Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/66

Rh The mystery of Fräulein Mueller's disfigurement was solved. This, too, explained what Miss Mytinger meant when she spoke of Satan's "awful claw which burned like a white-hot iron" touching her during the diabolical visitations.

"Bête—cochon!" de Grandin muttered, turning the man over with a none too gentle foot. "Let us see what we can find upon his so filthy carcass." A hasty examination of the fellow's pockets disclosed a shortbladed dirk knife, a neat, business-like blackjack and a bunch of small keys. One of these fitted the lock of Miss Mytinger's iron collar, and de Grandin forthwith transferred the fetter from her neck to that of her late tormentor.

"Let us go," he admonished, as he stowed the loot from his fallen foeman's pockets in his own. "Thus far the luck has been with us, but he who tries heaven's patience too far ofttimes comes to grief." Stepping carefully, we crept from the darkened room into the dimly lighted hall.

the care, Friend Trowbridge," de Grandin warned as we started cautiously down the corridor, "a loose board may betray us, for—ha?"

Not fifteen feet ahead of us a door swung suddenly open and the menacing figure of a tall, black-bearded man stepped toward us. He was clad in a flame-colored robe on which was printed in black the figure of a prancing devil. A sort of diadem from which curving horns rose above his forehead gave his lean, cadaverous countenance a look of supernatural evil, and the wicked, sneering smile on his bony features completed the unpleasant picture.

Miss Mytinger gave a high-pitched squeal of terror. "Dr. Martulus!" she cried. "Oh, we're lost; he'll never let us go!"

De Grandin faced the other defiantly, his teeth bared in a grimace which was more a snarl than a grin. "We take this lady from out your damned, execrable house, Monsieur le Diable," he announced truculently. "Have the goodness to stand aside, or"

"Nelzyá!" the other retorted, raising a small Mauser automatic from the folds of his red robe.

"Ha! 'It can not be done,' do you say?" the Frenchman inquired sarcastically, and let drive with his heavy revolver, firing from the hip.

Too late he discovered his error. A crash of tinkling, shivering glass sounded, and the vision of the man in red dissolved before our eyes like a scene on a motion-picture screen when the film is melted in an over-heated projector. A full-length mirror had been moved into the hall since we came through, and the man we had supposed before us was really at our back. De Grandin had been parleying with the fellow's reflection and—irony of ironies!—fired pointblank into the mirror, smashing it into a hundred fragments, but injuring his opponent not at all.

Like the echo of de Grandin's shot sounded the spiteful, whiplike report of the other's weapon. Jules de Grandin clapped his left hand to his right shoulder and dropped like an overturned sack of meal to the polished floor.

Two more figures joined the red-robed man. One of them burst into a roar of laughter. "Ach, dot vas a goot vun!" he chuckled. "He vas daking der lady from der house oudt, vas he? Now, berhabs, ve dake her back und gift her some more dime to dink ofer vedder she vill der baber sign or not. No?"

"No!—Nom d'un porc—NO!" de Grandin echoed, rolling over and rising on his elbow. The chuckling German swayed drunkenly in his tracks a moment, then crashed face