Haggopian and Other Stories

“Mercifully, yes,” he answered, “Magruser and his project with him! He died the day before yesterday, on fourth March 1964, also an important date. It was in yesterday’s news, but I’m not surprised you missed it. He wasn’t given a lot of space, and he leaves no mourners that I know of. As to his ‘secret weapon’”—and here Crow gave an involuntary little shudder— “the secret has gone with him. For that, too, we may be thankful.”

“Then the cemetery you mentioned in your note is where he’s to be interred?” I guessed.

“Where he’s to be cremated,” he corrected me. “Where his ashes are to be scattered to the winds.”

“Winds!” I snapped my fingers. “Now I have it! Sturm means ‘storm’—it’s the German word for storm!”

Crow nodded. “Again correct,” he said. “But let’s not start to add things up too quickly.”

“Add things up?” I snorted. “My friend, I’m completely lost!”

“Not completely,” he denied. “What you have is a jigsaw puzzle without a picture to work from. Difficult, but once you have completed the frame the rest will slowly piece itself together. Now, then, I was telling you about the time three weeks ago when I saw Magruser’s picture.

“I remember I was just up, still in my dressing gown, and I had just brought the paper in here to read. The curtains were open and I could see out into the garden. It was quite cold but relatively mild for the time of the year. The morning was dry and the heath seemed to beckon me, so that I made up my mind to take a walk. After reading the day’s news and after breakfast, I would dress and take a stroll outdoors. Then I opened my newspaper—and Sturm Magruser’s face greeted me!

“Henri, I dropped the paper as if it were a hot iron! So shaken was I that I had to sit down or risk falling. Now, I’m a fairly sturdy chap, and you can well imagine the sort of shock my system would require so to disturb it. Then as I sat down in my chair and stooped to recover the newspaper—the other thing.

“Out in the garden, a sudden stirring of wind. The hedgerow trembling and last year’s leaves blowing across my drive. And birds startled to flight, as by the sudden presence of someone or thing I could not see. And the sudden gathering and rushing of spiralling winds, dust devils that sucked up leaves and grit and other bits of debris and shot them aloft. Dust devils, Henri, in March—in England—half a dozen of them that paraded all about Blowne House for the best part of thirty minutes! In any other circumstance, a marvellous, fascinating phenomenon.”

“But not for you?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not then. I’ll tell you what they signified for me, Henri. They told me that just as I had recognised something, so I had been recognised! Do you understand?”

“Frankly, no,” and it was my turn to shake my head.

“Let it pass,” he said after a moment. “Suffice it to say that there were these strange spiralling winds, and that I took them as a sign that indeed my psychic sense had detected something unutterably dangerous and obscene in this man Sturm Magruser. And I was so frightened by my discovery that I at once set about to discover all I could of him, so that I should know what the threat was and how best to deal with it.”

“Can I stop you for a moment?” I requested.

“Eh? Oh, certainly.”

“Those dates you mentioned as being important, Magruser’s birth and death dates. In what way important?”

“Ah! We shall get to that, Henri.” He smiled. “You may or may not know it, but I’m also something of a numerologist.”

Now it was my turn to smile. “You mean like those fellows who measure the Great Pyramid and read in their findings the secrets of the universe?”

“Do not be flippant, de Marigny!” he answered at once, his smile disappearing in an instant. “I meant no such thing. And in any case, don’t be in too great a hurry to discredit the pyramidologists. Who are you to say what may or may not be? Until you have studied a thing for yourself, treat it with respect.”

“Oh!” was all I could say.

“As for birth and death dates, try these: 1889, 1945.”

I frowned, shrugged, said: “They mean nothing to me. Are they, too,

important?”

“They belong to Adolf Hitler,” he told me; “and if you add the individual numbers together you’ll discover that they make five sets of nine. Nine is an important number in occultism, signifying death. Hitler’s number, 99999, shows him to have been a veritable Angel of Death, and no one could deny that! Incidentally, if you multiply five and nine you get forty-five, which are the last two numbers in 1945—the year he died. This is merely one example of an ancient science. Now, please, Henri, no more scoffing at numerology…”

Deflated, still I was beginning to see a glimmer of light in Crow’s reasoning. “Ah!” I said again. “And Sturm Magruser, like Hitler, has dates which add up to forty-five? Am I right? Let me see: the 1st of the 4th 1921—that’s eighteen—and the 4th of the 3rd 1964. That’s forty-five!”