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

by Henry S. Whitehead

  I heard a pad-pad outside, like slippered feet, and I had the thing in my pocket again when Stephen came in, glowing from his shower. I did not want to explain that hand to the boy.

  “Good morning, Cousin Gerald,” said Stephen. “You got off early, didn’t you? I heard your alarm-clock but I turned over and went to sleep again.”

  “Yes,” I answered. “You see, I have a lot of work to get through with today.”

  “I’d have gone with you,” continued Stephen, half-way into his fresh clothes by now, “if you’d waked me up! I’m going to six o’clock church if I can make it.”

  He dressed rapidly, and with another pleasant, hasty word or two, the boy was off, running. The “English Church” is quite near by.

  I got up, left Number 4 empty, crossed the ballroom diagonally, and entered Mr. Reynolds’ sanctum at its western extremity. I had thought of something. I must do what I could to clear up, or put away forever, if possible, that explanation, the details of which were invading my excited mind, pressing into it remorselessly.

  I went to the lowest shelf of one of his bookcases, and took out the three heavy, calf-bound, ancient registers of the Hotel du Commerce. I must find out, on the off-chance that the room numbers had not been changed since then, who had occupied Room 4 at the time of Black Tancrède’s execution and cursings. That, for the moment, seemed to me absolutely the salient fact, the key to the whole situation.

  I could hardly believe my eyes when the faded entry, the ink brown, the handwriting oddly curlicued, jumped out at me.

  For all of the year 1832, 1833, and most of 1834 besides, Room 4, Hotel du Commerce, Raoul Patit, proprietor, had been occupied by one Hans de Groot. Hans de Groot had been Governor Gardelin’s judge of the Danish Colonial high court. Hans de Grout had condemned Black Tancrède to death, by amputation of hands, pinching, and breaking on the rack.

  I had my explanation.

  If only this were a romance, I should proceed to tell how thereafter I had applied, in the traditional method for the laying of this kind of ghost—a ghost with an unfulfilled desire, promise, or curse—how I had applied for permission to restore the hand to the resting-place of Black Tancrède. I should recite the examination of old records, the location of the lime-pit in the Fort yard; I might even have the horrible thing which lay in my jacket pocket “escape” to wreak devastation upon me after unavailing efforts on my part to avoid destruction; a final twist of luck, the destruction of the hand.

  But this is not romance, and I am not attempting to make “quite a tale” of these sober facts.

  What I did was to proceed straight to the hotel kitchen, where fat Lucinda the cook was cutting breakfast bacon at a table, and two dusky assistants preparing grapefruit and orange-juice against the hour for breakfast.

  “Good morning, Lucinda,” I began; “is your fire going?”

  “Marnin’, Mars’ Canevin, sar, returned Lucinda, “hot, good’n hot, sar. Is you’ desirous to cook someting?”

  Both handmaidens giggled at this, and I smiled with them.

  “I only have something I wish to burn,” said I, explaining my early-morning visit.

  I approached the glowing stove, anticipating Lucinda, and waving her back to her bacon-cutting, lifted a lid, and dropped the horrible, mummified thing into the very heart of a bed of cherry-colored coals.

  It twisted in the heat, as though alive and protesting. It gave off a faint, strange odor of burning, like very old leather. But within a few moments the dry and brittle skin and the calcined bones were only scraps of shapeless, glowing embers.

  I replaced the stovelid. I was satisfied. I would now satisfy Lucinda, if not her very natural curiosity. I handed her with an engaging smile one of the small, brown, five-franc currency bills which are still issued by the Dansk Vestindiske Nationalbank, and are legal tender In our Uncle Sam’s Virgin Islands.

  “May t’anks, sar; Gahd bless yo’, Mars’ Canevin, sar,” muttered the delighted Lucinda.

  I nodded to them and walked out of the kitchen reasonably certain that the Jumbee of Number 4 would trouble guests no more at four o’clock in the morning, nor at any other hour; that eternity had now swallowed Black Tancrède, who tradition alleged, was a very persevering man and always kept his word.…

  It is true, as I remarked at the beginning of this narrative, that Black Tancrède did not curse Hans de Groot, but that Governor Cardelin went home to Denmark and so escaped—whatever it was that happened to Achilles Mendoza and Julius Mohrs. Perhaps the persevering shade of Black Tancrède was limited, in the scope of its revengeful “projection” through that severed hand, to the island on which he died. I do not know, although there are almost fixed rules for these things; rules in which Quashee believes religiously.

