Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 18, No. 5, May 1973

He Scarab Ring by William Brittain

A crackerjack scheme is often born of desperation, but seldom just so.

Come in, gentlemen, and welcome. First, permit me to say that the regulations which prevented our having this interview several months ago were those of the medical staff of this institution and not my own. I personally am always glad to accommodate members of the fourth estate.

Perhaps those among you who are photographers would care to take pictures now, while the reporters are readying notebooks and sharpening pencils or whatever reporters do. Yes, those wooden benches are hard, aren’t they? But a mental hospital — an insane asylum, if you will — can make little provision for the creature comforts of such a large number of visitors. Please forgive it.

I must also ask the gentlemen with the TV cameras to forgive the metal screening which separates my section of the room from yours. While I can give you my personal assurance that I would not attempt to harm any of you, my doctors still classify me as homicidal. A person who has run his father-in-law through the chest with a 16th century halberd and hacked his wife of eight months to bits with a Moorish scimitar, as I did last winter, should be restrained, don’t you agree?

The reason you are here, of course, is to get the answer to a question which has plagued your readers and viewers ever since the police arrived to find me standing over the bodies of my victims — and that question is, why? Why would a rather nondescript young man who had succeeded in marrying into a world of wealth, prestige and stratospheric social position so bloodily murder the two people who had made that lifestyle possible?

To answer, I must begin at a time two years ago almost to the day. It was then, as now, late spring. I was twenty-four years old, with visions of becoming a great writer, another Melville or Hemingway. Much to my chagrin I found that while my pile of rejection slips was getting higher and higher, the precise opposite was happening to my supply of cash.

I was sitting on my bed in the dingy rooming house where I resided when my landlady slipped my mail under the door — three rejected manuscripts on the same day. I picked them up, preparing to hurl them angrily into a comer, when a letter fell from among the large brown envelopes and floated to the floor. Quickly I retrieved it, tore it open and read it.

The letter was from Professor Rolf Kassachian — yes, the same man whom, months later, I was to skewer with the halberd — and he was replying to a query of mine. In a forlorn hope that perhaps articles rather than fiction were my forte, I had written to Professor Kassachian requesting an interview for a proposed article concerning his recent archaeological discoveries in the Nile Delta. I had posted the letter with little hope that Kassachian would reply; the man was famous for his reticence where publicity was concerned.

Yet not only had Kassachian answered my query, but he was willing to grant my request! I was beside myself with joy. An interview with the great and mysterious Rolf Kassachian would be bound to find a publisher, regardless of the technique — or lack of it — of the writer.

Two days later I arrived for the interview ten minutes before the appointed time. In an agony of anticipation, I paced back and forth near the huge wall that surrounded the rambling house. I wished neither to appear too eager by arriving early, nor to antagonize the professor by being late. It was exactly two p.m. when I lifted the ponderous knocker on the front door.

The door was opened by a girl about my own age who introduced herself as Dara Kassachian, the professor’s daughter. A more unprepossessing creature would be hard to imagine. Lank brown hair hung about a vapid face marked by close-set eyes, a piggy snout of a nose, and a mouth to which lipstick had been applied with wild abandon. Her plump, almost obese figure was covered with a dress of black and white horizontal stripes, giving her the appearance of an elephant which had escaped from a penitentiary. In a thin, whining voice, she asked me into the livingroom and then left to fetch the

The Kassachian livingroom resembled a museum, filled as it was with what were clearly artifacts collected during the professor’s expeditions. Knives, jewelry and bits of pottery were hung on the walls or tastefully arranged along the room’s many shelves. That this wealth of rare items could be displayed so casually was, I found out later, due to an excellent alarm system designed both to entrap anyone entering the house illegally and to summon the police within seconds. I must confess that while none of the items was familiar to me, the overall effect I found to be striking without being ostentatious.

Then the ring, lying on the glass-topped coffee table, caught my eye. It was of a dull, silvery metal, somewhat resembling pewter. Thick and massive, its design was that of an insect resembling a huge oval beetle almost an inch long. It was sculpted in beautiful detail, including tiny legs which protruded from under the divided carapace.

Merely as a way to pass the time, I tried the ring on the middle finger of my right hand. It was too small. I shifted it to the ring finger, and it slid into place with almost no effort whatsoever.

I was about to remove the ring when suddenly I heard a deep voice behind me. “You’d be that writer chap, wouldn’t you?” Nervously thrusting my right hand behind me, I turned about to face a tall man whose thick glasses and iron-gray hair were in odd contrast to his tanned, well-muscled body.

“Professor Kassachian?” I asked, my voice cracking. Behind my back, the ring seemed to weigh a ton, dragging at my hand.

