 An Arrest by Ambrose Bierce Having murdered his brother-in-law, Oren Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive from justice. From the county jail, where he had been confined to await his trial, he had escaped by knocking down his jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the outer door, walking out into the night. The jailer being unarmed, Brower got no weapon with which to defend his recovered liberty. As soon as he was out of town, he had the folly to enter a forest. This was many years ago, when the region was wilder than it is now. The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and as Brower had never dwelt here about, and knew nothing of the lay of the land, he was naturally not long in losing himself. He could not have said if he were getting further away from the town or going back to it, a most important fact to Oren Brower. He knew in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would soon be on his track, and his chance of escape was very slender, but he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit. Even an added hour of freedom was worth having. Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there before him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom. It was too late to retreat. The fugitive felt that at the first movement back toward the woods he would be, as he afterward explained, filled with buckshot. So the two stood there like trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart. The other, the emotions of the other, are not recorded. A moment later, it might have been an hour, the moon sailed into a patch of unclouded sky, and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of law lift an arm and point significantly toward and beyond him. He understood. Turning his back to his captor, he walked submissively away in the direction indicated, looking to neither the right nor left, his head and back actually aching with a prophecy of buckshot. Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged. That was shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had coolly killed his brother-in-law. It is needless to relate them here. They came out as his trial, and the revelation of his calmness in confronting them came near to saving his neck. But what would you have? When a brave man is beaten, he submits. Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head. Just once, when he was in deep shadow, and he knew that the other was in moonlight, he looked backward. His captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as white as death, and bearing upon his brow the livid mark of the iron bar. Orrin Brower had no further curiosity. He eventually they entered the town, which was all alight but deserted. Only the women and children remained, and they were off the streets. Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy iron door, pushed it open without command, entered, and found himself in the presence of a half-dozen armed men. Then he turned. Nobody else entered. On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff. THE END OF AN ARREST by Ambrose Bierce The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Bratton, 1867 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. THE COLD EMBRACE by Mary Elizabeth Bratton He was an artist. Such things as happened to him happen sometimes to artists. He was a German. Such things as happened to him happen sometimes to Germans. He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless. And being young, handsome, and eloquent, he was beloved. He was an orphan, under the guardianship of his dead father's brother, his uncle Wilhelm, in whose house he had been brought up from a little child. And she who loved him was his cousin, his cousin Gertrude, whom he swore he loved in return. Did he love her? Yes, when he first swore it. It soon wore out, this passionate love, how threadbare and wretched a sentiment it became at last in the selfish heart of the student. But in its first golden dawn, when he was only nineteen, and had just returned from his apprenticeship to a great painter at Antwerp, and they wandered together in the most romantic outskirts of the city at Rosy Sunset, by holy moonlight, or bright and joyous morning, how beautiful a dream. They keep it a secret from Wilhelm, as he has the father's ambition of a wealthy suitor for his only child, a cold and dreary vision beside the lover's dream. So they are betrothed, and standing side by side when the dying sun in the pale rising moon divide the heavens, he puts the betrothed ring upon her finger, the white and taper finger whose slender shape he knows so well. This ring is a peculiar one, a massive golden serpent, its tail in its mouth, the symbol of eternity. It had been his mother's, and he would know it amongst a thousand. If he were to become blind tomorrow he could select it from amongst a thousand by the touch alone. He places it on her finger, and they swear to be true to each other for ever and ever, through trouble and danger, sorrow and change, in wealth or poverty. Her father must needs be one to consent to their union by and by, for they were now betrothed, and death alone could part them. But the young student, the scoffer at revelation, yet the enthusiastic adorer of the metaphysical asks, Can death part us? I would return to you from the grave, Gertrude. My soul would come back to be near my love, and you, you, if you died before me, the cold earth would not hold you from me. If you loved me, you would return. And again, these fair arms would be clasped around my neck as they are now. But she told him, with a holier light in her deep blue eyes than had ever shown in his, she told him that the dead who die at peace with God are happy in heaven and cannot return to the troubled earth, and that it is only the suicide, the lost wretch on whom sorrowful angels shut the door of paradise, whose unholy spirit haunts the footsteps of the living. The first year of their betrothal is past, and she is alone, for he has gone to Italy on a commission for some rich man to copy Raphael's Titians, Guido's, in a gallery at Florence. He has gone to win fame, perhaps, but it is not the less bitter he has gone. Of course her father misses his young nephew, who has been as a son to him, and he thinks his daughter's sadness no more than a cousin should feel for a cousin's absence. In the meantime, the weeks and months pass, the lover writes, often at first, then seldom, at last, not at all. How many excuses she invents for him, how many times she goes to the distant little post office to which he is to address his letters, how many times she hopes only to be disappointed, how many times she despairs only to hope again. But real despair comes at last and will not be put off any more. The rich suitor appears on the scene and her father is determined. She is to marry at once. The wedding day is fixed, the 15th of June. The date seems burned into her brain. The date, written in fire, dances forever before her eyes. The date, shrieked by the furies, sounds continually in her ears. But there is time yet. It is the middle of May. There is time for a letter to reach him at Florence. There is time for him to come back to Brunswick, to take her away and marry her in spite of her father, in spite of the whole world. But the days and weeks fly by. And he does not write. He does not come. This is indeed despair which usurps her heart and will not be put away. It is the 14th of June. For the last time she goes to the little post office. For the last time she asks the old question. And they give her, for the last time, the dreary answer. No, no letter. For the last time, for tomorrow is the day appointed for her bridal. Her father will hear no entreties. Her rich suitor will not listen to her prayers. They will not be put off a day and hour. Tonight alone is hers. This night, which she may employ as she will. She takes another path than that which leads home. She hurries through some by streets of the city out onto a lonely bridge where he and she had stood so often in the sunset, watching the rose-colored light glow fade and die upon the river. He returns from Florence. He had received her letter. That letter blotted with tears in treating, despairing. He had received it, but he loved her no longer. A young Florentine, who has sat to him for a model, had bewitched his fancy. That fancy witch with him stood in place of a heart. And Gertrude had been half forgotten. If she had a rich suitor, good! Let her marry him. Better for her. Better far for himself. He had no wish to fetter himself with a wife. Had he not his art always, his eternal bride, his unchanging mistress. Thus he thought it wiser to delay his journey to Brunswick, so that he should arrive when the wedding was over, arrive in time to salute the bride. And the vows, the mystical fancies, the belief in his return, even after death to the embrace of his beloved, oh, gone out of his life, melted away forever those foolish dreams of his boyhood. So on the 15th of June he enters Brunswick by that very bridge on which she stood, the stars looking down on her the night before. He strolls across the bridge and down by the water's edge, a great rough dog at his heels and the smoke from his short Mircham pipe curling in blue wreaths fantastically in the pure morning air. He has his sketchbook under his arm, and attracted now and then by some object that catches his artist's eye stops to draw. A few weeds and pebbles on the river's bank, a crag on the opposite shore, a group of Pollard Willows in the distance. When he has done, he admires his drawing, shuts his sketchbook, empties the ashes from his pipe, refills from his tobacco pouch, sings the refrain of a gay drinking song, calls to his dog, smokes again, and walks on. Suddenly he opens his sketchbook again, this time that which attracts him as a group of figures. But what is it? It is not a funeral, for there are no mourners. It is not a funeral, but a corpse lying on a rough buyer, covered with an old sail, carried between two bearers. It is not a funeral, for the bearers are fishermen, fishermen in their everyday garb. About a hundred yards from him they rest their burden on a bank. One stands at the head of the buyer, the other throws himself down at the foot of it. And thus they form a perfect group. He walks back two or three paces, selects his point of sight, and begins to sketch a hurried outline. He has finished it before they move. He hears their voices, though he cannot hear their words, and wonders what they can be talking of. Presently he walks on and joins them. You have a corpse there, my friends, he says. Yes, a corpse washed ashore an hour ago. Drowned? Yes, drowned. A young girl, very handsome. Suicides are always handsome, says the painter. And then he stands for a little while, idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas covering. Life is such a golden holiday for him. Young, ambitious, clever, that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny. At last he says that as this poor suicide is so handsome he should like to make a sketch of her. He gives the fishermen some money, and they offer to remove the sailcloth that covers their features. No, he will do it himself. He lifts the rough coarse wet canvas from her face. What face? The face that's shown on the dreams of his foolish boyhood. The face which once was the light of his uncle's home. His cousin Gertrude. His betrothed. He sees, as in one glance, while he draws one breath, the rigid features, the marble arms, the hands crossed on the cold bosom, and, on the third finger of the left hand, the ring which had been his mother's, the golden serpent, the ring which, if he were to become blind, he could select from a thousand others by the touch alone. But he is a genius and a metaphysician. Grief, true grief, is not for such as he. His first thought is flight. Flight anywhere out of that accursed city, anywhere far from the brink of that hideous river, anywhere away from remorse, anywhere to forget. He is miles on the road that leads away from Brunswick before he knows that he has walked a step. It is only when his dog lies down panting at his feet that he feels how exhausted he is himself, and sits down upon a bank to rest. How the landscape spins round and round before his dazzled eyes, while his morning sketch of the two fishermen and the canvas-covered buyer glares readily at him out of the twilight. At last, after sitting a long time by the roadside, idly playing with his dog, idly smoking, idly lounging, looking as any idle, light-hearted traveling student might look, yet all the while acting over that morning's scene in his burning brain a hundred times a minute. At last, he grows a little more composed, and tries presently to think of himself as he is, apart from his cousin's suicide. Apart from that, he was no worse off than he was yesterday. His genius was not gone. The money he had earned at Florence still lined his pocketbook. He was his own master, free to go wither he would. And while he sits on the roadside, trying to separate himself from the scene of that morning, trying to put away the image of the corpse covered with the damp canvas sail, trying to think of what he should do next, where he should go, to be farthest away from Brunswick and Remorse, the old diligence comes rumbling and jingling along. He remembers it. It goes from Brunswick to Eilishapel. He whistles to his dog, shouts to the postillian to stop, and springs into the coupé. During the whole evening, through the long night, he does not once close his eyes. He never speaks a word. But when morning dawns, and the other passengers away can begin to talk to each other, he joins in the conversation. He tells them that he is an artist, that he is going to Cologne and to Antwerp to copy Rubens's and the great picture by Quentin Nazis in the museum. He remembered afterwards that he talked and laughed boisterously, and that when he was talking and laughing loudest, a passenger older and graver than the rest opened the window near him and told him to put his head out. He remembered the fresh air blowing in his face, the singing of the birds in his ears, and the flat fields and roadside reeling before his eyes. He remembered this, and then falling in a lifeless heap on the floor of the diligence. It is a fever that keeps him for six long weeks on a bed at a hotel in Eilishapel. He gets well, and accompanied by his dog, starts on foot for Cologne. By this time he is his former self once more. Again the blue smoke from his short Mircham curls upwards in the morning air. Again he sings some old university drinking song. Again stops here and there, meditating and sketching. He is happy, and he has forgotten his cousin, and so on to Cologne. It is by the great cathedral he is standing, with his dog at his side. It is night. The bells have just chimed the hour, and the clocks are striking eleven. The moonlight shines full upon the magnificent pile over which the artist's eye wanders absorbed in the beauty of form. He is not thinking of his drowned cousin, for he has forgotten her, and is happy. Suddenly, some one, some thing from behind him, puts two cold arms round his neck, and clasps its hands on his breast. And yet there is no one behind him. For on the flags bathed in the broad moonlight there are only two shadows, his own and his dog's. He turns quickly round. There is no one. Nothing to be seen in the broad square but himself and his dog, and though he feels he cannot see the cold arms clasped round his neck. It is not ghostly, this embrace, for it is palpable to the touch. It cannot be real, for it is invisible. He tries to throw off the cold caress. He clasps the hands in his own to tear them asunder and to cast them off his neck. He can feel the long delicate fingers cold and wet beneath his touch, and on the third finger of the left hand he can feel the ring which was his mother's, the golden serpent, the ring which he has always said he would know among a thousand by the touch alone. He knows it now. His dead cousin's cold arms are round his neck, his dead cousin's wet hands are clasped upon his breast. He asks himself if he is mad. Up Leo, he shouts up up boy, and the Newfoundland leaps up onto his shoulders. The dog's paws are on the dead hands and the animal utters a terrific howl and springs away from his master. The student stands in the moonlight, the dead arms round his neck, and the dog at a little distance moaning piteously. Presently, a watchman, alarmed by the howling of the dog, comes into the square to see what is wrong. In a breath, the cold arms are gone. He takes the watchman home to the hotel with him and gives him money. In his gratitude, he could have given that man half his little fortune. Will it ever come to him again? This embrace of the dead. He tries never to be alone. He makes a hundred acquaintances and shares the chamber of another student. He starts up if he is left by himself in the public room at the inn where he is staying and runs into the street. People notice his strange actions and begin to think that he is mad. But in spite of all, he is alone once more. For one night the public room being empty for a moment when on some idle pretense he strolls into the street, the street is empty too. And for the second time he feels the cold arms round his neck and for the second time when he calls his dog, the animal slinks away from him with a piteous howl. After this he leaves Cologne, still traveling on foot, of necessity now, for his money is getting low. He joins traveling hawkers. He walks side by side with laborers. He talks to every foot passenger he falls in with and tries from morning till night to get company on the road. At night he sleeps by the fire in the kitchen of the inn at which he stops. But do what he will. He is often alone. And it is now a common thing for him to feel the cold arms round his neck. Many months have passed since his cousin's death. Autumn, winter, early spring. His money is nearly gone. His health is utterly broken. He is the shadow of his former self. And he is getting near to Paris. He will reach that city at the time of the carnival. To this he looks forward. In Paris, in carnival time, he need never, surely be alone. Never feel that deadly caress. He may even recover his lost gaiety, his lost health. Once more, resume his profession. Once more earn fame and money by his art. How hard he tries to get over the distance that divides him from Paris. While day by day he grows weaker and his steps slower and more heavy. But there is an end at last. The long dreary roads are past. This is Paris, which he enters for the first time. Paris, of which he has dreamed so much. Paris, whose million voices are to exercise his phantom. To him tonight, Paris seems one vast chaos of lights, music and confusion. Lights which dance before his eyes and will not be still. Music that rings in his ears and defends him. Confusion which makes his head whirl round and round. But in spite of all, he finds the opera house, where there is a masked ball. He has enough money left by a ticket of admission and to hire a domino to throw over his shabby dress. It seems only a moment after his entering the gates of Paris that he is in the very midst of all the wild gaiety of the opera house ball. No more darkness, no more loneliness, but a mad crowd shouting and dancing and a lovely debauched douce hanging on his arm. The boisterous gaiety he feels surely is his old lightheartedness come back. He hears the people around him talking of the outrageous conduct of some drunken student, and it is to him they point when they say this. To him, who has not moistened his lips since yesterday at noon, for even now he will not drink. Though his lips are parched and his throat burning, he cannot drink. His voice is thick and hoarse and his utterance indistinct. But still this must be his old lightheartedness come back that makes him so wildly gay. The little debauched douce is wearied out. Her arm rests on his shoulder heavier than lead. The other dancers, one by one, drop off. The lights and the chandeliers, one by one, die out. The decorations look pale and shadowy in that dim light which is neither night nor day. A faint glimmer from the dying lamps, a pale streak of cold gray light from the newborn day creeping in through half-opened shutters. And by this light the bright-eyed debauched douce fades sadly. He looks her in the face, how the brightness of her eyes dies out. Again he looks her in the face, how white that face has grown. Again and now it is the shadow of a face alone that looks in his. Again and they are gone. The bright eyes, the face, the shadow of the face. He is alone. Alone in that vast saloon. Alone. And in the terrible silence he hears the echoes of his own footsteps in that dismal dance which has no music. No music but the beating of his breast. For the cold arms are round his neck. They whirl with him. They will not be flung off or cast away. He can no more escape from their icy grip than he can escape from death. He looks behind him. There is nothing but himself in the great empty sal. But he can feel cold, deathlike, but oh how palpable the long slender fingers and the ring which was his mother's. He tries to shout, but he has no power in his burning throat. The silence of the place is only broken by the echoes of his own footsteps in the dance from which he cannot extricate himself. Who says he has no partner? The cold hands are clasped on his breast, and now he does not shun their caress. No, one more polka if he drops down dead. The lights are all out. And half an hour after the gendarmes come in with a lantern to see that the house is empty, they are followed by a great dog that they have found seated howling on the steps of the theatre. Near the principal entrance, they stumble over the body of a student who has died from want of food, exhaustion, and the breaking of a blood vessel. The End of the Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Bratton. Recording by Dave Musgrove. April, 2020. A Dark Mirror by Arthur Quiller Couch. From Quiller Couch's collection, Noughts and Crosses, Stories, Studies and Sketches, 1898. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Dale Grossman. A Dark Mirror by Arthur Quiller Couch. In the room of one of my friends hangs a mirror. It is an oblong sheet of glass set in a frame of dark, highly varnished wood, carved in the worst taste of the Regency period, and relieved with fainted guilt. Glancing at it from a distance, you would guess the thing a relic from some genteel drawing room of Miss Austen's Time. But go nearer and look into the glass itself. By some malformation or mere freak of make, all the images it throws back are livid. Flood the room with sunshine. Stand before this glass with youth and hot blood tingling on your cheeks, and the glass will give back neither sun nor color, but your own face, blue and dead, and behind it a horror of inscrutable shadow. Since I heard this mirror's history, I have stood more than once and twice before it, and peered into this shadow. And these are the Sumilacra I seem to have seen there, darkly. I have seen a bleak stone parsonage, hammed in on two sides by a graveyard, and behind for many miles nothing but somber moors, climbing and stretching away. I have heard the winds moaning and withering night and morning, among the gravestones, and around the angles of the house, and crossing the threshold, I know by instinct that this mirror will stand over the mantle place, in the bare room to the left. I know also to whom those four suppressed voices will belong, that greet me, yet while my hand is still on the latch. Four children are within, three girls and a boy, and they are disputing over a box of wooden soldiers. The eldest girl, a plain child with reddish-brown eyes, and the most wonderful small hands, snatches up one of the wooden soldiers, crying, This is the Duke of Wellington! This is the Duke! And her soldier is the gayest of all, and the tallest and most perfect in every part. The second girl makes her choice, and they call him Gravy, because of the solemnity of his painted features. And then all laugh at the youngest girl, for she has chosen a queer little warrior, much like herself, but she smiles at their laughter, and smiles again when they christen him, Waiting Boy. Lastly the boy chooses. He is handsomer than his sisters, and is their hope and pride, and has a massive brow, and a mouth well formed, though a trifle loose. His soldier shall be called Bonaparte. Though the door is closed between us, I can see these motherless children under the same blue mirror, the glass that had helped to pale the blood on their mother's face after she left the warm, cornish sea that was her home, and came to settle and die in this bleak exile. Some of her books are in the small bookcase here. They were sent round from the west by sea, and met with shipwreck. For the most part they are Methodist magazines, for, like most cornish folk, her parents are followers of Wesley, and the stains of the salt water are still on their pages. I know also that the father will be sitting in the room to my right, sitting at his solitary meal, for his digestion is queer, and he prefers to dine alone. A strange, small, purrblind man, full of sorrow and strong will. He is a clergyman, but carries a revolver always in his pocket by day, and by night sleeps with it under his pillow. He has done so ever since someone told him that the moors above were unsafe for a person with his opinions. All this the glass shows me, and more. I see the children growing up. I see the girls droop and pine in this dreary parsonage, where the wind's nip and the miasma from the churchyard chokes them. I see the handsome, promising boy going to the devil, slowly at first, then by strides. As their hope fades from his sister's faces, he drinks and takes to opium-eating, and worse. He comes home from a short absence, wrecked in body and soul. After this there is no rest in the house. He sleeps in the room with that small, persistent father of his, and often there are sounds of horrible struggleings within it, and the girls lie awake, sick with fear, listening till their ears grow heavy and dull, for the report of their father's pistol. At the morning the drunkard will stagger out and look, perhaps, into this glass that gives him back more than all his despair. The poor old man and I have had a terrible night of it, he stammers. He does his best, the poor old man, but it's all over with me. I see him go headlong at last and meet his end in the room above, after twenty minutes' struggle, with a curious desire at the last to play the man and face his death standing. I see the second sister fight with a swiftly wasting disease, and because she is a solitary, titanic spirit, refuse all help and solace. She gets up one morning, insists on dressing herself, and dies, and the youngest sister follows her, but more slowly and tranquilly, as besiems her gentler nature. Two only are left now, the queer father and the eldest of the four children, the reddish-eyed girl with the small hands, the girl who never talked hopeful. Fame has come to her and to her dead sister, for looking from childhood into this livid glass that reflected their world, they have peopled it with strange spirits. Men and women in the real world recognize the awful power of these spirits, without understanding them, not having been brought up themselves in front of this mirror. But the survivor knows the mirror too well. Madame Azele, vous êtes triste? Monseur, John a bien l'a doit. With the last look I see into the small, commonplace church that lies just below the parsonage, and on the tablet at the altar I read a list of many names. The last of these is that of Charlotte Bronte, the end of A Dark Mirror by Arthur Quiller Couch. Doom of the House of Durier by Earl Pierce, Jr. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Dale Grossman. A powerful story of stark terror and the dreadful thing that happened in a lone house in the main woods. Doom of the House of Durier by Earl Pierce, Jr. Durier, a young, handsome man, came to meet his father for the first time in twenty years. As he strode into the hotel lobby, long strides had the spring of elastic in them. Idle eyes lifted to appraise him, for he was an impressive figure, somehow grim, with exaltation. The desk clerk looked up from his habitual smile of expectation. How do you do, Mr. So-and-So? And his fingers strayed to the green fountain pen that stood in the holder on the desk. Arthur Durier cleared his throat, but still his voice was clogged and unsteady. To the clerk, he said. I am looking for my father, Dr. Henry Durier. I understand he is registered here. He has recently arrived from Paris. The clerk lowered his glance to the list of names. Dr. Durier is in suite six hundred, sixth floor. He looked up, his eyebrows arched questioningly. Are you staying too, sir, Mr. Durier? Arthur took the pen and scribbled his name rapidly. Without a further word, neglecting even to get his key and own room number, he turned and walked to the elevators. Not until he reached his father's suite on the sixth floor did he make an audible noise, and this was a mere sigh, which fell from his lips like a prayer. The man who opened the door was unusually tall. His slender frame clothed in tight-fitting black. He hardly dared to smile. His clean-shaven face was bare, and almost livid whiteness against the sparkle in his eyes. His jaw had a bluish luster. Arthur, the word was scarcely a whisper. It seemed choked up quietly, as if it had been repeated time and again on his thin lips. Arthur Durier felt the kindness in those eyes go through him, and then he was in his father's embrace. Later, when these two grown men had regained their outer calm, they closed the door and went into the drawing-room. The elder Durier held out a humidor of fine cigars, and his hand shook so hard when he held the match that his son was forced to cup his own hands about the flame. They both had tears in their eyes, but their eyes were smiling. Henry Durier placed a hand on his son's shoulder. This is the happiest day of my life, he said. You can never know how much I have longed for this moment. Arthur, looking into that glance, realized with glowing pride that he had loved his father all his life, despite any of those things which had been cursed against him. He sat down on the edge of a chair. I—I don't know how to act, he confessed. You surprised me, Dad. You're so different from what I had expected. A cloud came over Dr. Durier's feature. Why did you expect, Arthur? He demanded quickly. An evil eye. A shaven head and knotted jowls. Please, Dad, no! Arthur's words clipped short. I don't think I ever really visualized you. I knew you would be a splendid man, but I thought you'd look older, more like a man who has really suffered. I have suffered more than I can ever describe, but seeing you again and the prospect of spending the rest of my life with you has more than compensated for my sorrows. Even during the twenty years we were apart, I found an iconic joy in learning of your progress in college, and in your American game of football. Then you've been following my work? Yes, Arthur, I've received monthly reports ever since you left me. From my study in Paris, I've been really close to you, working out your problems as if they were my own. And now that the twenty years are complete, the ban which kept us apart is lifted for ever. From now on, son, we shall be the closest of companions, unless your Aunt Celia has succeeded in her terrible mission. The mention of that name caused an unfamiliar chill to come between the two men. It stood for something, in each of them, which gnawed their minds like a malignancy. But to the younger durier, in his intense effort to forget the awful past, her name, as well as her madness, must be forgotten. He had no wish to carry on this subject of conversation, for it betrayed an internal weakness which he hated. With forced determination, and a ludicrous lift of his eyebrows, he said, Celia is dead, and her silly superstition is dead also. From now on, Dad, we're going to enjoy life as we should. Bygones are really bygones in this case. Dr. Durier closed his eyes slowly, as though an exquisite pain had gone through him. Then you have no indignation, he questioned. You have none of