Title: Creep, Shadow!
Author: Abraham Merritt
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
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Language: English
Date first posted: September 2006
Date most recently updated: August 2007

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Creep, Shadow!
Abraham Merritt



CHAPTER I. FOUR SUICIDES



I unpacked my bags at the Explorers' Club gloomily enough. The
singularly unpleasant depression with which I had awakened in my berth
the night before had refused to be shaken off. It was like the echo of
some nightmare whose details I had forgotten but which still lurked
just over the threshold of consciousness.

Joined to it was another irritation.

Of course I had not expected any Mayor's Committee to welcome me
home. But that neither Bennett nor Ralston had met me began to assume
the aspect of a major tragedy of neglect. I had written to both before
sailing, and I had looked for one of them, at least, to be on the dock
to meet me.

They were the closest friends I had, and the queer current of
hostility between them had often amused me. They thoroughly liked, yet
as thoroughly disapproved of, each other. I had the idea that away
down under they were closer each to the other than to me; that they
might have been Damon and Pythias if each hadn't so disliked the
other's attitude toward life; and maybe were Damon and Pythias despite
it.

Old Aesop formulated their discordance centuries ago in his fable
of the Ant and the Cricket. Bill Bennett was the Ant. The serious-
minded, hard-working son of Dr. Lionel Bennett, until recently one of
the modern, civilized world's five outstanding experts upon brain
pathology. I make the distinction of modern and civilized because I
have had proof that what we are pleased to call the uncivilized world
has many more such experts, and I have good reason to believe that the
ancient world had others much further advanced than those of the
modern world, civilized or uncivilized.

Bennett, the elder, had been one of the few specialists whose mind
turned upon his work rather than his bank account. Distinguished but
poor. Bennett, the younger, was about thirty-five, my own age. I knew
that his father had rested heavily upon him. I suspected that along
some lines, and especially in the realm of the subconscious, the son
had outstripped the sire; his mind more flexible, more open. Bill had
written me a year ago that his father had died, and that he had
associated himself with Dr. Austin Lowell, taking the place of Dr.
David Braile who had been killed by a falling chandelier in Dr.
Lowell's private hospital. (See Burn, Witch, Burn.)

Dick Ralston was the Cricket. He was heir to a fortune so solid
that even the teeth of the depression could only scratch it. Very much
the traditional rich man's son of the better sort, but seeing no
honor, use, nor any joy or other virtue in labor. Happy-go-lucky,
clever, generous--but decidedly a first-class idler.

I was the compromise--the bridge on which they could meet. I had
my medical degree, but also I had enough money to save me from the
grind of practice. Enough to allow me to do as I pleased--which was
drifting around the world on ethnological research. Especially in
those fields which my medical and allied scientific brethren call
superstition--native sorceries, witchcraft, voodoo, and the like. In
that research I was as earnest as Bill in his. And he knew it.

Dick, on the other hand, attributed my wanderings to an itching
foot inherited from one of my old Breton forebears, a pirate who had
sailed out of St. Malo and carved himself a gory reputation in the New
World. And ultimately was hanged for it. The peculiar bent of my mind
he likewise attributed to the fact that two of my ancestors had been
burned as witches in Brittany.

I was perfectly understandable to him.

Bill's industry was not so understandable.

I reflected, morosely, that even if I had been away for three
years it was too short a time to be forgotten. And then I managed to
shake off my gloom and to laugh at myself. After all, they might not
have gotten my letters; or they might have had engagements they
couldn't break; and each might have thought the other would be on
hand.

There was an afternoon newspaper on the bed. I noticed that it was
of the day before. My eye fell upon some headlines. I stopped
laughing. The headlines ran:

$5,000,000 COPPER HEIR KILLS HIMSELF

RICHARD J. RALSTON, JR. PUTS BULLET THROUGH HEAD

"No Reason Known for Act--Fourth New York Man of Wealth to Take
His Life Without Apparent Cause in Last Three Months--Police Hint
Suicide Club."

I read the story:

"Richard J. Ralston, Jr., who inherited some $5,000,000 when his
father, rich mine owner, died two years ago, was found dead in his bed
this morning in a bedroom of his house on 78th Street. He had shot
himself through the head, dying instantly. The pistol with which he
had killed himself was lying on the floor where it had fallen from his
hand. The Detective Bureau identified the finger marks on it as his
own.

"Discovery was made by his butler, John Simpson, who said that he
had gone into the room about 8 o'clock, following his usual custom.
From the condition of the body Dr. Peabody, of the coroner's office,
estimated that Ralston must have shot himself about three o'clock, or
approximately five hours before Simpson found him."

Three o'clock? I felt a little prickling along my spine. Allowing
for the difference between ship time and New York time, that was
precisely when I had awakened with that strange depression. I read on:

"If Simpson's story is true, and the police see no reason to doubt
it, the suicide could not have been premeditated and must have been
the result of some sudden overmastering impulse. This seems to be
further indicated by the discovery of a letter Ralston had started to
write, and torn up without finishing. The scraps of it were found
under a desk in the bedroom where he had tossed them. The letter read:

"'DEAR BILL.

"'Sorry I couldn't stay any longer. I wish you would think of the
matter as objective and not subjective, no matter how incredible such
a thing may seem. If Alan were only here. He knows more--'

"At this point Ralston had evidently changed his mind and torn up
the letter. The police would like to know who 'Alan' is and have him
explain what it is that he 'knows more' about. They also hope that the
'Bill' to whom it was to have been sent will identify himself. There
is not the slightest doubt as to the case being one of suicide, but it
is possible that whatever it was that was 'objective and not
subjective, no matter how incredible' may throw some light on the
motive.

"At present absolutely no reason appears to exist to explain why
Mr. Ralston should have taken his life. His attorneys, the well-known
firm of Winston, Smith & White, have assured the police that his
estate is in perfect order, and that there were no 'complications' in
their client's life. It is a fact that unlike so many sons of rich
men, no scandal has ever been attached to Ralston's name.

"This is the fourth suicide within three months of men of wealth
of approximately Ralston's age, and of comparatively the same habits
of life. Indeed, in each of the four cases the circumstances are so
similar that the police are seriously contemplating the possibility of
a suicide pact.

"The first of the four deaths occurred on July 15, when John
Marston, internationally known polo player, shot himself through the
head in his bedroom in his country house at Locust Valley, Long
Island. No cause for his suicide has ever come to light. Like Ralston,
he was unmarried. On August 6, the body of Walter St. Clair Calhoun
was found in his roadster near Riverhead, Long Island. Calhoun had
driven his car off the main road, here heavily shaded by trees, into
the middle of an open field. There he had put a bullet through his
brains. No one ever discovered why. He had been divorced for three
years. On August 21, Richard Stanton, millionaire yachtsman and globe-
trotter, shot himself through the head while on the deck of his ocean-
going yacht Trinculo. This happened the night before he was about to
set out on a cruise to South America."

I read on and on...the speculations as to the suicide pact,
supposedly entered into because of boredom and morbid thrill-
hunger...the histories of Marston, Calhoun, and Stanton...Dick's
obituary...

I read, only half understanding what it was I read. I kept
thinking that it couldn't be true.

There was no reason why Dick should kill himself. In all the world
there was no man less likely to kill himself. The theory of the
suicide pact was absurdly fantastic, at least so far as he was
concerned. I was the 'Alan' of the letter, of course. And Bennett was
the 'Bill.' But what was it I knew that had made Dick wish for me?

The telephone buzzed, and the operator said: "Dr. Bennett to see
you."

I said: "Send him up." And to myself: "Thank God!"

Bill came in. He was white and drawn, and more like a man still in
the midst of a stiff ordeal than one who has passed through it. His
eyes held a puzzled horror, as though he were looking less at me than
within his mind at whatever was the source of that horror. He held a
hand out, absently, and all he said was: "I'm glad you're back, Alan."

I had the newspaper in my other hand. He took it and looked at the
date. He said: "Yesterday's. Well, it's all there. All that the police
know, anyway."

He had said that rather oddly; I asked: "Do you mean you know
something that the police don't?"

He answered, evasively I thought: "Oh, they've got their facts all
straight. Dick put the bullet through his brain. They're right in
linking up those other three deaths--"

I repeated: "What do you know that the police don't know, Bill?"

He said: "That Dick was murdered!"

I looked at him, bewildered. "But if he put the bullet through his
own brain--"

He said: "I don't blame you for being puzzled. Nevertheless--I
know Dick Ralston killed himself, and yet I know just as certainly
that he was murdered."

He sat down upon the bed; he said: "I need a drink."

I brought out the bottle of Scotch the club steward had
thoughtfully placed in my room for homecoming welcome. He poured
himself a stiff one. He repeated:

"I'm glad you're back! We've got a tough job ahead of us, Alan."

I poured myself a drink; I asked: "What is it? To find Dick's
murderer?"

He answered: "That, yes. But more than that. To stop more
murders."

I poured him and myself another drink; I said: "Quit beating about
the bush and tell me what it's all about."

He looked at me, thoughtfully; he answered, quietly: "No, Alan.
Not yet." He put down his glass. "Suppose you had discovered a new
bug, an unknown germ--or thought you had. And had studied it and noted
its peculiarities. And suppose you wanted someone to check up. What
would you do--give him all your supposed observations first, and then
ask him to look into the microscope to verify them? Or simply give him
an outline and ask him to look into the microscope and find out for
himself?"

"Outline and find out for himself, of course."

"Exactly. Well, I think I have such a new bug--or a very old one,
although it has nothing whatever to do with germs. But I'm not going
to tell you any more about it until I put your eye to the microscope.
I want your opinion uncolored by mine. Send out for a paper, will
you?"

I called the office and told them to get me one of the latest
editions. When it came, Bill took it. He glanced over the first page,
then turned the sheets until he came to what he was looking for. He
read it, and nodded, and passed the paper to me.

"Dick's reduced from page one to page five," he said. "But I've
gotten it over. Read the first few paragraphs--all the rest is rehash
and idle conjecture. Very idle."

I read:

"Dr. William Bennett, the eminent brain specialist and associate
of Dr. Austin Lowell, the distinguished psychiatrist, visited Police
Headquarters this morning and identified himself as the 'Bill' of the
unfinished letter found in the bedroom of Richard J. Ralston, Jr.,
after the latter's suicide yesterday morning.

"Dr. Bennett said that undoubtedly the letter had been meant for
him, that Mr. Ralston had been one of his oldest friends and had
recently consulted him for what he might describe roughly as insomnia
and bad dreams. Mr. Ralston had, in fact, been his guest at dinner the
night before. He had wanted Mr. Ralston to spend the night with him,
but after consenting, he had changed his mind and gone home to sleep.
That was what he had referred to in the opening sentence of his
letter. Professional confidence prevented Dr. Bennett from going into
further description of Mr. Ralston's symptoms. Asked whether the
mental condition of Mr. Ralston might explain why he had killed
himself, Dr. Bennett guardedly replied that suicide was always the
result of some mental condition."

In spite of my perplexity and sorrow, I couldn't help smiling at
that.

"The 'Alan' referred to in the letter, Dr. Bennett said, is Dr.
Alan Caranac, who was also an old friend of Mr. Ralston, and who is
due in New York today on the Augustus after three years in Northern
Africa. Dr. Caranac is well-known in scientific circles for his
ethnological researches. Dr. Bennett said that Mr. Ralston had thought
that some of his symptoms might be explained by Dr. Caranac because of
the latter's study of certain obscure mental aberrations among
primitive peoples."

"Now for the kicker," said Bill, and pointed to the next
paragraph:

"Dr. Bennett talked freely with the reporters after his statement
to the police, but could add no essential facts beyond those he had
given them. He did say that Mr. Ralston had withdrawn large sums in
cash from his accounts during the two weeks before his death, and that
there was no evidence of what had become of them. He seemed
immediately to regret that he had given this information, saying that
the circumstance could have no bearing upon Mr. Ralston's suicide. He
reluctantly admitted, however, that the sum might be well over
$100,000, and that the police were investigating."

I said: "That looks like blackmail--if it's true."

He said: "I haven't the slightest proof that it is true. But it's
what I told the police and the reporters."

He read the paragraph over again and arose.

"The reporters will soon be here, Alan," he said. "And the police.
I'm going. You haven't seen me. You haven't the slightest idea of what
it's all about. You haven't heard from Ralston for a year. Tell them
that when you get in touch with me, you may have something more to
say. But now--you don't know anything. And that's true--you don't.
That's your story, and you stick to it."

He walked to the door. I said:

"Wait a minute, Bill. What's the idea behind that bunch of words
I've just read?"

He said: "It's a nicely baited hook."

I said: "What do you expect to hook?"

He said: "Dick's murderer."

He turned at the door: "And something else that's right down your
alley. A witch."

He shut the door behind him.



CHAPTER II. THE DEMOISELLE DAHUT



Not long after Bill had gone, a man from the Detective Bureau
visited me. It was evident that he regarded the call as waste motion;
just a part of the routine. His questions were perfunctory, nor did he
ask me if I had seen Bennett. I produced the Scotch and he mellowed.
He said:

"Hell, if it ain't one thing it's another. If you ain't got money
you wear yourself out tryin' to get it. If you got it, then somebody's
tryin' all the time to rob you. Or else you go nuts like this poor guy
and then what good is your money? This Ralston wasn't a bad guy at
that, I hear."

I agreed. He took another drink and left.

Three reporters came; one from the City News and the others from
afternoon papers. They asked few questions about Dick, but showed
flattering interest in my travels. I was so relieved that I sent for a
second bottle of Scotch and told them a few stories about the mirror-
magic of the Riff women, who believe that at certain times and under
certain conditions they can catch the reflections of those they love
or hate in their mirrors, and so have power thereafter over their
souls.

