Author of “Hunger,” “The Wind That Tramps the World,” etc.
At Dromore many strange legends were told about “The Castle”. It was a magnificent building and perched on the extreme edge of Black Hill, like a great white albatross poised for flight. It had been built by a young oil magnate who had years before gone to California almost penniless, to return later with uncountable wealth. Blindly he had purchased a tract of barren land for a few hundred dollars, and this subsequently developed into a spectacular oil field.
After he had sold out his interests for a fabulous amount, he returned to the town of his boyhood, Dromore, a veritable conquering hero. He proposed to the most beautiful girl in the town and was instantly accepted. At once he commenced building the castle for her on Black Hill, a place dreaded by superstitious folk. It was haunted, they said, by strange wraiths as transparent as mist, and occasionally one heard eery sounds as of distant thunder. They pleaded with Dan Cooley not to build a home there, but he only derided their fears.
“The wraiths,” he said, “exist only in people’s distorted imaginations. They are just stray wisps of fog and mist such as float about any mountain peak. The weird booming is a purely natural phenomenon. Such noises, phantom noises if you like, occur in all parts of the world. Only recently the newspapers gave columns to a discussion of the cause, and scientists all agree that the sounds come up from the depths of the earth, the result of subterranean disturbances. I am not superstitious. We will prove that Black Hill, despite its sinister reputation, is the happiest, most joyous spot in the countryside.”
So Dan Cooley continued his building, oblivious to all the comments and forebodings of the people, and at last the work was done. At the gayest party ever held in Dromore, a party to which all the poor folk of the countryside were invited, he was married. At the moment it seemed as if all the weird legends were groundless. There was nothing wraithlike in this.
And yet less than one month later Mrs. Cooley went violently insane. She rushed up to the turret of “The Castle” and, laughing wildly and hysterically, pitched headlong down to the ragged, grim black rocks hundreds of feet below. When Dan Cooley made his way down to the rocks where the poor broken body lay, he was horrified by the sight. Her clothes were torn to shreds and her face was so scratched and disfigured that it suggested that she had been mauled by wild beasts.
Hours later a farmer found him babbling foolishly, over the lifeless body. With the aid of the servants, the farmer carried the nerve-shattered husband to his bed. For weeks he raved in delirium. His fever was so intense that it seemed to consume his body. Finally the last spark of life burned out. They buried him beside the body of his wife beneath a great pine tree in the shadow of Black Hill, and the grim old “Castle” was locked up, left to the wraiths that haunt the mountain tops.
Then the country people shunned the path leading to it more than ever. Occasionally the most venturesome of the farm lads would creep up the crooked winding path, only to return breathlessly, asserting that there were eery lights burning in the windows.
Not for a moment did anyone dispute the statement by suggesting that the lights may have been caused by the reflecting rays of the orange-red rising moon.
For five years “The Castle” remained untenanted, for who would be so foolhardy as to move into a house with such an unsavory reputation? The people of Dromore, even the poorest of them, would not have accepted it as a gift if they had been forced to live in it.
“It will fall to ruins,” they said, “for lack of care, and it will be a good thing for Dromore when it is gone.”
Then abruptly the unexpected happened. It was rented. Sportsly, the realtor, who was also the sheriff, the postmaster and the best informed citizen of Dromore, was so stunned by the fact that he almost suffered a stroke. He could scarcely wait to distribute the mail before broadcasting the news. He was a veritable newspaper of gossip and circulated throughout the countryside for miles around. That morning he neglected to read any of the post cards and he mixed up the mail for the first time in forty years. But nobody protested about his glaring errors, for his news quite submerged all other considerations.
Unfortunately he could not tell who had purchased “The Castle” because all negotiations had been conducted through an agent. At first he had not taken the matter seriously. He was constantly interviewed about the property, for the most part by curiosity seekers who simply wished to hear the details of the story, which it can be assumed Sportsly was never reluctant to tell. But now at last the house had been sold to a Mr. Cass Ledyard. Whether he was young or old, married or a bachelor, Sportsly did not know.
Within a very few weeks carpenters and mechanics were putting “The Castle” in order. It had been untenanted for so long that it was badly in need of repair.
When the workmen had departed, Cass Ledyard moved in. His daughter Nona accompanied him.
