The Day the World Ended Read online

  THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

  McKINLAY, STONE & MACKENZIE NEW YORK

  COPYRIGHT, 1930

  DOUBLEDAY, DORAN COMPANY, INC.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  COPYRIGHT, 1929 BY P. F. COLLIER & SONS CO.

  CHAPTER I - I AM GIVEN THREE DAYS

  1

  Brian Woodville! I sat up in bed with a start. Pitch darkness prevailed in my apartment. But, staring intently out of the alcove in the direction of the half-shuttered windows, I could just discern a faint difference in the gloom. Beyond was the balcony; beyond that the gardens.

  I reached up for a hanging switch and lighted my bedside lamp.

  The room was empty. No sound was audible except a distant rippling from the little stream at the foot of the gardens and the intimate ticking of my wrist watch.

  I raised my pajama sleeve and glanced at the dial. Just three o’clock.

  Silence—emptiness . . . yet, a cold, commanding voice had called me by name! Or had I dreamed — dreamed vividly?

  “Brian Woodville!”

  This time I was not dreaming! I leaped out of bed in a flash, my heart beating rapidly. With concrete things I can cope moderately well; but this voice— the voice of one not a yard removed—was frankly, starkly something of another world!

  My mode of life had trained me to action. And, conscious of a sensation which I can only suppose presaged hysteria, I did what anybody else would have done. Knowing it to be useless, beside the point, I searched everywhere—feverishly. I tried the door. It was locked. I ran to the French windows, raised the shutters fully, and looked out on a deserted balcony.

  Not a soul was in sight. But, as I reentered :

  “Brian Woodville,” said the cold inexorable voice —apparently at my elbow!—“you have three days. You will leave Baden-Baden within that time. This is the first warning. You have three days”

  The voice ceased. I dropped into an armchair beside the writing table. Perhaps this unfamiliar tension in my head had meant that I wanted to scream. Frankly, I think now, that it did.

  Either I was at last face to face with what is loosely termed “the supernatural” or I was going mad!

  Action, of some sort, I have found to be the only antidote to panic—of any sort. There was a bottle of whisky and some soda water on the table. I brewed a drink—with exaggerated care and coolness. I filled and lighted my pipe.

  I had three days. . . .

  For five—ten—fifteen minutes, I sat there considering the mystery from every conceivable angle.

  One thing was certain. Either it had been the product of some form of hypnotism with which I was not acquainted, or it had been produced by means of apparatus concealed in my apartment.

  I began an examination of the floors, walls, and furniture in search of: (a) a speaking tube; (b) a radio fitting.

  But I found nothing.

  Dawn was stealing wanly through the slats of my shutters when at last I gave up.

  What did it mean? How the “warning” had been conveyed to me I simply could not imagine. But that it was associated with my mission, equally I could not doubt; that mission which I had undertaken so lightly! I had counted my Brazil expedition, in quest of a white race said to survive far up a tributary of the Rio Negro, perilous enough, God knows. For although at long last I had got back, it was more by good luck than good management.

  Then there was the Sahara trek, fairly risky, but successful; and now . . .

  When the Daily World had invited me to go to the Black Forest, professional zest and personal inclination both urged acceptance.

  There was no danger attached to a holiday in these fruitful valleys. (To-night I had been disillusioned!) I badly needed a rest. (This was true.) And the subject came within my province. In short, said the powers behind the Daily World, this was clearly indicated as my job.

  I had undertaken it. And—I had three days. . . .

  That most gruesome of all superstitions known to man—vampires—had reappeared in Germany! The details were few and conflicting. A peasant had been found dead in the Forest, exhibiting extraordinary symptoms of emaciation. Animals, also, and even birds. A number of witnesses spoke of a giant bat seen hovering over the trees. The locale it had proved impossible to trace more exactly than that it was “in the Black Forest.,,

  Armed with all the known facts, I had set out, and now found myself living (hitherto, very pleasantly) in the charming garden of Baden-Baden.

