The Second Wish and Other Exhalations by Brian Lumley
Then, since the hour already approached twelve and I would be late for my ‘appointment,’ I phoned for a taxi and double-checked that my one or two antique treasures were safely locked away; and finally I donned my overcoat. Half an hour or so later, at perhaps a quarter to one, I stood on Crow’s doorstep and banged upon his heavy oak door; and having heard the arrival of my taxi, he was there at once to greet me. This he did with his customary grin (or enigmatic smile?), his head cocked slightly to one side in an almost enquiring posture. And once again I was ushered into the marvellous Aladdin’s Cave which was Blowne House.
Now Crow had been my friend ever since my father sent me out of America as a child in the late thirties, and no man knew him better than I; and yet his personality was such that whenever I met him — however short the intervening time — I would always be impressed anew by his stature, his leonine good looks, and the sheer weight of intellect which seemed invariably to shine out from behind those searching, dark eyes of his. In his flame-red, wide sleeved dressing-gown, he might easily be some wizard from the pages of myth or fantasy.
In his study he took my overcoat, bade me sit in an easy chair beside a glowing fire, tossed a small log onto ruddy embers and poured me a customary brandy before seating himself close by. And while he was thus engaged I took my chance to gaze with fascination and unfeigned envy all about that marvellous room.
Crow himself had designed and furnished that large room to contain most of what he considered important to his world, and certainly I could have spent ten full years there in constant study of the contents without absorbing or even understanding a fifth part of what I read or examined. However, to give a brief and essentially fleshless account of what I could see from my chair:
His ‘Library,’ consisting of one entire wall of shelves, contained such works as the abhorrent Cthaat Aquadingen (in a binding of human skin!), Feery’s Original Notes on the Necronomicon (the complete book, as opposed to my own abridged copy), Wendy-Smith’s translation of the G’harne Fragments, a possibly faked but still priceless copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Justin Geoffrey’s People of the Monolith, a literally fabulous Cultes des Goules (which, on my next birthday, having derived all he could from it, he would present to me), the Geph Transcriptions, Wardle’s Notes on Nitocris, Urbicus’ Frontier Garrison, circa ad 183, Plato on Atlantis, a rare, illustrated, pirated and privately printed Complete Works of Poe in three sumptuous volumes, the far more ancient works of such as Josephus, Magnus, Levi and Erdschluss, and a connected set of volumes on oceanic lore and legend which included such works as Gantley’s Hydrophinnae and Konrad von Gerner’s Fischbuch of 1598. And I have merely skimmed the surface …
In one dim corner stood an object which had been a source of fascination for me, and no less for Crow himself: a great hieroglyphed, coffin-shaped monstrosity of a grandfather clock, whose tick was quite irregular and abnormal, and whose four hands moved independently and without recourse to any time-system with which I was remotely familiar. Crow had bought the thing in an auction some years previously, at which time he had mentioned his belief that it had once belonged to my father — of which I had known nothing, not at that time.
As for the general decor and feel of the place:
Silk curtains were drawn across wide windows; costly boukhara rugs were spread on a floor already covered in fine Axminster; a good many Aubrey Beardsley originals — some of them most erotic — hung on the walls in equally valuable antique rosewood frames; and all in all the room seemed to exude a curiously mixed atmosphere of rich, warm, Olde Worlde gentility on the one hand, a strange and alien chill of outer spheres on the other.
And thus I hope I have managed to convey something of the nature of Titus Crow and of his study — and of his studies — in that bungalow dwelling on Leonard’s Heath known as Blowne House … As to why I was there—
“I suppose you’re wondering,” Crow said after a while, “just why I asked you to come? And at such an hour on such a chilly night, when doubtless you’ve a good many other things you should be doing? Well, I’ll not keep you in suspense — but first of all I would greatly appreciate your opinion of something.” He got up, crossed to his desk and returned with a thick book of newspaper cuttings, opening it to a previously marked page. Most of the cuttings were browned and faded, but the one Crow pointed out to me was only a few weeks old. It was a photograph of the head and shoulders of a man, accompanied by the following legend:
Mr. Sturm Magruser, head of ‘Magruser Systems UK,’ the weapons manufacturing company of world repute, is on the point of winning for his company a £2,000,000 order from the Ministry of Defence in respect of an at present ‘secret’ national defence system. Mr. Magruser, who himself devised and is developing the new system, would not comment when he was snapped by our reporter leaving the country home of a senior Ministry of Defence official, but it has been rumoured for some time that his company is close to a breakthrough on a defence system which will effectively make the atom bomb obsolete. Tests are said to be scheduled for the near future, following which the Ministry of Defence is expected to make its final decision …
“Well?” Crow asked as I read the column again.
I shrugged. “What are you getting at?”
“It makes no impression?”