your Aunt's hatred? Indignation? Hatred? Arthur laughed aloud. Ever since I was twelve years old, I had disbelieved Celia's stories. I have known that these horrible things were impossible, that they belonged to the ancient category of mythology and tradition. How, then, can I be indignant? And how can I hate you? How can I do anything but recognize Cecilia for what she was? A mean, frustrated woman, cursed with an insane grudge against you and your family? I tell you, Dad, that nothing she has ever said can possibly come between us again. Henry Durier nodded his head. His lips were tight together, and the muscles in his throat held back a cry. In the same soft tone of defense, he spoke further, doubting words. Are you so sure of your subconscious mind, Arthur? Can you be so certain that you are free from all suspicion? However vague? Is there not a lingering premonition? A premonition which warns of peril? No, Dad, no! Arthur shot to his feet. I don't believe it. I never believed it. I know, as any sane man would, that you are neither a vampire nor a murderer. You know it, too, and Cecilia knew it, only she was mad. That family rod is dispelled, Father. This is a civilized sentry. Belief in vampirism is sheer lunacy. What? Why, it's too absurd even to think about. You have the enthusiasm of youth, said his Father, in a rather tired voice. But have you not heard the legend? Arthur stepped back instinctively. He moistened his lips, or their dryness might crack them. The legend? He said the word in a curious hush of odd softness. As he had heard his aunt Cecilia say it many times before. That awful legend that you—that I eat my children? Oh, God, Father! Arthur went to his knees, as a cry burst through his lips. Dad, that—that's ghastly! We must forget Cecilia's ravings. You are affected, then, said Dr. Durier bitterly. Affected? Certainly I'm affected, but only as I should be, by such an accusation. Cecilia was mad, I tell you. Those books she showed me years ago, those folktales of vampires and ghouls, they burned into my infantile mind like acid. They haunted me day and night in my youth, and caused me to hate you worse than death itself. But in Heaven's name, Father, I have outgrown those things as I have outgrown my clothes. I'm a man now. Do you understand that? A man, with a man's sense of logic. Yes, I understand. Henry Durier threw his cigar into the fireplace, and placed a hand on his son's shoulder. We shall forget, Cecilia, he said. As I told you in my letter, I have rented a lodge in Maine, where we can go to be alone for the rest of the summer. We'll get in some fishing and hiking, and perhaps some hunting. But first, Arthur, I must be sure in my own mind that you are sure in yours. I must be sure you won't bar your door against me at night, and sleep with a loaded revolver at your elbow. I must be sure you're not afraid of going up there alone with me, and dying. His voice ended abruptly, as if an age-long dread had taken hold of it. His son's face was waxing, with sweat standing out like pearls on his brow. He said nothing, but his eyes were filled with questions which his lips could not put into words. His own hand touched his father's, and tightened over it. Henry Durier drew his hand away. I'm sorry, he said. His eyes looked straight over Arthur's head. This thing must be thrashed out now. I believe you when you say you discredit Cecilia's stories, but for a sake greater than sanity I must tell you the truth behind the legend. And believe me, Arthur, there is a truth. He climbed to his feet and walked to the window, which looked out over the street below. For a moment he gazed into space, silent. Then he turned and looked down at his son. You have heard only your aunt's version of the legend, Arthur. Doubtless it was wrapped into a thing far more hideous than it actually was, if that is possible. Doubtless she spoke to you of the inquisitorial stake in Carcassonne, where one of my ancestors perished. Also she may have mentioned that book, Vampires, which a former Durier is supposed to have written. But certainly she told you about your two younger brothers, my poor motherless children, who were sucked bloodless in their cradles. Arthur Durier passed a hand across his aching eyes. These words so often repeated by that witch of an aunt stirred up the same visions which made his childhood nights sleepless with terror. He could hardly bear to hear them again, and from the very man to whom they were accredited. Listen, Arthur. The elder Durier went on quickly, his voice low with the pain it gave him. You must know that true basis to your aunt's hatred. You must know of that curse, that curse of vampirism, which is supposed to have followed the Duriers through five centuries of French history, but which we can dispel as pure superstition, so often connected with ancient families. But I must tell you that part of the legend is true. Your two younger brothers actually died in their cradles, bloodless, and I stood trial in France for their murder, and my name was smirched throughout all of Europe with section inhuman damnation that it drove your aunt and you to America, and has left me childless, hated, and ostracized from society the world over. I must tell you that on that terrible night in Durier Castle I had been working late on historical volumes of Crespit and Prynne, and on the loathsome tome vampires. I must tell you of the soreness that was in my throat, and of the heaviness of the blood that coursed through my veins, and of that presence which is neither man nor animal, which I knew was someplace near me, yet neither within the castle nor outside of it, and which was closer to me than my heart and more terrible to me than the touch of the grave. I was at the desk in my library, my head swimming in a delirium which left me senseless until dawn. There were nightmares that frightened me, frightened me, Arthur, a grown man who had dissected countless cadavers in morns and in medical schools. I know that my tongue was swollen in my mouth, and that brine moistened my lips, and that a rottenness pervaded my body like a fever. I can make no recollection of sanity or of consciousness. That night remains vivid, unforgettable, yet somehow completely in shadows. When I had fallen asleep, if in God's name it was sleep, I was slumped across my desk, but when I woke in the morning I was lying face down on my couch. So you see, Arthur, I had moved during that night, and I had never known it. What I'd done and where I'd gone during those dark hours will always remain an impenetrable mystery, but I do know this. On the morrow I was torn from my sleep by shrieks of maids and butlers, and by that mad wailing of your aunt. I stumbled through the open door to my study, and in the nursery I saw those two babies there, lifeless, white, and dry like mummies, and with twin holes in their necks that were caked black with their own blood. Oh, I don't blame you for your incredulousness, Arthur. I cannot believe it yet myself, nor shall I ever believe it. The belief of it would drive me to suicide, and still the doubting of it drives me mad with horror. All of France was doubtful, and even the savants who defended my name at the trial found that they could not explain it, nor disbelieve it. The case was quieted by the Republic, for it might have shaken science to its very foundation, and split the pedestals of religion and logic. I was released from the charge of murder, but the actual murder has hung about me like a stench. The coroners who examined those tiny cadavers found them both dry of all their blood, but could find no blood on the floor of the nursery, nor in the cradles. Something from hell stalked the halls of Durrier that night, and I should blow my brains out if I dare to think deeply of who that was. You, too, my son, would have been dead and bloodless if you hadn't been sleeping in a separate room with your door barred on the inside. You were a timid child, Arthur. You were only seven years old, but you were filled with the folklore of those mad lombards and the decadent poetry of your aunt. On the same night, while I was someplace between heaven and hell, you also heard the padded footsteps on the stone corridor and heard the tugging at your door handle. For in the morning you complained of a chill and of terrible nightmares which frightened you in your sleep. I only thank God that your door was barred. Arthur Durrier's voice choked into a sob which brought the stinging tears back to his eyes. He paused to wipe his face and to dig his fingers into his palm. You understand, Arthur, that for twenty years under my sworn oath at the Palace of Justice, I could neither see you nor write to you twenty years, my son, while all that time you had grown to hate me and to spit at my name. Not until your aunt's death could you call yourself a Durrier, and now you come to me at my bidding and say you love me as a son should love his father. Perhaps it is God's forgiveness for everything. Now at last we shall be together and that terrible, unexplainable past will be buried forever. He put his handkerchief back in his pocket and walked slowly to his son. He dropped to one knee, his hands gripping Arthur's arm. My son, I say no more to you. I have told you the truth as I alone know it. I may be, by all accounts, some ghoulish creation of Satan on earth. I may be a child-killer, a vampire, some morbidly-diseased specimen of Rycolicus, things which science cannot explain. Perhaps the dread legend of the Durriers is true. Artel Durrier was convicted of murdering his brother in the same monstrous fashion in the year 1576, and he died in flames at the stake. François Durrier, in 1802, blew his head apart with a blunderbuss on the morning after his youngest son was found dead, apparently from Anemia. And there are others of whom I cannot bear to speak that would chill your soul if you were to hear of them. So you see, Arthur, there is a hellish tradition behind our family. There is a heritage which no sane God would ever have allowed. The future of the Durriers lies in you, for you are the last of the race. I pray with all my heart that Providence will permit you to live your fullest share of years, and to leave other Durriers behind you. And so, if ever again I feel that presence as I did in Durrier Castle, I am going to die as François Durrier died over a hundred years ago. He stood up, and his son stood up by his side. If you are willing to forget, Arthur, we shall go up to the lodge in Maine. There is a life we've never known awaiting us. We must find that life, and we must find the happiness which a curious fate snatched from us on those Lombardi Sourlands twenty years ago. 2 Henry Durrier's tall stature, coupled with a slenderness of frame and a sleekness of muscle, gave him an appearance that was