“I wish you were right,” he said.
S
HE HAD LAUGHED
at him, yes. But what was it he had left unsaid?
His theory was fantastic, ridiculous, unscientific. She knew her own mind—how well she knew it! Or did she?
She had to be alone, get away from the hotel, think it out for herself.
She took the car along the road to Port Elizabeth, watching, but not knowing for what. At least, not until she found it.
It was a valley, a sheer sweep from the road, giant trees, and a towering mountain opposite. Except for the house at the bottom or the slope it was identical with the landscape that called to her.
She got out of the car, stood on the edge of the road, and let the wind ruffle her hair.
This valley meant nothing to her. And so it provided proof that Dr. Penner must be wrong. Here it was, a valley, mountains and trees—the same perfect symbolism that he said had excited her complex. And yet she was unmoved.
She should have felt elation, satisfaction, only she couldn’t because of the house. It spoiled the picture. There were people living here: that was the difference.
She half-closed her eyes, so that the house below her was obscured, and filled her mind with the memory of the other valley. Then the house didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered except a point in the view-finder of her camera, a head on a photographic print.
She turned the car, went home, and was very silent at dinner. So was Dr. Penner, but the professor chatted excitedly about the morning.
She went to bed early.
And dreamed.
She was a cave-dweller, dressed in skins, and Penner and the professor were there, too, and all three of them were thrusting desperately against a huge rock at the mouth of their cave, to save themselves from something monstrous pushing on the other side. And all the time their muscles were like lead, and Penner, clumsy, hindered their efforts. Then suddenly she and the professor were alone, gradually being forced back. The stone jerked, hurling them aside. The monster walked through, and the monster was Penner.
Foolish and fantastic and meaningless. Yet she woke sobbing …
T
HEY SET OUT
early in the morning, loaded with knapsacks, and she was in a fever of impatience because the professor was driving, and he was driving too slowly.
Then they were there, parking the car, climbing out with their gear. On the lip of the descent the professor turned and faced them. In that second she saw him as a picture, with the shock of white hair like a patriarch’s, the keen eyes, the wrinkled neck protruding from the khaki shirt, the strangely youthful legs below the shorts.
“In a few hours we’ll know,” he said; and then added, “I found out something about this place in town yesterday. There’s a man living in town who, they say, is over a hundred years old. He told me he knew about this valley—that it was haunted, and that no person has ever set foot in it. He had a name for it, too—
Drakensvallei—
the Valley of the Dragon; but he could not tell me why it had been given that name.”
The going was not easy, but it was not as bad as they had expected. She felt a pleasurable yearning grow with every step; the professor sang, even Penner became quite animated.
He twitted her about the little pearl-handled pistol she carried. “A pop-gun,” he said. “I doubt whether it would kill a man, let alone a tyrannosaurus.”
“You’d be surprised what damage this thing can do,” she told him, “and I’m a very good shot. I didn’t bring it for the tyrannosaurus, though. There may be other things here. Snakes, for instance.”
There was a snake, and she did shoot it, but not before it had buried its fangs deep in the professor’s youthful leg.
Penner called urgently, “Have you got a knife?” but she could only shake her head. He cursed, tore a tin of sardines from a knapsack, opened it, and used the metal to cut a great gash in the vicinity of the wound. Then he applied his lips.
She winced, stared, and began to see nothing.
“No use,” said the professor. “Mamba.”
A little later he tried to say something else, but his paralysed larynx only made animal sounds.
Penner, perspiration pouring down his face, leaned over the old man. “What did you say? George, talk to me! Try again! I’m listening.”
But there was no life in the twisted lips, no breath even to expel guttural noises … She stood there, gun in hand, her consciousness sliding into ever narrowing focus. Penner rose. “We must report this. I’ll stay here. Go back, take the car, and fetch the police.”
He became aware of the expression on her face. “Do you hear me?”
She spoke then, not in answer to his question, but in tones full of lingering wonderment. “So his name was George,” she said.
He tried to grasp her arm, but she shook herself away and stood staring at something in the far distance; in reality, her lids were pricking with the narrowness of her concentration.
She said very simply, “It is calling me,” and he felt a flash of panic.
“Wait,” he said. “Listen. I know—believe me, I know—just how strong this obsession is with you. But please—concentrate on this—it is
only
an obsession! There is no tyrannosaurus—except in your mind. The professor is lying here dead. You must go back.”
She shook her head, and did not know she was shaking it.
“No,” he said with decision, “no. You wanted to know yesterday—now I must tell you. I can’t let you go on. I’m afraid. Afraid because I … love you, Mary.”
There was a swirling mist that obscured him; she could only see his eyes. They were very blue and wide apart and intense. Her finger moved, just a slight movement, and then he had a third eye. She was not even conscious of the noise of the shot.
He slid down into the mist and she went forward, stumbling over him, but not knowing she had stumbled.
Sometimes she ran and sometimes she walked, but there was no consciousness of physical weariness when she slowed her pace. There was no consciousness of anything except a pulse in her brain, a single pulse, reverberating, not with pain but with power. And as she went forward, the power grew, slowly exploding into soundless thunder, echoes concussing ever more and more, and those concussions mushrooming into greater beats.
