LONERGAN DESERTS
1
In my records of this encounter with a creature more than humanly
terrible, in my memories of the part I played in, literally, saving
the world from destruction, the following day--it was a
Wednesday--forms a peak. It was destined to be memorable.
We had until midnight.…
Since our feeble subterfuges were plainly matter for laughter on the
part of the Voice, we had agreed to breakfast together on the balcony
of my apartment.
As I came out of the bathroom and stood for a moment looking across
sunny lawns where gaily chattering holiday makers already hurried to
their hotels from early constitutionals, I questioned, once again, the
reality of it all.
Gaston Max’s story--what did it mean? That the presence of Mme. Yburg
in that stricken village had been accidental was an explanation which
reason rejected. Her visit to Hartford, Connecticut, at the time of
the radio mystery, made it impossible to ignore the significance of
what might otherwise have passed for a coincidence.
“A tremendous electrical discharge,” someone had said in speaking of
the Pyrenees tragedy; and the American mystery was also one of unknown
waves.… “Perhaps the high priestess of some new religion of
destruction.” Mme. Yburg had been so described by Gaston Max.
At the time appointed, the latter gentleman joined me. He wore gray
flannels and a blue reefer jacket. His socks, his shirt, and his tie
harmonized pleasingly.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, coming up the steps, “our American friend is
late!”
“Not yet,” said I, consulting my watch: “You are absolutely on time.”
He dropped into a chair and stared reflectively at the beautiful
prospect. Presently:
“I have been watching trout down there in the stream,” he said.
“Inspiring idea. What about trout for breakfast?”
“Good,” he acknowledged; adding, characteristically, “I am all for it.
Early breakfast is not in my line. But blue trout, toast, and a cup of
coffee--yes, I could manage this! But”--he glanced aside at me--“it
was not of breakfast I was thinking as I watched those trout.”
“No?”
“No! They head always upstream--watching the oncoming water. Any
danger, they suppose, would approach on the current, which they can
see. They do not realize--being fishes--that they are trapped; that it
is only a question of somebody’s whim how soon they will be cooked and
eaten!”
I stared at him curiously. He was not looking in my direction. Seen in
profile he had a magnificent head.
“_We_ are heading upstream,” he went on--“you and I and Mr. Lonergan.
But we have this advantage over the trout: we _do_ know when we are to
be cooked!”
“At midnight?”
He shrugged.
“Say, rather, at any time after midnight. But where we share the
ignorance of the fishes is in this: we do not know _how_ we are going
to be cooked--nor by whom we are going to be eaten!”
Following a short silence, during which I caught snatches of careless
conversation from distant passers-by wafted to me over the song of the
little stream:
“Having slept on the problem,” I said, “has any theory explaining the
Voice occurred to you?”
“None.”
“Or one to account for the giant bat?”
He turned to me impulsively, and:
“I tell you,” he declared, “we are face to face with powers against
which we are as helpless as those trout in the Oos are helpless
against the net!”
A silence fell upon us, in which no doubt Gaston Max was thinking, as
I was thinking, that Lonergan, usually a model of punctuality, had
presumably overslept. When, after some aimless chat which mainly
served to hide a mutual doubt, fifteen minutes passed and our American
colleague still remained absent, I made a suggestion.
“Either Lonergan has forgotten the appointment,” I said, “or something
is wrong with him. If you will excuse me for a moment, I will make
inquiries.”
“I wish you would.”
I crossed to the telephone, and remembering only just in time the name
in which Lonergan was registered at the hotel:
“Would you call Mr. Kluster’s room,” I said to the clerk who answered.
“I don’t know his number.”
There was a silent interval, then:
“Mr. Woodville?” inquired another voice, that of an assistant manager
whom I knew fairly well.
“Yes.”
“You are asking for Mr. Kluster? I am surprised he neglected to advise
you. Mr. Kluster has gone. He left for Düsseldorf by an early train!”
2
“One wise fish has escaped the net,” said Gaston Max.
But, frankly, I regarded Lonergan’s desertion less lightly. If ever I
had come upon a man whom obstacles stimulated and to whom danger was
refreshment that man was surely John Lonergan. Besides, ignominious
flight was childish--a plain defection from duty with two witnesses to
testify against Washington’s special commissioner.
It was utterly incomprehensible.
“It is plain, is it not,” said Max, as we strolled through the gardens
after breakfast, “that for us to attempt to hide our movements from M.
the Voice is simply silly?”
“Quite plain.”
“Mr. Lonergan has recognized this. So--do not let us judge him
hastily.”
I paused, staring at the speaker, but:
“You and I,” he went on smilingly, “have until midnight. Let us use
this time to the best advantage. What line of inquiry had you intended
to follow to-day?”
“I had planned to visit the Felsenweir mausoleum in the cemetery.”
“Curious,” Max murmured. “So had I. Let us go together.”
A sudden and oppressive darkness had fallen when, half an hour later,
we set out. The hall porter proffered a word of advice:
“Don’t go too far, sir. When it rains in Baden at this season, it
rains hard.”
Nevertheless, we risked it. I welcomed the Frenchman’s company,
although his usual amusing chatter was absent during our walk up to
the old cemetery. I could not reconcile Lonergan’s desertion with the
character of the man; I believed that Gaston Max had a theory; and he
remained silent. Perhaps I was a little bit resentful.
Some few parties returning to the town we met, driven by the
threatening storm, but beyond where the steep path bent sharply to the
left, offering a prospect of the roofs of Baden-Baden, we had the road
to ourselves.
An awning of cloud hung over the green bowl which shelters the town.
Its effect was queerly forbidding. Robbed of sunshine, Baden looked
like a dead place--like the shell of a fly (why did the image suggest
itself?) whose life had been sucked out by a spider. And, as the
unpleasant thought came to my mind:
“Do you know,” said Gaston Max suddenly, “that up to the year 1449 or
1549--forgive my bad history--I am not sure which it is--there was a
village of Felsenweir?”
“No.”
“There was. No trace of it remains, I am told. It was deserted by all
its inhabitants, and now the forest has partly reclaimed the soil it
occupied.”
“Why was it deserted?”
“Because of a plague.”
“You mean the Black Death--called in Germany, I believe, the ‘Basle
Death’?”
“No, no, not at all. This was another kind of plague. One by one they
died, the people of Felsenweir. They wasted away. And it was
said--those were the dark ages, Mr. Woodville--that a _vampire_ was
visiting the village!”
“Good heavens!”
I pulled up shortly. The angry curtain drawn over the valley now
touched with its eastern edge higher slopes of the hills. Premature
night threatened us; and no fellow travellers followed the road. Cast
back by Max’s words into a dim past haunted by witches and werewolves,
I saw that old “plague” in operation… I saw again a gigantic bat
alighting amid the tombs. The red mouth of Mme. Yburg smiled at me,
and I heard the Voice.
“Does it surprise you?”
“No. But it seems to link up with more recent rumours. I must
compliment you on your thoroughness. This story is new to me. Was
anyone identified as the vampire?”
“But yes! Those superstitious peasants traced the trouble to Adelheid,
Countess of Felsenweir. She was dead, you understand? They enlisted
the authority of Mother Church and she was removed from the family
vault and buried elsewhere, with a stake through her heart.”
“Then the Felsenweir tomb…”
“Has remained closed since the day that long dead lady was taken from
it.”
And now we had reached the cemetery. Its gate was open, but the
impending storm had deterred visitors. A phenomenal gloom lay over
that place normally gloomy enough. It appeared deserted. Gaston Max
looked up at the pall above, and:
“We are in for a drenching, I think,” he said. “But no matter. There
is no one whose attention we are likely to attract.”
“No one that we can _see_.”
Max shrugged his shoulders.
“The Invisible we cannot hope to dodge. In the course of my
professional duties, Mr. Woodville, I have of course come in contact
with strange things, but never before have I been tracked by a
disembodied Voice nor met with giant bats. Failing some new light on
these mysteries, I must confess myself defeated. But until midnight we
can go on hoping.”
