The Compleat Boucher

by Anthony Boucher; Editor: James A. Mann

  The customer settled down again. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.” The light from the pentacle shone on his bared teeth and glistered off the drop of saliva at the corner of his mouth. “He reviewed my book. It was a clever review, a devilish review. It was so damnably wittily phrased that it became famous. Bennett Cerf and Harvey Breit quoted it in their columns. It was all anybody heard about the book. And it killed the book and killed me and he has to die.”

  The man in shadow smiled unseen. One review out of hundreds, and in an out-of-town paper at that. But because it had been distinctively phrased, it was easy to make it a scapegoat, to blame its influence alone for the failure of a book that could never have succeeded. His customer was crazy as a bed-bug. But what did that matter to him, whose customers always were as mad as they were profitable?

  “You realize,” he said, “that the blood must have fire?”

  “I’ve learned a lot about him. I know his habits and his reactions. There will be fire, and he’ll use it.” The customer hesitated, and a drop of saliva fell, luminous in the flame from the pentacle. “Will I . . . will I know about it? As though I were there?”

  “It’s your blood, isn’t it?” the man said tersely.

  He said nothing more while he arranged the customer inside the pentacle. At his side he set the container of thick black stuff and propped the customer’s wrist over it so that the blood dripped in as he made the incision. Then he tossed a handful of powder onto the flame and began to chant.

  The book came into the office of the San Francisco Times in a normal and unobtrusive manner. It was in a cardboard box wrapped in brown paper and bore postage at the proper book-rate. The label was plain, bearing no information other than the typed address, which read:

  Book department

  San Francisco Times

  San Francisco, California

  Miss Wentz opened the package and discarded the wrappings. She glanced at the oddly figured jacket, opened the book, and read the printed slip.

  We take pleasure in sending you this book for review and we shall appreciate two clippings of any notice you may give it.

  She muttered her opinion of publishers who give neither price or publication date, and turned to the title page. Her eyes popped a little.

  THE BLOOD IS THE DEATH

  being a collection of arcane matters

  Demonstrating

  that in the violence of death

  lies the future of life

  assembled by

  Hieronymus Melanchthon

  New York

  The Chorazin Press

  1955

  She had never heard of Hieronymus Melanchthon nor The Chorazin Press; but anything comes to a newspaper. In a book-review department, incredulity is a forgotten emotion. Miss Wentz shrugged and soberly set to making out a card for the files, just as though the thing were really a book.

  She was interrupted by the arrival of The Great Man, as she (in private) termed The Most Influential Bookpage Editor West of the Mississippi. He breezed in, cast a rapid eye over the pile of new arrivals, and hesitated as he looked at The Blood Is the Death.

  “What now?” he said. He picked it up, held it in one hand, and let the pages riffle past his thumb. Malicious people said he could turn out an impeccable 250-word review after such a gesture. “Crackpot,” he said tersely. “Over on the left.” He picked up his mail and headed for the inner office. But he stopped a minute and looked at his thumb, then took out his handkerchief and rubbed at an ink smudge. He looked hurt, as a biologist might if a laboratory guinea pig turned on him and scratched him.

  Miss Wentz put The Blood on the left. One wall of the office was a tall double bookcase. On the right were current books to be reviewed, from which the staff reviewers made their selections. On the left was a hodge-podge of rental romances, volumes of poetry printed by the author, secrets of the Cosmos published in Los Angeles, and other opera considered unworthy even of a panning. The Blood went in among them, between Chips of Illusion and The Trismegist of the Count St. Germain.

  Miss Wentz went back to her typewriter and to her task of explaining to the usual number of eager aspirants that The Great Man did not read unsolicited manuscripts. In a moment she looked up automatically and said “Hello,” but there was no one there. Reviewers were always in and out all day Monday; she was sure she had heard, seen, felt somebody . . .

  She tried to type and wished the phone would ring or The Great Man would decide to dictate or even a screwball author would wander in. Anything rather than this room that was not quite empty . . .

