Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (39 page)

‘I have only one “polite accomplishment”. I paint. I was in Spain making sketches for future working out, up to the end of the summer. I was in Valencia first, and then I made a long jump up north-side, to Santander where there is a peculiar, hard, clear light afternoons that makes everything stand out rather remarkably.

‘I stayed on in Santander for more than three weeks altogether, and I had nine or ten rather satisfactory “block-ins” done. I stayed at a small waterfront inn all the time I was there; not any too respectable, I imagine, but exactly convenient for me. I was making waterfront sketches, you see, and my material was right there handy.

‘I’m going to make this short, Canevin – merely state the facts. It doesn’t need any narrative skill, or whatever it was our friend Pelletier called it – my telling of the first part of it, I mean. These are the bare facts, and they’ll speak for themselves.

‘I’d been on board the
Bilbao
nearly two months when we struck this port of St Thomas to coal. It was, to be precise, the fourteenth of August when I went on board her, there in Santander. Three days before that, while I was sitting eating my dinner (the Spanish are the worst of the world’s cooks, you know – haven’t learned anything about preparing food since Cervantes’ day!), a great big fellow came in and took a table across the room from me. I didn’t particularly take note of him except that he was big. I was gnawing away at a chicken – one of Noah’s – and when I happened to glance over in the big man’s direction, I noticed that he was glowering at me. His extremely ugly face seemed vaguely familiar, which, of course, fitting in with his really personal expression of dislike, made me wonder who he could be.

‘Canevin, I said I’d make it short. I mulled over that not very interesting problem of the man’s identity until, quite suddenly, it broke upon me. I had, I knew, seen him somewhere, and there was something quite definitely unpleasant connected with that face and that huge bulk.

‘It was “Godbor”, Canevin – Godbor to the life.

‘That was where I “remembered” him, facing me with those drooping knees and false face full of pretended pain, there in the arena in Ludekta. The whole thing – just as I told it to you and Pelletier this evening – came back to me. I felt sick. I could not eat any more. I sat there, with the queerest feelings imaginable. I can’t really put it into words. It was, well, as though an inescapable fate had dropped down on me out of a clear sky – something inevitable, predestined, inescapable.

‘I sat there, and just sweated. I remember putting my face between my hands, my elbows on the table, and feeling just plain sick at heart.

‘There was something hopeless, grim, really dreadful about it.

‘And then, down beside me on a chair dropped this fellow who had been glowering at me, and a big, thick, guttural voice, such as would go naturally with that gross body, was speaking to me.

‘He was civil enough. His name was Fernando Lopez. He was the first mate of the
Bilbao
, just arrived in Santander harbor, expecting to clear for Buenos Aires three or four days from then.

‘Lopez proposed that we, being the only persons of quality in the inn, should take our meals together. The man sickened me. His mere presence, the fact that he existed, had a most devastating effect upon a set of otherwise sound and untroubled nerves.

‘I told him that I was painting and required as much time to myself, including meal-times, as I could get, without social engagements or interruptions! I spoke, of course, with a civility equal, at least, to his. I imagined that any Latin would understand that refusal. They instinctively respect any kind of an artist, as everybody knows.

‘But it had no effect on Fernando Lopez! He was the grossest, the most thick-skinned individual you could possibly imagine. Nothing could daunt the fellow, put aside or deter the tremendous admiration my work – he had seen me painting on the wharves, he alleged; had looked more than once on tiptoes over my shoulder – had inspired in him. He would take no refusal.

‘There was no shaking him off, you see. Try it, literally, I mean, with a person entirely impervious to snubs, silence, direct statements of one’s unwillingness to associate with him and anything else you can think of to get him out from under one’s feet, and you’ll see what I mean.

‘In and out of season, this Old-Man-of-the-Sea hung on my flank, so to speak! He was always beseeching me to come on board his vessel to visit him. Well, I’ll make it short, as I said I would.

‘The morning of the day the
Bilbao
was to clear from Santander, about seven o’clock, I found my money-belt gone. Fernando Lopez, too, was gone. He would be on board very early, I figured, getting ready for the ship’s departure, and I had found out that she was to sail about eight o’clock. I suspected no one else. I hurried down to the docks and went on board.

‘There he was, waiting for me, his ugly grin which I had grown to hate and loathe, heavily in evidence. I charged him flatly with the theft. He made no bones about it, said he had taken the money-belt out of my room about five that morning, had it down in his cabin, was ready to give it back to me – no, not a joke – a device to get me to visit him; his last resort. He was quite frank about these statements.

‘I went down to his cabin with him, thoroughly disgusted. But, of course, I had to get that money-belt back. All I had with me was in it.

‘He stood aside at his cabin door with an elaborate gesture of courtesy which made me squirm internally, and I walked in and he after me, and the next thing I knew, after the blow which he struck me over the head with a blackjack or something of the sort, was coming to in a berth, my hands ironed, and a head that ached and throbbed so that I could barely move.

‘The rest of it is simple enough, until we came in sight of St Thomas three days ago. I was sweated and hazed through a period that is like a black nightmare. I was forced to sign on with two men – one of them Lopez – holding my hands. I was given extra watches.

‘The captain, an old man named Chico Perez, was Lopez’s uncle. He left everything to his nephew, who was cock of the walk on board the
Bilbao
.

‘They ironed me again the day we put into Buenos Aires. Lopez was taking no chances on my jumping the ship and reporting him, you see. And, two days after we had cleared from there, the old captain disappeared. I have no doubts in my own mind about what happened to him. Lopez probably broke his neck, or knifed him, and threw the body overboard.

