Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  He looked uncertainly at the Oberleutnant.

  “Would you like to see my chapel? It is very pretty.”

  “No, you old fool!” The Oberleutnant’s thin face was flushed with anger. “I have important work to do. I can’t waste time listening to your babblings. Have you heard anything, seen anything at all tonight?”

  THE old monk looked at him with puzzled eyes.

  “There isn’t anybody here any more,” he said in a soft patient voice. “Don’t you remember? There used to be many of us but the soldiers took them all away. I have prayed ever since for them, because many of them were very young. I prayed that the soldiers were kind to them. I hope my friends are happy, where ever they are.

  “No,” he said softly, “they have taken everyone but old Brother Joseph. “But they couldn’t take me,” he said, and there was an anxious note in his voice, “for I must keep the candles lighted. If I left there would be no one to do that. They won’t take me, will they?”

  There was a desperate pleading note in his faltering voice and his gaze moved from the trooper to the Oberleutnant in a mute, childishly fervent appeal.

  The Oberleutnant snapped his gloves into his hand angrily. He glared at the trooper. “Why didn’t you tell me the old fool was demented? Can I get information from a raving madman? Bah! Your stupidity should be reported.”

  He turned on his heel and strode down the stone pathway to his waiting car. The trooper hurried along behind him.

  Oberleutnant Reinwold paused with his foot on the running board and looked back at the monastery. The old monk was still standing in the doorway, his shabby cassock flapping in the wind, the candlelight outlining his thin stooped figure. He raised a hand and waved slowly.

  There was a thoughtful smile on the Oberleutnant’s thin face.

  “In case I forget,” he murmured to the trooper, “remind me to sign an order transferring this old fool to a concentration camp tomorrow.” His white teeth gleamed in the dark as his smile widended. “Brother Joseph misses his friends but we shall remedy that pathetic condition. We shall put Brother Joseph with his friends where he can be happy.”

  He climbed into the car.

  “And now,” he said harshly, “we will continue our search . . .”

  BROTHER JOSEPH stood in the doorway until the staff car had moved away into the darkness, until its lancing headlights were no longer visible. Then he closed the heavy oak door and locked it with slow careful deliberation.

  His slippers shuffled against the smooth stones of the floor as he moved along the dimly lit corridor that led to a high arch, beyond which the main chapel was visible.

  Brother Joseph stood under the high arch for several moments and there was benign tranquility on his old face as his eyes moved lovingly over the heavy, burnished wood of the pews, the single votive light that burned before the low altar, and the small grottoes that had been carved into the solid rock walls.

  After a while he shook his head wearily, tiredly, and moved slowly toward the altar. There was a kneeling bench stretching before the altar but he did not pause to pray.

  He shuffled to the back of the altar, moving like a weary aged wraith through the flickering shadows that danced in grotesque patterns against the wall.

  His hands moved over the back of the altar until they touched a smooth, slightly irregular stone. He pressed down slowly and a door in the seemingly solid stone of the altar swung slowly open. A flight of crudely chiseled stone steps led downward into blackness.

  Brother Joseph stepped into the opening and pressed another stone. The door closed behind him as he descended the steps with slow sure steps.

  There was a movement below him. A voice whispered:

  “Brother Joseph? Is it all right?”

  “Yes, my son. You may light a candle.” The voice of the frail monk was solid and strong now and there was in it a deep authority.

  A match flickered and then the steady glow of a candle fought stubbornly against the darkness. Brother Joseph stepped down into a large, rock-walled room that was damp with the chill of the under earth.

  Two men stood in the center of the room. One was young with black hair that fell over his high forehead and flashing eyes, but the other man was old and worn. His face was dazed and hope had died in his eyes.

  “Who was it?” the young man asked tensely.

  “Storm troopers,” Brother Joseph answered. “They have gone away.”

  “They never go away,” the old man said dully. “They wait until you think you are safe and then they strike.”

