But still, from amid the coaly gloom, that phantom-thin music continued to sound, the voice of the singer blended with the notes of the instrument, unspeakably sad, immensely distant, fading like the wind-borne tones of receding minstrels.
Only then did all my concentrated dread and horror find expression in one tremendous scream. Fumbling and groping, somehow I found the door; somehow I forced my limbs free of the spell that had gripped them, and started down the twisted stairs. And then all at once everything went blank.
WHEN I came to myself, still listening to that sad, faint music, I was lying on a Paris street. The glow of late twilight was in the air; a small crowd had gathered about me.
"Does monsieur need help?" a man's voice sympathetically asked. "He stumbled and fell, and has been many minutes coming to. No doubt it was only the heat."
"No doubt—it was the heat," I agreed, as I struggled to my feet. But in my ears that phantom music still made a dismal refrain.
Next day I reported my experience to my friend Jacques Chervier, a student at the
Sorbonne, whose specialty was Parisian history.
He looked at me sharply as I finished. "Just where did you say this happened?"
I mentioned the exact street location, of which I had taken note after the adventure.
"So?" he answered, significantly. "So? Well, this is strange. Do you know you were walking on the exact site of the old Temple?"
"What in thunder was the Temple?"
"It was the old castle of the Knights Templars, which was torn down in 1811, at the age of almost six hundred years."
"Torn down in 1811?" I repeated, dully.
"It's famous as the scene of many historic episodes," Jacques warmed to his theme, "not the least notable being the imprisonment of a king and queen of France, along . with their two children, and Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister. That was back in 1792. You know, of course, what king and queen I refer to."
I could only mumble something incoherent.
"Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette were both lodged there before being sent to the guillotine. The old castle, from all I can make out, was exactly as you have described it, even to the small dog that kept the prisoners company."
"But that doesn't explain why I, of all persons, and at this particular time—"
"Don't you recall the date?"
"Let's see. Today's the fourteenth, isn't it?"
"And yesterday was the thirteenth. It was on August thirteenth, just at about sunset, that Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette were imprisoned in the Temple. Perhaps every year, on the anniversary of that event—"
But I did not hear the remainder of Jacques' speech. I was not interested in his explanations. In my ears a thin, sorrowful music seemed to be playing; I was back in a tower room, in a wavering fog-gray light, where five shadowy figures were gathered, among them a woman whose deep pleading tragic eyes seemed to call and call across an immeasurable gulf.
Luna Aeternalis
bjr CLARK ASHTON SMITH
BY an alien dream despatched and driven In a land to strange stars given, Stars that summoned forth the moon, Singing a strange red eldritch rune, I heard the coming of the moon With tremulus rim that ciomb and rang, Whose rondure on the horizon rang A gong distinct with silvern clang, Re-echoing distantly, until, Arisen soon,
In silent silver stood the moon Above the horizon ringing still.
Half-waned and hollow was her brow, And caverned by the night; but now Her twilight turned the stars' loud rune To muted music in a swoon, Her low light lulled the stars to drowse. Flicker and fail, and vaguely rouse: I felt the silence come and go As the red stars muttered low . . .
Oid with moonlight lay the night,
And on the desert lay
Ancient and unending light
That assured not of the day;
For the half-moon stood to stay
Fixed at the heavens" height
And eternal ere the day.
Triumphant stood the moon
In a false and cold and constant noon:
Surely in conflict fell
The true, lost sun of noon;
The golden might of Uriel
Met some white demon of the moon.
By an alien dream despatched and driven, I found a land to demons given, To silvern, silent demons given That flew and fluttered from out the moon, Weaving about her tomb-white face With mop and mow and mad grimace, And circling down from the semilune In a dim and Saturnalian dance, To pirouette and pause and prance, To withdraw and advance, All in a, wan eternal dance.
ast Man
BY SEABURY QUINN
One cup to the dead already— Hurrah for the next that dies! —Bartholomew Dowling, The Revel.
