Page:Weird Tales volume 02 number 03.djvu/52

Rh tured man's shoes had been burned away, he remembered.) The wall was scorching hot when Eric backed against it.

"Now for the Douglas Fairbanks stuff," he remarked with a grim smile.

The next moment he was hanging by his hands from the stairway. He crawled over it, and crouching under the trap-door, thrust his powerful shoulders suddenly against it. The abruptness of the movement saved him. The trap door flew open, sending the guard, who had been sitting on it, sprawling to the floor. It did not take Eric long to secure the automatic, with the barrel of which he quite coolly knocked the man insensible. He then stripped off the robe and hood, and put them on himself, bound and gagged the senseless man and rolled him under the bench. He closed the trap-door, and automatic in hand, cautiously opened the heavy outside door. Instantly a wave of sound rushed to his ears and he realized that with the door closed the little room had been soundproof.

Somewhere ahead of him there was a pandemonium of yelling voices, frenzied laughter, and gusts of wild music. He felt his way along until he stepped through a half-screened doorway on to a high alcove like a stage box, and looked down on an immense hall, lit by low-hung lights a pallid green and sickly blue.

The vast place at first suggested a church with the dim lights flickering on long stained-glass windows; niches where candles burned before shadowy images; a huge organ, and the silent black-robed throng clustered around a high altar at the far end of the hail.

Yet there was a discordant note somewhere—a sense of the abnormal. The lights flared higher and the lurking evil was revealed. The images in the shrines were crouching, goat-horned creatures with leering faces; the stained-glass windows depicted scenes and figures of incredible depravity and horror. And there was a low moaning in the center of the black-robed group.

A tall figure rose suddenly above it and stood beside the altar.

"Back to your places!" commanded this one. "Let the renegade recant before he dies."

There was a rebellious murmur from the crowd as it pressed closer around its victim. The man beside the altar broke into furious cursing. He snatched up a thick whip and unmercifully lashed the heads und shoulders just beneath him. With screams of pain, they scattered, sinking to their knees in a semi-circle half a yard from the altar.

The man with the whip looked down at a moaning something that sprawled at his feet. It lifted a ghastly drawn face and Eric saw that it was the tortured man.

"Mercy—Sebastian—" gasped the victim.

Sebastian seized the half-dead-creature by the throat, dragging him to his knees.

"It is hard to believe," he said mockingly, "that a few days ago this whimpering broken thing in my hand was Schuyler Van Tassell!"

Erie suppressed a gasp. A week ago at his club he had seen Schuyler Van Tassell, looking bored and dissipated as usual, but as usual coventional and sleek.

"Before you die," Sebastian went on, "you shall renew your vows of allegiance to our great Master, Ruler of the Dark Invisible Empire, Prince of Fiends, Our Sovereign Lord, Satan. Repeat the Creed."

Cringing and moaning, the thing that had been Schuyler Van Tassell began:

The blasphemous words died in his throat.

"Oh, God!" he sobbed. His head fell back and Sebastian dropped a dead body across the dark altar.

The kneeling people swayed in sudden relief from tension.

"The fate of all renegades," said Sebastian, who made an obeisance before the altar and stood looking upward into the shadows.

Following his gaze, Eric's heart almost stood still. For he found himself looking into an enormous dark face. Such diabolic malice glared from the glittering eyes and wide sardonic smile that it hardly needed the little pointed horns to proclaim it an effigy of the Devil himself. This same face in miniature Eric had seen on the copper coins. He noted the shadowy sweep of vast wings, the hovering trend of the gigantic figure looming menacingly above its worshipers.

Sebastian stooped over the altar and seven jets of green flame sprang up around it. Higher and higher they leaped, licking out toward the still figure lying there. A heavy smell of incense rose on the air. Swaying back and forth, Sebastian began to intone. His voice sing-songed through some kind of long ritual, evidently well-known, for he paused at certain intervals for responses from the worshipers.

The words were gabbled so quickly that Eric could not distinguish their meaning. But the monotonous deep voice, the regular chorus of responses, began to have a strangely soothing effect on his excited mind. He felt himself swaying slowly, as the worshipers were swaying.

The intoning died away and from somewhere there came a distant chanting. Little colored lights flashed out from the walls, the ceiling, the altar; twinkling and sparkling and confusing the mind with their restless brilliance. The rich deep chant swelled higher as the singers approached, and the big organ added its rolling harmony to the voices.

A lurid glare flared suddenly behind the Devil statue, outlining the monstrous form with hideous distinctness. From somewhere back of it two lines of scarlet-robed figures marched into the hall. Their faces were hidden in scarlet cowls and each one carried a tall candle which cast a deep red light.

The lines moved slowly around the altar, turning and twisting, winding and interwinding. The little colored lights were twinkling; the red lights and red robes were twining and turning: the organ and voices were rising and falling: the kneeling throng were bending and swaying, in the warm, heavy, incense-laden air.

Eric was bending and swaying, too, struggling feebly against the lethargic spell.

Like the crack of a gun, the quick beat of a drum crashed through the music. The lights went out: the music stopped. There was not a sound in the hot, perfumed blackness.

Then, like the tick, tick, tick of an eight-day clock the drumbeats came. In Eric's brain the short, dull thuds tapped raw nerves. He held his ears: the sound beat through. He tried to count:

"One-two-three—one-two-three—one-two-three."

What came next he did not know. He could not think. It was not a drum. It was a bell—a thousand bells—all the dismal bells of all the world. Wild alarm-bells, dreary prison bells, sinister temple gongs, funeral death-bells—clanging and tolling till the vast hall reverberated with discordant sound.

Silence again, an almost unbearable hush. For the first time in his life, Eric felt a wave of fear sweep over him, emanating from the kneeling people. What did they fear? A wan light began to glimmer down there, flickering over the thrownback heads and gleaming eyes. Eric glanced sharply up and the wave of fear swept over him again. The