Tales of Terror and Mystery
Here a page of the manuscript is unfortunately missing. On the next
page is written, in large, straggling writing:
"Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are
beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"
Such in its entirety is the Joyce-Armstrong Statement. Of the man
nothing has since been seen. Pieces of his shattered monoplane have
been picked up in the preserves of Mr. Budd-Lushington upon the borders
of Kent and Sussex, within a few miles of the spot where the note-book
was discovered. If the unfortunate aviator's theory is correct that
this air-jungle, as he called it, existed only over the south-west of
England, then it would seem that he had fled from it at the full speed
of his monoplane, but had been overtaken and devoured by these horrible
creatures at some spot in the outer atmosphere above the place where
the grim relics were found. The picture of that monoplane skimming
down the sky, with the nameless terrors flying as swiftly beneath it
and cutting it off always from the earth while they gradually closed in
upon their victim, is one upon which a man who valued his sanity would
prefer not to dwell. There are many, as I am aware, who still jeer at
the facts which I have here set down, but even they must admit that
Joyce-Armstrong has disappeared, and I would commend to them his own
words: "This note-book may explain what I am trying to do, and how I
lost my life in doing it. But no drivel about accidents or mysteries,
if YOU please."
The Leather Funnel
My friend, Lionel Dacre, lived in the Avenue de Wagram, Paris. His
house was that small one, with the iron railings and grass plot in
front of it, on the left-hand side as you pass down from the Arc de
Triomphe. I fancy that it had been there long before the avenue was
constructed, for the grey tiles were stained with lichens, and the
walls were mildewed and discoloured with age. It looked a small house
from the street, five windows in front, if I remember right, but it
deepened into a single long chamber at the back. It was here that
Dacre had that singular library of occult literature, and the fantastic
curiosities which served as a hobby for himself, and an amusement for
his friends. A wealthy man of refined and eccentric tastes, he had
spent much of his life and fortune in gathering together what was said
to be a unique private collection of Talmudic, cabalistic, and magical
works, many of them of great rarity and value. His tastes leaned
toward the marvellous and the monstrous, and I have heard that his
experiments in the direction of the unknown have passed all the bounds
of civilization and of decorum. To his English friends he never
alluded to such matters, and took the tone of the student and virtuoso;
but a Frenchman whose tastes were of the same nature has assured me
that the worst excesses of the black mass have been perpetrated in that
large and lofty hall, which is lined with the shelves of his books, and
the cases of his museum.
Dacre's appearance was enough to show that his deep interest in these
psychic matters was intellectual rather than spiritual. There was no
trace of asceticism upon his heavy face, but there was much mental
force in his huge, dome-like skull, which curved upward from amongst
his thinning locks, like a snowpeak above its fringe of fir trees. His
knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior
to his character. The small bright eyes, buried deeply in his fleshy
face, twinkled with intelligence and an unabated curiosity of life, but
they were the eyes of a sensualist and an egotist. Enough of the man,
for he is dead now, poor devil, dead at the very time that he had made
sure that he had at last discovered the elixir of life. It is not with
his complex character that I have to deal, but with the very strange
and inexplicable incident which had its rise in my visit to him in the
early spring of the year '82.
I had known Dacre in England, for my researches in the Assyrian Room of
the British Museum had been conducted at the time when he was
endeavouring to establish a mystic and esoteric meaning in the
Babylonian tablets, and this community of interests had brought us
together. Chance remarks had led to daily conversation, and that to
something verging upon friendship. I had promised him that on my next
visit to Paris I would call upon him. At the time when I was able to
fulfil my compact I was living in a cottage at Fontainebleau, and as
the evening trains were inconvenient, he asked me to spend the night in
his house.
"I have only that one spare couch," said he, pointing to a broad sofa
in his large salon; "I hope that you will manage to be comfortable
there."
It was a singular bedroom, with its high walls of brown volumes, but
there could be no more agreeable furniture to a bookworm like myself,
and there is no scent so pleasant to my nostrils as that faint, subtle
reek which comes from an ancient book. I assured him that I could
desire no more charming chamber, and no more congenial surroundings.
"If the fittings are neither convenient nor conventional, they are at
least costly," said he, looking round at his shelves. "I have expended
nearly a quarter of a million of money upon these objects which
surround you. Books, weapons, gems, carvings, tapestries,
images--there is hardly a thing here which has not its history, and it
is generally one worth telling."
He was seated as he spoke at one side of the open fire-place, and I at
the other. His reading-table was on his right, and the strong lamp
above it ringed it with a very vivid circle of golden light. A
half-rolled palimpsest lay in the centre, and around it were many
quaint articles of bric-a-brac. One of these was a large funnel, such
as is used for filling wine casks. It appeared to be made of black
wood, and to be rimmed with discoloured brass.