MYCROFT paused self-consciously before the little bronze plate marked simply TOUSSAINT above the doorbell of the big brownstone house in East One Hundred and Thirty-sixth Street. He felt extraordinarily foolish, like a costumed adult at a child's masquerade party, or as if he were about to rise and "speak a piece." People—his kind of people—simply didn't do this sort of thing.
Then his resolution hardened. "What can I lose? 1 ' he muttered cynically, and pressed the button.
A Negro butler, correct as a St. John's Wood functionary in silver-buttoned dress suit and striped waistcoat, answered his ring. "Mister—Monsieur Toussaint?" asked Mycroft tentatively.
"Who iss calling?" asked the butler with the merest trace of accent on his words.
"Uh—Mr. Smith—no, Jones," Mycroft replied, and the shadow of a sneer showed 44
Heading by Vincent Napoli
at the corners of the young Negro's mouth. "One minute, if ycu plee2," he returned, stepped back into the hall and closed the
THE LAST MAN
45
door. In a moment he was back and held the door open. 'This way, if you pleez," he invited.
Mycroft was not quite certain what he would find; what he did find amazed him. Vaguely he had thought the place would reek with incense, possibly be hung with meretricious tapestries and papier-mache weapons, perhaps display a crystal ball or two against cheap cotton-velvet table covers. He was almost awe-struck by the somber magnificence of the room into which he was ushered. Deep-piled rugs from Hamadan and Samarkand lay on the floor, the furniture was obviously French, dull matte-gold wood upholstered in olive-green brocade, on the walls were either Renoir and Picasso originals or imitations good enough to fool a connoisseur; somewhat incongruously, above the fireplace where logs blazed on polished andirons hung a square of rather crudely woven cotton stuff bordered in barbaric black and green. On second look the border proved to be a highly conventionalized but still disturbingly realistic serpent. More in character was the enormous black Persian cat that crouched upon a lustrous Bokhara prayer rug before the fire, paws tucked demurely under it, great plumy tail curled round it, and stared at him with yellow, sulphurous eyes.
"Good evening, Mr. Mycroft, you wished to see me?" Mycroft started as if he had been stung by a wasp. He had not heard the speaker enter, and certainly he was not prepared to be greeted by name.
AT THE entrance of the drawing room stood his host, smiling faintly at his discomfiture. He was a tall man of uncertain age, dressed with a beautiful attention to detail in faultless evening clothes. The studs of his immaculate white shirt were star sapphires, so were his cuff links, in his lapel showed the red ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur, and he was very black. But not comic, not "dressed up," not out of character. He wore his English-tailored dress clothes as one to the manner born, and there was distinction, almost a nobility, about his features that made Mycroft think of the
head of an old Roman Emperor, or perhaps a statesman of the Golden Age of the Republic, carved in basalt.
He had planned his introduction, humorous, and a little patronizing, but as he stared at the other Mycroft felt stage fright. "I—" he began, then gulped and stumbled in his speech. "I—uh—I've heard about you. Mister—Monsieur Toussaint. Som
e friends of mine told me—"
"Yes?" prompted Toussaint as Mycroft's voice frayed out like a pulled woolen thread. "What is it that you want of me?"
"I've heard you're able to do remarkable things—" once more he halted, and a look of irritation crossed his host's calm features.
"Really, Mr. Mycroft—"
"I've heard that you have power to raise spirits!" Mycroft blurted confusedly. "I'm told you can bring spirits of the dead back—" Once again he halted, angry with himself for the fear he felt clawing at his throat. "Can it be done? Can you do it?"
"Of course," Toussaint replied, quite as if he had been asked if he could furnish musicians for a party. "Whose spirit is it that you want called? When—and how— did he die?"
