The men danced them attendance. And on the walls were shadows with no people to throw them, and here or there were mirrors in which no image showed.
“All of us vampires!” laughed Mr. Fletcher. “Dead!”
There were seven rooms, each a different color, one blue, one purple, one green, one orange, another white, the sixth violet, and the seventh shrouded in black velvet. And in the black room was an ebony clock which struck the hour loud. And through these rooms the guests ran, drunk at last, among the robot fantasies, amid the Dormice and Mad Hatters, the trolls and giants, the Black Cats and White Queens, and under their dancing feet the floor gave off the massive pumping beat of a hidden telltale heart.
“Mr. Stendahl!”
A whisper.
“Mr. Stendahl!”
A MONSTER WITH THE FACE OF DEATH stood at his elbow. It was Pikes. “I must see you alone.”
“What is it?”
“Here.” Pikes held out a skeleton hand. In it were a few half-melted, charred wheels, nuts, cogs, bolts.
Stendahl looked at them for a long moment. Then he drew Pikes into a corridor.
“Garrett?” he whispered.
Pikes nodded. “He sent a robot in his place. Cleaning out the incinerator a moment ago, I found these.”
They both stared at the fateful cogs for a time.
“This means the police will be here any minute,” said Pikes. “Our plan will be ruined.”
“I don’t know.” Stendahl glanced in at the whirling yellow and blue and orange people. The music swept through the misting halls. “I should have guessed Garrett wouldn’t be fool enough to come in person. But wait!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing the matter. Garrett sent a robot to us. Well, we sent one back. Unless he checks closely he won’t notice the switch.”
“Of course!”
“Next time, he’ll come himself. Now that he thinks it’s safe. Why, he might be at the door any minute, in person! More wine, Pikes!”
The great bell rang.
“There he is now, I’ll bet you. Go let Mr. Garrett in.”
Rapunzel let down her golden hair.
“Mr. Stendahl?”
“Mr. Garrett. The real Mr. Garrett?”
“The same.” Garrett eyed the dank walls and the whirling people. “I thought I’d better come see for myself. You can’t depend on robots. Other people’s robots, especially. I also took the precaution of summoning the Dismantlers. They’ll be here in one hour to knock the props out from under this horrible place.”
Stendahl bowed. “Thanks for telling me.” He waved his hand. “In the meantime, you might as well enjoy this. A little wine?”
“No thank you. What’s going on? How low can a man sink?”
“See for yourself, Mr. Garrett.”
“Murder,” said Garrett.
“Murder most foul,” said Stendahl.
A woman screamed. Miss Pope ran up, her face the color of a cheese. “The most horrid thing just happened! I saw Miss Blunt strangled by an ape and stuffed up a chimney!”
They looked and saw the long yellow hair trailing down from the flue. Garrett cried out.
“Horrid!” sobbed Miss Pope, and then ceased crying. She blinked and turned. “Miss Blunt!”
“Yes,” said Miss Blunt, standing there.
“But I just saw you crammed up the flue!”
“No,” laughed Miss Blunt. “A robot of myself. A clever facsimile!”
“But, but—”
“Don’t cry, darling. I’m quite all right. Let me look at myself. Well, so there I am! Up the chimney, like you said. Isn’t that funny?”
Miss Blunt walked away, laughing softly.
“Have a drink, Garrett?”
“I believe I will. That unnerved me. My God, what a place. This does deserve tearing down. For a moment there …” Garrett drank.
ANOTHER SCREAM. Mr. Steffens, borne upon the shoulders of four white rabbits, was carried down a flight of stairs which magically appeared in the floor. Into a pit went Mr. Steffens, where, bound and tied, he was left to face the advancing razor steel of a great pendulum which now swept down, coming closer and closer to his outraged body.
“Is that me down there?” said Mr. Steffens, appearing at Garrett’s elbow. He bent over the pit. “How strange, how odd, to see yourself die.”
The pendulum made a final stroke.
“How realistic,” said Mr. Steffens, turning away.
“Another drink, Mr. Garrett?”
“Yes, please.”
“It won’t be long. The Dismantlers will be here.”
“Thank God!”
And for a third time, a scream.
“What now?” said Garrett, apprehensively.
“It’s my turn,” said Miss Drummond. “Look.”
And a second Miss Drummond, shrieking, was nailed into a coffin and thrust into the raw earth under the floor.
“Why I remember that,” gasped the Investigator of Moral Climates. “From the old forbidden books. The Premature Burial. And the others. The Pit, the Pendulum, and the ape; the chimney, the Murders in the Rue Morgue. In a book I burned, yes!”
“Another drink, Garrett. Here, hold your glass steady.”
“My Lord, you have an imagination, haven’t you?”
They stood and watched five others die, one in the mouth of a dragon, the others thrown off into the black tarn, sinking and vanishing.
“Would you like to see what we have planned for you?” asked Stendahl.
“Certainly,” said Garrett. “What’s the difference? We’ll blow the whole thing up, anyway. You’re nasty.”
“Come along then. This way.”
And he led Garrett down into the floor, through numerous passages and down again upon spiral stairs into the earth, into the catacombs.
“What do you want to show me down here?” said Garrett.
“Yourself killed.”
“A duplicate?”
“Yes. And also something else.”
“The Amontillado,” said Stendahl, going ahead with a blazing lantern which he held high. Skeletons froze half out of coffin lids. Garrett held his hand to his nose, face disgusted.
“The what?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of the Amontillado?”
“No!”
“Don’t you recognize this?” Stendahl pointed to a cell.
“Should I?”
“Or this?” Stendahl produced a trowel from under his cape, smiling.
“What’s that thing?”
“Come,” said Stendahl.
They stepped into the cell. In the dark, Stendahl affixed the chains to the half-drunken man.
“For God’s sake, what are you doing?” shouted Garrett, rattling about.
“I’m being ironic. Don’t interrupt a man in the midst of being ironic. It’s not polite. There!”
“You’ve locked me in chains!”
“So I have.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Leave you here.”
“You’re joking.”
“A very good joke.”
“Where’s my duplicate? Don’t we see him killed?”
“There is no duplicate.”
“But, the others!”
“The others are dead. The ones you saw killed were the real people. The duplicates, the robots, stood by and watched.” Garrett said nothing.
“Now you’re supposed to say ‘For the love of God, Montresor!’” said Stendahl. “And I will reply ‘Yes, for the love of God.’ Won’t you say it? Come on. Say it.”
“You fool.”
“Must I coax you? Say it. Say ‘For the love of God, Montresor!’”
“I won’t, you idiot. Get me out of here.” He was sober now.
“Here. Put this on.” Stendahl tossed in something that belled and rang.
“What is it?”
“A cap and bells. Put it on and I might let you out.”
“Stendahl!”
“Put it on, I said!”
Garrett obeyed. The bells tinkled.
“Don’t you have a feeling that this has all happened before?” inquired Stendahl, setting to work with trowel and mortar and brick now.
“What’re you doing?”
“Walling you in. Here’s one row. Here’s another.”
“You’re insane!”
“I won’t argue that point.”
“You’ll be prosecuted for this!”
He tapped a brick and placed it on the wet mortar, humming.
Now there was a thrashing and pounding and a crying out from within the darkening place. The bricks rose higher. “More thrashing, please,” said Stendahl. “Let’s make it a good show.”
“Let me out, let me out!”
There was one last brick to shove into place. The screaming was continuous.
“Garrett?” called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced himself. “Garrett,” said Stendahl. “Do you know why I’ve done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe’s books without really reading them. You took other people’s advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you’d have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.”
Garrett was silent.
“I want this to be perfect,” said Stendahl, holding his lantern up so its light penetrated in upon the slumped figure. “Jingle your bells, softly.” The bells rustled. “Now, if you’ll please say ‘For the love of God, Montresor,’ I might let you free.”
The man’s face came up in the light. There was a hesitation. Then, grotesquely, the man asked, “For the love of God, Montresor.”
“Ah,” said Stendahl, eyes closed. He shoved the last brick into place and mortared it tight. “Requiescat in pace, dear friend.”
He hastened from the catacomb.
In the seven rooms, the sound of midnight clock brought everything to a halt.
The Red Death appeared.
Stendahl turned for a moment, at the door, to watch. And then he ran out of the great House, across the moat, to where a helicopter waited.
“Ready, Pikes?”
“Ready.”
“There it goes!”
They looked at the great House, smiling. It began to crack down the middle, as with an earthquake, and as Stendahl watched the magnificent sight, he heard Pikes reciting behind him in a low, cadenced voice:
“‘—my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the House of Usher.’”
The helicopter rose over the steaming lake and flew into the west.
The End
