Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 Read online

  When you’re done with your duties there, why not come to visit? It’s April, the mint’s sprouting in my patch. I’ll make you one of those juleps I learned the secret of in New Orleans, back when you were just a boy.

  I say again, I wish I could be there. At that sort of a meeting, who can say what might break out and try to be direly effective?

  On which disquieting note, I close by saying

  Yours, etc.,

  KHP

  Thunstone mused, the letter in his hand. His old friend Pursuivant, still magnificent, still wise, still brilliantly scholarly in his eighties. Pursuivant, Tenderer of priceless but unappreciated service in both the w7orld wars. Pursuivant, who had given him that walking stick that hid the silver blade. On impulse, Thunstone picked up the stick, turned the crooked handle, and freed the blade it held. Silver, that blade, gray ancient silver, said to have been forged for the master smith Saint Dunstan, a long thousand years ago. He traced the Latin letters still legible upon it:

  Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine. So perish all thine enemies, O Lord. How useful that blade had been, now and then in Thunstone’s past.

  He slid the blade back into its sheath, again sipped brandy, and took up the other letter. No return address this time, but instantly he knew the writing of his name and address upon it. This envelope, too, he opened.

  Inside a card with just a single sentence in a clear, sure feminine hand:

  Sooner than you think!

  Sharon

  Of course. She who had been Sharon Hill, who held the title of the Countess of Monteseco. From whom he had actually fled, again and again, trying to keep her from involvement in his perilous adventures. Thunstone frowned, but the frown was a tender one, a fond one.

  The telephone rang, on the stand beside his chair. He picked it up. “Hello,” he said.

  “Thunstone?” a deep bass voice came to him.

  “Yes,” he said, “Thunstone here.”

  “It is better not.”

  A click as the connection was broken.

  Thunstone put up his own instrument. Now his frown was neither tender nor fond.

  What voice had spoken to him? He knew it from somewhere, but whose was it?

  II

  Thunstone pondered the question and could find no answer whatever. After a time, he stripped, went into the bathroom and showered, soaping his muscular body from head to foot. Then he shaved his square jaw, combed and parted his wet hair. He put on clean clothes, with a white shirt and a blue necktie sprinkled with white squares. His dark suit was conservative, but it had been skillfully cut by a good London tailor. Sitting down, he brought out a briar pipe, filled and lighted it, and thought.

  The telephone rang again. He picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Mr. Thunstone?” said a man’s voice, quite unrecognizable this time.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is George Pollock. I’m the chancellor here at Buford State. I hope to see you at dinner tonight.”

  “Yes, thank you, Chancellor. Professor Pitt spoke about that.”

  “Shall we say six-thirty, then? We’ll eat in the dining room at the Inn, and we can meet in the lobby. I’ll recognize you, Mr. Thunstone, I’ve seen your picture in the New York papers. There’ll be some other interesting people along.”

  “Will Professor Pitt be there?”

  “No, Lee can’t come. He’ll be speaking tomorrow morning, and he’s still deciding what to say. He’s earnest about such things.”

  “Thank you,” said Thunstone. “I’ll be in the lobby.”

  They both hung up. Thunstone got a flat envelope briefcase from his bag, and from that drew a printed program. AMERICAN FOLKLORE SURVEY SYMPOSIUM, Said big black capital letters at the top. Below that, it showed the program for the first day, tomorrow, Friday, at Whitney Auditorium. At ten o’clock in the morning, the chancellor would make opening remarks. Then Lee Pitt would give an introductory speech and afterward would preside over a panel including John Thunstone, Chief Reuben Manco, Professor Tashiro Shimada and Father Mark Bundren, each of these dealing with studies of the supernatural. At 1 p.m., Manco would speak on myths and legends of the American Indian. Then, at 3:30 p.m., Father Bundren on Satanism. At 8 p.m., at the Playmakers Theater, would be presented scenes from William Shakespeare that dealt with the classic supernatural.

