JERRY PHELAN, the narrator
JAMES BLAKE, Curator of Central American Antiquities
MARIUS HARTMANN, a collector
ROGER THORPE, a Director of the Metropolitan Museum
MURCHISON, a Museum guard
TREVIS TARRANT, interested in the bizarre
KATOH, Tarrant’s butler-valet
I HAD NOT wanted to spend the night in the Museum in the first place. It had been a foolish business, as I realised thoroughly now that the lights had gone out. A blown fuse, of course; but what could blow a fuse at this time of night? Still, it must be something of that nature, perhaps a short in the circuit somewhere. Murchison, the guard in the corridor outside, had gone off to investigate. Before leaving he had stepped in and made his intention clear; then he had closed the door, whose handle he had shaken vigorously to assure both of us that it was locked. The lock had had to be turned from the outside, for the door was without means of being secured from within. I was alone.
The room was in the basement. It was comparatively narrow and about fifty feet long; but, since it was situated at one of the corners of the great building, its shape was that of an L, with the result that, from where I sat near its only door, no more than half of the room could be seen. Of the three barred windows near its ceiling, the one in my half of the room was already becoming dimly visible as a slightly lighter oblong in the darkness.
The darkness had given me quite a jolt. Earlier, at half-past ten, when I had propped my chair back against the wall and settled down to read my way through the hours ahead with the latest book on tennis strategy, it had been very quiet; I had seen to it that the three windows were all closed and fastened, so that even the distant purr of the cars across Central Park had been inaudible. Murchison, from outside, had reported every hour, but of course he had other duties than patrolling this one corridor, although he was giving it most of his attention to-night. We had considered it better, when he was called away, to leave the door locked and this he had done on each occasion. At first he had unlocked it and either come in or lounged in the doorway when reporting, but lately he had been contenting himself with calling to me through the closed entrance.
The silence, which to begin with had been complete, seemed somehow to have gotten steadily more and more profound. Imperceptibly but steadily. Oppressive was the word probably, for by two a.m. I had the distinct feeling that it would have been possible to cut off a chunk of it and weigh it on a scale.
I am a person who is essentially fond of games and outdoor life generally; being cooped up like this was uncongenial as well as unusual. As the silence grew deeper and deeper and Murchison’s visits farther and farther apart, the whole thing commenced to get on my nerves. Inside, I undoubtedly began to fidget. There was no possibility of backing out now, however. The diagrams showing just how one followed the ball to the net for volley (the proper time to do so being explicitly set forth in the text) made less claim upon my attention as the hours drew past. I had finally ended by closing the book and dropping it impatiently to the floor beside me.
Could there possibly be anything in this Curse business? Absurd! I stared across at the Codex lying on the little table near the closed door. What power for either good or evil could be possessed by some unknown Aztec, dead hundreds of years ago? It was an indication of my unaccustomed nerviness that I found it of comfort to reflect that I was in a world-famous Museum in the centre of modern New York, to be specific on upper Fifth Avenue; there must be a score of guards in the Museum itself, a precinct station was but a few blocks away, the forces of civilisation that never sleep surrounded me on all sides. I glanced at the Codex again and gave something of a start. Had it moved ever so slightly since I had looked at it before? Hell, this was ridiculous. Then the lights went out.
The effect in any case is startling and in the present instance it was doubly so. Nothing could have been more unexpected. Unconsciously, I suppose, one becomes accustomed to hearing the click of a button or a switch when lights are extinguished; even in a roomful of people, unexpected darkness descending suddenly causes uneasiness. And I was not in a roomful of people by any means. The unbroken silence preceding and following made a sort of continuity that ought to have prevented any abrupt change. Darkness, silently instantaneous, for a moment was unbelievable.
Murchison’s voice through the door a minute later was, I admit, a bit of a relief. He opened the door, flashed his light about for a moment, then locked it again and hurried away.
The guard’s light had shown the Codex quietly in its place on the table. Well, naturally; how could it have moved, since I had not been near it and no one else was in the room? A Curse from the dark past of Aztlan. The third night. Nonsense. Here was merely a matter of a short circuit. It suddenly occurred to me that that, too, might not be unimportant. Where there are short circuits, there are sometimes fires. The door was locked on the outside. I could break any of the windows, of course, if they couldn’t be unfastened, but what then? All of them were guarded by sturdy iron bars set in the stonework of the building. It was plain enough that in any emergency I couldn’t get out by myself.
I simply couldn’t help thinking how often these coincidences seemed to happen. An ancient warning and a modern calamity. It was a silly notion; it persisted in running through my head. In that inanimate manuscript written by dead Aztec hands there couldn’t possibly be anything——
When I had come into town that morning, nothing had been further from my mind than spending the night in the Metropolitan Museum. At most I had anticipated no more than calling there for a few minutes around noon to take Jim Blake out to lunch. Blake is considerably older than I am, being in fact a friend of one of my aunts; our common interest, however, is not the aunt but the game of golf, as to which we are both enthusiasts. Thus, having some business in town, I thought I might run up and compare notes with him about a recently opened course in New Jersey which we had both played, though not together. Blake had been with the Museum for years and, I understand, is now the Keeper, or whatever they call it, of their Central American antiquities.
When I found him in his basement office, however, I discovered Marius Hartmann already with him, a fellow about my own age whom I knew slightly at college and never liked very much. A quiet, studious chap, though I suppose that’s nothing against him. What I really disliked was his contempt for all sports, a matter he took little trouble to conceal. I had not seen him since graduation but had heard that he had come into a large inheritance and taken up collecting. This interest, I suppose, had brought him and Blake together but, not knowing of their acquaintance, I was considerably surprised to find him in the office.
He shook hands with me pleasantly enough but it was evident that his interest had been excited and was wholly taken up by the subject he had been discussing with Blake.
