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sell the paper, darned if I don't look up Bonney the very next day. I'd love
to work in the Roman candle department. Your husband is a lucky man."
"You're joking, Mr. Stoeger. But are you really thinking of selling the
paper?"
"Well ґ thinking of it." And that reminded me. "I didn't get any story
on the accident at Bonney's, didn't even hear about it. And I'm badly in
need of a story for the front page. Do you know the details of what
happened? Anyone else hurt?"
She'd been part way across the front porch, but she turned and came
back nearer the door. She said, "Oh, please don't put it in the paper. It
wasn't anything important; my husband was the only one hurt and it was his
own fault, he says. And Mr. Bonney wouldn't like it being in the paper; he
has enough trouble now getting as many people as he needs for the rush
season before the Fourth, and so many people are afraid to work around
powder and explosives anyway. George will probably be fired if it gets
written up in the paper and he needs the work."
I sighed; it had been an idea while it lasted. I assured her that I
wouldn't print anything about it. And if George Carr had been the only one
hurt and I didn't have any details, it wouldn't have made over a one-inch
item anyway.
I would have loved, though, to get that beautiful phrase, "the Roman
candle department," into print.
I went back inside and closed the door. I made myself comfortable by
taking off my suit coat and loosening my tie, and then I got the whisky
bottle and my glass and put them on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
I didn't take the tie off yet, nor my shoes; it's nicer to do those
things one at a time as you gradually get more and more comfortable.
I picked out a few books and put them within easy reach,. poured myself
a drink, sat down, and opened one of the books.
The doorbell rang.
Al Grainger had come early, I thought. I went to the door and opened
it. There was a man standing there, just lifting his hand to ring again. But
it wasn't Al; it was a man I'd never seen before.
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
He was short, about my own height, perhaps, but seeming even shorter
because of his greater girth. The first thing you noticed about his face was
his nose; it was long, thin, pointed, grotesquely at variance with his pudgy
body. The light coming past me through the doorway reflected glowing points
in his eyes, giving them a catlike gleam. Yet there was nothing sinister
about him. A short pudgy man can never manage to seem sinister, no matter
how the light strikes his eyes.
"You are Doctor Stoeger?" he asked.
"Doc Stoeger," I corrected him. "But not a doctor of medicine. If
you're looking for a medical doctor, one lives four doors west of here."
He smiled, a nice smile. "I am aware that you are not a medico, Doctor.
Ph. D., Burgoyne College ґ nineteen twenty-two, I believe. Author of Lewis
Carroll Through the Looking-Glass and Red Queen and White Queen."
It startled me. Not so much that he knew my college and the year of my
magna cum laude, but the rest of it was amazing. Lewis Carroll Through the
Looking-Glass was a monograph of a dozen. pages; it had been printed
eighteen years ago and only a hundred copies had been run off. If one still
existed anywhere outside of my own library, I was greatly surprised. And Red
Queen and White Queen was a magazine article that had appeared at least
twelve years ago in a magazine that had been obscure then and had long since
been discontinued and forgotten.
"Yes," I said. "But how you know of them, I can't imagine, Mr.ґ"
"Smith," he said gravely. Then he chuckled. "And the first name is
Yehudi."
"No!" I said.
"Yes. You see, Doctor Stoeger, I was named forty years ago, when the
name Yehudi, although uncommon, had not yet acquired the comic connotation
which it has today. My parents did not guess that the name would become a
joke ґ and that it would be particularly ridiculous when combined with
Smith. Had they guessed the difficulty I now have in convincing people that
I'm not kidding them when I tell them my nameґ" He laughed ruefully. "I
always carry cards."
He handed me one. It read:
Yehudi Smith
There was no address, no other information. Just the same, I wanted to
keep that card, so I stuck it in my pocket instead of handing it back.
He said, "People are named Yehudi, you know. There's Yehudi Menuhin,
the violinist. And there'sґ"
"Stop, please," I interrupted. "You're making it plausible. I liked it
better the other way."
He smiled. "Then I haven't misjudged you, Doctor. Have you ever heard
of the Vorpal Blades?"
"Plural? No. Of course, in Jabberwocky:
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.
But ґ Good God! Why are we talking about vorpal blades through a
doorway? Come on in. I've got a bottle, and I hope and presume that it would
be ridiculous to ask a man who talks about vorpal blades whether or not he
drinks."
I stepped back and he came in. "Sit anywhere," I told him. "I'll get
another glass. Want either a mix or a chaser?"
He shook his head, and I went out into the kitchen and got another
glass. I came in, filled it and handed it to him. He'd already made himself
comfortable in the overstuffed chair.
I sat back down on the sofa and lifted my glass toward him. I said, "No
doubt about a toast for this one. To Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known, when
in Wonderland, as Lewis Carroll."
He said, quietly, "Are you sure, Doctor?"
"Sure of what?"
"Of your phraseology in that toast. I'd word it: To Lewis Carroll, who
masqueraded under the alleged identity of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the
gentle don of Oxford."
I felt vaguely disappointed. Was this going to be another, and even
more ridiculous, Bacon-was-Shakespeare deal? Historically, there couldn't be
any possible doubt that the Reverend Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis
Carroll, had created Alice in Wonderland and its sequel.
But the main point, for the moment, was, to get the drink drunk. So I
said solemnly, "To avoid all difficulties, factual or semantic, Mr. Smith,
let's drink to the author of the Alice books."
He inclined his head with solemnity equal to my own, then tilted it
back and downed his drink. I was a little late in downing mine because of my
surprise at, and admiration for, his manner of drinking. I'd never seen
anything quite like it. The glass had stopped, quite suddenly, a good three
inches from his mouth. And the whisky had kept on going and not a drop of it
had been lost. I've seen people toss down a shot before, but never with such
casual precision and from so great a distance.
I drank my own in a more prosaic manner, but I resolved. to try his
system sometime ґ in private and with a towel or handkerchief ready at hand.
I refilled our glasses and then said, "And now what? Do we argue the
identity of Lewis Carroll?"
"Let's start back of that," he said. "In fact, let's put it aside until
I can offer you definite proof of what we believe ґ rather, of what we are
certain."
"We?"
"The Vorpal Blades. An organization. A very small organization, I
should add."
"Of admirers of Lewis Carroll?"
He leaned forward. "Yes, of course. Any man who is both literate and
imaginative is an admirer of Lewis Carroll. But ґ much more than that. We
have a secret. A quite esoteric one."
"Concerning the identity of Lewis Carroll? You mean that you believe ґ
the way some people believe, or used to believe, that the plays of
Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon ґ that someone other than Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson wrote the Alice books?"
I hoped he'd say no.
He said, "No. We believe that Dodgson himself ґ How much do you know of
him, Doctor?"
"He was born in eighteen thirty-two," I said, "and died just before the
turn of the century ґ in either ninety-eight or nine. He was an Oxford don,
a mathematician. He wrote several treatises on mathematics. He liked ґ and
created ґ acrostics and other puzzles and problems. He never married but he
was very fond of children, and his best writing was done for them. At least
he thought he was writing only for children; actually, Alice in Wonderland
and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, while having plenty of appeal for
children, are adult literature, and great literature. Shall I go on?"
"By all means."
"He was also capable of ґ and perpetrated ґ some almost incredibly bad
writing. There ought to be a law against the printing of volumes of The
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. He should be remembered for the great
things he wrote, and the bad ones interred with his bones. Although I'll
admit that even the bad things have occasional touches of brilliance. There
are moments in Sylvie and Bruno that are almost worth reading through the
thousands of dull words to reach. And there are occasional good lines or
stanzas in even the worst poems. Take the first three lines of The Palace of
Humbug:
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
"Of course he should have stopped there instead of adding fifteen or
twenty bad triads. But `Went wobble-wobble on the walls' is marvelous."
He nodded. "Let's drink to it."
We drank to it.
He said, "Go on."
"No," I said. "I'm just realizing that I could easily go on for hours.
I can quote every line of verse in the Alice books and most of The Hunting
of the Snark. But, I both hope and presume, you didn't come here to listen
to me lecture on Lewis Carroll. My information about him is fairly thorough,
but quite orthodox. I judge that yours isn't, and I want to hear it."
I refilled our glasses.
He nodded slowly: "Quite right, Doctor. My ґ I should say our ґ
information is extremely unorthodox. I think you have the background and the
type of mind to understand it, and to believe it when you have seen proof.
To a more ordinary mind, it would seem sheer fantasy."
It was getting better by the minute. I said, "Don't stop now."
"Very well. But before I go any farther, I must warn you, of something,
Doctor. It is also very dangerous information to have. I do not speak
lightly or metaphorically. I mean that there is serious danger, deadly
danger."
"That," I said, "is wonderful."
He sat there and toyed with his glass ґ still with the third drink in
it ґ and didn't look at me. I studied his face. It was an interesting face.
That long, thin, pointed nose, so incongruous to his build that it might
have been false ґ a veritable Cyrano de Bergerac of a nose. And now that he
was in the light, I could see that there were deep laughter-lines around his
generous mouth. At first I would have guessed his age at thirty instead of
the forty he claimed to be; now, studying his face closely, I could see that
he had not exaggerated his age. One would have to laugh a long time to etch
lines like those.
But he wasn't laughing now. He looked deadly serious, and he didn't
look crazy. But he said something that sounded crazy.
