LITMIR.BIZ

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made a light, crossed the cabin’s single room and opened the rough, hard-hewn door.

      A spindrift of rain flurried at him, and with it came the man who had called out so despairingly. He was Jeb Starko from up in Haunted Hollow, a mile beyond the ridge—an area bedeviled, according to local superstition, by ghosts and similar evil creatures of the night. Soaked to the skin, his unshaven face pasty with fear, Starko stumbled over the threshold. “You got to stop ’em, doc!” he mouthed. “They’re a-comin’ to git my Eula!”

      “Coming to get your wife? But she’s—” Tim Croft choked back the gloomy news he had for the mountaineer. “Who’s coming, and why?” he demanded.

      “The Ludwells from down in the flats, damn ’em! They’re a-sayin’ as how Eula is a witch-vampire like the hants that roam the ridge, an’ they’re aimin’ to kill her. They’ll do for you an’ your nurses, too, if you ain’t careful!”

      Croft’s nostrils pinched in as he drew a deep breath. The Ludwells were members of a clan which, from the very outset, had fiercely resented his coming to the region as only the deeply superstitious can resent progress. More than once they had muttered dark threats against him because of his efforts to educate the natives away from their old beliefs in herbs and charms and devil-magic philtres. If it were really true that they were now on their way to the hospital, then trouble was definitely brewing.

      There was an old revolver in the top drawer of Tim Croft’s desk. He got it and thrust it into the pocket of his bathrobe. Then he pivoted as he heard scurrying footfalls behind him. His day nurse, Brenda Lemoyne, came pelting into the room, clad in a slicker over her nightgown. Daintily blonde and alluringly pretty, she panted: “Tim, darling, what’s wrong? I heard a commotion—”

      His arm went possessively about her slender waist. Some day Brenda would be his wife, when he had achieved a promotion to some more important post; and because his love for her was so great, he frowned uneasily at her presence in his quarters now. “You should have stayed in your cabin with Edith Paxon,” he said gravely, referring to the nurse who shared duty with Brenda.

      “But—but Edith isn’t there. I looked for her before I came over here, but I couldn’t find her. Tim—tell me what the trouble is!”

      “The Ludwells are on their way here.”

      “The Ludwells? Oh, Tim, I—I’m frightened!”

      “I’ll handle them,” he said evenly.

      She shivered as she clung to him. “Maybe you won’t be able to. You know how they hate us, Tim. And that Lige Ludwell is…dangerous. Only today, down in the village, somebody told me Lige turned his own daughter out into the storm after whipping her with a leather strap—because she’d fallen in love with a boy Lige disliked. A man capable of doing a thing like that is capable of doing…uglier things.”

      Croft summoned a smile. “Maybe they won’t come here, after all.”

      Even as he spoke the words, the trembling Jeb Starko pointed through the open doorway toward the road. “Don’t fool yourself, doc. Here they be now!”

      Tim Croft peered into the storm and saw a group of grim-visaged men slogging forward through the ankle-deep mud. Three carried lanterns, while the remaining pair bore a limp burden that sagged gruesomely between them. It was the inert form of a young girl, stripped stark naked and horribly pallid in the lantern glow.

      Some inner sixth sense told Croft that the unclad girl was dead, and apprehension seized him when he recognized her as Lige Ludwell’s daughter and saw the marks of a whiplash on her nude flesh. Lige was the acknowledged leader of the Ludwell clan, the bearded and sullen herb-dispenser responsible for most of the bad feeling against the hospital. But what had caused his girl’s death, and why should he bring her body here?

      The five surly mountaineers halted outside the door, and glowering Lige Ludwell stepped forward a truculent pace. “We-uns got business with you, doc,” he announced savagely.

      “What kind of business?”

      “We-uns want the witch-vampire.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “Yes, you do. Hit’s Eula Starko we-uns air after. She vampired my datter, here. She kilt her an’ drank up her blood.” He gestured toward the pallid corpse held by his clansmen.

      Croft’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no such thing as a witch-vampire. That’s nonsense.”

      “No hit ain’t, Doc Croft. You’re a-harborin’ Eula Starko here in your horspital an’ you know she’s a blood-drinkin’ vampire. She hexed my datter up to the holler tonight an’ kilt her. Now we-uns air aimin’ to take her away from you an’ drive a hick’ry stake through her heart, by God!”

      Jeb Starko clutched at Croft’s arm. “Don’t let ’em git my Eula!” he choked. “She hain’t no witch-vampire. She—she’s jest sick.”

      “No, Jeb. I won’t let them take her. But she isn’t sick. It’s worse than that.” Tim Croft turned to the Ludwells. “I can prove you’re wrong when you accuse Eula Starko of killing your girl tonight. You see, Eula died at four o’clock this afternoon.”

      A wild cry surged from Jeb Starko’s thin throat. “My Eula—dead? God, why didn’t you tell me?”

      “Hold it, Jeb. We did everything we possibly could for her. I told you at the start that she was suffering from nephrosis. That’s an extremely rare disease, and very few cases ever pull through. You knew the treatment we were giving her. I’m sorry, old fellow. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just Eula’s time to go, I guess.” Starko shambled out into the rain, dazed, his bony shoulders shaking, his sobs rising above the wail of the wind. Meanwhile, Lige Ludwell came pushing into the cabin, bearded jaw jutting pugnaciously. “You say the witch-vampire’s dead. We-uns don’t believe you. We-uns want to see her corpse.”

      “I’m not compelled to show it to you, but I’m willing to let you look at her, just to prove my point,” Croft answered steadily. “First, though, I’ll examine your daughter. I want to know what caused her death.”

      They brought the Ludwell girl into the room and placed her naked body on the floor. And then Brenda Lemoyne gasped: “Tim—look!” She pointed a trembling forefinger.

      He felt his scalp tightening. Marring the too-white flesh of the dead girl’s throat, full over the jugular vein, were four deep incisions that looked as if they might have been made by the teeth of some sharp-fanged beast!

      “Good God!” Tim Croft whispered as he went to his knees for a closer inspection of the wounds. Then he looked at the clansmen who clustered around him. “How did this happen? Tell me about it!”

      Lige Ludwell snarled: “Reckon mebbe you’ll be a-changin’ your mind about witch-vampires now. Anybody can tell what kind of thing made them tooth-marks.”

      “Will you forget the witch-vampires and answer my question? I want to know how this happened.”

      “How do we know? We-uns jest found her a-hangin’ to a tree limb in the holler by Haunted Creek. A-hangin’ upside down, by God, an’ still warm to the touch. An’ she’d been bled white, jest the way you see her now. But there warn’t no blood on the airth underneath her.”

      Croft blurted out the first words that popped into his mind. “Of course there wouldn’t be any blood. The rain washed it away, naturally. All the same, this is murder. Somebody killed the girl and then tried to make it look like the work of a vampire in order to alibi himself.” His mouth compressed, “I heard you whipped her and kicked her out of your house today because she was having a love affair. Maybe—”

      Ludwell let out a bellow of rage. “Air you accusin’ me of killin’ my own datter? We-uns will git even with you for that, Doc Croft! Mark my words, you an’ your nurses will wish you’d never set foot in these here mountains afore I git through with you!” He balled his fists and

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