He had no lack of enemies—he knew that. Had one of them chosen this fantastic method of declaring war on him? In that case he could certainly afford to ignore the letter as coming from a source unworthy of serious consideration. A worth-while enemy does not give a warning; he strikes. The cheapest thing about a rattlesnake is its rattle. Varr started to run over a list of recognized foemen who might have done this ill-natured deed, but presently desisted; their name was legion.
He did not overlook a third, quite reasonable theory. The whole business might have sprung from the unbalanced mind of a lunatic—some person who believed himself appointed to right the wrongs of the world—the victim of religious mania. That would account for the choice of a monastic costume in which to masquerade—and it would also account for the queer language of the letter, savoring as it did of the Bible. Again, the type of person most likely to suffer from that form of mental affliction would be a poorly educated person—and Simon entertained grave doubts as to the orthography of some of the words in the letter.
He reached into a pigeonhole of the desk and took out a small dictionary that he always kept at hand. He selected the dubious spellings that had caught his attention and ran them down one by one. "Oppresor" was wrong. "Defensless" was fearful. "Neighbor" started out brilliantly but came a cropper at the end. And that curious phrase, "Who hast"; what about that? Simon was a trifle hazy over this, so he gave the writer the benefit of the doubt. It sounded queer, though. Anyway, he had established to his satisfaction that the fellow was illiterate—naïvely passing by the fact that he had himself resorted to a dictionary to confirm his belief.
He congratulated himself frankly on one score—he had laid the ghost! He could admit now—though with a blush of shame—that he had been badly shaken for just a few minutes, what with his own nerves and Ocky's confounded chattering! A man without a face! A "familiar" from the Spanish Inquisition! What rot a man's imagination can trick him into crediting. But that was over and done with now; he was back on solid ground, self-confident, secure—
He jumped quite half a foot in his chair at a muffled tap on the door—and swore at Bates for announcing dinner.
IV: The Legend of the Monk
Four people sat down to dinner that evening in the big dining-room across the hall from the parlor and Varr's study. The walls of the dining-room were plentifully equipped with sconces bearing lamps, but Simon, in some moment of petty economy, had once decreed that these should be lighted only on formal occasions. The only illumination this evening came from the candles on the table, which stood in the center of the room, and beyond the area reached by their rays the shadows deepened into impenetrability. At one end of the room a narrow slit of light at top and bottom marked the position of the swinging door which gave access to the pantry.
From this point to the sideboard, and thence to the table, and back again, moved Bates on noiseless feet as he busied himself with the service of the meal. In his black clothes, the instant he slipped out of the magic lighted circle he was swallowed completely by the shadows, to reappear presently with spectral abruptness in another segment of activity. Several times he startled Simon by silently materializing from the void at his elbow, and on each occasion the tanner found some excuse to vent his anger in a curt rebuke to the servant.
The four who dined were of diametrically opposed temperaments. Across the table from Varr sat his wife, Lucy, a pale, gentle soul who under happier circumstances might have retained more of her youthful freshness and beauty than she had. She appeared washed-out and bloodless, so that her sister had remarked to herself that living with Simon Varr must be not unlike associating permanently with a vampire. His own abundant vitality sapped the life-juice from those about him, leaving the desiccated bodies an easy prey to his appetite for dominance.