Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (32 page)

“Gentlemen,” I began. “Having learned of the recent disappearance of the Reverend Ambrose Mortimer, I think I can provide information which may prove of use to investigators.”

There is no need to quote the rest of the letter here. Suffice it to say that I recounted my conversation with the missing man, emphasizing the fears he’d expressed for his life: pursuit and “ritual murder” at the hands of a Malayan tribe called the Tcho-Tcho. The letter was, in short, a rather elaborate way of crying “foul play.” I sent it care of my sister, asking that she forward it to the correct address.

The police department’s reply came with unexpected speed. As with all such correspondence, it was more curt than courteous. “Dear Sir,” wrote a Detective Sergeant A. Linahan; “In the matter of Rev. Mortimer we had already been apprised of the threats on his life. To date a preliminary search of the Pompano Canal has produced no findings, but dredging operations are expected to continue as part of our routine investigation. Thanking you for your concern—”

Below his signature, however, the sergeant had added a short postscript in his own hand. Its tone was somewhat more personal; perhaps typewriters intimidated him. “You may be interested to know,” it said, “that we’ve recently learned a man carrying a Malaysian passport occupied rooms at a North Miami hotel for most of the summer, but checked out two weeks before your friend disappeared. I’m not at liberty to say more, but please be assured we are tracking down several leads at the moment. Our investigators are working full-time on the matter, and we hope to bring it to a speedy conclusion.”

Linahan’s letter arrived on September twenty-first. Before the week was out I had one from my sister, along with another clipping from the
Herald;
and since, like some old Victorian novel, this chapter seems to have taken an epistolary form, I will end it with extracts from these two items.

The newspaper story was headed WANTED FOR QUESTIONING. Like the Mortimer piece, it was little more than a photo with an extended caption:

(Thurs.) A Malaysian citizen is being sought for questioning in connection with the disappearance of an American clergyman, Miami police say. Records indicate that the Malaysian, Mr. D. A. Djaktu-tchow, had occupied furnished rooms at the Barkleigh Hotella, 2401 Culebra Ave., possibly with an unnamed companion. He is believed still in the greater Miami area, but since August 22 his movements can not be traced. State Dept. officials report Djaktu-tchow’s visa expired August 31; charges are pending.

The clergyman, Rev. Ambrose B. Mortimer, has been missing since September 6.

The photo above the article was evidently a recent one, no doubt reproduced from the visa in question. I recognized the smiling moon-wide face, although it took me a moment to place him as the man whose dinner I’d stumbled over on the plane. Without the moustache, he looked less like Charlie Chan.

The accompanying letter filled in a few details. “I called up the
Herald
,” my sister wrote, “but they couldn’t tell me any more than was in the article. Just the same, finding that out took me half an hour, since the stupid woman at the switchboard kept putting me through to the wrong person. I guess you’re right-anything that prints color pictures on page one shouldn’t call itself a newspaper.

“This afternoon I called up the police department, but they weren’t very helpful either. I suppose you just can’t expect to find out much over the phone, though I still rely on it. Finally I got an Officer Linahan, who told me he’s just replied to that letter of yours. Have you heard from him yet? The man was very evasive. He was trying to be nice, but I could tell he was impatient to get off. He did give me the full name of the man they’re looking for—Djaktu Abdul Djaktu-tchow, isn’t that marvelous?—and he told me they have some more material on him which they can’t release right now. I argued and pleaded (you know how persuasive I can be!), and finally, because I claimed I’d been a close friend of Rev. Mortimer’s, I wheedled something out of him which he swore he’d deny if I told anyone but you. Apparently the poor man must have been deathly ill, maybe even tubercular—I intended to get a patch test next week, just to play safe, and I recommend that you get one too—because it seems that, in the reverend’s bedroom, they found something very odd. They said it was pieces of lung tissue.”

6.

I, too, was a detective in youth.

