by Earl Peirce
3
The lodge door slammed shut with a sudden, interrupting bang. The lockgrated, and Henry Duryea's footsteps sounded on the planked floor.
Arthur shook himself from the bed. He had only time to fling thathaunting book into the Gladstone bag before he sensed his fatherstanding in the doorway.
"You--you're not shaving, Arthur." Duryea's words, spliced hesitantly,were toneless. He glanced from the table-top to the Gladstone, and tohis son. He said nothing for a moment, his glance inscrutable. Then,
"It's blowing up quite a storm outside."
Arthur swallowed the first words which had come into his throat, noddedquickly. "Yes, isn't it? Quite a storm." He met his father's gaze, hisface burning. "I--I don't think I'll shave, Dad. My head aches."
Duryea came swiftly into the room and pinned Arthur's arms in his grasp."What do you mean--your head aches? How? Does your throat----"
"No!" Arthur jerked himself away. He laughed. "It's that French stew ofyours! It's hit me in the stomach!" He stepped past his father andstarted up the stairs.
"The stew?" Duryea pivoted on his heel. "Possibly. I think I feel itmyself."
Arthur stopped, his face suddenly white. "You--too?"
The words were hardly audible. Their glances met--clashed likedueling-swords.
For ten seconds neither of them said a word or moved a muscle: Arthur,from the stairs, looking down; his father below, gazing up at him. InHenry Duryea the blood drained slowly from his face and left a purpleetching across the bridge of his nose and above his eyes. He looked likea death's-head.
Arthur winced at the sight and twisted his eyes away. He turned to go upthe remaining stairs.
"Son!"
He stopped again; his hand tightened on the banister.
"Yes, Dad?"
Duryea put his foot on the first stair, "I want you to lock your doortonight. The wind would keep it banging!"
"Yes," breathed Arthur, and pushed up the stairs to his room.
* * * * *
Doctor Duryea's hollow footsteps sounded in steady, unhesitant beatsacross the floor of Timber Lake Lodge. Sometimes they stopped, and thecrackling hiss of a sulfur match took their place, then perhaps adistended sigh, and, again, footsteps....
Arthur crouched at the open door of his room. His head was cocked forthose noises from below. In his hands was a double-barrel shotgun ofviolent gage.
... thud ... thud ... thud....
Then a pause, the clinking of a glass and the gurgling of liquid. Thesigh, the tread of his feet over the floor....
"He's thirsty," Arthur thought--_Thirsty!_
Outside, the storm had grown into fury. Lightning zigzagged between themountains, filling the valley with weird phosphorescence. Thunder, likedrums, rolled incessantly.
Within the lodge the heat of the fireplace piled the atmosphere thickwith stagnation. All the doors and windows were locked shut, theoil-lamps glowed weakly--a pale, anemic light.
Henry Duryea walked to the foot of the stairs and stood looking up.
Arthur sensed his movements and ducked back into his room, the gungripped in his shaking fingers.
Then Henry Duryea's footstep sounded on the first stair.
Arthur slumped to one knee. He buckled a fist against his teeth as aprayer tumbled through them.
Duryea climbed a second step ... and another ... and still one more. Onthe fourth stair he stopped.
"Arthur!" His voice cut into the silence like the crack of a whip."Arthur! Will you come down here?"
"Yes, Dad." Bedraggled, his body hanging like cloth, young Duryea tookfive steps to the landing.
"We can't be zanies!" cried Henry Duryea. "My soul is sick with dread.Tomorrow we're going back to New York. I'm going to get the first boatto open sea.... Please come down here." He turned about and descendedthe stairs to his room.
Arthur choked back the words which had lumped in his mouth. Half dazed,he followed....
In the bedroom he saw his father stretched face-up along the bed. He sawa pile of rope at his father's feet.
"Tie me to the bedposts, Arthur," came the command. "Tie both my handsand both my feet."
Arthur stood gaping.
"Do as I tell you!"
"Dad, what hor----"
"Don't be a fool! You read that book! You know what relation you are tome! I'd always hoped it was Cecilia, but now I know it's you. I shouldhave known it on that night twenty years ago when you complained of aheadache and nightmares.... Quickly, my head rocks with pain. _Tie me!_"
Speechless, his own pain piercing him with agony, Arthur fell to thatgrisly task. Both hands he tied--and both feet ... tied them so firmlyto the iron posts that his father could not lift himself an inch off thebed.
Then he blew out the lamps, and without a further glance at thatPrometheus, he reascended the stairs to his room, and slammed and lockedhis door behind him.
He looked once at the breech of his gun, and set it against a chair byhis bed. He flung off his robe and slippers, and within five minutes hewas senseless in slumber.
4
He slept late, and when he awakened his muscles were as stiff as boards,and the lingering visions of a nightmare clung before his eyes. Hepushed his way out of bed, stood dazedly on the floor.
A dull, numbing cruciation circulated through his head. He feltbloated ... coarse and running with internal mucus. His mouth was dry,his gums sore and stinging.
He tightened his hands as he lunged for the door. "Dad," he cried, andhe heard his voice breaking in his throat.
Sunlight filtered through the window at the top of the stairs. The airwas hot and dry, and carried in it a mild odor of decay.
Arthur suddenly drew back at that odor--drew back with a gasp of awfulfear. For he recognized it--that stench, the heaviness of his blood, therawness of his tongue and gums.... Age-long it seemed, yet rising like aspirit in his memory. All of these things he had known and felt before.
He leaned against the banister, and half slid, half stumbled down thestairs....
His father had died during the night. He lay like a waxen figure tied tohis bed, his face done up in knots.
"He lay like a waxen figure tied to his bed."]
Arthur stood dumbly at the foot of the bed for only a few seconds; thenhe went back upstairs to his room.
Almost immediately he emptied both barrels of the shotgun into his head.
* * * * *
The tragedy at Timber Lake was discovered accidentally three days later.A party of fishermen, upon finding the two bodies, notified stateauthorities, and an investigation was directly under way.
Arthur Duryea had undoubtedly met death at his own hands. The conditionof his wounds, and the manner with which he held the lethal weapon, atonce foreclosed the suspicion of any foul play.
But the death of Doctor Henry Duryea confronted the police with aninexplicable mystery; for his trussed-up body, unscathed except for twojagged holes over the jugular vein, _had been drained of all its blood_.
The autopsy protocol of Henry Duryea laid death to "undeterminedcauses," and it was not until the yellow tabloids commenced aninvestigation into the Duryea family history that the incredible andfantastic explanations were offered to the public.
Obviously such talk was held in popular contempt; yet in view of thecontroversial war which followed, the authorities considered itexpedient to consign both Duryeas to the crematory....