RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
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.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Terror Tales, May 1935 with "The Devil's Brewers"
The citizens of Ellendale, behind locked doors and shuttered windows, guarded their daughters jealously and whispered of the shriveled, bloodless maiden-corpses. For it was rumored that blood—the clean, swift-flowing blood of virgin maids—was the priceless ingredient of the liqueur brewed by red-robed men on the bleak slopes of Devil's Mountain!
THE party was over! It was over the moment Lucy Alcott shrieked. A second before, the wide, formal lawn had been alive with light and movement. Guests sipped their tea at round, intimate tables and chattered gaily against the weaving tapestry of a small string orchestra. Huge Japanese lanterns swayed overhead and cast a warm, golden glow on the smooth expanse.
But now the lawn was emptied of movement; the tea cooled unnoticed in forgotten cups, and the musicians had frozen into fear-struck immobility. Even the varicolored lanterns seemed shrouded in a murky pall through which light barely filtered.
Lucy Alcott did not see the crowding people, nor hear the sharp intakes of breath of the men, the thin screams of the women. Horror held her rigid as in a vise, forced her eyes wide-staring upon the pallid corpse at her feet. She had made the discovery, had seen the pitiful high-heeled shoes where they stuck out of the clump of birches bordering the bend of the road.
It seemed to her frozen senses an eternity ago that she had wandered over the lawn, starry-eyed with happiness at this birthday party which Dave Cooper, Ellen-dale's young lawyer, had tendered her. Even now, the thought of his keen, alert face;—the adorable way in which his eyebrows raised in quizzical wonderment at her, the unruly cowlick of hair which always refused to stay in place—pierced like a warm gush of sunlight through shrieking darkness.
The dead girl stared with drained, sightless eyes up at the shuddering, huddled guests. She was nude, except for the slippers on her small feet and the coarse sacking that barely covered her shrunken torso. Even in the half-shadows, her body seemed oddly grey and empty. A deep, bloodless gash gaped across her twisted neck.
A babble of voices broke the first stark silence.
"My God!" a woman shrilled, "it's Flora Wells!"
As if Lucy hadn't known! Flora, who had been her friend and playmate from childhood, whose non-appearance at her party had brought the first vague dread to her that the unseen menace had struck again at Ellendale.
"And look," someone else gasped, pointing with shaking finger. "There's no blood in her body. She's been bled white—like the others!"
A mutter of horror went rippling through the cowering guests. Lucy moaned, reached blindly for the solid security of Dave's shoulder. She had not dared think that, even to herself. For three months, doom had stalked the streets of Ellendale, striking with dreadful secrecy at its victims. Flora Wells was the third—the third of those slim, virginal, lovely girls whose laughter had been stilled in their throats—whose life-blood had been drained from their shrunken arteries. For what dreadful purpose? Why were the bodies found, without a single smear of blood on their pallid nudities, with wide, gaping wounds in their throats, as if—as if they had been hung, head downward, and the flooding gore carefully collected in waiting basins?
Lucy clung desperately to Dave. She hardly felt the comforting pat of his strong fingers on her quivering cheeks. "I'm so afraid, Dave dear," she moaned. "Please, please, let us go away from Ellendale—now—before anything happens to me."
She felt him go rigid under her blind-gripping arm. His strained face bent sharply down to her. There was a strange look in his eyes, as if steel shutters had swung in place over his inmost thoughts.
"Nonsense!" he objected quickly. "You're just overwrought at poor Flora's death. Nothing will happen to you. I've got to stay in Ellendale; you know that."
SOMETHING warm and glowing shriveled into a small, cold ball within her. Dave had never spoken to her in that sharp, quick tone before. Why was there no tenderness in his eyes—those eyes that used to thrill her with the depth of their ardor? Why did he suddenly seem a stranger to her?
Faintly, so faintly it seemed like a whisper from another world, someone was saying: "Queer! Three of them found in that same clump of birches, on David Cooper's property!"
The rustling voice slithered into her bosom like a striking serpent. It congealed around her heart with deadly venom. Her whirling thoughts affrighted her. Now she knew why her feet had led irresistibly to this very spot, why she had peered with half-expectant eyes into the dreadful shadows where the light of the lanterns had not penetrated.
A man loomed suddenly before them; dissociated from the formless mass of the guests. In the dim glow from the mockery of the still-bobbing lanterns, he seemed an avenging spirit. He stared at the poor, bloodless girl on the ground with bitter, slitted eyes. Lucy felt a vast feeling of pity for Tom Steele. Poor fellow! His life had been completely futile. An invalid mother had claimed all his youth; held him in sterile bachelorhood. Now that she was gone, age had overtaken him, greyed his once black hair, stooped his powerful shoulders. His distillery absorbed more and more of his attention. But to Lucy, it had seemed that the fresh young beauty of Flora had awakened a more than kindly interest in him. And now she lay dead before him.
"This damnable thing must stop," he said hoarsely. "A monster lurks in our midst, a monster who strikes down the loveliest of our maidens, who sucks their veins empty of blood. There is a fiendish reason behind these murders. We must find that reason, we must hunt down the devils; we must kill them without mercy!"
An eerie whisper rose in the tightening air. It seemed a mere exhalation rather than a voice.
"Dave Cooper!"
"Oh!" Lucy gasped faintly. Her hand shuddered off the arm of the man to whom she was engaged. It was not true, she said wildly to herself. Dave, her beloved Dave, could not be the hideous pervert who stalked the streets of Ellendale secretly at night, who... Why then had she shuddered away from him, why did he make no move to resent that accusing whisper? She peered stealthily into his face, for signs of anger, of furious contempt. But he did not seem to have heard. His face was a rigid mask, his eyes blank on some far-off sight.
Steele swung on the shrinking huddle of people.
"Dave Cooper had nothing to do with this," he lashed out heatedly. "Whoever says so, lies!"
No one answered. No one stepped forward. Steele had thundered the slander down. Good old Tom! Lucy felt a flush of gratitude for his prompt defense of the man she loved. She had not expected it of the distiller. But why was Dave so silent; why, even now, did he make no move to thank Steele for his chivalrous defense; why, in God's name, did his veiled glance contain so much dislike, hatred even?
Steele lifted his hand. "The blood of these girls! There's the answer. Who needs this blood? For what foul purpose?"
Each of the guests held his eyes aloof from the secret terror in his neighbor's. Each thought of his own young daughter, with firm, warm flesh and the racing blood of youth in her veins, and panic swept in a great shuddering gasp through their ranks. Tom Steele knew; he knew the echoing whispers that had murmured up and down the streets of Ellendale since the first dreadful corpse had been discovered; he knew as well as they did what was muttered behind masking hands and tight-locked doors.
Irresistibly, against their wills, their eyes went sidelong in the direction of his pointing finger.
Bong—bong—bong!
The bell flooded the valley in which Ellendale nestled with a great diapason of sound. Slowly, sullenly, the brazen clangor beat out the hour, while all life seemed frozen in a nightmare paralysis at that reiterated knell.
