Part 2

"And Ruthven?" I prompted, feeling unaccountably presumptuous in speaking uninvited.

Varduk smiled and lowered his fringed lids. "The part is not too difficult," he murmured. "Ruthven is off stage more than on, an influence rather than a flesh-and-blood character. I shall honor myself with this title rôle."

Switz, sitting near me, produced a watch. We had been listening to the play for full two hours and a half.

Again a knock sounded at the door. Davidson started to rise, but Varduk's slender hand waved him down.

"That will be Judge Pursuivant. I shall admit him myself. Keep your seats all."

He got up and crossed the floor, walking stiffly as though he wore tight boots. I observed with interest that in profile his nose seemed finer and sharper, and that his ears had no lobes.

"Come in, Judge Pursuivant," he said cordially at the door. "Come in, sir."

_3. Enter Judge Pursuivant_

Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in appearance and manner. Our first impression was of a huge tweed-clad body, a pink face with a heavy tawny mustache, twinkling pale eyes and a shock of golden-brown hair. Under one arm he half crushed a wide black hat, while the other hand trailed a heavy stick of mottled Malacca, banded with silver. There was about him the same atmosphere of mature sturdiness as invests Edward Arnold and Victor McLaglen, and withal a friendly gayety. Without being elegant or dashing, he caught and held the regard. Men like someone like that, and so, I believe, do women who respect something beyond sleek hair and brash repartee.

Varduk introduced him all around. The judge bowed to Sigrid, smiled at Miss Vining, and shook hands with the rest of us. Then he took a seat at the desk beside Varduk.

"Pardon my trembling over a chance to see something that may have been written by Lord Byron to lie perdu for generations," he said pleasantly. "He and his works have long been enthusiasms of mine. I have just published a modest note on certain aspects of his----"

"Yes, I know," nodded Varduk, who was the only man I ever knew who could interrupt without seeming rude. "_A Defense of the Wickedest Poet_--understanding and sympathetic, and well worth the praise and popularity it is earning. May I also congratulate you on your two volumes of demonology, _Vampyricon_ and _The Unknown that Terrifies_?"

"Thank you," responded Pursuivant, with a bow of his shaggy head. "And now, the manuscript of the play----"

"Is here." Varduk pushed it across the desk toward the expert.

Pursuivant bent for a close study. After a moment he drew a floor lamp close to cast a bright light, and donned a pair of pince-nez.

"The words 'by Lord Byron', set down here under the title, are either genuine or a very good forgery," he said at once. "I call your attention, Mr. Varduk, to the open capital B, the unlooped down-stroke of the Y, and the careless scrambling of the O and N." He fumbled in an inside pocket and produced a handful of folded slips. "These are enlarged photostats of several notes by Lord Byron. With your permission, Mr. Varduk, I shall use them for comparison."

He did so, holding the cards to the manuscript, moving them here and there as if to match words. Then he held a sheet of the play close to the light. "Again I must say," he announced at last, "that this is either the true handwriting of Byron or else a very remarkable forgery. Yet----"

Varduk had opened a drawer of the desk and once more he interrupted. "Here is a magnifying glass, Judge Pursuivant. Small, but quite powerful." He handed it over. "Perhaps, with its help, you can decide with more accuracy."

"Thank you." Pursuivant bent for a closer and more painstaking scrutiny. For minutes he turned over page after page, squinting through the glass Varduk had lent him. Finally he looked up again.

"No forgery here. Every stroke of the pen is a clean one. A forger draws pictures, so to speak, of the handwriting he copies, and with a lens like this one can plainly see the jagged, deliberate sketchwork." He handed back the magnifying glass and doffed his spectacles, then let his thoughtful eyes travel from one of us to the others. "I'll stake my legal and scholastic reputation that Byron himself wrote these pages."

"Your stakes are entirely safe, sir," Varduk assured him with a smile. "Now that you have agreed--and I trust that you will allow us to inform the newspapers of your opinion--that _Ruthven_ is Byron's work, I am prepared to tell how the play came into my possession. I was bequeathed it--by the author himself."

We all looked up at that, highly interested. Varduk smiled upon us as if pleased with the sensation he had created.