He said, "Doctor, has it ever occurred to you that ґ that the fantasies
of Lewis Carroll are not fantasies at all?"
"Do you mean," I asked, "in the sense that fantasy is often nearer to
fundamental truth than is would-be realistic fiction?"
"No. I mean that they are literally, actually true. That they are not
fiction at all, that they are reporting."
I stared at him. "If you think that, then who ґ or what ґ do you think
Lewis Carroll was?"
He smiled faintly, but it wasn't a smile of amusement.
He said, "If you really want to know, and aren't afraid, you can find
out tonight. There is a meeting, near here. Will you come?"
"May I be frank?"
"Certainly."
I said, "I think it's crazy, but try to keep me away."
"In spite of the fact that there is danger?"
Sure, I was going, danger or no. But maybe I could use his insistence
on warning me to pry something more out of him. So I said, "May I ask what
kind of danger?"
He seemed to hesitate a moment and then he took out his wallet and from
an inner compartment took a newspaper clipping, a short one of about three
paragraphs. He handed it to me.
I read it, and I recognized the type and the setup; it was a clipping
from the Bridgeport Argus. And I remembered now having read it, a couple of
weeks ago. I'd considered clipping it as an exchange item, and then had
decided not to, despite the fact that the heading had caught my interest. It
read:
MAN SLAIN BY UNKNOWN BEAST
The facts were few and simple. A man named Colin Hawks, living outside
Bridgeport, a recluse, had been found dead along a path through the woods.
The man's throat had been torn, and police opinion was that a large and
vicious dog had attacked him. But the reporter who wrote the article
suggested the possibility that a wolf ґ or even a panther or a leopard ґ
escaped from a circus or zoo might have caused the wounds.
I folded the clipping again and handed it back to Smith. It didn't mean
anything, of course. It's easy to find stories like that if one looks for
them. A man named Charles Fort found thousands of them and put them into
four books he had written, books which were on my shelves.
This particular one was less mysterious than most. In fact, there
wasn't any real mystery at all; undoubtedly some vicious dog had done the
killing.
Just the same something prickled at the back of my neck.
It was the headline, really, not the article. It's funny what the word
"unknown" and the thought back of it can do to you. If that story had been
headed "Man Killed by Vicious Dog" ґ or by a lion or a crocodile or any
other specified creature, however fierce and dangerous, there'd have been
nothing frightening about it.
But an "unknown beast" ґ well, if you've got the same kind of
imagination I have, you see what I mean. And if you haven't, I can't
explain.
I looked at Yehudi Smith, just in time to see him toss down his whisky
ґ again like a conjuring trick. I handed him back the clipping and then
refilled our glasses.
I said, "Interesting story. But where's the connection?"
"Our last meeting was in Bridgeport. That's all I can tell you. About
that, I mean. You asked the nature of the danger; that's why I showed you
that. And it's not too late for you to say no. It won't be, for that matter,
until we get there."
"Get where?"
"Only a few miles from here. I have directions to guide me to a house
on a road called the Dartown Pike. I have a car."
I said, irrelevantly, "So have I, but the tires are flat. Two of them."
I thought about the Dartown Pike. I said, "You wouldn't, by any chance,
be heading for the house known as the Wentworth place?"
"That's the name, yes. You know of it?"
Right then and there, if I'd been completely sober, I'd have seen that
the whole thing was too good to be true. I'd have smelled fish. Or blood.
I said, "We'll have to take candles or flashlights. That house has been
empty since I was a kid. We used to call it a haunted house. Would that be
why you chose it?"
"Yes, of course."
"And your group is meeting there tonight?"
He nodded. "At one o-clock in the morning, to be exact. You're sure
you're not afraid?"
God, yes, I was afraid. Who wouldn't be, after the build-up he'd just
handed me?
So I grinned at him and said, "Sure, I'm afraid. But just try to keep
me away."
Then I had an idea. If I was going to a haunted house at one o'clock in
the morning to hunt Jabberwocks or try to invoke the ghost of Lewis Carroll
or some equally sensible thing, it wouldn't hurt to have someone along whom
I already knew. And if Al Grainger dropped in ґ I tried to figure out
whether or not Al would be interested. He was a Carroll fan, all right, but
ґ for the rest of it, I didn't know.
I said, "One question, Mr. Smith. A young friend of mine might drop in
soon for a game of chess. How exclusive is this deal? I mean, would it be
all right if he came along, if he wants to?"
"Do you think he's qualified?"
"Depends on what the qualifications are," I said, "Offhand, I'd say you
have to be a Lewis Carroll fan and a little crazy. Or, come to think of it,
are those one and the same qualification?"
He laughed. "They're not too far apart. But tell me something about
your friend. You said young friend; how young?"
"About twenty-three. Not long out of college. Good literary taste and
background, which means he knows and likes Carroll. He can quote almost as
much of it as I can. Plays chess, if that's a qualification ґ and I'd guess
it is. Dodgson not only played chess but based Through the Looking-Glass on
a chess game. His name, if that matters, is Al Grainger."
"Would he want to come?"
"Frankly," I admitted, "I haven't an idea on that angle."
Smith said, "I hope he comes; if he's a Carroll enthusiast, I'd like to
meet him. But, if he comes, will you do me the favor of saying nothing about
ґ what I've told you, at least until I've had a chance to judge him a bit?
Frankly, it would be almost unprecedented if I took the liberty of inviting
someone to an important meeting like tonight's on my own. You're being
invited because we know quite a bit about you. You were voted on ґ and I
might say that the vote to invite you was unanimous."
I remembered his familiarity with the two obscure things about Lewis
Carroll that I'd written, and I didn't doubt that he ґ or they, if he really
represented a group ґ did know something about me.
He said, "But ґ well, if I get a chance to meet him and think he'd
really fit in, I might take a chance and ask him. Can you tell me anything
more about him? What does he do ґ for a living, I mean?"
That was harder to answer. I said, "Well, he's writing plays. But I
don't think he makes a living at it; in fact, I don't know that he's ever
sold any. He's a bit of a mystery to Carmel City. He's lived here all his
life ґ except while he was away at college ґ and nobody knows where his
money comes from. Has a swanky car and a place of his own ґ he lived there
with his mother until she died a few years ago ґ and seems to have plenty of
spending money, but nobody knows where it comes from." I grinned. "And it
annoys the hell out of Carmel City not to know. You know how small towns
are."
He nodded. "Wouldn't it be a logical assumption that he inherited the
money?"
"From one point of view, yes. But it doesn't seem too likely. His
mother worked all her life as a milliner, and without owning her own shop.
The town, I remember, used to wonder how she managed to own her own house
and send her son to college on what she earned. But she couldn't possibly
have earned enough to have done both of those things and still have left him
enough money to have supported him in idleness ґ Well, maybe, writing plays
isn't idleness, but it isn't remunerative unless you sell them ґ for several
years."
I shrugged. "But there's probably no mystery to it. She must have had
an income from investments her husband had made, and Al either inherited the
income or got the capital from which it came. He probably doesn't talk about
his business because he enjoys being mysterious."
"Was his father wealthy?"
"His father died before he was born, and before Mrs. Grainger moved to
Carmel City. So nobody here knew his father. And I guess that's all I can
tell you about Al, except that he can beat me at chess most of the time, and
that I hope you'll have a chance to meet him."
Smith nodded. "If he comes, we'll see."
He glanced at his empty glass and I took the hint and filled it and my
own. Again I watched the incredible manner of his drinking it, fascinated.
I'd swear that, this time the glass came no closer than six inches from his
lips. Definitely it was a trick I'd have to learn myself. If for no other
reason than that I don't really like the taste of whisky, much as I enjoy
the effects of it. With his way of drinking, it didn't seem that he had the
slightest chance of tasting the stuff. It was there, in the glass, and then
it was gone. His Adam's apple didn't seem to work and if he was talking at
the time he drank there was scarcely an interruption in what he was saying.
The phone rang. I excused myself and answered it.
"Doc," said Clyde Andrews' voice, "this is Clyde Andrews."
"Fine," I said, "I suppose you realize that you sabotaged my this
week's issue by canceling a story on my front page. What's called off this
time?"
"I'm sorry about that, Doc, if it really inconvenienced you, but with
the sale called off, I thought you wouldn't want to run the story and have
people coming around toґ"
"Of course," I interrupted him. I was impatient to get back to my
conversation with Yehudi Smith. "That's all right, Clyde. But what do you
want now?"
"I want to know if you've decided whether or not you want to sell the
Clarion."
For a second I was unreasonably angry. I said, "God damn it, Clyde, you
interrupt the only really interesting conversation I've had in years to ask
me that, when we've been talking about it for months, off and on? I don't
know. I do and I don't want to sell it."
"Sorry for heckling you, Doc, but I just got a special delivery letter
from my brother in Ohio. He's got an offer out West. Says he'd rather come
to Carmel City on the proposition I'd made him ґ contingent on your deciding
to sell me the Clarion, of course. But he's got to accept the other offer
right away ґ within a day or so, that is ґ if he's going to accept it at
all.
"So, you see that makes it different, Doc. I've got to know right away.
Not tonight, necessarily; it isn't in that much of a rush. But I've got to
know by tomorrow sometime, so I thought I'd call you right away so you could
start coming to a decision."
I nodded and then realized that he couldn't see me nod so I said,
"Sure, Clyde, I get it. I'm sorry for popping off. All right, I'll make up
my mind by tomorrow morning. I'll let you know one way or the other by then.
Okay?"
"Fine," he said. "That'll be plenty of time. Oh, by the way, there's an
item of news for you if it's not too late to put it in. Or have you already
got it?"
"Got what?"
"About the escaped maniac. I don't know the details, but a friend of
mine just drove over from Neilsville and he says they're stopping cars and
watching the roads both sides of the county asylum. Guess you can get the
details if you call the asylum."
"Thanks, Clyde," I said.
I put the phone back down in its cradle and looked at Yehudi Smith. I
wondered why, with all the fantastic things he'd said, I hadn't already
guessed.
"But wait a bit," the Oyster cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
I felt a hell of a letdown. Oh, not that I'd really quite believed in
the Vorpal Blades or that we were going to a haunted house to conjure up a
Jabberwock or whatever we'd have done there.
But it had been exciting even to think about it, just as one can get
excited over a chess game even though he knows that the kings and queens on
the board aren't real entities and that when a bishop slays a knight no real
blood is shed. I guess it had been that kind of excitement, the vicarious
kind, that I'd felt about the things Yehudi Smith had promised. Or maybe a
better comparison would be that it had been like reading an exciting fiction
story that one knows isn't true but which one can believe in for as long as
the story lasts.
Now there wasn't even that. Across from me, I realized with keen
disappointment, was only a man who'd escaped from an insane asylum. Yehudi,
the little man who wasn't there ґ mentally.
The funny part of it was that I still liked him. He was a nice little
guy and he'd given me a fascinating half hour, up to now. I hated the fact
that I'd have to turn him over to the asylum guards and have him put back
where he came from.
Well, I thought, at least it would give me a news story to fill that
nine inch hole in the front page of the Clarion. He said, "I hope the call
wasn't anything that will spoil our plans, Doctor."
It had spoiled more than that, but of course I couldn't tell him so,
any more than I could have told Clyde Andrews over the phone, in Smith's
presence, to call the asylum and tell them to drop around to my house if
they wanted to collect their bolted nut.
So I shook my head while I figured out an angle to get out of the house
and to put in the phone call from next door.
I stood up. Perhaps I was a bit more drunk than I'd thought, for I had
to catch my balance. I remember how crystal clear my mind seemed to be ґ but
of course nothing seems more crystal clear than a prism that makes you see
around corners.
I said, "No, the call won't interrupt our plans except for a few
minutes. I've got to give a message to the man next door. Excuse me ґ and
help yourself to the whisky."
I went through the kitchen and outside into the black night. There were
lights in the houses on either side of me, and I wondered which of my
neighbors to bother. And then I wondered why I was in such a hurry to bother
either of them.
Surely, I thought, the man who called himself Yehudi Smith wasn't
dangerous. And, crazy or not, he was the most interesting man I'd met in
years. He did seem to know something about Lewis Carroll. And I remembered
again that he'd known about my obscure brochure and equally obscure magazine
article. How?
So, come to think of it, why shouldn't I stall making that phone call
for another hour or so, and relax and enjoy myself? Now that I was over the
first disappointment of learning that he was insane, why wouldn't I find
talk about that delusion of his almost as interesting as though it was
factual.
Interesting in a different way, of course. Often I had thought I'd like
the chance to talk to a paranoiac about his delusions ґ neither arguing with
him nor agreeing with him, just trying to find out what made him tick.
And the evening was still a pup; it couldn't be later than about half
past eight so my neighbors would be up at least another hour or two.
So why was I in a hurry to make that call? I wasn't.
Of course I had to kill enough time outside to make it reasonable to
believe that I'd actually gone next door and delivered a message, so I stood
there at the bottom of my back steps, looking up at the black velvet sky,
star-studded but moonless, and wondering what was behind it and why madmen
were mad. And how strange it would be if one of them was right and all the
rest of us were crazy instead.
Then I went back inside and I was cowardly enough to do a ridiculous
thing. From the kitchen I went into my bedroom and to my closet. In a
shoebox on the top shelf was a short-barreled thirty-eight caliber revolver,
one of the compact, lightweight models they call a Banker's Special. I'd
never shot at anything with it and hoped that I never would ґ and I wasn't
sure I could hit anything smaller than an elephant or farther away than a
couple of yards. I don't even like guns. I hadn't bought this one; an
acquaintance had once borrowed twenty bucks from me and had insisted on my
taking the pistol for security. And later he'd wanted another five and said
if I gave it to him I could keep the gun. I hadn't wanted it, but he'd
needed the five pretty badly and I'd given it to him.
It was still loaded with bullets that were in it when we'd made the
deal four or five years ago, and I didn't know whether they'd still shoot or
not, but I put it in my trouser pocket. I wouldn't use it, of course, except
in dire extremity ґ and I'd miss anything I shot at even then, but I thought
that just carrying the gun would make my coming conversation seem dangerous
and exciting, more than it would be otherwise.
I went into the living room and he was still there. He hadn't poured
himself a drink, so I poured one for each of us and then sat down on the
sofa again.
I lifted my drink and over the rim of it watched him do that marvelous
trick again ґ just a toss of the glass toward his lips. I drank my own less
spectacularly and said, "I wish I had a movie camera. I'd like to film the
way you do that and then study it in slow motion."
He laughed. "Afraid it's my one way of showing off. I used to be a
juggler once."
"And now? If you don't mind asking."
"A student," he said. "A student of Lewis Carroll ґ and mathematics."
"Is there a living in it?" I asked him.
He hesitated just a second. "Do you mind if I defer answering that
until you've learned ґ what you'll learn at tonight's meeting?"
Of course there wasn't going to be any meeting tonight; I knew that
now. But I said, "Not at all. But I hope you don't mean that we can't talk
about Carroll, in general, until after the meting."
I hoped he'd give the right answer to that; it would mean that I could
get him going on the subject of his mania.
He said, "Of course not. In fact, I want to talk about him. There are
facts I want to give you that will enable you to understand things better.
Some of the facts yon already know, but I'll refresh you on them anyway. For
instance, dates. You had his birth and death dates correct, or nearly enough
so. But do you know the dates of the Alice books or any other of his works?
The sequence is important."
"Not exactly," I told him. "I think that he wrote the first Alice book
when he was comparatively young, about thirty."
"Close. He was thirty-two. Alice in Wonderland was published in
eighteen sixty-three, but even before then he was on the trail of something.
Do you know what he had published before that?"
I shook my head.
"Two books. He wrote and published A Syllabus of Plane Geometry in
eighteen sixty and in the year after that his Formulae of Plane
Trigonometry. Have you read either of them?"
I had to shake my head again. I said, "Mathematics isn't my forte. I've
read only his non-technical books."
He smiled. "There aren't any. You simply failed to recognize the
mathematics embodied in the Alice books and in his poetry. You do know, I'm
sure, that many of his poems are acrostics."
"Of course."
"All of them are acrostics, but in a much more subtle manner. However,
I can see why you failed to find the clues if you haven't read his treatises
on mathematics. You wouldn't have read his Elementary Treatise on
Determinants, I suppose. But how about his Curiosa Mathematica?"
I hated to disappoint him again, but I had to.
He frowned at me. "That at least you should have read. It's not
technical at all, and most of the clues to the fantasies are contained in
it. There are further ґ and final ґ references to them in his Symbolic
Logic, published in eighteen ninety-six, just two years before his death,
but they are less direct."
I said, "Now, wait a minute. If I understand you correctly your thesis
is that Lewis Carroll ґ leaving aside any question of who or what he really
was ґ worked out through mathematics and expressed in fantasy the fact that
ґ what?"
"That there is another plane of existence besides the one we are now
living in. That we can have ґ and do sometimes have ґ access to it."
"But what kind of a plane? A through-the-looking-glass plane of
fantasy, a dream plane?"
"Exactly, Doctor. A dream plane. That isn't strictly accurate, but it's
about as nearly as I can explain it to you just yet." He leaned forward.
"Consider dreams. Aren't they the almost perfect parallel of the Alice
adventures? The wool-and-water sequence, for instance, where everything
Alice looks at changes into something else. Remember in the shop, with the
old sheep knitting, how Alice looked hard to see what was on the shelves,
but the shelf she looked at was always empty although the others about it
were always full ґ of something, and she never found out what?"
I nodded slowly. I said, "Her comment was, `Things flow about so here.'
And then the sheep asked if Alice could row and handed her a pair of
knitting needles and the needles turned into oars in her hands and she was
in a boat, with the sheep still knitting."
"Exactly, Doctor. A perfect dream sequence. And consider that
Jabberwocky ґ which is probably the best thing in the second Alice book ґ is
in the very language of dreams. It's full of words like trumious, manxome,
tulgey, words that give you a perfect picture in context ґ but you can't put
your finger on what the context is. In a dream you fully understand such
meanings, but you forget them when you awaken."
Between "manxome" and "tulgey" he'd downed his latest drink. I didn't
pour another this time; I was beginning to wonder how long the bottle ґ or
we ґ would last. But he showed no effect whatsoever from the drinks he'd
been downing. I can't quite say the same for myself. I knew my voice was
getting a bit thick.
