The Best of Weird Tales 1923 Page 10

  “And so,” he concluded his story, “you see before you a murderer! Your verdict would be—?”

  “But how can you be sure?” I countered. “If you slipped up on the vase, you may have slipped up on other details of your program. Besides, his chance on the island was as good as yours in a leaking dory.

  Who shall say?”

  Old Twining merely shook his head. He returned again to the glowing fragment on the table between us.

  “Ah, you are thinking that the vase is my consolation—that I wanted to keep it. And perhaps I did,” he owned wistfully. “I swear to you I abhor the deed it stands for, but I can no more help loving it in itself

  —” He lost himself, wandered off once more into the fine points of his treasure.

  But the wind rose up again, and the old man’s head dropped to his hands. I was with him all that night and I saw him suffer the tortures of an eternally damned soul with a razor blade conscience.

  The storm over, he was the kindly, considerate host when he bade goodbye on the following morning. I left him with the feeling that I had been in the presence of as fine a gentleman as I had ever met; that his story of the preceding night was utterly incongruous to the man as he was. It would be a physical impossibility, I protested, for that gentle old scholar to harm an insect.

  His mind had wandered at times: could it be that he was suffering some kind of an hallucination, the result, perhaps, of an overacute conscience? I believed there was some factor to his story which I had not got hold of, and I promised myself to visit him again.

  VI

  But time passed. I was abroad in England and in France. Then two years later, back again in New York, I picked up the missing link in the old scholar’s story:

  It was inevitable, I suppose, that, as buyer for the House of Harrow, I should sooner or later stumble into Max Bauer. At a private sale I lazily bid against the wealthy collector for a jade bowl and good-naturedly lost to him. I talked with him, and when he urged me to dine with him that evening and see his treasures, I assented.

  I don’t know why I accepted his invitation, for I did not like the man; but I was mildly curious about his collection, and alone in the city in midsummer, I welcomed any diversion.

  So he dined me and wined me—especially the latter—to repleteness in the ornate diningroom of his luxurious apartment, which was after the manner of a banquet hall. I watched him pick apart the bird that was set before him, and found something cannibalistic in the performance; and I watched him again over a rich mousse, and liked him less and less. His hand was always upon the bottle; he gave me no peace—urged things upon me, made a show of his food and his service.

  The meal over, still keeping the decanter by him, he trailed me through rooms littered with oriental junk. He bragged and boasted, told the history of this piece and that: how he had robbed one man here and tricked another there. His voice thickened, as his enthusiasm grew, and I turned thoroughly uncomfortable and wondered when I could break away.

  Clearly, the man attracted few friends of a caliber to appreciate his art treasures, for under my perfunctory approval, he became increasingly garrulous, until at last he invited me into the inner shrine, the small room which held his most private and precious possessions.

  We stopped before a water color painting of a slim girl in gray.

  “My wife,” said old Bauer with a flourish. “Her last portrait.”

  I turned incredulously from that white-flower face, with its fine, subtle smile, half-ironical and half-tired, to my gross-featured host—and I shuddered.

  “A handsome woman,” he mumbled. “Picture doesn’t do her justice. Face so-so, but a body … a body for an artist to paint…”

  I looked away from him—followed the gray girl’s eyes to the object below her upon which she

  ironically smiled: it was a red-figured Greek vase, and I remember thinking that this man must have changed—that his taste, his very life, must have degenerated, like the retrogression from the fine to the decadent, since such a girl had married him.

  Then something familiar in the vase struck me—like the broken pattern of a forgotten dream … It was the fragment of a vase, the half of a cylix, on which an orange goddess stood with uplifted spear.

  “Ah,” I breathed, “the Athena—Euphronios!”

  “So you’re up to it!” chuckled old Bauer. “Not many of ‘em are. Classic stuff: I used to aim for a collection of the pure Greek, but I’ve grown out of that; not that I wouldn’t have achieved it if my taste hadn’t changed, y’understand, for I’m generally successful—I get the things I set out for.

  This —” he scowled at the vase—“is my one failure. But there’s a story,”—he poured himself another whisky (to my infinite relief forgot to press me)—“want to hear it, eh?”

