Pat drew back, leaning against the door, and her key tinkled on the
concrete of the porch. She was startled, shocked, but not as completely
terrified as she might have expected. After all, she thought rapidly,
they were standing in full view of a public street, and Dr. Carl's
residence was but a few feet distant. She could summon his help by
screaming.
"Well!" she exclaimed, eyeing the figure inimically. "Your appearances
and disappearances are beginning to remind me of the Cheshire Cat."
"Except for the grin," said the other in his cold tones.
"What do you want?" snapped Pat.
"You know what I want."
"You'll not get it," said the girl angrily. "You--you're doomed to
extinction, anyway! Go away!"
"Suppose," said the other with a strange, cold, twisted smile, "it were
_he_ that's doomed to extinction--what then?"
"It isn't!" cried Pat. "It isn't!" she repeated, while a quiver of
uncertainty shook her. "He's the stronger," she said defiantly.
"Then where is he now?"
"Dr. Carl will help us!"
"Doctor!" sneered the other. "He and his clever theory! Am I an
illusion?" he queried sardonically, thrusting his red-glinting eyes
toward her. "Am I the product of his puerile, vacillating nature? Bah!
I gave you the clue, and your Doctor hasn't the intelligence to follow
it!"
"Go away!" murmured Pat faintly. The approach of his face had unnerved
her, and she felt terror beginning to stir within her. "Go away!" she
said again. "Why do you have to torment me? Any one would serve your
purpose--any woman!"
"You have an aesthetic appeal, as I've told you before," replied the
other in that toneless voice of his. "There is a pleasure in the
defacement of black hair and pale skin, and your body is seductive,
most seductive. Another might afford me less enjoyment, and besides,
you hate me. Don't you hate me?" He peered evilly at her.
"Oh, God--yes!" The girl was shuddering.
"Say it, then! Say you hate me!"
"I hate you!" the girl cried vehemently. "Will you go away now?"
"With you!"
"I'll scream if you come any closer. You don't dare touch me; I'll call
Dr. Horker."
"You'll only damage _him_--your lover."
"Then I'll do it! He'll understand."
"Yes," said the other reflectively. "He's fool enough to forgive you.
He'll forgive you anything--the weakling!"
"Go away! Get away from here!"
The other stared at her out of blood-shot eyes. "Very well," he said in
his flat tones. "This time the victory is yours."
He backed slowly toward the steps. Pat watched him as he moved, feeling
a surge of profound relief. As his shadow shifted, her key gleamed
silver at her feet, and she stooped to retrieve it.
There was a rush of motion as her eyes left the form of her antagonist.
A hand was clamped violently over her mouth, an arm passed with
steel-like rigidity about her body. Nicholas Devine was dragging her
toward the steps; she was half-way down before she recovered her wits
enough to struggle.
She writhed and twisted in his grasp. She drove her elbow into his
body with all her power, and kicked with the strength of desperation
at his legs. She bit into the palm across her mouth--and suddenly,
with a subdued grunt of pain, he released her so abruptly that her own
struggles sent her spinning blindly into the bushes of the hedge.
She turned gasping, unable for the moment to summon sufficient breath
to scream. The other stood facing her with his eyes gleaming terribly
into her own; then they ranged slowly from her diminutive feet to the
rumpled ebony of her hair that she was brushing back with her hands
from her pallid, frightened face.
"Obstinate," he observed, rubbing his injured palm.
"Obstinate and unbroken--but worth the trouble. Well worth it!" He
reached out a swift hand, seizing her wrist as she backed against the
bushes.
Pat twisted around, gazing frantically at Doctor Horker's house, where
a light had only now flashed on in the upper windows. Her breath flowed
back into her lungs with a strengthening rush.
"Dr. Carl!" she screamed. "Dr. Carl! Help me!"
The other spun her violently about. She had a momentary glimpse of
a horribly evil countenance, then he drew back his arm and shot a
clenched fist to her chin.
