Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/71

 Deborah's song—fifth chapter of Judges."

Varduk was plainly intrigued. "A war-like text, I must say. What knight of the church chose it for his battle cry?"

"Many have chosen it," responded the judge. "Shall we go on?"

.They walked down the stairs side by side, and so out of my sight and hearing.

Varduk returned he called us at once to rehearsal. He was as alert as he had been the night before, but much harder to please. Indeed, he criticized speeches and bits of stage business that had won his high praise at the earlier rehearsal, and several times he called for repetitions and new interpretations. He also announced that at the third rehearsal, due the next day, he would take away our scripts.

"You are all accomplished actors," he amplified. "You need nothing to refresh good memories."

"I'd like to keep my book," begged Martha Vining, but Varduk smiled and shook his head.

"You'll be better without," he said definitely.

When we approached the climactic scene, with Swithin's attempt to kill Ruthven and Mary's attempted sacrifice, Varduk did not insist on stage business; in fact, he asked us flatly to speak our lines without so much as moving from our places. If this was to calm us after the frightening events of the night before, it did not succeed. Everyone there remembered the accidental sword-thrust, and Varduk's seeming invulnerability; it was as though their thoughts were doleful spoken words.

Rehearsal over—again without the final line by Ruthven—Varduk bade us a courteous good-night and, as before, walked out first with Sigrid and Martha Vining. I followed with Jake, but at the threshold I touched his arm.

"Come with me," I muttered, and turned toward the front of the lodge.

Varduk and the two women had gone out of sight around the rear of the building. Nobody challenged us as we walked silently in the direction of the road, but I had a sensation as of horrors all around me, inadequately bound back with strands that might snap at any moment.

"What's it about, Gib?" asked Jake once, but at that moment I saw what I had somehow expected and feared to see.

A silent figure lay at the foot of the upward-sloping driveway to the road. We both ran forward, coming up on either side of that figure.

The moon showed through broken clouds. By its light we recognized Judge Pursuivant, limp and apparently lifeless. Beside him lay the empty shank of his walking-stick. His right fist still clenched around the handle, and the slender blade set therein was driven deeply into the loam.

I did not know what to do, but Jake did. He knelt, scooped the judge's head up and set it against his knee, then slapped the flaccid cheeks with his open palm. Pursuivant's eyelids and mustache fluttered.

Jake snorted approvingly and lifted his own crossed eyes to mine. "I guess he's all right, Gib. Just passed out is all. Maybe better you go to Varduk and ask for some brand"

He broke off suddenly. He was staring at something behind me.

I turned, my heart quivering inside my chest.

Shapes—monstrous, pallid, unclean shapes—were closing in upon us.

In the thrilling chapters that will bring this strange novel to its end in next month's WEIRD TALES, the veil is swept aside, and the weird monstrosity known as Varduk stands revealed in all his hideousness. We suggest that you reserve your copy at your magazine dealer's now.