  He saw that on Saturday, the final day, he and the others would appear on a morning panel with a question-and-an- swer period. At one o’clock, Pitt would speak on America’s literature of the supernatural. At three o’clock, Professor Shimada would discuss Oriental beliefs and their influence on various national cultures, Finally, at eight o’clock in the evening, he, Thunstone, was to deliver the final address of the program.

  The final address: he had better make it a good one. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter past six. He went out to the elevator and down to the lobby.

  Knots of people stood and chatted here and there. One group looked up at Thunstone as he came into view. One of them, dark and wiry, raised his hand in recognition. Thunstone walked toward them.

  A gaunt, gray-haired man stepped forward and held out his hand. ‘I’m George Pollock,” he said. “Glad to see you, and so are these others. Grizel, may I present Mr. Thunstone. Ms. Grizel Fian, sir.”

  She stepped forward to face Thunstone. She was tall and proud to look at; she wore a low-cut gown of soft blue material that clung to the splendid proportions of her figure. Her rich brown hair was drawn back into a bun. She had a handsome, ivory-pale face. Her red lips smiled as she looked at Thunstone with wide green eyes and gave him a slim, jeweled hand.

  “How much I’ve looked forward to meeting you,” she purred.

  “And Chief Reuben Manco,” said Pollock,

  “We know each other,” said the wiry man who had singled Thunstone out. His gray-black hair hung in two braids to bracket his brown, seamed face. “How are you, Thunstone?” he asked, and they shook hands,

  “This is Father Mark Bundren,” went on Pollock,

  The priest wore clericals, dark suit and vest, with a round white collar. He was tall, though not as tall as Thunstone, and rather stocky without being soft. He had a short, straight nose, a good-humored mouth. His dark hair was closely curled,

  “How do you do?” he said, giving Thunstone his hand, “I’ve heard about you, read about you. I hope to profit by talking to you.”

  “And this is Professor Tashiro Shimada,”

  Professor Shimada was a shred of a man, smaller than Manco. His face was leathery tan, with twinkling spectacles and a bristling gray mustache. His teeth gleamed whitely in a smile.

  “Now, shall we go on into the dining room?” invited Pollock. “I’ve reserved a table for us and ordered a dinner I hope you will all like, Here, follow me,” He led them into the dining room, A white-jacketed waiter met them inside the door and conducted them to a table in a comer, Pollock pointed them to seats, with Grizel Fian at the head and himself and Thunstone at her right and left. Father Bundren sat at the opposite end of the table, and Shimada and Manco took chairs at either side of him.

  The waiter brought steaming plates of onion soup, each with a slice of toasted French bread floating on top and a liberal sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese. Thunstone tasted his. It was excellent, and both Father Bundren and Shimada praised it aloud. Grizel Fian ate hers with manifest appetite. Glancing up at Thunstone, she smiled warmly, almost conspiratorially. They finished the soup, and Pollock spoke.

  “The subjects of folklore and legendry are universally interesting,” he said, as though saying something new. “In all countries and among all cultures.”

  “Fve thought that for a number of years,” contributed Father Bundren. “More than that, they’re also especially interesting to the classicist. Anyone who wants to laugh at them must be prepared to laugh at every religious faith in the world.”

  “Amen, if I may use a Christian locution when I worship the old Cherokee gods,” put in Reuben Man
co.

  “Japanese culture is built upon a tremendous fabric of immemorial folk belief, and I hope to explain that here,” said Shimada in his turn. His English had only a trace of accent.

  “Father Bundren mentioned laughter, and we may hear some of that on this occasion,” resumed Pollock. “There have already been several facetious newspaper stories here and there. Hundreds of people are coming, and not all of them with open minds. I depend on you gentlemen, yes and on you Grizel, to be highly impressive.”

  “We’ll try,” promised Manco, and, “We’ll try,” echoed Grizel Fian.

  The waiter had carried the soup plates away. Now he returned with other plates that bore slices of roast beef, browned potatoes, broccoli. He filled glasses with bright red wine, and set a wooden bowl of shredded lettuce before Pollock.

  “Will all of you start eating?” Pollock said to them. “I’m going to mix this salad, and if you don’t like it, I’ll cry.”

