The Thing on the Hearth
"THE first confirmatory evidence of the thing, Excellency, wasthe print of a woman's bare foot."He was an immense creature. He sat in an upright chair thatseemed to have been provided especially for him. The great bulkof him flowed out and filled the chair. It did not seem to befat that enveloped him. It seemed rather to be some soft, toughfiber, like the pudgy mass making up the body of a deep-seathing. One got an impression of strength.The country was before the open window; the clusters ofcultivated shrub on the sweep of velvet lawn extending to thegreat wall that inclosed the place, then the bend of the riverand beyond the distant mountains, blue and mysterious, blendingindiscernibly into the sky. A soft sun, clouded with the haze ofautumn, shone over it."You know how the faint moisture in the bare foot will make animpression."He paused as though there was some compelling force in thereflection. It was impossible to say, with accuracy, to whatrace the man belonged. He came from some queer blend of Easternpeoples. His body and the cast of his features were Mongolian.But one got always, before him, a feeling of the hot East lyinglow down against the stagnant Suez. One felt that he had risenslowly into our world of hard air and sun out of the vastsweltering ooze of it.He spoke English with a certain care in the selection of thewords, but with ease and an absence of effort, as thoughlanguages were instinctive to him - as though he could speak anylanguage. And he impressed one with this same effortlessfacility in all the things he did.It is necessary to try to understand this, because it explainsthe conception everybody got of the creature, when they saw himin charge of Rodman. I am using precisely the descriptive words;he was exclusively in charge of Rodman, as a jinn in an Arabiantale might have been in charge of a king's son.The creature was servile - with almost a groveling servility.But one felt that this servility resulted from something potentand secret. One looked to see Rodman take Solomon's ring out ofhis waistcoat pocket.I suppose there is no longer any doubt about the fact that Rodmanwas one of those gigantic human intelligences who sometimesappear in the world, and by their immense conceptions dwarf allhuman knowledge - a sort of mental monster that we feel naturehas no right to produce. Lord Bayless Truxley said that Rodmanwas some generations in advance of the time; and Lord BaylessTruxley was, beyond question, the greatest authority on syntheticchemistry in the world.Rodman was rich and, everybody supposed, indolent; no one everthought very much about him until he published his brochure onthe scientific manufacture of precious stones. Then instantlyeverybody with any pretension to a knowledge of syntheticchemistry turned toward him.The brochure startled the world.It prosed to adapt the luster and beauty of jewels to commercialuses. We were being content with crude imitation colors in ourcommercial glass, when we could quite as easily have the actualstructure and the actual luster of the jewel in it. We werepainfully hunting over the earth, and in its bowels, for a fewcrystals and prettily colored stones which we hoarded andtreasured, when in a manufacturing laboratory we could easilyproduce them, more perfect than nature, and in unlimitedquantity.Now, if you want to understand what I am printing here aboutRodman, you must think about this thing as a scientificpossibility and not as a fantastic notion. Take, for example,Rodman's address before the Sorbonne, or his report to theInternational Congress of Science in Edinburgh, and you willbegin to see what I mean. The Marchese Giovanni, who was adelegate to that congress, and Pastreaux, said that the somethingin the way of an actual practical realization of what Rodmanoutlined was the formulae. If Rodman could work out theformulae, jewel-stuff could be produced as cheaply as glass, andin any quantity - by the carload. Imagine it; sheet ruby, sheetemerald, all the beauty and luster of jewels in the windows ofthe corner drugstore!And there is another thing that I want you to think about. Thinkabout the immense destruction of value - not to us, so greatly,for our stocks of precious stones are not large; but the thingmeant, practically, wiping out all the assembled wealth of Asiaexcept the actual earth and its structures.The destruction of value was incredible.Put the thing some other way and consider it. Suppose we shouldsuddenly discover that pure gold could be produced by treatingcommon yellow clay with sulphuric acid, or that some geniusshould set up a machine on the border of the Sahara that receivedsand at one end and turned out sacked wheat at the