Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 12 (1943-07).djvu/60

Rh and Limerick collided a foot from the sill. Ruthlessly Cummings elbowed the younger student aside.

"Yeah, he’s standing right by the window,” he confirmed. "I can see his shadow on the lawn.”

"You can see! How about me?”

"Pipe down, Limerick. Keep back. We don’t want him to hear us.”

"He’ll yell out in a second,” O’Rourke murmured. "He hasn’t seen it yet.”

Breathlessly the three students waited for a blood-curdling scream to echo across the campus. They hoped it would be blood-curdling. What was the good of frightening Freddy if he didn’t go all to pieces and cry out in abject terror.

OR five full minutes they waited, cursing Freddy inwardly. Finally Cummings jumped up, and started pacing the room like a caged orang-outang.

"Something’s wrong,” he muttered. "He’s either drunk, or we’ve underestimated him. A lad who can—”

His speech congealed. From beyond the window there had come an unutterably terrifying sound—a metallic screeching and rasping which wrenched a cry from Limerick and jelled the blood in O’Rourke’s veins.

This time Cummings and Limerick reached the window simultaneously. Together they stared out, their view-hogging impulses forgotten.

The sound was not repeated. But streaking across the campus in the moonlight was a tall and quaking figure, its arms crooked sharply at the elbows, and its coat-tails flying.

"Freddy!” gasped Cummings. “Just look at him go!”

“As though the Devil were after him,” chuckled Limerick. "That sound we heard must have been the screen ripping. He frightens slow, but boy, does it take!”

Cummings sighed with relief. "So that’s what it was. I thought for a minute it was a banshee on a tear.”

The three students sank down in their chairs and exchanged significant glances. They had put it over. Freddy had had the scare of his life.

They were having a quiet laugh together when there came a knock at the door.

Cumming’sCummings' [sic] grin vanished. "That you, Slats?” he called.

Through the thin panel came the rasping voice of Dr. Amos Harlow, the professor in charge of the men’s dormitory. "Your door is bolted on the inside, Mr. O’Rourke. Open it immediately.”

Cummings jumped up, swung his chair into the middle of the room and grabbed a book.

Limerick threw himself down on O’Rourke’s bed and whipped out a pipe.

"O’Rourke crossed swiftly to the door and threw it open. "Sorry, sir,” he apologized.

R. HARLOW was a wiry little man with snow-white hair and a skin as smooth as a baby’s. He fairly stormed into the room, his eyes blazing.

"You know damn well it’s an infraction to keep your door bolted after ten-thirty,” he rapped.

"Baloney,” Cummings murmured.

Dr. Harlow swung on him. "What was that?”

Cummings grimaced. "I said it was only an accident, sir. Mr. O’Rourke snapped the bolt absent-mindedly, without thinking.”

“Well, all right. But think next time— all of you. You’ll turn the dormitory into a fire-trap.”

He cleared his throat. "A moment ago I heard a very strange noise on your side of the hall—a sort of tearing sound. It seemed to come from this room. Did you gentlemen—”

"We heard it,” said Limerick.