“Ach, it was nothing serious,” he reassured me. “Only this.” He touched with his forefinger an eye, and I could see that it was bruised and swollen half-shut. “A citizen with too ready a fist and too slow a mind has that to answer for.”
“I’m partly responsible,” I said. “You were trying to help me, I understand, when it happened.”
More noise behind him, and two more shapes pushed into the clearing. I recognized Judge Pursuivant, nodding to me with his eyes bright under his wide hat-brim. The other man, angular, falcon-faced, one arm in a sling, I had also seen before. It was Constable O’Bryant. I spoke to him, but he gazed past me, apparently not hearing.
Doctor Zoberg saw my perplexed frown, and he turned back toward the constable. Snapping long fingers in front of the great hooked nose, he whistled shrilly. O’Bryant started, grunted, then glared around as though he had been suddenly and rudely awakened.
“What’s up?” he growled menacingly, and his sound hand moved swiftly to a holster at his side. Then his eyes found me, and with an oath he drew his revolver.
“Easy, Constable! Easy does it,” soothed Judge Pursuivant, his own great hand clutching O’Bryant’s wrist. “You’ve forgotten that I showed how Mr Wills must be innocent.”
“I’ve forgotten what we’re here for at all,” snapped O’Bryant, gazing around the clearing. “Hey, have I been drunk or something? I said that I’d never—”
“I’ll explain,” offered Zoberg. “The judge met me in town, and we came together to see you. Remember? You said you would like to avenge your brother’s death, and came with us. Then, when you balked at the very edge of this Devil’s Croft, I took the liberty of hypnotizing you.”
“Huh? How did you do that?” growled the officer.
“With a look, a word, a motion of the hand,” said Zoberg, his eyes twinkling. “Then you ceased all objections and came in with us.”
Pursuivant clapped O’Bryant on the unwounded shoulder. “Sit down,” he invited, motioning toward the roots of the tree.
The five of us gathered around the fire, like picnickers instead of allies against a supernormal monster. There, at Susan’s insistence, I told of what had happened since Judge Pursuivant had left us. All listened with rapt attention, the constable grunting occasionally, the judge clicking his tongue, and Doctor Zoberg in absolute silence.
It was Zoberg who made the first comment after I had finished. “This explains many things,” he said.
“It don’t explain a doggone thing,” grumbled O’Bryant.
Zoberg smiled at him, then turned to Judge Pursuivant. “Your ectoplasmic theory of lycanthropy – such as you have explained it to me – is most interesting and, I think, valid. May I advance it a trifle?”
“In what way?” asked the judge.
“Ectoplasm, as you see it, forms the werewolf by building upon the medium’s body. But is not ectoplasm more apt, according to the observations of many people, to draw completely away and form a separate and complete thing of itself? The thing may be beastly, as you suggest. Algernon Blackwood, the English writer of psychic stories, almost hits upon it in one of his ‘John Silence’ tales. He described an astral personality taking form and threatening harm while its physical body slept.”
“I know the story you mean,” agreed Judge Pursuivant. “The Camp of the Dog, I think it’s called.”
“Very well, then. Perhaps, while Miss Susan’s body lay in a trance, securely handcuffed between Wills and myself—”
“Oh!” wailed Susan. “Then it was I, after all.”
“It couldn’t have been you,” I told her at once.
“But it was! And, while I was at the judge’s home with you, part of me met the constable’s brother in this wood.” She stared wildly around her.
“It might as well have been part of me,” I argued, and O’Bryant glared at me as if in sudden support of that likelihood. But Susan shook her head.
“No, for which of us responded to the call of that thing out there?”
For the hundredth time she gazed fearfully through the fire at the bushes behind which the commanding whine had risen.
“I have within me,” she said dully, “a nature that will break out, look and act like a beast-demon, will kill even my beloved father—”
“Please,” interjected Judge Pursuivant earnestly, “you must not take responsibility upon yourself for what happened. If the ectoplasm engendered by you made up the form of the killer, the spirit may have come from without.”
“How could it?” she asked wretchedly.
“How could Marthe Beraud exude ectoplasm that formed a bearded, masculine body?” Pursuivant looked across to Zoberg. “Doctor, you surely know the famous “Bien Boa” séance, and how the materialized entity spoke Arabic when the medium, a Frenchwoman, knew little or nothing of that language?”
Zoberg sat with bearded chin on lean hand. His joined brows bristled the more as he corrugated his forehead in thought. “We are each a thousand personalities,” he said, sententiously if not comfortingly. “How can we rule them all, or rule even one of them?”
O’Bryant said sourly that all this talk was too high-flown for him to understand or to enjoy. He dared hope, however, that the case could never be tied up to Miss Susan Gird, whom he had known and liked since her babyhood.
“It can never do that,” Zoberg said definitely. “No court or jury would convict her on the evidence we are offering against her.”
I ventured an opinion: “While you are attempting to show that Susan is a werewolf, you are forgetting that something else was prowling around our fire, just out of sight.”
“Ach, just out of sight!” echoed Zoberg. “That means you aren’t sure what it was.”
“Or even that there was anything,” added Susan, so suddenly and strongly that I, at least, jumped.
“There was something, all right,” I insisted. “I heard it.”
“You thought you heard a sound behind the tree,” Susan reminded me. “You looked, and there was nothing.”
Everyone gazed at me, rather like staid adults at a naughty child. I said, ungraciously, that my imagination was no better than theirs, and that I was no easier to frighten. Judge Pursuivant suggested that we make a search of the surrounding woods, for possible clues.
“A good idea,” approved Constable O’Bryant. “The ground’s damp. We might find some sort of footprints.”
“Then you stay here with Miss Susan,” the judge said to him. “We others will circle around.”
The gaunt constable shook his head. “Not much, mister. I’m in on whatever searching is done. I’ve got something to settle with whatever killed my kid brother.”
“But there are only three lanterns,” pointed out Judge Pursuivant. “We have to carry them – light’s our best weapon.”
Zoberg then spoke up, rather diffidently, to say that he would be glad to stay with Susan. This was agreed upon, and the other three of us prepared for the search.
I took the lantern from Zoberg’s hand, nodded to the others, and walked away among the trees.
XIV “I was – I AM – a wolf”
Deliberately I had turned my face toward the section beyond the fire, for, as I have said repeatedly, it was there that I had heard the movements and cries of the being that had so strongly moved and bewitched Susan. My heart whispered rather loudly that I must look for myself at its traces or lack of them, or forever view myself with scorn.
Almost at once I found tracks, the booted tracks of my three allies. Shaking my lantern to make it flare higher, I went deeper among the clumps, my eyes quartering the damp earth. After a few moments I found what I had come to look for.
The marks were round and rather vague as to toe-positions, yet not so clear-cut as to be made by hoofs. Rather they suggested a malformed stump or a palm with no fingers, and they were deep enough to denote considerable weight; the tracks of my own shoes, next to them, were rather shallower. I bent for a close look, then straightened up, looked ev
erywhere at once, and held my torch above my head to shed light all around; for I had suddenly felt eyes upon me.
I caught just a glimpse as of two points of light, fading away into some leafage and in the direction of the clearing, and toward them I made my way; but there was nothing there, and the only tracks underfoot were of shod human beings, myself or one of the others. I returned to my outward search, following the round tracks.
They were plainly of only two feet – there were no double impressions, like those of a quadruped – but I must have stalked along them for ten minutes when I realized that I had no way of telling whether they went forward or backward. I might be going away from my enemy instead of toward it. A close examination did me little good, and I further pondered that the creature would lurk near the clearing, not go so straight away. Thus arguing within myself, I doubled back.
Coming again close to the starting-point, I thought of a quick visit to the clearing and a comforting word or two with Susan and Zoberg. Surely I was almost there; but why did not the fire gleam through the trees? Were they out of wood? Perplexed, I quickened my pace. A gnarled tree grew in my path, its low branches heavily bearded with vines. Beyond this rose only the faintest of glows. I paused to push aside some strands and peer.
