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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Terror Tales, Mar-Apr 1937, with "The Garment Sinister"
Modest and demure, shy, even, normally, my adored wife became a creature of cruel passions, of diabolical, unearthly lust the moment that accursed gown clothed her ravishingly beautiful body...
THE gown was a beautiful thing of delicately brocaded flame-colored satin, light in texture but rich in design. Dolores was mad about it—and I hated it.
I couldn't hate it, though, when she wore it. That is, not at first. It was to her dark beauty what a flame is to a candle. In it she was a creature of fire and snow, her creamy skin warming to its ardent color where its daring décolletage outlined her shoulders and breast. But even at first I disapproved. It was frankly immodest. It displayed, perhaps, no more of the body of its wearer than most of the evening gowns then in vogue—but somehow it robbed Dolores of the virginal quality I had so adored in her. I resented the fact that she did not seem to mind its cut—that, rather she seemed to glory in it...
It had been Miranda Finche's gown. The vagaries of an unpredictable fashion had brought such dresses back in style, and Miranda Finche's niece, Estelle, had given it to Dolores. Miranda Finche had been a belle of the '90's, and in my opinion, her history was none too savory. Because of her two men had lost their lives in duels, and her own death was shrouded in mystery—mystery which contained an element of scandal. But Dolores didn't seem to mind that, either...
IT was late when we got to the Country Club, that first
night Dolores wore Miranda Finche's gown. We entered during
the early intermission in the dancing, and I felt a curious
mixture of pride and embarrassment as we walked across the
floor. I knew there was not a male eye in the place which
did not follow our progress—or a female eye, either,
for that matter. Dolores walked like a queen, femininely
reveling in her beauty and the sensation she was creating.
Hobart Grainger came up to us immediately.
Absent-mindedly he gave me a clammy hand while his eyes devoured Dolores. "Jeff wouldn't let anyone have the first dance, except over his dead body—I know that, so I won't ask for it. But—"
Dolores interrupted him with a smile which seemed to me a little over-gracious. "But Jeff hasn't even asked me for the first dance—so if you really want it, Hobe—"
I looked at her in amazement. "Why, naturally I wanted the first, Dolores," I said. "I didn't think it necessary to be so formal."
Hobe chuckled, and I detected pleased malice in the sound. "This is an excellent chance to teach him a lesson," he said. "Something should be done about a two-month's husband who is already taking his wife for granted... Especially a wife like you, Dolores."
Normally I am not quick-tempered, but I felt a sudden rage rising in me like the flare of an oil-fed fire. Had I not restrained myself in the nick of time, I would have knocked the fellow flat. It was the sheer, over-powering pressure of my emotion which saved me from a senseless display of brutal anger.
Trembling with that strange excessive impulse to violence, I went into the bar. While I drank a whiskey and soda I got back to a normal emotional level, and I felt an uneasy amazement, remembering the towering rage I had been in but a few moments ago. I could not have blamed myself for being irritated at Grainger's over-done gallantry, and Dolores' coquettish response—but there had been no excuse for the murderous anger which had arisen in me at the incident... Murderous! I gasped with the sudden realization that it had been murderous—I might have killed Hobart Grainger if I had not had that single flash of sanity!
At the end of the dance I went to look for Dolores. The music had started again before I located her—just starting off to another dance with Grainger. I cut in none too politely, and Grainger bowed himself away, smirking maliciously.
DOLORES looked up at me with a provocative smile. "Oh,
darling, you mustn't be rude," she said. She pressed her
body closely against mine, and I gazed down into the
dark liquid depths of her eyes, down at the rose-stained
whiteness of her breasts. I caught her closer into my
arms, felt her respond with a warmer embrace. "But it's
because you love me so much—isn't it, dearest?" she
whispered. "You hate to have me out of your arms for a
single second..."
Another flame was rising in me now—and in a way, it was as incongruous as that first spate of fury I had felt. My love for Dolores had a healthy enough leaven of physical desire—but this was something different. Again that small tocsin was ringing in the back of my brain, warning me...
I did not heed. "Come," I whispered hoarsely. I led her through the dancing crowd and out onto the deserted piazza of the club. As soon as we had passed beyond the lights from the windows I turned and crushed her in my arms. And her lips and body clung to mine with an abandon which somehow penetrated my own torrential passion and frightened me...
At last I broke away from her with a gasp. I was dizzy, unstrung with the complexity and strangely overpowering quality of my sensations. I stared into Dolores' shadowed eyes. "What is it, Dolores?" I whispered. "This—this is different... I don't like it—"
"Different?" she murmured. "How different? Why don't you like it, Jeff? Don't you want me to—"
Her soft arms curved out.
"No—wait," I said. "There's something odd—unnatural about it, Dolores. Let's get out of here..."
Dolores stared at me for a long moment, and then a slyly languorous smile curved her perfect lips. "All right, Jeff," she said. "Let's go home..."
The drive through the night air did something to dispel the tumult in my brain; but my hands trembled on the wheel as I fought the impulse to crush my wife in my arms. There was a brutal quality in that impulse which made me want literally to crush Dolores—to make her scream with the pain of my embrace.
I fought it and conquered it, even though Dolores pressed close to my side, even though her arm slipped about my waist as we drove.
But once we had reached home I could no longer withstand the spurs of my desire. I ripped her cloak from her shoulders and stood for a moment glaring with eyes which I know must have been those of a madman. And she came into my arms with wild abandon, instead of falling back in revulsion as she should have done.
My hands reached the bodice of Dolores' gown, touched the satin smoothness of her breast. My fingers caught the edge of the dress, and in a gust of savagery I ripped downward. It tore the gown half off her, and the next jerk ripped it completely away. She stood before me in a fragile evening slip her roseate body gleaming through it...
But even though now she was nearly nude, my raging passion suddenly subsided. And not even normal desire remained, for in that instant sanity returned to me, and with it, full knowledge of what had been going on in my brain and heart—and if I needed further light on the extent of my temporary madness I had it in the expression of my wife's face.
She stood there, suddenly cowering, her arms raised to cover her breasts. Her eyes were widened in fear and amazement.
"My God!" she gasped. "What has happened to us, Jeff? What made us feel like that?"
I shook my head slowly, and my gaze lowered to the gown which I still clutched in my right hand. "I—I—don't know," I said. "But maybe—you know this dress... It used to belong to Miranda Finche—"
But I suddenly felt too foolish to go on. The abrupt transition from such an unbalanced and feverish state as we had been in to one of cold sanity has a tendency to leave one incredulous of the former condition. Already I was beginning to lose the sense of nightmare weirdness, that I had felt right up to the height of my passion. And now cold reason was driving out even my strong intuitive certainty that the gown had been responsible for the evening's strangeness.
Dolores smiled. Her reaction was like mine. Her fear, her sudden insight into what had happened was passing, too. "You don't mean you think Miranda's gown had anything to do with it?" she said. "We just got a little—excited, I suppose. That's all..."
But a lingering doubt remained in my own mind—a sense that this night we had verged very near that dark, unfathomable precipice of human emotion beyond which lies madness and death...
NEITHER of us wanted to go to Estelle Finche's party
after we learned that Estelle insisted upon Dolores'
wearing the red gown which had belonged to Estelle's aunt.
But Dolores had that strange feminine sense of obligation
regarding apparel which has been given one, to wear it
proudly in the view of the donor. And Estelle had given the
gown to Dolores!
Again we were late, and again Hobart Grainger immediately assumed an unwelcome squire-ship of my wife. Perhaps both of us were leaning over backward to avoid succumbing to the emotions we had experienced on that former occasion. There was a sober deliberation about Dolores' acceptance of his proffered arm which was in distinct contrast to her coquettishness at the country club. As for myself, although I felt a latent rage stir, turn in me like a slumbering animal, I restrained it with every ounce of my will, and even smiled at the fellow as he led my wife away. And I watched her lissome figure at his side with only a faint spark of the desire which had swept over me on that former occasion.
Estelle's brother, Clayborne, came up to me then and suggested we have a drink. He led the way to the buffet.
"Dolores looks marvelous in that gown of Aunt Miranda's," he remarked. His fine dark eyes followed her through the French doors as Grainger escorted her out onto the lawn at the side of the house. "Amazing how much she resembles the early pictures of that Victorian belle... But you know," he added suddenly turning back to me, "I can't understand women about things like that. Don't know whether you've heard the story or not, but Miranda was the cause of two fatal duels. She was wearing that gown at the time of both challenges—and she died with her husband's stiletto through her heart when she was surprised in the arms of a lover. And yet that merely adds glamour to the gown in the eyes of these girls!
His tone was light, but I sensed a seriousness underneath it, I said, "I wish Dolores wouldn't wear it. I—I—have a feeling she is, somehow, different when she wears it..."
Clayborne set down the bottle from which he was pouring my drink and looked up at me quickly. "You do, eh?" he said. "You feel that?"
"Well," I hedged, "perhaps I'm being silly—it's the gown's associations..."
