Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted you to keep
clear, stay out of danger.”
                 Now she frowmed, a tiny crease between her brows. “Well,”
she said after a moment. “I hadn’t expected this sort of a reception. Am I
wrong in remembering that you used to say you loved me?”
                 “I
do love you, this minute I love you,” he fairly burst out. “I’ve always loved
you, since first we met, since before you went abroad and married your Italian
count.”
                 “That’s
all I want to know,” she half whispered.
                 She,
too, leaned forward, put her small hands on his big shoulders and met his mouth
with a strong, swimming kiss.
                 Thunstone
took her close in his arms and returned the kiss with a burning hunger. But
then he released her and stood up, away from where she sat.
                 “There,”
the countess said. “Maybe I was a trifle shameless, but didn’t I convince you
that I can love, too?”
                 “Yes,”
he said, rather gruffly. “But I say again, you’re in peril here. That always
happens when you’re with me. I mentioned Rowley Thome.”
                 “Isn’t
he gone?” she reminded him again. “Vanished into nowhere? You told me that.”
                 “He
vanished, and I’d hoped forever. He brought a whole army of evil spirits
against me, and when I defeated them they disappeared, and took Thome with
them.”
                 “How
can that happen?”
                 “It
seems to happen all the time. Ambrose Bierce made a study of disappearances,
and he disappeared himself, without leaving a trace. Men and women seem to pop
out of sight, before the eyes of witnesses. About a hundred years ago, a man
named David Lang disappeared in a Tennessee field while his wife and two friends
watched. These things happen.”
                 “Yes,
and those planes dropping out of sight in the Bermuda Triangle, and the crew of
the Marie Celeste , ” added the countess, her voice
troubled. “ But Rowley Thome?”
                “I’m fairly sure I saw him
downstairs in the lobby,” said Thunstone, “and I think he called me on the
telephone earlier today.”
                “But nobody comes back from those
disappearances,” she argued.
                 “A
man in the Carolina mountains , a man
named Sol Gentry, seemed to fade out of existence in sight of his home,” said
Thunstone. “Twenty years or so later, he was there again, at the very same
spot. He didn’t remember anything about being gone, but he was back.”
                 Her
face had gone pale. “Then—”
                ’'Thome seems to be here. Sharon . And he knows I’m here, and probably knows
that you’re here, too. He’s always wanted you for a victim, hasn’t he?”
                 “Why
does he want me? Why?”
                 Thunstone
reached a long arm to the side table. He took the brandy bottle and poured
drinks into two glasses and handed her one.
                 “Let
me speak to the point, Sharon ,” he said. “You haven’t been wise about him all the time, but he’s paid
considerable intelligent attention to you. I’d diagnose the situation like
this; Thome is evil. He’s spent his life being evil, he’s brought a considerable talent to it. As for you, you’re a fundamentally
good, normal woman. He recognizes that. And evil wants to conquer good,
overthrow it.”
                 Her
glass trembled in her hand as she sipped. She said, “What you say sounds
fantastic, but I believe you. I always believe what you say.”
                 “Because
you know that I always mean what I say.” He finished his drink and rose. “Now,
you’re in Room 316, two doors away from me, but I can’t be here all the time.
Let me give you this protection.”