Vintage Vampire Stories (34 page)

Morley Charles Roberts (1857–1942) was born in London and educated at the Bedford School for boys in Bedford and Owens College in Manchester.

He was a prodigious author who penned more than fifty novels. Roberts travelled extensively and wrote about his adventures in places such as California, Canada, Rhodesia, the Orient and the South Seas. His best-known work may be
The Private Life of Henry Maitland
(1912), a fictionalized biography of his friend, George Gissing.

The following curiosity is from his collection
Midsummer Madness
, which was published by Eveleigh Nash in 1909.

I
n the early years preceding the First World War, vampire stories set in even more remote parts of the world saw the genre develop still further. The great explorer, Sir Richard Burton, for instance, offered an entire collection of stories from India entitled,
Vikram the Vampire
(1893); while George Soulie's translation of ‘The Corpse The Blood Drinker' from a Chinese book,
Strange Stories From The Lodge of Leisures
(1913) indicated that the vampire had been a part of that great nation's history for centuries. The fact that the tradition also existed in that other vast continent, Africa, was demonstrated by this next story, ‘The Blood Fetish' by Morley Roberts which is not only highly unusual, but has also never been anthologised before. If I indicate no more than it is the grisly tale of a severed hand that resorts to vampirism in order to sustain itself, I think the reader will be in no doubt that the word unusual is an understatement if anything! I have a feeling, too, that the story must have had quite an impact on the readers of the
Strand
magazine when it appeared in October 1908. Sadly, though, this famous magazine which gave the world Sherlock Holmes and made Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a household name, did little for Morley Roberts who contributed just as frequently and sometimes every bit as ingeniously as the creator of the Great Detective. He is today virtually forgotten, except among those collectors who treasure the rare volumes of his novels and short stories.

Morley Roberts (1857-1942) was born in London, the son of an income tax inspector, but spent much of his early life traveling around the world which accounts for the variety of settings of his stories. In 1876, for instance, he was helping to rebuild railways in Australia. This was followed by cattle ranching in America, projects in India,Africa, the South Seas and Central America, not to mention a period at sea, before he finally returned home and devoted the rest of his life to fiction writing. His first success as a novelist was with The Adventures of the Broad Arrow (1897), a ‘lost race' story set in Australia which contains a vivid picture of the Australian outback that is obviously drawn from personal experience. This was followed by similar tales of fantasy and the macabre including ‘The Colossus' (1899), ‘The Degradation of Geoffrey Alwith' (1908), ‘The Serpent's Fang' (1930), and ‘The White Mamaloi' (1931), plus a string of weird stories for the Strand and Pearson's Magazine like ‘A Thing of Wax',‘Out of the Great Silence', ‘The Man With The Nose', ‘The Fog' (a notable tale about London being threatened with a horrible doom) and ‘The Blood Fetish' which he indicated was inspired by a curious incident that happened to him while he was living in Africa. It is, I think, one of his very best short fictions and certainly unique among all the vampire stories I have read . . .

Outside the tent the forest was alive and busy, as it is for ever in the tropics of Africa. Birds called with harsh strange notes from dark trees, for, though the forest was even more full of creeping shadows, the sun had not yet sunk beyond the western flats through which the Kigi ran to the sea. Monkeys chattered and howled: and beneath this chorus was the hum of a million insects, that voice of the bush which never ceases. The sick man in the tent moved uneasily and looked at his companion.

‘Give me something to drink, doctor,' he said.

The doctor supported his head while he drank.

‘Were there any of your drugs in it?' asked the patient.

‘No, Smith,' said the doctor.

‘My taste is morbid,' said Smith. ‘I shan't last long, old chap.'

Dr Winslow looked out into the forest, into the night, for now it was night very suddenly.

‘Nonsense,' said Winslow. ‘You'll live to take your collection home and be more famous than you are now.'

‘Am I famous?' asked Simcox Smith. ‘I suppose I am in my way. I'm thought to know more than most about this country and the devilish ways of it. Every one acknowledges that, or everyone but Hayling.'

He frowned as he mentioned the name.

‘He's no better than an ignorant fool,' he remarked. ‘But we see strange things here, doctor.'

The doctor sighed.

‘I suppose so,' he said, ‘but what fools we are to be here at all.'

The dying man shook his head.

‘No, no, I've learnt a lot, old chap. I wish I could teach Hayling. I meant to, and now I can't. He'll spend all his time trying to discredit my—my discoveries.'

‘Lie quiet,' said the doctor, and for long minutes Simcox Smith and the anthropologist said nothing. He lay thinking. But he spoke at last.

‘I've not bought that thing from Suja,' he said.

‘Don't,' said Winslow.

‘You think it's fraud?'

‘I'm sure of it,' said Winslow.

Simcox Smith laughed.

‘You are as bad as Hayling.'

He put out his hand and drew Winslow closer to him.

‘Suja showed me what it did,' he said. ‘I saw it myself.'

‘On what?' asked Winslow quickly.

‘On a prisoner, one who was killed when you were away.'

‘And it did—'

‘Did something! My God, yes,' said the anthropologist, shivering.

‘What?' asked the doctor curiously, but with drawn brows.

‘He grew pale and it got red. I thought I saw the wrist,' said Simcox Smith. ‘I thought I saw it. I did see it.'

