The Best of L. Sprague de Camp L. Sprague de Camp

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"Wait, please," said Hathaway. "I got to get me a pencil. My Seneca ain't so hot. . -
When Hathaway was driving back to Gahato, he attempted to pass a truck on one of the
narrow bridges over the Moose River at McClintock. The truck driver misjudged his clearance, and
Hathaway's car stopped with a rending crunch, wedged between the truck and the bridge girders.
When the garage people got the vehicles untangled and towed to the garage, Hathaway learned that
he faced a four-hour, fifty-dollar repair job before he could start moving again, let alone have
his fenders straightened. And the afternoon train north had just left McClintock.
That evening, Barbara Scott had collected the elite of Gahato for her s�ance: Doe Lenoir
and his wife; Levi Macdonald, the bank cashier, and his better half; the Pringles, father and son;
and a couple of other persons. Dan Pringle greeted Barbara with a polite but
cynical smile. He was plump and wheezed and had seldom been worsted in a deal.
Barbara sat her guests- in a circle in semidarkness to await the arrival of her
"influences." When Harvey Pringle had fallen asleep, she got out her paraphernalia. She sat on a
chair in the cabinet, a thing like a curtained telephone booth, and directed the men to tie her
securely to the chair. Then she told them to drop the curtain and put out the lights. She warned
them not to risk her health by turning on the lights without authorization. It was not an
absolutely necessary warning, as she could control the lights herself by a switch inside the
cabinet.
On the table between the cabinet and the sitters were a dinner bell, a trumpet, and a
slate. The chair on which Barbara sat came apart easily. Concealed in the cabinet was a quantity
of absorbent cotton for ectoplasm. There was also a long-handled grasping device, painted black.
Her own contribution to the techniques of this venerable racket was a system of small lights which
would warn her if any of the sitters left his chair.
Soon, Barbara gave the right kind of squirm, and the trick chair came apart. The loose
bonds could now be removed. Barbara moaned to cover the sounds of her preparations and chanted a
few lines from the Iliad in Greek. She intended to have Socrates as one of her controls this time.
She was still peeling rope when she was astonished to hear the dinner bell ring. It wasn't
a little ting such as would be made by someone's accidentally touching it, but a belligerent
clangor, such as would be made by a cook calling mile-away farmhands. The little signal lights
showed all the sitters to be in their seats. The bell rang this way and that, and the trumpet
began to toot.
Barbara Scott had been s�ancing for several years and had come to look upon darkness as a
friend, but now childish fears swarmed out of her. The cabinet began to rock. She screamed. The
cabinet rocked more violently. The door of the false side flew open; the cotton and the grasper
were snatched out. The curtain billowed. The table began to rock too. From the darkness came an
angry roar as the grasper tweaked Doe Lenoir's nose.
From somewhere came the muffled beat of a drum and a long, ululating loon-cry:
"U-u-u-u-u-u-u-u!"
The cabinet tipped over against the table. Barbara fought herself
out of the wreckage. She remembered that her private light switch was in series with the room's
main switch, so that the lights could not be turned on until the secret switch had be�n thrown.
She felt for it, pushed it, and struggled out of the remains of the cabinet.
The terrified sitters were blinded by the lights and dumb at the spectacle of the medium
swathed in loose coils of rope with her hand on the switch, her dress torn, and the beginnings of
a black eye. Next they observed that the bell, slate, grasper, and other objects were swooping
about the room under their own power.
When the lights came on, there was a yell and a command in an unknown language. The slate
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry...e%20Best%20of%20L%20Sprague%20De%20Camp.txt (80 of 149) [2/5/2004 12:29:03 AM] [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki