Nana went to him, laid her hand on his forehead, and pushed him gently but firmly back. “Nothing, my friend. Please calm yourself. One of your servants attacked me, and Eric had to shoot him. The man was mad. But there is nothing to fear. Eric has gone to see that Gail isn’t harmed.”
An unearthly howling came from the dogs, rising in a crescendo louder than at anytime before. Halliday pushed himself up, bright feverish spots burning in his gaunt cheeks, eyes like living coals. “No, no!” he cried. “Something must be done. Demerest, go to Gail. Help her!”
Demerest turned toward the door, but a sudden icy voice checked him. “Fool—stay quiet! Another step, and I’ll kill you.”
He whirled. Nana Larsen was clutching the automatic, had pointed it straight at his heart. Her pale blue eyes were glittering and deadly, chill as ice. Her voluptuous body was as rigid as a figure carved from snow. He saw her finger tighten on the trigger as she read defiance in his eyes, saw murder on her face.
He did the one thing possible, leaped sidewise and dropped flat. He heard the report of the gun, felt the fanning flame of the bullet above his head. He caught hold of a light chair and flung it at her. As she leaped aside screaming, he rushed her in the brief instant that her gun was deflected.
She swung wildly, crashed two more shots his way. But she missed him. He closed with her, thrusting her wrist downward and aside in a grip of iron.
She fought like a trapped panther. She kicked him, scratched him. When he wrestled the gun from her fingers, made her drop it, she bent suddenly and sank her white teeth into his arm.
He cried out, hugged her in a restricting grip that made her hardly able to move. She hissed like a cat, came up out of her bursting dress, her body gleaming, and tried to scratch out his eyes. Demerest, in the straining emergency of the moment, did something he’d never done before, something ungallant but necessary. He crashed a fist to the point of her chin, dropping her, senseless, to the floor.
He turned away, picked up her gun, and ran to the door, with Halliday shouting for him to hurry. He didn’t know what weird conspiracy he had to face. He only knew that Gail Halliday was in some sort of danger. He seemed to feel her dark, unfathomable eyes upon him, no longer arrogant, but helpless and appealing.
He ran through the corridor down a flight of stairs, around another hall into that other wing of the mansion. He heard a sound of battle, saw Eric Larsen struggling with the second gnome-like figure. The servant had evidently jumped him, taken him by surprise. With his one good arm, he was trying to hold Larsen, clutching both wrists, to prevent him from again using his weapon. Larsen was snarling, cursing, and the dogs in a nearby room were howling frightfully, leaping against a closed door, scratching and whining with desperate claws.
* * * *
Demerest ran straight toward the fighting figures. He raised the gun he had taken from Nana Larsen. Then Eric Larsen saw him. With a superhuman wrench, he broke away from the servant. He whirled, his gun aimed straight at Demerest.
Demerest pumped the trigger of the small automatic. He felt a brief, sickening sensation inside when no shot sounded. The gun’s magazine was empty.
He saw the quick flash of Larsen’s pistol, felt a hot, stinging pain at the top of his head. He sank to his knees, as though a burning iron had been laid across his scalp. He sank inertly, saw Larsen turn and fire straight into the gnome-man’s face. The ugly creature went down spouting blood.
Larsen turned and disappeared through a door. Demerest could still see. His eyes were half-open. His mind was even capable of registering impressions. But the stunning force of the bullet that had laid his scalp open, almost seared his brain, made movement impossible. He could only lie and stare through half-closed lids.
Dimly he heard a scream, then silence—except for the fearful racket of the dogs. A moment later, Larsen came through the door. He was carrying Gail Halliday. There was a bruise on the girl’s white forehead. She was in her nightdress, with her white legs trailing. Larsen, without a single glance at Demerest, bore her along the hall and out into the night.
Demerest tried to rise. He fought within himself, as a man fights a horrible, paralyzing force; fought while his brain burned in agony, and hot blood trickled down his face. But he couldn’t rise. And he saw a shadow, as in a nightmare, creep along the hall when Larsen had gone.
