Dracula’s Brethren

by Richard Dalby

  LIEUTENANT Will Scarlett’s instructions were devoid of problems, physical or otherwise. To convey a letter from Captain Driver of the Yankee Doodle, in Porto Rico Bay, to Admiral Lake on the other side of the isthmus, was an apparently simple matter.

  ‘All you have to do,’ the captain remarked, ‘is to take three or four men with you in case of accidents, cross the isthmus on foot, and simply give this letter into the hands of Admiral Lake. By so doing we shall save at least four days, and the aborigines are presumedly friendly.’

  The aborigines aforesaid were Cuban insurgents. Little or no strife had taken place along the neck lying between Porto Rico and the north bay where Lake’s flagship lay, though the belt was known to be given over to the disaffected Cubans.

  ‘It is a matter of fifty miles through practically unexplored country,’ Scarlett replied; ‘and there’s a good deal of the family quarrel in this business, sir. If the Spaniards hate us, the Cubans are not exactly enamoured of our flag.’

  Captain Driver roundly denounced the whole pack of them.

  ‘Treacherous thieves to a man,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose your progress will have any brass bands and floral arches to it. And they tell me the forest is pretty thick. But you’ll get there all the same. There is the letter, and you can start as soon as you like.’

  ‘I may pick my own men, sir?’

  ‘My dear fellow, take whom you please. Take the mastiff, if you like.’

  ‘I’d like the mastiff,’ Scarlett replied; ‘as he is practically my own, I thought you would not object.’

  Will Scarlett began to glow as the prospect of adventure stimulated his imagination. He was rather a good specimen of West Point naval dandyism. He had brains at the back of his smartness, and his geological and botanical knowledge were going to prove of considerable service to a grateful country when said grateful country should have passed beyond the rudimentary stages of colonization. And there was some disposition to envy Scarlett on the part of others floating for the past month on the liquid prison of the sapphire sea.

  A warrant officer, Tarrer by name, plus two A.B.’s of thews and sinews, to say nothing of the dog, completed the exploring party. By the time that the sun kissed the tip of the feathery hills they had covered some six miles of their journey. From the first Scarlett had been struck by the absolute absence of the desolation and horror of civil strife. Evidently the fiery cross had not been carried here; huts and houses were intact; the villagers stood under sloping eaves, and regarded the Americans with a certain sullen curiosity.

  ‘We’d better stop for the night here,’ said Scarlett.

  They had come at length to a village that boasted some pretensions. An adobe chapel at one end of the straggling street was faced by a wine house at the other. A padre, with hands folded over a bulbous, greasy gabardine, bowed gravely to Scarlett’s salutation. The latter had what Tarrer called ‘considerable Spanish.’

  ‘We seek quarters for the night,’ said Scarlett. ‘Of course, we are prepared to pay for them.’

  The sleepy padre nodded towards the wine house.

  ‘You will find fair accommodation there,’ he said. ‘We are friends of the Americanos.’

  Scarlett doubted the fact, and passed on with florid thanks. So far, little signs of friendliness had been encountered on the march. Coldness, suspicion, a suggestion of fear, but no friendliness to be embarrassing.

  The keeper of the wine shop had his doubts. He feared his poor accommodation for guests so distinguished. A score or more of picturesque, cut-throat-looking rascals with cigarettes in their mouths lounged sullenly in the bar. The display of a brace of gold dollars enlarged mine host’s opinion of his household capacity.

  ‘I will do my best, senors,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’

  So it came to pass that an hour after twilight Tarrer and Scarlett were seated in the open amongst the oleanders and the trailing gleam of the fireflies, discussing cigars of average merit and a native wine that was not without virtues. The long bar of the wine house was brilliantly illuminated; from within came shouts of laughter mingled with the ting, tang of the guitar and the rollicking clack of the castanets.

  ‘They seem to be happy in there,’ Tarrer remarked. ‘It isn’t all daggers and ball in this distressful country.’

  A certain curiosity came over Scarlett.

  ‘It is the duty of a good officer,’ he said, ‘to lose no opportunity of acquiring useful information. Let us join the giddy throng, Tarrer.’

