Professor Qualt
took a step toward the figure, but still it didn’t move.
“Professor,” whispered
Anna. “For God’s sake, remember what happened in the drawing room.”
Qualt said
nothing but took another step toward the figure. It remained where it was. A
slight draft blew its robes around its invisible feet, and the hood seemed to
shiver.
Qualt kept
walking, step by step, until he was only a few feet away from the hooded
figure. Then he said dryly, “What do you want?”
The figure
started to turn away, but Professor Qualt said, “I know who you are, you know,”
and it paused and stopped.
“The jar is
nearly open,” said Professor Qualt. “You can’t afford to miss that, can you?”
The figure
remained silent. Professor Qualt walked right up to it, only inches away, and
peered into the hood.
Then, the
figure spoke. Its voice was croaky, painful, and infinitely weary. It sounded
like a voice from a sepulchre, a voice that had experienced more doom and
misery than any normal being could ever know. It was oddly distorted, too, as
if the figure were speaking in an unseen wind.
“You know?” it
said simply. “Well, if you know, then you must know what this means to me.”
“You want me to
let you pass?” asked Professor Qualt. “Is that what you’re asking?”
“I have to
pass,” said the hooded figure. “Unless I pass, I am cursed forever.”
“I won’t let
you,” said Qualt. “You know as well as I do how wrong this is.”
The hooded
figure lowered its head. “Who are you to speak to me of wrong?” it said. “What
do you know of wrong? What do you know of ancient evil and the power that it
holds over all those who have been weighted down with its sorrow? What do you
know about anything?”
Professor Qualt
didn’t budge. “I may not know much,” he said calmly, “but I know who you are,
and I know what you’re trying to do.”
The hooded
figure was silent for a moment. Inside the turret, I could sense even more
insistently the pulse of the reviving djinn. Through the thick pine door, Miss
Johnson’s voice and other strange voices came echoing into the corridor. There
wasn’t much time left, and we all knew it.
“Do you hear
that?” asked Professor Qualt. “In a few minutes, the djinn will be let loose.
She doesn’t even realize you’re not there. She doesn’t even know that it’s all
going to go catastrophically wrong.”
“What do you
want me to do?” the figure said.
Professor Qualt
turned around and pointed to the turret door. “I want you to do what you should
have done all along. I want you to exorcize
that djinn
.
I want you to seal him up for all eternity and cast him away where he can’t
work his evil on other people, the way that he did on you.”
The hooded
figure spoke again in its whispery, broken voice. “Do you think I didn’t try,
you fool? Do you think I didn’t try to get rid of it? But once
that djinn
had a lust for freedom, it was too late! I wasn’t
strong enough! I’m still not. It’s only she who has what the
djinn
really wants
!”
Then the figure
raised its arm and cast back its hood. In the chilling light of the crescent
moon, I saw the hideously butchered face of my godfather, Max Greaves. He only
showed it for a moment, then dropped the concealing hood back again and was
once more drowned in darkness.
“Max,” I said
softly. “Max, what’s going on?”
The hooded
figure didn’t answer but stood there as before, unmoving and ethereal.
I left Anna’s
side and joined Professor Qualt Even though I could see nothing but blackness
inside Max’s
hood,
I still had a sickening mental
picture of what he had done to his face.
“Max,” I said.
“You recognize me, don’t you? It’s Harry!”
The figure
nodded. “I know,” said Max Greaves hoarsely, in that distorted graveyard voice.
“I know it’s you, Harry.”
“Max, we
thought you were dead. We went to your funeral.”
Max sighed, an
odd-sounding noise that was more like a dog than a man. “You were supposed to
think I was dead,” he said softly. “Everyone was supposed to think that, except
for those who knew.”
“But why?” said
Professor Qualt. “What was it all for?”
There was
renewed chanting from the turret room and a strange noise like hundreds of
people whispering at once. The pulse was stronger and more pronounced now, and
it throbbed through the house as if the very substance of the building were
coming to life. I heard rats running in panic through the rafters.
