According to Mwanu, the gray city and the hybrid creatures were no more, having
been annihilated by the warlike N’bangus many years ago. This tribe, after
destroying most of the edifices and killing the live beings, had carried off the
stuffed goddess which had been the object of their quest; the white ape-goddess
which the strange beings worshipped, and which was held by Congo tradition to be
the form of one who had reigned as a princess among these beings. Just what the
white apelike creatures could have been, Mwanu had no idea, but he thought they
were the builders of the ruined city. Jermyn could form no conjecture, but by
close questioning obtained a very picturesque legend of the s.tuffed goddess.
The ape-princess, it was said, became the consort of a great white god who had
come out of the West. For a long time they had reigned over the city together,
but when they had a son, all three went away. Later the god and princess had
returned, and upon the death of the princess her divine husband had mummified
the body and enshrined it in a vast house of stone, where it was worshipped.
Then he departed alone. The legend here seemed to present three variants.
According to one story, nothing further happened save that the stuffed goddess
became a symbol of supremacy for whatever tribe might possess it. It was for
this reason that the N’bangus carried it off. A second story told of a god’s
return and death at the feet of his enshrined wife. A third told of the return
of the son, grown to manhood—or apehood or godhood, as the case might be—yet
unconscious of his identity. Surely the imaginative blacks had made the most of
whatever events might lie behind the extravagant legendry.
Of the reality of the jungle city described by old Sir Wade, Arthur Jermyn had
no further doubt; and was hardly astonished when early in 1912 he came upon what
was left of it. Its size must have been exaggerated, yet the stones lying about
proved that it was no mere Negro village. Unfortunately no carvings could be
found, and the small size of the expedition prevented operations toward clearing
the one visible passageway that seemed to lead down into the system of vaults
which Sir Wade had mentioned. The white apes and the stuffed goddess were
discussed with all the native chiefs of the region, but it remained for a
European to improve on the data offered by old Mwanu. M. Verhaeren, Belgian
agent at a trading-post on the
Congo, believed that he could not only locate but obtain the stuffed goddess, of
which he had vaguely heard; since the once mighty N’bangus were now the
submissive servants of King Albert’s government, and with but little persuasion
could be induced to part with the gruesome deity they had carried off. When
Jermyn sailed for England, therefore, it was with the exultant probability that
he would within a few months receive a priceless ethnological relic confirming
the wildest of his great-great-great-grandfather’s narratives—that is, the
wildest which he had ever heard. Countrymen near Jermyn House had perhaps heard
wilder tales handed down from ancestors who had listened to Sir Wade around the
tables of the Knight’s Head.
Arthur Jermyn waited very patiently for the expected box from M. Verhaeren,
meanwhile studying with increased diligence the manuscripts left by his mad
ancestor. He began to feel closely akin to Sir Wade, and to seek relics of the
latter’s personal life in England as well as of his African exploits. Oral
accounts of the mysterious and secluded wife had been numerous, but no tangible
relic of her stay at Jermyn House remained. Jermyn wondered what circumstance
had prompted or permitted such an effacement, and decided that the husband’s
insanity was the prime cause. His great-great-great-grandmother, he recalled,
was said to have been the daughter of a Portuguese trader in Africa. No doubt
her practical heritage and superficial knowledge of the Dark Continent had
caused her to flout Sir Wade’s tales of the interior, a thing which such a man
would not be likely to forgive. She had died in Africa, perhaps dragged thither
by a husband determined to prove what he had told. But as Jermyn indulged in
these reflections he could not but smile at their futility, a century and a half
after the death of both his strange progenitors.
In June, 1913, a letter arrived from M. Verhaeren, telling of the finding of the
stuffed goddess. It was, the Belgian averred, a most extraordinary object; an
object quite beyond the power of a layman to classify. Whether it was human or
simian only a scientist could determine, and the process of determination would
be greatly hampered by its imperfect condition. Time and the Congo climate are
not kind to mummies; especially when their preparation is as amateurish as
seemed to be the case here. Around the creature’s neck ‘had been found a golden
chain bearing an empty locket on which were armorial designs; no doubt some
hapless traveller’s keepsake, taken by the N’bangus and hung upon the goddess as
a charm. In commenting on the contour of the mummy’s face, M. Verhaeren
suggested a whimsical comparison; or rather, expressed a humorous wonder just
how it would strike his corespondent, but was too much interested scientifically
to waste many words in levity. The stuffed. goddess, he wrote, would arrive duly
packed about a month after receipt of the letter.
The boxed object was delivered at Jermyn House on the afternoon of August 3,
1913, being conveyed immediately to the large chamber which housed the
collection of African specimens as arranged by Sir Robert and Arthur. What
ensued can best be gathered from the tales of servants and from things and
papers later examined. Of the various tales, that of aged Soames, the family
butler, is most ample and coherent. According to this trustworthy man, Sir
Arthur Jermyn dismissed everyone from the room before opening the box, though
the instant sound of hammer and chisel showed that he did not delay the
operation. Nothing was heard for some time; just how long Soames cannot exactly
estimate, but it was certainly less than a quarter of an hour later that the
horrible scream, undoubtedly in Jermyn’s voice, was heard. Immediately afterward
Jermyn emerged from the room, rushing frantically toward the front of the house
as if pursued by some hideous enemy. The expression on his face, a face ghastly
enough in repose, was beyond description. When near the front door he seemed to
think of something, and turned back in his flight, finally disappearing down the
stairs to the cellar. The servants were utterly dumbfounded, and watched at the
head of the stairs, but their master did not return. A smell of oil was all that
came up from the regions below. After dark a rattling was heard at the door
leading from the cellar into the courtyard; and a stable-boy saw Arthur Jermyn,
glistening from head to foot with oil and redolent of that fluid, steal
furtively out and vanish on the black moor surrounding the house. Then, in an
exaltation of supreme horror, everyone saw the end. A spark appeared on the
moor, a flame arose, and a pillar of human fire reached to the heavens. The
house of Jermyn no longer existed.
The reason why Arthur Jermyn’s charred fragments were not collected and buried
lies in what was found afterward, principally the thing in the box. The stuffed
goddess was a nauseous sight, withered and eaten away, but it was clearly a
mummified white ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any recorded
variety, and infinitely nearer mankind—quite shockingly so. Detailed description
would be rather unpleasant, but two salient particulars must be told, for they
fit in revoltingly with certain notes of Sir Wade Jermyn’s African expeditions
and with the Congolese legends of the white god and the ape-princess. The two
particulars in question are these: the arms on the golden locket about the
creature’s neck were the Jermyn arms, and the jocose suggestion of M. Verhaeren
about certain resemblance as connected with the shrivelled face applied with
vivid, ghastly, and unnatural horror to none other than the sensitive Arthur
Jermyn, great-great-great-grandson of Sir Wade Jermyn and an unknown wife.
Members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burned the thing and threw the
locket into a well, and some of them do not admit that Arthur Jermyn ever
existed.