Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Dime Mystery Magazine, November 1934, with "The Doom Dust"
STELLA WARREN was running endlessly up a long hill in an eerie half-light that cast no shadows. The two she pursued were silhouetted far ahead, against the bare grayness of the declivity, and just beyond them the road ended abruptly. Only a few steps more and they must plunge over the brink of a sheer precipice that went down to horror.
John, the man who loved her and for whom her love had blazed more and more ardently through the three months of their marriage till it was a consuming flame, could not see the peril. He was looking back at her over his shoulder. She could see his dear face clearly despite the distance between them and her heart bled at the longing and despair with which it was suffused.
The woman who ran at his side, Lois Morne, touched, just barely touched his wrist with the tips of her pale fingers, but it was that touch that chained John to her, so that he could neither stop nor turn back. She also was looking back, but she was aware of the abyss gaping just ahead of them and her too-red lips were parted in a soundless laugh, triumphant horrible....
Fast as Stella ran she made no progress and the two elopers, their legs striding so speedily that they were a blur, remained just the same distance ahead of her. She could never catch them, but as long as she kept on running she could hold them, could hold John, from going over the cliff-edge. If she stopped....
A huge bird swooped out of the brazen sky. It screamed, and the sound was oddly like a shrill bell, ringing, ringing. It hurtled down; when it reached her it would stop her and John would go over the cliff. Its head was not a bird's head, it was the head of Wan Lee, their house boy, the livid scar across the saffron of his face obliterating half his nose!
The man-bird dropped plummet-like, its long nail claws extended for the kill, its bell-cry shrilling higher till it pierced Stella's eardrums. An abortive scream scraped her throat—and she was awake In the dark. Her body and the gossamer silk of her nightgown were clammy with the cold sweat of nightmare terror. She was awake, but the shrill bell was still ringing, splitting the blackness with its clamor.
"John!" Stella called. "John! The telephone!" She kept her eyes closed against the dark, against sharp dread of what that summons might mean shrilling out of the dead of night. "John!"
There was no creak from the other twin bed, no answering mumble. Icy fingers squeezed Stella's heart, momentarily; then she remembered. John wasn't here, of course. He had driven away somewhere—mysteriously—last evening, had promised to be back in the morning. It must be he calling.
Sudden fear that the ringing would stop invaded her. She threw the covers back, rolled out of bed. The floor was cold, but she didn't wait for slippers or robe. Her bare feet thudded down the stairs; she snatched up the 'phone in the entrance foyer. "Hello," she gasped. "Hello!"
"Stell!" John's voice crackled in her ear. "Stell! Is it you?"
"Yes, dear. Yes. What's the matter?" There was something wrong, his hoarseness, the urgency in his tone, its edge of—yes—of fear told her that even before he went on.
"Listen, Stell, and don't interrupt. In my laboratory—a black note-book—get it out of there. Don't let anyone see you do it—above all don't let anyone get hold of the book. Not anyone. I've written you... you'll get my letter in the morning. And don't trust..." A dull thud broke off the snapped, staccato phrases! Stella heard a moan, a sudden high-pitched gabble, queerly like yet unlike a human voice. Then there was a click, and silence broken only by the thin hum of wire noise.
The girl's small hand rattled the receiver-hook. "John! John!" Someone was talking in an indifferent monotone. "Your party has hung up, madum."
"Operator. Oh, operator!" Stella fought to keep her own voice steady. "Get him back. Please get him back!"
"One mo-ment, plee-uz!" Clickings, a burr. Then the operator again. "I am sorry, madum. I cannot get your party; their instrument seems to be out of order."
"Oh!" The receiver crashed into its cradle. Afterwards Stella berated herself for not asking where the call had come from, but then it was too late. A flicker of movement pulled her eyes to the dimness at the stairhead, the faint rustle of silk. A shadow moved up there, was gone. Had someone been listening?
Lois? Lois Morne, her classmate whom John and she had met on their trip and who had rather awkwardly taken Stella's casual invitation to visit with them on their return at its face value. She had arrived a week ago, bag, baggage and poodle, and since then had been a charming presence in the house.
Too charming, Stella had begun to think, when it came to John. But why should Lois eavesdrop? Perhaps she had been awakened by the 'phone bell, had thought the call might be for her. Then why hadn't she said something? Why hadn't she made her presence known?
NONSENSE! The girl tried to pull herself together.
There hadn't been anyone there. She must not let her
nerves go. John was in trouble; he was depending on her
to do something for him; she mustn't fail him. In the
laboratory—a black book. She peered through dimness
toward the back of the entrance hall, at the blank,
inscrutable door of the room she had never entered. No one
besides her husband, not even Wan Lee, had ever stepped
over that threshold. John had always been curiously, grimly
silent about what he did in there, all day and sometimes
far into the night.
She clicked on light and padded to it—took hold of the doorknob. It was immovable! The door was locked! And not even with a key. Stella stared at the nickeled dial in which the futile knob centered, wrinkling her forehead at the lines and letters graved into the metal. Why, that was like a lock on a safe in a bank; one had to know the combination to get it open.
Good Lord! The notebook—how could she get in to get it? Was that what John had meant—that he had written the combination in the letter that would arrive in the morning? But she must get in there tonight. If....
"No can do," a voice squealed. Stella whirled, and recoiled from the sinister saffron of Wan Lee. "Ony Mistel John know."
"Wan! You—How—" He was fully dressed, his arms folded, his hands hidden in the voluminous sleeves of a flowing robe of black silk. Silk! Stella remembered the betraying rustle at the stair-top. Was Wan Lee the eavesdropper, then, instead of Lois? "Don't trust..." someone, John had started to say. Had he been about to warn her against the Chinese? The Oriental's horrid scar, a hideous scarlet gash across half his face, seemed to crawl with a monstrous life of its own, and above it slant, glittering eyes were obscurely menacing. "What are you doing here?"
