Haggopian and Other Stories

Name and Number

In the tradition of a good many writers of weird fiction before me (E. A. Poe, Seabury Quinn, and Manly Wade Wellman spring most easily to mind) I created my own”occult investigator” in the shape of Titus Crow. He featured first in “The Caller of The Black”, (the first story in this current volume) but was destined for greater adventures in many a story (not to mention several novels) that were still to come. “Name and Number” is one such story. Written in 1981, just one month after I left the Army (following twenty-two years’ service), it first appeared in Francesco Cova’s excellent glossy Anglo-Italian fanzine (Kadath), in the 5th issue, dated July 1982. Nominated for a British Fantasy Award, which it didn’t win, its most recent appearance was in TOR Books’ Harry Keogh: Necroscope, & Other Weird Heroes. But the best (in my opinion) Titus Crow story, “Lord of the Worms”, can be found in this book’s companion volume…

I

Of course, nothing now remains of Blowne House, the sprawling bungalow retreat of my dear friend and mentor Titus Crow, destroyed by tempestuous winds in a freak storm on the night of 4 October 1968, but…

Knowing all I know, or knew, of Titus Crow, perhaps it has been too easy for me to pass off the disastrous events of that night simply as a vindictive attack of dark forces; and while that is exactly what they were, I am now given to wonder if perhaps there was not a lot more to it than met the eye.

Provoked by Crow’s and my own involvement with the Wilmarth Foundation (that vast, august and amazingly covert body, dedicated to the detection and the destruction of Earth’s elder evil, within and outside of Man himself, and working in the sure knowledge that Man is but a small and comparatively recent phenomenon in a cosmos which has known sentience, good and evil, through vast and immeasurable cycles of time), dark forces did indeed destroy Blowne House. In so doing they effectively removed Titus Crow from the scene, and as for myself…I am but recently returned to it.

But since visiting the ruins of Crow’s old place all these later years (perhaps because the time flown in between means so very little to me?), I have come to wonder more and more about the nature of that so well-remembered attack, the nature of the very winds themselves—those twisting, rending, tearing winds—which fell with such intent and purpose upon the house and bore it to the ground. In considering them I find myself casting my mind back to a time even more remote, when Crow first outlined for me the facts in the strange case of Mr. Sturm Magruser V.

• • •

Crow’s letter—a single hand-written sheet in a blank, sealed envelope, delivered by a taxi driver and the ink not quite dry—was at once terse and cryptic, which was not unusual and did not at all surprise me. When Titus Crow was idling, then all who wished anything to do with him must also bide their time, but when he was in a hurry—

Henri,

Come as soon as you can, midnight would be fine. I expect you will stay the night. If you have not eaten, don’t—there is food here. I have something of a story to tell you, and in the morning we are to visit a cemetery!

Until I see you—

Titus

The trouble with such invitations was this: I had never been able to refuse them! For Crow being what he was, one of London’s foremost occultists, and my own interest in such matters amounting almost to obsession—why, for all its brevity, indeed by the very virtue of that brevity—Crow’s summons was more a royal command!

And so I refrained from eating, wrote a number of letters which could not wait, enveloped and stamped them, and left a note for my housekeeper, Mrs. Adams, telling her to post them. She was to expect me when she saw me, but in any matter of urgency I might be contacted at Blowne House. Doubtless the dear lady, when she read that address, would complain bitterly to herself about the influence of “that dreadful Crow person,” for in her eyes Titus had always been to blame for my own deep interest in darkling matters. In all truth, however, my obsession was probably inherited, sealed into my personality as a permanent stamp of my father, the great New Orleans mystic Etienne-Laurent de Marigny.

Then, since the hour already approached twelve and I would be late for my “appointment”, I phoned for a taxi and double-checked that my one or two antique treasures were safely locked away; and finally I donned my overcoat. Half an hour or so later, at perhaps a quarter to one, I stood on Crow’s doorstep and banged upon his heavy oak door; and having heard the arrival of my taxi, he was there at once to greet me. This he did with his customary grin (or enigmatic smile?), his head cocked slightly to one side in an almost inquiring posture. And once again I was ushered into the marvellous Aladdin’s cave which was Blowne House.

Now, Crow had been my friend ever since my father sent me out of America as a child in the late ’30s, and no man knew him better than I; and yet his personality was such that whenever I met him—however short the intervening time—I would always be impressed anew by his stature, his leonine good looks, and the sheer weight of intellect which seemed invariably to shine out from behind those searching, dark eyes of his. In his flame-red, wide-sleeved dressing gown, he might easily be some wizard from the pages of myth or fantasy.

In his study he took my overcoat, bade me sit in an easy chair beside a glowing fire, tossed a small log onto ruddy embers and poured me a customary brandy before seating himself close by. And while he was thus engaged I took my chance to gaze with fascination and unfeigned envy all about that marvellous room.

Crow himself had designed and furnished that large room to contain most of what he considered important to his world, and certainly I could have spent ten full years there in constant study of the contents without absorbing or even understanding a fifth part of what I read or examined. However, to give a brief and essentially fleshless account of what I could see from my chair:

His “library”, consisting of one entire wall of shelves, contained such works as the abhorrent Cthaat Aquadingen (in a binding of human skin!), Feery’s Original Notes on the Necronomicon (the complete book, as opposed to my own abridged copy), Wendy-Smith’s translation of the G’harne Fragments, a possibly faked but still priceless copy of the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Justin Geoffrey’s People of the Monolith, a literally fabulous Cultes des Goules (which, on my next birthday, having derived all he could from it, he would present to me), the Geph Transcriptions, Wardle’s Notes on Nitocris, Urbicus’ Frontier Garrison, circa A.D. 183, Plato’s Atlantis, a rare, illustrated, pirated and privately printed Complete Works of Poe in three sumptuous volumes, the far more ancient works of such as Josephus, Magnus, Levi and Erdschluss, and a connected set of volumes on oceanic lore and legend which included such works as Gantley’s Hydrophinnae and Konrad von Gerner’s Fischbuch of 1598. And I have merely skimmed the surface…

In one dim corner stood an object which had been a source of fascination for me, and no less for Crow himself: a great hieroglyphed, coffin-shaped monstrosity of a grandfather clock, whose tick was quite irregular and abnormal, and whose four hands moved independently and without recourse to any time system with which I was remotely familiar. Crow had bought the thing in auction some years previously, at which time he had mentioned his belief that it had once belonged to my father—of which I had known nothing, not at that time.

As for the general decor and feel of the place:

Silk curtains were drawn across wide windows; costly Boukhara rugs were spread on a floor already covered in fine Axminister; a good many Aubrey Beardsley originals—some of them most erotic—hung on the walls in equally valuable antique rosewood frames; and all in all the room seemed to exude a curiously mixed atmosphere of rich, warm, Olde World gentility on the one hand, a strange and alien chill of outer spheres on the other.

And thus I hope I have managed to convey something of the nature of Titus Crow and of his study—and of his studies—in that bungalow dwelling on Leonard’s Heath known as Blowne House… As to why I was there—

“I suppose you’re wondering,” Crow said after a while, “just why I asked you to come? And at such an hour on such a chilly night, when doubtless you’ve a good many other things you should be doing? Well, I’ll not keep you in suspense—but first of all I would greatly appreciate your opinion of something.” He got up, crossed to his desk and returned with a thick book of newspaper cuttings, opening it to a previously marked page. Most of the cuttings were browned and faded, but the one Crow pointed out to me was only a few weeks old. It was a photograph of the head and shoulders of a man, accompanied by the following legend:

Mr. Sturm Magruser, head of Magruser Systems UK, the weapons manufacturing company of world repute, is on the point of winning for his company a £2,000,000 order from the Ministry of Defence in respect of an at-present “secret” national defence system. Mr. Magruser, who himself devised and is developing the new system, would not comment when he was snapped by our reporter leaving the country home of a senior Ministry of Defence official, but it has been rumoured for some time that his company is close to a breakthrough on a defence system which will effectively make the atom bomb entirely obsolete. Tests are said to be scheduled for the near future, following which the Ministry of Defence is expected to make its final decision…

• • •

“Well?” Crow asked as I read the column again.

I shrugged. “What are you getting at?”

“It makes no impression?”

“I’ve heard of him and his company, of course,” I answered, “though I believe this is the first time I’ve actually seen a picture of him—but apart from—”

“Ah!” Crow cut in. “Good! This is the first time you’ve seen his picture: and him a prominent figure and his firm constantly in the news and so on. Me too.”

“Oh?” I was still puzzled.

“Yes, it’s important, Henri, what you just said. In fact, I would hazard a guess that Mr. Magruser is one of the world’s least-photographed men.”

“So? Perhaps he’s camera shy.”

“Oh, he is, he is—and for a very good reason: We’ll get to it—eventually. Meanwhile, let’s eat!”

Now, this is a facet of Crow’s personality which did annoy me: his penchant for leaping from one subject to another, willy-nilly, with never a word of explanation, leaving one constantly stumbling in the dark. He could only do it, of course, when he knew that his audience was properly hooked. But in my case I do not expect he intended any torment; he merely offered me the opportunity to use my mind. This I seized upon, while he busied himself bringing out cold fried chicken from his kitchen.

II

Sturm Magruser…A strange name, really. Foreign, of course. Hungarian, perhaps? As the “Mag” in “Magyar”? I doubted it; even though his features were decidedly Eastern or Middle Eastern; for they were rather pale, too. And what of his first name, Sturm? If only I were a little more proficient in tongues, I might make something of it. And what of the man’s reticence, and of Crow’s comment that he stood amongst the least-photographed of men?

We finished eating. “What do you make of the V after his name?” Crow asked.

“Hmm? Oh, it’s a common enough vogue nowadays,” I answered, “particularly in America. It denotes that he’s the fifth of his line, the fifth Sturm Magruser.”

Crow nodded and frowned. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But in this case it can’t possibly be. No, for he changed his name by deed poll after his parents died.” He had grown suddenly intense, but before I could ask him why, he was off again. “And what would you give him for nationality, or rather origin?”

I took a stab at it. “Romanian?”

He shook his head. “Persian.”

I smiled. “I was way out, wasn’t I?”

“What about his face?” Crow pressed.

I picked up the book of cuttings and looked at the photograph again. “It’s a strange face, really. Pale somehow…”

“He’s an albino.”

“Ah!” I said. “Yes, pale and startled—at least, in this picture—displeased at being snapped, I suppose.”

Again he nodded. “You suppose correctly… All right, Henri, enough of that for the moment. Now I’ll tell you what I made of this cutting—Magruser’s picture and the story when first I saw it. Now, as you know I collect all sorts of cuttings from one source or another, tidbits of fact and fragments of information which interest me or strike me as unusual. Most occultists, I’m told, are extensive collectors of all sorts of things. You yourself are fond of antiques, old books and outré bric-a-brac, much as I am, but as yet without my dedication. And yet if you examine all of my scrapbooks you’ll probably discover that this would appear to be the most mundane cutting of them all. At least on the surface. For myself, I found it the most frightening and disturbing.”

He paused to pour more brandy and I leaned closer to him, fascinated to find out exactly what he was getting at. “Now,” he finally continued, “I’m an odd sort of chap, as you’ll appreciate, but I’m not eccentric—not in the popular sense of the word. Or if I am,” he hurried on, “it’s of my choosing. That is to say, I believe I’m mentally stable.”

