Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/37

180 and mementos of a lost race. No other part of England held its savage charm. Jarvais had come here seeking new material, new color, and new ideas. He had been stagnating. Before, to him, mystery had meant the East—the Orient—but here at home in the quiet of old England was more mystery—more allure than he had ever known.

Far away across the moonlit bleakness of the moor were the ruins—that mass of toppled columns and rough-hewn slabs set in crude circles. The stones glistened mistily, and threw huge, sprawling shadows beneath them like pools of blood on a silver tray.

Broken only by the whispering of the trees, the stillness gripped Jarvais; held him tense, expectant, waiting. But for what? For there was only stillness and the soft rustle of the night wind among the trees.

As Jarvais was about to toss his finished cigaret [sic] over the balcony rail and return to his room, he paused and glanced sharply across the empty lawn. He had seen something—he did not know what. There was movement, where but a moment before had been naught but moonlit emptiness. He had heard nothing, but he was conscious of another presence. He looked out again across the moor. All was as before, but here beneath the balcony was something, someone. He had caught but the fleeting glimpse of a shadow moving, where before had been but nothingness.

It was a shadow—the dim silhouette of a woman. The time was long past midnight, and the inhabitants of the inn were all asleep. What was a woman doing here, alone, on the moor at this hour? The sight of something alive, here in this deserted place, and at this hour, made him shiver. It was so out of all keeping with his thoughts and the place. Icy fingers of dread clutched his heart. Then he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. It was nothing. Some tourist out to see the moor. But what was a woman doing here alone, at this hour? None the less, here she was, moving slowly across the silvery waste toward the ruins that were so white and still in the glow of the dying moon.

Jarvais rubbed his eyes, shook his head, and looked again. The shadow was still there, but becoming fainter, and more distant. He paused, and suddenly a thought came to him. Shadows were cast by bodies; they were mere reflections of a concrete shape. Perhaps a wind-blown tree had cast it. But the shadow, which seemed a woman, was bodiless. There was only the shadow, and no figure. shadow to cast such strange reflections. To find that the shadow was actually bodiless brought back all his first terror—the sense of dread that he had first experienced. This was not earthly. It was uncanny. Impossible. Yet his eyes told him that the impossible was fact.

Through his mind raced all the tales he had heard of this lonely, lovely country, of things that should be dead, but lived; things spoken of only in whispers, and never to be mentioned. The shadow was moving toward the ruins. What was happening here beneath his window—strange, weird, terrorizing? There was but one thing to do—follow.

Silently he dropped over the rail of the low balcony, caught up with and followed behind the shadow of the woman, if woman it were.

to Jarvais that this ghostly pursuit lasted for hours. Now he would lose it and would wait. Then in a few moments he would see the dim outlines again before him, always moving toward that heap of rocks—the ruins that had held his fancy with their starkness. Now and