Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 2 (1925-08).djvu/111

 A Ghastly Ride With Death

HE driver congratulated himself on having only one more trip to make that night. It was nearly 11:30 when he brought the long-backed car up to the bus station on Pacific Street and let his passengers out. When he got back to Lewis he would turn in for the night. And it was high time.

A group of men stood waiting at the edge of the curb, and almost as soon as the bus had been emptied it was full again. Butler looked around. Eight men occupied the eight places in the tonneau.

“One more for the emergency seat, and we’re off,” he thought. And while he was thinking it, the ninth man came to the curb and took the seat beside him.

“That’s the way to get passengers,” he told himself as he took up the fares. “Just the right number and no waiting.” It was something that had never happened before in his long experience as a driver.

In less than a minute after arriving, he was jockeying the long-backed bus out through the traffic. He climbed the H Street hill, gathered speed on the lever and slipped into the overdrive without disturbing the clutch.

It was a dark, windless night and there was nothing to see but the pool of headlights on the road. In the darkened tonneau eight passengers sat like shadows without speaking, nodding slightly with the motion of the ear. Beside the driver the ninth man looked steadily and silently into the darkness. Butler was annoyed.

“Anyone would say that I was driving them to a funeral,” he thought.

The light in the last house slipped by and they rushed on between the dark walls of scrub pines that bordered the road. And no one had spoken a word.

“What a gang of passengers!” he breathed to himself.

Suddenly the buzzer vibrated through the silence. And for some reason the man at the wheel started.

“Driver, I want to get out here,” a voice called from the darkness of the tonneau.

Obediently he put his feet on the pedals and brought the bus to a full stop with the hand brake. A man climbed out and disappeared into the blackness.

“The devil,” the driver thought as he started on; “I never saw a crossroad here!”

Again the big car whined along in the overdrive. And not a word had been spoken except by the man who had gotten out. A nice party!

Three minutes later the buzzer broke through the silence.

“Driver.”

Again his feet reached for the pedals.

“I want to get out here.”

The car came to a stop, a man got out, closed the door; and they rolled on.

“Is there any place for that man to go?” Butler wondered. “Anyway, 254