“Ah, such asses!—such feeble excuses for ‘policemen’!” Xavier exclaimed, of a sudden: with a renewed rush of his anger, and a thrust of pain behind his eyes. “If only I had been in charge—”
Roused by his intemperate outburst, the murdered girl lifted her head, with some difficulty, to gaze at him: her sweet face so sorely abused, and her plump lower lip so bloodied,—indeed, was the flesh not torn partly away?—that, though he had pondered her likeness many a time, in rapt and pitying absorption, Xavier might not have recognized her now. Poor girl!—poor child! If only he might have saved her!
Xavier staggered backward, rubbing roughly at his eyes. It was the noontide heat, the vertiginous glare: he was not himself: he was himself, but most agitated. For, alas, the pathos of the situation struck him, as it had so many years previous: even should the murderer be apprehended, and the “solution” proudly proclaimed,—even should the detective revel in his triumph—the murdered and abused cannot rise again, to share in such felicity: for their time on our pitiless earth is past: and Heaven’s balm most problematic.
“Nay, I cannot allow myself to think along those lines,” Xavier cautioned himself, in a panting voice, “not now,—not again—not ever again. For it is a sort of blasphemy, is’t not?—to despair in my own powers, and to risk God’s displeasure—”
He resolved to give way no more to childish fancies and degrading fears: but to return to the task at hand: noting (with considerable relief) that the phantasmagoric figure of Eva Teal had been disrupted by a small contingent of wasps, and that he was quite alone in the Half-Acre; and safe from all danger.
So familiar had Xavier become with the divers histories of the “Damsels of the Half-Acre,” and so long had he ground his teeth, as it were, over their sisterly fates, it was not so difficult for him to envision the corpses in their allotted places amidst the boulders, as the disinterested observer might suppose. To be a detective, it has oft been remarked, is to dine,—and commune,—and sleep—with the dead, if not with Death itself: and to so adroitly braid one’s life with one’s subject, not a hair’s breadth comes between. Thus, Xavier Kilgarvan knew in what deplorable wise Miss Euphemia Godwit had been found, in a corner of the stony graveyard, frozen so stiff amidst the rocks, it had taken an heroic species of effort to free her,—and a singular amount of fortitude, on the part of the sheriff’s men. He knew the approximate place,—some eighty feet to the east—Miss Dulcinea Inman had been hastily, and doubtless with contempt, interred, in the vine-enshrouded swamp; and the final resting places, within fifty feet of his own position, of Miss Tricia Furlow,—the kitchen maid who had so “shamelessly” pursued Ringgold Peregrine, the affrighted young man had had to flee the country!—and Miss Florette Sparks, of whom it was said she possessed a “resolutely cheery manner,” and a mass of dull-blond curls so profuse, they seemed to fly about her head. Each of the young women had had the fortune,—soon to become misfortune—of having been acquainted with, and doubtless courted by, a certain gentleman, whispered to be handsome, and high-born, and wondrously gracious, and, withal, inclined to be cruel: and so it seemed they were made his brides, if not precisely his wives: and suffered the retribution of a most brutal death. “Yet it is not an exaggeration to say,” Xavier heard himself whisper hoarsely, “that, in all of Winterthurn, I am the sole person to suspect,—nay, to know—that Valentine is guilty: or even to dare make the claim aloud. Moreover,—”
So it was, despite the warning throb of pain in his head, and the tears that now liberally streaked his cheeks, Xavier succumbed to a fit of very bad temper indeed: berating the police for their incompetence, and himself for failing to speak up more forcibly: cursing Mrs. Teal and Hans Deck alike, for their resistance to consenting to the exhumation of Eva’s body,—unless, perhaps (for the thought only now occurred to him), they were awaiting monetary rewards for their consent; which is to say, bribes: the which Xavier would offer them out of his own pocket, if necessary, with due contempt. “Nay, I have been too courteous these many months,—I have been too law-abiding,—too ‘good,’” Xavier raged, “—while the murderer himself feels not a whit of apprehension, let alone fear; and the luckless Rosenwald is prepared for slaughter; and, I have no doubt, Perdita herself stands aside amazed, that her ‘impassioned’ suitor so lacks boldness!”
The golden-winged butterfly incautiously brushed too near, and drew Xavier’s ire, so that, all unthinkingly, he closed his fist about it, and destroyed it in an instant: flicking its crushed body from his fingers against a rock, and essaying to wipe the powdery remains, yet unthinkingly, against his coat sleeve. At this moment he chanced to sight, perhaps a hundreds yards distant, where the rocky soil of the Half-Acre subsided by degrees to marshland, badly choked in cattails, reeds, scrub willow, and the like, a single glove,—a lavender glove—lying in brazen innocence, for any eye to discover!
His—!
Hesitating not a moment, Xavier ran to retrieve the solitary clue,—yet found it devilishly difficult to approach, as it had been blown, or had floated, several yards out, into a puddle of questionable composition: being partly stagnant water, encrusted with a frothy greenish scum, and partly a thick, black, malodorous mud. Alas, to set foot in such foulness!—to be forced to ruin not only his shoes, but very likely his trousers as well! But, holding his breath against the noisome stench, Xavier all bravely splashed out into the puddle, and in triumph seized the “clue,”—indeed, was it not in genuine triumph?—as any fool could see that the glove, despite its unusual hue, was a gentleman’s, and not a lady’s: and, in all of Winterthurn, could belong only to Valentine Westergaard. “Thus, I will see you damned by man,” Xavier said, panting, “who are, till now, damned only by God.”
It happened, however, that Xavier’s progress into the little bog had been more gracefully executed than his egress could be: for, to the detective’s consternation, he saw too late that he had unwittingly run out into a species of quicksand: and that, with every step, but particularly with a panicked step, he sank several inches more!—and was so dazed at the suddenness, and queerness, of the danger, he could not think how to proceed. To hasten forward seemed altogether unadvisable: to retreat, purposeless: yet to stay in one position, a fatal decision, as, even unmoving, he felt himself being tugged downward, by hideous, implacable, sucking degrees. Casting his eyes wildly overhead, where a meager patch of August sky peeped through a confused lacework of leaves, branches, and sinewy vines, Xavier murmured aloud: “But to die here, and now,—and in so degrading a manner!”
Yet he could not reasonably believe he would die, for saving himself was an utterly simple matter: he had only to maneuver his body (grown frighteningly heavy and clumsy) some eight or ten yards forward,—which is to say, out of the clayey sucking mud in which he found himself, to firmer ground: that very ground from which, but a scant moment before, the detective had, all obliviously, stepped—! Then, he had been altogether safe, though he had not guessed at the conditions, and the qualifications, for his “safety.” Now, as the bog sucked at him,—for, indeed, it did suck, and tug; all how deliberately, how resolutely sucking, tugging, pulling, swallowing!—now he was in mortal danger: and cursed himself for his irremediable error. That the simple reversal of Time could not be directed, in such emergencies, struck Xavier as a singular failing of the human will: as wretched a predicament, perhaps, as the habitation of a body.
Now, with astonishing swiftness, he had sunk to his knees; now, all unbelievably, to midthigh; a warm purulent gassy odor was released from the mud that awakened a spasm of nausea in him; he cried out in desperation, and in rage, at his plight; he succumbed to a terror, that he could not fail to sink,—might it be completely?—for now the mud had drawn him down yet farther, and,—but could it be?—yet farther: and no help was in sight: and no means within reach, that he could help himself,—for, though the marsh was overgrown with scrub trees and vines, none was close by; nor had he a rock, or any firm thing, that his fingers might grasp.
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p; Even now, Xavier reasoned with himself that the substance into which he had so brashly stepped, to retrieve his invaluable clue (held high above his head, in a trembling hand, for safekeeping), could not possibly be quicksand, as quicksand per se was not to be found in Winterthurn, to his knowledge: it must be but a particularly odious, and, he supposed, dangerous, species of marsh mud,—so rank, and foul-smelling, and fecal in its composition, it quite beggared defining. Not quicksand, which was known to be lethal to mankind, or to any living thing that blundered into it; but mere mud,—mere muck, mere slimy watery filth—which was another matter entirely. Surely so banal a predicament might be overcome by a spirited application of,—but, alas, Xavier knew not precisely what: not wit, not ingenuity, not virtue, not cunning, not patience, not exactitude, not physical prowess, not excellent intentions,—not, indeed, anything he might dazedly call forth as possessed by Xavier Kilgarvan.
