A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, December 1949 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

—— — a ee =: . = aot “% Thee sain «Oa < - ~ ae ) i me them. Stanton’s executor called me up this morning to ask the same thing. Said Stanton had drawn _ substantial - amounts of cash just before he died, and th hey hadn’t been able to trace it.” ~ I whistled: : re “Tats queer. How about Calhoun wy xt e tate Pidae _ begin to smell damned fishy.” I’m te to find out,” he = said. = “Wait = minute, Bill,” I said. “I’m a Be “Ss oC d waiter, and all of that. But I’m get- a ‘ting mighty curious. When do I see you, and pot do you want me to do in the WwW #3 he answered his voice was as ‘gre ave as I’d ever heard it. — “Alan, sit tight until I can lay the cards b peiore you. I don’t want to say more now, , trust me, there’s a good reason. I’ i | tell you one thing, though. That inter- | vie ww of yours is another hook—and I’m not sure it isn’t baited even better than mine. : mm AT was on Tuesday. Obviously, I -was puzzled and curious to a degree. y much so that if it had been anybody but Bill who had sat me down in my little corner chair and told me to be quiet, I would have been exceedingly angry. But knew what he was about—I was sure eet So I stayed out. Or Wednesday, Dick was buried. I rent Over my notes and started the first apter of my book on Moroccan sor- . Thursday night, Bill called up. “ there's a small dinner party at Dr. well’s tomorrow night,” he said. “A S de Keradel and his daughter. I want you to come. I'll promise you'll be inter- ¢ ” | De ‘Keradel? The name had a familiar sound. “Who is he?” I asked. reso} René de Keradel, the French psychia- tr oe. must have read some of his—” a es, of course,” I’ interrupted. “He 1p some of Charcot’s hypnotic ex- lents at the Salpetriere didn’t he? ed them on from the point where ot had stopped. Left the Salpetriere cloud some years ago. Subjects he-was to ‘too geertiodos: or some- CREEP, SHADOW! BS n d Marston? If they did the same, it'll” = said: “I'll be there. I’d like to meet im,” “Good,” said Bill. “Dinner’s at 7 30. Wear your dinner jacket. And come an eR hour ahead of time. There’s a girl who —— = = = wants to talk to you before the company — aS comes, as we used to say.’ “A gut” I asked, astonished. “Helen,” said Bill with a chuckle. “And — don’t you disappoint her. You're her hero.” He hung up. % Helen was Bill’s sister. About ten years younger than I. I hadn't seen her for fifteen years. An impish sort of kid, I - recalled. Eyes sort of slanting and yellow brown. Hair a red torch. Gawky when I saw her last and inclined to be fat. Used | to follow me around when I was visit- ing Bill during college vacations, and sit and stare at me without speaking until it — made me so nervous I stuttered. Never could tell whether it was silent a _ adoration or sheer deviltry. That was oe when she was abouc twelve. Nor could I SSSR forget how she had led me, apparently os innocently, to sit on a subterranean nest : aaa of hornets; nor the time when, going to — Se ~ bed, I had found it shared by a family of = garter snakes, The first might have been an accident, although I had my doubts, but the second wasn’t. I had dumped the snakes out the window and never by word, look or gesture referred to it, having my reward in the child’s bafflement at my reticence and her avid but necessarily mute curiosity, I knew she had gone through Smith College and had been studying art in Florence. I wondered _ what she had grown to be. I read over some of de Keradel’s papers at the Academy of Medicine Library next — day. He was a queer bird without doubt, with some extraordinarily arresting the- ories. I didn’t wonder that the Salpetriere | had eased him out. Stripped of their scien- tific verbiage, the framework of his main idea was startlingly like that expounded to eee. a) ‘ ; Le { ht Oe Steer 2 ; eae me by the Many-Times-Born Abbot of the Lamasery at Gyang-tse, in Tibet. = A holy man and an accomplished won- eo der-worker, a seeker of knowledge along strange paths, what would be loosely called = a sorcerer by the superstitious. Also by a- Greek priest near Delphia whose Christian cloak covered a pure case of pagan ata-— vism. He offered to demonstrate his hypo- — Comicbooks.com-