Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/109

 "Give warning, Hunted One!"

The command was like an electric shock. A bell tinkled, a spun of light was followed by a sharp report; then there was the sound of falling glass, and Gissing realized his shot had found its billet in one of the great mirrors panelling the walls.

Again the darkness of the Pic, the awful silence, the terrifying sound of his own heartbeats, and the click of his dry tongue in his mouth. For years and endless years it continued, this walking in a hot black world, where hands stretched out to seize him by the throat! The hands of the Strangler feeling in the dark for him feeling feeling!

"Give warning, Hunted One!"

Again the bell—again the flash and the report! Again the soft thick silence fell, while Hunter and Hunted moved blindly to and fro in hell.

Gissing's instinct, tuned to abnormal sensitivity by his maddened brain, held him still, with his back against the wall one outstretched hand had touched. He stood there like a thing of stone, while the centuries slipped past him; he stood and suffered there alone—most awfully alone—while around him all the souls whizzed past and were released from hell, while he must stay alone alone!

"Give warning, Hunted One!"

The bell rang almost ac Gissing's elbow, and his shot was followed by a fierce hiss of rage and the thud of a fall. Swift as light, he was at Buzak's side, feeling the inert helpless body, patting—probing—searching frantically! Ah! here in the armpit was something! A jerk another and Gissing pulled a small chamois leather bag from under the broad bandage which had held it close to Buzak's body, and thrust it into his own girdle.

Then he ascertained with deft sure touch that his bullet had injured but not killed the Strangler, for the heart beat slow and strong. As the red moon glowed overhead once more, he dashed to meet the brethren, who were swarming back into the hall.

He ran like some swift fire in their midst, and with mad fury snatched off veil after veil from before the faces of the paralyzed brethren. His own, too, he tore off and trampled under foot, and as the unveiled began to shout and run and gesticulate as madly as Gissing himself, in a few seconds none could say who had begun the assault, for Gissing ran to and fro bewailing and crying out his unveiled state like the rest.

The confusion was appalling. Torn veils were picked up from the ground at random by the outraged brethren, each one seeking to cover his features, no matter how. Gissing, alone, chose his veil with an eye to the number he picked up, and that number was not 901!

He had fastened it securely, and stood quietly fingering that packet in his girdle, when suddenly the place was bathed in all the colors of a desert sunrise, as one tinted globe after another filled with light.

The spokesman came forward, and after ascertaining that brother 27 was wounded, but not killed, he accepted the situation with the true fatalism of the East, and took the most convenient way out of his predicament.

"This is the deed of some Shaitan [demon] who is amongst us tonight!" he said at last. "Who may strive against fate? It was written that we should be afflicted by this terrible devil what is written, is written! Let us invoke the aid of the Mighty Ones, that this Shaitan shall be driven from our midst."

This idea diverted the braver of the brethren; but the majority were too shaken to linger under a roof which sheltered so evil a spirit, Gissing being