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Adventure, 15 July 1931, with "The Black Beast"
DIAGONALLY across the Sunday Market in Christiansted, on the island of Santa Cruz, from the house known as Old Moore's, which I occupied one season—that is to say, along the southern side of the ancient marketplace of the old city, built upon the abandoned site of the yet older French town of Bassin—there stands, in faded, austere grandeur, another and much larger old house known as Gannett's. For close to half a century Gannett House stood vacant and idle, its solid masonry front along the marketplace presenting a forlorn and aloof appearance, with its rows of closely shuttered windows, its stones darkened and discolored, its whole appearance stern and forbidding.
During that fifty years or so in which it had stood shut up and frowning blankly at the mass of humanity which passed its massive bulk and its forbidding closed doors, there had been made, by various persons, efforts enough to have it opened. Such a house, one of the largest private dwellings in the West Indies, and one of the handsomest, closed up like this, and out of use, as it transpired upon serious inquiry, merely because such was the will of its arbitrary and rather mysterious absentee proprietor whom the island had not seen for a middle-aged man's lifetime, could hardly fail to appeal to prospective renters.
I know, because he has told me so, that the Rev. Fr. Richardson, of the English Church, tried to engage it as a convent for his sisters in 1926. I tried to get a season's lease on it myself, in the year when, failing to do so, I took Old Moore's instead—a house of strange shadows and generous rooms and enormous, high doorways through which, times innumerable, Old Moore himself, bearing, if report were believable, a strange burden of mental apprehension, had slunk in bygone years, in shuddering, dreadful anticipation...
Inquiry at the Government offices had elicited the fact that old Lawyer Malling, a survival of the Danish régime, who lived in Christiansted and was invaluable to our Government officials when it came to disentangling antique Danish records, was in charge of Gannett's. Herr Malling, interviewed in turn, was courteous but firm. The house could not be rented under any considerations; such were his instructions—permanent instructions, filed among his records. No, it was impossible, out of the question. I recalled some dim hints I had received of an old scandal.
Over a glass of excellent sherry which hospitable Herr Malling provided, I asked various questions. The answers to these indicated that the surviving Gannetts were utterly obdurate in the matter. They had no intention of returning. Repairs—the house was built like a fortress—had not, so far, been required. They had assigned no reason for their determination to keep their Christiansted property closed? No—and Herr Malling had no option in the matter. No, he had written before, twice; once in behalf of the rector of the English Church, just recently; also, ten, eleven years ago when a professor from Berlin, sojourning in the islands, had conceived the idea of a tropical school for tutoring purposes and had cast a thickly bespectacled eye on the old mansion. No, it was impossible.
'Well, skaal, Herr Canevin! Come now—another, of course! A man can not travel on one leg, you know; that is one of our sayings.'
But three years after this interview with Herr Malling, the old house was opened at last. The very last remaining Gannett, it appeared, had gone to his reward, from Edinburgh, and the title had passed to younger heirs who had had no personal connection, no previous residence in the West Indies.
Herr Malling's new instructions, transmitted through an Aberdeen solicitor, were to rent the property to the best advantage, to entertain offers for its disposal in fee simple, and to estimate possible repairs and submit this estimate to Aberdeen. I learned this some time after the instructions had been transmitted. Herr Malling was not one to broadcast the private and confidential business of his clients. I learned thereof from Mrs Ashton Garde, over tea and small cakes in the vast, magnificent drawing room of Gannett's, a swept and garnished Gannett's which she had taken for the season and whose eighteenth-century mahogany she had augmented and lightened with various furniture of her own in the process which had transformed the old fortress-like abode into one of the most attractive residences I have ever been privileged to visit.
Mrs Garde, an American, and a widow, was in the late forties, a very charming and delightful woman of the world, an accomplished hostess, incidentally a person of substantial means, and the mother of three children. Of these, a married daughter lived in Florida and did not visit the Gardes during their winter in Santa Cruz. The other children, Edward, just out of Harvard, and Lucretia, twenty-four, were with their mother. Both of them, though diversely—Edward, an athlete, had no particular conversation—had inherited the maternal charm as well as the very striking good looks of their late father whose portrait—a splendid Sargent—hung over one of the two massive marble mantelpieces which stood at either end of the great drawing room.
It was quite near the end where the portrait hung, low because the mantelshelf, lacking a fireplace under it, stood two feet higher than an ordinary mantelshelf, balancing a ceiling fifteen feet in height, that we sat upon my first visit to the Gardes, and I noticed that Mrs Garde, whose tea table was centered on the mantelpiece, as it were, and who sat facing me across the room's width, glanced up, presumably at the portrait, several times.
I am of an analytical mentality, even in small matters. I guessed that she was trying out the recent hanging of this very magnificent portrait 'with her eye', as people do until they have become accustomed to new placements and the environmental aspects of a new or temporary home and, my attention thus drawn to it, I made some comment upon the portrait, and rose to examine it more closely. It repaid scrutiny.
But Mrs Garde, as though with a slight note of deprecation, turned the conversation away from the portrait, a fact which I noticed in passing, and which was emphasized, as I thought of it later, by her sidelong glances, upward and to her right, in the intervals of pouring tea for a considerable group of company, which kept going up there again and again. I gave to these facts no particular interpretation. There was no reason for analysis. But I noted them nevertheless.
I saw considerable of the Gardes, for the next few weeks, and then, because I had planned some time before to go down the islands as far as Martinique when the Margaret of the Bull-Insular Line which plies among the upper islands should go there for several days' sojourn in dry dock, I did not see them at all for more than two weeks during which I was renewing my acquaintance with Martinique French in the interesting capital town of Fort de France.
I ran in to call on the Gardes shortly after my arrival on Santa Cruz at the conclusion of this trip, and found Mrs Garde alone. Edward and Lucretia were playing tennis and later dining with the Covingtons at Hermon Hill Estate House.
I was immediately struck with the change which had taken place in Mrs Garde. It was as though some process of infinite weariness had laid its hold upon her. She looked shrunken, almost fragile. Her eyes, of that dark, brilliant type which accompanies a bistre complexion, appeared enormous, and as she looked at me, her glances alternating with the many which she kept casting up there in the direction of her husband's portrait, I could not escape the conviction that her expression bore now that aspect which I can only describe by the somewhat trite term 'haunted'.
I was, sharply, immediately, surprised; greatly intrigued by this phenomenon. It was one of those obvious things which strike one directly without palliation, like a blow in the face unexpectedly delivered; an unmistakable change, hinting, somehow, of tragedy. It made me instantaneously uneasy, moved me profoundly, for I had liked Mrs Garde very much indeed, and had anticipated a very delightful acquaintance with this family which centered about its head. I noticed her hand quite definitely trembling as she handed me my cup of tea, and she took one of those sidelong glances, up and to the right, in the very midst of that hospitable motion.
I drank half my tea in a mutual silence, and then, looking at Mrs Garde, I surprised her in the middle of another glance. She was just withdrawing her eyes. She caught my eyes, and, perhaps, something of the solicitude which I was feeling strongly at the moment, and her somberly pallid face flushed slightly. She looked down, busied herself with the paraphernalia of her circular tea tray. I spoke then.
'Haven't you been entirely well, Mrs Garde? It seemed to me that, perhaps, you were not looking altogether robust, if you don't mind my mentioning it.' I tried to make my tone sufficiently jocular to carry off my really solicitous inquiry lightly; to leave room for some rejoinder in somewhat the same vein.
She turned tragic eyes upon me. There was no smile on her drawn face. The unexpected quality of her reply brought me up standing.
'Mr. Canevin—help me!' she said simply, looking straight into my eyes.
I was around the tea table in two seconds, held her shaking hands, which were as cold as lumps of ice, in mine. I held them and looked down at Mrs Garde. 'With all my heart,' I said. 'Tell me, please, when you can, now or later, Mrs Garde, what it is.'
She expressed her thanks for this reassurance with a nod, withdrew her hands, sat back in her rattan chair and closed her eyes. I thought she was going to faint and, sensing this, perhaps, she opened her eyes and said: 'I'm quite all right, Mr. Canevin—that is, so far as the immediate present is concerned. Will you not sit down, finish your tea? Let me freshen your cup.'