The City News man said that if he could get the Riff women to
teach him that trick, he could lift all the mirror-makers in America
out of the depression and get rich doing it. The other two morosely
agreed that they knew some editors whose reflections they'd like to
catch. I laughed and said it would be easier to bring over a good old-
fashioned Bulgarian mason or two. Then all they need do was to get the
mason a job, decoy the editor to the place and have the mason measure
his shadow with a string. After that, the mason would put the string
in a box and build the box in the wall. In forty days the editor would
be dead and his soul be sitting in the box beside the string.

One of the afternoon men glumly said that forty days would be too
long to wait for the ones he had in mind. But the other asked, with
disarming naivete, whether I believed such a thing possible. I
answered that if a man were strongly enough convinced he would die on
a certain day, he would die on that day. Not because his shadow had
been measured and the string buried, but because he believed that this
was going to kill him. It was purely a matter of suggestion--of auto-
hypnosis. Like the praying to death practiced by the kahunas, the
warlocks of the South Seas, of the results of which there was no doubt
whatever. Always providing, of course, that the victim knew the kahuna
was praying his death--and the exact time his death was to occur.

I ought to have known better. The morning papers carried only a
few lines to the effect that I had talked to the police and had been
unable to throw any light on the Ralston suicide. But the early
editions of the naive reporter's paper featured a special article.

WANT TO GET RID OF YOUR ENEMIES?

GET A RIFF GAL'S MAGIC MIRROR--OR BRING IN A BULGARIAN MASON.

Dr. Alan Caranac, Noted Explorer, Tells How to Separate Yourself
Safely from Those You Don't Want Around--But the Catch Is That First
You Have to Make 'Em Believe You Can Do It.

It was a good story, even if it did make me swear in spots. I read
it over again and laughed. After all, I'd brought it on myself. The
'phone rang, and Bill was on the line. He asked abruptly:

"What put it in your head to talk to that reporter about shadows?"

He sounded jumpy. I said, surprised:

"Nothing. Why shouldn't I have talked to him about shadows?"

He didn't answer for a moment. Then he asked:

"Nothing happened to direct your mind to that subject? Nobody
suggested it?"

"You're getting curiouser and curiouser, as Alice puts it. But no,
Bill, I brought the matter up all by myself. And no shadow fell upon
me whispering in my ear--"

He interrupted, harshly: "Don't talk like that!"

And now I was truly surprised, for there was panic in Bill's
voice, and that wasn't like him at all.

"There really wasn't any reason. It just happened," I repeated.
"What's it all about, Bill?"

"Never mind now." I wondered even more at the relief in his voice.
He swiftly changed the subject: "Dick's funeral is tomorrow. I'll see
you there."

Now the one thing I won't be coerced or persuaded into doing is to
go to the funeral of a friend. Unless there are interesting and
unfamiliar rites connected with it, it's senseless. There lies a piece
of cold meat for the worms, grotesquely embellished by the
undertaker's cosmetic arts. Sunken eyes that never more will dwell
upon the beauty of the clouds, the sea, the forest. Ears shut forever,
and all the memories of life rotting away within the decaying brain.
Painted and powdered symbol of life's futility. I want to remember
friends as they were alive, alert, capable, eager. The coffin picture
superimposes itself, and I lose my friends. The animals order things
much better, to my way of thinking. They hide themselves and die. Bill
knew how I felt, so I said:

"You'll not see me there." To shut off any discussion, I asked:

"Had any nibble at your witch bait?"

"Yes and no. Not the real strike I'm hoping for, but attention
from unexpected quarters. Dick's lawyers called me up after I'd left
you and asked what he had told me about those cash withdrawals. They
said they'd been trying to find out what he had done with the money,
but couldn't. They wouldn't believe me, of course, when I said I knew
absolutely nothing; that I had only vague suspicions and had tried a
shot in the dark. I don't blame them. Stanton's executor called me up
this morning to ask the same thing. Said Stanton had drawn substantial
amounts of cash just before he died, and they hadn't been able to
trace it."

I whistled:

"That's queer. How about Calhoun and Marston? If they did the
same, it'll begin to smell damned fishy."

"I'm trying to find out," he said. "Good-by--"

"Wait a minute, Bill," I said. "I'm a good waiter, and all of
that. But I'm getting mighty curious. When do I see you, and what do
you want me to do in the meantime?"

When he answered his voice was as grave as I'd ever heard it.

"Alan, sit tight until I can lay the cards before you. I don't
want to say more now, but trust me, there's a good reason. I'll tell
you one thing, though. That interview of yours is another hook--and
I'm not sure it isn't baited even better than mine."

That was on Tuesday. Obviously, I was puzzled and curious to a
degree. So much so that if it had been anybody but Bill who had sat me
down in my little corner chair and told me to be quiet, I would have
been exceedingly angry. But Bill knew what he was about--I was sure of
that. So I stayed put.

On Wednesday, Dick was buried. I went over my notes and started
the first chapter of my book on Moroccan sorceries. Thursday night,
Bill called up.

"There's a small dinner party at Dr. Lowell's tomorrow night," he
said. "A Dr. de Keradel and his daughter. I want you to come. I'll
promise you'll be interested."

De Keradel? The name had a familiar sound. "Who is he?" I asked.

"Rene de Keradel, the French psychiatrist. You must have read some
of his--"

"Yes, of course," I interrupted. "He took up some of Charcot's
hypnotic experiments at the Salpetriere, didn't he? Carried them on
from the point where Charcot had stopped. Left the Salpetriere under a
cloud some years ago. Subjects died, or he was too unorthodox in his
conclusions, or something?"

"That's the chap."

I said: "I'll be there. I'd like to meet him."

"Good," said Bill. "Dinner's at 7:30. Wear your dinner jacket. And
come an hour ahead of time. There's a girl who wants to talk to you
before the company comes, as we used to say."

"A girl?" I asked, astonished.

"Helen," said Bill with a chuckle. "And don't you disappoint her.
You're her hero." He hung up.

Helen was Bill's sister. About ten years younger than I. I hadn't
seen her for fifteen years. An impish sort of kid, I recalled. Eyes
sort of slanting and yellow brown. Hair a red torch. Gawky when I saw
her last and inclined to be fat. Used to follow me around when I was
visiting Bill during college vacations, and sit and stare at me
without speaking until it made me so nervous I stuttered. Never could
tell whether it was silent adoration or sheer deviltry. That was when
she was about twelve. Nor could I forget how she had led me,
apparently innocently, to sit on a subterranean nest of hornets; nor
the time when, going to bed, I had found it shared by a family of
garter snakes. The first might have been an accident, although I had
my doubts, but the second wasn't. I had dumped the snakes out the
window and never by word, look, or gesture referred to it, having my
reward in the child's bafflement at my reticence and her avid but
necessarily mute curiosity. I knew she had gone through Smith and had
been studying art in Florence. I wondered what she had grown to be.

I read over some of de Keradel's papers at the Academy of Medicine
Library next day. He was a queer bird without doubt, with some
extraordinarily arresting theories. I didn't wonder that the
Salpetriere had eased him out. Stripped of their scientific verbiage,
the framework of his main idea was startlingly like that expounded to
me by the Many-Times-Born Abbot of the Lamasery at Gyang-tse, in
Tibet. A holy man and an accomplished wonder-worker, a seeker of
knowledge along strange paths, what would be loosely called by the
superstitious--a sorcerer. Also by a Greek priest near Delphi whose
Christian cloak covered a pure case of pagan atavism. He offered to
demonstrate his hypothesis, and did. He nearly convinced me. Indeed,
visualizing again what he had made me see, I was not sure that he
hadn't convinced me.

I began to feel a strong interest in this Dr. de Keradel. The name
was Breton, like my own, and as unusual. Another recollection flitted
through my mind. There was a reference to the de Keradels in the
chronicles of the de Carnacs, as we were once named. I looked it up.
There had been no love lost between the two families, to put it
mildly. Altogether, what I read blew my desire to meet Dr. de Keradel
up to fever point.

I was half an hour late getting to Dr. Lowell's. The butler showed
me into the library. A girl got up from a big chair and came toward me
with hand outstretched.

"Hello, Alan," she said.

I blinked at her. She wasn't so tall, but her body had all the
lovely contours the sculptors of Athens' Golden Age gave their dancing
girls. The provocative dress of filmy black she wore hid none of them.
Her hair was burnished copper and helmeted her small head. The heavy
chignon at the nape of her neck showed she had resisted the bob. Her
eyes were golden amber, and tilted delicately. Her nose was small and
straight and her chin rounded. Her skin was not the creamy white that
so often goes with red heads, but a delicate golden. It was a head and
face that might have served as the model for one of Alexander's finest
golden coins. Faintly archaic, touched with the antique beauty. I
blinked again. I blurted:

"You're never--Helen!"

Her eyes sparkled, the impishness that my experience with the
hornets had set indelibly in my memory danced over her face. She took
my hands, and swayed close to me; she sighed:

"The same, Alan! The same! And you--oh, let me look at you! Yes,
still the hero of my girlhood! The same keen, dark face--like--like--I
used to call you Lancelot of the Lake, Alan--to myself of course. The
same lithe, tall, and slender body--I used to call you the Black
Panther, too, Alan. And do you remember how like a panther you leaped
when the hornets stung you?" She bent her head, her rounded shoulders
shaking. I said: "You little devil! I always knew you did that
deliberately."

She said, muffled:

"I'm not laughing, Alan. I'm sobbing."

She looked up at me, and her eyes were indeed wet, but I was sure
not with any tears of regret. She said:

"Alan, for long, long years I've waited to know something. Waited
to hear you tell me something. Not to tell me that you love me,
darling--No, No! I always knew that you were going to do that, sooner
or later. This is something else!"

I was laughing, but I had a queer mixed feeling, too.

I said:

"I'll tell you anything. Even that I love you--and maybe mean it."

She said:

"Did you find those snakes in your bed? Or did they crawl out
before you got in?"

I said again: "You little devil!"

She said:

"But were they there?"

"Yes, they were."

She sighed contentedly:

"Well, there's one complex gone forever. Now I know. You were so
damned superior at times I just couldn't help it."

She held her face up to me:

"Since you're going to love me, Alan, you might as well kiss me."

I kissed her, properly. She might have been fooling with me about
having been her girlhood hero, but there was no fooling about my
kiss--nor the way she responded to it. She shivered and laid her head
on my shoulder. She said, dreamily: "And there's another complex gone.
Where am I going to stop?"

Somebody coughed at the doorway. Somebody else murmured,
apologetically: "Ah, but we intrude."

Helen dropped her arms from around my neck, and we turned. In a
way, I realized that the butler and another man were standing at the
door. But all I could focus my eyes upon was the girl--or woman.

You know how it is when you're riding in the subway, or at the
theater, or at a race track and suddenly one face, for some reason or
no reason, thrusts itself out from the crowd, and it's as though your
mental spotlight were turned on it and every other face gets misty and
recedes into the background. That often happens to me. Something in
the face that stirs some old forgotten memory, no doubt. Or stirs the
memory of our ancestors whose ghosts are always peering through our
eyes. Seeing this girl was like that, only far more so. I couldn't see
anything else--not even Helen.

She had the bluest eyes I've ever seen, or rather eyes of a
curious deep violet. They were big and unusually wide apart, with long
curling black lashes and slimly penciled black eyebrows that almost
met above her high-arched but delicately modeled nose. You felt,
rather than saw, their color. Her forehead was broad, but whether it
was low I could not tell, for it was coifed with braids of palest
gold, and there were little ends of hair that curled up all over her
head, and they were so fine and silken that the light in the hall
shining through them made a queer silver-gilt aureole around her head.
Her mouth was a bit large, but beautifully formed and daintily
sensuous. Her skin was a miracle, white, but vital--as though moon
fires shone behind it.

She was tall almost as I, exquisitely curved, deep bosomed. Her
breasts echoed the betrayal of her lips. Her head and face and
shoulders came like a lily out of the calyx of a shimmering sea-green
gown.

She was exquisite--but I had swift understanding that there was
nothing heavenly about the blue of her eyes. And nothing saintly about
the aureole about her head.

She was perfection--and I felt a swift hatred against her,
understanding, as the pulse of it passed, how one could slash a
painting that was a masterpiece of beauty, or take a hammer and
destroy a statue that was another such masterpiece if it evoked such
hatred as that which I, for that fleeting moment, felt.

Then I thought:

Do I hate you--or do I fear you?

It was all, mind you, in a breath.

Helen was moving by me, hand outstretched. There was no confusion
about Helen. Our embrace that had been interrupted might have been a
simple handshake. She said, smiling and gracious:

"I am Helen Bennett. Dr. Lowell asked me to receive you. You are
Dr. de Keradel, aren't you?"

I looked at the man who was bending over her hand, kissing it. He
straightened, and I felt a queer shock of bewilderment. Bill had said
I was to meet Dr. de Keradel and his daughter. But this man looked no
I older than the girl--if she was his daughter. True, the silver in
the gold of his hair was a little paler; true, the blue of his eyes
had not the violet-purple of hers...

I thought: But neither of them has any age! And on top of that I
thought, rather savagely: What the hell's the matter with me anyway?

The man said:

"I am Dr. de Keradel. And this is my daughter."

The girl--or woman--seemed now to be regarding both Helen and me
with faint amusement. Dr. de Keradel said with, I thought, curious
precision:

"The, Demoiselle Dahut d'Ys," he hesitated, then finished--"de
Keradel."

Helen said:

"And this is Dr. Alan Caranac."

I was looking at the girl--or woman. The name of Dahut d'Ys
fingered half-forgotten chords of memory. And as Helen named me, I saw
the violet eyes dilate, become enormous, the straight brows contract
until they met above the nose in a slender bar. I felt the glance of
her eyes strike and encompass me. She seemed to be seeing me for the
first time. And in her eyes was something threatening--possessive. Her
body tensed. She said, as though to herself: "Alain de Carnac...?"

