Manly Wade Wellman

“ Sigrid's step grew freer, her face browner and her green-gold hair paler by contrast. I acquired some weight, but in the proper places, and felt as strong and healthy as I had been when first I went from the Broadway stage to Hollywood, eight years before. Even Jake Switz, whose natural habitat lay among theatrical offices and stage doors, became something of a hill-climber, canoeist and fisherman. Only Varduk did not tan, though he spent much time out of doors, strolling with Davidson or by himself. ”

“ We explored the auditorium and the stage with a fine show of casual interest. Davidson and Switz were putting final touches on the scenery—a dark blue backdrop for evening sky, a wall painted to resemble vine-hung granite, benches and an arbor—but no properties lay on the table backstage.
"You know this is a Friday, Gib?" demanded Jake, looking up from where he was mending the cable of a floodlight. "Bad luck, opening our play on a Friday."
"Not a bit," laughed Pursuivant. "What's begun on a Friday never comes to an end. ”

“ Swithin, refusing the sacrifice, thrusts Ruthven through with a sword, but to no avail. Oscar overpowers him, and the demoniac lord pronounces the beginning of a terrible curse; but Mary steps forward as if to accept her lover's punishment. Ruthven revokes his words, blesses her. As the Almighty's name issues from his lips, he falls dead and decaying.
"End of the play," said Varduk. "I daresay you have surmised what rôles I plan for you. Miss Holgar and Mr. Connatt are my choices for Malvina and Aubrey in the first act, and Mary and Swithin in the second. ”

“ As though the world would end tonight!"
"God forbid," I said at once, and "God forbid," echoed Judge Pursuivant. Sigrid laughed merrily at our sudden expressions of concern.
"Oh, it won't end that way," she made haste to add, in the tone one reserves for children who need comfort. "I mean, the world will begin tonight, with success and happiness."
She put out a hand, and I squeezed it tenderly. After a moment she departed to inspect her costume.
"I haven't a maid or a dresser," she called over her shoulder. "Everything has to be in perfect order, and I myself must see to it." ”

“ Yet the seduction is not a gay one, and smacks of bird and snake. When Ruthven says to Bridget,
"You move and live but at my will; dost hear?"
and she answers dully:
"I hear and do submit,"
awareness rises of a darkling and menacing power. Again, as Aubrey mentions the fight with the bandits, Ruthven dismisses the subject with the careless,
"I faced them, and who seeks my face seeks death,"
one feels that he fears and spares an enemy no more than a fly. And, suddenly, he turned his attentions to Malvina:
"Yes, I am evil, and my wickedness
Draws to your glister and your purity. ”

“ We might have been awkward amateurs, wilting into nothingness when a master took the stage. I was eclipsed completely, exactly as Aubrey should be at the entrance of Ruthven, and I greatly doubt if a single pair of eyes followed me at my first exit; for at the center of the stage, Varduk had begun to make love to Sigrid. ”

“ Pursuivant sat astride a chair, his sturdy forearms crossed upon its back.
"How does it go?" he asked.
"Like a producer's dream," I replied, seizing a powder puff with which to freshen my make-up. "Except for the things we know about, I would pray for no better show."
"I gave you a message in my speech before the curtain. Did you hear what I said? I meant, honestly, to praise Byron and at the same time to defy him. You and I, with God's help, will give Ruthven an ending he does not expect." ”

“ I felt inclined to agree, and said as much. "If a curse exists," I added, "would it affect Varduk as a descendant of Byron?"
"I think that it would, and that his recent actions prove at once the existence of a curse and the truth of his claim to descent. A shadow lies on that man, Connatt."
"The rest of the similarity holds," I responded. "The charm and the genius. I have wondered why Miss Holgar agrees to this play. It is archaic, in some degree melodramatic, and her part is by no means dominant. Yet she seems delighted with the rôle and the production in general." ”

“ Judge Pursuivant arrived for lunch, dressed comfortably in flannels and a tweed jacket, and his performance at table was in healthy contrast to Varduk, who, as usual, ate hardly anything. In the early afternoon I induced the judge to come for a stroll up the slope and along the main road. As soon as we were well away from the lodge, I told him of Jake's adventure, the outcome of the sword-accident at rehearsal, and the air of mystery that deepened around the omitted final speech of the play. ”

“ Jake could not be sure whether they found shelter behind bushes and trees or not; perhaps they actually faded into invisibility. Sigrid had come close, stepping gingerly in her wet shoes, and stooped to retrieve Jake's fallen glasses.
"We owe you our lives," she said to Varduk. "What were those——"
"Never mind," he cut her off. "They will threaten you no more tonight. Go to your beds, and be more careful in the future."
This was the story that Jake told me as we drove the final miles to the Lake Jozgid Theater. ”