“Why, a Codex like that is priceless, literally priceless!” he exclaimed, as soon as the greetings were over. “Such a find isn’t reported once in a century. And when it is, it’s usually spurious.”
Blake, leaning back in his chair with his feet resting on a corner of his desk, grunted acquiescence. “Fortunately there’s no question of authenticity this time,” he asserted. “Our own man found it, sealed away in a small stone wall-vault in the teocalli. More by chance than anything else, he says himself. The place where it was must have been rather like a safe; they never did find out how it was properly opened. It was partly broken open during the excavation work and when they saw that some sort of storage chamber had been struck, they finished it up with a pick. As I say, it was only a small receptacle, a few feet each way, I understand.”
“I suppose that accounts for its preservation,” Hartmann reflected. “Over seven hundred years, you say? It’s a long time, that, but if this temple safe was sealed up—— Of course, we do know of manuscripts as old as seven hundred years. The oldest Codex I have is about four hundred,” he added.
I thought it was high time to find out what a Codex is, so I asked.
“A Codex, Jerry,” replied Blake with half a smile, “is a manuscript book. Strictly speaking, the thing we’re talking about is not a Codex; it’s written on stuff resembling papyrus and it is rolled rather than being separated into leaves and bound. But so many of these Central American records are Codices written by Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Aztecs after the conquest, that we have been calling this record a Codex, too.”
“But seven hundred years?” I was puzzled.
“Oh, yes, it far antedates the conquest. In fact, it purports to have been inscribed by the Chief Priest of the nation at Chapultepec on the occasion of the end of one Great Cycle and the beginning of the next. ‘Tying up the bundles of bundles of years,’ they called it; a bundle, or cycle, being fifty-two years and a bundle of bundles being fifty-two cycles, or twenty-seven hundred and four years. The end of the particular Great Cycle in question has been pretty well identified with our own date, 1195 a.d.”
Hartmann’s eyes were glistening as he leaned forward. “What a treasure!”
“You knew of it some time ago, I believe?” Blake asked him.
“Yes. Yes, I did. Roger Thorpe, one of your directors, told me. I offered the Museum forty thousand dollars for it, through him, before it ever got here. Turned down, of course … But I had only the vaguest idea about the contents. It appears to be even more valuable than I realised; undoubtedly it contains an historical record of the whole preceding Great Cycle.”
“More than that,” Blake chuckled, “more than that. When this is published, it is going to make a sensation, you can be sure … I don’t mind telling you in confidence that the Codex contains the historical high spots of the preceding five Great Cycles, including place names and important dates of the entire Aztec migration. In some way we have not been able to ascertain as yet, the occasion of its writing was even more impressive than the end of a Great Cycle; apparently it was the ending of an especially significant number of Great Cycles in their dating system. Possibly thirteen; we’re not sure.”
Frankly the subject wasn’t of much interest to me. I couldn’t work up the excitement that Hartmann obviously felt, and Blake, too, to a lesser degree. But I didn’t want to mope in a corner about the thing. More to stay in the conversation than for any other reason, I asked what sort of writing was employed in the manuscript.
“Eh, what sort of writing? Why, picture writing, naturally. Much more developed than the American Indian, though; more like the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Some ideographs; Chapultepec, for example, which means ‘grasshopper-hill,’ is represented by a grasshopper on a hill. But there is a lot of phonetic transcription also, in which the symbols stand for their sounds rather than the objects pictured. The curious thing is that this Codex, by far the earliest Aztec manuscript we know of, uses a much more highly developed script than the later writings just preceding the conquest. It certainly makes the Popol-Vuh look just like what some of us have always suspected—the ignorant translation by a Spanish priest of traditions that had already been badly mangled and half forgotten by the natives themselves.”
Marius Hartmann had been doing some rapid calculation. He said: “But if this covers five Great Cycles, it goes back thirteen thousand five hundred years or more from 1195. Thirteen thousand five hundred years! Why, that’s—why——”
“Oh, yes,” acknowledged Blake with an understanding grin. “It is indeed. You know the controversies concerning the origin of the Aztecs, the location of the original Aztlan from which they traditionally migrated. I’ve only had a chance for one look at the Codex myself but it appears to me to be a highly circumstantial history without any embroidery at all. The writer states definitely that Aztlan is nothing else than the Atlantis mentioned by Plato. He even gives the clear location of the ancestors of the Aztecs in one of the western, coastal provinces of the continent. After the catastrophe the survivors found themselves on the North American coast, apparently in the vicinity of what have now become the Virginia capes. From there, after the passage of thousands of years and through the operation of a good many different causes, their migrations finally carried them into central Mexico.”
Hartmann’s mouth was partly open and his eyes, I thought, would soon be popping out. “You—you believe this is an authentic record?” he stammered.
“I can only tell you this, but I really mean it. I’ve been here a good many years now, Hartmann, and so far as my own experience goes, it’s the most authentic document that I have ever come across. I’d be perfectly willing to stake my reputation on it.”
There could be no doubt about it; the man’s eyes would pop out in another minute. That would never do.
I said, “How about getting some lunch? I’m empty as a football, for one.”
The lunch was highly unsatisfactory from my point of view at any rate. Highly so. I had no opportunity to discuss the new course with Blake, or anything else about golf, for that matter. Marius Hartmann came with us; he stuck to Blake like a leech and there was no getting rid of him. Worse, they both continued to discuss the matter of the Codex with undiminished zeal. Most of the time I ate in silence and by the approach of the end of the meal I was pretty thoroughly fed up on everything connected with Aztecs.
It was during lunch that the question of the Curse came up. It appeared that the Codex really comprised two separate parts, although both were written on the same manuscript. The second part was the historical section already mentioned, while the first dealt with a religious ritual or training of some kind. “Curious,” Blake observed, “very curious. The title of the first part is almost identical with the actual title of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Pert em Hru, ‘Coming into Light.’ The Aztec title is Light Emergence, but the contents are certainly not concerned with a burial ritual or anything like it.”
Preceding this part of the Codex and introducing the entire manuscript, a species of warning had been placed. Blake quoted some of it. “Beware,” it ran, “lest vengeance follow sacrilege. Who would read the Sacred Words, let him be instructed, for ignorance conducteth disaster. Quetzalcoatl, the Reminder, (goeth) in dread splendour. The desecration of Light-Words is an heavy thing; in an unholy resting-place the third night bringeth the Empty.” And considerably more to the same general effect.
“It doesn’t sound much like the Codex Chimalpopoca, does it?” ventured Hartmann.
“Not a bit. No, we have to do with something along different lines here. The Chimalpopoca is not much more than folklore at best, written some time after the conquest, even if it is in the native language. Our Codex is a genuine article; the man who wrote it was quite certainly the religious head and he had no doubts as to what he was writing about. Not only is the form of expression quite different but the content is, too; even the language is far more evolved. The author isn’t guessing, in other words; he gives the strongest impression both of accuracy and of knowledge.”
“How do you mean, Blake? Are you hinting that you take the opening Curse seriously?”
“Well, no. I didn’t mean that exactly. I was referring more to the historical section and even to the ritual part itself. That seems to be a good bit more explicit, in parts at least, than most such compilations; from what I had a chance to read, one section appears to lead up to and introduce the following one, quite otherwise than in the usual haphazard collections. It gave me rather a strange feeling, just glancing through it.… As a matter of fact I’ve heard that you take such passages as the prefatory Curse more seriously than most of us.”
Hartmann looked up from his salad. “As a matter of fact, I do. When I meet the real thing. Of course there was a lot of pseudo-magic in Greek times that couldn’t affect a child. I mean the real thing,” he repeated. “I can assure you that I’m much more sceptical about the dictum of a modern scientist than I am about that of a High Priest of, say, the Fourth Dynasty.”
Blake smiled at our companion’s earnestness. “Can’t say I feel your way entirely. However, if that’s your opinion, to-night is your night.”
“Why? How is that?”
“ ‘In an unholy resting-place the third night bringeth the Empty.’ We’ve finally gotten the Codex to its permanent resting-place and I’ve no doubt at all that the writer would consider it unholy. To complete the point, to-night is the third one.” He paused and smiled again. “If I took it literally, I’d expect the Codex to vanish or undergo spontaneous combustion or something of the kind before morning. I shouldn’t feel any too pleasant myself, either, for I happen to be its custodian now.”
“Oh, you’re all right. It doesn’t say anything about the custodian,” Hartmann answered. I was surprised, I must admit, at the entire seriousness of his words, which were accompanied by no hint of a smile. “About reading it, that’s another matter; I don’t know whether I’d be prepared to try it or not, ‘uninstructed.’ But its custody, especially in an official capacity, will surely be harmless. It’s not as if you had stolen it or even been the one to dig it up.”
Blake looked a touch astonished himself, though not as much as I was. He explained to me later that enthusiasts often get these notions. He had known a man once who had been determined to obtain an Egyptian mummy and had finally procured one which he kept in his library as his most prized possession; but he had assured Blake that were he ever prevented from doing a proper obeisance—“purification ceremony,” he called it—night and morning upon entering the room, he would get rid of the mummy the same day. I, however, had not met this man and Hartmann’s sentiments, I confess, were strengthening my disposition to consider him something of an ass. Too much learning—some old fellow said once, I think—is worse than not enough.
But he was continuing. “About to-night, though, that’s a different thing. If it will really be the third night and if it was set forth literally in the warning just as you said, I should be frankly anxious, in your place. What precautions have you taken?”
“It’s really the third night,” Blake acknowledged. “And the threat, or whatever you want to call it, is not ambiguous; it is simply and literally that the third night will bring ‘the Empty.’ But, thank heaven, I haven’t your idea about it and I’m not anxious at all. My word, if I worried about those things, I’d have been out of my mind long ago; I’m surrounded every working day by more curses and threats from the past than I can count. I just don’t bother about ’em. To tell you the truth, I haven’t taken any precautions,” he finished, “and I don’t intend to.”
“Surely you’ve got it locked up somewhere?”
“Oh, surely. Your friend Thorpe, by the way, is of your mind; he seems quite worried over the matter. You ought to talk to him about it … Yes, it’s down in one of the extra rooms in the basement, locked up naturally. No one could get at it down there. In the first place, a thief wouldn’t know where to look for it, in the second, although the room isn’t a bank vault by any means, it is locked; and in the third place, the usual patrols will be on duty near it anyhow. That’s safe enough from my point of view.”
“Oh, thieves.” Hartmann snorted contemptuously. “I wouldn’t be concerned about modern sneak-thieves; no market for such a thing, anyhow. I’m thinking of something quite different than that, I assure you.”
“So is Thorpe apparently. I can’t make him out this time. He has insisted upon putting the Codex into the same room every night with his precious statue from Palestine, until we are ready to put it on exhibition in the main halls. I believe he has some superstition about that statue; thinks it will be a guardian angel or something. He surprised me, really. You do too, if you’re serious. What do you imagine could happen, thieves ruled out?”
The other man shrugged. “Nothing—possibly. These warnings don’t materialise sometimes but in my opinion that is because we don’t know enough to interpret them correctly. Neither you nor I have any definite knowledge as to what ‘the Empty’ means. Maybe your Codex will disappear to-night, although a thief would be the last thing I should look for in such a case. I don’t know; but I am certain of this, that something, and something more or less unpleasant, will happen on the third night that that bit of ancient wisdom rests in a museum.… After all, a museum is simply an exhibition house for the ignorantly curious, or vice versa.”
Blake grinned his appreciation. “No reflections, I take it? A lot of us have to earn our bread and butter, you know.… Well, why don’t you sit up with it to-night and see what happens? I’ll get you permission.”