  But, since that morning, I, truthful Gerald Canevin, confess, I have never seen any large spider without at least an internal shudder. I can understand, I think, what that strange mental aberration called “spider fear” is like.

  For I saw that thing which ran along the floor of the Grand Hotel ballroom like a maimed spider—I saw it go under that conch-shell. And it did not come out as it went in.

  CASSIUS

  Originally published in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, November 1931.

  My house-man, Stephen Penn, who presided over the staff of my residence in St Thomas, was not, strictly speaking, a native of that city. Penn came from the neighboring island of St Jan. It is one of the ancient West Indian names, although there remain in the islands nowadays no Caucasians to bear that honorable cognomen.

  Stephen’s travels, however, had not been limited to the crossing from St Jan—which, incidentally, is the authentic scene of R. L Stevenson’s Treasure Island—which lies little more than a rowboat’s journey away from the capital of the Virgin Islands. Stephen had been “down the Islands,” which means that he had been actually as far from home as Trinidad, or perhaps, British Guiana, down through the great sweep of former mountaintops, submerged by some vast, cataclysmic, prehistoric inundation and named the Bow of Ulysses by some fanciful, antique geographer. That odyssey of humble Stephen Penn had taken place because of his love for ships. He had had various jobs afloat and his exact knowledge of the house-man’s art had been learned under various man-driving ship’s stewards.

  During this preliminary training for his life’s work, Stephen had made many acquaintances. One of these, an upstanding, slim, parchment-colored Negro of thirty or so, was Brutus Hellman. Brutus, like Stephen, had settled down in St. Thomas as a house-man. It was, in fact, Stephen who had talked him into leaving his native British Antigua, to try his luck in our American Virgin Islands. Stephen had secured for him his first job in St. Thomas, in the household of a naval officer.

  For this friend of his youthful days, Stephen continued to feel a certain sense of responsibility; because, when Brutus happened to be abruptly thrown out of employment by the sudden illness and removal by the Naval Department of his employer in the middle of the winter season in St. Thomas, Stephen came to me and requested that his friend Brutus be allowed to come to me “on board-wages” until he was able to secure another place.

  I acquiesced. I knew Brutus as a first-rate house-man. I was glad to give him a hand, to oblige the always agreeable and highly efficient Stephen, and, indeed, to have so skilful a servant added to my little staff in my bachelor quarters. I arranged for something more substantial than the remuneration asked for, and Brutus Hellman added his skilled services to those of the admirable Stephen. I was very well served that season and never had any occasion to regret what both men alluded to as my “very great kindness!”

  It was not long after Brutus Hellman had moved his simple belongings into one of the servants’-quarters cabins in my stone-paved yard, that I had another opportunity to do something for him. It was Stephen once more who presented his friend’s case to me. Brutus, it appeared, had need of a minor operation, and, Negro-like, the two of them, talking the matter over between themselves, had
decided to ask me, their present patron, to arrange it.

  I did so, with my friend, Dr. Pelletier, Chief Surgeon, in charge of our Naval Station Hospital and regarded in Naval circles as the best man in the Medical Corps. I had not inquired about the nature of Brutus’ affliction. Stephen had stressed the minor aspect of the required surgery, and that was all I mentioned to Dr. Pelletier.

  It is quite possible that if Dr. Pelletier had not been going to Porto Rico on Thursday of that week, this narrative, the record of one of the most curious experiences I have ever had, would never have been set down. If Pelletier, his mind set on sailing at eleven, had not merely walked out of his operating-room as soon as he had finished with Brutus a little after eight that Thursday morning, left the dressing of the slight wound upon Brutus’ groin to be performed by his assistants, then that incredible affair which I can only describe as the persecution of the unfortunate Brutus Hellman would never have taken place.

  It was on Wednesday, about two P. M., that I telephoned to Dr. Pelletier to ask him to perform an operation on Brutus.

  “Send him over to the hospital this afternoon,” Pelletier had answered, “And I’ll look him over about five and operate the first thing in the morning—if there is any need for an operation! I’m leaving for San Juan at eleven, for a week.”

  I thanked him and went upstairs to my siesta, after giving Stephen the message to Brutus, who started off for the hospital about an hour later. He remained in the hospital until the following Sunday afternoon. He was entirely recovered from the operation, he reported. It had been a very slight affair, really, merely the removal of some kind of growth. He thanked me for my part in it when he came to announce dinner while I was reading on the gallery.

  It was on the Saturday morning, the day before Brutus got back, that I discovered something very curious in an obscure corner of my house-yard, just around the corner of the wall of the three small cabins which occupy its north side. These cabins were tenantless except for the one at the east end of the row. That one was Brutus Hellman’s. Stephen Penn, like my cook, washer, and scullery-maid, lived somewhere in the town.

  I had been looking over the yard which was paved with old-fashioned flagging. I found it an excellent condition, weeded, freshly swept, and clean. The three stone servants’-cubicles had been recently whitewashed and glistened like cake-icing in the morning sun. I looked over this portion of my domain with approval, for I like things shipshape. I glanced into the two narrow air spaces between the little, two-room houses. There were no cobwebs visible. Then I took a look around the east corner of Brutus Hellman’s little house where there was a narrow passageway between the house and the high wall of antique Dutch brick, and there, well in towards the north wall, I saw on the ground what I first took to be a discarded toy which some child had thrown there, probably, it occurred to me, over the wall at the back of the stone cabins.

  It looked like a doll’s house, which, if it had been thrown there, had happened to land right-side-up. It looked more or less like one of the quaint old-fashioned beehives one still sees occasionally in the conservative Lesser Antilles. But it could hardly be a beehive. It was far too small.

  My curiosity mildly aroused, I stepped into the alleyway and looked down at the odd little thing. Seen from where I stopped it rewarded scrutiny. For it was, although made in a somewhat bungling way, a reproduction of an African village hut, thatched, circular, conical. The thatching, I suspected, had formerly been most of the business-end of a small house-broom of tine twigs tied together around the end of a stick. The little house’s upright “logs” were a heterogenous medley of little round sticks among which I recognized three dilapidated lead pencils and the broken-off handle of a tooth-brush. These details will serve to indicate its size and to justify my original conclusion that the thing was a rather cleverly made child’s toy. How such a thing had got into my yard unless over the wall, was an unimportant little mystery. The little hut, from the ground up to its thatched peak, stood about seven inches in height. Its diameter was, perhaps, eight or nine inches.

  My first reaction was to pick it up, look at it more closely, and then throw it into the wire cage in another corner of the yard where Stephen burned up waste paper and scraps at frequent intervals. The thing was plainly a discarded toy, and had no business cluttering up my spotless yard. Then I suddenly remembered the washer’s pick’ny, a small, silent, very black child of six or seven, who sometimes played quietly in the yard while his stout mother toiled over the washtub set up on a backless chair near the kitchen door where she could keep up a continuous stream of chatter with my cook.

  I stayed my hand accordingly. Quite likely this little thatched hut was a valued item of that pick’ny’s possessions. Thinking pleasantly to surprise little Aesculapius, or whatever the child’s name might be, I took from my pocket a fifty-bit piece—value ten cents—intending to place the coin inside the little house, through its rounded, low entranceway.

  Stooping down, I shoved the coin through the doorway, and, as I did so, something suddenly scuttered about inside the hut, and pinched viciously at the ends of my thumb and forefinger.

  I was, naturally, startled. I snatched my fingers away, and stood hastily erect. A mouse, perhaps even a rat, inside there! I glanced at my fingers. There was no marks on them. The skin was not broken. The rodent’s vicious little sharp teeth had fortunately missed their grip as he snapped at me, intruding on his sacred privacy. Wondering a little I stepped out of the alleyway and into the sunny, open yard, somewhat upset at this Lilliputian contretemps, and resolved upon telling Stephen to see to it that there was no ugly rodent there when next little Aesculapius should retrieve his plaything.