unusually gaunt. His son couldn't help but think of that word as he sat on the rustic porch of the lodge, watching his father sunning himself at the lake's edge. Henry Durrier had a kindness in his face, at times an almost sublime kindness, which great prophets often possess. But when his face was partly in shadow, particularly above his brow, there was a frightening tone that came into his features, for it was a tone of farness, of mysticism, of conjuration. Somehow, in the late evenings he assumed the unapproachable mantle of a dreamer, and sat silently before the fire, his mind ever off in unknown places. In that little lodge there was no electricity, and the glow of the oil lamps played curious tricks with the human expression which frequently resulted in something inhuman. It may have been the dusk of night, the flickering of the lamps, but Arthur Durrier had certainly noticed how his father's eyes had sunken further into his head, and how his cheeks were tighter, and the outline of his teeth pressed into the skin about his lips. It was nearer sundown on the second day of their stay at Timberlodge. Six miles away the dirt road wound on to Holton, near the Canadian border. So it was lonely there, on a solitary little lake, hammed in closely with dark evergreens, and the sky, which drooped low over the dirt-summited mountains. Within the lodge was a homey fireplace, and a glossy elk's head, which peered out above the mantle. There were guns and fishing tackle on the walls, shelves of reliable American fiction, Mark Twain, Melville, Stockton, and a well-worn edition of Bret Hart. A fully supplied kitchen and a wood stove furnished them with hearty meals, which were welcome after a whole day's tramp in the woods. On that evening Henry Durrier prepared a select French stew out of the available vegetables and a can of soup. They ate well, then stretched out before the fire for a smoke. They were outlining a trip to the Orient together, when the back door blew open with a terrific bang, and the wind swept into the lodge with a coldness which chilled them both. A storm, Henry Durrier said rising to his feet. Sometimes they have them up here, and they're pretty bad. The roof might leak over your bedroom. Perhaps you'd like to sleep down here with me. His fingers strayed playfully over his son's head as he went into the kitchen to bar the swinging door. Arthur's room was upstairs, next to a spare room filled with extra furniture. He'd chosen it because he liked the altitude, and because the only other bedroom was occupied. He went up there swiftly and silently. His roof didn't leak, it was absurd to think it might. It had been his father again, suggesting that they sleep together. He had done it before in a jesting, whispering way, as if to challenge them both if they dared sleep together. Arthur came back downstairs dressed in his bathrobe and slippers. He stood on the fifth stair, rubbing a two-day's growth of beer. I think I'll shave tonight, he said to his father. May I use your razor? Henry Durrier, draped in a black raincoat, and with his face, haloed, in the brim of a rain hat, looked up from the hall. A frown glided obscurely from his features. Not at all, son. Sleeping upstairs? Arthur nodded and quickly said, Are you going out? Yes, I'm going to tie the boats up tighter. I'm afraid the lake will rough it up a bit. Durrier jerked back the door and stepped outside. The door slammed shut, and his footsteps sounded on the wood flooring of the porch. Arthur came slowly down the remaining steps. He saw his father's figure pass across the dark rectangle of a window. Saw a flash of lightning that suddenly printed his grim silhouette against the glass. He sighed deeply, a sigh which burned in his throat, for his throat was sore and aching. Then he went into the bedroom, found the razor lying in plain view on the birch tabletop. As he reached for it, his glance fell upon his father's open Gladstead bag, which rested at the foot of the bed. There was a book resting there, half hidden by a gray flannel shirt. It was a narrow, yellow-bound book, oddly out of place. Frowning, he bent down and lifted it from the bag. It was surprisingly heavy in his hands, and he noticed a faint, sickening odor of decay which drifted from it like a perfume. The title of the volume had been thumbed away into an indecipherable blur of gold letters. But pasted across the front cover was a white strip of paper, on which was typewritten the word Infantifagy. He flipped open the cover and ran his eyes over the title page. The book was printed in French, an early French, yet to him wholly comprehensible. The publication date was 1580 in Cannes. Breathlessly he turned back the second page and saw a chapter heading, Vampires. He slumped to one elbow across the bed. His eyes were four inches from those mildewed pages. His nostrils reeked with the stench of them. He skipped long paragraphs of pedantic jargon on theology. He scanned brief accounts of strange, blood-eating monsters, vercolegous, and leprechauns. He read of Joan Dark, of Ludwig Prynne, and muttered aloud the Latin snatches of the episcopy. He passed pages in quick succession, his fingers shaking with the fear of it, and his eyes hanging heavily in their sockets. He saw vague reference to Enoch, and saw the terrible drawings by an ancient Dominican of Rome. Paragraph after paragraph, he read, the horror-striking testimony of Nighter's anthill, the testimony of people who died shrieking at the stake, the recitals of grave-tenders, of jurists, and hangmen. Then, unexpectedly, among all of this monumental vestige, there appeared before his eyes the name of Autel Durier, and he stopped reading, as though invisibly struck. Thunder clapped near the lodge, and rattled the windowpains. The deep rolling of the bursting clouds echoed over the valley, but he heard none of it. His eyes were on those two short sentences which his father, or someone, had underlined with dark red crayon. The execution four years ago of Autel Durier does not end the Durier controversy. Time alone will decide whether the demon has claimed that family from its beginning to its end. Arthur read on about the trial of Autel Durier, before Vanity, the Cacochorean inquisitor general, read with mounting horror the evidence which had sent the far-gone Durier to the pillar, the evidence of a bloodless corpse who had been Autel Durier's younger brother, unmindful now of the tremendous storm which had centered over Timberlake, unheeding the clatter of windows and the swish of pines on the roof, even of his father who worked down at the lake's edge in a drenching rain. Arthur fastened his glance through the blurred print of those pages, sinking deeper and deeper into the garbled legends of the dark age. On the last page of the chapter he saw again the name of his ancestor, Autel Durier. He traced a shaking finger over the narrow lines of words, and when he finished reading them, he rolled sideways on the bed, and from his lips came a sobbing, mumbling prayer, God, oh God, in heaven protect me! For he had read, as in the case of Autel Durier, we observe that this specimen of Hercologus craves only upon the blood of its own family. It possesses none of the characteristics of the undead vampire, being usually a living male person of otherwise normal appearances, unsuspecting of its inherited demonism. But this Hercologus cannot act according to its demonical possession, unless it is in the presence of a second member of the same family, who acts as a medium between the man and its demon. This medium has none of the traits of the vampire, but it senses the being of this creature when the metamorphosis is about to occur by reason of intense pains in the head and throat. Both the vampire and the medium undergo similar reactions, involving nausea, nocturnal visions, and physical disquietude. When these two outcasts are within a certain distance of each other, the coalescence of inherited demonism is complete, and the vampire is subject to its attacks, demanding blood for its sustenance. No member of the family is safe from these times, for the Hercologus, acting in its true agency on earth, will unerringly seek out the blood. In rare cases where other victims are unavailable, the vampire will take the blood from the very medium which made it possible. This vampire is born into certain aged families, and not but death can destroy it. It is not conscious of its blood madness and acts only in a psychic state. The medium also is unaware of its terrible role, and when these two are together, despite any lapse in years, the fission of inheritance is so violent that no power known on earth can turn it back. Three, the lodged door slam shut with a sudden interrupting bang. The lock grated, and Henry Durier's footsteps sounded on the planked floor. Arthur shook himself from the bed. He had only time to fling that haunting book into the Gladstone bag before he sensed his father standing in the doorway. You—you've not shaved, Arthur. Durier's words, spliced hesitantly, were toneless. He glanced from the tabletop to the Gladstone and to his son. He said nothing for a moment. He glanced inscrutably. Then, it's blowing up a storm outside. Arthur swallowed the first words which had come into his throat, nodding quickly. Yes, isn't it, quite a storm? He met his father's gaze, his face burning. I—I don't think I'll shave, Dad. My headaches. Durier came swiftly into the room and pinned Arthur's arms in his grasp. What do you mean your headaches? How? Does your throat? No, Arthur jerked himself away. He laughed. It's that French stew of yours. It hit me in the stomach. He stepped past his father and started up the stairs. The stew? Durier pivoted on his heel. Possible. I think I feel it myself. Arthur stopped, his face suddenly white. You—too? The words were hardly audible. Their glances met, clashed like dueling swords. For ten seconds neither of them said a word or moved a muscle. Arthur, from the stairs looking down, his father below gazing up at him. He and Henry Durier the blood drained slowly from his face and left a purple etching across the bridge of his nose and above his eyes. He looked like a death's head. Arthur winced at the sight and twisted his eyes away. He turned to go up the remaining stairs. Son? He stopped again, his hand tightened on the banister. Yes, Dad? Durier put his foot on the first stair. I want you to lock your door tonight. The wind would keep it banging. Yes, breathed Arthur and pushed up the stair to his room. Dr. Durier's hollow footsteps sounded in steady, unhesitating beats across the floor of the Timberlake Lodge. Sometimes they stopped and the crackling hiss of a sulfur match took their place. Then perhaps a distended sigh and again footsteps. Arthur crouched at the open door of his room. His head