Somewhat relieved, I resumed my own chair and, over a second cup of tea, looked at my hostess. She had made a distinct effort to pull herself together. We sat for some minutes in silence. Then, I refusing more tea, she rang, and the butler came in and removed the tray and placed cigarettes on the table between us. It was only after the servant had gone and closed the drawing room door behind himself that she leaned forward impulsively, and began to tell me what had occurred.
Despite her obvious agitation and the state of her nerves which I have attempted to indicate, Mrs Garde went straight to the point without any beating about the bush. Even as she spoke it occurred to me from the form of her phraseology that she had been planning how, precisely, to express herself. She did so now very concisely and clearly.
'Mr. Canevin,' she began, 'I have no doubt that you have noticed my glancing up at the wall space above this mantel. It has grown, one would say, to be a nervous habit with me. You have observed it, have you not?'
I said that I had and had supposed that the glances had been directed toward her husband's portrait.
'No,' resumed Mrs Garde, looking at me fixedly as though to keep her eyes off the place over the mantelshelf, 'it is not at the picture, Mr. Canevin. It is at a place directly above it—about three feet above its top edge to be precise.'
She paused at this point, and I could not help looking toward the point she had indicated. As I did so, I caught sight of her long and rather beautiful hands. They were clamped against the edge of the low table, as though she was holding on to that as if to something solid and material—an anchor for her nerves—and I observed that the knuckles were white with the pressure she was exerting.
I saw nothing but a wide space of empty, gray sanded wall which ran up cleanly to the high ceiling and out on both sides of the portrait, a clear space, artistically left vacant, one would surmise, by whoever had possessed the good sense to leave the Sargent alone with its wide blank background of gray wall space.
I looked back at Mrs Garde and found her gaze fixed determinedly on my face. It was as though she held it there, by a sheer effort of the will, forcing herself not to look up at the wall.
I nodded at her reassuringly.
'Please continue, if you will, Mrs Garde,' I said, and leaned back in my chair and lighted a cigarette from the silver box on the table between us.
Mrs Garde relaxed and leaned back in her lounge chair, but continued looking straight at me. When she resumed what she was saying she spoke slowly, with a certain conscious effort at deliberation. My instinct apprised me that she was forcing herself to this course; that if she did not concentrate in some such fashion she would let go and scream aloud.
'Perhaps you are familiar with Du Maurier's book, The Martian, Mr. Canevin,' and, as I nodded assent, she continued, 'You will remember when Josselin's eye began to fail him, he was puzzled and dreadfully worried by discovering a blind spot in his sound eye—it was emphasized by the failure of the other one, and he was vastly distressed—thought he was going stone blind, until the little Continental oculist reassured him, explained the punctum caecum—the blind spot which is in the direct line of vision with the optic nerve itself. Do you recall the incident?'
'Perfectly,' said I, and nodded again reassuringly.
'Well, I remember testing my own blind spots after reading that when I was quite a young girl,' resumed Mrs Garde. 'I dare say a great many people tried the experiment. There is, of course, a line of vision outside each blind spot, to the left of the left eye's ordinary focus and, correspondingly, to the right of that of the other eye. In addition to this variation of ordinary vision, as I have ascertained, there is another condition, especially evident in the sight of the middle-aged. That is that the direct line of ordinary vision becomes, as it were, "worn", and the vision itself, in the case of a person especially who has used his or her eyes a great deal—over embroidery, or reading, or some professional work which requires concentrated looking, I mean—is somewhat less acute than when the eyes are used at an unaccustomed angle.'
She paused, looked at me as though to ascertain whether or not I had been following the speech. Once more I nodded. I had listened carefully to every word. Mrs Garde, resuming, now became acutely specific.
'As soon as we had arrived here, Mr. Canevin, the very first thing that I had to attend to was the suitable hanging of this portrait of Mr. Garde.' She did not look toward it, but indicated the portrait with a gesture of her hand in its direction.
'I looked over that section of the wall space to ascertain the most advantageous point from which to hang it. I found the place that seemed to me suitable and had the butler drive in a nail in the place I indicated. The picture was then hung and is still in the place I selected.
'This process had required considerable looking, on my part, at the blank wall. It was not, really, until the portrait was actually hung that I realized—that it occurred to me—that something—something, Mr. Canevin, which had gradually become clearer, better defined I mean, was there—above the picture—something which, within that outside angle of vision, outside the blind spot of my right eye as I sat there and looked up and to the right, became more evident every time I looked up at the wall. Of course, I looked at the picture many times, to make quite sure I had it in the right spot on the wall. In doing so the outside vision, the portion of the eye which was not worn and more or less dimmed from general usage, took in the place I have indicated. It is, as I have mentioned, about three feet above the top of Mr. Garde's portrait.
'Mr. Canevin, the thing has grown—grown!'
Suddenly Mrs Garde broke down, buried her face in trembling hands, leaning forward upon the table like a child hiding its eyes in a game, and her slim body shook with uncontrollable, dry sobs.
This time, I perceived, the best thing for me to do was to sit quietly and wait until the poor, overwrought lady had exhausted her hysterical seizure. I waited, therefore, in perfect silence, trying, mentally, to give my hostess, as well as I could, the assurance of my complete sympathy and my desire and willingness to help her in all possible ways.
Gradually, as I had anticipated, the spasm of weeping worked itself out, minimized itself and finally passed. Mrs Garde raised her head, composed herself, again looked at me, this time with a markedly greater degree of calmness and self-possession. The gust of hysteria, although it had shaken her, had, in its ordinary effect, done her good. She even smiled at me a little wanly.
'I fear that you will think me very weak, Mr. Canevin,' she said finally.
I smiled quietly.
'When it is possible, it would be of assistance if I could know of this matter as exactly as possible,' I said. 'Try, please, to tell me just what it is that you see on the wall, Mrs Garde.'
Mrs Garde nodded, spent a little while composing herself. She even used her vanity box, a trifling gold affair with the inevitable mirror. After this she was able to smile herself. Then, suddenly quite serious again, she said simply: 'It is the head and part of the body—the upper, forward part, to be precise, Mr. Canevin—of what seems to be a young bull. At first only the head; then, gradually, the shoulders and neck. It seems quite utterly grotesque, absurd, does it not?
'But, Mr. Canevin, extraordinary as that must seem to you, it is—' she looked down at her twitching hands, then, with a visible effort, back at me, her face now suddenly ghastly under the fresh make-up which she had so recently applied to it. 'Mr. Canevin, that is not the terrifying part of it. That, indeed, might, perhaps, be construed as some kind of optical illusion, or something of the sort. It is—' again she hesitated, looked down; then, with a greater effort than before back at me—'it is the—expression—of the face, Mr. Canevin! It is, I assure you, quite human, terrifying, reproachful! And, Mr. Canevin, there is blood, a thick single stream of blood, which runs down from the center of the forehead, over the creature's poor nose! It is—somehow, pathetic, Mr. Canevin. It is a very frightful experience to have. It has utterly ruined my peace of mind. That is all there is to it, Mr. Canevin—the head and neck and shoulders of a young bull, with that blood running down from its forehead, and that expression... '
At once, upon hearing this salient particularization of Mrs Garde's extraordinary optical experience, that analytical faculty of mine began forthwith to run riot. There were points of contact with previous knowledge of the spectral beliefs of the blacks and similar phenomena of our West Indies in that picture, affairs wherein I am not wholly without experience. The bull, as at once it occurred to me, is the principal sacrificial animal of the main voodoo cults, up and down the islands, where the old African gods of 'Guinea' prevail.
But a bull, with such an expression on its face as my hostess had briefly described, with blood running down its nose, up there on the wall space above the high mantelshelf in Gannett House—this was, truly, a puzzler! I shifted, I remember, forward in my chair, raised a hand to command Mrs Garde's attention. I had thought of something.
'Tell me, if you please, Mrs Garde,' said I. 'Is the appearance which you have described close against the wall, or—otherwise?'
'It is well out from the wall itself,' replied Mrs Garde, striving to express herself with precision. 'It seems, I should say, to be several feet away from the wall proper, toward us, of course—not as though behind the wall, I mean—and, I omitted to say, Mr. Canevin, that when I look at it for any considerable length of time, the head and shoulders seem to sag forward and downward. It is, I should say, as though the animal were just freshly hurt, were beginning to sink down to its death.'
