“WAKE--AND FORGET”
1
“Do you realize, my friends,” said Gaston Max, “that our doom has
been pronounced? We have defied the edict of the Voice. _Bien!_ we are
to pay the penalty! _I_ am to survive for a thousand years! Appalling
prospect! You, friend Lonergan, are to suffer oblivion: it is
preferable, I think. But you, Woodville, are to _decide_…”
“What is it that you must decide?”
Behind closed shutters of my apartment we sat in conference. Lonergan
took a long draught of beer. I had been studying him carefully since
our return, and his genius for disguise positively amazed me. There
seemed to be nothing more synthetic about the Rev. Josiah Higgins than
there had been about Mr. Aldous P. Kluster.
“Let’s review the facts,” said he, “and figure out our chances. You
claimed there awhile back, Max, that we weren’t constantly watched. I
say what happened in the Felsenweir woods showed for sure you were
wrong. That outer barrage, whatever it is, was put down after
Woodville and I went through. If it had been there when we started
we’d have struck it.”
“I cannot agree, my friend. In my opinion the gate is insulated--so is
the path. You were lucky enough not to stray from this path.”
“We were covered!”
“From the time you approached Felsenweir, possibly.”
“What about the Voice?”
“Presently,” Max replied, “I shall ask you a question and also
Woodville. If your replies are what I expect, I shall offer an
explanation, fantastic perhaps, but possible, of this Voice.”
Lonergan and I stared hard at the speaker, and:
“If there’s an acceptable explanation of the Voice,” I said, “there
may be one covering the bats, in which event we can rule out the
supernatural element.”
“I wish I could think that way,” Lonergan growled. “But we’ve got to
find some kind of answer to the question: Why did that poor devil
die?”
“He died,” I replied, “because he knew things which the Voice does not
intend we shall learn.”
“True enough!” cried Gaston Max. “But _how_ did he die?”
“Let’s just log it,” Lonergan proposed, “that we haven’t the mistiest
notion how he died, and then let’s get down to sawdust. He hadn’t a
thing on him to prove his identity or connect him with Felsenweir.”
“I cannot agree,” Max interrupted. “He wore a steel bracelet with a
kind of medal attached to it. On one face of this medal was a number,
on the other an Egyptian figure. A strange ornament for a man of his
class.”
Strange indeed. I, too, had seen that queer bracelet. Having driven
our dead captive to a lonely spot and laid him under the trees,
Max--Lonergan acting as torch bearer--had skillfully examined his
possessions. It was a scene I could never forget.
“Possibly worn for sentimental reasons,” I suggested. “The man may
have been a sailor at some time.”
“There’s nothing sentimental about a _number_,” Lonergan objected
harshly. “4,396 is about as romantic as a taxicab.”
“Congratulations!” Max murmured. “This was indeed the number on the
disk.”
“But if, as we have reason to believe,” I went on, “he was killed by
the Voice (we know our enemy by no other name), isn’t this evidence
that we were watched--even after we left Felsenweir?”
“My point exactly!” said Lonergan. “Let’s agree we _were_. Next--have
we covered our tracks? When the poor devil’s found in the morning are
we going to be arrested for murdering him?”
“If so, I was clumsy,” said Max. “But I think--no!”
“I hope you’re right,” Lonergan declared. “Let’s go ahead. We know
Felsenweir is inhabited. If it isn’t, why was that poor devil climbing
up there? No normal citizen of these parts would go within a mile of
it at night. We know: (a)”--he ticked off the points on his
fingers--“it’s haunted, or (b) guarded by men in armour--God knows
what for!…
“We know it’s protected by death zones of a kind unheard of by any of
us. Argument: it is, as we’re already agreed, the headquarters of
somebody who doesn’t encourage interviewers and photographers. We were
plainly warned to beat it. We’re still here! If you feel happy--_I_
don’t. I’ll say that poor kite didn’t die a natural death. And if the
Voice can strike down that way…”
He paused, looking from Max to myself. The latter shrugged and smiled.
“I am willing to bet,” he declared, “that the Voice cannot strike _us_
down so easily. Otherwise he would most certainly have done so.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that this Voice is not infallible. He failed to foresee the
arrival of the poor fellow by whose misfortune you escaped death in
those woods! For all his strange powers, he is not yet a god. Fate
plays with him as it plays with others. He is, I think, the cleverest,
the most dangerous man the world has ever known. He has a wonderful
brain; obedient accomplices. Let me test one of my theories about him.
Let me ask these questions I spoke of.”
He turned to me.
“Have you recently lost or mislaid any object which you usually carry
about with you?”
I stared, scarcely comprehending; but:
“_I_ have,” Lonergan broke in. “I lost my cigar lighter for a whole
day: posted it as missing. Then a waiter brought it back--told me he
found it in the garden.”
A gleam of triumph lighted up the eyes of Gaston Max.
“If it’s any answer to your question,” I said, “my wrist watch stopped
a few days after I arrived here, and I had to send it to be mended.”
