Manly Wade Wellman - Judge Pursuivant 01 (7 page)

           
 
''A trick that almost killed
you."

 
          
 
When I stepped into the open with Judge Keith
Pursuivant, the snow had ceased and a full moon glared through a rip in the
clouds, making diamond dust of the sugary drifts. By its light I saw my
companion with some degree of plainness - a man of great height and girth, with
a wide black hat and a voluminous gray ulster. His face was as round as the
moon itself, at least as shiny, and much warmer to look at. A broad bulbous
nose and broad bulbous eyes beamed at me, while under a drooping blond mustache
a smile seemed to be lurking. Apparently he considered the situation a pleasant
one.

 
          
 
"I'm not one of the
mob
,"
he informed me reassuringly. "These pastimes of the town do not attract
me. I left such things behind when I dropped out of politics and practice - oh,
I was active in such things, ten years ago up
North
-
and took up meditation."

 
          
 
"I've heard that you keep to
yourself," I told him.

 
          
 
"You heard correctly. My black servant
does the shopping and brings me the gossip. Most of the time it bores me, but
not today, when I learned about you and the killing of John Gird
- "

           
 
"And you came looking for me?"

 
          
 
"Of course.
By
the way, that was a wise impulse, ducking into the Devil's Croft."

 
          
 
But I shuddered, and not with the chill of the
outer night. He made a motion for me to come along, and we began tramping
through the soft snow toward a distant light under the shadow of a hill.
Meanwhile I told him something of my recent adventures, saving for the last my
struggle with the monster in the grove.

 
          
 
He heard me through, whistling through his
teeth at various points. At the end of my narrative he muttered to himself:

 
          
 
"The hairy ones shall dance
- "

 
          
 
"What was that, sir?" I broke in,
without much courtesy.

 
          
 
"I was quoting from the prophet Isaiah.
He was speaking of ruined Babylon, not a strange transplanted bit of the
tropics, but otherwise it falls pat.
Suggestive of a
demon-festival.
'The hairy ones shall dance there.'"

 
          
 
"Isaiah, you say? I used to be something
of a Bible reader, but I'm afraid I don't remember the passage."

 
          
 
He smiled sidewise at me. "But I'm
translating direct from the
original,
Mr Wills is the
name, eh?
The original Hebrew of the prophet Isaiah, whoever
he was.
The classic-ridden compilers of the King James Version have
satyrs dancing, and the prosaic Revised Version offers nothing more startling
than goats. But Isaiah and the rest of the ancient peoples knew that there were
'hairy ones.' Perhaps you encountered one of that interesting breed
tonight."

 
          
 
"I don't want to encounter it a second
time," I confessed, and again I shuddered.

 
          
 
"That is something we will talk over more
fully. What do you think of the Turkish bath accommodations you have just left
behind?"

 
          
 
"To tell you the truth, I don't know what
to think. Growing green stuff and a tropical temperature, with snow outside
- "

 
          
 
He waved the riddle away.
"Easily
and disappointingly explained, Mr Wills.
Hot springs."

 
          
 
I stopped still, shin-deep in wet snow.
"What!" I ejaculated.

 
          
 
"Oh, I've been there many times, in
defiance of local custom and law - I'm not a native, you see."
Once more his warming smile.
"There are at least three
springs, and the thick growth of trees makes a natural enclosure, roof and
walls, to hold in the damp heat. It's not the only place of its kind in the world,
Mr Wills. But the thing you met there is a trifle more difficult of
explanation. Come on home -we'll both feel better when we sit down."

 
          
 
We finished the journey in half an hour. Judge
Pursuivant's house was stoutly made of heavy hewn timbers, somewhat resembling
certain lodges I had seen in England. Inside was a large, low-ceilinged room
with a hanging oil lamp and a welcome open fire. A fat blond cat came leisurely
forward to greet us. Its broad, good-humored face, large eyes and drooping
whiskers gave it somewhat of a resemblance to its master.

 
          
 
"Better get your things off,"
advised the judge. He raised his voice. "William!"

 
          
 
A squat
negro
with a
sensitive brown face appeared from a door at the back of the house.

