The Cthulhu Encryption Read online

  “Oberon has forgiven you now, Ysolde,” Dupin told her. “There is to be no further punishment.”

  “But you,” she murmured, her voice becoming fainter in spite of the seeming revivification of her flesh. “What has he done to you…you faded away…I was sure that he had taken you back, to kill you.”

  “I’m here, am I not?” Dupin said. “Whatever has been done is done, and is over…but for one thing. Do you remember the legend inscribed on your flesh, Ysolde?”

  “Oh yes,” she said, he voice regarding a little of its force. “My flesh forgot, for a while, but my inner self never did…I never could…but let’s not speak of that, Tristan. We have so much more….”

  “Indeed we have,” said Dupin, “but there are things I need to know. Do you know what the inscription says, Ysolde. Can you pronounce it?”

  “No one can,” she replied. “Except perhaps Oberon….”

  It was, I think, a frank denial on her part. She meant what she said. She had no intention of attempting to pronounce anything…but there seemed to be some kind of contest going on between her flesh and her consciousness, which was no mere side-effect of the great pox. She fell silent, but there was something inside her that would not tolerate silence. Her madness was layered; there was something behind or beneath her comforting legendary fantasy that did not want to let her rest easy. Perhaps something within her did not believe that she had, as yet, been punished enough.

  She was, I think, stricken unconscious before her lips moved—but her lips moved, nevertheless.

  She was right, though. Nobody could have pronounced the mock-syllables that whatever was in her wanted to pronounce. The nonsense was strangely memorable, but it was utter nonsense. Had I not had occasion to hear it several more times in the course of the next few days, I would never have been able to scribble the various representations of it that enable me to reproduce it, very approximately, here and now.

  What her lips said, as far as I can estimate it, was: “Ph’nglui mglw’nat Cthulhu R’laiyeh wgah’ngl fhtaign.” Each individual letter in that written version, however, needs to be pronounced as a distinct syllable, no matter what the conventions of English orthography might imply as to their pronunciation in combination.

  Dupin dropped the sick woman’s hand as if he had suddenly realized that he was holding a venomous snake by the tail. I could feel the eyes of half a hundred patients and half a dozen orderlies fixed upon us, as if we were players on a stage, at some crucial point in a melodramatic plot. There was audible muttering now, and more violent convulsions, to which the orderlies were slow to respond.

  It did not matter that “Tristan” had dropped “Ysolde’s” hand, for she was already oblivious—but not certainly not dead. Her face seemed to be on fire—and I suspected that her whole body might be streaked with scarlet as well.

  Dupin stood up and turned to Chapelain. “Will you help me turn her over,” he said. “I need to see the inscription on her back.”

  Leuret had had enough. “I must protest, Monsieur Dupin,” he said. “I cannot pretend to know what you are doing, but I really do not think that this is helping my patient in the least. I know that there is a school of thought that advises humoring patients in their hallucinations, and it is a method that I have tried myself in the hope of achieving further insights into their condition, but I have found it wanting as a means of helping patients to recover their sanity. We must not lose sight of our objective in treating the mentally ill, which is to dispel their hallucinations and return them to a safe and secure grasp of reality.”

  “Forgive me, Dr. Leuret,” Dupin replied, smoothly, “if what I am doing seems unorthodox, or even offensive—but I really am trying to act in your patient’s interest…and my ultimate objective, as always, is to make sure that reality continues to maintain a safe and secure grasp of us.”

  He should not have added that last remark, in my opinion, but he never could resist the temptation of clever wordplay. The sage of Bicêtre was not yet in a position to accuse him of madness, though, no matter what suspicions he might have formed.

  In the meantime, Chapelain had chosen his own side, and for the time being, it was not Leuret’s. He removed the blanket covering the stricken woman, and helped Dupin to roll her over, as gently as possible. Then, with as much reverence and decency as could be contrived, in the circumstances—which was not a great deal—he displaced the shift that was her only garment to reveal a square array of characters inscribed on her back.

