It is a point of consternation among Dunsany fans and collectors that many of his shorter works have never or seldom been reprinted or collected. In part, this is due to lack of demand: Lord Dunsany churned out many ephemeral bits of micropropaganda in prose and verse during the World Wars that saw print in numerous newspapers. There are a number of small pieces on fantasy and war published in magazines that, for whatever reason, Lord Dunsany and his heirs have opted not to republish. Which is their right, although it might annoy the completionists to no end, as there is not, never has been, and may never be a definitive collection of the totality of Lord Dunsany’s creative output.
For the most part, Dunsany’s settings and cycles tend to be loose; relatively few tales require knowledge of previous tales to appreciate, being each a standalone story that could be read in almost any order and still retain the magic of the telling. However, there is at least one story that sticks out as a bit of a sore thumb. Not the scarcest, since it has been republished twice, but a story that builds off the previous work in a small way, so anyone aware of the absence must feel it.
“The Opal Arrow-Head” was first published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine (May 1920). It is an unusual story as it ties in directly with “The Secret of the Sea” (1916) from The Last Book of Wonder, and one of the last stories in that vein of fantasy, as Lord Dunsany’s fiction increasingly turned to more sardonic irony, anti-modernism, club tales, mysteries, and science fiction. Which is probably how it ended up being collected in The Man Who Ate the Phoenix (1949), a now-scarce and expensive volume of Lord Dunsany’s latter fantasies, and which has never been reprinted—and maybe that is the reason that “The Opal Arrow-Head” has languished largely unread, as the collection is still under copyright, even if that single story from 1920 is clearly in the public domain.
Other than that, the story was only reprinted one other time, in Everybody’s Weekly (18 Mar 1950).
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The Opal Arrow-Head
by Lord Dunsany
“ONCE on the Amber River,” said Locquialton.
We almost held our breath and were suddenly silent round that old table where Locquialton sat. There were five of us there besides him. An old stained table and a low room in an inn; a fireplace behind Locquialton, huge and old. You could almost have burned trees on it. The embers were low now, the fire dying; it was dark outside, and inside a few candles. Pale-blue cigar smoke filled much of the room. As I see it now, I see the pale-blue smoke, the dark blue of the night beyond the uncurtained windows, the huge chestnut-brown table, and Locquialton leaning forward. I hear that voice of his as we heard it then, “Once on the Amber River,” suddenly out of the silence. We knew that a traveler he had been. That is to say, we did not know; no man knew. We remembered long years and no Locquialton. No Locquialton anywhere, no rumor, and then his return. We knew Locquialton’s silences. And then—why, then, the world invented tales for itself, tales of amazing rivers and unknown lands where he went. he came back perfectly silent; nobody knew his business; none knew where he went and none knew why. And then one day as we smoked, “Once on the Amber River.” The words held us spellbound. And seated there so long ago, he told us one of his stories. None of us had ever heard him speak of himself before. Soon afterward other things happened. So this, as far as any one ever heard, is Locquialton’s only story. I cannot vouch for it, and no man can. I knew Locquialton as well as any man and know he was grimly unimaginative.
“One on the Amber River”—those words alone I remember as he said them. And the rest of the story, after this lapse of time, I rather see as pictures that float under the pale-blue cigar smoke, past our attentive faces, going away from the fire-place. And the story—it throws no light on the man, for it is as strange as himself, I think the strangest story I ever heard; but of that the reader shall judge, if I can remember it.
Once on the Amber River Locquialton was in a boat, a long boat that he did not describe, with thirteen rowers, black men; he had some strange name for it. He was so far from civilization then that at evening he used to take out a white-linen collar, all starched, and look at it. I imagine that he gazed on it wistfully, thinking of London ballrooms, but that I do not know, you never got what Locquialton was thinking. He just mentioned that collar. It gave me the idea of the sort of place better than latitude and longitude. Then he told us about the songs the rowers sang, odd songs. But I cannot remember that, though I see to-day Locquialton’s eyes as he spoke of them. And after that they came to the bend of the river, and the reed hut on the left bank, and a white man there. A white man all alone by the Amber River. Locquialton landed and went up to the hut; he thought the black men looked contemptuous of it, but could not tell, though he knew them as well as most; it was in any case poor in comparison to a native hut, no more than six feet high, about the size of a summer-house. And here this man lived alone. He was sitting outside his hut when Locquialton came, a man with a yellow beard, looking genially out at the river as though he owned the earth. Behind the hut was a heap of untidy boxes, and from these Locquialton says he brought two bottles of the best champagne he had ever tasted. This strange white man would not drink himself, saying that he despised champagne, and looking on with a kind of amused toleration while Locquialton drank. His only talk was of mountains.
Locquialton had news to give him that was worth little less than ivory in such a place as that. He could have told him what the latest dance was in London, the latest song, the new election cry. He could have told him just the kind of gloves men wore now when they went dancing; he could have brought back something that men have lost who live by the Amber River; and yet this strange man spoke only of mountains. He seemed content where he was, at ease, even happy, yet he dwelt on alluvial plains that the Amber River divided, where there was not a mountain for hundreds and hundreds of miles, and all his talk was of mountains. Mountains were clearly to him what London must have been to Locquialton, the London of lights and dances.
And then, before they parted, this smiling, self-satisfied man raised a sort of door in the floor and drew an old, old bottle out of a box. With extreme care he poured out a small wineglassful, offering none to his guest, and carefully corked the bottle and put it back in its resting-place and closed the door in the floor. He drank, and his spirit seemed to leave Locquialton there, sitting over his champagne, and went smiling away with endless beatitude, seeming to have no part in the mortal cares or any troubles of earth. If Locquialton spoke to his host the blue eyes and the tolerant smile looked far beyond him. He spoke no more nor noticed Locquialton, or if he noticed him it was only as a man infinitely happy, infinitely wise, watches small children quarrel. We gathered that Locquialton was rude to him, and still more rude when he could not possibly ruffle his temper. Then he got up and left him, having never met such a man. He went down to the boat and the black men rowed him away.
A year later, coming back, rowing against the current, Locquialton looked in there again. The hut was as shabby as ever. The man with the yellow beard sat blandly outside in the shade of it with the same look in his eyes, as though he owned infinity. And this time Locquialton got his story. He got it by talking about mountains to his host’s heart’s content. That man loved mountains, though he lived as far from them as Locquialton was then from the lights of cities.
His name, he said, was MacDonald, and in his youth he had been a mountaineer, climbing high places everywhere; and so he had come one day to the Huthneth Mountains. They were seated inside the hut at the table over that grand champagne which MacDonald had despised, and he took off his old jacket and rolled back his flannel shirt and showed Locquialton a scar running along his left shoulder-blade. An arrow-wound, he said. It had come one day over the rocks in the mountains, very near his neck, but had just caught the edge of the shoulder-blade and slid away to the left. They broke off the end of the arrow when he got home, and the doctor had cut it out the way it was going—you can’t cut an arrow out any other way because of the barbs—and then they had cleaned it and looked at it. MacDonald’s voice grew grave, even after the lapse of years. Sick though he was, he had left his bed at once and had traveled as far as he could from any mountains and never seen mountains since. For the arrow-head was an opal.
[MacDonald drew out of his waistcoat pocket and handed across to his guest such an opal as you would never find in any human market, a blue like the moon at midnight flashing in lakes at noon.]
Well, as Locquialton said, there was no describing it. And in the core of it was a long streak of scarlet, more like a flame caught in ice, Locquialton said, or a tiny bit of a stormy sunset frozen. He wondered what heaven was like if you could see it far off. That opal set you thinking, but you couldn’t describe it. “Only the gnomes use that,” MacDonald had said. Locquialton had looked at the vicious barbed arrow-head and nodded. “I knew I’d offended the gnomes,” MacDonald said.
And Locquialton said, “You must have done something pretty annoying to them,” or some such thing. And MacDonald had been silent awhile; and Locquialton went on with that rare champagne. And then MacDonald sighed. A sigh from that smiling, self-satisfied, contented man had astonished Locquialton; it was like a storm on a lake. MacDonald sighed and said:
“I am going back to the mountains.”
Still Locquialton was silent; and his silence somehow brought the secret out, as he had thought it would.
“I had stolen Gorgondy,” MacDonald said.
Locquialton did not need to tell any of us who sat in that somber inn what Gorgondy was; we had all read the Last Book of Wonder and knew it to be the hoarded wine of the treasure-house of the gnomes.
“I had stolen Gorgondy,” MacDonald said, “and the gnomes were after me.”
And then he told Locquialton how the last bottle of hammered iron was very nearly empty under the floor of his hut and he could never go back to drinking champagne or any stuff like that; he would just as soon drink water. And life without Gorgondy might be all very well for those who had never tasted it, but life without it to those who had was no more worth while living than that Greek fellow had once said it was, anyway.
“What Greek fellow?” we asked Locquialton.
“Oh, that man who said,” Locquialton answered, “that it was best of all not to be born, and after that to die young.”
“Oh yes; go on,” we said.
MacDonald had sighed and was soon going back to the mountains. And then he had told Locquialton of the talks he had had with old peasants down in the valleys, men who talk little at first and then give you some treasured legend, and they knew of a gnome in those mountains that never missed. The peasants there believe that the chamois never die naturally; they said that this gnome got them, a brown man, beard and all, the tint of the rocks exactly, the gnome that never missed. And he was the one, MacDonald thought, that guarded the treasure, on the other side of the rocks, the gnome whose arrowhead had in his waistcoat pocket. The windiest day he knew, MacDonald said, and the gnome must have aimed at his spine, yet, well, as he must have known the wind in those valleys, it had flicked the arrow an inch more or less than the gnome had allowed. He was going back now, for life was no good without Gorgondy; and he sighed, and muttered under his breath, “The gnome than never missed.”
“For that matter,” Locquialton said to him, “nor do I.”
“They talked it over and, briefly, their scheme was this: They should go together to the Huthneth Mountains; MacDonald should get his Gorgondy if he wanted it, and Locquialton should lie a little ‘way off with his light .275, expanding bullet, and get the dwarf as he came after MacDonald. And MacDonald was to get a horse up a grassy valley that ran near to the hoard of the gnomes, and ride for it, and the gnome would come out and Locquialton would get him.
It was a queer arrangement for two men to make. We put it down to a fellow-feeling there must have been between Locquialton and this man that was hunted from his mountains, for there was a rumor that Locquialton had been hunted, too, and dared not go within a hundred miles of some valley that to him was the fairest; it was thought that he might have killed a female elephant.
These thoughts crossed our minds as Locquialton’s blue eyes gazed far through the mist of cigar smoke, thinking, in silence. When he spoke again it was to speak of the Amber River two years later. He came to the hut again at the bend on the left of the river. It had all fallen in as those reed huts do; the old table was rotting away in the tropical damp, the iron bottle under the floor was empty, but thirty-two bottles of the very finest champagne still lay uncorked in the boxes. Locquialton was silent again like the man we had known for years. He had told his story of the Amber River; mountains did not interest him; his spirit, his imagination, his memory—whatever you call it—was still on the Amber River in that long, quaint boat rowed by black men. We puffed our cigars and waited.
“What happened in the mountains? one said.
Locquialton came back with a jerk from the Amber River.
“I got there first,” he said, “with my .275, behind a peak of a sort of tiny mountain, higher than the hoard of the gnomes, and about five hundred yards from it—five hundred and twenty-four, to be exact. A little high green valley ran right to a spot under the hoard of the gnomes. MacDonald brought his horse there and picketed it, then clambered perhaps thirty yards up the brown rocks, and came to the hoard and went in. He soon came out with six of the iron bottles hung by strings from his belt, in lops that he had all ready. He dropped down those rocks in very good time indeed, and mounted his horse and loosed the rope by a swivel, and the gnome came tumbling after him. The brown gnome came over those brown rocks like muddy water. I did not try to shoot against the rock; you could hardly see him; sometimes he would be behind the brown rock, sometimes in front of it; he wouldn’t be much more visible one way than the other. MacDonald hit his horse, and the bottles bumped and rattled, which frightened it more, and on the downward slope of that valley they got a good pace at once. The moment the gnome touched the grass of the valley he began to run, and I got my finger tight on to the trigger. There was no wind. You allow ten feet for a man running, of course, at five hundred yards. I had thought of allowing a little less, as he was a dwarf about three and a half feet high, but when I saw the pace he ran I allowed a little more. It was extraordinary. I never saw a creature less built for speed. He was short-limbed, square and squat, but he ran with violence. He did it by sheer strength of his abnormal muscles, his feet beat the earth, his thick legs pounded up and down with repeated blows. There was none of the grace of speed, just sheer violent motion; he ran with deliberate anger, crashing down every footstep. He went like hail over the ground. He was brown all over and showed up well against the green of the valley. At first he gained on MacDonald, but just as the horse got into his full stride, as a horse does not do for about a hundred yards, the dwarf halted and threw up a bow and shot his arrow. I had already fired and missed; I had made the wrong allowance and shot behind him. No one could have hit him; no one could have guessed the pace that that dwarf was doing; it would have taken a bad shot and a fluke to have hit him, and that is all about it. So I failed MacDonald.”
He was silent then for a moment. We had almost seen the Huthneth Mountains and the high green valley, and the dwarf, halting all of a sudden and shooting his arrow, and when his voice ceased the room, as it were, came back, and the blue cigar smoke and the uncurtained windows and the deep night outside. We sat there waiting for his final words, under his spell, not daring to disbelieve.
“In that man’s waistcoat pocket,” said Locquialton, “and in his heart, are probably two of the finest opals a man has ever touched.”
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I swore that I said nothing against brandy but added that it was often given to children, while Gorgondy was only drunk by men of such depravity that they had abandoned sin because all the usual vices had come to seem genteel. When he asked if Gorgondy was a bad wine to drink I said that it was so bad that if a man sipped it that was the one touch that made damnation certain. Then he asked me what I had in the iron bottle, and I said it was Gorgondy; and then he shouted for the largest tumbler in that ill-lit ancient tavern, and stood up and shook his fist at me when it came, and swore, and told me to fill it with the wine that I got on that bitter night from the treasure house of the gnomes. —Lord Dunsany, “The Secret of the Sea”
Technically, “The Opal Arrow-Head” is a club tale, and readers might be tempted to see it as a bridge between the last wonder-tales and the Joseph Jorkens stories. Maybe it is. Given the relative obscurity, it’s no surprise that there’s not much of a legacy for this story, so far, though it has gained a little attention as an example of pre-Tolkien fantasy, before the image of dwarves was quite so set in the popular imagination.
And, for Lord Dunsany scholars, there is a certain attraction to this tale because we can trace it to a specific source. On Dunsany’s 1919 tour of the United States—the same tour where he stopped at Copley Plaza in Boston to speak, and among the audience of eager listeners was one H. P. Lovecraft—he stopped in Wyoming, NY, and received a gift:
Mrs. Coonley Ward gave me a very rare crystal, and an opal carved like an arrowehead, for she overflowed with generosity. For each of these crystals I wrote a story, as Mrs. Ward probably intended that I should, and on Thanksgiving Day I had to read the tales before a large party. —Lord Dunsany, While the Sirens Slept: An Autobiography (1944) 27
Above are photos of the opal arrowhead by Joe Doyle and the Dunsany estate, courtesy of Cy Williams.
THE BARAHONA store of Amablis, the Syrian, was a house of mystery. It was a long rambling wooden structure and, except for a wee bit of space before the greasy counter over which he made his sales, it was crammed and jammed with everything, almost, that the fertile mind of a tradesman could imagine. Machetes, spurs, native tobacco, native hats and bags, knives, bread, aged bologna. And kinds and classes of hardware such as could only be conjured out of the mind of a person such as Amablis, the Syrian. One could spend a week in that store and come up on new surprises minute by minute.
It was in a dark corner of this store that I found the brass dachshund.
I dragged it forth and studied it curiously. It was a foot scraper about two feet in length, fashioned in the shape of a dachshund with elevated tail and pointed ears. It had long spikes at either end, by which it could be secured to wooden rails or blocks to carry out the purpose for which it had been intended.
“How much for this, Amablis?” I demanded.
“Five dollars, Sir,” he said hopefully, “it is a very valuable work of art, Sir.”
“Yes, Amablis, I note that myself. Which moves me to offer you seventy-five cents for it.”
“It is an outrage, sir; but since you are the commandante here, I must let you have it.”
“Now, Amablis,” I said, after I had paid for my purchase, “tell me just how much profit you made on that deal.”
Amablis grinned all over his swarthy face.
“Seventy-one cents, captain,” he replied, “I got it from a poor Haitian for two native biscuits!”
“And he probably stole it from before the door of some white employee of the sugar company.”
Amablis shrugged his shoulders and his face became as stolid of expression as that of a Digger Indian.
“If it is stolen I do not know, captain. Nor could I identify the Haitian who traded it to me—they all look alike, you know.”
I did know. I haven’t been warden of the prison for Haitian evaders of the immigration laws for two years without learning something about these dull and stupid blacks.
I walked out of Amablis’ store with the brass dachshund under my arm and, though I did not know it, right into adventure such as you read about. From the store I walked half a block south to the prison, for a look around before going home and calling it a day. It is quite a job to be commandante over a company of Dominican soldiers whom you have to father, pet, and cajole into doing your bidding—to say nothing of finding food for a hundred and sixty Haitians prisoners who, though the Cuban calls the Haitian that creation nearest resembling man, are in reality human beings requiring food. Take it from me, such a job is no sinecure, especially if one is an almost-expatriated American, strictly on his own among people whom no white man ever really learns to understand, to say nothing of being compelled to take orders from octaroons in authority who, out of jealousy perhaps, take pleasure in unduly “riding” the foreign official.
I had the brass contraption under my arm when the gate of the stockade was swung open for me to enter. I stepped inside and the sentry closed and locked the gate behind me, shutting out the clean air which comes landward from Naiba Bay, and giving me the benefit of the variegated odors to be encountered about a prison habitually used for the confinement of Haitians. If you have ever visited one, I can see you smile as you read!
The stupid blacks were out of the prison proper, busily engaged in cleaning up the stockade for the day, supervised by a half dozen Dominican privates with grounded Krags. I believe in discipline in a prison. Usually when I enter this prison the first Haitian to note my presence lets out a yell in his crazy lingo and the blacks drop everything to line up for inspection with the best speed of which they are capable.
But not this time.
The black who first saw me started to yell. He even had his mouth open. But the words never came out. The fellow froze there as he stared at me, his eyes momentarily seeming to bulge larger, showing their fishy whites. In a brace of seconds his ebony skin, all I could see of it, was dotted with perspiration.
I turned to the interpreter who always stands at my elbow when I am inside the stockade.
“Ask that black ape what ails him.”
The interpreter spoke, supposedly translating what I had said.
The Haitian who started at me might have been all alone in some silent mountain fastness for all the attention he paid the interpreter. Odd circumstances when one considers the usual docility of the Haitian. He just stood there and stared.
Not at me, I know, for the blacks fear me because I am white; but at the brass dachshund which I carried under my arm.
I looked around at the other blacks.
To see that they, too, were starting at the brass foot scraper—and that the faces of most of them had changed to that muddy gray which is the Haitian’s facial manifestation of fright.
I brought the thing around before my own eyes and studied it. What was there about the thing to do affect the negroes? Probably no one of them had ever seen a dachshund in the flesh. Probably no one of them had ever seen this brass one before. It might have been in the store of Amablis, the Syrian, for four or five years. But I soon gave it up—which one usually does when trying to unravel the mental processes of the Haitian. It can’t be done.
Yet what made them act that way?
I finally herded them into line and looked them over, noting particularly that as I passed each man in line his eyes went to that brass dachshund under my arm, and that he drew his body as far back from me as he could. What was it? It doesn’t hurt my conscience to frighten a Haitian—so when I got to the end of the line I suddenly thrust the dachshund under the nose of the last Haitian to be inspected.
The result was all that could be desired. He let out an unearthly yell that could have been heard halfway out in Neiba Bay and bolted for the gate, absolutely disregarding the sentry’s command to halt, seeming not to see the bare bayonet that was thrust forth to bar his flight. He ducked under the extended bayonet with the agility of a monkey, reached the gate of the stockade, where he turned like a wild animal at bay, his arms flung wide along the side of the enclosure. I saw his scrawny chest rise and fall swiftly and could partially guess at the abject gear which seemed to look out of his eyes.
As I approached the stockade gate to leave the compound he fled from me as though I had had the plague. I could guess at the sigh of relief which must have gone up from the stockade after I had left. yet I could not guess why this brass dachshund should have had such an effect upon the stupid blacks. Outside the stockade I paused in the street and studied the scraper anew. Nothing but a brass foot scraper—dirty, as things usually are which remain for very long in the store of Amablis, the Syrian. Something that looked like an irregular dab of rust stained that part of the scraper which represented the ears of the dachshund. Of course that stain might have been blood of some kind. It looked a bit like it; but why should there be blood stains on a foot scraper? Again, I did not recall for a moment whether or not brass was subject to rust.
I gave it up and strode away, stopping at the Hotel Marina for my customary evening bottle of beer.
Now, as I have hinted just above, I have been in the habit for two years of stopping at the Marina for a bottle of beer as I go home. The beer is the best made. It has never caused me a moment of sickness, nor left me with a feeling of nausea in the morning.
Yet, for the first time since coming to Santa Domingo, I was held that night in the grip of horrible nightmares. All night long, it seemed to me, I dreamed until I would start up in the darkness with perspiration dampening my forehead. Convincing myself of my folly by reasoning, I would go back to sleep, only to dream again. Such dreams! Dreams of valleys, precipice-bordered, in which lived naked black savages whose only domesticated animals were scores of lanky dachshunds. In one part of the sequence of dreams, the blacks captured me and found me hand and foot, and I lay for hours in the darkness, with a long lean dachshund squatting upon my chest, lolling out his tongue as he looked into my starting eyes. I would start awake suddenly then, and stare wildly around my darkened quarters.
Was it fancy? Or could I really hear the rustling of bare feet on the wooden porch outside my room? Boards creaked suddenly, causing me to start nervously. This happened twice, my nightmares and the realities of awakening blending so curiously that they seemed to make a weird whole of some dream of terror. The third time I leaped out of bed, stumbled over the brass dachshund which I had left on the floor beside my bed, and flung wide my door. Gripping my pistol firmly I slipped the catch on my flashlight.
There was absolutely nothing in the yard before my little wooden house. Scarce had that pencil of light swept searchingly across the yard than my Dominican sentry was at my side, coming noiselessly up like a cat, his rifle at the ready.
“What is it, captain?” he whispered.
“Did you hear nothing, Felipe?” I asked.
“Nothing at all, captain,” he replied.
“Must have been the wind then, Felipe,” I muttered. “I’ll go back to bed.”
I was conscious that he looked at me curiously as I said this. For there was no wind. It was one of those nights which are frequent in the tropics during certain seasons. A night when there was nothing abroad but silence, through which, at intervals, come little puffs of wind which sound like eery whispers from nowhere. A pale moon about the Bahorucos, shadows among the palm trees, phosphorescent gleams upon the bosom of Neiba Bay.