Cass Ledyard in time grew to be almost as great a mystery in Dromore as the Black Hill itself. Who he was, nobody knew. Nor did they have the faintest inkling whence he had come. He had covered his tracks as absolutely as if he had been a renowned criminal with a price upon his head. At Dromore he made friends with no one. Not a soul was ever invited to the house. For the most part in the evenings it remained in darkness. It still seemed as austere and cheerless as when it was vacant. Once a week York Sills, who kept the general store, delivered to the house enough meat and provisions to last throughout the ensuing seven days. He always placed the bundles upon the porch. He was never asked to enter the house, for which he was thankful, and he was always paid at once in cash by Nona. At first he had entertained the suspicion that Cass Ledyard was a forger and hence his almost hermitlike existence, until Mr. Roberts of the bank in Middletown had assured him that the money was as good as any the treasury had ever turned out. So a splendid theoretical bubble was burst.
In appearance, Cass Ledyard was rather odd. His great, glittering, deep-sunken eyes, shaded by huge bushy eyebrows, gave to his white, gaunt, somber face a rather fanatical appearance. He was very tall and slightly round-shouldered. He carried himself in a furtive, hang-dog fashion, as if he were always expecting a blow. When he looked up at one, only his eyes moved. Unless absolutely forced to, he seldom turned his head. His mouth was covered by a thick, bushy, uncared-for beard and his hair was so long it reached almost to his shoulders. Add to this the fact that his head was rather huge, and it can be imagined that he presented a rather grotesque appearance. He always dressed in black, which accentuated the sallow color of his face and the wildness of his habitual expression.
“The only difference between Mrs. Cooley and Cass Ledyard,” declared York Sills, “is that she went crazy after living in ‘The Castle’ and Ledyard was crazy before he moved in.”
“A man would have to be insane,” asserted Sportsly, “to even think of living on Black Hill.”
“It must be terrible for his daughter,” added York Sills.
Nona Ledyard was beautiful in the fullest sense of the word; a dark, languid beauty that made one think of the paintings of old Italian masters. There must have been a trace of Latin blood in her, for all the beauty of southern Europe seemed reflected in her sad, rather wistful expression. Her eyes were dark and expressive and were veiled by lashes of wondrous length. Her hair was as black as old ebony and cast off the same soft glittering glow. Her warm red lips served to emphasize the ivory whiteness of her face. She was magnificent. Yet as one gazed into her face one was far more impressed by her tragic, mournful expression than by the beauty and grace of her features.
The people of Dromore pitied her, a girl who should have had every luxury as a setting for her jewel-like loveliness and yet was forced to remain in a weird and shadowy house all alone except for the presence of a grim old man whose very sanity was open to question.
Night after night she used to sit alone in her dark room gazing out on the somber black countryside, a prey to fears and worries too frightful to describe. She lived in abject fear. She was mortally afraid, not of her father, but for her father. The fear that gnawed like a hungry rat at his mind was beginning to grip hers, until life itself became a veritable torture.
Every night, at the darkest hour, her father rushed from the house like a wild animal, his long hair streaming in the breeze as he fled. And always it seemed to Nona as if he were trying to escape from himself. It is frightful when one endeavors to escape from something that is buried in his body as firmly as his very heart. Always when he returned it was nearly dawn, and the wan look of his face was appalling. He was breathless and more colorless than ordinarily, and his dank face was bathed in perspiration. And all through the hours when he was absent, Nona would sit at the window, as cold as ice, as if carved of stone. Every screech of the wind, every crackle of the tree branches, every hoot of an owl threw her into a veritable panic.
So immediately she commenced advertising in a newspaper that was published in a town about ten miles away, but though she received many answers, no one was willing to take a job in a house on Black Hill. They shunned it as if it had been plague-infested. At last an ex-convict answered the advertisement, a man who had just completed a ten-year prison term and who looked almost as uncouth as a gorilla. His name was Sig. But whether it was his first name or his last he refused to say.
“When I went to prison,” he said, “I lost my personality. The man I was is dead. There are no threads of existence for me to take up again. The few living relatives I had went back on me. There isn’t a soul in the world willing to give me a chance.”
His words sounded so hopeless, Nona felt sorry for him at once, despite his uncouthness.
“If you wish,” said she, “you can come and work for us; that is, if you are not afraid of Black Hill.”
He laughed savagely.
“I am afraid of nothing,” said he emphatically, “death least of all. If I were afraid of anything it would be of life. For ten years I lived in prison, never visited by a soul, haunted by all sorts of wild thoughts and desires for revenge. I was going to ‘get’ the man that got me.”
He smiled mirthlessly.