other! What,then, would our hoarded gold be worth, or the wheat-lands ofAustralia, Canada or our Northwest?The illustrations are fantastic. But the thing Rodman was afterwas a practical fact. He had it on the way. Giovanni and LordBayless Truxley were convinced that the man would work out theformula. They tried, over their signatures, to prepare the worldfor it.The whole of Asia was appalled. The rajahs of the native statesin India prepared a memorial and sent it to the BritishGovernment.The thing came out after the mysterious, incredible tragedy. Ishould not have written that final sentence. I want you tothink, just now, about the great hulk of a man that sat in hisbig chair beyond me at the window.It was like Rodman to turn up with an outlandish human creatureattending him hand and foot. How the thing came about reads likea lie; it reads like a lie; the wildest lie that anybody ever putforward to explain a big yellow Oriental following one about.But it was no lie. You could not think up a lie to equal theactual things that happened to Rodman. Take the way he died!....The thing began in India. Rodman had gone there to consult withthe Marchese Giovanni concerning some molecular theory that wasinvolved in his formulas. Giovanni was digging up a buriedtemple on the northern border of the Punjab. One night, in theexplorer's tent, near the excavations, this inscrutable creaturewalked in on Rodman. No one knew how he got into the tent orwhere he came from.Giovanni told about it. The tent-flap simply opened, and the bigOriental appeared. He had something under his arm rolled up in aprayer-carpet. He gave no attention to Giovanni, but he salaamedlike a coolie to the little American."Master," he said, "you were hard to find. I have looked overthe world for you."And he squatted down on the dirty floor by Rodman's camp stool.Now, that's precisely the truth. I suppose any ordinary personwould have started no end of fuss. But not Rodman, and not, Ithink, Giovanni. There's the attitude that we can't understandin a genius - did you ever know a man with an inventive mind whodoubted a miracle? A thing like that did not seem unreasonableto Rodman.The two men spent the remainder of the night looking at thepresent that the creature brought Rodman in his prayer-carpet.They wanted to know where the Oriental got it, and that's how hisstory came out.He was something - searcher, seems our nearest English word to it- in the great Shan Monastery on the southeastern plateau of theGobi. He was looking for Rodman because he had the light - herewas another word that the two men could find no term in anymodern language to translate; a little flame, was the literalmeaning.The present was from the treasure-room of the monastery; the verycarpet around it, Giovanni said, was worth twenty thousand lire.There was another thing that came out in the talk that Giovanniafterward recalled. Rodman was to accept the present and the manwho brought it to him. The Oriental would protect him, in everyway, in every direction, from things visible and invisible. Hemade quite a speech about it. But, there was one thing fromwhich he could not protect him.The Oriental used a lot of his ancient words to explain, and hedid not get it very clear. He seemed to mean that the creativeForces of the spirit would not tolerate a division of worshipwith the creative forces of the body - the celibate notion in themonastic idea.Giovanni thought Rodman did not understand it; he thought hehimself understood it better. The monk was pledging Rodman to ahigh virtue, in the lapse of which something awful was sure tohappen.Giovanni wrote a letter to the State Department when he learnedwhat had happened to Rodman. The State Department turned it overto the court at the trial. I think it was one of the things thatinfluenced the judge in his decision. Still, at the time, thereseemed no other reasonable decision to make. The testimony musthave appeared incredible; it must have appeared fantastic. Noman reading the record could have come to any other conclusionabout it. Yet it seemed impossible - at least, it seemedimpossible for me - to consider this great vital bulk of a man asa monk of one of the oldest religious orders in the world. Everycommon, academic conception of such a monk he distinctlynegatived. He impressed me, instead, as possessing the ultimatequalities of clever diplomacy - the subtle ambassador of some newOriental power, shrewd, suave, accomplished.When one read the yellow-backed court-record, the sense of old,obscure, mysterious agencies moving in sinister menace,invisibly, around Rodman could not be escaped from. You believedit. Against your reason, against all modern experience of life,you believed it.And yet it