Peter Whiffle

by Carl Van Vechten

Not in this room! I gasped. Unless you mean the secrets of Paul Poiret and Léon Bakst.

No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder and began to purr loudly, not in this room. This is my reception-room where I receive nobody. You are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, to enter this house since I have remodelled it but, he continued reflectively, I have a fancy that the bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellow and blue devils, will like this room, when I call them forth to do my bidding.

Again he warned me, Not one word to Edith, do you understand? Not one word. I must be alone. I have told you and only you. I must work in peace and that I cannot do if I am interrupted. This room is my relief. It amuses me to sit here, but it is not my laboratory. Come, it is time to show you. Besides, I have my reasons....

We did not rise. The lights were again mysteriously extinguished and I felt that the couch on which we sat was moving. The sensation was pleasant, like taking a ride on a magic carpet or a taktrevan. In a few seconds, when light appeared again, instead of a wall behind us we sat with a wall before us. Facing about, I perceived that we were in another chamber, a chamber that would have pleased Doctor Faust, for it was obviously the laboratory of an alchemist. Nevertheless, I noted at once a certain theatrical air in the arrangement.

This, I said, seems more suitable for the performances of Herrmann the Great or Houdini than the experiments of Paracelsus.

Peter grinned. It was clear that he was taking a childish delight in the entertainment.

It is fun to do this with you. I've had no one but the black boy and the cat. There are moments when I think I would like to bring Edith here, but she would spoil it by getting tired of it, or else she would like it too much and want to come every day and bring others with her to see the show. Well, look around.

I followed his advice. It was the conventional alchemist's retreat. There were stuffed owls and mummies and astrolabes. Herbs and bones were suspended from the ceiling. Skulls grinned from the tops of cabinets. There were rows and rows of ancient books, many of them bound in sheepskin or vellum, in a case against one wall. A few larger volumes, with brass or iron clasps, reposed on a table. Lou Matagot, who had been carried into the room with us, presently stretched his great, black, glossy length over the top of one of these. There were cauldrons, retorts, crucibles, rows of bottles, a fire, with bellows, and a clepsydra, or water-clock, which seemed to be running. There was an Arcula Mystica, or demoniac telephone, resembling a liqueur-stand. Peter explained that possessors of this instrument might communicate with each other, over whatever distance. There were cabinets, on the shelves of which lay amulets and talismans and periapts, carved from obsidian or fashioned of blue or green faience, the surfaces of which were elaborately scratched with hermetic characters, and symplegmata with their curious confusion of the different parts of different beasts. There were aspergills, and ivory pyxes, stolen, perhaps, from some holy place, and now consecrated to evil uses. There were stuffed serpents and divining rods of hazel. There were scrolls of parchment, tied with vermilion cord. In fact, there was everything in this room, that David Belasco would provide for a similar scene on the stage.

Here, said Peter, I study the Book of the Dead, hierograms, rhabdomancy, oneiromancy, hippomancy, margaritomancy, parthenomancy, gyromancy, spodanomancy, ichthyomancy, kephalonomancy, lampodomancy, sycomancy, angelology, pneumatology, goety, eschatology, cartomancy, aleuromancy, alphitomancy, anthropomancy, axinomancy, which is performed by applying an agate to a red-hot ax, arithmomancy, or divination by numbers, alectoromantia, in which I lay out the letters of the alphabet and grains of wheat in spaces drawn in a circle and permit a cock to select grains corresponding to letters, belomancy, divination by arrows, ceroscopy, cleidomancy, astragalomancy, amniomancy, cleromancy, divination performed by throwing dice and observing the marks which turn up, cledonism, coscinomancy, capnomancy, divination by smoke, captoptromancy, chiromancy, dactyliomancy, performed with a ring, extispicium, or divination by entrails, gastromancy, geomancy, divination by earth, hydromancy, divination by water, and pyromancy and æromancy, divination by fire and air, onomancy, divination by the letters of a name, onychomancy, which is concerned with finger-nails, ornithomancy, which deals with birds, and chilomancy, which deals with keys, lithomancy, eychnomancy, ooscopy, keraunoscopia, bibliomancy, myomancy, pan-psychism, metempsychosis, the Martinists, the Kabbalists, the Diabolists, the Palladists, the Rosicrucians, the Luciferians, the Umbilicamini, all the nocuous, demonological, and pneumatic learning, including transcendental sensualism. At present, I am experimenting with white mice. I dip their feet in red ink and permit them to make scrawls on a certain curious chart.

I have dabbled in drugs, for you know that the old Greek priests, the modern seers, and the mediæval pythonesses, all have resorted to drugs to assist them to see visions. The narcotic or anæsthetic fumes, rising from the tripods, lulled the old Greek hierophants and soothsayers into a sympathetic frame of mind. First, I experimented with Napellus, for I had read that Napellus caused one's mental processes to be transferred from the brain to the pit of the stomach. There exists an exact description of the effects of this drug on an adept, one Baptista Van Helmont, which I will read you.