Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 3 (1926-09).djvu/120

 sitting posture, Bessie began to understand the actual words passing between those two, even though she could not seem to gain any real insight into their esoteric meaning.

"I didn't mean any harm," Gretel whined, those clawlike fingers curling and uncurling, a demoniacal expression on her face, as she slyly watched the doctor's every movement. "I would only have taken—a little—and you had frightened me—and I needed—strength."

"You deliberately stole out of the home that in your better moments you had chosen as your earthly prison," charged the doctor sternly. "You deliberately came here, in a spirit of revenge against me, to hurt innocent people in the hope that this would hurt me most of all."

"But she isn't hurt," eagerly exclaimed his wife in a croaking voice, those clutching talons moving eerily about her face, throwing strangely writhing shadows across it.

"Because I came in time," retorted the doctor harshly, no pity showing in his grim face. "Another second, and you would have added this poor girl to your list of victims," he accused bitterly.

Bessie's hand went instinctively to her throat. Her fingers, examining the smooth surface with gingerly delicacy, found little roughnesses where those pointed teeth had met. She paled and listened strainedly, her fingers protectively over those tiny, terrible, ominous wounds, which she feared the doctor had not seen.

"But you didn't give me time," almost complained Gretel, in a peevish whine. The interlacing shadows of her clawlike fingers moved more and more like dark serpents' trails over her writhing face. "I am still parched—"

"Enough, you fiend!" commanded the doctor sharply. "There is no repentance possible for you, is there, Gretel? No remorse? Well, you will go back to the lodge now, and after I have seen to these two people I shall return, and after that there will be less freedom of action for you, since you are no longer to be trusted. Make no mistake," he added quickly, as a kind of twisted smile drew up his wife's vivid lips, "when I am with you I am protected in ways that do not concern you. You see, my dear Gretel, I take no chances," said he coldly.

"Oh! You wish to make me a perpetual prisoner! You, whose fault it is that I am as I am!" she shrilled, drawing herself upright at last. "Why don't you kill me, and drive a stake through my heart, and cut off my head, and be done with it, once for all?"

The doctor regarded her impersonally as she raged.

"Because that kind of thing isn't being done, my dear Gretel," he responded dryly after a moment's silence.

"That's not the true reason, Dale, and you know it isn't," she screamed back. "It's because even in your hard heart there's remorse for what you did to an innocent girl who loved you! That's why you don't dare do now what you think you will when I die! Ah—but you won't then, either."

Her face grew sly and narrow with cunning; the redly flashing eyes peered from beneath lowered lashes. A hissing little laugh that sent sick shudders over the listening Bessie came in gusts through the drawn red lips.

"What do you mean? Are you trying to threaten me again?" demanded Dr. Armitage. "If you are, I'll have this thing out with you here and now, for I'll not permit a Thing like you let loose upon the world while I can prevent it," he declared with definiteness.

"They'd send you to the electric chair," whispered his wife, trembling