I stepped back inside my room, listening there until I heard the retreating footsteps of the faithful sentry.
Moving silently, then. I searched about until I found a little box of common carpet tacks. I opened the door slowly, an inch at a time so that the sentry would not notice. Holding my hand close to the porch I scattered the carpet tacks before my door. Aside from a narrow window in my bedroom—a window high up from the floor—there was no other entrance to my sleeping quarters. Satisfied with my precautions I went back to bed.
To more and startling nightmares.
Always in my dreams there would be brass dachshunds, or dachshunds in the flesh.
Once I came awake to find myself standing erect in the center of the room, in the path of moonlight which came in from the high window, my automatic tight-gripped in my right hand.
In reality there was nothing at that window; in my dream I had seen a black shadow blot out the light in the window, had made out the outline of a negro’s head!
I was trembling when I awoke on the floor there. Perspiring as though I had had malaria. Had there, just prior to my awakening, been a face at that window? I could only guess. I believed that there had been and that my subconscious mind had reacted to that living picture.
Once more I composed myself for sleep. But could not sleep for a long time. Then my senses began to dull and I was halfway between sleeping and waking—
When a horrible yell came from outside on my porch—followed by the rustling retreat of bare feet. There followed the swift patter of bare feet all around my house then, as though the place had been surrounded by people who wore no shoes. With an oath, uttered in a shout to hide my fear, I sprang to the door and swung it wide. A black shadow, swift as the wind, disappeared around the corner of the house next to mind. I swung my light down to look at the porch where I had spread those carpet tacks. Some of them were gone out of the pattern I had made there, and here and there were bright red drops of blood which the prowler had left in their stead.
What had the prowler wanted?
The brass dachshund? Nonsense! When the Haitians had shown such fear of the thing in daylight, why would they come around my house—fearing me as they did to boot—to look for it after dark?
The sentry did not appear this time—and I must confess that I feared to make a search for him. He was part and parcel of this country, groomed from birth to take care of himself. He had Haitian blood in his veins, like most of his countrymen, and knew Haitians. But I wondered why he did not come at my shout.
Oh, well. I turned back to my room, closed and locked the door—and sat up, wide awake, until morning came.
The first report that was brought to me next morning was a surprise. My most trusted Dominican sergeant explained excitedly that, during the night just past, Three Haitians, using their fingers and some bits of cocoanut [sic] shell smuggled past the sentries, had dug under the wall and escaped. Though this had happened in plain view of over a hundred and fifty other Haitians, not one of the latter could tell a thing about it. If a Haitian won’t talked it is useless to “third degree” him, for you will get nothing from him but the most transparent and astounding lies. And he’ll stick to his story until Hades becomes a pleasure report.
After the sergeant had made his report he turned to go back to his duty at the prison.
“By the way, Sir,” he said, “where is your sentry?”
Odd, at that, I hadn’t seen him since that time last night.
Well, we found him in short order. Dead by violence, rifled of all his clothing, his rifle gone.
He was not a pleasant sight to look upon. For he had practically been disemboweled.
That day I compelled the frightened negroes to put the brass foot scraper in place below my porch, securing it by sinking its prints deep in a heavy block of concrete—the making of which I myself supervised.
The concrete would set before night. The brass dachshund was anchored to stay. There is a bit of stubborness in my makeup.
II
I SPENT MUCH of the day in and about the prison, using my interpreter freely in an effort to learn something of why the Haitians had made their escape. This was not the first escape in my experience with the Barahona prison. Two prisoners had gone once before, only to return of their own accord the following morning when the usual breakfast of beans and plantains was being served. They had come back because they knew of no place to go where they would be better off than in prison. They freely admitted to the interpreter that the prison was far preferable to their own homes, and when I pictured a hundred and sixty odd of them confined in a building intended to hold half that number—piled up like sheep in a blizzard—I could fancy just about what their home life must have been.
But I knew instinctively that this escape was different. I knew at once that these three who had left did not intend to return and that, somehow, the brass dachshund which I had purchased from Amablis had something to do with it. It was quite a puzzle; but it is useless to try to figure out a Haitian. Did I say that before? Well, don’t forget it.
I passed the word around among the prisoner “chasers” to be more than usual on the alert with the various working parties which they superintended. There was a feeling in the air that I did not like. Ugly looks in my direction when the blacks did not think that I saw. Extraordinary absence of guile when I was looking. To my wrought-up imagination it seemed that the time was ripe for a concerted jail delivery. This would never have been particularly hard, for the jail was just a wooden excuse for a jail. They might all have gone last night had not a half-witted black given the alarm before the rest could crawl through the hole which had been dug under the wall. The looks that the other blacks cast at him were certainly far from brotherly. I told the sergeant to put this one in a cell by himself in the Dominican section of the jail if he would save himself the trouble of managing an untimely funeral.
It happened to be Saturday, the regular bathing day for the prisoners, and I was half minded to pass up this part of the routine for this week, until everything cooled down somewhat. I would have passed it up except that I did not wish to show openly that I heard the negroes one whit. When the blacks were lined up, two and two, inside the stockade, for the half mile jaunt to the shore of Neiba Bay, I could see more than one of them glance furtively at the sentries who would accompany them. When I spoke a word to the sentries and these fixed bayonets quietly, there were queer glints in the eyes of the blacks as they glanced at me.
I didn’t like it.
The door of the stockade was flung open and the blacks herded out and turned into the street leading to the beach by the half dozen sentries posted at vantage points outside the door. The Dominican guards were on the job with a vengeance and I knew quite well that not a one of them but would have welcomed a jail delivery as a good excuse to show the white captain, me, how proficient they were with their firearms. The Haitians knew this, too, and were quite docile. Not a black put forward an excuse to keep from taking his weekly bath—which was quiet unusual, as most of them try to get out of bathing if humanly possible.
Just out of a sight of Barahona, around the spit of land to the south of the town, the Haitians were ordered to cast off their clothes—not a very difficult operation, as most of them were half naked anyway—and get into the water. Double guards patrolled the beach on either hand, while other sentries stood quietly within the palm grove, rifles at the ready. The only avenue of escape was straight out to sea, where the only land visible was a small island some two hundred yards from shore.
Yet one of the Haitians attempted escape in this direction—and made it! He dove under the water and swam straight out, coming up after a full minute and a half underneath the surface, gulped a breath of air and dove again. We did not see him come up a second time. But shortly we noticed a slight commotion among the undergrowth at the edge of the island. The other bathers had been hurried ashore and lined up before the lowered rifles of the guards. Two of my best marksmen were ordered off on either hand, out of line with the bulk of the prisoners. These knelt swiftly, and methodically swept that little island with a veritable hail of bullets. Yet no cry of pain came from the island.
Leaving a guard to see that our man did not return to the mainland, I went back with the prisoners and saw them safely locked up again. Then I hunted out a negro fisherman and was rowed out to the island. Scarce fifteen could have elapsed. The guard I had left on the beach was as trustworthy as any Dominican can be. That islan’t wasn’t much larger than a fair-sized blanket. Yet that Haitian had made good his escape, and we couldn’t learn exactly how he had done it.
There was something uncanny about it, even to a fellow who knew—or thought, that he knew—Haitians. Where had the black fellow gone?
That night, for the first time in over two years, I omitted the bottle of beer at the Hotel Marina. I was worried and felt that I needed all my faculties.
You wonder, perhaps, why I made no effort to capture the three blacks who had escaped the night before. Here is the answer: Off the beaten trails of the Province of Barahona there is nothing but peculiarly unprepossessing wilderness, in which only the Haitian is perfectly at home. It would have been the old story of the needle and the haystack.
I dreaded the night which was to come. Before I turned in I scattered carpet tacks on my porch once more, even though I knew it to be rather a forlorn hope. The Haitians, if it were Haitians that had visited me the night before, would look for tracks if they came again, and could quietly remove them before stepping up on the porch.
I had a new sentry tonight, and I knew instantly that he was scared half to death. He trembled visible when I spoke to him, and his bulging eyes swerved to that corner of my compounds where his predecessor had been found that morning. This man was faithful to me—but not faithful enough to disregard the very evident danger of being disemboweled. And he looked fearfully at the brass dachshund in its block of green concrete below the steps. It was plain that the soldiers had been talking among themselves and that, almost as superstitious as the Haitians, they were wearing all sorts of weird fancies around the thing.
“Captain,” quavered the sentry, “why did you buy that thing?”
“Is there any good reason, Octavio,” I replied, “why I should not have bought it?”
“I don’t know, Captain; but the men are wondering. Why do the Haitians fear that brass dog of the long body and short legs? We think there is something ‘voodoo’ about it! The Haitians think it is a good of some kind. And they were talking in prison today about how, four or five years ago——”
Here, the sentry paused and looked fearfully about him. Shadows were creeping into the palmgroves, were deepening at the southern end of Punta Martin Barcia, and the sun was just at the crest of the Bahorucos. An eery blue hazel filled the valley which leads into the west toward invisible Lake Rincon. Something, I could not guess what, kept the Dominican from going on with what he would have said.
“Yes, yes, Octavio,” I prompted, “what were the Haitians saying in prison?”
But Octavio would not tell the rest, whatever it was.
“I shouldn’t have spoken, captain,” he said, “it was just a story anyway!”
I knew that he was hiding the real cause of his fear, and that he was hiding it because he believed in his superstitious heart that unseen ears might hear his disclosures and—well, his predecessor had gone the way of no returning, and had gone the way of no returning, and would be laid to rest in the cemetery ere another sunset. Octavio did not wish to follow him. Mysterious things happen in Santo Domingo.
Believing that it would bolster up his courage I sent for additional sentries, so that there could be a double guard about my house. Don’t think that I am afraid in Santo Domingo; but one early learns to exercise care where one’s personal safety is concerned. But I made a mistake; for the sentries talked among themselves, making mountains out of mole hills, I’ll Wagner, until they half scared one another to death with their stories.
I went to bed around midnight, opening my door to look out before dousing my light—and knew blame well that every last sentry had slipped away to the barracks, a quarter of a mile away. They preferred a courtmartial to remaining in the presence of that brass dachshund. Understanding them, I did not really blame them, even though their going made it rather unpleasant for me.
I turned my flashlight upon the brass dachshund below the steps, noticing the brassy sheen which told me that the odd foot scraper was still in place. I shot the beam all around and saw no one. Then I stepped hurriedly down and tested the green concrete with the toe of my boot. It was quite hard, and the strongest men could not have torn the brass dachshund from its foundation. I turned about and started up the steps.
And fairly leaped inside the lighted room. Why? I cannot say exactly; but the instant I turned my back up on the darkness, I felt unseen eyes boring into the back of my neck, had a feeling as of slinking figures surging forward with the tread of prowling cats. It is not a pleasant sensation. Perhaps a lot of it is imagination; but a chap gets that way after too long in Latin America. The ghost of Le Clerc—who tried to bring Haiti back to French rule—could tell you the feeling, eloquently.
I closed the door, locked it, and placed a chair-back under the knob. I even fastened the great hooks with which most Dominican doors are equipped. And I cursed myself for a coward even as I did it. But there was no one to see my fear except myself, and as this thought came to me I went to my mirror and studied my own face. It was drawn and pale but, analyzing it, I saw that there was stubbornness, too. I grinned, but the grin was crooked and unconvincing.
I placed my automatics, one on either side of my bed, so that my hands would fall upon them naturally if need were. I had trained myself in this manner just as some people train themselves to awaken at a certain hour in the morning. I knew when I lay down at night that, should need arise, I would be erect and with my automatics in my hand when I came awake.
Then I slipped into bed and blew out the lamp on the chair beside it.
To my great surprise I went directly to sleep.
And, just as I had done the night before, dreamed dreams which brought me wide awake, with the perspiration bathing my body. I was sitting up in bed with my automatics trained upon that window, high up above the floor. Just as I had done last night. It was uncanny. Why had I done this two nights in succession? I had never done it prior to my purchase of the brass dachshund.
Then I raised one of the automatics and fired through the window. I had seen a weird shadow there for a fleeting instant. As though a curly polled negro had slowly raised his head to look in. I fired before his eyes could have reached the proper height. The poll disappeared instantly and there was not a sound. No sound of footfalls, shod or bare. Nothing. I began to tremble. Damn this silence! Curse a vivid imagination!
I strained my ears as I listened for sounds from the barracks which should tell me that my men were coming in answer to the signal of my shot. I wished them to come—and I didn’t. I wished them to come because I was honestly in a blue funk. Wished them to come because I did not wish the quadroons to snicker because the white captain was afraid and discharged his weapons at shadows.
No sound from the barracks.
But my straining to hear such sounds was productive of results.
For I heard, after a strained moment or two, an eery whispering! Disconcerting and bothersome, in that I could not tell whence it came, nor could I understand the words. Yet I knew that the whispers came from human lips. There was a rustling of the loose sand beneath my floor, accompanied by whispering. Then I turned my head and listened carefully, ear against the north wall of my room. The whispering seemed to come from outside that wall now; but when I straightened up slowly, it seemed to come from beneath the floor. It seemed to be travelling, now here, now there—as though some skillful ventriloquist was playing pranks upon me. Once I thought I could hear it in the very room with me, in the center of the room about the height of an average man’s lips—but I could see nothing, could hear nothing but that elusive whispering.
Then I was sure that it came from directly beneath my feet. I drew a bead on the floor and emptied a clip through the boards. The result was nothing, except that, after the echoes had died away inside my room, the whispering seemed louder, as though it came up more easily through the bullet holes.
A board in the floor of the porch outside cracked suddenly, like a pistol shot, and I was against the door instantly, ear to the keyhole, listening for the sound of footsteps. There was none.
But through the keyhole came the sound of that eery whispering!
As silently as possible I slipped a new clip into the pistol I had emptied. Taking my courage in hand with a distinct effort of will, I slipped the hooks on the door free, unlocked it silently, hurled the door suddenly and forcibly open.
My flashlight showed not a thing that moved out there. My ears heard never a sound, except the soughing of the wind in the bayohunda trees a short distance from my door. Even that eery whispering had stopped.
A back shadow moved in the deep Shadow beneath a bayohunda. The beam from my light showed a standing Haitian, motionless as a post. I fired hurriedly, aiming swiftly at his black, naked chest. He did not move and, cursing softly in exasperation, I sprang from the porch and ran toward him, firing as I ran. I didn’t take my eyes off that Shadow, by my father, I swear it! But when I reached the bayohunda there was no one. I saw the marks of broad splay feet—footprints leading away into the night. But no drops of blood. I had missed completely.
I turned to retrace my steps.
Idly, as I started to mount to the porch once more I switched the beam of my light up on the brass dachshund.
Only there was no dachshund! Just the hole, empty as an eye-socket, where the concrete foundation had been! Foundation and foot scraper together had weighed all of two hundred pounds; yet the whole had been wrenched away and carried off, as though snatched up by the hand of a ruthless giant!
What?
I confess it, freely. I ran, frightened and unashamed of my fear, to the barracks, where my senior sergeant had already prepared a service bed in readiness for my coming!
III
BUT THE next morning I was ashamed.
Things always do appear differently in daylight. But, studying the faces of my soldiers I could not see that they thought me a coward. But I never could excuse myself later for having fled into the night from a bunch of shadows. But do shadows whisper? I KNEW that I had heard whispers, whispers which came from human lips. And it was certainly no dream that the brass dachshund had been literally torn up from its roots in that block of concrete and carried away.
At the same time, while I guessed that Haitians had done this, I knew that it had required more than those four blacks who had escaped from the prison. That whispering had come from all around my house. But then there is always a “Haitian Town” in every Dominican town, and I knew quite well that the blacks stick together—especially against folks of another race. It had been an easy matter to enlist the aid of the free blacks in Barahona town and in the sugar company nearby, which employs large numbers of these cheap laborers.
I breakfasted at the barracks and went to the prison. Where I learned at once that four other blacks had escaped during the night. How, or at what hour, no one knew. But the count was four short at checking up time before breakfast. The four missing ones had vanished as though the earth had opened up and swallowed them. And I knew that my Dominican sentries were more than average in intelligence, too proud of their calling to sleep on the job. Yet the blacks were gone, there was no gain-saying that.
I went over the roster, checking off the names of the missing: Adan Tebo, Cerimarie Leontes, Chal Yac, and Divue David. Those names don’t mean a great deal, for to a Haitian a name is like a garment which he slips off and on as he sees fit. He forgets his name as soon as he gives it to you. I have known Haitians to remain in prison far beyond the time of their sentence, solely because, when their name was called, they did not recognize it—and they all look as like as a pan of black peas, if such there be.
As a matter of habit I scolded my Dominican sentries, after which I quitted the prison en route to my quarters which I had fled so ignominiously the night before. it it was some time before I really reached the house. For as soon as the door of the stockade closed behind me I noted a crowd of Dominicans in the street before the store of Amablis the Syrian. A mailing crowd, an expectant crowd. The natives, men, women and children, whispered excitedly among themselves.
For the first time within my memory of Barahona, the mysterious store of Amablis was closed. Its two windows which gave up on the street looked like the sightless eyes of a blind man. No smoke arose from the chimney to indicate that Amablis was preparing his rice and beans for breakfast. Passing strange.
The Dominican can scent tragedy further than the mongrel which yowls in the presence of death. They knew—and I guessed at once—that the closed door of the store, and the sightless eyes of windows, masked tragedy of some sort.
My heart went down into my boots. As a commandant of the constabulary and Provost Marshal of the Province, it was my duty to ascertain the reason why Amablis’ door was closed. The Dominicans began to form a Lane to the door for me even before I arrived on the scene. They looked at me curiously, mutely telling me that they knew all about last night. There are no secrets in the constabulary—the native soldiers know too many Dominican maidens to whom they tell everything they know. But these people did not regard me as a coward. They could fancy things from which even the “inevitable white man” might run.
I imagine that my face was a bit grim, for they gave back respectfully, even further than was really necessary. It was not fear of me, for the Dominicans look up on me as friend and father confessor.
I knocked on the door and shouted for Amablis.
There was no answer. The Dominicans fell silent, scarcely breathing. I listened for several moments, hearing nothing but a slight crackling inside as of a floor board shifting. Then nothing, not even echoes.
I put my shoulder to the door and heaved.
The door leaped open so suddenly and unexpectedly that I almost fell as I lurched over the threshold.
Amablis was not in the half darkened shop.
But even so, the store was occupied. Two black men, Haitians, lay sprawled on the floor at my feet. Dead, both of them. One of them was the fellow who escaped us by swimming out into Neiba Bay. Crimson dyed was his throat, where a gaping wound told what manner of death he had died. The wound was clean-cut, as though it had been made with a razor. Yet, somehow, I knew that no razor had done it.
The second Haitian had a bullet wound in his breast above the heart, and though I had never before seen this man to know him, something inside me shouted aloud that this was the man who had stood like a post last night in the shadow of the bayohunda. The bullet hole was about where I had seen the front sight of my pistol when I had fired at the fellow’s breast. Yet, with a bullet hole through his heart, the Haitian had escaped into the night! The Haitian is hard to kill, I knew quite well. Only a week or two before I had seen a Haitian stabbed twice through the heart walk calmly down a flight of four steps, turn up the street and walk all of fifty yards, ere he fell to the ground like a steer that has been pole-axed. The internet in the sugar company’s hospital had thrust two fingers into one of the wounds—deep. Believe it or not; but you know, if you know Haitians, that I speak the truth.
Where was Amablis, the Syrian?
It was a long time before the question was answered.
With the aid of some of the Dominicans I turned the store of Amablis upside down; but the Syrian, or any sign of hurried departure on his part, could not be found.
Then, slowly and thoughtfully, I went back to my house.
The whole thing seemed like some weird nightmare, and it really required that I see the gaping hole where the brass dachshund had been to make me realize that this was no dream. Possibly I had half expected to find the brass dachshund in place in its foundation of concrete, and it was a bit of a shock to me to discover that this faint hope was vain. There, below my steps, was the proof. And it filled me with a feeling of dread which I could not easily cast off. Down in my heart I knew that I would again hear of the brass dachshund.
The interior of my house was just as I had left it. I entered and looked all around. Then I went back outside and stooped to look beneath my floor. In the sand there were numerous footprints—of broad splay feet. From here I went to the bayounda tree where the black man had stood to receive my bullet in his breast, and followed the trail he had left in his flight. It did not lead far. I shortly found the unmistakable marks of where he had fallen at full length and lay still. it was an unbelievable distance from where he had stood—when one considered where the bullet had struck the black. There was dry blood in the sand, and marks of many other feet—footprints of those who had borne their fellow away.
Why had they taken him to the house of Amablis, the Syrian?
I shuddered as my mind went back to last night. How would I have felt, scared as I had been, had I followed that trail with my flashlight last night and stumbled upon the stark body of the black? To say nothing of what those other blacks, in the darkness there, watching me, might have done. The Haitian is but slightly removed from cannibalism, and when angered his thoughts follow strange channels.
Why had that other Haitian in Amablis’ store been slain?
Certainly there were numerous questions to be answered before I should get to the bottom of this mystery.
But what could I do? I made a report of the whole affair for my superiors at Santo Domingo City, and sat me down to wait for something to happen. For over a week I lived in my house as formerly, untroubled by phantom footfalls. No eery whispers troubled my sleep. Whoever had done all this had apparently decided to bother me no more.
I knew it would be long before my superiors at Santo Domingo would take action. Dominican officials are best at procrastination.
The first message received from the commandant of the constabulary apparently had nothing to do with the case. It was a phoned telegram, worded as follows:
“Word has been received here that Cerimarie Leontes, notorious Haitian voodoo priest, has crossed into Santo Domingo. Watch for him, and for signs of activity among the Haitian laborers on the sugar estate.”
Cerimarie Leontes! Where, and under what circumstances, had I heard or read that name before? Slowly it came back to me. I fished among the numerous odds and ends of papers in my pocket and finally found what I sought—the names of the last four Haitians to escape from the prison which I managed.
If you will go back and read over those names you will see at once that Cerimarie Leontes had been one of the four who had escaped that night when the weird whispering under my floor had sent me in full flight to the barracks—scared half out of my wits. The night which had witnessed the double killing of Haitians and the disappearance of Amablis the Syrian. For 15 days, according to my records, I had had Cerimarie Leontes under my thumb, while ignorant of the fact that I held an important prisoner—a prisoner moreover, I know remembered, who was badly wanted by the Haitian authorities for the practice of the voodoo rites among his countrymen across the Border! I cursed myself in that the name had meant nothing to me when I had first seen it on the report of the confined. For Cerimarie Leontes was a notorious character. And I couldn’t even recall what he had looked like.
“Arturo,” I said to my senior sergeant that morning, “what sort of a man was Cerimarie Leontes?”
Cerimarie Leontes, the voodoo priest, meant nothing to Arturo; but Cerimarie Leontes, escaped prisoner, did mean something. Arturo Hernandez never forgets a face, even a Haitian face.