“Not a chance! I’m going to a ball at the Waldorf to-night; but if I had nothing to do, you can take it I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want to be anywhere near your Codex on the third night.”
“I believe you’re more than half in earnest,” said Blake, regarding our companion with an estimating glance. “It’s tosh, you know.”
Hartmann suggested, “Ask Jerry. He has heard both sides.” Turning to me. “What’s your idea, old man; will anything happen, or won’t it?”
It was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. I said briefly, probably all too briefly, “Nuts!”
He leaned back, smiling as he lit a cigarette. “Nuts, eh? … Well, Jerry, I’ll give you a thousand you won’t stay up with the Codex and, further, if you do, that something will happen and you won’t be able to prevent it … On?”
Doubtless I looked as bewildered as I felt at the offer. Before I could pull my wits together and reply, Blake volunteered: “Wish I could take you myself. As a matter of fact, though, I’m taking Jerry’s aunt to the opera to-night and I don’t intend to miss out on that. You might tell her sometime, Jerry, that I paid one grand, extra, for the pleasure of seeing her this evening.”
“Sure, glad to.” My impatience with the whole business had reached a crucial point and I was feeling fairly irked. Not a word about golf the entire time and in another minute or so I should have to leave. “Look here,” I said, “I can’t afford to take you for a thousand but you’re on for a hundred. I’ll spend the night with your damned Codex and nothing will happen to it at all or about it at all. So what?”
“So there’s a hundred for me,” came the exasperating answer.
“Nuts again. Draw your cheque.”
Suddenly he was serious. “You mean this? You really intend to go through with it?”
“Naturally.”
“All right. Now listen to me. A hundred isn’t enough to make me want to have you take a risk. And you’ll be taking one, no matter what you think about it. I’m sorry now that I made the proposition. I’d much rather call it off. Shall we?”
Let him crawl out like that? “Nothing doing, my lad. It was your suggestion. It’s on now; I’m chaperoning the Codex to-night and collecting in the morning.” If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s these fellows who know more than every one else about everything. Except golf, of course.
“As you will.” He shrugged, as who remarks that sagacity is wasted on any but sages. “Do you mind, Jerry, if I call you up once or twice during the night? I’d feel a little easier.”
“Call away. All you want.”
“It can be arranged, Blake, can’t it?”
“Easily. I’ll have the phone in the room plugged through before I leave.” He smiled broadly, with more pleasure than I could muster over the tedious performance. “I don’t think, though, that I’ll stay up fretting over Jerry,” he added.
“No?” The tone had just that accent of the sceptical tinged with the supercilious that is appropriate, I suppose, to these occasions.
The waiter was bringing our check.
Late that afternoon Blake showed me the room. As I have said it was L-shaped. There was a roll-top desk in it and a flat one, both obviously unused. Several piles of bundles, pamphlets no doubt or some of the monographs the museum is frequently publishing, were stacked against the long back wall. There were also a few small boxes, various odds and ends that accumulate in a disused apartment. The statue, still in its skeleton crate whose sides were covered with sacking, stood at the farther end of the room beyond the flat desk on which rested the telephone instrument. Life-size, apparently, to judge from the crate. “Thorpe’s sweetheart,” said Blake in a dry voice. “He won’t even let us see it. It’s a particularly nifty one of Astarte, I understand. Came in ten days ago from the Palestine expedition and he insists on unpacking it himself. Hasn’t gotten around to it yet.”
He laid the Codex on the small table in the other half of the room, near the entrance door. It was contained in a cylinder of wood, black with age, on one side of which two symbols, or letters, had been skilfully inlaid in white shell. “Sacred very-very,” Blake translated them, explaining that the Codex was in its original package, as found. He had taken it carelessly from one of the drawers of his own desk.
As we turned to the door, he said: “Here’s a note I’ve written for you to Murchison, the guard who will be on duty down here to-night. He’s not here yet. And I’ll introduce you to the supervisor as we go out, so there will be no trouble when you come in after dinner.”
On the way up to the main entrance I surprised an unwonted expression on Blake’s face. He said abruptly, “Of course, Jerry, I don’t really know much about that Codex or its origin. Something might happen—I suppose. Watch your step. And if anything does begin to break, get out.”
I stared at him in plain amazement. Through the big doors the sunlight was slanting cheerfully across Fifth Avenue. “Forget it. I’m making the easiest hundred bucks I’ve ever found.… Remember me to Aunt Doris.”
There wasn’t any sunlight now. I sat back on my chair, staring into black murk. I couldn’t fool myself into believing that I was relaxed; I realised in fact, that my muscles were tensed as if for a spring. Not that I had any idea where to spring or for what purpose.
Funny, how thick the darkness seemed to be. One’s eyes usually become accustomed to lack of light within a relatively short time, but the window continued as dim as at first, minute after minute. I couldn’t see the table, only a few feet away. This darkness was like the silence—it had weight—it pressed. The cigarettes I had been smoking all evening, perhaps? That was a comforting thought and I clung to it as long as I could. Still, cigarette smoke doesn’t show a preference, in a closed room, for one part rather than for another. I became more and more certain that the gloom was deeper in the corner where the Codex rested than anywhere else. Where the mischief was Murchison? How long did it take him to plug in a new fuse, anyhow?
A little rustle! Little enough, it would not even have been perceptible ordinarily; in the silence of the room it was not only perceptible but it just couldn’t be put down to imagination. Thank God it didn’t come from the direction of the table. It was only momentary and the silence resumed, as leaden as ever. Had I imagined it? As I strained my ears for a repetition, Blake’s words occurred to me—“If anything breaks, get out.” It also occurred to me that the Codex was between me and the door. The fact that the door was locked, if I remember correctly, didn’t occur to me till later.
Why hadn’t I brought a flashlight? I hadn’t brought a thing, actually. A gun would have helped a lot, too. I’m a good shot with an automatic; but a good shot without an automatic is about as useful as a fine yachtsman in the subway. I couldn’t blame myself for that, however. When I had left home in the morning I hadn’t foreseen a night of conflict with the nebulous menace of a piece of manuscript.