"I leading third book Confucius, velly good philosophel my people. Heal Missee Wallen talk tel'phone; come see what can do. Something?"
Reading Confucius! Very likely—at three in the morning! Stella licked cold, dry lips. She mustn't let him see how afraid John's tortured voice, his desperate message, had made her. But neither could she leave the laboratory unguarded—with the book in it that had sounded so tremendously important to her husband.
"Yes," she managed an almost normal intonation. "You can do something for me. It's hot in my room, cooler here. Please bring my mattress down, the bedclothes, and my dressing gown and slippers. I intend to sleep here, right here, the rest of the night."
There was no expression in the yellow countenance, but Stella knew Wan Lee was not deceived. He glided away, his felt slippers utterly soundless on the stairs, vanished into the dimness of the upper hall. Stella whirled, darted into the living room, flitted across it to an Adam table in a dark corner. She jerked a drawer open; her hand fumbled among papers, clattering odds and ends within. Her fingers found cold metal; she whimpered and pulled out John's flat automatic.
She was back again at the laboratory door, the gun hidden in the folds of her sheer nightdress, was watching the Chinese' waddling descent as he grunted under his bulky burden. Her feathery, frivolous dressing gown made a splotch of vivid red over the top of the bundle. Somehow it looked as if he were bearing a horribly limp corpse, a great gout of fresh blood staining its white shroud!
One thing, she thought as she watched Wan Lee arrange the improvised bed on the floor right across the laboratory entrance, was fortunate. The room had no windows, was ventilated by narrow ducts from fans in the basement. John had told her that once, when she had wondered at a great windowless space in the stone side-wall of the house; he had said something about fumes from his experiments killing the ivy and other foliage if that were not done.
She hadn't paid much attention then, watching the adorable way in which his tiny black mustache moved under his nose as he talked. But she remembered now, and was glad. This was the only way anyone could get in. Her lips moved in a silent prayer that if anyone came she would be able to stop him.
STELLA sat bolt upright on the mattress, her back
against the door, her quivering fingers tight on the
butt of the automatic under the sheets. Her eyes, wide,
aching, strained into black pools of shadow cast by a tiny
nightlight, high up in the foyer ceiling, and the broad
entrance hall was strangely unfamiliar, filled suddenly
with eerie menace. Tiny creakings, the rustle of foliage
outside, sent cold prickles up and down her spine.
She fought for calmness, fought not to think of the way John's voice had choked off, of the final thud and the shrill voice she had heard. Her lover was all right, she tried to tell herself; nothing had happened to him. His letter would clear things up, and she would laugh at her present terror when she read it.
But oh, how long, how long was it yet till morning? Till old Si Hopkins would come in his axle-squealing buggy and bring that letter? That letter from the—dead. Stella's heart skipped. Stark terror seized her. John was dead, murdered! She would never see him any more!
God! She mustn't think that; she would go mad before dawn if she did. She mustn't think at all. She stared straight ahead of her at the great entrance-door. Beyond it was the terraced garden, the gravelled path sloping down to the gate, and the mailbox with its little red flag into which Si would put John's letter in the morning. No! She must meet him there, get the letter from him. She must let no one else know of it or get a hand on it Not Wan Lee—certainly not Wan Lee—nor even Loris Morne. John had said no one... no one... Stella forced heavy eyelids open.
What was that? A furtive sound brought Stella wide awake, icy fingers clamping her heart. There it was again, the sough of fabric against wood, the almost imperceptible grate of stealthy metal against metal. Someone was at the outside door, was fumbling a key into its lock. The girl snatched up the gun from where her drowsing hand had dropped it. She was on her feet, tense, quivering.
She could hear the pound of blood in her ears, the single, startled chirp of a woods cricket, and nothing else. Not another sound, but she felt the presence of the intruder on the other side of the stout panel at which she stared; visualized him, a shapeless, menacing figure crouched out there on the doorstep... Oh God! Here, inside the house, in that corner, a black shadow was coming to life, was extending upward, was taking on the form of a man, of... "I see you!" she gulped. "I see you! Stop there or I'll shoot."
"No shoot, Missee Wallen," liquid syllables sounded from the shadow. "This me, Wan Lee."
Stella gasped with quick relief, then paled. What was the Chinese doing there? Had he been creeping up on her, hoping to find her asleep? The feel of the gun-butt in her wet palm was comforting. "Wan! There's someone outside, someone trying to get in!"
"I go see," His response was imperturbable, no hint of excitement tinged its thin monotone. Ignoring the gun still snouting at him, he moved to the portal. A bolt rattled and the great leaf swung open. A rectangle of graying dawn was blotted by Lee's tall silhouette—was gone as the door slammed closed and its spring-lock clicked. Stella swayed, put her free hand back to the wall behind to steady herself, waited interminably for the sound of a struggle.
Minutes dragged, and there was no sign that anything lived, out there in the garden. Was the house boy ever coming back? Had he fled—frightened away by the terror that quivered about the house? Had he been ambushed—wounded, killed, perhaps, by the trespasser whose furtive attempt to enter had awakened her? Or—her veins ran an icy stream—was he whispering out there to the other, planning an attack? Was that the reason he had been stealing toward the door, to let the prowler in?
JUST as that last thought squeezed her brain
in a constricting band of steel, another furtive sound
jerked her eyes away from the door, through the great arch
of the living-room, to the pale oblong of a window it
half-obscured. Something was moving across that window. It
was an arm—a hairy arm—stretching across the
glass. She could not see the hand, but she divined that it
was at the invisible corner of the frame—the corner
where John had installed a patent lock! Metal snapped
loudly. Had that lock been forced? Was the window about to
open, to let in—what? What sort of thing owned that
black, shaggy arm?
