Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 (5 page)

"What has my conscience to do with it? I didn't throw a dead girl in the river; I didn't "

"Prerisiment, neither did the good Costello, yet both of you described the odor of that Devil's incense: Costello when he went to view the bodies of the suicides, you when we halted Monsieur Balderson's attempt at self-destruction. Were you also haunted by that scent, or were you not?"

"I smelled it," I responded frigidly, "but I wasn't haunted by it. Just what is it you're driving at?"

"That the odor of that incense, or even the perception of the dead Marescha's te&enant, is no optical illusion caused by guilty conscience. It is my firm conviction that the apparition which appeared to these unfortunate young men was the

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earthbound spirit of a girl who begged a boon from them."

"Then you don't think that she haunted them because they'd thrown her body in the river?"

"Entirely no. I think she came to ask their help, and in their fear and horror at beholding her they could not understand her plea. First one and then another, lashed with the scorpion-whip of an accusing conscience, destroyed himself because he dared not look into her pleading eyes, thinking they accused him of mistreating her poor body, when all the pauvre belle creature asked was that they help her to secure release from her earth-bound condition."

"Why should she have appealed to them?"

"In al! that congregation of benighted worshippers of evil, she knew them best. They saw her die, they gave her body sepulture; one of them, at least, had been her lover, and was, presumably, bound to her by ties of mutual passion. She was most strongly in their minds and memories. It was but natural that she should appeal to them for succor. Did not you notice one outstanding fact in all the testimony—the poor Marescha appeared to them in turn, looking not reproachfully, but pleadingly? Her lips were held, jvhe might not put her plea in words. She could but come to them as they had last beheld her, entreat them by dumb show, and hope that they would understand. One by one they failed her; one by one they failed to understand "

"Well, is there anything that we can do about it?"

"I think there is. Come, let us be upon our way."

"Where the deuce "

"To the rectory of St. Chrysostom. I would interview the Reverend Doctor Bentley."

"At this time of night?"

"Mais certainemenl, clergymen and doctors, they have no privacy, my friend. Surely, you need not be told that."

The freshly lighted fire burned brightly in the Reverend Peter Bentley's study, the blue smoke spiraled upward from the tips of our cigars, the gray steam curled in fragrant clouds from the glasses of hot Scotch which stood upon the coffee-table. Looking anything but clerical in red-flannel bathrobe, black pajamas and red Turkish slippers, Doctor Bentley listened with surprizing tolerance to de Grandin's argument.

"But it seems the poor girl died in mortal sin," he murmured, obviously more in sorrow than in righteous indignation. "According to your statement, her last frantic words called on the Devil to fulfill his bargain: 'O Lord, be pitiful * "

"Prec/set/ient, mon pert, but who can say her prayer was made to Satan? True, those so bewildered, misled followers of evil were wont to call the Devil Lord and Master, but is it not entirely possible that she repented and addressed her dying prayer to the real Lord of the heaven and earth? Somewhere an English poet says of the last-minute prayer of a not-wholly-righteous fox-hunter who was unhorsed and broke his sinful neck:

Betwixt the stirrup and the ground I mercy asked; mercy 1 found.

"Me, I believe in all sincerity that her repentance was as true as that the thief upon the cross expressed; that in the last dread moment she perceived the grievous error of her ways and made at once confession of sin and prayer for pity with her dying breath.

"But she had bent the knee at Satan's shrine. With her fair body—that body which was given her to wear as if it were a garment to the greater glory of the Lord —she parodied the sacred faircloth of the

INCENSE OF ABOMINATION

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altar. By such things she had cut herself adrift, she had put herself beyond communion with the righteous which is the blessed company of all the faithful. There was no priest to shrive her sin-encumbered soul, no one to read words of forgiveness and redemption above her lifeless clay. Until some one of her companions in iniquity will perform the service of contrition for her, until the office for the burial of Christian dead is read above her grave, she lies excommunicate and earthbound. She cannot even expiate her faults in Purgatory till forgiveness of sins has been formally pronounced. Sincerely repentant, hell is not for her; un-shrived, and with no formal statement of conditional forgiveness, she cannot quit the earth, but must wander here among the scenes of her brief and sadly misspent life. Do we dare withhold our hands to save her from a fate like that?"

Doctor Bentley sipped thoughtfully at his hot Scotch. "There may be something in your theory," he admitted. "I'm not especially strong on doctrine, but I can't believe the fathers of the early church were the crude nincompoops some of our modern theologians call them. They preached posthumous absolution, and there are instances recorded where excommunicated persons who had hovered round the scenes they'd known in life were given rest and peace when absolution was pronounced above their graves. Tell me, is this Balderson sincerely sorry for his misdeeds?"

"I could swear it, mon pere," "Then bring him to the chapel in the morning. If he will make confession and declare sincere repentance, then submit himself to holy baptism, 1*11 do what you request. It's rather mediaeval, but— I'd hate to think that I'm so modern that I would not take a chance to save two souls."

The penitential service in the Chapel of the Intercession was a brief but most impressive one. Only Balderson, I and de Grandin occupied the pews, with Doctor Bentley in his stole and cassock, but without his surplice, at the little altar:

". . . we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against Thy holy laws . . . remember not, Lord, our offenses nor the offenses of our forefathers, neither take Thou vengeance of our sins ... we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickednesses; the memory of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable . . ."

After absolution followed the short service ordered for the baptism of adults; then we set out for Shadow Lawns.

Now Doctor Bentley wore his full canonicals, and his surplice glinted almost whiter than the snow that wrapped the mounded graves as he paused beside an unmarked hillock in the Nurmi family plot.

Slowly he began in that low, full voice with which he fills a great church to its farthest corner: "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. . . ."

