Haggopian and Other Stories

“A week ago I attended a party at the home of my friend in the MOD. Magruser was to be there, which was why I had to be there—and I may tell you that took a bit of arranging. And all very discreetly, mind you, for I could not let any other person know of my suspicions. Who would have believed me anyway?

“At the party, eventually I cornered Magruser—as strange a specimen as ever you saw—and to come face-to-face with him was to confirm my quarry’s identity. I now knew beyond any question of doubt that indeed he was the greatest peril the world has ever faced! If I sound melodramatic, Henri, it can’t be helped.

“And yet to look at him…any other man might have felt pity. As I have said, he was an albino, with hair white as snow and flesh to match, so that his only high points seemed to lie in pallid pulses beating in his throat and forehead. He was tall and spindly, and his head was large but not overly so; though his cranium did display a height and width which at one and the same time hinted of imbecility and genius. His eyes were large, close together, pink, and their pupils were scarlet. I have known women—a perverse group at best—who would call him attractive, and certain men who might envy him his money, power, and position. As for myself, I found him repulsive! But of course my prejudice was born of knowing the truth.

“He did not wish to be there, that much was plain, for he had that same trapped look about him which came through so strongly in his photograph. He was afraid, Henri, afraid of being stopped. For of course he knew that someone, somewhere, had recognized him. What he did not yet know was that I was that someone.

“Oh, he was nervous, this Magruser. Only the fact that he was to receive his answer that night, the go-ahead from the ministry, had brought him out of hiding. And he did receive that go-ahead, following which I cornered him, as I have said.”

“Wait,” I begged him. “You said he knew that someone had recognised him. How did he know?”

“He knew at the same moment I knew, Henri, at the very instant when those spinning winds of his sprang up in my garden! But I had destroyed them, and fortunately before he could discover my identity. Oh, you may be sure he had tried to trace me, but I had been protected by the barriers I had placed about Blowne House. Now, however, I too was out in the open…

“But I still can’t see how the British government could be tricked into giving him a handful of atomic bombs!” I pressed. “Are we all in the hands of lunatics?”

Crow shook his head. “You should know by now,” he said, “that the British give nothing for nothing. What the government stood to gain was far greater than a measly two million pounds. Magruser had promised to deliver a power screen, Henri, a dome of force covering the entire land, to be switched on and off at will, making the British Isles totally invulnerable!”

“And we believed him?”

“Oh, there had been demonstrations, all faked, and it had been known for a long time that he was experimenting with a ‘national defence system’. And remember, my friend, that Magruser had never once stepped out of line. He was the very model of a citizen, a man totally above suspicion who supported every welfare and charity you could name. Why, I believe that on occasion he had even funded the government itself; but for all this he had not the means of powering his damnable weapons. And now you begin to see something of the brilliance of the man, something of his fiendishness.

“But to get back to what I was saying: I finally cornered him, we were about to be introduced, I even stuck out my hand for him to shake, and—

“At that very moment a window blew in and the storm which had been blowing up for over an hour rushed into the room. Rushing winds, Henri, and fifty ladies and gentlemen spilling their drinks and hanging on to their hats—and a whirling dervish of a thing that sucked up invitation cards and flowers from vases and paper napkins and flew between Magruser and myself like…like one of hell’s own devils!

“How his pink eyes narrowed and glared at me then, and in another moment he had stepped quickly out of my reach. By the time order was restored Magruser was gone. He had rushed out of the house to be driven away, probably back to his plant outside Oxford.

“Well, I too left in something of a hurry, but not before my friend had promised not to tell Magruser who I was. Later, Magruser did indeed call him, only to be fobbed off with the answer that I must have been a gatecrasher. And so I was safe from him—for the moment.

“When I arrived home my telephone was ringing, and at first I was of a mind not to pick it up but…it was the information I had been waiting for, a quotation from the Mad Arab himself, Abdul Alhazred.” Here Crow paused to get up, go to his desk, rummage about for a second or two and return with a scrap of paper. He seated himself once more and said: “Listen to this, Henri: