19 Tales of Terror

by Whit Burnett

  excitedly talking over the telephone. He was there for more

  than twenty minutes, they could hear little of what he said,

  though once he screamed rather angrily, "Never said I did say

  I did say I did," and at least twice he cried petulantly, "Aow,

  pooh!" When he returned he put his hand on Isobel's shoulder.

  "It's all right, ducks," he said. "I've fixed it. Now we can all be

  cosy and that's nice, isn't it?" Sitting tailor-wise on the Boor, he

  produced his solution with reasonable pride. "You see," he

  said, "it only says in the will 'set in that room in which they entertain their friends.' But it doesn't say you need entertain with those great horrors in the room more than once, and after a

  great deal of tiresome talk those lawyers have agreed that I'm

  right. For that one entertainment we'll build our setting round

  the horrors, Isobel dear, everything morbid and ghostly. Your

  first big reception, duckie, shall be a Totentanz. It's just the

  sort of special send-off you need. After that, pack the beastly

  things off, and presto, dear, back to normal."

  The Totentanz was Isobel's greatest, alas! her last, triumph.

  The vast room was swathed in black and purple, against

  which the huge white monuments and other smaller tombstones

  specially designed for the occasion stood out in bold relief. The

  Totentanz • 145

  waiters and barmen were dressed as white skeletons or elaborate Victorian mutes with black ostrich plumes. The open fireplace was arranged as a crematorium fire, and the chairs

  and tables were coffins made in various woods. Musical archives had been ransacked for funeral music of every age and clime. A famous Jewish contralto wailed like the ghetto, an

  Mrican beat the tomtom as it is played at human sacrifices, an

  Irish tenor made everyone weep with his wake songs. Supper

  was announced by "The Last Post" on a bugle and hearses were

  provided to carry the guests home.

  Some of the costumes were most original. Mrs. Mule came

  tritely but aptly enough as a Vampire. Lady Maude with her

  hair screwed up in a handkerchief and dressed in a shapeless

  gown was strikingly successful as Marie Antoinette shaved for

  the guillotine. Professor Cadaver dressed up as a Corpse Eater

  was as good as Boris Karloff; he clearly enjoyed every minute

  of the party, indeed his snake-like slit eyes darted in every direction at the many beautiful young women dressed as corpses and his manner became so incoherent and excited before he left

  that Isobel felt quite afraid to let him go home alone. Guy bad

  thought at first of coming as Millais's Ophelia, but he remembered the harm done to the original model's health and decided against it. With flowing hair and marbled features, however,

  he made a very handsome "Suicide of Chatterton." Isobel

  thought he seemed a little melancholy during the evening, but

  when she asked him if anything was wrong he replied quite absently, "No, dear, nothing really. Half in love with easeful death, I s'pose. I mean all this fun is rather hell when it comes

  to the point, isn't it?" But when he saw her face cloud, he said,

  "Don't you worry, ducks, you've arrived," and, in fact, Isobel

  was too happy to think of anyone but herself. For many hours

  after the last guests had departed, she sat happily chipping

  away at the monuments with a hammer. She sang a little to

  herself: "I've beaten you, Uncle and Auntie dear, I hope it's the

  last time you'll bother us here."

  Guy felt very old and weary as he let himself into his oneroomed luxury flat. He realized that Isobel would not be needing him much longer, soon she would be on the way to spheres beyond his ken. There were so many really young men who

  could do his stuff now and they didn't get bored or tired in the

  middle like he did. Suddenly he saw a letter in the familiar, uneducated handwriting lying on the mat. He turned giddy for a moment and leaned against the wall. It would be impossible

  to go on finding money like this for ever. Perhaps this time he

  could get it from Isobel, after all she owed most of her success

  to him, but it would hasten the inevitable break with her. And

  even if he had the courage to settle this, there were so many

  J46

  Nineteen Tales of Terror

  •

  more demands in different uneducated hands, so much more

  past sentimentalism turned to fear. He lay for a long time in

  the deep green bath, then sat in front of his double mirror to

  perform a complicated routine with creams and powders. At

  last he put on a crimson and white silk dressing gown and hung

  his Chatterton wig and costume in the wardrobe. He wished so

  much that Chatterton were there to talk to. Then going to the

  white painted medicine cupboard, he took out his bottle of

  luminal. "In times like these," he said aloud, "there's nothing

  like a good old overdose to pull one through."

  Lady Maude enjoyed the party immensely. The funeral

  baked meats were delicious and Isabel had seen that the old

  lady had all she wanted. She sat on the edge of her great double

  bed, with her grey hair straggling about her shoulders, and

  swung her thick white feet with their knobbly blue veins. The

  caviare and chicken mayonnaise and Omelette Surprise lay

  heavy upon her, but she found, as usual, that indigestion only

  made her the more hungry. Suddenly she remembered the

  game pie in the larder. She put on her ancient padded pink dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs-it would not do for the Danbys to hear her, servants could make one look so foolish.

  But when she opened the larder, she was horrified to find that

  someone had forestalled her, the delicious, rich game pie had

  been removed. The poor, cheated lady was not long in finding

  the thief. She padded into the kitchen and there, seated at the

  table, noisily guzzling the pie, was a very young man with long

  fair hair, a red and blue checked shirt and white silk tie with

  girls in scarlet bathing costumes on it; he looked as though he

  suffered from adenoids. Lady Maude had read a good deal in

  her favourite newspapers about spivs and burglars so that she

  was not greatly surprised Had he been in the act of removing

  the silver, she would have fled in alarm, but as it was she felt

  nothing but anger. Her whole social foundation seemed to

  shake beneath the wanton looting of her favourite food. She

  immediately rushed towards him, shouting for help. The manhe was little more than a youth and very frightened-struck at her wildly with a heavy iron bar. Lady Maude fell backwards

  upon the table, almost unconscious and bleeding profusely.

  Then the boy completely lost his head and, seizing up the

  kitchen meat axe, with a few wild strokes he severed her head

  from her body. She died like a queen.

  Only the moon lit the vast spaces of Brompton Cemetery,

  showing up here a tomb and there a yew tree. Professor Cadaver's eyes were wild and his hands shook as he glided down the central pathway. His head still whirled with the fumes of

  the party and a thousand beautiful corpses danced before his

  eyes. An early underground train rattled in the distance and he

  Totentanz

  1 41

  •

  hurried his steps. At last he reached his objective-a freshly

  du
g grave on which wooden planks and dying wreaths were

  piled. The Professor began feverishly to tear these away, but

  he was getting old and neither his sight nor his step was as sure

  as it had been, he caught his foot in a rope and fell nine or ten

  feet into the tomb. When they found him in the morning his

  neck was broken. The papers hushed up the affair, and a Sunday newspaper in an article entitled "Has Science the Right?"

  only confused the matter by describing him as a professor of

  anatomy and talking obscurely of Burke and Hare.

  It was the end of Isobel's hopes. True, Mrs. Mule still remained to play the vampire, but without the others she was as nothing. Indeed, the position for Isobel was worse than when

  she arrived in London, for it would take a long time to live

  down her close association with the Professor and Guy. Brian

  was a little nonplussed at first, but there was so much to do at

  the University that he had little time to think of what might

  have been. He was now the centre of a circle of students and

  lecturers who listened to his every word. As Isobel's social

  schemes faded, he began to fill the house with his friends.

  Sometimes she would find him standing full square before the

  Zurbaran pointing the end of his pipe at a party of earnest

  young men sitting bolt upright on the tapestried chairs. "Ah,"

  he would be saying jocosely, "but you haven't yet proved to

  me that your famous average man or woman is anything but a

  fiction," or, "But look here, Wotherspoon, you can't just throw

  words like 'beauty' or 'formal design' about like that. We must

  define our terms." Once she discovered a tobacco pouch and a

  Dorothy Sayers's detective novel on a tubular chair in the "dear

  old lav." But if Brian had turned the house into a W.E.A. lecture centre, Isobel would not have protested now. Her thoughts were too much with the dead. She sat all day in the vast empty

  drawing-room, where the two great monuments threw their

  giant shadows over her. Here she would smoke an endless chain

  of cigarettes and drink tea off unopened packing cases. Occasionally she would glance up at the inscriptions with a look of mute appeal, but she never seemed to find an answer. She made

  less and less pretence of reading and listening to good music,

  and yet for months on end would hardly stir from the house.

  A faint April sun shone down upon the wet pavements of

  the High Street, casting a faint and melancholy light upon the

  pools of rain that had gathered here and there among the cobblestones. It was a deceptive gleam, however, for the wind was piercingly cold. Miss Thurkill drew her B.A. gown tightly

  around her thin frame as she emerged from the lecture hall

  and hurried off to the Heather Cafe. Turning the corner by

  tea

  Nineteen Tales of Terror

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  Strachan's bookshop, she saw the Master's wife advancing

  upon her. Despite the freezing weather, the old lady moved

  slowly, for the bitter winter's crop of influenza and bronchitis

  had weakened her heart; she seemed now as fat and waddling as

  her bulldogs.

  "Did you get the London appointment?" she shouted; it was

  a cruel question, for she knew already the negative reply.

  "Back to the tomb, eh?" she went on. "Ah welll at least we

  know we're dead here."

  Miss Thurkill giggled nervously. "London didn't seem very

  alive," she said. "I went to see the Cappers, but I couldn't get

  any reply. The whole house seemed to be shut up."

  "Got the plague, I expect," said the Master's wife; "took it

  from here," and as she laughed to herself, she crouched forward like some huge, squat toad.

  "lsobel certainly hasn't been the success she supposed,"

  hissed Miss Tburkill, writhing like a malicious snake. "Well, I

  shall catch my death of cold if I stay here," she added, and

  hurried on.

  The old lady's voice came to her in the gale that blew down

  the street: "No one would notice the difference," it seemed to

  cry.

  WILLIAM B. SEABROOK

  THE SALAMAN DER

  FOR WEEKS Artur had not left his rooms.

  Every day the janitor deposited outside his door the little food

  he required. Sometimes he opened the door· after the janitor

  had gone away. Frequently he forgot. He had explained that

  he was working and did not want to be disturbed. No one else

  knew where he was, so he was secure from interruption.

  But he_ was not working. He had not been able to write since

  he had come out of the hospital. He was waiting for the salamander. He knew that sooner or later the salamander would come to him, but he was not afraid. He knew that when it

  came, it would either transform itself into a demon woman

  who would glide out of the flames and consume him in her ardent embraces; or it would retain its natural shape, which is that of a small serpent-like lizard, and after communicating to

  him a certain spark of fire, would disappear by crawling back

  into the heart of the glowing coals.

  Part of this Artur had learned from an old book of Rosicrucian mysteries, but most of it he had reasoned out for himself while he Jay in the hospital recovering from fever. He was sure

  that the salamander's gift to him would be the divine spark, for

  already in his brain there smoldered a little fire which awaited

  only the serpent's breath to burst into pure white flame.

  Sometimes his head ached and bright specks danced before

  his eyes. When this occurred, his brain played strange tricks.

  The interior of his skull became a vast arena, in an amphitheatre. In the center, on a tripod, flickered a tiny flame which was his soul. And locked in a death struggle before this tripod

  were a Woman and a Serpent, bright lithe limbs and brighter

  scaly coils interlocked and writhing . . . Woman· and Serpent

  . . . Folly and Wisdom . . . Madness and Genius, contending

  there for his immortal soul . • . wrestling to the death in the

  amphitheatre of his brain.

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  Nineteen Tales of Tenor

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  Not often, however, was he obsessed by such phantasies.

  Most of the time his mind was logical and clear. He had only to

  wait patiently. The salamander would appear. And his high destiny would be accomplished.

  So every night he piled wood in the open fireplace and kept

  vigil before the flames. When the embers turned gray at dawn

  he went to bed.

  It was on one of these mornings, just before daybreak, when

  the embers were beginning to bum low, that he first saw the

  salamander. But the strange part of it was that the salamander

  was not in the fire. His rooms were in one of those old mansions still unrazed in the slums of lower Manhattan; dilapidated and dirty, fallen from their high estate and cut up into tenement

  apartments. Their worn doorways are sometimes of astonishing

  architectural beauty, and even the interiors, despite alterations

  and the wear and tear of time, often retain traces of their former dignity and gr-andeur. In the room where Artur sat the plaster was broken in places from the walls, and the ceiling was

  cracked and stained; but the room was large and the ceiling

  was high, higher than the ceilings are built nowadays in the

  finest modem apartments, an
d around this ceiling there still ran

  an elaborate old rococo cornice of white plaster-a formal design, in high relief, of swirling vines and scroll-like leaves.

  Weary of staring for long hours into the fire, and convinced

  that the salamander would not appear that night (the dawn was

  already beginning to outline the high windows) he had thrown

  himself back in his chair and was watching the flickering lights

  and !Shadows as they played on the walls and ceiling, in and

  out among the curves and crannies of the cornice. Suddenly

  one of the curled acanthus leaves began to glow faintly and unfold. A luminous lizard wriggled from its depths and poised itself for an instant on the edge of the cornice. Artur stared-and it was gone. He had seen it. Of this he was sure. But he was not

  certain whether the salamander had seen him. At any rate,

  nothing more had happened.

  Later, in the November dawn, as he lay sleepless on his bed,

  he began to wonder if the thing had not been a hallucination,

  or even something worse. Either there was a salamander hidden

  in the cornice of his room, behind the acanthus leaves, or he

  was going mad. One point, however, was clear; if the sala_.

  mander were really up there in the cornice, it was useless to

  look for it any longer in the fire. But how could he make sure?

  If a salamander were an ordinary creature like a mouse or a

  rat, it might be possible to entice it from its hiding place . • •

  even to trap it . . . . After all, why not? Such a thing might be

  possible, if one knew how to go about it

  seriously

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  ne Salamander • 151

  Presently he fell into a broken sleep, dreaming of setting

  traps to catch salamanders.

  The following afternoon he went out, for the first time in

  nearly a month, and returned with three packages wrapped in

  paper, hidden under his overcoat. The largest was a wire rat

  trap, a basket-like affair with a small round opening in one

  end, guarded on the inside with a circle of sharp barbed points,

  arranged so as to make entrance easy and exit impossible. The