mentioned sportsmanship,” Tala Mag’s voice came from behind me. “I trust you have learned your lesson.”
I managed to push myself up to my feet. Bord and Cuyler were coming around the side of the house. They snatched pellets from Tala Mag and dashed off again. I had to go on, to inflict pain on other women so that Helen could be saved.
I became crafty—a hunter. Instead of rushing about wildly, I chose what appeared to be the best hiding places and went to them. In a copse of birch trees I came across Jane Rooney and let her have it. I ran back to reload and returned to the hunt. I got Clara Cuyler and then Inez Spaulding. I had Lillian Bord trapped against a corner of the wall when her husband appeared suddenly and threw himself at me.
As we struggled there in the moonlight, a sharp beam of light spread over us and one of the servants pulled us apart. Now it was Frank Bord who received a lashing. Lillian had fled. I rose and went in search of a fresh victim.
Time lost all meaning. Two hours the hunt was to last, and five minutes or an hour might have passed. The night air was shattered by the occasional shrieks of the women; and now and then across my vision would flash a naked running woman, or a clothed man in pursuit or returning to the terrace to reload, or a huge servant with whip in one hand and flashlight in the other to impose “sportsmanship” on us.
Running across what had been a lawn, I almost stumbled over a white body which lay pressed flat, hidden in the tall grass. The woman leaped to her feet with breasts bobbing crazily and flesh quivering as she realized that she could not escape and waited with shrinking body for the searing pain of the acid pellet.
I lifted my pistol. Then for the first time I saw her face and my arm dropped to my side.
“Helen!”
She stumbled to me and my arms closed about the sweet, abused body of my wife.
“Helen, perhaps we can get out of here or hide before it’s all over. Let’s try to get into the house. They’ll never think of looking there for us.”
We ran across the lawn. We had almost reached the rear of the house when the form of Roland Cuyler came running toward us.
“Let him shoot you,” I whispered. “We mustn’t become separated again, and if I try to stop him they’ll tear us apart.”
She nodded and waited for him, setting her teeth. I swung a short distance away from her. In spite of the blue marks which pitted her skin, she looked breathtakingly lovely as she stood there in the moonlight. Cuyler came up to her, and glanced at me, then went close to her so that he would not miss. His lips were pressed tightly together and his eyes glinted with the joy of the hunter who had cornered his quarry. He was no longer quite human, and neither were the rest of us.
He shot a pellet at her sleek hip and raced off. Helen winced, but did not cry out. Then we were holding each other’s hands again and continuing toward the house.
The sight of the windows shattered my scheme. They were all barred. Doubtless the front door was locked. There had to be another way. I had counted the blue acid marks on her and there seemed to be eight or ten. And the hunt was still young.
“Perhaps the wall,” I said desperately. “I might be able to lift you to the top. The barbed-wire will tear you, but it will be no worse than the pellets and what might follow. Somehow you might manage to get over the second wall.”
We ran across to the wall. For a while we were in the open and she was seen by Rooney, so we had to stop while she submitted to being shot again. I went through a hell of helplessness watching. Then we were at the wall.
I had hoped that there might be a tree close enough, but Tala Mag had taken care of that.
Sticking my pistol in my belt, I pressed against the wall while Helen climbed up to my shoulders. She could just about reach the top of the wall with her fingers. I grasped her ankles and, exerting every ounce of strength, lifted her slowly. She got her elbows on the wall, was pulling herself up—
A flashlight beam covered us. With a groan of despair I knew that I had failed. The whip curled around my back. I stumbled and Helen lost her hold and we both dropped to the ground. Panting under the pressure of Helen’s soft body, I lay waiting for the whipping.
But what happened then was worse than any whipping would have been. The servant Wick dropped his whip and flashlight and plucked Helen from the ground. Holding her with one hand, he pulled from a pocket a pistol containing a number of the acid pellets, and five times he shot at various parts of Helen’s body.
Her screams of agony formed a maddening din in my brain. This was our punishment for attempting to escape. Not only did the five pellets at once cause her unendurable anguish, but, counting the two other marks she might have avoided if she had not met me, she was seven marks behind the others. God, what a fool I had been! She had had one chance in five of losing.
Now her handicap was terrific.
She writhed there on the ground, clawing at her flesh, and her screams attracted other hunters.
“Run!” I shouted.
With an effort she managed to stumble to her feet and choke off her voice. She cast a frantic glance over her shoulder and plunged in among a nearby copse. Frank Bord and Bob Spaulding raced after her.
Wick picked up his whip and flashlight and strode off. It struck me that I was wasting valuable time, that the only way to make up for those marks on Helen was to redouble my own efforts. And so I became a hunter again.
Several times more I came across Helen, and each time I kept my distance. With despairing heart I saw that her skin was literally pitted with those cruel, damning marks.
And so the nightmare continued. Running to the terrace to reload, shooting the pellet at a naked body, returning to the terrace. And always Tala Mag was behind that table, holding out the pellets one by one, that unholy smug smile fastened to her lips. Sometimes none of her servants was near, and it did not occur to me or to any of the others to strangle her then and there. We were too thoroughly cowed; too thoroughly savages intent only upon the hellish hunt.
Toward the end the five of us were so exhausted that we could scarcely stumble along, and our wives were weaker still, so that they made hardly any effort at flight any more.
Finally, after the passing of an eternity, the two hours were up. When we came to reload, two of the servants were waiting for us. We were taken into the chamber where Portia Teele had been tortured, and we were chained once again. The corpse had been removed.
Next the women were rounded up. They entered the room on legs which could scarcely bear them up, and they flopped on the bare floor and lay there, their bodies twitching with pain.
Then one by one they were dragged to the center of the floor and the blue marks on their skin were counted by Tala Mag while Emil kept a record. We men dared hardly breathe. Looking at Helen, my heart stopped within me. She seemed to have marks more than any of the others.
She was the third to be counted, after Clara Cuyler and Jane Rooney. Yes, she had many more than the others. And then Lillian Bord, and Helen was still the first.
Clops was at the brazier, blowing on the coals to heat the irons.
CHAPTER VI
PASSION IN HELL
Inez
