"Are you prepared to give effective battle to a painted demon, Barclay?" Funk's laugh was incredulous. "Can you, through that painted thing, silence for ever the intangible, distant malefactor?"
"You can do such things?" said Barclay's hushed murmur.
"I shall know how to, before I return tomorrow afternoon."
"But how?"
"I'm going to someone who knows. I shall demand the secret. She will yield
it, I am certain. I'm going to see Gwen Carradorne."
"Where have I heard that name?" puzzled Barclay.
"Possibly in connection with her published brochures. Her Reality of the Abstract is fairly well known; it's discussed everywhere."
"Quite likely," sighed Barclay. "I seem to remember it vaguely."
"Now," pursued Funk briskly, "how about your car?"
IT was dusk when Funk returned on the following day. The seriousness and abstraction that wove a cloak about him struck Barclay's curious inquiries into silence. A certain high air about the younger artist forbade imperiously any break upon that lofty mood. Funk's first query was, Had Silva been duly informed of the occupation of the studio that night?
"He knows. He told Hoddeston that he would call for his unappreciated masterpiece in a couple of days." The words were significantly emphasized.
"I rather fancied he'd say that. He knows you'll be there tonight?"
"Hoddeston told him, if there were any further trouble, I'd sleep there from tonight on, to protect his painting."
"Excellent!" Funk rubbed his hands together and blew a cloud of thick smoke from the cigarette in one corner of his mouth. "And was there any?"
"Yes. Last night the two canvases I'd left were demolished."
"Good! He'll be expecting you to sleep there tonight. Let's have supper. Then I'll run into town and fetch Miss Carradorne. She insists upon coming out; the time was too brief to prepare me to handle the situation single-handed."
"That's extraordinarily kind of her, Funk. But if she is to be at the studio tonight, why not I?" Barclay insisted.
WEIRD TALES
"She would have handled it alone, only
that she " Funk broke off suddenly,
looking apologetic. "Sorry I can't be more explicit, but she bans discussion of herself unless she decides to come out into the open, which she rarely does. She's—well, wait until you meet her, if she permits it," Funk broke off, in a kind of embarrassment. "You'll understand then. But believe me, she is worthy the highest respect and admiration a human being could expect."
Funk did not have to drive to town. Between dusk and dark a shining dark blue car with a special delivery body slipped into the driveway. From the limousine-like front two uniformed men alighted and walked to the rear of the car. There were wide doors there, which they proceeded to open. They withdrew, with the utmost care, a strange anachronism; a blue-and-black-and-gold decorated sedan chair, small and delicate. They placed themselves between the shafts and started toward the farmhouse.
Funk exclaimed, and sprang down the steps to meet that odd equippage. He bent over what was obviously an extended hand, white in the dusk. Barclay, staring, saw the young artist touch his lips to those extended fingers. A child's high, shrilly sweet voice gave an order, and the chair-bearers carried the sedan chair toward the barnyard. Funk followed, calling back as he went.
"See you tomorrow morning, Barclay." With that, he disappeared after the chair into the soft darkness beyond the barnyard.
Barclay felt that he could not sleep. He was intensely irritated that Gwen Car-radorne should have sent a child to take her place in what he felt must be a post of danger. He went down to the shining automobile and walked around it with
curiosity. The rear doors had been closed, and nothing marked it as out of the ordinary save, perhaps, the expensive type of shock-absorbers for a delivery body; and of course, what looked very like a periscope set in the top, as much out of place as was a modern child in a sedan chair.
He sat at his window, fell asleep there in his chair, and did not waken until Mrs. Hoddeston tapped at his door, calling that Mr. Funk and the little girl had returned. She volunteered that the little girl was a perfect little French doll.
Barclay took the stairs three at a stride. In the hall Funk sat on a hassock which brought his face slightly below the level of the small oval countenance of the child, who sat sedately on the hall chair.
Barclay noted with an artist's appreciation the bloom on her dazzling cheeks; the straight nose; the richly scarlet mobile lips. He approved the curling black lashes, finely penciled arching eyebrows, sleek black bobbed hair. Her creamy silk dress, rather longer than worn by most children of her age (apparently about six), was smocked in a knowing fashion with bright colors. Her feet were inappropriately encased in high-heeled French slippers.