Max bowed as though I had paid him a compliment. He drew out his
ornate gold cigarette case; and:
“The hinge of this case became mysteriously broken,” he explained, “on
the day I entered Baden-Baden. I also sent it to be mended. I was
opening it, my friends, after its return, at the very moment the Voice
spoke to me outside the cemetery gate!
“There are employees in this hotel who could tell us much we should
like to know! There is a mysterious jeweller in the town who cleverly
repairs watches, lighters, and cigarette cases!”
Lonergan had his cigar lighter in his hand and I was staring at my
wrist watch as though I had never seen it before.…
“I have examined my cigarette case with the utmost care,” Max went on,
“and although I do not understand its construction, I have found that
a tiny, delicate mechanism--so tiny as to be almost impossible to
detect--has been attached inside it!”
“Suffering Moses!”
“It is, I think, through this mechanism that the _Voice_ speaks!”…
2
“Our only course,” said I, “is to apply to the German authorities and
have Felsenweir raided. If possible, to-night--certainly before
to-morrow morning.”
“Is that so?”
Lonergan regretfully examined an empty beer bottle.
“It is difficult,” Max murmured. “And as for my own position, the
French were never really popular in Germany.”
“What’s more,” said Lonergan, “that’s where we failed back home. When
the raiding party got in the ‘cupboard was bare.’ I’d be willing to
lay a hundred to one that a raid of Castle Felsenweir would draw
blank. It’s supposed to be empty. It’s supposed to be haunted. If we
could ginger the German police to take the matter up, we’d maybe find
it wasn’t haunted, but we’d surely find it was empty.”
I looked from one speaker to the other. Dimly to my apartment
penetrated strains from the dance band still playing almost
continuously in the ball room. Laughing voices were audible--footsteps
on gravel paths. On the return journey, having dropped our gruesome
passenger, we had passed more than one lighted car crammed with
fancifully clad figures.
“Imagine,” Max resumed, “that we present ourselves before the chief of
police. We identify ourselves. We say: ‘We want a large party of men
to go and surround the grounds of Felsenweir. We want the ruins of the
castle raided to-night.’ He is polite, and: ‘Gentlemen,’ he says,
‘what evidence have you upon which I may take this action?’”
Max shrugged, looking from me to Lonergan.
“What do we reply? We tell a story, my friends, which no chief of
police in Europe would believe. Consider what we know. I put it to
you, Woodville, would any editor publish what you have to tell?”
“Frankly, I shouldn’t care to put my name to it at the moment----”
“We can prove nothing,” Lonergan broke in. “But there’s one thing we
_can_ do.”
“What?”
“We can log it! We can put the record in a safe place. We can tell
London, Paris, and New York where the evidence lies. Then--if the
Voice acts--we sha’n’t have died for nothing.”
“Good!” said Gaston Max. “With this I am in accord. Woodville--you
shall be the scribe.”…
I wrote an account of the night’s strange work, prompted first by one,
then by another. It was significantly like the act of a man who
feverishly executes his last will and testament, knowing his hours to
be numbered.
From moment to moment we were expecting an intrusion… the Voice.
Max’s theory had yet to be proved. Even if correct, it pointed to
knowledge on the part of our opponent passing the achievements of any
scientist of Europe or America.
But except for the intrusion of a waiter summoned by Lonergan to bring
more beer, distant strains of dance music, voices, and vague footsteps
on garden paths, my task was uninterrupted. The account completed:
“Pin these pages to your earlier notes,” Max directed. “We will all
sign it.”
This done and the signatures being blotted:
“What now?” I asked.
“Now,” said Lonergan, “we put it in a large envelope--I see you’ve got
some--and we have it locked in the manager’s safe.”
The manuscript was sealed in an envelope which we all three
initialled. Max and I set out for the office.
“It would be kind of better,” Lonergan explained, “if I didn’t
associate myself with this matter, as I’m now Rev. Josiah Higgins. I
might easily have made your acquaintance but I don’t have to be mixed
up in your affairs. The Voice has got me taped but the gang mayn’t
know where I am.”…
The manager was discovered. He agreed to lock the document in his
safe. Gaston Max despatched a code wire to Paris, adding that it was
to be transmitted immediately to Scotland Yard and cabled to New York
Police Headquarters. This done:
“To-morrow,” he said, “or, rather, later to-day, in France, in
England, in America it will be known that important information is
lodged in the safe of this hotel. It is a precaution which may be
unnecessary or may be useless, but, name of a good little man, we can
do no more!”
We went back to my apartment where Lonergan was waiting.
As I turned the key and opened my door, I heard--or thought I heard--a
voice. I stopped dead. It was not Lonergan’s voice! The words reached
me confusedly, but they seemed to be:
“Wait--and forget!”
I turned to Max.
“You heard it?”
He shook his head.
“I heard nothing.”
I hurried into the apartment, Max close behind me.
The first thing which caught my notice was the attitude of Lonergan.
He was sitting in an armchair by the writing table, staring around him
in a dazed way. In other circumstances I should have supposed that he
had fallen asleep and had been awakened by the sounds of our return.
But with the menace which hung over us such an idea was ridiculous.
Nevertheless, his manner was oddly vague. He stared dreamily. But
already my attention had wandered.
