The Horror Megapack

by H. P. Lovecraft

  Half an hour later he rose from his chair in the library with a rueful grin. “Sorry, gentlemen,” he admitted, “but our host’s excellent liqueur has been a little too much for me. That’s the penalty of poverty; those who can’t afford Benedictine as a rule don’t know how to carry it when they get it. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll take my headache up to bed with me.”

  Followed by a chorus of chaffing laughter, he walked unsteadily to the stairs and mounted them slowly, leaning heavily on the handrail, and pausing as though for breath every few steps.

  Once round the bend, his intoxication left him abruptly, and with swift, steady strides he ran down the hall to his room. Rosalie was nowhere in sight, but on his dressing table was a pile of blank white note paper, a fresh blotter with a single smear across its virgin surface lying on top.

  Hastily seizing the blotter, Forrester held it before the mirror, and began spelling out the words which had been soaked from the message it had been used to dry. “H’m,” he muttered, “what—the devil?”

  In the mirror’s brilliant surface he read:

  “Try again, old fox. Others have eyes and ears, too.”

  Again and yet again he read the curt, one-line note, then turned to the pile of paper underneath and scrambled through it frantically. Every sheet was clear and unspotted, mocking him with is virginal purity.

  “Good heavens!” he ejaculated, letting the sheets fall from hands gone suddenly nerveless. “This is dreadful! If Rosalie—”

  Down the hall on stumbling feet he raced to the room occupied by his ward, and beat upon the panels with frantic fists.

  No answer.

  Once again he hammered his summons on the white door, then seized the handle with a savage wrench and bore his weight against it. The door swung open readily, and he half ran, half stumbled, into his ward’s room.

  Every electric bulb in the apartment was aglow. Not a corner of the place but was flooded with sharp, brilliant light. In the glass ash tray on the bureau lay a long Philippine cigarette, half consumed, a thin spiral of smoke slowly ascending from its glowing tip. Forrester knew the speed with which the dry, black Island tobacco burned. The cigarette could not have been lighted more than two minutes before. Rosalie must have been here then. Where was she now? Across the foot of the bed hung a bright orange and blue coolie coat; beneath its trailing hem, toes inward, stood a pair of blue and yellow satin Chinese slippers. But Rosalie was nowhere in sight.

  “Rosalie,” the Professor called softly, gazing wildly about the room. “Rosalie—ha?” The exclamation was fairly jerked from him as his eye fell on a long, vertical crack in the wall. Half an inch wide it was, running from baseboard to cornice, and showing behind the black, impenetrable background of utter darkness.

  One long stride carried the frenzied Professor across the room, one furious tug swung back a section of the wall like a door, and left him gazing down a flight of narrow, winding stairs, tunnel-like and unlighted, and leading, apparently, to the very nadir of the earth.

  As he stared horrified down the twisting spiral of the stairway, he felt a tug at his hand. Operated by some cunningly hidden spring, the secret door he had wrenched open was closing slowly, resistlessly. In a moment, despite his utmost efforts to hold it open, it would be shut.

  The Professor gave one desperate look about the deserted room, searching for something which might serve as a weapon, found nothing suitable, drew one quick, sharp breath and squeezed through the rapidly narrowing opening of the secret panel. The door shut behind him with a sharp click, latching firmly with a snap-lock, and he was sealed in total darkness at the stairhead as securely as a corpse desposited in the crypt of a mausoleum.

  V

  Professor Forrester paused a moment on the topmost of the stone steps, seeking vainly to pierce the Stygian darkness of the downward-spiraling passage. Thrusting a hand into his pocket, he felt for a match, but his questing fingers encountered nothing but an accumulation of snuff-like powder where the longcut black tobacco he habitually smoked had leaked from its paper carton and crumbled to dust. “Confound it!” he lamented, remembering too late that he had laid his book of matches on his dresser just before picking up the blotter on which he had read the defiant message.

  Slowly, putting first one, then the other foot forward in tentative, experimental steps, the Professor began descending the curving stairs.