“Just a half witted Haitian, Sir,” he replied, “it was he who gave the alarm the night those three escaped. Only to leave himself a short time later. Why?”
I did not enlighten him. Even the Dominican gets scared when “voodoo” is mentioned—and I might need Arturo in my business later on. With the list of those who had escaped still in my hand, I strode to my desk in the company office and sat down to think things over.
My orderly came in shortly to report that a Syrian woman and a half dozen grimy children were outside waiting to see me. I knew before they came in that they were the family of Amablis. I was all interest at once, swearing at myself to having failed to interview the family before this. But than I had known nothing of the family connections of Amablis.
The woman was dry-eyed, woebegone. The kids were the dirtiest I had ever seen. The woman, from long residence in Santo Domingo, spoke Spanish fluently.
“What can I do for you, madam?” I asked, “Do you seek Amablis?”
She nodded dully.
“Why didn’t you come to me before?”
“Because,” she said. “I thought that Amablis would come back soon. I did not wish to trouble the authorities.”
The Syrians in Santo Domingo are like the Dominicans in this, going to the authorities only when there seems nothing else to do. And it is useless to get angry with them. They are doubtful of uniforms, knowing as they do that the uniform is often prostituted to uses for which it was never intended. I knew that, had there been food in the house of Amablis, the woman would have remained in her home, silent as the grave, until Amablis came back or word was received that he was dead. This family was hungry. I could read it in the face of the woman, and in the whimpering children.
“I do not know where Amablis has gone,” I said gently, “can you not help me a little?”
“I can only guess,” she replied, “but I believe that it is the brass dog which has caused this. I was in the store when Amablis bought it from a Haitian, only two months ago. The man was scared half to death,, looking behind him as Amablis put the thing away as though he feared that someone would see him. I begged Amablis not to buy it; but you can’t pull a Syrian away from a bargain. He kept it out of sight because I asked it, and I firmly believe that Amablis would be with me now had you not found the brass dog and carried it away—openly, so that anyone might see it?”
“But what,” I asked in exasperation, “could a simple brass foot scraper have to do with the disappearance of Amablis?”
“I do not know,” she wailed, “but something tells me HERE that the brass dog is the cause of all the trouble!”
She pressed a dirty hand to her ample person over her heart.
That was all she could tell me.
I gave her money to buy food, and told her to come back when she needed more. She smiled gratefully and went away.
Two days later a trail spent native from far Enriquillo, south on the Peninsula, came staggering into my office with a strange story to tell.
“There is a terrible presence among us of Enriquillo!” he gasped, “burros belonging to us, running in pasture at La Rabiza, have been found dead from no cause at all, apparently. Our cattle come home with dry udders, having been milked while running in the hills. We know that our chickens lay eggs, for we can hear them cackle in the woods around the town; but when we go to hunt the eggs we do not find them—only scattered twigs where their nests have been robbed and destroyed! Yesterday my brother saw a half naked Haitian in the woods, who ran like a deer when discovered. He soon distanced my brother, who is fat; and my brother started up on his trail, following the marks of his feet. My poor brother did not come back!”
“Yes, yes,” I encouraged, “what became of him?”
“I came here to tell you, captain, travelling all night, even though I was very much afraid. When he did not come back my father sent me to seek him.”
He paused dramatically. Your true Dominican recognizes drama, crude as may be some of its guises.
“I found him” he continued sadly, “on the trail between Enriquillo and Los Patos—dead! He had been badly hacked and slashed, as though he had been slain with machetes. Most of the wounds were on his stomach!”
I started to my feet with a cry of horror. I was remembering the sentry who had been all but disemboweled that first weird night after I had purchased the brass dachshund. The spent native was put to bed for a short rest.
I ordered that my saddlebags be filled for a journey, together with those of Sergeant Hernandez. The latter did not wish to go.
He had stood, unnoticed by me, in the doorway of my office, while the native of Enriquillo had told me his story.
IV
WE WAITED for evening before taking the southward trail—six solid hours of steady riding. Skirting the sea, climbing along the faces of aged talus slopes, up and down, up and down—over rim rock and through Danke woods where the light seldom falls even at midday, because the limbs of scraggy trees unite above the path to create gloomy, shadowy hallways. Not a pleasant journey, even in daytime—calling for surefooted steeds and steady riders. I was going over the trail during darkness.
I decided upon this for one excellent reason. The people along the way would be in bed, and the knowledge of my coming would not precede me. Travel as fast as you may while the sun is up, and the natives know you are coming hours before you actually arrive. The “grapevine telegraph” we call it. You catch a glimpse of a startled native on the trail ahead. He vanishes and you see him no more; yet the people further along are waiting to receive you when you pass through their little towns. Ride as swiftly as you may, the tale of your coming is miles ahead of you.
For several miles we followed a fair travel along the coast, beginning our first climb near the little town-by-courtesy called Juan Estaban. A short climb which caused us to follow a trail along the edge of a cliff looking fifty or seventy-five feet down into the Caribbean. We could make out the sea below us when the waves broke against the cliff and broke into flying spume; but we could not see the trail we followed. There was forest on our right hand which cast a heavy Shadow in the trail and over us, making us feel as though we were inside some great subterranean pocket. We saw the trail again when we left the woods to Ford the historic Bahoruco River, that place where the aborigines held out so long against the Spaniards. Then we were in the pocket again until we arrived at La Cienega, in the even deeper Shadow of El Coronel, that stately mountain where the Bahorucos vanish into the sea. There were a few lights in La Cienega, twinkling like fireflies in the darkness. But the roar of incoming waves as they broke across a mile of rough shingle drowned out the sound of our approach until we had forded the Cienega River and entered the one street of the little town. We went through the town only because there was no other trail.
An aged crone came to the door of her hut and stared out at us, venting a scream of fright when she caught a gimpse of our uniforms against the foliage opposite her hut. She slammed the door and we could hear the heavy bolt crashed into place. The police, she she took us to be, could be abroad at night on no good business. I felt sorry for her, for I had been through here before, in daylight, and she had prepared excellent native coffee against my coming. But I did not enlighten her. Even now the word would go up and down the whole coast that police had ridden through in the night, following the trail into the south.
Then we were out of the village and following the trail, here bordered by hedges of Spanish bayonet, which led through the deep shadow of El Coronel, to the cliffs which we must skirt and climb ere we reached Paradis. Our roughest going lay ahead of us.
Too dark to see even our hands before our faces, we released the reins of our mules and allowed them their heads. A mule will not go into danger, ergo, if you are rider enough to remain astride him, you may go where you will—if it is agreeable to the mule.
The turbulent Petite Banane behind us we struck a trail steeper than all we had passed before—a trail which went up the mountain in sneaky spirals, the turns so sharp that the mules halted to turn, pivoting on bunched hoofs. All of this in total darkness. The ride from La Cienega to Paradise that night was the longest and most heartbreaking I have ever made—for I had been over the trail in daytime and knew the countless places where the slightest misstep meant a swift and terrifying drop for scores of feet, yet hundreds of feet—where one must end up in the sea or among the boulders cast off by the mountains.
Ever ahead of us in the darkness, invisible, trotted the native who had brought his weird tale out of the south. I could guess dimly at the courage it must have required of this native to go over this trail alone in the darkness of last night—especially with the view of his disemboweled brother fresh in his mind. The Dominican peon usually fears the darkness as the abode of all sorts of evil things. Yet this untutored quadroon had risen above his fears and come in with his report. It made me feel humble, and thought of it kept me buoyed up throughout that terrifying ride through the night and the Dominican jungle.
Paradis was in total darkness when we rode through, followed by a chorus of the mongrels which always haunt Dominican hill towns. They bark at everything and the native sleeps on, feeling that their barking means nothing.
South of Paradis the way is close to the sea again, seldom rising to more than ten feet above the sea until Los Patos has been passed. But all along here is the never-ending roar of the waves across the shingle, inducing eery and melancholy moods. Nothing but this sound, and the dragging of mules’ hoofs through the sand above where the waves break. Before Los Patos is reached there is a mile or two of white cliffs, to skirt which one must ride into the surf—for the water surges to the very foot of the cliffs. It scarce comes to the muels’ fetlocks, but the waves are high when they break, menacing as they rush in against the cliffs. One momentarily expects to be hurled against the unyielding stone; yet the water through which one rides is scarcely disturbed.
Then the cliffs are passed and one rides out upon the long strip of beach at the southern end of which is Los Patos—still in the shadow of the hills.
The trail to the hilltop south of Los Patos is very steep, calling for mighty effort on the part of the mules. But when the summit is reached the roar of the sea below is muted with distance. Then the ride on into Enriquilo.
But at the top of this hill, ere we entered the trail which is here bordered by the little farms of the country people, our guide, visible now because of the pale moon overhead—paused for us to come up. Even as he paused there came to my nostrils the pungent odor of wood smoke—and with this the odor the almost indefinable—never-to-be-mistaken odor of Haitian. The Dominican fell back between Sergeant Hernandez and myself, walking beside my mul with his hand in the animal’s mane.
“What is it, boy?” I asked, “What do you fear?”
“The night, captain!” he replied, “The shadows! The odor of unwashed Haitian! Everything!”
He paused again, ever the dramatist.
“It is just about here that I found my brother, with his stomach slashed open—dead in the trail for me to find!”
In spite of myself a shiver shook me. Fearfully I started around in the darkness of the stunted trees on either hand. To my left, far below, invisible because of a fringe of trees at the edge of the cliff, I could hear the moaning of the sea. I knew that nearby was a bleak promontory, abrupt above the sea, where, in my mind’s eye, I had more than once seen a magnificent horse and rider leap into the sea for the benefit of a cameraman, and for the delectation of movie audiences at home in the States. But now I could not see the promontory and the woods about me seemed suddenly peopled by shifting and darting shadows. And ever the odor of wood smoke. Ever the odor of unwashed Haitian. I half drew my automatic and it required a distinct effort of will for me to keep from emptying the weapon into the shadows. Even the mules were uneasy, pricking up their ears as they strove to look into the shadows. Perhaps they saw things there which we could not see; for they tugged at the reins to be gone.
“Is there a Haitian village near here?” I asked the native.
“There are Haitians in Enriquillo, but that is some little distance ahead of us—and the wind is blowing out to sea. The odor from the town would not reach us.”
“Then why do we catch the odor of Haitian here?”
“I do not know, captain. Perhaps there are Haitians, watching us from the darkness. Maybe there is Haitian ‘voodoo’ in the woods on our right.”
The mule ridden by Hernandez, a few strides ahead, snorted suddenly—because he was tired. But it was so sudden that it caused a momentary chill of dread to caress my spine and stir the hair at the base of my skull. Hernandez set spurs to his mount and moved ahead, and I was glad to follow him without comment. The native stayed at my stirrup, his hand in my mule’s mane. Before we had reached Enriquillo I had made my plans.
We gave the mules into the keeping of the Dominican and, thought Hernandez liked what I proposed no better than I, we turned back a foot, en route for that spot where we had caught the elusive odor of wood smoke. We carried our rifles in our hands, having removed them from their boots upon dismounting. I felt at my hip to see that my knife—and my automatics—were in place and ready for use. Over our shoulders we carried our light packs filled with food. Canteens of water, fresh from the Petit Banane only a couple of hours before, swung silently at our belts.
Shortly we were again among the shadows where our Dominican had found his brother. As I thought of his story I fancied I could see his body there in the trail. I shivered anew and drew closer to Hernandez. Then, silently as a pair of ghosts, we parted the foliage below the trail, and edged toward the sea until the lip of the precipice above it yawned at our feet. We could even see where the white lace flew from the crests of hurtling waves a hundred feet below our hiding place. I could make out the bleak promontory across an arm of a little inlet. We composed ourselves in silence to await whatever might betide. The odor of wood smoke was in our nostrils—and the acrid odor of negro. And both of us were afraid, staring into the darkness which hung like a blanket over us. We dared neither smoke or talk. Nothing to do but wait, and when a vivid imagination peoples the shadows with other shadows that move, waiting is the hardest accomplishment of which I know. But we waited.
And froze like statues when we heard faint rustling sounds in the darkness about us.
“Listen, captain,” it was the trembling voice of Hernandez, his lips against my ear, “don’t you hear it—in the darkness there? Can’t you hear the whispering?”
When he stopped I COULD hear it. A wordless, uncanny, yet oddly human whispering! It was all about us—and in the air above our heads. More pungent at the same time was the odor of wood smoke. The whispering stopped at length, and a moaning that did not come from the sea was wafted to our straining ears—apparently from the very ground upon which we reclined. A moaning as of a beast, buried alive in some subterranean cavern, straining at his fetters in vain.
This stopped and the rustling in the woods about us could be heard again. Then the whispering, many-tongued yet wordless. But HUMAN! Even with all this uncertainty and mental strain my eyes were heavy from a night without sleep and I could feel the lids lowering over them.
“Arturo,” I whispered, and Hernandez started at my voice, “I shall try to sleep for a half hour. Watch carefully, and waken me if there is ANYTHING that makes you believe it necessary.”
Crossing my arms under my head, I turned on my stomach and closed my eyes.
To find that the odor of wood smoke now almost choked me. I turned on my back to keep from coughing. The odor, too, of Haitian, had been stronger.
“Arturo,” I whispered again excitedly, “we are lying right on the spot where a wood fire has been—a fire about which Haitians have squatted!”
I sat up as I spoke and Hernandez ran his hand hurriedly over the ground where I had lain, brushing aside the leaves to reach the soil beneath. He was wise in the ways of the woods, and I awaited his judgment eagerly.
“There has been no fire here,” he whispered, “not since before the falling of the leaves!”
“Then why did I catch the odor when my face was pressed against the ground?”
“It is a mystery, captain. I do not know.”
“I knew that Hernandez shivered beside me as he rendered judgment.
I sat up, wide-awake, weariness forgotten, until the first pink of the morning could be seen in the east.
Long ago the rustling in the woods had ceased. The whispering had come no more. Only once had fright set its cold seal upon us after my discovery of that odor which had seemed to huge the ground—that had been when, ripping the night like a thin-bladed knife, a shirek of terrible fear—as of an animal in mortal pain—had come down to us with the wind which swept to sea from the shadow shrouded hils which oom away to the Bahorucos in the west. Just that one shriek before the silence—silence that was significant—as though a tragedy had come and gone on speeding feet.
This had seemed hours before. Yet when that pink tinged the sky in the east it did not seem so long. Gradually the sun drove the shadows back, and the bird life in the woods awoke to sing to the new day. I swung my eyes to that Bleak promontory.
And almost cried aloud, even as I seized Arturo’s hand and pointed. A heavy bundle had been hurled over the cliff at the very end of the little inlet. I had not seen who, or what, had hurled it. But I recognized it before it struck the waters of the sullen sea below. It was a wild goat, its four feet bunched together and bound tightly, while a heavy stone tied to its binding added to the speed of its fall. The goat was dead, and somehow I knew that this creature it had been which had shrieked its death agony in the night.
It struck the water and was gone, carried down by the weight of that heavy stone. I tried to watch it as it sank, but the water was too deep and I looked from too great an angle.
Why had this dead goat, weighted with the stone, been hurled into the sea?
My eyes swung back to the promontory—and fastened upon a floating object in the water, some twenty feet or so from the shore. It was a neat bundle of fagots, bound together in a short raft which floated high above the surface! It floated! Yes, even though the sea was as smooth as glass, now, and not a bit of breeze was blowing it floated! It came around the end of the promontory, entering the inlet slowly as though it rode the bosom of some current which I could not detect. It came to rest almost in the exact spot where the wild goat had sunk out of sight. Beyond it I caught a flashing glimpse of something black—like a rising fish which leaves the surface and drops back at once. A gentle spat on the water came clearly up to our hiding place.
“Arturo,” I whispered, “what is in that bundle of wood? What does it mean? Why are the fish interested in it? Did you see the flash of black beyond the bundle of fagots—like a fish leaping up and diving again?”
“I saw it, yes,” there was excitement in his whisper, “but it was not a fish. It was the foot and ankle of a black man! He has gone under for something! Watch for him to come up! I wonder what he is doing?”
The mystery was not solved then. Rather another was added to it. For, as a bobbing cork is taken under when a fish takes the hook, the bundle of fagots was snatched beneath the surface!
There was only a ripple where it had lain, and this soon smoothed out.
Though we watched the spot for a good half hour, we saw neither the fagot or the black man again!
V
THE LITTLE thicket in which we had hidden effectively screened us from observation from the trail which led into Enriquillo, unless observers knew exactly just where to look for us—which I more than half believed. For that whispering last night had been meant for us to hear. One of the uncanny methods used by Haitians to engender fear. And with them its use, I imagine, is purely instinctive; the usual run of Haitians does not think along psychological lines.
But I did not believe that the Haitians, if, after all, those whom we sought were Haitians, would attack us during the day. The blacks of Haiti fear the inevitableness of “the inevitable white man.” If they knew we were here they knew that a white man was one of our number and that he would undoubtedly be well armed, to say nothing of the advantage of the fact that he was white! So we waited, quietly, for day to wear on and bring developments. And while we waited I planned again. I did not tell Hernandez exactly what I planned, but I believe from a question or two that I asked him he half guessed what I had in mind.
“Is this ground up on which we now are part of the COMUN of Enriquillo?” this in a whisper, as we had talked during the hours of darkness.
“It is, captain,” replied Hernandez.
“Do you know the old Haitian name for Enriquilo, given during the Haitian occupation?”
“Yes, captain, the old name is ‘Petit Trou,’ and the town is better known by that name than the Dominican, even now.”
“What is the translation of ‘Petit Trou’?”
“In the Haitian language it means ‘little hole.’ Why?”
“I’ll explain my idea later, Arturo. Have patience. How do you explain the Haitian choice of a name in the case of the town of Enriquillo, or Petit Trou?”
“Names were usually chosen for some outstanding feature easy to remember. When they named the place ‘Petit Trou,’ there must have been a ‘little hole’ somewhere to suggest the idea.”
“Do you know of any hole or cave in the vicinity of Enriquillo that might have suggested the name to the simple invaders from over the border?”
“I do not. Tell me, captain, what it is that you are thinking!”
But I ignored him. It would be better that he did not know my plans, since knowledge of them might weight upon his mind and steal away his courage when I most needed it. I knew that what I proposed would require really more courage than I possessed, even though I could see no other way out of the matter.
Twice more before noon bundles of fagots came around that promontory, came to rest where the goat had gone down and been snatched under the surface not to come up again. But we had seen no more black ankles and feet.
It must have been about six o’clock—in last night’s excitement I had failed to wind my watch—when we heard a wiling sound from the direction of Enriquillo. A sound I had heard many times before and would never be able to forget. A sound which may be mistaken for no other. The rising and falling chant of Dominicans who wail out their sorrow over their newly dead. hearing it I could picture the rude wooden coffin in the center of the native hut, the family gathered before it with dry eyes and saddened faces—the neighbors grouped around the doors and windows outside, talking and speculating upon the whys and wherefores of the taking off of the deceased. Frank discussions which took no account of what the family, hearing every word, might feel in the matter. The screaming, now articulate, now wordless, of the mourners:
“Oh God! Virgin of the Most High Grace! Father beyond the skies! Oh, Father, for the love of God!”
A meaningless jumble of oaths and prayers, yet strangely significant when the Spanish equivalent of the above is used. A terrible wailing when heard in some mountain fastness in the dead of night-time. Making one’s flesh crawl even when the sun is up. Not the oaths or prayers themselves—but the sadness unutterable of the tones in which the words are expressed.
I knew that during the night tragedy had stalked abroad in the title Peninsula town of Enriquillo. Knew it even more certainly when the trail became filled with straggling natives from Los Patos, hurrying a foot to Enriquillo to join in the wailing. I noted that all of these, when they reached the trail almost opposite our hiding place, quickened their steps to a run, looking wildly about them into the woods. For up and down the coast had gone of the story which the native of Enriquillo had brought to me at Barahona—that story of the brother who did not come back. This particular stretch of road would be cursed, to the native mind, for many years to come—until those who knew should die and the memory fade away.
I wished to step forth and question the natives concerning what had taken place in Enriquilo, but dared not do so. I felt that the Haitians who were terrorizing this section knew I was here; but I did not wish to step forth, on the off chance that they might not know.
We ate our lunch at noon and drank sparingly from our canteens.
The day wore on. The sun was at the western skyline when an aged Dominican walked along the trail in the direction of Los Patos. This one, when he reached this portion of trail, did not break into a run as had all others that day. His eyes were up on the ground as though he searched for something. I tried to puzzle out what this might be, without success. At that point where the man from Enriquillo had told me his brother had been found, the old man turned abruptly into the woods on our side of the trail and was standing beside us before we could leap to our feet.
“Sit down, friends,” he said quietly, “I am seeking you!”
He squatted on his heels, Dominican fashion, seemingly sure of his welcome. But his greeting was a whisper.
We waited for him to speak, sure that he came from our guide of the night before. Else how had he come so unerringly to our hiding place?
“I am the father of the boy who brought you to Enriquillo last night!”
“And why have you come to us?” I asked.
“To help you, Sir, and to warn you!”
“But why did not Horacio come? Why should he send his feeble Father into danger which he should brave?”
Horacio Carrasco had been the name of our guide.
“He could not come, captain. He is dead!”
I could guess how he had died even before the old man told us.
“He meant to come to you this morning, to offer his aid in laying this curse which has fallen upon our beloved Enriquilo. Horacio was a brave boy!”
Terrible grief looked out of the eyes of this old man. But he did not show it in his voice. He, too, was brave. The old man continued.
“He left his home before daylight this morning, to seek you—and when the sun came up and I opened the door, I found him in the street before the house, Dead! Slashed and mutilated as his brother had been! Time was important, so we buried him as soon as possible, and I am here in his stead!”
“Why was he killed?” I asked, divining the answer even as I spoke.
“He brought the white captain over the trail to Enriquillo! And my warning is this: If you would make sure that you follow not in his footsteps, return to Barahona at once and leave us with our troubles!”
I stared at the old man at this, and something he read in my eyes must have satisfied him, for he sighed a little as he said:
“Well, my son, I have warned you—though I knew you would not go! I am glad. I will gladly give my life to aid you, since you are risking your own. What do you intend?”
I told him all that had transpired during the night just passed. While I talked his eyes and those of Arturo Hernandez roved all around, ever watchful, ever alert. I looked around several times, satisfied in my mind that no one saw us or heard us—but in my innermost being I felt that unseen eyes were upon us, and that people we could not see listened to our words!
When I told the old man of that scream we had heard in the night I saw a shadow, as of mortal pain, Flint across his face. It was too late to take back the statement. Too late I realized that it had not been the death cry of a goat we had heard! I told him of the goat hurled into the sea, of the floating faogts at the end of the promontory. When I had finished, the old man threw himself flat on his back and, crawling like a snake, crept to the very edge of the precipice and looked over, keen Old eyes searching the face of the cliff. I knew that this old native could see things that I could not see.
He came back finally and sat down beside us, evidently prepared to wait. Had the same thought come to this old man which had come to me?
A half hour later and it was as dark as it had been when we had come to this place last night. The right time for an attack. Yet no attack came. The strategy of the Haitian calls for keeping the enemy on tenterhooks. We changed our hiding place, moving along the edge of the precipice toward the promontory.
“At what time do you make your attempt, captain?” asked the old man quietly at last.
“What do you think I intend doing?”
“You plan to swim, do you not, Sir?”
The old man had guessed, apparently, and, since the time had arrived, I was ready for Hernandez to know my plans. So I told them in as few words as possible. The old man grunted affirmatively when I had finished.
“Now is the best time, Captain,” he said, “before the moon is bright.”
The two Dominicans stripped to the skin at my word. Husky Arturo Hernandez. Aged Carrasco, thin and lean, like a bird of prey. I kept my trousers, doffing everything else. We made our clothing into bundles and left them there. We carried our knives in our hands. Carrasco strode swiftly to the edge of the precipice and looked over.
“We can move now,” he called softly, after a brief survey.
In a moment we were at his side, my bare feet already bleeding from the sharp rocks. The old man led the way along the edge, making no more noise than a cat. he had seized my wrist, guiding me as though I had been a child; so that I made little noise either. Once we paused before making the descent to the end of the inlet. Paused to listen, and heard no sound.
But I caught that odor of wood smoke again!
I shivered and pressed the old man’s hand. He led on and did not stop until we stood at the water’s edge, having come down to it by a steep descent, the last twenty feet or so down the very face of the cliff. The old man led the way, reaching back up to guide my groping feet. I in turn guided Hernandez, feeling his trembling each time I touched him. Or maybe it was my own.
At the water’s edge we paused again to listen. I imagined that I again heard that eery whispering, this time from a greater distance, sounding like the sighing of a breeze.
The old man pressed my wrist at last and slid into the water like an eel. I made as little splash as I could, and I am a good swimmer. Hernandez followed and we floated there for a moment, listening. Then we began to swim, straight out toward the promontory. I had a feeling that great depths fell away below me, and a momentary fear of sharks.
When I guessed that we were above the spot where the goat had gone down I touched the old man. he pressed my shoulder in return, drew a deep breath, turned over and went straight down. At least three minutes must have passed! He broke water beside me so suddenly and silently that I almost screamed.
“Can you hold your breath under water, and swim, for a full minute?”
“I can,” I replied. Hernandez grunted, which I took to mean that he could do the same. I knew that he could, anyway.
“When I turn over to go down, grasp my ankle; but help yourself all that you can. Hernandez is a Dominican—he can follow without aid.”
We took our knives in our teeth, Drew air into our lungs. Then the old man turned over as he had done before, and I grasped his ankle as he went under. He was a great swimmer, and swift. Yet my lungs were almost bursting when I felt him straighten from the vertical and swim on a level. I knew that we were deep down, and that we were swimming straight toward the face of the promontory. I was in agony when he ceased swimming and allowed his body to rise. I released his ankle. I felt Hernandez kick me in the side and knew that he had followed through.
Then we broke the surface together.
All around us were dark green walls, above us blackness. Over all the odor of wood smoke and unwashed Haitian. We had entered a cave whose opening was beneath the sea! And we must return that way; but I refused to think of that.
Ahead of us was a steep incline which seemed to ascend about fifteen feet. Over the top of this we could see the flickering of firelight upon the roof and walls of the cavern. Out of sight over this crest I knew that there were black people.
How many I could only guess at the time. It sounded like a score and they were all talking at once in the primitive PATOIS of Haiti. We breathed quickly, renewing our strength.
We could just see one another’s faces. I saw that the face of Hernandez was set in grim lines. He had forgotten his fear of mysterious ‘voodoo’ at the sound of those voices up there, and I was mighty glad. No longer was he an unknown quantity.
A pebble was loosened from the incline and rolled into the water beside us. A black face peered over, while we sank quietly with only the tops of our heads out of water. A naked Haitian slipped rapidly down and took to the water swiftly. I let him go. But I looked around in vain for Hernandez and Carrasco. When they broke water Hernandez was grinning, and he touched his knife significantly.
Then we crawled up the incline and looked over. I counted the blacks and there were eight of them, about a campfire, squatting upon their heels. Talking the most, evidently the leader, I recognized Cerimarie Leontes the half wit. Only now he did not look like a half wit. More like a savage brute beast.
As my eyes became accustomed to the shadows in the cave, which was about the same size as the Barahona prison, I made out the motionless figure of a brown man just beyond the fire. As I looked, however, he moved and turned on his side, face toward us.
It was Amabis, the Syrian, and his eyes as he looked at the Haitians, were wells of malevolence! Cerimarie Leontes turned and looked at him as he turned over, laughed—then deliberately kicked the Syrian in the face with his bare foot.
Then we three arose to our feet, with a shout that, echoing in the cavern, must have made the Haitians think us a score at least, and charged into the circle of the blacks. They leaped to their feet in terrible panic; but the voice of Cerimarie Leontes shrieked at them, calling for courage. Knives and machetes gleamed.
Carrasco charged at Leontes and died with his hands at the Haitian’s throat—his own throat a gaping gash where the negro’s knife had slashed.
“I’ll hold them, captain,” yelled Hernandez, “free Amablis!”
In a trice I had done his bidding and Amablis leaped to his feet, staggering on deadened limbs. Still that malevolence in his eyes.
Then I turned back to aid Hernandez. He was between the Haitians and the incline leading to freedom, and three dead blacks told of the harvest he had reaped. He was superb, and laughed as he wielded his deadly knife—unconscious that his own body was crimson from many wounds, that the blacks swarmed over him. Then I was at his side, and as I fought my eyes went back to Amablis. He had stepped back from the firelight for a moment, and when he had came back into my line of vision he held a terrible weapon in his hand.
It was the brass dachshund, freed now of its bed of concrete!
Grasping it near what would have been the dog’s tail, he swung the gruesome weapon over his head and struck. But not before I noted that the pointed metal ears of the thing were already a rusty brown.
If you can imagine what Amablis must have suffered from these blacks, can imagine what he owed them by way of revenge, you can guess at the havoc he wrought with that weapon.
Not a Haitian left that grotto alive. The last to fall was Cerimarie Leontes, who stood toe to toe at the end with Amablis, until almost decapitated from a sweeping blow of that foot scraper.
When there was no one left but we three we staggered back against the wall of the grotto, panting like spent runners, bleeding from many wounds.
And we had scarce dropped back out of the firelight when another negro, dripping seawater, came up out of the darkness as we had done and advanced toward the fire. He stopped aghast as he saw the carnage about the fire.
He was an excellent target. So Amablis must have thought, for with all his might he hurled the brass dachshund. It struck the Haitian between the eyes and he went down like a poled ox. The dachshund slid down into the sea and disappeared, while after it slumped the Haitian.
“Good God, Amablis!” I exclaimed, “I wonder if there are any more?”
“None, captain,” he answered quietly, “that was the last.”
We sat down by the fire to rest before the return to the outside world.
“Now, Amablis,” I said, “will you please explain?”
“I bought the thing from a Haitian, as I told you, two months ago. Later I tried to sell it to another Haitian, who was scared half to death when he saw it. I held him in the store and him tell me the thing’s history. It wasn’t much. A foot scraper shaped like a dachshund disappeared from before the door of an American family in Port-au-Prince. Later a man named Cerimarie Leontes was discovered in the woods north of Anses-a-Pitre who professed to be a great voodoo priest, able to turn animals into metal with his magic. As proof of what he said he showed the brass dachshund to the simple natives. He became powerful, even sacrificing children to the dachshund, which soon became a symbol for Cerimarie’s god. The military forces heard about him and tried to bring him in as a murderer. He hid the dachshund and, because of the general unreliability of Haitian testimony—Haitians were the only witnesses at the trial—he went free. But when he came back for his ‘god’ someone had stolen it. I bought it, unwittingly, from the thief. When I had heard the story I laughed at it and foolishly let the fellow go free who had told me. He must have gone back across the Border and reported the matter to Leontes, and when I saw among your prisoners a black man who answered the description of Leontes given me by this other Haitian, I knew that the voodoo priest had come to claim his own. I wanted no trouble for myself. So I put the dachshund where you found it. You bought it; but I had my troubles anyway!”
“Serves you right, Amabis, for trying to shunt it onto me!”
The Syrian grinned ruefully at this. He had made a clean breast of the whole thing and expected to be forgiven.
“Who killed those two Haitians in your store?”
“I killed one of them, captain, when they came to take me. They had the other one with them, already Dead. They left him there because I put up such a fight, and made so much noise, that the Haitians feared the arrival of the GUARDIA would prevent their retreat.”
“Why did they take you, and what did they intend doing with you?”
“Took me out of revenge. From what Cerimarie told me they meant to eat me!”
I grinned at this; but my grin froze when I recalled that there are two Haitians in prison at Santo Domingo City charged with cannibalism.
We kicked out the fire and left the grotto, swimming up and out of the “little hole” which once gave Petit Trou its name. We had nipped voodooism in the bud before it had really taken root in the soil of the COMUN of Enriquillo.
If you wish to go there, there are good native swimmers who will show you the “little hole” if you can swim under water and hold your breath for a minute or more.
But hold your breath as you may, and be you ever so strong a swimmer, you’ll never get down deep enough to reach the brass dachshund.
Oh, yes—Amabis the Syrian, always on the lookout for bargains, took back to Barahona with him the rope, with a hook on the end, by which the black renegades had drawn the dead goat and the fagots of wood up and into their grotto!
※
Once he became established as fast-writing pulp writer, Arthur J. Burks had a notable party piece:
WHEN Arthur J. Burks, who writes ’em while you wait, made his now famous statement that he could write a story about any object in his room, or make a plot from the said object for any writer then present, my assignment was the glass door-knob in Burk’s study. Pointing to the dull, machine-cut glass, Art said, “a man is found dead on the side-walk in a side street and when examined this door-knob was found clutched in his left hand.”
He then smiled cheerfully at me and said, “now you go on from there. —Frederick C. Painton, “Wuxtry! Art Burks’ Plot Clicks” in Writer’s Digest Apr 1936 (23)
While I cannot prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is the origin of “The Brass Dachshund,” it feels like the kind of story that might be churned out when trying to write a novelette on the rather bare premise of a prosaic mass-manufactured item. And, despite the abundance of weird tropes that hint at possible supernatural goings-on, it feels like the kind of serial that Farnsworth Wright might have passed on as having too little story for the word count. Yet we aren’t sure if it was ever submitted to Weird Tales, much less rejected; while it holds all the hallmarks of the longer tales of Santo Domingo Burks had published in WT, unlike the other Leatherneck tales it lacks any attribution to WT. So we can be pretty sure if it was submitted, Farnsworth Wright didn’t buy it.
Elements of “The Brass Dachshund” reflect other bits and pieces from Burks’ previous works; “Ceremarie Leontes” is unmistakably similar to “Cerimarie Sam,” the voodoo high priest in “Voodoo” (Weird Tales Dec 1924), and the whole motif of the cliff recalls “Luisma’s Return” (Weird Tales Jan 1925). The Barahona setting came from his own experience as a warden of a prison in the Dominican Republic with many Haitian prisoners. Compare his description of Barhona above with the “non-fiction” version from his memoir:
It was a clapboard, white-washed building in the middle of town. It was surrounded by a board stockade topped by strandes of barbed wire. In the stockade there was a smaller building for the incarceration of Dominican prisoners. […]
The Haitian portion of the prison was built to hold sixty prisoners. It actually held a hundred and thirty odd. There were no cots, beds, bed clothing or lavatories, and when I made my midnight-to-morning visit of sentries and prison guards—an immitable law of the military—the odor oin the place could be cut with a knife. The Haitian is capable of going from the cradle to the grave unbathed. —Arthur J. Burks, The Land of Checkerboard Families (1932) 17-18
So, too, probably came the prejudice; while nearly all of Burks’ tales of Hispaniola display racial prejudice or stereotypes and are essentially told from the viewpoint of colonizers, “The Brass Dachshund” stands out among the Leatherneck tales for how openly and repeatedly Burks relies on racial prejudice in nearly every characterization, and even as a plot point. This, too, reflects his experience in the Dominican Republic:
The Cuban calls the Haitian, “that animal nearest resembling man,” and it’s my personal opinion that the Cuban pays the Haitian a high compliment. […] When I began to write stories for juvenile magazines, deciding that with my lack of technique they must suffice for a time at least, I began on the Haitian prisoners as material for stories and articles. When they were herded to prison in droves, we took down their names in a book, through an interpreter of course, and in course of time that book became a mighty roster of Haitian names. —Arthur J. Burks, The Land of Checkerboard Families (1932) 18-19
In many ways, it was the verisimilitude of Burks’ descriptions, taken from his lived experience, that provided the color and interest in this and other stories. They also showed Burk that he could effectively cannibalize his experiences for fiction, not just once but several times; a number of the details and anecdotes in “The Brass Dachshund” are identical to those that Burks relates in The Land of Checkerboard Families.
While many readers may wish this story had remained “lost” because of the racism, it is important to realize that this was not terribly different from the stories that pulp editors like Farnsworth Wright had bought and published in Weird Tales from Burks before—and would buy again, not just from Burks but many other pulp writers. It speaks to the cultural pervasiveness of racism, and the attitudes that allowed the United States to invade and occupy two sovereign states in the Caribbean, each for over a decade, that this sort of characterization was not just accepted but often commonplace.
CHRISTOPHE, who called himself Henri I, Emperor of Northern Haiti, was the greatest monster in all history. He killed for the love of killing. He murdered innocent people who dared to gaze upon his face without permission. To question his orders and commands was to give oneself to the executioner. This black monster of the Haitian hills took whatever pleased him, be it lands, movable property, or women. His word was law, as immutable as that of the Medes and Persians, and his hand was quick to punish.
None knew this better than did General Luisma Llansal, the greatest soldier in the pay of the emperor. Luisma was a little man as to body, but his arms hung below his knees as he walked, like those of a giant anthropoid. His mind was slow to thought and mental pictures came slowly. Even so, he could look into the near future and picture what Christophe would say and do to him when he should return to report failure in the mission which Christophe had assigned him out there in the Haitian wilderness. He had tried with all his power to succeed, as evidenced by his dragging gait as he walked up the streets of Cape Haitien—proof that he was tired to exhaustion. Only the knowledge that his little black sweetheart awaited him at the end of the street kept him on his leaden feet.
The girl’s mother met him at the door of the hut, and he read in her dry eyes and expression of utter hopelessness that something terrible had happened. His lips trembled a bit as he asked for Madeleine.
“Have you not heard then, Luisma?” asked the old woman, hopelessly.
“Have I heard what, old woman?” demanded Luisma. “I have asked for the little sweetheart. Where is she?”
“Alas!” cried the old woman. “Henri has taken her!”
“But Henri! I do not understand. What could he want with the girl?”
“Henri does not explain his actions to common people,” replied the old woman. “I only know that the soldiers from the citadel came for her and that she has gone. Who knows? The queen is very old and very fat. Perhaps Henri craves the freshness of youth.”
“Hush, aged one, do not speak thus of the emperor’s consort! Dost wish to be hurled from the cliff at sunrise?”
“What matters it? As well be hurled tomorrow morning as a week hence. Age does not breed pity in the heart of Christophe, and one is as apt to go as another when it moves the soul of Henri.”
“Hush, the very stones in the street have ears with which to listen for the emperor!”
“So be it, Luisma; I am very old, and I am ready.”
“But,” cried Luisma, “have our friends done nothing to save the beloved mademoiselle from the hands of Christophe? Surely they have known of this!”
“It was told in the market place after you had left for the wilderness, Luisma. They pitied you, knowing that Henri had sent you so that you might not spoil his plans. Though what you could have done no one knows. For whoever stood against the might of the emperor?”
“None has ever done it—and lived,” replied Luisma, “Yet mark what I say, aged one, Luisma will do it and live to tell how he avenged the dishonor of his loved one.”
General Luisma turned about and left the hut. His fatigue was forgotten because of the terrible weight of his great misfortune. He would be avenged. He had promised himself that it should come to pass. Anger flashed from his black eyes as he entered the jungle, en route to the Citadel.
Luisma was admitted because he was a general in the service of the monster. But even the keeper of the gate looked at him with pity in his eyes.
“Where is she, Baron?” questioned Luisma.
“She rests in the arms of his Excellency, on the bench beneath the council tree,” replied the baron hurriedly. He feared Henri more than he pitied Luisma. The emperor had made him a gatekeeper, with the title of baron, just as he had made dukes of black stevedores on the wharves of St. Marc; but the emperor was fickle and he made vacancies in the royal family just for the pleasure it afforded his vanity—while the deposed dukes and barons left their bones to whiten on the rocks a thousand feet below the Citadel. It was best to guard one’s speech.
Luisma hurried away, walking erect and unafraid. The baron gazed after him and shook his head. Already he could hear the death shriek of a general, as he plunged to his death at the foot of the cliff.
Luisma stood erect before his emperor. The latter, half reclining on the stone bench beneath the great tree which still remains as one of the monuments to Christophe, raised himself on his elbow to glance at this man, bravest of his generals. Luisma affected not to notice the dusky mademoiselle who snuggled against the emperor and complacently allowed him to stroke her bare arm with his disengaged hand.
“What is it, Luisma? We give you permission to speak.”
“I have failed, Excellency,” replied Luisma, “as you very well knew that I would. Why did you bother to send me away, when you might have taken my loved one without? Why steal her away by stealth?”
“Steal her away, Luisma? I did not steal her. She came of her own free will, because Henri the emperor desired her. Tell him, child, that the master speaks the truth.”
The black girl, who had held the heart of Luisma in her keeping for many months, looked into the eyes of Luisma as she answered.
“I want none of thee, filthy one!” she replied. “Thou needest a bath, Luisma!”
She said it in a sing-song fashion, as if it were a lesson she had committed to memory.
“Dost see, Luisma?” demanded the emperor. “There is no more to be said, man. Tomorrow you take command of our guard. You will put them through their paces well, for in a few days an envoy comes from Boyer, and it is our wish to impress the fellow with our might. Go!”
Luisma turned and left the royal presence.
Out of sight of Cliristophe, Luisma met the baron who had admitted him to the palace.
“Luisma!” cried the Baron in a husky whisper. “Have you taken leave of your senses, man? Do you not recall that you looked upon the face of Christophe without permission, forfeiting your life?”
“But I am still alive, baron,” replied Luisma bitterly. “I shall continue to live until I am avenged of Christophe!”
“Say on, fool,” replied the baron. “you cannot make your position worse after gazing without permission on the face of the mighty Christophe!”
“So be it, Baron!”
The next day Luisma’s one-time sweetheart was not to be seen. Luisma knew that she was in the palace, a plaything of the monster. Yet he could do nothing. He was slow of thought like all his kind, with the fatalist’s belief that all things are foreordained and that his own time must come in the end. In the meantime he marched and counter-marched the troops of Christophe until they moved at his word of command like a bit of well-oiled machinery. And ever, suggestively near, yawned the edge of the cliff upon which the castle stood. Christophe came daily to watch the drilling of his crack troops.
“That one, the blackest one in the rear rank, Luisma,” the monster would say, with a judicial air, “he does not seem to keep step with his mates, exactly. If he were hurled over the cliff we believe that it would improve the appearance of the guard!”
Luisma would bow at this and tell off two men for the task. The offending one would be led to the edge and pushed over—well over, so that he might not, perchance, have an opportunity to grasp at something and save himself.
With his shriek of terror dying away as he plunged downward like a plummet to land with a crunching sound as his bones became as jelly on the rocks below, ringing in their ears as they commenced to drill again, is it any wonder that those who remained made an even more perfect machine than before? Yet ever the critical Henri found fault with the drilling. The guard had dwindled noticeably when the emperor would finally yawn, opening his thick lips to their widest extent, and leave the narrow parade to find rest in the arms of Luisma ’s sweetheart-that-might-have-been. Luisma was left to wonder why both himself and Christophe still lived.
Two days later came word that Boyer’s ambassador was at the gate of the Citadel. Christophe commanded that the fellow be brought into his presence at once. He received the dignitary beneath the great council tree, where the two great men talked largely of affairs of state.
“We are told, Excellency,” said the envoy at length, “that in all Haiti there is no man who has such authority over his people as does Henri the Emperor.”
“My authority is absolute!” replied Christophe calmly, forgetting for a moment the imperial “we.”
Christophe clapped his hands and an attendant crawled into the royal presence on hands and knees, eyes turned steadfastly toward the stones of the courtyard.
“Tell Luisma Llansal to march on his soldiers!”
The attendant crawled away. The soldiers marched into view and began their well-oiled evolutions at the command of Luisma. It was beautifully done and the envoy clapped his hands by way of applause when Luisma had finished.
“But there are many generals who can cause their men to do this!” cried the envoy. “Your Excellency has not proved yet that his discipline is any stronger than that of Boyer!”
“Luisma,” said the emperor softly, “place yourself at the head of your troops. As I give the commands you will lead in the execution.”
Luisma obeyed, taking his place at the head and standing stiffly at attention.
“Forward, march!”
As one man the entire guard moved forward.
“God in Heaven!” thought Luisma. “Does the fool not see that we are headed directly for the edge of the precipice?”
But, never faltering, Luisma held the step. There came no command to halt or for a column movement to right or left. The edge of the precipice was but a few strides away. Even the envoy turned a dirty green when he read the intention of the emperor. He sprang to his feet.
“Not that, Excellency!” he cried. “Not that! I believe! I believe!”
Luisma was the first man over. He stepped off into eternity without faltering. There was the awesome sensation of falling. Sickening pain as his legs struck nubs of rock which protruded from the face of the thousand foot cliff. He struck with such force that he was turned over in mid-air. His head struck next, filling his brain with molten fire. His hand struck something then—and held on! The crushed body of the erstwhile general swung there in space, unknowing that it swung, holding on by instinct because the brain could not command. Luisma was a man with great strength in his arms. His other hand, without command, moved up and over, clawing, grasping, holding.
A glimmering of sense came back to the brain of the broken general. His eyes turned downward. He pondered dully as, far below, he caught glimpses of ragged bundles that bounced from rock to rock, shapeless things that had once been peerless soldiers, coming to rest in huddled heaps. He looked up and saw them still stepping over into space, wondering why they, like himself, did not catch on and hold. He saw them strike bits of rock above him, felt warm splashes on his cheeks—but whether the blood was theirs or his own, he could not tell. When the last one had stepped over, fallen, bounced, and finally lay still in a huddled heap far, far below, Luisma began to climb, dragging his useless legs behind him up the face of the precipice. He was glad of the strength in his arms and he had always been sure that his time had not come to die.
