The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe black drama

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe black dramaThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The black dramaAuthor: Manly Wade WellmanIllustrator: Margaret BrundageVirgil FinlayRelease date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74147]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1938Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK DRAMA ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The black dramaAuthor: Manly Wade WellmanIllustrator: Margaret BrundageVirgil FinlayRelease date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74147]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1938Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: The black drama

Author: Manly Wade WellmanIllustrator: Margaret BrundageVirgil Finlay

Author: Manly Wade Wellman

Illustrator: Margaret Brundage

Virgil Finlay

Release date: July 28, 2024 [eBook #74147]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1938

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK DRAMA ***

The Black DramaBy GANS T. FIELDA strange weird story about the eerypersonality known as Varduk, who claimeddescent from Lord Byron, and the hideousdoom that stalked in his wake.[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromWeird Tales June, July, August 1938.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

By GANS T. FIELD

A strange weird story about the eerypersonality known as Varduk, who claimeddescent from Lord Byron, and the hideousdoom that stalked in his wake.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromWeird Tales June, July, August 1938.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,Have been to me as rain unto the sandsSince that all-nameless hour.—Lord Byron:Manfred.

Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,Have been to me as rain unto the sandsSince that all-nameless hour.

Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,

Have been to me as rain unto the sands

Since that all-nameless hour.

—Lord Byron:Manfred.

Foreword

Unlike most actors, I do not consider my memoirs worth the attention of the public. Even if I did so consider them, I have no desire to carry my innermost dear secrets to market. Often and often I have flung aside the autobiography of some famous man or woman, crying aloud: "Surely this is the very nonpareil of bad taste!"

Yet my descendants—and, after certain despairful years, again I have hope of descendants—will want to know something about me. I write this record of utterly strange happenings while it is yet new and clear in my mind, and I shall seal it and leave it among my important possessions, to be found and dealt with at such time as I may die. It is not my wish that the paper be published or otherwise brought to the notice of any outside my immediate family and circle of close friends. Indeed, if I thought that such a thing would happen I might write less frankly.

Please believe me, you who will read; I know that part of the narrative will strain any credulity, yet I am ready with the now-threadbare retort of Lord Byron, of whose works more below: "Truth is stranger than fiction." I have, too, three witnesses who have agreed to vouch for the truth of what I have set down. Their only criticism is that I have spoken too kindly of them. If anything, I have not spoken kindly enough.

Like Peter Quince inA Midsummer Night's Dream, I have rid my prolog like a rough colt. Perhaps, like Duke Theseus, you my readers will be assured thereby of my sincerity.

Signed,Gilbert Connatt,New York CityAugust 1, 1938

We, the undersigned, having read the appended statement of Gilbert Connatt, do hereby declare it to be true in substance.

Signed,Sigrid HolgarKeith Hilary PursuivantJacob A. Switz

1. Drafted

The counterman in the little hamburger stand below Times Square gazed at me searchingly.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere?" he asked, and when I shook my head he made a gesture as of inspiration. "I got it, buddy. There was a guy in a movie like you—tall, thin—black mustache and eyes——"

"I'm not in pictures," I told him, quite truthfully as concerned the moment. "Make me a double hamburger."

"And coffee?"

"Yes." Then I remembered that I had but fifteen cents, and that double hamburgers cost a dime. I might want a second sandwich. "Make it a single instead."

"No, a double," piped somebody at my elbow, and a short, plump figure climbed upon the next stool. "Two doubles, for me and my friend here, and I'm paying. Gilbert Connatt, at half-past the eleventh hour I run onto you by the luck of the Switzes. I am glad to see you like an old father to see his wandering boy."

I had known that voice of old in Hollywood. Turning, I surveyed the fat, blob-nosed face, the crossed eyes behind shell-rimmed glasses, the thick, curly hair, the ingratiating smile. "Hello, Jake," I greeted him without enthusiasm.

Jake Switz waved at the counterman. "Two coffees with those hamburgers." His strange oblique gaze shifted back to me. "Gib, to me you are more welcome than wine at a wedding. In an uptown hotel who do you think is wondering about you with tears in her eyes as big as electric light bulbs?" He shrugged and extended his palms, as if pleased at being able to answer his own question. "Sigrid Holgar!"

I made no reply, but drew a frayed shirt-cuff back into the worn sleeve of my jacket. Jake Switz continued: "I've been wondering where to get hold of you, Gib. How would you like again to play leading man for Sigrid, huh?"

It is hard to look full into cross-eyes, but I managed it. "Go back to her," I bade him, "and tell her I'm not taking charity from somebody who threw me down."

Jake caught my arm and shook it earnestly. "But that ain't true, Gib. It's only that she's been so successful she makes you look like a loser. Gib, you know as well as you know your own name that it was you that threw her down—so hard she ran like a silver dollar."

"I won't argue," I said, "and I won't have charity."

I meant that. It hurt to think of Sigrid and myself as we had been five years ago—she an inspired but unsure newcomer from Europe, I the biggest star on the biggest lot in the motion-picture industry. We made a film together, another, became filmdom's favorite lovers on and off screen. Then the quarrel; Jake was wrong, it was Sigrid's fault. Or was it? Anyway, she was at the head of the class now, and I had been kicked away from the foot.

The counterman set our sandwiches before us. I took a hungry bite and listened to Jake's pleadings.

"It would be you doing her and me a favor, Gib. Listen this one time—please, to give Jake Switz a break." His voice quavered earnestly. "You know that Sigrid is going to do a stage play."