was cocked for those noises from below. In his hand was a double-barrel shotgun of violent gauge. Thud, thud, thud. Then a pause and a clinking of glass and the gurgling of liquid. The sigh, the tread of his feet over the floor. He's thirsty, Arthur thought. Thirsty. Outside the storm had grown into fury, lightning zigzag between the mountains, filling the valley with weird phosphorescence. Thunder, like drums, rolled incessantly. Within the lodge the heat of the fireplace piled the atmosphere thick with stagnation. All the doors and windows were locked shut. The oil lamps glowed weakly, a pale, anemic light. Henry Durier walked to the foot of the stairs and stood looking up. Arthur sensed his movement and ducked back into his room. The gun gripped in his shaky fingers. Then Henry Durier's footsteps sounded on the first stair. Arthur slumped to one knee. He buckled a fist against his teeth as a prayer tumbled through them. Durier climbed the second step and another and still one more. On the fourth stair he stopped. Arthur, his voice cut into the silence like a crack of a whip. Arthur, will you come down here? Yes, Dad. Beedraggled, his body hanging like cloth, young Durier took five steps to the landing. We can't be zanies, cried Arthur Durier. My soul is sick with dread. Tomorrow we're going back to New York. I'm going to get the first boat to open sea. Please come down here. He turned around and descended the stairs to his room. Arthur choked back the words that had lumped in his mouth. Half dazed, he followed. In the bedroom he saw his father stretched face up, along the bed. He saw a pile of rope at his father's feet. Tie me to the bed post, Arthur, came the command. Tie both my hands and both my feet. Arthur stood gaping. Do as I tell you. Dad, what the hard—don't be a fool. You read that book. You know what relation you are to me. I'd always hoped it was Cecilia, but now I know it's you. I should have known it on that night twenty years ago, when you complained of a headache and nightmares. Quickly my head rocks with pain. Tie me. Speechless, his own pain piercing him, with agony, Arthur fell to the grisly task. Both hands he tied, and both feet. Tied them so firmly to the iron post that his father could not lift himself an inch off the bed. Then he blew out the lamps, and without a further glance at that Prometheus, he re-ascended the stairs to his room, and slammed and locked his door behind him. He looked once at the breach of his gun, and set it against a chair by his bed. He flung off his robe and slippers, and within five minutes he was senselessly in slumber. Four. He slept late, and when he awakened his muscles were as stiff as boards, and the lingering vision of a nightmare clung before his eyes. He pushed his way out of bed, stood daisily on the floor. A dull, numbing cruciation circulated through his head. He felt bloated, coarse, and running with internal mucus. His mouth was dry, his gums were sore and stinging. He tightened his hands as he lunged for the door. Dad, he cried, and heard his voice break in his throat. Sunlight filtered through the window at the top of the stairs. The air was hot and dry, and carried in it a mild odor of decay. Arthur suddenly drew back at that odor, drew back with a gasp of awful fear, for he recognized it, that stench, the heaviness of his blood, the rawness of his tongue and gums. Age-long it seemed, yet rising like a spirit in his memory. All of these things he had known and felt before. He leaned against the banister, and half slid, half stumbled down the stairs. His father had died during the night. He lay like a waxen figure tied to his bed, his face done up in knots. Arthur stood dumbly at the foot of the bed for only a few seconds. Then he went back upstairs to his room. Almost immediately he emptied both barrels of the shotgun into his head. The tragedy at Timberlake was discovered accidentally three days later. A party of fishermen, upon finding the two bodies, notified state authorities, and an investigation was directly underway. Arthur Durrier had undoubtedly met death at his own hands, the condition of his wounds, and the manner with which he held the lethal weapon at once foreclosed the suspicion of any foul play. But the death of Dr. Henry Durrier confronted the police with an inexplicable mystery. For his trust-up body, unscathed except for two jagged holes over the jugular vein, had been drained of all its blood. The autopsy protocol of Henry Durrier laid death to undetermined causes. And it was not until the yellow tabloids commenced an investigation into the Durrier family history that the incredible and fantastic explanations were offered to the public. Obviously such talk was held in popular contempt. The End of Doom of the House of Durrier by Earl Pierce, Jr., The Highwayman, from The Sword of Wellerin and Other Stories by Lord Dunsenay. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Dale Groothman. The Highwayman by Lord Dunsenay. Tom O. The Rhodes had ridden his last ride and was now alone in the night. From where he was a man might see the white recumbent sheep and the black outline of the lonely downs and the gray line of the further and lonelier downs beyond them, or in the hollows far below him, out of the pitiless wind, he might see the gray smoke of hamlets arising from black valleys. But all alike were black to the eyes of Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears. Only his soul struggled to slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into paradise. And the wind blew and blew. For Tom tonight had not but the wind to ride. They had taken his true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields and the sky, men's voices, and the laughter of women, and had left him alone with chains around his neck to swing in the wind forever. And the wind blew and blew. But the soul of Tom O. The Rhodes was nipped by the cruel chains, and whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the iron collar by the wind that blows from paradise from the south. And swinging there by the neck there fell away old sneers from off his lips, and scoffed that he had long since scoffed at God fell from his tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and from his fingers the stains of deeds that were evil, and they all fell to the ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul was clean again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring, and it swung up in the wind with the bones of Tom and with his old torn coat and rusty chains, and the wind blew and blew. And ever and anon the souls of the sepulchred came from consecrated acres would go by beating up the wind to paradise, past the gallows-tree, and past the soul of Tom that might not go free. Night after night Tom watched the sheep upon the downs with empty hollow sockets until his dead hair grew and covered his poor face and hid the shame of it from the sheep, and the wind blew and blew. Sometimes on gusts of the wind came someones tears and beat and beat against the iron chains, but could not rust them through, and the wind blew and blew, and every evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came flocking in from doing their work in the world, the work that might not cease, and sat along the gallows branches and sure and surept to the soul of Tom, the soul that might not go free, all the thoughts that he had ever uttered, and the evil thoughts rebuked the soul that bore them because they might not die, and all those that he had uttered the most furtively surept the loudest and the shrillest in the branches all the night, and all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about himself now pointed at the wet bones and mocked the old torn coat. But the thoughts that he had thought of others were the only companions that his soul had to soothe it in the night as it swung to and fro, and they twittered to the soul and cheered the poor dumb thing that could have dreams no more till there came a murderous thought and drove them all away, and the wind blew and blew. Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Vaens, lay in his white sepulcher of marble, facing full to the southward toward paradise, and over his tomb was sculpted the cross of Christ that his soul might have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in the lonely treetops up upon the downs, but came with gentle breezes, orchard scented, over the lowlands from paradise, from the southwards, and played about forget-me-nots and grasses in the consecrated land where lay the reposeful round the sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Vaens. Easy it was for a man's soul to pass from such a sepulcher, and, flitting low over remembered fields, to come upon the garden lands of paradise and find eternal ease. And the wind blew and blew. In a tavern of foul repute three men were lapping gin. Their names were Joe and Will and the Gypsy Puglione. None other names had they, for of whom their fathers were. They had no knowledge, but only dark suspicions. Sin had caressed and stroked their faces often with its paw, but the face of Puglione sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin. Their food was robbery, and their pastime murder. All of them had incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a table with a pack of cards before them, all greasy with marks of cheating thumbs, and they whispered to one another over their gin. But so low that the landlord of the tavern at the other end of the room could only hear muffled oaths, and knew not by whom they swore or what they said. These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had given unto a man, and he to whom their friendship had been given had nothing else besides save some bones that swung in the wind and rain, and an old torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might not go free. But as the night wore on the three friends left their gin and stole away, and crept down to the graveyard where, rested in his sepulcher, Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Benet. At the edge of the graveyard, but outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave, two digging, while one watched in the wind and rain, and the worms that crept in the unhollow ground wandered, and waited. And the terrible hour of midnight came upon them with his fears, and found them still beside the place of tombs, and the three friends trembled at the horror of such an hour in such a place, and shivered in the wind and drenching rain, and still worked on. And the wind blew and blew. Soon they had finished, and at once they left the hungry grave with all its worms unfed, and went over to the wet fields stealthily, but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the midnight. And as they went they shivered, each man as