Citadel of Fear

by Francis Stevens

  Following the plank walk, he squelched heavily along in what he felt must be the direction of the house. Now and again he allowed himself another brief glance beyond the wire fence, but most of the space seemed empty. One mournful cow, unprovided with even so flimsy a shelter as the sheep-shed, mooed at him dolefully as he splashed by.

  “This I am sure of,” thought Colin indignantly, “if that Reed man treats all his creatures like this, he’ll soon have no stock to play scientist with. Sure, they’ll all die of pneumonia!”

  He had traversed a considerable distance, and still he saw nothing but on one hand that absurdly strong wire fence, on the other, shrubbery and a multitude of lashing, wind-tormented trees.

  “I’ll get nowhere at this rate save the other end of the estate.”

  So, turning aside, he plunged into pathless shrubbery. It was bad going and, except for his flash, would have been worse. They were blackberry and currant bushes, run wild and malignant with thorns and prickles. Out of their clutches at last, he, for the first time, glimpsed a light other than his own, which latter he promptly extinguished.

  “That’ll be the house,” he said decisively, and hoped he was right.

  Plowing toward it through a wet wilderness of weeds that had once been close-cropped lawn, he came among trees again and shortly found himself within a stone’s throw of his goal.

  It was a double light for which he had been heading, and proved to emanate from two windows set close together in the second story. Presently, using his own light cautiously, he identified near by the deep porch and porte-coch?re of his last night’s visit.

  And now, having achieved the goal for whose attainment he had laid himself open to a charge of felonious trespass, Colin found himself somewhat at a loss. Standing there in the rain it seemed to him that the strong inner force that had hitherto driven him, and which constituted his only real excuse for being there, now mockingly withdrew.

  He shivered and scowled morosely at the dark, inhospitable entrance. For the first time he knew what a prowling, prying fool he must seem to Reed, could that gentleman have guessed his presence.

  He glanced again toward the lighted windows above him. To his surprise he saw that the lower sash of one was raised. The drenched white curtains were flapping inward with the wind-driven rain. Then, as he looked, a figure appeared there, backing slowly into view, and O’Hara gasped at the desired but unexpected apparition.

  There she stood, and though her back was toward him and the rain slanted between, he could make no mistake. He knew every curving line of those green-clad shoulders, that erect, white neck, and well-poised head. Had she been his closest comrade for years, instead of the stranger common sense called her, he could have felt no keener sense of familiar recognition.

  Still keeping her face to the room, she stretched back one slim arm, feeling for the window-ledge. A wet curtain lashed and wrapped itself about the arm. With a quick, frantic energy she strove to free it. Then another arm flashed into view, and at last Colin knew the meaning of the silent drama of whose actors he had yet seen but one.

  That darting arm was neither charming nor graceful. White, shaggy, rough as a length of pale, thick vine, it clutched toward her throat, with hand and fingers extravagantly long and terrible. Colin knew that hand, for he had felt it on his own throat.

  With a great shout he sprang across the drive and was under the window.

  “Jump!” he yelled through the sheeting rain. “Throw yourself backward and jump!”

  He commanded a difficult feat, and from where he now waited could see nothing of what was going on above him. How might she possibly elude that near and gripping hand? And why should she obey his own roaring command from the outer darkness?

  Three seconds passed, four, five. This was folly. He must break his way in somehow, before it was too late, and —

  Above him there leaned out a head and a pair of slim shoulders, while a low voice called:

  “I am coming! You frightened it!”

  A pair of white, bare feet swung out over the window-ledge. Sitting so, the girl was instantly drenched. To emerge into the raging maw of the tempest, blinded by rain, and swing off into a vacancy which might or might not receive her tenderly, must have required a courage-or a recklessness-of uncommon quality. Yet sitting so, without pause or hesitation, the girl pushed herself off and dropped.

  Colin caught her in his arms and did not even stagger to the shock. It seemed to him that she had fallen lightly as a leaf drifting earthward, or a bird with the air cupped in its wings. How had his strength increased that she lay in his arms so lightly? He closed them about her in a quick fierceness of protection. That brute-that hairy, clutching ape-thing-had dared clutch at her-at his Dusk Lady!

  “Are you hurt?” he whispered. “Is it hurt you are that you lie so still?”

  She answered in the same low, sweet tones that had addressed him from the window.

  “No, my lord. But it was well that you came when you came, and well that you called to me! The demon above there would have killed me, I think, had you not frightened him with the trumpet of your voice. My lord, will you take me away now?”

  “My lord” scarcely knew what to do. To some queer deep part of his being it seemed quite natural that she should call him so; quite reasonable and satisfactory that she should speak to him with the quiet confidence of one who appeals to an old friendship-old and sure. But his surface mind was less easy. Her father had spoken no more than truth-the girl was demented!

  “Sure and I’ll take you away,” he declared. “And isn’t that the very reason I was waiting under your window? But first we’ll go into the house and make all straight and proper, the way none may say I’ve been stealing you, little lady.”

  “What? Return behind the walls of hate? But why?”

  “It’s a matter of decency, my dear. And, besides, before I can take you away you must be dry and better clothed. You’re shivering this minute.”

  “Not for cold,” she began, but just then a light sprang up close to Colin’s head.

  Startled, he fumed and saw that he was close by a window of the entrance hall. Two forms flashed, running across his field of vision, and a moment later he heard the door within the deep porch flung open.

  Carrying the girl, he stalked around toward the steps, for he was no sneaking marauder, and felt neither shame nor further need of excuse for his presence. It had been too amply justified.

  Marco met him, behind him a crouching, snarling, bestial form, but of that latter Colin had a very brief glimpse. Genghis Khan may have recognized the enemy who had chased him across five miles of rough going after breaking his right arm, now bandaged in splints at his side. Khan promptly retreated, sliding through, the door and out of sight with the streaking speed of a giant white cockroach. But Marco held his ground.

  “You-you!” he mumbled, pointing a shaking, furious finger. “You come again? You touch her-my lady?”

  “Better I than some others less respectful,” retorted O’Hara calmly. “Is your master here?”

  “Well, you know he is not! You fear him-everyone fears him! You come when he is gone! Put her down-let me take my lady!”

  Coming at him, the albino thrust his hand beneath the girl’s shoulders as if to tear her away. At that she screamed for the first time, clutching at Colin with small, convulsive fingers.

  Then Colin struck Marco with the full weight of his fist, and with all his really terrible strength at the back of the blow.

  It was a needless, savage act, as he afterward condemned it.

  Marco was no possible match for him. In cold blood he would have brushed the albino aside without harming him. But the sight of that repulsive, red-eyed, pallid thing clawing at the girl, and the loathing and the terror in her voice acted upon him like a draft of maddening liquor. He struck without thought or premeditation, as at some noxious insect, desiring only to crush it, obliterate it from the world it polluted by living.

  The blow caug
ht Marco just under the point of the chin. His head flew back with an audible snap, his body jerked through the air, and sliding full length across the porch, brought up at the inner threshold. It twitched spasmodically and lay quiet.

  Colin stood, and the girl clung to him, silent and quivering.

  Very softly he ascended the steps, crossed the porch, and gently disengaging her arms set his burden down within the doorway, her bare feet on the dry softness of a rug.

  Then he bent over Marco. He had hit him hard-too hard, and well he knew it. A thin, scarlet trickle was running from a corner of the flaccid mouth. He was not at all surprised when, lifting the albino’s shoulders, the head dropped back with the limpness of a broken stick held together by a few torn fibers. He felt for Marco’s heart and examined his neck with inquiring fingers. Then he laid him back and rose.

  From the dead man he looked up to his mad Dusk Lady. She was watching him with dark, wondering eyes. Her wet, green gown clung to limbs and body, close as the green bark of a young tree, and the thick curls of her hair glistened black and shining.

