 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Japan Box by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was a curious thing, said the private tutor. When are those grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes through life? I lost the best situation which I'm ever likely to have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place for a gained. Well, as I tell you the story, you will learn what I gained. I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the Midlands which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part of England. Shakespeare, the flower of our whole race, was born right in the middle of it. It is a land of rolling pastures rising in the higher folds to the westwards until they swell until the Malvern Hills. There are no towns, but numerous villages, each with its grey Norman church. You have left the brick of the southern and eastern counties behind you, and everything is stone. Stone for the walls and lichen slabs of stone for the roofs. It is all grim and solid and massive as befits the heart of a great nation. It was in the middle of this country, not far from Evisham, that Sir John Bollemore lived in the old ancestral home of Thorpe Place, and thither it was that I came to teach his two little sons. Sir John was a widower. His wife had died three years before, and he had been left with these two lads, aged eight and ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now my wife, was governess to this little girl. I was tutor to the two boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an engagement? She governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But there, I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe Place. It was a very, very old house, incredibly old, pre-Norman some of it, and the Bollemores claimed to have lived in that situation since long before the conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when I first came there. Those enormously thick gray walls, the crude crumbling stones, the smell is from a sick animal which exhaled from the rotting plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing was bright, and the garden was well kept. No house could be dismal, which had a pretty girl inside it, and such a show of roses in front. Apart from a very complete staff of servants, there were only four of us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at that time four and twenty, and as pretty, well, as pretty as Miss Colmore is now. Myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs Stevens, the housekeeper, a dry, silent woman, and Mr Richards, a tall, military-looking man who acted as steward to the Bollemore estates. We four always had our meals together, but Sir John had his usually alone in the library. Sometimes he joined us at dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he did not. For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six feet, three inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed, aristocratic face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed, Mephistophelian beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes as deep as if they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes which claimed your pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was rounded with study, but otherwise he was as fine a-looking man of his age, five and fifty perhaps, as any woman would wish to look upon. But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always courteous, always refined, but singularly silent in retiring. I have never lived so long with any man at a known so little of him. If he were indoors he spent his time either in his own small study in the eastern tower, or in the library in the modern wing. So regular was his routine that one could always say at any hour exactly where he would be. Twice in the day he would visit his study, once after breakfast, and once about ten at night. You might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For the rest of the day he would be in his library. Save that for an hour or two in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was solitary like the rest of his existence. He loved his children and was keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were a little odd by the silent shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided him as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that. It was some time before I came to know anything about the circumstances of Sir John Bolamore's life. For Mr. Stevens, the housekeeper, and Mr. Richards, the land steward, were too loyal to talk easily of their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she knew no more than I did, and her common interest was one of the causes which drew us together. At last, however, an incident occurred which led to a closer acquaintance with Mr. Richards and a fuller knowledge of the life of the man whom I served. The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of Master Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill race, with imminent danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk myself in order to save him. Dripping and exhausted, for I was far more spent than the child, I was making for my room when Sir John, who had heard the hubbub, opened the door of his little study and asked me what was the matter. I told him of the accident, but assured him that his child was in no danger. While he listened with a rugged, immobile face, which expressed in his intense eyes the tightened lips all the emotion which he tried to conceal. One moment, step in here, let me have the details, said he, turning back through the open door. And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which, as I afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set save that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round room, conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was situated, with a low ceiling, a single, narrow, ivy wreath window, and the simplest furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a deal table, and a small shelf of books made up the whole contents. On the table stood a full-length photograph of a woman. I took no particular notice of the features, but I remember that a certain gracious gentleness had the prevailing impression. Beside it were a large black Japan box, and one or two bundles of letters or papers fastened together with elastic bands. Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollemore perceived that I was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The incident led, however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the agent, who had never penetrated into the chamber which Chance had opened to me. That very afternoon he came to me, all curiosity, and walked up and down the garden path with me, while my two charges played tennis upon the lawn beside us. You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your favor, said he. That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir John's visits to it have been so regular and consistent, that an almost superstitious feeling has arisen about it in the household. I assure you that if I were to repeat to you the tales which are flying about, tales of mysterious visitors there, and of voices overheard by the servants, you might suspect that Sir John had relapsed into his old ways. Why do you say relapsed? I asked. He looked at me in surprise. Is it possible that Sir John Bollemore's previous history is unknown to you? Absolutely. You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew something of his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if it were not that you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts might come out to your ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon them. I always took it for granted that you knew you were in the service of devil Bollemore. But why devil? I asked. Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty years ago the name of Devil Bollemore was one of the best known in London. He was the leader of a fastest set, bruiser, driver, gambler, drunkard, a survival of the old type, and as bad as the worst of them. I stared at him in amazement. That quiet, studious, sad face man the greatest rip and debauchee in England, all between ourselves, Cole Moore. But you understand now what I mean when I say that a woman's voice in his room might even now give rise to suspicions. But what can have changed him so? Little Barrel Claire when she took the risk of becoming his wife. That was the turning point. He had got so far that his own fast set had thrown him over. There's a world of difference, you know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but they taboo a drunkard. He had become a slave to it, hopeless and helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him though she might have had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought him back to manhood and decency. You have observed that no liquor is ever kept in the house. There never has been any since her foot crossed its threshold. A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger even now. Then her influence still holds him? That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we all expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways. She feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for she was like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for the one purpose. By the way, did you see a black Japan box in his room? Yes. I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to be away, if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black Japan box with him. Well, well, Cormor, perhaps I have told you rather more than I should, but I shall expect you to reciprocate if anything of interest should come to your knowledge. I could see that the worthy man was consumed with curiosity, and just a little peaked that I, the newcomer, should have been the first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But the fact raised me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found myself upon more confidential terms with him. And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an object of greater interest to me. I began to understand that strangely human look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his care-worn face. He was a man who was fighting a ceaseless battle, holding at arm's length, from morning till night, a horrible adversary who was forever trying to close with him. An adversary which would destroy him, body and soul, could it but fix its claws once more upon him. As I watched the grim, round-backed figure pacing the corridor, or walking in the garden, this imminent danger seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends, crouching closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks besides its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in warning off this danger, took shape also in my imagination, and I saw her as a shadowy but beautiful presence, which intervened forever with arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved. In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him, and he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He even invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no word passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of confidence which he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me also to index his library. It was one of the best private libraries in England, and I spent many hours in the evening in his presence, if not in his society, he reading at his desk and I sitting in a recess by the window, reducing to order the chaos which existed among his books. In spite of these close relations, I was never again asked to enter the chamber in the turret, and then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident changed all my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my employer still remained all that he ever had been, with the additional vice of hypocrisy. One evening Miss Withersen had gone down to Broadway, the neighboring village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I, according to my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The drive sweeps round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I passed that the light was lit in the circular room. It was a summer evening, and the window, which was a little higher than our heads, was open. We were, as it happened, engrossed in our own conversation at the moment when we paused upon the lawn which skirts the old turret, when suddenly something broke in upon our talk, and turned our thoughts away from our own affairs. It was a voice, the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low, so low that it was only in the still night air that we could have heard it, but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its feminine timber. It spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few sentences, and then was silent, a piteous, breathless, imploring sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I stood for an instant, staring at each other. Then we walked quickly in the direction of the hall door. It came through the window, I said. We must not play the part of eavesdroppers, she answered. We must forget that we ever heard it. There was an absence of surprise in her manner that suggested a new idea to me. I cried, You have heard it before. I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same turret. It has happened frequently. Who can the woman be? I have no idea. I'd rather not discuss it. Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting that her employer led a double and dubious life, who could this she be, this mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower? I knew from my own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was. She certainly did not live there. But in that case, where did she come from? It could not be anyone of the household. They were all under the vigilant eyes of Mrs Stevens. The visitor must come from without. But how? And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was, and how probable that some medieval passage existed in it. There is hardly an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the basement of the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort, it would open through the floor. There were numerous cottages in the immediate vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might lie among some tangle of bramble in the neighboring cops. I had said nothing to anyone, but I felt that the secret of my employer lay within my power. And the more convinced I was of this, the more I marveled at the manner in which she concealed his true nature. Often as I watched his austere figure, I asked myself if it were indeed possible that such a man should be living this double life. And I tried to persuade myself that my suspicions might, after all, prove to be ill-founded. But there was the female voice. There was a secret nightly rendezvous in the turret chamber. How could such facts admit an innocent interpretation? I conceived a horror of the man. I was filled with loathing and his deep, consistent hypocrisy. Only once during all those months did I ever see him without that sad, but impassive mask, which he usually presented towards his fellow man. For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic fires which he had damped down so long. The occasion was an unworthy one, for the object of his wrath was none other than the aged charwoman, whom I have already mentioned as being one person who was allowed within his mysterious chamber. I was passing the corridor which led to the turret, for my own room lay in that direction. When I heard a sudden startled scream and merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who was inarticulate with passion. It was a snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I heard his voice thrilling with anger. You would dare, he cried. You would dare to disobey my directions? An instant later the charwoman passed me, flying down the passage, white-faced and tremulous, while the terrible voice thundered behind her. Go to Mrs. Stevens for your money. Never set foot in Thorpe Place again. Consumed with curiosity, I could not help following the woman, and found her round the corner, leaning against a wall and palpitating like a frightened rabbit. What is the matter, Mrs. Brown? I asked. It's Master, she gasped. Oh, how he frightened me. If you had seen his eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir, I thought he would have been the death of me. But what had you done? Done, sir? Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of. Just laid my hand on that black box of his. I hadn't even opened it when any came, and you heard the way he went on? I've lost my place, and I'm glad of it, for I would never trust myself within reach of him again. So it was, the Japan box, which was the cause of this outburst, the box from which he would never permit himself to be separated. What was the connection, or was there any connection, between this and the secret visits of the lady whose voice I overheard? Sir John Bulamor's wrath was enduring as well as fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the chairwoman, vanished from our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more. And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all these strange questions, and put my employer's secret to my possession. The story may leave you with some lingering doubts as to whether my curiosity did not get the better of my honor, and whether I did not condescend to play the spy. If you choose to think so, I cannot help it, but I can only assure you that, improbable as it may appear, the matter came about exactly as I describe it. The first stage in this denouement was that the small room in the turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall of the worm-eaten, oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten with age, it snapped in the middle one morning, and it brought down a quantity of plaster with it. Fortunately, Sir John was not in the room at the time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the debris, and brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was locked within his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the damage, and I never had an opportunity of searching for that secret passage, the existence of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I had thought that this would have brought her visits to an end, had I not one evening heard Mr. Richards asking Mrs. Stevens, who the woman was, whom he had overheard talking to Sir John in the library. I could not catch her reply, but I saw from her manner that it was not the first time that she had had to answer or avoid the same question. You've heard the voice, Colmore? said the agent. I confessed that I had. And what do you think of it? I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business of mine. Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a woman or not? It is certainly a woman. Which room did you hear it from? From the turret room, before the ceiling fell. But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the doors as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and praying just plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman. Why, what else could it be? He looked at me hard. There are more things in heaven and earth. If it is a woman, how does she get in there? I don't know. No, nor I. But if it is the other thing. But there, for a practical businessman at the end of the 19th century, this is rather a ridiculous line of conversation. He turned away, but I saw that he felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost stories of Thorpe Place, a new one was being added before our very eyes. It may, by this time, have taken its permanent place, for though an explanation came to me, it never reached the others. And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a sleepless night from neuralgia, and about midday I had taken a heavy dose of chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time, I was finishing the indexing of Sir John Bulamor's library, and it was my custom to work there from five until seven. On this particular day, I struggled against the double effect of my bad night and the narcotic. I have already mentioned that there was a recess in the library, and in this, it was my habit to work. I settled down steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me, and, falling back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep. How long I slept, I do not know, but it was quite dark when I awoke. Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay motionless in a semi-conscious state. The great room with its high walls covered with books loomed darkly all around me. A dim radiance from the moonlight came through the farther window, and against this lighter background, I saw that Sir John Bulamor was sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a key in the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream, I was vaguely conscious that this was the Japan box which stood in front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I never realized, it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain, that I was intruding upon his privacy, and that he imagined himself to be alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my horrified perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my presence, I heard a strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the voice. Yes, it was a woman's voice. There could be not a doubt of it. But a voice so charged with entreaty, and with yearning love, that it will ring forever in my ears. It came with a curious, far away tinkle, that every word was clear, though faint, very faint, for they were the last words of a dying woman. I'm not really gone, John, said the thin, gasping voice. I am here at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more. I die happy to think that morning and night you will hear my voice. Oh John, be strong, be strong until we meet again. I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but could not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain half lying, half sitting, paralyzed, astounded, listening to those yearning, distant, musical words. And he, he was so absorbed that even if I had spoken, he might not have heard me. But with the silence of the voice came my half-articulated apologies and explanations. He sprang across the room, switched on the electric light, and in its white glare I saw him, his eyes gleaming with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless chairwoman may have seen weeks before. Mr. Colmore, he cried, you hear, what is the meaning of this, sir? With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the narcotic, my luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened the glow of anger faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask closed once more over his features. My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore, he said. I have only myself to blame for relaxing my precautions. Half-confidences are worse than no-confidences, and so you may well know all, since you know so much. The story may go where you will when I have passed away, but until then I rely upon your sense of honor that no human soul shall hear of it from your lips. I am proud still, God help me, or at least I am proud enough to resent the pity which this story would draw upon me. I have smiled at envy and disregarded hatred, but pity is more than I can tolerate. You have heard the source from which the voice comes, that voice which has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my household. I am aware of the rumors to which it has given rise. These speculations, whether scandalous or superstitious, are such as I can disregard and forgive. What I should never forgive would be a disloyal spying and eavesdropping in order to satisfy an illicit curiosity. But of that, Mr. Colmore, I acquit you. When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are now, I was launched upon town without a friend or an advisor, and with a purse which brought only too many false friends and false advisors to my side. I drank deeply of the wine of life. If there is a man living who is drunk more deeply, he is not a man whom I envy. My purse suffered, my character suffered, my constitution suffered, stimulants became a necessity to me. I was a