Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/136

 already taking form on her tender flesh.

"Careful, Friend Trowbridge," de Grandin commanded, picking up the lantern and sword and leading the way from the chapeL "Carry her tenderly, the poor, sinned-against one. Do not waken her, I beseech you. Pardieu, if that scolding mother of hers does but open her shrewish lips within this poor lamb's hearing this night I shall serve her as I did the serpent. Mordieu, may Satan burn me if I do not so!"

, Trowbridge, my friend, come and see!" de Grandin's voice sounded in my ear.

I sat up, sleepily staring about me. Daylight had just begun, the gray of early morning still mingled with the first faint rose of the new day, and outside my window the blackbirds were singing.

"Eh, what's up?" I demanded, swinging my feet to the floor.

"Plenty, a very plenty, I do assure you," he answered, tugging delightedly first at one end of his mustache, then the other. "Arise, my friend, arise and pack your bags; we must go, immediately, at once, right away."

He fairly pranced about the room while I shaved, washed and made ready for the journey, meeting my bewildered demands for information only with renewed entreaties for haste. At last, as I accompanied him down the great stairway, my kit bags banging against my knees;

"Behold!" he cried, pointing dramatically to the hall below. "Is it not superb?"

On a couch before the great, empty fireplace of the château hall sat Adrienne Bixby, dressed and ready for a trip, her slender white hands se-

Fourteen men—and they paid, one by one, in agony and crime and death. Fourteen good men and true, whose personalities were slaves to the evil will of Rolf Jaeke, the hunchback, Stealer of Souls. One by one they paid, and the narrative of Rolf Jaeke's revenge is one of the weirdest and most fascinating stories ever written.

This powerful story will be printed complete

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