A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 81: what you’re looking at

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

THE NINTH LIFE 81 door to rap sharply, raising echoes from within. Tott got out of the car and came to stand beside him. “Peculiar,” he observed. “People don't leave their front doors open when they go out. It looks as if—” Gees gave the door a push, and it swung inward slowly, heavily. He pressed the bell-push again and the sharp, harsh tin- tinabulation of the bell clanged out loudly, “They'd hear that anywhere in the house,” Tott said. “There may be some- thing wrong. More cats, or something of the sort.” “That being so—” Gees ended the sen- tence by stepping into the hall, and Tott followed him. For a few seconds they stood, listening, and then, seeing that the drawing room door was not closed, Gees pushed it wide. The room was untenant- ed; in the fire-basket on the hearth was a little mass of ash and cinders from which bluish smoke still rose. Tott said: “It’s not so long since somebody was here.” The clock on the mantel ticked noisily—far more noisily, to Gees’ hear- ing, than when he had been in this room with Kefra. Then he saw that a stamped and addressed envelope was placed be- fore the clock face, and crossed the room to take it down, for the name and address on it, as he saw when he approached, were his own. “Why wasn’t it posted?” Tott, beside him, asked. a BOUT replying, he tore the en- velope open, and at that Tott, with in- nate courtesy, went to the window and stood looking out. Gees took out the let- . ter and recognized Kefra’s handwriting: When I gave, and in giving asked, it was in the certainty that I was free. Now, I have equal certainty of being still bound, and the bonds are so terrible that I shall not see you again. They held me back from you yesterday. I would have you know that it ues not I who held back, but I myself was held. Though the little time I craved and won is all, still I am olad, for though this executric of Typhon, whom I believed, long ago in Abydos, subject to the will of Osirts —though she bind and hold me after I- have fulfilled my part, yet she cannot take from me what has been. And though Saleh— 7 Typhon, Gees knew, was in old Egyp- tian belief the very essence of evil, as Osir- is was the source of all good. He stood ‘looking at the unfinished letter—had Sa- leh come to her as she wrote, and given her no opportunity of finishing it P—until Tott faced about. Then Gees crumpled - the sheet and thrust it into his pocket, and the envelope with it. “Tt tells nothing, as far as finding any- one—goes,” he said. “It looks as if you know Miss Kefra fairly well,” Tott observed. “Tt’s that devil Saleh I want to find,” Gees said. : Tott said: “There’s nothing against him—or against Miss Kefra either. «I think I’ll go out to the car and wait there. Rummaging over a private house while the occupants are away doesn’t appeal tome. And they are away.” “What makes you so certain?’ Gees asked. “Just a feeling.” Tott moved toward the door. ‘But just in case there should be any more cats, have you got your Gees took it out from his overcoat pocket and pushed off the safety catch. “Yes,” he said. “I’m going to make sure,” But when, ten minutes or so later, he went out to where Tott waited by the car,. he shook his head. “No sign of anyone, and no clothes nor anything left about,” he remarked. “It looks as if they didn’t mean to come back.”’ “But they left the door open,” Tott pointed out. Gees gave him no answer. It was in his mind that Saleh was the cause of her letter being unfinished, and that she had left the door ajar in case he, Gees, should come to the Grange and find the letter, which, because Saleh was with her, she would not take out to post in the ordinary way. Or perhaps she had hoped that any- one else, entering, would take and post it. “And you’re going back to London?” Tott asked, as Gees started the car and turned it toward the bridge over the moat. “Yes. Get lunch along the road— hullo!” A small sports car, approaching the Grange, appeared ahead of them as Gees drove over the bridge. So narrow was the drive that he felt his rear wheels comicbooks ee : : amy an A pian — = Cc @)