  I looked at him carefully: the plump fingers; the full, sensual lips; the dark skin and the nose—probably Jewish blood. What was the name?—Lutz, that was it!

  Decidedly, I did want to hear his story!

  VII

  “My one failure,” he emphasized it, slumping into a chair. “Not my fault, either; the fault of a stuffy old fool. He doted on me, played the fatherly role and I tolerated him as you will such folks. I cribbed a lot off of him; I was keen on the classics at that time, and he knew a thing or two.

  “Besides, he was sweet on Lorna, and you never could tell about her—odd tastes; it was best to keep track of him. We traveled together for the college—you’d never guess I’d been a college professor in my day, would you? I happened onto this thing quite by luck—a genuine Euphronios, broken clean in two pieces. I wanted it, and I managed it. This fellow—old Gooding—had a notion of turning it in to the college museum; he had some other fool’s idea of proving something-or-other—a rare, old bird, a pedant, you understand. It was a shaky business; I’d no intention of publishing my Euphronios at this time. But he was set—you’d never believe how set!—and since I couldn’t afford to stir up a row there in Athens, I humored him.

  “Once we were clear of Greece—once we struck home ground—but we never struck home ground on that ship. She went down!”—with a flourish of his glass. “Yes, dammit all, regular desert island stuff.

  We were hung up on a rock in mid-ocean, the two of us, old Gooding hugging tight to half the vase, and me nursing the other half. Can’t say I ever was more damned uncomfortable in my life.

  “He had this eccentric idea of honor and he had it hard like religion, and he hung on like a bulldog. It was war between us. Oh, he doted upon me right enough, still insisted upon the paternal role, but I’d no intention of letting him pull this thing.”

  Again Bauer fumbled for the bottle, spilled whisky into his glass.

  “The old idiot—you’d think he’d’ve seen what he was driving me to, but not him. I had a couple of matches in my pocket—I’d held out on him, y’understand. And I’d built up a pile of driftwood for a signal fire to the first ship that passed. But I’d no notion of saving him, too. No, I had a contrary notion of setting him adrift in the dory.

  “Oh, it was easy: he’d gone weaker than a cat, y’understand—all gray matter an’ no physh—physhique, ol’ Cheever Gooding. I’d take my chances on the island with a heap of dry wood an’ two matches for a l’il bonfire, an’ with the c-cup, both pieces of it safe.

  ” Murder? ” Bauer laughed. “‘s’n ugly word, eh?” He pursued with an uncertain finger an injured fly which crawled across his trousers leg. “Bah, they say this man kills for hate, that for love—all good, noble motives. But your true collector—you ‘n’ me—kills for a c-cup. Killing’s natural—th’easiest thing in the world—when you’re preshed for time. ‘N I was preshed for time, see? There was a ship out there—I saw the smoke. I got him into the dory, but it was a fight; there was life in the ol’ bird yet, though the sun’d laid him low. Leaky boat—not much chance for him—still I’d be sure. I choked him gently—oh, quite gently—like thish,”—Bauer demonstrated by crushing the fly v
ery thoroughly between his thumb and forefinger—“till the breath was gone from him. Then I looked for th’other half of the vashe—

  couldn’t find it. The smoke was close—couldn’t wait. P’raps he’s hid it in the rocks, I shay. So I shoves him off, an’ the tide carries him ‘way from the ship’s smoke—bob-bobbin’ away.

  “I runs up an’ sends my twigs a-blazin’ to the sky. ‘N I searches everywhere for the c-cup—in every crack—an’ no luck! Guns shalute—ship’s comin’; li’l dory bobs off there a mere sun spot; still no luck.

  Can you beat it? All my work for nothing! ‘Cause, see, I’d murdered him—an’ what for? Damn him, his skin’s too cheap —

  “Say, you’re not leavin’? My one failure—I’ve had everything else: Lorna an’ thish here c-c’lection—

  everything! But this one l’il broken c-cup—too bad—too bad —”

  I left him caressing the vase with his hands as old “Tinker” Twining had caressed it with his eyes. But before I went, my gaze fell again upon the painting of Bauer’s wife, and I remembered the other man’s words for her: “A beautiful mind, and a light shining through her gray eyes that was like the haunting line of a poem.”

