HE CLENCHED HIS FISTS. Lord, how immediate it was! His face was red, and he was gasping for breath.
As for Mr. Bigelow, he was astounded at this long explosion. He blinked at Mr. Stendahl and at last said, “Sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Names, just names to me. From what I hear, the Burning was a good thing.”
“Get out!” screamed Mr. Stendahl. “Get the blazes out! You’ve got your money, you’ve done your job, now let me alone, you idiot!”
Mr. Bigelow summoned his workers and went away.
Mr. Stendahl stood alone before his House. “Listen here,” he said to the unseen rockets, flying over. “I’m going to show you all. I’m going to teach you a fine lesson for what you did to Mr. Poe. As of this day, beware. The House of Usher is open for business!”
He pushed a fist at the sky.
THE ROCKET LANDED. A man stepped out. He looked at the House and his gray eyes were displeased and vexed. He strode across the moat and confronted the small man there.
“Your name Stendahl?
“I’m Mr. Stendahl, yes,” said the small man.
“I’m Garrett, Investigator of Moral Climates.” The irritated man waved a card at the House. “Suppose you tell me about this place, Mr. Stendahl.”
“Very well. It’s a castle. A haunted castle, if you like.”
“I don’t like, Mr. Stendahl, I don’t like. The sound of that word ‘haunted’.”
“Simple enough. In this year of Our Lord 2249 I have built a mechanical sanctuary. In it copper bats fly on electronic beams, brass rats scuttle in plastic cellars, robot skeletons dance; robot vampires, harlequins, wolves and white phantoms, compounded of chemical and ingenuity, live here.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Garrett, smiling quietly. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to tear your place down.”
“I knew you’d come out as soon as you discovered what went on.”
“I’d have come sooner, but we at Moral Climates wanted to be sure of your intentions before we moved in. We can have the Dismantlers and Burning Crew here by supper. By midnight, your place will be razed to the cellar. Mr. Stendahl, I consider you somewhat of a fool, sir. Spending hard-earned money on a Folly. Why, it must have cost you three million dollars.”
“Four million!
But, Mr. Garrett, I inherited twenty-five million when very young. I can afford to throw it about. Seems a dreadful shame, though, to have the House finished only an hour and have you race out with your Dismantlers. Couldn’t you possibly let me play with my Toy for just, well, twenty four hours?”
“You know the law. Strict to the letter. No books, no houses, nothing to be produced which in any way suggests ghosts, vampires, fairies, or any creatures of the imagination.”
“You’ll be burning Babbitts next!”
“You’ve caused us a lot of trouble, Mr. Stendahl. It’s in the record. Twenty years ago. You and your library.”
“Yes, me and my library. And a few others like me. Oh, Poe’s been forgotten for many centuries, and Oz, and the other creatures. But I had my little cache. We had our libraries, a few private citizens, until you sent your men around with torches and incinerators and tore my fifty thousand books up and burned them. Just as you put a stake through the heart of Hallowe’en and told your film producers that if they made anything at all they would have to make and re-make Ernest Hemingway. My God, how many times have I seen For Whom the Bell Tolls! Thirty different versions! All realistic. Oh, realism! Oh, here, oh, now, oh hell!”
“It doesn’t pay to be better!”
“Mr. Garrett, you must turn in a full report, mustn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then, for curiosity’s sake, you’d better come in and look around. It’ll take only a minute.”
“All right. Lead the way. And no tricks. I’ve got a gun with me.”
The door to the House of Usher creaked wide. A moist wind issued forth. There was an immense sighing and moaning, like a subterranean bellows breathing in the lost catacombs.
A rat pranced across the floorstones. Garrett, crying out, gave it a kick. It fell over, the rat did, and from its nylon fur streamed an incredible horde of metal fleas.
“Amazing!” Garrett bent to see.
An old witch sat in a niche, quivering her wax hands over some orange and blue cards. She jerked her head and hissed through her toothless mouth at Garrett, tapping her greasy cards.
“Death!” she cried.
“Now that’s the sort of thing I mean,” said Garrett. “Deplorable!”
“I’ll let you burn her personally.”