“I’ve heard of him and his company, of course,” I answered, “though I believe this is the first time I’ve actually seen a picture of him — but apart from—”
“Ah!” Crow cut in. “Good! This is the first time you’ve seen his picture: and him a prominent figure and his firm constantly in the news and so on. Me too.”
“Oh?” I was still puzzled.
“Yes, it’s important, Henri, what you just said. In fact, I would hazard a guess that Mr Magruser is one of the world’s least photographed men.”
“So? Perhaps he’s camera shy.”
“Oh, he is, he is — and for a very good reason. We’ll get to it — eventually. Meanwhile, let’s eat!”
Now this is a facet of Crow’s personality which did annoy me: his penchant for leaping from one subject to another, willy-nilly, with never a word of explanation, leaving one constantly stumbling in the dark. He could only do it, of course, when he knew that his audience was properly hooked. But in my case I do not expect he intended any torment; he merely offered me the opportunity to use my mind. This I seized upon, while he busied himself bringing out cold cuts of fried chicken from his kitchen.
II
Sturm Magruser … A strange name, really. Foreign, of course. Hungarian, perhaps? As the ‘Mag’ in ‘Magyar’? I doubted it, even though his features were decidedly eastern or middle-eastern; for they were rather pale, too. And what of his first name, Sturm? If only I were a little more proficient in tongues, I might make something of it. And what of the man’s reticence, and of Crow’s comment that he stood amongst the least photographed of men?
We finished eating. “What do you make of the “V” after his name?” Crow asked.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s a common enough vogue nowadays,” I answered, “particularly in America. It denotes that he’s the fifth of his line, the fifth Sturm Magruser.”
Crow nodded and frowned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But in this case it can’t possibly be. No, for he changed his name by deed-poll after his parents died.” He had grown suddenly intense, but before I could ask him why, he was off again. “And what would you give him for nationality, or rather origin?”
I took a stab at it. “Romanian?”
He shook his head. “Persian.”
I smiled. “I was way out, wasn’t I?”
“What about his face?” Crow pressed.
I picked up the book of cuttings and looked at the photograph again. “It’s a strange face, really. Pale somehow …”
“He’s an albino.”
“Ah!” I said. “Yes, pale and startled — at least in this picture — displeased at being snapped, I suppose.”
Again he nodded. “
He paused to pour more brandy and I leaned closer to him, fascinated to find out exactly what he was getting at. “Now,” he finally continued, “I’m an odd sort of chap, as you’ll appreciate, but I’m not eccentric — not in the popular sense of the word. Or if I am,” he hurried on, “it’s of my choosing. That is to say, I believe I’m mentally stable.”
“You are the sanest man I ever met,” I told him.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he answered, “and you may soon have reason for re-evaluation, but for the moment I am sane. How then might I explain the loathing, the morbid repulsion, the absolute shock of horror, which struck me almost physically upon opening the pages of my morning newspaper and coming upon that picture of Magruser? I could not explain it — not immediately …” He paused again.
“Presentiment?” I asked. “A forewarning?”
“Certainly!” he answered. “But of what, and from where? And the more I looked at that damned picture, the more sure I became that I was seeing something monstrous! Seeing him — that face, startled, angered, trapped by the camera — and despite the fact that I could not possibly know him, I recognized him.”
“Ah,” I said. “You mean that you’ve known him before, under his former name?”
Crow smiled, a trifle wearily I thought. “The world has known him before under several names,” he answered. Then the smile slipped from his face. “Talking of names, what do you make of his forename?”
“Sturm? I’ve already considered it. German, perhaps?”
“Good! Yes, German. His mother was German, his father Persian, both nationalized Americans in the early 1900s. They left America to come here during McCarthy’s Un-American Activities witch-hunts. Sturm Magruser, incidentally, was born on 1 April 1921. An important date, Henri, and not just because it was April Fool’s Day.”
“A fairly young man,” I answered, “to have reached so powerful a position.”
“Indeed,” Crow nodded. “He would have been forty-three in a month’s time.”
“Would have been?” I was surprised by Crow’s tone of finality. “Is he dead then?”
“Mercifully, yes,” he answered, “Magruser and his project with him! He died the day before yesterday, on 4 March 1964, also an important date. It was in yesterday’s news, but I’m not surprised you missed it. He wasn’t given a lot of space, and he leaves no mourners that I know of. As to his “secret weapon,”‘ (and here Crow gave an involuntary little shudder), “the secret has gone with him. For that, too, we may be thankful.”
“Then the cemetery you mentioned in your note is where he’s to be interred?” I guessed.
“Where he’s to be cremated,” he corrected me. “Where his ashes are to be scattered to the winds.”
“Winds!” I snapped my fingers. “Now I have it! “Sturm” means “storm” — it’s the German word for storm!”
Crow nodded. “Again correct,” he said. “But let’s not start to add things up too quickly.”
“Add things up?” I snorted. “My friend, I’m completely lost!”
“Not completely,” he denied. “What you have is a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to work from. Difficult, but once you have completed the frame the rest will slowly piece itself together. Now then, I was telling you about the time three weeks ago when I saw Magruser’s picture.
“I remember I was just up, still in my dressing-gown, and I had just brought the paper in here to read. The curtains were open and I could see out into the garden. It was quite cold but relatively mild for the time of the year. The morning was dry and the heath seemed to beckon me, so that I made up my mind to take a walk. After reading the day’s news and after breakfast, I would dress and take a stroll outdoors. Then I opened my newspaper — and Sturm Magruser’s face greeted me!
“Henri, I dropped the paper as if it were a hot iron! So shaken was I that I had to sit down or risk falling. Now I’m a fairly sturdy chap, and you can well imagine the sort of shock my system would require to disturb it. Then as I sat down in my chair and stooped to recover the newspaper — the other thing.
“Out in the garden, a sudden stirring of wind. The hedgerow trembling and last year’s leaves blowing across my drive. And birds startled to flight, as by the sudden presence of someone or thing I could not see. And the sudden gathering and rushing of spiralling winds, dust-devils that sucked up leaves and grit and other bits of debris and shot them aloft. Dust-devils, Henri, in March — in England — half-a-dozen of them that paraded all about Blowne House for the best part of thirty minutes! In any other circumstance, a marvellous, fascinating phenomenon.”
“But not for you?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not then. I’ll tell you what they signified for me, Henri. They told me that just as I had recognized something, so I had been recognized! Do you understand?”
“Frankly, no,” and it was my turn to shake my head.
“Let it pass,” he said after a moment. “Suffice it to say that there were these strange spiralling winds, and that I took them as a sign that indeed my psychic sense had detected something unutterably dangerous and obscene in this man Sturm Magruser. And I was so frightened by my discovery that I at once set about to discover all I could of him, so that I should know what the threat was and how best to deal with it.”
“Can I stop you for a moment?” I requested.
“Eh? Oh, certainly.”
“Those dates you mentioned as being important, Magruser’s birth and death dates. In what way important?”
“Ah! We shall get to that, Henri,” he smiled. “You may or may not know it, but I’m also something of a numerologist.”
Now it was my turn to smile. “You mean like those fellows who measure the great pyramid and read in their findings the secrets of the universe?”
“Do not be flippant, de Marigny!” he answered at once, his smile disappearing in an instant. “I meant no such thing. And in any case, don’t be in too great a hurry to discredit the pyramidologists. Who are you to say what may or may not be? Until you have studied a thing for yourself, treat it with respect.”
“Oh!” was all I could say.
“As for birth and death dates, try these: 1889, 1945.”
I frowned, shrugged, said: “They mean nothing to me. Are they, too, important?”
“They belong to Adolf Hitler,” he told me, “and if you add the individual numbers together you’ll discover that they make five sets of nine. Nine is an important number in occultism, signifying death. Hitler’s number, 99999, shows him to have been a veritable Angel of Death, and no one could deny that! Incidentally, if you multiply five and nine you get forty-five, which are the last numbers in 1945 — the year he died. This is merely one example of an ancient science. Now please, Henri, no more scoffing at numerology …”
Deflated, still I was beginning to see a glimmer of light in Crow’s reasoning. “Ah!” I said again. “And Sturm Magruser, like Hitler, has dates which add up to forty-five? Am I right? Let me see: the 1st of the 4th 1921 — that’s eighteen — and the 4th of the 3rd 1964. That’s forty-five!”
Crow nodded, smiling again. “You’re a clever man, Henri, yes — but you’ve missed the most important aspect of the thing. But never mind that for now, let me get back to my story …
“I have s
“First, however, I contacted a friend of mine at the British Museum, the Curator of the Special Books Department, and asked him to search something out for me in the Necronomicon. I must introduce you one day, Henri. He’s a marvellous chap. Not quite all there, I fancy — he can’t be to work in that place — but so free of vice and sin, so blindly naive and innocent, that the greatest possible evils would bounce right off him, I’m sure. Which is just as well, I suppose. Certainly I would never ask an enquiring or susceptible mind that it lay itself open to the perils of Alhazred’s book.
“And at last I was able to concentrate on Magruser. This was about midday and my mind had been working frantically for several hours, so that already I was beginning to feel tired — mentally if not physically. I was also experiencing a singular emotion, a sort of morbid suspicion that I was being watched, and that the observer lurked somewhere in my garden!
“Putting this to the back of my mind, I began to make discreet telephone enquiries about Magruser — but no sooner had I voiced his name than the feeling came over me again, more strongly than before. It was as if a cloud of unutterable malignity, heavy with evil, had settled suddenly over the entire house. And starting back from the telephone, I saw once again the shadow of a nodding dust-devil where it played with leaves and twigs in the centre of my drive.”