A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

14 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY His hands caught the chain. They held. For a second, they slipped a little on the oily links; but like forceps they grappled and held fast. Once the doctor had been an athlete and a man of power. His college records proved that. And even though all such days were “long and far away,” yet something of skill and strength still remained in him, half-instinctive, in- grained in his being. Summoning all his power, he drew him- self up, grasped the edge of the port, and— now realizing that excitement had burst forth above him, that there were cries and shouts and wild, profane commands— managed to struggle through the gaping aperture. Booming into resonant, deafening echoes, the liner’s whistle blared with ti- tanic uproar; it blurred the doctor’s spent and shaken senses as he crawled, trem- bling violently, between packing cases in the gloom of the hold. Down on his knees he dropped. Feeling here, there, he sought the little valise. He found it. Bells trilled and jangled. A more pow- erful shuddering gripped the hull as the engines quickened their pace. The doctor heard footsteps questing along the iron floor-plates of the hold. ~ “Hey, you!” hailed a voice. “Come out o’ there!” But he answered nothing. Clasping the hand-bag to his breast, he smiled. “In a fortnight, Marseilles!” though he. “And then—” CHAPTER 2 The Ladle Gate N December 2, just ten days after La Toulouse dropped the Fire Island light below the western horizon, Dr. Dennison climbed down from the Bordeaux express at the little white- stone station of Cette, on tlie Mediterran- ean, some hundred miles west of Mar- seilles. Despite a rather better color than he had shown in New York—due to the long sea-trip—the doctor seemed to have lost strength. New lines had graven them- selves in his face; the former ones had grown deeper; he looked old and tired. For a moment he peered around him, as though to make sure his presence was attracting .no undue attention. Then, find- ing that to all appearances he passed as an ordinary tourist, he hailed a fiacre, climbed in, ordered, “To the Chateau d’Eau,” and promptly pulled down the green silk shades. Not until the carriage had reached the little park stretching up the first steep slopes of Mount St. Clair did he show himself again. Here he ordered the coach- man to stop. He got out, paid liberally, and, without a single word, set off up the mountain. Though it was winter, here on the Rivi- era the temperature was that of an Amer- ican June. Presently the doctor, swabbing his heated forehead, stopped, exhausted, and gazed back at the wide panorama al- easy beginning to spread out beneath im. The vast azure sheet of the sea stretched away to its horizon of hazy gold. Nearer, the town lay maplike in the sheltering arms of the breakwaters. Ordinarily Den- nison might have seen and pondered on the beauty of this southern landscape; but ad he turned away to scan the heights above. “How much farther?” he demanded petulantly, with overwrought nerves. “Great Heavens, what a climb! I ought to have known about this, and started six months ago. What if anything should have happened to him? And me with sclerosis and—but there’s no use think- ing about that. Up, and at it!’”’ And once more he began the long, steep, weary ascent. To his tired, weak eyes the bright glory of the scene brought no relief. “If I’m only not too late!’”’ he panted as he labored upward. Narrower now and steeper grew the way, with terraced steps and high boun- dary walls topped with broken glass set in cement. These walls were pierced only by an occasional gateway, inscribed with some fanciful name or other to denote the villa hidden far inside among the groves of cedar, olive, and dark-foliaged orange. The doctor gave them no more than a passing glance. For now the brow of the mountain lay not far above him. He judged it just a few minutes more as he topped the crest of the height and came out upon a sort of plateau which (C(O) nn) (C 6)(0)©) S (C(O)