 
          
 
"Bring in a bathrobe and slippers for
this gentleman," ordered Judge Pursuivant, and himself assisted me to take
off my muddy jacket. Thankfully I peeled off my other garments, and when the
servant appeared with the robe I slid into it with a sigh.

 
          
 
"I'm in your hands. Judge Pursuivant,"
I said. "If you want to turn me over
- "

 
          
 
"I might surrender you to an
officer," he interrupted, "but never to a lawless mob. You'd better
sit here for a time - and talk to me."

 
          
 
Near the fire was a desk, with an armchair at
either side of it. We took seats, and when William returned from disposing of
my wet clothes, he brought along a tray with a bottle of whisky, a siphon and
some glasses. The judge prepared two drinks and handed one to me. At his
insistence, I talked for some time about the seance and the events leading up
to it.

 
          
 
"Remarkable," mused Judge
Pursuivant. Then his great shrewd eyes studied me. "Don't go to sleep
there, Mr Wills. I know you're tired, but I want to talk lycanthropy."

 
          
 
"Lycanthropy?"
I repeated. "You mean the science of the werewolf?" I smiled and
shook my head. "I'm afraid I'm no authority, sir. Anyway, this was no
witchcraft - it was a bona fide spirit seance, with ectoplasm."

 
          
 
"Hum!" snorted the judge.
"Witchcraft, spiritism!
Did it ever occur to you that
they might be one and the same thing?"

 
          
 
"Inasmuch as I never believed in either
of them, it never did occur to me."

 
          
 
Judge Pursuivant finished his drink and wiped
his mustache. "Skepticism does not become you too well, Mr Wills, if you
will pardon my frankness. In any case, you saw something very werewolfish
indeed, not an hour ago. Isn't that the truth?"

 
          
 
"It was some kind of a trick," I
insisted stubbornly.

 
          
 
"
A trick
that
almost killed you and made you run for your life?"

 
          
 
I shook my head. "I know I saw the
thing," I admitted. "I even felt it." My eyes dropped to the
bruised knuckles of my right hand. "Yet I was fooled - as a magician, I
know all about fooling. There can be no such thing as a werewolf."

 
          
 
"Have a drink," coaxed Judge
Pursuivant, exactly as if I had had none yet. With big, deft hands he jxjured
whisky, then soda, into my glass and gave the mixture a stirring shake.
"Now then," he continued, sitting back in his chair once more,
"the time has come to speak of many things."

 
          
 
He paused, and I, gazing over the rim of that
welcome glass, thought how much he looked like a rosy blond walrus.

 
          
 
"I'm going to show you," he
announced, "that a man can turn into a beast, and back again."

           
 
''To a terrified victim he is
doom
itself."

 
          
 
He leaned toward the bookshelf beside him,
pawed for a moment,
then
laid two sizable volumes on
the desk between us.

 
          
 
"If this were a fantasy tale, Mr
Wills," he said with a hint of one of his smiles, "I would place
before you an unthinkably rare book -one that offered, in terms too brilliant
and compelling for argument, the awful secrets of the universe, past, present
and to come."

 
          
 
He paused to polish a pair of pince-nez and to
clamp them ujxin the bridge of his broad nose.

 
          
 
"However," he resumed, "this is
reality, sober if uneasy. And I give you, not some forgotten grimoire out of
the mystic past, but two works by two recognized and familiar
authorities."

 
          
 
I eyed the books. "May I see?"

 
          
 
For answer he thrust one of them, some six
hundred pages in dark blue cloth, across the desk and into my hands. ''Thirty
Years of Psychical Research, by the late Charles Richet, French master in the
spirit-investigation field," he informed me.
"Faithfully
and interestingly translated by Stanley De Brath.
Published
here in America, in 1923."

 
          
 
I took the book and opened it. "I knew
Professor Richet, slightly. Years ago, when I was just beginning this sort of
thing, I was entertained by him in London. He introduced me to Conan
Doyle."