  “Body love and soul love,” I muttered.

  Bauer sought me out the following morning.

  “What did I tell you last night?” he asked.

  I told him briefly.

  “Fiction!” he shrugged with an uneasy laugh. “I get to running on—You’ll forget it?”

  I was ready for him.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I’ll forget it—on one condition: that you run down to the Cape with me to—pass judgment on an antique; to give me your honest, expert advice—free of charge.”

  He consented at once, the connoisseur in him aroused.

  VIII

  So we came down to the Cape on a clear blue morning after rains.

  I made inquiries at the village concerning old “Tinker” Twining, and was prepared for what I found. I had come in time, a woman told me; she was troubled about him, though, since he would allow no one to stop in the house and care for him.

  We took the trail over to the back shore; and I held Bauer off, answered his questions vaguely. It was a different day from that sullen one on which I had first walked this path; an exquisite morning, requiring you to capture the shine of each separate leaf—the upward-tossed, silver poplar leaves and the varnished oak leaves—if you would adequately describe it.

  This meeting I had planned solely for the sake of the old scholar; if, in aiding Twining to clear his conscience, I also cleared the conscience of Max Bauer, that I could not help. But Bauer, I assured myself, had no conscience; one way or the other, it would not matter to him.

  Still, it was a situation without parallel, I thought: two men, each living, and each believing himself to have murdered the other. And to bring those two men together, face to face, would be smashing drama!

  But life is seldom as spectacular as we anticipate; my fireworks fizzled. Beyond a stretch of beach grass—running silver under the sunlight—and humped up there precariously over sands, stood the same little rusty gray house. The door was half open, and the work bench was deserted. We found the old man in a bedroom over the sea, lying in a black walnut bed under a patchwork quilt.

  He was propped up on pillows, and the worn face was silhouetted against the ocean, blue today with pale sweepings, and flowing out to silver under the sun. The elderly scholar was delirious, his mind wandering over that old sin; he was still paying the penalty for a murder of the imagination.

  “My friend,” he muttered, “the man who was bound to me in friendship—certain death —”

  “Listen!” I said. “This is Max Bauer, the man you thought you killed! You didn’t murder him; you only thought you did. He’s here safe—look!”

  But the other did not grasp it; only repeated the name “Max Bauer,” and turned away with a long shudder.

  Then Bauer was chattering at my shoulder: ” Gooding—old Cheever Gooding himself!““Perhaps that’s what you called him—the man you strangled—It’s no use—no earthly use; he’s still under the illusion—we can never make it clear to him now.”

  “But how—?” I turned impatiently at Bauer’s insistence, gave him curtly and succinctly, in four sentences, the clues he had missed.

  He sat there. “So he tried to murder me! The old—skunk!”

  And later, “B’God,” he whispered, “how he’s gone! A shadow…”

  I looked at Bauer, sitting corpulent and gross.

  “Yes,” I replied, “a shadow.”

  But already Bauer’s eyes had roved from Twining to a thing on the quilt which he had missed in the patchwork colors, a thing of orange and black.

  “Lord, it’s the missing half!” he exclaimed, and now there was genuine feeling in his voice.

  I stood between Bauer and that object, guarding Twining’s treasure. And still I tried to give old Twining back his clear conscience.

  “It’s Max Bauer,” I insinuated, “Max Bauer.”

  I must have got it across for as Bauer edged closer and as I seized the shard, the old man stared at that sensual, dark face with an expression of recognition. There must have come to him then some inkling of the situation.

  “Yes,” he whispered, “let him have it.” He took the fragment from me, held it up tenderly for a moment in his two frail, fine old hands, and then placed it in the thick hands of Max Bauer. Bauer closed upon it greedily.

  “Murdered him!” moaned Twining.

  “Murdered me nothing,” chuckled Bauer, who could now, with the vase in his grasp, afford to be generous. “‘S all right, old man; we’re quits.”