Meanwhile, as though nothing had happened out of the ordinary, Henri the Emperor, talked calmly ahead with the trembling envoy. He seemed absolutely unmoved over what he had done. The envoy was shaken to the very core. Such a monster could not be human! He might even forget the dignity of Boyer’s own envoy! That worthy shuddered as he saw himself, in his mind’s eye, a crumpled and bloody heap at the foot of the precipice. Ever and anon his eyes wandered, against their will, to the place where, to a man, the guard of Christophe had stepped off into space.
“Excellency!” he shouted, springing to his feet and pointing a trembling finger. “Look!”
Slowly Christophe swerved his gaze and fixed it intently on the gruesome thing that the envoy had seen. At the precise moment that he looked, a single black hand came into view above the edge of the precipice—clawing fingers clutched here and there for a grasping place. Another hand came up and placed itself beside the first. A straining of muscles and a face such as neither had ever seen came up above the edge. The face, which could not be recognized as such except for the shape, weirdly resembling that of a man, looked more like a smear of blood. Even the hands were smeared with red—and with something else that they had found when, during the upward climb, they had grasped at the protuberances where the heads of the falling soldiers had touched.
Slowly, like a great black serpent with a broken back, the red-visaged apparition slithered up and over the edge. Its ghastly eyes were staring fixedly at the face of the emperor. Atop the precipice at last, the jelly-like creature slithered toward Christophe and the envoy, leaving a snaky red trail in its wake, dragging the crushed legs, dangling red things, behind.
“I have come back, monster,” babbled the thing. “Surely dost know that Luisma could not die unavenged!”
The envoy fled, nor stopped his mad flight until he reached Port an Prince and told his wild tale to Boyer himself. Boyer, knowing that his envoy’s mind had gone, placed him in an asylum, where he spent the rest of his days, happy because he knew that crawling things could never get through the bars to haunt him!
Christophe looked at Luisma as the latter, groveling before the emperor only because he could not rise to his feet, looked up into his face with all his savage hate easily readable in the flashing eyes.
“I have come back, Christophe! Ridiculous puppy that calls himself Henri I, Emperor of the North! I am stronger than you! I have cheated death itself! Even you cannot do that!”
“Baron!” called Christophe softly. “Take this fellow and hurl him over once more. He has disobeyed me! He climbed back instead of falling, as ordered!”
The thing leered up into his master’s face.
“Stay, monster! I shall go back of my own accord. I only came back to tell you that, even though I fall to the rocks this time, I shall yet be avenged for your cruelties!”
Luisma turned, like a snake with a broken back, and slithered to the precipice edge and over—out of sight! Had Henri followed and looked over, that which followed might never have been.
Why, when all his life he had never felt a tremor of fear, did the great emperor suddenly get a fit of the ague and tremble so that his very knees knocked together? He wiped the fine dew from his forehead and wondered. He entered the citadel and tried to forget the whole incident.
This night was the one during which the great Christophe killed himself with a silver bullet, because he believed that no baser metal should touch that brain of his! No one really knows why he did it. Some say it was because he had failed to make himself emperor of all Haiti. Many stories are told. One does not know what to believe.
Only the dishonored sweetheart of Luisma heard the last words of Christophe just before that monster blew out his brains. She was awakened in the dead of night by his wild ravings.
“Go back, Luisma! Go back! Go back to your dead body at the foot of the precipice! How dare you leave splotches of blood on the floor of my bedchamber with your dragging limbs! Turn about so that I may not see those hate-filled eyes of yours!”
There followed the sounds of a scuffle, as if the emperor fought with invisible devils, there in the darkness. The girl cowered beneath her covers, leaving only her widening eyes exposed. In the flash of Christophe’s pistols she saw the thing! She babbled her story the next day, but people thought her demented because she had spent the night in the chamber with the dead emperor—and did not believe her.
There are many stories of the death of Christophe. Many of them are queer. Many are horrible.
Nor are any of them as queer or horrible as that told by the aged idiot who dragged himself about Cape Haitien like a snake with a broken back, begging for pennies, telling his story to all who would listen. They never believed, of course, for people whom Christophe cast over the cliff never came back, they said. When he told them that his name was Luisma Llansal, they only laughed. For he looked not at all like the Luisma they remembered.
He died a few years ago, in Cape Haitien, insisting, even on his deathbed, that his story was true.
※
In The Leatherneck, the tale ends with the notice “Copyright 1925, by Popular Fiction Publishing Co. Reprinted by permission of Weird Tales.,” and is the only such tale to deserve the notice. The first two stories Burks published in Weird Tales were under the pseudonym “Estil Critchie,” this was the first published under his own name. The differences between the two texts are relatively minor; the title changed, and there are some variations in wording and punctuation. For example:
None knew this better than did General Luisma Llansal, the greatest soldier in the pay of the emperor. Luisma was a little man as to body, but his arms hung below his knees as he walked, like those of a giant anthropoid ape. His mind was slow to thought, and mental pictures came slowly. Even so, he could look into the near future and picture what Christophe would say and do to him when he should return to report failure in the mission which Christophe had assigned him out there in the Haitian wilderness. He had tried with all his power to succeed, as evidenced by his dragging gait as he walked up the streets of Cap Haitien—proof that he was tired to exhaustion. Only the knowledge that his little black sweetheart awaited him at the end of the street kept him on his leaden feet.
None knew this better than did General Luisma Llansal, the greatest soldier in the pay of the emperor. Luisma was a little man as to body, but his arms hung below his knees as he walked, like those of a giant anthropoid. His mind was slow to thought and mental pictures came slowly. Even so, he could look into the near future and picture what Christophe would say and do to him when he should return to report failure in the mission which Christophe had assigned him out there in the Haitian wilderness. He had tried with all his power to succeed, as evidenced by his dragging gait as he walked up the streets of Cape Haitien—proof that he was tired to exhaustion. Only the knowledge that his little black sweetheart awaited him at the end of the street kept him on his leaden feet.
Weird Tales Jan 1925
The Leatherneck Jan 1927
It isn’t clear if the Weird Tales text is closer to Burks’ original, or the Leatherneck text. In Black Medicine, which collected Burks’ early Weird Tales fiction, the story uses the WT title but a text which has features of both—for example, the Black Medicine text and Weird Tales use “Cap Hatien” throughout, which is correct, but also retains “anthropoid ape” in the second paragraph. The difference probably amounts to little more than different editors working on Burks’ original text.
Henri Christophe, President and later King of Haiti, existed; as do the legends of his suicide via a silver bullet; Burks would refer to Christophe and his end in other tales set in Haiti. Burks himself only visited Haiti for a very brief period during the end of his deployment to Hispaniola
CAPTAIN PETER SMITH, commanding a certain company in a certain Canadian Regiment, had just taken over his allotted section of front line trench. It was no new experience to Smith; but his men were nervously tense because this was their first experience face to face with Fritz. It was the fourth company Smith had commanded, he himself being the only survivor of the last one he had “taken in.” So he tried by personal example and judiciously worded encouragement to keep up the spirits of his new men.
He was talking to them, calming them, when there came an odd crunching sound, as of the breaking of an eggshell; and one of the new men who had lifted his head for a split second to gaze out into No-Man’s-Land, sagged against the firestep and froze there to the immobility of a statue.
Dead instantly, with a neat hole in his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
Smith’s words died in his throat. Even he, with his years in the front lines, had not entirely become accustomed to seeing men snuffed out like that. It was so damned final! Just that odd sound, as though an invisible hand had pulled a switch, extinguishing an incandescent.
The men who stood along the trench crouched lower, and here and there Smith noted that the foreheads of some of them were bathed with the perspiration of fear.
“It’s just a damned sniper, men,” he called out, “and by and by we’ll get him!”
But he had said that before.
“Keep your heads down! Use your periscopes!”
The devil of it was that one could not tell whence the shots came. Just a sharp crack! The sound as of an eggshell suddenly broken, and a letter that must be written home to carry its burden of sorrow to waiting and expectant parents.
Smith himself went to one of the periscopes and studied the ground in advance of the trench in which his men crouched. His trained eyes searched every bit of the ground, probed every thicket and standing tree for sign of the hidden marksman. It seemed that, out front, there was not a single place where even a rabbit could have hidden. Methodically he had caused his best riflemen to bombard every possible hiding place.
Invariably, after such bombardment, some man would raise his head above the parapet for a fleeting second, only to fall the next moment with that sinister hole in his forehead. It was as though the unseen marksman derided the whole company, laughing at its puny efforts at retaliation.
Where could he be?
There was one place out there—an aged cemetery; but it had been bathed in a baptism of fire so often by the heavy artillery of either side that it seemed foolish to entertain any idea that the sniper had found a hiding place among its ruins.
Ghastly ruins they were, too. For the “heavies” had torn most of the graves asunder, scattering far and wide the evidence of once gruesome occupancy.
More than once had the eyes of Captain Smith wandered over the wastes of this burying ground. Ever, as he watched, he shuddered at an idea that kept obtruding itself upon his mind.
Could those bullets be the phantom bullets from some vengeful, departed being who had had his rest disturbed by the implements of war? Nonsense! Yet whence had the bullets come? They were real enough, as evidenced the dead scattered throughout the trench in which he stood. There was no gainsaying that phantom bullets do not slay.
Only a man who had spent agonizing hour after agonizing hour with his staring eyes looking into the cold orbs of ever-present death could entertain ideas of the supernatural in this wanton slaying.
Yet Smith shuddered and knew not why.
Crack! Crunch!
Smith knew even before his first sergeant came to him with his report that another soul had sped its earthly casement of clay.
“It’s Corporal Higgins this time, sir,” reported the Sergeant, “wanted to show his men that he wasn’t afraid, I guess. That makes twelve altogether now, Captain.”
Smith faced about, staring, white-lipped into the eyes of his first sergeant.
“Good God, Top!” he cried, “where can that brute be?”
The first sergeant shook his head hopelessly.
“We can’t keep our heads down forever,” continued Smith, “we have an area to manage. If we don’t locate that dashed sniper he’ll wipe out our whole company! He’s been there three days now, and we haven’t seen hide or hair of him—and it seems that the fellow never misses. How does he get to and from his hiding place? We’ve kept a periscope trained on every likely spot and haven’t seen even a wisp of smoke to give us a clue, or a kick-up of dust to indicate the backblast from the muzzle of the devil’s rifle. Does he stay forever in his hiding place? He must get food somehow—must be in communication with his friends. How does he do it? We must either answer that question or quit cold; for we are at the sniper’s mercy.”
“The men are worried, Captain,” said the first sergeant, hesitantly, “and no mistake. The bullets come from that graveyard over there, but still it ain’t possible. There ain’t a hiding place big enough to cover a flea. And there’s one or two chaps in the outfit, sir, ignorant fellows most likely, who are talking around that the things that’s knockin’ us off ain’t human. Of course it ain’t true, but the men are almost ready to believe anything.”
Here a junior sergeant and a trembling private approached the Captain and stood respectfully at attention.
“Sir,” began the sergeant when the Captain nodded permission for him to speak, “we’d like a try at bagging that sniper, Captain. It ain’t no ways reasonable that he ain’t human, and we want to volunteer to turn him up.”
The Captain, loath to lose more of his men, hesitated.
“But, sergeant,” he temporized, “you don’t know where to look for him, and he can see every move we make. It’s plain suicide to let you go!”
“We’re resigned to that, Captain,” replied the sergeant, “if any of his bullets are engraved with our names; but better, say we, that two men commit suicide than that a whole company be murdered in cold blood. It’s a chance that we are prepared to take, although it is my first belief, and intention, that we will be back here safely after we have fulfilled our mission.”
“When do you wish to go?”
“Tonight, before the moon gets too bright.”
“I give you leave to go, sergeant,” said Smith, “and may God be with you both!”
For the remainder of the day the men in this section of trench kept their heads below the level of the parapet’s crest.
Only once did anything out of the ordinary occur during the rest of that fateful day.
Across from the cemetery, after a long period during which no head had shown above the parapet, there came an exultant, derisive laugh, oddly muffled.
Captain Smith shivered anew. The sergeant and the private who had volunteered to assist him were safely sleeping in the depths of a dugout, conserving their energies against the night to come. When that derisive laugh came they could not have heard it.
But both of them moved complainingly as they slept and the sergeant whispered something:
“It ain’t no ways reasonable that he ain’t human!”
The laugh did not come again.
That night, when the light of the moon was hidden behind a bank of sullen black clouds, the sergeant and the private after a whispered goodbye to the Captain and the first sergeant, and a silent handshake all around, crept softly to the top of the parapet and glided, like a pair of serpents, into No-Man’s-Land.
Many hours passed before they came back.
But come back they did, in the darkest hour before dawn.
The Captain was sleeping and they did not waken him, returning instead to their regular posts.
But when Smith came forth from the dugout in the morning, he asked at once for the two volunteers. His orderly looked queerly at the Captain, and his manner was hesitant as he reported the safe return of the two who had gone forth into No-Man’s-Land.
“Send them to me, here,” Smith ordered sharply.
The sergeant, with the private at his back, came at once and stood before the commander. Smith studied them carefully before asking questions. In the eyes of each he read horror such as he had never before read in the eyes of one of his soldiers. Beads of sweat rolled unheeded down the rough cheeks of the two men. Ever and anon they looked furtively away from their Captain, their eyes flashing fearfully in the direction of the graveyard in No-Man’s Land.
“Did you get him, sergeant?” asked the Captain hoarsely.
“Captain,” replied the sergeant, “there will be no more bullets from that particular sniper. But, for the sake of your own peace of mind, don’t ask us what happened in the still watches of last night! Both of us wish to forget the horror of it all—if ever we may. Yet, rest assured, Sir, that whatever we did to him, it was not enough to pay him for the death of twelve of our buddies; that had he had twelve lives to give that would still have been insufficient—for the twelve he killed hadn’t a Chinaman’s chance. On his part, it was cold blooded murder!”
“But I am your Captain, sergeant,” cried Smith, “and I demand that you tell me!”
“Then the Captain must court-martial us for disobedience of orders—for we refuse to tell! Believe me, sir, it is best for us all. He will kill no more of us; let that be sufficient.”
Further than this the two volunteers refused to say anything.
Smith noted, however, that they kept their hands carefully out of sight behind them.
“Let me see your hands, both of you!” he commanded.
Reluctantly the two men thrust forth their hands for inspection.
The hands of each were covered with dried blood, and there were many punctures upon them, whence the blood had come—as though the two, crawling through No-Man’s-Land, had scarred and wounded them while passing through some hidden cactus-bed—or while cutting their way through the wife.
“What did that?” persisted the Captain.
“Rusty wire, sire,” replied the sergeant, with a warning glance at the perspiration-bedewed private.
Abruptly Smith dismissed them, and as they walked away he looked after them thoughtfully. perhaps it were best, he decided, that he did not know all the details. The sergeant had so stated, and he had faith in the sergeant.
That ended the story for the dime being.
Years later, in Lusamitan, Dominican Republic, ex-Captain Smith told me the rest of the story.
“Aboard the boat, enroute to Blighty,” he said, “the sergeant told me something of what had happened in the old cemetery that night. He could afford to tell me then, for we were both being mustered out and the war was over. What he told me filled me with an irresistible desire to return sometime to that particular section to see for myself. I decided, eventually, to come to America, stopping for a time in France-at-peace enroute. I am sorry now that I did—now that it is too late to do anything.”
Ex-Captain Smith heaved a deep sigh, as though reluctant to continue.
“I found the cemetery with little trouble, for every detail of it was etched unforgettably upon my mind. I found the grave which the sergeant had mentioned. It was one of those aged affairs, the like of which is sometimes encountered here in Santo Domingo, where, in place of the usual mound, the family builds a concrete or metal retaining wall above the surface of the ground—with a broad slab covering the area of the grave beneath. The sniper, so the sergeant had told me, had crept to this grave in the darkness before dawn, lifted the great slab and squeezed himself down inside the retaining wall, where there was just room enough for a man to lie comfortably prone. Then he had but to put a bit of stone or wood under the end of the slap to hold it up far enough for his rifle to protrude. Even with the best field glasses we could not have discovered him from our trench. The sergeant and the private, waiting silently in the cemetery, saw the fellow sneak in and crawl into his hiding place—and knew that, when daylight came, he would be ready once more to take his deadly toll of our men. Here he would remain throughout the day, returning to his friends when Darkness settled over No-Man’s-Land.”
Once more the ex-Captain paused.
“I lifted the slab,” he said slowly, “and drew it away. Then, horror seizing me in its grip, I turned hurriedly away and did not look back again. One look had been enough. Within the narrow retaining wall lay a mouldering skeleton, to which clung rotting folds of a grey uniform! Beside the body lay a rusty rifle and the remains of a light pack. What a ghastly revenge!”
Once again he paused.
“For the sergeant and the private,” he continued at last, “had crept up on the sniper and made him prisoner. Then they had thrust him back into that horrible retaining wall—ALIVE—after which they returned the slab to its place. But they had made retribution doubly sure. For wrapped about and about that mouldering skeleton, dolf up on fold, was a veritable maze of rusty barbed wire, which the two volunteers had torn from the fence that had once kept cattle from pasturing in the cemetery.”
※
In The Leatherneck, the tale ends with the notice “Reprinted by permission of WEIRD TALES.” Arthur J. Burks published six “Strange Tales of Santo Domingo” in the pages of Weird Tales, but this is not one of them. Again, probably not quite weird enough for Farnsworth Wright.
Arthur J. Burks did serve during World War I, but he was never sent overseas and never saw combat, and this is really in every respect a Great War tale, with just a bit of a framing device at the end to make it part of the Santo Domingo series.
The little sneaky street which leads westward to the Malecon is as dark as Erebus. Narrow, evil smelling—thoroughfare of the poor who spend their days in gazing out to sea, their evenings on the stone sidewalks that were built in the time of Columbus and his brutal governors, and their nights behind the locked doors of huts. The huts themselves are very old, and the paint has scaled off in so many places that most of them have the scarred look of aged lepers who have given up all hope. There are cracks between the twisted boards which let in the rain during the rainy season, and through which, after nightfall, the reddish glow of subdued native lanterns comes out to the traveler who stumbles along the cobblestones. If one pauses to listen one may hear the pitiful wailing of babies who have gone to bed supperless, and the soft crooning of native mothers who try to soothe them. The little street is stifling, seems to weight down upon one, dampening one’s spirits weirdly.
Especially the night of the first moanings of the last hurricane.
The wreck of the U. S. S. Memphis stands solidly at the western extremity of the Malecon, taking its rest upon the point of the stone Gogotha which slew her. Beyond her cage mast, against the lowering, black-clouded heavens, a red moon looks down upon as wild a scene as any ever conceived by a painter. Fine mister, separated from the whitecaps which break against the rampart of cliffs below the Malecon, slips over the roofs of the huts and sinks clammily into the crazy little street. From far Cabo Caucedo, from the southern mouth of Mona Passage, the winds come moaning, singing a requiem to the spirits of the savage coast, whispering eerily at the mouth of the Ozama River.
We are all alone—my horse and I. It is near midnight and we are stumbling into the city to visit our patrols. Following an unaccountable whim of mine, we are taking the way which leads along the deserted Malecon.
We quit the street to enter the broad promenade. The moaning of the wind is louder, almost a continuous shriek. The red moon darts into hiding in a bank of black clouds, while the waves, breaking high over the cage mast of the Memphis, dash themselves to pieces in a furious attack upon the immovable ramparts of stone which is the coast.
We are brought to pause. The horse halts stiff-legged, snorting fearfully. He does not fear the moaning and shrieking of the wind. It is the waves that he fears, and they are breaking over the Malecon itself, deluging the broad promenade, gurgling as they slip back to Sea and lose themselves in the bosom of the Caribbean. But ere we can pass along the Malecon another wave, higher than its predecessor, towers above the Malecon, causing us to retreat fearfully.
But what is that?
A long wailing cry, that is heard even through the shrieking of the wind and the pounding roar of the waves, cutting like a keen edged knife, comes through to us. It is an oddly human cry, yet there is something in it which is not of the earth. The horse pricks up his ears and stares into the wall of spray and water. He paws the cobblestones restlessly, showing me plainly that he wishes to be gone. When I touch him slightly with my spur he refuses to advance, though his eyes stare fixedly into the spray, his nostrils are distended—and a snort that is expressive of fear answers me as plainly as though the brute had spoken.
But as I hesitate the wailing comes against. From a hut behind me bursts a startled ejaculation in Spanish. I turn to look back and the light in this hut goes out, the hut becomes the abode of fearful silence. In the silence between the breaking of two waves the wailing comes again.
Holding my horse with tightened reins I peers into the mist and spray, seeking the spot whence the wailing comes. A great wave, higher than any I have seen—each one has been higher than the last since we paused here—towers above the Malecon for a breathless instant, then tumbles headlong with a ponderous roar. Just as it breaks and tumbles its crest grows white as snow, the flying spume making an eery mane for the monster of the sea. There is something luminous in the spume and in its every light I see the spirit of the monument which loving hands have erected at the very crest of the coral cliffs mid-way of the Malecon. Then the spire vanishes in the bosom of the wave, comes to view after it has passed, letting me see the monument against the night, wetly dripping. At the base of the monument there is a dark shadow which moves—the wind whips soggy garments this way and that.
The wailing comes again!
Then with a muttered prayer—that is half prayer, half curse—I dismount and drop the reins over my horse’s head. With a snort the animal bolts, sweeping back along the narrow alley toward Fort Ozama, whence we came a few moments earlier. Shrugging my shoulders resignedly I turn into the Malecon, hugging the row of houses, my hands extended to seek support should a wave overwhelm me and threaten to bear me back with it to the sea. Once I almost drown when a wave buries me deeply, receding then to leave me dripping and panting, but with my eyes seeking the dripping spire of the monument which should come to view after the wave has returned to the Caribbean.
I make out the spire and run toward it swiftly. Even before I reach its substantial haven I see the shadow that moves, make out the whipping of the soggy garments. The wailing comes again. I reach the great spire and lean against it heavily, measuring its circumference with my arms to insure that I be able to save myself when the waves break again. Besides me, wearily drooping, yet with an expression on her white face which has something ethereal in it, stands a middle-aged Dominican woman. She has been drenched and buffeted by the waves until most of her strength has fled, so that she sags against the monument and her hands retain their grip upon the count of stone more by good fortune than intent. Her hair—she is bareheaded—is wet and hangs over her eyes except when she casts it aside with a flirt of her head. She is blue about the lips from the coldness of the water. She shows her fine white teeth in a wan smile as she notes my presence beside her. But in her eyes there is no recognition, just a weird sort of questioning such as one sees in the eyes of intelligent animals or very young children. Then her eyes turn back toward the surging sea. Now there is expression in them, and her lips move as though she whispered a prayer. The expression is a boundless expression of love! What is it that she sees about the great monster out there to love? What is the weird story behind this wan woman’s presence here on the sadly beleaguered Malecon? What does she expect to come to her out of the sea?
