The hissing boom within the pentacle drowned out the last grating rattle of the old man’s voice. John Harker looked at what he had caused to be summoned.
The first word that came to him was scrawny. Which is a peculiar word to apply to something not of our flesh, nor shaped in any way conceivable to us; but there was that in what passed for its eyes that told of endless deprivation, insufficiency, hunger.
It spoke, though no sound waves disturbed the stillness of the warehouse. It said, “You called me. I can grant you one wish. Make up your mind.”
John Harker smiled. “Are your customers usually so irresolute? I have made up my mind.”
The scrawny one’s eyes fed on him. “What can you want?” it said, and there was hatred and envy in its soundless words. “What can any man want when you have the one thing to be prized above all others . . . flesh?”
“How fortunate,” Harker observed, “that you are not empowered to call us up. But little though you may believe it, we have our hungers too, and largely because of this so enviable flesh. And my own hungers I am resolved to end now.”
“Your wish!” The scrawny one writhed in impatience.
Harker deliberately dawdled, savoring this little moment of power, this curtainraiser to the ultimate power. “In the opera,” he began, “Mephisto, when summoned, proffers Faust first gold, then glory, then power. But that prime idiot the learned Doctor Faust replies, ‘I want a treasure that contains them all! . . . I want youth!’” Harker laughed and hummed a snatch of the tripping tune to which Faust expresses his senile desire. “But I know better.”
“Your wish!” the scrawny one insisted.
“I know that power and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing can all be summed up, in this most worldly of all possible worlds, in one word: wealth. My wish is simple: You will make me the richest man in the world. From that all else will follow.”
The scrawny one made a sign of agreement, while darting hunger glimmered in several of its eyes. Then it added, “You must release me from the pentacle before I can accomplish that.”
John Harker hesitated. “I know that you are bound to truth while you are contained there. You swear to me that if I release you you will do no harm to me in soul or body?”
“I swear.”
“You swear that if I release you you will, immediately, make me the richest man in the world?”
“I swear. You must cut the pentacle with cold steel.”
John Harker nodded and jerked the knife from the dead magician’s back. As he extended the bloody knife toward the pentacle there was a flicker of the scrawny shape, and that part of the blade which protruded beyond the rim was licked clean of blood.
The cold steel descended and scraped across the cement floor.
The pentacle was empty and the scrawny one was beside John Harker.
“Now!” he commanded.
But the scrawny one flashed the thought that it had something to do first.
When there was no trace left of the magician’s body (and how convenient that was, even when you were unconcerned about damaging evidence), the not quite so scrawny one ceased its intricate vibrations and stood all but motionless beside John Harker.
“Are you ready for your wish?” it asked.
John Harker smiled and nodded.
That is, he lowered his chin in assent. A nod is usually concluded by bringing the chin back to its normal position. But his muscles would not obey and his chin remained sunk on his breastbone.
There was trouble with his eyes too. He did not remember closing the lids, but closed they were and obstinately so.
His ears functioned. They brought a sound of music totally unfamiliar to him who had casually prided himself on his knowledge of music. And mingled with the wailing of unknown pipes was the wailing of hundreds of unknown voices. And mingled with the plunking of strings and the thumping of drums was the plunking thump of hundreds of small hard objects, like the rattle of hail close to his ears.
His other senses functioned, too. One told him that he lay suspended on some flat metal surface, that he did not rest in one position, but slowly kept floating higher in the air. And another told him that there was not a fiber of his body that did not ache with a pain so exquisitely refined as to be almost beyond the limits of conscious endurance.
And yet another sense informed him that he was surrounded by a stench of decay, an aura of charnel rot so strong, so intimate, that he could not long resist the conclusion that it rose from his own vile body.
The upward movement had stopped, and he floated in equipoise as the music and the rattle ceased and a shout went up from the hundreds of voices. Now at last his eyes half-opened, and he could see his vast bloated bulk swaying in one pan of a tremendous gold balance, while in the other pan hung his weight in precious stones.
The sight of his wealth gave him a last flash of strength. He was able to move his hand close enough to his eyes for their half-parted slits to watch his little finger slowly detach itself and drop, leaving a ragged stump of corruption. Through the eyes that had once been John Harker’s, the once scrawny one read the newspaper story:
RICHEST MAN DYING
Annual gem rite held
RAVENPORE, India (UP).— The Djatoon of Khot, reputedly the wealthiest man in the world, lay dying here today of an obscure disease; but his loyal subjects still performed the traditional annual ceremony in which the Djatoon is presented with his weight in precious stones.
The greatest physicians of three continents profess themselves baffled by the degenerative malignancy which has attacked the wealthy potentate, and express no hopes for his recovery.
The once scrawny one used
