by Otto Penzler
She felt a great wave of irritation. “What do you mean?”
“Have you ever heard of gestalt? No, I see you haven’t. Well, let me explain it, then. Give a person an ordinary shapeless ink blot and ask him what he sees in it. Immediately his mind begins to view the blot in terms of a pattern, one common and familiar to him. If, at the same time, you suggest that there is a similarity to a donkey, he will be predisposed to look for a donkey. Here you have given us a sketch of a tyrannosaurus and a shapeless blur in which you say it is—and the chances are ten to one we will see a tyrannosaurus. Especially,” he added, “since one of us is an eminent naturalist, who’d probably give his right arm for sight of such a creature.”
“Theory,” said the professor, “and very torturous theory at that. There is a much simpler one which conforms more closely to the facts—that there is actually the head of a tyrannosaurus in the picture.”
Dr. Penner shrugged. “I said I was not certain. You may be right—but so may I.”
She broke in eagerly. “Don’t you see, Dr. Penner, that you must be wrong? I’m not a naturalist—I didn’t even know what the creature was—but I saw it all the same.”
“I have a theory about that too,” he said quietly, “but I won’t bring it up now. There’s another thing I want to query. Let’s assume there is a tyrannosaurus. Can you explain why this one is still alive when the rest of its species died thousands of centuries ago?”
“Alive?” expostulated the professor. “Who said anything about that? What Miss Carlton has photographed is a perfect or near-perfect fossil of the creature—a priceless scientific treasure!”
But she shook her head. “You’re wrong, Professor. It is alive! I feel it. And it’s got—no, intelligence isn’t quite what I mean—it has some form of mental power. I’ve felt it ever since I stopped to take those photographs—it forced me to go and develop the film. And now I can feel, deep inside me, an urge to return, to go back to the spot I photographed. How else can that be explained?”
Penner said abruptly, “You haven’t answered my question. How is it possible for this creature to be alive?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Isn’t just the fact of its existence enough? Perhaps—well, I told you my impression of the valley, that it had been isolated, untouched for centuries—perhaps they have never died out there. Or what do we know about how long their natural life-span was? Perhaps this is one of the original species?”
“And its mental power?” went on Penner, relentlessly. “As far as I remember, the tyrannosaurus had a brain about the size of a pea.”
“Aha!” said the professor triumphantly. “What has that got to do with it? Didn’t you tell me yourself the other night that the theory that intelligence depended on brain size could never be considered valid, because Anatole France had a brain smaller than a Bushman’s? Miss Carlton’s theories may be as imaginative as yours, but at least they are based on facts of experience. For myself, I believe there is a gigantic fossil in the valley—nothing more. But I have an open mind, and I am going there tomorrow to make sure.” “And I,” said Penner, “am going there to prove you wrong.”
THEY MADE PLANS for the expedition over the lunch table, and the professor left to make the necessary preparations in the town.
She walked to the veranda and stood a long time staring at the glimpse of the lagoon down the road and at the little church with its graveyard opposite.
By herself like that, she had content, a mind crowded with a patient ecstasy of anticipation. Then Dr. Penner came to join her, and she felt lonely and afraid.
He must have sensed something of this, because his first words were almost an apology. “I must speak to you,” he said.
“Yes?”
“About this trip tomorrow. There are things I feel I should tell you.”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember our conversation last night, when you asked me to analyze your complex? May I do that now?”
She hesitated. “All right—if it amuses you. But don’t expect me to accept your theories unconditionally. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m going to ask you a few questions—personal ones. I want you to answer them candidly and truthfully. How old are you, Miss Carlton?”
There was just a shade of defiance in her voice. “Thirty-five.”
“I take it, at your age, you’re continually thinking about getting married?”
“You’re not quite right there. Naturally, I do think about it sometimes—but ‘continually’ is definitely an overstatement. I want you to understand, also, that I am single today by my own choice, not through any lack of opportunity.”
“That, of course, is obvious—you’re a very attractive woman. Let me say rather that Mr. Right has not yet come along, but that you wish he would?”
“Yes, that’s more accurate.”
“Then I want to go further and suggest that when you decided to come here on holiday, the hope of meeting Mr. Right was one of your deeper motives?”
“Yes, one of them. Another, and much more important one, was that I’d been overworking and needed a holiday.”
She waited for his next question, but this time his voice did not rise in query at the end of the sentence. It was conversational, casual, a bare statement of fact.
“St. George and the dragon,” he said.
The remark was so out of context, so apparently inconsequential, she should have felt amused, and was annoyed at herself because she wasn’t. Behind her annoyance was a prickle of shock.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Your complex. Oh, it’s very plain to me, but I must make it just as plain to you. Listen. What you are fixated on is the idea of romance—that very young and childish idea. The maiden rescued by the Knight from terrible peril. St. George and the dragon.”
“Do you really believe this nonsense?”