Paralysis of terror held Stella rigid. She could not scream; she could not move the hand in which she held John's gun, could not shoot. Wood grated—was that window opening? Oh God!
Suddenly as it had appeared, the arm was gone! The window had not opened—she must have imagined it—for the shadow of a tree bough loomed across the pane. That was it—the shadow of a branch. More than once she had been frightened by just such an apparition. Then something thumped against the big door, and its knob rattled!
She hadn't imagined the arm at that. The attack had shifted, that was all, had come around to the front entrance. Of course—Wan Lee had brought them there—easier—they were coming in...
Her throat worked; her frozen lips moved, but she could utter only a hissing rasp. Would she—could she—fire the gun in her hand? Could she send lead death pounding into living flesh? "Missee Wallen!" The high squeal of Wan Lee's voice came through the thick wood: "Missee Wallen, open do'!"
Then he hadn't his key! Good! She would keep him outside. Safer that way—safer... Oh Lord! She couldn't; she dared not. It was already growing light, soon it would be broad day and the mailman would be coming up the road. He would give John's letter to the Oriental unquestionably, that all-important letter!
At all costs she must prevent that! "All right," she contrived to say. "All right, Wan Lee, I'm coming."
The girl's trembling legs seemed to move through a viscous liquid; miles stretched between her and her goal. But she reached there at last, got her left hand on the polished knob, turned it. She jumped back, the gun jerking up. But only Lee was there, tall and gaunt against the blazing glory of sunrise. He shuffled in, and the portal slammed shut behind him.
"Well," Stella husked. "Well, Lee. What—who...?"
"Nobody!" He spread his gnarled, ocherous talons wide. "Nobody there, no tracks in wet glass, nothing." He shrugged, continued without change of tone. "I go make bleakfas'."
"Put up a card-table here." The Chinese slid through the door at the left, and it closed behind him. But Stella did not see that. She was staring at the pale-tinted wall, at a tiny smear that showed where Lee's voluminous sleeve had brushed against it—a smear that glistened redly in the light that swept in now through the fanlight over the big door.
"OH, Hon... Honey!" A sleepy, little-girl's voice broke through the gray mists swirling about her. "Why all the confabulation down there in the middle of the night?" Stella turned, looked bleakly up the green-carpeted stairs. Lois Monte was peering down at her, round-eyed and tiny in pajamas of peach silk through which the glint of her skin was a pink sheen. "Has Johnnie come home already?" The tousled aureole of yellow hair that crowned her head was repeated under her plump, ineffectual chin by a furry bundle of dog hugged to her breast. "Oooh, I hope so. Lois is just aching for the walk in the dew of the dawn that he's promised her. And Babs wants to go too, don't you, baby?" The last was to the poodle, who yelped and darted a red tongue across the girl's cheek.
"No," Stella said drearily. "John has not come home." A little flare of resentment at the diminutive the other had used was quenched in the black flame of her fear for her husband. Her body ached as if the terrors of the night had been physical blows. "I hope worry about him didn't disturb your sleep."
She couldn't help that bitter jab; more than ever she felt her old friend to be an interloper. And the irony of it was that if anything more happened here, she would have to look out for that bundle of blonde fluff as well as for herself and the mysteriously precious black book behind the fast-locked door.
"We slept like logs, thank you, Babsie and I." Lois' red sandaled feet came down a step or two. "We—oh!" She broke off with a little squeal. "Oh, you've got a gun, Stella, and—and you've slept in the hall. What's happened?"
"I couldn't sleep in my room. It was too hot, so I came down here. Couldn't sleep here either and I was cleaning John's gun to kill time." Stella knew her lies were as transparent to Lois—unless she were actually the utter moron she pretended—as they had been to Wan Lee.
But it didn't matter, nothing mattered except the letter she awaited. Perhaps, beside the combination, there would be some clue in it to John's whereabouts, some hint as to where she could begin to look for him.
Worse even than the threat to herself, and the unknown menace still hovering around the place was the awful uncertainty regarding her lover's safety, the terrible not-knowing whether he were not lying wounded somewhere, bleeding his life away. ...
FROM the gate Stella could look up the
flower-bordered path, through the wide-open front door to
the blank, inscrutable face of the laboratory door. The gun
in her pocket would easily carry that far. She could turn
her head, just a bit, and look down the steep brown ribbon
of the mountain road, a hundred yards to where the trail
curved and was hidden by a green curtain from behind which
the mail-carrier's buggy would come.
The house, thank God, was empty. Wan Lee had departed, a quarter-hour ago, with swinging can for milk and eggs at the Ransom's farm up the tree-cloaked hill; Lois, in shorts and halter, was somewhere out back basking in her matutinal sun bath. That same bright sun was beating down on Stella, and in its warm glare the night's alarms seemed unreal, fantastic. But she could see, even from here, a tiny smudge on the foyer-wall where the Chinese's sleeve had brushed, and it was brown now, granulated, undoubtedly a spot of blood....
From somewhere upstairs, a clock, clinked eight times. Si Hopkins was down below now at the Dane's; the grizzled mailman's daily round was punctual as time itself. He would be here in minutes, Babs would come scrambling out from some grassy covert and leap into the buggy for the head-scratching she had learned to expect. The kindly old man would drawl a greeting, would reach into the bag between his feet, and pull out John's letter at last.
Why didn't he come? It was time now, it must be time!—A far-off squeaking pulled Stella around, the familiar intermittent squeal of the mail-buggy's ungreased axles. In seconds, now, the gray head of his horse would poke around that bend. Everything was tight inside the girl, her breath came from her pale lips in hissing whisper. And suddenly—in mid-squall—the axle-sound stopped!
