over him. Over behind the boulders, the other four clansmen were scrambling out to help their leader. One of them swore as he searched for a lantern.
“Quiet, you fools!” Tim Croft whispered harshly through the blackness. “Your trap is about to work. That’s why I hit Lige; to keep him from giving us away. Down, all of you—unless you want to scare off your witch-vampire!”
There was a slithering sound at the mouth of the cave, and suddenly a hellish crimson effulgence glowed there like devil’s fire. Through the dim ruby light a shape scuttled forward, and something clattered metallically. Brenda shrieked again. “Tim—it’s got me—it’s at my throat—”
He surged toward her, and his hard arms closed about a jerkily-writhing form. “You’re all through killing girls for their blood, Jeb Starko!” he said as he bore the scrawny mountaineer to the cavern floor and pinned him there. “Make another light, you Ludwells. Starko’s red lantern gives me the creeps!”
The clansmen came out of hiding, struck matches. Kerosene wicks flickered as flame was applied to them. Lige Ludwell swayed to his feet, staring stupidly. “You—you mean to say it was Jeb Starko that done all the killin’?”
Tim Croft nodded. “Hold him while I cut Miss Lemoyne down.” They obeyed willingly, and Croft slashed at Brenda’s bonds with a borrowed blade. He stood her upright, peeled off his bathrobe, wrapped it around her and held her in his embrace. “It’s all over, darling,” he whispered. “There’ll be no more talk of vampirism in Haunted Hollow.”
Pinioned and helpless, Jeb Starko sobbed: “There never was no witch-vampires, damn ye all! You got no right to say—”
Croft cast a pitying glance at the prisoner. “You’re right, Jeb. There weren’t any witch-vampires; there was only you, and your ignorance of medical methods. I had told you that your wife was suffering from nephrosis, a disease where the blood rejects proteins and refuses to transmit water to the kidneys. The only way to treat it is by transfusion—putting borrowed blood into the patient’s veins.
“You knew we were keeping Eula alive by giving her new blood, refrigerated and shipped here from the county hospital blood bank. In spite of that, she kept getting worse. You conceived the idea that the reason she wasn’t improving was because we weren’t giving her enough fresh blood. You decided to do something about it.
“You caught Lige Ludwell’s daughter in the woods, killed her, drained her veins into a tin bucket. You didn’t know anything about transfusion methods; you thought the fluid was fed to your wife by mouth. You were going to bring the Ludwell girl’s blood to the hospital for Eula—until you learned that the Ludwells had discovered the murder and jumped to a wrong conclusion.
“That scared you. You knew the Ludwells thought Eula was a vampire. So you came to the hospital to warn me. Then I told you your wife had died. You went almost crazy with grief. While I was palavering with the Ludwells in my cabin, you sneaked around to the hospital building and stole Eula’s corpse, carried it into the woods and hid it. Maybe my night-nurse, Edith Paxon, was wandering around and caught you; I don’t know. But I do know you killed her, took her into the surgery and drained her blood into a container.”
“I—I wanted to bring Eula back to life,” the man choked.
“Yes. I realized that when I saw her corpse in your cabin, with bowls of blood on the table and blood streaming down out of her mouth. You’d been trying to force it down her poor dead throat, hadn’t you?”
“She…she wouldn’t drink. I tried to make her, but she…she jest wouldn’t. Then I thought it was because the blood was cold, mebbe. So I went out to try an’ git some that was warmer… ”
Croft nodded. “Yes. And you heard Miss Lemoyne screaming up here in this cave. So you came to investigate, carrying a red lantern you must have stolen from some road project.” He sighed as he turned to the Ludwells. “You men can understand the rest of it, I guess. And—well, I won’t hold it against you for knocking me out and kidnapping my sweetheart. You were on the wrong track, but your trap worked.”
“Reckon mebbe we-uns been wrong about you, too, doc,” Lige Ludwell said. “Me an’ the boys air willin’ to be right friendly-like with you from now on, if hit suits you.”
Croft stuck out his hand. And then Jeb Starko, with a sudden burst of strength, broke away from his clansmen captors. “I’m a-goin’ back to Eula!” he cried as he raced for the mouth of the cavern. But just as he reached the brink, he lost his footing. Screaming, he plunged downward; there came a crashing thud as his body impacted against the valley floor, far below. Then silence, save for the requiem of the rain and the wind’s sighing dirge.…
* * * *
They buried Jeb Starko and his wife in a single grave, the next day. Returning from the simple funeral, Tim Croft held Brenda Lemoyne very close to him. “Love’s a queer thing, isn’t it, my sweet?” he whispered.
“It’s a very wonderful thing,” she answered, and held up her lips for his kiss.
MISTRESS OF SNARLING DEATH, by Paul Chadwick
Stephen Demerest stopped when he saw the figure coming toward him across the desolate, rain-drenched fields. It was his first glimpse of a human being since his car had mired in the thick mud of the country road.
He was on foot now, lost in a dreary region of deserted farms and rocky fields, from which all fertility seemed to have been pressed by the weight of ages. Even the spring rain had brought no life back to the barren, eroded earth.
He waited beside the rough path he’d followed. The figure was only a dimly moving shape in the dusk, at first. Then, it materialized into a human form enveloped in some sort of dark cloak, with a stiff, wide-brimmed hat standing out queerly from the head, reminding him of a fantastic figure out of the mists of antique Spanish legend. But this was New England he was in, not ancient Spain, and the approaching figure was incongruous.
Then Stephen Demerest started. For the lowering sunset clouds broke apart a little. A sulphurous glow came through them, touching the wet landscape with a weird, sickly saffron light. And he saw that the person coming toward him was a woman.
She moved with stately grace. There was something so odd about her presence in this lonely spot, something so arresting in her costume, that Demerest stared in growing wonder.
She got closer. He saw that she was youthful, hardly more than a girl. A girl with pale, impassive features, beautifully molded, and great dark eyes that were strangely fixed upon him.
He stood speechless, breathless. She was directly opposite before he pulled himself out of his trance sufficiently to speak. “Can you tell me,” he said, “if I’m anywhere near the Benjamin Halliday house?”
Her eyes remained fixed upon him, but she didn’t answer. Demerest hurriedly explained: “My car got stuck in the mud. I had to leave it. I thought I was taking a short-cut across country to the Halliday house, but apparently I’m lost.”
Still she was silent, her oval, cameo-clear face unchanging in its expression, her dark, unfathomable eyes staring at him as though he were something less than human.
Demerest, wet, cold, weary and annoyed, stepped quickly toward her—and at once stopped with a stifled gasp. For a sound reached him that he hadn’t heard before—the soft, rustling patter of many feet. He saw suddenly that the girl wasn’t alone.
Behind