She glanced from me to Helen. There was calculation in that
glance, appraisal. Contemptuous indifference, too--if I read it
aright. A queen might so have looked upon some serving wench who had
dared to lift eyes to her lover.

Whether I read the glance aright or not, Helen evidently got
something of the same thought. She turned to me and said sweetly:

"Darling, I'm ashamed of you. Wake up!"

With the side of her little high-heeled slipper she gave me a
surreptitious and vigorous kick on the shin.

Just then Bill came in, and with him a dignified, white-haired
gentleman I knew must be Dr. Lowell.

I don't know when I had ever been so glad to see Bill.



CHAPTER III. THEORIES OF DR. DE KERADEL



I gave Bill the old fraternity high-sign of distress, and after
introductions he bore me away, leaving the Demoiselle Dahut to Helen
and Dr. de Keradel with Dr. Lowell. I felt an urgent need for a drink,
and said so. Bill passed me the brandy and soda without comment. I
drank a stiff brandy neat.

Helen had bowled me off my feet, but that had been a pleasant
upset, nothing that called for any alcoholic lever to right me. The
Demoiselle Dahut had been an entirely different matter. She was damned
disconcerting. It occurred to me that if you compared yourself to a
ship bowling along under full sail, with your mind as a capable
navigator and through charted seas, Helen was a squall that fitted
normally into the picture--but the Demoiselle was a blow from a new
quarter entirely, heading the ship into totally strange waters. What
you knew of navigation wouldn't help you a bit.

I said:

"Helen could blow you into Port o' Paradise but the other could
blow you into Port o' Hell."

Bill didn't say anything, only watched me. I poured a second
brandy. Bill said, mildly:

"There'll be cocktails and wine at dinner."

I said: "Fine," and drank the brandy.

I thought:

It's not her infernal beauty that's got me going. But why the hell
did I hate her so when I first saw her?

I didn't hate her now. All I felt was a burning curiosity. But why
did I have that vague sense of having long known her? And that not so
vague idea that she knew me better than I did her? I muttered:

"She makes you think of the sea, at that."

Bill said: "Who?"

I said: "The Demoiselle d'Ys."

He stepped back; he said, as though something was strangling him:

"Who's the Demoiselle d'Ys?"

I looked at him, suspiciously; I said: "Don't you know the names
of your guests? That girl down there--the Demoiselle Dahut d'Ys de
Keradel."

Bill said, rather dumbly:

"No, I didn't know that. All Lowell introduced her by was the de
Keradel part of it."

After a minute, he said: "Probably another drink won't hurt you.
I'll join you."

We drank; he said, casually:

"Never met them till tonight. De Keradel called on Lowell
yesterday morning--as one eminent psychiatrist upon another. Lowell
was interested, and invited him and his daughter to dinner. The old
boy is fond of Helen, and ever since she came back to town she's been
hostess at his parties. She's very fond of him, too."

He drank his brandy and set down the glass. He said, still
casually:

"I understand de Keradel has been here for a year or more.
Apparently, though, he never got around to visiting us until those
interviews of mine and yours appeared."

I jumped up as the implication of that struck me. I said:

"You mean--"

"I don't mean anything. I simply point out the coincidence."

"But if they had anything to do with Dick's death, why would they
risk coming here?"

"To find out how much we know--if anything." He hesitated. "It may
mean nothing. But--it's precisely the sort of thing I thought might
happen when I baited my hook. And de Keradel and his daughter don't
exactly disqualify as the sort of fish I expected to catch--and
especially now I know about the d'Ys part. Yes--especially."

He came round the table and put his hands on my shoulders:

"Alan, what I'm thinking wouldn't seem as insane to you, maybe, as
it does to me. It's not Alice in Wonderland, but Alice in Devil-land.
I want you tonight to say anything that comes into your head. Just
that. Don't be held back by politeness, or courtesy, or conventions or
anything else. If what you want to say is insulting--let it be so.
Don't bother about what Helen may think. Forget Lowell. Say whatever
comes into your mind. If de Keradel makes any assertions with which
you don't agree, don't listen politely--challenge him. If it makes him
lose his temper, all the better. Be just alcoholic enough to slip out
of any inhibitions of courtesy. You talk, I listen. Do you get it?"

I laughed and said:

"In vino veritas. But your idea is to make my vino bring out the
veritas in the other party. Sound psychology. All right, Bill, I'll
take another small one."

He said: "You know your limit. But watch your step."

We went down to dinner. I was feeling interested, amused, and
devil-may-care. The image I had of the Demoiselle was simplified to a
mist of silver-gold hair over two splotches of purple-blue in a white
face. On the other hand, Helen's was still the sharp-cut antique coin.
We sat down at table. Dr. Lowell was at the head, at his left de
Keradel, and at his right the Demoiselle Dahut. Helen sat beside de
Keradel and I beside the Demoiselle. Bill sat between me and Helen. It
was a nicely arranged table, with tall candles instead of electrics.
The butler brought cocktails and they were excellent. I lifted mine to
Helen and said:

"You are a lovely antique coin, Helen. Alexander the Great minted
you. Someday I will put you in my pocket."

Dr. Lowell looked a bit startled. But Helen clinked glasses and
murmured:

"You will never lose me, will you, darling?"

I said:

"No, sweetheart, nor will I give you away, nor let anybody steal
you, my lovely antique coin."

There was the pressure of a soft shoulder against me. I looked
away from Helen and straight into the eyes of the Demoiselle. They
weren't just purple-blue splotches now. They were the damnedest eyes--
big, and clear as a tropic shoal and little orchid sparks darted
through them like the play of the sun through a tropic shoal when you
turn over and look up through the clear water.

I said:

"Demoiselle Dahut--why do you make me think of the sea? I have
seen the Mediterranean the exact color of your eyes. And the crests of
the waves were as white as your skin. And there was sea-weed like your
hair. Your fragrance is the fragrance of the sea, and you walk like a
wave--"

Helen drawled:

"How poetic you are, darling. Perhaps you'd better eat your soup
before you take another cocktail."

I said:

"Sweetheart, you are my antique coin. But you are not yet in my
pocket. Nor am I in yours. I will have another cocktail before I eat
my soup."

She flushed at that. I felt bad about saying it. But I caught a
glance from Bill that heartened me. And the Demoiselle's eyes would
have repaid me for any remorse--if I hadn't just then felt stir that
inexplicable hot hatred, and knew quite definitely now that fear did
lurk within it. She laid her hand lightly on mine. It had a curious
tingling warmth. At the touch, the strange repulsion vanished. I
realized her beauty with an almost painful acuteness. She said:

"You love the old things. It is because you are of the ancient
blood--the blood of Armorica. Do you remember--"

My cocktail went splashing to the floor. Bill said:

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Alan. That was awkward of me. Briggs,
bring Dr. Caranac another."

I said:

"That's all right, Bill."

I hoped I said it easily, because deep in me was anger, wondering
how long it had been between that "remember" of the Demoiselle's and
the overturning of my glass. When she had said it, the tingling warmth
of her had seemed to concentrate itself into a point of fire, a spark
that shot up my arm into my brain. And instead of the pleasant candle-
lighted room, I saw a vast plain covered with huge stones arranged in
ordered aisles all marching to a central circle of monoliths within
which was a gigantic cairn. I knew it to be Carnac, that place of
mystery of the Druids and before them of a forgotten people, from
which my family had derived its name, changed only by the addition of
a syllable during the centuries. But it was not the Carnac I had known
when in Brittany. This place was younger; its standing stones upright,
in place; not yet gnawed by the teeth of untold centuries. There were
people, hundreds of them, marching along the avenues to the monolithed
circle. And although I knew that it was daylight, a blackness seemed
to hover over the crypt that was the circle's heart. Nor could I see
the ocean. Where it should have been, and far away, were tall towers
of gray and red stone, misty outlines of walls as of a great city. And
as I stood there, long and long it seemed to me, slowly the fear crept
up my heart like a rising tide. With it crept, side by side, cold,
implacable hatred and rage.

I had heard Bill speaking--and was back in the room. The fear was
gone. The wrath had remained.

I looked into the face of the Demoiselle Dahut. I thought I read
triumph there, and a subtle amusement. I was quite sure of what had
happened, and that there was no need of answering her interrupted
question--if it had been interrupted. She knew. It was hypnotism of
sorts, suggestion raised to the nth degree. I thought that if Bill
were right in his suspicions, the Demoiselle Dahut had not been very
wise to play a card like this so soon--either that, or damned sure of
herself. I closed my mind quickly to that thought.

Bill, Lowell, and de Keradel were talking, Helen listening and
watching me out of the corner of her eye. I whispered to the
Demoiselle:

"I knew a witch-doctor down in Zululand who could do that same
thing, Demoiselle de Keradel. He called the trick 'sending out the
soul.' He was not so beautiful as you are; perhaps that is why he had
to take so much more time to do it."

I was about to add that she had been as swift as the striking of a
deadly snake, but held that back.

She did not trouble to deny. She asked:

"Is that all you think--Alain de Carnac?"

I laughed:

"No, I think that your voice is also of the sea."

And so it was; the softest, sweetest contralto I'd ever heard--low
and murmurous and lulling, like the whisper of waves on a long smooth
beach.

She said:

"But is that a compliment then? Many times you have compared me to
the sea tonight. Is not the sea treacherous?"

"Yes," I said, and let her make what she would of that answer. She
did not seem offended.

The dinner went on with talk of this and that. It was a good
dinner, and so was the wine. The butler kept my glass filled so
faithfully that I wondered whether Bill had given him orders. The
Demoiselle was cosmopolitan in her points of view, witty, undeniably
charming--to use that much misused word. She had the gift of being
able to be what her conversation implied she was. There was nothing
exotic, nothing mysterious about her now. She was only a modern, well-
informed, cultivated young woman of extraordinary beauty. Helen was
delightful. There wasn't a single thing for me to grow unpleasantly
argumentative about, nor discourteous, nor insulting. I thought Bill
was looking a bit puzzled; disconcerted--like a prophet who has
foretold some happening which shows not the slightest sign of
materializing. If de Keradel was interested in Dick's death, there was
nothing to show it. For some time Lowell and he had been absorbed in
low-toned discussion to the exclusion of the rest of us. Suddenly I
heard Lowell say:

"But surely you do not believe in the objective reality of such
beings?"

The question brought me sharply to attention. I remembered Dick's
torn note--he had wanted Bill to consider something as objective
instead of subjective; I saw that Bill was listening intently. The
Demoiselle's eyes were upon Lowell, faint amusement in them.

De Keradel answered:

"I know they are objective."

Dr. Lowell asked, incredulously:

"You believe that these creatures, these demons--actually
existed?"

"And still exist," said de Keradel. "Reproduce the exact
conditions under which those who had the ancient wisdom evoked these
beings--forces, presences, powers, call them what you will--and the
doors shall open and They come through. That Bright One the Egyptians
named Isis will stand before us as of old, challenging us to lift Her
veil. And that Dark Power stronger than She, whom the Egyptians named
Set and Typhon, but who had another name in the shrines of an older
and wiser race--It will make Itself manifest. Yes, Dr. Lowell, and
still others will come through the opened doors to teach us, to
counsel us, to aid and obey us--"

"Or to command us, my father," said the Demoiselle, almost
tenderly.

"Or to command us," echoed de Keradel, mechanically; some of the
color had drained from his face, and I thought there was fear in the
glance he gave his daughter.

I touched Bill's foot with mine, and felt an encouraging pressure.
I raised my wine and squinted through it at de Keradel. I said,
irritatingly explanatory:

"Dr. de Keradel is a true showman. If one provides the right
theater, the right scenery, the right supporting cast, the right music
and script and cues--the right demons or whatnot bounce out from the
wings as the stars of the show. Well, I have seen some rather
creditable illusions produced under such conditions. Real enough to
deceive most amateurs--"

De Keradel's eyes dilated; he half rose from his chair; he
whispered:

"Amateur! Do you imply that I am an amateur?"

I said, urbanely, still looking at my glass:

"Not at all. I said you were a showman."

He mastered his anger with difficulty; he said to Lowell:

"They are not illusions, Dr. Lowell. There is a pattern, a
formula, to be observed. Is there anything more rigid than that
formula by which the Catholic Church establishes communion with its
God? The chanting, the prayers, the gestures--even the intonation of
the prayers--all are fixed. Is not every ritual--Mohammedan, Buddhist,
Shintoist, every act of worship throughout the world, in all
religions--as rigidly prescribed? The mind of man recognizes that only
by exact formula can it touch the minds that are not human. It is
memory of an ancient wisdom, Dr. Caranac--but of that no more now. I
tell you again that what comes upon my stage is not illusion."

I asked: "How do you know?"

He answered, quietly: "I do know."

Dr. Lowell said, placatingly: "Extremely strange, extremely
realistic visions can be induced by combinations of sounds, odors,
movements, and colors. There even seem to be combinations which can
create in different subjects approximately the same visions--establish
similar emotional rhythms. But I have never had evidence that these
visions were anything but subjective."

He paused, and I saw his hands clench, the knuckles whiten; he
said, slowly:

"Except--once."

De Keradel was watching him, the clenched hands could not have
escaped his notice. He asked: "And that once?"

Lowell answered, with a curious harshness: "I have no evidence."