he shivered cursing the rain aloud. And so they came to the spot where they had hidden a ladder and a lantern. There they held a long debate whether they should light the lantern, or whether they should go without it for fear of the king's men. But in the end it seemed to them better that they should have the light of their lantern, and risk being taken by the king's men and hanged. Then that they should come suddenly face to face in the darkness, with whatever one might come face to face with, a little after midnight, about the gallows-tree. On three roads in England whereupon it was not the want of folks to go their ways in safety, travelers tonight went unmolested. But the three friends walked several paces wide of the king's highway, approaching the gallows-tree, and Will carried the lamp, and Joe the ladder. But Puglione carried a great sword wherewith to do the work that must be done. When they came close they saw how bad was the case with Tom, for little remained of the fine figure of a man, and nothing at all of his great resolute spirit. Only as they came they thought they heard a whimpering cry, like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree. Two and fro, two and fro in the winds, swung the bones and soul of Tom, for the sins that he had sinned on the king's highway against the laws of the king. And with shadows, and lantern through the darkness, at the peril of their lives, came the three friends that his soul had won before it swung in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom's own soul that he had sown all his life had grown into a gallows-tree that bore in season iron chains in clusters, while the careless seeds that he had strewn here and there, a kindly jests, and a few merry words, had grown into a triple friendship that would not desert his bones. Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and Puglione went up with his sword in his right hand, and at the top of it he reached up and began to hack at the neck below the iron color. Presently the bones and the old coat and the soul of Tom fell down with a rattle, and a moment afterwards his head, which had watched so long alone, swung clear from the swinging chain. These things Will and Joe gathered up, and Puglione came running down his ladder, and they heaped upon its rungs the terrible remains of their friend, and hastened away, wet with the rain, with the fear of phantoms in their heart, and horror lying before them on the ladder. By two o'clock they were down again in the valley, out of the bitter wind, but they went on past the open grave into the graveyard, all among the tombs, and with their lantern and their ladder, and the terrible thing upon it, which kept their friendship still. Then these three that had robbed the law of its due and proper victim, still sinned on for what was still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs from the sacred sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Aloy, and Veyantz, and from it they took the very bones of the Archbishop himself, and carried them away to the eager grave that they had left, and put them in, and shoveled back the earth. But all that lay on the ladder they placed, with a few tears, within the great white sepulcher, under the cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs. Thence the soul of Tom, a rising hallowed out of the sacred ground, went at dawn down the valley, and, lingering a little about his mother's cottage, and old haunts of childhood, passed on, and came to the wide lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with all the kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew and sang beside it all the way southward, until at last, with singing all about it, it came to paradise. But Will and Joe and the gypsy Paglione went back to their gin, and robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not that in their sinful lives they had sinned one sin at which the angels smiled. THE END OF THE HIGHWAY MAN By Lord Dunsonay An incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read for LibriVox by Dale Grossman He was already a thief, prepared to steal again. He didn't know that he himself was only booty. An incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz. Phil Garfield was thirty miles south of the little town of Redmond on Route 12 when he was startled by a series of sharp, clanking noises. They came from under the Packard's hood. The car immediately began to lose speed. Garfield jammed down on the accelerator, had a sense of sick helplessness at the complete lack of response from the motor. The Packard rolled on, getting rid of its momentum, and came to a stop. Phil Garfield swore shakily. He checked his watch, switching off the headlights, and climbed out onto the dark road. A delay of even half an hour here might be disastrous. It was past midnight, and he had another hundred and ten miles to cover to reach the small private airfield, where Maj waited for him and the thirty thousand dollars in the suitcase on the Packard's front seat. If he didn't make it before daylight. He thought of the bank guard. The man had made a clumsy play at being a hero, and that had set off the fool woman who'd run screaming into their line of fire. One dead, perhaps two. Garfield hadn't stopped to look at the evening paper. But he knew they were hunting him. He glanced up and down the road. No other headlights in sight at the moment. No light from a building showing on the forest hills. He reached back into the car and brought out the suitcase, his gun, a big flashlight, and the box of shells which had been standing beside the suitcase. He broke the box open, shoved a handful of shells and the thirty-eight into his coat pocket, then took suitcase and flashlight over to the shoulder of the road, and set them down. There was no point in groping about under the Packard's hood. When it came to mechanics, Phil Garfield was a moron and well aware of it. The car was useless to him now, except as bait. But as bait it might be very useful. Should he leave it standing where it was? No, Garfield decided. To any one driving past it would merely suggest a necking party, or a drunk sleeping off his load before continuing home. He might have to wait an hour or more before someone decided to stop. He didn't have the time. He reached in through the window, hauled the top of the steering wheel towards him, and put his weight against the rear window frame. The Packard began to move slowly backwards at a slant across the road. In a minute or two he headed in position, not blocking the road entirely, which would have aroused immediate suspicion, but angled across it, lights out, empty, both front doors open, and inviting a passerby's investigation. Garfield carried the suitcase and the flashlight across the right hand shoulder of the road, and moved up among the trees an undergrowth of the slope above the shoulder. Lacing the suitcase between the bushes, he brought out the 38, clicked the safety off, and stood waiting. Some ten minutes later a set of headlights appeared speeding up Route 12 from the direction of Redmond. Phil Garfield went down on one knee before he came within range of the lights. Now he was completely concealed by the vegetation. The car slowed as it approached, breaking nearly to a stop sixty feet from the stalled Packard. There were several people inside. Garfield heard voices. Then a woman's loud laugh. The driver tapped his horn inquiringly twice, moved the car slowly forward. As the headlights went past him, Garfield got to his feet among the bushes, took a step down toward the road, raising the gun. Then he caught the distant gleam of a second set of headlights approaching from Redmond. He swore under his breath, and dropped back out of sight. The car below him reached the Packard, edged cautiously around it, rolled on with a sudden roar of acceleration. The second car stopped when it was still a hundred yards away. The Packard caught in the motionless glare of its lights. Garfield heard a steady purr of the powerful engine. For almost a minute nothing else happened. Then the car came gliding smoothly on, stopped again no more than thirty feet to Garfield's left. He could see it now through the screening brush, a big job, a long, low, four-door sedan. The motor continued to purr. After a moment a door on the far side of the car opened and slammed shut. A man walked quickly out into the beam of the headlights and started toward the Packard. Phil Garfield rose from his crouching position, the thirty-eight in his right hand, flashlight in his left. If the driver was alone, the thing was now cinched. But if there was somebody else in the car, somebody capable of fast, decisive action, a slip in the next ten seconds might cost him the sedan, and quite probably his freedom and life. Garfield lined up the thirty-eight's sights steadily on the center of the approaching man's head. He let his breath out slowly as the fellow came level with him in the road and squeezed off one shot. Instantly he went bounding down the slope to the road. The bullet had flung the man's sideways to the pavement. Garfield darted past him to the left, crossing the beam of the headlights, and was in darkness again on the far side of the road, snapping on his flashlight as he spread it up to the car. The motor hummed quietly on. The flashlight showed the seats empty. Garfield dropped the light, jerked both doors open in turn, gun pointed into the car's interior. Then he stood still for a moment, weak, almost dizzy with relief. There was no one inside. The sedan was his. The man he had shot through the head lay face down on the road, his hat flung a dozen feet away from him. Route twelve still stretched out in the dark silence to east and west. There should be enough time to clean up the job before anyone else came along. Garfield brought the suitcase down and put it on the front seat of the sedan. Then started back to get his victim off the road and out of sight. He scaled the man's hat into the bushes, bent down, grasped the ankles, and started to haul him towards the left side of the road, where the ground dropped off sharply beyond the shoulder. The body made a high squealing sound and began to writhe violently. Shocked, Garfield dropped the legs and hurriedly took the gun from his pocket, moving back a step. The squealing noise rose in intensity as the wounded man quickly flopped over twice, like a struggling fish, arms and legs sewing about with startling energy. Garfield clicked off the safety, pumped three shots into his victim's back. The grisly squeals ended abruptly. The body continued to jerk for another second or two, then lay still. Garfield shoved the gun back into his pocket. The unexpected interruption had unnerved him. His hands shook as he reached down again for the stranger's