"The germ of _Ruthven_ came into being one night at the home of the poet Shelley, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The company was being kept indoors by rain and wind, and had occupied itself with reading German ghost stories, and then tried their own skill at Gothic tales. One of those impromptu stories we know--Mary Godwin's masterpiece, _Frankenstein_. Lord Byron told the strange adventures of Ruthven, and Polidori appropriated them--that we also know; but later that night, alone in his room, Byron wrote the play we have here."

"In one sitting?" asked Martha Vining.

"In one sitting," replied Varduk. "He was a swift and brilliant worker. In his sixteen years of active creative writing, he produced nearly eighty thousand lines of published verse--John Drinkwater reckons an average of fourteen lines, or the equivalent of a complete sonnet, for every day. This prodigious volume of poetry he completed between times of making love, fighting scandal, traveling, quarreling, philosophizing, organizing the Greek revolution. An impressive record of work, both in size and in its proportion of excellence."

Sigrid leaned forward. "But you said that Lord Byron himself bequeathed the play to you."

Again Varduk's tight, brief smile. "It sounds fantastic, but it happened. Byron gave the manuscript to Claire Clairmont, his mistress and the mother of two of his children. He wanted it kept a secret--he had been called fiend incarnate too often. So he charged her that she and the children after her keep the play in trust, to be given the world a hundred years from the date of his death."

* * * * *

Pursuivant cleared his throat. "I was under the impression that Byron had only one child by Claire Clairmont, Mr. Varduk. Allegra, who died so tragically at the age of six."

"He had two," was Varduk's decisive reply. "A son survived, and had issue."

"Wasn't Claire's son by Shelley?" asked Pursuivant.

Varduk shook his curly head. "No, by Lord Byron." He paused and drew a gentle breath, as if to give emphasis to what he was going to add. Then: "I am descended from that son, ladies and gentlemen. I am the great-grandson of Lord Byron."

He sank back into his shadows once more and let his luminous face seem again like a disembodied mask against the dark tapestry. He let us be dazzled by his announcement for some seconds. Then he spoke again.

"However, to return to our play. Summer is at hand, and the opening will take place at the Lake Jozgid Theater, in July, later to come to town with the autumn. All agreed? Ready to discuss contracts?" He looked around the circle, picking up our affirmative nods with his intensely understanding eyes. "Very good. Call again tomorrow. Mr. Davidson, my assistant, will have the documents and all further information."

Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real warmth.

"So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me--my suite is here in this hotel."

She bade Varduk good-night, nodded to the others and left quickly. I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant that recalled me to my surroundings.

"I've seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr. Connatt," he said graciously. "Shall we go out together? Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in another of my enthusiasms--late food and drink."

We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.

"Two of those, and soda--no ice," he directed. "Something to eat, Mr. Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato salad." Smiling, he turned back to me. "Good living is my greatest pursuit."

"Greater than scholarship?"

He nodded readily. "However, I don't mean that tonight's visit with Mr. Varduk was not something to rouse any man's interest. It was full of good meat for any antiquary's appetite. By the way, were you surprized when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?"

"Now that you mention it, I wasn't," I replied. "He's the most Byronic individual I have ever met."

"Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the manner a pose. But in any case, he's highly picturesque, and from what little I can learn about him, he's eminently capable as well. You feel lucky in being with him in this venture?"

I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. "Judge Pursuivant," I said honestly, "any job is a godsend to me just now."

"Then let me congratulate you, and warn you."

"Warn me?"

"Here's your whisky," he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, "Warn me, you were saying, sir?"

"Yes." He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline mustache. "It's this play, _Ruthven_."

"What about it?"

His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.

"This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were we? Oh, yes, about _Ruthven_. I was quite unreserved in my opinion, wasn't I?"

"So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the manuscript being genuine."

"So I did," he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. "And I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content, albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron's. Yet I felt like staking my reputation on something else."

He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.

"It's a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most certainly wrote _Ruthven_, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked less than ten years ago."

_4. Into the Country_

The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.

Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk's hotel. Only Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy of the play and left.

After my frugal lunch--I was still living on the money Jake Switz had lent me--I walked to the library and searched out a copy of _Contemporary Americans_. Varduk's name I did not find, and wondered at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to the P's. This time my search bore fruit:

PURSUIVANT, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Landing, Ky.; Col. and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861-65; attorney and journalist; d. 1898) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b. 1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).

Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A. B., male, 1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL. B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar, 1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917, to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U. S. A., 1917-19, D. S. C., Cong. Medal of Honor, _Legion d'Honneur_ (Fr.). Ret. legal practice, 1919.

