by Whit Burnett
off, all at once, resuming darkly in a lower tone, "1-1 believe
222 • Nineteen Tales ol Terror
I know-what it is
You
.
•
.
•
don't, do you? You're too little
and silly . . . . "
Dulcie pretended not to hear him. His voice had a funny
"hinting" and uncomfortable quality. She hoped, queerly, that
he would not go on, but he did.
"And I know what that is too." He pointed to the circlet of
yellow metal round the figure's neck. "It's a ring-someone's
gold ring, and-"
Again, she pretended to pay him no attention, and this time
he also fell silent. She bad felt, at his words, a sort of shame
and disquiet, touched by the vaguest possible breath of fear.
"Well, you be good to him!" she repeated flatly as she ran
out of the shed.
She had set off, however, on her drive to Wandleton lightheartedly enough. The air, though warm, was crisp, and the sun rolled along with them, over the trees and hedges. Susie, the
chestnut mare, had soon disposed of the three miles.
But they had been rather late in starting, and Mrs. Hewson,
Dulcie's mother, had barely done half her shopping when it
was time, they felt, for tea. "We'll have it with the Candys,"
Mummy informed Dulcie. "And then I'll park you there with
them just for a few minutes while I finish my marketing. You
won't mind, will you?"
"Candys?" Dulcie queried dubiously. "Who are they?"
"No, you don't know them yet, do you? Except for Mrs.
Justin, who was a Miss Candy. They're quite nice. Bella used
to work for them--or, actually, for old Major Candy-before
she came to us."
"Oh . . . Bella . . .
," said Dulcie. A cloud had gathered; and
she was silent and subdued when she was introduced to the
Candys and while she was having tea with them, even although
Mrs. Justin, whom she liked, happened to be there as well.
"Father's not quite up to joining us," explained a Miss Laura
Candy. "It's his leg again, chiefly. Such a time of it he's had
lately, with one thing after another . . . . But I'm sure he'd love
to see Dulcie and show her his curios, now she's here."
So, while Mummy was completing her purchases in town
after tea, Dulcie was shepherded upstairs to Major Candy. "I'll
run down again and leave you two to yourselves," Dulcie heard
Miss Laura saying directly. "Father'll show you his African
assegais and heads, and you can tell him all about the farm
and your drawing lessons from Miss Todd . . . . "
In truth, Dulcie had been in too much of a daze to catch
more than a word here and there of Miss Laura's sprightly
chatter. She, Dulcie, was staring, in an utterly electrified manner, at Major Candy. A shiver of astonished suspicion had
na Childish nlng • 223
darted through her the moment she entered the room and saw
him, and now she could not keep her eyes away from him or
her mouth from gaping.
"How do you do?'' the Major had said, but she had not answered. Miss Laura had gone, and he looked at Dulcie with a puzzled and rather wry expression. "Well, young lady," he said
dryly, "you'll certainly know me again! What is it? Haven't I
washed my neck, or what?"
Acute embarrassment added itself to Dulcie's other emotions. "No. 1-" she managed to stammer. "I . . • " She forced her gaze downward to the carpet.
"Shy, eh?" said the Major. "Don't be that. I like little girls
and I don't bite 'em. So if people tell you I do bite 'em, just
don't believe 'em, what?"
"Yes," said Dulcie. "I know. I . . . "
By an effort, she listened to him, as, hobbling, he wandered
to and fro, taking down spears and other weapons from the
walls, showing jewelry and trinkets he had brought back from
the natives, and homed or antlered heads of animals that he
had shot. But all the time, dreadfully, she was peeping at him
and covertly considering him. Yes-he was . • . he was . . . . His
lame leg was the left leg. His beard was gray and pointed. An
ear-the ear she had snipped off and then stuck on again-was
plastered over. Oh, dear, she thought. Oh, dear • . . She almost
wanted, absurd though that, she realized, would have been, to
touch him and see if he felt waxy.
''There!" said the Major, panting. "You'll excuse me if I sit
down. Not so well as I used to be. Falling to bits, eh? First a
big toe drops off and then a little finger, what? Put 'em in the
curry next day for dinner, eh, and eat 'em, and pretend I like
'em, eh?"
But horribly near the truth as this grim jesting sounded, Dulcie was scarcely attending to what he said. A wheel chair stood in one comer of the room, and to this he now retired, laying
aside his crutch stick as he sank into it. He uttered a slight
groan.
"Ah well," he murmured presently, "Mustn't be in the
dumps, must we? Never do, that. When 1-But you're not listening!" he broke off in testy accusation. "What in the name of fortune is it?"
A faint communication or reflection of her own terror
seemed gradually to alter his expression to one of genuine
alarm. "Of her own terror," yes, for Dulcie had been putting
two and two together, and recalling Vic! What she had done
to Maj�r Ca�dy's simulacrum was quite bad enough, but in
compariSon With what Vic had in mind . • • •
2ZC
Nineteen Tales of Terror
•
She heard herself speaking, agonizedly. "1--0o, I must go,
quick. You're--oh . . . You're going to be blown up."
A pained look was imprinted on the Major's face. As she began to back from him toward the door he tried in vain to rise from his seat and to detain her. "Here, wait a bitl Don't be in
such a hurry. What's aU this? If-"
But Dulcie had already darted from the room. Not only did
she wish, if possible, to save the Major, but she had no desire to
be involved, and at so close a range, in what might be hls fate.
Dashing down the stairs, she found Mummy in the hall, just
returned from her shopping. "Oh, Mummy, let's go-let's go
quick, quick!"
There was astonishment on all sides of course, hand liftings
and a mild consternation. However, 'it was concluded by the
Candys that father's assegais and skulls must have frightened
Dulcie, and she had better have her way. After the hastily apologetic leave-takings, Mummy, putting Susie to a brisk trot, wanted to know more about it, but Dulcie did not tell her. She
had heard, without contradicting it, the Candys' conjectured
explanation of her conduct and was glad to seize on it and pretend to agree with it. Mrs. Hewson was surprised. Dulcie had never shown such timidity before. It was very odd. But it
would be wiser perhaps not to press her, and she desisted from
her questionings. Dulcie meanwhile gazed ahead imploringly
at Susie's rhythmically swinging rump, as if imploring could
have caused it to swing any faster. "Oh, get on !" she prayed.
And as soon as they were home Dulcie bolted to the shed.
Thank heaven she was in the nick of time. Her brother, as
she raced in, w
as busy with something on a low trestle table,
in the middle of which, on a small mound of blackish powder,
the effigy was lying. From the recumbent manikin, and attached
about his waist, led what looked like a length of orange-colored
cord, its free end hanging over the table's edge, where Vic held
a lighted match.
"Stop !" cried Dulcie. "Don't! Don't! • • • It's Major Candy!
I've just seen him, and it is!''
Frowning, and for a while incredulous, Vic took his match
from .the fuse, reluctantly blew it out, and listened to her tale.
Dulcie's visit to the Candys had the effect of ushering in an
entirely new era so far as the history of the waxen puppet was
concerned. Her previous barbarities had been sins of ignorance, but now that she was aware of the doll's "identity" her treatment of it must need be very different. She trembled to
think how narrowly Major Candy--or at least his proxy-had
escaped a sulphurous extinction, and, having plucked him from
it as a brand from burning, she would make up to him for all
The Childish Tiling • 2211
the errors of the past. It should be as much fun, or almost, to be
good to him for a change, and pet him and get him strong and
fit as to clip off his ear or singe his beard or let him be destroyed
by gunpowder.
In this humaner, more enlightened, point of view Vic finally
concurred, though not, his sister sometimes fancied, too enthusiastically. Short of the explosively dramatic curtain of which he had been cheated, he regretted, she suspected, a number of missed opportunities of an alternative and minor but still fascinating character. If the flesh-and-blood Major Candy
had to be allowed to stay alive at all (he might hankeringly have
thought ) , it would have been considerably more interesting and
amusing to watch him-following the application of a suitable
and nicely graduated stimulus-develop wattles and a comb,
or suddenly come out in spots, or grow a hom, than merely,
unexcitingly, to keep him well . . . .
As to the actuality of the link between the effigy and its
original, Vic would not commit himself. His was a curious, discreetly probing, and in some ways rather "cagey" mind, old for its years, and Dulcie was never quite sure what his real
opinion was. It had been he who, prior to her Candy visit, had
arrived at a comprehension of the doll's true nature, and it was
he again who now additionally supplied her with several further
facts regarding Bella--one of the daughters, it appeared, of a
reputed local "witch." Bella herself, moreover, had been dismissed from Major Candy's service, after some offense, "without a character"-a circumstance with which her subsequent employer, Mrs. Hewson, had been remiss in failing, earlier, to
become acquainted. "And of course," Vic had judicially concluded, "she had a grudge . . . . That was old Candy's ring she stole, I'll bet, round the thing's neck. Still is his ring, I s'pose. If
you can put in anything the fellow's worn, or bits of him-his
nail parings or teeth or hair-the spell works stronger."
Dulcie shivered. What had Bella been like, more exactly?
What had she said and done?-Memories of the dead girl came
back to her, now haltingly, now sometimes in a rush.
And then, from thinking of Bella, Dulcie would look at the
manikin, lying on top of the pile of sacking where Bella, it
seemed plain, had hidden it before having to be whisked off in
a hurry to the hospital.
"Oomosassoway . . , ," Dulcie murmured, dubiously. But the
doll was Oomosassoway no longer. It was revealed as of a
stuff considerably more sinister than that.
None the less, for a while, it could scarcely be denied that
Major Candy bloomed and blossomed under the new regime.
The mere respite from twea.kings and prickings must, alone,
221 o Nineteen Tales ol Terror
have been enough to gladden him, and when, to this, were
added embowerings in rose petals, gentle fomentations of fern,
sprayings and sprinklings with perfume, immersions in lollipop
tea, and finally his decoration with the George Cross for "heroism," his bliss can have had no bounds. Such reports of him as came to hand indicated him as much improved in health, in
quite a flourishing condition and indeed positively thriving. So
there you were! The spell could be reversed. Bella's odd legacy
of hate was turned into an instrument of good, the only pity
being, Dulcie often thought, not without conscious virtue, that
Major Candy could not guess who were his benefactors.
Not that the course of therapy proceeded minus incident or
interruption. The puppet survived various hazards. Once the
cat got him, sniffing and pawing him suspiciously, thoughable, after an experimental lick and nibble, to make nothing of his wax--quickly abandoning him. Once he was dropped into a
water butt; and once-a narrow shave-he was all but carted
away with rubbish on a general clearing-out abd cleaning of
the shed.
This last and barest of escapes had emphasized the permanent, still abiding nature of the problem and raised, in Dulcie's mind, a serious difficulty. What should she do with Major
Candy's effigy eventually? Surely she could not keep and cosset
it forever-yet, if she didn't, what would happen to the Major?
Vic (who had diligently extended his researches into the whole
subject) had informed her, gruesomely, that if the doll were
buried, or were set to melt at a slow fire, its human counterpart
must pine and die of "wasting sickness." And so on . . . What
should she do? The implied, and rather accidentally assumed,
responsibility for Major Candy's welfare weighed on her. It
was too grave and onerous a trust. If there had but been any
means of simply nullifying the connection, without doing more,
and, as it were, thenceforward leaving the good Major to his
own devices, that would have been ideal-but was there such a
means? She could find no solution to the puzzle.
"Oh, put it in a baiJ.k," Vic suggested, flippantly, knowing
perfectly well that of course she couldn't. Vic, as an ally in the
matter, was increasingly half hearted. He had lost interest, she
divined, in the affair, and perhaps that was scarcely to be wondered at. Dulcie had twice, and Vic three times, observed the Major, apparently fully recovered, in the streets of Wandleton;
but there was hardly enough in these occasional peeps of him,
satisfactory as they were, to nourish and sustain a genuine devotion to his cause. Even Dulcie, too, had to confess that, failing fresh developments, the business was beginning to grow just a trifle stale and wearisome.
"Or post it to him," Vic had absently gone on. Post it • • o o
Tlle Childish Tiline • 221
Yes, that was better. Dulcie had been shy of repeating her visit
to the Candys, but posting-yes, that might be a way out of her
quandary. The Major's fate would then be in his hands, and, if
he were sensible, he could give himself. no end of treats. . . •
"And he'd get back his crest ring then too," said Dulcie.
"He'd like that. I wonder if he'd wear it again or let it stay
round Oomo's neck."
Now and then, at odd moments, they discussed the plan, but
somehow, as yet, without putting it into execution. Nearly a
year had flown since Dulcie had found the doll, and a host of
other exciting matters competed for attention. Vic, to his curious joy, was off to boarding school, and presently Dulcie would be going to school as well. They were both growing up, and
possibly, belief in Bella's magic was not so firmly unassailable
as once it was.
For the time, at any rate, nothing was done, and the manikin, remembered less and less frequently as the days slipped by, still reposed hidden and almost neglected under its shrouding sacks and mildewed old horse blankets in the shed.
But about three months later, toward the end of Vic's holidays and just before his sister was to start her first term, the puppet was recalled. This dilatoriness, Dulcie rebuked herself,
could not continue, and the effigy must be got rid of somehow.
She was not certain, now, that posting it to the Major was such
a brilliant notion after all-it seemed a bit 'little-kid'-ish and
might merely annoy him-yet this scheme of disposing of the
incubus had been agreed upon ages ago and in her mind acquired a sort of fixity and "momentum of inertia" simply by virtue, so to speak, of its longstandingness. Anyhow, she could
think of no alternative procedure.
Accordingly, despite considerable misgivings, and in a hurry
with all the packing and other preparations for St. Osyth's, she
placed the manikin in a stout cardboard box, which she committed to Vic for posting, when he had the chance, in Wandleton. No note of warning or "directions" was enclosed, though she originally had meditated an explanatory label. "This is you"
or words to that effect. But clues of this kind had been quite
unnecessary, besides being liable (since Oomosassoway was
something of a caricature) to misinterpretation as a piece of
rudeness. The ring, if . nothing else, would surely set the addressee on the right scent and tell him who the puppet was supposed to be.
Driving to the station with Mummy, she passed near the
Candys' house and speculated, fleetingly, on the Major's probable reaction to the parcel, mailed to him by Vic the previous day. Had there, she mused, been anything in it-in the whole
228
Nineteen Tales of Terror
•
rigmarole of waxen images, and spells, and evil ey��? �t .all
