Read Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 Online

Authors: Dorothy McIlwraith

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Weird Tales volume 42 number 04 (8 page)

BOOK: Weird Tales volume 42 number 04
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As if by instinct, I was backing toward the door. I wondered if I were not the victim of some frightful hallucination.

"But what do you want me to do?" I blurted out, as with one hand I groped behind me for the doorknob.

"Do? What do we want you to do, man* sieur?" groaned the elder woman. "Speak with them! Plead with them! Beg them to treat us like human beings—-not hke beasts in cages!"

"But who am I to speak to? Who are they? What do you mean, Madam?"

"Who but oar persecutors—our oppressors?"

"Who but our persecutors—our oppres-

THE ROUND TOWER

39

sors?" echoed the other woman, with a ghostly repetition of the words.

By this time it was so dark that the five persons made but shadows indistinctly seen against the dungeon-like gloom. There w f as no arguing now with my fear; it was taking command of me; the next instant, had the man not surmised my thoughts by some clairvoyant perception, I would have left the dolorous strangers to their fate and dashed pellmell down the tower stairs.

"Hold, monsieur," his voice detained me. "It is growing late—we need a light."

And then, with startled eyes, I witnessed one of the eeriest, one of the most inexplicable incidents of all. Suddenly, though I had seen no lantern, there was a light in the room! It was a sort of gray-white phosphorescence, midway between the hue of a light fog and that of pewter; and it seemed to come from nowhere in particular, but filled the room with a fluctuating radiance, at times bright enough to reveal every object, at times permitting everything to sink back almost into invisibility. By this illumination all things—even the man's beefy face—took on a ghastly pallor; my own hand, outstretched in a gesture of spontaneous horror, startled me with its pale, spectral quality.

"Do not be afraid, monsieur, 1 ' one of the women spoke reassuringly. "They will not find you. The guards were sleeping; else you could not have come up. You were heaven-sent to help us in our need."

My knees quivering beneath me, I did not feel heaven-sent to help anyone. In that uncanny wavering light, which struck my disordered imagination as almost sepulchral, I was more frightened than in the darkness. I was just a little relieved, however, to see how the small boy, curled up near the wall with some straw for a pillow, was sleeping an apparently normal childhood sleep.

Nevertheless, I had found the doorknob, and was drawing it toward me.. A blast of chilly air, contrasting weirdly with the heat of the summer evening, swept up the tower stairs.

A second more, and I would have been gone. But the elder woman, crossing the loom like a flash of light, had placed her-

self next to me; between me and the door. I could see her big sad eyes, not a foot from mine, glowing as if from immense hollow depths; I could see her long, pale proud face alternately brightening and darkening by the flickers of the changeable unearthly light. And once more she exercised thai strange, that magical compulsion upon me. My limbs were frozen. I could merely stare —and wonder.

"It is not for our own sakes, monsieur," she resumed, in a voice that shook and wavered even more than did the light. "It is not for our own sakes that I beg your aid, but for our poor, innocent children. For their sakes, in the name of heaven's mercy, go out and plead with our oppressors, monsieur. Rush forth—rush forth and summon help, before it is too late!"

"Before it is too late!" came a low sobbing echo.

"But you—who are you?" I demanded, growing more mystified from minute to minute.

"We? Who are we? Is there anyone in all Paris that does not know?"

"Is there anyone in all Paris that does not know?" there sounded a sobbing refrain.

But they seemed not to hear, or at least not to believe my denials.

"Look at me! Do you not recognize me?" the man demanded, thrusting his face within inches of mine. "Who in all the land could help recognizing me?"

Observing the round, commonplace features, the paunchy cheeks, the sensual lips and dull eyes, I failed to recognize anyone I had ever known.

"Ah, monsieur, you must be a stranger in the land."

"I—I—yes, I am a stranger—from California," I managed to grasp at a straw.

"From where do you say, monsieur?" he asked, as if he had never heard of my native state. And then dismally he went on, half to himself, "Am I then so changed by my hardships that I cannot be recognized? Ah, no doubt I had a different look in the old times, when I went forth daily in the hunt. Yes, that was a sport worthy of a king— chasing the antlered stag. A sport worthy of a king!"

WEIRD TALES

"And 1," bewailed the elder woman, her eyes downcast, her whole form seeming indistinctly to sag, "perhaps I also am changed —oh, how changed from the days when I led in gay revels and frolics, and banquets and masked balls, and was merry the whole day long—and the whole night long, too! Little did I suspect, in those old happy times, what a bitter blow was in store for me!"

"Little did I suspect," moaned the second woman. "Little did we all suspect!"

Had I chanced upon a band of lunatics? Was this old tower the hospital where these poor deranged wretches were kept? This seemed to me, all in all, the most plausible solution. Nevertheless, it did not explain the weird light, which still pervaded the grim round tower room from some unseen source. Nor did it account for various other incidents, which I report even now with a tingling sensation along the spine and a numbing clutch at the heart.

HI

IT MAY have been only the wind; but the door, which I had opened slightly, suddenly closed with a dull thudding jar. Yet how could it have been the wind, since the door opened inward, and hence a breeze from below would have pushed the door wider open? And from inside the closed room, how could an air current originate? But I was sure that no hand, and least of all mine, had touched the door.

