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0

reamer's Worlds

Surely the world of Thar—its strange cities and enormous mountains,

its turquoise seas, twin moons and crimson sun — is

nothing but a dream? And yet. . .

REINING in his pony on the ridge, Khal Kan pointed down across . the other sands of the drylands that stretched in the glare of the crimson, sinking sun.

"There we are, my lads!" he announced

heartily. "See yonder black blobs on the desert? They're the tents of the dry-landers."

His tall young figure was straining in the saddle, and there was a keen anticipation on his hard, merry young face.

Swift Fantasy Novelet of a Dreamer and His Dream

EDMOND

HAMI LTON

But Brusul, the squat warrior in blue leather beside him, and little Zoor, the wizened third member of the trio, looked uneasily.

"We've no business meddling with the drylanders!" accused brawny Brusul loudly. "Your father the king said we were to scout only as far west as the Dragal Mountains. We've done that f and haven't found any sign of the cursed Bunts in them. Our business is to ride back to Jotan now and report."

"Why, what are you afraid of?" demanded Khal Kan scoffingly. "We're wearing nondescript leather and weapons —we can pass ourselves off to the dry-landers as mercenaries from Kaubos."

" Why should we go bothering the damned desert-folk at all?" Brusul demanded violently. "They've got nothing we want."

Little Zoor broke into sniggering laughter. His wizened, frog-like face was creased by wrinkles of mirth.

WEIRD TALES

"Our prince has heard of that dryland princess—old Bladomir's daughter that they call Golden Wings," he chuckled.

"I'll be damned!" exploded Brusul. "I might have known it was a woman! Well, if you think I'm going to let you endanger our lives and the success of our reconnaissance for a look at some desert wench, you-*-"

"My sentiments exactly, Brusul!" cried Khal Kan merrily, and spurred forward. His pony galloped crazily down the crimson ridge, and his voice came back to them singing.

"The Bunts came up to fotan,

Long ago!

The Bunts fled back on the homeward

track When blood did flow!"

"Oh, damn all wenches, here's an end of us because of your fool's madness," groaned Brusul as he caught up. "If those drylanders find us out, we'll make fine sport for them."

Khal Kan grinned at the brawny warrior and the wizened little spy. "We'll not stay long. Just long enough to see what she looks like—this Golden Wings the desert tribes all rave about."

They rode forward over the ocher desert. The huge red orb of the sun was full in their faces as it sank toward the west. Already, the two moons Qui and Quilus were rising like dull pink shields in the east.

Shadows lengthened colossal across the yellow sands. The wind was keen, blowing from the far polar lands of this world of Thar. Behind them rose the vast, dull red shoulders of the Dragal Mountains, that separated the drylands from their own coastal country of Jotanland.

A nomad town rose ahead, scores of flat-topped pavilions of woven black hyrk-hzit. Great herds of horses of the black desert

strain were under the care of whooping herdsboys. Smoke of fires rose along the streets.

Fierce, swarthy drylanders whose skins were darker than the bronze faces of Khal Kan and his companions, looked at the trio with narrowed eyes as they rode in. Dryland warriors fell in behind them, riding casually after them toward die big pavilion at the camp's center.

"We're nicely in the trap," grunted Brusul. "Now only wit will get us out. Which means we can't depend on you, Khal Kan."

Khal Kan laughed. "A good sword can take a man where wit will stumble. Remember, now, we're from Kaubos."

They dismounted outside the great pavilion and walked into it past cat-eyed dryland sentries.

Torches spilled a red flare over the interior of the big tent. Here along rows, on their mats, sat the chiefs of the desert folk, feasting, drinking and quarreling.

UPON a low dais sat old Bladomir, their highest chief. The old desert ruler was a bearded, steel-eyed warrior of sixty whose yellow skin was grizzled by sandstorm and sun. His curved sword leaned against his knee, and he was drinking from a flagon of purple Lurian wine.

Khal Kan's eyes flew to the girl sitting beside the chief. He felt disappointment. Was this the famous Golden Wings, this small, slight, slender dark-haired girl in black leather? Why, she was nothing much —mildly attractive with her smooth black hair and fine, golden-skinned features— but not as pretty by half as many a wench he knew.

The girl looked up. Her eyes met Khal Kan's. The stab of those midnight-black eyes was like the impact of sword-shock. For a moment, the Jotan prince glimpsed ? a spirit thrilling as a lightning-flash.

"Why, I ree now why they rave about her!" he thought delightedly. "She's a

DREAMER'S WORLDS

tiger-cat, dangerous as hell and twice as beautiful!''

Golden Wings' black brows drew together angrily at the open, insolent admiration on the face of Khal Kan. She spoke to her father.

Bladomir looked down frownlngly at the tall, grinning young warrior and his two companions.

"Watermen!" grunted the dryland chief contemptuously, using the desert-folk's name for the coast peoples. "What do you want here?"

"We're from Kaubos," Brusul answered quickly. "We had to leave there when the Bunts took our city last year. Being men without a country now, we thought we'd offer our swords to you."

Bladomir spat. "We of the desert don't need to hire swords. You can have tent-hospitality tonight. Tomorrow, be gone."

It was what Khal Kan had expected. He was hardly listening. His eyes, insolent in admiration, had never left the girl Golden Wings.

A shrill voice yelled from the drylandcrs feasting in the big torchlit tent. A thin, squint-eyed desert warrior had jumped to his feet and was pointing at Khal Kan.

"That's no Kaubian!" he cried. "It's the prince of Jotan! I saw him with the king his father, two years ago in Jotan city!"

Khal Kan's sword sang out of its sheath with blurring speed—but too late. Dry-landers had leaped on the three instantly, pinioning their arms. Old Bladomir arose, his hawk-eyes narrowing ominously.

"So you're that hell's brand, young Khal Kan of Jotan?" he snarled. "Spying on us, are you?"

Khal Kan answered coolly. "We're not spying on you. My father sent us into the Dragals to see if the Bunts were in the mountains. He feared that traitor Egir might lead the green men north that way."

"Then what are you doing here in our camp?" Bladomir demanded.

Khal Kan looked calmly at the girl. "I'd heard of your daughter and wanted to look at her, to see if she was all they say."

Golden Wing's black eyes flared, but her voice was silky. "And now that you have looked, Jotanian, do you approve?"

Khal Kan laughed. "Yes, I do. I think you're a tiger-cat as would make me a fit mate. I shall do you the honor of making you princess of Jotan."

Swords of a score of dryland warriors flashed toward the three captives, as the desert warriors leaped to avenge the insult.

"Wait!" called Golden Wings' dear voice. There was a glint of mocking humor in her black eyes as she looked down at Khal Kan. "No swords for this princeling—the whip's more suited to him. Tie him up."

A roar of applause went up from the drylanders. In a moment, Khal Kan had been strung up to a tent-pole, his hands dragged up above his head. His leather jacket was ripped off and his yellow shirt torn away.

Brusul, bound and helpless, was roaring like a trapped lion as he saw what was coming. A tall drylander with a lash had come.

Swish— crack! Roar of howling laughter crashed on the echo, as Khal Kan felt the leather bite into his flesh. He winced inwardly from the pain, but kept his insolent smile unchanged.

Again the lash cracked. And on its echo came the voice of Golden Wings, silvery and taunting.

"Do you still want me for a mate, princeling?"

"More than ever," laughed Khan Kan. "I wouldn't have a wench without spirit,"

"More!" flashed Golden Wings' furious voice to the flogger.

The lash hissed and exploded in red pain along Khal Kan's back. Still he would not flinch or wince. His mind was doggedly set.

WEIRD TALES

Through crimson pain-mists came the girl's voice again. "You have thought better of your desire now, Jotanian?"

Khal Kan heard his own laughter as a harsh, remote sound. "Not in the least, darling. For every lash-stroke you order now, you'll seek later to win my forgiveness with a hundred kisses."

"Twenty more strokes!" flared the girl's hot voice.

The whole world seemed pure pain to Khal Kan. and his back was a numbed torment, but he kept his face immobile. He was aware that the fierce laughter had ceased, that the dryland warriors were watching him in a silence tinged with respect.

The lashes ceased. Khal Kan jeered over his shoulder.

"What, no more? I thought you had more spirit, my sweet."

Golden Wings' voice was raging. "There's still whips for you unless you beg pardon for your insolence."

"No, no more," rumbled old Bladomir. "This princeling's wit-struck, it's plain to see. Tie them all up tightly and we'll send to Jotan demanding heavy ransom for them."

Khal Kan hardly felt them carrying him away to a dark, small tent, his body was so bathed in pain. He did feel the gasping agony of the jolt as he was flung down beside Brusul and Zoor.

THEY three, bound hand and foot with thongs of tough sand-cat leather, were left in the tent by guards who posted themselves outside.

"What a girl!" exclaimed Khal Kan. "Brusul, for the first time in my life, I've met a woman who isn't all tears and weakness."

"You're wit-struck, indeed!" flared Brusul. "I'd as lief fall in love with a sand-cat as that wench. And look at the mess you've got us into here! Your father await-

ing our report — and we prisoned here. Faugh.'"

"We'll get out of this some way," muttered Khal Kan. He felt a reaction of exhaustion. "Tomorrow will bring counsel—"

He heard Brusul grumbling on, but he was drifting now into sleep.

Golden Wings' face floated before him as sleep overtook him. He felt again the strong emotion with which the dryland girl had inspired him.

Then he was asleep, and was beginning to dream. It was the same dream as always that came quickly to Khal Kan.

He dreamed, first, that he was awaking—

HE WAS awaking—in fact, he was f.ow awake. He yawned, opened his eyes, and lay looking up at the white-papered bedroom ceiling.

He knew, as always, that he was no longer Khal Kan, prince of Jotan. He knew that he was now Henry Stevens, of Midland City, Illinois.

Henry Stevens lay looking up at the ceiling of his neat maple bedroom, and thinking of the dream he had just had— the dream in which, as Khal Kan, he had been flogged by the drylanders.

"I've got myself in a real fix, now," Henry muttered. "How am I going to get back to Jotan? But that girl Golden Wings is a darling—"

Beside him, his wife's plump figure stirred drowsily. "What is it, Henry?" she asked sleepily.

"Nothing, Emma," he replied dutifully. He swung out of bed. "You don't need to get up. I'll get my own breakfast."

On slippered feet, Henry Stevens plodded across the neat bedroom. As he carefully shaved, his mind was busy with remote things.

"Even if Jotan can pay the ransom, it'll be a week before I can get back there," he

DREAMERS WORLDS

11

thought "And who knows what the Bunts will be up to in that time?"

Out of the mirror, his own newly-shaven face regarded him. It was the thin, commonplace face of Henry Stevens, thirty-year-old insurance official of Midland City —a face fa?* different from Khal Kan's hard, bronzed, merry visage.

"I suppose I*m crazy to worry about Jo-tan, when it may be all a dream," Henry muttered thoughtfully. "Or is it this that's the dream, after all? Will I ever know?"

He was facing the mystery that had baffled him all his life.

Was Khal Kan a dream—or was Henry Stevens the dream?

All his life, Henry Stevens had been beset by that riddle. It was one that had begun with his earliest childish memories.

As far back as he could remember, Henry had had the dream. As a child, he had every night dreamed that he was a child in a different world far removed from Midland City.

Each night, when little Henry Stevens had lain down to sleep, he had at once slipped into the dream. In that dream, he was a boy in the city Jotan, on the shore of the .Zambrian Sea, on the world of Thar. He was Khal Kan, prince of Jotan, son of the king, Kan Abul.

All through his years of youth and manhood, the dream had persisted. Every night, as soon as he slept, he dreamed that he was awaking. And then, in the dream, he seemed to be Khal Kan again. As Khal Kan, he lived through the day on Thar. And when Khal Kan lay down to sleep, he dreamed that he awoke as Henry Stevens, of Earth!

The dream was continuous. There was nothing incoherent or jerky about it. Day followed day consecutively in the life of Khal Kan, as logically as in the life of Henry Stevens.

Henry Stevens grew up through boyhood and youth, attending his school and

playing his games and going off to college, and finally getting a job with the insurance company, and marrying.

And each night, in Henry's dream Khal Kan was similarly pursuing his life—was learn ing to ride and wieid a sword, and explore the mountains west of Jotanland, and go forth in patrol expeditions against the hated Bunts of the south who were the great enemies of Jotan.

When he was awake and living the life of Henry Stevens, it always seemed to him that Khal Kan and his colorful, dangerous world of Thar were nothing but an extraordinarily vivid dream. All that world, with its strange cities and enormous mountains and forests and alien races, its turquoise seas and crimson sun, were surely nothing but dream.

That was how it seemed to Henry Stevens. But when he was Khal Kan, in the nightly dream, it was exactly the opposite. Then it seemed to Khal Kan that Henry Stevens and his strange world of Earth were the dream.

Khal Kan seldom doubted that. The hardy young prince of Jotan knew there could be no such world as this Earth he dreamed about each night. A world where he was a timid little man who worked with papers at a desk all day long, a world where men dressed and acted differently, where even the sun was not red but yellow. Surely, Khal Kan thought, that could be nothing but a dream that somehow had oppressed him all his life.

Henry Stevens was, not so sure about which was real. There were many times when it seemed to Henry that maybe Thar was the real world, and that Earth and Henry Stevens were die dream.

They couldn't bodi be real! One of these existences of his must be the real one, and the other a strange continued dream. But which?

"If I only knew that," Henry muttered to his reflection in the mirror. "Then,

WEIRD TALES

whichever one is the dream, wouldn't bother me much—I'd know that it wasn't real, whatever happened."

He looked ruefully at himself. "As it is, I've got two lives to worry about. Not that Khal Kan does much worrying!"

His puzzled reverie was broken by the sleepy voice of his wife, calling a mechanical warning from the bedroom.

"Henry, you'd better hurry or you'll be late at the office."

"Yes, Emma," he replied dutifully, and hastened his toilet.

He loved his wife. At least, Henry Stevens loved her—whether or not Henry was real.

"OUT Golden Wings! There was a girl! -*-' His pulse still raced as he remembered her beauty, when he had seen her through Khal Kan's eyes.

How the devil was Khal Kan going to get out of the trap into which the girl's beauty had led him?

He couldn't guess what the reckless young prince would do—for Khal Kan and Henry Stevens had nothing in common in their personalities.

"Oh, forget it!" Henry advised himself irritably. "Thar must be a dream. Let Khal Kan worry about it, when the dream comes back tonight."

But he couldn't forget so easily. As he drove to town in his sedate black coupe, he kept turning the problem over in his mind. And he found himself brooding about it that afternoon over his statements, at his desk in the big insurance office.

If Khal Kan didn't get away, his father might send an expedition out of Jotan to search for him. And that would weaken Jotan at a time when the Bunts were menacing it. He must—

"Stevens, haven't you finished that Blaine statement yet?" demanded a loud voice beside his desk.

Henry started guiltily. It was Carson,

the wasp-like little office manager, who stood glowering down at him.

"I—I was just starting it," Henry said hastily, grabbing the neglected papers.