'Thank you,' said I. 'It must have been a considerable ordeal to tell me about it so clearly and exactly. However, it is very simple psychology to understand that the process has done you good. You have shared your strange experience with someone else. That, of course, is a step in the right direction. Now, Mrs Garde, will you permit me to "prescribe" for you?'
'Most assuredly, Mr. Canevin,' returned Mrs Garde. 'I am, frankly, in such a state over this dreadful thing, that I am prepared to do anything to secure some relief from it. I have not, of course, mentioned it to my children. I have not said a word to anybody but you. It is not the sort of thing one can discuss—with anybody and everybody.'
I bowed across the table at this implied compliment, this expression of confidence in me, after all, the most casual of Mrs Garde's acquaintances.
'I suggest,' said I, 'that the entire Garde family take an excursion down the islands, like the one from which I have just returned. The Samaria, of the Cunard Line, will be at St. Thomas on Thursday. Today is Monday. It would be quite a simple matter to make your reservations by wireless, or even by cable to St. Thomas. Go away for two or three weeks; come back when you are ready. And leave me the key of Gannett House, Mrs Garde.'
My hostess nodded. She had listened avidly to this suggestion.
'I will do so, Mr. Canevin. I think there will be no argument from Edward and Lucretia. They were, as a matter of fact, envying you your visit to Martinique.'
'Good,' said I encouragingly. 'We may call that settled then. I might add that the Grebe is going back to St. Thomas tomorrow morning. It would be an excellent idea for you to go along. I will telephone the dispatching secretary at once for the permission, and consult Dr Pelletier who is chief municipal physician there. He has a broad mind and a large experience of affairs such as this.'
Again Mrs Garde nodded acquiescently. She had reached, it was obvious, the place where she would carry out any intelligent suggestion to the end of terminating that optical horror of hers.
The Garde family left on board the little Government transport, which runs between our Virgin Islands and from them to and from Porto Rico, at eight o'clock the following morning. I saw them off at the Christiansted wharf, and the following afternoon a wireless from St. Thomas apprised me that Dr Pelletier had proved very helpful, and that reservations for a three weeks' cruise about the islands had been secured for all three of them on board the Cunarder.
I breathed easily, for the first time. I had assumed a fairly considerable responsibility in my advice. I was now, for some three weeks, lord of the manor at Gannett House. I arranged, through Mrs Garde's butler, a white man whom she had brought with her, to give the house servants a day's vacation for a picnic—a common form of pleasure seeking among West Indian blacks—and requested him, quoting Mrs Garde's desire—she had given me carte blanche in the entire affair—to take the same day off himself, or even two days. He could, I pointed out, go over to St. Thomas on the next trip of the Grebe and come back the following day. There would be much to see in St. Thomas with its fine shops.
The butler made this arrangement without any demur, and I called on Fr. Richardson, rector of the English Church. Fr. Richardson, to whom I told the whole story, did no more than nod his wise West Indian head. He had spent a priestly lifetime combating the 'stupidness' of the blacks. He knew precisely what to do, without any further suggestions from me.
On the day when the servants were all away from Gannett House, Fr. Richardson came with his black bag and exorcized the house from top to bottom, repeating his formulas and casting his holy water in room after room of the great old mansion. Then, gravely accepting the twenty-franc note which I handed him for his poor, and blessing me, the good and austere priest departed, his services just rendered being to him, I dare say, the nearest routine of a day's work.
I breathed easier now. God, as even the inveterate voodooists of Snake-ridden Haiti admit in their holy week practises—when every altar of the Snake is stripped of its vile symbols, these laid face downward on the floors, covered with rushes, and the crucifix placed on the altars—God is infinitely more powerful than even the mighty Snake of Guinea with his attendant demigods! I believe in being on the safe side.
After this, I merely waited until Mrs Garde's return. Every few days I ran in and spoke with Robertson the butler. Otherwise I left the healing air of the sea to do its work of restoration on Mrs Garde, confident that after her return, refreshed by the change, there would be no recurrence of her horror.
The thing was a problem, and a knotty one, from my viewpoint. I should not rest, I was fully aware, until, by hook or crook, I had satisfied myself about the background for the strange appearance which that lady had recounted to me across her tea table. In the course of the cogitations, wherein I exhausted my own fund of West Indian occult lore, I remembered old Lawyer Malling. There was a possible holder of clues! I have briefly alluded to what I might call a vague penumbra of some ancient scandal hanging about Gannett's. If there existed any real background for this, and anybody now alive knew the facts, it would be Herr Malling. He had passed his eightieth birthday. He had been personally acquainted, in his young manhood, with Angus Gannett, the last of that family to reside here. He had had charge of the property for a lifetime.
To old Malling's, therefore, after due cogitation as to how I should present such a matter to the conservative ancient, I betook myself.
Herr Malling received me with that Old World courtesy which makes a formal occasion out of the most commonplace visit. He produced his excellent sherry. He even used the formula—
'To what, Mr. Canevin, am I indebted for the honor of this most welcome visit?' Only he said 'dis' for 'this', being a Danish West Indian.
After chatting of various local matters which were engaging the attention of the island at the moment, I delicately broached the subject upon which I had come.
I will attempt no full account of the fencing which led up to the main aspect of that conversation. Likewise the rather long impasse which promptly built itself up between this conservative old solicitor and myself. I could see, clearly enough, his viewpoint. This cautious questioning of mine had to do with the sacred affairs of an old client. Policy dictated silence; courteous silence; silence surrounded and softened by various politic remarks of a palliative nature; silence, nevertheless, as definite as the solitudes of Quintana Roo in the midst of the Yucatan jungles.
But there was a key word. I had saved it up, probably subconsciously, possibly by design; a design based on instinct. I had mentioned no particulars of Mrs Garde's actual account; that is, I had said nothing of the nature and quality of that which had been distressing her. At last, baffled at all points by the old gentleman's crusted conservatism, I sprung my possible bombshell. It worked!
It was that word 'bull' which formed the key. When I had reached that far in my account of what Mrs Garde had seen over the mantelshelf in Gannett House, and brought out that word, I thought, for an instant, that the old gentleman who had gone quite white, with blue about his ancient lips, was going to faint.
He did not faint, however. With something almost like haste he poured himself out a glass of his good sherry, drank it with an almost steady hand, set down the glass, turned to me and remarked—'Wait!'
I waited while the old fellow pottered out of his own hall, and listened to the pat-pat-pat of his carpet slippers as he went in search of something. He came back, looking quite as I had always seen him, his cheeks their usual apple red, the benign smile of a blameless old age again triumphant on his old lips. He set down an old fashioned cardboard filing case on the mahogany table beside the sherry decanter, looked over to me, nodded wisely and proceeded to open the filing case.
From this he took a thing somewhat like a large, old fashioned gentleman's wallet, which proved to be the binding placed by old-school lawyers about particular documents, and unfolding this, and glancing at the heading of its contents, and once again nodding, this time to himself, Herr Malling handed the document, with a courteous bow, to me.
I took it, and listened to what the old gentleman was saying, while I examined it superficially. It consisted of many sheets of old-fashioned, ruled foolscap, the kind of paper I have seen used for very old plantation accounts. I held it in my hand expectantly while Herr Malling talked.
'Mr. Canevin,' he was saying, 'I giff you dis, my friend, because it contain de explanation of what haff puzzled you—naturally. It iss de account off precisely what hov happen in Gannett's, de Autumn of de year 1876, when Herr Angus Gannett, de late owner, haff jus' retorn from de United States where he haff been wisiting his relatives an' attending de Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia.
'I t'ink you foind, sir, dis document, dis personal account, explain all t'ings now impossible to—er—grasp! I feel free to giff it to you to—er—peruse, because de writer iss dead. I am bound, as you will observe—er—upon perusal, solely by the tenure off life in de testator—er—de narrator, I should say. Dis iss not a will; it iss merely a statement. You will, I imagine, sir, find dis of some interest. I did!'
With a bow to Herr Malling for his great courtesy, I proceeded to read.
2
Gannett House, Christiansted, D. W. I.