“Will you, really?” Garrett was pleased. Then he frowned. “I must say you’re taking this all too well.”
“It was enough just to be able to create this place. To be able to say I did it. To say I nurtured a medieval atmosphere in a modern, incredulous world.”
“I’ve a somewhat reluctant admiration for your genius myself, sir.” Garrett watched a mist drift by, whispering and whispering, shaped like a beautiful and nebulous woman. Down a moist corridor a machine whirled. Like the stuff from a cotton candy centrifuge, mists sprang up and floated, murmuring, in the silent halls.
An ape appeared out of nowhere.
“Hold on!” cried Garrett.
“Don’t be afraid.” Stendahl tapped the animal’s black chest. “A robot. Copper skeleton and all, like the witch. See.” He stroked the fur and under it metal tubing came to light.
“Yes.” Garrett put out a timid hand to pet the thing. “But why, Mr. Stendahl, why all this? What obsessed you?”
“Bureaucracy, Mr. Garrett. But I haven’t time to explain. The government will discover soon enough.” He nodded to the ape. “All right. Now.”
The ape killed Mr. Garrett.
PIKES LOOKED UP from the table.
“Are we almost ready, Pikes?” Stendahl asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“You’ve done a splendid job.”
“Well, I’m paid for it, Mr. Stendahl,” said Pikes, softly, as he lifted the plastic eyelid of the robot and inserted the glass eyeball to fasten the rubberoid muscles neatly. “There.”
“The spitting image of Mr. Garrett.”
“What do we do with him?” Pikes nodded at the slab where the real Mr. Garrett lay dead.
“Better burn him, Pikes. We wouldn’t want two Mr. Garretts, would we?”
Pikes wheeled Mr. Garrett to the brick incinerator. “Goodby.” He pushed Mr. Garrett in and slammed the door.
Stendahl confronted the robot Garrett. “You have your orders, Garrett?”
“Yes, sir.” The robot sat up. “I’m to return to Moral Climates. I’ll file a complementary report. Delay action for at least forty-eight hours. Say I’m investigating more fully.”
“Right, Garrett. Good-by.”
The robot hurried out to Garrett’s rocket, got in, and flew away.
Stendahl turned. “Now, Pikes, we send the remainder of the Invitations for tonight. I think we’ll have a jolly time, don’t you?”
“Considering we waited twenty years, quite jolly!”
They winked at each other.
SEVEN O’CLOCK. Stendahl studied his watch. Almost time. He twirled the sherry glass in his hand. He sat quietly. Above him, among the oaken beams, the bats, their delicate copper bodies hidden under rubber flesh, blinked at him and shrieked. He raised his glass to them. “To our success.” Then he leaned back, closed his eyes and considered the entire affair. Now he would savor this in his old age. This paying back of the antiseptic government for their literary terrors and conflagrations. Oh, how the anger and hatred had grown in him through the years. Oh, how the plan had taken a slow shape in his numbed mind, until that day, three years ago, when he had met Pikes.
Ay, yes, Pikes. Pikes, with the bitterness in him as deep as a black, charred well of green acid. Who was Pikes? Only the greatest of them all! Pikes, the man of ten thousand faces, a fury, a smoke, a blue fog, a white rain, a bat, a gargoyle, a monster, that was Pikes! A whisper, a scream, a terror, a witch, a puppet, all things was Pikes! Better than Lon Chaney, the father?
Stendahl ruminated. Night after night he had watched Chaney in the old films. Yes, better than Chaney. Better than that other ancient mummer? What was his name? Karloff? Far better! Lugosi? The comparison was odious! No, there was only one Pikes, and he was a man stripped of his fantasies, now, no place on earth to go, no one to show off to. Forbidden even to perform for himself, before a mirror!
Poor impossible, defeated Pikes! How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in rolls and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger.
So what more natural than they would one day talk over endless coffee-pots into innumerable midnights, and out of all the talk and the bitter brewings would come—the House of Usher.
A great church bell rang. The guests were arriving.
Smiling, he went to greet them.
FULL GROWN WITHOUT MEMORY the robots waited. In green silks the color of
