Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/61

Rh horrible vow on Halloween. When I recovered I learned that Manny, driving his car that day madly, had lost control and had come to a horrible end. His evil influence seemed to hold me drugged in its power. I longed to die. But death does not come when one craves it. I lived, a piece of senseless clay, until you came to me; and when I looked into your eyes I felt that heaven had been kind in denying me my desire. My heart, my soul, went out to you, but I couldn't let you know. I could never become your wife with that terrible vow sounding in my ears, that terrible power controlling me.

"Then yesterday, in the dim watches of the night a dream came to me. A voice spoke and said: 'Love beyond price is yours. Take and cherish it, lest this priceless gift be withdrawn!'

"I awoke, happy, myself once more, grateful that life could come to me again."

She nestled close and his hand caressed her hair.

"My darling, how you have suffered. My whole life shall be spent in keeping you free of the mirage of this terrible experience—"

"Beg pardon," a suave voice interrupted, and a cowled figure drew near, "this is my dance, I believe. Is it not too warm to repair to the ballroom? I have my car here. A spin will refresh us both."

The cowled figure bowed low. Audrey glanced at her card, and arose with a little laugh.

"You will excuse me, Arthur, won't you? It seems that this august domino person has prior claim."

With a light hand on the newcomer's arm she was lost in the crowd. The music from the palm-shaded orchestra stirred forth, hummed, throbbed, and sobbed into a soft requiem.

WO days later, some belated wayfarers came upon a young woman, who seemed unable to move from her seat in an automobile. Upright beside her was a skeleton, whose sightless eye-sockets even then bored into the soul from which the light of reason had fled forever more!

Manny had kept his threat.

And in an old moonlit garden, under the white pergola where he had lived his one moment of bliss, a figure fell, turned into sudden clay, as the smoking weapon could testify. 

APPY" Bill Ransom of struggling Medical College days is now Dr. William Ransom, world renowned surgeon, and collects thousands in fat fees every year. But to this day the stare of a pair of unblinking, intense blue eyes will make him shudder. No matter what the possible fee, he will always refuse a case of optical surgery. His colleagues call it eccentricity—but I know different, for you see, there is a story and I got it first hand. It happened near the close of our last year in school.

I didn't usually study on Sunday evenings. A medical student who spends his days cutting up cadavers and listening to lectures on symptoms and ailments needs at least one day's relaxation each week. But final examinations began Monday morning, and I was not sure of myself in optical anatomy. That is the reason "Happy" Bill Ransom found me in my room that drizzly and drear June night.

There came a clatter at my elbow. Two tiny red lights flashed on. I turned to my door and called, "Come."

The door opened and there stood Bill. Big handsome, blond, poor as a church mouse but carefree and happy—that was Bill. His hat was gone. His hair was unkempt and uncombed. The usually radiant face was haggard and drawn. Dark circles were beneath his eyes. He staggered like a drunken man.

"For God's sake, Jim, the eyes! Turn off that damn thing!"

His voice was hoarse and broken as he begged.

He was looking at my door-knocker, a contrivance of which I was inordinately proud. It was a perfect snow-white skull with the lower jaw hinged. Tiny electric bulbs of red glass were in the eye sockets. A touch of the button outside my door turned on the red lights and set a toy motor running. The motor in turn started the lower jaw clattering.

"What's the matter, Bill?" I gasped as I threw off the switch.

He sank into my big Morris chair and covered his face with his hands. His body shook with a violent chill.

"Some jag!" I mumbled, half to myself.

"I'm not drunk," he said hoarsely. "Jim—Jim—I believe I am going insane. I've got to tell someone. You're the best friend I have in the world. Will you listen to me? Will you help me fight it off? You've got to, Jim!" [sic]

"Calm down, old son," I said evenly, although I was beginning to get just a little shaky at Bill's palpable terror. "Sure I'll help you—you know that. What is it?"

"We've only three weeks more at the old school," he began. "Then we'll be full fledged M. D.'s. And Jim, I've wanted a skeleton to mount for my study. I have never before wanted anything quite so badly. It has become an obsession with me. I can't buy one. It is all I can do to earn my expenses. I have tried to trade for one—I have even been tempted to steal. Jim, I had begun to get desperate. The days were passing and I was still as far as ever from getting my skeleton. It maddened me that the cemeteries guarded thousands of skeletons and I could not even have the smallest and most insignificant of the lot.