Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/27

 dead leaves were quiet on the trees, a menacing twilight, brassy-yellow and unreal, filled the streets. But Susette was indifferent to the threat of rain and tempest, her brain and heart were too filled with anticipation to give heed to such-like unimportant things. Returning from the notion shop where she had made a few purchases—soap, a flacon of perfume, a spool of silk and a small box of rice-powder—she walked with a sort of liking, questing eagerness. The Deborah had come up the Seine that afternoon; tonight she and Marjotte and Mordecai would board her; tomorrow morning with the turning of the tide they'd set sail for America and love and freedom. No more to be a fugitive, hunted like a brute beast; no more to live in constant dread with the weight of never-ceasing fear upon her nerves and terror gnawing at her heart! One could not but be very happy in such circumstances. Le bon Dieu was very good indeed, life was very good, Mardochée, especially, was good. Unbidden and spontaneously a snatch from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro welled up to her lips:

The song died in a little gasp, and up her back a tiny chill of apprehension rippled. There was no breeze—the leaves upon the street-side trees hung motionless as if they had been painted on the scenery of a theatre—but somewhere in the street behind her, or in the alley which let into it, there was a dry, harsh, crackling rustle. Not a footstep, but a scuffing, as of stealthy feet among the fallen leaves that strewed the gutters.

She quickened her pace almost to a run; the rustle ceased, and she relaxed her haste. She was nervous, like a silly child that starts at nothing. Too long living in the shadow of the chopper, too much longing for tomorrow—"Thou little foolish one!" she chid herself. "It was a sparrow scratching in the leaves in hope of food, perhaps a dog or cat." But reason abdicates when terror comes. However sensible her explanation was, it did not satisfy her. Once more she quickened pace; her little sandaled feet were fairly twinkling as she turned into the Street of the Windows. Yonder was her home, there lay sanctuary

The live coals of the smoldering sunset died beneath the ashes of the twilight, and suddenly the street was filled with shadows. And something more! Ahead of her, obscure in the unlighted highway, a vague, half-visible, half guessed-at umbrose something flitted from one tree trunk to another, and this time she heard unmistakably the scuffing of a boot-heel on the bricks.

was that behind her? At first it was so faint she could not tell if she heard or imagined it; now it approached, and she knew it was no figment of disordered fancy. Step—shuffle—step, she heard it limping nearer with a dreadful, dragging hobble, a sort of terrifying dot-and-carry-one, as though some obscene wounded thing were slithering toward her. Terror, stark, unreasoning, chilling terror, took her by the throat, and she broke into a run, the awkward, knock-kneed run of a woman, unmindful of what lay before her if only she could leave this shambling, dragging, stealthy pursuer behind.

"Your pardon, Citiziness, we would have a word with you!" from the darkness of the angle of a wall a form