It was now literally snowing black death in my room and the end had to follow quickly. Gedney's bulging eye and screaming, frothing mouth seemed to sink into the ever thickening blackness and the noises he was making were instantly shut off. For a few seconds he did a monstrous, shuffling dance of agony, and unable to bear the sight any longer I used the pole to push him off his feet. My prayer that this action would put a quick end to it was answered. He pulsed! Yes, that is the only way I can describe the motion of his smothered body: he pulsed for a moment on the carpet — and then was still. Briefly then, the lights seemed to dim and a rushing wind filled the house. I must have momentarily fainted for I awoke to find myself stretched out full length on the carpet with the shower still hissing behind me. As mysteriously as it had come, 'The Black' had departed, back to that other-dimensional body which housed it, taking Gedney's soul and leaving his lifeless shell behind...
Later, after a stiff drink, I opened the envelope and found the flaking, brittle shards I had expected. Later still, with the rapidly stiffening, lolling corpse beside me,
I drove out towards Gedney's country home. I parked his car in a clump of trees, off the road, and in the small hours made my way back on foot to Blowne House. The brightening air was strangely sweet.
THE VIKING'S STONE
THE VIKING'S STONE is another of those tales which seem to write themselves: it is as if, once you start, the story takes over. And that's something which should happen far more often! It is, of course, a 'ghost story'— but perhaps you should first be reminded that Titus Crow isn't one for meeting up with conventional ghosts. Or very much of conventional anything else, for that matter!
'De Marigny!' Titus Crow's voice sounded tense and urgent over the telephone. 'De Marigny, tell me - did you ever lend that book of yours, Loftsson's SagaEnglendingabok, to Benjamin Sorlson?'
'Why, yes, Titus; I yawningly answered, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, '- but I got it back all right, and Sorlson seems a genuine enough chap. You know him, though, surely?'
'I know him, yes,' Crow's growl came back, strangely tinny over the wire. 'I know him for a damn good archaeologist, a damned argumentative fool... and I know him for a- friend, of sorts. But that hardly matters now. Henri, I think I might need your help - if only to talk Sorlson out of it
'Talk Sorlson out of it?' Dully, apathetically, I repeated him. 'Titus, isn't it a bit early in the morning for cryptic messages? And what on Earth are you doing up, at this hour anyway?' I was well aware of Crow's habit of working late and rising even later.
' "This hour," de Marigny, is 9:00 a.m. - and I'm up to check the mail. I've had a letter from Sorlson. He's gone to Skardaborg - and he's found the stone of Ragnar Gory-Axe!'
Gory-Axe? Skardaborg? What in heaven — My foggy sleep-sodden mind would not bring the man's words into focus. I had attended a meeting — a rather bawdy meeting toward the end, not at all Crow's sort of thing — of the London Mystery Writers' Society the previous evening, and I was now suffering the consequences. I briefly explained this to Crow.
'Coffee, de Marigny,' he barked. 'I'd prescribe three or four mugs at least, and black! Then, if you're interested, bring Loftsson's book with you and meet me at King's Cross for the first afternoon train north. I'll explain it all then.'
Well, a summons from Titus Crow is not something to be lightly put aside — the man has been my friend and mentor ever since my father sent me out of America as a youth — and so I got up and dressed, made a hurried breakfast (including, as my friend had suggested, a great pot of black coffee), placed the book Crow had requested in my briefcase, and then caught a taxi for King's Cross.
In the taxi I took out the Saga-Englendingabok and looked up 'Skardaborg'. The book was very rare, I knew that, for it was a manuscript copy in longhand from the original Latin — or so its preface led me to believe. Crow, after borrowing the book one summer some four years earlier, had told me he believed it to be a translation of Jon Loftsson's lost Latin work on the Kings of Norway and the adventures of the Vikings in England; he doubted if any other copy remained extant. He had referred to it as 'Loftsson's book' ever since. Certainly there was a lost Latin work, believed to be circa 1115, but I secretly disputed Crow's authority to claim my book as being related to that work.
Skardaborg! Yes, there it was: Scarborough, as I had guessed. So, Benjamin Sorlson, the celebrated if unorthodox archaeologist and expert in Viking and other ancient Norwegian matters, was in Scarborough. Now .. what of Ragnar Gory-Axe?
Before I could, further follow my enquiry the taxi arrived at King's Cross. I put the book away, paid the driver, and made my way to the ticket-booth. There, like a fool, I asked for a return ticket to Skardaborg before realizing my slip; but eventually I found myself on the northbound platform searching for my friend, Titus Crow.
He was impossible to miss. Tall in his dark suit, with his leonine head and imposing looks, he would have seemed prominent in any crowd; but when I stood with him it would be safe to say that few if any of the other people on the platform recognized us as 'two of London's foremost occultists'.
Now, I oppose such a description as applied in any derogative manner- to myself (and as in the past certain members of the press have found occasion so to use it) but I do not deny my interest in occult matters. How could I, and own to a father, Etienne-Laurent de Marigny, who was one of the greatest of modern mystics? It is merely that I myself am no great adept, and if I were I should certainly not use dark forces to my own ends.
Crow, too, deplores this 'Black Magician' tag, for he is one to whom, in his unending search for mysteries and discoveries of marvels, the occult has been simply a passage down which his wanderings have taken him; where he has learned, on more than one occasion, outré things unheard of in the more mundane world of ordinary men. Crow may, in that sense, be called an occultist — but so is he a most knowledgeable man and something of an expert in many fields.
We managed to get a compartment to ourselves on the train, but it was only after the journey commenced that Titus made any attempt to explain his purpose in following Sorlson to Scarborough, and then not without a little prodding on my part
'Er, you said Sorlson had "found the stone of Ragnar Gory-Axe" ... ?'
'So he has; Crow answered, nodding, 'and damn him for a fool, he intends to bring the thing back to London!'
'Just what is this stone, Titus, and why is it so important to you?'
The stone? Oh, excuse me, de Marigny, but I thought you were on intimate terms with that book of yours. The stone is a Bauta-stein or menhir — though you'd usually only use the latter term in Celtic connections — raised near a tomb for the spirit of the occupant to rest upon at night, like a perch, and by means of which the ghost might find its way back to the tomb at daybreak'
'How very homely,' I answered, with something of a shudder. 'Then it's an important historical and archaeological find. Surely Sorlson only wants to present the thing to a museum or some such authority?'
'He wants it for himself,' Crow bleakly told me, and that's exactly where the trouble lies. That stone must not be interfered with! There's a curse on the thing, one that goes back eight hundred years to the Viking wars — and it is still operative!
You see, de Marigny, he went on after a brief pause, 'unlike us Sorlson sees little to fear in this sort of thing. He laughed at me when I let it slip about the stone and its curse three months ago. In fact he made it clear that he thought I was pulling his leg about the stone's very existence... Or so I thought! But in truth he must have known something of Ragnar Gory-Axe before; and then, when I told him of your book. . . Well, no matter how slim the chance, Sorlson obviously thought my story was at least worth looking into.' He stroked his chin. 'When did he borrow the book, by the way?'