The Day the World Ended Page 7

  CHAPTER VIII - THE LAST WARNING

  1

  Following a silence of stupefaction—I can only describe it so:

  “How did you join up with Madame?” Lonergan asked.

  “I made her acquaintance here, in the hotel,” Max replied. “Her associates seemed to be—first, yourself; second, Mr. Woodville! I was naturally suspicious of Aldous P. Kluster—knowing that Mme. Yburg had American interests. Also, Mr. Woodville,,—he turned to me—“I looked upon you as a victim of this very fascinating woman.”

  “It’s understandable,” I admitted. “I returned the compliment!”

  Gaston Max shrugged, thrust a hand into his pocket, and:

  “Furies!” he exclaimed. “I forgot my cigarette case!”

  One of those sudden ideas which, regrettably, come to me so rarely came now. I crossed to the writing table, opened a drawer, and took out the caporal which I had placed there. I offered it to Max.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  He accepted it, watching me wonderingly. He examined it, and:

  “Suffering Moses!” Lonergan growled. “I begin to have hopes for you, Woodville!”

  “/ rather think,” I went on, “that you may have dropped this cigarette-”

  “Mon Dieu!” He stared hard into my eyes. “I too am thinking! And, yes! I know! At the cemetery gate?” “Correct.”

  And, as he spoke, his expression changed. It was as though a mask had been slipped aside. I found myself looking into hunted eyes . . . those same eyes which had stared out in my direction from a passing car on the previous night.

  Gaston Max laid his hand upon my shoulder. “My friend,” he said, “it is necessary that I should bring my story up to date.”

  He crossed to an armchair and dropped into it, looking from Lonergan to me; then:

  “Last night,” he continued, “I followed Mme. Yburg. She left the hotel after dinner, and I was curious about her movements. Bear in mind, gentlemen, that I believed my incognito to be unsuspected. I traced her . . . and she went to the cemetery on the hill!”

  “We know she did,” Lonergan interrupted. “Woodville met her coming away. I was covering you earlier on, but you handed me a rubber pass-out. What happened ?”

  Max frowned. The artist beneath that cloak of savoir-vivre which the investigator wore resented these intrusions; but:

  “You have interrupted me so often, my friend,” he went on smilingly, “that I am going to take the liberty of interrupting myself! I came to Baden-Baden expecting to find Mme. Yburg in touch with other members of a dangerous organization which undoubtedly exists. I found her to be in touch with nobody but yourself and Mr. Woodville! You”— he bowed to Lonergan—“occupied rooms which were not accessible; but you”—turning to me—“were vulnerable.”

  He paused, considered the cigarette which I had given him, placed it in an ash tray, and accepted one from my case. As he struck a match:

  “I came to this apartment yesterday,” he continued, “while you were away. I was disturbed by the manservant. I hid in a wardrobe. I was trapped! When the man had gone (he came to close the sun shutters) I considered these. I made it possible for them to be raised from outside. Then I departed.”

  “But you returned later last night?” I suggested.

  “I did. And, clumsily, I awakened you. I hid under a bush, and pretended to be the watchman! The real watchman nearly caught me! Again, tonight, I observed your meeting, gentlemen, at the Kurhaus.”

  “Saw you,” Lonergan drawled. “I tipped Woodville we were covered. That’s how I roped you in later. But, listen—it's urgent—were you here earlier in the evening?”

  “I was not.”

  Lonergan stared across at me.

  “Somebody was,” said he simply. “We’re getting down to hard facts. And now, Mr. Max, maybe I’ve broken up your story quite a bit; but we come back to the point where you tracked Mme. Yburg to the lay-out and dropped a cigarette. Excuse my interruptions, and go on from there.”

  "I will.”

  Max stood up.

  “She had entered the cemetery. She held a key of the gate. I heard the gate close behind her. Then I crept forward. Three or four minutes had elapsed. Inside the cemetery all was silent. No sound of footsteps. In the bright moonlight I could see right along a broad path which stretched from the point where I stood to the farther wall. I tried the gate. It was locked.

  “Mme. Yburg—you follow?—had locked herself in among the graves!

  “The strangeness of this brought me to pause. Why had she locked that gate behind her? There are horrible stories abroad, you understand, concerning the Black Forest, and Mme. Yburg is a woman of mystery—perhaps the high priestess of some new religion of destruction.

  “I think best when I smoke. You say it would have been unwise to strike a match; but this point I had not considered when, almost without knowing, I took out my cigarette case. I withdrew a caporal... .” He paused dramatically, then:

  “As I did so,” he went on, lowering his tone, “a Voice called on me by name! This Voice, coming from nowhere, from no one, chilled my blood. I do not remember dropping the cigarette, but I know, now, that I must have done so.

  “‘Gaston Max/ the Voice said—right at my elbow in the empty road!—‘return to Paris! You have two days!’”

  He stared from face to face, expecting incredulity —a clever man taxed beyond the limits of his experience—when:

  “We’ve made the grade together,” Lonergan growled. “We’ve all got the same time!”

  2

  I can never forget those changing expressions which passed across the expressive features of Gaston Max whilst, as briefly as possible, I told him the story of the Voice . . . that Voice which had also spoken to me and to Lonergan. The fact that he was not alone with this bodiless terror seemed to remove a weight of years from him. As I concluded:

  “It’s eased your mind some to know,” Lonergan said, “Woodville and I both sympathize. But except that we’re all together, I can’t see that it helps on the case a lot.”

  “I disagree!” Max cried. “It proves that the supernatural—for so we must call it—works to plan, as does the normal. If this is so, we may upset those plans!”

  “Don’t follow,” Lonergan declared.

  “But it is plain!” the Frenchman exclaimed impatiently. “There is reason behind this! And reason can work against reason. If it is not so—why have we all two days?”

  “Suffering Moses!” Lonergan’s tones were even less musical than usual. “I’ve been thinking crosseyed! Let’s sort out the facts. The Voice first spoke to me at 2 a. m., precisely, last Sunday morning. It gave me four days to quit. Two a. m. on Monday it gave me three.”

  “Exactly one hour later,” I interrupted, “it first spoke to me!”

  “Two o’clock yesterday morning,” Lonergan went on, “I was given two days-”

  “At nine last night,” Max cried, “I, also, was given two days! More than one of them has passed!”

  I looked at my wrist watch. One-thirty.

  “It is now-” I began.

  But I was interrupted.

  “Gaston Max!” said the Voice.

  We all sprang to our feet.

  “John Lonergan!”

  I glanced at Lonergan. His mask of Red Indian stoicism failed to hide the fact that he had paled.

  “Brian Woodville!”

  We stood there, a tense trio, amid silence which seemed to throb; then:

  “All three have until tomorrow midnight,” the Voice went on. “This is the last warning. You have until tomorrow midnight.”

  CHAPTER IX - LONERGAN DESERTS

  1

  In my records of this encounter with a creature more than humanly terrible, in my memories of the part I played in, literally, saving the world from destruction, the following day—it was a Wednesday—forms a peak. It was destined to be memorable.

  We had until midnight. . . .

  Since
our feeble subterfuges were plainly matter for laughter on the part of the Voice, we had agreed to breakfast together on the balcony of my apartment.

  As I came out of the bathroom and stood for a moment looking across sunny lawns where gaily chattering holiday makers already hurried to their hotels from early constitutionals, I questioned, once again, the reality of it all.

  Gaston Max’s story—what did it mean? That the presence of Mme. Yburg in that stricken village had been accidental was an explanation which reason rejected. Her visit to Hartford, Connecticut, at the time of the radio mystery, made it impossible to ignore the significance of what might otherwise have passed for a coincidence.

  “A tremendous electrical discharge," someone had said in speaking of the Pyrenees tragedy; and the American mystery was also one of unknown waves. . . . “Perhaps the high priestess of some new religion of destruction.” Mme. Yburg had been so described by Gaston Max.

  At the time appointed, the latter gentleman joined me. He wore gray flannels and a blue reefer jacket. His socks, his shirt, and his tie harmonized pleasingly.

  “Ah!” he exclaimed, coming up the steps, “our American friend is late!”

  “Not yet,” said I, consulting my watch: “You are absolutely on time.”

  He dropped into a chair and stared reflectively at the beautiful prospect. Presently:

  “I have been watching trout down there in the Stream,” he said.

  “Inspiring idea. What about trout for breakfast?”

  “Good,” he acknowledged; adding, characteristically, “I am all for it. Early breakfast is not in my line. But blue trout, toast, and a cup of coffee—yes, I could manage this! But”—he glanced aside at me— “it was not of breakfast I was thinking as I watched those trout.”

  “No?”

  “No! They head always upstream—watching the oncoming water. Any danger, they suppose, would approach on the current, which they can see. They do not realize—being fishes—that they are trapped; that it is only a question of somebody’s whim how soon they will be cooked and eaten!”

  I stared at him curiously. He was not looking in my direction. Seen in profile he had a magnificent head.

  “We are heading upstream,” he went on—“you and I and Mr. Lonergan. But we have this advantage over the trout: we do know when we are to be cooked!”

  “At midnight?”

  He shrugged.

  “Say, rather, at any time after midnight. But where we share the ignorance of the fishes is in this: we do not know how we are going to be cooked—nor by whom we are going to be eaten!”

  Following a short silence, during which I caught snatches of careless conversation from distant passers-by wafted to me over the song of the little stream:

  “Having slept on the problem,” I said, “has any theory explaining the Voice occurred to you?” “None.”

  “Or one to account for the giant bat?”

  He turned to me impulsively, and:

  “I tell you,” he declared, “we are face to face with powers against which we are as helpless as those trout in the Oos are helpless against the net!”

  A silence fell upon us, in which no doubt Gaston Max was thinking, as I was thinking, that Lonergan, usually a model of punctuality, had presumably overslept. When, after some aimless chat which mainly served to hide a mutual doubt, fifteen minutes passed and our American colleague still remained absent, I made a suggestion.

  “Either Lonergan has forgotten the appointment,” I said, “or something is wrong with him. If you will excuse me for a moment, I will make inquiries.”

  “I wish you would.”

  I crossed to the telephone, and remembering only just in time the name in which Lonergan was registered at the hotel:

  “Would you call Mr. Kluster’s room,” I said to the clerk who answered. “I don’t know his number.”

  There was a silent interval, then:

  “Mr. Woodville?” inquired another voice, that of an assistant manager whom I knew fairly well.

  “Yes.”

  “You are asking for Mr. Kluster? I am surprised he neglected to advise you. Mr. Kluster has gone. He left for Duesseldorf by an early train!”

  2

  “One wise fish has escaped the net,” said Gaston Max.

  But, frankly, I regarded Lonergan’s desertion less lightly. If ever I had come upon a man whom obstacles stimulated and to whom danger was refreshment that man was surely John Lonergan. Besides, ignominious flight was childish—a plain defection from duty with two witnesses to testify against Washington's special commissioner.

  It was utterly incomprehensible.

  “It is plain, is it not,” said Max, as we strolled through the gardens after breakfast, “that for us to attempt to hide our movements from M. the Voice is simply silly?”

  “Quite plain.”

  “Mr. Lonergan has recognized this. So—do not let us judge him hastily.”

  I paused, staring at the speaker, but:

  “You and I,” he went on smilingly, “have until midnight. Let us use this time to the best advantage. What line of inquiry had you intended to follow today?”

