Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Number 02 (1936-02).djvu/54

 water for all the strength it had. His eyes were hot and bloodshot. He could not banish the face of Lee Grandon from his consciousness. The reflection seemed imbedded in his eyes as though they were mirrors.

Charley Tzu sidled over to him. "What's the matter?" he asked casually. "You look as though you had seen a ghost."

"I did," cried Jan Breedon hoarsely. "And I cannot forget it."

Charley Tzu tapped him on the arm and smiled. "Beyond yon door," he said, "there are no ghosts to trouble you. If there are spirits, they are friendly ones."

Jan Breedon seized Charley's wrist with such force his fingers bit into the flesh like steel talons. Charley only smiled.

"Take me into that room," Jan Breedon implored.

Charley shrugged his shoulders. "All right," he agreed laconically as he gently released the quivering fingers.

Without another word he led the way through the doorway. The door opened at his approach. The room in which Jan Breedon now found himself was shrouded in semi-darkness. In the center of the room a tiny shriveled Chinaman was working, preparing long bamboo pipes with the tiny bowl in which a pill of rolled opium was to be inserted. As he rolled the tiny gummy pellets into satisfactory roundness he placed them in a symmetrical row along a porcelain slab.

led Jan Breedon to a rude divan in one secluded corner of the room. There were numerous similar bunks around him, on some of which seemingly lifeless forms were sprawled.

"Wait here," Charley directed. Then he withdrew.

A few minutes later a slim girl walked over to Jan Breedon. She was Chinese, and her face shone golden in the feeble light. She held out to him a pipe which was already lighted. Then she crouched down beside him as he inhaled a few whiffs of the drug.

The girl was not good-looking. Her features were ill-formed and her lips were heavily painted. About her mouth there was the suggestion of a sneer as though she looked down on this white man. But to Jan Breedon she seemed a vision of loveliness. As he gazed at her it seemed as though she were peering down at him through an azure mist. It was easy to forget Lee Grandon when he had so magnificent a face to gaze upon. At last he lost consciousness.

His sleep was restless. He tossed and turned as though endeavoring to escape a thousand grasping hands. Gone was the girl of dazzling beauty. Beside him sat an old hag. She drooled at the mouth, and when she wiped her lips he noticed her fangs of teeth. She was laughing softly at his agony. Now his tongue was burning. He could scarcely breathe. All air had been drawn from the room. He was in a complete vacuum, panting, tossing, moaning, gasping helplessly. And it seemed as though thousands of insects were crawling under his skin. With a shriek, he leaped from the divan. He made as though he would seize the old hag and throttle her, so evil did she look. But now there was no one there.

In the center of the room, the old Chinaman still worked endlessly at his task, molding death into little black pearls. Jan Breedon staggered across the room. He stumbled over a divan which loomed in his path. Some uncanny power made him gaze into the face of the man who was sleeping there. It was Captain Grandon. With an oath, Jan Breedon drew a long knife and struck twice. Captain Grandon did not move. Without a murmur, he succumbed to the