Latest / The Jailer of Souls / THE FACE IN THE MOONLIGHT

Transcript

THE FACE IN THE MOONLIGHT · The Jailer of Souls

• 0:00
  Chapter four of The Jailer of Souls. This liberal vox recording is in the
• 0:05
  public domain, read by Yoganan The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie, Chapter
• 0:12
  four. The Face in the Moonlight. Anister had thrown him with Rooke,
• 0:17
  but he trusted him no further than he would have trusted a cougar, a
• 0:21
  mountain cat. At the club, as the afternoon wore on to evening,
• 0:25
  he had met four or five men beaten. The county judge, a red
• 0:29
  face tippler with on the surface a heartiness that was repellent. Lun the hotel
• 0:34
  proprietor, a vast asthmatic man with a small ports in eye. Daventry,
• 0:39
  the land commissioner, whose British accent Anister noticed, would on occasion flat into
• 0:44
  a high nasal whining that was reminiscent of sag Harbor, a buzzard's bay.
• 0:49
  The rest hard faced typical of the environment aester put down for the usual lesser
• 0:54
  fry hangers on chackles, as it might chance housemen in the parlance of the
• 1:00
  room. Anester knew the type well enough. They seemed hospitable, but once
• 1:03
  or twice Anister had thought to detect in their glances a grimly curious look of
• 1:07
  a prizal and of something more. There had been a game going, but
• 1:11
  he had not Satin, nor had the lawyer invited him. The visit had
• 1:15
  been meant plainly enough as a sort of introduction. We're all here, Rokit
• 1:21
  said. But it was apparent too that there was one or two others who
• 1:25
  were absent. Anister heard several references to Bull, but for the most part
• 1:29
  there was a silence beneath which Anister could feel the tension. It was like
• 1:33
  a fine wire vibrating deep down, almost, he might have said, a
• 1:38
  certain, grimly quiet anticipation of that which was to come. Presently, the
• 1:42
  telephone tinkled loud. In the sudden stillness, aniester could hear the voice at
• 1:47
  the other end, harsh, strident, with a bestial growl that penetrated outward
• 1:52
  into the closed room. He can't come, came from the man at the
• 1:56
  telephone. Bull, Yeah, and I reckon, he seemed some dissip pointed.
• 2:00
  Anistor noticed that the tension at all at once relaxed, and with it,
• 2:04
  as he could see, there was plainly visible in the faces about him
• 2:07
  a certain disappointment. It was as if they had been waiting for something,
• 2:10
  something well that had not materialized. There was a laugh or two, a
• 2:16
  word stifled nutterance. One or two of the men, glancing at Anister and
• 2:20
  away, gave an almost imperceptible head shake. Even Rooke, as Anister could
• 2:24
  tell, appeared relieved as the newcomer rose, turning to the company with a
• 2:29
  conventional good night. For just as split second, it seemed to Anister that
• 2:32
  something was about to happen. For a moment he saw, or fancy that
• 2:37
  he saw a quick silent signal flash. Then from eye to eye Lune the
• 2:43
  hotel man had half risen in his chair. Out of the tail of his
• 2:46
  eye. As he was turning toward the door, Anister was aware of a
• 2:50
  quick ripple, a moment, the shadow of a sound, like the movement
• 2:53
  of a conjuror manipulating his cart's white hands flashing in a beveldering passade, But
• 3:00
  nothing happened. Leaving, he had walked slowly toward the hotel, turning over
• 3:05
  in his mind the story that had been told him by the lawyer. And
• 3:07
  there was one more question he wanted to ask him, a question that had
• 3:10
  to do with the squire paper that he had come upon among his father's papers
• 3:15
  in New York. For it had been this chance discovery that had sent him
• 3:19
  post haste to Drybone and the lawyer's office. Thinking these things, he was
• 3:23
  turning the corner to the hotel, when out of nowhere, as it seemed,
• 3:28
  a man had passed him, walking with a peculiar dragging shuffle. Seen
• 3:32
  under the moon for a moment, this man's face had impressed itself upon Anister.
• 3:37
  It was dark and foreign, with high cheek bones, and what seemed
• 3:40
  curiously out of place in Drybone, a black mustache and professional vandyke. Anister,
• 3:46
  watching the man, saw him turn into the doorway he had just quitted.
• 3:50
  It was the entrance to the club, two rooms above the saddler's shop
• 3:53
  at the corner of the street. Halting a moment to look after the man,
• 3:57
  Anister was wondering idly who he might be, certainly not the man called
• 4:00
  Bull, if there was anything in a name, And then abruptly he was
• 4:04
  remembering what the lawyer had let fall about the doctor. Perhaps that was who
• 4:10
  he was. He had had a distinctly professional air. The man's eyes had
• 4:15
  lingered upon Anister for a moment, and for a moment the latter had been
• 4:17
  conscious of a curious shock, for it had been as if the man had
• 4:21
  looked through rather than at him. Those eyes had glowed suddenly in the darkness,
• 4:27
  gray green, like a cat's in the abrupt, ferocious basilisk stare.
• 4:31
  Anister in his day had seen some queer corners and some tight places and rangoon.
• 4:36
  For example, he had penetrated to a certain dark house in a dim
• 4:40
  back water, stinking and dark, with the darkness of midnight even at high
• 4:45
  noon. And it was there in that dark house, which shuttered windows like
• 4:48
  blind eyes to the night, that he had seen that which was not good
• 4:53
  for any white man to have seen the right of the Sati, the blood
• 4:57
  stone of Siva, the destroyer reeking, with the sacrifice Aye and more.
• 5:01
  And something now at that time half perceived and dimly understood, came again with
• 5:06
  the sight of the dark face with its high cheek bones and black, foking
• 5:11
  beard. For he had seen a creature with a face, and yet without
• 5:14
  a face, muling and mowing like a cat now come from horrors. And
• 5:18
  the practitioner had been the man who but just now passed him at the corner
• 5:23
  of the street, the man with a dark foreign visage and the eyes of
• 5:28
  death. The end of chapter four