could not be true! One had to find that verdict ortopple over all human knowledge - that is, all human knowledge aswe understand it. The judge, cutting short the criminal trial,took the only way out of the thing.There was one man in the world that everybody wished could havebeen present at the time. That was Sir Henry Marquis. Marquiswas chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of ScotlandYard. He had been in charge of the English secret service on thefrontier of the Shan states, and at the time he was in Asia.As soon as Scotland Yard could release Sir Henry, it sent him.Rodman's genius was the common property of the world. TheAmerican Government could not, even with the verdict of a trialcourt, let Rodman's death go by under the smoke-screen of such aweird, inscrutable mystery.I was to meet Sir Henry and come here with him. But my traininto New England was delayed, and when I arrived at the station,I found that Marquis had gone down to have a look at Rodman'scountry-house, where the thing had happened.It was on an isolated forest ridge of the Berkshires, no humansoul within a dozen miles of it - a comfortable stone house inthe English fashion. There was a big drawing-room across one endof it, with an immense fireplace framed in black marble under agreat white panel to the ceiling. It had a wide black-marblehearth. There is an excellent photograph of it in the record,showing the single andiron, that mysterious andiron upon whichthe whole tragedy seemed to turn as on a hinge.Rodman used this drawing-room for a workshop. He kept itclose-shuttered and locked. Not even this big, yellow, servilecreature who took exclusive care of him in the house was allowedto enter, except under Rodman's eye. What he saw in the finalscenes of the tragedy, he saw looking in through a crack underthe door. The earlier things he noticed when he put logs on thefire at dark.Time is hardly a measure for the activities of the mind. Thesereflections winged by in a scarcely perceptible interval of it.They have taken me some time to write out here, but they crowdedpast while the big Oriental was speaking - in the pause betweenhis words."The print," he continued, "was the first confirmation ofevidence, but it was not the first indicatory sign. I doubt ifthe Master himself noticed the thing at the beginning. Theseductions of this disaster could not have come quickly; andbesides that, Excellency, the agencies behind the material worldget a footing in it only with continuous pressure. Do notreceive a wrong impression, Excellency; to the eye a thing willsuddenly appear, but the invisible pressure will have been forsome time behind that materialization."He paused."The Master was sunk in his labor, and while that enveloped him,the first advances of the lure would have gone by unnoticed - andthe tension of the pressure. But the day was at hand when theMaster was receptive. He had got his work completed; theformula, penciled out, were on his table. I knew by therelaxation. Of all periods this is the one most dangerous to thehuman spirit."He sat silent for a moment, his big fingers moving on the arms ofthe chair."I knew," he added. Then he went on: "But it was the one thingagainst which I could not protect him. The test was to bepermitted."He made a vague gesture."The Master was indicated - but the peril antecedent to hiselevation remained . . . . It was to be permitted, and at itsleisure and in its choice of time."He turned sharply toward me, the folds of his face unsteady."Excellency!" he cried. "I would have saved the Master, I wouldhave saved him with my soul's damnation, but it was notpermitted. On that first night in the Italian's tent I said allI could."His voice went into a higher note."Twice, for the Master, I have been checked and reduced in merit.For that bias I was myself encircled. I was in an agony ofspirit when I knew that the thing was beginning to advance, butmy very will to aid was at the time environed."His voice descended.He sat motionless, as though the whole bulk of him weredevitalized, and maintained its outline only by the inclosingframe of the chair."It began, Excellency, on an August night. There is a chill inthese mountains at sunset. I had put wood into the fireplace,and lighted it, and was about the house. The Master, as I havesaid, had worked out his formulae. He was at leisure. I couldnot see him, for the door was closed, but the odor of his cigarescaped from the room. It was very silent. I was placing theMaster's bed-candle on the table in the hall, when I heard hisvoice. . . . You have read it, Excellency, as the scrivenerswrote it down before the judge."He paused."It was an exclamation of surprise, of astonishment. Then Iheard the Master