I said, "But why postulate the reality of such a world? I can see your
point otherwise. The Jabberwock itself is the epitome of nightmare creatures
ґ with eyes of flame and jaws that bite and claws that catch, and it
whiffles and burbles ґ why, Freud and James Joyce in tandem couldn't have
done any better. But why not take it that Lewis Carroll was trying, and
damned successfully, to write as in a dream? Why make the assumption that
that world is real? Why talk of getting through to it ґ except, of course,
in the sense that we invade it nightly in our dreams?"
He smiled. "Because that world is real, Doctor. You'll hear evidence of
that tonight, mathematical evidence. And, I hope, actual proof. I've had
such proof myself, and I hope you'll have. But you'll see the calculations,
at least, and it will be explained to you how they were derived from Curiosa
Mathematica, and then corroborated by evidence found in the other books.
"Carroll was more than a century ahead of his time, Doctor. Have you
read the recent experiments with the subconscious made by Liebnitz and
Winton ґ the feelers they're putting forth in the right direction, which is
the mathematical approach?"
I admitted I hadn't heard of Liebnitz or Winton.
"They aren't well known," he conceded. "You see, only recently, except
for Carroll, has anyone even considered the possibility of our reaching ґ
let's call it the dream plane until I've shown you what it really is ґ
physically as well as mentally."
"As Lewis Carroll reached it?"
"As he must have, to have known the things he knew. Things so
revolutionary and dangerous that he did not dare reveal them openly."
For a fleeting moment it sounded so reasonable that I wondered if it
could be true. Why not? Why couldn't there be other dimensions besides our
own? Why couldn't a brilliant mathematician with a fantastic mind have found
a way through to one of them?
In my mind, I cussed our Clyde Andrews for having told me about the
asylum break. If only I hadn't learned about that, what a wonderful evening
this one would be. Even knowing Smith was insane, I found myself ґ possibly
with the whisky's help ґ wondering if he could be right. How marvelous it
would have been without the knowledge of his insanity to temper the wonder
and the wondering. It would have been an evening in Wonderland.
And, sane or crazy, I liked him. Sane or crazy, he belonged
figuratively in the department in which Mrs. Carr's husband worked
literally. I laughed and then, of course, I had to explain what I'd been
laughing about.
His eyes lighted. "The Roman candle department. That's marvelous. The
Roman candle department."
You see what I mean.
We had a drink to the Roman candle department, and then it happened
that neither of us said anything right away and it was so quiet that I
jumped when the phone rang.
I picked it up and said into it, "This is the Roman candle department."
"Doc?" It was the voice of Pete Corey, my printer. It sounded tense.
"I've got bad news."
Pete doesn't get excited easily. I sobered up a little and asked,
"What, Pete?"
"Listen, Doc. Remember just a couple of hours ago you were saying you
wished a murder or something would happen so you'd have a story for the
paper ґ and remember how I asked you if you'd like one even if it happened
to a friend of yours?"
Of course I remembered; he'd mentioned my best friend, Carl Trenholm. I
took a tighter grip on the phone. I said, "Cut out breaking it gently, Pete.
Has something happened to Carl?"
"Yes, Doc."
"For God's sake, what? Cut the build-up. Is he dead?"
"That's what I heard. He was found out on the pike; I don't know if he
was hit by a car or what."
"Where is he now?"
"Being brought in. I guess. All I know is that Hank called meґ" Hank is
Pete's brother-in-law and a deputy sheriff. "ґ and said they got a call from
someone who found him alongside the road out there. Even Hank had it
third-hand ґ Rance Kates phoned him and said to come down and take care of
the office while he went out there. And Hank knows Kates doesn't like you
and wouldn't give you the tip, so Hank called me. But don't get Hank in
trouble with his boss by telling anybody where the tip came from."
"Did you call the hospital?" I asked. "If Carl's just hurtґ"
"Wouldn't be time for them to get him there yet ґ or to wherever they
do take him. Hank just phoned me from his own place before he started for
the sheriff's office, and Kates had just called him from the office and was
just leaving there."
"Okay, Pete," I said. "Thanks. I'm going back downtown; I'll call the
hospital from the Clarion office. You call me there if you hear anything
more."
"Hell, Doc, I'm coming down too."
I told him he didn't have to, but he said the hell with having to; he
wanted to. I didn't argue with him.
I cradled the phone and found that I was already standing up. I said,
"Sorry, but something important's come up ґ an accident to a friend of
mine." I headed for the closet to get my coat. "Do you want to wait here,
orґ"
"If you don't mind," he said. "That is, if you think you won't be gone
very long."
"I don't know that, but I'll phone here and let you know as soon as I
can. If the phone rings answer it; it'll be me. And help yourself to whisky
and books."
He nodded. "I'll get along fine. Hope your friend isn't seriously
hurt."
That was all I was worrying about myself. I put on my hat and hurried
out, again, and this time seriously, cussing those two flat tires on my car
and the fact that I hadn't taken time to fix them that morning. Nine blocks
isn't far to walk when you're not in any hurry, but it's a hell of a
distance when you're anxious to get there quickly.
I walked fast, so fast, in fact, that I winded myself in the first two
blocks and had to slow down.
I kept thinking the same thing Pete had obviously thought ґ what a hell
of a coincidence it was that we'd mentioned the possibility of Carl's beingґ
But we'd been talking about murder. Had Carl been murdered? Of course
not; things like that didn't happen in Carmel City. It must have been an
accident, a hit-run driver. No one would have the slightest reason for
killing, of all people, Carl Trenholm. No one but aґ
Finishing that thought made me stop walking suddenly. No one but a
maniac would have the slightest reason for killing Carl Trenholm. But there
was an escaped maniac at large tonight and ґ unless he'd left instead of
waiting for me ґ he was sitting right in my living room. I'd thought he was
harmless ґ even though I'd taken the precaution of putting that gun in my
pocket ґ but how could I be sure? I'm no psychiatrist; where did I get the
bright idea that I could tell the difference between a harmless nut and a
homicidal maniac?
I started to turn back and then realized that going back was useless
and foolish. He would either have left as soon as I was out of sight around
the corner, or he hadn't guessed that I suspected him and would wait as I'd
told him to, until he heard from me. So all I had to do was to phone the
asylum as soon as I could and they'd send guards to close in on my house and
take him if he was still there.
I started walking again. Yes, it would be ridiculous for me to go back
alone, even though I still had that gun in my pocket. He might resist, and I
wouldn't want to have to use the gun, especially as I hadn't any real reason
to believe he'd killed Carl. It could have been an auto accident just as
easily; I couldn't even form an intelligent opinion on that until I learned
what Carl's injuries were. I kept walking, as fast as I could without
winding myself again.
Suddenly I thought of that newspaper clipping ґ "MAN SLAIN BY UNKNOWN
BEAST." A prickle went down my spine ґ what if Carl's body showedґ
And then the horrible thought pyramided. What if the unknown beast who
had killed the man near Bridgeport and the escaped maniac were one and the
same. What if he had escaped before at the time of the killing at Bridgeport
ґ or, for that matter, hadn't been committed to the asylum until after that
killing, whether or not he was suspected of it.
I thought of lycanthropy, and shivered. What might I have been talking
about Jabberwocks and unknown beasts with?
Suddenly the gun I'd put in my pocket felt comforting there. I looked
around over my shoulder to be sure that nothing was coming after me. The
street behind was empty, but I started walking a little faster just the
same.
Suddenly the street lights weren't bright enough and the night, which
had been a pleasant June evening, was a frightful, menacing thing. I was
really scared. Maybe it's as well that I didn't guess that things hadn't
even started to happen.
I felt glad that I was passing the courthouse ґ with a light on in the
window of the sheriff's office. I even considered going in. Probably Hank
would be there by now and Rance Kates would still be gone. But no, I was
this far now and I'd carry on to the Clarion office and start my phoning
from there. Besides, if Kates found out I'd been in his office talking to
Hank, Hank would be in trouble.
So I kept on going. The corner of Oak Street, and I turned, now only a
block and a half from the Clarion. But it was going to take me quite a while
to make that block and a half.
A big, dark blue Buick sedan suddenly pulled near the curb and slowed
down alongside me. There were two men in the front seat and the one who was
driving stuck his head out of the window and said, "Hey, Buster, what town
is this?"
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.
It had been a long time since anyone had called me "Buster," and I
didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the looks of the men, either, or
the tone of voice the question had been asked in. A minute ago, I'd thought
I'd be glad of any company short of that of the escaped maniac; now I
decided differently.
I'm not often rude, but I can be when someone else starts it. I said,
"Sorry, pal, I'm a stranger here myself." And I kept on walking.
I heard the man behind the wheel of the Buick say something to the
other, and then they passed me and swung in to the curb just ahead. The
driver got out and walked toward me.
I stopped short and tried not to do a double-take when I recognized
him. My attention to the wanted circulars on the post office bulletin board
was about to pay off ґ although from the expression on his face, the payoff
wasn't going to be the kind I'd want.
The man coming toward me and only two steps away when I stopped was Bat
Masters, whose picture had been posted only last week and was still there on
the board. I couldn't be wrong about his face, and I remembered the name
clearly because of its similarity to the name of Bat Masterson, the famous
gunman of the old West. I'd thought of it as a coincidence at first and then
to work in the Roman candle department. Your husband is a lucky man."