“You are the sanest man I ever met,” I told him.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he answered, “and you may soon have reason for reevaluation, but for the moment I am sane. How then might I explain the loathing, the morbid repulsion, the absolute shock of horror which struck me almost physically upon opening the pages of my morning newspaper and coming upon that picture of Magruser? I could not explain it—not immediately…” He paused again.

“Presentiment?” I asked. “A forewarning?”

“Certainly!” he answered. “But of what, and from where? And the more I looked at that damned picture, the more sure I became that I was on to something monstrous! Seeing him—that face, startled, angered, trapped by the camera—and despite the fact that I could not possibly know him, I recognised him.”

“Ah!” I said. “You mean that you’ve known him before, under his former name?”

Crow smiled, a trifle wearily I thought. “The world has known him before under several names,” he answered. Then the smile slipped from his face. “Talking of names, what do you make of his forename?”

“Sturm? I’ve already considered it. German, perhaps?”

“Good! Yes, German. His mother was German, his father Persian, both nationalized Americans in the early 1900s. They left America to come here during McCarthy’s Unamerican Activities witch-hunts. Sturm Magruser, incidentally, was born on first April 1921. An important date, Henri, and not just because it was April Fool’s Day.”

“A fairly young man,” I answered, “to have reached so powerful a position.”

“Indeed.” Crow nodded. “He would have been forty-three in a month’s time.”

“Would have been?” I was surprised by Crow’s tone of finality. “Is he dead then?”

“Mercifully, yes,” he answered, “Magruser and his project with him! He died the day before yesterday, on fourth March 1964, also an important date. It was in yesterday’s news, but I’m not surprised you missed it. He wasn’t given a lot of space, and he leaves no mourners that I know of. As to his ‘secret weapon’”—and here Crow gave an involuntary little shudder— “the secret has gone with him. For that, too, we may be thankful.”

“Then the cemetery you mentioned in your note is where he’s to be interred?” I guessed.

“Where he’s to be cremated,” he corrected me. “Where his ashes are to be scattered to the winds.”

“Winds!” I snapped my fingers. “Now I have it! Sturm means ‘storm’—it’s the German word for storm!”

Crow nodded. “Again correct,” he said. “But let’s not start to add things up too quickly.”

“Add things up?” I snorted. “My friend, I’m completely lost!”

“Not completely,” he denied. “What you have is a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to work from. Difficult, but once you have completed the frame the rest will slowly piece itself together. Now, then, I was telling you about the time three weeks ago when I saw Magruser’s picture.

“I remember I was just up, still in my dressing gown, and I had just brought the paper in here to read. The curtains were open and I could see out into the garden. It was quite cold but relatively mild for the time of the year. The morning was dry and the heath seemed to beckon me, so that I made up my mind to take a walk. After reading the day’s news and after breakfast, I would dress and take a stroll outdoors. Then I opened my newspaper—and Sturm Magruser’s face greeted me!

“Henri, I dropped the paper as if it were a hot iron! So shaken was I that I had to sit down or risk falling. Now, I’m a fairly sturdy chap, and you can well imagine the sort of shock my system would require so to disturb it. Then as I sat down in my chair and stooped to recover the newspaper—the other thing.

“Out in the garden, a sudden stirring of wind. The hedgerow trembling and last year’s leaves blowing across my drive. And birds startled to flight, as by the sudden presence of someone or thing I could not see. And the sudden gathering and rushing of spiralling winds, dust devils that sucked up leaves and grit and other bits of debris and shot them aloft. Dust devils, Henri, in March—in England—half a dozen of them that paraded all about Blowne House for the best part of thirty minutes! In any other circumstance, a marvellous, fascinating phenomenon.”

“But not for you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not then. I’ll tell you what they signified for me, Henri. They told me that just as I had recognised something, so I had been recognised! Do you understand?”

“Frankly, no,” and it was my turn to shake my head.

“Let it pass,” he said after a moment. “Suffice it to say that there were these strange spiralling winds, and that I took them as a sign that indeed my psychic sense had detected something unutterably dangerous and obscene in this man Sturm Magruser. And I was so frightened by my discovery that I at once set about to discover all I could of him, so that I should know what the threat was and how best to deal with it.”

“Can I stop you for a moment?” I requested.

“Eh? Oh, certainly.”

“Those dates you mentioned as being important, Magruser’s birth and death dates. In what way important?”

“Ah! We shall get to that, Henri.” He smiled. “You may or may not know it, but I’m also something of a numerologist.”

Now it was my turn to smile. “You mean like those fellows who measure the Great Pyramid and read in their findings the secrets of the universe?”

“Do not be flippant, de Marigny!” he answered at once, his smile disappearing in an instant. “I meant no such thing. And in any case, don’t be in too great a hurry to discredit the pyramidologists. Who are you to say what may or may not be? Until you have studied a thing for yourself, treat it with respect.”

“Oh!” was all I could say.

“As for birth and death dates, try these: 1889, 1945.”

I frowned, shrugged, said: “They mean nothing to me. Are they, too,

important?”

“They belong to Adolf Hitler,” he told me; “and if you add the individual numbers together you’ll discover that they make five sets of nine. Nine is an important number in occultism, signifying death. Hitler’s number, 99999, shows him to have been a veritable Angel of Death, and no one could deny that! Incidentally, if you multiply five and nine you get forty-five, which are the last two numbers in 1945—the year he died. This is merely one example of an ancient science. Now, please, Henri, no more scoffing at numerology…”

Deflated, still I was beginning to see a glimmer of light in Crow’s reasoning. “Ah!” I said again. “And Sturm Magruser, like Hitler, has dates which add up to forty-five? Am I right? Let me see: the 1st of the 4th 1921—that’s eighteen—and the 4th of the 3rd 1964. That’s forty-five!”

