LITMIR.BIZ

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but did not cry out. Then we were holding each other’s hands again and continuing toward the house.

      The sight of the windows shattered my scheme. They were all barred. Doubtless the front door was locked. There had to be another way. I had counted the blue acid marks on her and there seemed to be eight or ten. And the hunt was still young.

      “Perhaps the wall,” I said desperately. “I might be able to lift you to the top. The barbed-wire will tear you, but it will be no worse than the pellets and what might follow. Somehow you might manage to get over the second wall.”

      We ran across to the wall. For a while we were in the open and she was seen by Rooney, so we had to stop while she submitted to being shot again. I went through a hell of helplessness watching. Then we were at the wall.

      I had hoped that there might be a tree close enough, but Tala Mag had taken care of that.

      Sticking my pistol in my belt, I pressed against the wall while Helen climbed up to my shoulders. She could just about reach the top of the wall with her fingers. I grasped her ankles and, exerting every ounce of strength, lifted her slowly. She got her elbows on the wall, was pulling herself up—

      A flashlight beam covered us. With a groan of despair I knew that I had failed. The whip curled around my back. I stumbled and Helen lost her hold and we both dropped to the ground. Panting under the pressure of Helen’s soft body, I lay waiting for the whipping.

      But what happened then was worse than any whipping would have been. The servant Wick dropped his whip and flashlight and plucked Helen from the ground. Holding her with one hand, he pulled from a pocket a pistol containing a number of the acid pellets, and five times he shot at various parts of Helen’s body.

      Her screams of agony formed a maddening din in my brain. This was our punishment for attempting to escape. Not only did the five pellets at once cause her unendurable anguish, but, counting the two other marks she might have avoided if she had not met me, she was seven marks behind the others. God, what a fool I had been! She had had one chance in five of losing.

      Now her handicap was terrific.

      She writhed there on the ground, clawing at her flesh, and her screams attracted other hunters.

      “Run!” I shouted.

      With an effort she managed to stumble to her feet and choke off her voice. She cast a frantic glance over her shoulder and plunged in among a nearby copse. Frank Bord and Bob Spaulding raced after her.

      Wick picked up his whip and flashlight and strode off. It struck me that I was wasting valuable time, that the only way to make up for those marks on Helen was to redouble my own efforts. And so I became a hunter again.

      Several times more I came across Helen, and each time I kept my distance. With despairing heart I saw that her skin was literally pitted with those cruel, damning marks.

      And so the nightmare continued. Running to the terrace to reload, shooting the pellet at a naked body, returning to the terrace. And always Tala Mag was behind that table, holding out the pellets one by one, that unholy smug smile fastened to her lips. Sometimes none of her servants was near, and it did not occur to me or to any of the others to strangle her then and there. We were too thoroughly cowed; too thoroughly savages intent only upon the hellish hunt.

      Toward the end the five of us were so exhausted that we could scarcely stumble along, and our wives were weaker still, so that they made hardly any effort at flight any more.

      Finally, after the passing of an eternity, the two hours were up. When we came to reload, two of the servants were waiting for us. We were taken into the chamber where Portia Teele had been tortured, and we were chained once again. The corpse had been removed.

      Next the women were rounded up. They entered the room on legs which could scarcely bear them up, and they flopped on the bare floor and lay there, their bodies twitching with pain.

      Then one by one they were dragged to the center of the floor and the blue marks on their skin were counted by Tala Mag while Emil kept a record. We men dared hardly breathe. Looking at Helen, my heart stopped within me. She seemed to have marks more than any of the others.

      She was the third to be counted, after Clara Cuyler and Jane Rooney. Yes, she had many more than the others. And then Lillian Bord, and Helen was still the first.

      Clops was at the brazier, blowing on the coals to heat the irons.

      CHAPTER VI

      PASSION IN HELL

      Inez Spaulding saved Helen’s life. Because she had two more of the tiny blue acid dots on her skin than Helen, it was she who was suspended by her wrists from the ceiling.

      I leaned back against the wall, feeling like a wrung out rag. Bob Spaulding went stark raving mad, and his shrieks as he tore against his chains mingled with those of his wife. Helen sat on the floor with head buried in her arms, shoulders quaking.

      The brazier was wheeled from its corner by Clops. Inez watched him with eyes which were no longer those of a human being. Tala Mag placed a hand on Inez’ quivering flesh and whispered words to her which I could not hear, but I knew by the sadistic light in her face that she was taunting the poor girl, telling her in detail which she was soon to endure.

      Then Tala Mag stepped back and Clops set to work with the glowing irons.

      It was a repetition of what happened to Portia Teele. For a long time Inez’ statuesque body jerked in midair like a marionette and her screams rasped against our eardrums. Then little by little the screams turned to moans and her body grew still save for involuntary spasms which shook it. The acrid smell of burning flesh clogged our nostrils.

      It was over at last, and what hung from the chains was a grotesque caricature of Inez Spaulding.

      Frank Bord’s voice came weakly: “And now, for God’s sake, let us go, You promised.”

      Tala Nag faced him and laughed. “Soon,” she said. “You will have to be patient.”

      It was odd that it had occurred to none of us until that moment that Tala Mag could not keep her word to us—even if she had wanted to. The drugs, perhaps, and the mental tension under which we had been, had obscured the fact that our release would send the police of the nation after her and her servants. She did not have to take that risk.

      So that hideous degrading hunt had been in vain!

      Despair clouded our faces. We were helpless to do anything but wait for whatever fate Tala Mag announced.

      Tala Mag gestured to Emil. He released me from the chains. Was I the next to be tortured? It did not matter, greatly. I was beyond caring.

      Holding my arm, Emil dragged me up a flight of stairs and into a bedroom. In a dresser mirror I saw myself for the first time since I had entered the estate. My eyes were wild, my face grimy, and my shirt, ripped by whips and bushes, hung in tatters from my shoulders.

      A minute later Tala Mag entered. She stood regarding me critically, with a strange excitement in her face and her practically bared breasts panting.

      She said: “You are still very handsome, Lester Marlin. You shall be my lover, and after that you and your wife may leave. Emil will be outside the door, so do not attempt violence. And I may add that if you touch me, that if you attempt to harm me in any way while we are alone, your wife will suffer ten times the agony of those two other women.… Emil, you may go.”

      E were alone then, that creature of hell and myself. I looked at her provocative, voluptuous body in that blue gown which did not hide it from my gaze. Many a man would have given his soul to possess her, but my hatred of her made her repulsive in my eyes.

      I went to her, saying: “You promise we shall be released—after?”

      “I promise,” she said, moving into my embrace.

      I had to restrain myself to laugh the lie back into her face. I brought my mouth down to her red lips, and she was vibrant against me. For a moment she stepped away from me; the blue

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