Page:Weird Tales volume 31 number 03.djvu/18

 more easily than memories, Doctor. Besides"

"Yes, Monsieur, besides?" de Grandin prompted as our guest stared silently into the study fire.

"Do you believe the spirits of the dead—die dead who are in Hell, or at least cut off from Heaven—can come back to plague the living?" he demanded.

brushed the ends of his small waxed mustache with that gesture which always reminded me of a tomcat combing his whiskers. "You have experienced such a visitation?"

"I have. So did the others."

"Mordieu! How was it?"

"You may remember reading that Ted Eldridge hanged himself? Three days before it happened, he met me on the street, and I could see that he was almost frantic. 'I saw Marescha last night!' he told me in a frightened whisper.

Marescha? You must be off your rocker, man! We put her in the Shrewsbury'

And she's come back again. Remember the perfume of the candles and the incense Herbules used in celebrating the Black Mass? I'd come home from New York last night, and was getting ready for a drink before I went to bed, when I began to smell it. At first I thought it was some fool trick that my senses played on me, but the scent kept getting stronger. It seemed as if I were back in that dreadful chapel with the tall black candles burning and the hellish incense smoldering, Herbules in his red vestments and Marescha lying naked on the altar—I could almost hear the chanting of inverted prayers and the little whimpering noises that she made. I gulped my drink down in two swallows and turned round. She was standing there, with water on her face and streaming from her hair, and her hands held out to me'

You're crazy as a goat!' I told him. 'Come have a drink.'

"He looked at me a moment, then turned away, walking quickly down the street and muttering to himself.

"I'd not have thought so much about it if I hadn't read about his suicide next day, and if Stanley Trivers hadn't called me on the telephone. "Hear about Ted Eldridge?' he asked the moment I had said hello. When I told him I'd just read about it he demanded: 'Did you see him—recently?'

Yes, ran into him in Broad Street yesterday,' I answered.

Seemed worried, didn't he? Did he tell you anything about Marescha?'

Say, what is this?' I asked. 'Did he say anything to you'

Yes, he did, and I thought he had a belfry full o' bats.'

There's not much doubt the poor old lad was cuckoo'

That's where you're mistaken, Balderson. According to the paper he'd been dead for something like four hours when they found him. That would have made it something like four o'clock when he died.'

So what?'

So this: I waked up at four o'clock this morning, and the room was positively stifling with the odor of the incense they used in the Black Chapel'

Yeah? I suppose you saw Marescha, too?'

I did! She was standing by my bed, with water streaming from her face and body, and tears were in her eyes.'

"I tried to talk him out of it, tell him that it was a trick of his imagination stimulated by Ted Eldridge's wild talk, but he insisted that he'd really seen her. Two days later he committed suicide.

"Don Atkins followed. I didn't talk

W.T.—2