"You're joking, Mr. Stoeger. But are you really thinking of selling the
paper?"
"Well ґ thinking of it." And that reminded me. "I didn't get any story
on the accident at Bonney's, didn't even hear about it. And I'm badly in
need of a story for the front page. Do you know the details of what
happened? Anyone else hurt?"
She'd been part way across the front porch, but she turned and came
back nearer the door. She said, "Oh, please don't put it in the paper. It
wasn't anything important; my husband was the only one hurt and it was his
own fault, he says. And Mr. Bonney wouldn't like it being in the paper; he
has enough trouble now getting as many people as he needs for the rush
season before the Fourth, and so many people are afraid to work around
powder and explosives anyway. George will probably be fired if it gets
written up in the paper and he needs the work."
I sighed; it had been an idea while it lasted. I assured her that I
wouldn't print anything about it. And if George Carr had been the only one
hurt and I didn't have any details, it wouldn't have made over a one-inch
item anyway.
I would have loved, though, to get that beautiful phrase, "the Roman
candle department," into print.
I went back inside and closed the door. I made myself comfortable by
taking off my suit coat and loosening my tie, and then I got the whisky
bottle and my glass and put them on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
I didn't take the tie off yet, nor my shoes; it's nicer to do those
things one at a time as you gradually get more and more comfortable.
I picked out a few books and put them within easy reach,. poured myself
a drink, sat down, and opened one of the books.
The doorbell rang.
Al Grainger had come early, I thought. I went to the door and opened
it. There was a man standing there, just lifting his hand to ring again. But
it wasn't Al; it was a man I'd never seen before.
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!
He was short, about my own height, perhaps, but seeming even shorter
because of his greater girth. The first thing you noticed about his face was
his nose; it was long, thin, pointed, grotesquely at variance with his pudgy
body. The light coming past me through the doorway reflected glowing points
in his eyes, giving them a catlike gleam. Yet there was nothing sinister
about him. A short pudgy man can never manage to seem sinister, no matter
how the light strikes his eyes.
"You are Doctor Stoeger?" he asked.
"Doc Stoeger," I corrected him. "But not a doctor of medicine. If
you're looking for a medical doctor, one lives four doors west of here."
He smiled, a nice smile. "I am aware that you are not a medico, Doctor.
Ph. D., Burgoyne College ґ nineteen twenty-two, I believe. Author of Lewis
Carroll Through the Looking-Glass and Red Queen and White Queen."
It startled me. Not so much that he knew my college and the year of my
magna cum laude, but the rest of it was amazing. Lewis Carroll Through the
Looking-Glass was a monograph of a dozen. pages; it had been printed
eighteen years ago and only a hundred copies had been run off. If one still
existed anywhere outside of my own library, I was greatly surprised. And Red
Queen and White Queen was a magazine article that had appeared at least
twelve years ago in a magazine that had been obscure then and had long since
been discontinued and forgotten.
"Yes," I said. "But how you know of them, I can't imagine, Mr.ґ"
"Smith," he said gravely. Then he chuckled. "And the first name is
Yehudi."
"No!" I said.
"Yes. You see, Doctor Stoeger, I was named forty years ago, when the
name Yehudi, although uncommon, had not yet acquired the comic connotation
which it has today. My parents did not guess that the name would become a
joke ґ and that it would be particularly ridiculous when combined with
Smith. Had they guessed the difficulty I now have in convincing people that
I'm not kidding them when I tell them my nameґ" He laughed ruefully. "I
always carry cards."
He handed me one. It read:
Yehudi Smith
There was no address, no other information. Just the same, I wanted to
keep that card, so I stuck it in my pocket instead of handing it back.
He said, "People are named Yehudi, you know. There's Yehudi Menuhin,
the violinist. And there'sґ"
"Stop, please," I interrupted. "You're making it plausible. I liked it
better the other way."
He smiled. "Then I haven't misjudged you, Doctor. Have you ever heard
of the Vorpal Blades?"
"Plural? No. Of course, in Jabberwocky:
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.
But ґ Good God! Why are we talking about vorpal blades through a
doorway? Come on in. I've got a bottle, and I hope and presume that it would
be ridiculous to ask a man who talks about vorpal blades whether or not he
drinks."
I stepped back and he came in. "Sit anywhere," I told him. "I'll get
another glass. Want either a mix or a chaser?"
He shook his head, and I went out into the kitchen and got another
glass. I came in, filled it and handed it to him. He'd already made himself
comfortable in the overstuffed chair.
I sat back down on the sofa and lifted my glass toward him. I said, "No
doubt about a toast for this one. To Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known, when
in Wonderland, as Lewis Carroll."
He said, quietly, "Are you sure, Doctor?"
"Sure of what?"
"Of your phraseology in that toast. I'd word it: To Lewis Carroll, who
masqueraded under the alleged identity of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the
gentle don of Oxford."
I felt vaguely disappointed. Was this going to be another, and even
more ridiculous, Bacon-was-Shakespeare deal? Historically, there couldn't be
any possible doubt that the Reverend Dodgson, writing under the name Lewis
Carroll, had created Alice in Wonderland and its sequel.
But the main point, for the moment, was, to get the drink drunk. So I
said solemnly, "To avoid all difficulties, factual or semantic, Mr. Smith,
let's drink to the author of the Alice books."
He inclined his head with solemnity equal to my own, then tilted it
back and downed his drink. I was a little late in downing mine because of my
surprise at, and admiration for, his manner of drinking. I'd never seen
anything quite like it. The glass had stopped, quite suddenly, a good three
inches from his mouth. And the whisky had kept on going and not a drop of it
had been lost. I've seen people toss down a shot before, but never with such
casual precision and from so great a distance.
I drank my own in a more prosaic manner, but I resolved. to try his
system sometime ґ in private and with a towel or handkerchief ready at hand.
I refilled our glasses and then said, "And now what? Do we argue the
identity of Lewis Carroll?"
"Let's start back of that," he said. "In fact, let's put it aside until
I can offer you definite proof of what we believe ґ rather, of what we are
certain."
"We?"
"The Vorpal Blades. An organization. A very small organization, I
should add."
"Of admirers of Lewis Carroll?"
He leaned forward. "Yes, of course. Any man who is both literate and
imaginative is an admirer of Lewis Carroll. But ґ much more than that. We
have a secret. A quite esoteric one."
"Concerning the identity of Lewis Carroll? You mean that you believe ґ
the way some people believe, or used to believe, that the plays of
Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon ґ that someone other than Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson wrote the Alice books?"
I hoped he'd say no.
He said, "No. We believe that Dodgson himself ґ How much do you know of
him, Doctor?"
"He was born in eighteen thirty-two," I said, "and died just before the
turn of the century ґ in either ninety-eight or nine. He was an Oxford don,
a mathematician. He wrote several treatises on mathematics. He liked ґ and
created ґ acrostics and other puzzles and problems. He never married but he
was very fond of children, and his best writing was done for them. At least
he thought he was writing only for children; actually, Alice in Wonderland
and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, while having plenty of appeal for
children, are adult literature, and great literature. Shall I go on?"
"By all means."
"He was also capable of ґ and perpetrated ґ some almost incredibly bad
writing. There ought to be a law against the printing of volumes of The
Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. He should be remembered for the great
things he wrote, and the bad ones interred with his bones. Although I'll
admit that even the bad things have occasional touches of brilliance. There
are moments in Sylvie and Bruno that are almost worth reading through the
thousands of dull words to reach. And there are occasional good lines or
stanzas in even the worst poems. Take the first three lines of The Palace of
Humbug:
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
"Of course he should have stopped there instead of adding fifteen or
twenty bad triads. But `Went wobble-wobble on the walls' is marvelous."
He nodded. "Let's drink to it."
We drank to it.
He said, "Go on."
"No," I said. "I'm just realizing that I could easily go on for hours.
I can quote every line of verse in the Alice books and most of The Hunting
of the Snark. But, I both hope and presume, you didn't come here to listen
to me lecture on Lewis Carroll. My information about him is fairly thorough,
but quite orthodox. I judge that yours isn't, and I want to hear it."
I refilled our glasses.
He nodded slowly: "Quite right, Doctor. My ґ I should say our ґ
information is extremely unorthodox. I think you have the background and the
type of mind to understand it, and to believe it when you have seen proof.
To a more ordinary mind, it would seem sheer fantasy."
It was getting better by the minute. I said, "Don't stop now."
"Very well. But before I go any farther, I must warn you, of something,
Doctor. It is also very dangerous information to have. I do not speak
lightly or metaphorically. I mean that there is serious danger, deadly
danger."
"That," I said, "is wonderful."
He sat there and toyed with his glass ґ still with the third drink in
it ґ and didn't look at me. I studied his face. It was an interesting face.
That long, thin, pointed nose, so incongruous to his build that it might
have been false ґ a veritable Cyrano de Bergerac of a nose. And now that he
was in the light, I could see that there were deep laughter-lines around his
generous mouth. At first I would have guessed his age at thirty instead of
the forty he claimed to be; now, studying his face closely, I could see that
he had not exaggerated his age. One would have to laugh a long time to etch
lines like those.
But he wasn't laughing now. He looked deadly serious, and he didn't
look crazy. But he said something that sounded crazy.
