
Just for the moment, Gilda Ransome's life had crystallized into one desperate wish: if she couldn't scratch her thigh, this instant, she would go stark, raving mad. A few hours earlier she had thought that if she didn't have breakfast life would be insupportable. Hunger was bad enough—but this itch!
"You may rest now," said Mr. Blake, the well-known designer of the fleshier covers of the naughtier magazines. He turned away and lit a cigarette. Gilda applied her nails to her skin as she went behind a screen and drew on a dressing-gown.
She began to think about her hunger again. She was not hungry because she was on a reducing diet—she needed neither reduction nor addition. Every artist for whom she had posed had agreed that her figure was "just the type"—presumably the type that sells magazines. And her face was certainly no less attractive than her figure—which is an emphatic statement.
She felt starved because influenza had kept her idle for three weeks and during that time her money had run out. She had never been one to save.
Later in the day she fainted while try-
ing to hold a tiring pose. Mr. Blake was very much annoyed, and he determined that in the future he would use stronger, if less perfect, models.
N the West Indies there were many,
many men who would have testified to the cleverness of Jeremiah Van Orton. As a lad of twenty he had come to Curacao from Holland, and for forty-five years thereafter he had remained in the Indies. Then he had decided that he was too rich and too old to go on working. That was his first mistake. If he had kept his nose to the grindstone, he would not have come to New York. He would not have met Marion Martin, the actress. He would not have made a fool of himself.
Van Orton sat huddled in front of an open fire and thought the matter over. In this climactic hour he paused to review his life and works.
Vivid flashes of memory confused his efforts to keep his thoughts orderly. A tongue of flame licked around a log in the f
ireplace. A thread of scented smoke curled into the room. . . . A night in the Haitian jungle—when was it? Twenty—thirty years ago? A black wench was dying. "For no reason," the doctor said; "for superstition. Voodoo." . . . Marion Martin had been convincing. She had said that she was tired of young men—men whom she could not respect. She had said a man was not in his prime until sixty or seventy. Until then, he was callow, unproved, not worthy of admiration or love. He knew nothing of metropolitan people. He had been attracted to her and, presently, he had believed and loved her. . . . What was that about the natives destroying with such care every fingernail cutting, every hair? One had to be careful—voodoo was strong in the West Indies. . . . He had given Marion his honorable name
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319
and a million dollars besides. Even if she hadn't pretended to love him, he might have done the same. She had given him the illusion of youth. He had thought of a future with her, for her. He might have lived for ever!
And now he was nothing but an old fool who was going to die. But so was she. Oh, yes, so was she!
The idea of following his wife to wherever she might come to rest and murdering her there never occurred to Jeremiah Van Orton. He was too tired and feeble for such a melodramatic role. One did not spend a lifetime in the Indies for nothing. He was clever; except for this little interlude of marriage, he had always been clever. He would find a way, a good wav—a safe way for him, an unpleasant way for her.
Jeremiah Van Orton could always think better among his beautiful collection of paintings. He went to the drawing-room and drew up a chair before a Hobbema landscape. There he remained until he had planned all the details of his vengeance.
IN the restaurant of the Hotel Lafayette, Michael Bonze sat across the table from his friend, Pierre Vanneau, and cursed the age in which they both were born.
"What does art mean in the Twentieth Century?" he asked rhetorically. "Nothing! People talk about the dynamic beauty of a new stream-lined toilet seat or the Empire State Building. Or take Surrealism: daubs—-damn it!—daubs by clumsy, color-blind house-painters! Picasso eats while I starve! Cocteau is the white-haired boy while I worry myself bald! People don't want things to look like what they are—they want them to look like the sublimation of the mood of the essence of the psychological reaction
Weird Tales volume 24 number 03 Page 4
