Page:Weird Tales v01n03 (1923-05).djvu/70

Rh man whose very protection has become her peril—the peril of the abyss.

And it was then that she heard it, like a summons of doom; the sound of heavy footsteps from the room above.

HE footsteps were coming down now; they beat hollowly against the iron treads of the staircase with rapid thunder.

Robert Daventry was coming, leaping downward, now to meet—the death that waited for him behind that closed door, or to deal it to the man who, somewhere in that smothering dark, crouched, automatic ready, waiting for the man who was coming—on the wings of death.

After all, her husband might not have heard that thumping clatter; all unknowing, he might be rushing downward to meet an ambush unsuspected and unknown. And that Armitage would shoot, the woman was convinced. For he would put but one construction upon that headlong descent. Daventry had heard him, knew that he was there, like a thief in the night, a marauder, an outlaw meriting the swift justice of the bullet.

And then, all at once, the steps ceased; a silence grew and held that was like the silence before storm, so that to the woman upon the bed it seemed that she abode in a vacuum of sound and silence; brooding upon the night in a volcanic, breathless calm.

It must be a nightmare that would pass, a waking dream that would presently dissolve in the sanity of peaceful slumber, She strove, as a drowning swimmer fathoms deep in dreams, to scream a warning, a command to the man—her man—silent now upon the threshold of life, or of death. But she could not.

And presently, how she could not have told, she knew that, where before there had been but one dim Presence in that bed-chamber, now there were two.

She had heard nothing, seen nothing, felt nothing; neither the opening nor the closing of the heavy door; no faintest sound of breathing; the silence held, borrowing a tension from the electric air. Remote, as through many thicknesses of walls, there came to her now, as from a world removed, the night noises of the City, muted by distance to a vague shadow of clamor, faint and far.

But that velvet black before her was, as she knew, most terribly endowed with motion, sinister, alive, awaiting merely the spark, the pressure of rigid finger upon trigger, the touch of hand against hand, the faintest whisper of a sound, to dissolve in a chaos of red ruin—and with it the ruin of her world.

Abruptly, again she heard that muffled ticking, this time close at hand, and with it, as she fancied, the faint breathing of a man. But even as she heard it, it receded, died; there came the faint snick of metal upon metal, like the snick and slither of a steel blade; it was followed by a sort of chugging impact, like the sound made by a knife sheathed home, say, at the base of a man's brain, or between the shoulders—a sound to freeze the blood.

That Armitage could have been capable of this she could not believe, but upon the instant her flesh crawled abruptly at the thought; of the invisible duelists but one remained now, and he was coming toward her; she fancied she could hear the faint, scarce-audible footfall on the thick pile of the rug.

And then—the silence was abruptly broken by a shattering crash. The intruder, unfamiliar with the room's interior, had swept a great vase from the mantel.

And then, distinct and clear, she heard the sodden impact of fist on flesh, a heaving grunt, the lift and strain of heavy bodies, close-locked.

And following this, in a sudden fury, all round the room the pictures rattled in their frames; the flooring shook; a heavy desk went over in a smashing ruin; grunts followed it, the straining shock of big men in a death-grapple. But mostly it was a fight in silence and darkness, with the quick, hard breathing of men at the last desperate urge of their spent strength.

With her finger again upon the light switch, again she hesitated, and in that flash of time she heard all at once a quick, sobbing breath—a groan—then silence.

Somewhere out there in that midnight blackness her husband might be lying wounded—dead—above him the beast whom she had known as Ronald the Debonair, turning his face now toward the girl who, shivering and defenseless, crouched forlorn upon the bed.

But even as this fresh terror out of the dark assailed her, there came a heavy crash—another—the barking rattle of an automatic, the quick flashes stabbing into the murk to right and left.

The roaring crashes beat upon her ears like a tocsin of doom, and then, in answer, three answering shots, deliberate, slow. With them there came the slumping fall of a heavy body, and the labored breathing of a man.

The duel was over.

For a moment the silence held. Dreading what the coming of the light might reveal, her finger, hovering upon the push-button, came away; then, with an agony of effort, made a darting thrust.

And as the light sprang to full flower she looked with white face and staring eyes, upon the tall figure in the doorway.

It was Robert Daventry!

UT her hysterical, glad cry was stifled in her throat as her husband, bending forward over the rug, turned over the dead man with his foot.

Fearful, yet eager to see, she rose upon her knees, peering with wide eyes over the foot board.

Then—hysteria seized her with, by turns, a sudden storm of mingled weeping and frantic laughter.

"That That!" she cried, pointing a shaking finger at the still figure on the carpet.

And then:

"Oh, my God! it might have been—!"

But Daventry, gazing with a grim face at the rigid figure of the housebreaker—the unclean skin, with its bristly stubble of unshaven chin, blue now under the lights—thought it merely the natural reaction of the terrific strain which she had undergone.

"You mean—it might have been—me!" he said slowly. "Well—of course"

"Of course, Dear," lied Rita Daventry, with a misty smile.

'''F. McCAMPBELL, a Chicago undertaker, claims he has invented a process of embalming a dead body so that it will last forever. For twelve years Mr. McCampbell has been working on his process, and he now exhibits a modern mummy, lying in grandeur in an elaborate coffin, as proof that he has succeeded. By dehydrating a body with electricity, he says, its natural expression, even its complexion, may be preserved for ages.'''

"In the dehydration process performed by the Egyptians," said Mr. McCampbell, "the body was buried in the sand for seventy days. Then linen was wrapped about the corpse to prevent reabsorption of water and the body was placed away in a tomb. Through the electrical process the body will retain its lifelike appearance. It will be particularly valuable for preserving the bodies of great men so that future generations may see them as lifelike as the day they died."