Winslow would have said it was all a delusion if Smith had been well. He knew how men's minds went in the rotten bush of the West Coast. He had seen intellects rot, and feared for his own.

‘Oh,' said Winslow.

The sick man lay back in his bed.

‘I'll buy it and send it to Hayling.'

‘Nonsense,' said Winslow; ‘don't.'

‘You don't believe it, so why shouldn't I send it? I will. I'll show Hayling! He's a blind fool, and believes there are no devilish things in this world. What is this world, old chap, and what are we? It's all horrible and ghastly. Fetch Suja, old chap.'

‘Nonsense, lie down and be quiet,' said Winslow.

‘I want Suja, the old rascal, I want him,' said Smith urgently. ‘I must have it for Hayling. I'd like Hayling or some of his house to grow pale. They'll see more than the wrist. Oh God! What's the head like?'

He shivered.

‘I want Suja,' he said moaning, and presently Winslow went out and send a boy for Suja, who came crawling on his hands and knees, for he was monstrously old and withered and weak. But his eyes were alive. They looked like lamps in a gnarled piece of wood. He kneeled on the floor beside Smith's bed. Smith talked to him in his own tongue that Winslow could not understand, and the two men, the two dying men, talked long and eagerly while Winslow smoked. Suja was dying, had been dying for twenty, fifty years. His people said they knew not how old he was. But Smith would die next day, said Winslow. Suja and Smith talked, and at last they came to an agreement. And then Suja crawled out of the tent.

‘Get me a hundred dollars out of my chest,' said Smith. ‘And when I am dead you will give him my clothes and blankets; all of them.'

‘All right if you say so,' said Winslow. He got the hundred dollars out, and presently the old sorcerer came back. With him he brought a parcel done up in fibre and a big leaf, and over that some brown paper on which was as label in red letters,' With great care'. It was a precious piece of paper, and not a soul thereabouts but Suja would have touched it.The red letters were some dreadful charm, so Suja had told the others.

‘This is it,' said Suja.

‘Give him the money,' said Smith eagerly.

He turned to Suja and spoke quietly to him in his own tongue.

‘It's not mine, Suja, but John Hayling's. Say it.'

Winslow heard Suja say something, and then he heard the words, ‘Shon 'Aylin'.'

Simcox Smith looked up at Winslow.

‘He gives it to Hayling,Winslow,' he said triumphantly.

‘Is that part of the mumbo jumbo?' asked Winslow, half contemptuously. But somehow he was not wholly contemptuous. The darkness of the night and the glimmer of the lamp in the darkness, and the strange and horrible aspect of the sorcerer affected him.

‘Shon 'Aylin',' mumbled Suja, as he counted his dollars.

‘Yes, it's part of it,' said Smith. ‘It won't work except on the one who owns it and on his people. It must be transferred. We have it to the slave who died.'

‘It's a beastly idea,' said Winslow.

‘You'll send it for me,' said Smith. ‘You must.'

‘Oh, all right,' said Winslow.

With trembling hands Smith put the packet into a biscuit tin.

Old Suja crept out into the darkness.

‘I believe anything with that old devil in the tent,' said Winslow.

Smith giggled.

‘It's true, and it's Hayling's. I always meant to send it to him, the unbelieving beast,' he said. ‘I wish I was going to live to see it.You'll send it,Winslow?'

‘Yes.'

‘You promise on your word of honour?' insisted Smith.

Reluctantly enough, Winslow gave his word of honour, and Smith was satisfied. And at ten o'clock that night he died in his sleep.

Winslow packed up all his papers and collections, and sent him down to the coast by carriers and canoe. The packet containing the fetish which Smith had bought from the ancient sorcerer he sent by post to England. He addressed it to A.J. Hayling, 201 Lansdown Road, St John's Wood. By this time Winslow had recovered his tone. He believed nothing which he could not see. He was angry with himself for having been affected by what Smith and old Suja had said and done.

‘It's absurd, of course,' said Winslow, with bend brows. He added, ‘but it's a beastly idea.'

When he sent the fetish away he wrote a letter to go with it, saying that Simcox Smith had often spoken to him of his rival in England. He described briefly what had occurred at the time of Smith's death, and gave some brief details of old Suja. He was obviously very old, and all the natives for miles round were frightened of him. Nevertheless, there was, of course, nothing in the thing. Latterly the climate and overwork had obviously affected Smith's mind. ‘I should not sent it if he had not made me promise to do so on my word of honour,' wrote Winslow.

He dismissed the matter from his mind, and the parcel and letter went home by the next Elder Dempster boat.

Mr Hayling was rather pleased than otherwise to hear of Simcox Smith's decease, although he said ‘poor fellow,' as one must when a scientific enemy and rival dies. They had quarreled for years when they met at the Societ's rooms, and had fought in the scientific journals. Hayling was an anthropological Mr Gradgrind. He wanted facts, and nothing but facts. He believed he was a Baconian, as he knew nothing of Bacon. It had never occurred to him that there was any mystery in anything. There was nothing but ignorance, and most men were very ignorant. The existence of men, of things, of the universe, of matter itself, were all taken for granted by him, in the same way they were taken for granted by the average man. What made Simcox Smith (who had a penchant for metaphysics) once jokingly called the Me-ness of the Ego was an absurdity. It was idiocy. When a man begins to think what made himself an Ego and what constitutes ‘Me', he is on the verge of insanity unless he is a great philosopher.