  Thus far I had made little or no headway. There seemed to be a damnable conspiracy of silence among the people most likely to be of help. Few denied having heard the stories, but none seemed prepared to enlarge upon them. Several persons whom I spoke to crossed themselves and abruptly changed the subject!

  Was everybody who knew anything afraid to speak? If so, why? I had asked myself that question so recently as the previous evening. The voice in the night perhaps had answered it.

  “You have three days. . .

  2

  A waiter I had not seen before brought my breakfast. In the scented beauty and the sunshine it was hard to recapture that horror of the night. As he stepped out on the balcony, shouldering a laden tray:

  “Good-morning, sir,” he greeted me cheerfully.

  “Good-morning,” I returned, and watched him deftly arranging my light repast upon the white cloth.

  During the restless hours which had intervened between the coming of that bodiless voice and sunrise, I had been thinking hard. I had bidden good-bye to the amused carelessness with which, thus far, I had regarded my Black Forest mission. Brazil had nearly put “paid” to my account, and I had stood fairly near the edge of beyond in the Sahara; but here, in a modern, fashionable town, I was up against something worse than fever, cataracts, and poisoned arrows; something harder to dodge than Arab bullets: something very insidious—its worst element being that I didn’t know my enemies.

  “I’m hoping,” I went on casually, “for a glimpse of one of the giant bats which I hear have been seen in this neighbourhood.”

  Those words had an electrical effect. The man perceptibly paused in his labours. But, quickly recovering himself, he set down the coffee pot, and resting his hands on the table looked into my eyes.

  “If you took my advice, sir,” he said earnestly, “you would leave those things alone.”

  “Why?” I challenged.

  He stood upright, bowed, and:

  “It is just my advice, sir,” he said, smiled, bowed again, and went out.

  “Extraordinary fellow!” I muttered.

  This constant evasion was getting on my nerves. Hitherto it had merely provoked me. But, after the inexplicable episode of the night, it began to assume a more sinister character.

  I felt lonely. And it was a different kind of loneliness from any loneliness I had known before.

  My plans for the day were vague. Where should I start? Whom could I question? One definite change I made, when I presently set out for Hohen-Baden; I had a well-tried Colt repeater on my hip. It seemed absurd, in that pleasure valley under smiling skies. I had roamed the byways of Fez at midnight, I had returned to my quarters in Timbuctoo under a setting moon—unarmed. Yet here I was, with merry German holiday makers about me, carrying a cargo of live shells!

  However, I had no occasion to use them.

  Feeling rather a fool, and asking myself again and again, “Could the ‘warning’ have been an unusually vivid dream?” I returned late in the afternoon to the Regal.

  I had seen nothing, and I had learned nothing.

  One lunches early but dines late in Baden-Baden. To-night I was one of the latest. But the head waiter had my table reserved.

  Having fared well but sparingly, I found him at my elbow.


  “Everything satisfactory, sir?” he asked.

  I looked up; and his blue eyes met my inquiring stare unflinchingly. I had questioned Fritz—and had met with the usual evasions.

  “Quite,” I replied.

  The long, softly lighted dining room was nearly deserted. In a near-by lounge, the hotel orchestra played a Slovak dance. Fritz was of Prague—a great commercial centre today but of old the capital of the witch country. Bohemia still cherishes vampires. And I thought I knew why Fritz was reticent.

  But I did not know why his gaze wandered so strangely.

  I stared out of the window, as he was staring. Beautiful gardens, unreally lovely in the dusk, backed by magically shadowed woodlands, lay before me. I could hear the laughing song of that tiny stream, crossed by a floral bridge almost directly in front of the window in which my table was set, from which those famous blue trout are brought fresh to the diner.

  Then, I saw the tall, sinuous figure.

  Fritz was watching Mme. Yburg.

