Mythos and Horror Stories Read online

  “And since we know that a mere insufficiency or superabundance of glandular secretions can work such devasting changes, can turn men virtually into Neanderthalers, or great apes, what is there really unaccountable in the alteration I witnessed in poor Ulman?

  “Some Oriental diabolist merely ten years in advance of the West in the sphere of plastic surgery and with a knowledge of glandular therapeutics no greater than that possessed by Doctors Noel Paton and Schafer might easily have wrought such an abomination. Or suppose, as I have hinted before, that no surgery was involved, suppose this fiend has learned so much about our glands that he can send men back and back through the mists of time—back past the great apes and the primitive mammals and the carnivorous dinosaurs to their primordial sires! Suppose—it is an awful thought, I know—suppose that some creature closely resembling what Ulman became was once our ancestor, that a hundred million years ago a gigantic batrachian shape with trunk-like appendages and great flapping ears paddled through the warm primeval seas or stretched its leathery length on banks of Permian slime!”

  Mr. Scollard turned sharply and plucked at his subordinate’s sleeve. “There’s a crowd in front of the Museum,” he muttered. "See there!”

  Algernon started, and rising instantly, pressed the signal bell above his companion’s head. “We’ll have to walk back,” he muttered despondently. “I should have watched the street numbers.”

  His pessimism proved well-founded. The bus continued relentlessly on its way for four additional blocks and then came so abruptly to a stop that Mr. Scollard was subjected to the ignominy of being obliged to sit for an instant on the spacious lap of a middle-aged stout woman who resented the encroachment with a furious glare.

  “I’ve a good mind to report you,” he shouted to the bus conductor as he lowered his portly person to the sidewalk. “I’ve a damn good mind...”

  “Let it pass, sir.” Algernon laid a pacifying arm on his companion’s arm. “We’ve got no time to argue. Something dreadful has occurred at the Museum. I just saw two policemen enter the building. And those tall men walking up and down on the opposite side of the street are reporters. There’s Wells of the Tribune and Thompson of the Times, and...”

  Mr. Scollard gripped his subordinate’s arm. “Tell me,” he demanded, “did you put the—the statue on exhibition?"

  Algernon nodded. “I had it carried to Alcove K, Wing C last night. After the inquest on poor Ulman I was besieged by reporters. They wanted to know all about the fetish, and of course I had to tell them that it would go on exhibition eventually. They would have returned everyday for weeks to pester me if I hadn’t assured them that we’d respect the public clamor to that extent at least.”

  “Yesterday afternoon all the papers ran specials about it. The News-Graphic gave it a front-page write-up. I remained at my office until eleven, and all evening at half-minute intervals some emotionally-overcharged numbskull would ring up and ask me when I was going to exhibit the thing and whether it really looked as repulsive as its photographs, and what kind of stone it was made of and—oh, God! I was too nervous and wrought-up to be bothered that way and I decided it would be best to satisfy the public’s idiotic curiosity by permitting them to view the thing today.”

  The two men were walking briskly in the direction of the Museum.

  “Besides, there was no longer any necessity of my keeping it in the office. I had had it measured and photographed and I knew that Harrison and Smithstone wouldn’t want to take a cast of it until next week. And I couldn’t have chosen a safer place for it than Alcove K. It’s roped off, you know, and only two paces removed from the door. Cinney can see it all night from his station in the corridor.”

  By the time that Algernon and Mr. Scollard arrived at the Museum the crowd had reached alarming proportions. They were obliged to fight their way through a solid phalanx of excited men and women who impeded their progress with elbow-thrusting aggressiveness, and scant respect for their dignity. And even in the vestibules they were repulsed with discourtesy.

  A red-headed policeman glared savagely at them from behind horn-rimmed spectacles and brought them to a halt with a threatening gesture. “You’ve got to keep out!” he shouted. “If you ain’t got a police card you’ve got to keep out!”

  “What’s happened here?” demanded Algernon authoritatively.

  “A guy’s been bumped off. If you ain’t got a police card you’ve got to .. .”

  Algernon produced a calling-card and thrust it into the officer’s face. “I’m the curator of archeology,” he affirmed angrily. “I guess I’ve a right to enter my own museum.” The officer’s manner softened perceptibly. “Then I guess it’s all right. The chief told me I wasn’t to keep out any of the guys that work here. How about your friend?”

  “You can safely admit him,” murmured Algernon with a smile. "He’s president of the Museum.”

  The policeman did not seem too astonished. He regarded Mr. Scollard dubiously for a moment. Then he shrugged his shoulders and stepped complacently aside.

  An attendant greeted them excitedly as they emerged from the turnstile. “It’s awful, sir,” he gasped, addressing Mr. Scollard. “Cinney has been murdered—knifed, sir. He’s all cut and mangled. I shouldn’t have recognized him if it

  weren’t for his clothes. There’s nothing left on his face, sir.” Algernon turned pale. “When—when did this happen?” he gasped.

  The attendant shook his head. “I can’t say, Mr. Harris. It must’ve been some time last night, but I can’t say exactly when. The first we knew of it was when Mr. Williams came running down the stairs with his hands all bloodied. That was at eight this morning, about two hours ago. I’d just got in, and all the other attendants were in the cloak room getting into their uniforms. That is, all except Williams. Williams usually arrives about a half-hour before the rest of us. He likes to come early and have a chat with Cinney before the doors open.”

  The attendant’s face was convulsed with terror and he spoke with considerable difficulty. “I was the only one to see him come down the stairs. I was standing about here and as soon as he came into sight I knew that something was wrong with him. He went from side to side of the stairs and clung to the rails to keep himself from falling. And his face was as white as paper.”

  Algernon’s eyes did not leave the attendant’s face. “Go on,” he urged.

  “He opened his mouth very wide when he saw me. It was like as if he wanted to shout and couldn’t. There wasn’t a sound came out of him.”

  The attendant cleared his throat. “I didn’t think he’d ever reach the bottom of the stairs and I called out for the boys in the cloak room to lend me a hand.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He didn’t speak for a long time. One of the boys gave him some whiskey out of a flask and the rest of us just stood about and said soothing things to him. But he was trembling all over and we couldn’t quiet him down. He kept throwing his head about and pointing toward the stairs. And foam collected all over his mouth. It was ghastly.”

  “‘What’s wrong. Jim?’ I said to him. ‘What did you see?’ “‘The worm of hell!’ he said. ‘The Devil’s awful mascot!’ He said other things I can’t repeat, sir. I’m a God-fearing man, and there are blasphemies it’s best to forget you ever

  heard. But I’ll tell you what he said when he got through talking about the worm out of hell. He said: ‘Cinney’s upstairs stretched out on his back and there ain’t a drop of blood in his veins.’

  “We got up the stairs quicker than lightning after he’d told us that. We didn’t know just what his crazy words meant, but the blood on his hands made us sure that something pretty terrible had happened. They kind of confirmed what we feared, sir—if you get what I mean.”

  Algernon nodded. “And you found Cinney —dead?”

  “Worse than that, sir. All black and shrunken and looking as though he’d been wearing clothes about four sizes too large for him. His face was all gone, sir—all eate
n away, like. We picked him up—he wasn’t much heavier than a little boy—and laid him out on a bench in Corridor H. I never seen so much blood in my life—the floor was all slippery with it. And the big stone animal you had us carry down to Alcove K. last night was all dripping with it, ’specially its trunk. It made me sort of sick. I never like to look at blood.”

  “You think someone attacked Cinney?”

  “It looked that way, Mr. Harris. Like as if someone went for him with a knife. It must have been an awful big knife—a regular butcher’s knife. That ain’t a very nice way of putting it, sir, but that’s how it struck me. Like as if someone mistook him for a piece of mutton.”

  “And what else did you find when you examined him?”

  “We didn’t do much examining. We just let him lie on the bench till we got through phoning for the police. Mr. Williamson did the talking, sir.” A look of relief crept into the attendant’s eyes. “The police said we wasn’t to disturb the body further, which suited us fine. There wasn’t one of us didn’t want to give poor Mr. Cinney a wide berth.”

