Priestess of Murder (6 page)

"That's it, is it?" Eve's cry was abruptly a hollow whisper of defeat.
"That's what I must pay to save him? Here, then, Calban. Here!"

Her hands flew to her throat, her fingers fumbled at the high, lacy collar
that veiled it. Then the flimsy silk was ripping; as those white hands tore
down through it; ripping away from her chest, the creamy, heaving rounds of
her desirous breasts, the taut, quivering hollow of her abdomen. The shredded
fabric slid down the long line of her thighs, reached the floor, and she
threw out her arms to the beast-man in an abandon of seduction noisome as the
uttermost depths of Hell, and glorious as Heaven itself. Glorious because,
whatever the woman was, whatever evil had driven her, she descended now into
Hades to save the man she loved!

The man she loved! In that moment the whole story was clear to Leila. Eve
loved Stan and—

Calban whimpered. He let his victim fall. He lumbered; uncouth, shaken by
the tempest she had aroused within him; to the naked, alluring form of the
temptress, luminous-seeming in the moonlight glow. His black arms slid around
that voluptuous form...

By some accident of the inscrutable fates, Stan had dropped right atop the
knife he so futilely had struggled to reach. His twitching, bloodless hand
closed on its hilt...

Eve moaned, shudderingly, as Calban's shaggy arms enfolded her—That
moan seemed to explode in Stan with a sudden, spasmodic strength. He lifted
to his knees, flung the knife...

Point first, it was a silver flash streaking the moonlight, and then it
was a black excrescence, quivering from the middle of Calban's back. Blood
spurted...

The monster squealed with the sudden pain. His great hands gripped the
woman they had been fondling, flung her from him in a paroxysm of rage. She
catapulted into the wall. The crackling thud of crushing bone sickened
Leila...

And then the bound girl was screaming in terror for her lover as the
wounded beast-man whirled and plunged ferociously at the trooper, who was
swaying on his knees, was toppling over from the effort alone of throwing
that knife. Calban's writhing fingers closed on Stan...

Thunder crashed in the room. It was the thunder of Foster Corbett's gun,
blazing from the doorway. Long, orange-red jets of flame seared across the
room. Calban's great form jolted to the impacts of the lethal lead, once,
twice. He collapsed like a ripped meal sack, rolled over near his intended
victim, quivered and was still.

Foster Corbett came in. He was mud-covered, from head to foot. A blue
bruise blotched the seamed gray of his face and one trouser leg flapped,
grotesquely somehow in two disjointed halves.

But the man's old, tired eyes glowed with a strange satisfaction.

"You gals sure can play hell," he growled, "when you get to fighting over
a boy." He picked up the knife and sliced Leila's lashings, then bent to his
son's flaccid form.

"Is—is he—?" Leila dared not finish the question, but Corbett
understood and answered it. "No. He's just knocked out and he's coming out of
it now. He'll be all right by noon, I imagine, right enough to stand up with
you in front of the parson and—"

"He wouldn't marry me, now," Leila moaned. "He wouldn't marry the daughter
of a madman."

"Madman, hell," Corbett grunted, swinging around to Eve's crumpled,
moaning body. His gnarled fingers probed the girl's hurts with a curious
tenderness. Then, "I'm afraid you're through, Eve," he said. "Maybe things
will be a little better for your soul, where it's going, if you tell Leila
yourself..."

White lips moved in face that was agony incarnate.

"Yes... I... swore you... never would have... Stan. Calban... imbecile
living caves... West Cliff... everybody thought... monster. I... made friends
with him... got him kill... Rourke... throw blame your father... kill Stan's
love for you. It's... killed me instead." A gush of blood burbled from her
lips, she writhed to a sitting position, threw out her arms. "Forgive me,
Stan."

And then there wasn't an Eve Starr any more. Only a pitiful, nude corpse,
slumped in a corner of the dreadful room.

THEY pieced it together afterward, the tale of that dreadful
night. How, learning of Stan's message that her plot had failed, the
love-maddened girl must have determined to have her mindless dupe kill Leila.
How she must have sneaked into Leila's bedroom, either up the ram-spout
ladder or through the same window that Calban had entered. How the imbecile
must have attacked her, choked her to insensibility on the bed, been scared
away by Leila's rush, by Stan's pounding on the doorway below... Had been
scared away, and then had attacked Foster Corbett, kidnapped Leila.

Eve had recovered, had gone out into the woods to make certain Calban had
gone for Leila. The frightened girl's questions had given her the clue to
Leila's fear of her own madness. She had played on that to torture her, to
lure her deeper into the woods, into Calban's clutches. But Stan's appearance
had once more disrupted her plan.

Because she loved him she had saved him then. She had saved him again
later, when the imbecile took matters into his own hands. But she had been
able only at terrible cost to herself to save him the third time...

"It was horrible," Leila shuddered, shrinking into Stan's arms. "It was a
nightmare out of hell's vilest depths."

"But it ended happily, my darling." Stan's lips were warm, under her ear.
"Like the fairy stories. ?And so they were married and lived happily ever
after.'"

"Ever after," Leila murmured. "But the ending of our fairy story is even
better. Look!"

Under the poplars that till now had divided the Monroy and the Corbett
farms, that till now had made a line of ancient enmity, two old men stood.
The taller one, Justin Monroy, pointed to the ground, made a gesture with his
forefinger as though he were drawing a boundary. Foster Corbett nodded. The
two shook hands gravely.

"They've got it settled at last, that old fight."

"Doesn't make much difference any more, does it, Leila? The two farms will
belong to one little fellow pretty soon—"

"What do you mean?" Leila Corbett cried, blushing. But she knew. Even if
they had only been wedded a short hour before, she knew what her husband
meant.