Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

552 shaken as by some severe shock, and he felt sick with self-reproach that he had deliberately dragged another innocent victim within the green casket’s evil in- fluence. Leilah, though with secret misgivings on her uncle’s account, had urged Miss Fel- lowes to remain with them till the following day; but Dr. Vanaman’s aunt had had enough and more than enough of that house. A few short minutes, it seemed, had robbed her of all pretense to courage, and the mere vicinity of the green box appeared to cause her the most acute dis- tress. Vaguely she assured her nephew that she had been through an experience which cured her forever of any liking for or in- terest in the occult, entreated him to leave the house with her and promise never to return; and when he refused, insisted on at once taking her own departure. Since Vanaman’s solemn promise forbade him to desert his charge, Leilah ordered out the runabout and herself saw the poor wo- man to the railroad station and off on the first New York train. Returning, she found the doctor still in the library, very meditative and depressed, though he greeted Leilah with attempted lightness. ‘ Archangels and scarlet cities are a new development,” he smiled. 3 ‘“Not altogether so,” she corrected him. ‘“No? Have you seen—”’ ‘Nothing that you have not. But I think you have forgotten or perhaps over- looked something. Wait.” She rang for Frisby, and when the man - appeared asked him to bring them the noon edition of yesterday’s Inquirer. From some- where at the back of the house he resur- rected it, and alone once more the girl pointed to a sentence in the earlier account of Lutz’s death. “The man, who was well dressed but hatless, splashed with mud, and, according to Dolan, rather wild-eyed, made a mut- tered reply in which the guards could dis- tinguish only some reference to an ‘ arch- angel,” and passed on.” “Vou see?”? commented Leilah quietly. “TI see nothing,” Vanaman , protested, THE ARGOSY. rumpling his reddish-brown hair till it stood up wildly. ‘‘ Archangels—scarlet cities— they only confuse what few coherent ideas I had of the affair. Lutz ‘ muttered some- thing about an archangel.’ But why should he sacrifice a white horse to an arch- angel?” Leilah’s eyes opened wide. ‘Sacrifice? You mean those two men bought white horses to sacrifice them?” Vanaman nodded miserably. “They most surely did. In all the an- cient worship of the sea, whether under the older Greek name of Poseidon, or as the Roman Neptune, black bulls and white horses were considered the most acceptable offering. I had a very definite suspicion of Lutz’s purpose when I first read that ac- count. He didn’t use his knife to strike at the life-guard, as it says. the horse, but not Dolan. He meant to cut Mirror’s throat there on the beach, and failing in that seems to have gone clean raving mad and drowned himself. “When we met Blair at the river he was bound on a similar errand. I didn’t interfere, because I was afraid of precipi- tating a similar result. He succeeded in making his offering, and may God let it bring him peace! Though it’s a rankly pagan custom, 1 am beginning to under- stand how they may have been driven to it. But Poseidon, god of the sea, was not an archangel. Where does the archangel come in?” Leilah did not reply, and he saw that she was staring with strange, fascinated eyes fixed on lucent depths of green. He snatched the box from the table, tucked it under one arm, and rose. “You, at least, need not be sacrificed, Miss Robinson! If I swear to you that under no circumstances and for no reason, imaginable or otherwise, will I desert your uncle so long as he keeps this box—won’t you in turn consent to leave here for a while? You have other relatives with whom you could stay. Go to them! I beg and entreat of you, go!” The girl shook. her head, smiling. This was not the first time Vanaman had voiced that plea, but his “ sprite of the moonlight,” as he had fancifully thought of her, pos- cConmicoool. He struck at..