“But I shall not die, for such a trifle,” Xavier whispered, “for the possibility is unthinkable: and my murderer should evermore be free.”
Nonetheless, he deemed it advisable to put aside his manly pride, and call for help in earnest: nay, shout for help: and scream: and plead that someone in this godforsaken place should come to his aid. Yet this agitation,—coupled, unfortunately, with a sudden and involuntary struggle: a wrestling, as it were, with no one and nothing against which to pit his strength,—had the infelicitous effect of causing him to sink yet farther, and yet more rapidly: the loathsome mud sucking now at his midriff, so that it was necessary for him to keep his stiffening arms raised above his head,—an action that, though sounding facile enough, had begun to produce some discomfiture.
“Nay, ‘Xavier Kilgarvan’ cannot die,” the now-terrified man pleaded, “for it would violate all that I,—all that we—know of God’s love for us: and our expectations of,—of completion, and perfection—”
Doubtless such logic, and its translation into a rigorous grammatical form, afforded the doomed man a scant semblance of control of his unfortunate situation: but, I am sorry to say, it had no effect whatsoever in slowing the cruel rate of progress with which the “mud” pulled him down. So it was, he gave over logic yet again: and again succumbed to shouting, and screaming, and begging, and pleading: the which came sadly to naught, as the marsh, and the dank surrounding forest, and the portion of the Devil’s Half-Acre it was yet Xavier’s privilege to see, were all empty: and even empty of motion: and so unutterably dead, no echoes of his pleas sounded. Alas, that Xavier’s surrender of his pride, and his abrupt indifference as to his worldly reputation, should seem to have no effect upon the surrounding landscape or, indeed, upon the vast World beyond: was it not some ignoble species of error, an uncalibrated shifting of planes, an actual rent (as it were) in the fabric of Reality itself?
Why, the mere prized fact that Xavier’s mother loved him so dearly,—was this not, in itself, sufficient to “save” him?
And,—how queer and disordered, the thoughts buzzing in his skull!—the mere fact that, as he had concluded from a close perusal of Simon Esdras Kilgarvan’s early Treatise, the probability of the existence of the “World” itself was in doubt; or had been so, at the time of the Treatise’s publication.
And, most potent of all, that Xavier Kilgarvan was a hero, and knew himself so: willing to risk death (as, it seemed, he was now doing,—his trembling hand yet held high, to keep the lavender glove safe), with no expectation of monetary reward; and, it began to appear self-evident, very little hope of appreciation.
Or was the hideous experience but a dream?—from which, bathed in chill perspiration, he would wake, to open his affrighted eyes wide, upon the balm of morning sunshine?
Or,—he knew not how, or why, or by what agent—was it a test of his courage? his intelligence? his muscular strength?
Or was the incident a humiliating sort of moral lesson, designed to imprint the need for constant vigilance upon his soul?—no matter the detective’s confidence in his powers, and his certitude in doing right.
(“Well, as I have learned my lesson now,” Xavier feebly observed, “the folly might lift.”)
Yet he continued to sink, all helplessly; and unvoiced prayers shaped his lips; and yet the forest, and the Devil’s Half-Acre, and the glimmering patch of blue sky, mirrored naught of his plight. For some tantalizing seconds, the sucking action of the bog appeared to have stopped: and Xavier scarcely dared breathe, let alone move his body, for fear he would provoke it into resuming. His handsome face was so besmeared with mud, and so screwed up in amazed terror, it is altogether likely that he could not have recognized himself; or would have wished to. And as, at last, he was forced to draw a deep, desperate, gasping breath,—why, the very thing happened that he had feared: and he sank another inch or two, the mud being now at midchest.
But it could not be, his buzzing thoughts insisted, that he might sink yet further,—and then yet further: for would that not mean his very extinction? And as the proposition was untenable, how might it be demonstrated?
“Nay, it is unthinkable,” Xavier whispered, with numbed lips. And yet the action of the bog most miserably continued, now accelerating, now slackening in its pace, and again accelerating; and releasing, as before, a most nauseating gas,—these tiny heated bubbles rising to the surface, and bursting, stirred by Xavier’s feet. “Unthinkable,” Xavier murmured, trying with all his will to hold himself rigid, and not to flail out in panic, “unthinkable: for I am ‘Xavier Kilgarvan,’ and I am, after a long hiatus, at last in possession of a tangible clue—! Thus it seems to me in error, and,—I know not: incongruous, unseemly, unnatural—that I should die now, in the midst of the story. Why, it seems to me self-evident that I cannot die,—that God would not permit it—for all of the world should vanish with me!”