  Down, down, endlessly down, he crept, through the impenetrable dark, pausing now and again to feel the walls on each side for a possible connecting passageway. Nothing but iron-cold, smooth masonry met his hands. At last, when it seemed he must be in the immediate vicinity of Hongkong, his searching foot encountered level ground, and he stepped forward over a pavement of smooth, moist stones which seemed to incline upward at a gentle grade.

  “This thing must lead in the general direction of the creek,” Forrester told himself, striding forward carefully, for much experience with underground passages had taught him they often contained deep fissures, or even wells, and he had no desire to step over the brink of such an opening in the dark. “Yes, I’m sure we’re going toward the creek. Those circular stairs threw me off my bearings to some extent; but—oh!”

  Rounding a sudden angle in the passage, the Professor found himself at the entrance of a sizeable subterranean chamber, roughly circular in shape, floored, walled and vaulted with slabs of ancient freestone, and lighted by two ship’s lanterns hanging from the ceiling. A charcoal brazier, evidently used to furnish some measure of heat for the cavern, stood in the center of the floor, and just beyond it, her hands and elbows bound behind her, and her wrists secured to her ankles by a sailor’s knot, knelt Rosalie, the loose ends of the cord which fettered her limbs made fast to a rusty iron staple let into the cement between two blocks of stone. A wide band of dirty cotton cloth was wrapped over her mouth, effectually gagging her, but her big yellow eyes were uncovered, and looked with feline fury on the corduroy-clad young man who lounged on a dirty mattress and leered at her.

  Facing the entrance of the chamber was a second man, a tall, wide-shouldered fellow with thick, curling black hair and a broad Tartar face. As the Professor came to an abrupt halt the fellow grinned broadly, displaying a set of astonishingly white teeth in the midst of which two gold crowns gleamed opulently. The lamplight also gleamed on a pair of gold rings in his thick-lobed ears and on the blade of a long, murderous dirk-knife.

  “Ah, Meestair,” he greeted, advancing a step, “I t’eenk you come for you gal, an’ wait here for you. You not make any noise w’ile we tie you opp, or—” he raised the dirk and drew it horizontally through the air some six inches before his throat in a gesture more expressive than agreeable. “You stan’ steel w’ile we tie you, no?” he concluded.

  “After you get tied opp all nice an’ tight, maybe we decide w’at we do afterwards. Maybe we leave you ’ere; maybe we put you out your suffering queek, lak dees—” again the knife-blade performed the murderous gesture. “Maybe we let you ’ave some fon w’ile we enjoy ourself wiz you gal. She ver’ prett’ gal, Meestair, bot I t’eenk she tak some leetle beating before she gentle enoff for us.”

  As he concluded, he drew up immediately before Professor Forrester and reached forward a noosed rope. “You put you ’and in heem now, an’ not mak no foss,” he advised, “or—”

  Professor Forrester dropped both hands into his dinner coat pockets and faced the burly scoundrel defiantly. “Stand out of my way!” he commanded sharply.

  “Ha-ha, ho!” the other burst into a laugh, towering over the diminutive Forrester like a turkey-cock above a bantam. “You mak foss, eh? I show you dam’ queek who’s boss ’round ’ere—

  “Devla!” the exclamation was a scream as he staggered back, pawing furiously at his eyes.

  Professor Forrester had hurled a handful of the powdered, dry tobacco fairly into the man’s face as he bent forward to loop the rope about his arms.

  The gypsy’s knife fell clattering to the stone floor as the f
iery powder stung his eyes almost past endurance, and Professor Forrester placed one foot upon it, drawing it toward him. Next instant, before his disabled antagonist had time to lower his hands from his blinded eyes, the Professor’s right heel landed in the pit of his stomach with devastating force, doubling him forward like a closing jack-knife. As the man’s head came level with his waist, Forrester lashed out with his fist, putting every ounce of his strength, weight and anger behind the blow. Fist and jaw collided with a sharp, smacking impact, the gypsy dropped limply to the floor and lay there, twitching spasmodically, but showing no other sign of life.

  “Mahrimé!” with a lithe bound the younger man was up from his pallet, his knife flashing wickedly.

  He was a muscular young man, and was obviously anxious to use his weapon. There was no time to temporize, no chance to achieve victory by some such trick as that which conquered the first Romany. Professor Forrester grasped the knife let fall by his first opponent and threw himself into a defensive position.