  “And what did the police do when they arrived?”

  “Asked us about a million crazy questions, sir. Was Mr. Cinney disfigured in the war? And was Mr. Cinney in the habit of wearing a mask over his face? And had Mr. Cinney received any threatening letters from Chinamen or Hindoos? And when we told them no, they seemed to get kind of frightened. ‘If it ain’t murder,’ they said, ‘we’re up against something that ain’t natural. But it’s got to be murder. All we have to do is get hold of the Chinaman.’”

  Algernon didn’t wait to hear more. Brushing the attendant ungratefully aside he went dashing up the stairs three steps at a time. Mr. Scollard followed with ashen face.

  They were met in the upper corridor by a tall, loose-jointed man in shabby, ill-fitting clothes who arrested their progress with a scowl and a torrent of impatient abuse. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded. “Didn’t I give orders that no one was to come up here? I’ve got nothing to say to you. You’re too damn nosy. If you want the lowdown on this affair you’ve got to wait outside till we get through questioning the attendants.”

  “See here,” said Algernon impatiently. “This gentleman is president of the Museum and he has a perfect right to go where he chooses.”

  The tall man waxed apologetic. “I thought you were a couple of newspaper Johns,” he murmured confusedly. “We haven’t anything even remotely resembling a clue, but those guys keep popping in here every ten minutes to cross- examine us. They’re worse than prosecuting attorneys. Come right this way, sir.”

  He led them past a little knot of attendants and photographers and fingerprint experts to the northerly part of the corridor. “There’s the body,” he said, pointing toward a sheeted form which lay sprawled on a low bench near the window. “I’d be grateful if you gentlemen would look at the poor lad’s face.”

  Algernon nodded, and lifting a corner of the sheet peered for an instant intently into what remained of poor Cinney’s countenance. Then, with a shudder, he surrendered his place to Mr. Scollard.

  It is to Mr. Scollard's credit that he did not cry out. Only the trembling of his lower lip betrayed the revulsion which filled him..

  “He was found on the floor in the corridor about two hours ago,” explained the detective. “But the guy who found him isn’t here. They’ve got him in a straitjacket down at Bellevue, and it doesn’t look as though he’ll be much help to us. He was yelling his head off about something he said came out of hell when they put him in the ambulance. That’s what drew the crowd.”

  “You don’t think Williams could have done it?” murmured Algernon.

  “Not a chance. But he saw the murderer all right, and if we can get him to talk... He wheeled on Algernon abruptly. “You seem to know something about this, sir.”

  “Only what we picked up downstairs. We had a talk with one of the attendants and he explained about Williams—and the Chinaman.”

  The detective’s eyes glowed. “The Chinaman? What Chinaman? Is there a Chinaman mixed up in this? It’s what I’ve been thinking all along, but I didn’t have much to go on.”

  “I fear we’re becoming involved in a vicious circle,” said Algernon. “It was your Chinaman I was referring to. Willy said you were laboring under the impression that all you had to do to solve this distressing affair was to catch a Chinaman.”

  The detective shook his head. “It’s not as simple as that,” he affirmed. “We haven’t any positive evidence that a Chinaman did it. It might have been a Jap or Hindoo or even a South Sea Islander. That is, if South Sea Islanders eat rice!”

  “Rice?” Algernon stared at the detective incredulously.

  “That’s right. In a bowl with long sticks. I’m no authority on et-eternalogy, but it’s my guess they don’t use chopsticks much outside of Asia.”

  He went into Alcove K and returned with a wooden bowl and two long splinters of wood. “All those dark spots near the rim are blood stains,” he explained, as he surrendered the gruesome exhibits to Algernon. “Even the rice is all smeared with blood.” Algernon shuddered and passed the bowl to Scollard, who almost dropped it in his haste to return it to the detective.

  “Where did you find it?” the president spoke in a subdued whisper.

  “On the floor in front of the big stone elephant. That’s where Cinney was killed. There’s blood all over the elephant—if it’s supposed to be an elephant.”

