Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 2 (1926-08).djvu/64

 "More pay. Satan must yet exact the penalty."

The duke was walking through the hall, the wizard at his heels. At the door they paused.

"The Devil may have a casket of gold," laughed the duke, "if my enemy is dead."

"Have you heard, Magnificent? The Devil loves nought so much as a soul."

His leering face vanished in the darkness, and the duke relished the vision of the magician's squat head on the end of a pike-pole as he picked his way back to where his gondola awaited him.

He stepped from his gondola to the dock before his magnificent palace and stood there a space watching the gondola recede in the distance. He looked up at the moon and wondered about his enemy. If he were not dead the vision of the wizard's head on a pike-pole would no longer be a vision, but a reality.

He was about to turn to ascend the steps to his palace when he heard the swishing of poles in the water. The gondola was coming at a swift rate, he judged. He did not err, for it hove into sight and came directly to the dock upon which he was standing.

"Messer Duca," came a muffled voice from the gondola.

The duke started; he recognized the voice of his watch in the house of his enemy.

"Ho, Messer Marcquo. Come you from the residence of the duke?"

"So I do, and I must haste to return, for my absence will be suspected. I have great news."

"The duke?"

"Is dead."

"Excellent."

"At the end of the sixth hour after sunset he was seized with a most violent pain throughout his body. He screamed that he was burning; that he had been poisoned. But he had not been poisoned, for his food-tasters still live unaffected. At the end of the seventh hour he succumbed in horrible pain, delivering a curse upon you."

"It is well, Messer Marcquo. You shall be rewarded amply for this. You have not been followed?"

"I trow not, Magnificent."

"Then haste and return; it would not do to have someone suspect you as my envoy."

The boat moved away, and the duke exultantly leaped up the steps and into the palace. He ascended to his chamber, threw off his cloak and donned a luxurious gown. His enemy was dead! Now he would no longer be hampered in his nefarious designs by his enemy! His chief councilor must know. He would go to him, now, and inform him of the incident. The Devil could come and take a casket of gold—ten caskets, for that matter, for his enemy was dead.

He started down the stairway as swiftly as his burdensome robe would allow. But half-way down his gown tangled in his legs and he tripped and fell headlong down the stone steps.

A lackey found him next morning. He was dead; his neck was broken.