"I've read about it inVariety," I nodded. "Horror stuff, isn't it? LikeDracula, I suppose, with women fainting and nurses dragging them out of the theater."

"Nurses!" repeated Jake Switz scornfully. "Huh, doctors we'll need. At our show Jack Dempsey himself would faint dead away on the floor, it's so horrible!" He subsided and began to beg once more. "But you know how Sigrid is. Quiet and restrained—a genius. She wouldn't warm up, no matter what leading man we suggested. Varduk, the producer, mentioned you. 'Get Gilbert Connatt,' he said to me. 'She made a success with him once, maybe she will again.' And right away Sigrid said yes."

I went on eating, then swallowed a mouthful of scalding coffee. Jake did the same, but without relish. Finally he exploded into a last desperate argument.

"Gib, for my life I can't see how you can afford to pass it up. Here you are, living on hamburgers——"

I whirled upon him so fiercely that the rest of the speech died on his open lips. Rising, I tossed my fifteen cents on the counter and started for the door. But Jake yelled in protest, caught my shoulder and fairly wrestled me back.

"No, no," he was wailing. "Varduk would cut my heart out and feed it to the sparrows if I found you and lost you again. Gib, I didn't mean bad manners. I don't know nothing about manners, Gib, but have I ever treated you wrong?"

I had to smile. "No, Jake. You're a creature of instincts, and the instincts are rather better than the reasonings of most people. I think you're intrinsically loyal." I thought of the years he had slaved for Sigrid, as press agent, business representative, confidential adviser, contract maker and breaker, and faithful hound generally. "I'm sorry myself, Jake, to lose my temper. Let's forget it."

He insisted on buying me another double hamburger, and while I ate it with unblunted appetite he talked more about the play Sigrid was to present.

"Horror stuff is due for a comeback, Gib, and this will be the start. A lovely, Gib. High class. Only Sigrid could do it. Old-fashioned, I grant you, but not a grain of corny stuff in it. It was written by that English guy, Lord Barnum—no, Byron. That's it, Lord Byron."

"I thought," said I, "that there was some question about the real authorship."

"So the papers say, but they holler 'phony' at their own grandmothers. Varduk is pretty sure. He knows a thing or two, that Varduk. You know what he is going to do? He is getting a big expert to read the play and make a report." Jake, who was more press agent than any other one thing, licked his good-humored lips. "What a bust in the papers that will be!"

Varduk.... I had heard that name, that single name whereby a new, brilliant and mysteriously picturesque giant of the theatrical world was known. Nobody knew where he had come from. Yet, hadn't Belasco been a riddle? And Ziegfeld? Of course, they had never courted the shadows like Varduk, had never refused to see interviewers or admirers. I meditated that I probably would not like Varduk.

"Send me a pass when your show opens," I requested.

"But you'll be in it, Gib. Passes of your own you'll be putting out. Ha! Listen this once while I try to do you good in spite of yourself, my friend. You can't walk out after eating up the hamburgers I bought."

He had me there. I could not muster the price of that second sandwich, and somehow the shrewd little fellow had surmised as much. He chuckled in triumph as I shrugged in token of surrender.

"I knew you would, Gib. Now, here." He wrote on a card. "This is Varduk's hotel and room number. Be there at eight o'clock tonight, to read the play and talk terms. And here."

His second proffer was a wad of money.

"Get some clothes, Gib. With a new suit and tie you'll look like a million dollars come home to roost. No, no. Take the dough and don't worry. Ain't we friends? If you never pay me back, it will be plenty soon enough."

He beamed my thanks away. Leaving the hamburger stand, we went in opposite directions.

2. Byron's Lost Play

I did not follow Jake's suggestion exactly. Instead of buying new garments throughout, I went to the pawnshop where I had of late raised money on the remnants of a once splendid wardrobe. Here I redeemed a blue suit that would become me best, and a pair of hand-made Oxfords. Across the street I bought a fresh shirt and necktie. These I donned in my coffin-sized room on the top floor of a cheap hotel. After washing, shaving and powdering, I did not look so bad; I might even have been recognized as the Gilbert Connatt who made history in the lavish film version ofLavengro, that classic of gipsydom in which a newcomer named Sigrid Holgar had also risen to fame....

I like to be prompt, and it was eight o'clock on the stroke when I tapped at the door of Varduk's suite. There was a movement inside, and then a cheerful voice: "Who's there?"

"Gilbert Connatt," I replied.

The lock scraped and the door opened. I looked into the handsome, ruddy face of a heavy, towering man who was perhaps a year younger than I and in much better physical condition. His was the wide, good-humored mouth, the short, straight nose of the Norman Scot. His blond hair was beginning to grow thin and his blue eyes seemed anxious.

"Come in, Mr. Connatt," he invited me, holding out his broad hand. "My name's Davidson—Elmo Davidson." And, as I entered, "This is Mr. Varduk." He might have been calling my attention to a prince royal.

I had come into a parlor, somberly decorated and softly lighted. Opposite me, in a shadowed portion, gazed a pallid face. It seemed to hang, like a mask, upon the dark tapestry that draped the wall. I was aware first of a certain light-giving quality within or upon that face, as though it were bathed in phosphorescent oil. It would have been visible, plain even, in a room utterly dark. For the rest there were huge, deep eyes of a color hard to make sure of, a nose somewhat thick but finely shaped, a mouth that might have been soft once but now drew tight as if against pain, and a strong chin with a dimple.

"How do you do, Mr. Connatt," said a soft, low voice, and the mask inclined politely. A moment later elbows came forward upon a desk, and I saw the rest of the man Varduk start out of his protective shadows. His dark, double-breasted jacket and the black scarf at his throat had blended into the gloom of the tapestry. So had his chestnut-brown curls. As I came toward him, Varduk rose—he was of middle height, but looked taller by reason of his slimness—and offered me a slender white hand that gripped like a smith's tongs.

"I am glad that you are joining us," he announced cordially, in the tone of a host welcoming a guest to dinner. "Miss Holgar needs old friends about her, for her new stage adventure is an important item in her splendid career. And this," he dropped his hand to a sheaf of papers on the desk, "is a most important play."

Another knock sounded at the door, and Elmo Davidson admitted a young woman, short and steady-eyed. She was Martha Vining, the character actress, who was also being considered for a rôle in the play.

"Only Miss Holgar to come," Davidson said to me, with a smile that seemed to ask for friendship. "We've only a small cast, you know; five."

"I am expecting one more after Miss Holgar," amended Varduk, and Davidson made haste to add: "That's right, an expert antiquary—Judge Keith Pursuivant. He's going to look at our manuscript and say definitely if it is genuine."

Not until then did Varduk invite me to sit down, waving me to a comfortable chair at one end of his desk. I groped in my pockets for a cigarette, but he pressed upon me a very long and very good cigar.

"I admire tobacco in its naked beauty," he observed with the wraith of a smile, and himself struck a match for me. Again I admired the whiteness of his hand, its pointed fingers and strong sensitivity of outline. Such hands generally betoken nervousness, but Varduk was serene. Even the fall of his fringed lids over those plumbless eyes seemed a deliberate motion, not an unthought wink.

Yet again a knock at the door, a brief colloquy and an ushering in by Elmo Davidson. This time it was Sigrid.

I got to my feet, as unsteady as a half-grown boy at his first school dance. Desperately I prayed not to look so moved as I felt. As for Sigrid, she paused and met my gaze frankly, with perhaps a shade's lightening of her gently tanned cheeks. She was a trifle thinner than when I had last seen her five years ago, and wore, as usual, a belted brown coat like an army officer's. Her hair, the blondest unbleached hair I have ever known, fell to her shoulders and curled at its ends like a full-bottomed wig in the portrait of some old cavalier. There was a green flash in it, as in a field of ripened grain. Framed in its two glistening cascades, her face was as I had known it, tapering from brow to chin over valiant cheekbones and set with eyes as large as Varduk's and bluer than Davidson's. She wore no make-up save a touch of rouge upon her short mouth—cleft above and full below, like a red heart. Even with low-heeled shoes, she was only two inches shorter than I.

"Am I late?" she asked Varduk, in that deep, shy voice of hers.

"Not a bit," he assured her. Then he saw my awkward expectation and added, with monumental tact for which I blessed him fervently, "I think you know Mr. Gilbert Connatt."

Again she turned to me. "Of course," she replied. "Of course I know him. How do you do, Gib?"

I took the hand she extended and, greatly daring, bent to kiss it. Her fingers fluttered against mine, but did not draw away. I drew her forward and seated her in my chair, then found a backless settee beside her. She smiled at me once, sidewise, and took from my package the cigarette I had forsaken for Varduk's cigar.

A hearty clap on my shoulder and a cry of greeting told me for the first time that little Jake Switz had entered with her.

Varduk's brief but penetrating glance subdued the exuberant Jake. We turned toward the desk and waited.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began Varduk, seriously but not heavily, "a new-found piece of Lord Byron's work is bound to be a literary sensation. We hope also to make a theatrical sensation, for our new-found piece is a play.

"A study of Lord Byron evokes varied impressions and appeals. Carlyle thought him a mere dandy, lacking Mr. Brummel's finesse and good humor, while Goethe insisted that he stood second only to Shakespeare among England's poets. His mistress, the Countess Guiccioli, held him literally to be an angel; on the other hand, both Lamartine and Southey called him Satan's incarnation. Even on minor matters—his skill at boxing and swimming, his depth of scholarship, his sincerity in early amours and final espousal of the Greek rebels—the great authorities differ. The only point of agreement is that he had color and individuality."

He paused and picked up some of the papers from his desk.

"We have here his lost play,Ruthven. Students know that Doctor John Polidori wrote a lurid novel of horror calledThe Vampire, and that he got his idea, or inspiration, or both, from Byron. Polidori's tale in turn inspired the plays of Nodier and Dumas in French, and of Planché and Boucicault in English. Gilbert and Sullivan joked with the story inRuddigore, and Bram Stoker read it carefully before attemptingDracula. This manuscript," again he lifted it, "is Byron's original. It is, as I have said, a drama."

His expressive eyes, bending upon the page in the dimness, seemed to shed a light of their own. "I think that neither Mr. Connatt nor Miss Vining has seen the play. Will you permit me to read?" He took our consent for granted, and began: "Scene, Malvina's garden. Time, late afternoon—Aubrey, sitting at Malvina's feet, tells his adventures."

SinceRuthvenis yet unpublished, I take the liberty of outlining it as I then heard it for the first time. Varduk's voice was expressive, and his sense of drama good. We listened, intrigued and then fascinated, to the opening dialog in which young Aubrey tells his sweetheart of his recent adventures in wildest Greece. The blank verse struck me, at least, as being impressive and not too stiff, though better judges than I have called Byron unsure in that medium. Varduk changed voice and character for each rôle, with a skill almost ventriloquial, to create for us the illusion of an actual drama. I found quite moving Aubrey's story of how bandits were beaten off single-handed by his chance acquaintance, Lord Ruthven. At the point where Aubrey expresses the belief that Ruthven could not have survived the battle:

"I fled, but he remained; how could one man,Even one so godly gallant, face so many?He followed not. I knew that he was slain——"

"I fled, but he remained; how could one man,

Even one so godly gallant, face so many?

He followed not. I knew that he was slain——"

At that point, I say, the first surprize comes with the servant's announcement that Ruthven himself has followed his traveling companion from Greece and waits, whole and sound, for permission to present himself.

No stage directions or other visualization; but immediate dialog defines the title rôle as courtly and sinister, fascinating and forbidding. Left alone with the maid-servant, Bridget, he makes unashamed and highly successful advances. When he lifts the cap from her head and lets her hair fall down, it reminds one that Byron himself had thus ordered it among the maids on his own estate. Byron had made love to them, too; perhaps some of Ruthven's speeches in this passage, at least, came wholemeal from those youthful conquests.

Yet the seduction is not a gay one, and smacks of bird and snake. When Ruthven says to Bridget,

"You move and live but at my will; dost hear?"

and she answers dully:

"I hear and do submit,"

awareness rises of a darkling and menacing power. Again, as Aubrey mentions the fight with the bandits, Ruthven dismisses the subject with the careless,

"I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death,"

one feels that he fears and spares an enemy no more than a fly. And, suddenly, he turned his attentions to Malvina:

"Yes, I am evil, and my wickednessDraws to your glister and your purity.Now shall you light no darkness but mine own,An orient pearl swathed in a midnight pall——"

"Yes, I am evil, and my wickedness

Draws to your glister and your purity.

Now shall you light no darkness but mine own,

An orient pearl swathed in a midnight pall——"

Oscar, husband of the betrayed Bridget, rushes in at this point to denounce Ruthven and draw away his bemused mistress. At a touch from the visitor's finger, Oscar falls dead. Aubrey, arming himself with a club of whitethorn—a sovereign weapon against demons—strikes Ruthven down. Dying, the enchanter persuades Aubrey and Malvina to drag him into the open and so leave him. As the moon rises upon his body, he moves and stands up:

"Luna, my mother, fountain of my life,Once more thy rays restore me with their kiss.Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!...

"Luna, my mother, fountain of my life,

Once more thy rays restore me with their kiss.

Grave, I reject thy shelter! Death, stand back!...

"Curtain," said Varduk suddenly, and smiled around at us.

"So ends our first act," he continued in his natural voice. "No date—nor yet are we obliged to date it. For purposes of our dramatic production, however, I intend to lay it early in the past century, in the time of Lord Byron himself. Act Two," and he picked up another section of the manuscript, "begins a century later. We shall set it in modern times. No blank verse now—Byron cleverly identifies his two epochs by offering his later dialog in natural prose. That was the newest of new tricks in his day."

Again he read to us. The setting was the same garden, with Mary Aubrey and her cousin Swithin, descendants of the Aubrey and Malvina of the first act, alternating between light words of love and attentions to the aged crone Bridget. This survivor of a century and more croaks out the fearsome tale of Ruthven's visit and what followed. Her grandson Oscar, Mary's brother, announces a caller.

The newcomer explains that he has inherited the estate of Ruthven, ancient foe of the Aubreys, and that he wishes to make peace. But Bridget, left alone with him, recognizes in him her old tempter, surviving ageless and pitiless. Oscar, too, hears the secret, and is told that this is his grandfather. Bit by bit, the significance of a dead man restless after a century grows in the play and upon the servants. They swear slavishly to help him. He seeks a double and sinister goal. Swithin, image of his great-grandfather Aubrey, must die for that ancestor's former triumph over Ruthven. Mary, the later incarnation of Malvina, excites Ruthven's passion as did her ancestress.

Then the climax. Malvina, trapped by Ruthven, defies him, then offers herself as payment for Swithin's life. Swithin, refusing the sacrifice, thrusts Ruthven through with a sword, but to no avail. Oscar overpowers him, and the demoniac lord pronounces the beginning of a terrible curse; but Mary steps forward as if to accept her lover's punishment. Ruthven revokes his words, blesses her. As the Almighty's name issues from his lips, he falls dead and decaying.

"End of the play," said Varduk. "I daresay you have surmised what rôles I plan for you. Miss Holgar and Mr. Connatt are my choices for Malvina and Aubrey in the first act, and Mary and Swithin in the second. Miss Vining will create the rôle of Bridget, and Davidson will undertake the two Oscars."

"And Ruthven?" I prompted, feeling unaccountably presumptuous in speaking uninvited.

Varduk smiled and lowered his fringed lids. "The part is not too difficult," he murmured. "Ruthven is off stage more than on, an influence rather than a flesh-and-blood character. I shall honor myself with this title rôle."

Switz, sitting near me, produced a watch. We had been listening to the play for full two hours and a half.

Again a knock sounded at the door. Davidson started to rise, but Varduk's slender hand waved him down.

"That will be Judge Pursuivant. I shall admit him myself. Keep your seats all."

He got up and crossed the floor, walking stiffly as though he wore tight boots. I observed with interest that in profile his nose seemed finer and sharper, and that his ears had no lobes.

"Come in, Judge Pursuivant," he said cordially at the door. "Come in, sir."

3. Enter Judge Pursuivant

Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in appearance and manner. Our first impression was of a huge tweed-clad body, a pink face with a heavy tawny mustache, twinkling pale eyes and a shock of golden-brown hair. Under one arm he half crushed a wide black hat, while the other hand trailed a heavy stick of mottled Malacca, banded with silver. There was about him the same atmosphere of mature sturdiness as invests Edward Arnold and Victor McLaglen, and withal a friendly gayety. Without being elegant or dashing, he caught and held the regard. Men like someone like that, and so, I believe, do women who respect something beyond sleek hair and brash repartee.

