The A. Merritt Megapack

by Abraham Merritt

  Charles Meredith sat in one of its rooms, three weeks to a night from the birth of Jean Meredith’s baby. He was not a member, but it was the privilege of accredited patrons to entertain guests to whom secrecy was as desirable as to themselves—or who might prove refractory.

  It was a doubtful privilege for these guests, although they were not aware of it, because it was always quite possible that they might never appear again in their usual haunts. In such event it was almost impossible to trace them back to the Home of Heavenly Anticipations. Always, on their way to it, they had been directed to leave their vehicle, coolie-carriage or what not at a certain point and to wait until another picked them up. Beyond that point they were never traced. Or if their bodies were later found, it was always under such circumstances that no one could point a finger at the Home of Heavenly Anticipations, which was as expert on alibis for corpses as for crooks.

  Although he knew nothing of this, Charles Meredith was uneasy. For one thing, he had a considerable sum of money in his pocket—a very considerable sum. To be explicit, fifty thousand dollars. For another thing, he had not the slightest idea of where he was.

  He had dismissed his hotel coolie at a designated point, had been approached by another who gave the proper word of recognition, had been whisked through street after street, then through a narrow alley, then through a door opening into a winding passage, thence into a plain reception hall where a bowing Chinese had met him and led him to the room. He had seen no one, and he heard no sound. Under the circumstances, he appreciated privacy—but damn it, there was a limit! And where was Li-kong?

  He got up and walked about nervously. It gave him some satisfaction to feel the automatic holstered under his left arm-pit. He was tall, rather rangy and his shoulders stooped a little. He had clear eyes whose grey stood out a bit startlingly from his dark face; a good forehead, a somewhat predatory beaked nose; his worst feature, his mouth, which hinted self-indulgence and cruelty. Seemingly an alert, capable American man of affairs, not at all one who would connive at the murder of his own brother.

  He turned at the opening of the door. Li-kong came in. Li-kong was a graduate of an American college. His father had cherished hopes of a high diplomatic career, with his American training as part of its foundation. He had repaid it by learning in exhaustive detail the worst of American life. This, grafted to his natural qualifications, had given him high place in the Home of Heavenly Anticipations and among its patrons.

  He was in the most formal of English evening dress, looked completely the person his father had hoped he would be instead of what he actually was—without principles, morals, mercy or compunction whatever.

  Meredith’s nervousness found vent in an irritable, “You’ve been a hell of a long time getting here, Likong!”

  The eyes of the Chinese flickered, but he answered urbanely: “Bad news flies fast. Good news is slow. I am neither early nor late.”

  Meredith asked suspiciously: “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  Li-kong said, eyes watchful: “Your honorable elder brother has ascended the dragon.”

  Meredith’s grey eyes glittered. The cruelty stood out on his mouth, unmasked. Li-kong said before he could speak: “All with him, even his unworthy servants, ascended at the same time. All except—” He paused.

  Meredith’s body tightened, his head thrust forward. He asked in a thin voice: “Except?”

  The eyes of the Chinese never left him. He said:

  “When you rebuked me a moment ago for slowness, I answered that I was neither early nor late. I must therefore bear good news and bad—”

  The American interrupted: “Damn you, Li-kong, who got away?”

  The Chinese answered: “Your brother’s wife.”

  Meredith’s face whitened, then blackened with fury. He whispered: “Christ!”

  He roared: “So you bungled it!” His hand twitched up to the gun under his arm-pit, then dropped. He asked: “Where is she?”

  The Chinese must have seen that betraying movement, but he gave no sign. He answered: “She fled to the Temple of the Foxes—to your brother’s old friend, the priest Yu Ch’ien.”

  The other snarled: “What were your bunglers about, to let her go? Why didn’t they go after her?”

  “They did go after her! Of what happened thereafter, you shall hear—when you have paid me my money, my friend.”

