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Sterling Edmund Lanier was born on December 18, 1927 in New York City to Priscilla Thorne Taylor and Berwick Bruce Lanier. Lanier did six years’ graduate work at the School of Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, and educated at Harvard, from which he graduated during 1951. He was a lifelong devotee of speculative fiction, a cryptozoology enthusiast, as well as, a very successful sculptor. Before beginning his literary career Lanier worked as a research historian at the Winterthur Museum from 1958 to 1960.

Lanier’s career as an author and editor began in 1961, when his first short story, “Join Our Gang?” was published in the May 1961 issue of Analog Science Fact -> Fiction. He was an editor for Chilton Books from 1961 to 1967. Lanier also worked as an editor for the John C. Winston Company and McRae-Smith.

Lanier was with Chilton in 1965, when he was instrumental in persuading the firm to publish Frank Herbert’s Dune. Having read Dune World in Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction, he was responsible for tracking down the author and conveying Chilton’s offer. More than twenty other publishing companies had already turned the book down. Despite Lanier’s brilliant insight on the worth of the book, he was dismissed from Chilton a year later because of high publication costs and poor initial book sales.

The most prominent of Lanier’s own writings are his stories of the crypto-adventurer Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, and the post-apocalyptic novels Hiero’s Journey (1973) and The Unforsaken Hiero (1983). His short story “A Father’s Tale” (1974) was a World Fantasy Award nominee.

Lanier’s sculptures have been exhibited at a number of museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in miniatures, among which were a series featuring characters from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. One set was given to Tolkien himself, with whom Lanier corresponded. Tolkien reportedly admired the miniatures but did not want them to be marketed commercially, a wish Lanier respected.

Sterling E. Lanier died on June 28, 2007 in Sarasota, Florida, at the age of 79.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Novels

The War for the Lot (1969)

Hiero’s Journey (1973)

The Unforsaken Hiero (1983)

Menace Under Marswood (1983)

Chapbooks

Join Our Gang? (2009)

Omnibus

Science Fiction Special 34 (1981)

Hiero Desteen (1984)

SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY

Join Our Gang?, Analog Science Fact -> Fiction, May 1961

Such Stuff as Dreams, Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact, January 1968

Whose Short Happy Life?, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1968

Soldier Key, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1968

Deathchild, If, October 1968

The Kings of the Sea, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1968

The Leftovers, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1969

Fraternity Brother, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1969

A Feminine Jurisdiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1969

His Only Safari, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1970

His Coat So Gay, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1970

Never Cry Human, If, January/February, January 1971

And the Voice of the Turtle . . ., The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1972

Thinking of the Unthinkable, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1973

. . . No Traveler Returns, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1974

A Father’s Tale, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1974

Ghost of a Crown, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1976

The Syndicated Time, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1978

Commander in the Mist, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1982

The Brigadier in Check—and Mate, The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes, November 1986

FICTION SERIES

[C] = Collection

[N] = Novel

[O] = Omnibus

[SF] = Short Story/Novelette

Brigadier Ffellowes

Soldier Key [SF]

The Kings of the Sea [SF]

The Leftovers [SF]

Fraternity Brother [SF]

A Feminine Jurisdiction [SF]

His Only Safari [SF]

His Coat So Gay [SF]

The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes [C]

And the Voice of the Turtle . . . [SF]

Thinking of the Unthinkable [SF]

A Father’s Tale [SF]

Ghost of a Crown [SF]

Commander in the Mist [SF]

The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes [C]

The Brigadier in Check—and Mate [SF]

Hiero Desteen

Hiero’s Journey [N]

The Unforsaken Hiero [N]

Hiero Desteen [O]

Join Our Gang?

They didn’t exactly hold a gun at anybody’s head; all they offered was help. Of course, they did sort of encourage people to ask for help . . .

COMMANDER William Powers, subleader of Survey Group Sirian Combine—1027798 and hence first officer of its ship, the Benefactor, stared coldly out of his cabin port. The Benefactor was resting on the bedrock of Island Twenty-seven of the world called Mureess by its natives. Like all the other such names, it meant “the world,” just as the natives’ name for themselves, Falsethsa, meant “the people,” or “us,” or “the only race.” To Commander Powers, fifty years old, with eleven of them in Survey work, the world was Planet Two of a star called something unpronounceable in the nebula of something else equally pointless. He had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven, because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island Twenty-seven, to him, had only one importance, and that was its being the site of the largest city on the planet.

Around the island’s seven square miles, a maze of docks, buildings, sheds, breakwaters, and artificial inlets made a maze stretching a mile out to sea in every direction. The gray sea, now covered with fog patches, rolled on the horizon under low-lying cloud. Numerous craft, some small, some large, moved busily about on the water, which in its components was identical with that of Terra, far distant in the Sirius Sector. Crude but workable atomic motors powered most of them, and there was a high proportion of submarines. Powers thought of Earth’s oceans for a moment, but then dismissed the thought. Biological technical data were no specialty he needed. Terra might be suitable for the action formulating in his mind, but a thousand suns of Sirian Combine might prove more useful. The biologists of Grand Base would determine, assisted by data his ship provided, in their monster computers, what was called for. Powers had been trained for different purposes.

He was, as every survey commander was, a battle-hardened warrior. He had fought in two major fleet actions in his day, and had once, as a very junior ensign of the Sirian Grand Fleet, participated in the ultimate horror, the destruction by obliteration of an inhabited planet. For planetary destruction a unanimous vote of the Sirian Grand Council, representing over four thousand worlds, was necessary. It had been given only four times in the long history of the Confederacy. Every intelligent being in the great Union shuddered at the thought of its ever becoming necessary again. Powers stared moodily over the rocky ground toward a group of figures in the distance which were moving in his direction. The final delegation of the Mureess government, a world government, was coming for its last meeting before the Benefactor departed into the far reaches of space.

Powers braced himself mentally for a grand effort. He held equivalent rank to that of a Galactic admiral, and it was held for one reason only, because of his real work and its importance. He was a super-psychologist, a trend-analyzer, a salesman, a promoter, a viewer, an expert on alien symbology and the spearhead of the most ruthless intelligence service in the known universe. Long ago, he had transferred from the battle fleet to the inner’ school at Sirius Prime for the most intensive training ever devised. Now it would be put to the ultimate test.

He heard the air lock open and turned away from the window. He had a long way to walk to the neutral council chamber, for the Benefactor was a big ship, despite the fact that only twenty beings comprised the total complement. Down the echoing corridors he paced,’ brow furrowed in thought. Mazechazz would have his own ideas, he knew, but if they made no impression, he would have to put his oar in. Each being on board, whether he breathed halogen or oxygen, ate uranium or protein, had to be independent in thought and action under certain circumstances. The circumstances were here, here and now in his judgment.

He arrived at the door of the Council chamber, and entered, an impressive sight in flaming orange and blue uniform.

Four members of the Supreme Council of Mureess rose solemnly and inclined their heads in his direction. They were tall bipeds of vaguely reptilian ancestry, most of their height being body. They stood on short powerful legs, terminating in flippered feet, and their long arms were flanged to the second elbow with a rubbery fin. Only four opposed fingers flexed the hands, but the dome-shaped heads and golden eyes screamed intelligence as loudly as the bodies shouted adaption to an aquatic environment. Around the brown torsos, light but efficient harness supported a variety of instruments in noncorrosive metal sheaths. All of the instruments had been discreetly examined by scanning beams and pronounced harmless before any contact had been allowed.

Across the central table, Sakh Mazechazz, of Lyra 8, leader and captain of the Survey stared red-eyed at his executive officer. Mazechazz resembled the delegation far more than he did his own officer, for he, too, had remotely reptilian forbears. Indeed he still sported a flexible tail and, save for his own orange and blue uniform, ablaze with precious stones, resembled nothing so much as a giant Terrestrial chameleon. The uniforms were no accident. Surveymen wore anything or nothing as the case called for it, and the Falsethsa admired bright colors, having few of their own and a good color sense. The gleaming jewels on Mazechazz’s uniform stressed his superiority in rank to Powers, as they were meant to.

Of the twenty Surveymen on board the Benefactor, Mazechazz and Powers were the only two who most resembled, in that order, the oxygenbreathing natives of Mureess. That automatically made them captain and executive officer of the Benefactor. The native population saw only the captain and executive officer of the ship, and only the council chamber. On a world of ammonia breathers, Mazechazz and Powers would have been invisible in their own part of the ship providing advice only to the Skorak of Marga 10, Lambdem, and perhaps Nyur of Antares-bi-12. If a suspicious native saw an entity with whom he could feel a remote relationship giving orders to a weirdlooking, far more, alien creature, a feeling of confidence might appear.

Since Mazechazz came from a planet of super-heated desert and scrub resembling the Karoo of South Africa, the resemblance could have been bettered, but it was well within the allowable limits set forth in the Inner Mandate. And in Galactic Psychology, every trick counted. For persuasion was the chief weapon of the Sirian Combine. Outright force was absolutely forbidden, save by the aforesaid vote of the council. Every weapon in the book of persuasion was used to bring intelligent races into the Combine, and persuasion is a thing of infinite variety.

As these thoughts flashed through Powers’ mind, he seated himself in a plain chair and adjusted the Universal Speaker to his mouth. Beside him, on a more elaborate chair, tailored to fit his tail, Mazechazz did the same, while the four Falsethsa seated themselves on low stools and took similar instruments from the oblong table which separated them from the two Surveymen. Deep in the bowels of the ship, a giant translator switched on, to simultaneously translate and record the mutually alien tongues as they were spoken. Adjustable extensions on the speakers brought the sound to the bone of the skull. For different life forms, different instruments would have been necessary and were provided for.

Mazechazz, as “captain,” opened the proceedings.

“Since this is our last session with you, we hope some fresh proposals have occurred to your honorable council during your absence,” hummed the speaker through Powers’ skull.

He who was designated First among, the council of Mureess answered.

“We have no new proposals, nor indeed had we ever any. Trade would be welcome, but we vitally need nothing you or your Combine have described, captain. We have all the minerals we need and the Great Mother—he meant the sea—provides food. We will soon go into space ourselves and meet as equals with you. We cannot tolerate what you call an observer,’ who seems to us a spy, and not subject to our laws by your own definition. That is all we have to say.”

That does it, thought Powers glumly. The cold—and entirely accurate—description of a Planetary representative of the Sirian Combine was the final clincher. The intensely proud and chauvinistic Falsethsa would tolerate no interference.

Mazechazz gave no indication that he had heard. He tried again.

“In addition to trade and education, general advancement of the populace,” murmured the mike, “have you considered defense?” He paused. “Not all races who travel in space are friendly. A few are starkly inimical, hating all other forms of life. Could you defend yourselves, Honorable Sirs, against such?”

It was obvious from the speed of the answer that the Council of Mureess had considered, if not anticipated this question. The second member spoke, an obvious pre-assignment.

“In all our long history, you are our first contact with star travelers. Yet we are not defenseless. The Great Mother contains not only food, fish and plants which we harvest, but many strong and terrible beasts. Very few are left to disturb us. In addition, the implications of your ship have not escaped us, and our scientists are even now adapting some of our atomic devices used in mining to other ends.” The voice contained a faint hint of pride as it ended. We got guns, too, buddy, it said, and we ain’t pushovers.

The First of the Council spoke again. “Let me be plain, Respected Star-farers. It seems obvious to us that you have learned most of what we represent as a council,-if not all. We are the heads of the Great Clans and we will not change. It hardly seems likely that you represent a society based on heredity if you include the diverse and nameless breeds of creature you have shown us on your screens. We do not want such an amalgam on our world causing unrest and disturbances of public order. Still less’ do we desire authoritarian interference with the ordered life we have developed. Your requests are one and severally refused. There will be no observer.’ Trade, regulated by us, will be welcome. Otherwise, should you choose not to be bound by our laws, we must respectfully and finally bid you farewell. When at some future date, we develop ships such as yours, we may reconsider.” The speaker paused, looked at his three confreres, who nodded silently. The First stared arrogantly at Mazechazz, and continued.

“Finally, we have decided to place a ban on further landings by aliens unless you are now prepared to negotiate a trade agreement on our terms!”

Powers thought frantically, his face motionless. This was defeat, stark and unequivocal. The parable he had in mind seemed indicated now or never. He turned to Sakh Mazechazz, and spoke.

“May I have your permission to address the Honored Council, Noble Captain?” he asked.

“Speak, First Officer,” said the Lyran, his gular pouches throbbing. His ruby eyes, to his associate, looked pained, as well they might.

“Let me pose a question, Honored Sirs,” said Powers. “Suppose that in your early history of creating your orderly realm you had discovered on one of your islands a race of Falsethsa as advanced and regulated as yourselves who wished nothing to do with you?” He could feel the alerted tension of the four as the golden eyes glowed at him.

“The implications of your question are obvious,” the First of the Council spoke, as coldly as ever. “Do you threaten us with force from your Combine devoted to peace?” The flat voice of the translator hummed with acquired and impossible violence which Powers knew to be subjective.

The First continued. “We would resist to the ultimate, down to the least of our young and the most helpless female weed cultivator! Do your worst!”

Powers sat back. He had done his best. The hereditary dictatorship of a united world had spoken. No democratic minority had ever raised its head here. The society of Mureess was stratified in a way ancient India never thought of being, down to refuse collectors of a thousand generations of dishonorable standing. Ancient Japan had been as rigidly exclusionist but there had been a progressive element there. Here there was nothing. Nothing that is, except a united world of coldly calculating and very advanced entities about to erupt into space with Heaven knew what weapons and a murderous arrogance and race pride to bolster them.

He thought of the dead orb called Sebelia, rolling around its worthless sun, an object of nausea to all life: And he had helped. Well, the boys in Biology had the ball now. He forced himself to listen to the First of Council as he bade Mazechazz a courteous farewell.

“Depart in harmony and peace, Honorable Star-farers. May your Great Mother be benign, when you return to give your high council our message on the far-distant worlds you have shown us in the sky.”

The Council departed, leaving Powers and Mazechazz staring at. each other in the council chamber, their gaudy uniforms looking a little dull and drab.

“Well, Sakh,” said Powers, his ruddy face a little flushed, “we can’t be perfect. They don’t know about spacewarps and instantaneous communicators. Plan II has nothing to do with us.”

“Beyond our recommendation, you mean,” said the Lyran flatly. “We have failed, William. This means death for thousands of innocent beings, perhaps more. Their world population is about eighty million, you know.”

There was silence in the room until Powers broke it again.

“Would you have Sebelia, Sakh,” he asked gently, “or Ruller I, Bellevan’s world, or Labath?” There was no answer to this and he knew it. There was only one alternative to a dead, burned-out, empty planet. Mureess was in the wrong stage of development, and it would have to be brought in line. The Sirian Combine had to, and would remove any intelligent unknown menace from a position from which it could threaten its Master plan of integrated peace. As they left the chamber, Powers said a silent prayer and touched the tiny Crescent and Star embroidered on his shirt pocket. At least, he thought, the planted ultra-wave communicators would be there when the Falsethsa needed them. He looked out of a corridor port at the gray and rolling sea. The Great Mother, he thought bitterly, benevolent and overflowing!

Traleres-124, female gardener, aged thirty-two cycles, hummed in a minor key as she harvested weed of the solstice crop, twelve miles off the northern islands. A rest period was due in the next cycle day, and she and her mate were ahead of quota which should make the supervisor give them a good holiday.

The tall weed swayed gently against her and several small fish darted past in fright. As the first heavy beat of the water struck against her slim body, she looked up. Frozen with horror, she released her container, but in forty feet of water, the monster caught her before she had moved a hundred yards.

As it fed, horribly, other grim shapes, attracted by the blood moved in from the distant murk of deeper water.

Savathake-er rode his one-man torpedo alertly as he probed the southern bay of Ramasarett. He was a scientist-12 and also a hereditary JOIN OUR GANG? hunter. If the giant fish, long since eliminated from the rest of the seas, were breeding in some secret area of the far and desolate southern rocks, it was his business to know it. No fish could catch his high-powered torpedo, while his electric spears packed a lethal jolt. Probably, he thought, a rumor of the poor fisher folk who worked the southern fringe areas. What else could you expect from such types, who had never even learned to read in a thousand cycles. Nevertheless, as he patrolled the sunken rocks, he was alert, scanning the water on all sides constantly for the great shape he sought, his skin alert for the first strange vibration. By neglecting the broken bottom, brown with laminaria and kelp, he missed the great, mottled tentacle which plucked him off his torpedo in a flash of movement, leaving the riderless craft to cruise aimlessly away into the distance.

“Your highness,” said the Supervisor Supreme, “we are helpless. We have never used metal nets, because we have never had to. Our fiber nets they slash to ribbons. They attack every species of food-fish from the Ursaa to the Krad. The breeding rate is fantastic, and now my equal who controls the mines says they are attacking the miners despite all the protection he can give them. They are not large, but in millions—”

“Cease your outcries,” said the First in Council, wearily, “and remove that animal from my writing desk. I have seen many pictures of it since they first appeared five cycles ago. It still looks alien and repulsive.”

They stared in silence at the shape that any high-school biology student of distant Terra could have identified in his sleep.

At. length, the First in Council dismissed the Supervisor of Fisheries and headed thoughtfully for an inner room of his palace. He knew at last the meaning of the strange metal communicating devices, discovered and confiscated after the star ship had departed, six cycles before. It was a simple machine to operate, and he guessed food could be sent incredibly quickly to his starving planet. Just as quickly as other things, he thought grimly. And we have to beg. Hah. Admission to the great peace-loving Combine, may the crabs devour them.

But he knew that he would send and that they would come.

“I was comparing the two reports, my friend,” said Mazechazz, ‘“but I am not so familiar with your planetary ecology as I should be. When Mureess applied for admission to the Combine, I requested a copy of their secret directive from Biology, but I had never seen the older report until you gave it to me just now. Can you explain the names to me, if I read them off?”

“Go ahead,” said Powers, sipping his sherbet noisily. He seldom wondered what alcohol would feel like any longer. Most Old Believers had tried it when young and disliked it. “I’ve already looked up the names I didn’t know,” he said, “so start the Mureessan list first.”

“Great White Shark, or Man-eater,” read Mazechazz. “He sounds obvious and nasty.”

“He is,” said Powers. He put down his glass. “Remember, as usual, the birth rate has been at least tripled. An increased metabolism means increased food consumption, and no shark on Terra was ever full. This brute runs forty feet when allowed, in size, that is. A giant carnivorous fish, very tough.”

“Number two is Architeuthis, or Giant Squid,” continued the Lyran. “Is that a fish? Sorry, but on my world, well, fish are curiosities.”

“It’s an eyed, carnivorous mollusk with enormous arms, ten of them and it reaches eighty feet long at least. Swims well, too.”

There was a moment of silence, then Mazechazz continued. “Smooth dogfish.”

“A tiny shark,” said Powers, “about three and a half feet in size. They school in thousands on Terra and eat anything that swims. Just a blind agile appetite. They have a high normal breeding rate.”

“Finally we have a Baleran Salamander, so you’re free of one curse, anyway. Balera, I believe, is hellishly wet, although I don’t know much about it.”

Powers rose and stretched. “He’s a little fellow with six legs and a leathery hide. A nuisance on Balera, which is the equivalent of a Terran swamp. He eats every vegetable known, dry or fresh, and, being only two inches long is hard to see. He doesn’t bite, just eats things and breeds. There must be millions by now, on each island of Mureess. Then the eggs get carried about. They’re tough and adhesive. You can guess what their warehouses looked like.”

“At least two million starved before the Council gave in,” resumed the Lyran sadly. “But they gave in all the way and abolished caste privilege before the first relief ship even arrived. They’ll be full members shortly. And this older report?”

“Read the names,” said Powers. He was staring out of the Club window at the stars. “They fed us our own dirt, because we hadn’t eliminated all our competitors. Disease means microorganisms, so you choose the largest animal possible with efficiency, that is. Just read the list. My grandparents died, you know, but it had to be done, or we’d have destroyed ourselves. The Combine was a far greater blessing to us than it ever was to Mureess, I can assure you of that!”

He listened in silence as the Lyran read.

“Desmodus, the vampire bat,
Rattus Norvegicus, the common
Mus Domesticus, the common mouse,
The Common Locust,
Sylvilagus, the Cottontail Rabbit,
Passer Domesticus, the House Sparrow,
Sturnus Vulgarus, the European Starling.”

Powers sat down and stared at his friend. “Terran life by comparison with many other worlds is terribly tough because we have so many different environments, I suppose. Hence its use on Mureess. Of course, the Combine increased breeding rates again, but adapting that bat to stand cold was the last straw,” he said. “The rest of them were all ready and waiting, but the bat was tropical. We’ll start with him. Desmodus is a small flying mammal about . . .

THE END

Such Stuff As Dreams . . .

The entrance exam for the mysterious Survey & Contact division didn’t take long—but it was a dilly, and everlasting as Death if you flubbed it!

Commander William Jahangir Powers had reached a point where he was more than simply bored and annoyed.

He was neither a fool, nor a person who lived solely for physical action. He was a combat veteran with a distinguished service record and at the age of thirty-six, a very good officer indeed. His opinion of himself was only fair, but he had never felt outclassed by too many of his fellows. Now, however, he was feeling extremely angry.

He looked around for the fiftieth time. The room in which he sat was small and contained a plain desk and chair, a drab sofa and a monotone rug. He had come in the only door visible in the gray wall and now had been sitting for an hour on the sofa. Across the room behind the desk, sat a fat, stupidlooking woman of about fifty, with gray hair tied up in a bun and a mottled complexion. She had a figure like a lard can and wore a smocklike dress of olive green, ill-suited to her complexion. She might have been from Earth and might not. Humanoids capable of interbreeding with Terrans had been found four times elsewhere, possibly due to independent evolution. No one knew. In any event, this one was slowly writing something by hand on a pad, and had not even looked up when he had come in. She had grunted a few words, waved at the sofa, and continued writing, as she was still doing.

Powers stretched and yawned. His trim black-and-silver uniform felt sticky, and he was unpleasantly warm. The temperature must be at least 85° Farenheit in the small office, and he wondered where he was and grew thoughtful. Survey & Contact had a strange reputation among the regular services and did little by accident. He decided to mention it—the heat.

“Always this hot in here, Madam?”

An opaque, beady gaze lifted from the desk and focused on him. A nasal whine answered.

“Survey & Contact maintains perfect temperature control throughout Headquarters. We cannot be continually annoyed and questioned by visitors if any work is to be done.” With that, the woman resumed her slow progress with the scriber, paying Powers no further attention.

Feeling silly at having spoken, he examined his wristchron—2:00 p.m., local time. He had been in the office almost two hours, waiting and doing nothing.

When the order to report to Survey & Contact Headquarters had appeared on his desk early that same morning, he had been processing some routine requests for equipment. The official summons was blunt and directed him to be at the entrance—which entrance was not stated—at 11:45 a.m. When he had finished reading it, he suddenly realized that it was already 10:00 a.m., local time, and also that he had no idea where on Sirius Prime Base the Survey front office was located. He examined the summons and found it had no directions on it and also no time or date of dispatch, which for an official document was unusual, to say the least. To add to his annoyance, as he stared at the thin sheet of buff paper, it began to dissolve before his astonished eyes. In two seconds a little dust was the only evidence that any such document had appeared on his desk!

All at once, the strange nature of Survey & Contact had again struck him. He had never met a Survey man or other being, and knew of no one else who had, either. All the rest of the services had an awesome respect for the branch, but no one seemed to know much about it. It was supposed to be open to any serving officer or enlisted man, but aside from the idea that it both contacted new races and functioned as a super intelligence net, little detail was really grasped by the rest of the galaxy. He could not remember when the idea of applying had first entered his mind, but the mystery was certainly in itself a factor.

Survey & Contact recruited humans and nonhumans as well. Everyone knew that a being capable of serving in Survey & Contact category was the absolute top, but it was still almost impossible to find out anything concrete about the corps. A veil of silence existed about its operations and makeup.

Intrigued and curious, Powers had patiently begun to amass a file of his findings about Survey, commencing the day he had first formally applied for entry, and a strange file it was. He had first transcribed every service rumor he had ever heard about Survey accomplishments, and then gone looking for more solid material. All his recent leaves had been spent in archives and dusty libraries. The interstellar newspaper files had been combed for any item, however fragmentary. And service files to which he had regular access were also scanned, as far as his rank would carry him without direct authorization from above.

The picture which had emerged made the strangeness of Survey & Contact both more interesting and more baffling than ever. Their personnel were paid triple service standard, for one thing! Secretive though the branch might be, this item had to be published in the annual appropriations of the Unified Services.

Public interest was obviously minimized and diverted by someone. News stories often said little more than that a new world had been visited or opened to trade by Survey & Contact. Gradually, as Powers’ interest grew, he realized that entities, human and otherwise, of the Division must be located everywhere, all through the services and in civilian life as well. But the anonymity was fantastic.

Omnipresent, but invisible, Survey & Contact seemed to be all about, had a hand in everything, but was never seen or even acknowledged, except in the sparsest and least-revealing way. Further, Survey & Contact apparently seemed to have its own ships, bases and equipment. No one ever seemed to have seen any of these either, or at least would acknowledge it. A whole new world!

Within his own service, Powers had heard, on good authority, of at least three major crises in which battle fleets had been held ready. They were never needed. “S. & C. got in first” was the story in each case. The crises had simply evaporated and the fleets had then been taken off the standby list. Powers had friends in the regular intelligence outfits, but on questioning, they knew less than he.

Powers’ ultimate decision to join was based not only on what he had learned of the extraordinary work of the Mystery Division, but also on his own increasing boredom. A bachelor, with each increase in rank, his desk grew fuller and his planet-side duty longer. His personal initiative and drive seemed to him to grow lazier as well. At the time when the Survey legend began to grow upon his mind, he was actually thinking of leaving the Space Force and looking for a more exciting civilian career, if only to stop the walls of routine closing in. The less he could find out about Survey, the more attractive the idea had become, until finally it had assumed the force of nothing less than a compulsion.

His own application for the Division had been made over a Galac year earlier. Since then, he had continued his duties as a commander, Sirian Combine Space Force, without any real hint as to what had become of the request. But official forms had begun to appear on his desk at Sirius Prime, where he was serving a hitch at Grand Base Communications, and he had dutifully filled them out. They were mostly psychological questionnaires and almost all had been meaningless, at least to him. All had borne the magic title of Survey & Contact on their covers however, and so he had doggedly persisted.

One had ordered him to write an essay about the joys of dying of thirst! “Stress the appeal and pleasure of water deprivation,” the form said. Another asked him how—in two thousand words or less—he would explain a new color to someone who had not seen it. Still another stated that he must imagine he was the survivor of an aerial disaster on his own planet, Terra, and that he had managed to save a two-month old baby. He and his charge had parachuted to an uninhabited island in the Tropics. A list of the plant and animal life on and around the island was attached. Problem—in a thousand words or less—how to feed the baby.

The endless questions and tests, which seemed to have no clear, discernible reason behind them, had finally begun to get him down. Only the fact that they all emanated from the legendary Survey & Contact Division had made him persevere, giving them the fullest and best attention of which he was capable. Somewhere, he forced himself to believe, a picture must be building up of his personality, brains, and all other attributes, and these bizarre exams and essays were just more steps on the road. He simply had to assume this.

Thus, when he had stared at the dust of the vanishing message on his desk, he got two new ideas. One, he was suddenly and absolutely sure that the summons was genuine, and two, that it would never be either confirmed or repeated. The disappearing paper was one little touch of mystery, maybe to simply pique his curiosity, perhaps yet another test of some kind. At any rate, it had to be pursued at once.

Powers had moved quickly in the next hour, very quickly indeed. He had called for directions through the Command Center, asking for the planetary location of Survey & Contact Headquarters. The stupidest clerk he had ever encountered had taken twenty minutes to find and report the location, which then turned out to be on the far side of the same continent which housed Command Division. Raging with impatience, Powers had ordered a special, one-man jet sled, and this also had been unaccountably delayed.

Using the highest speed possible, he had been exactly three minutes late when he braked down on a deserted landing strip near a quiet, blue arm of the ocean. Behind the strip rose a bulging, blobby gray building which seemed to have no basic design at all, and which showed no visible windows or doors. However, as Powers got out of the sled and narrowed his eyes against the sunlight, a figure appeared around a corner of the building, and moved slowly out to meet him.

As a commander in the Combine Navy, Powers had seen some strange members of the military services, but this specimen was outstanding. As he came to a leisurely halt in front of Powers, he brought a hand up in a sloppy salute.

He was a tall, powerfully-built, blond man in the green uniform of a sergeant, Special Landing Forces, and appeared to be a Terran. His insignia was tarnished, his boots dirty, and he needed a shave, the yellow stubble showing through a tanned skin. His whole posture was casual and insulting. He said nothing, just stood and blinked sleepily.

Keeping his temper barely under control, Powers returned the salute.

“At ease, Sergeant . . . if you aren’t already. Is this place Survey & Contact, or an abandoned supply dump?”

“This is it,” said the tall one lazily. “You got orders here?”

“Call me ‘Sir,’ ” blared Powers. “I am Commander William Powers, and the orders were . . . well, they were verbal. Now brace up and take me inside before I get those stripes yanked off and charge you with being insolent as well as dirty and unshaven on duty.”

The sergeant gulped and straightened up a little. “Sorry, Sir, I haven’t had any field duty for a long time. Guess you get out of practice, huh, Sir? You got any luggage I can carry, Sir?”

Powers stared coldly at the man, but could read nothing in his eyes except stupidity and fright. How could Survey & Contact have an eight ball like this around to welcome visitors, he wondered? He merely waved toward the building and they set off across the dusty landing strip, the sergeant in front.

The N.C.O. marched straight to an apparently blank wall and leaned on it. Silently, a door appeared, a black rectangular opening in the gray smoothness. The sergeant stood to one side and indicated that Powers precede him. It was not until Powers was in the corridor beyond that he realized the door behind him was closing. As he spun around, he heard a malicious cackle from outside.

“You’re a hell of an officer. Three minutes late, yet!”

Then the door shut, as silently as it had opened. There was no knob or button on the inside.

Fuming, but also deciding to waste no more time, Powers had walked forward along a dimly-lit corridor, blank, gray walls revealing no opening. After about a mile of meaningless curves, all appearing the same, and passing nothing but a thousand atomo bulbs in the metal ceiling, he had suddenly emerged into the office in which he now sat. And had been sitting. And sitting . . .

The sour-faced prune behind the desk had spoken exactly twice, the first time when he came raging through the door.

“Commander Powers?” she had whined in Universal. “You are late. Please sit down and do not disturb me. I have work to do.” The second time had been when he had commented on the heat.

Inwardly, he continued to seethe. The whole day so far had been one foul-up after another. Nothing had gone right from the moment he had received the message in his office. And now, after months of filling out gibberish forms and tests devised by lunatics calling themselves psychologists, he had finally cracked the portals of the fabulous Survey & Contact Branch. Hah! A madhouse staffed by rejects and morons! The minute someone in. authority appeared he would politely ask the way out, leave and withdraw his application for Survey Service.

As he brooded over the wasted time and energy he had expended, a dull ache in his midsection reminded him that he needed lunch. He decided to check the time again and examined his wristchron. It still said 2:00 p.m. Annoyed, he held it to his ear. The thin hum of the atom battery was silent. Stopped! Sweet suffering epaullets! He had put in a new battery only two months before and they were good for three years! One more stinking item to add to a wasted day.

Across the now stifling room, the elderly woman continued to slowly scrawl on her pad. Powers decided that she had one of the most unpleasant faces he had ever seen. As he studied it for the fiftieth time, he suddenly thought it looked not only revolting but strangely familiar. Where in the cosmos could he have seen her before? Whatever the memory was, it evaded him, and he stared at the featureless brown wall again, determined not to speak. By God, if they wanted to annoy him, he would not be annoyed. An officer of the Senior Service had more control than that. He began to formulate abstract math problems in his head, his eyes fixed and unseeing.

At some indeterminate time later, Powers suddenly tensed, every sense alert. He was a graduate of the Lyran Nerve Training School, and his body had unmistakably sounded a subtle warning. It took a split second to identify what his system was being alerted against, and this was too long for him to take action or hold his breath. Sleep gas! Subtly it had filtered into the room and he was already going under. His last memory before he lost consciousness was one of surprise, because his eyes registered the flabby hag across the room writing steadily away, obviously unaffected. Then he passed out.

When he woke, it was with full consciousness of what had occurred, and he came to his feet with a rush, only to relax. He was in the same office as before, overheated, bare walls and desk, nothing changed. He was still hungry, sweating and irritated, but now had a headache as well. Then his eyes steadied on the figure behind the desk and he grew alert again.

A short, fat man with a long, droopy nose, again presumably Terran like himself, was smiling at him. The man was bald, looked about sixty years old and wore a featureless coverall of gray. Two scribers were clipped to his pocket, but nothing else gave a clue to his position in life. Powers studied the face in front of him and felt repelled. In lean, hard condition himself, the sight of the bloated body disgusted him and so did the oleaginous smile which was fixed on the sweating, jowled face.

The man spoke, using Slavang, the language of Terra, fluently, but with a guttural and unpleasant accent. Powers noticed that the smile never reached the cold, black eyes and readied himself again, sitting down as he did so and trying to appear at ease.

“I have a few questions, Commander,” the man said. “Please answer them promptly and don’t waste my time being indignant. You asked to be here, you know, we didn’t send for you. You applied for Survey & Contact voluntarily.” There was nothing pleasant about the thick, grating voice or the words, but the meaningless smile never left the fat countenance.

Powers gasped audibly because the other’s statement had taken the wind out of his sails. His protest and request to withdraw his application died stillborn. After all, he had volunteered. Steadying himself, he nodded, incapable of calm speech.

With no more preamble, the fat man began a stream of brutally personal questions, noting the answers on a pad in front of him.

Did Powers like women? Sexually? What other ways? Was he sexually attracted to men? Had he ever been? Which women had he been attracted to? Where? Under what circumstances? How? What forms of love-making did he prefer? Had he experimented with women of other races than his own Caucasoid strain? With men? With creatures of other races? From other worlds? Did he go to joy houses? Alone?

Bill Powers was a healthy, and perfectly normal male, a bachelor, but no celibate. The stream of questions began to really disgust him, as they passed from personal to prurient, from clinical to obscene, while all the time the fat smile and the jet eyes never wavered. Biting his lip, Powers managed to contain himself, although barely, and continued his increasingly terse answers. Just when he felt that his patience was about to snap completely the questions stopped. The fat man folded his notebook pad and tucked it into a side pocket. Then he rubbed his fleshy hands together and placed them on the desk, before addressing Powers.

Do you still wish to continue your application for Survey & Contact, Commander? If so, I must tell you that you are in mortal danger.”

Hungry, hot, furious and baffled, Powers stared back at the cold eyes. Despite his intense irritation, he was conscious suddenly that he was being told the exact truth. The greasy smile had disappeared from his interrogator’s face and the short figure had assumed both a menace and a dignity it had not previously possessed. The annoying accent was still present, but the voice was unmistakably sincere.

Powers thought hard for a moment. “Can I ask what you mean?” he said.

“You may ask, indeed,” said the fat man. “My answer may not satisfy you. The next step in interrogation is a test, but a physical test—a survival test. I can give you no details whatsoever about it, but I can say this. Failure is lethal. Every member, real member, or Field Agent, of Survey & Contact, excluding hired help, has passed it. If you choose, you may return, as of this minute to your normal duties, and your regular service. There will be no mark on your record. You may become a Fleet Admiral and a very good one. But your application file for this branch will be closed and never reopened.” He paused and then continued.

“There is one final point. The records of those who have failed this next test are also closed. Failure in this test, you see, means death. The percentage of failures is 37.9. I can allow you, by Survey & Contact regulations, our private regulations, exactly three minutes for a decision.”

The words rang hollowly in the small room. 37.9! Failure is death! Powers thought desperately. This was insane. Get out of here quickly and forget the whole business. No one but a madman would consider such a lethal proposal. He looked up and heard the fat man speaking.

“All failures die. They are marked as dying in the line of duty. A full pension is paid to any person or persons designated.”

Powers stared at the floor again, his strong hands clenching and opening convulsively. This was the end of the line. To hell with courage. Get out now, Powers!

He looked up and met the fat man’s stare evenly, conscious even as he did so that breakfast might have been his last meal.

“I’ll do it,” he said flatly. “Do I sign anything, any release?”

He thought he detected a flicker of something, possibly respect in the jet eyes, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Not necessary,” was the answer. “The service regulations cover it. The test starts—now!”

Powers felt the Sleep gas hit again, but as he went under he knew surprise, for he could hear the fat man still talking, this time with no accent at all.

“Good luck, Son, and remember—never give up . . . never!”

Then all faded out again and was gone.

As he came awake, he was conscious of two things, the light and coolness. As he opened his eyes, a third, an up-and-down motion, was added to the other sensations. Finally, the fact that he was dripping wet was brought home to him with a vengeance as his head was suddenly buried in water, which made him choke. Fighting clear of it into the air, he spat out the liquid, finding that it was salt and bitter-tasting as well, and sat up, staring about him.

He was sitting on a tiny raft, a crude thing, low and awash in the water. Made of a few logs, loosely lashed together with what looked like vegetable fibers, the raft rode soggily on a dirty-looking sea. The ropes holding it together looked frayed and creaked audibly as the waves lifted the raft.

The water was dark and scummy-looking and the waves were mild. Overhead, a cloudy, brown sky hid the sun, but enough dim light came through so that Powers could see fairly well in every direction.

Looking down, he saw that he was almost naked, wearing only issue cloth shorts and a belt. He was barefoot. From the belt hung a short, heavy dagger, and he slipped the two-edged blade out of its metal sheath with satisfaction, testing its sharpness on his thumb.

Then he stood up, balancing carefully on the two center logs of the four-log raft, and slowly turning his head. He could see nothing in any direction but one, save water. About a mile away, a rocky island rose out of the ocean, its sides sheer and menacing. No other object broke the limited horizon. A black structure which looked artificial and not natural crowned the island’s height.

Sitting down, Powers drew his knife and cut off a tiny piece of wood from one of the logs. The wood was soft, waterlogged almost, but would still float. Throwing the chip over the side, he resheathed the knife and watched the movement of the piece of wood with one eye, while estimating the distance to the island with the other.

At the same time his mind was racing furiously. He assumed automatically that he had been knocked out by the Sleep gas, put in deep freeze and dumped on an alien Planet. Unless, of course, he was in some monstrous environmental testing lab maintained by Survey & Contact for the purpose. This latter was possible though unlikely, from the sheer amount of space involved.

He checked the wood chip until ’t was out of sight and tried to estimate his speed. He was drifting at about one knot on a current right for the island, which was almost certainly no accident. Looking up, he could see it clearly in the gray light, even from a sitting position, and decided the raft would bring him to shore in about two hours, if nothing changed.

A faint drizzle, imperceptible almost as a mist, began to fall, but, although his exposed skin felt chilly, he was not acutely uncomfortable. The ocean, or whatever it was, seemed about 72° Farenheit and the air perhaps 10° cooler. He could survive a long time under such conditions. He was conscious of mild thirst but it was only mild, and the fact that he had missed lunch could be dismissed also. He might have been in deep freeze a month or ten seconds but he felt perfectly fit.

Keeping an eye on the island, already perceptibly closer, he began a careful examination of the raft. All the survival courses he had ever taken had stressed utilization of whatever unlikely materials were available. He could hear the instructor now at Grand Base O.C.S. during the castaway’s course.

“Beings, remember! Examine and catalog what is available at once! If an emergency strikes, there will be no time!”

So far, nylon shorts and belt, metal buckle, seven-inch, two-edged knife, its metal sheath clipped to the belt, plus a sagging raft.

Just how sagging, he soon discovered. It was breaking up. The lashings as he had thought, were tattered bits of some plant fiber rope, and very few were still holding. Even as he watched, a section snapped, worn out by time and hard usage, and a log drifted away. The raft was only minutes away from dissolution with three logs left.

He thought quickly. Where in the universe could he be? Was that grimy-looking ocean dangerous? Although it tasted unpleasant, the flavor was more that of a dirty tide pool than something poisonous. But if harmless, what lived in it? It looked capable of concealing anything, and for the first time a thrill of fear ran through him. He could die on this test: almost half the applicants had, according to the fat man.

Another fiber parted and the two logs supporting Powers’ weight began to come apart at one end of the raft. At the same time paralysis seized him, numbing his muscles and sapping his nerve to the breaking point in a split second.

Out of the gentle curve of a wave, black and shining, a high, pointed fin had appeared mysteriously, no more than a few yards from the left side of the disintegrating raft. It stood at least a yard out of the water, the droplets gleaming from its smooth surface and then subsided as silently as it had come, leaving a man gaping at the dark water, frozen with a fear so stark and awful that his heart had almost stopped beating.

As a boy, Powers had been taken on a vacation to the South Pacific by his parents, to Rarotonga, and while swimming one day he had seen a native of the island seized and devoured by a huge Tiger shark, the clear water revealing every nasty detail. He never had got over it, and while not afraid of water, had never gone swimming alone since, nor entered any but clear, cold water, and fenced at that, if in an ocean. Now all the horrors rushed back and the screams of the long-dead native beat again upon his eardrums. He must be on Terra, some lost backwater of his own planet, and in front of him cruised a monster capable of shredding him apart in one bite.

But it was only for a second that he was bereft of control. A lifetime’s arduous training and discipline overrode the panic, and he began to function as a reasoning being once more. He felt self-contempt wash out much of the fear.

A quick glance showed that the raft was almost gone. The two former center logs were tightly secured only at one end, by a loose strand in the middle where he crouched, and not at all at the other end behind him. He drew his knife, holding it blade up and looked at the island.

It now lay between one half and one quarter mile away. And for the first time he could see the black object which sprawled upon its peak. And this confirmed his decision. He was on Earth, on Terra itself. For before him, plainly visible, towered an ancient house, huge, colored in grays and blacks, with peaked roofs and chimneys and what looked like a myriad, black, gaping windows, staring out over the misty ocean.

Even as Powers fixed the identity of the house in his mind, the logs beneath him began to move apart. There was no delaying the decision, and while a tiny part of his mind still cowered in fear, shrieking “you’ll be killed,” it was overridden by his will.

He dived cleanly into the black water, and struck out for the island, using a side stroke which allowed him to keep his knife in his right hand.

As he rose on the first gentle wave, his stroke faltered. Two waves away, directly ahead and between him and the island, rose the towering dorsal fin. Now it had risen clear out of the water, and a six-foot length of shining black skin showed the back of whatever carried it.

But Powers had been driven too far by will, and in any case, could not now turn back if he wished. He had no place to go and knew it, except forward. He continued to stroke smoothly, straight for the island and the fin, too, although that had silently vanished again. His body seemed one giant nerve ending, keyed up to the surge of water against his skin which would give a useless warning of the monster’s rush. But his knife was ready as ever, and he was prepared at least to leave a gash on its hide. A wave broke gently over his head, filling his open mouth with the taste of the water, salty and unpleasant, but his steady stroke never varied. On and on he went, numbing his imagination, swimming steadily and slowly for what seemed eternity.

And suddenly, he was there. His feet scraped bottom, and, hardly able to believe it, he staggered ashore on to a pebbled beach under the towering face of rock, and fell on the hard stones, his knees giving way from the strain and his heart pounding with relief.

It was at least five minutes, he estimated, before he could sit up. The prospect before him was not inviting, but at least he was on dry land and unharmed.

He was on a tiny beach, about ten yards long by eight deep, surrounded on all sides by walls of bleak, granitelike stone. No seaweed or shells lay on the margin to mark a tideline, and further back, no plants of any sort grew. He got up and began to examine his landing place carefully, noting absently that the light seemed to be decreasing. It must be evening, but the low cloud bank hid any trace of stars or sun, and the light was not that of a normal evening, anyway. His belief that he had been transported to Terra wavered for a moment, while he searched the desolate shingle for a clue as to where he might be.

The house! All at once the great house on the headland came back into his mind. He must be right below it. Even if it were empty, there would at least be shelter, and possibly food and water. There ought to be water at any rate.

Gloomily he studied the bleak walls of his temporary prison. The damp rock did not even have lichen growing on it. There was no other sign of life on the shore. He looked out to sea, but the visibility was far lower than when he had arrived. It was not night, but a gloomy dusk which now covered the waters.

Once again he circumnavigated the grim little beach, this time looking for footholds on the cliff. Above the center of the shingle, at its broadest point, the black face of the frowning rock actually leaned out, casting a deeper shadow, but at no place, even on the sides, was there a trace of footing. He found a small pool of water at one place, apparent seepage from the dank stones above, but it was evil-smelling and undrinkable.

This left the beach. Carefully, he waded out to the right-hand edge, holding on to the cliff as he did so. Where the cliff ended, his probing foot went down and he drew back hastily. He still could not see around the cliff. Looking out to sea again, he suddenly saw the great, black fin. It lay, almost motionless in the gentle swell, about fifteen yards off shore, a silent sentinel.

Shuddering involuntarily, he stepped quickly back on the beach and sat down. A gentle breeze had come up and the misty rain still fell, but the wind was barely audible and the regular plash of the tiny waves on the shingle was the only sound he could hear.

Sound! Perhaps the strange house was not empty! Springing up as the thought came to him, Powers yelled, funneling his hands around his mouth. Three times he bellowed, “Help,” and then stood waiting, his ears straining. After a minute’s silence, he tried again, and again stood listening.

This time he felt sure he heard something, but the answer was neither what he was expecting, nor was it reassuring.

From far above him there seemed to quaver for an instant a brief, high sound, somewhere between a wail and a shriek. It only lasted a moment, rising to an almost inaudible tremolo, and then abruptly ceased, so that Powers was left wondering if he had really heard anything at all. In the end, he decided that he had, but also that he could derive little comfort from the sound. Whatever made it did not have human vocal chords, and there had been an element of want and hunger in the keening cry which had impressed itself most thoroughly in the stiff hairs on the back of his skull. Something strange, eerie and halfremembered had come into his mind, leaving him momentarily shaken and nerveless.

He stood for a moment, arms rigidly folded, cursing the Survey & Contact Division under his breath and adding a final epithet for himself and his own stupidity in volunteering. Then, once again, he rallied and began to review the known facts he had to work with.

He was marooned on a rocky island, and there was an odd old-fashioned house. The house looked Terran, but the sea around the island tasted weird. Still, there was a monster shark offshore. But was it a shark? Other planets produced remarkably similar adaptations. Powers was neither a biologist nor an ecologist but he had done a lot of reading and he had seen similar life forms listed from several other worlds beside Earth. And now, there was that chilling sound his shouting had evoked from the clifftop. Some deep-buried memory, perhaps ancestral in nature, told him plainly that the sound he had heard was never produced by anything that walked on Earth. And yet there was that haunting sense of familiarity. Where was he?

Abruptly dismissing further speculation as profitless, he walked over to the left-hand end of the beach and began to wade out, as he had done earlier on the other side. The sheer cliff of the island came down just as sharply here, but to his delight he could wade around the corner of the cliff in no more than a foot or two of murky water.

Peering cautiously around the elbow of rock, he found he could see about a dozen yards clearly. There was no corresponding beach on the other side, but at first glance there appeared to be a slight inward angle to the cliff face, offering possible hand-holds for climbing.

Ever so carefully, keeping his left hand on the rock, he waded out, shuffling his naked feet, so as not to step into a pothole, or a sudden dropoff into deep water. He glanced once out to sea, but this time there was no sign of the fin.

About twenty feet along from the corner of the bay, he found what he was looking for. A narrow crack angled up the cliff on a steep, but not impossible, slant and, moreover, the cliff drew back a little, so that peering up, he could see the dark line which marked its top, even now through the brown and baffling dusk.

He decided to take one more precaution and waded inch by inch out into the water directly in front of the crack. As he expected, it deepened within two yards. Satisfied, he waded back to the base of the crack. If he became stuck higher up on his climb, he could at least leap out into the sea and try to make the little bay again by swimming.

Then he stood breathing deeply for a moment and said a silent prayer. At length, he began to climb. He did not like climbing heights and never had. In fact he dreaded it, but he was in good condition and his nerves were under rigid control. Keeping his face to the wall and looking up, not down, he made slow but steady progress. He had learned the basic elements of climbing long before in various survival schools, and he was surprised how easily they returned when needed from the depths of his memory. At one point a considerable distance above the sea, the crack widened suddenly into a narrow chimney, and he braced himself on both sides automatically, going up like an inchworm.

He felt the strain of unused muscles only slightly, but it was a relief to discover a small ledge fifty feet up the chimney on which he could sit and take a breather. The ledge had room only for his buttocks and his legs hung over the drop, but he could rest his back and relax, at least momentarily.

Looking out over the strange sea, he felt a chill, not of his skin, but from deep inside. What was this uncanny place? The light had faded even more, and although the fine rain had now stopped, the visibility was still dropping. And yet it was not a true night, but rather a dark, gloomy evening, which nevertheless maintained some odd, diffused source of light, never entirely absent. The wind had risen until it was audible as a faint moan, which added to the increasing unease in Powers’ mind. He was conscious of a feeling of forlornness, of being hopelessly lost and adrift, which he had never felt before, and against which he had to continually brace himself if he were to keep going.

He gathered his feet under him on the ledge and got set to resume his progress up the cleft. Looking up, he saw with some surprise that the cliff edge was not very far away. He looked down briefly and estimated that he must have climbed at least two hundred feet, and now had another eighty or so to go. A brief wave of nausea made him turn quickly away to his task and he started to climb again.

Now he looked neither up nor down. Despite his rest on the ledge, he was becoming tired and he didn’t dare use up any reserves of nervous energy getting frightened by heights. He just climbed, feeling for handholds and levering himself up in a steady, undeviating motion. The wind ruffled his hair, bringing no coolness, but rather a nasty feeling of delicate fingers probing for him, and its soughing on the damp rocks seemed to have a malignant note.

The clifftop came as a shock. His outflung arm, searching vainly for a new grip, encountered nothingness and a brief spasm of panic struck him before he looked up and saw the line of the top only a foot above his head, dark against the lighter sky. Drawing on a last store of energy, he gave a mighty heave and snapped his body over the top in one motion, to lie gasping on the moist ground. He lay face down, panting, the sweat pouring from his body, dead to everything but the need to rest.

When his starved lungs had finally fulfilled their need for air and his overstrained muscles stopped their spasmodic twitching, he sat up and stared about him, now cold again from congealed perspiration.

He was lying on the cliff’s edge, at the bottom of a gentle slope. A yard from his position, a verge of brownish, tussocky grass led into a tangled mass of shrubbery and bushlike vegetation, with here and there a low tree, all tossing in the rising wind, their colors a variety of duns and brownish shades.

Rising out of the scrub and wood, about a half mile away, was the house he had seen from the sea, an enormous structure of peaked and crenellated roofs, broken chimneys and countless windows, black pits of emptiness in the gray walls.

As he stared at it, he saw that flecks of reddish light now played here and there over both the building and the surrounding foliage, and looking up, saw a vast dim, red moon had appeared, partly veiled by flying murk and cloud. It gave little light, and only added a mottled effect to the landscape, which was unpleasant enough anyway. The view now appeared both spectral and unclean, in some manner which disturbed the inner part of his being. The moon was far larger than that of Terra, but blank and featureless where the surface showed.

Looking at the house once again, Powers felt a tug of memory. Somewhere, he had a feeling, he had seen it before, and in some connection he did not like to recall. The feeling was momentary and he suppressed it quickly. Whatever the place looked like, he had to have shelter, for as the sweat cooled on his skin, he was aware of an icy chill which penetrated to his bones, and at the same time, thirst, not a severe problem until now, made itself felt as a sharp pang.

He stood up and unsheathing his knife stepped on to the edge of the shaggy grass. His bare feet, which were now sore from many small cuts, registered that it felt greasy and unpleasant, but it seemed to contain no thorns or brambles. In only a few steps he had crossed it and entered the shadow of the shrubbery. For as he entered it, he had realized that this was the correct word. He was in the ruins of some mighty garden or estate, surrounding the huge and apparently empty house like a barrier to keep out intruders. A few more cautious steps confirmed this view. He could not identify the low, wind tossed bushes around him or the larger trees that jutted up from their midst, but the whole appearance of the place was unmistakable.

As he stared about him in the strange half-light, he began to pick out overgrown paths, heavy with rank grass here and there through the bushes. In one place through the trees a faint gleam flickered momentarily as lighter than the rest, and seemed to speak of stone. As the identification registered on his forebrain, so, too, did his now acute thirst. Gardens should contain fountains, which meant stonework.

Stumbling slightly over the longer grass stems, he headed in the direction of the faint gleam. He found a dim, overgrown path which led that way, although winding here and there through the dark vegetation. Soon he emerged in an open space, and there, sure enough, was water.

It was a dark, round pool, perhaps twenty feet across, oily and repellent in aspect, backed by the broken wall of whitish stone, which he had seen in the distance. Patches of some bloated weed lay here and there on the still surface. The slimy, light brown roots of some water plant sprawled on the edge and spilled up and over into the rank grass which surrounded the verge.

Still, it was water and presumably fresh, and he now badly needed water. Crouching, one wary eye on the house, which now lay much closer and to his right front, he left the bushes and moved toward the nearest part of the silent pool.

As he did so, a strange and terrible thing happened. The fat, ropy tendrils of ochre weed which he had seen lying on the brink of the stonework lifted suddenly and began to wave and oscillate in the air, like monstrous feelers trying to grasp some unimaginable prey.

He was no more than a yard or two from the water when it happened, but drew back convulsively to the edge of the bushes, and numb, stared at the thick dancing tentacles which whipped and vibrated all around the edge of the pool to a height of six feet. He had never seen a more disgusting sight, and he felt almost physically sick. Even as he watched, the movements began to slowly die down, until in a few moments the pool was once more still under the evil rusty moonlight, as calm as when he had first appeared.

He stood a moment more in concentrated thought. Whether animal or plant, the evil-looking guardian of the pool had clearly been somehow alerted by his approach. To try and get a drink from the water now would be madness, particularly since he had only a knife.

What particularly annoyed him, even more than his painful thirst, was his own fright. Since waking from the Sleep gas, he had been conscious of recurrent waves of fear passing through his system. Although he had mastered them and gone on, over one menace and obstacle to yet another, they were still surging against his inner being. As he raised his eyes to the great house, frowning above him, the fear returned again, so strongly that his body shook as if with an ague.

His mind fought the fear back, and he held his fist out stiffly until its trembling subsided and the dagger point ceased to waver. Helping him muster strength was a renewed feeling of rage, rage at Survey & Contact for dumping a man in this ghastly place and using the forces of some unknown area as a trap for an almost defenseless man.

Once again he started for the house. Skirting the neighborhood of the uncanny pool, he kept in the shadow of the trees and moved around the water in a wide circle. Although he watched carefully, he could not see any movement from the strange inhabitant which lurked there.

On the far side of the open space, he found, as he had expected, a continuation of the path which had brought him thus far. The tussocky grass was now knee-high, but the opening was unmistakable, and pointed straight up the slope toward the house.

As he entered the gap in the trees, the wind rose from a moan to a shriek, and glancing up, he saw the moon clearly, with only a few racing scuds of cloud to shield it. Then he knew that it was no moon he had ever seen before. It was not only a far larger orb, but the sickly red of its light was an actual color he had never before glimpsed.

Looking down again, he moved steadily on down the lane of windswept trees. He was not on Terra, but on something alien, some lost planet. But then, the house! How had that come here? Even as he pondered it, it appeared before him.

Clearly delineated in the moonlight, now grown brighter, it stood, less than a hundred yards away, across another belt of brown grass. The trees thinned back on both sides and so far as he could see, approached the place nowhere closer than the distance which separated him from the walls.

He had not realized the sheer bulk of the huge, stone building or its countless convolutions until now. It had four rows of windows in the main body, which was directly in front of him, but wings led off on both sides and innumerable towers, separate roofs and chimneys broke the outline. Here and there, small balconies and walks with black doorways behind them broke the outline of the walls. The place could have housed an army, he thought and realized that if it had ever done so it had been long ago. For the house walls were crumbling, piles of rock and rubble marking where weaker parts had long ago crashed to ruin. Holes were visible in the slanted main roof, and many of the chimneys were gaunt fingers of stone with two or three sides missing. Windows here and there were irregular in outline, as if etched out of their true shape by time’s acid. And over all brooded a feeling of age, desolation and decay.

And more, of menace. As Powers swept the vast building with his gaze, he was suddenly and sharply aware of that. The monstrous pile might be crumbling and falling to the ground, but there was life somewhere about, inimical life, horrible in purpose. His brain, sent this message by some subtle chemistry of the body, filed and accepted the fact, and he steeled himself for an encounter, crouching to earth under a low shrub as he did so.

And suddenly he saw something. To his left, where a wing of the house extended beyond his vision, in one place a walk had been built into an angle of the building, at the highest level of windows and doors, just before the peaked roof actually started to rise. A crumbling stone balustrade marked the line of the walk along a fifty-yard stretch of the wall. His eyes, alerted by a half-seen flicker of movement, switched left and centered on the walkway.

Along it, at speed, came a great dark shape, moving at a lumbering yet fluid pace. It was hard to see details, but before the body passed from sight into a dark doorway further down the balcony, Powers had received several impressions.

One was of size. The thing he had seen was at least the size of a Terran bear, and not unlike it in outline and movement. But the head, in the one glimpse he had caught, was rounded and without visible ears. It had seemed to move on all fours, but he had an ugly and innate feeling that it could move on two almost as easily.

The total impression given him was one of mind-chilling stealth and ferocity, schooled into his brain by previous encounters with alien forms of life on a dozen worlds. Nowhere had he seen anything like this, and yet he knew it was dangerous, hideously dangerous, on the instant.

All these sensations flooded into his mind in a split second. Even as they were recorded, his ears were assailed by a cry, coming from behind him in the dark and tangled wilds of the forlorn and abandoned garden. It was, he realized instantly, the same noise he had heard when calling for help at the foot of the cliff, a shrieking wail, rising above the wind and dying away in a high, piercing tremolo. But it was now far louder and nearer. As he crouched, numbed by a new terror, it sounded again, closer still.

With the simultaneous realization that it must be on his track, Powers darted from cover, his limbs galvanized by desperation. Better the house and its lurking occupant than meeting the author of that horrid sound in the open. In the house, he had a chance at least to take cover. He raced for the building, momentarily not knowing or caring what might be hidden there, and hurled himself through an open ground floor window head first in a spaceman’s roll. He hit with a thud on a stone floor, the breath driven out of his body, but still clutching the knife in the ready position.

Sparked by adrenalin, he staggered to his feet and peered out of one corner of the window, hoping to gain a view of whatever was following him. As he tried to muffle his gasps for breath and quiet his twitching nerves, he raked the space in front of the windows with his eyes. But only the tossing bushes in which he had recently sheltered, swaying in the wind, met his gaze. Under the fitful light of the red moon, the lank grasses waved undisturbed. Of whatever made that uncanny wail, no trace presented itself.

He swung back into the room of a sudden, damning himself internally for a careless fool. As he peered from the window, anything might have stolen upon him from the inner doorway of the small chamber in which he found himself. It was solid stone, walls, floor, ceiling, with no trace of any furnishings, the floor only faintly dusty. A man-sized doorway opened on to dimness beyond, but no door was in evidence.

Moving silently, but with every nerve thrilling, Powers went to the opening and peered into the dark beyond. His eyes were now well-accustomed to the poor light, and he found that he could see clearly.

The small room gave upon a long, high corridor, unlit except for patches of lessened dimness marking other doors. In both directions it ran away into darkness, but one glimpse off to the right gave him a flash of hope. This was a gap in the corridor wall which looked like the base of a stair.

Once more checking the corridor for sound or movement, and finding neither, he gripped the knife firmly and ventured out of the room, moving slowly along to the right, every muscle taut as a wire.

Underfoot, the stone felt slimy and cold, but it was smooth and well-worn, presenting no obstacle to silent movement.

He passed the doorways of several rooms, four of them lit by the moonlight outside, to his right, and two on the inner wall, dark as tombs. In each case he braced himself for a sudden assault from one of the openings as he passed, but nothing happened and he soon found himself at the foot of the stair which he had hoped for before starting.

It was narrow, also of stone and seemed perfectly sound. It wound in a tight spiral and pausing at the foot, he tried to see up. He listened, to the point of straining his eardrums.

No sound broke the silence but the faint noise of the wind, outside, now muffled by the house walls. But another sense, one long-used, screamed “Beware” in his mind, and he continued to stand frozen while his tired and overwrought brain sought to identify it.

It was—scent! Musky, abominable and mephitic, a strange odor hung about the stairway. It was not strong, as if whatever had made it had not been present recently, but it was not stale either.

Powers had no doubt what the origin was and felt the panic rising to the surface again. The black bulk he had seen on the upper stories of the house had been here, and could use the stair.

He began to mount, testing each worn and greasy step and finding it firm beneath his sore feet. He nerved himself as he passed the small landing of the second floor, but heard and saw nothing. He went on.

Nothing happened at the third floor either, but he had no trouble realizing that his passage might still have been marked by a silent listener. Narrow windows, set high in the wall of the stairwell, gave some light, but he could not see out of them and could only continue his progress. He was acutely sensitive to each minute scuff of his feet on the smooth steps, his own breathing, which he fought to keep even and the noise of the wind outside, as it hummed around the house.

He arrived at the fourth landing, and far down inside his being, felt better. Some heritage from treedwelling ancestors made heights seem safer, he mused to himself, even as he stood waiting and listening.

The stairs climbed no higher. One doorway opened off the landing, just as in the ground floor, a rectangle of blackness. He tried to catch the elusive and acrid odor he had detected earlier, but it was gone. Gripping his knife, he passed through the doorway and found himself in another corridor.

This one appeared even longer than the one on the ground floor of the house, and it was far better lit. Not only were there windows admitting the rays of the red moon, but breaks in the roof were numerous as well, and the passage had piles of rubble here and there on its floor. The noise of the wind seemed suddenly louder, almost a yell as it raced through the many openings and surged down the length of the whole building.

For no particular reason, Powers turned right rather than left and began a slow reconnaissance of the corridor, watching for any place that might provide at least a temporary shelter, in which he could hide until daybreak. If there is such a thing as day in this place, said his weary mind.

He passed a doorway on his right, no different from any other, when he halted suddenly and spun back. There had been an actual door, and his tired brain had failed to register it. It was hung on great metal hinges and stood solidly, a great, unadorned mass of a seeming black wood, opening on the room or inward side. There was no bolt or lock.

He checked the corridor again, saw and heard nothing and then moved quickly into the room. Unlike the other he had seen, it was not completely empty. Several large timbers, fragments of old beams, lay scattered on the floor, and a large wooden chest, minus its top, stood in one corner, under the window.

Powers summoned his last reserves of energy and by sheer strength managed to close the heavy door on its harshly grating hinges. The noise he made terrified him but there was no help for it. Dragging over the largest fragment of beam, he made a sturdy brace against it, and then sat down, facing the window and the moonlight. He noted idly, while listening, that a small hatch was set in one wall, the left, which might communicate with some forgotten pantry and that it seemed to have something dark like rotted velvet stuffed back in its recesses. A vague unease about the texture of what he had noted in passing made him look back again. And this time he saw movement where the material had been.

Into the room, slowly and with infinite caution there came a hand. It was five fingered and each huge finger was tipped with a polished claw. The hand and the colossal arm behind it were furred in black, closelying pelage, which he had mistaken for velvet. It moved slowly and stealthily in his direction, already as long as his leg and twice as big around. With it came a wave of the foul and sickening odor.

Frozen momentarily, he saw his error. The hatch he had seen was actually a connecting window to the next room and he had awakened what was lying there when he moved the beams and braced the door.

A great gust of fury awakened in his exhausted body. Just when he had found a shelter, some hideous thing sought to devour him! Within a bare second of his moment of discovery, he sprang across the room and with his knife, slashed at the groping black limb, aiming at the inner elbow, and hoping to sever a tendon.

The arm jerked back like lightning, and simultaneously, he was almost deafened by a scream of rage and pain which shook him physically with its sheer volume.

He leaped back, alert, his gaze fixed on the little window and saw, framed in its square, filling it from side to side, the visage which guided the arm.

The face was twice the size of a man’s and rather like that of a colossal cat. Black fur covered it to the blunt, naked muzzle, which was damp and wet. The eyes were huge, red and lambent, with vertical, black pupils, and he could just see tiny, upright ears on the sides of the great head. The wide, lipless mouth opened and again he was deafened by that awful cry, even as he saw the terrible teeth, a row of razor-sharp carnassials. The stench of the brute filled the room like a fog, but as he poised, ready for further battle, he saw with satisfaction that dark drops and pools on the floor showed his own power. He waited, tired but alert, for the monster’s next move, his eyes fixed on that dreadful face.

As he waited for the next attack, the beast screamed again. But the cry was different, higher and wailing, even though it still left the man shaking from sheer vibration. And all the time, the strange eyes never left him, their stare of concentrated malignancy seeming to will him to remain, to freeze there and never move.

And even as that thought crossed his mind, a faint sound from outside came to his ears through the window, and he knew the bitter taste of his own folly. He had ignored all the warnings, the scream in the garden as he entered the house, the almost simultaneous shape on the balcony that he had watched, and now the familiar wailing howl from the wounded animal, followed by the scrape of claws outside. The balcony ran outside this very room, and there were two hunters, not one!

All this flashed through his mind as he was moving. The beast in the next room could never get through the connecting window. All he had to do was stay out of its reach. He dropped his knife and spinning to the old chest he had noted in the far corner, lidless and battered, he stooped and with a convulsive effort raised it from the ground. Half hurling and half pushing it, he aimed it straight at the outer window and his timing could not have been better, although it was largely luck.

As the second hideous head rose to the window level, preparing to scramble in, a hundred pounds of ancient but solid wood struck it squarely with all the force a tired but powerful and desperate man could put behind it.

A massive crunch was followed by an awful, choked-off snarl and scrabbling sounds and then the window was clear again. From far below came the sound of something heavy hitting the ground with a squashy impact.

Powers had fallen to his knees, and, still on them, turned to face his original enemy. But the small connecting window was also empty. Must get up, he thought, and find that knife. But he could not rise. And the room was getting darker, much darker. His strong body was at last betraying him, when he needed it most, giving way to all the physical effort that had been demanded of it, giving way to the hours of fear and tension, the lack of food and water. The other one will come in the window, said his mind: fight! Once more he tried to rise and do battle and actually managed to totter erect, even as the room went completely black and he knew that he was falling forward. He never even felt the floor as he hit.

Which, under the circumstances, was not really too surprising.

“He’s coming out now,” said a voice. “The last shot should do it. Keep his arm immobilized as long as that tube is in it. Twenty more units of Adrenergon before his balance is built up again.”

Powers was aware of being alive and comfortable even before opening his eyes. He felt tired. But pleasantly so, and cool and clean as well. Something soft covered his recumbent body and a pleasant odor, fresh and bracing, was in the air he breathed. Stretching ever so slightly, still only partly awake, he felt his right arm immobilized and the feeling brought all his memories back in a wave, causing him to try to sit up, his eyes open with shock.

“Easy, easy, Commander.” A firm hand on his chest and another on his left shoulder kept him from moving. A tall, blond man of his own age was smiling down at him, his arms restraining any movement. Powers blinked stupidly at him and then stared past him at the others in the large room. All present, but one, wore white coveralls.

A short, elderly man with an aquiline, clean-shaven face and a stubble of cropped, gray hair stood grinning at the foot of Powers’ bed. Next to him, also smiling pleasantly, was a handsome gray-haired woman. And lounging against the far wall was the tall figure of a Lyran, wearing service Blacks with no insignia, his great goggling eyes fixed oddly on Powers’ face, his greenish tail curled neatly around one leg, making his race look even more than usual like monstrous parodies of Terrestrial chameleons.

Powers lay back under his white sheet, idly noting the bustle of a group of human technicians, farther back still, who were moving some massive equipment from the room on silent wheels. He also noted the tube inserted in his arm and leading to a hospital intravenous feeding unit.

“O.K.,” said the blond man who had been holding him down. “Stay quiet, don’t move and you can talk. We’re here to answer questions. But let me say one thing first. You graduated.”

A sense of lassitude almost stopped Powers from answering, but he was too curious.

“Where was it? What planet was I on?”

The older man at the bed’s foot answered. “No one will ever land there, or ever has, Commander. You are its first, last and only inhabitant and always will be.”

“That’s impossible,” said Powers. “How did you get me there? How did you get me away? And what about those black demons and the . . .” He stopped, because all those in the room were smiling except the Lyran who could not, and he was emitting the leaking-kettle noise which passed for laughter with his race. A light began to gleam in Powers’ eyes and his mind started to race furiously. He was in a hospital. Had he ever left it?

“He’s getting it,” said the woman. “Let’s put him out of his misery quickly. Commander, you have spent six Galac hours, no more, battling the deadliest dangers, the most vicious adversaries in the galaxy, as well as surmounting the worst obstacles known to man. But none of us can ever really go where you have gone, see what you have seen or do what you have done.

“You see,” she continued pleasantly, “You have fought monsters of your own creating, battled difficulties existing only in your own imagination, dredged from the worst horrors of your subconscious fears and dreads. You have never left this building, never moved a muscle in actuality, except to tense one occasionally.” She paused.

“I’ll take over,” the older man said. “Ever see the clown who was just holding you, Commander?”

Powers glanced at the tall, blond man, then shook his head. This would take a whole lot of time to sort out.

“Think of him in a dirty uniform, unshaven and with Landing Force insignia.”

Powers stared again, then smiled in recognition.

“Yes, I remember. He met my flier at the building. Why?”

“Annoyed you, didn’t he?” was the question.

“Yes, he did. So did that hag in the office and that toadstool of a psychiatrist. Again why? What does it prove?”

This time he flushed when he saw them all grinning.

“Yes,” smiled the woman. “I’m the hag. Dr. Anna Fradkin at your service. We’re rather good at disguise around here. I was made up as a grade-school teacher you once had and whom you loathed. Pretty good research, eh? The ex-sergeant, very ex, is Inspector Jared Morgan of the Terran Criminal Police. Sakh Mazzechaz of Lyra Seven is against the wall. And our toadstool psychiatrist with the disgusting interest in sex is at the foot of your bed. Galac Rear Admiral Dulip Singh, to be formal.”

Powers could only gape at this point, but the smiling flag officer helped ease his bewilderment.

“Look, Powers, relax. You are now, and only now, a Galac Field Agent of Survey & Contact. You’ve passed the final tests. There’s a lot more to learn but it’s school work, although some of it can be rough.

“Survey & Contact has a very small corps. Human and nonhuman, and we’re a minority, there are only about three thousand Field Agents. Not many for a galaxy, largely unexplored, eh?

“You’ve been tested for over a year. Your mail has been read, your messages, oral and written, monitored. You’ve been spied on, checked, watched and studied. Those forms and tests you filled out were like the one seventeenth or whatever of an iceberg that appears above water. We know you pretty well. Frankly, we planted the original idea of joining us in a thousand, subtle ways. We do it all the time, although most never get here at all. We are always looking for new people. The good ones are scarce.

“If we had found anything we didn’t like, you’d never have joined. It would have been harmless, but you would have lost interest. We have some pretty good psych people, too. Survey & Contact still would be a mystery to you, and not an interesting one at that.

“All right, we had brought you to a certain point. We could go no farther. The final test was devised by . . . well, never mind, some day you’ll learn, if you live that long.

“Anyway, this morning was it. Disappearing messages, late fliers, no lunch, endless waiting, a busted chron, dirty, unkempt sergeants, nasty prying about sex, alternate jolts of gas, we arranged all of it. Getting a picture? Then, bingo, a threat of death and you’re out like a light again. You’re strapped in, the electronics wizards connect their gadgets, and you’re on your own. In the worst possible place you can think of. The bottom of your own subconscious dread, fighting the demon world of your own Id! You see, a world, even a universe, that you loathe and fear can be induced, forced to appear in your mind.

“Don’t ask me how it’s done. That’s not my area. You may have a leaning that way yourself. If so, we’ll find it. But to get back to the point, you were on a ghastly world filled with childhood fear symbols, half-remembered ghost stories, everything you personally were afraid of, most afraid of, I should say—like that house. A search of your early childhood on Terra disclosed that you had to pass one on your way to school, an empty, old, ‘haunted’ house that looked like that, and it must have scared Hell out of you so you brought it back. We could follow you on some of it by means of instruments, but you’ll have to tell us the rest later. We need the data for our files.

“At any rate, we had you, irritated, tired, enraged, frustrated, and—keyed up to the highest nervous pitch, which is the only point to all the petty irritations, we had you on, or in as I said, this awful place. You had to fight or go under. Now get this. Those statistics I gave you back in the office were absolutely truthful. You could have been killed. A lot of good men and women have been. So have many other entities. Some minds simply cannot take what they call up out of their own depths. It’s the last, ultimate test for a flaw. If you can keep coming, never stop, and never let up, against the worst in your own subconscious, you can’t be stopped by anything. Killed, physically, of course, but not stopped.” He paused. “Any questions?”

Powers felt numbed and overwhelmed by what he had heard, but he still had things to ask.

“What happens now, Sir, about my regular service, I mean?”

“You’ll be transferred, probably to Supply & Requisitions. And be promoted steadily in grade. We have no rank, only assignments. Today you obey me. Tomorrow—the reverse. You may make admiral, but I doubt it. Too impetuous.

“And then you’ll go to school. Our school. And go to work. But no one will ever know. What else?”

“Well, the gentle being from Lyra, has he something special to say to me?”

“Oh, him.” Admiral Singh turned and winked at Mazzechaz, who politely snapped a nictitating membrane in a return gesture.

“Seems he wants you for a partner. He liked your total profile in our files. We all have them, partners, that is, to begin with, sometimes permanently. Don’t know what he saw in you, myself. More?”

Powers sat up and stared at the faces around him. It all seemed unbelievable, but it must be true.

“Is this graduation, Sir?”

“All you’ll ever get, Son. Now we’ll clear out, let you get some rest. Oh, yes, one more thing.” The admiral assumed a rigid posture, a deadpan expression.

“Do you still want to join?”

Powers was awfully tired, but he managed to rise to the occasion.

“Hell, yes, it beats work, I guess.”

There was a long silence from all those around the bed and then the tall Lyran spoke for the first time, in a sibilant whisper.

“Welcome, Brother.”

Whose Short Happy Life?

Here is a story about a hunting party that includes a couple of real hunters and one indoor type. If there’s anything worse for a nonhunter than being dragged along on a hunting trip, it’s surely to accompany a party that is in search of dangerous game; after all, a guy can get killed . . .

PERSONALLY SPEAKING, I DON’T kill animals for fun. I don’t mind people hunting, but I get no pleasure out of it. Not even of watching it. Why not stay in civilization, a nice quiet bar say, with a friendly young thing as company? But I had no choice.

“We’re going hunting,” the Boss says, just like that. I like my job so I say, “Fine, lovely, what fun,” and all that. I like the Boss, mind you, a really great guy, one of the best. Aside from this silly hunting and the wife situation, he’s a chap I really admire. Wives? Well, this tramp was the fourth. Half his age and completely, but utterly no good. Just like all the rest, I might add. The Boss is rich but he’d be a lot richer if he didn’t feel he had to marry them. The joke is, after he marries them, they despise him. Can’t stand him, cheat on him practically in public, laugh at him until he has to get rid of them. And then go find a new one just like the others.

Well, I knew what this was all about. This latest tramp was beginning to laugh. So we were going into one of the Reserves to show how brave and virile the Boss still was. I ask you! A good lay on with a leather strap once a week and he’d have had a happy married life forever. Instead, he has to look for real danger, and include me, who wants no part of it.

“You cheer me up,” he says. “Those stories of yours are going to make this the best trip yet. I don’t know why I never thought of bringing you before. You’re a natural around the camp fire.”

I shudder. How much is the job worth? Will this go on every time he splits up? Ugh. I steel myself.

I’ll try it once, anyway, before I am forced to quit and find other employment.

If you like wild country, grass and sunlight (who likes that, I ask you), trees and birds and all that junk, I guess you might like the Reserves. We went to the one in the north of Ssgurrland and picked up our guide and vehicles and the guns. There was even one of those for me. It made me cold to look at it. I wondered if I could avoid carrying it, maybe pretend my arm was hurt. I figured that I’d blow my foot off if I ever had to use it.

The guide was terrible, one of those hams you see in the Tridees, all whiskers and muscles, about twice as big as he had to be. I felt small and insignificant beside him. No one was watching me, however. But I could see the Boss’s wife giving this bum a fast once-over. And compared to him the Boss looked kind of old and grizzled. It made me mad. I knew what he’d done in the last war as a youngster. Had a lot of medals he never talked about and one of his old servants told me, or I’d never have known. He was twice the hero this brawny oaf would ever be, but the tramp would be in this guy’s sack just as inevitably as the Sun went down.

Well, we swore all the Government oaths about never allowing an Escape, even if we died to prevent it. I can tell you, it made me feel creepy. To me the whole thing belonged on a Tridee screen, not for real. People were killed doing what we were. All the time it makes the papers. I still don’t know why I didn’t quit right then.

Anyway, I signed all the releases, next of kin, all that garbage, and then we went out and climbed in the Kombat Kamper. Some car. Armor and two turrets with sealed ports yet. Just the thing to make you relax. The glass on the ports was thicker than the armor.

The gate guard opened the three gates, one at a time, and we rolled into the Reserve. I knew there were cannon and gas guns trained on us as the last gate opened, in case there was a planned rush. That had happened once or twice in the past, I knew from reading up on the history of the Reserves. It was considered the real danger point.

To be honest, as long as I’m on the subject, I don’t really see why we have to have the Reserves anyway. I’m not going to pretend I think it’s a good idea, and don’t kid yourself. I felt exactly the same way before I went in, and I’m not lying. I saw a Tridee program once, something on the Ed-Yu channel, where this big whisker of a skull tapper explained the whole thing. According to him, we all have a guilt complex and that’s why the Reserves. I thought it over and so did some of the other guys in the bar, and well, we decided it was all crazy. Look, it was them or us, see? A war over the whole world, that lasted over twenty years. A war of extermination, that’s the way I learned it in school. No quarter, no prisoners, no truce.

So as far as I care, you could clean out every Reserve there is and eliminate all of them, which is what they tried to do to us.

To get back to my thrilling tale of adventure, we saw nothing but a few deer and some birds that night. Nobody was packing laser blast rifles for things like that. For what the Boss was paying, you wanted only the Big Stuff.

We slept the day through behind the high voltage, portable stockade the guide and his two flunkies set up. He made out that he wouldn’t have used it if it weren’t the law. What a phoney! The Boss didn’t say much, but the tramp ate it up with the “Oh how brave you must be” routine. Enough to make you choke. I slept as well as I could, and we woke at dusk.

We had to listen to a lot of nothing from the guide while we ate out breakfast. All about trails and patterns and how he knew their habits and would put us in a position where even dopes like us couldn’t miss. The Boss finally had enough and said sharply that this was his eighth hunt. That shut the clown up, because any one who will go into a Reserve that often is a real hunter. The fact is, the Reserves get even the guides down. The danger is too real and the feeling of being watched too constant. You just can’t shake five thousand years of heredity that easy, and anyone that says you can is a liar.

We packed up and moved out in the Kamper as evening began to blur the details. I felt better without the glare of the Sun, but not so much better I wouldn’t have led a run for the nearest gate at the drop of a suggestion. No one made it.

After about an hour, nice and dark out, the guide tells the driver, who is one of his flunkies, to stop. Then he turns to the Boss and says, “I have been watching this area for some time. No recent hunts or sweeps here have turned up any traces. The gate people think there may be a combined movement going on here and asked me to check it. But I, ah, must warn you that it will be very risky if there is anything. If you wish, you can stay here in the vehicle, while alone I blah, blah blah.” Finally, he ran down.

“Let’s go,” says the Boss, grabbing his gun. “You coming?” he says to me.

“Right you are,” I say, grabbing my gun, just like in the Tridees. I get to the door before I realize what I’m doing, and by then it’s too late to back out. Then I hear the tramp yacking it up. Oh no! Oh yes! She wants to come. After all she has her gun, just like we do. She pulls out all the charm, leans all over the guide and the Boss and finally uses the ultimate argument.

“If that little poop can go, it ought to be safe enough for an infant in arms.” You get one guess whom she is pointing at. When the Boss looks at me in a calculating way and says OK, I really get angry. But what can I do?

We start off in a fan formation, guide on the extreme left, Boss on die extreme right. In the middle, me and the tramp, all of us about fifty paces apart. We carry our guns at the ready, and nobody talks, not even bigmouth, the guide. I remember everything I ever read in school about Them, and I guess the others feel the same way.

Pretty soon, I see the guide stop. He hand signals us to stop too and points ahead a way. It takes me a minute, but finally I see that we are close to a boundary fence, and that’s what he is pointing at.

At his signal, we move along the fence, but not next to it, I can tell you. Those fences are loaded! Get too close and you are hit by every automatic weapon ever invented, plus mines and lasers, all firing in a random set up.

We had come maybe a thousand paces along the fence and about a hundred out from it, when I see the Boss tense up and stop. We all stop, even the tramp, and he points at something ahead of us in a grove of trees. All I see is a bunch of trees with no leaf on them, but I find out later on that its the framework for a giant catapult, which is almost complete. The Boss signals with his free hand for the guide to join him. And then the fun starts.

The guide decides he will be a hero and waves us back while he goes forward alone. As if this idiocy isn’t enough, the tramp follows him! What she has in mind no one will ever know, but I’ll bet it’s nothing more than some scheme to humiliate the Boss.

Then all hell starts. There’s a scream like you never heard from the tramp, and something vast and dark rises out of the ground in front of us. In one easy motion the guide is hammered into the earth like a tent peg. Another giant limb sweeps the tramp up and away and I hear her hit a tree with a crunch. All of this takes seconds. I am frozen stiff.

But not the Boss! He may be old and a little fat, but you can’t change a real fighting veteran.

He shoots his rifle into the middle of that colossus as cool as if it were a target. And he’s been thinking too, not just acting on reflex. As the red flash of the laser zeroes in on the monster, the Boss is running towards me, shouting. Even before the beast begins to scream in its giant voice, I can hear the Boss.

“It’s an escape! We have to get back and warn them! Stay with me and we’ll cover each other!”

Well, you know, even I got a medal. The guide and the tramp got a posthumous citation apiece. What a farce that was. Because the only one of the whole outfit who deserved it was the Boss.

We know now that it was the most dangerous attempt ever discovered. They had a working catapult, rigged it at night, assembled the pieces and set it up to shoot a number of Them over the fence. Crazy! And so were the enormous parachutes made of animal hide chewed fine. So half of them get killed getting over, maybe two thirds even.

Would you want to meet one of the ones that didn’t, one of the ones that got into the mountains and couldn’t be found until it, or they, dug up some old weapons stores, buried since the war two hundred years ago? Maybe atomic weapons? Makes you think doesn’t it?

Who knows what the Boss saved?

Personally, I remember almost nothing. The Boss and I ran back toward the Kombat Kamper. He knew where to go, I didn’t. I just did what he told me.

“Shoot left!” He’d shout, and by God there would be one of Them, rising out of the bushes, those great paws spread out to grab. And I’d shoot. The fiery streak of the laser would hit the middle and the awful stink of burnt meat would come at once. Sometimes they screamed, a terrible howl; the volume alone would split your ear drums. Mostly though, they died quiet. And that shows you. That takes training, discipline. They were willing to die that way in the hope of not alerting the others, our two drivers and roustabouts back at the Kamper.

It all seems like a nightmare still, us running and ducking, shooting and dodging. Only an old counterpuncher like the Boss could have got us through, and even he says we’re lucky to be alive. If it had been just a tiny bit farther to the Kamper, our blaster charges would have run out. There was the luck, I guess. Hitting the escape attempt on target like that was luck too, of course.

The two techs finally heard something and got the perimeter lights on. When one of them spotted us and saw what we were shooting at, he got into the top turret and started the flame cannon going over our heads. By that time we needed help. Just as we made the perimeter, one of them made a last try. He had a stone-headed club twice as long as I’m tall, and he brought it down in a long, looping slice at my head. Thanks to the Boss, I’m still alive. His shot caught the brute just as it swung. As you can see, it cut right through die fur on my head, grazed the top of my right ear and finally took off the last third of my tail.

Pain? Hell, I was in shock! I didn’t feel any pain. You won’t believe this, but as I stood there looking down at that naked monster lying dead there, what I felt was pity. Yes sir, pity. Those huge things had almost finished us off once, if you can believe the books. And now all they had were clubs, and we had the whole planet that they’d tamed for us. We had all the knowledge, the cities, the whole culture. All they had was the Reserves and clubs made of stone.

That’s why I felt pity.

Of course when I learned how close they’d come to getting out, after we’d radioed the guards and the planes had come, the copters and hover craft and all, why I lost the pity. That was just a bit too close for comfort. The old slogan about “even a cornered man will fight” wouldn’t leave my thoughts.

That’s why I want the Reserves abolished. Soft-heartedness could mean we’d be right back where we started, and you know where that was.

In a hole.

Soldier Key

Sterling Lanier (WHOSE SHORT HAPPY LIFE? March 1968) has politely responded to our nagging requests for biographical information as follows: “Age 40. Married, one two-year old son. Have been a soldier (two enlistments), anthropologist and an editor. My current professions are those of writer and sculptor, the latter mostly of animals, miniatures done in bronze, silver and gold.” Mr. Lanier’s latest story is the first of several good ones we have on hand concerning the adventures of Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, who did not eat crab. And for good reason.

EVERYONE IN THE CLUB, EVEN those who disliked him, agreed that Brigadier (“not Brigadier General, please”) Donald Ffellowes. R.A., ret., could tell a good yarn when he chose. He seemed to have been in the British Army, the Colonial Police and M.I.-5 as well at one time or another, and to have served all over the globe.

People who loathed him and the English generally, said all his tales were lies, that he was a remittance man, and that his gift for incredible stories was a direct inheritance from Sir John Mandeville, the medieval rumormonger. Still, even those who denounced his stories the most loudly never left once he started of them. If Ffellowes was a liar, he was an awfully good one.

Mason Williams, who was one of those who resented Ffellowes as both British and overbearing, had instantly ordered stone crab when he saw it on the club’s lunch menu. Of the eight others present at the big table that day, only one besides Williams had ever had stone crab, but we all decided to try it, that is, except Ffellowes.

“No, thank you,” he repeated coldly, “I’ll have the sweetbreads. I don’t eat crab or any crustacean, for that matter. I used to love it,” he went on, “in fact I ate crab, lobster, langouste, crawfish and shrimp with the best of you at one time. Until 1934 to be exact. An unpleasant and perhaps peculiar set of circumstances caused me to stop. Perhaps you would care to hear why?

“Now, I couldn’t get it past my mouth, and if I did I couldn’t swallow it. You see, something happened . . .

His voice trailed away into silence, and we could all see that his thoughts were elsewhere. He stared at the snowy tablecloth for a moment and then looked up with an apologetic smile. We waited, and not even Williams seemed anxious to interrupt.

“I’ve never told anyone about this, but I suppose I ought, really. It’s a quite unbelievable story, and not a very nice one. Yet, if you’d like to hear it?” he queried again.

An instant chorus of affirmation rose from around the table. We were all men who had traveled and seen at least something of life, but none of our tales ever matched what we extracted from Ffellowes at long intervals.

“Wait until after dinner,” was all he would say. “I need a good meal under my belt and some coffee and a cigar before this one.”

The rest of us looked at one another rather like boys who have been promised a treat, as indeed we had. Williams grunted something, but made no objection. His denunciations of the British always came after Ffellowes’ stories, I noticed.

When we were settled in our leather chairs in an alcove of the huge library, with cigars drawing and coffee and brandy beside us, Ffellowes began.

“Did any of you ever sail the Caribbean in the pre-War period? I don’t mean on a cruise ship, although that’s fun. I mean actually sailed, in a small boat or yacht, touching here and there, calling at ports when you felt like it and then moving on? If not, you’ve missed something.

“The dawns were fantastic and the sunsets better. The food from the galley, fresh fish we’d caught ourselves usually, was superb, and the salt got into our skin, baked there by the sun.

“Islands rose up out of the sea, sometimes green and mountainous like Jamaica, sometimes low and hidden by mangroves and reefs like the Caymans or Inagua.

“We called at funny little ports and gave drinks to local officials who came aboard and got tight and friendly and told us astonishing scandals and implausible state secrets, and finally staggered off, swearing eternal friendship.

“And then at dawn, we hoisted anchor, set sail and checked our charts, and off we went to see what was over the next horizon, because there was always another island.”

He paused and sipped his coffee, while we waited in silence.

“I had three months leave on half pay at the time due to a mix-up; so Joe Chapin and I (he’s dead a long time, poor fellow, killed at Kohima) chartered an island schooner at Nassau and hired two colored men to help us work her and cook. They were from Barbados and wanted to get back there, and that suited us. Badians are good seamen and good men, too. One, the older, was called Maxton, the other, Oswald, and I’ve forgotten their last names. We told them to call us Joe and Don, but it was always “Mistah Don, Sah’ to me, and “Cap’n’ to Joe, because he was officially captain on the papers.

“Well, we sailed along south for a month or so, calling here and there, picking up news and having fun at this port or that, until we got to Basse-Terre on Gualdeloupe. We were ashore having a few rums in the bar with the port officials when we first heard of Soldier Key.

“Any of you ever hear of it? Well, you won’t now because it’s gone. The people are anyway. The big hurriance of 1935 smashed it more than flat, and I’m told the few people left were moved by the British government. I checked up later on and found they went first to Dominica and then elsewhere, but there weren’t many left.

“At any rate, the French customs officer we were drinking with suggested we look in at Soldier Key if we wanted an unusual, what you call offbeat’, place to visit.

“ ‘Messieurs,’ he told us, “this is a very strange place. You will not, I think, call twice, because few do, but I do not think you will be bored. These people are British like yourselves, and yet the island has no British official in residence, which is odd. They have an agreement with the government of Dominica that they govern themselves. Twice a year comes an inspection, but otherwise they are alone, with none to disturb them. Curious, is it not?’

“We agreed it sounded mildly strange, but asked why we should bother going at all?’

“ ‘As to that,’ he said, “you must suit yourselves. But you English always seek new things, and this place is a strange one. The people are, how you say it, forgot by everyone. They trade little, selling only langouste (the spiny lobster) and the meat of green turtle. They are good seamen, but they call at few ports and avoid other fishing boats. For some reason, they never sell the turtle shell, although they could catch all the shell turtles they wish. I cannot tell you more, except I once called there for water when on a cruise and the place made me feel discomfortable.’ He paused and tried to convey what he meant. “Look, these Key of the Soldier people all belong to one church, not mine or yours either. To them, all who are not of this communion are damned eternally, and when they look at you, you feel they wish to speed the process. A funny place, Messieurs, but interesting.’

“ ‘He finished his rum and stood up to go. “And another thing, Messieurs,’ he said, “all people of color dislike this place, and there are none of them who live there. Again, interesting, eh? Why not try it? You may be amused.’

“Well, after we got back to the boat, we hauled out our charts and looked for Soldier Key. It was there all right, but it was quite easy to see how one could miss it. It lay about two days sail West by Northwest of Dominica, and it looked like a pretty small place indeed. The copy of the Mariners Guide we had wasn’t really new, and it gave the population as five hundred (approximately) with exports limited to lobster and imports nil. A footnote said it was settled in 1881 by the Church of the New Revelation. This, of course, must be the church to which our little customs official had been referring, but I’d never heard of it, nor had Joe. Still, there are millions of sects all over the place; so that meant nothing, really.

“Finally, before we turned in, Joe had an idea. Tm certain someone has some reference books in town,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a dekko tomorrow morning, first thing, shall I?’

“Well, he did, and about noon, when I was considering the day’s first drink in the same waterfront bar as the night before, he came in with a small volume, very worn-looking, in his hand.

“Took at this,’ he said, ‘I found it in the local library; been there forever, I should think.’

“What he had in his hand was a slim, black book, written in English, cheaply bound and very tattered, with brown pages crumbling at the edges. It was dated London, 1864, and was written by someone who called himself, the Opener of the Gate, Brother A. Poole. The title of the book was The New Revelation Revealed to the Elect,

“ ‘One of those island people must have left it here on their way through,’ I said, ‘or perhaps some fisherman lost it. Have you looked at it?’

“We read it aloud in turn, as much as we could stand, that is, because it was heavy going, and it was really a very boring book. A good bit of it came from Revelation and also the nastier bits of the Old Testament, and practically all of it was aimed at warning Those Who Transgressed.

“But there were stranger parts of it, based apparently on Darwin, of all people, and even some Jeremy Bentham. All in all, a weirder hodgepodge was never assembled, even by your Aimee Semple McPherson or our own Muggletonians.

“The final summing up of the hundred pages or so, was a caution, or rather summons, to the Faithful, to withdraw from the world to a Secluded Spot at the first opportunity. Judging from what we had heard, Soldier Key was the Secluded Spot.

“ ‘It would be fascinating to find out what a gang like this has done in seventy years of isolation, don’t you think?’ said Joe. I agreed. It sounded like giving a new twist to our trip.

“Well, we weighed anchor that afternoon; after a farewell drink with our customs friend, and his last words intrigued us still more.

“ ‘Have you any weapons on board?’

“I answered that we had a shark rifle, a .30-30 Winchester carbine, and a Colt .45 automatic pistol.

“ ‘Good. I think less well today than I did last night of having directed you to this place. There are strange rumors among les Noirs of Soldier Key. Send me a card from your next port, as a favor, eh?’

“We promised and then said goodbye. Once clear of the harbor, we plotted a course and then told the two crewmen where we were going. The reaction was intriguing.

“Maxton, the older, looked rather glum, but Oswald, who was a six-foot black Hercules, actually forgot his usual respectful terms of address.

“ ‘Mon, what you go theah fo’ ? They not good people theah; wery bad people on Soljah Cay, Mon!’

“When Joe and I pressed them to say why exactly they disliked the place, they could not, or would not, give us any answers, except that no one went there from other islands and that the folk were unfriendly, especially to colored people.

“ ‘Come, come, Oswald,’ said Joe finally, ‘there surely must be something you are not telling us.’

“The man stared at the deck and finally mumbled something about ‘Duppies’.

“Well, you know, this made us laugh and that was an error. Duppies are West Indian ghosts, evil spirits, and are objects of fear among all British West Indian Negroes from Jamaica to Trinidad. When we joshed these two men about them, they shut up like oysters! Not one further word could we get out of them about Soldier Key. No, that’s not right. I got one more thing a day later.

“Oswald was fishing with a hand line from the stern at a time when I had the helm. I had asked him idly what he was using for bait.

“He reached into a metal pail beside him and pulled out a huge black and grey snail’s shell about six inches across. ‘Soljah, Mistah Don, Sah.’ I noticed he held it gingerly, and I suddenly saw why. The owner of the shell was not the original snail at all, but a weirdlooking crab, with great orange and purple claws, too large for its size, beady eyes on stalks and a mass of red spiky legs. In fact, it was the northern hermit crab, simply grown huge and aggressive in the tropics. Its claws snapped and clicked as it tried to reach his fingers, and then he dropped it back into the pail.

“ ‘They are many of thorn where we go, Mistah Don, Sah, wery many of the Soljahs.’

“So here was the reason for the name of the island! I had been speculating to myself as to whether the British had ever had a fort there, but the explanation was much simpler. Hermit Crab Island! Under this new name, it made all the vague warnings of our French friend seem quite silly, and when I told Joe about it later when we changed watch, he rather agreed.

“We made our landfall in a trifle under three days, due mostly to light airs, you know. The island was flat, only about seven miles long and two wide; so it would not have been a hard place to miss, actually. We came steadily in from the East, took down sail and started the auxiliary engine, because there was a circular reef marked on the charts as extending almost completely around the island and it only had a few navigable openings.

“It was evening, and the sun was on the horizon when we saw the first lights of the island’s only town. There was a hundred-yard passage through the reef, marked clearly as showing seven fathoms opposite the town; so we brought the schooner in until we were no more than fifty or so yards offshore.

“The town lay in a semicircle about a shallow bay. There was a broken beach, with bits of low cliff about five feet above the water, which we could just dimly make out. I say dimly because it was now completely dark and there was no moon, only Caribbean starlight, although that’s pretty bright.

“We switched off the engine, anchored and watched the town, because it was the oddest-appearing port we had ever seen. There wasn’t a sound. A few dimmish lights, perhaps half a dozen, burned in windows at wide intervals, but no dogs barked, no rooster crowed, no noise of voices came over the water. There was a gentle breeze in our rigging and the lapping of wavelets on the hull, and that was all.

“Against the sky at one point to the left, we could see the loom of some tall building, and we thought that this might be a church, but what we were to make of this silence baffled us. Night, especially the evening, is a lively time in the tropics, in fact the liveliest. Where were the people?

“We debated going ashore and decided against it. I say we’, but I assure you our crew wasn’t debating. They had made it quite plain earlier that they were not going even if ordered, not even in daylight.

“ ‘This is a bod place, Cap’n’, said Oswald to Joe. ‘We do not wish to discommode you, Sah, but we don’t go on thot land, at all, Sah, no!’

“And that was that. So, we set anchor watch and turned in. A few mosquitoes came out from shore but not many, and we fell asleep with no trouble at all, determined to solve the mystery of the quiet in the morning.

“I was awakened by a hand on my arm. I blinked because it was still pitch-black out, and I looked at my watch. It was two a.m. Against the stars I could see Joe’s head as he stooped over me.

“ ‘Come on deck, Don,’ he said, ‘and listen.’ Even as he spoke, I was conscious that the night was no longer completely quiet.

“On deck, the four of us, for the two crewmen were up too, crouched in the cockpit, and we all strained our ears.

“The sound we were hearing was quite far off, a mile at the very least from the volume, but it was unmistakably the sound of many human voices singing. To us, it sounded like a hymn, but the tune was not a familiar one.

“After what seemed about twenty-three stanzas, it stopped, and we listened in the silent night again. Then, there came a distant shout, somewhat sustained and again silence for a moment. Then the rhythmic mass cry again, but longer this time and seeming to go up and down. It went on this way for about ten minutes, first the silence and then the noise of human voices, and I tried without success to make out what was going on. Joe got the clue first.

“ ‘Responses,’ he said, and of course, that was it. We were listening to something very like a psalm, chanted by a lot of people, a long way off, and naturally we couldn’t hear the minister at all, but only the antiphony.

“After a bit, it stopped, and after fifteen minutes or so we turned in again. Now we knew why the town was quiet. All the people, apparently including the babies, were celebrating a church service somewhere inland. The Church of the New Revelation seemed to go in for midnight services.

“Well, we woke at 6 a.m. to a typical blazing Caribbean morning and also to a visitor. Standing on the edge of the deck coaming was the hatless figure of a man, staring down at Joe and myself out of pale blue eyes.

“He was about sixty from his looks, clean-shaven and sallow, with thick white hair and a gaunt, peaked face. Not especially impressive until you studied the eyes. Ice blue they were, and so cold they gave me a chill even in the ninety-plus heat on deck.

“ ‘What do you want here?’ he said, with no other introduction at all. ‘We seek no visitors. This island is dedicated to the Lord.’

“I introduced Joe and myself, but he paid no attention. I noticed his shabby but clean white suit, shirt and tieless stiff collar as he stepped down into the cockpit. Behind him, I saw a little skiff tied to the stern in which he had rowed himself out.

“ ‘Look!’ he said suddenly, an expression of disgust crossing his features. ‘You are bringing pollution with you. You slay the helpless creatures of the Lord!’ With that he reached down and seized the bait bucket and emptied Oswald’s bait, three of the big purple hermit crabs, over the side in one convulsive heave.

“ ‘Now, I say, just a moment, now,’ said Joe, letting annoyance show through. ‘Exactly who are you, and what’s this all about? We’ve tried to be polite, but there are limits. . . .’

“The cold eyes swept over us again, and their nasty glint deepened. ‘I am Brother Poole, son of the Founder. You would call me the Pastor, I suppose. The government of this blessed place is in my keeping. Once again, I say, who are you and what do you want?’

“Joe answered peaceably enough and re-introduced us, but he had obviously been doing some thinking while he listened to Poole.

“ ‘We just wanted to get some water and a little food,’ said Joe, ‘and some fresh fruit, before we go to Dominica. No law against going ashore on your island, is there?’ He added, ‘Isn’t this British territory? Doesn’t the Dominican governor ever allow people ashore here?’

“It was quite obvious that he had given Brother Poole something to chew on, you know. Whatever Poole’s powers were on the island, he wasn’t used to having them challenged. And it was evident from his hesitation that he didn’t care for the remarks about the British or Crown government. You could see his bony face working as he grappled with the problem. Finally, something he must have thought was a smile struggled to get through. Frankly, I preferred his previous expression. A sanctimonious whine also crept into his hard voice.

“ ‘I regret my sharpness, gentlemen. We have so few visitors, mostly fishermen of loose morals. I am the guardian of our little Eden here, and I have to think of my flock. Of course, you may come ashore, and buy what you need. I only ask that you kill nothing, do no fishing while here, out of respect to our law.’

“We stated we had no intention of killing anything and said we’d come ashore after we cleaned up and had breakfast. He climbed back into his boat, but before he cast off, turned back to us.

“ ‘Please see that those two black heathen stay on your schooner. Their presence is not wanted on our island, where they might corrupt our people.’ A good share of the original venom had come back in his speech.

As he pulled away, I turned to Maxton and Oswald to apologize, but it was unnecessary. Their faces were immobile, but also, it seemed to me, a shade paler under their natural darkness. Before I could say anything, Max ton spoke.

“ ‘Don’t worry about us, Sah. We hov no desiah to enter in thot place. It is of the utmost dislike to us, I ossuah you, Sah?

“Well, Joe and I shaved, and put on clean clothes, and then rowed our dinghy into the empty dock. There was only one, and that one small. A lot of fishing boats, all under twenty feet, were moored to buoys and also pulled up on the sloping beach, where it existed, that is.

“The town lay before me to observe, as Joe was doing the rowing, and I had a full view from the stern. It looked pretty small, perhaps fifty houses all told, plus the one church we had spotted the night before, a steepled white thing with something metallic, not a cross, on the steeple, which caught the sunlight and reflected it blindingly.

“The houses were all white stucco, mostly palm-thatch roofed, but a few with rusting tin instead, and all set on short stilts a foot or so off the ground. You could have duplicated them on any other island in the Caribbean.

“A few coco palms grew here and there and some shortish trees, mostly in the yards of the houses. Behind the town, a low green scrub rolled away, the monotonous outline broken only by a few of the taller thatch palms. The whole place lay shimmering in the heat, because not a breath of air moved.

“And neither did anything else. A white figure on the end of the dock was Brother Poole, identifiable at long range as waiting for us. But behind him the town lay silent and still. Not so much as a dog or chicken crossed a yard or disturbed the dust of the white roads. It was, if anything, more eerie than the night before.

“We nosed into the dock, and Poole leaned down to catch the painter Joe flung up to him. We climbed up as he was securing it to a post. Then he stood up and faced us.

“ ‘Welcome to Soldier Key, gentlemen,’ he said. “I hope I did not appear too unfriendly earlier, but I have a precious duty here, guarding my flock. Although you are not of the Elect, I know you would not wish to bring disturbance to a pious community, which has cut itself off from the dross and vanity of the world.’ He turned to lead us down the dock without waiting for an answer and threw another remark over his shoulder. “The Governor of Dominica has given me magistrate’s powers.’

“ ‘The carrot and the stick, eh! Joe and I exchanged glances behind his back.

“At the foot of the dock, Poole turned again, the cold eyes gleaming in the sunlight. “I presume you wish to see our little town? You will find it quiet. This is a festival of our church, and all of our people rest during the day to prepare for the evening service, by fasting and by prayer. I would be doing so too, but for the duties of hospitality, which are paramount.’

“I had been trying to analyze his very odd accent since I’d first heard it. It was not West Indian, but a curiously altered Cockney, flat and nasal, something like the worst sort of Australian, what they call ‘Stryne’. I thought then, and still think, that I know exactly how Uriah Heep must have sounded.

“As we walked up the silent main street, which lay dreaming in the white heat, our feet kicking up tiny clouds of coral dust, I suddenly saw something move in the shadow of a house. At first I thought it was a cat, then a large rat, but as it moved, it came momentarily into a patch of sunlight, and I stopped to stare.

“It was a soldier, a hermit crab, but enormous in size, at least a foot long, its naked body hidden in and carrying a huge conch shell as it scuttled clumsily along. As we came abreast of it, its stalked eyes seemed to notice us, and to my surprise, instead of retreating, it ran out toward us and stopped only a foot away. Its great orange and purple claws looked capable of severing one’s wrist, or a finger, at any rate.

“Poole had stopped too, and then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a linen bag from which he extracted a strip of dried meat. He leaned down, do you know, and placed it in front of the crab. It seized it and began to shred it in the huge claws, passing bits back to its mouth, where other smaller appendages chewed busily. It was as thoroughly nasty a sight as I’d ever glimpsed. Also, I wondered at the meat.

“That’s a monster,’ I said. ‘How on earth do you tame them? I had no idea they grew so big. And I thought you ate no meat?’

“ ‘They are not tame, as you in the gross world think of it,’ said Poole sharply. ‘They are our little brothers, our friends, as much a part of life as we, and all units of the great chain live here in peace, some higher, some lower, but all striving to close the great circle which holds us to the material earth, at peace, yet in competition, the lower sinking, failing, the higher mastering the lower, then aiding. It is all a part of—’ His whining voice rose as he spoke, but then suddenly stopped as he realized that our expressions were baffled, unmoved by the exposition of his extraordinary creed. ‘You would not understand,’ he finished lamely, and pocketing the still unexplained meat, he turned to lead us on. We followed, glancing at one another. Behind us, the huge crab still crunched on its dainty, clicking and mumbling.

“Wrapped in thought about Poole and his religion, I really didn’t notice that we had come to the town square, until I almost ran into Joe, who had stopped in front of me.

“Before us now stood the church we had glimpsed earlier, a massive, white-stuccoed structure with a pointed spire. As I looked up, I could see by squinting that the shiny object on the steeple was, indeed, not a cross. It was a huge crab claw, gilded and gleaming in the sunlight!

“My jaw must have dropped, because Poole felt it incumbent on himself to explain. ‘We have abandoned the more obvious Christian symbols,’ he said. ‘And since our friends, the soldiers, are the commonest local inhabitants, we choose to symbolize the unity of all life by placing their limb on our little place of worship.’

“ ‘Rather! I can see it’s their church,’ said Joe pointing. ‘Look there, Donald.’

“As he spoke, I saw what he had seen first, that the shadows around the base of the church were moving and alive—alive with the great hermit crabs.

“Large, small, and a few immense, they rustled and clanked in and around the coral blocks which formed the base, and the scrubby bushes which flanked the blocks, a sea of shells, claws, spiny legs and stalked eyes.

“Poole must have seen that we were revolted, because he moved on abruptly, leaving us no choice except to follow him. As we moved, I heard a distant human sound break the hot silence for the first time that morning, the sound of hammering. It came from our right, toward the edge of town, and peering down a sandy street in that direction, I thought I could identify the source as a long shedlike structure, about a third of a mile away.

“ ‘I thought everyone had retired to pray?’ said Joe at the same moment. ‘What’s that hammering?’

“Poole looked annoyed. I never met a man less good at disguising his feelings, but since he normally never had to while on his island, it must have been quite hard to learn. Finally, his face cleared and the spurious benevolence gained control.

“ ‘A few of the men are working on religious instruments,’ he said. ‘We have a festival coming: we call it the Time of the Change, so there is a dispensation for them. Would you like to see them at work?’

“Since the silent town had so far yielded nothing of interest except the soldiers, which we loathed, we said yes.

“We came at length to one end of the long building, and Poole held aside a rattan screen door, so that we could go in first. A blast of frightful heat hit us in the face as we entered.

“Inside, the building was one long open shed, lit by vents in the walls, and by a fire which blazed in a trench running half the length of the structure. Several giant metal cauldrons bubbled over the fire, with huge pieces of some horn-like material sticking out of them.

“Over against one wall were several long benches, and at these, a number of bronzed white men, stripped to tattered shorts, were furiously hammering at more pieces of the horny substance, flattening it and bending it, forcing it into huge wooden clamps and vises and pegging it together.

“As we watched, several of them stopped work and seized a huge piece of the stuff and dragging it to the fire, dumped it into one of the giant pots. No one paid us the slightest attention, but simply kept working as though driven by some frantic need, some internal pressure. The whole affair was most mysterious.

“I stepped close to one of the pots to see if I could learn what it was they were working on, and as I looked I saw, to my amazement, it was tortoise shell.

“Now, a hawksbill sea turtle, the only known source of shell, seldom grows one much over a yard long, you know. The pieces these men were working on must have been made with many dozens of them at least. What on earth were they doing?

“Poole, who had been surveying our bewilderment with a sardonic smile, decided to mystify us further. Tapping Joe on the shoulder and pointing, he started walking down the length of the long shed, skirting the fires and the workmen, but ignoring them.

“His goal was the far left-hand corner, which we now saw had a palm-thatch curtain extending from floor to ceiling, masking what lay behind.

“With the air of a second-rate showman on his unpleasant face, he pulled on a rope and drew the high brown curtain aside. ‘Behold our aim, gentlemen. Here is a fitting offering that we make for the altar of the Most High!’

“What we saw was certainly worth more than a little showmanship. Before us, poised on seven or eight large sawhorses, was a giant, gleaming shell, as if some colossal and quite improbable snail had washed up from the deeps of the sea. Golden, mottled and semitranslucent, it towered over our heads, and must have been at least twelve feet in diameter from the great opening in the base to the peak of the spiral tip. As we drew closer we saw that the whole marvelous object was artificial, being made of plates of overlapping tortoise shell pegged so cunningly that it was hard to see any joint. At one place on the side, a large gap showed where the work was not yet complete. Obviously, this was why the silent, half-naked workers were toiling so industriously. It was a very beautiful and awe-inspiring sight, if still a mysterious one.

“Poole drew the curtain closed and stood with his arms in his coat pockets smiling at our amazement. That’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ I said, quite honestly. “May I ask what you do with it when it’s finished?’

“Some strong emotion flashed for a second across his face, to be replaced by a bland expression of benignity. ‘We set it afloat on a large raft, surrounded by offerings of fruit and flowers,’ he said. ‘An offering to God, to be swept where He wills by the waves and winds.’

“Seeing our incomprehension at the idea of so much hard work going to waste, he elaborated, still smiling in his sneering way. “You see, it takes a long time to make the shell. The whole community, our whole little island, participates. Men must catch turtles. Then they must be killed, as mercifully as possible, the shell cured in a special manner and so on, right up until the final work. Then, when we gather at the ceremony of departure, all our people share in the delight of speeding it forth. We feel that we send our sins with it and that our long labor and offering to God may help our souls to Paradise. A naive idea to you, cultivated men of the great, outside world, no doubt, but very dear to us. My father, of blessed memory, the Founder, devised the whole idea.’

“Actually, you know, the idea was a lovely and reverent one. It reminded me of the Doge of Venice marrying the Sea, and other ceremonies of a similar nature. Brother Poole must have spent some time indeed on the composition of his tale, for it was quite the pleasantest thing we had heard about the island.

“While he had been speaking, we had passed out of the shed into the glaring sunlight, which seemed cool after the inferno we had left behind us.

“As we stood blinking in the sun, Poole turned to us with the false benignity now vanished from his face. ‘So, gentlemen, you have seen all there is to see of our little town. There is an important religious festival tonight, the launching of our offering. I must ask you to purchase such supplies as you need and leave before this evening, since non-believers are not permitted here during our holy night and day, which is tomorrow. I can sell you any supplies you may need.’

“Well, we had no reason to linger. Personally, as I said earlier, I had taken a profound dislike to the whole town and particularly to Brother Poole, who seemed to embody it, as well as actually to direct it. We walked to the wharf, discussing what we needed on the way. Poole seemed ready to sell fruit, bananas, mangoes and papayas, as well as bread, at perfectly honest prices, and offered us fresh water free of any charge at all.

“Only once did any hardness come back into his voice, and that was when I asked if any spiny lobsters, langouste, were for sale.

“ ‘We do not take life here,’ he said. ‘I told you earlier of our rule?

