The Best Crime Stories Ever Told (37 page)

“But hang it all!” Philip Hands said. “You don’t mean to say that these things were really pagan gods, or that the prayers of nuns kept them shut up in a valley?”

“I don’t mean to tell you anything, my friend,” the doctor said. “These are things for specialists. Specialists in the history of religion will tell you one thing; specialists in biology another; historians another; I, I am a humble nerve doctor. And if I report to you the conclusions of the Hofrath von Kellermann and his scientific colleagues which will be published in a lucid and compendious volume, I don’t do any more than give you the faintest shadows of their splendid arguments which, according to my humble lights, I have mastered in order to be of service to my patients. For my business is to assure people who are in doubt as to their sanity that they are sane.”

“But the Hofrath von Kellermann—” Philip Hands began.

“The Hofrath von Kellermann,” the doctor continued, “died here yesterday on his four hundred and twenty-first visit to my Large Ones. How he died is not known. He was found crushed to pieces at the bottom of the mountain. But whether he was killed by a rock falling upon him or whether he himself was taken up and thrown down to this great distance, it is very difficult to say. For my Large Ones are of a placid and amiable disposition. They do not eat nor do they, as a rule, touch any living animal, though, at intervals of about a month, the Hofrath observed that one or the other of them would take a pine tree and grind it between his teeth. But the Hofrath was of opinion that this was not done for the sake of nourishment but more probably in order to while away the time as you might chew the stump of an unlit cigar.”

“But—” Mr. Hands began again.

“Excellent Mr. Second Secretary of Embassy,” the Sanitätsrath said, “in order to save you the trouble of incessant questions I will try to sum up for you the conclusions arrived at by these eminent professors.”

Philip Hands couldn’t restrain himself from remarking, “I don’t see why you haven’t got some American agent to boom these—these giants? It would have been the sensation of the world.”

And at the same moment Mrs. Hands exclaimed:

“Don’t continue to exhibit yourself as an indomitable ass, Philip!” The Fraulein von Droste, intent upon her more romantic train of mind, asked:

“And the lost Grand Duke?”

The doctor glanced at her quietly and amiably.

“Ah, my never to be sufficiently lamented and glorious lord!” he said. “It was his case that set me on to preach the crusade that I am never tired of preaching—the crusade that there is no such thing as madness. They said he was mad but he was a man of grandiloquent schemes and magnificent achievements. It was simply that he was outside the plan of his circumstances. He desired to be greater than Tiberias so he built splendid palaces that his subjects couldn’t pay for. He desired to be greater than Alexander so he was perpetually raising forces to prepare for a struggle against Prussia. He desired to emulate Hercules and so he came here to fight with the Large Ones, the secret of whose existence was the heritage of his illustrious position. He came here, you understand, alone, the sisters of the convent and the officials of his court begging him to desist from the dangerous adventure. And that is all that is known of him! There was never another trace. Where do his bones lie rotting? Who knows? As a young man, being his body physician, I searched every nook of the valley, I climbed in between the legs of the Large Ones as they slept.”

“You!” Mr. Philip Hands exclaimed.

“Excellent Mr. Second Secretary,” the doctor said ironically, “if you will climb down and examine these beings who appear to be now once more asleep, you will discover that their forms are covered with a grey-black hair, so coarse that it resembles the plants known as mares’-tails, and the grain of their flesh is so huge that with its indentations and the dirt that is upon it, it resembles a rough and uncultivated field, whilst the warmth that they give out is so considerable that each of these little valleys like cups appears like a greenhouse for heat and the stench is intolerable. If you will only climb you will observe all these things.”

“Oh, thanks,” Mr. Hands explained, “I am not a connoisseur in stinks!”

“Yet all these things I observed thirty-six years ago,” the Sanitätsrath said, “when I was a young doctor, and spent six months in this valley, searching for the lost Grand Duke, of whom no vestige was ever discovered.”

“Then he may be still alive—still here!” Annette von Droste exclaimed.

“Assuredly he may be still alive and still here,” the doctor said, “who knows? The peasants say they see him from time to time riding all glorious upon his
schimmel.”

“But, I say,” Philip Hands interrupted again. “If these fellows have been here all this time, how is it that nobody has ever talked of them?”

“My friend,” the Sanitätsrath answered, “for centuries the peasants have talked of them. Twenty years ago you might have heard from any of these peasants of the feats of what they call the giants. You would hear now, when they desire to tell each other that it is time to light the stove to cook their bread, they thrown great rocks from one side of the mountain to the other, as you have witnessed. The learned Vonggobel interprets this action of theirs differently. He says these actions are the outcome of a rudimentary desire for play, as you would observe the larger apes take up curiously a fragment of straw, and then cast it from them. And you would have heard from the peasants twenty years ago of how, when my Large Ones scratch their sides, it gives off a sound like the screaming of a thousand fiends. In this, the learned Von Kellermann agrees, though he says the sounds more rightly resemble that made by the crushing of metals under the stamp of gold-refining machines—a sort of metallic scream. In short, you have heard it. Twenty years ago you might have heard these things from the lips of the peasants, but now, fearing ridicule, they keep silent, though they talk amongst themselves, as they do of the lost Grand Duke, of great fowls resembling cocks, whose footsteps, twenty yards long, are seen in winter mornings in the snow, and of the Witches’ Sabbaths called Walpürgis Nights, and of all the other things of which the peasants discourse in winter, when the snow is high over the roofs and the pine-knots burn merrily and the spinning-wheels turn in those lonely valleys.”

“Oh, we know all about folk-lore,” Mr. Philip Hands said.