  “Paid you!” Meredith’s fury mastered him at this. “With the bitch alive? I’ll see you in hell before you get a cent from me.”

  The Chinese said calmly: “But since then she has also ascended the dragon in the footsteps of her lord. She died in childbirth.”

  “They both are dead—” Meredith sank into the chair, trembling like one from whom tremendous strain has lifted. “Both dead—”

  The Chinese watched him, malicious anticipation in his eyes. “But the child—lived!” he said.

  For a long minute the American sat motionless, looking at him. And now he did not lose control. He said coldly: “So you have been playing with me, have you? Well, now listen to me—you get nothing until the child has followed its father and mother. Nothing! And if it is in your mind to blackmail me, remember you can bring no charge against me without sending yourself to the executioner. Think over that, you leering yellow ape!”

  The Chinese lighted a cigarette. He said mildly:

  “Your brother is dead, according to plan. His wife is dead through that same plan, even though she did not die when the others did. There was nothing in the bargain concerning the child. And I do not think you could reach the child without me.” He smiled. “Is it not said, of two brothers, he who thinks himself the invulnerable one—that is the fool?”

  Meredith said nothing, eyes bleak on him. Li-kong went on: “Also, I have information to impart, advice to give—necessary to you if you determine to go for the child. As you must—if you want her. And finally—is it not written in the Yih King, the Book of Changes, that a man’s mind should have many entrances but only one exit! In this house the saying is reversed. It has only one entrance but many exits—and the door-keeper of each one of them is death.”

  Again he paused, then said: “Think over that, you welching white brother-killer!”

  The American quivered. He sprang up, reaching for his gun. Strong hands grasped his elbows, held him helpless. Li-kong sauntered to him, drew out the automatic, thrust it into his own pocket. The hands released Meredith. He looked behind him. Two Chinese stood there. One held a crimson bow-string, the other a double-edged short-sword.

  “Two of the deaths that guard the exits.” Li-kong’s voice was courtesy itself. “You may have your choice. I recommend the sword—it is swifter.”

  Ruthless Meredith was, and no coward, but he recognized here a ruthlessness complete as his own. “You win,” he said. “I’ll pay.”

  “And now,” smiled Li-kong.

  Meredith drew out the bundle of notes and passed them to him. The Chinese counted them and nodded. He spoke to the two executioners and they withdrew. He said very seriously: “My friend, it is well for you I recognize that insults by a younger people have not the same force that they would have if spoken by one of my own race, so much older than yours. In the Yih King it is written that we must not be confused by similitude, that the superior man places not the same value upon the words of a child as he does upon those of a grown man, although the words be identical. It is well also for you that I feel a certain obligation. Not personally, but because an unconsidered factor has caused a seed sown in this house to bring forth a deformed blossom. It is,” continued Li-kong, still very seriously, “a reflection upon its honor—”

  He smiled at that, and said, “Or rather, its efficiency. I suggest, therefore, that we discuss the matter without heat or further recrimination of any kind.”

  Meredith said: “I am sorry I said what I did, Likong. It was childish temper. I apologize.”

  The Chinese bowed, but he did not take the hand the other extended. Nor d
id he recall his own words.

  He said: “The child is at the Temple of the Foxes. In Kansu, it is an extremely sacred shrine. She is in charge of Yu Ch’ien, who is not only wise but powerful, and in addition was your honorable late brother’s devoted friend. If Yu Ch’ien suspects, then you will have great difficulty in adding to your brother’s and your sisterin-law’s happiness in Heaven by restoring to them their daughter. You may assume that Yu Ch’ien does suspect—and knows.”

  Meredith asked incredulously: “Why should he suspect? How could he know?”

  Li-kong tapped his cigarette thoughtfully before he answered: “The priest is very wise. Also, like myself, he has had the advantage of contact with your admirable civilization. The woman was with him for weeks, and so he must know who would benefit by the—ah, expungement of your revered relatives. He might think it highly suspicious that those responsible for the regrettable affair did not pursue the custom of holding the principals for ransom instead of—ah, expunging them on the spot. Naturally, he would ask himself why. Finally, Yu Ch’ien is locally reported to have sources of information not open to other men—I mean living men. The dead,” observed Li-kong sardonically, “of course know everything.”

