"PRIVATE—KEEP OUT" by Philip MacDonald (1896-1980)
The terror of finding out
“The Man Who Found Out” (1912) by Algernon Blackwood is a story about a man who finds ancient tablets on an archaeological dig in the Middle East. The tablets reveal everything about human existence, and its utter folly.
“The Man Who Found Out” is a story that has held me captive since I first read it several years ago.
To the very short list of such existential cosmic horror stories, I can now add “Private–Keep Out” by Philip MacDonald. This is thanks to its mention in Michael Cisco's book Weird Fiction: A Genre Study. Philip MacDonald's story is below.
The preliminary notes are from the story's introduction in the anthology The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 11, 1949.
Jay
14 October 2024
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
by Philip MacDonald (1896-1980)
The late Philip MacDonald was the grandson of the famous Scottish poet George MacDonald and a highly regarded Hollywood screenwriter and detective novelist. Perhaps his most famous film work was his script for Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1940), but he also wrote a number of Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan films. His detective character Anthony Gethryn, introduced in 1924, appeared in some ten novels.
MacDonald’s work was partially lost in the large shadows of the two other great writers with the same last name—John D. and Ross MacDonald—which is a shame, because he was a major talent. Mystery critics maintain that his short stories are even better than his novels; “Private—Keep Out” was unfortunately one of only a handful of works he published in the sf field.
And we can’t allow another moment to go by without welcoming The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to this series. Few realized it at the time, but Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas had launched what many* believe to be the finest sf magazine of all time, one that is happily still with us today. —M.H.G.
*Not all, Marty. (I.A.)
(They say that earthquakes are extremely terrifying, even if you are in no immediate danger of having anything fall on you; even if you are in an open field and no fissures form; even if it only lasts for a minute or so.
I have never experienced an earthquake, but I think I can imagine the sensation and can appreciate what it is that is so terrifying. It is the fact that the solid earth is moving, shaking, vibrating. We are so used to the ground we walk upon being the motionless substratum on which all exists, we take it so for granted, that when that basic assumption is negated for even a short time, we feel the terror of chaos.
And yet there are assumptions that are more basic still, and if we were to get the notion that these, too, might vanish, our terror would be past description. “Private—Keep Out” by Philip MacDonald deals with such a disruption and you will not be human if you don’t feel a frisson of horror at the last sentence.
Marty, by the way, wondered if this story was really sci¬ence fiction. My response was that it most certainly was; and not only that but that I liked it better than I did any other story in the book—including mine.—I.A.)
* * * *
The world goes mad—and people tend to put the cause of its sickness down to Man; sometimes even to one particular little man. Perhaps, only a few months ago, I would have thought like this myself about the existing outbreak of virulent insanity—but now I can’t.
I can’t because of something which happened to me a little while ago. I was in Southern California, working at Paramount. Most days, I used to get to the studio about ten and leave at five forty-five, but on this particular evening—it was Wednesday, the 18th of June—I was a little late getting away.
I went out through the front hall and hurried across the street to the garage. The entrance is a tunnelled archway. It was fairly dark in there—and I bumped square into a man who’d either been on his way out or standing there in the deepest part of the shadow. The latter didn’t seem probable, but I had an odd sort of feeling that that was just what he had been doing.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was ...” I cut myself off short and stared. I recognized him, but what with the semi-darkness and the funny, stiff way he was standing and looking at me, I couldn’t place him. It wasn’t one of those half-memories of having once met someone somewhere. It was a definite, full-fledged memory which told me this man had been a friend closely knit into my particular life-pattern, and not so long ago.
He turned away—and something about the movement slipped the loose memory-cog back into place. It was Charles Moffat— Charles who’d been a friend for fifteen years; Charles whom I hadn’t seen or heard about since he’d gone cast in a mysterious hurry two years ago; Charles whom I was delighted to see again; Charles who’d changed amazingly; Charles, as I realized with a shock, who must have been very ill.
I shouted his name and leapt after him and grabbed him by the arm and swung him around to face me.
“You old sucker!” I said. “Don’t you know me?”
He smiled with his mouth but nothing happened to his eyes. He said:
“How are you? I thought you’d forgotten me.”
It should have been a jest—but it wasn’t. I felt…uncom¬fortable.
“It’s so damn’ dark in here!” I said, and dragged him out into the sunshine of the street. His arm felt very thin.
“Straight over to Lucey’s for a drink!” I was prattling and knew it. “We can talk there. Listen, Charles; you’ve been ill, haven’t you? I can see it. Why didn’t you let me know?”
He didn’t answer, and I went on babbling rubbish; trying to talk myself out of the…the apprehensiveness which seemed to be oozing out of him and wrapping itself around the pair of us like a grey fog. I kept looking at him as we walked past the barber’s and reached the corner and turned towards Melrose and its rushing river of traffic. He was looking straight ahead of him. He was extraordinarily thin: he must have lost twenty pounds— and he’d never been fat. I kept wishing I could see his eyes again, and then being glad I couldn’t.
We stood on the curb by the auto-park and waited a chance to cross Melrose. The sun was low now, and I was shading my eyes from it when Charles spoke for the first time.
“I can use that drink,” he said, but he still didn’t look at me.
I half-turned, to get the sun out of my eyes—and noticed the briefcase for the first time. It was tucked firmly under his left arm and clamped tightly to his side. Even beneath his sleeve I could see an unusual tensing of the wasted muscles. I was going to say something, but a break came in the traffic and Charles plunged out into the road ahead of me.
It was cool in Lucey’s bar, and almost empty. I wondered if the barman would remember Charles, then recalled that he’d only been here a couple of months. We ordered—a gin-and-tonic tor me and a whiskey-sour for Charles which he put down in a couple of gulps.
“Another?” he said. He was looking at the pack of cigarettes in his hand.
“Mine’s long,” I said. “Miss me this time.”
While I finished my tall glass, he had two more whiskey-sours, the second with an absinthe float. I chatted, heavily. Charles didn’t help: with the briefcase tucked under his arm and clamped against his side, he looked like a starving bird with one wing.
I bought another round—and began to exchange my uneasi¬ness for a sort of anger. I said:
“Look here! This is damn ridiculous!” I swivelled around on my stool and stared at him.
He gave a small barking sound which I suppose was meant to be a laugh. He said:
“Ridiculous!...Maybe that’s not quite the word, my boy.”
He barked again—and I remembered his old laugh, a Gargan¬tuan affair which would make strangers smile at thirty paces. My anger went and the other feeling came back.
“Look,” I said, dropping my voice. “Tell me what’s wrong, Charles. There’s something awfully wrong. What is it?”
He stood up suddenly and clicked his fingers at the barman. “Two more,” he said. “And don’t forget the absinthe on mine.”
He looked at me fully. His eyes were brighter now, but that didn’t alter the look in them. I couldn’t kid myself any more: it was fear—and, even to me who have seen many varieties of this unpleasant ailment, a new mixture. Not, in fact, as before, but a new fear; a fear which transcended all known variations upon the fear theme.
I supposed I sat there gaping at him. But he didn’t look at me any more. He clamped the briefcase under his arm and turned away.
“ ‘Phone,” he said. “Back in a minute.”
He took a step and then halted, turning his head to speak to me over his shoulder. He said:
“Seen the Archers lately?” and then was gone.
That’s exactly what he said, but at the time, I thought I must have mis-heard him—because I didn’t know any Archers. Twenty-five years before, there’d been a John Archer at school with me but I hadn’t known him well and hadn’t liked what I did know.
I puzzled over this for a moment; then went back to my problem. What was the matter with Charles? Where had he been all this time? Why didn’t anyone hear from or about him? Above all, what was he afraid of? And why should I be feeling, in the most extraordinary way, that life was a thin crust upon which we all moved perilously?
The barman, a placid crust-walker, set a new drink down in front of me and said something about the weather. I answered him eagerly, diving into a sunny sanctuary of platitude.
It did me good—until Charles came back. I watched him cross the room—and didn’t like it. His clothes hung loose about him, with room for another Charles inside them. He picked up his drink and drained it. He drank with his left hand, because the briefcase was under his right arm now. I said:
“Why don’t you put that thing down? What’s in it, anyway— nuggets?”
He shifted it under the other arm and looked at me for a moment. He said:
“Just some papers. Where’re you dining?”
“With you.” I made a quick mental cancellation. “Or you are with me, rather.”
“Good!” He nodded jerkily. “Let’s get a booth now. One of the end ones.”