October 25th, 1876
My very good friend and brother, Rudolf Malling
This will serve as instructions for you in the affair of the conduct of my property, the town residence on the south side of the Sunday Market which I herewith, for purposes of custodial administration, place in your care. It is my purpose, on the twenty-ninth of this month, to take ship for England, thence direct to the City of Edinburgh; where my permanent address is to be No. 19, MacKinstrie's Lane, off Clarges Street, Edinburgh, Scotland. To this address all communications of every kind and sort whatsoever are to be addressed, both personal and concerning the property if need therefor should arise.
I direct and instruct that the house shall be closed permanently upon my departure, and so maintained permanently, the same being in your charge, and the statement of your outlay for this purpose of closing the house fast remitted to me at Edinburgh.
An explanation is due you, as I clearly perceive, for this apparently abrupt decision. I will proceed to make it herewith.
To do so I bind you to complete secrecy during the term of my natural life on the basis as of *****s'p—which, as a Bro. Freemason you will recognize, of course, even though thus informally given you, and keep my confidence as hereinafter follows strict and close as of the Craft.
I will begin, then, by reminding you of what you already know, to wit, that after the death of my mother, Jane Alicia MacMurtrie Gannett, my father, the late Fergus Gannett, Esq., caused me as well as his kinfolk in Scotland a vast and deep grief by resorting to that which has been the curse of numerous Caucasian gentlefolk as well as of many of the baser sort throughout the length and breadth of the West India Islands. In short, my father entered upon a liaison with one Angelica Kofoed, a mulattress attached to our household and who had been the personal attendant of my late mother. This occurred in the year 1857.
As is also well known to you, a son was born of this union; and also my father, who, according to the law of the Danish West Indies, could have discharged his legal obligation by the payment of the sum of four hundred dollars to the mother, chose, instead, in the infatuation of which he appeared possessed, to acknowledge this son and, by due process of our legal code, to legitimize him.
I was a little past my tenth birthday when the child later known as Otto Andreas Gannett was born, here in our old home where I write this. Thereafter my father ceased all relationship with the woman Angelica Kofoed, pensioned her and, shortly after her child was weaned, caused her, the pension being continued and assured her for the term of her natural life, to emigrate to the Island of St. Vincent, of which place she was a native.
My legal half-brother, Otto Andreas Gannett, was retained, with a nurse, in our residence, and grew to young manhood under our roof as a member of the family. I may say here that it is more possible that I should have been able to overcome my loathing and repugnance toward my half-brother had it not been that his character, as he developed from childhood into boyhood and from boyhood into youth, was such as definitely to preclude such an attitude.
I will be explicit to the extent of saying plainly that Otto Andreas 'took after' the Negro side of his blood heritage, although his mother was but an octoroon, no more than slightly 'scorched of the blood', and appearing, like my half-brother, to be a Caucasian. I would not be misunderstood in this. I am very well aware that many of our worthiest citizens here in the West India Islands are of this mixed blood. It is a vexed and somewhat delicate question at best, at least here in our islands. Suffice it to say that the worst Negro characteristics came out as Otto Andreas grew into young manhood. He bears today and doubtless will continue long to bear, an evil reputation, even among the blacks of this island; a reputation for wicked and lecherous inclination, a bad choice of low companions, a self-centered and egotistical demeanor and, worst of all, an incurable inclination toward the wicked and stupid practises of the blacks, with whom, to the shame of our house, he had consorted much before his death in the Autumn of this year, 1876. I refer to what is known as obeah.
It is especially in this last mentioned particular that I found it impossible to countenance him. Fortunately my father departed this life five years ago, before this dreadful inclination toward the powers of the Evil One had sufficiently made themselves manifest in Otto Andreas to draw thereto my father's failing attention. I thank my God for that He was pleased to take my father away before he had that cross to bear.
I will not particularize further than to say that the cumulation of these bad attributes in my half-brother formed the determining cause for my departure for the United States, May second, in this year, 1876. As you are aware, I left Otto Andreas here, with strict adjurations as to his conduct and, thinking to escape from continuous contact with him, which had grown unbearably hateful to me, went to New York, thence to the city of Philadelphia where I attended the Centennial Exposition in the hope of somewhat distracting my mind and, later, before returning toward the beginning of October, visited various of our kinfolk in the States of Maryland and Virginia.
I arrived on this island, sailing from New York via Porto Rico, on the nineteenth of October, landing at West-End and remaining overnight at the residence of our friend, Herr Mulgrav, the Judge of the Frederiksted Reconciling Court, and, through the courtesy of the Reverend Dr. Dubois of the West-End English Church, who very considerately loaned me his carriage and horses, drove the seventeen miles to Christiansted the following morning.
I arrived just before breakfast time, about a quarter before one o'clock p.m.
I will be explicit to inform you, my good friend and brother, that I had not been so futile minded as to anticipate that my long absence in America would have anything like a corrective effect upon my half-brother. Indeed I was not far from anticipating that I should have to face new rascalities, new stupidnesses upon his part, perpetrated in my absence from home. I anticipated, indeed, that my homecoming would be anything but a pleasant experience, for of such presage I had, in truth, ample background on which to base such an opinion. I arrived at my house, therefore, in anything but a cheerful frame of mind. I had gone away to secure some respite. I came home to meet I knew not what.
No man in his senses—I say it deliberately, for the purpose of warning you, my friend, as you proceed to read what I am about to write—however, could have anticipated what I did meet! I had, indeed, something like a warning of untowardness at home, on my way across the island from Frederiksted. You know how our island blacks show plainly on their faces what their inmost thoughts are, in some instances; how inscrutable they can be in other affairs. As I passed black people on the road, or in the estate fields, I observed nothing on the faces of those who recognized me save a certain commiseration. Murmurs came to my ears, indeed, from their mouths, as one or another murmured—'Poor young marster!' Or such remarks as 'Ooh, Gahd, him comin' to trouble an' calamity!'
This, of course, was the opposite of reassuring; yet I was not surprised. I had, you will remember, anticipated trouble, with Otto Andreas as its cause and root.
I will not dissemble that I expected something, as I have remarked, untoward.
I entered a strangely silent house—the first thing that came to me was a most outrageous smell! You are surprised, doubtless, at such a statement. I record the facts. My nostrils were instantly assailed, so soon as I had myself opened the door and stepped within, leaving Dr Dubois's coachman, Jens, to bring in my hand luggage, with a foul odor comparable to nothing less wretched than a cattle pen!
I say to you that it fairly took me by the throat. I called to the servants as soon as I was within, leaving the door open behind me to facilitate Jens with my bags, and to let out some of that vile stench. I called Herman, the butler, and Josephine and Marianna, maids in the household. I even called out to Amaranth Niles, the cook. At the sound of my voice—the servants had not known of my arrival the night before—Herman and Marianna came running, their faces blank and stupid, in the fashion well known to you when our blacks have something to conceal.
I ordered them to take my bags to my bedroom, turned to give Jens the coachman a gratuity for his trouble, and turned back again to find Josephine staring at me through a doorway. The other two had disappeared by this time with my hand luggage. The rest, the trunks and so forth, heavier articles, were to be sent over from Frederiksted that afternoon by a carter.
'What is this frightful smell, Josephine?' I inquired. 'The whole house is like a cattle pen, my girl. What has happened? Come now, tell me!'
The black girl stood in the doorway, her face quite inscrutable, and wrung her two hands together.
'Ooh, Gahd, sar, me cahn't say,' she replied with that peculiarly irritating false stupidity which they can assume at will.
I said nothing, I did not wish to inaugurate my homecoming with any fault finding. Besides, the horrible smell might very well not be this girl's fault. I stepped to the left along the inner gallery and into the hall [footnote: A West Indian drawing room is commonly called the hall.] through the entrance door, which was shut. I opened it, and stepped in, I say.
My dear friend Malling, prepare yourself. You will be—well—surprised, to put the matter conservatively.
There, in the center of the hall, its neck turned about so as to look toward whoever had just opened the door from the inner gallery, in this case, myself—stood a young, coal-black bullock!
Beside it, on the floor in the middle of the Bokhara rug which my grandfather had brought with him from his voyage to Turkestan in the year 1837, there was a crate, half filled with fresh grass and carrots; and nearby, and also on the rug, stood a large bucket of water. Wisps of the grass hung from the bullock's mouth as it stared at me for all the world as though to remark, 'Who is this who intrudes, forsooth, upon my privacy here!'