In the name of all the saints why did Si have to stop there, today of all days? Stella pulled the gate open, took a step out into the road, stopped. No! She dared not get out of sight of the lab.
The thin shriek of the axle shuddered again through the ambient air, and the long face of Roamer, Hopkins' decrepit mare, appeared nodding around the curve.
The buggy came into view. Queer! Why were the rain-curtains up, hiding the vehicle's interior? The sky was cloudless—could it have been raining in the valley when he had set out? Stella's eyes narrowed, her scalp tightened with apprehension, with growing fear. Wholly unconsciously, her hand slid into the pocket of her linen slacks, fastened on the butt of the automatic there. Something was wrong—deadly wrong. Suddenly the sun's warmth was gone and a chill penetrated the very marrow of her bones.
Roamer plodded toward her, slowly, oh, so slowly. Time stretched into infinity, but he reached her at last, stopped; whinnying, stretching his nose for the apple she always had for him. She had forgotten it. Why were those black curtains so immovable? Why did no quavering, cheery voice greet her from behind them?
Was it fancy, or did a queerly musty odor taint the air?
Stella knew she must open those curtains, and she was afraid, horribly afraid. Her skin crawled with fear. But she fought her hand up, fought it to the rusty fasteners edging the peeling fabric and jerked them open. And screamed!
It wasn't—it couldn't be Si Hopkins, this slumped, inert bundle on the buggy seat! It couldn't be anything human—this Thing in the frayed blue suit of the old mail-carrier. Where there should be hands there were two formless lumps of a slimy substance like the scum on a stagnant pool, except that it was fish-belly white and dotted with small gall-like protuberances. The head—Stella's stomach churned—the head was a mass of the same fungoid stuff, and from its mouth, its nostrils, trailed long tendrils of something that looked like Spanish moss, clammy-white, growing even as the aghast girl stared at it....
Protruding here and there through the nauseous, quivering mass, all that could be identified as belonging to the old man were little tufts of curly, silver hair.
THOSE knobby balls—how they were swelling,
like little balloons! There was a scamper behind the
girl; a white flash passed her, scrambled into the buggy.
The impetus of Bab's rush carried it against the Thing's
face and one of the balls plopped open. It sprayed a
tiny cloud of fine dust around the dog's head. The
poodle yelped—its cry of anguish was like a human
scream—threw itself backward in a somersault that
landed it, thumping, on the ground.
The tiny dog lurched to its feet, started a blind, frantic rush away from the agony that had seized it, got to the side of the road and fell again, writhing in the ditch. Its hairy pelt was clotting—no!—was being covered with the same odd fungus that invested Si Hopkins. Tendrils grew, spurted almost, from its nostrils, its snarling mouth. It lay still... Stella averted her eyes from the horror.
But she forced them back again to the buggy. Against the dashboard lay the bulging mailbag. Had any of the death-dust sprayed the striped bed-ticking? If she touched it would that lethal fungus spring to life on her own hand, spread appallingly, eating her white, firm flesh as it had eaten the dog's, the old man's? Would it sprout from her nostrils as it sprouted from theirs? But the letter in the mail-bag held the combination that would enable her to reach the notebook John had entrusted to her care. She could seize it, flee from this place of menace, of soul-shattering terror. But as long as that book was still within the house she could not leave. Stella moaned, her hand drifted toward the bag, reached it, touched it. Her fingertips prickled—she gasped—it was only the harshness of the thick fabric. She clutched the sack, jerked it from the wagon-bed in one convulsive movement. It crashed to the ground, white papers spilled from it—from a long gash in its side.
The ground heaved under her feet. Hopkins' disaster was not some fearful accident, then. Someone had murdered him, had sprayed him with the fungoid death, had ripped the mailbag and stolen—what? Awful certainty pounded at the girl's brain, but she dropped to her knees, hoping against hope as she scrambled among the spilled envelopes, the scrawled postcards. Whimpering, searching, desperately searching for the familiar bold lettering she knew she would not find. She read the names of families up the mountain, over its crest, down the other slope. But no Mrs. John Warren....
No Dane either, or anyone below. Their letters had been delivered. Then suddenly Stella remembered the momentary stoppage in the buggy's approach. The thing had happened there, just below the bend, not a hundred yards away. Whoever had John's letter with the combination, was near—very near. He might be—She jumped to her feet, her frantic glance shooting to the house, the hall.
Someone was in the foyer! Her hand flashed to the pocketed gun; she plunged up the path. Something metallic caught the light in the hands of the dark figure; Stella's numbed fingers fumbled to find the automatic's safety catch, couldn't. She felt threshold-stone underfoot, catapulted into the hall. The tall form within tensed—flung an arm out at her....
"No cleam today," Wan Lee said blandly, holding up the can. "Cow sick." He seemed quite unconcerned. "No can hab stlawbelly-sholtcake."
STELLA stared at him. Had he, or hadn't he been at
the laboratory when she first glimpsed him? She couldn't
be sure. From the bright daylight outdoors it had been
impossible to see clearly within the house. But she was
dishevelled, breathless, holding a gun, and even Oriental
fatalism could not possibly be so imperturbed at the
spectacle she must present. His very poise argued guilt.
He could have met Hopkins in the copse below, killed him,
slipped back here through the woods and come in the back
way. Her finger tightened on the trigger. But she could not
shoot him out of hand—could not even accuse him. She
had no proof.
"Any letters for little Lois, honey-girl?" The speaker followed her insipid voice from a door to the left.
"No, Lois. No letters for you." Yesterday she had winced at the way John's eyes had caressed the girl's voluptuous curves, all too fully revealed by her sparse costume. The thought stabbed, how happy she would be if he were here to do that now—even if Lois were stark naked.
"Oh, Si's still here!" the blonde exclaimed, and undulated toward the exit.
"Wait!" Stella snapped. "Wait. Don't go out there. Close that door and lock it." The blonde turned, pouting, but Stella paid no attention. She was at the telephone, whirling the magneto handle. She must have help. She would tell the operator to send the Dane boys up here, to dispatch Marshal Lester from Nehansic. She could hold Wan Lee off till they came. Then she would have them batter down the laboratory door. She would get the book out, and they would guard her as far as the village. Funny, the line sounded dead. She twirled the handle again. There was no tinkle, no responding voice. The girl swayed back on her heels. The line was dead! It had been cut somewhere outside!
Very calmly she replaced the receiver in its hook, turned to the others. Wan Lee was standing meekly still, hands hidden within his sleeves, the milk-can dangling incongruously against the frogged buttons on his black cotton working-jacket. "Lee," she said. "Go upstairs and make the beds, I'll tell you about lunch later."
His scarred face was a still, sinister mask, but she could have sworn that his narrow eyes glittered malevolently, mockingly. "I obey," they seemed to say, "because it suits me. But watch out. My time is coming." His departure was silent, reptilian, as always.
Stella jerked around as soon as he was out of sight. "Lois!" she whispered. "I don't want to frighten you, but I need your help. Si Hopkins is out in the buggy there dead—murdered. The 'phone wire has been cut. I want you to slip out the back way, run through the woods to the Dane's, and tell them to get here as quickly as they can, with their guns. Do you think you can do that, dear?"
Color drained from the other's doll face, and her eyes grew big. "Oh, Stell," she whimpered. "I knew something was wrong. But—but why don't you go. I—I'm afraid!"
"Whatever there is to fear is here; you'll be going away from danger. The quicker you go the safer you will be. Come, I'll get the door and windows locked out here and go to the back with you. I'll watch you, cover you with the gun as far as I can see you. But hurry!" Stella's voice broke. "Please hurry!"
STELLA slammed the back door behind Lois, clicked the lock, watched her run like a shaggy rabbit across the clearing. With her out of the house there was at least one worry off her mind. She was almost at the dark rim of the pines now. After that—
Lois screamed! Something white flashed through the sunlight. A little cloud of mist swirled on the ground at the blonde's feet. She whirled, dived back headlong, eyes wide with terror, as scream after scream shrilled through her lips.
Stella had the door open again, blazed a single shot into the gloomy tree trunks where a flicker of movement had showed momentarily. Lois brushed by her, still screaming, and Stella slammed the door again, locked it, stooped, her fearful glance darting to the bare legs of the blonde girl who had collapsed in a dead faint on the kitchen floor.
The tanned skin, tiny hairs glinting golden against its bronze, was clean. No clammy fungus was spreading there. The lethal puff-ball had missed! Stella gasped relief, reached for a pot of water on the sink drain-board, dashed its contents into Lois' face. The girl sputtered back to consciousness, stared up at the ceiling with eyes whose blue was darkened, almost blackened with fear. "The dog-man!" she moaned. "Oh, the horrible dog-man!"
Stella recalled the shaggy arm she had seen last night. Her fingers dug into the girl's bare shoulder. "What dog-man? Lois, what was it you saw?"
"A little man, all hairy, in among the trees. He had a face like an Airedale, and he threw something. He made noises, like a dog barking, awful noises. Oh, honey," she clung to Stella's arm, pulled herself to a sitting posture, "What was he? What is going on around here?"
"I wish I knew," Stella said bitterly.
"Upstai's all finish," Wan Lee announced, shuffling in. Then he saw the pool on the floor and his face suddenly twisted with anger. "Wach you do here, Missee?" he cackled. "Wach fo' you make my flo' wet?" He snatched at the buttons of his jacket, ripping them open. "I go. I thloo. You come my kitchen, make dilty; I go."
Stella lifted herself erect. Her face was set, the gun steady in her hand. "Oh, no!" she gritted. "No, you don't go. You stay here, right here, till Mr. John comes home safely." Had he, somehow, gotten hold of the precious notebook?
A very hell of fury blazed in the Chinese's eyes. His evil scar was blue-black with the blood surging into it. Only for an instant, though. Suddenly all expression was gone from his countenance; it was mask-like as ever. "Vely well," he muttered. "I stay. I stay in my loom upstai's till Missa John come." He started to turn.
"One moment," Stella snapped. Ignoring his glowering look she came closer to him. Jamming her gun into his stomach she passed her free hand tightly over his clothes. Keys came out of a pocket, the house keys. She passed by sundry odds and ends of string, buttons and other odds and ends of things. There was nothing else—nothing suspicious—wait!
She remembered a lurid Chinatown yarn she had once read, felt around at the back of his neck between his shoulder blades. Something hard was there, something long and thin and hard. Her fingers slipped inside his loose collar, came out with a narrow knife whose handle was notched, whose eight-inch blade was smeared with brown that was not rust!
HYSTERIA plucked at Stella's nerves—but
her voice was steady. "This was for killing chickens, I
suppose?" she said grimly. "Lois—there's some wire
in—Lois!"
Where was that girl? Had—? Wan Lee lurched suddenly, a sudden leap that took him past her before she could shoot. She whirled. He was just beyond her, his arm was up and out, a white ball struck it, burst, spewed a misty cloud of tiny dancing particles around his yellow hand. Stella's scream was a choked squeal. Lee's attempt at escape had saved her life. That puff-ball had been thrown through the doorway at her—by whom?
She glimpsed the Oriental's pain-contorted face as she plunged past him. There was no one in the dining-room, no one in the foyer. She twisted to a sound from above, saw Lois peering down, "What happened, sweet?" the infantile blonde lisped. "Any more trouble?"
"Lois," Stella gasped. "Did you see anyone out here?"
The other went wide-eyed. "Why, no! Who could be there? I was going to my room to fix my make-up. I saw no one."
That nut would stop for lipstick on Judgment Day. "Go ahead and prink," Stella blurted, forced her eyes back toward the kitchen, knowing that she would see Wan Lee writhing on the floor in the throes of the horrible fungus-death. But he was still standing, a yellow liquid was dripping down his arm, dripping from his finger-tips. Where it gathered on the concrete floor it fizzed and smoked.
With his other hand the Chinaman was just putting a bottle down on the kitchen table. Stella could see its red label, knew it was the muriatic acid the houseboy used for cleaning. God! The skin of the Chinese where the acid bathed it was rising in great white weals—but the caustic had killed the spores that otherwise would have spread all over his body by now.
A single moan forced itself through his thin lips. Then stolid endurance of what must have been terrific pain hardened his face to its usual impassivity. He was washing the stuff off now, under a turned-on tap. A more pressing problem called for Stella's attention.
She had locked the windows, the door. A quick glance showed her they were undisturbed. But the attacker must be in the house. How had he gotten in? She whirled to a stealthy, muffled sound that came from inside the laboratory door.
Stella crouched, her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth, stared at the blank, forbidding panel. The unseen assailant, the prowler whom John had feared, had penetrated her defenses, was within the closed room. Even now he must have the black book in his hands!
She had failed her husband, had fallen down on the task he had given her in his frantic cry from out of the unknown. The thought exploded red fury within her skull. Her left hand darted out like the strike of a rattler, clutched the doorknob. The door pulled open. A vague, bent form, somehow uncouth, moved in the dimness. The girl thrust over the threshold, her weapon swung up, "Hands up!" she cried, "or I'll shoot!"
Only a faint rustle answered her. "Hands—" An arm snaked past her side, from behind. A hand clutched the gun, ripped it from her fingers. The door crashed closed behind her, blackness crashed about her, and a shrill laugh came muffled through the thick panel!
Stella spun around, an abortive scream rasping her throat. Her hands reached out for, found wood, found a knob, turned it and thrust against it. The door was immovable, locked! It was locked! she was imprisoned, here in the dark—shut in weaponless with some hideous thing that moved furtively in the blackness—with some bestial thing which killed with clammy white puff balls that burst and made horror of its victim!
MAD laughter swelled the muscles of her own neck.
Wan Lee! Fool that she was—mad fool!—thinking
him helpless, ignoring him. He had come up behind her with
his noiseless tread, had jerked the gun from her hand and
slammed to the door that shut her in to die!
Glass tinkled against glass—in here!
Her staring eyeballs ached with the pressure of utter lightlessness. Her brain writhed with terror, with anguish transcending terror. Instinct gibbered to her that the thing inhabiting this darkness with her was other than human, was foulness unspeakable.
She sensed it in the padding footfall that thudded against her straining ears, in the fetid odor that threaded the pungent smell of chemicals, that assailed her nostrils with its eerie menace. And she knew that the thing was creeping toward her, that its hairy claws were reaching out for her—for the soft flesh of her neck.
Sudden coldness invaded her, and she found sly cunning in the extremity of her fear, the sly cunning that animates the completely mad. If she couldn't see what crept upon her, it couldn't see her. She dropped soundlessly to the floor, slid noiselessly along the wall.
Noiselessly? The fabric of her clothing scraped; the faint sound that was thunderous in her ears must resound equally to the other. Frantic fingers flew—modern woman's garments are scanty, easily shed. Her skin wouldn't rustle, wouldn't scrape against wood or plaster and betray her to the unseen hunter. Naked as the day she was born, Stella slithered through the shielding darkness, naked and snarling as some primordial progenetrix, far back in the dawn of Time.
And like that far-away ancestress the nude girl crawled, through blackness that well might be the dark of a primeval night, shuddering with fear of the nameless, invisible thing that stalked her. In time Stella lost all sense of direction, all knowledge of where she was, of where the door might be, knew only that she must slide endlessly, silently on.
A chair-leg brushed her flank, a table corner scraped her thigh. She stifled a startled cry, too late. The Thing was upon her! A hairy body prickled her with its bristles, a taloned claw sliced searingly along her arm, fingers like steel springs clamped her wrist. A surge of terror-born strength heaved the girl to her feet, lifting the other with her. Her free hand flailed into the darkness, crashed against mushy lips that drooled, was gashed by protruding fangs.
Two beasts battled in blackness, fought with snapping tooth and tearing claw—a loathsome, shaggy thing that growled, a woman once white and soft but now a snarling mad creature from which civilization was stripped as her clothes had been. The furious maelstrom whirled through the laboratory; a table toppled; bottles were swept from a shelf, crashed thunderously. Stella did not feel the splintered glass slash her bare feet, nor the acids burn them. But suddenly a tiny flame kindled by the seething mixture of chemicals, ran along the floor; a greenish light flickered, and she saw the face of the thing with which she battled.
BULGING eyes were bloodshot with lust and
battle-madness, under an infinitesimal brow. A flat
nose dripped blood; long, yellow fangs gnashed between
thick black lips. Gory foam dribbled from those lips. It
flecked the stiff, green-brown hair fringing the brutish,
protruding jaw and merged it with the dog-man's barrel
chest. Marvelously, he was shorter than she, though wiry,
powerful. Stella's clawed hand darted for his eyes, gouged.
He growled, jerked away.