The shutters were raised fully six feet! Framed in that square opening
was such a nocturne as genius never painted. I saw a moon-bathed
nightscape. Max spoke.
“My dear friend, why in heaven’s name did you raise those shutters?”
Lonergan stood up, staring almost angrily at the speaker.
“I thought there was somebody outside.” He spoke in an oddly
mechanical way. Max stared at him very hard, crossed, and lowered the
shutters.
I was mystified, irritated. But the truth was far from my mind. Would
that we had realized what had occurred since Max and I had left the
room! Fate ordained otherwise.
Those haggard hands which hovered, eaglesque, over the world, met with
no check.
3
Our final conference outlasted the band. All sounds of music and of
laughing voices had ceased when at last we parted. Memory of that odd
expression of Lonergan’s as I had found him seated with the shutter
raised haunted me from time to time. More than once I caught Max
glancing shrewdly at him.
His behaviour was normal and his contributions to the conversation
were characterized by all his old pungency. Nevertheless, I was
uneasy. Admittedly, since the windows were open, the voice might have
been that of someone in the gardens. Lonergan’s story was definite
enough. Suspicion had prompted him to raise the shutter, but there had
been no one on the balcony. Yet it was oddly unsatisfactory.
“This is a case,” said Gaston Max at last, “where there is no strength
in numbers. If you take my advice, Woodville, you will not go to bed
wearing your wrist watch! It may be useless--one cannot shoot the
invisible--but it is reassuring to have a pistol under one’s pillow.
And if the Voice decides to treat us as he treated that poor fellow
whom we captured--well!…” He shrugged. “We have left a record of all
we know.”
“You are to survive for a thousand years,” I reminded him mirthlessly.
“And Lonergan is to taste of the Waters of Oblivion.…”
He shrugged again.
“What does it matter?”
And so presently I found myself alone.
Whilst I undressed I listened to that merry music of the little
stream, rippling on its way so near to my window. I made a very
elaborate business of brushing my teeth in the bathroom and even then
lighted another cigarette and mixed myself a final whisky and soda. My
wrist watch I placed on the writing table.
Since hearing Max’s ingenious theory I had had no opportunity of
examining its mechanism and now I had no disposition to do so.
I was oddly reluctant to extinguish the light.
Lifting my telephone, I called up the night porter and gave orders
that I should be awakened at seven o’clock. I was sorry when he wished
me good-night. I found myself listening for footsteps in the gardens
and calculating how long must elapse before the Prussian sergeant’s
patrol led him to my windows.
The Rev. Josiah Higgins had registered, and deposited his baggage, at
a modest hotel near the Trinkhalle. To-night, however, he was
occupying the spare bed in that large double room on the first floor
above me in which Gaston Max resided.
I carefully locked both my outer and inner door and tested the
fastenings of the shutters, with which the ingenious Max had found a
means of tampering. They were safe enough to-night.
Yet when at last I scrambled into bed, leaving only one lamp alight
beside me, the idea of darkness had become definitely terrible.
“But, you, Woodville, are to _decide_…”
In short, I’m not ashamed to confess that, while nothing palpable
threatened me, I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life. I
had merely to close my eyes to see again the still, white, masklike
face of that unknown man who had died in the car, propped up between
Lonergan and myself; stricken silently.
Nor could I forget those words heard in this very room as Max and I
had returned.
“Wait--and forget.”… I recalled the intonation, the muted strangeness
of the tone; I tried to construe a sentence of which these three words
might have formed a part.
I lingered over my whisky and soda and lighted yet another cigarette,
resting on my elbow and looking toward the shuttered windows.
Revellers had long since dispersed. There were no pedestrians in
Lichtenthaler Allee. Faintly from the woods came the call of a
night-hawk above musical chattering of the stream.
My glance was persistently drawn in the direction of the shutters.
Owing to the position of the moon, bars of light shone through the
slats on to the left-hand wall of the outer room. I found this pattern
morbidly fascinating.
All the time I was turning over in my mind those strange words. Now,
suddenly, like an inspiration, I grasped the clue. The voice had not
said, “Wait--and forget,” but, “_Wake_--and forget!”
This I realized, dropped my cigarette in the tray beside me, and sat
bolt upright… staring.
A shadow had moved across that moon-cast pattern--the magnified shape
of what might have been an upraised arm!
I had my pistol out in a trice. Stripping off the sheets, I stepped
silently on to the floor.
_Tap, tap, tap!_
Someone, or something, was rapping on the shutters!
I forced myself to advance. Barefooted, I began to cross the carpet in
the direction of the windows.
_Tap, tap, tap!_
I was now no more than five feet away, and:
“Who’s there?” I cried.
“Mr. Woodville! Quick! Lift the shutters! Let me in!”
My heart seemed to miss a beat.
Running, a silver thread through the nightmare of my life in the Black
Forest, a dream had persisted--a hope; and a prayer that it might be
realized.
This was my dream come true!
Putting the pistol on the settee, I sprang to the cords. I raised the
heavy shutters.
A muffled figure stood on the balcony.…
“_Marusa!_”