 
          
 
"Then you're probably familiar with his
book. Yes? Well, the other," and he took up the second volume, almost as
large as the Richet and bound in light buff, "is by Montague Summers, whom
I call the premier demonologist of today. He's gathered all the
lycanthropy-lore available."

 
          
 
I had read Mr Summers' Geography of Witchcraft
and his two essays on the vampire, and I made bold to say so.

 
          
 
"This is a companion volume to
them," Judge Pursuivant told me, opening the book. "It is called The
Werewolf He scrutinized the flyleaf
. "
Published
in 1934- thoroughly modem, you see. Here's a bit of Latin, Mr Wills: Intrabunt
lupi rapaces in vos, non parcentes gregi."

 
          
 
I crinkled my brow in the effort to recall my
high school Latin, then began slowly to translate, a word at a time:
"'Enter hungry wolves -'"

 
          
 
"Save that scholarship," Judge
Pursuivant broke in. "It's more early Scripture, though not so early as
the bit about the hairy ones - vulgate for a passage from the Acts of the
Apostles, twentieth chapter, twenty-ninth verse
. '
Ravenous
wolves shall enter among you, not sparing the flock.' Apparently that
disturbing possibility exists even today."

 
          
 
He leafed through the book. "Do you
know," he asked, "that
Summers
gives
literally dozens of instances of lycanthropy, things that are positively known
to have happened?"

 
          
 
I took another sip of whisky and water.
"Those are only legends, surely."

 
          
 
"They are nothing of the sort!" The
judge's eyes protruded even more in his earnestness, and he tapped the pages
with an excited forefinger. "There are four excellent cases listed in his
chapter on France alone - sworn to, tried and sentenced by courts
- "

 
          
 
"But weren't they during the
Middle
Ages?" I suggested.

 
          
 
He shook his great head.
"No,
during the Sixteenth Century, the peak of the Renaissance.
Oh, don't
smile at the age, Mr Wills. It produced Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Galileo,
Leonardo, Martin Luther; Descartes and Spinoza were its legitimate children,
and Voltaire builded upon it. Yet werewolves were known, seen, convicted
- "

 
          
 
"Convicted on what grounds?" I
interrupted quickly, for I was beginning to reflect his warmth.

 
          
 
For answer he turned more pages, "Here is
the full account of the case of Stubbe Peter, or Peter Stumpf," he said.
"A contemporary record, telling of Stumpfs career in and out of wolf-form,
his capture in the very act of shifting shape, his confession and execution -
all near Cologne in the year 1589. Listen."

 
          
 
He read aloud: "'Witnesses that this is
true. Tyse Artyne. William Brewar. Adolf Staedt. George Bores.
With divers others that have seen the same.'"
Slamming
the book shut, he looked up at me, the twinkle coming back into his spectacled
eyes. "Well, Mr Wills? How do those names sound to you?"

 
          
 
"Why, like the names of honest German
citizens."

 
          
 
"Exactly.
Honest, respectable, solid. And their testimony is hard to pass off with a
laugh, even at this distance in time, eh?"

 
          
 
He had almost made me see those witnesses,
leather-jerkined and broad-breeched, with heavy jaws and squinting eyes, taking
their turn at the quill pen with which they set their names to that bizarre
document. "With divers others that have seen the same" perhaps too
frightened to hold pen or make signature . . .

 
          
 
"Still," I said slowly,
"Germany of the Renaissance, the Sixteenth Century; and there have been so
many changes since."

 
          
 
"Werewolves have gone out of fashion, you
mean? Ah, you admit that they might have existed." He fairly beamed his
triumph. "So have beards gone out of fashion, but they will sprout again
if we lay down our razors. Let's go at it another way. Let's talk about
materialization - ectoplasm - for the moment." He relaxed, and across his
great girth his fingertips sought one another. "Suppose you explain,
briefly and simply, what ectoplasm is considered to be."

 
          
 
I was turning toward the back of Richet's
book. "It's in here. Judge Pursuivant. To be brief and simple, as you say,
certain mediums apparently exude an unclassified material called ectoplasm.
This, at first light and vaporescent, becomes firm and takes shape, either upon
the body of the medium or as a separate and Hving creature."

