The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories (17 page)

“He knelt down to examine the ground.

“‘What's that?' he asked me. ‘If it's blood, it has something else with it.'

“There was only a tiny spot on the bare rock. I looked at it. It was undoubtedly brain tissue. I was surprised that there was no more of it. It must, I suppose, have come from a deep wound in the skull. Might have been made by an arrow, or a bird's beak, or perhaps a tooth.

“Vaughan slid down the rock, and prodded his stick into the sulphurous mud of the stream bed. Then he hunted about in the bushes like a dog.

“‘There was no body dragged away in that direction,' he said.

“We examined the further side of the rock. It fell sheer, and seemed an impossible climb for man or beast. The edge was matted with growing things. I was ready to believe that Vaughan's eyes could tell if anything had passed that way.

“‘Not a sign!' he said. ‘Where the devil has his body gone to?'

“The three of us sat on the edge of the rock in silence. The spring bubbled and wept beneath, and the pines murmured above us. There was no need of a little particle of human substance, recognizable only to a physiologist's eye, to tell us that we were on the scene of a kill. Imagination? Imagination is so often only a forgotten instinct. The man who ran up that rock wondered in his panic why he gave way to his imagination.

“We found the magistrate in the village when we returned and reported our find to him.

“‘Interesting! But what does it tell us?' he said.

“I pointed out that at least we knew the man was dead or dying.

“‘There's no certain proof. Show me his body. Show me any motive for killing him.'

“Vaughan insisted that it was the work of an animal. The magistrate disagreed. If it were wolf, he said, we might have some difficulty in collecting the body, but none in finding it. And as for bear—well, they were so harmless that the idea was ridiculous.

“Nobody believed in any material beast, for the whole countryside had been beaten. But tales were told in the village—the old tales. I should never have dreamed that those peasants accepted so many horrors as fact if I hadn't heard those tales in the village inn. The odd thing is that I couldn't say then, and I can't say now, that they were altogether wrong. You should have seen the look in those men's eyes as old Weiss, the game warden, told how time after time his grandfather had fired point-blank at a grey wolf whom he met in the woods at twilight. He had never killed it until he loaded his gun with silver. Then the wolf vanished after the shot, but Heinrich the cobbler was found dying in his house with a beaten silver dollar in his belly.

“Josef Weiss, his son, who did most of the work on the preserves and was seldom seen in the village unless he came down to sell a joint or two of venison, was indignant with his father. He was a heavily built, sullen fellow, who had read a little. There's nobody so intolerant of superstition as your half-educated man. Vaughan, of course, agreed with him—but then capped the villagers' stories with such ghastly tales from native folklore and mediaeval literature that I couldn't help seeing he had been brooding on the subject. The peasants took him seriously. They came and went in pairs. No one would step out into the night without a companion. Only the shepherd was unaffected. He didn't disbelieve, but he was a mystic. He was used to passing to and fro under the trees at night.

“‘You've got to be a part of those things, sir,' he said to me, ‘then you'll not be afraid of them. I don't say a man can turn himself into a wolf,—the Blessed Virgin protect us!—but I know why he'd want to.'

“That was most interesting.

“‘I think I know too,' I answered. ‘But what does it feel like?'

“‘It feels as if the woods had got under your skin, and you want to walk wild and crouch at the knees.'

“‘He's perfectly right,' said Vaughan convincingly.

“That was the last straw for those peasants. They drew away from Vaughan, and two of them spat into the fire to avert his evil eye. He seemed to them much too familiar with the black arts.

“‘How do you explain it?' asked Vaughan, turning to me.

“I told him it might have a dozen different causes, just as fear of the dark has. And physical hunger might also have something to do with it.

“I think our modern psychology is inclined to give too much importance to sex. We forget that man is, or was, a fleet-footed hunting animal equipped with all the necessary instincts.