De Keradel went on: "But there is another element in this
evocation which is not of the stage--nor of the showman, Dr. Caranac.
It is, to use a chemical term, a catalyst. The necessary element to
bring about a required result--itself remaining untouched and
unchanged. It is a human element--a woman or man or child--who is en
rapport with the Being evoked. Of such was the Pythoness at Delphi,
who upon her tripod threw herself open to the God and spoke with his
voice. Of such were the Priestesses of Isis of the Egyptians, and of
Ishtar of the Babylonians--themselves the one and the same. Of such
was the Priestess of Hecate, Goddess of Hell, whose secret rites were
lost until I rediscovered them. Of such was the warrior-king who was
Priest of tentacled Khalk-ru, the Kraken God of the Uighurs, and of
such was that strange priest at whose summoning came the Black God of
the Scyths, in the form of a monstrous frog--"

Bill broke in:

"But these worships are of the far-distant past. Surely, none has
believed in them for many a century. Therefore this peculiar line of
priests and priestesses must long ago have died out. How today could
one be found?"

I thought the Demoiselle shot de Keradel a warning look, and was
about to speak. He ignored her, swept away by this idea that ruled
him, forced to expound, to justify, it. He said:

"But you are wrong. They do live. They live in the brains of those
who sprang from them. They sleep in the brains of their descendants.
They sleep until one comes who knows how to awaken them. And to that
awakener--what reward! Not the golden and glittering trash in the tomb
of some Tut-ankh-Amen, not the sterile loot of some Genghis Khan, or
of Attila...shining pebbles and worthless metal...playthings. But
storehouses of memories, hives of knowledge--knowledge that sets its
possessor so high above all other men that he is as a god."

I said, politely:

"I'd like to be a god for a time. Where can I find such
storehouse? Or open such hive? It would be worth a few stings to
become a god."

The veins throbbed in his temples; he said:

"You mock! Nevertheless, I will give you a hint. Once Dr. Charcot
hypnotized a girl who had long been a subject of his experiments. He
sent her deeper into the hypnotic sleep than ever he had dared before
with any subject. Suddenly he heard another voice than hers coming
from her throat. It was a man's voice, the rough voice of a French
peasant. He questioned that voice. It told him many things--things the
girl could not possibly have known. The voice spoke of incidents of
the Jacquerie. And the Jacquerie was six hundred years before. Dr.
Charcot took down what that voice told him. Later, he investigated,
minutely. He verified. He traced the girl's parentage. She had come
straight down from a leader of that peasant uprising. He tried again.
He pushed past that voice to another. And this voice, a woman's, told
him of things that had happened a thousand years ago. Told them in
intimate detail, as one who had been a spectator of these happenings.
And again he investigated. And again he found that what the voice had
told him was true."

I asked, even more politely:

"And have we now arrived at transmigration of souls?"

He answered, violently:

"You dare to mock! What Charcot did was to pierce through veil
upon veil of memory for a thousand years. I have gone further than
that. I have gone back through the veils of memory not one thousand
years. I have gone back ten thousand. I, de Keradel, tell you so."

Lowell said:

"But Dr. de Keradel--memory is not carried by the germ plasm.
Physical characteristics, weaknesses, predilections, coloration,
shape, and so on--yes. The son of a violinist can inherit his father's
hands, his talent, his ear--but not the memory of the notes that his
father played. Not his father's memories."

De Keradel said:

"You are wrong. Those memories can be carried. In the brain. Or
rather, in that which uses the brain as its instrument. I do not say
that every one inherits these memories of their ancestors. Brains are
not standardized. Nature is not a uniform workman. In some, the cells
that carry these memories seem to be lacking. In others they are
incomplete, blurred, having many hiatuses. But in others, a few, they
are complete, the records clear, to be read like a printed book if the
needle of consciousness, the eye of consciousness, can be turned upon
them."

He ignored me; to Dr. Lowell he said with intense earnestness:

"I tell you, Dr. Lowell, that this is so--in spite of all that has
been written of the germ plasm, the chromosomes, the genes--the little
carriers of heredity. I tell you that I have proved it to be so. And I
tell you that there are minds in which are memories that go back and
back to a time when man was not yet man. Back to the memories of his
ape-like forefathers. Back further even than that--to the first
amphibians who crawled out of the sea and began the long climb up the
ladder of evolution to become what we are today."

I had no desire now to interrupt, no desire to anger--the man's
intensity of belief was too strong. He said:

"Dr. Caranac has spoken, contemptuously, of the transmigration of
souls. I say that man can imagine nothing that cannot be, and that he
who speaks contemptuously of any belief is therefore an ignorant man.
I say that it is this inheritance of memories which is at the bottom
of the belief in reincarnation--perhaps the belief in immortality. Let
me take an illustration from one of your modern toys--the phonograph.
What we call consciousness is a needle that, running along the
dimension of time, records upon certain cells its experiences. Quite
as the recording needle of a phonograph does upon the master disks. It
can run this needle back over these cells after they have been stored
away, turning the graphs upon them into memories. Hearing again,
seeing again, living again, the experiences recorded on them. Not
always can the consciousness find one of these disks it seeks. Then we
say that we have forgotten. Sometimes the graphs are not deep cut
enough, the disks blurred--and then we say memory is hazy, incomplete.

"The ancestral memories, the ancient disks, are stored in another
part of the brain, away from those that carry the memories of this
life. Obviously this must be so, else there would be confusion, and
the human animal would be hampered by intrusion of memories having no
relation to his present environment. In the ancient days, when life
was simpler and the environment not so complex, the two sets of
memories were closer. That is why we say that ancient man relied more
upon his 'intuitions' and less upon reason. That is why primitive men
today do the same. But as time went on, and life grew more complex,
those who depended less upon the ancestral memories than those which
dealt with the problems of their own time--those were the ones with
the better chance to survive. Once the cleavage had begun, it must
perforce have continued rapidly--like all such evolutionary processes.

"Nature does not like to lose entirely anything it has once
created. Therefore it is that at a certain stage of its development
the human embryo has the gills of the fish, and at a later stage the
hair of the ape. And, therefore, it is that in certain men and women
today, these storehouses of ancient memories are fully stocked--to be
opened, Dr. Caranac, and having been opened, to be read."

I smiled and drank another glass of wine.

Lowell said:

"That is all strongly suggestive, Dr. de Keradel. If your theory
is correct, then these inherited memories would without doubt appear
as former lives to those who could recall them. They could be a basis
of the doctrine of transmigration of souls, of reincarnation. How else
could the primitive mind account for them?"

De Keradel said:

"They explain many things--the thought of the Chinese that unless
a man has a son, he dies indeed. The folk saying--'A man lives in his
children-'"

Lowell said:

"The new born bee knows precisely the law and duties of the hive.
It does not have to be taught to fan, to clean, to mix the pollen and
the nectar into the jellies that produce the queen and the drone, the
different jelly that is placed in the cell of the worker. None teaches
it the complex duties of the hive. The knowledge, the memory, is in
the egg, the wriggler, the nymph. It is true, too, of the ants, and of
many insects. But it is not true of man, nor of any other mammal."

De Keradel said:

"It is true also of man."



CHAPTER IV. THE LOST CITY OF YS



There was a devil of a lot of truth in what de Keradel had said. I
had come across manifestations of that same ancestral memory in odd
corners of the earth. I had been burning to corroborate him, despite
that excusable dig of his at my ignorance. I would have liked to talk
to him as one investigator to another.

Instead I drained my glass and said severely: "Briggs--I have not
had a drink for five minutes," and then to the table in general: "Just
a moment. Let us be logical. Anything so important as the soul and its
travels deserves the fullest consideration. Dr. de Keradel began this
discussion by asserting the objective existence of what the showman
produced. That is correct, Dr. de Keradel?"

He answered, stiffly: "Yes."

I said: "Dr. de Keradel then adduced certain experiments of Dr.
Charcot in hypnotism. Those cases are not convincing to me. In the
South Seas, in Africa, in Kamchatka, I have heard the most arrant
fakirs speak not in two or three but in half a dozen voices. It is a
well-known fact that a hypnotized subject will sometimes speak in
different voices. It is quite as well known that a schizoid, a case of
multiple personality, will speak in voices ranging from high soprano
to bass. And all this without ancestral memories being involved.

"It is a symptom of their condition. Nothing more. Am I right, Dr.
Lowell?"

Lowell said: "You are."

I said: "As for what Charcot's subjects told him--who knows what
they had heard their grandmothers say? Stories passed down by the
family--heard when children, treasured by the sub-consciousness. Built
up, improvements suggested, by Charcot himself. Charcot finds two or
three points true, naturally. There is none so credulous as he who
seeks evidence to support his idee fixe, his pet theory. So these few
points become all. Well, I am not so credulous as Charcot, Dr. de
Keradel."

He said: "I read your interviews in the newspaper. I seemed to
detect a certain amount of credulity there, Dr. Caranac."

So he had read the interviews. I felt Bill press my foot again. I
said:

"I tried to make plain to the reporters that belief in the hokum
was necessary to make the hokum effective. I admit that to the victim
of his belief it doesn't make much difference whether it was hokum or
reality. But that doesn't mean that the hokum is real or can affect
anybody else. And I tried to make plain that the defense against the
hokum is very simple. It is--don't believe it."

The veins on his forehead began to twitch again. He said: "By
hokum you mean, I assume, nonsense."

"More than that," I said, cheerfully. "Bunk!"

Dr. Lowell looked pained. I drank my wine, and grinned at the
Demoiselle.

Helen said: "Your manners aren't so good tonight, darling."

I said: "Manners--hell! What're manners in a discussion of
goblins, incarnation, ancestral memories and Isis, Set and the Black
God of the Scyths who looked like a frog? Now I'm going to tell you
something, Dr. de Keradel. I've been in a lot of out of the way
corners of this globe. I went there hunting for goblins and demons.
And in all my travels I've never seen one thing that couldn't be
explained on the basis of hypnotism, mass suggestion, or trickery. Get
that. Not one thing. And I've seen a lot."

That was a lie--but I wanted to see the effect on him. I saw it.
The veins in his temples were twitching more than ever, his lips were
white. I said:

"Years ago I had a brilliant idea which puts the whole problem in
its simplest form. The brilliant idea was based on the fact that the
hearing is probably the last sense to die; that after the heart stops
the brain continues to function as long as it has enough oxygen; and
that while the brain does function, although every sense is dead--it
can have experiences that seem to last for days and weeks, although
the actual dream lasts but a fraction of a second.

"'Heaven and Hell, Inc.' That was my idea. 'Insure yourself an
immortality of joy!' 'Give your enemy an immortality of torment!' To
be done by expert hypnotists, masters of suggestion, sitting at the
bedside of the dying and whispering into his ear that which the brain
was to dramatize, after hearing and every other sense was dead--"

The Demoiselle drew a sharp breath. De Keradel was staring at me
with a strange intentness.

"Well, there it was," I went on. "For a sufficient sum you could
promise, and actually give, your client the immortality he desired.
Any kind he wanted--from the houri-haunted Paradise of Mahomet to the
angel choirs of Paradise. And if the sum were sufficient, and you
could gain access, you could whisper into the ear of your employer's
enemy the Hell he was going into for aeon after aeon. And I'll bet
he'd go into it. That was my 'Heaven and Hell, Inc.'"

"A sweet idea, darling," murmured Helen.

"A sweet idea, yes," I said, bitterly. "Let me tell you what it
did for me. It happens that it's entirely feasible. Very well--
consider me, the inventor. If there is a delectable life after death,
will I enjoy it? Not at all. I'll be thinking--this is just a vision
in the dying cells of my brain. It has no objective reality. Nothing
that could happen to me in that future existence, assuming it to be
real, could be real to me. I would think--Oh, yes, very ingenious of
me to create such ideas, but after all, they're only in the dying
cells of my brain. Of course," I said, grimly, "there is a
compensation. If I happened to land in one of the traditional hells, I
wouldn't take it any more seriously. And all the miracles of magic, or
sorcery, I've ever beheld were no more real than those dying visions
would be."

The Demoiselle whispered, so faintly that none but I could hear:
"I could make them real to you, Alan de Caranac--either Heaven or
Hell."

I said: "In life or in death, your theories cannot be proven, Dr.
de Keradel. At least, not to me."

He did not answer, staring at me, fingers tapping the table.

I went on: "Suppose, for example, you desired to know what it was
that they worshiped among the stones of Carnac. You might reproduce
every rite. Might have your descendant of priestess with the ancient
ghost wide-awake in her brain. But how could you know that what came
to the great cairn within the circle of monoliths--the Gatherer within
the Cairn, the Visitor to the Alkar-Az--was real?"

De Keradel asked, incredulously, in a curiously still voice, as
though exercising some strong restraint: "What can you know of the
Alkar-Az--or of the Gatherer within the Cairn?"

I was wondering about that, too. I couldn't remember ever having
heard those names. Yet they had sprung to my lips as though long
known. I looked at the Demoiselle. She dropped her eyes, but not
before I had seen in them that same half-amused triumph as when, under
the touch of her hand, I had beheld ancient Carnac. I answered de
Keradel:

"Ask your daughter."

His eyes were no longer blue, they had no color at all. They were
like little spheres of pale fire. He did not speak--but his eyes
demanded answer from her. The Demoiselle met them indifferently. She
shrugged a white shoulder. She said: "I did not tell him." She added,
with a distinct touch of malice: "Perhaps, my father--he remembered."

I leaned to her, and touched her glass with mine; I was feeling
pretty good again. I said: "I remember--I remember--"

Helen said, tartly: "If you drink much more of that wine, you're
going to remember a swell headache, darling."

The Demoiselle Dahut murmured: "What do you remember, Alain de
Carnac?"

I sang the old Breton song--to the English words:

Fisher! Fisher! Have you seen

White Dahut the Shadows' Queen?

Riding on her stallion black.

At her heels her shadow pack--

Have you seen Dahut ride by.

Swift as cloudy shadows fly

O'er the moon in stormy sky.

On her stallion black as night--

Shadows' Queen--Dahut the White?

There was a queer silence. Then I noticed that de Keradel was
sitting up oddly rigid and looking at me with that same expression he
had worn when I had spoken of the Alkar-Az--and the Gatherer in the
Cairn. Also that Bill's face had bleached. I looked at the Demoiselle
and there were little dancing orchid sparks in her eyes. I hadn't the
slightest idea why the old song should have had such an effect.

Helen said: "That's a weird melody, Alan. Who was Dahut the
White?"

"A witch, angel," I told her. "A wicked, beautiful witch. Not a
torched-tressed witch like you, but a blonde one. She lived twenty
centuries or more ago in a city named Ys. Nobody knows quite where Ys
was, but probably its towers rose where now the sea flows between
Quiberon and Belle Isle. Certainly, it was once land there. Ys was a
wicked city, filled with witches and sorcerers, but wickedest of all
was Dahut the White, the daughter of the King. She picked her lovers
where she would. They pleased her for a night, two nights--seldom
three. Then she cast them from her...into the sea, some say. Or, say
others, she gave them to her shadows--"

Bill interrupted: "What do you mean by that?"

His face was whiter than before. De Keradel was looking sharply at
him. I said:

"I mean--shadows. Didn't I sing to you that she was Queen of
Shadows? She was a witch--and could make shadows do her bidding. All
sorts of shadows--shadows of the lovers she'd killed, demon shadows,
Incubi and Succubi nightmares--a specialist in shadows was the White
Dahut, according to the legend.

"At last the Gods determined to take a hand. Don't ask me what
Gods. Pagan, if all this was before the introduction of Christianity--
Christian if after. Whichever they were, they must have believed that
who lives by the sword must die by the sword and all of that, because
they sent to Ys a youthful hero with whom Dahut fell instantly,
completely, and madly in love.

"He was the first man she had ever loved, despite her former
affairs. But he was coy--aloof. He could forgive her previous
philandering, but before he would accept her favors he must be
convinced she truly loved him. How could she convince him? Quite
easily. Ys, it appears was below sea-level and protected by walls
which kept out the tides. There was one gate which would let in the
sea. Why was there such a gate? I don't know. Probably for use in case
of invasion, revolution, or something of the sort. At any rate, the
legend says, there was such a gate. The key to it hung always about
the neck of the King of Ys, Dahut's father.

"'Bring me that key--and I'll know you love me,' said the hero.
Dahut stole down to her sleeping father, and stole the key from his
neck. She gave it to her lover. He opened the sea-gates. The sea
poured in. Finish--for wicked Ys. Finish--for wicked Dahut the White."

"She was drowned?" asked Helen.

"That's the curious detail of the legend. The story is that Dahut
had a rush of filial devotion to the heart, rushed away, awakened the
father she had betrayed, took her big black stallion, mounted it, drew
the King up behind her and tried to beat the waves to higher ground.
There must have been something good in her after all. But--another
extraordinary detail--her shadows rebelled, got behind the waves and
pushed them on higher and faster. So the waves overtook the stallion
and Dahut and her papa--and that was indeed their finish. But still
they ride along the shores of Quiberon 'on her stallion black, at her
heels her shadow pack--'" I stopped, abruptly.

My left arm had been raised, the glass of wine within it. By a
freak of the light, the candles threw its shadow sharply upon the
white tablecloth, directly in front of the Demoiselle.

And the Demoiselle's white hands were busy with the shadow of my
wrist, as though measuring it, as though passing something under and
around it.

I dropped my hand and caught hers. Swiftly she slipped them under
the edge of the table. As swiftly I dropped my right hand and took
from her fingers what they held. It was a long hair, and as I raised
it, I saw that it was one of her own.

I thrust it into the candle flame and held it there while it
writhed and shriveled.

The Demoiselle laughed--sweet, mocking laughter. I heard de
Keradel's chuckle echo hers. The disconcerting thing was that his
amusement seemed not only frank but friendly. The Demoiselle said:

"First he compares me to the sea--the treacherous sea. Then
darkly, by inference, to wicked Dahut, the Shadow Queen. And then he
thinks me a witch--and burns my hair. And yet--he says he is not
credulous--that he does not believe!"

Again she laughed--and again De Keradel echoed her.

I felt foolish, damned foolish. It was touche for the Demoiselle,
beyond any doubt. I glared at Bill. Why the devil had he led me into
such a trap. But Bill was not laughing. He was looking at the
Demoiselle with a face peculiarly stony. Nor was Helen smiling. She
was looking at the Demoiselle too. With that expression which women
wear when they desire to call another by one of those beautifully
descriptive Old English words which the Oxford Dictionary says are
"not now in decent use."

I grinned, and said to her: "It appears that another lady has put
me on a hornet's nest."

Helen gave me a long comforting look. It said: "I can do that, but
God help any other woman who tries it."

There was a short and awkward silence. De Keradel broke it.

"I do not quite know why, but I am reminded of a question I wished
to ask you, Dr. Bennett. I was much interested in the account of the
suicide of Mr. Ralston, who, I gathered from your interview in the
newspapers, was not only a patient of yours but a close friend."

I saw Bill blink in the old way when he had come to some
unshakeable conviction. He answered, smoothly, in his best
professional manner.

"Yes, indeed, Dr. de Keradel, as friend and patient I probably
knew him as well as anyone."

De Keradel said: "It is not so much his death that interests me.
It is that in the account of it three other men were mentioned. His
death linked to theirs, in fact, as though the same cause were behind
all."

Bill said: "Quite so."

I had the idea that the Demoiselle was watching Bill intently from
the corners of her lovely eyes. De Keradel took up his glass, twirled
it slowly, and said:

"I am really much interested, Dr. Bennett. We are all of us
physicians, here. Your sister...my daughter...are of course in our
confidence. They will not talk. Do you think that these four deaths
had anything in common?"

"Without doubt," answered Bill.

"What?" asked de Keradel.

"Shadows!" said Bill.



CHAPTER V. THE WHISPERING SHADOW



I stared at Bill, incredulously. I remembered his anxiety over my
mention of shadows to the reporters, and his tenseness when I had told
of the Shadows of Dahut the White. And here we were, back to shadows
again. There must be some link, but what was it?

De Keradel exclaimed: "Shadows! Do you mean all suffered from
identical hallucinations?"

"Shadows--yes," said Bill. "Hallucinations--I'm not sure."

De Keradel repeated, thoughtfully: "You are not sure." Then asked:
"Were these shadows--what your friend and patient desired you to
regard as objective rather than subjective? I read the newspaper
reports with great interest, Dr. Bennett."

"I'm sure you did, Dr. de Keradel," said Bill, and there was an
edge of irony to his voice. "Yes--it was the shadow which he desired
me to regard as real, not imaginary. The shadow--not shadows. There
was only one--" He paused, then added with a faint but plainly
deliberate emphasis--"only one shadow for each...you know."

I thought I understood Bill's plan of battle. He was playing a
hunch; bluffing; pretending to have knowledge of this shadowy decoy of
death, whatever the thing might be, exactly as he had pretended to
have knowledge of a common cause for the four suicides. He had used
that bait to lure his fish within range of the hook. Now that he
thought he had them there, he was using the same bait to make them
take it. I didn't believe he knew any more than when he had talked to
me at the Club. And I thought he was dangerously underestimating the
de Keradels. That last thrust had been a bit obvious.

De Keradel was saying, placidly: "One shadow or many, what
difference, Dr. Bennett? Hallucinatory shapes may appear singly--as
tradition says the shade of Julius Caesar appeared to the remorseful
Brutus. Or be multiplied by the thousands which the dying brain of
Tiberius pictured thronging about his death bed, menacing him who had
slain them. There are organic disturbances which create such
hallucinations. Ocular irregularities produce them. Drugs and alcohol
spawn them. They are born of abnormalities of brain and nerves. They
are children of auto-intoxication. Progeny of fever, and of high blood
pressure. They are also born of conscience. Am I to understand that
you reject all these rational explanations?"

Bill said, stolidly: "No. Say, rather, that I do not yet accept
any of them."

Dr. Lowell said, abruptly: "There is still another explanation.
Suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion. If Ralston and the others had
come under the influence of someone who knew how to control minds by
such methods...then I can well understand how they might have been
driven to kill themselves. I, myself--"

His fingers clenched around the stem of the wine glass. The stem
snapped, cutting him. He wrapped a napkin around the bleeding hand. He
said: "It is no matter. I wish the memory that caused it went no
deeper."

The Demoiselle's eyes were on him, and there was a tiny smile at
the corners of her mouth. I was sure de Keradel had missed nothing. He
asked:

"Do you accept Dr. Lowell's explanation?"

Bill answered, hesitantly: "No--not entirely--I don't know."

The Breton paused, studying him with a curious intentness. He
said, "Orthodox science tells us that a shadow is only a diminution of
light within a certain area caused by the interposition of a material
body between a source of light and some surface. It is insubstantial,
an airy nothing. So orthodox science tells us. What and where was the
material body that cast this shadow upon the four--if it was no
hallucination?"

Dr. Lowell said: "A thought placed cunningly in a man's mind might
cast such shadow."

De Keradel replied, blandly: "But Dr. Bennett does not accept that
theory."

Bill said nothing. De Keradel went on: "If Dr. Bennett believes
that a shadow caused the deaths, and if he will not admit it
hallucination, nor that it was cast and directed by a material body--
then inevitably the conclusion must be that he admits a shadow may
have the attributes of a material body. This shadow came necessarily
from somewhere; it attaches itself to someone, follows, and finally
compels that someone to kill himself. All this implies volition,
cognition, purpose and emotion. These shadows? They are attributes of
material things only--phenomena of the consciousness housed in the
brain. The brain is material and lives in an indubitably material
skull. But a shadow is not material, and therefore can have no skull
to house a brain; and therefore can have no brain, and therefore no
consciousness. And, still again, therefore, can have no volition,
cognition, will, or emotion. And, lastly therefore, could not possibly
urge, lure, drive, frighten, or coerce a material living being to
self-destruction. And if you do not agree with that, my dear Dr.
Bennett, what you are admitting is--witchcraft."

Bill answered, quietly: "If so, why do you laugh at me? What are
those theories of ritual you have been expounding to us but
witchcraft? Perhaps you have converted me, Dr. de Keradel."

The Breton stopped laughing, abruptly, he said: "So?" and again,
slowly: "So! But they are not theories, Dr. Bennett. They are
discoveries. Or, rather, rediscoveries of, let us say, unorthodox
science." The veins in his forehead were twitching; he added, with an
indefinable menace: "If it is truly I who have opened your eyes--I
hope to make your conversion complete."

I saw that Lowell was looking at de Keradel with a strange
intentness. The Demoiselle was looking at Bill, the little devilish
lights flickering in her eyes; and I thought that there were both
malice and calculation in her faint smile. There was an odd tension
about the table--as of something unseen, crouching and ready to
strike.

Helen broke it, quoting dreamily:

Some there be that shadows kiss.

Such have but a shadow's bliss--

The Demoiselle was laughing; laughter that was more like the
laughter of little waves than anything else. But there were undertones
to it that I liked even less than the subtle menace in her smile--
something inhuman, as though the little waves were laughing at the
dead men who lay under them.

De Keradel spoke rapidly, in a tongue that I felt I ought to
recognize, but did not. The Demoiselle became demure. She said,
sweetly: "Your pardon, Mademoiselle Helen. It was not at you that I
laughed. It was that suddenly I am reminded of something infinitely
amusing. Someday I shall tell you and you too will laugh--"

De Keradel interrupted her, urbane as before: "And I ask your
pardon, Dr. Bennett. You must excuse the rudeness of an enthusiast.
And also his persistency. Because I now ask if you could, without too
great violation of confidence between physician and patient, inform me
as to the symptoms of Mr. Ralston. The behavior of this--this shadow,
if you will call it so. I am greatly curious--professionally."

Bill said: "There's nothing I'd like better. You, with your unique
experience may recognize some point of significance that I have
missed. To satisfy professional ethics, let us call it a consultation,
even though it is a postmortem one."

I had the fleeting thought that Bill was pleased; that he had
scored some point toward which he had been maneuvering. I pushed my
chair back a little so that I could see both the Demoiselle and her
father. Bill said:

"I'll start from the beginning. If there is anything you want me
to amplify, don't hesitate to interrupt. Ralston called me up and said
he wanted me to look him over. I had neither seen nor heard from him
for a couple of months; had thought, indeed, that he was on one of his
trips abroad. He began, abruptly: 'Something's wrong with me, Bill. I
see a shadow.' I laughed, but he didn't. He repeated: 'I see a shadow,
Bill. And I'm afraid!' I said, still laughing: 'If you couldn't see a
shadow you certainly would have something wrong with you.' He answered
like a frightened child.

"'But, Bill--there's nothing to make this shadow!'

"He leaned toward me, and now I realized that he was holding
himself together by truly extraordinary effort. He asked: 'Does that
mean I'm going crazy? Is seeing a shadow a common symptom when you are
going insane? Tell me, Bill--is it?'

"I told him that the notion was nonsense; that in all probability
some little thing was wrong with his eyes or his liver. He said: 'But
this shadow--whispers!'

"I said: 'You need a drink,' and I gave him a stiff one. I said:
'Tell me exactly what it is you think you see, and, if you can,
precisely when you first thought you saw it.' He answered: 'Four
nights ago. I was in the library, writing--' Let me explain, Dr. de
Keradel, that he lived in the old Ralston house on 78th Street; alone
except for Simpson, the butler, who was a heritage from his father,
and half a dozen servants. He went on: 'I thought I saw someone or
something slip along the wall into the curtains that cover the window.
The window was at my back and I was intent upon my letter, but the
impression was so vivid that I jumped up and went over to the
curtains. There was nothing there. I returned to my desk--but I
couldn't get rid of the feeling that someone or something was in the
room.'

"He said: 'I was so disturbed that I made a note of the time.'"

"A mental echo of the visual hallucination," said De Keradel. "An
obvious concomitant."

