Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 3 (1926-03).djvu/138

424 

I don't know quite how it happened, but she was wrapt in my arms quite as if she had belonged there always. And I was stroking that glorious hair of hers, and whispering "darling" over and over again. The castle, Nielson and all the rest faded silently into the limbo of things that didn't matter. She loved me—my own wonderful Doris loved me!

"Of course I do, Perry, you silly old dear," she whispered caressingly. "How could I help it? Oh, Perry, I couldn't stand it, if something should ever take me away from you."

"Darling," I breathed, and it was almost a prayer, "if you love me nothing ever can."

For the first, and God help me, the last time in my life, my lips thrilled to the velvet sweetness of hers. And then we sprang apart like two guilty children caught tasting a forbidden pleasure. For the door to the north tower was slowly opening! And a dark figure was crawling out!

I could have shouted for pure joy as the moonlight illumined it sufficiently to see. For there before me was Nielson! He rose unsteadily to his feet and made as if to draw the door shut.

"Look put!" I screamed; "there's a spring lock on the thing."

But my warning fell on unheeding ears. Only when the door was securely fastened did he speak.

"Unless I am very much mistaken, it will open soon," he said very, very slowly. And not until then did I notice the change in his appearance.

His smooth-fitting tuxedo was completely gone. His white silk shirt was torn vertically in three places, and seemed barely to be hanging on him. Nor did silk gleam more white in the moonlight than the skin showing beneath the rents, Blood was trickling from his face, from a scratch made there as if by voracious claws. That huge yellow mass of hair clustered defiantly around his forehead in a tawny mop. But in those steel-gray eyes of his there was no fear—only a fierce, silent wrath. It was the deathless courage of the old viking who dies fighting to the last.

"Harvey!" gasped Doris. "What is it, Harvey? Tell me, Harvey, what is it?"

"It is nothing human," he said with that same careful deliberation of his words. "It is a troll." And then I could see that, at last superstition had conquered. "It caught me as I was coming out this door. It caught me around the waist and drew me to the floor. We wrestled there in the dark for a minute, an hour, I don't know how long. At last I broke away from the demon and came out here. But it will follow. It will follow," he repeated with a certain in born conviction. "It has marked me for its victim, and I must kill it or perish. Must kill it or perish."

My eyes had leaped beyond him and were taking in the door at his back. I gave a little cry of horror. For once again that door was opening, and I seemed to see something beyond—some black creature that seemed to be trying to force an entrance.

"So, Perry," said Nielson gently, "you love her? And she loves you," he went on without waiting for an answer. "Then I want your solemn promise on one thing"—that broad back of his was strained against the door, making every effort to hold it back—"don't touch the thing you see. It has marked me for its own, and if I kill it, all right, but if I don't, it 