Mycroft felt on surer ground now. There was no nonsense about this Toussaint, no hint of the charlatan. He was a businessman discussing business. "There are several of them—twenty-five or -six. They died in— er—different ways. You i see, they served with me in—"
"Very well, Mr. Mycroft. Come here night after tomorrow at precisely ten minutes to twelve. Everything will be in readiness, and you must on no account be late. Leave your telephone and address with the butler, in case I have to get in touch with you."
"And the fee?"
"The fee will be five hundred dollars, payable after the seance, if you're satisfied. Otherwise there will be no charge. Good evening, Mr. Mycroft."
The impulse had come to him that evening as he walked across the Park from
WEIRD TALES
bis apartment to his club in East Eighty-sixth Street. Spring had come to New York, delicately as a bal lerina dancing sur les pohites, every tree was veiled in scarves of green chiffon, every park was jeweled with crocus-gold, but he had found no comfort in awakening nature, nor any joy in the sweet softness of the air. That morning as he unfurled his Times in the subway on his way downtown he had seen the notice of Roy Hardy's death. Roy had been the twenty-sixth. He was the last man.
More than fifty years ago they had marched down the Avenue, eager, bright-faced, colors flying, curbside crowds cheering. Off to Cuba, off to fight for Liberty. Remember the Maine!
"When you hear that bell go ding-a-ling,
And we all join in and sweetly we will sing, my baby,
When you hear that bell go ding-a-ling,
There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!"
the band had blared. He could still hear the echo of Max Schultz's cornet as he triple-tongucd the final note.
They didn't look too much like soldiers, those ribbon-counter clerks and bookkeepers and stock exchange messengers. The supercilious French and British correspondents and observers smiled tolerantly at their efforts to seem military; the Germans laughed outright, and the German-armed, German-trained Spanish veterans disdained them. But after El Caney and San Juan Hill tfi e tu ne ch anged. Astounded and de-moralized, the Spaniards surrendered in droves, the foreigners became polite, the Cubans took the valiant Americans to their col 1 ective hearts, and no one was more gracious in his hospitality than Don Jose Resales y MonLdvo, whose house in the Calle O'Brien became an informal headquarters for the officers and noncoms of the company.
Don Jose's table creaked and groaned beneath a load of delicacies such as those
young New Yorkers had never seen or even heard of and his cellars seemed inexhaustible. Lads who had known only beer, or, in more reckless moments, gin and whiskey, were introduced to St. Estephe, Johannesburg and Nuites St. Georges. Madeira and Majorca flowed like water, champagne was common as soda pop at home.
But more intoxicating than the strongest, headiest vintage in Don Jose's caves was Dona Juanita Maria, his daughter. She was a rubia, a Spanish blonde, with hair as lustrous as the fine-drawn wires of the gold filigree cross at her throat. Little, tiny, she walked with a sort of lilting, questing eagerness, her every movement graceful as a grain-stalk in the wind. Her voice had that sweet, throaty, velvety quality found only in southern countries, and when she played the guitar and sang cancions the songs were fraught with yearning sadness and passionate longing that made those hearing her catch their breath.
Every man-jack of them was in love with her, and not a one of them but polished up his Spanish to say, "Yo te amo, Juan/la — Juanita, I love you!" And there was not a one of them who did not get a sweet, tender refusal and, by way of consolation, a chaste, sisterly kiss on the cheek.
IT^HE night before their transport sailed -*- Don Jose gave a party, a celebration grande. The patio of the house was almost bright as noon with moonlight, and in the narrow Saracenic arches between the pillars of the ambulatory Chinese lanterns hung, glowing golden-yellow in the shadows. A long table clothed with fine Madeira drawnwork and shining silver and crystal was laid in the center of the courtyard, at its center was a great bouquet of red roses. Wreathed in roses a fat wine cask stood on wooden sawhorses near the table's head. "It is Pedro Ximenes, a full hundred years old," Don Jose explained pridefully, "I have kept it for some great occasion. Surely this is one. What greater honor could it have than to be served to Cuba's gallant liberators on the eve of their departure?" After dinner toasts were drunk. To Cuba
THE LAST MAN
47
Libre, to Don Jose, to the lovely Nona Juanita. Then, blushing very prettily, but in nowise disconcerted, she consented to sing them a farewell.