I suppose your eardrums, if you are listening intently, become supersensitised. Something about “sets,” I think. At any rate the noise that broke out was terrific; it seemed as if fifty devils had started screaming simultaneously. I don’t know whether I yelled or not (probably did) but I gave such a jump that I upset the chair and found myself sprawling on the floor, supported by one foot, one knee and one hand. As I scrambled to my feet, still instinctively crouching, I was too scared to do any thinking. It was only when the noise stopped and then began again, that I realised the telephone was ringing.
I was relieved. For the moment I just straightened up and felt like singing the first song that came into my head. Then I became annoyed, suddenly, at the infernal din the thing was making. I started toward the bend in the room and the instrument beyond it; and of course knocked a couple of bundles off the pile at the corner. With a hearty “Damnation!” I took up the receiver.
“Hallo.”
“Hartmann speaking from the Waldorf. Jerry, is everything O.K. so far?”
That fellow certainly wouldn’t find out how uncomfortable I was, if I could help it. I felt grateful to him, though, for the steadying effect of his silly voice. But I wasn’t prepared yet for much talking. “Certainly. Why not?”
“You’re sure? Nothing a bit out of the way has happened?”
“Well, the lights seem to be out for the moment.”
“What? … My God!… ”
I waited but there wasn’t any more.
“What do you mean, my God?”
The quiet over the wire continued for so long that I began considering the possibility that he had left the phone. Then his voice came through excitedly.
“Jerry, get out of that room! Listen, Jerry, please, please will you get out? I’ll pay you the hundred, I’ll——. Get out now! Before it happens. Now!”
I’ll admit I had a hard time answering that one, but I did. I said, “I won’t get out at all. Anyhow, I can’t; the door’s locked——”
“Oh my God! You say the door’s locked?” Hartmann’s voice rose into a kind of wail that, under the circumstances, wasn’t the pleasantest sound I could have thought of. “Jerry, Jerry! Listen to me; listen carefully. If you can’t get out, you must do this. You must; understand, you must! Don’t go near the Codex. Get as far away from it as you can, even if only across the room. And lie down on the floor. Do you hear me, Jerry? You must lie down on the floor; get as——”
Click.
And there I was, inanely banging the hook of the telephone up and down. It was dark as pitch in the room. There was silence over the wire. There isn’t much that is deader than a dead telephone line, but somehow the silence over the wire didn’t seem half as dead as the silence in the room.
I couldn’t go one way, nor could I go the other. I stood there, with the telephone receiver still in my hand. The telephone had gone now, too. The lights had gone, the guard had gone, the telephone had gone; what price those “forces of civilisation”? What is unavailable, it was being borne in upon me, might just as well not exist.… What could he possibly mean, about lying down? Why lie down? It didn’t——
The lights came on.
Instantaneously. Just as they had gone off.
Light is truly a blessed thing. I only realised that I had been trembling when I stopped, after the first dazzle was over. There were the blank walls, the two black windows, the piles of bundles, the crated statue. All motionless, with the stolidity of the prosaic. It was all right; it was all right, I repeated, it was all right. I drew a deep breath of the heavy air and expelled it in a long “whew.” Automatically I put the receiver on the phone. I started back to my chair in the other part of the room.
Right then I got the biggest shock of my life. The table was absolutely bare. The Codex had vanished!
I jumped to the door and shook it; it was locked as tightly as ever. I turned and stood stock still, staring down at the table, disbelieving my eyes.
From somewhere I heard an unmistakable chuckle.
I whirled around. And saw him.
There he stood, leaning negligently against the corner of the wall where the room turned, and regarding me with amusement in his grey eyes. A tall, lean man in an ordinary tweed suit. A sensitive face, ending in a long, strong jaw.
A number of thoughts chased themselves through my head in the space of that first second. Amazement was one of them. How had he gotten in? And if he had (which was impossible, unless he could walk through locked doors), how had he managed to get behind me? He hadn’t been in the other half of the room when I had put down the telephone receiver; and during my trip from the flat desk to the door, he could not have passed me, for the lights had been on then. Hostility was another of the thoughts. Had I not been overwrought by what had gone before, I might have reflected that, once in, he certainly couldn’t get out again until the guard returned, and I might have acted differently. But as it was, I would probably have flung myself upon anything in the room that moved or betrayed an appearance of animation.
I flung myself upon the man at the corner, glad that he no more resembled an Aztec bird-god in armour than did any one else to be met with on Broadway in the daytime. Here was some one I could deal with adequately, at any rate.
It soon turned out that I was wrong in that, however. Unexpectedly as my sudden attack must have been, he slipped back in a quick turn and landed a powerful blow against my shoulder. I got in with a few then on my own account, while he contented himself with little more than parrying. Within a short time, however, he appeared to have come to the conclusion that I meant business. He stepped closer; just as I was launching a smash toward his chin, he ducked with an agility that caught me unprepared, grasped my arm in a grip like a vice, and twisted.
The arm was bent back behind me. My face was forced suddenly forward and collided smartly with a bony knee that moved into its path at the proper instant. Then the knee moved on and I was forced to the floor with my opponent kneeling over me. Pain shot along my arm from the wrist and began spreading over the shoulder. I grunted with it and tried in vain to twist away; all I accomplished was to rub my face along the floor until it was turned once more in the direction of the doorway.
I had just achieved this position, surely no improvement upon its predecessor, when the door opened. Murchison stood in the entrance, his mouth partly open in amazement. But not for long. Like the other museum guards, he was a special officer and the gun that came up in his hand was business-like and steady. Although it was pointing too near my own head for comfort, I have seldom been more pleased with the sight of any weapon.
“Get up outta that,” commanded Murchison. “Stand away.”
