Black Cat Weekly #9

THE WOLF WOMAN, by H. Bedford-Jones-1

THE WOLF WOMAN,

by H. Bedford-Jones

INTRODUCTION

Henry Bedford-Jones (1887-1949) was a Canadian-born author. Born in Napanee, Ontario, his family moved to the United States when he was a teenager, where he became a naturalized citizen. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime novels and short stories. He soon discovered he had a real talent for it, and he rose quickly through the ranks of pulp magazine writers to become one of the most successful of the era.

He wrote quickly and to order in every genre imaginable. His clean, smooth prose worked equally well for South Seas adventures, historical tales set in Asia and Europe, Westerns, contemporary fiction, mysteries—and even fantasy and horror. He was famous for writing multiple stories on multiple typewriters at the same time, moving from one typewriter to the other as the mood struck.

His speed and work ethic made him one of the most prolific authors of his day, and he published more than 1,200 short works and around 200 novels that we know of. More are probably waiting to be discovered in the pulp magazines, which have never been fully indexed and catalogued. His many magazine markets included Blue Book, Adventure, All-Story Weekly, Argosy, Short Stories, Top-Notch Magazine, The Magic Carpet, Golden Fleece, Ace-High Magazine, People’s Story Magazine, Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, Detective Fiction Weekly, Western Story Magazine, and even the legendary Weird Tales.

Because he published primarily in ephemeral magazines rather than books, his name faded quickly after his death, and today he is remembered mainly by pulp magazine fans and collectors. However, his work is top rate and deserves to be rediscovered by a modern audience

“The Wolf Woman” originally appeared in the August, 1939 issue of Blue Book magazine. It is part of the “Trumpets from Oblivion” series of loosely related stories, but like all of them, stands alone.

*

Norman Fletcher phoned me one morning. Even though one may know Fletcher well, to get a call from so distinguished a scientist,—one of the great men of the earth,—is to get a thrill.

“Hello!” came his cheerful tones. “Have you a stenographer in your office?”

“Yes,” I replied in some astonishment.

He chuckled. “Have you a particular young woman there named Stephens?”

“Oh! Sure. Why?”

“I have a letter here from her.”

“You have what?”

“I got a letter from her the other day, asking if I could reveal the origin of the werewolf myth. If you’re not busy, will you bring her out this evening?”

“Of course!” I promised. “I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you. The Inventors’ Club want to know whether you’ll be good enough to give any more demonstrations—”

“No!” he barked, with an unwonted brusqueness. “Sorry; I’ve undertaken a lot of Government work and may leave for Washington soon. Besides, something’s gone wrong with my apparatus. Apparently it’s getting out of control; I’ll explain tonight.”

I hung up, thinking uneasily of the recent occasion when something had gone wrong with his infernal invention. Then I called Miss Stephens and she flushed when I told her of Fletcher’s words.

“Perhaps it was terribly impertinent,” she confessed. “But you had said so much about those experiments—and I did a thesis at college on the werewolf—and—”

“And all that remains is for you to drive out there with me tonight,” I said cheerfully. “You’ll have the last word—or the first word—on the werewolf subject.”

She was demure enough as I ushered her into Norman Fletcher’s laboratory that evening and performed the introductions; but her demure quality had solid subsurface foundations. In no time at all, she had Fletcher interested, for she knew her subject; everything that had been written about werewolves, or humans who took wolf form at night, was in her head.

“But where’s your apparatus?” she exclaimed, looking around. “Working with ultrasonic and high-frequency waves, with electricity of all sorts—and nothing in sight!”

It is true that about this grim stonewalled laboratory was little to suggest the home of the most advanced electrical scientist in the country. Easy-chairs were grouped about his instrument-board, or controls; this, looking like the triple manual of an organ, gave forth a faint hum of tubes at heat, but seemed unconnected with any other apparatus.

* * * *

Fletcher settled himself before it and dimmed the room lights. To my displeasure, Miss Stephens accepted a cigarette and smoked with an air of enjoyment. She knows very well that I discourage cigarettes about the office, but she disregarded me entirely and seemed absorbed in Fletcher and his theories.

“Reduced to its essentials,” Fletcher said, “the myth is that a person dons a girdle of wolfskin and turns into a wolf, to prowl at night; a woman is usually the subject, and as a rule it makes a grisly and horrible story. It goes back to the earliest of the Greek writers, even back to the Assyrians, and the belief still lingers in Europe today.”

“Yes,” said Miss Stephens. “I have Vetlugin’s book on the Russian legends about it.”

“Oddly enough,” pursued old Fletcher, “the werewolves of the Christian dispensation were usually beneficent creatures, even touching and pitiful. While attempting yesterday to discover the origin of the legend, I chanced upon the story I’m going to show you. It concerns St. Odo, abbot of Cluny.”

* * * *

That his singular genius actually brought back scenes and sounds of the past, that the tremendous power of his ultrasonic mechanism could recapture, by a sort of backward television, real incidents from across the ages, we already knew. There was much about his process, however, that he had never revealed to anyone.

“Then,” I said, “the characters tonight will talk old French, I presume?”

“No,” said Fletcher hurriedly, for already the yellowish light was beginning to play upon the stone wall facing us. “My apparatus is somehow out of kilter; it does unexpected things, I regret to say, and I’ve no time to work on it now. Something about those new tubes and the iridium I’ve been using.”

“What’s that got to do with the language employed?” I asked.

“Everything. I can now get the sound alone, or the scenes alone. Yesterday I made a recording of the sound on this story and rushed it up to the university. Professor Hartmetz translated it into English and had the words recorded anew, rushed it back to me by dinnertime tonight, and I now switch the recording in on my sound-track. Ah! Pardon me.”

A telephone was buzzing insistently. He reached out to the instrument and spoke. I watched the yellowish light dissolving the stones of the wall; the solid granite melted and began to disappear before our eyes. Suddenly Fletcher’s voice sounded sharply.

“What?” he ejaculated. “What’s that, Hartmetz? A horrible thing? Impossible! It was a lovely story, about St. Odo and the wolves—what? It was not?” Agitation suddenly thrilled in his tones. “Good Lord, man! Then there must be something wrong! Well, let it go. Thanks for calling me. I’ve got the thing on now. Good night.”

I vaguely realized that something in his program had gone decidedly amiss; in the reflected radiance I saw him mop his brow and dart an anxious look at Miss Stephens, but she did not notice. She was staring at the wall. Those solid stones had now almost vanished, and as through a window, we were gazing out upon a scene that was no picture, but reality in every dimension. I caught a dazed mutter from Norman Fletcher.

“Sanscrit, he says—Sanscrit! The old Aryan race, thousands of years ago; no, no, it’s impossible.…”

A woman’s laughter drowned out the mutter.

The scene before us blurred and moved, blurred and took shape anew—a vista of hills and forests, of squat, massive towers. Again everything blurred; the apparatus was certainly not functioning aright. The woman’s laughter rose louder; it was no ringing musical peal of mirth, but the bitter laughter of hysteria. Suddenly the scene came clearly.

She was standing in a courtyard, laughing; a glorious figure against the background of rough stone and ancient thick trees, a woman laughing wildly, torn between grief and furious anger. The group of men regarded her with fear and awe. Her laughter died out and she put both hands to her face, as though to shut out some frightful vision.

This whole scene conveyed an impression of indescribable savage majesty; one sensed it, felt it in every detail. In this place was no delicacy or grace. The courtyard, the walls and buildings, were of enormous ill-fitted stone blocks; the trees were nobly massive; an air of spacious power pervaded everything, as in some dwelling of the gods.

The very doors, the stone seat, the beam-ends under the eaves, were gigantic and heavy-hewed. The weapons of the men bulked crudely large; spears with great bronze blades, huge splay-bladed axes of bronze, swords like beams of metal. The men themselves were built to match—figures of muscled strength and power. Outstretched at the woman’s feet, red tongue lolling, was a tamed wolf of tremendous size, eying her sharply.

The woman lifted her head and bared her face. She was in white, a golden torque about her neck. Her radiant loveliness struck forth like sun through dark clouds; it was a regal beauty, a richly glowing force instinct with energy. There was nothing passive about her. Into her stark blue eyes came a flame that shook her whole body, and her voice leaped forth like a clarion.

“Fight, Shatra! I’ll lead, with you and the warriors following.”

“Very well, but you know what it means, Indra,” said the stalwart warrior, Shatra. “You know how they kill us; all day long we slay the little dark men, and at the end when we’re exhausted, they overwhelm us. They’re in countless numbers like ants. That’s how your husband the king died; that’s how most of our warriors have died. We are few, and they are like the forest leaves. Barbarians, rude and uncouth and swart—but they fight!

“That,” he went on sadly, “is how our Aryan people have vanished. They slew in vain, and were overwhelmed. They drifted away and migrated, their civilization is lost; these little dark men have swarmed over the whole land. We alone remain, and now it is our time to die, if so you command.”

* * * *

The flame died from Indra’s face. “You have sworn to obey me and my son to the death,” she said quietly.

“Our oaths stand; order it, and we fight and die—you and your son with us.”

She caught her breath. “I see, I see! What are their terms?”

“They will not attack; behind our walls we can stand and laugh at them, killing them as they come. Their king gives a choice. Go forth freely and migrate, unharmed, seek another land as most of our people have done. Or else remain here in our stronghold; they’ll send us what we need of food, but every man of us who leaves the walls, will be slain; women and children taken for slaves. We are the last of our people, Indra; the choice is yours to make and we abide by it.”

She listened, wide-eyed. “Clever, these people! Let us remain here—and any who go forth, die! They’re not anxious for any fight to the death. Come.”

She beckoned imperiously and started across the courtyard. They followed her, mounting by the stairs to the stone tower over the gateway.

This was the donjon or central keep, the palace quarters of the dead king of a vanished people. From the squat tower, Indra could look down into the courtyard of the crudely massive castle itself, whose walls stretched afar over the hill. Within these walls was a small town. Outside was a vast camp stretching afar by hill and forest. And, from this camp, a score of the besiegers had come into the great courtyard of the castle, and waited there.

Indra looked at them. Hardy, swarthy men, different from her own people; smaller in stature, armed only with sword and bow. No stalwart hunters, like her powerful race, but numberless as the sea sands in that vast camp, an ocean of men who had flooded down over the snowy peaks and had driven her people out of their land. Small men, these Dravidians, yet they had conquered the mighty Aryan people and driven them into migration and exile afar.