He said, "Doctor, has it ever occurred to you that ґ that the fantasies
of Lewis Carroll are not fantasies at all?"
"Do you mean," I asked, "in the sense that fantasy is often nearer to
fundamental truth than is would-be realistic fiction?"
"No. I mean that they are literally, actually true. That they are not
fiction at all, that they are reporting."
I stared at him. "If you think that, then who ґ or what ґ do you think
Lewis Carroll was?"
He smiled faintly, but it wasn't a smile of amusement.
He said, "If you really want to know, and aren't afraid, you can find
out tonight. There is a meeting, near here. Will you come?"
"May I be frank?"
"Certainly."
I said, "I think it's crazy, but try to keep me away."
"In spite of the fact that there is danger?"
Sure, I was going, danger or no. But maybe I could use his insistence
on warning me to pry something more out of him. So I said, "May I ask what
kind of danger?"
He seemed to hesitate a moment and then he took out his wallet and from
an inner compartment took a newspaper clipping, a short one of about three
paragraphs. He handed it to me.
I read it, and I recognized the type and the setup; it was a clipping
from the Bridgeport Argus. And I remembered now having read it, a couple of
weeks ago. I'd considered clipping it as an exchange item, and then had
decided not to, despite the fact that the heading had caught my interest. It
read:
MAN SLAIN BY UNKNOWN BEAST
The facts were few and simple. A man named Colin Hawks, living outside
Bridgeport, a recluse, had been found dead along a path through the woods.
The man's throat had been torn, and police opinion was that a large and
vicious dog had attacked him. But the reporter who wrote the article
suggested the possibility that a wolf ґ or even a panther or a leopard ґ
escaped from a circus or zoo might have caused the wounds.
I folded the clipping again and handed it back to Smith. It didn't mean
anything, of course. It's easy to find stories like that if one looks for
them. A man named Charles Fort found thousands of them and put them into
four books he had written, books which were on my shelves.
This particular one was less mysterious than most. In fact, there
wasn't any real mystery at all; undoubtedly some vicious dog had done the
killing.
Just the same something prickled at the back of my neck.
It was the headline, really, not the article. It's funny what the word
"unknown" and the thought back of it can do to you. If that story had been
headed "Man Killed by Vicious Dog" ґ or by a lion or a crocodile or any
other specified creature, however fierce and dangerous, there'd have been
nothing frightening about it.
But an "unknown beast" ґ well, if you've got the same kind of
imagination I have, you see what I mean. And if you haven't, I can't
explain.
I looked at Yehudi Smith, just in time to see him toss down his whisky
ґ again like a conjuring trick. I handed him back the clipping and then
refilled our glasses.
I said, "Interesting story. But where's the connection?"
"Our last meeting was in Bridgeport. That's all I can tell you. About
that, I mean. You asked the nature of the danger; that's why I showed you
that. And it's not too late for you to say no. It won't be, for that matter,
until we get there."
"Get where?"
"Only a few miles from here. I have directions to guide me to a house
on a road called the Dartown Pike. I have a car."
I said, irrelevantly, "So have I, but the tires are flat. Two of them."
I thought about the Dartown Pike. I said, "You wouldn't, by any chance,
be heading for the house known as the Wentworth place?"
"That's the name, yes. You know of it?"
Right then and there, if I'd been completely sober, I'd have seen that
the whole thing was too good to be true. I'd have smelled fish. Or blood.
I said, "We'll have to take candles or flashlights. That house has been
empty since I was a kid. We used to call it a haunted house. Would that be
why you chose it?"
"Yes, of course."
"And your group is meeting there tonight?"
He nodded. "At one o-clock in the morning, to be exact. You're sure
you're not afraid?"
God, yes, I was afraid. Who wouldn't be, after the build-up he'd just
handed me?
So I grinned at him and said, "Sure, I'm afraid. But just try to keep
me away."
Then I had an idea. If I was going to a haunted house at one o'clock in
the morning to hunt Jabberwocks or try to invoke the ghost of Lewis Carroll
or some equally sensible thing, it wouldn't hurt to have someone along whom
I already knew. And if Al Grainger dropped in ґ I tried to figure out
whether or not Al would be interested. He was a Carroll fan, all right, but
ґ for the rest of it, I didn't know.
I said, "One question, Mr. Smith. A young friend of mine might drop in
soon for a game of chess. How exclusive is this deal? I mean, would it be
all right if he came along, if he wants to?"
"Do you think he's qualified?"
"Depends on what the qualifications are," I said, "Offhand, I'd say you
have to be a Lewis Carroll fan and a little crazy. Or, come to think of it,
are those one and the same qualification?"
He laughed. "They're not too far apart. But tell me something about
your friend. You said young friend; how young?"
"About twenty-three. Not long out of college. Good literary taste and
background, which means he knows and likes Carroll. He can quote almost as
much of it as I can. Plays chess, if that's a qualification ґ and I'd guess
it is. Dodgson not only played chess but based Through the Looking-Glass on
a chess game. His name, if that matters, is Al Grainger."
"Would he want to come?"
"Frankly," I admitted, "I haven't an idea on that angle."
Smith said, "I hope he comes; if he's a Carroll enthusiast, I'd like to
meet him. But, if he comes, will you do me the favor of saying nothing about
ґ what I've told you, at least until I've had a chance to judge him a bit?
Frankly, it would be almost unprecedented if I took the liberty of inviting
someone to an important meeting like tonight's on my own. You're being
invited because we know quite a bit about you. You were voted on ґ and I
might say that the vote to invite you was unanimous."
I remembered his familiarity with the two obscure things about Lewis
Carroll that I'd written, and I didn't doubt that he ґ or they, if he really
represented a group ґ did know something about me.
He said, "But ґ well, if I get a chance to meet him and think he'd
really fit in, I might take a chance and ask him. Can you tell me anything
more about him? What does he do ґ for a living, I mean?"
That was harder to answer. I said, "Well, he's writing plays. But I
don't think he makes a living at it; in fact, I don't know that he's ever
sold any. He's a bit of a mystery to Carmel City. He's lived here all his
life ґ except while he was away at college ґ and nobody knows where his
money comes from. Has a swanky car and a place of his own ґ he lived there
with his mother until she died a few years ago ґ and seems to have plenty of
spending money, but nobody knows where it comes from." I grinned. "And it
annoys the hell out of Carmel City not to know. You know how small towns
are."
He nodded. "Wouldn't it be a logical assumption that he inherited the
money?"
"From one point of view, yes. But it doesn't seem too likely. His
mother worked all her life as a milliner, and without owning her own shop.
The town, I remember, used to wonder how she managed to own her own house
and send her son to college on what she earned. But she couldn't possibly
have earned enough to have done both of those things and still have left him
enough money to have supported him in idleness ґ Well, maybe, writing plays
isn't idleness, but it isn't remunerative unless you sell them ґ for several
years."
I shrugged. "But there's probably no mystery to it. She must have had
an income from investments her husband had made, and Al either inherited the
income or got the capital from which it came. He probably doesn't talk about
his business because he enjoys being mysterious."
"Was his father wealthy?"
"His father died before he was born, and before Mrs. Grainger moved to
Carmel City. So nobody here knew his father. And I guess that's all I can
tell you about Al, except that he can beat me at chess most of the time, and
that I hope you'll have a chance to meet him."
Smith nodded. "If he comes, we'll see."
He glanced at his empty glass and I took the hint and filled it and my
own. Again I watched the incredible manner of his drinking it, fascinated.
I'd swear that, this time the glass came no closer than six inches from his
lips. Definitely it was a trick I'd have to learn myself. If for no other
reason than that I don't really like the taste of whisky, much as I enjoy
the effects of it. With his way of drinking, it didn't seem that he had the
slightest chance of tasting the stuff. It was there, in the glass, and then
it was gone. His Adam's apple didn't seem to work and if he was talking at
the time he drank there was scarcely an interruption in what he was saying.
The phone rang. I excused myself and answered it.
"Doc," said Clyde Andrews' voice, "this is Clyde Andrews."
"Fine," I said, "I suppose you realize that you sabotaged my this
week's issue by canceling a story on my front page. What's called off this
time?"
"I'm sorry about that, Doc, if it really inconvenienced you, but with
the sale called off, I thought you wouldn't want to run the story and have
people coming around toґ"
"Of course," I interrupted him. I was impatient to get back to my
conversation with Yehudi Smith. "That's all right, Clyde. But what do you
want now?"
"I want to know if you've decided whether or not you want to sell the
Clarion."
For a second I was unreasonably angry. I said, "God damn it, Clyde, you
interrupt the only really interesting conversation I've had in years to ask
me that, when we've been talking about it for months, off and on? I don't
know. I do and I don't want to sell it."
"Sorry for heckling you, Doc, but I just got a special delivery letter
from my brother in Ohio. He's got an offer out West. Says he'd rather come
to Carmel City on the proposition I'd made him ґ contingent on your deciding
to sell me the Clarion, of course. But he's got to accept the other offer
right away ґ within a day or so, that is ґ if he's going to accept it at
all.
"So, you see that makes it different, Doc. I've got to know right away.
Not tonight, necessarily; it isn't in that much of a rush. But I've got to
know by tomorrow sometime, so I thought I'd call you right away so you could
start coming to a decision."
