The black drama

By GANS T. FIELD
A strange weird story about the eery personality known as Varduk, who claimed descent from Lord Byron, and the hideous doom that stalked in his wake.
Powers, passions, all I see in other beings,
Have been to me as rain unto the sands
Since that all-nameless hour.
—Lord Byron: Manfred .
Foreword
Unlike most actors, I do not consider my memoirs worth the attention of the public. Even if I did so consider them, I have no desire to carry my innermost dear secrets to market. Often and often I have flung aside the autobiography of some famous man or woman, crying aloud: Surely this is the very nonpareil of bad taste!
Yet my descendants—and, after certain despairful years, again I have hope of descendants—will want to know something about me. I write this record of utterly strange happenings while it is yet new and clear in my mind, and I shall seal it and leave it among my important possessions, to be found and dealt with at such time as I may die. It is not my wish that the paper be published or otherwise brought to the notice of any outside my immediate family and circle of close friends. Indeed, if I thought that such a thing would happen I might write less frankly.
Please believe me, you who will read; I know that part of the narrative will strain any credulity, yet I am ready with the now-threadbare retort of Lord Byron, of whose works more below: Truth is stranger than fiction. I have, too, three witnesses who have agreed to vouch for the truth of what I have set down. Their only criticism is that I have spoken too kindly of them. If anything, I have not spoken kindly enough.
Like Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream , I have rid my prolog like a rough colt. Perhaps, like Duke Theseus, you my readers will be assured thereby of my sincerity.
Signed, Gilbert Connatt, New York City August 1, 1938