The waves break over us while I cling to the woman to see that she does not go to the sea when the wave returns. I see her eyes lift to the crest of the wave which towers above us, and those eyes are alight with a fearful question—as though within the bosom of the landward-hurtling monster she would find that question’s answer. But the waves break over us and flood the Malecon—and the woman wails that sad cry of hers which first attracted my attention, swerving her gaze, still with the fearful question in her eyes, back to the next wave that dashes toward the Malecon. When the last wave has receded I seize her in my arms, tearing her numbed fingers free of the stone by sheer British force, causing her to wait again in protest, and dash with her in my arms toward the haven of the houses on the north side of the Malecon. A great wave pursues us, but we win out against its fury and gain the heaven of the second street beyond the great promenade. Here we encounter a later traveler, Howard bound perhaps, who looks startled as his eyes fall upon my burden and me. Then, curiosity banishing his fear, he bends to look into the face of the woman I have rescued. Seeing the white face of the woman, who has mercifully fainted, he mutters something to himself—something expressive of fear—crosses himself hurriedly, and darts away, losing himself among the shadows.
Who is the woman in my arms? What can I do with her? Where does she live? When she opens her eyes and I ask her each of these questions in turn she only shakes her head, though I speak her language and know that she understands. Then she points toward the Malecon as I hear another wave break above the rocks with its thunderous roar. When I shake my head in turn she signals for me to release her. I ask her if she is able to find her way home and she smiles upon me sadly—speaking never a word. Then she moves slowly away—among the shadows as did he who crossed himself when he saw her in my arms.
On foot I continued my interrupted duty, visiting my patrols throughout the city. But when I returned to the Fort there was no sleep for me that night. My mind was busy with all sorts of unanswerable questions. Who was the woman? What did she ask of the sea? Why did she take her life in her hands to stand above the ramparted coast to watch the great waves come in?
Off duty next day I turned to the Malecon. The waves no longer leaped the ramparts of coral, though the Malecon and the first row of houses northward were all wet and dripping as though they had emerged during the night from the bottom of the sea. I started out across the angry waste of waters to the southern horizon, and all between the balked waves were churning one another into foam, creating a vast maelstrom in which the strongest small boat could never have survived. I strode across the slippery stones to the stone monument above the sea, marvelling as I did so how I had been Abe to win across those same stones in the darkness of night with a woman in my arms. I reached the monument and stared at the bronze plate in its landward side. On it were Spanish words, of which this is the English translation:
IN MEMORY OF THE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHO LOST THEIR LIVES HERE THE NIGHT OF THE GREAT HURRICANE.
By this time the Malecon was filling with curious Dominicans, come forth to see what the Caribbean had given up during the night—morbid curiosity readable in their bronzed faces. Some of them stare at me questioningly, though none approaches to ask questions. I note that no one crosses the slippery stones to the great stone monument. Shaking my head, believing the answer to the puzzle beyond me, I turn and move back to the Malecon, staring as I return at the faces of the scores of people who line the southern side of the Malecon, leaning on the stone railing as they stare out upon the waves. Just for a fleeting second I fancy I note the white face of her whom, last night, I saved from the bellowing sea. There is the sad smile and the unreadable question—and I catch myself listening for the wail which came to me through the water and flying mist. Then the face disappears and I convince myself that I did not see it after all. Now I am back at the Malecon, looking about me.
The faces of the Dominicans, as a whole, are not friendly; but I scrutinize each one near me, seeking someone who may be able to answer my questions. As though he knows what I wish, an elderly Dominican of the better class, detaching himself from a well dressed group along the railing, strolls in my direction, a half smile of invitation on his face. I smile back at him and go to meet him.
“Tell me about her, senor,” I burst out, “she stood beside that pillar last night when the hurricane was raging, and would have drowned had I not rushed out and brought her back to safety. Why does she wail, and why did she choose light night of all nights to stand beyond the Malecon at the mercy of the waves?”
“It is a long story, Americano,” he replied softly. “she is the guardian of the Malecon, and every night for the last several years she had gone to the Malecon to keep her tryst beside the spire.”
“But why? Why?”
“It was the night of the Great Hurricane,” he continued; “when a small schooner, returning from a fiesta at Bani, was caught and pounced upon by the waves before it could reach the mouth of the Ozama—less than half a mile distant! Aboard that schooner were men, women and children—poor people all. A kind president had secured funds in order that these people might have one day out of their lives to which they could look back with pleasure. I remember when they sailed forth from the Ozama, dressed in holiday attire, happy and carefree as though all had been children—which, in truth, we all are at heart—and a native band was playing on the gently heaving deck. It promised to be an unforgettable holiday; but at that time no one even guessed in what Dread the happening was to be kept alive in the memory of Santo Domingo. The Male one was crowded to watch the boat come in with its happy passengers—WHEN THE HURRICANE BROKE WITHOUT WARNING BEFORE THE SCHOONER COULD READ THE OZAMA! All night we stood in the streets back from the Malecon, praying that the schooner weather the storm. We heard the band playing as the brave musicians strove to keep up the courage of the ill-fated passengers. But the band stopped at last, and we saw that the lights of the schooner were slowly but surely moving landward—now hidden in a trough of the waves, now in plain view at the crest of a monster of the sea. Ever and anon we caught the wailing of those yet left alive aboard her. Then the lights vanished as a terrible wave engulfed the schooner; the wailing died out as disappears a candle flame in a wind—and silence settled over the Malecon save for the shrieking of the waves and the screaming of the wind. There was no way of going to the rescue! It would have been suicide to no avail, senor! One man tried to swim out of the schooner—we found his body next day in the middle of second street north of the Malecon—and with him were the bodies of many others. That monument yonder was erected in memory of one of the saddest pages in Dominican history.”
“But the woman! What of her?”
“All of her family, save her husband, was aboard the schooner. All save one of them returned—the youngest, a girl of twelve, best-beloved of her family—we found their bodies north of the Malecon. But the girl never came back! The sea took her and has never given her up.”
“But the woman’s husband, who you saw was not a board? Why does he permit her to visit the Malecon alone?”
“Her husband, senor,” replied the man, “was the only Dominican who tried to reach the foundering schooner. He failed, as I have told you. Now, there is no one of the family save the wife and mother—who comes nightly to the Malecon to pray that the sea give up her best-beloved. But there is no reason to fear her, senor. She is harmless, though all Santo Domingo knows that she has lost her mind—she does not even grow angry at the men and boys who follow her about, hurling gibes at her for a lunatic. So you can see that there is really no harm in her.”
“Yes,” I replied bitterly, “I can well understand. But do you?”
Many months later, when I stood on the deck of an outbound transport, leaving Santo Domingo behind to drop slowly out of sight below the horizon, I stood at the rail and looked back toward the Malecon. We had left the Ozama at nightfall and already lights had flashed on in the Capital City. A revolving light to guide mariners blinked on and off as it circled in its huge cage above the harbor. Its light flashed for an instant along the coast, causing the spire of the monument to stand out in startling relief as it passed. Just for an instant it was; but in its pathway, coming across the slippery stones from the Malecon, I fancied I could make out the shadowy outlines of a woman who walked slowly, with her great eyes fixed questioningly upon the sea. Then the light passed on and, after a long time, Santo Domingo dropped out of sight beneath the heaving waste.
※
In The Leatherneck, the tale ends with the notice “[Reprinted by permission of WEIRD TALES].” Arthur J. Burks published six “Strange Tales of Santo Domingo” in the pages of Weird Tales, but this is not one of them. Not quite weird enough, perhaps, for Farnsworth Wright.
The Carribean to the south, beyond the Malecon, was a mighty Sapphire mystery encircling the world. […] To the west of the Malecon the wrecked U. S. S. Memphis, often seen now in newsreels, rested solidly upon the stone Golgotha which had crucified her. And when the waves were running in their crests broke into creamy foam over the very top of her cage mast, which had not then been taken down by the salvaging interests. —Arthur J. Burks, Land of Checkerboard Families (1932) 8-9
The U.S.S. Memphis was real, and wrecked in the harbor of Santo Domingo in 1916. The partially dismantled wreck would still have been visible in the 1920s when Burks was stationed there.
[…] Burks had been a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corp[s]. After leaving the military in 1919 he joined the reserves as a 2nd Lieutenant. […] He returned to active duty in 1921 with the U.S. Marine Corp[s]. After training recruits at Parris Island, S.C., he was sent to the Dominican Republic, where he was involved in intelligence duty and the making of maps for the republic until 1924.
Although he had begun to write in 1920, it wasn’t until he was stationed in the Caribbean, where its people and native voodoo rituals fired his imagination, that he began to sell weird stories to Weird Tales. Many of those tales, often considered his best work in the field, eventually became the foundation for his 1967 Arkham House collection Black Medicine. —Peter Ruber, Arkham’s Masters of Horror(2000) 251
In 1915, U.S. Marines landed in Port-au-Prince, capital of the Republic of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola; beginning an occupation that would last until 1934. The following year, U.S. Marines would invade and occupy the Dominican Republic, also on Hispaniola, which would last until 1924. The occupation would result in closer contact between the continental U.S. and Caribbean culture, and the local syncretic African diaspora religions of Haitian Vodou and Dominican Vudú strongly captured the public imagination through books like William Seabrook’s The Magic Island (1925), which sparked the zombie craze.
Among the leathernecks serving in the occupation was 2nd Lt. Arthur J. Burks, who had been attempting to launch a writing career for years. Now he took a writing course at the Palmer Institute of Authorship, which helped polish his style and set his feet on the path of a pulp fiction career—one he would so excel at in terms of speed and sales that he soon became one of the star pupils.
With the local color and lore picked up from his time in the Dominican Republic, Burks at last hit on a seam of material that could sell—and a magazine that would lap it up. Weird Tales had begun publication in 1923, and after a reorganization in 1924, it must have seemed a perfect market for Burks’ tales set on Hispaniola. His first published story in the magazine was in 1924, under the pseudonym Estil Critchie, and he soon became a prolific contributor:
Historical Racism
Please be aware that these works were written during a time when racism and racial stereotypes were extremely prevalent in U.S. society; all of the stories include characters who exhibit or embody these prejudices in some way. This was typical of Arthur J. Burks’ early works.
“Thus Spake the Prophetess: A Tale of Haiti” (Weird Tales Nov 1924) as by Estil Critchie
“Voodoo” (WT Dec 1924) as by Estil Critchie
“Luisma’s Return” (WT Jan 1925)
“A Broken Lamp-Chimney” (WT Feb 1925) *
“Desert of the Dead” (WT Mar 1925) *
“Daylight Shadows” (WT Apr 1925) *
“The Sorrowful Sisterhood” (WT May 1925) *
“The Phantom Chibo” (WT Jun 1925) *
“Black Medicine” (WT Aug 1925)
“Vale of the Corbies” (WT Nov 1925)
“When the Graves Were Opened” (WT Dec 1925)
“Something Toothsone” (WT Mar 1926)
“The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee” (WT May 1926)
“Asphodel” (WT Jun 1926)
“Orbit of Souls” (WT Dec 1926)
“Faces” (WT Apr 1927) *
“The Invading Horde” (WT Nov 1927)
“Bells of Oceana” (WT Dec 1927)
…and so on. Burks recalled his start with Weird Tales:
[…] the time when I sold my first adult story. That was in 1924, and as long as I live I shall never forget the thrill of it, nor the letter which came to me accepting “Too Many Legs,” nor the name which was signed to that letter. Put it in capitals, that name, Mr. Editor, for it was the biggest, most important letter I ever received in all of my days: FARNSWORTH WRIGHT, editor then, and now, of Weird Tales. Weird Tales, and its editor, were having a hard time then, and Farnsworth Wright was very plainly a much overworked man. That was evident in all his letters, yet he still had time, knowing as he did that I was a newcomer, and that he was buying my first yarn, still found time to write me about my story, to ask for more, to offer friendly criticism, and to suggest revisions for stories which for one reason or another did not stick. —Arthur J. Burks, “Are Editors Human?” (1929) in Pulp Fictioneers(2004) 25
Wright managed to convince Burks to publish a series of short tales—not all of them weird in the traditional sense—as “Strange Tales of Santo Domingo.” These tales are marked with an asterisk in the list above.
No story under the title “Too Many Legs” was published in the pages of Weird Tales, but then Farnsworth Wright had a habit of editing titles to suit his own tastes. However, there is reason to believe that Burks actually sold more stories to Weird Tales than were published, because of a series that appeared in an oft-overlooked Marine Corps journal called The Leatherneck in 1926 and 1927.
Three of the four Leatherneck tales bear the curious notice at the end: “Reprinted by permission of WEIRD TALES” (or variant thereof), yet only one of them was published in the pages of that pulp: “The Return of Luisma Llansal,” which is a variant of “Luisma’s Return” (WT Jan 1925). All four are also plainly stories of Hispaniola, in the same vein as the tales Burks had published in Weird Tales in 1925, 1926, and 1927.
While we might speculate about the exact behind-the-scenes story, it’s worth remembering that Weird Tales only paid on publication, which could be months or, in extreme cases, years after the story was accepted. So it is quite possible that Burks “sold” a number of stories to Weird Tales, a handful of which went unpublished for a couple of years, and which Burks finally asked Wright for permission to print (or reprint) in Leatherneck. At least, that is one scenario that fits the facts at hand.
The Leatherneck tales have never, as far as I can determine, been collected or reprinted, and they are:
This story contains racist historical stereotypes and language. Reader discretion advised.
Seabury Grandin Quinn was the most prolific contributor to Weird Tales during its initial run (1923-1954); especially remembered for his occult detective character Jules de Grandin, whose adventures ran to a whopping 93 stories in WT over a period of 25 years. Readers might well ask how Quinn was able to keep things fresh and not repeat himself…and, well, he did. Just not always in obvious ways.
Like Robert E. Howard and other prolific pulpsters, Quinn wasn’t above recycling themes or even cannibalizing entire plots into new stories as the situation required it. While folks who only read his stories in Weird Tales will pick up on the structural similarities between the de Grandin tales—which are structured a bit like a murder mystery, starting out with a victim or inciting incident and ending with an expository explanation and the villain dead or in custody—to really see how much Quinn borrowed from himself, you have to look at what he wrote outside Weird Tales.
One such series was the Washington Nights’ Entertainment, a series of 24 detective/mystery stories starring his character Major Sturdevant that ran in Detective Tales and Real Detective Tales, and reprinted in various newspapers. Many of the Sturdevant tales have a weird element, and Quinn borrowed from several of them heavily for later de Grandin stories; in particular, “The Kiss of Madagascar” (Sturdevant, Real Detective Tales Dec 1924) became the basis for “The Black Orchid” (de Grandin, Weird Tales Aug 1935).
“The Kiss of Madagascar” was reprinted in various newspapers (such as the Muncie Evening Press, 7 Mar 1929 (12)), and also appeared under the title “The Blood Thief” in Detective Book Magazine (Sep 1931). However, like the other Sturdevant tales, it has never been collected and remains obscure.
※
The Kiss of Madagascar
by Seabury Quinn
“Hey, somebody lend me twenty-five bucks?” Bailey, who represented the Post-Intelligencer at Washington, peered through the Record’s office door, glancing hopefully from Williams, the Record’s correspondent, to Loomis, of the Clarion-Call.
“Kind o’ original in your needs, ain’t you?” Loomis asked. “Most of us don’t need more than ten, or fifteen bucks, anyhow.”
“Aw, fellers,” Bailey pleaded, “don’t throw me down; I need this dough, I tell you. Gotta get my sweetie some flowers. She’s goin’ to a doings up at the Highlands tomorrow, and I want to knock her dead with an orchid corsage. I’ll pay you back when my check comes next week, honest—”
“Orchid,” Loomis cut in again. “Gosh, he’d actually give her orchids.”
“Hey, what’s biting on you?” Bailing asked angrily. “You talk as if I was fixin’ to present the dam with a lovers’ knot of rattlesnakes, or something.”
“You might as well, according to my way of thinking,” Loomis returned. “Listen: Do you remember when the French Madagascar Commercial Mission was over here last year?”
“Yes,” Bailey agreed sulkily, “I remember, all right. But what’s that got to do with your disliking orchids?”
“Everything,” Loomis answered. “When that aggregation hit Washington last year they looked like a constellation of bright stars of hope to me. I’d slipped up on important matters three times hand-running, and it looked as if I’d soon be hunting a Government clerkship when the Frenchmen came along.
“‘Here’s where I get in solid,’ I dolt myself. ‘I’ll just run up and cop off a red-hot story and square myself with the old man.’
“Did I? I did not. The Frenchies were occupying the Bushnell residence, in Sheridan Circle, and they’d had time to dig in by the time I rang the front doorbell. A tenth-assistant secretary, who smelled like a ladies’ hairdressing emporium, gave me a supercilious look anda sheet of mimeographed legal cap. ‘Zat ees all ze Commeesion haff for pooblication,’ he said, and nodded to the doorkeeper to give me the gate.
I started down Massachusetts Avenue toward DuPont Circle, when someone hit me a crack on the shoulder.
“‘Hello, Frank,’ my assailant said, ‘what’s the trouble? You look as if you were taking a guilt conscience out for an airing.’
“It was Major Sturdevant, of the Secret Service, and he’d been responsible for my scoring more beats than all the luck I’d have since coming to Washington.
“‘No: it’s the job,’ I said. ‘Those Frenchmen back there gave me a raw deal.’
✾
“‘WELL, well. I reckon I can give you a lift. I know La Peruse, the director of the Commission, slightly—was on my way to see him when I bumped into you. I’ll take you back with me.’
“‘Next time you want ten or a dozen guys murdered, call on me, Major.” I asked as we mounted the Bushnell steps and Sturdevant rang the bell.
“‘Ze Commeessionaire, he air not to see ze journaleests,’ the overgrown porter announced.
“Sturdevant thrust his card foward, adding the oral explanation. ‘Service de Surete.’
“‘Oh, mais oi, M’sieur, certainment,’ the porter agreed, his hostility evaporating before Sturdevant’s announcement.
“We rode up two floors in the automatic electric elevator, and entered a large parlor on the third floor which seemed to combine the duties of lounging room and office.
“‘Ah, Monsieur Sturdevant,’ a big, blond man greeted as we followed the porter through the tapestry lambrequins at the door.
“The Major shook hands cordially and presented me to the Frenchman. He was well over six feet tall and proportionately broad, with the prominent nose and cheekbones that bespoke Basque ancestry and the fair skin and light eyes that told of descent from the Northmen who overran Brittany in the days before Hastings.
“‘Mister Loomis,’ he acknowledged Sturdevant’s introduction in excellent English. ‘I had not thought to give anything but a formal statement to the press at this time; but I make an exception of you. Here are some memoranda you may find of interest. Copy what you wish and announce your dispatches as coming from the Commission.’
“I thanked him and dug into the papers, getting enough live stuff to fill two columns comfortably.
✾
“STURDEVANT and La Peruse talked of adventures in far places as I worked, and it was not till the library clock struck midnight that I realized how long we had been there.
“‘But, gentlemen, you will surely remain the night, certainly,’ La Peruse insisted as we rose to go. ‘It is past twelve, and the snow is deep. I can make you most comfortable.’
“I looked out the window and saw he was correct. Both Sturdevant and I hastened to accept the invitation.
“‘Queer chap, La Peruse,’ the Major told me as he snapped off the light. ‘He could have retired twenty years ago, if he’d wished, but colonial administration seems a sort of passion with him. Africa, Polynesia, Madagascar—wherever the French have possessions, he’s given the best years of his life and a lot of his own money to carrying on their work. This commissionership he holds now is only an honorary position: he doesn’t get a cent out of it. Why— Good Lord! What’s that?”
“We leaped out of bed and rushed into the darkened hall as a second blood-chilling cry echoed through the house.
“‘Down there!’ Sturdevant shouted, running headlong toward a room at the turn of the corridor. In a moment we were at the door.
“‘La Peruse!’ he called. ‘La Peruse, what’s wrong; are you ill?”
“We pressed our ears to the wood, waiting a reply, but no word came from the bedroom. Only a gurgling noise, like water escaping through a drain, or a man fighting desperately for breath. Then we burst open the door.
✾
“FEELING his way along the wall, Sturdevant located the electric switch and snapped on the light. La Peruse lay on his bed, the covers kicked to the floor, his hands flexed in a rigidity lie that of death, fingers digging into the yielding mattress. His pajama jacket was open at the neck, and on the white skin of his throat, below the line of tan, was a ruby disc where warm blood welled up from a tiny wound. His eyes were wide open, staring, and on his sunburned face was such a look of mortal terror as it seldom seen outside the phantasies of nightmare.
“‘La Peruse,’ the Major called, hurrying to the bedside and laying a hand over the Frenchman’s heart.
“His warm touch seemed to revive the stricken man. He rose unsteadily on his elbow, staring at us in pathetic bewilderment. ‘Where is it?’ he asked in a shaking voice. ‘Did you see it, Sturdevant, mon ami?’
“‘See what?’ Sturdevant asked. ‘What hurt you, La Peruse?’
“The other passed a trembling hand across his forehead. ‘The vampire,’ he answered with a shudder. ‘The demon un-dead, Major. It was here. I tell you, sitting on my breast, sucking the life-blood from my veins—’ he crossed himself awkwardly. ‘I saw it, flicking like a flame of hell-fire over me——”
“‘Rats!’ Sturdevant interrupted. ‘My dear fellow, you’ve had a bad dream. A vampire! You’ll be seeing old Mother Hubbard and her dog, next!’
“The Frenchman smiled wanly. ‘So?’ he said. ‘Look,’ he touched the wound at his throat and held his blood-stained fingertips up for inspection. ‘Is this blood or not blood, my friend? And if it be blood, how comes it there? You, yourself, can testify my door was locked; there is no other entrance to the room. Yet when you broke in what did you find, hein? If it were no vampire, then, pour l’amour de Dieu, what was it?”
✾
“SERVANTS and attaches of the Commission, in varying stages of dishabille, were crowding into the room. La Peruse waved them away and turned to Sturdevant.
“‘My friend,’ he said, ‘I am afraid. And my fear is the greater because I know not what it is I fear. How long I slept before It came I cannot tell, but I remember waking with a feeling of suffocation—no pain, but weakness and utter impotence—to see a red, fiery thing waving like a flame above me and to smell the odor of a charnel house. At first I knew not where I was, but realization came slowly. The thing that seemed to burn above me I cannot describe, for the darkness of the room and its very nearness obscured my vision. How long I lay wondering I have no idea; but suddenly I became aware of a feeling like a pulling at my throat. Then I knew: The thing was sucking my blood.
“‘Rubbish!’ Sturdevant replied. ‘I don’t doubt you think you saw this thing, but you couldn’t have. No one ever saw a vampire, or anything like one, outside a book or a bad dream.’