Clayborne handed the drink to me, his eyes still on my own. "Associations—yes," he said, "I have a theory about such things. I believe in the existence of the human aura. Such personal things as clothing cannot avoid absorbing something of our physical essence. Who can say how much of that essence remains after the body which wore the clothes has died?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Clayborne shrugged. "There's a lot about human volition we don't understand," he said. "Why were bear skins, tiger's teeth, wolves' fangs and such-like talisman regarded as bestowers of courage by savage warriors? Because of their obvious connotations of ferocity? Perhaps. But maybe they really imparted qualities to the wearers which they did not possess before..."
"Are you implying that Dolores is going to be affected in some way by wearing Miranda Finche's gown?" I said, trying to keep the fear out of my voice—for his suggestion aroused a terror in me that I could not name. And to fight that terror I added, "Don't be ridiculous, Clay—"
Clayborne did not reply. His eyes had gone beyond me, were fastened on something behind my back, and at the sound of clicking heels coming rapidly toward us over the floor I whirled about.
Dolores was approaching us, her lithe body moving with a seductive grace that started quick fire pounding in my temples. Her creamy bosom was heaving, and her dark eyes blazed.
"Hobart Grainger has grossly insulted me, Jeffery," she said. "I insist that you do something about it!"
Instantly Clayborne's hand was on my arm. "Easy, Jeff," he said. "Hobe is really a bad egg. If you quarrel with him he's sure to challenge you to a duel. Don't forget that this is New Orleans. Only a month ago a man died with a rapier through his heart out at Lake Ponchartrain. Hobe went to Heidelberg, you know and is an expert fencer—"
It was true. In certain sets, the obsolete forms of gallantry are still preserved in the cultural capital of the South. There have been many fatal duels down there—news of which never reaches the public.
A fury was rolling in my brain like the lashing breakers of a storm-tossed sea. As I strode toward the French windows I was speechless with murderous wrath, and Grainger's sudden appearance in the opening was all that was needed to turn me into a blood-hungry animal.
Grainger eyed me, striding toward him, with an expression of sneering interest on his handsome face. I halted in front of him—then suddenly swung my hand against his cheek with all my strength.
Grainger recoiled from the blow almost as though I had hit him with my fist.
"There is your provocation for a duel," I roared, "but I insist that the grievance is mine. I challenge you—you yellow dog—and that gives you the right to choose your weapons. Would you by any chance like swords?"
Grainger's hand was pressed against the fiery mark on his cheek where I had slapped him. His eyes were the eyes of a killer, steel-sharp and cold, as he said in a low, choking voice, "I'll split your heart for that, you fool!"
THERE were none of the usual amenities of the duel in
this affair. No appointing of seconds, no waiting for dawn,
no opportunities extended to retract. Our friends argued
with us in vain. Clayborne threatened, at last, to call the
police—and I told him I'd kill him or anyone else who
attempted to do so. At last they gave us up. We were not
men any longer, we were ravening beasts thirsting for each
other's blood. I rushed upstairs, and tore a pair of sabers
from the wall of Clay's bedroom where I knew they hung.
I had fenced but little—never learned the technique of sabers—and I boasted of the fact. "I am going to kill you with your own weapons," I raved. "No amount of skill will overcome that yellow streak down the middle of your back. I'll cut you to ribbons on your feet!"
Grainger's responses were sneers, as senseless as my own mouthings. We stormed out of the house onto the moonlit lawn. Only the men followed us. The men and one woman—Dolores.
I knew why my wife had come, and the knowledge heightened my rage to the last extremity of madness. She had deliberately instigated this quarrel so that her vicious vanity might be satisfied. Very well. I would rip Grainger's body apart while she stood there and gloated. Then I would carry her off into the woods as the savages carry off their women, and when I was through with her no other man would ever want her again...
A curious calm in which rage was suppressed only by an intense desire to kill settled over me, as my opponent and I stood at salute there on that moonlit lawn. Dolores stood at one side, near the inky shadow cast by the trees. The men were gathered in a little knot on the other side. Still remonstrating, Clayborne stood with us, reluctantly acting as referee.
"Very well," he said. "You realize that the survivor will undoubtedly be tried for murder—and that we shall all be involved in a nasty mess. But since you are determined to try to kill each other, it is probably as well to do it this way as any... En garde!"
At the word he stepped back, and our swords clashed and struck sparks in the moonlight.
At that instant my brain cleared. I realized, suddenly, that I was face-to-face with death. I saw the flash and sweep of Grainger's saber as I all but missed parrying a savage blow and replied with an awkward riposte. This man was incomparably my master. I parried another stroke, and again brought my own blade down in a fatally slow attempt at a coup de tête. My offensive was further enfeebled by the sudden realization that I had been the dupe of forces beyond my control—beyond, perhaps, any mortal's control. Even Dolores, standing over there and gloating was not to blame. Grainger, himself, had succumbed to something he didn't understand...