  But Twining was fumbling for a piece of paper. “This!” he breathed. “Tell them where—painting before sculpture —”

  “But great Caesar, they’ve known all this for forty years!” exploded Bauer, scanning the written statement. “Why, they’ve found fragments of another Euphronios in that same Persian dirt heap; someone else proved that very thing and the Lord knows how many other things. Just fragments

  though, y’understand—not a perfect one like this.” Bauer let the paper flutter from his hands; I quietly picked up Twining’s confession and later dropped it into the stove. The old man relapsed into his former state of wandering misery, with apparently no recollection of the episode.

  Bauer left soon after that.

  “A good day for me, and I owe it all to you, Van Nuys—My thanks,” he made genial acknowledgment from the doorway.

  I choked on my disgust of him. So Max Bauer, whom only circumstances outside of himself had saved from actual murder, went up to the city, successful and carefree, to add to his many treasures old

  “Tinker” Twining’s one treasure.

  I stayed with the old scholar, whose every instinct would have held him from the murder he had

  planned, and watched him wear himself out, suffering to the last breath for his one mental sin.

  That is why I hope at the final reckoning, God will take some account of the sensitiveness of the souls he weighs, and will fix his penalties accordingly.

  SEPTEMBER 1923

  Volume II, Number 2 is marginally better than its predecessor, thanks in part to Otis Adelbert Kline’s atmospheric “The Cup of Blood,” which collectors generally consider to be the best of Kline’s early contributions to Weird Tales. Sixth of the thirteen issues that Edwin Baird would edit, September 1923

  contains an article on black magic, Preston Langley Hickey’s third “The Cauldron” feature, and sixteen stories, including a reprint of Ambrose Bierce’s tired old warhorse, “The Damned Thing,” and lesser efforts by Julian Kilman, Vincent Starrett and Farnsworth Wright. One of the two serial installments is the first half of “The People of the Comet” by Austin Hall, coauthor with Homer Eon Flint of “The Blind Spot,” an indifferently-written but popular and conceptually striking science-fantasy novel that first appeared in 1921 in “Argosy Magazine.”
In addition to Kline’s story, I have chosen James Ravenscroft’s nasty period piece about vivisection, “The Bloodstained Parasol,” and the obscure and possibly pseudonymous P. D. Gog’s grim Hawaiian anecdote, “The Dead-Naming of Lukapehu.” The latter has a ring of authenticity and might well be a true story.

  THE DEAD-NAMING OF LUKAPEHU

  By P. D. GOG

  The following tale was handed to me in manuscript by an acquaintance to whom it was related by a friend who heard it from an old resident of the Hawaiian group as happening to his father. In view of the father’s integrity, and bearing in mind other similar cases, there is, of course, no doubt as to the truth of the story. Whether Lukapehu died of an “error of mortal judgement,” of the incantations of the old medicine man, or of superstitious fear, is for the reader to judge for himself.

  The title Kahuna means sorcerer. Kahuna-anana is a specific title for a death-dealing sorcerer, from a Kahuna a sorcerer; and anana, to gaze intently. The epithet suggests that ancient belief in the evil eye, so naively preserved in the Scottish ballads, and particularly common in Italy and India. The story is recorded here substantially as it came into my possession.

  In 1859, my father had already established himself on a large plantation of Kawai, one of the Hawaiian group. He acquired among his “boys” a reputation for utter fearlessness and, to an astonishing degree, for foolhardy disregard of the various powers of enchantment. There dwelt also on Kawai, where the two branches of the Waimea River join, a famous old Kahuna, Kapukapu, who far surpassed his fellow sorcerers in skill, being reputed a Kahuna-anana or death-dealing sorcerer. So great was the reputation of this magician that never did any of the villagers presume to oppose his wishes; but often they complained bitterly to my father of Kapukapu’s unjust demands for food and service, exacted under threats of fearful and certain calamity. My father pooh-poohed these tales, particularly to a certain one of his boys, Lukapehu, his most skillful fisherman, exhorting him to have no fear of the old man but to face him boldly and laugh his threats to scorn.