  Like some sorrowful spirit of the storm-torn forest she stood there, and Colin was ashamed before her. He, who had come to protect and guard her, had been betrayed by his temper and thereby involved them in Heaven only knew what entanglements.

  “My lord, why do you look so sad and stern? Have I given you offense?”

  “You! Poor child, no, ‘tis myself has offended-but how, never mind. Go to your room, little lady, and dress yourself so that I may take you to a kinder place. At least, Marco will trouble you no more the night. He is-hurt.”

  “Hurt? Is he not dead?”

  She said it so simply and with so childlike an inflection of disappointment that the words took Colin aback.

  “Never mind that!” he retorted almost sharply. “Never mind that! Go dress yourself dry and warm, and put on a coat, if you have one, against the rain.”

  Frowning, she looked down at her one inadequate but becoming garment.

  “I owe you gentle obedience, my lord, but I had vowed never to don robes of his giving. Must I, then, break my solemn vow?”

  “Indeed, and I fear you must. They’ll not let us on the train otherwise.”

  She meditated a moment longer. Then, “I will put on me a coat, since my lord desires it,” and she started for the stair.

  Remembering Genghis Khan, O’Hara followed. She led him straight to the door at the end of the second floor hall, where he had first seen her. It stood open, and as she entered he looked in over her shoulder.

  He saw a large bedroom, well, even luxuriously furnished. Clearly, careless though he might be of her welfare in other respects, Reed did not begrudge money spent on his daughter’s immediate surroundings.

  Having made sure that the great ape was lurking nowhere in the room, and having closed the window above a rain-flooded Persian rug, O’Hara left his charge alone. She had said nothing in that while, only watched hum with attentive eyes that followed every move with quiet interest, and he himself had little mind for conversation.

  But in the act of closing her door he turned back. “Where’s the phone?” said he.

  “The-the phone?”

  “The telephone-the box they talk through when a bell rings,” explained O’Hara patiently.

  She shook her head, with a look of perplexed distress that was to him unutterably pathetic. Dusk Lady indeed, ever wandering through the twilight of a darkened mind!

  “I’ll find it myself,” said he hastily, and closed the door.

  Down the stairs he went, heavy and slow, weighed down by a great sickness of the spirit. Despite Reed’s assurance, despite the dictates of everyday reason, O’Hara had until the last hour been possessed of a secret, unvoiced hope that this girl, the glamour of whose elfin personality had drawn him as no woman ever drew him before, might prove to be a sane and normal being. That hope was dead now-dead as the unlucky albino slain in his master’s doorway. And for the sake of a mad girl he had committed a crime which in his own eyes debased him to the level of any common thug.

  Coming at last to the stair foot, he turned and crossed toward the corpse of his poor, repulsive victim. And reaching the threshold of the hall, lo, it was empty!

  The body of Marco lay there no more, nor any trace of it.

  CHAPTER XIX. Cliona Receives a Guest

  “I’LL pay the fare, for I’ve no tickets.” The conductor nodded and counted out change.

  “A nasty sort of night, Mr. O’Hara,” he observed affably.

  Like every man on that short line, he knew half his passengers by sight, many by name, and there was little gossip going about at any of the smaller stations with which he was not acquainted. O’Hara had ridden with him only a few times, but the conductor was familiar with every extraneous fact concerning the Irishman’s life at Carpentier. He remembered taking him to Undine earlier in the evening.

  Now O’Hara was going in town, where he was said never to go, and accompanied by a mysterious female.

  At that hour-eleven thirty-there was not another passenger on the inbound train, so the conductor had plenty of leisure for curious thoughts.

  Sitting on the dusty red plush cushions beside his silent Dusk Lady, O’Hara’s mind dwelt grimly on the results of his little expedition.