creature for whom my memory recoils. And it was at that time, the time of my blackest degradation, that God sent into my life the gentlest, sweetest spirit that ever descended as a ministering angel from above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me, and spent her life in making a man once more of that which had degraded itself into the level of the beasts. But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before my eyes. In the hour of her agony, it was never of herself, of her own sufferings, and her own death that she thought. It was all of me. The one pang which her fate brought to her was the fear, when her influence was removed, I should revert to that which I had been. It was in vain that I made oath to her, and that no drop of wine would ever cross my lips. She knew only too well, behold, that the devil had upon me. She who had striven so to loosen it. And it haunted her night and day, the thought that my soul might again be within his grip. It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she heard of this invention, this phonograph. And with the quick insight of a loving woman, she saw how she might use it for her ends. She sent me to London to procure the best which money could buy. With her dying breath, she gasped into it the words which have held me straight ever since. Lonely and broken, what else have I in all the world to uphold me? But it is enough. Please, God, I shall face her without shame when he is pleased to reunite us. That is my secret, Mr. Colmore, and whilst I live, I leave it in your keeping. For more information, and to find out how you can volunteer, please visit Libervox.org. Read and recorded by William Coon. November 2006 The Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling Your gods and my gods, do you or I know which are the stronger? Native Proverb East of Suez, some hold, the direct control of Providence ceases, man being there handed over to the power of the gods and devils of Asia, and the Church of England Providence only exercising an occasional and modified supervision in the case of Englishmen. This theory accounts for some of the more unnecessary horrors of life in India. It may be stretched to explain my story. My friend Strickland of the police, who knows as much of natives of India as is good for any man, can bear witness to the facts of the case. Dumois, our doctor, also saw what Strickland and I saw. The inference which he drew from the evidence was entirely incorrect. He is dead now. He died in a rather curious manner, which has been elsewhere described. When Fleet came to India, he owned a little money and some land in the Himalayas, near a place called Dharmzala. Both properties had been left him by an uncle, and he came out to finance them. He was a big, heavy, genial, and inoffensive man. His knowledge of natives was, of course, limited, and he complained of the difficulties of the language. He rode in from his place in the hills to spend New Year in the station, and he stayed with Strickland. On New Year's Eve there was a big dinner at the club, and the night was, excuseably, wet. When men foregather from the utmost ends of the empire, they have a right to be riotous. The frontier had sent down a contingent of Kachamalivos, who had not seen twenty white faces for a year, and were used to ride fifteen miles to dinner at the next fort, at the risk of a Kybery bullet where their drinks should lie. They profited by their new security, for they tried to play pool with a curled-up hedgehog found in the garden, and one of them carried the marker round the room in his teeth. Half a dozen planters had come in from the south and were talking hoarse to the biggest liar in Asia, who was trying to cap all their stories at once. Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang old Lang Syne with our feet in the polo championship cup and our heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends. Then some of us went away in annexed Burma, and some tried to open up the Sudan, and were opened up by fuzzies in that cruel scrub outside Swahkeem, and some found stars and metals, and some were married, which was bad, and some did other things which were worse, and the others of us stayed in our chairs and strove to make money on insufficient experiences. Fleet began the night with sherry and bidders, drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, rasping capery with all the strength of whiskey, took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half past two, winding up with old brandy. Consequently when he came out at half past three in the morning, and to fourteen degrees of frost, he was very angry with his horse for coughing, and tried to leapfrog into the saddle. The horse broke away and went to his stables, so Strickland and I formed a guard of dishonor to take Fleet home. Our road lay through the bazaar, close to a little temple of Hanuman, the monkey god, who was a leading divinity worthy of respect. All gods have good points, just as have all priests. Personally I attach much importance to Hanuman, and am kind to his people, the great gray apes of the hills. One never knows when one may want a friend. There was a light in the temple, and as we passed we could hear voices of men chanting hymns. In a native temple the priests rise at all hours of the night to do honor to their god. Before we could stop him, Fleet dashed up to steps, patted two priests on the back, and was gravely grinding the ashes of his cigar butt into the forehead of the redstone image of Hanuman. Strickland tried to drag him out, but he sat down and said solemnly, Shridhat, mark of the beast, I made it, isn't it fine? In half a minute the temple was alive and noisy, and Strickland, who knew what came of polluting gods, said that things might occur. He, by virtue of his official position, long resided in the country, and weakness for going among the natives, was known to the priests, and he felt unhappy. Fleet sat on the ground and refused to move. He said that girl Hanuman made a very soft pillow. Then, without any warning, a silver man came out of a recess behind the image of the god. He was perfectly naked in that bitter, bitter cold, and his body shone like frosted silver, for he was what the Bible calls a leper as white as snow. Also he had no face because he was a leper of some year's standing, and his disease was heavy upon him. We, too, stooped to haul Fleet up, and the temple was filling and filling with folk who seemed to spring from the earth, when the silver man ran in under our arms, making a noise exactly like the mewing of an otter, caught Fleet round the body and dropped his head on Fleet's breast before we could wrench him away. Then he retired to a corner and sat mewing, while the crowd blocked all the doors. The priests were very angry until the silver man touched Fleet. That nuzzling seemed to sober them. At the end of a few minutes' silence one of the priests came to Strickland and said in perfect English, Take your friend away, he has done with Hanuman, but Hanuman has not done with him. The crowd gave room and we carried Fleet into the road. Strickland was very angry. He said that we might all three have been knifed, and that Fleet should thank his stars that he had escaped without injury. Fleet thanked no one. He said that he wanted to go to bed. He was gorgeously drunk. We moved on, Strickland silent and wrathful until Fleet was taken with violent shivering fits and sweating. He said that the smells of the bazaar were overpowering, and he wondered why slaughterhouses were permitted so near English residences. Can't you smell the blood? said Fleet. We put him to bed at last, just as the dawn was breaking, and Strickland invited me to have another whiskey and soda. While we were drinking he talked of the trouble in the temple and admitted that it baffled him completely. Strickland hates being mystified by natives because his business in life is to overmatch them with their own weapons. He has not yet succeeded in doing this, but in fifteen or twenty years he will have made some small progress. They should have mauled us, he said. Instead of mewing at us, I wonder what they meant. I don't like it one little bit. I said that the managing committee of the temple would in all probability bring a criminal action against us for insulting their religion. There was a section of the Indian Penal Code which exactly met Fleet's offence. Strickland said he only hoped and prayed that they would do this. Before I left I looked into Fleet's room and saw him lying on his right side, scratching his left breast. Then I went to bed, cold, depressed, and unhappy, at seven o'clock in the morning. At one o'clock I rode over to Strickland's house to inquire after Fleet's head. I imagined that it would be a sore one. Fleet was breakfasting and seemed unwell. His temper was gone, for he was abusing the cook for not supplying him with an underdone chop. A man who can eat raw meat after a wets night is a curiosity. I told Fleet this and he laughed. You'll breed queer mosquitoes in these parts, he said. I've been bitten to pieces, but only in one place. Let's have a look at the bite, said Strickland. It may have gone down since this morning. While the chops were being cooked Fleet opened his shirt and showed us just over his left breast a mark, the perfect double of the black rosettes, the five or six irregular blotches arranged in a circle, on a leopard's hide. Strickland looked and said, It was only pink this morning, it's grown black now. Fleet ran to a glass. By Jove, he said. This is nasty. What is it? We could not answer. Here the chops came in all red and juicy, and Fleet bolted three in a most offensive manner. He ate on his right grinders only and threw his head over his right shoulder as he snapped the meat. When he had finished it struck him that he had been behaving strangely, for he said apologetically, I don't think I ever felt so hungry in my life. I bolted like an ostrich. After breakfast Strickland said to me, Don't go, stay here, and stay for the night. Seeing that my house was not three miles from Strickland's, this request was absurd. But Strickland insisted and was going to say something when Fleet interrupted by declaring a shame-faced way that he felt hungry again. Strickland sent a man to my house to fetch over my bedding in a horse, and we three went down to Strickland's stables to pass the hours until it was time to go out for a ride. The man who has a weakness for horses never worries of inspecting them, and when two men are killing time in this way, they gather knowledge and lies, the one from the other. There were five horses in the stables, and I shall never forget the scene as we tried to look them over. They seemed to have gone mad. They reared and screamed and nearly tore up their pickets. They sweated and shivered and lathered and were distraught with fear. Strickland's horses used to know him as well as his dogs, which made the matter more curious. We left the stable for fear of the Brutes throwing themselves in their panic. Then Strickland turned back and called me. The horses were still frightened, but they led us gentle and make much of them and put their heads in our bosoms. They aren't afraid of us, said Strickland. Do you know? I'd give three months pay if outrage here could talk. But outrage was dumb and could only cuddle up to his master and blow out his nostrils, as is the custom of horses when they wish to explain things but can't. Fleet came up when they were in the stables, and as soon as the horses saw him their fright broke out afresh. It was all that we could do to escape from the place unkicked. Strickland said, They don't seem to love you, Fleet. Nonsense, said Fleet. My mare will follow me like a dog. He went to her. She was in a loose box, but as he slipped the bar she plunged, knocked him down, and broke away into the garden. I laughed, but Strickland was not amused. He took his mustache in both fists and pulled at it till it nearly came out. Fleet, instead of going off to chase his property, yawned, saying that he felt sleepy. He went to the house to lie down, which was a foolish way of spending New Year's Day. Strickland sat with me in the stables and asked if I had noticed anything peculiar in Fleet's manner. I said