“And _after_ midnight?…”
“We may have nothing to hope for.”
He made a weary gesture, smiling lightly, but his manner--as did my
own--concealed a deep unrest. In sunshine it had been possible to
shake off the incubus of that invisible menace. Personally I am not
ashamed to admit that now, surrounded by tombs, curtained by a
lowering storm, a vast uneasiness was claiming me. What my feelings
must be when midnight came I preferred not to imagine.
In silence we walked along the path, turning to the left, to the
right, and to the left again, until in the oldest part of the cemetery
we stood before the strangely conceived tomb of the Felsenweirs.
There was something barbaric in its form. It vaguely resembled a
mosque. And I wondered if its builder had been influenced by the
Crusades. A Felsenweir banner had flown in Palestine. Two ancient
cypresses guarded the door, and this door was of some time-blackened
wood, covered with iron scroll-work and seeming to have been unopened
for generations. In fact, the queer, square building which palpably
had not known a restorer’s hand, ordinarily, I thought, must have lain
in ruin. There was something phenomenal in its solidity.
Set in worn stonework above this door, a device had been carved; but
Time or the hand of man--I could not be sure which--had completely
defaced it. No doubt it had represented the crest of the Felsenweirs,
but none could have deciphered it now.
Gaston Max stepped forward and examined the mediæval fastenings. He
tested the strength of the woodwork. He turned, smiled, and shrugged.
Then, from an inner pocket he took out a lens. He examined the lock,
the hinges, and the worn stonework below. He replaced the lens.
“This door has not been opened for many years,” he declared
positively.
3
Vegetation grew close up to the mausoleum on two sides, rank and
unkempt. There was an ancient, musty smell.
“Stay where you are on the path, please,” said Max. “There is
something I wish to investigate.”
Stepping mincingly like a dancing master, he forced a delicate way
through the undergrowth, stooping and peering at the soft ground. In
this way he performed a circuit of the building. He rejoined me and
again shrugged characteristically.
“Not a trace,” he reported. “No steps but mine have disturbed that
smelly tangle for long enough. Name of a good little man! the vampire
leaves no footprints. It is not from here, Mr. Woodville, that our
charming friend Mme. Yburg was coming when you met her.”
The storm had gathered so blackly above us that I was anxious to
commence the return journey, when:
“One thing more,” said Max softly.
He was gazing through ever growing darkness along the path, westward.
“What?”
He pointed, and I stared wonderingly in the direction indicated.
“Mysterious,” he murmured, “yet perhaps no more than a coincidence.
But amid all these ancient tombs, most of them hundreds of years old,
there is one yonder, you see, which has been renovated quite
recently!”
To my mind the explanation was simple enough, but Max’s expression
held a sudden triumph as we walked along the narrow mossy path and
stood before that monument which had arrested his attention. It bore
no inscription and was palpably of great age, but as he had said,
signs of recent repair were evident.
As Max, drawing the lens again from his pocket, stooped and began to
examine the crevices in the stonework, a blinding flash of lightning
came. It whitely illuminated the prospect. It seemed like a reproach,
a threat, to those who would disturb the dwellings of the dead. Max
started upright; my own heart seemed to miss a beat. As he turned to
me, although his face thus lighted looked unnaturally pale, he was
smiling. And I thought there was triumph in his glance.
“I may be wrong,” he said enigmatically, “but I think I am right.”
My reply was drowned in a deafening crackle of thunder. In silence we
turned and ran along the path as the first great drops of rain began
to fall. We made for the lych-gate, the only shelter we knew.
What prompted me to look back from the corner on to the main path, I
cannot say. But I did so.…
A tall cloaked figure was standing by the Felsenweir vault!… and I
thought of the Countess Adelheid.…
“Max!” I cried.
He was five paces ahead of me, but he pulled up with a jerk and
turned. Even as he did so, the figure vanished. There came another
blinding flash of lightning followed by a torrent of rain.
“What?” impatiently.
“Nothing. I must have been mistaken.”
And we ran on side by side.