Solomon's Stone
L. Sprague de Camp
Chapter I.
When Montague Stark had explained what he was going to do, he added: "You understand, folks, I'm sure this won't work or I wouldn't try it." He looked up from where he squatted on the uncovered floor, drawing circles with a compass improvised from a pushpin, a piece of chalk, and a string."If it did, we'd probably set the house on fire at least. Prosper, what's the trick for inscribing a pentagon in a circle?"
"Let me think," said Prosper Nash. He closed his eyes and mentally thumbed the pages of a plane geometry text that he had studied ten years previously. At last he opined: "Lay off two-thirds of the radius along the arc, ten times running. That's not exact but it ought to do. He's not going to bring a steel tape along to measure your diagrams, is he?"
Stark laughed, "The pentacles in the grimoires are mostly pretty irregular, so ours ought to do." He set about ruling off a five-pointed star in the larger of the two circles. He added a number of astronomical symbols and Hebrew letters to the resulting figure, inscribed an equilateral triangle in the other circle, and put three small circles inside the triangle."Alice, may I use your coffee table?"
"I'm not sure mother would like it—" said his hostess nervously.
"Aw come on, I won't hurt it!" Without waiting for further objections, Stark placed the low circular table at one end of the room, in line with the two large circles on the floor.
On the table he put a square of white artist's paper board on which was drawn another complex symboclass="underline" a pentagram with Hebrew letters, planetary symbols, keys, daggers, and other gadgets hither and thither about it. He set up a small brass tripod on the square of paper, and lit the incense in the little pot that dangled from the apex of the tripod, commenting: "This pentacle's supposed to be drawn on the skin of a ewe lamb sacrificed in the dark of the moon or something, but I figure a good clean drawing sheet ought to do. The reason those old birds killed their own lambs was to make sure of getting a sheet of genuine virgin parchment.
"Prosper, you light the candles.. Bob, unwrap Gus and put him on the floor here. For gossakes be careful of him; the museum wants him back."
A rustle of paper heralded the unveiling of Gus, who was the skull of a Bannock Indian. Prosper Nash and Robert Lanby obeyed meekly. The uninhibited Stark had always had the psychological bulge on them, despite his short tubby unimpressiveness.
Prosper Nash often wondered why this should be, knowing that he surpassed Stark in stature and looks, especially now that his glossy-black mustache had come to full flower. Of course he could see why Bob Lanby should let Monty Stark dominate him; Nash had always considered Bob a twerp, especially since the blue-eyed but unresponsive Alice—
The candles shone out. Monty Stark got into his new bathrobe, blue with orange piping for Friday, the day of amusing or amorous experiments. Nash smiled a little as he thought that to Monty "amusing" and "amorous" were practically synonyms; to him they were distinct but not incompatible; to poor Alice and Bob they were apt to be violently antithetical—
Stark glanced toward the kitchen door, behind which Bill Averoff supposedly lurked, ready at the proper stage of the proceedings to pop out with a deep "Good evening, everybody!" and scare the living pants off all but Montague Allen Stark.
At this moment, however, Bill was writing a note:
"Dear Mr. Stark:
I just looked out the window and seen a fare alongside of my hack. I been waiting longer than I expected and I can't afford to pass up the good fares you get on Haloeen so I got to go. I am sorry.
Yours truly, William Averoff.
Being a fundamentally honest man, Averoff placed on the note the dollar bill that Stark had given him for his part in the performance, weighted note and bill with the salt shaker, and stole out the service entrance of Alice Woodson's apartment.
When he arrived at the street level, the prospective fare had vanished. Averoff settled into his taxicab and opened the Western pulp that he kept on the front seat. His hero, Arizona Blake, was just shooting his way out of the fourth gambling hell when another fare arrived.
Bill Averoff cast a regretful glance up toward the windows of Miss Woodson's apartment—good-looking dame, but snooty—and drove off. He knew and liked the three boys he had brought across town from their Y, and would have been glad to be the one to drive them home later. But you had to live.
Meanwhile Montague Stark continued his essay into amateur sorcery, unaware that his star actor had departed. He placed the box containing Godiva, the toad, in the center of the circle of evocation. Occasional faint thumps and slight movements of the box implied that Godiva had not yet become reconciled to her close quarters.
The room by now reeked with the mixture of agalloch and storax burning in the censer on the coffee table; the two candles on the periphery of the circle of evocation sent up slow stalactites of gray smoke.
Stark pinned to the front of his bathrobe a diamond pin in the form of a Star of David, borrowed from the young daughter of a Jewish friend, and hung a copper medal around his neck. He put on his head a homemade diadem of twisted copper wire, and picked up his brother-in-law's little cross-hilted cadet sword.
"Ready?" he asked.
Alice Woodson put out the light.
Stark cocked his head to read from the typed sheet in his left hand by the doubtful light of the candles. The appellation started off with a long sentence in Hebrew which nobody, Stark included, understood.
His three hearers leaned forward, tense with the synthetic excitement that is conjured up by spook movies and Halloween stunts. Prosper Nash reflected that probably everybody had suppressed desires to be and do strange things, but that Monty Stark was the only person he knew who went ahead and did something about it.
Monty had wanted to be an archaeologist and had ended up as a high school teacher of history. Still, when he acquired a hobby like this craze for magic, he went into it wholeheartedly, which was no doubt why he had so much fun. He, Prosper Nash, sometimes day-dreamed of himself as a dashing cavalier instead of a competent but unglamorous C. P. A. with a good memory for detail. But there didn't seem to be much he could do toward realizing that fancy, nearsighted as he was—
Monty Stark ended his Hebrew and started in on his Latin, his voice rising a little. The air was unpleasantly thick.
Nash wondered about the suppressed desires of the other two. Little Bob Lanby displayed none except to be a depressingly good boy and a good chess player. And, as an afterthought, to marry Alice. The cool Alice, he supposed, would like to be a nun.
Stark at last got to the English, or at least to a passage containing some English words. His voice rose higher and louder: "Hemen-Etan! Hemen-Etan! Hemen-Etan! El Ati Titeip Aozia Hyn Teu Minosel Achadon vai vaa Eie Aaa Eie Exe A El El El A Hi! Hau! Hau! Hau! Hau! Va! Va! Va! Va! Chavajoth! Aie Saraie, aie Saraie, aie Saraie! By Elohim, Archima, Rabur, Batbas over Abrac, flowing down, coming from above Aheor upon Aberer Chavajoth! Chavajoth! Chavajoth! I command thee, Bechard, by the Key of Solomon and the great name Shemhamphoras! By Adonai Elohim, Adonai Jehova, Adonai Sa-baoth, Metraton On Alga Adonai Mathon, the Pythonic Word, the Mystery of the Salamander, the Assembly of Sylphs, the Grotto of Gnomes, the demons of the heaven of Gad, Almousin, Gibor, Jehoshua, Evam, Zariatnatmik: Come, Bechard! Come, Bechard! Come, Bechard!"
"Good evening!"
Stark, Nash, Lanby and Alice Woodson all jumped at the words and at the appearance in the "trap"—the circle-and-pentagram figure between the circle of evocation, on which Stark stood, and the coffee-table altar—of a figure. Then they relaxed; Nash and Lanby thought they recognized Bill Averoff's deep tones. Alice thought it was just another of Monty's gags—