They were the first words, except my short replies to Hartmann, that had been spoken in the room since he had left.
“Who is the man?” Murchison demanded.
I said: “I don’t know. I never saw him before.” I had gotten to my feet now and crossed over to the guard beside the doorway. Opposite us the fellow stood nonchalantly in the centre of the room, his hands in his coat pockets, and regarded us quizzically but with evident good humour. Murchison still had him covered.
“Don’t worry, he’s got the Codex,” I went on grimly. “It was here when you left to see to the lights. When they came on, it was gone and he had gotten into the room somehow.”
“Search him.… Up with your hands, my man.”
I made the search, to which he acceded willingly enough, with that amused half-smile still on his lips. Most of it I conducted with the left hand, for my right arm was growing no less painful and was now beginning to swell. There was no sign of the Codex; and since it was a good two and a half feet long and a number of inches in diameter, it could scarcely have been concealed on his person. I found a bunch of keys and took from his coat pocket (where his own hand had so recently been) a wicked little automatic. I realised abruptly that he could easily have shot down Murchison, and myself too, a few seconds before. I looked at him perplexedly; this was certainly a funny sort of chap.
I tried his keys on the door immediately. None of them fitted and I tossed the bunch back to him. There was no other key on him. He said, “Thanks, old man,” and pocketed them.
“Now,” he went on, “you’ll want to search the room. You have my word that I won’t interfere, nor will I attempt to get away. Let’s get it over with.”
The easy sincerity in his voice impressed me, but Murchison, I noticed, continued to keep a wary eye on him. We began at the door and went completely through the room. Every bundle was moved, every box was opened, the desks were thoroughly searched and also moved about. No sign whatsoever of the Codex could we find.
When we came at last to the crated statue at the end of the room, there was a long slit down one side of the sacking. Before I could say anything, our prisoner remarked conversationally, “Yes, that’s where I was. Of course. The lady with me looks hot but feels cold. If you have to lean against her for a few hours.”
I hadn’t an idea what he meant until I enlarged the slit somewhat and peered inside the crate. I recalled vaguely that Astarte was never considered as a symbol of the virginal and this conception, chiselled some thousands of years ago in Palestine, even from the small glimpse I could get, was sizzling. It struck me as a side thought that the basement was probably destined to be her permanent home at the Metropolitan.
The crate yielded nothing either. And that was the end. Definitely, the Codex had vanished from this locked room.
Our companion suggested calmly: “It’s getting late and I should like to leave presently. Will you please call up Mr. Roger Thorpe on that telephone? The number is Butterfield 7-8344.”
For want of anything better to do, the truth being that my mind was filled with bewilderment, I followed the suggestion. But I decided not to be too naïve about it. First I called Information and verified that the number was that of Roger Thorpe.
After a minute’s ringing Thorpe himself answered the phone; and since he was already acquainted with the situation, it took little time to tell him what had happened. He received the news with rumbles of excitement. “Let me speak to Tarrant at once,” he snorted through the receiver.
I placed the receiver against my side and turned about. “What is your name?” I asked the man across the room.
He was bending forward, lighting a cigarette. When he had finished, he said: “My name is Trevis Tarrant. Thorpe wants to speak with me?”
I handed the instrument over to him and heard him confirming the information I had just given.… “And kindly speak to this guard here, so I can go home.… Oh, forget it, Roger; and stop that snorting. You’ll have it back by noon to-morrow, one o’clock at the latest.… Yes, I give you my guarantee.”
More bewildered than ever, I hardly caught the end of Murchison’s words through the instrument. The upshot, however, was a complete change in the guard’s attitude. He now treated Tarrant with the utmost respect and seemed prepared to follow any directions the latter might give.
“Well,” said Tarrant, “first of all I’ll take back my little gun. And then I shall bid you good-night, if you will be so good as to show me the way out. How is your arm, young man?”
I winced with pain as he touched it and his concern was apparent at once. “That’s a bad wrench,” he ejaculated. “Worse than I meant. See here, you must come along with me and spend the night. No, I insist. I can fix that arm up for you; I owe you that much at the very least. Yes, yes, it’s decided; let us be getting along.”
I was too tired and in too much pain to argue. I merely went with him.
We picked up a cab opposite the Museum and in a few minutes were set down before a modern apartment house in the East Thirties. As Tarrant opened the door of his apartment a little Jap butler-valet, spick-and-span in a white coat, came hurrying into the entrance hallway, despite the lateness of the hour.
“Katoh,” Tarrant advised him, “this is Mr. Jerry Phelan. He will spend the rest of the night with us. Let us have two stiff whiskies for a nightcap, please.”
In the lounge-like room, pleasant and semi-modernistic, which we entered, the butler was already coming forward with a tray of bottles, glasses, and siphon. The drinks were quickly mixed.
“Bless,” said Tarrant raising his glass. He took a long pull. “Mr. Phelan is suffering from a severe ju-jitsu wrench in his right arm. See what you can do for him, Katoh.”
Once again the man hastened away, to return in a moment with a small bottle of ointment. He indicated a couch upon which he invited me to rest and helped me out of my coat and shirt. The arm was now throbbing with pain and was almost unbearable when he first touched it. His fingers were deft, strong—and gentle; and within a short time the peculiar massage he administered began to have a soothing effect.
To distract my attention, Tarrant was talking. “Katoh is as well educated a man as either you or I,” he was saying. “He is a doctor in his own country in fact. Over here he is a Japanese spy. I found that out some time ago.”
Katoh, busy with the muscles of my shoulder, looked up and grinned impishly. “Yiss.” He poured out more ointment. “Not to mention, pless. Not everybody so broad-minded.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a bit,” my host assured me. “If he wants to draw maps of New York when he could buy much better ones from Rand McNally for fifty cents, it’s entirely all right.… I heartily approve of spy systems that permit me to hire one of my equals as a butler.… A hobby of mine, as you saw to-night, is investigating strange or bizarre occurrences and he’s sometimes invaluable to me there also. No; I’m not only amused by the spy custom but I am actually a beneficiary of it.”