  Meredith said contemptuously: “What do you mean? Spiritism, divination—that rot?”

  Li-kong considered pensively, answered at last: “No—not exactly that. Something closer, rather to the classical idea of communion with elemental intelligences, nature spirits, creatures surviving from an older world than man’s—but still of earth. Something like the spirits that answered from the oaks of Dodona, or that spoke to the Sybyl in the grotto of Cumae, or in more modem times appeared in, and instructed Joan of Arc from, the branches of the arbre fee, the fairy tree of Domremy.”

  Meredith laughed. “Good God! And this—from you!”

  Li-kong said imperturbably: “This from me! I am—what I am. I believe in nothing. Yet I tell you that I would not go up those steps to the Temple of the Foxes for all the gold you could give me. Not—now!”

  Meredith thought: He is trying to frighten me. The yellow dog is trying to keep me from the temple. Why? He spoke only the last word of the thought: “Why?”

  The Chinese answered: “China is old. The ancient beliefs are still strong. There are, for example, the legends of the fox women. The fox women are nature spirits. Intelligences earthy but not human—akin to those in Dodona’s oaks, Cumae’s grotto, Joan of Arc’s fairy tree. Believed in—especially in Kansu. These—let us say spirits—have certain powers far exceeding the human. Bear with me while I tell you of a few of these powers. They can assume two earthly shapes only—that of a fox and that of a beautiful woman. There are fox men, too, but the weight of the legends are upon the women. Since for them time does not exist, they are mistresses of time. To those who come under their power, they can cause a day to seem like a thousand years, or a thousand years like a day. They can open the doors to other worlds—worlds of terror, worlds of delight. If such worlds are illusions, they do not seem so to those for whom they are opened. The fox women can make or mar journeys.”

  Meredith thought: Come, now we’re getting down to it.

  The Chinese went quietly on: “They can create other illusions. Phantoms, perhaps—but if so, phantoms whose blows maim or kill. They are capricious, bestowing good fortune or ill regardless of the virtue or the lack of it of the recipient. They are peculiarly favorable to women with child. They can, by invitation, enter a woman, passing through her breasts or beneath her finger nails. They can enter an unborn child, or rather a child about to be born. In such cases, the mother dies—nor is the manner of birth the normal one. They cannot oust the soul of the child, but they can dwell beside it, influencing it. Quaint fancies, my friend, in none of which I have belief. Yet because of them nothing could induce me to climb the steps to the Temple of the foxes.”

  (Meredith thought: He’s trying to frighten me away! What the hell does he think I am—to be frightened by such superstitious drivel? He said, in that thin voice with which he spoke when temper was mastering him:

  “What’s your game, Li-kong? Another double-cross? You’re trying to tell me that if I were you, I wouldn’t go to the temple for the brat. Why?”

  The Chinese said: “My friend, I have played the game with you. I do not say that if I were you, I would not go. I say that if you were I, you would not. A quite different thing.”

  The other swung clenched fist down upon the table. “Don’t tell me you expect me to take seriously that farrago of nonsense! You don’t expect me to give up now because of a yellow—” He checked himself abruptly.

  The Chinese completed the sentence politely: “Because of a yellow man’s superstition! No, but let me point out a few rather disquieting things. The Temple of the Foxes is believed to be the home of five of these fox women. Five—spirits—who are sisters. Three messengers were sent me with the news of the ambush. The first should have reached me within three weeks after it happened. He has vanished. The second was despatched with other news a week later. He too vanished. But the third, bearing the news of the death of your brother’s wife, the birth of the child, came as on the wings of the wind. Why the failure of the first two? Because someone desired to keep you in ignorance until after that birth? Who?