Malling, I let myself go then. This—a bullock in my hall, in my town house!—this was too much! I rushed back into the gallery crying out for the servants, for Herman and Josephine and Marianna. They came, looking down at me, fearfully, over the balusters of the stairway, their faces gray with fear. I cursed them roundly, as you may well imagine. I conceive that even the godly Dr Dubois himself would at least feel the desire so to express himself were he to return to his rectory and find a bullock stabled in his choicest room!
But all my words elicited nothing save that look of blank stupidity to which I have already referred; and when, in the midst of my diatribe, old Amaranth Niles, the cook, came hastening upon the scene from her kitchen, a long spoon in her fat old hand, she, who had been with us since my birth twenty-eight years before, likewise went stupid.
Suddenly I ceased reviling them for ingrates, for fools, for rapscallions, for gallows birds. It occurred to me, very shortly, that this rascality was none, could be none, of theirs, poor creatures. It was the latest devilment of my half-brother Otto Andreas. I saw it clearly. I collected myself. I addressed poor Herman in a milder tone.
'Come Herman, get this beast out of the house immediately!' I pointed toward the now open door into the hall.
But Herman, despite this definite command of mine, never stirred. His face became an ashen hue and he looked at me imploringly. Then, slowly, his hands raised up above his head as he stood there on the stairway looking fearfully over the baluster, he cried out, tremblingly: 'I cyan't, sar, 'fore the good God an' help me de Lord—I cyan't dislodge de animal!'
I looked back at Herman with a certain degree of calmness. I addressed the man.
'Where is Mr. Otto Andreas?' I inquired.
At this simple query both maids on the stairs began to weep aloud, and old Amaranth Niles, the cook, who had been staring, pop-eyed and silent through the doorway, turned with an unexpected agility and fled back to her kitchen. Herman, if possible, became a full shade paler. Unsteadily the man forced himself to come down the stairs, holding rigidly to the baluster. He turned and stepped toward me, his face gray and working and the beads of sweat standing thickly and heavily on his forehead. He dropped upon his knees before me there on the gallery floor and, his hands held up above his head, cried out: 'Him dead, sar, from day before yestiddy, sar—it de troof, me marster!'
I will confess to you, Malling, that the gallery reeled about me at this wholly unexpected news. Nobody had told me the night before. Just possibly my hosts had not been aware of it. Another question presented itself to my tottering mind, a question the answer to which would clear up that matter of not being told.
'What time did he die, Herman?' I managed to articulate. I was holding on to the baluster myself now.
'Late, sar,' returned Herman, still on his knees, and swaying backward and forward. 'P'rops two hour after midnight, sar. Him bury de nex' day, sar, dat am to say 'twas yestiddy afternoon, two o'clock, me marster. De body ain' keep good, sar, an' 'sides, all we ain' made sensible of your arrival, sar.'
So that was why the Mulgravs had not told me. They simply had not known of my half-brother's death, would not know until today in the ordinary course of events, at that distance from Christiansted.
My first reaction, I will admit, was one of profound relief.
Otto Andreas would never—I confess to have thought—trouble me again; would not, indeed, again trouble anyone with his shortcomings, his arrogance, his manifold evil habits, his villainies. I was premature...
Then, almost mechanically, I suppose, my mind turned to that shambles in my hall, that barnyard beast stabled there, the priceless rug sodden with its filth. I turned to Herman and spoke.
'Get up, Herman! Stand up, man! There is no occasion for you to act in this fashion. I was, naturally, very much annoyed at the animal being in the hall. I am, in fact, still vexed about it. Tell me—' as the man rose to his feet and stood trembling before me—'who placed it there, and why has it not been removed?'
At this Herman visibly shook from head to foot, and again his dark visage, which had been somewhat restored to its wonted coloration, turned gray with fright. I sensed somehow that he was less frightened at me than at something else. I am, of course, accustomed to the peculiarities of our Negroes. I spoke to him again, very gently, voicing my previous idea which had stayed my first great anger.
'Did Mr. Otto Andreas place the animal there?'
Herman, apparently not trusting himself to speak, nodded his head at me.
'Come now, man, get it out quickly!' I commanded.
Again, to my profound annoyance, Herman fell on his knees before me, mumbled abjectly his statement of inability to carry out my orders.
I struggled with myself to be patient. I had been, I conceived, rather sorely tried. I took Herman by the shoulder, drew him to his feet, walked him, unresisting, along the gallery and into my office. I closed the door behind us and sat down at my work table where I do my accounts and write—where I am now writing this to you. Herman, I perceived, was still trembling. There was something in this which I was—so far—unable to fathom.
'Go and bring me some rum and two tumblers, Herman,' I ordered, still forcing myself to speak gently, calmly. Herman left the room in silence. I sat there waiting for him to come back, intensely puzzled. The bullock, it seemed to me, could wait. By the indications it had been there for a full day or more. The odor was, even here with the door closed, almost unbearable.
Herman returned and set down the rum and the tumblers. I poured out a stiff tot and a smaller one for myself. I drank off my rum and then handed the other tumbler to Herman.
'Drink this, Herman,' I ordered him, 'and then sit down there. I wish to speak with you very seriously.'
Herman gulped the rum, his eyes rolling and, when I had repeated my command, seated himself uneasily on the extreme edge of the chair I had indicated. I looked at him. Fetching and drinking the rum had somewhat helped his agitation. He was no longer visibly trembling.
'Listen to me, now, man,' said I. 'I beg you to tell me, plainly and without equivocation, why is it that you have not taken that bullock out of the hall. That I must know. Come now, tell me, man!'
Once again Herman literally threw himself at my feet and groveled there. He murmured—'I is beg yo' to believe, me marster, dat I can not do, sar.'
This was too much. I threw my restraint to the winds, caught the black rascal by the neck, hauled him to his feet, shook him soundly, slapped him on both sides of the face. He was unresistant, quite limp in my grasp, poor old fellow.
'You will tell me,' I threatened him, 'or, by Caesar, I'll break every bone in your damned worthless black body! Come now, at once and no more of this intolerable stupidness!'
Herman stiffened. He leaned forward, whispered, tremblingly, in my ear. He did not dare, it seemed, to mention the name he had on his tongue aloud. He told me that Pap' Joseph, their devilish black papaloi, as they name him, their witch-doctor, had been the cause of the bullock's remaining in the hall. Furthermore, now that he was started on his confession, he told me that my half-brother had had that filthy wretch staying in the house—can you imagine it, Malling?—for several days before his sudden death; that the two had made elaborate arrangements, there in the hall, for some filthy obeah which they were planning between them; that the bullock had been introduced three days ago; other detail which would be here superfluous, and, finally, that, as nearly as he—not a witness of whatever necromancy or sorcery they were working among them—there had been various other blacks on the scene in my hall besides those two—could estimate the matter, Otto Andreas had died, very suddenly and unexpectedly, in the midst of their incantations, and that Pap' Joseph himself had given him, Herman, the strictest orders not to remove the bullock from the hall upon any pretext whatsoever until he, Pap' Joseph, should come to take the animal away in person. It was to be watered, fed—hence the bucket and the trough of green food—but not otherwise to be interfered with in any manner whatsoever.
That, of course, explained much; but knowing why poor old Herman had balked at answering my previous questions did not help the affair very greatly. The disgusting creature was still, as it were, pastured in my hall. It was inexplicable—why the witch-doctor had issued such ridiculous orders, I mean to say, because to understand that, one would have to be familiar with the inner workings of their incantations and similar stupidness. However, I saw clearly that Herman could not, being under such pressure of fear—they all dread this Joseph like pestilence or the Evil Fiend himself—do anything by way of removing the animal. I sent him out, and stepped along the gallery and again into the hall.
Here, for the first time, I perceived what my complete stultification upon seeing that bullock calmly occupying my hall on my first visit had prevented my noticing before. At the east end of the hall, a large, strong platform of boards, approached from the side by a ramp or inclined plane, had been solidly built against the wall, at the same height as the marble mantelshelf. Indeed, the platform, which was about twelve feet square, was an extension into the room of the mantelshelf itself. I knew, and you know, of course, what that had involved. The platform was a 'high' altar of voodoo. Some very elaborate rites of the higher manifestations of their horrible practises had been planned here. I was dry-mouthed with pure indignation. The son of my father, Fergus Gannett, even by a person of color, lending himself to that, taking willing part in such atrocious villainy!
