Authors: Franklin Gregory
THE next night, within ten minutes of each other, Justin Hardt and Manning Trent arrived. They found Pierre as they had never seen him before: nervous, ashen-faced, dejected, and somewhat drunk. But Pierre had reached his decision.
He talked, at first a bit garrulously. He had framed what he was going to say, and how he would develop each item, point by point.
They sat about the fire in the library. Hardt, who liked to talk himself, became impatient. But he listened none the less. And that was all Pierre asked. Once in a while Trent broke in:
“Oh, now, Pierre! After all, we're men ol experience—not imbeciles.”
“We’ll argue the points later,” Pierre replied once. “But just now—”
And he went on talking.
Finally he finished what he had to say. Hardt said with his professional air of assurance:
“It is circumstantial evidence, sir. Every bit of it! And, sir, it is not very good circumstantial evidence at that.”
“We may as well be frank,” Trent said, and there was a hint of amusement in his eyes. “When a good, solid, substantial citizen goes off the deep end, he does it right. Plain fact is, Pierre, you're drunk.”
Trent got up then and mixed a highball for himself. But Pierre cocked his head and listened. He said:
“She’s coming down the stairs now. I'll call her in here before she goes out. I want you to take a very, very close look.”
He arose and walked unsteadily to the hallway door.
“Pet, come here a moment.”
Sara, dressed for a winter's walk, entered the library slowly, almost reluctantly.
“Stand under that light, dear. No not quite under. To one side.”
Sara hesitated. She protested, “But why?” Pierre’s voice rose slightly, “Do as I say, dear. Near that light.”
She looked at her father questioningly. Then she obeyed. Pierre turned to Hardt and Trent. He kept his eyes on them; they, theirs on Sara.
Manning shook his head.
“Don’t get it,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to see?”
“Keep looking,” Pierre said evenly.
Hardt said in a low voice, “Man. I see nothing.”
Pierre glanced at the bewildered girl to reassure himself.
“You will. Keep looking.”
Then, almost as one, both men gasped. “That’s all,” Pierre said grimly. Wondering, Sara left the room. Nor did either Hardt or Trent take their astounded eyes from her until the door closed. Then—and only then— did either speak.
Trent’s voice shook,
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “She hasn’t any shadow”
There was no occasion for the three men to speak for the next several minutes. There was little enough they could say; little enough—for the vocabularies of skeptics are of limited use in such situations. Too, when the first shock began to wear and paralyzed nerves began to react tremulously, both Hardt and Trent needed liquid stiffening—a fast one, and a long, tall one.
Hardt’s face was white. His pince-nez spectacles tilted crazily on his nose and he did not trouble to straighten them. He sat slumped in a heavy chair and kept looking at the door through which Sara had disappeared. His pompousness was gone.
It was Trent who managed to speak first. He said with dull tonelessness:
“I suppose—this means she killed the Tilson boy.”
He said it questioningly, as if he knew it for a fact, yet didn't want, couldn't bring himself, to believe it. Pierre did not give him the satisfaction of an answer. Instead, he. too poured himself a drink.
“Don't think I'm callous,” he said, finally. “But I'm twenty-four hours up on you and I've had—well, time to recover from the first jolt. I—I d been looking over the family history when I discovered it She was on the lawn. The sun came out.”
He stood by the heavy smoking stand where the whiskey bottle stood. He placed his glass on the table and walked the length of the library to the study door. He disappeared momentarily, then returned, carrying a book and the big chart. He staggered slightly.
“Couldn’t quite figure,” he said thickly, “that l.g. beside those two names—Fernand and Jerome. But I know now.
Loup garo
u
—werewolf.”
Trent took the book without enthusiasm and began thumbing slowly through it.
“You’ll find it all there,” Pierre assured him. “Even the story—remember?—I told at the club that night. The one about Old Hugues.”
Trent said dully.
“Yes. I remember. Thought it was claptrap. And you, Doctor, argued the point. Amusing, of course. You. . . . Did you believe it?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Or I might have connected it with Sara’s—illness. But what I didn't tell that night—the part I forgot— was what you’ll find in the book. Hugues’ soul was finally saved. Saved? Well, at least it gained quiet. But it was only at a price to the devil, a quite gruesome price.”
He paused. He sipped from his glass. Hardt looked at him with glazed eyes. Pierre paused for so long that it seemed he had forgotten what he was saying. Trent impatiently prodded him:
“You were saying. . . .”
“Yes. A gruesome price. The curse was to rest on the eldest member of every seventh generation. Well, there’s your chart. You can count up. Sara’s the seventh since Armand.” He added with quick bitterness, “Thank God, she’s the last, too!”