Even as I struggled to regain my com-ptoure, I reached again for the door handle, more determined than ever to leave. But, as I did so, my shaken nerves were shattered by another shock. With a series of high-pitched yipping barks, a small creature ran out as if from nowhere and began cavorting about my knees. Where had the little dog come from? I was certain it had not been in the room before. I was equally convinced that there was rio way for it to enter.

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR of horrors would have appreciated the window dummy. . . .

"The Weird Tailor" ^ Prisoners

ROBERT BLOCK ^ in rose quartz! 'Shallafai" ARTHUR J. BURKS

"The CiSy"

Verses by

H. P.

LOVEZCRAFT

Treasure Trove In the next

WEIRD TAI.ES

AUGUST DERLETH

H. RUSSELL WAKEFIELD

SEABURY OUINN

THE ROUND TOWER

41

By the flickering grayish-white light, it had a sort of half-solid appearance as I reached down to pet it; and somehow I was not quite able to place a hand upon it. Eluding my touch, it ran over to the elder woman, who bent down and caressed it. And then, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. But from someone's throat—the adolescent girl's, I believe—there burst a spasm of uncanny hollow laughter.

Then, as I pulled at the doorknob, the elder woman was again at my side, her lovely sad eyes fixing me with a stare of such terrible intensity that I was gripped powerless in my place. My hand dropped from the doorknob; for the first time, I knew myself to be a prisoner.

"What is to happen to us, monsieur?" she lamented, not hysterically, but with an air of dignified restraint beneath which I could feel the hot passion smoldering. "What is to happen to us all? Time after time we hear the tocsin sounding below us on the streets. We hear the crowds shouting. But we can only guess what it all means. Can you not tell us, monsieur, what it means?"

"Can you not tell us, monsieur?" echoed the younger woman.

I shook my head, helplessly.

"Ah, monsieur, you are like them all," the first speaker sighed. "Like the guards-like that monster who has charge of us. You know, yet you will tell us nothing."

"You know, yet you will tell us nothing," came the unfailing repetition.

"I feel it in my bones, a worse fate is in store for us," the woman moaned, while one pale hand moved significantly across her neck. "My sainted mother, who was far wiser than I, foresaw it all long ago; but then I was too young and giddy to listen. Now that she is in her grave— -monsieur, sometimes at night I can see her before me, warning, warning, warning "

"Warning, warning, warning "

took up the other woman.

"Come, come now. Things are not always so bad, are they?" the rumbling voice of the man broke out in incongruous, soothing contrast. " We have no complaints about many things—least of all, about the food,

now have we? At noon we have three soups, two entrees, two roasts, fruit, cheese, claret, and champagne—it is not all we have known in our better days, monsieur, but it is not bad. It is not bad. Then the boy and I, on fine days, are allowed to walk in the court below—"

"You can walk there, but not I!" broke out the elder woman, who was evidently his wife. "You can submit yourself to the staring insolence of those beasts of guards— not I! You can console yourself with your fine meals—not I, not I! I—I think of the fate that is in store for us all. I—I think of the future of our poor children!"

"I—think of the future of our poor children!" came the inevitable echo.

The boy, slumbering against the wall, chose this particular moment to turn over in his sleep and moan.

IFOR my part would have left then and there—had this been possible. But even if I had not already been riveted to the spot, I would have been held by the woman's anguished cry.

"Think of our friends—our poor friends —the ones who did not escape, or came back out of loyalty to us—those tigers in human form have cut their heads from their bodies—torn them limb from limb!"

"Have cut their heads from their bodies —torn them limb from limb!"

"Come, come, my dear," interposed the man, still in a placating voice, "we cannot always think of these horrible tilings. Come, come, play for me at the clavecin, as of old —sing to me, my dear."

As if from nowhere, an old-fashioned musical instrument—a clavecin, or harpsichord—appeared before us. It could not have been there before without being seen, for it was a huge thing on legs, nearly as large as a modern piano. Yet there it was, clearly visible in the wavering grayish light; with a stool before it, at which the elder woman seated herself.

As my lips opened in a half-uttered cry of horror, the player began plucking at the strings—and the strangest melodies I had ever heard began coming forth, while she accompanied them in a quivering sad ?oice

WEIRD TALES

of a subdued loveliness. The music was low, almost ghostly faint; and was charged with such a deep, throbbing sorrow that, at die first note, the tears began coursing down my cheeks. As the woman went on and on with her song, its melancholy increased, though it still had the same eerily distant quality; it seemed that I was listening to a plaint from across countless years and remotest places. Now everyone in the room appeared to have forgotten my presence; the younger woman, the man and the girl gathered about the player, as if to drink in every note; even the small boy arose and joined the group; and as they did so the light, as if condensed by some unseen reflector, suddenly concentrated upon them, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. And then the illumination, wavering and flickering more than ever, began to dwindle . . . until suddenly, without warning, it went out and I found myself in blackness.

But still, from amid the coaly gloom, that phantom-thin music continued to sound, the voice of the singer blended with the notes of the instrument, unspeakably sad, immensely distant, fading like the wind-borne tones of receding minstrels.

Only then did all my concentrated dread and horror find expression in one tremendous scream. Fumbling and groping, somehow I found the door; somehow I forced my limbs free of the spell that had gripped them, and started down the twisted stairs. And then all at once everything went blank.

BOOK: Weird Tales volume 42 number 04
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