Page:Weird Tales v41n04 (1949-05).djvu/68

66 Lucy fell half asleep in the hammock that evening. The fresh country air and the lavish supply of good country food combined to bring early, drowsiness to her eyes. She came awake when a small mongrel dog she had seen from time to time in and out of the Renner barn began to dig furiously around the roots of a nearby shrub, unearthing eventually a small blue bottle half filled with white tablets. She pushed the dog away and picked up the bottle. She looked at it curiously. A shiver of apprehension went over her body. She had seen just such a container on Cora Kent’s office desk and Cora had said something about garlic being good for tubercular-inclined people. Lucy unscrewed the bottle cap and sniffed at the contents. The odor was unmistakable. She quickly slipped the bottle inside her blouse. She knew now beyond the shadow of a doubt that Cora Kent had preceded her as a guest in the Renner household. She knew, now that the small loom must have been Cora's. The initialed handkerchief was yet another silent witness.

Lucy crept up to her room and again locked the door. She slipped the back of a chair under the knob as a further precaution. For the first time, she began to sense some threat to her own safety. Her thoughts flew to the flowers Mrs. Renner had tossed from the window. Why should her landlady take such a stand? Why had she told old Aaron that she was going to "take out the honeysuckle?” What was there about honeysuckle that made Mrs. Renner wish to remove it from her guest’s room, as if it had something to do with Kathy Renner’s plaintive, "Mom, I’m hungry!"

Lucy could not fit the pieces of the puzzle together properly. But the outstanding mention of honeysuckle determined her to pull several more sprays from the vine clambering up the wall outside her window. If Mrs. Renner did not want them in the room, then Lucy was determined to have them there. She removed the screen quietly and leaned out. It struck her with a shock. Every spray of flowering honeysuckle within reaching distance had been rudely broken off and dropped to the ground below. Somebody had foreseen her reaction. She replaced the screen and sat down on the edge of her bed, puzzled and disturbed. If Mrs. Renner was entertaining nefarious designs that mysteriously involved the absence of honeysuckle, then Lucy knew she would be unable to meet the situation suitably.

It might have been amusing in broad daylight. She could just walk away to the shed where her car was garaged. Even if "they” had done something to it, Lucy figured that she could walk or run until she reached the main road where there ought to be trucks and passenger cars; not the solitude of the secluded Renner farm, hidden behind thickly wooded slopes.

She told herself sharply that she was just being an imaginative goose, just being silly and over-suspicious. What could honeysuckle have to do with her personal security? She got ready for bed, resolutely turned out the kerosene lamp. Drowsiness overcame her and she sank into heavy sleep.

She did not hear Mrs. Renner’s sibilant whisper: "Sh-sh-sh! Kathy! You can come now, Kathy. She’s sound asleep. Mother took out the honeysuckle. You can get in now. Sh-sh-sh!”

She did mot hear old Aaron’s querulous protest: "You can’t do this, missus. Let me get the stake, missus. It’d be better that way. Missus”

To Lucy, soundly sleeping within her locked room, no sound penetrated. Her dreams were strangely vivid and when she finally wakened Monday morning she lay languidly recalling that final dream wherein a white-clad child had approached her bed timidly, had crept in beside her until her arms had embraced the small, shy intruder. The child had put small warm lips against her throat in what Lucy felt was a kiss, but a kiss such as she had never in her life experienced. It stung cruelly. But when she yielded to the child’s caress, a complete relaxation of mind and muscle fell upon her and it was as if all of herself were being drawn up to meet those childish lips that clung close to her neck. It was a disturbing dream and even the memory of it held something of mingled antipathy and allure.

UCY knew it was time to rise and she sat up, feeling tired, almost weak, and somehow disinclined to make the slightest physical effort. It was as if something had gone out of her, she thought exhaustedly.