  Tarrer expressed himself with enthusiasm in favour of any amusement that might be going. A month’s idleness on shipboard increases the appetite for that kind of thing wonderfully. The long bar was comfortable, and filled with Cubans who took absolutely no notice of the intruders. Their eyes were turned towards a rude stage at the far end of the bar, whereon a girl was gyrating in a dance with a celerity and grace that caused the wreath of flowers around her shoulders to resemble a trembling zone of purple flame.

  ‘A wonderfully pretty girl and a wonderfully pretty dance,’ Scarlett murmured, when the motions ceased and the girl leapt gracefully to the ground. ‘Largesse, I expect. I thought so. Well, I’m good for a quarter.’

  The girl came forward, extending a shell prettily. She curtsied before Scarlett and fixed her dark, liquid eyes on his. As he smiled and dropped his quarter-dollar into the shell a coquettish gleam came into the velvety eyes. An ominous growl came from the lips of a bearded ruffian close by.

  ‘Othello’s jealous,’ said Tarrer. ‘Look at his face.’

  ‘I am better employed,’ Scarlett laughed. ‘That was a graceful dance, pretty one. I hope you are going to give us another one presently—’

  Scarlett paused suddenly. His eyes had fallen on the purple band of flowers the girl had twined round her shoulder. Scarlett was an enthusiastic botanist; he knew most of the gems in Flora’s crown, but he had never looked upon such a vivid wealth of blossom before.

  The flowers were orchids, and orchids of a kind unknown to collectors anywhere. On this point Scarlett felt certain. And yet this part of the world was by no means a difficult one to explore in comparison with New Guinea and Sumatra, where the rarer varieties had their homes.

  The blooms were immensely large, far larger than any flower of the kind known to Europe or America, of a deep pure purple, with a blood-red centre. As Scarlett gazed upon them he noticed a certain cruel expression on the flower. Most orchids have a kind of face of their own; the purple blooms had a positive expression of ferocity and cunning. They exhumed, too, a queer, sickly fragrance. Scarlett had smelt something like it before, after the Battle of Manila. The perfume was the perfume of a corpse.

  ‘And yet they are magnificent flowers,’ said Scarlett. ‘Won’t you tell me where you got them from, pretty one?’

  The girl was evidently flattered by the attention bestowed upon her by the smart young American. The bearded Othello alluded to edged up to her side.

  ‘The senor had best leave the girl alone,’ he said, insolently.

  Scarlett’s fist clenched as he measured the Cuban with his eyes. The Admiral’s letter crackled in his breast pocket, and discretion got the best of valour.

  ‘You are paying yourself a poor compliment, my good fellow,’ he said, ‘though I certainly admire your good taste. Those flowers interested me.’

  The man appeared to be mollified. His features corrugated in a smile.

  ‘The senor would like some of those blooms?’ he asked. ‘It was I who procured them for little Zara here. I can show you where they grow.’

  Every eye in the room was turned in Scarlett’s direction. It seemed to him that a kind of diabolical malice glistened on every dark face there, save that of the girl, whose features paled under her healthy tan.

  ‘If the senor is wise,’ she began, ‘he will not—’

  ‘Listen to the tales of a silly girl,’ Othello put in, menacingly. He grasped the girl by the arm, and she winced in positive pain. ‘Pshaw, there is no har
m where the flowers grow, if one is only careful. I will take you there, and I will be your guide to Port Anna, where you are going, for a gold dollar.’

  All Scarlett’s scientific enthusiasm was aroused. It is not given to every man to present a new orchid to the horticultural world. And this one would dwarf the finest plant hitherto discovered.

  ‘Done with you,’ he said; ‘we start at daybreak. I shall look to you to be ready. Your name is Tito? Well, goodnight, Tito.’

  As Scarlett and Tarrer withdrew the girl suddenly darted forward. A wild word or two fluttered from her lips. Then there was a sound as of a blow, followed by a little stifled cry of pain.

  ‘No, no,’ Tarrer urged, as Scarlett half turned. ‘Better not. They are ten to one, and they are no friends of ours. It never pays to interfere in these family quarrels. I daresay, if you interfered, the girl would be just as ready to knife you as her jealous lover.’

