Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/37

36 He rose from the table now, going out into the pale Spring sunshine on his way to the office of Hamilton Rook. He found the building presently; it was the court-house; there was a figure of Blind Justice with her scales just over the entrance. Annister reflected sardonically that, here, in Carter County, distant from a civilization at present as remote as the moon, she was probably also deaf—and dumb. And presently, at the head of a dark flight, there was the office, with the legend:

There was a small sign at the corner of the door; in obedience to its invitation to "Walk In," Annister, his hand upon the knob in a noiseless pressure, abruptly flung it wide.

A split second before the opening of that door, and while his hand was on the knob, Annister had seen, or thought that he had seen, a swift shadow pass suddenly across the ground-glass panel; there was the grating sound of a chair being moved backward,

Then, standing in the doorway, Annister's eyes narrowed; he stood rigid, tense.

For the man facing him across the stained and battered desk, lean head like a vulture’s set upon wide shoulders; mouth like a straight gash with its thin, bloodless lips; cold eyes fixed upon him in a silent, ophidian brightness—was— the "third light," as he had called him —the man whom he had met for a moment back there in the smoker of the Transcontinental.

ister ANNISTER, greeted the man at the desk. "You didn't know me, eh? Well—it's-a long time—three years—and my beard—" he passed a bony hand across his chin—"I sacrificed that long ago; it is scarcely the fashion, Now—" he waved a hand, indicating a chair at his left—"sit down, won't you? We can—talk better so."

Annister seated himself, his eyes upon the cold eyes just across. That the man who sat there had inspired those warnings he had little doubt; that he had sent that midnight assassin against him, he was convinced. And yet—he was at a loss to find the reason.

Rook was not aware, could not be aware, of a certain fact known only to himself, Annister, and a certain man just then twenty-five hundred miles distant in that dim office hard by the Capitol; it was beyond the bounds of possibility. No—it could scarcely be that, he told himself.

And of a sudden a cold rage shook him so that he trembled; his hands, flat upon the desk-top, balled suddenly into fists. This man—this suave, secret knave with the eyes of ice, and the implacable, grim mouth—sat there now, removed from him merely by the width of the narrow desk. And if it were true, that which he suspected, then this man, this jackal, this Prince of Plunder with the heart of a hyena and the conscience of a wolf—why, he had earned his quittance a hundred times over.

The flat black shape of the automatic hung in a sling under his left arm-pit—Annister had forgotten that. He knew merely that he was face to face with the man whom he had come twenty-five hundred long miles to meet; he saw him now as through a crimson mist. And for the moment the careful plan that he had made—that, too, was forgotten, lost in the almost overmastering impulse to drive his fist into that face so close to his, the cold eyes, the pallid, sneering mouth

Something of this must have showed in his face; plainly visible to the man who faced him across the desk.

There was a semi-twilight in the room even by day. Now the lean head thrust forward like a striking snake; there came a sudden, brief explosion of movement, a darkening flash, as the hand, holding the heavy automatic, swung upward level with his visitor, point-blank.

At such a distance it would be impossible to miss.

There was a curtain just behind him; Annister had noticed it upon entering. Now at his back it rippled suddenly along its length as if at the passage of a heavy body just behind. The lawyer smiled thinly.

"Ah, my friend," he said, "it is so easy to be indiscreet! And one must meet force with force. This—it is the atricalarticle [sic], if you like—but—it is just a little demonstration of my—preparedness. I thought—you see "

There came a sardonic flicker in the nearsetnear set [sic] eyes; the voice purred now in the semi-darkness like a cat's:

"I must protect myself There are—reasons  You see, I thought, for a moment, that you—ah—meditated a resort to—violence. And violence is something that I deplore, my friend; and here I am surrounded by violent men, 'sudden and quick in quarrel,' as the poet has it; sometimes they are difficult to control."

Annister had himself in hand. The veiled threat with which the lawyer had ended bothered him not at all. Now, casually as it seemed, but with the lightning riposte of a duellistduelist [sic], his hand reached out; there came a sudden wrench, a twist, a snarling oath from Rook; and Annister, pocketing the pistol, smiled grimly now in answer.

"Now—'we can talk better so'!" he mocked. The balance of power, ha? Now, let me tell you something: You left the big town—for your health; that was three years ago, wasn't it? I didn’t recognize you, but it was a pretty close shave, at that!"

He laughed, but there was a ring of menace in it, His hard eyes held the pale ones of the lawyer with a chill malevolence.

"Rook," he said, low, "you're as crooked as a ram's-horn; you're a bent twig; I wouldn't trust you this side of hell further than I could see you, and not even then. Now—" his voice cracked suddenly in the thick silence like the cracking of a whip—"you had the infernal gall to send me—here—after you'd have accounted for me—by the left hand, ha?

"I left that window open, because, if you want to know, I was expecting something of the sort. And now—"

The hand holding the pistol became rigid as a rock.

"I want the reason why—in a holy minute, Mister Hamilton Rook—or else—"

For a heart-beat the face of the lawyer seemed swollen to a poisonous whiteness; the veins in his neck and temples stood out in ridges. Then—the long, spatulate fingers spread wide with a curious, flicking motion, thumbs downward; the curtain bellied outward suddenly as if in answer.

Abruptly Annister felt for a heart-beat a something that was like a cold wind blowing upon the back of his neck, and it was a wind of death. Something slid past his shoulder with the speed of light; talons of steel, thumbs downward, pressing at the base of his brain, He heard a hoarse, whistling croak—a sound that was nothing human. Then—

There is but one answer to that strangler's grip, and it is a secret known only to a few. Annister had learned it, no matter where, and in the learning he had paid

Now, an infinitesimal split second before the beast paws had encircled his throat, his forefinger and thumb had flashed upward, hooked, as steel gaff is hooked, between those fingers and his throat.

There followed a straining heave; a cry, inhuman, beastlike, like the mewing of a cat, Annister, rising to his feet,