"Perhaps," said Bill. "At any rate, a little later he had the same
experience, only this time the movement was from right to left, the
reverse of the first. In the next half hour it was repeated six times,
always in the opposite direction--I mean, from left to right, then
right to left and so on. He laid emphasis upon this, as though he
thought it in some way significant. He said: 'It was, as though it
were weaving.' I asked what 'It' was like. He said: 'It had no shape.
It was just movement--No, it had no shape then.' The feeling of not
being alone in the room increased to such an uncomfortable pitch that
shortly after midnight he left the library, leaving the lights
burning, and turned in. There was no recurrence of the symptoms, in
his bedroom. He slept soundly. Nor was he troubled the next night. By
the day following he had almost forgotten the matter.

"That night he dined out and came home about eleven o'clock. He
went into the library to go over his mail. He told me: 'Suddenly I had
the strongest feeling that someone was watching me from the curtains.
I turned my head, slowly. I distinctly saw a shadow upon the curtains.
Or, rather, as though it were intermingled with them--like a shadow
cast by something behind. It was about the size and shape of a man.'
He jumped to the curtains and tore them away. Nothing was behind them
nor was there anything beyond the window to cast a shadow. He sat down
again at the table, but still he felt eyes upon him. 'Unwinding eyes,'
he said. 'Eyes that never left me. Eyes of someone or something that
kept always just past the edge of my field of vision. If I turned
quickly, it slipped behind me, was watching me from my other side. If
I moved slowly, just as slowly did it move.'

"Sometimes he caught a flickering movement, a shadowy flitting, as
he pursued the eyes. Sometimes he thought he had caught the shadow.
But always it faded, was gone, before he could focus it. And instantly
he felt its gaze upon him from another quarter.

"'From right to left it went,' he said. 'From left to right...and
back again...and back again and again...weaving...weaving...'

"'Weaving what?' I asked, impatiently.

"He answered, quite simply: 'My shroud.'

"He sat there, fighting until he could fight no more. Then he
sought refuge in his bedroom. He did not sleep well, for he thought
the shadow was lurking on the threshold; had pressed itself against
the other side of the door, listening. If so, it did not enter.

"Dawn came, and after that he slept soundly. He arose late, spent
the afternoon at golf, dined out, went with a party to the theater and
then to a night club. For hours he had given no thought to the
experience of the night before. He said: 'If I thought of it at all,
it was to laugh at it as childish foolishness.' He reached home about
three o'clock. He let himself in. As he closed the door he heard a
whisper--'You are late!' It was quite plain, and as though the
whisperer stood close beside him--"

De Keradel interrupted: "Progressive hallucination. First the idea
of movement; then the sharpening into shape; then sound. Hallucination
progressing from the visual field to the auditory."

Bill went on, as though he had not heard: "He said the voice had
some quality which--I quote him--'made you feel the loathing you do
when you put your hand on a slimy slug in a garden at night, and at
the same time an unholy desire to have it go on whispering forever.'
He said: 'It was unnamable horror and perverted ecstasy in one.'

"Simpson had left the lights burning. The hall was well lighted.
He could see no one. But the voice had been reality. He stood for a
few moments fighting for control. Then he walked in, took off hat and
top-coat, and started for the stairs. He said: 'I happened to look
down, and over the top of my eyes I saw a shadow gliding along about
six feet ahead of me. I raised my eyes--and it vanished. I went slowly
up the stairs. If I looked down at the steps I could see the shadow
flitting ahead of me. Always at the same distance. When I looked up--
there was nothing. The shadow was sharper than it had been the night
before. I thought it was the shadow of a woman. A naked woman. And
suddenly I realized that the whispering voice had been that of a
woman.'

"He went straight to his room. He passed the door. He looked down
and saw the shadow still those two paces before him. He stepped
swiftly back and into the room, closing the door and locking it. He
switched on the lights and stood with his ear against the door. He
said: 'I heard someone, something, laughing. The same voice that had
whispered.' And then he heard it whisper--'I will watch outside your
door tonight...tonight...tonight...' He listened with that same alien
mixture of horror and desire. He lusted to throw open the door, but
the loathing held back his hand. He said: 'I kept the lights on. But
the thing did what it had promised. It watched all night at my door.
It wasn't quiet though. It danced...I couldn't see it...but I know it
danced...out there in the hall. It danced and weaved...right to
left...left to right and back again and again...danced and weaved till
dawn outside my door...weaving...my shroud, Bill...'

"I reasoned with him, much along your lines, Dr. de Keradel. I
went over him thoroughly. I could find, superficially, nothing wrong.
I took specimens for the various tests. He said: 'I hope to God you do
find something wrong, Bill. If you don't--it means the shadow is real.
I think I'd rather know I was going crazy than that. After all,
craziness can be cured.'

"I said: 'You're not going back to your house. You're going to
stay at the Club until I've gotten my reports. Then, no matter what
they show, you're going to hop on a boat and take a long trip.'

"He shook his head: 'I've got to go back to the house, Bill.'

"I asked: 'Why, for God's sake?'

"He hesitated, puzzled distress on his face; he said: 'I don't
know. But I've got to.'

"I said, firmly: 'You stay here with me tonight, and tomorrow you
hop on a boat. To anywhere. I'll let you know about the tests and do
my prescribing by radio.' He replied, still with that same puzzled
look: 'I can't go away now. The fact...' he hesitated...'the fact is,
Bill...I've met a girl...a woman. I can't leave her.'

"I gaped at him. I said: 'You're going to marry her? Who is she?'

"He looked at me, helplessly: 'I can't tell you, Bill. I can't
tell you anything about her.'

"I asked: 'Why not?'

"He answered with the same puzzled hesitation. 'I don't know why I
can't. But I can't. It seems to be a part of--of the other in some
way. But I can't tell you.' And to every question that touched upon
this girl he had the same answer."

Dr. Lowell said, sharply: "You told me nothing of that, Dr.
Bennett. He said nothing more to you than that? That he could not tell
you anything more about this woman? That he did not know why--but he
could not?"

Bill said: "That--and no more."

Helen said, coldly: "What amuses you so, Demoiselle? I do not find
anything in all this that is humorous."

I looked at the Demoiselle. The little orchid sparks were alive in
her eyes, her red lips smiling--and cruel.



CHAPTER VI. KISS OF THE SHADOW



I said: "The Demoiselle is a true artist."

There was a small, tense silence around the table. De Keradel
broke it, harshly:

"Exactly what do you mean by that, Dr. Caranac?

I smiled: "All true artists are pleased when art attains
excellence. Story telling is an art. Dr. Bennett was telling his
perfectly. Therefore, your daughter, a true artist, was pleased. A
perfect syllogism. Is it not true, Demoiselle?"

She answered, quietly:

"You have said it." But she was no longer smiling, and her eyes
said something else. So did de Keradel's. Before he could speak, I
said:

"Only tribute from one artist to another, Helen. Go on, Bill."

Bill went on, quickly:

"I sat and reasoned with him. Betimes, I gave him several stiff
drinks. I related some famous cases of hallucination--Paganini, the
great violinist, who at times thought he saw a shadowy woman in white
stand beside him playing her violin while he played his. Leonardo da
Vinci who thought he saw and spoke with the shade of Chiron, wisest of
all the Centaurs, who tutored the youthful Aesculapius--dozens of
similar instances. I told him he had become a companion of men of
genius and that it was probably a sign of something like that breaking
out on him. After awhile he was laughing. He said: 'All right, Bill.
I'm convinced. But the thing for me to do is not to run away from it.
The thing for me to do is meet it and knock out.' I said:

"'If you feel you can, that's the one thing to do. It's only an
obsession, sheer imagination. Try it tonight, anyway. If it gets a bit
too thick, call me up on the 'phone. I'll be right here. And take
plenty of good liquor.' When he left me he was quite his old self.

"He didn't call me up until next afternoon, and then asked what I
had heard about the specimens. I replied that what reports I had
received showed him perfectly healthy. He said, quietly: 'I thought
they would.' I asked what kind of a night he had had. He laughed, and
said: 'A very interesting one, Bill. Oh, very. I followed your advice
and drank plenty of liquor.' His voice was quite normal, even
cheerful. I was relieved, yet felt a vague uneasiness. I asked: 'How
about your shadow?' 'And plenty of shadow,' he said. 'I told you,
didn't I, that I thought it a woman's shadow? Well, it is.' I said:
'You are better. Was your woman shadow nice to you?' He said:
'Scandalously so, and promises to be even scandalouser. That's what
made the night so interesting.' He laughed again. And abruptly hung
up.

"I thought: 'Well, if Dick can joke like that about something that
had him terrorized to the liver a day ago, he's getting over it.'
That, I said to myself, was good advice I gave him.

"Still, I felt that vague uneasiness. It grew. A little later I
rang him up, but Simpson said he had gone out to play golf. That
seemed normal enough. Yes--the whole trouble had been only a queer
evanescent quirk that was righting itself. Yes--my advice had been
good. What--" Bill broke out suddenly--"What Goddamned fools we
doctors can be."

I stole a look at the Demoiselle. Her great eyes were wide and
tender, but deep within them something mocked. Bill said:

"The next day I had more reports, all equally good. I called Dick
up and told him so. I forgot to say I had also instructed him to go to
Buchanan. Buchanan," Bill turned to de Keradel, "is the best eye man
in New York. He had found nothing wrong, and that eliminated many
possibilities of cause for the hallucination--if it was that. I told
Dick. He said, cheerfully: 'Medicine is a grand science of
elimination, isn't it, Bill? But if after all the elimination you get
down to something you don't know anything about--then what do you do
about it, Bill?'

"That was a queer remark. I said: 'What do you mean?' He said: 'I
am only a thirsty seeker of knowledge.' I asked, suspiciously: 'Did
you drink much last night?' He said: 'Not too much.' I asked: 'How
about the shadow?' He said: 'Even more interesting.' I said: 'Dick, I
want you to come right down and let me see you.' He promised, but he
didn't come. I had a case you see that kept me late at the hospital. I
got in about midnight and called him up. Simpson answered, saying he
had gone to bed early and had given orders not to be disturbed. I
asked Simpson how he seemed. He answered that Mr. Dick had seemed
quite all right, unusually cheerful, in fact. Nevertheless, I could
not rid myself of the inexplicable uneasiness. I told Simpson to tell
Mr. Ralston that if he didn't come in to see me by five o'clock next
day I would come after him.

"At exactly five o'clock he arrived. I felt a sharp increase of my
doubt. His face had thinned, his eyes were curiously bright. Not
feverish--more as though he had been taking some drug. There was a
lurking amusement in them, and a subtle terror. I did not betray the
shock his appearance gave me. I told him that I had gotten the last of
the reports, and that they were negative. He said: 'So I have a clean
bill of health? Nothing wrong with me anywhere?' I answered: 'So far
as these tests show. But I want you to go to the hospital for a few
days' observation.' He laughed, and said: 'No. I'm perfectly healthy,
Bill.'

"He sat looking at me for a few moments silently, the subtle
amusement competing with the terror in his over-bright eyes--as though
he felt himself ages beyond me in knowledge of some sort and at the
same time bitterly in fear of it. He said: 'My shadow's name is
Brittis. She told me so last night.'

"That made me jump. I said: 'What the hell are you talking about?'

"He answered with malicious patience: 'My shadow. Her name is
Brittis. She told me so last night while she lay in my bed beside me,
whispering. A woman shadow. Naked.'

"I stared at him, and he laughed: 'What do you know about the
Succubi, Bill? Nothing, I at once perceive. I wish Alan were back--
he'd know. Balzac had a great story about one, I remember--but Brittis
says she really wasn't one. I went up to the library this morning and
looked them up. Plowed through the Malleus Maleficarum--'

"I asked: 'What the hell is that?'

"'The Hammer Against Witches. The old book of the Inquisition that
tells what Succubi and Incubi are, and what they can do, and how to
tell witches and what to do against them and all of that. Very
interesting. It says that a demon can become a shadow, and becoming
one may fasten itself upon a living person and become corporeal--or
corporeal enough to beget, as the Bible quaintly puts it. The lady
demons are the Succubi. When one of them lusts for a man she beguiles
him in this fashion or another until--well, until she succeeds.
Whereupon he gives her his vital spark and, quite naturally, dies. But
Brittis says that wouldn't be the end of me, and that she never was a
demon. She says she was--'

"'Dick,' I interrupted him, 'what's all this nonsense?' He
repeated, irritably: 'I wish to God you wouldn't keep on thinking this
thing is hallucination. If I'm as healthy as you say, it can't be-' He
hesitated. '-But even if you did believe it real, what could you do?
You don't know what those who sent the shadow to me know. That's why I
wish Alan were here. He'd know what to do.' He hesitated again, then
said slowly: 'But whether I'd take his advice...I'm not sure...now!'

"I asked: 'What do you mean?'

"He said: 'I'll begin from the time we agreed I'd better go home
and fight. I went to the theater. I purposely stayed out late. There
was no unseen whisperer at the door when I let myself in. I saw
nothing as I went upstairs to the library. I mixed a stiff highball,
sat down and began to read. I had turned on every light in the room.
It was two o'clock.

"'The clock struck the half hour. It roused me from the book. I
smelled a curious fragrance, unfamiliar, evocative of strange images--
it made me think of an unknown lily, opening in the night, under moon
rays, in a secret pool, among age-old ruins encircled by a desert. I
looked up and around seeking its source.

"'I saw the shadow.

"'It was no longer as though cast against curtains or walls. It
stood plain, a dozen feet from me. Sharp cut, in the room. It was in
profile. It stood motionless. Its face was a girl's, delicate,
exquisite. I could see its hair, coiled around the little head and two
braids of deeper shadow falling between the round, tip-tilted breasts.
It was the shadow of a tall girl, a lithe girl, small-hipped, slender-
footed. It moved. It began to dance. It was neither black nor gray as
I had thought when first I saw it. It was faintly rosy--a rose-pearl
shadow. Beautiful, seductive--in a sense no living woman could be. It
danced, and trembled--and vanished. I heard a whisper: 'I am here.' It
was behind me dancing--dancing...dimly I could see the room through
it.