  Eyes glaring, lips pinched, the two men circled one another like a pair of hostile game cocks. Feinting, striking, dashing in to slash quickly at each other’s throats, then leaping nimbly back, they crept round the room.

  Clink! the blades struck together.

  Clash! steel rattled wickedly on steel. The gypsy was evidently an adept knife-fighter, and displayed every trick known to that deadly type of fencing. Forrester had never before wielded such a weapon, but a thorough grounding in the art of boxing made him no mean antagonist. Each time the Romany struck, the Professor managed to parry the thrust with his own blade or avoid it by a deft dodge, such as he would have employed in a fist-fight. Each blow the Professor aimed at his enemy was met by the gypsy’s ready steel or evaded by a nimble side-step.

  Sweat was pouring down their faces, their breath came hot and fast in their throats, both were tiring fast, but the Professor, ten years older than his adversary, and unused to the violent exertion, was losing strength more rapidly.

  A drop of perspiration trickled over his left eyebrow and ran down his lid behind his glasses. With an impatient shake of his head he sought to clear his vision.

  Cling! His rimless pince-nez flew from his nose and landed on the stone floor with a thin, bell-like tinkle. He stumbled forward blindly, tripped over an uneven stone in the pavement, and sprawled toward the floor, instinctively flinging both hands out to save himself.

  “Hai!” shrilled his opponent exultantly, raising his dirk for a slashing blow.

  As Forrester’s right hand shot out in an attempt to break his fall, he felt his point strike something which resisted, yet yielded before the keen steel. The Professor hung his weight on the knife handle, striving desperately to recover his balance. The blade slipped downward, as though the substance in which it was imbedded were too soft to hold it, came free, and the Professor staggered backward two stumbling steps, regaining his footing by a supreme effort.

  “Whs-s-s-sh!” hissed the gypsy sibilantly, a look of shocked surprise on his dark, handsome face, and fell forward limply, a spate of sudden blood dyeing his soiled gingham shirt. He was ripped open from sternum to navel as neatly as a hog disemboweled by a butcher.

  The Professor gasped, regarding his handiwork with a kind of unbelieving horror. A feeling of deadly, weakening nausea rose in him, and he all but fell prostrate beside his dying foe, when the memory of Rosalie’s plight revived him like a stimulant.

  Stooping to retrieve his glasses, he hastened to the girl, and with two quick slashes of his razor-edged dagger severed the cords binding her to the wall, then turned to fling the murderous weapon from him.

  “Not so, master of my life!” the girl besought in tumultuous Hindu. “Throw not away the emblem of thy triumph. Wallah, thou art the king of fighters! In all the world there is none who handles the steel like thee—my king!”

  “S-s-s-sh, someone’s coming!”

  He took a fresh grip on his dripping knife, and Rosalie, nimble as a fox, leaped across the room and seized the weapon dropped by the dead man, then flattened herself to the wall beside the door so that whoever entered the room from the passage beyond must necessarily offer his back to her blade as he crossed the threshold.

  “Put ’em up, you!” the sharp hail rang out authoritatively, as Procter strode into the circular chamber, leveling an ugly-looking automatic pistol at the Professor. “You may be a fair ripe ’un with the cold steel, but I’ll trade you hot lead for it if you don’t stick ’em up lively. Thought you could sneak round here and spy on us—Gawd!”

  His pistol fell crashing and bouncing to the pavement, and his left hand flew upward to grasp his right arm.

  Standing to his right and rear, Rosalie had slashed downward with her knife, and the keen steel had almost severed the butler’s triceps, paralyzing his pistol-hand.

  “Wah, son of a filthy and very unvirtuous female hog, descendant of countless generations of stinking cockroaches!” she shrilled. “Verily, this night shall I cut thy evil heart from out thy bosom. I shall slit thy eyes and send thee sightless to beg thy bread at the street crossings, thou son of an evil smell!”

  Matter-of-factly, to her guardian, she remarked: “Tie him fast, my lord, that we may deliver him into the hands of justice.”