that he ate his food like a beast, but that this might have been the result of living alone in the hills out of the reach of society as refined and elevating as ours, for instance. Strickland was not amused. I did not think that he listened to me, for his next sentence referred to the mark on Fleet's breast, and I said that it might have been caused by blister flies or that it was possibly a birthmark newly born and now visible for the first time. We both agreed that it was unpleasant to look at, and Strickland found occasion to say that I was a fool. I can't tell you what I think now, he said, because you would call me a madman, but you must stay with me for the next few days if you can. I want you to watch Fleet, but don't tell me what you think till I have made up my mind. But I am dining out tonight, I said. So am I, said Strickland, and so is Fleet, at least if he doesn't change his mind. We walked about the garden smoking, but saying nothing, because we were friends and talking spoils good tobacco till our pipes were out. Then we went to wake up Fleet. He was wide awake and fidgeting about his room. I say, I want some more chops, he said. Can I get them? We laughed and said, go and change, the ponies will be round in a minute. All right, said Fleet, I'll go when I get the chops. Underdone ones, mind. He seemed to be quite in earnest. It was four o'clock and we had had breakfast at one. Still for a long time he demanded those underdone chops. Then he changed into riding clothes and went out into the veranda. His pony, the mare had not been caught, would not let him come near. All three horses were unmanageable, mad with fear. And finally Fleet said that he would stay at home and get something to eat. Strickland and I rode out, wondering. As we passed the temple of Hanuman, the silver man came out and mewed at us. He is not one of the regular priests of the temple, said Strickland. I think I should peculiarly like to lay my hands on him. There was no spring in our gallop on the race course that evening. The horses were stale and moved as though they had been ridden out. The fright after breakfast has been too much for them, said Strickland. That was the only remark he made through the remainder of the ride. Once or twice I think he swore to himself, but that did not count. We came back in the dark at seven o'clock and saw that there were no lights in the bungalow. Careless, ruffians, my servants are, said Strickland. My horse reared at something on the carriage-drive, and Fleet stood up under its nose. What are you doing groveling about the garden? said Strickland. But both horses bolted and nearly threw us. We dismounted by the stables and returned to Fleet, who was on his hands and knees under the orange bushes. What the devil's wrong with you? said Strickland. Nothing, nothing in the world, said Fleet, speaking very quickly and thickly. I've been gardening, botanizing, you know. The smell of the earth is delightful. I think I'm going for a walk. A long walk. All night. Then I saw that there was something excessively out of order somewhere, and I said to Strickland, I am not dining out. Bless you, said Strickland. Here, Fleet, get up. You'll catch fever there. Come into dinner and let's have the lamps lit. We'll all dine at home. Fleet stood up unwillingly and said, No lamps, no lamps, it's much nicer here. Let's dine outside and have some more chops, lots of them, and underdone, bloody ones with gristle. Now a December evening in northern India is bitterly cold, and Fleet's suggestion was that of a maniac. Come in, said Strickland sternly. Come in at once. Fleet came, and when the lamps were brought, we saw that he was literally plastered with dirt from head to foot. He must have been rolling in the garden. He shrank from the light and went to his room. His eyes were horrible to look at. There was a green light behind them, not in them if you understand, and the man's lower lip hung down. Strickland said, There is going to be trouble, big trouble, tonight. Don't you change your writing things. We waited and waited for Fleet's reappearance, and ordered dinner in the meantime. We could hear him moving about his own room, but there was no light there. Presently from the room came the long-drawn howl of a wolf. People write and talk lightly of blood running cold, and hair standing up, and things of that kind. Both sensations are too horrible to be trifled with. My heart stopped as though a knife had been driven through it, and Strickland turned as white as the tablecloth. The howl was repeated, and was answered by another howl far across the fields. That set the gilded roof on the horror. Strickland dashed into Fleet's room. I followed, and we saw Fleet getting out of the window. He made beast noises in the back of his throat. He could not answer us when we shouted at him. He spat. I don't quite remember what followed, but I think that Strickland must have stunned him with the long boot-jack, or else I should never have been able to sit on his chest. Fleet could not speak. He could only snarl, and his snarls were those of a wolf, not of a man. The human spirit must have been giving way all day, and have died out with the twilight. We were dealing with a beast that had once been Fleet. The affair was beyond any human and rational experience. I tried to say hydrophobia, but the word wouldn't come, because I knew that I was lying. We bound this beast with leather thongs of the punkarope and tied its thumbs and big toes together and ganged it with a shoehorn, which makes a very efficient gag if you know how to arrange it. Then we carried it into the dining room and sent a man to Dimoise, the doctor, telling him to come over at once. After we had dispatched the messenger and were drawing breath, Strickland said, It's no good. This isn't any doctor's work. I also knew that he spoke the truth. The beast's head was free, and it threw it about from side to side. Anyone entering the room would have believed that we were curing a wolf's pelt. That was the most loathsome accessory of all. Strickland sat with his chin in the heel of his fist, watching the beast as it wriggled on the ground, but saying nothing. The shirt had been torn open in the scuffle and showed the black rosette mark on the left breast. It stood out like a blister. In the silence of the watching we heard something without mewing like a she-otter. We both rose to our feet and, I answer for myself, not Strickland, felt sick, actually and physically sick. We told each other, as did the men in Pinafore, that it was the cat. Dimoise arrived and I never saw a little man so unprofessionally shocked. He said that it was a heart-rending case of hydrophobia and that nothing could be done. At least any palliative measures would only prolong the agony. The beast was foaming at the mouth. Fleet, as we told Dimoise, had been bitten by dogs once or twice. Any man who keeps half a dozen terriers must expect a nip now and again. Dimoise could offer no help. He could only certify that Fleet was dying of hydrophobia. The beast was then howling for it had managed to spit out the shoehorn. Dimoise said that he would be ready to certify to the cause of death and that the end was certain. He was a good little man and he offered to remain with us, but Strickland refused the kindness. He did not wish to poison Dimoise's new year. He would only ask him not to give the real cause of Fleet's death to the public. So Dimoise left, deeply agitated, and as soon as the noise of the cartwheels had died away, Strickland told me in a whisper his suspicions. They were so wildly improbable that he dared not say them out aloud, and I, who entertained all Strickland's beliefs, was so ashamed of owning to them that I pretended to disbelieve. Even if the silver man had bewitched Fleet for polluting the image of Hanuman, the punishment could not have fallen so quickly. As I was whispering this, the cry outside the house rose again, and the beast fell into a fresh paroxysm of struggling until we were afraid that the thongs that held it would give way. Watch, said Strickland, if this happens six times I shall take the law into my own hands. I order you to help me. He went into his room and came out in a few minutes with the barrels of an old shotgun, a piece of fishing line, some thick cord, and his heavy wooden bedstead. I reported that the convulsions had followed the cry by two seconds in each case, and the beast seemed perceptibly weaker. Strickland muttered, But he can't take away the life. He can't take away the life. I said, though I knew that I was arguing against myself, It may be a cat, it must be a cat. If the silver man is responsible, why does he dare to come here? Strickland arranged the wood on the hearth, put the gun barrels into the glow of the fire, spread the twine on the table, and broke a walking stick in two. There was one yard of fishing line, gut, lapped with wire, such as is used for man-seer fishing, and he tied the two ends together in a loop. Then he said, How can we catch him? He must be taken alive and unhurt. I said that we must trust in Providence and go out softly with polo-sticks into the shrubbery at the front of the house. The man or animal that made the cry was evidently moving around the house as regularly as a night-watchman. We could wait in the bushes till he came by and knock him over. Strickland accepted this suggestion and we slipped out from a bathroom window into the front veranda and then across the carriage-drive into the bushes. In the moonlight we could see the leper coming round the corner of the house. He was perfectly naked, and from time to time he mewed and stopped to dance with his shadow. It was an unattractive sight, and thinking of poor fleet, brought to such degradation by so foul a creature. I put away all my doubts and resolved to help Strickland from the heated gun-barrels to the loop of twine, from the loins to the head and back again, with all tortures that might be needful. The leper halted in the front porch for a moment, and we jumped out on him with the sticks. He was wonderfully strong, and we were afraid that he might escape or be fatally injured before we caught him. We had an idea that lepers were frail creatures, but this proved to be incorrect. Strickland knocked his legs from under him, and I put my foot on his neck. He mewed hideously, and even through my riding-boots I could feel that his flesh was not the flesh of a clean man. He struck at us with his hand and feet stumps. We looped the lash of a dog-whip around him, under the armpits, and dragged him backwards into the hall, and so into the dining-room where the beasts lay. There we tied him with trunk-straps. He made no attempt to escape, but mewed. When we confronted him with the beast the scene was beyond description. The beast doubled backwards into a bow as though he had been poisoned with strychnine and moaned in the most pitiable fashion. Several other things happened also, but they cannot be put down here. I think I was right, said Strickland. Now we will ask him to cure this case. But the leper only mewed. Strickland wrapped a towel around his hand and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking-stick through the loop of the fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland's bed-stead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive. For the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the silver man had no face you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron, gun-barrels, for instance. Strickland shaded his eyes with his hands for a moment, and we got to work. This part is not to be printed. The dawn was beginning to break when the leper spoke. His mewings had not been satisfactory up to that point. The beast had fainted from exhaustion and the house was very still. We unstrapped the leper and told him to take away the evil spirit. He crawled to the beast and laid his hand upon the left breast. That was all. Then he fell face down and whined, drawing in his breath as he did so. We watched the face of the beast and saw the soul of Fleet coming back into the eyes. Then a sweat broke out on the forehead in the eyes. They were human eyes, closed. We waited for an hour, but Fleet still slept. We carried him to his room and bade the leper go, giving