Lucy's blood congealed, and her heart raced furiously to pump the sluggish fluid through her veins. Flora's ghastly death, the strange, aloof manner of the man she loved, the wild talk of Tom Steele, his pointing finger, and now, pat with his unuttered accusation, the bell! Oh God, she did not want to be hysterical, but a terrible, unreasoning certainty grew on her. She, Lucy Alcott, was marked for destruction!
She tried to keep her head from turning with the others, but a power beyond her will forced it around and upward in mechanical movement.
Bong—bong—bong!
WOULD it never stop, that dreadful, booming bell? Her eyes lifted. Across the road, the valley ended abruptly in the satanic configurations of Devil's Mountain. Half way up, perched like a bird of ill omen over a doomed village, grey and hideous like a vampire bat with outspread wings, were the long, dim battlements of the House of Hermes.
The House of Hermes! Even as a child, Lucy had run as fast as small feet could carry her when darkness swooped unexpectedly upon her homecoming in this particular section of the valley. Many were the tales that were bandied around the firesides on the long, shuddering winter evenings concerning this strange sect that had descended mysteriously upon the valley some thirty years before and built that frowning, fortress-like retreat.
Bong—bong—bong! Nine o'clock! Lucy felt herself counting those long, slow strokes with breathless intensity. No sound came from the other guests of the tragic birthday party. Steele's pointing hand seemed frozen into eternal rigidity; Dave, pale and grim, looked a far-off stranger. And the bloodless corpse of the dead girl lay exposed to a merciless sky.
Ah, there it was coming! Lucy clenched her little hands in dreadful anticipation. The scream she barely managed to choke back hurt the swelling muscles of her throat. It was silly, she knew, but she could not help it. Every night at nine o'clock this happened. It had never affected her quite this way before. But now...!
She turned blindly to Dave, plucking at his sleeve for comfort. But he did not seem to sense her presence. His face was a grim, set mask that she had never seen before. This was not the man she had loved with all the warmth of her nature. She shrank away from him with a little moan, and still he did not hear or see.
As the last stroke of the great bell died away with dreadful reverberations, the moon, full and dead of face, was transfixed on the topmost spire of Devil's Mountain. Its waning light made a dull, leaden ribbon of the grey battlement of the House of Hermes; it lingered with a fearful fascination on the figure that had suddenly appeared in the single embrasure.
A long, blood-red robe enveloped his powerful body. Distance dwarfed his head to a pallid blob of indistinct features, from which a blur of uncut beard fell in a hairy mop over chin and robe. He faced the valley like a tiny, malignant doll, his scarlet arms outspread over the huddled village of Ellendale.
Faintly, as the echoes shuddered away, his voice shrilled out in an indistinct gibberish that no one in Ellendale had yet been able to decipher. Once, years before, Lucy, lost on the mountainside, had heard that dreadful gabble close at hand, had seen the huge-thewed body of Golas, the Head of the House of Hermes, as he thundered out what seemed a hymn of hate, a fierce blaspheming against a cowering world.
On and on it went, this travesty of the night-blessing of the muezzin in the minarets dedicated to Allah. Lucy, locked in rigid terror, felt her scalp freeze to the very marrow of her brain. God, would it never stop? This dreadful, incomprehensible prayer that seemed like a curse, that now, with Flora dead at her feet, was directed at her own poor body. Already she felt the blood drain in gushing torrents from her throat, already she felt...
THE moon sank beneath the jagged rim of the mountain, the dun, grey walls of the House of Hermes merged into the somber black of the slope, and the scarlet flare of the sectarian blanked into nothingness. His screeching, ghastly voice died as abruptly.
Silence lay like a crouching panther over the valley, waiting... waiting... Someone stirred uneasily, exhaled an explosive gasp of long-withheld breath. Lucy felt her limbs again, sensed the warm blood go rushing through her veins. They were suddenly too heavy for her to carry; she sagged and swayed with a little moan.
Dave caught at her slim body with an ejaculation. Anxiety leaped into his frozen eyes.
"Good Lord, Lucy, are you ill?" A little shiver of happiness coursed through her. Thank God, he was normal again. She had been imagining things. Of course! The dreadful body from which everyone had ebbed away, the strain, the sudden apparition of the strange recluse—all had sapped her strength, given rise to horrible fantasies.
She smiled wanly at his perturbed features, saw with curious clarity that upstanding cowlick she always ached to smooth down.
"It's nothing, Dave darling," she said. "Just a passing faintness."
Already the guests were scattering, slinking off with hasty, muttered good-nights, eyes carefully averted from the dead thing that had been Flora Wells.
Dave pushed Lucy quickly into a chair. "Just a moment," he called back over his shoulder. "I'll get you something..." Then he was swallowed up in the house.
The night pressed down with leaden weights on Lucy's aching eyeballs. Only Tom Steele was left of that birthday party which had started off so bravely with lights and music and laughter. Only Tom—and the huddled corpse.
Steele dragged his somber eyes away from the grey, ominous line that etched the House of Hermes against the black hillside. Fear, warning even, leaped into them at the sight of Lucy. His age-lined face showed startlingly distinct in the shadowed amber of the lanterns. Only a few were still lit, and the candles within guttered and flared unevenly.
"Lucy," he whispered hoarsely, "be very careful. I am afraid for you." His face writhed painfully. "I—I cared a bit for Flora, and she is dead. Now I am lonely again..." He gulped, stopped, looked around fearfully, and went on hurriedly.
"That liqueur the House of Hermes is making—what is in it? What gives it that strange flavor that everyone is crazy about? I am a distiller; and I tell you, Lucy, it's something never before used. It's—" He brought his head closer to Lucy's. She knew what he was about to say, what had been hinted around in evasive undertones since Elsie Dunn, the first of the blood-drained victims, had been found. Yet, now, knowing what was coming, why did every nerve-end quiver in shrieking protest, every muscle twist into involuntary knots against the open utterance of the secret horror that oppressed them all?
"It's—" Steel commenced, and stopped.
"Coming, Lucy!" That was Dave's voice. His feet thudded loudly on the verandah.
THE distiller cast her a strange, warning glance. "Not a word of this to anyone—yet," he whispered. "Especially not to Dave. There are certain things I must find out before I can explain further. Good night, Lucy, and be careful."
Then he was gone, swallowed up in the tar-barrel murk of the line of trees.
Dave Cooper was running now, his feet making padding sounds across the lawn. He held something in his hand.
"Lucy darling," he cried with panting anxiety. "How do you feel?"
She collapsed with a long, shuddering sigh in her chair. Her limbs, a moment before rigid with ice, were now weak as flowing water. What had Tom Steele meant? Why shouldn't Dave know? Then, unreasonably, the deep concern etched into his finely chiseled features made her happy. She loved him, loved this young lawyer who had crept like a flame into her hitherto secluded life.
"It—it was—" she started weakly.
"Never mind," he said peremptorily, with just that touch of masculine bruskness she loved. "Don't speak, but drink this. It's the natural reaction to—Flora."
His eyes jerked to the maimed thing on the lawn, swerved back to her. Solicitude, anxiety, showed candidly in their shadowed grey depths.
Her shoulder clung to the supporting arc of his pulsing arm. She raised herself to the glass he offered her lips. It held a beaded liquor, bright red—red as the robe of Golas, red as blood.