I nodded and then realized that he couldn't see me nod so I said,
"Sure, Clyde, I get it. I'm sorry for popping off. All right, I'll make up
my mind by tomorrow morning. I'll let you know one way or the other by then.
Okay?"
"Fine," he said. "That'll be plenty of time. Oh, by the way, there's an
item of news for you if it's not too late to put it in. Or have you already
got it?"
"Got what?"
"About the escaped maniac. I don't know the details, but a friend of
mine just drove over from Neilsville and he says they're stopping cars and
watching the roads both sides of the county asylum. Guess you can get the
details if you call the asylum."
"Thanks, Clyde," I said.
I put the phone back down in its cradle and looked at Yehudi Smith. I
wondered why, with all the fantastic things he'd said, I hadn't already
guessed.
"But wait a bit," the Oyster cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
I felt a hell of a letdown. Oh, not that I'd really quite believed in
the Vorpal Blades or that we were going to a haunted house to conjure up a
Jabberwock or whatever we'd have done there.
But it had been exciting even to think about it, just as one can get
excited over a chess game even though he knows that the kings and queens on
the board aren't real entities and that when a bishop slays a knight no real
blood is shed. I guess it had been that kind of excitement, the vicarious
kind, that I'd felt about the things Yehudi Smith had promised. Or maybe a
better comparison would be that it had been like reading an exciting fiction
story that one knows isn't true but which one can believe in for as long as
the story lasts.
Now there wasn't even that. Across from me, I realized with keen
disappointment, was only a man who'd escaped from an insane asylum. Yehudi,
the little man who wasn't there ґ mentally.
The funny part of it was that I still liked him. He was a nice little
guy and he'd given me a fascinating half hour, up to now. I hated the fact
that I'd have to turn him over to the asylum guards and have him put back
where he came from.
Well, I thought, at least it would give me a news story to fill that
nine inch hole in the front page of the Clarion. He said, "I hope the call
wasn't anything that will spoil our plans, Doctor."
It had spoiled more than that, but of course I couldn't tell him so,
any more than I could have told Clyde Andrews over the phone, in Smith's
presence, to call the asylum and tell them to drop around to my house if
they wanted to collect their bolted nut.
So I shook my head while I figured out an angle to get out of the house
and to put in the phone call from next door.
I stood up. Perhaps I was a bit more drunk than I'd thought, for I had
to catch my balance. I remember how crystal clear my mind seemed to be ґ but
of course nothing seems more crystal clear than a prism that makes you see
around corners.
I said, "No, the call won't interrupt our plans except for a few
minutes. I've got to give a message to the man next door. Excuse me ґ and
help yourself to the whisky."
I went through the kitchen and outside into the black night. There were
lights in the houses on either side of me, and I wondered which of my
neighbors to bother. And then I wondered why I was in such a hurry to bother
either of them.
Surely, I thought, the man who called himself Yehudi Smith wasn't
dangerous. And, crazy or not, he was the most interesting man I'd met in
years. He did seem to know something about Lewis Carroll. And I remembered
again that he'd known about my obscure brochure and equally obscure magazine
article. How?
So, come to think of it, why shouldn't I stall making that phone call
for another hour or so, and relax and enjoy myself? Now that I was over the
first disappointment of learning that he was insane, why wouldn't I find
talk about that delusion of his almost as interesting as though it was
factual.
Interesting in a different way, of course. Often I had thought I'd like
the chance to talk to a paranoiac about his delusions ґ neither arguing with
him nor agreeing with him, just trying to find out what made him tick.
And the evening was still a pup; it couldn't be later than about half
past eight so my neighbors would be up at least another hour or two.
So why was I in a hurry to make that call? I wasn't.
Of course I had to kill enough time outside to make it reasonable to
believe that I'd actually gone next door and delivered a message, so I stood
there at the bottom of my back steps, looking up at the black velvet sky,
star-studded but moonless, and wondering what was behind it and why madmen
were mad. And how strange it would be if one of them was right and all the
rest of us were crazy instead.
Then I went back inside and I was cowardly enough to do a ridiculous
thing. From the kitchen I went into my bedroom and to my closet. In a
shoebox on the top shelf was a short-barreled thirty-eight caliber revolver,
one of the compact, lightweight models they call a Banker's Special. I'd
never shot at anything with it and hoped that I never would ґ and I wasn't
sure I could hit anything smaller than an elephant or farther away than a
couple of yards. I don't even like guns. I hadn't bought this one; an
acquaintance had once borrowed twenty bucks from me and had insisted on my
taking the pistol for security. And later he'd wanted another five and said
if I gave it to him I could keep the gun. I hadn't wanted it, but he'd
needed the five pretty badly and I'd given it to him.
It was still loaded with bullets that were in it when we'd made the
deal four or five years ago, and I didn't know whether they'd still shoot or
not, but I put it in my trouser pocket. I wouldn't use it, of course, except
in dire extremity ґ and I'd miss anything I shot at even then, but I thought
that just carrying the gun would make my coming conversation seem dangerous
and exciting, more than it would be otherwise.
I went into the living room and he was still there. He hadn't poured
himself a drink, so I poured one for each of us and then sat down on the
sofa again.
I lifted my drink and over the rim of it watched him do that marvelous
trick again ґ just a toss of the glass toward his lips. I drank my own less
spectacularly and said, "I wish I had a movie camera. I'd like to film the
way you do that and then study it in slow motion."
He laughed. "Afraid it's my one way of showing off. I used to be a
juggler once."
"And now? If you don't mind asking."
"A student," he said. "A student of Lewis Carroll ґ and mathematics."
"Is there a living in it?" I asked him.
He hesitated just a second. "Do you mind if I defer answering that
until you've learned ґ what you'll learn at tonight's meeting?"
Of course there wasn't going to be any meeting tonight; I knew that
now. But I said, "Not at all. But I hope you don't mean that we can't talk
about Carroll, in general, until after the meting."
I hoped he'd give the right answer to that; it would mean that I could
get him going on the subject of his mania.
He said, "Of course not. In fact, I want to talk about him. There are
facts I want to give you that will enable you to understand things better.
Some of the facts yon already know, but I'll refresh you on them anyway. For
instance, dates. You had his birth and death dates correct, or nearly enough
so. But do you know the dates of the Alice books or any other of his works?
The sequence is important."
"Not exactly," I told him. "I think that he wrote the first Alice book
when he was comparatively young, about thirty."
"Close. He was thirty-two. Alice in Wonderland was published in
eighteen sixty-three, but even before then he was on the trail of something.
Do you know what he had published before that?"
I shook my head.
"Two books. He wrote and published A Syllabus of Plane Geometry in
eighteen sixty and in the year after that his Formulae of Plane
Trigonometry. Have you read either of them?"
I had to shake my head again. I said, "Mathematics isn't my forte. I've
read only his non-technical books."
He smiled. "There aren't any. You simply failed to recognize the
mathematics embodied in the Alice books and in his poetry. You do know, I'm
sure, that many of his poems are acrostics."
"Of course."
"All of them are acrostics, but in a much more subtle manner. However,
I can see why you failed to find the clues if you haven't read his treatises
on mathematics. You wouldn't have read his Elementary Treatise on
Determinants, I suppose. But how about his Curiosa Mathematica?"
I hated to disappoint him again, but I had to.
He frowned at me. "That at least you should have read. It's not
technical at all, and most of the clues to the fantasies are contained in
it. There are further ґ and final ґ references to them in his Symbolic
Logic, published in eighteen ninety-six, just two years before his death,
but they are less direct."
I said, "Now, wait a minute. If I understand you correctly your thesis
is that Lewis Carroll ґ leaving aside any question of who or what he really
was ґ worked out through mathematics and expressed in fantasy the fact that
ґ what?"
"That there is another plane of existence besides the one we are now
living in. That we can have ґ and do sometimes have ґ access to it."
"But what kind of a plane? A through-the-looking-glass plane of
fantasy, a dream plane?"
"Exactly, Doctor. A dream plane. That isn't strictly accurate, but it's
about as nearly as I can explain it to you just yet." He leaned forward.
"Consider dreams. Aren't they the almost perfect parallel of the Alice
adventures? The wool-and-water sequence, for instance, where everything
Alice looks at changes into something else. Remember in the shop, with the
old sheep knitting, how Alice looked hard to see what was on the shelves,
but the shelf she looked at was always empty although the others about it
were always full ґ of something, and she never found out what?"
I nodded slowly. I said, "Her comment was, `Things flow about so here.'
And then the sheep asked if Alice could row and handed her a pair of
knitting needles and the needles turned into oars in her hands and she was
in a boat, with the sheep still knitting."
"Exactly, Doctor. A perfect dream sequence. And consider that
Jabberwocky ґ which is probably the best thing in the second Alice book ґ is
in the very language of dreams. It's full of words like trumious, manxome,
tulgey, words that give you a perfect picture in context ґ but you can't put
your finger on what the context is. In a dream you fully understand such
meanings, but you forget them when you awaken."
Between "manxome" and "tulgey" he'd downed his latest drink. I didn't
pour another this time; I was beginning to wonder how long the bottle ґ or
we ґ would last. But he showed no effect whatsoever from the drinks he'd
been downing. I can't quite say the same for myself. I knew my voice was
getting a bit thick.