  “Again, no word has come from Kansu, except by this messenger, of the attack on your brother’s party. This, my friend, places you in a dilemma. You cannot betray your knowledge of his death without subjecting yourself to questioning as to how that knowledge came to you. You cannot, therefore, send for the child. You must yourself go—upon some pretext. I think that whoever sped the third messenger on his way intends that you shall go—yourself. Why?”

  Meredith struck the table again. “I’ll go!”

  “Third,” continued Li-kong, “my messenger said that the woman who fled ran up the steps of the Temple of the Foxes. And that when they were almost upon her—a fox stood between her and them. And that fox changed into a woman who changed their leader into a mad dog. At which—they ran. So I think,” said Likong meditatively, “would I have run!”

  Meredith said nothing, but his hand beat steadily on the table and the grey eyes were furious.

  “You are thinking,” said the Chinese, “‘The yellow dogs! Of course they would run! Filled with rum or opium! Of course!’”

  It was precisely what he had been thinking, but Meredith made no answer.

  “And finally,” said Li-kong, “your brother’s wife died when the child was born—”

  “Because, I suppose, the fox bitch crawled into her!” jeered Meredith, and leaning back, whined thin, highpitched laughter.

  The Chinese lost for a moment his calm, half arose, then dropped back. He said patiently: “If you go up the steps—ride a horse. Preferably an English horse that has hunted foxes.”

  He lighted another cigarette. “But that is superstition.

  Nevertheless, if you go, take two men with you as free from taint—as you are. I know two such men. One is a German, the other French. Bold men and hard men. Travel alone, the three of you, as far as you can. At all times keep as few Chinese with you as possible. When you go to the temple, go up the steps alone. Take no Chinese with you there.” He said gravely: “I vouch for these two men. Better still, the Home of Heavenly Anticipations vouches for them. They will want money, of course.”

  Meredith asked: “How much?”

  “I don’t know. They’re not cheap. Probably five thousand dollars at most.”

  Meredith thought: Here’s what he’s been leading up to. It’s a trap!

  Again it was as though Li-kong had read his thoughts. He said very deliberately: “Meredith, listen to me! I want nothing more from you nor through you. I have not spoken to these men. They do not know, nor will they know from me, anything of that transaction for which you have just paid. I am through with it. I am through with you! I do not like you. I hope never to see you again. Is that plain American talk?”

  Mere
dith said, as deliberately: “I like it. Go on.”

  “All that they need know is that you are anxious about your brother. When in due time during your journey you discover that he and his wife are dead, and that there is a child, you will naturally want to bring that child back with you. If you are denied the child, and killing is necessary, they will kill. That is all. I will put you in touch with these two men. And I will see to it that none with whom I have relations embarrass you on your way to Kansu, nor on your way back—if you come back. Except for that obligation of which I have spoken, I would not do even this. I would not lift a finger to help you. After you leave this house, you shall be to me as though you never had been. I want nothing to do with Yu Ch’ien and those who go to the Temple of the Foxes. If we should meet again—never speak to me! Do not show you have known me! Never speak to me, never write to me, do not think of me. I am through with you! Is that clear?”

  Meredith nodded, smiling. He thought: I was wrong about him wanting to keep me from the place. The yellow rat is frightened… he believes in his own bogies! America and everything else couldn’t knock the superstition out of him!

  The thought amused him. It gave him a contemptuous tolerance of Li-kong, a pleasant knowledge of superiority. He said, not bothering to keep the contempt from his voice: “Clearer than you know, Li-kong. Where do I meet your friends?”

  “They can be at your hotel at one, if it suits you.”

  “It suits me. Their names?”

  “They will tell you. They will bear credentials from me.”

  Li-kong arose. He stood beside the door, bowing courteously. Meredith passed through. They went along another passage and through a winding alley out into a street. It was not the same street from which he had entered. Nor did he recognize it. A coolie-car waited. Li-kong bowed him into it.