It was the horrible, noseless servant with the single eye. The eye was glaring now, burning with the fierce light of a devil’s torch. The man was shaking. His lips were moving, writhing across his broken teeth, though no sound came from them.
He moved straight toward the door, from behind which the howling of the dogs sounded. He sprang a bolt, drew the door outward. He went down writhing under a mad rush of flying black bodies.
Like the moving ribbon of some satanic cyclorama, Demerest saw the snarling, wicked heads of the great black dogs. He saw their green eyes, their slavering lips, their bared and glistening fangs. He saw them come straight toward him in a surging flood of fury. They loomed as large as mammoths, their fangs were curving scimitars that seemed, to his dazed brain, to sweep the whole hallway. He already thought he felt them, rending, tearing at his throat, thought he felt his own hot blood choking him.
But instead the dogs passed over him, unheedingly trampled him with their flying paws, went by so near him that he could feel their fetid breaths on his face. They passed on along the hall, turned in a column and plunged through the open doorway out into the night.
Demerest lay weakly, sheer terror bringing his numb brain slowly back. He watched as the one-eyed, monstrous servant got to his feet. He saw a hideous, sinister expression on the man’s scarred face. The servant disappeared for a brief moment, returned, and came toward Demerest with something in his fingers.
Demerest cringed with returning consciousness, gasped and shrank back in horror as the one-eyed servant pressed a cold substance against his face. Then reason asserted itself. Demerest relaxed for an instant, trembling.
The one-eyed man was pressing a wet cloth to his skin, trying to revive him. Demerest helped, battling the cloudy pain in his head. The servant got two more cloths, then dragged Demerest to his feet. He plucked at Demerest’s coat sleeve, made strange, inarticulate whimpers in his scarred throat, pointed out the door through which the dogs had gone.
Demerest understood that he was to follow them. The servant drew an old-fashioned lantern from a closet. He shuffled ahead of Demerest, still beckoning fiercely.
As he neared the doorway, Demerest heard a sound he was never to forget, a sound of mortal, bloodcurdling horror coming out of the darkness—a scream torn from a human throat. Above it, he heard the snarling of the dogs like that of a pack of ravening wolves.
The one-eyed servant hurried forward. Demerest, weak and trembling, followed. The cold rain on his face helped to revive him, washed the blood from the crease along his scalp. The sound of the horrible battle ahead lent speed to his feet.
Then under the glow of the lantern, he saw what was happening; saw a bloodstained body leap upward, like a huge white fish, above a sea of tossing black muzzles. The sea of savage animal forms was speared with green points of light, like stars blazing above water.
Larsen, stripped from the waist up, his flesh torn already into awful ribbons, was striking right and left with his gun butt. But the fierce dogs pulled him down. His crimson-stained back disappeared under a tidal wave of furry bodies. He didn’t appear again, and the sound of gurgling, bubbling worryings that followed sickened Demerest.
The servant waved his skinny arms, again making meaningless noises. The dogs snarled and broke away a little. Demerest caught sight of the still, shapeless thing that had a moment before been Larsen. Faint and sickened, he turned toward the slumped form on the ground a little way off.
The dogs, jaws dripping, instantly sprang away from their dead quarry. Demerest thought for an instant they were going to fly at him. But they ringed the form of Gail Halliday and snarled their menace at hi
m until the clucking of the noseless servant made them draw off.
Then Demerest and the servant bent over Gail Halliday. She lay unconscious but feebly stirring, the thin, rain-soaked nightdress plastered to the lovely lines of her body, beautiful, Demerest thought, as some reclining, fabled goddess. The servant plucked Demerest’s arm, made motions for him to pick the girl up and carry her.
Demerest did so, feeling a strange, thrilling sense of protective tenderness as her warm body lay against his chest. Her face was upturned. Her black, silky hair lay in damp, sweet ringlets on her glorious shoulders.
As the servant led the way, Demerest bore her toward the house, leaving that grisly thing out in the dark. The dogs fell into step behind him, escorting him now, as though in carrying their strange mistress he had become their master.
