Compleat Crow

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 Crows 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, 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 outr 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, 'if 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 re-evaluation, 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 onto something monstrous! Seeing him — that face, startled, angered, trapped by the camera --and despite the fact that I could not possibly know him, I recognized 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 1 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 4 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 recognized something, so I had been recognized! 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 m 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-fiver

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.