A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, December 1949 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

#3 = major tragedy of neglect. I had written to ____ both before sailing, and had looked for one Se CAS —S 5 - - ae A. MERRITT’S FANTASY 4 of them, at least, to be on the dock to ss meet me. They were the closest of friends I had, and the queer current of hostility between _ them had often amused me. They thor- oughly liked, yet as thoroughly disap- proved of, each other. I had the idea that away down under they were closer each to the other than to me; that they might have been Damon and Pythias if each hadn’t so ‘disliked the other’s attitude toward life; and maybe were Damon and Pythias despite it. Old Aesop formulated their discordance centuries ago in his fable of the Ant and the Cricket. Bill Bennett was the Ant. _ The serious-minded, hard-working son of Dr. Lionel Bennett, until recently one of the modern, civilized world’s five out- standing experts upon brain pathology. I make the distinction of modern and civil- ized because I have had proof that what we are pleased to call the uncivilized world has many more such experts, and I have good reason to believe that the ancient world had others much further advanced than those of the modern world, civilized or uncivilized. Bennett, the elder, had been one of the few specialists whose mind turned upon his work rather than his bank account. Distinguished but poor. Bennett, the younger, was about ‘thirty-five, my own age. I knew that his father had rested heavily upon him. I suspected that along some lines, and especially in the realm of the sub-conscious, the son had outstripped the sire; his mind more flexible, more open. Bill had written me a year ago that his father had died, and that he had asso- ciated himself with Dr. Austin Lowell, taking the place of Dr. David Braile who had been killed not long before by a fall- ing chandelier in Dr. Lowell’s private hospital. Dick Ralston was the Cricket. He was heir to a fortune so solid that even the teeth of the depression could only scratch it. Very much the traditional rich man’s son of the better sort, but seeing no honor, use, joy nor any other virtue in labor. Happy-go-lucky, clever, generous — but decidedly a first-class idler. I was the compromise—the bridge on which they could meet. I had my medical _ degree, but also I had enough money to — save me from the grind of practice. — Enough to allow me to do as I pleased—_ which was drifting around the world on ethnological research. Especially in those fields which my medical and allied scien- tific brethren call superstition — native sorceries, witchcraft, voodoo and the like. In that research I was as earnest as Bill in his. And he knew it. Dick, on the other hand, attributed my wanderings to an itching foot inherited from one of my old Breton forbears, a pirate who had sailed out of St. Malo and carved himself a gory reputation in th New World. He ultimately was hange for it. The peculiar bent of my mind he likewise attributed to the fact that two of thy ancestors had been burned as witches in Brittany. | I was perfectly understandable to him. Bill’s industry was not so understand- able. I reflected, morosely, that even if I had been away for three years it was too short a time to be forgotten. And then I man- aged to shake off my gloom and to laugh at myself. After all, they might not have gotten my letters; or they might have had engagements they couldn’t break; and each might have thought the other would be on hand. — [HERE was a paper on the bed, the Evening Sun. I noticed that it was of the day before. My eye fell oped some headlines. I stopped laughing. The story ran: | : $5,000,000 COPPER HEIR KILLS HIMSELF os Richard J. Ralston, Jr., who inherited some $5,000,000 when his father, rich mine | owner, died two years ago, was found dead in his bed this morning in his apartments at 356 Park Avenue. He had shot himself through the head, dying instantly. The pistol with which he had killed himself was lying — on the floor, where it had fallen from his hand. The Detective Bureau identified the finger marks on it as his own. Discovery was made by his butler, John Simpson, who said that he had gone into the room about 8 o’clock, following his usual custom, From the condition of the body Dr. Peabody, of the coroner’s office, estimated = __ that Ralston must have shot himself about _ COMME OC ai _ * ie | 4 sa — wales fe mage