The fire had almost died, and by its light I but half saw two figures, one tall and one slender, standing together well to one side. They faced each other, and the taller – a seeming statue of wet-looking gray – held its companion by a shoulder. The other gray hand was stroking the smaller one’s head, pouring grayness thereon.
I saw only this much, without stopping to judge or to wonder. Then I yelled, and sprang into the clearing. At my outcry the two fell apart and faced me. The smallest was Susan, who took a step in my direction and gave a little smothered whimper, as though she was trying to speak through a blanket. I ran to her side, and with a rough sweep of my sleeve I cleared from her face and head a mass of slimy, shiny jelly.
“You!” I challenged the other shape. “What have you been trying to do to her?”
For only a breathing-space it stood still, as featureless and clumsy as a half-formed figure of gray mud. Then darkness sprang out upon it, and hair. Eyes blazed at me, green and fearsome. A sharp muzzle opened to emit a snarl.
“Now I know you,” I hurled at it. “I’m going to kill you.”
And I charged.
Claws ripped at my head, missed and tore the cloth of my coat. One of my arms shot around a lean, hairy middle with powerful muscles straining under its skin, and I drove my other fist for where I judged the pit of the stomach to be. Grappled, we fell and rolled over. The beast smell I remembered was all about us, and I knew that jaws were shoving once again at my throat. I jammed my forearm between them, so far into the hinge of them that they could not close nor crush. My other hand clutched the skin of the throat, a great loose fistful, drew it taut and began to twist with all my strength. I heard a half-broken yelp of strangled pain, felt a slackening of the body that struggled against me, knew that it was trying to get away. But I managed to roll on top, straddling the thing.
“You’re not so good on defense,” I panted, and brought my other hand to the throat, for I had no other idea save to kill. Paws grasped and tore at my wrists. There was shouting at my back, in Susan’s voice and several others. Hands caught me by the shoulders and tried to pull me up and away.
“No!” I cried. “This is it, the werewolf!”
“It’s Doctor Zoberg, you idiot,” growled O’Bryant in my ear. “Come on, let him up.”
“Yes,” added Judge Pursuivant, “it’s Doctor Zoberg, as you say; but a moment ago it was the monster we have been hunting.”
I had been dragged upright by now, and so had Zoberg. He could only choke and glare for the time being, his fingers to his half-crushed throat. Pursuivant had moved within clutching distance of him, and was eyeing him as a cat eyes a mouse.
“Like Wills, I only pretended to search, then doubled back to watch,” went on the judge. “I saw Zoberg and Miss Susan talking. He spoke quietly, rhythmically, commandingly. She went into half a trance, and I knew she was hypnotized.
“As the fire died down, he began the change. Ectoplasm gushed out and over him. Before it took form, he began to smear some upon her. And Mr Wills here came out of the woods and at him.”
O’Bryant looked from the judge to Zoberg. Then he fumbled with his undamaged hand in a hip pocket, produced handcuffs and stepped forward. The accused man grinned through his beard, as if admitting defeat in some trifling game. Then he held out his wrists with an air of resignation and I, who had manacled them once, wondered again at their corded strength. The irons clicked shut upon one, then the other.
“You know everything now,” said Zoberg, in a soft voice but a steady one. “I was – I am – a wolf; a wolf who hoped to mate with an angel.”
His bright eyes rested upon Susan, who shrank back. Judge Pursuivant took a step toward the prisoner.
“There is no need for you to insult her,” he said.
Zoberg grinned at him, with every long tooth agleam. “Do you want to hear my confession, or don’t you?”
“Sure we want to hear it,” grunted O’Bryant. “Leave him alone, judge, and let him talk.” He glanced at me. “Got any paper, Mr Wills? Somebody better take this down in writing.”
I produced a wad of note-paper and a stub pencil. Placing it upon my knee, with the lantern for light, I scribbled, almost word for word, the tale that Doctor Zoberg told.
XV “And that is the end.”
