OLD MAN'S BEARD

by H. R. Wakefield

  ‘Yours sincerely,

  ‘A.B. Tryon.’

  ‘Blast the fellow!’ thought Mr Rhode, ‘tempting me like that. Certainly it’s a good price; quite half what they pay Michael Arlen. I feel like writing a tale called “Those Alarming Green Rats”, I’m so flattered. But that isn’t quite my métier. What is it? To fool the myriad, mindless mob and cause their bugle eyeballs to pop from their sockets with the dear old “Lighted Turnip” bunk. I’ve done it exactly a hundred times; sixty good, thirty moderate, and ten duds, and they liked the duds best! Who said you couldn’t fool all of the people all of the time? That was just a typical piece of greasy politician’s slobber. Once they really believed they couldn’t they’d go into the Advertising business, or some less cynical profession.’

  But here he was at the age of sixty-four, still in the ghost story business, with thirty-six years of it behind him, his tongue so very stiff from burrowing a hole in his cheek. How had it happened? Well, no doubt heredity had something to do with it, for his father had been a Nonconformist parson and his mother the daughter of a nerve specialist — a nasty ancestry, enough to get him dismissed with a caution for any crime tried before a realist judge. But it couldn’t all be blamed on his begetters, there must have been a stout dollop of original sin looking for a congenial home when he was brought into the world. For how otherwise could it have happened that he, utterly, unregenerately sceptical, a gross ‘impercipient’, if a more controversially tart epithet were preferred, had written a hundred extremely popular ghost stories, which had netted him £40,000? Yet he hadn’t the slightest belief in this chain-clanking tripe. Not that he wrote that sort of story, and he knew many of his to be highly disturbing, intensely visualised tales, technically admirable, for he knew his business, and to do himself justice was a decent craftsman who never left a tale till he had tightened and trimmed and polished it to as near perfection as he could bring it.

  Yet the deeper question remained unanswered. What fantastic kink had made him the best-known ghost story writer in the world? Certainly he knew authors of such tales were seldom over-credulous, usually were temperamentally disinclined to revue the regurgitations of mediums, weave fantasies with ectoplasm, or join Conan Doyle in a romp with under-vitamined pantomime fairies. Yet none of them shared his unswerving, contemptuous disbelief in the possible existence of the spirits he called up.

  Lowell, for example, who had written some decent ones, had told him that while he never expected to see anything of the kind, he would not be greatly surprised if he did so. Agnew, whose reputation was far higher than it deserved to be, had solemnly stated that in a waking dream one morning he had seen the whole universe, like a transparent globe the size of an orange, poised on his hand, and that it had seemed when he peered into it as infinite as when he stared up at the stars, and that he had felt for a moment, with a sense of ecstasy, that he was on the verge of understanding the truth of all things, on the threshold of the final secret. Well, he hadn’t put it quite as crudely as that, but what piffling mysticism, what puerile egoism! No wonder he wrote such rot. The universe was as hopelessly inexplicable as the state of mind of those who thought otherwise.

  Well, should he write number 101? Four hundred quid was not to be despised. He could buy those oils of Regnier with which Jenkins of the Pall Mall Gallery was always tempting him. And £2000 a year didn’t go so far nowadays. All right, he’d do it. But never again, he swore it. He’d better look over his notes for those stories he’d conceived but never brought to birth.

  He went to a drawer and pulled out a battered note-book, over the leaves of which he ran his eye. Eventually he paused at a heading — ‘The Red Hand’ — and read out to himself: ‘ “Suggested title — ‘The Red Hand’. Central idea — employee kills head of firm who has discovered his tampering with the till. Sob relief — employee owns wife and a large family, destined for workhouse if swindle discovered. Method of crime — employee sent for by boss after office shuts. Employee, let us call him ‘Tonks’, knows why he is summoned and is desperate. (The fact that he is sent for must not be known to anyone else.) He comes to boss’s office and is shown evidence of swindle. Asked about it. (Employee better be old member of firm and trusted.) He loses all self-control, picks up poker and puts boss to sleep. As boss slips out of chair to floor he overturns with left hand red ink-pot, which empties contents over same hand of boss. Tonks tiptoes quietly from room. Looks back once and sees a red hand sticking out from side of desk. Tonks makes successful ‘get-away’. End of Part I.”

  ‘ “Part II. Mystery unsolved. (Work this up.) Trouble for Tonks begins few days later. He is in bus. Just handing penny to conductor, when Red Hand materialises and as it were conducts Tonks’s hand to conductor. (This must be subtly phrased.) Tonks feels this must be a projection from his own hand, due to its intense preoccupation with the crime. Image of hand has been etched on mind and therefore appears. Reassures himself. Not for long. Finds same Red Hand taking letters from him as he signs them and giving them to typist. Begins to be always at his service — helps him insert latch-key in front door at home, etc. (Bored for the moment, will finish tomorrow.)”

  ‘ “Red Hand becomes ubiquitous. Almost as ubiquitous as Bolshie red hand to Duke of Northumberland. Sees its imprint wherever he goes. (Make a point of this.) Eventually, however, settles in Tonks’s home. (Perhaps make it cause nervous breakdown in Tonks, so keeping him at home.) Anyway, eventually touches forehead of one young Tonks and that young Tonks dies; kills them all one by one (so increasing Tonks’s Income Tax). Eventually touches Mrs Tonks’s forehead and she goes west. Tonks now on verge of madness and taken to mental home. He wakes up in middle of night and finds hand stroking his forehead. Screams out a confession and Tonks’s family extinct.”

  ‘ “Note: This synopsis very rough and undeveloped. Full of difficulties and needs most careful working out. No need for elaborate characterisation. All simple types. Actual appearances of Red Hand must be neatly contrasted and most convincingly described.” ’

  Mr Rhode put down the document. ‘Rough and undeveloped! I should say it was! But the idea isn’t bad. I’ll put my mind to it.’

  One had a curious sensation when reading over an old synopsis, almost as if one were stealing the idea, plagiarising from someone else. That was so in a sense, for he and the other fellow in a sense were different people. He had written it ten years ago. It was all very well for that other fellow to say there was no need for elaborate characterisation, but Tonks had got to be made a convincing murderer and the best type of family man at the same time. And he must have been a tough nut to have stuck it as long as he did. That was good, he was beginning to see him objectively.

  First of all he must visualise that hand. He put his hands over his ears and stared down at the blotting-paper, and then after a moment he started back. Well, that had been a very successful attempt. It had actually seemed to be there. Red as hell-fire, and the little finger longer than the ring finger. That was just the bizarre detail he wanted. Rather reassuring to find he could still visualise as well as ever — if not better. So well, that the stain of the hand, the visual echo as it were, seemed still to linger on the blotting-paper.

  He must make the boss an unpleasant fellow, rather a sneering bully, a grinder of wage slaves’ silly faces. Everyone would cheerfully murder someone — I’d murder ‘Jix’ — and most people would have a sneaking sympathy for Tonks, but it wouldn’t do for them to have too much or his persecution would seem intolerable. That was just where it wasn’t simple. And he’d only got 4000 words! Well, his capacity for compression had always been pretty good.

  He might make Tonks rather a ‘Red’ — Magazine readers hated ‘Reds’ worse than murderers — there were more of ’em. Yes, then he’d break straight into the story with Tonks entering Boss’s office; latter with malignant sarcasm tells Tonks he’s been found out and informs him that his subversive activities directed against the innocent rentiers have long been known to him. We
ll, as he has so much sympathy with work-dodgers and dole-snatchers, he could join their ranks. Then Tonks picks up poker (‘and so would I and so would any Tonks). Just before that I should make the Boss boast that he always gets his own back (with a bit of someone else’s sticking to it), and bang his hand on the table.’ Then Tonks should notice for the first time that his fingers were eccentric. (Stigma of exploiter, thinks Tonks plinthly.)

  Tonks should be a small, beady-eyed chap, big head, tiny body, under-nourished in youth. A measly sort of ‘Mr Polly’, extremely proud of his family because he believes they ‘take after him’.