  “It isn’t, strictly speaking, an elephant,” said Algernon. “Well, whatever it is, it could tell us what Cinney’s murderer looked like. I'd give the toes off my left foot if it could talk.”

  “It doesn’t talk,” said Algernon decisively.

  “I wasn’t wisecracking,” admonished the detective. “I was simply pointing out that that elephant could give us the lowdown on a mighty nasty murder.”

  Algernon accepted the rebuke in silence.

  “There ain’t no doubt whatever that a Chinaman or Hindoo or some crazy foreigner sneaked in here last night, set himself down in front of that elephant and began eating rice. Maybe he was in a church-going mood and mistook the beast for one of his heathen gods. It kind of looks like an oriental idol—the ferocious-looking kind you sometimes see in Chinatown store windows.”

  Algernon smiled ironically. “But unquestionably unique,” he murmured.

  The detective nodded. “Yeah. Larger and uglier-looking, but a heathen statue for all that. I bet it actually was worshipped once. Hindu... Chinese... I wouldn’t know. But it sure has that look.”

  “Yes,” admitted Algernon, “it is indubitably in the religious tradition. For all its hideousness it has all the earmarks of a quiescent Eastern divinity.”

  “There ain’t anything more dangerous than interfering with an Oriental when he’s saying his prayers,” continued the detective. “I’ve been in Chinatown raids, and I know. Now here’s what I think happened. Cinney is standing in the corridor and suddenly he hears the Chinaman muttering and mumbling to himself in the dark. He’s naturally frightened and so he rushes in with his pocketlight where an angel would be fearing to tread. The light gets in the Chinaman’s eyes and sets him off.

  “It’s like putting a match to a ton of TNT to throw a light on a Chinaman when he’s squatting in the dark in a worshipful mood. So the Chinaman goes for the kid with a knife. He feels outraged in a religious way, isn’t really himself, thinks he’s avenging an insult to the idol.”

  Algernon nodded impatiently. “There may be something in your theory, sergeant. But there’s a great deal it doesn’t explain. What was it that Williams saw?”

  “Nothing but Cinney lying dead in the corridor. Nothing but Cinney looking up at him without a face and that awful heathen animal looking down at him with blood all over its mouth.”

  Algernon stared. “Blood on its mouth?”

  “Sure. All over its mouth, trunk and tusks. Never seen so much blood in my life. That’s what Williams saw. I don’t wond
er it crumpled the kid up.”

  There was a commotion in the corridor. Someone was sobbing and pleading in a most fantastic way a few yards from where the three men were standing. The detective turned and shouted out a curt command. “Whoever that is, bring him here!”

  Came an appalling, ear-harassing shriek and two plain-clothesmen emerged around a bend in the corridor with a diminutive and weeping Oriental spread-eagled between their extended arms.

  “The Chinaman!” muttered Scollard in amazement.

  For a second the detective was too startled to move, and his immobility somehow emboldened the Chinese to break from his captors and prostrate himself on the floor at Algernon’s feet.

  “You are my friend,” he sobbed. “You are a very good man. I saw you in green-fire dream. In dream when big green animals came down from mountain I saw you and Gautama Siddhartha. Big green animals all wanted blood—all very much wanted blood. In dream Gautama Siddhartha said: ‘They want you! They have determined they make you all dark fire glue.’

  “I said, ‘No! Please,’ I said. Then Gautama Siddhartha let fall jewel of wisdom. ‘Go to museum. Go to big museum round block, and big green animal will eat you quick. He will eat you quick—before he make American man dark fire glue.’

  “All night I have sat here. All night I said: ‘Eat me. Please!’ But big green animal slept till American man came. Then he moved. Very quickly he moved. He gave American man very bad hug. American man screamed and big green animal drank all American man’s blood.”

  The little Oriental was sobbing unrestrainedly. Algernon stooped and lifted him gently to his feet. “What is your name?” he asked, to soothe him. “Where do you live?”

  “I’m boss big laundry down street,” murmured the Chinaman. “My name is Hsieh Ho. I am a good man, like you.”

  “Where did you go when—when the elephant came to lifer'