“Any friend of Ian’s is a friend of mine, Mr Semple. What can I do for you?”
“David—please call me David,” he insisted. “And it’s more what I can do for you, I think.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Ian has mentioned this queer shell of yours, and I think I might be able to throw some light on it.”
“You’re a conchologist then, Mr, er, David?”
“No, no—but I am a collector.”
“Of shells?”
“Of books!”
“Books?”
“Indeed, Mr. Vollister—or should I call you John?”
“Please do.”
“Good … Yes, I collect books. Old and new—first editions and modern reprints, priceless antiques and worthless, poorly—printed paperbacks. But they all have one thing in common. You see, John, I’ve had a lifelong interest in the macabre, the weird, the strange, the occult!”
“Well, that’s all very interesting, er, David, but I fail to see—”
“Wait, wait! About this shell of yours—let me read something to you. One moment. Ah, here we are:
“‘Even as big as a small child’s head, the seashell is thickish and bears sharp spines ringed about its coils. Its mouth is not much smaller than the mouth of a man, and indeed it has the look of some animal’s mouth. Reddish in hue, the shell has not a wholesome aspect, but the snail itself is as a delicacy to the tainted palates of the Deep Ones. Yet they crop the slug with care, for under their direction vast colonies of the creatures layer the pearly and subaqueous houses and temples of their cities! Thus were the mighty Pacific temples beautified in the great deeps about R’lyeh, and even Y’ha-Nthlei’s columns and colossi are cemented with the grey-green nacre of the shellfish’s mantle
The voice at the other end of the line paused, then: “Well?”
“Well, I suppose it could be my shell,” I told him, “but where on Earth did you find that passage you just read to me? It sounded extremely old—not to mention very weird!”
“Yes, it’s over two hundred years old: an English translation of a passage from an even older German work, the rather ugly Untersee Kulten of Graf Grauberg. And there are illustrations, too—rather crude, I fear, but adequate. So that if this is your shell, why, you should easily manage to match the drawings against the real thing.”
“I’d like to see that book,” I said at once, trying but not quite managing to keep the eagerness out of my voice.
“But that’s why I'm calling you,” he answered. “It so happens I’m to be in your area for a few days early next week—some business to attend to, you know—and I thought we might meet.”
“Why, certainly: I look forward to it. You might like to stay here at the house?”
“Thank you—very hospitable—but no. I’m a founder-member of a boating club not far from Newquay. I shall stay there and not put you to any trouble. Now then, if you’ll tell me when we can meet…?”
“Why, any time—but can’t you tell me more about the book right now? Perhaps I could obtain a copy, and—”
“Obtain a copy of the Cthaat Aquadingen?” he laughed. “No, I don’t think you could, John. It’s one of those books—like Gantley’s Hydrophinnae and Gaston le Fe’s Dwellers in the Depths—which are very seldom found. Banned or burned, mostly, many years ago. Forbidden volumes, “black books”, they’re called: like the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, and Von Junzt’s Nameless Cults. But we’ll talk a lot more next week.”
“Fine. I’m home all week. I usually take a walk in the afternoon along the beach or in the town, but you can get me at home most of the time. Just give me a ring …”
“Oh, don’t worry, John,” he told me, sounding suddenly strange and distant. “I'll be in touch with you …” And with that he was gone.
Sunday and Monday passed very slowly. My interest in the new shell had waxed, waned a little, and was now redoubled. I would find myself pacing the floor of my study with the thing in my hands, quite without realizing that I had picked it up at all. I could not wait for Mr Semple’s call. Then, Tuesday afternoon …
I walked along the cliff top path towards the precipitous wooden stairway that led down to the beach. There, sitting on the grass at the very edge of the cliff, a girl gazed out across the sea, her legs dangling in space one hundred and twenty feet above needle rocks, her chin cupped in her hands. She wore jeans, an oversized sweater of a towelling material, and her hair was tied back with a silken green handkerchief. Beside her on the grass lay a yellow crash—helmet with a jaunty peak; the sort young ladies wear when riding or being carried on scooters and motorcycles.
I do not much care for heights and always feel uncomfortable when others treat them with contempt. I paused, keeping well back from the rim, and called: “Miss? Excuse me? Er—could I talk to you?”
She turned and smiled—a peculiar sort of smile, I thought—then swung her legs up and rolled clear of the edge. Picking up her crash-helmet, she climbed easily to her feet. She was no more than twenty-two, twenty-three at the outside, but there was in her face something that hinted of a rare intelligence, a wisdom belying her years. Her features were almost elfin-like, large-eyed and small-chinned, and her hair was so black and so reflected the green of the handkerchief that it seemed almost green itself, even pearly in its gloss.
She approached me with her head on one side, still half—smiling. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, er, Miss. Heights affect me badly. I just wanted to get you away from the edge of the cliff. Please forgive me.”
“Don't let it worry you,” she answered in an accent, however slight, which immediately gave her away for an American. “I was just about to go down to the beach anyhow. Are you going down?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, would you mind if I walked with you?”
“Not at all, I—”
“It’s just that the beach looks so lonely.”
“I know what you mean.”
We said no more until the wooden steps were behind us and the cliffs towered above. On the way down, she had gone before me, and I admit that I found myself attracted by her lithe, jean-clad form. Reaching the bottom first, she had turned to smile at me again, half-knowingly, I thought. But knowing what? Her look, it dawned on me, was not at all one of wide-eyed innocence. Then she laughed at my own serious expression, asking:
“You’re sure you don’t mind me walking with you?”
“Er, no. I mean, I’m sure!”
“You look so worried!” she laughed. She linked arms with me and we walked down towards the sea, turning north towards the village when we reached the high-water mark.
“Big, isn’t it?” she said, holding my arm tightly.
“Hm? The sea? Yes, it’s big.”
“My home,” she said, “is—let’s see—way over there!” She squinted out over the flat grey sea, pointing a finger west and slightly south.
“North America,” I said. “New York, perhaps?”
“Close enough, I suppose. What’s in a few hundred miles?” Then her hand flew to her mouth in mock alarm. “There I go, giving away all of my secrets.”
“Secrets?”
“A girl with no secrets has no mystery …” Then she quickly changed the subject. “Do you swim?”
“I do. I swim very well. But the sea is still quite cold. You won’t find many bathers for a month or so yet.”
“Let’s swim,” she answered impulsively.
“But—what about costumes?”
At that, she laughed—as earthy a laugh as ever I heard—and began to pull her sweater up over her head. Embarrassed, I half-turned away, anxiously searching the beach with my eyes but seeing no one. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stepping out of her jeans, and again I averted my gaze. But her laughter was wholly free and fresh, so that when I heard her feet flying seaward I turned to stare after her …
And then I, too, had to laugh. Her bikini, tiny though it was, was most certainly decent. Obviously sh
e had worn it beneath her clothes; and equally obvious was the fact that she had deliberately set out to embarrass me! Oddly enough, I didn’t mind at all.
She ran into the calm sea and swam maybe fifty yards out. There she played, splashed, and shouted, occasionally diving beneath the surface and staying down for what I thought to be inordinately long periods. Using my watch, I timed her on her last dive and found that she stayed down for well over two minutes; the girl swam like a fish! And yet I was in no way astonished by her performance. I myself have always found swimming a delight, and my own capacity for remaining underwater for long periods has often surprised my friends. I believed it to be simply a matter of willpower.
A few minutes later she came out of the water and ran up the beach to me. She sat at my feet where I myself sat on a flat stone and handed me her sweater of soft towelling.
“Dry my back,” she commanded, turning her back to me and letting her hair fall forward over her shoulders. However cold she felt—and indeed her skin was cold—she hardly showed it; not a goose-bump showed on her pale skin and her breathing seemed perfectly controlled. Despite the fact that I was at least fifteen to twenty years her senior (or then again, perhaps because of it) I fancied that my heart beat a little faster as I patted her back dry and gave her back her sweater.
Later, as we continued our walk along the beach and climbed the crumbling sea wall to the promenade and so into the village, she told me her name. She was Sarah Bishop, an American of an old New England family, on holiday (‘vacation”, she said) with her father. They would be in England for some weeks yet while her father sorted out various property matters. Having several relatives living in Cornwall, the old gentleman—he was sixty-seven—was thinking of retiring there. When I asked where she and her father were staying, she told me they had rooms at a boat club between the village and Newquay.
At this I was reminded of what David Semple had told me when I invited him to stay at my house: that he was a ‘founder-member of a boating club not far from Newquay’. I wondered if his club—presumably some exclusive sort of place for rich yachtsmen and such—could be one and the same with Sarah’s, and I was on the point of questioning her about the place when we reached the village police station.
There, as if I no longer existed—or as if she had never heard of the word ‘goodbye’—she turned her back on me, put on her crash-helmet, unlocked the anti-thief device on a motor-scooter which was parked at the kerb, and kicked the engine into life. As she guided the scooter into the road I was moved to call out:
“We may meet again …?” And having said it, I felt unaccountably foolish.
She looked back over her shoulder and smiled that strange smile of hers. “Oh, we surely will,” she said. “Of course we will!” Then, in a clatter of tiny pistons, she was gone. She left behind a dispersing cloud of blue exhaust smoke.
Walking home again along the beach, I found my mind wandering. I was miles away, almost completely unaware of the passage of time or distance, and it actually came as a surprise when I found myself at the top of the wooden stairway that led to my cliff top retreat. Daydreaming, my mind had been on many things—but chiefly on the girl. She evoked something in me; a memory that seemed much more than mere memory, really; a feeling of … déjà vu?
Her skin, for instance. When I had dried her, I had noticed a peculiar film to it, a sort of mild oiliness, but the feeling had not been at all unpleasant. Remembering, my fingers tingled slightly. It dawned on me that I had not felt this way for … for a very long time.
II: The Place on the Beach
That night I worked until very late and retired well after midnight. I slept until mid-morning, ate a small breakfast, and was no sooner dressed than I became aware of a visitor. I heard a car approaching the house and went out on the balcony in time to see it draw to a halt below. When the driver got out, I hailed him from where I stood at the balcony rail:
“Hello, there! Can I help?”
“I’m David Semple,” came the reply. “Have I come to the right place?”
“You certainly have. Wait just a moment and I'll be down.”
The house is built to my own specifications, with bedrooms, study, and bathroom upstairs; kitchen, small library, storage space, and garage downstairs. Since I never did learn how to drive, the garage long ago became just another storage room.
I hurried downstairs and unlocked the front door. Semple grasped my hand as soon as I appeared. His handshake was firm enough, though cool and moist. I welcomed him in and saw him upstairs and into my study; and there, as unobtrusively as I might while pouring drinks, I carefully scrutinized him.
He was slim, rather pale, and I would have guessed that he wore a toupee. His skin was uncommonly rough and seemed large-pored. His walk was almost that of a sailor; and why not, since on his own word he was a founder-member of his boating club? For no justifiable reason, I found myself disliking him. There was something odd about him, something I could not quite pin down, insubstantial, but something which nevertheless set my teeth on edge.
No sooner had Semple made himself comfortable than he spotted the conch where it lay upon the occasional table. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Yes, most certainly!” He crossed the room and picked up the object of his interest. “Without a doubt this is the shell—the shell from the book!”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“As sure as I can be without actually having the book here with me to make a positive comparison.”
“You didn’t bring it?” My voice showed my disappointment.
“No, I'm sorry. Fool that I am, I left it at the club. But we can have a look at it later …”
By now, however, and despite my consuming interest in his subject, I had taken the opportunity of studying my visitor more closely. In so doing I had discovered several more peculiar idiosyncrasies none of which, however petty they might seem normally, had improved my liking for the man.
There was, for instance, an odd gasping quality in his voice, a suggestion of fighting for air that made me wonder if perhaps he was asthmatic. But if so, why did he wear his silken scarf so high on his neck and so well wrapped about his throat? Indeed, why wear a scarf at all on this unusually warm day? Also, now that we were together in the close confines of my study, I found myself very nearly offended by the heavy odour of his aftershave—if that was what it was—and even more disturbed by an underlying smell of … of what?
Perhaps the sun was at fault, warming the beach to send the taint of rotting seaweed wafting up to my balcony. But the balcony doors were closed, and what slight breeze there was came off the land …
I was aware suddenly of his strange gaze. He was looking at me most oddly, eyes large and round behind modern, heavy-rimmed spectacles—and it was a look which, inexplicable as my feelings were, chilled and quickly unnerved me.
I half started to my feet, causing him quickly to enquire: “Is there … something?”
“Do forgive me,” I fumbled. “It’s the room—so stuffy—forgive me for bringing you into an unaired room—I worked late last night.”
“My goodness! Don’t concern yourself,” he answered at once, “I’m perfectly comfortable.”
“I’ll open the French windows anyway,” I said, getting hold of myself at last.
“Please do, if it will make you happy. Probably a good idea. I should hate to pass on to you my cold and sore throat.”
So that was it; and doubtless the smell I had noticed was an embrocation of some sort or other. Nevertheless, my initial dislike for Semple remained. Still, he was not here for my approval but to offer his assistance. For that, at least, I should be grateful. I decided to put my unnatural apprehensions behind me and try to be as pleasant as I could in Semple’s presence.
“How did you find your way to the house, er, David? It's not the easiest place to find, and the road between here and the main road is barely a track.”
“Oh, I—” he looked momentarily lost for words, then quickly went on: ?
??I obtained directions in the village. Of course, I don’t know the locals, but they seemed to know you well enough.”
“Yes, they do, though I suppose I must seem a bit reclusive to them.”
“This is an excellent whisky,” he said after a while, changing the subject.
“Thank you. I pamper myself a little. But I’ve been thinking, David, what an odd coincidence this is.”
“Coincidence?” he sounded wary.
“Yes. That this ridiculous enigma of a seashell came into my possession in the first place, and that you should then find reference to it in some strange old book. Even better—that we should discover two facets of the same mystery and bring them together through a mutual friend. That in itself seems something of a coincidence.”
“I suppose so,” he said after a moment, again favouring me with that weird look. “But listen—you can’t possibly have had lunch yet—why not come back with me to the club? We can eat there and you can look at my books to your heart's content.”
“Books?”
“Oh, yes. I brought more than just the one. Well, what do you say? Later I’ll drive you back here.”
I agreed to his suggestion without further discussion, and not entirely because of my interest in the American shell. Sarah Bishop had been in the back of my mind since last I had seen her riding off on her motor-scooter. If Sarah and her father were staying at Semple’s club, then perhaps I would meet her again this very day, and—
—But in any case, she was very much secondary to my obsession with tracking down the new shell (or so I told myself). This might be my last chance to discover whether or not the conch was indeed a brand new species, hitherto unknown to science—though apparently, if Semple were correct, it had not been unknown to the author or authors of his book.
I wanted to change into more suitable clothing, but Semple said that was completely unnecessary. No one at the club worried greatly about dress. Comfort was thought to be more desirable; and in any case I was already perfectly well attired. I consented to remain just as I was, and we went down to the car.