De Marigny and Phillips stared at the Hindoo as if hypnotized, while
Aspinwall emitted a series of snorts and bellows. The old attorney's
disgust had by now surged into open rage, and he pounded the table with
an apoplectically veined fist. When he spoke, it was in a kind of bark.
"How long is this foolery to be borne? I've listened an hour to this
madman--this faker--and now he has the damned effrontery to say
Randolph Carter is alive--to ask us to postpone the settlement for no
good reason! Why don't you throw the scoundrel out, de Marigny? Do you
mean to make us all the butts of a charlatan or idiot?"
De Marigny quietly raised his hand and spoke softly.
"Let us think slowly and clearly. This has been a very singular
tale, and there are things in it which I, as a mystic not altogether
ignorant, recognize as far from impossible. Furthermore--since 1930 I
have received letters from the Swami which tally with his account."
As he paused, old Mr. Phillips ventured a word.
"Swami Chandraputra spoke of proofs. I, too, recognize much that
is significant in this story, and I have myself had many oddly
corroborative letters from the Swami during the last two years; but
some of these statements are very extreme. Is there not something
tangible which can be shown?"
At last the impassive-faced Swami replied, slowly and hoarsely, and
drawing an object from the pocket of his loose coat as he spoke.
"While none of you here has ever _seen_ the silver key itself, Messrs.
de Marigny and Phillips have seen photographs of it. _Does this look
familiar to you?_"
He fumblingly laid on the table, with his large, white-mittened hand,
a heavy key of tarnished silver--nearly five inches long, of unknown
and utterly exotic workmanship, and covered from end to end with
hieroglyphs of the most bizarre description. De Marigny and Phillips
gasped.
"That's it!" cried de Marigny. "The camera doesn't lie. I couldn't be
mistaken!"
But Aspinwall had already launched a reply.
"Fools! What does it prove? If that's really the key that belonged to
my cousin, it's up to this foreigner--this damned nigger--to explain
how he got it! Randolph Carter vanished with the key four years ago.
How do we know he wasn't robbed and murdered? He was half crazy
himself, and in touch with still crazier people.
"Look here, you nigger--where did you get that key? Did you kill
Randolph Carter?"
The Swami's features, abnormally placid, did not change; but the
remote, irisless black eyes behind them blazed dangerously. He spoke
with great difficulty.
"Please control yourself, Mr. Aspinwall. There is another form of
proof that I _could_ give, but its effect upon everybody would not be
pleasant. Let us be reasonable. Here are some papers obviously written
since 1930, and in the unmistakable style of Randolph Carter."
He clumsily drew a long envelope from inside his loose coat and handed
it to the sputtering attorney as de Marigny and Phillips watched with
chaotic thoughts and a dawning feeling of supernal wonder.
"Of course the handwriting is almost illegible--but remember that
Randolph Carter now has no hands well adapted to forming human script."
Aspinwall looked through the papers hurriedly, and was visibly
perplexed, but he did not change his demeanor. The room was tense
with excitement and nameless dread, and the alien rhythm of the
coffin-shaped clock had an utterly diabolic sound to de Marigny and
Phillips, though the lawyer seemed affected not at all.
Aspinwall spoke again. "These look like clever forgeries. If they
aren't, they may mean that Randolph Carter has been brought under the
control of people with no good purpose. There's only one thing to
do--have this faker arrested. De Marigny, will you telephone for the
police?"
"Let us wait," answered their host. "I do not think this case calls for
the police. I have a certain idea. Mr. Aspinwall, this gentleman is a
mystic of real attainments. He says he is in the confidence of Randolph
Carter. Will it satisfy you if he can answer certain questions which
could be answered only by one in such confidence? I know Carter, and
can ask such questions. Let me get a book which I think will make a
good test."
He turned toward the door to the library, Phillips dazedly following
in a kind of automatic way. Aspinwall remained where he was, studying
closely the Hindoo who confronted him with abnormally impassive face.
Suddenly, as Chandraputra clumsily restored the silver key to his
pocket, the lawyer emitted a guttural shout.
"Hey, by Heaven! I've got it! This rascal is in disguise. I don't
believe he's an East Indian at all. That face--it isn't a face, but
a _mask_! I guess his story put that into my head, but it's true. It
never moves, and that turban and beard hide the edges. This fellow's
a common crook! He isn't even a foreigner--I've been watching his
language. He's a Yankee of some sort. And look at those mittens--he
knows his fingerprints could be spotted. Damn you, I'll pull that thing
off----"
"Stop!" The hoarse, oddly alien voice of the Swami held a tone beyond
all mere earthly fright. "I told you there was _another form of proof
which I could give if necessary_, and I warned you not to provoke me to
it. This red-faced old meddler is right--I'm not really an East Indian.