“Yes. Dara said you were here.” He indicated the girl, simpering in the doorway. “How are you?” With that, Kassachian put out his hand to shake mine.

Wanting nothing more than to disappear into a crack in the floor, I extended my own hand. Kassachian took it, pumped it once, and turned it upward. He stared at the ring for what seemed an eternity, glanced at the coffee table, and then looked me in the eye.

“That’s mine, isn’t it?” he asked, nodding at the ring.

“Yes... yes, sir. But I was just—”

“No harm done,” said Kassachian with a smile. “But take it off, will you?”

I pulled at the ring. Nothing happened. I pulled harder. Finally I wet my finger in my mouth and tried again. “It... it seems to be stuck,” I said finally.

“Nonsense. Here, let me try.” Kassachian jerked at the ring until I cried out with pain. It seemed welded to my finger, which was now raw and bleeding.

“It’s the damned legs,” said Kassachian. “They’re pointed outward and dig into the flesh when the ring’s pulled.” He turned and shouted over his shoulder. “Dara! Get me some string, there’s a good girl.”

Galloping out of the room the girl soon returned with a length of string. Taking my hand, Kassachian wrapped the string tightly about my finger just ahead of the ring. “It compresses the flesh,” he said. “This’ll work. You’ll see.”

It didn’t work. The ring remained firmly in place. “Soapsuds, that’s the ticket,” said Kassachian with a grin. “That’ll fetch it.”

I was directed to the bathroom, where I soaped my right hand liberally while the professor and Dara waited in the livingroom. Returning to them, I had to confess failure.

“Umm. We seem to be in a bit of a bind here,” rumbled Kassachian.

“I don’t see why, sir,” I said brightly. “I have a friend who’s a jeweler, and people come to him with this kind of problem all the time. He has a little saw that cuts a ring, then the ends can be pried apart...”

I thought I saw Kassachian go white under his tan as he gave a low moan.

“I’d be glad to pay for mending the ring after it’s removed,” I said weakly.

“My boy,” replied Kassachian, “if your name were Getty or Onassis, you might — I say might — be able to pay me for any damage to that ring. Otherwise, it’s out of the question.”

“I don’t quite understand, sir.”

“That ring on your finger was presented to the pharaoh Zoser by his high priest about the year 2500 B.C. It is a depiction of Scarabus sacer, the sacred scarab of Egypt. It is the only one of its kind anywhere in the world. What is more to the point as far as you’re concerned, it is priceless. No amount of money could purchase it. Right at present, I’m not too concerned about your welfare. You are nothing but a bit of useless humanity which has somehow become inextricably attached to my ring.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. I had a vision of myself stuffed and mounted on a pedestal, my right hand extended to show off the ring to its best advantage.

“There is, of course, one more thing we might try,” said Kassachian, an odd look in his eye.

“Anything, sir. Anything.”

“I was thinking of amputation. Of the finger, you know.”

“Father! That’s horrible.” Dara waddled to my side and grasped my arm tightly. “He wouldn’t really hurt you,” she said, gazing at me through eyes that, heavy with mascara, resembled twin pools of hot tar.

Tenderly I patted the hand of my newfound ally. “I’ll go home and think all night about how I can get the ring off,” I said. “I’m sure in the morning I can—”

“What!” shouted Kassachian in a towering rage. “Leave my house while you’re wearing that ring? Out of the question.”

“But I can’t stay here forever.”

“Why not?” said Kassachian, a little smile playing across his face. “Oh, I don’t mean forever, confound it. Just until we can find some way to remove the ring.”

“But I have to...”

“You have to what?” replied Kassachian scornfully. “Look, you’re a writer. Do your writing here.”

“But I couldn’t impose on you that way.”

“Very well, do whatever you want,” said Kassachian. “But my ring does not leave this house.”

With the ring and me now a package deal, that was how I came to take up permanent residence at the professor’s house.

For the first few days we spent each morning discussing and experimenting with methods of removing the ring. Nothing worked. The ring seemed to be bonded to me as if I had been born with it.

At the end of a week, further attempts to remove the ring were abandoned as impossible. Instead, I was put on a strict diet and assigned a series of finger exercises in the frail hope that the offending digit could be slimmed down to a point where the ring could be slipped off.

To pass the time I began working on the article concerning the professor. Each day I would study Kassachian’s notes and type rough drafts until time for the evening meal. Afterward the professor would retire to his study while Dara and I went into the livingroom where she listened in wide-eyed wonder to the lies I told concerning my writing experiences. Later she would put slow music on the phonograph and try to snuggle up close to me on the couch, an experience I found much the same as entertaining an amorous squid.

