Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/102

 people start anything like that. I've got a gun over here in my trunk—and it's loaded for business."

"Good enough. I have one myself," Whittly approved. "I've been carrying it for the last week, every time I came out here. But we may be fretting over a remote contingency that will never mature into a crisis. Mrs. Blauvette—if you'll get me an old sheet? We'll make poor Henry ready for his last sleep."

through the night Saul raced, across the little hill that breathed the spirit of the girl he loved and into the little town. Not even in the streets did he stay his pace, but rushed headlong on to the house where Helene Kinkaid lived. Many an eye watched him go, and many a brain already harassed by dark suspicions regarding that laboratory in the trees took fire at the sight of him running mad and hatless through the thoroughfare. By the time he reached Helene's door more than a dozen people had collected into a following train, rushing to keep him in sight, taking the opposite side of the street to prevent his noticing their interest in him. Such precaution was unnecessary. In his state of mind he would have noticed nothing less than an earthquake.

He reached the house where Helene lived, leaped up the steps and threw himself headlong at the door. Helene heard the pound of his fists, and the cry of his voice calling her. She dropped the book she had been reading and rushed to admit him.

"Helene!" he cried, as she opened the door and he saw her startled face. "Come with me to the hill!"

"What's wrong? Saul! You look like a corpse!" The girl caught his shoulder and strove to shake him into coherent attention. "What's wrong?"

"Henry"—Saul gasped, but his voice carried clearly to the straining ears across the street—"Henry's dead and I've killed my mother!"

"Saul—no! No!"

"It's true! I'm half insane! Come out to the hill with me!"

He grasped her arm, pulling her toward him and down the steps, drawing her to keep pace with his furiously hurrying feet as he turned her toward the little birch-clad hill. Neither of them saw the horror-frozen group of people huddled in the shadows across the street, people who turned their heads to stare at each other in incensed dismay at the import of his words. Saul and Helene went hurrying on, stricken to dumbness with their own terrible problem, while the group of people behind them broke and ran rapidly in the opposite direction to spread the hideous thing Saul had said.

Upon the little hilltop Saul threw himself on the ground, buried his head in Helene's lap, gripped her convulsively with his arms and poured out the story of the last few terrible hours at the laboratory. She held him, listening in panic. Her heart shook smotheringly as he finished what he had to tell.

"And now what am I going to do?" Saul's throat choked shut, and he quivered from head to foot.

"You are coming with me." Helene drew him to his feet by sheer force with her strong hands, looked intently into his face and pointed down the hill toward the laboratory. "Dr. Whittly is sane, he will keep his head, but Cloud will need you—he must be about crazed, too. And your mother will need us both. We can't think of ourselves, now. We've got to think of your mother."

"Helene, where are you going?"

"I am going at last where I have always wanted to be, where I belong. I am going into your workroom with you, and into the crisis to walk through with you to the end. I am going into that laboratory, to see if