“Joe could not help breaking in with an obvious point, although he should have known better when dealing with a fanatic.

“What about the turtles. You kill them for their shells and presumably eat the meat? And what about the fish you catch?’

“Poole looked murderous. ‘We do not eat meat,’ he snapped. ‘You would not understand, being heretics, unaware of the Divine Revelation, but the turtles’ deaths are allowable, since we beautify our offering to God with their shells. The greater cause is served through a smaller fault. Also, the fish are set aside to us as our portion, although a sinful one. But what is the use of explaining these holy things to you, since you have not seen the Light?’

“After this, he declined to say anything else at all, except to wish us a good journey in a furious voice and to add that our purchases and water would be on the dock in an hour. With that, he stalked off and disappeared around a corner of the street. Upon his departure, all movement ceased, and the town dreamed on, neither sound nor movement breaking the noon silence. Yet we both had the feeling that eyes watched us from behind every closed shutter and each blank, sealed window.

“We rowed back to the schooner in silence. Only when we climbed aboard, to be greeted by Maxton and Oswald, did our voices break out together, as if pent up.

“ ‘Appalling character, he was! What a perfectly hellish place! Did you feel the eyes on your back?’ et cetera.

“Only after settling down and disposing of lunch, which the men had thoughtfully made in our absence, did we seriously talk. The conclusion we reached was that the British government and the local administration in Dominica needed a good jolt about this place, and that it ought to be thoroughly investigated to find out just how happy the locals really were about Brother Poole and his hermit crab church. Other than that, we decided the sooner we left, the better.

“During lunch we had seen some of the locals, all whites, manhandling a cart down on the dock, and unloading it. We now rowed ashore and found two large, covered baskets of fruit, half a dozen loaves of new bread, and an old oil drum of water, which looked and tasted clean and fresh. We also found Poole, who seemed to appear out of the air and accepted the previously agreed-on payment for the food. When that was over and we promised to return the water drum after putting the water in our tank, he came to his official business again.

“ ‘Now that you have water, you can leave, I suppose,’ he said. ‘There is no further reason for interrupting our holy festivities?’ His arrogant whine, half command and half cringe, was om the upsurge. It annoyed Joe as well as me, and his answer to the order, on the face of it, was quite natural, really.

“ ‘We’ll probably use the land breeze this evening,’ said Joe. ‘Of course, we may decide not to. Your bay is so pretty. We like to look at it.’

“ ‘Yes’, I added, picking up his cue. ‘You know how we yachtsmen are, passionate lovers of scenery. Why, we may decide to stay a week.’

“Of course we were only trying to get a rise out of the Reverend Poole, but he had absolutely no sense of humor. Yet he realized that we disliked him quite as much as he did us. His eyes blazed with sudden rage, and he half-lifted one hand, as though to curse us. But another expression crossed his face first, and the mask dropped again. He must have suddenly realized that he didn’t have a pair of his co-religionists to deal with.

“Without another word, he turned on his heel and left, leaving us sitting in our rowboat staring at one another.

“We got the water, bread and fruit out, and I rowed back and left the empty oil drum on the dock. The town still lay as quiet as ever in the sun, and no breeze disturbed the few coco palms. From the pier, I could see no sign of any movement further in, and the harbor was like a mirror, on the reflection of which our schooner and the small, anchored fishing boats hung motionless in the heat.

“Back aboard again, I conferred with Joe, and then we told the two crewmen we would leave on the evening land breeze. The harbor was deep enough so that tide made no difference. We could have used our engine, of course, but we hated to do so when sails would do the work. Aside from disliking engines, as all who sail for pleasure do, we always thought of emergencies, when the fuel might be desperately needed.

“Oswald and Maxton brightened up when we said we were going, and had we left right then, I’m sure they would have offered to row, or swim, for that matter. Their dislike of Soldier Key had never been plainer.

“The afternoon drifted on, and again the tropical night came quickly, with no real evening. But there was no wind. The expected land breeze simply didn’t appear. When this happens, one can usually expect it to come around midnight or a little after in these waters, although I have no idea why. We’d had it happen before, however, so we waited. Since we had anchor lights on, we were perfectly visible from shore, but tonight no lights at all showed there. There was no moon, hut brilliant starlight, and we could see the outline of the shore and the loom of the buildings behind, as silent as ever.

‘We decided to leave one man awake to look for wind, and the rest would turn in all standing, that is, dressed, not that we wore much but shorts. We could raise sail in no time. Oswald said he was not sleepy, and so he got the job.

‘I don’t know why I should have wakened at midnight. There was still no wind, and we had all been sleeping on deck. I looked at my watch, cast my eye along the deck to Maxton’s and Joe’s sleeping forms and then went aft to find Oswald. He wasn’t there, so I looked forward again. No sign of him, and the starlight was clear enough to see from bow to stern. There was no use waking the others on a false alarm. I got up and dropped into the cabin, gave it a quick once over, and then came out of the forward hatch and went quickly aft to the stern. No Oswald.

“I woke the others quietly, and explained the situation in a few words. From the moment I spoke, none of us had any doubt as to what had happened. Oswald had never left voluntarily. Someone, or something, with human motivation, had plucked him off the schooner as easily as you gaff a fish and even more quietly, and the purpose and. the strength had come from the silent town, from Soldier Key.

“We discovered afterwards that it had been easy for them. Several swimmers approached as silently as sharks and one of them had clipped Oswald over the head with a club as he sat with his back to the rail. Then, without a sound, he had been lowered into the bay and towed back to shore. Why they left the rest of us I shall never know, but I suspect that they simply had got cold feet. Or perhaps Poole thought we’d be reluctant to report our loss. By the time we got back with help, he could always plead ignorance and say that we had done the poor chap in ourselves. He of course would have his whole island to back him up. As a second purpose, I think he wanted us out of there and that this was perhaps a last warning. Well, if that were so, he had made a mistake.

‘Without anyone’s having to speak, all three of us went below and began to gather weapons. I took the big Colt automatic pistol, because it was my own, Joe the 30-.30 carbine, and Maxton simply tucked his cane knife, a big machete, without which most West Indians feel undressed, in his belt. Then we collected ammunition and went aft to our dinghy. I hauled the painter in without even looking until the cut end came into my hand! I had not noticed its absence on my earlier check, but the Key men had cut it adrift.

“However, this actually didn’t put us back a bit. Still without speaking, but all three purposeful, we began to rig a float for the weapons out of small line and four life preservers. We had it done and ready to move in less than ten minutes and were about to slip over the side when Maxton suddenly caught us by the arms and put a hand to his ear.

“As we listened in the quiet dark, a noise, almost a vibration began to come over the water. It was a sound we couldn’t identify, a strange sort of muffled rustling or shuffling sound, and Joe and I looked at each other in the starlight, absolutely baffled. Maxton whispered in our ears.

“ ‘Dot is feet. Dey move somewheah.’

“Of course he was quite right. We were listening to the whole town on the move, the rustle of hundreds of feet scuffing through the coral dust of the streets. Where they were going we didn’t know, but we began to drop into the water, because this silent march almost certainly meant no good to Oswald. We all three knew that, somehow. I took the lead, carrying the pistol out of the water, so that we should be armed upon landing. Behind me, Joe and Maxton swam, pushing the little raft with the rifle, the spare ammo, our shoes, and two canteens. Joe had added something else, but I didn’t find that out until later.

“I swam for the edge of town way over on the left, well away from the dock or the boats, since I had to assume that if they had posted a sentry, he would be placed at that point. It apparently was quite unnecessary, but we had to try to outguess them at every point, and we still thought these people rational. I tried not to think of sharks, which I dislike.

“As we swam, I listened for the sound of the footsteps, but it had died away, and this lent new urgency to our efforts. In a very short time, my feet grated on the coral beach, and keeping the pistol poised, I waded ashore, the other two behind me. Joe had the rifle at ready now, and Maxton had drawn his machete.

“There was no sign of movement. We had landed just on the outer edge of town, the last house looming about two hundred feet to our right. Not a sound broke the silence but faint insect humming and the splash of ripples breaking on the narrow beach.

“After listening a minute, we put on our shoes, then divided the ammunition and the canteens. I saw Joe stick something else in his belt, but I was concentrating so hard on listening that it really didn’t register.

“We placed the life preservers above the high water mark under a bush and moved into the town, guns at ready. If the town were quiet by day, it was dead that night. This was a town presumably inhabited by living people, but not a murmur of life came from any of the shuttered houses. At each corner, we stopped and listened, but we could hear nothing. Nothing human, that is. Twice I almost fired at rustling shadows and faint clanking noises, only to realize that it was only the hideous crabs from which the island took its name.

“The church was our goal, by unspoken agreement, but when we reached the square, it loomed silent and unlit in front of us. The central door was wide open, and we could hear no movement from the black interior. Wherever the people were, it was not there.

“Moving on, we struck a broader street, one which led away from the water inland. As we paused in the shadow of a tamarind tree, Maxton suddenly held up a hand and dropped to his knees. I couldn’t make out what he was doing, but he stood up in a second.

“ ‘This dust has been kicked up wery recent. I think the people come this way, many people.’

“I couldn’t smell anything, but Joe and I knew we didn’t have his perceptions, and we had no other clues anyway. Besides, we had heard the marching feet, and they had gone somewhere, and then there was the singing of the previous night, too.

“Keeping to the edge of the road, we went inland, walking quickly, but very much on the alert. The road left the town, which wasn’t too big, remember, after about two hundred yards and cut straight into the scrub, in the direction of the center of the island, as near as we could make out. At about fifteen minutes walk from the town, we learned that Maxton was right. We were deep in the shadowy scrub now; not a jungle, but the thick, low thorn bush of most West Indian islands. The road still ran straight and smooth ahead of us, a dim, white ribbon under the stars. Only insect noises broke the silence.

“Suddenly, we all halted. Not far off, a half mile at a guess, a sound had erupted into the night. We had heard it before, not so loud, on the previous night and recognized it at once for the mass chorus of human voices in a chant. It came from ahead of us and to one side, the left.

“Our pace quickened to a trot, and as we ran we listened, trying to pinpoint the noise. It was some sort of service, because we could hear the sound die into silence and then start again. As we drew closer to the source, we began to hear the single voice which led the chant, high and faint, and then the muffled roar that followed from the congregation.

“It was only the voices that saved us from missing the path. The trees had increased in height, and shadowed the road a good deal, so that we should have overshot the left fork if we hadn’t been watching for it. Even then, Maxton was the only one to spot it, and he suddenly signaled us to turn into what looked like a dense bush. Following him, we broke through a screen of vegetation, which gave way so easily that we realized that it must have been dragged there after cutting. And there was a road again, narrower but still plain and well-trodden. Some old habit of caution must have led them so to mask their path. We now moved at an increased speed.

“Ahead of us, the voices swelled in another chant, but we could not as yet distinguish words. The single voice was silent. As the noise increased, so did our caution, and we slowed our pace, since we had no wish to burst unexpectedly into the middle of some gathering of goodness knows what.

“All at once, we could see light ahead through the trees, a flickering, reddish glow which lit the path far better than the dim starlight. We eased down to a slow walk and advanced cautiously.

“The light grew continually stronger as we went on, reflected back from our faces and the boles and leaves of the thorn bushes and palmettoes. The sound of voices was almost deafening now, but we were searching so hard for a sight of a guard or sentry, we paid no attention to the words, which were blurred in any case.

“The trees suddenly thinned before us, and stooping low, the three of us crawled abreast of their edge and peered into the open, keeping well behind the screening branches, and off the road, which suddenly appeared to vanish. When we reached the last line of bushes, it was easy to see why. We were gazing down into an immense pit.

“We were on one edge of an enormous hole in the ground, quite round and perhaps seventy feet deep. It was rimmed with greyish limestone rock, level at the edges, to which point the bushes grew, all around. ‘

“At our feet, the path, now very narrow, wound down a steep slope to the smooth floor of white sand below. One side of the natural amphitheatre, for such it was, was banked up into lines of crude seats, sloping to the open floor of packed sand. The width of the whole place must have been at least two hundred yards in diameter, if not more.

“The entire population of Soldier Key, now silent, was sitting on the banked seats of this private arena, gazing at the scene before them with rapt attention. We had an excellent view of them, which made up in completeness for what we had missed earlier. Every man, woman and child, perhaps two hundred or more, was stark naked, clothed only in garlands of flowers and flower necklaces. Every single living soul on the island must have been there, and not a sound came from even the smallest baby at its mother’s breast, or the oldest crone. I could see no colored people, but only whites. Apparently the creed of the New Revelation was not valid for any but Caucasians.

“Inching forward to get a better look, we were able to see what held their attention. Two great bonfires burned on the floor of the pit, and between them Brother Poole, the Shepherd of his people, was moving about. As naked as his flock, his scrawny white body gleaming as if oiled, he was capering in a strange way around three objects on the sand, between the fires.

“In the center, golden in the firelight, lay the immense shell we had seen earlier in the workshed in town. No holes now marred its perfection, and it lay gleaming and wonderful on one of its sides, the opening facing us as we watched.

“On either side of the shell, dwarfed by its bulk, were two bound human bodies! One was Oswald. He was not only bound but gagged. As far away as we were, we could see his eyes roll and the muscles under his dark skin strain as he tried to break his bonds. The other figure was that of a white girl, perhaps fifteen or so from her build. She lay silent and unmoving, but I could see that her eyes were open. Around the three, the shell and the bodies, Brother Poole danced and waved his hands, as if in some maniac’s parody of a benediction. Although he was otherwise quite nude, he wore a strange necklace, of some hard, purplish objects, which bounced and shook as he moved. So silent were the people that even as high as we were lying, I could hear the click and rattle of them. The sound jogged my memory, until I suddenly realized why it was familiar. He was wearing a necklace of hermit crab claws and the noise was just as if some of them were scuttling about.

“I stated that the pit was circular. The floor was level, sloping up on one side to the packed earth seats of the people, and on the other side to the limestone walls. Nothing grew on these smooth walls, excepting only in one place, directly opposite the seats, where dense canopies of some creeper hung down, half obscuring a great triangular opening or cleft in the rock, about twenty feet in height and at least that wide near the base. Pressed against the cliff to one side of this hole, was a massive, now open door or gate, made of bulky timbers in a heavy frame. It was hung on great iron hinges driven into the rock. Could this be the Gate of which Poole claimed to be the Opener, I wondered? In front of the hole, and a little to one side, there was a still pool of water, probably a spring. Directly across from us, a path similar to that below us wound up the cliff face and vanished into the dark fringe of foliage at the top.

“Brother Poole suddenly ceased his capering and raised both hands. He was now facing the dark opening across the arena, and to this he addressed his invocation. I cannot at this date give it word for word, but roughly it went rather like this:

‘Oh, Lord of Majesty, Incarnation of Survival, Manifestation of Nature and its struggle, Devourer of Sin and the Flesh, have mercy upon us?

“Behind him a roar arose as the crowd repeated the last line, ‘Have mercy upon us.’ He continued:

‘Have mercy, Oh Thou, Shelled in Adamant. Of Thy mercy, accept our offerings, a new home for Thy greatness, new life for Thy limbs, new viands for Thy table. Enter now upon Thy new home and partake of Thine offerings?

“This rather unpleasant parody of a communion service seemed extraordinarily unreal, it was so fantastic.

“In the red light, Poole’s gaunt face, now drooling slightly, assumed an air of repellent majesty. Much as he disgusted me, the creature did have a certain hypnotic power at that moment. He believed in what he was doing. Behind his back, his audience sat rapt and expectant, all of them, old and young, leaning forward in the same tense pause of anticipation. As he ceased to speak, time almost seemed to stop, and he held his hands out, facing the opening in the rock wall.

“Joe broke the spell, pushing the rifle at me and snatching the Colt from my limp hand.

“ ‘Stay here and cover us? he hissed. ‘Maxton and I are going down?

“The two of them moved like cats, breaking from the scrub and racing down the path below me with driving steps. My brain cleared and I aimed the loaded rifle at Poole. If anybody went, he certainly would be the first.

“Maxton and Joe were on the sandy floor of the pit before anyone even noticed them. Joe had a clasp knife in one hand and the pistol in the other, and he flashed behind Poole’s back and stopped to cut the girl’s bonds. Behind him, Maxton was doing the same for Oswald with the edge of his machete.

“A chorus of screams from the crowd announced that not all of them were in a trance, but none of them moved. I refocussed on Poole, but he still faced the cave, apparently lost to the actual world, entranced in an ecstasy of religion.

“Then, I caught a flicker of movement from the corner of my right eye and risked a glance in that direction. What I saw made my rifle fall with a thud to the earth.

“Framed in the entrance to the cleft was Horror incarnate. Poised on giant, stalked legs, monstrous, incredible gleaming in the firelight, stood the Soldier of Soldier Key, the Living God of Brother Poole and his awful church.

“The giant purple and orange claws, the larger of the two at least six feet long, were held in front of the mass of clicking, grinding mouth parts. From the stalked eyes held out ten feet above the ground, to the great, red-pointed legs, jointed and barbed with three inch spines, there stood complete and perfect a hermit crab that must have weighed not less than a thousand pounds.

“As it moved slowly forward from the mouth of its private cave, the dragging shell which covered its soft body and rear end became visible, and I saw the true reason for the labor of the whole island. It, the shell, was made of tortoise shell, still recognizable though dirty and scarred, and although enormous, it was obviously too small. The soft body bulging from the opening must have desperately needed more room. The purpose of the new and larger shell, which still lay sparkling on the sand, was now clear. The god was to have a new house.

“As all this flashed through my mind, I recovered my wits and snatched up the rifle again. It was as well I did, because now things were starting to break down on the pit floor.

“Emerging from his trance, Poole had turned around and had seen before his dumbfounded eyes his sacrifices no longer neatly tied up but actually escaping. Joe had the limp body of the girl over one shoulder, and Maxton was aiding Oswald to follow in the direction of the foot of the nearer path, just beneath my own position.

“With a shriek, Poole summoned his nude worshippers to the assault. ‘Blasphemy! Slay the desecrators of the shrine! Kill them, in the sight of the Living God!’

“With a roar, the whole mob poured off its earth benches and rushed for the three figures which ran slowly across the sand. Poole stood where he was, his hand raised in a curse, his face now wholly evil, working with madness in the firelight. Behind him some few yards, that unbelievable crustacean had paused, immobile, like a bizarre statue, motionless save for the moving, twitching mouth parts.

“I think to this day we would have been dead men, but for two factors. Joe, heavily burdened, Maxton and Oswald were still thirty feet from the path’s entrance. Behind them, the horde of frantic, raving islanders were no more than a hundred paces. I had begun to shoot, forgetting Poole, firing at the foremost men instead, and hitting at once, but it did no real good. Those behind simply leapt the prostrate bodies and came on. One rifle simply could not stop this gibbering, animal horde. But something else could.

“Above the howling of the pack and the bark of my rifle rang out a scream so awful and agonized that I can still hear it in my sleep. No one could have ignored that dreadful cry. With three exceptions, everyone halted to see the cause.

“Brother Poole had momentarily forgotten his god, but his god had not forgotten him. As he stood there launching curses and hellfire, the monster, irritated no doubt by all the noise and movement, had come from behind and now clutched him in its titanic, larger claw, as firmly as its little brothers would hold a grasshopper. Suddenly, with no apparent effort, it simply closed the claw, and before our eyes, the two halves of the screaming Shepherd of the Island fell to the sand in a fountain of blood.

“The three below, however had not halted nor seen this sight, but were now steadily coming up the path. I resumed my ineffective rifle practice, for with fresh screams of rage, the mob of worshippers surged forward again, and began to gain. But Joe changed that.

“He halted and allowed Oswald and Maxton to run past. Dumping the girl, who had never moved at all, to the ground, he reached for his belt and pulled out a bulky metallic object which I now saw for the first time in the firelight. It was the schooner’s flare pistol.

“Aiming at the center of the oncoming crowd, he fired straight into them, and then the flare exploded somewhere in the mass in a blast of white incandescence. At the same instant, I had a stroke of genius, and almost without thinking, I shifted my sights and squeezed off a shot at that incredible horror, the Soldier, aiming directly for the center of the head, and just over the grinding mouth parts.

“In the twin lights of the flare and the still-blazing fires, I caught a glimpse of Hell. Blackened figures writhed in agony on the ground, and others, their hair ablaze, ran aimlessly about, shrieking in pain and fright. But this was not all. My bullet must have wounded the Soldier in its tenderest parts. Raising its great shell off the ground and snapping its giant claws, it rushed at the nearest humans in a frenzy, not gripping and holding, but instead slashing and flailing about with its colossal pincers. That a creature of its bulk could move with such speed was a revelation to me, of an unsought kind. I remember seeing a screaming child crushed flat by a great leg.

“I was no longer firing, but simply watching the base of the path with one eye and the terrible scene below with the other. In only a few seconds, Maxton’s and Oswald’s heads appeared just below me, as they climbed panting from the inferno below.

“A little behind them came Joe, reloading as he ran and checking his backtrail as he paused at the bend in the path. The girl was gone.

“I rose and covered the path behind them as they reached level ground. That lunatic girl got up and ran back into the crowd,’ gasped Joe. To hell with her. Let’s get out of here.’

“With me to the rear covering the retreat, we stumbled off down the track to the main road. In a minute the edge of the cliff was lost to view, and only the red glow on the leaves and the appalling sounds remained to tell us of what we had left behind. Breathless with shock and fright, we ran on at our best speed under the stars and trees until we reached the road and only a far-off wailing came to our ears.

“As we ran, I tried to make some sense out of what I had seen. In only a few moments, a maze of jumbled thoughts poured through me. How had that incredible thing been grown? How long had it lived? How many people had died to feed it? As the sound of anguished voices died away, my brain simply gave up, and I devoted myself to breathing and moving. Thinking back now, I believe that somehow, through their insane religion, the islanders had created a miracle of biology, taking a tiny animal and forcing its size somehow until no natural sea shell would contain it, and then building artificial ones to house its increased growth. But now, of course, no one will ever know the answers.

“There was no pursuit, I may say. The whole population of the island had been in that shambles of a pit, and we simply walked, for we could no longer run, back to the town and along the beach to our piled and tied life preservers. Within an hour of leaving the Amphitheatre of the Crab, we were climbing wearily over the side of the schooner. It took us only a few minutes to start the engine and get in the anchor, and then we were underway. Checking my watch, I found it was 4:30 a.m., although it seemed that a week had gone by.

“At blazing dawn, the island was only a faint blur on the horizon, which soon sank into the sea, leaving us feeling that we had been in a bad dream.

“No, we never called at Dominica. The four of us talked it over and decided not to.

“Look here, you fellows, we had probably killed, at a minimum, twenty or so souls, directly by flare or gunfire, and more still through the agency of the Soldier. By the time any representatives of the law arrived, what evidence would they find in our favor? Whatever governing group or person took over from Poole would have the whole island behind him or it. Who would believe our story? No one.

“No, we did nothing, at least at the time. We sent an anonymous letter to the Colonial Office and a copy to the Dominican Administrator later on, saying nothing at all about giant crabs, but demanding an inquiry into voodoo murders and local affairs generally. I have never heard that anything came of it, and as I told you earlier, the people were almost wiped out by the hurricane of the following year. “But I don’t eat lobster or crab.

It came too close to being the other way round, you see? Anyone care for bridge?”

Williams managed to grunt. We would hear from him later on, no doubt.

Deathchild

This was the ultimate Quarantine. Upon its total security depended the life—or death—of humanity!

I

His name was Joseph. He was a blue-eyed blond and just a little bald in front, although a fuzz over his round forehead gave a promise of new hair still to come. He was healthy, weighed twenty-two pounds and was barely eight months old. He wore diapers and rubber pants, nothing else.

At the moment, he had a very intent expression on his small fat face. Somehow, the brightly colored plastic beads on a wood-bordered wire frame were not doing what he wanted. They simply would not come off the frame to be thoroughly tested by his four teeth for true intrinsic playability and actual baby value. It was very unsatisfactory. He whimpered slightly and then sat up straighter, his creased, plump legs assuming what looked like a Yoga position as they curled in front of him. A little sigh, almost inaudible, but weary, escaped him. It did not sound like a baby noise at all, but rather like the wistful regret of an aged man, brooding over the many mistakes of a long life. Babies make strange noises at times.

Joseph abandoned the beads to survey his domain out of round, cobalt eyes, thumb in mouth. The room was circular, dome-shaped and about twenty feet across. Soft white padding, spotlessly clean, covered the floor on which Joseph sat and ran up the gradually curving walls to a height of four feet. Above the edge of the padded covering, smooth dark metal, non-reflecting, rose to the top of the igloo-shaped room. Light, soft and lambent, flooded in from a round opening in the center of the dome, thirty feet over the middle of the room. Square black openings were spaced at regular intervals on the walls at a height of six feet They gave back the blankest of mirrors where the light hit them, and the baby paid no attention to them. He now had located and seized a large, floppy, green dog among the simple playthings which lay about him on the floor. Staring absently off into some far distance, he held the cloth dog firmly in his chubby hands and began to gnaw reflectively on one of its tattered ears. Inside his small body, chemical warnings were starting to send an alert throughout his system. Dinner time was approaching.

Even as Joseph chewed on the dog’s ear, his whole attitude was beginning to change. He was now watching only one section of the wall, a section which he had learned to keep an eye on, although it differed in no way from any other to a casual observer. Joseph stared at this particular part of the wall more eagerly now, and the green dog was dropped and abandoned. The child actually could hear nothing but the soft, almost inaudible hissing of the hidden air ducts, but his own body gave him a clock without compare, a timer provided by nature. The graduated intensity of the light in the room was an unnecessary assistance. Joseph knew it was noon.

His eyes widened in pleasure, and he held out his small, plump arms in what was obviously a gesture of welcome, combined with an involuntary plea.

Soundless, an opening the size of a standard door had appeared in the section of the wall he was facing. Framed in it stood a massive figure, six feet tall, which advanced slowly with a faint humming noise toward the eager baby, who now crowed with pleasure. Behind the figure, the opening in the wall closed as silently as it had appeared—with one difference, that is. From the figure a six-inch thick, shining cable led back through the wall, fitting a circular hole in the base of where the original door had appeared with micrometer smoothness.

A rich, warm voice broke the room’s silence and two long arms reached down to gather up Joseph, who was now panting inaudibly and squirming and wiggling with pleasure.

“Baby, hungry? Joseph hungry? Here’s the bottle, Love. Easy now, don’t try and drink it all at once. There’s still din-din. Mashed lamb and carrots coming, you know.”

His blue eyes half closed, Joseph lay back in the warm, padded cloth-covered arms and inhaled his milk with mighty slurps and gurgles. While he drank and sucked on the bottle’s nipple, he looked up with contentment at the immobile pink and white plastic mask and the blue, glassined eyes. As he continued his meal, the tapes played steadily, reeling off coo-ings and murmurs, loving gurgles and bits of lullaby with programmed precision. The pre-set warmth of the circuits in arms and breast reassured the baby and the duraluminum limbs rocked him ever so gently.

Joseph belched and then continued to drink. All was well. Mother had come again. She always did.

II

Brigadier General Albert Hardwick was thin, brown-eyed and a bachelor, young for his rank at thirty-eight. The fact that he was a deputy-Director of G-2, Army Intelligence, and had been promoted to General’s rank while serving in that capacity as a full colonel, made him even more of an anomaly. As he drove, he mused over these facts and others, while keeping a sharp eye on the road.

Only a superb combat record in Viet Nam and the acquisition of the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart with two clusters had warded off the mutterings within the inner circles of command. An M.A. in Political Science, earned while recovering from wounds, was distinctly not regarded as an asset in some eyes, some rather senior eyes indeed. Hardwick had gone as an undergraduate to Michigan State and entered the Army through R.O.T.C. A good school, Michigan State, fine American institution. Still, not the Point, though, was it now? And a general at thirty-eight!

Hardwick drove steadily on through the flat countryside of southeastern New Jersey. He was not worried about the rumblings higher up. He had faced them before when it came to a crisis point, and his record had always been more than enough—his record plus a few seniors of very high rank who cared nothing for mutterings and valued performance alone.

Cruising along through the unending scrub pines of the Jersey Barrens, illumined by a hazy September afternoon sun, Hardwick was not really concerned with military hierarchy. At the moment, the machinery of his mind was locked in on his present assignment, which presented enough puzzles for a decade of musing.

He had been working very hard of late. As head of G-2’s Chinese desk, he had to co-ordinate with the C.I.A., the Navy, the Air Force and the whole network of Defense Department Intelligence. As the Far Eastern landmass gave birth to one confrontation after another in a grim and mounting progression, his task grew worse by the week.

The Chinese takeover of Burma in 1974, two years earlier, had been awesome in its smoothness and precision. Burma had gone lock, stock and barrel into the Chinese camp, albeit on a privileged and semi-independent basis, led by its own neutralist rulers in a calculated gamble. The opposition leaders, including a former Secretary of the U.N., had been liquidated by their own secret police overnight, with Chinese assistance when necessary. In something like a week, Burma was solidly Peking communist, from Rangoon to the Kachin hills.

Everyone, including the Russians, had been caught napping.

For the next two years, a relentless dual pressure had been grinding at India to the West and Thailand to the East. Well fed on Burmese rice and led by professionals, the Chinese Armies, their proletarian militia outlook totally discarded since the counter-purge of 1968, were now armed with the latest weapons. And they were firmly based on all their perimeters, facing out from every point of the compass. The Russian relinquishment of Outer Mongolia to Chinese Influence was now a year old. The long moribund Viet Cong had re-emerged in strength and American troops were again engaged in full scale war from the South China Sea to the Thai-Burmese border, and not winning either. A strongly hostile note had intruded into U.S.-Japanese relations, and Japan’s government was pursuing a cold and distant attitude to United States overtures. And a month ago, two well-armed, well-led Hukbalahap corps had erupted overnight from the mountains of Western Luzon and attacked the Philippine Army in open and initially successful battle. Naval intelligence reports on a vast new fleet of Chinese nuclear-powered subs, mostly cargo and troop carriers, were pouring in. Everything, in short, was blowing up.

Why in hell, for the fiftieth time thought Hardwick as he drove, take a top man who is working a fifteen-hour day away from his job at the Pentagon and shove him out in the boondocks? Security Chief of Project Inside Straight, whatever that was! Super Q Clearance! No written orders! Unscheduled personal interview for assignment with the Secretary of Defense! Interview consisting of route information to Point Nowhere in Southern New Jersey, period. End of interview. Get on your civvies and go, man. He had gone.

The pine shadows were now darkening the narrow country road ahead. Hardwick spared a glance at his watch. Six-thirty. He braked as the road straggled lazily into a small clearing and a meaningless crossroads. A small wooden shack in front of which leaned a rusting gas pump, grayish hose in tatters, stood at one side of the road. Three broken windows leered over a sagging porch railing.

As Hardwick looked around, his eye caught a flicker of movement and a glint of metal at the left window, gone as soon as registered. His hands tightened on the Chevy’s wheel, but his gaze swept calmly on. Mentally, he considered the memorized travel plan and came to a decision.

The small black car, an inconspicuous, two-year-old electrocompact, took the road opening to the left, away from the shack, and Hardwick drove on, his mind racing. His whole life from combat in Asia to the present had alerted him to be wary of observation, and for the last ten miles he was aware that he had been steadily watched. The few farm houses, the dark scrubby pines and green thickets, the empty roadside stands, the occasional battered trucks—all, he knew, had contained sleepless eyes. Whatever Project Inside Straight was, someone wanted the word sealed in.

Again he recalled the precise tone of Secretary of Defense Madden when outlining his route. Hardwick’s hands again tightened on the wheel. Now, he felt a certainty that any deviation from the route he had been ordered to follow would meet with unpleasant results, results he would have no time to question!

The road at this point ceased to be even second-class and was no longer tar but plain dirt and sand. What kind of installation could this be? Hardwick cursed softly as he switched on the car’s lights. He had seen no signs on the road of any vehicular traffic at all, and the road itself was in appalling shape. How did supplies and personnel get in or out? He steered around a large pothole, his right fender scraping into a tangle of blueberry bushes as he did so. It was suddenly almost full dark outside, and the last katydids of the season had started a chirping audible even over the crunch of sand under the wheels and the faint hum of the battery-driven engine.

Suddenly, the road ceased. Before him, as he braked sharply, the lights shone on black, oily water. The road had ended at a tiny, forgotten landing on a broad creek winding through the Barrens. A rickety dock stood forlornly at road’s end, thrusting out ten feet into the stream, but that was all.

Hardwick switched off the engine and sat for exactly five seconds in the utter silence that followed, keeping time by staring at the sweep hand on his wristwatch, glowing in the darkness of the front seat At the fifth second he opened the window wide and began to whistle a tune. It was Melancholy Baby, After precisely fifteen seconds, he stopped whistling and sat very still. Not a sound broke the silence outside, save the faint eddying noise of the water lapping around the piers of the little dock.

Then an eyebeam from a pencil flash hit him square in the face. Although he had heard no whisper of movement, he saw that someone was now standing next to his window.

“General Hardwick?” came a pleasant soft voice.

Feeling slightly ridiculous, he answered, “Aces over Eights.”

“The Dead Man’s Hand,” said the voice approvingly. With that, a spray with an unfamiliar, sweet, pungent odor lanced in the window and settled over Hardwick’s face in a cloud. He barely had time to wonder what was going on when the powerful anaesthetic knocked him out for the count-The trip was over as far as any volition on his part was concerned.

III

He awoke suddenly and sat up in bed, memory returning with a rush. He saw that he was wearing comfortable pajamas. Looking around the small room, he noted first a uniform of his own rank with all of his correct decorations hanging on a hanger from a wall hook. Under it on the floor lay shoes and socks, both O.D., and a single-starred cap straddled the hook.

He realized that he felt fine and got out of bed and stretched, still eyeing his surroundings. The drably-painted room was windowless but the air seemed fresh. All around him he was conscious of the pulse of machines. Could this be a power plant of some kind? One of the two visible doors opened on inspection into a tiny shower-bathroom; the other, he guessed a hall door, was locked. What seemed to be all of his personal possessions lay neatly on top of a bureau near his uniform. Curious, he opened the bureau drawers and found a complete supply of O.D. underwear, shirts, handkerchiefs and such, all in his size. He seemed to be booked in for quite a stay.

At this point a bell pealed gently high on one wall, and a voice came from a hidden speaker apparently concealed in the central light fixture on the ceiling.

“Please shave and dress, General.

You will have visitors in exactly fifteen minutes.” There was a pause. “Repeat,” said the voice, “Fifteen minutes.” There was an audible click.

He stood with his hands behind him exactly fifteen minutes later, full-uniformed, and saw the locked door. open. Outwardly calm but extremely annoyed within, he watched two people come in and close the door.

In front was a woman, which surprised him, although his face stayed expressionless. Women do not normally achieve high rank in maximum Security operations. She was about five-seven, with brown hair and eyes, quite good-looking without being a raging beauty. Her eyes were sharp and very intelligent Hardwick guessed her age at about thirty-four and was surprised later on to find she was four years younger. She was wearing a well-cut brown suit and no jewelery.

The gray-haired man who stood quietly in back of her also surprised him, but for different reasons, and his impatient anger stopped mounting right there and then.

He had not seen Thomas B. Allen for over two years, but the mustached C.I.A. senior field agent, who somewhat resembled a caricature of Dr. Watson, was a man whom he respected anywhere or at any time. If Tom Allen was in this strange affair, he had better keep quiet and see what happened.

The woman looked at him for a moment and then came forward, hand outstretched and a smile on her face.

“General, you look like a man who needs an apology. I have nothing to apologize for and neither does Mr. Allen, but we apologize anyway. I’m Dr. Joanne Butler, the Technical Director of Inside Straight, and Mr. Allen, whom you already know, is the Security Director. Between us, we’ve been running things here. You’re our new boss.”

Mechanically, Hardwick shook hands with the woman, then with Allen, while trying to grasp this last sentence. His face must have relaxed and revealed some emotion, because Dr. Butler laughed, a sound Hardwick absently noted as low and pleasant.

“I’m not going to stay,” she said. “Mr. Allen will fill you in, and later we can go further into the job. I’ll simply say that all three of us are here at the direct—and in my case personal—request of the President. We’re not playing around for the fun of it.”

“I never thought we were,” said Hardwick, flushing slightly.

“I know,” she said. “But I wanted to make it plainer still. This is the biggest thing you’ve ever touched, General. Nothing and nobody must stand in its way. Too much has already been sacri . . . has been done, by everyone, for this to fail. Do you understand me?”

Puzzled at the sudden break in her otherwise calm voice, Hardwick merely nodded. She had been about to say “sacrificed” and had changed her mind, of that he was certain.

“Good,” she said, her efficient manner apparently restored. “I’ll see you later then when lorn brings you along. Bear with us until you know the whole story. You have an even tougher job than ours coming up.”

After the door closed behind her, the silent Allen seated himself in the room’s one chair and pulled out a horrible-looking old pipe which he lit while surveying Hardwick from opaque gray eyes. He waved a hand at the bed, and Hardwick sat down on its edge while his mind went racing back into what he knew about Allen. Allen was the man who, as a young agent, had broken the Mossadegh government of Iran almost single-handed and then gone on from strength to strength, until nowadays he practically wrote his own orders. His brown suit and scuffed shoes, plus the gray, bristly mustache made him look like an out-of-tenure, absent-minded professor at some Eastern college, but Hardwick knew better. Very few people did. He therefore waited, with as much patience as he could muster.

His pipe going, Allen finally leaned back and spoke.

“You’re looking well, General, but pale. The pressure getting pretty heavy back at the ranch?”

“I don’t imagine that you’re cut off from news here, Mr. Allen,” he answered. “The roof is falling in all over, in every way.”

“Call me Tom,” said Allen, looking shrewdly at him through a cloud of blue smoke. “And I’ll call you Al.”

“All right, Tom,” said Hardwick. “We’ll be pals, even chums, in no time. Now what in hell is this weird business all about?”

“What do you remember reading or hearing about the Houston General Hospital disaster?” Allen asked suddenly, still watching him very carefully.

Hardwick thought for a second. This was obviously not a time for idle questions.

“Yes, I remember it fairly well. Some volatile poisonous gas or something got into the central air ducts, and the whole place went blooie in seconds when it was ignited. The place was deliberately set on fire to destroy any traces of what was there, as I recall. Lot of people killed by the gas first. So what? It just happened earlier this year, didn’t it? I was in England at the time.”

“That was eight months ago,” said Allen almost to himself. He sucked noisily on his pipe and exhaled a cloud of awful-smelling blue smoke before continuing. His voice had suddenly become precise and metallic.

“Because of that disaster, you were sent here under highest security orders to familiarize yourself with and take command of the installation in which you now find yourself. You were trailed from Washington out into the country, watched every yard of the way and then knocked out and dumped into a helicopter, which probably transferred you to one or two others on route. The only thing I can tell you is that you are nowhere at all, probably not by a thousand miles, near to where you last thought you were. This installation is so secret that probably not more than ten people in the world know its exact location. That includes me. I came here the same way you did. I think it’s in the continental limits of the U.S., guess it may be underground, but I’m not sure of that either. It could even be underwater. Still interested?”

“Go on,” said Hardwick, keeping his face impassive.

“Okay. You are going to have to familiarize yourself in detail with this whole place. There are over a thousand personnel here, mostly men, all working as maintenance and security. They were all—except one—kidnapped and convinced later, as I was, that this was a job that had to be done. A whole lot of the place is simply nothing but machines and more machines. You can always hear them. Half the people here are technicians, the other half guards. Half the technicians are concealed guards and half the guards are reserve technicians, held in case of emergency. Any questions yet, or do I go on?”

“Dr. Butler is the non-kidnappee, I suppose?” Hardwick asked thoughtfully.

“Pretty smart. Yes, she’s the one. A Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. She and the President, or maybe the Secretary of Defense, grabbed the others, I suppose. No, don’t laugh. When you see what we’re guarding and why and understand your part in it, maybe you’ll believe anything. This place kind of gets to you.”

Hardwick thought that if a place could get to Thomas Allen, on whose head the Soviets had once put a no-questions-asked price of one hundred thousand dollars, it ought to be worth looking at.

Allen regretfully knocked out his ash on a saucer from the night table and stuffed the pipe back in his pocket.

“No smoking outside your room, the dining areas and lounges,” he said.

“I don’t smoke,” said Hardwick. “Do you really believe that this place could be underwater?”

“Wait until you see it,” said Allen glumly. “It might even be on the Moon. Let’s go take a look.”

Hardwick glanced at his watch. It said eight o’clock. “Do I get any breakfast?” he asked.

“You get anything you want, except Out,” answered Allen. “You’re the new boss, subject only to Dr. Butler and the Science staff in pure technology. I’ll walk you over to the cafeteria and show you what there is to be seen on the way.

“Oh, yes,” he added, reaching into a pocket, “here’s your new badge. Pin it on at all times outside this room. This is a very trigger-happy place.”

“What’s everyone so afraid of?” asked Hardwick, pinning on the large blue-metal badge. It bore inset a recent picture of himself that he didn’t remember seeing before, a lot of mysterious numbers and the words Director of Security.

“Killing everyone in the country and maybe the world, I imagine,” said Allen flatly and opened the door. “After you.”

They emerged into a narrow corridor, well lit by a continuous fluorescent panel in the ceiling. The sound of machinery was louder now, a continuous, muffled vibrato in the background, not loud enough to interfere with speech, but rather like traffic noises heard from a lofty New York apartment.

Down the corridor they were following, Hardwick saw a figure standing. As they approached, a tall lounging man in blue coveralls with a badge on them marked Security straightened up and waved casually. He was a light-skinned Negro.

“Jim, this is General Hardwick, our new boss. I’m showing him around. He goes anywhere, any time. Al, meet Jim Tableman. I don’t know all the troops, but Jim was one of the first to arrive.”

“Glad to see you, General,” said Tableman and shook hands. Hardwick noticed that the left hand stayed in his coverall pocket.

“Got a gun?” he asked casually.

Like lightning, a .357 magnum snub nose emerged from the pocket, then vanished again, all in one fluid motion.

“Not bad for an M.A. in Biochemistry, is it?” said Allen pleasantly.

“Does he just stand here all day or all watch?” asked Hardwick, turning to Allen. He was getting a bit irritated again by all the apparent mystery.

“Show him what else you’re here for, Jim,” said Allen. “Stand still, Al, and don’t move. My authority, demonstration purposes, Jim.”

IV

Hardwick saw Tableman’s hand flick out to an area of wall which appeared to the eye no different from any other. As Tableman touched it, a steel panel slid out from the equally unmarked ceiling and dropped to the floor with a muffled thud. The corridor ahead of them was now totally sealed off by what appeared to be an air-tight, bullet-proof barrier. The whole thing had taken less than a half-second.

Tableman waited and at a nod from Allen touched the wall again. The steel shutter slid up as fast and as silently as it had come down and the empty corridor stretched before them once more.

“Thanks, Jim. Come on, Al. We can talk as we walk, and you want breakfast.”

“How many Jims are there?” asked Hardwick as they strolled along. The corridor was always gently curved to the left, and Hardwick guessed that they were in a vast dome-shaped or circular structure of some kind, with many levels, both up and down.

Allen grinned. “Do you mean guards, biochemists or barrier watchmen?”

“Barrier watchmen, I guess.”

“One hundred and seven. Each one knows his own wall section trigger, and none of them knows any of the others, except me and eventually you.”

“You’ve memorized all those sections, all those hidden buttons?” asked Hardwick incredulously.

“No great trick for a good foreign duty agent, my boy. I’ll teach you the method. You’ve been at a desk too long.”

They passed other coveralled men and even one woman as they walked along. Despite his previous disclaimer, Allen seemed to know all of them by name. Occasional doors broke the smoothness of the corridor on both sides. Through one of them which was open, Hardwick glimpsed a lofty room almost filled to the ceiling with what looked like vast, throbbing turbines. It reminded him of a ship’s engine room he had once looked at.

“Air re-conditioning boosters,” said Allen. “The place is filled with them. Well, here we are at the restaurant.”

He led the way through a glass-panelled double door, and Hardwick found himself in a large, pleasant cafeteria. People of both sexes, all sporting identity badges on their coveralls, sat about in groups or alone. Some read while they ate; others talked, and a few were writing in pads or on sheets of paper.

“Looks like the dining room of the Rand Corporation,” remarked Hardwick as they chose a vacant table and sat down.

“The Rand Corporation couldn’t get the three top cooks off the atom sub fleet,” was the answer. “Two others worked for the Waldorf. Order anything you like. They’ve damn near got it.”

A pretty waitress, also in coveralls and badge, took their order and left. A few people looked at Hardwick and away, he noticed, and then spoke to one another. A steady hum of eating noises, crockery and conversation provided a background. The place could have been duplicated, save for clothes, at any number of science establishments he had visited at one time or another.

Hardwick asked few questions when the food arrived. He had ordered breakfast without thinking very hard, but the food was excellent, the eggs and bacon being exactly as he had specified. Over his second cup of very good coffee he again began to question Allen, who had been equally silent while eating.

“What next, Tom?”

“You get to see Dr. Butler—that is, after seeing the reason why we’re here at all. That can be done on the way to her office. You’ll understand a lot better what’s going on if you see that first.”

Finishing his coffee, Hardwick rose and followed Allen out of the noise and into the seemingly endless corridor outside.

They had only passed a couple of guards when Allen stopped at a blank door and gestured to Hardwick to stand beside him. Apparently there was some sort of scanning device in the featureless metal door, because it slid back at once into a grooved opening. Beyond the opening, a guard waved them forward into yet another corridor, but this time set at right angles to the first.

“How can every guard know everyone here?” asked Hardwick as he followed Allen on.

“They don’t,” was the answer. “In each specified area, only certain people of the whole population have any business. Anyone else doesn’t get in; and if he tried, a report would go in to security center at once. Very fast action follows. I go anywhere, and so does anyone with me, of course.”

They entered other doors, passed other guards, at one point used a ramp and at another, an elevator. It all seemed confusing to Hardwick, and he realized that it would be equally confusing to anyone who tried to penetrate the place from outside and managed to get past the outer guards.

“What’s the level of education here if an M.A. in Biochemistry is a guard?” he asked, a bit further on. “I have a B.A. in journalism from Connecticut,” said Alien, “and I must be at the bottom of the ladder.”

“Then this place was all actually built by these brains, if I understand you correctly, and they’re now all cheerfully doing guard and maintenance work as a result?”

“I came late,” was Alien’s reply, “but they even had me doing some electrical wiring. The whole place was built in one and a half months, starting with the Center. The first work was done entirely in space suits, around the center dome, but we’re not in space, despite what I said earlier. Another minute and you’ll see something. This is the last checkpoint.”

They stopped before still another featureless door. When it slid open, it revealed a metal desk and two more blue-coveralled men just inside, one seated behind the desk, one standing. They both nodded affably as Allen disgorged a short-barrelled Smith and Wesson .38, a German Fallschirmjager knife and a set of C.I.A. picklocks on to the desktop. Then he waited with arms raised as the standing man went over him in a thorough frisk.

“You too, Al,” he-said. “These particular boys have orders to let only certain people, of whom you are now one, in here. But no one goes in unsearched, ever, including Dr. Butler. That’s a house rule.”

Hardwick was searched in turn and a small pocket knife was added to the pile on the desk.

“You see,” continued Allen, “this is the inner circle. There are no guards from mow on, only a few monitors and technicians. Everything that needs doing from here on could be done by robots and servomechanisms in an emergency, with the rest of the place sealed off completely. This last check is one against plain and simple lunacy. I could do a little damage here with my bare hands, but not much. So I give up the arsenal and pick it up on the way out.”

By this time, they had left a short corridor and were now in a circular one, into which the first had led. A curve, like that of a rounded dome, made up one wall, as if the corridor in which they stood were circling a giant sphere. Near where the two had paused, a woman in a white lab coat was staring through a square glassed port in the dome wall. Her back was to the two men, but as they walked over, Hardwick was not surprised to see Dr. Butler turn and face them.

“I wanted to see your reaction, General,” she said, unsmiling. “I have few diversions these days, and this is one of them. Come and meet the ruler of the world.”

Hardwick walked to the inch-thick window and looked in and down.

On the padded white floor below him, Joseph was having his morning nap. As Hardwick watched in amazement, he stirred in his sleep and a small pink thumb found its way to the cupid’s-bow mouth.

Still unable to comprehend what he saw, Hardwick stared down at the sleeping baby for another minute and then turned back to stare in equal amazement at the other man and the woman who were watching him. In their eyes he saw a seriousness which left him no room for doubt. And in the woman’s expression, Hardwick sensed a terrible pain, a pain which no man could ever feel.

There was a moment of silence as the three looked at each ether and then Allen grunted.

“Come on back to Joanne’s office with us. You’ve just seen Joseph, the most dangerous creature on earth. Now, you really need information! Your own mission, Al, is now starting, and you have a lot to learn.”

V

Exactly five weeks later to the day—rather the night—Hardwick stood on the sloping deck of the United States Polaris sub Anthony Wayne and spoke quietly with a group of his fellow passengers. Around the ship, little waves lapped at the hull, and in the near distance a muffled roar proclaimed surf breaking over the outer reef of a small atoll. The warm night air of the South Pacific flowed over the immobile submarine, and a blaze of stars in the black sky shed almost as much light as a northern moon at full.

Hardwick was exchanging idle talk with a tall gray-haired navel officer when the latter was called away by a voice from the next group forward.

“How much longer, Admiral? Isn’t it time yet?”

“They’re late now, Sir,” was the answer. “We expected that. Sonar and radar report them out there, snooping around. Probably a matter of face, making us wait. We have orders to stay here for two hours, unless there’s a counter order from Pearl.”

A low call from the top of the submarine’s towering mast sent the admiral hurrying over. The civilian to whom he had been speaking moved along the deck to where Hardwick was standing gazing out to sea.

“Think they’re coming, General?”

“Mr. Secretary, I hope to God they’re coming.” Hardwick tried to read Defense Secretary Madden’s expression by the tropic starlight, but the eyes in the pale face were simply pools of shadow.

“They said they’d come,” he went on. “Their ambassador in Warsaw guaranteed all the arrangements. I think they’ll come. What in hell have they got to lose?”

The tall figure of the admiral had returned, and he now reported to the Secretary.

“The instruments say a big sub is heading away from the pack out there and moving straight in at ten knots. I think you’d better get ready.”

“I have my overnight bag and here’s Chief Justice Reeves with his. Nothing left to do but for us to thank you for the trip. Good luck to all you gentlemen.”

“Good luck to you, Sir, and you, too, Mr. Chief Justice. Hope to see you soon.”

Hardwick continued to watch with attention when a little later, the squatter, more massive form of the Red Chinese atom sub moved alongside the Wayne. You never knew what tiny detail would come in handy in intelligence work. He had seen pictures of the new enemy vessels before but the real thing was aweinspiring, considering that the Chinese navy of fifteen years earlier had been mostly P.T. boats and wooden minesweepers.

He was at the head of the gangway when the Chinese delegation appeared and he saluted them formally. The three uniformed members of the body saluted in return, albeit stiffly. The five civilians simply ignored him and walked on past to the deck of the U.S. vessel. Two officers motioned them to follow, and they all went below decks. Hardwick continued to watch the other vessel.

He watched the Chief Justice and the Secretary of Defense of the United States and their two aides enter the hatch of the enemy sub, now cast off, and then the hatch close. The great ship moved off at once, heading out to sea to join the invisible armada which had accompanied it When it had vanished from sight he went below to meet the newly arrived passengers.

They were standing about in the special lounge which had been fitted out for them, faces immobile, not even talking, when he entered. He closed the hatch behind him and moved to the center of the cabin, while they all turned to stare at him.

“Good evening, Gentlemen,” he said, speaking in impeccable Mandarin. “I am Brigadier General Hardwick of the American army, your host for the duration of this journey, until you are returned to your compatriots. Please let me know of anything which I can do to serve you. Any questions you have will be answered to the best of my ability, barring certain matters of security, of course. May I know your names? Do you wish tea?”

Sixteen dark eyes regarded him implacably. But it was obvious that someone had to speak, and the senior officer, a gaunt man who wore the gold and red rank badges of a Marshal of the Chinese People’s Army on his immaculate khakis stepped a pace forward.

“Tea will be welcome, General. I am Marshal Sun Lo Jen, chief of this delegation. My companions in the service are Generals Wu Sen Fang and Li Peng, who command respectively the Sixth and Eighth Armies of the People’s Defense Force.

“These other colleagues are Drs. Kai Li Po and Chang Hsien of our Central Medical Bureau and Drs. Feng Hsi Liang and Kuo Tai Min of the People’s Ministry of Defense, Chemical and Bacteriological Division.”

“I am honored to meet all of you,” said Hardwick politely. “Especially General Wu Sen Fang, who so closely resembles another officer, General Lo Jui Chen, the recently appointed Director of all the Combined Security Services of the Chinese People’s Republic.”

“I in turn am flattered by your attention,” said the now unmasked head of all the Chinese intelligence and police forces. He was a short, powerful man with an oval face, high cheek bones and close-cropped, black hair who smiled politely at Hardwick.

“We in turn are honored to have a Deputy Director of U.S. Army Intelligence serve as our guide,” be continued in very fair English.

Hardwick nodded. Point and riposte!

“Here’s the tea and some sandwiches,” he said as the door opened to admit a parade of tray-bearing stewards. “If any of you would rather go straight to bed, I can have you shown your quarters. We’ll rendezvous with our carrier at about eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“I think we would all like a little talk first,” said Lo Jui Chen, who appeared to be quite undiscomfited by the disclosure of his identity. Although militarily ranked by the Marshal, he was a member of the Chinese Politbureau and far more important a man. Since he could not have hoped to deceive U.S. intelligence, the name change must have been for internal Chinese consumption, thought Hardwick to himself. There must still be power plays going on back home in Peking, then.

“There is no point in wasting time in foolishness,” continued General Lo. He had reverted to Chinese, which made Hardwick sure he wanted his associates to understand perfectly what he was saying.

“Where are we going, if it is not too much to ask?”

“We are going, as I mentioned earlier, to meet a carrier,” said Hardwick. “Why don’t we all sit down for a moment, and I’ll sketch the trip?”

He waited until the eight Orientals had seated themselves in a semicircle around his own chair and were sipping their tea before going on.

“From the carrier we will fly to the States, board a sealed helicopter and go to an unnamed installation. In that installation, whose exact location I don’t know myself, by the way, you will be shown certain things and allowed to move about wherever you wish. You will be accorded free use of laboratories and equipment to make any tests you desire. I saw, from the cases you brought along, that a great deal of testing equipment was included in your baggage. That’s fine as far as we are concerned. You will be given every facility to use it. I must, however, tell you that you will be rigorously searched and so will your baggage before arriving at the site. No communications devices or electronic homers of any kind will be permitted.

“You will be shown quarters at your destination which you may or may not believe to be free from bugs or observation. Anything of that nature you find you are welcome to destroy.

“At the end of seven days or even longer, as pre-arranged with your government, you will be allowed to leave the way you came. You will be expected to send one uncoded signal authorizing the re-exchange of Chief Justice Reeves and Secretary Madden at this same rendezvous. Are there any other questions?”

“I have so many that they would be completely pointless,” replied General Lo coldly, “and I imagine my companions feel equally curious. To be frank, which you Caucasians consider a virtue, I believe neither in any of this fantastic story of a world-destroying weapon nor in even one of your assurances. I am obeying orders, however, and there is no more to be said. We would prefer to be left alone as much as possible. Perhaps we may be informed of the meal times and rest periods? Otherwise, we would wish to have as little as possible contact with your personnel, and certainly none of a social nature.”

“As you wish, gentlemen,” said Hardwick. “I will say ‘Goodnight’ in that case. You can reach me at any hour if you want something.” He bowed and left.

VI

“They’ll be here in half an hour, Joanne,” said Tom Allen to Dr. Butler. She merely looked at her watch and said nothing.

A week had passed since a sealed helicopter had brought Hardwick and the eight Chinese by night to the landing area of Project Inside Straight, which Hardwick was now fairly sure was under a mountain, somewhere in the far West of the United States.

The three, though Allen least of all, betrayed the strain of the past week by abrupt, staccato speech and nervous tension, try though they might to control it. Now, as they waited in the small auditorium for the Chinese to arrive for a final briefing and question period, they found it hard to sustain conversation.

“Tom,” said Hardwick abruptly, “can you offer any opinion on what their reaction has been? I’m supposed to be an expert on Chinese affairs, but I’ve never pretended that my knowledge wasn’t mostly theory. I’ve always felt that the Defense Department people in the field were miles behind you C.I.A. types in that kind of training and in getting under the skin of an alien thinker.”

Allen gnawed meditatively on his unlit pipe for a second before answering.

“Hard to say, pal. I haven’t been eyeball to eyeball with these guys since the last Khamba uprising in Tibet, and that was quite a few years back. They certainly sent their top spooks, I’ll say that, especially General Lo. He expressed great regrets that my wife had died last year, by the way, and most of the people on our own team never even knew I had one. Wise bastard!”

He went on. “Well. I think they’re edgy. Lord, why wouldn’t they be? You both know all the daily tests we run on Joseph. They ran their own, and they all checked out, just as we knew they would. The one freak chance of a foulup would have been for him to lose his weird potential, maybe due to some obscure hormone or glandular change. I mean right while they were here, actually testing him, and that isn’t likely or possible.” He snorted and waved his pipe.

“They’re not crazy people, so I guess they must be scared. Hell, we’re scared and we live with it day in, day out.”

Hardwick looked over at Joanne Butler. Her expression, normally calm and impassive, was now, to his trained eye, getting a bit frayed at the edges. He felt again a quick moment of tragic empathy with this good-looking, quiet woman who had charge of so much grief and awesome power and who had carried the responsibility so well and bravely.

She sensed him looking at her and smiled briefly as she looked up, her face softening for a moment into that of a young girl. He had never known a woman who affected him this way, thought Hardwick. He had always considered himself a hopeless bachelor, a man who had found passion at rare and fleeting moments and then gone on back to his work. But now he felt a daily, almost hourly, surge of protectiveness toward Joanne and was detached enough to know what it meant.

Another thought also jogged his mind before he buried it forcefully. As the top boss of Inside Straight, he had, for the past month, spent many hours in going through the massive and voluminous personnel files. There, he had encountered almost in passing a tiny bit of information, something which had set him to thinking hard. He had been inclined to tell Allen when the first bizarre thought had stirred in his mind, but had not done so, and now he was glad. He suppressed the unbidden thought firmly and smiled back at Joanne as warmly as he could, conscious that the strain must be as visible on his face as it was on hers.

“It’s ten forty-four, and they’ll be here any second,” said Allen. “Any last minute ideas?”

“We’ve said it all,” the woman answered. “All we can do is let Al give his little speech and wait for questions.”

As she spoke, a door at the far end of the auditorium opened and the Chinese delegation entered, the three military officers in front as usual. They had one Chinese-speaking companion, who had turned out, to Hardwick’s surprise, to be Tableman, the chemist turned temporary gunman. It seemed that his job at his university had been that of a translator of Chinese papers on his subject. Not content with reading knowledge, he had gone on to learn the spoken language as well. It was he who had handled the scientists in the party and had conducted tours when Hardwick and Joanne were not available. He sat down quietly in the last row of seats while the Orientals moved up and took the first row.

Hardwick stood up in the center of the small stage, leaving the other two seated behind him, and addressed his audience in Mandarin.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Before we commence this final briefing, I must formally ask whether you consider your task complete? Is there anything more you wish to see, or feel you have not been shown, concommittant with your acknowledged purpose in coming here? It will be best to save time by answering now.”

The Chinese glanced briefly at one another, but no one said a word. Then General Lo, long since fully and openly accepted as the delegation’s real leader, stood up, nodded abruptly and spoke before resuming his place.

“We feel there is nothing we have not seen. Whether the tests are reliable under your apparatus and supervision is another matter, but we have done all we can here.”

Hardwick grinned, but only to himself. The grudging admission was all he could have hoped for at this point. No modern Chinese, least of all a high Communist official, could publicly admit that anything Western was not somehow suspect, even if no tangible evidence existed.

Outwardly unmoved, he continued.

“In that case, I will now recapitulate the whole story, keeping it as brief as possible. As you now know, the history of Joseph began eight months ago in Houston, in the state of Texas. An outwardly ordinary baby, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lucas J. Hittle, was born on January 15, 1976. The birth was normal in every respect, save one.

“As the child was born, everyone in the operating room died. Suspecting gas, an intern watching through glass from outside the room donned a smoke mask from a fire prevention kit on the wall, entered the delivery room and saved the baby, who was still barely out of his mother’s body. The cord was cut and knotted, and the child kept warm.

“The mask and uniform, despite gloves, were of course not completely airtight, and the intern also died, but only after he had summoned help by phone. As fast as that help arrived, both doctors and nurses died within seconds of entering the room.”

Hardwick paused and studied the impassive faces before him and then went on.

“The baby was not yet suspect, but an alert was broadcast and the hospital evacuated. Not, however, before many patients and staff members in adjoining corridors had also died. The hospital’s excellent air circulating system probably saved the others.

“Finally, fully suited and masked firemen entered the hospital and found the baby crying in the chamber of death which had introduced him to life.” Hardwick still wondered about this last line, but Allen liked it, so it stayed in.

“By chance, a brilliant and famous doctor was present. He heard of what had happened and was the first to pick out the baby as a cause of the mass deaths, working on the principle of Occam’s Razor, the line of least resistance. He, that is the doctor, persuaded everyone to give out no news and to handle Joseph with every precaution for the time being.

“He also called Washington and reached a very high government official whom he had treated in the past. As a result of his urgency, the whole hospital area was sealed off and security measures of a drastic nature were established. The press was excluded, and the Intelligence service chiefs were called to a meeting in Washington.”

Hardwick paused and poured himself a glass of water from a pitcher on the table next to him. No one spoke, and after a mouthful of water, he continued.

“Meanwhile, the firemen and medical staff who had cared for the baby in airtight masks and suits were now also dying, dying as they removed the suits and came into contact with a residue, however faint, of the most terrible poison ever discovered!

“And those with them were dying, from mere contact with the suits!

“It was possible to localize the whole menace only because the suits and masks were removed on the hospital premises or in an area close by. Chance again. If one man, still suited up, had gone back to the fire station . . .! None did so, luckily.

“By this time, Washington was fully alerted and subsequent suited personnel were drenched, on orders, with an hour-long spray of almost corrosive chemicals before removing their protective clothing and helmets. They were volunteers, these brave men and women, even so, because they all expected to die. They did not, however, and a check showed that their equipment was no longer lethal. This was the beginning of our project here, the first evidence that this incredible pathogen was controllable or had any limits.

“Washington now went into full operation. The newsmen and everyone else were told that a lethal gas had been released by a maniac into an air-conditioning duct. It was openly hinted that it might even be radioactive, although this was not flatly asserted. The area around the hospital was cleared for a distance of fifty blocks, and the hospital was first scientifically burned out and then razed to nothing but ash and rubble. A continuous chemical spray was maintained for a week over the ashes, every inch of them. Even so, a terrible fear gripped the few who knew the real story. Would the burning, demolition and chemical bath do the trick? Or would the smoke spread the instant killer, whatever it was? The chance had to be taken, since the alternative might be worse.

“Joseph, by now definitely identified as the carrier of the lethal pathogen, was secretly, with every due precaution, removed to a hidden site, and with him all who knew the truth of what he was.

“I am the first person who knows this story ever to leave this installation, and I do not know the area I have left and to which I returned with you gentlemen. We may be under the Rockies, in Mammoth Cave or buried under an oil rig offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not important. What is important is what followed the decision to save Joseph, to hide him and to try to find out what caused his monstrous inheritance. I will now turn this meeting over to Dr. Butler, who has presided over this project from its inception. Since not all of you gentlemen speak English and Dr. Butler speaks no Chinese, I will translate. Those of you who do speak English can insure that my translation is an accurate one.”

VII

Joanne Butler got up and came over to stand beside Hardwick. He saw her swallow once, and then she began to speak, her low voice carrying clearly to the men seated below. She paused at the end of every short paragraph, and Hardwick put the words into his best Mandarin, before she re-commenced.

“Gentlemen, you now know who I am. I am a biochemist who, among other things, has worked for some years for the American National Foundation of Science. I also hold a degree in psychology, which helped in my selection for this position.

“I was virtually kidnapped in the middle of the night by agents of the U. S. government and taken to an interview with three of the highest officials of this country. At first, I thought they were mad when they explained what had happened and what they wanted me to do. My patriotism was not prepared for such a test. And, gentlemen, it still is not!”

She waited, while Hardwick translated and then continued, her voice soft and even.

“My patriotism is not, as I said, up to the test of running the scientific side of this project. Bust something else is, my feeling for all humanity.”

Hardwick expected at least a cynical smile from General Lo at this point, but to his surprise, noted nothing of the kind. Indeed, the Red security chief had leaned forward to hear better, and his face was completely serious.

Joanne went on, after the ‘translation.

“When I heard the proposal that this child and his awful gift be used as the Ultimate Weapon, I was revolted to every fibre of my being, I refused the task for which I had been selected. But—I was persuaded at least to listen further.

“I was told what the leaders of my government planned. They desperately fear a third World War, a war of total annihilation using every ghastly weapon ever devised, from bacteria and gas to the cobolt Hell bombs. They felt, and feel, that such a war is perilously close. They felt humanity had one last chance, and that chance was Joseph—whom they had christened the Deathchild.

“It was made very clear to me,” she went on, “that there would be no conquest of any foreign country, China or any other. China would be the target for Joseph, however, if all else failed. Russia could be discounted, and even allied, since the Soviet staffs were already in secret and joint discussions with those of the West.

“But China and her new arsenal of conquest, her new tributary states and her new attempts to rule the entire mass of eastern Asia, meant war. This was demonstrated to me in a hundred details. Whether you gentlemen here agree or disagree is not important, since I believed it and I still do.

“I have been in charge of this place and all that it implies for over seven months, which I regard as seven months of torment. I have helped in and supervised the chemical tests and extractions of fluid from the baby’s body and their subsequent processing. You have seen and tested the arsenal of test tubes which resulted. They are my work. You have seen the fantastic and hitherto-unheard-of safeguards used to take care of the Deathchild and also to protect him. You have been allowed to talk freely with the scientific staff of this place, to examine and pry into every detail, save for certain security measures, that exist here. You have seen the extraordinary robot mother designed to keep the baby in a happy state of mind as well as body, since we dare not tamper with anything that affects his overall well-being. And you have observed the baby and his own care and treatment.”

Hardwick thought he heard a very faint catch of breath when Joanne said “mother,” but he could not be sure. He dismissed the idea temporarily and went on with his translating. The thought could be recovered. She continued, her voice steady:

“You have seen all the films of Houston General Hospital, the death films and those of the destruction. You have, and I stress this point for the scientists among you, been allowed to examine the test animals, and have seen that the new death does not affect them. It is reserved for humans, who brought it into the world.

“You have had access to our shielded labs and have run tests of your own, utilizing a lot of equipment you brought with you. You have examined all the cunning air and waste disposal devices, the flame incinerators, the filters, the chemical baffles. Is there anything you have not seen and still feel you must?”

Again there was silence, and again no one spoke. Eventually, after a look at his silent companions, General Lo shook his head.

“Very well,” said Joanne. “My responsibility for this group is over. I return you to General Hardwick.” She walked back and sat down next to Allen again, shutting her eyes as she did so, from what seemed simple weariness.

“You have heard Dr. Butler speak for, and to, the scientists,” said Hardwick, resuming his conversational style. “There are a few other points to be mentioned. We have no clue to this day of Joseph’s lethal mutation. No germ or bacteria, no virus, absolutely nothing, has been isolated. We remain as ignorant as at the beginning on what we are dealing with. You have seen the medical records of every member of the baby’s family which we could provide, from birth to death, as far back as-we can reach. There is nothing, no hint, no lead, in any of them. All were ordinary, simple Americans, differing in no way from the norm, physically or mentally. His father, poor man, is in a well guarded mental home, suffering from shock.”

Hardwick’s voice hardened. “But we can, by using the baby’s wastes, his blood, his perspiration, dilute and render usable in a military sense the death that he carries. We have done so on volunteers, people who were inevitably soon to die anyway of disease or of natural causes. These magnificent people, all doomed to die in any case, gave the brief remainder of their lives to test Joseph’s continuing power to kill. You have seen the films and records of the men and women who died, not knowing why or how, to make sure the Deathchild could still kill. Their passing, as in all other cases, was instantaneous and painless. Beyond that grace, we have nothing to give them but honor.

“Two of your members selected certain of their bodies, carefully preserved by freezing, and performed dissections with every device we could give you to aid. You have their findings. This ends the discussion on the local level. I will now read a document, an official copy of which will be given to you for transmission to your own government.”

His voice steady, Hardwick pulled the papers from his tunic pocket and began to read:

“I, as President of the United States of America, in accordance with the powers vested in me by Congress, and in defense of not only the national security of the United States but the security of the entire human race, make upon the Government of the Chinese People’s Republic the following requirements, to be listed here below by number. Any failure to abide by any and all of these requirements will be met by the seeding of the entire Chinese People’s Republic with the serum of the Deathchild. Every plane, every missile and every means of utilization known to man, will be employed to this end. Three weeks will be granted from the date of exchange of personnel, and no more will be allowed for an affirmative answer.

“The method of negotiation initiated by the United States, by which the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the Secretary of Defense passed into custody of the Peoples Republic of China in exchange for the high dignitaries and scientists of that nation who will inspect the Deathchild and his facilities has, by the time of the reading of this document, been fulfilled in part. It now remains for the re-exchange to be completed and for the transmission to and the consideration by the Peoples Republic of China of these proposals.

“The Requirements are herewith listed:

“1) That all armed forces of the Peoples Republic of China immediately withdraw all equipment and personnel to within the borders of that country.

“2) That a delegation will be sent at once to negotiate for a mutual and joint permanent exchange of arms control and nuclear power control personnel between the United States and the Peoples Republic of China.

“3) That the Peoples Republic of China at once apply for admission to the United Nations.

“4) That. . . .

VIII

Two weeks had come and gone when Hardwick emerged from his daily visit to the guarded communications center. It was four o’clock in the afternoon by his watch, and a feeling of futility and depression rode him like the black dog his Irish grandmother used to talk about.

There was still no answer to Washington from Peking, and time was running out. In only another five days he would have to give orders to start loading the sealed cases which were Joseph’s gift to his fellow humans. The helicopters would come to the hidden field far above, and the cargo of death would depart, to begin its journey to the far-scattered launching sites, airfields and submarine pens.

And what would happen then, be thought? If his deepest and almost unconscious suspicions were correct, what would happen then?

He strolled along the corridors toward his quarters, nodding absently to the guards as he passed them. He had nearly reached his room when he saw Joanne passing ahead of him at a cross corridor.

Without even thinking, he called out to her, and she waited until he had caught up.

Hardwick had not seen much of his female counterpart since the departure of the Chinese delegation. She had totally withdrawn, staying in her quarters and having most of her meals sent in. The only time she had come out was for work, the continual and never-ceasing tests and inspections of the baby’s byproducts and serology. Otherwise, she had simply stayed away from everyone, even from Tom Allen, who was her closest friend in the installation.

Now, under the unvarying glow of the fluorescents, she waited almost passively as he approached. Her face, he saw with an inner wrench, was white and drawn, the skin taut over her high cheekbones, the eyes smudged and blurred looking, without expression.

“Hey, lady, where you been?” he asked in a gruff voice. He took her by the arm, and she followed as if without a will of her own. Inwardly, he cursed the world and its problems which had brought the two of them together under this man-killing strain and these cave-dwelling conditions.

“I prescribe a stiff belt in my quarters,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual. “You don’t mind not being chaperoned, I hope?”

Her only answer was a wan smile, but she made no resistance and allowed him almost to lead her to his room. It was as if the unending responsibility had finally drained away all her will power and left a semi-robot, capable only of routine tasks.

He had barely seated her in the room’s only chair and started to open his little wall refrigerator when his private phone burred, the green light indicating a closed line. He put down the ice cubes and picked it up, wondering what now.

“Okay, pal,” said Tom Allen. “I was just in the comm room. They gave in. A little haggling, but they gave in. A few of our reports have picked up the start of a pullout from Burma already. Congratulations! Say so to your friend as well. Good luck.” There was a click, and the line was dead.

Hardwick put the phone down slowly, wondering, as he had in the past, where Allen got some of his information. How had he known Joanne was there? And why “Good luck” ? Maybe ESP was his secret.

He looked at her, staring at the wall, her face dead and gone to outside concerns, and felt a violent need to bring her back to life on a crash basis.

She sipped the drink be gave her but still said nothing, like a child doing what an adult has ordered, dutifully but uncomprehendingly.

“Joanne,” he said softly, standing over her. “Look at me. We’ve won. That was Tom on the phone. The Chinese are coming to terms. It worked. We’re really going to have peace for a while.”

She looked up slowly and blinked. Then her tired eyes filled with tears. She put the glass on the floor and buried her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. Hardwick stood over her, his own face working, and wondered, like a normal male idiot, what to do.

She solved the problem for him by rising and coming into his arms so quickly that some of his highball sloshed over her back. Neither of them paid it any attention.

It was half an hour before any sense returned to the room, and by this time they were both in the chair.

Joanne was curled up in his lap, her arms still around his neck, her hair in total disorder, an expression of bliss on her face, which seemed to have lost years of age in mere moments.

Cursing himself for what he had to do, Hardwick rose, lifted her and laid her gently on the bed. Then he stood away from her, looking down, his hands behind his back.

“Honey,” he said, “we have to settle something right now. I’ve lived with a crazy idea for a long time, and the crazier it got, the more sense it made. I have to know the answer.”

The smile slipped from her face; she lay back on the pillow and stared at him.

“Whose child is Joseph?” asked Hardwick quietly. “And aside from not being toilet-trained, what else prevents him from adorning a living room rug in any normal home?”

To his amazement, after a quick catch of breath, a very faint smile appeared at the corner of her mouth. She stretched and locked her arms behind her head in relaxation.

“He’s mine, Al. Had you got that far?”

Hardwick exhaled a gust of air and sat down suddenly in the vacated chair.

“And there’s nothing wrong with him at all is there?”

“Not a thing, dear.”

“Who else knows?” asked Hardwick. He got up and made himself a new drink, feeling curiously lightheaded.

“Make me another one too, will you? No one knows the whole story but the President, Tom Allen, me—and now you. It had to be that way. I’ll have to report you, of course, unless you’d rather do it yourself.”

“Who’s the father?” Hardwick asked thickly. He was not looking at her and had faced the other way.

“A man who had supplied the sperm bank of a small hospital in Billings, Montana,” came the unruffled reply from behind him. “He was medically fit and’ a citizen. That’s all I know, except that Tom destroyed all his hospital records, whoever he was.”

“I checked on a few things while going over the personnel record files, Joanne,” he said, at length. “You have a small birthmark on your left calf. It didn’t register until I noticed that Joseph does too. These things frequently are hereditary. My father and brother had identical ones. No proof, but it got me to thinking. It seemed absurd, of course. It meant everything had to be a fraud, from beginning to end. Then I thought of the code name of this operation which, by ‘the way, the Chinese never heard. “Inside Straight” ! Who thought that up, I wondered? A desperate and unlikely gamble, using a sucker’s attempt to fill a bad hand. A bad, almost hopeless hand, one intrinsically worth nothing! “I’m no psychologist, but that struck me as odd. Who could believe the United States, with life or death, at stake would gamble on nothing, a dud poker hand? But if it filled, as it just has, then it’s a real hand! The most colossal gamble in human history!”

He drank and turned to face her.

“Who thought it up?”

“Tom Allen and I. His wife, Lee, is—was my sister. Do you want me to tell you the whole story, in order?” Her placidity was once again restored, as it had been when they first met.

“You know very well that I do.”

“All right, here’s what happened.” Joanne and Allen had seen a lot of each other in Washington after the death of Allen’s wife. They had often played complicated games for amusement, including one they had invented, which they called Superspy. In this game, each one had to present the other, who represented a major power, with a fait accompli, a means meticulously worked out, by which his or her country was absolutely compelled to surrender. The opponent, faced with this overwhelming menace, had to somehow frustrate or nullify it. From this game came the concept of the Deathchild, the lethal mutant in reverse, the one weapon to end them all. But something was missing, the actual convince the gimmick which really caused death.

Then, exactly at the right time, a report had crossed Alien’s desk, coming directly from a field agent who operated in the Virgin Islands. No one else in Washington had seen it before Allen. It told how a young biochemist in a small, marine laboratory, working with animal proteins and alkaloids derived from corals and other forms of sea life, had discovered and isolated a terrible poison. So awful did he feel this substance to be, he had actually contacted the C.I.A. directly, not even informing his superiors at the research station where he worked.

Allen had called Joanne at once and simultaneously sent a pickup order for the man and his family.

“Where are they now?” interrupted Hardwick.

“On our Ascension Island base, under total security wraps. He had always wanted to write, and now he has the best private library in Hs field. He and his wife volunteered, without knowing why. One more group of unsung heroes, but his Jeb is a lot easier than most.”

Allen had had the authority to go, and did go, straight to the White House. Approval came after a week, and meanwhile six C.I.A. chemists had died testing the poison, which acted in many ways much like the nerve gases, only in far smaller quantities. Further, like a number of proteins, it left absolutely no trace. The original discoverer had simply not refined it sufficiently and thus had lived.

Joanne had then become pregnant under a false identity. They had felt this was the only way to insure complete security, and it had been Allen’s suggestion. She had asked him to be the father, and he had refused, feeling it would make her task unbearable. The whole matter from then on had been so falsified that no one concerned had known anything but inconsequential bits of the total story.

Next had come the selection of the hospital. Houston General was fairly old and a new one was badly needed. The pictures of the dead and other evidence were fakes, all concerned being of C.I.A. agents, none of whom were later associated with the project. The staff of the hospital was a harder problem, but not insoluble. Mostly they had been carefully dispersed, with only a final hard core remaining, who were put under National Security Oath. None of them were in the hospital on the day of Joseph’s supposed birth. The dead firemen and patients, the heroic doctors and nurses who gave their lives, were all agents, and all were pulled off the project immediately after and reassigned as far away as possible.

At each level, a new team was introduced and an old one scattered to the winds. A few of the more pertinacious inquiries were dealt with by top level interviews, and the blanket of National Security was invoked.

Only Allen and Joanne were in it all the way. Not even the Cabinet knew the real story, nor did the Intelligence department heads. The Secretary of Defense and the Chief Justice didn’t even know the details of the cover story, a fact they were well aware of, and indeed had been instructed to tell the Chinese.

The plant installation had certainly been built with every precaution, just as if the whole thing were true. To everyone who thought he knew the actual truth, save for the President, Joanne and Allen, the precautions, guards and secrecy were vital. “I can understand that,” said Hardwick. “If it wasn’t believable to the last ounce, the whole atmosphere was gone. But I don’t see how the stuff got moved around. Does it really kill in the atmosphere in those minute quantities?”

“Al, G-gas practically does too, and that’s been around since the Second World War. But Josephine, which is what Tom and I call the poison, dissipates almost at once. There are no traces any test can detect. It seems to be a close cousin of Ciguatera, the tropical poison that kills people after they eat certain marine fish. They may even be two aspects of the same thing.”

The chemical fiddling was very tricky, she went on, but not impossible. Every technical loophole they could think of had been blocked a month before Hardwick had arrived. In a way, he was the last test. Allen had a high belief in Hardwick’s intelligence and had argued that if he could be fooled, anyone could. Hardwick felt professionally pleased at the tribute, but was still puzzled.

“Couldn’t any of your science people have realized that vents and hidden ducts and secret pipes in the filters were feeding this stuff in and that none of it came from the baby?”

“They could, but only if the idea were given them first. The place was built to be believed. Workmen who had no idea of what they were doing installed all those hidden bits and pieces on the orders of engineers who had no idea why they were wanted. Then they all left. Then and only then, don’t you see, did the science staff come and get the full treatment. Why shouldn’t they believe it?”

“Yes, I see,” said Hardwick. “The belief just grew and grew, until it spread to every new person like a miasma. And I suppose you and Tom checked the mysterious machinery and the poison apparatus yourselves?” This was correct, she said. Allen was, among other things, a trained electrical engineer, and she was a competent chemist as well as a psychologist. The two could not have built the apparatus originally, but it was no trouble to monitor and maintain it, once installed. Any heavy or serious checking was always done during a mock evacuation or fire drill of the particular area needed.

There was a long silence while Hardwick simply sat and stared at the floor, hands clasped between his knees.

Eventually he looked up and met her sympathetic gaze.

“What now, Joanne? It worked. Sounds banal, but you seem to have saved the world. But what about Joseph? Who saves him? And what happens to this place? I’ve never had a chance to think about that aspect before, but you and Tom must have.” He sighed. “What happens now? And what about your child, your little boy?”

She got off the bed, came over and knelt at his side.

“We stay here, dear. Joseph stays, and we stay. He’s my son, and I love him desperately, fatherless, alone and thinking that a filthy robot, padded with cloth, is his mother. But he stays. Tom stays. We all stay. The play goes on.

“We can’t let up. You can see that, if you think a minute. In five er ten years, peace may be secure enough for us to come out and change our names. Maybe it will, I don’t know.

“But meanwhile, the Deathchild has to stay. He had to be believed in, hidden, guarded, cared for. Tom says the enemy will never, never stop looking for him. We may have to move, may have to rebuild this whole place somewhere else. So everyone has to believe in it, totally, religiously, especially our staff. They’re giving their lives and devotion to an idea. The idea has to stay valid. It may be trite,” she ended, “but we have each other now. That helps.”

It helped, Hardwick guessed, as he sat looking down at her, but somehow all he saw in his mind was a round-faced baby, who might have been his son. It was silly, in the face of world peace, to quibble about one atom of mortality, but he wondered if he would ever be able to hold Joseph in his arms.      END

The Kings of the Sea

Sterling Lanier introduced Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, late of her Majesty’s forces, in SOLDIER KEY, August 1968. It’s a pleasure to have him back, and the Brigadier is in perfect form with this engrossing tale of an incredible family secret that is revealed on a lonely strip of Swedish coastline in the summer of ’38.

I DON’T REMEMBER HOW MAGIC came into the conversation at the club, but it had, somehow.

“Magic means rather different things to different people. To me . . .” Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, late of Her Majesty’s forces, had suddenly begun talking. He generally sat, ruddy, very British and rather tired looking, on the edge of any circle. Occasionally he would add a date, a name, or simply nod, if he felt like backing up someone else’s story. His own stories came at odd intervals and to many of us, frankly verged on the incredible, if not downright impossible. A retired artilleryman, Ffellowes now lived in New York, but his service had been all over the world, and in almost every branch of military life, including what seemed to be police or espionage work. That’s really all there is to be said about either his stories or him, except that once he started one, no one ever interrupted him.

“I was attached to the embassy in Berlin in ’38, and I went to Sweden for a vacation. Very quiet and sunny, because it was summer, and I stayed in Smaaland, on the coast, at a little inn. For a bachelor who wanted a rest, it was ideal, swimming every day, good food, and no newspapers, parades, crises or Nazis.

“I had a letter from a Swedish pal I knew in Berlin to a Swedish nobleman, a local landowner, a sort of squire in those parts. I was so absolutely happy and relaxed I quite forgot about going to see the man until the second week of my vacation, and when I did, I found he wasn’t at home in any case.

“He owned a largish, old house about three miles from the inn, also on the coast road, and I decided to cycle over one day after lunch. The inn had a bike. It was a bright, still afternoon, and I wore my bathing trunks under my clothes, thinking I might get a swim either at the house or on the way back.

“I found the place easily enough, a huge, dark-timbered house with peaked roofs, which would look very odd over here, and even at home. But it looked fine there, surrounded by enormous old pine trees, on a low bluff over the sea. There was a lovely lawn, close cut, spread under the trees. A big lorry—you’d say a moving van—was at the door, and two men were carrying stuff out as I arrived. A middle-aged woman, rather smartly dressed, was directing the movers, with her back to me so that I had a minute or two to see what they were moving. One of them had just manhandled a largish black chair, rather archaic in appearance, into the lorry and then had started to lift a long, carved wooden chest, with a padlock on it, in after the chair. The second man, who must have been the boss mover, was arguing with the lady. I didn’t speak too much Swedish, although I’m fair at German, but the two items I saw lifted into the van were apparently the cause of the argument, and I got the gist of it, you know.

“ ‘But Madame,’ the mover kept on saying, ‘Are you sure these pieces should be destroyed? They look very old.’

“ ‘You have been paid,’ she kept saying, in a stilted way. ‘Now get rid of it any way you like. Only take it away, now, at once.’

“Then she turned and saw me, and believe it or not, blushed bright red. The blush went away quickly, though, and she asked me pretty sharply what I wanted.

“I answered in English, that I had a letter to Baron Nyderstrom. She switched to English, which she spoke pretty well, and appeared a bit less nervous. I showed her the letter, which was a simple note of introduction, and she read it and actually smiled at me. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman—about 45-48, somewhere in there, anyway—but she was dressed to the nines, and her hair was dyed an odd shade of metallic brown. Also, she had a really hard mouth and eyes.

“ ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘but the baron, who is my nephew, is away for a week and a half. I know he would have been glad to entertain an English officer friend of Mr.—’ here she looked at the letter ‘—of Mr. Sorendson, but I’m afraid he is not around, while as you see, I am occupied. Perhaps another time?’ She smiled brightly, and also rather nastily, I thought. ‘Be off with you,’ but polite.

“Well, really there was nothing to do except bow, and I got back on my bike and went wheeling off down the driveway.

“Halfway down the drive, I heard the lorry start, and I had just reached the road when it passed me, turning left, away from the direction of the inn, while I turned to the right.

“At that point something quite appalling happened. Just as the van left the drive, and also—as I later discovered—the estates property line, something, a great weight, seemed to start settling over my shoulders, while I was conscious of a terrible cold, a cold which almost numbed me and took my wind away.

“I fell off the bike and half stood, half knelt over it, staring back after the dust of the lorry and completely unable to move. I remember the letters on the license and on the back of the van, which was painted a dark red. They said Solvaag and Mechius, Stockholm.

“I wasn’t scared, mind you, because it was all too quick. I stood staring down the straight dusty road in the hot sun, conscious only of a terrible weight and the freezing cold, the weight pressing me down and the icy cold numbing me. It was as if time had stopped. And I felt utterly depressed, too, sick and, well, hopeless.

“Suddenly, the cold and the pressure stopped. They were just gone, as if they had never been, and I was warm, in fact, covered with sweat, and feeling like a fool there in the sunlight. Also, the birds started singing among the birches and pines by the road, although actually, I suppose they had been all along. I don’t think the whole business took over a minute, but it seemed like hours.

“Well, I picked up the bike, which had scraped my shins, and started to walk along, pushing it. I could think quite coherently, and I decided I had had either a mild coronary or a stroke. I seemed to remember that you felt cold if you had a stroke. Also, I was really dripping with sweat by now and felt all swimmy; you’d say dizzy. After about five minutes, I got on the bike and began to pedal, slowly and carefully, back to my inn, deciding to have a doctor check me out at once.

“I had only gone about a third of a mile, numbed still by shock—after all I was only twenty-five, pretty young to have a heart attack or a stroke, either—when I noticed a little cove, an arm of the Baltic, on my right, which came almost up to the road, with tiny blue waves lapping at a small beach. I hadn’t noticed it on the way to the baron’s house, looking the other way, I guess, but now it looked like heaven. I was soaked with sweat, exhausted by my experience, and now had a headache. That cool sea water looked really marvelous, and as I said earlier, I had my trunks on under my clothes. There was even a towel in the bag strapped to the bike.

“I undressed behind a large pine tree ten feet from the road, and then stepped into the water. I could see white sand for about a dozen feet out, and then it appeared to get deeper quickly. I sat down in the shallow water, with just my neck sticking out, and began to feel human again. Even the headache receded into the background. There was no sound but the breeze soughing in the trees and the chirping of a few birds, plus the splash of little waves on the shore behind me. I felt at peace with everything and shut my eyes, half sitting, half floating in the water. The sun on my head was warm.

“I don’t know what made me open my eyes, but I must have felt something watching, some presence. I looked straight out to sea, the entrance of the little cove, as I opened them, and stared into a face which was looking at me from the surface of the water about eight feet away, right where it began to get deeper.”

No one in the room had moved or spoken once the story had started, and since Ffellowes had not stopped speaking since he began, the silence as he paused now was oppressive, even the muted sound of traffic outside seeming far off and unreal.

He looked around at us, then lit a cigarette and continued steadily.

“It was about two feet long, as near as I could tell, with two huge, oval eyes of a shade of amber yellow, set at the corners of its head. The skin looked both white and vaguely shimmery; there were no ears or nose that I could see, and there was a big, wide, flat mouth, opened a little, with blunt, shiny, rounded teeth. But what struck me most was the rage in the eyes. The whole impression of the face was vaguely—only vaguely, mind you—serpentine, snakelike, except for those eyes. They were mad, furious, raging, and not like an animal’s at all, but like a man’s. I could see no neck. The face ‘sat’ on the water, so to speak.

“I had only a split second to take all this in, mind you, but I was conscious at once that whatever this was, it was livid at me personally, not just at people. I suppose it sounds crazy, but I knew this right off.

“I hadn’t even moved, hadn’t had a chance, when something flickered under the head, and a grip like a steel cable clamped onto my hip. I dug my heels in the sand and grabbed down, pushing as hard as I could, but I couldn’t shake that grip. As I looked down, I saw what had hold of me and damn near fainted, because it was a hand. It was double the size of mine, dead white, and had only two fingers and a thumb, with no nails, but it was a hand. Behind it was a boneless-looking white arm like a giant snake or an eel, stretching away back toward the head, which still lay on the surface of the water. At the same time I felt the air as cold, almost freezing, as if a private iceberg was following me again, although not to the point of making me numb. Oddly enough, the cold didn’t seem to be in the water, though I can’t explain this very well.

“I pulled back hard, but I might as well have pulled at a tree trunk for all the good it did. Very steadily the pressure on my hip was increasing, and I knew that in a minute I was going to be pulled out to that head. I was kicking and fighting, splashing the water and clawing at that hand, but in the most utter silence. The hand and arm felt just like rubber, but I could feel great muscles move under the hard skin.

“Suddenly I began to scream. I knew my foothold on the bottom sand was slipping and I was being pulled loose so that I’d be floating in a second. I don’t remember what I screamed, probably just yelling with no words. I knew for a certainty that I would be dead in thirty seconds, you see.” He paused, then resumed.

“My vision began to blur, and I seemed to be slipping, mentally, not physically, into a blind, cold world of darkness. But still I fought, and just as I began to be pulled loose from my footing, I heard two sounds. One was something like a machine gun, but ringing through it I heard a human voice shouting and, I thought, shouting one long word. The shout was very strong, ringing and resonant, so resonant that it pierced through the strange mental fog I was in, but the word was in no language I knew. Then I blacked out, and that was that.

“When I opened my eyes, I was in a spasm of choking. I was lying face down on the little beach, my face turned sideways on my crossed arms, and was being given artificial respiration. I vomited up more water and then managed to choke out a word or two, probably obscene. There was a deep chuckle, and the person who had been helping me turned me over, so that I could see him. He pulled me up to a sitting position and put a tweed-clad arm around my shoulders, giving me some support while I recovered my senses.

“Even kneeling as he was, when I turned to look at him, I could see he was a very tall man, in fact, a giant. He was wearing a brown tweed suit with knickerbockers, heavy wool knee socks and massive buckled shoes. His face was extraordinary. He was what’s called an ash-blond, almost white-haired, and his face was very long, with high cheekbones, and also very white, with no hint of color in the cheeks. His eyes were green and very narrow, almost Chinese looking, and terribly piercing. Not a man you would ever forget if you once got a look at him. He looked about thirty-five, and was actually thirty, I later found out.

“I was so struck by his appearance, even though he was smiling gently, that I almost forgot what had happened to me. Suddenly I remembered though, and gave a convulsive start and tried to get up. As I did so, I turned to look at the water, and there was the cove, calm and serene, with no trace of that thing, or anything else.

“My new acquaintance tightened his grip on my shoulders and pulled me down to a sitting position, speaking as he did so.

“ ‘Be calm, my friend. You have been through a bad time, but it is gone now. You are safe.’

“The minute I heard his voice, I knew it was he who had shouted as I was being pulled under. The same timbre was in his speech now, so that every word rang like a bell, with a concealed purring under the words.

“I noticed more about him now. His clothes were soaked to the waist, and on one powerful hand he wore an immense ring set with a green seal stone, a crest. Obviously he had pulled me out of the water, and equally obviously, he was no ordinary person.

“ ‘What was it,’ I gasped finally, ‘and how did you get me loose from it?’

“His answer was surprising. ‘Did you get a good look at it?’ He spoke in pure, unaccented ‘British’ English, I might add.

“ ‘I did,’ I said with feeling. ‘It was the most frightful, bloody thing I ever saw, and people ought to be warned about this coast! When I get to a phone, every paper in Sweden and abroad will hear about it. They ought to fish this area with dynamite!’

“His answer was a deep sigh. Then he spoke. ‘Face-to-face, you have seen one of Jormungandir’s Children,’ he said, ‘and that is more than I or any of my family have done for generations.’ He turned to face me directly and continued, ‘And I must add, my friend, that if you tell a living soul of what you have seen, I will unhesitatingly pronounce you a liar or a lunatic. Further, I will say I found you alone, having a seeming fit in this little bay, and saved you from what appeared to me to be a vigorous attempt at suicide.’

“Having given me this bellypunch, he lapsed into a brooding silence, staring out over the blue water, while I was struck dumb by what I had heard. I began to feel I had been saved from a deadly sea monster only to be captured by an apparent madman.

“Then he turned back to me, smiling again. ‘I am called Baron Nyderstrom,’ he said, ‘and my house is just a bit down the road. Suppose we go and have a drink, change our clothes and have a bit of a chat.’

“I could only stammer, ‘But your aunt said you were away, away for more than a week. I came to see you because I have a letter to you,’ I fumbled in my bathing suit, and then lurched over to my clothes under the trees. I finally found the letter, but when I gave it to him, he stuck it in his pocket. ‘In fact I was just coming from your house when I decided to have a swim here. I’d had a sick spell as I was leaving your gate, and I thought the cool water would help.’

“ ‘As you were leaving my gate?’ he said sharply, helping me to get into my clothes. ‘What do you mean “a sick spell”, and what was that about my aunt?’

“As he assisted me, I saw for the first time a small, blue sports car, of a type unfamiliar to me, parked on the road at the head of the beach. It was in this, then, my rescuer had appeared. Half carrying, half leading me up the gentle slope, he continued his questioning, while I tried to answer him as best I could. I had just mentioned the lorry and the furniture as he got me into the left-hand bucket seat, having detailed in snatches my fainting and belief that I had had a mild stroke or heart spasm, when he got really stirred up.

“He levered his great body, and he must have been six foot-five, behind the wheel like lightning, and we shot off in a screech of gears and spitting of gravel. The staccato exhaust told me why I thought I had heard a machine gun while fighting that incredible thing in the water.

“Well, we tore back up the road, into and up his driveway, and without a word, he slammed on the brakes and rushed into the house as if all the demons of hell were at his heels. I was left sitting stupefied in the car. I was not only physically exhausted and sick, but baffled and beginning again to be terrified. As I looked around the pleasant green lawn, the tall trees and the rest of the sunny landscape, do you know I wondered if through some error in dimensions, I had fallen out of my own proper space and landed in a world of monsters and lunatics!

“It could only have been a moment when the immense figure of my host appeared in the doorway. On his fascinating face was an expression which I can only describe as being mingled half sorrow, half anger. Without a word, he strode down his front steps and over to the car where, reaching in, he picked me up in his arms as easily as if I had been a doll instead of 175 pounds of British subaltern.

“He carried me up the steps and as he walked, I could hear him murmuring to himself in Swedish. It sounded to me like gibberish, with several phrases I could just make out being repeated over and over. What could they do, what else could they do! She would not be warned. What else could they do?’

“We passed through a vast dark hall, with great beams high overhead, until we came to the back of the house, and into a large sunlit room, overlooking the sea, which could only be the library or study. There were endless shelves of books, a huge desk, several chairs, and a long, low padded window seat on which the baron laid me down gently.

“Going over to a closet in the corner, he got out a bottle of aquavit and two glasses, and handed me a full one, taking a more modest portion for himself. When I had downed it—and I never needed a drink more—he pulled up a straight-backed chair and set it down next to my head. Seating himself, he asked my name in the most serious way possible, and when I gave it, he looked out of the window a moment.

“ ‘My friend,’ he said finally, ‘I am the last of the Nyderstroms. I mean that quite literally. Several rooms away, the woman you met earlier today is dead, as dead as you yourself would be, had I not appeared on the road, and from the same, or at least a similar cause. The only difference is that she brought this fate on herself, while you, a stranger, were almost killed by accident, and simply because you were present at the wrong time.’ He paused and then continued with the oddest sentence, although, God knows, I was baffled already. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I am a kind of game warden and some of my charges are loose.’

“With that, he told me to lie quiet and started to leave the room. Remembering something, however, he came back and asked if I could remember the name of the firm which owned the mover’s lorry I had seen. Fortunately I could, for as I told you earlier, it was seared on my brain by the strange attack I had suffered while watching it go up the road. When I gave it to him, he told me again not to move and left the room for another, from which I could hear him faintly using a telephone. He was gone a long time, perhaps half an hour, and by the time he came back, I was standing looking at his books. Despite the series of shocks I had gone through, I now felt fairly strong, but it was more than that. This strange man, despite his odd threat, had saved my life, and I was sure that I was safe from him at least. Also, he was obviously enmeshed in both sorrow and some danger, and I felt strongly moved to try and give him a hand.

“As he came back into the room, he looked hard at me, and I think he read what I was thinking, because he smiled, displaying a fine set of teeth.

“ ‘So—once again you are yourself. If your nerves are strong, I wish you to look on my late aunt. The police have been summoned and I need your help.’

“Just like that! A dead woman in the house and he needed my help!

“Well, if he was going to get rid of me, why call the police? Anyway, I felt safe as I told you, and you’d have to see the man, as I did, to know why.

“At any rate, we went down the great hall to another room, much smaller, and then through that again until we found ourselves in a little sewing room, full of women’s stuff and small bits of fancy furniture. There in the middle of the room lay the lady whom I had seen earlier telling the movers to go away. She certainly appeared limp, but I knelt and felt her wrist because she was lying face down. Sure enough, no pulse at all and quite cold. But when I started to turn her over, a huge hand clamped on my shoulder and the baron spoke. ‘I don’t advise it,’ he said warningly. ‘Her face isn’t fit to look at. She was frightened to death, you see.’

“I simply told him I had to, and he just shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. I got my hands under one shoulder and started to turn the lady, but my God, as the profile came into view, I dropped her and stood up like a shot. From the little I saw, her mouth was drawn back like an animal’s, showing every tooth, and her eye was wide open and glaring in a ghastly manner. That was enough forme.

“Baron Nyderstrom led me from the room and back into the library, where we each had another aquavit in silence.

“I started to speak, but he held up his hand in a kind of command, and started talking.

“ ‘I shall tell the police that I passed you bathing on the beach, stopped to chat, and then brought you back for a drink. We found my aunt dead of heart failure and called the police. Now, sir, I like you, but if you will not attest to this same story, I shall have to repeat what I told you I would say at the beach, and I am well known in these parts. Also, the servants are away on holiday, and I think you can see that it would look ugly for you.’

“I don’t like threats, and it must have showed, because although it would have looked bad as all hell, still I wasn’t going to be a party to any murders, no matter how well-planned. I told him so, bluntly, and he looked sad and reflective, but not particularly worried.

“ ‘Very well’, he said at length, ‘I can’t really blame you, because you are in a very odd position.’ His striking head turned toward the window in brief thought, and then he turned back to face me directly and spoke.

“I will make a bargain with you. Attest my statement to the police, and then let me have the rest of the day to talk to you. If, at the end of the day, I have not satisfied you about my aunt’s death, you have my word, solemnly given, that I will go to the police station and attest your story, the fact that I have been lying and anything else you choose to say.’

“His words were delivered with great gravity, and it never for one instant occurred to me to doubt them. I can’t give you any stronger statement to show you how the man impressed me. I agreed straightaway.

“In about ten minutes the police arrived, and an ambulance came with them. They were efficient enough, and very quick, but there was one thing that showed through the whole of the proceedings, and it was that the Baron Nyderstrom was somebody! All he did was state that his aunt had died of a heart attack and that was that! I don’t mean the police were serfs, or crooks either for that matter. But there was an attitude of deference very far removed from servility or politeness. I doubt if royalty gets any more nowadays, even in England. When he had told me earlier that his name was ‘known in these parts’, it was obviously the understatement of the decade.

“Well, the police took the body away in the ambulance, and the baron made arrangements for a funeral parlor and a church with local people over the telephone. All this took awhile, and it must have been 4:30 when we were alone again.

“We went back into the library. I should mention that he had gotten some cold meat, bread and beer from a back pantry, just after the police left, and so now we sat down and made ourselves some sandwiches. I was ravenous, but he ate quite lightly for a man of his size, in fact only about a third of what I did.

“When I felt full, I poured another glass of an excellent beer, lit a cigarette, sat back and waited. With this man, there was no need of unnecessary speech.

“He was sitting behind his big desk facing me, and once again that singularly attractive smile broke through.

“ ‘You are waiting for your story, my friend, if I may call you so. You shall have it, but I ask your word as a man of honor that it not be for repetition.’ He paused briefly. ‘I know it is yet a further condition, but if you do not give it, there is no recourse except the police station and jail for me. If you do, you will hear a story and perhaps—perhaps, I say, because I make no promises—see and hear something which no man has seen or heard for many, many centuries, save only for my family and not many of them. What do you say?’

“I never hesitated for a second.

I said ‘yes’, and I should add that I’ve never regretted it. No, never.” Ffellowes’ thoughts seemed far away, as he paused and stared out into the murky New York night, dimly lit by shrouded street lamps, and the fog lights on passing cars. No one spoke, and no sound broke the silence of the room but a muffled cough. He continued.

“Nyderstrom next asked me if I knew anything about Norse mythology. Now this question threw me for an absolute loss. What did a dangerous animal and an awful death have to do with Norse mythology, to say nothing of a possible murder?

“However, I answered I’d read of Odin, Thor, and a few other gods as a child in school, the Valkyries, of course, and that was about it.

“ ‘Odin, Thor, the Valkyries, and a few others?’ My host smiled, ‘You must understand that they are rather late Norse and even late German adaptions of something much older. Much, much older, something with its roots in the dawn of the world.

“ ‘Listen,’ he went on, speaking quietly but firmly, ‘and when I have finished we will wait for that movers’ truck to return. I was able to intercept it, and what it took, because of that very foolish woman, must be returned.’

“He paused as if at a loss how to begin, and then went on. His bell-, like voice remained muted, but perfectly audible, while he detailed one of the damnedest stories I’ve ever heard. If I hadn’t been through what I had that day, and if he hadn’t been what he was, I could have thought I was listening to the Grand Master of all the lunatics I’d ever met.

“ ‘Long ago,’ he said ‘my family came from inner Asia. They were some of the people the latercomers called Aesir, the gods of Valhalla, but they were not gods, only a race of wandering conquerors. They settled here, on this spot, despite warnings from the few local inhabitants, a small, dark, shoredwelling folk. This house is built on the foundations of a fortress, a very old one, dating at the very least back to the Second Century B.C. It was destroyed later in the wars of the Sixteenth Century, but that is modern history.

“ ‘At any rate, my remote ancestors began soon to lose people. Women bathing, boys fishing, even full-grown warriors out hunting, they would vanish and never return. Children had to be guarded and so did the livestock, which had a way of disappearing also, although that of course was preferable to the children.

“ ‘Finally, for no trace of the mysterious marauders could be found, the chief of my family decided to move away. He had prayed to his gods and searched zealously, but the reign of silent, stealthy terror never ceased, and no human or other foe could be found.

“ ‘But before he gave up, the chief had an idea. He sent presents and a summons to the shaman, the local priest, not of our own people, but of the few, furtive, little shore folk, the strand people, who had been there when we came. We despised and avoided them, but we had never harmed them. And the bent little shaman came and answered the chiefs questions.

“What he said amounted to this. We, that is my people, had settled on the land made sacred in the remote past to Jormungandir. Now Jormungandir in the standard Norse sagas and myths is the great, world-circling sea serpent, the son of the renegade Aesir Loki and a giantess. He is a monster who on the day of Ragnarok will arise to assault Asgard. But actually, these myths are based on something quite, quite different. The ancient Jormungandir was a god of the sea all right, but he was here before any Norsemen, and he had children, who were semi-mortal and very, very dangerous. All the Asgard business was invented later, by people who did not remember the reality, which was both unpleasant and a literal, living menace to ancient men.

“ ‘My ancestor, the first of our race to rule here, asked what he could do to abate the menace. Nothing, said the shaman, except go away. Unless, if the chief were brave enough, he, the shaman, could summon the Children of the God, and the chief could ask them how they felt!

“ ‘Well, my people were anything but Christians in those days, and they had some rather nasty gods of their own. Also, the old chief, my ancestor, was on his mettle, and he liked the land he and his tribe had settled. So—he agreed, and although his counselors tried to prevent him, he went alone at night to the shore with the old shaman of the shore people. And what is more, he returned.

“ ‘From that day to this we have always lived here on this stretch of shore. There is a vault below the deepest cellar where certain things are kept and a ceremony through which the eldest son of the house of Nyderstrom must pass. I will not tell you more about it save to say that it involves an oath, one we have never broken, and that the other parties to the oath would not be good for men to see. You should know, for you have seen one!’

“I had sat spellbound while this rigmarole went on, and some of the disbelief must have showed in my eyes, because he spoke rather sharply all at once.

“ ‘What do you think the Watcher in the Sea was, the “animal” that seized you? If it had been anyone else in that car but myself—!’

“I nodded, because after recalling my experience on my swim, I was less ready to dismiss his story, and I had been in danger of forgetting my adventure. I also apologized and he went on talking.

“ ‘The woman you spoke to was my fathers much younger sister, a vain and arrogant woman of no brainpower at all. She lived a life in what is now thought of as society, in Stockholm, on a generous allowance from me, and I have never liked her. Somewhere, perhaps as a child, she learned more than she should about the family secret, which is ordinarily never revealed to our women.

“ ‘She wished me to marry and tried ceaselessly to entrap me with female idiots of good family whom she had selected.

“ ‘It is true that I must someday marry, but my aunt irritated me beyond measure, and I finally ordered her out of the house and told her that her allowance would cease if she did not stop troubling me. She was always using the place for house parties for her vapid friends, until I put a stop to it.

“ ‘I knew when I saw her body what she had done. She must have found out that the servants were away and that I would be gone for the day. She sent men from Stockholm. The local folk would not obey such an order from her, in my absence. She must have had duplicate keys, and she went in and down and had moved what she should never have seen, let alone touched. It was sacrilege, no less, and of a very real and dangerous kind. The fool thought the things she took held me to the house, I imagine.

“ ‘You see,’ he went on, with more passion in his voice than I had previously heard. ‘They are not responsible. They do not see things as we do. They regarded the moving of those things as the breaking of a trust, and they struck back. You appeared, because of the time element, to have some connection, and they struck at you. You do see what I mean, don’t you?’

“His green eyes fixed themselves on me in an open appeal. He actually wanted sympathy for what, if his words were true, must be the damnedest ‘set of beings this side of madness. And even odder, you know, he had got it. I had begun to make a twisted sense of what he said, and on that quiet evening in the big shadowed room, I seemed to feel an ancient and undying wrong, moreover one which badly needed putting right.

“He seemed to sense this and went on, more quietly.

“ ‘You know, I still need your help. Your silence later, but more immediate help now. Soon that lorry will be here and the things it took must be restored.

“ ‘I am not now sure if I can heal the breach. It will depend on the Others. If they believe me, all will go as before. If not—well, it was my family who kept the trust, but also who broke it. I will be in great danger, not only to my body but also to my soul. Their power is not all of the body.

“ ‘We have never known,’ he went on softly, why they love this strip of coast. It is not used so far as we know, for any of their purposes, and they are subject to our emotions or desires in any case. But they do, and so the trust is honored.’

“He looked at his watch and murmured ‘six o’clock’. He got up and went to the telephone, but as his hand met the receiver, we both heard something.

“It was a distant noise, a curious sound, as if, far away somewhere, a wet piece of cloth were being dragged over stone. In the great silent house, the sound could not be localized, but it seemed to me to come from deep below us, perhaps in a cellar. It made my hair stiffen.

“ ‘Hah,’ he muttered. ‘They are stirring. I wonder—’

“As he spoke, we both became conscious of another noise, one which had been growing upon us for some moments unaware, that of a powerful motor engine. Our minds must have worked together for as the engine noise grew, our eyes met and we both burst into simultaneous gasps of relief. It could only be the furniture van, returning at last.

“We both ran to the entrance. The hush of evening lay over the estate, and shadows were long and dark, but the twin lights turning into the drive cast a welcome luminance over the entrance.

“The big lorry parked again in front of the main entrance, and the two workmen I had seen earlier got out. I could not really understand the rapid gunfire Swedish, but I gathered the baron was explaining that his aunt had made a mistake. At one point both men looked appalled, and I gathered that Nyderstrom had told them of his aunt’s death. (He told me later that he had conveyed the impression that she was unsound mentally: it would help quiet gossip when they saw a report of the death).

“All four of us went around to the rear of the van, and the two men opened the doors. Under the baron’s direction they carried out and deposited on the gravel the two pieces of furniture I had seen earlier. One was the curious chair. It did not look terribly heavy, but it had a box bottom, solid sides instead of legs and no arm rests. Carved on the oval-topped head was a hand grasping a sort of trident, and when I looked closely, I got a real jolt. The hand had only two fingers and a thumb, all without nails, and I suddenly felt in my bones the reality of my host’s story.

“The other piece was the small, plain, rectangular chest, a bit like a large toy chest, with short legs ending in feet like a duck’s. I mean three-toed and webbed, not the conventional ‘duck foot’ of the antique dealers.

“Both the chair and the chest were made of a dark wood, so dark it looked oily, and they had certainly not been made yesterday.

“Nyderstrom had the two men put the two pieces in the front hall and then paid them. They climbed back into their cab, so far as I could make out, apologizing continuously for any trouble they might have caused. We waved from the porch and then watched the lights sweep down the drive and fade into the night. It was fully dark now, and I suddenly felt a sense of plain old-fashioned fright as we stood in silence on the dark porch.

“ ‘Come,’ said the baron, suddenly breaking the silence, ‘we must, hurry. I assume you will help?’

“ ‘Certainly,’ I said. I felt I had to, you see, and had no lingering doubts at all. I’m afraid that if he’d suggested murdering someone, by this time I’d have agreed cheerfully. There was a compelling, hypnotic power about him. Rasputin was supposed to have had it and Hitler also, although I saw him plenty, and never felt it. At any rate, I just couldn’t feel that anything this man wanted was wrong.

“We manhandled the chair and the chest into the back of the house, stopping at last in a back hall in front of a huge oaken door, which appeared to be set in a stone wall. Since the house was made of wood, this stone must have been part of the original building, the ancient fort, I guess, that he’d mentioned earlier.

‘There were three locks on the door, a giant old padlock, a smaller newer one and a very modern-looking combination. Nyderstrom fished out two keys, one of them huge, and turned them. Then, with his back to me, he worked the combination. The old house was utterly silent, and there was almost an atmospheric hush, the kind you get when a bad thunderstorm is going to break. Everything seemed to be waiting, waiting for something to happen.

“There was a click and Nyderstrom flung the great door open. The first thing I noticed was that it was fined with steel on the other, inner side, and the second, that it opened on a broad flight of shallow steps leading down on a curve out of sight into darkness. The third impression was not visual at all. A wave of odor, strong but not unpleasant, of tide pools, seaweed and salt air poured out of the opening. And there were several large patches of water on the highest steps, large enough to reflect the light.

“Nyderstrom closed the door again gently, not securing it, and turned to me. He pointed, and I now saw on one wall of the corridor to the left of the door, about head height, a steel box, also with a combination lock. A heavy cable led from it down to the floor. Still in silence, he adjusted the combination and opened the box. Inside was a knife switch, with a red handle. He left the box open and spoke, solemnly and slowly.

