The Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 3: Emil Petaja Page 3

  “And—?”

  “And only then by exorcism with a portion of the sacred Staff of St. Francis!”

  “Ah’” Retts said, very softly.

  Then he rose to his feet like an avenging spectre.

  “Who do you think you’re fooling, you cheap impostor!”

  The stranger rose to his feet also. They stood face to face across the desk. Rett’s face was livid with rage.

  “You say I’m an impostor,” said the stranger mildly. “Might one ask how you know?”

  Retts laughed harshly.

  “Elementary, my dear fake! You made three important mistakes in your story. “One—you numbered Bluebeard’s victims at one hundred and twenty-three. Actually, there were one hundred and twenty-nine!

  “Two—you mentioned the name of a certain saint. Had you really been the diabolical Bluebeard you would not have been able to speak his name!

  “Third—you said that the only thing that could destroy Bluebeard is exorcism with part of the sacred staff. That is completely wrong. Actually—”

  He paused, his thin lips twisting.

  “Why don’t you finish, monsieur?”

  “Why should I tell you, you miserable charlatan,” Retts said scornfully. “Who are you, anyway? Some incompetent out of work writer who—”

  The stranger bent his head meekly.

  “You’ve guessed it, sir!” he said in a crestfallen manner. “My name is Emil Petaja. I live in Los Angeles. I have sent you story after story for your magazine, but all of them have been rejected. So as a last desperate measure I—”

  “Hah!” sneered the editor. “I can guess the rest. You heard about my project, in getting the autobiographies of famous fiends, and thought you would put over a fast one on me. You would impersonate the murderer Bluebeard and write—”

  “No!” protested the crushed stranger appealingly. “I only wished to talk to you. I have tried many times, and each time you are too busy, your secretary says. I was certain my manuscripts were being returned unread. I have several right here in my handbag!”

  Retts stood over his desk with his hands folded, looking down at the cloaked stranger with sardonic contempt. His visitor had turned his back and was fumbling in his hand-bag.

  Suddenly he turned.

  “Sir, I am overwhelmed with curiosity. I, too, in my small way, am a collector of bizarre crime stories, particularly those that concern the notorious Bluebeard. Won’t you tell me, please, what it is that can destroy this immortal monster—according to the superstition, I mean, of course?”

  Retts shrugged.

  “I don’t know why I should tell a nondescript little fool like you, but—well, the one thing that will destroy Bluebeard is water from the sacred spring of Assisi!”

  The stranger quivered in his cloak. Suddenly his gloved hands flashed up with a little bottle. He uncorked it gravely, and flung it into the editor’s cadaverous face.

  “Merci beaucoup, le Baron Bluebeard!” he cried out.

  Miss Twisp heard her employer’s strident scream.

  She hesitated a moment, then timidly opened the inner-office door and peeked in.

  Her wide eyes beheld Editor Malcolm Retts writhe in agony. She heard again his cry of baffled fury.

  She saw his gaunt cheeks become the hollows in the visage of a grinning skull. Then she saw the skull itself crumble into dust. Finally there was nothing left in the office chair but empty clothes—and a jaunty chestnut wig…

  Miss Twisp put her hand to her mouth to suppress a wild scream. Her eyes turned to the stranger…

  With a single gesture the stranger flung off his blue glasses, his false beard and wig, and his cloak.

  Miss Twisp caught just a glimpse of a long brown monk’s robe, an austere transfigured face, and a silver cross held aloft. Then the stranger put his slender fingers together in an attitude of prayer, and vanished.

  LIVE EVIL

  Shuddering in the cold November rain, Jan Gormley rang the bell again. Again nothing but vibrating echoes inside. He mopped an anxious face and twisted the Sunset Weekly in his hands. Gormley, a thin sparrow of a man, looked just a little ludicrous in an overlarge black raincoat. But there was a fierce fire inside his brain. Gormley was mad, madder than he had ever been in his life before.

  Finally. Finally the door opened.

  A big man with a cigar in his face filled the opening. He looked down at his visitor and his thick lips curled. Then he shrugged and stepped aside. Gormley darted in gratefully. He followed the fat man down a dim hall and into a grimy but somehow important-scented office.

