10 Short Novels Magazine — page 86: what you’re looking at

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

| ey SE AR Al Rie ee ee be a a eee Sea > : Y = i et eS a — tae 84 * * * Ten Short Novels Magazine He is—what you call?—a guard. But I know not at what hours he works.” I waited to hear no more. Forgetting completely about the Gottschalk group, I darted out of the shop, hailed a cab and sped to the Metropolitan Museum—only to find that my man had gone home, and the museum authorities adamant in their refusal to give the address of any em- ployee to an unidentified stranger. There seemed to be nothing else’ to do but wait, until the morrow, and attempt to waylay Montors at the antique shop. But since I was there, I indulged myself in one of my favorite pastimes—lI visited the armor room of the museum. is a marvelous, awe-inspiring spec- tacle, that armor room. It is a strange- ly moving thing to see those majestic steel figures mounted on their metal-clad steeds, austerely haughty in their medi- aeval dignity. In hauberk and casque, b late and greaves, they are like som gleaming monuments to the memory of a grander age than ours. But there is something eerie about them, too. Strolling through their rigid ranks I was often assailed by a strange sensation that I could never quite analyze. It was a feeling half vague, formless fear, and half faintly pulsing excitement. It was not altogether an unpleasant feel- ing but surely not enjoyable enough to ‘account for the fascination of the place that drew me there two or three times every week. I had become an habitué without knowing exactly why—without even faintly suspecting the real reason. That day I lingered later than usual. The bell—the signal to clear the building —had already rung. The soft twilight beams of the setting sun seeped through the lofty west windows, making the air faintly luminous; cloaking that silent throng of antique figures with a nimbus of somber mystery. I leaned against one of the great columns, indifferent to the knowledge that I should be going, that soon a guard would be ordering me out of the place. I gazed with a curious fas- cination at the towering figure in the middle of the mounted cavalcade. It was, I knew, only a dummy in that handsome suit of gleaming black armor, sitting astride of his heavily sheathed dummy horse; but as I gazed at it I was suddenly conscious of a feeling of ex- pectancy. It was as though I were await- ing some movement, some sign from the figure—some signal that would bridge a ap that existed between us. Somehow I elt that the strange fascination these figures held for me, was about to be ex- plained and justified. And as this feeling grew stronger, an- — % = en ee ee Le SS = ~ = ee OD SPEEA Sora Coal ae a a ey a i ee ae a ae eS ea a a ag ip ge < ns Se > Frat a ~— ew me <i s Pall other sensation grew along with it—a sensation of fear that quickly changed to something very like panic. I had no idea what it was I feared; I only knew that something terrible was going to hap- pen very soon. I wanted to take to my heels and leave this place, never to re- turn; but I could not. My forehead was damp with cold moisture, and every muscle in my body seemed slowly hardening into rigid steel. My breath was coming in shallow, chok- ing gasps; but still I waited—rooted to the spot I stood upon, as immovable and incapable of voluntary action as the fig- ures aboutme.... And then the spell that held me was broken. As though she had appeared out of the gravely glowing air itself, a slender girl seemed suddenly to materialize be- fore my very eyes. At first her small body was like a mist, floating slowly toward me over the floor. And then I saw that she was solid, material, alive; walking across the floor with a gracefully lithe movement—and that her dove-gray suit, with its collar of squirrel, blended so per- fectly with the ghostly light of the place, that it was no wonder I had not seen her until she was practically upon me. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Her dark hair, under her close-fitting gray hat, curled softly down to frame the ivory-and-rose oval of her face, which seemed to glow in the dusk with a strange, pale light of its own. But it was her eyes; dark, and wide-spread in an ex- pression of joyous wonder, that held me enthralled. — Those eyes were not fixed on my own. As she neared me, I saw that she was gazing steadfastly at the charm—my half of the sigil of Narl—which hung sus- pended on my watch-chain, midway be- tween my upper vest pockets. She came close to me and stopped. I recognized her now—she was the girl I had seen in the antique shop. The girl who was so ae to possess the other half of my sigil. Then she raised her eyes to mine— and the expression in their glowing depths shook me from crown to heels. Without thought, without a _ syllable being spoken, I opened my arms and gathered her into them in a passionate embrace. Her slender arms went about my neck, and her soft lips met mine in a long kiss of burning rapture. STERIOUS, overwhelming emo- tion had submerged every con- scious thought in my mind. I did not won- der whence came this woman; I did not question the strange fact of our instinc- Gomichbooks =" <— SS ee ee 8 Si ie