“ ‘I am going down to a confrontation. You must stay right here, with the door open a little, watching the steps. I may be half an hour, but at most three quarters. If I come up alone, let me out. If I come up not alone, slam the door, turn the lock and throw that switch. Also if anything else comes up, do so. This whole house, under my direction, and at my coming of age, was extensively mined and you will have exactly two and a half minutes to get as far as possible from it. Remember, at most, three quarters of an hour. At the end of that time, even if nothing has happened, you will throw that switch and run . . .!’

“I could only nod. There seemed to be nothing to say, really.

“He seemed to relax a little, patted me on the shoulders, and turned to unlock the strange chest. Over his shoulder he talked to me as he took things out. ‘You are going to see one thing at any rate, a true Sea King in full regalia. Something, my friend, no one has seen who is not a member of my family since the late Bronze Age.’

“He stood up and began to undress quickly, until he stood absolutely naked. I have never seen a more wonderful figure of a man, pallid as an ivory statue, but huge and splendidly formed. On his head, from out of the stuff in the chest, he had set a narrow coronet, only a band in the back, but rising to a flanged peak in front. Mounted in the front peak was a plaque on which the three-fingered hand and trident were outlined in purple gems. The thing was solid gold. Nyderstrom then stooped and pulled on a curious, short kilt, made of some scaly hide, like a lizard’s and colored an odd green-gold. Finally, he took in his right hand a short, curved, gold rod, ending in a blunt, stylized trident.

“We looked at each other a moment and then he smiled. ‘My ancestors were very successful Vikings,’ he said, still smiling. ‘You see, they always could call on help.’

“With that, he swung the door open and went marching down the steps. I half shut it behind him and settled down to watch and listen.

“The sound of his footsteps receded into the distance, but I could still hear them in the utter silence for a long time. His family vault, which I was sure connected somehow with the sea, was a long way down. I crouched, tense, wondering if I would ever see him again. The whole business was utterly mad, and I believed every word of it. I still do.

“The steps finally faded into silence. I checked my watch and found ten minutes had gone by.

“Suddenly, as if out of an indefinite distance, I heard his voice. I recognized it instantly, for it was a long quavering call, sonorous and bell-like, very similar to what I had heard when he rescued me in the afternoon. The sound came from far down in the earth, echoing faintly up the dank stairs and died into silence. Then it came again, and when it died, yet again.

“My heart seemed to stop. I knew that this brave man was summoning something no man had a right to see and calling a council in which no one with human blood in his veins should sit.

“Silence, utter and complete, followed. I could hear nothing, save for an occasional faint drop of water falling somewhere out of my range of vision.

“I glanced at my watch. Twenty-one minutes had gone by. The minutes seemed to crawl endlessly, meaninglessly. I felt alone and in a strange dream, unable to move, frozen, an atom caught in a mesh beyond my comprehension.

“Then far away, I heard it, a faint sound. It was faint but regular, and increasing in volume, measured and remorseless. It was a tread, and it was coming up the stair in my direction.

“I glanced at my watch, thirty-four minutes. It could be my friend, still within his self-appointed limits of time. The step came nearer, nearer still. It was, so far as my straining ear could judge, a single step. It progressed further, and suddenly into the circle of light stepped Nyderstrom.

“He was alone and as he came up he waved in greeting. He was dripping wet and the light gleamed on his shining body. I threw the door wide and he stepped through.

“As his head emerged into the light, I stepped back, almost involuntarily. There was a look of exhaltation and wonder on it, such as I have never seen on a human face. The strange green eyes flashed, and there was a faint flush on the high cheekbones. He looked like a man who has seen a vision of Paradise.

“He walked rather wearily, but firmly, over to the switch box, which he closed and locked. Then he turned to me, still with that blaze of radiance on his face.

“ ‘All is well, my friend. They are again at peace with men. They have accepted me and the story of what has happened. All will be well now, with my house, and with me.’

“I stared at him hard, but he said no more and began to divest himself of his incredible regalia. He had one more thing to say, and I can hear it still as if it were yesterday, spoken almost as an afterthought.

“ ‘They say the blood of the guardians is getting too thin again. But that also is settled. I have seen my bride.’ ”

The Leftovers

The introduction of Brigadier Donald Ffellowes is perhaps unnecessary to readers who have followed his earlier adventures in these pages (SOLDIER KEY, August 1968; THE KINGS OF THE SEA, November). Suffice it to say that the Brigadiers bag of incredible experiences seems not one whit diminished by past offerings, as evidenced by this strange tale of survivors from earlier times.

I STARTLED THE DISCUSSION BY accident. A national magazine recently had carried some color photographs of an alleged giant, apelike creature said to be living in the California mountains. This intrigued me, and I mentioned that I would like to go and look for the beast and wished I were younger.

We were sitting over coffee at the clubs big table, four or five of us, and Ffellowes, our retired British brigadier was one.

“Tike that coelacanth fish off East Africa,” said somebody. “A survivor from earlier times, perhaps, like a live Pithecanthropus or even a Neanderthal man.”

“Probably a lot of nonsense or else a crude publicity stunt,” said someone else. “You’ve traveled a lot, General Ffellowes, what do you think?”

“ ‘Brigadier’, please, not ‘General’,” said Ffellowes absently. “Our generals begin with major general. A lot of nonsense? I saw the pictures and they looked extremely convincing to me, I must say. But I don’t think I want to look for the thing, not myself. If it is a survivor, a sort of leftover, as it were, why I would leave it quite to itself, or themselves properly speaking. There must be more than one, if they do exist, you know.”

He looked vacant, his red, clean-shaven face smooth as a boy’s, his eyes focused on nothing as he stared over our heads.

I scented a story. The vacant look and musing manner had always preceded one of Ffellowes incredible tales in the past, and I felt sure there was something similar on his mind now. Several others, who had heard him in the past, also looked alert. None of us dared speak, because Ffellowes is moody. Usually you can let well enough alone and he’ll talk by himself, but if someone says something at the wrong moment, he simply shuts up. We waited.

“If my geological knowledge is not too dated,” he said, still looking at the mantelpiece, “these man-apes and hairy giants once existed in the Pleistocene epoch, about a million years ago, and may still be with us. Why not, indeed? A million years is nothing in terms of the Earth’s history.”

Mason Williams had been sitting glaring at Ffellowes since he first spoke. Williams disliked him, and the British in general, but he couldn’t seem to stay away from him, either. Now he had to say something.

“A million years ago there was only the beginning of intelligence, pal. That’s a mighty long time and it’s how long it took to develop us, from whatever ancestor you pick.”

Exactly what his point was, I don’t really know. He’d just been looking for something to argue with Ffellowes about, and this was the first statement he could pounce on.

Ffellowes stared coldly at Williams, and I knew it was touch and go. He’d either clam up or be irritated enough to go on talking. But we were lucky.

“Intelligence, according to a number of experts in the field of evolution, a study, Williams, somewhat removed from stockbroking, may well be an accident. That Pleistocene or Pliocene, or even earlier still, hominids of some sort achieved it could very well be ascribed to luck. Circumstances in one place loading the dice, so to speak, in terms of the right animal, the right climate, the right impetus.” He fell silent again.

Williams opened his mouth, but what he was about to say will remain unknown, because Ffellowes started talking, steadily and precisely, in a way which permitted no interruption, at least not by anyone of Williams’ caliber.

“I rather imagine none of you know the Hadhramaut, do you? I thought not. Well, it’s the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula, the area the British just abandoned when we left Aden last month. If you go from the Aden area east, you run through a lot of what were called ‘associated states’; and finally, a little more than halfway, on a map, across the Arabian peninsula, you hit Oman, a sort of dreary, fringe state which borders Saudi Arabia on the southeast, cutting it off from the sea. Now that were gone, I rather imagine that the Saudis will do something about Oman. They could use a seaport on the Indian Ocean. But that’s by the way.

“A most unpleasant country to travel in, the Hadhramaut, unless one is, or appears to be, a part of the scenery and very well armed in addition. Two people simply aren’t enough, or weren’t in 1924.

“A Sudanese Arab named Moussa wad Helu and I were moving east along the coast, quite near the Oman border and hoping we’d get out alive. I’d been sent to get some information on a reputed Mahdi, a prophet, who was going to expell the British from that part of the world, and I’d got myself rumbled. You’d say ‘blown’ now I think.

“Old Moussa, who was an awfully sound chap, one of our best men in the area, volunteered to get me out, before the Mahdi’s boys did me in, that is. We left a ghastly hole called Hauf on the run, with the opposition firing badly aimed Lewis guns at our backs. We had two fairish camels and a limited amount of food and water, plus one rifle, two pistols and an assortment of knives. I was rigged out as an Arab but couldn’t have fooled anyone. I speak Arabic but appearances are against me. I’d been hiding, lying low inland collecting information when the balloon went up.

“We knew the local Mahdi’s people would be after us like a shot, and we only had one ace in the hole. This was a big torch, a flashlight, for signaling a motor torpedo boat the Navy had in the area. We’d got a last message off on my wireless set before we destroyed it, and we could only hope the boat would be cruising along looking for us where it was supposed to be.

“We rode all through the night, along the low dunes behind the beach. It was cool and lovely, but we knew what the next day would be like.

“In the dawn light the ocean stretched like a sheet of pink glass on our right. There was a narrow stretch of pebbly beach, about a quarter mile of exposed coral reef, because the tide was out, and then the empty, motionless sea.

“We rode on all through the burning hot day, hoarding our water and not talking. The vague rendezvous with the MTB was about fifty miles ahead, and we knew the local bad types were sure to be not too far behind.

“Lovely scenery if one had the time to enjoy it, really. I saw a flock of large black and white birds, not gulls or terns, but something else, standing on the reef at one point. That was all that moved until about noon. Then I pulled up my oont with a jolt. There were five blackish, hunched figures way out on an outcrop of coral, scrabbling about in the shallow water.

“ ‘Only dwellers of the tide, Effendi,’ said Moussa, also reining up. They are dwarfs, harmless, not even able to kill. They eat all the dirt cast up by the sea, shells and seaweed, dead fish also. They are no danger to anyone.’

“ ‘Are they then Bedawi (Arabs)?’ I asked.

“He looked disgusted, his narrow, sun-blackened face wrinkled in contempt. They are barely human. They have no house, nothing. God never sent the Prophet, blessed be His Name, to speak to such as they. But they are very old. They have always been here.’

“This was apparently all he cared to say, and we moved off again. I looked back at the strange little shapes and wished I knew more about them.

“At dusk we stopped. The straight shore had sloped in a little, and some sort of seep had brought enough water to form a small bog at the entrance of a shallow gully. It was a nasty, evil-smelling place, but the camels needed rest and so did we. Also, and this was even more important, the camels could drink the brackish, scummy water of the seep and allow us to save our waterskins.

‘The mosquitoes were particularly bad, so we tethered the animals in the gully and climbed to its western edge to both rest and keep watch. I noticed Moussa seemed a bit edgy, constantly glancing about, you know, and I finally asked him if he had heard or seen anything that disturbed him. He’d been quite relaxed earlier in the afternoon and had even said we had a good lead on the opposition, so this change in attitude got the wind up a bit for me.

“ ‘I don’t like this place, Effendi,’ he finally said. ‘No one comes here. It has a bad name among all the people of the Hadhramaut. I wish we were far enough along the shore to signal the English ship.’

‘I looked about us more carefully, but I couldn’t see anything very disturbing. A range of barren, reddish hills rose inland, the ground sloping up rather sharply from the sea coast. Below us, in the light of late afternoon, the camels fed placidly in the marsh, ignoring the clouds of gnats and mosquitoes around them. I couldn’t see what was bothering the man, a very tough customer indeed, and I said so, telling him at the same time to calm down a bit. To get him in a better mood, I asked him to give me a bit more detail about the area and why it was so disliked.

“ ‘Dawut, Effendi,’ he said, staring at me with his red-rimmed eyes. Now dawut means a number of things, depending on the context of your speech. His meant magic, magic and sorcery.

“I had sense enough to keep from smiling, and I think this reassured him. He fiddled with his big, sickle-shaped Hadhramaut dagger and then went on, clearly speaking with an effort.

“ ‘Not all of the demons were caged by Suleiman bin Daoud,’—that is, Solomon. ‘All sensible men know this. Djinn and Grol still live in the Rub’ al Khali, the greatest of deserts to the north, claimed now by ibn-Saud. But around here,’ and he looked around in the failing light, ‘here the cursed ones, the worst of those ancient ones who lived before Adam, the Beni (unpronounceable) are said still to hide. That is why no one ever comes here.’

“After the word Beni, which means ‘sons of’ the next word had been a curious grating hiss, which I can’t imitate now and which somehow made me rather uncomfortable then.

“I was quite intrigued. Moussa was anything but soft, and I’d never heard a superstitious word out of him before. Now all this tosh about magic and devils came boiling out like beer from a shaken bottle. It was all very surprising and mysterious.

“There was still light enough to see one another quite well, and some contempt or something must have shown on my face. His mouth shut like a trap and he swung away down the slope. Over his shoulder he called back.

“ ‘We have rested long enough and we must keep moving. Otherwise we will miss the English ship.’

“I couldn’t argue that, so we went down, unhobbled the camels and set off over the dunes again. The daylight was now very dim, and the blazing stars of the tropics were clearly visible. On our right the Indian Ocean lapped at the pebbles, and aside from the shuffle of our camels and the creak of our leather gear, this was the only sound. We could see well enough to ride if we didn’t move too fast, and as the night came on, the stars gave us quite decent visibility.

“Every so often and with increasing frequency, we came to one of the marshy, ill-smelling wadis, or gullies, sloping down from the hills, and I soon noticed that Moussa gave these as wide a berth as possible. I knew that I must always follow him, because he knew the country and I didn’t, but when we finally waded the camels out knee-deep into the ocean to avoid one of these little estuaries, I asked him what he thought he was doing.

“ ‘Be silent!’ he said in a carrying whisper, whipping around in his saddle. I could see the whites of his eyes clearly. ‘If you make any more sound, I will forget my oath and leave you here. We are in deadly danger, and because you are stupid we will die if we are not careful. Now—silence!’ He turned and urged his beast on.

“This was a new Moussa with a vengeance! No ‘Effendi’ and a threat to leave me flat in addition. I made up my mind to have it out with Master Moussa at a later date, but meanwhile I kept my mouth shut and followed.

“Now in the silence that followed, I suddenly became aware of something new. Moussa and most other desert Arabs I ever met could beat me all hollow at seeing things far away. I reckon our civilized noses aren’t worth much either, and again he could catch scents I couldn’t begin to detect. But his ears were curiously inefficient, compared to mine. I’ve noticed this before among other various folk who live out of doors, notably in West Africa, and I have no idea why, but it’s a fact nonetheless.

“I heard something now and I didn’t much care for it either. It was a curious padding and scuffling noise, and it seemed to come from our left where the land rose. At first it seemed near, then farther away, then closer again. We were riding at a slow trot over the gentle sea face of the sand dunes, and I finally caught on to just what I was hearing.

“Some thing, or things, was moving parallel to us along the other side of the line of dunes, and the slight variation in the height of the dunes made for the difference in the sound.

“I looked at Moussa’s back, but even though it appeared tense, I knew somehow he couldn’t hear what I could. What should be done, I wondered?

“Finally, I urged my camel alongside his to get his attention quietly. As he looked up in surprise, I pointed to my ears and made a motion of someone walking or running with my fingers. Then I pointed to our left, to the crest of the dunes. The starlight was so bright that it was easy for him to see what I was doing.

“He caught on at once and his face went all drawn and taut while his mouth opened in an ‘o’ of surprise. Then he unslung his rifle in one motion and laid it across his saddlebow. He took out his pistol and jammed that in his cartridge belt and motioned to me to do the same. Next, he waved me around him so that I rode on the ocean side, but next to him. All this was done without our camels breaking stride, and I was beginning to get a bit shaken.

“He angled our line of march down off the dunes onto the pebbly strand itself and even further, so that the camels were running almost in the calm water itself. They had speeded up, by the way, and we were now moving at a pretty fair clip. They were well-trained camels and the hour’s rest had done them good.

“I could hear nothing now, because the plash of their feet in the water made too much noise, but I felt sure we were not out of danger. Soon I saw the reason why. Up ahead, the dunes suddenly got very low and then for a space vanished. This flat lasted about half a mile, and then the dunes resumed again. A wave of fetid odor told me we were coming to yet another tidal marsh where still another wadi led to the sea.

“The camels were running ankle-deep now, and any deeper would have slowed them badly. We were in the best possible position to meet whatever was pacing us, and as the last dune halted abruptly, I got my first sight of it, or rather, them.

“A line of lean dark figures, perhaps a score or more, erupted over the crest of the white dune and poured down the face of it in our direction. In a second, they were out on the flat and coming after us like race horses. And they were men! The starlight showed their long legs clearly as they ran, in tremendous, leaping strides. By heavens, I had no idea men could run like that, and, mind you, I’d seen Masai and Shilluk warriors, both supposed to be tops in that field. They came on in utter silence, what’s more, and Arabs would have been yelling like the devil by now. Also, desert Arabs don’t like fighting at night, and won’t if they can help it.

“Moussa beat his camel and mine, too, with his goad, and we went on at a fine pace over the sea’s edge, but behind us those dark figures got more and more distinct in the starlight.

“In a pinch, you couldn’t find better than Moussa. Not all Arabs can shoot, but a lot can, and he was one. He spun on his saddle and began snapping his Enfield off like a veteran. I saw one runner go down, but the rest came on. Then he hit another, who veered off into the water and fell with a mighty splash, and they seemed to check for a moment. By this time, I’d made up my mind whatever they were, they certainly were no Arabs for they were naked or almost so, and I really could see no clothes of any sort at all.

“Moussa reloaded in the saddle and we thundered on. The dunes had reappeared again, but our enemies weren’t taking cover, but coming on right behind us once more, and once more they were gaining. Such running I simply could not believe.

“ ‘Effendi,’ yelled Moussa, ‘the camels can’t last at this speed. How far to the ship-meeting place?’

“Now I’d been devoting a lot of thought to just that, and I felt sure it wasn’t much further. I’d been checking a pedometer at intervals, and it works on camelback, you know; and with that and a certain landmark, a small island now visible off the coast, I knew we were only about two miles or so away. Of course, if the boat wasn’t there . . .!

“Actually, it was quite a narrow squeak, what with one thing and another. I’d hauled out my big torch from the saddlebag and started blinking it like mad in an SOS aimed out to sea. Moussa was shooting again, really browning the lot, I suppose, but I couldn’t see, being busy with the light. What a chase! And still not one bloody sound out of those beggars. If it hadn’t been for the rifle, it all could have been a bad dream.

“My camel gave way suddenly with no warning at all. The poor brute had done its best, and it collapsed kicking and threw me over its head into the shallows. As I flew through the air, I kept thinking to myself, don’t let the pistol go, and I managed to hold it as I hit in about three feet of water. It was a big “broom handle’ Mauser automatic, and as I staggered erect, three of them were on me, coming through the shallows like Olympic sprinters.

“I blinked the salt out of my eyes, flipped the change lever to full auto and sprayed all three until the magazine was empty.

“I downed them all, but one got his hand on my arm and pulled me under with him. I pulled free of the body as the grip relaxed and there was Moussa and his camel beside me.

“ ‘Get up behind me quick,’ he called, and believe me, I did. He was still shooting over my head, but then his shots stopped as I mounted, and by the time I’d hauled myself up, the night was quiet again. As we sat in the shallow water, watching and listening, I could hear the MTB’s engines as it swept in to meet us, and in another minute a searchlight beam had picked us out. We shot Moussa’s camel, nothing else to do, and left the area in a great hurry. I wasn’t sorry to see the last of it.

““You see, the flash of my pistol had lit up my attackers all too clearly. They were about seven feet tall, stark naked, hairless and covered with minute blackish scales. In addition, their mouths were full of needle-like fangs, and they only had two holes where a nose ought to be. Their hands had long, sharp claws on the fingers, which I can demonstrate.”

No one said a word as Ffellowes removed first his coat and his left cuff link and finally rolled up his sleeve. There on his inner elbow were four savage white wheals, obviously done a long time ago.

““Yes,” he went on, “if anyone wants to look for Pleistocene man in California, good luck to him. I rather fancy I’ve seen Paleozoic Man, and that’s quite enough of a leftover for me, thank you. Someone else can find the others.”

Even Williams could think of nothing to say.

Fraternity Brother

The subject of discussion at the club was secret societies: the Mafia, the Carbonari, the Black Hand, and the Chinese secret societies, which everyone agreed were the oldest. “With one exception, that is,” said Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, and thereby hangs another of the Brigadiers strange and fascinating tales.

WE HAD GOT OUORSELVES ON the subject of secret societies one day at the club, although how exactly I forget.

The Carbonari, the Black Hand, the Illuminati, Rosicrucians (the real ones, not the modem newspaper ad people), all had been argued over. From them, we had gone on to the Leopard and Hyena societies of Africa, the Thugs of Nineteenth-Century India (a case was made, by the way, for their continued existence) and the various Chinese secret societies, of which the tongs are but a part.

We ended up with the medieval German Vehmgericht, the recent Balkan murder groups such as IMRO, the Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, and of course, the Ku Klux Klan.

With the latter, it was agreed we were approaching political parties too closely, which were not really the same thing at all. The discussion began to peter out into an argument about continental European Freemasonry, particularly so-called Grand Orient lodges, and whether or not the South and Central American lodges were still connected with them.

I didn’t even know Brigadier Ffellowes, late of Her Majesty’s forces, was in the club until he got up and came over. He’d been sitting in an alcove of the library behind us, reading the London Times, and had overheard us talking.

“I’ve heard,” he said quietly, in a pause in the conversation, “that every member of the Mexican Cabinet still must be a Grand Orient Mason, in order to prove that he will make no later concessions to the Roman Church. Mexico is the only Latin country to have disestablished the church, severed it from the state, you know, and Rome is still violently opposed to Freemasonry.”

“What we were really after,” I said, “was the origin of secret societies and fraternities, which are the oldest still going, and when they started.”

He looked thoughtful, his ruddy, smooth-shaven face turned to the window. “Well, the Masons are pretty old, certainly,” he said at length.

“Their early periods are somewhat confused, but they run in a continuous line from at least 1400 and probably a good deal earlier. There are records in the British Museum. The chaps who were sent to England from the Continent to build our cathedrals seem to have been some kind of Masons, I believe, but the Craft died out there until we re-introduced it, beginning with the formation of the first British Grand Lodge in 1717.”

“Are you a Mason?” I asked. “Not at all,” he said quickly. “This is all a matter of public record. I’m giving away no ones secrets, I assure you. But you know, the Masons are not really competitors for your early date.

“The Chinese secret societies you mentioned go back to the Han dynasty at least. That’s 206 B.C., so you see they have a long lead on the Masons. Confucius was a secret society member, and so was Mencius and probably Lao-tze as well.”

“What about the Near East?” said someone else. “Do any modern groups come down from Babylon or Sumer? What about ancient Egypt?”

“Yeah, and what about the Mafia?” came another question. “Aren’t they pretty damned old?”

“I say, not so fast,” said Ffellowes. He sat down in a vacant chair and took up the thread of his lecture again.

“Near Eastern societies are all relatively pretty modern, like the Arab Brotherhood types who are always trying to do Nasser in. They’re usually religious and semi-mystical, like old Ibn Saud’s Wahabis, who are sort of Moslem monks, really. But very few, if any, date from earlier than six or seven hundred A.D.

“The sect of the Assassins is gone in its original sense, although a few villages in northern Persia call themselves that, I think.

“And finally, the Mafia, although nasty, probably goes back to around 1700 in Sicily, its place of origin, and so isn’t really very old at all.”

There was a silence while we all tried to think of any group we might have missed, but none of us could.

‘That means, then, that the Chinese are the oldest?” I finally said.

Ffellowes was now looking vacantly out of the window at the evening traffic and appeared not to hear me, so I repeated my question.

“I do beg your pardon,” he said, coming back to earth. “What did you say?”

For the third time I asked if the Chinese had the oldest secret societies.

“Yes, I think so,” said the brigadier, “with one exception, that is. Yes, with one exception.”

There was something almost teasing in the tone of his voice, although his face was as expressionless as ever. But I knew and so did the others, that he had sprung a trap on us and was waiting for a question.

I couldn’t resist saying, not maliciously, but for fun, “I suppose you’re the only guy who knows the exception?”

His blue eyes twinkled for a second, but his face remained immobile.

“I don’t know how you guessed it, but that’s so. As a matter of fact, there’s a story connected.”

There was a scraping of chairs as we closed in around him. His stories were like that. When we were settled, he began in his flat, clipped tones.

Tn the spring of 1939, I went, for a vacation of two weeks, to a place in the Spanish Pyrenees. It’s a very small place and its name will not appear in my story. Lovely clean air and pine-clad mountains.

“My hobby, or one of them, is bird-watching, and it’s a grand area for birds. I saw the short-toed eagle my first day out, and all sorts of rare species nested there. I was staying at a little mountain village inn, and except for a few scattered cottages, this tiny hamlet of some hundred-odd souls was the only inhabited place for miles.

“The ghastly havoc of the Civil War was only just over, of course, but I was in such a remote area that even that had had very little visible effect. The people were very poor and life was hard, but that had always been the case.

“They were interesting people. They were Basques, but not the big, burly seamen one finds around Bilbao and on the Asturian coast. This was a shorter, darker race, very curt in speech, and impassive in appearance. Mind you, they were kind and gentle as well, but they had a great capacity for minding their own business.

“Now I speak a little Basque.

Its a hard tongue to grasp, but I’ve lived in northern Spain at various times and I can make myself understood. As most of you know, I’m sure (this was flattery, pure and simple), the Basque language has no relatives in any other tongue in the world. This is one reason it’s so hard to learn.

“And it’s a funny language in other ways. All the words for cutting implements, such as scissors or knives, mean ‘the stone which does such and such’, when translated literally. As I say, an odd speeck.”

He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling as if to marshal his thoughts.

“When I said that there was no trace of the Civil War in the village, I overlooked something. Three members of Franco’s Guardia Civil, his state police, were stationed there. To be precise, two privates and a sergeant.

“The privates were decent enough sorts, but the sergeant was ‘something else’, as you say over here. He was a Navarrese city tough named Sandoval, who hated his exile to the mountains and was damned well going to take it out on someone.

“He tried to bully me at first, and when that didn’t work, tried to cadge drinks and use me as a wailing wall. I soon choked him that tack and as a result he hated me like poison. But then, he hated everyone.

“The Spanish Government at this time was still flushing out enemies all over the country. They saw Communists under every rug and were especially suspicious of the Basques and the Catalans, since the two large minorities had been pillars of the late, unhappy Republic. Hence the presence of the sergeant and his men, even in this remote backwater of a village.

“When the locals realized that I could speak Basque and disliked Sandoval as much as they did, they began to warm up to me. Children would sometimes stop me on the street to tell me about an ibex they had seen or to inquire which birds interested me the most. And the adults smiled when they said ‘Good Morning.’

“The patriarch and ruler of the village was one Macario Urrutia, the innkeeper in fact. There was no chapel and the children had no school save for one twelve miles away, which few attended. Thus the school teacher and the priest, traditional authorities of the village scene, were absent and the elderly innkeeper ruled instead.

“Perhaps he would have done so anyway. He was a squat, powerful man, clean-shaven with very broad cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes of a dark brown. I imagine he was around sixty, though I don’t know: he could have been eighty, I suppose. The people live to a great age in this area. Certainly he was very strong and agile as well. I have seen him lift a great barrel of wine as if it were nothing, and as for his agility—well, that comes later.

“Even Sandoval rather feared him, although I don’t think it was altogether physical. The Guardia sergeant was drunk one evening in the large room of the inn and began stigmatizing the whole Basque race as cowardly, treacherous scum. I was about to speak to him myself when Urrutia appeared from somewhere and stood in the center of the room looking down at the seated man.

“Sandoval suddenly shut up quite abruptly, crossed himself and lurched out. The innkeeper had never said a word and it never happened again. It was a peculiar performance.

“But to my amazement, Sandoval, now quite sober, approached me on the street later that same night as I was getting some fresh mountain air before going to bed.

“ ‘Senor Ingles,’ he said abruptly, ‘do not be deceived by these people. You may think them your friends, but I, whom you dislike, tell you they are not. Leave here, lest they involve you in their dirty conspiracies.’

“I was quite annoyed and showed it. ‘Do you think them enemies of the State, Sergeant,’ I said ironically, ‘about to overthrow the Caudillo perhaps?’

“He wasn’t annoyed, which surprised me again. ‘Senor,’ he said, quite politely, I thought, ‘you have lived in the Biscay provinces and in Spain elsewhere. Where, then, is their cemetery?’ With that he turned on his heels and left.

“This was a puzzler! Of all the possible charges against these quiet, law-abiding folk, this seemed the most ludicrous. And yet, the man had been deadly serious. Moreover, his question was not so idiotic to a Spaniard. He must have a dossier on me, for one thing, since I had told no one where I’d lived, and had implied I’d learnt Basque and Spanish at the University. However, that’s by the by.

“Where was the damned cemetery? True, there was neither church nor priest, but I had never heard of any place, no matter how small, on the Iberian Peninsula, without a communal burial site. I resolved to ask Urrutia, since I was getting very tired of Sandoval.

“When I went back to the inn, I found him in the big room making out bills or receipts. He rose as I approached and courteously asked me to take wine, speaking in Basque, but slowly, so that I should be sure to understand. Even the children invariably were this polite, I may say.

“I addressed him as ‘Jaun’, the Basque title meaning ‘Lord’, which every male Basque uses to every other, and explained in my poor Basque, helped out by Spanish, what it was I wanted to know.

“ ‘Our cemetery?’ he said at length. ‘You have been listening to that animal of a sergeant, whom the obscenity calling itself a government has sent to afflict us? I thought so.

“ ‘Friend,’ he continued, laying his hand on my arm, ‘the stones are thick and heavy in these parts. There is little soil and when the rain comes it washes that little away.

“ ‘As true children of Mother Church we send our dead to (he named a town some miles away) where they can lie undisturbed in ground so deep the elements will not expose them to the mountain wolves and stray dogs. I tell you this much,’ he added, his voice suddenly very stern, ‘because you are a friend and honest. With others I would let them think what they wanted.’

“I appreciated his compliment and said so. He never smiled, but nodded and tapped my arm again, as if in dismissal. I went up to my room under the eaves wondering why the sergeant was so stupid.

“Late one afternoon, three days later, I found myself high in the mountains to the east of the village and quite suddenly realized that I was lost.

“I had a compass and wasn’t too worried, just annoyed. I’d somehow got into a maze of gloomy canyons and deep gorges that lay between the village and the French frontier. No one much ever went there; it was trackless all through and not even Sandoval thought there was any smuggling. The route involved would have been so awful that platinum or diamonds wouldn’t have been worth it. The villagers themselves didn’t like the general area, and I’d been warned that several local men had been lost there and never found.

“Yet it was evident that I was in the exact same place I’d been warned to avoid. Night was coming on, but I wasn’t much bothered. Plenty of bushes and stunted pine trees grew about the particular canyon I found myself in, and I resolved to sleep high, to avoid any flash flood coming down the gorge at me. The following day it should be easy enough to find my way out.

“I collected some dry wood with no trouble, found a place to sleep, a shallow cave to be exact, well above the marks of past waters on the canyon wall and prepared to settle down. I had a chocolate bar and even a chunk of spicy, local sausage as well as my canteen, so I wasn’t too badly off at all.

“The fire died down to a bed of coals and I curled up around it. I’d slept a lot worse than this, both before and since, I may say, and the sky was clear and full of stars. I fell asleep in no time.

“When I suddenly woke, it was past midnight by my watch. Clouds covered the stars and the fire had gone out completely so that I was in total darkness.

“But it was what awakened me that had me fully alert. It was a sound, and I knew that I hadn’t dreamt it. Somewhere, not very far away, there had come a sound which had raised the hackles on my neck.

“I listened, straining every nerve. The sounds of the night were gentle, water falling in a tiny brook at the canyon’s bottom, the wind in the bushes. I began to persuade myself that I had heard nothing.

“Then, just as I was dropping off again, it came. Rising to a crescendo and then dying away, the howl of a great wolf rang down the canyon. As it died away, it was answered, this time by a chorus of howls. The whole pack had gathered and were giving tongue. From the sheer volume of noise, they couldn’t have been more than a few hundred yards off.

“D’you know, I was quite thrilled. Very few people have ever got this close to a wolf pack. There was no real danger; in summer, European wolves, even in Russia, are perfectly harmless. After a great battle or a winter famine, I suppose things can be different, but I wasn’t a bit frightened.

“I was about to strike a light, since I was a trifle cold, and rekindle the fire, when something altogether different happened.

“Not from the direction of the wolves, but from down the canyon came first one shot, then a number close together. A scream rang out and to my horror, I realized that it came from a human throat. I sprang to my feet as I heard a hoarse voice shouting in Spanish, ‘So, you Communist pig, that’s one of you who won’t bother the Government again.’ The voice was that of Sergeant Sandoval!

“Then, as silence fell again, I heard from not far away, a low, pitiful moan and the sound of Sandoval’s laugh. Wretched creature that he was, he never laughed without meaning ill to someone.

“At the same time, I saw the glow of a torch, a flashlight you know, not more than fifty yards away down canyon, and heard the Guardia sergeant speak again.

“ ‘Stop pretending to be hurt, Animal. If you want to be really hurt, then don’t answer my questions. Now, why are you in these mountains at night? I have followed many of you. Where do you go? Speak, you—’ Here he used a stream of filthy epithets.

“There was no answer except that I again heard a low groan.

“This was altogether too much.

“ ‘ Sandoval,’ I bellowed. ‘Sergeant Sandoval, it is I, the Senor Ingles. I am coming over. Leave that man alone!’

“I scrambled down from my cave and following the flickering torchlight soon stumbled into a little pocket on the other side of the tiny rivulet. Two figures were revealed in the light.

“Sandoval had laid his torch on a big rock and it illuminated all of us. He stood with his carbine ready, aimed at my stomach, his face contorted with fury and suspicion. It relaxed a little when he saw that I was alone and unarmed, but not much, and the gun stayed aimed.

“Between us on the bare ground crouched the figure of a young man. He was one of the locals whose face I vaguely remembered seeing from the village, although his name escaped me.

“His uncured sheepskin jacket was oozing blood from the right shoulder and his eyes were wide with shock and pain. Why Sandoval had shot the lad I didn’t know, but I was determined to stop any further beastliness.

“ ‘All right, Sergeant,’ I said firmly. ‘What’s all this about. You woke me up with all your racket. What’s this chap done, eh? Looks harmless enough, don’t he?’ My imitation of the authoritarian Pukka Sahib, I felt, was the best way to deal with Sandoval.

“It was only partially successful. The gun muzzle lowered a little and a speculative look replaced the venom in his eyes.

“ ‘Perhaps the Senor knows what this Basque dirt is doing here himself? Perhaps he was meeting the Senor for some secret purpose? Perhaps the Senor is an agent of the Ingles government, eh?’

“Sandoval was not half-witted and was well aware what the current Spanish hierarchy felt about England. This looked like a more than plausible chance to involve me in something illegal.

“ ‘Don’t be a bigger damned fool than you can help, Sergeant,’ I said briskly. ‘I’m unarmed as you can see. If I were a spy or some such rot, I’d have shot you from ambush and no one the wiser. I certainly wouldn’t have shouted your name and come to be slaughtered.

“ ‘Now sling that gun and we’ll see what we can do for this lad here. He’s bleeding badly, can’t you see?’

“It was a good try, but it missed by a mile. The carbine muzzle came up and again centered on my midriff.

“ ‘Always the orders from the great Ingles,’ said Sandoval in a very nasty voice. ‘I think you are wrong, Senor. I have another idea.

This cabron here murdered the poor Ingles traveller, and was caught in the act by me, Juan Sandoval, of the Guardia Civil, who avenged the Ingles nobly. Do you like that idea, Senor?’

“And he meant it. The bastard was going to shoot me down like a rat and blame it on the kid lying between us. It was easy in the torchlight to see. there was murder in Sandoval’s eyes, as he slowly raised the gun until I could look down the barrel. I couldn’t believe it. I was frozen, don’t you know, and at the same time realized that I would be dead in one second. Whew!

“At this point my legs came to life almost by themselves. I had no conscious idea of doing anything, I just jumped at him. There was a blast in my face and utter darkness.

“When I woke, there was singing. How appropriate, I thought to myself. Of course you’re now Up Above and the singing is official,

“But then I realized that I had one king devil of a headache and that the singing didn’t sound much like any heavenly choir I’d ever envisaged. I also realized that my eyes were tight shut, so I opened them. Then I shut them quickly. Then I opened them again. A wolf was looking at me from a foot away.

“The wolf said ‘ah,’ in a satisfied voice and went away. I really began to wake up then, and look about as well.

“I was lying on a bed of skins in a little stone-walled and ceilinged room lit by a small fire in one corner. My hands were tied in front of me and feet were tied together as well, both by a loose sort of leather strap arrangement. I could move, but only hobbled as it were, and I wasn’t uncomfortable except for an aching head. The room was empty but that didn’t last long. A skin curtain or hanging was twitched aside and two men came in. Here was my wolf, or rather wolves!

“They were dressed in skins, entirely, except for peculiar leather leggings of some sort, and set over their heads were the beautifully carved and decorated heads of wolves. These combined helmets and masks were apparently made of painted wood and the wolf’s furry skull, somehow blended. The effect was striking, grotesque and most effective. Save for the eye slits, no trace of a human face was visible.

“Without a word, they came over and helped me to my feet. Half-leading, half-carrying, they got me through the skin doorway and out into the larger cave beyond.

“Of course, that’s what it was. My room was a natural alcove off a huge grotto, at least two hundred feet long and twice that wide, and God alone knows how high. The light of the great log fire, in the center of the cave, and to one side, simply vanished up above in the blackness.

“Around the fire on the floor were at least fifty seated figures, all singing. This was the music I’d heard, a splendid, deepchested chant that went on and on. The words were quite unintelligible. Every figure wore skins like my two guards, but the faces, or rather the masks, were a wide selection. There were wolves, the majority, but also some few badgers, at least one ibex, two or three bears and a number I couldn’t identify by the firelight.

“While I’d been looking at all this, I’d been set down on a flat rock and my two attendants had sat down with me, one on each side. They began to sing also, but although they were roaring practically in my ears, one still couldn’t make out the words. Still, there’s no denying it was impressive.

“I was about thirty feet from the fire and I could see that it was dying; no one was trying to replenish it either, and as it died, other things became visible. As the logs smouldered and collapsed, a great square block of stone appeared behind the fire and against the central wall of the cave. And the wall itself also appeared. It seemed to have been polished or smoothed down, for there were designs and things painted on it, but too dim for me to make them out in the dying light.

“Next the singing began to die out along with the light, and soon there was a hush, with only the crackle of the coals and blackening logs breaking the silence. Everyone, and I include myself, was waiting for something. One could feel it in the air like electricity.

“Now four men, all in wolf masks, appeared, carrying a heavy burden. They marched solemnly through a lane in the crowd and deposited the burden on the great stone altar. The big block could have been nothing else, you know, and the second I spotted it I knew what was coming. Somehow, something or someone was going to occupy that altar and I felt pretty certain who it would be! Still, no point in yelling, so I sat quietly. Nothing else I could do, actually.

“But on the altar now lay the body of a huge brown bear. The carriers had left and I could see it clearly, it’s great clawed forepaws spilling over the side of the stone, its massive, snarling jaws clotted with dried saliva open in a grin of rigor mortis, I can tell you chaps, it made me feel just a trifle easier in my mind.

“A new light appeared at the far end of the cave, and as it advanced a stranger and even more curious sight became visible.

“The new light came from a single large torch, not a flash, a real torch, made of wood, and holding it was the damnedest figure in the whole assemblage. The mask this time was the neck and head, antlers and all, of a great red deer, a stag. The skinclad body beneath was naked to the waist and attached to the waist by a belt was a great, carved wooden phallus, strapped on over a kilt of fur and hide. The legs again were bare and on the man’s chest were painted strange geometric designs. Oh, yes, there was a long tail of some animal or other fastened on behind. Sounds ludicrous in a description, I dare say, but it was anything but to see. I rather think I was still dizzy from that gunshot or head crease, but the whole wild scene was superb and this last entry a figure of tremendous and awful dignity.

“The chant began again with this new arrival and he seemed to lead it, singing out in a great roaring voice, quite audible over the rest. And the others began to rise and whirl about as they sang. So did the chief, whirling his torch about so that the sparks flew. He moved like a ballet dancer, too.

“Several times as he did so, the torch illumined the back wall of the cave, and I saw the painted designs upon it clearly for a second or two. I’d seen them before, or others like them. Blackened by age and smoke, the wooly mammoth and the reindeer, the vanished aurochs and the wild horse marched across the wall as they had for countless millennia. The cave evidently had been in use for a very long time indeed.

“Now the man-deer held a great club in his free hand. All the others, save for my guards, had produced them too, and began to form a great line leading to the altar, with the antlered leader in front. While the mighty chant rose higher and higher, first he, then in turn the others, filed by the carcass of the bear and struck it each one tremendous blow. The dead body shook to the frightful pounding, but I’d rather have seen it than felt it, I can tell you!

“When all were done, I was amazed to see that blood was trickling down the face of the altar in a dark stream from under the bear skin. I should have thought this impossible in a creature dead so long, but I was clearly mistaken. No doubt the battering the body had received had caused it to flow afresh.

“The man-deer suddenly whirled up his snapping torch, by now almost the only light, and there was instant silence. Then, one by one, the worshippers approached the altar. As they did so, they briefly knelt while the chief hierophant dipped one finger in the blood and marked their beastly disguises on the muzzle.

“As they finished, my two wolfish attendants suddenly lifted me firmly to my feet and carried me also down to the altar stone. For a second I stared into the burning eye slits of the great deer mask, and felt the wet finger mark my forehead. I was no longer afraid. For I knew well, oh yes, I knew now I was in no danger. I had been sealed in the compact.

Then a bowl was brought and held to my lips. In silence I drank without fear and without fear felt the whole scene darken, then vanish as my drugged eyes closed.

“When I woke, the morning sun was streaming into my window at the inn. I lay for some time quietly in my pajamas, listening to the sounds of passers-by on the village street outside, smelling the stew cooking in the kitchen.

“Presently I rose, shaved and dressed. As I looked into my travelling mirror, I saw the weal on my right temple, but the headache was gone.

“I went downstairs to the big room, noting that it was about nine and called for coffee and bread. I was very hungry.

“The landlord brought the tray himself and after placing it in front of me, stood looking down at me, his broad face calm as always. I determined I’d say nothing and finally he spoke.

“ ‘You are well again, Friend? You were found on the mountain yesterday, having apparently fallen, but when we carried you down, my wife said you would be yourself after a good sleep. This is so, no?’

“That was the way it was going to be then. A ‘fall’ and a ‘good sleep’. And then it came to me with a rush.

“You fellows must think I was awfully obtuse, but one thing had completely vanished from my thoughts. Sandoval! I’d completely forgotten a man who’d tried to murder first a village boy and then me! Where was the Guardia sergeant? The shock of remembering started to bring me to my feet in an involuntary spasm, when Urrutia’s great hand fell upon my shoulder, calming me and preventing my getting up.

“ ‘We have had a worse tragedy, Friend, which is why we have not paid you the attention you deserve,’ came his deep, resonant voice. ‘The evil-spoken sergeant of the government police has vanished. All the men in the village are out looking, and his two men as well. It seems he left here very drunk, yesterday afternoon, and I fear that he has been foolish. Even you fell and you are used to the mountains, which he is not.’

“Presently his hand left my shoulder and when I eventually looked up, he was gone.

“I remained seated long after my coffee had cooled. How does one tell the last of the Cro-Magnon priest-kings that one strenuously objects to witnessing human sacrifice? I never did think of a way until I left.

“Still, as I say, the Chinese do not have a clear run on being the oldest at everything, you know.”

I asked a question and Ffellowes looked thoughtful.

“The cemetery? I don’t think they buried their dead locally, that’s all. In fact, I think they were in the cave. Logical, eh? Well, goodnight all.” He was gone.

A Feminine Jurisdiction

This is, we think, the most exciting Ffellowes adventure to date, in which the Brigadier relates the curious and frightening events that follow his being stranded on an island during World War II, an island strange in a particularly nasty and unpleasant way.

THE EVENING TALK IN THE club library had reached—or descended, it’s all in the point of view—to the subject of women. Not sex. Older men are perfectly capable of discussing sex of course, but women are far more interesting to an experienced, intelligent man. Here we are, sharing the planet with what is another species really, and yet we still don’t know how they think! Incredible!

The subdivision, you could call it, of the current conversation, was “executive women”, or “business women”; but really what was meant was women running things that men normally do or holding jobs men have always held in the past.

Mason Williams was in his usual noisy, if not good, form. He told a long story about some woman in a brokerage office who had annoyed him by doing something or other she shouldn’t. Williams is a bore and the story was both interminable and completely uninteresting. Several of us were openly yawning before it mercifully ended.

Yet oddly enough, the anecdote, dull and trite though it was, struck a response among a number of others present. A quiet guy named Callahan, a lawyer, spoke up quite vigorously for more women’s rights and said that very few women ever got a decent break in any profession. I personally have always felt this was true in my business (I’m a retired banker), and chipped in a few examples of how I’d known capable women who got “new” titles and drastically lowered salaries to do exactly the same work as the men they were replacing.

Of the ten or so present we were finally all talked out on the subject. Except, that is, for Donald Ffellowes, our retired British brigadier. (He always corrected anyone who said “brigadier general”.) There is no one more worth listening to on any subject. His commission was supposed to have been in the Royal Artillery, but his experiences ranged from the Colonial Police to MI-5 to the R.A.F. I mean he’d been everywhere. He had a liking for obsolete American slang, and he’d say “I’ve seen the elephant and heard the owl.” A lot of his stories were absolutely wild and almost unbelievable.

A few anti-British types, like Mason Williams, said he was a liar and a fake, but I noticed they never left once he’d started talking or telling a story.

Anyway, he’d been sitting, saying nothing about women or anything else, and finally it became obvious that he was the only one who hadn’t said anything. We sort of looked at him, and he suddenly looked up and blinked, as if he’d been a long way off, in time and space.

“Let us see,” he said, “the subject was, or is, women as executives, eh? That is, women running things, and especially men—supervising men or ordering them about, as it were. Is that it? And you are good enough to ask my opinions on the matter?”

Williams mumbled something mostly inaudible in which I caught the word “Limeys”, but no one paid an attention, especially Ffellowes. This annoyed Williams more than anything else, by the way.

“To be frank,” said Ffellowes, “I feel that much of what has been said this evening rather begs the question, evades it, don’t you know.

“You see,” he went on, his ruddy, smooth-shaven face calm and reflective, “women are perfectly constructed, mentally, physically and spiritually for certain things. They possess, in my opinion—and that of others, such as Kipling—a quality of stark ruthlessness which is an outgrowth of the maternal defense mechanism.”

He stared moodily at his Scotch and soda as if seeking inspiration, took a hearty gulp and continued.

“But constructive imagination on a large scale is perhaps not their long suit. They don’t usually innovate well, and once they find a comfortable or accustomed pattern of living, they are very reluctant indeed to change it. Did any of you married chaps ever have an easy time getting the wife to move to another area?” (None of us knew whether Ffellowes himself was married, and no one liked to ask.)

As the benedicts grinned in response to his question, he took up the thread of his theory again.

“As I see it, then, one can’t say women are suitable for this and that position, unless one knows both the woman concerned and the position concerned very well indeed. Some women such as Elizabeth the First and Catherine the Great of Russia have made admirable rulers. Still, I think a continuous matriarchy is not a good thing, really. It tends to, well, freeze in a mold, allowing no change to occur, and in nature, that sort of thing is quite unnatural.”

He looked reflective again, and then said a funny thing.

“To make a very unpleasant pun, “freeze’ is exactly the word I wanted to use. Matriarchies are bad things in the long run, and when there is an element of something else added, the situation is compounded for the worse. Much the worse.

“Now I once encountered a situation of this sort. Would you like to hear a story?” He knew us all pretty well by now and didn’t wait long before starting.

“In May of 1941, the Germans had completely overrun Greece. I had been sent over by Wavell’s intelligence people—since I speak Demotic, or modern, Greek—to do a spot of resistance preparation. It was obvious to all of us, except Winston apparently, that we couldn’t hold the Panzers back, even though we’d stripped North Africa to do it, and some far-sighted blokes decided to help set up a guerrilla network in advance.

“It was an excellent idea and we did good work. But the Jerries moved one hell of a lot faster than even the most pessimistic of us had thought possible. Instead of taking a leisurely departure through channels laid out in advance, I had to run like hell and trust to luck, if I weren’t to be snaffled and stuck in some ghastly stalag.

“Well, I got to the coast and found the last of the Royal Navy had just left. With another chap, a Greek intelligence wallah whom we badly needed and whom I’d been guarding among other things, I located a small motor-driven caique, a Greek fishing boat, and we shoved off for Crete.

“I had kept a pretty useful radio with us, and I raised our people in Crete easily that night. They told us to keep off and as you say here get lost’, because Student’s crack Fallschirm jager division was dropping out of everyplace, and Crete itself was obviously a short hop from a total loss.

“I told our Greek crew, all three good men, and we took new bearings for the southeast. Perhaps we could work our way into the Sporades and Cyprus if our luck held. We had providentially put lots of fuel aboard and could go a long way, if at not too fast a pace. We wore Greek civies in the hope no Messerschmitt pilot would think us worth strafing.

“Our luck held exactly ten hours, and then a perfectly ghastly Aegean gale blew up out of Asia, driving at us from the northeast. We were somewhere north of Denusa and were driven southeast at a furious rate, really fighting to just stay afloat. This seemed to go on all night, but lasted about five hours, much of it spent under cold, salt water to one degree or another.

“Sometime around 6 AM, when the spume and murk were coming a bit alight, we hit something, a rock one supposes, very, very hard. The little caique, which had really behaved admirably, just burst asunder, and we were all in the sea in seconds.

“The three sailors must have drowned. At any rate, I’m sorry to say I never saw or heard of them again. God bless them, they did their level best for us.

“But my Greek officer and I survived, both, by chance seizing opposite ends of an empty wooden crate which had been lashed to the deck and which had come loose intact. The weather was so bad and black, spray and all, that it was quite a while before each of us saw that the other was hanging on to the same object.

“This seems as good a time as any to mention my charge, the Greek army captain. His name was Constantine Murusi, called Connie by everyone, and he was one of the really old and true Greek nobility, a descendant of the Phanariot princes who ruled the Balkans under the Turks for hundreds of years. A delightful man, humorous and charming, educated in France and spoke a dozen languages. He was steeped in the legends and history of Greece and could make its antiquity come alive for me as no professor ever did. The Greek army thought the world of him, and I’d been told by my chief to take very good care of him, since he was slated for high command in the near future.

“Well, I had not got him killed at this point, but that was about all that could be said for my care. We were unable to do much except cling to our crate, fortunately a sturdy one, and pray, as we were buffeted by spray and pounded by heavy seas. Little by little, the weather was lightening, and finally our range of vision allowed us to actually see one another clearly. Connie grinned at me and even managed to gesture in a feeble way, and I tried to smile back. The force was going out of the waves, but we were exhausted and very cold, and I knew that it was only a matter of time until I simply couldn’t hang on any longer.

“Still, the light grew and the wind dropped and we somehow held on, aided by the fact that the crate was lower in the water, and we could rest our chests on it a bit, if we were careful.

“Suddenly, the clouds all vanished at once and there was the sparkling blue sea, only a bit choppy now, the bright blaze of the morning sun and, about a half of a mile off, an island.

“It must, I still feel, be one of the odd bits that lie in the triangle between Naxos, Ios and Amorgos. I am not really sure to this day, and I confess I have no intention of going back to find out. It was small and rocky, we could see that, you know, even low in the water as we were, perhaps a mile long, not more. There was a little cluster of white houses near the water’s edge where a harbor opened and a larger building up on a cliff, some distance above. It looked like heaven, I can tell you.

“We began to kick and push our clumsy raft as hard as we were able. Neither of us dared swim for it—too tired for that, but we hoped to get ashore by floating. The current seemed to help, and we had actually got near to the harbor entrance, before a sign of life appeared.

“A small boat, rowed by two men, put out from the shore, and we were hauled out of the sea and carted to the beach. When the boat grounded, we tried to stand, but neither of us had the strength, and the boatmen, not roughly but not gently either, picked us up and dumped us on the sand. As we lay there, still panting, we got a most unpleasant shock.

“A sneering voice—sounds silly, but you can sneer verbally—said in excellent English, ‘An obvious Englishman, probably a deserter, looks like a ragamuffin, and a piece of Greek offal who could be anything, so long as it were sufficiently unsavory. Not much of a catch.’

“I looked up and saw that we were lying at the feet of an immaculately uniformed German officer, wearing the black collar tabs of the Waffen SS and the insignia of a Sturmbannführer, which was equivalent to our major. A thoroughly nasty-looking piece of work he was, a thin, blue-eyed blond, narrow-headed to boot; could have passed for Heydrich’s own brother. His only concession to actual war was that he wore a helmet rather than the uniform cap. He now holstered a huge Browning pistol, since we were obviously helpless, and ordered the two men to pick us up and bring us along. He spoke, as good modern Greek as he did English, stilted by our standards, but good.

“One of the men answered, in a curious, slurred, singsong dialect, that the Kyrios, the lord, would be obeyed; and each one put a shoulder under one of ours and one of our arms around his neck. Half supported, half dragged, we were taken in a direction away from the cluster of houses and up a narrow and rocky path to the larger building I had seen earlier. It was quite a steep climb, and although the Nazi marched arrogantly along in front, never even turning around, our two supporters were soon panting. But they never said a word and gave us all the help they could.

“They were shortish, sturdy chaps, both quite young I should say, dark and heavy of feature. Their black eyes were not the usual animated Greek orbs however, but utterly blank, as if nothing at all interested them or ever would. Not dead precisely, but dumb, as in a dumb beast, such as a cow or better still, an ox.

“Eventually we reached the top of the path, and the building lay before us. There was a rather surprising garden, mostly tamarisk sorts of shrubs and low trees, but laid out well, and there were some very fine-looking marble statues here and there. Even in my depressed state I noticed one of an ancient Greek warrior in hoplite armor, which if genuine, ought to be priceless. The man had an arm raised to ward off some danger, and the horror and rage on the face were remarkably done, the work of some master equal to Phidias or Scopas at his best.

“The building was very large, not anywhere over two stories and most of it one, but long and sprawling. The base tier of stones was of huge marble blocks, and I saw at once that a great temple had surely stood here once upon a time. Some of the later work was good, some not, and various rough and smooth courses of stone had been added at different times. Everything not already of white marble had been whitened by stucco so that the surface effect was not inharmonious.

“And yet—the major impression was quite unpleasant. It was as if some vast, inchoate creature had built or accumulated a strange nest, or as if a cosmic whirlpool had gathered house materials and never let any one of them go. There was rather the same feeling I once got on contemplating an underwater cave in the South Pacific, where a large octopus had lived for a long time. There were all sorts of empty shells and fishbones around the cave’s entrance and the feeling that something inside was patiently waiting. It was like that.

“Here, though, there was an added touch, and this was simply age. The great, rambling structure, patched and repaired, seemed immeasurably old, more like a piece of the island than something built upon it. The overall feelings induced, even in the glaring Aegean sunlight, were not particularly happy.

“I was brought sharply out of this, semiconscious reverie by the Nazi, who had just ordered us dropped onto some turf in front of him. He was now sitting on a moss-covered marble bench and had taken his helmet off. Connie and I managed to sit up, but that was about all we were good for. The two Greek boatmen stood behind us in silence.

“The German stared at us for a moment and then surprised me. He extended a pack of cigarettes, produced from his uniform, and when we had each taken one, lit them for us. He also had some water brought in earthenware cups from a fountain nearby. He was no fool.

“ ‘Neither a Greek peasant nor the average Tommy as a rule wears gold seal rings, gentlemen,’ he said, when we were all smoking. ‘I am OberSturmbannführer Freiherr Klaus von Bruch-Wiletzki of the Waffen SS. I may as well tell you that at the moment I am the only German on the island. My plane, which was part of the invasion force of Crete, crashed, and I am the sole survivor.’

“I have always suspected personally he had the only parachute or something, but who can say?

“ ‘Now, gentlemen,’ he went on, ‘as you may or may not be aware, Crete has almost certainly fallen by now. The Axis forces will be all through these islands in a very short time. I suggest you cooperate fully with me, give me your names and ranks for a start, and we will try to live in a civilized manner until the time when you will have to be sent to a prison camp. What do you say?’

“Here was pretty solid truth, at least in most of what he said. These islands could not be held without air cover and the Germans did indeed end up roping them in before the end. I looked at Connie and he looked at me and shrugged. A German baron who was enough of a Nazi to be a field-grade SS officer must be an unpleasant customer, but he was telling the truth, and what could we do about it?

“Well, we gave him our names and ranks. He said, rather surprisingly for someone of that type, that since we were obviously not yet clearly behind German lines, the matter of uniforms would not be brought up, and they would be considered lost at sea. He may actually have grown tired of associating with the scum he normally commanded; I don’t know.

“ ‘This is a strange island, Captain Ffellowes,’ he said to me at length. ‘I have been here now two days and living in the big house here as a guest. The family who owns it runs the whole place, almost one could say, owns it all, the people and every other thing. But so far as I can see, no other island people, not even local fisher folk come here. And look, we are high up. Can you see another island?’

“It was true. We were at one of the highest points on the island, and yet, looking about, nothing but empty sea could be discerned.

“ ‘By my last accurate calculations and those of my dead pilot,’ von Bruch-Wiletzki went on, ‘there should be many such islands nearby. Also, we crashed on a clear day. Suddenly came a mist out of nowhere and, since we were flying quite low when the engine suddenly failed, pfui, all was gone. Peculiar, nicht wahr?’

“Well, it was peculiar, but that was all one could say. An interruption of a quite different kind brought all three of us to our feet just then.

“Apparently out of nowhere, but actually from the strange building behind us, a girl seemed to have materialized.

“She was blonde and very pale, an incredibly rare thing for a Greek and quite beautiful in an indefinable and also non-Greek way. Her face was both round and rather flattened, so that except for her blue eyes, which were also very round, she looked something like a blonde Chinese. She wore a simple, white, flowing garment, rather archaic in cut, and sandals. I judged that she was about eighteen.

“She seemed amazed and yet very pleased at the sight of us. She clasped her hands together in delight and almost skipped with pleasure, the round eyes showing whites all the way around the irises.

“ ‘Two more and one fair skinned,’ she cooed.

“I shouldn’t have thought we looked that delightful, unshaven, coated with brine and dressed in water-soaked rags, but she did. Her voice was low and pleasant, but her Greek was simply amazing. It was nothing less than Attic, the ancient language of the classical period. It was highly inflected and singsong, which Demotic is not, but it was not at all the classic Greek that I had learned in school. It contained a number of modern or at least reasonably modern words, but its inflections made it hard, though not impossible for me to understand, and it was not the dead and arid thing one gets in school texts. Connie, who was a real scholar, perked up his head and bowed grandly.

“She looked at him with interest, but one could see there was a difference. The Nazi and I were blonds, and this was obviously more important to her.

“ ‘You are not the same as our folk,’ she said to him, pointing to the two silent men, who still stood behind us, just as a horse might, fidgeting but patient. ‘But you are more like them than these two. Perhaps once you were as they, or once they were as you. Who shall say?’ She laughed, a pretty sound, but not exactly heartwarming after her strange little speech.

“ ‘But come, you two, I must take you in to see the—’

“She used a word I had never heard but which Connie later told me was a very ancient one, which meant something between ‘relatives’ and ‘persons in authority.’

“Von Bruch-Wiletzki interrupted at this point. ‘I shall accompany them, Fraulein,’ he said ponderously. ‘Pray precede us.’

“She looked at him for a moment and then shook her head. He was speaking Demotic, and apparently she could understand it just as he and I could understand Attic, but not speak it.

“ ‘They have seen you,’ she said pleasantly. ‘You will remain until I return.’

“ ‘I must insist,’ he said harshly, and one hand moved to his pistol holster. Then a strange thing took place. He stopped moving. That was all. Hand still resting on the holster flap, head thrown back, staring at nothing now, for the girl had moved slightly, and the German simply froze, his mouth slightly open.

“Connie and I gaped at the girl, who still smiled pleasantly at us.

“ ‘Come,’ she said. ‘He is very impatient, your friend. He can wait here until we are through inside. He must learn patience. We do not like impatient people here.’ She shook a finger at us in mock reproof, half a play, half admonition.

“We followed her up a broad but shallow flight of steps and entered a large open door. Just before going in, I looked back and there was the Nazi, hand on hip, staring at nothing. It was eerie.

“Inside it was cool and ought to have been refreshing, but it was not. Rather like the overdone air-conditioning one gets in so many shops over here, actually—all dank and chill. The room was large and dark, as indeed were all the rooms in this strange house, and any details were hard to make out. There seemed to be no windows and yet a dim, diffused light came in from some place or other.

“However, our guide beckoned us to another door, and we dutifully—and wearily, I may add—followed her through a succession of similar rooms. There seemed to be no halls, just large rooms, all tacked onto each other in the strangest way.

“Eventually, after passing through at least a dozen of these rooms, we came to an extra large one which seemed to have even worse light than usual. Across the far half of it there was a sort of vast hanging, of something thin and translucent, like fine linen. But it was ragged and not clean and looked more like a sort of grey dusty spider web grown much too large.

“There were two stools and a low round table set in front of the curtain. On the table was a jug of wine and some cups as well as a plate of some small cakes. The girl motioned to us to sit and then poured for us. When we had tasted the wine—very heavy, sweet stuff, but refreshing—she nodded and simply left us sitting there. We were hungry and pitched into the cakes, and the huge room was silent except for us crunching and sipping for some minutes.

“Then suddenly, we were aware that we were not alone. I stopped in the middle of a bite and looked up, and so did Connie. He told me later that he got the same feeling, just as suddenly as I, that of being observed.

“Behind the great dirty hanging, someone was moving in the gloom. Although only a vague shape or impression came through the dim, dark air and the filthy drape, I got the impression of a person of considerable bulk. A sudden dull crash indicated that something quite heavy had been knocked over, and a clumsy scraping sound followed. Then there was a heavy sigh and muffled sounds which seemed to indicate that someone was settling down.

“Then came the voice. It was slow, heavy and grating, most unpleasant to listen to, I do assure you. And there was a suggestion of size and loudness, deliberately muffled about it, too. But it was also bleak somehow and despairing. There was something hopeless and lost about it that would have aroused one’s sympathy if the overall effect had not been so thoroughly ghastly. I can still hear it as I sit here.

“It spoke the same strange archaic Greek as had the girl, and like her’s, it was perfectly intelligible, if one concentrated.

“ ‘Why have you come here? We seek no visitors, except once in a long, long while. The urge comes seldom. Keto, she who brought you here, was the last of the daughters for long, for many, many great tides. I say again, Strangers, what do you want?’

‘Well, d’you know, I could make nothing of this speech. It sounded like raving of some kind. I gathered only two things, one being that the girl’s name was Keto, a pretty name I thought, and that the person addressing us was female. Somehow, under all the grating and rumbling, the tone was that of a woman, an extremely old woman at that. Apparently some half-demented matriarch, some Miss Faversham of the Cyclades was now interviewing us.

“Tired, dirty and now cold as well, because this last room was like an ice chest, I had no idea what to say or do. Connie though, was sitting bolt upright, staring fixedly at the dirty hanging and the shadows moving, or seeming to move, behind it. He spoke in answer and his classical Greek was really superb, although he didn’t use the strange inflections these people did.

“ ‘I am sorry we may not see you, Lady,’ he began. ‘It is very dark in here and our eyes are used to the light. As for coming here, the sea brought us, and we are thus in the lap of the gods, castaways who ask protection.’

“There was a long silence, so long I thought the old creature must have gone to sleep. But the rasping, croaking, voice boomed from behind the curtain at last.

“Are you Greeks, Achaeans or other kinds?” it said.

“ ‘I am of Greek blood,’ said Connie calmly. ‘My companion is from the West, and the other man is a barbarian of the far North.’

“Again there was a long silence. Then the unpleasant voice did something even more unpleasant; it laughed. The noise sounded to me like a barrel of old nails and broken glass dropping on wet cement. Then again, more speech:

“ ‘The other one is cold, cold as the House of the Eye. He plots and schemes and listens and pries. He cannot find me and the other sister, and this makes him angry. And now a Greek has come and with him yet another from far away.’

“The voice died away for a moment, and I caught only the word ‘dream.’ Then it strengthened.

“ ‘Greek, you wish to see me. Well, perhaps you will later, although I do not love the light. Now go and let me be in peace.’ Again there came that decidely nasty laughing noise. This was followed by a loud clatter and the sound of slow, heavy steps going away from us. We could hear them quite a long way off until they finally seemed to cease, lost in some far recess of this strange house.

“The light was good enough for me to see Connie clearly, although it was anything but bright. He was sitting, eyes shut, with his hands clenched on his knees, and his face was very pale and drawn. He seemed to open his eyes with an effort and looked at me and tried to smile, but it was not easy for him.

“ ‘Donald,’ he said in a low voice and leaning over to tap my knee, we must get off this island at once. We are in terrible danger here, far worse than anything you possibly can imagine.’

“ ‘I thought the old lady sounded a bit bonkers, I agree,’ I replied. ‘But do you feel she’s a menace? Let’s not get the wind up.’

“I know this bit sounds very stuffy and British of me, but I was trying to put some starch back in Connie. He was badly shaken and I didn’t like it. It didn’t work, though.

“ ‘A bit bonkers, old lady,’ he repeated in despairing tones. ‘Damn you, Donald, you English idiot, did you see what the girl did to that German in the garden? The way he was made to stay put there? Well, did you?’

“ ‘Of course I did,’ I answered. ‘And a very useful bit of hypnotism, I thought. When we’re rested up, we can get her to put him to sleep again, take his gun and do a bunk in one of the local boats. Now, Connie, do get hold of yourself, old chap. What we both need is some rest, that’s all.’

“ ‘Some rest?’ he almost wailed. ‘Donald, you cretin, we have to get out of here at once. At once, do you hear me! The German is nothing compared to what lives here!’

“ ‘A voice from behind me stopped whatever I was going to say. I turned and saw the girl, standing smiling at the entrance to the room.

“ ‘Have you talked with Euryale?’ she repeated, when she saw I hadn’t heard her. ‘Let us go then and see the other man, the impatient one.’

“Connie pushed past me, rather rudely as a matter of fact, before I could answer and faced the girl from a very short distance. He spoke in the old language.

“ ‘So you are Keto, eh, young lady? And the—the one whom we talked with was Euryale, then?’ His voice was very gentle and low, as if he were anxious not to excite or annoy the girl.

“ ‘Then,’ he continued still facing her, ‘where is Stheno? Surely she dwells also in the House of the Eye, does she not?’

“Now I can, as I said earlier, understand slow-spoken classic Greek, but what this rigmarole meant escaped me completely. However, the girl answered quite calmly, as if it all made perfect sense to her.

“ ‘Of course,’ she said, looking mildly at us. ‘And they have always needed one daughter. Euryale comes up seldom and Stheno never, so I must see that the House is kept strong and safe and tell the folk in the village what to do and how to get food for us and themselves.

“ ‘I wish,’ she added slowly, ‘that I had a sister, for it is often lonely. But that is for the Two to decide.’

“Connie backed up until he was close to me, as if he wanted to lean on me, as perhaps he did. I was feeling pretty chipper again, but he was a bit older and a rather thin chap. His reserves of energy were about gone.

“ ‘Come,’ said Keto again, more abruptly, ‘we will go out and find a place where you can rest. You seem tired and not strong. We do not like people who are not strong. It will be better for you if you are strong. You are not old or weakened by sickness, which is something we do not like either.’

“She turned on her heel, assuming we would follow, and we did, in silence, back through that maze and jumble of dark rooms until we left the portico and were once more standing outside in the garden with the sun on our heads and a soft breeze ruffling our hair. It now seemed very hot, but it was the effect of that dank and frigid pile of stone on our systems, for it was really a lovely day.

“Around a corner of the building, pacing fast, gun in hand, came the SS man, von Bruch-Wiletzki. He broke into a trot when he saw us, charged up and thrust that Browning practically up my left nostril. He was furious and his mean, narrow face was also frightened. There was no more ‘cultivated-among-equals-of-good-birth-together’ manner about him now, just suspicion and nastiness.

“He yelled in English, ‘Where did she take you, Captain Ffellowes! Don’t try to lie to me! I had an attack of dizziness, and when I came out from it, you and that Greek were gone! I demand to know what you have been doing! Remember, I am in charge here, and you two are nothing but my prisoners whom I can, and will, shoot out of hand if it should be necessary. Well?’

“I tried to at least appear calm. These Teuton hysterics are usually impressed by what they consider British phlegm, whether they admit it or not.

“ ‘Now see here,’ I said, ‘put that pistol away and please do try to be reasonable. We left you in the garden—I made no mention of how we had left him; if he was prepared to assume he had had a dizzy spell, that was his lookout—and were taken down to be interviewed by what must be one of the more unpleasant old ladies on record. She said a few words of dubious import from behind a dirty curtain and told us, in effect, to go away. That is absolutely and completely all, and now let’s sit down and talk sensibly for a change.’

“His pistol drooped and he re-holstered it grudgingly and then actually did sit down, on a bench where we joined him. Keto sat on the grass nearby looking happily at us, apparently not bothered by our use of another language, simply content to gaze on her new toys, or possibly playmates.

“ ‘Himmelherrgottkreuzen!’ suddenly burst out von Bruch-Wiletzki, ‘This damned place is becoming intolerable. Every time I issue an order to this stupid girl, I find myself an hour later sitting staring at the ground. The only thing that she has done which I wished was to tell those two untermensch to row out and pick you up. I can’t even find out what the name of this place is!’ His voice had steadily risen until at the end it was almost a wail.

“I looked over at Connie in a questioning way, but he was staring at the German. He asked him a question and got a prompt answer.

“ ‘Yes, I talked with some old woman, some hag-like creature down in the dark,’ he admitted. ‘I could scarcely understand her, and when I shined my belt lamp,’ he indicated a small torch clipped to his cross buckle, ‘she had fled, vanished, and there was nothing behind the curtain but a hideous statue.’

“ ‘A statue?’ breathed Connie, his face taut, ‘a statue of what?’

“ ‘How do I know?’ yelled von Bruch-Wiletzki, springing to his feet. ‘Who cares anyway? A huge octopus with an awful sleeping face or something. I can’t catalog these barbaric atrocities. It made me sick to look at it, with its shuttered eyes, so I called for the girl, this moron Keto, and demanded to be taken away.’

“He looked down at us angrily and then, apparently realizing that he needed us, tried to relax. He sat down again and almost visibly got a grip on himself.

“ ‘Listen, gentlemen,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘This is a very remote island, wherever it is. Germany will absorb it in due course, but there may be a longish time before that happens. I admit it, we may be here quite a while. I find this situation intolerable, personally. I have things to do, important things, and I do not doubt, you have also.

“ ‘Therefore,’ he went on, trying to be as persuasive as he could, ‘I propose ‘a temporary armistice. I could make you help me, but I will not. Two more Allied officers freed will not stop the Third Reich to any serious degree. Aid me in escaping and I swear to let you go, even to assist you to rejoin your forces, on the honor of a German officer. What do you say? Tell me you agree and we can develop a plan.’

“I looked at Connie and he looked at me and we read each other’s minds. We could trust this bastard the distance of a mosquito’s antenna, but we had better play along and see what developed.

“ ‘Captain Murusi and I are agreeable, Major,’ I said blandly—be damned if I’d use his idiotic SS title. ‘We don’t much care for this place either. Your offer sounds reasonable enough. What had you planned to do?’

“Well, while Keto smiled and gazed at us, like an ornithologist with three totally new species, all discovered together, we worked out a simple escape plan. It seemed that von Bruch-Wiletzki had been given a small ground-floor room on the far wing of the great sprawling house. He felt sure we would be given similar rooms near to or next to his. Although there were only very small windows, too small for a man to crawl through, the rooms had no doors and were really only cells or cubicles made of stone. There was an exit to the outside at the end of a short corridor, and at midnight—we all still had watches—we would rendezvous there and go down and simply steal a rowboat. There were several at the base of the path to the house, and no one seemed to guard them.

“To me it sounded rather too easy. I frankly had not cared a bit for our encounter with the old person inside, and I knew Connie was very upset indeed about the whole layout, although for some esoteric reason I couldn’t fathom. The Nazi had the wind up worse than either one of us, although he was trying to pretend otherwise in the best Herrenvolk manner. I also felt sure that a German bullet in the back was our destined reward, as soon as he felt himself quite safe, and I knew Connie felt exactly the same.

“Nevertheless, we had little choice except to agree. The man was on the edge of a complete crackup and might have shot us on the spot. Whatever would have happened to him afterward, if Miss Keto had put him to sleep again would hardly have been of much concern to us.

“Connie turned to the young lady and asked very politely if we could be shown to our rooms. It was, indeed, by now late afternoon, and the sky was darkening rapidly, which made our request seem all the more sincere.

“ ‘Do you wish food brought to you?’ she said a bit dubiously. ‘For I wished you to eat in my company.’

“Connie was superb. I knew him well enough that I could tell if it gave him the absolute chills to even talk to her, but he concealed it awfully well. He told her that we wanted to rest and be on our top-hole best form to enjoy her ravishing company and a lot of bumph like that.

“Her reaction was curious, I thought, not that of a flattered woman at all, but a bit more like that of a child, who knows it’s being put off but anticipates a treat in the near future anyway. Also as the light faded, her strange round eyes grew less attractive and rather, well, spectral.

“Von Bruch-Wiletzki was quite right. She showed us to rooms, or cubicles, next to his and drifted reluctantly and slowly away.

“A short time later one of the island men, older than the two we’d seen, but the same dull, vacanteyed article, appeared with food. There was coarse bread and meat, some grapes and a jug of the sweet, heavy wine. Connie wouldn’t touch the meat, seemingly some sort of local and very stringy goat, but not bad, so I ate his. He wouldn’t say why at the time, only asked me not to eat it either, but I was hungry. I expected he was wrong anyway.

“There was no fish, which Was odd for an island, but one can’t worry about everything.

“Von Bruch-Wiletzki ate with us, but he actually didn’t tuck much away, mostly fidgeted and looked at his watch and muttered to himself. Once he shot a question at Connie, something about the statue he’d seen, I believe, and Connie said, ‘I knew the eyes were closed or you couldn’t describe them,’ whatever that meant.

“It was not exactly a cheery meal, but I felt better when I’d finished. Always grab a bite in a tight place, because you never know where the next nibble is.

“We decided to set, since it was now 6:30, three rough sentry go’s until midnight. I had the first, and the other two went to their respective cubicles and tried to sleep on the pallets provided for them.

“I lay down on mine and tried to plan ahead a bit on how to deal with our German ‘comrade.’ I had not, you may have noticed, given my word to any agreement, and he was so obviously meditating treachery, he hadn’t even asked it, which was a trifle silly of him if he expected to be believed.

“I hadn’t much luck in thinking up any schemes, beyond grabbing a rock and blipping von Bruch-Wiletzki from behind. The atmosphere of the gloomy place, the House of the Eye, I suppose, whatever that meant, was not conducive to ordered thought. A soft wind moaned through the little narrow window and strange groaning and creaking noises echoed through the cold, dank air.

“I think the whole place must have been built over vast limestone caverns in the island’s rock, caverns which allowed the sea to enter. Every so often a great muffled noise, something like a softened howl would come vibrating through the floor, almost shaking it with its sheer intensity. I am considered to be anything but oversensitive, and yet at times one was almost persuaded that one was hearing some monstrous and awful beast, whose feeding hour is overdue and whose bellow signals the rise of a titanic and raging hunger. All this from the sea simply banging away at the ceiling of an underground and underwater, cave far below my feet. Shows you how wrought up I was, eh?

“It really was a most weird place, with the utterly dumb and peculiar servants or serfs or whatever and the two women, old and young, running everything and lurking in this vast mausoleum. I almost got up and woke Connie, because he at least seemed to have some idea of who these very odd people were, but decided to let him alone. He had the last watch, just before we left, and I thought he looked really done up.

“Eventually von Bruch-Wiletzki appeared from his cell and announced he would take his turn. But he told me in a nasty voice that he would take it in my company. I could sleep and he would wait for Murusi. ‘I don’t trust you two overmuch, Captain,’ he said and tapped his pistol. ‘We will wait together until midnight.’

“I was annoyed, but too tired to argue and fell asleep on my pallet almost at once. I needed rest and the Nazi problem could wait.

“I woke up suddenly to a crash and a thud. The SS man had been sitting on a low, wooden stool, the room’s sole furniture, and must have nodded off. At any rate, as I blinked and stretched, I saw a grinning Connie tucking that very large pistol into his belt. He had waited, come around the door fast and dotted the German over the head with the stool from his cell. Von Bruch-Wiletzki lay on the floor, quite visible in that strange light, looking as if he were asleep. Well, let him answer the questions about where we had gone.

“There was no need for speech. My shoes were already on and we had never removed our clothes at all. We stole down the corridor, Connie in front with the gun, I carrying one of the stools. We could see moonlight coming in a door at the far end, and there was no sign of life or movement elsewhere, except for the subaqueous and subterranean roarings, which were both louder and more frequent. I thought to myself there must be quite a sea running.

“When we actually got out, we could see that a strong wind had come up and the sea was indeed rising. We were at an exit leading directly into the garden, and after a quick look around, we dashed off for the head of the path down to the beach. The shrubs and low trees were bending in the wind, and the moon gave strong but fitful illumination through a wrack of racing cloud.

“We had just reached the hoplite statue I mentioned earlier, and it looked very effective and alive in the moonlight, when the last sound I expected to hear broke on my ears. It was the snap of several bullets passing by! An accompanying burst of fire came from behind us.

“I threw myself flat instinctively, and saw Connie dive under a bush to the right. We wriggled around and got a look back at the building and saw we had made two cardinal errors.

“One was assuming that von Bruch-Wiletzki had only one weapon. He was staggering after us firing a Schmeisser machinepistol in short bursts and screaming something in German, probably curses. The second error was not bashing his conk a bit harder, or at least tying him up.

“Connie sighted the Browning carefully and fired twice. One bullet must have been a near miss, and that was excellent shooting with a pistol, by the way, especially at night. Usually, a large rock is a far more reliable weapon. At any rate, von Bruch-Wiletzki also fell flat and got behind the base of a statue about a hundred feet off. He stopped firing, and a momentary quiet, broken only by the wind and the sound of waves far below, lay about us.

“But now the House of the Eye was roused. No light appeared, but suddenly Keto, in her white robe, her heavy blonde locks flying, appeared in a clear space not far from von Bruch-Wiletzki and a little behind him. She called out something, but he had either had enough or was rattled, and whipping around, shot her dead in her tracks, using at least six bullets. I was appalled, because strange though the girl may have been, she was unarmed and had done nothing to justify her cold-blooded murder, at least that I could see. Connie, I may add, later disagreed, but that is another matter.

“The German seemed a bit stunned by his own action and remained staring at the body, his back to us and resting on one knee. Connie motioned to me and we both got up and ran for the path like deer. We were running on turf and made no sound at all. I think we could have just gone racing on down, but at the head of the path something, some premonition or other, made us turn back and this is what we saw:

“Where von Bruch-Wiletzki had been standing, something had interposed itself between us and him. The moon was partly veiled and sight was difficult, but some great, dark bulk, whose upper parts seemed to writhe and be full of restless movement, had blocked off the light somehow so that the German was momentarily hidden. Whatever it was suddenly withdrew, lurching off to one side and at that precise moment the moon came from behind the clouds.

“What we both saw next made us tear down that path like Olympic sprinters. In seconds it seemed, we were in one of the little boats, each at an oar and rowing like hell for the harbor entrance. The waves were rising, but we fought our way out of the narrow entrance and pulled for the open sea like good ones.

“Despite the rest and grub, we’d been through a lot, you know, and as we passed the two little headlands which guarded the harbor, I began to slack off a bit on the oars. But Connie noticed at once and, thank goodness, was having none of it.

“ ‘Goddamnit, Donald, keep pulling!’ he screamed over the rising wind. ‘We aren’t near being safe yet! Pull, for the love of your mother, pull!’

“Something about his manner, d’you know, made me tug a bit harder, and my idea that we could rest vanished.

“The wind was strong, but not near gale force, and the air was warm. The little boat was well shaped for riding the seas, and we took in hardly any water, but we were getting quite wet from the spray. Overhead the sky had grown darker and black clouds seemed to be increasing ahead of us, to what I assumed was North. Behind us not a light showed, and only an occasional gap in the clouds revealed the mass of the island. Now, in the clouds ahead, I could see lightning begin to play as I looked over my shoulder. The thought crossed my mind that we had come to the island in storm and in storm we were going forth.

“Connie, however, wasn’t looking ahead at all. He was staring back at our stern and over it, as if determined to memorize every speck of wood on the square end. Suddenly he cried out sharply and stopped pulling. He pointed at the water some way astern, but I could see nothing except that an unusually large wave had broken at its crest, showing a splash of foam.

“Ahead of us, and now almost over us indeed, lightning bolts played down the sky. The moon had vanished behind the heavy cloud cover, and only the lightning gave any view of the tossing black waves and the foaming combers.

“At this time, new strength came to my arms. It may sound peculiar, and indeed downright mystical sitting here, but I felt as if I’d received a combination message and shot in the arm, so to speak. The message said ‘Pull just a trifle harder and you’re safe,’ and the jolt seemed to give me the strength to do it. Connie was pulling like hell, too, and we simply tore through those waves, as if we were working up for Henley.

“Then it happened. Connie had never stopped watching the sea behind us, and he shipped his oar inboard in one easy motion. I was still pulling, but I stopped slack-jawed, and the boat poised on a tall wave crest.

“Illumined by a strong lightning flash, what Connie had seen emerged from the crest of the next big wave but one away from us.”

Ffellowes was silent for a moment and seemed reluctant to continue, staring at the floor. Then he looked soberly at us and went on.

“I am not quite certain to this day exactly what it was I saw or what sensations I felt. Something enormous rose and broke the surface, something like a great rounded mass of long pieces of seaweed, many yards across in area. Only the separate seaweed fronds were moving! And under the weed mass I thought I could see two great round eyes, eyes which had their own luminescence and glowed under the water with a baleful light.

“At the same time, the strength left my hands, indeed left me completely. I simply sat, gaping at the thing which had arisen from the ocean depths to pull us down.

“Connie was made of sterner stuff. In the next flash of lightning, I saw him kneeling at the stern and the roar of the big Browning pistol blasted out over the noise of the storm. He emptied the magazine and then, he told me later, hurled the empty gun at the creature. Whether it did any good, we will never know.

“Because the next flash of lightning almost struck the boat. There was an ear-splitting crack of sound, a blinding glare and a sudden stink of ozone, all together, and just as suddenly the sea behind us was empty. Whatever it was had gone, and somehow one knew inside, that it had gone and that it would not, or better, could not, harm us again.

“Well, we started to row again. The storm died, the seas moderated and the stars came out, so we rowed northwest as well as we could. At dawn we were almost run down by a Turkish freighter, neutral of course, and in two weeks time we were back in Cairo. Turkey’s neutrality’ was useful. All in all a very peculiar experience.

“What had we seen on the island to make us run so? What happened to the German?

“Well, he’s crouching still there, I expect. In that bright moonlight, he, his clothes and gun, everything in fact, had turned into nice white stone, probably marble. Very ornamental if you’re in a mood to appreciate it. We weren’t.

“I can still hear Connie’s last words when we talked over what had happened.

“ ‘I don’t think one pierces the barrier around that island very often, which is just as well. The Ancients,’ he continued, made it very plain, that of the Three Sisters, Medusa was the only mortal.’ ”

His Only Safari

The background of this new Brigadier Ffellowes story is East Africa, in a range of forested hills near Mt. Kenya. The Brigadier has been sent on a mission to locate an enemy intelligence agent, a routine “hunting” expedition, which—as you might expect if you’ve followed this series—turns into something quite different and frightening.

MASON WILLIAMS WAS IN great form that evening. Or so an admirer would have described him, if he’d had any admirers. A lot of us in the club were still trying to find out how he’d ever been elected in the first place. The election committee, of course, will never say anything, but we were pretty sure they had blundered and were now pretending not to notice it.

Anyhow, Williams, had just come back from Africa. He had bought himself a complete safari there, the iced champagne and hot bath kind, and got himself a lot of stuffed animal heads, also bought, if many of our suspicions were correct.

“Yes, I went alone,” he brayed, so that you could hear him across the library. “Real hunting, just me and the white hunter, two ‘pros’, if I do say so.”

“Since the hunter was being paid, he couldn’t refuse to go along, now could he?” said someone in a perfectly audible aside. Williams got red, but refused to take notice. He was going to tell us all about it if it killed him.

It was pretty bad. I’m no hunter but I knew enough to know Williams knew absolutely nothing. Bits of it filtered through despite my attempts to read a paper.

“Used a Bland .470 express at 300 yards on that baby!—Have to watch your step with kudu—The hunter told me the Grants would be a near record—Slept with loaded guns because lions were prowling around.” Et cetera, et cetera.

On and on it went. No one was really listening, but we were all damned if we’d allow Williams to drive us out of the library. Besides being warm and cosy there, it was a foggy, November night, and the city streets outside were dim and dirty.

Brigadier Ffellowes’ even voice cut in neatly during one of Williams’ infrequent pauses for breath, and we all sat up and felt considerably more cheerful. Our retired English artilleryman had made one of his usual unobtrusive entrances and was toasting himself, back to the big fireplace, his ruddy face smiling gently.

“I wonder if you glimpsed a place I visited once, Williams?” he said in a musing tone. “A tribe of dark, hawk-faced men lived there in an ancient, ruined city. They were ruled by a white, veiled priestess who made claim to some incredible age. Why, it must have been in the very area you were hunting over.”

Williams had never read She, or much else except market sheets, but this was too raw even for him.

“I suppose you know all about Africa,” he said furiously. “After all, you British used to practically run the place until the natives got wise and ran you out. Probably you got some great sun-and-sand African hunting stories, too, General.” (He knew Ffellowes hated being called ‘General’.)

“Why not give us one, pal?” he went on. “A lousy American businessman can’t hardly compete with a real pucker say-hib, eh wot?” Williams is a horrible man, honestly.

Ffellowes never batted an eye. Nothing infuriated Williams more than the realization that nothing he could say seemed to bother the Englishman. Now the brigadier kept his serene smile as he drew himself an armchair and sat down near us. Very tangentially, he somehow managed to make a circle of chairs, so that Williams was left standing outside it and had to wedge himself half under the mantelpiece so as to even hear.

“I only once ever went on what might be called a safari,” he said, “and my chief memory is not of heat, oddly enough. It’s of cold, cold and mist, weather not unlike tonight, don’t you know. But the mist was both thicker and wetter, as well as cleaner, of course. And the quiet was nothing like the city. Oh, that quiet!”

He was silent for a moment. The faint hooting of traffic was the only sound in the room. Suddenly, Ffellowes’ gift for dominating a group had started operating again. His precise, level speech resumed abruptly.

“I was up in the Aberdares in December of 39, more because no one else was handy than for any special skill of my own, as will become apparent.

“Any of you know them? Well, they are a range of forested hills in Kenya that go quite high in some places and lie about fifty miles west of Mt. Kenya itself. There is heavy forest up to 11,000 feet in many places, and surprising amounts of big game, bongo, some Cape buffalo and even elephant. Leopard, of course, but no lions, unless poor Gandar Dowar was right and an unknown, small, spotted species used to live there.

“Into this area I had been sent by His Majesty’s Government to look for a missing man. His name was Guido Bruckheller, and he had an Austrian name but was an Italian zoologist, a Ph.D. from Bolzano originally, I believe. He apparently had done some excellent work on tropical rodents as disease vectors. Out of my line by miles. But he was in Military Intelligence’s books also, as a most dangerous Axis agent. The fellow spoke a dozen African languages and was a real bushman to boot. He had been staying in Nairobi, watched carefully, but as a nominal Italian citizen, no more than that, since Mussolini was technically neutral at this time.

“Well, it was the period of the so-called ‘phoney war’ in France. Poland was dished and we were simply waiting for the onslaught. I was on my way back from a certain job in India when I got orders to sidetrack to Nairobi, and at once. Bruckheller had vanished and supposedly a trained intelligence man was wanted to follow up and find him.

“I found the local security people dithering all over the map. They had the wind up badly and seemed to feel this chap could start a second Senussi uprising or something unless he was caught up with promptly. Personally, mind you, I thought it all a lot of rubbish. One man is just that, one man, and there had been no reports of any trouble among the tribes in western Kenya. Still, the fellow had vanished and he was supposed to be hot stuff. The locals could have handled it better, I thought.

“There was only one clue as to where he had gone. Two white farmers, out hunting about their farms on the Chania River, thought they’d seen a white man and some natives cross a clearing much higher up the slope, at dawn three days earlier. Since the colony was now at war and most of the able-bodied whites were gone, they’d reported it to the local police post at Nyeri, whence it had come in to H.Q. Nairobi. This was absolutely the only report from the whole of Kenya of anyone or anything out of place, and so we had to assume it was our lead.

“Since I didn’t know the territory, some local talent was needed. What I got was an elderly major of the local volunteer defense force who’d been with Meinertzhagen in Tanganyika during the First World War, and a middle-aged, one-armed Boer farmer from up north somewhere who said he’d come for the fun of it. Their names were Sizenby and Krock—and this Krock, the Boer, made very bad jokes, starting with ‘I am a young Krock not an English old crock, neen? We also got six King’s African Rifles under a sixty-year-old Kikuyu sergeant named Asoto, who stood five feet six and weighed two hundred pounds, all of it muscle.

“The whole place, I mean Nairobi, was such a hotbed of gossip that half the town must have been in on our mission. One chap buttonholed Sizenby in the Mithaiga Club the night before we left, and said, rather incoherently, ‘Now do look out, Size. The Kerit is out in Aberdares. My boys tell me it took four cattle and a grown man last week.’

“ ‘What on earth was that, Major?’ I asked Sizenby when we were outside in the street.

“ ‘Oh, nothing,’ he mumbled. ‘Lot of fiddle. Supposed to be some animal, quite dangerous up that way, but no one’s ever really seen it. Chap was drunk.’

“I stopped still for a moment. You know, I’d never thought of animals at all. We were after a man, who might or might not be dangerous, but there was a largish war on and that was normal. But animals now! ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘what animal is this? Surely not a lion? A leopard? What did that chap say?’

“Sizenby chewed a ratty grey mustache for a bit. He was an undersized creature in an ill-fitting uniform and with a vague blue eye. Frankly, he looked pretty hopeless, but he and the Boer were all I could get, and he was supposed to know the country.

“ ‘It has several native names,’ he said slowly. ‘Chimiset is one, Kerit another. Now and again it makes the papers. Then it usually gets called the Nandi Bear.’

“The Nandi Bear! Well, you know, even I had heard of that. It was supposed to be the mystery beast of East Africa and made the Sunday supplements regularly along with the Lost Valley of the Nahanni, the Loch Ness monster, and supposed living dinosaurs.

“ ‘That’s a lot of hooh-hah, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘I mean really, I thought it was all rot and old settlers’ tales. Do you think there is such a creature? I mean actually?’

“He looked at the ground and mumbled again. It was quite obvious he did think there was something to the story, and that he didn’t like it at all. I was both intrigued and annoyed. Just then, however, along came the general commanding the colony forces, and I found out he knew all about my mission and had some ideas of his own. In the ensuing, and I may add, pointless, discussion, I quite forgot the Kerit, sometimes called Nandi Bear.

“We left at dawn the next day, all in an army truck for Nyeri, our jumping-off point. I was formally introduced to the other ranks—that is, the K.A.R. boys—and forgot all their names, except Sergeant Asoto’s, at once. Two were Somalis, the rest Kikuyu; that’s all I remember, except that they were all good, brave men.

“Now a road of sorts, really a baddish dirt track, barely usable for sturdy vehicles, ran west across the south end of the Aberdare range, going from Nyeri to Naivasha. This we took at once after checking for more news in Nyeri, where there was none. We went up and up in our truck, crashing into pot holes and large rocks until the air actually began to get quite chilly.

“ ‘Now,’ said Krock, reaching me a heavy sweater, ‘you see why we bring all this stuff. It gets colder yet, I tell you.’ Everyone, including the troops, bundled up, and we all needed it.

“Toward evening, we broke out onto the open plateau, first from the dense rain forest which covered the slopes to about 10,000 feet, and then from a belt of bamboo. Up here, in the light of the setting sun, it looked most unlike my idea of Africa. If I’d had a chance later, I’d have traded even for the bamboo.

“Before us stretched a cheerless-looking moor, with here and there an outcropping of rock or a plant like a monstrous cabbage on a stalk, or simply a great vegetable spike, raising its head above the tussocky grass. It was absolutely weird looking, and the setting sun made it resemble a patch of Dartmoor crossed with a bad dream. A cold wind blew fitfully across it and I shivered.

“The truck ground to a halt. Sizenby and Krock hopped out and began chatting up the local gossip and the sergeant and his six whirled into galvanized activity. In ten minutes two tents were up, a small one for us three and a large one for them, two fires were crackling, and the smell of food and wood smoke were in the air. I had nothing to do at all, so I wandered over to listen absently to Krock and Sizenby, speculating to myself meanwhile on what Bruckheller was doing and why. During a pause in the conversation, I interrupted to ask the same question aloud. Perhaps these two might have some fresh ideas, since I had none.

“ ‘Oh, I know why he’s here,’ said Sizenby, quite matter-of-fact. ‘I knew him, you know; not a bad chap but a bit daft. He’s up here because of Egypt.’ Just like that! And after I’d been racking my brains for two days!

“ ‘Now look, Major,’ I said, ‘what on earth are you talking about?’ We had moved to our fire and were standing grouped about it. It was quite dark now, and a white ground mist had formed and lay thick about the camp. There was no moon.

“ ‘What is this?’ I repeated. Why haven’t you mentioned knowing this man before? No one else in Nairobi seems to even have talked with him.’

“ ‘Well, you never asked me and it didn’t seem important,’ he said quietly. ‘I rather liked the man. We’re both curious chaps, and we found some of the same things interesting. At any rate, Bruckheller’s quite dotty on the subject of Egyptology. I know he’s a zoologist not an archaeologist, but he has a hobby horse like most of us, and his is ancient Egypt. He was always at me about it. Had I ever seen any Egyptian ruins in these parts, heard of any rock paintings that might be Egyptian looking and so on? For some reason he’s convinced the early Pharaohs went north from around here. He was following his theory down from Ethiopia.’

“I thought for a moment. It all sounded completely mad, but then people’s interests frequently are mad. Still, it wouldn’t wash.

“ ‘I gather you think that in the middle of a war, knowing that aliens, even neutrals, are subject to arrest for moving in unauthorized areas, this fellow, who is supposed, mind you, to be a trained secret agent, wandered up here to look for Egyptian ruins?’

“ ‘Yes,’ said Sizenby, ‘I rather think he did. He was that sort of chap. And I think he’d heard something, d’you see, something that set him off, some recent news from this part of the colony. And perhaps he felt he wouldn’t get another chance to see whatever it was.’

“I mulled this over, holding my hands to the fire. The next question was obvious.

“ ‘Neen,’ said Krock, who had simply been listening up to now. ‘Nothing new comes from here in the last year, I tell you. I hear all the news, man, you bet. Only the—’ his voice lowered and he looked over his shoulder at the group of K.A.R. around the other fire, ‘the Gadet, the Kerit being out up here, that’s new.’

“Sizenby looked at me attentively, but I remembered the conversation outside the Mithaiga Club with no trouble.

“ ‘I doubt the Nandi Bear, or ancient Egypt either, has much to do with this,’ I said sourly. ‘Obviously the man received certain orders and followed them. All this bumph and Egypt and—’

“ ‘Better lower your voice, Captain,’ Sizenby cut in, speaking softly. ‘The men don’t like to hear about the Kerit, and there’s no point in upsetting them needlessly.’

“ ‘Yah, that’s so,’ chimed in the Boer. We don’t talk about it around them.’

“The one-armed South African and the little settler were oddly impressive up here in the cold mountain air. Sizenby had lost the vagueness I’d noted earlier and seemed both tougher and more self-assured. He was telling me to shut up in a very firm way, and I got quite irritated.

“ ‘What on earth is all this?’ I said heatedly. ‘You two can’t really expect me to believe in all this hogwash, mystery animals and Egyptian ruins? Suppose you simply tell me how to find the chap and leave the abstruse speculation to me, eh?’

“Sizenby stared at me a minute and then called over to the other fire. ‘Sergeant Asoto, come over here a moment, will you?’

“In a second, Asoto’s squat, immaculately uniformed bulk stood immobile before us, hand at the rigid salute. Sizenby and I returned it, Krock being a ‘civie.’

“ ‘Sergeant,’ said Sizenby slowly, ‘the Ingrezi captain thinks we’re having a bit of fun with him. I want you to tell him about the Kerit. I know you and your men all know it’s out again. Say nothing to the men about my asking this, but simply tell everything you know.’

“The broad, dark face which turned to me was certainly not that of any frightened child, the brown eyes were calm, and the deep voice controlled.

“ ‘The Kerit is very bad, Captain,’ he said, in quite fair English. ‘No one sees it until it kills. In certain places no one ever lives, because sooner or later it comes there. It takes strong men as easily as children, cattle as easily as goats. Nothing can stand against it. Now, we hear, all of us, that one or two are out and walking around in these mountains somewhere. It is nothing to laugh about. It is too serious a matter. Only those who live very far off joke about it. We must be careful, I do say so.’ He stopped, apparently feeling he had said enough on the subject.

“I must say, I was impressed in spite of myself. One had to be, you know.

“ ‘Is it a real animal, Sergeant,’ I said, after a moment’s thought, ‘or could it be human, an evil man or men?’

“ ‘I have seen its tracks many years ago,’ was the deep-throated answer. ‘They are a little bit like an old lion with his claws out, but much more long and more big too. No man could make such a track. But in its cunning it is like no animal. No one sees it and lives.’

“Well, that seemed to be that. I thanked him and he saluted and went back to his other ranks’ fire. Then I apologized to Sizenby and Krock. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what to think. I had either encountered a case of mass hallucination or something even stranger.

“We turned in shortly thereafter and I got very little sleep, being cold, damp and nervous. The next morning I awoke to more dense fog and a cold breakfast of biltong, or dried antelope meat. Since the others didn’t complain, I could hardly do so, but I was getting a bit fed up with the Dark Continent, I may say. Not at all like the moving pictures.

“We all piled into our truck and drove off into the moorlands before the sun had burnt the mist off, and the ride was miserable indeed on that rotten excuse for a road. By noon we had crossed the spine of one hilly range and were going down again, to the west. And by the middle of the afternoon we were in a giant bamboo belt again. Here, for no reason that I could discern, we all piled off. I was damned if I’d ask questions, and I was so stiff from that infernal truck ride that I went for a quick run in a circle around the truck, just to limber up.

“The second time I circled the truck I saw to my amazement that our party had been augmented. Three tall, lean Negroes, with fringes of ringlets over aquiline faces, long spears and almost no clothes, had appeared out of nowhere, and were talking in low tones to Sizenby and the Boer. Occasionally they would gesture and several times the chief spokesman shook his head violently. Sizenby pointed to the K.A.R. lads who were standing watching and said something emphatic. The three looked gloomily at each other, but finally they nodded. Krock slapped one on the back and walked them over to Asoto and the others, while Sizenby came over to me.

“We’re in luck,’ he said. ‘These chaps are local hunters, Wanderobos, and they’ve agreed to give us some help. Seems that the two lads seen with Bruckheller may be relatives of theirs, and they’re a bit worried about them.’

“They didn’t seem all that enthusiastic to me,’ I said, looking over at them.

“ ‘No, well, you saw that, hum? Fact is, the Kerit tends to cool one off a bit, old man. I had to point out how many rifles we had before they decided to chance it. Frankly, the odds were a thousand to one on our finding nothing until they popped up. Bruckheller is a real bushie, and if he doesn’t want to be found, we could have a real job on our hands. These lads make the odds a little evener though? Sizenby paused, pulled out a battered pipe and lit it, then went on through the smoke cloud, looking diffidently at me.

“ ‘Something occurs to me, but it’s a bit mad, I dare say. We were talking a while back about Bruckheller perhaps having got some news that sent him off. Well, as Krock told you, the Kerit is the only news that’s come in. Could he have wanted to hunt it, d’you think?’

“ ‘I thought you were convinced he was looking for Egyptian ruins,’ I said. My tone must have been sub-acid, because he just turned away, murmuring something I couldn’t catch.

“It developed that we were at present only a thousand feet or so in altitude above the place where Bruckheller, if it actually were he, had been seen. We now were going to split into three small groups and look for tracks. Since I had no other suggestion, we set oft.

“Each party drew one Wanderobo hunter and one white. I had Sergeant Asoto as well as two of his men, since I couldn’t speak ’derobo, or Swahili either for that matter, to say nothing of being a new chum. We all took compass bearings, checked out local maps, arranged meeting places, and set off. I wondered again what I was doing there.

“Really, the bamboo forest was most unpleasant. The sun didn’t get in at all, and the forty-foot hollow stems made a strange clacking noise, as well as a dismal moaning up in the tops from the wind. It was both dank and gloomy. My mood did not improve when Asoto, who was number two in line, the hunter being first, pointed out a large pile of steaming dung in a small clearing. It was enough like ordinary cow dung to mean Cape buffalo, and the thought of meeting a herd in the close-packed bamboo was most unsettling. One could neither run nor climb.

“We moved along narrow trails, made by game, I expect. When I later heard that the Mau Mau leaders were holed up in this area after the Second World War, I assumed they’d never be caught. My memories of it are chiefly of an incomprehensible, damp maze, with no more organized pattern than a child’s scribble on a blackboard.

“But the men leading me were not disconcerted. We eventually struck another small path, this time crossing ours at a right angle, and going uphill again on a slant. Here the Wanderobo called Asoto and the two soldiers into consultation, pointing at the ground. I was evidently recognized as being utterly useless in such a discussion. Out of politeness, however, Asoto called me over and saluted.

“ ‘See here, Captain,’ he said pointing at some smudge or other on the track. ‘This stupid shenzi (wild man) says three men, one a white man, passed along here two days ago. He may be lying but I think he knows how to follow animals.’ The hunter glared at the insult, which he apparently understood, and waved his great spear while croaking out some threat or other. Asoto ignored him, except to wave him on up the new trace.

“I was in fairly good shape but I may say that I was completely dished at the end of the day. Just as planned, and accomplished through no effort of mine, we emerged from a bamboo clump into a soggy sort of large clearing and found the other two groups already there. I simply collapsed on the long grass and waved Sizenby and Krock over. I could hardly talk. My superior attitude was further weakened by the fact that neither of them—and mind you, Sizenby was in his sixties at least—looked even a bit tired. However, they were decent enough not to say anything.

“ ‘Asoto tells me you found some sign,’ said Sizenby. ‘Well, so did we. They seem to have been wandering all about this area for a number of days. My group found where they’d killed a bongo, a large, rather rare antelope, and cut it up for food. Krock, tell him what you found.’

“ ‘Yah,’ said the Boer. His rifle hung in the hollow of his one arm, the right, and Sizenby had told me he was a dead shot with it. “Well, old Size here, he finds a bongo cut up for to make biltong, and I find a Wanderobo cut up for biltong. At least that’s what it looks like!’

“ ‘You don’t mean there are cannibals around here?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

“ ‘Not cannibals, old man,’ said Sizenby gently. ‘The Kerit. Maybe two. There were what appeared to be several sizes of tracks. One of its tricks is butchering its prey.’

“I sat in exhausted silence, watching the night mist begin to form and listening to the giant bamboos clattering and moaning to themselves. I could think of nothing to say.

“ ‘What do we do now?’ I asked. ‘What do you think has happened?’

“ ‘Looks to us as if the Kerit follows Bruckheller’s party and picks them off one by one. If you want to see him at all, you got to get to him first, and quick.’ The Boer’s eyes were steady on mine and so were Sizenby’s when I looked at him.

“ ‘I suggest camping here,’ said Sizenby. He was delicate enough to make it a suggestion, since I was technically in command. I nodded agreement. ‘We have enough gear,’ he went on, ‘and food for one night. We shall post watches and fire a few rounds every so often. I have a feeling that Bruckheller may be glad to be found. The men all know what we came across, and if we try to split up, they may get a bit jouncy.’

“ ‘Yah,’ added Krock. ‘And maybe they scoot, run off and leave us. I don’t blame them much, I tell you.’

“Well, we ate cold grub, iron rations, and set watches. There were no tents, but we had some small bits of canvas the K.A.R. had been carrying, and it was set up so that everyone, regardless of rank, got some dryness along with some of the wet. For most of the early night we simply sat and felt miserable, at least I did, and the expressions I saw on the others were no more cheerful. We had one small fire that sputtered feebly in the middle of the clearing, but it barely kept the fog off us, let alone gave any heat. Every hour, Krock would lever off a couple of shots in the air, but we never heard an answer.

“At least until around two A.M. by my watch. Then we heard something and everyone in camp sat up and reached for a weapon, either spear or rifle.

“Far off in the fog and night came a rhythmic, regular sound. It was easy to hear because the wind had finally dropped and the bamboos had ceased their ungodly racket. We all strained our ears in the cold mountain air and listened as hard as we could. There, it came again. All thirteen of us were on our feet now, listening and staring one at the other.

“It was the sound of running feet. But more than that, it was the sound of a man running, and running, moreover, on his last legs. As the sound grew louder, we were able to focus on it and we could all face uphill, the direction from which it was coming. On and on it came, the labored, staggering run of a man who is running his heart out, pounding and lurching on in the process of burning the very last stores of vital energy. Finally we could hear the panting, gasping breath of the runner himself. We stared, transfixed, at the place in the encircling mist where the man had to emerge.

“Suddenly, the sound just stopped. There was nothing, nothing but the drip, drip of water from the leaves, the hiss of the fire and the faint movements of all of us shifting our weight. All rifles were in the ready position, and the Wanderobo hunters held their great spears poised.

“Now at this time, we were standing in a loose group, staring uphill, as I have said, no one speaking. I was in the center, Sergeant Asoto next to me, Krock and Sizenby in front of me. The three Wanderobo were near me on the left, and behind me were two K.A.R., with the other four on the right.

“As the silence persisted, the chill, uncanny silence, we slowly lowered our rifles and looked at one another. In the light of the small fire we were all clearly visible. All twelve of us!

“As we had stood, waiting for the supposed runner to break from the mist-shrouded bamboos above us, a trap, cleverly baited to appeal to human reflexes, had swung shut. Silently, swiftly, a man, the K.A.R. private who stood lowest down on the slope and thus a little behind the rest of us, had been made to disappear. And twelve heavily armed, alert men had been powerless to prevent the incredibly stealthy capture. It was a numbing realization as we stood, black and white, staring at one another while the little fire spat sparks at the bank of fog around us.

“With never a word spoken, we moved in on the fire and all faced outward at the same time. The movement was quite instinctive and, one imagines, dates from the paleolithic or earlier. Get your back to the light and face the enemy from a circle.

“For a little there was a silence again, except for the little noises of the fire and the wet leaves. Then another sound commenced. It was not far away, but impossible to register or get a fix upon.

“It was the sound of great jaws, as they crunched and tore at prey. Just that, but in the sound there was an element of—how can I convey it?—play. It was the noise a house cat makes as it eats the first mouse, knowing that the other mice have been forced from their holes and cannot escape, can be gathered in at any time the cat chooses. And we knew, all of us, of what the meal consisted. Sergeant Asoto said something under his breath which was not a prayer. Yet no one flinched. The Wanderobo kept as firm in the face of the threat as the disciplined soldiers. I felt rather pleased with being a man, for a fleeting second.”

Ffellowes stopped, stood up in front of the fire at this point, and stretched luxuriously. All of us kept quiet, although we were as stiff as he was. We were there, with him, on that haunted mountain! Then he started again, sitting down once more.

“I suppose we were all wondering what would happen next. The initiative had been completely taken away from us, you know, in just seconds, and that’s hard to bear, hard to readjust to. Happens in war, when one is ambushed. Only very highly trained men can recover in time to save themselves, can think reflexively or let reflexes and training take the place of organized thought.

“The ghastly feeding noises ceased as suddenly as they had commenced. Before we had any time to think this over, a voice came ringing out of the rolling mist, a human voice speaking English.

“ ‘He-e-e-elp! Don’t shoot, I’m coming in! For God’s sake, don’t shoot!’

“Along with the voice came the sound of running feet, just as it had before, only very close this time.

“ ‘Don’t move, not any of us!’ rasped Sizenby. ‘Keep your positions; face out, rifles ready! It may be another trap.’

“We all obeyed, none moving. We needed no telling. Suddenly a man stood before us, on the uphill side of the circle, the side we had all faced the first time. His hands were up in the air and empty.

“He was a tall chap, a white man, light-haired and distinguished-looking in a way. His garments were torn, stained and filthy, ripped almost to shreds in fact, but his boots were still good. He had several days’ growth of pale beard, and his light-blue eyes were glassy with what looked like fatigue. He stumbled forward and fell gasping at the feet of Krock, who happened to be the closest.

“ ‘Good God, it’s Bruckheller,’ said Sizenby crisply. ‘Well, that’s one problem solved. More wood on the fire, Sergeant. Drag it from the pile right there. We’ll keep you covered.’ The ineffectual little colonial farmer had disappeared. I could see that Sizenby might have been very useful to Smuts’ army in the East African war of long ago. This was a tough frontiersman talking, and I was frankly delighted he was in charge. I’m no chicken, but I was out of my depth.

“Asoto dragged some more logs over, watched closely by all of us, and with more fuel the fire blazed up and widened the circle of light, driving back the dank wall of fog.

“ ‘Good,’ said Sizenby. ‘Now, I want the hunters in the middle, next to the fire, Sergeant, because they have no guns. Detail four men for permanent fixed watch, kneeling, rifles at ready position, one at each compass point. They are to fire at anything moving unless I say to the contrary. The hunters will keep the fire going at this level, covered by you, Mr. Krock, and the remaining private. Captain Ffellowes and I will see to this man. That is the arrangement.”

“With this new battle formation, we all felt better, and you could see the men respond to the firm orders. And I can tell you, I felt better. This show was a good-ish bit more than I’d bargained for.

“We both knelt by the Italian’s head, and I lifted him until he was resting against my knee. He was not unconscious, but simply exhausted, to all appearances, and his eyes were wide open in an almost fixed glare.

“ ‘You are quite safe, Dr. Bruckheller,’ I said, ‘as well as being under arrest. Just relax and tell us what happened.’

“For a second the strange eyes just stared at me and then the man laughed, weakly but clearly. He proved, too, that he was able to speak.

“ ‘Safe?’ he said, in excellent English. He turned his head and looked at Sizenby on the other side, then briefly out at the silent fog-shrouded dark before turning back to me.

“ ‘Do you know what is out there? I have told Sizenby here some of my theories, but not all, and you are unknown to me. Who are you?’

“I identified myself, but he didn’t seem very interested.

“ ‘Of course, an intelligence officer. An intelligent officer, a brilliant officer, is what I need. A second Lawrence, a Flinders Petrie, a Schliemann!’

“He took hold of my arm and shook it. ‘Listen, Captain, and you too, Sizenby! I have made a discovery so fabulous that it will rock the world of science. I know why the Egyptians first came to Egypt! Yes, I know that, and all about their gods, too, where they got them. Because to begin, they had only one, you understand, only one!’

“Over his head I looked at Sizenby. It was clear that some tropical fever, heightened by exposure, hunger and fear had driven the fellow out of his head. This raving was utterly meaningless.

“In the silence, as Bruckheller gasped for fresh breath, we all heard a stick break. The clear sound was very close, somewhere beyond the firelight, but impossible to pin down as to direction. All of us tensed and I reached with one hand for the rifle I had laid down.

“ ‘Steady,’ came Sizenby’s voice. ‘Steady now. It’s just a noise. Don’t give way!’

“ ‘No, don’t give way,’ mumbled Bruckheller. ‘We are all dead men, but don’t give way. You English are marvelous. None of us will live until morning! But don’t give way!’ His cackling laugh was a nasty parody of the real thing, and there was a note of hysteria or worse running through it.

“He plucked my sleeve. ‘Listen, Captain, listen, Sizenby. I must tell you something. We are walking dead men, but I have to tell you. Someone should know what I have found, even if they don’t live long.’

“ ‘All right, old chap, we’re listening,’ said Sizenby soothingly. His eyes nevertheless continued to watch the swirling mist which surrounded us and from which came an aura of silent menace, of malign observation. So did mine and the others’.

“As the silence grew and the fog seemed to form sinister shadow shapes, Bruckheller talked on and on, his voice low and grating, somehow hard to understand. I don’t remember half what he said, but it went something like this:

“Many thousands of years earlier, a tribe of brown-skinned people, hunters and crude agriculturalists, had lived in this very area. But every effort they had made in their rise to higher levels of culture had been crushed and blocked. Their foe was not neighboring tribes but a malevolent species of creature unlike anything known elsewhere on the Earth, a bloodthirsty monster, or race of monsters, which preyed upon them ceaselessly. No weapons succeeding in killing the creatures, no prayers averted their wrath. Indeed, the hapless folk even made them (or it; the number was not clear) the tribal gods, but all in vain, for no sacrifice, human or animal, was sufficient.

“At last, despairing and decimated, the remnants of the people simply fled. Pursued by their awful oppressors, they somehow struggled north until at last in the great swamps of the White Nile the pursuing creatures were left behind. And the people, freed at last from a thousand years of nightmare, went on to become the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians.

“Mind you, it didn’t sound as wild then as it no doubt appears now to you chaps here in the well-lit room of a building in a great city,” said Ffellowes. “Please recollect that out there, in that cold mist, barely held off by the fire, knowing that something had got the missing askari (soldier), and moreover got him from out of our very midst, it was a very different matter. So that although we, Sizenbv and I, were only giving Bruckheller half our attention, as it were, we were still impressed.

“ ‘The clues are all there,’ he kept repeating in that very odd voice, ‘if only one takes the trouble to read them, they are all there, in the hieroglyphs, in the religion, everywhere. But only I, of all those who have seen them, realized what they actually said.’

“Just then, any doubts we might have been entertaining about nocturnal visitors were abruptly dispelled. The mist had parted a little in front of the K.A.R. soldier on my left, the one doing sentry duty on one knee at this point. Two immense yellow eyes were reflected by the firelight, eyes with slit pupils, but nothing at all like a cat’s, being long and pointed at the corners. They only appeared for a half second, but they were unpleasantly close to us. The soldier never fired, but Krock’s reflexes were better, and he shot almost over my head, momentarily deafening me and filling the quiet night with the crash of his Winchester.

“In reply there came the most hideous cry I have ever heard. It was a coughing howl of volcanic rage, rising to a crescendo of sound and yet with a fearful shriek running quavering through it. It lasted for a moment and seemed to leave the very air tingling.

“ ‘That’s no death cry,’ said Sizenby grimly. ‘That was simply annoyance. A wounded brute would have sounded quite different.’

“ ‘Tali,’ agreed Krock, I know when I hit anyway. That one, he moves plenty quick, I can tell you.’

“ ‘You cannot hurt them,’ rasped Bruckheller from my knee, where he still lay. He seemed to have got his wind back and he sounded almost amused. They are just as clever as you, you must realize, and they know very well what guns can do. They have lived here since the dawn of time, and never yet has anyone actually seen them and escaped.’

“ ‘Did you see one yourself?’ Sizenby quickly asked, dropping to one knee beside me. ‘Did you actually see them?’

“Bruckheller appeared disconcerted, as if his word had been challenged and seemed at a loss for speech. He gobbled something unintelligible and then muttered, ‘I hardly got a look. They took my hunters—and I had two—one by one, they took them. I saw only a dark mass as they took the last one.’

“ ‘When was that and how did they let you get here, get to us? Come on, man, speak up!’ Sizenby seemed to be following a thought and his voice was fierce. I had no idea what he wanted, but he was clearly in charge, so I shut up.

“ ‘How do I know?’ snarled the Italian. ‘Sometime yesterday afternoon, I think. I have been running and hiding, running and hiding. When I heard the shots I tried to get close, but always I would hear things moving. Why do you ask me all this?’ His voice had taken on an unpleasant, grating whine, like that of a spoilt child who wishes to make excuses for a fault, but in some indefinable way even nastier.

“ ‘Just wondered, that’s all,’ said Sizenby in an absent tone. He was once again standing and watching the misty perimeter of visibility.

“Since that dreadful scream, no sound had come from out in the night. But now the far silence and the patter of drops of water from the bamboos were again broken. And once again it was the sound of running feet. Never very close and never very far away, the pad, pad of the runner came through the chill silence. First on one side of the circle then on the other. We had learned our lesson though, and we watched all sides.

“The sounds would cease at intervals, then commence again. The noises, indeed any sound in the bamboo forest, had a curious echoing quality, so that at times we seemed encompassed by legions of stealthy, padding feet, running on urgent and malignant errands. Yet at others there seemed only the one creature, running in the night, driven by some ancient and evil compulsion as if in search of a phantom prey.

“Somehow the night passed. As the grey dawn slowly widened our circle of vision, the invisible feet ceased. One moment they were active, the next gone, and a few birds began a desultory chirping deep in the ranks of the bamboo tufts.

“At length the area one could see clearly had widened to almost a hundred feet, and a hot circle in the eastern fog banks indicated the struggle of the sun to break through. We all relaxed a little and looked at one another for the first time.

“ ‘I sat up for the Tsavo maneaters,’ said Sizenby, passing his hand over his eyes, ‘and at least once I heard them feeding on a Hindu railroad coolie twenty feet away from my tree. But it wasn’t like this, I can tell you.’ He looked grey and shriveled. Krock looked like the wrath of God too, and I could feel every nerve in my body aching from the constant strain of watching and waiting. The Negros, Somali, Kikuyu and Wanderobo were silent, a bad sign if one knew them. Only Sergeant Asoto spoke, stepping forward to point at my feet.

“ ‘Sirs, is this the man we hunt? He looks bad to me.’

“This simple remark made me and the others remember our quarry, the reason for all this incredible strain and the nexus of our search, almost forgotten due to the night’s stealthy evil.

“Bruckheller had been sitting crouched at my feet, and as the sergeant spoke, he looked up, and I saw at once what the sergeant’s rather basic English meant. I had thought he meant that Bruckheller was ill when he said ‘looked bad.’ But it was obvious that the words were meant absolutely literally. The Italian’s face seemed to have suffered some indefinable change. The man’s jaws appeared prolonged into a snout, almost as if he were thrusting his lower face forward, like an angry monkey’s. And his eyes were narrowed in what looked like a damned vicious glare. He did indeed look bad.’ He looked evil, if ever a man did; and as his eyes wandered over us, it was as though he were cataloguing us for some peculiar vengeance.

“Further, there was something markedly unpleasant about his posture. He was squatting but somehow gave the impression of a dangerous animal crouching to spring, rather than a human being seated or resting. I stepped back almost involuntarily, and Krock and Sizenby both raised their guns.

“ ‘Stand away from him, Ffellowes,’ said Sizenby sharply. ‘I was afraid of this. It’s one of the legends of the Kerit.’

“ ‘By God, you said it!’ said Krock. ‘Just look at him!’

“ ‘What’s this?’ I asked, as I turned around, baffled by the menace in their voices. All the blacks, faces set like flint were leveling rifles and spears at the silent Italian.

“Why, it’s got to him,’ said Sizenby. ‘Look at him, Ffellowes! He’s not a man any longer. Can’t you see that?’

“ ‘Are you completely daft?’ I shouted. ‘This man is my prisoner. What the hell do you mean, not a man? Put those guns down! That’s an order, damn it!’

“At this point Bruckheller sprang. I say ‘Bruckheller’, but I doubt the name was deserved any longer. In the light of what I next saw and heard, our companion of the night was frankly no longer anything that could be called human. The creature on the ground leapt with a snarl on my back and with a strength I wouldn’t have believed possible seized me and held me as a shield between itself and the leveled rifles of the rest of the party. Helpless to move, I was neatly interposed against any bullets, as my captor backed rapidly away toward the nearest point of bamboo jutting into the rapidly clearing glade.

“I could not move, but I could hear, see and speak. What I heard was a noise made by the thing clutching my neck in an iron grip, a rumbling, chuckling growl. It was pleased with itself, like a circus animal which has somehow downed the trainer.

“What I saw were the agonized faces of all of our party, white and black, as they tried to get a point of aim from which to shoot, or throw in the Wanderobos’ case, without hitting me. Some appeared frozen, others were moving but slowly, as one seems to in a nightmare.

“That is not all I saw. The mist was thinning, but in swirls and twists, not all at once. And behind the men, in a patch of clarity for one second, I saw something appear.

“Reddish, matted fur, upright posture, great gnarled and hunched shoulders, and surmounting them, I saw—Anubis!

“In one blinding instant I saw the great, pointed head, like a giant jackal’s, the razor fangs bared in a snarl; and I realized the truth of Bruckheller’s story, the hidden horror behind the beast-headed statues of ancient Egypt.

“Tor God’s sake—behind you.’ I managed to scream. It was Krock who caught my meaning fastest, and he whirled and fired in one motion, one arm cradling the rifle against his side and doing the firing as well. He could shoot, could Krock.

“Again from out of the mist we all heard that awful cry, like a coughing shriek which ran up the scale until it actually hurt one’s ear. But this time there was a dreadful note of pain, so that the cry was half a wail. We all heard it. The second time, the Boer had hit his target.

“My own captor lost his head. What ghastly metamorphosis was working in him I will never know, but it was clear that a bond of some sort, psychic, spiritual perhaps, somehow connected him with that demon visage I had seen.

“At any rate, he hurled me on to the ground and throwing back his head (I was told this, I did not see it), he answered that horrible call with a perfect copy of it, slightly weakened but otherwise accurate. It was the last noise he ever made. Face down in the muck of that mountain meadow, I heard every rifle in our party explode simultaneously, some fired three or four times. Then, there was a great, ringing silence. I didn’t move or even try to until I felt hands under my armpits and was hauled up to face the rest of the group.

“I turned then to look down at the late Dottore Guido Bruckheller. It was not a pleasant sight, since every bullet appeared to have hit, as well as two lion spears, but I felt then and still feel most strongly indeed that we had done the man an immense favor. It is not, I think, wise to speculate upon what he seemed well on the road to becoming. Whatever it was had no place in polite, or indeed human, society.

“Krock, Sizenby and I held a brief conference with Sergeant Asoto. The vote was unanimous. The men dug a rude grave, and after I searched the body, unpleasant but necessary, and found nothing, we buried it. Then Asoto addressed the troops in Swahili, briefly, forcefully and, to me, unintelligibly. At the end of his speech he asked a question. I could catch the inflection as well as the answer, ‘Asente,’ which rang out.

“That means yes, does it not?’ I asked the two whites.

“ ‘Quite so,’ said Sizenby. ‘They shot the foreign bwana because he was shooting at them. End of story. What they’ll say in their own villages doesn’t matter. It was made plain that all this had best be forgotten.’

“ ‘Yah,’ added Krock, ‘and a good thing too. Listen, I hear of an English sea captain once who sees the sea serpent, the groot meerschlang, and goes to his cabin and tells the mate to log him as having been sick. He don’t want people think he’s crazy. Neither do we and neither do you, eh, Captain?’

“I looked around at the sunlit glade. The mist had vanished and a green touraco bird fluttered on the stalk of bamboo over the mound under which Bruckheller lay. My report would be the same, in essence, as the others. We came, he ran, he shot, we shot, Jims. And there it rests to this day. You chaps are the first to ever hear the real story.”

There was a long silence as we digested what we had heard. Then someone, not Williams—he was still numb—but another man, said hesitantly, “I guess it really is like the great sea serpent, isn’t it, just too much to expect the world to believe?”

Ffellowes stared at him coldly, his blue eyes like ice. “Great sea serpent, indeed, my dear man? You don’t know what you’re talking about! That’s a totally, I mean to say, totally different matter altogether. Why, there’s nothing in the least unbelievable about the great sea serpent, as I myself can attest. Nothing like whatsoever, nothing!”

I felt good at once. The great sea serpent! Well, well, well.

His Coat So Gay

This new Brigadier Ffellowes story takes place during the depression, in the country near Washington D. C. Ffellowes, a military attache at the Washington embassy, is invited to a hunt at an estate that seems somehow mysteriously removed from that time and place, and it is not long before the behavior of the hosts moves from the peculiar to the horrifying.

THERE HAD BEEN A BIG SPREAD in the newspapers about a British duke going through bankruptcy proceedings and his third divorce simultaneously. The divorce was contested, the evidence was sordid and those giving it equally so. The nobleman in question came out of the whole thing very badly, it being proved, among other things, that he had run up huge debts to tradesmen, knowing damn well when he did it that he couldn’t hope to pay them. There was lots more, though, including secret “orgies,” which seem to have been dirty parties of the sort to have passed quite unnoticed in Los Angeles.

One of the members tapped his newspaper. A few of us were sitting upstairs in the library after dinner. It was a hot night in New York, but the club was air-conditioned and very pleasant.

“Good thing,” said the man with the paper, “that Mason Williams isn’t here to shout about this. He’d love to give General Ffellowes a hard time. Can’t you hear him? ‘Rotten bunch of degenerates! Lousy overbearing crooks and cadgers! Long line of aristocratic bums and swindlers!’ It would be the best opportunity he’s had in years for trying to annoy the brigadier.”

“I notice you were smart enough to say ‘trying’ !” said someone else. “He’s never managed to annoy Ffellowes yet. I doubt if this would do it either.”

“Who wants to annoy me, eh?” came the easy, clipped tones of our favorite English member. He had come up the narrow back stairs at the other end of the room and was now standing behind my own back. He always moved silently, not I feel certain out of a desire to be stealthy, but from a lifetime’s training. Ffellowes’ years in (apparently) every secret as well as public branch of Her Majesty’s service had given him the ability to walk like a cat, and a quiet one at that.

I jumped and so did a couple of the others, and then there was a moment of embarrassed silence.

Ffellowes is very quick. He saw the newspaper headline in my neighbor’s lap and began to chuckle.

“Good heavens, is that supposed to offend me? What a hope! I suppose someone thought our friend Williams might make use of it to savage the British Lion, eh?” He moved from behind my chair and dropped into a vacant seat, his eyes twinkling.

“Item,” he said, “the man in question’s a Scot, not English. Most important distinction. A lesser and unstable breed.” This was said with such dead-pan emphasis that we all started to laugh at once. Ffellowes’ smooth, ruddy face remained immobile, but his blue eyes danced.

“If you won’t be serious,” he said, when the laughter died away, “I shall have to explain why Chattan’s little peccadilloes are unlikely to move me to wrath. Or anyone else with any real knowledge, for that matter.

“You know, Richard the Lion Heart was a bad debtor on a scale that makes anyone modern look silly. All the Plantagenets were, for that matter. Richard seems to have been a quite unabashed queer as well, of course, and likewise William the Second, called Rufus. When, at any rate, one asked those lads for monies due, one had better have had a fast horse and a waiting ship. They canceled debts rather abruptly. There arc thousands more examples, but I mention the kings as quite a fairish sample. Now Chattan’s an ass and his sexual troubles are purely squalid, fit only for headlines in a cheap paper. But there arc other cases no paper ever got to print. Not so. long ago, one of your splashier magazines ran a purely fictional piece about an aged nobleman, Scots again, who was sentenced never to leave his family castle, as a result of an atrocious crime, not quite provable. The story happens to be quite true and the verdict was approved by the Lords in a closed session. The last pope but two had a South Italian cardinal locked up in his own palace for the remainder of his life on various charges not susceptible of public utterance. The old man only died ten years ago. So it goes, and there are dozens more cases of a similar nature.

“The fact is, persons in positions of power often abuse that power in the oddest and most unpleasant ways. The extent of caprice in the human mind is infinite. Whenever public gaze, so to speak, is withdrawn, oddities occur, and far worse than illicit sex is involved in these pockets of infection. Once off the highways of humanity, if you care for analogies, one finds the oddest byways. All that’s needed is isolation, that and power, economic or physical.” He seemed to brood for a moment.

Outside the windows, the haze and smog kept even the blaze of Manhattan at night dim and sultry looking. The garish electricity of New York took on something of the appearance of patches of torch and fire light in the heat and murk.

“Haven’t you left out one qualification, sir?” said a younger member. “What about time? Surely, to get these Dracula-castle effects and so on, you have to have centuries to play with a complaisant bunch of peasants, hereditary aristocrats, the whole bit. In other words, a really old country, right?”

Ffellowes stared at the opposite wall for a bit before answering.

Finally he seemed to shrug, as if he had come to a decision.

“Gilles de Rais,” he said, “is perhaps the best example known of your Dracula syndrome, so I admit I must agree with you. In general, however, only in general. The worst case of this sort of thing which ever came to my personal knowledge, and very personal it was, took place in the early 1930’s in one of your larger Eastern states. So that while time is certainly needed, as indeed for the formation of any disease, the so-called modern age is not so much of a protection as one might think. And yet there was great age, too.”

He raised his hand and the hum of startled comment which had begun to rise died at once.

“I’ll tell you the story. But I’ll tell it my way. No questions of any sort whatsoever. There are still people alive who could be injured. I shall cheerfully disguise and alter any detail I can which might lead to identification of the family or place concerned. Beyond that, you will simply have to accept my word. If you’re interested on that basis . . .?”

The circle of faces, mine included, was so eager that his iron countenance damned near cracked into a grin, but he held it back and began.

“In the early days of your, and indeed everyone’s, Great Depression, I was the most junior military attache of our Washington embassy. It was an agreeable part of my duties to mix socially as much as I could with Americans of my own age. One way of doing this was hunting, fox hunting to be more explicit. I used to go out with the Middleburg Hunt, and while enjoying the exercise, I made a number of friends as well.

“One of them was a man whom I shall call Canler Waldron. That’s not even an anagram, but sounds vaguely like his real name. He was supposed to be putting in time as a junior member of your State Department, my own age and very good company.

“It was immediately obvious that he was extremely well off. Most people, of course, had been at least affected a trifle by the Crash, if not a whole lot, but it was plain that whatever Can’s financial basis was, it had hardly been shaken. Small comments were revealing, especially his puzzlement when, as often happened, others pleaded lack of funds to explain some inability to take a trip or to purchase something. He was, I may add, the most generous of men financially, and without being what you’d call a ‘sucker’, I he was very easy to leave with the check, so much so one had to I guard against it.

“He was pleasant looking, black haired, narrow faced, dark brown eyes, a generalized North European type, and, as I said, about my own age, barely twenty-one. And what a magnificent rider! I’m not bad, or wasn’t then, but I’ve never seen anyone to match Canler Waldron. No fence ever bothered him and he always led the field, riding so easily that he hardly appeared to be conscious of what he was doing. It got so that he became embarrassed by the attention and used to pull his horse in order to stay back and not be first at every death. Of course he was magnificently mounted; he had a whole string of big black hunters, his own private breed he said. But there were others out who had fine ‘cattle’ too; no, he was simply a superb rider.

“We were chatting one Fall morning after a very dull run, and I asked him why he always wore the black hunting coat of a non-hunt member. I knew he belonged to some hunt or other and didn’t understand why he never used their colors.

“ ‘Highly embarrassing to explain to you, Donald, of all people,’ he said, but he was smiling. ‘My family were Irish and very patriotic during our Revolution. No pink coats (‘pink’ being the term for hunting red) for us. Too close to the hated redcoat army in looks, see? So we wear light green, and I frankly get damned tired of being asked what it is. That’s all.’

“I was amused for several reasons. ‘Of course I understand. Some of our own hunts wear other colors, you know. But I thought green coats were for foot hounds, beagles, bassetts and such?’

“ ‘Ours is much lighter, like grass, with buff lapels,’ he said. He seemed a little ill at ease for some reason, as our horses shifted and stamped under the hot Virginia sun. ‘It’s a family hunt, you see. No non-Waldron can wear the coat. This sounds pretty snobby, so again, I avoid questions by not wearing it except at home. Betty feels the same way and she hates black. Here she comes now. What did you think of the. ride, Sis?’ ‘

“ ‘Not very exciting,’ she said quietly, looking around so that she should not be convicted of rudeness to our hosts. I haven’t mentioned Betty Waldron, have I? Even after all these years, it’s still painful.

“She was nineteen years old, very pale, and no sun ever raised so much as a freckle. Her eyes were almost black, her hair midnight, and her voice very gentle and sad. She was quiet, seldom smiled, and when she did my heart turned over. Usually, her thoughts were miles away and she seemed to walk in a dream. She also rode superbly, almost absentmindedly, to look at her.”

Ffellowes sighed and arched his hands together in his lap, his gaze fixed on the rug before him.

“I was a poor devil of an artillery subaltern, few prospects save for my pay, but I could dream, as long as I kept my mouth shut. She seemed to like me as much, or even more than the gaudy lads who were always flocking about, and I felt I had a tiny, the smallest grain of hope. I’d never said a tiling. I knew already the family must be staggeringly rich, and I had my pride. But also, as I say, my dreams.

“ ‘Let’s ask Donald home and give him some real sport,’ I suddenly heard Can say to her.

“ ‘When?’ she asked sharply, looking hard at him.

‘How about the end of the cubbing season? Last week in October. Get the best of both sports, adult and young. Hounds will be in good condition, and it’s our best time of year.’ He smiled at me and patted his horse. ‘What say, limey? Like some real hunting, eight hours sometimes?’

“I was delighted and surprised, because I’d heard several people fishing rather obviously for invitations to the Waldron place at one time or another and all being politely choked off. I had made up my mind never to place myself where such a rebuff could strike me. There was a goodish number of fortune-hunting Europeans about just then, some of them English, and they made me a trifle ill. But I was surprised and hurt, too, by Betty’s reaction.

“ ‘Not this Fall, Can,’ she said, her face even whiter than usual. ‘Not—this—Fall!’ The words were stressed separately and came out with an intensity I can’t convey.

“ ‘As the head of the family, I’m afraid what I say goes,’ said Canler in a voice I’d certainly never heard him use before. It was heavy and dominating, even domineering. As I watched, quite baffled, she choked back a sob and urged her horse away from us. In a moment her slender black back and shining topper were lost in the milling sea of the main body of the hunt. I was really hurt badly.

“ ‘Now look here, old boy,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t possibly accept your invitation under these circumstances. Betty obviously loathes the idea, and I wouldn’t dream of coming against her slightest wish.’

“He urged his horse over until we were only a yard apart. ‘You must, Donald. You don’t understand. I don’t like letting out family secrets, but I’m going to have to in this case. Betty was very roughly treated by a man last year, in the Fall. A guy who seemed to like her and then just walked out, without a word, and disappeared. I know you’ll never speak of this to her, and she’d rather die than say anything to you. But I haven’t been able to get her interested in things ever since. You’re the first man she’s liked from that time to this, and you’ve got to help me pull her out of this depression. Surely you’ve noticed how vague and dreamy she is? She’s living in a world of unreality, trying to shut out unhappiness. I can’t get her to see a doctor, and even if I could, it probably wouldn’t do any good. What she needs “is some decent man being kind to her in the same surroundings she was made unhappy in. Can you see why I need you as a friend so badly?’ He was damned earnest and it was impossible not to be touched.

“ ‘Well, that’s all very well,’ I mumbled, ‘but she’s still dead set against my coming, you know. I simply can’t come in the face of such opposition. You mentioned yourself as head of the family. Do I take it that your parents are dead? Because if so, then Betty is my hostess. It won’t do, damn it all.’

“ ‘Now, look,’ he said, ‘don’t turn me down. By tomorrow morning she’ll ask you herself, I swear. I promise that if she doesn’t, the whole thing’s off. Will you come if she asks you and give me a hand at cheering her up? And we are orphans, by the way, just us two.’

“Of course I agreed. I was wild to come. To get leave would be easy. There was nothing much but routine at the embassy anyway, and mixing with people like the Waldrons was as much a part of my duties as going to any Fort Leavenworth maneuvers.

“And sure enough, Betty rang me up at my Washington flat the next morning and apologized for her behavior the previous day. She sounded very dim and tired but perfectly all right. I asked her twice if she was sure she wanted my company, and she repeated that she did, still apologizing for the day before. She said she had felt feverish and didn’t know why she’d spoken as she had. This was good enough for me, and so it was settled.

“Thus, in the last week in October, I found myself hunting the coverts of—well, call it the valley of Waldrondale. What a glorious, mad time it was! The late Indian summer lingered, and each cold night gave way to a lovely misty dawn. The main Waldron lands lay in the hollow of a spur of the Appalachian range. Apparently some early Waldron, an emigrant from Ireland during the T6, I gathered, had gone straight west into Indian territory and somehow laid claim to a perfectly immense tract of country. What is really odd is that the red men seemed to feel it was all fine, that he should do so.

“ ‘We always got along with our Indians,’ Canler told me once. Took around the valley at the faces, my own included. There’s some Indian blood in all of us. A branch of the lost Erie nation, before the Iroquois destroyed them, according to the family records.’

“It was quite true that when one looked, the whole valley indeed appeared to have a family resemblance. The women were very pale, and both sexes were black haired and dark eyed, with lean, aquiline features. Many of them, apparently local farmers, rode with the hunt and fine riders they were, too, well mounted and fully familiar with field etiquette.

“Waldrondale was a great, heart-shaped valley, of perhaps eight thousand acres. The Waldrons leased some of it to cousins and farmed some themselves. They owned still more land outside the actual valley, but that was all leased. It was easy to see that in Waldrondale itself they were actually rulers. Although both Betty and Can were called by their first names, every one of the valley dwellers was ready and willing to drop whatever he or she was doing at a moment’s notice to oblige either of them in the smallest way. It was not subservience exactly, but instead almost an eagerness, of the sort a monarch might have got in the days when kings were also sacred beings. Canler shrugged when I mentioned how the matter struck me.

“ ‘We’ve just been here a long time, that’s all. They’ve simply got used to us telling them what to do. When the first Waldron came over from Galway, a lot of retainers seem to have come with him. So it’s not really a strictly normal American situation.’ He looked lazily at me. ‘Hope you don’t think we’re too effete and baronial here, not that England’s becoming so democratized?’

“ ‘Not at all,’ I said quickly and the subject was changed. There had been an unpleasant undertone in his speech, almost jeering, and for some reason he seemed rather irritated.

“What wonderful hunting we had! The actual members of the hunt, those who wore the light green jackets, were only a dozen or so, mostly close relatives of Canler’s and Betty’s. When we had started the first morning at dawn, I’d surprised them all for I was then a full member of the Duke of Beaufort’s pack, and as a joke more than anything else, I had brought the blue and yellow-lapelled hunting coat along. The joke was that I had been planning to show them, the Waldrons, one of our own variant colors all along, ever since I had heard about theirs. They were all amazed at seeing me not only not in black, but in ‘non-red,’ so to speak. The little withered huntsman, a local farmer, named McColl, was absolutely taken aback and for some reason seemed frightened. He made a curious remark, of which I caught only two words, ‘Sam Haines,’ and then made a sign which I had no trouble at all interpreting. Two fingers at cither end of a fist have always been an attempt to ward off the evil eye, or some other malign spiritual influence. I said nothing at the time, but during dinner I asked Betty who ‘Sam Haines’ was and what had made old McColl so nervous about my blue coat. Betty’s reaction was even more peculiar. She muttered something about a local holiday and also that my coat was the ‘wrong color for an Englishman,’ and then abruptly changed the subject. Puzzled, I looked up, to notice that all conversation seemed to have died at the rest of the big table. There were perhaps twenty guests, all the regular hunt members and some more besides from the outlying parts of the valley. I was struck by the intensity of the very similar faces, male and female, all staring at us, lean, pale and dark eyed, all with that coarse raven hair. For a moment I had a most peculiar feeling that I had blundered into a den of some dangerous creature or other, some pack animal perhaps, like a wolf. Then Canler laughed from the head of the table and conversation started again. The illusion was broken, as a thrown pebble shatters a mirrored pool of water, and I promptly forgot it.

“The golden, wonderful days passed as October drew to a close.

We were always up before dawn and hunted the great vale of Waldrondale sometimes until noon. Large patches of dense wood had been left deliberately uncleared here and there and made superb coverts. I never had such a good going, not even in Leicestershire at its best. And I was with Betty, who seemed happy, too. But although we drew almost the entire valley at one time or another, there was one exception, and it puzzled me to the point of asking Can about it one morning.

“Directly behind the Big House (it had no other name) the ground rose very sharply in the direction of the high blue hills beyond. But a giant hedge, all tangled and overgrown, barred access to whatever lay up the slope. The higher hills angled down, as it were, as if to enclose the house, and grounds, two arms of high, rocky ground almost reaching the level of the house on either side. Yet it was evident that an area of some considerable extent, a smallish plateau in fact, lay directly behind the house, between it and the sheer slopes of the mountain, itself some jagged outlier of the great Appalachian chain. And the huge hedge could only have existed for the purpose of barring access to this particular piece of land.

“ ‘It’s a sanctuary,’ Canlcr said when I asked him. ‘The family has a burial plot there, and we always go there on—on certain days. It’s been there since we settled the area, has some first growth timber among other things, and we like to keep it as it is. But I’ll show it to you before you leave if you’re really interested.’ His voice was incurious and flat, but again I had the feeling, almost a sixth sense, if you like, that I had somehow managed to both annoy and, odder, amuse him. I changed the subject and we spoke of the coming day’s sport.

“One more peculiar thing occurred on that day in the late afternoon. Betty and I had got a bit separated from the rest of the hunt, a thing I didn’t mind one bit, and we also were some distance out from the narrow mouth of the valley proper, for the fox had run very far indeed. As we rode toward home under the warm sun, I noticed that we were passing a small, white, country church, wooden, you know, and rather shabby. As I looked, the minister, parson, or what have you, appeared on the porch, and seeing us, stood still, staring. We were not more than thirty feet apart for the dusty path, hardly a road at all, ran right next to the church. The minister was a tired-looking soul of about fifty, dressed in an ordinary suit but with a Roman collar, just like the C. of E. curate at home.

“But the man’s expression! He never looked at me, but he stared at Betty, never moving or speaking, and the venom in his eyes was unmistakable. Hatred and contempt mingled with loathing.

“Our horses had stopped and in the silence they fidgeted and stamped. I looked at Betty and saw a look of pain on her face, but she never spoke or moved either. I decided to break the silence myself.

“ ‘Good day, padre,’ I said breezily. ‘Nice little church you have here. A jolly spot, lovely trees and all.’ I expect I sounded half-witted.

“He turned his gaze on me and it changed utterly. The hatred vanished and instead I saw the face of a decent, kindly man, yes, and a deeply troubled one. He raised one hand and I thought for a startled moment he actually was going to bless me, don’t you know, but he evidently thought better of it. Instead he spoke, plainly addressing me alone.

“ ‘For the next forty-eight hours this church will remain open. And I will be here.’

“With that, he turned on his heel and re-entered the church, shutting the door firmly behind him.

“ ‘Peculiar chap, that,’ I said to Betty. ‘Seems to have a bit of a down on you, too, if his nasty look was any indication. Is he out of his head, or what? Perhaps I ought to speak to Can, eh?’

“ ‘No,’ she said quickly, putting her hand on my arm. ‘You mustn’t; promise me you won’t say anything to him about this, not a word!’

“ ‘Of course I won’t, Betty, but what on earth is wrong with the man? All that mumbo jumbo about his confounded church being open?’

“ ‘He—well, he doesn’t like any of our family, Donald. Perhaps he has reason. Lots of people outside the valley aren’t too fond of the Waldrons. And the Depression hasn’t helped matters. Can won’t cut down on high living and of course hungry people who see us are furious. Don’t let’s talk any more about it. Mr. Andrews is a very decent man and I don’t want Canler to hear about this. He might be angry and do something unpleasant. No more talk now. Come on, the horses are rested, I’ll race you to the main road.’

“The horses were not rested and we both knew it, but I could never refuse her anything. By the time we rejoined the main body of the hunt, the poor beasts were blown, and we suffered a lot of chaff, mostly directed at me, for not treating our mounts decently.

“The next day was the thirty-first of October. My stay had only two more days to run and I could hardly bear to think of leaving. But I felt glorious too. The previous night, as I had thrown the bedclothes back, preparatory to climbing in, a small packet had been revealed. Opening it, I had found a worn, tiny cross on a chain, both silver and obviously very old. I recognized the cross as being of the ancient Irish or Gaelic design, rounded and with a circle in the center where the arms joined. There was a note in a delicate hand that I knew well, since I’d saved every scrap of paper I’d ever received from her.

“Wear this for me always and say nothing to anyone.

“Can you imagine how marvelous life seemed? The next hunt morning was so fine it could hardly have been exceeded. But even if it had been terrible and I’d broken a leg, I don’t think I’d have noticed. I was wearing Betty’s family token, sent to me, secretly under my shirt, and I came very close to singing aloud. She said nothing to me, save for polite banalities, and she looked tired, as if she’d not slept too well.

“As we rode past a lovely field of gathered shocks of maize, your corn,’ you know, I noticed all the jolly pumpkins still left lying about in the fields and asked my nearest neighbor, one of the younger cousins, if the local kids didn’t use them for Hallowe’en as I’d been told in the papers.

“ ‘Today?’ he said, and then gobbled the same words used by the old huntsman, ‘Sam Haines,’ or perhaps ‘Hayne.’

“ ‘We don’t call it that,’ he added stiffly and before I could ask why or anything else, spurred his horse and rode ahead. I was beginning to wonder, in a vague sort of way, if all this isolation really could be good for people. Canler and Betty seemed increasingly moody and indeed the whole crowd appeared subject to odd moods.

“Perhaps a bit inbred, I thought. I must try and get Betty out of here. Now apparently I’d offended someone by mentioning Hallowe’en, which, it occurred to me in passing, was that very evening. ‘Sam Haines’ indeed!

“Well, I promptly forgot all that when we found, located a fox, you know, and the chase started. It was a splendid one and long, and we had a very late lunch. I got a good afternoon rest, since Canler had told me we were having a banquet that evening. ‘A farewell party for you, Donald,’ he said, ‘and a special one. We don’t dress up much, but tonight we’ll have a sort of hunt ball, eh?’

“I’d seen no preparations for music, but the Big House was so really big that the London Symphony could have been hidden somewhere about.

“I heard the dinner gong as I finished dressing, and when I came down to the main living room, all were assembled, the full hunt, with all the men in their soft-emerald green dress coats, to which my blue made a mild contrast. To my surprise, a number of children, although not small ones, were there also, all in party dress, eyes gleaming with excitement. Betty looked lovely in an emerald evening dress, but also very wrought up, and her eyes did not meet mine. Once again, a tremendous desire to protect her and get her out of this interesting but rather curious clan came over me.

“But Can was pushing his way through the throng and he took me by the elbow. ‘Come and be toasted, Donald, as the only outsider,’ he said, smiling. ‘Here’s the family punch and the family punch bowl too, something few others have ever seen.’

“At a long table in a side alcove, stood an extraordinary bowl, a huge stone thing, with things like runes scratched around the rim. Behind it, in his ‘greens,’ but bareheaded, stood the little withered huntsman, McColl. It was he who filled a squat goblet, but as he did so and handed it to me, his eyes narrowed, and he hissed something inaudible over the noise behind me. It looked like ‘watch’ ! I was alerted, and when he handed me the curious stone cup, I knew why. There was a folded slip of paper under the cup’s base, which I took as I accepted the cup itself. Can, who stood just behind me, could have seen nothing.

“I’m rather good at conjuring tricks, and it was only a moment before I was able to pass my hand over my forehead and read the note at the same instant. The message was simple, the reverse of Alice’s on the bottle.

“ ‘Drink nothing.’ That was all, but it was enough to send a thrill through my veins. I was sure of two things. McColl had never acted this way on his own hook. Betty, to whom the man was obviously devoted, was behind this. And something else, too.

“I was in danger. I knew it. All the vague uneasiness I had suppressed during my stay, the peculiar stares, the cryptic remarks, the attitude of the local minister we had seen, all coalesced into something ominous, inchoate but menacing. These cold, good-looking people were not my friends, if indeed they were anyone’s. I looked casually about while pretending to sip from my cup. Between me and each one of the three exits, a group of men were standing, chatting and laughing, accepting drinks from trays passed by servants, but never moving. As my brain began to race overtime, I actually forgot my warning and sipped from my drink. It was like nothing I have had before or since, being pungent, sweet and at the same time almost perfumed, but not in an unpleasant way. I managed to avoid swallowing all but a tiny bit, but even that was wildly exhilarating, making my face flush and the blood roar through my veins. It must have showed, I expect, for I saw my host half smile and others too, as they raised their cups to me. The sudden wave of anger I felt did not show, but now I really commenced to think.

“I turned and presented my almost full goblet to McColl again as if asking for more. Without batting an eye, he emptied it behind the cover of the great bowl, as if cleaning out some dregs, and refilled it. The little chap had brains. As again I raised the cup to my lips, I saw the smile appear on Can’s face once more. My back was to McColl, blocking him off from the rest of the room, and this time his rasping, penetrating whisper was easy to hear.

“ ‘After dinner, be paralyzed, stiff, frozen in your seat. You can’t move, understand?’

“I made a circle with my fingers behind my back to show I understood, and then walked out into the room to meet Canler who was coming toward me.

“ ‘Don’t stand at the punch all evening, Donald,’ he said, laughing. ‘You have a long night ahead, you know.’ But now his laughter was mocking, and his lean, handsome face was suddenly a mask of cruelty and malign purpose. As we moved about together, the faces and manners of the others, both men and women, even the children and servants, were the same, and I wondered that I had ever thought of any of them as friendly. Under their laughter and banter, I felt contempt, yes, and hatred and triumph too, mixed with a streak of pure nastiness. I was the stalled ox, flattered, fattened and fed, and the butchers were amused. They knew my fate, but I would not know until the door of the abattoir closed behind me. But the ox was not quite helpless yet, nor was the door quite slammed shut. I noticed Betty had gone, and when I made some comment or other, Can laughed and told me she was checking dinner preparations, as indeed any hostess might. I played my part as well as I could, and apparently well enough. McColl gave me bogus refills when we were alone, and I tried to seem excited, full of joie de vivre, you know. Whatever other effect was expected was seemingly reserved for after dinner.

“Eventually, about nine I should think, we went in to dinner, myself carefully shepherded between several male cousins. These folk were not leaving much to chance, whatever their purpose.

“The great dining room was a blaze of candles and gleaming silver and crystal. I was seated next to Betty at one end of the long table, and Canler took the other. Servants began to pour wine and the dinner commenced. At first, the conversation and laughter were, to outward appearances, quite normal. The shrill laughter of the young rose above the deeper tones of their elders. Indeed the sly, feral glances of the children as they watched me surreptitiously were not the least of my unpleasant impressions. Once again and far more strongly, the feeling of being in a den of some savage and predatory brutes returned to me, nor, this time, did it leave.

“At my side, Betty was the exception. Her face never looked lovelier, ivory white in the candle glow, and calm, as if whatever had troubled her earlier had gone. She did not speak much, but her eyes met mine frankly, and I felt stronger, knowing that in the woman I loved, whatever came, I had at least one ally.

“I have said that as the meal progressed, so too did the quiet. I had eaten a fairish amount, but barely tasted any of the wines from the battery of glasses at my place. As dessert was cleared off, amid almost total silence, I became aware that I had better start playing my other role, for every eye was now trained at my end of the table.

“Turning to the girl, an unmarried cousin, on my other side, my right, I spoke slowly and carefully, as one intoxicated.

“ ‘My goodness, that punch must have been strong! I can scarcely move my hand, d’you know. Good thing we don’t have to ride tonight, eh?’

“Whatever possessed me to say that, I can’t think, but my partner stared at me and then broke into a peal of cold laughter. As she did so, choking with her own amusement, the man on her far side, who had heard me also, repeated it to his neighbors. In an instant the whole table was a-ripple with sinister delight, and I could see Can at the far end, his white teeth gleaming as he caught the joke. I revolved my head slowly and solemnly in apparent puzzlement, and the laughter grew. I could see two of the waiters laughing in a far corner. And then it ceased.

“A great bell or chime tolled somewhere, not too far off, and there was complete silence as if by magic. Suddenly I was aware of Canler, who had risen at his place and had raised his hands, as if in an invocation.

“ ‘The hour returns,’ he cried. ‘The Blessed Feast is upon us, the Feast of Sam’hain. My people, hence to your duties, to your robes, to the sacred park of the Sheade! Go, for the hour comes and passes!’

“It was an effort to sit still while this rigmarole went on, but I remembered the earlier warnings and froze in my seat, blinking stupidly. It was as well, for four of the men servants, all large, now stood behind and beside my chair. In an instant the room was empty, save for these four, myself and my host, who now strode the length of the table to stare down at me, his eyes filled with anger and contempt. Before I could even move, he had struck me over the face with his open hand.

“ ‘You, you English boor, would raise your eyes to the last princess of the Firbolgs, whose stock used yours as the meat and beasts of burden they are before Rome was even a village! Last year we had another one like you, and his polo-playing friends at Hicksville are still wondering where he went!’ He laughed savagely and struck me again. I can tell you chaps, I learned real self-control in that moment! I never moved, but gazed up at him, my eyes blank, registering vacuous idiocy.

“ ‘The mead of the Dagda keeps its power,’ he said. ‘Bring him along, you four, the Great Hour passes!’

“Keeping limp, I allowed myself to be lifted and carried from the room. Through the great dark house, following that false friend, its master, we went, until at last we climbed a broad stairway and emerged under the frosty October stars. Before us lay the towering, overgrown hedge, and now I learnt the secret of it. A great gate, overgrown with vines so as to be invisible when shut, had been opened, and before me lay the hidden place of the House of Waldron. This is what I saw:

“An avenue of giant oaks marched a quarter mile to a circular space where towered black tumuli of stone rose against the night sky. As I was borne toward these monoliths, the light of great fires was kindled on either side as I passed, and from them came an acrid, evil reek which caught at the throat. Around and over them leapt my fellow dinner guests and the servants, wearing scanty, green tunics, young and old together, their voices rising in a wild screaming chant, unintelligible, but regular and rhythmic. Canler had vanished momentarily, but now I heard his voice ahead of us. He must have been gone longer than I thought, for when those carrying me reached the circle of standing stones, he was standing outlined against the largest fire of all, which blazed, newly kindled, behind him. I saw the cause of the horrid stench, for instead of logs, there were burning white, dry bones, a great mountain of them. Next to him stood Betty and both of them had their arms raised and were singing the same wild chant as the crowd.

“I was slammed to the ground by my guards but held erect and immovable so that I had a good chance to examine the two heirs of the finest families in the modern United States.

“Both were barefoot and wore thigh-length green tunics, his apparently wool, but hers silk or something like it, with her ivory body gleaming through it almost as if she were nude. Upon her breasts and belly were marks of gold, like some strange, uncouth writing, clearly visible through the gauzy fabric. Her black hair was unbound and poured in waves over her shoulders. Canler wore upon his neck a massive circular torque, also of gold, and on his head a coronal wreath, apparently of autumn leaves. In Betty’s right hand was held a golden sceptre, looking like a crude attempt to form a giant stalk of wheat, She waved this in rhythm as they sang.

“Behind me the harsh chorus rose in volume, and I knew the rest of the pack, for that’s how I thought of them, were closing in. The noise rose to a crescendo, then ceased. Only the crackling of the great, reeking fire before me broke the night’s silence. Then Canler raised his hands again in invocation and began a solitary chant in the strange harsh tongue they had used before. It was brief, and when it came to an end, he spoke again, but in English this time.

“ ‘I call to Sam’hain, Lord of the Dead, I, Tuathal, the Seventieth and One Hundred, of the line of Miled, of the race of Goedel Gias, last true Ardr’i of ancient Erin, Supreme Vate of the Corcu Firbolgi. Oh, Lord from Beyond, who has preserved my ancient people and nourished them in plenty, the bonefires greet the night, your sacrifice awaits you!’ He fell silent and Betty stepped forward. In her left hand she now held a small golden sickle, and very gently she pricked my forehead three times, in three places. Then she stepped back and called out in her clear voice.

“ ‘I, Morrigu, Priestess and Bride of the Dead, have prepared the sacrifice. Let the Horses of the Night attend!’

“D’you know, all I could think of was some homework I’d done on your American Constitution, in which Washington advocated separation of church and state? The human mind is a wonderful thing! Quite apart from the reek of the burning bones, though, I knew a stench of a spiritual sort. I was seeing something old here, old beyond knowledge, old and evil. I felt that somehow not only my body was in danger.

“Now I heard the stamp of hooves. From one side, snorting and rearing, a great black horse was led into the firelight by a half-naked boy, who had trouble with the beast, but still held him. The horse was saddled and bridled, and I knew him at once. It was Bran, the hunter I’d been lent all week. Behind him, I could hear other horses moving.

“ ‘Mount him,’ shouted Canler, or Tuathal, as he now called himself. With that, I was lifted into the saddle, where I swayed, looking as doped and helpless as I could. Before I could move, my hands were caught and lashed together at the wrists with leather cords, then in turn tied loosely to the headstall, giving them a play of some inches but no more. The reins were looped up and knotted. Then my host stepped up to my knee and glared up at me.

“ ‘The Wild Hunt rides, Slave and Outlander! You are the quarry, and two choices lie before you, both being death. For if we find you, death by these,’ and he waved a curious spear, short and broad in the blade.

“ ‘But others hunt on this night, and maybe when Those Who Hunt Without Riders come upon your track, you will wish for these points instead. Save for children’s toys, the outside world has long forgotten their Christian Feast of All Hallows. How long then have they forgotten that which inspired it, ten thousand and more years before the Nazarene was slain? Now—ride and show good sport to the Wild Hunt!’

“With that someone gave Bran a frightful cut over the croup, and he bounded off into the dark, almost unseating me in the process. I had no idea where we were going, except that it was not back down the avenue of trees and the blazing fires. But I soon saw that at least two riders were herding me away at an angle down the hill, cutting at Bran’s flanks with whips when he veered from the course they had set. Twice the whips caught my legs, but the boots saved me from the worst of it.

“Eventually, we burst out into a glade near the southern spur of the mountain, and I saw that another, smaller gate had been opened in the great hedge. Through this my poor brute was flogged, but once through it, I was alone. The Big House was invisible around a curve of the hill, and no lights marked its presence.

“ ‘Ride hard, Englishman,’ called one of my herdsmen. ‘Two deaths follow on your track.’ With that, they turned back and I heard the gate slam. At the same time, I heard something else. Far off in the night I heard the shrill whinnying of a horse. Mingled with it and nearer was the sound of a horn, golden and clear. The horse cry was like that of no horse I have ever heard, a savage screaming noise which cut into my ear drums and raised the hackles even further on my neck. At the same time I made a new discovery.

“Some sharp thing had been poking into my left thigh ever since I was placed on the horse. Even in the starlight I now could see the reason. The haft of a heavy knife projected under my leg, apparently taped to the saddle! By stretching and bending my body, I could just free it, and once free, I cut the lead which tethered my wrists to the headstall. As I did so, I urged Bran with my knees downhill and to the right, keeping close to the trees which grew unclipt at the base of the mountain spur. I knew there was little time to waste, for the sound of galloping horses was coming through the night, far off, but drawing nearer by the instant! It might be the Twentieth Century outside the valley, but I knew it would be the last of me if that pack of green-clad maniacs ever caught up with me. The Wild Hunt was not a joke at this point!

“As I saw it, I had three secret assets. One, the knife, a sturdy piece of work with an eight-inch blade, which I now held in my teeth and tried to use to saw my wrists free. The other was the fact that I have a good eye for ground and I had ridden the length and breadth of the valley for a week. While not as familiar with the area as those who now hunted me over it like a rabbit, I was, nevertheless, not a stranger and I fancied I could find my way even at night. My third ace was Betty. What she could do, I had no idea, but I felt sure she would do something.

“The damned leather cords simply could not be cut while Bran moved, even at a walk, and I simply was forced to stop. It only took a second’s sawing, for the knife was sharp, and I was free. I was in deep shadows, and I listened intently, while I unknotted the reins.

“The sound of many horses galloping was still audible through the quiet night, but it was no nearer, indeed the reverse. It now came from off to my left and somewhat lower down the valley. I was baffled by this, but only for a moment. Canler and his jolly group wanted a good hunt. Drugged as I was supposed to be, it would never do to follow’ directly on my track. Instead, they were heading to cut me off from the mouth of the valley, after which they could return at leisure and hunt me down. All of this and much more passed through my mind in seconds, you know.

“My next thought was the hills. In most places the encircling wall of mountain was far too steep for a horse. But I could leave Bran behind, and most of the ground ought to be possible for an active chap on foot. By dawn I could be well out of reach of this murderous gang. As the thought crossed my mind, I urged Bran toward the nearest wall of rock. We crossed a little glade and approached the black mass of the slope, shrouded in more trees at the base, and I kept my eye peeled for trouble. But it was my mount who found it.

“He suddenly snorted and checked, stamping his feet, refusing to go a foot forward. I drew the knife from my belt, also alerted, and by a sudden awakening of a sense far older than anything merely physical. Ahead of us lay a menace of a different sort than the hunters of Waldrondale. I remembered my quondam host, threatening me that something else was hunting that night, and also the men who had driven me through the hedge called after me that two deaths were on my track.

“Before me, as I sat, frozen in the saddle, something moved in the shadows. It was large, but its exact shape was not easy to make out. I was conscious of a sudden feeling of intense cold, something I’ve experienced once or twice. I now know this to mean that one of what I’ll call an Enemy from Outside, a foe of the spirit, is about. On my breast there was a feeling of heat, as if I’d been burnt by a match. It was where I wore Betty’s gift. The cross, too, was warning me. Then, two dim spots of yellow phosphorescence glowed at a height even with mine. A hard sound like a hoof striking a stone echoed once.

“That was enough for Bran! With a squeal of fright which sounded more like a hare than a blood horse, he turned and bolted. If I had not freed my hands, I would have been thrown off in an instant, and as it was I had the very devil of a time staying on. He was not merely galloping, but bounding, gathering his quarters under him with each stride as if to take a jump. Only sheer terror can make a trained horse so forget himself.

“I did my best to guide him, for through the night I heard the golden questing note of a horn. The Wild Hunt was drawing the coverts. They seemed to be quite far down the valley, and fortunately Bran was running away across its upper part, in the same direction as the Big House.

“I caught a glimpse of its high, lightless gables, black against the stars as we raced over some open ground a quarter mile below it, then we were in the trees again, and I finally began to master the horse, at length bringing him to a halt. Once again, as he stood, sweating and shivering, I used my ears. At first there was nothing, then, well down the vale to my right front came the sound of the questing horn. I was still undiscovered.

“You may wonder, as I did at first, why I had heard no hounds. Surely it would have been easy for this crew to keep some bloodhounds, or perhaps to smear my clothes or horse with anise and use their own thoroughbred foxhounds. I can only say I don’t know. At a guess, and mind you, it’s only a guess, there were other powers or elements loose that night which might have come into conflict with a normal hunting pack. But that’s only a guess. Still, there were none, and though I was not yet sure of it, I was fairly certain, for even the clumsiest hound should have been in full cry on my track by now. The Wild Hunt then, seemed to hunt at sight. Again the clear horn note sounded. They were working up the slope in my direction.

“As quietly as possible, I urged Bran, who now seemed less nervous, along the edge of the little wood we were in and down the slope. We had galloped from the hill spur on the right, as one faced away from the house, perhaps two thirds of the way across the valley, which at this point was some two miles wide. Having tried one slope and met—well, whatever I had met, I would now try the other.

“My first check came at a wooden fence. I didn’t dare jump such a thing at night, as much for the noise as for the danger of landing badly. But I knew there were gates. I dismounted and led Bran along until I found one, and then shut it carefully behind me. I had not heard the mellow horn note for some time and the click of the gate latch sounded loud in the frosty night. Through the large field beyond I rode at a walk. There was another gate at the far side, and beyond that another dark clump of wood. It was on the edge of this that I suddenly drew rein.

“Ahead of me, something was moving down in the wood. I heard some bulky creature shoulder into a tree trunk and the sound of heavy steps. It might have been another horse from the sound. But at the same moment, up the slope behind me, not too far away came the thud of hooves on the ground, many hooves. The horn note blew, not more than two fields away, by the sound. I had no choice and urged Bran forward into the trees. He did not seem too nervous, and went willingly enough. The sound ahead of me ceased, and then, as I came to a tiny glade in the heart of the little wood, a dim shape moved ahead of me. I checked my horse and watched, knife ready.

“ ‘Donald?’ came a soft voice. Into the little clearing rode Betty, mounted on a horse as dark as mine, her great black mare. I urged Bran forward to meet her.

“ ‘I’ve been looking for you for over an hour,’ she whispered, her breath warm on my cheek. I was holding her as tightly as I could, our mounts standing side by side, amiably sniffing one another. ‘Let me go, Donald, or we’ll both be dead. There’s a chance, a thin one if we go the way I’ve thought out.’ She freed herself and sat looking gravely at me. My night vision was good and I could see she had changed into a simple tunic of what looked like doeskin and soft, supple, knee boots. Socketed in a sling was one of the short, heavy spears, and I reached over and took it. The very heft of it made me feel better. The glimmering blade seemed red even in the dim tree light, and I suddenly realized the point was bronze. These extraordinary people went in for authenticity in their madness.

“ ‘Come on, quickly,’ she said and wheeled her horse back the way she had come. I followed obediently and we soon came to the edge of the forest. Before us lay another gentle slope, but immediately beneath us was a sunken dirt road, which meandered away to the left and downhill, between high banks, their tops planted with hedge. We slid down a sandy slope, and our horses began to walk along the road, raising hardly any dust. Betty rode a little ahead, her white face visible as she turned to look back at intervals. Far away a cock crowed, but I looked at my watch and it was no more than 3 AM. I could hear nothing uphill and the horn was silent. We rode through a little brook, only inches deep. Then, as we had just passed out of hearing of the gurgle of the stream, a new’ sound broke the quiet night.

“It was somewhere between a whinny and a screech, and I remembered the noise I had heard as the two riders had driven me through the hedge. If one could imagine some unthinkable horse creature screaming at the scent of blood, eagerly, hungrily seeking its prey, well, that’s the best I can do to describe it.

“ ‘Come on, we have to ride for our lives!’ Betty hissed. ‘They have let the Dead Horse loose. No one can stand against that.’

“With that, she urged her mount into a gallop and I followed suit. We tore along the narrow’ track between the banks, taking each twist at a dead run, always angling somehow’ downhill and toward the valley mouth.

“Then, the road suddenly went up and I could see both ahead and back. Betty reined up and we surveyed our position. At the same time the horn blew’ again, but short, sharp notes this time, and a wild screaming broke out. Three fields back up the long gentle slope, the Wild Hunt had seen our black outlines on the little swell where we paused. I could see what looked like a dozen horsemen coming full tilt and the faint glitter of the spears. But Betty was looking back down along our recent track.

“From out of the dark hollows came a vast grunting noise, like that of a colossal pig sighting the swill pail. It was very close.

“Betty struck her horse over the withers and we started to gallop again in real earnest. Bran was tired, but he went on nobly, and her big mare simply flew. The Hunt was silent now, but I knew they were still coming. And I knew too, that something else was coming. Almost, I felt a cold breath on my back, and I held the spear tightly against Brans neck.

“Suddenly, Betty checked, so sharply that her horse reared, and I saw why as I drew abreast. We had come very close to the mouth of the valley and a line of fires lay before us, not three hundred yards away on the open flat. Around them moved many figures, and even at this distance I could see that a cordon was established, yet from the hats and glint of weapons, I knew they were not the Waldrons or their retainers. Apparently the outside world was coming to Waldrondale, at least this far. We had a fighting chance.

“Between us and the nearest fire, a black horseman rode at us, and he was only a hundred feet off. The raised spear and the bare head told me that at least one of the valley maniacs had been posted to intercept me, in the unlikely event of my getting clear of the rest.

“I spurred the tired hunter forward and gripped the short spear near its butt end, as one might a club. The move was quite instinctive. I knew nothing of spears but I was out to kill and I was a six-goal polo player. The chap ahead, some Waldron cousin, I expect, needed practice, which he never got. He tried to stab at me, overhand, but before our horses could touch, I had swerved and lashed out as I would on a long drive at the ball. The heavy bronze edge took him between the eyes and, really, that was that. His horse went oft to one side alone.

“Wheeling Bran, I started to call to Betty to come on, and as I did, I saw that which she had so feared had tracked us down.

“I am still not entirely certain of what I saw, for I have the feeling that part of it was seen with what Asiatics refer to as the Third Eye, the inner ‘eye’ of the soul.

“The girl sat, a dozen yards from me, facing something which was advancing slowly upon us. They had called it the Dead Horse, and its shifting outlines indeed at moments seemed to resemble a monstrous horse, vet at others, some enormous and distorted pig. The click of what seemed hooves was clear in the night. It had an unclean color, an oily shifting, dappling of grey and black. Its pupilless eyes, which glowed with a cold, yellow light, were fixed upon Betty, who waited as if turned to stone. Whatever it was, it had no place in the normal scheme of things. A terrible cold again came upon me and time seemed frozen. I could neither move nor speak, and Bran trembled, unmoving between my legs.

“My love broke the spell. Or it broke her. God knows what it must have cost her to defy such a thing, with the breeding she had, and the training. At any rate, she did so. She shouted something I couldn’t catch, apparently in that pre-Gaelic gibberish they used and flung out her arm as if striking at the monster. At the same instant it sprang, straight at her. There was a confused sound or sounds, a sort of spinning, as if an incredible top were whirling in my ear, and at the same instant my vision blurred.

“When I recovered myself, I was leaning over Bran’s neck, clutching him to stay on, and Betty lay silent in the pale dust of the road. A yard away lay her horse, also unmoving. And there was nothing else.

“As I dismounted and picked her up, I knew she was dead, and that the mare had died in the same instant. She had held the thing from Outside away, kept it off me, but it had claimed a price. The high priestess of the cult had committed treason and sacrilege, and her life was the price. Her face was smiling and peaceful, the ivory skin unblemished, as if she were asleep.

“I looked up at the sound of more galloping hoofbeats. The Wild Hunt, all utterly silent, were rounding a bend below me and not more than a hundred yards away. I lifted Betty easily, for she was very light, and mounted. Bran still had a little go left, and we headed for the fires, passing the dead man lying sprawled in his kilt or whatever on the road. I was not really afraid any longer, and as I drew up at the fire where a dozen gun barrels pointed at me, it all felt unreal. I looked back and there was an empty hill, a barren road. The riders of Waldrondale had vanished, having turned back apparently at the sight of the fires and the armed men.

“ ‘He’s not one! Look at the gal! That crowd must have been hunting him. Call the parson over or Father Skelton, one of you. Keep a sharp lookout, now!’

“It was a babble of voices and like a dream. I sat staring stupidly down and holding Betty against my heart until I realized a man was pulling at my knees and talking insistently. I began to wake up then, and looking down, recognized the minister I had seen when Betty and I had ridden past a day earlier. I could not remember his name, but I handed Betty down to him when he asked for her, as obediently as a child.

“ ‘She saved me, you know,’ I said brightly. ‘She left them and saver’ me. But the Dead Horse got her. That was too much, you see. She was only a girl, couldn’t fight that. You do see, don’t you? This is what I am told I said at any rate, by Mr. Andrews, the Episcopal minister of the little Church of the Redeemer. But that was later. I remember none of it.

“When I woke, in the spare bed of the rectory the next day, I found Andrews sitting silently by my bed. He was looking at my bare breast on which lay the little Celtic cross. He was fully dressed, tired and unshaven, and he reeked of smoke, like a dead fireplace, still full of coals and wood ash.

“Before I could speak, he asked me a question. ‘Did she, the young lady, I mean, give you that?’

“ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It may have saved me. Where is she?’

“ ‘Downstairs, in my late wife’s room. I intend to give her a Christian burial, which I never would have dreamt possible. But she has been saved to us.’

“ ‘What about the rest of that crowd?’ I said. ‘Can nothing be done?’

“He looked calmly at me. ‘They are all dead. We have been planning this for three years. That Hell spawn have ruled this part of the country since the Revolution. Governors, senators, generals, all Waldrons, and everyone else afraid to say a word.’ He paused. ‘Even the young children were not saved. Old and young are in that place behind the house. We took nothing from the house but your clothes. The hill folk, who live to the West came down on them just before dawn, as we came up. Now there is a great burning, the house, the groves, everything. The State Police are coming, but several bridges are out for some reason, and they will be quite a time.’ He fell silent, but his eyes gleamed. The prophets of Israel were not all dead.

“Well, I said a last good-bye to Betty and went back to Washington. The police never knew I was there at all, and I was apparently as shocked as anyone to hear that a large gang of bootleggers and Chicago gangsters had wiped out one of America’s first families and got away clean without being captured. It was a six day sensation and then everyone forgot it. I still have the little cross, you know, and that’s all.”

We sat silent, all brooding over this extraordinary tale. Like all of the brigadier’s tales, it seemed too fantastic for human credibility, and yet—and yet!

The younger member who had spoken earlier could not resist one question, despite Ffellowes’ pre-story ban on such things.

“Well, sir,” he now said. “Why, this means that one of the oldest royal families in the world, far more ancient than King Arthur’s, say, is only recently extinct. That’s absolutely amazing!” Ffellowes looked up from his concentration on the rug and seemed to fix his gaze on the young man. To my amazement he did not become irritated. In fact, he was quite calm and controlled. “Possibly, possibly,” he said, “but of course they all appear to have been Irish or at least Celts of some sort or other. I have always considered their reliability open to considerable doubt.

Never Cry Human

Always know your enemy—but know yourself even better!

I

THE great blue sun was a long way from the planet called after it, Origen VII. As he ran heavily over the hot sand under its glare, William Powers, Field Agent of Survey and Contact Bureau, Syrian Combine, thanked the One God that its heat was no worse. It barely approximated 105° F on Terra. Even so, only Powers’ superb condition enabled him still to keep moving at the steady trot he was forcing himself to maintain.

Beside him the lean, seven-foot form of his Lyran partner sped on with no visible effort, flexible tail streaming behind him, slender five-clawed toes making only a faint rustle in the black sand of the canyon’s floor, a noise imperceptible to anyone but the man running beside him. Powers could barely hear the thud of his heart but he had no trouble with the crunch of his feet as the plastic sandals bit into the ground and occasional patches, of naked rock over which the two ran. Sweat poured from his nearly naked body. It was kept from his eyes by a crude headband, hastily made of cloth torn from the coat of his vanished uniform. Other than this, sandals and his calf-length service pants, he wore nothing at all.

In the waste all was still save for the two running figures. Above them, on both sides, the towering walls of the mighty gorge rose sheer and stark, black and red rock making a pattern of ferocious beauty. Except for ah occasional gray cactus—like shrub clinging to the rock or rooted in some crevice, no vegetation was visible. Down the almost straight hundred-foot width of the canyon floor the two ran, as if competing in some strange contest.

In another quarter of a mile Powers stole a glance at his wristchron.

“Break,” he croaked and came to an abrupt stop.

The Lyran checked at once and whirled in one easy motion to look back up the canyon, his long tail curling gracefully as he did so. Seeing nothing, he turned his great red goggle eyes on his human companion, his immobile, snouted face looking like nothing as much as a magnified head of a Terran chameleon. But there was both intelligence and concern in the huge, lambent orbs as he saw how Powers panted while he crouched on one knee.

“Bill,” he said in Universal, making it sound more like Hipeel, “you don’t look so good. Can you last much longer?”

“Why in hell, you overgrown skink, you don’t get out of here, is beyond me,” gasped Powers. “How much water you got left?”

The Lyran examined the skin water bag slung over one bony shoulder.

“Maybe a quart. Maybe a touch more. Want some?”

“Yeah,” said the man, holding up one hand for the water. He drank rapid gulps of the muddy, lukewarm fluid and handed the skin back in silence. The olive-scaled Lyran stood above him, lean double-ankled legs locked as he braced himself on his long stiffened tail, the whole forming a rigid triangle on which to rest. In this portion he also shaded Powers from the sun but neither one mentioned it, any more than he did the fact that only Powers had used the water.

SAHK MAZZECHAZZ was a native of Beta Lyrae IV or Zzorm, an ancient, arid planet, a world not unlike the Karoo desert of Southern Africa over much of its expanse. He needed little water at any time and the hot blue glare of giant Origen bothered him hardly at all. It was the man who was in really bad trouble and they both knew it. There was no need to make any comment. The help was an automatic reflex and on a different, perhaps wetter, world, would have been as freely given in reverse.

Powers’ breath had subsided to normal and he checked his chron again.

“Let’s go,” he said, coming to his feet. “I’ve had five minutes and we haven’t got time to hang around. We don’t know what those hellions turned loose after us. We only have the one chance and we need cover.”

“Quiet a moment, please,” said the Lyran. He was now standing fully erect and his broad, plate-like tympanum surfaces, far more sensitive than human ears to vibration, were quivering as he strained to catch a sound. Powers waited, also staring up canyon. He could see and hear nothing. The shimmering haze, caused by heat reflected off the rocks arid sand, made visibility almost nil more than two hundred yards away.

“Yes,” said Mazzechazz after a moment. “Something comes, something large and with many limbs, my friend. We had best resume our journey. We can do nothing here.”

The two began to run down canyon again, their eyes ceaselessly scanning the terrain ahead and on either side. They needed an ambush spot, anything at all that would give them a chance against whatever horror had been loosed on their trail. A chance to use their one weapon.

As he ran Powers cursed the grim humor of the Arghor war chiefs to himself, not for the first time. They had carefully deprived the two agents of all their weapons, even down to knives, leaving them only a food pack, water and a limited amount of clothing. Two items of Powers’ personal jewelry had been overlooked or considered unimportant. One was his wristchron, the other the large Space Academy ring he wore, set with a green stone. Next, the Arghor had left them at the head of the great gorge and told them to run.

“One comes perhaps, whom it would not be well to meet,” the oldest chief had growled jovially and all the surrounding warriors had yelped in what passed for delighted laughter, some even slapping their black-furred thighs in a fair approximation of mirth.

For the tenth time since their capture at the end of the previous night, Powers had, with dignity, pointed out that he and the Lyran had the status of ambassadors and that the sky gods would curse any who harmed such.

“We have harmed no one, Skydweller,” snarled the old chief venomously. “You came unasked, out of nowhere, on behalf of other irreligious, muck-eating monsters like yourselves down on the plain yonder. Whom we will kill in due course. You claim to be heralds, ambassadors? We asked for none, nor were we asked by your people to receive any. We found you at night lurking on our land near your sky machine, doubtless engaged in some vile skypeople plot. We could kill you at once without losing honor. This one with you looks like an evil spirit.

“But you are heralds, you say? Perhaps. We will release you then. If you are true warriors you need no cowardly death beams,” and he pointed a massive, pelted hand at the two Ferraby handlasers lying on the ground.

“Let us have our knives then, Eldest,” rejoined Powers, staring impassively into the angry yellow eyes. “If you leave us defenseless entirely, then who will be the coward?”

“No!” roared the angry old chief. Standing so close to Powers that his sharp-snouted, hairy face was only inches away. “No—we give you a chance for life, no more. You deserve no more, like all the dirty leaf and root eaters in your tribe. If you are true people, true hunters, make the most of it and save yourselves. Otherwise, die here and now.”

“We are ready,” interrupted the Lyran. He had been standing, arms folded, not speaking, while Powers argued. Now he took Powers by the arm and gently pulled him back.

The Unitrans machine which had taught them both to speak the Arghor dialect could not help to make the barks, growls and grunts as fluent for the reptilian mouth of the Lyran, but the tribemen nevertheless fell silent when he spoke. Humans they were used to seeing, but Mazzechazz was uncanny, and the fact that he could speak to them in their own tongue made them even more nervous. They were not afraid, exactly, but there was a grudging respect in their attitude toward the towering lizard shape that was absent in their attitude toward Powers.

“Go then,” grunted the old chief, “You have been given food and a skin of water. If you escape from the Hunter of the Sands we will kill you later—but in fair fight. Now go.”

Powers turned and followed his partner down the crude vine ladder to the canyon floor far below. At the bottom he looked up, expecting to see the assembled tribe gazing down, prick-eared in the clear light of the coming dawn. But the ladder was hauled up by invisible hands and then there was nothing. The Arghors had vanished, apparently uninterested.

“I think we had better run, friend,” said Mazzechazz gently, taking the unspoken thought from his mind. “They surely would like to see us die—and that means they are probably extremely scared of what’s coming. They are not hanging around to see how we’ll make out.”

NOW, three hours later, they had been running, running and running, thought Powers. And still they had found no position for making a stand. The level bottom of the canyon had stayed smooth, large, flat rocks alternating with fine gravel and sand, but with no break or usable crevice in the towering walls. The gentle downward slope never varied or ceased. Only the timed rests and his iron will had kept Powers from collapsing, but Sakh Mazzechazz could still go a long way. Powers knew that the big Lyran ought to have left him but he had given up arguing. The other had made it plain that he was not going to desert his partner for any reason whatsoever, mission or no mission.

As he pounded grimly and undeviatingly along, Powers tried to keep his mind off his straining muscles and laboring breath by recasting the events of the past few cycles in his mind. Everything had happened quickly—too quickly.

While returning from a pirate scan near the outer Magellanies he and his teammate, Mazzechazz, had been beeped by a subdimensional probe, matching velocities with their two-man, deep-space Farover. The powered message capsule, actually a tiny ship keyed to a molecular frequency in their own vessel’s construction, had been taken aboard, stored for return to base, its coded contents read.

The message had come through the subspace dimension from H.Q. on Sirius Prime. It seemed that no word had been received for three weeks, Universal time, from a new human colony on a Terratype world called Origen VII.

The colony was one of the products of an influential religious body, the Methodist Revival Templars, a group originating on old Terra in the distant past, still with Terran headquarters, but powerful on other worlds also. The Templars were ancient Christian in their remote antecedents and gave their clergy a lot of authority. A strongly pacific—even pacifist—sect, they had a previous record of planting useful and healthy colonies on a number of worlds suitable for agriculture. They did not despise scientific technology but favored the simple life.

Although the colony was human, the native inhabitants of Origen VII were not, although they were classified as clearly mammalian. Pictures and data on the planet, its ecology, resources and all other pertinent matters were included in the message. The Templar colony had been supposed to report twice a (Universal) week, but via sub-space radio, not capsule. Mission for Powers and Mazzechazz: Go find out what was wrong and either report or take appropriate action. Coordinates were given. That was all.

THE silent colony on Origen VII proved easy enough to locate. Set in a valley at the base of a mountainous and rugged peninsula on the larger of the two northern continents, it could be picked up easily on a clear night by its blaze of light. No natural satellite circled the planet to give light and the glow of the settlement was very plain. Farover landed easily, flickering out of the black sky into a glare of flood lights at the edge of what quickly revealed itself as a brand-new, defensive perimeter.

Heavily armed men, their faces haggard with strain, had swarmed around the ship as soon as it touched down. On emergence, the two Survey agents were caught up in a babbling crowd of excited people, all talking at once and were rushed almost off their feet to the office of the colony’s governor, who was also its chief priest. Behind them as they went, Powers noticed guards digging still more trenches and laying wire around the S. and C. ship, enclosing it in the zone of defense.

When all others but the six members of the governor’s council had been excluded and a guard had been posted outside, the two agents were finally able to ask questions. At least, so they thought.

Governor Halk Tahira, Presbyter of the Faith, was a man of late middle age and, if Powers were any judge, late middling experience and intelligence as well. He had been ready to explode for days and waited no longer.

“Do you know what’s been going on here?” he had shouted rhetorically. “This place was cleared, pronounced safe by all official sources. Safe and harmless! The natives were listed as ‘primitive, semi-nomadic indigenes, mammalian type, humanoid in structure and intelligence and friendly to outside contacts!’ Friendly! Humanoid! That’s what the official report said. “Do you know what we call this place? Wolf World!”

He had raved on. And since Powers and Mazzechazz were learning something from his attitude they made no move to interrupt. Finally he ran down, more from lack of wind than emotion and the real questions started. Allowing for hysteria and shock, what had been allowed to happen seemed bad enough, in all truth. Someone, and it looked like Survey and Contact, which bore the responsibility for the first reports, had goofed, but good.

The natives of Origen VII were semi-nomadic all right—carnivores at various levels of Stone Age culture, who ate nothing but meat unless literally starving. Cannibalism was usually a matter of ritual but perfectly acceptable if the meat were an enemy warrior of one’s one tribal group. The planet provided a variety of environments, all of them swarming with large and small game. Most of the big game animals and their attendant predators were highly dangerous themselves. You worked for your dinner.

At first friendly enough, the natives had swiftly become contemptuous on discovering that the humans were omnivores whose basic diet was vegetable, who did not eat each other and failed to see hand-to-hand combat as the only hobby for an idle moment.

The natives were erect, bipedal and possessed five digits on what a zoologist would style manus and pes or hand and foot. Opposable thumbs were present.

In general appearance and at a fast look the natives resembled nothing so much as human-sized, black dogs walking upright, although they wore harnesses of leather and made sophisticated bone and stone tools. They lived in palisaded villages, used fire and were quite as intelligent as any member race of the Syrian Combine.

Their economy was strictly primitive, however, and since they actually occupied a very small share of the planet’s total surface, the Combine Xenological Bureau had given permission for a colony, subject to the usual safeguards. These, were designed to protect the natives, be it stated, and not the colony.

The Grawm, as the race styled itself, was anything but united. Primitives almost never are and the natives of Origen VII were no exception.

THE particular body of Grawm who called themselves Arghor, was a widespread confederacy of ten tribes, numbering perhaps a bit less than ten thousand warriors. As part of their hunting grounds they owned the peninsula on which the human settlement had been placed. Sparked by anti-vegetarian disgust and apparently urged on by a powerful (and hitherto unsuspected) shamanic priesthood, they had attacked the colony in broad daylight a month earlier. Despising humans and unaware of what advanced technology possessed in the way of weapons, the Arghor warriors had relied on head-on charges.

At tremendous cost to themselves, the “Wolves” had penetrated to the governor’s quarters, destroying the subspace radio shack en route and by mere chance. When they were finally driven out, ninety-two men, twenty-two women and eleven children were dead or missing. Merely wounded in one degree or another were two hundred and ten more. An estimated thousand Arghor, all fighting males, had been killed, mostly by close-range laser fire.

Now the colony had been placed under a loose but effective siege. At first individual Arghor warriors tried to kill Templar sentries at night, for both weapons and prestige. A jury-rigged radar network had quickly put a stop to this practice. It was now safe to move around the colony perimeter, but that was all. No hunting was possible except by airboat and the boats had to land and retrieve anything killed at once. The seven existing airboats could hardly feed the eight hundred people who remained in any case, and the emergency food stocks were already half gone. The speed-growth crops on which the colony had relied for the coming season were totally destroyed, the fields stamped flat by the enraged Arghor. All in all, Powers had reflected, a fairly messy situation.

He was not unaware of the psychic damage either. Peaceful people, who hated violence, had been forced to kill and had seen loved ones killed as well. This was as much a tragedy as the purely physical aspects of what had happened.

He had interrupted the fuming governor at this point in the story and inquired what that ecclesiastic official thought ought to be done.

“Ought to be done?” spluttered Presbyter Tahira angrily. Powers decided Tahira was a standard Mark I bureaucrat—overweight, confused and helpless in an emergency.

“We should get a battleship, Marines, heavy lasers, clear this end of the peninsula,” the governor had suggested, his voice rising. Other members of the council had joined in. “Paralysis beams—null rays—grabbers—rover bombs—”

The babble had slowly died away as it became apparent that Powers and Mazzechazz were simply sitting, saying nothing, waiting. Finally the room was silent again.

“NOW Reverend Presbyter,” Powers had said. “I’ll tell you what we’re actually going to do. You Templars, despite your religion and its training, all seem to have forgotten the Combine Charter. This is not your world, unless the intelligent inhabitants want you. This they no longer do. Whose fault your coming here was originally means nothing, understand me, nothing.” He had stared coldly at the council and no eyes had met his. The Lyran had waited quietly. This was human business.

Powers then continued. “My partner ‘and I will try to fix up this mess. Peaceably. You people can defend yourselves if attacked and that is absolutely all. I am assuming military command of this post. Does anyone oppose my authority for so doing?” Again there was silence. No one had wished to go on record as opposing Survey and Contact Field Agents. The reputation of the Corps insured that. In addition, the reminder of their religion and its teachings was not making them deeply ashamed.

Reinstalling the governor as commandant, but this time as his deputy, Powers had filed a subspace report of the situation to Prime base from the ship’s radio. After ordering an emergency supply ship to leave at once and outlining his procedures and ideas as part of the report, Powers had not waited for an answer. The two S. and C. specialists had decided to head for the main Arghor encampment that very night and start the ball rolling. He and Mazzechazz had taken one of the colony’s airboats and landed on the rim of the plateau about a mile from the blaze of fires marking the main Arghor camp.

Several canyons and gorges ran up from the end of the peninsula and the human settlement’s location to the top of the massif. The Arghor apparently were based in a whole series of camps, in the mountains and sent their warriors down to attack the off-worlders in rotation.

At any rate, with less than one more Universal period left of the local, or four-day, night, Powers and Mazzechazz decided to try a sneak survey of the main enemy position. They landed, seemingly undetected. Only the cry of some distant bird thing and the hum of insects had. broken the velvet darkness.

As the airboat touched down gently on the grass of the plateau a local mammoth-sized herbivore had burst, trumpeting loudly, out of an adjacent clump of brush and trampled heavily on and over the rear or engine part of the machine before galloping ponderously into the surrounding gloom. In no more than five seconds, before they had even left the airboat, the two agents had been robbed of ninety percent their mobility.

Badly shaken around and battered though they were, yet no real bodily injury had occurred. Feeling more or less safe, both from the distance to the enemy camp and the presence of the hulking brute which had smashed their aircraft, Powers and the Lyran had started to examine the damage to the little vessel. They later agreed that one of them should have manned the combat radar, but by the time the hide lassos had dropped neatly out of the black night and over their shoulders it had been a bit late to worry about it.

Caught by an alert Arghor hunting party, which had chanced to be downwind of their landing, Terran and Lyran had been dragged before the hastily summoned Assembly of Chiefs, stripped and sentenced, all in one operation. As dawn came up they had gone down into the canyon.

II

THE two runners rounded a sharp bend in the gorge—and both abruptly halted, looking at each other as the topography sank in. This was the first sharp corner they had found since starting.

“Do you think we can do better?” hissed Mazzechazz. “We have perhaps five minutes before it comes.”

“This looks quite possible,” said Powers absently. In front of him were two huge, steep-sided rocks, giant boulders over twenty feet high, which almost blocked the whole canyon. The last flash flood must have failed to move them farther down the canyon floor. A narrow gap between the rocks—only about six feet wide—constituted the sole pathway to whatever lay beyond.

Walking through this opening and pacing it, Powers estimated its depth at about ten feet and the distance to the corner they had just rounded at double that.

“This is okay,” he said. “We can relax, I think, unless what’s coming is a lot tougher than it has any right to be. Should be quite killable on a Terranorm planet though.”

“It comes now,” said the Lyran and proceeded to crouch low at the downcanyon base of one of the great stones, the one to the right. His tail was coiled neatly about his ankles and his great eyes were covered by his long-fingered hands.

The man stepped out into the middle of the gap and waited. He finished very carefully removing the large stone, an oval green Cadmean fire eye, from the ring on his right third finger. As he looked upcanyon he hefted the stone in his right hand, keeping his thumb and index finger pressed on it. He could hear the rustling himself now—it was rapidly becoming louder and louder.

Powers poised for action.

Around the corner of the cliff appeared two immense whiplike antenna, a sickly blue in color. They were followed by a great, flat head surmounted by two monstrous pupilless eyes, also blue. From mighty mandibles at the front of the head drooled a foul-scented ichor as the creature paused to examine the puny-looking prey, which seemed to await it with such confidence. Six great, jointed legs, tipped with spiked claws, and then an armored, ten-foot body slowly followed the. awful head around the corner. Powers and the beast were now no more than fifteen feet apart.

“Down!” shouted the Terran and hurled the three-quarter inch stone square, flat and low, at the nightmare head. Even as he released the tiny trigger pressed down underneath the stone, he was diving to the left for the shelter of the other great rock. He fell prone—face ground into the sand—behind it as the tiny Osmium wrecker bomb went into its nuclear cycle, exactly on target. The huge boulder actually shifted in its bed next to him and a blast of superheated air came over its top and around the sides. Powers, his eyes tightly shut, hugged the sand as the terrific heat of the almost soundless explosion eddied around his body and the sand swirled over his naked back and shoulders. His eardrums ached from the pressure of the blast.

“Get up, Bill,” said Mazzechazz. “It worked.”

POWERS scrambled to his feet, somewhat embarrassed by the fact that he had not yet realized it was safe to do so. He found the big Lyran standing in the gap between the two mammoth stones. The sand on which his clawed feet rested was now covered by a thin film of fused, black glass, a mute tribute to the tiny bomb’s intense heat.

The two looked back up canyon but except for a scorched area, fifty feet across, where sand and rock had flowed together, there was nothing to be seen.

“Superscorp seems to have bought it,” acknowledged Powers. There was not a speck of matter to show that the giant arthropod had ever existed, so savage had been the instant furnace created by the nuclear Osmium.

“That’s the second time that ring has saved my life,” said Powers, turning away. “Give me a swallow of the water and let’s go. If my bearings are right, we should make the base camp in three more hours, provided the Wolves don’t pick us off first.”

“They probably have the camp ringed by scouts,” said Mazzechazz, passing over the canteen. “We know how good they are. Why not signal, use smoke or something and call down one of the three big airboats they have left?”

“The Arghor could reach us a lot quicker, I suspect.”

They both glanced up at the rims of the gorge, far above against the white sky, but no sign of life or movement could be seen there. Some winged creatures circled higher still, probably the local analog of vultures. The oppressive heat of Origen, the great, blue sun, still lay all around them.

The man drank some lukewarm water and considered, while the Lyran waited. Of the two, Mazzechazz was the profounder thinker, the philosopher-logician, the chess player. He was also the memory bank, a living library of history and technology, spanning many races and worlds besides his own. But in a situation calling for lightning action, reflex moves and brutal cunning Homo sapiens had still not met a peer in the galaxy. Powers was the decision maker here by mutual consent. Just as he had cold-bloodedly risked annihilation for years by wearing a long-outlawed nuke ringstone, so he now ran the combat situation on a moment-to-moment basis.

In this case his decision stayed fixed. “We have a better chance trying it on foot,” he decided aloud. “They won’t be expecting us and I’m pretty sure the whole tribe back at the main camp thinks we’re dead. We got caught good when the airboat was stomped—but I’m damned if I think any primitive can beat us at scouting when we really work at it.”

Without another word they set off down the canyon again. They now possessed no weapon at all, save for their wits, but the prospect of meeting another ravening life form daunted neither of them. They were trained to do all they could and not worry about what could not be helped. Worrying, as opposed to forethought, clouded the mind. A clouded mind could mean bad reaction time and that got you killed. So, at a trot calculated-to save energy, the two agents loped along, looking for the next obstacle.

TEN Universal hours later Powers was as tired as he had ever been in his sometimes very active life. He and his partner were uncomfortably ensconced in a giant tree, about a half-mile from the fortified outer zone of the Templar settlement. To all appearances, as far as their getting to home base safely went, they might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

They had emerged earlier from the mouth of the canyon to find themselves in more or less dense forest, although moving in the right direction for ultimate safety. Realizing that they probably stood a good chance of being slaughtered on the ground by native predators, if not by the Arghor, they had taken to the towering trees and moved more or less easily along through them toward the base. Their alien order probably helped keep what animals they saw at a distance.

But now, out of water and hungry, they seemed stuck and could see no way to go farther. Arghor sentries, easily spotted from high above, were spread all around the section of base perimeter the two could observe. The off-world agents had managed to count nine of them, in a layer three deep, crouched in immobile watchfulness. The warriors were not too close to one another laterally; that is, each file of three formed a rather isolated line extending out from the base to the forest’s edge, each of the enemy being about one hundred and fifty feet apart. With the wolf people’s keen scent and hearing the formation appeared an effective one. It was hard to see how man and Lyran could get by without detection.

“Suppose we went between two of the files?” said Powers in a whisper.

“Then both sets would hear or smell us,” said Mazzechazz. “But I have an idea. These are very proud, independent creatures, William. They dislike calling for help unless desperate. Many savages act so. Now suppose we come down, you in front and then—”

Powers’ answering whisper grew excited.

An hour later they were hailing the Templar sentries manning the perimeter. And ten minutes after that they were relaxing in air-conditioned privacy on their own ship.

“I’m amazed that anything that obvious worked,” mumbled Powers as he chewed away at the second large steak he had cooked. Across the dining table, Mazzechazz was eating spiced, processed fruit. His people had never been carnivores, or at least not since a stage analogous to a shrew in human evolution.

He finished a portion of something purple and juicy and flicked a handful of seeds out of his mouth with his slender tongue before answering.

“Psychology, William, psychology. Action is not everything. What could be simpler? You walk up to a sentry, naked, unarmed and hands in the air. By the way, there is food for thought in this area of defenselessne&s. I must consider it.

“To resume, can he kill you? No, you are helpless, he has to talk, figure things out, try to understand why you are out there coming from the wrong direction. This is too much of a puzzle. In the half-minute it takes to think of asking for advice, not help, mind you, advice, I, the quieter moving of the two, have eased up behind him and throttled him into insensibility. The sentries in the files to left and right have heard nothing and the two remaining in his own line but nearer to camp have not been called. He gets tied up, I take his knife for insurance and we repeat the performance twice more, all the way into camp. Psychology!” He selected a package of Terran figs and carefully opened it, transparent nictitating membranes snapping over his eyes in anticipation. For a while the two ate in silence.

At last, his belt groaning, Powers leaned back and reached for a pipe.

“So now what? We managed to get out safe and sound, but that’s all. Got any ideas?

“It seems to me,” he went on, without waiting for the other to speak, “that we have to recommend evacuation. The Arghor are intelligent, quite highly intelligent, even if they’ve only arrived at the Neolithic. They now detest humans and want to kill them all. It’s their planet and they have the right to do so if the humans remain. The humans, under Syrian Combine law, do not have the right to kill the Arghor, even in self defense, once they—the humans that is, have been officially told to leave and the Combine has evaluated the situation and agreed. Which would seem to make evacuation the only possibility. Someone is going to get a very noisy kick in the pants over this,” he added. “I mean the S. and C. team that recommended this hell hole for colonization. And that’s our service responsibility. The whole of Survey and Contact is going to look awfully incompetent when this news gets out. Even the Bureau can’t keep this one quiet. There are too many people and departments involved, Xenological, Colonization—all those, et-cetra.” He subsided, stoking his pipe with black Cannicotea antarea, lighting it and emitting clouds of lavender smoke.

THE Lyran ran his tongue around his wide, lipless mouth, pushed the empty food containers away and leaned back in his hammock, supple tail curling neatly around the stanchion which supported one end of it.

“Don’t be so gloomy, William,” he said gently. “We have only been here a little over one cycle. Besides, if my ideas are correct, there should be no real trouble about this colony. A little thought is what is needed, a little philosophy, a little history, and a little psychology. Something workable exists in our common store of experience for every eventuality. We have only to tap the proper circuit.”

“Have you got something to use all that quickly?” said Powers. “Short of driving the Arghor out of an area and erecting a large force field, I can’t think of anything.”

“There are several possibilities,” said the Lyran. “They are perhaps eighty percent carnivorous or even more, from the recorded data. We could quite easily remove most of the game animals from any given area, perhaps drive the animals out with contact sonics. The Arghor would also have to move or starve.”

“That’s interference with a native intelligent life form. Destroying or moving their food supply is hardly noninterference, is it?”

“All right,” rejoined Mazzechazz. “But it’s not lethal and surely allowable.”

“Not, and I stress this point,” said Powers smugly, “unless the people or civilization or culture or what have you constitute a menace to the peace of the civilized universum. From “constitute” on, that’s a quote from our own manual, which you know better than I do.” He leaned back and exhaled more of the pungent smoke. Since Lyrans have no powers of scent worth’ mentioning, Mazzechazz ’had never noticed the aroma of Powers’ pipe, which made many other beings as well as humans ill.

“Mmm, quite so, William. But I never really intended this proposal seriously; I simply wished to indicate that there are any number of solutions to any given problem and that we should be exploring them and not trying to evade our duty. We need to reason matters through, not simply report that matters are hopeless.”

Powers tried to look thoughtful.

All that came to his mind was a desire to rest, which was not very helpful. The Lyran, however, had a modest share of the strange telepathic talent of his race.

“Go lie down,” he said. “I don’t feel tired. When you wake up I’ll give you a dozen solutions, all good. Then you can explain why none of them will work. Yet one of them will be correct. The clue I will leave you to dream over is this: the answer lies in ancient Terra, in your own past.”

THE following day, local time[*], was busy indeed. Once persuaded that the weird proposal made by Mazzechazz was quite legitimate and even practical, Powers had to sell it to the governor and council of the Templars. He knew that if these men, particularly the Presbyter-governor, could be convinced, the rest of the colony would follow. The debate was long.

“Presbyter, I am not a member of your splendid religion,” he said, trying a new argument, “but isn’t there a saying ‘Oh, Ye of little faith—’ in your holy book?”

“Yes, there is,” said Tahira sourly. “However, you are offering an explanation based on science not religion. And if you are wrong we will all perish miserably, women and children as well.”

“All the Research and Biological authorities we have messaged on Prime Base bear my partner out,” countered Powers. “They also say that if the plan is not tried the only alternative is to recommend immediate evacuation. The colony will be completely written off and the planet will become an educatable ward of the Syrian Combine. Perhaps it will be opened to colonization again by some more reasonable, adaptable group.” Always save the sting for the tail, the psych books said.

“Further,” he continued, “your remark about all perishing is silly. There is some danger to a few of us—those out in front—I agree. I will be out there in front, you know, with whoever volunteers from your colony. The extrapolation based on BuPsych readings says about twenty men should be enough. No women or kids need be involved at all.”

“Suppose they use missile weapons, spears maybe, from a distance?” said a younger council member; one of the smarter ones, Powers recalled.

“They’ll be barred from doing so for two reasons,” said Powers. “One, we’ll be away out in a part of your fields near no cover when they spot us. Two, they kill hand-to-hand from preference. We’ll be isolated, almost naked and empty-handed when they first see us working. The results will surprise you, I guarantee.

“Look,” he went on, “Sakh and I dug up one of the dead Arghor you buried and dissected him right down to his capillaries. These are pure and simple pack carnivores, only a lot more intelligent than the four-footed variety you and I are used to. In fact, let’s face it, in lots of ways as intelligent as you or I. No species precisely like them has been encountered up to this point, but they obviously had to appear at some point just because of the law of averages. And as Sakh points out, they’re a picture-book example of what had been predicted they would be like if they ever did appear. “They live in tribes, which are little more than extended families or clans, rather like Terran primitives.

“The Amerindians of old Noramerica,” said a hitherto silent councilor.

“Exactly,” said Powers, glad of any support, however vague and qualified. “To go on, they possess a high degree of what used to be called chivalry. They never harm the females, the aged and the young in their battles with each other. War is a sport for healthy males only. Again, there are numerous Terran parallels.”

“AGENT POWERS, assuming that what you have said earlier is correct, this last obviously is totally wrong,” sneered the Presbyter. “They killed every child and woman they could reach in the battle. A number are just plain missing and you have admitted that they were probably carried off to be eaten. Is this an example of your so-called chivalry?”

Patiently Powers returned to the scientific explanation he had presented earlier in the day.

“There again are two points to take note of, Presbyter, One, what were women and children doing during the attack? Two, what is the Arghor view of human beings, inculcated by both your food habits and by the arguments of their priests, wizards or whatever you want to call them?

“Don’t answer,” he went on. “I know what happened and so do you. When attacked by hairy, savage monsters the women and kids fought. Who wouldn’t?” I agree entirely. But if they had known more, if they had been trained, they would not have fought at all. All they had to do was what I’ve told you. “Sakh and I took an Arghor prisoner some twelve standard hours ago and we went through his mind up, down and sideways. We know the Arghor, I tell you, and Sakh’s idea is pure genius—which is nothing more than intuition, memory and scientific knowledge all coalesced. You have to try this or go home with your tails between your legs, beaten by a bunch of primitives and savages.”

The Templar councilors stared at one another for a few seconds without speaking. Powers leaned back in his chair, projecting a good imitation of casualness and tried not to look at the silent Lyran across the table. He, in turn, had no trouble appearing calm. A reptilian face seldom displays emotion in any way a human can read.

Powers was aware that his last shot had been fired. And he had managed to conceal a major source of his concern from the council—the fact that Survey and Contact would get a public black eye if the colony were forced to leave. This was something to avoid at all costs. Now he could do nothing but wait. But in truth, the decision had already been made. The Presbyter-governor broke the silence.

“It means only risking twenty men, I suppose, and we have lost many more. We need eighteen volunteers, gentlemen.”

“You mean twenty, don’t you, Reverend, sir?” said a council member.

“Agent Powers and I make two,” said the governor drily. He met Powers’ eyes squarely for the first time and even managed the ghost of a smile.

Powers said, “I’m honored.”

The details were easily settled. The long local night was coming to an end. The idea would be tested at dawn by Powers and the others. Mazzechazz would remain in command of the perimeter, most of which would be unguarded. Save for the party of exposed men who had volunteered; there should be no real danger to the rest of the humans on the planet. And in last analysis, the Farover possessed enough armament to stand off with ease anything the whole Arghor confederacy could summon up. But it was not supposed to come to that. There was going to be no violence at all, Powers told himself silently as the meeting broke up—not the slightest bit of violence.

III

PRETENDING to hoe a chewed-up, rock-strewn piece of what had once been a Templar grain field in the pitch dark just before dawn, Powers was not quite so sure.

He and Governor Tahira, plus eighteen other nervous men had shipped out in the colony’s airboats a half-hour earlier. They had been dumped, almost naked and armed only with wooden sticks, in the middle of what had been the Templar’s agricultural area, over a mile from the nearest woods. They were all pretending to hoe.

Powers concentrated on mental calisthenics and recited twelve Vegan verse palindromes backward, chopping savagely at the ground as he did so. He could hear nothing and see very little but he felt sure that he and the others had been accurately pinpointed by the Wolves.

Quit calling them that, he thought, You re getting to believe Mazzechazz too much and too hard. . . .

And where was that reptilian conman? Why, back on the ship, since he would be useless in this human problem and would merely confuse the issue for the Arghor minds.

Artificially preoccupied with such reflections, Powers was taken by surprise by the coming of the dawn. Almost without warning visibility became unlimited. As the rim of the giant sun poked above the horizon he lowered his gaze and squinted. Unconsciously, he and the other men began to draw slowly together, their eyes shuttling to the dark forest.

“There they come—” A young settler, pale but determined, stopped pretending to hoe and pointed. Shading his eyes, Powers saw the line of black dots break out of the forest and move rapidly toward them.

“Remember,” he shouted, “they can kill us in seconds if you don’t obey orders and do what you’ve been taught. Have faith!”

“As a priest myself, Agent, in a case like this, perhaps I should be above fear.” Presbyter Tahira had moved close to Powers and’ spoken in a low tone of voice but his eyes twinkled and he seemed quite calm.

The Arghor were now only a hundred yards away, and suddenly the blazing dawn’s quiet was shattered by a concerted howl.

The warrior nearest to Powers was now charging, heavy, stonetipped spear drawn back in one hairy arm. Others who had outstripped their fellows were about to fall upon Tahira and his eighteen Templars.

“Now!” shouted Powers.

INSTANTLY everyone, including Powers himself, dropped to the ground. The men lay flat on their backs, knees drawn up to protect their stomachs, backs arched and arms extended at full length on the ground. All bent their heads back, so that their straining throats were exposed to the sky above. In this posture, eyes wide open, they waited for the enemy.

By rolling his eyes, Powers could see the six-foot, black-furred warrior who had been about to skewer him stop a few yards away, dumbfounded, fanged jaws agape. Unmoving, Powers watched the Arghor approach, spear drooping, until he stood over Powers’ body, his rank odor a pungent reminder of alienness.

“What is this skyfolk madness?” the Arghor growled. “Get up and fight, die like a warrior, skyman?”

Powers remained frozen in his strange posture. The Arghor raised his spear as if to strike and suddenly shrieked horribly. Somehow Powers managed not to flinch. The Arghor stopped screaming. Staring at Powers, he yelped with frustration, shaking his hairy head from side to side and doing a little dance of sheer rage.

“Get up and die,” he howled again, dancing in a circle. Powers could hear a similar and deafening chorus all around him. It was music to his numbed ears. He allowed himself a small smile. His neck muscles ached from the upward jut of his throat and chin but he could hold the cramped posture a long time if he had to do so. So, he was sure, could the others. Now that they realized it was actually working, they could hold it all day, spurred on by success.

His own screaming Arghor suddenly stood squarely over his body, furry legs straddling Powers. Growling horribly and wordlessly, the savage fumbled with his leather breechclout.

By God, Sakh even predicted this . . .

Powers then closed his eyes tightly. The ultimate insult and also the ultimate award for success. The prize for cunning was hardly pleasant but it was a far cry from death or defeat. He waited, honest laughter exploding deep in his body, but outwardly as rigid as ever, for the final and irrevocable gesture of contempt.

AS THE Farover bored through its first subspace jump on its return trip to Sirius Prime the two agents relaxed, each in his own way. The ship was on automatic and its computer could take care of almost any emergency imaginable.

Stripped of his harness, Sakh Mazzechazz was going over his body inch by inch with a tiny battery-operated buffer, polishing his minute scales until his whole yellowish green body gleamed and shimmered in the light.

“You must have a date,” said Powers.

Equally relaxed, he had been transcribing notes for his own private records. Now he put down his recorder and turned his gaze on the Lyran.

“I said, you must have a date. Am I right?”

“A young female from my delegation’s staff on Prime Base has brought me messages from the nearer members of my clan. It is only natural that I hear them in the proper atmosphere of privacy. Otherwise proper reverence would not be displayed.”

“Yes,” agreed Powers. “You mean you have a date.”

“That’s right,” said the Lyran.

His red goggle eyes met Powers’ and the transparent membrane flickered up and down rapidly in an uproarious laugh.

Powers smiled. “You deserve a date,” he said quietly. “As a matter of fact, you deserve a medal. Not that you’ll ever get one, pal. Mind telling me the background of your wizardry back there on Wolf World? You said the clues that gave you the idea were from my own racial history, I know, but we had no time to go into it in any detail.”

“A small matter, Williams, hardly worth discussion. It will be in the report and you can read it later back at H.Q.”

“Ah, ah,” said Powers. “Play fair, Lizard face, I know how modest you pretend to be but this time don’t bother. I want a story. Let the backroom boys read it at H.Q. You just tell Daddy in simple language.”

The Lyran’s gular pouch suddenly swelled out into a great, bluish fan under the long, thin jaws. The sight was a frightening one to someone unaccustomed to his race. The gesture meant absolutely nothing, as a matter of fact, being purely vestigial and used perhaps as a yawn or stretch in a human.

“Very well,” said Mazzechazz, “since you are so insistent. But it hardly bears telling. When the human governor, the priest Tahira, spoke of the Arghor as ‘wolves,’ something clicked in my mind. Somewhere, long ago, I had seen a reference, perhaps far back in time, as a young student. It was to the Terran carnivorous animals called by this name. The reference, too, must have lain in some sphere of my own interest, which, as you know, mainly comprises alien psychology and things related to it.

“The Lyran mind, organized as it is, must reject useless information and store usable data only. This reference then must lie in the latter category. I therefore put myself in a trance state while you listened to the history and the hysterics of the governor and his council, and isolated the reference, as well as several related to it—and others still more remote but bearing on the general subject. The matter of recall under such conditions requires training, of course. But it was not so hard as the time I—”

“Never mind past triumphs,” growled Powers. “Stick to Wolf World.”

“If you insist, Softskin. Your own education may even be raised an infinitesimal notch. Unliklier things have happened.” He neatly ducked a seat cushion and went on talking. “Long, long ago on Terra, before your first Global Interregnum, the science of behavioral psychology, which even I must admit, you excel in, was still in its infancy. Certain of your early scientists, led by a man named Lorenz, postulated that rules of behavior which rigidly governed the lower animals also might affect human beings. The fact that Lorenz and the others had barely begun even to discover the basic rules which governed the lower animals made their work very difficult.

“But they persevered. One of them, whose name I never memorized, having no reason to, was working with Canis lupus, the wolf, the ancestor of all the dogs and doglike things you humans carry about with you to this day as pets and guardians. This person discovered that a pack-living carnivore such as the wolf is the most rule-bound, other-structured animal in creation. It has to be. If it were not, the race it represents would perish. The rules are simple but unbreakable and they go as follows:

1) Females and young of its race may not be attacked unless the young are approaching maturity. Then the adult pack leaders may expel them.

2) Territories are inviolate and may not be entered without elaborate ceremonial and ritual between packs.

3) Any members of the same species, that is, a wolf which exposes its vital organs, such as the throat and belly, and refuses to fight may not be harmed.

“The last rule is perhaps the strongest of all. Note, William, that these rules are common sense for a carnivorous animal. Omnivores and herbivores, such as you and I, can kill our own species with ease. In the case of my planet, a world government came mercifully early, you know the unhappy and bloody history of your own before the Syrian Combine discovered Terra and compelled you to seek membership.

“But a true carnivore can only kill on a very small scale. Any male Grawm would have to have a civilization a billion Standard revolutions old to overcome the inbred inhibitions against total war upon his own species. Fighting other males for sexual reasons, smallscale raids for prestige, Tor sport really, all these things, yes. But killing the young, the aged, the females and above all those who will not fight back, never! He can’t do it. The pack leader can kill any pack member. This is because he is the strongest and the wisest, the most cunning in battle. Those below him do not fight back when he punishes. It would be interesting to know what happens to old leaders! I think I can guess, however.

“Once I had recalled all’ this I examined, mentally and physically, a Grawm male. It then became a simple matter to set up a construct and a field problem. And of course it worked, because my examination proved my theoretical postulate to be more than approximate. It was more exact than I could believe.”

“Irritating though it is to’ agree with you, I’m afraid you’re right,” said Powers.

“You were so right,” he went on, “that when that hairy buck standing over me relieved himself I almost wanted to yell, ‘Not me, Mazzechazz did it!’ You told me that this was a probable gesture of utter contempt among such a species and it certainly was.”

“The extrapolation for such an action was only sixty-five percent, allowing for the differences in intelligence and culture between Grawm as a higher species, and wolves,” said the Lyran. “I was lucky.”

“I wasn’t.” Powers grinned. “But even that kind of bath wasn’t. much of a price, I agree, not for what we got. Once they realized that the twenty males they had pinned down wouldn’t move, wouldn’t fight, they sent for the big chiefs. It took quite a while but there was no real problem. I simply made it plain that we were nonfighters. That all the fighters had been killed in the big raid and that we would never send any more. That we were cowering behind the colony walls trying to think of a way to tell them this.

“They were almost physically ill when I finished. In a generation, maybe, the Propaganda boys can start a little work of an underhand kind and begin to civilize them. Meanwhile, they want no part of any human.

“Now,” he went on, stretching lazily, “we can forget about the Arghor Confederacy—or any Grawm as a problem. Every colonist will be taught as an infant to flop on his or her back, throat exposed, the minute a male Grawm appears. I strongly suspect that all the Arghor villages will change location to miles away from the settlement—and very quickly at that. The sense of disgust, the sheer revulsion, at being located near a colony of non-fighting males must be hideously strong.

“I am incapable of truly appreciating—or should I say feeling mammalian emotion, as you know,” said Mazzechazz. “I would not have risked this operation without your approval despite all my theory.”

“The minute you suggested it I knew it would work,” said Powers. “These Arghor aren’t so very far from my own ancestors in a lot of ways. The main problem, of course, the real risk, was a rather subtle one. Did the Grawm species, specifically the Arghor, despite their hatred and contempt for us, feel we were their spiritual equals? If they didn’t, if they saw us a weird but lower form of animal, then all bets were off. Things could have been different. The wolf inhibition against killing only applies to one’s own kind, not to rabbits or deer. That was the only real chance we had to take. Your figures said it was an extremely good chance, so I took it and persuaded the others to take it as well.”

“Actually,” the Lyran began, “actually you took no chance at all.” He appeared in some impossible way, embarrassed at what he was saying. Finally, after looking at a bulkhead, he stared his partner in the eye, using one of his own periscope orbs, head turned sideways.

“I had a needle-beam laser on electronic reflex aimed at your particular assailant, William. Had he moved one wrong muscle and I know to a millimeter which they are—the telltales, I mean—he would have died at once. So would the others.”

Powers was horrified. “My god, that would have violated the major Prime Directive! Are you crazy? How would you have explained it later?”

The Lyran’s membranes flickered up and down over the great red eyes.

“Oh,” he said. “I would have thought of something. I am too lazy and too conservative to become accustomed to a new partner, you see. It has nothing, of course, to do with sentiment.”

Powers looked hard at the Lyran and then himself glanced away at a sealed port.

“Yes,” he said. “I see.”

[*] Four Universal 28-hour (Terran) periods equal one Origen VII day or night. In the human colony Universal Time based on this cycle was maintained artificially since the days and nights were simply too long for human activities. The Grawm were largely diurnal but not entirely so.

And the Voice of the Turtle . . .

Sterling Lanier’s British brigadier, Donald Ffellowes, has been a most welcome addition to these pages during the last several years, and the first seven stories in the series (ranging from “Soldier Key,” August 1968 to “His Coat So Gay,” July 1970) have recently been collected and published by Walker & Co. under the title THE PECULIAR EXPLOITS OF BRIGADIER FFELLOWES. Here is a new one. Enjoy.

WE HAD A SCIENTIST AT the club on this particular evening. One of the members had brought him as a guest, and he joined us after dinner in the library. He was a museum biologist, from the American Museum of Natural History, I think, but it may have been the Smithsonian. He had a beard, but a neat one, and was civilized in all ways. I forget his name, but he was a reptile expert, a herpetologist, and he was one of those men who are not really happy unless wading in a tropical marsh somewhere, up to the neck in mud and malaria. He spoke with great enthusiasm of his last trip, to some appalling swamp in West Africa, where he had found out that the local crocodiles dug holes rather than building nest mounds, as did some close relatives elsewhere. I never fully grasped the exact importance of this discovery, but it obviously meant a lot to him. He told the story well, too, and could laugh at himself, over his difficulties with the local people, who thought all crocodiles ought to be killed on sight. They could never grasp what he was trying to do, that is, in simply watching them dig nests. A very interesting fellow, and the talk was only marred by Mason Williams commenting loudly “that it was a relief to hear from a real expert for a change and not have to listen to more of Ffellowes’ baloney!”

Ffellowes, our British brigadier (I sometimes think of him as the grenadier, but he always says his commission was in the artillery), was not in the room, at least at the beginning of the story, but I suddenly looked up and saw him standing outside the circle, smoking a cigar. He had just appeared, in that way he has, one minute absent, the next present. He said nothing, but listened quietly, until the visitor happened to get on the subject of turtles. Then, in the next break in the conversation, when Professor Jones, or whatever his name was, had finished a story about sea turtles mating, he asked, “Did you ever know a man named Strudwick? A specialist in your field, I believe.” (The name, by the way, was not anything like Strudwick, but some relative might read this account, and I have no desire to be sued for libel).

Our visitor grew pretty excited. “I knew him very well; as a matter of fact, I did some of my graduate work under him. A real genius, but a strange man. He vanished in the Pacific, I believe, some years back, though I forget the details.”

“I knew him slightly,” said Ffellowes quietly. “And he was certainly strange.” He did not elaborate on his remarks, and Williams snorted audibly.

Eventually whoever had brought the scientist took him away and a number of others left also. Williams, alas, was not one of them. He had grown to know Ffellowes well enough to scent a story as well as the rest of us regulars, and though he never tires of denouncing the brigadier’s tales as total fabrications, he never missed one if he could manage to get into the circle. As usual, Ffellowes ignored him, or treated him rather with the scrupulous courtesy used for unusually aged and stupid waiters and doormen. Williams, I think, would have disliked him less if he had walked up and belted him with a straight left. But, Ffellowes being Ffellowes, this was impossible.

Ffellowes smiled when we asked if there were a story concerning the missing scientist he had inquired about.

“Indeed there is. I don’t mind telling it. But I warn you it is quite odd. There are a number of things about the whole thing that were, so to speak, left hanging, loose ends. A very peculiar business, from beginning to end.” I settled back to listen with an audible, or almost audible, sigh of satisfaction, and I noticed others do the same.

“I was on leave from a job in Singapore. Let’s see, that would have been in 1940. Things were on fire in Europe; London was burning night and day; the Jerries had France, the Low Countries, Norway and what all. I kept trying for active duty, and kept being shoved back into one odd job after another, like that thing in Kenya that I told you about.[*]

“At any rate, I was due for a spot of leave, and it was decided by a rather intelligent superior of mine, that one could have some fun and still do some work. He knew I liked poking about in the world’s backwaters.

“We were not too happy then about the situation in some of the Dutch islands below us. They had Java and Sumatra under firm political control all right, but we kept hearing about trouble in the smaller, less well-patrolled places, some of the old Somerset Maugham settings, you know. It was obvious that Brother Jap, whom I had already met in other areas, was only waiting for a chance to jump us, and we felt that our Dutch neighbors might be neglecting some of the classic soft underbelly. There were reported meetings of Bajau pirates, of whom plenty existed then, and probably still do, with dissident petty rajahs, Moro bandits from up in the Philippines and so on. Our intelligence people in north Borneo and Sarawak were getting edgy, feeling that there might be a widespread uprising at a time when we all needed to concentrate on a northern invasion. It seemed to want looking into.

“When you consider,” he added, his smooth, ruddy face putting on a rueful appearance, “how badly we ourselves messed up the actual Jap invasion when it did come, it seems we were a bit silly to worry about this other and, as it turned out, minor matter. Still, I make no apologies for my mission. Hindsight makes things only too evident that are invisible at the time. Half or more of any given intelligence mission is ridiculous to begin with, becomes more so as it goes on and usually ends up totally irrelevant. Still, as I say, one never knows, not in advance.

“The scheme we worked out was for me to hire a large prau, a native sailboat, in Sandakan, and then noodle down the islands on a poor man’s yachting cruise, picking up what scraps I could from natives, informers, our local agents (mostly worthless, I-may say, the latter), and generally trying to find out what was what. We briefed our Dutch opposite numbers,. and they didn’t care for it; but since their government and queen were now pensioners in England, they had to agree, like it or not, and keep hands off, too.

“It was a lovely trip, if one doesn’t mind trading sunsets for bedbugs and the loveliest seas in the world for appalling grub. Bad Malay cooking is even worse than bad English’ cooking, but fortunately in those days I had a stomach of proof steel.”

“Who said there was any good English cooking,” mumbled Williams, but he might as well not have spoken for all the attention Ffellowes paid.

“We called at Manado, in the north of Celebes, and then sailed on down through the Molucca Passage. In the middle of the Molucca Sea lie the Sula Islands, lovely places or were then, quite unspoiled and full of white beaches, coco: paints and pleasant. folk. I used to mourn them privately when the Jap fleet made the waters blood-red later on. And it was there, from a most charming man, a self-exiled Norwegian who had settled, as a trader, years before, that I heard first of Bulau Tuntong, the Island of the Turtle, and also, incidently, of Dr. and Mrs. Strudwick.

“I shall not attempt to give you my Norwegian chum’s accent, but under it, he spoke fairly intelligible if ‘American’ English, as well as fluent Malay—Buginese, the local talk, into which he would switch when seeking a hard ward. I used to speak fairish Malay myself, so We got along well enough.