Her lips closed over the bubble-thin rim of the glass.
"It will do you good, darling," he urged. "It's Sang de la Fille."
Lucy's lips, parted to absorb the fiery fluid, jerked away.
Sang de la Fille! The new liqueur that had swept the world. The beady drink with that strange, lingering flavor which had already driven all other liqueurs off the market. The product of the cryptic cult who called themselves the House of Hermes: shaggy, bearded men who performed secret rites in the underground depths of the grey, stone structure they had builded themselves in Ellendale; whose leader was Golas. "The liqueur of the secret formula, of the inimitable ingredient," read the scarlet label on the squat, round bottle.
Sang de la Fille! Blood of the maiden! The sinister meaning of that name struck her with stunning force. She had never thought of that before. Why had no one...? But of course they had! Tom Steele and others who whispered among themselves. Tom had been about to tell her, to warn her, when Dave's reappearance had struck him dumb.
IN Lucy's fevered mind arose a vision of madmen, deep in the bowels of the mountain, huddled over a hideous, bubbling brew in a vat, adding with gloating chuckles the last ingredient, the... The vision blotted out and others swarmed with flickering shadows in her brain. Elsie, then Ruth, now Flora, cold and shrunken. Later, would it be Lucy Alcott?
Dave said: "Drink it, dear!"
There was impatience in his voice. He tilted the glass, to force the fluid against her pallid lips. Lucy laughed madly, silently. It made crashing thunder in her ears, that unuttered sound. So Dave Cooper was anxious for her to drink that devil's brew! He was trying to force it upon her, was he? That light in his eyes as he bent over her—which seemed concern, commiseration—was nothing of the sort. It was a secret gloating, like that of the band of Hermes as they bent over the stirring of their nauseous concoction.
She remembered now. David Cooper, the stranger in town of a year ago, who had opened his law office and struggled for months until, suddenly, he had money, plenty of it. Why? Where did he get it? Only a few of the villagers were his clients, and they had little business. Yes, she remembered now. It was just after The House of Hermes had announced Sang de la Fille, the liqueur with the different taste.
She understood—everything! A fierce fire burned in her veins. Horror of that staring face, which seemed so kind, so lovable, swept over her. Elsie, Ruth, Flora, now Lucy Alcott! If she drank that blood-red drink, she was doomed.
With a wild cry she dashed the brimming glass from her lips. It spilled in a bloody spray over the greedy lawn; it splashed in dreadful sisterhood over the drained corpse. The glass smashed into a tree and splintered into a thousand jagged shards.
Dave cried out in alarm. "For God's sake, Lucy, are you mad?"
Lucy bent back her head and shrilled laughter, shrilled until the tears rolled down her cheeks. Mad! Not she! She knew now; knew everything! Back in the small dim recesses of her brain was a tiny doubt. He did look so genuinely bewildered, so startled. But the doubt sank in a weltering flood of hysteria. She stopped abruptly. She crouched away, her breath coming in quick little gasps.
Dave started for her, arms outstretched.
"Lucy dear," he said, "you are ill. Let me take care of you and call a doctor."
In another step he would have her. For one queer instant, she swayed, forgetful of everything, tugged by the thrill in his voice, the pain on his face. Then she glimpsed the lifeless corpse of Flora Wells. Its nude pallor, its grey-white skin, whirled her around on small, fleeing feet as if it were a turntable.
Down the road she fled blindly, away from the direction of her home, beating out a desperate tattoo on the black asphalt with her high-heeled shoes. Behind her came shouts, calls, imploring cries to stop. Dave was coming after her.
WITH sly cunning, knowing even in the red haze of her thoughts that she was being cunning, Lucy slipped into the close-pressing fields, crouched with withheld breath in the impenetrable dark, heard the mad clatter of Dave's feet as he rushed past her hiding place. Only when the pounding thud had died away in the distance did she rise from her crouch and retrace her steps, past Dave's home—the home she had once thought would be her own—up the road to her own cottage, where she lived alone with an aunt.
Already her madness was passing. The moon had sunk behind the mountain and the blackness was a palpable shroud. The grey line of the House of Hermes loomed almost overhead, leering down at her with avid, eyeless gaze. The breeze fanned her fevered cheek, slowly unloosed the strange hysteria that had overtaken her.
Lucy flushed in the dark. What had she done, how had she acted toward Dave? She had been mad, she realized that now. He would never forgive her, would never...
What was that? Something was moving stealthily along the road, paralleling her clicking heels. Fear crawled with spiny legs down her back. It was nothing, she told herself desperately; it was only the rustling of the breeze in the grass. But she knew it was not that. She pulled her quivering limbs to a halt, listened. All she heard was the pounding of the blood in her ears. She went ahead, and the stealthy gliding kept even pace with her.
"No, no!" she shrieked to herself. There was no one out there in the Stygian darkness; nothing but her own fearful imaginings. Oh God! If only Dave were here, if only Tom Steele were walking by her side, encouraging her trembling limbs...
She started to run. Her heart tore at the thin covering of her ribs; the breath wheezed and sobbed in her throat. Beyond the next bend of the road, as it curved around the mountain's flank, was home—the little cottage which spelled safety, surcease from terror.
There was no mistaking that pursuing sound now. The Thing was coming after her. She flogged her failing limbs to renewed effort. Oh God, it was no use! She was doomed! The corpses of the other girls, grey-shrunken, drawn of all blood, flared in her fevered brain with horrid beckoning, inviting her with dreadful mockery to join their mummified estate.
Slowly the unseen menace crept up on her. Now its hot breath seared the nape of her neck with scorching exhalations. A great scream burst from her laboring lungs. It went racketing down the valley, ascended with pitiful appeal to the leering House of Hermes, and choked off abruptly.
A huge, powerful hand crept out of the dark, clamped with terrific force over her pallid mouth. Her wire-taut, struggling body crushed within the shrouding folds of a billowing garment, went limp under relentless pressure. Complete darkness overwhelmed her.
Before she sank into oblivion, Lucy felt a sharp jab in her left arm, like the stinging sensation of a needle prick. Someone chuckled—a low, grating chuckle—then she knew no more...
SOMEHOW—Lucy was never to understand just how—she awoke to find herself weaving with sagging, drunken feet along the valley road. The sharp pain in her left arm still persisted; it stung as if with the venom of a million bees. The warm, night breeze fanned her dizzy brow, dried the terror-dew upon her cheek. Her skull was a throbbing fire; her arm hurt; her legs could barely support her.
Slowly, very slowly, realization came to her, and with it renewed fear. Merciful God, what had happened to her? What being still lurked in that groping murk, waiting with fiendish grin to attack her again? Lucy staggered on with moaning, laboring breath. She must get to her home. She repeated it over and over, forcing it through clenched teeth, willing her body forward against the strange suction of the night. Unseen hands plucked at her dress; eerie voices shrilled mockeries in her ear; strange, monstrous faces mopped and mowed before her splitting vision, but she went on and on, wearily, hopelessly. She could never win through.
