Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/64

90 "Don't you realize that a ghost might want release? And others beside the Hessians found a tragic death here. Two women, didn't you say—I heard a voice ask for the final repetition of my spell. Again, it said."

"We-ell—" began Scrope uncertainly.

"The spirits of those two women are here, too," said Pursuivant confidently. "The evil of the place is too strong to let them escape, even though they're dead."

"Judge!" gasped Scrope, very pale. He swallowed twice, and continued:

"You realize something? If something happens to us—"

"Exactly," agreed Pursuivant, very steadily. "We'd be caught, too. For all eternity. I realize it perfectly. That is why we must push this thing through to the end—and win."

He rose once again and went to the door. Foot on the sill, he leaned ever so narrowly in. Then he drew quickly back, like a spectator from the cage of an angry beast.

"Still here," he reported. "Ready for us. It, too, knows that the showdown's at hand."

Scrope studied the doorway, eyes and lips hard. "I've got a theory. It stays in that part of the house, the middle part. Might it live in the cellar?"

"Why?" asked Judge Pursuivant.

"Because the cellar—the old basement—lies only under the bathroom and the hall and that guestroom, with only a bit lapping under parts of the kitchen and—"

"By thunder, you have it!" interrupted Pursuivant excitedly.

While Scrope stared, the judge fished his pen from his vest pocket. He began to sketch, on the table-top.

"See here," he lectured as he drew. "Your house is sprawling—great big rooms, making a wide base, like this." He outlined a square. "And the cellar is rather centrally located, so." He marked in a smaller rectangle, which took a middle slice of the square.

"Yes. That's about like it," nodded Scrope. "What are you getting at?"

"Don't you see, man?" cried Pursuivant, almost roughly. "That basement shows the limits of the old house—narrow and high, just as this new one is broad and low. The spirit haunted the old place. Your house takes in that original territory, and some new ground as well."

He threw down the pen.

"You're only half haunted, Scrope."

Understanding dawned into the little man's face. He sprang to his feet. He began a glad jabber:

"That changes everything. We're safe. If we don't go in there—"

"Oh, but we're going in there."

Scrope looked wide-eyed, scared. Pursuivant elaborated:

"The last recital of the spell will take place right in that thing's den—right on his own dunghill, so to speak. We'll destroy him forever, where he can't seek refuge from us."

an hour was passed. The two rose from their chairs in the kitchen.

"It's time," said Scrope, looking at his wrist watch. "Judge, must I come in there with you?"

"You must," Pursuivant assured him. "into that front bedroom. The creature must face his final exorcism."

He walked to to the hall, and in. Scrope kept close behind, on feet that sounded amazingly heavy for so small a body. They stood together in the hall's dimness.

It was no longer the hall, new and narrow and fresh-painted in light color. It was a corner of something else.

Despite the gloom, Pursuivant could see plainly that the walls had somehow fallen away. He stood as in a wide and ruinous apartment, with shattered windows extending almost to the high ceiling. The