Demerest thrilled with an exultant feeling of power as he heard their padding feet.
As he entered the house, and the light fell on Gail Halliday’s face, he stopped in wonder.
The pain in his head seemed to turn to a quivering song; the beat of tumultuous music. She was beautiful, so beautiful, that he bent irresistibly, as one in a dream, and pressed his lips against her warm, damp ones. It was a tender kiss, respectful in its lightness, an impulse born of the whirling giddiness in his head, and the great strain he’d been under.
But as he kissed her, Gail Halliday’s eyes opened. The lids fluttered like moth wings for a moment, uncovering the dark, glorious depths that lay beneath. She lay still in his arms for a breathless second, looking up, while a slow, strange smile softened her face. Childlike, trusting, her arms tightened about his neck for the barest instant. Then color flooded her pale cheeks. She slipped from his grasp, said huskily: “We must go to my father. He may have been hurt. Those terrible people!”
She turned and ran down the hall, her damp hair swinging against her neck. Demerest and the servant followed, around the wing of the house, up a stairway, into Halliday’s room.
Halliday was sitting up in bed, face twitching, hoarsely calling out. Nana Larsen still lay crumpled.
Halliday sank back gasping and held out his shaking arms to his daughter. She fled to them, said soft, reassuring things to comfort him. Then suddenly remembering her thin nightdress, she shrank shyly away into a corner.
Demerest stared at Halliday, and the sick man, finding his voice, spoke to his daughter. “Please go outside a minute, Gail. There are some things I want to tell our friend, Demerest—things he will want to know.”
When the girl had gone, Halliday grasped Demerest’s hand in his. “You have been kind,” he said, “so kind to come here. You have saved us.”
Demerest shook his head. He pointed to the noseless servant. “Thank him. He saved things, just now, by turning the dogs on Larsen. Larsen shot the two others. He is dead, now, himself.”
“If you hadn’t come,” said Halliday, “my servants would never have had the courage to act. Your arrival was the signal.”
“The signal for what?”
“To make an attempt to free ourselves from the bondage of the Larsens.” Halliday bent forward, his voice trembling. “You must have guessed that they had some hold over me. I know I am dying; I can talk freely, now. There are many things I’ve done that I shouldn’t, but I didn’t deserve such persecution. The Larsens were criminals, wicked people trying to steal my money—and Eric Larsen wanted Gail.”
“I don’t think I quite understand,” said Demerest.
“No, no, you wouldn’t. But this will help to explain it. I killed the man who ran off with my wife—shot him in a fair fight after he had caused her death by his brutal treatment. I am not a murderer, really—but the law is sometimes cruel. It seemed best to leave Europe, quickly. I thought nobody knew, but the Larsens learned what I had done somehow. They followed me here to blackmail me, bleed me. They threatened to expose me as a criminal, unless I turned over everything I had. They knew I was old, dying, and when I was stubborn, Eric Larsen saw a way of accomplishing his ends through Gail. He might have succeeded—if you hadn’t come. He would have taken her away—I don’t know where.”
Halliday lay back breathing laboredly for a moment. Demerest could see the tortured pounding of his heart, and knew that the man’s days were numbered.
Halliday went on slowly, huskily:
“In many ways, as I said in my letter, I’ve been a wicked, selfish fool. But after my wife, Grace, left me, after I’d brought up Gail from babyhood, nursed her, watched over her, I made up my mind that no man should ever take her from me. She had reached lovely young womanhood when I brought her here. I tried my best to see that no attractive man should ever meet her. I hired the most hideous servants I could find. I saw to it that even our family doctor was old and ugly. I went further, and encouraged a scorn of men in Gail herself, told her never to speak to any stranger, gave her clothes that were unconventional, queer. Even the dogs were my doing. She’s held in such terror by the few neighbors we have, that no man would go near her.
“But it was wrong, wicked. What has happened in the last few weeks has made me see it. She might, even in her loneliness, have been beguiled by that monster, Larsen. It was wrong, and I want to ask a favor of you, Demerest. I want to pay you handsomely to see, after I’m dead, that Gail leads a more normal life: that she meets some good young men and finds love and marriage, if that is her wish. Will you do that for me, in memory of the friendship that I bore your father?”