“As soon as I mentioned hunger, there was a chorus of assent—though they really didn't know what I or the shepherd or Vaughan was talking about. Most of those men had experienced extreme hunger. The innkeeper was reminded of a temporary famine during the war. The shepherd told us how he had once spent a week stuck on the face of a cliff before he was found. Josef Weiss, eager to get away from the supernatural, told his experiences as a prisoner of war in Russia. With his companions he had been forgotten behind the blank walls of a fortress while their guards engaged in revolution. Those poor devils had been reduced to very desperate straits indeed.

“For a whole week Vaughan and I were out with the search parties day and night. Meanwhile Kyra wore herself out trying to comfort the womenfolk. They couldn't help loving her—yet half suspected that she herself was at the bottom of the mystery. I don't blame them. They couldn't be expected to understand her intense spirituality. To them she was like a creature from another planet, fascinating and terrifying. Without claiming any supernatural powers for her, I've no doubt that Kyra could have told the past, present, and future of any of those villagers much more accurately than the traveling gypsies.

“On our first day of rest I spent the afternoon with the Vaughans. He and I were refreshed by twelve hours' sleep, and certain that we could hit on some new solution to the mystery that might be the right one. Kyra joined in the discussion. We went over the old theories again and again, but could make no progress.

“‘We shall be forced to believe the tales they tell in the village,' I said at last.

“‘Why don't you?' asked Kyra Vaughan.

“We both protested. Did she believe them, we asked.

“‘I'm not sure,' she answered. ‘What does it matter? But I know that evil has come to those men. Evil …' she repeated.

“We were startled. You smile, Romero, but you don't realize how that atmosphere of the uncanny affected us.

“Looking back on it, I see how right she was. Women—good Lord, they get hold of the spiritual significance of something, and we take them literally!

“When she left us I asked Vaughan whether she really believed in the werewolf.

“‘Not exactly,' he explained. ‘What she means is that our logic isn't getting us anywhere—that we ought to begin looking for something which, if it isn't a werewolf, has the spirit of the werewolf. You see, even if she saw one, she would be no more worried than she is. The outward form of things impresses her so little.'

“Vaughan appreciated his wife. He didn't know what in the world she meant, but he knew that there was always sense in her parables, even if it took one a long time to make the connection between what she actually said and the way in which one would have expressed the same thing oneself. That, after all, is what understanding means.

“I asked what he supposed she meant by evil.

“‘Evil?' he replied. ‘Evil forces—something that behaves as it has no right to behave. She means almost—possession. Look here! Let's find out in our own way what she means. Assuming it's visible, let's see this thing.'

“It was, he still thought, an animal. Its hunting had been successful, and now that the woods were quiet it would start again. He didn't think it had been driven away for good.

“‘It wasn't driven away by the first search parties,' he pointed out. ‘They frightened all the game for miles around, but this thing simply took one of them. It will come back, just as surely as a man-eating lion comes back. And there's only one way to catch it—bait!'

“‘Who's going to be the bait?' I asked.

“‘You and I.'

“I suppose I looked startled. Vaughan laughed. He said that I was getting fat, that I would make most tempting bait. Whenever he made jokes in poor taste, I knew that he was perfectly serious.

“‘What are you going to do?' I asked. ‘Tie me to a tree and watch out with a gun?'

“‘That's about right, except that you needn't be tied up—and as the idea is mine you can have first turn with the gun. Are you a good shot?'

“I am and so was he. To prove it, we practised on a target after dinner, and found that we could trust each other up to fifty yards in clear moonlight. Kyra disliked shooting. She had a horror of death. Vaughan's excuse didn't improve matters. He said that we were going deer stalking the next night and needed some practice.

“‘Are you going to shoot them while they are asleep?' she asked disgustedly.

“‘While they are having their supper, dear.'

“‘Before, if possible,' I added.

“I disliked hurting her by jokes that to her were pointless, but we chose that method deliberately. She couldn't be told the truth, and now she would be too proud to ask questions.

