The Compleat Crow (8 page)

“Excellent!” was Harry Townley’s view.

“Fine stuff,” commented Taylor Ainsworth. “Where on earth did you find it, Titus?” He picked up the bottle and peered closely at the label. “Arabic, isn’t it?”

“The label is, yes,” Crow answered. “It says simply, ‘table wine,’ that much at least I know. So you both believe it to be of good quality, eh?”

They nodded in unison and Townley admitted, “I wouldn’t mind a bottle or two in my cellar, young Crow. Can you get any more?”

Crow shook his head. “I really don’t think I want to,” he said. “It seems I’m already partly addicted to the stuff—and it leaves me with a filthy headache! Oh, and you certainly shouldn’t take it if you’re driving. No, Harry, I’ve other stuff here you can drink while we talk. Less potent by far. This bottle is for Taylor.”

“For me?” Ainsworth seemed pleasantly surprised. “A gift, do you mean? That’s very decent of you…” Then he saw Crow’s cocked eyebrow. “Or is there a catch in it?”

Crow grinned. “There’s a catch in it, yes. I want an analysis. I want to know if there’s anything in it. Any drugs or such like.”

“I should be able to arrange that OK,” said the other. “But I’ll need a sample.”

“Take the bottle,” said Crow at once, “and do what you like with it afterwards—only get me that analysis. I’ll be in touch next weekend, if that’s all right with you?”

Now Crow pulled the cork from a commoner brand and topped up their glasses. To Townley he said, “Harry, I think I’m in need of a checkup. That’s why I asked you to bring your tools.”

“What, you?” The doctor looked surprised. “Why, you’re fit as a fiddle—you always have been.”

“Yes,” said Crow. “Well, to my knowledge the best fiddles are two hundred years old and stringy! And that’s just how I feel,” and he went on to describe in full his symptoms of sudden nausea, headaches, bouts of dizziness and apparent loss of memory. “Oh, yes,” he finished, “and it might just have been something to do with that wine which both of you find so excellent!”

While Townley prepared to examine him, Ainsworth excused himself and went off to keep his business appointment. Crow let him go but made him promise not to breathe a word of the wine or his request for an analysis to another soul. When he left, Carstairs’ bottle was safely hidden from view in a large inside pocket of his overcoat.

Townley now sounded Crow’s chest and checked his heart, then examined his eyes—the latter at some length—following which he frowned and put down his instruments. Then he seated himself facing Crow and tapped with his fingers on the arms of his chair. The frown stayed on his face as he sipped his wine.

“Well?” Crow finally asked.

“You may well say ‘well,’ young Crow,” Townley answered. “Come on now, what have you been up to?”

Crow arched his eyebrows. “Up to? Is something wrong with me, then?”

Townley sighed and looked a little annoyed. “Have it your own way, then,” he said. “Yes, there is something wrong with you. Not a great deal, but enough to cause me some concern. One: there is some sort of drug in your system. Your pulse is far too slow, your blood pressure too high—oh, and there are other symptoms I recognize, including those you told me about. Two: your eyes. Now eyes are rather a specialty of mine, and yours tell me a great deal. At a guess—I would say you’ve been playing around with hypnosis.”

“I most certainly have not!” Crow denied, but his voice faltered on the last word. Suddenly he remembered thinking that Carstairs had a hypnotic personality.

“Then perhaps you’ve been hypnotized,” Townley suggested, “without your knowing it?”

“Is that possible?”

“Certainly.” Again the doctor frowned. “What sort of company have you been keeping just lately, Titus?”

“Fishy company indeed, Harry,” the other answered. “But you’ve interested me. Hypnosis and loss of memory, eh? Well, now,” and he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Listen, could you possibly de-hypnotize me? Trace the trouble back to its source, as it were?”

“I can try. If you’ve been under once—well, it’s usually far easier the second time. Are you game?”

“Just try me,” Crow grimly answered. “There’s something I have to get to the bottom of, and if hypnosis is the way—why, I’ll try anything once!”

An hour later, having had Crow in and out of trance half-a-dozen times, the good doctor finally shook his head and admitted defeat. “You
have
been hypnotized, I’m sure of it,” he said. “But by someone who knows his business far better than I. Do you remember any of the questions I asked you when you were under?”

Crow shook his head.

“That’s normal enough,” the other told him. “What’s extraordinary is the fact that I can get nothing out of you concerning the events of the last couple of weeks!”

“Oh?” Crow was surprised. “But I’ll gladly tell you all about the last few weeks if you like—without hypnosis.”