 
          
 
"And you don't believe in this
phenomenon?" he prompted, with something of insistence.

 
          
 
"I have never said that I didn't," I
replied truthfully, "even before my experience of this evening
went
so far toward convincing me. But, with the examples I
have seen, I felt that true scientific control was lacking. With all their
science, most of the investigators trust too greatly."

 
          
 
Judge Pursuivant shook with gentle laughter.
"They are doctors for the most part, and this honesty of theirs is a
professional failing that makes them look for it in others. You - begging your
pardon - are a magician, a professional deceiver, and you expect trickery in
all whom you meet. Perhaps a good lawyer with trial experience, with a level
head and a sense of competent material evidence for both sides, should attend
these seances, eh?"

 
          
 
"You're quite right," I said
heartily.

 
          
 
"But, returning to the subject, what else
can be said about ectoplasm? That is, if it actually exists."

 
          
 
I had found in Richet's book the passage for
which I had been searching. "It says here that bits of ectoplasm have been
secured in rare instances, and that some of these have been examined
microscopically. There were traces of fatty tissue, bacterial forms and
epithelium."

 
          
 
"Ah! Those were the findings of
Schrenck-Notzing.
A sound man and a brilliant one, hard to
corrupt or fool.
It makes ectoplasm sound organic, does it not?"

 
          
 
I nodded agreement, and my head felt heavy, as
if full of sober and important matters. "As for me," I went on,
"I never have had much chance to examine the stuff. Whenever I get hold of
an ectoplasmic hand, it melts like butter."

 
          
 
"They generally do," the judge
commented, "or so the reports say. Yet they themselves are firm and strong
when they touch or seize."

 
          
 
"Right, sir."

 
          
 
"It's when attacked, or even frightened,
as with a camera flashlight, that the ectoplasm vanishes or is
reabsorbed?" he prompted further.

 
          
 
"So Richet says here," I agreed once
more, "and so I have found."

 
          
 
"Very good.
Now," and his manner took on a flavor of the legal, "I shall sum up:

 
          
 
"Ectoplasm is put forth by certain spirit
mediums,
who
are mysteriously adapted for it, under
favorable conditions that include darkness, quiet, self-confidence. It takes
form, altering the appearance of the medium or making up a separate body. It is
firm and strong, but vanishes when attacked or frightened. Right so far,
eh?"

 
          
 
"Right," I approved.

 
          
 
"Now, for the word
medium substitute wizard.''
His grin burst out again, and he began to
mix a third round of drinks. "A wizard, having darkness and quiet and
being disguised to change shape, exudes a material that gives him a new shape
and character. Maybe it is bestial, to match a fierce or desperate spirit
within. There may be a shaggy pelt, a sharp muzzle, taloned paws and rending
fangs. To a terrified victim he is doom itself But to a brave adversary, facing
and fighting him
- "

 
          
 
He flipped his way through
Summers
'
book, as I had with Richet's. "Listen: '. . . the shape of the werewolf
will be removed if he be reproached by name as a werewolf, or if again he be
thrice addressed by his Christian name, or struck three blows on the forehead
with a knife, or that three drops of blood should be drawn.' Do you see the
parallels, man? Shouted at, bravely denounced, or slightly wounded, his false
beast-substance fades from him." He flung out his hands, as though
appealing to a jury. "I marvel nobody ever thought of it before."

 
          
 
"But nothing so contrary to nature has a
natural explanation," I objected, and very idiotic the phrase sounded in
my own ears.

 
          
 
He laughed, and I could not blame him.
"I'll confound you with another of your own recent experiences. What could
seem more contrary to nature than the warmth and greenness of the inside of
Devil's Croft? And what is more simply natural than the
hot springs
that make it possible?"

 
          
 
"Yet, an envelope of bestiality,
beast-muzzle on human face, beast-paws on human hands
-
"

 
          
 
"I can support that by more
werewolf-lore. I don't even have to open
Summers
,
everyone has heard the story. A wolf attacks a traveler, who with his sword
lops off a paw. The beast howls and flees, and the paw it leaves behind is a
human hand
.*
*