Page:Weird Tales volume 42 number 04.djvu/41

 ?" echoed the other woman, with a ghostly repetition of the words.

By this time it was so dark that the five persons made but shadows indistinctly seen against the dungeon-like gloom. There was no arguing now with my fear; it was taking command of me; the next instant, had the man not surmised my thoughts by some clairvoyant perception, I would have left the dolorous strangers to their fate and dashed pellmell down the tower stairs.

"Hold, monsieur," his voice detained me. "It is growing late—we need a light."

And then, with startled eyes, I witnessed one of the eeriest, one of the most inexplicable incidents of all. Suddenly, though I had seen no lantern, there was a light in the room! It was a sort of gray-white phosphorescence, midway between the hue of a light fog and that of pewter; and it seemed to come from nowhere in particular, but filled the room with a fluctuating radiance, at times bright enough to reveal every object, at times permitting everything to sink back almost into invisibility. By this illumination all things—even the man's beefy face—took on a ghastly pallor; my own hand, outstretched in a gesture of spontaneous horror, startled me with its pale, spectral quality.

"Do not be afraid, monsieur," one of the women spoke reassuringly. "They will not find you. The guards were sleeping; else you could not have come up. You were heaven-sent to help us in our need."

My knees quivering beneath me, I did not feel heaven-sent to help anyone. In that uncanny wavering light, which struck my disordered imagination as almost sepulchral, I was more frightened than in the darkness. I was just a little relieved, however, to see how the small boy, curled up near the wall with some straw for a pillow, was sleeping an apparently normal childhood sleep.

Nevertheless, I had found the doorknob, and was drawing it toward me.. A blast of chilly air, contrasting weirdly with the heat of the summer evening, swept up the tower stairs.

A second more, and I would have been gone. But the elder woman, crossing the loom like a flash of light, had placed herself next to me; between me and the door. I could see her big sad eyes, not a foot from mine, glowing as if from immense hollow depths; I could see her long, pale proud face alternately brightening and darkening by the flickers of the changeable unearthly light. And once more she exercised that strange, that magical compulsion upon me. My limbs were frozen. I could merely stare—and wonder.

"It is not for our own sakes, monsieur," she resumed, in a voice that shook and wavered even more than did the light. "It is not for our own sakes that I beg your aid, but for our poor, innocent children. For their sakes, in the name of heaven's mercy, go out and plead with our oppressors, monsieur. Rush forth—rush forth and summon help, before it is too late!"

"Before it is too late!" came a low sobbing echo.

"But you—who are you?" I demanded, growing more mystified from minute to minute.

"We? Who are we? Is there anyone in all Paris that does not know?"

"Is there anyone in all Paris that does not know?" there sounded a sobbing refrain. But they seemed not to hear, or at least not to believe my denials.

"Look at me! Do you not recognize me?" the man demanded, thrusting his face within inches of mine. "Who in all the land could help recognizing me?"

Observing the round, commonplace features, the paunchy cheeks, the sensual lips and dull eyes, I failed to recognize anyone I had ever known.

"Ah, monsieur, you must be a stranger in the land."

"I—I—yes, I am a stranger—from California," I managed to grasp at a straw.

"From where do you say, monsieur?" he asked, as if he had never heard of my native state. And then dismally he went on, half to himself, "Am I then so changed by my hardships that I cannot be recognized? Ah, no doubt I had a different look in the old times, when I went forth daily in the hunt. Yes, that was a sport worthy of a king—chasing the antlered stag. A sport worthy of a king!"