XIII
The Black Book
Our final rehearsal, on the night of the twenty-first of July, was fairly accurate as regards the speeches and attention to cues, but it lacked fire and assurance. Varduk, however, was not disappointed.
“It has often been said, and often proven as well, that a bad last rehearsal means a splendid first performance,” he reminded us. “To bed all of you, and try to get at least nine hours of sleep.” Then he seemed to remember something. “Miss Holgar.”
“Yes?” said Sigrid.
“Come here, with me.” He led her to the exact center of the stage. “At this spot, you know, you are to stand when the final incident of the play, and our dialog together, unfolds.”
“I know,” she agreed.
“Yet—are you sure? Had we not better be sure?” Varduk turned toward the auditorium, as though to gage their position from the point of view of the audience. “Perhaps I am being too exact, yet—”
He snapped his fingers in the direction of Davidson, who seemed to have expected some sort of request signal. The big assistant reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a piece of white chalk.
“Thank you, Davidson.” Varduk accepted the proffered fragment. “Stand a little closer center, Miss Holgar. Yes, like that.” Kneeling, he drew with a quick sweep of his arm a small white circle around her feet.
“That,” he informed her, standing up again, “is the spot where I want you to stand, at the moment when you and I have our final conflict of words, the swearing on the Bible, and my involuntary blessing upon your head.”
Sigrid took a step backward, out of the circle. I, standing behind her, could see that she had drawn herself up in outraged protest. Varduk saw, too, and half smiled as if to disarm her. “Forgive me if I seem foolish,” he pleaded gently.
“I must say,” she pronounced in a slow, measured manner, as though she had difficulty in controlling her voice, “that I do not feel that this little diagram will help me in the least.”
Varduk let his smile grow warmer, softer. “Oh, probably it will not, Miss Holgar; but I am sure it will help me. Won’t you do as I ask?”
She could not refuse, and by the time she had returned across the stage to me she had relaxed into cheerfulness again. I escorted her to the door of her cabin, and her good night smile warmed me all the way to my own quarters.
Judge Pursuivant appeared at noon the next day, and Varduk, hailing him cordially, invited him to lunch.
“I wonder,” ventured Varduk as we all sat down together, “if you, Judge Pursuivant, would not speak a few words in our favor before the curtain tonight.”
“I?” The judge stared, then laughed. “But I’m not part of the management.”
“The management—which means myself—will be busy getting into costume for the first act. You are a scholar, a man whose recent book on Byron has attracted notice. It is fitting that you do what you can to help our opening.”
“Oh,” said Pursuivant, “if you put it like that—but what shall I tell the audience?”
“Make it as short as you like, but impressive. You might announce that all present are subpenaed as witnesses to a classic moment.”
Pursuivant smiled. “That’s rather good, Mr. Varduk, and quite true as well. Very good, count on me.”
But after lunch he drew me almost forcibly away from the others, talking affably about the merits of various wines until we were well out of earshot. Then his tone changed abruptly.
“I think we know now that the thing—whatever it is—will happen at the play, and we also know why.”
“Why, then?” I asked at once.
“I am to tell the audience that they are ‘subpenaed as witnesses.’ In other words, their attention is directed, they must be part of a certain ceremony. I, too, am needed. Varduk is making me the clerk, so to speak, of his court—or his cult. That shows that he will preside.”
“It begins to mean something,” I admitted. “Yet I am still at a loss.”
Pursuivant’s own pale lips were full of perplexity. “I wish that we could know more before the actual beginning. Yet I, who once prepared and judged legal cases, may be able to sum up in part:
“Something is to happen to Miss Holgar. The entire fabric of theatrical activity—this play, the successful effort to interest her in it, the remote theater, her particular role, everything—is to perform upon her a certain effect. That effect, we may be sure, is devastating. We may believe that a part, at least, of the success depends on the last line of the play, a mystery as yet to all of us.”
“Except to Varduk,” I reminded.
“Except to Varduk.”
But a new thought struck me, and for a moment I found it comforting.
“Wait. The ceremony, as you call it, can’t be all evil,” I said. “After all, he asks her to swear on a Bible.”
“So he does,” Pursuivant nodded. “What kind of a Bible?”