  Brother Joseph patted the older man’s sagging shoulder.

  “Courage,” he said. “Others have escaped the Gestapo. God is with us. Tomorrow morning you will be in Switzerland.”

  “I know we will make it,” the younger man said. “Something inside tells me that we will not fail.” He looked at Brother Joseph and said, fervently, “If we do our lives will belong to you, Brother.”

  BROTHER JOSEPH smiled and shook his head slowly.

  “I am but one tiny link in the chain that stretches from the corrupted heart of Germany to the shores of England and America. We who work in the underground are not individuals. As individuals we are nothing; we are helpless. But as a strong chain welded together with the thought of fighting the monster of Naziism we become important; we become powerful in our unity. Our only mission is to save as many as possible of the persecuted souls who have been caught here in this terrible land. When we succeed, we thank God. And tonight I think I shall be saying prayers of thanksgiving for your safe conduct to Switzerland.”

  “How much longer must we wait?” the young man asked.

  “I do not know. Pastor Mueller is bringing two more refugees here. He will lead you the rest of the way.”

  The older man looked up, a wondering light in his eye.

  “But you and the Pastor Mueller are not of the same Church—”

  “We are of the same God,” Brother Joseph said. “The good Pastor’s church has been one of the links of the underground for many months.”

  “You say he is bringing others here tonight?” the young man asked worriedly. “But the forests are swarming with the Gestapo. Can he get through?”

  “He has before and he will again,” Brother Joseph answered quietly. “When he arrives you will leave immediately. Until then you must wait patiently.”

  There was a statue of Saint Benedict, the founder of the monastery in the corner of the room and Brother Joseph took the young man by the arm and led him to the carven figure.

  The statue was set in a niche in the wall, with head raised and hands outstretched in a gesture of supplication. There was a small kneeling bench before the shrine.

  Brother Joseph pointed to the statue. “I like to think of the good Benedict when situations are dark,” he said. “It is sometimes heartening to realize that others have faced tragedy and trouble and were able to survive their ordeal, stronger than ever.” His face was grave as he studied the statue of the Saint.

  “Benedict labored in one of the most dangerous of all fields of study, that of demonology and exorcism. On the very spot of this monastery’s foundation he fought his most terrible battle against the powers of darkness. The story has come to us through the centuries and doubtless alterations and exaggerations have distorted the original account, but I think the essential facts are substantially true. This area of the Black Forest was infested with unnatural monsters that had somehow escaped the bonds of hell and death. They prowled the dank byways of the forest seeking the damnation of souls. Benedict fought them unceasingly with bell and book and with every bit of holy power at his command. And on this very spot he completed the excorcism of this area. The unhuman fiends, the undead, unclean monsters were driven forever back to their black haunts. And this monastery was built to celebrate his victory. Benedict risked his immortal soul in the battle against the fiends of darkness, but he triumphed gloriously. You see—”

  Brother Joseph broke off abrup
tly. His thin hand gripped the young man’s arm like a claw.

  “Do you hear?” he whispered tensely.

  THERE was a tramp of booted feet above their heads; a swelling murmur of voices.

  “Pastor Mueller?” the young man asked. He stared white-faced at the aged monk.

  Brother Joseph shook his head.

  “No. I fear my optimism was premature. The Germans have returned.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “I must go up,” Brother Joseph said. “Perhaps I can get rid of them again. You must hide in one of the deeper recesses of the monastery. The entire buildings are honey-combed with catacombs and long-forgotten vaults,” He pointed urgently to a corridor that led off from the room. “Take that until you come to a blocking wall. There is a door that leads to another room. From that room you can escape to the forest.

  Go quickly now! If I do not come to you in an hour or so, don’t wait. God bless you.”

  The young man gripped his hand tightly and then, with his companion at his side, plunged into the dark corridor. When their footsteps had died away, Brother Joseph moved slowly to the stairway that led upward to the main chapel.