  Lettering on an outside window proclaimed:

  ALBERT FAST ENTERPRISES

  Albert Fast grunted as he slid behind his big desk. He pretended to be busy for a moment. Gormley just sat, yearning to vent his mad, waiting for his cue.

  “Well, Gormley,” Fast provided it and a stock answer as well, “what is it? More money? The answer is no. Not a cent.”

  Gormley flushed. He knew Fast’s games. Fast had tried to make people cringe ever since he was a slum kid in the San Francisco junk business. Often he had. Now as a respected enterpriser with greedy fingers in many pies he indulged himself almost daily. This little East Bay suburb partially belonged to him. Symbolically, his half was built on a swamp. His real estate brochures referred to it as Aloha Lagoon.

  Gormley plunged.

  “Albert, why did you let them print this story? You know what my research means to me! I’m devoting my life to it. You advanced me money to keep going. We were in school together. I thought you understood, Albert. Why did you tell them things—allow them to misinterpret?”

  Fast’s smile was more gloating than as reproachful as it purported to be.

  “You’re too serious about things, Gormley” he said. “Always were that way. As a scientist you hadn’t ought to let a hick weekly story bother you. A scientist has to be hard-headed, just like a business man. Practical. Never get rattled. That’s the key to success.”

  Gormley’s narrow face paled.

  “Scientists have to be dreamers, too. Until their ideas are proven. That’s what I’m trying to do, to prove my research is not only sound and practical but vital to the whole human race!”

  The fat man puffed his cigar as in deep thought.

  “Maybe. Let’s have a look at what young Bill Higgins wrote. I haven’t seen it yet.”

  He scanned the news story. His chins wobbled with amusement.

  “Here we are: ‘It would seem Sunset has a genius in its midst. Dr. Jan Gormley, late of Atlantic University, has invented a de-ghosting machine. Are you troubled with goblins or poltergeists? If so, send for Gormley. He’ll rout them out in jig-time. We neglected to find out his rates, but all interested should etc., etc.’”

  Albert Fast grinned.

  “This article will make me a laughing stock. There is no mention of my extra-sensory-perception experiments in the East, theories which have since been proven to be sound. I told you I wanted no publicity of any kind. How could you do it, Albert?”

  Fast mangled his cigar. A self-made man, he harbored a concealed respect for education and the science degrees Gormley was entitled to use after his name. But this respect frequently backfired.

  “I owed Bill’s father a favor,” he justified himself, “so when Bill came around spouting about his new job, wanting a story, I mentioned you. It was off hand, but he got interested, then I got carried away. How’d I know it would jell like this?” He made like Pontius Pilate.

  “My creditors are on me like wolves,” Gormley said. “I’ll probably get thrown out in the street. Worst of all—my machine! My beautiful machine! I’ve worked ten years on it; got most of my parts from Dudley Smith at KLB Radio Station.” He winced. “I had to prevaricate a little. I think Mr. Smith believes it to be something new for television. Otherwise he’d never have advanced me the electronic parts I needed.”

  Fast grinned. “I know Smith. Him and his two-bit radio station. Alway
s trying to make a fast buck with some phony advertising scheme. His angle is, the phonier it is, the more the public will eat it up. Yeah, he’ll be onto you like a ton of bricks when he reads this.” He chuckled. “He fell for your degrees, just like me. Now, instead of a super-television set he expected to be in on, he’s stuck with a de-ghosting machine.” He gnawed his cigar gleefully, then scowled. “What am I laughing at? I’m in the same boat with Smith. You’re into me for eight hundred.” His eyes narrowed on the little man, as if speculating on how much his carcass was worth at present meat prices.

  Gormley stood up.

  “Won’t you just help me once more—?”

  “Not a cent.”

  Gormley swallowed. “I know it has taken me a long time. These things do. It’s been trial and error, with no precedent to go on. I’ve made mistakes. But I’m on the right track now. Albert! I’ve discovered just where my error was. It wasn’t in the machine at all. It was—”

  “Save your-breath, Gormley. I got taken. Forget it.”

