Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/102

Rh that I'm going to look behind me. You are too close for one thing, and there isn't anything to see there, anyway."

"But there is something—in the sky!"

"In the sky! Ferdy, Ferdy! This puerile nonsense will never save you. No! Don't move another inch! Well, then, take that and that!"

Chantrell went staggering and collapsed upon his face, two bullets in his chest. With a heavy groan, he rolled over onto his back, his look upon the twisted, grinning face of Griswold.

"Not dead yet?" Griswold said. "Then take another. But no. I'll give you time, all the time you'll want, perhaps, to think over your sins and of what you will look like when the fishes are making of your handsome face a death's-head. Ah, you wince at that thought, Handsome Ferdy! You had your hour of triumph, and now I have mine. Glare away! If looks were daggers, my heart would be cut throbbing from my chest. But no look or word of yours can hurt me now. Probably, however, this will give you something else to think about."

He raised the revolver, took deliberate aim and sent a shattering bullet into Chantrell's right knee-cap. Again he fired, the bullet this time burying itself in the joint, right between the bones. Chantrell screamed. Cuthbert Griswold looked down upon his victim and laughed in triumph and gloating.

"I told you!" he cried. "Now you are paying for those stolen kisses. You scream. What do you think of the price, eh? I told you that, before I was done with you, you would rue the day that you set eyes on Amanda."

"For God's sake," cried Chantrell, "kill me—kill me! If you are a man and not a fiend, send a bullet into my heart and end it!"

"Not yet, Handsome Ferdy. But here is one for your other knee-joint."

As the last word left his lips, Griswold fired. Chantrell did not scream this time, but his fingers dug at the rock until the flesh broke.

"Ha, ha! Were her kisses worth the price that you are paying, Handsome Ferdy? And I wonder if you know how sweet is this, the hour of my triumph. And it is all the sweeter because I shall never be called to account for it. Flang will keep its secret well, Ferdy."

Again he raised the weapon and, firing twice, smashed the left knee of his victim. Then he sent shattering bullets into Chantrell's elbows and wrists.

"Fainted at last," Griswold laughed. "A bullet into the heart and end it all? Well, here it is, Ferdy—now when you can not feel the mercy of it."

so at last it was ended. There on the black rock lay the lifeless body of Ferdinand Chantrell—who had known the glory of a noble woman's love and the horror of a husband's vengeance. There it lay, a thing horrible to look upon but not so horrible, in blood and death, as the thing that stood and looked down upon it.

The wolf-dog crept forward and sniffed blood and corpse, then slunk back as though a sudden fear had entered the savage heart of it.

"Even Pluto!" Griswold said aloud. "Yes, even a wolf-dog slinks from the blood that warmed the false heart of him."

How long he stood there by the corpse, Griswold himself never knew—though another did. At last, however, he thrust the revolver into his pocket, seized the body, dragged it to the edge and sent it over into the sea.

For some moments—he did not know how long it was, but one watch-