Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 10 (1943-03).djvu/112

 that voice, one of darkness and power, now demanded but yet another sacrifice.

In respite, the wind slowed. It quelled over the conquered rubble of wood, plaster and sharded glass. It roved through the crippled ruin, biding time. It languished cutside the cellar, singing a blank versed melody in a score of keys.

And the singing was only broken by the sobbing from the cellar. There was a great silence after the maelstrom. A silence punctuated by weeping and the anxious hiss of the wind.

Colt would not come out.

The cellar floor was dirt. He lay on it, looking up, face streaked with dirt, sweaty, lined and haggard. "Come and get me," he husked.

CRABBLING at the soil, raking a shallow trench for his body, he attempted to burrow to crouch in. His fingernails tore and bled. He ached. He longed to rest.

Finally, he could stand it no longer. A coil of rope lay in a corner. He clutched it, threw a snake of it up over one quivering rafter. The kitchen flooring gave, creaking, bit by bit. In five minutes

As the rope came raveling down, Colt tied a quick noose in it, hard and sure. Just far enough off the floor to

Next, a keg of nails, rolled and rocked into place. Colt stepped up. This was escape. He reached for the noose.

The wind flicked the noose away from his fingers. A small hand of wind somehow had crept into the cellar from above, and now it flung the rope wildly in circles.

"Give it to me! The rope, you fool, the rope!" Colt tried to catch the madly dancing hemp-line. But the wind threw it out of reach, zig-zagging it from side to side and back and forth. A lurch from Colt—the rope flew away, came back to rap his face, then out again.

Desperation. Colt snatched, cursed, snatched again. Time grew short. So little time to escape. A snatch—a miss. And—

He caught the rope. The wind died. Died as if only playing a game. It waited. Colt wondered why. But taking advantage of the cessation, he thrust his head into the noose.

"You can't have me alive, you can't have my life-force!" he cried. "I'm getting away—I'm getting away—NOW!"

Colt leaped, kicking the nail-keg with frantic feet. The rope sang, wiring his throat in strangulation.

"I have won," his misting brain exalted, "I have won!"

But immediately, the rafters upon which the rope depended, sagged inward, shrieking, slowly, slowly, certainly.

With cracking thunder the rafters, pulled by Colt's weight, gave way, opening, opening an entrance for the wind.

The rafters collapsed, the floor caved and flew apart. Colt fell, sprawled, choking in the dirt.

"All right, God damn you!" He stiffened up, raging. "Here I am—take me!" The wind howled

HE LINES ARE DOWN, SIR."

"Are you sure, operator? I was cut off in the middle of my call." Herb Thompson laid the phone back in its cradle and leaned against the writing desk, shaking his head. "I can't figure it out. No storm. A little wind, maybe, but—" He took his coat off an armchair and shrugged into it. "Think I'll drive out Colt's way, have a look-see. He sounded strange. But, that's his way. May be on his way here now, with another of his cracked theories. Liable to pop up any time."

Herb Thompson was undecided. He stood, wavering, considering, hat in hand. Faintly, a rapping came, on the front door. "Eh?" Herb started, listening. The knock