Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/59

Rh from the trunk, like the distillation of all the screams of horror uttered by human lips since time began.

For one bad instant Opper thought he was going to faint, there beside the car. He clutched wildly at the fender, leaned heavily against it.

The whimper sounded again, distinct over the swish of gas through the hose—just as Martia had whimpered as she stood in the doorway waiting for death.

"Twelve gallons," called the boy. "Hey—what's the matter?"

He jumped to Opper's side.

"Heart" gasped Opper. "It acts up like this sometimes. Yes, twelve gallons is all right."

He clung, panting, to the fender.

The whimper sounded again.

"Water" said Opper loudly. It was almost a scream. "Get me a glass of water right away. Then I'll be all right. Hurry!"

The whimper fought faintly against his loud, shrill words. But he drowned the faint sound out—or thought he did.

"You're sure" began the boy doubtfully.

"Yes, yes!" Opper almost shouted, drowning out the ghastly whimper. "Hurry! Water!"

ran toward the little store. Opper leaped to the tank. He pulled out the gasoline hose, spilling the fluid remaining in it over the ground. He screwed on the cap with trembling fingers. And as he moved, the whimper kept sounding faintly in his ears.

That half-paralyzed small cry for mercy! Just the kind of cry that had come from Martia's white lips as she swayed in the doorway and stared into his eyes.

He dragged his billfold from his pocket and got behind the steering-wheel. Not till then did he realize just what had happened.

The animal-like little whimper hadn't come from the lips of the dead. It was as truly animal as it sounded.

Across his reeling brain shot the picture of the sleek white cat streaking out the side door just before he had come out himself and shut and locked the trunk. The cat, still seeking to be near its mistress

He had shut the cat in the trunk with the body!

He kicked the starter. The motor caught. He raced it till the hood shook, in an effort to drown out the mewling whimper of the thing behind.

The boy came out of the store with a glass of water in his hand. He gaped at Opper, then began to run toward the car.

"In a hurry!" Opper yelled above the roar of the motor, and the whimper. "Here's for the gas. Keep the change."

"But if you're sick" protested the boy.

"That's it. Got to get to town and see a doctor."

Opper snapped the clutch out and the car leaped toward the road.

"It's that way to the nearest town," he heard the lad call as he turned the sedan's wheels down the road away from the village he'd just passed through.

Then he was alone on the road again, shaking like a leaf, teeth chattering, moans coming from behind his compressed lips. He was almost done in when he stopped the car at the side of the road around the first bend from the gas station. He slumped forward over the wheel with his forehead resting on his clenched fists.

The first shock of hearing that whimpering and thinking it came from