  They seemed very tiny—certainly much smaller than the magnified version on the piece of paper in Dupin’s pocket. A casual glance from a distance would not have identified anything other than a pattern of grazes, which might have been made by raking fingernails, were there no so many of them.

  Dupin, however, was not content to look at them from a distance. He pored over them intently, and then took the piece of paper out of his pocket in order to determine whether it was an accurate transcription. I could not help leaning over too; nor could Chapelain.

  I could see immediately why Chapelain had demurred in the matter of calling the inscription a tattoo, even though I could not imagine any other process by which the forty-nine symbols could have been incorporated into her flesh. They looked as if they had been written beneath the surface of her skin in blood—arterial blood, for they were red, not blue—but that was impossible, so the appearance was clearly deceptive.

  Dupin obviously wanted to continue his comparison, but he was also aware that the situation was problematic in more ways than one. Abruptly, he put the paper away, got to his feet again and stood aside, in order to allow Chapelain to return the slight shred of decency that the poor woman had left. I was slightly surprised that he seemed to be surrendering so easily to the pressure of convention, but only temporarily.

  “Have you ever seen anything like that before, Monsieur Dupin?” Chapelain was quick to ask, as soon as he stood up again.

  “Not exactly,” Dupin replied, curtly but scrupulously. “We must procure her a cloak, at least—she cannot travel like this.”

  “Travel?” repeated Chapelain and Leuret, as one—and the only reason that my voice was absent from the chorus was that I could only mouth the echo silently.

  “You cannot take her away, Monsieur Dupin,” Leuret continued. “I could not possibly allow that. She is my patient. You have no authority.”

  “Forgive me, Dr. Leuret,” said Dupin, in what was probably intended to be his most soothing tone, “I know that you have done, and are doing, an enormous amount of good here, and you have my every sympathy and support in your heroic endeavors—but you cannot plausibly contend that any patient would be better off in surroundings like this than in a clean room of her own, with the personal attention of a physician of the ability of Dr. Chapelain. You are one man, with a mere handful of assistants and nearly a thousand patients to care for. You only know me by reputation, but Monsieur Groix will vouch for me as well as Dr. Chapelain, and they will both assure you that I am a trustworthy man. Your patient will come to no harm in my custody—no more harm than she is doomed to suffer anyway, given that she is dying—and will certainly be more comfortable. Dr. Chapelain told me last night that she is here voluntarily, and remains a free agent, with no legal constraint obliging her to remain. You heard her, just a few minutes ago, express a clear desire that I should take her away. That is what I intend to do, and I hope and expect that you will raise no objection, because you can clearly see that it is for the best.”

  While Leuret stood there dumbfounded I looked at Chapelain, and he met my eyes. We both knew that undertakings were being offered on our behalf, and that demands would shortly be made of us, of a frankly excessive nature and urgency, but neither of us said a word. He was the Chevalier Auguste Dupin—when he made firm decisions, it was not for lesser men to contest them.

  François Leuret did not want to cast himself as a lesser man, but he was no fool. He could see the inevitable when it was staring him in the ey
es, and he was sage enough to capitulate with it. When he finally replied, it was to say: “Where do you intend taking her?”

  My heart had already sunk; there was no surprise in the answer, when it came.

  “To my friend’s house, just south of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, near Saint-Germain-des-Prés,” he replied.

  Absurdly, the only objection I was able to raise, on the spot, was: “What about the servants?”

  “I will send you my concierge, to help install her,” he said, as if that were an answer to all possible objections. It probably was. Madame Lacuzon was not a person to tolerate objections, and her cousin—my cook—was as terrified of her as everyone else.

  Chapelain said nothing. He, after all, was going to gain from the arrangement too. My house was a good deal closer to his own residence than Bicêtre, and if he were to attend to the patient at all—as he clearly was, now that his curiosity had been thoroughly piqued—it would be infinitely more comfortable and convenient for him to do so in my house than in the filthy ward at the asylum.

  That thought might have occurred to Leuret, too. “In all conscience,” the sage of Bicêtre said, “I must continue to monitor the patient, and make sure that everything possible is being done for her. She is a free agent, but I am not; I have an obligation.”

  “You will be welcome to see her whenever you wish, Dr. Leuret,” Dupin told him. “Indeed, Dr. Chapelain and I will be very glad of your advice as to how best to make her comfortable during the last days of her life.”

  Leuret could hardly have failed to notice that there was a tacit challenge in that silky remark, but he must already have deduced that Dupin had no intention of seeking to “cure” Ysolde Leonys of her hallucination—and he must have known, too, that there was little point in attempting to bring a dying madwoman back to reality merely in the hope that she might die sane. I suspected that it was an argument that he had not only broached but exhausted when he had become annoyed with Chapelain the day before.

  In the end, all that the asylum director said was: “I cannot in all conscience oppose a move that will make the ward less crowded. I have every confidence in Dr. Chapelain’s ability to care for the patient as well as anyone else in Paris. But I do think that you owe me an explanation of your conduct. What is the meaning of the symbols tattooed on Madame Leonys’ back, and why are you so interested in them?”

  “I do, indeed, owe you an explanation,” Dupin conceded, looking round at the host of eyes that were upon him “but it will, of necessity, be a long one. Might I suggest that you call at my friend’s house his evening—or some other evening, if tonight is inconvenient—in order that we can discuss the matter at our leisure?”

  His presumption did not stop there; he left me to give Leuret my address, arrange a time for his visit that evening and swear him to the utmost secrecy with regard to what had just happened, while he and Chapelain returned their attention to unconscious woman.

  Having procured a batter blanket, for want of a good cloak, they had the ward orderlies place her on a stretcher and take her out to the fiacre, which was waiting for us at the gate.

  “A remarkable man, Monsieur Dupin,” Leuret observed, looking at me with a hint of sympathy, as I left the ward behind the, taking a deep breath of the slightly-less fetid air in the corridor as soon as the door was closed.

  “Very,” I agreed.

  “I feel it only fair to warn you,” he said, “that in my opinion, what you are doing is dangerous.”

  “Why?” I asked. “The woman is dying. If Chapelain can ease her final days, that is all to the good—and whether or not my friend can assuage his raging thirst for enlightenment in regard to the mystery she presents, his investigation can do her no harm.”

  “I did not mean that it is dangerous for her,” he said. “I meant that it is dangerous for you—and I shall be glad to explain why when I visit your home tonight, for I have no time at present.”

  And with that—having taking what slight revenge he could for Dupin’s cavalier treatment of him—he stalked away in the direction of his office.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DUPIN PLAYS TRISTAN

  Ysolde Leonys did not recover consciousness before we had carried her into my house and installed her in what had once been Dupin’s own bedroom, in the days when he had lived with me in my rented house. He was as good as his word; we had picked up his concierge, Madame Lacuzon, on the way, and she had climbed into the cab—even though there was no room for her on the cushions—without a flicker of protest at the fact that she might be thought derelict in her own duties

  I had known Dupin so long that I was almost accustomed to the gorgon’s intimidating presence, and was nowadays able to look in her direction if not actually to meet her eyes. I was astonished to notice, from the corner of my eye, that when Dupin told her the woman’s name, her expression shifted slightly, almost as if she had recognized the name—but I could not imagine that Dupin had discussed any matter with his concierge that might have led to his mentioning it before.

  I had to give the coachman a larger tip than usual to make up for the fact that, in spite of the clean blanket, the madwoman’s temporary presence in his vehicle had left it considerably more malodorous than usual. I have to admit, though, that Madame Lacuzon’s presence as Dupin’s auxiliary set aside any possibility that my servants might rebel in deed, word or expression against what was asked of them, and the gorgon pitched in with a will when she and her cousin were obliged to tackle the awkward task of cleaning the woman up sufficiently to be accommodated in clean sheets.

  Dupin stayed to supervise the eventual installation—and perhaps to take a further peek at the symbols in her flesh. I saw no such necessity, having already done my part, and took Chapelain into the smoking-room for a stiff brandy.

  “Well,” I said to him, “I must say that this is most unexpected. Have you the slightest idea what Dupin is up to?”

  “Not the slightest,” Chapelain confirmed, with a sigh, “but it is fascinating, is it not? From what I have been able to observe over the last year or two, Monsieur Dupin is a veritable magnet for strange occurrences—and I must say that you do not seem at all surprised by this bizarre sequence of events.”

  “I think I’m immune to astonishment now, where Monsieur Dupin is concerned,” I told him. “You’re right—fate does seem to have singled him out as a target for strange events. Fate…or the angels. She is mad, isn’t she?”

  “Utterly,” Chapelain confirmed. “I must confess, though, to some anxiety regarding this latest development. I had hoped that I had entranced her sufficiently to allow her to remain lost in her dream of Oberon, Merlin, Tristan and the like—where she seems reasonably content, in spite of her anxieties about being punished. If she sinks of her own accord into some further and more nightmarish dream-arena, however, I might have difficulty returning her to any kind of illusory stability. I have no idea what she was trying to say when that fit came upon her, but it sounded truly horrible. Monsieur Dupin seemed to recognize it, though, if not to understand it. Have you heard anything like it before?”

  “No,” I said. “If I had to guess, I’d say that it resembles or recalls something he’s reading one of his so-called forbidden books. Not the Harmonies de l’enfer, though—I never heard anything less harmonic.”

  “Nor I,” said Chapelain. “That story of the pirate treasure seemed intriguing, mind—although the connection between the pirate Levasseur and Ysolde’s cryptogram still seems extremely tenuous to me. This Breisz fellow might have expressed an interest in the name Leonys for some reason entirely unconnected with his interest in the Levasseur cryptogram.”

  “I can see why Dupin was struck by the coincidence, though,” I observed. “You know how inquisitive he is when his attention is caught by something like that. He cannot rest until he finds a satisfactory explanation—or becomes satisfied that the coincidence is of no significance at all.”

  “True,” Chapelain admitted. “He will want me t
o entrance her again, I presume, as soon as she wakes—or, given that she will probably still be entranced, to assist him to interrogate her.”

  “You may be certain of it,” I said. “I wish I could tell you what he hopes to gain from further intelligence, but I cannot. If the marks on her back were not tattooed, as you seem to believe, do you have any idea how they might have been inscribed there?”

  “I can only think that it is some strange kind of scar tissue,” he said “The only other hypothesis that springs to mind seems too ridiculous.”

  “The Devil’s mark?” I queried.

  “Not literally—but I have attended patients, in Bicêtre and elsewhere, who have manifested bloody symbols of a different sort, apparently psychosomatically.”

  “You mean stigmata?” I asked.

  “The cases I have seen involved the classic stigmata,” he confirmed.

  “But this is far more intricate than vague imprints of Christ’s nails, crown of thorns and spear-wound,” I said, although I was slightly relieved that he had had the same thought as myself, thus making to seem somewhat less ridiculous than it had while still unvoiced. “And she surely cannot be manifesting them by means of some perverted wish-fulfilment.”

  “Agreed,” he said, “but I have read reports in the mesmeric literature of stigmata-like imprints emerging by an effort of unconscious will, in response to suggestions planted by a magnetizer. Sometimes, if the reports are believable, sketches of faces have emerged, or even words in Latin, French or German.”

  “But forty-nine tiny symbols, each one intricately designed?” I queried. “That’s surely impossible, for any mesmerist.”

  He made no comment on my judgment of possibility. “If what the woman’s other voice said was a diabolical equivalent of speaking in tongues,” he observed, soberly, “I have no wish to meet the unholy spirit that inspired it. That one is certainly no paraclete.”

  The term paraclete, I knew, likened the holy spirit to a comforter. “Agreed,” I said, in my turn.