  ‘But a blow like that, Tarrer!’

  ‘It’s a pity, but I don’t see how we can help it. Your business is the quick dispatch of the Admiral’s letter, not the squiring of dames.’

  Scarlett owned with a sigh that Tarrer was right.

  It was quite a different Tito who presented himself at daybreak the following morning. His insolent manner had disappeared. He was cheerful, alert, and he had a manner full of the most winning politeness.

  ‘You quite understand what we want,’ Scarlett said. ‘My desire is to reach Port Anna as. soon as possible. You know the way?’

  ‘Every inch of it, senor. I have made the journey scores of times. And I shall have the felicity of getting you there early on the third day from now.’

  ‘Is it so far as that?’

  ‘The distance is not great, senor. It is the passage through the woods. There are parts where no white man has been before.’

  ‘And you will not forget the purple orchids?’

  A queer gleam trembled like summer lightning in Tito’s eyes. The next instant it had gone. A time was to come when Scarlett was to recall that look, but for the moment it was allowed to pass.

  ‘The senor shall see the purple orchid,’ he said; ‘thousands of them. They have a bad name amongst our people, but that is nonsense. They grow in the high trees, and their blossoms cling to long, green tendrils. These tendrils are poisonous to the flesh, and great care should be taken in handling them. And the flowers are quite harmless, though we call them the devil’s poppies.’

  To all of this Scarlett listened eagerly. He was all-impatient to see and handle the mysterious flower for himself. The whole excursion was going to prove a wonderful piece of luck. At the same time he had to curb his impatience. There would be no chance of seeing the purple orchid today.

  For hours they fought their way along through the dense tangle. A heat seemed to lie over all the land like a curse – a blistering sweltering, moist heat with no puff of wind to temper its breathlessness. By the time that the sun was sliding down, most of the party had had enough of it.

  They passed out of the underwood at length, and, striking upwards, approached a clump of huge forest trees on the brow of a ridge. All kinds of parasites hung from the branches; there were ropes and bands of green, and high up a fringe of purple glory that caused Scarlett’s pulses to leap a little faster.

  ‘Surely that is the purple orchid?’ he cried.

  Tito shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

  ‘A mere straggler or two,’ he said, ‘and out of reach in any case. The senor will have all he wants and more tomorrow.’

  ‘But it seems to me,’ said Scarlett, ‘that I could—’

  Then he paused. The sun like a great glowing shield was shining full behind the tree with its crown of purple, and showing up every green rope and thread clinging to the branches with the clearness of liquid crystal. Scarlett saw a network of green cords like a huge spider’s web, and in the centre of it was not a fly, but a human skeleton!

  The arms and legs were stretched apart as if the victim had been crucified. The wrists and ankles were bound in the cruel web. Fragments of tattered clothing fluttered in the faint breath of the evening breeze.

  ‘Horrible,’ Scarlett cried, ‘absolutely horrible!’

  ‘You may well say that,’ Tarrer exclaimed, with a shudder. ‘Like the fly in the amber or the apple in the dumpling, the mystery is how he got there.’

  ‘Perhaps Tito can explain the mystery,’ Scarlett suggested.

  Tito appeared to be uneasy and disturbed. He looked furtively from one to the other of his employers as a culprit might who feels he has been found out. But his courage returned as he noted the absence of suspicion in the faces turned upon him.

  ‘I can explain,’ he exclaimed, with teeth that chattered from some unknown terror or guilt. ‘It is not the first time that I have seen the skeleton. Some plant-hunter doubtless who came here alone. He climbed into the tree without a knife, and those green ropes got twisted round his limbs, as a swimmer gets entangled in the weeds. The more he struggled, the more the cords bound him. He would call in vain for anyone to assist him here. And so he must have died.’

  The explanation was a plausible one, but by no means detracted from the horror of the discovery. For some time the party pushed their way on in the twilight, till the darkness descended suddenly like a curtain.

  ‘We will camp here,’ Tito said; ‘it is high, dry ground, and we have this belt of trees above us. There is no better place than this for miles around. In the valley the miasma is dangerous.’