  “But—my machine! They’ll take it away from me an—”

  “Scrap it for parts. That’s what they’ll do. Likely Smith will give me the job. I’ll make a little on it, anyway. We’ll tear it to pieces and put them where they’ll do some real good.”

  Gormley’s knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair. He leaned forward urgently. “Good! What could do more good than my machine! To save the world from the horrors that leak into it from evil dimensions—every night, every hour. Albert, those leakages of evil must be stopped up before it is too late. Evil influences are taking possession of men. It’s getting worse all the time. Don’t you see? If nothing is done these dimensional faults will widen and widen until—can’t you see the world is doomed without my machine?”

  “Gormley,” the fat man’s voice was cold and contemptuous, “maybe I didn’t have your education. Maybe I did drag myself up from the gutter. But I know what gives. I know the world is in a tight spot. But we’ll get out of it without any crackpot de-ghosting machine.” He rose ponderously. “Now, if you don’t mind. Time’s money to me. I’ve wasted too much of both on you.”

  Gormley, beaten, was closing the office door behind him when Fast called him back. It seemed an impulse. He sank back wondering in his chair while the fat man tramped the floor. Once he tried to plead his case further but Fast shushed him. Finally Fast parked his elephantine bulk right in front of him on the desk. His eyes burned with lethal acid, and a desperate kind of greed.

  “You think it’s that important, eh, Gormley?”

  The little man nodded hopefully. “May I explain?”

  Fast glanced at his watch, “Make it snappy.”

  “I will. Here is my basic theory. I believe that ‘good’ is a tangible living force. It exists strongly in certain places, leaking in from higher dimensions. All who come within its influences are affected to some extent. But there’s one thing I overlooked. It seems—”

  “Don’t ramble,” Fast warned.

  “No-o. If one is religious my theory is fairly obvious. Take Lourdes, and other ‘miraculous’ places. Zones of good. Leakage of force for good from dimensions of light. The religious application comes when one asks, are these leakages purposeful or just random.

  “At the opposite pole is evil. I believe there are also leakages of evil from dark dimensions. Certain old houses, rocky caverns, or lonely wastes on the surface of the ocean. Things happen in these places. Evil things which cannot be accounted for entirely. Often nothing can be seen, or heard, or detected by other senses. Suicide. Murder. I believe that each so-called haunted house contains a fault, a leakage where malignant tangible entities of pure evil slip through and when they find a suitable outlet for their desires cause misery and death.”

  The look of introspective boredom on Albert Fast’s face changed suddenly. His ears perked.

  “Haunted houses, eh? You know, I had a hunch when I called you back, Gormley. You know me. I don’t just let eight hundred bucks fly out of the window without putting up a scrap. My hunch told me there might be something in all this malarkey after all.”

  Gormley glowed. “We might save the world—”

  “Forget it,” Fast snapped.

  “It’s only theory,” Gormley admitted. “But if one just could trace back and locate the exact origin of the evil in certain men. Hitler, for example, or—”

  “Forget it! What hit me was what you said about haunted houses. You mean, like houses where everything goes wrong. Families bump each other off and then when somebody else moves in they lose all their money or go nuts. Finally the house gets a jinx on it and nobody’ll touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

  Now Gormley understood. He pushed his advantage.

  “Exactly like that, Albert. Think of the practical side. If we could stop up these leakages of evil. Make these houses habitable.”

  “I’m way ahead of you.” The fat man paced again, then whirled. “Mind you, I don’t want anybody to get wind of this. Can’t afford to have my name connected with any fiddle-faddle. I’m a practical man, Gormley. What I want first is proof. Proof positive, like the ads say.”

  “Certainly,” Gormley assured him. “And I’m now in the position to offer you proof, providing we have access to one of these authentic zones of evil.”

  Fast flicked his cigar and stared out at the pouring, rain. “Do you know the old Castongua Mansion in the ravine?”

  Gormley nodded. The lumbering old frame structure had once belonged to a nouveau riche French-Canadian. His name still adhered to it in spite of Fast’s glib real estate maneuvering. It had, in fact, been suspect in Gormley’s lists for a long time. Sinister things had happened in that dark house in the ravine.