—LOVECRAFT, 2/17/1931

Do amateur detectives still exist? I mean, outside of the pages of books? Who, after all, has the time for such games today? Not I, un fortunately; though for more than a decade I’d been nominally retired, my days were quite full with the unromantic activities that occupy people my age: letters, luncheon dates, visits to my niece and to my doctor; books (not enough) and television (too much) and perhaps a Golden Agers’ matinee (though I have largely stopped going to films, finding myself increasingly out of sympathy with their heroes). I also spent Halloween week on the Jersey shore, and most of another attempting to interest a rather patronizing young publisher in reprinting some of my early work.

All this, of course, is intended as a sort of apologia for my having put off further inquiries into poor Mortimer’s case till mid-November. The truth is, the matter almost slipped my mind; only in novels do people not have better things to do.

It was Maude who reawakened my interest. She had been avidly scanning the papers—in vain—for further reports on the man’s disappearance; I believe she had even phoned Sergeant Linahan a second time, but had learned nothing new. Now she wrote me with a tiny fragment of information, heard at thirdhand: one of her bridge partners had had it on the authority of “a friend in the police force” that the search for Mr. Djaktu was being widened to include his presumed companion—“a Negro child,” or so my sister reported. Although there was every possibility that this information was false, or that it concerned an entirely different case, I could tell she regarded it all as rather sinister.

Perhaps that was why the following afternoon found me struggling once more up the steps of the Natural History Museum—as much to satisfy Maude as myself. Her allusion to a Negro, coming after the curious discovery in Mortimer’s bedroom, had recalled to mind the figure on the Malayan robe, and I had been troubled all night by the fantasy of a black man—a man much like the beggar I’d just seen huddled against Roosevelt’s statue—coughing his lungs out into a sort of twisted horn.

I had encountered few other people on the streets that afternoon, as it was unseasonably chilly for a city that’s often mild till January; I wore a muffler, and my grey tweed overcoat flapped round my heels. Inside, however, the place, like all American buildings, was overheated; I was soon the same as I made my way up the demoralizingly long staircase to the second floor.

The corridors were silent and empty but for the morose figure of a guard seated before one of the alcoves, head down as if in mourning, and, from above me, the hiss of the steam radiators near the marble ceiling. Slowly, and rather enjoying the sense of privilege that comes from having a museum to oneself, I retraced my earlier route past the immense skeletons of dinosaurs
(“These great creatures once trod the earth where you now walk”)
and down to the Hall of Primitive Man, where two Puerto Rican youths, obviously playing hooky, stood by the African wing gazing worshipfully at a Masai warrior in full battle gear. In the section devoted to Asia I paused to get my bearings, looking in vain for the squat figure in the robe. The glass case was empty. Over its plaque was taped a printed notice: “Temporarily removed for restoration.”

This was no doubt the first time in forty years that the display had been taken down, and of course I’d picked just this occasion to look for it. So much for luck. I headed for the nearest staircase, at the far end of the wing. From behind me the clank of metal echoed down the hall, followed by the angry voice of the guard. Perhaps that Masai spear had proved too great a temptation.

In the main lobby I was issued a written pass to enter the north wing, where the staff offices were located. “You want the workrooms on basement level,” said the woman at the information counter; the summer’s bored coed had become a friendly old lady who eyed me with some interest. “Just ask the guard at the bottom of the stairs, past the cafeteria. I do hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Carefully keeping the pink slip she’d handed me visible for anyone who might demand it, I descended. As I turned onto the stairwell, I was confronted with a kind of vision: a blond Scandinavian-looking family were coming up the stairs toward me, the four upturned faces almost interchangeable, parents and two little girls with the pursed lips and timidly hopeful eyes of the tourist, while just behind them, like a shadow, apparently unheard, capered a grinning black youth, practically walking on the father’s heels. In my present state of mind the scene appeared particularly disturbing-the boy’s expression was certainly one of mockery—and I wondered if the guard who stood before the cafeteria had noticed. If he had, however, he gave no sign; he glanced without curiosity at my pass and pointed toward a fire door at the end of the hall.