get up softly and go over to the fireplace. . .Presently he returned. He got a new cigar, Excellency, clippedit and lighted it. I could hear the blade of the knife on thefiber of the tobacco, and of course, clearly the rasp of thematch. A moment later I knew that he was in the chair again.The odor of ignited tobacco returned. It was some time beforethere was another sound in the room; then suddenly I heard theMaster swear. His voice was sharp and astonished. This time,Excellency, he got up swiftly and crossed the room to thefireplace. . . I could hear him distinctly. There was the soundof one tapping on metal, thumping it, as with the fingers."He stopped again, for a brief moment, as in reflection."It was then that the Master unlocked the door and asked for theliquor." He indicated the court record in my pocket. "I broughtit, a goblet of brandy, with some carbonated water. He drank itall without putting down the glass . . . . His face was strange,Excellency . . . . Then he looked at me."`Put a log on the fire,' he said."I went in and added wood to the fire and came out."The Master remained in the doorway; he reentered when I cameout, and closed the door behind him . . . . There was a longsilence after that; them I heard the voice, permitted to thedevocation thin, metallic, offering the barter to the Master. Itbegan and ceased because the Master was on his feet and beforethe fireplace. I heard him swear again, and presently return tohis place by the table."The big Oriental lifted his face and looked out at the sweep ofcountry before the window."The thing went on, Excellency, the voice offering its lure, andpresenting it in brief flashes of materialization, and the Masterendeavoring to seize and detain the visitations, which ceasedinstantly at his approach to the hearth."The man paused."I knew the Master contended in vain against the thing; if hewould acquire possession of what it offered, he must destroy whatthe creative forces of the spirit had released to him."Again he paused."Toward morning he went out of the house. I could hear himwalking on the gravel before the door. He would walk the fulllength of the house and return. The night was clear; there was achill in it, and every sound was audible."That was all, Excellency. The Master returned a little laterand ascended to his bedroom as usual."Then he added:"It was when I went in to put wood on the fire that I saw thefootprint on the hearth."There was a force, compelling and vivid, in these meager details,the severe suppression of things, big and tragic. No elaborationcould have equaled, in effect, the virtue of this restraint.The man was going on, directly, with the story,"The following night, Excellency, the thing happened. The Masterhad passed the day in the open. He dined with a good appetite,like a man in health. And there was a change in his demeanor.He had the aspect of men who are determined to have a thing outat any hazard."After his dinner the Master went into the drawing-room andclosed the door behind him. He had not entered the room on thisday. It had stood locked and close-shuttered!"The big Oriental paused and made a gesture outward with hisfingers, as of one dismissing an absurdity."No living human being could have been concealed in that room.There is only the bare floor, the Master's table and thefireplace. The great wood shutters were bolted in, as they hadstood since the Master took the room for a workshop and removedthe furniture. The door was always locked with that specialthief-proof lock that the American smiths had made for it. Noone could have entered."It was the report of the experts at the trial. They showed bythe casing of rust on the bolts that the shutters had not beenmoved; the walls, ceiling and floor were undisturbed; the throatof the chimney was coated evenly with old soot. Only the doorwas possible as an entry, and this was always locked except whenRodman was himself in the room. And at such times the bigOriental never left his post in the hall before it. That seemeda condition of his mysterious overcare of Rodman.Everybody thought the trial court went to an excessive care. Itscrutinized in minute detail every avenue that could possiblylead to a solution of the mystery. The whole country and everyresident was inquisitioned. The conclusion was inevitable.There was no human creature on that forest crest of theBerkshires but Rodman and his servant.But one can see why the trial judge kept at the thing; he wasseeking an explanation consistent with the common experience ofmankind. And when he could not find it, he did the only thing hecould do. He was wrong, as we now know. But he had a hold inthe dark on the truth - not the whole truth by any means; henever had a glimmer of that. He never had the faintestconception of the big, amazing truth. But as I have said, he hadhis fingers on one essential fact.The man was going on with a slow, precise articulation as thoughhe would thereby make a difficult matter clear."The night had fallen swiftly. It was incredibly silent. Therewas no sound in the Master's room, and no light except theflicker of the logs smoldering in the fireplace. The thin lineof it appeared faintly along the sill of the door."He paused."The fireplace, Excellency, is at the end of the great room,directly opposite this door into the hall, before which I alwayssat when the Master was within. The fireplace is of black marblewith an immense black-marble hearth. And the gift which I hadbrought the Master stands on one side of the fire, on this marblehearth, as though it were a singe andiron."The man turned back into the heart of his story."I knew by the vague sense of pressure that the devocations ofthe thing were again on the way. And I began to suffer in thespirit for the Master's safety. Interference, both by act and bythe will, were denied me. But there is an anxiety of spirit,Excellency, that the uncertainty of an issue makes intolerable."The man paused."The pressure continued - and the silence. It was nearlymidnight. I could not distinguish any act or motion of theMaster, and in fear I crept over to the door and looked inthrough the crevice along the threshold."The Master sat by his table; he was straining forward, his handsgripping the arms of his chair. His eyes and every tenseinstinct of the man were concentrated on the fireplace. The redlight of the embers was in the room. I could see him clearly,and the table beyond him with the calculations; but the fireplaceseemed strangely out of perspective - it extended above me."My gift to the Master, not more than four handbreaths in length,including the base, stood now like an immense bronze on anextended marble slab beside a gigantic fireplace. This effect ofextension put the top of the fireplace and the enlarged andiron,above its pedestal, out of my line of vision. Everything else inthe chamber, holding its normal dimensions, was visible to me."The Master's face was a little lifted. He was looking at theelevated portions of the andiron which were invisible to me. Hedid not move. The steady light threw half of his face intoshadow. But in the other half every feature stood out sharply asin a delicate etching. It had that refined sharpness anddistinction which intense moments of stress stamp on the humanface. He did not move, and there was no sound."I have said, Excellency, that my angle of vision along thecrevice of the doorsill was sharply cut midway of this nowenlarged fireplace. From the direction and lift of the Master'sface, he was watching something above this line and directly overthe pedestal of the andiron. I watched, also, flattening my faceagainst the sill, for the thing to appear."And it did appear."A naked foot became slowly visible, as though some one weredescending with extreme care from the elevation of the andiron tothe great marble hearth, under this strange enlargement, now somedistance below."The big Oriental paused, and looked down at me."I knew then, Excellency, that the Master was lost! The creativeenergies of the Spirit suffer no division of worship; those ofthe body must be wholly denied. I had warned the Master. And intravail, Excellency, I turned over with my face to the floor."But there is always hope, hope over the certainties ofexperience, over the certainties of knowledge. Perhaps theMaster, even now, sustained in the spirit, would put away thedevocation . . . . No, Excellency, I was not misled. I knew theMaster was beyond hope! But the will to hope moved me, and Iturned back to the crevice at the doorsill."He paused."There was now a delicate odor, everywhere, faintly, like theblossom of the little bitter apple here in your country. The redembers in the fireplace gave out a steady light; and in the glowof it, on the marble hearth, stood the one who had descended fromthe elevation of the andiron."Again the man hesitated, as for an accurate method of expression."In the flesh, Excellency, there was color that would not appearin the image. The hair was yellow, and the eyes were blue; andagainst the black marble of the fireplace the body wasconspicuously white. But in every other aspect of her,Excellency, the woman was on the hearth in the flesh as she is inthe clutch of the savage male figure in the image."There is no dress or ornament, as you will recall, Excellency.Not even an ear-jewel or an anklet, as though the graver of theimage felt that the inherent beauty of his figure could takenothing from these ostentations. The