“Anger is a peculiar thing,” he said. “It burns itself out by its very intensity. When I was finally released, my hatred had vanished, leaving me cold. Only hopelessness remained.”
Nona could not help thinking how akin was her own case to that of Sig. She felt that like him, she, too, had been shut up in prison until only hopelessness remained.
And yet less than one week later, her viewpoint slightly changed. Much of the somberness vanished, for she met Stark Laurier by the simplest accident. Cass Ledyard had been out walking in the woods and had tripped over a hidden tree-stump, spraining his ankle rather badly. For a while he was unable to walk. He lay on the ground groaning in pain, when Stark Laurier found him. At first he was rather surly despite his agony and was unwilling to accept help, but finally, realizing that he was forced to, his attitude changed. In fact, after Stark Laurier had helped him home—almost carried him in fact—he grew positively cordial and urged Stark to remain with them a while.
“We seldom, in fact never, have company,” he said, “and your presence with us would undoubtedly help to break the monotony of the mountain silence.”
Stark Laurier agreed with him absolutely after he had met Nona, for he realized that wherever she was no place could be monotonous for him. So that very afternoon he moved his things over to “The Castle.” And again the country people shook their heads and declared that no good could come of it.
2
Stark Laurier was a novelist, but fortunately he had inherited a moderate fortune from his father, which permitted him to follow his own inclinations regarding the type of stories he wrote. He specialized in unusual fiction, and therefore “The Castle” was an absolute magnet to him. He was quite young, well under thirty and a keen lover of excitement and adventure. Romance, too, held
its allure for him, and romance was
typified in the person of Nona Ledyard.
During the ensuing days he wandered
much in the woods with her.
She told him all the superstitions pertaining
to Black Hill, of the phantom
noises, the mistlike wraiths that
haunted the mountain fastnesses, and
of the girl who had gone insane on
her honeymoon in “The Castle”.
“It is all very interesting,” commented
Stark Laurier, “but fiction
purely. The phantom noises are undoubtedly
merely a natural phenomenon.
The girl who went insane would
probably have done so whether she
dwelt in ‘The Castle’ or not. Perhaps
insanity runs in her family. Did
anyone ever take the trouble to trace
her antecedents?”
“Perhaps you are right,” said
Nona reluctantly, “but even I seem
to feel as if there is something sinister
about Black Hill. At night when I
gaze off into the shadows of the forest
it is not hard for me to imagine that
all sorts of weird, fantastic monstrosities
are lurking in among those velvet
shrouds of blackness. Every night,
or almost every night, my father
rushes off as if all the terrors of earth
are following right at his heels. I wish
more than anything else in the world
that I had seen the last of Black Hill
forever.”
Although Stark Laurier did not admit
it to Nona, he, too, felt as if some
terrible weight were crushing down
on his shoulders, some impending disaster
too frightful to dwell upon. Perhaps
the gloom of “The Castle” added
to his general depression, for it
was seldom lighted cheerfully. Cass
Ledyard would not permit more than
one room to be lighted at a time, and
as the lights were rather dull in any
case because the shades were made
of antique colored glass, the gloom of
the halls and the other rooms seemed
intensified by the single light. Stark
Laurier would have preferred that the
entire house remain dark rather than
have this travesty of brilliance. Once
when he disregarded instructions and
turned on the light in the hall he encountered
such a look of diabolical
hatred in the glaring eyes of Cass
Ledyard that he never repeated the
indiscretion.
For the most part Cass Ledyard
kept to his own room, but occasionally
he joined Stark Laurier before the
open hearth in the library. At such
times he was the most agreeable of
companions and a most interesting
conversationist. He seemed familiar
with every quarter of the globe
and could talk intelligently on almost
any subject. He was particularly interested
in the lore of precious stones
and in the science of color. Once he
told a peculiar story about an old
soothsayer of the East who was well
versed in all the arts, black, white
and gray. He knew the science of
color more definitely than any other
man that ever lived. And he had a
theory with which he wished to experiment.
One day he enticed his enemy
to his dwelling, which was fitted
out with enough paraphernalia to
shock a ghost. He placed his enemy
in a certain spot, then turned on two
rays of light of his own invention,
which clashed so violently that his
enemy, who sat in the exact spot
where the color forces met, was shattered
to atoms. Not even a vestige
of him remained. Of course it was
purely a bit of Persian fantasy, but
to Stark Laurier it was interesting
nevertheless.
