Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 3 (1926-03).djvu/8

294 "A friend of mine just got in from Chicago. Now it would hardly be polite to run off to a dance and let him hunt a movie, would it?"

I was rather of the opinion that such conduct would come well within the realm of the best etiquette. But it would never do to tell Doris so. I must devise a way out of the dilemma.

"Bring him along," I vouchsafed; "there's room for three in the coupé."

"You're an old darling, Perry," she called as she hung up the receiver.

I was far from feeling an old darling or anything else other than a growling, disgruntled bear. I had counted on having Doris alone that night. Of course one in my financial circumstances couldn't marry, but there was always such a thing as becoming engaged.

I liked Harvey Nielson from the minute his hand met mine in that warm hearty grip of his. He was a fine type of a young Danish-American: big, blond and virile. Here is a man you can depend on in a pinch, I thought, and almost forgot my annoyance at being dispossessed of Doris.

I do not remember much about the dance that night. I have a confused recollection of Japanese lanterns strung symmetrically over the hall, a jazzy orchestra, a smoothly waxed floor, and a multitude of pretty gowns, a few of them perhaps enclosing a pretty girl. It seems that I danced with Doris a great deal, and with other girls a little, and whispered pretty nothings to all as was the custom among our set. But as I look back it seems more like the hazy mysteries of a dream, than any bit of life in which I had a distinct part. Only what followed is forever engraved upon that function of human intellect which psychologists call the memory.

was a full moon and a cloudless sky, as well as just the faintest whisper of a breeze. I proposed to Doris that we drive up the canyon, returning by way of Mount Lookout in order to show Nielson a little bit of the splendor of Colorado mountains. Unfortunately she assented.

I had never known my Ford coupé to run more smoothly. We glided dreamily along that smooth white marvel of a road, Doris seated snugly between Nielson and me.

"What," asked Nielson, "is that picturesque old castle doing over there? It is distinctly out of place in these settings. It is an atavism, a throwback to old feudal England."

"It is all of that," I agreed. "That is Lochinvar Lodge. And it has a history."

"An old feudal castle in the heart of Colorado mountains with a history? Impossible! It is only a hallucination, something we both think we see."

"No, it is there, all right," I went on. "It was built by some millionaire mining man long before the auto was ever thought of, when this road was nothing more than a wagon road into the mining camps. He was an eccentric old fellow, what you'd call a misanthrope. They used to call him the Baron, for he certainly acted like a very fierce member of that species. So when he struck it rich he swore he would have a castle, like the Robber Barons of old time. It must have cost him a pretty penny, too, when you think of hauling all that stone up by wagon. At last the Baron's castle was finished, and he retired there to spend the rest of life away from mankind, surrounded by only a few faithful servants, as they say in fiction. He had lived there only about a year, when"

"Well," put in Nielson impatiently, "what happened?"

"He disappeared," I announced with an impressive pause, "disap-