The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK™, Vol. 1: Henry S. Whitehead

by Henry S. Whitehead

  The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany MEGAPACK™”)

  The Wildside Book of Fantasy

  The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

  Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

  To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

  Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

  Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

  More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

  X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

  THE PROJECTION OF ARMAND DUBOIS

  Originally published in Weird Tales, October, 1926.

  Some time before my marriage, when I was living in Marlborough House, the old mansion on the hill back of the town of Frederiksted, on the West Indian island of St. Croix—that is to say, before I became a landed-proprietor, as I did later, and was still making a variable living by the production and sale of my tales—I had a next-door neighbor by the name of Mrs. Minerva Du Chaillu. I do not know whether the late Monsieur Du Chaillu, of whom this good lady was the relict, was related or not to the famous Paul of that name, that slaughterer of wild animals in the far corners of the earth, who was, and may still be, for all I know, the greatest figure of all the big game hunters, but her husband, Monsieur Placide Du Chaillu, had been for many years a clergyman of the English Church on that strange island of St. Martin, with its two flat towns, Phillipsbourg, capital of the Dutch Side, and Maragot, capital of the French Side.

  The English Church was, and still is, existent only among the Dutch residents, Maragot being without an English Church. Therefore, Mrs. Du Chaillu’s acquaintance, even after many years’ residence on St. Martin, was almost entirely confined to the Dutch Side, where, curiously enough, English and French, rather than Dutch, are spoken; and which, although only eight miles from the French capital, has only slight communication therewith, because of the execrable quality of the connecting roads.

  This old lady, well past seventy at the time, used to sit on her gallery late afternoons, when the fervor of the afternoon sun had somewhat abated, and rock herself steadily to and fro, and fan in the same indefatigable fashion as ancient Mistress Desmond, my landlady. Occasionally I would step across and exchange the time of day with her. I had known her for several years before she got her courage up to the point of asking me if some day I would not allow her to see some things I had written.

  Such a request is always a compliment, and this I told her, to relieve her obvious embarrassment. A day or so later I took over to Mrs. Du Chaillu a selection of three or four manuscript-carbons, and a couple of magazines containing my stories, and I could see her from time to time, afternoons, reading them. I could even guess which ones she had finished and which she was currently engaged in perusing, by the expression of her kindly face as she read.

  Four or five days later she sent for me, and when I had gone across to her gallery, she thanked me, very formally as a finely-bred gentlewoman of several generations of West Indian background might be expected to do, handed back the stories, and, with much hesitation, and almost blushingly, intimated that she could tell me a story herself, if I cared to use it!

  “Of course,” added Mrs. Du Chaillu, “you’d have to change it about and embellish it a great deal, Mr. Canevin.”

  To this I said nothing, except to urge my old friend to proceed, and this she did forthwith, hesitating at first, then, becoming intrigued by the memories o the tale, with the flair of a quite unexpected narrative gift. During the first few minutes of the then halting recital, I interrupted occasionally, for the purpose of getting this or that point clear, but as the story progressed I quieted down, and before it was finished, I was sitting, listening as though to catch pearls, for here was my simon-pure West Indian “Jumbee” story, a gem, a perfect example, and told—you may believe me or not, sir or madam—with every possible indication of authenticity. Unless there is something hitherto unsuspected (even by his best friends, those keenest of critics) with the understanding apparatus of Gerald Canevin, that story as Mrs. Du Chaillu told it to him, had happened, just as she said it had—to her.

  I will add only that I have not, to my knowledge, changed a word of it. It is not only not embellished (or “glorified,~ as the Black People would say) but it is as nearly verbatim as I can manage it; and I believe it implicitly. It fits in with much that is known scientifically and verified by occult investigators and suchlike personages; it is typically, utterly, West Indian; and Mrs. Du Chaillu would as soon vary one jot or tittle from the strict truth in this or any other matter, as to attempt to stand on her head—and that, if you knew the dear old soul as I do, with her rheumatism, and her seventy-six years, and her impeccable, lifelong respectability, is as much as to say, impossible! For the convenience of any possible readers, I will tell her story for her, as nearly as possible in her own words, without quotation marks....