THERE are shocks in lives so violent they are not quickly absorbed. Absorption takes time, and only little by little is the full picture comprehended. So it was with Trent. He said abruptly:
“But man. this means she’s lost her soul.”
And then Hardt finally spoke, trying to pull himself together, trying to implement his words with something of professional objectiveness:
“I don't,” he said, “believe in the soul.” Pierre shook his head.
“I do—now.”
And then again there was a silence. And at length, again. Pierre began to speak:
“It wasn’t that the curse just happened—automatically, so to speak. If you read the accounts there,” he leaned forward and tapped the book open on Trent’s knees, “you’ll find a process. The devil made the approach to the doomed victim, who then became a warlock.” He stopped suddenly. Then he exclaimed: “That’s it! David told me about visits she made. Remember where that baby’s head was found—the one you posted a reward about?” Trent glanced up fearfully.
“Yes. Of course. Yes. South Ninth Street.” “She was visiting a house there. So David said. He followed her one day. He was pretty worried. I haven’t the slightest doubt that it was there she sold her soul.”
Trent shook himself. Reason was tiding back to replace his mental paralysis.
“Damned impossible business!” he exclaimed- Pierre said:
“Very well—but you saw.”
“Hallucination,” Trent said gruffly.
“And would we all three of us see it at the same time?” Pierre asked.
“Why not? There’s mass delusion, isn’t there? How about that. Doctor?”
“It's been known,” said Hardt slowly. Trent, reassured, nodded. He said:
“We might have been able to see anything after you gave us your rigamarole. Power of suggestion.”
“I did not.” Pierre replied evenly, “so much as suggest the absence of a shadow. All I said was to examine her closely.”
Hardt nodded judiciously.
Trent was unconvinced.
“Matter of thought transference, then,” he said sullenly.
Pierre's smile was grim. His hold on himself was tightening now and the effects of the liquor-potent for a man who hadn’t had a drink in two years—were wearing thin.
“You wouldn’t,” he inquired smoothly, “argue against the occult by contending I used an occult power to show you something that wasn't?”
“There’s nothing occult about telepathy at all.” Trent maintained doggedly. “It’s a scientific fact.”
But Dr. Hardt shook his head.
“Scarcely, sir.” he said. “There have been experiments. But nothing proved.”
Then, again, there fell an island of tormenting silence. Trent arose and prowled nervously about the room. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “She’s out there now!”
Pierre said, gently, “And David’s with her.” Trent turned on him.
“You can’t mean . . . .”
Pierre shook his head, gesturing with a shaking hand.
“I don’t
know
. But Heinrich said there were two. You can telephone your house.” Trent reached for the telephone. He called his own number. His hand was steady. And his voice. He said:
“Oh—Julia? Is David in?” . . . His voice faltered then. “What time?” . . .
He replaced the instrument in its cradle. And now his hand shook. And his figure was limp as he crossed the room to his chair. It was not necessary for the others to question him.
“It was curious,” mused Dr. Hardt, “about those two wolves. I read about them in last night’s paper. The one, white—” He turned toward Pierre. “As was the case in your family, sir. The other, a smaller gray.”
Trent's eyes were narrow.
“What’s curious?” he demanded. “All it proves is that she—and, damn itl I won't believe it’s she—picked up with some vagabond. Likely as not a renegade police dog.”
Pierre's voice was subdued. “Heinrich said the gray was a wolf. And Messner said it was a wolf. And Nathan knows wolves. Fifty years ago he saw what were called the last Pennsylvania timber wolves and he says this —the gray—was identical.”
Trent said angrily, “You’re damned sure of yourself, Pierre.”
Pierre said mildly, “Do you think
I
wanted to believe? I’ve been fighting this thing out with myself for the past twenty-four hours. I haven’t slept. I know how you feel. With me. it was Sara. With you, so long as it was Sara, you could look at it halfway objectively. But with David. . . .”
“You don’t
know
it’s David!”
DR. HARDT, contrary to his usual bombastic manner, waited patiently for this side argument to end. Now that there was a pause, he continued:
“What was curious was your Heinrich's contention that he shot pointblank at close range and—didn't hit.”
He hesitated, then added, “I say it is curious because the old accounts often mention the immunity of were-animals to bullets.” He laughed heavily, with abrupt embarrassment. “I think you remember, I wrote a brochure on witchcraft once. If it proved anything, it showed I did a good bit of research on the subject. It was,” he smiled grimly, “entirely derivative.”
“And if I recall,” Pierre said, “the reviewers thought your treatment hardly sympathetic.” Hardt appeared not to hear him.
