The Day the World Ended Read online

  Something in the chauffeur’s behaviour seemed odd. He sprang down with alacrity and opened the door; but his glance was furtive—unfriendly.

  Around me was the beautiful silence of woodlands. I might look through straight upstanding pines, and as far as sight could reach nothing stirred. Left of the climbing road a rock wall rose sheer for twenty feet or more. Above it, and beyond, on a slight gradient, the forest mounted to a distant peak.

  And now, in this solitude where almost anything could happen and never be heard of in the world of men, I realized that I was dealing with criminals of a unique kind; such as perhaps only mediaeval laws could reach—with human outcasts, pariahs so far beyond our modern pale that the life of an intruder would mean less to them than the flame of a candle.

  By means which I utterly failed to understand, the Voice had learned the object of my visit to the Black Forest. To his—or to its—human accomplices had been assigned the task of learning how much I knew.

  Now, noting an unmistakable change of demeanour in the man whom I had engaged early that morning outside the Kurhaus, the possibility crashed in on my mind that he might be one of them!

  At which moment I observed something that seemed to confirm my unpleasant theories. On the point of entering, I turned and looked at the driver. But he evaded my glance.

  “You told me, I think, that you had never been this way before?”

  “Never, sir. No one ever comes.”

  I had given him to understand that I was a geologist; but now:

  “It must lead somewhere,” I said, “beyond the point to which we are going?”

  “It leads to an old ruined monastery,” he replied —“but not interesting, and then a mile further on it joins the Alt-Eberstein road.”

  He persistently avoided meeting my glance, but, nevertheless, I resigned myself to the next stage of the journey. As I dropped back on the cushions and the man returned to the wheel, I wondered why he was lying.

  Because, on the finely powdered pine cone which coated the surface, clearly defined tire-tracks showed as far ahead as I could see.

  And they had been made by the same brand of tire as that which shod the car I sat in!

  2

  Pursuing a typical Black Forest road, we mounted higher and higher. Sharp bends there were and dangerous corners overhanging tree-clad declivities. I had the map open on my knees; but every once in a while, where the surface was favourable, I peered ahead . . . and always those car tracks showed, speaking of a former but a recent journey!

  I studied the chauffeur’s back. He was not tall, but he had a formidable shoulder span and the thick, fleshless neck of a fighter.

  Had I walked into a trap?

  The man’s behaviour when we arrived at the selected point—a mound marking the site of a Roman watch tower—must determine the problem, I argued.

  A theory that he would pass the tower and endeavour to carry me on to some unknown destination was shortly disproved. Having passed not one pedestrian on the route, we presently negotiated a hairpin bend overhanging dizzy pine tops, and a sort of clearing in the woodland came into view not more than twenty yards ahead. There was a bay on the left of the road, occupied by a flat mound. Out of this mound, three tall, very slender trees started, their distant crests overtopping the forest below.

  Here the Roman tower had stood.

  We stopped.

  I was out before the man had time to get to the door.

  “This is the place,” said he, coming round and facing me on the roadside.

  Here the surface was hard. I had lost sight of the car tracks below the hairpin bend; but:

  “Quite right,” I replied. “Turn the car and wait for me.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “I may be gone an hour or more.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  His behaviour was unexceptionable, if his glance remained evasive. I began to wonder. Perhaps the poor fellow, considering his odd commission at leisure, had come to the conclusion that I was mad!

  I set out along the road. My map I had returned to my pocket, but certain essential notes relating to my route from this point to that which I had in mind were pencilled on a slip of paper which I carried in my cigarette case. And just before I reached the spot where my notes told me that there was a footpath, forest swept down and overhung the road; the surface was dusted with pine debris.

  A bend concealed my movements from the chauffeur. Where a mountain path-—indicated in the map —turned due west, there was a recess.

  Sharply marked in this recess were impressions showing that a car had been turned here not very long before.

  I pressed on and upward. Presently, where a fallen tree offered a seat, I paused for a rest. Glancing at my notes, I filled and lighted a pipe.