In the moment's respite, the girl saw a teetering shelf, a bottle sliding from it whose red-lettered label shouted Nitric Acid. She snatched at it, had it, grasped it. A swift motion broke the neck from the container. Another jetted its contents straight into the man-beast's face.
The thing screamed, horribly, his shaggy hands went to eyes that were suddenly balls of blistered white, to a contorted, smoking visage. The jagged bottle was still in Stella's hands, she jabbed savagely—gripped it with both her torn hands, leaped high in the air and crashed it down on the other's flat skull. Blood gushed, there was a sickening sound of crushing bone, and the dog-man collapsing, screamed once.
Stella reeled, clutched at a table-top, held on, closing her eyes to shut out the awful sight. An acrid odor stung her nostrils—the sharp odor of singeing hair! It brought her back to awareness; her lids popped open. The light in the room was brighter, not green now but yellow and red. Flames licked along the twisted corpse of her beaten antagonist, fluttered like tiny flags from mingled reagents there on the floor, from its very boards. Greenish smoke gathered, undulated about her ankles, sent seeking tendrils up along the sun-tanned slimness of her legs.
The room was ablaze, and she was locked in it to burn, to roast. In minutes it would be a fiery caldron, a roaring furnace.... And there was only that tight-locked door!
Her glance lit on a desk in a corner, on a pulled-out drawer. The margin of a notebook, a black-covered notebook, peeped over the edge. There was the book, the black book John had entrusted to her, the book that had brought terror, death, surging about her. He had wanted her to hide it. Well, she would, she would hide it in the flames, with her own charred body!
The fire reached some inflammable liquid, roared higher. Black smoke billowed, eddied. A cough racked her throat, and she pounded on the desk in effort to control that spasmodic retching. Pounded—funny that her little fist should crash so loudly. It wasn't her fist! It was something pounding on the door, great blows that shook the thick panel, that splintered the wood. The door was breaking down!
Stella staggered over to it, hugging the precious book to her lacerated breasts. She could hardly breathe The heat was intolerable. She slid to her knees, slumped to the floor. A tiny current of fresher air seeped through the crevice down here, revived her a little. The panel quivered, metal screeched. And the pounding stopped!
Stella heard a scream, a woman's scream; she heard Wan Lee's cackling, high gabble. A woman—God! Lois! Was it Lois that had been hammering at the door, and the Chinese who had made her stop? A muffled shot cracked out there... and the pounding recommenced. Just as final blackness engulfed the beleaguered girl, the door crashed open.
PAIN, dull thumping pain, racked Stella as she heaved up through weltering blackness to consciousness again. Her eyes opened, she was on the foyer-floor. A rug was thrown over her to hide her nakedness. John's book was still against her breast. A white, limp hand was just within the edge of her vision.
Her sight cleared as she turned her aching head, and she saw the flaccid form of Lois limp against the wall—saw a spreading, scarlet blotch on the blonde girl's swelling bust. Oh, poor girl, poor girl. Lois had given her fluttering, butterfly life to save hers. To save—but there had been only one shot. Who, then, had dragged her from the flames?
Stella struggled to sit up, managed it through every fractional inch of movement sent agony stabbing through her. The shattered laboratory door gaped open. Within was charred chaos. A brassy fire-extinguisher lay on its side just within the threshold. She had laughed at John, called him an old woman, when he had insisted on buying it. And now it had saved the house. But who had used it? And where was Wan Lee?
She twisted at a thump against the entrance door, to the click of a key turning in its lock. And froze as she saw it move slowly inward, as she saw a yellow hand jag its edge, a yellow hand that clutched a long, cruel blade from whose sharp point red drops dripped. The great leaf came slowly open, and through the aperture the gaunt Oriental stepped.
Stella watched him almost impersonally. Wan Lee had come back for her, to kill her as he had killed Lois, to take the black book from her and vanish with it to the hell where such fiends go. And she didn't care. When he had cut her throat the pains that made her body a shell of agony would stop. She would be done with horror. She would rest at last in eternal oblivion. Only she would have liked to have felt John's warm lips on hers just once more before she died. Maybe he would meet her again—over there. Maybe he was there already, waiting for her....
The saffron face with its sinister scar leered at her, slant eyes glittering. Why did he stand there, gloating? Why didn't he kill her and be done with it? His lips moved—he was going to taunt her first. Maybe he would torture her. She had often read of diabolic Manchu tortures. That was really funny—he couldn't hurt her any more than she hurt already. "Mis-see feel betteh?" he said. "Tha's good! Maybeso Wan Lee get some clo's flom loom? Yes?"
Bewildered, half-delirious, the girl met this amazing speech with same dazed acceptance with which she had contemplated his supposed intention to kill her. "Yes," she breathed. "Yes, please." But when, having paused a moment to shoot the bolt on the great front door, he had flitted up the stairs, a modicum of reason returned to her. She was in his power, he was playing with her as a cat with a mouse, but she might be able to save John's book. Her eyes darted around for a hiding place, she saw none within easy reach. And then a sly thought came to her.
She turned over, skidded herself across the waxed floor to Lois' flaccid body! Her smoke-blackened hands tugged at the corpse, lifted it a bit, slid the notebook underneath, let it thump down again. And saw metal glint beyond, the automatic that had been snatched from her hand.
The gun had been under the slain girl. Stella snatched at it, hid that in turn under the rumpled rug that had covered her. Hid it—but the implication of its presence where she had found it did not come to her.
SHE was clothed again, had slipped into the kitchen
to wash off as much as she was able of the soot and dried
blood. Thought gradually began to function. Why Wan Lee
had spared her she could not fathom, but she could see him
from where she stood, a silent, black-robed form at the
living-room window, peering out through it with a curious
intentness.