“
All
about them?”

“Of course.”

“I doubt it,” Townley smiled, “for that’s the seat of the trouble. You don’t
know
all about them. What you remember isn’t the whole story.”

“I see,” Crow slowly answered, and his thoughts went back again to those dim, shadowy dreams of his and to his strange pseudo-memories of vague snatches of echoing conversation. “Well, thank you, Harry,” he finally said. “You’re a good friend and I appreciate your help greatly.”

“Now listen, Titus.” The other’s concern was unfeigned. “If there’s anything else I can do—anything at all—just let me know, and—”

“No, no, there’s nothing.” Crow forced himself to smile into the doctor’s anxious face. “It’s just that I’m into something beyond the normal scope of things, something I have to see through to the end.”

“Oh? Well, it must be a damned funny business that you can’t tell me about. Anyway, I’m not the prying type—but I do urge you to be careful.”

“It
is
a funny business, Harry,” Crow nodded, “and I’m only just beginning to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. As for my being careful—you may rely upon that!”

Seeing Townley to the door, he had second thoughts. “Harry, do I remember your having a gun, a six-shooter?”

“A .45 revolver, yes. It was my father’s. I have ammunition, too.”

“Would you mind if I borrowed it for a few weeks?”

Townley looked at him very hard, but finally gave a broad grin. “Of course you can,” he said. “I’ll drop it round tomorrow. But there is such a thing as being too careful, you know!”

VI

Following a very poor night’s sleep, the morning of Friday 18th January found Titus Crow coming awake with a start, his throat dry and rough and his eyes gritty and bloodshot. His first thought as he got out of bed was of Carstairs’ wine—and his second was to remember that he had given it to Taylor Ainsworth for analysis. Stumbling into his bathroom and taking a shower, he cursed himself roundly. He should have let the man take only a sample. But then, as sleep receded and reason took over, he finished showering in a more thoughtful if still sullen mood.

No amount of coffee seemed able to improve the inflamed condition of Crow’s throat, and though it was ridiculously early he got out the remainder of last night’s bottle of his own wine. A glass or two eased the problem a little, but within the hour it was back, raw and painful as ever. That was when Harry Townley turned up with his revolver, and seeing Crow’s distress he examined him and immediately declared the trouble to be psychosomatic.

“What?” said Crow hoarsely, “you mean I’m imagining it? Well, that would take a pretty vivid imagination!”

“No,” said Townley, “I didn’t say you were imagining it. I said it isn’t a physical thing. And therefore there’s no physical cure.”

“Oh, I think there is,” Crow answered. “But last night I gave the bottle away!”

“Indeed?” And Townley’s eyebrows went up. “Withdrawal symptoms, eh?”

“Not of the usual sort, no,” answered Crow. “Harry, have you the time to put me into trance just once more? There’s a certain precaution I’d like to take before I resume the funny business we were talking about last night.”

“Not a bad idea,” said the doctor, “at least where this supposed sore throat of yours is concerned. If it is psychosomatic, I might be able to do something about it. I’ve had a measure of success with cigarette smokers.”

“Fine,” said Crow, “but I want you to do more than just that. If I give you a man’s name, can you order me never to allow myself to fall under his influence—never to be hypnotized by him—again?”

“Well, it’s a tall order,” the good doctor admitted, “but I can try.”

Half an hour later when Townley snapped his fingers and Crow came out of trance, his throat was already feeling much better, and by the time he and Townley left his flat the trouble had disappeared altogether. Nor was he ever bothered with it again. He dined with the doctor in the city, then caught a taxi and went on alone to the British Museum.

Through his many previous visits to that august building and establishment he was well acquainted with the Curator of the Rare Books Department, a lean, learned gentleman thirty-five years his senior, sharp-eyed and with a dry and wicked wit. Sedgewick was the man’s name, but Crow invariably called him “sir.”

“What, you again?” Sedgewick greeted him when Crow sought him out. “Did no one tell you the war was over? And what code-cracking business are you on this time, eh?”

Crow was surprised. “I hadn’t suspected you knew about that,” he said.

“Ah, but I did! Your superiors saw to it that I received orders to assist you in every possible way. You didn’t suppose I just went running all over the place for any old body, did you?”

“This time,” Crow admitted, “I’m here on my own behalf. Does that change things, sir?”

The other smiled. “Not a bit, old chap. Just tell me what you’re after and I’ll see what I can do for you. Are we back to cyphers, codes and cryptograms again?”

“Nothing so common, I’m afraid,” Crow answered. “Look, this might seem a bit queer, but I’m looking for something on worm worship.”

