A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

a ‘fluttered from her fingers. 86 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY CHAPTER 18 The Net Is Closing S GEES left the car and stepped toward the portico he saw Ketra in the doorway. He realized that she had admitted him each time he had come here, and momentarily wondered if Saleh wanted to avoid him? It was no more than a second’s reflection, driven out by the sound of Kefra’s voice. “Why?” she asked, with no word of greeting for preface. “After what I wrote.” He answered: ‘Saleh—where is he?” He saw the moonstone on her breast rise and fall with her breath. “He will come back soon.” “T want to see him—I came back here to find him.”’ “Then will you come in?” she asked. “He will not be long.” He followed her into the drawing room. The fire had been replenished ; it was now a red mass, radiating heat that he felt halfway across the room, and crowned by little bluish flames. Kefra reached up to lay her hand on the mantel, and faced him. “What is it?” “This.” He took from his pocket the card he had received. She took it from him, read its brief mes- sage, and then, still holding it, shook her head. ‘No, it is not from me,” she said. “As I knew when I got back from where it asked me to go,” he told her. “Saleh delivered it—only Saleh could have written it, since you did not. And going there was meant to kill me, horribly.” She bent her head to gaze down at the fire, and laid her arm on the mantel, with the card pendant in her hand. Then her foot on the guard slipped, and as she started to recover her balance the card Gees started forward to clutch at it, but merely knocked it away, down into the flames ; the paper flared up, crumpled, and was gone. Gazing down at it, he laughed—not a pleasant laugh. She said, very quietly and evenly: “It makes no difference, and you need not even see him. Very soon, he will be called to account for far more than this. far more than this!” “Without it, seeing him would be use- Far, less,” he answered. count?” She pointed at the armchair behind him. “Will you sit there for a little while?” she asked. “In my letter I told you I should not see you again, but now—I wish at”? Half reluctantly he seated himself, and she took her place on the rug at his feet, leaned against his knees with her face turned from him and toward the fire. ‘“So—like any woman of a day, for this last time of all,” she said. “As for some few hours out of all my hours. I dreamed I might rest at day’s end. Before I knew.” _For a moment she looked up at him, and he read in her eyes that she was no longer remote, but desiring his nearness. “You knew—?” “That I am no less bound from you than I was before the ninth life was taken,”’ she answered somberly. “Freedom was an illusion, given for the little time I knew with you to make the bonds more cruel— a vengeance designed by Typhon’s own minister, Sekhmet the accursed.” In the stillness that followed he listened, still and tensed ; and heard a faint, purring sound—so faint that he could not deter- mine its source. It might have been in the room, outside the house, or even close here beside him. Then Kefra said: “Ves, I too hear it. She is content, but nothing can take from me the time we two knew.”’ She looked up at him again. The sound had ceased. ‘‘No power can take it away. Nor this—this interval of peace.” Again she turned toward the fire, and leaned her head down on her knee, The red coals rustled, shrinking down behind their bars. He laid his hand on her hair. “All this is illusion, Kefra,” he said. “Surely it is all illusion. Forget it—come back to London with me—” “T have seen,” she interrupted him. “Since I wrote the letter you took away, I have seen. Else, I would not be here But—called to ac-. with you again, as now. And Saleh—you . es of him. He will not see another ay.” He tried to frame a question, but could find no words. tion as if he had spoken it. “No, not through me. Nor do I know in what way. But I have seen, and know She answered the ques- - that even now the assessors wait to judge comi cbooks.co