  He poured in olive oil from a cruet and stirred it judiciously with a wooden fork and spoon.

  “I remember an ancient recipe for salad,” offered Father Bundren. “You need a miser for the oil.”

  “I don’t think I was exactly miserly,” said Pollock, sprinkling salt and pepper and stirring those in, too. “But your recipe continues, a spendthrift for the vinegar.”

  He sluiced on a liberal portion of red wine vinegar.

  “And a madman to stir it,” pronounced Father Bundren.

  “Exactly,” said Pollock and stirred vigorously, then served out portions in smaller wooden bowls and handed them around. Grizel Fian tasted a forkful.

  “You needn’t cry on my account,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

  Thunstone took some in his turn. “Amen,” he said.

  They ate the beef and the vegetables and the salad, all with good appetites. Meanwhile, they talked about the coming programs. Pollock asked if Father Bundren had ever exorcised evil spirits.

  “I’ve done that from time to time,” said Father Bundren. “Some of my work lies among people on the Lower East Side in New York. They call on me for exorcisms, and I perform them, and hope that they work.”

  “Don’t you know if they work?” asked Grizel Fian quickly.

  “It’s hard to be sure of anything in an enigmatic world,” was the priest’s reply. “Yet there are certain phenomena— interesting, sometimes daunting. But I’ll save those until I have to speak here.”

  “There has to be exorcism among the Cherokees,” said Manco, buttering a fragment of roll. “We recognize evil and

  its spirits. We have the anisgina—malignant spirits of evil, and among them the worst are the Raven Mockers. If you happen to be sick or wounded, the Raven Mockers will come to suck your blood and kill you.”

  “Like vampires in the Old World,” suggested Thunstone. “You can find vampires in the New World, too,” said Manco. “The New World is older, perhaps, than the Old. To drive the Raven Mockers away from a victim will take all a skilled medicine man has of prayer and method.”

  “You sound as if you’ve had it to do, Mr. Manco,” remarked Grizel Fian.

  “Frequently,” Manco said, and no more than that. Carefully he cut a morsel of beef.

  Pollock smiled. “Professor Shimada,” he said, “these Occidental pronouncements must amuse a sophisticate of the Far East, from immemorial Japan.”

  Shimada smiled in his turn. “Sophistications are relative,” he said gently, “and as for being immemorial, we Japanese aren’t really that when we consider the long life of man on earth. Probably the first settlers of Japan came from what is now Korea, something like two hundred thousand years ago.” He smiled again. “Earlier by some ages than the first adventurers to Australia or America, no more than fifty thousand years ago, if that.”

  “You make my people sound like parvenus,” said Manco.

  “No, no, your earliest Americans came from the Asiatic mainland, like the Japanese, like the Australians.”

  “And perhaps like my European ancestors,” put in Thunstone. “I mean the first modem men in Europe, the Cro- Magnons. They may have come from Asia or even Africa, but they got there.”

  “I greatly admire the Cro-Magnon paintings,” said Shimada. “But to speak of the supernatural, it’s a prime factor in Japanese religious beliefs. I’m here to discuss that when I make my speech.”

  “And you, Mr. Thunstone?” asked Grizel Fian.

  She leaned toward him above the table. Her low-cut gown slid away from the upper slopes of her pale breasts. Her green eyes probed at him.

  “Do you believe in what they call the supernatural?” she asked. “Is it possible?”

  “If it’s possible, it’s not supernatural,” he replied. “I believe in what I’ve experienced, in the work I’ve done all my life. People talk to me about impossibilities and possibilities, but I feel that the old saying fits in somehow, that a likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.”

  “Whoever said such a thing?” inquired Pollock.

  “Aristotle did, for one,” said Manco, before Thunstone could speak.

  The waiter took away their plates and brought back slices of Black Forest torte and a pot of coffee. As they ate their dessert, they continued to talk of various beliefs and their influence. At last they were finished. Pollock and Grizel Fian and Shimada lighted cigarettes. Thunstone and Father Bundren produced briar pipes, and Manco brought out an Indian pipe of dark red stone, carved to resemble an elephant.

