LITMIR.BIZ

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fingers, made her drop it, she bent suddenly and sank her white teeth into his arm.

      He cried out, hugged her in a restricting grip that made her hardly able to move. She hissed like a cat, came up out of her bursting dress, her body gleaming, and tried to scratch out his eyes. Demerest, in the straining emergency of the moment, did something he’d never done before, something ungallant but necessary. He crashed a fist to the point of her chin, dropping her, senseless, to the floor.

      He turned away, picked up her gun, and ran to the door, with Halliday shouting for him to hurry. He didn’t know what weird conspiracy he had to face. He only knew that Gail Halliday was in some sort of danger. He seemed to feel her dark, unfathomable eyes upon him, no longer arrogant, but helpless and appealing.

      He ran through the corridor down a flight of stairs, around another hall into that other wing of the mansion. He heard a sound of battle, saw Eric Larsen struggling with the second gnome-like figure. The servant had evidently jumped him, taken him by surprise. With his one good arm, he was trying to hold Larsen, clutching both wrists, to prevent him from again using his weapon. Larsen was snarling, cursing, and the dogs in a nearby room were howling frightfully, leaping against a closed door, scratching and whining with desperate claws.

      * * * *

      Demerest ran straight toward the fighting figures. He raised the gun he had taken from Nana Larsen. Then Eric Larsen saw him. With a superhuman wrench, he broke away from the servant. He whirled, his gun aimed straight at Demerest.

      Demerest pumped the trigger of the small automatic. He felt a brief, sickening sensation inside when no shot sounded. The gun’s magazine was empty.

      He saw the quick flash of Larsen’s pistol, felt a hot, stinging pain at the top of his head. He sank to his knees, as though a burning iron had been laid across his scalp. He sank inertly, saw Larsen turn and fire straight into the gnome-man’s face. The ugly creature went down spouting blood.

      Larsen turned and disappeared through a door. Demerest could still see. His eyes were half-open. His mind was even capable of registering impressions. But the stunning force of the bullet that had laid his scalp open, almost seared his brain, made movement impossible. He could only lie and stare through half-closed lids.

      Dimly he heard a scream, then silence—except for the fearful racket of the dogs. A moment later, Larsen came through the door. He was carrying Gail Halliday. There was a bruise on the girl’s white forehead. She was in her nightdress, with her white legs trailing. Larsen, without a single glance at Demerest, bore her along the hall and out into the night.

      Demerest tried to rise. He fought within himself, as a man fights a horrible, paralyzing force; fought while his brain burned in agony, and hot blood trickled down his face. But he couldn’t rise. And he saw a shadow, as in a nightmare, creep along the hall when Larsen had gone.

      It was the horrible, noseless servant with the single eye. The eye was glaring now, burning with the fierce light of a devil’s torch. The man was shaking. His lips were moving, writhing across his broken teeth, though no sound came from them.

      He moved straight toward the door, from behind which the howling of the dogs sounded. He sprang a bolt, drew the door outward. He went down writhing under a mad rush of flying black bodies.

      Like the moving ribbon of some satanic cyclorama, Demerest saw the snarling, wicked heads of the great black dogs. He saw their green eyes, their slavering lips, their bared and glistening fangs. He saw them come straight toward him in a surging flood of fury. They loomed as large as mammoths, their fangs were curving scimitars that seemed, to his dazed brain, to sweep the whole hallway. He already thought he felt them, rending, tearing at his throat, thought he felt his own hot blood choking him.

      But instead the dogs passed over him, unheedingly trampled him with their flying paws, went by so near him that he could feel their fetid breaths on his face. They passed on along the hall, turned in a column and plunged through the open doorway out into the night.

      Demerest lay weakly, sheer terror bringing his numb brain slowly back. He watched as the one-eyed, monstrous servant got to his feet. He saw a hideous, sinister expression on the man’s scarred face. The servant disappeared for a brief moment, returned, and came toward Demerest with something in his fingers.

      Demerest cringed with returning consciousness, gasped and shrank back in horror as the one-eyed servant pressed a cold substance against his face. Then reason asserted itself. Demerest relaxed for an instant, trembling.

      The one-eyed man was pressing a wet cloth to his skin, trying to revive him. Demerest helped, battling the cloudy pain in his head. The servant got two more cloths, then dragged Demerest to his feet. He plucked at Demerest’s coat sleeve, made strange, inarticulate whimpers in his scarred throat, pointed out the door through which the dogs had gone.

      Demerest understood that he was to follow them. The servant drew an old-fashioned lantern from a closet. He shuffled ahead of Demerest, still beckoning fiercely.

      As he neared the doorway, Demerest heard a sound he was never to forget, a sound of mortal, bloodcurdling horror coming out of the darkness—a scream torn from a human throat. Above it, he heard the snarling of the dogs like that of a pack of ravening wolves.

      The one-eyed servant hurried forward. Demerest, weak and trembling, followed. The cold rain on his face helped to revive him, washed the blood from the crease along his scalp. The sound of the horrible battle ahead lent speed to his feet.

      Then under the glow of the lantern, he saw what was happening; saw a bloodstained body leap upward, like a huge white fish, above a sea of tossing black muzzles. The sea of savage animal forms was speared with green points of light, like stars blazing above water.

      Larsen, stripped from the waist up, his flesh torn already into awful ribbons, was striking right and left with his gun butt. But the fierce dogs pulled him down. His crimson-stained back disappeared under a tidal wave of furry bodies. He didn’t appear again, and the sound of gurgling, bubbling worryings that followed sickened Demerest.

      The servant waved his skinny arms, again making meaningless noises. The dogs snarled and broke away a little. Demerest caught sight of the still, shapeless thing that had a moment before been Larsen. Faint and sickened, he turned toward the slumped form on the ground a little way off.

      The dogs, jaws dripping, instantly sprang away from their dead quarry. Demerest thought for an instant they were going to fly at him. But they ringed the form of Gail Halliday and snarled their menace at him until the clucking of the noseless servant made them draw off.

      Then Demerest and the servant bent over Gail Halliday. She lay unconscious but feebly stirring, the thin, rain-soaked nightdress plastered to the lovely lines of her body, beautiful, Demerest thought, as some reclining, fabled goddess. The servant plucked Demerest’s arm, made motions for him to pick the girl up and carry her.

      Demerest did so, feeling a strange, thrilling sense of protective tenderness as her warm body lay against his chest. Her face was upturned. Her black, silky hair lay in damp, sweet ringlets on her glorious shoulders.

      As the servant led the way, Demerest bore her toward the house, leaving that grisly thing out in the dark. The dogs fell into step behind him, escorting him now, as though in carrying their strange mistress he had become their master.

      Demerest thrilled with an exultant feeling of power as he heard their padding feet.

      As he entered the house, and the light fell on Gail Halliday’s face, he stopped in wonder.

      The pain in his head seemed to turn to a quivering song; the beat of tumultuous music. She was beautiful, so beautiful, that he bent irresistibly, as one in a dream, and pressed his lips against her warm, damp ones. It was a tender kiss, respectful in its lightness, an impulse born of the whirling giddiness in his head, and the great strain he’d been under.

      But as he kissed her, Gail Halliday’s eyes opened. The lids fluttered like moth wings for a moment, uncovering the dark, glorious depths that lay beneath. She lay still in his arms for a breathless second, looking up, while a slow, strange smile softened her face. Childlike,

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