Page:Amazing Stories Volume 21 Number 06.djvu/65

Rh Mine was probably as good as any god's perdurable face, that had watched a million centuries wash over it it must be a pretty worn and weary face at that.

After all, those discouraged blue eyes looking back at me had only seen twenty-five summers; that tangled sandy mop of sweat-heavy hair had been twisted in the hands of some pretty classy females—and they hadn't objected to my stocky two hundred pounds of bone and muscle-bound figure either.

Amid these casual cogitations before the mirror, my mind kept hearing, without noticing, the continuous soft sliding of silk against silk, and now a faint perfume, an alluring musky scent that reached and at last penetrated my discouraged consciousness. I whirled toward the door just in time to see a flash of dark movement.

She was almost out the door, a slim figure in black, moving silently, swiftly on her toes. She had been behind the door as I opened it, and had almost managed to escape my attention entirely.

Suddenly I was angry. I loved my fellow men—any my women—and I hated to have them make a sucker out of me. It was so darn inconsiderate of them!

I leaped after her, and seized one smooth silk-covered arm. But she twisted cleverly, her face a white, emotionless mask, expressing nothing. She disappeared into the adjoining room, outside at the end of the hall. The lock clicked behind her. It was one of those old-fashioned jiggers with a little lever at the top that anyone could lock.

That flash view I had had of her white face was a lightning bolt to me!

For that face was as familiar to me as my mother's, although I had never seen it in the flesh before. It was the face of Kyra! And about the smooth, black silk sleekness of that slippery female sneak-thief had been an aura, an overwhelming sensing of echoes of greatness, of terrible mysterious involvement, like

if you saw a hand stretching toward you from the air of your own room, without a body, you would know that here was something that extended into the fourth dimension. Your mind would picture that world of the fourth dimension, a tremendous echo of far unending reaches of life would resound in your mind with an earthquake effect. But the mysterious thing causing this terrific echo of reason can be just a simple, normal hand—just a human hand.

So it was with this woman I glimpsed. With her, went, to me, the awful sensing of another world. Why, I couldn't understand; except that she had the face of Kyra—and so far as I knew Kyra was a person who existed only in my mind.

ELL, she hadn't escaped, for there was no way out of that room. No way for an ordinary woman to travel, anyway. Only one small window, high up, and if she was slim enough to try it, a thirty-foot drop. She wouldn't.

I reached into my room and seized the chair by the door, and all the while in my mind buzzed the mental echo of the intuitional glimpse of a vast alien landscape that this woman had brought to me. In front of the door I propped the chair.

I sat down and put my feet on the door casing on the other side. Even if I fell asleep, I was sure she would have to wake me up in getting out of that room.

I couldn't leave to phone police; besides I had no intention of arresting her. I was just mad at her eluding me so easily.

I sat and smoked, wondering if she was after what I thought she was after? The newspapers had made so much fun of my invention that I didn't believe anyone thought it valuable enough to steal. But I meant to find, out! If that elusive female wasn't made of smoke

She must work for someone in that line of business, who had read of me in the newspapers. But the papers had said my invention was "of no value whatever," in fact, "dangerous to the health." They were wrong, but how could anyone know that but me?

I didn't want to rouse the house for some vague, inner reason. The perfume worn by the dark-clothed feminine figure? Perhaps it was the lure of soft woman-form within the sleek black silk? Something was at work within me, trying to protect the woman from her own misguided action. Anyway I sat and waited.

I got more and more angry as I waited. What I would do with her when I caught her never entered my mind.

Neither did the more probable chance that she might use a weapon on me occur to me. I was sure she was just a cheap