The elevator slid upward steadily through the white-tiled shaft.
Lampley, slowly recovering his calm after the loss of the unicorn,
caught glimpses of the activities in the various sub-basements. Men
were building a ship in one, laying the keel, riveting the ribs,
welding the plates. Higher, dynamos of all sizes were attended by
midgets who climbed and clung like flies. On the next floor hundreds
of seamstresses in grecian robes cut and sewed balloons, twisted
silk threads into heavy ropes, wove rush baskets and attached them
to the flaccid bags; on another he saw a congregation of worshippers
at prayer. There was a sub-basement that was a library, one which
was a toy factory, one where alchemists turned waste into gold.
There was a bakery, an automobile assembly, an iron foundry, a
chemical laboratory, a college, a mortuary. They rose through
moving picture stages, distilleries, warehouses, mill-wrights,
armorers, perfume-makers, silversmiths, glass-blowers, gem-cutters,
machine-shops, art galleries, a mint, lumber-yard, stoveworks.
Then came a series of vacant floors: bleak, void, stale. The elevator
moved much more slowly now, as though dragged down by the emptiness,
pulled back, hampered by the blankness through which it was passing.
"About this fellow," said the clerk abruptly.
"What fellow?" parried the Governor. But he knew.
The clerk pulled out a plastic mask and slipped it over his face. It
was a replica of his own features, subtly altered, so that the Governor
was filled with sick terror at the sight of mouth, nose, cheeks, eyes,
superimposed on those which differed only enough to be totally alien.
The clerk stopped the elevator, opened the door. Walls of rough stone
towered on all sides. The Governor held back until the clerk's steady
stare forced him out onto the cracked, uneven pavement. There was a
sweetish, sickening, vaguely familiar smell all around.
The clerk rubbed his hands together and then over Lampley's arm in a
gesture of appraisal and possession. To his disgust the Governor saw
the fabric of his jacket crumble and dissolve. His jacket and the shirt
beneath, leaving his skin and flesh bare and vulnerable. The touch of
the fingers was loathsome but he was unable to draw away from it. The
clerk brought his face close, so that Lampley saw where the mouth of
the mask, the eyeholes and nostrils failed to match those beneath.
"This man, this convict, this felon. You couldn't find it in you to
reprieve him?"
"He had a fair trial," mumbled Lampley.
"A fair trial," repeated the clerk. "The jurors were gods, the judge
was justice incarnate?"
"The judge was properly assigned; the jurors were members of a
qualified panel."
"Your prerogative...?"
"My prerogative is to temper justice with mercy."
"And you were unable?"
"He murdered his father. He strangled him, he smothered him with a
pillow, he stabbed him in the heart, he poisoned him, he shot him with
a pistol; he killed his mother."
"Are you sure?" asked the clerk, puffing out the cheeks of his mask.
"There were witnesses, there was circumstantial evidence, he confessed.
He clubbed his mother to death, he cut her throat, he held her under
water till she died."
"Ah," sighed the clerk. "Ah.... Then no reprieve was possible?"
"No reprieve was possible," replied the Governor firmly.
"So be it," said the clerk.
Two pale men leapt from their hiding-place and bound Lampley's hands
behind him. They led him through an archway into a courtyard. A
masked executioner came forward and knelt at his feet. "I ask your
forgiveness, noble sir, for what I am about. The deed is not mine, I am
but a servitor."
The two pressed him toward the block and forced his head low. The
semicircular hollow was cunningly contrived to fit any neck. The long
gashes in the wood pulled and sucked at his throat. The executioner
raised his ax and brought it down. Lampley's head rolled in the sawdust
beyond the scaffold.
The two seized him and bound his arms. From a distance he heard the
chaplain's breaking voice. They hustled him between the stone walls
and dragged him up the gallows' steps. The hood was dropped over his
head, then the rope. He felt the hardness of the knot against his left
ear. There was no spittle in his mouth. They pushed his legs firmly
into place over the trap. He heard the snick of the knife as it cut the
cords. He swung in a narrowing circle.
They wrapped the thin cord deftly round and round his body, pinioning
his arms cruelly to his sides. They slid him down the incline beneath
the guillotine. When he was suitably in place the blade descended
swiftly.
They seated him in the chair and strapped the electrodes to his leg
and head. They pushed him into the sealed chamber and watched through
greedy slits while the cyanide pellets were released. They tied the
bandage over his eyes and stepped back just before the fusilade.
He lay broken on the rough stones. He remembered the touch of the
golden horn and began breathing again. He remembered the island under
the earth and his heart resumed beating. He remembered the young girl
in the hotel and he could see and hear.
* * * * *
He rose slowly and viewed his bodies after their agonies. He walked
past the bullet-chipped wall, the gas-chamber, electric chair,
guillotine, gallows. His feet scuffed the bloody sawdust by the
headsman's block.