It was one of those still winter days, quieter than an afternoon in August, for no chirp of bird or whir of insect sounded. no breath of breeze disturbed the evergreens; yet as he read the opening sentence of the office for the burial of the dead a low wail sounded in the copse of yew and hemlock on the hill, as though a sudden wind moaned in the branches, and I stiffened as a scent was borne across the snow-capped grave mounds. Incense! Yet not exactly incense, either. There was an undertone of fetor in it, a faint, distinctly charnel smell. Balderson was trembling, and despite myself I flinched,

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but Doctor Bentley and de Grandin gave no sign of recognition.

"Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts, shut not Thy merciful ears to our prayer, but spare us, Lord most holy . . ." intoned the clergyman, and,

"Amen," said Jules de Grandin firmly as the prayer concluded.

The JEolian wailing in the evergreens died to a sobbing, low damation as Doctor Bentley traced in sand a cross upon the snow-capped grave, declaring: "Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our departed sister, and we commit her body to the ground: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life "

And now there was no odor of corruption in the ghostly perfume, but the clean, inspiring scent of frankincense, redolent of worship at a thousand consecrated altars.

As the last amen was said and Doctor Bentley turned away I could have sworn I heard a gentle slapping sound and saw the blond hairs of de Grandin's small mustache bend inward, as though a pair of lips invisible to me had kissed him on the mouth.

Doctor Bentley dined with us that night, and over coffee and liqueurs we discussed the case.

"It was a fine thing you did," the cleric told de Grandin, "Six men in seven

would have sent him packing and bid him work out his salvation— ot damnation—for himself. There's an essential nastiness in Devil-worship which is revolting to the average man, not to mention its abysmal wickedness "

"Tiens, who of us can judge another's wickedness?" the little Frenchman answered. "The young man was repentant, and repentance is the purchase price of heavenly forgiveness. Besides"—a look of strain, like a nostalgic longing, came into his eyes—"before the altar of a convent in la belle France kneels one whom I have loved as I can never love another in this life. Ceaselessly, except the little time she sleeps, she makes prayer and intercession for a sinful world. Could I hold fast the memory of our love if I refused to match in works the prayer she makes in faith? Eh bren, man [>ere, my inclination was to give him a smart kick in the posterior; to bid him go and sin no more, but sinfully or otherwise, to go. Ha, but I am strong, me. I overcame that inclination."

The earnestness of his expression faded and an impish grin replaced it as he poured a liberal potion of Napoleon 1811 in his brandy-sniffer. "Jules de Grandin," he apostrophized himself, "you have acted like a true man. You have overcome your natural desires; you have kept the faith.

"Jules de Grandin, my good and much-admired self — be pleased to take a drink!"

c/hing on the Floor

By THORP McCLUSKY

A strange story of an unscrupulous hypnotist and the frightful thing that he

called Stepan, who was immune to destruction while

his master lived

1. Charlatan or Miracle-Man?

"TpV ARLING," Mary Roberts told 1 her fiance, "I'm sorry, but I won't be able to go to the Lily Pons recital Thursday night. Helen Stacey-Forbes insists that I go with her to Dmitri's."

Across the spotless linen and gleaming silver that graced their luncheon table Charles Ethredge's gray eyes questioned.

"It's a subscription concert, Mary. I've had the tickets for months."

Her slender right hand reached across the table to him. "I'm terribly sorry, Charles. But Helen has been after me for weeks to go, and Dmitri's evenings are always Thursdays "

Ethredge grimaced. "I think it's rather silly of you two—this thrill visit to an obvious charlatan."

Mary shook her head. "Helen Stacey-Forbes doesn't think Dmitri a charlatan. She swears by the man—claims he's done wonders for Ronny."

Ethredge laughed. "Dmitri not a charlatan? With his half-baked parlor magic and that moving-picture brand of mysticism he exudes? I've heard all about him. Doc Hanlon says that if he isn't exposed pretty soon there'll be a major rabies epidemic among'our local psychiatry."

For a moment Mary Roberts did not reply, but sat quietly, her delicately oval face profiled, her wide-set, limpid eyes thoughtful as she gazed musingly through

the iron-grilled window at the row of dwarf evergreens in their stone window-box beneath the sill. Discreetly, from its palm-hidden sound shell on the mezzanine, the hotel's string quintet began to play a Strauss waltz. Abruptly Mary turned back to her nance, a strange little smile trembling on her lips.

"Oh, Charles, I wish that I could be so sure. Yes, you're probably right about Dmitri, darling. He's certainly theatrical enough—even Helen admits that. But you wouldn't want me to disappoint her, would you? And she does say he's saved Ronny's life."

"Lord," Ethredge grumbled, "I wish to heaven Dmitri didn't have that Vienna degree; we'd stop him so fast his teeth'd rattle. And by the way, where did Helen Stacey-Forbes get the crazy notion that he's helped Ronny? Good grief, that fellow's healthier than I am."

"Ronny's really been ill, Charles. It's not generally known, but he's a hemophiliac; he's had several severe hemorrhages within the past year. Dmitri's the only man who's been able to do anything for him."

Ethredge looked startled. "Why, I'd always thought hemophilia was hereditary; I've never heard of it in Ronny's family before. Two years ago, at the Wil-mot's hunt, he was thrown, and pretty badly bruised and cut, but he was up and limping around the same evening. He even danced."

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281

Mary shook her head. "I don't know; I'm no medical authority, Charles, but it's hemophilia, all right. It's been diagnosed as such several times within the past year. Why "

But Charles Ethredge was not really listening. He was recalling some of the vague, ugly stories he had heard, in recent months, of Dmitri Vassilievitch Tu-lin—stories which could not all be put down to professional jealousy. And, curiously, he was thinking of the twenty-years-dead Tsarevitch, and of a mad monk named Gregori Rasputin. . . .