Author: _The Unknown That Terrifies_, _Cannibalism in America_, _Vampyricon_, _An Indictment of Logic_, etc.

Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.

Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.

Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.

Address: Low Haven, RFD No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.

Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of his existence--had she died in giving him life?--Keith Pursuivant was born, it seemed, to distinction. To graduate from Yale in 1908 he must have been one of the youngest men in his class, if not the youngest; yet, at seventeen, he was an honor student, an athlete, member of an exclusive senior society and an orator. After that, law school, practise and election to the bench of his native community at the unheard-of age of twenty-three.

Then the World War, that sunderer of career-chains and remolder of men. The elder Pursuivant had been a colonel at twenty-one, a major-general before twenty-five; Keith, his son, deserting his brilliant legal career, was a major at twenty-six, but in the corps of brain-soldiers that matched wits with an empire. That he came off well in the contest was witnessed by his decorations, earnest of valor and resource.

"Ret. legal practise, 1919." So he did not remain in his early profession, even though it promised so well. What then? Turn back for the answer. "Ph. D., Oxford, 1922." His new love was scholarship. He became an author and philosopher. His interests included the trencher--I had seen him eat and drink with hearty pleasure--the study hall, the steel blade.

What else? "Protestant"--religion was his, but not narrowly so, or he would have been specific about a single sect. "Independent"--his political adventures had not bound him to any party. "Unmarried"--he had lived too busily for love? Or had he known it, and lost? I, too, was unmarried, and I was well past thirty. "Address: Low Haven"--a country home, apparently pretentious enough to bear a name like a manor house. Probably comfortable, withdrawn, full of sturdy furniture and good books, with a well-stocked pantry and cellar.

I felt that I had learned something about the man, and I was desirous of learning more.

* * * * *

On the evening mail I received an envelope addressed in Jake Switz's jagged handwriting. Inside were half a dozen five-dollar bills and a railway ticket, on the back of which was scribbled in pencil: "Take the 9 a. m. train at Grand Central. I'll meet you at the Dillard Falls Junction with a car. J. Switz."

I blessed the friendly heart of Sigrid's little serf, and went home to pack. The room clerk seemed surprized and relieved when I checked out in the morning, paying him in full. I reached the station early and got on the train, securing a good seat in the smoking-car. Many were boarding the car, but none looked at me, not even the big fellow who seated himself into position at my side. Six years before I had been mobbed as I stepped off the Twentieth Century Limited in this very station--a hundred women had rent away my coat and shirt in rags for souvenirs----

"Would you let me have a match, Mr. Connatt?" asked a voice I had heard before. My companion's pale blue eyes were turned upon me, and he was tucking a trusty-looking pipe beneath his blond mustache.

"Judge Pursuivant!" I cried, with a pleasure I did not try to disguise. "You here--it's like one of those Grand Hotel plays."

"Not so much coincidence as that," he smiled, taking the match I had found. "You see, I am still intrigued by the paradox we discussed the other night; I mean, the riddle of how and when _Ruthven_ was set down. It so happens that an old friend of mine has a cabin near the Lake Jozgid Theater, and I need a vacation." He drew a cloud of comforting smoke. "Judiciously I accepted his invitation to stay there. You and I shall be neighbors."

"Good ones, I hope," was my warm rejoinder, as I lighted a cigarette from the match he still held.

By the time our train clanked out of the subterranean caverns of Grand Central Station, we were deep in pleasant talk. At my earnest plea, the judge discussed Lord Byron.

"A point in favor of the genuineness of the document," he began, "is that Byron was exactly the sort of man who would conceive and write a play like _Ruthven_."

"With the semi-vampire plot?" I asked. "I always thought that England of his time had just about forgotten about vampires."

"Yes, but Byron fetched them back into the national mind. Remember, he traveled in Greece as a young man, and the belief was strong in that part of the world. In a footnote to _The Giaour_--you'll find his footnotes in any standard edition of his works--he discusses vampires."

"Varduk spoke of those who fancied Byron to be the devil," I remembered.