angles. Then he jerked his hands back and straightened up, startled. From the side of the man's chest, a few inches below the right arm, something like a thick black stick, three feet long, protruded now through the material of the coat. It shone, gleaming wetly, in the light from the car. Even in that first uncomprehending instant, something in its appearance brought a surge of sick disgust to Garfield's throat. Then the stick bent slowly halfway down its length, forming a sharp angle, and its tip opened into what could have been three blunt black claws, which scrambled clumsily against the pavement. Very faintly the squealing began again, and the body's back arched up as if another stick-like arm were pushing desperately against the ground beneath it. Garfield acted in a blur of horror. He emptied the thirty-eight into the thing at his feet almost without realizing he was doing it. Then, dropping the gun, he seized one of the ankles, ran backwards to the shoulder of the road, dragging the body behind him. In the darkness at the edge of the shoulder he let go of it, stepping around to the other side, and with two frantically savage kicks sent the body plunging over the shoulder and down the steep slope beyond. He heard it crash through the bushes for some seconds, then stop. He turned and ran back to the sedan, scooping up his gun as he went past. He scrambled into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut behind him. His hand shook violently on the steering wheel as he pressed down on the accelerator. The motor roared into life, and the big car surged forward. He edged it past the packard, cursing aloud in horrified shock, jammed down the accelerator, and went flashing up Route 12, darkness racing beside him and behind him. What had it been? Something that wore what seemed to be a man's body like a suit of clothes, moving the body as a man moves, driving a man's car. Roach armed. Roach legged itself. Garfield drew a long, shuddering breath. Then, as he slowed for a curve, there was a spark of reddish light in the rear view mirror. He stared at the spark for an instant, break the car to a stop, roll down the window and look back. Far behind him along Route 12, a fire burned, approximately at the point where the packard had stalled out, where something had gone rolling off the road into the bushes. Something, Garfield added mentally, that found fiery automatic destruction when death came to it so that its secrets would remain unrevealed. But for him the fire meant the end of a nightmare. He rolled the window up, took out a cigarette, lit it, and pressed the accelerator. In incredulous fright he felt the nose of the car tilt upward, headlights sweeping up from the road into the trees. Then the headlights winked out. Beyond the windscreen, dark tree branches floated down towards him, the night sky beyond. He reached frantically for the door handle. A steel wrench clamped silently about each of his arms, drawing them in against his sides, immobilizing them there. Garfield gasped, looked up at the mirror and saw a pair of faintly gleaming red eyes, watching him from the rear of the car. Two of the things, the second one stood behind him out of sight, holding him. They'd been in what had seemed to be the trunk compartment. And they had come out. The eyes in the mirror vanished. A moist black roach arm reached over the back of the seat beside Garfield, picked up the cigarette he had dropped, extinguished it with rather horrible human motions, then took up Garfield's gun and drew back out of sight. He expected a shot, but none came. One doesn't fire a bullet through a suit one intends to wear. It wasn't until that thought occurred to him that tough Phil Garfield began to scream. He was still screaming minutes later when, beyond the windshield, the spaceship floated into view among the stars. The end of an incident on Route 12 by James H. Schmitz, John Mortensen's Funeral by Ambrose Beers. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Dale Grossman. John Mortensen was dead. His lines in the tragedy of man had all been spoken, and he had left the stage. John Mortensen's Funeral by Ambrose Beers. The body rested in a fine mahogany coffin fitted with a plate of glass. All arrangements for the funeral had been so well attended to that had the deceased known he would doubtless have approved. The face, as it showed under the glass, was not disagreeable to look upon. He had bore a faint smile, and, as the death had been painless, had not been distorted beyond the repairing power of the undertaker. At two o'clock in the afternoon, the friends were to assemble to pay their last tribute of respect to one who had no further need of friends and respect. The surviving members of the family came severally each few minutes to the casket and wept upon the placid features beneath the glass. This did them no good. It did no good to John Mortensen, but in the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent. As the hour of two approached the friends began to arrive, and after offering such condolences to the stricken relatives as the proprieties of the occasion required, solemnly seated themselves about the room with an augmented consciousness of their importance in the scheme funereal. Then the minister came, and in that overshadowing presence the lesser lights went into eclipse. His entrance was followed by that of the widow whose lamentations filled the room. She approached the casket, and after leaning her face against the cold glass for a moment was gently led to the seat near her daughter. Mournfully and low the man of God began his eulogy of the dead, and his doleful voice, mingled with the sobbing which it was its purpose to stimulate and sustain, rose and fell, seemed to come and go like the sound of a sullen sea. The gloomy day grew darker as he spoke, a curtain of cloud underspread the sky, and a few drops of rain fell audibly. It seemed as if all nature were weeping for John Mortensen. When the minister had finished his eulogy with a prayer a hymn was sung, and the pallbearers took their places beside the beer. As the last notes of the hymn died away the widow ran to the coffin, cast herself upon it, and sobbed hysterically. Gradually, however, she yielded to dissuasion, becoming more composed, and as the minister was in the act of leading her away her eyes saw the face of the dead beneath the glass. She threw up her arms and with a shriek fell backward, insensible. The mourners sprang forward to the coffin, and friends followed, and as the clock on the mantle solemnly struck three all were staring down upon the face of John Mortensen, deceased. They turned away, sick and faint. One man, trying in his terror to escape the awful sight, stumbled against the coffin so heavily as to knock away one of its frail supports. The coffin fell to the floor. The glass was shattered to bits by the concussion. From the opening crawled John Mortensen's cat, which lazily leapt to the floor, sat down, frankly wiped its crimson muzzle with a forepaw, then walked away with dignity from the room. The end of John Mortensen's funeral by Ambrose Beers. A Legend of Sonora by Hildegard Hawthorne. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Newgate Novelist. A Legend of Sonora by Hildegard Hawthorne. Two persons, a man and a woman, faced each other under a clump of live oaks. Hard by were visible the walls of an adobe house crumbling with age. The sun was setting. A slight breeze stirred in the dark branches of the trees, which all through the hot Mexican day had been motionless. The woman was dark and small, with large eyes and a graceful body. The man a swarthy vequero in Serape and Sombrero. And you heard him say, that, said she. Yes, senorita. He said, I love you, I love you, twice like that. And then he kissed her. He kissed her. Anything else? This. He handed her a slip of folded paper. It contained a woman's name, a few words of passion and a signature. As the senorita's eyes perused it, they contracted, and she drew a long breath. The vequero watched o' keenly. I found it in the arbor after they had gone, said he. She looked away dreamily. Thank you. Thank you, Mazepa. She muttered. It is late. I must go in now. Adios, Mazepa. She turned and, moving slowly, vanished behind a corner of the adobe house. The vequero remained motionless until she was out of sight. Then he pressed his hands to his lips and flung them out toward her with a passionate gesture. The next moment he had mounted his horse and was gone. An hour passed. Again the sound of hoofs. A handsome young senor, jauntily attired, galloped up to the door of the house, and, springing from the saddle, hitched his reign over a large hook projecting from the wall. Hola, Maria, little one, he called out in a rich, joyous voice. Where is my little Maria? The senorita appeared, smiling. She was in white with a riboso drawn around her delicate face. She bore a two-handled silver cup, curiously chased. See, she said, I have brought you some wine, such a long ride, just to see me. She was holding out the cup toward him, but, as he was about to receive it, she drew it back suddenly. She was pale. Her eyes glittered. I too am thirsty, she said. She lifted the cup to her lips and took a deep draft. Now you shall finish it. She added, handing it to him. He nodded to her, laughingly. To our love, he said, and drained it. But how strangely you look at me, little one! He exclaimed as he set the cup down and caught his breath. Is anything wrong? All is well, she answered. I am happy. Are you happy? I, I am with you, am I not? She put her hand in his. Let us never be parted any more, she said. Come, we'll walk to the hilltop and see the moon rise. Hand in hand, they sauntered along the path up the bare hillside. On and on they walked, slowly, slowly. Maria gave a little gasp and glanced with dilated eyes at her lover. He smiled faintly and tried to draw her toward him. But somehow did not, and still they moved slowly on their way. The hilltop seemed strangely far off. Maria pressed forward, grasping her lover's hand. What made the distance seem so long? Surely it was but a stroll of ten minutes, yet it was as though they had been walking an hour, a year, many years. Down the hillside path came a horseman riding quietly and humming a love song. He was close upon the two figures before he appeared to be aware of them. The horse stopped as if to speak to him. The horse shivered and plunged. The rider stared at the couple-button instant, then, driving home his spurs, he sprang past them. Mother of God! he faltered, crossing himself as he threw a backward glance up the path, on which nothing was now visible. The ghosts, the little girl who, they say down below, poisoned herself and her lover fifty years ago. End of A Legend of Sonora by Hildegard Hawthorne