Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/153

152 As she and her uncle settled once more to their work, Maquarri bent still over his machine. Mariquita, the quadroon, came clattering down into the hurricane cellar, casting a look of fury and scorn at him, but he saw nothing. She made her way over to the one narrow window that furnished air to the cellar, and swung the hurricane shutter to, but the gale in the town was by now in its full fury and the heavy wooden blind flapped and tugged in her hands. She succeeded in pulling it to, but the wind had broken off one of its hinges, and she had to press against the shutter with all her weight to keep it closed. She struggled there, muttering curses and reproaches at the hunchback, but, still unheedful, he sat crouching over his machine.

As Olivier, riding with the wind along the avenue, saw the square bulk of the gray stone Charing house in the distance, his horse suddenly reared and then swerved. A giant palm had leapt from the earth, uprooted, and sprawled across the road. The terrified horse dashed in terror across a cane field. The rain was falling in torrents, but Olivier gave him the reins and they flew across the fields in a short cut to the house.

Now he approached a small stone stable, at the foot of the avenue leading to the house, and he stopped there to stall his horse, for he saw that the place was safe. The sweating animal made straight for the open door and the stable, and Olivier lost no time in tying him fast and bolting the door.

He staggered toward the house. His linen coat and shirt were torn almost to ribbons by the ride in the wind and rain. His hair lay plastered flat against his head. Now on his knees, now crawling on his stomach for a part of the way, but never daring to stand, Olivier made his slow progress along the last hundred yards to the house. He reached the corner of the wall, his arm pressed hard against his eyes, and tried to rise. The wind picked him up with a vicious flip and he landed at the foot of the steps. In a moment, however, he had recovered his breath, and he managed to stagger to the door of the house. He battered on it with one fist while with his other hand he clung to the knob lest the wind carry him off.

As a frightened darky let him inside the door, Olivier looked about desperately.

"Miss Joan, where is she?" he cried.

"Lawdy, sir, Miss Joan and Lord Hubert, dey doan' pay no 'tention to de storm. Dey's workin', workin', all de time in him's study, sir."

Olivier waited to hear no more. He made a dash for the stairs, but as he mounted the first two steps, one of the hurricane windows in the hall came unfastened, and the wind rushed in as if about to lift the house from its foundations. The terrified darky yelled to Olivier for help, and he turned to tug and pull with him until the window was once more shut and the bolt secured.

S OLIVIER sat beside his friend's hurricane window, in the same house Joan, upstairs with her uncle, once more moved stealthily toward him. Both seemed under the wishing machine's fiendish spell, impervious to the storm outside, and Joan's face was once more unseeing and set in a mask. Lord Hubert bent over his microscope, and Joan stood over him. She looked down at his throat and fingered the deadly ring on her hand. She stood poised and ready to plunge the beetle's fang into his throat as Olivier bounded up the stairs.

He pounded on the panels, but the door was thick, and the storm outside made such a racket that the girl heard nothing. Desperately Olivier pounded and called, but Joan, caught in the wishing machine's spell, showed no sign. She waited, waited, for the right moment to plunge the ring's poisoned fang.