"Just starting it?" Carson's thin lips tightened. "Stevens, you've got to pull yourself up. You're getting entirely too dreamy and inefficient lately. I see you sitting here and staring at the wall for hours. What's the matter with you, anyway? "

"Nothing, Mr. Carson," Henry said panically. Then he amended, "I've had a few troubles on my mind lately. But I won't let them interfere with my work again."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," advised the waspish little man ominously, and departed.

Henry felt a cold chill. There had been a significant glitter in Carson's spectacled eyes. He sensed himself on the verge of a terrifying precipice—of losing his job.

"If I don't forget about Thar, I will be in trouble," he muttered to himself. "I can't go on this way."

As he mechanically added figures, he was alarmedly trying to figure out a way to rid himself of this obsession.

If he only knew which was reality and which was dream! That was what his mind always came back to, that was the key of his troubles.

If, for instance, he could learn for a certainty that Khal Kan and his life in Thar were merely a dream, as they seemed, then he wouldn't brood about them. There wouldn't be any point in worrying about what happened in a dream.

On the other hand, if he should learn that his life as Khal Kan was real, and that Henry Stevens and his world were the dream, then that too would relieve his worries. It wouldn't matter much if Henry Stevens lost his job—if Henry were only i dream.

Henry was fascinated, as always, by that

DREAMER'S WORLDS

13

thought. He looked around the sunlit

.office, the neat desks and busy men and

' girls, with a flash of derisive superiority.

You may none of you be real at all," he

thought. "You may all just be part of

Khal Kan's nightly dream."

That was always a queer thought, that idea that Earth and all its people, including himself, were just a dream of the prince of Jotan.

"I wish to heaven I knew," Henry muttered baffledly for the thousandth time. "There must be some way to find out which is real."

Yet he could see no test that would give proof. He had thought of and had tried many things during his life, to test the matter.

Several times, he had stayed up all night without sleep. He had thought that if he did not sleep and hence did not dream, it would break the continuity of the dream-life of Khal Kan.

But it had had no effect. For when he finally did sleep, and dreamed that he awoke as Khal Kan, it merely seemed to Khal Kan that he had dreamed he was Henry Stevens, staying up a night without sleep—that he had dreamed two days and a night of the unreal life of Henry Stevens.

No, that had failed as a test. Nor was there any other way. If he could be sure that while he was sleeping and living the dream-life of Khal Kan, the rest of Earth remained real—that would .solve the problem.

The other people of Earth were sure they had remained in existence during his sleep. But, if they were all just figments of dream, their certainty of existence was merely part of the dream.

It was maddening, this uncertainty! He felt that it would drive him to insanity if the puzzle persisted much longer. Yet how was he to solve the riddle?

"Maybe a good psychoanalyst," Henry

thought doubtfully. "A fellow like that might be able to help."

He shrank from his own idea. It would mean telling the psychoanalyst all about his dream-life. And that was something he had not done for years, not since he was a small boy.

When he was a boy, Henry Stevens had confidendy told his family and chums all about his strange dreams—how each night when he slept he was another boy, the boy Khal Kan in Jotan, on the world Thar. He had told them in detail of his life as Khal Kan, of the wonderful black city Jotan, of the red sun and the two pink moons.

His parents had at first laughed at his stories, then had become worried, and finally had forbidden him to tell any more such falsehoods. They had put it all down to a too-vivid imagination.

And his boyhood chums had jeered at his tales, admiring his ability as a liar but rudely expressing their opinions w r hen he had earnestly maintained that he did dream it all, every night.

So Henry had learned not to tell of his dream-life. He had kept that part of his life locked away, and even Emma had never heard of it.

"But still, if a psychoanalyst could help me find out which is real," he thought desperately, "it'd be worth trying—"

THAT afternoon when his work was finished, Henry found himself entering the offices of a Doctor Willis Thorn whom he had heard of as the best psychoalanlyst in the city. He had made an appointment by telephone.

Doctor Thorn wis a solidly built man of forty, with the body of a football player, and calm, friendly eyes. He listened with quiet attention as Henry Stevens, slowly at first and then more eagerly, poured out his story.

"And you say the dream continues log-

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ically, from night to night?" Doctor Thorn asked. "That's strange. I've never heard of a psychosis quite like thai."

"What I want to know is—which is real?" Henry blurted. "Is there any way in which you could tell me whether it's Thar or Earth that's real?"

Doctor Thorn smiled quietly. "I'm not a figment of a dream, I assure you. You see me sitting here, quite real and solid. Too solid, I'm afraid—I've been putting on weight lately."

Henry, puzzledly thoughtful, missed the pleasantry. "You seem real and solid," he admitted, "and so does' this office and everything else, to me. But then I, Henry Stevens, may only be a part of the dream myself—Khai Kan's dream."

Doctor Thorn's brow wrinkled. "I see your point. It's logical enough, from a certain standpoint. But it's also logical that you and I and Earth are real, and that Khal Kan and his world are only an extraordinarily vivid dream your mind has developed as compensation for a monotonous life."

"I don't know," Henry muttered. "When I'm Khai Kan, I'm pretty sure that Henry Stevens is just a dream. But I, Henry Stevens, am not so sure. Of course, Khal Kan isn't the kind of man to brood or doubt much about anything — he's a fighter and reckless adventurer."

Doctor Thorn was definitely interested. "Look here, Mr. Stevens, suppose you write out a complete history of this dream-life of yours—this life as Khal Kan—and bring it with you the next time. It may help me."

Henry left the office, with his new hope on the wane. He didn't think the psychoanalyst could do much to solve his problem.

After all, he thought depressedly as he drove homeward, there was hardly any way in which you could prove that you really existed. You felt you did exist, everyone

around you was sure they did too, but there was no real proof that that whole existence was not just a dream.

His mind came back to Khal Kan's present predicament. How was he going to escape from the drylanders? He brooded on that, through dinner.

"Henry Stevens, you haven't been listening to one word!" his wife's voice aroused him.

Emma's plump, good-natured face was a little exasperated as she peered across the table at him.

"I declare, you're getting more dopey every day!" she told him snapffily.

"I'm just sleepy, I guess," Henry apologized. "I think I'll turn in."

She shook her head. "You go to bed earlier every night. It's not eight o'clock yet."

Henry finally was permitted to retire. He felt an apprehensive eagerness as he undressed. What was going to happen to Khal Kan?

He stretched out and lay in the dark room, half dreading and half anticipating the coming of sleep. Finally the dark tide of drowsiness began to roll across his mind.

He knew vaguely that he was falling asleep. He slipped into darkness. And, as always, the dream came at once. As always, he dreamed that he was awaking—

KHAL KAN awoke, in the dark, cold tent. His whole back was a throbbing pain, and his bound arms and legs were numb.

He lay thinking a moment of his dream. How real it always seemed, the nightly dream in which he was a timid little man named Henry Stevens, on a queer, drab world called Earth! When he was dreaming—when he was the man Henry Stevens —he even thought that he, Khal Kan, was a dream!

Dreams within dreams—but they meant

DREAMER'S WORLDS

If

nothing. Khal Kan had long ago quit worrying about his strange dream-life, The wise men of Jotan whom he had consulted had spoken doubtfully of witchcraft Their explanations had explained nothing. And life was too short, there were too many enemies to slay and girls to kiss and flagons to drink, to worry much about dreams.

"But this is no dream, worse luck!" thought Khal Kan, testing his bonds. "The prince of Jotan, trussed up like a damned hyrk —"

He stiffened. A shadow was moving toward him in the dark tent. It bent over him and there was a muffled flash of steel. Amazedly, Khal Kan felt the bonds of his wrists and ankles relax. They had been cut.

The shadow sniggered. "What would you do without little Zoor to take care of you, Prince?"

"Zoor?" Khal Kan's whisper was astonished. "How in the name of—"

"Easily, Prince," sniggered Zoor. "I always carry a flat blade in the sole of my sandal. But it took me all night to get it out and cut myself free. It's almost dawn."

The cold in the tent was piercing. Through a crack in the flap, Khal Kan could see the eastern sky beginning to pale a little. He could also hear the drylanders on guard out there, shuffling to keep warm.

Khal Kan got to his feet while Zoor was freeing Brusul. Then the little man used his sliver of steel to slice a rip through the back wall of the tent. They three slipped out into the starry darkness.

Khal Kan chuckled a little to himself as he remembered how his dream-self—the man Henry Stevens in that dream-world-had worried about his plight. As though there was anything worth worrying about in that.

They did not stop for a whispered consultation until they were well away from the tent in which they had been kept. The

whole camp of the drylanders was still, except for an occasional drunken warrior staggering between the dark tents, and the stamping of tethered horses not far away.

"The horses are this way," muttered Brusul. "We can be over the Dragals before these swart-skinned devils know we're gone."

"Wait!" commanded Khal Kan's whisper. "I'm not going without that girl. Golden Wings."

"Hell take your obstinacy!" snarled Brusul. "Do you think you can steal the drylanders' princess right out of their camp? They'd chase us to the end of the world. Beside, what would you want with that little desert-cat who had you flogged raw?"

Khal Kan uttered a low laugh. "She's the only wench I've ever seen who was more than a sweet armful for an idle hour. She's flame and steel and beauty—and by the sun, I'm taking her. You two get horses and 'wait by the edge of the camp yonder. I'll be along."

He hastened away before they could voice the torrent of objections on their lips. He had taken Zoor's hiltless knife.

Khal Kan made his way through the dark tents to the big pavilion of the dryland chief. He silently skirted its rear wall, stopping here and there to slash the wall and peer inside.

Thus he discovered the compartment of the pavilion in which the girl slept. It had a guttering copper night-lamp whose flickering radiance fell on silken hangings and on a low mass of cushions on which she lay.

Golden Wings' dark head was pillowed on her arm, her long black lashes slumbering on her cheek. Coolly, Khal Kan made an entrance. He delayed to cut strips from the silken hangings, and then approached her.

His big hand whipped the silken gag around Golden Wings' mouth and tied it before she was half-awake. Her eyes blaz-

WEIRD TALES

ing raging as she recognized him, and her slim silken figure struggled in his grasp with wildcat fury.

Khal Kan was rough and fast. He got the silken bonds around her hands and feet, and then drew a breath of relief.

"Now we ride for Jotan, my sweet," he whispered mockingly to her as he picked up her helpless figure.

Golden Wings" black eyes blazed into his own, and he laughed.

He kissed her eyelids. "This will have to serve as proof of my affections until we can take this damned gag off, my dear," he mocked.

TTER firm body writhed furiously in his ■*•-■- grasp as he went out into the starry night. Silently, bearing the girl easily, he made his way through the sleeping camp.

Stamping shadows loomed up at the camp edge, awaiting him. Brusul and Zoor had horses, and the little spy handed Khal Kan a stolen sword.

"You have the girl!" Zoor sniggered. "Even I could not make a theft so daring —to steal the drylanders' princess out of their own camp!"

"We haven't got her out yet, and it's far to Jotan," snarled Brusul. "Let's get out of here."

Khal Kan vaulted into the saddle and drew Golden Wings' struggling silken figure across the saddle-bow. They walked their horses softly eastward till they were out of earshot of the camp, and then they spurred into a gallop.

The cold dawn wind whistled past Khal Kan's face. Far ahead, the black bulk of the Dragals loomed against the paling sky.

He took the gag from Golden Wings' mouth. In the growing light, the cold anger of the girl's face flared at him.

"Dog of Jotan!" she panted. "You'll be staked out in the desert to die the sun-death, for this crime."

"I didn't free your mouth for words,

my dear," replied Khal Kan. "But for this—"

Her lips writhed under his kiss. His laughter pealed bade on the wind as he straightened again in the saddle.

Golden Wings sobbed with rage. "You'll not be killed at once," she promised breathlessly. "It will take time to think up a death appropriate for you. Even the sun-death would be too easy."

"That's the way I like to hear a girl talk," applauded Khal Kan. "Hell take these wenches who are all softness and whimpers. We'll get along, my pet."

They were still far from the first ridges of the Dragals when the crimson sun came up to light their way. Brusul turned his battered face back to stare across the ocher sands, and then swore and pointed to a remote, low wisp of dust back on the western horizon.

"There the)' come! They're following our tracks, curse them!"

"We can lose them when we reach the mountains," Khal Kan called easily. "Faster!"

"You'll never reach the Dragals," taunted Golden Wings, eyes sparkling now. "My father's horses are swift, Jotan dogs!"

They spurred on. The first low red ridges of the Dragals seemed tantalizingly far away. The sun was rising higher, and its blistering heat had already dispelled the coolness of dawn.

The crimson orb hung almost directly overhead, and they were still hours from the ridges, when Zoor's pony tripped and went down. It rolled with a broken neck as the little man darted nimbly from the saddle.

Khal Kan reined up and came riding back. The dust-cloud of their pursuers was ominously big and close.

"Ride en!" Zoor cried, his wizened face unperturbed. "You can make the ridges without me."

DREAMER'S WORLDS

17

"We caribt, make them," Khal Kan denied coolly. "And it's not our way to separate in face of danger."

He dismounted. Golden Wings was looking westward with exultation in her black eyes. "Did I- not tell you I'd see you caught!" she cried.

Khal Kan cut free her hands and feet. He reached up and set his lips against hers, bruisingly. Then he stepped back, releasing her.

"You can ride back and meet your father's warriors with the glad news that we're here for the taking, my sweet," he told her.

"You're letting Jier go?" yelled Brusul. "We could hold her hostage."

"No," declared Khal Kan. "I'll not see her harmed in the fight."

He laughed up at her, as she sat in the saddle looking down at him with wide, strangely bewildered eyes.

"Too bad I couldn't get you to Jotan with me, my little desert-cat. "But you'll have the pleasure of seeing us killed. Tell your father's warriors to come with their swords out!"

TT^'OR a long moment, Golden Wings -"- looked down at him. Then she set spur to the pony and galloped away to the oncoming dust-cloud.

Khal Kan and his two comrades drew their swords and waited. And soon they saw the force of a hundred drylanders riding up to them. Bladomir was in the lead, his beard bristling. And Golden Wings rode beside him.

"The little hell-cat wants to help kill us," growled Brusul. "You should have slit her throat."

Khal Kan shrugged. "I'd liefer slit my own. Too bad we have to end in a skirmish like this, old friends. I dragged you into it."

"Oh, it's all right, except that we won't be with the armies of Jotan when they go

out to meet Egir and the Bunts," muttered Brusul.

The drylanders were not charging. No sword was unsheathed as they came forward, though old Bladomir was frowning blackly. The desert chieftain halted his horse ten paces away, and spoke to Khal Kan in a roaring voice.

"I ought to kill you all, Jotanians, for taking my daughter away with you. But we're a free people. Since she says she goes with you of her own free will, I'll not interfere."

"Of her own free will?" gasped Brusul. "What in the sun's name—"

GOLDEN WINGS had dismounted and came toward Khal Kan. Her dark eyes met him levelly. She did not speak, nor did he, as she took his hand.

Bladomir laid a sword-blade across their clasped hands, and tossed a handful of the yellow desert sand upon it. Khal Kan felt his heart in his throat. It was the marriage rite of the drylanders.

Zoor and Brusul were staring unbelievingly, the drylanders sadly. But Golden Wings' red lips were sweet fire under his mouth.

"You said that for each lash-stroke last night, I'd pay a hundred kisses," she whispered. "That will take long—my lord,"

He looked earnestly into the brooding sweetness of her face. "No deceptions between us, my little sand-cat!" he said. "When I freed you and let you go to your father, I was gambling that you'd come back—like this."

For a moment her eyes flared surprise and anger. And then she laughed. "No deceptions, my lord! Last night, in my father's pavilion, I knew you were the mate I'd long awaited. But—I thought the lashing would teach you to value me the more!"

Bladomir had mounted his horse. The stoical old desert chieftain and his men

WEIRD TALES

called their farewells, and then rode back westward.

They had left horse and sword for Golden Wings. She rode knee to knee with Khal Kan as they spurred up the sloping sands toward the first red ridges of the Dragals.

Dusk came upon them hours later as they climbed the steep pass toward the highest ridge of the range. One of the pink moons was up and the other was rising. The desert was a vague unreality far behind and below.

"Look back and you can see the camp-fires of your people,"' he told the girl.

Her dark head did not turn. "My people are ahead now, in Jotan."

They topped the ridge. A yell of horror burst from Brusul.

"The Bunts are in Galoon! Hell take the green devils—they've marched leagues north in the last two days!"

Khal Kan's fierce rage choked him as he too saw. Far, far to the east beneath the rosy moons, the lowland plain below the Dragals stretched out to the silvery immensity of the Zambrian Sea.

Down there to the right, on the coast, should have shone the bright lights of the city Galoon, southern most port of Jotan-land.

But instead the city was scarred by hideous red fires, that smoldered through the night like baleful, unwinking eyes.

"Egir's led the green men farther north than I dreamed!'" Khal Kan muttered. "Oh, damn that traitor! If I had my sword at his throat—"

"We'd best ride hard for Jotan before we're cut off," Zoor cried.

They rode north along the ridges, until the red fires of burning Galoon receded from sight. Then they moved down the wesiern slopes of the mountains, and galloped on north along the easier coast road.

Galloping under the rosy moons, Khal Kan pointed far along the shore to a yellow

beacon-fire atop the lighthouse tower outside Jotan.

The square black towers of Jotan loomed sheer on the edge of the silver sea, surrounded by the high black wall which had only two openings—a big water-gate on the sea side, and a smaller gate on the other. The rosy moonlight glinted off the arms of sentries posted thick on the wall, and a sharp challenge was flung down as Khal Kan rode up to the closed gate.

Joyful cries greeted the disclosure of his identity. The gates ground slowly open, and he and Golden Wings galloped in with Brusul and Zoor. Khal Kan led the way through the black-paved stone streets of Jotan to the low, brooding mass of the palace.

When, with Golden Wings' hand in his, he hurried into the great domed, torchlit marble Hall of the Kings, he found his father awaiting him.

Kan Abul's iron-hard face seemed even grimmer than usual.

"The Bunts—" Khal Kan began, but the king finished for him.

"I know—the green men have captured and sacked Galoon, led by my traitorous brother. We've been gathering our forces. Tomorrow we march south to attack—it's good you*re in time to join us. But who's this?"

Khal Kan grinned. "I found no Bunts over the Dragais, but I did find a princess for Jotan. They call her Golden Wings— Bladomir's daughter."'

Kan Abul grunted. "A dryland princess? Well, you've made a bad bargain, girl—this son of mine's an empty-skulled rascal. And tomorrow he goes south with us to battle.''

"And I go with him!" declared Golden Wings. "Do you think I'm one of your Jotan girls that cannot ride or fight?"

Khal Kin Lmghed. "We'll argue that the morrow."

Later that night, in his great chamber of

DREAMER'S WORLDS

!9

seaward windows, with Golden Wings sleeping in his arms, Khal Kan also slept—

HENRY STEVENS brooded as he sat waiting in the office of the psychoanalyst, the next afternoon. Things couldn't go on this way! He'd been reprimanded twice this day by Carson for ne-gleet of his work.

Since he'd awakened this morning, the danger to Jotan had been obsessing his thoughts.

It was queer, but he had had more time to reflect upon the peril than had Khal Kan himself in the dream.

"You can go in now, Mr. Stevens," smiled the receptionist.

Doctor Thorn's alert young eyes caught the haggardness of Henry's face but he was casual as he pushed cigarettes across the desk.

"You had the same dream last night?" he asked Henry.

Henry Stevens nodded. "Yes, and things are getting worse—over there in Thar. The Bunts have taken Galoon in some way, and Egir must be planning to lead them on against Jotan."

"Egir?" questioned the psychoanalyst.

Henry explained. "Egir was my—I mean Khal Kan's — uncle, the younger brother of Kan Abul. He's a renegade to Jotan. He fled from there about—let's see, about four Thar years ago, after Kan Abul discovered his plot to usurp the throne. Since then, he's been conspiring with the Bunts."

Henry took a pencil and drew a little map on a sheet of paper. It showed a curving, crescent-like coast.

"This is the Zambrian Sea," he explained. "On the north of this indented gulf is Jotan, my city—I mean, Khal Kan's city. Away to the south here across the gulf is Buntland, where the barbarian green men live. On the coast between Buntland and Jotan are the independent

city of Kaubos and the southernmost Jo-tanianVity of Galoon.

"When my uncle Egir fled to the Bunts," Henry went on earnestly, "he stirred them up to attack Kaubos, which they captured. We've been planning an expedition to drive them out of there. Five days ago I rode over the Dragal Mountains with two comrades to reconnoiter a possible route by which we could make a surprise march south. But now the Bunts are moving north and have sacked Galoon. There's a big battle coming—"

Henry paused embarrassedly. He had suddenly awakened from his intense interest in exposition to become aware that Doctor Thorn was not looking at the map, but at his face.

"I know it all sounds crazy, to talk about a dream this way," Henry mumbled. "But I can't help worrying about Jotan. You see, if it turned out that Thar was real and that this was the dream—"

He broke off again, and then finished with an earnest plea. "That's why I must know which is real—Thar or Earth, Khal Kan or myself!"

Doctor Thorn considered gravely. The young psychiatrist did not ridicule Henry's bafflement, as he had half expected.

"Look at it from my point of view," Thorn proposed. "You think it's possible that I may be only a figment in a world dreamed by Khal Kan each night. But I know that I'm real, though I can't very well prove it."

"That's it," Henry murmured discout-agedly. "People always take for granted that this world is real—they never even imagine that it may be just a dream. But none of them could prove that it isn't a dream."

"But suppose you could prove that Thar is a dream?" Thorn pursued. "Then you'd know that this must be the real existence."

Henry considered. "That's true. But how can I do that?"

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"I want you to take this memory across into the dream-life with you tonight," Doctor Thorn said earnestly. "I want you, when you awake as Khal Kan, to say over and over to yourself—'This isn't real. I'm not real. Henry Stevens and Earth are the reality'."

"You think that will have some effect?" Henry asked doubtfully.

"I think that in time your dream-world will begin to fade, if you keep saying that," the psychoanalyst declared.

"Well, I'll try it," Henry promised thoughtfully. "If it has any effect, I'll be sure then that Thar is the dream."

Doctor Thorn remarked, "Probably the best thing to happen would be if Khal Kan got himself killed in that dream-life. Then, the moment before he 'died,* the dream of Thar would vanish utterly as always in such dreams."

Henry was a little appalled. "You mean —Thar and Jotan and Golden Wings and all the rest would be gone forever?"

"That's right—you wouldn't ever again be oppressed by the dream," encouraged the psychoanalyst.

Henry Stevens felt a chill as he drove homeward. That was something he hadn't forseen, that the death of Khal Kan in that other life would destroy Thar forever if Thar was the dream.

Henry didn't want that. He had spent just as much of his life in Thar, as Khal Kan, as he had done here on Earth. No matter if that life should turn out to be merely a dream, it was real and vivid, and he didn't want to see it utterly destroyed. He felt a little panic as he pictured himself cut off from Thar forever, never again riding with Brusul and Zooc on crazy adventure, never seeing again that brooding smile in Golden Wings' eyes, nor the towers of Jotan brooding under the rosy moons.

Life as Henry Stevens of Earth, without his nightly existence in Thar, wojdd be

tame and profitless. Yet he knew that he must once and for all settle the question of which of his lives was real, even though it risked destroying one of those lives.

"I'll do what Doctor Thorn said, when I'm Khal Kan tonight," Henry muttered. "I'll tell myself Thar isn't real, and see if it has any effect."

He was so strung up by anticipation of the test he was about to make, that he paid even less attention than usual to Emma's placid account of neighborhood gossip and small household happenings.

That night as he lay, waiting for sleep, Henry repeated over and over to himself the formula that he must repeat as Khal Kan. His last waking thought, as he drifted into sleep, was of that.

KHAL KAN awoke with a vague sense of some duty oppressing his mind. There was something he must do, or say—

He opened his eyes, to look with contentment upon the dawn-lit interior of his own black stone chamber in the great palace at Jotan. On the wall were his favorite weapons—the sword with which he'd killed a sea-dragon when he was fourteen years old, the battered shield with the great scar which he had borne in his first real battle.

Golden Wings stirred sleepily against him, her perfumed black hair brushing his cheek. He patted her head with rough tenderness. Then he became aware of the tramp of many feet outside, of distant clank of arms and hard voices barking orders, and rattle of hurrying hoofs.

His pulse leaped. "Today we go south to meet Egir and the Bunts!"

Then he remembered what it was that dimly oppressed his mind. It was something from his dream—the queer nightly dream in which he was the timid little man Henry Stevens on that strange world called Earth.

He remembered now that Henry Stev-

DREAMER'S WORLDS

21

ens had promised a doctor that he would say aloud, "Thar isn't real—I, Khal Kan, am not real."

Khal Kan laughed. The idea of saying such a thing, of asserting that Thar and Jo-tan and everything else was not real, seemed idiotic.

"That timid little man I am in the dream each night—he thinks I would mouth such folly as that!" Khal Kan chuckled.

Golden Wings had awakened. Her slumbrous black eyes regarded him ques-tioningly.

"It's my own private joke, sweet," he told her. And he went on to tell her of the nightly dream he had had since childhood, of a queer world, called Earth in which he was another man. "It's the maddest world you can imagine, my pet—that dream-world. Men don't even wear swords, they don't know how to ride or fight like men, and they spend their lives plotting in stuffy rooms for a thing they call 'money'—bits of paper and metal.

"And the cream of the joke," Khal Kan laughed, "is that in my dream, I even doubt whether Thar is real. The dream-me believes that maybe this is the dream, that Jotan and Brusul and Zoor and even you are but phantom visions of my sleeping brain."

HE ROSE to his feet. "Enough of dreams and visions. Today "we ride to meet Egir and the Bunts. That is no dream!"

Ten thousand strong massed the fighting-men of Jotan later that morning, outside the walls of the city. Under the red sun their bronzed faces were sternly confident and eager for battle.

Kan Abul rode out through their ranks, with his captains behind him in full armor. Khal Kan was among them, and beside him rode Golden Wings. The desert princess had fiercely refused to be left behind.

Their helmets flashed in die red sun-

light, and the cheers of the troops were deafening as Kan Abul spoke to his captains.

"Egir's main force is already ten leagues north of Galoon," he told them. "There's talk of some new weapon which the Bunts have, with which they claim to be invincible. So we're going to take them by surprise.

■"I'll lead our main force of eight thousand archers and spearmen south along the coast road," the king continued. "My son, you will take our two thousand horsemen and ride over the first ridge of the Dragals, ■=■ then ride south ten leagues. We'll join battle with the Bunts down on the coastal plain, and you can come down from the Dragals and strike their flank. And the gods will be against us if we don't roll them up and destroy them as our forefathers did, generations ago."

Kan Abul led the troops down the coast -road, and as they marched along they roared out the old fighting-song of Jotan.

"The Bunts came up to Jotan, Long ago!"

Hours later, Khal Kan sat his horse amid a thin screen of brush high in the red easternmost ridge of the Dragals, leagues south of Jotan. Golden Wings sat her pony beside him, and their two thousand horsemen waited below the concealment of the ridge.

Down there below them, the red slopes dropped into a narrow plain between the mountains and the blue Zambrian. Far southward, a pall of black smoke marked the site of sacked Galoon. And from there, something like a glittering snake was crawling north along the coast.

"My Uncle Egir and his green devils," muttered Khal Kan. "Now where ate father and our footmen?"

"See—they come!" Golden Wings cried, pointing northward eagerly.

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IN THE north, a glittering serpent of almost equal size seemed crawling southward to meet the advancing Bunt columns. "Your desert eyes see well," declared Khal Kan. "Now we wait." ■ The two armies drew closer to each other. Horns were blaring now down in the Bunt columns, and the green bowmen were hastily forming up in double columns, a solid, blocky formation. More slowly, they advanced.

Trumpets roared in the north, where the footmen of Jotan marched steadily on. Faintly to the two on the ridge came the distant chorus.

"The Bunts fled back on the homeward l rack When blood did flow!"

"There is my uncle, damn him!" exclaimed Khal Kan, pointing.

He felt the old, bitter rage as he saw the stalwart, bright-helmed figure that rode with a group of Bunts at the head of the green men's army.

"He leads them to the battle," he muttered. "He never was a coward, whatever else he is. But today I will wipe out his menace to Jotan."

"They are fighting!" Golden Wings cried, with flaring eagerness.

Clouds of" arrows were whizzing between the two nearing armies, as Jotan archers and Bunt bowmen came within range.

Men began to drop in both armies— but in the Jotan army four fell for every stricken Bunt.

"Something's wrong!" Khal Kan cried. "Every man of ours who is even touched by an arrow is falling. I can't—"

"Poison!" hissed Golden Wings. "They are using poisoned arrows. It's a trick I've heard of the Nameless Men of the far north."

Khal Kan stared unbelievingly. "Even

the Bunts wouldn't use such hideous means! Yet my uncle is ruthless—"

Red rage misted his brain, and his voice was an unhuman roar as he turned and shouted to his tensely waiting horsemen.

"Our men are being slain by foul magic!" he yelled. "Down upon them— we strike for Jotan!"

It was as though he and Golden Wings were riding the forefront of a human avalanche as they charged down the steep slope to the battle.

They smashed home into the flank of the Bunts. The green men gave way in surprise and momentary terror. Kahl Kan's sword whipped like a lash of light among ugly green heads and thrusting spears. As always, in a fight, he moved by pure instinct rather than by conscious design.

Yet he kept Golden Wings a little behind him. The girl was fiercely wielding her light sword against those on the ground who sought to hamstring Khal Kan's horse with spear or sword. His riders were yelling shrilly.

HHHE crazy confusion of the battle took -*- on definite pattern. The Bunts had recoiled from the unexpected attack, but Egk was reforming them.

Khal Kan shouted and spurred to get at Egir. He could see his uncle's giant form, his cynical, powerful face under his helmet, and could hear his bull voice directing the reforming of the Bunt columns.

But he could not smash through the mad melee toward Egir. And now poisoned Bunt arrows were falling, dropping men from their saddles.

Brusul had reached him, was shouting to him. "Prince, your father is slain—one of those hellish arrows."

Khal Kan's heart went cold for a moment. He hardly heard Brusul's hoarse voice, shouting on.

"We can't face those poisoned shafts here in the open! Unless we fall back,

DREAMER'S WORLDS

23

they'M cut us down from a distance like grain in harvest-time!"

Khal Kan groaned. He saw the dilemma. They could not hope to smash the Bunt lines that Egir had reformed—and in a long battle the new poisoned arrows of the green men would take heavier and heavier toll of them.

The safety of Jotan was now a crushing weight on his shoulders. He was king now, and the dire responsibility of the position in this mad moment left him no time even for sorrow for his father. A battle lost here now meant that Jotan was defenseless before Egir's horde.

With a groan, he ordered a trumpeter to sound retreat

"Fall back toward Jotan!" he ordered. "March the footmen back on the double, Brusul—-we'll cover your withdrawal with the horsemen."

Through the long, hot hours of that afternoon, the bitter righting retreat surged back northward to Jotan. The Bunt columns followed closely, the green men howling with triumph.

Ever and again, Khal Kan and his riders charged back against the pursuing Bunts and smashed their front lines, making them recoil. Each time, empty saddles showed the toll of the poisoned shafts.

Sunset was flaring bloodily over the Dragals when the}' came back by that bitter way to the black towers of Jotan. Footsore, reeling with fatigue, Brusul's spearmen marched through the gate into the city.

One last charge back at the Bunts made Khal Kan with the horsemen. He rode back then with Golden Wings, who was swaying in her saddle. They two were the last of the riders to enter the city.

The great gates hastily ground shut, as sweating men labored in the dusk at the winches. Through the loopholes of the guard-towers, Khal Kan looked out and saw the Bunt hordes outside spreading to encircle the whole land side of Jotan.

"The}' have now four fighting-men to every one of ours," he muttered through his teeth. "We are in a trap called a city."

He was staggering, his face grimed and smeared with sweat and dust and blood. Golden Wings pressed his arm in complete faith.

"It was only the foul trick of the poisoned arrows that defeated tis!" she exclaimed. "But for that, we'd have rolled them into the sea."

"We have Egir to thank for that," rasped Khal Kan. "While that man lives, doom hangs like a thundercloud over Jotan."

He stepped to the window and sent his voice rolling out into the gathering darkness."

"Egir, will you settle this man to man, sword to sword? Speak!"

Back came a sardonic voice from the camp of the Bunts.

"I am not so simple, my dear nephew! Your city's a nut whose shell we'll soon crack and pick, so rest you."

Khal Kan set guards at every rod of the wall. Jotan's streets were dark under the two moons, for no torches had been lit this night. The sound of women's voices wailing a requiem for his dead father brought his numbed mind a sick sense of , loss.

No one else in Jotan spoke or broke the stillness. Awful and imminent peril crushed the city's folk. But from the darkness outside the walls came the sound of distant hammering as the Bunt hordes began making scaling-ladders for the morrow.

IjiROM a window of the palace, before he -*- collapsed in drugged sleep of exhaustion, Khal Kan saw the Bunt fires hemming in the whole landward side of the city in their crescent of flame. . . .

Henry Steven's wife had been worried about him all day. He had been

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acting queerly, she thought anxiously, ever since he had awakened that morning.

He had been pale and stricken and haggard since he had awakened. He had not gone to the office at all, a tiling unprecedented. And he had spent most of the day pacing to and fro in the little house, his haunted eyes not seeming to see her, his whole bearing one of intense excitement.

Henry was afraid—afraid of the dread climax to which things were rushing in the other world of Thar. He knew the awful peril in which Jotan now stood. Once those hordes of Bunts got over the wall, the city was doomed.

"I've got to qutt driving myself crazy about it," he told himself desperately that afternoon. "It's just a dream—Thar and Khal Kan must be only a dream."

But his feverish apprehension was not lessened by that thought. No- matter if Thar was only a dream, it was real to him!

TTE KNEW Jotan and its people, from -"•-^- the nightly dreams of his earliest

childhood. Every street of the black city he had known and loved, as Khal Kan. Even if it were only a dream, he couldn't let the old, lovely city and its people be overwhelmed by Egir and his green barbarians.

If Thar was the dream, and the city Jotan was taken and Khal Kan was slain— there would be an end to his precious dream-life, forever. Only the monotonous existence of Henry Stevens would stretch before him.

And if Thar happened to be the reality, then it was doubly vital that Khal Kan's people be saved from that menace.

"Yet what can I do?" Henry groaned inwardly. "What can Khal Kan do? The Bunts will surely break into the city—"

The poisoned arrows, new to the Jotani-ans, gave Egir's green warriors a terrific advantage. That, and their outnumbering hordes, would enable them to scale the

walls of Jotan and then the end would be at hand.

"Damn Egir for his deviltry in using those arrows!" Henry muttered. "I wish I could take a dozen machine-guns across. I'd show the cursed traitor."

It was a vain and idle wish, he knew. Nothing material could traverse the gulf between dream-world and real world, whichever was which. His own body, even —Henry Stevens' body—never crossed that gulf. AH he took into Thar each night were his memories of Henry Stevens' life on Earth during the day, and that seemed only a dream.

He could take memory across, though. And that thought gave pause to Henry. A faint gleam of hope appeared on his horizon. As Khal Kan, he would remember everything that he did or learned now, as Henry Stevens. Suppose that he—

"By Heaven!" Henry exclaimed excitedly. "There's a chance I could do it! A trick to overmatch Egir's poisoned arrows!"

His wife watched him puzzledly as he pored excitedly over certain volumes of their encyclopedia. She saw him hastily jot down notes, and then for a long time that evening he sat, moving his lips, apparently memorizing.

Henry was vibrant with excitement and hope. He, Henry Stevens of Earth, might be able to save Khal Kan's city for him!

"If Khal Kan will only do it!" he thought prayerfully. "If he won't just ignore it as dream—"

Waiting tensely for sleep that night, Henry repeated over and over to himself the simple formula he had gleaned from the encyclopedia.

"Khal Kan must try it!" he told himself desperately.

Sleep came slowly to him. And as he fell asleep, he knew that in his dream he would wake to what might be the last day of Jotan's existence. . . .

DREAMER'S WORLDS

Khal Kan awoke with that thought from his dream vibrating in his mind like an ominous tolling.

"The last day of Jotan!" he whispered. "By all the gods— no!"

Fiercely, the tall young prince rose and buckled on his sword. It was just dawn, and sea-mists shrouded all the city outside in gray fog.

Golden Wings still lay sleeping, Khal Kan heard a persistent hammering from out in the fog, as he went down to the lower level of the palace. Brusul, in full armor, came stalking up to him.

"All's quiet," reported the brawny captain. "The Bunts are still working away at their cursed scaling-ladders. When they are ready, they'll dear the walls of our men with their damned poisoned arrows, and then come over."

Khal Kan went out with him and inspected their defenses. As he supervised the placing of their fighting-men around the wall, and gave the white-faced people rough encouragement, something oppressed Khal Kan's mind. Something he should be doing for the defense of the city—

When he got back to the palace with Brusul, Golden Wings' slim, leather-clad figure came flying into his arms.

"I dreamed the Bunts were already in the city!" she cried. "And then I awoke and found you gone—"

Khal Kan, soothing her, suddenly stiffened. Her words had recalled that vague, forgotten something that had oppressed him.

"My dream!" he exclaimed. "I remember now—in the dream, on that other world, I learned how to make a weapon against the Bunts."

It had all come back to him now—the dream in which Henry Stevens had feverishly memorized a formula out of the science of that dream-world of Earth, to help him in his struggle against the Bunts.

For a moment, Khal Kan clutched at new hope. Then his eagerness faded. After all, that was only a dream. Henry Stevens and Earth and its science were only an insubstantial vision of his sleeping mind, and nothing that he learned in that could be of any value.

"I could wish you'd dreamed away the Bunts entirely," Brusul was saying dryly. "Unfortunately, they're still outside and it won't be many hours before they attack."

Khal Kan was not listening. His mind was revolving the simple formula that Henry Stevens had desperately memorized, in the dream.

"It wouldn't work," he thought. "It couldn't work, when there's no reality to all that—"

Yet he kept remembering Henry Stevens' desperate effort to help him. That timid, thin little man he was in his dream each night—that little man had prayed that Khal Kan would not ignore his help, would try the formula.

Khal Kan reached decision. "I'm going to try it—the thing I learned in the dream!" he told the others.

Brusul stared. "Are you wit-struck? Dreams won't help us now! How could a dream-weapon be of any use?"

"I'm not so sure now it was a dream," Khal Kan muttered. "Maybe this is the dream, after all. Oh, hell take all speculations—dream or reality, I'm going to try this thing."

He shot orders. "Bring all the charcoal you can find, all the sulphur from the street of the apothecaries, and all of the white crystals we use for drying fruits. Those crystals were called 'saltpeter' in the dream."

SCARED, wondering men brought the materials to the palace. There, Brusul and Zoor and Golden Wings watched mystifiedly as Khal Kan supervised their preparation.

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He remembered clearly the formula that Henry Stevens had memorized in the dream. He had the men pound and pulverize and mix, until a big mass of granular black powder was the result.

"Now bring small metal vases—enough to hold all this—and lampwicks and day," he ordered.

A captain came running, breathless. "The Bunts have finished their ladders and I think they're soon going to make their attack, sire!" he cried.

"And our leader lingers here, muddling in minerals!" cried Brusul gustily. "Khal Kan, forget this crazy dream and make ready for battle!"

T/" HAL KAN paid no attention. He was •*•** having the men stuff the small metal vases with the black powder, stopping their mouths with clay through which a fuselike wick protruded.

"Distribute these vases to all our men along the walls," he ordered. "Tell them, that when the Bunts place their ladders, they are to light the fuses and fling the vases down among the green warriors, at my command."

"Hell destroy all dreams!" raged Brusul. "What good will such a crazy plan do? Do you think dropping vases on the Bunts will stop them?"

"I don't know," Khal Kan muttered. "In the dream, I thought it would. The dream-me called the powder 'gunpowder' and the vases grenades.' And in the dream they seemed a more terrible weapon even than the poisoned arrows."

Yells from the walls and the warning blare of trumpets ripped across the sunlit city. A great cry swept through Jotan's streets.

"The Bunts are coming!"

"To the wall!" Khal Kan cried.

From the parapet atop the great wall, the rising sun revealed an ominous spectacle. From all around the landward side

of Jotan, the hordes of the Bunts were surging toward the city.

First came a line of green bowmen whose hissing, poisoned shafts were already rattling along the top of the wall. Jotanian warriors sank groaning as the swift poison sped into their blood. Khal Kan held his shield up, and swept Golden Wings behind him as they waited.

Behind the first line of bowmen came Bunts carrying long, rough wooden scaling-ladders. Behind these came the main masses of the stocky green men, armed with bows and short-swords, led by Egir himself.

The ladders came up against the wall, and the blood-chilling Bunt yell broke around the city as the green warriors swarmed catlike up them. Joranians who sought to push over the ladders were smitten by arrows.

"Over the wall and open the gates!" Egir's bull voice was yelling to his green men. "Let us into Jotan!"

The main horde of the Bunts was already surging toward the gates of the city, while their attackers on the ladders sought to win the wall.

"Now—light the fuses and drop the vases!" Khal Kan yelled along the parapet, through the melee.

Torches at readiness set the wicks alight. The seemingly harmless little metal vases were tossed over into the surging mass of the Bunts.

A series of ear-splitting crashes shook the air, like thunder. White smoke drifted away to show masses of the Bunts felled by the explosions.

"Gods!" cried Brusul appaliedly. "Your dream-weapon is thunder of heaven itself!"

"Magic!" yelled the Bunts, shrinking back aghast from their own dead, tumbling in panic off the ladders. "Flee, brothers!"

The fear-maddened green warriors surged back from the walls of Jotan, breaking in panic-stricken, disorganized masses.

DREAMER'S WORLDS

27

Egir's bull voice could be heard raging, trying to rally them, but in vain.

The men of Jotan who had lighted and flung the new weapons were as horrified as their victims. Khal Kan's yell aroused them.

"Horses, and after them!'' he cried. "Now is our chance to avenge yesterday!"

The gates ground open—and every horsemen left in jotan galloped out after Khal Kan and Golden Wings in pursuit of the routed, green men.

The Bunts made hardly any effort to turn and fight They were madly intent on putting as great a distance as possible between them and Jotan.

"It's Egir I'm after!'' Khal Kan cried to Brusul. "While he lives, no safety for Jotan!"

"See — there he rides!" cried Golden Wings' silvery voice.

Khal Kan yelled and put spur to his horse as he saw Egir and his Bunt captains riding full tilt toward the Dragals, in an effort to escape.

They rode right through the Seeing Bunts in pursuit of the traitor. They were overtaking him, when Egir turned and saw them coming. The Jotanian renegade uttered a yell, and he and his green captains turned.

" 'Ware arrows!" shouted Brusul, behind Khal Kan.

Khal Kan saw the Bunts loosing the vicious shafts, but he saw it only vaguely, for only Egir's sardonic face was clear to him as he charged.

Sword' out, he galloped toward his uncle. Something stung his arm, and he heard a scream from Golden Wings and knew an arrow had hit him.

"My dear nephew, you've two minutes to live!" panted JEgir, his eyes blazing hate and triumph as they met and their swords clashed. "You're a dead man now—"

Khal Kan felt a cold, deadly numbness creeping through his arm with incredible

rapidity. He summoned all his fa! ing strength to swing his sword up.

It left his guard open and Egir stabbed viciously as their horses wheeled. Then Khal Kan's nerveless arm brought his blade-down.

"This for my father, Egir!"

The sword shore the traitor's shoulder and neck half through. And a moment after Egir dropped from the saddle, Khal Kan felt his own numb body falling. He could not feel the impact with the ground.

His mind was darkening and everything was spinning around. It was as though he whirled in a black funnel, and was being sucked down into its depths, yet he could still hear voices of those bending over him.

"Khal Kan!" That was Golden Wings, he knew.

He tried to speak up to them out of the roaring darkness that was engulfing him.

"Jotan—safe now, with Egir gone. The kingship to Brusul. Golden Wings—"

He could not form more words. Khal Kan knew that he was dying. But he knew, at last, that Thar was not a dream, for even though his own life was passing, nothing around him was vanishing. But, his dark-enirfg brain wondered, if That had been real all the time—

But then, in a flash of light on the very verge of darkness, Khal Kan saw the truth that neither he nor the other had ever imagined. . . .

HENRY STEVENS lay dead upon his bed in the neat bedroom of his little suburban cottage. And in the room, his sobbing wife was trying to tell her story to the physician and the psychiatrist.

"It was all so sudden," she sobbed. "I awoke, and found that Herry was clenching his fists as though in a convulsion and was shouting—something about Jotan being safe now. And then—he was dead—"

The physician was soothing her as he

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led her to another room. When he came back, his face was keen as he looked at Doctor Thorn.

"You heard her story?" he said to the psychiatrist. "I telephoned you because I understood he'd been consulting you. I can't understand this thing at all."

He pointed to Henry's motionless figure. "The man had nothing organically wrong with him, as I happen to know. Yet he died in his sleep—as though from terrible mental shock."

"You've hit it, Doctor," nodded Doctor Thorn thoughtfully. "If my guess is right, he was dreaming, and when his dream-self was killed, Henry Stevens died, also."

He went on to tell the physician of the case.

The practitioner's face became incredulous as he heard.

"The poor devil!" he ejaculated. "He had that dream and dream-life all his life long, and when his dream-self died, he died too by mental suggestion."

"I am not sure that that other life of his, that world of Thar, was a dream," Doctor Thorn replied soberly.

"Oh, come, Doctor," protested the other. "If Henry Stevens and Earth were real, and we know they were, Thar and Khal Kan must have been only his dream."

"I wonder," replied the psychiatrist. "Did you ever hear of mental rapport?

Cases where two people's minds are so tuned that one experiences the other's feelings and thoughts, when his own mind is relaxed and quiescent? There have been a good many such provable cases.

"Suppose," Thorn went on, "that Henry Stevens was a unique case of that. Suppose that his mind happened to be in rapport, from the time of his birth, with the mind of another man—another man, who was not of Earth but of some world far across the universe from ours? Suppose that each man's subconscious was able to experience the other man's thoughts and feelings, when his own consciousness was relaxed and sleeping? So that each man, all his life, seemed each night to dream the other man's life?"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the practitioner. "If that were true, both Henry Stevens and Khal Kan were real, on far-separated worlds?"

Doctor Thorn nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, and the two men would be so much in rapport that the death of one would kill the other. It's only a theory, and we can never know if it's true. Probably he knows, now—"

Henry Stevens, lying there, seemed to be smiling at their speculations. But it was not his own smile that lay upon his face. It was the reckless, gay, triumphant smile of Khal Kan.

"Great Gitche Manitou . . - punish — punish — punisn!"

From THE WiTCH'S TALE—that highly popular radio broadcast which thrilled you so often over the air — comes a story specially adapted for the magazine by that famous program's author and director, Alonzo Deen Cole.

7ke pirits of the Lake

By ALONZO DEEN COLE

Was it at the bidding of the "Old Ones" that slime — loathsome, hideously green — rose from the lake's dreadful depths to

vengeance . . . ?

exact monstrous

ROGER BENTON slammed the bungalow door behind him and to stamped down the path to the shore. Another month in this wilderness and Bernice would be going about dressed in a blanket and beads, he angrily told himself—for she acted and thought more like a damned Indian every day. He'd been a fool to let her buy this island a

stone's throw from the reservation on the advice of these dumb doctors. Her lungs hadn't shown any improvement here; her condition was worse, if anything—and as for the effects of this "Back to Nature" stuff on him —.' He cursed aloud, bitterly. From across the placid lake a monotonous Indian chant beat at his eardrums, and weak tears of self pity welled into his eyes.

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Back in Chicago, his marriage to the semi-invalid Bernice had seemed a good bargain, foe she was wealthy, very generous, and had never attempted to pry too deeply into his outside affairs. But here, where he saw no one but her and a handful of stinking red-skins; where he heard nothing but that savage caterwauling and her incessant coughing—! He flung himself into the canoe and paddled furiously toward the mainland—and Hilda Johannson. What a difference that Swedish farmer's daughter could make in his exile, if she would only cast aside her backwoods scruples! He railed inwardly at her now, for her frigid aloofness had long since fired him with a consuming infatuation. Nothing was right on this damn Michigan peninsula!

Floating across the slimy lake in ceaseless, maddening rhythm, the savage chant intruded itself upon his mind again and drove out thoughts of Hilda. He laid aside the paddle for a moment to stop his cars, so unbearable had the sound become. It had begun early this evening when the pale new moon cast its first reflection on the waters, and it would continue every night until this moon had waned. It had been Bernice's infantile delight in its crazy significance that precipitated his furious departure from the house. She had said: "It's a ceremony the tribe holds every year 'at this time to appease the Spirits of the Lake—the Neebanawbaigs, they call them. This is a holy lake to the Indians, you know; and they say if anyone affronts it, or harms its friends, the Neebanawbaigs take terrible vengeance!" Here she had laughed self-consciously — as well she might!—before she went on:

"Two Horses—that's our old housekeeper's cousin, you know—spoke so convincingly of its terrors that I made it a peace offering this afternoon. I cast a bouquet of garden flowers on the waters, and said a prayer Two Horses taught me. Now,

no one may harm me, for fear the Spirits of the Lake will punish them."

That last bit of addle-brained nonsense had marked the limit of Roger's endurance. - What civilized man wouldn't have blown up and flown out of the house in disgust after that? And, because Bernice's silliness had driven him away so early in the evening, he would arrive at his rendezvous with Hilda half an hour too soon. Roger Benton felt terribly abused.

Hilda, following the custom of her sex, did not appear until much later than the waiting man expected.

When she finally came in sight, she presented a striking contrast to the thin, dark, ailing woman he had left in anger. Tall, strong, blonde as her Viking forebears, she strode with lithe grace along the forest path.

Eyes that were too cold, and a thin lipped mouth too firmly set, marred the beauty of her face. But Roger Benton had never noted these imperfections. His long wait had sharpened his desire. Forgetting past rebuffs, he rushed to meet her and clasped her in his arms.

She coolly disengaged herself and sat down upon a fallen tree.

Irritably, he threw himself beside her. "Hilda, why do you hold me off like this?" he pouted. "You know I'm mad—insane about you."

Her thin lips curled in a faint smile. "You have no right to be mad about me —you're a married man."

"We're not children! You know how little I care about my wife! Besides, it's only a question of time before—" He paused.

"Before she will die, you mean," she finished simply.

He turned his head away. "Yes. She thinks she's getting better; but the doctors don't tell her what they tell me." His arms clasped her again, "And the moment I'm free, I'll marry you—I swear it! But I

THE SPIRITS OF THE LAKE

31

can't wait for you till then—I've got to have you!"

She thrust him away, roughly this time. "You will have me only as your wife. I have told you that before."

His hands fell helplessly to his sides. Petulantly, resentfully, he complained, "If you really mean that, why don't you stop making a fool of me? Why do you meet me here by the lake each night, playing with me as a cat does with a mouse?"

She looked at him silently for a moment; then quietly, "Because I hope you will not always be a mouse. If you are as mad about me as you say, you will not let a woman you hate stand between us much longer.'

"What can I do? Divorce is out of the question."

"Of course—then her money would be taken from you."

He was annoyed. "I'm not thinking only of moa.

She leaned close to him, "I'm not thinking only of divorce."

He stared at her for a long moment, and her cold, unwavering eyes returned his gaze. His eyes fell and she began to talk rapidly in her low, compelling voice.

THE pathetic little cough rasped out again. At the sound, the man in the stern dipped his paddle more deeply into the faint shimmer of the scum-covered water.

After a struggling, breathless moment, the coughing spell abated and its victim spoke:

"It's wonderful to be on the lake with you again, Roger—it's been so Jong since we've been in the canoe together." She laughed happily. "I feel as though we were beginning a second honeymoon."

Roger Benton glanced briefly at his frail wife, grunted, and returned his attention to the paddle. In the silence that followed the throbbing hum of th; Indian

chant slid steadily over the water — a brooding monotone of endless cadence.

Finally Bernice spoke again.

"How solemn the chant sounds tonight: Like the hymn it really is—a prayer for the dying."

"For the—dying?" His voice held a sharp, uncertain quality.

"Yes. This is Indian Summer, you know —the Moon of Falling Leaves, of dying things. That song is a tribute to fading nature. Rather beautiful, don't you think?"

The paddle trailed unheeded, as he repeated abstractedly: "The Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things."

She leaned forward a little, her dark eyes searching his face anxiously. "Roger —you act so strangely tonight. Aren't you well, dear?"

He straightened, recovered himself. "I'm quite all right." He resumed his jerky, erratic stroke, as she readied to place a small hand tenderly on his knee.

"I know how unhappy you are here. But I'll be well again soon, and we'll go back to the city." She laughed self-consciously, "I would like to return here for just one day each year, though—to renew my offering to the Spirits of the Lake. I've taken their protection very seriously, you see."

The muscles of his jaw working spasmodically under the tanned skin, and he opened his mouth as though to speak.

Quickly, placatingly, she forestalled him.

"Please don't be annoyed, dear, it's such a pretty legend."

He turned his head abruptly away; as though in anger or to avoid her eyes. His strokes grew faster, clumsier; stabbing angry slashes that sent the frail craft forward in plunging leaps. The woman, a little fearfully, looked behind her to see where this mad race was heading. Then she spoke again, with patently assumed unconcern:

"Roger, sharp rocks are just ahead—

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those the Indians call the "Spirits Talons'." She continued, as though to herself, "They say the Road to the Villages of the Happy Dead leads over such rocks as those—rocks with a knife-like edge, upon which only the Good can keep their footing; the Bad fall off into an abyss of eternal torment."

His hysterical snarl brought her rudely to a stop.

"Stop talking that filthy savage rot! It can't frighten me!"

Her eyes grew wide in amazement. His voice rose in a crazy yell:

"I'm not afraid of "spirits'! They can't hurt me—and men will say it was an accident! An accident!"

Madly he continued, repeating again and again, "An accident!"

Her hands mounted in futile gesture to her throat and she began to cough; gasping, terror laden words tumbling out between the spasms.

"You're making for the rocks on purpose—you know I can't swim—you mean to drown me—Roger—don't—Turn back —turn back—"

His voice and stroke beat on. "Accident—accid ent—"

The blood drained from her face, she clawed frantically at the gunwales—tried terribly to scream.

With a rending crash, the canoe splintered to matchwood on the razor-edged rocks.

Rogfcr Benton swam to shore and fell, sobbing, to the ground. From far away, the savage chant in honor of the Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things—still rose and fell. But he didn't hear it now. The sound of a canoe ripping upon sharp rocks was repeating over and over inside his mind. He was hearing again the horrible, choking struggles of a drowning woman. He was hearing again the words she'd cried before the waters closed about her—words that would reverberate within his brain for-

"Oh, God—great gitche Manitou—Spirits of the Lake—" she'd prayed, "—punish—punish—punish—"

T TP THE rough path from the water's ^ edge toiled the grim little cortege Roger Benton had been dreading for a week. He watched the two approaching Indians and thev grisly burden from his bedroom window, then steeled his nerves for the inevitable knock upon his door. When it came, he almost screeched his answer.

The voice of Nahma, the old squaw who Bernice had engaged as housekeeper, replied, "Men of my tribe—they find Missis."

He quavered. "I'll be down."

How he managed to descend the stairs (o the living room, he didn't know, nor how he forced his rebellious eyes to focus themselves on the horror before him. But he did manage, somehow.

His gaze took in the sodden divan, on which they'd placed her, huge spots of lake water darkening the upholster}-; the dripping figure with gaping mouth and wide eyes staring out of a pulpy mask the weeds and moss that trailed from the streaming hair to the rug below.

And, in a corner of his chaotic mind a thought intruded that some element was missing from the scene. He searched for it vaguely.

It was the brisk little county coroner who, later that day, found it for him.

Wagging his head sympathetically as lie prepared to leave after completion of his professional duties, "Folks round here were mighty shocked when they heard 'bout your accident on th' lake an' Mrs. Benton's drownin'. "Course, we haven't known your wife long; but everyone who met her thought she was a mighty fine lady —th' Injuns especially." He paused, and looked thoughtfully at the floor. "Funny thing bout the slime, ain't it?"

THE SPIRITS OF THE LAKE

33

Something clicked in Roger Benton's brain. "Slime?"'

The little man nodded. "You know, the slime that covers the whole lake this time o' year. There wasn't none on her. The body should've been covered with it, by rights, after bein' over a week in th' water. Don't seem natteral like, does it?" He grinned rather sheepishly. " 'Course, I don't hold with what them Injuns says 'bout it."

With an effort the other murmured, "What do they say about it?"

"Some heathen stuff 'bout th' d'ceased* bein' a friend of the lake sperits, an' them savin' her from th' deefilement o' th' slime." He chuckled. "What stuff them dumb savages do think up!"

Roger Benton didn't answer. He sat very still, listening to the chant that drummed against his ears through the open window.

II

AS HE paddled evenly through the water the copper-skinned boatman rested a stolid gaze upon the back of the cringing figure who sat in the center of his canoe.

A very different look burned from the eyes of the expensively dressed blonde woman who reclined beside the cringing figure—a look of disgust and contempt which soon took form in rancid words; "If you could only see yourself!" she sneered. "You're white as a sheet and trembling like a frightened dog."

Benton turned bloodshot, pleading eyes upon her. "Won't you change your mind, Hilda? Please tell him to take us back."

"When we're nearly there?'' Her jaw set grimly. "Not much I won't! It's taken me two years to get you this far—and now you're going the rest of the way; you won't cheat me any longer out of the pleasure of

swelling it over my old neighbors in that swanky island bungalow."

He stretched a quivering hand toward her, "Hilda, I'll buy you a nicer place. I'll buy you anything you like, if you won't make me go back there."

She knocked his hand aside roughly. "You could buy me the most expensive mansion on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't give me the kick of living on that island across from Paw's farm where I used to be so poor."

A flash of forgotten spirit was in his voice as he leaned toward her out of earshot of the oarsman: "Haven't you done enough to me already? Have you forgotten the reason you're not poor now is that you made me commit a murder you had planned?"

"Shut up, you fool!" she hissed through clenched teeth, "And get this through your head, once and for all: 7 planned nothing—/ knew nothing— I did nothing! And you or nobody else can prove otherwise!"

The canoe slid to a stop upon the island shore. "We're here. Get up and help me out," she commanded.

For a long moment he remained motionless, glaring at her with a burning hatred. Under her own steady stare, his gaze wavered, dropped. When he raised it again it was a vacant, hopeless thing.

As his wife picked a fastidious way through the shells and weed that covered the shore, old Nahma waddled down the h'ily path toward them. Hilda peered past her at the coveted bungalow. Satisfied with what she saw she turned patronizingly to the squaw.

"Well old woman looks from here like you've taken pretty good care of things." Nahma returned an impassive nod then gazed silently into her eyes. Hilda felt vaguely uncomfortable and abruptly ordered:

"I want you to go back to the mainland

WEIRD TALES

with Two Horses." She indicated the Indian who had brought them. "You can help him bring back our baggage." With a grunt Nahma swung herself into the canoe and followed the two with her beady eyes as they mounted the path to the house.

Roger Benton reached the porch steps, stumbled as he mounted them, and was curbed for his clumsiness. As Hilda opened the door, a sudden swell of sound smote his ears. He raised his head quickly, like a startled animal.

The tribesmen had begun their yearly chant across the lake.

Hilda chuckled dryly, "You've heard that before. This is the singing season for these fools."

"Yes—" he muttered, "it's the 'Moon of Falling Leaves—of dying things'." Then he fell groveling at her feet. "I can't go in that house," he sobbed, "I've got to leave this island! I'm afraid here—I'm afraidr

She swung the door open, pushed him inside and down on the nearest chair. Then she cursed, sneered, threatened and cajoled until his hysteria had spent itself. When his sobs of unreasoning terror ceased, she thrust a flask of whiskey in his hand and told him, "I'm going to have a look through the house and make sure that squaw's taken care of things. You stay quiet here till I come back and,"—with a sneer—"don't let that conscience of yours get going again."

The chant from across the lake beat monotonously against his ears. After awhile he became aware of another sound—a dry little rasping that seemed somehow familiar, native to the place. He found a kind of peace in the strangely wonted sound— until his mind snapped open and he realized what it was.

It was an invalid's rasping cough.

His scream brought Hilda down the stairs almost instantly.

Voice .breaking to treble pitch in his terror, he indicated the closed door that led to the living room, "I heard Bernice coughing—in /here!"

She slammed him back into the chair. "You've got her on your brain, that's all."

"No—no," he whispered. "I heard her, I tell you!"' He stiffened, sat upright.

Behind that closed door something had coughed again. Hilda wheeled, a light of bewilderment in her face. "Say, I heard something that time!" She strode purposefully to the door.

He found her laughing. -"Absolutely empty—not a soul here but ourselves." Then both heard the cough again.

rle stood as if frozen she, puzzled. "Funny—we both hear it, yet this room is empty. Oh—!" impatiently, she threw off the unaccustomed fear that strove to grip her—"You've got me imagining things now, that's the whole answer."

Neither spoke for a full minute. Both stood tense. Listening. Waiting. Finally, Hilda shivered slightly. "Must be going to rain," she muttered, "feel how damp it's grown suddenly?"

"Yes," he quavered, "very damp—suddenly." She followed his gaze, riveted to a spot on the floor.

"Where did that come from? A minute ago this room was as neat as a pin. What is it?"

He mumbled thickly, his hands shaking: "It's slime—green slime, from the bottom of the lake."

"That squaw didn't clean—"

He interrupted her, "It wasn't there a minute ago. You said that yourself."

"I must have overlooked it!" Her voice was wavering, uncertain now. "There's another—and another, right on the divan!"

"Yes! And there—and there—"

All over the room began to appear patch after patch of the filthy slime forming silently under their horrified eyes. As they

THE SPIRITS OF THE LAKE

35

stared, the patch on the divan spread— grew till it almost covered the cushions.

He gibbered, pointing a shaking finger at it. "That's where they laid her, after—"

She turned on him savagely. "If you don't stop that, I'll brain you! There's a natural explanation for this. Ugh!" She broke oif, revulsed, as she felt the cold spat of the green stuff on her hand.

"The room is full of it," he shrieked. "It's from the lake! From the Spirits of the Lake she prayed to punish me! I knew they would if I came back here!"

"They have nothing against me —1 had nothing to do with—!" She was interrupted by his scream of terror. Her eyes followed his, and stark panic fell upon her.

On the sodden divan lay a dripping figure with wisps of weed and moss hanging from its matted hair.

An instant later they were racing madly down the wet, crumbling path to the beach and a canoe. From the sky above them, from trees, bushes, even rocks it seemed, sprang the clammy, fetid slime, hurling itself into their faces, raising their gorge with its noxious odor, chilling their hearts with each wet impact.

Suddenly, the man stopped short. The woman ran on, screamed back at him to follow.

"No!" he sobbed. "Nut out on that lake. Canli you see that's what it wants— to get us on the water! 3 '

Apparently she did not hear him for she continued to call on him to follow. She reached the canoe, clambered in, and beckoned to him wildly. All at once her voice soared frantically higher. She pointed.

"Look behind you!"

He pivoted, saw the grisly specter of the drowned Bernice, its dripping arms outstretched. He floundered down the path, fell into the canoe, and grasped the paddle Hilda pressed into his hands. With the strength of despair he propelled the frail shell into the lake. After a dozen strokes,

he turned to glimpse the misty figure, standing at the marge; still with arms outstretched.

A moment later the paddle broke.

He sat staring at the pieces. Then "Worms" he mumbled. "It was eaten through by worms—worms from the lake."

"We're drifting—drifting toward the rocks!" The woman strove to waken him, to stir him to action. "DO something. We'll be killed!"

He shook his head. The canoe wasn't drifting—some force, powerful, utterly irresistible, was drawing them along!

The woman screeched, "The rocks!— we're going to -strike!"

He nodded slowly. A terrible quiet descended upon him; the quiet of the long-condemned. Slowly he said, as though repeating a. lesson from memory, "The Indians call these rocks the Spirit's Talons — the road to death leads over rocks like those—only the Good can keep their footing-—the Bad fall off into an abyss of eternal torment."

"They won't harm ME!" Hilda shouted. 'Tm going to swim—swim to safety."

He raised a deterring hand, "It's no use to try. The Spirits of the Lake will punish—as she said they would."

Sl*e shook him off, plunged into the foaming water. He quietly watched her useless struggles as the canoe bore ever faster toward the rocks.

Nahma, the old Indian woman, found their bodies days later where the lake had cast them out. The green slime which had long since disappeared from the surface of the waters, its season past, sheathed Hilda and Roger Benton in its viscous embrace. She looked for a time out of her expressionless dark face at the grisly sight, then waddled heavily away.

On the other side of the island that night, she and Two Horses each flung a handful of late garden flowers on the quiet bosom of the lake.

Uhe

K

erewolf Howls

BY CLIFFORD BALL

The men who were watting for thai wolf had silver bullets in their muskets.

TWILIGHT had come upon the slopes of die vineyards, and a gentle, caressing breeze drifted through the open casement to stir into further disorder the papers upon the desk where Monsieur Etienne Delacroix was diligently applying himself. He raised his leonine bead, the hair of which had in his later years turned to gray, and stared vacantly from beneath bushy brows at the formation of a wind-driven cloud as if he thought that the passive elements of the heavens could, if they so desired, aid him in some momentous decision.

There was a light but firm tap on the door which led to the hall of the chateau. Monsieur Delacroix blinked as his thoughts were dispersed and, in some haste, gathered various documents together and thrust them into the maw of a large envelope before bidding the knocker to enter.

Pierre, his eldest son, came quietly into the room. The father felt a touch of the pride he could never quite subdue when Pierre approached, for he had a great faith in his son's probity, as well as an admiration for the straight carriage and clear eye He, at his own age, could no longer achieve. Of late he had been resting a great many 'matters pertaining to the management of the Chateau Dore and the business of its vineyards, which supported the estate, on the broad shoulders poised before him.

But Etienne Delacroix had been born in a strict household and his habits fashioned in a stern school, and was the lineal

descendant of ancestors who had planted their peasant's feet, reverently but independently, deep into the soil of France; so visible emotions were to him a betrayal of weakness. There was no trace of the deep regard he felt for his son evident when he addressed the younger man.

"Where are your brothers? Did I not ask you to return with them?''

"They are here, Father. I entered first, to be certain that you were ready to receive us."

"Bid them enter."

Jacques and Francois came in to stand with their elder brother and were careful to remain a few inches in his tear; he was the acknowledged spokesman. Their greetings were spoken simultaneously; Jacques' voice breaking off on a high note which caused him obvious embarrassment, for he was adolescent. Together, thought Monsieur Delacroix, they represented three important steps in his life, three payments on account to posterity. He was glad his issue had all been males; since the early death of his wife he had neither cared for any woman nor taken interest in anything feminine.

"I have here, my son, some papers of importance," he announced, addressing Pierre. "As you observe, I am placing them here where you may easily obtain them in the event of my absence." Suiting the action to the word, he removed the bulky envelope to a drawer in the desk and turned its key, allowing the tiny piece of metal to remain in its lock. "I am grow-

"He flung back his head — whimpering,"

ing older"—his fierce, challenging eyes swept the trio as if he dared a possible contradiction—"and it is best that you are aware of these accounts, which are relative to the business of the chateau,"

"Non, nonl" chorused all three. "You are as young as ever, papa!"

"Sacre blue! Do you name me a liar, my children? Attend, Pierre!"

"Yes, papa."

"I have work for you this night."

The elder son's forehead wrinkled. "But the work; it is over. Our tasks are completed. The workers have been checked, the last cart is in the shed "

"This is a special task, one which requires the utmost diligence of you all. It is of the wolf."

"The werewolf!" exclaimed , Jacques, crossing himself.

WEIRD TALES

THE other brothers remained silent, but mingled expressions of wonder and dislike passed across their features. Ever since the coming of the wolf the topic of its depredations had been an unwelcome one in the household of the Chateau Dore.

"Mov Dieu, Jacques!" exploded the head of the house. "Have you, too, been listening to the old wives' tales? Must you be such an imbecile, and I your father? Rubbish! There can be no werewolves; has not the most excellent Father Cromecq flouted such stones ten thousand times? It is a common wolf; a large one, true, but nevertheless a common mongrel, a beast from the distant mountain. Of its ferocity we are unfortunately well aware; so it must be dispatched with the utmost alacrity."

"But, the workers say, papa, that there have been no wolves in the fields for more than a hundred "

''Pesle! The ever verbose workers! The animal is patently a vagrant, a stray beast driven from the mountains by the lash of its hunger. And I, Etienne Delacroix, have pronounced that it must die!"

The father passed a heavy hand across his forehead, for he was weary from his unaccustomed labor over the accounts. His hands trembled slightly, the result of an old nervous disorder. The fingers were thick, and blunt from the hardy toil of earlier years; the blue veins were still corded from the strength which he had once possessed.

"It is well," said Pierre in his own level tones. "Since the wolf came upon and destroyed poor little Marguerite D'Es-tourie, tearing her throat to shreds, and the gendarmes who almost cornered it were unable to slap it because they could not shoot straight, and it persists in "

"It slashed the shoulder of old Gavroche who is so feeble he cannot walk without two canes!" interrupted Francois, excitedly.

" ravaging our ewes," concluded

the single-minded Pierre, who was not to

be side-tracked once he had chosen his way, whether in speech or action. "The damage to our flocks has been great, papa. It is just that we should take action, since the police have failed. I have thought this wolf strange, too, although I place no faith in demons. If it but seeks food, why must it slay so wantonly and feed so little? It is indeed like a great, gray demon in appearance. Twice have I viewed it, leaping ' across the meadows in the moonlight, its long, gray legs hurling it an unbelievable distance at every bound. And Marie Poly-dore, of the kitchens, found its tracks only yesterday at the very gates of the chateau!"

"I have been told," revealed Jacques, flinging his hands about in adolescent earnestness, "that the wolf is the beast-soul of one who has been stricken by the moon-demons. By day he is as other men, but by night, though he has the qualities of a saint he cannot help himself. Perhaps he is one with whom we walk and talk, little guessing his dreadful affliction."

"Silence!" roared Monsieur Delacroix. One of his clenched fists struck the desk a powerful blow and the sons were immediately quieted. "Must I listen to the ranting and raving and driveling of fools and imbeciles? Am I not still the master of the Chateau Dore? I will tend to the accursed matter as I have always, will I not? I have always seen to the welfare of the dwellers in the shadow of the Chateau Dore! And with the help of the good God I shall continue to do so, until the last drop of my blood has dried away from my bones. You comprehend?"

In a quieter tone, after the enforced silence, he continued: "I have given orders to both the foreman and Monsieur the mayor that this night, the night of the full moon by which we may detect the marauder, all the people of the vineyards and of the town beyond must remain behind locked windows and barred doors. If they have obeyed my orders—and may the

THE WEREWOLF HOWLS

39

good God look after those who have not— they are even now secure in the safety of their respective homes. Let me discover but one demented idiot peeking from behind his shutter and I promise you he shall have cause to remember his disobedience!"

TJIERRE nodded without speaking, ■*- knowing he was being instructed to punish a possible, but improbable, offender. "Now, we are four intelligent men, I trust," said Monsieur Delacroix, pretending not to notice the glow of pleasure which suffused Jacques' features at being included in their number. "We are the Delacroix's, which is sufficient. And as leaders we must, from time to time, grant certain concessions to the inferior mentalities of the unfortunate who dwell in ignorance; so I have this day promised the good foremen, who petitioned me regarding the activities of this wolf, to perform certain things. They firmly believe the gray wolf is a demon, an inhuman atrocity visited upon us by the Evil One. And also., according to their ancient but childish witch-lore, that it may only be destroyed by a silver weapon."

Monsieur Delacroix reached beneath his chair and drew forth a small, but apparently heavy, sack. Upending it on the surface of the desk, he scattered in every direction a double dozen glittering cylindrical objects.

"Bullets!" exclaimed Jacques.

"Silver bullets!" amended Pierre.

"Yes, my son. Bullets of silver which I molded myself in the cellars, and which I have shown to the men, with the promise that they will be put to use."

"Expensive weapons," commented the thrifty Francois.

"It is the poor peasant's belief. If we slew tills wolf with mere lead or iron they would still be frightened of their own 4vdows and consequently worthless at their work, as they have been for the past

month. Here are the guns. Tonight you will go forth, my sons, and slay this fabulous werewolf, and cast its carcass upon the cart-load of dry wood I have had piled by the vineyard road, and burn it until there is nothing left but the ash, for all to see and know."

"Yes, papa," Assented Pierre and Francois as one, but the boy Jacques cried: "What? So fine a skin? I would like it for the wall of my room! These who have seen the wolf say its pelt is like silver

shaded into gray "

"Jacques!"' Etienne Delacroix's anger flooded his face with a great surge of red and bulging veins, and Pierre and Francois were stricken with awe at the sight of their father's wrath.

"If you do not burn this beast as I say, immediately after slaying it, I will forget you are my son, and almost a man! I

will "

His own temper choked him into inco-herency.

"I crave your pardon, father," begged Jacques, humbled and alarmed. "I forgot myself."

"We will obey, papa, as always," said Frangois, quickly, and Pierre gravely nodded.

"The moon will soon be up," said Monsieur Delacroix, after a short silence. The room had grown dark while they talked; receiving a wordless signal from his father, Pierre struck a match and lit the blackened lamp on the desk. With the startling transition, as light leaped forth to dispel the murky shadows of the room, Pierre came near to exclaiming aloud at sight of (he haggard lines in his father's face. For the first time in his life he realized thai what his parent had said earlier in the evening about aging was not spoken jocularly, not the repeated jest Monsieur Delacroix had always allowed himself, but the truth. His father was old.

"You had better go," said Etienne Dela-

WEIRD TALES

croix, as his keen eyes caught the fleeting expression on his son's face. His fingers drummed a muffled tattoo upon the fine edge of his desk, the only sign of his nervous condition that he could not entirely control. "Monsieur the Mayor's opinion is that the wolf is stronger when the moon is full. But it is mine that tonight it will be easier to discover."

rjTHE three turned to the door, but as -■- they reached the threshold Monsieur Delacroix beckoned to the eldest. "An instant, Pierre. I speak to you alone."

The young man closed the door on his brothers' backs and returned to the desk, his steady eyes directed at his father.

Monsieur Delacroix, for the moment, seemed to have forgotten what he intended to say. His head was bowed on his chest and the long locks of his ashen hair had fallen forward over his brow. Suddenly he sat erect, as if it took an immense effort of his will to perform the simple action, and again Pierre was startled to perceive the emotions which twisted his father's features.

It was the first time he had ever seen tenderness there, or beheld love in the eyes he had sometimes, in secret, thought a little cruel.

"Have you a pocket crucifix, my son?"

"In my room."

"Take it with you tonight. And—you will stay close to Jacques, will you not?" His voice was hoarse with unaccustomed anxiety. "He is young, confident, and— careless. I would not wish to endanger your good mother's last child."

Pierre was amazed. It had been fifteen years since he had last heard his father mention his mother.

"You have been a good son, Pierre. Obey me now. Do not let the three of you separate, for I hear this beast is a savage one and unafraid even of armed men. Take care of yourself, and see to your brothers."

"Will you remain in the chateau for safety, papa? You are not armed."

"I am armed by my faith in the good God and the walls of Chateau Dore. When you have lit the fire under the wolf's body ■—I will be there."

He lowered the leonine head once more, and Pierre, not without another curious look, departed.

For a long while Monsieur Delacroix sat immobile, his elbows resting on the padded arras of the chair, the palms of his hands pressing into his cheeks. Then he abruptly arose and, approaching the open casement, drew the curtains wide. Outside, the long, rolling slopes fell away toward a dim horizon already blanketed by the dragons of night, whose tiny, flickering eyes were winking into view one by one in the dark void above. Hurrying cloudlets scurried in little groups across the sky.

Lamps were being lit in the jumble of cottages that were the abodes of Monsieur Delacroix's workmen, but at the moment the sky was illuminated better than the earth; for the gathering darkness seemed to ding like an animate thing to the fields and meadows, and stretch ebony claws across the ribbon of the roadway.

It was time for the moon to rise.

Monsieur Delacroix turned away from the casement and with swift, certain steps went to the door, opening it. The hall was still, but from the direction of the dining room there came a clatter of dishes as the servants cleared the table. Quickly, with an unusual alacrity for a man of his years, he silently traversed the floor of the huge hall and passed through its outer portals. A narrow gravel lane led him along the side of the chateau until he reached the building's extreme corner, where he abandoned it to strike off across the closely clipped sward in the direction of a small clump of beech trees.

The night was warm and peaceful, with no threat of rain. A teasing zephyr tugged

THE WEREWOLF HOWLS

41

at the thick locks on his uncovered head; from somewhere near his feet came the chirp of a cricket.

In the grove it was darker until he came to its center, wending through and past the entangled thickets like one who had traveled the same path many times, and found the small glade that opened beneath the stars. Here there was more light again but no breeze at all. In the center of the glade was an oblong, grassy mound, and at one end of it a white stone, and on the stone the name of his wife.

MONSIEUR DELACROIX stood for an instant beside the grave with lowered head, and then he sank to his knees and began to pray.

In the east the sky began to brighten as though some torch-bearing giant drew near, walking with great strides beyond the edge of the earth. The stars struggled feebly against the superior illumination, but their strength diminished as a narrow band of encroaching yellow fire appeared on the rim of the world.

With its arrival the low monotone of prayer was checked, to continue afterward with what seemed to be some difficulty. Monsieur Delacroix's throat was choked, either with grief for the unchangeable past or an indefinable apprehension for the inevitable future. His breath came in struggling gasps and tiny beads of perspiration formed on his face and hands. His prayers became mumbled, jerky utterances, holding no recognizable phrases of speech. Whispers, and they ceased altogether.

A small dark cloud danced across a far-off mountain-top, slid furtively over the border of the land, and for a minute erased

the yellow gleam from the horizon. Then, as if in terror, shaken by its own temerity, it fled frantically into oblivion, and the great golden platter of the full moon issued from behind the darkness it had left to deluge the landscape with a ceaseless shower of illusive atoms; tiny motes that danced the pathways of space.

Monsieur Delacroix gave a low cry like a child in pain. His agonized eyes were fixed on the backs of his two hands as he held them pressed against the dew-dampened sward. His fingers had begun to stiffen and curl at their tips; he could see the long, coarse hairs sprouting from the pores of his flesh—as he had many times within the past month since the night he had fallen asleep by the grave of his wife and slept throughout the night under the baleful beams of the moon.

He flung back his head, whimpering because of the terrible pressure he could feel upon his skull, and its shape appeared to alter so that it seemed curiously elongated. His eyes were bloodshot, and as they sank into their sockets his lips began to twitch over the fangs in his mouth.

The three brothers, crouching nervously in the shadows of the vineyards, started violently.

Jacques, the younger, almost lost his grasp on the gun with the silver bullets which his father had given him.

From somewhere nearby there had arisen a great volume of sound, swirling and twisting and climbing to shatter itself into a hundred echoes against the vault of the heavens, rushing and dipping and sinking into the cores of all living hearts and the very souls of men—the hunting-cry of the werewolf.

UPERGTlftONS

K.

^SuPEDSTITION ATTACHED TO LIGHTING THREE CIGARETTES WITH ONE M4TCM /S SUPPOSED TO DATE FPOM 77/E 7/ME OF7//E CRIMEAN WAR** IN OLDEN DAYS, ALL RUSSIANS RECOGNIZED THE STRICT ~ULE THAT DURING THE SERVICES IN THE RUSSIAN CHURCHES, OA/LY TA/Eti/GUfiPJEST WAS ALLOWED TO L/GPT WE 7m£E CAUDLES ATTPE MEQ MTP ONE TAPER P THE INFLUENCE OF THE PRIESTS PENETRATED TO ALL CLASSES, AND PEOPLE WEPE TAUGUTTO LOOM UPOAT ANYTP/AVG COMECTED WTP ME PP/ESWOOD AS F0P3/DDE/V FPUIT OR FOP-BIDDEN GP.OUND TO TAJEM. DURING THE WAR, RUSSIAN PRISONERS PASSED ON THIS BELIEF TO THEIR ENGLISH CAPTORS h

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WJEN A LADDER ' LEANS AGAINST TU( WALLITFORMSATRI-. ANGlt AND JS 7/LUS SYMBOLICAL OF THE *'

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days would therefore consider utmself debarred from passing through tuis 5acred arch. Should one be compellei to pass under a ladder. all mia be well if the fm6e.qs adech035ed,

Natives of Dutch New Guinea

PLACE A SPADE UPON THE GRAVE OF OF A DEPARTED FRIEND OR RELATIVE, , SO WAT IF THE CORPSE GE6MNS

m soul and comes to life

■AGAIN, /rCAN DIG tfSElF

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A blinding rivet of fire spiffed out of tlie sky!

7Jie ystery of Uncle Alfred

By MINDRET LORD

He was devoted to those pigs — absolutely devoted; perhaps that had something to do with his sudden, fantastic disappearance. ...

WHEN the estate of my uncle, Alfred Fry, is finally settled, I shall give the farm to George Harris. I would not spend another night in the house for all creation. But Harris

is a strange, elemental sort of man; he hated Uncle Alfred while he worked for him, and now that my uncle is gone, he hates him, still. I think it actually amuses him—and as a matter of fact, I am almost

THE MYSTERY OF UNCLE ALFRED

45

certain that I heard him laugh aloud and shout, "Peeeeg!" in a mocking falsetto, on that last, amazing nigrit that I spent at the farmhouse. There was the clatter of sharp hooves on the bare floor of the hall, and the unmistakable grunting snuffle of a hog. The incongruous sound passed along the corridor to the end where Harris' cubbyhole of a room was. I strode to my door and flung it open—and it was at that moment I heard Harris' roar of mirth and the malicious, "Peeeeg!"—as if he were calling the swine to dinner. I accused him of it later, but he denied it. If that had been all I might have been able to persuade myself that my imagination was responsible, but it was not ail—not by any means.

As a child, I have a vague memory of a tremendously fat man attending the funeral for my mother and father. This I think must have been the first time that ever I saw him, but I am sure that I did not set eyes on him again for over fifteen years. Although, there is much of my unhappy childhood that I have forgotten, Uncle Alfred's grotesque figure must have stood out in my memory in all its terrifying bulk.

After all those years, I met Uncle Alfred as the result of a rather uncomfortable coincidence. Having left the university with an excellently engraved but otherwise worthless degree, I was at length fortunate enough to obtain a job in New York City as a process server. In most cases, to serve a defendant with a summons requires little more skill than that which might be expected of an errand boy, but it does occasionally happen that considerable ingenuity is necessary. Such a case was that of Uncle Alfred.

When my employer gave me the summons for Alfred Fry, he told me that he had been trying to serve it for months and that he had exhausted every dodge in his head. "Try anything you can think of," he said. "I'm beginning to believe the man doesn't exist,"

I said, "If he's the man I think he is, the job's as good as done!" And I left the office with a vision of my triumph in my mind. "It was easy," I would say on my return. "Why, there was nothing to it, at all!"

Alfred Fry lived in a big graystone house, just off Fifth Avenue — a town house—a residence—the stately, ugly, dignified sort of dwelling that millionaires inhabit. The front doors were plate glass and wrought iron, and as I rang the bell it occurred to me that it would be far from safe to put my foot in the crack when the door was opened.

"PRESENTLY a haggard, sickly-looking -"- butler asked me my business. "Is Mr. Alfred Fry at home?" I asked. The butler believed that Mr. Fry was not at home. I said, "If you should happen to find him somewhere in there, would you tell him that his nephew, Julian Barrow, would like to pay his respects?" The butler stared at me doubtfully, and I repeated, "Julian Barrow."

The butler said, "I'll see if Mr. Fry is in," and started to close the door. Before the latch clicked, I said, "Tell him I don't want to borrow any money!" He disappeared into the interior darkness without making any sign of having heard. After what seemed a long time, he returned and said, "Mr. Fry will see you."

I followed the butler through a long, gloomy hall that was draped and carpetted in dark red and gold. There were several massive pieces of carved furniture, the sort of thing that seems to have been made far the lobbies of hotels whose guests are giants: chairs too large for one person, but too small for two—tables too high for convenience—mirrors too large for comfort. We came to a broad oak door where the butler stopped. Murmuring, "Mr. Fry is in the study," he swung it open, and I went in.

WEIRD TALES

FROM behind his enormous desk, my uncle peered at me. "So!" he said in a high, thin voice, "you are Julian!"

"And you," I said, "are Uncle Alfred. I remember you." And the odd thing is tiiat I did actually remember him. Seeing him again, I wondered how his memory could ever have grown so dim. It was like seeing a motion picture, or a play, for the second time, inadvertently; though apparently you had forgotten everything about it, with the first sequence the whole thiqg comes back in complete detail. I suppose he had changed—he must have changed in fifteen years!—but it seemed to me that I remembered him exactly as I saw him now.

The man was a hog: that is the most accurate, if not the most charitable way to put it. Not having seen him, you may conclude that Uncle Alfred was merely a sufferer from some such disease as dropsy or elephantiasis. But he was no invalid. On the contrary, he appeared to be in the best of health and spirits—like a vigorous hog. His head was huge and bald except for a few long strands of straight, black hair on the crown; the bulging jowls began just below the rounded brow and descended in a sweeping curve that cradled the chin; the nose was short, the tip raised in such a way that it seemed to be lifting the upper lip, also; the eyes were small, closely-set, and so deeply imbedded that the lids were not visible. They were keen, restless eyes that darted from object to object as if in hungry search for something. (I caught myself wondering what he was looking for: a carrot? An ear of corn?)

"Well, sit down!" he said. "Sit down, my boy! The last time I saw you, you were a baby—and now—look at you—a grown man! Tell me how you are—what you're doing. Did you know that you are my nearest living relative?" His eyes made a quick search of the room for nearer relatives.

It amused me to think of the summons in my pocket and of how angry my uncle would be when I served it on him, and it seemed to me that the longer I delayed, the greater the joke, so I sat down and answered his questions volubly. His curiosity about my life somewhat surprised me, for in the past his interest and his help would have been eagerly welcomed. But he had ignored my existence, and had even failed to reply to my guardians' letters.

Uncle Alfred was obviously impatient with the account I gave him of my childhood. He grunted and twiddled his fat thumbs that just managed to meet across his belly, and it was not until I mentioned my fiancee that he seemed to prick up his rather pointed ears.

"Ah!" he said. "You must tell me all about this girl! Her name?"

"Annette Worth."

"She is young? Of course. Beautiful? Surely. You love her very much?"

"Why, yes," I said. "Certainly." His sudden eagerness annoyed me in some obscure way.

"You are a lucky boy—a lucky boy." He sighed reflectively. "And when is the marriage to be?"

Before I could draw breath, he answered his own question. "Why, that depends on Uncle Alfred. That's why you came here, today. 'Will Uncle Alfred give his loving nephew enough money so that he can be married' ?"

I was angry, but at the same time, delighted. How could he have stepped into the trap more effectively? I got to my feet and smiled down at his obese head. "Why no, my dear uncle," I said. "My reason for coming here was nothing of the sort. It was simply a matter of business." I reached into my pocket and drew out the paper. "I have here a summons for one Alfred Fry. It gives me pleasure to serve it on you!" And I slapped it down on the desk in front of him.

THE MYSTERY OF UNCLE ALFRED

47

He snatched it up in his puffy hands and let out a squeal of rage that was exactly like the "ecce-yeec!" of a pig caught under a gate. I laughed at him and started toward the door.

"Wait!" he called after me. "Wait, Julian!"

I turned, and was amazed to see that his face was creased and folded into a kind of porkine smile. "Don't go. Come back and sit down. This"—he picked up the summons and flung it aside—"doesn't mean anything. I should have had to settle the case eventually, anyhow. I'm sorry for what I said—now be a good boy, come back—and let's be friends."

I had nothing to lose, and although 1 did not like my uncle, his remarkable change of manner excited my curiosity and impelled me to accept his invitation. It was as simple a thing as returning to my chair that altered the whole probable course of my life.

My uncle sang a tune to the title: Blood Is Thicker Than Water. It was a sweet, subtle melody, and well-calculated to fall pleasantly on my ears. I was broke, and I was in love; Uncle Alfred was rich and lonely; and after all, I was his nearest blood relative—the logical person to inherit his fortune. With a hint of tears in his shoe-button eyes he described to me the misunderstanding and ridicule that had cursed his life. He had no friends, a woman's love he had never known, even his own relations (among them, his brother, my father) had refused him their sympathies. In short, it was a melancholy recital. Late in the afternoon he began to plead with me to invite Annette to his house, and nothing would do but that we must stay to dinner.

FROM the moment of Annette's arrival, Uncle Alfred^ manner changed again; he stopped his moaning, and became on the instant a picture of pathetic and almost

absurd gallantry. In every way possible he showed Annette that she was welcome —that she was much more than welcome.

As the evening wore on, he became more and more outspoken in his praises both for Annette and for me; we were his beloved, long-lost niece and nephew, the darlings of his old age sent by Providence to comfort his final years. In leaving him, the last thing that he said to us was: "Remember, children—I have great plans for you! Great plans! Great plans for us all!"

When we were out on the street, and the door closed behind us, I asked Annette, "Well, what do you think of him?"

"The poor old man," she said. "It's not his fault he's so fat."

"Perhaps not entirely," I said. "But to judge by the way he acted at dinner, he had something to do with it."

"You mustn't be too critical—he seems awfully fond of you—"

"Yes," I said, as much to myself as to her. "And I would very much like to know why."

I was a long time finding the answer—if I ever did.

We saw Uncle Alfred frequently in the days that followed. I do not recall exactly how he first introduced the subject of his farm, but each time we visited him he talked more and more enthusiastically of it. Strictly as a farm, it was nothing, he told us—only a few acres in the hills, up-state. An old house, dating from Revolutionary times, that had been restored and modernized, a small orchard, a plot or two of vegetables. But the pigs! That was the attraction for him. He boasted that he had six of the finest pens of pedigreed hogs in the country, and when he spoke of them, it was with the same admiration and affection that a hunter lavishes upon his dog.

Shortly after our first meeting, Uncle Alfred insisted that Annette and I spend a

WEIRD TALES

weekend with him at the farmhouse. We found the place much as he had described it—a rather charming old building set among ancient fruit trees. At a little distance there was a modern barn which was flanked by a series of elaborately constructed pig pens. I had always thought of pigs as wallowing in mud and refuse, but these pens were as clean and dry as the cage of any animal in the zoo. Each enclosure contained four well-groomed hogs.

George Harris lived on the place and acted as caretaker. He is a lanky, leather-skinned farmer, surly in manner, taciturn, and completely without humor of any civilized variety. From the beginning, however, I was conscious of a bond of sympathy between Harris and me; unspoken and unadmitted, I believe it was none the less real.

Annette was more charitable than I. She loved the house, the pigs did not disgust her, and she was even able to persuade herself that Uncle Alfred's almost insane fondness for them was somehow praiseworthy. Even when he would get into the pen with them, scratch their bristly backs with a stick, call them individually by name, and grunt crooningly at them, Annette felt only a kind of sorrow for the loveless life that had brought my uncle at last to pigs.

On that first evening at my uncle's house in New York, he had said, "Remember, children—I have great plans for you!" But I doubt very much if he spoke the truth. Instead, I think he realized that eventually he would have a plan—when he had had time, to devise one of sufficient intricacy. When the scheme finally emerged, it was so delicately constructed, so beautifully balanced, that I completely failed to recognize it.

ONE night my uncle said, "Julian, my boy—I don't know if I ever told you that I have several important business in-

terests in South America. As you can see, I am not built for traveling, so I have always employed agents to represent me. But agents are not always entirely trustworthy. Now if only you could speak Spanish—"

The offer'expanded slowly and alluringly, like dawn that begins with a line of light on the horizon and gradually sets the whole sky a-blaze. First, I would give up my miserable job, and devote my entire time for a period of three or four weeks to the study of the South American enterprises, and to learning enough Spanish to handle my uncle's affairs. Then, Annette and I could be married, and sail to Rio for our honeymoon. The salary would be large, but even this was not all. In addition, Uncle Alfred proposed to make me his sole heir. There was one other detail: Uncle Alfred insisted that Annette give up her work and the room where she lived. He wished her to stay at the Savoy Plaza, at his expense. Laughing, he said that she must begin to accustom herself to life as the wife of a rich man.

The month of preparation went according to my uncle's schedule; Annette spent most of her time shopping for her trousseau, and my days were filled by my studies.

On the date set for our marriage, we three went to the farm where it was my uncle's whim to have the ceremony performed. We would spend the night there, and sail in the morning for Brazil. All the arrangements were in Uncle Alfred's hands—hiring the minister, buying the tickets, and so on. Apparently he enjoyed playing Lord Bountiful, for his face was like a smiling mould of jelly.

When we arrived at the farm the weather was unnaturally warm and threatening; heavy, sluggish clouds hung low in the sky, the air was oppressively still, and it seemed to me that I could feel the vibration of distant thunder, though it was not yet audible. Even the hogs seemed affected by the sultry atmosphere; they were restless

THE MYSTERY OF UNCLE ALFRED

49

and irritable, and kept up an annoying squeal of complaint.

Uncle Alfred's gaiety was somewhat dampened by the discovery that George Harris was absent without leave. He said that he supposed Harris would show up in time to feed the pigs, but meanwhile he strongly disapproved of the man leaving the farm aione, even for a short while. "Suppose something should happen to one of the hogs—with nobody here to help!"

Annette and I were in a state of comatose bliss; our new life lay before us, but it had not yet quite begun. "With my arm around her, I remember wandering about the house and grounds — saying little, thinking of nothing but the future: the future that we owed entirely to the kindness of my uncle.

The minister was expected at two o'clock. At three he had not arrived, and since the sky was growing more and more ominous, I began to fear that if he did not come, soon, a storm might interfere with making the trip that day. Uncle Alfred said he would telephone to find out the reason for the delay. He waddled out of the living room, and down the hall to his own bedroom where the telephone was. As I heard his door dose, I heard also the first deep growl of thunder.

The passage of time meant nothing to Annette and me, but I suppose it must have been more than half an hour later when Uncle Alfred appeared in the doorway and clapped his pink hand to his forehead in a gesture of despair.

"My God, Julian!" he groaned. "The most terrible thing has happened-! I don't know how to tell you! I can't tell you!"

We stared at him. "What is it?" I demanded. "The tninistcr—"

"No, not that. I tried to reach him, and there was no answer, so I suppose he's on his way. If it were only that!"

"Then what?"

"Afterwards, you see, I called my office.

I won't stop to tell you all about it, now, but—" he sighed deeply. "Julian, my boy, you must fly to Mexico City at once! My office has made a reservation for you on the earliest plane—we must leave here within an hour!" As I started to protest, he handed me a long envelope that was sealed in a number of places with red wax. "Here—take this! I will tell you about it before you go. Oh, Julian, I am so sorry about this! So sorry!" Then he sighed again, and added, "But journeys end in lovers' meeting, you know. Annette will follow you as soon as your mission is finished—■"

I interrupted, "Why shouldn't she come with me now?"

"Ah!" he said. "There was anothei piece of bad luck! Terrible luck! There was only room for one more passenger on the plane. But don't worry—I'll send her to you at the first possible moment." He put his arm as far as it would go around her waist, and murmured, "Poor, poor girl—"

Annette looked at me with shining eyes. "It's all right—it's your jot>—and I can understand that. I'll follow you, darling."

"Of course she will" Uncle Alfred assured me. "And if there isn't time for you to be married here, she'll marry you wherever you are. Won't you, my dear?"

I WAS enraged by something indefinable in my uncle's manner—or perhaps it was by the situation, itself. In any case, I remember the insane itch to sink my fingers in my uncle's fat neck, to squeeze the life from his disgusting body. But I stood silent in the gloomy room, as if waiting for the next thing to happen. Annette released herself, came to me and put her hands on my shoulders; raising her head, she whispered, "Think of the future, darling. We'll be so happy for so long." I kissed her— and my anger was gone.

The thunder had grown louder, and

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suddenly there was a piercing squeal from one of the hogs, as if it were being injured. My uncle trundled out of the room, calling back, "Come along, Julian! I'll tell you what you must know while I see what's the matter—" I held Annette a moment longer before I followed.

The sky was boiling black, with intermittent flashes of lightning on the horizon, but so far there was little wind, and no rain. The pens were over a hundred yards from the house, and not visible from it owing to the curve of the hill. As I started along the path, I heard steps behind me, and turned to see George Harris coming around the corner of the porch.

"Looks like bad weather," I said. "Where have you been? My uncle's been looking for you."

"Has he? Why? Anything missing?"

"Missing?" I repeated.

"I'll ask him, myself." We walked a few paces side by side. "I only came back for a saw I forgot."

We had topped the hill, and were looking down at Uncle Alfred who was bending over one of the hogs in the third pen before Harris' statement struck me as curious. I halted, and said, "What do you mean? Has something happened between you and Mr. Fry?"

"Why, sure. Didn't you know? I'm fired. He called me up yesterday, and told me to be off the place by this morning."

Distant lightning glinted in Harris' sardonic eyes as I gazed at him, wonder-ingly. Why had Uncle Alfred pretended to think that Harris would return? The answer was in a closed cell of my brain— I knew it was there, but I could not find it.

"That's strange," I said at last, and we went down the hill to the pen, inside of which my uncle was comforting one of his swine.

Without looking up, my uncle said, "Galahad has scratched himself on a nail, or something of the sort. Awful thing to

happen at a moment like this—just when I've got to give you your instructions and send you off—"

Harris cut in; "Did you want to see

me?"

My uncle was obviously startled. Ke jerked his head around, and exclaimed, "What! Oh—Harris. No, I don't want to see you—why would I? I spoke to you yesterday and I haven't changed my mind."

Harris nodded and leaned against the wall of the pen. My uncle stood up. Sweat was glistening on his forehead and jowls, his upper lips was raised over his yellow teeth, and he looked less human than usual. "Well?" he cried. "Get on about your business! I've got to talk to my nephew!"

"Sure," said Harris. "I just wondered if you knew the telephone line's been cut? I noticed it when I came around the house just now—"

"Damn you!" my uncle shouted. "Go on! Go on! I won't listen to your nonsense!" He turned to me. "Julian, you must hurry! Go before the storm breaks! You'll find the man at the address on the letter. I'll wire you there—I'll—

At that moment the hog named Galahad broke away and trotted painfully to the far end of the pen—my uncle trotted after him. And then, a wide, blinding river of fire spilled out of the sky. I heard it sizzle and crackle before the thunder came, and before the thunder had echoed away I smeiled the sulphur strong in the still air. I turned to Harris and said, shakily, "That was close!"

Harris was staring into the pen, a look of amazement on his face. As my gaze followed his, I, too, was amazed — my uncle had disappeared. I said, "Did you see him go? How did he get away so cniickly?"

Suddenly the rain began to fall as if it were dashed out of buckets, but Harris remained a few seconds, leaning over the

THE MYSTERY OF UNCLE ALFRED

51

wall of the pen. "Five!" I heard him mutter. "Yes, by God, five!"

I waited no longer, but ran back to the house where I arrived soaked and breathless.

Annette met me at thhe door, pale and frightened. "Wasn't the lightning ghastly? Where's Uncle Alfred?"

"Isn't he here?" And then it occurred to me where he must have gone. "Oh!" I said. "He's in the barn, of course— though how he got away so quickly, I can't imagine."

Harris came striding out of the rain and joined us on the porch. I noticed he was carrying the hand saw he had mentioned, and I asked, "Did you go into the barn?"

"Yes."

"Was Mr. Fry there?"

He looked at me in what I thought was a very curious way, but he made no answer, and I asked the question again. "Did you see Mr. Fry when you got your saw out of the barn?"

A strange, almost mocking smile spread over Harris' angular face; slowly he dropped the lid over one eye in an adagio wink, and at last he uttered the one syllable: "No."

"Then where is he?"

"If you don't know," said Harris, "I don't know."

Annette said, "You'd both better come in and dry your clothes. Anyhow, darling, you can't possibly get to the airport in this weather."

"No—these clay roads will be impassable for at least several hours. I suppose I had better phone Uncle Alfred's office to have them cancel the plane reservation— but I wish he'd come back here! I don't really know what to do."

Harris chuckled deep in his chest, and then I remembered what he had said about the telephone. I told him that he must be mistaken about it, because Uncle Alfred

was making a call just a few minutes before.

Harris said, "Try it if you want to."

As I started out of the room, he asked, "Did you notice how many hogs there was in that pen we was leaning over?"

"Four," I said. "There are four in each of the pens. You know that better than I."

"There's five in that pen, now," Harris told me. "And next time you go down, I'll ask you to look close at one hog in particular—he's the biggest, and the fattest —and he's got no ring in his nose!"

Apparently this meant much more to Harris than to me. To me, the explanation seemed obvious: simply that Uncle Alfred had bought a new hog during Harris' absence. I did not begin to take the man seriously until I raised the telephone receiver to my ear. The line was dead.

THE discovery of the severed telephone was the first link in a chain of astonishing revelations. As soon as the condition of the road permitted, Annette, Harris and I drove down to the village of Oak-tree. Through the drug store telephone I began to learn some of the truth about my missing uncle. Uncle Alfred had never spoken to the minister whom he had been expecting. I called the North-South Continental Company, which was Uncle Alfred's New York headquarters. They had never heard of an Alfred Fry. I called the airport and found, somewhat to my surprise, that there was a reservation in my name. In canceling it, I asked when the ticket had been bought, and whether there was more room on the plane. There was more room, and the passage had been reserved three days in advance. While I still sat in the telephone booth, Annette and Harris waiting outside, J tore open the elaborately sealed envelope Uncle Alfred had given me. It was addressed to "Carlos Diaz, Hotel Geneva, Mexico City," and it

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contained two sheets of perfectly blank paper.

For the moment, the problem was too much for me. I went out and told Harris to notify the local authorities of Uncle Alfred's disappearance, and then to go back to the house and stay there until he heard from us or we heard from him.

"He looked at me owlishly. "What should I do about the hogs?"

"Damn the hogs!" I exclaimed. "What difference does it make to me? Do anything!"

"Even the—the new one?"

"Of course!" If I thought anything, I suppose I thought the man was talking about feeding the brutes.

Annette and I drove back to New York and went directly to Uncle Alfred's town house. The place was closed, shades drawn at all the windows, the front door locked.

There we were. The mystery seemed as complete as our despair.

But within the next few days, our fortunes took a sudden upward turn. I got a much better position than I could have hoped for, and within a short time Annette and I were married.

SO FAR as I know, Alfred Fry was never seen again. Although it seems impossible that such a tremendously fat man could vanish like an illusion in a distorting mirror, search has been made for him throughout the world, in vain. If he does not turn up in the time specified by law, his death will be legally presumed, and his considerable estate (which does not include ownership in the North-South Continental Company) will come to me. It seems I am his sole living relative.

I hesitate to speak of the night Annette and I spent at the farmhouse, because as a reasonable, unimaginative man I am not willing to argue the accuracy of my own impressions. We went up to the country shortly after our marriage, and within a

month of my uncle's disappearance. The first thing I noticed was that the pens were completely empty, and I asked Harris what had happened to the hogs.

"Oh," he said, "I sent them to market. You'll be getting the check for them."

I said, "If my uncle ever shows up, he'll throw you in jail for it."

Harris grinned at me. "If he ever shows up."

After dinner, Annette, Harris and I talked once again about the mystery of Uncle Alfred. There was little doubt in my mind of what the old devil had planned and I was certain that if I had made the trip to Mexico, I should never have returned. As I said, whatever happened to him, and however it happened, it seemed to me that only the merest, eleventh hour luck had saved my life and spared Annette the most terrible fate. Harris said nothing, but sat staring into the firelight.

The sound woke me from a deep sleep, in the middle of the night—the clatter of hooves on the hardwood floor in the hall outside our doof. I waited, listening, while the beast stopped and snuffled along the bottom of the door, as if food were just beyond his reach. Then the clatter began again as the hog started down the hall. I jumped out of bed, and was in the long, straight corridor before the trotting hooves had reached the end. There was nothing to see. As I stared into empty space, I heard Harris call, "Peeeeg!" and it seemed to me that the sound of the sharp hooves on the bare floor appeared to enter Harris' room, but the door neither opened nor closed.