“ ‘That’s a funny place, Mr. Ffellowes. Only a few natives and they are not liked much either, sort of, pariahs, like they have up in. India. They seem to have always lived there, and the other peoples in these; parts never go there, and they themselves, they never leave, neither. But I can’t say they ever give trouble, no killings or nothing. The Dutch Controleur here, he don’t never go. there, and no ships call, no. Chink traders even, and they go anywhere they can for a profit, with them old, beat-up junks. I never been there, but they say there ain’t no harm in the place. Anyone can. go there, if you see what I mean, but no one does. Except for the American and his wife. They are there right now, been there six months about. I forward their mail in my own boat once a month.

They’re some kind of scientists, studying turtles, they said. It’s supposed to be a great place for turtles. Guess that’s how it got its name. But the whole thing, by Joe, even looks like a turtle. One maybe three miles long, that is half in the water, with only the point of the head sticking out, which is another little island, maybe a quarter mile from shore, from the big one.

“ ‘How far? Maybe thirty miles southeast, as the crow is flying from here. Lots of bad reefs and no good anchorage. I wouldn’t like to be there in a storm, I tell you. The place is always foggy, too. All kinds of mineral sinks and steams and smokes, so it takes a good wind to give you a view of the whole thing. Must be a capped volcano or something, Lots of these islands are, but I never heard that this one blew or nothing. Just the steams and smokes all the time, like Yellowstone Park in the U. S., or some of our warm springs back in Norway. But it is a kind of place that makes you—well—discomfortable. My boys don’t like to go there, never go ashore, and they leave plenty quick, too.’

“He rambled on, but I got to wondering to myself. Who were these Americans and what were they doing there? The Dutch had said nothing of them to us, and this was odd. It may have been that they had forgot, but they kept, pretty careful account of traveling Caucasians in their islands. There weren’t so many then, you know. Up in Malaya, we had picked up several White Russians already, types who were the most popular with the Japanese for work in areas where they themselves would be a standout. And there were one or two German agents in the Far East, too, men who had dropped out of sight at the beginning of the war in ’39. We would dearly have liked to know where they were and what they were doing. I had a radio on my prau, and I tried to reach Sandakan and get an enquiry passed to Washington via London. But the damned thing was on the blink, as I have always found these devices to be when most wanted. There were the Dutch authorities in the Celebes of course, but I had been warned to avoid them except in a case of dire emergency, which this was not. What to do was a puzzle.

“I finally decided to go have a look-see myself. Old Ali, my captain, was a Bugi himself and passably familiar with these waters. As a matter of fact, he was a reformed pirate, caught by one of our gunboats robbing a trading junk up in the Anambas some years before. My chief had interviewed him, got him a suspended sentence and set him up as a handy type, whenever we needed someone for just such an offbeat mission as my present one. His crew were his sons and cousins, a cheerful collection of sea thieves, got by wives from every race in Indonesia, I imagine, since some were dark and some light and all dressed differently. But they jumped when the old man said ‘frog,’ and he himself had always proved utterly trustworthy in his dealings with us. There were nine of them, as I recall, all hung about with krises, bolos, kampilans and all other known variety of edged weapon found thereabouts. I had a rifle and a Webley auto pistol below, and the crew had guns too, though I had them kept out of sight. This was quite normal, for we could very easily have met pirates, of whom, as I said, plenty were still known to be operating.

“Ali waddled up when I called from my cabin the next morning, a short, rubbery old thing, with a Fu-Manchu mustache, stained red with betel nut, a bald head and an engaging black-stumped grin. But the grin vanished when I told him where I wanted to go.

“ ‘I have never been there, Tuan. No one goes there. I know we look for bad men, men who would plot against the British and the Dutch. You will never find such people there. It is a waste of time. Let us go further south.’

“He was talking the Malay lingua franca of the South Seas, which is used from the China Sea to the Australian coast. One can be quite elaborate in it, and he grew increasingly so, since it was obvious that he did not at all care for the proposed visit. Now this was a really case-hardened scoundrel, who had weathered a dozen typhoons in what amounted to skiffs, as well as a thousand other hair-curling experiences to boot. I grew intrigued as he persisted in trying to change my mind, because I couldn’t imagine what could scare him. And he was scared.

“I finally announced that I was going to Pulau Tuntong, alone if necessary, and that if no one of sufficient courage would accompany me, I would rent a one-man boat and go by myself. As I thought, he had far too much pride to take that. I had been entrusted to him, and he said he would go, even if all the djins of Hell (he was some kind of casual Moslem) stood in the way. I got out our maps, and the two of us sat down over a bottle of horrible gutrot, some form of arrack he liked, to work out a course. I already had interviewed the natives who took the mail, and got what they could tell me about the trip, and between us, we figured it out. The place might have been thirty miles as the crow flies, but it was nearer double that if you didn’t want to get wrecked. We were coming from the north, and we had to land on the south shore of the island, which meant a long detour to avoid the very complex reefs. We decided to leave at first light; no place at all for running at night. After a while the spirit, as I had hoped, got to him, and he began to recall what he had heard from his grandmother or someone of that vintage about the Island of the Turtle. It was all very vague.

“There was a curse on the place, that was clear. It had, the curse, I mean, something to do with the turtles themselves, who swarmed there. When I asked if he meant the sea turtles, he said it did, but there were many turtles on land, too. This confused me for a moment, since, as you may or may not know, in England everything not a large sea turtle is called, confusingly, a tortoise, even if it lives in fresh water. I have since learnt that the rest of the world uses that term for the ones that live exclusively on land. When I got this sorted out, I continued to pump him, but got little more that made any kind of sense. The people of the island were under the curse too, but only if they left the island; Then they died. They had a turtle as a deity, avoided strangers, and though harmless in themselves, were considered unlucky and good to avoid. Mariners who were ship-wrecked there simply never turned up again. Even the toughest Bajau and sea Dayak pirates never went near the place and hadn’t for as long as tradition went back.

“Well, he finally reeled out, his sarong or whatever dragging on the deck, and I turned in with my own thoughts. I had hoped to carry some mail to the alleged scientists, but my Norse friend had sent some off only the week before. An evening with a steam kettle might have told me something.

“Our trip down was uneventful and we raised the anchorage we were seeking in the evening. I must say the place was not cheerful looking. A low cliff overgrown with scrub seemed to stretch around the whole island. It was hard to make out details, because the fogs and steams that my chum had mentioned did indeed blanket the landscape. Against the sunset it was a sort of whaleback of a thing, as one could make out when the rifts appeared in the mist, perhaps five or six hundred feet high at the top of the curve. There were patches of dense vegetation and patches of bald rock, the latter gleaming wetly. Once in a while, lighter areas showed, which looked like sand. We could see no beach, but I remembered hearing that there was a long one on the north coast, which is where the great sea turtles came to lay their eggs.

“But we had found the correct place all right. There was a cluster of lights, perhaps fifty or so, in front of us and quite near to the water, and higher up, and further to the east, one small clump, in what appeared to be a sort of shallow dip or declivity. The Americans were said to have built a real house, which sounded curious, but not wildly so, above the village, and this must be its lights. It could be nothing else, since we had been told that the entire population of the place normally lived in this one village, which lay before us.

“Night fell with the suddenness of the tropics, and the lights became hard to see, since there was no wind once the land breeze had fallen and the fogs from the fumaroles (as I guessed) shrouded the island in a blanket. I decided, with the hearty approval of the crew, to lie to until morning, and go ashore only when we could see our way pretty clearly.

“I was sleeping soundly, my leg over the long bolster known as a ‘Dutch wife,’ waking only to slap a mosquito which had penetrated my net, when I became conscious of a sound. I can, to this day, think of nothing that quite matches it, but the bellow of an alligator in a Florida swamp is somewhat the same. This was not so throaty nor so long lasting, however. A sustained, almost agonized grunt is not too far off, but in the deep note there was a treble as well, causing a most unpleasant wailing effect. I have seldom heard a noise for which I cared less. I looked at my wristlet watch and it was 3 PM. The noise ceased suddenly, and there was nothing more but the slap of tiny waves on the hull of the prau.

“There was a scratching at the sliding panel on my cabin, which served as a door. I opened it and found Ali holding a torch, a flashlight, you’d say, a small one with his hand over the lens.

“ ‘You heard that, Tuan?’

“ ‘Yes. What do you think? A crocodile?’

“ ‘Never! I have heard them all my life. I do not know this noise, nor my people either. We are frightened. Let us leave this place!’

“Well, I managed to send him off after a while, feeling a bit better, by pointing out that it was, after all, only an odd noise, perhaps even a night bird with which he was unfamiliar. I told him to set two of his crew as an anchor watch, and have them relieved every few hours. We would see what morning would bring.

“Morning brought no breeze, a humid stickiness, the dim sun shining through fog wraiths and a distinct smell of sulfur, the latter obviously emanating from the island.

“We launched our small boat, and with Ali at the helm and me in the sterm, pistol under jacket, we rowed in to the place opposite the anchorage, where the village houses, thatched with the usual nipa palms, dimly could be seen. There was a low place in the cliff there, and we soon saw a well-marked path leading down to a place where one could step out of the boat onto a sort of rock platform. A small group of natives were standing on this waiting for us.

“As we drew in, I looked closely at them. They were, to my eye at least, innocuous. They all wore the wraparound skirt, though not with the usual bright colors, and seemed in no way very different physically to any of a thousand other Indo-Malayan types I had seen. That is, they were short, slightly built, had black hair, brown skins and slanted black eyes. They were all male, and all unarmed, not even the usually omnipresent kris being tucked in the skirt top. The only thing about them which might be called unusual was a sort of stoop-shouldered appearance, as if they all suffered from the beginnings of a hunchback condition. And one other thing, an air of apathy and disinterest. Most places that see few visitors are very eager to greet new arrivals. But these chaps looked as if we were as interesting as—well, a coconut rind. They stood silently while we moored the boat on a rock projection, and only when I got out did one step forward and address me, in ordinary coast Malay, the same I used with the crew.

“ ‘Be welcome, Tuan.” He said it listlessly, as if by rote, or performing a set task, of no interest or importance. He was obviously the oldest, for he had the worst stoop, but his thinning hair was still jet black, and he had no facial hair. Up close he and the others had another thing that was new to me. Their skins looked glossy in a strange way, almost as if they were a rigid and not a flexible covering, though they moved in the same way as ours and one could see the muscles. Some disease, I thought, seemingly a fungus condition. Perhaps they were inbred.

“I answered politely and asked if one of them could show me to the house of the other Tuan and his Mem. They looked blankly at one another, but the elder simply motioned me to follow and turned on his heel. No one of them looked at my men in the boat, but I did. They, even Ali, were not even trying to pretend they weren’t frightened. They all looked seasick. I told them to go back to the ship and pick me up around five o’clock that afternoon. I didn’t see how the Americans could refuse to give me lunch at least.

“We walked slowly up through the humidity of the steams and vapors, which made me cough a bit. The sulfur stink was very strong now. The path went through the village, laid out in a simple row of big communal houses on stilts, like lots of others I had seen; and then I got my first surprise. I almost stepped on a lot of little turtles which were waddling about on the path, right at the village entrance. I had to skip a bit to avoid them, and I noticed that my guide did so automatically. The little things paid us no attention at all, and most small turtles I have seen are very shy, rush away or into water at the glimpse of a man, you know. A few women and men (I saw no children) watched apathetically as we went by in line, the rest of the lads who had come down to the landing still bringing up the rear. It was a peculiar sensation, this utter lack of any interest at all. Never seen anything like it before or since.

“The fog grew denser on the upslope on the far side of the village, but the path was easy enough to make out as one went uphill. In places, it was actually dark, as big trees and vines leaned over it, and totally windless and dank as well. I heard no birds, no insects, nothing at all but my own and the others’ footsteps and water dripping somewhere. Then, in the darkest patch we had hit yet, fog all around, came that Godawful sound I had heard the night before. The island men all stopped, and so did I, fumbling for my gun, I may say, because the sound was very close and very loud.

“ ‘Muaah, muaah, mu-aaaaah!’ it came, like a colossal and very sick cow, or perhaps a diseased foghorn. Nasty!

“The men didn’t seem afraid exactly, but I could feel them tense up, the first show of any feeling of any sort I had noticed. The noise stopped, and they promptly resumed their march, me along with them. In a few moments more, the path opened into a large clearing, and we had arrived.

“The mists were thinner here, and the glow of the sun could be seen in a blurred way through them. In front of us was a rather large house, made of peeled logs, like a hunter’s lodge rather; although the roof was thatched in the island way. It too stood on stilts, or thin logs, right against a shoulder of the hill itself, and had a wide veranda running around the front and one side, up to which broad wooden steps had been laid. It looked quite pretty, or would have save for the unearthly surroundings. There were large pits of what looked to be brown wet sand all about, some with a, scum of water on the surface, and the warmth was now almost sickening, like an overdone greenhouse. The path wound to the steps between several of these pits and seemed to be on a spine of rock. And all about were turtles.

“They were of different shapes and sorts, large and small, some black, some brown, some yellowish. One or two had red markings on their shells. Some had blunt heads, others pointed, and one great whacking chap had a leather platter instead of a real shell, one of the so-called ‘soft shells,’ as I later learnt.

“To my surprise, the fellows who had brought me faced about and without a word turned and marched back down the path again, leaving me to the turtles and the fog. I quickly headed for the house before I heard that most decidedly sick-making noise again.

“I had gone perhaps halfway along the path, treading slowly to avoid the turtles—which crawled freely over it and of which the littlest were hard to see, when suddenly I heard steps. A white man in khakis game out of the door onto the veranda and stood looking down at me. You’ll never guess what his first words were.

‘For God’s sake! What are you doing here, Ffellowes?’

“Now, the name of Strudwick, while not as common as Smith, is not unknown in England. It simply had never occurred to me. to recall this lad at all. He had been a Rhodes Scholar when I was doing my two years at Cambridge, in ’21 that would be. An American and a brilliant student, he had lived down the hall from me for two terms, and we had got rather friendly. We had never written when he had left, and I had completely forgotten he had ever existed. And here he was, pumping my hand warmly—in the most isolated island in Australasia. Life is a funny thing.

“ ‘Hallo, Strudwick,’ I said; preserving my British phlegm as best I could. ‘As a matter of fact, old boy, I’ve come to see you, more or less to find out what you’re doing here. Pleasant surprise, eh, or I hope so anyway.’

“He was no fool. He looked at me shrewdly and laughed. ‘Mysterious Americans attract the attention of His Majesty’s Government, hm? Well, I’m glad to see you, though I don’t encourage visitors. Haven’t had any, as a matter of fact. But I thought the Dutch looked after this part of the world?’

“I lied, though only a bit, and said they had called us in, being short-handed, and that seemed to go down all right. He wasn’t really much interested anyway, though he did seem excited about something. By this time we were in the house, which was really very comfortable. All the furniture was obviously handmade and to European specs. I gathered he must have had everything made locally, but it was good work, and there were flowers in bowls and kerosene lamps on the tables. He even gave me an iced drink; had his own portable generator, and that was a treat.

“We filled each other in on the missing years for a bit, and then he started suddenly to talk.

“ ‘Let me tell you why I’m here,’ he said, as quickly as that. ‘You may have forgotten I took a ‘zoo’ First (I had, of course). Well, I’m a reptile specialist. This tiny island is the home of the damnedest collection of turtles that ever existed in the world. I’ve done more original work here in six months than I ever did in the rest of my life. You can’t follow all this, I know, but it’s fantastic, and I know this field as well as anyone alive. Why there are types here that don’t belong in any family, genus or species any scientist has ever seen before!’

“He went on like a brook in spate, while I relaxed with my drink and tried to follow him as well as I could. It seemed that turtles, tortoises and all the other things, like terrapins, were pretty well mapped out. No new ones had been found in years, and very few save the sea turtles, of course, went much to the east of Java, Sumatra and Borneo; that is, until one struck New Guinea. There was a lot about Wallace’s line, sort of a zoological barrier, I gathered, and what did and did not cross it, all mixed up in the lecture. Then came a flood of Latin names, mostly meaningless to anyone but another expert, like the lad who was here at the club earlier. New types of Emydura, not supposed to be here at all; a kind of Geochelone no one had seen anywhere; something that looked like a cross between Chelodina, or a type of it, and an unknown Geomyda variety, which was flatly impossible, but—occurred here. And so on, until I was frankly bewildered.

“But there was one thing which kept my attention pretty well fixed through all this. I just was not hearing the whole story. One cannot do the work I had done and not pick this sort of thing up, you know. It was, my work, I mean, in many ways, not dissimilar to police work, and I must have interrogated hundreds of clever types at one time or another. Strudwick was not lying; his enthusiasm was genuine all right; that’s very hard to fake. But he was keeping something back. I could read it in his body, in his rare sidelong glance. Something was not for ne to learn.

“Now I had no idea that the chap was a spy. I could have been wrong, but it was simply lot in the cards, as I read the man. But he had a secret and I wondered what it was. A very casual remark put me onto something.

“He paused for breath, and I had mentioned the hordes of turtles and how tame they had seemed. He smiled and was about to speak when I added,

“ ‘And I hope whatever makes that disgusting sound out in the forest is equally tame. Gave me the grue, when I heard it, even out on the boat.’

“He caught his breath and turned pale. He was a big fellow, bigger than I, cleanshaven and with a goodish tan. Now he went almost green.

“ ‘You heard that?’ His question was almost a whisper. It was echoed from the back of the room. I totally forgot he had a wife with him, and now she came in from the back, still muttering.

“Ethel Strudwick was big, too. She was not pretty, a faded blonde with hair stringy from the damp and a hard eye. She was also moderately drunk, and this at about ten in the morning. She wore the same khakis, shirt and ‘ratting pants,’ as we used to call them, and canvas shoes that he did. Her make-up had run. Not a very attractive sight.

“He mumbled an introduction, and I tried to be polite, but she could not stop staring at me and seemed to hear nothing of what he said, as he tried haltingly to explain who I was and what I was doing there. Not a pleasant woman, in looks or manners, but I felt very sorry for her. Because she was terrified. It was obvious, when one watched her for a minute or two. Something or someone had scared the living Hell out of her, and my former hall mate was equally jumpy, though controlling it far better. She sat down in a bamboo chair, and I tried to pick up the conversation at the point whence it had departed from the rails, so to speak.

“ ‘Well, Strudwick, before your wife came in, I mentioned that strange cry in the forest. I heard it last night, and it put the wind up my crew pretty thoroughly. What on earth was it?’

“ ‘A bird—We don’t know—Why did we ever come to this awful place?—Just a bird!’ They were both speaking together, he repeating his nonsense about a bird, she lamenting their arrival and stay, neither paying the slightest attention to the other. It was unsettling to watch and listen to.

“ ‘Look here!’ I said loudly. ‘May I stay the night? I have to run over your papers and all that. This is an official visit, don’t you know. Could I get my things from the boat? It would be a pleasant break for me.’ I could think of no place I wanted to stay less, but I was intrigued, and they were obviously in some kind of trouble.

“Mrs. Strudwick was delighted and practically kissed me. He was not nearly so pleased, in fact not pleased at all, but there was little he could say.

“There seemed to be no servants, and Strudwick walked me down through the forest to the landing himself. We heard nothing on the way. The villagers were moving slowly and droopily about as we passed through their streets and we saw small and large turtles the whole journey, though none so many as just about the house itself. My host explained that he had heard rumors about the island for years and had only just been able to get the funds and time to come there. The locals were obliging enough to work quite hard in building the house and furniture and had accepted the money he gave them without haggling. What they did with it, he had no idea. They had no pigs or fowls, save for a few gone wild in the jungle which covered much of the place, and no traders called. They grew rice, he thought, or some crop in fields beyond the village and fished in a desultory way when the mood took them. They refused to live in or near the house, but were perfectly amiable, if not forthgoing. He had never been able to get them to talk about turtles or anything else, for that matter. They provided him fruit and coconuts, as well as rice and even fish on occasion, and did not seem to care whether they got paid or not.

“I mentioned the odd look they all had, the rigid-looking skin and the humped backs, and suggested that some obscure form of elephantiasis, added to prolonged inbreeding might be responsible.

“ ‘I believe you’ve hit it. I’m no anthropologist, but I’ll bet that’s exactly what’s wrong with them.’

“His agreement sounded totally hollow to me, and I have a good ear for this. I was sure of one thing, though it made no sense, which was that he had some other theory of his own, concerning which he wished me to remain ignorant. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ I reflected to myself.

“When we got to the landing, the prau was in plain view, the fog being mostly burned off at sea level, and the small boat came in when I hailed. I went out, got my gear and a change of clothes, and we walked back up through the miasmatic heat to the house on the hill. I told Ali to keep a strict watch on the landing place and to come in at once if he saw or heard me, or if I signaled with my pocket torch during the night. He agreed promptly, and I thought I could rely on him, so long as he hadn’t got to come ashore himself.

“Back in the building, Mrs. Strudwick had taken some pains to make up her face and no longer looked so bedraggled and miserable. She would never be lovely, but she at least looked decent, and she seemed to have sobered up as well. I learnt later that she was very wealthy and that they had not been married long. It must have been her money which allowed Strudwick to make this out-of-the-way trip.

“He brought out all his letters to officials for me to glance over, and he came well-recommended and was, as I had surmised, more than respectable from the scientific standpoint. He had three doctorates, I recall, one being from Yale, and all sorts of ‘please aid the bearer’ notes, signed by everyone from the American Undersecretary of State down. I solemnly made notes of it all.

“After lunch, which was mostly expensive tinned stuff they had brought with them, plus a little fruit and a lot of gin, I asked Strudwick why he had selected the particular site that he had for the house.

“ ‘The turtles, man, the turtles. There are more of them right here than anywhere else on the island. These hot springs or seeps seem to attract them, and you soon get used to the sulfur smell.”

“ ‘You do!’ The venom in his wife’s voice was naked. ‘Why can’t we get out of here? You’ve seen every damned turtle and its bloody grandmother that ever was! Why-are we staying here any longer?’ Her voice rose to a strident pitch that was almost a scream.

“ ‘Look, honey, it won’t be much longer. I’ve told you that. I need to get just a little more information.’ His tone was soothing, but I caught a nasty glint in his eye. Whatever was keeping them here, it was important to him, and he did not propose to have it interfered with.

“ ‘Information! On what prowls around this house on dark nights! I’m going crazy—’ She got up and stumbled out of the room and disappeared in back somewhere, getting a drink, I expect. Her last sentence, unfinished, hung in the steamy air of the room.

“I saw Strudwick looking at me in a speculative way and felt bound to make some remark.

“ ‘What was that about something prowling around at night? Your wife seems to have a bad case of the jitters. Is it wise to stay here under the circumstances?’

“He took a long swallow of gin before answering, gathering his thoughts to sound convincing, it appeared.

“ ‘There is something here I haven’t worked out yet, Ffellowes. If it’s what I think, well, it will be one of the great zoological finds of the age. Hell, of any age! I can’t give you the details. First, it’s none of your business. Second, you’d think I was nuts. Christ Almighty, I think I am nuts, sometimes. Just bear with us, will you? Ethel isn’t used to the tropics or my burying myself in my work either. The natives walk about at night, and this makes her nervous, though they’re perfectly harmless.’ It was then he told me the story of their recent marriage and mentioned that his wife had been both rich and sheltered.

“I retired to the room they had given me for a nap, but I found it hard to sleep. I was turning restlessly, when I caught the sound of voices, not too far away. I pricked up my ears not only because they were talking Malay, but because one voice was Strudwick’s deep-chested rumble. I slid off the rattan couch and out of my window. I felt no compunction about eavesdropping. I had no great affection for my host, and I had commenced to have a great curiosity about whatever he was doing. I soon found he had told me a thumping lie in one area at least.

“Behind some dense undergrowth at the corner of the house he was talking to the strange-looking villager, the old one who had led me up to the house that morning. I caught only a snatch of conversation before the native turned and walked away, but it was an intriguing item.

“ ‘It must be soon, or we will find another, one of our own. But the Father likes yours. But it must be soon.’

“ ‘It will be soon!’ Strudwick’s answer was low yet intense. ‘But this new Tuan has changed things, He must go, first.’

“ ‘It must be soon,’ was the dull-toned answer.” The strange Tuan is your business, not ours. What do we care for Tuans? Or the Father, either? Give him to the Father. But he grows impatient. They all do. They call.’

“With that remark, the man left, drifting away between the steaming muck holes until he had vanished from sight around a corner of the slope.

“I eeled back into my room, taking care to make no noise. So the locals never spoke about anything, eh? And who was the Father and what was he waiting for and why was I supposed to leave, or possibly be ‘given’ to him, whoever he was? With all these things chasing themselves through my head, I finally did drift off into an uneasy doze. But my hand gripped my pistol under the pillow. The Island of the Turtle seemed to have sinister overtones all of a sudden.

“Supper, or rather tiffin, that evening was strained. Strudwick was very silent, and I caught him more than once looking at me in an unpleasant and calculating way. He seemed to be suppressing an air of intense excitement. His wife again was two-thirds blotto, and at intervals would rouse herself to relate some incoherent tale of her past, usually involving a dance at Bar Harbor or a society scandal of her dead youth in some exclusive enclave in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, I think. The whole thing was both depressing and eerie. I excused myself as soon as I decently could and retired. But I did not undress, and I never had my hand far from the gun. A little nocturnal prowling on my own account seemed to be more than called for.

“The light, such as there was under the sulfurous vapors of the place, became suddenly absent. Tropic sunsets didn’t last long, but here there was a dim light one moment, nothing the next. I frankly preferred it to the smoky haze of the day, and I can get about in full dark as well as most so-called savage people that I have met. In addition to my gun, I had a 4-inch, single-bladed, clasp knife, a tool I have often found to be more useful in the dark than any firearm.

“I went out through my open window again. I could hear nothing in the night but water drip and the sound of a faraway frog croaking. I placed my feet carefully, whole foot at a time, testing wherever I set clown before placing my full weight on the foot. I had my torch, but I kept it in my pocket for emergencies. The pallid ghost of a full moon appeared up over the fogs and reeks, and I found I could see quite well, if I concentrated. Eyes need training to see in dim light, and I had had more than just a trifle, since it is a sense I cultivate.

“Around the front of the house I moved, and even with care, I almost trod on a small turtle more than once. They appeared to be even thicker on the ground than at the morning hours, and after a while, I could hear them moving in the silence as my ears also grew attuned, the scrape of tiny claws on the rock path and an occasional squelch as they moved into one of the damper areas.

“Nothing happened to stir my interest for a very long time. I ignored the mosquitoes, which is also a trick and a necessary one, if one is to do any proper stalking. I just kept moving slowly about, resting under a tree at intervals, then going on again. The house was silent. There were no lights, and I gathered my host and hostess were abed. She had taken on enough gin to keep her insensible until morning.

“Once I heard a vast, heaving, sucking noise over to the far side of the clearing, as if a hippo were lurching out of some mud, but it soon ceased. I felt sure it was an internal gas bubble in one of the warm springs, erupting to the surface and throwing the sand about. I have seen the same thing in New Zealand, where such mud geysers are common.

“I must have been spooking around for several hours, with no incident of any kind, when the quiet came to an abrupt end. The house was still silent, and I had reached the lower end of the clearing in front of it, near the base of the path, when I heard a woman scream. The cry was short in length, and I felt sure it had been smothered. There was only one woman on this hill, and without thinking, I drew my gun from my belt and ran straight for where I knew the house to lie, though it was invisible through the mist.

“Now I had forgot those stinking pools of sand and water, and simply ran dead ahead in a straight line. I had cleared only a few yards when my right foot went smack into one and myself after it in a spiral curve, head over heels. But I kept hold of the gun, which, by the way, was heavily oiled and was loaded with greased cartridges. My other arm flailed about and hooked on something hard, the edge of the rock path. I was immersed, for the sand was in suspension, like quicksand, and seemed to have no bottom, but I had a good grip and began to haul myself out. There was no pull such as one finds in genuine quicksand, and I was soon halfway to the solid ground with only my legs from the knee down in the muck.

“Then—my ankles were seized. There was no mistaking the feeling. Something warm, muscular and very powerful had two death grips on my legs and was exerting a steady pressure to drag me back down into that slop from which I had almost succeeded in freeing myself! I swear that not only was I being gripped but that I could feel fingers!”

We all sat silent, while Ffellowes took a long pull on his cigar. In passing, I noticed chat Williams had his mouth open and was just as enthralled as the rest of us.

“I froze, but only for a second,” resumed Ffellowes. ‘My first reaction was to try and get up, in other words a panicked one, simply to keep struggling out the same way I had been pulling. My waist was well up on the solid rock, and I dropped the gun and used both lands to try and haul myself forward on my stomach. But it vas no go. Whatever had me was at least as strong as I and from the feel probably stronger. I couldn’t move an inch, and the pressure to haul, that is to haul me back down, never slackened an inch. Then I got the use of my brain back, and tried to twist, so that I was now on my side. This got me a little ground, though not much, and I tried it again,’ gaining a few more inches. Now I could see the pool, or rather I could see my legs, sunk in something. The fog was so dense that the pool’s surface was invisible. I never thought of yelling, you know. Something told me it would be useless, and so the silent struggle continued.

“By now, I was almost sitting, and I shifted my right hand to get a better grip. It was only a few inches, but it was almost the death of me. Whatever had hold of my legs also pulled at just this point, and the yank almost took me the whole way back in!

“But it also saved me. I scrabbled wildly with my right hand seeking a stronger hold, and the hand came down on my pistol. As a wave of sand and water eddied up around my middle, spilled out of the sink by my struggle, I wrenched myself around further, thrust the barrel down as close to my leg as I could, while still keeping it clear of the water, mind you, and fired. I kept firing as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.

“The thing must have come up near the surface to get a better grip on me. There was a great final, heave and a flurry in the muck. I dimly could make out something brownish and rounded emerging briefly from the watery slime and ooze, but it was hard enough to see any detail. I could be sure of nothing except that I had seen something. Then, the stuff subsided, and I was left with a half empty gun, sprawled over the edge of the pool. The surface was calm again under the mist and vapor.

“I had pot forgot that scream. I staggered to my feet and got out my torch. With that in one hand and the gun in the other, I headed for the house as fast as I could. With the light of the torch, the path was easy enough to view, and I carefully avoided the other pools. I made no effort to avoid the turtles, for there were none. For some reason they all had disappeared.

“I lurched up the front step, calling for Strudwick. There was no answer and the house was silent as a tomb. I tried to control my panting breath and listened. Not a sound broke the night. I took the opportunity to reload the automatic with fresh .455 bullets. They had been useful once that night already.

“Barely had this been done when I did hear something. From the higher shoulder of the slope, behind the house and above it, there came a repetition of that appalling cry I had heard twice before. Loud and long, it rang out in the silent, steaming dark. ‘Muaah, mu-aaah!’ But this time it sounded—well, different, with almost a note of triumph, or impossible as it sounds—laughter.

“I raced through the house, no longer calling. The time for it seemed past, if it had ever existed, There was a back door and leading from it another path. It suddenly occurred to me that the house had been built on the existing path. My light showed that in the mud of the path were many footprints, some of feet shod with canvas tennis shoes, the rubber crosshatching showing clearly. My host and hostess had come this way, but so had others, many with bare feet. Another path joined this one a few yards higher up the hill, and there the new feet had come in. Some of them, even in that moment, looked strange, as if the feet that made them were blurred and lumpy. Not that I stayed to examine them in detail, mind. For that strange cry was ringing out ahead of me again, and I went on upward, keeping my torch masked in my left fist, which gave me enough vision. The moon was still up aswell, and “the mists were a trifle thinner up here.

“The flack Wound around the base ‘buttresses and out-thrust roots of monstrous trees, and vines and branches hung over the way’ ‘ sometimes brushing my face. But I had my wind back and went steadily and softly,’ And all the while that ghastly sound kept echoing down the path, growing louder and louder as I went on.

“I must have done a good quarter mile, all steadily uphill, when I saw a glimmer of light ahead and slowed down a bit. As I drew near, I saw that another clearing lay ahead and that it opened out under the moon’s rays. I crept on and presently found myself looking at something very strange indeed.

“Two steep sides of the island’s peak made an angle here, though a shallow one. They, the walls, were rock but covered with mosses and wet growth that hung down over the face. In front of the angled steep, in the V, was a broad, flat place, and here was a much larger replica of the small pools such as lay in front of the house below, a sinkhole two hundred feet, across, filled with the same dark water. and patches of suspended sand as the ones lower down. Around the wet area was a strip of glistening rock, this perhaps ten yards and a bit in width. And it was full of people. The islanders were there in force, both men and women. Again, I saw no children. They stood silent, facing the pool, and in the center, his back to me was Strudwick. He was supporting his wife over one arm. She appeared to have fainted, or was, at best, semiconscious.

“Now the light, and I must stress this, was most capricious. That is, the moon would illumine bits very clearly for a second or two, and then the drift of the fog and haze from the great pool would blot things out just as one was trying to concentrate one’s gaze oh some particular detail.

“But at the back of the crowd there were figures which made my flesh crawl. Whatever ‘ disease affected these people, the ones in the last stages, or at least I surmised, were not good to look upon. I could see long swaying necks, covered with leathery skin, and high, arched humped backs which looked rounded and hard. The terminal stages of the peculiar island blight ought not to have been viewed at all, not by normal people. All of the folk, though, were swaying the same way, their bodies still, but their necks weaving, as if in some ghastly parody of those little girls who do the formal Thai and Javanese dances And all were watching Strudwick and his wife.

“Then came that terrible coughing, moaning cry again. And this time I saw, or at least partly saw, whatever made it.

“I had not been watching the pooh as I edged closer, since I was looking for possible danger, being noticed by a native or something. Now I saw that the surface, the floating sand and brown scum were moving. And out of the water had come a head.

“To this day, I have trouble convincing myself I saw what I think I saw. As the head rose higher on a monstrous, rugose neck. I half noticed the beginning of a great rounded dome of a back, glistening and rigid in the unearthly moon glow. But it was on the head which I concentrated, because it was moving, the whole incredible thing was moving, slowly with hardly a ripple, directly toward where Dr. Sylvanus Strudwick, Ph.D., author of more learned papers than I can remember hearing, stood holding his wife. And I knew what it had come for, as if I somehow had known all along. This was the Father and Ethel Strudwick was what it wanted.

“You may ask what the head resembled. It was high-domed and leathery. Great flaps, or ears, stood out on the side. The pinkmouth was frankly disgusting as it opened out for its hideous call, for it projected and there were no teeth, giving it the look of a great beaked maw. The eyes, as well as I could make out, were large and bulbous, of an unwinking black. And as I watched, I saw membranes slide across them and lift again. Yet the most awful thing concerning the whole appearance, if I may so describe it, was something not physical at all. The thing was intelligent. Whatever abysmal lair had spawned it had given it the same germ, DNA or whatever they call it now, that had been given us. It was not a beast, but somehow a hyena would have looked clean by comparison. Its size? Far larger than a human, but how much I really could not undertake to say.

“It was now very close to the edge of the rock surface. And Strudwick had shifted his grip on his wife. What madness affected the man, I will never know. Whether he hated her anyway, no doubt with some cause, or whether he had simply made some foul bargain in the interest of ‘pure science’ (I have always distrusted scientists most when they claim to be pure, by the way), I will never know. Certainly she feared him and his purposes. With good reason, since it was perfectly obvious he was about to chuck her into the grip of the insane-looking form of monstrous life in front of him.

“I had to do something and rather promptly. I tucked my torch in my pocket, opened my clasp knife, walked down to the pack in front of me and simply stabbed the nearest in the back, aiming high for the kidneys as a certain Pathan had once taught me, long before our commandos perfected the technique. I managed to kill three in three strokes, so hypnotized were they, and then there was no one at all between me and my fellow Cantabrigian.

“I had kept my pistol in my left hand. As I got clear of the natives, none of whom seemed capable of moving, I simply called out, ‘Strudwick.’

“He turned and let his wife slip to the ground, which was what I had been praying for. Above and behind him, the impossible head rose higher on the vast wrinkled neck, and the great expressionless eyes focused on me. I ignored it for the moment. Everything seemed very plain and logical. There really was no time for parleying or argument.

“Strudwick must have read my eyes, for he tried to put up his hands. The moon was full on his face as I put a bullet through his brain, quite easy at that range. He reeled backward and fell into the muck with a sodden splash. The echo of the shot reverberated off the rock face behind the pool. I had no compunction about what I had done and still do not.

“The Father was now about six feet away and perhaps eight above the surface of the pool. I straddled Ethel Strudwick’s body, which lay very still, and raised my pistol. As I did so, the thing’s mouth opened and a rumble heralded the start of the cry. I sighted very carefully and fired three rapid shots into the yawning pink gape, resting one arm on the other forearm as I did.

“I watched the death, for my bullets had crashed up into the brain through the roof of the mouth, just as I intended. And as the light went out of those strange eyes and the giant head slumped, I felt a queer pang—well, no doubt you’ll think me soft—almost of pity. Who knows how old it was, nor how long it had lived there?

“The great neck collapsed and the vast dome sank back. A wave of sulfurous water and sand sloshed over my shoes as I bent and lifted the woman. I still had four shots, and I still clung to the knife. I turned and saw the beginnings of movement in that circle of rapt faces. They could not yet believe what they had seen, but the death of the Father and the blast of the shots were beginning to have an effect, even on such very dim and peculiar minds as theirs.

“Then, and thank God for it, the moon went out. Whether a real cloud way up in the far sky had crossed it or whether an unusually heavy waft of the local murk had done so, I neither know nor care. The effect was all I cared for.

“Lifting Mrs. Strudwick, who was damned heavy, I ran I right back the way I had come. In thirty very fast paces indeed, I felt a tree bole in front of me and dropped her. I tucked the knife in my belt, still open, and pulled out my torch. Then I bent down and gave her face a good hard slap. I was never going to get down that hill carrying a woman who must have weighed little less than I, and I had to get her on her legs. I jammed the gun into my belt next to the knife and hauled her to her feet. She moaned, but her eyes were open. I slapped her again, hard enough to sting, but not disable, and draped her arm over my shoulder. I could hear movement behind us now, and a grunting, cracking sound that reminded me more of the Father’s voice than anything that ought to issue from human lips. The opposition could not be expected to stay quiescent forever.

“I shone the torch about, and there was the entrance to the path, just a few feet away. I ran toward it, forcing her to use her feet at least a touch and thus take some of the weight off me. My light was still the only one, but as we entered the trail and headed down, the moon came out again. The mumbling behind us now swelled into a yell, through which ominous grunts came all too clearly. I got a speedy notion that the village ‘elders,’ the gentry with the high backs and long necks, might not be too slow in action either.

“Down that slippery, twisting track we went like a couple of good ones. After a brief spurt she seemed to wake up at last and took her arm away. She was still shaky, not surprisingly, but she got along at a pretty fair clip, and I handed her the light at the next bend. She kept it on the path, which was good enough for me and enabled me to get my gun back in my hand. The cries behind us were getting louder, and some of them sounded like echoes of the ‘Muaah’ thing. Worse, though I said nothing, I thought at one point that I caught an echo of the same cry ahead of us. I had hoped the whole population would be up on the hill, indulging in what passed for church services, but it might be a mistaken hope. Well, I still had my weapons.

“Suddenly, sooner than I had hoped, the house was before us. We tore into it, through the open back door, and into the dark living room. Here I caught her by the arm. The hue and cry was a bit further back now, and I had an idea. I have mentioned that there were kerosene lamps about on the tables.

“I struck a match and grabbed one, which looked full. I lighted it and quickly looked for more. ‘Kerosene,’ I gasped, ‘pour it about as fast as you can.’

“She got the idea finally and began sloshing the lamp contents over the room as fast as I. I smashed the one lighted lamp into the biggest pile of papers I could see, some of her late husband’s unpublished discoveries, I expect, and serve him right. The house was full of bamboo stuff, and even in this damp climate that would bum. Also, the house itself was only wet on the outside and had had time to dry out a lot since the months in which it had first been built. The room went up like a bonfire behind us, and I shoved her out the front door and onto the veranda. With any luck, this blaze should delay our pursuers for a moment, and that might be enough. At the very least, they would have to take the other track around, the one that came in higher up the hill.

“We had got halfway across the path which ran between the sinkpools when I saw we were going to need all the luck we could get. All the islanders were not behind us. Clearly visible in the light from the burning house behind us, there now stood one of what I shall call for want of a better word, the ‘elders.’ He was waiting for us on a narrow place between two of the boggy patches, and his whole attitude was more than plain. As we caught sight of him, I pushed Mrs. S. behind me.

“The creature, for it hardly looked human any longer, stood, crooked arms outstretched, his eyes glittering in the light. His visible skin was cracked and leathery, almost like dun-colored scales, and the neck was obscenely long and twisting. He was hairless, and his ears had shrunk or rotted to mere stubs, while the shining dome of his back rose far up behind his shoulders. It seemed to me also that the feet and fingers had nails of extraordinary length and sharpness, but I may have been mistaken in this. He was quite nude, not even the island wraparound, and his whole body looked damp in the firelight. As I advanced slowly, the mouth opened, and I saw that the disease had caused him to lose his teeth as well. There was an uncanny resemblance to the monster I had dealt with up on the higher reaches. No doubt why they called the thing the ‘Father.’ No doubt.

“At ten paces, I fired. I shot steadily, and I could see the awful body shake from the impact of the heavy bullets. But though it staggered, it still came on. I shot carefully, for the midbody, not trying out anything fancy. The blank dark eyes never changed expression, though that toothless mouth opened and closed.

“Behind me, I could hear Mrs. Strudwick whimpering. Couldn’t say I blamed her.

“At the fourth, and last, shot, I dropped the gun, pulled out my knife and waited. Incredible though it may sound, the man, or perhaps what had once been a man, lurched on and closed with me. The fetid breath of that ghastly mouth came into mine, as I drove the knife home again and again, meeting a queer resistance, as if the skin were actually a sort of armor or something similar.

“But it was dying. There was no strength to its grapple, only a kind of post-mortem will, as if the big nerve centers were actuating the body even after the brain had died. I hurled it aside, and it slid into the nearest muck pool, much as its giant forerunner had a few minutes earlier.

“We could hear the cry of the pack behind us somewhere, even over the roaring of the flames from the house. This was now totally ablaze and sending sparks over the landscape. Curiously, the only physical harm I got on the whole happening (unless you count a possible something I’ll get to later) came from one of these, which caught, unnoticed, in my shirt back and gave me a nasty burn.

“Again we ran downhill, this time through the village, which, I am happy to say, was deserted. I was perfectly prepared to swim out to the prau, if necessary, towing my lady friend in my wake. The peril of sharks never entered my head, not after what we had just been through, and I feel certain she felt the same way.

“But it was not necessary. The shots and the blaze had got to old Ali, and though I am not sure he actually would have come ashore, he had fought down his fears and at least bully-damned some of his crew of family thugs to bring the small boat in to the landing place. There they were, armed to the teeth, and looking half petrified with fright. No more unsavory lot ever looked better to me. After the good folk of Pulau Tuntong, a squad of Waffen SS would have looked reassuring.

“Well, that was that. We got out to the ship, upanchored and were gone, despite night, reefs and all, in less than twenty minutes. By the time dawn came, Pulau Tuntong was not even in sight. I was barely able to note this fact, because I was burning up with a curious fever. Mrs. Strudwick was not only feverish, but totally unconscious in my cabin, shock no doubt playing some part in the matter.

“We made port in the Sulas next day and my old Norwegian trader behaved like a saint. He took us in and nursed us both tenderly, as well as a woman could, that hard-handed old swab. I was well enough to leave in a couple of days, but Mrs. Strudwick was a very sick woman. The old man promised to see that she was shipped to the Celebes in his own vessel, and turned over to the Dutch authorities, for transfer eventually to the States. Looking at her, I was not sure she would make it, since she was out of her head half the time and raving senselessly. I told the old man that she and her husband had provoked a native uprising, which in a certain sense you’ll agree was true. I also told him to stop sending any boat whatever to Pulau Tuntong, since the people there were far better utterly avoided. I would file my own (discreetly edited) report with the Dutch. He agreed, and told me that though he had tried to find native women to help nurse us, none would do so, not when they had heard whence we came. He had done wonders, and I sent him a fattish check when I got back to Singapore, along with a gold watch I thought he might fancy. I know he got it because he wrote. Mrs. Strudwick had been shipped out also, and I never heard of her again.

“Now, before you fellows bombard me with questions, let me try to make a few things plain. First, I have never gone back there or checked up on the place, nor even bothered. I had too many other things on my mind until 1945. Never since met anyone who knew the area well enough to put a sensible question to, either. If anyone, either Jap or Allied ever landed there, I never heard of it. You are all welcome to inquire if you care to.

“As to what I ran into, in all its implications, I warned you, in the beginning, it was full of loose ends and unanswered questions. Most of the major things in life are, I find. But I have one thought that I will share, or rather some related thoughts.

“In 1940, beyond knowing vaguely that Madame Curie had died of radium poisoning, while doing experiments, the word ‘radioactivity’ meant literally nothing to me. Am I clear? Hiroshima, of course, changed all that. My current thought is this: the whole island, and especially around those seeps and sulfur springs, could, I think, have been rich in uranium or some such article. I say ‘could,’ since I know nothing of these matters, beyond what one reads in the tabloids.

“So, consider a possibility, nothing more. Consider an inbred, isolated fragment of humanity, constantly soaked in this stuff. Would it eventually not cause a mutation among those who survived and managed to breed? I don’t know, nor I expect will anyone else, at least for a long time. Only a thought, mind you, and not clear in my own mind. But the turtles, now, according to Strudwick, who may have been loathsome morally, but was at least a good scientist—the turtles were an extraordinarily odd mix, all sorts or strange breeds on one tiny island, to use his words. Another matter is my strange fever, not like malaria at all. And I lost a lot of hair, though it later grew back.

Radioactivity? It gives one to think.

“Thus we come to the village ‘elders.’ They looked awful, but may, just may have been on the road to something new, a new breed, if a most unpleasing one to our eyes. Remember, I saw no children. Could the race have been dying out? Again, I have no idea, no real answers.

“And finally, I suppose you want my ideas on the creature they called the ‘Father.’ My first thought, and one I clung to for a longish while, was simply that it was an enormous, deformed and very aged turtle, changed perhaps by the radioactive bath in which it had soaked and indeed may have done so for ages, for all that I know.”

He paused, then rose and stood behind his chair, staring blankly at the mantelpiece.

Then he turned to leave, but his voice floated back as he went. “There are, naturally, many other possibilities. The eyes, you know, were utterly human in their expression. Many other possibilities.” We heard his feet on the stairs.

For once in his life, Mason Williams had nothing to say, not a word. It was an occasion.

[*] His Only Safari (F & S F, February 1970)

Thinking of the Unthinkable

In which Brigadier Ffellowes (last seen here in “And The Voice of the Turtle,” October 1972) runs into a test of sorts at the club and comes through, as usual, in extraordinary form.

“Well,” said a new member, “from what you guys tell me, he’s either a total fraud or just maybe one of those odd types who attract things, a man to whom things just happen. There doesn’t seem to be any thing, or any place, that he hasn’t seen or visited. I once knew a man in the war, World War II, who managed to get transferred to every invasion point; just by sheer bad luck, no finagling. He’d get shot up and leave the hospital to find he was in the first wave at Omaha Beach or something. Happened about six times. So maybe your brigadier has that to him, a magnetism for weird events.”

We were in the club library and, of course, discussing Ffellowes. It was cold as hell out, and he hadn’t been around for a week or so. Our British member didn’t like cold weather; despite his implausible adventures all over the globe, in every branch of Her Majesty’s Services, he stayed home, wherever it was, and warm when the New York streets got icy. No one ever asked him where he lived, and his mail came to the club, where it was kept for him.

“He’s not home, because I saw him in Washington yesterday.” The voice was that of a man named Onderdonk, who had something diplomatic to do with NATO and flew back and forth to Europe regularly. He was a regular in Ffellowes’ circle of listeners, and a nice guy, in a quiet way. “I saw him coming out of the Pentagon and he was walking along with an American rear admiral. I don’t know the admiral personally, but I do know he’s a hush-hush type, something to do with advanced research.”

There was a period of silence while we thought this one over. We had all heard Ffellowes say many times that he was fully retired. But why should he be? Another layer was added to our mystery member.

“If Williams were here, which, Thank God, he is not,” said Onderdonk, “he’d say Ffellowes went down to buy cheap booze and cadge meals at the Pentagon restaurants.”

Since this was so like Williams, it took a long time for the laughter to die down.

The new member, who was not so new as to have missed Mason Williams, or found him anything but unlovable, still wanted to pursue the subject.

“Did you guys ever run a test on this Ffellowes?” was his next tack. “It seems to me you could pick a subject, like say conditions on the Moon, or a famous haunted house, anything like that. If he’s a fake, he’ll be a pretty good bet to rise to it, and claim to have been there. I know he’s a friend of yours, but don’t you ever wonder . . .?”

Since we all, separately and collectively, had wondered, and often, about Ffellowes’ stories, there was a further silence. We all liked him, except Williams, of course, but was he the best liar on record? Or was he something else?

“Something for which there is no logical explanation, would be a good bet,” mused another man, “but it would have to be something well-known at the same time, I mean something people had puzzled about, had given a lot of thought to.”

The new member had been thinking hard. He slammed his palm down on his knee with a crack. “What about the Loch Ness Monster?”

We all looked at each other. The damned thing was in the papers at least six times a year or more. A regular, organized group had been trying to get pictures of it for ten years. It was supposed to have been tracked on sonar. Why, questions about it were even asked in England’s Parliament.

A babble of approval went around the circle. It was perfect, and best of all, there was no harm in it. If Ffellowes denied any knowledge of the thing, no harm was done, no feelings could be hurt. We lifted our glasses, still laughing, and gave a ringing toast: “To the Loch Ness Monster!”

We had forgotten that our absent member, Ffellowes, liked the back staircase, which opens into an alcove of the library; and he moved like a ghost, out of habit, he said. We still had our glasses lifted when there he was, dropping into a vacant seat and pressing the bell for a waiter, the faint quizzical smile on his face as he looked around.

“What’s the Scottish Enigma done now, to be so praised, eh? Must have et a Russian sub, to have all you chaps applauding.”

Onderdonk was quick. “Glad to see you, Ffellowes. We were applauding the fact that a few mysteries still remain in the world, to make us humble. The monster seemed to symbolize them, so to speak.” He then introduced Ffellowes to the new member, while the rest of us caught our breaths.

The brigadier shook hands politely, but absently. To the old hands, the silence in the book-lined room was deafening. We knew the look. There was, or might be, a story. Something was on his mind.

He got his drink, sipped it reflectively, then looked around at us. “I see what you chaps mean, about the symbol of the Unknown, that is, keeping us human, as it were, and even ‘Humble before the Lord.’ A zoologist of my acquaintance once advocated, in all seriousness, mind you, loosing every variety of poisonous vermin, snakes, scorpions and all that, plus all known breeds of man-eating cat, on all the civilized countries. The idea was not dissimilar, don’t you know. Keep the people humble and in fear of externals over which they had no control. Keep them from feeling they were not either gods or God. One would think that earthquakes, famine, typhoons and such would be enough, but when I mentioned this, the chap said ‘No.’ It has to be more personal, more intimate. People are terrified of man-eating sharks, for example, though the chances of being bit by one are minuscule compared to crossing a village street in one of your suburbs, one of mine, for that matter, without being mashed by a carelessly driven van.” He sipped and we waited.

“Still and all, I don’t feel much like joining your particular toast. The casual references in the newspapers to Loch Ness frankly give me the grue.” He paused. “I know a trifle too much about that phenomenon to be even relaxed, you see. In fact, it doesn’t really bear thinking about at all.”

There was a sigh from the new member, but Ffellowes either missed or ignore it.

“I suppose you’d be annoyed at my stopping there, after being so mysterious?” Once again the faint smile was visible. “I don’t mind telling it now, though, before I’m through, you may all regret it.

“It would have been in the summer of ‘43. I had come home from a rather shaky thing in North Africa and was given some leave. I chose to spend it at a small inn near Inverness, owned by a delightful old Scot of ancient lineage named George Smith. We used to tour the neighboring distilleries, all run by chums of his, and even in wartime, the uncut Scotch, about 120 proof before watering, mind you, was always somehow available. Between such visits, we found time to visit sites like Culloden, Bannockburn, and Flodden. The drink helped to re-enact old battles. All glorious fun, quite illegal, including the petrol for our car, and essentially harmless. That is, until we got to Innisdracht. And there we met, George and I, Professor Randolf Hafstad.

“We had come in for a drink, it being a dampish evening, to The Old Pretender. This was a rather natty pub, though cramped by wartime, on the east shore of Loch Ness. It was a nasty night. The bar was empty, but in the private, so-called, a hunched figure crouched over a glass. George and I got our drinks, not really needed, I may say; it had been a wet afternoon at a local distillery, and we were in a jovial mood. We seated ourselves near the stranger, and when he looked around, we raised our glasses. To my surprise, he raised his tankard, which contained beer, and then moved over to join us. ‘Obviously not English,’ was my first reaction.

“He was a big elderly man, clean-shaven, with huge hands, clear blue eyes and a long, hooked nose. His face was long and also solid and supported the nose well. His hair was black, flecked with grey and combed neatly backward. His massive shoulders were masked by a sort of boat cloak, something like the old caped overcoats of my father’s day, and he carried a heavy wool hat in his free hand. His first words were somewhat disconcerting.

“ ‘So, gentlemen, you have come to see the destruction of Europe?’ His English was very fluent, with a faint trace of two things, one being an American accent (he had been at college there, it transpired), the other thing being the curious sing-song of the Norse peoples, with a rise and fall in every sentence.

“ ‘Wha’s that, man?’ said George, in his thickest Scots accent, which I will not attempt to imitate.

“The man smiled, not at all unpleasantly, and introduced himself. He had been a professor at some tiny Norwegian university, Stavanger, I think, or was until Quisling, Hitler, et al. had turned him out and into a refugee. His wife was dead, as was one son. The other was in the forces somewhere. Meanwhile, Dr. Hafstad was billeted in this Scottish backwater and pursuing his avocation as a hobby. He was, in fact, a geologist. When he paused, George, who had caught his first odd remark and was brooding over it, returned to the attack.

“ ‘Wha’s the business about the destruction of Europe?’ George had taken just enough to make him argumentative. Not combative, mind you. But he had seized a subject and would not let go.

‘“What do you know of the geology of Europe?’ was the somewhat enigmatic answer. It turned out we neither of us knew anything, so he told us, in a sonorous drone that must have put his students to sleep in buckets in the past.

“We heard all about varves, thermoclines, Pleistocene recessions, gneiss, schist, continental shelves, faults, the Riss, Mindel and Wurm Glaciations; the man missed nothing. And yet, somehow, he kept us interested. For one thing, he kept interspersing the most peculiar remarks into his lecture. There would be a longish strip on cave faults or something and then, ‘If Hitler knew; seven bombers on the right incline.’ Now, then, I began to prick up my ears. I had taken a fair load of spirits, but I had a goodish head. Was the man a confused idiot or an Axis sympathizer?

“The learned rigmorale went on, and so did the baffling interjections. ‘If there is a Wakening, what then? Ragnarok’ While I was mulling over this, we were back in cave faults, conterminous flaws in Welsh Sandstone, the unnoticed work of one Sergius of the University of Uppsala, some obscure savant of his acquaintance apparently. The whole thing was at one time a conversation, or rather monologue, from a pedantic bore, and then again a refreshing change from the casual chats with distillery officials, procurators fiscal, Gaelic revivalists and other types with whom George had tried to enliven my leave. Yet . . . there was something else. I tried to focus upon it, ‘nail it down,’ as you chaps say.

“Suddenly, as these things come upon one after a few glasses, I found my clue. The man was dreadfully in earnest. He was also frightened, and trying to conceal it. Underneath all this learned gibberish, was an appeal. In the only way he could, the retired professor was asking somehow for help, for comfort, for succor in some form or other.

“George, who had been quite as silent as I for many long minutes, caught it too. He was—George, I mean—a short, broad Scot, who did not care to discuss his income, or indeed anything, with strangers, save for the iniquities of the firm conviction that Smith was a Scottish name, rudely captured by the Sassenach invaders. He owned, in fee simple, four fishing villages, had twice refused a peerage. He had three sons in the British army. Two others were dead, one of them a pilot in the Battle of Britain. In a locked drawer was his own D.S.C. from the First War. He was, in many ways, a typical Scot. Now he drained his glass and looked fixedly at Hafstad, who had momentarily withdrawn into his tankard. “ ‘Man, wha’s amiss with ye? You’re black with fear of somm’at. Do you need help?’

“The clear blue eyes appeared over the tankard and inspected both of us. ‘You do not laugh? You do not think here is a crazy old Norwegian who should be shut in a house for the mad?’

“I was personally out of this, you understand. I could see that George had got on our strange friend’s wavelength, though, and I shut up. The intensity, for want of a better term, that the man projected had touched me, however.

“His inspection seemed to ease his mind. Abruptly, he stood up, and he was a big chap, over six foot and broad. When he put on his hat, which had a droopy brim, I thought of Odin and wondered if two ravens were hid on the premises.

“ ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I have made calculations for over a year now. I will show you the end of the world, the world as you now know it. I will show you the Abomination of Desolation as the Israelites knew it, and as my own ancestors knew it even better. This is why I have come tonight to this place.’

“We got up, paid our score, collected our hats and coats and went out after him. It was not until I had seen the loch, gleaming in the summer moonlight, no more than a few hundred yards away below us that I realized where we were heading. George was silent, his head bowed, and his hat jammed down on his big head. We simply stumped along, following our leader down the slope from the inn, across the road and through the heather and gorse on the other side, down, down to the shore of the cold lake itself.

“And all the while, Hafstad was talking. The talk was still the same, all about geology, the interconnected, underground linkages through Scandinavia and Great Britain, the Irish lakes, the Swedish lakes, the confluence of currents, the intermeshing of tides, the rocks and their characteristics, the underlying faults. But there was more. In between the other stuff kept coming one word.

“Appearances. There had been few Appearances in Sweden lately, but many in Scotland. Appearances were down, it seemed in Norway, but the war might have had an effect; reporting might be out. Irish Appearances were well up to the mark, however, so far as one could judge, and realizing that the Free State was neutral. This was mixed up with more of the geology lecture, but I found myself nodding my head gravely, wondering when the next Appearance would occur. It seemed important somehow, since the old visionary who was leading us thought it must be so.

“No doubt you chaps will think I was naive. Yet I dare swear that until the three of us were standing on a sort of rock shelf at the water’s edge, no more, even later, I had no idea what all this was leading up to.

“Our guide took up his stand at the very lip of the stone and turned now to face us. He was very impressive in his cape and his droopy hat, especially as he gestured toward the glassy mere behind him.

‘“Watch, you two! You will see something others have seen before, and made themselves the scorn of their equals. But you are the first besides myself to understand! “

Ffellowes stopped talking, and there was the silence that falls on all of his stories. I did notice the new member, out of the corner of my eye. His mouth was slightly open and an unlit cigarette was in his hand. The night noises of the winter city, coming through the closed drapes over the windows, sounded far off and in another time.

“Professor Hafstad reached into his inside pocket and produced a large old-fashioned watch, which he inspected and restored to its recess,” the brigadier continued, his even voice leaving every clipped syllable flawless and perfectly clear. “George and I stood, immobile, while he turned and waved at the placid water behind him, whose tiny wavelets lapped almost at his feet. All was still under the moon, and the wisps of cold fog rising off the dark surface did not hide, but rather revealed the far expanse of the loch, though hiding the distant shore.

“We watched, and suddenly there was indeed an Appearance. Without warning, the loch was in motion. Something arose, grew in size and moved. It was not far offshore. What did it resemble? At first blush, something very thick and rather flexible, not unlike hose, garden hose. It waved. There was a thin part, near the tip, then a broadening at the tip itself. It grew larger or perhaps longer, as it extended itself.

‘“There! Now you see the peril! Now you at least understand!’ It was our new leader and his voice was far louder and more ringing than it had been in the inn. A trifle too loud, I fancy.

“I have said the Appearance was not far offshore. In fact, it was very close. Too close. In one fluid motion, it bent, like the trunk of some quadruple-magnified and quite improbable elephant. One moment had the professor with us. The next did not. I had a close look, a rather closer look than I needed, at something rippling down upon us.

“I next saw the loch rippling under the moon and the swirls of mist rising again. The small waves were now much larger and swirled up almost to my boots.

“George, who like myself had stood in silence during this visitation now looked up, and I saw his face in the moonlight. He was nodding his head gravely. ‘Ah, Nessie,’ he said. ‘Ye’re a bad, bad gurrl. Why for did ye do that?’

“I must have made some sort of strangled noise at this point, for he turned and looked calmly at me. ‘Donald, man, he called it and it tuk him. Now we’d best awa’, you and me. The procurator fiscal in this parish is a devil for asking questions. We’ll go the noo, and avoid all the trouble.’

“Since I was totally blank, had no understanding of what had happened and was in fact stunned, I suffered myself to be led away. We climbed the gentle slope again, found our battered Morris van in front of the inn, which was now dark by the bye, and drove off. We had gone some miles on our way home across the quiet moorland before George took one hand off the wheel and patted my shoulder in a rough way.

“ ‘Dinna fash yourself, Sassenach. He was a nice man, but Nessie doesna’ ken these fine distinctions. It happens now and again. Saint Columba was the last man to argue wi’ her, and he was a very holy man. Puir mortals like us can hardly make the pace.’ He resumed driving, and the next morning, when I tried to raise the subject, stared me into silence.”

Ffellowes put down his empty glass and stretched. Then he looked at us. “Having seen that, you will understand why I find drinking a bumper to the dear old Scottish pet rather hard to do.”

The new member stuck his neck out. “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t quite get it. Why, other than the obvious, were you so appalled?”

The brigadier stared past him at the unlit fireplace, as if he were thinking, or perhaps remembering.

“My dear man. Possibly you suffer from deafness. Perhaps, though I doubt it, I may have been obscure. When the thing, or Appearance, swung down, I saw certain vast circular marks, cicatrices, or what have you, on its surface. Disks, if that makes it plainer. In other words, chum, a single, colossal tentacle. I do not personally care to speculate on its point of origin.”

No one said anything. The new member stared at the empty fireplace. When I looked up, the brigadier had gone.

. . . No Traveler Returns

A short and surprising chiller from Sterling Lanier, whose novel, HIERO’S JOURNEY was recently published by Chilton.

Colonel Morehouse held up his handkerchief again. The odor of the rubbing alcohol in which he had soaked it came over the foul reek from the great open pit like a cleaner breath of air. His fleshy, red face was unshaven, and the dark pouches under his eyes betrayed lack of sleep and also strain.

“The governor is sending more men if we need them. But I have the whole town tightly cordoned off. The population is only three hundred or so; so that should be enough.”

“We moved quick for once.” Naylor, the State Police captain, looked equally tired, but his immaculate uniform had not bagged, and though he also was unshaven, it hardly showed. He looked with some degree of sardonic sympathy at the National Guard officer. Morehouse was a civilian, a political appointee, and he was very close to shock.

“If you won’t get some rest, at least get a gas mask. There’s no need to put yourself through this.”

“No.” The heavy head shook stubbornly. “I have to see, and you can’t see through one of those, at least not well. I can stand it.”

Naylor returned to his inspection of the huge hole. Fresh clouds of purulent foulness eddied from it as more bodies were brought out by the masked and goggled police. Naylor simply forced himself to breathe through his mouth, by an exercise of iron will. The dust of the broken road eddied and sifted around them in the hot Midwestern sunlight. The shattered fragments of tar lay about them in heaps, spilling over into the roadside ditches, some of it hurled as far as the near wire fence rows. Somewhere in the tall town, meadowlarks called and piped, notes of heart-rending bittersweet.

The pit was now over thirty feet across. The men seemed to have come to an end of the excavation and had reached untouched earth on all the perimeters. But they were still digging straight down.

“Count’s now thirty-two.” Lieutenant Vardaman towered over his lean superior. His voice was muffled since he wore a gas mask, but the modified Afro haircut was unrestrained by any cap. The long, slender dark-brown fingers interlaced as he spoke, the only sign of tension. “Come and look at the rest of this stuff. I still can’t believe it.”

The two older men followed him to a small pile of curious utensils. There were small pickaxes, battered entrenching tools and shorthandled shovels; all were rusty, but some were smeared with fresher stains, darker and heavier stains.

“Looks like the kind of thing you buy at a surplus store,” said Morehouse through his handkerchief. “We had shovels like that when I was just a kid in the Korean War. Haven’t seen any for years, though.”

“The picks were traditional, but the shovels and entrenching tools are a modern adaption.” The dry, uninflected voice came from behind them, and they all jumped a little.

“You must be Professor Alietti,” said Naylor, his mind clicking over with an effort. “You got here fast, all the way from State.”

The small, round academic looked around with keen interest before answering. The incredible, sickening stench seemed to have no effect on him at all.

“The governor sent a plane after he spoke with me on the phone. This is incredible, of course, but, perhaps not, well—surprising. But still to borrow an archaic thing like this, almost two hundred years old. Fantastic!” There was a note of professional relish in the newcomer’s tones which the others found unpleasant.

Naylor pointed to the distant town, whose clustered buildings reflected the sun back over the flat landscape. Only the acres of corn, silent and high in the noon heat, lay between them and the distant hamlet. A man cursed as his foot slipped on something unspeakable at the edge of the charnel pit.

“The clues are over there.” The captain fell silent for a moment. “We’ll have to dig them out. Just like we dug this out. They all are in it. They none of them are going to get off, except maybe the small kids. We’ll get the answers.”

Alietti looked curiously at him. “May I ask what gave you your first clues? I gathered from the governor that this is your work, this whole thing, the fact that it was uncovered at all, I mean.”

Naylor said, “It was a lot of little things, like most police work. It started with a ring of professional car thieves fighting over territories. Someone was undercutting them in this area, underselling them. The syndicate had money in it. They sent people to look around. Some didn’t come back. The syndicate smelled something badly wrong and got out of the whole thing. They don’t much go for new ideas, or mysteries either. But we heard about it. That was one piece.” He watched the line of men who were still carrying nameless things up from the great hole and laying them gently on the side, extending the lines of shapeless objects, all covered in plastic, to yet further on down the road. It was obvious, sickeningly so, that they were no longer finding bodies, but rather fragments.

“Disappearances were still another thing. All kinds of people, not who were known to have been here, but who could have been here or passing through. The F.B.I. has charts and graphs, and so do we. I began to play with them, and a kind of vague blob appeared. This county and two around it on the east and west.” Vardaman left them and went back to the hole where he could supervise. The sound of careful digging still came from the bottom. The men were silent, the enormity of what they were uncovering reducing them to a perspiring quiet, broken only by a muffled curse and the shovel noises audible at close range. Over all, the piercing tremolo of the larks rose on the hot air of the prairie, uncaring and rapturous.

“The next clue came from the churches, a place I’d never have looked. No minister of any denomination ever asked here to perform marriages or to bury anyone. The churches demolished and used as building sites. No church records newer than twenty years of this town at all. Vardaman found that out while he was investigating. Since the churches, even the Protestant ones, don’t liaison much with one another, not one of them noticed that it alone was not the only brand that had left town.” A man ran up the ladder on the far side of the hole and ripped off his gas mask. He went off to the side of the road, well away from the hole and vomited. The sounds came clearly to the little group who were listening to Naylor. Nobody reprimanded the man, a state patrolman, or tried to bring him back. He sat down after a while with his head in his hands.

“We’ll all have a few nightmares,” mused the captain, half to himself. “Let’s see, what came next? Well, there was money, lots of it, moving in the wrong ways for this area. This is conservative country. People don’t play the stock market here, or have Swiss bank accounts. That was a weak point in their planning, though they tried to be clever. They were awfully damn clever about the cars. With the two legitimate garages to change the bodies and repaint, file off engine-block numbers and so on, those cars just like to vanished. We still have only a very few traced, mostly to Mexico. But the idea of the local banker and the local nail factory owner and the fellows that owned the garages all having Swiss bank accounts, that was bad. Treasury gave us some help there. Then there was the law situation.”

He spat. A bad cop is anathema to a good one. A cop involved in this sort of thing was unthinkable, awful, a terrible affront to the concept of the law. The law officers involved were people whom Naylor really hated.

He went on. “Never any crime here, beyond reports, second-hand from the town police and the justice, a chicken stealing and kids being wild. That was another mistake, and it helped eliminate the other places we were watching. Every town has major crimes once in a while, usually an occasional murder, or homicide of some kind, never mind the actual cause. Yet this place never had anything but the piddling stuff, and it was always settled here without trial, or at least nothing beyond the J.P. That was a pointer. I’m a little surprised that they thought they could get away with that, surprised no one had any more psychology than that.”

“They got away with it for twenty years, from the looks of things,” mumbled Morehouse through his handkerchief. “Suppose they decided they’d had enough last year and quit? Where would we be then?”

They all came alert. The sound of a distant series of shots came faint and far off from over the fields. In a moment, a young lieutenant, masked like all the rest, sprinted over from his command jeep parked up the road. He saluted the colonel, who waved irritably in answer, still holding the cloth to his nose, and choked out the word, “Report.”

“Two of them tried through the cornfields north of town, sir. The heat sensors picked them up, and the machine gunners got them. Both adult males.” At a nod, he returned to his radio watch.

Naylor silently revised some ideas. The paunchy colonel seemed to have an adequate capability for his task. He resumed his story.

“We took the whole story to the governor, in secret. We had enough proof to convince him but the attorney general wanted even more. So we sent in a decoy family. Father, mother, two grown kids and all police, our people. In a trailer van, because they said they were vaguely moving to California, site and time of arrival uncertain. They were volunteers. Oh boy, what a nice friendly town! But the thing was, when you knew what was going on, it was so obvious that it made your skin crawl. The fake smiles, the mockery, the sly grins, the kindly questions. I was the ‘father,’ ” he added, “so I know what I’m talking about.

“They rushed us at dusk. We had dummies sitting around the trailer door, and we were inside. The trailer was armored. We stood them off, and the helicopters came in with the sleep gas in minutes. Your people were ringing the town at the same time. That’s all. We woke up a teen-ager and asked a few questions. He sent us to here.” He nodded at the mass grave. The things being brought up now were all very small.

Alietti stared at the ground for a moment. Then he looked at Naylor. “Have you found anything religious in nature, any of what we anthropologists call cult objects? If the parallel is an exact one, these people simply could not stop what they were doing. The profit motive became a minor one, whatever it had been in the beginning. The lust of killing, the service of Death itself, under one guise or another, that becomes the paramount, the overpowering desire. At least that is the pathology of the thing in other cases. Sleeman stamped it out so quickly in India during the 1840’s that a lot of documentation is missing.”

“Too bad,” said Colonel Morehouse in a nasty tone. “He should have left it alone so you could study it better.” He turned and stalked off to his staff car.

A sergeant from the police radio car brought Naylor a written flimsy. He studied it and handed it to the scholar without comment. Alietti read and handed it back.

“I’m not surprised, captain. That makes three of these graves. You’ll have to check every one of the roads. And even then you won’t be sure. But I have another question. Have you any reason to believe that in this crowded, mobile and individualistic country, that this is the only situation of its kind?”

“We’ve recommended that the Justice Department set up a special study on it. Beyond that, it’s too big for us. This almost was.” Naylor’s voice was weary.

The two men looked at the distant heat-shrouded town and listened to the meadowlarks caroling. Their piping rose and fell in the heat, like the piping of the temple flautists in ancient temples on the far side of the globe. It is such piping which rises to the eight-armed thing who is Sitala, who is Durga, who is Kali, the goddess-demon of the oldest murders in the world, the Thugs.

Formerly of India.

A Father’s Tale

This, the longest and most unusual of Brigadier Donald Ffellowes’ stories—or “tales” as Mason Williams would have it—concerns Ffellowes’ father and a mysterious stranger who become uneasy allies on a grisly mission in the jungles of Sumatra. Friends of the Brigadier are almost certainly prepared for a tale of these astounding proportions; as for the rest of the world, we do not know . . .

“You certainly seem to like the tropics, sir,” said a younger member. It was one of the dull summer evenings in the club. The outside fetor in New York City was unbelievable. Heat, accumulated off the sidewalks, hung in the air. Manhattan was hardly a Summer Holiday, despite the claims of its mayor. It was simply New York, The City, a place one had to work in or probably die in.

“I suppose you have a point there,” Ffellowes answered. The library was air-conditioned, but all of us who recently had come in from the streets were sweating, with one exception. Our British member was utterly cool, though he had come in after most of us.

“Heat,” said Ffellowes, as he took a sip of his Scotch, “is, after all, relative, especially in case. Relatives, I should say.

“But many of your tales, if you’ll pardon me, in fact most of them, have been, well—set in the tropics,” the young member kept on.

Ffellowes stared coldly at him. “I was not aware, young man, that I had told any tales.”

At this point, Mason Williams, the resident irritant, who could not let the brigadier alone, exploded. “Hadn’t told any tales! Haw-haw, haw-haw!”

To my amazement, and, I may add, to the credit of the new election committee, this piece of rudeness was quashed at once, and by the same younger fellow who had started the whole thing.

He turned on Williams, stared him in the eye, and said, “I don’t believe you and I were speaking, sir. I was waiting for Brigadier Ffellowes to comment.” Williams shut up like a clam. It was beautiful.

Ffellowes smiled quietly. His feelings about Williams were well-known, if equally unexpressed. A man who’d been in all of Her Majesty’s Forces, seemingly including all the intelligence outfits, is hardly to be thrown off gear by a type like Williams. But the defense pleased him.

“Yes,” he confessed, “I do like the tropics. Always go there when I can. But—and I stress this—it was a certain hereditary bias. I acquired it, one might say, in the genes. You see, my father, and for that matter his, had it as well.”

Again the young member stuck his neck out. Those of us, the old crowd, who were praying that we would get a story, simply kept on praying. Ffellowes was not mean, or petty, but he hated questions. But the boy plugged on.

“My God, sir,” he bored in, “you mean your father had some of the same kind of weird experiences you’ve had?”

I don’t know to this day why the brigadier, ordinarily the touchiest of men, was so offbeat this evening. But he didn’t either dummy up or leave. Maybe, just maybe, he was getting so fed up with Williams he didn’t want to let the young fellow down. Anyway, those of us who knew him leaned forward. Of course, Mason Williams did too. He hated Ffellowes but never enough to miss a story, which is, I suppose, an indication that he isn’t completely mindless.

“If you care to hear this particular account, gentlemen,” began Ffellowes, “you will have to take it second-hand, as it were. I wasn’t there myself, and all I know comes from my father. However—he was there, and I may say that I will strongly resent [here he did not quite look at Williams] any imputation that he spoke to me anything but the absolute truth.” There was silence. Total. Williams had lost too many encounters.

Said Ffellowes, “The whole thing started off the west coast of Sumatra. My father had been doing a spell of service with old Brooke of Sarawak, the second of the so-called White Rajahs, C.V. that would be. Anyway, Dad was on vacation, leave, or what have you. The Brookes, to whom he’d been ‘seconded,’ as the saying goes, from the Indian Army, were most generous to those who served them. And my father wanted to see a few new areas and get about a bit. This was in the fall of 1881, mind you, when things were different.

“So there he was, coming down the Sumatran coast, in one of Brooke’s own private trading prahus, captained by old Dato Burung, picked crew and all that, when the storm hit.

“It was a bad one, that storm, but he had a largish craft, as those things went, a big Prau Mayang, a sort of merchant ship of those waters. No engine, of course, but a sturdy craft, sixty feet long, well capable of taking all the local weathers, save perhaps for a real typhoon, which this was not. They all battened down to ride out the storm. They had no trouble.

“Surely enough, the next morning was calm and clear. And off the lee side, within sight of the green west Sumatran coast, was a wreck. It wasn’t much, but the remnants of another prau, a prau bedang, the local light craft used for fishing, smuggling, and what have you. Ordinarily, this much smaller vessel would have carried two modified lateen sails, or local variants, but now both masts were gone, snapped off at the deck, obviously by the previous night’s storm. The fragile hulk was wallowing in the deep milky swells, which were the only trace of the earlier wind.

“My father’s ship bore down on her. He had given no orders, but a ship in trouble in these waters was fair game for anyone. Occasionally, hapless folk were even rescued. Dad stood on the quarter-deck in his whites, and that was quite enough to make sure there would be no throat cutting. Forbidding anything else would have been silly. Next to him stood his personal servant, old Umpa. This latter was a renegade Moro from the Sulus, but a wonderful man. He was at least sixty, but as lean and wiry as a boy. Whatever my father did was all right with him, and anything anyone else did was wrong, just so long as my father opposed it, mind you.

“To his surprise, as the bigger craft wore, to come up under the wreck’s lee, a hand was raised. Beaten down though the little craft had been, there was someone still left alive. Dad’s vessel launched a rowing boat, and in no time the sole survivor of the wreck was helped up to the poop and placed before him. To his further amazement, it was not a Sundanese fisherman who confronted him, but a Caucasian.

“The man was dressed quite decently, in tropical whites, and even had the remnants of a celluloid collar. Aside from the obvious ravages of the sea, it was plain that some time must have passed since the other had known any amenities of civilization. His whites, now faded, were torn at the knees, badly stained with green slime and ripped at various places. His shoes were in an equally parlous condition, almost without soles. Yet, the man still had an air about him. He was tall, a youngish man, sallow and aquiline in feature, with a hawk nose. Despite his rags, he bore himself as a person of consequence. His beard was only a day or two grown.

“ ‘Captain Ffellowes, Second Rajput Rifles, very much at your service,’ said my father, as this curious piece of human flotsam stared at him. ‘Can I be of some service?’

“The answer was peculiar. ‘Never yet, sir, have I failed in a commission. I should not like this occasion to be the first. With your permission, we will go below.’ With that, this orphan of the gale fell flat on his face, so quickly that not even my father or the ship’s captain could catch him as he slumped.

“They bent, both of them, quickly enough when the man fell. As my father reached down to take his head, the grey eyes opened.

“ ‘At all costs, watch for Matilda Briggs,’ said the unknown, in low and quite even tones. The lids shut and the man passed into total and complete unconsciousness. It was obvious to my father that he had only been sustaining himself by an intense effort of will. What the last piece of nonsense meant was certainly obscure. Who on earth was Matilda Briggs, and why should she be sought? As they carried the man below to my father’s cabin, he had decided the chap was simply delirious. On the other hand, he was obviously a man of education, and his precise speech betrayed the university graduate. One can be excused of snobbery at this point. There were not so many of this type about in the backwaters of the world in those days, you know, despite what Kipling may have written on the subject. Most educated Englishmen in Southeast Asia had jobs and rather strictured ones at that. The casual drifter or ‘remittance man’ was a later type than one found in the 1880’s, and had to wait for Willie Maugham to portray him.

“Well, my father took his mystery man below; the crew looted the remnants of the little prau (and found nothing, I may say, including any evidence of anyone else; they told the skipper that the mad Orang Blanda must have taken her out alone); and the White Rajah’s ship set sail and continued on her way down the Sumatran coast.

“Dad looked after the chap as best he could. Westerners, Europeans, if you like, though my father would have jibbed at the phrase since he thought that sort of thing began at Calais, did this sort of thing without much thinking then. There were so few of them, you see, surrounded by the great mysterious mass of Asia. Outside the British fief, as the Old Man said, one felt A.C.I., or Asia Closing In. No doubt the feeling of the average G.I. in Viet Nam a few years ago. I know what they meant, having spent enough time out in those regions.

“First, the chap was, as I have said, a lean, tough-looking creature. As he lay there on my father’s bed in the stern cabin, even in utter exhaustion and repose, his sharp features were set in commanding lines. His clothes, or rather their remains, which the native servants stripped off at my father’s orders, revealed nothing whatsoever of their owner’s past. Yet, as the ragged coat was pulled off the tattered shirt, something fell to the cabin deck with a tinkle and a glitter. My father picked it up at once and found himself holding a man’s heavy gold ring, set with an immense sapphire of the purest water. Was this the unknown’s? Had he stolen it? No papers, and my father made it plain that he felt no compunction in looking for them, were on the castaway’s person. Save for the ring, and his rags, he appeared to own nothing.

“For a day, as the prau ran slowly down the coast, my father nursed the stranger as tenderly as a woman could have done. There was no fever, but the man’s life had almost run out, nonetheless. It was simple exhaustion carried to the nth degree. Whatever the derelict had been doing, he had almost, as you chaps say, ‘burned himself out’ in the doing of it. Dad sponged and swabbed him, changed his personal linen, and directed the servants he had with him, as they all fought for the man’s life. The ship’s cook, an inspired Buginese, wrought mightily with the stores at his command, and nourishing soups were forced down the patient’s lips, even though he lay in total unconsciousness.

“On the second day, my father was sitting by the man’s bed, turning over in his hand the sapphire ring, when he was startled to hear a voice. Looking up, he saw that the patient was regarding both him and also what he held.

“ ‘I once refused an emerald of rather more value,’ was the unknown’s comment. ‘I can assure you, for whatever my assurances are worth, that the object that you hold is indeed my personal property and not the loot of some native temple.’ The man turned his head and looked out the nearest of the cabin ports within reach. Through it, one could discern the green shoreline in the near distance. He turned back to my father and smiled, though in a curiously icy way.

“ ‘The object you hold, sir, is a recompense for some small services, of the reigning family currently responsible for the archipelago which we appear to be skirting. I should be vastly obliged for its return since it has some small sentimental value.’

“Having no reason to do otherwise, Dad instantly surrendered the ring.

‘“My thanks,’ was the languid comment. ‘I assume that I also have you to thank for my treatment on board this somewhat piratical vessel?’

“The question was delivered in such an insolent tone that my father rose to his feet, ready to justify himself at length. He was waved back to his cushion by a commanding arm. After a pause, the unknown spoke.

‘“As an Englishman, and presumably a patriot, I have some small need of your assistance.’ The face seemed to brood for a moment, before the man spoke again; then he stared in a glacial way directly at my father, running his gaze from top to toe before speaking again. His words appeared addressed to himself, a sort of soliloquy.

“ ‘Hmm. English, an officer, probably Sandhurst—Woolwich gives one rather less flexibility—on leave, or else extended service; speaks fluent Malay; seconded to some petty ruler as a guide into civilization, perhaps; at any rate, tolerably familiar with the local scence.’

“At this cold-blooded, and quite accurate appraisal (my family has indeed sent its males to Sandhurst for some time), my father continued to sit, waiting for the next comment from his bizarre guest.

“ ‘Sir,’ said the other, sitting up as he spoke, and fixing my father with a steely glare, ‘you are in a position to assist all of humanity. I flatter myself that never have I engaged in a problem of more importance, and, furthermore, one with no precedents whatsoever. Aside from one vaguely analogous occurence in Recife, in ’77, we are breaking fresh ground.’

“As he delivered this cryptic series of remarks, the man clapped, yes, actually clapped his hands, while his eyes, always piercing, lit up with glee, or some similar emotion. My father decided on the spot that the chap was deranged, if not under the influence of one of those subtle illnesses in which the East abounds. But he was brought back at once by the next question, delivered in the same piercing, almost strident, voice.

“ ‘What is our latitude, sir? How far south have we been taken since I was picked up?’ Such was the immense authority conveyed by the strange voyager’s personality, that my father had no thought of not answering. Since he himself took the sights with a sextant every dawn, he was able to give an accurate reply at once. The other lay back, obviously in thought.

“Rousing himself after a moment, he seemed to relax, and and his chiseled features broke into a pleasant smile as he stared at my father.

“ ‘I fear you think me mad,’ he said simply, ‘or else ill. But I assure you that I am neither. The Black Formosa Corruption has never touched me, nor yet Tapanuli Fever. I am immune, I fancy, to the miasmas of this coast, thought I take no credit for the status. In fact, I believe it to be hereditary. If the world would pay more attention to that forgotten Bohemian monk, Mendel, we should be in a position to learn much . . . but I digress.’ Once more he stared keenly at my father, then seemed to come to some private decision.

“ ‘Would you, sir, be good enough to place yourself under my orders for the immediate future? I can promise you danger, great danger, little or no reward, but—and you have my word, which I may say has never yet been called into question—you would be serving your country and indeed all of humanity in aiding me. If what I have learnt is any evidence, the entire world, and I am not given to idle speculation, is in the gravest of perils.’ He paused again. ‘Moreover, I can not at this point take you into my full confidence. It would mean, for the moment, that you would have to follow my instructions without question. Is this prospect of any attraction?’

“My father was somewhat taken aback by this sudden spate of words. Indeed, he was both irritated and impressed, at one and the same time, by the masterful way the stranger played upon him.

‘“I should be happy, sir, or rather happier, if I had your name,’ he said stiffly. To his complete surprise, the other clapped his hands again and fell back on his couch, laughing softly.

“ ‘Oh, perfect!’ The man was genuinely amused. ‘Of course, my name would solve everything.’ He ceased laughing and sat up in the bed with a quick motion, and once he did so, all humor left the scene.

“ ‘My name is—well, call me Verner. It is the name of a distant connection and bluntly speaking—not my own. But it will serve. As to any other bona fides, I fear you will have to forgive me. I simply cannot say more. Again, what do you say to my proposal?’

“My father was somewhat disconcerted by his guest’s manners, but—and I stress this—one cannot realize what the circumstances were unless one had been there.”

As Ffellowes spoke, and perhaps because he spoke, we were there, in the quiet waters off Sumatra, long, long ago. The silence of the library in the club became the silence of the East. Honking taxis, bawling doormen, straining buses, all the normal New York noises heard through our shuttered windows, were gone. Instead, with quickened breathing, we heard the tinkle of gamilans and the whine of tropic mosquitoes, the shift of the tide over the reefs, and smelled the pungent scent of frangipani blossoms. I stole one look at Mason Williams and then relaxed. He had his mouth open and was just as hung up as the rest of us. The brigadier continued.

‘“I am astounded, sir, at your presumption,’ my father said, ‘here you are a—’

‘ ‘ ‘—veritable castaway and runagate, no doubt the sweepings of some Asian gutter,’ finished the other in crisp tones, putting my father’s unspoken words into life. ‘Nevertheless, what I have said to you is so deadly in earnest that if you will not agree to aid me, I must ask that you put me afoot at once, on yonder inhospitable shore, from whence, as you must have discerned, I have recently fled.’ He stared again at my father’s face, his piercing eyes seeming to probe beyond the mere skin. ‘Come, man, give me your decision. I cannot idle away the hours in your yacht’s saloon, no matter how luxurious. Either aid me, on my terms, mind you, or let me go!’

“What do you need then?’ It was my father’s tentative capitulation. I can only say in his defense. if he should need one, that as he told me the story, Verner’s manner was such as somehow did not brook any opposition.

“ ‘Hah,’ said Verner. ‘You are with me. Trust the Bulldog.’ My father professed to misunderstand the man, though the unedifying implications were plain.

‘“I wish all of your maps, at once, particularly of this coast,’ was Verner’s next remark. “I have not been in these waters at all. I need the very best charts you possess.’

“My father bustled about, found all the maps he had, and as he had made something of a study of the area, he had all the best Dutch naval charts and whatnot. He brought them down into the big stern cabin. There, he found that in his absence, there had been a palace revolution of sorts. His captain, Dato Ali Burung, was on his knees before Mr. Verner, beating his head on the carpet, or rather, the straw matting.

“When the Asian arose, sensing my father’s arrival, he had no shame on his flat features. ‘We are going to help the Tuan Vanah, Tuan, are we not?’ was what the chap said. Really, as my father put it. it wasn’t enough that the strange traveler had seduced him; he had also somehow had the same effect on the toughest native skipper in the South China Sea! Whoever and whatever he was, Mr.

Verner had, as you fellows put it, ‘control.’

“ ‘I am tentatively prepared to assist you in your quest, Mr. Verner,’ My Old Man had given his commitment, and beyond ‘unbelievable, but utterly true to type,’ he heard no further particulars from his uninvited guest, who relapsed into silence.

“The next morning, they stood in to the coast. Western Sumatra in those days was much as it is today, I expect. They were well north of the Mentawi isles at the time, and just a bit south of the Batus. In there were, and no doubt still are, a thousand little anchorages. My father, or rather, old Dato Burung, found one of them. It was a tiny river, flowing into the sea under nipa palms, which almost arched over the entrance. It was the sort of place a Westerner wouldn’t expect to launch a log canoe, but from which they had been turning out big seagoing vessels since well before the Christian era.

“There was even a small village, a kampong, as they say in those parts. The people thought they were pirates, my father said, and turned out the town for the ship. But Mr. Verner wanted nothing from them. He had ascertained that my father had a number of Martini-Henry rifles aboard, perhaps from old Burung. Even in those days, this was hardly the latest thing, but in any of the backwaters of Asia, a breechloading rifle, even the old Martini, was a thing of rare worth. At any rate, Verner had taken control of the arms locker and twelve of the skipper’s prize thugs were armed and standing guard on the beach.

“I daresay you wonder what my father was doing, to let himself and his ship be commandeered in this casual way. All I can give you is the story he told me. Verner, whoever he was, had simply ‘taken over.’ Dad told me that he violently resented everything the man suggested, but could not raise any objection, at least beyond commonplaces. He simply was no longer in charge, and somehow he had come to accept it.

“ ‘Where are we going?’ said Verner in answer to a question. ‘Where I tell you, which is, as the crow is supposed to reckon matters, some twenty miles due north. There, hopefully, we will find a certain ship. This latter, we may or may not board. In any case, my orders are final. Is that quite understood?’

“The fellow’s commands to the natives were delivered, I may say, in excellent Coast Malay. The timid folk of the local village came out and gave everyone garlands of flowers. No doubt, it was not the first time it had happened, but invaders who wanted nothing beyond food, and even paid for that, were something new. Yet, in retrospect, there may have been other reasons. . . .

“Verner, as if he had nothing to do with it at all, stood on the beach among the mangroves, waiting for my father to give all the orders. Finally, Dad asked him what he wanted next. He confessed to me in after years, that the man was so much in charge, that if he had said ‘jump in the river,’ the crew would have done so despite the abundant knobs of salt-water crocodiles, imitating tree stumps on every shallow bank and bar.

“The guest of the sea was now wearing one of my father’s linen suits although he refused a Solah Topee and went hatless. His ruined boots had been replaced by sandals, but the fact was, as Dad put it, Verner could have worn a loincloth, or some sort of sarong, and still have been as much in charge as if he had been the supreme Rajah of Bandung. One simply gave up arguing when around him. You tolerated his presence because the only alternative was killing him!

“ ‘We must have food for two days and two nights,’ said Verner to my father. ‘We shall be going north along the coast for about that distance. Would you be good enough to order your remaining ship’s people to remain in these parts for some four days. No, better five. Some mischance may delay us. After that, they may head north, until they either meet us—or do not.’

“Since the orders appeared already to have been given, and since the twelve toughest members of the crew of my father’s prau, all armed to the teeth with not only their native cutlery but with rifles from my father’s arms locker as well, were waiting, this latter would appear to have been only courtesy. But it was not. Verner himself made that plain.

“ ‘Captain Ffellowes, I much regret the outward appearance of these matters,’ he told my father. ‘While I personally have no doubt of your trustworthiness, the simple folk you command feel rather more strongly concerning my mission. In fact, though you might attempt to divert them from their purpose, and, be it said, mine as well, you would do little more than present them with your carcass as a species of local signpost. Possibly, indeed, probably, impaled as well, on bamboo shoots. Should you desire this new impalement on your coat of arms (ghastly pun, really), you have only to urge my immediate arrest.’

“Frankly, as my father put it to me, the man was becoming an incubus, and he seemed to have no sense at all of what was due a fellow Englishman. Although my father was allowed his pistols, Colt’s matched Bisleys as it happens, on his belt, two of the twelve hearties from the crew flanked him at all times. It was more than clear that he was along on sufferance. Twice, Verner came to a halt as they crawled through the vile coastal scrub behind the mangroves, but it was not my father whom he consulted, but rather old Burung, the skipper of the prau. The man himself seemed to feel somewhat abashed by this insolent favoritism of a native, and at one of the rest stops, he actually spoke to my father in some terms of apology. ‘See here, Captain,’ he said, ‘it is a capital mistake not to accept the best local information one can get.’ My father was by this time too affronted by Verner’s behavior to pay him much heed. Yet—the man, by his very presence, somehow brooked no interference. Dad simply nodded. He felt, he told me later, it was as if he were in a dream, or suspended in space. The whole thing, from the arrival on board his vessel of Verner and all that had happened subsequently, seemed to be a walking nightmare. He wondered, how could all this be happening? The only rock in a failing world was his personal man. Umpa, who trudged sturdily along beside him. He, at least, seemed faithful to his master.

“Have I failed to mention the heat? It was bad enough at sea, off the coast, but here it was almost unbearable. The party was following a winding trail along the shore, though somewhat back from it, which wound through green coco palms, jackfruit plantations gone wild, rambutan and pure jungle. Sometimes they were under dank shade, with great tropical hardwoods towering overhead, shutting off the sun; the next moment they would break out into heavy yellowish rattan and lantana brush growth and the saber-edged grasses of the coast. This would be hacked through by the advance guard with their myriad steel weapons. The next instant they would be in slippery mud under the giant trees again. Leeches and ticks fell upon their necks at every instant; gnats and mosquitoes assaulted them continuously, but they kept moving through innumerable muddy bogs and across many small tidal creeks as well.

“As if this were not bad enough, Burung, as well as some of the other natives and Verner too, were constantly stooping over patches of mud, in order to see what appeared to be quite ordinary traces of game. Once, late in the afternoon, they called my father over and showed him, in high glee, some daub or other which seemed important to them.

“ ‘Look here, Captain,’ said Verner. ‘This can hardly fail to interest an old shikari, such as yourself!’

“My father looked and saw some spoor or other of an animal, large enough to be sure, in the bank mud of one of the many small estuaries through which they had just stumbled. The trace had four clawed footprints and was otherwise without meaning. It was indeed wet, that is, recent, with the water oozing in around the rim of the track, but beyond being the trace of some no doubt harmless creature, probably distorted by expansion, it appeared to have no significance whatever.

“My father’s attitude seemed to annoy Verner a great deal, and without any further argument the man signaled to the others that they must press on. As they did so, Dad heard Verner say, as if to himself, ‘Microcephalous! A case of simian survival!’ The meaning of these phrases escaped him.

“At length, even Verner, who seemed made of iron, had to call a halt. He spoke to Data Burung in low tones, and a camp was set up. My father, now stumbling with fatigue and insect-bitten to the limit, was gently passed along the line of marchers, until placed in the circle formed around the tiny fire they had lit. At this point, he related, he would not have cared much if they had told him that he was the main course in the evening meal.

“He roused himself, though, when he saw Verner seated next to him on the same rotting log. The fellow was almost as cool-looking as he had been on the prau after his recovery and, to my father’s amazement, was in the act of fitting a clean paper collar to his very tattered shirt. God knows where he got them.

“At my father’s gaze, something must have penetrated this strange person’s subconscious mind. He finished dealing with his collar and without any affectation laid his hand on my father’s knee.

“ ‘I fear that you are still in doubt, my dear chap,’ he said in vibrant tones. ‘We are now far enough from the hue and cry so that one may elaborate without any fear of indiscretion. Pray tell me how I can serve you. Is there any matter on your mind?’ The tones were as soft and caressing as those of a woman, and the man’s whole attitude so charged with sympathy that my father almost wept. Exhausted and bemused as he was by what had transpired around him in the last twenty-four hours, he nevertheless retained enough energy to ask why this extraordinary jaunt through a trackless wilderness was necessary?

“ ‘The matter is quite plain,’ returned his singular congener. ‘We are going to call upon a local ruler who is apparently dead, a native people who, though certainly native, are not people, and a ship due to be charged with more misery than any vessel that ever floated on this planet’s seas. Finally we shall, I trust, destroy the scientific works of one Van Ouisthoven. who has been seemingly dead for fifteen years.’

“This flood of lunacy was too much for my father, who had been both physically and mentally taxed almost beyond endurance. He fell asleep, slumped over his own rotting log, even as he heard the final words of Verner’s explanation. Yet the words stayed in his memory, so much so that even at his life’s end, he could still recite them to me.

“It was not, however, to be a sleepless night. The noises of the great tropical rain forest were no doubt designed to make newcomers uncomfortable, but my father was an old stager at this sort of thing. Yet the cries of the civet cats, the hooting of the fish owls, the usual noises of insect and tree frog, none of these would have been sufficient to wake Dad. Suddenly, as he recollected, about 1 a.m., Verner and old Burung shook him awake. ‘Listen,’ hissed Verner, who actually grasped him by the collar.

“At first, my father heard nothing. There were the normal tropic sounds, the night wind in the great trees, the innumerable insects, locusts and such, the faraway cry of a sleepy gibbon, and that was all. But Verner’s grip remained tight on his collar, and so—he listened. He could smell the reek of old Burung on the other side, full of garlic and menace, but the silence and the attention of the two finally got to him as well.

“Then he heard it. Over all the normal night noises, he heard the chatter of a squirrel. No one can mistake that nasty, scolding sound, and it came first from one side of the camp and then the other. The sound is the same in the Temperate Zone as it is in the tropics. But—and mind you, my father was an old tropic hand and a noted shikari—squirrels are not animals of the night. No scientist to this day has found anything but the flying squirrels active at night. And they are silent, or almost so. Also, this was deeper in pitch.

“Mixed with the chattering was a gruff, snarling bark, though that seemed to come only at intervals. Anything else he might have thought was shaken out of him by Verner. ‘That is the enemy, Captain. They have already taken one sentry. Do you now feel my precautions to be unnecessary?’

“If this were not enough, the next thing was a sort of strangled choking noise from the other side of camp. Verner darted off like a flash, and came back almost as quickly. ‘Another gone,’ he said. ‘We must move on in the morning, or they will pick us off like so many flies on a side of beef.’ My father roused himself long enough to see that two more of the crew were detailed to stand sentry go, and then he relapsed once more into exhausted slumber. But, as he lay down, he was very conscious that something out in the great black forest was a hideous danger, clear and present. He fell asleep with dread on his soul.

“My father remembered nothing until he was roughly shaken in the first light of morning. He felt, and was, filthy, as well as being still tired, confused and angry at the way Verner had somehow pirated the loyalty of his men. Then he remembered the incidents of the night. He looked over and saw the very man himself, bent over a log which he was using as a table, in deep converse with my father’s, or Rajah Brooke’s, own captain, Burung. Ignoring the native crewman who was trying to give him sustenance in the form of cold rice, my father lurched over to the duo, who were his captors as he then felt.

“Verner looked up coldly at first, then seeing who had caused the interruption, smiled. It was the same glacial smile, to be sure, a mere rictus, but the strange man actually rose from his seat, and, as if by osmosis, so did Dato Burung.

“ ‘Just the man we wanted,’ said Verner. ‘My dear chap, do come and look at this map. It purports to be the mouth of the river Lubuk Rajah. I fear you will be disappointed to learn that it was once considered by some to be the Biblical Ophir. The whole idea is, of course, beyond any reasoned belied. I, myself, when in the Mekran, found that. . . . Still, a most interesting and primitive area, geologically speaking. There is a young Dutch physician in these islands, Dubois, I believe, who is laying the ground for some splendid work on human origins. He is unknown to you? Strange how the body controls the mind, in terms of limitation, that is.’

“My father, who was, on his own admission to me given many years later on, only half awake, ignored this rambling and stared at the map which had been spread out on the rude table before him. There was indeed a river mouth and a small harbor. As an officer of the British Army, he was familiar with planes and gradients of the landscape, but here were other things on this map. There were lines, in various colors, extending around a central area. This central part appeared to be a settlement of some sort. In short, it looked like any typical village on any Southeast Asian coast, as observed and recorded by a European cartographer. Except for the odd lines, that is.

“He next heard his mentor, for so Verner had come to seem, in the same tone, but in excellent Malay, state the following: ‘Those are their lines. They have an inner and an outer defensive circuit. We shall have to somehow go between them. Do you have any suggestions?’

“ ‘Look here, Verner,’ said my father. ‘What the Hell are you planning to do?’ Nothing but fatigue, he told me, would have made him use language of this degree of coarseness.

“ ‘I had thought it would have been apparent to any child with even a board school education,’ said Verner, turning back to stare at him with those strange eyes. ‘I propose to destroy this entire village, root and branch, females, young, the whole—as our American cousins put it—shebang. All at once. And I fear that I am compelled to ask for your direct assistance in the matter.’

“My father stared at him. He was, after all, a British officer, charged with spreading our native virtues, Pax Britannica and all that it implied in those days. He was told now that he was to assist in totally obliterating some native village in a foreign colonial possession! It was fantastic! Do please remember this was long before genocide became a word in the English language.

“ ‘Dato Burung said something to Verner in Malay, but so fast and low that my father totally failed to grasp it.

“ ‘Quite so,’ said Verner, ‘but we have none and should we seek a prisoner, we stand the risk of further alerting all the others. No. I think the Tuan, captain, will have to sleep. Then, perhaps he and I may make the trail together, and once and for all see what Van Ouisthoven’s work has come to. Strange that this whole matter should have grown from a simple assessment of mining machinery.’ This last sentence was in English.

“My father was at this point, utterly out of his wits, strength, and did indeed fall silent. His next memories as he listened were those of hearing Verner say, in his clipped tones, and musingly in English, ‘There are strange rhythms in world events, yet none stranger than that of unpaid businessmen!’

“They were now on the march in the usual blazing dawn. They had wound, in the previous day’s journey, much closer to the coast than he had thought. Only a few mangroves and giant Java plums kept them from the glare of light, which now burst over the hills to the east. The day brought with it the inevitable cloud of insect horrors to replace the night’s mosquitoes. His face puffed up and his eyes swollen, my father faced Verner—the man had the same catlike neatness, despite their march—at a trail fork and demanded to know who was in charge.

“He looked at my father coolly enough. His first words cut off anything my father was impelled to say, quite short.

“ ‘Do you know, Captain, anything about general assurance companies? No? I rather thought not. Then you will have heard nothing of Messrs. Morrison, Morrison and Dodd. You will be pleased to know that a highly respectable firm, of Mincing Lance, no less, is the cause of your present discomfort.’ On receiving nothing but the blankest of looks from Dad, he continued in the same light, jocular vein, obviously amused to make some mystery of his remarks, as though, Dad said, they were not mysterious enough already.

“ ‘All I know, sir,’ interrupted my father, ‘is that you have mishandled me in the most outrageous fashion, suborned and subverted my officers and men, the employees of His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak, and finally taken us away on some dubious journey for an unnamed purpose. I insist, sir, that you tell me what—’ At this point my father fell silent, for as his voice rose, a wave of Verner’s hand had caused a cloth to be thrown over his mouth by one of the burliest of his own crewmen, and despite his struggles, he was flung back upon a nearby tree trunk in the most compelling way. ‘During all this, Verner continued to regard him in the most placid manner. When he had waited, as my father was compelled to admit, for his struggles to cease, he again waved his hand and the swaddling was removed. Meanwhile, Dad had seen old Umpa, his faithful servant, sworn to guard him with his life, quietly picking his teeth across the way!

“ ‘Captain,’ said Verner, leaning forward and staring into my father’s eyes, ‘behave yourself!’

“It was the rebuke one gives a child, and, my father was free to state, entirely successful. He sat quietly; the gag was withdrawn, and he stood in silence while listening to his interlocutor.

“ ‘In a short time, Captain,’ said the cold voice, ‘we are going to carry out a murderous assault, by stealth, upon what appears to be a peaceful village. I cannot, even at this date, take you entirely into my confidence. However, I give you a few morsels of thought to mull over. Your men, starting with the captain, are the picked officers of the Rajah Muda of Sarawak. Think, man! Would they be likely to go over to a complete stranger such as myself, a castaway of no known antecedents, without the most compelling of reasons? Your own servant, that Moro savage, is with us. Do you dare exclude yourself?’ ”

There was a silence in the club library at this, and Ffellowes, who had lit a cigar, pulled on it gently before resuming. We were all so caught up that he could have said almost anything, but, even so, this was a point most of us had missed. Why indeed had the faithful crew of his Rajah’s vessel turned coat so fast over to this wandering stranger?

‘“The answer is simple, as are indeed most answers,’ resumed Verner to my father. ‘They believe most strongly in what I am doing. Why do you not ask them?’

“ ‘Dato Burung,’ said Dad to the old Bajau skipper. ‘Why do you obey the strange Tuan? Why do you guard me as a prisoner?’ He looked into the old man’s jet eyes for the first time, seeing him not as a part of the ship, but as a man.

“ ‘Tuan,’ the old man spoke most respectfully. ‘We have heard in the islands for many moons, and some few suns, that there will come a time when we will all rule ourselves. But, Tuan, not through those who are Not-men. We go now, under this strange Tuans orders, to kill the Not-men. Only men should rule men. The Orang Blanda, even the great ones, are silly, but—you are men, of whatever strange, mad country. But—never Not-men, this is against the Law of the Prophet. These are Efreets, something not to be born. They must be killed.’ The old pirate sighed and caressed his long drooping mustaches. ‘It is quite simple, really.’

“This last piece of lunacy, as Dad told me, should have convinced any sane man that he had no chance. Instead, maddeningly, it swung him completely over to the other side. You see, he knew old Burung, and trusted him; had now for over a year served with him and his crew. Then there was Umpa, his Moro servant. He had been saved from execution by Dad’s personal intervention. And he was a Hadji, had made the Mecca pilgrimage. He now stared at my father and nodded his head. If these men believed. . . .

“My father’s response rather startled Verner in fact, if anything could startle a man as much in control of himself as that cold fish.

‘“I’m your man,’ Dad said simply, stretching out his hand. ‘What do we do next?’

“Verner stared at him for a moment, then a lean hand clasped his. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ he said, and nothing more. ‘Now—I badly need your help. The innermost grounds of this place are unknown to me. I escaped, more by luck than anything else, from what seems to be the outer perimeter. As you must have guessed, we are not too far from the place off which I was so fortunate as to have you encounter me. There is a ship in the harbor there which must at any hazard be prevented from leaving. She must in fact be destroyed. She is the Matilda Briggs, of American registry, out of Tampa in the state of Florida, I think. Her charter is under grave suspicion. A bark of some 700 tons. No ship in the world has ever carried such a cargo of future misery in the history of the human race. I repeat, she must be destroyed, at all costs.’

“ ‘Of what does this cargo consist?’ my father asked.

“ ‘Females and infants in arms, in all probability,’ was the cool answer. The man’s face was grave, however, and it was evident that he was not in jest. My father could say no more. He was now committed, on the sole basis of common trust.

“ ‘Now,’ continued Verner, in his usual icy manner, but speaking Malay. ‘Let us plan our next move,’ The six remaining crewmen moved in closer. They obviously knew something portended. The other two had been made guards, to watch both trails, north and south.

“ ‘See here,’ cried Verner, pointing to the map. ‘This is the weak point, here at this juncture of slopes. It is very plain that here is where we must strike.’ Then he said a curious thing, almost an aside, a remark baffling to my father. ‘May God defend the right. If it is the right.’ The comment was so unlike Verner’s usual detached attitude that it stuck in Dad’s memory.

“ ‘We shall be well off enough if the Dolffin does not play us false,’ continued the master of the expedition. He seemed to be talking to himself as much as anyone else. ‘She’s only 250 tons, but she carries two 12 pounders. And yet my last message may not have got through.’

“With no more remarks, Verner proceeded to dispose of the whole party. Two men, the crewmen with the best edged weapons, were sent on ahead to act as an advance guard. The two sentries were called in and made a rear party. The remaining four, including old Burung, plus my father and Verner, made up the central column. Dad loosened his revolvers in their holsters. He had been in some rough work more than once; yet he felt somehow that this business would take rank with the best of them. Verner seemed to carry no weapon at all, beyond a straight stick of some heavy wood he had cut.

“They were now on an obvious trail. It was early morning and the light was fair, despite the oppressive heat, even under the dark overhang of the giant trees. Moreover, the party was now heading inland, a bit away from the sea, in a northeasterly direction. Suddenly, as if by some species of legerdemain, they were confronted with an open area. The jungle simply stopped, and before them lay, in the morning light, a European village. Allowing for the tropics, there were fenced, brush-bordered fields, low peak-roof houses, chimneys curling with smoke, and in the middle distance a larger structure, hard to see through the morning mist, but also peak-roofed, which might have served as the headquarters of the squire, or what have you, with no trouble. Anything less likely on the Sumatran coast than this rustic view would be hard to imagine. It was as if a segment of Bavaria, or perhaps Switzerland, had been removed bodily to the tropics. To make the scene complete, off to the left was a tiny harbor, empty save for a three-masted bark at anchor. She was surrounded by boats.

“ ‘They have learned well,’ said Verner in cryptic tones. ‘Come on, you men. We should have had some opposition by now. They must be leaving and we can afford no wait. There lies the Matilda Briggs.’

“Even as he spoke, they were surrounded. My father was a man of few words at the best of times, and in this description (I may say,” said Ffellowes at this point, “I was a child of my father’s old age) he always became somewhat incoherent.

“There were many of them, all larger than man-size. Their pointed faces were drawn back from the great yellow chisel teeth, which snapped and chattered as they came on. They barked, too, like giant dogs. They had been hiding in the growth at the edge of the fields, and now they rushed in upon the small party, their clawed hands, yes, hands, clutching great crooked knived and other edged tools. The early morning air was still, no wind or even a shadow of a breath; and as my father put it, their stink, an acrid bitter reek, came on before them. It was inconceivable, but it was happening. Even the stumpy, naked tails that flailed the air behind them as they scuttered forward on their hind legs seemed to add no more unbelievability to the whole scene. It was monstrous, incredible, impossible—and it was happening!

“Then, the Nineteenth Century, as my father put it, justified itself. All of the crew, as any of Brooke’s men had to, knew how to shoot. The sharp crack of the Martinis rang out in the muggy air.

“The men could see the harbor, even as they fought. There was a stream of small boats putting out to the ship at anchor, shuttling back and forth. In between pauses in the fighting, each side drew breath, so to speak. Had they not had the advantage of firearms, my father told me, I venture to say that the small party of ten would have been overwhelmed in an instant. Even so, the courage of the creatures, or ferocity, rather, was astonishing. They removed their dead and wounded after each onslaught, and as fast as this was done, returned to the attack. Automatically, Verner took one flank and my father the other. Dato Burung, the old scoundrel, stayed with the center. Between them, somehow or other, they managed to hold the tiny line. More than once the monsters came to close quarters, but each time they were beaten back with cold steel. Verner, using only his heavy stick, disabled at least two of them personally, the stick revolving in a curious pinwheel manner, of point and side, that my father declared to be miraculous in its effect. But the attacks never ceased. There was, even though my father could not grasp the whole of the matter, an element of desperation about the way the creatures behaved, which was almost suicidal. Despite their immense strength, and the fact that their bulk much exceeded that of a man, they were clumsy with their weapons, and not only unskillful, but seemingly untrained in their usage. Save for a few barks and snarls at the outset, they were utterly silent.

“The whole affair could not have exceeded a quarter hour, but when it was over, my father felt that it had been going on for most of the morning. As suddenly as they had come, the monstrous enemy vanished, drawing off into the rice fields and the scrub which lined then. He was astonished to note the same placid harbor below and the small craft plying busily to and from the ship at anchor, so quick had been the onslaught.

“ ‘Now,’ said Verner, breaking in on his thoughts abruptly. ‘We have two objectives, Captain. Yonder largish building, which abuts on the hill slope, is surely the central situation of these inimical creatures and must have been Van Ouisthoven’s headquarters. As you can see, there are open-faced mine workings behind it, and a conduit as well. This it indeed must be, the point d’appui, of your section. I, on the other hand, will have to deal with the vessel in the harbor and attempt to ensure its total destruction. Am I clear?’

“If he was not clear, he had at least given orders; and a British officer, once he has accepted a superior, obeys orders, or did in those benighted days, before all this crapulous nonsense about morality came into the picture.” (I have got to say here that this is the only time I ever heard Ffellowes do any “bitching,” and he told me afterward that he simply was repeating what his father had said.) “The idea of a ‘section,’ which in the British Army implied the use of a company or more, was laughable. My father,” said Ffellowes, “found his first amusement at Verner’s misuse of military language somehow consoling. The man was not God, after all, and did not know everything. This was a military operation and had best be run on military lines. Of the eight ‘lower ranks’ who had begun the fight, three were incapacitated, one being in point of fact—dead; the other two, badly wounded and in no condition to move at all. Of the remainder, all had cuts and bruises, including both Umpa and old Burung, who had bound a great flap of cut skin, blood and all, back under his turban. But they could go on.