“It’s the truth. Let me show you step by step. Why did the valley attract your attention? You couldn’t think of the phrase to describe it—remember?—and that’s also significant. Virgin forest. Two meanings there—land untrodden by man, and the forest where the virgin is in peril of the dragon. Don’t sneer. That’s what your unconscious mind thought. That’s why you moved involuntarily—so you could photograph a portion of the landscape where there was little or no definition. To satisfy your complex you had to find a dragon, and that was the only way. You found one because you were looking for it.”
She repeated, “Nonsense,” but he kept on speaking.
“I’m telling you this because I’m afraid for you. Afraid of the strength of your obsession. Afraid of what it may do to you tomorrow when you find no trace whatever of the tyrannosaurus. Oh, you don’t believe me, but think it over. Now. Tonight. And especially tomorrow.”
She felt angry but quite cold, and her voice slapped him in the face. “Dr. Penner, do you know you’re behaving like an overwrought schoolboy? I have never in my life heard such preposterous nonsense as your analysis of me. You’ve disobeyed all the laws of logic in your theory, given the wrong values to some facts and completely disregarded others, because they don’t fit in with your preconceived ideas. Like the fact that although I’ve never seen a picture of a tyrannosaurus, or even heard the name of the creature, I was able to make a recognizable sketch of it.”
“You’ve forgotten—but of course you had seen a drawing somewhere. You must have! You may not even have been conscious of it—just caught a glimpse somewhere—but enough for your unconscious mind to perceive the dragon symbolism.”
She laughed out loud. “Your logic astounds me. Because you don’t see another reason, therefore, there cannot be another reason. Tell me, Doctor, what makes you take so much trouble over me? Why is it so necessary for you to pry into my mind?”
He looked at her very gravely. “I will tell you some day—but not now.”
“You won’t or you cannot? I wonder. You see, Doctor, you’ve also got a complex, which is just as obvious to me as min
e seems to you. A psychology complex. Everything you see and hear is distorted by you in terms of your pet subject. More than a complex, Dr. Penner—an obsession.”
“I wish you were right,” he said.
SHE HAD LAUGHED at him, yes. But what was it he had left unsaid?
His theory was fantastic, ridiculous, unscientific. She knew her own mind—how well she knew it! Or did she?
She had to be alone, get away from the hotel, think it out for herself.
She took the car along the road to Port Elizabeth, watching, but not knowing for what. At least, not until she found it.
It was a valley, a sheer sweep from the road, giant trees, and a towering mountain opposite. Except for the house at the bottom or the slope it was identical with the landscape that called to her.
She got out of the car, stood on the edge of the road, and let the wind ruffle her hair.
This valley meant nothing to her. And so it provided proof that Dr. Penner must be wrong. Here it was, a valley, mountains and trees—the same perfect symbolism that he said had excited her complex. And yet she was unmoved.
She should have felt elation, satisfaction, only she couldn’t because of the house. It spoiled the picture. There were people living here: that was the difference.
She half-closed her eyes, so that the house below her was obscured, and filled her mind with the memory of the other valley. Then the house didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered except a point in the view-finder of her camera, a head on a photographic print.
She turned the car, went home, and was very silent at dinner. So was Dr. Penner, but the professor chatted excitedly about the morning.
She went to bed early.
And dreamed.
She was a cave-dweller, dressed in skins, and Penner and the professor were there, too, and all three of them were thrusting desperately against a huge rock at the mouth of their cave, to save themselves from something monstrous pushing on the other side. And all the time their muscles were like lead, and Penner, clumsy, hindered their efforts. Then suddenly she and the professor were alone, gradually being forced back. The stone jerked, hurling them aside. The monster walked through, and the monster was Penner.
Foolish and fantastic and meaningless. Yet she woke sobbing …
THEY SET OUT early in the morning, loaded with knapsacks, and she was in a fever of impatience because the professor was driving, and he was driving too slowly.
Then they were there, parking the car, climbing out with their gear. On the lip of the descent the professor turned and faced them. In that second she saw him as a picture, with the shock of white hair like a patriarch’s, the keen eyes, the wrinkled neck protruding from the khaki shirt, the strangely youthful legs below the shorts.
“In a few hours we’ll know,” he said; and then added, “I found out something about this place in town yesterday. There’s a man living in town who, they say, is over a hundred years old. He told me he knew about this valley—that it was haunted, and that no person has ever set foot in it. He had a name for it, too—Drakensvallei—the Valley of the Dragon; but he could not tell me why it had been given that name.”
The going was not easy, but it was not as bad as they had expected. She felt a pleasurable yearning grow with every step; the professor sang, even Penner became quite animated.
He twitted her about the little pearl-handled pistol she carried. “A pop-gun,” he said. “I doubt whether it would kill a man, let alone a tyrannosaurus.”
“You’d be surprised what damage this thing can do,” she told him, “and I’m a very good shot. I didn’t bring it for the tyrannosaurus, though. There may be other things here. Snakes, for instance.”
There was a snake, and she did shoot it, but not before it had buried its fangs deep in the professor’s youthful leg.
Penner called urgently, “Have you got a knife?” but she could only shake her head. He cursed, tore a tin of sardines from a knapsack, opened it, and used the metal to cut a great gash in the vicinity of the wound. Then he applied his lips.
She winced, stared, and began to see nothing.
“No use,” said the professor. “Mamba.”
A little later he tried to say something else, but his paralysed larynx only made animal sounds.
Penner, perspiration pouring down his face, leaned over the old man. “What did you say? George, talk to me! Try again! I’m listening.”
But there was no life in the twisted lips, no breath even to expel guttural noises … She stood there, gun in hand, her consciousness sliding into ever narrowing focus. Penner rose. “We must report this. I’ll stay here. Go back, take the car, and fetch the police.”
He became aware of the expression on her face. “Do you hear me?”
She spoke then, not in answer to his question, but in tones full of lingering wonderment. “So his name was George,” she said.
He tried to grasp her arm, but she shook herself away and stood staring at something in the far distance; in reality, her lids were pricking with the narrowness of her concentration.
She said very simply, “It is calling me,” and he felt a flash of panic.
“Wait,” he said. “Listen. I know—believe me, I know—just how strong this obsession is with you. But please—concentrate on this—it is only an obsession! There is no tyrannosaurus—except in your mind. The professor is lying here dead. You must go back.”
She shook her head, and did not know she was shaking it.
“No,” he said with decision, “no. You wanted to know yesterday—now I must tell you. I can’t let you go on. I’m afraid. Afraid because I … love you, Mary.”
There was a swirling mist that obscured him; she could only see his eyes. They were very blue and wide apart and intense. Her finger moved, just a slight movement, and then he had a third eye. She was not even conscious of the noise of the shot.
He slid down into the mist and she went forward, stumbling over him, but not knowing she had stumbled.
Sometimes she ran and sometimes she walked, but there was no consciousness of physical weariness when she slowed her pace. There was no consciousness of anything except a pulse in her brain, a single pulse, reverberating, not with pain but with power. And as she went forward, the power grew, slowly exploding into soundless thunder, echoes concussing ever more and more, and those concussions mushrooming into greater beats.
She stopped when she knew she had to.
It was in a glade, and she peered upward expectantly to see what must be there. Her mind was heavy, feathered, and she knew a great sorrow because she could see nothing. Then there was a hint of movement in the trees, a swelling and gasping of the air, and she realized with a sudden flush of triumph that some things cannot be seen because they are too big.
She felt a mighty eye upon her, a red moon, and the beams trembled into her with a knowledge, a certainty of a presence, a consciousness of unhumanity and potent great age.
She called out, “What do you want of me?”
The pulsations in her brain fluttered and boomed telepathically, forced themselves down habitual neural patterns, twisted into her consciousness in the familiar form of words. I am very pleased you have come.
She wondered why It was pleased, and even with the thought the answer came, blurting from the pulse in high-toned spasms of power, so that the words they shaped in her brain were ringing echoes in her ears:
I am very, very hungry.
• • •
THE LADY AND THE DRAGON
AFTERWORD
So here is the riddle for this bizarre story: did the tyrannosaurus rex actually exist in this unlikely locale, or was the giant prehistoric monster merely a figment of the apparently rational lady’s mind?
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
MARK TWAIN
Although Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) is justly famous as a great, perhaps the great American novelist, with such masterpieces to his credit as Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Cou
rt and The Prince and the Pauper, it is often forgotten that he was a seminal figure in the history of crime fiction.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867) was selected by Ellery Queen for his compendium of the 106 greatest mystery short stories of all time, as it told the tale of a stranger who successfully pulls off a great confidence game.
More significant is his semi-autobiographical Life on the Mississippi (1883), which contains a complete short story, “A Thumb-Print and What Became of It” (chapter 31), which is historically important because it contains the first fictional use of fingerprints as a method of identification. The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) is frequently cited as the first fictional use of fingerprints in a detective story novel and was regarded as such a milestone in the genre that it was selected for the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone Library of important books of detective fiction. While it obviously followed the pioneering short story in Life on the Mississippi by eleven years, it is still important because the entire plot revolves around Pudd’nhead’s courtroom explanation of the uniqueness of a person’s print.
“A Medieval Romance” is, candidly, only a mystery by virtue of its conclusion and its title. It was first published in the Buffalo Express in 1870 and in book form in Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance the following year. At least, that is the title on the title page. The title displayed when the story begins is “Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance.” It is neither awful nor terrible, hence the shorter title used for this volume.
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
BY MARK TWAIN
CHAPTER I.
THE SECRET REVEALED.
IT WAS NIGHT. Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the tallest of the castle’s towers a single light glimmered. A secret council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of state meditating. Presently he said, with a tender accent:
“My daughter!”
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, answered:
