Page:Weird Tales v01n03 (1923-05).djvu/69

68 tle, like the flicker of a wind-blown leaf.

Simply by reaching forth her hand she could have pressed the wall switch, flooded that midnight blackness with the blazing effulgence of the electrolier, but she could not. Eyes strained against that velvet black, she crouched now, in the immensity of the great bed, the silken ease of the sheets turned suddenly to ice, her pulses hammering to the tension of her hard-held breathing, there in the stifling dark.

There came a clanking, a whirring as of wings invisible; then, from the wall clock, there boomed twelve heavy strokes—midnight.

She heard the slow tick-tock of that steady beat, and then, of a sudden she heard something else: the muffled ticking of a watch.

The sound was not loud—it came to her as through walls of silence—but it was nearer now. She was certain of it.

The door was closed; it was a heavy, sound-proof affair; the intruder, whoever he might be, had entered by the window. Rita Daventry knew that he was armed, and desperate—desperate with the cold courage of a cornered grizzly; a housebreaker, who, if attacked, would shoot his way out, reckless of consequences. To such a man, murder, as the price of his liberty, would be a little thing.

And with the thought she stiffened; her mouth opened, to release the scream, at the first sound of which she knew that aid would come, unthinking, swift, reckless, too, in its first fury of intrepid action.

But she would not summon that scream.

On the floor above, her husband was working now in his laboratory. But the man below would have the advantage of that midnight black; with the opening of the door, he would shoot him down with the ruthless, cold cruelty of a wolf.

But that was not all the reason. To Rita Daventry, alone now with this invisible menace of the dark, there had come, on a sudden, a thought to freeze her blood, the thought of Ronald Armitage.

It had been only the night before, at a studio tea, that Armitage had made the threat, or the promise, that came to her now with a sudden, cold prevision of tragedy. Armitage was young, reckless, debonair, of an engaging manner with women; and Rita had encouraged him—well, just a little, she told herself,

It was a fascinating game—in the playing. The paying—that would be another matter. And as if the words had been spoken in her ear, she was hearing now the smooth voice, thickened a trifle with his potations, with that faintly roughened, passionate undertone:

"Daventry doesn't care, does he? Why should you? I tell you, Rita, you've gotten into my blood. Some night between you and me—the witching hour, ha? I promise you I'll be there; and you won't have to look to find me!"

The handsome, dissipated face had come close to hers; there had been a menace in the tone, as well as a caress. And the fact that the man had been—well—not himself could not condone. The noise, the lights, the music upon which, dancing together, they had floated as on a languorous, steep wave of sound and motion, could not condone.

Rita had had no excuse save the oft repeated, sophisticated sophistry of "The last time; this will be the very last!" And she had gone on, protesting, if at all, with a half-mutinous, wholly unconsidered coquetry, which, at the last, had led to this!

ONALD ARMITAGE had the reputation of being something of a "blood;" the Armitages had sowed and reaped, and of young Ronald it was said that he would stop at nothing for the accomplishment of his desires.

And now, alone in that vast bed, hearing again that stealthy movement by the window, the girl checked again sharply in the act of reaching forth her hand. With her finger upon the button, she froze, rigid, as that smooth, stealthy advance moved closer.

There came a fumbling at the footboard; she heard the sound, like a faint, rubbing whisper, of naked fingers sliding upon polished wood. But the night was a moonless, black emptiness; the bed-chamber was like a tomb for blackness, dark as a wolf's throat, and yet alive with movement, with a tension drawn like a fine wire and singing at a pitch too low for sound.

At any moment, too, Daventry might come down; he was a careful man who guarded his house and the treasure therein with a meticulous observance. And sitting there, waiting, nerves at pitch, Rita Daventry tasted to the full the fruits of her single indiscretion. As between Armitage and her husband, she knew now beyond peradventure whom it was she loved, and with a love, as she knew now, fierce and protective, desirous above all things of the safety—the life, indeed, of the toiler on the second floor.

Armitage had never been in her bedchamber, of course, although he knew its location, had seen it, from the outside, walking with Daventry through the corridor without. But in the darkness strange tricks are played with one's sense of direction, The room was a large one. lofty, high-ceilinged, its rear windows opening upon a service alley, and it had been by means of this alley that the midnight intruder had made entrance.

She could hear him now a little better his breathing, hard-held and yet rising to that peculiar, stertorous quality that was almost like a snuffling, a quick, eager panting as of a hound questing his quarry in the dark. If Armitage had been drinking—but then, he must have been, or he would scarcely have made good his threat.

Daventry, though a studious, careful man, was a lion when aroused; he could shoot and shoot straight, And if the two should meet, there in that midnight black, it would be grim tragedy for one, or both—tragedy with none for witness save that pale girl new-risen from her couch of dreams, wide-eyed, her gaze fixed now in a sightless staring upon the black well of the night.

And then, as she shrank backward against the pillows, there came a thumping clatter, a thick, whispered oath, and a following silence that was more terrible than any sound.

He was coming now, around the foot board, along the side of the bed. She felt rather than heard that fumbling, stealthy advance; the fingers feeling along the counterpane; the noiseless pad-pad of the feet deadened by the thick pile of the Kermanshah rug; in imagination she could almost see the face, flushed now, bemused with drink, the leering, parted mouth

The scream, lodged in her throat now, seemed like a bird beating against bars; in a moment the silence would be ripped from end to end, as a sheet is ripped from point to point, with the tearing impact of that scream, rising heavenward with the first defiling touch of those groping fingers. Armitage's face on that evening had been the face of a satyr, high-colored, the nose sharpened to a point of greed, the eyes in a wide, avid staring upon the perfect curve of her shoulders, her neck.

And she had encouraged him with byplay of hand and eye, speech in a low rich contralto dealing in double meanings that yet had no meaning; glance provocative plumbing the depths of his—for this.

And in that moment Rita Daventry knew fear; the primal fear of the wo-