My arm was now so greatly improved that I was becoming aware of a tremendous fatigue. I sat up, mumbling my thanks, and finished off my drink. Tarrant said: “I think you’ll sleep very well. Show him where to do it, Katoh.”
I hardly saw the room to which the little Jap conducted me and where he assisted me out of my clothes and into a pair of silk pyjamas. The events of the evening had worn me out completely; I remember seeing the bed before me, but I don’t remember getting into it.
At quarter of ten the next morning Katoh came into the room just as I was preparing to open one eye. As he advanced toward me, he grinned cheerfully and observed, “Stiff, yiss?”
In a moment I was sufficiently awake to perceive the justice of the remark. My whole arm and shoulder were incapable of movement and as I inadvertently rolled over on my side, I gave a grunt of pain.
“Pless.”
The butler very gently removed my pyjama top and got to work with the same bottle of ointment. His ability was amazing; it could have been no more than a minute before the arm was limbering up. Within five minutes the pain had gone completely.
“All right now. You rub to-night, then all finish. Your shower ready, sair.”
Tarrant was waiting for me in the lounge, beside a table upon which two breakfast places had been laid out. As soon as we had greeted each other I lost no time in attacking the ice-cold grapefruit before my place. I was hungrier, in fact, than I can ever remember being.
During an excellent repast, of which I evidenced my appreciation in the most practical way, little was said. But when we had finished the last cup of coffee and were leaning back enjoying that first, and best, cigarette of the day, Tarrant remarked: “I see you know Marius Hartmann.”
This was surprising. I was sure I had not mentioned Hartmann to him during our brief acquaintance.
He smiled at my puzzled expression. “No,” he remonstrated, “I am not trying to emulate Holmes and bewilder a Dr. Watson. His card dropped out of your pocket last night when Katoh helped you out of your coat. There it is, over on the smoking stand.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I know him, worse luck. And by golly I shall have to step round and see him this morning.” I explained how I had come to be in the Museum the night before and related the matter of the wager. “So there it stands,” I finished. “I’m out a hundred dollars I certainly never expected to lose.”
“Bad luck,” my host observed. “Still, it was a foolish bet to have made. As I believe I mentioned last night, I interest myself in the sort of peculiar affairs with which we had to do; and whatever else may be said about them, they always come out unexpectedly. Very poor subjects for wagers. I should never risk anything on them myself.”
“I am altogether in the dark,” I confessed. “I can’t imagine what happened to the Codex. You—you don’t think it’s possible that that Aztlan Curse thing really worked, do you?” With the sunlight streaming in brightly I was viewing the matter quite differently than a few hours before. And yet, what could have happened?
“If you are asking whether I take a seven-hundred-year-old Mexican threat literally, I can tell you I don’t. I have seen older warnings than that take a miss; very much older. You heard me talking to Thorpe over the phone; he was afraid something would happen and, at my suggestion, he smuggled me into the room in the basement to discover what it might be.”
I grinned. “So I’m not the only one out of luck this morning.”
“I’m afraid you are,” Tarrant stated calmly. “In spite of your own unexpected presence which kept me much closer to the charmingly immoral Astarte than I had intended, I know exactly what occurred, and why.”
“Well——”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to an explanation, but I should rather let you have it a little later. Before the morning is out, I’ll be glad to tell you. Meantime, if you intend calling on Marius Hartmann, I should like to go with you, provided you have no objection. It happens that I should like to meet him and this will be a good opportunity, if you are sure you don’t mind.”
I expressed my entire willingness; indeed I was finding my new friend a pleasant companion. And presently we alighted in front of Hartmann’s sumptuous apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, somewhat above the Museum.
His rooms were ornate, with the stuffiness of classic furnishing, and filled with objets, as I am sure he called them. We had little time to notice them, however, for he made an immediate appearance. His smile was just what I had expected, as he greeted me. “I take it you have come to make a little settlement? You’re very prompt, Jerry.”
With the best grace I could summon I admitted his victory; and seeing a spindly kind of desk against one wall, I sat down and wrote out a cheque for him without more ado.
As I got up and waved the paper in the air to dry it (the desk had a sand trough instead of a blotter), I remembered Tarrant with sudden embarrassment. Hartmann had so exasperated me that I had forgotten my manners. I stammered some apologies and made the introduction.
They shook hands and Tarrant appropriated the only decent chair in the room. “By the way, Mr. Hartmann,” he asked, “how did you know so soon what happened at the Museum last night?”
“Eh? Oh, I telephoned Roger Thorpe first thing this morning and he told me all about it. I felt pretty sure something unusual would occur; the ancients possessed strange powers on this continent as well as in the East. But this is more remarkable than I imagined. Really inexplicable.”
“Why, I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Tarrant crossed one long leg over the other, as he lounged back comfortably. “I was there myself last night during the—phenomenon and a rather simple explanation occurs to me.”
“Is that so? You have discovered what type of power is in the Codex?” Hartmann leaned forward with every appearance of interest.
“There is undoubtedly a certain force in the Codex,” my companion agreed, “though not quite the sort you are thinking of. The recent phenomenon, however, was modern, very modern. And in a way estimable; scheduled simplicity is always a characteristic of the best phenomena. I almost regret that it didn’t come off.”
“How do you mean? I thought——”
“Oh, surely, the Codex vanished. But I have the strongest reasons to believe that it will return before one o’clock this afternoon. If you know what I mean?”
“But I don’t know at all. I can’t imagine. You suppose that in some way it became invisible last night and will materialise again to-day?”
“No, Mr. Hartmann,” said Tarrant softly, “I do not look for anything so astonishing. The Codex will reappear in a much more prosaic manner, I expect. It would not surprise me, for instance, if it should be handed in at the entrance of the Museum by a messenger, addressed to the Curator of Central American Antiquities. Of course, it might be delivered otherwise, but that, I should think, would be perhaps the best way.”