"'Dancing,' he said, 'weaving--weaving my shroud-' he laughed.
'But a highly embroidered one, Bill.'

"He said he felt a stirring of desire such as he had never felt
for any woman. And with it a fear, a horror such as he had never
known. He said it was as though a door had opened over whose threshold
he might pass into some undreamed of Hell. The desire won. He leaped
for that dancing, rosy shadow. And shadow and fragrance were gone
snuffed out. He sat again with his book, waiting. Nothing happened.
The clock struck three--the half-hour--four. He went to his room. He
undressed, and lay upon the bed.

"He said: 'Slowly, like a rhythm, the fragrance began. It pulsed--
quicker and quicker. I sat up. The rosy shadow was sitting at the foot
of my bed. I strained toward it. I could not move. I thought I heard
it whisper--'Not yet...not yet...""

"Progressive hallucination," de Keradel said. "From sight to
hearing, from hearing to smell. And then the color centers of the
brain become involved. All this is obvious. Yes?"

Bill paid no attention; continued: "He went to sleep, abruptly. He
awakened next morning with a curious exaltation of spirit and an
equally curious determination to evade me. He had but one desire--that
the day should end so that he could meet the shadow. I asked, somewhat
sarcastically: 'But how about the other girl, Dick?'

"He answered, plainly puzzled: 'What other girl, Bill?' I said:
'That other girl you were so much in love with. The one whose name you
couldn't tell me.'

"He said, wonderingly: 'I don't remember any other girl.'"

I stole a swift glance at the Demoiselle. She was looking demurely
down at her plate. Dr. Lowell asked:

"First, he could not tell you her name because of some compulsion?
Second, he told you he remembered nothing of her?"

Bill said: "That's what he told me, sir."

I saw the color drain from Lowell's face once more, and saw again
a lightning swift glance pass between the Demoiselle and her father.

De Keradel said:

"A previous hallucination negatived by a stronger one."

Bill said:

"Maybe. At any rate, he passed the day in a mood of mingled
expectancy and dread. 'As though,' he told me, 'I waited for the
prelude of some exquisite event, and at the same time as though for
the opening of a door to a cell of the condemned.' And he was even
more resolved not to see me, yet he could not be easy until he knew
whether I had or had not found something that might account for his
experiences. After he had talked to me he had gone out, not for golf
as he had told Simpson, but to a place where I could not reach him.

"He went home to dinner. He thought that during dinner he detected
fugitive flittings from side to side, furtive stirrings of the shadow.
He felt that his every movement was being watched. He had almost panic
impulse to run out of the house 'while there was still time,' as he
put it. Against that impulse was a stronger urge to stay, something
that kept whispering of strange delights, unknown joys. He said--'As
though I had two souls, one filled with loathing and hatred for the
shadow and crying out against slavery to it. And the other not
caring--if only first it might taste of those joys it promised.'

"He went to the library--and the shadow came as it had come the
night before. It came close to him, but not so close that he could
touch it. The shadow began to sing, and he had no desire to touch it;
no desire except to sit listening forever to that singing. He told me,
'It was the shadow of song, as the singer was the shadow of woman. It
was as though it came through some unseen curtain...out of some other
space. It was sweet as the fragrance. It was one with the fragrance,
honey sweet...and each shadowy note dripped evil.' He said: 'If there
were words to the song, I did not know them, did not hear them. I
heard only the melody...promising...promising...'

"I asked: 'Promising what?'

"He said: 'I don't know...delights that no living man had ever
known...that would be mine--if..."

"I asked: 'If what?'

"He answered: 'I did not know...not then. But there was something
I must do to attain them...but what it was I did not know...not then.'

"Singing died and shadow and fragrance were gone. He waited
awhile, and then went to his bedroom. The shadow did not reappear,
although he thought it there, watching him. He sank again into that
quick, deep and dreamless sleep. He awakened with a numbness of mind,
an unaccustomed lethargy. Fragments of the shadow's song kept
whispering through his mind. He said: 'They seemed to make a web
between reality and unreality. I had only one clear normal thought,
and that was keen impatience to get the last of your reports. When you
gave me them, that which hated and feared the shadow wept, but that
which desired its embrace rejoiced.'

"Night came the third night. At dinner, he had no perception of
lurking watcher. Nor in the library. He felt a vast disappointment and
as vast a relief. He went to his bedroom. Nothing there. An hour or so
later he turned in. It was a warm night, so he covered himself only
with the sheet.

"He told me: 'I do not think I had been asleep. I am sure I was
not asleep. But suddenly I felt the fragrance creep over me and I
heard a whisper, close to my ear. I sat up--

"'The shadow lay beside me.

"'It was sharply outlined, pale rose upon the sheet. It was
leaning toward me, one arm upon the pillow, cupped hand supporting its
head. I could see the pointed nails of that hand, thought I could see
the gleam of shadowy eyes. I summoned all my strength and laid my hand
on it. I felt only the cool sheet.

"'The shadow leaned closer...whispering...whispering...and now I
understood it...and then it was she told me her name...and other
things...and what I must do to win those delights she had been
promising me. But I must not do this thing until she had done thus and
so, and I must do it at the moment she kissed me and I could feel her
lips on mine--'

"I asked, sharply: 'What were you to do?'

"He answered: 'Kill myself.'"

Dr. Lowell pushed back his chair, stood trembling: "Good God! And
he did kill himself! Dr. Bennett, I do not see why you did not consult
me in this case. Knowing what I told you of--"

Bill interrupted: "Precisely because of that, sir. I had my
reasons for wishing to handle it alone. Reasons which I am prepared to
defend before you."

Before Lowell could answer, he went on swiftly: "I told him: 'It's
nothing but hallucination, Dick; a phantom of the imagination.
Nevertheless, it has reached a stage I don't like. You must take
dinner with me, and stay here for the night at least. If you won't
consent, frankly I'm going to use force to make you.'

"He looked at me for a moment with the subtle amusement in his
eyes intensified. He said, quietly: 'But if it's only hallucination,
Bill, what good will that do? I'll still have my imagination with me,
won't I? What's to keep it from conjuring up Brittis here just as well
as at home?'

"I said: 'All that be damned. Here you stay.'

"He said: 'It goes. I'd like to try the experiment.'

"We had dinner. I wouldn't let him speak again of the shadow. I
slipped a strong sleepmaker into a drink. In fact, I doped him. In a
little while he began to get heavy-eyed. I put him to bed. I said to
myself: 'Fellow, if you come out of that in less than ten hours then
I'm a horse doctor.'

"I had to go out. It was a little after midnight when I returned.
I listened at Dick's door, debating whether to run the risk of
disturbing him by going in. I decided I wouldn't. At nine o'clock the
next morning, I went up to look at him. The room was empty. I asked
the servants when Mr. Ralston had gone. None knew. When I called up
his house, the body had already been taken away. There was nothing I
could do, and I wanted time to think. Time, unhampered by the police,
to make some investigations of my own, in the light of certain other
things which Ralston had told me and which I have not related since
they are not directly related to the symptoms exhibited. The
symptoms," Bill turned to de Keradel, "were the only matters in which
you were interested--professionally?"

De Keradel said: "Yes. But I still see nothing in your recital to
warrant any diagnosis than hallucination. Perhaps in these details you
have withheld I might--"

I had been thinking, and interrupted him rudely enough: "Just a
moment. A little while back, Bill, you said this Brittis, shadow or
illusion, or what not, told him that she was no demon--no Succubus.
You started to quote him--'She said she was-' then stopped. What did
she say she was?"

Bill seemed to hesitate, then said, slowly: "She said she had been
a girl, a Bretonne until she had been changed into--a shadow of Ys."

The Demoiselle threw back her head, laughing unrestrainedly. She
put a hand on my arm: "A shadow of that wicked Dahut the White! Alain
de Carnac--one of my shadows!"

De Keradel's face was imperturbable. He said: "So. Now do I see.
Well, Dr. Bennett, if I accept your theory of witchcraft, what was the
purpose behind it?"

Bill answered: "Money, I think. I'm hoping to be sure soon."

De Keradel leaned back, regarding Lowell almost benevolently. He
said: "Not necessarily money. To quote Dr. Caranac, it could perhaps
be only art for art's sake. Self-expression of a true artist. Pride. I
once knew well--what without doubt the superstitious would have called
her a witch--who had that pride of workmanship. This will interest
you, Dr. Lowell. It was in Prague--"

I saw Lowell start, violently; de Keradel went blandly on: "A true
artist, who practiced her art, or used her wisdom--or, if you prefer,
Dr. Bennett, practiced her witchcraft--solely for the satisfaction it
gave her as an artist. Among other things, so it was whispered, she
could imprison something of one she had killed within little dolls
made in that one's image, animating them; and then make them do her
will--" He leaned toward Lowell, solicitously--"Are you ill, Dr.
Lowell?"

Lowell was paper white; his eyes fixed on de Keradel and filled
with incredulous recognition. He recovered himself; said in a firm
voice: "A pang I sometimes suffer. It is nothing. Go on."

De Keradel said: "A truly great--ah, witch, Dr. Bennett. Although
I would not call her witch but mistress of ancient secrets, lost
wisdom. She went from Prague to this city. Arriving, I tried to find
her. I learned where she had lived, but, alas! She and her niece had
been burned to death--with her dolls, their home destroyed. A most
mysterious fire. I was rather relieved. Frankly, I was glad, for I had
been a little afraid of the doll-maker. I hold no grudge against those
who encompassed her destruction--if it were deliberate. In fact--this
may sound callous but you, my dear Dr. Lowell, will understand I am
sure--in fact, I feel a certain gratitude to them--if they are."

He glanced at his watch, then spoke to the Demoiselle: "My
daughter, we must be going. We are already late. The time has passed
so pleasantly, so quickly--" He paused, then said with emphasis,
slowly: "Had I the powers she had at her command--for powers she did
have else I, de Keradel, would have felt no fear of her--I say, had I
those powers, none who threatened me, none even who hampered me in
what I had determined to do, would live long enough to become a
serious menace. I am sure--" he looked sharply at Lowell, at Helen and
Bill, let his pale eyes dwell for a moment on mine--"I am sure that
even gratitude could not save them--nor those dear to them."

There was an odd silence. Bill broke it. He said, somberly: "Fair
enough, de Keradel."

The Demoiselle arose, smiling. Helen led her to the hall. No one
would have thought they hated each other. While de Keradel bade
courteous farewell to Lowell, the Demoiselle drew close to me. She
whispered:

"I will be awaiting you tomorrow, Alain de Carnac. At eight. We
have much to say to each other. Do not fail me."

She slipped something in my hand. De Keradel said: "Soon I shall
be ready for my greatest experiment. I look for you to witness it, Dr.
Lowell. You too, Dr. Caranac...you...it will especially interest. Till
then--adieu."

He kissed Helen's hand; bowed to Bill. I wondered with vague
misgivings why he had not included them in the invitation.

At the door the Demoiselle turned, touched Helen lightly on the
cheek. She said: "Some there be that shadows kiss..."

Her laughter rippled like little waves as she swept down the steps
after her father and into the waiting automobile.



CHAPTER VII. THE DOLL-MAKER'S LOVER



Briggs closed the door and walked away. We four stood in the hall,
silent. Suddenly Helen stamped a foot. She said, furiously:

"Damn her! She tried to make me feel like a slave girl. As if I
were one of your lesser concubines, Alan, whom it amused your Queen to
notice."

I grinned, for it was almost exactly what I had thought. She said,
viciously:

"I saw her whispering to you. I suppose she was asking you to come
up'n see her sometime." She gave a Mae West wriggle.

I opened my hand and looked at what the Demoiselle had slipped
into it. It was an extremely thin silver bracelet's half-inch band
almost as flexible as heavy silk. Set in it was a polished, roughly
oval black pebble. Incised upon its smoothed outer face, then filled
in with some red material, was the symbol of the power of the ancient
god of Ocean, who had many names long centuries before the Greeks
named him Poseidon; the three-tined fork; his trident with which he
governed his billows. It was one of those mysterious talismans of the
swarthy little Azilian-Tardenois people who some seventeen thousand
years ago wiped out the tall, big-brained, fair-haired and blue-eyed
Cro-Magnons, who, like them, came from none knows where into Western
Europe. Along the silver band, its jaws holding the pebble, was
crudely cut a winged serpent. Yes, I knew what that pebble was, right
enough. But what puzzled me was the conviction that I also knew this
particular stone and bracelet. That I had seen them many times
before...could even read the symbol...if only I could force
remembrance...

Perhaps if I put it around my wrist I would remember--

Helen struck the bracelet from my hand. She put her heel on it and
ground it into the rug. She said:

"That's the second time tonight that she-devil has tried to snap
her manacles on you."

I bent down to pick up the bracelet, and she kicked it away.

Bill stooped and retrieved it. He handed it to me and I dropped it
in my pocket. Bill said, sharply:

"Pipe down, Helen! He has to go through with it. He's probably
safer than you and I are, at that."

Helen said, passionately:

"Let her try to get him!"

She looked at me, grimly: "But I don't exactly trust you with the
Demoiselle, Alan. Something rotten in Denmark there...something queer
between you. I wouldn't hunger after that white fleshpot of Egypt if I
were you. There've been a lot of misguided moths sipping at that
flower."

I flushed: "Your frankness, darling, is of your generation, and
your metaphors as mixed as its morals. Nevertheless, you need not be
jealous of the Demoiselle."

