Rattle of Bones | Page 3

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.
All was darkness within, so that Kane could not even see the glimmer
of the bones on the floor.
"All men are my foes!" mumbled the host, in the incoherent manner of
the insane. "Why should I spare any man? Who lifted a hand to my aid
when I lay for years in the vile dungeons of Karlsruhe--and for a deed
never proven? Something happened to my brain, then. I became as a
wolf--a brother to these of the Black Forest to which I fled when I
escaped.
"They have feasted, my brothers, on all who lay in my tavern--all
except this one who now clashes his bones, this magician from Russia.
Lest he come stalking back through the black shadows when night is
over the world, and slay me--for who may slay the dead?--I stripped his
bones and shackled him. His sorcery was not powerful enough to save
him from me, but all men know that a dead magician is more evil than
a living one. Move not, Englishman! Your bones I shall leave in this
secret room beside this one, to--"
The maniac was standing partly in the doorway of the secret room, now,
his weapon still menacing Kane. Suddenly he seemed to topple
backward, and vanished in the darkness; and at the same instant a
vagrant gust of wind swept down the outer corridor and slammed the
door shut behind him. The candle on the wall flickered and went out.
Kane's groping hands, sweeping over the floor, found a pistol, and he
straightened, facing the door where the maniac had vanished. He stood
in the utter darkness, his blood freezing, while a hideous muffled
screaming came from the secret room, intermingled with the dry, grisly
rattle of fleshless bones. Then silence fell.
Kane found flint and steel and lighted the candle. Then, holding it in
one