  I had been living in Phillipsbourg about two years; perhaps slightly longer (said Mrs. Du Chaillu) when one morning I had occasion to go into my husband’s study, or office. Monsieur Du Chaillu—as he was generally called, of course, even though he was a clergyman of the Church of England—was, at the moment of my arrival, opening one of the two “strong-boxes,” or old-fashioned iron safes which he had standing side by side, and in which he kept his own money and the various parish funds of which he had charge.

  The occasion of my going into his office, where he received the parishioners—you know in these West Indian parishes the Black People come in streams to consult “Gahd’s An’inted” about every conceivable matter from a family row to a stolen papaya—was on account of Julie. Julie was a very good and reliable servant, a young woman whose health was not very good, and whom I was keeping in one of the spare-rooms of our house, The rectory was a large residence, just next-door to the Government House, and poor Julie did better, we thought, inside than in one of the servant’s rooms in the yard. Every day I would give Julie a little brandy. She had come for her brandy a few minutes before—it was about four-thirty in the afternoon—and I discovered that I would have to get a fresh bottle. Monsieur Du Chaillu was in the office and had the key of the big sideboard, and I had stepped in to get the key from him.

  As I say, he was just opening one of the safes.

  I said: “Placide, what are you doing?” It was one of those meaningless questions. I could see clearly what he was doing. He was opening his safe, the one in which he kept his own private belongings, and I need not have asked so obvious a question.

  My husband straightened up, however, not annoyed, you understand, but somewhat surprized, because I never entered his office as a rule, and remarked that he was getting some money out because he had a bill to pay that afternoon.

  I asked him for the key to the sideboard and came and stood beside him as he reached down into the safe, which was the kind that opened with a great heavy lid on the top, like a cigar-box, or the cover for a cistern. He reached into his pocket with his left hand after the sideboard key, his right hand full of currency, and I looked into the safe. There on top lay a paper which I took to be a kind of promissory note. I read it, hastily. I was his wife. There was, I conceived, nothing secret about it.

  “What is this, Placide?” I enquired.

  My husband handed me the key to the sideboard.

  “What is what, my dear Minerva?” he asked.

  “This note, or whatever it is. It seems as though you had loaned three hundred dollars a good while ago, and never got it back.”

  “That is correct,” said my husband. “I have never felt that I wished to push the matter.” He picked up the note with his now free left hand, in a ruminating kind of manner, and I saw there was another note underneath. I picked that one up myself, my husband making no objection to my doing so, and glanced through it. That, too, was for three hundred dollars. Both were
dated between seventeen and eighteen years previously, that is, in the year 1863, although they were of different months and days, and both were signed by men at that time living in Phillipsbourg, both prosperous men; one a white gentleman-planter in a small way; the other a colored man with a not very good reputation, but one who had prospered and was accounted well-to-do.

  Well, my husband stood there with one note in his hand, and I stood beside him, holding the other. I did a rough sum in mental arithmetic. The notes were “demand” notes, at eight percent, simple interest, representing, the two together, six hundred dollars. Eighteen years of interest, at eight percent added on, it seemed to me, would cause these notes to amount to a great deal more than twice six hundred dollars, something around fifteen hundred, in fact. We were far from rich!

  “But, my dear Placide, you should collect these,” I cried.

  “I have never wished to press them,” replied my husband.

  “Allow me, if you please, to take them,” I begged him.

  “Do as you wish, Minerva my dear,” replied Monsieur Du Chaillu. “But, I beg of you, no lawsuits!”

  “Very well,” said I, and, carrying the two notes, walked out of the office to get Julie her brandy, out of the sideboard in the dining-room.

  I will admit to you, Mr. Canevin, that I was a little put out about my dear husband’s carelessness in connection with those notes. At the same time, I could not avoid seeing very clearly that the notes, if still collectible, constituted a kind of windfall, as you say in the United States—it has to do with a variety of apple, does it not?—and I decided at once to set about a kind of investigation.

