The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes

‘Come!’ he said. ‘It shall be as you wish.’

‘Do you know where we are?’

‘We are at the entrance to Wardour Street.’

He gave a gesture of impatience, whipped a hand at his companion’s sleeve, and once more they trod down the icy echoes, going onwards.

The narrow lane reverberated to their footsteps; the drooping fog swayed sluggishly; the dead blank windows and high-shouldered doors frowned in stubborn progression and vanished behind them.

The stranger stopped in a moment where a screen of iron bars protected a shop front. From behind them shot leaden glints from old clasped bookcovers, hanging tongues of Toledo steel, croziers rich in nielli – innumerable and antique curios gathered from the lumber-rooms of history

A door to one side he opened with a latch-key. A pillar of light, seeming to smoke as the fog obscured it, was formed of the aperture.

Obeying a gesture, Rose set foot on the threshold. As he was entering, he found himself unable to forbear a thrill of effrontery.

‘Tell me,’ said he. ‘It was not only to point a moral that you flung away that coin?’

The stranger, going before, grinned back sourly over his shoulder.

‘Not only,’ he said. ‘It was a bad one.’

III

… La Belle Dame sans merci

Hath thee in thrall!

All down the dimly luminous passage that led from the door straight into the heart of the building, Amos was aware, as he followed his companion over the densely piled carpet, of the floating sweet scent of amber-seed. Still his own latter exaltation of nerve burned with a steady radiance. He seemed to himself bewitched – translated; a consciousness apart from yesterday; its material fibres responsive to the least or utmost shock of adventure. As he trod in the other’s footsteps, he marvelled that so lavish a display of force, so elastic a gait, could be in a centenarian.

‘Are you ever tired?’ he whispered curiously.

‘Never. Sometimes I long for weariness as other men desire rest.’

As the stranger spoke, he pulled aside a curtain of stately black velvet, and softly opening a door in a recess, beckoned the young man into the room beyond.

He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with potpourri; in one corner a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinée, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half-filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur – such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan – one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tessellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.

The door behind him swung gently to: his eyes half-closed in a dreamy surrender of will: the voice of the stranger speaking to him sounded far away as the cry of some lost unhappiness.

‘Welcome!’ it said only.

Amos broke through his trance with a cry.

‘What does it mean – all this? We step out of the fog, and here – I think it is the guest-parlour of Hell!’

‘You flatter me,’ said the stranger, smiling. ‘Its rarest antiquity goes no further back, I think, than the eighth century. The skeleton of the place is Jacobite and comparatively modern.’

‘But you – the shop!’

‘Contains a little of the fruit of my wanderings.’

‘You are a dealer?’

‘A casual collector only. If through a representative I work my accumulations of costly lumber to a profit – say thousands per cent – it is only because utility is the first principle of Art. As to myself, here I but pitch my tent – periodically, and at long intervals.’

‘An unsupervised agent must find it a lucrative post.’

‘Come – there shows a little knowledge of human nature. For the first time I applaud you. But the appointment is conditional on many things. At the moment the berth is vacant. Would you like it?’

‘My (paradoxically) Christian name was bestowed in compliment to a godfather, sir. I am no Jew. I have already enough to know the curse of having more.’

‘I have no idea how you are called. I spoke jestingly, of course; but your answer quenches the flicker of respect I felt for you. As a matter of fact, the other’s successor is not only nominated, but is actually present in this room.’

‘Indeed? You propose to fill the post yourself?’

‘Not by any means. The mere suggestion is an insult to one who can trace his descent backwards at least two thousand years.’

‘Yes, indeed. I meant no disparagement, but—’

‘I tell you, sir,’ interrupted the stranger irritably, ‘my visits are periodic. I could not live in a town. I could not settle anywhere. I must always be moving. A prolonged constitutional – that is my theory of health.’

‘You are always on your feet – at your age—’

‘I am a hundred tonight – But – mark you – I have eaten of the Tree of Life.’

As the stranger uttered these words, he seized Rose by the wrist in a soft, firm grasp. His captive, staring at him amazed, gave out a little involuntary shriek.

‘Hadn’t I better leave? There is something – nameless – I don’t know; but I should never have come in here. Let me go!’

The other, heedless, half-pulled the troubled and bewildered young man across the room, and drew him to within a foot of the curtain closing the alcove.

‘Here,’ he said quietly, ‘is my fellow-traveller of the last nine months, fast, I believe, in sleep – unless your jarring outcry has broken it.’

Rose struggled feebly.

‘Not anything shameful,’ he whimpered – ‘I have a dread of your manifestations.’

For answer, the other put out a hand, and swiftly and silently withdrew the curtain. A deepish recess was revealed, into which the soft glow of the lamp penetrated like moonlight. It fell in the first instance upon a couch littered with pale, uncertain shadows, and upon a crucifix that hung upon the wall within.

In the throb of his emotions, it was something of a relief to Amos to see his companion, releasing his hold of him, clasp his hands and bow his head reverently to this pathetic symbol. The cross on which the Christ hung was of ebony a foot high; the figure itself was chryselephantine and purely exquisite as a work of art.

‘It is early seventeenth century,’ said the stranger suddenly, after a moment of devout silence, seeing the other’s eyes absorbed in contemplation. ‘It is by Duquesnoy.’ (Then, behind the back of his hand) ‘The rogue couldn’t forget his bacchanals even here.’

‘It is a Christ of infidels,’ said Amos, with repugnance. He was adding involuntarily (his savoir faire seemed suddenly to have deserted him) – ‘But fit for an unbelieving—’ when his host took him up with fury—

‘Dog of a Gentile! – if you dare to call me Jew!’

The dismayed start of the young man at this outburst blinded him to its paradoxical absurdity. He fell back with his heart thumping. The eyes of the stranger flickered, but in an instant he had recovered his urbanity.