By the middle of July I had been a guest of the Kassachians for nearly six weeks, and then one evening I made a complete fool of myself. All I can say in my defense is that the only female to whom I had been exposed in all that time was Dara.

As usual, we were on the couch. An album called Songs for Lovers was playing and Dara, instead of dimming the lights as was her usual habit, turned them all the way off.

Gentlemen, I can only tell you that Dara Kassachian seemed much more desirable in the dark than when it was possible to see her. I felt her lips on mine. To my everlasting regret, I responded. I kissed her in return. After that, one thing led to another — until suddenly the lights went on.

Professor Kassachian was standing over us. In a stern voice he ordered Dara off to bed and asked to see me in his study. Once there, he took a bottle of brandy from the drawer of his desk and poured two glasses. “Of course you’ll want to do the honorable thing,” he began.

A week later, in a small, private ceremony, Dara Kassachian became my wife. Previously, of course, her father had made it quite clear that I would be expected to continue to live with them in the house.

The following month was a continuous round of parties at which the great and near-great of the scientific, intellectual and social worlds all came to congratulate Dara on her fine husband. I was examined from all angles and made to feel like a family pet on exhibition.

Still, all my wants — except for my freedom — were satisfied. I received the finest foods, the best and most luxurious clothing. Even my writing, which had formerly been universally rejected, now found its way into the most prestigious journals. I might have learned to be content with my lot, except for one thing.

Dara loved me. She loved me in a way that made Tristan and Isolde seem little more than a couple of passing acquaintances. I would look up from my typing and there she would be in the doorway, her beady eyes staring at me in adoration.

I couldn’t sit in an easy chair without having that slug-like body trying to climb into my lap. At parties she would hang onto me, a huge white leech. In the privacy of our room... Don’t ask.

I could begin to feel my reason slipping. Every time I looked upon that accursed ring I saw not the scarab but Dara’s bloated, love-sick face. I was being overwhelmed.

The sickness came the following November. I don’t know how I contracted it. Pity the germ that tried to get at me; it would have to find some way around Dara first.

After a week during which a bad chest cold had contributed to exhaustion and aching muscles, I looked across the table at dinner one evening and — horror of horrors — I saw not one Dara but two. Suddenly I had a blinding headache and the room started spinning. Vaguely I remember Dara and her father taking me up to bed and someone strange — a doctor, I suppose — bending over me. Then for a time I remember very little — just vague visions of Dara’s porcine body mounted on a huge ring and gigantic scarabs snuggling up to me. I must have had a few semilucid moments though, because I can remember feeling that I was dying, and that made me glad. Dying was the only way I could be rid of Dara forever.

I finally swam back to consciousness to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. It took me quite some time to realize that the music was coming from downstairs and that I was not imagining it. I heard an announcer’s voice counting: “Five, four, three, two...” And then shouts of “Happy New Year!”

I had been delirious or unconscious for nearly two months.

I was warm, and so I kicked off the blankets. Somebody had provided me with a hospital gown, one of those short garments which do their best to destroy modesty. I stared at the skinny shanks that had once been my legs.

As I reached out weakly to pull the blankets back into place I felt something slide on my finger. The ring. The ring had slid around until the scarab itself was toward my palm.

It took me several moments to realize the significance of this. The ring — that damned ring that was the cause of all my troubles — could now be removed.

Slowly, almost reverently, I grasped it and pulled. It slid away from my emaciated finger. I looked at it — this thing that had ruined my fife and bound me forever to the toad-like Dara.

That, gentlemen, is when it happened. With a strength dredged up from hatred and desperation I rushed out of the room and down the stairs. In the hallway I found the halberd, its steel point glittering. I grasped it and with a loud shout leaped into the livingroom where Dara and her father were watching television. Professor Kassachian rose from his chair and turned to face me just in time to take the point of the halberd full in the chest. The scimitar, which hung above the fireplace, did, in turn, for Dara.

What’s that, sir? Oh, you ask if I’m now sorry for what I did. No sir, I’m not. I will not lie about it, even though a lie might possibly earn me my freedom.

You see, gentlemen, lying there in bed staring at the ring, I suddenly realized that while the ring’s getting stuck on my finger was blind chance, everything that occurred after that was a plot; a plot by Professor Kassachian to provide a husband for that impossible daughter of his, and I have no doubt that Dara, desperate for a mate, aided and abetted him in every way possible. An opportunity had presented itself, and they had seized it mercilessly, with no regard for me.

No, no. You misunderstand. This is not merely an assumption on my part. You see, when I finally got the ring off, there was an inscription on the inside of the band. I’m unable to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, but I could read this all right: