Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 (2 page)

"Even if you've committed the unpardonable sin?"

"Ttens, this peche irremissible of which the theologians prate so learnedly, yet which none of them defines? You had a mother, one assumes; you may have sinned against her grievously, disappointed her high hopes in you, shown ingratitude as black as Satan's shadow, abused her trust or even done her bodily hurt. Yet if you went to her sincerely penitent and told her you were sorry, that you truly loved her and would sin no more, parbleu, she would forgive, you know it! Will the Heavenly Father be less merciful than earthly parents? Very well, then. Who can say that he has sinned past reconciliation?"

"I can; I did—we ail did! We cast

God out and embraced Satan "

Something that was lurking horror seemed to take form in his eyes, giving them a stony, glazed appearance. It was as if a filmy curtain were drawn down across them, hiding everything within, mirroring only a swift-mounting terror.

"Ah?" de Grandin murmured thoughtfully. "Now we begin to make the progress." Abruptly he demanded:

"You knew Messieurs Eldridge, Tri-vers and Atkins?" He flung the words more like a challenging accusation than a query.

"Yes!"

"And they, too, thought they had sinned past redemption; they saw in suicide the last hope of escape; they were concerned with you in this iniquity?"

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"They -were, but no interfering busybody stopped them. Let me out of here, I'm going to "

"Monsieur," de Grandin did not raise his voice, but the look he bent upon the other was as hard and merciless as though it were a leveled bayonet, "you are going to remain right here and tell us how it came about. You will tell of tills transgression which has caused three deaths already and almost caused a fourth. Do. not fear to speak, my friend. We arc physicians, and your confidence will be respected. On the other hand, if you persist in silence we shall surely place you in restraint. You would like to be lodged in a madhouse, have your every action v, .itched, be strapped in a straitjacket if you attempted self-destruction, hein?" Slowly spoken, his words had the impact of a bodily assault, and the other reeled as from a beating.

"Not that!'" he gasped. "O God, anything but that! I'll tell you everything if you will promise——"

"You have our word, Monsieur; say on."

THE visitor drew his chair up closer to the fire, as if a sudden cold had chilled his marrow. He was some fort)' years of age, slim and quite attractive, immaculately dressed, well groomed. His eyes were brown, deep-set and drawn, as if unutterably weary, with little pouches under them. His shoulders sagged as if the weight the}' bore was too much for them. His hair was almost wholly gray. "Beaten" was the only adjective to modify him.

"I think perhaps you knew my parents, Doctor Trowbridge," he began. "My father was James Balderson."

I nodded. Jim Balderson had been a senior when I entered college, and his escapades were bywords on the campus. Nothing but the tolerance which stamps

a rich youth's viciousness as merely indication of high spirits had kept him from dismissal since his freshman year, and faculty and townsfolk sighed with relief when he took his sheepskin and departed simultaneously. The Balderson and Aid-ridge fortunes were combined when he married Bronson Aldridge's sole heir and daughter, and though he settled down in the walnut-paneled office of the Farmers Loan & Trust Company, his sons had carried on his youthful zest for getting into trouble. Drunken driving, divorce cases, scandals which involved both criminal and civil courts, were their daily fare. Two of them had died by violence, one in a motor smash-up, one when an outraged husband showed better marksmanship than self-restraint One had died of poison liquor in the Prohibition era. We had just saved die sole survivor from attempted suicide. "Yes, I knew your father," I responded.

"Do you remember Horton Hall?" he asked.

I bent my brows a moment. "Wasn't that the school down by the Shrewsbury where they had a scandal?—something about the headmaster committing suicide, or "

"You're right. That's it. I was in die last class there. So were Eldridge, Trivers and Atkins.

"I was finishing my junior year when the war broke out in 'seventeen. Dad got bulletproof commissions for the older boys, but wouldn't hear of my enlisting in the Navy. 'You've a job to do right there at Horton,' he told me. 'Get your certificate; then we'll see about your joining up.' So back I went to finish out my senior year. Dad didn't know what he was doing to me. Things might have turned out differently if I'd gone in the service.

"Everyone who could was getting in the Army or the Navy. We'd lost most

INCENSE OF ABOMINATION

of our faculty when I went back in 'eighteen, and they'd put a new headmaster in, a Doctor Herbules. Fellows were leaving right and left, enlisting from the campus or being called by draft boards, and I was pretty miserable. One day as I was walking back from science lab., I ran full-tilt into old Herbules.

" 'What's the matter, Ba'derson?' he asked. You look as if you'd lost your last friend.*

" 'Well. I have, almost," I answered. "With so many fellows off at training-camp, having all kinds of excitement '

" 'You want excitement, eh?' he interrupted. 'I can give it to you; such excitement as you've never dreamed of. I can

make you ' He stopped abruptly, and

it seemed to me he looked ashamed of something, but he'd got my curiosity roused.

" 'You're on, sir,' I told him. What is it, a prize-fight?'

"Herbules was queer. Evcrybo so. He couldn't have been much past thirty; yet his hair was almost snow-white and there was a funny sort o' peaceful expression on his smooth face that reminded me of something that I couldn't cruite identify. He had the schoolmaster's trick of speaking with a sort of pedantic precision, and he never raised his voice; yet when he spoke in chapel we could understand him perfectly, no matter how far from the platform we were sitting. I'd never seen him show signs of excitement before, but now he was breathing hard and was in such deadly earnest that his lips were fairly trembling. 'What do you most want from life?' he asked me in a whisper.

" 'Why, I don't know, just now I'd

like best of all to get into the Army; I'd

go to France and bat around with

the mademoiselles, and get drunk any

time I wanted '

" 'You'd like that sort of thing?' he laughed. 'I can give it to you. and more; more than you ever imagined. Wine and song and gaytty and women—beautiful, lovely, cultured women, not the trulls that you'd meet in France—you can have aU this and more, if you want to, Balderson.'

