The clerk pulled out a plastic mask and slipped it over his face. It was a replica of his own features, subtly altered, so that the Governor was filled with sick terror at the sight of mouth, nose, cheeks, eyes, superimposed on those which differed only enough to be totally alien. The clerk stopped the elevator, opened the door. Walls of rough stone towered on all sides. The Governor held back until the clerk's steady stare forced him out onto the cracked, uneven pavement. There was a sweetish, sickening, vaguely familiar smell all around.
The clerk rubbed his hands together and then over Lampley's arm in a gesture of appraisal and possession. To his disgust the Governor saw the fabric of his jacket crumble and dissolve. His jacket and the shirt beneath, leaving his skin and flesh bare and vulnerable. The touch of the fingers was loathsome but he was unable to draw away from it. The clerk brought his face close, so that Lampley saw where the mouth of the mask, the eyeholes and nostrils failed to match those beneath.
"This man, this convict, this felon. You couldn't find it in you to reprieve him?"
"He had a fair trial," mumbled Lampley.
"A fair trial," repeated the clerk. "The jurors were gods, the judge was justice incarnate?"
"The judge was properly assigned; the jurors were members of a qualified panel."
"Your prerogative...?"
"My prerogative is to temper justice with mercy."
"And you were unable?"
"He murdered his father. He strangled him, he smothered him with a pillow, he stabbed him in the heart, he poisoned him, he shot him with a pistol; he killed his mother."
"Are you sure?" asked the clerk, puffing out the cheeks of his mask.
"There were witnesses, there was circumstantial evidence, he confessed. He clubbed his mother to death, he cut her throat, he held her under water till she died."
"Ah," sighed the clerk. "Ah.... Then no reprieve was possible?"
"No reprieve was possible," replied the Governor firmly.
"So be it," said the clerk.
Two pale men leapt from their hiding-place and bound Lampley's hands behind him. They led him through an archway into a courtyard. A masked executioner came forward and knelt at his feet. "I ask your forgiveness, noble sir, for what I am about. The deed is not mine, I am but a servitor."
The two pressed him toward the block and forced his head low. The semicircular hollow was cunningly contrived to fit any neck. The long gashes in the wood pulled and sucked at his throat. The executioner raised his ax and brought it down. Lampley's head rolled in the sawdust beyond the scaffold.
The two seized him and bound his arms. From a distance he heard the chaplain's breaking voice. They hustled him between the stone walls and dragged him up the gallows' steps. The hood was dropped over his head, then the rope. He felt the hardness of the knot against his left ear. There was no spittle in his mouth. They pushed his legs firmly into place over the trap. He heard the snick of the knife as it cut the cords. He swung in a narrowing circle.
They wrapped the thin cord deftly round and round his body, pinioning his arms cruelly to his sides. They slid him down the incline beneath the guillotine. When he was suitably in place the blade descended swiftly.
They seated him in the chair and strapped the electrodes to his leg and head. They pushed him into the sealed chamber and watched through greedy slits while the cyanide pellets were released. They tied the bandage over his eyes and stepped back just before the fusilade.
He lay broken on the rough stones. He remembered the touch of the golden horn and began breathing again. He remembered the island under the earth and his heart resumed beating. He remembered the young girl in the hotel and he could see and hear.
He rose slowly and viewed his bodies after their agonies. He walked past the bullet-chipped wall, the gas-chamber, electric chair, guillotine, gallows. His feet scuffed the bloody sawdust by the headsman's block.
The elevator stood empty and unattended. He went into the car, the door closed behind him and the car shot up. Again it slowed as it passed the darkened tiles in the upper reaches of the sub-basements, so that it was once more moving sluggishly as the lobby and the hall above came in sight. It stopped amid the elegance of the third floor, and the doors opened of themselves.
The elegance had become shabby beyond restoration. The thick carpet was worn to the threads. Woodwork and panelling no longer contrasted, they were the same uniform color of age. The chairs and sofas were ripped and tattered, their stuffing protruded like ruptures. The doll was in the same place and position; a pendulous belly and two elongated breasts had been sewed on with coarse stitches.
The iron railing around the quadrangle leaned outward; some of the balusters were missing. The concourse below was gone; he looked down on the dingy lobby, past the visible portion of the second floor hiding the reception desk. He turned away; the doors which had borne the esoteric numerals were blank, their panels warped and sagging.
He searched for the wide staircase to the second floor. His orientation had changed, he turned left instead of right, or right instead of left. In lieu of the grand flight he came upon a mean descent, twisting every few steps. The boards creaked and quivered under his weight.
His room was that of the first door he opened. His handbag rested on the foot of the bed, the wax figures of the bride and groom stood stiffly in the cloudy glass bell. Lampley tarried before the mirror, adjusting his sleeves, assuring himself there was neither lint nor soil on his jacket. He picked up his bag and gave a conventional last glance around, though he knew he had brought nothing more into the room.
He shut the door and tried the handle; it did not turn. Yet surely it had been closed before he went in to retrieve his bag? All the doors on the hall were shut, shut and locked and untenanted, their invitation withdrawn. He reached the narrow stairs. From these there was no landing halfway down, nor did they lead to the lobby. They ended at a solid door with a handle instead of a knob. He pressed the latch down doubtfully, anxious to be out of this blind end, unwilling to go back up and start down again.
The refrigerator room which had been so cold was now warm and stuffy. There was no igloo. The game and fish were gone, the brine barrels were tipped over, gaping unconcernedly. They gave out no smell save that of old wood. The sawdust had weathered. Most of the meat hooks were empty; from a few hung the bare skeletons of beeves and sheep and swine, the surface of their bones dry, cracked with long, thin crevices, crossed with fine hairlines. He recognized the buffalo because of the peculiar shape of the skull and horns lying on the floor below the carcass.
He pushed open the massive door to the kitchen. The old man was carving a set of chessmen out of bone; several finished pieces, rooks, knights and a queen stood in a row before him. In his thick fingers the other queen was taking recognizable shape. All had the same distortion as the plaster figures in the wall. He looked up at Lampley without interrupting his work. "A hard time, hay?"
The Governor nodded. The old man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Lampley followed its direction into the eating room. The idiot was trying to spoon soup into his mouth, spilling most of it, sputtering the rest into slimy bubbles. The clerk, his eyes closed, had one leg hooked over the corner of the table. The woman smiled at him, showing the gold tooth. There was no sign of the girl. Lampley sat down in the old man's place.
The clerk's eyes opened; the mask was gone. He pushed a hard crust of bread across the table. Lampley picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. "I'm going," he announced to them.
The clerk yawned. "I'd be afraid myself," he confessed.
"Afraid of what?" asked the Governor.
The clerk shrugged. "So much," he said hazily. "Everything." He smiled doubtfully.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," said the Governor boldly.
The clerk shook his head and left the room. The idiot gurgled and sputtered over his soup. Lampley reached for the corner of the napkin tied around his neck and wiped the drooling mouth. He took the stale crust and broke it into the soup. When the bits were soaked he used the spoon to feed them slowly to his son.
"It's no use," said the woman. "You can't teach him."
"I wasn't trying—" began Lampley, and let it go. "Where is your sister?"
She wrinkled her forehead. "Sister?"
He had asked the girl if she were this woman's daughter; she is my sister, she had said, and then something horrible—what?—happened. He could not be mistaken. "The girl who was here."
"I was the only girl here. There was no other. There never was another."
He looked at her searchingly; her face showed no disingenuousness. He finished feeding the defective and wiped his face again. He got up and went over to the woman. She reached out her hand to touch his. He bent and kissed her. Then he kissed his son.
In the lobby the clerk was behind the desk, idly searching through the empty pigeonholes. "Nothing for you," he said without turning around.
The Governor went through the entrance and down the steps into the afternoon sunlight. When he came to his car he reached in his pocket for the keys. His hand touched his watch. He pulled it out and saw it was running, the sweep-second hand revolving inexorably. He slipped it on his wrist and unlocked the car door.
Before getting in he glanced up and down the street and back at the hotel. He had never seen it or the town at any time in his life.
THE END