Then he told all sorts of odd little
stories about the power of precious
stones—how the opal has grown to be
an omen of ill-luck—how melted
pearls in vinegar can cure illness, how
the amethyst is the most soothing of
gems because it blends best with the
sun.
Thus would he keep on telling almost
endless anecdotes. At such times all the mystery of his wild appearance
seemed to slip from him and
he seemed as rational and calm as
anyone else. And yet in the late evenings
he would continue his wild
dashes into the forest like a frightened,
hunted thing.
Cass Ledyard permitted Stark Laurier
to wander wherever he
wished over the house, with the exception
of one room. This room
opened off the library and was always
kept locked.
“If you enter that room without
my permission,” he said gravely, “I
shall not be responsible for what happens
thereafter.”
This peculiar warning only served
to make Stark Laurier’s curiosity
more acute. He wondered if there
were some living thing in that room,
some living horror too awful to gaze
upon, but he soon abandoned this theory
because Cass Ledyard never entered
the room. If there were any
living thing there it would be necessary
to feed it. As the days dragged
on his curiosity grew.
Sig, also, seemed rather mysterious
in his actions. He crept about the
house, utterly soundless. Occasionally
Stark Laurier would look up from
his book with a start to find Sig
standing over him, his grotesque,
gorillalike face looking more formidable
than ever. Although Sig was always
polite and servile, Stark Laurier
realized that in his manner there was
a hidden note of hatred. He resented
Stark’s presence there.
It was not always gloomy, however,
for as time wore on, Nona’s fascination
increased. Her loveliness wove
a spell about him, a net from which
he did not wish to escape. At last he
told her how much she meant to him,
and to his surprize and joy she confessed
that she cared equally as much
for him. So they became engaged.
Cass Ledyard made no objection to
their marriage, although he became
immediately quiet and grave and
went to his room right after supper.
That night Sig disappeared without
a word of explanation. His life was
shattered as completely as that of the
Persian in Cass Ledyard’s story, who
had unfortunately sat in the direct
path of the clashing colors. Although
no one even suspected it, Sig had begun
to think of Nona as his own. He
imagined that she too, like him, was a
social outcast. He believed eventually
she would consent to become his
wife. He did not realize the absurdity
of the thought, nor did he realize
that he was a loathsome monstrosity.
It is fortunate that we see only the
most pleasing aspect of our faces
when we gaze into mirrors. Sig had
studied Cass Ledyard every moment
they had been together and he had
arrived at the conclusion that Cass
Ledyard was a far more notorious
criminal than even he himself. The
thought increased his own egotism.
He was less in fear of the law than
his employer, who evidently lived in
constant dread of it.
3
The next night Cass Ledyard was
just as cordial as usual to Stark
Laurier. He had not appeared at
breakfast or lunch. He had remained
in his room, and Nona, knowing her
father’s eccentricities, did not disturb
him. But at supper he was quite
talkative. He recounted many interesting
anecdotes and proved himself
in truth a charming host. After supper
he and Stark Laurier went into
the library and seated themselves before
the hearth while Nona went to
the kitchen to wash the dishes, for
now that Sig had disappeared they
were entirely without servants.
Most of Cass Ledyard’s talk that
evening was about the Orient, odd little
tales whose settings were in the
fabulous romance countries of the
East. He talked of India and southern
China so vividly that the cities he told of seemed to materialize before
their eyes among the crackling
embers of the open fire. And
then eventually conversation veered
around to Tibet—that wild, desolate
little country situated at the roof of
the world.
“It is a land of drifting shadows,”
he said, “a land in the grip of a
fanatical religion, ruled by a revered
Lama of whom the people stand in as
great awe as if he were the
White God himself. In Tibet one
hears many strange incidents. For
example, a prognosticator once foretold
a happening which irritated the
Dalai Lama. In a fit of rage he summoned
the man before him and ordered
that his lips be sewn together
by a tentmaker, proclaiming that if
what the soothsayer predicted came
to pass he was to be signally honored;
if not, the stitches were to remain as
a fitting reminder that it is unwise
even for a prophet to talk too much.”
As Cass Ledyard finished speaking,
some unseen hand switched off the
electric lights, plunging the room into
a well of darkness. The fire on the
hearth had burned low. Only an eery
blue flame remained, which cast off
no illumination. It seemed, on the
contrary, to make the blackness of the
room more impenetrable. There came
a sudden draft, as cold and damp and
dismal as if a window had been
stealthily opened and the night fog
was drifting in. From the distant
mountain solitudes floated a dismal
wail as if some animal were in distress.