"Preguntale a las estrellas, Si no de noche me venllovar, Preguntale si no busco, Para adorarie la soledad . . ."
she sang,
"O ask of the stars above you If I did not weep all the night, O ask if I do not love you, Who of you dreamt till the dawn-light . . ."
Sabers flashed in the moonlight, blades beat upon the table. "Juanita! Juanita!" they cried fervently. "We love you, Juanita!"
"And I love you—all of you— senores amados," she called gaily back. "Each one of you I love so much I could not bear to give my heart to him for fear of hurting all the others. So" —her throaty, velvet voice was like a caress—"here is what I promise." Her tone sank to a soft ingratiating pizzacato and her words were delicately spaced, so that they shone like minted silver as she spoke them. "I shall belong to the last one of you. Surely one of you will outlive all the rest, and to him I shall give my heart, myself, all of me. I swear it!" She put both tiny hands against her lips and blew them a collective kiss.
And so, because they all were very young, and very much in love, and also slightly drunk, they formed the Last Man Qub, and every year upon the anniversary of that night they met, talked over old times, drank a little more than was good for them, and dispersed to meet again next year.
TrIE years slipped by unnoticed as the current of a placid river. And time was good to them. Some of them made names for themselves in finance, the court rooms echoed to the oratory of others; the first World Wax brought rank and glory to jome; more than one nationally advertised
product bore the name of one of their number. But time took his fee, also. Each time there were more vacant chairs about the table when they met, and those who remained showed gray at the temples, thickening at the waist, or shining patches of bald scalp. Last year there had been only three of them: Mycroft, Rice and Hardy. Two months ago he and Hardy had acted as pallbearers for Rice, now Hardy was gone. He hardly knew what made him decide to consult Toussaint. The day before he'd met Dick Prior at luncheon at the India House and somehow talk had turned on mediums and spiritism. "I think they're all a lot of fakes," Mycroft had said, but Prior shook his head in disagreement.
"Some of 'em—most, probably—are, but there are some things hard to explain, Roger. Take this Negro, Toussaint. He may be a faker, but—'*
"What about him?"
"Well, it seems he's a Haitian; there's a legend he's descended from Christophe, the Black Emperor. I wouldn't know about that, or whether what they say about his having been a papaloi —a voodoo priest, you know—has any basis. He's highly educated, graduate of Lima and the Sorbonne and all that—"
"What's
he done?" Mycroft demanded testily. "You say he's done remarkable things—"
"He has. Remember Old Man Meson, Noble Meson, and the way his first wife made a monkey out of her successor?"
Mycroft shook his head. "Not very well. I recall there was a will contest—"
"I'll say there was. Old Meson got bit by the love-bug sometime after sixty. Huh, love-bug me eye, it was that little gold digger Suzanne Langdon. The way she took him away from his wife was nothing less than petty larceny.* He didn't last long after he divorced Dorothy and married Suzanne. Old men who marry young wives seldom do. When he finally pegged out everybody thought he was intestate, and that meant Mrs. Meson number two would take the jackpot, but just as she was all set to rake in the chips Dorothy came up with a last
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will and testament, signed, sealed, published and declared, and unassailable as Gibraltar. Seems the old goof got wise to himself, and, what was more to the point, to Suzanne, before he kicked the bucket, and made a will that disinherited her, leaving the whole works to Dorothy.
"They found it in the pocket of an old coat in his shooting cabin out on the island, and found the men who'd witnessed it, a Long Island clam-digger and a garage mechanic out at Smithtown."
"How?" asked Mycroft.
Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 Page 6