  As Tito spoke he struck a match, and soon a torch flamed up. The little party were on a small plateau, fringed by trees. The ground was dry and hard, and, as Scarlett and his party saw to their astonishment, littered with bones. There were skulls of animals and skulls of human beings, the skeletons of birds, the frames of beasts both great and small. It was a weird, shuddering sight.

  ‘We can’t possibly stay here,’ Scarlett exclaimed.

  Tito shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘There is nowhere else,’ he replied. ‘Down in the valley there are many dangers. Further in the woods are the snakes and jaguars. Bones are nothing. Peuf, they can be easily cleared away.’

  They had to be cleared away, and there was an end of the matter. For the most part the skeletons were white and dry as air and sun could make them. Over the dry, calcined mass the huge fringe of trees nodded mournfully. With the rest, Scarlett was busy scattering the mocking frames aside. A perfect human skeleton lay at his feet. On one finger something glittered – a signet ring. As Scarlett took it in his hand he started.

  ‘I know this ring!’ he exclaimed; ‘it belonged to Pierre Anton, perhaps the most skilled and intrepid plant-hunter the Jardin des Plantes ever employed. The poor fellow was by way of being a friend of mine. He met the fate that he always anticipated.’

  ‘There must have been a rare holocaust here,’ said Tarrer.

  ‘It beats me,’ Scarlett responded. By this time a large circle had been shifted clear of human and other remains. By the light of the fire loathsome insects could be seen scudding and straddling away. ‘It beats me entirely. Tito, can you offer any explanation? If the bones were all human I could get some grip of the problem. But when one comes to birds and animals as well! Do you see that the skeletons lie in a perfect circle, starting from the centre of the clump of trees above us? What does it mean?’

  Tito professed utter ignorance of the subject. Some years before a small tribe of natives invaded the peninsula for religious rites. They came from a long way off in canoes, and wild stories were told concerning them. They burnt sacrifices, no doubt.

  Scarlett turned his back contemptuously on this transparent tale. His curiosity was aroused. There must be some explanation, for Pierre Anton had been seen of men within the last ten years.

  ‘There’s something uncanny about this,’ he said, to Tarrer. ‘I mean to get to the bottom of it, or know why.’

  ‘As for me,’ said Tarrer, with a cavernous yawn, ‘I have but one amb
ition, and that is my supper, followed by my bed.’

  Scarlett lay in the light of the fire looking about him. He felt restless and uneasy, though he would have found it difficult to explain the reason. For one thing, the air trembled to strange noises. There seemed to be something moving, writhing in the forest trees above his head. More than once it seemed to his distorted fancy that he could see a squirming knot of green snakes in motion.

  Outside the circle, in a grotto of bones, Tito lay sleeping. A few moments before his dark, sleek head had been furtively raised, and his eyes seemed to gleam in the flickering firelight with malignant cunning. As he met Scarlett’s glance he gave a deprecatory gesture and subsided.

  ‘What the deuce does it all mean?’ Scarlett muttered. ‘I feel certain yonder rascal is up to some mischief. Jealous still because I paid his girl a little attention. But he can’t do us any real harm. Quiet, there!’

  The big mastiff growled and then whined uneasily. Even the dog seemed to be conscious of some unseen danger. He lay down again, cowed by the stern command, but he still whimpered in his dreams.

  ‘I fancy I’ll keep awake for a spell,’ Scarlett told himself.

  For a time he did so. Presently he began to slide away into the land of poppies. He was walking amongst a garden of bones which bore masses of purple blossoms. Then Pierre Anton came on the scene, pale and resolute as Scarlett had always known him; then the big mastiff seemed in some way to be mixed up with the phantasm of the dream, barking as if in pain, and Scarlett came to his senses.

  He was breathing short, a beady perspiration stood on his forehead, his heart hammered in quick thuds – all the horrors of nightmare were still upon him. In a vague way as yet he heard the mastiff, howl, a real howl of real terror, and Scarlett knew that he was awake.

  Then a strange thing happened. In the none too certain light of the fire, Scarlett saw the mastiff snatched up by some invisible hand, carried far on high towards the trees, and finally flung to the earth with a crash. The big dog lay still as a log.