Out of the Dark: Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers. Robert W. Chambers

dangling before me, and he laughed and placed it on the counter.

      ‘Did you ever see anything like that?’ he demanded.

      ‘No,’ said I truthfully, ‘and I hope I never shall again. What is it?’

      ‘I don’t know. Ask them at the Natural History Museum – they can’t tell you. The Smithsonian is all at sea too. It is, I believe, the connecting link between a sea urchin, a spider, and the devil. It looks venomous but I can’t find either fangs or mouth. Is it blind? These things may be eyes but they looks as if they were painted. A Japanese sculptor might have produced such an impossible beast, but it is hard to believe that God did. It looks unfinished too. I have a mad idea that this creature is only one of the parts of some larger and more grotesque organism – it looks so lonely, so hopelessly dependent, so cursedly unfinished. I’m going to use it as a model. If I don’t out-Japanese the Japs my name isn’t Godfrey.’

      The creature was moving slowly across the glass case towards me. I drew back.

      ‘Godfrey,’ I said, ‘I would execute a man who executed any such work as you propose. What do you want to perpetuate such a reptile for? I can stand the Japanese grotesque but I can’t stand that – spider—’

      ‘It’s a crab.’

      ‘Crab or spider or blindworm – ugh! What do you want to do it for? It’s a nightmare – it’s unclean!’

      I hated the thing. It was the first living creature that I had ever hated.

      For some time I had noticed a damp acrid odor in the air, and Godfrey said it came from the reptile.

      ‘Then kill it and bury it,’ I said, ‘and by the way, where did it come from?’

      ‘I don’t know that either,’ laughed Godfrey. ‘I found it clinging to the box that this gold serpent was brought in. I suppose my old Reuben is responsible.’

      ‘If the Cardinal Woods are the lurking places for things like this,’ said I, ‘I am sorry that I am going to the Cardinal Woods.’

      ‘Are you?’ asked Godfrey; ‘for the shooting?’

      ‘Yes, with Barris and Pierpont. Why don’t you kill that creature?’

      ‘Go off on your shooting trip, and let me alone,’ laughed Godfrey.

      I shuddered at the ‘crab’, and bade Godfrey good-bye until December.

      That night, Pierpont, Barris, and I sat chatting in the smoking car of the Quebec Express when the long train pulled out of the Grand Central Depot. Old David had gone forward with the dogs; poor things, they hated to ride in the baggage car, but the Quebec and Northern road provides no sportsman’s cars, and David and the three Gordon setters were in for an uncomfortable night.

      Except for Pierpont, Barris, and myself, the car was empty. Barris, trim, stout, ruddy, and bronzed, sat drumming on the window ledge, puffing a short fragrant pipe. His gun case lay beside him on the floor.

      ‘When I have white hair and years of discretion,’ said Pierpont languidly, ‘I’ll not flirt with pretty serving maids; will you, Roy?’

      ‘No,’ said I, looking at Barris.

      ‘You mean the maid with the cap in the Pullman car?’ asked Barris.

      ‘Yes,’ said Pierpont.

      I smiled, for I had seen it also.

      Barris twisted his crisp gray moustache, and yawned.

      ‘You children had better be toddling off to bed,’ he said. ‘That lady’s-maid is a member of the Secret Service.’

      ‘Oh,’ said Pierpont, ‘one of your colleagues?’

      ‘You might present us, you know,’ I said; ‘the journey is monotonous.’

      Barris had drawn a telegram from his pocket, and as he sat turning it over and over between his fingers he smiled. After a moment or two he handed it to Pierpont who read it with slightly raised eyebrows.

      ‘It’s rot – I suppose it’s cipher,’ he said. ‘I see it’s signed by General Drummond—’

      ‘Drummond, Chief of the Government Secret Service,’ said Barris.

      ‘Something interesting?’ I enquired, lighting a cigarette.

      ‘Something so interesting,’ replied Barris, ‘that I’m going to look into it myself—’

      ‘And break up our shooting trio—’

      ‘No. Do you want to hear about it? Do you, Billy Pierpont?’

      ‘Yes,’ replied that immaculate young man.

      Barris rubbed the amber mouthpiece of his pipe on his handkerchief, cleared the stem with a bit of wire, puffed once or twice, and leaned back in his chair.

      ‘Pierpont,’ he said, ‘do you remember that evening at the United States Club when General Miles, General Drummond, and I were examining that gold nugget that Captain Mahan had? You examined it also, I believe.’

      ‘I did,’ said Pierpont.

      ‘Was it gold?’ asked Barris, drumming on the window.

      ‘It was,’ replied Pierpont.

      ‘I saw it too,’ said I; ‘of course, it was gold.’

      ‘Professor La Grange saw it also,’ said Barris; ‘he said it was gold.’

      ‘Well?’ said Pierpont.

      ‘Well,’ said Barris, ‘it was not gold.’

      After a silence Pierpont asked what tests had been made.

      ‘The usual tests,’ replied Barris. ‘The United States Mint is satisfied that it is gold, so is every jeweller who has seen it. But it is not gold – and yet – it is gold.’

      Pierpont and I exchanged glances.

      ‘Now,’ said I, ‘for Barris’ usual coup-de-théâtre: what was the nugget?’

      ‘Practically it was pure gold; but,’ said Barris, enjoying the situation intensely, ‘really it was not gold. Pierpont, what is gold?’

      ‘Gold’s an element, a metal—’

      ‘Wrong! Billy Pierpont,’ said Barris coolly.

      ‘Gold was an element when I went to school,’ said I.

      ‘It has not been an element for two weeks,’ said Barris; ‘and, except General Drummond, Professor La Grange, and myself, you two youngsters are the only people, except one, in the world who know it – or have known it.’

      ‘Do you mean to say that gold is a composite metal?’ said Pierpont slowly.

      ‘I do. La Grange has made it. He produced a scale of pure gold day before yesterday. That nugget was manufactured gold.’

      Could Barris be joking? Was this a colossal hoax? I looked at Pierpont. He muttered something about that settling the silver question, and turned his head to Barris, but there was that in Barris’ face which forbade jesting, and Pierpont and I sat silently pondering.

      ‘Don’t ask me how it’s made,’ said Barris, quietly; ‘I don’t know. But I do know that somewhere in the region of the Cardinal Woods there is a gang of people who do know how gold is made, and who make it. You understand the danger this is to every civilized nation. It’s got to be stopped of course. Drummond and I have decided that I am the man to stop it. Wherever and whoever these people are – these gold makers – they must be caught, every one of them – caught or shot.’

      ‘Or shot,’ repeated Pierpont, who was owner of the Cross-Cut Gold Mine and found his income too