Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/105

 leave his food at the door and when he does think to eat it, he sets the dishes outside the door again. He won't even let me talk to him. He won't see anyone, except Professor Shepard."

"Shepard!" exclaimed Hanley. "I didn't think he would have anything to do with Shepard."

A little shiver seemd to ripple through Susan Blythe. "I don't like Professor Shepard. His eyes—"

Hanley's face hardened, but he withheld his opinion of Professor Martin Shepard.

It would only have worried Susan Blythe more, for Hanley had been quite sure the last time he had seen Professor Shepard that the man was mad. That had been three years ago.

He said: "I'm surprised your father's taken up with Professor Shepard." Yet the moment the words were out, he realized that he wasn't surprised at all. Two weeks ago, he had quarreled with Professor Blythe. "All right," Blythe had snapped at him, "if you won't help me, I'll get someone who will."

A frown creased Hanley's forehead and Susan Blythe saw it. "It's true, then, what I've suspected. He's engaged in an experiment. Something—evil—?"

The girl's guess caused Hanley to blink in surprise. His difference with Professor Blythe had been because of something that might be construed by an outsider as—evil!

He took a step away from the arbor. "Perhaps I'd better talk to your father—"

"I want you to, but I want you to promise that you'll tell me what he's doing when you come out. Will you do that?"

Hanley bit his lower lip, uneasily, "I may be forced to give my word to him, in which case—"

"Don't promise him!" exclaimed Susan Blythe. "If it's unreasonable, don't promise anything. Please—!" Her eyes were bright with tears that threatened to cascade down her face.

"I'll try—" Hanley mumbled and then backed hurriedly away from her. He almost ran to the big English house.

LD Martha, grown gray in the service of the Blythes let him into the house. "Professor Blythe telephoned me to come and see him, Martha," Hanley told the housekeeper.

"Thank the lord!" breathed Martha. "Maybe you can make him stop that awful work he's doing."

"Awful, Martha?"

The housekeeper shuddered. "The smells that come from the lab'ratory. You'd think he was embalming some—"

Hanley left her in the hall. He hurried through the house to the door of the laboratory at the rear. When he reached it, he raised his fist and knocked loudly. He had to repeat the knock before an irascible voice inside, snapped: "What the devil do you want? I told you not to disturb me."

"It's Eric Hanley, Professor!"

Hanley heard an exclamation inside the laboratory, then after a moment the door was pulled inward.

The overpowering smell that struck Hanley caused him to reel back. Professor Blythe's lean hand reached through the aperture and catching Hanley's wrist pulled him into the room.

"Come in, come in," he snarled. "We haven't got all day."

"Ah," said another voice, "the brilliant young Egyptologist, Mr. Hanley!"

Hanley glowered at Professor Shepard, under whom he had studied twelve years before. Even then, Shepard had been eccentric. It was, in fact, but a year after Hanley's graduation from the university that Shepard himself had resigned—at the insistence of the university board, it was rumored at the time.