_This face is a mask, and what it covers is not human._ You others have
guessed--I felt that minutes ago. It wouldn't be pleasant if I took
that mask off--let it alone, Ernest. I may as well tell you that _I am
Randolph Carter_."
* * * * *
No one moved. Aspinwall snorted and made vague motions. De Marigny
and Phillips, across the room, watched the workings of the red face
and studied the back of the turbaned figure that confronted him. The
clock's abnormal ticking was hideous, and the tripod fumes and swaying
arras danced a dance of death. The half-choking lawyer broke the
silence.
"No you don't, you crook--you can't scare me! You've reasons of your
own for not wanting that mask off. Maybe we'd know who you are. Off
with it----"
As he reached forward, the Swami seized his hand with one of his own
clumsily mittened members, evoking a curious cry of mixed pain and
surprize. De Marigny started toward the two, but paused confused as
the pseudo-Hindoo's shout of protest changed to a wholly inexplicable
rattling and buzzing sound. Aspinwall's red face was furious, and with
his free hand he made another lunge at his opponent's bushy beard.
This time he succeeded in getting a hold, and at his frantic tug the
whole waxen visage came loose from the turban and clung to the lawyer's
apoplectic fist.
As it did so, Aspinwall uttered a frightful gurgling cry, and Phillips
and de Marigny saw his face convulsed with a wilder, deeper and more
hideous epilepsy of stark panic than ever they had seen on human
countenance before. The pseudo-Swami had meanwhile released his other
hand and was standing as if dazed, making buzzing noises of a most
abnormal quality. Then the turbaned figure slumped oddly into a posture
scarcely human, and began a curious, fascinated sort of shuffle toward
the coffin-shaped clock that ticked out its cosmic and abnormal rhythm.
His now uncovered face was turned away, and de Marigny and Phillips
could not see what the lawyer's act had disclosed. Then their attention
was turned to Aspinwall, who was sinking ponderously to the floor. The
spell was broken--but when they reached the old man he was dead.
Turning quickly to the shuffling Swami's receding back, de Marigny saw
one of the great white mittens drop listlessly off a dangling arm. The
fumes of the olibanum were thick, and all that could be glimpsed of the
revealed hand was something long and black. Before the Creole could
reach the retreating figure, old Mr. Phillips laid a restraining hand
on his shoulder.
"Don't!" he whispered. "We don't know what we're up against. That other
facet, you know--Zkauba, the wizard of Yaddith...."
The turbaned figure had now reached the abnormal clock, and the
watchers saw through the dense fumes a blurred black claw fumbling with
the tall, hieroglyphed door. The fumbling made a queer, clicking sound.
Then the figure entered the coffin-shaped case and pulled the door shut
after it.
De Marigny could no longer be restrained, but when he reached and
opened the clock it was empty. The abnormal ticking went on, beating
out the dark, cosmic rhythm which underlies all mystical gate-openings.
On the floor the great white mitten, and the dead man with a bearded
mask clutched in his hand, had nothing further to reveal.
* * * * *
A year passed, and nothing has been heard of Randolph Carter. His
estate is still unsettled. The Boston address from which one "Swami
Chandraputra" sent inquiries to various mystics in 1930-31-32 was
indeed tenanted by a strange Hindoo, but he left shortly before the
date of the New Orleans conference and has never been seen since. He
was said to be dark, expressionless, and bearded, and his landlord
thinks the swarthy mask--which was duly exhibited--looks very much
like him. He was never, however, suspected of any connection with the
nightmare apparitions whispered of by local Slavs. The hills behind
Arkham were searched for the "metal envelope," but nothing of the sort
was ever found. However, a clerk in Arkham's First National Bank does
recall a queer turbaned man who cashed an odd bit of gold bullion in
October, 1930.
De Marigny and Phillips scarcely know what to make of the business.
After all, what was proved? There was a story. There was a key which
might have been forged from one of the pictures Carter had freely
distributed in 1928. There were papers--all indecisive. There was a
masked stranger, but who now living saw behind the mask? Amidst the
strain and the olibanum fumes that act of vanishing in the clock might
easily have been a dual hallucination. Hindoos know much of hypnotism.
Reason proclaims the "Swami" a criminal with designs on Randolph
Carter's estate. But the autopsy said that Aspinwall had died of shock.
Was it rage _alone_ which caused it? And some things in that story....
In a vast room hung with strangely figured arras and filled with
olibanum fumes, Etienne-Laurent de Marigny often sits listening
with vague sensations to the abnormal rhythm of that hieroglyphed,
coffin-shaped clock.