Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/42

Rh "And did you keep the window closed, as I requested?" "Yes, sir; closed and latched."

"Bien. Await us here, mon brave; we shall rejoin you presently."

He led the way to Arabella's bedroom, removed the wrappings from a bulky parcel, and displayed the object thus disclosed with the air of a magician about to do a trick. "You see him?" he demanded proudly. "Is he not a beauty?"

"Why—what the deuce?—it's nothing but a window-screen," I answered.

"Ah, but it is made of copper," he informed me, as though explaining something of inordinate importance.

"Well——"

"Well? Pardieu, I shall say it is well; it is very exceedingly well, my friend. Observe him, how he works."

From his kit bag he produced a reel of insulated wire, an electrical transformer and a set of tools. Working quickly, he passe-partouted the screen's wooden frame with electrician's tape, then plugged a wire into a near-by lamp socket, connected it with the transformer, and from the latter led a double strand of cotton-wrapped wire to the screen. This he clipped firmly to the copper meshes and led a third wire to the metal grille of the heat register. Last of all, he filled a bulb-syringe with water and sprayed the screen from it, repeating the dousings till the woven copper sparkled like a cobweb in the morning sun. "Now, Monsieur le Revenant, I damn think we are ready for you," he announced, surveying his handiwork with every sign of satisfaction.

We waited quietly for something like an hour; then de Grandin rose and bent above the bed where Arabella slept.

"Madame!"

The girl stirred faintly, murmuring some half-audible response, and:

"In half an hour you will rise," he told her in a low, insistent voice. "You will put on your robe and stand before the window, but on no account will you go near it or lay hands on it. Should anyone address you from outside, you will reply, but you will not remember what you say or what is said to you."

He motioned me to follow him, and we left the room, taking station in the hallway just outside.

OW long we waited I have no idea. Perhaps it was an hour, perhaps less; at any rate, the silent vigil seemed unending, and I raised my hand to stifle a tremendous yawn, when:

"Yes, Uncle Warburg, I can hear you," we heard Arabella saying softly in the room beyond the door.

We tiptoed to the entry: Arabella Tantavul stood before the window, looking fixedly at its darkened square, and beyond her, framed in the window-casing as a masterpiece of horror might be framed for exhibition, glared the face of Warburg Tantavul.

It was dead, there was no doubt about it. In the sunken cheeks, the pinched-in nose and the yellowish-gray skin there showed the evidence of death and early putrefaction, but dead though it was, it was also animated with a dreadful sort of life. The eyes were glaring horribly, as though illuminated with some inward phosphorescence, and they bulged forward in their sunken sockets as though a throttling hand were clutching at the dead thing's throat. The lips were red—red as rouge—but they were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with fresh blood.

"You hear me, do ye?" he demanded, and the ruddy, foam-flecked lips writhed across his yellow teeth. "Then listen, girl; you broke your bargain with me,