Then, suddenly, the trim, vine-covered cottage was a shadowed white thing just before her. A great sob burst from her aching throat. Home! Never had the simple word been so fraught with meaning. She was running now, running with the last atoms of strength in her body. Nothing could harm her there, nothing. Aunt Celia would...
She fumbled blindly at the latch gate. She had forgotten. Her aunt was gone for the weekend and would not be home until Monday morning. She would be alone in the little cottage, a prey to all the crawling, prowling Things of the night.
She flung the gate shut behind her. Her running feet were loud on the narrow gravel path. Her trembling hand reached mechanically for the door knob. It twisted, and the arched door opened silently into a well of darkness. With a cry, she staggered back. She had locked the door before she left for that fatal party. She was sure of that. What dreadful Thing was slinking in that suddenly clammy darkness, waiting for her unsuspecting entrance?
Her slender hand went dizzily to her brow. Perhaps she was mistaken; perhaps in the excitement of her departure she had forgotten to turn the key. Aunt Celia was the one who usually took care of those details.
She forced her leaden limbs over the threshold. Outside was hideous death, within was...? Nothing happened. The cavern of the familiar room was nevertheless ominous with its very breathless silence. She bit her lip to force back the betraying breath; she fumbled slowly across the wall for the switch. The Delco unit whirred noisily in the cellar, and warm, blessed illumination sprang from the frosted bulbs.
Nothing was wrong, absolutely nothing. Every piece of the thrice-familiar furniture was in its ordered, meticulous place. Aunt Celia had such a passion for neatness. Sweet Aunt Celia—if only she were here to greet her, to take the lurking curse of solitude off the place!
Lucy locked the door, slammed the bolt, put the heavy chain into place. Now she was safe. Safe? With dreadful Things out there, possibly surrounding the house even now; with windows that could shatter under blows of stony fists? God! She could never last through the night.
Her arm too—it throbbed with a blinding pulse of its own. What had that monster done to her? She was afraid to look; it took infinite effort to bring her eyes down to the bareness of her left arm, just beneath the filmy shortness of her sleeve.
There, imbedded in an angry, swelling mound of inflamed flesh, was a round, dark, red hole. The room suddenly rocked before Lucy's darkened sight. That round red hole! A needle had been thrust into her arm, and then withdrawn! Her blood had been taken by the Thing on the road!
WHY? Why? In a shrieking corner of her brain, she knew why. But she must not admit it; she must not say it out aloud. She must get to the 'phone immediately; she must call for help!
Her half-mad eyes caught on something that lay flat and white on the floor. It was just over the door sill, as if it had been shoved through the tiny crack between door and floor. She stared at it with wide, fierce eyes. She had not seen it before. Had it been there all the time, while fright and hurry had clouded her vision? Or had some stealthy, unseen hand just now carefully edged it through the tiny space?
Writing was on it. Something cried aloud in her brain: "Don't read it! Destroy it; run to the 'phone; get help at once!" But even as it shrieked its warning, she knew that she must read those cryptic black marks, even if her life depended on it.
Slowly, stiffly, she bent and picked it up. The black-ink letters danced before her eyes in mocking blurs. They seemed to taunt her with the secret that they held. Teeth clenched, lips stiffly set, she forced her whirling brain to a slower pace. The letters cleared, sent their hideous message stabbing into her consciousness.
Your blood has been tested. It is perfect. It is the inimitable ingredient. Prepare for our coming!
The paper dropped from Lucy's suddenly nerveless fingers. She shrank against the wall, choking back the scream that tore at her throat; she stared at that oblong of paper as it slowly fluttered to the floor. The livid words etched themselves in letters of red across her brain.
Her blood—the inimitable ingredient!
Merciful God in Heaven! The very slogan on the label of Sang de la Fille! The secret ingredient which gave that ultimate taste to the cordial that was sweeping the world! Blood, that's what it was—blood of maidens, blended in a foul brew with alcohol and aromatic spices! With what monstrous impudence those vermilion-clad monsters who called themselves the Sect of Hermes had named their liqueur, chuckling horribly to themselves in the bowels of Devil's Mountain!
The world did not know, and flocked with avid thirst to this new and rare sensation. All day long, and every day, the huge trucks thundered into the hitherto sleepy valley, hurtled out again laden with cases of the squat, round bottles. The world ever clamored for more. Other liqueurs, other alcoholic drinks, were forgotten.
Elsie, Ruth, Flora, sacrificed, drained of blood, made into loathsome, shrunken corpses, so that this strange new taste could tickle the palate of unknowing drinkers. And she, Lucy Alcott, was next! They had tested her blood, had found it perfect' Prepare for...! Oh God! She must hurry; she must call for help!
The short steps to the wall-'phone in the hall were endless miles; the wait while a sleepy operator tried to make connection with David Cooper's home, was an eternity of hovering nightmares. Dave, her darling Dave! He had nothing to do with this; she had been hysterical, half-mad when she ran from him and her crowding fears. How happy she would be to hear his clear, thrilling voice on the wire. Over and over again she mumbled to herself what he would say: "Of course, darling. I'll be right over. Just don't you worry."
But why, in God's name, did it take so long? She would report the operator to the management. She was careless, inexcusably negligent. Didn't she know this was a matter of life and death?
But no! She was ringing; she could hear that strong, intermittent buzz. Dave must be sleeping, he must be...?
"I'm sorry, Miss Alcott, but Mr. Cooper does not answer."
Click!
LUCY stared at the dead 'phone in her hand as if it were a shiny black beetle. It was impossible! It was...! Then she remembered. She herself had caused Dave to go wandering through the night, up the road into the wilder mountains, searching for her.
With a sob, she jiggled the 'phone again frantically. The sheriff! She must get the sheriff!
Thank God, he was in. He listened to her stumbling, hurtling words with cool, easily detectable skepticism.
"Of course, Miss Alcott," he soothed. "I'll be over in half an hour or so. It's ten miles from Monckton to Ellendale, you know. Just keep the door locked until I come." She could hear his cheery whistling as he hung up.
She looked with shuddering eyes about her. Half an hour? She laughed, and was shocked to hear the strange timber of that laugh. Half an hour! Anything might happen in half an hour!
There must be something else she could do, someone else she could call for immediate help. Lucy tried to think. It was hard, with maggots crawling in her brain, with pain lancing her left arm, with every rustling wind outside a shrieking invitation to madness.
Of course! Why hadn't she thought of him before? Tom Steele! Good, faithful Tom. His home was not a quarter of a mile away; he could be at her side in minutes.
Whimpering with eagerness, she caught the 'phone off its cradle, gave his number. Tom must be home; he must!"
"Tom! Tom!" Her knees sagged with relief, almost pitched her headlong. How quickly he had answered.
"What is it?" He sounded sleepy. Then he roused. "Oh, Lucy, it's you! What's the matter?" There was sudden clarity, anxiety, in his usually gruff voice.
She was shrieking the words into the receiver. "Come over at once. They're after me—my blood! Please, please come!"
There was a clicking noise on the line, as if someone was trying to cut in; as if—someone was trying to hear.
"Hold everything," Tom cried. "I'll be over in five minutes. Get the sheriff, get Dave!"
"I—I have."