I said, "But why postulate the reality of such a world? I can see your
point otherwise. The Jabberwock itself is the epitome of nightmare creatures
ґ with eyes of flame and jaws that bite and claws that catch, and it
whiffles and burbles ґ why, Freud and James Joyce in tandem couldn't have
done any better. But why not take it that Lewis Carroll was trying, and
damned successfully, to write as in a dream? Why make the assumption that
that world is real? Why talk of getting through to it ґ except, of course,
in the sense that we invade it nightly in our dreams?"
He smiled. "Because that world is real, Doctor. You'll hear evidence of
that tonight, mathematical evidence. And, I hope, actual proof. I've had
such proof myself, and I hope you'll have. But you'll see the calculations,
at least, and it will be explained to you how they were derived from Curiosa
Mathematica, and then corroborated by evidence found in the other books.
"Carroll was more than a century ahead of his time, Doctor. Have you
read the recent experiments with the subconscious made by Liebnitz and
Winton ґ the feelers they're putting forth in the right direction, which is
the mathematical approach?"
I admitted I hadn't heard of Liebnitz or Winton.
"They aren't well known," he conceded. "You see, only recently, except
for Carroll, has anyone even considered the possibility of our reaching ґ
let's call it the dream plane until I've shown you what it really is ґ
physically as well as mentally."
"As Lewis Carroll reached it?"
"As he must have, to have known the things he knew. Things so
revolutionary and dangerous that he did not dare reveal them openly."
For a fleeting moment it sounded so reasonable that I wondered if it
could be true. Why not? Why couldn't there be other dimensions besides our
own? Why couldn't a brilliant mathematician with a fantastic mind have found
a way through to one of them?
In my mind, I cussed our Clyde Andrews for having told me about the
asylum break. If only I hadn't learned about that, what a wonderful evening
this one would be. Even knowing Smith was insane, I found myself ґ possibly
with the whisky's help ґ wondering if he could be right. How marvelous it
would have been without the knowledge of his insanity to temper the wonder
and the wondering. It would have been an evening in Wonderland.
And, sane or crazy, I liked him. Sane or crazy, he belonged
figuratively in the department in which Mrs. Carr's husband worked
literally. I laughed and then, of course, I had to explain what I'd been
laughing about.
His eyes lighted. "The Roman candle department. That's marvelous. The
Roman candle department."
You see what I mean.
We had a drink to the Roman candle department, and then it happened
that neither of us said anything right away and it was so quiet that I
jumped when the phone rang.
I picked it up and said into it, "This is the Roman candle department."
"Doc?" It was the voice of Pete Corey, my printer. It sounded tense.
"I've got bad news."
Pete doesn't get excited easily. I sobered up a little and asked,
"What, Pete?"
"Listen, Doc. Remember just a couple of hours ago you were saying you
wished a murder or something would happen so you'd have a story for the
paper ґ and remember how I asked you if you'd like one even if it happened
to a friend of yours?"
Of course I remembered; he'd mentioned my best friend, Carl Trenholm. I
took a tighter grip on the phone. I said, "Cut out breaking it gently, Pete.
Has something happened to Carl?"
"Yes, Doc."
"For God's sake, what? Cut the build-up. Is he dead?"
"That's what I heard. He was found out on the pike; I don't know if he
was hit by a car or what."
"Where is he now?"
"Being brought in. I guess. All I know is that Hank called meґ" Hank is
Pete's brother-in-law and a deputy sheriff. "ґ and said they got a call from
someone who found him alongside the road out there. Even Hank had it
third-hand ґ Rance Kates phoned him and said to come down and take care of
the office while he went out there. And Hank knows Kates doesn't like you
and wouldn't give you the tip, so Hank called me. But don't get Hank in
trouble with his boss by telling anybody where the tip came from."
"Did you call the hospital?" I asked. "If Carl's just hurtґ"
"Wouldn't be time for them to get him there yet ґ or to wherever they
do take him. Hank just phoned me from his own place before he started for
the sheriff's office, and Kates had just called him from the office and was
just leaving there."
"Okay, Pete," I said. "Thanks. I'm going back downtown; I'll call the
hospital from the Clarion office. You call me there if you hear anything
more."
"Hell, Doc, I'm coming down too."
I told him he didn't have to, but he said the hell with having to; he
wanted to. I didn't argue with him.
I cradled the phone and found that I was already standing up. I said,
"Sorry, but something important's come up ґ an accident to a friend of
mine." I headed for the closet to get my coat. "Do you want to wait here,
orґ"
"If you don't mind," he said. "That is, if you think you won't be gone
very long."
"I don't know that, but I'll phone here and let you know as soon as I
can. If the phone rings answer it; it'll be me. And help yourself to whisky
and books."
He nodded. "I'll get along fine. Hope your friend isn't seriously
hurt."
That was all I was worrying about myself. I put on my hat and hurried
out, again, and this time seriously, cussing those two flat tires on my car
and the fact that I hadn't taken time to fix them that morning. Nine blocks
isn't far to walk when you're not in any hurry, but it's a hell of a
distance when you're anxious to get there quickly.
I walked fast, so fast, in fact, that I winded myself in the first two
blocks and had to slow down.
I kept thinking the same thing Pete had obviously thought ґ what a hell
of a coincidence it was that we'd mentioned the possibility of Carl's beingґ
But we'd been talking about murder. Had Carl been murdered? Of course
not; things like that didn't happen in Carmel City. It must have been an
accident, a hit-run driver. No one would have the slightest reason for
killing, of all people, Carl Trenholm. No one but aґ
Finishing that thought made me stop walking suddenly. No one but a
maniac would have the slightest reason for killing Carl Trenholm. But there
was an escaped maniac at large tonight and ґ unless he'd left instead of
waiting for me ґ he was sitting right in my living room. I'd thought he was
harmless ґ even though I'd taken the precaution of putting that gun in my
pocket ґ but how could I be sure? I'm no psychiatrist; where did I get the
bright idea that I could tell the difference between a harmless nut and a
homicidal maniac?
I started to turn back and then realized that going back was useless
and foolish. He would either have left as soon as I was out of sight around
the corner, or he hadn't guessed that I suspected him and would wait as I'd
told him to, until he heard from me. So all I had to do was to phone the
asylum as soon as I could and they'd send guards to close in on my house and
take him if he was still there.
I started walking again. Yes, it would be ridiculous for me to go back
alone, even though I still had that gun in my pocket. He might resist, and I
wouldn't want to have to use the gun, especially as I hadn't any real reason
to believe he'd killed Carl. It could have been an auto accident just as
easily; I couldn't even form an intelligent opinion on that until I learned
what Carl's injuries were. I kept walking, as fast as I could without
winding myself again.
Suddenly I thought of that newspaper clipping ґ "MAN SLAIN BY UNKNOWN
BEAST." A prickle went down my spine ґ what if Carl's body showedґ
And then the horrible thought pyramided. What if the unknown beast who
had killed the man near Bridgeport and the escaped maniac were one and the
same. What if he had escaped before at the time of the killing at Bridgeport
ґ or, for that matter, hadn't been committed to the asylum until after that
killing, whether or not he was suspected of it.
I thought of lycanthropy, and shivered. What might I have been talking
about Jabberwocks and unknown beasts with?
Suddenly the gun I'd put in my pocket felt comforting there. I looked
around over my shoulder to be sure that nothing was coming after me. The
street behind was empty, but I started walking a little faster just the
same.
Suddenly the street lights weren't bright enough and the night, which
had been a pleasant June evening, was a frightful, menacing thing. I was
really scared. Maybe it's as well that I didn't guess that things hadn't
even started to happen.
I felt glad that I was passing the courthouse ґ with a light on in the
window of the sheriff's office. I even considered going in. Probably Hank
would be there by now and Rance Kates would still be gone. But no, I was
this far now and I'd carry on to the Clarion office and start my phoning
from there. Besides, if Kates found out I'd been in his office talking to
Hank, Hank would be in trouble.
So I kept on going. The corner of Oak Street, and I turned, now only a
block and a half from the Clarion. But it was going to take me quite a while
to make that block and a half.
A big, dark blue Buick sedan suddenly pulled near the curb and slowed
down alongside me. There were two men in the front seat and the one who was
driving stuck his head out of the window and said, "Hey, Buster, what town
is this?"
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound.
It had been a long time since anyone had called me "Buster," and I
didn't particularly like it. I didn't like the looks of the men, either, or
the tone of voice the question had been asked in. A minute ago, I'd thought
I'd be glad of any company short of that of the escaped maniac; now I
decided differently.
I'm not often rude, but I can be when someone else starts it. I said,
"Sorry, pal, I'm a stranger here myself." And I kept on walking.
I heard the man behind the wheel of the Buick say something to the
other, and then they passed me and swung in to the curb just ahead. The
driver got out and walked toward me.
I stopped short and tried not to do a double-take when I recognized
him. My attention to the wanted circulars on the post office bulletin board
was about to pay off ґ although from the expression on his face, the payoff
wasn't going to be the kind I'd want.
The man coming toward me and only two steps away when I stopped was Bat
Masters, whose picture had been posted only last week and was still there on
the board. I couldn't be wrong about his face, and I remembered the name
clearly because of its similarity to the name of Bat Masterson, the famous
gunman of the old West. I'd thought of it as a coincidence at first and then