  As soon as I had supplied Julie with a brandy which Dr. Duchesne had prescribed for her, I sent our house-boy after Monsieur Henkes, the notary of our town of Phillipsbourg. Monsieur Henkes came within the hour—he stayed for tea, I remember—and he assured me that the notes, not yet being twenty years old, were still collectible. I placed them in his hands, and paid him, in advance, as the custom is on St. Martin, and, I daresay, in Curaçoa, and the other Dutch possessions, his fee of fifty dollars for collection, instructing him that it was my husband’s desire that there should be no actual lawsuit.

  I will shorten my story as much as possible, by telling you that the note which had been given by the gentleman-planter was paid, in six months, in two equal installments, and, with my husband’s permission, I invested the money in some shares in one of our St. Martin Salt-Ponds—salt, you know, is the chief export from St. Martin.

  The other note, the one which had been given by the colored man, Armand Dubois, did not go through so easily. Here in the West Indies, as you have surely observed, our “colored” people, as distinct from the Black laboring class, are, commonly, estimable persons, who conduct themselves like us Caucasians. Dubois, however, was exceptional. He was only about one-quarter African—a quadroon, or thereabouts. But his leanings, as sometimes happens, were to the Black side of his heredity. Many persons in Phillipsbourg regarded him as a rascal, a person of no character at all. It seems he had heard, far back in the days when my husband accommodated his friend, the planter, of that transaction, and had come almost at once to ask for a similar accommodation. That is why the two notes were so nearly of the same date, and perhaps it accounts for the fact that the two notes were both for three hundred dollars. Negroes, and those persons of mixed blood whose Black side predominates, are not very inventive. It would be quite characteristic for such a person to ask for the same sum as had been given to the former applicant.

  Dubois made a great pother about paying. Of this I heard only rumors, of course. Monsieur Henkes did not trouble us in the matter, once the collection of the notes had been placed in his hands. It was, of course, a perfectly clear case. The note had been signed by Dubois, and it had more than two years to run before it would be outlawed—“limited” is, I believe, the legal term. So Armand Dubois paid, as he was well able to do, but, as I say, with a very bad grace. Presumably he expected never to pay. The impudence of the man!

  Shortly after I had placed the notes in the hands of Monsieur Henkes for collection, Julie came to me one afternoon, quite gray in the face, as negroes look when they are badly frightened. On St. Martin, perhaps you know, Mr. Canevin, servants have a custom similar to what I have read about in your South. That is to say, they invariably address their mistresses as “Miss,” with the Christian name. Why, I can not say. It is their custom. Julie came to me, as I say, very frightened, very much upset,—quite terrified, in fact.

  She said to me: “Miss Minerva, on no account, ma’am, mus’ yo’ go to de door, if yo’ please, ma’am. One Armand Dubois come, ma’am, an’ is even now cloimbing de step of de gol’ry. Hoide yo’self, ma’am, I beg of yo’, in de name of Gahd!”

  Julie’s distress and state of fright, which the girl could not conceal, impressed me more than her words. I said: “Julie, go to the door yourself. Say, please, to this Dubois, that I have nothing to say to him. For anything whatever, he must address himself to Monsieur Henkes.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Julie, and almost pushed me into my bedroom and shut the door smartly behind me. I stood there, and listened, as Dubois, who had now mounted the gallery steps, knocked, very truculently, it seemed to me,—the creature had no manners,—on the door. I could hear him ask for me, and the murmur of Julie’s voice as she delivered my message. Dubois was reluctant to leave, it seemed. He stood and parleyed, but forcing his way into a house like the rectory of the English Church was beyond him, and at last he went. Several other persons, black fellows, Julie told me, had accompanied him, for what purpose I can not imagine,—it was most unusual that he should come to trouble me at all,—and these all walked down the street, as I could see through the slanted jalousies of my bedroom window, Dubois gesticulating and orating to his followers.