  He ascended the steps slowly. At the top he pressed the keystone and waited in the darkness until the door swung noiselessly open. Quietly he stepped through the door.

  Too late was he aware of the deeper shadows at the back of the altar I Strong hands pinioned his arms; a light flashed in his eyes.

  Oberleutnant Reinwold chuckled drily as he stepped forward.

  “How interesting,” he said. “Secret doors, hidden rooms, every thing a refugee might need to escape the Gestapo.” Brother Joseph saw that the Oberleutnant had at least a dozen troopers with him. Two men held him and the others were spread fanwise about the tall, thin superior officer.

  He forced a blankness over his face and eyes.

  “I do not know what you mean,” he said. “I—”

  Oberleutnant Reinwold slapped him viciously across the mouth with his gloves.

  “You’re lying,” he snapped. He motioned to four of his men. “Search the room below the altar.”

  The men descended the steps, guns drawn, torches stabbing beams of light into the darkness. Their voices floated back a moment later and the Oberleutnant’s face flushed angrily.

  “Gone!” he snarled. “They can’t be gone far.”

  He turned slowly and studied the aged monk with cold, determined eyes.

  “Do you know where they’ve gone?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Brother Joseph said.

  “You don’t know what I mean, eh? How unfortunate.” He slapped his gloves into the palm of his hand with slow deliberate emphasis. “There are ways to loosen obstinate tongues,” he said; “but it won’t be necessary.”

  He nodded to the men holding the monk.

  “Take him downstairs.”

  BROTHER Joseph felt the slow death of despair creeping over him as he was jerked down the steps to the hideaway room under the altar.

  Oberleutnant Reinwold closed the door in the back of the altar and followed the rest of his men down. He smiled without humor at Brother Joseph.

  “You have been very clever,” he said. “Our intelligence has just learned the details of the work you have been doing. They have also learned of the operations of one Pastor Mueller and of the interesting information that he is expected here tonight. He shall receive a pleasant surprise. We shall wait until we have him and his charges safely in custody before we resume our search for the others you so cleverly have been hiding. It wouldn’t do to find them and shoot them just yet. The disturbance might scare Pastor Mueller away. And we don’t want that to happen, do we?”

  Brother Joseph could feel his heart beating wildly within the frail confines of his body. Pastor Mueller would walk blindly into this trap. The underground would be crippled for months, possibly forever, if the Germans were able to smash these two vital links of the chain.

  “There is no one expected here tonight,” he said. He knew the German wouldn’t believe him, but what else could he say?

  “So?” the Oberleutnant smiled, “we are on a wild goose chase, are we? But let us wait awhile and see. If you are right it will be a most amusing joke on us, will it not?”

  Brother Joseph was silent. His brain wheeled in a tired circle, but he knew there was no hope.

  The minutes ticked slowly away. The troopers were stationed at the stairs and about the wall. Oberleutnant Reinwold stood in the center of the room smiling idly.

  Brother Joseph felt a desperate fear coursing through his body. Not for himself, but for the courageous Pastor Mueller, the hunted, persecuted men he was leading to freedom and the whole system that they had developed to fight the ruthless slavery of the Nazi State. These were things that were in danger of destruction.

  His anguished eyes moved slowly about the damp, dimly lighted room; they came to rest on the statue of Saint Benedict.

  And when he saw that carven figure a desperate thought occurred to him; a thought so terrible in its implications that he murmured a prayer instinctively. But that breath of thought fanned the dying embers of hope in his soul and his mind turned the idea over and over; gripped by its terrible fascination.

  He remembered the legend of the founder of the monastery; his mind brought to the fore of consciousness his own half-forgotten memories of the desolate, labrynthine passages and vaults that honey-combed this ancient building, and of dimly remembered stories he had heard, and of the dark and horrible tales that clung to this site, like a hateful miasma seeping from an evil swamp.

  A cold sweat stood out on his face; a chilling tremor passed over his body. What was he contemplating? What mad evil plan was spawning in the dark recesses of his brain?

