Haggopian and Other Stories

Now, this is a facet of Crow’s personality which did annoy me: his penchant for leaping from one subject to another, willy-nilly, with never a word of explanation, leaving one constantly stumbling in the dark. He could only do it, of course, when he knew that his audience was properly hooked. But in my case I do not expect he intended any torment; he merely offered me the opportunity to use my mind. This I seized upon, while he busied himself bringing out cold fried chicken from his kitchen.

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 Crow’s 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, it’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 outré 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, “it’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 reevaluation, 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 on to something monstrous! Seeing him—that face, startled, angered, trapped by the camera—and despite the fact that I could not possibly know him, I recognised 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 first 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?”