The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard by Robert E. Howard Page B

considerable money on your person. I had thought to wait until you slept and then slay you, but the opportunity presented itself and I took it. You trick easily.”
    “I had little thought that I should fear a man with whom I had broken bread,” said Kane, a deep timbre of slow fury sounding in his voice.
    The bandit laughed cynically. His eyes narrowed as he began to back slowly toward the outer door.
    Kane’s sinews tensed involuntarily; he gathered himself like a giant wolf about to launch himself in a death leap, but Gaston’s hand was like a rock and the pistol never trembled.
    “We will have no death plunges after the shot,” said Gaston. “Stand still, m’sieu; I have seen men killed by dying men, and I wish to have distance enough between us to preclude that possibility. My faith–I will shoot, you will roar and charge, but you will die before you reach me with your bare hands. And mine host will have another skeleton in his secret niche. That is, if I do not kill him myself. The fool knows me not nor I him, moreover–”
    The Frenchman was in the doorway now, sighting along the barrel. The candle, which had been stuck in a niche on the wall, shed a weird and flickering light which did not extend past the doorway. And with the suddenness of death, from the darkness behind Gaston’s back, a broad, vague form rose up and a gleaming blade swept down. The Frenchman went to his knees like a butchered ox, his brains spilling from his cleft skull. Above him towered the figure of the host, a wild and terrible spectacle, still holding the hanger with which he had slain the bandit.
    “Ho! ho!” he roared. “Back!”
    Kane had leaped forward as Gaston fell, but the host thrust into his very face a long pistol which he held in his left hand.
    “Back!” he repeated in a tigerish roar, and Kane retreated from the menacing weapon and the insanity in the red eyes.
    The Englishman stood silent, his flesh crawling as he sensed a deeper and more hideous threat than the Frenchman had offered. There was something inhuman about this man, who now swayed to and fro like some great forest beast while his mirthless laughter boomed out again.

    “Gaston the Butcher!” he shouted, kicking the corpse at his feet. “Ho! ho! My fine brigand will hunt no more; I had heard of this fool who roamed the Black Forest–he wished gold and he found death! Now your gold shall be mine; and more than gold–vengeance!”
    “I am no foe of yours,” Kane spoke calmly.
    “All men are my foes! Look–the marks on my wrists! See–the marks on my ankles! And deep in my back–the kiss of the knout! And deep in my brain, the wounds of the years of the cold, silent cells where I lay as punishment for a crime I never committed!” The voice broke in a hideous, grotesque sob.
    Kane made no answer. This man was not the first he had seen whose brain had shattered amid the horrors of the terrible Continental prisons.
    “But I escaped!” the scream rose triumphantly, “and here I make war on all men…. What was that?”
    Did Kane see a flash of fear in those hideous eyes?
    “My sorcerer is rattling his bones!” whispered the host, then laughed wildly. “Dying, he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free, and I laugh, I laugh! Ho! ho! How he yearns to rise and stalk like old King Death along these dark corridors when I sleep, to slay me in my bed!”
    Suddenly the insane eyes flared hideously: “You were in that secret room, you and this dead fool! Did he talk to you?”
    Kane shuddered in spite of himself. Was it insanity or did he actually hear the faint rattle of bones, as if the skeleton had moved slightly? Kane shrugged his shoulders; rats will even tug at dusty bones.
    The host was laughing again. He sidled around Kane, keeping the Englishman always covered, and with his free hand opened the door.