Jake Switz was first to leave, hurrying to telephone announcements to all the morning newspapers. Sigrid, rising, smiled at me with real warmth.
“So nice to see you again, Gib. Do not bother to leave with me—my suite is here in this hotel.”
She bade Varduk good night, nodded to the others and left quickly. I watched her departure with what must have been very apparent and foolish ruefulness on my face. It was the voice of Judge Pursuivant that recalled me to my surroundings.
“I’ve seen and admired your motion pictures, Mr. Connatt,” he said graciously. “Shall we go out together? Perhaps I can persuade you to join me in another of my enthusiasms—late food and drink.”
We made our adieux and departed. In the bar of the hotel we found a quiet table, where my companion scanned the liquor list narrowly and ordered samples of three Scotch whiskies. The waiter brought them. The judge sniffed each experimentally, and finally made his choice.
“Two of those, and soda—no ice,” he directed. “Something to eat, Mr. Connatt? No? Waiter, bring me some of the cold tongue with potato salad.” Smiling, he turned back to me. “Good living is my greatest pursuit.”
“Greater than scholarship?”
He nodded readily. “However, I don’t mean that tonight’s visit with Mr. Varduk was not something to rouse any man’s interest. It was full of good meat for any antiquary’s appetite. By the way, were you surprised when he said that he was descended from Lord Byron?”
“Now that you mention it, I wasn’t,” I replied. “He’s the most Byronic individual I have ever met.”
“Right. Of course, the physical resemblances might be accidental, the manner a pose. But in any case, he’s highly picturesque, and from what little I can learn about him, he’s eminently capable as well. You feel lucky in being with him in this venture?”
I felt like confiding in this friendly, tawny man. “Judge Pursuivant,” I said honestly, “any job is a godsend to me just now.”
“Then let me congratulate you, and warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Here’s your whisky,” he said suddenly, and was silent while he himself mixed the spirit with the soda. Handing me a glass, he lifted the other in a silent toasting gesture. We drank, and then I repeated, “Warn me, you were saying, sir?”
“Yes.” He tightened his wide, intelligent mouth under the feline mustache. “It’s this play, Ruthven.”
“What about it?”
His plate of tongue and salad was set before him at this juncture. He lifted a morsel on his fork and tasted it.
“This is very good, Mr. Connatt. You should have tried some. Where were we? Oh, yes, about Ruthven. I was quite unreserved in my opinion, wasn’t I?”
“So it seemed when you offered to stake your reputation on the manuscript being genuine.”
“So I did,” he agreed, cutting a slice of tongue into mouthfuls. “And I meant just that. What I saw of the play was Byronic in content, albeit creepy enough to touch even an occultist with a shiver. The handwriting, too, was undoubtedly Byron’s. Yet I felt like staking my reputation on something else.”
He paused and we each had a sip of whisky. His recourse to the liquor seemed to give him words for what he wished to say.
“It’s a paradox, Mr. Connatt, and I am by no means so fond of paradoxes as was my friend, the late Gilbert Chesterton; but, while Byron most certainly wrote Ruthven, he wrote it on paper that was watermarked less than ten years ago.”
IV
Into the Country
The judge would not enlarge upon his perplexing statement, but he would and did play the most genial host I had ever known since the extravagant days of Hollywood. We had a number of drinks, and he complimented me on my steadiness of hand and head. When we parted I slept well in my little room that already seemed more cheerful.
Before noon the following day I returned to Varduk’s hotel. Only Davidson was there, and he was far more crisp and to the point than he had been when his chief was present. I accepted the salary figure already set down on my contract form, signed my name, received a copy of the play and left.
After my frugal lunch—I was still living on the money Jake Switz had lent me—I walked to the library and searched out a copy of Contemporary Americans. Varduk’s name I did not find, and wondered at that until the thought occurred that he, a descendant of Byron, was undoubtedly a British subject. Before giving up the volume I turned to the P’s. This time my search bore fruit:
Pursuivant, Keith Hilary; b. 1891, Richmond, Va., only son of Hilary Pursuivant (b. 1840, Pursuivant Landing, Ky.; Col. and Maj.-Gen., Va. Volunteer Infantry, 1861–65; attorney and journalist; d. 1898) and Anne Elizabeth (Keith) Pursuivant (b. 1864, Edinburgh; d. 1891).
Educ. Richmond pub. sch., Lawrenceville and Yale. A.B., male, 1908. Phi Beta Kappa, Skulls and Bones, football, forensics. LL.B., Columbia, 1911. Ph. D., Oxford, 1922. Admitted to Virginia bar, 1912. Elected 1914, Judge district court, Richmond. Resigned, 1917, to enter army. Major, Intelligence Div., U.S.A., 1917–19, D.S.C., Cong. Medal of Honor, Legion d’Honneur (Fr.). Ret. legal practice, 1919.
Author: The Unknown That Terrifies, Cannibalism in America, Vampyricon, An Indictment of Logic, etc.
Clubs: Lambs, Inkhorn, Gastronomics, Saber.
Hobbies: Food, antiquaries, demonology, fencing.
Protestant. Independent, Unmarried.
Address: Low Haven, R.F.D. No. 1, Bucklin, W. Va.
Thus the clean-picked skeleton of a life history; yet it was no hard task to restore some of its tissues, even coax it to life. Son of a Southern aristocrat who was a soldier while young and a lawyer and writer when mature, orphaned of his Scotch mother in the first year of his existence—had she died in giving him life?—Keith Pursuivant was born, it seemed, to