“There are some odd tales,” he resumed. He added hastily, “Don’t take me wrong. I myself, sir, have not the slightest faith.” Pierre thought the tone a bit too defensive. “In general it is said there are two types of werewolves. The one, selling his soul to the devil, receives as the highest reward for faithful service as a warlock the ability to shift his shape at will. And some of the stories tell how no ordinary attack upon the beast will prove effective.”
Trent said with a quick sneer, “Ah. And yet you tell us, Pierre, this crazy yam about Sara coming home with smashed fingers the night of that thing at Melton Crossing!”
Pierre replied with a voice now beginning to chill, “I only told you—because it was true.”
Dr. Hardt bowed his head thoughtfully. “Smashed? Swollen, I believe he said. No blood was there?”
“I didn’t see any,” Pierre said.
“It is said,” Hardt explained, “that sometimes they are bloodless. It might check. Of course, in the other type, there are many reports of werewolves revealed for what they—I say, allegedly—were by the loss of a leg or an arm in conflict with a huntsman.
“Petronius tells how a soldier, turned werewolf, was wounded in the neck by a pike. When he resumed human form, he had a bad gash in the exact spot.”
Trent interposed suspiciously, “What do you mean, other type?”
“The type,” explained Hardt, “that does not sell its soul to the devil.”
Trent began, “Then how can a person become—”
Then, guessing such a terrible answer as he did not wish to hear, he stopped abruptly. But Hardt said brutally, “Contagion.” “Personal contact?” inquired Pierre.
“That, sir, is the supposition. Frazier quotes the Toradja belief that a man is either born a werewolf or becomes one by mere contact. A bite would suffice; the human would be doomed.”
“Forever?”
“In cases of contagion, I believe, the curse is supposed to last seven years, unless the spell is broken.”
Pierre, who had been listening intently, asked, “But for the former type, Doctor?”
“Life.”
And once more there was an uncomfortably long pause.
Trent pierced a cigar and lit it. He lit it with the elaborate automatic lighter which Pierre kept on his smoking stand—the butt end of an old flintlock pistol. He snapped the trigger, and the steel hammer struck flint and gave flame. Trent held it a moment, examining it with an obvious attempt at selfcommand. He said wearily:
“At least, we don’t
know
that David. . . .”
Pierre (and Dr. Hardt could see how the man was terrorized at the thought of being the only victim; how he clutched at each straw to draw someone, anyone, into his own horrible web) said:
“We don’t know. But we surmise. I’ve good grounds to surmise. Sara told me how much she wanted David. And now—they’re together.”
If ever Trent felt like murder, he did now. He gripped the arms of his chair with his fists until his knuckles were drawn of blood. He glared at Pierre. And Dr. Hardt, whose lifelong study was the human mind, could see—even as he had deciphered Pierre— how eager Trent was to transfer his fear of the unknown to a hatred of something that was definitely flesh and blood. In mental turmoil he sought a scapegoat.
What Hardt did not know was that Manning Trent suddenly remembered David’s return on a recent night from a nocturnal tramp. Ever solicitous for his son’s welfare, he had observed that David’s lower lip was split; it was stained with blood. His hands relaxed from the chair arms. And he held up his left, fingers outspread, and with the forefinger of his right began to count—back.
That was it! That was the night of Melton Crossing!
Had they met, then? He remembered kisses of his own youth.
Trent’s head lowered and his hand stroked his hot forehead. After a time, from what seemed a long distance, he heard Hardt’s voice:
“Those prints. Didn’t I read where they led away from the Tilson child’s body and disappeared at the creek edge?”
“You did,” said Pierre.
“The reason I asked,” said Hardt, “was that, so the stories go, the werewolf often changes his shape by rolling in water. A baptism, in reverse, if you like. Is it true that your—ah, beast has been seen near the water each time?”
Pierre said, “Near by, usually. Seems to hug the watercourses.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Hardt, “for a quick change in order to avoid detection?”
The doctor spoke with a tolerant air. Pierre replied seriously:
“Perhaps.”
“And were there not,” pursued Hardt, “the prints of a human being across the stream from where the animal’s tracks disappeared?”
“There were,” Pierre said. “And now that you’ve brought that up. . . .”
He rose heavily from his chair and turned once more to the study. The eyes of both men followed him—Trent’s, bitterly; Dr. Hardt’s, with curiosity. When he reappeared, Pierre held a shoe box. He placed it on the coffee stand.
“I went over there this morning,” he said. “It’s on the Waterman place, just across the highway. Those prints were still there, most of them in pretty bad shape because of the wet weather. But there was one—frozen. . . .”
He held up a small plaster cast.
“I don’t pretend,” he said, “to be a detective. Still, heel and toe, here it is. And here—’’ he held up a woman’s oxford—”is the shoe that matches. I took it—from Sara’s closet.”