Varduk introduced him all around. The judge bowed to Sigrid, smiled at Miss Vining, and shook hands with the rest of us. Then he took a seat at the desk beside Varduk.

"Pardon my trembling over a chance to see something that may have been written by Lord Byron to lie perdu for generations," he said pleasantly. "He and his works have long been enthusiasms of mine. I have just published a modest note on certain aspects of his——"

"Yes, I know," nodded Varduk, who was the only man I ever knew who could interrupt without seeming rude. "A Defense of the Wickedest Poet—understanding and sympathetic, and well worth the praise and popularity it is earning. May I also congratulate you on your two volumes of demonology,VampyriconandThe Unknown that Terrifies?"

"Thank you," responded Pursuivant, with a bow of his shaggy head. "And now, the manuscript of the play——"

"Is here." Varduk pushed it across the desk toward the expert.

Pursuivant bent for a close study. After a moment he drew a floor lamp close to cast a bright light, and donned a pair of pince-nez.

"The words 'by Lord Byron', set down here under the title, are either genuine or a very good forgery," he said at once. "I call your attention, Mr. Varduk, to the open capital B, the unlooped down-stroke of the Y, and the careless scrambling of the O and N." He fumbled in an inside pocket and produced a handful of folded slips. "These are enlarged photostats of several notes by Lord Byron. With your permission, Mr. Varduk, I shall use them for comparison."

He did so, holding the cards to the manuscript, moving them here and there as if to match words. Then he held a sheet of the play close to the light. "Again I must say," he announced at last, "that this is either the true handwriting of Byron or else a very remarkable forgery. Yet——"

Varduk had opened a drawer of the desk and once more he interrupted. "Here is a magnifying glass, Judge Pursuivant. Small, but quite powerful." He handed it over. "Perhaps, with its help, you can decide with more accuracy."

"Thank you." Pursuivant bent for a closer and more painstaking scrutiny. For minutes he turned over page after page, squinting through the glass Varduk had lent him. Finally he looked up again.

"No forgery here. Every stroke of the pen is a clean one. A forger draws pictures, so to speak, of the handwriting he copies, and with a lens like this one can plainly see the jagged, deliberate sketchwork." He handed back the magnifying glass and doffed his spectacles, then let his thoughtful eyes travel from one of us to the others. "I'll stake my legal and scholastic reputation that Byron himself wrote these pages."

"Your stakes are entirely safe, sir," Varduk assured him with a smile. "Now that you have agreed—and I trust that you will allow us to inform the newspapers of your opinion—thatRuthvenis Byron's work, I am prepared to tell how the play came into my possession. I was bequeathed it—by the author himself."

We all looked up at that, highly interested. Varduk smiled upon us as if pleased with the sensation he had created.

"The germ ofRuthvencame into being one night at the home of the poet Shelley, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The company was being kept indoors by rain and wind, and had occupied itself with reading German ghost stories, and then tried their own skill at Gothic tales. One of those impromptu stories we know—Mary Godwin's masterpiece,Frankenstein. Lord Byron told the strange adventures of Ruthven, and Polidori appropriated them—that we also know; but later that night, alone in his room, Byron wrote the play we have here."

"In one sitting?" asked Martha Vining.

"In one sitting," replied Varduk. "He was a swift and brilliant worker. In his sixteen years of active creative writing, he produced nearly eighty thousand lines of published verse—John Drinkwater reckons an average of fourteen lines, or the equivalent of a complete sonnet, for every day. This prodigious volume of poetry he completed between times of making love, fighting scandal, traveling, quarreling, philosophizing, organizing the Greek revolution. An impressive record of work, both in size and in its proportion of excellence."

Sigrid leaned forward. "But you said that Lord Byron himself bequeathed the play to you."

Again Varduk's tight, brief smile. "It sounds fantastic, but it happened. Byron gave the manuscript to Claire Clairmont, his mistress and the mother of two of his children. He wanted it kept a secret—he had been called fiend incarnate too often. So he charged her that she and the children after her keep the play in trust, to be given the world a hundred years from the date of his death."

Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that Byron had only one child by Claire Clairmont, Mr. Varduk. Allegra, who died so tragically at the age of six."

"He had two," was Varduk's decisive reply. "A son survived, and had issue."

"Wasn't Claire's son by Shelley?" asked Pursuivant.

Varduk shook his curly head. "No, by Lord Byron." He paused and drew a gentle breath, as if to give emphasis to what he was going to add. Then: "I am descended from that son, ladies and gentlemen. I am the great-grandson of Lord Byron."

He sank back into his shadows once more and let his luminous face seem again like a disembodied mask against the dark tapestry. He let us be dazzled by his announcement for some seconds. Then he spoke again.

"However, to return to our play. Summer is at hand, and the opening will take place at the Lake Jozgid Theater, in July, later to come to town with the autumn. All agreed? Ready to discuss contracts?" He looked around the circle, picking up our affirmative nods with his intensely understanding eyes. "Very good. Call again tomorrow. Mr. Davidson, my assistant, will have the documents and all further information."

Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real warmth.

"So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me—my suite is here in this hotel."

She bade Varduk good-night, nodded to the others and left quickly. I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant that recalled me to my surroundings.

"I've seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr. Connatt," he said graciously. "Shall we go out together? Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in another of my enthusiasms—late food and drink."

We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.

"Two of those, and soda—no ice," he directed. "Something to eat, Mr. Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato salad." Smiling, he turned back to me. "Good living is my greatest pursuit."

"Greater than scholarship?"

He nodded readily. "However, I don't mean that tonight's visit with Mr. Varduk was not something to rouse any man's interest. It was full of good meat for any antiquary's appetite. By the way, were you surprized when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?"

"Now that you mention it, I wasn't," I replied. "He's the most Byronic individual I have ever met."

"Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the manner a pose. But in any case, he's highly picturesque, and from what little I can learn about him, he's eminently capable as well. You feel lucky in being with him in this venture?"

I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. "Judge Pursuivant," I said honestly, "any job is a godsend to me just now."

"Then let me congratulate you, and warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me, you were saying, sir?"

"Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline mustache. "It's this play,Ruthven."

"What about it?"

His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.

"This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were we? Oh, yes, aboutRuthven. I was quite unreserved in my opinion, wasn't I?"

"So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the manuscript being genuine."

"So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content, albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my reputation on something else."

He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.

"It's a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most certainly wroteRuthven, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked less than ten years ago."

4. Into the Country

The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.

Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk's hotel. Only Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy of the play and left.

After my frugal lunch—I was still living on the money Jake Switz had lent me—I walked to the library and searched out a copy ofContemporary Americans. Varduk's name I did not find, and wondered at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to the P's. This time my search bore fruit:

Pursuivant, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Landing, Ky.; Col. and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861-65; attorney and journalist; d. 1898) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b. 1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male, 1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL. B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar, 1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917, to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U. S. A., 1917-19, D. S. C., Cong. Medal of Honor,Legion d'Honneur(Fr.). Ret. legal practice, 1919.Author:The Unknown That Terrifies,Cannibalism in America,Vampyricon,An Indictment of Logic, etc.Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.

Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male, 1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL. B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar, 1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917, to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U. S. A., 1917-19, D. S. C., Cong. Medal of Honor,Legion d'Honneur(Fr.). Ret. legal practice, 1919.

Author:The Unknown That Terrifies,Cannibalism in America,Vampyricon,An Indictment of Logic, etc.

Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.

Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.

Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.

Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.

Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of his existence—had she died in giving him life?—Keith Pursuivant was born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest; yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school, practise and election to the bench of his native community at the unheard-of age of twenty-three.

Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men. The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.

"Ret. legal practise, 1919." So he did not remain in his early profession, even though it promised so well. What then? Turn back for the answer. "Ph. D., Oxford, 1922." His new love was scholarship. He became an author and philosopher. His interests included the trencher—I had seen him eat and drink with hearty pleasure—the study hall, the steel blade.

What else? "Protestant"—religion was his, but not narrowly so, or he would have been specific about a single sect. "Independent"—his political adventures had not bound him to any party. "Unmarried"—he had lived too busily for love? Or had he known it, and lost? I, too, was unmarried, and I was well past thirty. "Address: Low Haven"—a country home, apparently pretentious enough to bear a name like a manor house. Probably comfortable, withdrawn, full of sturdy furniture and good books, with a well-stocked pantry and cellar.

I felt that I had learned something about the man, and I was desirous of learning more.

On the evening mail I received an envelope addressed in Jake Switz's jagged handwriting. Inside were half a dozen five-dollar bills and a railway ticket, on the back of which was scribbled in pencil: "Take the 9 a. m. train at Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Dillard Falls Junction with a car. J. Switz."

I blessed the friendly heart of Sigrid's little serf, and went home to pack. The room clerk seemed surprized and relieved when I checked out in the morning, paying him in full. I reached the station early and got on the train, securing a good seat in the smoking-car. Many were boarding the car, but none looked at me, not even the big fellow who seated himself into position at my side. Six years before I had been mobbed as I stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited in this very station—a hundred women had rent away my coat and shirt in rags for souvenirs——

"Would you let me have a match, Mr. Connatt?" asked a voice I had heard before. My companion's pale blue eyes were turned upon me, and he was tucking a trusty-looking pipe beneath his blond mustache.

"Judge Pursuivant!" I cried, with a pleasure I did not try to disguise. "You here—it's like one of those Grand Hotel plays."

"Not so much coincidence as that," he smiled, taking the match I had found. "You see, I am still intrigued by the paradox we discussed the other night; I mean, the riddle of how and whenRuthvenwas set down. It so happens that an old friend of mine has a cabin near the Lake Jozgid Theater, and I need a vacation." He drew a cloud of comforting smoke. "Judiciously I accepted his invitation to stay there. You and I shall be neighbors."

"Good ones, I hope," was my warm rejoinder, as I lighted a cigarette from the match he still held.

By the time our train clanked out of the subterranean caverns of Grand Central Station, we were deep in pleasant talk. At my earnest plea, the judge discussed Lord Byron.

"A point in favor of the genuineness of the document," he began, "is that Byron was exactly the sort of man who would conceive and write a play likeRuthven."

"With the semi-vampire plot?" I asked. "I always thought that England of his time had just about forgotten about vampires."

"Yes, but Byron fetched them back into the national mind. Remember, he traveled in Greece as a young man, and the belief was strong in that part of the world. In a footnote toThe Giaour—you'll find his footnotes in any standard edition of his works—he discusses vampires."

"Varduk spoke of those who fancied Byron to be the devil," I remembered.