SO IT WAS, the doomed detective consoled himself.
As the torturous minutes passed, he found it no longer practicable to hold both arms stiffly aloft; and resigned himself to surrendering, as it were, his left arm to the bog: which, even at this juncture, he shrank from calling quicksand. Now it was with inordinate difficulty he drew air into his lungs; and this, owing to its sickly gaseous quality, provoked so violent a sensation in him, he was forced to expel it at once. Some yards distant, a flotilla of golden-winged butterflies all lightly passed, with no more cognizance of the entrapped man than the petrified hulks of swamp trees had cognizance of him: and Xavier sharply regretted that, shortly before his death, he had been intemperate enough to cause the death of one of these,—a creature possessed of so delicate, and so wondrously intricate, a beauty, in the minute span of its fluted wings, as to justify all earthly disharmony,—and Mankind’s enfeebled wickedness. “Ah, forgive me!” was Xavier’s whispered plea.
Now, however, it was too late for such musings, for even the most resolutely optimistic of persons could not help but suspect that Xavier must soon sink below the bog’s scum-encrusted surface,—and suffocate, and die an unspeakable death: and, indeed, suffer that most irremediable of insults, complete oblivion, and erasure: with no trace of him remaining for the world to mourn—! Sensing this, in despairing fatigue Xavier lowered his right arm, which had grown numb: and closely examined the “clue” to which, it seemed, he had given his life: now perceiving it, with a sickened rush of certitude, and rage, to be far too clean,—indeed, was the glove not freshly laundered?—to have lain in the bog since June. “Why, it has been ‘planted’ to lure me hither,—to my folly,—to my death!” Xavier softly exclaimed: and so revulsed was he by his own blindness, he threw the glove from him with what meager strength his arm retained,—so that it landed a few yards away, caught in an upright jaunty position amidst the reeds, with mocking lavender solicitude bidding him adieu.
BY DEGREES, SINKING, being sucked so relentlessly downward, to the febrific bowels of the earth, Xavier came to see that this was no merely local and finite a space into which he plunged, but the primordial, everlasting, boundaryless Universe. Here, no World existed, for “exist
ence” was but a phantom: this inchoate sprawling lapping sucking substance predated all extension in space, and all time,—and, it scarcely needs be said, quite annihilated the very principle of Individuality. It had been given to him, to be Xavier Kilgarvan for naught but the duration of his heartbeat,—for the duration of his lungs’ potency: and when these failed, as they soon must, he would pass over, unresisting, into the primordial Universe, where Time had yet to be born.
This, then, is the greatest of Mysteries,—to which there is no solution: thus Xavier’s ebbing consciousness bade him understand, as the surrounding marsh, and the forest, and the Devil’s Half-Acre, grew dim; and the overhead sun had so greatly descended from noon, it might have been,—ah, how unnaturally!—dusk.
In Courthouse Green
And, all by happenstance, it was on this very day,—in truth, the late evening hours of the day—that Isaac Rosenwald met his fate, at the rough hands of the Soldiers of the Second Invisible Empire of the Brethren of Jericho. (The First Invisible Empire having dissolved, it was said, in 1869 or ’70, for clouded reasons.)
Doubtless, any reader familiar with the general contours of Winterthurn history, or, indeed, the history of the State, or the era, knows the tragical sequence of events: yet I cannot deceive myself that there do not exist numberless others, born of generations inhospitable to History, who are altogether ignorant of the shameful episode,—declared, all arrogantly, to have been performed by the Brethren so that Justice would be served, and the murderous Jew not slip away, by one or another knothole in the Law,—the which his New York City attorney would doubtless find. (For thus the criminal action was explained afterward; and certain newspapers through the State, being so zealous of widening their circulation, and so little disposed to the protocol of common decency, saw nothing amiss in publishing confidential interviews with members of the Brethren, in which the “high Christian-American ideals” of the secret fraternal order were set forth!—and but a modicum of criticism, of their methods, offered.)
Mysteries of Winterthurn Page 34
