“You may now go up and see Mr. Halliday,” he said, harshly. “I understand he’s expecting you.”
Demerest didn’t answer. He moved up the stairs, heard the gnome-man’s step close behind him. The servant was dogging his footsteps like an evil shadow.
“Right here!” The servant held open a door and followed Demerest into a room where there was a huge, old-fashioned canopied bed.
Demerest’s eyes swung to the figure on it, then to the two others who stood beside it.
The man in the bed was obviously Halliday. That wrinkled, crafty face, prematurely aged, stirred vague memories in Demerest’s mind. The other two, a youngish, fair-haired couple, were the first civilized-looking people he’d seen in the house. The woman had fair skin, a shapely body and washed-out but still attractive blue eyes. The man bore a striking resemblance to her. Both seemed well-bred, quiet.
Halliday turned feverish eyes on his visitor. Demerest could sense the hideous, gnome-like servant standing close behind him; and Halliday’s expression seemed to plead craftily for Demerest to be discreet.
“You’ve come about the radio,” said Halliday in a thin, flat voice. “I’m glad. It hasn’t been acting right. I’m an old man, bedridden, helpless. The radio, which keeps me in touch with the outside world, is one of my few pleasures.”
“I won’t be able to fix it until tomorrow,” Demerest said. “My car, with all my tubes and testing equipment, is stuck in the road a mile from here. If you’ll let me spend the night, I’ll start on the radio tomorrow.”
“I expected you to spend the night,” said Halliday. “We’re far from things here—isolated, as you see.” He waved his thin hand toward the man and the woman. “My good friends, Eric and Nana Larsen! They and my daughter, Gail, are taking turns nursing me.”
Demerest looked into the faded blue eyes of the man and the woman, and knew that these two must be brother and sister.
The woman favored him with a smile that made her look younger and glamorously appealing, in a foreign sort of way. “Please to meet you,” she said, with a slight, becoming accent. Then her eyes fell on the hideous gnome standing behind Demerest. The smile left her face and she shuddered. An air of tenseness settled over the room.
Halliday’s features, now that the first effort of greeting was over, had become wan and corpselike, their only expression one of inscrutable, deep-seated terror. He said, listlessly: “Dinner will soon be ready. I’m sorry I can’t join you; but I shall not be alone. Either Eric or Nana will stay with me.” The invitation to dinner seemed also dismissal. The hideous servant, standing so close behind Demerest that he could feel the man’s breath on his neck, said: “Come, Mr. Demerest. I’ll find you a room.”
Demerest had only a small grip with him. He followed the squat-bodied servant down a long hall. The man thrust open a door, lighted an oil lamp and favored Demerest with a curious leer. He said: “Here’s where you’ll sleep.”
There was another canopied bed in the room—like the one Halliday had. The house was obviously ancient, all the furnishings dating back to Colonial times. The servant withdrew, then abruptly thrust his ugly face back around the door. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes,” he growled.
Demerest unpacked his things, went out into the hall, and saw Nana Larsen descending the staircase. She had changed her gown, as though for his especial benefit. Her low-cut dress revealed the shapeliness and alluring whiteness of her shoulders.
But a moment later the pale beauty of Nana Larsen was eclipsed by the lush, dark loveliness of the girl who entered the hall below, through another door.
Demerest started, stared, felt his heart contract. For he was again looking at the classic, inscrutable features of the mystery girl, whose great dogs had menaced his life.
Nana Larsen smiled. “Miss Halliday, this is Mr. Demerest, your father’s radio man.”
The mystery girl’s dark eyes searched Demerest’s face. She nodded briefly, acknowledging the introduction. There was something both haughty and tragic in her bearing. She preceded them into the dining room, and Demerest noticed that she was dressed almost as strangely as before. Her gown was individual and exquisitely becoming, but old-fashioned, Victorian in its cut, as though the girl were costumed for some part in a play.
A third repulsive and gnome-like servant, seeming to be a brother of the one who had given Demerest his orders, was in the dining room. Gail Halliday seated herself with all the hauteur of a princess. Nana Larsen smiling slid into her chair. Demerest took a place facing the two women.
He had a strange feeling of unreality. No one spoke. The candles on the table shed a light that barely penetrated to the corners of the big Colonial room. The presence of the monster-like servants cast a damper on the meal. Demerest could feel their eyes boring into him, watching his every move.
Each time one of them went near Nana Larsen, to present a dish, she cringed away, as though the white, bare skin of her arms and shoulders shrank from any possible contact with their simian hands.
* * * *
Gail Halliday kept her eyes steadfastly on her plate. Demerest found himself watching her with ever-increasing fascination. He’d never seen a girl like her, never beheld such a mixture of strange beauty and chill aloofness. Once, when she raised her dark eyes and glanced at him, he had a sense of hidden, unaroused depths, tragic and exciting. He was attracted by her and afraid of her, at one and the same time. Nana Larsen made conversation finally by asking him about his trip from the city, slurring soft words in her peculiarly accented voice.
The meal ended at last. Gail Halliday slipped away as mysteriously, as silently, as she had come. Nana Larsen went upstairs and Eric Larsen came down. But he did not attempt to talk to Demerest, and Demerest went to his room, after one cigarette.
There seemed nothing else to do. Halliday hadn’t called him, and he found himself wondering if the old man’s strange letter had not been the product of delirium.
As he went along the hall to his chamber, he caught sight of the most hideous of the servants, the one with the single burning eye and noseless face, watching him. The ugly mute stared, as though in secret, diabolical speculation.
Demerest paced his room nervously, smoking cigarette after cigarette. The whimpering wind rose outside to a tortured moan. Spurts of rain rapped against his window with a sound like bony knuckles. Demerest drew the shade, gazed out.
He started when he looked across to another wing of the house, where there were lighted shades, across which a figure moved—the tall, lithe, glorious figure of Gail Halliday. She was also pacing, appearing and reappearing against the shades.
Then Demerest heard the throaty howling of dogs, a strange, clamorous, oddly menacing chorus, out in the darkness of the night. Somewhere on the other side of the court, in the girl’s wing of the house, the great black beasts were imprisoned, stirred apparently by the noise of the storm, and by a macabre, vaguely-felt restlessness that filled the air. Demerest suddenly had a sense that unknown, devilish forces were all about; that some storm other than the wind and the rain was gathering, creeping closer and closer, threatening them all.
The girl finally stopped pacing. She disappeared from a window, then came back. For a moment he saw her figure eerily silhouetted without the strange gown on it; saw the chaste, proud lines of her body. Then her light went out.
Demerest