“In the upshot, my father took three men, Verner two.

“ ‘Should we not meet again, my thanks for your support,’ said Verner in his chilly manner. ‘It may comfort you to know that you have been involved in a matter far beyond the normal purlieu of the average Indian Army officer.’ A cheery farewell, indeed! In addition, ammuntion was running low. Each man had no more than twenty-five rounds for his rifle, and my father no more than that for his two revolvers. He mentioned this latter to Verner and was dismissed with a wave of the hand.

“ ‘Pray rendezvous at the harbor, my dear Ffellowes,’ was all he got in response. With that, the man was off, his grubby white suit soon vanishing around the lower end of the forest. To do the man justice, my father never thought him a coward. And he still carried only his heavy stick.

“There was nothing left to do but head for the central building, the transplanted seat of the local squirearchy, or whatever. It seemed, through the morning haze, to sit in the center of the fields, against the hill behind; and as Verner had said, there was the scar on the green slope beyond it, the red earth visible in the morning sun, which clearly showed that something or other was being worked. Indeed, there was even a glitter of twin rails. My father was in the infantry, not the engineers, but he could see a railway if it were thrust at him. Some dim meaning of the horror that Verner had hinted at now came upon him. Something monstrous and inchoate, in terms of the world at large, lay before him. The busy little boats, shuttling out to the ship, the placid harbor, the frenzied attack by the great, tool-wielding beasts, all began to fall into a dreadul pattern. The sight of those shining rails, leading from the central building to the mine on the hill, crystallized it, into a fear which must at some time haunt the dreams of every thinking person.

“When I tell you that my father was a convinced antievolutionist, who thought Darwin a moral degenerate, the matter may become clearer still. Or may not.

“A narrow path led downslope through the fields, or rather paddies, for rice seemed to be the crop grown. Dense brush of the usual rattan and other thorny plants lined it, and the party tensed themselves for an attack. But none came. In the morning heat, so hot that a mist obscured the hills in the distance, only faint chittering cries and barks came from far away. Each moment the little party of blood-stained, ragged men tensed as they rounded a curve between banks of thick scrub. The men could no longer see the harbor and sometimes could see no more than a few feet ahead. Yet the hideous things appeared to have withdrawn, at least for the time.

“Nevertheless, the trace they followed seemed to lead in the direction of the large building, and once or twice they caught a glimpse of the raw face of the hill which lay behind it, over the tops of the fringing shrubbery.

“At length, when my father estimated that they must have covered a mile or more, Umpa, his old servant, who was in the lead, held up a hand in warning. They froze, and then Umpa signaled to my father to join them. As Dad stole up and as he crouched beside the old savage, an amazing sight met his eyes.

“Before them rose a gentle slope, of clipped grass, rising for a hundred yards to the veranda of the large building they had seen in the distance. The path, which was almost a tunnel under the overhanging scrub, debouched onto this lawn, for it was nothing less, quite abruptly; and as my father looked about, he could see other openings of a similar nature all around the fringe of the brush.

“But the building itself was even more startling. Minus the broad veranda, it was nothing more than a Dutch farmhouse, of the sort one can still see in Zeeland, though much larger than most. There was the peaked roof, the stuccoed walls, with wooden beams set between the stucco as facing, and even wooden shutters on the high-arched windows. Small balconies held massive urns full of bright flowers, and near the door were set large geometric flower beds, also bright with scarlet blooms. The only thing missing was a blonde maid in starched cap and wooden shoes, chevying hens away from the stoop. A more unlikely edifice under the circumstances would be hard to envisage.

“No smoke curled from the high brick chimneys though, and there was no sign of life. My father could make nothing of this, but he had his orders, and he waved to the men to follow him. Half crouching, half running, they raced across the lawn, all of them trying to see in every direction at once, waiting for an attack from any or all sides to overwhelm them. They were a little more than halfway when the big front door opened suddenly. Every weapon went up as one, and they all halted in their tracks. Yet no one fired.

“Before them stood an old bearded gentlemen, his ruddy face and snowy hair making him look like a tropical version of Saint Nick, a conceit not much accentuated by his costume, which consisted of a rather soiled duck jacket and equally dirty sarong. Old as he obviously was, there was no mistaking his urgency. His sharp blue eyes had nothing senile about them, and he waved them forward to him with a gesture of both command and urgency, peering about as he did so in a way that made his meaning plain, as plain indeed as his silence. My father also waved the others on, and in an instant they were in the hall of the house and the heavy door was shut and bolted behind them.

“The old chap addressed my father in sharp tones. When he saw that his Dutch gutturals were unintelligible, he switched to good, though accented, English. ‘Are there no more of you? This is madness! We need at least a regiment to deal with my Folk. Did not my messages make this plain? And now they are leaving! You are too late!’ His despair would have been comic had my father not seen what he had just seen.

“ ‘Who the deuce are you, old chap,’ he asked, ‘and what on earth are you doing here?’ He wanted to know much more, such as how the old man was still alive and a few other obvious things like that.

“His question seemed to stun the old gentleman. ‘Who am I? I am Van Ouisthoven. This is my place, Kampong De Kan, my house, my laboratory. Who else should I be?’

“My father had an excellent memory. This was the name Verner had twice mentioned, that of a man ‘dead for fifteen years.’ Verner then, did not possess the key to all knowledge, despite his air of omniscience. But the old man was clutching my father’s sleeve.

“ ‘Did you not come in answer to my messages? Don’t you know what has been happening? You have been fighting—you have met the Folk, that is obvious. Why are you here, then, if not to stop them? And, God help us, why so few?’

“In a few sentences, my father told the history of the past few days. The old chap was sharp as a needle, and he listened intently.

“ ‘So—I see. Maybe a message did get through, maybe not, But, anyway, this other Englishman comes and he knows or guesses something. There was a disturbance some four days ago, and Grixchox (or something like that) would tell me nothing. So he gets away from them then; a brave man to come here-alone to face the Folk! And you find him, and he, how to put it, takes over you and your ship.’ His eyes grew thoughtful, then focused.

“ ‘Listen. Everything rests on that ship out there. It must not get out, you understand me! I have been a prisoner here for a long while. But they do not kill me. They still remember that I taught them! But they do not know all my secrets. When they begin to learn, they scare me; I get just a few things in. But them—they are clever, they made me not nervous, they make me think I am their God, and all the time—among themselves—they plot. When the day comes, they kill all my Javanese boys quickly, yes, and their women and the little ones too. Only me they save. I can still teach them something, and—they do not forget that without me, they never be! Now, come fast. We have things to get. They are all down at the boat; that is why you got here alive, my friend. Come.’

“With no more words, he led them to the interior of the house, which went way back into the hill and was far larger than it appeared from the outside. The place was beautifully kept, by the way, old pictures on the walls, the floor spotless, rattan carpets here and there, and so on.

“Finally, Van Ouisthoven stopped at what was to outward appearances a blank section of wall between two large doors. Murmuring to himself in soft tones, the old man ran his fingers over the wall, an inlaid one of varicolored native woods. Then he gave a gasp of satisfaction and pressed hard. Silently, a great panel slid aside, and there before them lay a snug closet, perhaps ten feet deep and as much high and wide. In it were various shapes, covered with heavy canvas. The old Hollander flung this aside, and from my father and the others came gasps in their turn.

“Oiled and gleaming on its tripod base, funnel hopper feed mechanism seated in place, sat the fat brass cylinder of a Gatling gun! It was the small model, invented for the use of your New York police, I believe; but there were enough of them in service in the British and Indian Army that my father was fully conversant with its operation. Behind lay a stack of boxes, wrapped in brown oilskin, which could be nothing but its ammunition. A stand of Martini rifles and more ammunition stood next to it.

“ ‘Get it out, at once,’ shouted Van Ouisthoven, ‘we get it down to the harbor and those ungrateful schlems learn something they didn’t learn yet. But hurry! That crook Yankee what skippers the Matilda Briggs, he’ll take them all off yet if we don’t hurry! They have been giving him my gold for years!’

“In a few words, my father told the others what he wanted. One man carried four boxes of ammunition for the gun. The other two took the weapon itself, one being Umpa, who carried the tripod and another box. My father slung two rifles and gave the old Dutchman another, at the same time taking a pouch of rifle cartridges. They were all laden, but not so much so that they could not make good time. The urgency of what they were doing—though, to be sure, even my father only half understood it—somehow communicated itself to all of them.

“As they left the front door, my father was amazed to see the old man take a large box of wax vestas from his jacket pocket and calmly light a tall bamboo screen just inside the door. As it took fire, Van Ouisthoven turned to my father and said sadly, ‘It must go. The whole thing. If some should survive, they must have nothing to come back to. All must go. And it is suitable. Here it started.’ There was nothing in his eyes as he spoke but grim determination, and Dad could only begin to grasp what it must have cost the old chap. But he knew’ his history, and he remembered the men who cheerfully flooded their Dutch countryside in 1587 to turn back the Prince of Parma’s Spanish Army.

“With no more words, the five of them set off down across the lawn and into another trail, this time headed for the harbor. Behind them a plume of black smoke came out the open door and began to rise in the heat of the steaming tropic mists.

“As they entered the new track, clear through the morning air, came the distant sound of a rifle shot, followed by others. With no word spoken, they all began to run, their various loads seeming light as they did. Van Ouisthoven’s age was a mystery to my father, but he kept up gamely, his white beard jutting forward and his rifle at the ready.

“The trail they were on was a goodish bit broader than the narrow trace on which they had first approached the house, beaten smooth with much use, and presenting no obstruction to movement. They kept alert, the two Europeans guarding the flanks and moving first. The rifle fire continued in the distance, and grew louder as they advanced. How long they ran would be impossible to estimate, but suddenly they came into the open and saw a panorama which stayed riveted in their memories. My father could describe it, after a fifth glass of port, as if it had been only the day before.

“The tiny bay lay before them, a broad stretch of yellow sand skirting a calm blue lagoon. Some hundreds of yards offshore lay the bark at anchor, a shabby enough craft, her brown hull paint peeling, patched sails half up but idle in the almost windless air. Between her and the shore, boats, three of them, none large, plied steadily with paddles, all heading for the ship.

“Directly in front of my father and his group, Verner and his three seamen fronted the monsters. It was a curious situation. The three seamen, including Burung, were prone, firing at intervals, in unison, and only when there was a rush. Their ammunition must have been almost exhausted. Behind them, Verner leaned on his crude cane, somehow conveying an air of casual urbanity, as if bored by the whole proceedings, his shabby garments even now appearing neat, despite their rips and tatters. My father, who disliked the man intensely, was always careful to aver, nevertheless, that he carried himself in a very gentlemanly manner at all times.

“There were bodies on the sand between Verner’s people and the Folk. Huge bodies covered with yellow-brown fur, great ivory chisel teeth fixed in death grimaces, strange hairy hands still clutching their crude knives. Behind them, in turn, were the rest of the Folk, the great males, in a circle, their horrid faces turned toward their enemies, their gruff barking notes and shriller chatter filling the air. Even as my father saw them, they were massing for another rush. In back of the ring of raging creatures were a mass of smaller brutes, many of them no larger than children. The Folk, or at least some of them, had been brought to bay, and their females and young were the cause.”

As we heard this story, those of us who knew Ffellowes saw something we had seldom seen, I mean the man was feeling! As he told the final moments of this tale, the man was really moved. He illustrated his story with jerky hand motions, and there was actual sweat on his forehead! Whatever the truth of his yarns, and I have long since suspended judgment on them, there is no doubt about one thing, in this one anyway. The guy felt it! And it was supposed to have happened to his father back long before any of us were born!

He went on. “My father wasted no time. Several crisp orders and the Gatling was set up, with Dad holding the yoke bars. Old Umpa was the ammunition loader and emptied the first box of shells into the hopper feed.

“Get down, Verner, get down flat!’ Dad bellowed. Verner, whose back was to them, fell as if struck dead. The others being prone already, a clear field of fire was possible. Dad began to turn the crank.

“The bellow of the Gatling drowned out all other noises, and my father traversed it back and forth as coldly as if he had been on a target range. Old Umpa, his dark, scarred visage expressionless, broke open the boxes and emptied cartridges into the hopper as calmly as if he were shelling nuts. The result was appalling. The great furry brutes went down like nine-pins, and as fast as those in front fell, the others behind followed. It was over in five minutes.

“My father stopped firing and the bluish smoke drifted in the faint breeze. The water at the beach edge was red, and so too were the sands. It looked like a slaughterhouse. The bulky carasses lay in their gory death like so many shot muskrats, which indeed they resembled, save in size.

“Verner rose from the sand and dusted himself off in a precise, almost mincing way. His three trusties also got up, old Burung in the lead, and walked over to us.

“ ‘You have justified my belief in you, Captain,’ he said in his usual icy tones. ‘These dangerous vermin were tolerably close to terminating a career which has not been without some small distinction. And who is this, pray tell?’

“It was a considerable pleasure for my father to introduce Van Ouisthoven to Mr. Verner, though the latter was, to be sure, as imperturbable as usual.

“ ‘I see that the reports of your death, Mynjheer, have been considerably exaggerated.’ Verner’s voice was even chiller than its normal wont. ‘You have much to answer for, sir. You have imperiled the entire human race by your meddling in matters better left to Providence.’

“His rebuke, however, went unnoticed. For even Verner had forgot the ship. Now, with a cry, the old Hollander pointed, and we all remembered her. Under easy sail, square sails set on the two foremasts, and gaff on the mizzen, the Matilda Briggs was standing out to sea. The three small boats which had been plying to and from shore drifted on the tide.

“It was a beautiful scene, really. There was the brown ship, as lovely as only a sailing vessel can be, the azure waters, the fringe of nipa and coco palms on the shore, and then the open sea beyond the harbor’s mouth. But it was horror! One thing had been made plain to my father; that the ship must not escape. And here she was, stealing out to sea, and they were helpless. The Gatling, though unparalleled at close range, was useless beyond two hundred yards, and the ship was thrice that already. Everyone stood in numb silence, and simply watched her go. And saw her end.

“Around the corner of the northern point of the bay, came the bow of a small black steamer with white upper works. And as she appeared, she began to fire, first the bow gun and then the stern, as soon as they could bear upon the target. She was not large, but on her staff she wore the blue, red and white of the navy of Holland. In silence the little crowd on the beach watched the annhilation of the Matilda Briggs. The two guns the gunboat used were not of great caliber, but the bark was a fragile thing, wood-built, old and hard-used. Her masts fell in seconds, and the fires kindled by the exploding shells were all over her in another instant. Ceaselessly, remorselessly, the warship fired. When she stopped and the echoes of her guns no longer resounded in one’s ears, there was nothing on the surface of the lagoon, nothing but a smear of oily muck, some oily smoke, a litter of wood scraps, and the dark fins of countless sharks.

“ ‘The Dolfjin has justified the Dutch naval estimates indeed those of the entire mass of all the world’s navies,’ came the didactic comment of Verner over my father’s shoulder. ‘A curious reflection on the rise of modern fleets, that one minute gunboat should prove the probable savior of the human race. She came only just in time,’ he added.

“But my father was not really listening to Verner. He was watching Van Ouisthoven instead. The old man was walking slowly down the beach to the pile of bodies where the Folk lay, the males in front of their females and young. For some reason, my father followed him as he skirted the fringe of the mass of dead creatures and advanced slowly and with head bent on the last heap at the water’s edge.

“While my father stood silent behind him, the old fellow began to pull the bodies apart in the last heap, the one nearest the water, ignoring the warm blood that stained his arms and clothing. Persistently, he tugged and hauled, shoving the great carcasses aside, until at last he was rewarded.

“Something moved under his hands, and his motions grew more excited. My father drew one of his revolvers and stood waiting, poised for any eventuality.

“A blunt-nosed head appeared from under one of the larger shapes, and into the bright sun of noon wiggled a small furry creature, no more than three feet high. In one arm it clutched something flat, but the other hand it held out to Van Ouisthoven, squeaking plaintively as it did so. The man whom it addressed stood silent, his shoulders seeming to stoop even more, if possible. Then in the same absence of sound, Van Ouisthoven held out one hand—to my father. In the same bleak silence, as if no other noise could be allowed, my father handed over the revolver he held. He saw tears pouring down Van Ouisthoven’s face. There was a shot. My father confessed he had his eyes closed at this juncture. Then a second shot.

“When Dad could bear to look again, two figures were clasped together. The old Hollander lay hugging the small shape of the last of the Folk, a bullet in his own brain. Beside them on the sand lay the object which the little thing had been holding so tightly. My father stirred it with his foot. It was a Dutch primer, brightly illustrated in color, with pictures of children in Holland at play.

“The next scene of the drama, or what have you, took place in the captain’s cabin of His Netherlandish Majesty’s ship, the Dolfjin. They were headed down the coast to pick up my father’s prau. The Dutch naval officer had ceased his questions, and the interminable voice of Verner had taken up the tale. Through a fog of fatigue blended with irritation, my father tried to follow what the man was saying. His comprehensive dislike of the fellow’s personality was palliated only by a genuine admiration of the man’s attainments and perserverance.

“ ‘It becomes quite clear, I think, to all present, that no report of this affair must reach any but the few constituted authorities, those who are cognizant to some extent, that is, of the problem. Were the facts to be made plain, I fear, some scientific rascals would be able to reproduce the late Van Ouisthoven’s work. While he had a good degree from Leyden, he was hardly, save in sheer persistence, a genius, and it is highly possible. . . .’

“Here, my father, who could not forget the old man’s death, made some ejaculation or even swore, though this was most unlike him.

“ ‘My dear Ffellowes,’ said Verner, his voice losing some of its habitual sang-froid. ‘No one is more cognizant than myself of that unfortunate man’s dilemma. He must, perforce, destroy the very thing he had created. His last moments, which I also observed, were charged with remorse and grief. Yet, what choice had he? Or, indeed, any of us? His final actions, awful though they may appear to an observer, gave him rank with the leaders of the human race. He raised Caliban from the depths and to the depths he dispatched him.’

“My father said nothing. He was too sunk in weariness and sadness to venture further. Yet—for one moment, Verner’s wiry hand had pressed his shoulder, and he felt the unspoken sympathy which the other could not express in any other way, both to the dead, and to himself. There was a silence.

“ ‘To resume,’ Verner continued, his high querulous voice cutting off any debate, ‘the facts are indeed singular. They stem, in fact, from the unpaid bills of a Manchester firm of machinery manufacturers. These people, whose name is in the highest degree inconsequential to this story, retained in turn, my employers, Messrs. Morrison, Morrison and Dodd, who act only as appraisers of various mechanical artifices and manufacturers, but also, in a subsidiary vein, as assurers of the same. Thus are great affairs put in train! The bills of the original company were not being paid! A steady and reliable account had ceased payment, without prior notice! An outrage, in the ordered community of business! What transpired? Morrison, Morrison and Dodd were called in and found themselves at sea, literally and figuratively. The account was in the great Dutch island of Sumatra. Some ten thousands of pounds sterling were owed. The Dutch, when appealed to, could give no assistance.

“ ‘The area in question was remote and feverish, on the so-called Tapanuli coast. Few ships called there. In any case, the Hollands Government could hardly prosecute a bankrupt on behalf of an English firm. They declined action. So the matter stood. But do not undervalue the persistence of the English man of business. He will follow a bad dept to the end. Hence my appearance in this matter, brought about by devious means and my own desires, let it be said.

“ ‘When the matter was first put to me, I was at first totally disinterested. It seemed to have little of consequence, and less of any noteworthy quality about it. I was resistant to the idea of my services being engaged. Yet, I made a few preliminary moves. One of these was to frequent the numerous haunts in the areas of the London docks, where information on this part of the world might be ascertained, if patience were applied.

“ ‘My patience was rewarded. Some mouthings of a dying lascar seaman in a den of the vilest description caused me to accept the commission. What the fellow said was vague and in the highest degree inconclusive. Nevertheless, it brought me out here to the East. For, in speaking of the very area of coast in which we now find ourselves, he said something of great interest.

“ ‘Do not go there,’ he choked out. ‘That is the land of Not-men. Men like you and me, we are killed on sight!’

“ ‘So, by strange methods, including enlisting persons so lofty in stature they may not be mentioned on this vessel, through a previous indebtedness to my humble person, I secured the right to go anywhere in these islands. And also to ask for the aid of such Dutch naval craft as might be available. In fact, I could tell my colleague here to sink anything he saw moving on this coast.

“ ‘And so by circuitous means,’ continued Verner, ‘I came to one Cornelius Van Ouisthoven, the original bad debtor of my employers. The man was presumed dead. Not one relative in his family had heard from him for many years. But—and a large BUT it was—he had ordered mining machinery, railway machinery, all sorts of machinery, and had not paid for it, that is, after a certain point in time.

“ ‘I found myself with a curious and unsolvable equation, involving this hitherto unknown Dutch gentleman, whose background I was at some pains to look into. Added to him there was some unpaid-for machinery, and finally, as I drew closer to the area in question, more and more rumors about a land where men were not welcome!

“ ‘So curious were all these circumstances that I felt I must investigate in person. I did so, and the results were as you know. I found myself the prisoner of these creatures the old gentleman chose to call “the Folk.”

“ ‘I managed to escape and even flee the harbor in one of the native craft whose previous owners, no doubt innocent fishermen, the Folk had slain. These vessels, which were beyond their management, were left drawn up on the beach.

“ ‘I have not been so fortunate as to secure Van Ouisthoven’s notes, but I rather fancy I can piece together the main membra.

“ ‘Briefly, the old man was a biologist, and one of extraordinary patience. He bred some native rodent, almost certainly Rhizomys sumatrensis, the local so-called, “bamboo rat” to extraordinary size. In my dissecting days at Barts, various genera of the Rodentia were exposed to me, and I well remember noting that this particular species had very well-developed paws, quite resembling hands, in fact.

“ ‘Hands come before brains, you know. This is the most recent opinion. Without grasping organs, our peculiar human brains would be worthless. So, the old recluse went on with his work. And. from what you tell me. Ffellowes, he succeeded.

“ ‘Brain is an inevitable increment of size at this rate. These vermin are quite clever enough as it is. Someone at the British Museum has deduced that there are four thousand species of rodents on the planet already. But if we are to be supplanted, let it be in due course. Even the old man agreed with that at the end.’

“And there,” said Ffellowes, extinguishing his cigar, “my story, or ‘tale’ if you like, Williams, ends. My father was returned to his own vessel, he continued his cruise through the islands, and no report of any of this exists anywhere, unless it be in some hidden archives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. That is all.”

There was a longer silence this time. It was broken by the younger member who had brought on the whole business in the first place.

“But, Brigadier, with all respect, sir, there is something vaguely familiar about all this. Who was this man, Verner, or whatever he called himself? He sounds like some creature of fiction himself.”

Ffellowes’ answer was—well—typical. He stared at the young man coldly, but not in anger.

“Possible, no doubt. Since I never read sensational literature, I fear that I am in no position to give an answer. I have nothing to go on, you understand, but my father’s unsupported word. I have always felt that sufficient!”

After a much longer silence, the brigadier was found to have gone, as silently as always. And, as usual, no one else seemed to have anything to say.

Ghost of a Crown

A fantastic tale from Brigadier Donald Ffellowes is long overdue (the last one being his Sherlockian adventure, “A Father’s Tale,” July 1974). This new story is prime Ffellowes, concerning some frightful doings in a windswept Cornish castle, and it is sure to please both fans and newcomers.

“Ghost stories are passe in some circles, I suppose,” said a new member. I didn’t know his name, but he was a younger man, of what, I guess, could be called a bookish type. He had rather thick glasses and a thin, angular face. He was drinking Madeira, which is not much in vogue with most of my acquaintances, but I didn’t hold that against him either.

It was a cold spring night, and the club library had a fire lit at one end of the long room. A group of us were sitting in one of the big bay window alcoves overlooking Fifth Avenue, and the park looked rather gloomy in the drifting mist below. Personally, I’d rather hit Omaha Beach alone than go into it at night.

“I like them myself,” said Bryce. He was something important in the Bank of New York. “I read them in my office, that is, when my secretary is busy.” This raised a mild laugh. “In fact,” he went on, unperturbed, “I have a standing order with Blackwells, in England, to send me any new ones that look good. And I even put myself on the lists of some of these jobbers that deal in science fiction, horror stories, and such things, in case some of the old ones come in that sound good.” He sipped his drink. “Actually, I’ve found that some of the best are long out of print, and damned hard to get hold of.”

Perhaps a banker was needed to break the ice, the image of bankers being so stuffy and conventional, even to those of us who knew better. It turned out that a whole lot of us read ghost stories, horror stories, wild fantasy, and so on. In no time an argument was raging over who wrote what, who wrote best (and worst!), and various schools of opinion began to get sorted out. For the library it was a pretty noisy scene. Two old gentlemen drowsing by the fire got up and left, muttering about seeing someone on the house committee, but we paid them no attention, being busy attacking H. P. Lovecraft or someone similar.

During a lull, the younger guy who had started the whole thing suddenly asked, “But why do you all enjoy these things? Is it because your lives are so dull today? Or is it that you’d really like to believe that there are things beyond our level of knowledge, powers of darkness, say, that still can reach us at times and in certain places? In other words, friends, what grabs you about all this, as the kids say now?” He was quite excited.

We all thought for a minute. Frankly, I don’t think any of us had ever given a hell of a lot of thinking time to why we enjoyed being frightened or whatever.

The young guy, whose name turned out to be Simmons, went on. “Is it the same reason children ride roller coasters? Or do you think it may be something deeper, such as a feeling that the ancients, perhaps, knew more than we do, that a deep well of lost knowledge underlies all the broomstick and Halloween nonsense? And that by reading the stuff, you both acknowledge its reality and in a subconscious way, well, pay it a sort of respect?”

Well, the argument started afresh. Some of us admitted we liked being scared (I was one), especially if we knew we could always close the book! But a few others picked up Simmons’ idea of a racial memory of the ancient past, and started telling of strange things that had happened to them or to people they knew. I noticed the really strange things were always those that had happened to someone else, while the ones that they had experienced in person sounded pretty flat.

I think almost everyone present must have had the same sequence of thoughts simultaneously. They ran: Yes, these experiences are dull and banal-sounding, and next—Ffellowes!.

And, of course, there he was. Leaning against the end bookcase in the alcove, just as if he’d been there all evening, and none of us, as usual, had even seen him come in! God knows how long he had been there, or how much he had heard. He was smoking a long thin cigar, very pale in color, and sipping brandy, which he took, incidently, in a tumbler.

We introduced him to Simmons, who had never met the brigadier before, and rather confusedly explained what we had been talking about, then more or less sat back, not quite panting, but pretty obvious.

Our English member smiled politely around at us. His pink face was bland, but the bright blue eyes were amused. Oh, he knew what we wanted, all right! If anyone in the room could lay claim to knowing the strange and the inexplicable, the man who had served the Empire all over the world, who had encountered more weird things in person than we had ever read about, was surely the man. And he knew we wanted a story. He teased us a little.

“I just had a nice brisk walk through the park. You chaps ought to get out more. You’re all simply getting fat, sitting around here.”

I ask you! A nice brisk walk, at 38 F, through Central Park at eleven at night! That was Ffellowes, all right. If a gang of muggers jumped him he probably became invisible! Yet none of us doubted he had come that way.

He turned to look at Simmons for a moment, in a reflective way, and I rang a bell for a waiter to bring us a fresh round. I had learned the signs by now.

“You postulate, Mr.—er—ah, Simmons,” he was saying when I looked back, “that we are subconsciously aware of older things, or past, well, unpleasantnesses, which once had power, and might still, under certain circumstances? May I ask if those are in any way your own beliefs or are simply put forward as the basis of a discussion?”

Simmons kind of drew back a little. “It is a theory, I believe, that some people hold: that some places, and some persons even, are influenced by the ancient past, and that certain things can allegedly be summoned by the right people, in the right place, and even at the right time. Personally, I have no views on the matter.” His face turned a little pink. “I should say,” he added, “no views that I care to give at the present time or verbally.” He retired into his glass of Madeira, leaving us a little puzzled.

“I see,” said Ffellowes, and I had the idea he did see, though what it was he saw, I was damned if I knew.

A waiter had drawn up another chair, and the brigadier sat down and took a sip of his brandy. The room was suddenly very quiet.

“Many years ago,” came the clipped English tones, “I had a friend who was Cornish. I don’t mean he lived in Cornwall; I mean rather that he was Cornwall. His family, and, yes, he had a title, had lived there since time immemorial. They owned a ruined castle, and I mean a really frightful ruin, all tumbled stones, and also a delightful manor house, called Avalon House. Goodness knows how old the castle was, but the house was 18th century, a lovely thing of aged brick, surrounded by wild gardens and overlooking the Atlantic. It could be most windswept but was very wonderful even in winter. There were great tangled hedges, which had been planted strategically, to keep off the worst of the wind, you know, but it still could howl about the eaves in a full gale. The family were not of great wealth, but not poor either. Occasional judicious marriages with nabob’s daughters and city merchants, I expect. A very normal county custom and a very normal county family, of no particular note, with a fat paragraph in Debrett’s Peerage.

“We’ll call my friend the Earl of Penruddock, which sounds right and was neither his name nor his title. He and I had known each other since childhood, having gone to what we call a “little school” together, what you fellows call a grade school, I think. We were not the closest of chums, but rang each other up at times when one or another was in London, for a lunch or a drink. He was quite a normal specimen of his class, had served in the Grenadier Guards before succeeding to the title. He hunted with the Quorn and grew prize roses. When he married, I was an usher, and his wife was equally suitable, a distant cousin with some money of her own, a jolly girl, who loved the country as he did.

“I was startled one day, therefore, to get a wire from James (that was his real given name) asking me down in a curiously urgent way, down for a visit to Avalon House. There was a sort of appeal in the wire, you know, something such as ‘your advice most necessary’ and ‘would be extremely grateful if you could see your way,’ and so on. All very peculiar from one of the most composed men I ever knew. I was doing odd jobs for the War Office already, and I found out James knew this, through what might be called the ‘old boy’s circuit.’ Still, I couldn’t imagine what had made him think of me in particular.

I arranged a leave, ten days or so, with my chief, wired James to have me met and set off by train. It was late April, and as I changed to the small local train, a sort of Rowland Emmett affair with a staff all ninety in appearance, the countryside was really lovely. We went through a number of sleepy little towns and green valleys, until in late afternoon the creaky old car attendant warned me that Tolferry was next.

“James was there to meet me and I was shocked at his appearance. He was a big blond chap, like me in his late twenties, with a Guards mustache and normally a genial grin. Now, though, he looked both pale and harassed, as if some overpowering worry, some strain of overwhelming proportions were eating at his vitals. He tried to smile as he seized my bags, but it was a poor effort. Yet there was nothing in the least false about his relief at seeing me.

“ ‘My dear man!’ he said. ‘This is really awfully good of you. I’m at my wit’s end. I had heard . . .’ and here he paused in some confusion, ‘not to put too fine a point of it, that, well—hm—you sometimes do very strange things for your department. Not that you ever say anything but . . .’ By this time we were in the car, and I quietly told him that he was not under suspicion of betraying official secrets.” Ffellowes paused and sighed. “This was long before types like Philby had appeared, thank God. One’s friends were still trustworthy.

“ ‘I came to pick you up myself so we could talk privately,’ he went on. ‘I think I’m about to go mad at times, Donald, and you know what a slow-and-solid I’ve always been. I’m afraid I’ll be up for commitment if anyone finds out what’s going on down here, and, damnit, I’m a J.P.’ ”

“I almost laughed, since madness may as well affect justices as any one else, but it was obvious that James had no humor left in him. In fact, to my not-untrained eye, he appeared on the verge of hysteria. So, I simply tried to soothe him as we slowly drove along the cliff road in his lumbering Diamler. And as the grey Atlantic foamed about the cliffs far below, the gist of his story began to emerge.

“ ‘It all began with Lionel.’ That was how he started. And I was surprised. For I had not known that his younger (and only) brother, Lord Lionel Penruddock, was even in England. And yet Lionel Penruddock had a way of making his presence known. Nor was he one to hide his light under a bushel.

“Lionel Penruddock, at this juncture, was one of the most brilliant and also most controversial members of the younger school of archaeology. He was also, in the opinion of many, a complete swine. He used women as if they were cattle, and at least one girl was known to have committed suicide over him. As a young man, he was asked to leave Italy, at roughly the same time as Aleister Crowley and his Coven, and for the same reasons, or worse. He could now no longer dig in Egypt; even the easygoing Egyptians having had enough of his treatment of native labor, which had culminated in the deaths of three experienced men whom he had run afoul of, or the reverse The verdict was ‘loss of life due to a sandstorm,’ but no one believed it. There was much more which I will not go into, and not all of it was this personal. The Foreign Office, as we knew, was beginning to take an interest in Lord Lionel, who had many strange and quite un-archaeological friends in many countries, including both Russia and Germany.

“When all this has been said, it has to be added that he was also a master of his chosen profession. He was that rare thing, a truly, allround expert. One year he was astonishing the world with the work he did at Gohklat, and its amazing revelations of the Sarmatian Migrations. The next, he discovered the Codex Panamensis, extending the Old Empire Maya hundreds of miles beyond their previously known southern boundries. And his fantastic recovery of a Gokstad type of Viking ship from the Namib Desert of Southwest Africa made even his most bitter professional rivals admit that he had genius.

“I had thought him to be in the Far East, but he was not. And as we drove, my poor friend attempted to tell me why his brother’s appearance had so upset him and his household.

“ ‘He simply popped up here, Donald, about a month ago. Had a couple of chaps, very rum ones, too, with him and asked if he could use the cliff cottage. Well, Isobel can’t stand him, you know, and if he wanted to stay, this way he was at least out of the house. I’ve never got on with him, and he makes it plain he thinks, and always has, that I’m a complete ass. But, well, he is my only brother and he’s never asked me for anything before. He’s got his own money, you know, and lots of it. Mother left him a packet and he is no fool at business. So, the long and the short of it is. . . .’

“The long and the short of it was, of course, that James, good fellow that he was, had told his brother to use the cliff cottage as long as he liked, assuming not unnaturally that Lord Lionel sought no more than a quiet vacation. This building was a comfortable house made of stone and perched on the edge of the cliffs not far from the ruined castle of the ancestral Penruddocks. They did not use it, and it was usually to let, often to artists of some means. It was a mile from Avalon House, and that was a million miles too close for my friend’s wife. Lionel’s wedding present (he did not attend at St. Margarets, Westminster, needless to say) to James and Isobel had been a Tantric image of such startling and revolting obscenity that James, noting it to be covered with jewels of undoubted worth, instantly sent it under seal to the British Museum, where no doubt it still reposes in some obscure vault. It certainly could never be exhibited. That incident may give you all some small idea of Lionel, by the bye.

“Lionel, however, reappeared at the house during breakfast the following day, making his brother and sister-in-law extremely nervous, since they had expected (and hoped) to see nothing further of him during his stay. But he was perfectly polite in his sardonic way, and he could be charming when he chose. What he wanted, it seemed, was something quite simple. He had a little time on his hands, and noting and remembering the old ruined pile of stone, the aforesaid ‘castle,’ he had come to ask his brother for permission to dig around and about it. His two ‘assistants’ would be all the help he needed. I’ll have occasion to speak further of these two.

“James could see no reason why his brother should not pursue his excavations if he wished. The castle was even further from Avalon than the cottage, which may have played some part in his decision. And the place was not much visited. It had an ill-omened name throughout the countryside, and the children did not play near it, while adults mumbled about ‘pookahs’ (the local ‘good folk’) if the site was mentioned. It crouched on a black fang of rock which thrust out into the ocean far below and was really nothing but a gigantic jumble of stones, some of them, including the foundation, of absolutely enormous size and all laid without mortar. It had not been occupied, so far as anyone could tell, since early Plantagenet times, and some said it was far older. No roads led to it, and it had escaped the attention of any serious researchers up to that point.

“Lionel left with his brother’s permission and did not reappear. He got his supplies sent in by truck, and one of the two assistants harrowed them over the hills on a cart to the cliff cottage. Lionel had a shooting brake, an early form of the American station wagon, but it was not much used, save for a rare trip to London once in a while.

“At this point, my friend stopped the car, or rather pulled off of the road to one side. His hands were actually shaking and frankly, I was just as happy he had them off the wheel. The road, as I have said, often ran very close to the cliff.

“One week after permission had been given to dig, the phenomena, for want of a better word, commenced. And they began, appropriately, at night.”

Ffellowes put his cigar out and rang the bell for another brandy. He stared at the books opposite him, but no one spoke, and the crackle of dying coals in the fireplace was quite audible. Then he went on.

“Now what I am going to tell you next is not my own information, but second-hand. Nor was it as clear and sorted out as you chaps will hear it. James was a fine fellow, but a good specimen of Anglensus inarticulatis. I had to keep making him stop and go back over things, and also to keep him from interrupting himself or simply mumbling. The fact was, he was so terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, even with me, and also so frightened (and ashamed of that) that he simply couldn’t tell a coherent story. But what I heard finally was roughly this:

“On the night I mentioned, everyone had gone to bed early, as country folk tend to. Around two in the morning, James was awakened by a sound, or rather, two sounds. The first was the sound of a horn, a brassy, echoing bawl, not the clear note of a hunting horn. As he sat up in bed, the horn fell silent, and the night was broken by a hideous screaming, as if, as he put it, ‘a thousand pigs were being killed all at once!’ Then, there was silence, except that all the dogs on the place, a half dozen setters, retrievers, and such, all started to howl in unison. These in turn fell silent, but a great wind began to sweep in from the Atlantic, and all the house shutters and doors rattled while slates were dislodged from the roof. This sudden gale lasted about fifteen minutes and then died away as suddenly as it had started.

“That was the first incident. Of course the whole household was roused at this one, maids scurrying about and squawking, grooms rushing about, gardeners in an uproar, lights blazing and general confusion. James took over with a few Guards bellows and managed to restore something like order, but it wasn’t easy. Those screams particularly, had been appalling. Isobel got the house staff in shape finally, while James led a force of the younger men out with lights and shotguns to see what they could find.

“They found nothing, I may say, either then or the next day, nothing at all. And when they got to the cliff cottage, Lionel appeared and, on being questioned, denied hearing a sound. James informed the police, and a local bobby came out, poked about and went away, managing to convey without words that the gentry should have better things to do than bother the police with utter nonsense.

“For three days nothing further occurred. That is, nothing tangible. Yet, there was a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere, very odd in March, to be sure. The servants were nervous, and one London maid gave notice and left at once. On the third night, James was roused from an uneasy sleep by more screams, but this time plainly human and emanating from his own house, from the servants’ wing in fact. Rushing to investigate, he found the butler trying to control the cook and the maids, one of whom had fainted while the others were simply hysterical. When the unconscious one was revived and the others quietened, the girl told the following story:

“She had been sewing in her bedroom when she happened to look at her window, which incidently was shut. Pressed against the glass was a face, and she almost fainted again attempting to describe it. It was very pale, she said, and the eyes were black and burning. The hair was long and black also, and so were the beard and mustache. A great weal or scar ran across the forehead. She had screamed and her friends had run in from their adjoining rooms. The first in had seen movement at the window also, though no more than that, just as the room’s occupant had fainted. Now even as they all stood in the girl’s room, they were all suddenly aware that the wind had risen again from out of the west and was roaring at full blast about the house. And James felt a strange tingling of his skin, as if, he put it, he were somehow in the center of an electric discharge. He did then not ask if the others felt anything, not wishing to add to the panic, but he did ask the butler alone the following day, and the man, an old soldier, said that he at least had not noticed it.

“The wind dropped again and they all got back to bed, all the servants now sleeping two to a room.” Ffellowes smiled at us as he continued.

“What I have omitted from my account is that the servant in question, the maid, lived on the third floor. When James examined the room both from the inside and from the lawn on the following morning, he grew very upset indeed. The house, you see, was covered with an immense and hoary canopy of ivy, and it was clear that this had been disturbed in more than one place. Some of the stems of this plant were over two inches thick, you know. Whatever the girl had seen, and she was a local lass of an unimaginative nature, it was clearly material.

“My friend and his wife decided to face the matter in the open. They called in all the staff, from outside as well as the house people, and told them they could leave, that they were not expected to face whatever was going on, and that the Penruddocks would think none the less of them if they did, though they themselves would stay. It was their home and their responsibility. And here, I may say, James interjected something that interested me greatly. ‘I felt somehow, Donald, that whatever happened, I had to stay, was compelled to stay, what?’ he told me.

“Well, he and his wife had a surprise coming, and a very pleasant one. The staff had had its own conference earlier, and they were not leaving, not even the girl who had fainted. They were all Cornish men and women, and the Penruddocks were their responsibility, as well as the other way, you see? Remember the loyalty of Cornwall to Charles the First when all else was lost? Under the sometimes stolid Saxon exterior, there burns often the ancient stubborness of the Celt.

“This display of loyalty heartened Isobel and James immensely, and Isobel even wept. Then they all got down to business. No one, when asked, thought that calling the police again would serve any purpose save to embarrass all concerned. On this they were all agreed. James issued all the shotguns and sporting rifles that he owned, and most of the men were veterans of the Great War. They arranged watches and made sure all doors and windows were locked after dark. Then they waited.

“James did one further thing. He went to call on Lord Lionel. He found him in the yard of the cliff cottage, issuing some instructions to one of his assistants, a short dark man with a most unpleasant face. As it happened, he approached without either of them seeing him at first and heard Lionel addressing the other in a foreign language, or rather, he thought, a very local one. Few in those days spoke Cornish, the original tongue of the land, which like Gaelic and Erse, was even then dying out, leaving only Welsh as the surviving British Celtic. But my friend had once had an old nanny who spoke it, and he thought he recognized it, though, as he put it to me, ‘It didn’t sound quite right, but foreign somehow.’

“When Lionel saw his brother, he seemed irritated and waved his helper away. ‘What now, noble Earl?’ he said in an unpleasant manner, ‘more of your bogles frightening the tweenies?’

“James kept his temper and simply told his brother what had happened and asked him to keep his eyes open. The response was a jeering laugh. ‘Good God, James, I think you’ve all gone round the bend up there. Faces at the window! I should think you would keep this to yourselves. Well, I’ll say nothing. I don’t want to be known as the brother of a lunatic, infected by the hysterics of a still-room slut. But don’t expect me to join your witch hunts. I have better things to do.’ And with that he had stalked into the cottage. This was the help he offered his only brother, who had never done him anything but kindness.

“James had expected little else. Lionel had been as hateful and unfriendly as a child as he was as a man. So this display was nothing new. But, as he told me about it, a thought began to stir in my own mind. All of this peculiar business had started when Lord Lionel appeared. Was there a direct connection?

“My friend went on with his tale, less disjointed now and easier to follow as he became somewhat more relaxed. It appeared that he and his household were living under siege, in a way, and a strange siege it was. The apparition of the face had not reappeared, but other things had. For one there was the smell.

“It had first been noticed in the cellars, by the butler, who was looking through the wine bins. It was a rank stench, which seemed to seep through the floor; and although they had bolted the cellar doors and stuffed rags around the cracks, it still got into the house, though far more faintly or the place would have been unlivable entirely. I smelled it myself later on, and I can assure you it was awful, a reek of graveyard mold, mixed with other, less describable things. Further, it seemed to ebb and flow, being weak at times and billowing up at others.

“The house had always kept a few sheep in a paddock, and also a small herd of dairy cows. One night, two sheep and a cow were found slaughtered, and not simply slaughtered but frightfully mangled, as if by a pack of wolves. No one had heard a sound, but the wind had been going through one of its sudden western gales, and it would have taken an artillery discharge to penetrate that. Indeed, this strange new wind, which always blew from the west when it came, was another mystery. It came at the same time or sometimes a bit beyond one of the other outrageous happenings, as if they summoned it; and though it did no direct harm, the Avalon folk were learning to dread its coming, for it always seemed to presage some appalling happening, or at least the imminent discovery of one.

“James had pulled the car back onto the road and we again resumed our slow way over the hills and gulleys. As he drove, he continued the sequence of events at what had once been the happiest of homes.

“ ‘Thank God, Isobel and I have no kids yet,” he went on. ‘We were sorry before, but, by the Eternal, we’re not now. They’d have gone off their chumps at half of what we’ve been through in the past fortnight.’ And this remark also set me thinking, though in a quite other direction to his.

“Now we were winding up the long drive to Avalon House, leaving the sea cliffs at our backs. As we pulled up to the entry, we saw two figures on the stairs. One was Isobel, whom I knew and loved, but with her face pallid and haunted-looking, and lines no woman her age should have possessed around her eyes and mouth. She seemed particularly glad to see us both.

“There was no welcome in the eyes of the other figure, and I knew who he was long before James made the introduction. I had seen Lord Lionel’s picture on many occasions, but I should have known him anywhere, I think.

“He was middle-sized, far below his brother’s blond bulk in height, and as dark and pale as James was fair and ruddy. He was by no means ugly, his long black hair framing a white clean-shaved face of considerable good looks. Nor was he a weakling, for his shoulders were immense for his stature, and his grip was that of an athlete. Yet I disliked him on sight, the instant I saw the cold jet eyes, and should have done so even had I not known of his past record.

“His voice was rather high and strident as he turned to speak to his brother. ‘You’ll have to call off those peasants of yours, James,’ he said in an arrogant way. ‘Damned if I can afford to have these taradiddles of yours mucking up a site I am working on. That fool of a gardener was staring at my men the other day for an hour while they worked. They are highly trained and I can’t afford to have them upset, d’you hear!’

“His tone was quite insufferable, and his brother flushed to the eyebrows. I was expecting trouble right then and there, but James controlled himself admirably. I expect he had had plenty of practice in his youth.

“ ‘I shall see no one bothers you,’ he answered coldly. ‘You know why the men are looking about even though you profess to believe none of it. Since you have neither help nor advice to offer, I suggest that you, in turn, stay out of my hair!’

“It was a funny little scene, or rather odd. Lionel actually took a step backward, and Isobel looked at her husband in puzzlement. I don’t think either of them had expected the icy tone or the rebuke from my gentle friend. I must say it took me by surprise as well.

“Lionel left abruptly and we went into the house. The butler, Traheal, was an old acquaintance of mine from the Penruddock townhouse, and he took me up to my room. ‘His Lordship told me why he had asked you, Captain, if I may be so bold,’ he said. ‘We badly need some help, sir.’ His voice dropped as he went on. ‘The Powers of Darkness, sir, that’s what we’re facing. In my opinion, we need a priest. If this goes on we’ll all have to leave.’

“He had been a sergeant on the Western Front and was no chicken. I bathed and got ready for dinner in a state of some perturbation.

“Dinner passed quietly, but conversation was strained, and there were long periods of silence as each of us fell into our own thoughts. We went early to bed.

“I awoke suddenly about three a.m. with a sense that something was about to happen. On impulse, I moved to the window and looked out. A red half-moon was partly hid by racing clouds, and the wind seemed to be rising. The stunted trees down toward the cliff face were bending toward the house. For some reason I felt that something was racing to the land from far, far out on the deeps.

“Then there came a sound. It seemed to come from a long way away, but it was very loud. It did have a direction, which seemed to me to be down the coast to my left. I was on the second floor, in a room facing the front drive and hence the sea. As to the sound, it was really several sounds, a medley, so to say. Overriding the rest were what sounded like the blaring of several immense trumpets, echoing and challenging, a brazen uproar. Under this ran a strange susurration of what sounded like shouting, or perhaps screams, with an occasional ringing noise, as of metal being struck. All this ran perhaps twenty seconds and then was cut off suddenly. There was a pause and I could hear the west wind gathering strength.

“Across that in turn broke out the horrible squealing cry, or cries, which James had described to me in the car as the sound of pigs being killed. But in me they produced a different reaction. I felt I was listening to something with a note of triumph, as if something foul beyond endurance, and not only foul but alien, was rejoicing and reveling in victory. It made my flesh creep, and my hands went white as I pressed the window ledge.

“This, too, was suddenly cut off, and now the wind was making all the noise needed, tearing and raging in from the ocean and buffeting the house with great fury. The clouds were blasted away from the moon, and far out at sea I could see the white spume of great waves.

“On impulse, I opened the window, which, like all in the house, had been both shut and bolted. The wind tore into the room, making the heavy drapes stand out, and actually pushed me back a bit! As it did so, I had the most extraordinary sensation. I smelt apple blossoms! And not just smelt them, I felt drenched in the scent, delicious and exhilarating. Now early April may produce this scent in southern England, but hardly at night on a sea cliff in the midst of a gale! Time seemed to stand still as I inhaled the delicious odor, and I could hear nothing over the roar of the great winds.

“Then, that too was gone, after some few minutes, perhaps ten. The wind dropped to a gentle breeze, the clouds gathered, and a light rain began to fall. I was suddenly conscious that my room door was open, that I was wearing silk pajamas and was getting awfully cold. I slammed the window shut and turned to find James standing in the doorway.

“He was wearing a dressing gown and slippers over his night clothes. And he was staring at the window and the night sky over my shoulder, a strange look of pain on his face. His face had lost any trace of its normal amiability and looked hard and set. He spoke softly, as if to himself.

“ ‘Too late, too late!’ he said. ‘Ever the cycle repeats and there is no escape.’ His voice dropped and ‘ he said two more words I could hardly catch at all. One sounded like ‘curse’ while the other might have been ‘migraine’ or something that sounded like it.

“Then his face cleared and it was as if he had seen me for the first time. ‘Well, Donald,’ he said in his normal tones, ‘what do you think of a month of things on that nature? A pretty noise to have around one’s home, eh, quite apart from all else. D’you wonder I fear for Isobel’s sanity?’

“ ‘Why don’t you leave?’ I said on impulse. ‘Or at least, send her away while you and I try to puzzle this out.’

“ ‘Because she won’t go.’ His voice was inexpressibly tired. ‘Not unless I go and I can’t! I must stay and face this thing down and I don’t know why. I just know I must. My God, what have we done to be afflicted with this?’

“I did not refer to the earlier words he had spoken, then or later. I was sure, you see, that he had no memory of them and would have been further upset by the conviction that his mind was going, and this was the last thing I wanted. We were going to need clear heads before this business was over, of that I was sure. But the words had started a train of thought in my mind, though I hardly dared voice my thoughts, even to myself. They were too monstrous and incredible.

“The next morning I spent some time in the library, a vast old place in which my host and hostess seldom entered, neither being bookworms. It had many rare volumes, collected by ancestral Penruddocks no doubt, but modern things, too, and I had no trouble finding the reference I sought. I still could not quite face what I was thinking, for if I was right, a tragedy as old as time was building up before my very eyes, and I was powerless to interfere.

“The morning passed quietly enough. None of us referred to the previous night, by common and unspoken agreement, but the faces of all of us were haggard and full of strain. The servants were very quiet, but their faces were set and grim. Their’s was loyalty indeed. I honor them.

“After lunch I asked James if he thought Lionel would mind if I strolled down to look at his site. The castle lay a mile or so south on the coast, and for reasons of my own I wished very much to see it, as well as to find out exactly how it could be reached in the most expeditious manner.

“ ‘Can’t think why he should object,’ said my host. ‘But you’ve seen what he can be like, damn him. He’s always been like that, you know. A word and blow, that’s Lionel since birth. No one but mother could stick him at all, and he even frightened her at times.’ His face hardened in thought.

“ ‘I can’t think why you shouldn’t be allowed to look at his work. It’s my own castle, when all’s said and done, not his. Go ahead. He’ll hardly be likely to treat you as he does the servants, after all. But you can be prepared for some piece of rudeness, all the same. I wish to goodness he’d take it into his head to go away! I don’t think he has a friend in this country, even among his fellow pot hunters.’

“Back in my room I put on heavy shoes, for the track to the castle was a rough one, I had been warned. I also borrowed a stout stick, of blackthorn, from the cane holder downstairs, and thus equipped, I set out.

“It was a still afternoon and fog lay in the hollows. I had excellent directions and a pocket compass as well, for there were bogs and ghylls as well as the sea cliffs, of course. But I swung somewhat inland. I did not want to be observed as I went from the cliff cottage, and the road ran pas’, the drive to Avalon and stopped there. I saw the roof of the cottage well before I got to it and was able to avoid it by going even further east until I was well past. The going was not bad, and though I saw no bogs close by, I caught glimpses of livid green in the distance, but way off my line of march. Now I angled back toward the coast, and after another half mile or so, I saw the castle in front of me. I had studied pictures of the thing in the house, but the reality was something else.

“A great point of dark rock jutted out over the sea, perhaps a hundred yards square. In the center of this, on a flat area, lay a huge pile of tumbled blocks, as black or blacker than the weathered cliff on which they rested. The foundation layers were intact, to double the height of a man, but above that, all was destroyed. The huge blocks of stone looked as if some giant had reached down and crushed the upper courses into ruin, like jackstraws turned over by a child. I do not think modern explosives could have done a more thorough job, even today. I had no idea that engines of destruction had reached such a level in medieval times, or even earlier, if some of the rumors about this place were correct.

“The area looked truly desolate, for I could see none of the white streaks that would indicate that sea birds nested there. But as I worked my way closer, down a bracken-covered slope, I began to feel uncomfortable. There was an atmosphere I did not like about this pile of time-worn rock. I could see why the locals disliked the place. I felt an air of something menacing, as if somewhere around me something old and strange were brooding over its wrongs, with silent hate emanating from every fiber of its being. I raised my glance and saw the smoke of a steamer far out on the wave-tossed horizon. Around the cliff foot, hundreds of feet below, the sea beat endlessly with a constant roar. But this view of normal things did not dispel the feelings that had been aroused by the pile of shattered stones before me. Almost, they seemed to increase them, by making the place itself even more of an intruder, something which had no habitation here in the normal world.

“I was not very close to the foundation, no more than a few feet, and suddenly, out of a hole I had not even seen in the rocks, a little to my right, a man’s head popped out, making me start back. We stared at each other for a second in silence, and then the man whisked down into the cavity from which he had emerged so silently. Now, I could hear movement below, and the dark visage of the person whom I sought appeared. Lord Lionel climbed out easily, and I now noticed the very tip of a ladder protruding from the black hole behind him. Two other men followed him, and the three stood watching me attentively for a moment.

“Lord Lionel was the first to break the chilly atmosphere, though he did not sound particularly friendly.

“ ‘Ffellowes, eh? Come to look over the dig? Didn’t know you chaps at the War Office ever got outdoors these days, let alone took an interest in archaeology.’

“Now this was a bad mistake, and if I were right in my gathering suspicion, the first the man had made. That I was attached to the War Office and not doing regular duty in my own branch of service was not all that well-known a fact. James knew it because he had asked very high up indeed. That much I had checked. But this meant that Lord Lionel had also been asking questions about me. I let none of this show in my face but looked casually about, while very conscious of his intent gaze. And I managed to get my first good look at his two helpers. They were interesting, too.

“They might have been brothers and perhaps were. Both were short massive men, very swarthy, unshaven and dirty-looking in soiled work clothes. They had high cheekbones and narrow black eyes, eyes in which I read contempt and dislike as they watched me impassively.

“Lionel must have noticed something, since he suddenly spoke harshly to them in a language I had never before heard, a tongue both lilting and harsh at the same time. I suppose it might have been Cornish, as James thought, but these two looked like nothing I had ever seen in Cornwall, or anywhere in the British Isles, for that matter.

“Both men ducked back down the ladder, and as they vanished into the depths, something stirred in my memory. Men like these and piles of black stones somehow went together, as if belonging! Now, what was that memory?

‘“Not much to see, I’m afraid, Ffellowes. I’m still trying to clear a lower passage. There have been a number of rock falls. It’s a bad place and only for experts. Can’t ask you down, I fear, since the risk is mine should you happen to be hurt.’ Under this show of concern lay an almost open sneer. I was not to be allowed down, whatever the pretext, that was plain.

“ ‘Shouldn’t dream of troubling you,’ I answered, keeping my face as blank as I could. ‘I’m sure you and these chaps of yours know how to work in safety. Never cared for scrambling about in holes, myself.’ I dared not be too much the silly ass, but I could hint at it. ‘What was that jabber you were giving them? Some Wog or Gyppo language?’

“His dark eyes narrowed as he studied me. I hoped I had not overdone the Pukka Sahib image. The wind soughed and wailed around us as he answered slowly.

“ ‘Yes, it’s an Arab dialect. My helpers were trained in the field by my own methods, in the Near East. This way they don’t gossip. I don’t like gossip, Ffellowes, or prying either.’ He took a step closer to me. ‘Now, my dear captain, I have work to do. I suggest you finish your Cook’s tour elsewhere. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘you can go back and hold my brother’s hand. He seems to need it, now that he’s taken to believing in bogey men.’ The malice was naked and so was something else. James had told me that his brother held him in contempt. But this was not contempt that I saw, but pure hatred, a very different thing.

‘“I say, that’s a bit raw,’ I mumbled. ‘Still, if you have things to do, I’ll push on.’ What I should have liked to do was push in his nasty face, or have a good stab at it. I had determined not to lose my control, and I turned away still mumbling inaudibly.

“I thought that was to be the end of the encounter, but I was wrong. I had underestimated the depths of Lord Lionel’s anger. His temper, always evil under the surface, now flared up. I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder, and I was spun around to find him glaring at me from a foot away, his face bonewhite with passion.

‘“You can tell my brother to stay out of my hair!’ he hissed at me, his voice actually shaking. ‘Tell him to stay away from here and keep his damned house pets out of my business, too, or, by heaven, I’ll give him something to really moan about! Now, get out!’

“This was too much, even for my role of chartered idiot. I chopped his hand aside with the edge of mine, a blow that really hurt, and had the satisfaction of seeing him wince. ‘I think, sir,’ I said coldly, ‘that you have been in too many primitive places recently. You forget yourself. This is England, you know.’

“I meant to infuriate him further, in the hope of learning more, but I was only partly successful. His face contorted in fresh rage, but suddenly changed. Over it instead, stole a most malignant and evil smile.

“ ‘Yes,’ he said in quiet tones. ‘Now how could I have forgot that? We are in Merry Old England.’ And he began to laugh! Still chuckling, he stalked over to the gap in his ruin and lowered himself down, without giving me the benefit of another glance.

“I walked back toward the house over the main track, having no reason to conceal myself any longer. As I walked I tried to puzzle out all the mixed and convoluted things and impressions that swam about my mind. One of them was the realization that whatever tongue his lordship had used to his men, it was nothing out of the Near East. I knew something of those languages even as a young man, and the inflections were totally different. So, why had he lied? Because the real truth would have meant something, would have given some clue as to what he was doing? I concentrated. James thought the language to be Cornish or something like it. It was not Gaelic or even Welsh. I did not speak either, but had heard both often enough. Could it be the soft Celtic of Ireland (though that was a rare speech even back then). No, the consonants were far too harsh and clipped, and those two stunted giants looked like no Sons of Erin in my experience. The answer lay elsewhere, and as I thought, the vision of those two and the great black stones came unbidden to my mind, and with the vision came the solution. There was another Gaelic, or rather Celtic tongue still in use in Europe! I saw in my mind the great menhirs and dolmens of Brittany, the stones of mist-shrouded Carnac, lost in antiquity, about which dark legends still circulated among the peasants. Those two were Bretons!

“Now why should the employment of Bretons be a secret? I racked my brain as I strode along past the cliff cottage, paying the place no heed, since I knew it to be empty. I think I later paid for this piece of egregrious stupidity, since I might possibly have had a very useful look around. But, meanwhile, I was turning over in my mind what I knew of Brittany, ancient and modern, which was damned little, actually. I knew, and don’t ask me why, that they had a dismal separatist movement from France and even a ‘national anthem,’ whose name sounded like ‘Bro Goz Ma Zadou.’ This meant nothing. I surmised that it was the past of Brittany, the last Celtic stronghold on the continent, that was important. And of that I knew little. No one seemed to know who had built Carnac. The whole peninsula had always been a hotbed of legends and folktales, even before medieval times. Among other things, King John, Richard the ‘Lion Heart’s most unpleasant brother, had murdered his nephew, Duke Arthur of Brittany, who had a better claim to the Plantagenet throne than he. And what else? Something was just out of reach in my mind! Legends, cults, Carnac, Prince Arthur (why that name?), Celtic mysticism, black stones, west winds, apples, all of this mishmash meant something, if only I could think of what!

“By this time, I was at the house and I hurried in to tell James what I had seen. We sat in the old drawing room, and I related my afternoon to both of them. Isobel, after pouring tea, told me that none of it, save for one thing, conveyed anything much to her.

“ ‘You’ve seen what he’s like, Donald,’ she said. ‘You have no idea, really, what poor James has had to put up with, even going back to childhood. Many of the stories are family secrets. No, James, I simply won’t be silent any longer, not to Donald. Why was he asked here, if not to help?’ James subsided into a chair, muttering ‘dirty linen’ into his tea cup.

“ ‘I think you are quite correct,’ she went on to me, ‘about this hatred, I mean. Yes, he has pretended to find James silly and stupid, but I have seen him look at James when he thought no one else was watching. He hates you, darling, and always has.’ She turned back to me, her tired face still glowing with love.

“ ‘When they were still little, Donald, still in the nursery, Lionel tried to kill James. They are only two years apart, apart in age. He packed a fruit cake, or rather James’ portion, with ground glass! I don’t think he could have been eight years old!’

“My friend looked at me after she had spoken. ‘I’m afraid it’s true, you know. Had a good old nanny, who didn’t take to Lionel, and she saw him do it. Told dad, and we were sent off to separate schools. If it hadn’t been for an open scandal and mother’s weeping, I think it might have come out in the open. As it was, dad made him see some alienist or something: they were just coming in then. I’ve seen the medical reports. Chap said he could do nothing with Lionel, nothing at all, and would be afraid to try. Fact is, I’ve never felt quite safe while he was nearby. Sounds silly, but Isobel and I have no kids, which makes him heir. Rotten thing to suspect your own brother, but he’s been such an all-round bloody piece of work. . . .’ His voice trailed off.

“ ‘That’s the oldest of all crimes,’ I said in a tight voice, ‘murder for a throne or title. If you get away with it, it’s called rebellion. One thing is clear to me, and that is that all your present troubles have started since your brother came on the scene. To my knowledge, and I’d like this confirmed, there has never been any trouble of any even vaguely supernatural nature in this house, or around it, until recently?’

“Isobel looked at James. After all, it was his house. He shook his head, finally. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can think of nothing. I expect I would have heard, too. I used to be awfully put down about it as a kid at school, come to think of it. All the others had places with Anne Boleyn or someone walking, and Cavaliers on the battlements. When they asked me, I had nothing to tell them, not even a monk or headless serf, or whatever. No, Donald, there has never been anything of the kind here.’

“I could only take refuge in silence. Poor devil, if my slowly coalescing ideas were correct, he was about to get an overabundance of all the things he had treated so lightly!

“We dined early. There was little conversation, and that was of a nature which omitted any discussion of what we were awaiting. Traheal came up the stairs with me, and I knew that, on his part, it was no accident. ‘Well, sir,’ he said hoarsely, ‘have you got some idea now of what we are going through?’

“I stared at him, not out of any class consciousness, I assure you, but simply because my thoughts were elsewhere. Then, I realized that a good man was asking for information.

“ ‘Yes,’ I answered bluntly. ‘I think the whole thing centers around his lordship’s brother. What do you think?’

“The blaze of anger on his face surprised me, though it should not have done so had I thought. After all, Lord Lionel had grown up in these parts.

“ ‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘Just what I’ve been telling the rest of them. There’s black evil, and he’s the man to bring it. Sir, when he was even a little child, he was wrong. We all knew this! The Earl, God bless him, never could see what his brother was like . . . but we could! My father was of the opinion that he was mad! All the servants used to watch him when he was young, so that he was never unobserved. We all felt that he would do his lordship an evil. And he tried, sir.’ He looked at me in a questioning way, as if debating what else he could tell me.

“ ‘I know about the ground glass,’ I said in answer to his look. ‘I shall do my utmost to protect the Earl and Countess, yes, and you all as well. But I may need help. If I am right, there is a most ancient malignancy gathering around this house, yes, and one which seems to be gaining strength.’ Looking back from this distant point in time, it seems the maddest conversation ever held between a guest at an English country house and its dignified butler! But, you know, after what we had seen it seemed quite normal, in the context.

“I continued: ‘By the way, Traheal, did you know the two men Lord Lionel employs were Bretons? I am told that their language is very close to the original Cornish. And I think Lord Lionel doesn’t want this known. Do you make anything of that?’

“He paused in the act of opening my door, his face thoughtful. ‘We used, back in the old smuggling days, sir, to have a lot to do with the Bretons. Long before my time of course, but I’ve heard many tales from the older folk. There was a lot of intermarriage among the sailors, back in Napoleon’s day and earlier, my granny used to say. Most of us have some Breton blood in us, if you can believe the stories. And they do say, too, that a Cornishman could understand them, and vice versa, those of us who used the old talk, mind you. But there’s none of them left now that speaks it any longer.’ He paused, still thinking, or rather, trying to recall some thought. ‘I don’t know, Captain, that we have much in common any longer. This is King Arthur’s land, you know, sir, and I do seem to remember somewhere that the Bretons lay some claim to him, too, some old stories about him living there or something. Maybe that’s how the languages got to be the same? They tell us now, Captain, that there was no such King and that the whole thing was a made-up tale of some old writer.’ He laughed, his rosy countryman’s face clearing. ‘You’ll never get a Cornish man or woman to believe that, now. Why, to us the King over there in London, and a fine man he is, meaning no disrespect, I assure you, he’s a new chum compared to our king.’ His face sobered as he turned to go back downstairs. ‘Those two rogues may be Bretons, though I’d hate to claim kinship to such ill-looking scoundrels. But I’ll leave you with this, Captain. If those two are Lord Lionel’s men, then they’re also black evil. None but the worst would willingly do his bidding!’

“He left me with a good deal more than he thought to mull over. A missing piece had dropped onto my puzzle table, though one I could not yet fully assess. The Pendragon! The great king of legend, and the savior of what was last and best in Celtic Britain! Arthur, the most towering shape in the mist of legend, the greatest of folk heroes in Western Europe! Was he a last Roman, as some have postulated, an inspired commander of heavy cavalry? One theory I had read made him Dux Brittanorum, the British war leader left behind by the last Roman garrison to save what vestige of civilization he could from the barbarism reaching out of the north and west. Another school thought him to be Comes Littorae Saxoni, the Count of the Saxon Shore, and thus the guardian of the east coast against the migrating hordes from the dark German forests, pagans and sacrificers to the blood-stained idols of the vast Hercynian forest.

“All accounts agree on a few points, though many of them have become cause for laughter in our present state of so-called enlightenment. Arthur was a Christian, and he fought the sorcery of his enemies with spiritual powers of his own. He was aided by at least one white wizard, usually called Merlin, but sometimes Blaize, or other names. Discounting the Round Table, Galahad, the Sword in the Stone, and other such trimmings, one was left with a series of desperate battles, against diverse foes, such as that of Mount Badon, and final defeat at the hands of. . . .!

“I opened my window and leaned against the shutter, staring out into the swirling mist. Could this be the solution to my riddle? If it was, Avalon House was a nexus, a focal point for an historic crime, a crime of the immemorial and incredibly antique past. Was it now in the process of re-creation? What was Lord Lionel Penruddock, a man of the foulest antecedents, with a limitless potential for evil, doing in that slag heap without a name out there on the cliff? What was he digging for?

“I stared out into the dark, my eyes trying to pierce the wraiths of mist and fog, down to the nameless castle on the rock promontory of that ocean-bound crag. The night was silent, save for the distant murmur of the Atlantic surges against the Cornish shore. Yet I felt, somehow, that far to the west something was stirring, out beyond human sight or the reach of human kind at all. I looked absently at my watch. It was eleven thirty. More time had gone on than I had realized, as I had stood there trying to see light where there was none to see, trying to read sense into a matter so strange that a mention of it in most places would have been grounds for accusations of insanity! It was well for us that no one at Avalon House had returned a second time for help from the police! This battle, for that was how I saw it, had to be fought by us alone, and our antagonist was a man with strange weapons at his command. If I were right, they might be weapons against which we would find ourselves powerless.

“I was about to close and bar the windows when I heard the sound in the night. Far off, to the south, I felt sure, echoing through the mist, came the high, shrill whinnying of a horse. Now, all the horses, the some half-dozen there were, belonging to the estate, were stabled and shut in tight at sundown. So too, with the sheep and cattle. And nothing lay to the south but miles of empty cliff and moor, with no habitations or roads. Save for the cliff cottage.

“And the castle, if that were truly ever a habitation. And anything that issued from that gloomy pile meant this house and all in it no good. Whatever was coming, and I knew in my bones that it was coming, was advancing from there. I knew this also, just as I knew that midnight was fast approaching.

“Then I heard it again, a high-pitched neighing, which got all through my bones, nearer that last time and coming fast. That nickering cry was wrong in some way I could not define. No normal horse would have made such a sound, nor indeed, could have done so.

“At the same time the mist began to swirl and part. It was a cloudy night, and the stars and moon were still hidden. But the ground mist was being shredded, and I heard, far off, the first faint moan of a wind, off in the uttermost west. And almost, so faint I could hardly catch the tremor of a scent in my nostrils, I seemed to smell the delicate perfume of apples. It seemed to give me hope, though why I did not know, and it also spurred me to action.

“I hurled myself out the door and raced down the corridor toward James’ and Isohel’s bedroom. They had to be roused at once.

“The door was opening as I arrived, and James stood there, fully clothed, with his wife behind him. Like myself, they had not undressed, but on his feet he now wore boots, instead of the evening slippers he had worn with his dinner clothes.

“Her face was pale and frightened, though she was striving hard to conceal it. But his? The quiet, placid face of the country squire that I knew was utterly gone. He was a big man, and suddenly a most formidable one as well. His face was set like flint, in a brooding but awesome expression, one I had never seen before and I expect no one else had either. He looked steady as a rock and just as hard to move, but it was more than that. Above all, the impression was regal, in the old sense of the word, that of a great ruler and master of men, one who controlled destiny and was never its plaything.

“And as I stared transfixed at this new and mighty visage, there came from outside in the night the sound of the rising wind and over it the neighing of whatever it was out there masquerading as a horse!

“James turned and gently, without a word, pushed his wife back into the room. I caught one glimpse of her white face before the door closed. Then he turned back to me and stared hard at me for a second, as if in assessment.

“ ‘He has loosed the Hunter upon us,’ he said. ‘Do you dare face him, and perhaps worse?’ His voice was as strange as his expression had been to me, being deep and sonorous, with each word carefully chosen, as if he were speaking a language which was somehow not his, but a recently acquired tongue.

“I could only nod, for somehow speech seemed out of place, or else my tongue simply would not function in my dry mouth.

“He seemed to understand and laid on hand on my shoulder. ‘Then come,’ he said, ‘Follow and ask no questions for there is no longer time. We must go and face this thing at its lair. What has been summoned must be laid to rest or it will come again and that must not be.’

“In silence, I followed him down the dark stairs and into the great silent hall. The clouds had parted outside, and through a mullioned window came just enough fitful moonlight to show us the way. The moaning of the wind had risen once more to gale force, but over it we could hear the neighing bray of whatever ranged the night, and ever and anon the sound of its hooves, beating a sinister tattoo as they galloped to and fro in the dark and storm.

“A patch of moonlight rested on one wall, and one could see the glimmer as it lighted on the various ancestral weapons which hung there. They ranged from trophies of foreign wars in the East, to mementos of Cavalier and Roundhead, and even older things, Lochaber axes, Scottish broadswords and claymores, with naval cutlasses of various times interwoven in the pattern.

“James moved to the wall and studied it for a moment, then reached up and unhooked a great Scottish broadsword, a thing most men would have needed two hands to swing, though he held it lightly enough in one.

“He turned to me, his face as grave as before and said, very simply, ‘Choose.’

“As I hesitated, he added in the same slow, stately way, ‘We must use fire or steel. The newer things will not help against that which walks the night. The servants and the woman sleep. They cannot face what we must. Choose!”

“This last was in a tone I could not resist. Nor did the mention of his beloved wife as ‘the woman’ rouse me to rebellion. Someone else had taken over command, and my business was to obey.

“I stepped over and peered up at the great wall. My hand went out to a blade as if led, and d’you know, the thing I had grasped almost seemed to leap into my hand. The minute I felt the hilt, I knew what I had, for I had handled the weapon in admiration a day or so earlier. It was a long, straight cut-and-thrust, with a basket hilt, made for some remote Elizabethan ancestor by the great Andrea Ferrara himself. I had been handy enough with the saber at Woolwich and later at Oxford. I could have chosen nothing better.

“ ‘A good choice,’ rang out the deep voice at my side. ‘A noble sword indeed, though lighter than is my use to wield. Now, let us on to the contest. We face the first challenge and perhaps not the lightest!’

“Grasping the great weapon in his right hand, he strode down the hall and, freeing the bolts, flung open the great oak doors to the storm of wind and to whatever it was I knew waited for us in the night. Out beyond the portico we went, with me three paces behind.

“Facing the darkness, he called above the storm in a voice like rollthunder. ‘Come and do battle, Hunter! You have no place here now! You and your kind were banished to the hills and under them, far back in the lost ages. You have no power over men of trust. I speak for Christ and defy you and all your pack. No longer should you roam the land and bring fear to the lost and the helpless in the dark! Come out, I command, on that horse I overthrew once and shall again!’

“And over the storm and the moaning winds, came an answer! Out of the night came a wild cry, a long rising sound, which pierced the noise of the wind as if it were not there. I could distinguish no words, but the tone was enough. In it, I heard defiance and anger, and something else, a kind of emptiness, as if whatever spoke were wracked with lost hopes and challenged us from bleak despair as well as dreadful hate.

“The moon had vanished for a second or two behind a cloud, and we stood in the dark, facing nothingness. In front of us and quite close, I heard the sound of a hoof, then another. Something was advancing on us and we were sightless!

“The Earl stood, his sword in the guard position, solid as one of his own great gnarled oaks. I raised my own blade, though I could see no target. I felt a sudden chill, which seemed to cut through me like a knife. Then the clouds parted and the pale moon burst through and gave us light. At the same time, the gale from the west seemed to stiffen, and I caught again the sweet scent of apples.

“In front of us, no more than ten yards off, was the outline of a great horse. Its color was a white, an opaque, shifting shade, so that it seerped almost without color at all. Its eyes were the same shade and showed no glint or light. And on its back, saddleless, it bore a rider.

“He was as dark as the horse was light, and seemed clothed in furs of a tight fit, which caught the fitful moonlight and trapped it, giving nothing back. His head was bare, with shaggy hair, and rising from it were two forked projections, as if somehow he had made a cap from the upper cranium of some strange deer. I could not see his face at all, but the flicker of red points came from the place where his eyes should have been. In one hand he held a great barbed spear, and this he now raised to shoulder height.

“I sprang forward as fast as I could for I knew I was not the target, but I was too slow for the cast.

“The feeling of cold sharpened suddenly and terribly, and something long and lightless flew toward my companion’s breast. His long sword flashed in the moon gleam, and there was a crash, as of riven metal. A nimbus of flame curved about his great blade and was gone.

“The light died as the racing clouds once more covered the white moon. Out of the pitch-black air in front of us came that wild cry again, despairing and lost now, its defiance gone, leaving only loneliness and utter wildness.

“ ‘Begone!’ shouted James in that great roar. ‘Seek the under hills and lie quiet! On the earth your time is done and your power gone from the world. I command you, get hence and never return!’ He held the great sword in both hands with the cross guard facing out.

“The moon came through the clouds again. Before us was . . . emptiness! The twin shapes of the strange steed and its night-gaunt of a rider had vanished as if they had never been. And around us the mighty winds raged as if in salute, roaring in bursts that sounded like my friend’s new voice when he gave commands.

“ ‘Come,’ said James, his call sounding clear over the storm. ‘We need mounts, so to the stables. The Hunter has lost his power, save against the frightened, and he and his were put down long ago. But this raising of the long-gone is an evil thing and perhaps not the worst. We must go and seek out our enemy in his lair. We must ride to the Caer Dhub, the Fortress of the Dark, and our time is short!’

“I had no argument, indeed I was eager to obey. I was not master here, and I had no purpose of my own any longer, except to serve as best I could. But if I were no more than a pawn, at least I was a willing one, and I raced behind James at my best speed.

“The horses were wild with excitement when we reached the stables, plunging and rearing in their stalls. But James gentled two down in a most marvelous manner, speaking to them in some language I had never heard before. Where he had learned it, I had no idea. But this new James was not the man I knew, and strange tongues were a part of this whole nightmare.

“We saddled up quickly and in a few minutes had ridden out into the full force of the wind. We took the track which led south to the cottage on the cliff, our way marked out by the intermittent moonlight. James galloped in front, an extraordinary figure in his black dinner clothes with trousers stuffed into hunting boots. I wished that I had had time to get some, but my patent leathers were better on horseback than they would have been to walk in. Like him, I carried my sword across the saddle.

“We thundered on through the night, often in sight of the sea, which was beaten to a fury by the wild and howling wind. The gale actually seemed to be still rising, and had we wished to speak, it would have been quite impossible through its shrieking and raging. It tore at us, too, so that we had to crouch over the horses’ necks, and they, poor beasts, had to angle themselves against it. But they bore us nobly and never faltered.

“Now on our right I glimpsed a single light. It was one of the windows of the cottage, gleaming through the dark. But our way did not lie there, I sensed, and James never drew rein. Our path was south, south to the grim ruin on the headland, which James had called the Fortress of the Dark. It was from this that all the portents had come, the threats and the wickednesses had been unleashed. It was in that nighted wreckage that some foul sorcery had been revived, and it was there that we must seek its sources, yes, and destroy them.

“I had lost my sense of direction by now, but James cantered on through the bracken and heath, and I simply followed him. Suddenly he put up his left hand, at the same time checking his mount. He gestured to me to draw rein beside him. When I came up, he leaned so close that his mouth was almost on my ear.

“ ‘We are very close now,’ he shouted over the wind’s howl. ‘We must leave the horses and go to battle on foot. They are of no use to us and they have carried us bravely. We shall let them go and they will take no hurt. Dismount now and follow.’

“I did as he bade and gave my beast a pat on the flank, dismissing it. Both of them cantered back the way we had come, and we were left alone in the night and the storm. In silence we advanced, with me once more backing James. We angled into a gentle downward slope, and now the bellowing of the sea grew louder in front of us as we approached the coast. It had not yet rained through all this storm of wind, but now my face grew damp and I tasted salt. The spray of the Atlantic was being flung hundreds of feet up through the sheer force of the driven air.

“The moon broke through another cloud, and there, downslope, was the ancient fortalice, exposed in all its shattered and titanic wreckage before us. Nor was this all. Two squat shapes were crouched not a hundred feet away, staring in our direction as if awaiting us. As we stood mutually exposed, they rose to their feet and, with wild cries in their harsh speech, rushed at us. One carried a great ax, like a woodsman’s but larger, while the other had a stranger weapon, a thing like a great rounded hammer, large enough to need the strength of both arms to wield. Lord Lionel might have expected no danger, but he had, nonetheless, left his two guardians.

“It was over in seconds. James took the one on the right with a great sweeping blow, a blow which shore through his ax shaft like paper and drove deep into the fellow’s chest. He crumpled up like a felled tree.

“The other swung his huge maul, or hammer, at my head, a swing that would have spattered my brains to pulp had it landed. I ducked under it, though I felt the air move in my hair, and extending my body, left hand on the ground, drove the Ferrara point straight through his heart. He stood for one instant, his face contorted, then fell transfixed to lie by his mate. I wrenched loose the blade and stood up. James was facing me, a look of stern approval on his face. ‘A good stroke,’ he said briefly. ‘Now follow, once more. The last test is to come and it will be far more dangerous than what has gone before. Be silent and keep watch, especially to the rear. We go into the dark, the true dark now, to speak with the master of these creatures.’

“We were both damp with our exertions and the wind-driven spray, up-welling from far below. But I felt no sensation of cold as I walked behind James in the direction of the fortress. Instead, I felt, despite the storm and the bleak surroundings, a sense of high resolve, almost of exhilaration. I felt myself part of a crusade, and yet certainly a stranger one never existed, consisting of two Englishmen in dinner clothes, armed with swords unused for many centuries!

“We crossed the bare wet rock around the site, and James headed unerringly for the spot where I had seen the cavity and its protruding ladder the previous day.

“In the flashes of moonlight we had no trouble picking our way over the rubble and soon the black cavity lay before us. The ladder was still in place.

“ ‘Listen,’ said my friend, pausing above the opening, one hand uplifted. Faintly, above the great noise of the wind and the raging sea, I seemed to hear a far-off throbbing, a beating pulse, as if from some mighty drum deep in the earth. I had no need to ask whence it came.

“ ‘He is there. Still he works his crimes, still conspires with things that never see the light of day. So be it. He has found that which should not have been disturbed until the end of time. And from it he gains power even now. If we wait longer, matters will grow worse.’

“We two stood now in the lee of a broken wall, whose vast slabs cut off some of the force of the gale. His face was very grave, as he seemed to muse on things beyond my comprehension, leaning on the pommel of that giant sword.

“Then he looked up at me, strangely as if in doubt, not of me, I thought, but of something else, perhaps even of himself. ‘We must go down. But my strength is less in the shadows under the earth, and his will be more. Let us go now, before I weaken further, from doubt and lack of faith. I will go first. Remember, have an eye to the rear and to the sides!’

“With no more ado he seized the first rungs of the ladder and began to go down. I waited and, when I could no longer see his hands, began my own descent, gripping the sword with two fingers and using the rest to cling to the ladder.

“The ladder was a long one, perhaps twenty feet. When my shoes touched rock, I was glad to stand up and look about. James was next to me, peering down the long tunnel in which we now stood. For there was light. Ten paces off, set in a niche in the wall of undressed stone, a kerosene lantern burnt with a dim glow. It was as if the light were changed down here in some way, for the color was odd, a pale light, like marsh fire in a summer bog. Far down the long shallow slope of the tunnel, another spot of similar hue shone in the distance.

“Remembering his warnings, I turned and looked back the other way. Here, the rock floor leveled off, as if we stood at the top of a slope; but here were no lights. Yet I had the feeling that the tunnel did not end near us at all but ran on for unguessable distances through the heart of the hills.

“Raising a finger to his lips, James led off down the gentle slope, his huge blade at the ready. I came behind in equal silence, listening as hard as I was able. Down here, out of the sound of the storm, the silence seemed muffled, but also echoing, so that the faint scuff of our feet rang abnormally loud in my ears. The faint throbbing beat we had heard on the surface had fallen silent as we had come down the ladder, but now it resumed again, louder and louder as we progressed. Then it halted once more, and the silence closed in upon us. We were now some few paces past the second lantern, still descending, and in the remote distance was the glowworm flicker of yet another light.

“All at once, on our left, there loomed up the opening of a huge passage, whose arch was far larger than the one we trod. We listened tensely, but I could hear nothing at first except the faint sound of dripping water some way off in the distance. Concentrating hard, I began to hear something else, or thought that I did. It was a sliding sound, as if something like wet hose were being dragged over a rock. It stopped, and I could only hear the drip of moisture again, but from James’ taut face I fancied I had not been mistaken.

“ ‘If we go on,’ he whispered, ‘we will have things behind us as well as before. Be twice vigilant.’ He turned and moved off again, with me still in his wake.

“As we reached the third of the lights, a distance I estimated of some hundred of yards, I began to be conscious of yet another sound. This was a faint roaring, more of a vibration to be felt, rather than something caught by one’s ears. It was not loud, but constant, as if it were coming through the rocks all around us, and it, too, seemed to emanate from in front, the direction in which we were advancing. James heard it also and turned to face me.

“ ‘We are almost under the sea face,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘You hear the ocean as it strikes the cliff. There may be a chance still. I had hoped for this.’

“What he hoped for escaped me. This whole episode had taken on the quality of a waking dream in which I felt myself a spectator as well as an actor. I could do nothing except follow and await events, in some world of which I knew nothing, except that it, and James as well, had taken over control of my actions, shaping them to suit themselves.

“We had passed the last light long since, but now ahead of us we saw something new. The tunnel took a sharp bend to the right, and the rock floor no longer sloped at all. From around this bend came a lurid glare, far stronger than the lantern gleam. As we halted to watch, the throbbing boom we had first heard burst out once more, but this time far closer. If it were not some sort of drum, then I had never heard one.

“James motioned me on and led the way cautiously. As we approached, I saw the mouth of still another tunnel opening on our left, just before the bend. It had been hidden from us as we approached by a shallow buttress or stone, which thrust from the tunnel wall. We listened as before, but could hear nothing. But from its mouth came a vile reek, a stench of decay which turned the stomach. It was the awful smell which had so sickened the people at the Avalon House, and I felt sure this was its origin. We moved slowly past the hole and more slowly still to the turn of the passage. Reaching this, we halted and peered around it. I dropped to one knee, with James over me so that we offered as little of a target as possible to any observer.

“What we saw was this: we were staring into a cave or vault, which arched to a high point in the center. It was roughly oval in shape, but appeared to be man-made rather than natural, for its proportions seemed shaped and fairly symmetrical, if rough. It was perhaps three hundred feet in circumference.

“Around the walls were dark alcoves at regular intervals, and between the alcoves rough stone benches had been hacked out of the wall material itself. In the center was a great rectangular block of smooth black stone, unadorned but polished to a glossy sheen, from which the evil light glanced back and glimmered on the walls about. The light itself came from a fire which had been lit just in front of the block itself and on our side. It seemed to be of ordinary logs, but the flame burned with a greenish glow and not the orange of a normal blaze. Smoke swirled about the place, but most of it was carried upward as if by some draught, and I thought there must be a chimney of some sort up above in the viewless center, out of our sight. Between us and the fire, with his back to us, stood a man.

“He seemed to wear a long dark robe and was bareheaded. In the light of the fire I could just see that the robe had reddish symbols or shapes of some sort on its back, but what they were I could not make out. The figure rose to its full height, arms extended over its head, and made some signs in the smoky air. The drum beat sounded louder as if in answer. But where was the drum?

“The sound seemed to come from off to my right someplace. I could not see into the black pits of the alcoves, which the firelight did not reach, and the drumbeat apparently came from one of these.

“Now the figure which postured before us began to chant, a long singsong, in some speech unknown to me. The voice was high and strident, and the sound cut through the drum song and seemed to reach a long way as if carrying to unguessable reaches of space and time. The drumming halted for a second and then resumed, louder and more menacing than before.

“James lowered his head to where I crouched. ‘Watch here, as I have told you. I must face what comes alone. Your task is to ward my back, unless I call. God give us strength, and His Son as well!’

“He rose, head erect, and while I watched in awe, he marched straight down into that ghastly chamber, his boots ringing on the rock, his sword loose in his great right hand.

“The figure in front of that grim altar, if that was what it was, whirled as it caught the sound, holding out its hands as if to hold off danger. And a strange sight he was.

“It was Lord Lionel, of course. What we had thought was a robe, was a long cloak, fastened about his neck with a jeweled clasp. Under it he wore a shirt of some coarse stuff that looked like frieze, and below that again a kilt of dark material, falling to just above his knees. On his legs were cross-garters, and his feet bore soft leather shoes, laceless and reaching to the ankles. He might have been garbed to play Hamlet on the stage, even to the curved dagger thrust into a gem-studded belt.

“But there was no playacting here. Even I, who loathed the man, had to admit he looked magnificent. It was as if these were his true clothes, the ones for which he had been born. His lank hair was bound back by a fillet of dull purple, and under it his eyes blazed in his chalk-white face. I read surprise, but that faded and was replaced by the raging hatred I had seen before, the fury of a demon unleashed. As he glared, the drum faltered and fell silent, and once more I heard about us the muffled roar of the Western Ocean. There was an atmosphere of waiting. I felt a wave of cold, alien and charged with malice, coming from the right of the room where the unseen drummer must lurk in the shadow of one of the niches.

“It was James who broke the silence. He took three more steps, which placed him to the left of the fire, forcing his brother to turn also and giving to me full view of both their profiles. The Earl’s was calm, with the brooding calm of majesty which I had earlier noted. His strange garb in no way detracted from his towering good looks, and I felt that any clothes would have meant nothing. He was what he was now, and clothes were extraneous.

“ ‘I have come to end it,’ his voice rumbled out. ‘I know why you are here and what you have summoned. The Hunter has been sent back to the hills, from whence only your vile arts could have roused him. Your servants, the spawn of ancient and black sorcery in the dolmens and monoliths of the lost, sunken lands of Brittany, lie dead over your head. I know, too, who seeks to be free, with his night wandering and frightening of the countryside. I know, too, how he is to be freed and what a price you will pay for it. Not even a thing like you, with your years of foreign delving into that which should have been long forgot, I say, not even you can fully know what it would cost you, and the world as well, if what sleeps here would once more come into full life!’

“The hatred left Lionel’s face for a moment to be replaced by wonder. It was a shock to hear his despised brother, I think, whom he had held in such contempt for years, challenging him on his own ground and, yes, with such a wealth of apparent knowledge. Then his face hardened.

‘“You think to defy me?’ he shouted incredulously, ‘me, with that stupid sword? You break in here, to this place of the most ancient mystery in the aisles, the cavern of the Dark Prince, where lies his tomb? You bring that cretin in the door to attack me, who have sought for the knowledge of this place the world over? It is you who are mad! In the name of the Lost One who lies here, I defy you. You have a sword, have you! Well, look on this then, you whom all the world call my brother! Look on the ax of him who lies here, laid in his tomb by the faithful, when he was cheated of his rights by the Christ-worshipers in that last battle, when dying he took with him the enemy of all his hopes!’ He rattled out a string of uncouth syllables, and once more that horrid drum began to pulse from its hiding place.

“Lionel had crouched at the base of the great ebon block, which I had thought an altar but which now appeared in its true light. It was a mighty catafalque. I could barely make out the faint, time-scored line of the massive lid.

“When Lionel rose, he had thrown off his cloak and in his left hand carried a great ax, doubleheaded, with lunate curves, its somber blades giving back no more light than the tomb at whose marge it had lain. On his right forearm hung a small round shield, of apparently the same metal with a spiked boss in the center. A grim and dangerous figure he looked as he circled the black, basalt-hued block and moved in, seeking an opening. I strained to join in, for the shield gave him a deadly advantage, and James had no such defense.

“But I had been given a charge, and I knew I could not yield to impulse. As the drumming rose in volume, I stole a glance over my shoulder to the tunnel at my back. It was well I did.

“Something as pale as white bone was creeping up on me, indistinct in the fire’s murky light. I caught a glimpse of long thin arms, the fingers ending in huge claws, a face like a starved baboon’s skull, all bone and yellowed fangs, with two eyes of opaque flame, pupilless and blinking. That I had turned at the last moment was luck, if anything was due to luck on that mad night. I think even the dim glow of the evil fire slowed the monster down, for whatever cavern it had stolen from must have been utterly without light.

“As it snarled hideously and rose from a crouch, I turned and lunged straight at that countenance of hell, between the orbs of pale phosphorescence it used for eyes.

“The blade bent, as the good steel struck something hard, and a shock ran up my stiffened arm to my shoulder. Even as I struck, I heard the clash of steel behind me and knew that James fought his enemy even as I.

“The foulness in front of me screamed, a high whining note which hurt my eardrums, and drew back in a scuttling lope, deeper into the dark of the tunnel. I thought I had struck its skull and knew that I had hurt but not killed it. I, too, drew back to the entrance of the huge cavern. I could not win a fight with that lurker in the shadows without light of my own, protecting James’ back came first in any case.

“The thing screamed again and once more came at me in that queer scrabbling way, low to the ground. I had backed almost out of the tunnel now, and the thud-thud of the devilish drums rang in my ears, mixed with the clatter of blows as ax met sword. Now, I had room for a cut and I used it.

“Once more, that unclean head came into the light. The spiderlike arms covered with pallid hairs groped for me. The fangs slavered and it crouched for a spring.

“I cut down and hard, the sweep beginning over my shoulder, and my aim was true. This sword was no courtier’s rapier, but the long heavy blade of a soldier, and it bit into that bone, if bone it was, high on that unnatural head, and further yet, with a crunch I could feel down to my toes!

“For the last time I heard that eldritch cry, and as my blade came back to guard, stained with foul blood, the battle ended. Limping and swaying, the thing lurched back up the slope, clutching its mangled skull and wailing hideously, and vanished into the dark above. If I had not given it a death wound, then I had at least removed it from the board. It would make no more mischief that night.

“The ring of arms renewed made me wheel and look below. Here the war still raged and it was not going well. The dark man in the archaic dress was untouched and handling his ax and shield like a master as he circled and struck through the veils of smoke and the uncertain gleam of the fire. James was bleeding from a wound high on one shoulder, though his face was still calm and serene. But his sword was another matter. As he swerved in my direction, I saw that the broad blade was sorely battered, with many notches gouged into the edge. Even as I watched, he struck a terrible blow, which his brother took full on the blade of that grim ax. The weapons clashed together and neither gave an inch. But when James fell back into a guard position, holding the sword in both hands, point up, I saw a fresh notch, while Lionel’s ax was untouched. The black metal of ax and shield had some awful power in them, perhaps a trick of forging long gone from the world.

“And he sensed his advantage. Over the rising, battering cry of that damned drum, he called out. ‘This ax and shield were made with blood and torment under the hills, brother. Long the owner bargained for them and none could prevail against them! Yield now and I may show mercy!’

“ ‘One weapon prevailed against them!’ came the deep-throated answer. ‘They were not victor at the last!’

“Circling again, Lord Lionel sneered. ‘Seek in the Hesperides for that weapon, dear brother. It is gone long ages from the earth, as well you know!’

“The drum beat higher still, and the Earl’s eyes blazed with blue fury. Lifting high his immense sword, he fell upon his brother’s shorter shape and with a series of battering blows began to drive him about the cavern, from one side of the fire to the other. And this was his undoing.

“As Lionel retreated, giving ground but protecting himself beautifully, James slipped and with a tremendous stroke drove his sword down on the stone top of that forgotten tomb. There was a rending crack and three things happened. The sword shattered, close to the cross hilt. The slab of midnight stone also cracked in two, straight across the top, and the drum suddenly ceased. Lionel leapt back, confronting his defenseless enemy in triumph, and, shaking the ax, howled something in that unknown language.

“And the sound of the sea outside on the rocks burst into a shrieking bellow such as I have never heard even in the worst of Pacific typhoons. There was another crash, like thunder, but far harder, and then yet another. High on one wall of the cavern, across the tomb, there appeared a great crack. For an instant, light came through it and a great burst of spray. Another horrendous crash shook the room and the gap doubled in size. A gout of storm-tossed sea poured in with this blow and with something else.”

Ffellowes looked around at all of us before he continued speaking, but we were as silent as the grave. The library fire had long since gone out, and we sat, intent, lit only by a small lamp in a corner of the bay.

“It was long and glittered,” he said at length. “I could not really undertake to say what it was, even to this day. James stooped, groping on the floor, now inches deep. The next wave poured down through the gap, and the fire spat and went out. Only dim moonlight and that only at intervals now lit the vault.

“When I could see again, James was advancing on his brother, and high above his head gleamed something which caught the light with a blue flame.

“The light dimmed again, and Lionel screamed. There was another tremendous crash, but this time it appeared to come from inside the cave.

“For a second there was silence, save for the wind and the water, which was now sloshing about my ankles. The next surge broke through the shattered wall of the place, and as it did, in the dim light something glittering flashed through it and vanished into the wild night outside.

“ ‘James,’ I called uncertainly, ‘are you all right?’ I could see nothing and hear nothing but the elements pounding on and through the rock. The moon must have been behind a cloud. Suddenly his voice was in my ear, his huge hand under my elbow. ‘Quick,’ he shouted. ‘We must run for it. The cliff is falling! Let me help you!’

“We ran. My God, how we ran. James must have been exhausted, but he was supporting me and wouldn’t let go either. Before we reached the first lantern, rock was falling from the tunnel roof, and vast grindings were echoing down its length. I looked back as we passed and already the light was gone in a shower of stone and sand. Ahead of us, the next lamp gleamed faintly in the gloom, but rock was already crashing down between us and its flicker. The surging water would have caught us, I’m sure, had not the tunnel sloped up ever so gently, but I could hear that raging in the rear as well.

“Tripping and stumbling, we passed the second light. The groaning of the rocks was really something now, and cracks began to appear in the tunnel’s floor. We had to vault a few but somehow always managed to keep staggering on.

“The next light was close now. As we passed it, a boulder the size of my head crashed down just behind us. An idea full of terror crossed my mind. Would we be able to see the tunnel entrance, the gap in its roof, should the moon not be shining? As it turned out we couldn’t, but it didn’t matter.

“I simply ran into the ladder, almost knocking my addled brains out. James made me go first, and I didn’t argue. You know, I still had the Ferrara sword in one hand, dumb stubbornness, I guess, but I carried it out of that hellhole and later put it back on the wall myself.

“As I climbed out, the moon came out again and flooded the landscape with pale light. But the groaning and cracking in the earth hadn’t halted for a minute, and I was damned glad to see my friend’s head appear at the top of the ladder. His face was pale and his eyes were half shut. It was I who grabbed him this time and hauled away until he was out of the hole. I got one arm under his shoulder and we lurched off away from the castle toward the east. One moment we were on the slippery rock of the point, the next we were on soft turf, and I never felt gladder of common dirt in my life.

“ ‘Go on,’ he gasped. ‘We are not safe yet. I know!’

“Up the slope we went, more at a crawl than a walk, I may say, until neither one of us could go a step further, and we simply collapsed into the moist verdure of the hills.

“Behind us, the grandfather of all breaking noises cut loose and we sat up and stared. The whole great finger of stone on which the castle sat was separating from the land!

“Slowly, inexorably in the moonlight, the cliff leaned out and away. There were rending and screeching noises deep down in the earth, and even where we crouched, the ground shook as though with an earthquake.

“James stood up, and that stern look of majesty was never clearer in the moonlight. ‘Accursed be thy stones forever!’ he shouted over the shattering noise of the cliff fall. ‘Lie in the sea bottom until the end of time and never trouble the world again!’ As he spoke the whole promontory point, fortress and all, vanished, and a splash roared up like some vast water spout and left us drenched. When the water had left our eyes, a ragged cliff edge ran some dozen yards away from us. Beyond this there was . . . nothing.

‘So passes Caer Dhub,’ said James in a strange voice. ‘So passes the last of an evil lost in time. And I too pass, yet I will . . .’ He never finished telling me what he would do because he had fainted. I was nigh on doing so myself, being exhausted as well as dripping wet. But someone had to get back to Avalon House, or else we would both die of exposure.

“I covered him with my jacket and in my soaked, boiled shirt, or the remnants of one, began to stumble over the faint trace Lionel’s people had left on the slope. I don’t know how long I had been putting one foot down after the other when I saw lights ahead and heard voices. I called out in a croak like that of an asthmatic frog and they heard me. I remember hands holding me up, but nothing more. Apparently I managed to tell them about James before I passed out, but I remember none of it, not until I woke up in my own bedroom at Avalon.

“I lost a whole day there, I later discovered. They found us at about four a.m., and I woke to an afternoon sun going down two days after that! That’s what I call needing a rest, eh?

“Well, I got myself up and dressed and wandered downstairs. And here are James and Isobel having tea! You would have thought I’d slipped away five minutes earlier to visit the w.c. With my head full of the last time I had seen James, I could hardly believe my own eyes!

“Of course they leapt up, James spilling his tea in the process, and fell on my neck. Isobel, I was glad to note, looked ten years younger already, her eyes shining and her cheeks with some at least of the old bloom.

“But James! Here was the man I had left three-quarters dead on a cliff after the damndest struggle in my memory, beaming at me in his old tongue-tied way, trying to get out something that made sense in terms of speech!

“ ‘Can’t thank you enough, old chap. I mean, dash it, you’ve been a trump to help us out this way! The lads on the place tell me you pulled me out of that damned landslide, the one that got old Lionel in the bravest way. I say, really, it was awfully decent of you. I can hardly recall a thing, must have been hit by a rock or something, what?’ I was speechless.

“Even the old familiar voice was back, and the deep sonorous tones I had heard on that fatal night were gone forever. The clear boy’s gaze which met mine was as untouched by trouble as a three-year-old’s. Whatever had ruled my friend on that cliff and in that vault had left forever. From appearance, he might never have done anything rougher than a day’s guard mount in front of Buck House.

“As I tried to think of something to say, a discreet cough came from the door. I looked up and there met Traheal’s steady eyes. ‘Very nice to see you up and about, Captain, speaking for myself and the staff. A very gallant thing you did, sir, saving his lordship like that. We all regret that poor Lord Lionel was lost in that tragic fashion, of course. No doubt he was trying to save them poor helpless men of his down below.’

“ ‘Mmh, well, thank you, Traheal,’ I said. So this was to be the pattern was it? ‘I suppose, James, they were all down below? No hope of rescue? This awful weather of late, no doubt, loosened the cliff, eh?’ No one can say I can’t pick up a cue! I went on. ‘Sorry as the devil about your brother. Hardly knew him, of course. Still wish to express regrets and all that.’

“But now the ball had moved to another court. It was Isobel who fixed her gaze on me.

“ ‘Such a pity. Lionel was a very peculiar man, there’s no denying it, but he was family. I’ve always said that all this digging about in odd places must make one morbid. I understand they often use dynamite or some awful explosive in these excavations. They must have been careless, that’s all.’ She paused, her blue orbs politely holding mine. ‘At least, that’s what the police think, isn’t it, James?’

“ ‘Ah, well, yes, I expect so,’ mumbled her spouse. He turned to me, as if in appeal. ‘You know, Donald, I honestly couldn’t stand him, I mean frankly, but I do feel bad about all this. I should never have let him dig down there. The whole cliff must have been as rotten as cheese.’ He sighed. ‘At least that bloody old castle is gone with the slip up there, and that’s a blessing.’ He looked thoughtful, then turned to me again. ‘Isobel thinks I must have had a premonition or something the other night when we ruslied out there. I’ll be blowed if I can recall it, but that’s what she says and she’s usually right about these things. But, I’ll say this. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had that old pile of slag on my mind, sort of hanging over me, what? I used to go miles to even avoid looking at it.

At least that’s gone for good, eh, my dear?’

“ ‘Yes,’ she replied very softly, ‘that’s gone for good. It’s all gone and it won’t be back. Why even that most unpleasant smell has left the cellars. And the weather is perfect again.’ Cornflower-blue fixed me with the same level gaze.”

Ffellowes paused and we all drew a long breath. He lit a cigar and I leaned back in my chair for the first time in half an hour. But another figure bounced up across from me. It was this guy Simmons, and if the signs were right, he was mad as hell.

“General Ffellowes!” he exploded. “I have never heard in my life a more preposterous farrago of fables! Do you expect me to believe this absolute tissue of—of fabrications? Are we all expected to believe that this monstrous melange of Tennyson, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory happened to you? In person?” He turned on his heel. “I believe, sir, that you have done your best to ridicule me, to make me a figure of fun for some obscure purpose of your own! This piece of senseless vulgarity is beyond belief! I shall never set foot in this institution again! Never!” He stormed out, leaving the rest of us flabbergasted.

“Well, for Pete’s sake,” said someone. “Who was that nut, anyway? And why did he blow up like that? I sure hope he keeps his word about not coming back!”

“I don’t get it,” remarked Bryce. “He was the one who brought up ghost stories in the first place. Brigadier, that’s one of the best stories I ever heard, and if you say it happened, it happened, at least in my book. But what got that character so stirred up? Any ideas?”

“Well,” said Ffellowes, “yes, I rather think I do. His name is Simmons. I have been hearing for the past year or so about one Professor Elwyn Simmons at Columbia or somewhere who is about to release the definitive work on the psychosis of witchcraft. It’s supposed to be the latest word in debunking any belief in things nonmaterial, you know.” He pulled on his cigar.

Bryce chuckled. “No wonder he got steamed up. Think he’ll revise the book, sir?”

“I doubt it,” said Ffellowes, “but I wish he’d stayed for the list of my friend’s names. Like many very old families, the heir always gets handed a bundle.”

“Such as?” I cut in.

“In James’ case, aside from James, of course, he drew the following: Arthur, Geraint, Percival, Bedivere and Tristram.” The ruddy face smiled at us.

For once my brain worked and back came a school English class on poetry. “And Lionel had only one initial, which might just have been M, right?” I asked.

“You have just won the coconut, as we say in Merry England,” said the brigadier.

The Syndicated Time

Sterling E. Lanier is the author of several novels (including a fine epic fantasy, HIERO’S JOURNEY) and many stories for F&SF, among them the popular series about Brigadier Donald Ffellowes. His new story is the immensely entertaining account of the events following the discovery of time travel by a seedy physicist at a Florida junior college.

Time travel is a dirty word these days. A person can get lynched just for mentioning it, like people being arrested in the old days for joking about hijacking while boarding a jet. The UN, in one of those few cases where even the Maidive Islands and Cocos-Keeling voted on the same side, has agreed that no member nation will do anything but suppress any research on the subject. Many nations passed laws of their own dealing with the treatment of those apprehended while conducting any such research. My personal favorite is the one from Uganda. Some people get sick reading it, but those old devil Amin habits die hard.

Every country in the world is still looking for the possible inventor or (ess). Since I know who it was, I could command a hefty sum for the right squeal. The only trouble is, the loudest squeal might turn out to be mine. I couldn’t fix an out-of-phase water wheel, but I’m too deeply involved. I’m no inventor, but I am a promoter. I should say, an ex-promoter.

It all started with a greedy inventor. You think maybe Tom Edison wasn’t greedy? Or read the fine clauses in the last Wright Brothers contracts. Yes, friends, they had a dream. Part of the dream was cash. Maybe only part, but still . . . part.

My friend, or let’s say acquaintance (if they ever get me, he was a deadly foe), was not like Tom Edison exactly, or the Wright Brothers either. He was a seedy little physicist at a third-rate, Florida, junior college. I never went there, or any other college, but I used to sell pirated texts, Formosa’s best, to some of them back in my less affluent days. A flat campus, four decaying coconut trees; the lawn, solid sand spurs; the faculty, solid losers. The academic end of the line. If you retire after thirty years, you get $12,000 before taxes and a plated Bulova. The janitors make more, and for once the state has right on its side. Through these hallowed halls pass a collection of out-of-state weed-heads, local rednecks, Northern heroin salesmen and apprentice whores equal to those found anywhere, that is until one comes, of course, to the next county. Need I say more?

I was motoring through Florida, searching, on behalf of a large conglomerate which shall be nameless, for vacant lands to develop. Bluntly, I was looking for places to put large, expensive condominiums, preferably smack on the beach sand, of course. My own employers, who I regret to say are, or were, not equal opportunity, owned a lot of them already, particularly on the west coast, the so-called “Sun Coast.” They wanted more. Due to many of their other enterprises still being frowned on by the law, they had to work through middlemen. One of these was my employer, J. G. “Bushveldt” Barnstaffel, the President of Amalgamated Tourist Enterprises.

No one in this splendid firm had a record, including the president, which made it ideal for certain purposes. Barnstaffel was a skinny slob who had once been lost in Kruger Park, R.S.A., for three whole days, while on a world tour. This almost incredible feat gave him his nickname.

“Check out the liddel colleges, Syd. Maybe some got left some land they can’t use,” he told me in his Dutch wheeze. He talked like George Washington or maybe Rip Van Winkle was his brother, but he was originally a simple Hollands crook, too inept for the Amsterdam police to tolerate. They flung him to the New World, or at least he decided to leave. He had fat hands, rheumy blue eyes, too close together, a bulbous red nose and an air of knowing everything in the world.

What does this have to do with the ban on time travel? “All history hangs on the actions of a few men (or women).” Lord Acton, or someone.

So, I pursued my merry way, from one Christawful motel to another, down the world’s most architecturally fucked-up peninsula. And then, one day, in a bar I encountered Associate Professor Motley van D’Alliance III, once a faint gleam in the eye of the New York Social Register. As of the point I met him, he was a bleary little soak, leaning on the bar and trying to pick up anyone to talk to. I hasten to add that the professor was not gay, pausing to add that I have nothing against such persons, myself. Who knows who will betray you?

“You may not believe me,” says this small, drained-out lush on the next bar stool, “but I can save the world.”

I removed an olive from my Manhattan and reordered, this being a typical Florida bar, and sat, waiting for the revelation. You get a mild laugh once in a great while from these type encounters.

“You might not think this,” says this jerk, “but I am the Professor of Ascidian Ophiolatry at Southern Dugong College.” He babbled on and I heard nothing, until, in the third martini, something came across. The words were “time machine.”

He had red eyes, like a semi-albino or possibly a white rat of some obscure sort. The only word for him was “unwholesome.” But, somehow, we got to talking. When I told him that my employers were looking for new coast land, he got all excited. “Coast land!” he yelled. “I’ll give you coast land! How would you like the best islands in the world, the finest tropic shores, absolutely untouched. Never a human print on them! I guarantee it!”

Well, I normally don’t encourage nuts. But this little weemer was so positive. Maybe it was the martinis. Cheap Florida gin made from orange pulp.

Anyway, I called the base, i.e., New York, that night, and, of course, I got Barnstaffel. I had nothing else to report, since there was nothing left to buy. But Bushveldt was simply in love with the idea of my nut professor. “Sounds like a great lead. Make sure you don’t lose him. Follow it up.” And more crap like that. I didn’t get it then, but after I’d hung up, a thought occurred to me. Barnstaffel sounded very anxious indeed. Maybe his unknown superiors, the boys with all the well-laundered financing, were leaning on him a bit? If these people asked the impossible, those on the end of the request often died trying. Literally.

Well, I had made an appointment with the little jerk. So the following day I got directions and motored out to the sun-browned series of vacant lots that Dugong called a campus. The heat, even for Florida, was blistering and my soles burned even through Ked rubber. I found his office in a moldering cube of puce-colored stucco, where the peeling paint and corroded metal vied with the exposed cinder block in a tribute to rip-off contracting.

He was crouched behind a crummy desk pretending to read a report when I walked in without knocking. The blinds were down and the place was so dark, I thought I’d stumbled into a broom closet by mistake. When I twitched up the Venetians, the place was hardly bigger, and I rated van D’Alliance a U on the alphabet scale of any college rank. For Christ’s sake, it wasn’t air-conditioned, even!

He gave a pitiful moan as the light hit his eyes, but I perched myself on his desk and inspected the place at leisure.

“What do you want?” he quavered. “I’m not seeing students today. I have work to do. What class are you in, anyway?”

I now discovered that the red in his eyes was caused by innumerable tiny broken veins, which were matched by mottled skin of the same color on his sunken face. Only his suit, which, though pretty soiled, was new, prevented him from an appearance on Skid Row as a major lead.

“Remember me?” I said, in soft tones. He winced because any tones must have hurt. “I’m the guy you were telling about all those untouched beaches, the virgin palmy islands and junk like that which you were going to give to me. I want to hear more about them, that’s all. Remember, we made a date at the Soapstone Pelican last night?”

“I did?” he mumbled. “I forgot. I must have had one too many. I didn’t know what I was saying.” He rose, or rather lurched to his feet. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m feeling quite ill. There must have been a mistake. Please, run along, there’s a good chap, and let’s forget the whole thing.” In the tiny, shut office, his stale breath was sheer murder, being half booze and half pyorrhea. But I’d stood worse.

When I’d mentioned the reason I was there, a light had flickered in back of the beat-up face, the eyes had glittered and the mouth worked. This piece of academic flotsam knew something, or at least he thought he did. This was the only reason I didn’t blow the unwholesome joint and leave him to his d.t.’s.

“Now, now,” I said soothingly. “Let’s not take that attitude. Have you any classes today? At my tasteful motel, we can lounge by the crystal pool and partake of cool beverages. Just the thing for a man in your condition. Then, if you feel like going further into the aforesaid matter, it’s up to you.” What a man in his condition really needed was oxygen, vitamin B-12 injections and restraint, not necessarily in that order.

I had the sorry bastard hooked in one sentence. After that office, cool drinks and someone else paying, by a pool, must have sounded like Paradise. He hesitated an easy split second, the stumbled around his desk, croaking, “I’ll have one with you for old times’ sake. What did you say your name was? Have you got a car?”