Crow nodded, smiling again. “You’re a clever man, Henri, yes—but you’ve missed the most important aspect of the thing. But never mind that for now, let me get back to my story…

“I have said that I set about to discover all I could of this fellow with the strange name, the camera-shy manner, the weight of a vast international concern behind him—and the power to frighten the living daylights out of me, which no other man ever had before. And don’t ask me how, but I knew I had to work fast. There wasn’t a great deal of time left before…before whatever was coming came.

“First, however, I contacted a friend of mine at the British Museum, the curator of the Special Books Department, and asked him to search something out for me in the Necronomicon. I must introduce you one day, Henri. He’s a marvellous chap. Not quite all there, I fancy—he can’t be, to work in that place—but so free of vice and sin, so blindly naive and innocent, that the greatest possible evils would bounce right off him, I’m sure. Which is just as well, I suppose. Certainly I would never ask an inquiring or susceptible mind that it lay itself open to the perils of Alhazred’s book.

“And at last I was able to concentrate on Magruser. This was about midday and my mind had been working frantically for several hours, so that already I was beginning to feel tired—mentally if not physically. I was also experiencing a singular emotion, a sort of morbid suspicion that I was being watched, and that the observer lurked somewhere in my garden!

“Putting this to the back of my mind, I began to make discreet telephone inquiries about Magruser, but no sooner had I voiced his name than the feeling came over me again, more strongly than before. It was as if a cloud of unutterable malignity, heavy with evil, had settled suddenly over the entire house. And starting back from the telephone, I saw once again the shadow of a nodding dust devil where it played with leaves and twigs in the centre of my drive.

III

“Now my fear turned to anger. Very well, if it was war…then I must now employ weapons of my own. Or if not weapons, defences, certainly.

“I won’t go into details, Henri, but you know the sort of thing I mean. I have long possessed the necessary knowledge to create barriers of a sort against evil influences; no occultist or student of such things worth his salt would ever be without them. But it had recently been my good fortune to obtain a certain—shall we call it ‘charm’?—allegedly efficacious above all others.

“As to how this ‘charm’ happened my way:

“In December Thelred Gustau had arrived in London from Iceland, where he had been studying Surtsey’s volcanic eruption. During that eruption, Gustau had fished from the sea an item of extreme antiquity—indeed, a veritable time capsule from an age undreamed of. When he contacted me in mid-December, he was still in a high fever of excitement. He needed my skills, he said, to help him unravel a mystery ‘predating the very dinosaurs’. His words.

“I worked with him until mid-January, when he suddenly received an offer from America in respect of a lecture tour there. It was an offer he could not refuse—one which would finance his researches for several years to come—and so, off he went. By that time I had become so engrossed with the work I almost went with him. Fortunately I did not.” And here he paused to refill our glasses.

“Of course,” I took the opportunity to say, “I knew you were extremely busy with something. You were so hard to contact, and then always at Gustau’s Woolwich address. But what exactly were you working on?”

“Ah!” he answered. “That is something which Thelred Gustau himself will have to reveal—which I expect he’ll do shortly. Though who’ll take him seriously, heaven only knows. As to what I may tell you of it—I’ll have to have your word that it will be kept in the utmost secrecy.”

“You know you have it,” I answered.

“Very well… During the course of the eruption, Surtsey ejected a…a container, Henri, the ‘time capsule’ I have mentioned. Inside—fantastic!

“It was a record from a prehistoric world, Theem’hdra, a continent at the dawn of time, and it had been sent to us down all the ages by one of that continent’s greatest magicians, the wizard Teh Atht, descendant of the mighty Mylakhrion. Alas, it was in the unknown language of that primal land, in Teh Atht’s own hand, and Gustau had accidentally lost the means of its translation. But he did have a key, and he had his own great genius, and—”

“And he had you.” I smiled. “One of the country’s greatest paleographers.”

“Yes,” said Crow, matter-of-factly and without pride, “second only to Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole. Anyway, I helped Gustau where I could, and during the work I came across a powerful spell against injurious magic and other supernatural menaces. Gustau allowed me to make a copy for myself, which is how I came to be in possession of a fragment of elder magic from an age undreamed of. From what I could make of it, Theem’hdra had existed in an age of wizards, and Teh Atht himself had used this very charm or spell to ward off evil.

“Well, I had the thing, and now I decided to employ it. I set up the necessary paraphernalia and induced within myself the required mental state. This took until well into the afternoon, and with each passing minute the sensation of impending doom deepened about the house, until I was almost prepared to flee the place and let well alone. And, if I had not by now been certain that such flight would be a colossal dereliction of duty, I admit I would have done so.

“As it was, when I had willed myself to the correct mental condition, and upon the utterance of certain words—the effect was instantaneous!

“Daylight seemed to flood the whole house; the gloom fled in a moment; my spirits soared, and outside in the garden a certain ethereal watchdog collapsed in a tiny heap of rubbish and dusty leaves. Teh Atht’s rune had proved itself effective indeed…”

“And then you turned your attention to Sturm Magruser?” I prompted him after a moment or two.

“Not that night, no. I was exhausted, Henri. The day had taken so much out of me. No, I could do no more that night. Instead I slept, deeply and dreamlessly, right through the evening and night until the jangling of my telephone awakened me at nine o’clock on the following morning.”

“Your friend at the Rare Books Department?” I guessed.

“Yes, enlisting my aid in narrowing down his field of research. As you’ll appreciate, the Necronomicon is a large volume—compared to which Feery’s Notes is a pamphlet—and many of its sections appear to be almost repetitious in their content. The trouble was, I wasn’t even certain that it contained what I sought; only that I believed I had read it there. If not—” and he waved an expansive hand in the direction of his own more than appreciable occult library “—then the answer must be here somewhere—whose searching out would form an equally frustrating if not utterly impossible task. At least in the time allowed.”

“You keep hinting at this urgency.” I frowned. “What do you mean, ‘the time allowed?’”

“Why,” he answered, “the time in which Magruser must be disposed of, of course!”