"They may have had more than fancy to father the thought. Not that I do not admire Byron, for his talents and his achievements; but something of a diabolic curse hangs over him. Why," and Pursuivant warmed instantly to the discussion, "his very family history reads like a Gothic novel. His father was 'Mad Jack' Byron, the most sinful man of his generation; his grandfather was Admiral 'Foul-weather Jack' Byron, about whose ill luck at sea is more than a suggestion of divine displeasure. The title descended to Byron from his great-uncle, the 'Wicked Lord,' who was a murderer, a libertine, a believer in evil spirits, and perhaps a practising diabolist. The family seat, Newstead Abbey, had been the retreat of medieval monks, and when those monks were driven from it they may have cursed their dispossessors. In any case, it had ghosts and a 'Devil's Wood.'"

"Byron was just the man for that heritage," I observed.

"He certainly was. As a child he carried pistols in his pockets and longed to kill someone. As a youth he chained a bear and a wolf at his door, drank wine from a human skull, and mocked religion by wearing a monk's habit to orgies. His unearthly beauty, his mocking tongue, fitted in with his wickedness and his limp to make him seem an incarnation of the hoofed Satan. As for his sins——" The judge broke off in contemplation of them.

"Nobody knows them all," I reminded.

"Perhaps he repented," mused my companion. "At least he seems to have forgotten his light loves and dark pleasures, turned to good works and the effort to liberate the Greeks from their Turkish oppressors. If he began life like an imp, he finished like a hero. I hope that he was sincere in that change, and not too late."

I expressed the desire to study Byron's life and writings, and Pursuivant opened his suitcase on the spot to lend me Drinkwater's and Maurois' biographies, a copy of the collected poems, and his own work,A Defense of the Wickedest Poet.

We ate lunch together in the dining-car, Pursuivant pondering his choice from the menu as once he must have pondered his decision in a case at court. When he made his selection, he devoured it with the same gusto I had observed before. "Food may be a necessity," quoth he between bites, "but the enjoyment of it is a blessing."

"You have other enjoyments," I reminded him. "Study, fencing——"

That brought on a discussion of the sword as weapon and symbol. My own swordsmanship is no better or worse than that of most actors, and Pursuivant was frank in condemning most stage fencers.

"I dislike to see a clumsy lout posturing through the duel scenes ofCyrano de BergeracorHamlet," he growled. "No offense, Mr. Connatt. I confess that you, in your motion-picture interpretation of the rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, achieved some very convincing cut-and-thrust. From what I saw, you have an understanding of the sport. Perhaps you and I can have a bout or so between your rehearsals."

I said that I would be honored, and then we had to collect our luggage and change trains. An hour or more passed on the new road before we reached our junction.

Jake Switz was there as he had promised to be, at the wheel of a sturdy repainted car. He greeted us with a triumphant story of his astuteness in helping Elmo Davidson to bargain for the vehicle, broke off to invite Pursuivant to ride with us to his cabin, and then launched into a hymn of praise for Sigrid's early rehearsals of her rôle.

"Nobody in America seems to think she ever made anything but movies," he pointed out. "At home in Sweden, though, she did deep stuff—Ibsen and them guys—and her only a kid then. You wait, Gib, she'll knock from the theater public their eyes out with her class."

The road from the junction was deep-set between hills, and darkly hedged with high trees. "This makes the theater hard to get at," Jake pointed out as he drove. "People will have to make a regular pilgrimage to see Holgar play inRuthven, and they'll like it twice as well because of all the trouble they took."

Pursuivant left us at the head of a little path, with a small structure of logs showing through the trees beyond. We waved good-bye to him, and Jake trod on his starter once more. As we rolled away, he glanced sidewise at me. His crossed eyes behind their thick lenses had grown suddenly serious.

"Only one night Sigrid and I been here, Gib," he said, somewhat darkly, "and I don't like it."

"Don't tell me you're haunted," I rallied him, laughing. "That's good press-agentry for a horror play, but I'm one of the actors. I won't be buying tickets."

He did not laugh in return.

"I won't say haunted, Gib. That means ordinary ghosts, and whatever is here at the theater is worse than ghosts. Listen what happened."

5. Jake's Story

Sigrid, with Jake in attendance as usual, had left New York on the morning after Varduk's reading ofRuthven. They had driven in the car Jake had helped Davidson to buy, and thus they avoided the usual throngs of Sigrid's souvenir-demanding public, which would have complicated their departure by train. At Dillard Falls Junction, Varduk himself awaited them, having come up on a night train. Jake took time to mail me a ticket and money, then they drove the long, shadowy way to the theater.

Lake Jozgid, as most rural New Yorkers know, is set rather low among wooded hills and bluffs. The unevenness of the country and the poverty of the soil have discouraged cultivation, so that farms and villages are few. As the party drove, Varduk suggested an advantage in this remoteness, which suggestion Jake later passed on to Judge Pursuivant and me; where a less brilliant or more accessible star might be ignored in such far quarters, Sigrid would find Lake Jozgid to her advantage. The world would beat a path to her box office, and treasure a glimpse of her the more because that glimpse had been difficult of attainment.

The theater building itself had been a great two-story lodge, made of heavy logs and hand-hewn planks. Some sporting-club, now defunct, had owned it, then abandoned it when fish grew scarce in the lake. Varduk had leased it cheaply, knocked out all partitions on the ground floor, and set up a stage, a lobby and pew-like benches. The upper rooms would serve as lodgings for himself and his associate Davidson, while small out-buildings had been fitted up to accommodate the rest of us.

Around this group of structures clung a thick mass of timber. Sigrid, who had spent her girlhood among Sweden's forests, pointed out that it was mostly virgin and inquired why a lumber company had never cut logs here. Varduk replied that the property had been private for many years, then changed the subject by the welcome suggestion that they have dinner. They had brought a supply of provisions, and Jake, who is something of a cook in addition to his many other professions, prepared a meal. Both Sigrid and Jake ate heartily, but Varduk seemed only to take occasional morsels for politeness' sake.

In the evening, a full moon began to rise across the lake. Sitting together in Varduk's upstairs parlor, the three saw the great soaring disk of pale light, and Sigrid cried out joyfully that she wanted to go out and see better.

"Take a lantern if you go out at night," counseled Varduk over his cigar.

"A lantern?" Sigrid repeated. "But that would spoil the effect of the moonlight."

Her new director blew a smooth ring of smoke and stared into its center, as though a message lay there. Then he turned his brilliant eyes to her. "If you are wise, you will do as I say," he made answer.

Men like Varduk are masterful and used to being obeyed. Sometimes they lose sight of the fact that women like Sigrid are not used to being given arbitrary commands without explanation. She fell silent and a little frigid for half an hour—often I had seen her just as Jake was describing her. Then she rose and excused herself, saying that she was tired from the morning's long drive and would go to bed early. Varduk rose and courteously bowed her to the stairs. Since her sleeping-quarters, a cleverly rebuilt wood-shed, were hardly a dozen steps from the rear of the lodge building itself, neither man thought it necessary to accompany her.

Left alone, Varduk and Jake carried on an idle conversation, mostly about publicity plans. Jake, who in the show business had done successfully almost everything but acting, found in his companion a rather penetrating and accurate commentator on this particular aspect of production. Indeed, Varduk debated him into a new attitude—one of restraint and dignity instead of novel and insistent extravagance.

"You're right," Jake announced at length. "I'm going to get the releases that go out in tomorrow's mail. I'll cut out every 'stupendous' and 'colossal' I wrote into them. Good night, Mr. Varduk."

He, too, trotted downstairs and left the main building for his own sleeping-room, which was the loft of an old boathouse. As he turned toward the water, he saw a figure walking slowly and dreamily along its edge—Sigrid, her hands tucked into the pockets of the light belted coat she had donned against possible night chills, her head flung back as though she sought all of the moonlight upon her rapt face.

Although she had wandered out to the brink of the sandy beach and so stood in the open brightness, clumps of bushes and young trees grew out almost to the lake. One tufty belt of scrub willow extended from the denser timber to a point within a dozen feet of Sigrid. It made a screen of gloom between Jake's viewpoint and the moon's spray of silver. Yet, he could see, light was apparently soaking through its close-set leaves, a streak of soft radiance that was so filtered as to look murky, greenish, like the glow from rotting salmon.

Even as Jake noticed this flecky glimmer, it seemed to open up like a fan or a parasol. Instead of a streak, it was a blot. This extended further, lazily but noticeably. Jake scowled. And this moved lakeward, without leaving any of itself at the starting-point.

With its greatening came somewhat of a brightening, which revealed that the phenomenon had some sort of shape—or perhaps the shape was defining itself as it moved. The blot's edges grew unevenly, receding in places to swell in others. Jake saw that these swellings sprouted into pseudopodal extensions (to quote him, they "jellied out"), that stirred as though groping or reaching. And at the top was a squat roundness, like an undeveloped cranium. The lower rays of light became limbs, striking at the ground as though to walk. The thing counterfeited life, motion—and attention. It was moving toward the water, and toward Sigrid.

Jake did not know what it was, and he says that he was suddenly and extremely frightened. Yet he does not seem to have acted like one who is stricken with fear. What he did, and did at once, was to bawl out a warning to Sigrid, then charge at the mystery.

It had stolen into the moonlight, and Jake encountered it there. As he charged, he tried to make out the details; but what little it had had of details in the darkness now went misty, as its glow was conquered in the brighter flood of moonglow. Yet it was there, and moving toward Sigrid. She had turned from looking across the water, and now shrank back with a tremulous cry, stumbling and recovering herself ankle-deep in the shallows.

Jake, meanwhile, had flung himself between her and what was coming out of the thicket. He did not wait or even set himself for conflict, but changed direction to face and spring upon the threatening presence. Though past his first youth, he fancied himself as in fairly tough condition, and more than once he had won such impromptu fist-fights as spring up among the too-temperamental folk of the theater. He attacked as he would against a human adversary, sinking his head between his shoulders and flinging his fists in quick succession.

He got home solidly, against something tangible but sickeningly loose beneath its smooth skin or rind. It was like buffeting a sack half full of meal. Though the substance sank in beneath his knuckles, there was no reeling or retreat. A squashy return slap almost enveloped his face, and his spectacles came away as though by suction. At the same time he felt a cable-like embrace, such as he had imagined a python might exert. He smelled putrescence, was close to being sick, and heard, just behind him, the louder screaming of Sigrid.

The fresh knowledge of her danger and terror made him strong again. One arm was free, and he battered gamely with his fist. He found his mark, twice and maybe three times. Then his sickness became faintness when he realized that his knuckles had become slimy wet.

A new force dragged at him behind. Another enemy ... then a terrible voice of command, the voice of Varduk:

"Let go at once!"

The grasp and the filthy bulk fell away from Jake. He felt his knees waver like shreds of paper. His eyes, blurred without their thick spectacles, could barely discern, not one, but several lumpy forms drawing back. And near him stood Varduk, his facial phosphorescence out-gleaming the rotten light of the creatures, his form drawn up sternly in a posture of command.

"Get out!" cried Varduk again. "By what power do you come for your victim now?"

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