Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 01.djvu/89

Rh we occupied different rooms at night. I was no longer afraid but I saw no use in taking chances.

I even went so far as to consult an eminent brain specialist who was an old family friend. I had had my dark moments of doubt as to Harvey's sanity, but after observing him, Dr. Harlow said he was perfectly sane. "It's the long arm of coincidence," he reassured me. "Harvey dreamt of a woman, probably a fixation from some childish experience. When he saw the picture he immediately invested it with the personality of this dream woman, and after hearing the legend, his sensitive mind transferred his dreams from the woman to the man. Let him go ahead with his experiment—nothing will come of it. But you will have peace afterward plus a summer home and a fortune in jewels."

This contented me. It was my own reasoning and there was no one to point out how terribly wrong we both were.

VERYTHING was prepared and ready the week before Christmas, so Harvey and I left for Southampton in his new Rolls Royce. He had of course gotten the best of everything for the God's use when they appeared. We promised the family, who had grown much attached to Harvey by now, we would be back in plenty of time for Christmas and they waved us off, little knowing what lay at the end of our road.

Harvey drove at a tremendous rate of speed. "There is much to do when we arrive," he explained, and added: "He was particular about the time."

I couldn't help the thought that if it hadn't been for Doctor Harlow I should have considered myself mad to go with Harvey—a Harvey who had always been strange, who had tried to kill me once and might again with some unholy rite in the God's service. But I had long ago made up my mind I would rather die than continue as we were and I firmly believed nothing would happen. Besides if it did, if the Shining Beings materialized, I had faith in the Lost God.

We tore through the sleepy town of Southampton until we left the houses with lights in them behind us and reached the ocean road where the untenanted homes of the summer people loomed darkly. I had never been there except when the summer colony was in residence. The end of December found this part of Southampton a deserted village. The huge empty houses looked strangely sinister and forbidding on the cold twilight. As we rode on and on they became fewer and farther apart until at last there were none at all, only the dunes stretching down to the ocean on one side, and on the other the long green marches running toward Shinnecock Bay.

There was no sign of life anywhere except an occasional wheeling gull against the gray sky. I had never thought that part of Long Island could be sinister but it was.

All at once we turned in between two heavy wooden gates set in a high stone wall. "This is the place I built according to the Gods' instructions." Harvey broke the long silence and the sound of his voice was a relief.

At the same moment I saw the house, a strange modernistic looking affair which had an affinity with the houses of ancient Egypt in the huge pylons either side of the bronze doors. Harvey left the car in a garage near the gate and we walked up the long drive to the house. Then Harvey took me inside a corridor and let me look into the central room which really was the house. It was huge, two stories high, with a glass ceiling through which one could see the sky. The wall facing the ocean was glass too, crystal clear. In the dim light I could still distinguish the waves leaping upon the shore below.

The other walls were hung with damask of a soft indefinite shade of ice green.