A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

THE LITTLE DOLL DIED 119° for I had no weapon. I knew you meant to kill me, then. So I crawled along the cliff-edge, through the bushes—crawled away. “After a while the wounds hurt and I lay down. Clung there in the underbrush. I could hear you firing, but you didn’t come after me. Then I lay unconscious for hours; I don’t know how many. Next day an old Negress found me, carried me on a mule to her mountain hut way up near the Santo Domingan border where the Arawaks are—”’ “Oh, my God!” Jenny Lou swayed, face in hands. “T had fever.” Her first husband’s voice sank to an apparitional whisper. “I wanted to die. But she kept me.up there—took care of me—for months. Just an ancient Negress—old and wrinkled—black—could not read or write—you wouldn't have called her civilized. But she was kind, gentle—even if she did pray to Voodoo gods to save me—more heart than any white woman I’ve ever known.” His whisper harshened. “She wouldn’t have tried to murder me. She wouldn't have shot a man—her man—for another—” “But I didn’t!” Jenny Lou tore aside her bridal veil with a cry. “I loved you, Wilfred! Loved you! Oh, I know I did a dreadful thing. You were always so preoccupied with your work—your re- search—I was jealous. I thought you’d lost interest in me. So I pretended to be interested in Terrence. Poor Terrence! “Tt was silly of me. Terrible! Just a foolish woman’s sham. But I thought to make you jealous, thought you’d pay me more attention. Then that night when you told me how you'd been working, saving, all for me—I was sorry, wanted to tell you. But the very next morning you were gone. “Oh, Wilfred!’’ She faced him, agonized. “How can you believe I tried to kill The twist on his ravaged face, then, was soul-curdling. He swept the wet hair away from his eyes to glare. His bony finger pointed. “Because I saw you! You know [ did! I heard your horse coming—turned in my saddle just as you rode around that big boulder behind me, Maybe it was dark and raining, maybe I’m near-sighted Fess HOMER TH “Lae Oe Mates eS ar —your gun was firing, too. But you had it pulled up to hide your face—I saw your white rubber cape. You were wearing that white raincape I gave you last Christmas !” ANG! What an accusation that was. — Like a silent bombshell; a bright ex- plosion of mercury in my paralyzed brain. Outside the Haitain crowd was rioting, but inside that church you could hear the candle-beads drop. Nobody moved. No- body seemed to breathe. And in that shatterpating moment I saw it all. Little Peabody riding absent-mindedly along that mountain trail Murder on hoof- beats shadowing up through the gray mist behind him. That startled turn in the saddle. Near-sighted eyes, glasses bleared by rain. Blinding gunfire; shock throwing him from his donkey; rolling head over heels, stunned, downslope to the edge of that abyss. Then the murderer’s gun keeps going— I’m across the valley—for me to hear. It must, like a Caco ambush, appear as one of Charlemagne’ jobs. The assassin rigs up a scene of bloody battle; kills the horse as well as the donkey ; sprawls down in the muddy path; shoots himself delib- erately in the leg and hand; fires random shots and a couple of bullets down the valley in my direction for good measure. When I get there the stage is set convincingly. But Peabody is alive, con- cealed by the bushes, crawling off stunned through the underbush of that overhang. And he’d glimpsed the white rain-cape the killer wore as a masking hood—Jenny Lou’s cape, which she'd loaned, on that rainy morning when we set out after Pea- body, to McCoy. I saw all that, and Jenny Lou saw it. McCoy saw that we saw it, too. That handsome Irish taxidermist! Wil- fred Peabody’s life-long friend! He'd been wearing Jenny Lou’s white raincape when we set out to find the little Arawak- hunting scientist and bring him back to Morne Noir. He was the one who’d fired those murderous bullets from behind. To kill Peabody and get his wife? Making certain that Jenny Lou, widowed, would come into a large bank account and ten thousand dollars insurance? Con- vinced that he, Terry could marry him- self into Wilfred Peabody's money? But | <<COMiICbooks.com