“Disposed of?” I could hardly believe my ears.

Crow sighed and brought it right out in the open: “The time in which I must kill him!” he said.

I tried to remain calm, tried not to seem too flippant when I said, “So, you had resolved to do away with him. This was necessary?”

“Very. And once my enquiries began to produce results, why, then his death became more urgent by the minute! For over the next few days I turned up some very interesting and very frightening facts about our Mr. Magruser, not the least of them concerning his phenomenal rise from obscurity and the amount of power he controlled here and abroad. His company extended to no less than seven different countries, with a total of ten plants or factories engaged in the manufacture of weapons of war. Most of them conventional weapons—for the moment. Ah, yes! And those numbers too, Henri, are important.

“As for his current project—the completion of this ‘secret’ weapon or ‘defence system’, in this I was to discover the very root and nature of the evil, after which I was convinced in my decision that indeed Magruser must go!”

The time was now just after three in the morning and the fire had burned very low. While Crow took a break from talking and went to the kitchen to prepare a light snack, I threw logs on the fire and shivered, not merely because of the chill the night had brought. Such was Crow’s story and his method of delivery that I myself was now caught up in its cryptic strangeness, the slowly strangling threads of its skein. Thus I paced the floor and pondered all he had told me, not least his stated intention to—murder?—Sturm Magruser, who now apparently was dead.

Passing Crow’s desk I noticed an antique family Bible in two great volumes, the New Testament lying open, but I did not check book or chapter. Also littering his desk were several books on cryptology, numerology, even one on astrology, in which “science” Crow had never to my knowledge displayed a great deal of faith or interest. Much in evidence was a well-thumbed copy of Walmsley’s Notes on Deciphering Codes, Cryptograms, and Ancient Inscriptions, also an open notebook of obscure jottings and diagrams. My friend had indeed been busy.

Over cheese and crackers we carried on, and Crow took up his tale once more by hinting of the awesome power of Magruser’s “secret” weapon.

“Henri,” he began, “there is a tiny island off the Orkneys which, until mid-1961, was green, lovely, and a sanctuary for seabirds. Too small and isolated to settle, and far too cold and open to the elements in winter, the place was never inhabited and only rarely visited. Magruser bought it, worked there, and by February ’62—”

“Yes?”

“A dustbowl!”

“A dustbowl?” I repeated him. “Chemicals, you mean?”

Crow shrugged. “I don’t know how his weapon works exactly, only what it produces. Also that it needs vast amounts of energy to trigger it. From what I’ve been able to discover, he used the forces of nature to fuel his experiment in the Orkneys, the enormous energies of an electrical storm. Oh, yes, and one other thing: the weapon was not a defense system!”

“And of course you also know,” I took a stab at it, “what he intended to do with this weapon?”

“That too, yes.” He nodded. “He intended to destroy the world, reduce us to savagery, return us to the Dark Ages. In short, to deliver a blow from which the human race would never recover.”

“But—”

“No, let me go on. Magruser intended to turn the world into a desert, start a chain reaction that couldn’t be stopped. It may even have been worse than I suspected. He may have aimed at total destruction—no survivors at all!”

“You had proof?”

“I had evidence… As for proof: he’s dead, isn’t he?”

“You did kill him, then?”

“Yes.”

After a little while I asked, “What evidence did you have?”

“Three types of evidence, really,” he answered, relaxing again in his chair. “One: the evidence of my own five senses—and possibly that sixth sense by which I had known him from the start. Two: the fact that he had carried out his experiments in other places, several of them, always with the same result. And three—”

“Yes?”

“That too was information I received through government channels. I worked for MOD as a very young man, Henri. Did you know that? It was the War Department in those days. During the war I cracked codes for them, and I advised them on Hitler’s occult interests.”

“No,” I said, “I never knew that.”

“Of course not,” he replied. “No man has my number, Henri,” and he smiled. “Did you know that there’s supposed to be a copy of the Necronomicon buried in a filled-in bunker just across the East German border in Berlin? And did you know that in his last hour Hitler was approached in his own bunker by a Jew—can you imagine that?—a Jew who whispered something to him before he took his life? I believe I know what that man whispered, Henri. I think he said these words: ‘I know you, Adolf Hitler!’”

“Titus,” I said, “there are so many loose ends here that I’m trying to tie together. You’ve given me so many clues, and yet—”

“It will all fit, Henri,” he calmed me. “It will fit. Let me go on…

“When I discovered that Magruser’s two-million-pound ‘order’ from the MOD was not an order at all but merely the use of two million pounds’ worth of equipment—and as soon as I knew what that equipment was—then I guessed what he was up to. To clinch matters there finally came that call from the British Museum, and at last I had all the information I needed. But that was not until after I had actually met the man face-to-face.

“First, the government ‘equipment’ Magruser had managed to lay his hands on: two million pounds’ worth of atomic bombs!”

IV

“What?” I was utterly astonished. “You’re joking!”

“No,” he answered, “I am not joking. They were to provide the power he needed to trigger his doomsday weapon, to start the chain reaction. A persuasive man, Magruser, and you may believe that there’s hell to pay right now in certain government circles. I have let it be known—anonymously, of course—just exactly what he was about and the holocaust the world so narrowly escaped. Seven countries, Henri, and seven atomic bombs. Seven simultaneous detonations powering his own far more dreadful weapon, forging the links in a chain reaction which would spread right across the world!”

“But…how…when was this to happen?” I stammered.

“Today,” he answered, “at ten o’clock in the morning, a little more than five hours from now. The bombs were already in position in his plants, waiting for the appointed time. By now of course they have been removed and the plants destroyed. And now too, Britain will have to answer to the heads of six foreign powers; and certain lesser heads will roll, you may be sure. But very quietly, and the world as a whole shall never know.”

“But what was his purpose?” I asked. “Was he a madman?”