"That is a curious thing," I remarked. "What is the history of that?"
"Ah!" said he, "it is the very question which I have had occasion to
ask myself. I would give a good deal to know. Take it in your hands
and examine it."
I did so, and found that what I had imagined to be wood was in reality
leather, though age had dried it into an extreme hardness. It was a
large funnel, and might hold a quart when full. The brass rim
encircled the wide end, but the narrow was also tipped with metal.
"What do you make of it?" asked Dacre.
"I should imagine that it belonged to some vintner or maltster in the
Middle Ages," said I. "I have seen in England leathern drinking
flagons of the seventeenth century--'black jacks' as they were
called--which were of the same colour and hardness as this filler."
"I dare say the date would be about the same," said Dacre, "and, no
doubt, also, it was used for filling a vessel with liquid. If my
suspicions are correct, however, it was a queer vintner who used it,
and a very singular cask which was filled. Do you observe nothing
strange at the spout end of the funnel."
As I held it to the light I observed that at a spot some five inches
above the brass tip the narrow neck of the leather funnel was all
haggled and scored, as if someone had notched it round with a blunt
knife. Only at that point was there any roughening of the dead black
surface.
"Someone has tried to cut off the neck."
"Would you call it a cut?"
"It is torn and lacerated. It must have taken some strength to leave
these marks on such tough material, whatever the instrument may have
been. But what do you think of it? I can tell that you know more than
you say."
Dacre smiled, and his little eyes twinkled with knowledge.
"Have you included the psychology of dreams among your learned
studies?" he asked.
"I did not even know that there was such a psychology."
"My dear sir, that shelf above the gem case is filled with volumes,
from Albertus Magnus onward, which deal with no other subject. It is a
science in itself."
"A science of charlatans!"
"The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the
astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the
experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of
tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time
be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of
our friends on the bookshelf yonder will no longer be the amusement of
the mystic, but the foundations of a science."
"Supposing that is so, what has the science of dreams to do with a
large, black, brass-rimmed funnel?"
"I will tell you. You know that I have an agent who is always on the
look-out for rarities and curiosities for my collection. Some days ago
he heard of a dealer upon one of the Quais who had acquired some old
rubbish found in a cupboard in an ancient house at the back of the Rue
Mathurin, in the Quartier Latin. The dining-room of this old house is
decorated with a coat of arms, chevrons, and bars rouge upon a field
argent, which prove, upon inquiry, to be the shield of Nicholas de la
Reynie, a high official of King Louis XIV. There can be no doubt that
the other articles in the cupboard date back to the early days of that
king. The inference is, therefore, that they were all the property of
this Nicholas de la Reynie, who was, as I understand, the gentleman
specially concerned with the maintenance and execution of the Draconic
laws of that epoch."
"What then?"
"I would ask you now to take the funnel into your hands once more and
to examine the upper brass rim. Can you make out any lettering upon
it?"
There were certainly some scratches upon it, almost obliterated by
time. The general effect was of several letters, the last of which
bore some resemblance to a B.
"You make it a B?"
"Yes, I do."
"So do I. In fact, I have no doubt whatever that it is a B."
"But the nobleman you mentioned would have had R for his initial."
"Exactly! That's the beauty of it. He owned this curious object, and
yet he had someone else's initials upon it. Why did he do this?"
"I can't imagine; can you?"
"Well, I might, perhaps, guess. Do you observe something drawn a
little farther along the rim?"
"I should say it was a crown."
"It is undoubtedly a crown; but if you examine it in a good light, you
will convince yourself that it is not an ordinary crown. It is a
heraldic crown--a badge of rank, and it consists of an alternation of
four pearls and strawberry leaves, the proper badge of a marquis. We
may infer, therefore, that the person whose initials end in B was
entitled to wear that coronet."
"Then this common leather filler belonged to a marquis?"
Dacre gave a peculiar smile.
"Or to some member of the family of a marquis," said he. "So much we
have clearly gathered from this engraved rim."
"But what has all this to do with dreams?" I do not know whether it
was from a look upon Dacre's face, or from some subtle suggestion in
his manner, but a feeling of repulsion, of unreasoning horror, came
upon me as I looked at the gnarled old lump of leather.
"I have more than once received important information through my
dreams," said my companion in the didactic manner which he loved to
affect. "I make it a rule now when I am in doubt upon any material
point to place the article in question beside me as I sleep, and to
hope for some enlightenment. The process does not appear to me to be
very obscure, though it has not yet received the blessing of orthodox
science. According to my theory, any object which has been intimately
associated with any supreme paroxysm of human emotion, whether it be
joy or pain, will retain a certain atmosphere or association which it