But he had already hung up. A great weight rolled off Lucy's heart. She could breathe again. Dear, faithful Tom! What a pity he was a lonely bachelor, grown old through the long years of his mother's illness.
In five minutes, he said. She walked back into the living room, light-headed with flooding relief from the terrible strain of the past hours. Tom would see that everything was all right. She even started to hum a little childish tune she remembered. And then she froze on a soprano note—froze into physical immobility as she reached the center of the room. Someone, something, was moving in the cellar!
Oh God! Were all her efforts in vain? It would take five minutes for Tom to get here, half an hour for the sheriff. In that time, she would be dead, a bloodless, horrible corpse. All the time she had been telephoning, that lurking Thing had been down in the cellar, waiting, waiting—
Madness shrieked through her brain. She opened her mouth to scream. The sound made fiendish echoes in her ears. Then, without warning, the lights went out. The house was suddenly a tomb, a hollow cave of crowding shapes and red-glaring eyes and whispering noise.
She staggered blindly along, arm stiff-extended, trying to find her way to the door. The telephone rang, a quick, insistent burr. What good was it now; with the stealthy monster almost upon her?
Thump—thump—thump! Slow pounding of heavy boots, coming up the cellar stairs, coming for her!
She shrank against the wall, holding herself barely erect with spread hands. Her scalp was a prickling, crawling mass; her blood a roaring, seething rapids.
Thud—bump! It was in the room, feeling, feeling slowly around for her. Screams ached in her throat with unuttered sound. Her heart was a trip-hammer pounding on unyielding metal. He would hear that dreadful sound; he would find her...
And all the while, the telephone buzzed angrily, insistently, trying to get her attention. Too late! No one could help her any more. The unseen monster had stopped. Not a sound came from him. He was waiting for her to give herself away. Her reason hung on a frayed thread. Good Lord, couldn't he hear the pounding of her heart, the loud murmur of the blood in her veins?
The telephone stopped. It was tired, even as she was. Her head went round and round. Her limbs were numb and cold; they could not support her any more. Desperately she gripped at the flat smooth wall for better purchase, missed, and went stumbling.
A hideous laugh enveloped her. She screamed as a shroud went over her head, muffled her body. Something sweet, sickeningly sweet... Oh God, she was drifting off!
HOW her head ached! Round and round and round went the small, loose pieces in her skull. She tried to catch them, to piece them together. Somehow it was important, her fumbling senses knew that. But they eluded her grasp, went round and round continually. There was a sweet smell somewhere, but it was getting fainter. Another more pungent odor was beating it off, driving it away with sharp, acrid whips. Slowly her brain cleared, slowly the whirling fragments fell into ordered patterns. She opened her eyes.
For a moment, bewilderment seemed but a greater nightmare. Where was she? She had never seen this fantastic place before. Surely she was dreaming, or dead. She tried to force her throbbing body upright, but something held her back, plucked her down with slicing fingers. Her still vacant eyes looked dully at her wrists. They were bound with stout Manila hemp. The lashings went around her prone form, and out of sight beneath a table. Her dress was a thing of shreds and tatters, as if ripped from her in her strugglings. White, satiny skin shivered in the cold dampness.
The frigid draught of air was like ice water on her numbed senses. She looked wildly around. Rock met her eyes overhead, all around. Damp, spotted granite, dark grey, dripping with slimy beads of seeping moisture. A dull, red light cast bloody shadows on the rough-hewn walls, made them alive with gloating, crawling shapes.
Lucy moaned with horror. She was underground, immured in a clamping tomb of rock, bound helpless to a table. What was going to happen to her? Slow, inevitable death from hunger and thirst and the vermin that burrowed beneath the earth, never to be found until her bones were an unrecognizable, crumbling mass, or—?
She twisted her head with agonized effort. The ropes cut cruelly into her slender neck, but she must see—she must!
The cavern was not large. Barrels lined the walls. Almost opposite her was a huge, gleaming, copper globe. From its rounded top issued curious whorls of shiny copper tubes that to her staring eyes seemed alive with sinuous motion, writhing like a nest of snakes. A huge pipe sprang from their midst, entered the slimy, solid rock, and disappeared.
A thin steam issued from a vent at the top of the copper globe, spread with fantastic, bloody shadows over the roof of the cavern. It assailed her quivering nostrils with sharp, spicy odors, mingled with strangely numbing fumes.
Realization flooded her with the sniffing of that flavor. Alcohol! Lucy strained against the ropes with a great scream. She knew now where she was. Better to be buried alive in a vault, with the everlasting dead for company, than in this cave with the shiny implements of man's industry about her.
She was in the underground passages, deep in the bowels of Devil's Mountain, which the men of the House of Hermes had hewn for the brewing of their hellish liquor. Sang de la Fille! Blood of the maiden! Then it was true, every shrieking word of it—the gossip that had been whispered in cryptic phrases through the village as if no one dared say it outright.
She had heard it, of course, as had Tom and the others. But it was a stealthy under current, for the village had feared the seldom-seen sectarians and their giant leader. There had been no proof, no evidence on which to call in the law. Just rumors of which no one acknowledged the fathership.
But it was true! Lucy knew now they were damnably true, now that it was too late. Too late! The two simple words were pregnant with doom. She had been brought, under chloroform, to this secret, rock-hewn distillery of the fanatical sect, to be slaughtered like any sheep, to feel the life-blood welling from her throat, dripping into that huge copper globe— the inimitable ingredient! Her disordered brain conjured up a vision of David, her beloved, sipping with critical tongue the perfumed liqueur, smacking his lips over it, not knowing that the girl he mourned as lost was close to him, an essential part of what he drank.
SHRIEKING madness descended upon her. In a red haze, she felt her body whip against the confining thongs like an eel whose back has been broken. As if they came from a stranger, she heard the searing screams lash from her throat, smash into fragmentary echoes against the jutting rocks. Her body became a gridiron of spurting wounds, into which the solid hemp dug deeper and deeper, but she did not feel it. Stark terror made her insensible to hurt or pain.
A door banged open. Heavy boots echoed hollowly on the stony floor. Her screams died down to little whimperings as she forced wide, haunted eyes upon the figure that loomed over her.
The flickering red shadows, the diffusing steam, made him seem a giant in size. A long, scarlet robe enshrouded his form. Fierce, fanatical eyes glared out at her from under great shaggy eyebrows. A tangled mop of coarse, black hair fell round his shoulders, mingled with the curling, writhing strands of a huge, black beard that covered his face with its uncut luxuriance.
Lucy could not scream any more; her throat was a raw fire.
"Golas!" she whispered through parched lips. She had never seen the strange Head of the Sect face to face, except that night when a lost little girl, she had fled down the mountain from the sight of his scarlet figure and the sound of his thundering voice.
His mouth twisted and grinned evilly under the masking beard. Red worms of madness crawled in those glaring, shadowed eyes.
The man was mad, that was it. The religious fanaticism of the sect he had fathered had turned his addled brain. In his madness, he had stumbled on the blood baptism of the liqueur he had concocted to provide the House of Hermes with ample funds—and she was merely an ingredient. There was no mercy in those eyes, there could be no mercy in that mad, lusting brain. There was no escape for Lucy!
