Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/143

 

 sively masked Anubis advanced in the moving circle of light.

and Rafferty were led before the throne, the former again scanned the face of the man seated thereon. The closer view brought full recognition. He was the man of whom Doris Lee had been in mortal fear at the opera and later at the café, from in front of which she had been abducted. Evidently he had worn a heavy false beard and mustache both to serve as a disguise and to cover the odd, sickle-shaped beard which would have made him conspicuous anywhere in Chicago.

Horus of the hawk-mask stepped into the circle of light.

"Mighty Osiris," he proclaimed, "I present Dan Rafferty and Alan Buell of the upper world. They sought admittance at the gates of Karneter, saying that they bore a message to the High One."

The man on the throne looked down at them from beneath beetling brows.

"We await the message," he said.

The ibis-masked Thoth poised his pencil expectantly.

Rafferty looked at Buell and Buell looked back at Rafferty. There was a moment of ominous silence.

"Quick! The message!" snapped Horus.

Buell gazed defiantly throneward.

"I demand the immediate release of my fiancée, Doris Lee," he said.

A sneering smile curled the lips of the potentate.

"A jackal may demand his mate from a lion," he replied, "and as readily gain the favor. Your insolence is in keeping with your rashness in entering Karneter. Know you, then, that she who was Doris Lee in the upper world exists no more as 

dug her out of a glacier, this golden-haired vampire of the North, and she called the white wolves to her bidding. A strange tale of dire occult evil and terrific adventures in the Northland.

found her, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, entombed in the ice that had been her grave for centuries. When he released her from her icy tomb he unwittingly loosed a dark influence on the valley—an influence that worked weird madness on the handful of white men and drained them of their lives, as the vampire-woman thundered into the plain on the head of her mammoth and surrounded by her white wolves. This story will be printed complete in the

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