“Thank you for being so open. Do you want to get rid of me so quickly? Remember, I would hardly be sitting here with you if your cousin John Roger had kept his papers.”
I exploded:
“So you know more about John Roger! You know how he died!”
“Calm down”, was the answer. “He died as he had to.”
“He died of John Dee’s cursed legacy!”
“Not in the way you mean. There is no curse upon it.”
“Why didn’t he complete the work – this pointless, superfluous task that I have lumbered myself with?”
“Which you undertook voluntarily, my friend! ‘Burn or preserve’ – wasn’t that what it said?”
Everything! The man in the armchair knew everything!
“I didn’t burn it,” I said.
“And you did well!” – So he had read my thoughts.
“And why did John Roger not burn it?” I asked, quietly.
“Presumably he was not the true executor of the will.”
I felt feverishly obstinate:
“And why was he not?”
“He died.”
A tremor ran through me. There was only one possible cause of my cousin’s death: Black Isaïs!
Gärtner stubbed out his cigar in the ash-tray and twisted round towards my desk. Playfully he ran his hand over the papers that lay on it singly or in piles, leafed through some and pulled out one, as if by chance, that I had missed; it must have been concealed somewhere, perhaps stuck in the binding of one of the Dee notebooks. I leant forward in curiosity. “Do you know this? Not yet, apparently!” he said after he had glanced through the sheet, and handed it to me. I shook my head and read it; I recognised the sloping hand of my cousin:
It came as I have long suspected it would. I expected it from the very beginning, when I first started to look into the musty, mysterious papers of our ancestor, John Dee. It seems I am not the first to meet it. I, John Roger Gladhill, the bearer of the arms, am a link in the chain my ancestor forged. I am truly linked to these accursed things now that I have touched them. – – The legacy is not dead! – – Yesterday ‘she’ appeared here for the first time. She is very slender, very beautiful, and her clothes give off a delicate scent you can only just smell – the scent of a beast of prey. Since then I have been in such a state of nervous excitement that I cannot get her out of my mind. – Lady Sissy she calls herself, but I can’t believe that is her real name. She claims to be Scottish. – She wants some mysterious weapon from me. A weapon that is supposed to have a connection with the arms of the Dees of Gladhill. – I assured her that I possessed no such weapon, but she just smiled. – Since then I have not had an hour’s peace! I am obsessed with the urge to procure for Lady Sissy, or whatever she may be called, the weapon she so desires, cost what it may, my present or my future happiness. – – Oh, I think I know who Lady Sissy really is – – –!
John Roger Gladhill.
The sheet of paper slipped out of my hand and fluttered to the ground. – I looked at my visitor. He shrugged his shoulders.
“That was what sent my cousin John to his death!?” I asked.
“I believe the new task the ‘Lady’ set was too much for him,” said the man whom I no longer dared to call Theodor Gärtner. A wild horde of dark thoughts rushed down upon me: Lady Sissy? Who was she?! Who else but Princess Shotokalungin! And she is: Who else but Black Isaïs!! – Bartlett Greene’s Black Isaïs!! – The veil was suddenly rent apart and the hidden realm of the Powers of Darkness opened up, the realm to which John Dee had sold his soul; and after him the unknown author, who, in fear and trembling, made the annotations in John Dee’s diary in which every word is a shriek of terror; and after him my cousin, John Roger; – and after him – myself, who have asked Lipotin to do all he can to help me fulfill the Princess’ strange desire.
My friend opposite me slowly sat up in his chair. His face seemed brighter but his body less clear than before. As he spoke his voice lost its physicality, its tone of spatial presence; he whispered:
“Thou art the last Bearer of the Arms. The rays from the green mirror of things past are gathering on the crown of thy head. Burn or preserve! But do not squander! The alchymy of the soul ordains metamorphosis or death. Choose as thou wilt – – ”
A thunderous crash, like rifle butts hammering against massive oaken doors, made me leap up with a start: I was alone in my study; before me stood Lipotin’s present, the old English mirror-glass, greenish in its Florentine frame; otherwise there was not the slightest change in the familiar surroundings. The knock at my door was hesitant, not at all thunderous.
At my “Come in” the door opened and a young lady was standing rather shyly on the threshold. She introduced herself, “I am Frau Fromm.”
In some confusion, I stood up. I liked Frau Fromm from the first. I shook her hand and looked absent-mindedly at my watch. It must have seemed rather impolite to Frau Fromm, who probably thought it had something to do with her late arival. She said in a quiet voice:
“I tried to get in touch with you at midday; I was unable to start before eight o’clock. I hope I