him the bedstead and the sheet on the bedstead to cover his nakedness, the gloves and the towels with which we had touched him, and the whip that had been hooked around his body. He put the sheet about him and went out into the early morning without speaking or mewing. Strickland wiped his face and sat down. A nightgong, far away in the city, made seven o'clock. Exactly four and twenty hours, said Strickland. And I've done enough to ensure my dismissal from the service, besides permanent quarters in a lunatic asylum. Do you believe that we are awake? The red-hot gun barrel had fallen on the floor and was singeing the carpet. The smell was entirely real. That morning at eleven we two together went to wake up Fleet. We looked and saw that the black leopard rosette on his chest had disappeared. He was very drowsy and tired, but as soon as he saw us he said, oh, confound you fellows, happy new year to you, never mix your liquors, I'm nearly dead. Thanks for your kindness, but you're over time, said Strickland. Today is the morning of the second. You slept the clock round with a vengeance. The door opened and little Dumois put his head in. He had come on foot and fancied that we were laying out Fleet. I brought a nurse, said Dumois. I suppose that she can come in for what is necessary. By all means, said Fleet cheerily, sitting up in bed. Bring on your nurses. Dumois was dumb. Strickland led him out and explained that there must have been a mistake in the diagnosis. Dumois remained dumb and left the house hastily. He considered that his professional reputation had been injured and was inclined to make a personal matter of the recovery. Strickland went out too. When he came back he said that he had been to call on the Temple of Hunaman to offer redress for the pollution of the God. It had been solemnly assured that no white man had ever touched the idol, and that he was an incarnation of all the virtues laboring under a delusion. What do you think? said Strickland. I said. There are more things, but Strickland hates that quotation. He says that I have worn it threadbare. One other curious thing happened which frightened me as much as anything in all the night's work. When Fleet was dressed he came into the dining-room and sniffed. He had a quaint trick of moving his nose when he sniffed. Horrid doggy smell here! said he. You should really keep those terriers of yours in better order. Try sulfur, Strick! But Strickland did not answer. He caught hold of the back of a chair and without warning went into an amazing fit of hysterics. It is terrible to see a strong man overtaken with hysteria. Then it struck me that we had fought for Fleet's soul with the silver man in that room and had disgraced ourselves as Englishmen forever. And I laughed and gasped and gurgled just as shamefully as Strickland, while Fleet thought that we had both gone mad. We never told him what we had done. Some years later, when Strickland had married and was a church-going member of society for his wife's sake, we reviewed the incident dispassionately, and Strickland suggested that I should put it before the public. I cannot myself see that this step is likely to clear up the mystery, because in the first place no one will believe a rather unpleasant story, and in the second it is well known to every right-minded man that the gods of the heathen are stone and brass, and any attempt to deal with them otherwise is justly condemned. End of The Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling She was very sorrowful and feared that it would die. Its little face was pale and its eyes were closed. The child drew its breath of difficulty, and sometimes so deeply as if it were sighing, and then the mother looked more sorrowfully than before on the little creature. Then there was a knock at the door, and a poor old man came in, wrapped up in something that looked like a great horsecloth, for that keeps warm, and he required it for it was cold winter. Without, everything was covered with ice and snow, and the wind blew so sharply that it cut one's face. And as the old man trembled with cold, and the little child was quiet for a moment, the mother went and put some beer on the stove in a little pot to warm it for him. The old man sat down and rocked the cradle, and the mother seated herself on an old chair by him, looked at her sick child that drew its breath so painfully, and seized the little hand. You think I shall keep it, do you not? she asked. The good God will not take it from me. And the old man, he was death, knotted in such a strange way that it might just as well mean yes as no. And the mother cast down her eyes, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Her head became heavy. For three days and three nights she had not closed her eyes, and now she slept but only for a minute. Then she started up and shivered with cold. What is that? she asked, and looked round on all sides. But the old man was gone, and her little child was gone. He had taken it with him. And there in the corner the old clock was humming and whirring. The heavy laden weight ran down to the floor, plump, and the clock stopped. But the poor mother rushed out of the house crying for her child. Out in the snow sat a woman in long black garments, and she said, Death has been with you in your room. I saw him hasten away with your child. He strides faster than the wind, and never brings back what he has taken away. Only tell me which way he has gone, said the mother. Tell me the way, and I will find him. I know him, said the woman in the black garments. But before I tell you, you must sing me all the songs that you have sung to your child. I love those songs. I have heard them before. I am night, and I saw your tears when you sang them. I will sing them, sing them all, said the mother. But do not detain me, that I may overtake him, and find my child. But night sat dumb and still. Then the mother wrung her hands, and sang and wept. And there were many songs, but yet more tears. And then night said, Go to the right into the dark fur wood, for I saw death take that path with your little child. Deep in the forest there was a cross road, and she did not know which way to take. There stood a blackthorn bush, with not a leaf nor a blossom upon it, for it was in the cold winter time, and icicles hung from the twigs. Have you not seen death go by with my little child? Yes, replied the bush. But I shall not tell you which way he went, unless you warm me on your bosom. I am freezing to death here, I am turning to ice. And she pressed the blackthorn bush to her bosom, quite close, that it might be well warmed. And the thorns pierced into her flesh, and her blood oozed out in great drops. But the blackthorn shot out fresh green leaves, and blossomed in the dark winter night. So warm is the heart of a sorrowing mother. And the blackthorn bush told her the way that she should go. Then she came to a great lake, on which there was neither ship nor boat. The lake was not frozen enough to carry her, nor sufficiently open to allow her to wade through, and yet she must cross it if she was to find her child. Then she laid herself down to drink the lake, and that was impossible for anyone to do. But the sorrowing mother thought that perhaps a miracle might be wrought. No, that can never succeed, said the lake. Let us rather see how we can agree. I'm fond of collecting pearls, and your eyes are the two clearest I have ever seen. If you will weep them out into me, I will carry you over into the great greenhouse, where death lives and cultivates flowers and trees. Each of these is a human life. Oh, what I would not give to get my child, said the afflicted mother. And she wept yet more, and her eyes fell into the depths of the lake, and became two costly pearls. But the lake lifted her up, as if she sat in a swing, and she was wafted to the opposite shore, or stood a wonderful house, miles in length. One could not tell if it was a mountain containing forests and caves, or a place that had been built. But the poor mother could not see it, for she had wept her eyes out. Where shall I find death, who went away with my child? she asked. He is not arrived here yet, said an old gray-haired woman, who was going about watching the hot house of death. How have you found your way here, and who helped you? The good God has helped me, she replied. He is merciful, and you will be merciful too. Where? Where shall I find my little child? I do not know it, said the old woman, and you cannot see. Many flowers and trees have faded this night, and death will soon come and transplant them. You know very well that every human being has his tree of life, or his flower of life, just as each is arranged. They look like other plants, but their hearts beat. Children's hearts can beat too. Think of this. Perhaps you may recognize the beating of your child's heart. But what will you give me if I tell you what more you must do? I have nothing more to give, said the afflicted mother. But I will go for you to the ends of the earth. I have nothing for you to do there, said the old woman. But you can give me your long black hair. You must know yourself that it is beautiful, and it pleases me. You can take my white hair for it, and that is always something. Do you ask for nothing more? asked she. I will give you that gladly. And she gave her beautiful hair, and received and exchanged the old woman's white hair. And then they went to the great hot house of death, where flowers and trees were growing marvelously intertwined. There stood the fine hyacinths under glass bells, some quite fresh, others somewhat sickly. Water snakes were twining about them, and black crabs clung tightly to the stalks. There stood gallant palm trees, oaks and plantains, and parsley in blooming time. Each tree and flower had its name. Each was a human life. The people were still alive, one in China, another in Greenland, scattered about in the world. There were great trees thrust into little pots, so that they stood quite crowded, and they were nearly bursting the pots. There was also many a little weakly flower in rich earth, with moss around it, cared for and tended. But the sorrowful mother bent down over all the smallest plants, and heard the human heart beating in each, and out of millions she recognized that of her child. That is it, she cried, and stretched out her hands over a little crocus flower, which hung down quite sick and pale. Do not touch the flower, said the old dame, but place yourself here. And when death comes, I expect him every minute. Then don't let him pull up the plant, but threaten him that you will do the same to all the other plants. Then he'll be frightened. He has to account for them all. Not one may be pulled up till he receives commission from heaven. And all at once there was an icy cold rush through the hall, and the blind mother felt that death was arriving. How did you find your way hither? said he. How have you been able to come quicker than I? I am a mother, she answered. And death stretched out his long hands towards the little delicate flower. But she kept her hands tight about it, and held it fast. And yet she was full of anxious care, lest he should touch one of the leaves. Then death breathed upon her hands, and she felt that his breath was colder than the icy wind, and her hands sank down powerless. You can do nothing against me, said death. But the merciful God can, she replied. I only do what he commands, said death. I am his gardener. I take all his trees and flowers, and transport them into the great paradise gardens in the unknown land. But how they will flourish there, and how it is there, I may not tell you. Give me back my child, said the mother, and she implored and wept. All at once she grasped two pretty flowers with her two hands, and called to death. I'll tear off all your flowers, for I am in despair. Do not touch them, said death. You say you are so unhappy, and now you would make another mother just as unhappy? Another mother, said the poor woman, and she let the flowers go. There are your eyes for you, said death. I have fished them out of the lake. They gleamed up quite brightly. I did not know that they were yours. Take them back. They are clearer now than before, and then look down into the deep well close by. I will tell you the names of the two flowers you wanted to pull up, and you will see what you were about to frustrate and destroy. And she looked down into the well, and it was a happiness to see how one of them became a blessing to the world, how much joy and gladness she diffused around her. And the woman looked at the life of the other, and it was made up of care and poverty, misery and woe. Both are the will of God, said death. Which of them is the flower of misfortune, and which the blessed one, she asked? That I may not tell you, answered death. But this much you shall hear, that one of these two flowers is that of your child. It was the fate of your child that you saw, the future of your own child. Then the mother screamed aloud for terror. Which of them belongs to my child? Tell me that. Release the innocent child. Let my child free from all that misery. Rather carry it away, carry it into God's kingdom. Forget my tears, forget my entreaties, and all that I have done. I do not understand you, said death. Will you have your child back, or shall I carry it to that place you know not? Then the mother wrung her hands, and fell on her knees, and prayed to the good God. Hear me not when I pray against thy will, which is at all times the best. Hear me not, hear me not! And she let her head sink down on her bosom. And death went away with her child into the unknown land. End of The Mother and the Dead Child by Hans Andersen. Read by Scott Bush. I do not recall distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension was horrible. Two a season of political and social upheaval was added to strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger. A danger widespread and all embracing, such a danger as may be imagined only in the most terrible phantasms of the night. I recall that the people went about with pale and worried faces, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he had heard. A sense of monstrous guilt was upon the land, and out of the abysses between the stars swept chill currents that made men shiver in dark and lonely places. There was a demonic alteration in the sequence of the seasons. The autumn heat lingered fiercely, and everyone felt that the world and perhaps the universe had passed from the control of known gods or forces to that of gods or forces which were unknown. And it was then that Nero Lothotep came out of Egypt. Who he was, none could tell, but he was of the old need of blood and looked like a pharaoh. The fellow he knew when they saw him, he could not say why. He said he had risen up out of the blackness of 27 centuries, and that he had heard messages from places not on this planet. Into the lands of civilization came Nero Lothotep, swarly, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences, of electricity and psychology, and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nero Lothotep and shuddered. And where Nero Lothotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare. Never before had the screams of nightmare been such a public problem. Now the wise men almost wished they could forbid sleep in small hours, that the shrieks of cities might less horribly disturb the pale, pitying moon as it glimmered on green waters, gliding under bridges, and old steeples crumbling against a sickly sky. I remember when Nero Lothotep came to my city, the great, the old, the terrible city of unnumbered crimes. My friend had told me of him and of the impelling fascination and allurement of his revelations, and I burned with eagerness to explore his utter most mysteries. My friend said they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings, and what was thrown on the screen in the dark room prophesied things none but Nero Lothotep dared prophesy, and in the sputter of his sparks, there was taken from men that which had never been taken before, yet was shown only in the eyes. And I heard it hinted abroad that those who knew Nero Lothotep looked on sights which others saw not. It was in the hot autumn that I went through the night with the restless crowds to see Nero Lothotep through the stifling night and up the endless stairs into the choking room. And shadowed on the screen I saw hooded forms amidst ruins and yellow evil faces peering from behind fallen monuments, and I saw the world battling against blackness, against the waves of destruction from ultimate space, whirling, churning, struggling around the dimming, cooling sun. Then the sparks played amazingly around the heads of the spectators and hair stood up on end while shadows more grotesque than I can tell came out and squatted on the heads. And when I, who was colder and more scientific than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about imposture and static electricity, Nero Lothotep drove us all out down the dizzy stairs into the damp hot deserted midnight streets. I screamed aloud that I was not afraid, that I could never be afraid, and others screamed with me for solace. We swore to one another that the city was exactly the same and still alive, and when the electric lights began to fade we cursed the company over and over again and laughed at the queer faces we made. I believe we felt something coming down from the greenish moon, for when we began to depend on its light we drifted into curious and voluntary marching formations and seemed to know our destinations that we dared not think of them. Once we looked at the pavement and found the blocks loose and displaced by grass, with scarce aligning of rusted metal to show where the tramways had run, and again we saw a tram car, long, windowless, dilapidated, and almost on its side. When we gazed around the horizon we could not find that third tower by the river, and noticed that the silhouette of the second tower was ragged at the top. Then we split up into narrow columns, each of which seemed drawn in a different direction. One disappeared in a narrow alley to the left, leaving only the echo of a shocking moan. Another filed down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a laughter that was mad. My own column was sucked toward the open country, and presently I felt a chill which was not of the hot autumn, for as we stalked out on the dark moor we beheld around us the hellish moon glitter of evil snows, trackless inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where lay a gulf all the blacker for its glittering walls. The column seemed very thin indeed as it plotted dreamily into the gulf. I lingered behind for the black rift in the green that in snow was frightful, and I thought I had heard the reverberations of a disquieting wail as my companions vanished, but my power to linger was flight. As if beckoned by those who had gone before, I half floated between the titanic snowdrifts, quivering and afraid, into the sightless vortex of the unimaginable. Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the god that word can tell, a sickened sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and world blindly past ghastly midnight's of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and to make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds, vague ghosts of monstrous things, half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe, the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin monotonous wine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time, the detestable pounding and piping were unto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly, the gigantic, tenebrous, ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is an iralithotep. End of recording. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. That's LibriVox.org. Recorded by me, Glenn Halstrom, also known as Smoke Stack Jones. Smoke Stack Jones at gmail.com. You'll also find my blog at toomuchjohnson.blogspot.com. The Terrible Old Man by H.P. Lovecraft It was the design of Angela Rickey and Joe Saznack and Manuel Silva to call on the terrible old man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble, which forms a situation very attractive to men of the profession of messers Rickey, Saznack, and Silva, for that profession was nothing less stignified than robbery. The inhabitants of Kingsport say and think many things about the terrible old man, which generally keep him safe from the attention of gentlemen like Mr. Rickey and his colleagues, despite the almost certain fact that he hides a fortune of indefinite magnitude somewhere about his musty and venerable abode. He is, in truth, a very strange person believed to have been a captain of East India clipperships in his day, so that no one can remember when he was young and so tack-turned that few knew his real name. Among the gnarled trees in his front yard of his aged and neglected place, he maintains a strange collection of large stones, oddly grouped and painted so that they resemble the idols of so obscure eastern temple. The collection frightens away most of the small boys who love to taunt the terrible old man about his long white hair and beard or to break into the small pain windows of his dwelling with wicked missiles. But there are other things which frighten the older and more curious folk, who sometimes steal up to the house to peer in through the dusty pains. These folks say that on a table in a large bare room on the ground floor are many peculiar bottles, in each a small piece of lead suspended pendulum-wise from a string. And they say that the terrible old man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scarface, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis. And whenever he speaks to a bottle, the little lead pendulum within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer. Those who have watched the tall, lean, terrible old man in these peculiar conversations do not watch him again. But Angel O'Ricky and Joe Saznack and Manuel Silva were not of kings' poor blood. They were of that new and heterogeneous alien stock which lies outside the charm circle of New England's life and traditions. And they saw in the terrible old man merely a tottering, almost helpless gray beard, who could not walk without the aid of his knotted cane and whose thin weekend shook pitifully. They were really quite sorry in their way for the lonely, unpopular old fellow whom everybody shunned, and at whom the dogs barked singularly. But business is business, and to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lord a challenge about a very old and very feeble man who has no account at the bank and who pays for his few necessities in a village store with Spanish gold and silver minted two centuries ago. Messers, Ricky, Saznack, and Silva selected the night of April 11th for their call. Mr. Ricky and Mr. Silva were to interview the poor old gentleman whilst Mr. Saznack waited for them in their presumable metallic burden with a covered motor car on Ship Street by the gate in the tall rear wall of the host's grounds. Desired to avoid needless explanations in case of unexpected police intrusions, prompted these plans for a quiet and unicentatious departure. As prearranged, the three adventurers started out separately in order to prevent any evil-minded suspicions afterwards. Messers, Ricky and Silva met at Water Street by the old man's front gate, and although they did not like the way the moon shone down upon the painted stones through the budding branches of the gnarled trees, they had more important things to think about than mere idle superstition. They feared it might be unpleasant work making the terrible old man loquacious concerning his hoarded golden silver, for agency captains are notably stubborn and perverse. Still, he was very old and very feeble, and there were two visitors. Messers, Ricky and Silva were experienced in the art of making unwilling persons valuable, and the screams of a weak and exceptionally vulnerable man can be easily muffled. So they moved up to the one-lighted window and heard the terrible old man talking childishly to his bottles with pendulums. Then they donned masks and knocked politely at the weather-stained Okendor. Waiting seemed very long to Mr. Saznak as he fidgeted restlessly in the covered motor car by the terrible old man's gate on Ship Street. He was more than ordinarily tender-hearted and he did not like the hideous screams that he had heard in the