The world reeled into a blaze of spinning lights that faded quickly to
darkness. She felt her knees buckling beneath her, and realized that
she was crumpling forward toward the figure before her. Then for a
moment she was aware of nothing.
She didn't quite lose consciousness, or at least for no more than a
moment. She was suddenly aware that she was gazing down at a moving
pavement, at her own arms dangling helplessly toward it. She perceived
that she was lying limply across Nicholas Devine's shoulder with his
arms clenched about her knees. And then, still unable to make the
slightest resistance, she was bundled roughly into the seat of his
coupe; he was beside her, and the car was purring into motion.
She summoned what remained of her strength. She drew herself erect,
fumbling at the handle of the door with a frantic idea of casting
herself out of the car to the street. The creature beside her jerked
her violently back; as she reeled into the seat, he struck her again
with the side of his fist. It was a random blow, delivered with
scarcely a glance at her; it caught her on the forehead, snapping her
head with an audible thump against the wall of the vehicle. She swayed
for a moment with closing eyes, then collapsed limply against him, this
time in complete unconsciousness.
That lapse too must have been brief. She opened dazed eyes on a vista
of moving street lights; they were still in the car, passing now along
some unrecognized thoroughfare lined with dark old homes. She lay
for some moments uncomprehending; she was completely unaware of her
situation.
It dawned on her slowly. She moaned, struggled away from the shoulder
against which she had been leaning, and huddled miserably in the far
corner of the seat. Nicholas Devine gave her a single glance with his
unpleasant eyes, and turned them again on the street.
The girl was helpless, unable to put forth the strength even for
another attempt to open the door. She was still only half aware of her
position, and realized only that something appalling was occurring to
her. She lay in passive misery against the cushions of the seat as the
other turned suddenly up a dark driveway and into the open door of a
small garage. He snapped off the engine, extinguished the headlights,
and left them in a horrible, smothering, silent darkness.
She heard him open the door on his side; after an apparently
interminable interval, she heard the creak of the hinges on her own
side. She huddled terrified, voiceless, and immobile.
He reached in, fumbling against her in the darkness. He found her arm,
and dragged her from the car. Again, as on that other occasion, she
found herself reeling helplessly behind him through the dark as he
tugged at her wrist. He paused at a door in the building adjacent to
the garage, searching in his pocket with his free hand.
"I won't go in there!" she muttered dazedly. The other made no reply,
but inserted a key in the lock, turned it, and swung open the door.
He stepped through it, dragging her after him. With a sudden access of
desperate strength, she caught the frame of the door, jerked violently
on her prisoned wrist, and was unexpectedly free. She reeled away,
turned toward the street, and took a few faltering steps down the
driveway.
Almost instantly her tormentor was upon her, and his hand closed again
on her arm. Pat had no further strength; she sank to the pavement and
crouched there, disregarding the insistent tugging on her arm.
"Come on," he growled. "You only delay the inevitable. Must I drag you?"
She made no reply. He tugged violently at her wrist, dragging her a few
inches along the pavement. Then he stooped over her, raised her in his
arms, and bore her toward the dark opening of the door. He crowded her
roughly through it, disregarding the painful bumping of her shoulders
and knees. She heard the slam of the door as he kicked it closed,
and she realized that they were mounting a flight of stairs, moving
somewhere into the oppressive threatening darkness.
Then they were moving along a level floor, and her arm was bruised
against another door. There was a moment of stillness, and then she was
released, dropped indifferently to the surface of a bed or couch. A
moment later a light flashed on.
The girl was conscious at first only of the gaze of the red eyes. They
held her own in a fascinating, unbreakable, trance-like spell. Then, in
a wave of dizziness, she closed her own eyes.
"Where are we?" she murmured. "In Hell?"
"You should call it Heaven," came the sardonic voice. "It's the home of
your sweetheart. His home--and mine!"
26