Free Final Reckonings by Robert Bloch Page B

emerged from the wrappings.
    It was a human skull.
    Maitland saw the horrid hemisphere gleaming ivory-white in the firelight — then, as Marco shifted it, he saw the empty eye sockets and the gaping nasal aperture that would never know human breath. Maitland noted the even structure of the teeth, adherent to a well-formed jaw. Despite his instinctive repulsion, he was surprisingly observant.
    It appeared to him that the skull was unusually small and delicate, remarkably well preserved despite a yellow tinge hinting of age. But Christopher Maitland was most impressed by one undeniable peculiarity. The skull was different , indeed.
    This skull did not grin!
    Through some peculiar formation or malformation of cheekbone in juxtaposition of jaws, the death's-head did not simulate a smile. The classic mockery of mirth attributed to all skulls was absent here.
    The skull had a sober, serious look about it.
    Maitland blinked and uttered a self-conscious cough. What was he doing, entertaining these idiotic fancies about a skull? It was ordinary enough. What was old Marco's game in bringing him such a silly object with so much solemn preamble?
    Yes, what was Marco's game?
    The little fat man held the skull up before the firelight, turning it from time to time with an impressive display of pride. His smirk of self-satisfaction contrasted oddly with the sobriety set indelibly upon the skulls bony visage.
    Maitland's puzzlement found expression at last. "What are you so smug about?" he demanded. "You bring me the skull of a woman or an adolescent youth — "
    Marco's chuckle cut across his remark. "Exactly what the phrenologists said!" he wheezed.
    "Damn the phrenologists, man! Tell me about this skull, if there's anything to tell."
    Marco ignored him. He turned the skull over in his fat hands, with a gloating expression which repelled Maitland.
    "It may be small, but it's a beauty, isn't it?" the little man mused. "So delicately formed, and look — there's almost the illusion of a patina upon the surface."
    "I'm not a paleontologist," Maitland snapped. "Nor a graverobber, either. You'd think we were Burke and Hare! Be reasonable, Marco — why should I want an ordinary skull?"
    "Please, Mr. Maitland! What do you take me for? Do you think I would presume to insult your intelligence by bringing you an ordinary skull? Do you imagine I would ask a thousand pounds for the skull of a nobody?"
    Maitland stepped back.
    "A thousand pounds?" he shouted. "A thousand pounds for that ?"
    "And cheap at the price," Marco assured him. "You'll pay it gladly when you know the story."
    "I wouldn't pay such a price for the skull of Napoleon," Maitland assured him. "Or Shakespeare, for that matter."
    "You'll find that the owner of this skull tickles your fancy a bit more," Marco assured him.
    "Enough of this. Let's have it, man!"
    Marco faced him, one pudgy forefinger tapping the osseous brow of the death's-head.
    "You see before you," he murmured, "the skull of Donatien Alphonse Francois, the Marquis de Sade."
    2
    Giles de Retz was a monster. Torquemada's inquisitors exercised the diabolic ingenuity of the fiends they professed to exorcise. But it remained for the Marquis de Sade to epitomize the living lust for pain. His name symbolizes cruelty incarnate — the savagery men call "sadism."
    Maitland knew de Sade's weird history, and mentally reviewed it.
    The Count, or Marquis, de Sade was born in 1740, of distinguished Provengal lineage. He was a handsome youth when he joined his cavalry regiment in the Seven Years' War—a pale, delicate, blue-eyed man, whose foppish diffidence cloaked an evil perversity.
    At the age of twenty-three he was imprisoned for a year as the result of a barbaric crime. Indeed, twenty-seven years of his subsequent life he spent in incarceration for his deeds — deeds which even today are only hinted at. His flagellations, his administration of outre drugs and his tortures of women have served to make his name infamous.
    But de