  She was very warm in her welcome of The Reverend, as she mentally labeled him—so warm as thoroughly to disconcert the Times’s, reviewer of religious books. He was a young man still in his diaconate—not a year out of the seminary yet, but already realizing the nets and springes that are set for an unmarried clergyman. He was slowly becoming not so much a misogynist as a gynophobe, and found himself reading Saint Paul more and more often. He had always thought of the Times office as a haven of safety, but if even here— He turned away his face, which was reddening embarrassingly, and devoted himself to serious study of the books on the right.

  He took down the letters of a Navy chaplain, a learned thesis on contemplation, and a small book in large type with the peppy title Prayer Is the Payoff. He set them on the table with a sigh of resignation (at that, there might be a sermon idea in them somewhere) and looked idly at the shelves again. With half a smile he reached for The Blood Is the Death.

  “Such a sacrilegious title!” he observed, paging through it. “I imagine this might fall into my province at that?”

  “What? Oh.” Miss Wentz looked at The Blood. “That’s supposed to be over on the other side. He doesn’t want anything on that.”

  “I found it here,” he protested mildly.

  “I’d swear I put it over with the rejects.” She rose and thrust it in its proper place. “Well, it’s there now.”

  The Reverend frowned at his finger. “What frightful ink in that odd book! Look how it comes off.”

  Miss Wentz reached in the drawer. “Here’s a Kleenex.”

  But rub though he would, the stain persisted. He was still at it, and rather wishing that he might revert to the vocabulary of his undergraduate days, when Mark Mallow came in.

  The word usually used for Mark Mallow was clever, or sometimes even brilliant. People always said how much they admired his work, or how entertaining he was. They were never heard to say anything so simple as “Mallow? Yeah, a swell guy.” Mallow wore, among other necessary items, a trim Van Dyke and a jaunty hat and a bright bow tie. You had a feeling that he might have added spats and a cane if that had not been a little too much for San Francisco. There was a spring to his step and a constant smile on his lips, which were thus always parted to show his teeth.

  This was fair warning; for though Mark Mallow never barked, his bite was an essential part of his life. Few people ever questioned his judgment in his chosen field of criticism; Starrett and Queen and Sandoe were in constant correspondence with him and respected his taste; but no one had ever accused him of immoderate softheartedness. He was honest, and he wrote a rave review when necessary; but the words sounded forced and compelled. His pannings, on the other hand, were gems of concise assassination, surgically accurate scalpel work that drew life blood.

  He had fun.

  Mallow nodded to The Reverend, smiled at Miss Wentz, and groaned at the weekly stack of whodunits set aside for him. Then he looked over the general section on the right, picked out a couple of works that bordered on his interests, and paused with a whistle of amazement. He took down a book, stared at its title page, and said, “I ’ll be damned! If you’ll pardon me, Reverend?”

  The Reverend, who had long concurred in the opinion, said “Quite.”

  “Jerome Blackland, or I’ll be several things I shouldn’t mention here. Jot me down for this, Miss Wentz, if you please; this ought to be good clean sport.”


  Miss Wentz looked up automatically and then made a sharp little noise of exasperation. “How did that get back there?”

  “It was right here,” Mallow said.

  “I know . . . and I’ll take my oath on a stack of Bibles that I put it over on the left not once but twice. Didn’t I?”

  The Reverend nodded. “I saw you.”

  “And now it’s . . . Oh well. He doesn’t want it reviewed, but if it interests you especially . . .”

  “Why?” The Reverend asked.

  Mallow extended the book open at its mad title page. “You see that unbelievable name, Hieronymus Melanchthon?”

  “A pseudonym, of course. So much of that quasi-mystical literature is pseudonymous.”

  “Like the man who wrote under the name of St. John a century or so later?” Mallow asked slyly. “Well, I know who’s back of this pseud. Translate it, and what do you get?”

  The Reverend summoned up his seminarian Greek. “Jerome Black . . . land, would it be?”

  “Exactly. Rich screwball New Yorker. Got all tangled up with black magic and stuff and turned out an amazing opus, half-novel, half-autobiography, that made William Seabrook and Montague Summers look like skeptics. I had fun with it. I think I’ll have fun with this, too— Damn!” He broke off and stared at his thumb. “I’m bleeding. Did this infernal opus up and take a nip at me? No . . . I’m not bleeding. It’s off the book. What the devil kind of ink is this?”

  The Reverend looked—and was—perplexed. On his own hand the smudge from that strangely printed volume was black. On Mark Mallow’s it was blood-red. It seemed perverse. Doubtless some simple explanation—some chemical salt present in Mallow’s body secretions and not in his which acted as reagent . . . Nevertheless he was nervous, and found an occasion promptly to leave the office.

  Mallow went on into the inner office to confer with The Great Man, leaving The Blood behind him. This time it stayed put, waiting for him. Miss Wentz tried to type again, but still the room was unempty. Not until Mallow and his book-crammed briefcase had departed did the room feel ordinary again.

  Mark Mallow settled himself comfortably on the Bridge train. It was the commuters’ hour and the train was packed; but experience and ingenuity always combined to get him a seat. When he had finished a cursory examination of the afternoon newspaper, he spread it over his trouser legs, hoisted his briefcase up onto his lap, and began rummaging among the week’s stock. The paunchy businessman occupying the other half of the seat needed more than a half for his bulk; but Mallow’s muscles, skilled in this form of civilian commando, unconsciously fended off his encroachment.

  The ride over the Bay Bridge, even by train (which operates on a lower and less scenic level than motor traffic), is beautiful and exciting the first time. But habitues never glance out the window unless to attempt to draw deductions from ships in port at the moment. Mark Mallow saw nothing of the splendor of the bay as he selected the latest Simenon to enjoy on the trip. (For Mallow did enjoy reading a good whodunit; he merely hated to write about any but the stinkers.)

  He read the first page over three times before he realized that the endeavor was vain. Something urged him to replace the Simenon in the briefcase and extract another volume, the one with the oddly figured jacket. His hand seemed to move of itself, and at the same time his muscles announced the surprising fact that there was no longer a pressure from the businessman. In fact, he seemed to be edging away.

  Mallow smiled as he opened the book. The pretentious absurdity of the title page delighted him, and the text more than lived up to it. (The businessman did not look the type who would give his seat to a lady.) It is, I suppose, inevitable, Mallow reflected, that those who seek to express the inexpressible should have no talent for expression. (The lady did not look the type to refuse a seat either.) Surely worth a choice stabbing little paragraph for the column. A joy, if only it weren’t for this damned ink . . . (The seat remained vacant, in that crowded car, for the whole of the trip. Mallow did not notice it; it seemed as though there were some one there.)

  The Reverend was still a trifle perturbed. It was ridiculous that one should worry about such a nothing as a minor chemical oddity. Had he not in fact prepared a sermon for next Sunday decrying the modern materialists who reduce everything to a series of chemical reactions?

  But there was always one source of peace and consolation. The Reverend took down his Bible, intending to turn to the psalms—the ninety-first, probably. But he dropped the Book in astonishment.

  It had happened so quickly it could scarcely be believed.

  The smudge on his thumb had been black. In the instant that it touched the Bible it turned blood-red, exactly like the stain on Mark Mallow’s hand. Then there was a minute hissing noise and an instant of intense heat.

  There was no smudge at all on his thumb now.

  There was no one in Dr. Halstead’s office. The Reverend took up the phone hastily and dialed the number of the Times. He said “Book department,” and a moment later demanded urgently, “Miss Wentz? Can you give me Mallow’s home address?”

  Mark Mallow ate well, as he always did when he felt inclined to cook for himself. The dinner was simple: a pair of rex sole, boiled rice (with a pinch of saffron), and a tossed salad; but it could not have been satisfactorily duplicated even in San Francisco, the city of restaurants.

  A half bottle of decent Chablis with dinner and a brandy after (both from California vineyards, but nowise despicable) had made Mallow mellow, as he thought to himself with perverse delight in the jarring phrase. Now the insight of Simenon would add pleasurably to his glow.

  He settled himself in front of the fireplace. It was quiet up there in the Berkeley hills. No, quiet was too mild a word. It was still—no, stronger yet—it was stilled. Hushed and gently frozen into silence.

  There was nothing in the world but the fire and his purring digestive system and the book in his hand . . . The book was The Blood Is the Death and the fire shone on his reddened hand.

  Mark Mallow swore to himself, but he was too post-prandially lazy to move from the chair. He opened the book and read on a little. His eyes half-closed; high-flown gibberish is one of the finest soporifics. They jerked open and he sat up with a start to greet the unexpected visitor.

  The room was empty.

  He swore again, in a half-hearted way. He turned his attention to those exquisitely satisfactory digestive processes and noticed that they had reached a point demanding some attention. He rose from the chair, carried The Blood over to the current-review bookcase, replaced it there, and took out the Simenon and laid it on the arm of the chair. Then he went to the bathroom, looking, for no good reason, over his shoulder as he left the room.

  The Reverend had stout legs. He needed them as he toiled up the hills beyond the end of the bus line.

  What are you going to say? The Reverend asked himself. What are you going to do? He couldn’t answer his questions. He knew only that he had encountered a situation where his duty demanded action.

  In the Roman Church, he believed, one of the lower orders of the priesthood was known by the title of Exorcist. He wondered if the Roman clergy were taught the functions of that order, or was the name merely an archaic survival? Shamefacedly he let his fingers steal into his pocket and touch the bottle nestling there—the tiny bottle which he had filled with holy water as he passed a Roman church.

  The lights ahead must be those of Mark Mallow’s house. From the front window came a glow which seemed to be that of a reading lamp combined with a wood fire. The lighted window was peaceful and of good omen.

  The redness came then—the vast redness that filled the room and the window and both The Reverend’s eyes.

  When Mark Mallow came back from the bathroom, he almost hesitated before entering the room. He felt an absurd impulse to retreat, lock the door, and go to bed. He smiled at himself (a rare phenomenon) and proceeded resolutely to the chair. He sat back, picked up the Simenon . . . and its print came off red on
his fingers. He stood up in wrath and hurled the crackpot volume into the fire.

  In the instant before he hurled it, the room gathered itself up into expectation. The shadows quivered, knowing what manner of light was about to dispel them. The flames of the fireplace shrank back to receive their fierce fresh fuel. For an instant there was no time in this space.

  That tick that was eternity passed and time rushed back into the room. The book found the flames and the flames found the blood and the blood found the death that is the life and the life that is death. The shadow went from infra-visibility to blinding sight and it was one with flames and blood and book and the one thing that was shadow and flames and blood and book leapt.

  The room was dark when The Reverend entered. There had been too much light there for an instant; the balance of the sane universe demanded blackness.

  The light came on without his touching it when the balance hung even again. He did not blink because it was necessary that he should see this sight. He saw the body of Mark Mallow and he saw the blood of Mark Mallow and another.

  The Reverend knew what to do. He opened the phial of holy water and started to pour it on the blood. Instead, the blood ran toward him, but he did not flinch. He stood his ground and watched as the water and the blood commingled and were one, and that one was the water. He recorked the phial, and in it was only water and around the body of Mark Mallow was only the blood of one man.

  He left the house. He understood a little. He understood that human reason cannot accept a corpse which sheds twice its amount of blood, and that his presence had enabled him to redress the balance. Now Mallow’s death would be only a terrible and unsolved murder, while it might have opened to man a knowledge which he could not bear. He found it harder to understand why he had been permitted to arrive only after the . . . happening. He guessed that in some way the small petty comfortable evils of Mark Mallow had made him vulnerable to a larger evil.