"They may have had more than fancy to father the thought. Not that I do not admire Byron, for his talents and his achievements; but something of a diabolic curse hangs over him. Why," and Pursuivant warmed instantly to the discussion, "his very family history reads like a Gothic novel. His father was 'Mad Jack' Byron, the most sinful man of his generation; his grandfather was Admiral 'Foul-weather Jack' Byron, about whose ill luck at sea is more than a suggestion of divine displeasure. The title descended to Byron from his great-uncle, the 'Wicked Lord,' who was a murderer, a libertine, a believer in evil spirits, and perhaps a practising diabolist. The family seat, Newstead Abbey, had been the retreat of medieval monks, and when those monks were driven from it they may have cursed their dispossessors. In any case, it had ghosts and a 'Devil's Wood.'"

"Byron was just the man for that heritage," I observed.

"He certainly was. As a child he carried pistols in his pockets and longed to kill someone. As a youth he chained a bear and a wolf at his door, drank wine from a human skull, and mocked religion by wearing a monk's habit to orgies. His unearthly beauty, his mocking tongue, fitted in with his wickedness and his limp to make him seem an incarnation of the hoofed Satan. As for his sins----" The judge broke off in contemplation of them.

"Nobody knows them all," I reminded.

"Perhaps he repented," mused my companion. "At least he seems to have forgotten his light loves and dark pleasures, turned to good works and the effort to liberate the Greeks from their Turkish oppressors. If he began life like an imp, he finished like a hero. I hope that he was sincere in that change, and not too late."

I expressed the desire to study Byron's life and writings, and Pursuivant opened his suitcase on the spot to lend me Drinkwater's and Maurois' biographies, a copy of the collected poems, and his own work, _A Defense of the Wickedest Poet_.

We ate lunch together in the dining-car, Pursuivant pondering his choice from the menu as once he must have pondered his decision in a case at court. When he made his selection, he devoured it with the same gusto I had observed before. "Food may be a necessity," quoth he between bites, "but the enjoyment of it is a blessing."

"You have other enjoyments," I reminded him. "Study, fencing----"

That brought on a discussion of the sword as weapon and symbol. My own swordsmanship is no better or worse than that of most actors, and Pursuivant was frank in condemning most stage fencers.

"I dislike to see a clumsy lout posturing through the duel scenes of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ or _Hamlet_," he growled. "No offense, Mr. Connatt. I confess that you, in your motion-picture interpretation of the rôle of Don Cæsar de Bazan, achieved some very convincing cut-and-thrust. From what I saw, you have an understanding of the sport. Perhaps you and I can have a bout or so between your rehearsals."

I said that I would be honored, and then we had to collect our luggage and change trains. An hour or more passed on the new road before we reached our junction.

* * * * *

Jake Switz was there as he had promised to be, at the wheel of a sturdy repainted car. He greeted us with a triumphant story of his astuteness in helping Elmo Davidson to bargain for the vehicle, broke off to invite Pursuivant to ride with us to his cabin, and then launched into a hymn of praise for Sigrid's early rehearsals of her rôle.

"Nobody in America seems to think she ever made anything but movies," he pointed out. "At home in Sweden, though, she did deep stuff--Ibsen and them guys--and her only a kid then. You wait, Gib, she'll knock from the theater public their eyes out with her class."

The road from the junction was deep-set between hills, and darkly hedged with high trees. "This makes the theater hard to get at," Jake pointed out as he drove. "People will have to make a regular pilgrimage to see Holgar play in _Ruthven_, and they'll like it twice as well because of all the trouble they took."

Pursuivant left us at the head of a little path, with a small structure of logs showing through the trees beyond. We waved good-bye to him, and Jake trod on his starter once more. As we rolled away, he glanced sidewise at me. His crossed eyes behind their thick lenses had grown suddenly serious.

"Only one night Sigrid and I been here, Gib," he said, somewhat darkly, "and I don't like it."

"Don't tell me you're haunted," I rallied him, laughing. "That's good press-agentry for a horror play, but I'm one of the actors. I won't be buying tickets."

He did not laugh in return.

"I won't say haunted, Gib. That means ordinary ghosts, and whatever is here at the theater is worse than ghosts. Listen what happened."

_5. Jake's Story_

Sigrid, with Jake in attendance as usual, had left New York on the morning after Varduk's reading of _Ruthven_. They had driven in the car Jake had helped Davidson to buy, and thus they avoided the usual throngs of Sigrid's souvenir-demanding public, which would have complicated their departure by train. At Dillard Falls Junction, Varduk himself awaited them, having come up on a night train. Jake took time to mail me a ticket and money, then they drove the long, shadowy way to the theater.