Sunday At The Salvage Yard: "The Book And The Beast"

From The Collected Stories of Robert Arthur

"The Book And The Beast" was originally published in Weird Tales (Canada) in September of 1942 and in Weird Tales (America) in March of 1943. Under the title "Mr. Dexter's Dragon" it was also anthologized in Ghosts & More Ghosts, Random House, 1963, but I think the original title works better to suggest both the plot and the resonance of the tale.

When he wrote it, my father hadn't yet married my mother or moved to Yorktown Heights, but was still living in his apartment on Waverly Place, and in the story, we once again find—as in "Footsteps Invisible" and "Mr. Milton's Gift" —a tale set in a mysteriously altered New York  City.

And while I suppose this is again, at least technically, a horror/fantasy story, in this case, the fantasy element vastly outweighs the horror. In fact, this is a playful, funny story in which my father assumed his readers would enjoy the same kind of story he did—and would therefore be attentive to the delightfully punchy clues with which he studded his tale. In the way it uses clues, this story actually reminds me a bit of "The People Next Door."

I love Dad's use of the old-fashioned verb "indite"—meaning to write, or to compose—in this story, and I also love the power the story gives to books—a power all writers believe, in their heart of hearts, to be the greatest power in the world.

Elizabeth Arthur

THE BOOK AND THE BEAST

By Robert Arthur

WALDO DEXTER found the book in the most prosaic of places—a second-hand shop.  Not even a good second-hand shop. Just a dingy hole in the wall on Canal Street, east of Broadway, a region as commonplace as Manhattan has to offer.

It was a shop devoted chiefly to second-hand luggage and old clothes of the most depressing appearance.  Mr. Dexter entered it in the first place only because a high wind had blown away his hat, whisking it in a series of eccentric leaps out of sight into a dark alley well supplied with puddles.

Waldo Dexter watched the hat vanish without emotion.  He was accustomed to losing things.  His hats blew away, he left his umbrellas on trains and in subways, and his glasses frequently dropped and broke. He was a smallish man, going bald, with an eager glitter in his eye that denoted the passionate hobbyist—which he was. His specialty was the collection of books and manuscripts devoted to magic and witchcraft.

It was to stave off a cold in the head rather than because he cared how he looked that Mr. Dexter turned into the little second-hand store.  There were some caps in the window, and he intended to buy one. A cap would keep his skull warm, be cheap, and wouldn't blow off. Mr. Dexter was not an impractical man, for all his eager absorption in his hobby.

It was very easy to buy a cap.  The only difficulty was to avoid buying half the contents of the store. If Waldo Dexter had been a fraction more suggestible, or the small, voluble proprietor a trifle more persuasive, he might have indeed done so. Mr. Dexter, however, was firm enough to avoid this sorry consequence of his slight mishap.  But he could not very well refuse the proprietor's last impassioned plea, which was that he at least look around to see if there positively wasn't anything else he could use.

Mr. Dexter let his glance run swiftly over the shelves, counters, and racks. Then, as if some magnetic quality in the volume had drawn his eyes to it, he saw the book on a low shelf, gathering dust.

The volume was not thick, but in height and breadth it was about the shape of an old-fashioned ledger.  It was bound in leather, of an unusual purplish-black color and a fine, unfamiliar texture. There was no title or inscription. There was, however—and Waldo Dexter's small, gray mustache quivered with interest—an inch-wide iron strap running completely about the book, keeping it not only shut but locked. For a small, rusty iron padlock of antique design was hooked through a hasp where the ends of the iron strap overlapped.

With a murmur indicating an interest so slight as to be almost nonexistent, and a gesture so casual that a word might have stopped it, Mr. Dexter reached for the book, brought it forth, and blew a fine film of dust from it.

"Hmm," he commented, and turning a lackluster eye upon the proprietor, shook the book slightly. "What is it?" he sighed.

It was, he gathered from the instant reply, a volume of the utmost rarity, the personal diary of a European nobleman of note, an intimate friend of Napoleon's. It had been found in a suitcase bought by the proprietor himself at a sale of unclaimed luggage from the various hotels.  It had belonged to a European gentleman who had been so uncouth as to run out on his hotel bill—at least, he had vanished from his room and never been seen again—and so had come into the proprietor's possession with the utmost legality. He was holding it for a collector who had offered him a hundred dollars for it, but if Mr. Dexter cared to make a better offer—

Waldo Dexter sighed and yawned politely, restraining the itch that quivered in every fiber of him to see what lay behind that suggestively locked iron strap.