" 'Lead me to it,' I replied 'When do we start?'

" Ah, my boy. nothing's given for nothing. There axe some things you'll have to do, some promises to make, something to be paid "

" 'All right; how much?' I asked. Dad was liberal with me. I had a hundred dollars every month for spending ; and I could always get as mud: from Mother if I worked it right.

" 'No, no; not money,' he almost laughed in my face. 'The price of all this can't be paid in money. All we ask is that you give the Master something which I greatly doubt you realize you have, my

■

"It sounded pretty cock-eyed to nit, but if tiic old boy really had something up his sleeve I wanted to know about it Count me in,' I told him. "What do I do next?"

"There was no one within fifty' yards of us, but he bent until his lips were almost in my ear before he whispered: "Next Wednesday at midnight, come to my house.'

" 'Private party, or could I bring a friend or two?'

"His features seemed to freeze. 'Who is the friend?' he asked.

" 'Well, I'd like to bring Eldrid Trivers, and maybe Atkins, too. They're all pretty good eggs, and I know they crave excitement '

" 'Oh, by all means, yes. Be sure to bring them. It's agreed, then? Next Wednesday night at twelve, at my house.'

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'TTerbules was waiting for us in a AA perfect fever of excitement when we tiptoed up his front-porch steps on Wednesday night He had a domino and mask for each of us. The dominoes were fiery red, with hoods that pulled up like monks' cowls; the masks were black, and hideous. They represented long, thin faces with out-jutting chins; the lips were purple and set in horrid grins; the eyebrows were bright scarlet wool and at the top there was another patch of bright red worsted curled and cut to simulate a fringe of hair. 'Good Lord,' said Atkins as he tried his on, 'I look just like the Devil!'

"I thought that Herbules would have a stroke when he heard Atkins speak. 'You'll use that name with more respect after tonight, my boy,' he said.

"After that we all got in his car and drove down toward Red Bank.

"We stopped about a mile outside of town and parked the car in a small patch of woods, walked some distance down the road, climbed a fence and cut across a field till we reached an old deserted house. I'd seen the place as I drove past, and had often wondered why it was unoccupied, for it stood up on a hill surrounded by tall trees and would have made an ideal summer home, but I'd been told its well was dry, and as there was no other source of water, nobody wanted it.

"We didn't go to the front door, but tiptoed round the back, where Herbules struck three quick raps, waited for a moment, then knocked four more. "We'd all put on our robes and masks white he was knocking, and when the door was opened on a crack we saw the porter was robed and masked as we were. Nobody said a word, and we walked through a basement entrance, down a long and narrow hall, and turned a corner where we met another door. Here Herbules went

through the same procedure, and the door swung back to let us in.

"We were in a big room, twenty by forty feet, I guess, and we knew it was a cellar by the smell—stiflingly close, but clammy as a tomb at once. Rows of folding chairs like those used at bridge games —or funerals—were arranged in double rows with a passage like an aisle between, and at the farther end of the big room we saw an altar.

"In all my life I don't believe I'd been to church ten times, but we were nominally Protestants, so what I saw had less effect on me than if I'd been a Catholic or Episcopalian; but I knew at once the altar wasn't regulation. Oh, it was sufficiently impressive, but it had a sort of comic—no, not comic, grotesque, rather —note about it. A reredos of black cloth was hung against the wall, and before it stood a heavy table more than eight feet long and at least six wide, covered by a black cloth edged with white. It reminded me of something, though I couldn't quite identify it for a moment; then I knew. I'd seen a Jewish funeral once, and this cloth was like the black-serge pall they used to hide the plain pine coffin! At each end of the altar stood a seven-branched candelabrum made of brass, each with a set of tall black candles in it. These were burning and gave off a pale blue glow. They seemed to be perfumed, too, and the odor which they burned with was pleasant—at first. Then, as I sniffed a second time it seemed to me there was a faint suspicion of a stench about it, something like the fetor that you smell if you're driving down the road and pass a dog or cat that's been run over and has lain a while out in the sun—just a momentary whiff, but nauseating, just the same. Between the candelabra, right exactly in the center of the altar, but back against the wall, was a yard-high crucifix of some black wood with an ivory figure

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on it, upside down. Before the cross there was a silver wine goblet and a box of gilt inlay about the size and shape of a lady's powder-puff box.

"I heard Atkins catch his breath and give a sort of groan. He'd been brought up an Episcopalian and knew about such things. He turned half round to leave, but I caught him by the sleeve.

" 'Come on, you fool, don't be a sissy!' I admonished, and next moment we were all so interested that he had no thought of leaving.

"There was a sort of congregation in the chapel; every scat was occupied by someone masked and robed just as we were, save three vacant places by the altar steps. These, we knew, were kept for us, but when we looked about for Herbules he was nowhere to be seen; so we went forward to our seats alone. We could hear a hum of whispering as we walked up the aisle, and we knew some of the voices were from women; but who was man and who was woman was impossible to tell, for each one looked just like his neighbor in his shrouding robe.

"*tt"1he whispering suddenly became in--i- tense, like the susurrus of a hive of swarming bees. Every neck seemed suddenly to crane, ever}' eye to look in one direction, and as we turned our glances toward the right side of the cellar we saw a woman entering through a curtained doorway. She wore a long, loose scarlet cape which she held together with one hand, her hair was very black, her eyes were large and luminously dark, seeming to have a glance of overbearing sensuousness and sweet humility at once. Her white, set face was an imponderable mask; her full red lips were fixed in an uneven, bitter line. Beneath the hem of her red cloak we saw the small feet in the golden, high-heeled slippers were un-stockinged. As she neared the altar she