The other frowned. “Worm worship? Man or beast?”

“I’m sorry?” Crow looked puzzled.

“Worship of the annelid—family,
Lumbricidae
—or of the man, Worm?”

“The man-worm?”

“Worm with a capital ‘W,’” Sedgewick grinned. “He was a Danish physician, an anatomist. Olaus Worm. Around the turn of the 16th Century, I believe. Had a number of followers. Hence the word ‘Wormian,’ relating to his discoveries.”

“You get more like a dictionary every day!” Crow jokingly complained. But his smile quickly turned to a frown. “Olaus Worm, eh? Could a Latinized version of that be Olaus Wormius, I wonder?”

“What, old Wormius who translated the Greek
Necronomicon
? No, not possible, for he was 13th Century.”

Crow sighed and rubbed his brow. “Sir,” he said, “you’ve thrown me right off the rails. No, I meant worship of the beast—the annelid, if you like—worship of the maggot.”

Now it was Sedgewick’s turn to frown. “The maggot!” he repeated. “Ah, but now you’re talking about a different kettle of worms entirely. A maggot is a grave-worm. Now if that’s the sort of worm you mean…have you tried
The Mysteries of the Worm
?”

Crow gasped.
The Mysteries of the Worm
! He had seen a copy in Carstairs’ library, had even handled it. Old Ludwig Prinn’s
De Vermis Mysteriis
!

Seeing his look, Sedgewick said: “Oh? Have I said something right?”

“Prinn,” Crow’s agitation was obvious. “He was Flemish, wasn’t he?”

“Correct! A sorcerer, alchemist and necromancer. He was burned in Brussels. He wrote his book in prison shortly before his execution, and the manuscript found its way to Cologne where it was posthumously published.”

“Do you have a copy in English?”

Sedgewick smiled and shook his head. “I believe there is such a copy—circa 1820, the work of one Charles Leggett, who translated it from the German black-letter—but we don’t have it. I can let you see a black-letter, if you like?”

Crow shook his head. “No, it gives me a headache just thinking of it. My knowledge of antique German simply wouldn’t run to it. What about the Latin?”

“We have half of it. Very fragile. You can see but you can’t touch.”

“Can’t touch? Sir—I want to borrow it!”

“Out of the question, old chap. Worth my job.”

“The black-letter, then,” Crow was desperate. “Can I have a good long look at it? Here? Privately?”

The other pursed his lips and thought it over for a moment or two, and finally smiled. “Oh, I dare say so. And I suppose you’d like some paper and a pen, too, eh? Come on, then.”

A few minutes later, seated at a table in a tiny private room, Crow opened the black-letter—and from the start he knew he was in for a bad time, that the task was near hopeless. Nonetheless he struggled on, and two hours later Sedgewick looked in to find him deep in concentration, poring over the decorative but difficult pages. Hearing the master librarian enter, Crow looked up.

“This could be exactly what I’m looking for,” he said. “I think it’s here—in the chapter called
Saracenic Rituals
.”

“Ah, the Dark Rites of the Saracens, eh?” said Sedgewick. “Well, why didn’t you say so? We have the
Rituals
in a translation!”

“In English?” Crow jumped to his feet.

Sedgewick nodded. “The work is anonymous, I’m afraid—by Clergyman X, or some such, and of course I can’t guarantee its reliability—but if you want it—”

“I do!” said Crow.

Sedgewick’s face grew serious. “Listen, we’re closing up shop soon. If I get it for you—that is if I let you take it with you—I must have your word that you’ll take infinite care of it. I mean, my heart will quite literally be in my mouth until it’s returned.”

“You know you have my word,” Crow answered at once.

Ten minutes later Sedgewick saw him out of the building. Along the way Crow asked him, “Now how do you suppose Prinn, a native of Brussels, knew so much about the practice of black magic among the Syria-Arabian nomads?”

Sedgewick opened his encyclopedic mind. “I’ve read something about that somewhere,” he said. “He was a much-travelled man, Prinn, and lived for many years among an order of Syrian wizards in the Jebel el Ansariye. That’s where he would have learned his stuff. Disguised as beggars or holy men, he and others of the order would make pilgrimages to the world’s most evil places, which were said to be conducive to the study of demonology. I remember one such focal point of evil struck me as singularly unusual, being as it was situated on the shore of Galilee! Old Prinn lived in the ruins there for some time. Indeed, he names it somewhere in his book.” Sedgewick frowned. “Now what was the place called…?”