Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 (3 page)

 
          
 
"But she is a great medium - greater than
Eusapia Paladino, or Daniel Home," Zoberg argued earnestly. "She is
an important figure in the psychic world, lost and wasted here in this
backwater
- "

 
          
 
"Please don't miscall our town,"
interrupted Gird. "Well, Doctor, I agree to a final seance, as you call
it. But I'm going to be present."

 
          
 
Zoberg made a gesture as of refusal, but I
sided with Gird.

 
          
 
"If this is to be my test, I want another
witness," I told Zoberg.

 
          
 
"Ahh!
If it is a
success, you will say that he helped to deceive."

 
          
 
"Not I. I'll arrange things so there will
be no deception."

 
          
 
Both Zoberg and Gird stared at me. I wondered
which of them was the more disdainful of my confidence.

 
          
 
Then Susan Gird joined us, and for once I
wanted to speak of other subjects than the occult.

           
 
''That thing isn't my daughter
- "

 
          
 
It was Zoberg who suggested that I take Susan
Gird for a relaxing drive in my car. I acclaimed the idea as a brilliant one,
and she, thanking me quietly, put on an archaic-seeming cloak, black and heavy.
We left her father and Zoberg talking idly and drove slowly through the town.

 
          
 
She pointed out to me the Devil's Croft of
which I had heard from the doctor, and I saw it to be a grove of trees, closely
and almost rankly set. It stood apart from the sparser timber on the hills, and
around it stretched bare fields. Their emptiness suggested that all the
capacity for life had been drained away and poured into that central clump. No
road led near to it, and I was obliged to content myself by
idling
the car at a distance while we gazed and she talked.

 
          
 
"It's evergreen, of course," I said.
"Cedar and a little juniper."

 
          
 
"Only in the hedge around it," Susan
Gird informed me. "It was planted by the town council about ten years
ago."

 
          
 
I stared. "But surely there's greenness
in the center, too," I argued.

 
          
 
"Perhaps.
They
say that the leaves never fall, even in January."

 
          
 
I gazed at what appeared to be a little fluff
of white mist above it, the whiter by contrast with the black clouds that
lowered around the hill-tops. To my questions about the town council, Susan
Gird told me some rather curious things about the government of the community.
There were five councilmen, elected every year, and no mayor. Each of the five
presided at a meeting in turn. Among the ordinances enforced by the council was
one providing for support of the single
church.

 
          
 
"I should think that such an ordinance
could be set aside as illegal," I observed.

 
          
 
"I think it could," she agreed,
"but nobody has ever wished to try."

 
          
 
The minister of the church, she continued, was
invariably a member of the council. No such provision appeared on the town
records, nor was it even urged as a "written law," but it had always
been deferred to. The single peace officer of the town, she continued, was the
duly elected constable. He was always commissioned as deputy sheriff by
ofTicials at the county seat, and his duties included census taking, tax
collecting and similar matters. The only other officer with a state commission
was the justice; and her father, John Gird, had held that post for the last six
years.

 
          
 
"He's an attorney, then?" I
suggested, but Susan Gird shook her head.

 
          
 
"The only attorney in this place is a
retired judge, Keith Pursuivant," she informed me. "He came from some
other part of the world, and he appears in town about once a month - lives out
yonder past the Croft. As a matter of fact, an ordinary experience of law isn't
enough for our peculiar little government."

 
          
 
She spoke of her fellow-townsmen as quiet,
simple folk who were content for the most part to keep to themselves, and then,
yielding to my earnest pleas, she told me something of herself.

 
          
 
The Gird family counted its descent from an
original settler -though she was not exactly sure of when or how the settlement
was made - and had borne a leading part in community affairs through more than
two centuries. Her mother, who had died when Susan Gird was seven, had been a
stranger; an "outlander" was the local term for such, and I think it
is used in Devonshire, which may throw light on the original founders of the
community. Apparently this woman had shown some tendencies toward psychic
power, for she had several times prophesied coming events or told neighbors
where to find lost things. She was well loved for her labors in caring for the
sick, and indeed she had died from a fever contracted when tending the victims
of an epidemic.

 
          
 
"Doctor Zoberg had known her," Susan
Gird related. "He came here several years after her death, and seemed
badly shaken when he heard what had happened. He and Father became good
friends, and he has been kind to me, too. I remember his saying, the first time
we met, that I looked like Mother and that it was apparent that I had inherited
her spirit."

 
          
 
She had grown up and spent three years at a
teachers' college, but left before graduation, refusing a position at a school
so that she could keep house for her lonely father. Still idiotically
mannerless, I mentioned the possibility of her marrying some young man of the
town. She laughed musically.

 
          
 
"Why, I stopped thinking of marriage when
I was fourteen!" she cried. Then, "Look, it's snowing."

 
          
 
So it was, and I thought it time to start for
her home. We finished the drive on the best of terms, and when we reached her
home in midafternoon, we were using first names.

 
          
 
Gird, I found, had capitulated to Doctor
Zoberg's genial insistence. From disliking the thought of a seance, he had come
to savor the prospect of witnessing it - Zoberg had always excluded him before.
Gird had even picked up a metaphysical term or two from listening to the
doctor, and with these he spiced his normally plain speech.