Lightly, cat-footed, she moved through the dining-room, into the hall. It was the work of a second to stoop, snatch the automatic from under the rug. The safety-catch slipped back easily, her finger curled about the trigger. Steady now. One shot.
It must be her first shot that would rip into the Oriental's back and pay him back for Si Hopkins, for Lois. ... She stopped breathing.
And Wan Lee whipped around, "Look," he said, his face alight. "Missa John come!" And then, before Stella could absorb it, before she could move, he was shrieking, his thin voice thinner with sudden terror. "The dogs! The dogs! Oh, Buddha! The dog-men!"
The girl hurtled through the archway, to the window, hurled the Chinese aside. There he was, John, his red hair an oriflamme in the lowering sunlight. He was coming around the hood of his roadster, looking curiously at the curtained buggy and its grazing mare. And behind him, shaggy, repulsive, two dog-faced men were at the margin of the woods across the road. One had his arm raised, a white ball in it—about to hurl the fungus-death at John's unsuspecting back!
Crack! Crash! The window splintered in front of Stella; the death-thrower jerked, collapsed. She realized that she had shot through the glass, that her bullet had sped unerringly to its mark. Crack! She shot again, and the other squat, shaggy fellow was a limp bundle in the road-dust. John spun around, his mouth ludicrously gaping, his hand flashing to a hip-pocket. From around the house-corner someone else appeared. But this one was clean-shaven, his countenance slant-eyed and yellow as Lee's, a bulldog revolver in his saffron fist.
Stella swung her weapon around, pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. The gun was empty, she had never thought to examine the clip. She screamed to warn her husband. He didn't hear her. The newcomer's hand lifted, his gun point-blank at John.
A metallic flash whipped through the air, plunk! A knife quivered in the squat man's neck. His gun barked, but its orange flame jetted at blue sky, and he was like an emptying sack, sinking slowly to the waiting ground.
As Warren whirled once again, Stella saw Wan Lee running down the path to him. John's voice came clearly to her. "Some throwing, Wan. Some knife-throwing! I didn't know you had it in you." She heard him say that. And then, clutched at the window-sill, she slid down and down into blackness.
"STELL! Stell dear!" John could call her back from
the Styx itself. "Honey-girl." His dear face was bending
above her, dark with anxiety, with fear for her. Her arm
went up, around his neck, she pulled him down for a long
kiss.
"Oh, that was good," she murmured, "better than all the medicine in the world. But are you all right, my dear?"
"Alive and kicking, Stell, though there's a place on the back of my head that's mighty tender. Had quite a tussle with a couple of yellow beggars who interrupted our conversation last night. They entertained me for a while, till I managed to get away. But you, sweet? You must have been passing through hell itself."
Stella smiled tremulously. "Hell is right. But I saved the black book, John. They didn't get it."
Warren's voice was sharp. "I thought—where is it?"
"Under—under Lois."
"Under Lois! Gad! That's almost pathetic. So she did get it, when it couldn't do her any good?"
"John! What do you mean?"
"I told you to watch her. She was here for just one purpose, to get hold of that book. I wrote you as soon as I found that out, called you first chance I got. She had warned the fellows for whom she was working to intercept me, hold me while she tried to get into the laboratory."
"Oh John! We were cut off before you finished. I thought you were warning me against Wan Lee!"
"Against Wan! Jumping Jehosaphat! From what he tells me, poor old Wan has saved your life a half-dozen times since last night. But I suppose it's his own fault. I've impressed him so strenuously with the need for secrecy about everything connected with me that he didn't dare tell even you what it was all about. But there are three Ainus in the woods out there who owe their death to his knife, beside the yellow spy-master with whom Lois was working, the chap that almost got me at the last."
"Ainus?" Stella asked, wonderingly.
"They're the half-savage denizens of the southern part of the islands of Saghalien.* The Japs call them that because they look so much like dogs; inu means dog in Japanese you know."
[* Saghalien, obsolete variant of "Sakhalin." —R.G.]
"I didn't know till now. And I want to forget it. So it was Lois who was behind all that happened? It must have been she who killed Si and got the letter—she who locked me in the laboratory with the Ainu she had admitted!"
"Yes! And she shot at Wan when he was trying to get you out so that he had to knife her too."
Stella shuddered. "She certainly did, John. But now that she's dead I can almost forgive her for everything except for using those horrible things that killed Si Hopkins and poor Babs. I didn't know anything so terrible existed."
"Very few do." John Warren knew that his wife's terror-numbed brain still verged on the edge of hysteria or worse, that he must explain everything to save her reason. "They are a genus of the Lycoperdon fungi. Some of them are edible, like the giant puffball, Calvatia bovista. These Calvatia Orientalis, in fact, are not poisonous in themselves; it is only the extreme rapidity with which their spores grow when they land on animal flesh that gives them their lethal power. But I think that's enough, sweetheart. Don't you think you ought to go up and try to sleep a bit?"
"John Warren!" Stella's eyes blazed. "Do you mean to say that after all that's happened you're not going to tell me what it was all about? Listen here, young man, you better give me the inside on what is in that black book or I'll pack up and go right back to mother."
WARREN grinned, rather shamefacedly. "Nothing
much," he muttered. "Only a formula for a new war-gas that
will make the American army invincible. That's what Lois
Morne and the yellow spy-master were after."
"And why, may I ask, were you trying to keep that information from me? Did you think me also a spy?"
John laughed shortly. "No. But I've just sold it to the government for enough to make us independent for life, and I wanted to have Wan Lee bake the check in your birthday cake, next Monday."
"Oh John! Oh my dear...."
Wan Lee kept his eyes discreetly averted as he announced, from the foyer whence he had cleared all signs of what had passed, "Lunchee leddy, Missee Wallen."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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