Thorne howled, and dropped the thing. A moment later, he pulled loose and jumped up. Thunstone was up, too, moving to block Thorne off from the book. Flame grew and flurried behind him, into a paler light, as if burning something fat and rotten.
“It’ll be ruined!” cried Thorne, and hurled himself low, like a blocker on the football field. An old footballer himself, Thunstone crouched, letting his hard knee-joint come in contact with Thorne’s incharging bald skull. With a grunt, Thorne fell flat, rolled over and came erect again.
“Put out that fire, Thunstone!” he bawled. “You may destroy us both!”
“I’ll chance that,” Thunstone muttered, moving again to fence him off from the burning book.
Thorne returned to the struggle. One big hand made a talon of itself, snatching at Thunstone’s face. Thunstone ducked beneath the hand, jammed his own shoulder up under the pit of the lifted arm, and heaved. Thorne staggered back, stumbled. He fell, and came to his hands and knees, waiting. His face, upturned to Thunstone, was like a mask of horror carved to terrorize the worshipers in some temple of demons.
It was plain to see that face, for the fire of the book blazed up with a last ardent leap of radiance. Then it died. Thunstone, taking time to glance, saw only glowing charred fragments of leaves, and ground them with a quick thrust of his heel.
Darkness again, without even the green mock-light. Thunstone felt no breeze, heard no noise of swaying bushes or stealthy, ponderous shape-movement—he could not even hear Thorne’s breathing.
He took a step sidewise, groping. His hand found a desk-edge, then the standard of a small lamp. He found a switch and pressed it.
Again he was in Thorne’s hotel room, and Thorne was groggily rising to his feet.
When Thorne had cleared his head by shaking it, Thunstone had taken a sheaf of papers from the desk and was glancing quickly through them.
“Suppose,” he said, gently but loftily, “that we call the whole thing a little trick of imagination.”
“If you call it that, you will be lying,” Thorne said between set teeth on which blood was smeared.
“A lie told in a good cause is the whitest of lies… this writing would be a document of interest if it would convince.”
“The book,” muttered Thorne. “The book would convince. I whisked you to a land beyond imagination, with only a grain of the power that book held.”
“What book?” inquired Thunstone. He looked around. “There’s no book.”
“You set it afire. It burned, in that place where we fought—its ashes remain, while we come back here because its power is gone.”
Thunstone glanced down at the papers he had picked up. “Why talk of burning things? I wouldn’t burn this set of notes for anything. It will attract other attentions than mine.”
His eyes rose to fix Thorne’s. “Well, you fought me again, Thorne. And I turned you back.”
“He who fights and runs away—” Rowley Thorne found the strength to laugh. “You know the rest, Thunstone. You have to let me run away this time, and at our next fight I’ll know better how to deal with you.”
“You shan’t run away,” said Thunstone. He put a cigarette in his mouth and kindled it with the lighter he still held in his hand.
Thorne hooked his heavy thumbs in his vest. “You’ll stop me? I think not. Because we’re back in conventional lands, Thunstone.
“If you lay hands on me again, it’ll be a fight to the death. We’re both big and strong. You might kill me, but I’d see that you did. Then you’d be punished for murder. Perhaps executed.” Thorne’s pale, pointed tongue licked his hard lips. “Nobody would believe you if you tried to explain.”
“No, nobody would believe,” agreed Thunstone gently. “That’s why I’m leaving you to do the explaining.”
“I!” cried Thorne, and laughed again. “Explain what? To whom?”
“On the way here,” said Thunstone, “I made a plan. In the lobby downstairs, I telephoned for someone to follow me—no, not the police. A doctor. This will be the doctor now.”
A slim, gray-eyed man was coming in. Behind him moved two blocky, watchful attendants in white jackets. Silently Thunstone handed the doctor the papers that he had taken from the desk.
The doctor looked at the first page, then the second. His gray eyes brightened with professional interest. Finally he approached Thorne.
“Are you the gentleman Mr. Thunstone asked me to see?” he inquired. “You—yes, you look rather weary and overwrought. Perhaps a rest, with nothing to bother you—”
Thorne’s face writhed. “You! You dare to suggest!” He made a threatening gesture, but subsided as the two white-coated men moved toward him from either side. “You’re insolent,” he went on, more quietly. “I’m no more crazy than you are.”
“Of course not,” agreed the doctor. He looked at the notes again, grunted, folded the sheets and stowed them carefully in an inside pocket. Thunstone gave a little nod of general farewell, took his hat from the bed, and strolled carelessly out.
“Of course, you’re not crazy,” said the doctor again. “Only—tired. Now, if you’ll answer a question or two—”
“What questions?” blazed Thorne.
“Well, is it true that you believe you can summon spirits and work miracles, merely by exerting your mind?”
Thorne’s wrath exploded, hysterically. “You’d soon see what I could do if I had that book!”
“What book?”
Thunstone destroyed it—burned it—”
“Oh, please!” begged the doctor good-naturedly. “You’re talking about John Thunstone, you know! There isn’t any book, there never was a book. You need a rest, I tell you. Come along.”
Thorne howled like a beast and clutched at his tormentor. The doctor moved smoothly out of reach.
“Bring him to the car,” said the doctor to the two men in white coats. At once they slid in to close quarters, each clutching one of Thorne’s arms. He snarled and struggled, but the men, with practiced skill, clamped and twisted his wrists. Subdued, he walked out between them because he must.
* * *
Thunstone and the Countess Monteseco were having cocktails at their favorite rear table in a Forty-seventh Street restaurant. They were known and liked there, and not even a waiter would disturb them unless signaled for.
“Tell me,” said the countess, “what sort of fantastic danger were you tackling last night?”
“I was in no danger,” John Thunstone smiled.
“But I know you were. I went to the concert, and then the reception, but all the time I had the most overpowering sense of your struggle and peril. I was wearing the cross you gave me, and I held it in my hand and prayed for you—prayed hour after hour—”
“That,” said Thunstone, “was why I was in no danger.”
HORROR AT VECRA
BY HENRY HASSE
…an ancient evil that will not die,
but draws men, soul and brain,
The pale stars peering fearfully down
remember whence it came.
The very darkness where They wait
doth shudder at the Name…
—Monstres and Their Kynde
NOW, AFTER TWELVE YEARS, VAGUE REPORTS ARE ISSUING again from the vicinity of Vecra. As yet they are little more than rumors, but they have served to awaken the remote horror in my brain—horror, for I now realize I must have failed, a dozen years ago, when I stood there on that brink of madness for a few hell-filled seconds.
I used dynamite then—enough of it, I thought—and believed that was the end. Now I can only wonder if this is the same evil, or some spawn of it that will never die. Perhaps even now it is not too late. I have kept silence, but now I shall tell my story and if I cannot then enlist aid, I will myself… But lest I become too incoherent, I had best begin on that day a dozen years ago.