Anna called
out, “Hurry, it can’t be long now!” Max took a tentative step toward us. “You
must let me through,” he said urgently. “I mustn’t miss it, whatever happens.”
Professor Qualt
blocked his way. “First,” he said harshly, “you must tell us what happened.
Quickly now, if
you want to keep your appointment with Miss Johnson.”
Max swayed his
hooded head from side to side in desperation. “There’s too much to tell,” he
said. “You must let me pass. For the love of everything holy, let me pass!”
“Max,” I said
coaxingly. “All you have to do is tell us what happened.”
“There’s too
much! I can’t! Let me pass, Harry! I’m your own godfather, Harry! I took vows
to keep and protect you! Please Harry, let me pass!”
For a moment,
hearing that distorted, beseeching voice-a voice so different from the Max I
knew, and yet still so familiar-I felt tempted to give way. But Professor Qualt
sensed my wavering and held my arm. “We must know,” he reassured me in his
deep, rich voice. “He must tell us, or we’ll all be damned.”
Again, like a
rustling tide, the sound of whispering rose and fell in the turret room. The
Forty Thieves, I thought to myself.
Forty variations of
death, each one more agonizing and unbearable than the last.
Above the
whispering, I could hear the staccato voice of Miss Johnson, casting her Arabic
spells over the Jar of the Djinn with unceasing stridency.
Max lowered his
hooded head and said, “All right, if that is the only way. We have a few
minutes yet, by the sound of it. But if I tell you everything, you must agree
to let me pass. You must.”
“Come and sit
down,” said Professor Qualt blandly, ushering the hooded figure into the study
that had been the center of Max Greaves’s life and work. Max stood in the
gloomiest corner, while Qualt sat down in the big wooden chair by the desk, and
I propped myself on the edge of the desk beside him. Anna came to the door to
listen, but she kept a sharp eye on the corner of the corridor.
“I think you
had better try and tell us what happened, right from the very beginning,” said
Professor Qualt. “You knew what the jar was when you bought it, didn’t you?”
“Yes,”
whispered Max, “I did. I was told of its existence by a Persian black marketeer
when I was working on a drilling project. I thought little of it at first. Rich
white men are always being offered worthless Middle Eastern antiquities when
they travel abroad. But I took the trouble to go to the library in Bagdad when
I. was
there,
arid I found a book on the story behind
Ali Babah and the Forty Thieves. From then on, I was hooked by the whole idea
of it. I went back to the black marketeer and I arranged to buy the jar. It
was-and still is-one of the finest antiques I possess.”
Professor Qualt
coughed. “But it was the djinn you wanted, rather than just the jar, wasn’t
it?”
The hooded
figure was silent for a while. Then he said, “It says in the legend that the
Forty Thieves, if properly appeased, is one of the most powerful and loyal of
all ancient djinns. It can make a man rich beyond his dreams, successful out of
all imagination, handsome, cultured, and attractive to women.”
I said,
scarcely believing it, “Max-you wanted all that? You wanted to be rich and
attractive and all of that stuff?
With the help of an evil
spirit?”
The hooded
figure turned my way. “Harry,” he said, “it is difficult for you to judge. The
offer was never made to you. The possibility was never within your grasp. But
when you suddenly realize that wealth is within your reach-untold wealth,
fabulous wealth, fairy-tale wealth-then you begin to think differently.
Perhaps, you even go a little mad. I don’t know. But I wanted wealth and I
wanted success. I wanted it even more when my oil business began to go bust. I
thought that the djinn could give it to me.”
As he spoke,
the room began to pulse with the low, sinister rhythm of the emerging spirit.
The whispering had never stopped, but now it seemed more threatening than ever.
“We have to
hurry,” said Professor Qualt. “Tell us more, Mr. Greaves. Tell us when you
decided to raise the djinn from its prison.”
“I tried many
times, over the years,” said Max Greaves. “I used all the right ancient
incantations, and all the right spells, but somehow it never worked. The jar
remained dormant.
Silent.
In the end, I gave up trying
and left it around as an ornament. I expect Harry remembers when it used to
stand in the hall.”
I nodded. “I
remember. I always used to like the horses on it.”