  Fast owned Castongua Mansion, evidently. It was obvious he had been unable to dispose of this valuable property. And herein lay the fat man’s mounting enthusiasm. The core of his interest lay, as always, in self-gain, not in any desire to help humanity. “Make that house saleable and I’ll talk turkey!” he cried.

  “I understand the paneling was imported from France,” Gormley murmured. “And the parquet floors are solid mahogany.”

  Fast wiped a wet tongue over his wide lips. “I’ve owned that house for the best part of twenty years. Sold it once. Writer from Denver. Committed suicide. Bought it back from the estate, they owed me money. Tried to strip it. But damn it, every time I sent workmen there something went wrong. One fell out of a third floor window and broke his neck. Another went home and choked his wife with a curtain sash he’d taken from one of the windows. I kept them at it until another of my men was caught peddling heroin that he kept stashed up there. He got sent up.

  “Finally I gave up. My workers wouldn’t go in the place. And damned if the only load of paneling we got out of it didn’t catch fire at the warehouse before I could sell it. I lost money all along the line, and I’m sick of it. The house is jinxed. Finally had to admit it.”

  “You believe in jinxes,” Gormley said softly.

  “Sure.”

  “But not in zones of evil.”

  “I believe in what I see,” Fast blustered. “Show me what you got and I’ll buy it. Maybe there are other houses—houses I could buy for a song. Yeah. We might do business after all. But I want an exclusive, mind you!”

  Gormley nodded ironically. By an effort he kept repugnance from his face when the fat man massaged his shoulder, beaming in the midst of his expanding dreams.

  “When would you like to start?”

  “Tonight!” Fast exclaimed. “You get your gadget moved down there this afternoon. No, this evening. I’ll send one of my truckers to help you. I’ll meet you there—say, eleven or eleven-thirty. Okay?”

  “Evil is strongest in the dark hours.”

  “Huh? Okay, see you there at eleven or so. Have everything all set. Can’t waste time, eh? Busy day tomorrow. You get everything ready there and wait for me.”

  It was a dismissal. At the door Gormley turned. “What about
Dudley Smith?”

  “Smith. Yeah. If he bothers you, send him around to me. I’ll head him off. The big thing is to get that mansion cleaned up. Means a lot to both of us, eh, Gormley? I’ll play along. But remember, I’m a practical guy. Never bought a pig in a poke yet. None of this sight unseen hokey-pokey for me. I got to have proof. Proof!”

  * * * *

  The rain soon had him wet through, but Gormley could be philosophical now. Albert Fast was not an ideal partner for such an important undertaking, but better than none at all. At least his beloved machine was safe.

  He climbed the three creaky flights to his loft in the miasmic clam flats district and, having reassured himself that the machine was safe, he broke up an orange crate and built a fire. This served to dry him off and to heat up a can of soup.

  While he waited for the soup to heat he thumbed through his mass of notes regarding so-called haunted localities. He found a lengthy page on Castongua Mansion. Skimming up a ladle of soup from time to time, he went over it.

  “Built in 1881 by Victor Castongua for his pretty young wife and her two daughters. He married late in life and left Canada when he received an unexpected inheritance. The inheritance preceded his marriage, significantly. Tempered his own reclusive bent with his wife’s inclination for society. The mansion was built in the ravine some distance from the coach road to Martinez, but was still near enough to San Francisco to please his wife.

  “A great oak tree shadows the east wing. Said to have been a hang-tree in road agent days. At least one hanging verified. A reckless boy of sixteen was suspected of stealing gold. An oldster interviewed about it in 1911, who attended the lynching, believed the boy to be innocent. Vicious mob. Haunting spectacle of brute violence…”

  Thus the very ground on which the mansion was built was steeped in terror and tragedy. Its evilness pre-dated its erection.

  The soup began to simmer so Gormley gave his attention to it, musing in a cursory way on Victor Castongua’s troubles. One might expect him to have troubles, marrying a wife half his age. And yet what happened to the Castongua family was unnaturally villainous. Double murder, suicide? Insanity. The papers of the day made much of the sordid love aspects of the affair, so Gormley had no difficulty in tracing his material.