Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 Read Online Free PDF

grisly farce of Devil worship with the money he embezzled. The trustees made the losses good and gave up in disgust. Ours was the last class graduated.
    "They found Marescha's body floating in the Shrewsbury two days later, and at first the coroner was sure she'd been the victim of a murder; for while the window-weights had fallen off, the cords that tied them were still knotted round her ankles. When the autopsy disclosed she'd not been drowned, but had been put into the river after death from heart disease, the mystery was deepened, but until tonight only four people knew its answer. Now there are only three."
    "Three, Monsieur?" de Grandin asked.
    "That's fight. Trivers, Atkins and Eldridge are dead. I'm still here, and you and Doctor Trowbridge "
    "Your figures are at fault, my friend. You forget we are physicians, and your narrative was given us in confidence."
    "But see here," I asked as the silence lengthened, "what is there about all this to make you want to kill yourself? If you'd been grown men when you joined these Devibworshippers it would have been more serious, but college boys are always in some sort of mischief, and this all happened twenty years ago. You say you are sincerely sorry for it, and after all. the leaders in the movement died, so-
    Balderson broke through my moralizing with a short, hard laugh. "Men die W. T—1
    INCENSE OF ABOMINATION
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    more easily than memories, Doctor. Besides "
    "Yes, Monsieur, besides?" de Grandin prompted as our guest stared silently into the study fire.
    "Do you believe the spirits of the dead —die dead who are in Hell, or at least cut off from Heaven—can come back to plague the living?" he demanded.
    DE grandin brushed the ends of his small waxed mustache with that gesture which always reminded me of a tomcat combing his whiskers. "You have experienced such a visitation?"
    "I have. So did the others."
    "Mordieu! How was it?"
    "You may remember reading that Ted Eldridge hanged himself? Three days before it happened, he met me on the street, and I could see that he was almost frantic. 'I saw Marescha last night!' he told me in a frightened whisper.
    " 'Marescha? You must be off your rocker, man! We put her in the Shrewsbury '
    " 'And she's come back again. Remember the perfume of the candles and the incense Hcrbules used in celebrating the Black Mass? I'd come home from New York last night, and was getting ready for a drink before I went to bed, when I began to smell it. At first I thought it was some fool trick that my senses played on me, but the scent kept getting stronger. It seemed as if I were back in that dreadful chapel with the tall black candles burning and the hellish incense smoldering, Herbules in his red vestments and Marescha lying naked on the altar—I could almost hear the chanting of inverted prayers and the little whimpering noises that she made. I gulped my drink down in two swallows and turned round. She was standing there, with water on her face and W. T.- 2
    ing from her hair, and her hands held out to me '
    " 'You're crazy as a goat!' I told him. 'Come have a drink.'
    "He looked at me a moment, then turned away, walking quickly down the street and muttering to himself.
    "I'd not have thought so much about it if I hadn't read about his suicide next day, and if Stanley Trivers hadn't called me on the telephone. "Hear about Ted Eldridge?' he asked the moment 1 had said hello. When I told him I'd just read about it he demanded: 'Did you see him —recently?'
    " 'Yes, ran into him in Broad Street yesterday,' I answered.
    " 'Seemed worried, didn't he? Did he tell you anything about Marescha?*
    " 'Say, what is this?' I asked. 'Did he say anything to you '
    " 'Yes, he did, and I thought he had a belfry full o' bats.'
    " 'There's not much doubt the poor old lad was cuckoo '
    " 'That's where you're mistaken, Bal-derson. According to the paper he'd been dead for something like four hours when they found htm. That would have made it something like four