woman's heavy yellow hairwas wound around her head, as in the image. She shivered alittle, faintly, like a naked child in an unaccustomed draught ofair, although she stood on the warm marble hearth and within thered glow of the fire."The voice from the male figure of the image, which I had broughtthe Master, and which stood as the andiron, now so immenselyenlarged, was beginning again to speak. The thin metallic soundsseemed to splinter against the dense silence, as it went forwardin the ritual prescribed."But the Master had already decided; he stood now on the greatmarble hearth with his papers crushed together. And as I lookedon, through the crevice under the doorsill, he put out his freehand and with his finger touched the woman gently. The fleshunder his finger yielded, and stooping over, he put the formulasinto the fire."Like one who has come to the end of his story, the huge Orientalstopped. He remained for some moments silent. Then he continuedin an even, monotonous voice"I got up from the floor then, and purified myself with water.And after that I went into an upper chamber, opened the window tothe east, and sat down to write my report to the brotherhood.For the thing which I had been sent to do was finished."He put his hand somewhere into the loose folds of his Orientalgarment and brought out a roll of thin vellum like onion-skin,painted in Chinese characters. It was of immense length, but onaccount of the thinness of the vellum, the roll wound on a tinycylinder of wood was not above two inches in thickness."Excellency," he said, "I have carefully concealed this reportthrough the misfortunes that have attended me. It is not certainthat I shall be able to deliver it. Will you give it for me tothe jewel merchant Vanderdick, in Amsterdam? He will send it toMahadal in Bombay, and it will go north with the caravans."His voice changed into a note of solicitation."You will not fail me, Excellency - already for my bias to theMaster I am reduced in merit."I put the scroll into my pocket and went out, for a motorcar hadcome into the park, and I knew that Marquis had arrived.I met Sir Henry and the superintendent in the long corridor; theyhad been looking in at my interview through the elevated grating."Marquis," I cried, "the judge was right to cut short thecriminal trial and issue a lunacy warrant. This creature is themaddest lunatic in this whole asylum. The human mind is capableof any absurdity."Sir Henry looked at me with a queer ironical smile."The judge was wrong," he said. "The creature, as you call him,is as sane as any of us.""Then you believe this amazing story?" I said."I believe Rodman was found at daylight dead on the hearth, withpractically every bone in his body crushed," he replied."Certainly," I said. "We all know that is true. But why was hekilled?'Again Sir Henry regarded me with his ironical smile."Perhaps," he drawled, "there is some explanation in the reportin your pocket, to the Monastic Head. It's only a theory, youknow."He smiled, showing his white, even teeth.We went into the superintendent's room, and sat down by asmoldering fire of coals in the gate. I handed Marquis the rollof vellum. It was in one of the Shan dialects. He read italoud. With the addition of certain formal expressions, itcontained precisely the Oriental's testimony before the court,and no more."Ah!" he said in his curiously inflected Oxford voice.And he held the scroll out to the heat of the fire. The vellumbaked slowly, and as it baked, the black Chinese characters fadedout and faint blue ones began to appear.Marquis read the secret message in his emotionless drawl:"`The American is destroyed, and his accursed work is destroyedwith him. Send the news to Bangkok and west to Burma. Thetreasures of India are saved."'I cried out in astonishment."An assassin! The creature was an assassin! He killed Rodmansimply by crushing him in his arms!"Sir Henry's drawl lengthened."Its Lal Gupta," he said, "the cleverest Oriental in the whole ofAsia. The jewel-traders sent him to watch Rodman, and to killhim if he was ever able to get his formulae worked out. Theymust have paid him an incredible sum.""And that is why the creature attached himself to Rodman!" Isaid."Surely," replied Sir Henry. "He brought that bronze Romuluscarrying off the Sabine woman and staged the supernatural to workout his plan and to save his life. I knew the bronze as soon asI got my eye on it - old Franz Josef gave it as a present toMahadal in Bombay for matching up some rubies."I swore bitterly."And we took him for a lunatic!""Ah, yes I" replied Sir Henry. "What was it you said as I camein? `The human mind is capable of any absurdity!"
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