A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

56 ‘A. MERRITT’S FANTASY gave to us—just a little while back.” — “Then I will wait,” Gees said, in turn glancing at his watch. Not quite eleven o clock—he could afford half an hour, and still be able to pick up Tott at the ap- pointed time. Crampton left him in company with the uniformed man guarding the door, and as the minutes dragged he heard the voices of the searchers, but could not distinguish what they said. Finishing on one side of the entrance lounge, they crossed it to tackle the rooms opposite. The man on the door occupied himself in an inspec- tion of prints on the walls of the lounge, and Gees noted that every one was a pic- ture of either ruins of old Egypt or some aspect of, evidently, the Nile. Kefra her- self had chosen them—or had Saleh ibn Nahor been responsible? Now, forced against his will to question whether the two deaths were in any way connected, and sure (he told himself he was absolutely sure) that Kefra was in no way connected with either tragedy, he felt that he wanted to know more about the blue-eyed little man who was neither old nor young, and yet looked both. He served Keira now, it appeared, yet equally it appeared that in the time of her meeting with Gees’ father she had served him, or at least been in league with him. Combining Kefra’s admitted association with the man thirty-eight years ago, and her slip which revealed his name as that of the wanted man, with what his father had told him, Gees felt justified in as- suming that Saleh ibn Nahor he had encountered was the Saleh of his father’s story. Yet here he was with Kefra, free and unsuspected! So far changed, in nearly four decades, of course, that he bore no likeness to the Saleh who had either killed Sadie Hill- man or instigated her death. Yet, if that death were as Kefra had said one of an appointed nine due to other than human agency, how did Saleh come into it? As agent, perhaps, but not as instigator. Again, if the tale of nine had been com- pleted, how account for this tenth in Gloucestershire, except by regarding its likeness to the others as entirely coinci- dental? Now, reviewing Kefra’s story of a cove- nant which called for nine sacrifices, three at least of them being dear to her, he wanted to dismiss the whole thing as utter fantasy, and could not. She had made it too vivid, too real, as he had heard her tell it in the firelight. UT Saleh—Saleh had had certain trunks loaded on to the car, the eve- ning of the day the Parkoot child had been kidnapped—by Saleh? He had set out with the car for Barnby Grange, some time that evening, and should have left London by a west road, headed for either Maidenhead or Aylesbury. But, with any modern car, he might have gone out by Putney and Kingston, thrown out the suitcase with its grim con- tents, and then gone over Kingston bridge and borne northwest to come to Maiden- head by Windsor and Slough. Yes, why—what possible motive was there? Was Kefra unwittingly employ- ing a homicidal maniac? If so, how ac- count for the claw-marks on the murdered child? Saleh’s hands were normal enough —Gees had seen them as he waited at table, and—but the cats that had fright- ened the three maids away from the Grange! Had Saleh got those cats con- cealed somewhere. Were they— Kefra had conjured up two great tawny cats to sit by the parapets of the moat bridge—or had she? IIlusions, lasting a minute or less while Gees had gazed at them, and then ceasing to be when the strain of throwing the pictures of them on his brain became too much for her. Great cats, small lhonesses—the goddess Sekhmet had been portrayed as a woman with the head of a lioness. But suppose Kefra had shaped those illusions as guards for the bridge because there were real cats like them somewhere about the Grange. Supposing the real ones had got loose and killed that girl? Had those real ones in like fashion killed the Parkoot child, after which Saleh had packed the body in the suitcase and disposed of it on his drive to Barnby Grange? If so, how had the cats got at the child in Gravenor Mansions? Some servant or attendant would have known if any such animals had been housed there; an animal, even of the cat tribe, big enough to kill a two-year-old child could / comicbooks.co