“ I assured her. "I'm a sorry failure, and we both know it."
"Whenever I see you," she replied irrelevantly, "bells begin to ring in my ears—loud alarm bells, as if fires had broken out all around me."
"We're triple idiots to think of love," I went on. "You're the top, and I'm the muck under the bottom."
"You'll be the sensation of your life when Ruthven comes to Broadway," rejoined Sigrid confidently. "And the movie magnets will fight duels over the chance to ask for your name on a contract."
"To hell with the show business! Let's run away tonight and live on a farm," I suggested. ”

“ You arranged the false-blood device splendidly, Davidson." He pushed the hilt into my slack grasp. "Look, the imitation gore is already evaporating."
So it was, like dew on a hot stone. Already the blade shone bright and clean.
"Very good," said Varduk. "Climax now. Miss Holgar, I think it is your line."
She, too, had been horrified by the seeming catastrophe, but she came gamely up to the bit where Mary pleads for Swithin's life, offering herself as the price. Half a dozen exchanges between Ruthven and Mary, thus:
"You give yourself up, then?" ”

“ In heaven's name, why?"
"Because evil is bound to occur. To spirit her away will be only a retreat. The situation must be allowed to develop—then we can achieve victory. Why, Connatt," he went on warmly, "can you not see that the whole atmosphere is charged with active and super-normal perils? Don't you know that such a chance, for meeting and defeating the power of wickedness, seldom arises? What can you think of when you want to run away?"
"I'm not thinking of myself, sir," I told him. "It's Sigrid. Miss Holgar." ”

“ Varduk had opened a drawer of the desk and once more he interrupted. "Here is a magnifying glass, Judge Pursuivant. Small, but quite powerful." He handed it over. "Perhaps, with its help, you can decide with more accuracy."
"Thank you." Pursuivant bent for a closer and more painstaking scrutiny. For minutes he turned over page after page, squinting through the glass Varduk had lent him. Finally he looked up again.
"No forgery here. Every stroke of the pen is a clean one. ”

“ Yet I, who once prepared and judged legal cases, may be able to sum up in part:
"Something is to happen to Miss Holgar. The entire fabric of theatrical activity—this play, the successful effort to interest her in it, the remote theater, her particular rôle, everything—is to perform upon her a certain effect. That effect, we may be sure, is devastating. We may believe that a part, at least, of the success depends on the last line of the play, a mystery as yet to all of us."
"Except to Varduk," I reminded. ”

“ Varduk's body sagged. It shrank within its rich, gloomy garments. It crumbled.
The curtain had fallen. I had not heard its rumble of descent, nor had Sigrid, nor the stupefied Davidson. From beyond the folds came only choking silence. Then Pursuivant's ready voice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, a sad accident has ended the play unexpectedly—tragically. Through the fault of nobody, one of the players has been fatally——"
I heard no more. Holding Sigrid in my arms I told her, briefly and brokenly, the true story of Ruthven and its author. She, weeping, gazed fearfully at the motionless black heap. ”

“ Their eagerness is premature."
He pulled off my coat and shirt. Grown calm again before his assurance, I got into my clothes for Act Two—a modern dinner suit. With alcohol I removed the clinging side-whiskers, repaired my make-up and brushed my hair into modern fashion once more. Within seconds, it seemed, Davidson was calling us to our places.
The curtain rose on Sigrid and me, as Mary and Swithin, hearing the ancestral tale of horror from Old Bridget. As before, the audience listened raptly, and as before it rose to the dramatic entrance of Varduk. ”

“ I drew another cigarette from my package, and my hand trembled despite itself. "Then the man is dangerous—Varduk, I mean. What is he trying to do to Sigrid?"
"That is what perplexes me. Once, according to your little friend Jake Switz, he defended her from some mysterious but dangerous beings. His behavior argues that he isn't the only power to consider."
The judge held a match for my cigarette. His hand was steady, and its steadiness comforted me.
"Now then," I said, "to prevent—whatever is being done."
"That's what we'd better talk about." Pursuivant took his stick and rose to his feet. ”

“ The company was being kept indoors by rain and wind, and had occupied itself with reading German ghost stories, and then tried their own skill at Gothic tales. One of those impromptu stories we know—Mary Godwin's masterpiece, Frankenstein. Lord Byron told the strange adventures of Ruthven, and Polidori appropriated them—that we also know; but later that night, alone in his room, Byron wrote the play we have here."
"In one sitting?" asked Martha Vining.
"In one sitting," replied Varduk. "He was a swift and brilliant worker. ”