The treetops outside the window
swayed and swished, and seemed
to be murmuring plaintively to one
another about the haunted horror
that had broken loose once more in
the mountains. Stark Laurier sat
rigid in his chair, every nerve tense,
listening, trying to peer through the
curtains of blackness.
He felt as if some other presence
were in the room besides himself and
his host. Once some unseen shape
passed soundlessly between him and
the blue flame of the fire, hiding it
for a brief moment. Cass Ledyard
groaned; he was breathing heavily as
if the very act of living had become
a pain to him.
Then like a flash, Stark Laurier
thought of Nona. She was in the
kitchen, alone, unprotected, left to the
mercy of the intruder.
Not hesitating for a moment, Stark
Laurier sprang to his feet. He
rushed blindly toward the kitchen
door, but he never reached it. For
he tripped over a great chair and fell
with such a crash that it echoed uncannily
throughout the house. The
next moment he felt two bony hands
creeping toward his throat, feeling
their way up his coat. They were
cold and damp, as the hands of a forest
prowler naturally would be. Stark
Laurier recoiled in horror. Then he
pulled himself together and the struggle
began in earnest. Each endeavored
to grip the other’s throat. Their
sole desire was to kill.
Stark Laurier realized that at last
he was face to face with the specter
that haunted the mountain. It was
not a wraith made of cloudlike mist,
but a strong man of flesh and blood,
though no less of a menace because
of that fact. He wondered what had
become of Nona. If he lost the fight,
he shuddered to think of her possible
fate. The very thought doubled his
strength. With one mighty effort he
broke free of the steel-like talons of
fingers. The next moment his hands
had closed about a scrawny though
muscular throat. He emitted a little
chuckle of satisfaction as he commenced
to close his fingers together.
Even as he did so the lights flared up
again. Nona Ledyard stood in the
doorway. Her face was very white
and she was breathing heavily. Stark
Laurier looked down at his victim and
recoiled in horror. It was Cass Ledyard.
In the darkness they had been
fighting each other.
Cass Ledyard struggled to his feet.
He was just barely able to breathe
but he did not seem to bear any resentment
toward Stark Laurier. For
the mistake in the blackness they were
equally to blame. But his usually
pale face was a sickly green, as if he
were a plague-sufferer, and his eyes
seemed bursting from their sockets.
“What is the matter?” gasped
Nona.
As she spoke, Cass Ledyard rushed
across the room in a panic. The door
of the adjoining room, the room which
he had forbidden Stark Laurier to enter,
was open. When Stark Laurier
and Nona followed Cass Ledyard,
they beheld him standing before an
empty mantelpiece.
“It’s gone!” he shrieked. “It’s
gone!”
He clutched paralytically at the air.
“The Golden Buddha is stolen!”
“Perhaps,” hazarded Stark Laurier,
“you will recover it in time.”
Cass Ledyard’s face as he turned
upon him was horrible to behold. His
mouth worked convulsively and he
was drooling at the lips. There was
no accounting for the hatred and fury
of his expression.
“Fool!” he rasped. “Fool!”
Then he burst into delirious laughter.
“I have lived ten years for this moment,”
he raged, “and now you speak
of recovery.”
He seized a huge cane.
“Get out of my house!” he
screamed, as he brandished the heavy
knotted stick above Stark Laurier’s
head. “Get out of my house, you
fool!”
Stark was speechless with astonishment
at the turn which events had
taken. Nona took his arm.
“Father is not himself,” she pleaded;
“please go.”
As if in a dream, Stark Laurier permitted
himself to be led unresisting
to the door. Nona pressed
her cold lips to his. The next moment
she was gone and the door of “The
Castle” had been barricaded against
him.
The night was intensely dark.
Against the reflected sheen of the
blood-burning moon the trees stood
out in jagged silhouette. The forest
trails were very damp. Stray bits of
mist, illuminated, white-glowing,
moved stealthily about as if they were
lost spirits searching for bodies to enter.
The distant, feeble dripping of
a mountain stream floated to his ears
so monotonously that eventually it
seemed to grow to drum-pitch. The
thickets seemed filled with subdued
voices, as if all the woodfolk were
deep in conversation. Stark leaned
against a tree. He shivered. The intense
cold of the night air was as cutting
as a meat-cleaver. It dug to his
very bones. The fact that he was hatless
served to increase his general discomfort.