  Certainly she was worthy of inspection. For my own part, I like a woman to be slender; but there is a point at which the slender becomes definitely the lean. My vision may lack those nuances which endow a Jacob Epstein, but I must confess that I looked upon Mme. Yburg as lean. She was svelte to a degree. And if good taste is beauty, she was beautiful. She was graceful, white-skinned, had thin but very red lips, and perfect teeth. Her eyes certainly were magnificent.

  As she went along the path toward the bridge, trailing a flame-coloured scarf with incomparable indolence, she glanced aside, saw me, and waved her hand. We were slightly acquainted. Her raised arm, gleaming in the moonlight, seemed to possess separate volition, to be individual: I thought of an ivory serpent.

  Turning, I trapped Fritz in the act of recomposing his expression.

  “No,” I said, smiling up at him, “that is not the kind of vampire I mean!”

  He started, then shrugged his shoulders and poured out what remained of a bottle of Liebfrau-milch. The willowy, swaying figure had disappeared.

  “You never know, sir,” he replied enigmatically.

  “Who is she?”

  “I cannot say. She often comes here. And she spends much money. She is very attractive.”

  He sighed. I looked at the blond Bavarian, and I knew that Mme. Yburg’s dark, lithe womanhood represented his ideal.

  “Yes,” I murmured reflectively, “I suppose she is.”

  I lost myself for awhile in meditation. And when I returned to realities, Fritz had left me.

  3

  “Very quiet tonight,” said I, glancing around the deserted bar.

  “Yes.” The barman set my liqueur before me. “There is a dance at the Casino.”

  “Ah, is that it?”

  I studied George interestedly. Here was a possible source of information hitherto untapped. Barmen are students of humanity and reliquaries of strange secrets. For the cocktail breaks down reticence and makes the dumb speak.

  “Nothing but dancing nowadays,” he went on. *T like dancing myself; but it’s bad for business.” “Really? You surprise me. I should have thought it promoted thirst.”

  “Bah!” George’s expressive features registered scorn. “They drink soft drinks, the dancing men. If it wasn’t for the women my trade would be finished! ” I invited him to join me and broached the subject uppermost in my mind—tactfully. The effect was extraordinary.

  The man paused, siphon in hand, thumb on the lever, and stared at me in a way which I can only describe as reproachful. Then he glanced about the empty bar fearfully. At last:

  “I shouldn’t go in for that sort of thing, sir,” he said, and squirted soda so nervously that some of his whisky was lost—“not if you’re on a holiday.” “Why? What is there to be afraid of?”

  Craning over the counter to assure himself that no eavesdropper was near:

  “Have you asked anybody else?” said he.

  “Yes,” I replied irritably—“a dozen at least!”

  “Then, sorry as I shall be to see you go, sir,” was George’s astonishing remark, “take the Rheingold Express tomorrow!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  George beckoned me closer, and:

  “Have you seen the cemetery above the town?” he asked with apparent irrelevance, and gestured to indicate its direction.

  “I have not.”

  “It’s full of new graves,” said George. “Good evening, sir!'9

  I started, turned—and found a man seated on the next stool to my own!

  “Good-evening. Beer,” the newcomer responded.

  He nodded, as our glances met.

  “Very warm,” he observed.

  He was Mr. Aldous P. Kluster. The presence of the middle initial indicates the American generation to which he belonged. He was lean, clean-shaven, ax-faced, and sallow. He wore a perpetual cigar which was rarely alight. He had a perfect mane of well-brushed gray hair and he dressed carefully but badly.

  “Very,” I agreed.

  I was taciturn to the point of rudeness; and for two reasons. I strongly suspected him of having spied upon me in my conversation with George. And, as our eyes had met, his habitually languid expression had been assumed too late.

  Mr. Aldous P. Kluster had a regard like a gimlet. He was interested in me. Why?

  As I lighted a cigarette:

  “Not dancing tonight?” said he.

