Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/47

Rh at being unable to wreak their will upon us—now found their opportunity. Into the room of the ancient records, into this library of sinister but somehow hallowed antiquity, into this room where the wisdom of the whole vast past of earth had miraculously been preserved under the fragile hand of one old man, under the watchful guardianship of one old man, one young woman and one loyal servant—into this room where we feared to breathe too heavily for fear of obliterating one little thought wave from one brittle old metal micro-film staggered the blood-dabbled figure of that servant—Hugo.

"Master, your son..." and from Hugo's straining lips gushed, instead of words, a torrent of blood and he fell at his aged master's feet. Behind him in the doorway stood a tall, lean unkempt figure that must have much resembled the old Mephisto, fifty years ago. The old man leaped to his feet in a moment's return of his young strength at this intrusion of sudden death upon our peaceful parting words. The old man croaked out:

"Zigor, what the Devil has happened? Is this your deed, you young fiend? Ordered I not you to keep your quarters while these children from afar were with us? Must you bring your vileness before the eyes of humans...?" The sudden strength that had come to the old man at the emergency left him, and his attempt to over-awe the young scion of the evil line failed of weakness. He sank to his chair, gasping for breath. As he looked down at Hugo, tears came to his old eyes, and he looked what he was—a broken old man with no reed to lean upon, now that his loyal servant was dead.

"Your time has come, father!" Young Zigor's voice was exultant, evidently this was a deed he had planned for a long, long time.

"I have taken your orders for the last time. From now on you will keep to your quarters under my orders, and eat your crackers and gruel in peace. I will shoulder the burdens of authority. You old fool, think you a Mephisto can be cooped up like a chicken? There is more in the blood than that, in spite of the squeamishness that has come over you of late. This night Satan will receive his due, and you, Chlio, will take your rightful place ... at the altar...."

EHIND the tall, unkempt, fierce-faced figure of young Zigor appeared now the face of an old woman. Her hair was a tangle of madness, nearly white and uncombed for years, apparently. It hung to her knees about a body that betrayed with every move a kind of madness that I knew too well, and feared too much—the madness of Evil. Her toothless mouth was split in a hideous grin, and she cackled constantly, evilly, a cachination that no witch of legend ever equalled for its horrible glee.

"Hee, hee, you old double-crosser—you think to keep your own wife and son shut here in these dungeons, when the whole cavern world should be groveling at our feet."

Old Mephisto, for some reason, looked at blind Nydia, and began to speak in a tired, defeated voice.

"Nydia, when I came here, I thought much as these two mad creatures do, that with the wisdom of the nature of the antique weapons those records of the past contain, I could regain the ancient dominion over the caverns that the Mephistos enjoyed in bygone times. But when I had read them all, and seen what evil and destruction, what terrific loss and sorrow and horrible endless pain the Mephisto family has meant to all the world for so many centuries, some fragment of manhood still existent in the Mephisto fibre—or else the spirit of my mother within me—rose up and choked the Devil of madness within me, and I resolved that never again, while I had the will to stop it, should a Mephisto rule anyone or fight for anything with these destroying weapons on this dark globe of pain and blood and endless loss. It was then I shut these two up in their rooms, and have since left them out for no reason. Now all has gone for naught—all those good intentions I formed after much thought upon what the records revealed to me—what they meant in truth. I am sorry that it must be you and your friends who suffer, for I can see no fault in you, and I know I am right. There is no wisdom in Evil, but only foolishness! One sweet word from such as you, Nydia, is worth more, someway, than all the dominion that Evil can offer. But, in truth, Evil destroys its own dominion, so that it is a false thought that Evil can offer anything."

Nydia, smiling in the face of our sudden