“Perhaps I was born what I am,” he began. “At least, even as a lad I knew that there was a lust and a power for evil within me. Night called to me, where it frightens most children. I would slip out of my father’s house and run for miles, under the trees or across fields, with the moon for company. This was in Germany, of course, before the war.”
“During the war—” began Judge Pursuivant.
“During the war, when most men were fighting, I was in prison.” Again Zoberg grinned, briefly and without cheer. “I had found it easy and inspiring to kill persons, with a sense of added strength following. But they caught me and put me in what they called an asylum. I was supposed to be crazy. They confined me closely, but I, reading books in the library, grew to know what the change was that came upon me at certain intervals. I turned my attention to it, and became able to control the change, bringing it on or holding it off at will.”
He looked at Susan again. “But I’m ahead of my story. Once, when I was at school, I met a girl – an American student of science and philosophy. She laughed at my wooing, but talked to me about spirits and psychical phenomena. That, my dear Susan, was your mother. When the end of the war brought so many new things, it also brought a different viewpoint toward many inmates of asylums. Some Viennese doctors, and later Sigmund Freud himself, found my case interesting. Of course, they did not arrive at the real truth, or they would not have procured my release.”
“After that,” I supplied, writing swiftly, “you became an expert psychical investigator and journeyed to America.”
“Yes, to find the girl who had once laughed and studied with me. After some years I came to this town, simply to trace the legend of this Devil’s Croft. And here, I found, she had lived and died, and left behind a daughter that was her image.”
Judge Pursuivant cleared his throat. “I suspect that you’re leaving out part of your adventures, Doctor.”
Zoberg actually laughed. “Ja, I thought to spare you a few shocks. But if you will have them, you may. I visited Russia – and in 1922 a medical commission of the Soviet Union investigated several score mysterious cases of peasants killed – and eaten.” He licked his lips, like a cat who thinks of meat. “In Paris I founded and conducted a rather interesting night school, for the study of diabolism in its relationship to science. And in 1936, certain summer vacationists on Long Island were almost frightened out of their wits by a lurking thing that seemed half beast, half man
.” He chuckled. “Your Literary Digest made much of it. The lurking thing was, of course, myself.”
We stared. “Say, why do you do these things?” the constable blurted.
Zoberg turned to him, head quizzically aslant. “Why do you uphold your local laws? Or why does Judge Pursuivant study ancient philosophies? Or why do Wills and Susan turn soft eyes upon each other? Because the heart of each so insists.”
Susan was clutching my arm. Her fingers bit into my flesh as Zoberg’s eyes sought her again.
“I found the daughter of someone I once loved,” he went on, with real gentleness in his voice. “Wills, at least, can see in her what I saw. A new inspiration came to me, a wish and a plan to have a comrade in my secret exploits.”
“A beast-thing like yourself?” prompted the judge.
Zoberg nodded. “A lupa to my lupus. But this girl – Susan Gird – had not inherited the psychic possibilities of her mother.”
“What!” I shouted. “You yourself said that she was the greatest medium of all time!”
“I did say so. But it was a lie.”
“Why, in heaven’s name—”
“It was my hope,” he broke in quietly, “to make of her a medium, or a lycanthrope – call the phenomenon which you will. Are you interested in my proposed method?” He gazed mockingly around, and his eyes rested finally upon me. “Make full notes, Wills. This will be interesting, if not stupefying, to the psychic research committees.
“It is, as you know, a supernormal substance that is exuded to change the appearance of my body. What, I wondered, would some of that substance do if smeared upon her?”
I started to growl out a curse upon him, but Judge Pursuivant, rapt, motioned for me to keep silent.
“Think back through all the demonologies you have read,” Zoberg was urging. “What of the strange ‘witch ointments’ that, spread over an ordinary human body, gave it beast-form and beast-heart? There, again, legend had basis in scientific fact.”
“By the thunder, you’re logical,” muttered Judge Pursuivant.
“And damnable,” I added. “Go on, Doctor. You were going to smear the change-stuff upon Susan.”
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men Page 39