 
          
 
"This ectoplasm stuff sounds
reasonable," he admitted. "If there is any such thing, there could be
ghosts, couldn't there?"

 
          
 
Zoberg twinkled, and tilted his beard-spike
forward. "You will find that Mr. Wills does not believe in
ectoplasm."

 
          
 
"Nor do I believe that the production of
ectoplasm would prove existence of a ghost," I added. "What do you
say.
Miss Susan?"

 
          
 
She smiled and shook her dark head. "To
tell you the truth, I'm aware only dimly of what goes on during a seance."

 
          
 
"Most mediums say that," nodded
Zoberg sagely.

 
          
 
As the sun set and the darkness came down, we
prepared for the experiment.

 
          
 
The dining room was chosen, as the barest and
quietest room in the house. First I made a thorough examination, poking into
corners, tapping walls and handling furniture, to the accompaniment of jovial
taunts from Zoberg. Then, to his further amusement, I produced from my grip a
big lump of seahng-wax, and with this I sealed both the kitchen and parlor
doors, stamping the wax with my signet ring. I also closed, latched and sealed
the windows, on the sills of which Uttle heaps of snow had begun to collect.

 
          
 
"You're kind of making sure, Mr.
Wills," said Gird, lighting a patent carbide lamp.

 
          
 
"That's because I take this business
seriously," I replied, and Zoberg clapped his hands in approval.

 
          
 
"Now," I went on, "off with
your coats and vests, gentlemen."

 
          
 
Gird and Zoberg complied, and stood up in
their shirt-sleeves. I searched and felt them both all over. Gird was a trifle
bleak in manner, Zoberg gay and bright-faced. Neither had any concealed
apparatus, I made sure. My next move was to set a chair against the parlor
door, seal its legs to the floor, and instruct Gird to sit in it. He did so,
and I produced a pair of handcufis from my bag and shackled his left wrist to
the arm of the chair.

 
          
 
"Capital!" cried Zoberg. "Do
not be so sour, Mr. Gird. I would not trust handcuffs on Mr. Wills - he was
once a magician and knows all the escape tricks."

 
          
 
"Your turn's coming, Doctor," I
assured him.

 
          
 
Against the opposite wall and facing Gird's
chair I set three more chairs, melting wax around their legs and stamping it.
Then I dragged all other furniture far away, arranging it against the kitchen
door. Finally I asked Susan to take the central chair of the three, seated
Zoberg at her left hand and myself at her right. Beside me, on the floor, I set
the carbide lamp.

 
          
 
"With your permission," I said, and
produced more manacles. First I fastened Susan's left ankle to Zoberg's right,
then her left wrist to his right. Zoberg's left wrist I chained to his chair,
leaving him entirely helpless.

 
          
 
"What thick wrists you have!" I
commented. "I never knew they were so sinewy."

 
          
 
"You never chained them before," he
grinned.

 
          
 
With two more pairs of handcuffs I shackled my
own left wrist and ankle to Susan on the right.

 
          
 
"Now we are ready," I pronounced.

 
          
 
"You've treated us like bank
robbers," muttered Gird.

 
          
 
"No, no, do not blame Mr Wills,"
Zoberg defended me again. He looked anxiously at Susan. "Are you quite
prepared, my dear?"

 
          
 
Her eyes met his for a long moment; then she
closed them and nodded. I, bound to her, felt a relaxation of her entire body.
After a moment she bowed her chin u
]3on
her breast.

 
          
 
"Let nobody talk," warned Zoberg
softly. "I think that this will be a successful venture.
Wills, the light."

 
          
 
With my free hand I turned it out.

 
          
 
All was intensely dark for a moment. Then, as
my eyes adjusted themselves, the room seemed to lighten. I could see the deep
gray rectangles of the windows, the snow at their bottoms,
the
blurred outline of the man in his chair across the floor from me, the form of
Susan at my left hand. My ears, Hkewise sharpening, detected the girl's gentle
breathing, as if she slept. Once or twice her right hand twitched, shaking my
own arm in its manacle. It was as though she sought to attract my attention.

 
          
 
Before and a little beyond her, something pale
and cloudy was making itself visible. Even as I fixed my gaze upon it, I heard
something that sounded like a gusty panting. It might have been a tired dog or
other beast. The pallid mist was changing shape and substance, too, and growing
darker. It shifted against the dim light from the windows, and I had a
momentary impression of something erect but misshapen - misshapen in an animal
way. Was that a head? And were those pointed ears, or part of a headdress? I
told myself determinedly that this was a clever illusion, successful despite my
precautions.

 
          
 
It moved, and I heard a ratde upon the planks.
Claws,
or perhaps hobnails. Did not Gird wear heavy
boots? Yet he was surely sitting in his chair; I saw something shift position
at that point. The grotesque form had come before me, crouching or creeping.

 
          
 
Despite my self-assurance that this was a
trick, I could not govern the chill that swept over me. The thing had come to a
halt close to me, was lifting itself as a hound that paws its master's knees. I
was aware of an odor, strange and disagreeable, like the wind from a great beast's
cage. Then the paws were upon my lap - indeed, they were not paws. I felt them
grip my legs, with fingers and opposable thumbs. A sniffing muzzle thrust
almost into my face, and upon its black snout a dim, wet gleam was manifest.