I took the book and opened it. “I knew Professor Richet, slightly. Years ago, when I was just beginning this sort of thing, I was entertained by him in London. He introduced me to Conan Doyle.”
“Then you’re probably familiar with his book. Yes? Well, the other,” and he took up the second volume, almost as large as the Richet and bound in light buff, “is by Montague Summers, whom I call the premier demonologist of today. He’s gathered all the lycanthropy-lore available.”
I had read Mr. Summers’ Geography of Witchcraft and his two essays on the vampire, and I made bold to say so.
“This is a companion volume to them,” Judge Pursuivant told me, opening the book. “It is called The Werewolf.” He scrutinized the flyleaf. “Published in 1934—thoroughly modern, you see. Here’s a bit of Latin, Mr. Wills: Intrabunt lupi rapaces in vos, non parcentes gregi.”
I crinkled my brow in the effort to recall my high school Latin, then began slowly to translate, a word at a time: “ ‘Enter hungry wolves—’ ”
“Save that scholarship,” Judge Pursuivant broke in. “It’s more early Scripture, though not so early as the bit about the hairy ones—vulgate for a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, twentieth chapter, twenty-ninth verse. ‘Ravenous wolves shall enter among you, not sparing the flock.’ Apparently that disturbing possibility exists even today.”
He leafed through the book. “Do you know,” he asked, “that Summers gives literally dozens of instances of lycanthropy, things that are positively known to have happened?”
I took another sip of whisky and water. “Those are only legends, surely.”
“They are nothing of the sort!” The judge’s eyes protruded even more in his earnestness, and he tapped the pages with an excited forefinger. “There are four excellent cases listed in his chapter on France alone—sworn to, tried and sentenced by courts—”
“But weren’t they during the Middle Ages?” I suggested.
He shook his great head. “No, during the Sixteenth Century, the peak of the Renaissance. Oh, don’t smile at the age, Mr. Wills. It produced Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Galileo, Leonardo, Martin Luther; Descartes and Spinoza were its legitimate children, and Voltaire builded upon it. Yet werewolves were known, seen, convicted—”
“Convicted on what grounds?” I interrupted quickly, for I was beginning to reflect his warmth.
For answer he turned more pages. “Here is the full account of the case of Stubbe Peter, or Peter Stumpf,” he said. “A contemporary record, telling of Stumpf’s career in and out of wolf-form, his capture in the very act of shifting shape, his confession and execution—all near Cologne in the year 1589. Listen.”
He read aloud: “ ‘Witnesses that this is true. Tyse Artyne. William Brewar. Adolf Staedt. George Bores. With divers others that have seen the same.’ ” Slamming the book shut, he looked up at me, the twinkle coming back into his spectacled eyes. “Well, Mr. Wills? How do those names sound to you?”
“Why, like the names of honest German citizens.”
“Exactly. Honest, respectable, solid. And their testimony is hard to pass off with a laugh, even at this distance in time, eh?”
He had almost made me see those witnesses, leather-jerkined and broad-breeched, with heavy jaws and squinting eyes, taking their turn at the quill pen with which they set their names to that bizarre document. “With divers others that have seen the same”—perhaps too frightened to hold pen or make signature. …
“Still,” I said slowly, “Germany of the Renaissance, the Sixteenth Century; and there have been so many changes since.”
“Werewolves have gone out of fashion, you mean? Ah, you admit that they might have existed.” He fairly beamed his triumph. “So have beards gone out of fashion, but they will sprout again if we lay down our razors. Let’s go at it another way. Let’s talk about materialization—ectoplasm—for the moment.” He relaxed, and across his great girth his fingertips sought one another. “Suppose you explain, briefly and simply, what ectoplasm is considered to be.”
I was turning toward the back of Richet’s book. “It’s in here, Judge Pursuivant. To be brief and simple, as you say, certain mediums apparently exude an unclassified material called ectoplasm. This, at first light and vaporescent, becomes firm and takes shape, either upon the body of the medium or as a separate and living creature.”
“And you don’t believe in this phenomenon?” he prompted, with something of insistence.
“I have never said that I didn’t,” I replied truthfully, “even before my experience of this evening went so far toward convincing me. But, with the examples I have seen, I felt that true scientific control was lacking. With all their science, most of the investigators trust too greatly.”
Judge Pursuivant shook with gentle laughter. “They are doctors for the most part, and this honesty of theirs is a professional failing that makes them look for it in others. You—begging your pardon—are a magician, a professional deceiver, and you expect trickery in all whom you meet. Perhaps a good lawyer with trial experience, with a level head and a sense of competent material evidence for both sides, should attend these séances, eh?”
“You’re quite right,” I said heartily.
“But, returning to the subject, what else can be said about ectoplasm? That is, if it actually exists.”
I had found in Richet’s book the passage for which I had been searching. “It says here that bits of ectoplasm have been secured in rare instances, and that some of these have been examined microscopically. There were traces of fatty tissue, bacterial forms and epithelium.”
“Ah! Those were the findings of Schrenck-Notzing. A sound man and a brilliant one, hard to corrupt or fool. It makes ectoplasm sound organic, does it not?”
I nodded agreement, and my head felt heavy, as if full of sober and important matters. “As for me,” I went on, “I never have had much chance to examine the stuff. Whenever I get hold of an ectoplasmic hand, it melts like butter.”
“They generally do,” the judge