I saw that I should have to secure a rope to remove the bullock, which was entirely free, and now standing looking out of one of the windows without so much as a halter on its head. I walked out of the room, closing the door behind me, and as I was about to call Herman to fetch me a rope it occurred to me that I would do well to procure some help. I could not, you see, lead such an animal out of my house on to the public road. It would be a most ridiculous sight and would mark me for years as a subject for derisive conversation among the blacks of the town, indeed of the entire island. I called to Herman, therefore, but when he came in answer to this summons I demanded, not a rope, but the carriage and, when that appeared ten minutes later, I ordered Herman to drive me out to Macartney House.
Yes, I had made up my mind, even to the extent of taking Macartney some way into my confidence, that I would do wisely to have him along. For one thing, he has many cattle. Macartney handing over a bullock—it could be led out through a back passage and into the house yard—to one of his farm laborers would not excite any comment at all in the town.
I thought better and better of this decision during the ten-minute drive to Macartney's, and when I arrived I found him at home and Cornelis Hansen, his son-in-law, who married Honoria, with him.
I explained no more to these gentlemen than that my eccentric late half-brother had seen fit to leave an animal in the hall shortly before his death, and that I begged their aid and countenance in getting rid of the beast, and they both came back with me.
It was close upon three o'clock in the afternoon when we arrived, Macartney having brought one of his cattlemen who sat beside Herman on the box, and taking this fellow with us, equipped with a rope and bull halter, we entered the house and walked along the inner gallery and into the hall.
Here, then, my dear Malling, I am constrained to set down the oddest happening! The bullock, which was a young one, only half grown, was not, as it turned out, the docile, placid creature one might very well have expected.
To put the matter briefly, so soon as the creature saw us enter, and had, apparently, observed the cattleman with his halter and rope, it began to act as though it were positively possessed! It raged about the room, upsetting what furniture was there, breaking some articles, overturning others, the cattleman in hot pursuit; Macartney, Mr. Hansen and I doing our best to hem it in and head it off. Finally it took refuge, of all imaginable places, upon the board platform! Yes, it ran up the ramp and stood, at bay, its muzzle positively frothing, its nostrils distended, and a look of the most extraordinary emotion upon its heavy animal face that anyone could—or could not—possibly imagine.
As it stood there, and the three of us and the cattleman stood looking up at it, Macartney burst out with—'Faith, Mr. Gannett, sir, it has every appearance of humanity in its confounded eyes—the beast!'
I looked at it and felt that Macartney might almost be right! The animal had most pronouncedly upon its facial expression every indication of unwillingness to be removed from my hall! The thing was entirely ridiculous, save only that its rushing about was going to cost me a pretty penny for the joiner's work which must be done upon my broken furniture.
Macartney ordered his Negro to mount the ramp and place the halter upon the now apparently cornered beast, and he attempted to do so. He had got nearly to the top when the beast unexpectedly lowered its head and hurled the unfortunate man to the floor, breaking one of his arms between the shoulder and elbow.
At this, once more that day, I lost patience entirely. This stupidness, it seemed to me, had gone far enough. Was my half-brother and his witless knavery to follow and distress and annoy me even from beyond his grave? I decided that I would end the affair there and then.
'Attend to your poor fellow, here, Macartney,' said I, 'and I will return directly. You might take him out and Herman will drive him to the municipal hospital.'
I left the room, walked along the inner gallery to my office, and took my pistol from the drawer of the table where I always keep it.
I came back to the hall, passing Macartney and Hansen as they carried the poor devil with his broken arm, moaning quite piteously, out to the carriage in the roadway below.
The pistol in my hand, I approached the platform. On it the bullock was still standing. It had made no effort to descend. I walked straight down the room and stood before the platform, raised the pistol, and took careful aim at the middle of the animal's forehead. It was only just as I pressed my index finger firmly around the trigger that I caught the expression in its eyes. Then I understood fully what Macartney had meant by his remark that it looked almost 'human'! If I had had time, I confess to you, Malling, I would, even then, and after all that provocation and vexatiousness, have stayed my hand. But it was too late.
The bullet struck squarely in the middle of the beast's forehead and, as it swayed on its stricken legs, a great gout of red blood ran down its soft nose and dripped upon the boards of the platform. Then, quite suddenly, its four legs gave out from under it, and it fell with a round thud on the boards, shaking the solid platform with its considerable weight, and lay still, its head projecting over the edge of the platform.
I left it lying there, the blood running over the edge and dripping on the mahogany flooring of the hall underneath and, as I left the room in the definite certainty that I was finished with this annoyance, all but having the furniture repaired and the stinking shambles cleaned and aired, I carried with me the most extraordinary impression which suddenly grew up in my mind—the most distressful matter imaginable—a feeling which, however illogical the affair may appear to you, I feel certain I shall carry with me to the grave—the feeling that I had gravely interfered, in some truly mysterious and inexplicable fashion, with my half-brother Otto Andreas's last wishes!
Macartney and his son-in-law were returning along the inner gallery from depositing the man in my carriage, and I took them into the dining room for some refreshment, laying the pistol on the table.
'So you shot the beast, eh?' remarked Macartney.
'Aye,' I returned, 'and that ends that phase of the trouble, Macartney. The wine and rum are here on the sideboard; be pleased to take your glasses, gentlemen—only, there is another side to all this on which I wish to consult you both.'
We drank a tot of rum and then, the decanter and glasses on the table beside the pistol, we drew up our chairs and I opened to these gentlemen the affair, in confidence—both, as you know, are, like ourselves, members of the Harmonic Lodge in St. Thomas, first placing them formally on the *****s'p—of my late half-brother and his bringing the witch-doctor into my house for their infernal deviltry, whatever it may have been.
Both, as soon as I had made this affair clear, were of one mind with me. This, in truth, was a matter for swift and very definite action. We must take into our joint confidence the Policemaster—our brother Freemason, fortunately—Knudsen.
We wasted no time, once we had come to that conclusion. I excused myself, leaving these gentlemen to their glasses and the decanter and, taking the pistol, which I returned to its drawer, entered my office and wrote a brief note to Policemaster Knudsen and dispatched Marianna with it to the Christiansfort.
Knudsen arrived in response to this summons just at four, and we sat down to a dish of tea in the dining room to discuss the matter. Knudsen agreed with us fully. He would send out a pair of his gendarmes at once, apprehend Pap' Joseph, lodge him in the fort safely, and bring him here to the scene of this last crime of his at nine o'clock that evening. Macartney and Hansen promised to be here at that hour, and Herman, who had returned from the hospital, drove them back to Macartney House.
Knudsen and his prisoner—handcuffed fast between two gendarmes who sat with him in the lower gallery on three adjacent chairs from eight forty-five until the punctual arrival of Macartney and Hansen on the stroke of nine—were the first to arrive. Knudsen and I sat together in my office waiting for the other two men in the interim. Knudsen had a glass or two of rum, but I excused myself from joining him in this refreshment.
Upon the arrival of Macartney and his son-in-law Cornelis Hansen, we dismissed the gendarmes, Knudsen instructing them to wait at the farther end of the inner gallery, and took the prisoner into the office where he was provided with a chair. We sat around and looked at him.
This man, rather small and very black, was decently clothed and, except for an extremely villainous expression about the eyes, looked commonplace enough. Yet a mere word of direction from him into the ear of my butler had caused that faithful old servitor of our family for more than thirty years utterly to refuse to obey my orders and dispose of the filthy beast stabled in my hall!
I had sent all the servants home, not even retaining Herman. We had thus the entire house to ourselves. Knudsen nodded to me as soon as we had bestowed ourselves, and I addressed the witch-doctor.
'Joseph,' said I, 'we know that you were here in this house with Mr. Otto Andreas, and that you used my hall for some of your incantations. This, of course, places you outside the law on several counts. The code forbids the practice of obeah in the Danish West Indies, and you were, plainly, breaking that law. Also, since you have been doing so here in my house, I am concerned in the matter. I have talked the affair over with these gentlemen and, I will be frank with you, there is some of it which we fail to understand; in particular why I discovered a beast stabled in my residence which, as I understand it, is some of your doings. We have brought you here, therefore, to hear your story. If you will reply clearly and fully to what we desire to ask you, Herr Knudsen assures me that you will not be thrown into gaol in the fort, nor prosecuted. If you refuse, then the law shall take its course in this case.
