"Rain"s letting up." Sir Robert nodded his approval. "Back to the forest. I"ve mapped the d.a.m.ned place for weeks. All the bodies were found in one half-open glade. That"s where the a.s.sa.s.sin, if it was a man, arrives! Or where the unnatural silk-spinning, earth-tunneling architect of special doors abides his tomb."
"Must I hear all this?" I protested.
"Listen more." Sir Robert downed the last of his burgundy. "The poor children"s prolapsed corpses were found at thirteen-day intervals. Which means that every two weeks our loathsome eight-legged hide-and-seeker must feed. Tonight is the fourteenth night after the last child was found, nothing but skin. Tonight our hidden friend must hunger afresh. So! Within the hour, I shall introduce you to Finnegan the great and horrible!"
"All of which," I said, "makes me want to drink."
"Here I go." Sir Robert stepped through one of his Louis the Fourteenth portals. "To find the last and final and most awful door in all my life. You will follow."
d.a.m.n, yes! I followed.
The sun had set, the rain was gone, and the clouds cleared off to show a cold and troubled moon. We moved in our own silence and the silence of the exhausted paths and glades while Sir Robert handed me a small silver pistol.
"Not that that would help. Killing an outsize arachnid is sticky. Hard to know where to fire the first shot. If you miss, there"ll be no time for a second. d.a.m.ned things, large or small, move in the instant!"
"Thanks." I took the weapon. "I need a drink."
"Done." Sir Robert handed me a silver brandy flask. "Drink as needed."
I drank. "What about you?"
"I have my own special flask." Sir Robert lifted it. "For the right time."
"Why wait?"
"I must surprise the beast and mustn"t be drunk at the encounter. Four seconds before the thing grabs me, I will imbibe of this dear Napoleon stuff, spiced with a rude surprise."
"Surprise?"
"Ah, wait. You"ll see. So will this dark thief of life. Now, dear sir, here we part company. I this way, you yonder. Do you mind?"
"Mind when I"m scared gutless? What"s that?"
"Here. If I should vanish." He handed me a sealed letter. "Read it aloud to the constabulary. It will help them locate me and Finnegan, lost and found."
"Please, no details. I feel like a d.a.m.ned fool following you while Finnegan, if he exists, is underfoot snug and warm, saying, "Ah, those idiots above running about, freezing. I think I"ll let them freeze.""
"One hopes not. Get away now. If we walk together, he won"t jump up. Alone, he"ll peer out the merest crack, glom the scene with a huge bright eye, flip down again, ssst, and one of us gone to darkness."
"Not me, please. Not me."
We walked on about sixty feet apart and beginning to lose one another in the half moonlight.
"Are you there?" called Sir Robert from half the world away in leafy dark.
"I wish I weren"t," I yelled back.
"Onward!" cried Sir Robert. "Don"t lose sight of me. Move closer. We"re near on the site. I can intuit, I almost feel-"
As a final cloud shifted, moonlight glowed brilliantly to show Sir Robert waving his arms about like antennae, eyes half shut, gasping with expectation.
"Closer, closer," I heard him exhale. "Near on. Be still. Perhaps . . ."
He froze in place. There was something in his aspect that made me want to leap, race, and yank him off the turf he had chosen.
"Sir Robert, oh, G.o.d!" I cried. "Run!"
He froze. One hand and arm orchestrated the air, feeling, probing, while his other hand delved, brought forth his silver-coated flask of brandy. He held it high in the moonlight, a toast to doom. Then, afflicted with need, he took one, two, three, my G.o.d, four incredible swigs!
Arms out, balancing the wind, tilting his head back, laughing like a boy, he swigged the last of his mysterious drink.
"All right, Finnegan, below and beneath!" he cried. "Come get me!"
He stomped his foot.
Cried out victorious.
And vanished.
It was all over in a second.
A flicker, a blur, a dark bush had grown up from the earth with a whisper, a suction, and the thud of a body dropped and a door shut.
The glade was empty.
"Sir Robert. Quick!"
But there was no one to quicken.
Not thinking that I might be s.n.a.t.c.hed and vanished, I lurched to the spot where Sir Robert had drunk his wild toast.
I stood staring down at earth and leaves with not a sound save my heart beating while the leaves blew away to reveal only pebbles, dry gra.s.s, and earth.
I must have lifted my head and bayed to the moon like a dog, then fell to my knees, fearless, to dig for lids, for tunneled tombs where a voiceless tangle of legs wove themselves, binding and mummifying a thing that had been my friend. This is his final door, I thought insanely, crying the name of my friend.
I found only his pipe, cane, and empty brandy flask, flung down when he had escaped night, life, everything.
Swaying up, I fired the pistol six times here into the unanswering earth, a dumb thing gone stupid as I finished and staggered over his instant graveyard, his locked-in tomb, listening for m.u.f.fled screams, shrieks, cries, but heard none. I ran in circles, with no ammunition save my weeping shouts. I would have stayed all night, but a downpour of leaves, a great spidering flourish of broken branches, fell to panic and suffer my heart. I fled, still calling his name to a silence lidded by clouds that hid the moon.
At his estate, I beat on the door, wailing, yanking, until I recalled: it opened inward, it was unlocked.
Alone in the library, with only liquor to help me live, I read the letter that Sir Robert had left behind: My dear Douglas: I am old and have seen much but am not mad. Finnegan exists. My chemist had provided me with a sure poison that I will mix in my brandy for our walk. I will drink all. Finnegan, not knowing me as a poisoned morsel, will give me a swift invite. Now you see me, now you don"t. I will then be the weapon of his death, minutes after my own. I do not think there is another outsize nightmare like him on earth. Once gone, that"s the end.
Being old, I am immensely curious. I fear not death, for my physicians tell me that if no accidents kill me, cancer will.
I thought of giving a poisoned rabbit to our nightmare a.s.sa.s.sin. But then I"d never know where he was or if he really existed. Finnegan would die unseen in his monstrous closet, and I never the wiser. This way, for one victorious moment, I will know Fear for me. Envy me. Pray for me. Sorry to abandon you without farewells. Dear friend, carry on.
I folded the letter and wept.
No more was ever heard of him.
Some say Sir Robert killed himself, an actor in his own melodrama, and that one day we shall unearth his brooding, lost, and Gothic body and that it was he who killed the children and that his preoccupation with doors and hinges, and more doors, led him, crazed, to study this one species of spider, and wildly plan and build the most amazing door in history, an insane burrow into which he popped to die, before my eyes, thus hoping to perpetuate the incredible Finnegan.
But I have found no burrow. I do not believe a man could construct such a pit, even given Sir Robert"s overwhelming pa.s.sion for doors.
I can only ask, would a man murder, draw his victims" blood, build an earthen vault? For what motive? Create the finest secret exit in all time? Madness. And what of those large grayish b.a.l.l.s of earth supposedly tossed forth from the spider"s lair?
Somewhere, Finnegan and Sir Robert lie clasped in a velvet-lined unmarked crypt, deep under. Whether one is the paranoiac alter ego of the other, I cannot say. But the murders have ceased, the rabbits once more rush in Chatham Forest, and its bushes teem with b.u.t.terflies and birds. It is another spring, and the children run again through a loud glade, no longer silent.
Finnegan and Sir Robert, requiescat in pace.
ON THE ORIENT, NORTH.
IT WAS ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS heading north from Venice to Paris to Calais that the old woman noticed the ghastly pa.s.senger.
He was a traveler obviously dying of some dread disease.
He occupied compartment 22 on the third car back, and had his meals sent in and only at twilight did he rouse to come sit in the dining car surrounded by the false electric lights and the sound of crystal and women"s laughter.
He arrived this night, moving with a terrible slowness to sit across the aisle from this woman of some years, her bosom like a fortress, her brow serene, her eyes with a kindness that had mellowed with time.
There was a black medical bag at her side, and a thermometer tucked in her mannish lapel pocket.
The ghastly man"s paleness caused her left hand to crawl up along her lapel to touch the thermometer.
"Oh, dear," whispered Miss Minerva Halliday.
The maitre d" was pa.s.sing. She touched his elbow and nodded across the aisle.
"Pardon, but where is that poor man going?"
"Calais and London, madame. If G.o.d is willing."
And he hurried off.
Minerva Halliday, her appet.i.te gone, stared across at that skeleton made of snow.
The man and the cutlery laid before him seemed one. The knives, forks and spoons jingled with a silvery cold sound. He listened, fascinated, as if to the sound of his inner soul as the cutlery crept, touched, chimed; a tintinnabulation from another sphere. His hands lay in his lap like lonely pets, and when the train swerved around a long curve his body, mindless, swayed now this way, now that, toppling.
At which moment the train took a greater curve and knocked the silverware, chittering. A woman at a far table, laughing, cried out: "I don"t believe it!"
To which a man with a louder laugh shouted: "Nor do I!"
The coincidence caused, in the ghastly pa.s.senger, a terrible melting. The doubting laughter had pierced his ears.
He visibly shrank. His eyes hollowed and one could almost imagine a cold vapor gasped from his mouth.
Miss Minerva Halliday, shocked, leaned forward and put out one hand. She heard herself whisper: "I believe!"
The effect was instantaneous.
The ghastly pa.s.senger sat up. Color returned to his white cheeks. His eyes glowed with a rebirth of fire. His head swiveled and he stared across the aisle at this miraculous woman with words that cured.
Blushing furiously, the old nurse with the great warm bosom caught hold, rose, and hurried off.
Not five minutes later, Miss Minerva Halliday heard the maitre d" hurrying along the corridor, tapping on doors, whispering. As he pa.s.sed her open door, he glanced at her.
"Could it be that you are-"
"No," she guessed, "not a doctor. But a registered nurse. Is it that old man in the dining car?"
"Yes, yes! Please, madame, this way!"
The ghastly man had been carried back to his own compartment.
Reaching it, Miss Minerva Halliday peered within.
And there the strange man lay strewn, his eyes wilted shut, his mouth a bloodless wound, the only life in him the joggle of his head as the train swerved.
My G.o.d, she thought, he"s dead!
Out loud she said, "I"ll call if I need you."
The maitre d" went away.
Miss Minerva Halliday quietly shut the sliding door and turned to examine the dead man-for surely he was dead. And yet. . . .
But at last she dared to reach out and touch the wrists in which so much ice-water ran. She pulled back, as if her fingers had been burned by dry ice. Then she leaned forward to whisper into the pale man"s face.
"Listen very carefully. Yes?"
For answer, she thought she heard the coldest throb of a single heartbeat.
She continued. "I do not know how I guess this. I know who you are, and what you are sick of-"
The train curved. His head lolled as if his neck had been broken.
"I"ll tell you what you"re dying from!" she whispered. "You suffer a disease-of people!"
His eyes popped wide, as if he had been shot through the heart. She said: "The people on this train are killing you. They are your affliction."