‘That fact, I imagine, saved me. You see, the entire crew had sailed with the old man, who was a part owner of the ship, for voyage after voyage. Lopez, as I well knew from the conversations among the members of the crew, was strongly suspected of having made away with him. He commanded the
Bilbao
now, and he did not, I think, quite dare to risk something like a mutiny if another member of the ship’s company “disappeared” in the same manner. Otherwise, I haven’t the slightest doubt, I’d have had the same treatment.

‘We made four or five other South American ports, Cartagena last of all, and then we were to put in to St Thomas for coal. This was the first American port of the voyage. I plucked up a little hope. It wouldn’t have done very much good even if I could have made my escape in one of the other places. We Americans are anything but popular down below there, as you know. Here it would be different. I did some figuring and kept my own counsel.

‘We were actually in sight of St Thomas when I got my chance, according to what I had planned out.

‘It was about five o’clock in the evening, four days ago. I was on deck, and we had just made our landfall. Lopez, and a member of the crew carrying the irons, came towards me across the deck. I had always submitted before. This time I took him by surprise. I simply waited until the two of them had got within a few feet of me, and then without warning I landed as hard as I knew how on Lopez’ jaw.

‘It knocked him over flat on the deck, but what would have been a clean knockout for a normal man, had little effect on his brute vitality. He was up like a rubber ball, and at me, a knife in his hand and a look of deadly hatred on his beast-face such as I had only faced once before – back there in the Ludekta arena, Canevin, before Godbor.

‘I figured that it was all up with me now, and I was fixing to go over on my back and try to catch him amidships with a double-footed kick as my only possible chance, when I felt a knife-hilt thrust into my hand. It was the fellow who had been carrying the irons.

‘Then, enormously heartened, I crouched and met Lopez’ attack.

‘I’ve described two fights already this evening. I’m not going into the particulars of this one beyond saying that I got Lopez across the arms with my first slash, sideways as I ducked that first rush of his; and I must have severed a tendon, for he slowed and paused and shifted his knife into his other hand.

‘I was on him like a cat at this opportunity. I was fighting for my life, and I knew it, and knew besides that I could expect no quarter.

‘I simply plunged at him, and struck, and felt the long, keen knife go home in soft flesh, and I sliced with it, and felt his great brutal body relax and then – he was lying on his back, cut clean across the stomach, and a great ooze of blood spreading over the deck.

‘I stood there, looking down on the havoc I had made, and became conscious that four or five of the
Bilbao’
s crew were gathered nearby looking on. Neither of the remaining ship’s officers was in sight, one being on the bridge and the other probably asleep between watches. Then I began to be conscious of the comments from the crew members.

‘ “It was well and quickly done!” “He can ‘disappear’ like old Chico, as well as not.” “He is where he put old Chico – the
sine verguenza
!!
Saco la mandonga
!! The Gringo has cut the tripe out of him!!!”

‘I felt the knife being quietly withdrawn from my hand, and the fellow who had passed it to me remarked, in my ear – “As well that I take it back now, Señor, and clear it of that hog’s blood. You will not need it further, Señor!”

‘And then, with many a furtive glance for possible witnesses other than the five or six like-minded fellows who had seen the disposal of Fernando Lopez, that person’s hulking carcass was quietly heaved overboard, and a dozen pails of water effectually cleansed the deck of his coagulating blood.

‘Nothing whatever was done to me, or even said to me. I have no doubt the officer who automatically succeeded to the command of the
Bilbao
made some kind of innocuous entry in his logbook. There was no report, and no investigation after they reached their anchorage in St Thomas Harbor, so far as I know.

‘I had gone straight down to Lopez’s cabin after the money-belt, got it, put it on, and come back on deck. I knew exactly where it was, you see, because Lopez had sent for me to his cabin half a dozen times, and taken it out, and gibed me about it during the past couple of months.

‘It was the easiest possible affair to come ashore here. No one stopped me or even questioned me. I imagine that that ship’s family was only too glad to get rid of the fellow who had relieved them of Fernando Lopez. The rest of it you know, Canevin. I might add that I haven’t the smallest possible regret over “removing” Lopez. If those “ancestral memories” of mine are authentic, I have killed before, but never in “this life”, certainly. There isn’t a single qualm! And if there’s any poetry in justice, as some imagine, it’s interesting to note that Lopez got the same wound that finished me there in the arena, delivered by his double, maybe twelve thousand years ago.’

Joe Smith sat silent, and I sat across from him and looked at him. The only thing I could think of to say seemed an incongruity after what I had listened to that day! However, by some strange perversity, the question I had on the end of my tongue, however irrelevant, would not down. Almost desperately, I blurted it out.

‘What is your real name, Smith?’ I enquired.

The fellow stared at me.

‘Joe Smith,’ said he.

‘O.K.,’ said I. ‘I’ll put your money in the safe and we’ll go to the bank with it in the morning.’

‘Good-night, Canevin, and thank you again,’ said my guest.

I saw him out, and picked up the money-belt from the table and carried it over to my old-fashioned, wrought-iron West Indian house-safe which stands in the corner of my bedroom and opens and locks with an enormous key with elaborate filed wards.

I opened the old safe and was about to lay the belt inside when I felt something rough against my hand. I turned it about and looked. A name was embossed upon the fine pigskin leather of the other side. I held it up to the light to read it. I read:

‘Josephus Troy Smith.’

I put the belt inside and closed and locked the safe.

Then I came back and sat down in the chair wherein I had listened to my guest’s recital of his recent adventures aboard the Spanish tramp steamer
Bilbao
.

Josephus Troy Smith. It wasn’t so vastly different from ‘Joe Smith’, and yet what a different viewpoint that full name had given me! Josephus Troy Smith, as most of the cultivated world is aware, is America’s foremost landscapist. Josephus Troy Smith was a modest chap. I realized that, now. ‘I have only one polite accomplishment,’ he had said, when he was explaining what he was doing there in northern Spain. A polite accomplishment!