Saddened, Bertie slumped into the chair before his brother’s desk. But Bertie’s mind, such as it was, was incapable of dwelling for more than two consecutive minutes on any problem. Even his own feeling of frustration and disappointment faded away, leaving him again his vacantly cheerful self.
Whistling, he picked up the massive, black leather bound book from his brother’s desk. In the back of his mind was the vague idea that since his brother practically burned incense before these crypts of entombed learning, it would do him no harm to dip into their musty depths and see what was what.
The first yellowed page of the book bore, in archaic lettering, the ominous inscription:
Interested, Bertie turned another page. There, he learned after glancing down a few paragraphs, the proper technique for summoning forth the demons from the sixth pit of the fourth lower world.
“Well, well,” muttered Bertie. “It’s darned simple at that. If anybody wanted a demon it shouldn’t be hard to arrange things.”
Thoroughly entranced, he browsed on, until he came to a tattered page which was headed in solid black letters,
There he paused. As nearly as he could figure it out one had simply to mutter a bit of mumbo-jumbo and — presto! Everything became as clear as crystal. He thought wistfully of the excellent use he could have put this device in his college days.
It was typical of Bertie that a book of mysterious incantations, designed to call up demons and impart superhuman knowledge, would cause him no surprise. He had a naive confidence in the printed word; to the extent that anything on paper was automatically true.
As he was about to turn the page a wonderful thought popped into his head. It was so beautifully simple that it took his breath away.
Quickly he re-read the directions on the Mystic Clarification page. They weren’t difficult. In fact it only took him a few minutes to repeat aloud the incantation that was part of the ritual. He waited a moment then, expecting something in the way of a blazing ball to explode in his head, but nothing happened.
Undaunted he pulled open the drawer of his brother’s desk and removed the heavy parchment which his brother had been vainly attempting to translate.
After a quick glance over the symbols inscribed on its ancient surface he chuckled heartily.
“It works,” he cried gleefully.
Picking up a pencil from the desk he scribbled down the translation on the back of a piece of scratch paper. This would certainly set him in solid with his brother. It was wonderfully simple. Why, it was just as easy as reading something written in English.
This idea had hardly grazed his mind, when a dampening thought occurred to him. Glancing at the writing on the parchment paper again was enough to clinch his suspicions. The thing was written in English. Even Bertie possessed sufficient intelligence to realize that it was this that made the translation so simple.
The pencil slipped from his disappointed fingers. He obviously had the wrong parchment. A hurried search of the desk drawer and the shelves over the desk disclosed no other untranslatable parchments, so he assumed, with one of his unusual flashes of brilliance, that his brother must have put the document somewhere else.
“Oh well,” he sighed, “his loss after all.”
With a shrug he turned back to the fascinating book. For the rest of the afternoon he amused himself by reciting aloud a number of the euphonious incantations, all of which applied to various types of goblins, witches and demons. He had reached voodooism when the sport began to pall on him. After all even the creatures of the Nether Cosmos grow tiresome if taken in too large doses.
With a yawn he tossed the heavy book back to the desk and sauntered from the library. The house was dark. No cheery bustling from the region of the kitchen indicated that toothsome meals were being prepared for him, so, with a martyred sigh, he ascended the stairs to the guest bed room.
He wasn’t really hungry, for he had eaten on the train, so he decided to hit the hay and thus convince his brother that he was really the soul of virtuous respectability. Ordinarily the eve of the traditional game between State and Mosswood college would find Bertie carousing about the bright spots of the town, wassailing with boon and beery companions until the wee sma’. When his brother returned and found him tucked peacefully away in bed and sleeping the sleep of the innocent and the just, perhaps it would soften his heart a bit.
So with these cheerful speculations buzzing about in his head Bertie turned off the dark hallway and groped his way into the bed room he intended to occupy.
Possibly it was because of this preoccupation that he did not notice the acrid odor of sulphurous smoke which was drifting through the room. That is, he didn’t notice it right away.
It wasn’t until he was in the middle of the room that he paused and sniffed the air.
“What ho!” he said, startled. “Something burning I’ll bet.”
Bertie was generally not so swift with his deductions. Now, possibly as a result of his studious afternoon, he was unusually sharp.
“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” he reasoned shrewdly.
He was just moving to the window to let in a little fresh air when he noticed a peculiar thing.
Circling him on all sides and silhouetted against the blackness of the room were several dozen pairs of gleaming white eyes.
Bertie glanced carefully about to be sure he was not imagining things. His scrutiny convinced him that he was not imagining anything at all. The eyes were there, round and white, and they all seemed to be staring directly at him.
Now the average young man stumbling into a room full of staring white eyes would probably do his thinking with his legs and dash from the room at top speed.
This would have been the sensible thing to do, which is probably why Bertie did nothing of the sort.
He peered at the circle of eyes with interest.
As his eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room he made out several dark shapes perched about. They appeared only as vague outlines and their shadowy forms were unlike anything Bertie had ever seen. Of their faces he could see nothing. Only the white staring eyes and the lumpy black shapes were visible. There must have been at least eight or ten of them, perched on the furniture of the room. “Well, well,” Bertie muttered.
He was not frightened, but he had the strange feeling that he should have been. The situation was rapidly developing into an impasse. After all he couldn’t just stand there and stare at these strange things which had chosen his bedroom as a roosting place.
He cleared his throat, while he tried to think of something that would more or less break the ice.
“Well, well,” he said finally. “Warm for May, isn’t it?”
There was a sound like the rustle of dead leaves as one of the vague, formless shapes seemed to stir slightly. A soft, strangely toneless voice said, “We have come to do your bidding, Oh Master. From the haunts of the nether cosmos we have traveled. By the unseen powers that bind us, what Is your wish?”
Bertie listened to the sepulchral voice with mingled emotions. He was touched by the fact that these things — whatever they were — seemed to be anxious to help him. That, however, did not alter the fact that there was something deuced peculiar about the whole matter.
“Well,” he said uncertainly, “it’s nice of you to — to stop in like this. But just who are you, anyway?”
“I am Xanthos,” the toneless voice replied softly.