“Then here you have the making of the folk-lore for yourself,” the Sanitätsrath said, “such folk-lore as you yourself will tell your grandchildren when the snow is thick above your roof and above the limbs of my Large Ones, who do not mind snow upon their mountain-tops. For folk-lore is the interpretation set by common minds to explain facts which they cannot otherwise explain. How you will explain them I do not know.”

“Then, why don’t
you
explain them?” the indomitable Mr. Hands exclaimed.

“I do not explain them,” the doctor said, “because in these matters I have an uninstructed mind. They have been explained as Woden and Thor, but they are not gods. They have been explained as immense devils, but they are not immense devils, since the existence of gods or devils presupposes a will, and my Large Ones have no wills, having reclined for thousands of years in the same valley. They have been explained as the secret warnings of the Grand Ducal House, since it is said that when one of them cries out, every twenty years or so, a Grand Duke dies. Yet assuredly their purpose cannot have been to warn Grand Dukes of their approaching deaths, since they existed thousands of years before there were any grand dukes. For me, they are the instruments of curing people who imagine themselves mad through the hearing of strange sounds and the seeing of incredible sights. I bring these people up here and I say, ‘Listen and behold!’ and they hear sounds, and they see sights, stranger than any that they can imagine. Thus by the Grace of God, in Whose hands we all are, 67.3 per cent of my patients find cures. So you have many explanations afforded to you. For the Early Pagans they were Woden and Thor, and some used their fame for their own purposes. For me they are strange things that exist, and I use them for my own purposes; for the peasant women they are the Giant Brothers, and the peasant women use the stories of them in lulling their children to sleep, which is, perhaps, the most sensible purpose of all.”

“But what
does
it all amount to?” Mr. Philip Hands asked.

“Oh, my excellent Anglo-Saxon friend!” the doctor ejaculated, with his first sign of exasperation. “What does it amount to? The well-known Professor of General Knowledge, von Imhoff zu Reutershausen, is contributing a general preface to the monumental work of the deceased Hofrath von Kellermann. In this the professor says—but I must warn you that he is regarded by his colleagues as romantic and unsound—the professor utters, if I can remember, these words:

“‘Here, therefore, amongst these stupendous and grave vastnesses, there lie these grey survivals of a time which went before the very foundations of our splendid Teutonic race, whose destinies have broadened down to the imperial heritage so well known to our own day. It is to be observed (see page 126 of text) that here are two adult males of an unknown and obviously prehistoric race. That there were giants before our days has been observed by many a classical writer. Thus we have the phrase,
‘Vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnon.’
And traces of the existence of such giants are to be observed in the mythology and legends of almost every race—’”

“But hang it all!” Philip Hands exclaimed. “These chaps appear to me immortal?”

“‘Immortal these survivors of a heavy antiquity may appear to our limited conceptions, but the flesh of which they are made up is not indestructible. In what cataclysm their fellows perished who shall tell? But traces of many cataclysms are to be observed upon our globe sufficient to have destroyed all that was destructible of these immortal beings. Here, then, these two survivors sit—these two adult males. And if, as Professor von Gagern observes, all life, all will, all emotion, all motion, all passion, all appetite, is brought about by the search of the eternal male for the eternal female, then their listless immobility is sufficiently explained. Here they sit, having exhausted the limits of the globe in the unavailing search for a female of their own species. But all such females are dead—are destroyed. They sit close together in an eternal ennui of immortality, casting into the air from time to time that which comes next to their hands, waiting through the eternal ages! And what shall be the end of them—’”

“But, I say,” Mr. Hands exclaimed, “if this blessed book about them is published, there will be an end of your practice?”

Dr. von Salzer looked for a long time at the young man.

“The essence of my practice is,” he said, “the principle, and the principle will remain. Still, in the world there will be a thousand inexplicable things. For you will never be able to explain to me or any other man how it is that the Fraulein Annette von Droste should desire to unite herself to yourself.”

“Oh, I say!” Philip exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say that that is a form of madness?”

“I say merely,” the Sanitätsrath answered dryly, “that it is inexplicable.”

He pulled out his watch and said, “My consultation hour will have arrived in three-quarters of an hour. We have just time to descend the hill.”

Annette von Droste rose briskly:

“So that the Grand Duke William,” she said, “may be still in these valleys?”

The Sanitätsrath pushed the rubbed-tyred bath-chair out of the opening of the grotto.

“The Grand Duke may well exist,” he said. “But you have done with Grand Dukes. Your business is to darn stockings.”

“At any rate,” Mrs. Hands piped suddenly, “I shall walk down the hill upon my own feet.”

“But I say, you haven’t explained . . . ?” Philip Hands was beginning.

“My friend,” von Salzer answered, “even for the Second Secretary of a Legation, there must arrive a time when he shall stand naked upon the shores of the world and discover that each of us is alone here and without one single companion. Then he must do all his explaining for himself or leave it to God. It is now a very good moment to cross the ridge and descend the hill. The Large Ones arc now slumbering, who can say when they will wake or what perils we should miss when they did awaken? Let us go now towards the naked beaches of the end of the world.”

“Now, what the deuce does that mean?” Philip Hands grumbled in the ear of Annette von Droste.

“Oh, the darling Sanitätsrath is so sentimental,” she answered. “I wonder if
he
has ever seen the ghost of the Grand Duke riding splendidly upon his
schimmel
?”

VIOLET HUNT

“It is but giving over of a game.

That must be lost.”—P
HILASTER
anhour—

“Come, Mrs. Arne—come, my dear, you must not give way like this! You can’t stand it—you really can’t! Let Miss Kate take you away—now do!” urged the nurse, with her most motherly of intonations.

“Yes, Alice, Mrs. Joyce is right. Come away—do come away—you are only making yourself ill. It is all over; you can do nothing! Oh, oh, do come away!” implored Mrs. Arne’s sister, shivering with excitement and nervousness.