All this the artist in Barclay captured at a glance, just as he took in the beauty of the slender, tiny hands, of the taper fingers, and the eloquence of every gesture. A strange, an unusual child, this. His leaping footsteps brought upon him a lifting of fringed eyelids, and what he felt shrinkingly was a glance of indifference. He stopped short at the foot of the staircase, abashed at this disdainful glance.
He knew all at once why this child's frock was longer than customary; why her tiny feet wore adult-styled foot-gear; why sophistication animated those taper
THE SINISTER PAINTING
333
fingers. The cobalt blue eyes that regarded him from the child's elfin face were the eyes of a grown woman. They were the informed eyes of one who has passed through the fires of varied experiences; the eyes of one who has gazed unafraid upon unveiled mysteries. The child was not a child, but was an exquisite midget, a creature set apart from the entire world by her miniature proportions.
Funk sprang up, caught the other man's hand and drew him down to the hassock, himself sinking upon the floor so that both men's faces were below the level of the midget's.
"Barclay," Funk said, in a tone of repressed excitement, "Miss Carradorne permits me to present you."
"Honored, Miss Carradorne," mumbled Barclay, still confused under the keen gaze of those faintly derisive blue eyes. He understood it, after a minute; she was touched with amusement at his discomfiture.
An elfish smile twitched at one corner of her scarlet lips, and she actually turned away those too-shrewd eyes as if to spare Barclay's feelings, a kindly gesture which did not serve to tranquillize him, for there was just a touch of condescension in her half-smile.
"Mr. Funk has been showing me these canvases from your studio," she said, slowly, in a shrilly sweet voice. "I would very much like that snow scene; it is charming. If you will tell me the price ?"
Barclay's embarrassment vanished. Here he could be sure of himself.
"I would feel honored if you would accept it as a proof of my gratitude for your having come here," he began, but his eyes questioned Funk.
"You are anxious to learn the outcome of last night's plans?" said Miss Carra-dorne's high voice lightly.
Suspended in the bosom of her frock by a slender platinum chain was a platinum whistle which she put to her lips and sounded. At once the bearers of the sedan chair came up the steps and into the hall, holding the chair close to their mistress. Like some bright bird, so airy and graceful was her lithe movement, she seemed to fly from her diair into the sedan's shelter. She waved one tiny hand. The bearers took their light burden outside, slid it into place in the rear of the waiting automobile. They mounted into the front, and the car slipped noiselessly away down the road, bespeaking the many-cylindered motor by its very silence and power.
>arclay stared after it, amazed. "So that strange little thing is your wonderful Gwen Carradorne? Why didn't you warn me?"
Funk lighted a cigarette hastily and began surrounding himself with smoke. "Why didn't I? Because she won't be talked about. She's proud and sensitive. She considers her miniature body the ultimate of human perfection, and won't permit its compariso
n with what she considers our gross bodies. And she's abnormally proud of her brain. She has reason to be. I think it is the most highly developed I have ever known. As an occultist—she's the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter "
Funk broke off bruskly. "You are anxious to know about last night? She has forbidden me to divulge details, but I may tell you briefly that Silva will never again repeat his evil act."
"He was there, then, last night?" gasped Barclay incredulously.
"Not in propria persona, but his familiar was already locked in with us, when I bolted the door behind Gwen and myself."
WEIRD TALES
"What do you mean?"
Funk sighed resignedly. "Let's go down to the studio. It's easier to understand, when you've seen things with your own eyes."
The telephone rang. Mrs. Hoddeston ran out of the kitchen and answered it. An expression of horror settled on her placid face.
"Manuel Silva's been found dead, with a knife-wound in his throat," she called, and gave closer attention to the telephone.
Funk beckoned Barclay silently, and the two hurried across the barnyard and into the woods. With the key Barclay had loaned him, Funk unlocked the padlock. He pushed the studio door open. Words seemed superfluous.