I stood up. “Okay. But if we’re going to drink any more, I’ll switch to a martini.”
He gave the order and we left the bar and in a minute were facing each other in a far corner booth. Charles looked right at me now, and I couldn’t get away from his eyes and what was in them. A waiter came with the drinks and put them in front of us and went away. I looked down at mine and began to fool with the toothpick which speared the olive.
“You’re not a moron,” he said suddenly. “Nor a cabbage. Ever wake up in the morning and know you know the Key—but when you reach for it, you can’t remember it? It was just there….” He made a vague, sharp gesture in the air, close to his head. “But it’s gone the minute your waking mind reaches for it. Ever do that? Ever feel that? Not only when you wake maybe; perhaps at some other sort of time?”
He was looking down at the table now and I didn’t have to see his eyes. He was looking down at his hands, claw-like as they fiddled with brass locks on the briefcase. I said:
“What’re you talking about? What key?” I was deliberately dense.
His eyes blazed at me with some of the old Carolian fire.
“Listen, numbskull!” He spoke without opening his teeth. “Have you, at any moment in your wretched existence, ever felt that you knew, only a moment before, the answer to ... to everything? To the colossal WHY of the Universe? To the myriad questions entailed by the elaborate creation of Man? To ... to Everything, you damned fool!”
I stopped pretending. “Once or twice,” I said. “Maybe more than that. You mean that awful sensation that you’re on the verge of knowing the…the Universal Answer: and know it’s amazingly simple and you wonder why you never thought of it before—and then you find you don’t know it at all. It’s gone; snatched away. And you go practically out of your mind trying to get it back but you never succeed. That’s it, isn’t it? I’ve had the feeling several times, notably coming out of ether. Everyone has. Why?”
He was fiddling with the briefcase again. “Why what?” he said dully. The momentary flash of the old fire had died away.
But I kept at him. I said:
“You can’t start something like that and then throw it away. Why did you bring the subject up? Did you finally grab the Key this morning—or did it bite you—or what?”
He still didn’t look up. He went on fiddling with the brass locks on the case.
“For God’s sake, leave that thing alone!” My irritation was genuine enough. “It’s getting on my nerves. Sit on it or something, if it’s so precious. But quit fiddling!”
He stood up suddenly. He didn’t seem to hear me.
“ ‘Phone again,” he said. “Sorry. Forgot something. Won’t be long.” He started away; then turned and slapped the case down in front of me. “Have a look through it. Might interest you.”
And he was gone. I put my hands on the case and was just going to slip the locks back with my thumbs, when a most extraordinary sensation…permeated me is the only word I can think of. I was suddenly extremely loath to open the thing. I pushed it away from me with a quick involuntary gesture, as if it were hot to the touch.
And immediately I was ashamed of this childish behavior and took myself in hand and in a moment had it open and the contents spread in front of me.
They were mostly papers, and all completely innocuous and unrelated. If you tried for a year you couldn’t get together a less alarming collection.
There was a program from the Frohman Theatre, New York, for a play called “Every Other Friday” which I remembered seeing in ‘31. There was a letter from the Secretary to the Dean of Harvard, with several pages of names attached to it, saying that in answer to Mr. Moffat’s letter he would find attached the list he had requested of the Alumni of 1925. There was a letter from the Manager of a Fifth Avenue apartment house, courte-ously replying to Mr. Moffat’s request for a list of the tenants of his penthouse during the years 1933 to 1935. There were several old bills from a strange miscellany of stores, a folded page from an old school magazine containing the photograph of the football team of C.M.I, in the year 1919, and a page torn from “Who’s Who” around one entry of which heavy blue pencil lines had been drawn.
And that finished the papers. There were only three other things—an empty, much-worn photograph frame of leather, a small silver plate (obviously unscrewed from the base of some trophy) with the names Charles Moffat and T. Perry Devonshire inscribed upon it, and an old briar pipe with a charred bowl and broken mouthpiece but a shiny new silver band.
The photograph frame stared up at me from the white tablecloth. I picked it up—and, as I did so, was struck by a sudden but indefinable familiarity. I turned it over in my hands, struggling with the elusive memory-shape, and I saw that, although the front of it bore every sign of considerable age and usage, it had never in fact been used. It was one of those frames which you undo at the back to insert the photograph, and pasted across the joint between the body of the frame and the movable part was the original price tag, very old and very dirty, but still bearing the dim figures $5.86.
I was still looking at it when Charles came back.
“Remember it?” he said.
I twisted the thing about, trying to find a new angle to look at it from. He said:
“It used to be on my desk. You’ve seen it hundreds of times.”
I began to remember. I could see it sitting beside a horseshoe inkpot—but I couldn’t see what was inside it. I said:
“I can’t think what was in it.” And then I remembered. “But there can’t have been anything.” I turned the thing over and showed him the price tag. I was suddenly conscious of personal fear.
“Charles!” I said. “What the hell is all this?”
He spoke—but he didn’t answer me. He picked up the collec¬tion of nonsense and put it back into the briefcase.
“Did you look at all the stuff?” he said.
I nodded, watching him. It seemed that we never looked at each other squarely, for his eyes were upon his hands.
“Did it suggest anything?” he said.
“Not a thing. How could it?” I saw that the knuckles of his interlocked fingers were white. “Look here, Charles, if you don’t tell me what all this is about I’ll go out of my mind.”
And then the head waiter came. He smiled at me and bowed gravely to Charles and asked whether we wished to order.
I was going to tell him to wait, but Charles took the menu and looked at it and ordered something, so I did the same.
It was nearly dark outside now and they’d put on the lights. People were beginning to come in and there was quite a murmur of talk from the bar. I held my tongue: the moment had passed—I must wait for another.
They brought cocktails and we sipped them and smoked and didn’t speak until Charles broke the silence. He said then, much too casually:
“So you haven’t been seeing much of the Archers?”
“Charles,” I said carefully, “I don’t know anyone called Archer. I never have—except an unpleasant little tick at school.”
Our eyes met now, and he didn’t look away. But a waiter came with hors d’oeuvres. I refused them, but Charles heaped his plate and began to eat with strange voracity.
“These Archers?” I said at last. “Who are they? Anything to do with this…this…trouble you seem to have?”
He looked at me momentarily; then down at his plate again. He finished what was on it and leaned back and gazed at the wall over my right shoulder. He said:
“Adrian Archer was a great friend of mine.” He took a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. “He was also a friend of yours.”
The waiter came again and took away my full plate and Charles’s empty one.
“What did you say?” I wasn’t trusting my ears.
He took the briefcase from the seat beside him and groped in it and brought his hand out holding the extract from “Who’s Who.”
“Look at this.” He handed me the sheet. “That’s Adrian’s father.”
I took the paper, but went on staring at him. His eyes were glittering.
“Go on!” he said. “Read it.”
The marked entry was short and prosaic. It was the history, in seven lines, of an Episcopalian minister named William Archibald Archer.
I read it carefully. I ought to have been feeling, I suppose, that Charles was a sick man. But I wasn’t feeling anything of the sort. I can’t describe what I was feeling.
I read the thing again.
“Look here, Charles,” I said. “This man had three daughters. There’s no mention of a son.”
“Yes,” said Charles. “I know.”
He twitched the paper out of my hand and fished in the briefcase again and brought out the little silver plate. He said:
“In ‘29 I won the doubles in the Lakeside tennis tournament. Adrian Archer was my partner.” His voice was flat, and the words without any emphasis. He handed the piece of metal across to me and once more I read Charles Moffet—T. Perry Devonshire…
And then the waiter was with us again and for the longest half hour of my life I watched Charles devour his food while I pushed mine aside and drank a glass of wine. I watched him eat. I couldn’t help myself. He ate with a sort of desperate determination; like a man clutching at the one reality.
Then, at last, the meal was over, with even the coffee gone and just brandy glasses before us. He began to talk. Not in the guarded, jerky way he had been using, but with words pouring out of him. He said:
“I’m going to tell you the story of Adrian Archer—straight. He was a contemporary of ours—in fact, I was at C.M.I, and Harvard with him. It was settled he should be a lawyer, but a year after he left Harvard he suddenly went on the stage. His father and all his friends—you included—advised him not to. But Adrian didn’t pay attention. He just smiled, with that odd, secret smile he’d use sometimes. He just smiled—and his rise to what they call fame was what they call meteoric….
Read in full:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xsLAKnmU_Q_R_Cwn16y868PwC9NuuxtbUM5qpZGhB0U/edit?usp=drivesdk