A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 43: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CALVERT RESERVE BLENDED WHISKEY —86.8 ‘PROOF_659% GRAIN NEUTRAL SPIRIT S. CALVERT DISTILLERS oRP., N. YC: THE NINTH LIFE 43 magne’s paladins had died at Roncesvalles. Now see'how a legend grows. I, found naked among the rotted rags of clothing that had been, came out from the cave dressed as a shepherd boy, a_ sleeper awakened. The tale passed from man to man, and in the telling grew, changed— one became two, more than two, and to- this day there is a legend of seven sleepers of Ephesus, because I, Kefra of Abydos, took poison in the cave and the goddess who had need of me kept life in me and wakened me in her own time. He said: “This goes too far.” He stared at her ironically. She said: ‘““You who know, test me with any question you choose to ask. Of any happening, any name, between the time of Menkau-Ra and this.”’ Unhesitatingly he asked: “What was the name of the woman whose place you took at Mena House, thirty-eight years ago?” “Sadie Hillman, an American by birth,” she answered instantly. “The goddess laid the darkness on me and took her— the eighth life.” “And how did you save my father?” he persisted. “Stood between him and Saleh—be- tween him and the man he would have arrested, and who would have killed: him,” she answered. He ignored the slip that had revealed another name. “How was it that he saw your goddess, or dreamed he saw her—a woman with the head of a lioness, purring like a cat ?’’ he demanded. She frowned in sudden, entire per- plexity. “‘No—that I cannot answer,” she said. “Unless, in the hypnosis I put on him, the semblance of the goddess was thrown from my mind to his. If that were so, it was not by my volition. When they would have killed him, I stood between and saved him, because—because his bride waited for him, as I had once waited in Epheses. So I saved him; took away his memory of the time, and sent him back to her, unharmed.”’ “And forgot to take away his memory of yourself,’ he pointed out. “T had no thought of seeing him again —no thought of coming to this country again, then,” she said. “It is chance— fate, perhaps.” “Then you have been in England be- fore?” he suggested. She smiled. was the castle under Hedlington, in the year that Poitiers was fought, she laid the darkness on me here in this keep for the sixth time and renewed her strength by a young girl’s life. Of all who were tried for sorcery in that age, I think I am the only one who was not sentenced to drown- ing or the stake. At least, I know of no other, but there was the shield between me and harm, as promised in the covenant she made with me.” She paused an instant. “T have told you a series of the mad- dest, most fantastic impossibilities. But —one thing. To you, if you think of me after you go from here as—Kefra, my own name as my mother gave it. Not the other. Kefra, given me because she was descended from Khefru himself, though not by his chief wife.” “And he, I believe, built the great pyramid,” Gees observed. “You sound sceptical, even, of that,” she said. Then, abruptly: “Dine with me before you go.” “When Barnby Grange — e—_—— we y —— een, a a, — —_ ay Monroe Doctrine: s_-Suitich to Calvert | of moderation: “Switch er, finer. It always mak taste beiter.”’ NEW YORK, N. Y.— George H. Monroe, New York singer and entertainer, advises men to Calvert Reserve—as I have. Calvert really is lighter, mild- es your occasional highball : com boo ic <SiGio mM ‘