Spread on the floor lay a painted canvas figure, pinned down by a knife through its throat. The edges of the canvas were sharply defined as if just cut out
of the painting leaning against the south wall with a neatly trimmed vacancy in its center.
Barclay stared, closed his eyes convulsively, then stared again.
"I couldn't have done it alone," Funk kept repeating in a kind of feverish excitement. "She furnished the power. She'd have done it herself, but she's too —I mean," he corrected himself hastily, "he was too tall."
Barclay stared, motionless. He was absorbing the details of a bizarre thing which confirmed him in his hasty resolution to burn Silva's painting without de-lay.
The empty space in the painting distinctly outlined a drooping, seated figure. The painted canvas shape lying on the floor, pinned down by the knife through its pallid painted throat, could have filled that vacancy twice over.
It was a full length, standing figure. . . .
eturn
By JULIA BOYNTON GREEN
"Look, dearest, this shall be my flower!" she said,
"This starry jasmine." And she thrust a spray
For me to smell. "Remember!" Ah, today
I see her buoyant loveliness—her red
Sweet lips. In one brief twelvemonth she was dead.
Last night wind wailed. December's first snow lay
Upon the ground. Too unresigned to pray,
Too torn with racking grief to sleep, I fed
My misery on remembrance. "Love," I cried,
"Come back to me—come back! No heaven, no tomb
Can keep you from me. Come—my own, my own!"
And as I ceased the gloom was glorified—
I was aware that I was not alone—
A sudden scent of jasmine filled the room.
"There was a violent explosion of radiant energy that shocked him into temporary blindness."
ffiMtJf&M&tf
Vine Terror
By HOWARD WANDREI
An unusual weird-scientific tale, about vegetable vampires that lusted for
animal and human food
ROMAN SHOLLA stood perfectly still on his front sidewalk, bewil-* dered. He blinked a few times, and opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. Then he thrust his still unlighted pipe into his pocket and ran.
There was reason enough for his fright. Sholla, proprietor of South's Cut-
Rate Supplies, lived on the outskirts of the community below the hill on which stood the glass, stone, and metal faced South Experimental Laboratories.
It was about twenty minutes past seven when Sholla issued from his front door, in his hand a pipe, which he loaded methodically with a poking forefinger. He proceeded down his front walk, at
WEIRD TALES
which point he produced a match from his side pocket and struck it on the mailbox nailed to the oak tree. But the tree wasn't there. It had moved, moved out of reach. The earth was shouldered aside. At the base of the huge, broken-barked bole was what seemed to be a wake of turf.
'To' fo'teen years," he explained excitedly to Eric Shane, who lived across the street, "I strike m' match on the tree. You see me do it. What is happen?" He looked around belligerently at the little group that had collected, and which had drifted back to the scene of the novelty.
"1 tell you what. I come down the walk and put out my hand to the post-box to strike the match. Every morning just the same. Eric will tell you so. But now I can't reach it," he said, his voice trembling. "Look for yourself. The tree has move' away from the sidewalk!" He pointed passionately at the base of the tree with his unlighted pipe. Before it, between the little huddle of men and the tree, was a plowed furrow, like a short, fresh grave.
Wiry, dark little Fred Yanotsky, who had once inspected ore at the Ashton mills, was looking up at the laboratories on the hill above Sholla's house.
'You vill find vhy up d'ere, I t'ink," he said malignantly. "No good come of machines. I know. I work wit' machines for ten, twelve year. Many funny t'ings happen. Funny t'ings." His voice trailed off ominously.
"Ah!" exclaimed Sholla contemptuously. "You talk like crazy. Because you catch yourself in the wheels one time, whose fault was it? You want to hang the big stamp, maybe, or the digger? P'r'aps you like to burn those generator' up there, like witches in the old country?"
"I do' know," said Yanotsky slowly, shaking his head. "I see some awful
funny t'ings." He looked up balefully at the power plant, and fingered the mutilations of the arm that had been caught in the mill machinery many years ago.
"Ay," spoke up an old bearded fellow, Papa Freng. "What has happened to the game? Tell me, Roman Sholla."
