“And he had you.” I smiled. “One of the country’s greatest paleographers.”
“Yes,” said Crow, matter-of-factly and without pride, “second only to Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole. Anyway, I helped Gustau where I could, and during the work I came across a powerful spell against injurious magic and other supernatural menaces. Gustau allowed me to make a copy for myself, which is how I came to be in possession of a fragment of elder magic from an age undreamed of. From what I could make of it, Theem’hdra had existed in an age of wizards, and Teh Atht himself had used this very charm or spell to ward off evil.
“Well, I had the thing, and now I decided to employ it. I set up the necessary paraphernalia and induced within myself the required mental state. This took until well into the afternoon, and with each passing minute the sensation of impending doom deepened about the house, until I was almost prepared to flee the place and let well alone. And, if I had not by now been certain that such flight would be a colossal dereliction of duty, I admit I would have done so.
“As it was, when I had willed myself to the correct mental condition, and upon the utterance of certain words—the effect was instantaneous!
“Daylight seemed to flood the whole house; the gloom fled in a moment; my spirits soared, and outside in the garden a certain ethereal watchdog collapsed in a tiny heap of rubbish and dusty leaves. Teh Atht’s rune had proved itself effective indeed…”
“And then you turned your attention to Sturm Magruser?” I prompted him after a moment or two.
“Not that night, no. I was exhausted, Henri. The day had taken so much out of me. No, I could do no more that night. Instead I slept, deeply and dreamlessly, right through the evening and night until the jangling of my telephone awakened me at nine o’clock on the following morning.”
“Your friend at the Rare Books Department?” I guessed.
“Yes, enlisting my aid in narrowing down his field of research. As you’ll appreciate, the Necronomicon is a large volume—compared to which Feery’s Notes is a pamphlet—and many of its sections appear to be almost repetitious in their content. The trouble was, I wasn’t even certain that it contained what I sought; only that I believed I had read it there. If not—” and he waved an expansive hand in the direction of his own more than appreciable occult library “—then the answer must be here somewhere—whose searching out would form an equally frustrating if not utterly impossible task. At least in the time allowed.”
“You keep hinting at this urgency.” I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘the time allowed?’”
“Why,” he answered, “the time in which Magruser must be disposed of, of course!”
“Disposed of?” I could hardly believe my ears.
Crow sighed and brought it right out in the open: “The time in which I must kill him!” he said.
I tried to remain calm, tried not to seem too flippant when I said, “So, you had resolved to do away with him. This was necessary?”
“Very. And once my enquiries began to produce results, why, then his death became more urgent by the minute! For over the next few days I turned up some very interesting and very frightening facts about our Mr. Magruser, not the least of them concerning his phenomenal rise from obscurity and the amount of power he controlled here and abroad. His company extended to no less than seven different countries, with a total of ten plants or factories engaged in the manufacture of weapons of war. Most of them conventional weapons—for the moment. Ah, yes! And those numbers too, Henri, are important.
“As for his current project—the completion of this ‘secret’ weapon or ‘defence system’, in this I was to discover the very root and nature of the evil, after which I was convinced in my decision that indeed Magruser must go!”
The time was now just after three in the morning and the fire had burned very low. While Crow took a break from talking and went to the kitchen to prepare a light snack, I threw logs on the fire and shivered, not merely because of the chill the night had brought. Such was Crow’s story and his method of delivery that I myself was now caught up in its cryptic strangeness, the slowly strangling threads of its skein. Thus I paced the floor and pondered all he had told me, not least his stated intention to—murder?—Sturm Magruser, who now apparently was dead.
Passing Crow’s desk I noticed an antique family Bible in two great volumes, the New Testament lying open, but I did not check book or chapter. Also littering his desk were several books on cryptology, numerology, even one on astrology, in which “science” Crow had never to my knowledge displayed a great deal of faith or interest. Much in evidence was a well-thumbed copy of Walmsley’s Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms, and Ancient Inscriptions, also an open notebook of obscure jottings and diagrams. My friend had indeed been busy.
Over cheese and crackers we carried on, and Crow took up his tale once more by hinting of the awesome power of Magruser’s “secret” weapon.
“Henri,” he began, “there is a tiny island off the Orkneys which, until mid-1961, was green, lovely, and a sanctuary for seabirds. Too small and isolated to settle, and far too cold and open to the elements in winter, the place was never inhabited and only rarely visited. Magruser bought it, worked there, and by February ’62—”
“Yes?”
“A dustbowl!”
“A dustbowl?” I repeated him. “Chemicals, you mean?”
Crow shrugged. “I don’t know how his weapon works exactly, only what it produces. Also that it needs vast amounts of energy to trigger it. From what I’ve been able to discover, he used the forces of nature to fuel his experiment in the Orkneys, the enormous energies of an electrical storm. Oh, yes, and one other thing: the weapon was not a defense system!”
“And of course you also know,” I took a stab at it, “what he intended to do with this weapon?”
“That too, yes.” He nodded. “He intended to destroy the world, reduce us to savagery, return us to the Dark Ages. In short, to deliver a blow from which the human race would never recover.”
“But—”
“No, let me go on. Magruser intended to turn the world into a desert, start a chain reaction that couldn’t be stopped. It may even have been worse than I suspected. He may have aimed at total destruction—no survivors at all!”
“You had proof?”
“I had evidence… As for proof: he’s dead, isn’t he?”
“You did kill him, then?”
“Yes.”
After a little while I asked, “What evidence did you have?”
“Three types of evidence, really,” he answered, relaxing again in his chair. “One: the evidence of my own five senses—and possibly that sixth sense by which I had known him from the start. Two: the fact that he had carried out his experiments in other places, several of them, always with the same result. And three—”
“Yes?”
“That too was information I received through government channels. I worked for MOD as a very young man, Henri. Did you know that? It was the War Department in those days. During the war I cracked codes for them, and I advised them on Hitler’s occult interests.”
“No,” I said, “I never knew that.”
“Of course not,” he replied. “No man has my number, Henri,” and he smiled. “Did you know that there’s supposed to be a copy of the Necronomicon buried in a filled-in bunker just across the East German border in Berlin? And did you know that in his last hour Hitler was approached in his own bunker by a Jew—can you imagine that?—a Jew who whispered something to him before he took his life? I believe I know what that man whispered, Henri. I think he said these words: ‘I know you, Adolf Hitler!’”
“Titus,” I said, “there are so many loose ends here that I’m trying to tie together. You’ve given me so many clues, and yet—”
“It will all fit, Henri,” he calmed me. “It will fit. Let me go on…
“When I discovered that Magruser’s two-million-pound ‘order’ from the MOD was not an order at all but merely the use o
f two million pounds’ worth of equipment—and as soon as I knew what that equipment was—then I guessed what he was up to. To clinch matters there finally came that call from the British Museum, and at last I had all the information I needed. But that was not until after I had actually met the man face-to-face.
“First, the government ‘equipment’ Magruser had managed to lay his hands on: two million pounds’ worth of atomic bombs!”
IV
“What?” I was utterly astonished. “You’re joking!”
“No,” he answered, “I am not joking. They were to provide the power he needed to trigger his doomsday weapon, to start the chain reaction. A persuasive man, Magruser, and you may believe that there’s hell to pay right now in certain government circles. I have let it be known—anonymously, of course—just exactly what he was about and the holocaust the world so narrowly escaped. Seven countries, Henri, and seven atomic bombs. Seven simultaneous detonations powering his own far more dreadful weapon, forging the links in a chain reaction which would spread right across the world!”
“But…how…when was this to happen?” I stammered.
“Today,” he answered, “at ten o’clock in the morning, a little more than five hours from now. The bombs were already in position in his plants, waiting for the appointed time. By now of course they have been removed and the plants destroyed. And now too, Britain will have to answer to the heads of six foreign powers; and certain lesser heads will roll, you may be sure. But very quietly, and the world as a whole shall never know.”
“But what was his purpose?” I asked. “Was he a madman?”
He shook his head. “A madman? No. Though he was born of human flesh, he was not even a man, not completely. Or perhaps he was more than a man. A force? A power…
“A week ago I attended a party at the home of my friend in the MOD. Magruser was to be there, which was why I had to be there—and I may tell you that took a bit of arranging. And all very discreetly, mind you, for I could not let any other person know of my suspicions. Who would have believed me anyway?
“At the party, eventually I cornered Magruser—as strange a specimen as ever you saw—and to come face-to-face with him was to confirm my quarry’s identity. I now knew beyond any question of doubt that indeed he was the greatest peril the world has ever faced! If I sound melodramatic, Henri, it can’t be helped.
“And yet to look at him…any other man might have felt pity. As I have said, he was an albino, with hair white as snow and flesh to match, so that his only high points seemed to lie in pallid pulses beating in his throat and forehead. He was tall and spindly, and his head was large but not overly so; though his cranium did display a height and width which at one and the same time hinted of imbecility and genius. His eyes were large, close together, pink, and their pupils were scarlet. I have known women—a perverse group at best—who would call him attractive, and certain men who might envy him his money, power, and position. As for myself, I found him repulsive! But of course my prejudice was born of knowing the truth.
“He did not wish to be there, that much was plain, for he had that same trapped look about him which came through so strongly in his photograph. He was afraid, Henri, afraid of being stopped. For of course he knew that someone, somewhere, had recognized him. What he did not yet know was that I was that someone.
“Oh, he was nervous, this Magruser. Only the fact that he was to receive his answer that night, the go-ahead from the ministry, had brought him out of hiding. And he did receive that go-ahead, following which I cornered him, as I have said.”
“Wait,” I begged him. “You said he knew that someone had recognised him. How did he know?”
“He knew at the same moment I knew, Henri, at the very instant when those spinning winds of his sprang up in my garden! But I had destroyed them, and fortunately before he could discover my identity. Oh, you may be sure he had tried to trace me, but I had been protected by the barriers I had placed about Blowne House. Now, however, I too was out in the open…
“But I still can’t see how the British government could be tricked into giving him a handful of atomic bombs!” I pressed. “Are we all in the hands of lunatics?”
Crow shook his head. “You should know by now,” he said, “that the British give nothing for nothing. What the government stood to gain was far greater than a measly two million pounds. Magruser had promised to deliver a power screen, Henri, a dome of force covering the entire land, to be switched on and off at will, making the British Isles totally invulnerable!”
“And we believed him?”
“Oh, there had been demonstrations, all faked, and it had been known for a long time that he was experimenting with a ‘national defence system’. And remember, my friend, that Magruser had never once stepped out of line. He was the very model of a citizen, a man totally above suspicion who supported every welfare and charity you could name. Why, I believe that on occasion he had even funded the government itself; but for all this he had not the means of powering his damnable weapons. And now you begin to see something of the brilliance of the man, something of his fiendishness.
“But to get back to what I was saying: I finally cornered him, we were about to be introduced, I even stuck out my hand for him to shake, and—
“At that very moment a window blew in and the storm which had been blowing up for over an hour rushed into the room. Rushing winds, Henri, and fifty ladies and gentlemen spilling their drinks and hanging on to their hats—and a whirling dervish of a thing that sucked up invitation cards and flowers from vases and paper napkins and flew between Magruser and myself like…like one of hell’s own devils!
“How his pink eyes narrowed and glared at me then, and in another moment he had stepped quickly out of my reach. By the time order was restored Magruser was gone. He had rushed out of the house to be driven away, probably back to his plant outside Oxford.
“Well, I too left in something of a hurry, but not before my friend had promised not to tell Magruser who I was. Later, Magruser did indeed call him, only to be fobbed off with the answer that I must have been a gatecrasher. And so I was safe from him—for the moment.
“When I arrived home my telephone was ringing, and at first I was of a mind not to pick it up but…it was the information I had been waiting for, a quotation from the Mad Arab himself, Abdul Alhazred.” Here Crow paused to get up, go to his desk, rummage about for a second or two and return with a scrap of paper. He seated himself once more and said: “Listen to this, Henri:
‘Many and multiform are ye dim horrors of Earth, infesting her ways from ye very prime. They sleep beneath ye unturned stone; they rise with ye tree from its root; they move beneath ye sea, and in subterranean places they dwell in ye inmost adyta. Some there are long known to man, and others as yet unknown, abiding ye terrible latter days of their revealing. One such is an evil born of a curse, for ye Greatest Old One, before He went Him down into His place to be sealed therein and sunken under ye sea, uttered a cry which rang out to ye very corners of ye All; and He cursed this world then and forever. And His curse was this: that whosoever inhabit this world which was become his prison, there should breed amongst them and of their flesh great traitors who would ever seek to destroy them and so leave ye world cleared off for ye day of His return. And when they heard this great curse, them that held Him thrust Him down where He could do no more harm. And because they were good, they sought to eradicate ye harm He had willed, but could not do so. Thus they worked a counter spell, which was this: that there would always be ones to know the evil ones when they arose and waxed strong, thus protecting ye innocents from His great curse. And this also did they arrange: that in their fashion ye evil ones would reveal themselves, and that any man with understanding might readily dispose of such a one by seizing him and saying unto him, “I know you,” and by revealing his number…’
“And in the end it was as simple as that, Henri…
“Late as the evening had grown, still I set about to strengthen those
psychic or magical protections I had built about Blowne House. Also, I placed about my own person certain charms for self-protection when I was abroad and outside the safety of these stout walls; all of which took me until the early hours of the morning. That day—that very day—Sturm Magruser would be collecting his deadly detonators, the triggers for his devilish device; and in my mind’s eye I pictured a vehicle pulling up at some innocuous-seeming but well-guarded and lethally supplied establishment, and the driver showing a pass, and documents being signed in triplicate and the subsequent very careful loading of seven heavy crates.
“There would be a pair of executive jets waiting on the private runway inside Magruser’s Oxford plant, and these would take six of the atomic bombs off to their various destinations around the globe. And so it can be seen that my time was running down. Tired as I was, worn down by worry and work, still I must press on and find the solution to the threat.”
“But surely you had the solution?” I cut in. “It was right there in that passage from Alhazred.”
“I had the means to destroy him, Henri, yes—but I did not have the means of delivery! The only thing I could be sure of was that he was still in this country, at his centre of operations. But how to get near him, now that he knew me?”
“He knew you?”
Crow sighed. “My face, certainly, for we had now met. Or almost. And if I knew my quarry, by now he might also have discovered my name and particulars. Oh, yes, Henri. For just as I have my means, be sure Magruser had his. Well, obviously I could not stay at Blowne House, not after I realised how desperate the man must be to find me. I must go elsewhere, and quickly.