by Cave, Hugh
A bestial growl issued from the innkeeper's lips. He fell back, rumbling. But the revolver followed him and menaced him with dire meaning, and he thought better of his refusal. Silently he scuffed backward toward the inner door.
"For your life, Allenby," Paul snapped, "don't lose your head and try to escape." He took the chalk from Jeremy's hand and dropped it on the table. "As soon as we've passed through this door, mark it with the sign of the cross, then stay here on pain of death. You're safe here, and with the door sanctified, and locked on the outside, these—these blood-hungry ghouls cannot escape. Do you hear?"
"I'II stay," Allenby muttered. "For the love of Heaven, come back soon. And—and give me a gun!"
"A gun is no good to you."
"But if I've got to stay here alone, I—"
Paul glared at the man suspiciously. But there was no sign of treachery in Allenby's white face. No sign that he perhaps wanted the revolver for another reason, to use on the men who had brought him here. And a gun might really prove valuable. It would give the man courage, at any rate.
But Paul took no chances. "Put your revolver on the table, Jeremy," he said curtly. "If you touch it before we're out of this room, Allenby, I'll shoot you. Do you understand?"
"I —I only want it for protection, I tell you!"
Jeremy slid the weapon within reach of the man's hand. Allenby stood stiff, staring at it. And then Paul's revolver pressed again into the thick flabbiness of Murgunstrumm's shrunken body, forcing the cripple over the threshold.
"Take the lantern, Jeremy."
The door closed then, shutting out the last view of the chamber—the last view of two thwarted demons in evening clothes, standing motionless, staring; and Allenby, close to the table, reaching for the revolver and flinging back his coat at the same time, to expose the stern white mark of protection on his chest.
The lantern sputtered eerily in Jeremy's hand. He turned, locked the door carefully, removed the key. Murgunstrumm watched silently.
"Now." Paul's weapon dug viciously into the cripple's abdomen. "Where is she? Quickly!"
"I—I ain't sure where they went. Maybe—"
"You know!"
"I tell you they might've gone anywhere. I ain't never sure."
"Then you'll show us every last room and corner of this devilish house until we find her. Cellar and all."
"Cellar?" The repeated word was a quick, passionate whisper. "No, no, there be no cellar here!"
"And if you try any tricks, I'll kill you."
It was a strange procession filing silently through the musty rooms and corridors of the ancient structure. Murgunstrumm, a contorted, malformed monkey swathed in dancing lantern light, led the way with limping steps, scraping resentfully over the bare floors. Very close behind him strode Paul, leveled revolver ready to cut short any move the man might make to escape or turn on his captors. Jeremy came next, huge and silent; and last of all, Kermeff, in whom all thought of rebellion had seemingly been replaced by deepening dread and his acute realization that here were things beyond the minds of men.
Room after room they hurried through—empty, dead rooms, with all windows locked and curtained, and every shutter closed. In one, obviously the kitchen, an oil stove was still warm and a large platter of fresh meat lay on the unclean table.
Room after room. Empty, all of them, of life and laughter. In some stood beds, stripped to bare springs; bare tables; chairs coated with dust. Like cells of a sunken dungeon the chambers extended deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house. From one to another the strange procession moved, eating its anxious way with the clutching glare of the lantern.
"There is nothing here," Kermeff said at last, scowling impatiently. "We are fools to go farther."
"There is something, somewhere."
Murgunstrumm, leering crookedly, said:
"They might've gone outdoors. I ain't never sure where."
"We have not yet explored upstairs."
"Huh?"
"Or down."
"Down? No, no! There be no downstairs! I told you—"
"We'll see. Here; here's something." Paul stopped as the advancing lantern rays touched a flight of black stairs winding up into complete darkness. "Lead on, Murgunstrumm. No tricks."
Murgunstrumm scuffed to the bottom of the steps and moved up with maddening slowness, gripping the rail. And suddenly, then, the man behind him hesitated. A single word, "Listen!" whispered softly through Paul's lips.
"What is it?" Kermeff said thickly.
"I heard—"
"No, no!" Murgunstrumm's cry was vibrant with fear. "There be no one up here!"