"The game?" said Sholla. "How do you mean?"
"The game, the small game. What has happened to all the rabbits? Where are the squirrels that used to come to my window for nuts, all summer and all winter? I tell you, there has been no small game seen here these three months, nor the small green snakes, even. Roman Sholla, what of the birds?"
"Birds? What are you talking about, papa? Up there is a bird, now." He pointed off at a slow-winged turkey buzzard of remarkable size, a really gigantic specimen, that was pursuing a low, undulating flight toward the wood that surrounded the hill and the laboratories. The five men at the oak tree turned and eyed the bird warily as though they were watching Judgment approach. The buzzard passed nearly overhead, somewhat to the right of Sholla's house, and side-winged into a wide spiral as it prepared to alight in the trees half-way between the house and the laboratories on the hill. Its trailing legs dropped a trifle, the wings spread umbrella-wise, and momentarily it disappeared from view among the foliage. Sholla turned to Papa Freng triumphantly, saying,
"Well, papa, there was one—or didn't I see it?"
"Look!" said the old man, seizing his arm and shaking it.
The buzzard had suddenly reappeared, beating its wings so violently that to the five astonished men it sounded like a waterfall. The frantic bird uttered hoarse, terrified cries, thrashing the air
W. T.—4
VINE TERROR
337
heavily. It was apparently working to lift some tremendous weight. The cries ceased abruptly, as the bird seemed to erupt above the foliage. It was heavily laden with what could only be a vine, which was entangled in its claws and dangled with many lively twists, dropping earth from the curling, whipping roots as the bird circled wearily higher and higher above the woods—higher and higher, till the silent, gaping circle of watchers strained their eyes to see. And then, when the great black buzzard, like a living kite with its grotesque tail, was almost beyond vision above them, the vine dropped away. It fell as though weighted, roots first. Behind its downward plunge tr
ailed a little flurry of leaves that had been torn away. The vine plummeted into the trees with a distant, leafy uproar in almost precisely the same spot from which it had issued. And when the five gaping watchers looked again into the sky the great buzzard was nowhere to be seen.
From the central chamber of the laboratories a watcher commanded at least a fifteen-mile view across the plains. This morning a tall, gray man was standing at the windows, looking out thoughtfully with keen blue eyes. From where he stood he could just make out the group of men now straggling away from the front of Sholla's house. He was smiling tolerantly.
"What cheer, fellow citizen?" said a voice behind him.
"Oh, hello, Schommer," said Haver-land, turning around. "Why, it's those confounded birds again. They don't seem to like these woods at all. I can't imagine what the devil has got into 'em. We'll have to beat them up one of these days and see whether there's a hungry critter or two down there. Set traps." W. T.—5
"Yes," said Schommer, blinking away the dregs of sleep. "Why, I haven't seen even a squirrel around here since—well, since poor Keene got his."
That was three months ago. Haver-land remembered it with regret and a great deal of embarrassment. To his complete shame, whatever it was that Keene, the senior engineer, had been working on—and those projects of his were remote enough—Haverland had destroyed. When Keene had been electrocuted, Haverland and the newcomer, Harriss, had been assisting in his experiment. Schommer stood just back of Keene. There was one peculiar aspect of the affair that Haverland thought of afterward as a remarkable, if peculiar, conception of his own. At any rate, it seemed to have been a phenomenon witnessed only by himself.
Keene had stretched forth a lean hand, and the bare wire had crossed his wrist. And then there was light, like a halo.
From where Haverland stood, watching through the poles of two huge electrodes, between which was fixed a bulb of one of the inert gases, Keene's body seemed to be aflame. He stood there like a waxwork, moments after Haverland had disconnected the current. Phosphorescent fires chased up and down his arms, and die exposed flesh of his breast and face seemed to be burning. The soft radiance brightened gradually. Harriss and Schommer, apparently blind to this aurora of light, gaped at their chief fearfully. The radiation of light was now sharply brilliant, and as Haverland gasped at its brightness there was a violent explosion of radiant energy from Keene's head that shocked him into temporary blindness.
Weird Tales volume 24 number 03 Page 7
