Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 06 (1928-12).djvu/25

 ed grin. "Had I not seen such things before, it might have imposed on me. As it is"

Reaching forward, he gave the loosened door a sharp, quick push, and the entire back of the wardrobe slipped upward like a sliding windowsash, revealing a narrow opening.

"And what have we here?" de Grandin asked, playing his spotlight through the secret doorway.

Straight ahead for three or four feet ran a flagstone sill, worn smooth in the center, as though with the shuffling tread of many feet. Beyond that began a flight of narrow, stone stairs which spiraled steeply down a shaft like the flue of a monster chimney.

De Grandin turned to me, and his little, heart-shaped face was graver than I had ever seen it. Though his tightly waxed mustache twitched and quivered at the points like the whiskers of an irritable tom-cat, his eyes were without the customary glitter which illuminated them when he was excited. "Trowbridge, dear, kind friend," he said in a voice so low and hoarse I could scarcely make out his words, "we have faced many perils together—perils of spirit and perils of flesh—and always we have triumphed. This time we may not. If I do not mistake rightly, there lies below these steps an evil more ancient and potent than any we have hitherto met. I have armed us against it with the weapons of religion and of science, but—I do not know that they will avail. Say, then, will you turn back now and go to your bed? I shall think no less of you, for no man should be compelled to face this thing unknowingly, and there is now no time to explain. If I survive, I shall return and tell you all. If I come not back with daylight, know that I have perished in my failure, and think kindly of me as one who loved you deeply. Will you not now say adieu, old friend?" He extended his hand, and though it was steady at the wrist, I saw the long, smooth-jointed fingers were trembling with suppressed nervousness.

"I will not!" I returned hotly, stung to the quick by his suggestion. "I don't know what's down there, but if you go, I go too!"

"Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!" he swore exultantly, and before I realized what he was about, he had flung his arms about my neck and kissed me on both cheeks. "Onward, then, brave comrade!" he cried. "This night we fight such a fight as has not been waged since the sainted George slew the monster!"

and round a steadily descending spiral, while I counted a hundred and seventy steps, we went, going deeper and deeper through inky blackness. Finally, when I had begun to grow giddy with the endless corkscrew turns, we arrived at a steeply sloping tunnel, floored with smooth black-and-white tiles. Down this we hastened, the pitch of the floor adding to our speed, until we had traversed a distance of perhaps a hundred feet; then for a similar length we trod a level path, and at last began an ascent as steep as the first decline had been.

"Careful—cautiously, my friend," the Frenchman warned in a whisper as the darting beam of his searchlight disclosed a heavy, iron-bound door before us.

Pausing a moment while he fumbled in the pocket of his jacket, my companion strode toward the barrier and laid his left hand on its heavy, wrought-iron latch.

The portal swung back almost as he touched it, and:

"Qui va là?" challenged a voice from the darkness.

De Grandin threw the ray of his torch across the doorway, disclosing a tall, spare form in gleaming black plate-armor over which was drawn the brown-serge habit of a monk. The sentry wore his hair in a sort of bob