“You surprise me,” Hartmann declared. “Why should such a thing happen?”
“Chiefly because a certain Deputy Inspector Brown is a great friend of mine. He is a very busy man, handling cases turned over to him by the District Attorney, signing search warrants, but I am sure he would be glad to take a few minutes any time to see me. Ours is a very close friendship; he has actually sent two of his men with me this morning, simply on the chance that I might have some unexpected use for them.… Yes, that, I think, is the real reason why the Codex may be expected to reappear before my time limit runs out. It would embarrass me somewhat if the prediction I made to Roger Thorpe should fail in any particular.”
Hartmann had plainly been giving the words his serious attention. He said, “I see.”
Tarrant got unconcernedly out of his chair and, on his feet, extended his right hand. “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hartmann, I should be glad of your opinion about my little prediction. Of course, I can come back later—I should be delighted to see you again—but in that case I fear it will be too late to justify all my claims as prophet.”
The other apparently failed to observe Tarrant’s hand. He said, “I should really prefer not to interfere further with your day. Pleasant as your visit has been, I feel that we might not get on if we saw too much of each other. On the other hand, I may say I feel certain that so brilliant a man as you cannot be mistaken, especially when he has gone so far as to confide his expectations to one of the Museum Directors.”
It was evidently our cue to leave and I followed Tarrant across the room puzzled by the enigmatic fencing with words to which I had been a witness. At the doorway he turned.
“Oh, I’m afraid I nearly forgot something, Mr. Hartmann. Experiments of the kind we engaged in last night naturally carry no other penalty than failure. There is, however, a small fine of one hundred dollars, to cover the necessary experimental expenses and I have arranged that my friend Phelan should be empowered to deal with it rather than my other friend, Inspector Brown. To save every one’s time and trouble. Brown, as I said, is so busy he has doubtless forgotten all about it by now and it would be a shame to impose on his time unnecessarily.”
Marius Hartmann did a most surprising thing. He said, “I fear I shall be forced to agree with you again. Fortunately the matter is simple, as you have arranged it.”
He took from his pocket the cheque I had given him and, tearing it into small bits, dropped them into a tall vase.
In the taxi, on the way downtown, I turned to Tarrant. “But what—how—what is this all about?”
Tarrant’s expression was one of amusement. “Surely you realise that Hartmann has the Codex?”
“Well, yes; I suppose so. I couldn’t make head or tail of most of the conversation, but when he tore up my cheque, I realised he must be on a spot somehow. But I don’t see how he can have gotten hold of it. He was at the Waldorf telephoning me just before it disappeared.… Or was that a fake? Wasn’t he at the Waldorf at all?”
“Oh, no,” said Tarrant, “I’m sure he was at the Waldorf; and almost certainly had a friend with him at the telephone booth, to make sure of his alibi. His accomplice took the Codex, of course, and delivered it to him later.”
“His accomplice?”
“Murchison, the guard. That is the only way it could have happened. The affair was run off on a time schedule. Murchison turned the lights off at an arranged time. A few minutes later Hartmann phoned, calling you into the other part of the room, and while you were talking to him, the guard quietly opened the door, secured the Codex in the dark and locked the door again. His cue to do so was the ringing of the telephone bell. I’ve no doubt Hartmann did everything he could to upset you while the lights were out so that you would be too nervous to connect anything you might hear with an ordinary opening of the door.”
“Yes, he certainly did. He pretended to be frightened half out of his wits about me. Told me I must get as far away from the Codex as I could. But look here, Hartmann was the one to suggest that I be there, in the first place. Surely he wouldn’t have done that, if——”
“A brilliant idea; he is really a smart chap. He didn’t know I was going to be there; didn’t know anything about me. But if no one was present, it is obvious the guard would be suspected, as the only person to have a key, and be grilled unmercifully. He might break down. But this way, here was some one else, present at Hartmann’s own suggestion, who would give evidence that the door had not been opened at the crucial time. Provided everything worked out as planned. No, that was a clever notion of his.”
“How could you figure all this out, when you were inside that crate, if I’m right, during the theft?”
“Why, it’s the only way it could have happened. Although I didn’t see it, I was there in the room and knew just what the conditions were. If you attack the problem simply with reason—dismiss the smoke screen, an Aztec Curse this time—there cannot be any other solution.”
I thought that over. After a few moments I said: “That might do for Murchison. But how did you know who had bribed him?”
“Oh, that. Well, it was a longer shot. But Thorpe had some suspicions of him, to begin with. Hartmann had suggested the possibility of something supernatural about the Codex when his offer was turned down. And when he heard about the opening warning, he mentioned it again. He slipped there. Thorpe felt sure, though, that Hartmann wouldn’t plan an ordinary theft; that was why he fell in with the idea that I should be smuggled in. I wasn’t entirely certain, until he made that other slip, giving away his knowledge of what had happened, when he first saw you just now. I talked with Thorpe this morning myself and asked especially whether Hartmann had called him. He hadn’t.”
“The man’s no better than a common thief. It will be a good thing to have him arrested.” By golly, I never had liked that man; and for the first time I was beginning to feel my animosity justified.
“Wouldn’t think of having him arrested,” was Tarrant’s calm comment.
“Why not? He’s a thief,” I repeated.
“Nonsense. The episode was more in the nature of good entertainment than theft. The Codex will be back unharmed within an hour, which in itself is a very mitigating circumstance. All that talk of mine about Inspector Brown was pure bluff. Arrest one of the future benefactors of the Museum? He’ll be on the Board some day. Don’t be silly.
“As for me,” Tarrant concluded, “I should dislike greatly seeing him arrested. There are far too few such clever fellows at large as it is. With Hartmann confined there would be just one less chance for my own amusement.”