But it was too late for this knowledge to save me. I was doomed. And then something happened which, in a measure, restored my fighting spirit. I heard Dolores call my name!
I know why she called! She favored Grainger! She was deliberately and cold bloodedly trying to divert my attention! Rage grew in me at that thought, even though I knew she was not responsible. But it was a different kind of rage—and sorrow was bigger in my heart than hatred.
Grainger's weapon was describing a circle of cold fire about my body. Twice his blade bit into my left shoulder, and then laid open the biceps of my left arm. That whole side was soon drenched in blood—and so far I had not even scratched him. As I began to grow faint with loss of blood I knew that I must disable my opponent or die within the next few seconds. I would not have killed him, even if I had been able to do so, realizing as I did the horrible tragedy we had been forced into enacting; but now I began fighting desperately to injure his right arm or shoulder—in such a stroke lay my only hope of escaping death.
I determined to employ an unethical ruse in order to accomplish this end. If I could use a certain thrust I had learned in fencing with foils, and get in under his guard and inflict a wound in his upper arm. Such tactics are unethical when dueling with sabers—but I was now sane and Grainger wasn't. And since I did not intend to kill him, I was justified in doing anything that would end this tragic-comedy of a duel and save my life.
I feinted after the next parry in such a manner that Grainger raised his guard. Instantly I lunged forward in the thrust I had planned—and felt my blade slide home in human flesh!
But it was not Grainger's flesh. Just before I lunged, but too swiftly for me to halt the thrust, a white figure had dashed in front of me—and it was only after the stroke was completed that I realized the figure was the nude form of Dolores. It was only when I saw her collapse on the lawn, with my saber wrenching out of my hand as she fell with it sticking from her side, and with her life's blood blackly staining the gleaming satin of her naked skin, that I knew what had happened.
I stood there for a moment looking down at her, stunned, disbelieving the evidence of my eyes. I think I screamed then—and my scream was echoed by another which I did not heed. I sank to my knees beside the still form of my wife—and then the world seemed to burst into a myriad of gyrating stars. I felt my body falling forward over Dolores', and there was an instant in which realization that Grainger had taken advantage of my defenselessness to get in the finishing stroke. Then I sank into a swirling whirlpool of blackness...
DOLORES' hand was cool on my head which still throbbed
painfully. "But I don't think even poor Clayborne was so
much to blame," she murmured, sitting beside me on the bed
so that she could continue massaging by burning forehead.
"It's true he planned the whole thing. Estelle says she
remembers that he was even responsible for her giving me
the gown. He did it very subtly so that she has only just
now realized it. He believed in its power to—to
affect us all as it did. For the rest—it wasn't
necessary for him to do much. Hobart still loved me after
his fashion—and you could be expected to respond
as you did to the—the feelings the gown aroused in
Hobart. The spell was on you, too..."
But "sanity" had again returned to me, and my head hurt so that I was a little impatient. "Oh, darling—we can't really believe in the devilishness of that damned dress," I said. "Clay put dope in our drinks—or something. We were all insane for awhile. It must have been hashish—"
Dolores smiled down at me. "Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps it was just wearing off as I stood there watching you begin to fight for your life. Perhaps it was because the effects of the drug were dying that I suddenly realized that I was going to be responsible for your death... But you see, darling, I was still avid for the duel to continue when I stripped off the dress. I felt that I had become split into two persons—one who wanted to see you kill each other, and the other who wanted only to love you, and to save you from death. I fought a terrible battle—and the person who loves you won. I tore off the gown, and called to you as that act freed me—made me myself, once more. Then I realized that if I did the slightest thing to divert you, you would be killed. There was only one thing to do—thrust myself between you before either of your swords found a mark. Even if I had been killed it would have been far, far better than—the other..."
"My brave darling," I said tenderly. "Thank God I only gave you a scratch. But the fact that Clayborne attacked me with that heavy scabbard as soon as you fell, and has been sent away to an asylum hopelessly mad proves that his submerged passion would have made him capable of anything—even poisoning all of us—"
"Very well," murmured Dolores. "We will test out your theory. Estelle said she was going to burn the dress—I left it there on her lawn—but she may not have done it yet. Shall I get it and put it on, again?"
There was a cold tingling up and down my back that had nothing to do with "sanity" as I held out my arms for my wife and folded her into them.
"No—" I said—"never, never again..."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.