  Mrs Tonks should be competent, rather hefty, a natural mistruster of all ‘isms’ and ‘asms’, who, when her temper fails, reads out Daily Mail ‘leaders’ on Russia to Tonks after supper. (‘I mustn’t get too interested in or waste words on her.) I’ll keep her conventional type. Tonks’s brats are only “heard off”. But how shall they die? — A Red Hand at night — convulsions all right?’ Better make it A Strange Malady — combination of croup and colic. ‘Well, they all fade out from the same stuff, so I’ve only got to slay one to slay the quiver-full. Let it be A STRANGE MALADY.

  ‘I think a little morbid psychology can be connected with the first appearance of that hand when Tonks is opening his front door. He should always feel less remorse when he gets home; when he sees his wife and family he should feel it had been ethically expedient that one boss should have died for the little people. All the more unlovely when he finds the hand becoming a member of the family. One other point; though he tries to pretend to himself it is simply an illusion, he doesn’t waste — for he knows in his heart of hearts it would be waste — any money on nerve specialists.’ He was already beginning to get the series of pictures sharply ‘seen’ and fitted into their proper sequence. The horror that was Tonks’s was coming to be his too. That meant he’d make a story of it. It wouldn’t be one of his best. It was rather a conventional idea — rather too much in the tradition. His best plots had always derived from some highly fantastic yet plausible psychic paradox, which it was the peculiar property of his mind to procreate. What a vicious tendency to alliteration lay in wait for him and always had done! Yet somehow as the rhyme often authoritatively dictated the sense, so alliteration sometimes heightened the pressure of an aphorism or any brand of dogmatic, squeezed generalisation.

  Irritating though it was, this weakness usually meant he was in a mood to write. How he hated to begin, for once he began he had to finish; and the labour and irritation that was before him! He knew it! The strain was greater in his case because he was a house divided against itself, that aloof contempt for what he wrote about elbowing that infatuate delight in how he wrote it.

  If only he’d once seen a ghost, or even successfully pretended to himself that he had, that rupture might be healed. He was too old for that now. Well, it was eleven o’clock and he must settle down to chronicle the dismal history of Sebastian Tonks. He took up a pen, and at once his face took on an expression of extreme concentration. Pictures were coming to him, he was seizing them and transforming them into words. The clock ticked softly, his pen scratched lightly. . . . As it struck four he laid his pen down and read through what he had written, making slight alterations here and there, and then he leaned back in his chair and shook his hand from the wrist, for it was numb and yet aching. A smile of sardonic satisfaction replaced his look of concentration.

  ‘Cheap at four hundred quid,’ he said to himself. ‘Just the stuff to give the mugs,’ and yet it had given him in spots that curious, puerile, chill flicker between his shoulder-blades. When he got that he knew he’d ‘clicked’. He would think of little else for a week and then re-write it. He had a conscience. In his dirty little way he was an artist. But never would he write another.

  Hullo, there was that infernal pain in his heart again. His own fault for disobeying that specialist, that damned angina. It took some guts to face even the possibility of such pain. Must it come? He was already beginning to sweat and lose his head a little. By God, that was a wicked twinge! Was there anything in the world so awful? He’d smoked too much, worked too long at a stretch. What a fool! God! that one seemed to rend and slash him, and how it brought with it the fear of death! He must wait for a pause and get his tabloids. He rallied himself, and putting his hands over his heart stared down once more at the blotting-pad. That Red Hand was there again! It just showed how he’d been concentrating! It would fade away, of course. Now the pain was better. He turned his head toward the little table on which were a tantalus and a siphon and that blessed little tube, and started to get up. But the Red Hand swung round with his eyes and settled itself on the little table, the sharpest illusion he’d ever known! And then it seemed to Mr Rhode that the fingers moved — clenched a little. He thrust his head forwards and stared at it, and then the pain came lashing back. He staggered to his feet, and as he did so the hand seemed to slide forward and close over the little phial. And then Mr Rhode flung himself forward in his agony and tried to tear away that hand, and the room went black and he pitched forward, recovered himself for a moment and then swung on his heel and toppled over to the floor. And as he fell his forehead caught the edge of the little table, and, as his head jerked back, the little phial slid from the table to the floor by his side.

  And presently the clock striking the half-hour broke the silence.

  Surprise Item

  THE HAUNTED HOUSE CLUB was founded in 1923 by a group of persons who decided it was high time that the venerable controversy concerning the genuine or concocted, the subjective or objective reality (a loose term, as they knew, but sufficiently precise) of those phenomena, loosely comprised within the elastic definition ‘psychic’, was decided. Quite possibly, this group agreed, no categorical decision could be made. At the same time — and with all due respect to the S.P.R. — it would inevitably be of value that a swift and pertinacious inquiry should be always made into the credentials of alleged haunted places. Therefore, when such alleged manifestations were published or came to their knowledge, it was decided that some member of the group should be ordered to the scene to examine the circumstances and report upon them. Then, if the investigator so recommended, the group should make a pilgrimage to the scene, institute such further inquiries as were feasible, and subsequently debate the case at the quarterly reunion.

  The following is the report of Mr Charles Baber into the Pevesham Wireless Case of April 14th, 1926 — the sixth of the series.

  * * * * *

  In accordance with the instructions of the H.H.C., I journeyed down to Pevesham on June 15th. Pevesham is a medium-sized market town with 10,000 inhabitants. I called first on the local retailer of wireless sets and accessories. He informed me, rather diffidently and without enthusiasm, that there had been an unexplained case of ‘interruption’ on April 14th. When more closely questioned, he stated that he himself had not been listening in on that evening, but he understood the trouble had only occurred over a four-mile radius from the Pevesham Town Hall. I should state that this area is served by the Daventry Station. He grudgingly owned that since the date of the ‘interruption’ the demand for his stock and his services had appreciably diminished.

  I then called on the editor of the local newspaper, who agreed to put a paragraph in his next issue stating that I was making this inquiry, and should be grateful for any assistance or information in furthering it. In response to this, I received a number of replies, the most important of which came from the local doctor, Mr Stokes. Apparently, his son, aged sixteen, was in the habit of practising his shorthand by taking down the wireless talks, and he had an important record of what had occurred on April 14th.

  I immediately went round to the doctor’s house, and his son gave me a long-hand copy of what he had taken down between 9:15 and 9:40 on April 14th. Having absorbed the contents of this, I visited others who had replied to me, and found that they all agreed that something very closely resembling young Stokes’s version had come through their
ear-phones and loud-speakers on that occasion.

  Young Stokes told me that the interruption had come in the middle of a talk on ‘Prospects for the Settler in Tasmania’. It was broken into after about five minutes. He couldn’t swear he had taken down every word of this interruption, as he was startled and perplexed, but he was convinced he had got most of it. The voice of the interrupter he judged to be that of an elderly person, ‘half-educated,’ he described it, ‘with the local twang’. This person appeared to be in a condition of extreme agitation, though, of course, it might have been feigned. But he didn’t think it was. He also said that many listeners in the neighbourhood had written strong protests to the B.B.C. about this most unpleasant and unnerving practical joke, as they supposed it to be. They had all received replies stating that the B.B.C. was quite at a loss to account for the interruption, but that the fullest inquiries would be made.

  Here is the long-hand transcription of young Stokes’s notes:

  ‘Why is he here? They buried him deep. I’d sooner see him outright than just know he’s there. He’s been there since supper-time Thursday. He keeps between me and the door and I can’t get past him. He stands there always, always facing me. I looked up just then and there he was. I’d sooner see him than just know he was there. I haven’t had food or drink since tea-time Thursday, and that’s days ago, three maybe. But there’s food in the kitchen and a pitcher of water beside the tap in the scullery. Could I slip past him? Shove him aside? I might if his eyes weren’t always on me. All on account of that little slut. As if I was the first — twenty-first more likely! What’s he want with me? They buried him deep. I saw them lower him down and heard the dirt tap on his box. There’s nothing there! I’ll look up! Yes, he’s there!