  And, as he spoke, a possible explanation of his odd behaviour occurred to me. On the previous evening I had danced once or twice with Mme. Yburg. Kluster and Madame were apparently old friends. The theory presented itself that he was her lover—and a very jealous lover.

  I recalled his almost open rudeness to a good-looking and debonair Frenchman who had succeeded me as Madame’s partner and who had monopolized her throughout the rest of the evening.

  “I dance very rarely,” I said.

  “The French acrobat makes up for you.”

  “M. Paul? Yes. He dances almost too well.”

  My theory, I considered, had received confirmation. Kluster disliked any man who approached his charming friend. I glanced at him curiously, as he set down his glass and replaced a stub of cigar in his thin, flexible mouth. He made an odd figure of a lover. Given a goatee and a high beaver hat with a stars-and-stripes band, he would have taken first prize at any carnival as Uncle Sam.

  I registered a sincere prayer that, at Mr. Kluster’s age, the tender passion might no longer disturb my peace. Conversation languished, and I stepped down to go.

  “Good-night,” I said.

  “Good-night, sir,” George called.

  “Good-night,” said Kluster, adding, as I left the bar, “Beer.”

  Outside, I turned right and walked along to the gardens. I followed the private path beside the little dancing trout stream. Along the parallel public path on the other bank of the Oos, Baden-Baden took the air. Here were family groups, courting pairs, and isolated strollers. Distinguished strangers taking the waters, and townsfolk to whom the beauty of the enchanted valley was a commonplace.

  On my left, half hidden by flowers, were many lighted windows on the ground floor of the Regal. In one might be glimpsed an intimate party, in another some solitary figure unable or disinclined to join the promenaders.

  Through the trees ahead came odd strains from the dance band in the Casino, and now I could see many twinkling fairy lights and detect moving figures.

  A crescent moon hung in a sky dark and starry as that of Egypt. A delicious sense of coolness was conveyed by the laughing chatter of the tiny stream. And, when a slight breeze stirred, the fragrance of a million pines was borne down from the embracing forest.

  “You have three days . . .”

  I opened the communicating gate and strolled up to the Casino.

  One of my three days was nearing its close.

  The scene presented great animation and considerable elegance. Smart people from three continents were h
ere. A maharajah famous for his racing stud, his family jewels, and his generosity to his lady friends was holding informal court at one table. At another presided a New York hostess whose Park Avenue parties were no less celebrated than the dances she gave in Bruton Street, and to whom Baden-Baden came as a rest from Juan les Pins.

  There were a fair number of dancers, but very few of them either young or attractive. Mme. Yburg was not present. And a premonition that I should find her there in the company of the dazzling M. Paul— which would have accounted for Kluster’s solitary beer drinking—was proved to have been misleading.

  I looked on for awhile, but could see no friend or acquaintance anywhere. The nearly ceaseless moaning of the saxophones began to depress me.

  Oddly, perhaps, I find in the music of this instrument something eerie. It does not stimulate in me a desire to dance or make love; it rather speaks of orgiastic rites beneath an African moon. I found myself thinking of George’s words:

  “Have you seen the cemetery above the town? . . . It’s full of new graves. ...”

  I left the Casino, not by way of the gardens, but by the door opening on to Schiller Strasse.

  A big car passed, going toward the Regal. Its only occupant stared hard in my direction. If he saw me, recognized me, it was impossible to say. But his expression, as he peered out, affected me most unpleasantly.

  It was the Frenchman, M. Paul.

  An apprehension of being hunted formed the main factor in this strange expression which so deeply impressed me. His was a fugitive look.

  "Three days . . .”

  4

  Steep paths, tree-shadowed, led me upward. At one point I could look down upon many roofs of Baden-Baden flooded with the blue amber of the moon rays. At another, I walked through a tunnel, rarely and irregularly patched with dim light.

  Ere long, the human element—jazz and laughter —was left behind. I approached the frowning buttresses of the Forest. I met never a soul from the moment I turned aside off the main road. My right hand rested on the butt of the Colt.