A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 120: what you’re looking at

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

120 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY McCoy must’ve had that in mind when we went out after Peabody that dark day. With murder in his heart and bullets in his gun he’d trailed his best friend, sent me off on a detour when we were getting close, and staged that ambush . stunt. There was murder in his heart again as he stood there, exposed, at the foot of the altar. In the light of the church candles his eyes were balls of yellow fire. All the handsomeness went out of him at a rush. He gave one wolf-like howl—the howl of the assassin caught red-handed just as his fingers closed on the prize money. Whirling, he snatched up a silver candelabrum; hurled the sacred candles at Peabody’s head. Talk about the return of Enoch Arden! In a flare of crashing constellations the little scientist went down. I’m glad I had one good sock at Terrence McCoy. Lash- ing out without time to aim, I nailed that wife-stealer a bash in the nose that sent him plunging over backward into the holy water, | He needed that baptism; it was going to be the last he’d ever get. Caroming off the stone fount in a shower, he went leaping and screaming over the pews, filling the church with a horde of wild oaths, knocking down a pile of prayer- books, clawing his way through a shrine. His last defilement was to smash Saint Christopher the Protector. Pictured in stained glass, the good saint went to smithereens as that black Irishman went shattering out through the window. He got away. By the time the Marines could pull themselves together and rush outside he was gone. In the devil’s hurly- burly of the street, the flittergibbet of lights and rain, the uproar of zombie- panicked natives, Haitian police, yells and thumping dance-drums, he vanished in the night. Cape Haiti with its crooked streets and hovels, its maze of dark alleys and smells was a haven for such a guy. A rat can always find a hole. Five days afterwards he was seen by a peasant, heading inland for the Santo Domingan border. I guess he figured the States might be too hot for him and he’d better lie under cover for a while. Anyway, at the time there was only _=«<that boat he had reserved for his honey- moon. We went out there that night to make sure he wasn’t aboard. Then our Marine patrols combed the town until long after midnight before they gave him up as a bad job. : I went back to the church to find Peabody. That blow on the head had given him an ugly gash, but Jenny Louise was looking after him. They sat together in a quiet pew while she bathed his face. Off in the vestry the poor priest dazed, was taking care of papers to revoke the wedding and restore Mrs, Peabody to ae lawful status as Wilfred Peabody's wite. The little professor was begging Jenny Louise to forgive him. ~ “To think that I could have mistrust you so.” “But it was my fault.” She was hugging him close. “‘I loved you so, I wanted to make you mistrust me!” And she’d married that McCoy cur be- cause she hadn’t wanted to hurt a friend of Wilfred’s. Lord! I tiptoed out. Across the night-hung town the sounds of rioting voodoo-drums and yeiling Marine patrols were breaking the peace and quiet. The peace and quiet of an island that hasn’t had any since Columbus waded ashore, there, with ci- vilization in 1492, EPILOGUE ona finished his story and a bottle of Scotch at the same time, and leaned back in his chair, wiping his lips, throat, cheeks, forehead, We were cruising in under the shadow of a mountainous headland, and, the wind cut off, the air was a dead weight flavored with custard, muggy. Clouds and pale, soundless lightning drifted around the mountaintops; in lav- ender twilight, bay and headland were two shades of purple. Listening, I thought I could hear drums. It may have been my imagination. Real or imaginary, the sound came in through the porthole and joined something in the smokeroom atmosphere I didn’t like. “Glennon,” I said—and I know my voice was husky—“That was a devil of _a-yarn |” adtsbaes Eomichooks:.com