LITMIR.BIZ

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He may have been hurt. Those terrible people!”

      She turned and ran down the hall, her damp hair swinging against her neck. Demerest and the servant followed, around the wing of the house, up a stairway, into Halliday’s room.

      Halliday was sitting up in bed, face twitching, hoarsely calling out. Nana Larsen still lay crumpled.

      Halliday sank back gasping and held out his shaking arms to his daughter. She fled to them, said soft, reassuring things to comfort him. Then suddenly remembering her thin nightdress, she shrank shyly away into a corner.

      Demerest stared at Halliday, and the sick man, finding his voice, spoke to his daughter. “Please go outside a minute, Gail. There are some things I want to tell our friend, Demerest—things he will want to know.”

      When the girl had gone, Halliday grasped Demerest’s hand in his. “You have been kind,” he said, “so kind to come here. You have saved us.”

      Demerest shook his head. He pointed to the noseless servant. “Thank him. He saved things, just now, by turning the dogs on Larsen. Larsen shot the two others. He is dead, now, himself.”

      “If you hadn’t come,” said Halliday, “my servants would never have had the courage to act. Your arrival was the signal.”

      “The signal for what?”

      “To make an attempt to free ourselves from the bondage of the Larsens.” Halliday bent forward, his voice trembling. “You must have guessed that they had some hold over me. I know I am dying; I can talk freely, now. There are many things I’ve done that I shouldn’t, but I didn’t deserve such persecution. The Larsens were criminals, wicked people trying to steal my money—and Eric Larsen wanted Gail.”

      “I don’t think I quite understand,” said Demerest.

      “No, no, you wouldn’t. But this will help to explain it. I killed the man who ran off with my wife—shot him in a fair fight after he had caused her death by his brutal treatment. I am not a murderer, really—but the law is sometimes cruel. It seemed best to leave Europe, quickly. I thought nobody knew, but the Larsens learned what I had done somehow. They followed me here to blackmail me, bleed me. They threatened to expose me as a criminal, unless I turned over everything I had. They knew I was old, dying, and when I was stubborn, Eric Larsen saw a way of accomplishing his ends through Gail. He might have succeeded—if you hadn’t come. He would have taken her away—I don’t know where.”

      Halliday lay back breathing laboredly for a moment. Demerest could see the tortured pounding of his heart, and knew that the man’s days were numbered.

      Halliday went on slowly, huskily:

      “In many ways, as I said in my letter, I’ve been a wicked, selfish fool. But after my wife, Grace, left me, after I’d brought up Gail from babyhood, nursed her, watched over her, I made up my mind that no man should ever take her from me. She had reached lovely young womanhood when I brought her here. I tried my best to see that no attractive man should ever meet her. I hired the most hideous servants I could find. I saw to it that even our family doctor was old and ugly. I went further, and encouraged a scorn of men in Gail herself, told her never to speak to any stranger, gave her clothes that were unconventional, queer. Even the dogs were my doing. She’s held in such terror by the few neighbors we have, that no man would go near her.

      “But it was wrong, wicked. What has happened in the last few weeks has made me see it. She might, even in her loneliness, have been beguiled by that monster, Larsen. It was wrong, and I want to ask a favor of you, Demerest. I want to pay you handsomely to see, after I’m dead, that Gail leads a more normal life: that she meets some good young men and finds love and marriage, if that is her wish. Will you do that for me, in memory of the friendship that I bore your father?”

      Demerest started to speak, then turned his head. Gail Halliday had stolen back into the room. She stood just inside the doorway, tall, white, lovely as a vision, her dark eyes fixed upon him, a strange, knowing smile softening her lips.

      Demerest turned toward her father and bowed his head. “I think I can promise to take good care of Gail,” he said. “Something tells me she and I are always going to understand each other, and be—dear friends.”

      FIANCES FOR THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, by Russell Gray

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE GOLDEN TEMPTRESS

      It was the usual sort of literary party at which half the guests were uninvited. By midnight you didn’t know whether the man drinking with you was a famous English author come to America to make war speeches or a crasher who wanted to rub shoulders with the famous. It didn’t matter because by that time everybody was pretty drunk and nobody paid any attention to those who drifted in and out of the apartment—until that woman suddenly appeared.

      She was the kind who drew your eyes and held them and made you forget that there were other attractive women in the room. She wore a mink cape which dropped open in front so that you couldn’t miss her high-bared breasts which pushed against the low bodice of a slinky gown. The gown was golden and so was her skin, and the way the material molded her body it wasn’t easy to tell precisely what was skin and what gown.

      She undulated over to the table where the drinks were served, and at once men closed in around her, pouring for her.

      Helen, my wife, and I, Roland Cuyler, the Author, and his wife Clara were standing near a window in an attempt to get a breath of air. We had ceased our conversation when the woman had entered. All of us looked at her.

      “Who’s she?” Helen asked.

      Roland Cuyler licked his lips and swallowed hard and said: “Never saw her before.”

      He was a bad liar. He’d become jittery as soon as he had been aware of her presence; looking at her a few minutes ago, some of the liquid had spilled from his cocktail glass. I wondered why he didn’t tell the truth, then dismissed it from my mind. As his literary agent, it was my business to sell his novels, not to delve into his personal life.

      Our little group at the window broke up. Helen moved away to talk to Portia Teele, whose love novels sold by the hundreds of thousands, and I found myself alone. But only for a moment. I turned and there was the woman in gold. A cocktail glass was raised to her lips, and above its rim I saw gray eyes, flecked with gold, calmly appraising me.

      “You’re Lester Marlin, the literary agent, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m Tala Mag.”

      Curious name. And curious woman. She could have been called very beautiful if you liked them that way—exotic, with eyes slightly slanted and extremely long and narrow brows and high cheekbones, and a body so vibrant that each motion was a sensuous invitation. Not my type, however. I preferred the pure fresh young beauty of Helen.

      Tala Mag dropped the glass from her lips and suddenly I realized that she was so close to me that her pointed breasts almost touched my chest. Over her left shoulder I saw Portia Teele and Helen staring at us. Helen smiled. She knew that a literary agent of my reputation, who, by accepting to handle a writer’s manuscript, practically assured its sale, was always being annoyed by women authors who tried to use their bodies as substitutes for lack of literary talent. This Tala Mag was probably one of those.

      Tala Mag glanced over my shoulder and coldly studied Helen. Then she turned back to me and intimately tucked a hand through my arm and leaned against me so that I felt the soft yielding of a breast.

      “Your wife appears jealous,” she whispered.

      Somebody must have told her who Helen was, and it was because my wife watched that she was trying to make me. What the hell was her game?

      “Of course she’s not,” I told her. “Why should she be? She knows that no other woman could mean anything to me.”

      Her gold-flecked eyes looked up at me challengingly. “She is rather attractive.”

      I let her have it right where I knew it would hurt. “By far the most attractive woman in this room,”

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