  Thus far no sound had reached me from the road below. No sound reached me now. Was the chauffeur stealthily following me? Above and below were the curious blue shadows of the forest. But nothing stirred—bird, beast, or man. When presently I started to climb again, my scrambling footsteps broke a perfect silence.

  Now the route followed a tiny stream, or rather, miniature cataract. It became a natural staircase. I could not be certain if the rocky footholds had been improved by man’s handiwork in primitive times, but the ascent was very easy although the gradient was steep.

  A grotto which might have sheltered gnomes gave birth to this mountain torrent. My path lay across its brow. Here, going was not so good, for the ground was cumbered with undergrowth.

  But I was near to my goal.

  Thirty yards saw me on the brink of a sheer precipice—a gaunt crag jutting up out of the forest like a mummy’s bone from torn wrappings.

  3

  This was the Devil’s Elbow—so called in my map; and the only point, I believed, from which one might overlook the heights of Felsenweir. I halted, a little breathless. My pipe had gone out, and I relighted it before consulting a pocket compass which I had brought with me.

  “A quarter north of northeast by east,” was my note.

  The naked rock offered no facilities for comfortable observation. But since my purpose was to study the distant ruins at some length, I could not possibly stand upright.

  Being now unpleasantly warm, I removed my coat, folded it to form a cushion, and, having the compass before me, lay prone, my elbows resting on the folded coat. I focussed the Zeiss glasses on a hazy blue crest lying northeast by east and a quarter north of the Devil’s Elbow.

  Forest climbed its slopes densely ranked. Gaps there were, here and there, and naked rock jutting out. But the height was warmly clothed almost to its summit.

  At one point—as I had calculated—no verdure protected the ruins from observation. I could see the upper walls, and they appeared to be in a fair state of preservation; I could see parts of the main building; and I could see very clearly the high keep, and a tower, like a minaret, which rose above it.

  Felsenweir had been a mighty hold in days when marauding barons had ruled the Rhineland.

  Carefully, I adjusted focusses. That curious blue haze which overhangs the Black Forest dispersed magically through ever lighter shades as I turned the threads. At last, I secured a sharp, clear view. Intervening miles were spanned by the lenses. I could count the embrasures on the upper battlements and pick out iron bars of a window high in the frowning keep.

  Except that the place seemed to be in wonderfully good preservation, I was unable at first to detect anything confirming my theory—viz.: that Felsenweir was inhabited.

  But, with intervals of rest, since the eye strain of close watching was considerable, I continued to study the distant ruin.

  I had hoped for no more than a glimpse of a moving figure And this was what I presently saw—a moving figure. But never can I forget the figure which came into view. . . .

  The winged horror of the graveyard had turned me cold: I had had a desperate fight with myself to conquer panic on that occasion. The Voice in the night would disturb
my dreams while memory remained. But the thing I saw now on the battlements of Felsenweir produced an almost sharper dread.

  I saw it passing the embrasures of the upper battlements, and I counted, mentally, “One—Two— Three,” and so on. It reached and passed the last one visible to me, and I lowered the glasses.

  So clear are recollections of this extraordinary spectacle I can even remember that I closed my eyes for a moment, in an endeavour to concentrate on facts—to arrange my ideas in some sort of harmony with what I had seen. I told myself that I lived in the Twentieth Century, not in the Tenth.

  A tall man, encased from head to foot in black armour, and carrying a heavy mace, had slowly patrolled the walls of Felsenweir! . . .

  My pipe lay near my hand. I stared down at it dazedly. It seemed to have lost significance—to belong to another age. I raised the glasses again. I became an impersonal intelligence, belonging to no generation, but merely a time-detached spectator, watching—watching. . . .

  Heedless, now, of eye strain, I waited, for five, seven, ten minutes; and then:

  A second man at arms crossed the battlements!

  I think, as I watched him disappear, I was nearer to doubting my own sanity than I had ever been in my life. The giant bat. Had I really seen it? The Voice in the night. Had I really heard it? . . . “You have two days ...”

  Again I dropped the glasses, and:

  “Am I mad?” I said aloud.

  “Not a bit of it!” a strident voice replied.

  Stiff as I was from crouching so long upon the rock, that voice had me on my feet in three seconds. I twisted around.

  Not six feet away, an unlighted cigar hanging from his mouth, Aldous P. Kluster stood regarding me!

  “Don’t get fussed,” he went on quietly. “I’ve got you placed at last. We’re together on this.”

  CHAPTER V - FROM THAT WHICH IS WRITTEN

  1

  For several moments I was dumbfounded. Suspect B had shown his hand! In spite of all my precautions, I had been tracked. We confronted one another in silence, then:

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, “and I can’t imagine where you have sprung from.”

  “Easy answered.” Kluster rolled the unlighted cigar from one end of his flexible mouth to the other. “I mean we both belong in the same camp. And I didn’t spring from any place; I just walked up.” “Walked up?”

  “You said it. I came along beside the baby canyon. That was your route.”

  “But I heard no sound.”

  “I don’t make any sound when I don’t want to. Besides, you were busy.”

  “Do you mean,” I demanded angrily, “that you have been following me?”

  “No, sir. I got here first.”

  “What!”

  “You passed me by the little old cave back there. As soon as you were all set I crept up on you.”

  Anger left me. The man’s imperturbable ill-humour was defeating. If, in spite of his surly friendliness, he “belonged” in the enemy camp, at least he was a comprehensible flesh-and-blood American citizen. Really, I hadn’t a scrap of evidence connecting him with the purpose of my journey, except his friendship with Mme. Yburg. After all, the Devil’s Elbow was open to the public; and amid all this phantasmagoria it was good to get to grips with sanity; therefore: “At the moment, Mr.. Kluster,” I said, “you definitely have the advantage. I don’t know how you got here, and I don’t know why you came here. I don’t even know who you are, except that your name is Kluster-”

  As I spoke, he had been regarding me under drooping lids—lids which concealed a pair of lancet-keen gray eyes. Now, he interrupted, and:

  “Wrong!” said he: “it isn’t! That’s the name in my passport, but Washington knows different.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “It’s easy. Your job’s covering the Felsenweir circus-newspaper commission, I guess. Mine’s the same—United States Secret Service. Name of Lonergan—John Lonergan. We might as well work together. I don’t want publicity at the wrong time.” “But”—I was temporarily at a loss for words— “might I ask what Felsenweir has to do with the United States?”

  “You might,” he returned sourly. “A newspaper man might ask any damn thing. Are you the Brian Woodville who went up the Rio Negro for the New York Bulletin?”

  “I am.”

  “Glad to know you better,” said this extraordinary individual. “How are you fixed from now on? We ought to pool notes.”

  Perhaps, as coldly recorded, there would seem to be nothing in this interview on the Devil’s Elbow to have convinced any but a credulous fool that Mr. Aldous P. Kluster was what he now claimed to be. Yet, for my part, I never doubted him. I saw the man in a new light. Much that had been obscure became obvious. I experienced an intense curiosity; and:

  “I am meeting Mme. Yburg for tea,” I replied truthfully, “and I am dining with M. Paul. Shall we meet somewhere later?”

  “You bet we shall,” he replied. He glanced down at the Zeiss glasses. “Seen anything fresh ?” he asked.

  And, at the question, realizing that I stood on the brink of a precipice with a stranger—probably armed; how only one other knew of my presence there—the chauffeur, a suspicious character—I suffered a revulsion of sentiment.

  “I’ve watched for hours,” Kluster (or Lonergan) went on. “Not from here. This look-out is a hundred per cent right. From three parts up the Mercuriusberg. I’ve seen the figures patrolling, but not a damn thing else.”

  I laughed to hide embarrassment—silently cursing my cowardly qualms.