He shook his head. “A madman? No. Though he was born of human flesh, he was not even a man, not completely. Or perhaps he was more than a man. A force? A power…

“A week ago I attended a party at the home of my friend in the MOD. Magruser was to be there, which was why I had to be there—and I may tell you that took a bit of arranging. And all very discreetly, mind you, for I could not let any other person know of my suspicions. Who would have believed me anyway?

“At the party, eventually I cornered Magruser—as strange a specimen as ever you saw—and to come face-to-face with him was to confirm my quarry’s identity. I now knew beyond any question of doubt that indeed he was the greatest peril the world has ever faced! If I sound melodramatic, Henri, it can’t be helped.

“And yet to look at him…any other man might have felt pity. As I have said, he was an albino, with hair white as snow and flesh to match, so that his only high points seemed to lie in pallid pulses beating in his throat and forehead. He was tall and spindly, and his head was large but not overly so; though his cranium did display a height and width which at one and the same time hinted of imbecility and genius. His eyes were large, close together, pink, and their pupils were scarlet. I have known women—a perverse group at best—who would call him attractive, and certain men who might envy him his money, power, and position. As for myself, I found him repulsive! But of course my prejudice was born of knowing the truth.

“He did not wish to be there, that much was plain, for he had that same trapped look about him which came through so strongly in his photograph. He was afraid, Henri, afraid of being stopped. For of course he knew that someone, somewhere, had recognized him. What he did not yet know was that I was that someone.

“Oh, he was nervous, this Magruser. Only the fact that he was to receive his answer that night, the go-ahead from the ministry, had brought him out of hiding. And he did receive that go-ahead, following which I cornered him, as I have said.”

“Wait,” I begged him. “You said he knew that someone had recognised him. How did he know?”

“He knew at the same moment I knew, Henri, at the very instant when those spinning winds of his sprang up in my garden! But I had destroyed them, and fortunately before he could discover my identity. Oh, you may be sure he had tried to trace me, but I had been protected by the barriers I had placed about Blowne House. Now, however, I too was out in the open…

“But I still can’t see how the British government could be tricked into giving him a handful of atomic bombs!” I pressed. “Are we all in the hands of lunatics?”

Crow shook his head. “You should know by now,” he said, “that the British give nothing for nothing. What the government stood to gain was far greater than a measly two million pounds. Magruser had promised to deliver a power screen, Henri, a dome of force covering the entire land, to be switched on and off at will, making the British Isles totally invulnerable!”

“And we believed him?”

“Oh, there had been demonstrations, all faked, and it had been known for a long time that he was experimenting with a ‘national defence system’. And remember, my friend, that Magruser had never once stepped out of line. He was the very model of a citizen, a man totally above suspicion who supported every welfare and charity you could name. Why, I believe that on occasion he had even funded the government itself; but for all this he had not the means of powering his damnable weapons. And now you begin to see something of the brilliance of the man, something of his fiendishness.

“But to get back to what I was saying: I finally cornered him, we were about to be introduced, I even stuck out my hand for him to shake, and—

“At that very moment a window blew in and the storm which had been blowing up for over an hour rushed into the room. Rushing winds, Henri, and fifty ladies and gentlemen spilling their drinks and hanging on to their hats—and a whirling dervish of a thing that sucked up invitation cards and flowers from vases and paper napkins and flew between Magruser and myself like…like one of hell’s own devils!

“How his pink eyes narrowed and glared at me then, and in another moment he had stepped quickly out of my reach. By the time order was restored Magruser was gone. He had rushed out of the house to be driven away, probably back to his plant outside Oxford.

“Well, I too left in something of a hurry, but not before my friend had promised not to tell Magruser who I was. Later, Magruser did indeed call him, only to be fobbed off with the answer that I must have been a gatecrasher. And so I was safe from him—for the moment.

“When I arrived home my telephone was ringing, and at first I was of a mind not to pick it up but…it was the information I had been waiting for, a quotation from the Mad Arab himself, Abdul Alhazred.” Here Crow paused to get up, go to his desk, rummage about for a second or two and return with a scrap of paper. He seated himself once more and said: “Listen to this, Henri:

‘Many and multiform are ye dim horrors of Earth, infesting her ways from ye very prime. They sleep beneath ye unturned stone; they rise with ye tree from its root; they move beneath ye sea, and in subterranean places they dwell in ye inmost adyta. Some there are long known to man, and others as yet unknown, abiding ye terrible latter days of their revealing. One such is an evil born of a curse, for ye Greatest Old One, before He went Him down into His place to be sealed therein and sunken under ye sea, uttered a cry which rang out to ye very corners of ye All; and He cursed this world then and forever. And His curse was this: that whosoever inhabit this world which was become his prison, there should breed amongst them and of their flesh great traitors who would ever seek to destroy them and so leave ye world cleared off for ye day of His return. And when they heard this great curse, them that held Him thrust Him down where He could do no more harm. And because they were good, they sought to eradicate ye harm He had willed, but could not do so. Thus they worked a counter spell, which was this: that there would always be ones to know the evil ones when they arose and waxed strong, thus protecting ye innocents from His great curse. And this also did they arrange: that in their fashion ye evil ones would reveal themselves, and that any man with understanding might readily dispose of such a one by seizing him and saying unto him, “I know you,” and by revealing his number…’

“And in the end it was as simple as that, Henri…

“Late as the evening had grown, still I set about to strengthen those psychic or magical protections I had built about Blowne House. Also, I placed about my own person certain charms for self-protection when I was abroad and outside the safety of these stout walls; all of which took me until the early hours of the morning. That day—that very day—Sturm Magruser would be collecting his deadly detonators, the triggers for his devilish device; and in my mind’s eye I pictured a vehicle pulling up at some innocuous-seeming but well-guarded and lethally supplied establishment, and the driver showing a pass, and documents being signed in triplicate and the subsequent very careful loading of seven heavy crates.

