The lips were thin, bloodless, tightly compressed, and stretched wide across a face that was remarkable for the receding forehead and shrunken cheeks. The skin was like parchment, thin parchment of a slightly green tinting — and now and then, as the Abbe stood there in silent meditation, he breathed into his closed mouth and puffed out those thin cheeks like a fish-bladder, and then he looked more like a frog than ever.
Of course, I could not say a word in regard to it. A Christian knight, who pretends to be a gentleman, does not eat the meat of a stranger and accept his hospitality and then repay him by telling him how very much like a frog he looks. At least, that was not the way that I acted in such emergencies; yet there was no harm in my thinking, and I certainly thought hard.
Then the Abbe asked me who I was and how I was hight and what I was doing, wayfaring in Cornwall; to all which questions I made answers that had a great deal of the truth in them, though I was naturally unwilling to confide in him as far as my desire to become Overlord of the land was concerned. He seemed to be well pleased with all that I had to say, and more and more he teetered on his feet, which were longer than the feet of most men, and faster and faster he puffed out his checks, breaking into my remarks with a strange puffing of wind, which, to my excited fancy, sounded rather like the croak-croak-croak of bullfrogs at the breeding season. Then, when I came to an end, he told me of himself.
“Fair sir, who say you are Cecil, son of James, son of David, son of John, and even back as far,as the son of Saint Christopher, you have some to Cornwall in good time, and the moment of your arrival in this wild land is indeed opportune. Of course, I am not a man of Cornwall, nor are these friends of mine you will see here tonight. Some of us are from France, and again there are some from Bohemia, and a few from the far lands beyond the deserts of Tartary, but we are all brothers, bound together by ties of blood and desire, and held fast by a blood-oath and a great ambition, which will be soon disclosed to you. Yet, while we all excel in brains and chicanery and knowledge, weird and deadly, yet none of us is skilled in arms and the use of weapons of offense and defense, and this is not due to any lack of bravery on our part — oh! believe me, fair sir, when I say that it is not due to any lack of bravery on our part, but, rather, to the possession of certain defects which prevent us from the brave art of war that most men delight in. So we gain our ends by other means, but tonight we must have a man who will fight for us, if there be need of fighting, and though I hope that such will not he the ease, still, there may be need of fighting — yes, there is no doubt that there will he use for a sharp sword, though it would be so nice if you could use your dagger.”
“Oh! as for that;” I replied, “I can use either one that is the most needed. Personally, I prefer the two-handed sword that I carry on my back, but, perhaps, if there is not much room, and the light is not the best, the dagger would be the weapon of choice. Now, in my previous work with giants, I always felt that the sword was the best, because there always came a time when it was necessary to carve off their heads, and, of course, that is slow work with a dagger. Yet, in little melee that I had with a one-eyed dragon in a cave mi the Canary Isle I obtained much satisfaction in blinding bun with one stroke of the dagger and the next moment the point found his heart. You would have enjoyed that little fight, Abbe, and I am sure that had you seen it, you would have full confidence in my ability to handle any emergency that might arise tonight.”
The Abbe smiled, “I like you. On my word, I like you. I am so impressed with you that I am almost tempted to ask you to become one of the Brethren. That may come later on. But to.the point of my tale. We are gathered here tonight to witness the overcoming of one of our greatest and most troublesome enemies. For centuries he has outwitted us and caused us grief. More than one brother has come to his death through the evil machinations of this fiend. But at last we have outwitted him, and tonight we are going to kill him. Naturally, when he dies his power will come to us, and, with that additional power, there is no telling to what heights of fame the Brethren will rise. We will kill him. For centuries he has boasted of his immortality, of his greatness, of his inability to be harmed; yet tonight we will kill him.
“I misspoke myself. We will not kill him. I will do it. That is what pleases me so. All of us are powerful, but I am just a little stronger than the others of the Brethren. So I am going to kill this enemy, and when I do so I will rule the men who are associated with me. I will rule them and also all men on this earth, and, perhaps, the men and women on other earths. I long to go into space, to conquer other stars than this we live on.
“So, tonight we will do this. I have this man in a glass bottle. By craft, I induced him to enter the bottle. Once there, he took a new shape — and was it not a pleasant thing that he took the shape he did! It gave me the power and the glory — world without end — no! no! NO! Oh, God! I did not intend to say that— not now! Not yet! I am not powerful enough to defy God. ” His voice sank to a whine. “Not yet, but, perhaps, in a few hours — after I have added to my power the strength of the dead fiend.
“This thing in the bottle can not be killed by poison, by steel, by fire, by water or by the preventing of his breath from reaching his lungs. There is no weapon of sufficient power to destroy him — but tonight he dies— tonight he is inside the glass bottle and I am on the outside, and he has voluntarily assumed the shape that makes it possible for me to kill him — through the glass — do you see? The glass is transparent. He has to look at me! I shall look at him, and in that glance lies his death. Soon he will shrivel, smaller; little by little he will lose his form till he lies, a few drops of slime, a twisted mass of softened bone, at the bottom of the bottle. Then I shall take the stopper out, and oh! the cunning I showed when I selected the stopper! True, it is of glass, but at the center there are ashes from the bones of saints and tears that fell from the eyes of Mary, and a drop of sweat from the brow of one of the saints, and it is thus I hold the fiend a prisoner. Well, since he is dead, the stopper is of no value; so I will remove it and place my mouth on the mouth of the bottle and suck into me the spirit of this dead fiend. No longer having a body to stay in, that spirit will be glad to inhabit me, and thus I will have the strength and power and glory of this fiend from Hell. Rather clever, what?”
“Indeed it is,” I replied with a lilt to my voice and a nausea in the pit of me. “But why do you have me in the drama, if my sword and my dagger are useless against this Evil One?”
He came over to me. He walked across the floor, and his feet made no noise on the pavement stones; he slid over to me and ingratiatingly put a hand on my hand and almost a cheek against my cheek, and, as I shivered at the cold touch of him and the clammy skin so cold and dew-wetted, he whined in my ear:
“You are to guard me, fair youth. You who are so brave and full of desire and the longing to be someone before you die, you have been sent here by Fate, in a most opportune moment, for you can guard me when I need that protection. Can not you see the situation? There I am, with my mouth over the mouth of the bottle, all ready to breathe in the spirit that will make me the greatest of all men, living or dead. Suppose just before I breathe, one of the Brethren (and I particularly suspect the man from Gobi) slips a dagger through my heart and takes my place as the breather-in of this power of greatness. Think how horrible this would be — what a sad ending to all my thoughts of greatness! And I have planned it all and plotted it all and brought it all to pass, and: why should I, at the lastward, be denied the right to become Emperor of the Powerful Ones, simply because a Chinese dagger is plunged through my heart? I know you will protect me. Oh! promise that you will be at my back and see that none of the Brethren acts in a manner that is wrong. Will you promise me? And in return I will see that you are paid. What do you wish most? Gold? Power? The love of beautiful women? Let me look into your eyes. Oh, lovely! You are a true brother of mine, for I see that you desire a warm room and safety and a library, with many books therein, and old manuscripts and curious vellums. I will give you all of these. I know you know me for a brother now. We are akin. Ha! What say you if I rewarded by giving you a copy of Elephantis? Some think Nero destroyed them all, but I know where one copy is. Will you guard me if I give you all this?”’