“Vaughan came down to the inn the following afternoon, and we worked out a plan of campaign. The rock was the starting point of all our theories, and on it we decided to place the watcher. From the top there was a clear view of the path for fifty yards on either side. The watcher was to take up his stand, well covered by the ivy, before sunset, and at a little before ten the bait was to be on the path and within shot. He should walk up and down, taking care never to step out of sight of the rock, until midnight when the party would break up. We reckoned that our quarry, if it reasoned, would take the bait to be a picket posted in that part of the forest.

“The difficulty was getting home. We had to go separately in case we were observed, and hope for the best. Eventually we decided that the man on the path, who might be followed, should go straight down to the road as fast as he could. There was a timber slide quite close, by which he could cut down in ten minutes. The man on the rock should wait awhile and then go home by the path.

“‘Well, I shall not see you again until to-morrow morning,' said Vaughan as he got up to go. ‘You'll see me but I shan't see you. Just whistle once, very softly, as I come up the path, so that I know you're there.'

“He remarked that he had left a letter for Kyra with the notary in case of accidents, and added, with an embarrassed laugh, that he supposed it was silly.

“I thought it was anything but silly, and said so.

“I was on the rock by sunset. I wormed my legs and body back into the ivy, leaving head and shoulders free to pivot with the rifle. It was a little .300 with a longish barrel. I felt certain that Vaughan was as safe as human science and a steady hand could make him.

“The moon came up, and the path was a ribbon of silver in front of me. There's something silent about moonlight. It's not light. It's a state of things. When there was sound it was unexpected, like the sudden shiver on the flank of a sleeping beast. A twig cracked now and then. An owl hooted. A fox slunk across the pathway, looking back over his shoulder. I wished that Vaughan would come. Then the ivy rustled behind me. I couldn't turn round. My spine became very sensitive, and a point at the back of my skull tingled as if expecting a blow. It was no good my telling myself that nothing but a bird could possibly be behind me—but of course it was a bird. A nightjar whooshed out of the ivy, and my body became suddenly cold with sweat. That infernal fright cleared all vague fears right out of me. I continued to be uneasy, but I was calm.

“After a while I heard Vaughan striding up the path. Then he stepped within range, a bold, clear figure in the moonlight. I whistled softly, and he waved his hand from the wrist in acknowledgment. He walked up and down, smoking a cigar. The point of light marked his head in the shadows. Wherever he went, my sights were lined a yard or two behind him. At midnight he nodded his head towards my hiding place and trotted rapidly away to the timber slide. A little later I took the path home.

“The next night our rôles were reversed. It was my turn to walk the path. I found that I preferred to be the bait. On the rock I had longed for another pair of eyes, but after an hour on the ground I did not even want to turn my head. I was quite content to trust Vaughan to take care of anything going on behind me. Only once was I uneasy. I heard, as I thought, a bird calling far down in the woods. It was a strange call, almost a whimper. It was like the little frightened exclamation of a woman. Birds weren't popular with me just then. I had a crazy memory of some Brazilian bird which drives a hole in the back of your head and lives on brains. I peered down through the trees, and caught a flicker of white in a moonlight clearing below. It showed only for a split second, and I came to the conclusion that it must have been a ripple of wind in the silver grass. When the time was up I went down the timber slide and took the road home to the inn. I fell asleep wondering whether we hadn't let our nerves run away with us.

“I went up to see the Vaughans in the morning. Kyra looked pale and worried. I told her at once that she must take more rest.

“‘She won't,' said Vaughan. ‘She can't resist other people's troubles.'

“‘You see, I can't put them out of my mind as easily as you,' she answered provocatively.

“‘Oh Lord!' Vaughan exclaimed. ‘I'm not going to start an argument.'

“‘No—because you know you're in the wrong. Have you quite forgotten this horrible affair?'

“I gathered up the reins of the conversation, and gentled it into easier topics. As I did so, I was conscious of resistance from Kyra; she evidently wanted to go on scrapping. I wondered why. Her nerves, no doubt, were overstrained, but she was too tired to wish to relieve them by a quarrel. I decided that she was deliberately worrying her husband to make him admit how he was spending his evenings.