The elevator stood empty and unattended. He went into the car, the door
closed behind him and the car shot up. Again it slowed as it passed the
darkened tiles in the upper reaches of the sub-basements, so that it
was once more moving sluggishly as the lobby and the hall above came in
sight. It stopped amid the elegance of the third floor, and the doors
opened of themselves.
The elegance had become shabby beyond restoration. The thick carpet was
worn to the threads. Woodwork and panelling no longer contrasted, they
were the same uniform color of age. The chairs and sofas were ripped
and tattered, their stuffing protruded like ruptures. The doll was
in the same place and position; a pendulous belly and two elongated
breasts had been sewed on with coarse stitches.
The iron railing around the quadrangle leaned outward; some of the
balusters were missing. The concourse below was gone; he looked down on
the dingy lobby, past the visible portion of the second floor hiding
the reception desk. He turned away; the doors which had borne the
esoteric numerals were blank, their panels warped and sagging.
He searched for the wide staircase to the second floor. His orientation
had changed, he turned left instead of right, or right instead of left.
In lieu of the grand flight he came upon a mean descent, twisting every
few steps. The boards creaked and quivered under his weight.
His room was that of the first door he opened. His handbag rested on
the foot of the bed, the wax figures of the bride and groom stood
stiffly in the cloudy glass bell. Lampley tarried before the mirror,
adjusting his sleeves, assuring himself there was neither lint nor soil
on his jacket. He picked up his bag and gave a conventional last glance
around, though he knew he had brought nothing more into the room.
He shut the door and tried the handle; it did not turn. Yet surely it
had been closed before he went in to retrieve his bag? All the doors on
the hall were shut, shut and locked and untenanted, their invitation
withdrawn. He reached the narrow stairs. From these there was no
landing halfway down, nor did they lead to the lobby. They ended at a
solid door with a handle instead of a knob. He pressed the latch down
doubtfully, anxious to be out of this blind end, unwilling to go back
up and start down again.
The refrigerator room which had been so cold was now warm and stuffy.
There was no igloo. The game and fish were gone, the brine barrels were
tipped over, gaping unconcernedly. They gave out no smell save that of
old wood. The sawdust had weathered. Most of the meat hooks were empty;
from a few hung the bare skeletons of beeves and sheep and swine, the
surface of their bones dry, cracked with long, thin crevices, crossed
with fine hairlines. He recognized the buffalo because of the peculiar
shape of the skull and horns lying on the floor below the carcass.
* * * * *
He pushed open the massive door to the kitchen. The old man was carving
a set of chessmen out of bone; several finished pieces, rooks, knights
and a queen stood in a row before him. In his thick fingers the other
queen was taking recognizable shape. All had the same distortion as
the plaster figures in the wall. He looked up at Lampley without
interrupting his work. "A hard time, hay?"
The Governor nodded. The old man jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Lampley followed its direction into the eating room. The idiot was
trying to spoon soup into his mouth, spilling most of it, sputtering
the rest into slimy bubbles. The clerk, his eyes closed, had one leg
hooked over the corner of the table. The woman smiled at him, showing
the gold tooth. There was no sign of the girl. Lampley sat down in the
old man's place.
The clerk's eyes opened; the mask was gone. He pushed a hard crust of
bread across the table. Lampley picked it up and turned it over in his
fingers. "I'm going," he announced to them.
The clerk yawned. "I'd be afraid myself," he confessed.
"Afraid of what?" asked the Governor.
The clerk shrugged. "So much," he said hazily. "Everything." He smiled
doubtfully.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," said the Governor boldly.
The clerk shook his head and left the room. The idiot gurgled and
sputtered over his soup. Lampley reached for the corner of the napkin
tied around his neck and wiped the drooling mouth. He took the stale
crust and broke it into the soup. When the bits were soaked he used the
spoon to feed them slowly to his son.
"It's no use," said the woman. "You can't teach him."
"I wasn't trying--" began Lampley, and let it go. "Where is your
sister?"
She wrinkled her forehead. "Sister?"
He had asked the girl if she were this woman's daughter; she is my
sister, she had said, and then something horrible--what?--happened. He
could not be mistaken. "The girl who was here."
"I was the only girl here. There was no other. There never was another."
He looked at her searchingly; her face showed no disingenuousness. He
finished feeding the defective and wiped his face again. He got up and
went over to the woman. She reached out her hand to touch his. He bent
and kissed her. Then he kissed his son.
In the lobby the clerk was behind the desk, idly searching through the
empty pigeonholes. "Nothing for you," he said without turning around.
The Governor went through the entrance and down the steps into the
afternoon sunlight. When he came to his car he reached in his pocket
for the keys. His hand touched his watch. He pulled it out and saw it
was running, the sweep-second hand revolving inexorably. He slipped it
on his wrist and unlocked the car door.
Before getting in he glanced up and down the street and back at the
hotel. He had never seen it or the town at any time in his life.
THE END