Demerest started to speak, then turned his head. Gail Halliday had stolen back into the room. She stood just inside the doorway, tall, white, lovely as a vision, her dark eyes fixed upon him, a strange, knowing smile softening her lips.
Demerest turned toward her father and bowed his head. “I think I can promise to take good care of Gail,” he said. “Something tells me she and I are always going to understand each other, and be—dear friends.”
FIANCES FOR THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER, by Russell Gray
CHAPTER ONE
THE GOLDEN TEMPTRESS
It was the usual sort of literary party at which half the guests were uninvited. By midnight you didn’t know whether the man drinking with you was a famous English author come to America to make war speeches or a crasher who wanted to rub shoulders with the famous. It didn’t matter because by that time everybody was pretty drunk and nobody paid any attention to those who drifted in and out of the apartment—until that woman suddenly appeared.
She was the kind who drew your eyes and held them and made you forget that there were other attractive women in the room. She wore a mink cape which dropped open in front so that you couldn’t miss her high-bared breasts which pushed against the low bodice of a slinky gown. The gown was golden and so was her skin, and the way the material molded her body it wasn’t easy to tell precisely what was skin and what gown.
She undulated over to the table where the drinks were served, and at once men closed in around her, pouring for her.
Helen, my wife, and I, Roland Cuyler, the Author, and his wife Clara were standing near a window in an attempt to get a breath of air. We had ceased our conversation when the woman had entered. All of us looked at her.
“Who’s she?” Helen asked.
Roland Cuyler licked his lips and swallowed hard and said: “Never saw her before.”
He was a bad liar. He’d become jittery as soon as he had been aware of her presence; looking at her a few minutes ago, some of the liquid had spilled from his cocktail glass. I wondered why he didn’t tell the truth, then dismissed it from my mind. As his literary agent, it was my business to sell his novels, not to delve into his personal life.
Our little group at the window broke up. Helen moved away to talk to Portia Teele, whose love novels sold by the hundreds of thousands, and I found myself alone. But only for a moment. I turned and there was the woman in gold. A cocktail glass was raised to her lips, and above its rim I saw gray eyes, flecked with gold, calmly appraising me.
“You’re Lester Marlin, the litera
ry agent, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m Tala Mag.”
Curious name. And curious woman. She could have been called very beautiful if you liked them that way—exotic, with eyes slightly slanted and extremely long and narrow brows and high cheekbones, and a body so vibrant that each motion was a sensuous invitation. Not my type, however. I preferred the pure fresh young beauty of Helen.
Tala Mag dropped the glass from her lips and suddenly I realized that she was so close to me that her pointed breasts almost touched my chest. Over her left shoulder I saw Portia Teele and Helen staring at us. Helen smiled. She knew that a literary agent of my reputation, who, by accepting to handle a writer’s manuscript, practically assured its sale, was always being annoyed by women authors who tried to use their bodies as substitutes for lack of literary talent. This Tala Mag was probably one of those.
Tala Mag glanced over my shoulder and coldly studied Helen. Then she turned back to me and intimately tucked a hand through my arm and leaned against me so that I felt the soft yielding of a breast.
“Your wife appears jealous,” she whispered.
Somebody must have told her who Helen was, and it was because my wife watched that she was trying to make me. What the hell was her game?
“Of course she’s not,” I told her. “Why should she be? She knows that no other woman could mean anything to me.”
Her gold-flecked eyes looked up at me challengingly. “She is rather attractive.”
I let her have it right where I knew it would hurt. “By far the most attractive woman in this room,” I said.
I had expected her not to like the indirect insult, but I hadn’t thought that such utter rage would flood her face. With a thin cry of fury she dropped my arm and stepped away from me. I smiled as I watched the indignant sway of her hips as she moved across the room. Helen was smiling also. We understood each other, my wife and I. That was why we were so incomparably happy together.
* * * *
The Pulp Fiction Megapack Page 4