I gave him the name I was registered under, which we’ll call Joe Doakes, and led him out to my air-conditioned Toyota. He almost fainted from the cool as we pedaled off campus, but the first gin and tonic by the pool pepped him up in no time. Maybe the dank reek of chlorine and the grinding and screeching noises from the highway out front added to the glamor. It was the off season, so the place was almost empty, and I had provided lots of gin (not the orange-pulp variety) and ice.

He’d reached a stage of his drinking life that I’d had lots of experience with in the past, starting with my own old man. I don’t think the guy was ever what you’d call sober, but he probably never was really flat-out drunk either. He just coasted along in a paranoid fog of dreams, frustrated ambitions, halfstarted projects, meaningless fucked-up jobs and general discontent. These types of people always have a glorious past and a fantastic future. During the now, or present, they are always being held back or harried by treachery, infidelity and corruption in high places, plus fire, plague and the Loch Ness Monster. All I had to do was sit back, listen and pour, judging his intake with a careful orb. Some of them fade like a quarterback at one gill too many.

I heard all about the van D’Alliances to open with. “Would you believe, my dear chap, grandmother had footmen in powder? I mean people knew what was due, then!” And the balls at the Waldorf. And his club at Yale. And his mother. And the Southhampton Yacht Club. And his first, or society wife (she was too good for him, of course). And so on, adbullshititem.

When he’d caromed off the New York Racquet Gub, “my dear chap,” for the third time and was starting a second round of “if they could only see me now!” I judged it was time for the kill.

Ever so gently, I leaned over and glared into his glazed eyes from about one inch away.

“But you’ll show them, Motley!” I hissed at him. “You’ll be batting those racquets with the best of them!” I paused. “When you find all those lovely islands or palmy shores you were talking about last night! That’s when you’ll be back where you belong! Old chap,” I added.

He was pretty far gone into his private dream world, and I’d gone and yanked him back by his zipper, but I’d also, please note, added the dream world to my own question. He gulped some gin while it sank in. Then a funny, kind of shy look came over him and, with it, that same flicker I’d seen before, in his cubicle.

“Well,” he mumbled. “It’s not fully tested yet.” He gulped more booze and his face got redder. “In fact, to be honest, it might not work at all.” He stared at the pool. “I haven’t dared make many tests. I think it works, but that’s not enough for a scientist, old chap.” For one fleeting moment, damned if I didn’t feel sorry for the useless, dumb bastard. For a whole second, I thought I saw something that maybe might have once been a real scientist.

“I suppose it has commercial uses. Possibly even military,” he was going on, “but I can’t finance proper tests. I’m at the end of the line, even down here. They won’t renew my present contract. I can’t get a job at a shitty high school, if this place goes and blackballs me.” He stared at me in what he must have thought of as honest candor or something. He just looked polluted, defeated, overripe and stale. His voice lowered in confidence. “The fact is, old chap, I have a slight drinking problem, nothing serious, but. . . .” He reached eagerly for the bottle, but I snaked it away first.

“Now look, Motley,” I purred. “I just happen to work for some very big interests. Very large on the cash flow, understand. People who back real science and real discoveries. With good old honest cash. These are important people, Motley, old chap. Ever heard of C. J. Wallingford? He’s on the board, in fact, he’s one of the men I report to. The biggest, see?”

Needless to affirm, I had never heard of C. J. Wallingford, either, but this sorry soak brightened up at once. “Ah, of course, Shaker Heights people. Made their money in corsets, but still quite acceptable. How is the old man?”

“He’s great, a grand old boy. And he’s backing this group to the hilt, Motley. To the hilt. He’ll be counting on you, if things go right.

Whoever might be counting on him, or me either, I couldn’t say for sure. Beyond and above Barnstaffel, the office chatter differed, opinions ranging between the Salupo Family of Brooklyn and the Figliosi Clan, with interests in Philadelphia and Miami; None of us really wanted to know, to be honest. The letter, to misquote from the Good Book, ain’t all that kills.

I hauled my mad scientist back from his lost world of Grosse Point, or wherever he’d got to, and now gave him the works, plus a small gin. He’d long since forgotten the tonic and even the ice.

“Now look, Motley,” I said. “You know and I know, you didn’t just gabble about islands and such last night. You also used two magic words. They had to do with time, right? So let’s discuss that aspect, like good chums, eh?”

He didn’t turn pale, or anything, to my surprise. I think by now, what with the intake of battery acid and all his childhood! memories, he’d fitted me into his crazy mental world, like I belonged there. He looked at me and slurped down some more gin.

“Well, it’s at the house. Can’t have a thing like that at the college, old chap. They’d steal it or say I was crazy.” He giggled and looked at his cheap wristwatch. Of course it had stopped.

“Maybe we could go and look,” I coaxed. “It’s only just a little before noon. We could take a bottle in case we get tired, hmm?”

This made him look eager and nervous at the same time. “I don’t know, old man. My wife, you know. Splendid woman and all that. Not quite my own class, you know, but splendid. Still, she gets a bit annoyed at times. Thinks I drink too much, you know.” Again I snatched the booze away from questing fingers.

“That’s easy,” I said. “Look, we sneak out to your place, all very quiet. Should your frau get a peek at us, why I’ll tell her we’re discussing big business, very big money, and please not to interrupt. What can you lose?”

He looked impressed and I poured him another small bite which increased his pleasure. Then I capped the bottle, the second bottle, that is, and stuffed it into a paper bag as I stood up.

He lived in the kind of scruffy subsection, which, to be fair, cannot be blamed on the Sunshine State alone. A lot of nasty little piles of congealed cinder block, all exactly alike, squatted inside an imitation brick gate, which said on top, “El Dorado Gardens.” That is, it should have, but the D and one were missing, making it “El rado Gardens.” The van D’Alliance manse was even crappier than the average, but a broken television antenna hanging off over the roof and roosting on a dead palm tree gave it that different look. The grass was dead too, the windows were shuttered, and the dump looked abandoned.

“Charming,” I said as we pulled up under his carport, which incidentally was full of holes. “A real haven of rest, away from the workaday world.” He was plastered but not that far gone, and he gave me a dirty look as I helped him out of the car.

Just behind the carport was, logically, a small, one-car garage. This was padlocked, not once but twice. It took Motley three tries to fish out both keys and get the locks off, but he finally made it. He pushed feebly at the sliding overhead door, and I finally had to help him. He wobbled over to one side and switched on a light, then managed to pull the door back down. I noticed he bolted it, too. Maybe he was a nut, but he at least thought he had something worth protecting. A window built into one wall of the room was filled with a window-unit air conditioner. We were sealed in.

The place was a mess and smelled as stale as its owner. There were rusting tools all over the concrete floor. A long work bench held more of them, plus a lot of oddly shaped bits of metal and also lots of wires, some in coils and others strung about in weird patterns. But in the middle, close to the back wall, was something else. It was a great big metal box, really, about six feet square, with gauges all over the outside. It was very thick metal, which I could see because it had a round door, like a porthole, and this was open. Actually it looked more like one of those thick hatches you see on a submarine, and you could also note it had heavy clamps. A kid of six could have scrunched into the inside of this box thing, but nothing much bigger.

I decided to goose him a little.

“What’s that junk pile?” I said with a nasty smile. “The famous time machine? Can you bring back Cleopatra and things like the Atlantis Treasures, maybe? How about King Tut or something?”

He woke up a little and looked serious, but not really angry.

“No,” he said slowly, “no, it won’t do that. I’m not quite sure what it will do. I built it with a legacy from a great aunt, you know, had the thing constructed and assembled over in Jacksonville to my own specs. But it’s funny. It goes back about eighty to one hundred and fifty million years, and I can’t seem to change it. I can’t get it closer and I can’t make it go forward either, not at all. There must be something I haven’t figured out yet.” This calm statement made a prickle of ice run down my spine. I’d been discounting this silly jerk all the way, but he sounded so sure!

“You mean,” I said, in what I hoped sounded like a relaxed voice, “this box goes back into time, real time, eighty million years?”

“No. no,” he said petulantly, “not the box, as you call it. That’s the gate. It’s what you put into the box that goes back.” There was a silence while I tried to think.

“OK,” I said, after a minute, “so how do you know it’s like eighty million years, say, not ten minutes or a million, million years?”

“I don’t know, not exactly,” he said in weary tones. “I’m not a geologist, a botanist, or a paleontologist either, and I’d really need to be all these to be anything like sure.” He eyed the paper bag. “Let’s have a little snort. I’ll go get some ice from the house. While I’m gone, you look into this stuff and I’ll try and explain it when I come back.” He pushed a box like an oversized foot locker into the light and unlocked it. Then he turned the air conditioner on and unbolted the door and left. He seemed to be making a lot more sense since we’d reached his workshop, and I didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

Meanwhile, I looked into the box, and since there was a lot of junk inside, I began to lift things into the light.

First came some dried plants, tall round things, like reeds or cattails, but with short spiky leaves all the way around, arranged in rings. They meant pure nothing to me. Next came some dried branches of a pine tree, with huge flat needles. I dumped this with the other dead vegetables. Next, so help me, was a big stoppered jar, filled with alcohol or some such preservative gorp, and floating in it was a dead rat! It had an open mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth and a furry tail, but was still a reject from the local drainage system, for my money.

Now I was down to a small cardboard box. I opened this and it was full of little broken pieces of something like coarse yellow paper, but with a pebble-grain surface like my English shoes. Some of the pieces were round or even dimpled.

There only was one more box, a large one, that took up most of the big container’s bottom. I opened this, and for the first time found something that really shook me. It was some bones, and they were impressive all right. I took them out and carefully put them on the floor, just as I heard Motley return. He was carrying a plastic ice bucket and some bottles of soda, which I guess were for me. While he rebolted his door, I took a hard look at those bones again.

They smelled terrible and had brown pieces of gut, muscle or whatever, dried onto them. But they were obviously part of a leg or maybe arm or foot. There were two great big round claws, something like a chicken’s but three times that size, and places where some more had been broken off. I felt Motley relieving me of the gin, and the clink of ice, but I didn’t look up, even. I laid out the two long bones again, and one was broken like the foot or hand thing. They were at least three inches around the middle and, even broken, three feet long. I felt that old creepy chill on the spine again and reached up for a drink which Motley handed me in silence.

“All right, Professor,” I said in as nice and easy a voice as I could, “what is all this crap? Take it from the top; start with the dried leaves.”

“I’m not sure,” he said, pouring a second dram for himself, and me too. I didn’t turn it down.

“I had to find a lot of my data in books I wasn’t trained to use, my dear chap. None of this is in my field, you know.” He inhaled some gin, but his voice was steady enough as he went on.

“Those round plants, like reeds with a trim, are called horsetails, I think, Equisetums or something. The only modern ones found now are about six inches long, I believe. Notice that both ends of the stalks are shaved off smoothly? That’s the time machine. The plants may have been twenty feet high. They were green when I got them.”

I looked at the stalky plants and he was right. They’d been cut off real smooth at each end.

“So what,” I growled. “I’ve seen bamboos that big here in Florida. What’s with this pine tree?”

“Well, that one is a puzzler. But I think it’s a sequoia, a sort of Redwood, very like the big trees in California. They used to grow all over the world, it seems. Just a guess, of course.” The gin bottle gurgled again. I removed it politely.

“The little box full of things are certainly broken egg shells. We have tortoises—turtles, you know—right here, on the campus actually, that lay eggs like that. But these seem to be much bigger in diameter. Much bigger.”

I held up the bottle with the dead rat in silence, and he began to laugh hoarsely. When he managed to stop, he choked out, “Ellen-Sue really had a fit. That was running around our bedroom. I killed it, but not before she had had hysterics.”

“I bet she did,” I said, “but so what. Motley? Most chicks don’t make it big with rats.”

“Rats?” he said in a funny way. “What rats? Oh, I see what you mean, old chap. My mistake too, at first. But it’s not a rat, not a rat at all.”

I waited, as patiently as I could, while he peered at the jar. “Look here,” he said, pointing. “See those pointed teeth. No rodent or rat has those. Look at the feet. They’re like tiny human hands. Some rats have furry tails, but none around here. I looked it up.”

“So it’s not a rat,” I snapped. “Why not a, well, a possum or a, well, raccoon or something?”

“Very sharp, old boy, very sharp,” he giggled at me. “As a matter of fact, a possum may well be what it is, or was. But if so, it’s a sort of possum no human ever saw alive. Maybe a remote possum ancestor, but if the books are right, nothing like it has lived for many millions of years. How about a shot, old boy? Getting a bit dry, all this talking?”

I gave him a slug in his glass but kept tight hold of the bottle. Then I fed myself another. I was thinking. I was thinking about old movies. Movies like King Kong, One Million, B.C. and The Lost World. I was thinking about those fucking bones! “And the bones?” I said.

“I found them down the road a little way, one evening. It was after I’d sent a ham and some other stuff through, the biggest load I’d sent, as a matter of fact.” He paused. “I suppose you can see they aren’t very old. Not much older than the beef bones you’d find in a dump, say.” He didn’t elaborate on what had owned the bones in the first place. From the look on my face he didn’t need to. I’m no scientist, but I have been to a museum or two in my life.

This was so big I got kind of numb all over for a minute or two. While I was deciding what to do next, I fed Motley another drink and walked over to look at his machine. It had, when I got close, a sort of homemade look about it. It could have been an experimental dishwasher or something. That meant nothing. Bell’s first phone looked that way too. Two very thick armored cables led from it into a special plug in the wall, which I also looked at.

“It takes a lot of power for its size,” said my host, who had followed me. “About four times the amount a big central air conditioner would, I’ve estimated. I had to have a special line put in. That took the last of my legacy,” he added sadly. “But I don’t need to have it on long, of course. Only a few minutes.”

Something else stirred in my mind, something he’d said which had grabbed my attention previously.

“Hey, wait a minute. You found that rat thing or whatever it is alive and in your bedroom, right? So I guess it got out of the machine. But what about those bones? What the hell, how could they be out in the road? You did say ‘road,’ didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “I did. And that ancient pre-opossum didn’t get out of the machine, either. It couldn’t. There’s a lug and a locking wheel on the door. Nothing could get out.” Here, he was wrong, but not by much.

“The way I figure it,” he went on, not forgetting to hold out his glass, “is something like this: when the Chronocron sends something back, it gets replaced in our time, and it gets replaced by something of the same exact mass. Say, ten pounds of coal gets sent back. OK, then ten pounds, no more, no less, of something, anything, alive or dead, comes out of the past. But there’s a catch. And the catch is the time lag. Somehow it’s uncertain, in a way I don’t yet understand. Some replacements have never turned up here at all. They must have been dumped a ways off, maybe a long way. Maybe it’s the earth’s rotational spin. Maybe something else.” He sunk back into his glass, mumbling about “Heisenberg” or someone.

My thoughts were still tripping over themselves, when a terrific bang hit the door. I almost jumped over the time machine, thinking some dinosaur (all right, I said it, finally) was coming home for lunch.

“Ah heeah you in theah, Motleee!” came a voice like worn truck brakes. Southern, worn, truck brakes.

“You come out heeah, rait naaow, you stinkin’, no good, runty, licker-haid!” I won’t do any more misspelled dialogue, but that’s the sound. Mrs. Motley van D’Alliance III was home in force, and from the pitch in her screech, my precious ideas about dealing with her might need a bit of overhaul.

Motley was shrunk into a corner. So I put my finger to my mouth, then patted myself on the chest, to let him know I’d handle things. He looked grateful but also doubtful.

I slipped the bolt and ran up the door just in time to nearly get caught on the noggin with one of those heavy brown palm stems that littered the yard. It whanged past me and into the wall with impressive force.

Mrs. van D’Alliance seemed stunned at her near-miss or an unknown target, or maybe both. It gave me a second to look her over and figure out what to do about it.

I dunno what the first, or Newport, Mrs. van D’ had been like, but this was an item from the bottom of the list. Any list. “Used hard and put away wet,” described her, in the classic words of an old pal in the horse-raising business.

She was a blobby, tightly corseted job, with orange-dyed hair, pulled up in one of those beehive things. She had purple lipstick and too much eye shadow on a pale washed-out face. A dirty green dress and wedgie-type shoes, plus cracked purple toenails, completed the picture. A semiretired hooker, recently drafted to the Tijuana League, would describe her.

“Who in hell are you and where’s that lousy drunken Motley?” was her greeting. “I could smell that gin ten yards off and I know he’s in there hiding behind his crazy, nut gadgets which cost Keerrist knows how much when I ain’t got hardly money to eat on and. . . .”

I held up my hand in a solemn way and put on a look of sober dignity, something like some funeral parlor manager.

“Mrs. van D’Alliance,” I said in a deep, vibrant voice, “your husband, Madam, has been doing very secret work for a long time.” I lowered my voice. “There are things id is not safe for you to know, but I can tell you this much, anyway. Vast sums might possibly be involved, vast sums indeed. Your husband has done some high-class inventing which may well interest people in high places, and people who don’t welcome idle chatter.”

Her mouth opened, but not in speech, just simple surprise.

“At this time, Madam, I am in the employ of the ATE. But I have worked for other agencies and may again, if you take my meaning?” If she wanted to think Amalgamated Tourist Enterprises was the CIA, that was her business. And my ultimate employers certainly disliked chatter about their business, idle or otherwise.

Motley had advanced behind me and now took on a little courage. He’d probably never seen his private hot-air outlet shut up before.

“You hear that, Ellen-Sue,” he said, sticking out his shrunken chest, “Mr. Doakes and I were discussing finances, big finances. You’ve never understood my work, so let’s hear no more of this. Mr. Doakes and I are going in town to dinner, eh, old chap? We may be discussing plans late into the night, so don’t wait up.” He had me in a corner, but I wasn’t unhappy about it. I had things to do and I wanted him under my eye.

I handed her a card, which had my name, ATE, and a phony Park Avenue address on it, and smiled in a tight, restrained way.

“I’ll take good care of old Mot,” I said. “We have much to discuss and I’ll be at the XYZ Motel with him later on. But remember, please, no gossip, none at all. There are penalties, you understand?”

She could only nod, with her mouth still open. As we drove away, after locking the workshop very carefully, she was still standing in the drive next to the chewed-up ’54 Plymouth, looking at my card. Motley was laughing and singing to himself. I’d given him back the whole bottle. Now, I wanted him drunk, dead drunk. By the time we reached the motel, after stopping for more booze, he was half gone. In another fifteen minutes he was totally gone and snoring unattractively on my couch. I loosened his grubby tie and went out to a public booth to do some long-distance phoning.

I got Barnstaffel on a very private line, only to be used in emergencies, and talked for a half-hour without a break. Then I listened for a minute, hung up and waited. Twenty minutes later, the phone rang and I did some more listening, but not to Barnstaffel. This was a voice I’d never heard before, but George Raft or Edward G. Robinson would have appreciated it. I especially disliked the ending, which went: “and if this is some kind of con or something, Doakes, you’ll be the sickest sickie in the business!”

I tried to convey my true sincerity in my answer, and it was no acting.

I had dinner sent in from a nearby burger joint. It was for one, naturally. Then I watched television until bedtime and retired, after piling furniture in front of the door.

I needn’t have bothered because Motley was still out cold, come the dawn. Breakfast was also sent in, but with it came some visitors.

One was Barnstaffel, as big as life and twice as repulsive. With him were two other guys, and if old B. B. made me sick, they just made me very nervous. They were dark, nattily dressed types in their thirties and they didn’t say “dese” and “dose.” They don’t any longer. They were supposed to take orders from Barnstaffel, but he was very nervous about giving them any.

“Choe, my boy,” he cried. “Where iss this famous discoverer?” I won’t give you any more of his Katzenjammer dialect crap either, but that’s the way he talked. I pointed to repulsive van D’Alliance on the couch and they all went over and peered at him. When he exhaled noisily, they moved back quickly.

“This scumbag invented something besides halitosis?” said the taller one. His name, I discovered, was Leo.

“He looks pretty terrible,” I admitted. “But I’ll be screwed if he hasn’t got something I don’t understand, and I’m damned if I think anyone in the world but him does either.”

“You may wish you was only getting screwed, Doakes, if this is a bust,” said the short one. His name was Goldy, but don’t ask me why. He had black hair.

“Now, now,” said Bushveldt, “that’s no nice way to talk. Joe finds something that looks good. He tells me and I tell—some other people. We both do our best. So let’s go look at what this professor has to show us, eh?”

“OK,” said Leo, “let’s. But first let’s get Lushwell here up on his feet. I want him along and someone’s supposed to watch him anyway.”

“Hell, I watched him all night,” I answered. “All we have to do is comb that scruddy wife of his out of the way. Wait till you see her!”

“Wait till she sees us,” said Goldy. Leo laughed in a hearty way and slapped him on the back.

The two of them simply undressed the guy and stuffed him into the shower, which they ran alternately boiling hot and ice cold for ten minutes, with the television turned up to muffle his screams. When they hauled him out, I thought he’d bought a coronary, but they knew what they were doing. He didn’t know where, or what he was for a bit, but Barnstaffel laid on his greasy charm over four cups of black coffee, and at the end of it, he was in something like human shape.

Next, they had him call in at West Dugong College and report himself sick. Then we poured ourselves into Bushveldt’s big rented limo, and headed out to Palazzo van D’Alliance.

It looked even scummier at nine thirty a.m., and we pounded on the door for a while until it opened creakingly.

Madam van D’ looked a hell of a lot worse than the estate. Her breath was as bad as Motley’s, and I figured a mutual hobby had brought them together in the first place. Her eyes were bleary and she had on a once-orange housecoat that might have seen the laundry the previous fall. Her bare feet peeped shyly out from under the frazzled hem. The bags under her eyes were a deep beige, and with her ratty snarled hair, she was a figure to frighten a sadist bill collector.

Barnstaffel stepped forward, gut out, ready to take the lead, but his two anchormen knew better. Leo elbowed him gently out of the way and blocked him off.

“You this man’s wife?” he said. He made ‘wife’ sound like ‘accomplice.’ “We need him on some top-secret work. You cleared by the government, lady?”

Once again, I watched fascinated, as the jaw dropped. Of course these boys had advantages I didn’t. Like her hangover, for one. She was not pushed out of the way, she was ignored out of the way. It was kind of interesting to watch. We all went in to the Florida Room, which is what they call a messy room to watch TV and get blasted in, down on the Sunny Peninsula. This was as big a mess as one might dream up, replete with empty bottles, full ashtrays, and assorted bad smells, all distributed over a cracked terrazzo floor, and interrupted by broken pseudo-bamboo type furniture.

Barnstaffel had been conferring with his assistants, while I steered Motley and the helpmeet into chairs. Now he stuck out his chin and launched into his spiel.

“Professor and Mrs. van D’Alliance. We are here as representatives of high authorities. We ask, no, we command your silence, yes, and your co-operation. The professor may just have found a new principle. If so, enemies of our great country will try to get it. So, we frustrate them! We go away, all of us, with the professor’s device and we build again in secret!” He hissed on “secret” and sounded pretty impressive, if you happen to dig old World War II movies with fat guys in S.S. uniforms doing the same act.

“We are all of us subject to the National Security Act,” he thundered, one mottled paw resting on his sunken chest. “Its penalties are severe!” They were no where near as severe as the penalties Leo’s and Goldy’s employers dished out, but it seemed to make its point. Anyway, Mrs. van D’Alliance’s toes began to twitch, and Motley looked up at the dirty windows like he was looking for bayonets or maybe rifle muzzles.

So help me, Bushveldt administers now the loyalty oath, or something like it, in the High Dutch he uses for English! Maybe they thought he was Henry Kissinger, who used to sound pretty similar. They were practically on their knees when he was through.

Next, we all went outside, having given Mrs. van D’ time to dress, which did nothing to improve her. She was pretty well cowed, but I failed to analyze her recovery period.

Here, I got surprised, because pulled into the drive was an armored car of the Brinks variety, only larger. The organization did not waste time when it got interested!

We all piled in, Mrs. van D’ protesting, but not very loudly, especially when Leo or Goldy looked at her. Before the rear door slammed, I could see a few neighbors gawking in surprise. I could also note the open garage door, locks busted and hanging loose, which made me gawk in surprise.

The armored truck had comfortable seats clamped to the floor and even a heavy card table, likewise bolted down, with a good lamp anchored to the wall. Some set up!

“Before you should ask,” said Leo, “his machine dingus got moved into another truck like this while we were inside. It’s on the road ahead of us. And don’t worry, Professor, we had it crated and padded like a baby’s ass. It’ll be in the same shape when we get where we’re going.”

“Where might that be!” I put in. “My gear and car are back at the motel, you may recall.”

Goldy sighed wearily. “Doakes, your wheels and your junk are checked out and are on their way up north to your pad. Just relax, OK? We’re all going on a trip and I don’t know any more than you do. It’s on a need-to-know basis, like in the spy books, see?”

“No one tells me this!” exploded Barnstaffel. “What about my office? What about my work?”

“Your work, chum, is doing what you’re told.”

“Suppose I don’t want to go on no trip? And what about Motley’s job at that chicken-shit college? It ain’t much, but it’s what we eat on. You gonna ship the college away, too?” Mrs. van D’Alliance had finally got her unpleasant voice back.

“Lady, I’m real glad you reminded me,” said Leo. “Over on that table, you will all find pens and paper. So everybody just sit down and write nice letters, OK? Professor, you resign from your college. The rest of you write anyone else which might get itchy that you are off on a long vacation to the South Seas or somewhere. Any moms, dads, sisters, girlfriends, businesses, or anything. And don’t seal the letters because I’m going to read them before they get mailed, dig?”

There was a long silence while we went on our separate thought paths. One thing was becoming most clear to yours truly. Leo and Goldy’s employers, who at one remove were mine and Barnstaffel’s also, were taking no chances, none at all. This time machine was so hot that no one who knew anything about it was going to be allowed out, except on a dog leash, if that! They had the whole pack of us wrapped up like salami, and Barnstaffel had been conned into thinking he was bossing things, when he was just more lunch meat like the rest of us.

Well, we all wrote letters. I had only one, to my landlord, telling him to keep the apartment open, that I’d be back in time and that a check for the rent would be along. Ellen-Sue wrote no one. Maybe she couldn’t write. Motley’s hand shook so bad I had to help him with his, but West Dugong now had a new vacancy. Barnstaffel wrote at least ten, probably all to creditors. Leo read them all carefully and then sealed them and stuck them in his coat pocket. Then he settled down to relax with a paperback, which I observed to be Spengler’s Decline of the West. Goldy was a reader, too, it turned out, but Teenage Vice School somehow looked less out of place. The rest of us just sat and listened to the tires, except for Motley, who fell asleep, breathing asthmatically into his shoulder.

Five hours later, by my clock, we stopped and the armored doors were opened onto a night sky, plus several shadowy figures. As we climbed out, I could see an identical truck parked next to us and figured the time machine must be in it.

We were on a flat piece of ground, with tufts of scrubby grass here and there and palm trees outlined against the stars some ways off. It looked like nowheresville and the mosquitoes began to bite hell out of me. Then I saw the plane. It was close behind us, a whopping big black shape against the sky, from the look of it, an old DC-4 prop job. This had to be one of the illegal Florida strips I was always hearing about, which funneled in dope, grass, and immigrants of the non-kosher type. What had I succeeded in horning myself into?

We were all herded, more or less gently, to the plane, and a door in the side opened, letting out light, while a row of steps clanked down. Up these we went and found ourselves in a big cabin made into a lounge, with sofas, chairs, and even a chrome bar with stools. As we entered in single file, I could hear grunting noises and thuds behind us, and I figured the machine was being wrestled into the cargo space. The plane door slammed and Leo dogged the locks shut.

Up front, next to the bar, a door opened and three men came through, from the direction of the pilot’s cabin, and moved down the slanting deck. These old prop jobs sit up very nose-high. Then they stepped and looked at us.

The one on the left was a tall skinny guy with a bald head and horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a rumpled seersucker suit. Every so often the corner of his mouth twitched a little. On the right was a burly clown in a windbreaker and worn levis. He had on heavy boots and sported a badly broke nose, as well as two days’ blue beard.

The one in the middle, though, was what held my attention. Because I knew him, and had for years. Lots of people knew him, including many assorted types in law enforcement.

He was still a bit round, but not so much as when we both attended P.S. 86 in a northern metropolis I shall not name. His name then was Salvatore Tomaselli, and we called him Sally Pasta, on account of his being unable to stop eating the stuff. He was the only kid I ever saw with both spaghetti and lasagna in his lunch box. Long since those childish days of yore, he had become upwardly maneuverable, via el Syndicato, where he became known as Sally Tomatoes, first as an enforcer, or soldier, then as a capo, and then as a very big area boss indeed. At this point, he made US Senate hearings with nonstop mutterings about “decline to answer on the grounds.” He finally managed to get deported as an illegal immigrant, and unless my wires were crossed, he had no business being back in the States at all. It made me even chillier watching his beady black orbs and his pinstriped chubbiness, when I figured he probably wouldn’t want it known he was here, let alone who he was in the first place.

“Greetings, chums,” he said, in an oily way. “You can call me Mr. Saul. On my right is Professor Jones, a very brilliant man who has come to look over your machine, Dr. van D’Alliance,” and he gave a nod to Motley, who just looked panicked. The tall guy twitched his mouth once and grunted, “Nonsense. Farcical. Impossible.”

Sally ignored him and continued in his breezy rasp: “On my left, we have Mr. Williams, who is a construction and metals expert in the engineering line. He builds things, as you will see. Now let’s all have a drink. I’ll tend bar and we can sit down and get better acquainted, eh?”

Motley and his bride were numbers one and two in line, and I was last, except for Leo and Goldy. They were always last from now on, remaining poised behind our backs for reasons which I had no doubt of.

When I got to the bar I had my head down, and since Motley was already behind me for seconds, I hoped I would pass unnoticed. No such luck. Sally hadn’t gotten to his present altitude by missing much. As I turned quickly away with my double Scotch, his hand clamped on my arm.

“I know you!” came the rasp, but with all the fake jollity evaporated.

“OK, it’s a cop,” I said feebly. “Long time since P.S. 86, eh,—Mr. Saul?”

He glared at me for a minute, then relaxed. “Well, well,” he smirked. “Old Joe Doakes, the class cut-up. You ain’t no Fed, that’s for sure.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “See that it stays Mr. Saul, Doakes, if you want to stay healthy.” Then he raised his voice to normal. “Remember when we blew up the crapper, with old lady Melchick sitting on it? Christ, what a laugh! Ah, them were the days!”

I laughed hollowly, having been home sick the day poor Miss Melchick was taken to the hospital after this merry jest, with two quarts of lye burning off her epidermis.

“Well, folks,” went on Sally, looking at his watch, “it’s nice to find an old buddy amongst you. But we can rework the past on other occasions. Now, let me explain loud and clear what comes next. And no dumb questions until I finish, see!” Aside from gulping and slurping noises, the cabin went dead quiet.

“In a few moments, we will all take off and fly to a tropical retreat of my acquaintance, where we will all live in luxury. If everyone co-operates, that is!

“While there,” he went on, “my colleagues will appraise and report on the van D’Alliance invention. If the report is favorable, there is going to be lots of money. Lots and lots of money, in fact more money than any of you ever thought about. There will also be lots of security, hence present arrangements, right? No one talks, nobody writes, nobody goes for unauthorized walks or swims or boat rides. And if they do, or try to, they get to be very, very sorry.” He looked hard at all of us and still not a soul spoke.

“Good,” he said, smiling again, like a chubby rattlesnake. “Now let’s all have another slug and relax. Think of all that dough that’s coming, which will be paid, I may say, into nice numbered bank accounts, which I will open for you in sunny Switzerland, right?”

The motors roared suddenly and in a short while we were bumped aloft and growling our way through the Florida night, destination Shangri-La, for all I knew.

Barnstaffel finally found his voice and, true to form, asked a stupid leading question.

“Ahem, Mr. Saul, I’m just maybe a little bit puzzled about something. I’m no scientist or engineer, and neither is Joe. What do we do on these operations? What do you need us for?” I felt the old chill as two nasty black eyes looked us over. If the answers came out “nothing,” then Bushveldt and I had a good chance to start a skydiving course in a hurry, minus parachutes!

After a pause that seemed to last several decades, Sally took a drink, then leaned over.

“You know hotels, motels, stuff like that, don’t you, Barnstaffel? I mean how they should look, how they should be run, right? Catering, first-class service, all that jazz?” Bushveldt gulped and nodded violently. He’d just made the same equation I had, only much later. If he’d been asked to be a ballet expert, he’d have nodded. Which left me, feeling very lonely.

“Look at those two crumbum lushes put it away,” marveled Sally, staring past me to where Motley and the Mrs. were knocking back their fifth or sixth jolts. “My best booze too. Ah, the hell with it. Now listen, Doakes,” he said, turning to me, “forget the old school shit. You mean one thing to me and one only. If that alky has really got what you claim he has, you get a free ride, plus all the dough you ever dreamed of. But I want him working. I mean, happy, but in condition to put out in the brain waves. He can get juiced on his own time, so long as he works his ass off when he’s needed, see. That means you! You see he stays healthy and in his mental right mind when he’s needed, and that woman of his, too. But keep her out of my hair and sight. Jeez, how could anyone get in the sack with that? No wonder he’s a lush. You get my picture?”

“Roger and out, Sally—I mean Mr. Saul.”

He scowled at the slip, then relaxed and even smiled. “So call me Sally. I get tired of being called Boss all the time, you know? Nice to have someone around that knew me back when, once in a while. Say remember the time. . . .”

I gave eager grunts of approval to an endless stream of Sally’s happy memories, ranging from cats incinerated in gasoline to dumping elderly pushcart vendors down open manholes. Eventually he ran dry and excused himself for some sack time. We all flaked out on chairs and lounges and I even managed to fall asleep to the roar of the engines.

Some six hours later I woke up as we landed again. But Leo informed us all it was a fuel stop, and no doors were opened. Out of the window I could see a pink dawn, a few palm trees and also a lot of sand. We could have been in the central Sahara, for all I could guess, though this seemed a bit unlikely from my estimate of our speed. As I tried to look further, Leo and Goldy went around and flicked all the shades down in an obvious way. “No peeking,” said Goldy, patting my bald spot. “Daddy doesn’t like that.” I got the message and fell asleep again.

When I woke next, we were lumbering down once more and landing for the second time. This time my watch said noon. And there was Sally standing in the door to the front section, all neat, shaved and spruced up, which none of us certainly were.

“OK, folks,” he said as we all unglued ourselves and got the sticky out of our eyes, “here we are in a great little place. It’s a very private island the Rockefellers ain’t got around to buying yet. Don’t ask the name or location, because you won’t get told and I will get very annoyed if I hear about it, which I will. Just think about all the sweet money at the end, eh? So now let’s go and see the sights.”

At the end of a long, hot day, what we had seen was this: A hot, low, squatty island covered with thorny brush and drooping palm trees, some of which had coconuts on them. Some big concrete buildings, like airplane hangars, but lower. These had trees all around and growing on the roofs, too, a pretty good camouflage gimmick. From a distance they looked like low hills. A big white house, and I mean big, with about fifty rooms, like a small hotel, with a pool and a fancy garden. A lot of bare, sharp, rock coast without even one beach, plus a lot of coral reefs just offshore. One very small harbor with some large cabin cruisers in it, entirely surrounded by tall wire fencing and a guarded gate. And a lot of peons in white clothes, jabbering in some language which might possibly have been Spanish. They, it turned out, were the help.

We saw all of this because Leo and Goldy drove the van D’s, Barnstaffel and me all around the island. We were meant to see it, Leo informed us, so that any silly ideas about leaving would be henceforward just that—silly ideas. We were told the island was around six miles long and two wide and that it was the property of a nutty hermit, a Swede millionaire, who never had any visitors. I believed the last part, but strongly suspected the Swede millionaire to be the collective label of a group of gentlemen who had once met at Appalachian, N.Y., to divvy up the U. S. A.

Anyway, by late evening we were back at the big house, well wined and dined, in clean clothes, and ready for the morrow’s business. I retired with a head full of thoughts, none of which were pleasant.

From the next day’s breakfast coffee, life took on a fast tempo indeed. The schedule went something like this: Motley and his twitchy corpse of a fellow scientist disappeared into a back office to argue all day with each other and also Williams the construction type. Mrs. van D’ slept hangover late, which was nice for the rest of us. Leo, Goldy and I played gin or fished or swam or read (there was even a large-sized library). I took a terrible beating at gin, and at a buck a point, it really hurt. Leo explained we were gambling on future wealth and that markers were fine, but it still made me nervous. Bushveldt Barnstaffel was very busy, however, and scuttled around all day checking blueprints and lists of various things, which he refused to let me see, for some stupid reason. Sally flew in and out to check on things, and after a while a lot of things were available to be checked on.

The only work I had, and it got pretty draggy, was watching Motley’s level of booze intake, which started at five thirty over cocktails. I stayed with him all evening, which was a big bore, then searched both him and his room for stashed-away samples, then locked him up for the night. Mrs. van D’ had a separate room, which suited both of them, and got sloshed totally and regularly. Nobody gave a fiddler’s fart about her, anyway. I soon learned what Motley could handle and still do his head work on the next day. So it got into a dull routine. The funny thing was, it became obvious that the other professor, whose alias was Jones and whom I suspected strongly of being a closet junkie, had changed his way of thinking about old Motley. He called him “Doctor” with real respect, even when Motley was boiled as an owl come sundown.

Two dirty freighters with Panama flags appeared off the minute harbor and began to unload lots of stuff onto flat barges they brought with them. The first thing that came off the barges was a bunch of mean-looking bastards who made Texas oil riggers look like ladies’ maids. These, in turn, began to bring in and unload tons of construction stuff, like cranes, bulldozers, cement, steel beams, heavy lumber, and God knows what all. These rough types built their own camp on the other end of the island, and we never saw them except at loading and unloading, which got pretty frequent. But a hell of a lot of building was going on somewhere back in the island, and Mr. “alias Williams” was always roaring around in hardhat and a jeep. One time they unloaded a monster generator that could have powered New York, or at least Staten Island. Another, it was tons of new furniture in crates and also swimming-pool loads of paint. This cargo and also the tons of assorted crockery were of special interest to Bushveldt, who went away with them into the backcountry looking smugger and stupider than usual.

For me, life went on like a crazy dream, being really bad only after Ellen-Sue got tired of propositioning Leo and Goldy and turned her efforts on me. I decided I would drown myself the day she began to look halfway acceptable. Meanwhile the peons buzzed about, serving as help, gardeners, and what all. And I continued to lose at gin, which might have been bad luck.

After three months of this weird, but no-so-bad existence, all at once the shit hit the fan.

Sally appeared unexpectedly at dinner one evening and announced we were all going-on a little drive later in the night. I only hoped the drive would not end with free catering for the island’s large population of sharks, which I had many opportunities to eyeball whilst fishing for nicer things. But he even took time to pat me on the back and tell me I’d been doing a great job on Motley. I felt confused, but this was nothing new.

So after the food, terminated by good brandy and better coffee as usual, we call crammed into a parade of jeeps and drove off in a cloud of bugs. One thing no one had been able to do was kill the hundred billion local mosquitoes, or even discourage them slightly. And they were a very greedy kind, which I can rate, being a sometime resident of south Jersey.

After fifteen minutes of swatting mosquitoes or spitting them out, a blaze of light appeared ahead of us, and we zipped down a tunnel on a concrete ramp into the underground, while enormous steel doors clanged shut behind us. We came to a stop in a huge cave with concrete all about us and lights like kliegs overhead. But none of us were looking at lights.

In front of us, in the middle of this king-sized air-raid shelter, sat an oversized version of Motley’s steel box. Where his had been maybe six feet high, this job was fifty if it was an inch. The round door was three feet thick, as well as being open, and inside you could put perhaps two school busses and a possible four cars as well. The biggest cables I ever saw, like a foot thick, ran out of it and into steel plates on the wall. Now I knew what that mother of a generator was for.

Sally lines us all up and, so help me, picked up an electric bullhorn, like they use on boats.

“OK,” he boomed, while the gray walls echoed, Tm going to let you in on a little secret. We here are not really government men. In fact, this whole deal is strictly free enterprise.”

I smiled sourly to myself. Even Motley and Ellen-Sue had figured that out a long time ago.

“What we have here,” he went on, “due to many talents present, but chiefly Professor van D’Alliance,” and he gave him a big wave, “is a thing which will enable many persons which like privacy to have it, free from care and types who want to prosecute, I mean to persecute them.” He covered this slight error of the tongue quickly and went on.

“This here time gimmick means anyone with access to the right ticket can go into the past and disappear!” He looked solemn, as if at a buddy’s funeral, many of which he had no doubt both attended and arranged as well. At this point I noticed “Jones” and “Williams” had appeared behind us. Leo and Goldy had never left, as usual.

“With my chum, Mr. Barnstaffel here,” he continued, as Bushveldt beamed, “I have designed a luxurious hotel in the past, friends, like many millions of years ago. All comforts are there or rather will be provided, at cost or maybe just a teentsy bit higher.” Like eight million percent higher, said the Doakes brain.

“We haven’t actually built anything yet, but the planning is all done, the materials are here ready to go. We are going to run a few tests first, and then we’re all set. Now, I will let that great genius who concepted the whole scene, brainwise, explain what we’ve done and what comes next. Professor van D’Alliance?” He now starts clapping, as so, of course, does everyone else.

Motley looked much the same as when I first met him, which was scared, although a little cleaner and with a shave. But he ambled forward and borrowed the bullhorn with a feeble grin.

“Well,” he said, “the van D’Alliance Chronocron, or time shuttle, A is here in front of you all. And it works. We have been able to get to certain points in the past on repeated occasions, that is the same points, which is vital. These points all fall within a period of about eighty-five to two hundred million years ago, give or take a few. There have been many problems to overcome. Professor, er, Jones and I have found certain, well, anomalies which we simply cannot resolve, in some cases. For instance, why are we limited to this one segment of time? Why can we go neither beyond it or closer to the present? We don’t know, but Krug’s recent work on magnetic fluxes may well . . .” Here a loud rasping cough from Sally shut him up. No Krug fluxes need apply. Stick to business!

“Ah, yes, well,” he went on, “then we had to find ways of probing what the shuttle emerged into. Obviously coming out into solid rock, earth or even underwater, would not only be useless but highly dangerous as well. But that problem we solved also, and we can safely predict that the shuttle will only exit safely onto dry land and in the same place, always, if the proper controls are used.” He looked down at the floor before going on, and, I realized late, he must have been summoning up his small supply of nerve to go on, because what he said next took some guts. His voice suddenly got louder.

“I am not satisfied with the matter displacement problem, however. Large and unpredictable objects may reappear anywhere on this globe, since the larger the mass sent back, the further the point of rediffusion into the present seems to occur. What I mean is. . . .” But Sally had now grabbed the bullhorn back, having finally got the idea that he was not listening to a hymn of thanksgiving any longer. He shoved Motley away in a sweeping motion and the poor bastard’s one feeble attempt to be honest was over.

“So like the professor said, folks,” Sally resumed, “practically all the problems been worked out. And, now, the volunteers which has been named to take a first look at our future site will be given their equipment and sent back into the past to survey around the site of the lovely retreat we will build!”

Two guys appeared from through a side door, pushing a dolly loaded with sun helmets, rifles, khaki clothes, and other gear of the Tarzan-epic variety, but I hardly gave them a glance, because I was looking around for the volunteers.

And found everyone looking at me. Or rather at me and Bushveldt Barnstaffel. Meet the “volunteers.” I thought of those rotting bones that Motley had found in his driveway and shuddered.

Bushveldt was blubbering helplessly about hotels and how he was needed to run and plan them, but meanwhile he was being dressed, forcibly, by the dolly crew and other rough types who had filed in behind us. They advanced on me, too, but I glared and pushed my way through them. I’m no hero, but I was fucked if I’d be dressed up like a baby.

I was interrupted by a wild howling noise and looked up to see two amazon bull-dyke types appearing to seize Ellen-Sue and dress her as well. I looked over at Motley and now found him grinning broadly. He must have made his own deal, the little rat. So much for his courage, the scummy creep. She was a mess, but nobody sends a woman, let alone a wife, into something like this. Then I got another surprise.

“Look, boss,” said Leo, stepping forward, “this is a test, right? Now Doakes here is the only one with half an ounce of guts or brains either. They could all three fall down a hole and you wouldn’t learn nothing. For a small bonus, me and Goldy will go along and ride shotgun, right, Goldy?” I felt kind of flattered, I must say.

Goldy looked surprised and not very pleased, either, but he was used to following Leo’s lead and grunted an assent.

Sally was really surprised because professional hoods don’t volunteer any more than career army sergeants, but Leo led him aside, and after a spirited discussion in whispers, he agreed. The discussion must have been about the size of the bonus.

Ellen-Sue finally stopped yelling and got dressed the same as us four, in long-sleeved khaki shirts and long pants, with high boots and sun helmets. Sally took one look at her face and told Leo the guns would be given only to him and Goldy, until after we were through the machine and out the other side. But she managed to get close to her helpmeet and spit in his face. No one tried to stop her. Barnstaffel was dead-white and muttering in Dutch.

We all got into the big lighted chamber, and the enormous round port slammed shut behind us. We could hear all the lugs and clamps being applied, and then there was a silence as we all looked at each other. It lasted maybe a minute and then there came a deep soft humming, more like a vibration that went all through us, as if we were inside some whopper of a microwave oven. It didn’t actually hurt, but your skin pringled all over, the way static electricity makes it.

This went on for a bit and I moved over to look at the heap of weapons, more to stop thinking than anything else. I was glad to see an old friend, an M-l Garand from World War II days, which I could still handle, I thought. There was also a bazooka and a lot of big shells for it, plus two .45 automatics and a .38 police-type revolver; also a couple of army auto-load shotguns and buckshot shells for them. At least we wouldn’t be completely defenseless, which was some comfort. We divvied them up and I got a .45 and the Garand .30 rifle. Ellen-Sue got a revolver and oddly enough could handle it. Watching her spin the cylinder, I wondered what her background had been. Goldy took the bazooka and Leo a .45 and one shotgun. Bushveldt got the other, but his hand trembled so, I made a vow to stick well back behind his fat butt.

The humming vibration finally died away, and Leo, who seemed to know all about it, moved to the opposite end of the chamber from where we had come in. There was an identical door, but all the huge lugs and locking bars were on the inside, our side. This made practical sense, because this way nothing could get back through and out the way we had come in. In theory, that is.

Leo positioned Goldy in the center, Ellen-Sue behind him, his bazooka aimed at the port, with Barnstaffel on one side and me on the other, also aiming. Then he began to free the bars, one by one, until all were dogged open. He looked around to see we were in line and pushed hard against the great steel circle, which opened slowly outward. Then he jumped back to one side.

A blaze of red light poured in, along with a gush of warm tropical air. We heard a crowing sound, like a rooster but much larger, in the distance. A thing like a huge oversized wasp, buzzed past the opening. We were looking into a sunset and down to a long sloping beach, with the blue sea lapping gently on it, about a hundred yards away. Strange pungent smells came in through the opening, the sea mixed with plant odors that really tickled the nose. The crowing thing let go again in the distance, but nothing moved in the circle of light.

“OK,” said Leo, peering around the door, “here’s how it goes. Doakes, Barnstaffel and me go out first. Goldy, as back-up, you stay within ten feet of the door. Ellen-Sue, you stay with him. We’ll go maybe a hundred feet, no more, and look around; then I’ll have some idea what to do next. And listen, you,” he added to Bushveldt, “if that shotgun goes off aimed at one of us, I’m going to personally blow your lard-ass off, see!”

We moved slowly out, stepping over the high rim of the port, and, once we were twenty feet outside, took a look around and back.

The big box now sat on level ground above the quiet sea, crushing down an acre of low, knee-high palmettos or something. Bigger palms, with fat trunks, loomed in the background and, beyond them, much taller frees still, but with pointed stems like pine trees and deep shadows under them. I did not realy like the shadows and decided to keep an eye peeled to the rear. Bugs of all kinds buzzed around us, but nothing tried to bite us. I guess we smelled wrong to bugs which had never tasted a human before. There was a nice breeze moving down through the trees, but it was very quiet in a funny way, and I finally figured out why. There were no birds singing. Jeez, pre-bird world! Somehow this hit me harder than anything else to date!

“This is supposed to be an island, about the same size as the one we left,” said Leo to me. “It isn’t in the exact same place, though, according to the eggheads, and I don’t think they know why, any more than I do. Jones thinks it may be in the South Pacific or what was the South Pacific way back then. Anyway, it’s supposed to be as safe as anything around in this period. So let’s push a little further away and see the sights. Stay well away from the water, though. They told me that much.”

The sea looked the safest place around to me, barring running back into the time shuttle, but if that was the word, then I would not venture to argue.

We went real slow, angling down the slope to the left, so we stayed midway between the sand of the beach and the higher stuff further up. And I noticed something else funny. This was a green, humid, tropical set-up that could have used Dorothy Lamour to advantage, but it was all green, or greeny-yellow. There was no other color, no flowers of any kind, any more than there were birds! Underfoot, there was just scrub or nothing, except some moss in the shady bits. But no grass of any kind. What a nutty place!

About a hundred yards from the shuttle entrance, trouble appeared. In front of us was a kind of shallow gully, choked with taller brush, which led down direct to the sea through a little rocky gulch. I could hear water trickling down from up to the left, but it was only visible at the sea edge where a little stream ran over some shallow rocks.

There was a cracking noise of trampled brush and out of the gully came a head. The mud-colored head had a big turtle beak and a huge horn like a rhino’s, but much bigger and straighter. Behind the horn were two yellow eyes and a skull flaring back into a rim of black spikes two feet long, pointing up and rearwards. The whole skull apparatus was perhaps six feet wide.

The yellow eyes looked us over and decided to vote “no.” There was a grunt, and two really gross front legs and a notched back, like a large hippo’s in size, began to come up out of the gully. How in hell it was hidden in the first place, I don’t know, unless it was asleep and lying down.

“Run,” yelled Leo, unnecessarily, while loosing off a blast of buckshot at the head. He might as well have blown a soda straw, for all the impression it made. The whole enormous body had heaved up now, and it was bigger than any elephant, with a long, heavy tail to match.

I was running my ass off toward the shuttle, and Barnstaffel was too. Leo, who was lighter and younger, plus in better shape, soon caught up and led the way. Ahead, I could see Goldy pointing the bazooka at my face, and I gave him A-plus for guts, as well as praying he knew how to aim. Personally, I’d have slammed the door on what was grunting and lumbering along behind us.

I sneaked a quick peek back and was appalled. The thing could make better time smashing through the scrub than we could, and that chomping beak was only twenty feet behind my tail! I let out a yowl and proceeded to trip on a flat palmetto trunk, falling down smoosh on my face. With my mouth full of scratchy brush, I froze, not even thinking “this is the end.”

Goldy kept his nerve, God bless him, and that bazooka sent one shell zipping over my back from about forty feet in front. There was a Christ-almighty bang and a shower of sloppy wet things fell on me. I scrambled up and looked back.

The bazooka was designed for knocking out tanks, but it had effectively removed most of the beaked head in front of the shoulders. Only fragments remained, both red meat and shattered white bone, and blood was spraying all over the place in fountains. We watched, all of us stupefied, because the whole colossal hulk was still staggering around, tearing up the ground in chunks, while gobs of raw flesh splattered all around us.

Then it tripped, and as we stood petrified into position, the headless dinosaur rolled and tumbled down the slope and went over and over the sand into the calm water of the sea with a twenty-ton splash, leaving a trail of blood and shredded unmentionables in its rear.

It thrashed feebly in the shallows, the gushing red stain coloring the water around it, and then rolled into deeper water, where it floated upside down, but still kicking. Not for long, however.

Out of the sea came a head like a huge snake, but with long needle fangs on the jaws. This was on a neck like a giraffe, only twice as long, and two more joined in. They began to tear the headless one in chunks, and we could see the huge tan bodies and flippers that went with the necks, while they fought and battered at the dying dinosaur, plus each other as well.

Suddenly, all three tried to leave, paddling desperately away and sending bloody waves washing way up the beach. Two of them made it, but the third suddenly rose out of the water held by a shark head that must have been ten feet wide, which promptly bit the giant body in half! The bitten things screamed so our ears hurt.

More showers appeared of blood and meat, more snapping and grinding and more red, foaming waves poured ashore. By this time we had all backed into the time shuttle, without even noticing what we were doing.

Still watching this incredible scene in the water, Leo pulled shut the big port and with shaky hands, set the locking bars, and dogged them shut. Silence now fell, broken first by friend Goldy.

“This is going to be a resort?” he said, rather in a mild way, I thought.

“I declare,” said Ellen-Sue, carefully checking out her revolver, “I think I’m gonna have a few words to say’ to Motley and that dirty stinkin’ Mr. Saul, sendin’ a lady off to a place like a crazy zoo with no cages!”

Goldy reached over nimbly and whipped the gun out of her mitts. “You got a point there, lady,” he admitted, “but I think Leo and me will keep the artillery while we go back to normal. Ante up, boys.”

I’d forgotten I was clutching the unfired M-l to my bloody breast. Looking down, I almost blew my dinner. I was sticky-tight with lizard gore and a few bits of solider gorp mixed in for effect. And the smell! I handed over my unused arsenal and so did Bushveldt. He was still mumbling in High Dutch.

“If you’re hungry, baby, try my shirt,” I told him.

He took a good look at it and went over and was violently sick in a far corner, which almost made it all worth it. When I turned around, Goldy started gagging. The back, it appeared, was much worse and I was glad I couldn’t see it. Leo shook his head at me in a reproving way, but he was grinning, if wolves can grin.

Then we sat in the quiet of the big box for sometime, and I began to wonder if we were going to stay there permanently. Leo did his usual mind-reading act.

“Relax, everybody. This thing is timed. We were supposed to go back in one hour, and we are almost at it.”

Sure enough, in a minute or so, the weird humming started again, and we could feel that strange tingling all through our bodies.

Eventually it stopped again, and we could hear the catches being freed on the other side of the original entry port.

When they opened we looked into the muzzles of two more bazookas, plus some assorted machine guns and a rifle or two, all of which slowly dropped as it sank in we had brought back no after-dinner guests.

Then Sally pushed up to the front and looked at us, and with him were Jones, Motley, and a guy in a white coat with a black bag. All their jaws sunk when they saw us, especially me, with my new re-encrusted suit.

“It’s a little like hairy back there, boss,” said Leo from behind me. “But we’re all OK, thanks to Goldy and that tank buster of his.” He slapped Goldy on the back. “They all behaved real good, but we need to have a little talk before anybody else gets sent back. Some very special equipment ought to go first, is what I mean.” He paused as if searching for what to say next. Then it came.

“Maybe we could get a loan from the Second Armored at Fort Hood or somewhere?”

II

It turned out the guy in the white coat was a doctor after all. Maybe an unfrocked abortionist or something, but he ran us through all kinds of tests, blood and otherwise, and we were even kept locked up until the tests were all over. I joked with the others about being astronauts, but sobered up when Ellen-Sue, of all people, pointed out we had been a hell of a lot further away than any of the space jockeys.

Actually, when some of the implications began to sink in, they scared the piss out of me. Suppose we had brought back some disease or bug that didn’t exist now? Compared to the precautions the United States takes over returning astronauts, what we went through was kindergarten stuff. We could have infected the whole island the minute we got out of the box!

I mentioned this to Leo over cards and he shrugged. “Yeah, I thought of that, too. But the doc says that the bugs back then were much too primitive to hurt us. Only a ninety-nine percent chance, he says.”

One percent, I thought to myself and flinched.

Well, we finished the tests, but more unnamed experts of various kinds quizzed us. One showed us pictures of various dinosaurs, each worse than the one before. And, sure enough, we spotted old Nosehorn right off. His name was Monocolonius (I wrote it down), and the three long-necked paddle-feet jobs were called plesiosaurs. The shark was only a shark, merely four times bigger than the biggest which nibble on you nowadays. This all got the guy with the book very excited and he squared off with twitchy Jones, who was also present.

“It can’t be an island!” he squeaked at Jones. “It is totally impossible, due to weight, especially skull weight, for an animal like this” (which was Nose-horn) “to swim very far, that is if they could swim at all.”

All this crap led to a long egghead argument and they went out together, still gabbling like geese and hand waving. It was amazing how much crazy talent Sally could lay his hands on, I often thought.

Eventually, after we had all been questioned to death, they let us out and alone, while the former routine began again. I found it very restful, personally. Fighting dinosaurs may look like fun in the flicks, but one hour would last me forever.

Meanwhile, equipment was still being landed and sent inland. A lot of it made more sense, after what we had been through. One night I heard a lot of clanking and engines and looked out the windows. There was a bunch of square tank-like things going by in the moonlight. Where a tank’s turret should be was a shield with a long, thin, skinny gun, looking much too small for the body, sitting up on a mount with a hole for the driver or gunner behind it. My knowledge of United States hardware was World War II vintage, and these were new to me.

“Multipurpose ONTOS,” purred Leo from behind me, making me jump. He had drifted in from his own pad. “They’re like tanks, but amphibious and also troop carriers. And that gun doohickey, is a recoilless rifle. It shoots small shells, like a bazooka, but bigger and ten times as far.

“So they still think they can handle that bunch of monsters, eh?”

“Hell, Doakes, they could probably get an atom bomb if they needed to. You think with all the leftover junk from thirty wars floating around, the boss can’t take care of some oversized lizards?” He laughed and went away again, leaving me leaning on my elbow until the motor noise died away.

Two other new things were of note in our lives. A bulletin board appeared with no advance notice, in the big main lounge, and on it every day were clipped bits from newspapers, mostly American, but English too, and sometimes German or French, which I don’t read. There were pictures in lots of them. One week’s reading was enough to tell the main story. We were rumbled, that is, up to a point.

Like a shower of mud, mixed with green logs, crushed a house in England. Two people were killed. The logs were from fossil trees, only they were fresh.

Or 60 tons of sea water washed away an oil rig. Not an offshore oil rig, but one planted in central Canada. When the mess was cleared away, a lot of fish, ripe and stinking, were found which should not have been anything but skeletons in very old rock indeed.

The one that broke Sally up made me want to vomit, as well as killing him with a dull knife. I’ve conned people in a mild way all my life, but this was murder. He was giggling over it when I came through the hall, and he waved me over to share the fun. Anything that made him laugh should have been a good enough stop sign.

A ten-foot high, meat-eating dinosaur had appeared in an Indonesian school yard during recess. It ate two kids and killed twelve others and a teacher before the local army arrived with artillery.

“This will really keep everybody hopping,” he chuckled. “They won’t have no time to think about us, baby, none at all.” If I’d had the guts, I’d have strangled him on the spot.

There was other news relating to Sally Tomatoes and Friends, Limited. The United Nations had secret security sessions going, and a world-wide alert was on. The United States, China and Russia, for once, all decided they were all under attack, and even the Arabs and Israel agreed it was neither of them. Castro sent offers of help to everybody, and teams of top scientists were meeting hourly. I had reached such a point of sickness, I almost hoped they would find us and wipe us out with a hydrogen bomb. But Sally had been clever, or someone had. The slant from the papers was that the world was being attacked by mad scientists from outer space! Or from the ancient past or somewhere. Nutty religious groups formed all over, ranging from end-of-the-world idiots to eco-freaks, who said the planet was striking bapk at polluters and had a giant brain down in its center core! Try to sell anyone on a Syndicate operation and you would have been sent to the nearest funny farm in a jacket laced up the back. All I could do was try and avoid Sally and his laughter, but I was getting less and less sleep. Motley was boozing more and more now, and I let him, but no one seemed to give a damn. They’d sucked him dry by now.

I have mentioned that a couple of things happened about this time. The other one was a pleasant surprise. Ellen-Sue began to pick up her socks.

First, I noticed that her hair dye was faded out and that she was neater. She held herself to one drink before chow and began to go swimming and even fishing with us. The bags disappeared from under her eyes and she got a nice tan, mixed with a lot of freckles. What appeared finally was a snappy-looking woman in the early forties, with brown hair (OK, so a little gray) and a cute figure for her age. She was no Raquel Welch, but she was no pig either.

She quit making drunken passes at anything in pants and was nice and polite. I dunno where her education stopped, but she was no dumb-head, and once I got used to her hog-and-hominy accent, she was fun to talk to. I found myself drifting her way more and more and even tried a pass after a good dinner one night. I got chilled off but quick, but not nasty, either, you know? Just, “You’re a nice guy, but nothing doing; let’s stay friends.” I began to look at her harder and harder. The Hour of the Dinosaur had really brought on a change, and I don’t mean change of life, either.

To Motley, she was Miss Frost. She looked right through him when he spoke to her, and after a bit he quit trying. He was so ginned up now anyway, I doubt if much really penetrated. He spent most of the day out under a tree, either passed out, bottle in paw or working on it.

Ellen-Sue and I found we felt the same way about the horror show on the bulletin board. She let me know that this was what had snapped her out of the scummy life she’d been rolling around in and that she felt slow burning was too good for Sally Tomatoes and his buddies. But wrack our brains as we tried, there seemed nothing we could do.

Meanwhile, the mountains of supplies and building stuff were still unloaded at night and trucked inland; the small army of servants and serfs still padded around mowing lawns, serving food and booze and doing tons of laundry.

A funny thing happened one evening in connection with these guys though. I heard low voices down near a little beach when I was out walking, and it sounded like the native secret code which I had figured out to be two parts Aztec, or something, and one part bad Spanish. I would have paid no attention, but the voices stopped and a man swung up the slope and passed me in the dark. I was standing still and he never noticed me at all, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t Goldy. What was that illiterate slob doing talking the weird native lingo and being so secret about it too? I decided to say nothing and keep an eye on him.

A few days later, just in case we were all getting too restless or bored, Sally staged another little show. This time it was bingo night, Godfather style, and we all got numbered certificates of deposit in Swiss banks plus keys to open them. I thought they must be counterfeit, but they looked real enough. I had always assumed he was going to knock us all off whenever our use was over, but if these things were real, maybe he felt some gratitude. I didn’t like to ask how much was involved, but he told us anyway, with no prompting. I almost fainted because my share was a hundred grand and so was Ellen-Sue’s. We all looked stunned and this gave him a big boot.

“You people never exactly seen what we got here, with the professor’s little machine,” he confided, while pulling on a foot-long Cuban cigar.

“Look, how many guys in the world need to cool off once in a while? Not just in the rackets, but South American generals and like that? OK, so the U.N. and Interpol and all the various law people with computers can make it pretty hairy these days, see? But one place they can’t go is back in time. So, my friends and I, which financed this whole operation, we sell shares. You can’t buy anything permanent, but you can lease space. And nobody without lots of the folding gets in. Everybody gets checked out first, and then they get assessed on two counts, one being what they are good for finance-wise, and second he degree of heat which is on them. Then we figure a scale for that person and back they will go, safe and sound. Neat, huh?”

“Plus a few million people get killed as a fringe benefit,” I couldn’t help putting in.

“So what are you, Doakes, Mr. Sunday School?” He gave me a dirty look, then laughed. “Maybe when you went back, half a big lizard head came up front and helped eat someone here. So you ain’t no rose either. We’re all in it together, folks, and that’s why you ain’t going to turn down that lovely money, right?”

He was right and I felt sick at my stomach. That night I lay awake, staring at the wall and wishing I could make a volcano blow up this rotten business and the whole scumbag crowd, including myself. What had once seemed merely a bad joke was now so filthy sick and nauseating that I now hated my own face in the bathroom mirror.

Suddenly, I heard a faint knock at my bedroom door. When it came a second time, I slid over and eased it open a crack. I could see Ellen-Sue’s face and I felt better all at once. Maybe a little female comfort was just what I needed.

But when I let her in I got a surprise. She was wearing the same long dress she had on at dinner and behind her in came Leo, in his dark suit, which made me flinch, naturally.

“Be quiet, Joseph,” she hissed, closing the door and locking it. “We got to talk to you. Leo here has somethin’ to tell you that’s mighty important!”

Leo checked the window and closed it, lowering the screens. Then he moved over and pulled my hand away from the light switch I was about to turn on.

“No lights, Doakes. I’ve checked your room and Ellen-Sue’s already. They’ve been bugged all along, but only with twenty-four hour tapes. That means no one checks them but once a day, understand? And I’m the one who does it. So we’re in the clear on that point.” His voice had changed, being now very clear and with no mistakes in English. And he was somehow on a first-name basis with Ellen-Sue, which annoyed me a bit. I sat down on the bed and looked at his tall shadow in the dark.

“I have to trust someone,” he said, “and I’m going to gamble on you two. I’ve been watching you both and this lousy set-up is really getting to you, unless I’m dimmer than I used to be. Right?”

My mind must have been working quicker than usual, I guess, because I began to see a new picture.

“Who are you, Leo?” I asked, “a Fed, or some other branch?”

“Not bad,” he said. “Glad your brain is functioning. Yes, I’m an agent. The bureau has been quite interested in Sally for a long time, and it took me two years to get this close to him. But no one ever thought of the van D’Alliance Chronocron, damn your drunken genius of a husband. Ellen-Sue.”

“I know,” she said. “I never thought he was worth anything, either, just a meal ticket after too many cheap bars and bad times. I knew he was no good, rat down inside, but I was no prize, either; so I had no decent complaint. Even when he had me sent back with you to that awful place, I guess I deserved it. But not now. Not with those rats killing kids and letting innocent people get eaten up and buried and all.”

I put my hand over her shoulders and pulled her over next to me on the bed. She’d never had much and neither had I and it felt good to know we were being honest. She didn’t pull away either.

“What can we do?” I said. “I think you realize we’ll both help. I’ve trimmed a few marks in my life but not this kind of a thing. It has to be stopped someway, anyway.”

“I don’t know, and that’s the hell of it. I have no signaling equipment and frankly don’t know where we are myself. I think it’s the Caribbean somewhere, but I’m not even sure of that. The boats are always tightly guarded by imported muscle, and if I make a move out of line, then all eyes get turned my way. Goldy watches me, I watch him, and everyone watches everyone else. Sally is no Rhodes scholar, but he’s damnably clever at hiring technical talent and setting up security arrangements. I simply haven’t got one clue as to how to get a message off this island, let alone get off myself. And now we have to move fast, very fast. You see. . . .”

“Wait a minute,” I cut in, “you should hear a funny thing about your pal, Goldy. It may not mean much, but. . . .” and I went on to fill him in on Goldy’s overheard private chat in the native lingo. This got him very excited indeed.

“You’re sure Doakes, that it was Goldy? No chance of a mistake?”

“No, it was him. And I saw one of the locals slide off down the rocks a little later. Mean anything?”

“Maybe a lot. I’ve always pegged him for a dumb killer, though now and again he gets an odd look in his eyes. But if he can talk this weird native gibberish, then he’s not that. But what is he? Not one of our people, for sure.” He went silent for a bit, and we waited while he tried to figure it out. After a bit he started again.

“Look, just keep an eye on him, I don’t know what his game is and I can’t trust him in case he’s one of Sally’s deep-cover types. That creep could run the CIA if he were halfway honest. He has a flair for covert operations. Anyway, I started to tell you something else, which is more important. Everyone who wants to use the Chronocron at present has to come here first, OK? But, Jones, or whatever his name is—and he’s got to be traced—has found a new gimmick. He’s pretty sure he can build other time-gates elsewhere in the world and lock them in to the same area and moment in the past as this one. See what that means?”

I thought for a second, but Ellen-Sue beat me to it. “It means no one can any longer, ever step them at all. If you close one, they go to another or build another one or somethin’. And the varmints and trash keep comin’ right out the past and eatin’ babies and such!”

“Right! So for God’s sake put on your thinking caps and keep your eyes open! Sally has something big planned for this weekend, though I have no idea what it is.” He punched my shoulder, patted her on the head and slipped out. I gave her a small hug and we both sat for a while in the dark without talking. At least we had a friend and some new ideas. The problem now was what to do with them.

Saturday came around and with it a new big notice on the bulletin board. Everybody was to wear party clothes for a grand hotel opening, and buses and trucks would pick us up at five p.m. that afternoon. I spent the afternoon cleaning and sharpening an old rusty machete I had found a week before on a path. It was so worn down it was only a foot and a half long and a couple of inches wide, but this made it easier to jam into my pants. Sally’s parties had a way of turning out rough on the guests, and the machete wasn’t much but it was the best I could do.

The sun started to go down at last and we all met on the terrace. Prominent in front was Sally and with him was none other than Bushveldt Barnstaffel, my beloved former employer. Here he was grinning and cracking jokes and slapping Sally on the back till you wanted to get sick.

I hadn’t seen him around for a couple of weeks, and we had figured out, Ellen-Sue and me, that he was back in the past, building the El Crooko, Hideout Hilton, or at least seeing it was built right. He must have done the job to Sally’s approval, because he was also in white jacket and black tie, looking as slimy as his new owner.

We all piled into some buses and Goldy and Leo sat opposite me. I looked at Goldy’s dead, cold eyes and wondered if I’d made a mistake. He looked merely stuffed.

Eventually we went down the tunnel and the machine door shut on us. This time a ramp was ready and the whole busload ran up and into the thing. It really was a fantastic arrangement, and when I saw Motley, half-gassed and slumped in a corner seat by himself, it seemed impossible it could have come out of that gin-head skull of his.

When the humming finally stopped and the bus rolled down the outer ramp into the sunset again, I grabbed the arm of my seat as well as Ellen-Sue’s hand. But I could have relaxed. Old Nose-horn was a thing of the past.

All the close-at-hand trees and brush had been cut down, and a tarred road ran up to a big pink building with a red tile roof. There were lights all over and ferns covered the ground where the scrub had been. Some clumps of tall trees were left in places for shade, I guess, and bunches of the fattrunked palms grew here and there. Down on the beach, actually in the water, was a whopper of a steel fence twenty feet high and anchored on big concrete pilings. I could see both triple-strand barb wire and electric insulators set on top of the fence, which stretched along the coast out of sight in both directions.

The bus did not head for the big building, but took a fork along the beach and followed a road along for about a mile or so. I watched the water, but saw no long-necked whatsits of any kind coming up to grab at us. What I did see were tall towers set at regular intervals and in them searchlights and the noses of those bazooka-type guns. Leo and Goldy were looking around too, and Leo pointed to the nearest tower.

“Anything gets near the fence, which is electrified, I guess, one of those recoilless rifles blasts it. After a while, even a dumb dinosaur could learn to stay away, eh, Goldy?”

“I guess,” said Goldy. But I was watching him now as I never used to before, and I thought I saw a spark in the dull glims as he swiveled his head back and forth.

By now, we had reached a place where the fence came out of the sea and ran to our left over the ground. We swung left on the road to stay parallel with it and I noticed the towers were set now twice as thick. Beyond the fence was an area of low swamp and really a terrible stink came in the open windows.

“In case you are wondering, folks,” yells Sally from up front, “this smell is dead meat! We are on a peninsula, or point, for those which cut school like Doaksey and me, of land sticking out into the ocean. With this fence, plus the artillery, we keep the bad guys from coming through from the mainland. Quite a layout, huh?”

The bus stopped and we all got out and looked at the swamp, trying not to breathe in the awful smell. As far as we could see was a flat country with bunches of tall reeds, twenty feet high and winding black water in between the clumps. In the sunset it looked dead and glomy. Ellen-Sue shivered and held my arm.

Over our heads, from the tower, came a long loud “whoosh,” followed by an explosion, far out in the swamp.

Out of the reeds came a greenish neck like a giant, mobile crane, with a little flat head on the end. From the open mouth a hooting scream came like the grandfather of all steam engine whistles. A tremendous thrashing flattened acres of reeds and black mud flew way up in the air. I caught a glimpse of a slimy body the size of a Goodyear blimp, and then there were more “whooshes,” from our tower and the nearest ones on the left and right, with lots more explosions and that mind-bending hooting noise, which never stopped.

Even Sally had enough and he waved us all back into the bus, his fat face even paler than usual. We drove off in a hurry, but the continued explosions and the dinosaur’s death yells followed after us a long ways. How long would it take to die, I thought?

We crossed the fenced-off peninsula and went back up a beach road on the other side, a mirror copy of the first, complete with the same fence and guard towers. Eventually we got back to a road slanting up to the big pink building, all of us pretty shaky in the knees. The reality of this place was hard to take, even when you had been there before. I wondered just how many millions this all must have cost and how many more had been paid in by the prospective customers.

By now the sun was down on the horizon and more lights were coming on, as we pulled up a long driveway and stopped in front of the pink place. It was bigger than I had thought, like a super gambling casino I once saw in Cuba, back before Castro. It looked new and raw, but the furniture was something else, and inside there were glass chandeliers that must have weighed a ton apiece. There were uniformed servants all over, some of them women, and a guy came up and passed me and Ellen-Sue some champagne from a loaded tray. Lots more guests were arriving now, and I stood back to one side and took a look at them. Both sexes were well represented, though the women were all younger and a lot better looking, in nonwifely ways, which figured.

I saw a lot of types like Sally, but the Unione Sicilione was hardly alone. There were several blond guys, like Krauts or Swedes, and a lot of fancy uniforms and dark faces, some of which looked vaguely familiar. An old bald guy with a girl on each arm tottered past, and Leo sucked in his breath behind me.

“So he really didn’t die in Berlin, or Paraguay either!” I looked at the old guy again, but he meant nothing to me.

A waiter passed us all slips of paper, with a message on it written in ten different languages. The American on mine said: “Please do not discuss your own or anyone else’s past. Please do not ask questions either of, or about the other guests. The reasons for this are obvious. Thank you. The Management.”

Conversation died while everyone read their piece of paper, but picked up quickly again, and the papers got dropped in ashtrays. More drinks were served and I saw a huge bar at one side where you could get anything not being passed already.

Ellen-Sue and I walked around and eyeballed the place. It was hard to believe. There were even polar bear rugs on the floor, and the door knobs and lamp switches looked like real gold. The tables were either mahogany or a good imitation, and a big marble fountain was even fizzing up in the middle of the main room.

Off on the sides, you could see lots more rooms, including a huge dining one with a buffet-smorgasbord set-up a mile long. I noticed at least two pool tables in their own rooms, as I wandered up and down the various halls, and big marble stairs led up to the second floor at several points. The place looked like Buzby Berkeley musical set crossed with something out of the Arabian Nights. If all the lice out in the main hall were paying out billions, it looked like Sally was going to at least try and give them their money’s worth.

Eventually, Ellen-Sue and I got bored with all the fancy furniture and stuff and went back to the festivities. Everybody was in groups now, all Cosa Nostra here, all loud gold-braid uniforms there, and so on. None of the various outfits seemed inclined to get together, though Sally and a couple of other hoods were trying to circulate. The talk and squeals of the call girls would start up and then stop. So there were funny bits of quiet when all you could hear was the help shoving glasses around or shuffling silverware. As a fun party it was a wet smack to me.

I was about to tow Ellen-Sue into the food room when I heard Leo whisper behind me.

“This place will have to slow down in the very early morning. There are a million bedrooms upstairs. You two pick one and then sneak down here to the front door at five a.m. sharp. This will probably be the only chance we’ll ever get to get back into that damned machine when the guards will be slack. It’s not much of a chance but it’s the only one I can think of.” Then he was gone, faded back into the crowd. I felt the old chopper cold against my ribs under the jacket and shivered. Ellen-Sue squeezed my hand and we went in together and ate. I’d just lost my appetite, but I figured we’d need the energy.

The food was like everything else there, caviar plus the trimmings. It all tasted like mud, the way I felt, but I managed to choke something down off a gold plate handed me by a uniformed flunky. It might have been hummingbird tongues or, equally, old whale guts, because I was beyond caring or noticing. I signaled Ellen-Sue and we carried our plates out and upstairs.

Like our FBI informant had said, there were miles of bedroom doors opening off long corridors. We grabbed the nearest, ducked in and then ducked out again even quicker, followed by a lot of curses and yells. One creep and his companion had not waited for dessert downstairs.

We ran around a corner and eventually found an empty suite, because it even had a sitting room plus bath along with the bedroom. It was so impressive I looked around for the TV, before realizing the local stations were unlikely to be working. The door had a bolt, I was glad to see, and I locked it, wondering why the clown we had interrupted hadn’t. In a hurry, I guess.

We chatted a little, but neither of us felt much like yakking, and we finally just lay down and rested, eyes open and counting the clicks on my wrist watch. We could hear the party getting louder down below through the open windows, and eventually I got up and shut them, which turned it down to a dull hum. All I could think of was how many Godawful horrors had been dumped back in our time to pay for Sally’s little house-warming binge.

Eventually, things quieted down, and by four o’clock I could open a window and hear nothing but a gentle breeze blowing in from the sea. Searchlights played along the water here and there, doing the monster-watch bit, but there was no gunfire. I wondered if that big dinosaur was still alive back by the fence. Somewhere I remembered reading those things were so stupid they didn’t even know when they had been killed.

We watched the first pale light come over the land and glitter on the quiet sea, and I put my arm around Ellen-Sue’s waist, while she snuggled up. I think both of us figured this was going to be the last day for us, but we didn’t say anything.

So probably we were the first to see what was coming.

Away out on the horizon, miles away, I noticed a wavy line building up on the water, like the line a squall makes when it comes. But there was no sound of any wind and the sky was perfectly clear, a few late stars dimming out in the west as the sun came up behind us. I pointed to the dark line and Ellen-Sue stared at it too. While we watched, it seemed to get bumpier and flecks of white foam began to appear. All I could suddenly think of was a description of a tidal wave, something I had never personally seen and didn’t want to. My watch said it wasn’t quite five, but I had a sudden urge to get the hell out of this crazy place.

We ran for the door, whipped it open and tore down the stairs. There was good old Leo standing by the front entrance, and as we appeared, he opened it a crack, peeped out and then waved his hand for us to get moving.

We all scurried outside into the growing light and ran through bushes and into a garden with clipped paths leading everywhere. A drunk’s shoes and pants stuck out of one bush, and I’ve often wondered since if it was Motley. I hope so.

At this point we all froze. A whole bunch of sirens went off, over to our left, where the beach and ocean were hidden by trees, and I figured we’d been spotted and that it was all over. But no one came our way, though people began to yell back at the house and further off, and then I figured out what had happened.

“They spotted a tidal wave coming,” I gasped to Leo. “We saw it from upstairs, way out on the water. Let’s get out of here!”

We made even better time after that, and the garden was over in no time. Next, as we broke out into the open, on the road leading to the time machine, all Hell really broke loose. An artillery barrage started, like Stalingrad or D-Day, and mixed in with it came howling and crashing noises like all the world’s zoos being broken up and bulldozed with the animals still inside. The “tidal wave” had arrived.

As far out as you could see, the ocean was boiling with giant bodies, as God knows how many swimming monsters raced for the shore, their flappers churning up huge waves that rushed in front of them. They were all the same kind, with bodies something like the plesiosaur thing I had seen the shark get, but different, too. They ranged from what must have been a hundred feet long, down to maybe thirty or forty, and had short heavy necks with heads like giant crocodiles, full of teeth like Bowie knives. And they were only a hundred yards offshore and coming fast.

All the guard towers in sight were blasting at them full tilt, but you might as well have tried to douse an oil rig fire with spit. For every one that got hit, and it only seemed to make them mad, a dozen more churned past, bellowing and screaming. There had to be thousands of them and they all had one idea, which was to hit the beach.

“Come on!” yelled Leo in my ear. “That electric fence won’t hold for five seconds. This whole place is going under!”

That juiced us into moving and we took off for the time gate like Jesse Owens. I kept looking at the beach as we panted down the road, and, boy, was Leo right! I saw the first wave hit that fence and sparks flew all along the line of ten-foot heads. Then—the fence was just gone and the whole bunch of freight-train bodies were wallowing and hauling themselves up onto the sand, with waves washing up ahead of them and clouds of sand and spray being pushed up by the flippers. If I’d needed more adrenalin, that view gave it to me!

We each took one of Ellen-Sue’s elbows and raced up to the big port. There were no guards, and I guess they had taken off when they saw what was coming. As I climbed in last, I turned and took one more look back. It was unbelievable. The towers were all down, and a steady wave of screaming tons of reptile meat was pouring out of the ocean and flopping and crawling up to the hotel, smashing everything in their way. They moved like circus seals, which is a lot faster than you might think, and just as the port shut, I saw the first ones rear up against one wing of Sally’s hideaway and smash into it and through it like it was paper. That was the last I saw of monsterland and I sat down with a thud on the steel floor, pulling Ellen-Sue with me. When I looked up, I saw we had company.

Leo was standing in a half crouch, his right hand frozen as he reached for his coat. Facing him was Goldy, and his automatic was out and pointing.

“Please don’t, Leo,” said Goldy. “You’d never make it, you know.” His voice was now educated and the dull eyes were lit up. He was even smiling.

“I have nothing against you, Colonel,” he went on. “If you give your word, I’ll put the gun away. How’s that for trust?”

“What’s with the ‘colonel’ bit?” I asked. “Leo’s an FBI man, chum, so be careful.”

Goldy laughed. “That wasn’t quite truthful, Leo. I’m glad I listened to the room tapes when you were out.” He turned to us and waggled a finger. “Let me introduce Lt. Col. Leonid Krassin of the KGB, or Soviet Security Service. As it happens, my name is Arthur Goldthwaite, and, oddly enough, I am the United States representative, though not, regrettably, from the bureau. Well, Leo what about a deal?”

“OK,” said Leo, straightening up. “The USSR wants this thing smashed as badly as anyone. How did you get on to me? I thought I was pretty good.”

“Oh, you’re good, pal,” said Goldy stowing his gun under his arm. “Thing is, I’ve been following you, not Sally Tomatoes. We wanted to know why the KGB put a top operator in with a bunch of hoods. All this time-travel stuff was a big surprise to me. And then I was stuck on that damn island, with no way to tell anyone.” They both ignored me and Ellen-Sue and went on talking shop while we gawped at each other and listened.

Leo laughed. “Now I know why there were no guards on this apparatus. Are they dead?”

“They are now,” was the answer. “Kronosaurus will see to that. But you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Very simple. We discovered that many Fascists, old Nazis, new ones, all the assorted scum of the political earth, were beginning to give lots of money to gangsters, both in America and elsewhere. Looking for protection, I imagine, since all governments are now hunting them down. I was sent to follow them, by becoming a gangster myself. Like you, I had no way of knowing this drunken pig van D’Alliance was going to invent a working time machine. I had thought at one time of trying to get the plans. But now I think not. It is better destroyed. You agree?”

“I sure as hell do. But the time’s almost up. We may have trouble getting out of here. And what made you bring these two?” He waved a hand at us.

Leo shrugged. “Sentimentality, I think. They are not criminals, really, and both were sickened by the murders and bloodshed these people have loosed on our century. Do I gather, my friend, you know what those last animals were, which invaded the beaches?”

“I think so,” said Goldy. “I borrowed some of Jones’ books when he was asleep or knocked out with dope. That was Kronosaurus or something close, a giant plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile. While I was watching them appear, it occurred to me the place might be an annual nesting ground, like with sea turtles. That would account for them swarming in all at once.” He looked at his watch. “Anyway, it put paid to time travel for crooks, at least temporarily. And if Jones and van D’Alliance are still there. . . .” He glanced at Ellen-Sue and looked a little embarrassed. I thought of Bushveldt with no regrets at all.

“Don’t you mind about me,” she said. “Motley threw me back there, remember? But, say, isn’t the machine noise dying down?”

Both men drew their guns and I pulled Ellen-Sue over to one side. The big chamber was empty, but we could at least get out of any direct lines of fire. The humming stopped and we could hear the bolts sliding open on the other side of the port. Slowly, the thing opened.

What happened was so quick it was all over in seconds. I don’t know why Sally had gone back from his bash or what made him suspicious of his two pet hoods, but he was waiting. Maybe he just wasn’t taking chances, but Leo had said how good he was at security. I just don’t know and now I never will.

There was the rattle of a machine gun, and both Leo and Goldy were blasted back into the chamber, shot full of holes. They never even had time to pull a trigger.

I waited without breathing, Ellen-Sue behind me. I heard a step, then another. Sally’s head poked past the line of the hatch, looking down at the two dead men. It stayed there. He never even saw me.

I brought the old cane knife down on his plump neck so hard it cut through bone and went on, leaving blood all over me and the corpses, Ellen-Sue and the metal floor. And, you know, I felt great, looking at that head bonce away.

I looked out and there was no one else there in the big room at all. The guards must have been sent away so Sally could be alone. The empty ramp led up to the sunlight, and that was it.

Ellen-Sue stopped and looked at me. “We gonna fix this thing, Joe?” she asked. “Won’t be no other chance, and these two poor guys got mighty dead trying.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But how? Neither of us can run this thing.”

“I watched real careful, Joe, and so did Leo. It runs just like on automatic when this door is bolted. Now just suppose, for instance, we open the other door a teeny bit, or even just unlock it? Then we shut this one. What happens now if this thing goes back with one door open?”

I thought for a minute. What would happen if the thing had a gate open and rushed back millions of years into the past? What would come in while it was moving, moving back into time, whatever “time” was?

“Get ready up at the top,” I said. “Watch out for anyone who might be on guard. Here.” I handed her Leo’s gun, after wiping it on his sleeve, the dry one. Then I stepped wetly over Sally’s head and went back to unlock the inside catches on the other port.

Ten seconds later I was closing the outer catches, on the tunnel side. When the last one was tight, I waited. Sure enough, the humming started. I ran like hell for daylight, and then some. I don’t think anybody alive knew what kind of force that damn machine built up, and I didn’t want a close view of any malfunction, either!

At the top, Ellen-Sue met me with good news. No one was in sight, but there was an empty jeep with a key in it. This must have been Sally’s. He wouldn’t need it. He was going back to his paradise hotel, minus head, with two dead secret agents as bodyguards.

We tore down the hill road and went straight past the big house, heading for the little harbor. At the gate, two goons were lounging in the shade and they slouched over, not suspicious. I guess they had seen us around enough. Fortunately, they both looked to be halfwits.

“Any of these motor cruisers gassed up?” I asked casually.

“So who wants to know, bud? You know the rules around here.”

“I do!” said Ellen-Sue. sticking her gun up his nose. “And you better too, mister, ’cause that crazy machine is running wild up there. Mister Big Boss is stone-cold dead, and this whole rat pit of an island is probably going to blow up!”

That did it. Ten minutes later, the two hoods in one boat, minus hardware, and us in another were creaming out through the entrance. We had no map, so we just went west and hoped. Where they went, I never heard.

About an hour later, when we were well out of sight of the island, a great big smooth wave came out of the east and picked us up by the rear end and shook us before going on. When the ocean got calm again, we just looked at each other. But we never heard a sound.

You know, we weren’t over fifty miles from the mainland? Never mind which mainland, either. But not too far from a town where I could swipe a car and Ellen-Sue could hock her jewelry (in her purse the whole time; she just “had a feeling”) for enough to get us airline tickets. We didn’t need passports either, if that’s a clue.

Yeah, we found the money in the Swiss accounts. Half what Sally said, and so I stopped any tears which might have got started. And we’re living OK. And no more live freight or dead weight is appearing out of the past any more. And the scientists are all busy writing papers about what they think happened. So here’s mine. No time like the present.

Commander in the Mist

It’s been too long (“Ghost of A Crown,” December 1976) since we were treated to one of Brigidier Ffellowes fantastic tales. Here, the Brigadier offers a dandy about an incredible encounter during the final days of World War II.

It was a rather normal day, or actually, afternoon, for New York. In November, that is. Crowds were moving along Fifth Avenue in a cold sleeting rain. Traffic was blaring horns and cab drivers were yelling obscenities at jaywalkers, other hapless motorists and each other. The brown-uniformed Traffic Police, including a few women, with the aid of the standard men in blue, were trying to make sense out of it all and, true to the reputation of New York’s police over the Earth, were doing so, with terse, barking commands of “Move along there” and “Can’t you see the color of a stop light, goddamnit?”

I was standing against the solid stone wall of Central Park, in the low Sixties, which was some protection against the cold wind and wet. The wind was out of the west, over the Hudson River and coming over the few leaves on the park trees with some force. The thin, cold drops of water were apt to be driven down one’s neck while walking. Still, I had only two blocks to go. Then the park would end and I could easily cross to my destination.

I was looking downtown and about to move on when I was startled by a voice from my other flank.

“Like the thunder of the city, old chap?” A man stood beside me, his Burberry belted and his slouch hat, some natty Italian make, maybe a Borsalino, slanted over one blue eye. A grin cut across the ruddy, smooth-shaven face, and I wondered again at the absence of lines on it. The Brigadier, as Ffellowes preferred to be called, had been everywhere in the world and not only done most known things, but seemed to have been mixed up in a whole bunch of things no one else had not only never done, most people had never conceived of them being remotely possible. His years of service to the British Crown had dumped him in every branch of their army I had ever heard of, and then some! If he’s truthful, and I think he is, it would hardly take me by surprise to have him state calmly that he had commanded a battle-cruiser at Jutland or been leader of the much later air strike on Dresden. What a man, and how quietly and unobtrusively he could move! A long period in some intelligence branch or branches, that had taught him this trick, or so he claimed. Now he spoke again, the clipped, even tones cutting through street noise like a knife through butter.

“Don’t recognize the quote, do you?” His smile broadened. “It was said to, or thought by, a hero, if you like. Fictional, I’m afraid.” He saw from my puzzled look that I had no idea what he was talking about, which was not rare, and went on with his joke. “It was said about this town to one Simon Templar. That ring a bell? Said by or inspired by a lovely girl though, not an aging hack of the Empire.”

My memory raced and finally came up with reading long past but still memorable. “For Christ’s sake! The Saint! Didn’t know you liked that kind of thing, Brigadier. What’s the story called?”

“If my recollection serves, very simple. The Saint in New York, by that chap, Leslie Charteris. Damned good book, too. You ought to try it. Maybe it’s in the club library, hmm?”

“Let’s go and look. I was headed there anyway. There’s no sun, to put it mildly, and it’s getting dark. This park has muggers you know.”

My answer didn’t make him turn a hair. As a matter of fact, I would have feared for any mugger who tried on Ffellowes, unless he had a team headed by a large tank, to help him.

He was going to the same place I was, and we strolled quickly along the rain-swept street in the growing dark, chatting away together. In no time we were in our club and had shucked our coats and settled down with drinks in the library. He had, not tea, which might have been what he was raised on, but a large cup of black coffee, fresh-ground as the club does it.

There were three or four of our acquaintances in the big room, and they quickly stopped whatever they were gabbing about and drew near to us and around the fire. I knew what they were hoping for, but I could hardly blame them. Any time I got Ffellowes at his ease by a fire, or just relaxed, I hoped for one of his incredible stories. They were rare but fantastic. We all felt the same way, but none of us wanted to beg or put the man at a disadvantage. If we had, we all felt, he might stop coming around at all. Better an occasional tale from the Brigadier, than none at all.

We were simply having a chat, about nothing in particular though, and I was about to give up hope of any of his bizarre reminiscences, when we were saved and by a most unlikely person, not to say an improbable one.

A voice like a rusty foghorn sounded from the stairs, and the sound of heavy, clumping shoes. We all straightened in our chairs and even Ffellowes stopped talking. ‘This Godawful town! I ought to go down to Florida and check on my horses at that stud place, north of Tampa. I got a lot of dough in them things, and IRS ought to be easy on my trips down there. Nobody knows what a real horse-lover has to put out and the work he’s got to do. Besides, any excuse to get the hell outta this shit-hole of a town and this weather, will do me.” Mason Williams was in full cry and sounded as unpleasant as ever. So much for peace and quiet in the library, was my thought as I watched his bulky shape thudding over our way, red face and bulbous nose under a thinning mop of greying hair. I had forgot our secret weapon, and the incisive syllables stirred me as they always did.

“You seem a trifle out of shape, Williams. Going to put in some time as an exercise-boy? Nothing like it for a horse-lover such as yourself, is there?”

Williams’ nasty face turned an even redder hue and verged on the purple in places. He hated Ffellowes anyway and was maddened by the cold contempt which was all he ever got from him. The Englishman fascinated him, more or less the way a cobra is supposed to petrify a bird, though, and he could never stay away from those cold eyes and the gelid tones, when they were about. Now he slouched into one vacant leather armchair and scowled in anger.

“I suppose you British know all about horses, pal,” was his opening gun. “No crummy Yank can hold a candle to you jerks and your Grando National jazz. Jeez, why don’t you give us a break, Genarul (he knew well that Ffellowes did not care for this title) and let the Amurrican peasants play with their toys in a back room, huh?”

As often he had done before, Brigadier Ffellowes smiled politely. It might have been a parrot squawking or a dog yapping at him. Williams could say nothing than even slightly ruffled him, then or ever. But the next words made us all, and that includes the unspeakable Williams, sit up straighter and also, shut up.

“Why I’m only a fair rider, old man. Hardly know one end of a filly from another. Equine, that is.” He smiled gently, and I cast my mind back to other stories which gave the lie to this statement. I held my breath.

“Frankly, I think there may be too much trouble, hunting for horses, you know. Can be fraught with peril and all that sort of thing. To say nothing of experiences that one really doesn’t care to recall. I remember the banks of the Danube in ‘45, now. Very odd and, d’you know, men, rather unsettling. Not at this time of year but just this sort of weather. Colder perhaps. No heat pipes running along the Donau banks, though once there was some decent heating. In Palaestrum, that is. Any of you know it?”

We shook our heads in silence and no one opened his mouth. I don’t know about the others, but for me the windy and wet eve of outside Manhattan was totally gone. I wanted to hear this one as I always did, more than anything I could think of. The high, curtained windows of the club library made a good sound barrier and the roar of the city outside was dim and far away.

Ffellowes smiled gently and looked up and off into space for a second. No one opened his yap, and the Brigadier knew, I think, that we were waiting.

“Well, if it would not bore you, it’s a vaguely interesting tale. Palaestrum is, or was, one of the old Roman bases on the Danube frontier. Got Roman cemeteries and the remains of amphitheaters, even a broken-down HQ or something, which might have had the structure of a palace. I think they’re still rooting about there and even finding things now and again. Off in a field, there’s some sort of big triumphal arch or something. The Russkies left it alone, though it was in their zone, which seems odd, but perhaps they had other things on their minds. More complexity in the Slav mentality than they often get credit for, you know.”

This was more than Williams could take. His anger overcame his fascination, but it did no harm. “Very funny, my dear Genarul. All them Romans and their lousy Empire. Like you Limeys, they ain’t around no more, are they? So what has any of this got to do with your Grando National winpers? Nothing, right?”

We all held our breath, and I vowed once again to try and find out how Williams had ever got by the Election Committee. But it did no harm.

“Quite right, my dear man. Nothing at all to do with Ain tree. But there are other steeds in the world, you know. And I was looking for some. Never found ‘em though. To find these horses, it took an old cavalryman. I suppose you’ve heard of George Patton? Ever hear of the Lippizaners?”

We were all mute again. At the mention of a great American general, even Williams had to clam up. It was very deft, as it always was. And it went calmly on, with no more interruptions.

“As I say, we were looking for horses. At the time, they were far north and east of our location. The Allies, all of us, had swung wide of Vienna and Austria and kept driving north into Germany, quickly, with a sharp lookout being kept. Plenty of Kraut stragglers and broken units about. A lot of ‘em wanted to surrender, but not all, not by any means. Several die-hard SS units were in our neighborhood, and God knows what else. The main army, ours, was U.S. and French.

We ourselves were a special small unit. We had three American halftracks though and more than a few bazookas. I was in command and had three officers and a half-company of other ranks. All volunteers and good men. Let me see, I seem to think they were Gloucester. All combat-proofed and veterans. Some of them went back a long time, to the Western Desert and similar places.

‘“My Second was a Major Broke, and there were two lieutenants, named Garvin and Embey. A couple of good sergeants, too. All in all, a good, selfcontained group.

“We’d been sent south, alone, to find the whereabouts of the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna and above all, its mounts, the Lippizaners. What, or who, they were destined for, I have no idea. They’re back in Austria now, of course, or their descendants are. Your Third Army leader saw to that. As I said, an old cavalryman. Ever know he designed the last saber ever thought of for issue to your mounted troops? Never used, but I’ve got one somewhere. Very good design, I always thought.

“Anyhow, some Intelligence wallah, probably in London, thought or heard that the damn horses had or were coming by a certain route. We were going to place ourselves, a lost company, on or across said route. Snaffle the animals and bring off a great coup for the British Army. It was all wrong, but so were a lot of efforts of that sort and many a lot more important. Not intention, that was all right. But the dope we’d been given was very late and way off anyway. We were miles from any of our own troops, let alone allies.

“So, as it happens, we found ourselves very close to the Blue Danube. Well, it may have been blue to Strauss, but I’ve seen a lot of it at one time or another, and it always looked brown and turgid as hell to me. Especially on a cold, spring afternoon, with the bare trees dripping with rain and patches of fog at low points. That, my friends, is how we got to Palaestrum. There’s a town there, built in the 16th Century or so, just about the time that Spanish School got going, or even earlier. Called Sankt Udo or close to it, as I recall. There was a ruined baroque Schloss, or castle, the seat of a family named Antenstein, I think. We avoided the town altogether, which was common sense. Anyone or anything could have been in those old houses. But by the castle, which seemed more or less gutted and empty, there ran a narrow dirt track, which, if our info was correct, actually ran down to the river itself. Here, the horses were supposed to cross, on makeshift barges or some gear of that sort or other. And there, if all went well, we would nab them.”

He paused and again his eyes went far away. “Wish you all could have seen what we did. Might even put Williams off on his devotion to rare equines. As we went left off a battered main highway, with gutted vehicles and ruins all about, it was around fourish in the afternoon of very early spring. The lines of tall trees on either side of our dirt track were bare and dripping wet. There was no wind and only that dank and sodden sound of water dripping. One could hear nothing else when our vehicles had to break their progress and the rumble of their engines fell silent.

‘Then, there was a break in the trees. We stopped, for the road or excuse for a road, led out into an open space, largish, with more trees on the far side. All the while the track, by the way, had been running downhill at a slight angle.

“It was Broke, sitting beside me in the back of the lead vehicle, who put a thought into speech. ‘Someone destroyed something here, by God. Looks as if it had happened a long time ago, though.’

“Before us, through the thin rain, we could see a vast hole in the ground, bowl-shaped and shallow, grading down to a level and rounded center. There were serrated lines sort of cut all around the rim, actually cut level, into the earth. Here and there, other, deeper cuts made what seemed to be openings or even entrances, which led down ramped earth into the level at the bottom. At a couple of the gaps, battered columns of greyish stone lifted themselves out of the dark soil to about ten or so feet. It brought some memories back, of jaunts in southern Europe long before.

“I laughed, for all our men were swiveling their rocket launchers and machine guns about as they peered off into the obscurity. ‘It was a long time ago, Major,’ I said. ‘I had a briefing by some of the In tell, brass that you missed. But tell the men not to worry, though not to relax. You’re looking at some remnants of an old war indeed. We’re at Palaestrum, friend, and this is a dug-up Roman amphitheater in front of us. Lions and Christians might have come through those gates, or chariots. But the last time troops had to be alerted here was against the Marcomanni or some other beginners at the Volkerwanderung. It’s their descendants, and remote ones, we have to guard ourselves from. Especially if they have SS badges on the collar.’

“Word was passed through the line back to the other two vehicles, and I could hear a refreshing ripple of amusement when they heard what they were goggling at. But they were too much on the alert to relax entirely. Before I could order it, three men with Stens were out in front of us on foot, just in case something modem was lying in wait somewhere in the ruins of the past. We all waited patiently for an ‘All Clear’ signal. Far off, through the silence, I now could hear the drone of planes, either ours or Russian we felt sure. The Luftwaffe was mostly gone by now. Presently, our scouts came back to my half-track. But they had a surprise with them, our first prisoner. She was not very menacing.

“She must have been seventy at least and was a nice-looking old thing, though in ragged and much patched clothes with a ratty old scarf covering grey locks from the cold and wet. She was gabbling away at a great rate, her squint orbs darting from one to the other of us in fright. My German is passable, but I could only make out an occasional word or two. I had had an instructor of the Potsdam variety, and the slurred patois of Austrian peasants was beyond me. But, my luck was in, as usual. From beside me, Broke took over. Turned out he’d spent summers in Austria as a boy, and it was nothing to him. He told the men to let go of the poor old thing and was soon chattering away happily with her, while she began to smile and wave Tier arthritic paws as she prattled at him. He turned to me at length with a smile on his face.

“ ‘Can I tell the men to let her go, sir? She lives not far away and was only gathering herbs. She knows what we are and has no use for Germans or even her own folk in the German ranks. I think she’ll keep her mouth shut.’

“I had a few questions, which he put and she was prompt to answer. She had seen no sign of armor, wagons, horses or uniformed men, save for occasional stragglers in the past weeks. She was delighted to see us, as a matter of fact, since we were not what she was dreading from over the Volga. But as I waved her politely away and the men all smiled at her kindly, she burst out in a torrent of expostulations, pointing ahead in the direction we were going.

“I turned to Broke and he was smiling even more broadly. He bowed and waved the poor thing off and she went, often looking back at us, until she disappeared into the side woods and the gathering mist. Then she was gone and I turned to my companion.

‘“Well, sir,’ he explained, his teeth showing, ‘seems we are still in danger, at least if we push on to the river. There are dread spirits down there, ‘on my word, hexerei of the most nasty sort. They’ve always been there by the river, and she meant that too, having been warned by a great-grandfather or somesuch, when a kid herself. Think we dare risk it? We mustn’t camp there at night, was an emphasis in that chatter.’

“I laughed. I told him I thought that we could manage that sort of thing, and the men near us laughed as well. So we signaled the others and all of us in our truncated column started engines and we went on past the amphitheater of a lost empire and entered the woods again at the other side. I had sent word that no one was to slack off and all were quite on the qui vive.

“It was now getting very dark and gloomy, though we could still hold the track without lights, though just. The rain had stopped and we went on through a cold and windless dark under the tall shining dark tree trunks, still down a long and gentle slope.

‘The man sitting by the driver up front gave us a hand signal then and we all saw it. We had come to great willows, whose dripping branches, still with many small leaves, hung down all about us. But this was not why we had stopped. There in front was dark water, smooth and almost silent in the gathering night, save for a chuckle where a log broke the surface and caused the great river to ripple about it. We were on the Danube, that ancient waterway of race since time began.

“Swirling mists lay on the water’s surface also, but not constant any more than they had been in the woods on the slope above. They veiled the waters but only in patches and shifted slowly to reveal new and shadowy vistas and then closed again and reformed anon some way off. In one opening of the white fog, I had seen a thing quite close to us and only a little way upstream, a couple of hundred feet. It had intrigued me for very obvious reasons, since dark was now coming fast. I gave orders and the wagons, all three, were put in a half-circle with the water at our backs. Sentries were posted at good points and silence imposed. I told the men to eat their combat rations cold and keep mum and lightless. Then I took Broke and a couple of well-armed men and all went to what I had spotted. When we got there, I got out a hooded flash and used it on what lay on the ground and also went out into the water.

“It was nothing more than a broad jetty or the shore portion of one. I looked it over carefully and so did the other three. A very thin layer of soil and leaves did not hide what lay underneath. I was struck silent by it. There were massive blocks of some stone or other, rough and worn yet still strong and solid. The chief wear was logically on our left side, the upstream side. The whole mass thrust out into the Danube for some fifty or so feet and then came to a stop.

“ ‘Not built yesterday, men,’ I said at length. ‘This is part of ancient Rome, if I’m not wrong, and was one of their piers. Probably been used by fishers and such, since the 4th Century, and still has uses. I rather think what we’re looking for will be coming this way. Good place to tie up to, and a riverman, coming from the other side, would not have too much trouble finding it. Even at night and a night like this one.’

“So that was all. We went back and sent the same two men with one of the veteran sergeants back to the pier we had found. They were to stay low and keep a sharp lookout. We were deep in enemy country. We were winning but not here or yet.

‘The rest of us, having arranged watches and checked all the posts where the inland advance guard was to keep watch, ate and turned in. I chatted for a bit with the three officers and then curled up in my waterproof under a blanket on one of the half-tracks. The night was very silent, save for the burble of the river and the steady drip from the trees, which blended with it. Every so often, planes would hum in the distance and once I heard a far-off thud which may have been a major explosion. But that was all, and I soon fell into an easy slumber, having satisfied myself that I had taken all precautions and done the best I could. I had a quiet smile as I dropped off. Even the ghosts the old girl had been so afraid of, wherever they were, were good and quiet.”

Outside the big’, high-ceilinged room, the thunder of one of man’s great cities seemed very far away. Save for our breathing and an occasional crackle from the fire, all was silent about us. I saw more than one mouth stay open as we waited for the next words of that silent, far-off night in an alien land.

“It was one of the younger officers who woke me up. I flicked a glance at my watch and it was two a.m. on a very dark morning. I could hear nothing and the night was silent, save for the plash of water and the fainter drip of that on the trees.

“ ‘Don’t know what’s up, sir,’ was the low-voiced message. The sergeant sent one of his watch back a second ago, from that bridgehead you found. They’ve heard some sound they don’t like, I gather.’

“I was on my feet quickly. I hissed at him to alert all hands and that I would go over and check myself on whatever it was. I drew my Webley from its holster and, at a crouch, eeled over to where the sergeant was waiting for me, in the shadow of a willow trunk by the ancient pier. I could feel his tension, even in the dark, and I could not even see his face clearly. The fogs were heavier now and, with the night as well, we were in a lightless shroud.

“ ‘We have heard something, sir,’ came his hoarse whisper. ‘Maybe it’s what we’re expecting. Very quiet and the sound of a few men marching. But, I heard metal clink and so did the other three.’ He paused. ‘Something else, too. What might have been a couple of horses, maybe unshod or walking on them leaves and stuff. That could be for us, now, right, sir?”

“ ‘I patted his arm and we listened intently. For some time, I heard only the usual night noise and the river. Once an owl hooted, faintly and a long piece off. Then when I was beginning to wonder if the men had bad dreams, I heard it myself.

“It was the sound of soft but regular footsteps, more than one, as if in that utter dark, some folk could actually keep in step. Too, just as the man had said, there came a clink of metal and now a creaking as well, which might have been leather or something like that. I held my breath and sure enough, there came the other sound. It was heavy and caused by some weight, but even muffled and hard to make out, it was quite close and the sound of more than two feet.

“I told him to get his men facing out and stay with them. I would stay hid at the pier’s foot and meet whatever it was. The others were on alert and ready to chip in if needed. He faded from my side and I crept over to a tree bole where I had said. Then we all waited in that dark and soggy night. Not even the hum of a plane was heard, as we all faced away from the river to the black wall of the wood.

“The sound of the muffled but regular pace, of both man and beast, came even closer. And, suddenly, I saw what I was listening to, or at least part of it. And what a sight it was!

“There in front of me, perhaps ten yards off, was a man and he held in one hand a kind of rude torch. I had heard no sound of its being lit; it was suddenly on and illumined what lay under it to my startled eye. I stood up and stepped forward, and a voice, that of the man in front of me, cried out something. I held up my empty left hand, palm outward, so he could see it. He stared at me, his jaw set, and then he spoke to me.

“ ‘Who are you?’ he began, ‘and what do you here on our side. You are on the lands of the Empire, Barbarian, and what do you here at night? It is death to be here and a ban exists. Do you understand me?’

“He was a short swarthy man, smooth-faced, and must have been given a short haircut, for none showed below his helmet. But he was no youth and his strong jaw had white scar lines. The eyes were dark and sharp and there were many wrinkles at the corners. I stood, frozen by a paralysis strong enough to melt bones. And suddenly the cold of the night went through my very soul, as if the wavering aura of torchlight around the figure before me had some malign and invisible miasma of its own. I could only stare, mouth wide open at what I saw.

“First, there was the helmet, of what looked like battered brass, dented and with verdigris over some of it. It was rounded, with a tail coming down the back of the neck and flaring around the sides. A ridge of smooth metal crowned it, also dented. He wore a tunic of stained leather, and on his breast was the brass of a pectorale which screened the chest. His brownish kilt came to his knees, and his boots were soft leather but with greave armor on their fronts. The gladius, the two-edged Spanish or Celtiberian short sword, was hung-from a shoulder belt. Tucked into this belt-was what looked like a switch or crop.

“Then and for the first time that I realized what tongue I had been hearing. My Sixth Form at school came back with a rush to me. The barking voice was in Latin! I could understand it perfectly well, save for an occasional word. But something old and cold had come into my spirit. Time had stood still and all thought of the present was gone, as if it were some ephemeral cloud.

“I heard the voice of the sergeant over my shoulder and close by as if it were from another world. All I heard was, ‘Are you all right . . .’ and then the figure in front of me barked a command.

“There was a sudden movement in the dark behind him, and something whizzed past my head. There was a sharp sound like a branch being broken, and I felt, rather than saw, a figure slump to the ground on my right and rear.

“ ‘Tell those Massagetae of yours to stay back,’ rapped the voice from the front, ‘and stand still yourself, even if you are their Prince!’

“I did not move and it was not voluntary. My hand was still raised and now even higher. Had Adolf seen me, he would have been proud, save that it was the wrong hand. I knew why that open hand was raised too, and terror crept through me. Was this a bad dream or the end of the world? The silent, fog-ensorcelled night had eaten all sounds but what I heard, and now I heard a new sound.

“It was the earthy sound of a horse pacing and it was coming out of the blackness behind the man before me, straight for us. Its head appeared in the light and I saw the gleam of silvery and gilt chains across its brow. A man, a very dark man, whose eyeballs flashed in the torchlight, was leading it. I hardly looked at him, but got the idea that he was swathed in white robes and had a hood pulled back of the same hue.

“It was the mounted man, whose mount he was leading, it was he whom I watched as my arm grew even stiffer. I could no longer even feel the Webley in my right fist.

“This new appearance was striking. His lorica, the cuirass on his chest, gleamed with a yelow light, and I knew gold when I saw it. It was ornate, too, and I saw scrollwork and the glitter of gems on his breast. He too wore a helmet but his was of finely wrought gold, and surmounting its gleaming ridge was a higher, great ridge of scarlet, running from the front to the rear, upright and narrow. The helmet had a slight bill over the dark eyes, and—oh, yes—thrown back over his shoulders was a heavy and shimmering cloak, whose golden fringe accented the deeper purple of the main body of the garment.

“His face, that of a mature and stem man, as hairless as the first man’s, gripped my gaze. It was commanding, that face, and yet, somehow, it was weary, with an unutterable tiredness. A thrill of ice went through me as I met those dark, weary eyes. Then he spoke, though not to me, and I flinched inside as I heard the voice of a doomed and mighty shade, for it contained all the weariness of the ages, mingled with its great authority. Tears came unbidden to my eyes and yet I stood frozen, held in that fog and dark by some mind-bending, tragic power.

“What have we here, Legate?” More incursions of the hordes of the East? They look strange enough to have come from the far, strange land of silks, on which our women will always waste our substance.’ His horse turned slightly and he addressed me, myself.

“His speech was plain, his voice of a deep timbre. ‘Principes Barbarii, this place and this river are forbid when Noctens rules. Not even the Foederati in my pay can come here then, not if they wish to live. My priests and some of ancient Set from the far-off Nilus, they have all laid this ban, and the dark powers will enforce if as did my own slinger from Balearica. Should you wish to take service, this is done only when Apollo himself is high in the Heavens. Otherwise, get you gone or the Powers of Darkness will hold you forever. I guard Vindobonum yet and always will and these are approaches that no one can cross the mighty river upon and live without an eternal price upon them.”

Ffellowes fell silent and the room stayed that way too. The thunder of New York was a far-distant murmur, and only a glow of remaining coals lit the high, dark of the big room. We were all a long way off, in time and space and only breathing was audible. At length, he spoke once more and finished his tale.

“We were, you fellows see, trapped by a thing that had emerged from the ages and the mists, not only of the river but the mists of time. In the next morning, after I had quietly nursed the sergeant, whose skull, for he’d taken off his helmet, was not cracked but badly gashed, I told everyone else that I had seen two stray nags, lost from some farm, and nothing else. The sergeant, who was concussed, looked at me but did not give me the lie. No one else had seen anything but the flicker of a light, which I explained as St. Elmo’s fire and quite natural. Before we went back to work and retraced our steps northwest, I gave the sergeant a smooth black pebble. It was apparently lava, and I have seen thousands on the Majorca or Ibizan beaches before and since.

“When I came back to myself lying on the ground in the still, cold glimmer of early day and amid the first piping of birds, I had a great deal of thought pass through my dazed head. Was Vindobonum which is the ancient name for Vienna, still sacrosanct and if so, how? Well, if it were, I knew how, deep in my heart. The last of the great stoic emperors, the Divine Marcus Aurelius, had died there. You’ll find his maxims in this room if you care to look for them. We two had seen and one had felt the effect of a Balearic slinger, a picked man from one of what amounted to the machine-gun units of the oldest army to ever guard the Danube frontier.

“And who was the man who had spoken to me from the back of his own charger? Well, I just gave you his name, my friends.”

The room was so silent that no breath could be heard as Ffellowes spoke his last words. I can hear them still.

“The mists were all about us, gentlemen. In the forest, out on the river, and I had them forever in my mind. For I had spoken to something awesome and of great and unconquerable dignity, from a far-away past and a duty unflagging through the mists of time. For, you see, in search of those rare horses, I had found something rarer and far more tragic and yet, you know, still mighty. I had heard the voice of a self-imposed guard to all he held sacred. I had heard the Commander in the Mist.”

The vast room was silent as seldom before. We had all been given a glimpse into the long-lost ages. We too had heard the words of . . . the Commander in the Mist.

The Brigadier in Check—and Mate

FIRST MOVE

It was a windy and wild March evening in lower Manhattan. As I went along the canyons of what was once a familiar Greenwich village area, or its western fringe, I looked despairingly for any sign of a vacant taxi. The few that passed were always full and their lights were smudged by the wind-blown dirt and water. I had come from a meeting of major shareholders near 12th St and had tried then to walk to Fifth Ave. It grew very dark quickly and began both to rain and blow together as it did. It was not a part of New York I’d been in for years, and though I had a hat and light raincoat, I soon became half-lost and thoroughly miserable. It was not really cold, being in the mid-forties Fahrenheit, but it was the classic English term for a Winter’s day, or “short, dark and dirty.”

As I groped futilely along the sloshy streets, I cursed my own stupidity for not having arranged some kind of a car pick-up. There were few people about and that made me feel a little safer, since this was a known haunt of drug addicts and the nastier lunatic fringe of the once-famous Art World of the old Greenwich Village. I kept well out toward the curb and the running gutters anyway, and avoided the dark alley mouths which gaped like black funnel vents between the dirty and narrow house fronts. I glanced at my wrist watch and saw that it was after 6:30 already. While the dirty rain blew in my face, I wondered if I ought to try one of the local bars, if I could find one, and risk being mugged or poisoned, just to get out of this blowing murk and trying to find out exactly where I was, as well as how to leave it as quickly as possible.

I skirted a pile of soaked paper bags, crammed with filth and garbage, then almost tripped over what might still be live garbage, a ragged body coiled around the far side of the trash mountain on the wet pavement. Its bearded mouth was open and moved faintly so I guess it was still alive.

Half a block further on, the blurred light of a passing car suddenly showed me a possible shelter, at least of a sort, quite close to me.

It was a larger opening, between two narrow houses, each of at least six-story height. This opening was not an alley, though quite dark, but had a smooth pavement with a worn, brick walk running down its center. I had heard that a few, old, set-back houses of the 1840 period, or what the English still call “mews,” still existed in lower Manhattan, though I’d never seen one. I turned left into this one, hopefully as well as carefully, keeping my left arm up before my eyes and my body bent as well, in case a blow should come out at me suddenly. The rain still fell steadily but at least I was out of that lousy, gale wind.

Ahead of me, down the path, I could see a faint light, though it came from one side rather than straight ahead. As I walked slowly and carefully forward, I saw that the little walkway curved to the right around one of the two flanking houses, and that the dim light came from around this corner. Keeping to the exact center of the brick strip, I moved cautiously around the curve, wondering what I would find.

There before me was a little house! It was about fifty feet away and the light came from a couple of curtained windows on the ground floor, for it had two floors under a low, peaked roof. There was even a minute garden or at least two tiny plots with some plants in them, one on each side of the front step and guarded by wooden fencelets a foot high. I gaped at this refugee from Grim’s fairy tales in astonishment. A thing like this buried in the canyons of lower New York City was indeed a thing to gape at.

My surprise and amusement got a quick ending and a scary one, too. One corner of my right eye suddenly picked up movement and my head swivelled to focus while my knees bent as well. Not ten feet away, in a darker angle of tall building was a metal fence, which I guessed was iron. Against this stood two tall, shrouded figures, silent and yet poised. They made no move, though one must have done so earlier to catch my attention, and simply watched me steadily. They were at least as tall as I am and I’m just under six feet. They made no forward movement, just watched, but in a way that somehow conveyed menace.

While the water ran down my hat brim and the moaning of the wind yowled far overhead and the faint noises of intermittent traffic barely pierced the noises of the natural world, I stared at the two silent shapes through the rainy gloom and they stared back at me. The only light, that of the shaded windows, made it possible to see only that two dim figures were watching one. At last, my nerve broke, which, in my own defense, is something it had never done under night attacks in Korea.

“I beg your pardon,” I called out “I’m afraid I got lost and came in here looking for a phone and directions.” I kept my voice from cracking, but it was an effort. The response was startling. One of the two stepped forward instantly, revealing itself as a man my size and also wearing a slouch hat and belted raincoat, a man who held out his right hand in welcome. When he spoke, my tight control of my nerves almost dissolved at the shock.

“My dear Parker,” said a very familiar voice, “I fear we appeared a bit dangerous. There are folk in your city, and not far off either, whom one would rather not meet at night, eh? Well, Old man, you’ve found my private digs which is more than anyone else has done, at least so far.”

“By this time, my rather limp hand was being firmly clasped by that of Donald Ffellowes, lately a Brigadier General of the British Army and, at this range, I could see the glitter of his blue eyes and the grin on his smooth face.

“My God, Sir,” I stammered, “I thought you stayed in hotels and we all know you like privacy and I assure you that I never, I mean I really am lost and I . . .”

The Brigadier laughed out loud or rather, gave a deep chuckle. He pointed at the tiny house and said, “I own that place and have for some years. I want your word that you’ll tell no one else of it and (here, he paused a second) about anything else, right?” I could do nothing but nod my spinning head in response.

“Good man. My wife and I were getting a breath of fresh air and then I was going up town to the club. Come and meet her.”

Another jolt to my already dazed brain! “My wife!” None of us at the club had ever known Ffellowes was married! He had never so much as mentioned a wife, past or present, any more than he’d mentioned owning a very old house in the labyrinths of lower Manhattan! I’m not a money-minded person as a rule but I was a bit staggered by another idea. Every surface foot of the Brigadier’s property could have been layered in platinum and even then the land itself would have been worth more!

As we walked forward together, the second figure never moved to meet us but remained tall and silent in the shadows. Tall indeed. In the bad and angled light and through the screen of falling water, I could see her head was bare and the glint of a copper color. She wore a long cloak, of something dark and almost ankle-length. A ray of light caught the shine of ordinary rubbers and a hint of wooly socks, heavy ones.

Ffellowes’ hand stopped us both when we were about six feet away from the lady but I am not sure that had I been alone, I would have come even that close. I saw great eyes, lambent and fiery, which seemed to have a luminescence of their own and broad cheekbones. The mouth too was broad but closed and there was another strange feature. The facial skin was not pale but a strange neutral hue and it was not shining from the rain but somehow, well, dull and sombre. But these thoughts came late. Just then, all I could think of were those great, burning eyes, wide apart and fixed on a level with my own or even above my own, in a steady, unwinking stare that was almost hypnotic. They were not the so-called “cat eyes” and had normal pupils but there was a glowing lambency about them, so that even in the murk and shadow, they seemed to glow with a sort of brown heat. Imagine a mildly luminous, chocolate milk shake and you’ll get some idea how it affected me.

Ffellowes’ voice shook me out of my paralysis, or, to use a better phrase, in its older and better meaning, Glamour. “This is Jim Parker, Love. You’ve heard me speak of him often. A good friend, remember?”

His wife bowed her head in a way that was both casual and somehow condescending, and even almost disdainful. I was damn glad to be free of those strange, flowing eyes but found myself just a little bit irritated, both at that regal head movement and the failure to even try to shake hands. Grand Duchess meets loathsome peasant to whom she must be polite, was the thought that flickered through my brain at that point.

The Brigadier either saw something he didn’t like or used some ESP. One never knew what he was capable of or what he saw. “My dear Parker, my wife’s a foreigner. Doesn’t grip hands, you know. Just as bad as the British in that respect.”

Then for the first time, I heard her voice. Never had I heard anything like it before and what with my surprise, the wild evening and this very odd meeting, well, it was really one more shock!

“I know very well, My Dear, who Mr. Parker is. He writes those tales for magazines. Those stories about you, he writes and then calls you by a name that is not yours in them, so that no one will ever know your real name or what your real family is.” If it were possible to contemplate a very large cat’s purr, mingled with a deep contralto, that would give one a vague idea. My own thought as she spoke conveyed my instant feeling: Lioness Diva; just those two words.

Ffellowes (which he will remain, now and in the future) was not a bit embarrassed. He grinned at me and stepped back just a little, anticipating his wife’s next move.

She stepped forward, her right hand out now, and I instinctively shook it. It was as large as mine, with a smooth-palmed, tight-glove, as warm as flesh, though I could feel the edge of the furry backing. Those feelings came later for then I could only stare into the broad-cheeked face and the great, glowing eyes.

“You two go on away now, Donald. Take Mr. Parker up to your club and tell him some other histories of your past that he can write about.” With that, she nodded to me, her wide, full-lipped mouth pleasant but with no trace of a smile, turned on her heel and headed up the path. In seconds the cottage door of the fabulous little house had opened and shut behind her stately back. I was left with the Brigadier in the shadowed court, frankly struck dumb and trying as hard as I could to keep my mouth tight shut so that it wouldn’t fall open and leave me gaping.

The Brigadier’s chuckle helped somewhat. “We’ll take her at her word, Parker, Old fellow. Don’t look so staggered. Few folk meet my Phaona but those who have were all a bit numbed by it Frankly, I am at times myself. She takes one that way and it makes no mind whether it’s Manhattan or a remote hamlet in the woods.” He turned and led me along the far side of the alley to where a recessed door stood open just enough to show it was a hidden garage. In three minutes we were out on the murky street in his beautiful old Lagonda and humming our way uptown.

Before we had parked two blocks away from the club’s front door, he said only one more thing.

“I’ve known those printed stories of yours since the first one came out, Parker. Very good, too. As long as you kept my title and real name and rank out of ‘em and scramble the dates and areas as you do so neatly, I haven’t the slightest objection.” His head turned and the blue eyes fixed on mine for just one second only. They were utterly cold and frozen. “You’re a gentleman and a man of honor. Please remain so.”

It took a real effort to get out of the car but I managed it and in five minutes we were alone in a corner of the Club Library.

The Brigadier called for hot coffee and when we’d been served he leaned back in his leather chair and looked at me with his old smile.

“Parker, I’m going to tell you and you alone, the story of my wife. It should interest you, I think. And I, My dear fellow, will be most intrigued indeed to see how you deal with this tale in one of your charming romances.” Again the deep chuckle.

COUNTERMOVE

It was a windy March afternoon in the Club. I had got out of my office a trifle earlier than I should, simply out of restlessness. Maybe it was a sign of Spring but the gloomy, windy, cold city sure didn’t look it.

I wandered into the library with a drink, thinking I might find an entertaining foreign journal or something, just to kill an hour with. I found something better. Much better.

The big room was empty except for one reading alcove where a small light illumined a bent-over shape I knew well and had missed for months.

“Brigadier!” I let out a joyful yelp. “Where you been, Sir? We were afraid you’d gone abroad for good or something. How are you, anyway?”

Brigadier Donald Ffellowes’ cold, blue eyes took me in and I thought or maybe hoped, warmed a bit. His smooth reddish face had no lines but it never did and his short-cut, white hair was neatly combed as always. He had a pile of battered-looking books next to him and had one open on his lap which he’d just been leafing through.

“Hullo, Parker. Nice to see you too. Just been havin’ a dekko at some oldish stuff, mostly fiction here. I picked up a batch of things I wanted down in one of those caves on, where is it? Oh yes, 4th Ave. Take a look, My lad. Sort of thing I expect would interest you perhaps.”

By the desk lamp on the small table in the alcove, I could indeed see familiar names on the covers, though most of the tides were unknown to me. There was, for God’s sake, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar! Next to Burroughs lay a Rider Haggard I’d never seen, titled Heu-Heu or the Monster. Finally, there was something by one McNeile, whom I didn’t know, called Island of Terror. Just a collection of old time thrillers, that was all.

The Brigadier smiled at the perplexity in my face, and shut the rather massive tome in his lap. He then held that one up for me to see the somewhat lurid jacket plainly. I read Abominable Snowmen; legend come to life.

Ffellowes laughed gently. “It’s all right, Parker. I’m not zany yet. Let’s say I am doing a spot of research and using some rather odd sources for my digging at, eh?”

Behind me, I heard movement and then before I could even turn, a cry or several cries of delight “He’s back, you guys! The Brigadier’s come back. Come on over, come on up and let’s see what he’s been doing. Parker’s got to him but so can the rest. Come on!”

I was happy to see that Mason Williams was not in the crowd. It was just the gang of four or five of the “regulars,” the fans who would have walked fifty miles and back for a chance at one of Ffellowes’ stories. Some were very important men, in finance, law and medicine but around the Brigadier they were a gang of eager kids, tongues hanging out, waiting, hoping, ready to beg, just anything, if only to hear one of his quietly-told tales of strange and lurid adventure. In his years in the service of the British Crown, the Brigadier had been damned near everywhere and it seemed, had been attached to every branch of the British Services or if not attached, then loaned to them, or maybe “it”.

“Hullo, hullo, Chaps. Nice to see you all again” was the greeting they got as they pulled up chairs and formed a circle around his bay. “Parker here was wonderin’ what I was doin’ with these books, which are the rankest kind of escape literature, eh? Well,” he went on, “I was doing a bit of pseudo-research. Frankly, I was wondering if any of these authors had any real idea of what they were writing about, you know, any actual facts on which to base these bits of wild and wooly fiction.”

The others had all been looking as hard as they could at the books he had started to show me and now Westcott spoke up. He was a very top lawyer in one of the big firms, I think maybe Silliman & Cramwell, but I knew he had once been a very sharp D. A. as well and his question proved the point.

“There must be some connecting link, I should think, Sir, between those old novels and your own life. Maybe that big book in your lap is another?”

“Very quick, Mr. Westcott,” smiled Ffellowes. “Good, shrewd thinking you attorneys have.” Ffellowes never forgot a thing about anyone he’d ever met, no matter how minor it was. Now he looked at the last book again for a second, before continuing.

“Have any of you chaps read much of this sort of thing? This one,” and he tapped the fat book about Abominable Snowmen, “is not fiction at all. The man who wrote it, who’s now dead, was a scientist himself, though he had imagination. He was trying to gather all the legends from every place on the planet, plus any facts he could find, and make an amalgam. These creatures, these hairy, ape-like, primitive things, are reported from damn near every place on Earth. Did you fellows know that? They are not just glimpsed or rumored in the Himalayas. No indeed! This man Sanderson in this book I have has Russian reports, Chinese reports, African reports and South American sightings. Oh yes, and the most reportage of all comes from of all places, this country we are sitting in.” There was a brief silence in the big room and the Fifth Ave. traffic outside provided the only sound. For several moments no one spoke.

Then a man on the other side of the group, a new member of the club, said something. “Isn’t there that thing out in California or maybe it was Oregon. They call it ‘Bigfoot’ and I think it has other names. All they find is footprints and they fake pictures and claim they took them of a real animal.”

“Quite possibly correct,” said Ffellowes. “Another name out there is ‘Sasquatch.’ American Indian dialect, one supposes.”

“But Brigadier Ffellowes,” said Westcott, “what has this idea of some actual ape thing in the woods, this, well this monkey version of Loch Ness or supposed dinosaurs alive, what has any of it got to do with those old novels you were reading? Didn’t Burroughs write Tarzan and that man Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines?”

“Yes indeed to both,” said Ffellowes. “But consider this. In Tarzan, there are tribes of intelligent giant apes, creatures which don’t exist in reality. This novel of Rider Haggard’s is called Heu-Heu or the Monster. Same thing again, intelligent, man-sized, ape things. This last one is by the chap who wrote those old detective thrillers about Bulldog Drummond. Stuff I grew up on, myself. But this one’s about an island off South America, and guess what? On that remote, little islet lives a mob of nasty, giant apemen. D’you begin to see why I’m interested?”

I seldom talk when the Brigadier’s around but I had a great idea and I had to speak. “What about Conan Doyle’s adventure novel, Brigadier? What about the tropical tribe of apemen in the Matto Grosso in The Lost World?” I felt I had made a score, had finally caught the Brigadier out in a bit of arcane and useless knowledge.

He smiled gently. “My dear fellow, I know the book by heart. I used it long ago on this pursuit of the nonsensical.” Seeing my face fall, he went on. “Not to feel badly though. That book may have started all the other ideas and I’ve had it on my own mind for years.”

He put all the books away on the side table and shoved that aside as well. “Sun’s over the Yardarm, Gentlemen. Let’s have a small dose of the usual medicine. Then, if you’re interested at all, I’ll tell you why I have such a personal interest in this problem.”

If we’d all been dogs, you could have heard the sound of panting and slavering, felt the eagerness and the electricity that his words had released. We are going to get a story, a Ffellowes story and the Brigadier never told the same one twice!

After the club waiter had brought the tray of cocktails and then gone away, we all started sipping, smoking and waiting. Ffellowes, who was having a glass of ale, gave us all a thoughtful stare and then began.

“Haven’t been down that way in years. Any of you fellows know the little colony that used to be British Honduras? It’s called Belize now but that was only the name of the capital and the one town of any size in the whole place then. Just a flyspeck colony of ours, which never paid for itself and which the neighboring country of Guatemala wanted. Still does I think, but it was never theirs or even really Spanish before them. It was settled by a bunch of ex- and not so ex-pirates and judicially run from Jamaica for a couple of centuries. Sole export was mahogany. No oil, no minerals, no nothing. Now that it’s allegedly independent. I wonder how it supports itself? Just north of it is that Quintana Roo place of Mexico’s. Currently a big resort area now with Can Cun and all that—” He took a sip of his ale and went on.

“It was in ‘47 I was sent there. It was an odd sort of job but the big war was over and I did often get the odd ones. I was technically or officially under the Foreign Office, if anyone really cared.

“It seems that during the war, there was a lot of murmur about the locals selling food and drummed petrol to German subs. Nothing ever came of it and I think that fellow Stevenson, the one now called Intrepid, had some of his folk there, checking up and keeping an eye on matters for the Crown and its allies. In fact, this author, that chap Sanderson once was one of ‘em.

“Well, it seems a new message had come out of the place and it was this message that got me sent there. The message itself was very odd. It was in an obsolete code form, addressed to a man in MI-6 who’d been dead for three years and it didn’t come through any channels at all. What happened was this:

“A local skipper of a coasting schooner had got the message. He, the skipper, was a Bayman, as they’re called down there. A big black, and I mean big, because I saw the man later. These folk, the Baymen, are very loyal to the idea of being ‘British.’ They once helped fight a whole Spanish fleet off, back in the 18th Century. I think myself they’re the descendants of runaway slaves from the islands or maybe Spanish territory, but they don’t like mestizos or Latins of any sort much. They speak good, if jumbled, English, though most can get along in some Spanish too. They usually live by or near the sea and are fine swimmers, boatmen and water people. The remaining inhabitants of the country are simply a straggle of southern Mayans, Maya Indians that is, just like the same folk over the border in Mexico but poorer and more spread out. There are a couple of modest Mayan temples in the back country but nothing very grand, like the ones in Mexico. Don’t think anyone from a university ever bothered to do much digging, though a few gave the area a looksee on occasion.

“Well, this skipper, whose name was Ambrose Hooper, had come up the coast in his old piece of floating junk and did a lot of small-time trading as he came. He could have started in Panama for all I know. Many of them did and paid small attention to customs, port duties or any other regulation. The whole coast of Central America was like that once. His story was this:

“One night, while at anchor off the Monkey River, down off the mangroves in the south of the colony, he heard someone swimming out to him from the local mangrove belt. He quietly roused the crew, which meant one son and two nephews and they got their cane knives ready. That’s what they call machetes and they all wear them, or used to.

“It was a dark, overcast night and they could see little or nothing. The sound of someone swimming and they had good ears was that of a man, not an animal, and they finally called out, asking who and what it was.

“For answer, they got something thrown neatly at them, right into the old schooner, barely missing Captain Hooper’s head. They ducked and waited but that was all. Except that in the following quiet they heard the same sound of someone swimming, only this time it was away, back to the hot, black shoreline, the steaming mangrove coast from which it had come in the first place. Slowly, it seemed to them, the sound faded into the fetid night, until once more only the hum of countless mosquitoes and sandflies was audible.

“When they could hear nothing more, Captain Hooper used a flashlight and they looked for whatever had been thrown into their vessel. They found it finally in the bilges and it was a small package, tied with twine, and wrapped in a filthy scrap of oilskin, which had kept the interior almost completely dry. In it was a scruffy pack of crude papers of some kind, very coarse stuff with frayed edges. On the paper was writing, blurred and in some brownish, dark ink of some sort.

“Now what got the men excited was this. On the outside of the bundle, in the same ink, but printed, not written, was the following: ‘On His Majesty’s Service. Take to English Consul at once!’ Oh yes, and below that was printed equally bold, ‘MOST SECRET.’

“Well, I’ve told you how loyal to England these Baymen were and for all I know, still are. The Captain rewrapped the package and tied it up again and then swore his crew of relatives to silence. Nothing more was said and at daybreak they sailed north again but with not a stop until they made the port town and/or capital of Belize. Remember, that was only a town name then and the whole dinky colony was called British Honduras or ‘B.H.’ locally. Captain Hooper took the package himself to the Consul and insisted on giving it to him in person and not to his one secretary. Then he left, his duty to the Crown accomplished.

“The Consul thought it was some sort of joke induced by tropical fever, but he looked carefully at it and he found a London address clearly printed. The rest of the scrawled pages were in English but in some sort of code, and no sort he had ever seen.”

The Brigadier took a pull of his ale and stared past or through us at the library wall. Outside the street noises penetrated faintly but in the big room, empty save for our small group, there was only silence. We all knew that he was seeing something none of us ever would or could see and that he was far away mentally, lost in some vision of the past, in some “lost world” of his own. Then he straightened again and his cold blue eyes flickered over us in casual appraisal, before he started to talk and to resume his tale.

“I’ll cut a few corners here, Gentlemen. The bundle of papers got to first, the Foreign Office and then trickled through several others in turn. They finally ended up in the place they were meant to go and there they caused both laughter and incredulity. Let’s call that last depository one or another HQ of a foreign-related intelligence division, eh? That tells you all you need to know.” He didn’t add “or ever will,” but it didn’t need adding.

“The papers were in a code, but a long-expired one. It was one of the codes given to agents in the field at a time of confusion, early in World War II. It had a use then, for it was easy to memorize, and even at that was only given to chaps who were considered of small importance and whose work was largely routine. A typical type would be some “small-timer” whose job was reporting shipping movements from obscure Portugese coastal areas of Africa, say. Once in a great while, these men and/or women in a few cases, would come up with something arresting, such as news of a Kraut surface raider or submarine, but this was not normal.”

The Brigadier lifted his eyes and stared at the ceiling. A faint but audible sigh came from his lips. Then he went on.

“The agent who had signed this package was interesting to the bureau involved for a couple of reasons. First, he was low on the scale, having been nothing but a very modest coastal trader along the Caribbean littoral for five years before WW II. But, long before a misspent life had commenced, he’d been a, well, to be a bit obsolete, a “gentleman.” He was, in fact, a latterday survival of an old Victorian custom, being a ‘Remittance Man’ of sorts, who had left his family, his country and all that when he got a bit embarrassing. His family, which we’ll call ‘Jones,’ heard little from him but sent him small sums of money through a lawyer at intervals, with the unspoken agreement that he would stay away, far away, and not bother them. One found these oddities here and there, mostly in the Tropics, to a much later date than is generally realized. Their offenses ranged from drink and women to actual criminality, though that was the rarest—”

Ffellowes paused here, and reaching down beside his leather armchair, pulled up another book, a very long and very thick book, which looked both used and used hard, being scuffed and with tiny holes in it. He held it up, facing outward, so that with a leaning from those on the edge, we could all read the words printed under the stained crown on the cover. They were simple, being Atlas of British Honduras and the date, 1939.

“Here’s the old official map book,” he said. “It was all we had until quite a while after. If I refer to something, it might make it easier on you fellows for me to indicate it on this thing than something more up-to-date, which I don’t have anyway, at least here.”

He eyed the book with amusement and affection for a moment “Full of rot and a few wormholes, this one. Any book carried into real tropical bush doesn’t last long.” He flicked it open and held it up and rotated it for us to see a map of the entire tiny country, which looked a bit like a shortened, bent version of the state of Vermont. Then, with his forefinger, he indicated a certain area, a largely blank area, two thirds of the way down or South and also in the center.

“This patch is all hills, covered with limestone crags, domes and heavy bush. There are bits of real tropical rain forest in places but a lot of it’s scrub jungle. Full of ravines and also streams, being quite well watered. There are swamps also in places in depressions in the hills or where the ravines broaden. The area’s known, or was known then, as ‘The Maya Mountain’. Well, the whole country inland was full of Amerindians of Mayan stock and probably still is. They have strong kinship systems, and now and again will leave their milpas, their corn patches, and go off visiting relatives on foot, some of whom are a long way off, such as due North up in Mexican Quintana Roo where famous ancient Mayans lived. You men have heard about Chichen Itza and all that. Or, they might drift due South or Southwest and end up in Guatemala with still other relatives. Made little of borders they did, and as the news tells us, they have not changed since the place became independent around 1971.” He sipped his ale and went on, a reflective tone now in his voice.

“An odd folk and keep very much to themselves, unless they’ve changed a lot. In B.H. very few spoke any English and their Spanish was archaic and full of loan words of Mayan. They preferred that and didn’t care much for anyone who was not Mayan. A dour, silent people, hardworking and living on tiny corn patches and a little hunting and fishing. They did not live on or even near the coast, leaving that to the negro Baymen and mestizo mixed-blood and the few Caucasians who were there, either for official reasons or for private ones.

“Now this brings us back to the mysterious message thrown on the boat by that unknown swimmer. Look at this map and see a lot of creeks hitting the sea almost due East of the Maya Mountains? See that area marked Seine Bight? All heavy swamp on that stretch and that’s where the Baymen’s coaster was moored when that message arrived.

“So then, we can get back to the message itself and to Jones, the supposedly dead and certainly vanished agent of the British Government, who had sent it, or at least had signed it with his long-defunct, assigned number. His first name was really Percy, I mean really. Sticks in my mind, it does, being rather effete for a man of this sort.

“The message was scrawled with some very crude sort of implement, perhaps a split piece of reed, it was, to put it mildly, confused as well as confusing, that is, to those who had to decipher and make what sense they could out of it—” The Brigadier stared away again, obviously trying to coax his memory.

“Well it went something like this, and I’m giving you a digest of what I can recall: ‘Send Troops to B.H. in secret! Send at least one half Batt, well-trained in Bush Fighting, artillery not needed. Send at once! Send to compass bearing XYZ, in the heart of Maya Mountains.’ ”

Ffellowes chuckled grimly at this point “Good thing he thought to put in the country involved and the Maya Mountains. The compass bearing was wildly askew and the latitude-longitude readings were someplace off Cape Horn in the sea. The whole thing seemed to indicate a very sick man, probably writing in the grip of some fever or other, or perhaps wounded or maybe both.

“There was a bit more to come and the next and last bit was the wildest and most weird of the lot. It went on in this way, all broken up, you know and not consecutive, like shorthand taken by a drunk stenographer. Here are enough pieces to give you some indication of what it was like: ‘Devils! They hate us and all like us! If the scientists are correct, though, they are us! Us as we were and they know it, by God!’ ” A strange smile flickered briefly over the Brigadier’s smooth face. “I’m not gassing you people when I use points of emphasis, that is verbal exclamation points and such. There are ways in a code of doing just that, to mean something’s most important and/or vital. Well, poor Percy Jones used that mark on every line, every scratched sentence, in fact on every place he could fit it in at all.” He sighed again, sadly, and we all felt his sympathy in our own minds as well for that poor lost man and his strange plight.

“Not too much more,” went on Ffellowes. “A few bits like this though: ‘They can see in the dark, better than cats; they have keen noses and can hear an ant crawling; they eat meat whenever they can get it and they don’t care what sort; they eat green stuff mostly, all kinds of plants; I think they raid a few lonely farms for corn and for other purposes; they must do that! How else could they get those other blank-blank?’ Now here,” the Brigadier went on, “one word was very hard to get straight. The best opinions seemed to be a mix. Some of the backroom boys thought it was ‘female,’ either singular or plural. Other opinions give it as ‘rulers’ or even ‘female rulers.’ Then there was another word that cropped up all the time and that was often blurred or run. This was something or appeared to be, olfactory. It was translated as ‘stench,’ ‘smelling’ and even ‘perfume’. There were continued references to ‘night,’ to ‘dark’ and to the apparent proclivities of ‘them’, whoever ‘they’ might be for darkness or the dark hours.”

He looked down at the open map book for a second and then up again quickly. “Oh yes, there was or were, still other repeated phrases of some sort. One was to ‘breeding’ and also ‘trying to breed’. That came in a lot rather at random. With it were words like ‘peril’ and ‘danger’/ ‘War’ and ‘revolution’ were not absent. And finally, there were constant references to some sort of hirsuteness. ‘Hair’ and ‘fur’ appeared a lot and also ‘pelt’—

“It didn’t really come to an end at all. There was some scribble about ‘Danger!’ and mixed in was ‘Hurry!’ and ‘Act at once!’ and more like that all with the emphasis on Now, Urgent, Instantly, and in general, ‘Hurry Up’ plus ‘Move!’ ”

He stopped talking for a moment and there was silence in the big room. The noise of traffic was audible through the curtained windows, the roar of New York that never stops. But no one felt like talking and we simply waited. The Brig, didn’t like being interrupted at any time but it was more than that. We were all far away, trying to hear a strange message in our minds from a lost soul.

“At any rate,” he finally went on, “Certain powers that be, or were then, got mildly intrigued. The bloody place was still a sort of dubious possession of the Crown. Somewhere in it a long-lost man had tried to communicate. It ought to get a quick look, if no more.” He chuckled quietly. “I had always been noted as an oddity, if no more and I happened to have no current job. So, to make a long story one inch longer, I was off to Belize, the then capital and only sizeable town in all B.H.

“I found it dismal enough when I got there. Built at sea level, it had little paving and open sewers that emptied into a sluggish little river also called ‘Belize’. The sewers and the river were both full of rubbish, including dead cats, pigs, dogs and possibly people. It all went out to sea but slowly and not much to sea, with each tiny tide. There were few if any decent buildings and fewer Caucasians, though that meant little to me. I had chats with the Governor, the Consul and the local police chief, saying little myself but learning a lot about the country. I had impressive but vague papers, which said I was from the Foreign Office on inspection duty. What I really wanted I kept to myself. I had to tell one chap only, and I chose the policeman. Like a lot of Colonial Cops, he was a splendid chap and had started long before as a London Bobby. I told him the whole thing, except for the meaningless bits of message, the stuff about ‘hair’ and such. And I had him arrange a meeting with Captain Hooper, the skipper who’d got the actual message so strangely. The police chief was the only one in the country who knew even vaguely what my job really was and he’d been cleared by my own H.Q.

“We ended up by having a very quiet meeting one evening, Captain Hooper, his oldest son, George, and I. Over vast glasses of appalling beer, which did not help much with the tropic stench in the still air, but some, we talked. Police Chief Plover, by agreement, kept watch outside the little hut on the town’s edge where we met.

“I got the whole story from Hooper and his son, the latter a big, really big, young Black. His rippling muscles were impressive but the steady eyes over the high cheekbones and the soft, deep voice were more so. The father had both and only a little grey in his cropped curls. They were far better material than I’d hoped for. I noticed their cheap clothes were clean and that they were also.

“I told them what I wanted and they promptly agreed with enthusiasm. They and the rest of the crew had been back from a trip down the Coast for over a week and were loading goods on their schooner, named Windsor incidentally (they pronounced it ‘Weensore’ in their deep tones) for another. Whatever I wanted was mine and they even argued about my offer to pay a price for charter! This was ‘Guvmint Wuhk’ and they wanted no pay. A refreshing note of loyalty for the battered Empire in those Post-War days but I’d found it elsewhere in the world before this and later as well. They were clever men and they could reason. When I’d sketched what my plans were, they had thought of some helpful ideas of their own and I do mean helpful.

“Captain Hooper summed it up and I’ll give it to you in his words. ‘You wanna go inshore to where that man swim out wit that lettah. Then, Cap’n, (I was that rank) you wanna go afta that mon all the way in to them Mayan Mountain, where you feel he come from? Okeh, gettin you theyah, thass easy. You come on wit us in the dahk and none know this. But when you go ashoah, thass vurry difficult. Bad country, fulla bugs, snake and sickness. If you goes through to them hills, mebbe it get worse. No one go up there, cep’ a few hunter now and then. Clean air, plenty watah, good ground and animals too, mebbe even a few ‘Panther cats’ or even ‘Tygrees.’ (He meant Puma and Jaguar, the latter being Tigre to Spanish speakers.) But, Sah, they ain’t why I’m worried, nor Jawge neither. Nobody like the inside of them hills and nobody, not the lousiest’ Injun’ corn digger, go there for mor’n a day or two. No one live theah! That Baaad Place and it always been so. A littul huntin, thass OK, but some folks won’t even go in there foh just that even.’ Captain Hooper stopped here and looked at his son. I could see them both clearly in the light of the paraffin or kerosene lamp.

“George was ready for the pause. ‘You’se watched, is what I heah,’ came his own deep tones. ‘Somfin’s in theah that watches folks. If they stays on the edges like and don’ stay long, then’s all right. If should be they goes in deep or mebbe tries to live there permanent, thass a diffrunt thing, Cap’n. They just vanish, like a Duppy got’m. Whoosh!’

“His father took a giant gulp of beer, emptied the bottle in fact, and nodded to me. ‘He say right, Cap’n. Thass no place to go, not nobody. And nevah alone, Suh. Too easy foh the Duppies, one puhson all by hisself!’ ”

Ffellowes leaned back and his blue eyes twinkled at us. “A ‘Duppy,’ my friends, is an evil spirit. It’s simply Anglic dialect for what the Haitians call a ‘Zombie’ or one of their own spirit terrors. Cheery news, eh, in that smoky hut?” Then the humor left his eyes and he continued. “I was making mental notes over what I heard when George spoke again.

“ ‘I go wit the Cap’n, Dadee. I ain’t no Bushman, jus’ a sayluh boy but I got good legs. An’ we take Lucas Payrfit. He part Spaniol, mebbe part Injun, but he my fren’ also. An’ he do know the Bush. He hunt evr’thin they is an’ he know to live theyah an’ go quiet-like. Wit us two, mebbe they’s a chanct. Lemme ask Lucas to come ovah and talk wit usn’s.’

“I strongly suspect,” Ffellowes continued, “that all this had been pre-talked over before we met. I feel that George had already got his father’s permission to escort me and that the mysterious Lucas had already been sounded and had agreed.”

He fell silent, gazing at the rug and we stayed immobile in our circle. Once again Ffellowes had captured our spirits and we all were far away and long ago with him in that steamy, tropical hut, planning a venture into the unknown. The street noises and the faint sounds from the other parts of the Club were mentally shut out and meaningless, not registering on our tensed-up sense patterns. We also saw and heard the two black giants as they calmly offered to risk their lives for Ffellowes and that sacred (to them) intangible, the British Government.

The Brigadier gave a sigh and then resumed. “Well, at Dawn, two days later, we cast off from a battered, mooring post and were off to the South. All had been taken care of that could be. I’d left a complete report of my findings, which were largely speculative and also my intentions, possibly even more so. All that was with Plover the Top Cop. A good chap and he’d served a term not long before in the police of one of the Malay States, in Borneo I believe. He knew something thus of both traveling and looking for trouble in uncharted rain forests.

“As the Windsor chugged out, sails down, on her battered auxiliary, there were two of us below decks, sweating in the still heat and stench. We’d come on board in the thick dark at 3:00 A.M. and with us a lot of equipment we needed. The other man was the mysterious ‘Lucas Pairfit’ His name was really of French derivation and spelled correctly, was ‘Peyrefitte.’ The Hoopers had summoned him quietly at dusk on the previous day and he’d just appeared, equally silent.

“I had given him the once over, since we were to be companions and I was rather impressed. He too was tall, perhaps 6′2″ but lean and not burly. He had a hawk face and bronzy-red skin. There was some negroid strain, as evinced by the close-cut tight curls, but the rest? At a guess, French and Amerindian. He moved like a great cat and he had piercing black eyes. His voice was a purring growl, very sinister at first but his grip was firm and hard. We chatted while trying to breathe as the schooner cleared the river with me putting the questions and him the answers. George Hooper was on deck with his father and two husky cousins, but that was the normal thing and thus not worth disguising.

“Lucas had guided more than one hunting party into the edge of the Maya Mountain country but as he put it ‘I don’ stay long. I keep the white folks who hire me movin’ fast and when they want rest I always tell ‘em this Bad Place. Sometime I say fevah, sometime bad watah, sometime no animal to hunt sometime too many buggses. But mos’ imphtant we keep on the move.’

“When I asked him about the feelings the others had told me of, those of being watched, I could see the whites of his eyes flicker, even in the fetid dark of the little cargo space.

“ ‘Oh yes,’ he said, this time with a real snarl. ‘They is somethin’ that see you. You don’ notice much in the day time, jus’ now an then. But aftah dark, then it get bad. You look to me Sah like a man what’s done a bit of huntin’, right?’ At my grunt of assent, he went on. ‘Then maybe you have feel this thing too. All huntah have. But, lookee, Cap’n, did you evah have this feelin’, that a smaht tigre watch you, one that don’ like you and can think about it, like a man think?’

“When he’d finished that particular comment, there was silence between us, broken only by creaking timbers and our breathing. His next comment anticipated my next question but was quite logical in so doing. ‘I nevah find any tracks, not a one. But I do fin’ where a place where something heavy, maybe man size, squat down. An in sof’ groun’ close by, I find where a branch been use to rub out track. Jus’ like you or me would if we don’ wanna be seen or notice we been theyah at all.’

“Again there was a brief pause and again he went on, but doing no thought reading this time. ‘Theah was also a stink. Vurry light and not one I evah smell. If it were people, then they got a very nasty smell to ‘em. They got that smell, like somethin’ that live in the woods, some wil’ animal, d’you see an’ they got a lot of weight, more than us and they like the dahk, jus’ like a cat do.’

“Once more there was silence and I noticed the engine was off and that we were heeling a little, obviously under sail. He pulled his thought-reading trick again. ‘I speak pretty fayuh Maya, Cap’n. They tell me I mus’ be part Maya and mebbe so. I don’ look like the Hooper men and that help, not lookin’ so much like a Bayman, wit’ this thin nose and mouth and all. Anyhow, they talk to me, some of ‘em do. I ask a lot about these Maya Mountains and the things I notice. Man, do they freeze up! That’s bad country in the inside, fulla devils! They are bad devils and they steal Maya girls mebbe to eat. They ain’t nevah seen again, not evah! They’s a vurry few ol’ men, who can remembah times they was told of befoh the whites come here. Any whites at all, Spanish, English or any and that mean any black men too, cause they had black men as slaves. An’ these ol’ mens, onect in a while, but rare, they would tell me a few things they been tol’ by their ol’ men when they little kids. This place we headed now was always the bad place! Them ol’ injuns they always stay out too even back when they was the bossmen of this whole country and the other countries round about like Guatemala an’ Mexico too. So what do that tell us, Cap’n?’ He was silent and waiting and my answer was obvious, as obvious as it must be now to you fellows. ‘Old,’ I said, ‘very old. Whatever makes them afraid of that country has been there a long time indeed, Lucas.’ His grunt of assent was loud and clear.

“At this point, a bolted hatch on the foredeck was slid open and we both took deep breaths of the gust of fresh air. Whatever the Hooper clan had carried in that little ship, including partly-cured hides, it didn’t make for easy breathing with the hatches shut.

“Young George Hooper’s head appeared and he hailed us with a smile and told us to come up and relax. We were well out of the river now and sailing South under a gentle breeze, with not another craft of any sort in sight, not even a canoe. So we climbed out and went aft in the sun to the after cockpit. There we settled down with Captain Hooper and the two other cousins ran the boat. We began to plan our own moves and coordinate them.

“It was obvious that we could not plan too much, since there were so many unknowns in the whole thing. But we did the best we could and as carefully as possible. Then, we simply ran South, aiming for the area where the strange message had been thrown aboard ship in the steaming night.

“For two days and nights we dawdled on, following the coastline and well inside the fringing reefs that lie up to ten miles off that same coast. It was work for experts only, since there were plenty of local obstacles, from bars of mud and sand to clumps of local coral heads, floating logs out of the forest and occasional fishing boats without lights, the latter probably smuggling something. The Hoopers had done this trip many many times before though and laughed uproariously when I joshed them about their varied cargoes and His Majesty’s Revenue Inspectors.

“As a cruise for honeymooners, I would fault it. The breeze was erratic and never strong and we were close enough to shore for sand flies and mosquitoes to pick us up with ease. We slapped, swore and smoked steadily. There was nothing else to do.

“Eventually at dawn, we arrived, having passed Stann Creek in the night where there’s a small port whose lights we could see at a distance. When the Windsor was anchored, close to where the older man said the message had come, young George Hooper, Lucas Peyrefitte and I collected our gear, prepared a spare dinghy which we’d towed for this purpose, and went ashore if you call a healthy mangrove swamp ‘shore’, which I don’t. The skipper and the other two were to call back at this point in two days and then in two more days, a job to be repeated until they saw us or a signal from us. Very simple arrangement compared to jobs I had during the war, off the Norwegian coast, say, but it was the best we could do.

“We got the dinghy as far up a muddy creek as we could and then had to slog through a lot more mud, plus clouds of stinging bugs, until we finally hit solid ground and collapsed. We had blazed mangrove trees with our machetes as a backtrail guide. Now we spit out bugs, wiped the worst mud off with leaves and looked at each other ruefully.

“We all had Winchester carbines slung on our shoulders and ammo, in pouches, plus oil and cleaning stuff. All three also had Webley .455 revolvers in flap holsters and full belts as well plus heavy hunting knives and the local machetes. We had full canteens as well and light packs, also shoulder-slung. In the packs were mosquito nets and food, charqui which is dried beef and crude tortillas baked to iron hardness. Most folk who know nothing of the tropics think being lost is the problem. It’s one, but the least thought-of is more dangerous yet. Quite simply, thirst. Just because you have tons of greenery, that doesn’t always mean water, reachable water. In this country, a mixture of sand, dirt limestone and granite, it was even more chancy. Little streams and brooks are there and lots of them. But they take finding. Rain is common and heavy as well but it can hold off for weeks at the wrong season, always when you most want it.

“I looked at my team and felt pretty good. George, to my delight had once done a short term in the local ‘Territorials’, a mob we raised during the war for local defense. Lucas was a hunter and a ‘bushman’. We were all in tough khaki trousers and shirts, commandeered from the Belize cops by Inspector Plover, my ‘link’ to the Crown. He had got Army laced boots for us too, just now soaking wet but we had grease to reproof ‘em and keep them from cracking. I had a slouch hat. my own shikari hat from India, but the other two didn’t want any or ever wear them. We all had compasses and they could read theirs as well as I. I had what local maps the Crown had had done, but these were vague and not much use.

“Looking at mine, I found that we were, or thought we were, south of a maze of creeks, the largest of which was labelled ‘Jenkins,’ named after God knows who. I discussed our position with the others and we set off, bearing West by NW.

“There were no trails in this country and Lucas went first me next and George last. It was up-and-down trekking, with lots of low ridges, some with bare rock spines protruding. The trees, Waha palms, tropical pines and a few mahoganys, weren’t too tall, except for a rare one but there was lots of low stuff under many of them and a lot was spiny and nasty. Lucas, who knew this stuff best was simply to hold course and pick the clearest path possible.

“We soon ran into another blight, one they had warned me of many times. It was tick country and several sizes and types were plentiful, from big black ones to minute red pests. We ignored them mostly, and when we stopped for breaks, scraped them off or held lit smokes to the most bloated until they popped bloodily. Mosquitoes were rare, save near water in the low bits, that is, rare by our standards here only. To reinforce them came a nasty group of large, biting flies. I was the chief sufferer, since the two young men seemed to ignore the damn things. Still, I’ve been in a lot of tropical bush and/or jungle and some was worse. There were at least no leeches.

“Actually, had we not been pressing on fast, the country was lovely. On top of sandy ridges, where the pines predominated, one could see a lot, especially as we were climbing steadily as we went inland in our torturous, up-and-down path. We saw few animals, save for a rare glimpse of an armadillo and once a tapir clumping away up a wet ravine. Birds were everywhere though, vultures or zopilotes sailing over us and lots of little things warbling and chirping below, some with very bright colors, other as drab as sparrows.

“On one of these ridges, Lucas called a halt and pointed. Far down a series of tangled ridges we could see patches of small corn fields spread over flat country and out of the heavy bush. This was to the North.

“Then, he whirled and we looked West. Here the summits of much higher, though rounded hills capped the view. ‘Maya Mountains’, he growled. ‘None of these Injun live any closer than those field we jus’ look over. We in the bad country right now, the land where no one go except to hunt and for not long even then. We mus’ be careful from now on, Cap’n. Already we might be seen.’ He paused then and added, ‘by sump’n, sump’n bad.’

“When night came, which meant less heat but only a different variety of biting bugs, we camped in a little gully, having found a niche on one side where three smooth rock walls twenty feet high gave us some feeling of protection. There was a tiny stream trickling down the ravine bed so we had water. We grilled our charaqui, very good but tough, over one of the cans of American Sterno, a thought of mine to bring. It weighed little and though there was a smell of meat perceptible, there was no fire and no woodsmoke. The latter can be detected miles away by sensitive noses.

“We picked off all the ticks we could find and George and I spread our one-man mosquito nets. We were keeping what the navy calls ‘watch on watch’ and Lucas had the first round. Then, after four hours, he’d wake me and after my four, I’d get George up. None of us wanted there to be no sentry at any time.

“Next day, after a quick meal, varied by an anti-scorbutic, what you men pay for as ‘Heart of Palm salad,’ or the little growing heads of some small palm trees, we set off West again. It was much the same going, into ravines and up tangled slopes, with breaks only where the pines, now getting fewer, dominated on the sandy ridge tops. Lucas used his machete with great skill and also his experience, and we seldom had to cut any tangles away from in front. He was a real bushman, with a keen eye for selecting the best track both for footing and also for the fewest tangles of vegetation.

“All day we went on in our usual way, which might be described as being alternate verticals or half verticals, mixed with spirals and right angle shifts. The only constant in the whole mess was the gradual but never-ceasing upward slant. In one way and another, we climbed steadily to higher ground. As we paused in the later afternoon for some de-ticking and a rest on a lofty ridge, I was amazed by a Westward glance. Through the taller and heavier trees, I could see rounded summits, little higher than our own position, though far larger and looking quite close. I mentioned it to the others and they seemed surprised I had just noticed.

“Lucas did not look elated and he continually darted his sharp eyes in every direction, up, down and sideways. ‘We is deep in the bad country now, Suh, and well in it. We keep a good lookout or we never come out. Now we be real quiet and we look for a good place to camp, some kin’ of place we can’t be jump on by dem thing what live here.’ His voice had lost all of the growl and was now a low, hissing purr. George Hooper, usually a cheery lad, quick to laugh and talk, was also suddenly silent and his seaman’s eyes were as wary as the hunter’s.

“Lucas shortly found the place he wanted, but he told me he had been on the watch for such a site for two hours past I checked my compass and got rough bearings, using the map, the setting sun and my own skill. We were about 16-1/2 degrees North and maybe 88-2/3 West. This certainly put us in the Maya Mountains, all totally unmarked territory.

“Lucas’ find for a campsite was another notch in a cliff, with bare or mossy rock behind and no big trees close. It was only a gap and about ten feet square. The rock walls for it arced out on each side, went up into darkness and there were no vines running down them. In front we had a clear view in daylight of 30 feet of open space, being rock slabs and shale with nothing higher than low bunches of grass. It made us all feel better when we got in and faced out.

“If any of you know the Tropics, you know there is no real ‘evening’. The dark fell like a cloud and we could hardly see one another save with our flashes, which we were careful not to use at more than three feet.

“The usual night noises rang out as we quietly used our Sterno and did not talk as we ate. Lots of bird calls, an insect vibrato and now and then the cry of some mammal. I heard a distant scream once and nudged Lucas. He nudged back and muttered Tigre under his breath. It had been a jaguar after all. There must have been a stream in the gully below us and to our left for the chorus of frog voices grew steadily louder during our meal, until it had almost blanketed the birds and the bugs through sheer volume.

“Suddenly, as we sat silent and listening, the batrachian calls stopped. It was an instant cut-off. So did the birds and even the insects seemed muted. In this silence came a new sound. It was not near or seemed not near but, oh how it carried! It was a strange cross between a moan and a roar. It gave the impression of immense volume somehow and more, for intermingled was a savagery, a terrible wild and forsaken anger, which rather chilled the blood. Quite unconsciously, I found myself huddling close to young Hooper, who sat to my left. His great body was trembling like a leaf and I could smell his sweat as no doubt he could smell mine.

“Finally that appalling sound died away in a series of rumbling grunts whose volume was not lessened much from that of the roaring wail which had begun the whole thing. There was silence and then the frogs took up their chorus again, with new members joining in until the night was once more echoing with croaks and trills in which insect stridulation was mixed again.

“The voice of Lucas Peyrefitte struck George and myself, though it was soft, so that we started and almost jumped away from one another. ‘Not too clost,’ it came. ‘Jus’ set still now an’ don’t talk nor move.’ He said no more for a second, and then continued. ‘Someone far off, he think that that noise come from them Howly Monkey. But it don’, not that. This come from somethin’ much bigger and meaner.’

“I had forgot, d’you fellows know, that Howler Monkeys were found in these parts. Never heard a Howler and I understand they can make a good, loud racket but I never thought they’d give one a chill to the marrow.

“Mind you, as some of you know, I’m not exactly inexperienced in living in the Tropics. I’ve heard leopards cough and grunt many times and the same with tigers and lions roaring. I’d picked up that jaguar scream back earlier and identified it by an educated guess. This was something I’d never heard before or wanted to hear again.

“Then Lucas spoke once more before falling silent. ‘Set still and use your ear an’ your nose till I say it OK. And keep you pistol handy too.’ I got my Webley cautiously in my grip and could feel George Hooper doing the same. Then we simply obeyed orders and sat listening. I’d forgot part of the order until I heard George sniffing deeply at intervals. I did the same without even thinking about it. And, deep in my subconscious memory, an alarm was triggered. Had there not been something about ‘smells’ or ‘stinks’ in that weird report signed by the man I call ‘Jones’? In fact, in the very report that had got me here in this wilderness in the first place?

“Well, gentlemen, God knows how long we three sat there, as relaxed as possible but more than alert. I checked my luminous watch hand at intervals and at least one hour had passed when something else began to happen.

“I’d given up sniffing the jungle air which was lovely but so full of bugs that I’d inhaled several gnats without meaning to. But the other two were tougher and they had not I heard and almost felt my neighbor George increase his sniffs and I started to do so too. One deep breath was enough.

“It was a most unpleasant odor that now wafted our way. It was wild, feral if you like, but mainly a sort of concentrated garbage sort of reek. There was none of the ammonia smell of the big cats; what you can get in any zoo, though I’ve had it close to in the bush myself. Oh no, this was another new one for me. Mix a filthy athletic locker room with the stench of uncleaned dog kennels and add rotten garbage. That’s the best I can do to describe it.

“And with this foul effluvium there was something else. This was more of a feeling than anything else. We were under intent and malign observation, that was it. Someone or something was looking at us and it was the look of a predator. You’ll recall that Lucas and I’d had a conversation on this point before we started. Well, as any real hunter knows, one can feel this sort of thing, if one’s lucky that is. Not very pleasant in that hot, damp dark, to feel that some ‘presence’, something deadly and predatory had one under observation!

“It was Lucas’s voice that broke the dead hush. And it was no whisper but a shout ‘Look up,’ he yelled, almost in my ear. ‘That stink come from up, down the rock behin’ us!’

“Well, the three of us whirled as one man and young Hooper, God bless him, flicked on his torch as he did. And so we weren’t taken too much by surprise.” The Brigadier paused for thought but there wasn’t a breath expelled in the Club library. We were all rivetted by the imagined horror of his tale and all mentally in that black, steaming forest, long ago in an unknown land, holding our breath and with racing pulses, all desperate to find out what followed.

The silence grew unbearable and Ffellowes’ smooth pink cheeks finally loosened and he resumed his tale.

“Something huge and covered with matted hair was dropping down that cliff face behind us, on what we’d all thought was the one safe side. How it found grip, I’ll never know, and it was half-falling and half-climbing, I think, now.

“I saw its turned head in the torchlight, the great fangs and the red, glaring eyes between the mighty shoulders and the vast arms and crook-clawed hands, the huge straight legs and the claws on the toes as well. It was an instant, glaring picture of primal terror, caught as one catches a flash bulb photo, all in a split second.

“The oddest thoughts tend always to surface in a time of crisis. No doubt those of you who’ve seen combat in a war have noticed the phenomena. I had the weirdest flash then and it went like this: ‘There are no reddish-blond gorillas in Central America. And its legs are much too long anyway!

“For the matted pelt that covered the hide of this monster was the color I’ve just used, a sort of reddish yellow and it was short, not like the longer hair of a gorilla or chimp you know.

“I had my gun drawn but frankly not levelled. It was Lucas, that trained hunter, who was ready, not I. His Webley .455 went off with a roar and young Hooper’s was not much behind. It was I, the supposedly trained soldier and the leader of the group, who finally fired third. I will say that I fired at the demon head, just in my own defense, you know and to demonstrate to you fellows that I wasn’t totally panicked. Damned lucky I finally came to, I might add.

“That huge, ghastly vision never let out one cough or even a grunt. It simply collapsed and fell, from perhaps eight feet up on that rock wall. One moment it was alive and about to leap on us, the next it was a huddled pile of reeking, bloody fur, clearly seen in the torch light for all three of us now had our flash buttons out and down. It was odd that the frog orchestra never stopped even for those three shots. The night was returned in an instant to the sounds of its normal voices while the three of us just stood frozen, staring at what we’d killed. I holstered my gun and started swatting mosquitoes without even thinking about it I felt like a moron later when I thought of what might have happened had there been more than one of those things!

“Now we come to more of my stupidity. It was not the trained Intelligence wallah who spotted the next piece of evidence but young Hooper who at this moment had both sharper eyes and quicker wits. He bent and held his light close to the outflung right hand, for claws, size and all, it was a hand, of the dead thing. I almost choked when I saw what he’d noticed. To prove it was a ‘hand’ and not a paw, it was clenched tight in a death spasm and clenched around the shaft of a weapon too. That dead grip was around the wood of a short and incredibly massive spear! A further glance along the shaft showed the glittering, broad point, which gleamed black in the torch light. As heavy and broad as the wood was massive, so too was the obsidian blade, sharpened by clearly-seen chipping and flaking to razor edges!

“Well, that chap Lucas read my mind at this point ‘I listen good,’ he said, almost casually. ‘Dis the onliest one around. Maybe more come but I think this one find us alone by himself and try kill us quick.’

While Lucas spoke, though I heard him clearly, I was looking hard at other things, details that fit nothing I’d ever dreamt of, let alone heard about. The hairy hand that retained its weapon had a thumb as long and human in shape as mine. I’m sure you men know that no ape, gorilla or other, has anything but a short peg, a stump that can’t grip or even bend. That dispelled any thought of the lower primates on the spot. You could, I suppose, teach a trained ape to carry a weapon but you can’t train him into growing a thumb!

“Next I carefully examined the head, which happened to lie face up so that I didn’t have to move anything or touch the foul-smelling bulk. Oh, did it stink, a feral reek of everything wild, mixed with rank garbage! But I breathed through my mouth and carefully looked at that head. Oddly, the more I looked, the less horrid it got. Here’s why.

“Under that curious pelt which was longer on the top just like a man’s hair, was a large, but not abnormally-shaped skull. There was a big hole in it where my bullet had gone home and I hate to think what would have happened if I’d missed. One of the other shots had hit an arm and only by a narrow margin, while the third had gone high and to the right in the chest If that thing had been given a few seconds in that little rock bay with that great spear, well, I think the whole party would have lost a few guests.

“The head of this creature grew more interesting every second I was staring at it. It had a small but adequate nose. The canines were very large and pointed, easy to see since the mouth gaped open in death. But and this interested me even more, there was a highish forehead, a well-rounded chin, such as no ape or monkey possesses, and glimpsed through the dirty head hair, ears not unlike those of, say Parker here,” and he nodded at me.

I must have turned purple or something because they all laughed but the Brigadier held up one hand and the laughter died. “I only meant,” he said, “that they were quite normal ears, that’s all, but you don’t see yet, any of you, what I’m getting at, nor should you, I suppose.” He paused to collect his thoughts and then continued.

“There was a frontal brow ridge on this thing’s forehead, which I think now nothing more than the Neanderthal Man had. But it was a high forehead, not ape-like. And there was a goodish bump at the skull’s back, which I believe is the occiput—”

He paused again and then came out with his full thought, one he’d apparently been skirting for some reason. “What I’m driving at is this: Aside from the enormous size, for the creature was seven foot tall at least, and the massive bulk and the pelt of course, what I was looking at was no ape at all but a crudish sort of very large man, a giant man with fur all over him.”

I must have been brooding subconsciously about my own ears and Ffellowes’ remark, because I saw a point or two I thought he’d missed and that made me bold, bold enough to interrupt, something I had seldom dared as did few others when one of the Brigadier’s stories was in progress.

“Excuse me, Sir,” I said quickly, “but what about those great claws you said you’d seen. Claws on both toes and fingers, wasn’t it?”

I was afraid I’d made the greatest tale-teller I ever knew angry when those blue eyes hit mine as he was about to speak. He only smiled a little though and just kept talking.

“Parker has a point there,” he said to all of us. “Glad he made me think and remember. They weren’t claws, they were immense, crooked fingernails, uncut, sharp and filthy.” He ruminated a moment and then went on. “I may be wrong but they looked as if they’d been filed sharp, you know and I looked carefully. Yet, that wasn’t the main reason I looked so long at those great hairy hands. On the right middle finger, clenched in that death grip around the spear handle, I saw a glint of something bright. I parted the fur with my pistol barrel and there it was, a huge gold ring!

“It was quite smooth, though very large and had a big green stone in the center, a dull circle of what looked to me like jade. It made me catch my breath to see it on the hand of this awful brute and I turned to point it out to Lucas and George.

“Neither one seemed much surprised. I guess they had lived too long with the thought of marvels to be as impressed as I was. Lucas gave a purring chuckle and then said, ‘These bad place thing, these killer men of the mountain dark, they rich. They got gol’ and jewel to hide, mebbe an’ that why then don’ come out and kill whoever try come in here.’ What it was that stuck in my throat about his comment was not the idea of a hidden treasure. No, it was the way both he and the younger chap quietly and directly took the thing I had killed to be . . . a man!

“I mentioned this, commenting on the fur and the lack of any clothes as well. They were not impressed, either of them, by these arguments. ‘They wild things, bad things, these men,’ said Hooper. ‘Try to kill us or anyone that come here, Cap’n. Look hard at that shape, the head, that shahp speeah he got. An’ the fingah ring too. That ain’t no animal, Sah. No way. In ol’ time, the Bible say these men live an’ whatever live in his mountain, it very ol’. Remember, Cap’n, it tell in the Book “an’ Esau were a hairy man” ?’

“That remark finished the argument for me. I’d come to much the same conclusion anyway, and if the Bible were going to be quoted against me, I’d better keep my trap shut. Frankly, you chaps, I thought I’d found a member of some lost race of what used to be called Missing Links, some creatures that had survived in a lost wilderness long after Homo sapiens had risen and cleared the Earth of his more brutish relatives, save for the few lingering colonies of great apes like the gorillas. The thought of what a great discovery we’d made danced through my brain but Lucas’ next words drove the idea far away.

“He wasted little time. ‘We got to get rid of this ‘un,’ he said bluntly. ‘Mebbe other ones come aftah him and follow he tracks. Bury him quick, that what did ought to be did!’

“I had no argument with this remark either. Guns or no guns, we’d stand no chance against a mob of these creatures even in daylight, not in this thick bush, while at night they’d smother us.

“Working by the light of our torches, always kept pointed down, we scratched up the soft earth and moved the rocks in it until we had a pit three feet deep cleared. Before we shoved the reeking body into it, I used my big knife, of which more later, and hacked off that ring, throwing the severed finger into the pit I pocketed the ring. I was going to have some evidence of something, anyway. The other two said nothing and for all I know, assumed I had just used the rank I had as leader to grab a piece of loot first.

“When we’d finally got that enormous body dumped in and wiped our hands on leaves and grass, we simply stamped the earth hard and flat for we’d shoved the loose dirt and rocks back in and covered our work as thoroughly as we could.

“It wouldn’t have deceived a policeman or even a skilled woodsman, not for long, but in a jungle where rot works fast and growth faster, both Lucas and I knew it would soon be quite unfindable.

“Then, I raised another point I had overlooked in the excitement and which I’m sure all of you have been puzzling over. I asked Lucas, the skilled woodsman, what he thought about the sound of our three shots.

“He didn’t seem concerned or even much worried. ‘Remembah, Captain, what I tell you about hunting along the edge of this bad place? Lots of them Injun down in the low country got guns. Here in this little hole, wit all those frog an’ bug sounds, if anyone, even us like, heah a shot or two, it soun’ far off and not clost—’ He thought for a minute and then added a word. ‘Somehow, I feel shuah this killer man come alone an’ he won’ be missed by them other things till day come or mebbe longer.’

“We were all silent then and deep in thought. My own ideas were simple for the hunter’s last words had brought out another thing I’d managed not to consider.

“Whatever we had killed, it could not be alone. To keep a whole area inviolate and under a blanket of fear and avoidance for countless years, perhaps countless centuries, there had indeed to be more than once specimen of whatever he had been. I was now thinking of he and not it myself, you see.

“Well, dawn finally came, as it does in the Tropics, as fast as the dark falls. A red glow in the East changed to bright morning sunlight in a few seconds. We packed our stuff and set off again, but I had them both do as I did and unfasten and tuck back the flaps on their pistol holsters, for a quick draw if needed.

“We climbed slowly and watchfully for three hours and I then called Lucas back and George up from the rear. I explained that we needed two things, a rest and a ‘cleanoff’. The ticks and crawling bugs had got all over me during the night and were driving me wild. Also, we’d had no morning grub, having decamped in a hurry from our haunted lair under the cliff.

“We were following up a fair-sized stream at the time and Lucas looked at the water thoughtfully. Suddenly his face lit up and he slapped his leg. He said only one word, unintelligible to me and that was ‘Billums!’ I had no idea what he meant but dutifully followed as he set off at a tremendous pace, still following the noisy brook up and over the rocks and screens and ducking under tree branches and vines as we did so.

“About 10:00 A.M. we suddenly hit the top of the biggest rise we had yet seen. Lucas waved us down flat on our stomachs and we all peered over the rim of sharp rock. The stream, now icy-cold and ten feet across, was pouring over the cliff or hill edge very close on our right.

“There before us lay a broad stretch of savannah, mostly tall grasses and a few scrub trees. On the far side, almost half a mile away, a belt of tall forest began again. But what Lucas was looking for lay much closer, no more than a hundred yards off. It was a long, crystalline pool, fringed by ferns and aquatic shrubs, all low except at the upper end where the stream entered and the lower where it left to flow over the hill. But we were at an angle and could see it clearly, all sixty feet or so of its length. At a signal from Lucas we sneaked over to the taller shrubs near us and then to the lower edge of this lovely water.

“Lucas said he would take first watch and told both George, who was equally at a loss, and I to take off everything and lie in the pool with only our heads out. We were not to move, even though things tickled us! We would come to no harm and we would have no bugs left in a minute, or even less. While on watch, he, Lucas would debug our clothes and then we would watch while he immersed himself in turn.

“Ye Gods that water was cold! Not icy but we were hot and sweaty and plain filthy as well. After a second shock, it felt heavenly and I lay back to watch a pair of hummingbirds, flickering close by over some arum plants growing from the water. Then, suddenly I felt a series of tugs all over, as if someone were pulling my body hairs in six different places.

“Both George and I jumped with a start, for he’d felt the same thing! I looked at Lucas on the bank above me and he was grinning widely, a thing I seldom saw that impassive chap do. Then I looked down at my body, all visible in the utterly clear water. I was surrounded by little fishes, some very brightly colored. They were darting in and out all over me and pulling off every tick, ant or bug on my body.

Sometimes, they would grab a hair by mistake and that was the ‘tickling.’ Lucas murmured his word again and I had my first experience with the ‘Billums’, the tiny, tropical fish he had been looking for to get us all clean. I relaxed again for I knew the piranhas of the Amazon did not come this far to the North.

“Well, he was right again. In five minutes we were quite clean and we climbed out and traded places while he went in himself. Once in our now debugged clothes again, we felt wonderful, being clean as well. Lucas had not been in the water a minute and I was searching out food with George when we heard an acid hiss like that of a huge snake. It was Lucas and his immobile head was facing the other end of the pool. We had slacked on our sentry job but he had not.

“We flattened ourselves behind a bank of foot-long, giant arum leaves and slid our Enfields forward. I saw nothing at first but soon noticed a waving of leaves coming our way down from where the upper stream entered the pool. The motion stopped near the water and we waited, ready, we thought, for anything.

“We were wrong. No one was ready for the most wonderful sight I ever saw. The bushes parted suddenly and out stepped a woman, the most glorious sight of my not too hum-drum life.

“She was nearly nude and very tall. She wore golden breastplates and a broad golden belt, all set with pieces of jade and what looked like dark shining stones, not the dull glint of jade. When I say she was nude, I felt for a moment I had made a mistake. Mind you, she was no more than seventy-five feet from my hiding place and I could see every detail plainly. Was she wearing a fur suit of a golden red colour? Her face, both broad and high-cheekboned, was an ochre or red tinted with bronze and as smooth as any baby’s. Only then did I see the fur ‘suit’ was nothing but her own lovely pelt, of a dense but close-clipped hair, body hair, you know. I could see her glorious eyes plainly as she faced the Sun; narrow and long though they were, they were a blazing brownish tint.”

The Brigadier paused here and looked off across the big room. He was plainly lost in memories and we all sat waiting. Then he took a deep breath and went on.

“Her hair, combed back straight, was straight itself and went to just above her waist. It was a reddish gold and shimmered in the sun. With her size and blazing good looks and coloring, she looked like the living figurehead of some ancient, royal ship, absolutely staggering!

“That, gentlemen, was my first sight of Fayuna, the glorious, lost queen of Conhung-At’lantz, and mind the last half of that place name.

“But though George Hooper and I had been simply gawping in total amazement, the real hunter among us had been thinking and moving. Lucas’ head popped up right under my nose, silently as an eel’s. ‘Watch all behind her,’ he purred. ‘I think she take bath. In the watah, I get her quiet like and bring her here.’

“I could only nod and he vanished again under overhanging leaves while George and I took up our watch, though I don’t think we’d have noticed anything short of a mad, pink elephant. Our male eyes were set hard on one thing only.

“Surely enough, the glorious young avatar of womanhood, and I could see by many indications, including her movements, that she was young, had come for a bathe. She only took one thing off. That gold belt and the jewel-studded gold bra were hardly clothing, but she unhooked the breast plates, laid them on the bank and stepped into the shallows, waded deeper and began to swim in our direction as it got deeper. She wasn’t much of a swimmer and it was nothing but what we’d call a ‘dog paddle’, but it was slow and graceful even so.

“As she swam, her deep husky voice sounded for the first time in a sort of gentle song. I couldn’t get a word but they were words nevertheless. It was kind of a chant and I could even catch sounds that seemed to rhyme, though not in any tongue that sounded even vaguely familiar and I’ve heard quite a few.

“Closer and closer she came and now she was on the edge of a tall patch of some reed which threw a shadow over the water below them. I was holding my breath for I’d seen one of those reeds move just a second earlier.

“Then, Lucas struck! He’d got in front of the reeds and slid under water until he was behind that great, red-gold shape and then he rose like a dark copper eel, suddenly and smoothly at her back. His long, strong arms locked about her upper torso, sliding under her arms and up behind her neck, a lovely neck but large, suiting the rest of her more-than-normal female proportions. They were so close now that as we waited breathless, her young, pointed breasts thrust at us and I saw the pink of the nipples rising out of that sleek, golden pelt which garbed her body. In a split second Lucas had the woman in the hold Americans call ‘Full Nelson,’ his hands locked at the back of her neck, holding her pinned fast to his own body, unable to even move.

As her wide and full-lipped mouth opened, I saw the white teeth, and they looked sharp, the canines almost those of a carnivore. Her great eyes, as strange as a cat’s but smokier looking, were wide in shock and surprise. I knew a yell was coming and I determined to try and prevent it. I rose from the cover of leaves and leapt forward into the water. It was not deep and the two in front of me were waist deep only. At the sight of me, her huge, lovely eyes widened even further and almost rolled upward in shock. I had one hand raised, palm out and up, and I hissed ‘Quiet’ at the frozen face before me.

“Lucas’s voice came from behind her shoulders. ‘Don’ worry, Sah, I got her good! She don’t move unless I let go.’ The woman’s, or rather girl’s for that was what she was, despite her size, a great girl mouth closed in despair. I had my finger at my own closed lips now and it took no knowledge of English to know that I wanted silence from her. In another instant I had one of her upper arms in one of mine and Lucas and I began to push and pull her into the shallows and up on our bank. George came down to help and we soon had her in the ferns where we had been hidden, concealed from sight by greenery from all but a careful search.

“She stared wildly at first from George to myself and back. Lucas had never slackened his firm grip but had allowed her head to come erect so that it was not bent over, and since he was still crouched behind her, she could see nothing of him.

“I decided to try my crude Spanish on her. I spoke no Indian tongues and the local Mayas all spoke a crude Spanish, when they felt like it, that is. ‘Amigos,’ I said, trying to keep my eyes fixed on hers. It wasn’t easy. That great, female body, lean-hipped and long-legged and all covered with that extraordinary pelt, like a close-furred golden cat’s but even shorter, the amazing hair, the oval face and the full lips, now slightly parted as she panted softly. But the fear and horror were gone from the eyes now and they were sharp eyes, studying us, though still surprised. And, when I’d said ‘Friends’ in Spanish, they flickered and she stopped twisting her neck and focussed on me alone. At this point, so odd is the human mind, I registered in my mind that below the massive golden belt, the lady wore a smooth leather loin cloth, which was tucked under and up again over her rounded rump. For some reason, this made me feel better, as if things were more proper this way!

“That thought only took a split second. Then, my brain wiped all else away. For she was talking to me and I could at least partially make sense out of what she was saying. There, if you like, men, was a real thrill and one I had never expected.

“She kept those extraordinary eyes glued on mine, not looking at all at either Lucas or George, though both were helping keep her pinned. Her voice, which I’d already heard when she was carolling to herself, was deep and throaty. She spoke slowly, as if trying to deal with both unfamiliar speech and concepts. It was an odd tangle, being largely crude Spanish but with many pauses. Mixed in were clicks and gutturals which I guessed were Mayan and Lucas told me I was right later on. Rarely, she’d be at a complete loss and then would come some word utterly alien even to Lucas. This, we soon learnt, was in her own tongue.

“What I got was roughly this: ‘Who are you? Are you from the Land of my people? Are you another of those who writes scrolls? Your eyes, they are of our ancient, lost color! Only once have I ever seen a man like you and those who advise, they killed him. I tried to stop them (it) but it was not good. The poor Pursee!’

“Even with all the garbled language, that last word got to me. Pursee! That was the first name, even mispronounced, of our long-lost agent, the chap I’ve called Jones, the man who wrote the report that was so strangely delivered to the Hoopers’ boat at night off the mangrove coast Percy, eh?

“I spoke finally, when she fell silent at last and simply stared up at me. ‘What do you know of Percy?’ I said in my very crude Spanish. I had no Mayan and her own language was a total blank. ‘Who killed Percy? He was my friend. I came to find him. Was it your people?’

“Those great, smoky-brown eyes widened even more, and that gorgeous mouth opened again. ‘He spoke like you do. He did not speak like those young girls the Plan has us take from down below. He spoke like that too, the other man who came and went away when I was little, the one who made our High Women so sick and angry, the one who wrote all the scrolls.’

“Here she looked thoughtful as one does who tries to remember some forgotten name. She no longer seemed upset or even afraid of us. Then the eyes cleared. ‘Labrador, that was his name, my aunt told me. Three names this strange man who escaped us had, Felipe Jose Labrador!’

“So, someone else had come and seen this weird bunch at close range and even got away with it, which seemed more than our lost agent had done. No doubt some peon or mestizo, some wandering laborer, maybe even a bandit ‘Philip Joseph Farmer indeed! As common as Smith in New York and probably an alias, as Pancho Villa had been. But what was that about this unknown’s writing scrolls? I asked the lady as best I could, and made sure that Lucas was also listening to it, so that any Mayan that crept in might have a chance of being understood.

“What came out was a real mélange of everything: Spanish, Mayan and her own gabble a real linguistic stew. I finally put my hand gently over her open mouth to shut her up and nodded to Lucas to tell me what, if anything, he’d got out of this. It was more certainly than I had, but puzzled us both.

“ ‘She talk very fast, Sir, and there is much words I don’ know at all. But she say this man she call Labrador, he get everyone all excited so they wan’ kill him, but he was clever and get out anyway. He tell them the country they come from it sink in the ocean, it don’ exist any longer. Then he tell them a man name of Ee Are Bee, he know all about it. And he say, this Labrador fellah, he say maybe there is other city and this other city over in Africa! Yes, a city from this country that sink in the ocean long ago, he say, and this other city it call “Opar.” I don’ understand what this woman talkin’ about, except it mus’ be very old.’

“Now that word ‘Opar’ stirred some lost memory in my own mind. I took my hand away and our captive raced off into more of her excited speech. I listened to it for a minute and then put my palm back and again looked at Lucas. He seemed more confused than before, but he tried.

“ ‘Now she say the people here worship the sun, jus’ like them ol’ Indios did, them Mayans befoh the priest come. And this place in Africa they do that too.’ He paused a second, then scratched his head. ‘This man Labrador, he mus’ be big liar but they think he smart. He tell them the name of their country that sink in the ocean and they say that is right name, the old name, almost the same as the way they say thot name. An’ the name of this country they say sink in the ocean is some funny one. They call the place “Azdante” or “Adantaz,” something like that anyways. I think this Felipe Jose Labrador, whoever he was, was some big liar and a bigger storyteller than anyone. But he fool these funny folks good wit’ all his talk about sunk countries and cities in Africa call “Opars” or somethin’. Anyway, Captain, that’s what I get out of her talk now and I think I get most of it’ Lucas fell silent and three pair of eyes studied my face. I looked down at the giant, chocolate and milk orbs of our captive and made it four pairs studying.

“Frankly, I was just a bit numb, you know. This weird trip, that peculiar message that started it all, the ape-man monster we’d killed and finally this extraordinary female revelation. Only one continent of civilized humans was ever supposed to have sunk in the sea, as any child knows. Atlantis! The greatest legend of all time, left to future ages by Plato, and no one has ever known whether that Greek genius was writing of actual history or simply inventing mythical Utopias for his own personal philosophy.

“So there we stayed, for what seemed an hour but was only a minute really, four people full of varying degrees of puzzlement, while the tropic sun beat down and small insects bit us and buzzed off.

“Finally, I woke myself out of my dreams and returned to reality or what passed for it in this place. I can tell you, it wasn’t easy with all of what I’d just heard and what I’d guessed, all churning through my mind.”

The Brigadier sipped from his glass and fell silent, looking off over the library mantle, seeing far-off things we could only imagine. But at this point, my own memory stirred and I recalled something read as a boy in the 10th grade.

“Excuse me, Sir, but wasn’t one of those lost cities in Africa that Tarzan’s author invented, wasn’t that called Opar?” I shut up as soon as those glacial blue eyes met mine, but then I could see he was laughing and felt a bit easier. The Brigadier didn’t like interruptions when he was telling one of his yarns and I was afraid I’d goofed badly, especially since I was often telling the others never to interrupt him.

“You may have noticed that I was looking at Burroughs’ stuff, along with a lot more light fiction when you came in, Parker,” he said and now there was an open grin on his smooth face. He looked around, to take in the rest of the listeners.

“I have a rather good memory, Gentlemen. Intell Training, you know, but some of it’s natural, especially for what is now called ‘trivia’. That name, the one Lucas had caught, ‘Opar’, supposedly a place in Africa, that rang an old bell in my mind. That was a so-called ‘lost city’ of the Ancients in a number of the Tarzan tales, by a writer whose initials were E.R.B.

“Did this mean that old Burroughs knew a few secrets of the unexplored? No, not to me. To me, it meant this unknown chap Labrador, whoever he was the name means nothing but ‘farmer’ or ‘agricultural laborer’ in Spanish, you know, so it was probably an alias but whoever and whatever he was, he must have thought very quickly and stuck in that name from his memory to sway the rulers of this strange area into believing he knew all about ‘em and that their alleged culture and ancestry was well known too.

“Pretty clever, the fellow must have been, since according to our fair captive, he’d impressed the locals well enough to escape from them, which seemed not the normal event at all!

“When I got this array of thoughts a tiny bit digested, I looked down at our scrumptious prisoner and thought quickly for a change.

“I told Lucas to try and ask what the woman’s name was first and also how she should be addressed, assuming there was some title or other, from ‘Your Grace’ to ‘Madam’. Always best to be polite to women, I’ve found, and I’ve been in a few odd places. What we finally got was several long and difficult words in her own tongue, but which ended in ‘Loosheer’ or at least something like that I tried calling her ‘Lucia’ and she smiled and seemed to enjoy my pronunciation. She had lovely white teeth but the carnassials or canines were a bit longer than normal and frankly looked as if they might be lethal in biting.

“It was time to do something. I checked my watch and it was close to Noon. We’d spent over an hour getting this muddled story sorted out and while there was still a lot missing, especially concerning our lost agent, I thought we’d sat around in dangerous country long enough, if not too long. A pack of those giant ape-men, like our visitor of the night before, might appear and we needed nothing less. But what to do next and especially what on Earth could we do with our oversized dazzler, our bepelted figurehead?

“We all three must have been on at least similar thought tracks. It was young Hooper who cleared the air. ‘Lookee heah, Sah. You an’ Lucas tell this lady to stay wit’ me an’ stay quiet ‘til you two come back.’ He waved his drawn Webley. ‘You tell her what this is an’ that I kill her dead if she run away or scream out or make trouble. You two better bush men an’ can get around faster in this bush than me. So you go take a looksee maybe while I stay an’ keep guard here.’

“Couldn’t have been better put, really. The youngest of us was the coolest at this juncture. I thanked him and then Lucas and I, both speaking slowly and carefully, gave the lady orders. She wasn’t pleased but she understood them. She said a couple of words, looking at our revolvers, and it was plain even to me that she knew something about firearms, whether her tribe had any or not. And something had to be done soon. The day was drawing on and we had to try and decide something about the future and do it quickly.

“Between us, we finally got the message across and though she seemed a bit hurt, she finally settled down and curled up. We three synchronized watches and agreed to come back to this spot in two hours or less. We ought to be able to learn something in that amount of time.

“With Lucas leading, we set off, following the upper stream flowing into the big pool, the path by which our captive had approached it. We kept low, using all the cover there was and along the brook there was a fairish bit. Ducking under big ferns, arums and shrubs that liked damp, we soon found a path, though a little-used one from the look of it. It made me wonder just how important locally our prisoner was. Was this her private trail?

“Lucas led and I brought up the rear. In no time at all we came to the forest across the plain, following the weedy little gorge of the brook bed the whole way.

“The sudden shade of the big tropical trees did not make us relax at all. Now we had to look up as well as on all sides. We all recalled our attacker of the previous night. When we finally got to looking about us and down as well, we found we were at what could only be a sort of junction. From a flat place between several towering boles, five or six paths and very well-beaten paths at that, led off like the ribs of a fan, all going somewhat forward. We looked at each other in silence. It was a silent place, with only a few insect hums and distant bird calls. Finally, Lucas crouched and studied the ground at close range.

“I heard him sniff several times too before he spoke. ‘I’m pretty suah she come this way,’ he said, pointing at a left-of-center trail. ‘That’s my best guess anyway.’ Then he looked at me, waiting for orders.

“I nodded. ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Let’s go as we did by the stream, one following the other. But we’ll go slow and keep on the very edge of the path, on the left side as close to the trees as one can get’ I checked my watch. We’d been away for one quarter of an hour so far. We unclipped our holster flaps and tucked them behind the revolver grips as well as shifting both rifles to the left hand. Then we moved out.

“For about a half hour there was nothing. Deep green shadows shading to black in places and that winding path. There was no undergrowth, only the great trees, whose trunks and leaves cut off any direct light save for rare gaps where stray sunbeams wandered down through lianas and bromeliads from far above. Then, suddenly, we both halted in our tracks. I didn’t need Lucas for we both saw a blaze of light ahead which could only mean a clearing.

“Lucas fell back to my side and without a word we began to advance in line, slowly and also moving from tree shadows and root boles in an irregular, shifting manner. I noticed in passing that we were now under the reddish, oily boles of a grove of absolutely giant, mahogany trees, the sole decent cash export of this odd little colony. We were moving under the shadows of twenty thousand Hepplewhite or Chippendale chairs and tables.

“As the light grew closer ahead, so did something else, which was an odor. The other man noticed it before I did but soon even I got it hard and strong. It needed no breeze to bring us that smell and there was none in any case. We halted in silence again and looked at one another. No words were needed. Whatever we were approaching bore the reek of that monstrous humanoid we had buried only a few hours before!”

Ffellowes stopped his story at this point and shifted a little in his chair. I saw an odd look come over his face, one almost of chagrin or even embarrassment, both rare to the Brigadier in my experience. Then the expression vanished and in his even tones he began to talk again.

“I thought of something just now, Gentlemen, a small thing but I should have mentioned it earlier. That unholy stink we had learnt to dread so had not been even faintly apparent on that great, furry beaut’ whom we’d taken prisoner.” Pause. “If anything at all could be said about the lady’s odor, it was very faintly that of a house cat, a pampered one, with a sort of wild, floral trace intermingled.” Pause. “Not in the slightest bit repellent, you know. If anything, quite the reverse. Sorry I forgot to mention it earlier.

“Well, Lucas held up one hand to me in silence. Then he pointed to the forward path and tapped his own chest and shaded his brows with the other hand. Finally he pointed to me and then to the ground behind a giant tree. The whole message took one second. He would scout and I would remain and wait. I simply nodded and got behind the tree. I’m fairish in the woods but was not a patch on Lucas and we both recognized the fact.

“It seemed a long time to me, once he had gone, moving off in the direction we’d been going, not on the path but near it and as silently as any native hunter I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a goodish few in many parts of the world, so that’s no mean compliment!

“It wasn’t really much actual time at all, no more than a few moments, he suddenly reappeared from behind the next tree to mine, coming back as noiselessly as he had left ‘Follow now, Captain,’ he murmured, his mouth next to my ear. ‘Is very old city, close in front; very old, broken-up place, the kind place science men come from all over to look at an’ study.’

“ ‘Do’you mean an ancient Mayan ruin?’ I whispered back. ‘No!’ came the quick reply. ‘I got Mayan blood with French an’ Spaniol too. I know the Mayan stuff an’ I got plenty Mayan frens’ too, and I can speak Mayan a bit. I know their old places, like Xunantunich, which is not too far Nort’ of where we are an’ I been to lots more up in Quintana Roo. This place, she’s, well, different—’ He paused a second, obviously trying to find some descriptive phrase in his slurred English. He soon gave up and shrugged. ‘I tell you this, Sar. This place no more like any Mayan place than that stink of that hairy man we kill, the stink we smell now, like sputa’s perfume!’

“I couldn’t help smiling and he gave one of his rare half-smiles back. The analogy was crude but effective. If the place he was describing was no more Mayan than that foul odor we’d learnt to know was like a whore’s perfume, it must be very different indeed!

“Well, there was no time for being humorous. I, in turn, tapped his shoulder and pointed to the trail’s right, then tapped my chest and pointed to its left ‘Go very slow and stay even with me,’ I breathed. He understood at once that I was telling him I couldn’t match his pace or his stealth in his own jungles and nodded. And so we set off, one on either side of the path where there was little scrub due to the dense foliage overhead and the shade it gave. The chief obstacles were the giant tree roots, some types of which spread out in huge flanges, tall as a man where they joined the tree.”

The Brigadier took a long drag on one of his thin cigars. Around us the big room was quiet, the few lamps illuminating only their own corners. I think the thick, old carpets added to the hush by absorbing sound. The roar of New York traffic was a monotonous and unheard or unnoticed hum, and only an occasional siren or police car whoop-whoop even drew one’s attention to it. We, his audience, were like children told to be quiet or we’d get no story. We moved only when we had to, breathing as quietly as we could.

“I got to hate those damned trees,” he resumed. “The giant roots were a nuisance and so were the bunches of vines, some large and some thread-like, which hung to the ground in many places. But the real reason was simple fear of what might be up above, ready to drop on our backs and even worse, might be watching us and stalking us from up above.

I had seen that great monkeyman we’d shot and knew quite well how quietly and agilely he had moved down a vertical rock face. Only his appalling odor had alerted me, though the others, the two younger men with their keen senses, had felt that we were under observation long before I did.” He looked around at the intent faces and smiled.

“I’ve been on shikar up in Garwhal after a maneater, a tiger who’d already got two experienced hunters. That was bad but this was worse, I can tell you. My own view is that we’re too used to danger from two dimensions only. A bomb or a diving plane or even rocket or missile is different. One knows the danger but it is still a mechanism at its worst. No one thinks of an animal striking from above, save for a few folk in the world who live in leopard country. Aside from Pantherapardus there ain’t no such animal, as you might say in this country. Despite a lot of nonsensical and faked stories by so-called ‘explorers,’ pythons do not drop from trees on human beings, of whom they have a very sensible fear. Very rarely, a big one may use that method on a small antelope, but I’ve never come across such a case aside from occasional comments by old hunters which are at least meant to be the truth and I mean not told to impress the ignorant or to make a news story.

“From time to time I could see Lucas, though damn seldom hear him, as we both climbed over roots and ducked tangles of liana on opposite sides of the narrow trail.

“In case either of us should forget where we were and why, that foul stench, the odour of those man-apes or apemen, was a persistent and excellent reminder to stay alert. It didn’t seem to increase or get worse or such. It didn’t need to. It was just there, all about us or rather about that track we were skirting. Once or twice a vast root led me a bit away from our route and it grew fainter rather swiftly. That to me clearly meant one thing. What we were sliding along was their path, and the smell was a result of constant usage.

“We hadn’t actually gone far when we checked and halted, both of us. I daresay Lucas alone could have done it in half the time and been not a bit less silent about it either. I suddenly saw his hand across the trail, just the hand projecting from a clump of glossy green bromeliads or something. I stopped short and saw one finger point ahead. It stayed that way for a second; then the hand flattened, fingers pointing ahead and all together. That gesture was held for a second too; then the whole palm, fingers and all, made a downward motion. It made the motion three times. I held a hand up so he could see it and made a circle with forefinger and thumb. Everyone seems to know that gesture. He’d told me that we were almost there, that we’d move ahead but would do so at a crawl. I’d answered that his signal was received. End of exchange.

“So I went into a Boy Scout or, if you prefer, a Commando crawl at the very left edge of the path. Lucas appeared and did the same on the other side. We moved out.

“It wasn’t far or even much of a muscle strain for me. I’m sure that it was nothing to my partner. In about two hundred feet, the path made an almost right-angle curve. I got my head carefully around the corner as did Lucas. And there it was, a sight that any museum in the world would have given its last cent for and perhaps 5/6 of its endowment for even a verified set of photographs!

“In front of us, a couple of hundred yards away, lay a hidden city. And I do mean hidden. The ground sloped down in front of us at about a 45° pitch. The trees stopped where we were concealed, leaving only low forms of vegetation, none over knee height, mixed with patches of smooth, damp, black rock and stretches of equally damp, brown sand. A couple of hundred yards away, the slope ceased and the ground became level. Well beyond the point where this started, there rose a high, stone wall, made of vast, reddish-hued blocks. Behind this obstacle and starting almost next to the wall were tall, cylindrical towers.

“And, Gentlemen, why do I emphasize the phrase hidden? Simply due to one fact. A cliff lay just behind the city, a cliff perhaps a sixth of a mile high. Now, due to some earlier convulsion of Nature, of God knows how long ago and Central America is still a great active, volcanic spine the cliff had leaned out and over the strange metropolis. Much more likely, of course, this very odd formation had been discovered in ancient times by whomever built the perishing place to begin with. They’d simply used the cover of this, well, call it a geologic scoop turned parasol. They found the place and built their lair under it to suit. The result was, among other forms of protection, such as a weather shield and such, they had a place that enemies could only approach from one direction. Plus an added benefit and one they couldn’t and in this case I’m frankly guessing, since there were strange things about this place, have calculated on it at least in their day. From the air, the whole complex was invisible! Nothing but smoke could give anything away, and planes over Central America were and are most unlikely to notice smoke. What with endless patches of vulcanism and thousands of unknown and/or tiny villages in dense rain forest or scrub forest why should any pilot even bother?

“I looked at my watch. It was midafternoon and we could see very well how this extraordinary place was built or rather had been built for it was certainly very old indeed. And gone somewhat to ruin as well. There was a vast wooden gate in the wall’s center. It was shut tight but there were gaps in it where the wood had rotted and they were unfilled gaps, some big enough to take a small car and with ragged edges. Some parts of the upper tier of the giant wall blocks were simply gone, leaving a broken, crenellated effect I could see a number of the great squares of stone lying outside the wall with grass growing around and over them but not enough to fill all those empty spaces by far. It was puzzling.

“Lucas, who was lying beside me now behind a clump of bushes, was the faster thinker at this point as he was in others. ‘Not enough stone in front, right, Captain? Not to fill them holes?’ I simply nodded, having nothing to say.

“ ‘I don’t think that breakings were done by people, Captain,’ he continued. ‘Them stones they mus’ weigh a half ton mebbe, each one. Well, mebbe I crazy but I think those other stones that don’ be out front where we see them, I think they inside, behin’ that monstruss wall. I don’t think people done it, Nossuh. I think there be an earthquake, mebbe long time gone. Some of those ol’ temple things that stick up behind, they look the same, I think.’

“As his very shrewd reasoning proceeded, he grew quite excited and talked faster as well as pointing to what he meant ‘See that tall towah on the lef? It still got a round top on but it ain’t straight up and down. It lean a bit. There’s two more like that in the middle an’ on the right two that leaned over too much an’ break halfway up.’ The clever fellow looked at me with a rather pathetic inquiry in his eyes. ‘I’m not much educate, not like you, but do that mebbe make a sense, Captain?’

“My answer was enthusiastic and I showed it by punching his near shoulder. ‘Dam right it makes good sense, man. You know more about this place than I ever will, Lucas, but by God it’s more than that! You can think and you make me feel stupid! That’s a perfect answer and one I’d never have got on to for months!’

“It was worth a lot to see the broad grin, a thing I’d only seen once before from Lucas. He was a silent man and though always decent, he was both reserved and for this part of the world, very taciturn. Now his pleasure vanished as quickly as it had come, and with one accord we both turned back to study that amazing place before us.

“I was fairly tired, though by no means exhausted, yet that hidden lair of strange architecture was like a stimulant, not just to the eye but to all the senses and of course, especially to the imagination, to what in a child is called ‘a sense of wonder.’

“We could see at least a dozen of the strange, cylindrical towers, all built of the same reddish stone, or at least those in front certainly were. Some could barely be glimpsed at all for they were far back in the shadow of that bizarre cliff which roofed the whole thing. The wall ran about three hundred yards on a flat plane across the front and then curved sharply in at each end. I imagine it ran right back to the cliff face, deep in the blackness of the great cavity’s back. In the center, but well back, was a tower which looked much bulkier than the others. It got just enough of the brilliant sun so that I could see its domed roof was colored, and that the color was a golden hue. All the other intact, dome roofs were of the same red hue as the towers and the mighty wall. Why not, I thought Gold-plated temples ranged from central Mexico all the way to southern Peru in the Andes. The old MesoAmericans used the precious metal the way we Europeans used bronze or even tin. No doubt this was the main temple, the religious and political HQ. of the entire culture which had built the place. And who could they be? Just as I was slowly returning to the present, two things brought me back with a rush!

“One was Lucas. ‘How come there is no plant on them walls?’ he whispered, ‘an’ I don’ see any peoples at all. We can smell ‘em good back on that track. Where they is, d’you think? All inside now?’

“The other stimulant to end daydreams followed like an answer to his questions. I had just realized that the walls must have been cleaned to stay so free of any growth, when out of the depths of that incredible, cave city there came a sound. And what a sound! It was a long, howling wail.

“How one noise, obviously from a throat not an instrument, could express all that this one did, I can’t conceive still. It held menace, it held despair, it held defiance and even triumph, all in one hellish, ululating wail! I’ve heard badly-played bagpipes playing laments, gentlemen, but their bad mix of sadness and off-key notes was ‘Merry Christmas’ by comparison. And it had great depth and volume, too. Lucas and I cocked an eye at each other, at the same time we stopped slapping bugs, wiping sweaty faces and froze where we lay, listening and staring. We guessed what kind of throat that was!

“The appalling sound died slowly away and once again one became aware of insect hums and bird calls. The pause was brief. Then it came again, exactly the same. Another brief pause and repeated a third time.

“In bright sunlight, tropical too, I felt as chilled and numbed by that ghastly sound as if I’d been plunged into an Arctic night. As the third cry died slowly away, neither of us had any inclination to move. We waited, just lay there, not even hearing the normal forest sounds as they became audible again. My head was buzzing and not with deafness or shock either but with scrambled thoughts and recollections.

“I thought of the long-lost ‘Jones,’ our sometime area agent, and the strange code message tossed into the Hooper’s trading schooner. All stirred up in that was a mess of other points; the apeman thing we’d killed, my giant, lovely ‘catgirl’ we’d caught and left behind, the vague but quite definite avoidance of the whole region we were in, all of that and more. That lost and hidden site before us and its architecture, unlike anything I’d ever glimpsed, anywhere in the world, jumbled with ‘Jones’ and the warnings of danger and the demand for troops, fast, plus my own memories of reading the Tarzan stories and their ‘lost city in central Africa’ that Burroughs had named Opar, in his wonderful, self-taught, imaginative fiction. Fiction? Was it all fiction? Had he heard rumors or tales of something real? And then there was my recently-acquired ‘catgirl’ and the jumble of what might be legend and/or fact Lucas and I had got from her through the maze of partial comprehension. Through that last, ran another thought or rather a feeling, you know, an emotion so to speak. Very strong one, too; I felt that adjective ‘my’ and ‘mine’ to the depths of my being. My girl, that incredible, tall, female thing! And with that came more lunacy, such as her comparing me to another man, her alleged ‘tale teller’, whose name in English came out as ‘Philip Joseph Farmer’, and who ‘knew all about everything and who had escaped her people.’ ”

Here Ffellowes stopped for breath and a quick drink. The library stayed utterly quiet. Then he began again.

“Must really sound as if I was and am still batty, eh? Felt a bit that way myself, though hopelessly confused, hyper-nerved up and more than a bit scared as well, might sum up what I was feeling then. The twin blows on eyes and ears at this point staring at this weird, shrouded city with its aura of abnormal age, and then those shocking sounds too. You fellows would have had to be there to understand.

“Then I checked my watch for something to do that was normal. Damn if a full twenty minutes had passed since that third, moaning yell had quit. I looked at Lucas but his eyes were fixed in front locked on that great stone wall. I looked back at it too, as if pulled by the thing, sort of mesmerized. So I also saw it all, from the start.

“As if laid on for an instant vision, pre-ordered by Fate or God, the great half-rotted gates in the wall began to open!

“My jaw must have dropped and Lucas’ did because I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Sort of thing one sees unconsciously and only recalls as fact long afterward. In any case, and my apologies for these random divergencies, slowly and creakingly the bloody things opened, shoving back built-up soil and plants as they did. There must have been one or more other exits from that cavernous fort and it really was more of a huge fort than a city. In a second, you’ll hear and realize why there had to be.”

He took a long breath, the only one to be heard in that big room, and continued. “Shocking the way I forget to tell details. Those gates were not pushed open by machines or electricity. On the inside of each half, exerting three times at least the strength that the same numbers of men could have done, were five goldy-red pelted bipeds. I didn’t need to look at my neighbor. We knew what they were as if we’d smelt ‘em. But these specimens were dressed, unlike what had fallen upon us earlier. They had short kilts of stuff that glittered like woven metal, which in fact it was, as we soon saw. There were things hanging from heavy belts as well, things that had to be weapons and some of them glinted brightly also. One had something strapped to his or her back which looked awfully familiar to me. If it wasn’t a rifle it was a close copy, and I could discern the breech and metal-tipped butt easily.

“This was all happening rather fast, but I’m trying to keep my tale a bit slow deliberately, so as not to miss anything else as I almost just did. Next, the ten gate openers fell back and lined up, each bunch of five with backs to its own half of the gate. There was a hush and even the distant birds seemed to shut up. All at once, there was movement in the shadowy opening, movement and noise. Barking cries, the clank of metal, the thudding of feet, all came at once. No problem for me to construe. I’d heard variants of that noise all my life. An armed body of considerable size had begun to move. If my eyes had been shut it might have been the Scots Guards, same number of U.S. Marines or probably even a gang of Alexander’s hoplites for that matter. Any troops make the same noises at times. I expect Chaka’s Zulu regiments would have sounded much the same when moving out. Because one thing allies all such groups, which is discipline and a cadence, a rhythm. And what was now appearing through the gate had it. The strangest little army on our planet was marching, not walking, marching out, and they were in both a formation, a column of fives, and in step to boot. Lousy pun, that, since they were barefoot.

“About a hundred came with officers on the flanks and one in front. Half way to our position, they stopped on a barked command as if a lion had been Regimental Sgt Major or a gorilla. Just what the Guards would like, unless they’ve changed. Behind this advance now came the cavalry, the most amazing body of mounted troops that ever existed, past or present.

“When I saw the first one, the leader or colonel or whatever, appear, I damned near choked. T’wasn’t the rider, and I don’t say ‘man’ for all the infantry who’d come first were our giant ape men. And so were the lines of mounted troops, and they were troops, now emerging. But that first one!

“She was another of these ultra females, gold breastplates and all, who might at a distance have been a twin to my big catgirl!

“Have you noticed I’ve carefully said ‘mounts’ and not ‘horses’ once? No, they weren’t mules, donkeys or even zebras. They were massive, with legs like elephants, though smaller, hair like coarse, greyish wire and long noses like pigs, noses that were pink and twitched but with broad, flat muzzles and nostrils set side by side. And tiny, short tails that hung straight. They each weighed about as much as a medium horse but had narrow, ridged backs and the massive legs were so short that the riders’ bare feet almost hit the ground, even though their knees were pulled up high.

“In short, Lucas and I were observing a force, the only such there ever was, of jungle cavalry, designed for the rain forest. Their mounts were not equids at all but tapirs!”

Ffellowes stopped and looked around at us, a grin on his face as he watched our reaction to this fantastic story. In the silence that followed, someone else cleared his throat and then spoke quickly. It was an older man named deCamp, an economist I believe for the U.S. Government “I’m a student of zoology as a hobby, Brigadier,” he said. “Did you know, by any chance, that tapirs, rhinoceroses and all types of horses, asses, donkeys and so on are all related? They’re the only living mammals, I mean those three groups, that are related, each to the other two sets. I mean like rats and squirrels both being members of the Rodentia?”

Ffellowes laughed aloud. “Yes, My dear man, I do know it; know it now, that is. I certainly didn’t at the time, and would have had you clapped into bed or a hospital due to either alcohol or fever if you had ventured to tell me such a thing in those days.

“And now, my friends, I suddenly understood a lot of what I had heard, and more than that I knew a lot that made perfect sense from the very beginning, from the story of ‘Jones’ for instance and the secret message thrown aboard the Hooper vessel.

“There was an army, a secret army, which had given our poor ex-agent the fits when he somehow discovered it. There were actual and very real reasons for the Amerindians to avoid this territory and there always had been, since the dawn of human civilization. Certainly since the Classic Age of Greece. Aristotle and Plato had known what they were talking about, gentlemen. There had been a great culture far to the West, whose name at least had come to them. I was standing in its lost and last colony, preserved through the ages. There was an Atlantis!

“All of this data flashed through my mind at once, as lightning comes through a cloud. I knew it all. And I knew more. Alone in the world, the world of Homo sapiens, the world of what Science calls Reasoning Man or Modern Man, Man the gorilla hunter, the Orangutan shooter, the Chimpanzee trapper, there had been one wiser branch long ago. And this one, isolated by its home’s disappearance under the Atlantic waves, had survived!

“Like the British garrison at Lucknow in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, this colony too had survived. In this case, they had been surrounded by the oncoming hordes of alien Amerindians who were pouring down from North America to the end of South America at Cape Horn. Some, perhaps many, had already gone past the lost colony of Atlantis, gone South forever. But more would come and Home could never now send help or even exist as a place to go back to, if evacuation had been possible at all.

“What to do, when all seemed lost, for these isolated men and women and probably some children too? What help was there in this hostile forest world? Think of it, men, think of it. Picture perhaps a few lonely ships, the last galleys perhaps, but possibly better ships than galleys, for the Atlanteans were wise, far ahead of the Minoans, the Egyptians and the south-migrating Dorian Greeks. Read Plato, who knew something of them. Can you see those lonely vessels and their crews with straining eyes, as they used the stars to navigate and again and again, crossed and recrossed the stormy Atlantic, looking, always looking, for the Home that now was not the Home that Never Was, for them?”

As the Brigadier brought that tragic story, one of the greatest of human tragedies ever, to life again and I thought of those gallant and forever lost seamen, my own eyes filled with moisture and my breath caught. I could hear some vigorous nose-blowing and throat clearing nearby, and I knew that I was neither a hurt child nor alone in my feelings.

Like the born tale spinner he was, Ffellowes gave it a moment to sink in. Then he started again, his calm uninfected voice as soothing and quieting as some old nurse’s. There is some child in every thinking man, I am sure.

“You may ask, did these folk know Europe? Did they know that behind the Gates of Hercules lay the Mediterranean and its peoples, the ones I have mentioned? Why of course they did. No doubt they took them for slaves on occasion and traded with some of them on others. How else could the bare knowledge of that lost and mighty realm have come to Plato and to others from whom he, in turn, got it? Consider two facts, taken in order. First the far-ranging and skilful seamen of Carthage, Hannibal’s city which Rome killed; plowing the levelled ground with salt and obliterating her great foe forever.

“We know from the Greek historians that the Carthaginians rounded the tip of Africa, going South down the East Coast and North up the West Coast. We know they reached the Canary Islands, whose still extant natives, the caucasoid or ‘white’ if you like, Guanches have never had any boats, not so much as a raft and still speak a dialect or rather their own language related to the mountaineers of the Moroccan Rif. Who put them there? Carthage or perhaps an earlier race of seamen? And remember this, too. The men of Carthage were most secretive. They did not and would not, say where they had been and especially how one got to any trading place by sea. They kept the secret of British tin, vital to the ancient world, for centuries. And why were they always want to go West? All the other seamen of the ancient Mediterranean and the Black and Red Seas too, knew about this obsession of the Carthage rovers. They were thought to be, and were called by others, mad. What were they seeking? Hell, Gentlemen, those folk knew the world was round, a knowledge later lost. There was regular sea trade with India and Ceylon, now called by its name of those days, Sri Lanka. Could they have learnt of this lost colony?

“Fact two. Why were blond Spaniards, starting with that greedy bastard Alvarado, Cortez’ lieutenant, revered by the Aztecs and other Amerindians of Central America? Not North, mind you or South. Only by the MesoAmerican folk, from Aztec to Mayan, and many more minor tribes. What was so holy about blonds and redheads? A lot of that scrambled mythos of Quetzalcoatl has to do with fair skins and light hair.

“So back to my own story. All of the above hit me at once and in one orderly, intelligible blast, as in the aforesaid lightning bolt. And more besides, the ultimate key to the whole mystery and it was a complex key, a mix of Genetics, Myth and Anthropology, all fused together. As another detective that imaginary,” (Ffellowes paused a strangely long time at this point in the sentence which was odd) “chap S. Holmes, was wont to remark, ‘When one has eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer.’ I had it now. What about the long-rumored Sasquatch, the ‘Big Foot,’ the Wendigo of the northern Amerindians? There are clever men, scientists, who are still searching and sure that a few are alive and in hiding. And if so, who and what might they be?

“Having just shot a cross-bred specimen and captured another, I had no doubts on the matter. The male I had shot had more of the early strain in him, call it Gigantopithecus, Pithecanthropus or whatever. My catgirl had far less. Probably a caste system existed, with those who had more of the ancient genes of Atlantis running things on an hereditary basis. Logical isn’t it? We Britons have had an absurd passion for logic, always.

“So there’s the key, Chaps. Lost Atlanteans, mostly fair-skinned, on one side. On the other, primitive apemen, not lost but frightened and in hiding. Because, like our cousins the anthropoid apes I named above, they got killed mercilessly whenever Modern Man, be his skin red, yellow, black or white, in short, our nice ancestors, found them around. And that was true on any part of the planet from the Himalayas and Alaska up north, to Capes Horn and Good Hope in the southern reaches.” He sighed and looked weary before going on.

“A lovely example is modern Germany. Hitler and his fellow crooks were warped fanatics in the bargain. And they were reverting to a very old and horrible idea. The Past is unsleeping. It never dies.

“What was the greatest crime a German could then commit? Male or female, sleeping with and/or breeding with a Jew of the opposite sex. To our remote forbears it must have been quite similar. Sleeping with, and/or breeding with intelligent hominids, who still lived in the wilder places and, mark you, had enough of the same genes to produce fertile offspring!” He sighed again and was silent. His eyes saw nothing as he mused on human cruelty and racism. Then he shook himself out of it and resumed.

“One gets hints in the Old Testament of all places. I was given one earlier that same day. ‘For Esau was an hairy man.’ How about, ‘There were giants on the earth in those days?’ To me, that’s just another one.

“But those lost Atlanteans had another idea. Their isolated, cut-off group needed men. Here were strange folk, also in hiding, who knew the rain forest and how to live in it better than anyone. Why not use logic and do some crossbreeding? Those leaders of the abandoned survivors were eminently practical and must have been real leaders and damn persuasive as well, to get those two sets of isolated aliens to do it. But they had. And I was at this point, along with another modern man, looking at the result of that ancient decision. Its last and only army, officers and NCOs, rulers and ruled, was parading in front of me, having emerged from their place of refuge and ancient retreat to do so.

“And who knew where this very dangerous force was going next? Or why and what they would do, or had plans to do when they got there? I was back in our time and place and taking a deep series of gulps of air as I recalled who I myself was and the fact that I could hardly die now and here, not because of any scientific discoveries of fabled realms which had become real. I was an officer of the British Army, sent on a scout, and I had found an unknown and wickedly-effective looking foreign army on British territory and totally unknown to any branch of His Majesty’s Government!

“I tapped Lucas’s shoulder and his head turned. ‘Crawl back to the curve,’ I murmured in his ear, and then run like Hell back to George and the girl. I’ll be doing the same, but do not wait for me, understand? You can run quicker. Wait with George and the other for three minutes by your watch. Not a second longer. If I haven’t come, get out and head for the coast and that Hooper boat fast! The Government has to know about this! That’s all that’s important. Understand? Let’s go!’

“We crawled back, going backward, always a slow job, but it wasn’t far. All the time our eyes never left that incredible army that was still issuing from the gate and forming up in the little valley below us. At last we reached the trail at the last curve, went around it, stood up and began to run.

“As I knew he would, Lucas took an instant lead and within a minute was out of sight, though I was doing my best and the trail, for a jungle trail, was good and firm with no obstacles. God, how I ran! All the time I was listening intently for any sound from behind me, checking my watch as my left arm flailed up and down and burning every ounce of energy I possessed in the process. Despite tobacco and alcohol, I was in pretty good shape, though nothing like that of my vanished woodsman whom I’m sure could have done anything he was trained to do in the Olympics for an equally sure gold medal.

“I was racing through the trail junction and fifty feet into the small trail, the one down which my catgirl had come and up which we two had retraced her steps, when I heard the first noise that was not that of a bird or insect. Ahead of me and not too far away there came the sound of a rifle shot. Just the one shot and no more, but that was enough to make me race even faster, faster than I’d known that I could. I burst out on the little savannah and tore through the grass, ignoring the cover of the stream up which Lucas and I had come. I was at the big pool in seconds and saw just what I’d feared I’d find.

“My two stalwart friends were standing together, looking sadly down at a long, still shape on the water’s edge. George kept looking down and away from me but Lucas, who wasn’t even breathing hard, by the way, met my eyes directly and stood erect as he did so. ‘Jawj had to do it Captain,’ he said quietly. ‘She tried to run the minute I come in sight. She move quick too, maybe quicker than me even an’ much too quick foh Jawj. But it was me, too, Suh. I yelled to him to shoot an’ he done it. It was the orders an’ what I knew you wanted, after what you said an’ what we seen back there.’

“Well, I’d got some breath back and I stepped over and put my arm around George’s big shoulder. He was crying, poor lad. ‘Lucas was right, Son,’ I said. ‘War is sometimes Hell, like this, but we’re alone in enemy country. If they’ve heard that shot, they’ll be coming fast on our tracks, I think. We’ll leave her right here. Her own folk can bury her. We three have to move and move fast or they’ll get us too, so let’s go. Lucas, take the lead again!

“That splendid young man straightened up. He wiped his eyes once with the back of his arm and we moved out and over the cliff edge, doing a dog trot whenever possible. I had looked just once at the shape in the grass and never again. If I had, I don’t think I could have left at all, except manacled and under restraint. Frankly, in a rather full life, never before had my sworn duty seemed so hard, so ugly and so meaningless.”

He stopped talking and the silence in that big room was such that the sound of one cockroach crawling would have seemed like a train coming by five feet away.

At least two minutes of the utter quiet went by while the Brigadier stared at the floor. No one could have spoken, I think, even had they tried.

Then, he lifted his head again, and the even, level tones resumed. “Since I’m here in this room, Gentlemen, you can see we got away. All three got away and back to George’s father’s boat.

“What came next? That’s locked in Her Majesty’s most thoroughly guarded files. Certain picked units of paratroops, allegedly training for jungle warfare in one of our quieter possessions, found a hilltop in one of the remoter areas, quite by accident, of course, where there had been a recent minor earthquake. This in turn seemed to have been followed by a subsidence of soil and rock over a wide area, as much as five square miles. Fortunately no one lived anywhere near the place. Simply a lot of ruined jungle and twisted rock was absolutely all there was to be seen. Wouldn’t have made a line in the papers if it had been reported, but since the troop training was secret, only the War Office ever heard about it.” He smiled a little. “I do hear the Mayan Indians still don’t like that area, or ever go there. They must have much knowledge of seismic forces and the danger of earthquakes, eh?

“Well, I’ve got to go now and can’t say when I’ll be back. I need a vacation and I’m thinking of the Caribbean shores. Probably why I recalled this tale just now.”

I went to the club’s front door with him and we two were alone. He shook my hand very hard indeed and something hard hurt my unready fingers. It was a massive ring, a huge gold thing with a great green stone set in the top. There was odd carving on the stone, but I could hardly study it then, could I?

The End