  “How interesting, your pipe,” said Grizel Fian to him. “An elephant shape to it.”

  “It was made by my ancestors, long before Columbus came to America,” he told her.

  “But an elephant?” she protested. “There weren’t any elephants in America then.”

  “Thousands of years before Columbus, there were elephants in America,” Manco said.

  “True,” seconded Father Bundren.

  Again Grizel Fian leaned herself toward Thunstone, giving him another glimpse of her bosom.

  “Mr. Thunstone,” she said, “do you remember a man named Rowley Thome?”

  “I remember him very clearly,” he answered her.

  “You do? And where is he now?”

  “As to that, I can’t really say. The last time we were together, I saw him vanish.”

  “Vanish?” repeated Pollock, interested. “Into thin air, you mean?”

  “I don’t know where he vanished to, but he was gone,” said Thunstone evenly. “He’d failed at something he tried to do, and the things he had summoned didn’t have any use for failures. They went back to whatever place they’d come from, and apparently they took Rowley Thome along, and I’ve heard nothing of him since.”

  “You’re having fun with us!” Pollock almost cried at him.

  “No,” said Thunstone. “I’m telling what seemed at the time to be the truth.”

  “Vanish?” said Pollock again. “You don’t know where. What sort of man was this Rowley Thome?”

  “Physically he was a big man, as big as I am,” Thunstone said. “Bald-headed, or perhaps closely shaved all over his skull. Strong, prominent features. That’s what he looked like. As for the rest—perhaps you’d like to describe that, Ms. Fian.”

  “Very wise,” she said, almost prayerfully. “Very deeply versed in strange sciences.”

  “But where did he go?” persisted Pollock. “Into some other dimension, are you trying to say?”

  “Science recognizes other dimensions,” said Thunstone patiently. “Mysticism recognizes other planes. I don’t pretend to be fully informed about these things, but”—he fixed Grizel Fian with his eyes—“I’m relieved and glad that he’s gone.”

  “Maybe he’s not gone,” she said, so softly that he could barely hear.

  “Well, all this is strange, it’s very interesting,” vowed Pollock. “Now, does anyone here wish anything else I can get for you?”

  “For myself, I’d be glad to be excused,” said Manco, ri
sing. “I’m to be on the panel with you others tomorrow morning, and later I must speak all alone, and I want to go over the things I must speak about.”

  They all got up, smiling at each other. They thanked Pollock for his hospitality and promised to see him the next morning. Then they started away into the lobby and through it. Grizel Fian walked along with Thunstone. Her shoulder touched his briefly.

  “You’re so sure that Rowley Thome vanished,” she whispered conspiratorially.

  “I saw him vanish,” said Thunstone. “He vanished like an image from a screen when the light goes off.”

  “Where did he go?” she asked. Her eyes were like green lamps. “Where?”

  “One lesson I’ve learned from the life I’ve led, is not to inquire too importunately into things like that. What are you trying to say? Do you think that he’s returned from wherever it was?”

  “I’ll want to talk to you again.”

  She turned away and crossed the lobby toward a door on the far side. She winnowed as she walked. Watching, Thunstone thought he saw her make a motion to a man beside the door.

  That man was powerfully built, big-nosed. He wore a checked sports coat. His head was as bald as a great egg.

  Then Shimada was at Thunstone’s elbow. “Chief Manco and I, we have rooms on the fourth floor,” he said. “Would you like to come with us? I look forward to more discussion with you.”

  “Perhaps in a little while, Professor,” said Thunstone. “I have some things to note down in my own room. What’s your number?”

  Shimada looked at the tag of his key, “Room 412,” he said.

  They went up together in the elevator, Thunstone got off at the third floor, strode quietly along the corridor to his room. As he unlocked the door, he heard the telephone ringing. He entered swiftly and picked up the instrument. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello yourself,” said a gentle voice he knew at once. “You’re hard to find at home. I’ve called and called.”

  “Sharon!” he almost shouted. “Where are you calling from?”

  “Why,” said Sharon, Countess Monteseco, quite easily, “right here in this Inn. I’m about two doors away from you. Room 316.”