Slowly he raised his red-shrouded arm. A grave-cold hand slithered down her shrinking flesh. The worms danced evilly in his red-rimmed eyes. Was there no God in Heaven? Was there to be worse than mere death in store for her?
He saw the panic in her eyes, felt the convulsive movements of her body. His great beard waggled with the hoarse chuckle.
"So you're afraid of Golas?" he jeered. "Not every one is good enough for you, is he, Lucy Alcott?" His voice was a deep, bass rumble. Hate lanced from his mad eyes. "Well, take a last look at that body you think so lovely. Soon it will be a thing of emptied flesh and bones. Your blood, the dainty red blood that flows in your veins, will give the last delicate flavor to Sang de la Fille!" His hideous laugh rang around the cavern. "What a stupid world! No one but myself knows the true reason for its name. The fools think it something similar to Lachrymae Christi, the Italian wine, Tears of Christ. But I, I know better! You, Lucy Alcott, will be the fourth of the stupid girls of this village whose blood runs in the sparkling liqueur that the world drinks and smacks its lips over." He threw back his head and laughed again and again. "Fools, fools, all of them!"
TERROR, such as she had never known before, sent red hot needles of agony lacing through Lucy's skull. Her blurred brain felt as though it would explode through the confining bone. Her blood was suddenly a moveless mass of ice. She gasped for air to fill her bursting lungs.
"You daren't do that, Golas!" she stammered with the desperation born of despair.
The man bent his shaggy face toward her. She recoiled against the ropes at the twisted, unutterable hatred in that bearded mask.
"I daren't?" he mouthed. "I dare everything. Everything, do you understand? The other girls, I simply cut their throats and hung them up like cattle to drain into the cordial. But you, my dear..." He paused and smacked his lips.
Oh God, what will he do to me? Oh dear God, let me die now, at once! I can't stand it any longer; I can't! The dry constriction of her throat was a tearing torture. If only she could scream—the very madness of the sound, the laceration of the muscles, would be relief.
"You," he went on with fiendish laughter, "I shall first amuse myself with. I shall skewer you on this iron hook overhead, and you shall swing like a gigantic pendulum through the air, while the blood rolls down your pretty white thighs and goes drip, drip, into the final distillation. What do you think of that, my dear?"
The bands that corded her throat gave way before the pouring ecstasy of her terror. It was no human sound that beat with desperate concussions against the enclosing rock; it was the last wail of a soul already lost. The bearded man grinned hideously at her. His eyes were deep slits of gloating madness.
"Scream all you want, Lucy Alcott. It won't do you any good. No one will ever hear you."
His scarlet-clad form seemed to increase to gigantic size as he moved toward the table. The long, clawed fingers which barely protruded from the flowing sleeves seemed already tight around her throat. Lucy could scream no more. Faint moans bubbled from her swollen lips.
He jerked at her head, snapped it against the ropes. Pain lanced through her body. A knife glittered in his hand, poised for the downward slash at her bonds.
What was that? A faint, far-off murmur grew steadily in volume until it became a confused tangle of many sounds. Through the solid rock it came, muffled, grinding, like the distant roar of many waterfalls.
The knife hesitated in the killer's hand, dropped back against his side. A startled look came into his glittering eyes; his beard waggled with a curious movement of its own. He stiffened, listened. The noise was a clamor now, as of voices shouting.
"So soon!" he mumbled. His voice seemed lost in the tangle of hair. "I didn't expect—" He paused, looked furtively at the moaning, lifeless girl on the table. "You can wait," he said hoarsely. "I must see this, I must—"
His heavy boots went thudding over the stone. His blood-red robes were a swirl of rushing movement as he vanished through the steamy haze behind the great copper retort. Something banged open in the wall. A huge flood of sound poured into the chamber, a great clamorous outcry that drowned the noise of his racing feet through long, subterranean passages.
THE fierce beat of sound crashed into Lucy's consciousness to bring awareness again to her numbed senses. What had happened? For one thing, Golas was gone, frightened away by the muted roar that was now a ghastly tumult. She had obtained a respite. But she knew, as she lay flat on her back, bound with cords that her unaided efforts could never loosen, that she was doomed. Soon, all too soon, that mad fanatic would return, would impale her tender body on huge tearing hooks, and complete the fiendish formula of his devil's brew.
But that noise! What was it? Why was it now so terribly loud? Golas had left the door open in the haste of his upward flight, and the rocky passages acted like sounding boards, to bring every least sound as it rose from the upper battlements of the House of Hermes.
There were shouts now, scuffling of heavy-booted feet, mad, indistinct confusion, voices shrill with fear, voices hoarse with frenzied threats.
Lucy listened, and a great hope surged through her frozen heart. The steel bands stopped pressing on her skull, the blood once more pumped warmly through her body.
The stronghold of the House of Hermes was being attacked!
The villagers had been roused by the culminating death of Flora Wells, by her own disappearance. Tom Steele had come to her house and found her gone. The telltale odor of chloroform would have lingered in the rooms. The sheriff had come, no longer skeptical. Dave—her heart constricted with fierce emotion at the thought of him—had been found and told what had happened.
Tom Steele, no longer restrained from voicing his suspicions, must have talked. What had been rumors became certainties. They had roused the village. Even now, grim, determined men, under the leadership of Dave and Tom and the sheriff, were storming the lair of the Sect, once and for all to determine the truth of the other girls' deaths; to rescue her.
Happy tears bathed her cheeks. She strained her ears to gather distinctness out of that welter of sound. Voices rose above the general tumult, faded before she could identify them. Once she thought she heard Dave's clear, masculine voice; another time, she was almost positive that Tom's deep roughness had floated momentarily on the surface.
Almost she could hear the trample of many feet as they stormed up the hillside. Perhaps even now Dave was scrambling, panting upward through thick underbrush and over rock masses, directly overhead, not ten, twenty, feet above her, unknowing that the girl he loved was a helpless prisoner beneath, doomed to a horrible, torturing death.
She would be rescued; she must. Her beloved would see to that; so would Tom Steele. He was a faithful, loyal friend.
The noise was increasing. The rock passages conducted the sounds inward with strange clarity; almost magnified them.
That shouting, shrieking blur must be the villagers storming to the attack. That nearer, cleared thudding meant the inmates of the House of Hermes—strange fanatics, members of a sect whose garbled religion was a hodgepodge of God knew what hideous rites. She heard their hoarse cries, strangled in the never-shorn beards that all affected, loud with alarm and startled fear.
Good! Good! Lucy cried insanely to herself. Let them suffer as they had wanted her to suffer, as Elsie and Ruth and Flora and who knew how many other innocent maidens had done. She was slightly light-headed, lying there in the red-shadowed cavern, inhaling the stupefying fumes of alcohol, sniffing the tart, wild tang of strange spices.
A sudden roar, more furious, more savage than any before, swept down the open tunnels, dinned in her ears like the mad surge of the sea. Lucy strained at her cords, listened with every ounce of her being. Up there, in that incomprehensible clamor, her fate was being decided. If only she knew what was happening, if only...
