10 Short Novels Magazine — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

' thoughts my heart, and forced her image from it. The next day the psychiatrist pro- nounced me cured, and I left for my MORNG 5 6. Perhaps, because for so many weeks I had been a total stranger to mental re- pose, and had been unable to marshall my into anything remotely re- sembling coherence, it was not until I was on the train that a thing occurred to me that, long since, should have appealed to me as significant. I suddenly remembered a name—the name of the man the antique dealer claimed had put a deposit on the half of the sigil he owned. It was similar to an- other name—which had fallen from the lips of my beloved Marion. P. Montors, the dealer had said, was the man who wished to purchase the sigil. And Perion de Montors was the name of the ancient enemy Marion said, had pursued us down the ages. From whatever sort of hallucinations I had suffered, they would hardly have encompassed such a coincidence as that! My first act, upon arriving in New York, was to visit the shop where I had geen the Gottschalk group, and, later, the sigil. The old Frenchman was still there. “Ah, M’siew!” he greeted me warmly. “You are back at last!” So he remembered me! It could not, then, have been an illusion that I had visited this shop.... “Tt am so happy to see you,” went on the little Frenchman ecstatically. “I feared that you would never return—or the pretty young lady, either. It was so strange! Three customers demand my little gold luck piece. Then pouf! they run away and I am left with no customers— tout a fait!” “Do you mean you still have it?” I asked huskily, and my knees were sud- denly warm and weak as a fearful joy suffused my body. “Mais oui!” , The little man turned and ran quickly toward the back of the shop. He returned in an instant bearing in his hands the black velvet case. He laid it in my hands, and with fingers that shook violently, I opened it. The sigil was there, as it had been before—the mate to the half that was mine! 7 “M’sieu’ Montors, he has never re- Black Knight’s Bondage * * * 91 turned,” said the Frenchman. “I have enquire at the Musée—where I am told ‘that M’siew’ Montors he have been kill in an auto. His car hit one other, and a beeg splinter of wood from his broken steering wheel she kill him through the neck. The deposit was to hold it but for a few days—and now you may have the charm if you wish to—” I shivered involuntarily, weird sensa- tions gripping my heart and mind. Killed —through the neck. That—that was how I had dealt a blow to the Black Knight —with the point of that broken axe staff. And my eyes went to the Mediaeval group of miniature battling warriors in the window of the store. I decided then that I would buy the tableau as a memento of my strange and inexplicable experience. “To give it to me,” said a soft voice at my. side. “Otherwise, I shall buy it myself — even though it cost all the wealth in the world!” I whirled—and then fell back against the counter. My head reeled with the sud- den, terrific pounding of my heart, and a cry that was both a sob and a paean of thanksgiving burst from my throat. In the next instant Marion was in my arms that for weeks had ached to hold her, with a horrible, hopeless pain... . She stirred after a moment and gave a little laugh. “You must not hold me so tightly, Reinald,” she said. “It hurts a little. You see, dear, I have been in the noerital +... I grasped her shoulders and held her so that I could look into her eyes. _ “Why—” I gasped— “why have you been in the hospital, Marion?” For a long moment she gazed back into my eyes, and in her own I could see the flitting shadows of old pain, and strange, unfathomable mystery. “They told me that I was in a fire,” she said softly. “I do not remember, for I slept so deeply that even the pain did not rouse me. And it was only afterward—in the hospital—that I knew what had hap- pened.” “You were burned?” I said. “Where were you burned, Marion? Beneath the ete arm. i*.T” “Yes,” she whispered, “how did you know?” and crept into my arms again, as a shudder shook her sweet, slender body. “Beneath the left arm... .” Gomichbooks (E(0)