His head was in a whirl.
He could not find his way down the
perilous mountain paths in the darkness.
But even if he had been able,
he could not leave Nona to the mercy
of all the unexplainable mysteries of
Black Hill. At any moment she
might call to him for help. So he sat
down on the trunk of a fallen tree not
twenty feet from “The Castle”. Now
all the lights were out and it looked
as grim and ghostlike as a tomb.
The ensuing hours seemed endless.
The coldness increased. The night
dew fell from the leaves above his
head like chips of ice. Once something
crawled across his foot. He
imagined it was only a hallucination.
But when he put his hand down and
felt his shoe it was slimy. Never once
did he close his eyes. In his misery
sleep was impossible, nor did he wish
to sleep. He waited intently, his ears
strained for the slightest cry, but none
came. The silence was unbroken, if a forest can be called silent that seems
to contain a thousand whispering
voices.
Dawn came at last. To Stark Laurier
it seemed considerably delayed.
He rose to his feet, surprized that he
was not frozen stiff. His body contained
less warmth than a snowman.
For half an hour he walked briskly
up and down to get his sluggish blood
back into circulation.
The sun climbed gradually higher
and higher. The roving bits of fog
vanished. The warm rays sucked up
the night dew. Even his spirits
emerged from their depression as the
charm of the morning grew. Suddenly
as he passed the main entrance
of “The Castle”, he was surprized to
see Nona Ledyard standing pensively
in the doorway.
“All night I have worried,” she
said. “I was miserable. I pictured
you killed, lying broken on the rocks
of some ravine. I knew it would have
been impossible to get safely away in
the blackness.”
“I could not have gone in any
case,” he said. “The thought of you
held me here more completely than
even the darkness.”
She smiled wistfully.
“Then you are not angry with
me?” she said.
“I could not be angry with you,”
he answered; “only if it is all the
same to you, the next time you intend
to drive me out of doors, choose a
warmer night.”
He was in excellent, spirits now that
his worry over Nona was lifted from
his shoulders.
“However,” he continued lightly,
“I suppose I should be thankful that
we didn’t have a blizzard.”
“Father is full of remorse this
morning,” she told him, “so you
must have breakfast with him and
give him an opportunity to explain
his peculiar actions of last night.”
Stark Laurier needed no second
bidding. Curiosity had ever been his
weak point; besides, he was ravenously
hungry. His appetite was a
very good friend. It never deserted
him. So he entered the house.
He found Cass Ledyard already
seated at the table in the dining room.
As Stark Laurier approached, he rose
and held out his hand.
“My shame is boundless,” he said,
and it was hard to realize that this
calm-faced man was the maniac of the
night before, “and yet it is not sufficient
to make me unhappy, for I have
been a virtual prisoner for ten years,
a prisoner of fear, but now I am free
at last. I have lived through an inferno
worse than Dante ever pictured.”
He walked over and opened the
window.
“It is a beautiful morning,” he
said. “I do not know when the countryside
has seemed so perfect. Those
mountains to the east I like to think
of as ‘The Mountains of the Morning’.
Beyond their purple ridges the
sun goes into camp at night.”
Then he returned and seated himself
at the table.
“I owe you an explanation,” he
said. “If you will let me tell you
the story of the Golden Buddha I am
sure many of my fanatical actions of
the last few weeks will be clarified.”
He did not wait for Stark Laurier
to assent, but plunged at once into his
story.
“To tell about the Golden Buddha,”
he began thoughtfully, “I
will have to carry you in revery away
off to the interior of unexplored Tibet,
where the Dalai Lama rules as
absolute and merciless as any tribal
chief in darkest Africa. Whatever
drew my footsteps to the bleak and
bare wilderness of Tibet in the first
place I cannot explain. Perhaps it
was the lure of forbidden lands, the
desire to walk through cities to which
no other Christian had ever penetrated,
to gaze upon mountain ranges, ravines and glacial lakes piled with
ice upon which the subdued glare of
the sun painted prismatic colors, to
fight a way through wind-beaten,
storm-swept mountain passes, enduring
a cold so intense that every
breath of wind shrieking down from
the needle-pointed peaks crashed
against the face like a solid thing, and
to know as each new scene loomed up
that no other Christian had ever penetrated
those inhospitable, bleak and
desolate regions.”
In Cass Ledyard’s eyes there was a
far-away, dreamy expression as if in
retrospection he was again seeing the
mysterious visions that haunt the
mountain passes.
“I first heard of the little Golden
Buddha at Simla in India,” he continued
presently, “immediately on
my return from Nepal. Colonel Gerould,
of the British army, told me its
story one evening as we sat out on the
balcony of the London Club. All
about us people were laughing and
chatting merrily. From far in the
distance came strains of delightful
music, blending pleasantly with the
exquisite fragrance of a million flowers.
“‘If you are looking for adventure,’
drawled Colonel Gerould, ‘why
don’t you journey to Lassa in quest
of the myth-famed Golden Buddha,
which is more revered by the people
than is the Dalai Lama? The tiny
statue is kept in a sacred temple that
has stood for a thousand years. It is
guarded by two old men, which is considered
sufficient, for who would even
attempt to steal so sacred a relic?
And yet the Golden Buddha is not
really the property of the Tibetans,
for many years ago it was stolen from
a temple somewhere in inland China.
So you see by procuring the Buddha
you would not be robbing the Tibetans,
for surely one cannot lose title to
a thing which one has never really
owned.’
“Thus for an hour Colonel Gerould
talked and extolled the merits of the
Golden Buddha, until at last he
kindled a fire of longing in my heart
to journey to Lassa on a quest almost
as obscure as Ponce de Leon’s search
for the Fountain of Youth. In less
than two hours we were discussing the
details of my journey. I fully appreciated
the dangers which would be
encountered on the road to Lassa, for
the almost unknown city of mystery
is one of the great centers of the religious
world.
“The days that followed were as
busy as any I have ever known. I
went about purchasing and collecting
such paraphernalia as I deemed necessary
for the expedition. In this
task, which was by no means small, I
was ably assisted by Ben Ali Reyham,
an Arab guide who had a dozen times
proved his extraordinary worth to me,
and Noor el Arfi, Ben Ali’s greatest
friend. Thus the final snags were unraveled,
and at last the eventful day
came which marked the start of our
expedition. . .
“Of the first few days of travel
nothing need be said. They contained
little of interest. It was not until we
got well away from the grass-covered
hill country that the real trouble of
our march began. Up forest-clad
mountains we pushed our way, skirting
moraines, through a region of
perpetual snow and then down into a
fertile valley once again. But the
valley was only a flitting part of our
journey, for soon we climbed a precipitous
slope and entered the great
corrugated uplands of Tibet, cut by
bleak mountain ranges of tremendous
height. Now we were in a weirdly
wild and desolate country with nothing
to break the frightful monotony
but bleak walls of bare, gray rock,
vast glaciers and high ranges crowned
with eternal snow. Added to this, we
were passing through a section peopled
by tribes of fierce, warlike hillsmen who hold the right of way to
Lassa, and our position can be imagined?”
Again Cass Ledyard lapsed into silence.
Stark Laurier made no effort
to interrupt his revery.
“I fear I am beginning to ramble,”
he continued slowly.
“Eventually we arrived within
two miles of the sacred city of Lassa.
We were fortunate in finding a cave
in the mountains, wherein we could
lie hidden. If our presence had been
discovered we should undoubtedly
have been made captives to be dealt
with according to the passing mood
of the Dalai Lama. . .
“When night came on, I stole forth
alone from our hiding place. As I
look back, I shiver even now as I think
of that night’s adventures. Something
in the uncanny, grim coldness
of the forbidden country seemed to
chill my blood to ice. My teeth chattered
and my knees trembled so that
it was a wonder I was able to reach
the temple at all. I frankly dreaded
to go forward and nothing on earth
could have made me turn back. I
feared cowardice more than I feared
danger, just as some men would
rather face death than ridicule.
“At the open door of the temple I
paused and peered nervously within.
A faint light burned near the altar
upon which stood the Golden Buddha.
To this day I could not describe the
furnishings of that temple if you were
to offer me all the treasure of the Incas.
My eyes were glued upon that
little Golden Buddha. I gloated over
it as avariciously as any miser might
gloat over money. I think, now, that
at that moment I was temporarily delirious
as a result of the terrible hardships
we had encountered on the road
to Lassa. But at the moment I did
not wonder at my intense cupidity.
To long to possess that statue of Buddha
seemed the most natural thing in
the world.
“I stole into the temple unchallenged.