The raging, howling clamor died suddenly, as if it had been a single thunderclap. Silence! Silence as of the grave! To Lucy that sudden stillness was more terrifying than any noise, no matter how hideous. Had they abandoned her, those villagers? Had Tom Steele—had Dave, the man in all the world who should have gone through Hell itself to find her—had they all slunk away and left her to horrible, tearing tortures? Were they suddenly cowards? A great sob tore at her throat, died stillborn.
What was that?
OUT of the stillness of the tomb rose a voice, a great, deep, rumbling voice. It shook the very rock around her with its bass vibrations, it poured out in a flood of sound more penetrating, more frightful, than the whole hideous welter of a hundred shouting men.
"Halt where you are, every one of you!" it resounded. "It is I, Golas, Head of the House of Hermes, who command it!"
Lucy whimpered in her throat. Golas, who had been interrupted in his tortures of a poor defenseless girl, was trying to stop the advancing horde of determined, angry men, was trying to stop her Dave, Tom Steele, the sheriff, with commands! She laughed wildly and shrank from her own laughter. Oh Lord, she prayed, please don't let me go mad now—now that my beloved is coming to rescue me. Please!
Ah, there it came! Just what she had expected. That fierce answering cry of defiance. It was like the last great breaker crashing on the shore. Now they would come on, wave on wave, and blot those evil monstrosities from the face of the earth.
But high above the growls, the mingled cries, came the voice of Golas once again—a great blast of sound that pounded and beat down the other to the merest whisper.
"I warn you," he thundered. "Not another move, or on your own heads be it. What manner of madmen are ye? Why do you come storming and clamoring for our blood? We are peaceful folk, minding our own business, and asking only that ye mind your own. What do ye want with us?"
Lucy shivered with controllable spasms. The damnable, cozening villain! How dared he utter such lies, when she was here below, a prey to unimaginable tortures! But no! They would never believe him, they would never...
A lone voice answered, saying things that her straining, bursting eardrums could not hear. Golas laughed, deep and rumbling. Yes, the madman was actually laughing. Did he think he would fool Dave, Tom and the rest with that pseudo-hearty laughter?
"What manner of children are ye," Golas demanded, "to believe such lies, such stupid superstitions? Ye would hark back to the days of witchcraft, to burn innocent people who do not conform to your ways, on accusations that ye cannot prove."
Smooth cunning—the cunning of a madman! But Dave would see behind the fair phrases, would know how to answer them.
Ah, there it came. "Let us know what is in the formula then."
That was the sheriff; she recognized his cool, even tones. Strange though! It should have been Dave Cooper, who loved her, who was a lawyer and a leader of men, who made that very pertinent demand. In any event, Golas was stumped. He could not answer, he dared not. The whole secret lay in the blood that had dripped from round bodies, even as hers. Golas was through now.
See, there was silence, as if he were hesitating. In another instant...
Like a cannon shot the voice of the giant boomed out. "That," he declared flatly, "is a secret. We cannot tell you that. Our livelihood, the continued existence of our Order, depends on the preciousness of our liqueur."
A wave of exultation burned fiercely along the quivering length of the imprisoned girl. He had called others fools. He was the greater fool. For once, his mad cunning had deserted him. He could have mentioned—anything. They would not have known the difference. But she had forgotten. Tom Steele would have known. He was a distiller himself. Now the villagers would move forward.
There they came. She heard dimly the crunching of feet on the rubble above; she heard the gathering, full-throated roar of determined men. They were attacking. She strained feverishly at her bonds, shouting hysterically, urging the unseen men along, bathed in alternate flushes of heat and icy cold.
GOLAS' huge bass rose above the din. "For the last time," he shouted authoritatively, "I demand that you stop. We are armed, and we shall shoot. This is private property. You have no search warrant; go back and get one if you wish, Sheriff. But now get out before I count three. At three I shall order my brethren to fire.
"One...!"
Lucy shrieked with hysterical laughter. Search warrants indeed! Dave would know that by the time they returned, hours later, she would be dead; there would be no trace of anything. And Golas would mock at them with bland, secret smiles and strange gestures.
"Two...!"
All Lucy's faculties were contained in her straining ears. Was it possible, could it be...? Was the noise, the clamor of righteous wrath, dying down to hesitant murmurs? Almost she could hear the indecisive shuffling of feet.
"Dave, Dave!" she shrieked. "I am down here. Help! Help!"
But of course he could not hear. Her voice had not the carrying power of Golas', or the throats of a hundred men. But Dave would not let her down. If he loved her as she loved him... Had? She shrank from that word. Why had she said it? Because she would not love a coward, a man who backed down before threats when his beloved's life was involved.
"Three!"
It crashed out above a sudden stillness with hideous triumph. For a whole minute, she knew that her heart was not moving, that all her faculties were rigid with nightmare paralysis. What were they going to do?
Oh God! The invocation tore hopelessly out of her throat. Her head sagged limply against the ropes. They were going away. That silence, broken only by the faintest of shuffling feet! The brave men of the village were crawling down the mountain. The sheriff was with them, and Tom Steele, and Dave!
It was impossible; it could not be! Her eyes glared wildly; her brain was a kaleidoscope of madness. They were abandoning her to Golas and the House of Hermes. Soon, the bearded giant would return. He would taunt her with their cowardice. He would approach her again with those hideous hands; he would take her slender body and impale it on sharp hooks. Even now he was...!
She stiffened in frantic fear. Behind her something was opening, slowly, cautiously. The creaking grew louder. They were coming for her. Her shriek was the borderline between sanity and madness.
"Lucy!"
Of course she was mad now. Her reason had definitely snapped. That was why she had heard her name called in accents that were Dave's.
There was a swift clatter of feet, a sobbing, frantic voice. Someone was bending over her, tearing at her bonds with bare fingers. She opened her eyes incredulously.
"Dave! Dave!" It was he, come to save her! It was no mirage, no apparition. There was suffering stamped on his keen, lithe features; there were the burnt-out embers of agony in the dark hollows of his eyes, but the unruly cowlick still stuck out, and his eyebrows arched in a pathetic attempt at his old-time grin.
"Lucy, darling," he was saying, as his fingers untied the ropes in trembling haste. "Thank God I found you. I didn't believe Golas had you; I couldn't. But I thought if you were here, if what they were saying was true, this would be the place. I knew of the secret entrance to this vault, and came by myself. I let the sheriff and the villagers do what they insisted on." His face went grim and hard as his eyes flicked over her poor, tortured body. "Golas and the House of Hermes will have to answer to me for this night's work!"
THE last strand was loose. He lifted her with strong, eager arms off the table. "Come on, darling. We'll get out and—"
"Look out behind you!" Lucy screamed. From her cradled position, she saw the wild shaggy face of Golas appear over his shoulder, the down-dropping of a wooden club.
It caught Dave on the back of his skull. There was a sickening thud. His eyes went blank, filmed over. He staggered and went headlong. Lucy fell with him, sobbing and screaming, rolling over and over.
In one great bound, the triumphant madman was upon her, held her in a grip of iron. Dave, her lover, lay horribly motionless on the stony floor.
"Got back just in time!" the scarlet figure rumbled in his beard with hoarse chuckles. "Your David Cooper won't bother us any more, my dear. So he knew the secret entrance from the hill! Well, he won't make any use of it now, will he?"
She beat weakly at the broad, shrouded chest above. "You've killed him; you've killed the man I love!"
"Sure! Why not?" he jeered. The blows of her fists were like brushing feathers to him. Hate boiled in his shadowed, sunken eyes. "I hate you all, everyone of you," he shouted suddenly. "I was different from Ellendale folk, and you mocked me. All of you. Don't think I didn't know it, that I didn't plan my revenge. And now, Lucy Alcott, I have won. I have fooled everyone. Everyone!" The thick beard swept over her tender skin with rasping, tearing bristles. His great hands tightened around her.
Lucy drooped like a broken, wilted flower. There was no strength in her body; she had no further will to live. Dave was dead. Let her die too; she was weary, weary...
The bearded figure, still chuckling, threw her body over his shoulder as if she were a sack. Her head drooped downward. He lurched forward toward the copper retort, to the hooks that were suspended overhead. In seconds, she would be a struggling butterfly, impaled on huge pins, gushing out her life blood to join the concoction that simmered and steamed below.
She was beyond mere fear. Terror had become so all-embracing that she felt nothing. Her eyes barely opened. Merciful God in Heaven! Was she delirious now? Dave, Dave who was dead, was crawling along the damp stone after them. His face was paper-white and streaked with blood. Gore welled slowly from a matted skull. His features were twisted with terrific agony; his teeth protruded with painful effort over his lower lip. His limbs seemed the broken legs of a fly in a spider web. But he kept inching his way along, fired by some grim, indomitable purpose.
Life coursed shudderingly again in Lucy's frozen body. Dave was still alive, incredibly so. She smothered the scream in her mouth, but it was too late.
Her captor had heard, and swung around. Dave's pain-swept eyes lifted. Astonishment spread over his blurred features; he opened his mouth and thick, formless words spewed forth. His limbs thrashed violently in a mighty effort to move faster.
The bearded giant let out a roar. "I thought I scotched you before, David Cooper. Well, this time—!"
He threw Lucy violently to the ground. Her bruised body crashed with a dreadful thud. Everything rocked and roared. She could not move; perhaps she never would be able to. Incongruously, something far-off, almost detached from her, annoyed her. It was something that had just occurred; yet she could not focus her blurred senses on the problem.
THEN shrieking horror enveloped her, made her forget everything else. Golas was standing over Dave. His great foot was uplifted, and the dark of his trousers showed beneath the robe. Dave writhed and tried to pull himself erect. His face was a mask of agony. But his legs dragged and dragged.
The foot was descending. In another second, it would crash into the agonized face beneath, would stamp out, with hideous thumps, the last vestige of life in the man she adored—making a hideous, pulped mass of his head.
She shrieked hopelessly, tonelessly.
Were those running feet? Was that the sound of men? She tried to raise her head. Hope for the last time thrilled her weary frame. She tried to shout and could not. From behind the great copper globe, from the door through which Golas had just emerged, poured a flood of men. Her head fell back at the sight of them, sick with hope deferred. Great shaggy men they were, clad in scarlet robes, with wild, streaming locks and huge beards. Reinforcements for their chief, for Golas, who was about to crush out the life of David Cooper.
The bearded figure's foot was almost down now. Then something cracked, sent reverberations around the room. The killer staggered, his descending foot slid aimlessly to one side, and he went down, like a riven oak, across the thrashing body of the man he was about to murder.
Lucy forced her eyes wide open, incredulous. Who was that who bent over her, with a strange, gentle concern in his deep-set eyes? Why, it was Golas! It must be—the same long, black hair, the same beard, the same robe. But Golas was dead, killed by the smoking revolver in this dual apparition's hand. See, there he lay, a huddled blob of red!
"Don't you worry, lass," said the Head of the House of Hermes. "You're safe now; and so is Davey Cooper, our lawyer. I heard screams up above, after I shooed those silly folk away, and thought I'd come down to investigate."
Others of the Brotherhood had lifted Dave, had brought him to her side. They crept painfully into each other's arms.
"I knew it couldn't be Golas," Dave whispered. "But I couldn't talk the Sheriff and the others out of it. I really came to warn him of the proposed attack, and—" He hesitated and looked up at the grim, yet kindly face of the giant.
The man wagged his shaggy head. "It did look bad for us, didn't it?" he queried. "But let's see who it was who impersonated me; he's responsible for those poor girls' deaths, for spreading the rumors about the House of Hermes."
He strode over to the huddled figure, ripped at beard and hair. They came off in his hands in great clumps. Beneath, glaring up at the rocky ceiling with hatred that even death could not quench, was Tom Steele!
"It's really simple enough," Dave explained later. "He had brooded over his wasted youth and the fact that the girls of Ellendale mocked at him as an old, unwanted man until his mind gave way. With mad cunning, he plotted a horrible revenge. The opportunity came when Golas and his Brotherhood discovered their secret formula and started making Sang de la Fille." He grinned wanly. "I was their lawyer, darling, and they've been pretty good clients. Their success was phenomenal. As a matter of fact, Tom Steele's business went down steadily in the face of their competition. He made them a private offer of partnership, and they turned it down. He was on the verge of bankruptcy, and his madness turned on them as responsible for that misfortune. In the cunning of his twisted brain, he saw the opportunity to obtain a fiendish revenge on all those he fancied were his enemies.
"The name Sang de la Fille gave him the idea. Blood of the Maiden. As a matter of fact I had warned Golas against the use of such a name, but he liked it. Compared it to the Italian wine, Lachrymae Christi, Tears of Christ, said it gave a novel touch.
"STEELE spread all those rumors," Dave went on. "He killed the girls and threw their bodies on my lawn. Possibly because I was the Brotherhood's lawyer, and in that way affiliated with them. He attacked you on the road, took a hypodermic of blood. He had already broken into your house and left the message there. He wanted definite suspicion to fall on the Brotherhood. That's why he didn't kill you at once. While you were staggering toward home, he ran ahead and hid in the cellar. His make-up as Golas was donned—he knew you did not know Golas personally. Then he waited for you to telephone for help, as he knew you would. He wanted the village to know what had happened. He had tapped in on the wire in the cellar in advance, so as to know exactly what was being said.
"When he heard you call him, he answered at once. That was his undoing. For the operator, ringing back to tell you there was no answer at his place, heard him talking. She listened in and became suspicious. She finally located me—I was still hunting the roads for you. I raced at once to your home. You ware gone, but the note was on the floor, where Steele had carefully left it. Meanwhile the sheriff had arrived, and the village was aroused. They were beyond reasoning—Steele's poisonous rumors had prepared the ground—and they tried to storm this place. The rest you know, except that I still don't understand how Steele found out about the secret entrance."
Golas smiled in his beard. "It was at his suggestion that I built it. He told me months ago we might need a way to escape. He said the folk around here were talking ugly things about us."
Lucy shivered in her lover's arms. What vileness there was in the world! Then Dave's lips met hers hungrily, and she forgot her still-racked body, the miasma of horror she had been through. She was content...
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.