That was a lie, of course. I felt the vague, inexplicable fear of
her, suspicion, and a lurking, inexorable hatred--yet there was
something else. She was very beautiful. Never could I love her in the
way I could Helen. Still, she had something that Helen had not;
something which without doubt was evil...but an evil I had drunk of
long and long and long ago...and must drink of...again--and I knew a
deep thirst that could be quenched only by that evil...

Helen said, quietly:

"I could not be jealous of her. I am afraid of her--not for myself
but for you."

Dr. Lowell seemed to awaken. It was plain that he was sunk in his
thoughts, he had heard none of our talk. He said:

"Let us go back to the table. I have something to say."

He walked to the stairs, and he walked like a man grown suddenly
old. As we followed, Bill said to me:

"Well, de Keradel was fair enough. He gave us warning."

I asked: "Warning of what?"

Bill answered: "Didn't you get it? Warning not to pursue the
matter of Dick's death any further. They didn't find out all they
hoped to. But they found out enough. I wanted them to. And I did find
out what I wanted."

I asked: "What was that?"

"That they're Dick's murderers," he answered.

Before I could ask any more questions we were seated at the table.
Dr. Lowell rang for coffee, then dismissed the butler. He tipped a
full glass of brandy into his coffee, and drank it. He said:

"I am shaken. Undeniably I am shaken. An experience, a dreadful
experience, which I had thought ended forever, has been reopened. I
have told Helen of that experience. She has a strong soul, a clear
brain; she is a bright spirit. Am I to understand--" he addressed
Bill--"that Helen was also in your confidence this evening; that she
knew in advance the facts that so strongly surprised me?"

Bill answered: "Partly, sir. She knew about the shadow, but she
didn't know that the Demoiselle de Keradel had an Ys pinned on her
name. No more did I. Nor had I any cogent reason to suspect the de
Keradels when they accepted your invitation. Before that, I did not go
into the details of the Ralston case with you because, from the very
first, I had the feeling that they would revive painful memories. And
obviously, until de Keradel himself revealed it, I could have had no
suspicion that he was so closely connected with the dark center of
those memories."

Lowell asked: "Did Dr. Caranac know?"

"No. I had determined, whether or not my suspicions seemed to be
warranted, to spread Dick's story before de Keradel. I had persuaded
Dr. Caranac to anger him. I wanted to watch the reactions of himself
and his daughter. I wanted to watch the reactions of Dr. Caranac and
yourself. I hold myself entirely justified. I wanted de Keradel to
show his hand. If I had laid my own hand before you, never would he
have done so. You would have been on your guard, and de Keradel would
have known it. He, also, would have been on guard. It was your
palpable ignorance of my investigation, your involuntary betrayal of
the horror you felt over some similar experience, that prompted him,
contemptuous now of you, to reveal his association with the doll-maker
and to deliver his threat and challenge. Of course, there is no doubt
that some way, somehow, he had discovered the part you took in the
matter of the doll-maker. He believes you are terrified to the
core...that through fear of what may happen to Helen and me, you will
force me to drop the Ralston matter. Unless he believed that, never
would he have risked forearming us by forewarning."

Lowell nodded: "He is right. I am frightened. We are, the three of
us, in unique peril. But, also, he is wrong. We must go on--"

Helen said, sharply: "The three of us? I think Alan is in worse
danger than any of us. The Demoiselle has her brand all ready to add
him to her herd."

I said:

"Try not to be so vulgar, darling." I spoke to Lowell: "I am still
in the dark, sir. Bill's exposition of the Ralston case was luminously
clear. But I know nothing of this doll-maker, and therefore cannot
grasp the significance of de Keradel's references to her. If I am to
enlist in this cause, manifestly I should be in possession of all the
facts to be truly effective, also, for my own protection."

Bill said, grimly:

"You're not only enlisted, you're conscripted."

Dr. Lowell said:

"I will sketch them for you, briefly. Later, William, you will put
Dr. Caranac in possession of every detail, and answer all his
questions. I encountered the doll-maker, a Mme. Mandilip, through a
puzzling hospital case; the strange illness and subsequent stranger
death of a lieutenant of a then notorious underworld leader, named
Ricori. Whether this woman was what is popularly known as a witch, or
whether she had knowledge of natural laws which to us, solely because
of ignorance, seem supernatural, or whether she was simply a most
extraordinary hypnotist--I am still not certain. She was, however, a
murderess. Among the many deaths for which she was responsible were
those of Dr. Braile, my associate, and a nurse with whom he was in
love. This Mme. Mandilip was an extraordinary artist--whatever else
she might be. She made dolls of astonishing beauty and naturalness.
She kept a doll-shop where she selected her victims from those who
came to buy. She killed by means of a poisonous salve which she found
means to use after winning the confidence of her victims. She made
effigies--dolls--of these, in their faithful image, in faithful
likeness to them. These dolls--she then sent out on her errands of
murder--animated, or at least so she implied, by something of the
vital or, if you will, spiritual essence of those whose bodies they
counterfeited; something that was wholly evil...little demons with
slender stilettos...who went forth under care of a white-faced,
terror-stricken girl whom she called her niece, subject so long to her
hypnotic control that she had become, literally, another self of the
doll-maker. But whether illusion or reality, of one thing there was no
doubt--the dolls killed.

"Ricori was one of her victims, but recovered under my care in
this house. He was superstitious, believed Mme. Mandilip a witch, and
vowed her execution. He kidnapped the niece, and in this house I
placed her under my own hypnotic control to draw from her the secrets
of the doll-maker. She died in this hypnosis, crying out that the
doll-maker's hands were round her heart--strangling it..."

He paused, eyes haunted as though seeing again some dreadful
picture, then went steadily on:

"But before she died, she told us that Mme. Mandilip had possessed
a lover in Prague to whom she had taught the secret of the living
dolls. And that same night Ricori and some of his men went forth to--
execute--the doll-maker. She was executed--by fire. I, though against
my will, was a witness of that incredible scene--incredible still to
me although I saw it..."

He paused, then lifted his glass with steady hand:

"Well, it seems that de Keradel was that lover. It seems that
beside the secret of the dolls, he knows the secret of the shadows--or
is it the Demoiselle who knows that, I wonder? And what else of the
dark wisdom--who knows? Well, that is that--and now all is to be done
again. But this will be more difficult--"

He said, musingly: "I wish Ricori were here to help us. But he is
in Italy. Nor could I reach him in time. But his ablest man, one who
passed through the whole experience with us, who was there at the
execution, he is here. McCann! I'll get McCann!"

He arose:

"Dr. Caranac, you will excuse me? William--I leave things in your
hands. I'm going to my study and then to bed--I am shaken. Helen, my
dear, take care of Dr. Caranac."

He bowed and withdrew. Bill began: "Now, about the doll-maker--"

It was close to midnight when he had finished that story, and I
had found no more questions to ask. As I was going out, he said:

"You bowled de Keradel almost clean out when you spoke of--what
was it--the Alkar-Az and the Gatherer within the Cairn, Alan. What the
hell were they?"

I answered:

"Bill, I don't know. The words seemed to come to my lips without
volition. Maybe they did come from the Demoiselle--as I told her
father."

But deep within me I knew that wasn't true--that I did know, had
known, the Alkar-Az and its dread Gatherer--and that some day I
would...remember.

Helen said: "Bill, turn your head."

She threw her arms around my neck, and pressed her lips to mine,
savagely; she whispered: "It makes my heart sing that you are here--
and it breaks my heart that you are here. I'm afraid--I'm so afraid
for you, Alan."

She leaned back, laughing a little: "I suppose you're thinking
this is the precipitancy of my generation, and its morals--and maybe
vulgar, too. But it really isn't as sudden as it seems, darling.
Remember--I've loved you since the hornets and snakes."

I gave her back her kiss. The revelation that had begun when I had
met her, had come to complete and affirmative conclusion.

As I made my way to the club, all that was in my mind was the face
of Helen, the burnished copper helmet of her hair and her eyes of
golden amber. The face of the Demoiselle, if I saw it at all, was
nothing but a mist of silver-gilt over two purple splotches in a
featureless white mask. I was happy.

I started to undress, whistling, Helen's face still clear cut
before me. I put my hand in my pocket and drew out the silver bracelet
with the black stone. The face of Helen faded abruptly. In its place,
as clearly cut, even more alive, was the face of the Demoiselle with
her great eyes tender, her lips smiling--

I threw the bracelet from me, as though it had been a snake.

But when I went to sleep it was still the face of the Demoiselle
and not the face of Helen that was back of my eyes.



CHAPTER VIII. IN DAHUT'S TOWER--NEW YORK



I woke up next morning with a headache. Also, out of a dream which
began with dolls holding foot-long needles in one hand dancing with
pink shadows around circles of enormous standing stones, and with
Helen and the Demoiselle alternately and rapidly embracing and kissing
me. I mean that Helen would embrace and kiss me, and then she would
fade into the Demoiselle; and then the Demoiselle would do the same
and as quickly fade into Helen, and so on and so on.

I remember thinking in that dream that this was quite like what
occurred at a very unusual place of entertainment in Algiers named the
"House of the Heart's Desire." It's run by a Frenchman, a hashish
eater and also a truly astonishing philosopher. He and I were great
friends. I won his regard, I think, by unfolding to him that same
scheme for "Heaven and Hell, Inc." which had so interested the
Demoiselle and de Keradel. He had quoted Omar:

I sent my Soul out through the Invisible.

Some letter of that after-life to spell:

And after many days my Soul returned.

And said, "Behold, Myself am Heav'n and Hell."

Then he had said my idea wasn't so original; it was really a
combination of that quatrain and what made his place so profitable. He
had a couple of renegade Senussi in his house. The Senussi are truly
astonishing magicians, masters of illusion. He had a dozen girls,
physically the most beautiful I've ever seen, and they were white and
yellow and black and brown and intermediate shades. When one wanted to
embrace "the Heart's Desire," and that was a most expensive
undertaking, these twelve girls would stand in a circle, naked; a big,
wide circle in a big room, hands clasped in each other's with their
arms out at full length. The Senussi squatted in the center of the
circle with their drums, while the aspirant for the "Heart's Desire"
stood beside them. The Senussi drummed and chanted and did this and
that. The girls danced, intertwining. Ever faster and faster. Until at
last white, brown, black and yellow and intermediate seemed to
coalesce into one supernal damsel--the girl of his dreams, as the old
sentimental songs so quaintly put it, with trimmings of Aphrodite,
Cleopatra, Phryne, and what not--at any rate, the girl he had always
wanted whether he had realized it or not. So he took her.

"Was she what he thought her? How do I know?" shrugged this
Frenchman. "To me--looking on--there were always eleven girls left.
But if he thought so. Then, yes."

Helen and the Demoiselle melting so rapidly into each other made
me wish that they would coalesce. Then I'd have no bother. The
Demoiselle seemed to stay a moment or two longer. She kept her lips on
mine...and suddenly I felt as though I had both water and fire in my
brain, and the fire was a stake upon which a man was bound, and the
flames rushed up and covered him like a garment before I could see his
face.

And the water was a surging sea...and out upon it, pale gold hair
adrift, wave washed, was Dahut...eyes staring up to a sky less blue
than they...and dead.

It was then I woke up.

After a cold shower I felt a lot better. While I ate breakfast, I
marshaled the events of the night before into coherent order. First,
Lowell's experience with the doll-maker. I knew much about the magic
of the animate doll, which is far ahead of the simple idea of the
effigy into which one sticks pins, or roasts at a fire or what not.
Nor was I so sure that the hypothesis of hypnotism could account for a
belief of such ancient and wide-spread popularity. But more ancient
still, and much more sinister, was the shadow magic that had slain
Dick. The Germans might give it the more or less humorous twist of
Peter Schliemel who sold his shadow to the Devil, and Barrie give it
his own labored whimsicality of Peter Pan whose shadow was caught in a
drawer and got torn--yet the fact remained that of all beliefs this of
the sharing of his shadow with a man's life, personality, soul--
whatever one may term it--was, perhaps, the most ancient of all. And
the sacrifices and rites connected with propitiation or safety from
shadows could parallel any for downright devilishness. I determined to
go up to the library and look up shadow lore. I went to my room and
called up Helen.

I said: "Darling, do you know that I love you desperately?"

She said: "I know that if you don't you're going to."

I said: "I'm going to be tied up this afternoon--but there is
tonight."

Helen said: "I'll be waiting for you, darling. But you're not
going to see that white devil today are you?"

I answered: "I am not. I've even forgotten what she looks like."

Helen laughed. My foot touched something and I looked down. It was
the bracelet I had thrown away. Helen said: "Tonight then."

I picked up the bracelet and dropped it in my pocket. I answered,
mechanically: "Tonight."

Instead of looking up shadow lore, I spent the afternoon at two
unusual private libraries to which I have access, delving into old
books and manuscripts upon ancient Brittany--or Armorica as it was
called before the coming of the Romans and for five centuries
thereafter. What I was looking for were references to Ys, and what I
hoped for was to find some mention of the Alkar-Az and the Gatherer in
the Cairn. Obviously, I must have read or heard those names somewhere,
sometime. The only other reasonable explanation was that the
Demoiselle had suggested them to me, and recalling the vividness of
that vision of Carnac under the touch of her hand, I was not inclined
to reject that. On the other hand she had denied it and I was as
strongly disinclined to reject her denial. It had sounded like truth
to me. Of the Alkar-Az I found no mention whatsoever. In a palimpsest
of the 7th Century, one torn leaf, there were a few sentences that
might or might not refer to the Gatherer. It read, translating freely
the monkish Latin:

"...is said that it was not because this people of Armorica took
part in the Gaulish insurrection that the Romans treated them with
such severity but because of certain cruel and wicked rites
unparalleled in their evil by any tribe or people with whom the Romans
had come in contact. There was one [several words illegible] the place
of the sta