  And then, with a sudden gleaming flash of understanding, he knew that he would do anything, no matter how darkly desperate, if it would offer a chance to destroy these Germans.

  His heart was thudding with hammer-blows at his ribs; his throat was dry and tight.

  He turned from the statue of Saint Benedict to the superior officer who was standing in the middle of the room.

  “Do you mind if I pray?” he asked.

  Oberleutnant Reinwold raised a cynical eyebrow.

  “If you think there is anyone listening,” he said, “you have my permission to go ahead.”

  “Thank you,” Brother Joseph said.

  HE WALKED to the bench before the statue and knelt. He did not fold his hands; he did not raise his eyes. He felt it would have been blasphemy to lift his eyes to the heavens while his heart’s request was . . .

  His prayer was simple.

  “You drove the hounds of hell from this place Saint Benedict. Now there is a new horror loose on this earth. Summon forth again—”

  The terrible words stuck in his throat. His tongue could not form them, his will refused them sound. There was something so monstrously unclean about what he was asking that he felt a staggering sense of guilty terror.

  He knew that he couldn’t do it. A stronger man, a man who could hurl a defiance into the seething pits of hell, might have uttered the words, but it was beyond his power.

  He raised his face and scalding tears were on his cheeks.

  “Forgive me,” he said brokenly. “It was not for myself I would have asked this terrible thing. It was—”

  The candle at the foot of the statue flickered. A cold clammy draft touched his cheek with a feather’s touch and a long whining moan sounded in the long dark corridor.

  Brother Joseph’s fingers closed slowly.

  A blast of cold wind lashed into the room with an angry crescendoing roar. There was a dreadful lost wail in the moan of the wind, as if it had howled over the wastelands of the world and had roared through cold space and had touched things that were loathsome and putrid with approaching death.

  Oberleutnant Reinwold backed away from the force of the blast. The torch in his hand was dimming. Shadow
s of darkness were closing inexorably in on the small band.

  “Turn your torches on,” he shouted to his men.

  Their answers were torn from their teeth by the lashing wind.

  Brother Joseph felt a nameless, writhing horror, creeping over him, paralyzing his thoughts.

  “My God, what have I done?”

  This tortured cry, from the depths of his soul, was whipped from his mouth and hurled to oblivion by the sobbing, screaming wind.

  And the lights were all out!

  Darkness, final and complete, filled the room.

  And then Brother Joseph heard a sound that was not made by the throat of a living thing; a slobbering, champing obscene sound that seemed to violate by its very existence everything decent and honorable that had ever been known to mankind.

  An instant later he heard something slithering in the corridor that led to his room; a sound that was like a furry, unfooted body dragging itself across wet, slimy stones.

  And he heard footsteps approaching, too.

  Footsteps that moved slowly and heavily with solid tread, but he knew that no human foot could create that sound; for human, two-footed creatures do not have hooves.

  Dimly, from afar it seemed, he heard the shrill, soul-numbing screams of the Germans, as the monstrous, unclean horde of things advanced, emerging from what noxious pit man could only imagine in his maddest dreams, hell-spawn surging forward with slavering jaws.

  And the wind rose to a wild scream.

  Brother Joseph clasped his hands until the knuckles whitened; his eyes rose to meet the stone countenance of the statue above him. His lips moved in prayer and gradually the sound faded away; a great vast silence surrounded him as he knelt there, eyes upraised, hands clasper.

  But the Germans heard; and eventually they saw . . .

  DAWN broke over the monastery clear and bright. Reich Inspector von Moltke stepped from his special car as the first rosy rays of the sun were bathing the crumbling buildings in pastel brilliance.

  “This is very queer,” he said to the soldiers who had accompanied him. “Intelligence ordered Oberleutnant Reinwold to apprehend a group of escaping refugees here last night. They have received no report from him as yet. We shall investigate.”