“‘You do not know the things I have seen, my friend,’ the other returned. ‘Here in what we call civilization we have forgotten the ancient things of nature, so we say they do not exist. But the people who live in the silent places have not forgotten, they remember, and they know. Listen, my friend:
“‘The revolt of Hova in 1898, which led ultimately to the exile of Queen Ranavalona, was not particularly anti-European. The Malagasy government had long employed English and French army officers and engineers, and found Europeans quite tolerable. But there is no question the Hova were violently opposed to Christianity. Travelers say the Hova had no definite religion of their own. That is not so. They worshiped a goddess known as “The Fragrant One,” whose manifestation was said to be a man-eating tree.’
“‘I was in Gallieni’s army of pacification when we put down the rebellion. One day word came by a convert Andevo that Hova insurrectionists had captured a missionary priest. We hurried inland to the rescue, and arrived to find the mission a smoldering ruin. Two days forced marching brought us to the Hova camp fires’ ashes, still warm. Another day our scouts surprised the war party dancing about something white on the ground. One volley of musketry sent them into the jungle, and when we charged their camp we found a skull and several bones in the center of their dancing circle.’
“‘Cannibalism?’ Sturdevant asked.
“‘Non, non,’ La Peruse denied. “The skull and bones were clean, clean as though scraped with sandpaper: there was no evidence of fire upon them, but something more we found: their surfaces had been eaten away—how do you say? eroded?—as though by acid.’
✾
“‘H’M,’ Sturdevant commented. ‘Whose skull was it?’
“‘The skull was that of a white man, and in the front of the mouth was a gold tooth—what you call a crown—the priest had set in by an American dentist in Paris. Our guide, the convert, recognized it at once, for that golden tooth had been the marvel of the mission settlement.’
“‘Still, I don’t see any evidence of your man-eating tree,’ Sturdevant objected. ‘The Hova might have used an acid substance to pickle their victim’s skeleton. Such things are no uncommon among barbarous peoples.’
“‘Yes, yes, you are right to be skeptical,’ the Frenchman admitted, ‘but wait. The guide told us the Hova made sacrifices to “The Fragrant One” by placing the victim (preferably a Christian) in the tree’s branches. It is supposed to be a sort of vegetable octopus, with tentacles to catch and hold its prey. When the tree had eaten the offering, the bones were collected and kept as souvenirs by the devotees.
“‘Now I, myself, had always scouted these stories: but when I saw the murdered priest’s skeleton I reconsidered. Do you know the Benus [sic] flytrap?”
“‘You mean the insect-catching plant of Carolina?’ Sturdevant asked.
“‘Yes,’ La Peruse answered, ‘the same. That plant, as you know, has a flower so delicately sensitive that the slightest touch by an insect closes the petals like the leaves of a book. Once imprisoned, the unfortunate insect is slowly dissolved by a powerful acidulous liquid excreted by the plant. As you would say, he is digested.
“‘Now consider: in tropical lands the flora of the temperate zone attains much greater size. If American and south Europe produce “flytrap” plants large enough to digest the humble bee, why should not a tropic island like Madagascar develop a tree large enough and fierce enough to devour a man? Eh?’
“‘H’m, possibly,’ Sturdevent tugged at his beard, ‘you may be right. At any rate, we’re still in the dark regarding the cause of your wound. It’s nearly morning; lie down and try to sleep. I’ll stay with you the rest of the night.’
“I left them together and crawled back in my own bed, but did precious little sleeping. The echo of the Frenchman’s ghastly cry and the sight of his still, horror-drawn face stayed with me till daylight.
✾
“WE had a Continental breakfast—coffee and rolls—in our bedroom, and I turned my overcoat collar up against the storm as I plunged my way toward Connecticut Avenue. La Peruse begged Sturdevant to stay with him so piteously that the Major consented to remain an hour or so.
“I knocked the information I’d gotten into shape and sent it off to the home office. The job was moderately safe for while longer, anyhow.
“I hadn’t been in the office fifteen minutes next morning when a call came from Sturdevant. ‘Hello, Loomis,’ he said, ‘there’s something dam’ queer going on up here.’
“‘What’s the trouble?’
“‘I don’t know: that’s where the difficulty comes in. La Peruse is worse. I stayed her again last night, and ran in to see how he was getting on about every half hour till five o’clock this morning. Everything seemed O. K., and I’d turned in for a couple of hours’ sleep when he gave another one of those war whoops, and when I got to his room he was lying just as we found him yesterday morning. I had more trouble in bringing him to this time, and he’s so weak from loss of blood we’ve had a physician up to look him over.’
✾
“I REPORTED at the Bushnell House about seven that evening, and Sturdevant took me to La Peruse’s room at once. The Frenchman was like a wraith of his former self. Violet half-moons under his eyes, a waxen pallor beneath his sunburn and a queer, pinched look about the nostrils testified eloquently to sudden and overwhelming weakness. The hand he extended unsteadily in greeting was as thin and bloodless as a fever patient’s.
“‘Now, Frank,’ the major said, ‘I want you to act as relief guard tonight. I’ll sit with La Peruse while you sleep; then you take your turn at sentry-go.’
‘We sat talking till I began to feel drowsy, and the Major took up his vigil by the sick man’s bed.
“He shook me awake shortly after two o’clock, and I slumped down in an easy chair beside the night light, a copy of the Clarion-Call in my hand.
“‘Do you wish coffee, sir?’ someone asked in a strong English accent. I looked up and saw a small and exceedingly black man with regular features and wire-straight hair, standing in the doorway, a tray containing a coffee pot and cup in his hands.
“‘Yes, thank you,’ I answered. ‘Pour it black, please.’
“‘Very good, sir,’ he replied, filling my cup. I swallowed a mouthful of the steaming black beverage and turned back to my paper.
“The old man had a riproaring editorial in that issue, lambasting the tar out of the administration about the coal strike, but, somehow, the words seemed to have lost their punch as I sipped my coffee. Presently the lines of type began to run together before my eyes. I nodded, shook my head to clear my vision, and—
✾
“LOOMIS, Loomis, wake up. Give me a hand here!”
“‘Eh, wha—what?’ I asked stupidly, half-rising from my chair, then sinking down again as the room commenced whirling like a Coney Island carousel.
“Gradually I began to see thing. Sturdevant, his white hair and beard bristling with anger and excitement, bent about La Peruse. La Peruse lay half out of the bed, head downward, eyes staring glassily, the bandage on his throat displaced, and a thin trickle of blood oozing from his reopened wound.
“‘Good Lord!’ I exclaimed, bracing myself against the arms of my chair. ‘What’s happened, Major?’
“‘La Peruse has been murdered while you sat there snoring.’
“‘But I wasn’t asleep,’ I protested. ‘I felt a little queer after I drank that coffee, but—’
“‘Eh? What’s that?” he asked sharply. ‘You drank coffee? Where? When? Who gave it to you?”
“‘Why, the boy!’ I answered.
“‘H’m,’ the Major lifted La Peruse to the bed, and glared at me. ‘Go find that servant and have someone ‘phone the doctor. There’s still a flutter in this poor chap’s pulse. No thanks to you, though.’
“I roused a secretary and asked him to call a physician, then inquired my way to the servants’ quarters. Three minutes’ search sufficed to find the man who served me, peacefully sleeping.
“I brought him, still in his pajamas, to Sturdevant.
“‘Did you serve coffee to this gentleman?’ the Major asked, eyeing him sternly.
“‘Yes, sir,’ the black man answered. ‘I thought some black coffee might help him stay awake.’
“‘H’m,’ Sturdevant looked him over from head to feet. ‘Pretty bold, doping him right under my eyes, aren’t you?’
“‘Doping him?’ the man’s assumption of horrified incredulity was masterly. ‘You surely don’t think that, sir.’
“He turned to me. ‘How much coffee did you drink, sir?’ he asked.
“‘Not more than half a cup,’ I answered.
“‘Ah,’ his insolence was superb as he stretched out his hand, lifted the cup, and drained it at a single gulp.
“He looked at Sturdevant. ‘If the coffee is drugged, sir,’ he announced, ‘it surely should act on me.’
“‘H’m, all right; you may go.’
“‘Thank you, very much, sir,’ the other replied, as he bowed his way from the room.
“The physician came bustling in. ‘What’s all this?’ he asked testily, making a hasty examination of this patient.
“‘Why, the man’s almost dead from exhaustion. Every indication of severe hemorrhage. Where’s the blood?’
“Sturdevant shrugged in annoyance. ‘We know no more about it than you do, doctor,’ he replied.
“‘Then you’re dam’ ignorant,’ the physician blurted. ‘There’ll have to be an immediate transfusion of blood if we’re going to save this man’s life.’
“Hurried telephone calls to the doctor’s office for paraphernalia, an examination of half a dozen of the Commission’s personnel for a suitable blood count, and the big porter was chosen to supply the vital fluid.
“When morning came La Peruse was resting easily, his body refreshed with new blood.
“‘We saved him this time,’ the doctor said as he struggled into his ulster, ‘but I’ll not answer for the consequences if he has another hemorrhage. See that he’s watched every moment.’
“‘He’ll be watched, all right, doctor, you may depend on it,’ Sturdevant assured him.
“As I was leaving he whispered, ‘Come up again tonight, Loomis. We’ll find out what’s what this evening, or know the reason why.’
✾
“LA PERUSE was slightly improved, though still very weak, when I arrived at the Bushnell house about eleven o’clock that evening.
“‘Hello, Frank,’ Sturdevant greeted as I was divesting myself of hat, muffler and overcoat.
“He led me to the room assigned us, shut the door carefully and lighted one of his long, black cheroots. ‘Been doing some visiting and exploring today,’ he announced. ‘Had quite a conference with Professor Stockton, of the Smithsonian Institute. He’s the foremost authority on tropical flora in the country.’
“‘What’s the idea?’ I asked. ‘Did you want to check up on La Peruse’s theory of the man-eating tree?’
“‘Partly,’ he replied. ‘Stocktown says La Peruse may not be far wrong. He gave me a lot of interesting data on Madagascar, too.’
“‘Shall I take the first trick?’ I asked as we walked toward La Peruse’s room.
“‘Not much; we’ll handle this business together,’ he answered. ‘I can’t risk having you sleep at the switch a second time.’
“We tiptoed across the room, and I was about to take a chair when the Major put out his hand, giving me a slight push. ‘Under the day bed, Loomis,’ he ordered.
“‘What?’ I whispered incredulously.
“‘Get under the day bed there,’ he repeated. ‘You’re going to be the silent partner in our little game tonight, and the invisible one, too. Crawl under that couch and keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Go on.’
“I slipped to the floor beneath the couch.
“THE Major pressed the bell communicating with the servants’ rooms. In a few moments the little black man who had waited on me the previous night entered. ‘You rang, sir?’ he asked.
“‘Yes,’ Sturdevant replied without looking up from his book. ‘Bring me some coffee at midnight, please.’
“‘Very good, sir.’
“The time crawled by like a frostbitten snake. The servant entered with the coffee, set the tray on the table and stood waiting Sturdevant’s orders.
“‘That’s all, thank you,’ the major said as he resumed his chair and picked up the cup. He took a swallow of the drink, then resumed his reading. Five, ten, fifteen minutes ticked off on my wrist watch, nothing happened. Then the room’s quiet was disturbed by a low guttural sound. I looked at Sturdevant in fascinated horror. His head had fallen on his chest, the book had dropped from his head. He was asleep—snoring.
✾
“I WRIGGLED a few inches on the floor, intent on crawling from under the couch and waking him, then froze where I lay.
“Stepping softly as a panther, the colored servant came into the room, followed by another. The second one carried a tray with coffee pot and cups, the first bore a bundle of some sort carefully between his outstretched hands.
“Pausing beside the Major a moment, they smiled at each other, then placed another cup exactly like that from which Sturdevant had drunk on the table, pouring an mount of coffee equal to that he had left into the substituted cup. Quietly the fellow with the coffee turned and walked quickly down the hall.
“The trick by which I’d been drugged the night before, and which had enabled the suspected black to demonstrate his innocence and my dereliction of duty, was so simple as to be childish, yet Sturdevant and I had been fooled by it.
“I lave where I was, watching the man’s movements.
“Quickly he leaned over the sleeping Frenchman, unfastening the bandage at his throat with a deftness the most experienced pickpocket might envy. A moment more and he produced a jar of oil, touched the sleeping man’s wound with the unguent, then, with a tiny scalpel, removed the softened scab.
“I saw a spot of blood form and grow larger as the wound was opened, and fixed my muscles for a spring when his next move struck me stone-still with mystification.
“Something like a ball of coarse moss, doubled upon itself like a giant, sleeping spider, dangled from a thread as the man drew his hand from the bundle he carried. I saw him swing the thing through the air several times, slowly t first, then faster and faster, till it whirled round his head like a wheel of light. Carefully he slackened the swinging thing’s speed, finally dangling it at arm’s length from him above La Peruse. The rapid motion through the air had opened the thing he held till its parts were fully displayed.
“Leaning forward, he dropped the knot of moss upon the Frenchman’s open wound.
“My eyes almost started from my head in horror. While I watched, the thing upon the sleeper’s throat began to live, putting out tiny tendrils like the fronds of an asparagus fern, but red as rusted iron in color. Like a living animal, the thing’s leaves waved and swayed in the air. Gradually, like a toy balloon slowly inflated, a great, tri-petaled, blood-red flower began unfolding.
“La Peruse moaned and stirred uneasily in his sleep.
“‘AT him, Loomis!’ With a bound Sturdevant was out of his chair. He leaped across the room, hands outstretched to seize the black.
“With a snarl of bestial ferocity, the little man dodged, hurling himself toward the door.
“I squirmed from my hiding place and leaped in his path, driving my fist at the point of his jaw.
“He fought like a wildcat. Shorter than I by almost a foot and under-weighing me by at least forty pounds, he was all I could handle, and more.
“‘Ah! Got him!’ Sturdevant dropped on the follow’s shoulders, seized his elbows in an iron grip and pressed them into his sides.
“‘Now, you little hellion,’ he rasped, ‘take that accursed thing off La Peruse and see you don’t leave any roots in his wound.’
“‘Ha! You think to make me?’ the other answered with a snarl. ‘You cannot. Your friend will die. You may kill me, cut me in pieces, if you like, but the cursed Frenchman dies. I’ll make no move to save him from his judgment.’
“‘No?’ Sturdevant replied, seizing the man’s left wrist in his right hand and slowly forcing it upward in a hammer-lock. ‘No? We’ll see about that.’
“Perspiration glistened on the fellow’s forehead, his eyes started in their sockets like a frog’s, his mouth drew taut with agony as Sturdevant slowly increased his pressure.
“Step by step the Major forced his captive toward the bed. At last the other dropped to his knees beside La Peruse. ‘Let me go,’ he begged. ‘Let me go, you white beast, and I’ll take “the Kiss” from him.’
“The captive reached out, seized the waving, red thing at the Frenchman’s throat, and lifted it carefully from his wound. Like an inflated bladder pricked with a pin, the infernal plant began wilting as its terrible nourishment was cut off.
“‘Now we’ll gather in the other one,’ Sturdevant announced as he snapped a pair of handcuffs over the prisoner’s wrists.
“The other black was lying in bed, apparently sound asleep, when we reached his room; but it required our combined efforts to subdue and shackle him when he leaped up as we entered the door.
✾
“‘HOW’D you dope it all out, Major’ I asked when La Peruse, rebandaged and soothed with a strong sedative, had fallen asleep once more.
“He bit the end from a cigar as he replied: ‘Just adding a few facts together, Loomis. A knowledge of Madagascar, plus a knowledge of the West Indies, plus a little thought—and there you are.’
“‘Take Madagascar, for instance. We know the difficulties the French had subduing the place and every effort the natives made to get back autonomy.
“‘When Gallieni and his forces defeated the Hova in 1896 they overthrew one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Ranavalona III had come to the throne by the simple expedient of murdering her predecessor with slow poison. The island’s inhabitants consisted of three classes, Andriana, or nobility, the Hova freemen, and the Andevo, or slaves. But actually there were no freemen but the Andriana. They had a custom called fanampoona which meant simply forced labor. The government would notify a man he was “honored” by being selected to work for it, and work he had to, without compensation.
“‘The natural result was the impoverishment of the people and the enrichment of the nobility. The French changed all this. They freed the slaves, forbade fanampoona, and made the nobles go to work. You can imagine how popular such a policy was with the ruling classes.
“‘La Peruse was one of the leaders in perfecting the new order of things, and he’s had more attempts made on his life than any man in the island, I suppose.
“‘A little conference with our historical experts and a talk with the French embassy revealed the existence of a well-developed, though unsuccessful, organization among descendants of Malagsy nobility to assassinate the directors of the colonial administration and restore the old regime.
✾
“NOW, when I talked with Professor Stockton yesterday he not only agreed La Peruse’s theory concerning the man-eating tree might be correct: but he told me something that furnished a definite working hypothesis for the cause of La Peruse’s illness. It seems there is a beautiful orchid of the epiphyte variety known as Angraecum, which grows on the west coast of Madagascar. But the natives whisper strange stories of a vampire plant, a sort of vegetable leech, which infests the interior. Stockton searched for the thing for months, but never found anything like it. Everywhere he heard of “the Kiss,” as they call it—a red, terrible plant that fastened on travelers as they slept and sucked their lives away, but no specimens could be found. He finally abandoned the hunt and decided the strange orchid was only a native myth. However, when he mentioned it, I saw where such a thing—provided it actually existed—could easily account for La Peruse’s strange sickness.
“‘The next question was: ‘Who is the logical suspect?’ The natives of Madagascar aren’t negroes in the generally accepted sense, though their skins are black when they happen to be pure-bloods, unmixed with Malay, Chinese or Hindu stock. These small, straight-haired regular featured black boys we captured tonight didn’t look like ordinary negroes, nor did they talk like them.
“‘The fact that you went to sleep after drinking his coffee was even a stronger clue, and the insolent manner in which he alibied himself only served to make my suspicions stronger.
“‘I took the precaution to search his room today, and got into every box he had, excepted on. That was iron and fastened with two Yale locks. If it hadn’t been for two things I’d have thought he had ordinary valuables in it; but I found a box of gold coin in his bureau drawer secured by an ordinary lock, and in another drawer I found a dagger about ten inches long with a waved, razor-edged blade—a Malay kris.
“‘NOW what would a servant have more valuable than a box of gold? If the man were an ordinary servant, as he assumed to be, there was no explanation for his possession of so much gold; but if he were the agent of a conspiracy, well supplied with ready cash from the conspiracy’s war chest, it was simply enough. Also, if he were a West Indian, as he claimed, why should he have a Malay kris concealed among his clothes?
“‘That’s the way I figured it, and I staged our little party last night on those assumptions. I knew he’d hardly try the drugged coffee again unless I gave him an opening, so I pretended to trust him, and everything worked out exactly as I’d figured. Pretending to drink his coffee was one of the hardest things. My shirt from is still sticky where I poured the villainous stuff down my collar.
“‘What are you going to do with “the Kiss”? I asked.
“‘Give it to Stockton,’ Sturdevant answered with a grin. ‘He spent six months looking for a specimen in its native habitat, and now I’ve got him one right here in Washington.'”
✾
LOOMIS drew a deep breath and stared hard at Bailey. “Now you see why I can’t abide the sight or thought of an orchid,” he explained. “Do you wonder I was horrified when you said you wanted to give your girl some of the awful things? Why, they’re all first cousins to ‘The Kiss of Madagascar.'”
“Gosh,” Bailey commented, “lend me ten dollars, will you? That’ll just pay for the violets.”
The mythology of “the Fragrant One,” however, was unique to Quinn, and something shared by both “The Kiss of Madagascar” and its weird counterpart, “The Black Orchid.”
“‘The revolt of Hova in 1898, which led ultimately to the exile of Queen Ranavalona, was not particularly anti-European. The Malagasy government had long employed English and French army officers and engineers, and found Europeans quite tolerable. But there is no question the Hova were violently opposed to Christianity. Travelers say the Hova had no definite religion of their own. That is not so. They worshiped a goddess known as “The Fragrant One,” whose manifestation was said to be a man-eating tree.’
[…]
“NOW, when I talked with Professor Stockton yesterday he not only agreed La Peruse’s theory concerning the man-eating tree might be correct: but he told me something that furnished a definite working hypothesis for the cause of La Peruse’s illness. It seems there is a beautiful orchid of the epiphyte variety known as Angraecum, which grows on the west coast of Madagascar. But the natives whisper strange stories of a vampire plant, a sort of vegetable leech, which infests the interior. Stockton searched for the thing for months, but never found anything like it. Everywhere he heard of “the Kiss,” as they call it—a red, terrible plant that fastened on travelers as they slept and sucked their lives away, but no specimens could be found. He finally abandoned the hunt and decided the strange orchid was only a native myth. However, when he mentioned it, I saw where such a thing—provided it actually existed—could easily account for La Peruse’s strange sickness.
“I was there with Gallieni in 1895, serving as sous-lieutenant of chasseurs, later as commandant of a detail of native guides. It was while serving with my detachment that I met Mamba. She was the daughter of an Andriana, or noble, family, distantly related to Ranavalona, the native queen just deposed by the French. Her skin was black as a minorca’s wing, with a blue, almost iridescent sheen; her features were small and delicate, her body as beautiful as anything ever chiseled out of marble in the Peridean age. She had tremendous influence not only with the Hova, or middle-class natives, but with the Andriana as well; for she was reputedly a witch and priestess of ‘the Fragrant One’, and a word from her would bring any native, noble or commoner, from miles around crawling on his belly to lick her tiny, coal-black feet, or send him charging down upon French infantry, though he knew sure death awaited from our chassepots and Gatling guns.
[…]
“You will recall Monsieur Sorensen referred to his native wife as Mamba, and called her a priestess of ‘the Fragrant One’? Very good. Mamba, my friends, is a native term for a terrible, strange black orchid said to infest the jungles of inland Madagascar. It is supposed to be a kind of vampire plant, or vegetable leech, and if it be placed upon an open wound it blossoms in the likeness of a human figure and nourishes itself upon the blood of its unfortunate host till he or she is dead. According to the stories I was told in Madagascar, the habitat of this strange plant is strictly guarded by the priesthood which serves ‘the Fragrant One,’ which is the native name for the more or less mythical man-eating tree of which such dreadful tales are told.
“The Black Orchid,” though it shares much with “The Kiss of Madagascar”—including the essential plot, a colonialist-friendly approach to French colonial history, some racial stereotyping, and a grasp of the French language which which can charitably be described as workmanlike—is not simply a redressing of a Sturdevant story in de Grandin’s clothes. Quinn took the opportunity in revisiting this idea to expand on the mythology, and “The Fragrant One” stands out as one of those odd bits of fakelore that mark Quinn as a mythmaker, much as his peers H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith were, albeit in a much more limited fashion.
In 1941, Robert A. W. Lowndes became editor of a science-fiction pulp magazine titled Future, which had been merged with another magazine titled Science Fiction Quarterly, and over the next few years would go by such titles as Future Combined with Science Fiction, Future Fiction, Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Stories over the next few years. Future, under whatever title, contained a great deal of work by Lowndes and his friends, sometimes under their own names and sometimes under pseudonyms, often joint pseudonyms for collaborations. One such pseudonym was Paul Dennis LaVond.
Lowndes had been a minor correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, and like several of HPL’s friends, had carved out his own corner of the Mythos, starting with “The Abyss” (Stirring Science Stories Feb 1941), which introduced a new eldritch tome: The Song of Yste. Lowndes would revisit and expand this personal Mythos in stories like “The Mantle of Graag” as by Paul Dennis LaVond (The Unique Magazine Oct 1941), “The Long Wall” as by Wilfred Owen Morley (Stirring Science Stories Mar 1942), “The Leapers” as by Carol Grey (Future Fantasy and Science Fiction Dec 1942), and the poem “Nyaghoggua” (Phantasmagoria 1939 / Famous Fantastic Mysteries Apr 1941). All of these stories were reprinted, sometimes in revised form and under slightly different titles, in later years…except one.
“Something from Beyond” (Future Dec 1941) by Paul Dennis LaVond is a story in the Song of Yste cycle that somehow fell through the cracks. Lowndes never republished or revised it; nor did Robert M. Price, who was studiously collecting early Mythos fiction in Crypt of Cthulhu and various anthologies like The Necronomicon: Selected Stories and Essays Concerning the Blasphemous Tome of the Mad Arab (1996, Chaosium) and Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (1992, Fredogan & Bremer / 2002, Del Rey). Other authors associated with Paul Dennis LaVond include C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl, and Dirk Wylie; Mike Ashley in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines(1985) credits “Something from Beyond” to Lowndes, Pohl, and Wylie (279). Perhaps that was why Lowndes never reprinted it.
※
Something from Beyond
by Paul Dennis LaVond
Foreword
WALLACE GREY was born in 2009, some thirty years after Harley Graeme made his first moon flight, in Norwich, and was schooled in Laurie Hall nearby, later attending Norwich University.
Although not nationally known, Norwich University has a fine, solid reputation for turning out acute, liberally-minded men, men who are neither too idealistic to adjust themselves to the harsh practicalities, nor yet too cut and dried to see beyond their noses. There are compulsory courses in subjects the mere mention of which would bring ridicule in other schools; they teach the occult and delve into what is known as Black Magic. Yet never do they permit their students thus to lose their grip on a world which denies and derides these things. The purpose of these courses is to instil into the student a love of truth and the unknown; they seek to make them like those sturdy scholars of a distant past who were willing to search through innumerable haystacks of falsehood for the needle of truth therein. Norwich men have always been the last to snort and cry “impossible” when the unknown occurs.
Shortly after graduating, Grey turned to anthropology for his vocation, but found the recognized authorities in the field to be grey-headed dodderers with a distaste for unorthodox views. In a fit of despair, he joined the Space Patrol, then popularly thought to be a glorified suicide club, nothing more. After a few months, his state of mind improved; but instead of buying his way out, as easily he could have done, he set about forging ahead in the Patrol. He was the first commissioned officer to rise from the ranks and there is no doubt but that he would have gone far, made a name both for himself and for the Patrol had not his career abruptly been terminated.
Grey was found dead, along with two other members of the crew, in the Patrol ship he commanded. The circumstances of his death were unusual inasmuch as the bodies of the three men were frozen, although the ship was quite warm. These bodies could not be thawed, yet gained heat rapidly upon arrival at Earth until the temperature was almost that of living men. An investigation brought no light upon the incident; there remains only Wallace Grey’s journal, extracts from which we give below.
From the Journal of Wallace Grey
“WHATEVER our scientists may say about the lifelessness of space, I cannot help believing that the void is indeed a harbor of life, even though it may not resemble the life we know. Perhaps such life is so alien that the very word itself cannot be applied, so different that by no stretch could the most plastic imagination conceive it. Yet, we have this word, and it signifies anything which possesses consciousness of being; to that we add growth, power of ingestion, reproduction, motion, and thought. Perhaps there are vortices of pure thought here in space. . . . But there is something out here which we cannot see, hear, taste, touch or smell. Yet we do sense its presence; we know it is here.
“It…. I cannot call the thing by any term more definite than ‘it’…. is watching us, or, should I say, it is aware of us; it may not possess what we know as sight. It is aware of us and has been following us for the last few days…. perhaps longer: we cannot tell how long it may have been hovering over us before we became aware of it. Perhaps a considerable length of time in its presence is necessary before any suggestion of its being can permeate us; Awareness has come, but not through the customary channels of perception. I wonder, though: is it conscious of us?…. Are trees conscious of the birds and animals that nest therein, of the little boys that climb them, of the men who come at last to hew them down?…. No, trees are still strange to men, even though men have known and dealt with trees as far back as our racial memories go. Even yet we do not know whether or not the tree has a consciousness of being, an awareness of other life-forms about it…. Imagination, psychological delusion, wishes that father thought…. we cannot be certain about anything; our greatest positivism can only be relative. Yet, I say that I can feel that this is a living, malevolent entity; but how do I know it is not my own emotions telling me this, my emotions which color my every act no matter how diligently I try to whitewash? It is only natural that we distrust what we do not know: all that we know is full of danger, pain, disaster, and death for us. We cannot trust ourselves: how, then, can the unknown bring other than apprehension to us?….
“I think that I am aware of this…. phenomenon…. more than Orloff or Jac; yet Orloff has been acting queerly for a number of days. He always was more than a little absent-minded; now he seems completely dazed. Ever since he and Jac repaired the blast-tube, Orloff has been…. different. He speaks very little, and, when he does, it is almost with an effort, as if he did not know the language he was trying to use. His voice, too, seems to have changed and the inflection is weird. I can see that Jac is puzzled; he asked me a few hours ago whether I thought Orloff might be developing some form of space-dementia. That is possible. I have tried to speak to Orloff several times, to see if he is in pain or feeling sick; he evades me and does not seem to understand what I am saying. There is, however, no fault to be found with his work; he does, true, perform his duties a trifle more slowly than before, but his efficiency has increased noticeably. He was always somewhat timid at the controls, fearful lest he make a blunder which would be disastrous to us all; now he handles them with confidence, does so well that I need not oversee him. He spends nearly all of his spare time staring out the portholes into space, although he does not appear to be watching anything. His eyes, I have noticed, are somewhat glazed as he stands there and, after he has finally turned away, his movements, for a few seconds, are incongruously stiff and awkward. Can there be any relationship between Orloff’s eccentricity and it? I must look into the Song of Yste again…. How out of place that ancient book seems aboard this ship, on the dark side of Luna, some quarter-million miles from Earth. Did those olden probers into the unknown, I wonder, ever dream of the day when men would leave the Earth physically?…. Yet, there is a vast amount of truth in this volume! I am told, by friends, that it was once declared pernicious, blasphemous, accursed, and to be destroyed on sight. A few copies were handed secretly from generation to generation lest they be discovered and burnt. (I wonder sometimes just how grandfather obtained it. Did he find it in a tomb, as he claimed, or was it obtained by other methods?)”
Later:
“Something has happened to my copy of the Song of Yste. I am positive that it was packed among other, more orthodox, volumes when we left Earth; yet it is not there now. I am sure Jac would not be rummaging around my things; even if he were, what possible Interest could a book like that hold for him. And Orloff…. but how could the lock on my chest be tampered with without traces being left? Moreover, of what value could a copy of this book be to other than myself? It is in cipher, most ingenious cipher. It took grandfather ten years to work it out, and another five to prepare the volume I now possess. But the mere possession of the key would be of little value, for even then one uninitiate could not read it. Each page holds a different variation of the cipher, the clue to which lies in the little sketch heading the page. Grandfather told me before he died. I mention this to point out the difficulty of reading a volume like my special copy of the Song of Yste and to draw attention to the high improbability that two people on the same ship, two members of the Space Patrol, further, would have the required abilities. Yet, Orloff’s condition leaves him open to grave suspicion.”
Later:
“Orloff has taken a change for the worse. He is unconscious now: Jac found him lying on the floor when he went below to see why Orloff did not respond to his signals. For a moment, he appeared to revive; his eyes opened yet I would swear that it was not Orloff who looked at us. He is lying on the couch in the next room; Jac and I are sharing his duties. I took advantage of the emergency to search Orloff’s room. Of course, it is within my authority to demand search at any time but I had been reluctant to use my power in this case as I was not sure that perhaps the blame was not mine. But the search proved my initial suspicions to be correct; it was in his room, and he had been reading it. Found figures on a sheet of paper in his desk which prove conclusively that he knew the cipher, was computing the variations for specific pages. When I am free, I shall determine just what he was reading; perhaps it will shed some light upon this gruesome state of affairs.”
Later:
“We are functioning under automatic controls, such as they are…. I have been reading that portion of the Song of Yste which seemed to be of so much interest to Orloff; it is damnable. Now I know what it is which has come out of space to dog our heels; I know why we feel so cold and the reason for Orloff’s curious condition…. We are completely helpless…. If I seem a bit reluctant to state what I know, it is because of the stark, objective closeness of the thing which stuns me. It is one thing to delve into the unknown and learn of hideous and alien secrets with which the cosmos is filled. That is one thing, I say, and it is a thing more than many minds can endure. But to face the actuality of these things is another matter. To those not afraid of thought, the Song of Yste is not so utterly horrible…. bizarre, grotesque…. words, words, words, but what can they mean, what can they mean when the reader has nothing in his own experience to approximate them?…. Imagination always paints a fascinating picture, albeit how gruesome, attaching glamor to the unknown and alien…. but the reality… Ia, Nyagghogua! Shub-Niggurath! Nyarlathotep! Nyartathotep!…. Nyagghogua, dissolver of space…. K’halkru!….
“Orloff’s condition is unchanged. He is still in a coma, apparently. But there are no wounds, no concussion, fractures or symptoms of shock. Jac does not suspect his true condition… but I know…. I know!”
“This is my last entry. It has come out of space…. for us. A short time ago I heard the call…. within. Weird piping sound ending in a piercing shriek. We…. felt it rather than heard it. Jac did not know what it was…. I tried to explain something natural….
“Orloff has arisen…. at the call. He stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at us, and, in his eyes a blackness, a vast shape of inconceivable power, malevolent power, that glared out at us. We are rooted to our seats…. though I cannot see what manner of resistance we could make were we free. I suppose it prefers us alive…. though could I reach the wall, none of us would go to it alive.
“We both feel very cold, although the instruments show that the temperature has not dropped a single degree. The cold comes from…. within. Orloff is moving slowly toward the space-lock; I sit here frozen to my seat, writing furiously…. Must try to put down what I read in that accursed book last night….
“‘Let not the hearts of men dwell too pleasantly upon escape from this earth to worlds of strangeness and glamor beyond the veil of night for without lies horror and madness and that which no human tongue or pen can describe. Vaster by far than the might and malevolence of those demons that plague and befoul the earth is that which comes out of space to feast upon the souls of men; yet, indeed, it is but a lesser manifestation of the evil which dwells beyond the stars. This out of space may be known by the coldness it brings, a coldness which no fire can abate, and by its unholy piping by which it summons its victims to sacrifice. For of old is it known to send itself into the living bodies of certain creatures so that they appear bewitched and know not themselves, shunning the day and the radiance of the sun which is hateful to it. Many and multiform are the prodigies it performs, for it may enter a city and blast all within into frozen corpses, yet, when these are discovered, there will have been no sign either of cold or of its point of entrance. Many and multiform are the prodigies it performs for its own amusement and contempt for men. And the crowning foulness of all….’
“I may write no more. The space lock is opening…. Orloff…”
“ENTRY in the log of the Space- Liner Majestic, Earth-Mars voyage EM 206: (From File .0078, Derelicts, Report of, for the year 2027, Record Rooms, Interplanetary Transit Building, N’York, Terra.)
“December 9, 2027. Discovered derelict space-patrol cruiser. #SP-070 R3, reported missing August 24, 2027, drifting in and parallel to Band 5. Found bodies of three men in cabin. Two in their official places; a third lying on the floor in such a position as to assume he had been placed there after death. Although ship was entirely warm and instruments showed no variation in room temperature, the corpses were frozen. Ship’s log, found in cabin, was dated August 5, 2027, no entries after that date being found. Journal of Commanding Officer, Wallace Grey, Lieutenant, Space-Patrol, hereby forwarded without comment. Lt. Grey was found, pen in hand, in the act of making entries in aforementioned journal.’’
The End
※
“Something from Beyond” is pure Lovecraftian pastiche, albeit in an uncommon space opera setting, which gives it the feel of a very stripped-down prototype of Event Horizon. Aside from the direct mentions to Lovecraft’s Mythos, the mention of Khalk’ru is a nod toward A. Merritt’s Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), where Khalk’ru is an extradimensional kraken worshipped by a cult in Alaska—sometimes seen as Merritt’s nod toward Lovecraft. Whether Lowndes intended any connection between Wallace Grey and Carol Grey (or simply liked the name) is unknown.
The original publication of “Something from Beyond” can be read on the Internet Archive.
In the letters of H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow compiled by S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz inO Fortunate Floridian! an individual named “Clara” is mentioned five times:
I see by the paper that your friend Clara has just lost a brother—not the one in Providence, but another dwelling in Mass. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 26 September 1935, OFF 296
My aunt vows she is going to shew Clara your binding of the “Shunned House” . . . . . Which reminds me that both Loveman & Brobst have seen this job & praised it to the skies. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 21 October 1935, OFF 299
My aunt ran into your friend Clara the other day, & they talked considerably about you. Clara is very anxious to see your job on The Shunned House, & I think my aunt will show her the book very shortly. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 25 October 1935, OFF 303
Meanwhile my aunt & Clara Buffner send you their best regards—the former having an intention of writing you ere long. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 30 November 1936, OFF 377-378
Here’s something about Aunt Clara (who always enquires admiringly about you) which you can keep for Yoh-Vombis. —H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 27 January 1937, OFF 397
Taken together, the overall impression is that Clara is a friend or associate of Lovecraft’s surviving aunt Annie E. P. Gamwell, that she was a resident of Providence c.1935 with a brother in the city, and that she had some interest in Barlow’s job of binding a set of sheets for Lovecraft’s The Shunned House. This book had been printed by W. Paul Cook in 1928, but never bound or widely distributed during Lovecraft’s lifetime. Barlow and Lovecraft prevailed on Cook to send the sheets to Barlow in De Land, Florida, which eventually happened. While in Washington, D.C. in early 1935, Barlow had bound the sheets in full leather, hand-tooled with raised bands, which was presented to his friend when Lovecraft had visited De Land in June (Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill618; Lovecraft’s Library106).
The only difficulty with these letters is the identity of Clara Buffner, who does not appear in any census or city directory for Providence in the 1930s. However, a close reading of a scan of the original letter shows that Clara’s last name is not Buffner but Buffum—an easy misreading, given Lovecraft’s sometimes cramped handwriting—and this makes a great deal more sense.
Clara Buffum was born 24 January 1873 to Joshua and Clara Maria Southwick Buffum in New York City. Census data and gravestones sketch a life: In the 1900 census she is listed as a secretary in the household of John C. Brown in Manhattan, which included nine servants. Joshua Buffum died in Providence on 10 July 1906. By the time of the 1910 census, Clara was living with her mother, aunt (Annie K. Southwick), and brothers Harrison (b. 7 March 1866) and Frederick (b. 20 July 1871) in Providence, Rhode Island and working as an artist at “book building.” Around 1915, brother Harrison (“Buff”) became a parole patient at Brattleboro Retreat in Vermont; his death certificate says he suffered from dementia praecox. Clara M. Buffum died on 3 January 1921. Another brother, Albert (b. 17 Sep 1870), was in business in Blackinton, Massachusetts, where he died on 4 August 1935—this would be the brother in Massachusetts Lovecraft mentioned in his first letter (OFF296), with the other brother being Frederick. Harrison would die in Vermont on 13 September 1935. Clara Buffum passed away on 6 July 1938, and was buried in Swan Point Cemetery in Providence, where she had lived most of her life.
Photo copyright 2026 Donovan Loucks
What the raw data doesn’t mention is that Clara Buffum was a skilled bookbinder that traveled to the United Kingdom to expand her skills, operated her own private business in a studio in Providence, consulted with universities, lectured, exhibited her work at the Rhode Island School of Design, and in 1935 published a book: Hand-Bound Books: A Guide for Amateur Bookbinders, in a limited edition of 500 copies. Her preface to that work declares:
It was my good fortune to learn the arts of book-binding and gilding from two men who belonged to the old type of craftsman. They were thorough, conscientious, and skilful [sic] workmen who never lowered their standards. My first teacher was Mr. F. P. Hathaway, for twenty years binder at the Boston Athenaeum, and later in charge of the bindery at the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, R. I. The teacher who instructed me in the art of decorative tooling and lettering with gold leaf was Mr. Charles McLeish of London, who was at one time connected with the famous Doves Bindery of Mr. Cobden-Sanderson at Hammersmith. It seems advisable to record the knowledge gained from them, to which has been added over twenty years’ experience in my own bindery in Providence.
Clara Buffum’s obituary expanded on this a little more:
Miss Buffum, who made a wide circle of friends during her residence here, was long recognied as one of the leading master craftsmen in the art of fine bookbinding in the East. She maintianed for many years a studio in Providence, where she bound many famous and valuable books, including a first edition fo Chaucer and the original Bible of John Bunyon, author of Pilgrim’s Progress. […] Miss Buffum studied under the leading masters of her craft in this country and in London. Every year for a long period, she exhibited with the Guild of Bookworkers of New York and also held occasional exhibitions at the Rhode Island School of Design where she taught bookbinding.
Other articles in newspapers and journals give evidence of Buffum’s lectures to various groups in Providence, including the New England Historic Genealogical Society (“Miss Buffum Talks Here of Bookbinding”). Given how active Annie Gamwell was in Providence society, including the Providence Art Club and attending public lectures and art exhibitions, it seems likely that was how Annie and Clara met—and probably continued to meet periodically, hence the latter occasional references in Lovecraft’s letters of 1936 and 1937. The article that Lovecraft mentions to Barlow in the 27 Jan 1937 letter is probably this article that ran in the Providence Sunday Journal 10 Jan 1937 (46):
It would be speculation at this point to try to sketch out any more of the relationships Clara had with Annie Gamwell, H. P. Lovecraft, and R. H. Barlow, but the confirmation of the few facts of her identity with the specific points in Lovecraft’s letters connects several dots. Barlow and Buffum’s shared interest in bookbinding, and the shared connection of Annie and Clara through Providence’s social circles, forged the brief connection accounted for in Lovecraft’s letters to Barlow.
When I read older stories, I try to have a bit of leeway for the general attitudes and goings-on of the times. What my grandfather felt and thought about is completely different from what I do in 2026.
I’d like to think we’ve grown a bit since “The Sex Serum”was published in 1935—it’s almost cartoonish in its gender stereotypes. The concept is something I think many queer people would agree is pretty sick, and I would like that to exist right now, thank you.
The story begins with a note that “It is the first time that this subject has been used in science fiction.” I find this hard to believe; more likely, it was the first time American fans of the genre had seen it.
Our narrator explains they have knowledge of a crime involving the disappearance of a professor and his daughter, with the fiancé, a man named Gilmour, the only witness. The corpse of an older woman and a young wounded man were at the scene. It’s baffled police and investigators for ages!
Gilmour goes to visit Jeanette, who he loves deeply but has a great distaste for her father, Professor Neville. He describes him as “stone-mad” and possessive of his daughter, but at the same time laments how awful it is that she was born a girl. His plan is to badger the man once again for Jeanette’s hand in marriage, using his poverty as a woe-is-me. I already hate him.
When he arrives, the professor says alright, I’ll hear you out. But first… “I must give you a brief idea of the workings of the sex machine.” Incredible opener. He goes into great detail about how embryos develop sexual characteristics and has discovered the secret “switch”, isolating it into a so-called Seventh Serum. After injection, and a few days time, you’re magically Trans-formed (my own pun, sorry) into the opposite sex. Don’t think about the mechanics too hard because we won’t be seeing any cool body horror. He does mention it happens “without pain or consciousness,” so that’s nice, I suppose.
You can probably guess who Neville has tested this Serum on—Jeanette.
Gilmour deals with this as well as one would expect. His emotional outburst is described as “sobbing like a child,” and he collapses on the floor, among other things. It’s interesting that when Jean—who is all regards, still the same person—caresses Gilmour’s face, it’s disgusting. How can a man show such tenderness to another of the same sex? When I was in high school, the trend was to follow a vulnerable moment with “no homo,” so everyone knew, “Well, I can do this, but don’t ever mistake that for being gay.”
The idea of being with another man is treated as an impossibility. Of course, to Gilmour, this is just something that would never work. As a man, Jean is not the person he loved anymore. He says that she’s dead, that “She had been swallowed in frightful inaccessible nothingness!” It’s no different from parents who describe their children as deceased when they’ve just…come out as trans. It feels selfish; to only understand the issue with how it affects yourself and not the person going through it.
Jean, for his part, seems pretty chill about the whole ordeal. He’s “enraptured with the novelty and the possibilities of his new life”. Masculinity has awoken an interest in science, in following his father’s work and exploring the world. It’s so close to having a nice message about coming out being a freeing experience—only to be ruined when the story describes what would happen in the other direction.
Gilmour flipflops from rage to sorrow and decides to give Professor Neville a taste of his own serum, locking him in a room during the process. I really wish we got any suggestion of what’s happening, even if it’s only in Gilmour’s imagination. He just stomps around the house for a few days until the transformation is complete. How boring!
This is where my biggest issues lie: While masculinity is applauded, with how charming and bright-eyed and wonderful it can be, there are no positive words used for femininity at all. Neville’s a “mannish old woman”, she spits and wails like a cat and has zero interest in science anymore. She whines about wanting to go out and look at roses instead. It’s a double whammy of the “man in a dress” trope and “old women are disgusting” rolled into one.
Realizing there’s no saving his lover, Gilmour beats Neville to death and throws a microscope at Jean before fleeing. A final note reveals Jean as the one recounting this tale, and that he is happily married with two children. So there’s that at least?
Admittedly, I found the story less interesting than an article inserted halfway through: “Manhood for Girl Dwarf Sought in Surgical Test.” The extremely dehumanising language—she’s a creature, not a girl that they hope can be turned into a normal being. Intersex individuals have been treated horribly throughout history, and here is a perfect example.
I wanted to know more about Clara. Who was she?Were there any records of her besides this?
After searching her name and some keywords, it turns out that not two months ago, a forum user had the same thought. “I really want to believe this person found some peace and contentment in their life,” they wrote. There are few records about her besides another article reflecting on the surgery. I have no doubts that her life was difficult, and I’m sickened by the way Clara was treated like an experiment and would have been better off dead. People are not projects to be tinkered with.
We have no way of knowing how she really felt. But there’s a bit of solace. A potential obituary reads “Clara W. Schreckengost died at age 69 in 1985 in Niagara Falls, unmarried, survived by several of her siblings.” I hope she was surrounded by love. I hope there was joy in her life, that she found happiness. We all deserve that.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 