ancient house just after the hour appointed for the deed. Had he not told his colleagues to be as gentle as possible with the pathetic old sea captain? Very nervously, he watched that narrow Okend gate on the high and ivy-clad stone wall. Frequently he consulted his watch and wondered at the delay. Had the old man died before revealing where his treasure was hidden and the thorough search became necessary? Mr. Saznak did not like to wait so long in the dark in such a place. Then he sensed the soft tread or tapping on the walk inside the gate, heard a gentle fumbling at the rusty latch, and saw the narrow heavy door swing inward. And in the pallid glow of the single dim street lamp he strained his eyes to see what his colleagues had brought out of that sinister house which loomed so close behind. But when he looked he did not see what he had expected, for his colleagues were not there at all but only the terrible old man, leaning quietly on his knotted cane and smiling hideously. Mr. Saznak had never before noticed the color of that man's eyes. Now he saw that they were yellow. Little things make considerable excitement in little towns, which is the reason that Kingsport people talked all that spring and summer about the three unidentifiable bodies horribly slashed as with many cutlasses and horribly mangled as by the tread of many cruel boot heels which the tide washed in. And some people even spoke of things as trivial as the deserted motor car found on Ship Street, or certain especially inhuman cries, probably of a stray animal or migratory bird, heard in the night by wakeful citizens. But in this idle village gossip the terrible old man took no interest at all. He was by nature reserved, and when one is aged and feeble, one's reserve is doubly strong. Besides, so ancient a sea captain must have witnessed scores of things much more stirring in the far off days of his unremembered youth. The Tomb by H. P. Lovecraft Cetibus when sulturned Placidus in Morta Requisium, Virgil In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the Demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh with patience and intelligence these isolated phenomena, seen and felt only by a psychologically sensitive few which lie outside its common experience. Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction between the real and the unreal, that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made conscious of them. But the prosaic materialism of the majority condemns as madness the flashes of supersight which penetrate the common veil of obvious empiricism. My name is Gervais Dudley and from earliest childhood I have been a dreamer and a visionary. Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world, spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little known books and enrobing the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home. I do not think that what I read in these books or saw in these fields and groves was actually what other boys read and saw there, but of this I must say little since detailed speech would but confirm those cruel slanders upon my intellect which I sometimes overhear from the whispers of the stealthy attendance around me. It is sufficient for me to relate events without analyzing causes. I have said that I dwelt apart from the visible world, but I have not said that I dwelt alone. There is no human creature made due for lacking the fellowship of the living. He invariably draws upon the companionship of things that are not or are no longer living. Close by my home there lies a singular wooded hollow in whose twilight deeps I spent most of my time reading, thinking and dreaming. Down its moss-covered slopes my first steps of infancy were taken and around its grotesquely gnarled oak trees my first fancies of boyhood were woven. Well did I come to know the presiding drides of those trees and often have I watched their wild dances and the struggling beams of waning moon, but of these things I must not now speak. I will tell only of the lone tomb in the darkest of the hillside thickets. The deserted tomb of the Hides, an old and exalted family whose last directus edit had been laid within its black recesses many decades before my birth. The vault to which I refer is an ancient granite weathered and discolored by the mists of dampness of generations. Excavated back into the hillside, the structure is visible only at the entrance. The door, a ponderous and forbidding slab of stone, hangs upon rusted iron hinges, and is fastened ajar in a clearly sinister way by means of heavy iron chains and padlocks according to a gruesome fashion of a half-century ago. The abode of race whose scions are inert had once crowned the declivity which holds the tomb, but had long since fallen victim to the flames which sprang up from a disastrous stroke of lightning. Of the midnight storm which destroyed this gloomy mansion, the older inhabitants of the region sometimes speak in hushed and uneasy voices, alluding to what they call divine wrath, in a manner that in later years vaguely increased the always strong fascination which I felt for the forest-dark and sepulchre. One man only had perished in the fire. When the last of the Hades were buried in this place of shade and stillness, the sad urnful of ashes had come from a distant land, to which the family had repaired when the mansion burned down. No one remains to lay flowers before the granite portal, and few cared to brave the depressing shadows which seemed to linger strangely about the water-worn sills. I shall never forget the afternoon when I first stumbled upon the half-hidden house of the dead. It was in mid-summer when the alchemy of nature transmutes the silden landscape into one vivid and almost homogeneous mask of green, when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moise-vedure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and vegetation. In such surroundings that might lose its perspective, time and space become trivial and unreal, and echoes of a forgotten prehistoric past beat incessantly upon enthralled consciousness. All day I had been wandering through the mystic groves of the hollow, thinking thoughts I need not discuss, and conversing with things I need not name. In years, a child of ten, I had seen and heard many wonders unknown to the throng, and was oddly aged in certain respects. When upon forcing my way between two savage clumps of briars, I suddenly encountered the entrance to the vault. I had no knowledge of what I had discovered. The dark blocks of granite, the door so curiously ajar, and the funerial carvings above the arch, aroused in me no associations of mournful or terrible character. Of graves and tombs I knew and imagined much, but had, on account of my peculiar temperament, been kept from all personal contact with churchards and cemeteries. The strange stone house in the woodland slope was to me only a source of interest and speculation, and its cold, damp interior into which I vainly peered through the aperture, so tantalizingly left contained for me no hint of death or decay. But in that instant of curiosity was born the madly unreasoning desire which has brought me to this hell of confinement. Spurred on by a voice which must have come from the hideous soul of the forest, I resolved to enter the beckoning gloom, in spite of the ponderous chains which barred my passage. In the waning light of day I alternately rattled the rusty impediments with the view to throwing wide the stone door, and essayed to squeeze my slight form through the space already provided. But neither plan met with success. At first curious I was not frantic, and when in the thickening twilight I returned to my home I had sworn to the hundred gods of the grove that at any cost I would someday force an entrance into the black, chilly depths that seemed calling out to me. The physician with the iron gray beard who comes each day to my room once told a visitor that this decision marked the beginnings of a pitiful monomania, but I will leave final judgment to my readers when they shall have learned all. The months following my discovery were spent in futile attempts to force the complicated padlock of the slightly open vault, and in carefully guarded inquiries regarding the nature and history of the structure. With the traditionally receptive ears of a small boy I learned much, although an habitual secretiveness caused me to tell no one of my information or my resolve. It is perhaps worth mentioning that I was not at all surprised or terrified on learning of the nature of the vault. My rather original ideas regarding life and death had caused me to associate the cold clay with the breathing body in a vague fashion, and I felt that the great sinister family of the burned-down mansion was in some way represented within the stone space I sought to explore. Mumbled tales of the weird rites and godless rebels of bygone years in the ancient hall gave me a new and potent interest in the tomb, before whose door I would sit for hours at a time each day. Once I thrust the candle within the nearly closed entrance, but could see nothing save a flight of damp stone steps leading downward. The odor of the place repelled yet bewitched me. I felt I had known it before in a past remote beyond all recollection, beyond even my tendency of the body I now possess. The year after I first beheld the tomb, I stumbled upon a worm-eaten translation of Plutarch's Lives in the book-filled attic of my home. Reading the Life of Theseus, I was much impressed by that passage telling of the great stone beneath which the boy's hero was to find his tokens of destiny whenever he should become old enough to lift its enormous weight. This legend had the effect of dispelling my keenest impatience to enter the vault, for it made me feel that the time was not yet right. Later I told myself I should grow to a strength and ingenuity which might able me to unfasten the heavily chained door with ease, but until then I would do better by conforming to what seemed to be the will of fate. Accordingly my watches by the dank portal became less persistent, and much of my time was spent in other, though equally strange, pursuits. I would sometimes rise very quietly in the night, stealing out to walk in those church-yards and places of burial from which I had been kept by my parents. What I did there I may not say, for I am not now sure of the reality of certain things, but I know that on the day after such an nocturnal ramble, I would often astonish those about me with my knowledge of topics almost forgotten for many generations. It was after not like that that I shocked the community with a queer conceit about the burial of the rich and celebrated squire Brewster, a maker of local history who was interred in 1711, and whose slate headstone bearing a graven skull and crossbones was slowly crumbling into powder. In a moment of childish imagination I vowed not only that the undertaker Goodman Simpson had stolen the silver buckled shoes, silk and hoes, and sat in small clothes of the deceased before burial, but that the squire himself, not full inanimate, had turned twice in his mound cover coffin on the day of internment. But the idea of entering the tomb never left my thoughts, being indeed stimulated by the unexpected genealogical discover that my own maternal ancestry possessed at least a slight link with the supposedly extinct family of the Hades, last of my paternal race, I was likewise the last of this older and more mysterious line. I began to feel that the tomb was mine, and to look forward with hot eagerness to the time when I might pass within the stone door and down those slimy stone steps in the dark. I now formed the habit of listening very intently at the slightly open portal, choosing my favorite hours at midnight stillness for the hot vigil. By the time I came of age I had made a small clearing in the thicket before the mold-stained facade of the hillside, allowing the surrounding vegetation to encircle and overhang the space like the walls and roof of Sylvan Bower. This Bower was my temple, the fastened door my shrine, and here I would lie outstretched on the mossy brown, thinking strange thoughts and dreaming of strange dreams. The night of the first revelation was a sultry one. I must have fallen