  The Professor complied with alacrity. Rosalie’s hyperbolic threats, voiced in Hindustani, might be only the reflex of her oriental upbringing; on the other hand, her usually gentle nature was transformed into that of a fury when any one so much as annoyed her guardian, and there was every likelihood that she would do the butler further injury unless he were removed from her presence.

  Tethering Procter and the still unconscious gypsy to a pair of iron staples in the wall, the Professor took down one of the lanterns from the ceiling, and, with the butler’s captured pistol in his right hand and Rosalie close to his left elbow, began a systematic exploration of the connecting passage.

  Twenty feet farther down the narrow tunnel, there was a second room, and here he found the source of the noise which had puzzled him that morning. Completely equipped, a foot-power printing press stood in the center of the chamber, a work table beside it neatly stocked with inks, packets of small, oblong slips of paper and a series of finely made halftone plates. It was the rhythmic clatter of the press, not entirely silenced by the intervening earth and bricks, which he had heard as he lay on the smoke house floor that morning.

  “So that’s it, eh?” he exclaimed, examining one of the finished pieces of printing with interest. It was an excellent imitation of a ten dollar national banknote. Though showing its illegitimate origin in its fresh state, after a little handling and crumpling, it would have passed muster almost anywhere among people not trained to detect counterfeit bills.

  Neatly stacked on the floor were enough other spurious notes to flood an entire state, and as many more were ready for the finishing touches on the press.

  At the farther end of the room a heavy curtain hung before a low arched doorway. Putting it aside, the Professor was not surprised to find a small underground boathouse in which the speed boat he had seen that morning was securely moored, the entrance to the subterranean anchorage being screened by a neatly woven blind of reeds and ivy.

  “Umpf,” he commented, “everything seems fairly clear thus far, but I think we might do well to ask our friend Procter a few questions before going back.”

  Rosalie deposited her knife in the glowing charcoal brazier and blew upon the coals until the steel blade took on a brilliant orange glow. This done, she wrapped her fingers in the cotton cloth with which she had been gagged, took the red-hot knife up gingerly and advanced until she stood directly before the bound and helpless butler.

  “Swine!” she admonished, speaking slowly, and in her most careful English, that every word might be understood, “Forrester sahib, who is the mightiest detector of evil in all the world, would honor your unclean ears by addressing a few questions to them. See to it that you answer quickly and truthfully, or I s
hall give myself the pleasure of burning out your unworthy eyes with this iron. Say, then, will it be talk or torture which you choose?”

  Procter, regarding the implacable eyes she bent upon him, made a wise decision.

  VI

  “I say, Towneley, I’ll trouble you for that twenty-five hundred dollar reward you offered for laying the ghost,” Professor Forrester announced as he and Rosalie let themselves in the front door of Towneley Towers and surveyed a surprised group in the lower hall.

  “Eh, what’s that?” demanded his host, eyeing him suspiciously. “Where have you been? I thought you went upstairs drunk a while ago. Speak up, man, if you’re sober. We’re in the devil of a fix. Now it’s Procter who’s disappeared, and—”

  “Wrong, my boy, quite wrong you are,” the Professor contradicted with a grin. “Procter may not be present, but I’ll guarantee to produce him when wanted. He’s the ghost of Towneley Towers.”

  “What?”

  “Your ghost’s name is James Allerton Procter, sometime butler to Eugene Towneley, Esquire, of Baltimore and St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Before he entered your employ he was popularly known to the aristocracy of the underworld as English Jimmie, and he was one of the cleverest counterfeiters—‘queer shooters,’ I believe the technical term is—in the entire nefarious business. I suppose you’ll recall that, no matter how much dread of the ghost he displayed, Procter never offered to leave your service?”

  “Er—yes, that’s right,” Towneley agreed.

  “Quite so. But he was forever harping on the subject to the other servants, and was largely responsible for your big labor turnover.

  “You’ll also remember that he presented himself as an applicant for the position of butler after three negro butlers had been scared off the premises. Very well. I’ve been talking with Mr. Procter, and he’s been quite confidential. Miss Osterhaut—” he shot a sidelong, humorous glance at the demure Rosalie, who stood at his elbow—“seemed to have quite an influence over him, and I’m sure she induced him to tell me things he never would have divulged without her persuasion.