“Curious bedfellow,” I said.
“Yes,” said Ecco. “But . . . please—” And he looked at Micky, frowned at me and laid a finger to his lips. “Ssh!” he whispered.
“How about some coffee?” I suggested.
He nodded. “Yes, my throat is very dry,” he said. I beckoned. That disgusting stuffed dummy seemed to charge the atmosphere with tension. He followed me on tiptoe and closed his door silently. As I boiled water on my gas-ring I watched him. From time to time he hunched his shoulders, raised his eyebrows and listened. Then, after a few minutes of silence, he said suddenly, “You think I’m mad.”
“No,” I said, “not at all; only you seem remarkably devoted to that dummy of yours.”
“I hate him,” said Ecco; and listened again.
“Then why don’t you burn the thing?”
“For God’s sake!” cried Ecco, and clasped a hand over my mouth. I was uneasy—it was the presence of this terribly nervous man that made me so. We drank our coffee, while I tried to make conversation.
“You must be an extraordinarily fine ventriloquist,” I said.
“Me? No, not very. My father, yes. He was great. You’ve heard of Professor Vox? Yes, well he was my father.”
“Was he, indeed?”
“He taught me all I know; and even now . . . I mean . . . without him, you understand—nothing! He was a genius. Me, I could never control the nerves of my face and throat. So you see, I was a great disappointment to him. He . . . well, you know; he could eat a beefsteak, while Micky, sitting at the same table, sang Je crois entendre encore. That was genius. He used to make me practice, day in and day out—Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, Ve, Doubleyou, without moving the lips. But I was no good. I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t. He used to give me hell. When I was a child, yes, my mother used to protect me a little. But afterward! Bruises—I was black with them. He was a terrible man. Everybody was afraid of him. You’re too young to remember: he looked like—well, look.”
Ecco took out a wallet and extracted a photograph. It was brown and faded, but the features of the face were still vivid. Vox had a bad face; strong but evil—fat, swarthy, bearded and forbidding. His huge lips were pressed firmly together under a heavy black mustache, which grew right up to the sides of a massive flat nose. He had immense eyebrows, which ran together in the middle; and great, round, glittering eyes.
“You can’t get the impression,” said Ecco, “but when he came out to the stage in a black cloak lined with red silk, he looked just like the devil. He took Micky with him wherever he went—they used to talk in public. But he was a great ventriloquist—the greatest ever. He used to say, ‘I’ll make a ventriloquist of you if it’s the last thing I ever do.’ I had to go with him wherever he went, all over the world; and stand in the wings and watch him; and go home with him at night and practice again—Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, Ve, Doubleyou—over and over again, sometimes till dawn. You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Why should I?”
“Well . . . This went on and on, until—ssh—did you hear something?”
“No, there was nothing. Go on.”
“One night I . . . I mean, there was an accident. I—he fell down the elevator shaft in the Hotel Dordogne, in Marseilles. Somebody left the gate open. He was killed.” Ecco wiped sweat from his face. “And that night I slept well, for the first time in my life. I was twenty years old then. I went to sleep, and slept well. And then I had a horrible dream. He was back again, see? Only not he, in the flesh; but only his voice. And he was saying: ‘Get up, get up and try again, damn you; get up I say—I’ll make a ventriloquist of you if it’s the last thing I ever do. Wake up!’
“I woke up. You will think I’m mad.
“I swear. I still heard the voice; and it was coming from . . .”
Ecco paused and gulped.
I said, “Micky?” He nodded. There was a pause; then I said, “Well?”
“That’s about all,” he said. “It was coming from Micky. It has been going on ever since; day and night. He won’t let me alone. It isn’t I who makes Micky talk. Micky makes me talk. He makes me practice still . . . day and night. I daren’t leave him. He might tell the . . . he might . . . oh God; anyway, I can’t leave him . . . I can’t.”
I thought, This poor man is undoubtedly mad. He has got the habit of talking to himself, and he thinks—
At that moment I heard a voice; a little, thin, querulous, mocking voice, which seemed to come from Ecco’s room. It said:
“Ecco!”
Ecco leaped up, gibbering with fright. “There!” he said. “There he is again. I must go. Forgive me. I’m not mad; not really mad. I must—”
He ran out. I heard his door open and close. Then there came again the sound of conversation, and once I thought I heard Ecco’s voice, shaking with sobs, saying: Bee, Eff, Em, En, Pe, Ve, Doubleyou . . .
He is crazy, I thought; yes, the man must be crazy . . . And before, he was throwing his voice . . . calling himself . . .
But it took me two hours to convince myself of that; and I left the light burning all night, and I swear to you that I have never been more glad to see the dawn.
FANTASY OF A HUNTED MAN
In Kentucky, in the year 1918, there lived a ferocious old man who was known as the Major. I suppose he was of the kind that carves out empires and breaks open new territories. He was indomitable, wiry, strong as steel in spite of his sixty years, and devoid of fear. An admirable, though far from lovable man, he lived alone, deeply respected and half feared by everybody who knew him. He was something of a madman, terrifying in his fanatical devotion to anything he regarded as his duty. The Major belonged to the hard old days when men, single-handed, fought wildernesses and beat them tame.
Into his battered, lion-like head, there had crept the craziness of race-hate. He loathed foreigners, and abhorred Negroes, and was always to be found in the forefront of any demonstration against the unhappy black men of Kentucky—a figure of terror, with his rifle, and his great mustache which curved down like a sharp sickle, and his huge and glaring blue eyes.
That kind of fanaticism seems to bubble dangerously near the surface of the Deep South. A word cracks the skin over it, and lets loose an eruption of murder and cruelty.
One day, a hysterical woman said that she had been accosted by a Negro named Prosper. He had, in fact, asked her some question pertaining to firewood; but she had run, screaming for help. (That happens frequently.) She ran, I say, screaming. The drowsy little town seemed to start and blink. The Negroes knew what that meant and they trembled. Somebody passed a word to Prosper. He knew that innocence was no argument: he was a Negro black as night and therefore damned before judgment. He took to the woods, flying from what he knew must come.
A great mutter rose. Men clustered, tense and angry. Mouths twitched up in snarls. Beware of the undercurrent of blood-lust that crawls in the depths of men! Somebody yelled, “Are we going to let that nigra get away with this?” A hundred other voices roared: “No!” The mutter of the mob became a howl, like that of mad dogs. Guns came down from hooks. Night had fallen. Torches flared. Two great bloodhounds, straining at their leashes, snuffled on the trail of Prosper. The men followed the dogs. The mob was out for blood and torture. And the Major led them, with a gun loaded with buckshot under his arm.