wordless howls were mingled with frantic admonitions to me to bring him the envelope and destroy it before his eyes! As he yammered this, he forced himself up on his elbows and with eyes starting and hair standing straight up on his head, he screamed at me in a manner to chill the blood. And he was shrieking for me to destroy the envelope, not to open it; and once he howled in his delirium for me to hew his body into pieces and scatter the bits to the four winds of heaven!" 

An uncontrollable exclamation of horror escaped my dry lips.

"At last," went on Conrad, "I gave in. Remembering his commands ten years ago, I at first stood firm, but at last, as his screeches grew unbearably desperate, I turned to go for the envelope, even though that meant leaving him alone. But as I turned, with one last fearful convulsion in which blood-flecked foam flew from his writhing lips, the life went from his twisted body in a single great wrench." 

He fumbled at the parchment. 

"I am going to carry out my promise. The directions herein seem fantastic and may be the whims of a disordered mind, but I gave my word. They are, briefly, that I place his corpse on the great black ebony table in his library, with seven black candles burning about him. The doors and windows are to be firmly closed and fastened. Then, in the darkness which precedes dawn, I am to read the formula, charm or spell which is contained in a smaller, sealed envelope inside the first, and which I have not yet opened." 

"But is that all?" I cried. "No provisions as to the disposition of his fortune his estate -- or his corpse?" 

"Nothing. In his will, which I have seen elsewhere, he leaves estate and fortune to a certain oriental gentleman named in the document as -- Malik Tous!" 

"What!" I cried, shaken to my soul. "Conrad, this is madness heaped on madness! Malik Tous -- good God! No mortal man was ever so named! That is the title of the foul god worshipped by the mysterious Yezidees -- they of Mount Alamout the Accursed -- whose Eight Brazen Towers rise in the mysterious wastes of deep Asia. His idolatrous symbol is the brazen peacock. And the Muhammadans, who hate his demon-worshipping devotees, say he is the essence of the evil of all the universes -- the Prince of Darkness -- Ahriman -- the old Serpent -- the veritable Satan! And you say Grimlan names this mythical demon in his will?" 

"It is the truth," Conrad's 

 Prev. P 6/12 next