"If it's worth so much," he inquired, raising one eyebrow, "why did the owner have to beat his hotel bill?  Why didn't he just sell the book?"

Then, not waiting for an answer, he fumbled at the small padlock. It proved to be not locked—the proprietor had picked it. Mr. Dexter swung back the cover, the iron hinge at the back moving with some difficulty, and as his eye fell upon the first page, his heart pounded so with excitement that it was with the greatest effort he kept his hands steady.

The book was not a printed volume. It was handwritten in ink, with flowing letters so ornate as to be almost unreadable, upon ruled pages.  The writing seemed to be a mixture of bad French and Italian, with some Latin thrown in for good measure.

It was not a diary at all, though the fact of its being handwritten might have misled an ignorant purchaser.

At the top of the page, in the bold, flowing script, was written in Italian: Recipes and Conjurations. And beneath that a few lines of verse which Mr. Dexter, because of their multilingual complexity, was not able to puzzle out. Beneath the verse was the single capital letter: C.

Waldo Dexter's pulse was hammering as he flipped rapidly through the pages of the volume.  He dared not inspect it more closely, lest he reveal his interest. But his gratified eye made out, at the top of several of the pages, such tantalizing headings as To Be Invisible, and To Make a Demon Bring Three Bags of Gold.

There were others, equally promising, but his scholarship was not great enough to untangle the lingual mixture of their wording in such a brief space. He did, however, pause to study with gleaming eyes the picture which some hand had inset into the exact center of the book.

The picture had been painted by a skilled artist upon the finest of parchment.  The parchment was a trifle yellowed, but the brilliant colors of the small, hungry-looking dragon upon it were undimmed.

It was a quite repulsive little creature, squatting upon a flagstoned floor, and staring out from the page with bright yellow eyes. At a slight distance behind the dragon the unknown artist had added a touch of artistic detail by putting in a cluttered heap of bones. Mr. Dexter did not try to make out more.

He closed the volume, yawned again, and shook his head.

"You lied to me," he accused the proprietor, looking him in the eye. "This isn't a diary at all. It's just a lot of nonsense.  It's either an old copybook that some child did compositions in, or something similar.  The picture's obviously a child's drawing. The whole thing isn't worth a dollar, except for the binding and clasp. If this was a real book, I might buy it, but just to put in my library as a curiosity.  Even then I wouldn't give more than ten dollars for it."

He shrugged and started to put the book back. The proprietor brought forth a hasty torrent of words. Ultimately Mr. Dexter allowed himself to be persuaded. Having set his own price, he was eventually talked out of ten dollars. Presently, shaking so with suppressed eagerness he could hardly hold the paper-wrapped book in his hands, he emerged from the shop. After one quick gulp of fresh air, he dived into a taxi to be taken to Pennsylvania Station, and thence by train to Bayside, Long Island, where he lived comfortably in a small house close to the water, tended by an aged couple.

Arriving home, Waldo Dexter popped directly into his study, and there, with trembling fingers, unwrapped his treasure. He leafed through it, at first quickly, then giving close attention to some of the pages. He spent perhaps an hour in this preliminary survey, and after that, because he simply had to tell someone of his find, he took enough time out to dash off a quick letter to his nearest crony. This was one McKenzie Muir, whose residence was in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.

It is  (wrote Waldo Dexter) a handwritten volume of recipes and conjurations dating at least to the early 18th century.  It is bound in, I am positive, human skin; a Senegambian's, I would wager.  An iron band constitutes part of the binding, and this locks with an iron padlock.  Within, upon the first page, is a bit of doggerel verse which I have finally translated as

Ope not this book
'Twixt dusk and dawn
Lest you let loose
The devil's spawn.

Beneath that is the single letter, an ornate capital C.

The warning I take to be intended to scare off unauthorized persons who might wish to make use of the volume.  For—I have no proof, but hope to discover some—I am convinced that this was Cagliostro's own personal volume of magical charms and conjurations!