I tried to remember. “To tell the truth, I don’t know. We haven’t used props of any kind in rehearsals—not even the sword, after that first time.”
“No? Look here, that’s apt to be significant. We’ll have to look at the properties.”
We explored the auditorium and the stage with a fine show of casual interest. Davidson and Switz were putting final touches on the scenery—a dark blue backdrop for evening sky, a wall painted to resemble vine-hung granite, benches and an arbor—but no properties lay on the table backstage.
“You know this is a Friday, Gib?” demanded Jake, looking up from where he was mending the cable of a floodlight. “Bad luck, opening our play on a Friday.”
“Not a bit,” laughed Pursuivant. “What’s begun on a Friday never comes to an end. Therefore—”
“Oi!” crowed Jake. “That means we’ll have a record-breaking run, huh?” He jumped up and shook my hand violently. “You’ll be working in this show till you step on your beard.”
We wandered out again, and Sigrid joined us. She was in high spirits.
“I feel,” she said excitedly, “just as I felt on the eve of my first professional appearance. As though the world would end tonight!”
“God forbid,” I said at once, and “God forbid,” echoed Judge Pursuivant. Sigrid laughed merrily at our sudden expressions of concern.
“Oh, it won’t end that way,” she made haste to add, in the tone one reserves for children who need comfort. “I mean, the world will begin tonight, with success and happiness.”
She put out a hand, and I squeezed it tenderly. After a moment she departed to inspect her costume.
“I haven’t a maid or a dresser,” she called over her shoulder. “Everything has to be in perfect order, and I myself must see to it.”
We watched her as she hurried away, both of us sober.
“I think I know why you fret so about her safety,” Pursuivant said to me. “You felt, too, that the thing she said might be a bad omen.”
“Then may her second word be a good omen,” I returned.
“Amen to that,” he said heartily.
Dinnertime came, and Pursuivant and I made a quick meal of it. We excused ourselves before the others—Sigrid looked up in mild astonishment that I should want to leave her side—and went quickly downstairs to the stage.
On the property table lay the cudgel I was to use in the first act, the sword I was to strike with in the second, the feather duster to be wielded by Martha Vining as Bridget, a tray with a wine service to be borne by Davidson as Oscar. There was also a great book, bound in red cloth, with red edging.
“That is the Bible,” said Pursuivant at once. “I must have a look at it.”
“I still can’t see,” I muttered, half to myself, “how this sword—a good piece of steel and as sharp as a razor—failed to kill Varduk when I—”
“Never mind that sword,” interrupted Judge Pursuivant. “Look at this book, this ‘Bible’ which they’ve refused to produce up to now. I’m not surprised to find out that—well, have a look for yourself.”
On the ancient black cloth I saw rather spidery capitals, filled with red coloring matter: Grand Albert.
“I wouldn’t look inside if I were you,” warned the judge. “This is in all probability the book that Varduk owned when Davidson met him at Revere College. Remember what happened to one normal young man, ungrounded in occultism, who peeped into it.”
“What can it be?” I asked.
“A notorious gospel for witches,” Pursuivant informed me. “I’ve heard of it—Descrepe, the French occultist, edited it in 1885. Most editions are modified and harmless, but this, at first glance, appears to be the complete and infamous Eighteenth Century version.” He opened it.
The first phase of his description had stuck in my mind. “A gospel for witches; and that is the book on which Sigrid must swear an oath of renunciation at the end of the play!”
Pursuivant was scowling at the flyleaf. He groped for his pince-nez, put them on. “Look here, Connatt,” he said.
I crowded close to his elbow, and together we read what had been written long ago, in ink now faded to a dirty brown:
At 1 hr. befor midnt, on 22 July, 1788 givn him. He was brot to coeven by Todlin he the saide Geo. G. to be bond to us for 150 yers. and serve for our glory he to gain his title & hav all he desirs. at end of 150 yrs. to give acctg. & not be releasd save by delivring anothr as worthie our coeven.
“And look at this, too,” commanded Judge Pursuivant. He laid his great forefinger at the bottom of the page. There, written in fresh blue ink, and in a hand somehow familiar:
This 22nd of July, 1938, I tender this book and quit this service unto Sigrid Holgar.