Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 3 (1923-03).djvu/4





HAVE been in many tight places in my varied life; I have met dangers in the most surprising forms; but I have never experienced anything more perilous and weird than when I was held captive by a group of unprincipled blackmailers in an old castle in Transylvania, on the banks of the Maros River, in what was at that time part of Hungary but was later given to Rumania in the settlement that followed the World War.

This adventure came to me most unexpectedly, with no hint of its dangerous character until I was fully drawn into it. I had been exhibiting my skill in various cities of Europe, and had just finished an engagement at Roanachers establishment in Vienna, mystifying the spectators by escaping from a triple-locked trunk into which I had been thrown manacled. I wanted to see a little of the picturesque country along the Maros River, so, after my engagement at Vienna was finished, I went out alone on what was intended to be purely a pleasure trip, but which turned into as exciting and perilous an adventure as I ever experienced.

In a small village, peopled mostly by Rumanians, although it was in Hungary, I stayed overnight with a grocer's family, amusing the children, as well as their parents, by several little tricks of parlor magic. They must have noised abroad that a magician was stopping with them, for when I was about to depart, the next morning, a heavily veiled woman came to see me, and asked for me by name.

Wondering how the woman knew who I was, I received her in the little living 3