The offices in the lower level were surprisingly shabby—the walls here were not marble but faded green plaster—and the entire corridor had a “buried” feeling to it, no doubt because the only outside light came from ground-level window gratings high overhead. I had been told to ask for one of the research associates, a Mr. Richmond; his office was part of a suite broken up by pegboard dividers. The door was open, and he got up from his desk as soon as I entered; I suspect that, in view of my age and grey tweed overcoat, he may have taken me for someone important.

A plump young man with sandy-colored beard, he looked like an out-of-shape surfer, but his sunniness dissolved when I mentioned my interest in the green silk robe. “And I suppose you’re the man who complained about it upstairs, am I right?”

I assured him I was not.

“Well, someone sure did,” he said, still eyeing me resentfully; on the wall behind him an Indian war-mask did the same. “Some damn tourist, maybe in town for a day and out to make trouble. Threatened to call the Malaysian Embassy. If you put up a fuss, those people upstairs get scared it’ll wind up in the
Times.”

I understood his allusion; in previous years the museum had gained considerable notoriety for having conducted some really appalling—and, to my mind, quite pointless—experiments on cats. Most of the public had, until then, been unaware that the building housed several working laboratories.

“Anyway,” he continued, “the robe’s down in the shop, and we’re stuck with patching up the damn thing. It’ll probably be down there for the next six months before we get to it. We’re so understaffed right now it isn’t funny.” He glanced at his watch. “Come on, I’ll show you. Then I’ve got to go upstairs.”

I followed him down a narrow corridor that branched off to either side. At one point he said, “On your right, the infamous zoology lab.” I kept my eyes straight ahead. As we passed the next doorway I smelled a familiar odor.

“It makes me think of treacle,” I said.

“You’re not so far wrong.” He spoke without looking back. “The stuff’s mostly molasses. Pure nutrient. They use it for growing microorganisms.”

I hurried to keep up with him. “And for other things?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, Mister. It’s not my field.”

We came to a door barred by a black wire grille. “Here’s one of the shops,” he said, fitting a key into the lock. The door swung open on a long unlit room smelling of wood shavings and glue. “You sit down over here,” he said, leading me to a small anteroom and switching on the light. “I’ll be back in a second.” I stared at the object closest to me, a large ebony chest, ornately carved. Its hinges had been removed. Richmond returned with the robe draped over his arm. “See?” he said, dangling it before me. “It’s really not in such bad condition, is it?” I realized he still thought of me as the man who’d complained.

On the field of rippling green fled the small brown figures, still pursued by some unseen doom. In the center stood the black man, black horn to his lips, man and horn a single line of unbroken blackness.

“Are the Tcho-Tchos a superstitious people?” I asked.

“They
were,”
he said pointedly. “Superstitious and not very pleasant. They’re extinct as dinosaurs now. Supposedly wiped out by the Japanese or something.”

“That’s rather odd,” I said. “A friend of mine claims to have met up with them earlier this year.”

Richmond was smoothing out the robe; the branches of the snake-trees snapped futilely at the brown shapes. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said, after a pause. “But I haven’t read anything about them since grad school. They’re certainly not listed in the textbooks anymore. I’ve looked, and there’s nothing on them. This robe’s over a hundred years old.”

I pointed to the figure in the center. “What can you tell me about this fellow?”

“Death’s Herald,” he said, as if it were a quiz. “At least that’s what the literature says. Supposed to warn of some approaching calamity.”

I nodded without looking up; he was merely repeating what I’d read in the pamphlet. “But isn’t it strange,” I said, “that these others are in such a panic? See? They aren’t even waiting around to listen.”

“Would you?” He snorted impatiently.

“But if the black one’s just a messenger of some sort, why’s he so much bigger than the others?”

Richmond began folding the cloth. “Look, Mister,” he said, “I don’t pretend to be an expert on every tribe in Asia. But if a character’s important, they’d sometimes make him larger. Anyway, that’s what the Mayans did. Listen, I’ve really got to get this put away now. I’ve got a meeting to go to.”

While he was gone I sat thinking about what I’d just seen. The small brown figures, crude as they were, had expressed a terror no mere messenger could inspire. And that great black shape standing triumphant in the center, horn twisting from its mouth-that was no messenger either, I was sure of it. That was no Death’s Herald. That was Death itself.