“Then,” said Max, “I read about night-clocks.
That was the
key to my problem. The djinn of Ali Babah had been sent to sleep in its jar for
a million years and only the astrological power of a night-clock could possibly
revive it. I searched for a night-clock for several years. In the end, I spent
three-quarters-of-a-million dollars buying one, on the black market, in the
Soviet Union. I had great trouble getting it out of the country, but untold
wealth is a considerable incentive.”
“Go on,” said
Professor Qualt, keeping half an ear open for the rustling sound of the djinn’s
whispers.
“I awoke the
djinn,” said Max Greaves. “I set up the night-clock on the sundial plinth and
aligned it, and after several attempts, I awoke it. I was sitting in my study
reading one evening when I heard a sort of scratching noise. I went outside to
see if it was a rat in the corridor, or maybe someone trying to get in. It was
only when I went back into the study, where I used to keep the jar in those
days, that I realized what it was. My incantations and my use of the night-dock
had stirred it out of its million-year slumber. I listened to it scratching all
night, and I was very excited.”
“And then? What
went wrong?” I asked him. “Marjorie told me you were sick and had migraines.”
“It was the
djinn,” whispered Max. “It was far more powerful than I first thought. Soon
after it awoke, I began to have terrible nightmares in which I was dying in all
kinds of bizarre and horrible ways. I had persistent headaches, and I lost my
appetite. At night, I used to hear the djinn singing to itself inside its jar,
and I knew what it was singing about. It would soon be free!”
Professor Qualt
said, “Couldn’t you have destroyed it then? Or gotten rid of it?
While it was still inside its jar?”
“I didn’t want
to,” answered Max. “I still believed that I could control it and find a way to
make it my slave. But as the nightmares got worse, and my health began to
suffer, I knew that I would have to seal it away, imprison it, until I knew
more about it and how to make sure it didn’t destroy me. That’s why I sealed it
in the turret and took the precaution of removing every face in the whole
house.”
“Every face,” I
said quietly, “except your own.”
The hooded
figure was silent again. He left it up to us to imagine the night when the
influence of the malevolent djinn began to reach out to him and demand the very
features from his face. And we had seen for ourselves the hacked-up cheeks and the
awful cavity of the nose, and we knew what he had sacrificed to prevent the
djinn from leaving its jar and acquiring a master form.
“After that
night,” said Max quietly, “for the sake of my family and myself, I pretended to
die.
Dr. Jarvis
helped me, and for a while, he managed to conceal the fact that I was still
alive from Marjorie. But when Marjorie gave you permission to break into the
turret and remove the jar, well, we had to tell her everything. That’s why she
sent you out of the house so abruptly, Harry.
She had just
been told that I was still alive, and that I needed the djinn to restore my
face.”
“And Miss
Johnson?” said Professor Qualt. “I presume that she knew what was going on?”
Max lowered his
hooded head. “Miss Johnson made herself known to me the moment she arrived
here. Marjorie never knew that she was anything except a companion. But after
that night-the night I had to cut off my face-Miss Johnson told me that she
could help me tame the djinn. She said that as long as I asked for nothing more
than the repair of my face-as long as I didn’t expect riches or wealth or
success-then she would raise up the djinn for me. Well, I was glad to accept. I
am still suffering more pain than you could ever imagine.”
“Max,” I said,
“Miss Johnson is going to destroy the djinn. Didn’t you know that?”
Max looked in
my direction. A faint gleam of moonlight shone in his mutilated eye.
“Oh, no,” he
said huskily. “That’s quite impossible. Miss Johnson said she wanted the djinn
for her own purposes. She would never destroy it.”
“What?” said
Professor
Qualt.
“What do you
mean,
her own purposes?”
“I don’t know,”
replied Max. “The deal was that I got my face back, and let her use all my
Arabic magic books and robes and swords in return. She has a picture of my face
in there, and she’s going to get the djinn to restore it to me. That’s the
deal. That’s what we agreed,”
Professor Qualt
stood up. His face was white. “You mean
,
she’s going
to let the djinn stay alive?”