She stopped when she knew she had to.
It was in a glade, and she peered upward expectantly to see what must be there. Her mind was heavy, feathered, and she knew a great sorrow because she could see nothing. Then there was a hint of movement in the trees, a swelling and gasping of the air, and she realized with a sudden flush of triumph that some things cannot be seen because they are too big.
She felt a mighty eye upon her, a red moon, and the beams trembled into her with a knowledge, a certainty of a presence, a consciousness of unhumanity and potent great age.
She called out, “What do you want of me?”
The pulsations in her brain fluttered and boomed telepathically, forced themselves down habitual neural patterns, twisted into her consciousness in the familiar form of words.
I am very pleased you have come
.
She wondered why It was pleased, and even with the thought the answer came, blurting from the pulse in high-toned spasms of power, so that the words they shaped in her brain were ringing echoes in her ears:
I am very, very hungry
.
• • •
THE LADY AND THE DRAGON
A
FTERWORD
So here is the riddle for this bizarre story: did the tyrannosaurus rex actually exist in this unlikely locale, or was the giant prehistoric monster merely a figment of the apparently rational lady’s mind?
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
M
ARK
T
WAIN
Although Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910) is justly famous as a great, perhaps
the
great American novelist, with such masterpieces to his credit as
Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
and
The Prince and the Pauper
, it is often forgotten that he was a seminal figure in the history of crime fiction.
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
(1867) was selected by Ellery Queen for his compendium of the 106 greatest mystery short stories of all time, as it told the tale of a stranger who successfully pulls off a great confidence game.
More significant is his semi-autobiographical
Life on the Mississippi
(1883), which contains a complete short story, “A Thumb-Print and What Became of It” (chapter 31), which is historically important because it contains the first fictional use of fingerprints as a method of identification.
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson
(1894) is frequently cited as the first fictional use of fingerprints in a detective story novel and was regarded as such a milestone in the genre that it was selected for the Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone Library of important books of detective fiction. While it obviously followed the pioneering short story in
Life on the Mississippi
by eleven years, it is still important because the entire plot revolves around Pudd’nhead’s courtroom explanation of the uniqueness of a person’s print.
“A Medieval Romance” is, candidly, only a mystery by virtue of its conclusion and its title. It was first published in the Buffalo
Express
in 1870 and in book form in
Mark Twain’s
(Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance
the following year. At least, that is the title on the title page. The title displayed when the story begins is “Awful, Terrible Medieval Romance.” It is neither awful nor terrible, hence the shorter title used for this volume.
A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE
BY
M
ARK
T
WAIN
C
HAPTER
I.
T
HE
S
ECRET
R
EVEALED.
I
T WAS NIGHT.
Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of Klugenstein. The year 1222 was drawing to a close. Far away up in the tallest of the castle’s towers a single light glimmered. A secret council was being held there. The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in a chair of state meditating. Presently he said, with a tender accent:
“My daughter!”
A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail, answered:
“Speak father!”
“My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath puzzled all your young life. Know, then, that it had its birth in the matters which I shall now unfold. My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of Brandenburgh. Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a
son
were born to me. And further, in case no son were born to either, but only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich’s daughter, if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed, if she retained a blameless name. And so I, and my old wife here, prayed fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain. You were born to us. I was in despair. I saw the mighty prize slipping from my grasp, the splendid dream vanishing away. And I had been so hopeful! Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no heir of either sex.
“‘But hold,’ I said, ‘all is not lost.’ A saving scheme had shot athwart my brain. You were born at midnight. Only the leech, the nurse, and six waiting-women knew your sex. I hanged them every one before an hour had sped. Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the proclamation that a
son
was born to Klugenstein, an heir to mighty Brandenburgh! And well the secret has been kept. Your mother’s own sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing.
“When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich. We grieved, but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed. She lived, she throve— Heaven’s malison upon her! But it is nothing. We are safe. For, Ha-ha! have we not a son? And is not our son the future Duke? Our well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?—for, woman of eight-and-twenty years as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you!
“Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother, and he waxes feeble. The cares of state do tax him sore. Therefore he wills that you shall come to him and be already Duke in act, though not yet in name. Your servitors are ready—you journey forth to-night.
“Now listen well. Remember every word I say. There is a law as old as Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people, s
HE SHALL DIE!
So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your judgments from the Premier’s chair, which stands at the
foot
of the throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life.”
“Oh, my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie! Was it that I might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights? Spare me, father, spare your child!”
“What, huzzy! Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has wrought for thee? By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of thine but ill accords with my humor. Betake thee to the Duke, instantly! And beware how thou meddlest with my purpose!”
L
ET THIS SUFFICE,
of the conversation. It is enough for us to know that the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl availed nothing. They nor anything could move the stout old lord of Klugenstein. And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed vassals and a brave following of servants.
The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter’s departure, and then he turned to his sad wife and said: