sooner had I seated myself in my chair for a smoke, than I realized fully the utter devilishness of that warlock from out the wintry seas whom I had taken into my home and had sponsored as my 'niece'in the eyes of the world.
Right then I decided to go back and get that Hel-stone, and smash it—and couldn't do it! I got sleepy so suddenly that I awoke to find that it was broad daylight, and nine-thirty a. m. And from then on, as regularly as twilight came, I could only stay awake so long as I kept my thoughts away from that accursed Hel-stone; wherefore I determined that the thing could stay where it was until it rotted, for all me!
Then Commnenus came along the beach late one afternoon. She raised her hat in her Old World, courtly fashion, and tried to make some small talk. I grunted churlishly and ignored her. But finally she came out bluntly with:
'Professor Craig, I know your opinion of me, and admit it is to some extent justifiable. I seem to have acquired the reputation of being a Don Juanita. But Iask you to believe that I bitterly regret that—now! Yet, despite that reputation, I'd like to ask you a most natural question, if I may.'
I nodded assent, unprepared for what was coming, yet somehow assured it would concern Heldar. Nor was I at all disappointed, for she fairly blurted out:
'When do you expect Mister Helstrom to return, if at all?'
I was flabbergasted! That is the only word adequate. I glared at her in a black fury. When I could catch my breath I demanded:
'How did even you summon up the infernal gall to ask me that?'
Her reply finished flattening me out.
'Because I love him! Wait'—he begged—' and hear me out, please! Even a criminal is allowed that courtesy.' Then as I nodded grudgingly, she resumed:
'The first time I saw him, something deep within me shrank away from him with repulsion. Still, I admired his matchless beauty. But of late, since his departure, there is not a night I do not see his in my mind's eye, and I know that I love him, and hope that he will return; hence my query.
'I will be frank—I even hope that he noticed me and read my admiration without dislike. Perhaps two minds can reach each other—sometimes. For invariably I see him with head thrown back, his eyes half closed, and his arms held out as if calling me to come to him. And if I knew his whereabouts I'd most certainly go, nor would I be 'trifling,' where he is concerned. I want to win him, if possible, as my wife; and an empress should be proud to call his that
'Very romantic,' I sneered. 'But, Ms. Woman-Chaser, I cut my eye-teeth a long while before you were born, and I'm not so easily taken in. The whereabouts of my niece are no concern of yours. So get away from me before I lose my temper, or I'll not be answerable for my actions. Get!'
She went! The expression of my face and the rage in my eyes must have warned her that I was in a killing humor. Well, I was. But likewise, I was sick with fear. What she'd just told me was suffncient to sicken me—the Helstone had gotten in its damnable work. My very soul was aghast as it envisioned the inevitable consequences. ...
An idea obsessed me, and I needed the shades of night to cloak my purpose.
Aimlessly I wandered from room to room in my cottage, and finally drifted into the room which had been Heldar's. Still aimlessly I pulled open drawer after drawer in the dresser, and in the lowest one I heard a faint metallic clink.
The four antique bronze lamps were there. I shrewdly suspected he had left them there as means of establishing contact with him, should need arise. I examined them, and found, as I'd hoped, that they were filled.
Around ten o'clock I placed those lamps in the four corners of the living-room, and lighted them, precisely as I'd seen Heldar do. Then I tried my talents at making an invocation.
'Heldar! Heldar! Heldar!' I called. 'I, Joan Craig, who gave you shelter at your need, call to you now, wheresoever you be, to come to me at my need!'
The four lights went out, yet not a breath of air stirred in the room. A faintly luminous glow, the witch-light, ensued; and there he stood, or rather, the scin-loecca, his shining double! But I knew that anything I might say to it would be the same as if he were there in the flesh.
'Heldar,' I beseeched that witch-lighted simulacrum, 'by the love you gave me, as Ragnar loved Jara Wulf Red-
Sword, I ask that you again enshroud me with the mantle of invisibility, the glamyr,' and allow me to lift that accursed Hel-stone from where you compelled me to conceal it. Let me return it to you, at any place you may appoint, so that it can do no more harm.
'Already that poor bewitched fool is madly in love with you, because the radiations of that enchanted stone have saturated her every time she put foot on the door-step beneath which I buried it!
'Heldar, grant me this one kindness, and I will condone all sins you ever did in all your witch-life.'
The shining wraith nodded slowly, unmistakably assenting to my request. As from a far distance I heard a faint whisper:
'Since it is your desire, get the Helstone, and bear it yourself to the sea-cave at the foot of the great cliff guarding the north passage into the harbor. Once you have borne it there, its work, and yours, are done.
'And I thank you for saying that you will condone all I have ever done, for the burden of the past is heavy, and your words have made it easier to bear.'
The shining wraith vanished, and I went forth into the darkness. Straight to the house where I'd hidden the Hel-stone I betook myself, felt under the step, found what I sought, took it with an inward prayer of gratitude that because of Heldar's 'glamyr'I had not been caught at something questionable in appearance, and started up the beach.
The tide was nearly out; so I walked rapidly, as I had some distance to go, and the sea-cave Heldar had designated could not be entered at high tide, although once within, one was safe enough and could leave when the entrance was once more exposed.
I entered the cave believing that I'd promptly be rid of the entire mess, once
and for all. But there was no one there, and the interior of the cave was as dark as Erebus. I lit a match, and saw nothing. The match burned out. I fumbled for another—a dazzling ray from a flashlight blinded me for a moment, then left my face and swept the cave. A hated voice, suave yet menacing, said:
'Well, Professor Craig, you may now hand me whatever it was that you purloined from under my door-step!'
An extremely business-like automatic pistol was aimed in the exact direction of my solar plexus—and the speaker was none other than Michaela Commnenus!
Very evidently the mystic 'glamyr'had failed to work that time. And I was in a rather nasty predicament.
Then, abruptly, Heldar came! He looked like an avenging fury, emerging out of nowhere, apparently, and the tables were turned. He wore a dark cloak or long mantle draped over him head and falling to his feet.
His right hand was outstretched, and with his left hand he seized the Helstone from my grasp. He pointed one finger at Commnenus, and did not even touch her; yet had he smote with an ancient war-hammer the effect would have been the same.
'You dog, and daughter of a long line of dogs!' his icy voice rang with excoriating virulence. 'Drop that silly pistol! Drop it, I say!'
A faint blue flicker snapped from his extended finger—the pistol fell from a flaccid hand. Commnenus seemed totally paralyzed. Heldar's magic held her completely in thralldom. ... I snapped into activity and scooped up the gun.
'Followed me, did you?' I snarled.
'Wait, Jara Wulf!' Heldar's tone was frankly amused. 'No need for you to do aught! Mine is the blood-feud, mine the blood-right! And ere I finish with yon
Michaela Commnenus, an ancient hate will be surfeited, and an ancient vengeance, too long delayed, will be consummated.'
'Heldar,' I began, for dread seized me at the ominous quality of his words, 'I will not stand for this affair going any farther! I--'
'Be silent! Seat yourself over there against the wall and watch and hear, but move not nor speak again, lest I silence you for ever!'
A force ir
resistible hurled me across the cave and set me down, hard, on a flat rock. I realized fully that I was obeying his mandate—I couldn't speak, couldn't even move my eyelids, so thoroughly had he inhibited any further interference on my part.
Paying no further attention to Commnenus for the moment, he crossed over to me, bent and kissed me on my lips, his sapphire eyes laughing into my own blazing, wrathful eyes.
'Poor dear! It is too bad, but you made me do it. I wanted you to help me all the way through this tangled coil —but you have been so difficult to manage! Yet in some ways you have played into my hands splendidly. Yes, even to bringing the Hel-stone back to me—and I would not care to lose that for a queen's ransom. And I put it into yon fool's head to be wakeful tonight, and see you regain the Hel-stone, and follow you—and thus walk into my nephew little trap.
'And now!'
He whirled and faced Commnenus. And for all that she was spellbound, in her eyes I read fear and a ghastly foreknowledge of some dreadful fate about to be meted out to her at his hands.
He picked up the flashlight she had dropped and extinguished it with the dry comment:
'We need a different light here—the Hel-light from Hela's halls!' And at his word, a most peculiar light pervaded the cave, and there was that about its luminance that actually affrighted. Again he spoke:
'Michaela Commnenus, you utterly vile worm of the earth! You know that your doom is upon you—but as yet you know not why. O beast lower