  “I saw them today for the first time.”

  He nodded, rolling the cigar between his lips.

  “Didn’t know why you were coming here,” he murmured. “Plain enough now. I covered you early this morning. The gink driving the car fell for ten dollars and brought me here first! Listen. Mme. Yburg is clever. Play for safety. Paul beats me. But tell him nothing. Got it clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “I'll go first, if it’s all the same to you, and send the car back. Don’t let the driver know you’re wise to him. And do your look-out from farther beyond where the sun doesn’t get your lenses. I don’t know what kind of things live in Felsenweir, but I guess they can see. Ten o’clock outside the Kurhaus. Some table left of the steps. I’ll look for you.”

  2

  When I joined Mme. Yburg at the Casino, her manner struck me as odd. She was charming as ever, conveying that sense of coolness, physical as well as mental, which was part and parcel of her personality. She wore green, with a little tight-fitting hat which for some reason set me thinking of gnomes and fairies —and so brought back a memory of the grotto under the Devil’s Elbow.

  Her beautiful, calm eyes studied me with disturbing frankness, as the waiter brought tea.

  “Has your busy day been successful?” she asked.

  “Not entirely,” I replied. “And yours?”

  “I had lunch on the Mercuriusberg,” she said, removing a handbag to make room for the tea tray. “Very much like a tripper, as you call it; but I adore the view„,,

  “It must be a familiar view?”

  She smiled, and glanced aside as the band began to play again. Her long, psychic hands fascinated.

  “My husband had a villa here. But we were rarely in Baden.”

  “I’m sorry. Have I stirred up unhappy memories?”

  “Not at all.” Her regard became fixed upon me once more. “My marriage was not entirely happy— what marriage is? And if I had any regrets, time has softened them. My husband has been dead for eleven years.”

  “The war?” I suggested gently.

  She nodded.

  Upon my sympathy, my natural sympathy with any victim of that ghastly international tragedy, came hot-foot the most poisonous suspicions. She played cleverly. A beautiful widow bereaved by one’s own countrymen or allies—it might be, by one’s own hand—is a distractingly appealing figure. “Mme. Yburg is clever”
—the strident voice seemed to ring in my ears. “Play for safety. . . .” Had she been to the Mercuriusberg?

  A number of dancers took the floor, and:

  “Shall we dance?” I asked.

  Mme. Yburg, watching me with those calm eyes in which lay so old and so dearly bought a wisdom as well as a smile which irritated whilst it caressed, shook her head slightly.

  “You don’t really want to, do you?”

  “Frankly, I don’t. I should rather talk here.”

  “So should I.”

  As a result, we talked—about a hundred and one things. But never about the Black Forest and its secrets. Mme. Yburg knew the world almost as well as I knew it. My only advantage was in respect of inaccessible spots right off the map. Europe, Asia, Africa, America—she had travelled them all. Her knowledge of human character left me miles behind. She made me feel like an infant. Only when—out of pity, I think, for my masculine inferiority—she led me on to talk of the Sahara and of the unexplored country up the Rio Negro, did I recover my poise. At last:

  “There are still a lot of jobs,” she said—she spoke vernacular English in a fascinating unfamiliar way— “which only a man can do.”

  Her words awakened me to the passage of time. I had been absorbed in that most delightful task— talking about myself to an attractive and sympathetic woman. The band had ceased, and departed. I glanced at my wrist watch, and:

  “Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Please forgive me! We have barely time to dress!”

  “You are forgiven,” said Mme. Yburg. “You have made me forget. . . .”

  3

  It was all of a quarter to seven when I joined Me Paul in the bar. His resplendence was difficult to define: but he made me feel dowdy. He wore dinner kit which would have caused the editor of the Tailor and Cutter to scream with joy; but I was well turned out, too, for that matter. It was the personality of the man, plus his faultless clothes, which created the impression.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, and leaped from his stool, regardless of the criticism of other occupants of the bar. “It is you—on the very tick of time!”