The whole thing is written in a hash of Latin, French, and Italian.  This I take to have been an additional precaution against unauthorized use, since only a very well-educated person could possibly have read it. It will take considerable digging to make the necessary translations, but I have already partially deciphered two of the conjurations.  One is simply called,  "To Be Invisible."  The other, "To Make a Demon Bring Three Bags of Gold."

If the ingredients were available, I would most certainly try the charms out! But one of the necessary articles for the first, for instance, is fat tried from the hand of a man hanged upon a gibbet. This imposes some difficulty in using the recipes! But I have no doubt I will find others which are simpler and then I shall positively experiment to discover their efficacy.

The most noteworthy item in the volume, though, is an inset parchment containing the brilliantly colored picture of a dragon. The monster has green scales, long blue claws, blue fangs in a crimson mouth, a scarlet tail, and scarlet filaments or antennae dangling from its head and spine like seaweed. Its eyes are bright yellow shot through with scarlet, and gleam from its head with an almost living brilliance.

The dragon seems to be squatting upon a tiled floor of stone, looking directly at you, jaws slightly agape, and a ravenous expression plain upon its features. Its scaled flanks are lean and sunken.  Its bones show through everywhere. A leaner, hungrier, more sinister monster I have never seen pictured. I have, accordingly, decided to nickname it Cassius.

Behind the dragon, partially obscured, is a pile of bones—a pleasantly gruesome touch.  For they are human bones. I have examined the picture through the glass, and there are visible thirteen human skulls, so skillfully done by the artist that under magnification every detail of them is accurate even to the discoloration showing some to be older than the others. Mingled with them are a mass of other bones and shreds of cloth; the whole is startling and almost upsetting in its vivid accuracy.

More than this I cannot tell you now. I have only had a few minutes in which to examine my find. Mrs. Studley is calling me for dinner, and I shall resume my examination after I have eaten.

You must come over and see it—today (as you get this) if possible.  Please bring your collection of Cagliostro's letters—a handwriting comparison will tell us instantly whether this volume was indited by him or not.  Don't try to buy it from me, though. Perhaps I'll leave it to you in my will, but you will never get it away from me sooner!
                                                  

Cordially,
                                                      WALDO DEXTER

 Mr. Dexter then sealed the letter, stamped and addressed it, and upon going downstairs to dinner gave it to Mrs. Studley to mail later.  He ate rapidly, gulping down a really excellent meal, as Mrs. Studley testified later, and then dashed back to his study to resume his perusal of his odd volume.

When the Studleys, having cleaned up the dinner dishes, left for their own home, several blocks distant, he was so engrossed he did not even respond to their good nights—a fact which somehow greatly upset buxom Mrs. Studley the next day.

For when, the next morning, she sent Studley up to call Mr. Dexter to breakfast, Waldo Dexter was not to be found. He was not in his bedroom. He was not in his study.  He was nowhere in the house. He was simply gone.

When the police arrived, they made slight headway in fathoming the mystery of Waldo Dexter's disappearance. He was just gone, with nothing to show for his going save a slight disturbance of his study.  Some books had been knocked off his desk, as if swept off by a careless arm, and Mr. Dexter's glasses had fallen to the floor and broken.

Beyond this there was no trace of him. The disturbance was not enough to suggest a fight, and Waldo Dexter was not wealthy enough to warrant his having been kidnapped. The police finally decided that Mr. Dexter had either deliberately vanished for reasons of his own, or wandered off in a state of amnesia.

Neither of these suggestions could be improved upon by Mr. McKenzie Muir, who arrived during the latter part of the afternoon.

Mr. Muir, a lanky Scotsman, was not so much interested in ascertaining the whereabouts of Waldo Dexter as he was in getting hold of the volume Dexter had written him about. Quickly learning the facts, he did not think it necessary to show the police Waldo Dexter's note to him; nor, in fact, to discuss the handwritten volume which they found opened upon Mr. Dexter's desk, gave a casual scrutiny to, and put aside.

Muir favored the amnesia theory himself and had small doubt that Dexter would reappear shortly. Before he did, Mr. Muir intended to see that the volume Waldo Dexter had stumbled upon was in his possession—and possession he interpreted as nine tenths of the law.

Accordingly, awaiting a favorable opportunity, he opened the purple leather-bound book and quickly slapped upon the inside cover one of his own bookplates, a supply of which he carried in his wallet. Then, having given the mucilage time to dry, he took the book to the lieutenant in charge of the case. Convincingly he explained that his chief reason for calling that day had been to get back the volume, borrowed from him by Dexter. He showed the bookplate, and was presently allowed to depart with the ledger.

He left, filled with the exultation of the collector, and returned by bus and subway to his home—a trip of several hours, so that it was after dark when he arrived. In studying the volume on the way, all thought of Waldo Dexter passed from his mind.

Arrived at his own residence, however, Mr. Muir was forced for a time to abandon his examination of his newly acquired treasure.  First he had to eat the dinner his butler had kept waiting for him.  Then a neighbor dropped in and sat gossiping the rest of the evening.

When Mr. Muir picked up the book again, he found himself fascinated, as Waldo Dexter had been, by the repulsive little dragon.

After a moment he reached for a glass to study it more carefully.  And doing so, he snorted, for he perceived that Dexter had been guilty of a distinct inaccuracy in describing the beast.

“‘Lean and hungry!'" he sniffed aloud. "'Bones showing through everywhere.' Gross overstatement.  The beastie is not fat, to be sure, but his bones don't show through. And though one might say his expression was hungry, I'd not call it ravenous. There's even a bit of bulge to the belly, which is not an indication of starvation. And—" Muir peered more closely through the glass— "there are fourteen skulls, not thirteen, in the heap behind the beastie. Ha! It's not like old Dexter to be so careless.  No doubt he did wander off somewhere with amnesia. Must have been slipping in his mind to make so many mistakes!"

Noting that it was now close to midnight, McKenzie Muir hastily turned out his study light. He strode into his bedroom, found he still held the purplish volume in his hand, and set it down upon a bureau, putting the reading glass on top of the picture of the hungry little dragon.

Then, having extinguished the light, he did not give the thing another thought.

Even the crash of the reading glass falling to the floor some time later did not disturb him.

The disappearance of McKenzie Muir was really a delightful sensation for the newspapers.

Since there was very little disarray—a broken reading glass on the floor, the bedclothes tossed in a heap into a corner—the disappearance was most mysterious, especially as the doors and all windows were locked. Resorting to the vague statement that they were working on clues, the police presently found it convenient to forget about the whole affair.

So the house was put in order, and the servants dismissed.  It was Johnson, the butler, performing his last duties, who slipped the odd volume that his master had stolen from Waldo Dexter onto a shelf and made everything neat.

As he handled the volume, it fell open in his hands at the picture of a small dragon. Johnson gazed at it for a moment with passing interest.

"Jolly fat little beast," he commented to Dora, the maid, who was pulling down the window shades. "Got a grin on him from ear to ear." Then, closing the book and putting it away, they left the study to gather dust.

The house remained tightly locked for some months, while some distant cousins sought to prove that McKenzie Muir was dead so that they might inherit it. Then one winter night a defective wire started the fire that before morning had reduced the entire structure to a heap of charred beams and powdery ashes fallen into the cellar hole.

And once again the newspapers received an unexpected godsend. The discovery of bones constituting the mortal remains of no less than fifteen human beings, together with some larger bones whose origin was obscure, pleasantly titillated several million newspaper readers for almost a week.

The scientists to whom the unidentifiable bones were taken were more than titillated, however. They were at first interested, and then vexed as they found themselves unable to come to any agreement as to the creature to whom those skeletal remains had once belonged. Eventually, however, they were able to salve their professional pride  by  announcing  that  the  bones belonged to some hitherto unknown species of the sabre-tooth tiger.

So that, except for one small point, the authorities in the end were able to explain the whole affair rather neatly. 

The bones, they concluded, represented the victims of McKenzie Muir, a homicidal maniac who lured people to his residence, killed them, and buried them in the cellar.  Undoubtedly he had so treated his unfortunate friend, Waldo Dexter. Then Muir, becoming frightened, had cleverly vanished.

Later he had returned to the locked house to burn it and destroy the evidence of his crimes, and himself had perished in the flames—for easily recognizable among the grisly relics dug forth by the searchers had been McKenzie Muir's dentures.

Thus almost all the loose ends were cleverly tied up. The only point for which the authorities never were able to offer any plausible explanation was the question of what, exactly, a sabre-tooth tiger was doing in the house.