  The disappearance of Marco’s body troubled him, though he had made no effort to find it. Perhaps in the few moments that he was absent above-stairs, Genghis Khan had carried it away; or it might be that another witness than the girl had seen the slaying of Marco, someone who feared to show himself to this savage invader of Reed’s domicile.

  One idea he clung to. Whatever he himself had done, Reed’s daughter should not spend another night in that house of mysterious human and bestial inhabitants.

  She was silent and unquestioning, and he glad of her silence. When she talked his reason continually rebelled against the eccentricities of her speech. Silent, he felt renewed that intangible bond which seemed to exist between his nature and hers. Silent, he could almost forget that between them was also the dread specter of insanity.

  “My lord, are you still angered with me?”

  At the sound of that low, slightly tremulous voice, O’Hara turned reluctantly to the girl beside him. Toward her when she spoke he felt only gentleness and pity, but he dreaded what she might say, feeling a sort of personal shame in her irrationality.

  “I have no anger with you, little lady,” he answered kindly.

  “Ill pleased, then. Is it because I have told you nothing of my story? One and another person I have told, but they had no-no understanding — “

  She broke off, hesitating, and O’Hara groaned inwardly, thinking, “And how should they understand? Poor lass, only God understands foolishness!”

  “But you are not as others; you will believe, for you are great and strong and noble, and, moreover, you are bound to me by the Golden Thread.”

  Colin started.

  “Tell me nothing!” he broke in hastily. Then, seeing that she shrank away with a little hurt motion, he added, “We’ve no time just now for the length of your tale. Do you just wait, little lady, till we are safe at home with my sister. It’s but a few minutes now till we get off the train.”

  “I will wait,” she answered with a submissive sigh, and indeed there was no more time for talk. They were then entering the trainshed at the city terminal, and shortly thereafter Colin was hurrying his charge toward the gates and through them, thankful for the late hour and bad weather.

  But there were few people about on the train floor, and in any case his fears proved needless. As they went she clung tightly to his arm, shrinking against him.

  Green Gables at last, and as Colin, standing in the shelter of the porte-coch?re, paid off his driver, another car swung in and came to a halt just behind the taxi. This midnight motorist was Rhodes, very much belated-for him-but aglow with the results of a successful business day. A few minutes later that satisfaction was obliterated in p
ure astonishment.

  Colin, full of the trouble and excitement of the past few hours, had clean forgotten that by Rhodes he was still supposed to be several thousand miles away, and it was a moment before he could see any reason for his brother-in-law’s thunderstruck amazement.

  Between that and genuine delight at finding him there, Rhodes did not notice the girl standing so silent at O’Hara’s side until the latter, protesting that explanation must come later, called attention to this mysterious companion.

  “Little lady,” said he, drawing her forward, “here is a good friend of mine who will be a friend to you, too, I am thinking. This is Mr. Anthony Rhodes, the husband of my sister. Tony, Miss Reed has come far and is needing rest.”

  “My wife will be delighted to welcome you, Miss Reed. Won’t you come in?”

  For all his cordial tone Rhodes was secretly filled with growing amazement. O’Hara’s abrupt and unheralded return had surprised him, but that he should drop out of nowhere at 12:45 A.M. accompanied by a mysterious and lovely female who appeared to be dumb-for she had acknowledged neither the introduction nor his invitation to enter save by a barely perceptible inclination of the head-this struck him as unreasonably queer, and altogether out of keeping with O’Hara’s known character.

  The latch-key was scarcely withdrawn from the opening door when Cliona appeared at the head of the stairs. She had sent the servants to bed, but herself waited up for her husband. Having planned a pleasant little supper à deux with her beloved Tony, and having donned for his benefit a most charming negligée, all soft white frills and chiffon rues with little gold bands to their edges, her glimpse of two other figures entering after him disconcerted her. Then, recognizing Colin, she came flying down the stairs like a small white whirlwind of welcome.

  Colin laughed, holding her off at ands length. “Rues and ribbons,” said he, “do you not see that I am dripping from the rain?”