"Be still!"
The cracked voice subsided gutturally. Another sound was audible above it. A strange nameless sound, vaguely akin to the noise of sucking lips or the hiss of gusty air through a narrow tube. A grotesque sound, half human, half bestial.
"An animal," Kermeff declared in a low voice. "An animal of some sort, feeding—"
But Paul's shrill voice interrupted.
"Up, Murgunstrumm! Up quickly!"
'There be nothin', I tell you!"
"Be quiet!"
The cripple advanced again, moving reluctantly, as if some inner bonds held him back. His face was convulsed. He climbed morosely, slowly hesitatingly before each step. And his move, when it came, was utterly unexpected.
He whirled abruptly, confronting his captors. Luridly he cried out, so that his voice carried into every corner of the landing above:
"I tell you there be no one! I tell you—"
Paul's hand clapped savagely over his mouth, crushing the outcry into a gurgling hiss. Jeremy and Kermeff stood taut, dismayed. Then Paul's gun rammed into the cripple's back, prodding him on. No mistaking the meaning of that grim muzzle. One more sound would bring a bullet.
Groping again, Murgunstrumm at last reached the end of the climb, where the railing twisted sharply back on itself and the upper landing lay straight and level and empty before him. The sucking sounds had ceased. The corridor lay in absolute uncanny silence, nerve-wracking and repelling.
"That noise," Paul said curtly, "came from one of these rooms. We've got to locate it."
"What—what was it?"
There was no answer. The reply in Paul's mind could not be uttered aloud. Kermeff did not know, and the truth would make a gibbering idiot of him. Kermeff, for all his medical knowledge, was an ignorant blind fool in matters macabre.
And another array of gloomy rooms extended before them, waiting to be examined. With Murgunstrumm probing the way, the four men stole forward and visited each chamber, one after another. There was nothing. These rooms were like those below, abandoned, sinister with memories of long-dead laughter, dust-choked, broodingly still.
"Something," Kermeff gasped suddenly, "is watching us. I can feel it!"
The others glanced at him, and Jeremy forced a dry laugh. Half the corridor lay behind them; the remaining doors stretched ahead beyond the restless circle of light. Paul muttered fretfully and pushed the innkeeper before him over the next threshold. His companions blundered close behind. The lantern light flooded the chamber, disclosing a blackened window and yellowish time-scarred walls. A four-poster bed stood against the wall, covered with mattress and crumpled blanket.
And Paul, too, as he bent over the bed examining the peculiar brownish stains there, felt eyes upon him. He whirled about bitterly, facing the doorway—and stood as if a hand of ice had suddenly gripped his throat, forcing a frosty breath from his open mouth.
A man stood there, garbed meticulously in black evening clothes, smiling vindictively. He was the same creature who earlier in the evening had escorted the girl in the white ermine wrap into the inn. The same, but somehow different; for the man's eyes were glowing now with that hellish green light, and his lips were full, thick and very red.
He said nothing. His gaze passed from Paul's colorless face to Murgunstrumm's, and the cripple answered it with a triumphant step forward. Kermeff shrank
back until the bed post crushed into his back and held him rigid. Jeremy crouched, waiting. The creature stirred slightly and advanced.
But Paul did not wait. He dared not. In one move he wrenched his coat open, baring the white sign beneath, and staggered forward. The intruder hesitated. The green eyes contracted desperately to slits of fire. The face writhed into a mask of hate. Violently the man spun back, recoiling with arms upflung. And the doorway, all at once, was empty.
For an instant Paul was limp, overcome. Then he was across the threshold, lurching into the hail in time to see a shape—a tawny, four-legged shape, wolfish in contour—race down the corridor and bound into darkness, to land soundlessly upon the stairs and vanish into lower gloom.
There was nothing else. Nothing but Kermeff, dragging at his arm and saying violently:
"He'll overpower Allenby downstairs!"
"Allenby's safe," Paul said dully, mechanically. "He has the cross."
He remembered the revolver in his hand and raised it quickly, swinging back to face Murgunstrumm. But the cripple was helpless, held in Jeremy's big hands, in the doorway.
And so they continued their investigation, and at the end of the long passageway, in the final room of all, found what Paul in the bottom of his heart had expected. There, on the white sheets of an enameled bed, lay the lady of the ermine wrap, arms outflung, head lolling over the side, lifeless hair trailing the floor.
Murgunstrumm, seeing her there, rushed forward to stand above her, glaring down, working his lips, muttering incoherent words. He would have dropped to his knees beside her, clawing at her fiendishly, had not Jeremy flung him back. For she was dead. Kermeff, bending above her, announced that without hesitation. Her gown had been torn at the breast, exposing soft flesh as delicately white as fine-grained gypsum. An ethereal smile of bewilderment marred her lips. And upon her throat, vivid in the ochre blare of the lantern, were two blots of blood, two cruel incisions in the jugular vein.
Paul stepped back mutely, turning away. He waited at the door until Kermeff, examining the marks, stood up at last and came to him.
"I don't understand," the physician was saying stiffly. "Such marks-I have never encountered them before."
"The marks of the vampire," Paul muttered.
"What?"
"You wouldn't understand, Kermeff." And then Paul seized the man's arm abruptly, jerking him around. "Listen to me, Kermeff. I didn't force you to come to this horrible place for revenge. I only wanted to prove to you that I'm not mad. But we've got to destroy these fiends. It doesn't matter why we came here. We've got to make sure no one else ever comes. Do you understand?"
Kermeff hesitated, biting his lips nervously. Then he stiffened.
"Whatever you say," he said thickly, "I will do."
Paul swung about then, and called quickly to Jeremy. And Jeremy, looking up from the limp figure on the bed, had to drag Murgunstrumm with him in order to make the innkeeper move away. A fantastic hunger gleamed in Murgunstrumm's sunken eyes. His hands twitched convulsively. He peered back and continued to peer back until Jeremy shoved him roughly over the threshold and kicked the door shut.
"Lead the way, Murgunstrumm," Paul snapped. "We have not yet seen the cellars."
The cripple's lips twisted open.
"No, no! There be no cellars. I have told you—"
"Lead the way!"
10. A Girl's Voice
The cellars of the Gray Toad Inn were sunken pits of gloom and silence, deep below the last level of rotted timbers and plastered walls. From the obscurity of the lower corridor a flight of wooden steps plunged sharply into nothingness; and Murgunstrumm, groping down them, was forced to bend almost double lest a low-hanging beam crush his great malformed head.
No amount of prodding or whispered threats could induce the captured innkeeper to hurry. He probed each step with his club like feet before descending. And there was that in his eyes, in the whole convulsed mask of his features, which spoke of virulent dread. The revolver in Paul's hand did not for an instant relax its vigil.
Like a trapped beast, lips moving soundlessly and huge hands twisting at his sides, the cripple reached the bottom and crouched, there against the damp wall, while his captors crowded about him, peering into surrounding darkness.
"Well," Paul said curtly, "what are you waiting for?"
A mutter was Murgunstrumm's only response. Sluggishly he felt his way; and the lantern light, hovering over him, revealed erratic lines of footprints, old and new, in the thick dust of the stone floor. Footprints, all of them, which harmonized with the shape and size of the cripple's own feet. He alone had visited these pits, or else the other visitors had left no marks! And the signs in the dust led deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of impossible gloom, luring the intruders onward.
And here, presently, as in the central square of some medieval, subterranean city, the floor was crossed and re-crossed with many lines of footprints, and chambers gaped on all sides, chambers small and square, with irregular walls of stone and high ceilings of beams and plaster.
Broken chairs, tables, choked every corner, for these rooms had been used, in the years when the house above had been a place of merrymaking and laughter, as storage vaults. Now they were vaults of decay and impregnable gloom. Spider webs dangled in every dark corner; and the spiders themselves, brown and bloated and asleep, were the only living inhabitants.
And with each successive chamber Murgunstrumm's features contracted more noticeably to a mask of animal fear. Not fear of the revolver, but the dread of a caged beast that something dear to him—food, perhaps, or some object upon which he loved to feast his eyes—would be taken from him. As he approached a certain doorway, at last, he drew back, muttering.