asleep from fatigue, for it was with a distinct sense of awakening that I heard the voices of those tones and accents I hesitate to speak, of their quality I will not speak. But I may say that they presented certain uncanny differences in vocabulary, pronunciation, and mode of utterance. Every shade of the New England dialect from the uncouth syllables of the Puritan colonists to the precise rhetoric of fifty years ago seemed represented in that shadowy colloquy, though it was only later that I noticed the fact. At any time, indeed, my attention was distracted from this matter by another phenomena, a phenomenon so fleeting that I could not take oath upon its reality. I barely fancied as I awoke a light had been hurriedly extinguished within the sunken sepulcher. I do not think I was either astounded or panic-stricken, but I know that I was greatly and permanently changed that night. Upon returning home, I went with much directness to a rotting chest in the attic, wherein I found the key, which next day unlocked with ease the barrier I had so long stormed in vain. It was in the soft glow of late afternoon when I first entered the vault on the abandoned slope. A spell was upon me, and my heart leapt with an exultation I can but ill describe. As I closed the door behind me and descended the dripping steps by the light of my lone candle, I seemed to know the way. And though the candle sputtered with the stifling reek of the place, I felt singularly at home in the musty charnelhouse air. Looking about me, I beheld many marble slabs bearing coffins or the remains of coffins. Some of these were sealed and intact, but others had nearly vanished, leaving the silver handles and plates isolated amid certain curious leaps of whitish dust. Upon one plate I read the name of Sir Jeffrey Hyde, who had come from Sussex in 1640 and died here a few years later. In a conspicuous alcove was one fairly well preserved and untenanted casket adorned with a single name which brought to me both a smile and a shudder. An odd impulse caused me to climb upon the broad slab, extinguish my candle, and lie down within the vacant box. In the gray light of dawn I staggered from the vault and locked the chain of the door behind me. I was no longer a young man, though but twenty-one winters had chilled my bodily frame. Early rising villagers who had observed my homeward progress looked at me strangely and marveled at the signs of rippled revelry, which they saw in one whose life was known to be sober and solitary. I did not appear before my parents until after a long and refreshing sleep. Henceforth I haunted the tomb each night, seeing, hearing, and doing things I must never reveal. My speech, always susceptible to environmental influences, was the first thing to succumb to the change, and my suddenly acquired archaism of diction was soon remarked upon. Later a queer boldness and recklessness came into my demeanor till I unconsciously grew to possess the bearing of a man of the world, despite my lifelong seclusion. My formerly silent tongue waxed verbal with the easy grace of a chesterfield or the gothless cynicism of a Rochester. I displayed a particular erudition, utterly unlike the fantastic monkish war over which I had poured in youth, and covered the fly leaves of my books with facile and prompt two epigrams which brought up suggestions of gay, prior, and the sprightliest of Augustine wits and rhymesters. One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by reclaiming impalpably licorice accents in a fusion of 18th century Bacchanalian mirth. A bit of Georgian playfulness never recorded in a book which ran in something like this, come hither my lads with your tankers of ale and drink to the present before it shall fail. Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef for it is eating and drinking that bring us relief. So fill up your glass so life will soon pass. When you're dead, you'll never drink to your king or your lass. An acorn had a red rose, so they say, but what's a red rose if you're happy and gay? God split me, I'd rather be red whilst I'm here than white as a lily and dead half a year. So betty my miss, come give me a kiss, inhale there's no innkeeper's daughter like this. Young Harry, propped up as straight as he's able, will soon lose his wig and slip under the table. But fill up your goblets and pass them around better under the table than under the ground. So revel in chaff as he thirsts slowly quaff under six feet of dirt is less easy to laugh. The fiends strike me blue, I'm scarce able to walk and dam me if I can stand upright or talk. Here landlord bid betty to summon a chair, I'll try home for a while, for my wife is not there. So lend me a hand, I'm not able to stand, but I'm gay whilst I linger on top of the land. About this time I can see my present fear of fire and thunderstorms previously indifferent to such things, I add now an unspeakable horror of them, and I would retire to the innermost recesses of the house whenever the heavens threatened an electrical display. A favorite haunt of mine during the day was a ruined cellar in the mansion that had burned down, and in fancy I would picture the structure as it had been in its prime. On one occasion I startled a villager by leading him confidently to the shallow sub-cellar of whose existence I seemed to know in spite of the fact that it had been unseen and forgotten for many generations. At last came that which I had long feared. My parents alarmed at the altered manner and appearance of their only son commenced to exert over my movements a kindly espionage which threatened to result in disaster. I had told no one of my visits to the tomb having guarded my secret purpose with religious zeal since childhood. But now I was forced to excise care and threading the mazes of the wooded hollow that I might throw off a possible pursuer. My key to the vault I kept suspended from accord about my neck, its presence known only to me. I never carried out of the sepulcher any of the things I came upon whisked within its walls. One morning as I emerged from the damp tomb and fastened the chain of the portal with no too steady hand I beheld an adjacent thicket the dreaded face of a watcher. Surely the end was near for my bower was discovered and the objective of my nocturnal journeys revealed. The man did not accost me so I hastened home in an effort over here what he might report to my dear worn father. Were my sojourns beyond the chain door about to be proclaimed to the world? Imagine my delight in astonishment on hearing the spy inform my parrot in cautious whisper that I had spent the night in the bower outside the tomb. My sleep filmed eyes fixed upon the crevice where the padlocked portal stood ajar. By what miracle had the watcher this been deluded? I was now convinced that a supernatural agency protected me. Made bold by this heaven since circumstance I began to resume perfect openness in going to the vault, confident that no one could witness my entrance. For a week I tasted to the full the joys of that charnel conviviality which I must not describe when the thing happened and I was borne away to this accursed abode of sorrow and monotony. I should not have ventured out that night. For the taint of thunder was in the clouds and the hellish phosphorescence rose from the rank swap at the bottom of the hollow. The call of the dead too was different. Instead of the hillside tomb it was the charred cellar on the crest of the slope whose presiding demon beckoned me with unseen fingers. As I emerged from an intervening grove upon the plain before the ruin, I beheld in the misty moonlight a thing I had always vaguely expected. The mansion, gone for a century, once more reared its stately height to the raptured vision. Every window ablaze with the splendor of many candles. Up along the drive rolled the coaches of the Boston gentry, whilst on foot came a numerous assemblage of powdered exquisites from the neighboring mansions. With this strong I mingled, though I knew I belonged with the hosts rather than the guests. Inside the hall were music, laughter, and wine on every hand. Several faces I recognized, although I should have known them better had they been shriveled or eaten away by death and decomposition. Amidst a wild and reckless throng I was the wildest and most abandoned. Gay blasphemy poured in torrents from my lips, and in my shocking sallies I heeded no law of God, man, or nature. Suddenly, a peel of thunder, resident even above the din of the swinish revelry, claved the very roof and laid a hush of fear upon the boisterous company. Red tongues of flame and searing gusts of heat engulfed the house, and the roisters, struck with terror at the descent of calamity, which seemed to transcend the bounds of unguided nature, fled streaking into the night. I alone remained riveted to my seat by a groveling fear which I had never felt before. And then a second horror took possession of my soul. Burnt alive to ashes, my body dispersed by the four winds, I might never lie in the tomb of Heidi's. Was not my coffin prepared for me? Had I not a right to rest until eternity among the descendants of Sir Jeffrey Hyde? I would claim my heritage of death, even though my soul goes seeking through the ages for another corporeal tenement to represent it. On that vacant slab in the alcove of the vault, Jeffrey Hyde would never share the sad fate of Polynerus. As the phantom of the burning house faded, I found myself screaming and struggling madly in the arms of two men, one of whom was the spy who had followed me to the tomb. Rain was pouring down in torrents, and upon the southern horizon were flashes of the lightning that had so lately passed over our heads. My father, his face lined with sorrow, stood by as I shouted my demands to be laid within the tomb, frequently admonishing my capitals to treat me as gently as they could. A blackened circle on the floor of the ruined cellar told of a violent stroke from the heavens. And from this spot a group of curious villagers with lanterns were prying a small backs of antique workmanship which the thunderbolt had brought to light. Seizing my futile and now jakeless writhing, I watched the spectators as they viewed the treasure-trove, and was permitted to share of their discoveries. The box, whose fastenings were broken by the stroke, which had unearthed it, contained many papers and objects of value, but I had eyes for one thing alone. It was the porcelain miniature of a young man in a smartly curled bag-wick, and bore the initials J. H. The face was such that as I gazed, I might well have been studying my mirror. On the following day I was brought to this room with the barred windows, but I had been kept informed of certain things through an agent and simple-minded servitor, for whom I bore a fondness and infancy and who, like me, loves the churchyard. What I have dared to relate of my experiences within this vault has brought me only pitying smiles. My father, who visits me frequently, declares that at no time did I pass the chain portal and swears that the rusted padlock had not been touched for fifty years when he examined it. He even says that all the village knew of my journeys to the tomb, and that I was often watched as I slept in the bower outside the grim façade. My half-opened eyes fixed on the crevice that leads into the interior. Against these assertions I have no tangible proof to offer, since my key to the padlock was lost in the struggle and the night of horrors. The strange things of the past which I learned during these nocturnal meetings with the dead, he dismisses as the fruits of my lifelong and omnivorous browsing among the ancient volumes of the family library. Had it not been for my old servant Hiram, I should have by this time become quite convinced of my madness. But Hiram, loyal to the last, has held faith in me, and has done that which impels me to make public at least part of my story. A week ago he burst open the lock which changed the door to the tomb perpetually ajar, and descended with a lantern into the murky depths. On a slab in an alcove he found an old but empty coffin whose tarnished plate bears the single word Jervay. In that coffin, and in that vault, they have promised me I shall be buried. The End of the Tomb by H. B. Lovecraft