  But when I arrived at the gallery steps my friend Colonel Lorriquer’s car was just drawing up before the house, and, in hastening to greet welcome early-morning callers and later in accepting Mrs. Lorriquer’s invitation to dinner and contract at their house that evening, the little hut and its unpleasant inhabitant were driven wholly out of my mind.

  I did not think of it again until several days later, on the night when my premises had become the theater for one of the most inexplicable, terrifying and uncanny happenings I have ever experienced.

  My gallery is a very pleasant place to sit evenings, except in that spring period during which the West Indian candle-moths hatch in their myriads and, for several successive days, make it impossible to sit outdoors in any lighted, unscreened place.

  It was much too early for the candle-moths, however, at the time I am speaking of, and on the evening of that Sunday upon which Brutus Hellman returned from the hospital, a party of four persons including myself, occupied the gallery.

  The other man was Arthur Carswell, over from Hayti on a short visit. The two ladies were Mrs. Spencer, Colonel Lorriquer’s widowed daughter, and her friend, Mrs. Squire. We had dined an hour previously at the Grand Hotel as guests of Carswell, and, having taken our coffee at my house, were remaining outdoors on the gallery “for a breath of air” on a rather warm and sultry February evening. We were sitting, quietly talking in a rather desultory manner, all of us unspokenly reluctant to move inside the house for a projected evening at contract.

  It was, as I recall the hour, about nine o’clock, the night warm, as I have said, and very still. Above, in a cloudless sky of luminous indigo, the tropical stars glowed enormous. The intoxicating sweet odors of white jessamine and tuberoses made the still air redolent. No sound, except an occasional rather languid remark from one of ourselves, broke the exquisite, balmy stillness.

  Then, all at once, without any warning and with an abruptness which caused Carswell and me to stand up, the exquisite perfection of the night was rudely shattered by an appalling, sustained scream of sheer mortal terror.

  That scream inaugurated what seems to me as I look back upon the next few days, to be one of the most unnerving, devastating, and generally horrible periods I can recall in a lifetime not devoid of adventure. I formulated at that time, and still
retain, mentally, a phrase descriptive of it. It was “the Reign of Terror.”

  Carswell and I, following the direction of the scream, rushed down the outer gallery steps and back through the yard towards the negro-cabins. As I have mentioned, only one of these was occupied, Brutus Hellman’s. As we rounded the corner of the house a faint light—it was Brutus’ oil lamp—appeared in the form of a wide vertical strip at the entrance of the occupied cabin. To that we ran as to a beacon, and pushed into the room.

  The lamp, newly lighted, and smoking, its glass chimney set on askew as though in great haste, dimly illuminated a strange scene. Doubled up and sitting on the side of his bed, the bedclothes near the bed’s foot lumped together where he had flung them, cowered Brutus. His face was a dull, ashen gray in the smokey light, his back was bent, his hands clasped tightly about his shin. And, from between those clenched hands, a steady stream of blood stained the white sheet which hung over the bed’s edge and spread below into a small pool on the cabin room’s stone-paved floor.

  Brutus, groaning dismally, rocked back and forth, clutching his leg. The lamp smoked steadily, defiling the close air, while, incongruously, through the now open doorway poured streams and great pulsing breaths of night-blooming tropical flowers, mingling strangely with the hot, acrid odor of the smoking lampwick.

  Carswell went directly to the lamp, straightened the chimney, turned down the flame. The lamp ceased its ugly reek and the air of the cabin cleared as Carswell, turning away from the lamp, threw wide the shutters of the large window which, like most West Indian Negroes, Brutus had closed against the “night air” when he retired.

  I gave my attention directly to the man, and by the time the air had cleared somewhat I had him over on his back in a reclining position, and with a great strip torn from one of his bedsheets, was binding up the ugly deep little wound in the lower muscle of his leg just at the outside of the shinbone. I pulled the improvised bandage tight, and the flow of blood ceased, and Brutus, his mind probably somewhat relieved by this timely aid, put an end to his moaning, and turned his ashy face up to mine.