"There be nothing more. I have told you there be nothing here."
Only the pressure of the revolver forced him on, and he seemed to shrivel into himself with apprehension as he clawed through the aperture and the lantern light revealed the chamber's contents.
There was a reason for his reluctance. The room was large enough to have been at one time two separate enclosures, made into a whole by the removal of the partition. And it was a display gallery of horrible possessions. The three men who entered behind Murgunstrumm, keeping close together, stood as if transfixed, while utter awe and abhorrence welled over them.
It was a vault, choked with things white and gleaming. Things moldy with the death that clung to them. And there was no sound, no intruding breeze to rustle the huge shapeless heap. It was death and mockery flung together in horror. And the men who looked upon it were for an interminable moment stricken mute with the fiendishness of it.
Then at last Kermeff stepped forward and cried involuntarily:
"Horrible! It is too horrible!"
Jeremy, turning in a slow circle, began to mumble to himself, as if clutching eagerly at something sane, something ordinary, to kill the throbbing of his heart. "Bones! God, sir, it looks like a slaughterhouse!"
The lantern in Paul's hand was trembling violently, casting jiggling shadows over the array, throwing laughter and hate and passion into gaping faces which would never again, in reality, assume any expression other than the sunken empty glare of death. And Murgunstrumm was in the center of the floor, huddled into himself like a thing without shape. And Kermeff was pacing slowly about, inspecting the stack of disjointed things around him, poking at them professionally and scowling to himself.
"Women, all of them," he announced gutturally. "Young women. Impossible to estimate the number—"
"Let's get out of here!" Jeremy snarled.
Kermeff turned, nodded. And so, jerking Murgunstrumm's shoulder, Paul forced the cripple once again to lead the way. And the inspection continued.
Other chambers revealed nothing. The horror was not repeated. As the procession moved from doorway to doorway, Jeremy said bitterly, touching Paul's arm:
"Why don't you ask him what those things are, sir? He knows."
"I know, too," Paul sai
d heavily.
Jeremy stared at him. The big man fell back, then, as Murgunstrumm, taking advantage of their lack of attention, attempted to scuff past a certain doorway without entering. Fresh footprints led into that particular aperture. And Kermeff was alert. Ignoring the cripple, Kermeff strode into the chamber alone, and suddenly cried aloud in a cracked voice.
There, upon a table, lay a thing infinitely more horrible than any heap of decayed human bones. Murgunstrumm, forced into the room by Paul, strove with a sharp cry to fall back from it, until he was caught up in Jeremy's arms and hurled forward again. And the three intruders stood mute, staring.
A sheet of canvas, ancient and very dirty, partly covered what lay there. A long, bone-handled knife was stuck upright beside it, in the table.
The operation, if such a fiendish process could be so termed, was half completed. Kermeff, faltering to the table, lifted the blanket halfway and let it drop again with a convulsive twitch. Jeremy looked only once. Then, twisting with insane rage, he seized Murgunstrumm's throat in his big hands.
"You did this!" he thundered. "You came down here when that rat came up and told you—told you he was finished. You came down here and—"
"Jeremy." Paul's voice was mechanical, lifeless. "Do you recognize her?"
Jeremy stiffened and looked again. And then a glint of mingled rage and horror and pity came into his eyes. He released the cripple abruptly and stood quite still.
"It's—it's the girl who came in here last night, sir!" he whispered hoarsely. "When you and I was outside alone, in the grass, watchin'—"
"God in Heaven!" Kermeff cried suddenly, reached up with both hands.
Paul had had enough. He swung about to grope to the door, and froze like a paralytic in his tracks.
There in the doorway a revolver was leveled at him in the hands of a leering creature in evening clothes. The revolver was Allenby's; and the man behind it, Costillan, was standing very still, very straight, with parted lips and penetrating eyes that were hypnotic.
Paul acted blindly, desperately, without thinking. Flinging up his own gun, he fired. An answering burst of flame roared in his face. Something razor-sharp and hot lashed into his shoulder, tearing the flesh. He stumbled back, falling across the table where lay that mutilated body. The gun slipped from his fingers; and the creature in the doorway was still there, still smiling, unarmed.