I might have been walking
through a dead city for all the
opposition I encountered. Five minutes
later I had the idol in my possession
and was fleeing back to the
mountain solitudes. And now fear
conquered. I sped down that mountain
pass as if pursued by a thousand
warlike hillsmen. Every shrieking
wail of the wind among the jagged
rocks seemed to me like the war cry
of my pursuers. And yet I sped
down that dark and silent ravine absolutely
alone. Not a single Tibetan
followed me.
“In some unknoown way I reached
the cave and fell exhausted at the feet
of my two guides, Ben Ali Reyham
and his comrade. That night I lay
and tossed on my blanket in the
wildest delirium. When rooming came
I was in the grip of a raging fever.
So it was impossible for us to return
to Simla. I could not walk a single
step.
“During the next two weeks my
brain recorded little of the happenings
about me. I just lay weak and
only semi-conscious, at the point of
death. Every day my companions
expected the last spark of life to flicker
out of my wasted body. Yet somehow
I pulled through.
“At the beginning of the third
week the fever lifted and I regained
full consciousness. I was still very
weak, but there was no longer any
doubt of my recovery.
“Then it was that Ben Ali Reyham
approached the blanket on which I
lay. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘the ways of
Allah are marvelous. He has drawn
suspicion away from us and placed
it upon the heads of the two old men
who used to guard the temple of the
Golden Buddha. The Dalai Lama has
decreed that they must die to atone
for the theft. If, within the next ten
sunrises, the Golden Buddha is not
returned, they are to be tied together,
hand and foot, and east into the river. So you see, my master, a great danger
has been lifted from our shoulders’.
“Weeks later we were back in Simla,
or rather, I should say I arrived
at an inferno, for I have never known
a happy moment since the Buddha
has been in my possession. Sometimes
I seem to see the bloated, ghastly
corpses of the old men floating on
that ancient river in Tibet. And the
thongs that bind them together have
bound my happiness as well. I have
been a slave to that idol more truly
than any lama ever was. Always I
have had the fear of retribution hanging
over me. I have been a hunted
thing, always watching for the grim,
gaunt emissaries who must surely be
relentlessly seeking me out.
“I used to live with Nona at Cresco,
but we fled when some suspicious
looking gipsies came and camped
within half a mile of our house. I
was afraid. Fear is a terrible thing.
To be hunted like a wild thing is
dreadful. But to be tormented by
one’s conscience is even worse.
“Sometimes at night I feel as if
my mind is breaking. A sudden impulse
overcomes me and I race out
into the night over the crooked winding
roads until I return absolutely
exhausted and sleep from utter weariness.
“That Golden Buddha hypnotized
me. I longed to get rid of it, yet I
could not throw it away. My hands
were tied. I have been under a spell.
But now the spell has been lifted, for
the lamas have gotten back their sacred
idol after a relentless pursuit
that lasted more than ten years.”
4
Stark Laurier and Nona were mar-ried
early the next week and they
left at once for a quiet honeymoon in
New York City.
“I haven’t been in New York for
years,” said Nona, “and I could not
take a trip anywhere I would enjoy
more.”
As the train sped down through the
mountains, Stark Laurier said
thoughtfully, “I have been thinking
a great deal about the disappearance
of the Golden Buddha and I have
come to the conclusion that the Tibetans
did not again secure possession of
it as your father imagined.”
“I thought,” she drawled, “I had
married a novelist, and now to my
surprize I find I have married a detective.
What is your theory?”
“I think,” he told her, “in fact I
am almost certain that Sig took the
golden idol when he ran away. He
was an ex-convict and undoubtedly
realized that the little statue was of
great value because it was made of
pure gold.”
“That is splendid,” she asserted,
“as far as it goes, but like most deductions
it doesn’t go far enough.”
As she spoke she opened her black
over-night bag and drew from it the
Golden Buddha.
“You see,” she went on wickedly,
“you have married a scoundrel, because
it was I who stole the Golden
Buddha. It was I who turned off the
electric lights and then opened the
window to give the affair an uncanny
appearance. For I realized that the
Golden Buddha was wrecking my
father’s life, driving him mad. He
was fleeing from pursuers that did
not exist. I do not believe that a single
soul is following him. I knew he
wished to get rid of the statue but did
not have the strength nor courage to
destroy it himself. Now we must carefully
dispose of it so he will never see
it again.”
Stark Laurier was amazed, but he
was also delighted with her stratagem.
“A moment ago,” he said, “you
stated that you had married a detective
as well as a novelist, but you
were wrong. You married only a
novelist.”
Nguồn: Wikisource English — Weird Tales/Volume 5/Issue 6/Black Hill. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.