'I ask you, therefore, to explain to us, fully, what this animal was doing in my hall; also what part Mr. Otto Andreas had in the affair. Those are the two matters on which we desire to have the fullest information.'
Malling, this black fellow simply refused to speak. Nothing, not a word, not a syllable, could we get out of him. Macartney tried him, Mr. Hansen spoke to him; finally Knudsen, who had waited without saying anything, put in his word.
'If you refuse to reply to the two questions,' said he, 'I shall take steps to make you speak.'
That was all. It occupied, in all, more than half an hour. At any rate, my watch showed it nearly a quarter before ten when we paused, and Macartney and Hansen and I looked at each other, baffled; apparently we could get no satisfaction out of this wretch. Then, in the pause which had ensued, Knudsen, the policemaster, addressed me.
'Have I your permission to send my men into your kitchen?' he asked in his curt manner. I bowed. 'Anything you desire, Herr Knudsen,' I replied, and Knudsen rose and walked out into the inner gallery, and through the half open door of the office we could hear him saying something to his gendarmes. Then he returned and sat, silently, looking at the black fellow who now, for the first time, appeared somewhat moved. He showed this only by a slight and characteristic rolling of his eyeballs. Otherwise he gave no more sign of communicativeness than he had vouchsafed previously.
We sat thus, waiting, until a few minutes after ten o'clock, Knudsen and the black fellow quite silent, the others of us conversing slightly among ourselves. Then, at eight minutes past ten, one of the gendarmes knocked at the door and handed in to Knudsen, who had arisen to open to this summons, a burning charcoal pot and the bayonets from the two men's rifles which had been detached, doubtless by their officer's command. I sensed, at this, something extremely unpleasant. I knew Knudsen's well earned reputation for downrightness. He is, as you are aware, one of those ex-non-commissioned officers of the Danish army who, as a professional handler of men, takes no stupidness from criminals or others with whom his profession causes him to deal.
He set the charcoal pot on the middle of the floor of my office, thrust the two bayonets, points inward, directly within the bed of glowing coals and, turning to the man who had waited at the door, commanded: 'Bring Larsen here, Krafft, and bind this fellow with his hands behind him and his feet trussed together.'
The policemaster spoke in Danish which, I suppose, the black fellow did not understand. Yet I could perceive him wince at the words, which plainly had to do with his subsequent treatment, and his dark face took on that grayish shade which is a Negro's paling.
Almost at once the two gendarmes were at the door again. The fellow addressed as Krafft saluted and said—'We have no rope, Herr Commandant.'
I remembered at that the bull handler's rope which Macartney's man, when carried out for his trip to the hospital, had left behind him. I recalled it as it lay on the floor near that horrid platform, as I had myself left the room after the destruction of the animal. No one had been in the hall since that time, some seven hours ago.
'Pardon, Herr Knudsen,' said I, rising. 'If you will send one of these men with me, I will provide him with a rope.'
Knudsen spoke to Krafft, who saluted once more and, stepping aside for me to pass out into the inner gallery, followed me a pace behind while I walked along it toward the doorway leading into the hall.
Malling, my friend, I hesitate to go on; yet, go on I must if I am to make it clear to you, after this long rigmarole which I have already, by nearly a whole day's steady composition, succeeded in setting out for your perusal and understanding. I will try to set it down, the dreadful thing, the incredible horror which blasted my sight and will invade my suffering mind until death closes my eyes for the last time on this earth; my real and sufficient reason for leaving this island where I have lived all my life, which I love as my native land, where all my friends live.
Attend, then, friend Malling, to what I must, perforce, set out on this paper, if you are to understand.
I reached the door, throwing it open, which let out upon us more of that wretched odor which was, of course, all through the house despite opened windows. Lighting a match, I set alight the nearest lamp, a standing, brass mounted affair, which stands quite near the doorway beside my mother's Broadwood pianoforte.
By this light we proceeded, the gendarme Krafft and I, along the room toward the other end where the platform still stood, where the carcass of the animal hung, its head over the edge, awaiting the very early morning when old Herman, according to my orders, was, with the assistance of two laborers he was to secure, to remove it and set about the cleaning of the room immediately afterward.
Two-thirds of the way along the room I paused and, pointing in the general direction to where it lay, on the mahogany floor, told Krafft that he would find the rope somewhere near the place I indicated. I caught his silent salute with the corner of my eye as I paused to light another standing lamp, since the light from the first, dimmed by its large ornamental shade, left us, at this point, in semidarkness and the mantelpiece and platform above it in thick darkness. I had just turned down the circular wick of this second lamp when I heard Krafft's scream and, dropping the box of matches I held upon the floor, wheeled just in time to see him, his hands above his head in a gesture of abandoned horror, sink limply to the floor not five paces from the front of that platform.
I peered toward him, my eyes for the instant slightly dazzled from having been close to the flame of the newly lighted lamp, and then, Malling—then, my friend, I saw what he had seen; what had set this tough-grained manhandler of a policeman to screaming like a frightened woman, and himself hurtling to the floor in an uncontrollable spasm of stark, unmitigated terror. And as I saw, and felt the room go around, and envisaged the conviction that this was the end of life—as I myself sank, helpless with the fearsome horror of that eldritch uncanniness, toward the floor, the light fading from my consciousness in the onset of a merciful oblivion, I heard behind me, the agitated voices of Knudsen and Macartney and young Mr. Hansen as they, summoned by Krafft's scream, crowded into the hall through the doorway. I had seen, dimly in that not too good illumination from the two standing oil lamps, not the head of the bullock I had destroyed, but—the head and shoulders of my half-brother Otto Andreas: a great blackened hole in his forehead; and the blood dried on his inverted face; as he hung, stark now, and ghastly lifeless from over the edge of the voodoo platform...
I awakened in my office surrounded by my acquaintances, a drizzle of cold water upon my face and neck, and the taste of brandy in my mouth puckering my lips. I was on my back on the floor and, looking up, I perceived that the gendarme, Larsen, stood over the still seated black fellow, his pistol held near the back of the man's head. As I sat up, assisted by young Mr. Hansen, Knudsen turned away from the group and, taking a now glowing bayonet out of the charcoal pot with his gloved hand, curtly ordered Larsen to turn the Negro out of his chair and stretch him, bound as I perceived, according to orders, upon the floor.
The anticipation sickened me slightly, and I closed my eyes; but I had determined not to interfere with Knudsen, who knew his own methods and was, after all, here upon my own request to force from this villain the confession which should clear up the mysteries we had vainly propounded to him.
I was soon in my chair, pretty well restored by the vigorous measures which had been taken with me, and able to hear what Knudsen was saying to the supine prisoner. I saw, too, the pale and stricken face of Krafft, just outside the doorway. He too, it appeared, had recovered.
I will abbreviate a very ugly matter, an affair which sickened me to the heart; which was, nevertheless, necessary as procedure if we were to secure the information we desired.
In short, the black fellow, even in his present distressful condition, refused, point blank, to reveal what we had inquired of him, and Knudsen, with his own hand, tore open his shirt and applied the cherry-red bayonet to his skin. A horrid smell of scorched flesh made itself apparent at once, and I closed my eyes, sick at the dreadful sight. The Negro screamed with the unbearable pain, but thereafter clamped his thick lips and shook his head against Knudsen's repeated orders to answer the questions.
Then Knudsen put the bayonet back, thrusting it well into the glowing charcoal, and took out the other one. He stood with it in his hand above the Negro. He addressed him, in his usual curt, cold and hard tones.
'My man, I warn you seriously. I make you sensible that you will not leave this house alive. I shall go over your entire body, with these, unless you reply to the questions you have been asked.'
With the conclusion of this warning speech, he abruptly pressed the flat of the bayonet across the Negro's abdomen, and after an anguished howl of pain, Pap' Joseph capitulated. He nodded his head and writhed out of twisted lips his consent.
He was at once lifted back into the chair by the two gendarmes, and then, gasping, his eyes rolling in a mental anguish plainly greater than that of his grievous bodily hurts, he told us...
It appears that there are two 'supreme offerings' in the dreadful worship of these voodooists; one the affair of a human sacrifice which they name 'the goat without horns', and which, according to our informant, was never put into practice in these islands; and the second, their ceremony which they call the 'baptism'. This last, it was, which had been perpetrated in my house! And—one could hardly guess it, even at this stage of this narrative of mine for your private eye, friend Malling—it was Otto Andreas who was the candidate!
I should, perhaps, have mentioned that his body, supposedly buried a day and a half before, and which had, to my distraction and that of the man Krafft, been seen hanging over the edge of the sacrificial platform, had been taken down and now lay, decently disposed by Knudsen and Larsen along four chairs in the hall during the short period when Macartney and Hansen had been engaged in reviving me and bringing me back to my office. Earth and splinters of pitch pine were upon the body.
The culmination of that foul rite which they impiously call the baptism is the sacrifice of an animal; sometimes a goat, sometimes a young bull. In this case the bull had been selected.
Before the knife is drawn across the throat of the animal, however, the candidate for the baptism, on hands and knees, and stripped naked as the hour he was born, must 'confront' the goat or the bull. Yes, Malling, as I gathered it from those twisted, pain-galled lips of that black fiend, the two, the candidate and the sacrificial animal, gaze for a long period into each other's eyes; the belief being that in this way the two, for the time being, exchange, as it were, their personalities! It seems incredible that it should be believed, yet such is what he assured us of.
In the ordinary course, the officiating priest having determined that this alleged exchange of personalities had indeed taken place, the animal is abruptly killed, its throat being cut across with a sharpened machete or canebill. At this, the personality of the human being retransfers itself to its proper abode; yet some modicum of it is supposed to remain in the animal, and this on the animal's death, passes out of it and into the custody of the thing they name the Guinea Snake, which is the ultimate object of their nefarious devotions, as a sacrifice, given up by the candidate thereto.
Such, as it was explained to us, is the underlying principle of a voodooist's baptism.
That is how it would have occurred in the case of Otto Andreas, if there had not been a kind of unexpected hitch. Naturally, one would gather, the nervous and mental strain upon such a candidate would be an extremely severe one. In the case of my half-brother it proved too severe.
Otto Andreas had dropped dead, doubtless from heart failure induced by the strain of it all, there on the platform, just at the very moment before Pap' Joseph himself, as he assured us, who was officiating at the baptism, was to slaughter the bull.
The personalities, as the voodooists believed, were at that moment entirely interchanged. In other words, lacking the release and relocation of these, which would have come at the knife stroke across the bullock's throat, the 'soul' of the sacrificial animal died at the moment of Otto Andreas' unexpected death, and—the soul of Otto Andreas remained in the bullock.
'An' so, sar,' finished Pap' Joseph, with a devilish leer in his eyes, and addressing me, 'yo' is destroy the life of yo' bruddah, sar, when yo' is so hasty as to shoot de bull!'
The witch-doctor, it transpired from a portion of this account, had given old Herman the orders—not knowing of my imminent return home—to keep the bullock in the hall, because he was 'making magic' to get the 'souls' exchanged back again! It had, of course, been necessary to bury Otto Andreas' body. But we were assured, if the bullock had been left alone, it would, by now, have been changed back into Otto Andreas, a process which, the witch-doctor gravely assured us, required not only a great skill in magicking like his own, but considerable time!
There was only one thing to be done that night. Pap' Joseph was sent back to the Christiansfort, with instructions that he was to be liberated the following morning at six o'clock. Then the four of us, having placed a blanket about the body of Otto Andreas, carried it among us to the cemetery. Arrived there, with the two spades we had fetched along, Hansen and Knudsen set to work to dig up the coffin. It was moonlight and, of course, at that hour of the night no one was in or even near the cemetery.
The earth, even for a newly made grave, was unusually loose, it seemed to all of us. A spade struck wood, about four feet down. Macartney spelled his son-in-law. I offered to do the same for Knudsen, but he refused. Within a minute he said in a puzzled tone—'What is this!'
He squatted down in the grave and with his gloved hands threw up a mass of soft earth about something he had discovered.
Malling, they had disinterred a smashed coffin, a coffin burst out of semblance to the narrow box which is designed to be the last housing place of a human form. And no wonder it had been burst asunder, from the monstrous thing which came partially to light. We did not wholly uncover what he had discovered down there under the surface of the holy ground. There was no need, Malling.
It had been the stiff, unyielding, bony limb of a four-legged horned animal, from which Knudsen had thrown up the loose earth. A bullock was buried there, where some thirty-six hours previously men had interred the body of my late half-brother Otto Andreas Gannett. Pap' Joseph, it appeared, under that direful compulsion to which he had so reluctantly yielded, had told us the truth.
We hastily enlarged the grave sufficiently to receive the body we had brought with us and, leaving a higher mound than had met us on our arrival, though beaten down with the flats of the spades, we came back swiftly and in silence to my house and there, as brother Freemasons, swore that, save for this information to you, our fellow brother Freemason, which I specified as an exception, we would none of us—and the others during the term of my life—reveal anything of what we had heard to any man. Knudsen answered for his gendarmes and from the reputation he bears as a disciplinarian, I have little fear that either of them will ever mention what part of it all they were privileged to witness.
This will serve, then, my friend, to account to you for why I am leaving Santa Cruz and going to Scotland whence our family came here four generations ago, when these islands were for the first time opened to the settlement of planters other than natives of Denmark through the generosity of the Danish government. I can not stay in this cursed house where such things as confound man's understanding have taken place; and so I place my property in your kind and efficient hands, my friend Malling, in the belief that I have made my reasons for such a decision clear.
I am taking with me to Scotland my faithful old servant Herman. I would not leave him here to endure the tender mercies of that pestiferous scoundrel Pap' Joseph, whose orders, out of faithfulness to me, he broke. One cannot tell what would happen to the poor old fellow if I were so inconsiderate.
I remain, yours most faithfully and to command,
Angus Gannett
P.S. Knudsen, of course, insists that some blacks, followers of Pap' Joseph, merely exchanged the bodies of the bullock and my half-brother, during the interval, after my shooting of the beast, in which my hall remained unvisited by any of my household.
A. G.
3
I finished the account and handed it back to Herr Malling. I thanked him for his extraordinary courtesy in allowing me to read it. And then I walked straight to Gannett House to look once more at that hall where all this mysterious succession of strange affairs had taken place. I sat down, after Robertson had let me in, in the place usually occupied by Mrs Garde, and Robertson brought me a solitary tea on the great circular tray.
I could not forbear glancing up toward the place once occupied by that board platform where a voodoo baptism had all but taken place; a strange rite interrupted just before its culmination by the collapse of long dead and gone Otto Andreas, with his unquenchable desire for the fellowship of the Snake! There are strange matters in our West Indies. Well, God was, always had been, always will be, stronger than the Snake. There would be, I felt well assured, no recurrence of that strange vision which had projected itself after all these years, of that bullock's 'almost human' eyes, reproachful, pathetic, as Mrs Garde had said, looking down at the grim Scot with his steady hand leveling his great horse pistol at the point between those eyes.
Mrs Garde returned to her hired house infinitely refreshed by her sea voyage, her mind occupied with other affairs than the horror of the wall near the portrait of her late husband.
There was, as I had anticipated, no recurrence of the phenomenon.
Naturally, Mrs Garde was solicitous to inquire what I had done to remove the appearance which had done so much to destroy her comfort and happiness, but I was loath to explain the matter to her, and managed never to do so. Perhaps her splendid gentility sensed that I did not wish to offer her explanations. Mrs Garde was a Boston Unitarian, and Boston Unitarians are apt to take things on an intellectual basis. Such are not likely to be sympathetically familiar with such other-worldly affairs as the exorcism of a house, routine affair as it had been to good Fr. Richardson.
Besides, I have no doubt, Mrs Garde was so pleased at the non-recurrence of the old annoyance, that she probably attributed it to something popularly called 'eye strain'. There was nothing to remind her of that bloody-faced, pathetic-eyed bullock, drooping to its final fall. Otto Andreas Gannett was not even a memory in Christiansted. We had many delightful tea parties, and several evening dances, in that magnificent hall of Gannett House that winter in Christiansted.
Roy Glashan's Library
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