“There would be a pair of executive jets waiting on the private runway inside Magruser’s Oxford plant, and these would take six of the atomic bombs off to their various destinations around the globe. And so it can be seen that my time was running down. Tired as I was, worn down by worry and work, still I must press on and find the solution to the threat.”

“But surely you had the solution?” I cut in. “It was right there in that passage from Alhazred.”

“I had the means to destroy him, Henri, yes—but I did not have the means of delivery! The only thing I could be sure of was that he was still in this country, at his centre of operations. But how to get near him, now that he knew me?”

“He knew you?”

Crow sighed. “My face, certainly, for we had now met. Or almost. And if I knew my quarry, by now he might also have discovered my name and particulars. Oh, yes, Henri. For just as I have my means, be sure Magruser had his. Well, obviously I could not stay at Blowne House, not after I realised how desperate the man must be to find me. I must go elsewhere, and quickly.

“And I did go, that very night. I drove up to Oxford.”

“To Oxford?”

“Yes, into the very lion’s den, as it were. In the morning I found a suitable hotel and garaged my car, and a little later I telephoned Magruser.”

“Just like that?” Again I was astonished. “You telephoned him?”

“No, not just like that at all,” he answered. “First I ordered and waited for the arrival of a taxi. I dared not use my Mercedes for fear that by now he knew both the car and its number.” He smiled tiredly at me. “You are beginning to see just how important numbers really are, eh, Henri?”

I nodded. “But please go on. You said you phoned him?”

“I tried the plant first and got the switchboard, and was told that Mr. Magruser was at home and could not be disturbed. I said that it was important, that I had tried his home number and was unable to obtain him, and that I must be put through to him at once.”

“And they fell for that? Had you really tried his home number?”

“No, it’s not listed. And to physically go near his estate would be sheer lunacy, for surely the place would be heavily guarded.”

“But then they must have seen through your ruse,” I argued. “If his number was ex-directory, how could you possibly tell them that you knew it?”

Again Crow smiled. “If I was the fellow I pretended to be, I would know it,” he answered.

I gasped. “Your friend from the ministry! You used his name.”

“Of course,” said Crow. “And now we see again the importance of names, eh, my friend? Well, I was put through and eventually Magruser spoke to me, but I knew that it was him before ever he said a word. The very sound of his breathing came to me like exhalations from a tomb! ‘This is Magruser,’ he said, his voice full of suspicion. ‘Who is speaking?’

“‘Oh, I think you know me, Sturm Magruser,’ I answered. ‘‘Even as I know you!’”

V

“There was a sharp intake of breath. Then: ‘Mr. Titus Crow,’ he said. ‘You are a most resourceful man. Where are you?’

“‘On my way to see you, Magruser,’ I answered.

“‘And when may I expect you?’

“‘Sooner than you think. I have your number!’

“At that he gasped again and slammed the phone down; and now I would discover whether or not my preliminary investigation stood me in good stead. Now, too, I faced the most danger-fraught moments of the entire business.

“Henri, if you had been Magruser, what would you do?”

“Me? Why, I’d stay put, surrounded by guards—and they’d have orders to shoot you on sight as a dangerous intruder.”

“And what if I should come with more armed men than you? And would your guards, if they were ordinary chaps, obey that sort of order in the first place? How could you be sure to avoid any encounter with me?”

I frowned and considered it. “I’d put distance between us, get out of the country, and—”

“Exactly!” Crow said. “Get out of the country.”

I saw his meaning. “The private airstrip inside his plant?”

“Of course,” Crow nodded. “Except I had ensured that I was closer to the plant than he was. It would take me fifteen to twenty minutes to get there by taxi. Magruser would need between five and ten minutes more than that…

“As for the plant itself—proudly displaying its sign, Magruser Systems, UK—it was large, set in expansive grounds and surrounded by a high, patrolled wire fence. The only entrance was from the main road and boasted an electrically operated barrier and a small guardroom sort of building to house the security man. All this I saw as I paid my taxi fare and approached the barrier.

“As I suspected, the guard came out to meet me, demanding to know my name and business. He was not armed that I could see, but he was big and heavy. I told him I was MOD and that I had to see Mr. Magruser.

“‘Sorry, sir,’ he answered. ‘There must be a bit of a flap on. I’ve just had orders to let no one in, not even pass-holders. Anyway, Mr. Magruser’s at home.’

“‘No, he’s not,’ I told him, ‘he’s on his way here right now, and I’m to meet him at the gate.’

“‘I suppose that’ll be all right then, sir,’ he answered, ‘just as long as you don’t want to go in.’

“I walked over to the guardroom with him. While we were talking, I kept covert watch on the open doors of a hangar spied between buildings and installations. Even as I watched, a light aircraft taxied into the open and mechanics began running to and fro, readying it for flight. I was also watching the road, plainly visible from the guardroom window, and at last was rewarded by the sight of Magruser’s car speeding into view a quarter mile away.

“Then I produced my handgun.”

“What?” I cried. “If all else failed you planned to shoot him?”

“Not at all. Oh, I might have tried it, I suppose, but I doubt if a bullet could have killed him. No, the gun had another purpose to serve, namely the control of any merely human adversary.”

“Such as the security man?”

“Correct. I quickly relieved him of his uniform jacket and hat, gagged him and locked him in a small back room. Then, to make absolutely certain, I drove the butt of my weapon through the barrier’s control panel, effectively ruining it. By this time Magruser’s car was turning off the road into the entrance, and of course it stopped at the lowered barrier. There was Magruser, sitting on my side and in the front passenger seat, and in the back a pair of large young men who were plainly bodyguards.

“I pulled my hat down over my eyes, went out of the guardroom and up to the car, and as I had prayed Magruser himself wound down his window. He stuck out his hand, made imperative, flapping motions, said, ‘Fool! I wish to be in. Get the barrier—’

“But at that moment I grabbed and held on to his arm, lowered my face to his, and said, ‘Sturm Magruser, I know you—and I know your number!’

“‘What? What?’ he whispered—and his eyes went wide in terror as he recognised me.

“Then I told him his number, and as his bodyguards leapt from the car and dragged me away from him, he waved them back. ‘Leave him be,’ he said, ‘for it’s too late now.’ And he favoured me with such a look as I shall never forget. Slowly he got out of the car, leaning heavily upon the door, facing me. ‘That is only half my number,’ he said, ‘but sufficient to destroy me. Do you know the rest of it?’

“And I told him the rest of it.

“What little colour he had drained completely from him and it was as if a light had gone out behind his eyes. He would have collapsed if his men hadn’t caught and supported him, seating him back in the car. And all the time his eyes were on my face, his pink and scarlet eyes which had started to bleed.

“‘A very resourceful man,’ he croaked then, and, ‘So little time.’ To his driver he said, ‘Take me home…’

“Even as they drove away I saw him slump down in his seat, saw his head fall on one side. He did not recover.”

After a long moment I asked, “And you got away from that place?” I could think of nothing else to say, and my mouth had gone very dry.

“Who was to stop me?” Crow replied. “Yes, I got away, and returned here. Now you know it all.”

“I know it,” I answered, wetting my lips, “but I still don’t understand it. Not yet. You must tell me how you—”

“No, Henri.” He stretched and yawned mightily. “The rest is for you to find out. You know his name and you have the means to discover his number. The rest should be fairly simple. As for me: I shall sleep for two hours, then we shall take a drive in my car for one hour; following which we shall pay, as it were, our last respects to Sturm Magruser V.”

• • •

Crow was good as his word. He slept, awakened, breakfasted and drove—while I did nothing but rack my brains and pore over the problem he had set me. And by the time we approached our destination I believed I had most of the answers.

Standing on the pavement outside the gardens of a quiet country crematorium between London and Oxford, we gazed in through spiked iron railings across plots and headstones at the pleasant-seeming, tall-chimneyed building which was the House of Repose, and I for one wondered what words had been spoken over Magruser. As we had arrived, Magruser’s cortege, a single hearse, had left. So far as we were aware, none had remained to join us in paying “our last respect”.

Now, while we waited, I told Crow, “I think I have the answers.”

Tilting his head on one side in that old-fashioned way of his, he said, “Go on.”

“First his name,” I began. “Sturm Magruser V. The name Sturm reveals something of the nature of his familiar winds, the dust devils you’ve mentioned as watching over his interests. Am I right?”

Crow nodded. “I have already allowed you that, yes,” he said.

“His full name stumped me for a little while, however,” I admitted, “for it has only thirteen letters. Then I remembered the V, symbolic for the figure five. That makes eighteen, a double nine. Now, you said Hitler had been a veritable Angel of Death with his 99999…which would seem to make Magruser the very Essence of Death itself!”

“Oh? How so?”

“His birth and death dates,” I reminded. “The 1st April 1921, and 4th March 1964. They, too, add up to forty-five, which, if you include the number of his name, gives Magruser 9999999. Seven nines!” And I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

After a little while Crow said, “Are you finished?’” And from the tone of his voice I knew there was a great deal I had overlooked.

VI

I sighed and admitted: “I can’t see what else there could be.”

“Look!” Crow said, causing me to start.

I followed his pointing finger to where a black-robed figure had stepped out onto the patio of the House of Repose. The bright wintry sun caught his white collar and made it a burning band about his neck. At chest height he carried a bowl, and began to march out through the garden with measured tread. I fancied I could hear the quiet murmur of his voice carrying on the still air, his words a chant or prayer.

“Magruser’s mortal remains,” said Crow, and he automatically doffed his hat. Bareheaded; I simply stood and watched.

“Well,” I said after a moment or two, “where did my calculations go astray?”

Crow shrugged. “You missed several important points, that’s all. Magruser was a ‘black magician’ of sorts, wouldn’t you say? With his demonic purpose on Earth and his ‘familiar winds’, as you call them? We may rightly suppose so; indeed the Persian word magu or magus means magician. Now, then, if you remove Magus from his name, what are you left with?”

“Why,” I quickly worked it out, “with R, E, R. Oh, yes and with V.”

“Let us rearrange them and say we are left with R, E, V and R,” said Crow. And he repeated, “R, E, V and R. Now, then, as you yourself pointed out, there are thirteen letters in the man’s name. Very well, let us look at—”

“Rev. 13!” I cut him off. “And the family Bible you had on your desk. But wait! You’ve ignored the other R.”

Crow stared at me in silence for a moment. “Not at all,” he finally said, “for R is the eighteenth letter of the alphabet. And thus Magruser, when he changed his name by deed poll, revealed himself!”

Now I understood, and now I gasped in awe at this man I presumed to call friend, the vast intellect which was Titus Crow. For clear in my mind I could read it all in the eighteenth verse of the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Revelations.

Crow saw knowledge written in my dumbfounded face and nodded. “His birthdate, Henri, adds up to eighteen—666, the Number of the Beast!”

“And his ten factories in seven countries,” I gasped. “The ten horns upon his seven heads! And the Beast in Revelations rose up out of the sea!”

“Those things, too,” Crow grimly nodded.

“And his death date, 999!”

Again, his nod and, when he saw that I was finished: “But most monstrous and frightening of all, my friend, his very name—which, if you read it in reverse order—”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. But in another moment my mind reeled and my mouth fell open.

“Resurgam!”

“Indeed,” and he gave his curt nod. “I shall rise again!”

Beyond the spiked iron railings the priest gave a sharp little cry and dropped the bowl, which shattered and spilled its contents. Spiralling winds, coming from nowhere, took up the ashes and bore them away…