Part 17 (2/2)

I walked back to my cell, where Brother Christophorus still slept, and lay down. Two hours pa.s.sed. I rose again and returned to the Abbot's quarters.

The door was closed but unlocked.

I eased it open, timing the creaks of the hinges with the screams of the prisoner. I tiptoed in.

Father Jerome lay snoring in his bed.

Slowly, cautiously, I lifted out the leather thong, and was a bit astounded at my technique. No Ellington had ever burgled. Yet a force, not like experience, but like it, ruled my fingers. I found the knot.

I worked it loose.

The warm iron key slid off into my hand.

The Abbot stirred, then settled, and I made my way into the hall.

The prisoner, when he saw me, rushed the bars. ”He's told you lies, I'm sure of that!” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely. ”Disregard the filthy madman!”

”Don't stop screaming,” I said.

”What?” He saw the key and nodded, then, and made his awful sounds. I thought at first the lock had rusted, but I worked the metal slowly and in time the key turned over.

Howling still, in a most dreadful way, the man stepped out into the corridor. I felt a momentary fright as his clawed hand reached up and touched my shoulder; but it pa.s.sed. ”Come on!” We ran insanely to the outer door, across the frosted ground, down toward the village.

The night was very black.A terrible aching came into my legs. My throat went dry. I thought my heart would tear loose from its moorings. But I ran on.

”Wait.”

Now the heat began.

”Wait.”

By a row of shops I fell. My chest was full of pain, my head of fear: I knew the madmen would come swooping from their dark asylum on the hill. I cried out to the naked hairy man: ”Stop! Help me!”

”Help you?” He laughed once, a high-pitched sound more awful than the screams had been; and then he turned and vanished in the moonless night.

I found a door, somehow.

The pounding brought a rifled burgher. Policemen came at last and listened to my story. But of course it was denied by Father Jerome and the Brothers of the Abbey.

”This poor traveler has suffered from the vision of pneumonia. There was no howling man at St.

Wulfran's. No, no, certainly not. Absurd! Now, if Mr. Ellington would care to stay with us, we'd happily--no? Very well. I fear that you will be delirious a while, my son. The things you see will be quite real. Most real. You'll think--how quaint!--that you have loosed the Devil on the world and that the war to come--what war? But aren't there always wars? Of course!--you'll think that it's your fault”--those old eyes burning condemnation! Beak-nosed, bearded head atremble, rage in every word!--”that you'll have caused the misery and suffering and death. And nights you'll spend, awake, unsure, afraid. How foolis.h.!.+”

Gnome of G.o.d, Christophorus, looked terrified and sad. He said to me, when Father Jerome swept furiously out: ”My son, don't blame yourself. Your weakness was _his_ lever. Doubt unlocked that door. Be comforted: we'll hunt _him_ with our nets, and one day..

One day, what?

I looked up at the Abbey of St. Wulfran's, framed by dawn, and started wondering, as I have wondered since ten thousand times, if it weren't true. Pneumonia breeds delirium; delirium breeds visions.

Was it possible that I'd imagined all of this?

No. Not even back in Boston, growing dewlaps, paunches, wrinkles, sacks and money, at Ellington, Carruthers & Blake, could I accept that answer.

The monks were mad, I thought. Or: The howling man was mad. Or: The whole thing was a joke.

I went about my daily work, as every man must do, if sane, although he may have seen the dead rise up or freed a bottled djinn or fought a dragon, once, quite long ago.

But I could not forget. When the pictures of the carpenter from Braumau-am-Inn began to appear in all the papers, I grew uneasy; for I felt I'd seen this man before. When the carpenter invaded Poland, I was sure. And when the world was plunged into war and cities had their entrails blown asunder and that pleasant land I'd visited became a place of hate and death, I dreamed each night.

Each night I dreamed, until this week.

A card arrived. From Germany. A picture of the Moselle Valley is on one side, showing mountains fat with grapes and the dark Moselle, wine of these grapes.

On the other side of the card is a message. It is signed ”_Brother Christophorus_” and reads (and reads and reads!): ”_Rest now, my son. We have him back with us again_.”

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THE DARK MUSIC.

by Charles Beaumont

It was not a path at all but a dry white river of sh.e.l.ls, washed clean by the hot summer rain and swept by the winds that came over the gulf from Mexico: a million crushed white sh.e.l.ls, spread quietly over the cold earth, for the feet of Miss Lydia Maple.

She'd never seen the place before. She's never been told of it. It couldn't have been purposeful, her stopping the bus at the unmarked turn, pausing, then inching down the narrow path and stopping again at the tree-formed arch; on the other hand, it certainly was not impulse. She had recognized impulsive actions for what they were years ago: animal actions. And, as she was proud to say, Miss Maple did not choose to think of herself as an animal. Which the residents of Sand Hill might have found a slightly odd att.i.tude for a biology teacher, were it not so characteristic.

Perhaps it was this: that by it's virginal nature, the area promised much in the way of specimens.

Frogs would be here, and insects, and, if they were lucky, a few garden snakes for the bolder lads.

In any case, Miss Maple was well satisfied. And if one could judge from their excited murmurings, which filtered through the thickness of trees, so were the students.

She smiled. Leaning against the elm, now, with all the forest fragrance to her nostrils, and the clean gulf breeze cooling her, she was suddenly very glad indeed that she had selected today for the field trip. Otherwise, she would be at this moment seated in the chalky heat of the cla.s.sroom. And she would be reminded again of the whole nasty business, made to defend her stand against the clucking tongues, or to pretend there was nothing to defend. The newspapers were not difficult to ignore; but it was impossible to shut away the att.i.tude of her colleagues; and--no: one must not think about it.

She looked at the shredded lace of sunlight.

It was a lovely spot! Not a single beer can, not a bottle nor a cellophane wrapper nor even a cigarette to suggest that human beings had ever been here before. It was --_pure_.

In a way, Miss Maple liked to think of herself in similar terms. She believed in purity, and had her own definition of the word. Of course she realized--how could she doubt it now?--she might be an outmoded and slightly incongruous figure in this day and age; but that was all right. She took pride in the distinction. And to Mr. Owen Tracy's famous remark that hers was the only biology cla.s.s in the world where one would hear nothing to discourage the idea of the stork, she had responded as though to a great compliment. The Lord could testify, it hadn't been easy! How many, she wondered, would have fought as valiantly as she to protect the town's children from the most pernicious and evil encroachment of them all?

s.e.x education, indeed!

By all means, let us kill every last lovely dream; let us destroy the only trace of goodness and innocence in this wretched, guilty world!

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