  Julie told me something else, too,—something which quite made my blood run cold. Armand Dubois, said Julie, had, half-concealed in his hand, as he stood talking to her, a small vial. Julie was sure it contained vitriol. I was almost afraid to venture out to the street after that, and it was a long time before I recovered from the shock of it. Vitriol,—think of it, Mr. Canevin!—if indeed that were what he had in the vial; and what else could he have had?

  Of course, I did not dare tell my husband. It would have distressed that dear, kind man most atrociously; and besides, the collection of the notes was, so to speak, a venture of mine, carried out, if not exactly against his will, at least without any enthusiasm on his part. So I kept quiet, and commanded Julie to say nothing whatever about it. I was sure, too, that even a person like Armand Dubois would, in a short time, get over the condition of rage in which Monsieur Henkes’ visit to him must have left him to induce him to come to me at all. That, or something similar, actually proved to be the case. I had no further annoyance from Dubois, and in the course of a few weeks, probably pressed by Monsieur Henkes, he settled the note, paying seven hundred and twenty-four dollars, to be exact, with seventeen years and eight months’ interest at eight percent.

  Of course, Mr. Canevin, all that portion of the story, except, perhaps, for Armand Dubois’ unpleasant visit, is merely commonplace,—the mere narrative of the collection of two demand-notes. Note, though, what followed!

  It was, perhaps, two months after the day when I had gone into my husband’s office and discovered those notes, and about a month after Dubois had paid what he owed Monsieur Du Chaillu, that I had gone to bed, a trifle earlier, perhaps, than usual,—about half-past nine, to be exact. My aunt was staying with us in the rectory at the time, and she was far from well, and I had been reading to her and fanning her, and I was somewhat tired. I fell asleep, I suppose, immediately after retiring.

  I awakened, and found myself sitting bolt-upright in my bed, and the clock in the town was striking twelve. I counted the strokes. As I finished, and the bell ceased its striking, I felt, rather than saw,—for I was looking, in an abstracted kind of fashion, straight before me, my elbo
ws on my knees, in a sitting posture, as I have said,—something at the left, just outside the mosquito-netting. There was a dim night- light, such as I always kept, in the far corner of the room, on the edge of my bureau, and by its light the objects in the room were faintly visible through the white net.

  I turned, suddenly, under the impulse of that feeling, and there, Mr. Canevin, just beside the bed, and almost pressing against the net though not quite touching it, was a face. The face was that of a mulatto, and as I looked at it, frozen, speechless, I observed that it was Armand Dubois, and that he was glaring at me with an expression of the most horrible malignancy that could be imagined. The lips were drawn back,—like an animal’s, Mr. Canevin,—but the most curious, and perhaps the most terrifying, aspect of the situation, was the fact that the face was on a level with the bed, that is, the chin seemed to rest against the edge of the mattress, so that, as it occurred to me, the man must be sitting on the floor, his legs placed under the bed, so as to bring his horrible leering face in that position I have described.

  I tried to scream, and my voice was utterly dried up. Then, moved by what impulse I can not describe, I plunged toward the face, tore loose the netting on that side, and looked directly at it.

  Mr. Canevin, there was nothing there, but, as I moved abruptly toward it, I saw a vague, dim hand and arm swing up from below, and there was the strangest sensation! It was as though, over my face and shoulders and breast, hot and stinging drops had been cast. There was, for just a passing instant, the most dreadful burning, searing sensation, and then it was gone. I half sat, half lay, a handful of the netting in my hands, where I had torn it loose from where it had been tucked under the edge of the mattress, and there was nothing there,—nothing whatever; I passed my hand over my face and neck, but there was nothing; no burns,—nothing.

  I do not know how I managed to do it, but I climbed out of bed, and looked underneath. Mr. Canevin, there was nothing, no man, nor anything, there. I walked over and turned up the night-light, and looked all about the room. Nothing. The jalousies were all fastened, as usual. The door was locked. There were no other means of ingress or egress.