  “I had planned to visit the Felsenweir mausoleum in the cemetery.”

  “Curious,” Max murmured. “So had I. Let us go together.”

  A sudden and oppressive darkness had fallen when, half an hour later, we set out. The hall porter proffered a word of advice:

  “Don't go too far, sir. When it rains in Baden at this season, it rains hard.”

  Nevertheless, we risked it. I welcomed the Frenchman’s company, although his usual amusing chatter was absent during our walk up to the old cemetery. I could not reconcile Lonergan's desertion with the character of the man; I believed that Gaston Max had a theory; and he remained silent. Perhaps I was a little bit resentful.

  Some few parties returning to the town we met, driven by the threatening storm, but beyond where the steep path bent sharply to the left, offering a prospect of the roofs of Baden-Baden, we had the road to ourselves.

  An awning of cloud hung over the green bowl which shelters the town. Its effect was queerly forbidding. Robbed of sunshine, Baden looked like a dead place —like the shell of a fly (why did the image suggest itself?) whose life had been sucked out by a spider. And, as the unpleasant thought came to my mind: “Do you know,” said Gaston Max suddenly, “that up to the year 1449 or 1549—forgive my bad history—I am not sure which it is—there was a village of Felsenweir?”

  “No.”

  “There was. No trace of it remains, I am told. It was deserted by all its inhabitants, and now the forest has partly reclaimed the soil it occupied.”

  “Why was it deserted?”

  “Because of a plague.”

  “You mean the Black Death—called in Germany, I believe, the ‘Basle Death’?”

  “No, no, not at all. This was another kind of plague. One by one they died, the people of Felsenweir. They wasted away. And it was said—those were the dark ages, Mr. Woodville—that a vampire was visiting the village!”

  “Good heavens!”

  I pulled up shortly. The angry curtain drawn over the valley now touched with its eastern edge higher slopes of the hills. Premature night threatened us; and no fellow travellers followed the road. Cast back by Max’s words into a dim past haunted by witches and werewolves, I saw that old “plague” in operation ... I saw again a gigantic bat alighting amid the tombs. The red mouth of Mme. Yburg smiled at me, and I heard the Voice.

  “Does it surprise you?”

  “No. But it seems to link up with more recent rumours. I must compliment you on your thoroughness. This story is new to me. Was anyone identified as the vampire?”

  “But yes! Those superstitious peasants traced the trouble to Adelheid, Countess of Felsenweir. She was dead, you understand? They enlisted the authority of Mother Church and she was removed from the family vault and buried elsewhere, with a stake through her heart.”

  “Then the Felsenweir tomb
. . .”

  “Has remained closed since the day that long dead lady was taken from it.” -And now we had reached the cemetery. Its gate was open, but the impending storm had deterred visitors. A phenomenal gloom lay over that place normally gloomy enough. It appeared deserted. Gaston Max looked up at the pall above, and:

  “We are in for a drenching, I think,” he said.

  “But no matter. There is no one whose attention we are likely to attract.”

  “No one that we can see.”

  Max shrugged his shoulders.

  “The Invisible we cannot hope to dodge. In the course of my professional duties, Mr. Woodville, I have of course come in contact with strange things, but never before have I been tracked by a disembodied Voice nor met with giant bats. Failing some new light on these mysteries, I must confess myself defeated. But until midnight we can go on hoping.” “And after midnight? . . .”

  “We may have nothing to hope for.”

  He made a weary gesture, smiling lightly, but his manner—as did my own—concealed a deep unrest. In sunshine it had been possible to shake off the incubus of that invisible menace. Personally I am not ashamed to admit that now, surrounded by tombs, curtained by a lowering storm, a vast uneasiness was claiming me. What my feelings must be when midnight came I preferred not to imagine.

  In silence we walked along the path, turning to the left, to the right, and to the left again, until in the oldest part of the cemetery we stood before the strangely conceived tomb of the Felsenweirs.