The Greatest Short Stories of E. F. Benson. E. F. Benson

when he is in this state, if a man who knew Black Magic was in the room, or knew that he was practising White Magic, he could get the spirit who presides over the Black Magic to kill the spirit of White Magic, for the Black Magic is the more potent, and the two are foes. And as the spirit of White Magic is on occasions a powerful friend—he had before now befriended Machmout in a manner which I consider incredible—Machmout is very desirous that he should abide long with him. But Englishmen it appears do not know the Black Magic, so with us he is safe. The spirit of Black Magic, to speak to whom it is death, Machmout saw once “between heaven and earth, and night and day,” so he phrases it, on the Karnak road. He may be known, he told us, by the fact that he is of paler skin than his people, that he has two long teeth, one in each corner of his mouth, and that his eyes, which are white all over, are as big as the eyes of a horse.

      Machmout squatted himself comfortably in the corner, and I gave him the piece of black American cloth. As some minutes must elapse before he gets into the hypnotic state in which the visions begin, I strolled out on to the balcony for coolness. It was the hottest night we had yet had, and though the sun had set three hours, the thermometer still registered close on 100º.

      Above, the sky seemed veiled with grey, where it should have been dark velvety blue, and a fitful puffing wind from the south threatened three days of the sandy intolerable khamseen. A little way up the street to the left was a small café in front of which were glowing and waning little glowworm specks of light from the water pipes of Arabs sitting out there in the dark. From inside came the click of brass castanets in the hands of some dancing-girl, sounding sharp and precise against the wailing bagpipe music of the strings and pipes which accompany these movements which Arabs love and Europeans think so unpleasing. Eastwards the sky was paler and luminous, for the moon was imminently rising, and even as I looked the red rim of the enormous disc cut the line of the desert, and on the instant, with a curious aptness, one of the Arabs outside the café broke out into that wonderful chant—“I cannot sleep for longing for thee, 0 full moon.

      Far is thy throne over Mecca, slip down, 0 beloved, to me.”

      Immediately afterwards I heard the piping monotone of Machmout’s voice begin, and in a moment or two I went inside.

      We have found that the experiments gave the quickest result by contact, a fact which confirmed Weston in his explanation of them by thought transference of some elaborate kind, which I confess I cannot understand. He was writing at a table in the window when I came in, but looked up.

      “Take his hand,” he said; “at present he is quite incoherent.”

      “Do you explain that?” I asked.

      “It is closely analogous, so Myers thinks, to talking in sleep. He has been saying something about a tomb. Do make a suggestion, and see if he gives it right. He is remarkably sensitive, and he responds quicker to you than to me. Probably Abdul’s funeral suggested the tomb!”

      A sudden thought struck me.

      “Hush!” I said, “I want to listen.”

      Machmout’s head was thrown a little back, and he held the hand in which was the piece of cloth rather above his face. As usual he was talking very slowly, and in a high staccato voice, absolutely unlike his usual tones.

      “On one side of the grave,” he pipes, “is a tamarisk tree, and the green beetles make fantasia about it. On the other side is a mud wall. There are many other graves about, but they are all asleep. This is the grave, because it is awake, and it moist and not sandy.”

      “I thought so,” said Weston. “It is Abdul’s grave he is talking about.”

      “There is a red moon sitting on the desert,” continued Machmout, “and it is now. There is the puffing of khamseen, and much dust coming. The moon is red with dust, and because it is low.”

      “Still sensitive to external conditions,” said Weston. “That is rather curious. Pinch him, will you?”

      I pinched Machmout; he did not pay the slightest attention.

      “In the last house of the street, and in the doorway stands a man. Ah! ah!” cried the boy.suddenly, “it is the Black Magic he knows. Don’t let him come. He is going out of the house,” he shrieked, “he is coming—no, he is going the other way towards the moon and the grave. He has the Black Magic with him, which can raise the dead, and he has a murdering knife, and a spade. I cannot see his face, for the Black Magic is between it and my eyes.”

      Weston had got up, and, like me, was hanging on Machmout’s words.

      “We will go there,” he said. “Here is an opportunity of testing it. Listen a moment.”

      “He is walking, walking, walking,” piped Machmout, “still walking to the moon and the grave. The moon sits no longer on the desert, but has sprung up a little way.”

      I pointed out of the window.

      “That at any rate is true,” I said.

      Weston took the cloth out of Machmout’s hand, and the piping ceased. In a moment he stretched himself, and rubbed his eyes.

      “Khalás,” he said.

      “Yes, it is Khalás.”

      “Did I tell you of the sitt in England?” he asked.

      “Yes, oh, yes,” I answered; “thank you, little Machmout. The White Magic was very good tonight.

      Get you to bed.”

      Machmout trotted obediently out of the room, and Weston closed the door after him.

      “We must be quick,” he said. “It is worth while going and giving the thing a chance, though I wish he had seen something less gruesome. The odd thing is that he was not at the funeral, and yet he describes the grave accurately. What do you make of it?”

      “I make that the White Magic has shown Machmout that somebody with black magic is going to Abdul’s grave, perhaps to rob it,” I answered resolutely.

      “What are we to do when we get there?” asked Weston.

      “See the Black Magic at work. Personally I am in a blue funk. So are you.”

      “There is no such thing as Black Magic,” said Weston. “Ah, I have it. Give me that orange.”

      Weston rapidly skinned it, and cut from the rind two circles as big as a five shilling piece, and two long, white fangs of skin. The first he fixed in his eyes, the two latter in the corners of his mouth.

      “The Spirit of Black Magic?” I asked.

      “The same.”

      He took up a long black burnous and wrapped it ’round him. Even in the bright lamp light, the spirit of black magic was a sufficiently terrific personage.

      “I don’t believe in black magic,” he said, “but others do. If it is necessary to put a stop to—to anything that is going on, we will hoist the man on his own petard. Come along. Whom do you suspect it is—I mean, of course, who was the person you were thinking of when your thoughts were transferred to Machmout.”

      “What Machmout said,” I answered, “suggested Achmet to me.”

      Weston indulged in a laugh of scientific incredulity, and we set off.

      The moon, as the boy had told us, was just clear of the horizon, and as it rose higher, its colour at first red and sombre, like the blaze of some distant conflagration, paled to a tawny yellow. The hot wind from the south, blowing no longer fitfully but with a steadily increasing violence, was thick with sand, and of an incredibly scorching heat, and the tops of the palm trees in the garden of the deserted hotel on the right were lashing themselves to and fro with a harsh rattle of dry leaves. The cemetery lay on the outskirts of the village, and, as long as our way lay between the mud walls of the huddling street, the wind came to us only as the heat from behind closed furnace doors. Every now and then with a whisper and whistle rising into a great buffeting flap, a sudden whirlwind of dust would scour some twenty yards