Howie gaped. She was wearing a loose flowing white gown that blended with the creamy white of her skin and set off her dark hair stunningly. Standing before him, an inviting smile on her lips she looked like a sorceress of seduction.
“Just wanted to tell you,” Howie gulped, “we’re about there.”
The girl reached out and took Howie’s hand, drew him into the drawing room.
“Now just a minute,” he spluttered, “I’ve—”
The girl closed the door after him, leaned against it, her head tilted back to expose the long column of her throat.
“You’re always in such a hurry,” she pouted. “But we can be together for these last few minutes anyway. You don’t find it disagreeable being alone with me do you?”
Howie’s will power was meeting its Waterloo. For three days he had been as noble as Galahad, but this provocative proximity was too much for him. Mazie receded into a vague blur in his consciousness.
Hardly knowing what he was doing he took the dark-haired girl into his arms and kissed her, thoroughly and completely. For a delirious instant the girl returned his embrace and it was like nothing he had ever known or dreamed in his life.
Then he got the surprise of his life!
For the girl suddenly and forcefully shoved him away, laughing gloatingly.
Howie staggered back and collapsed into a chair. He stared at her scornful features in silent, hurt amazement.
“You thought you could resist me,” she blazed angrily. “No man in three thousand years has done that. But your indifference has been grossly insulting. For that insult you will pay dearly.”
Howie stared at the girl, silent and stunned.
She seemed to be changing before his eyes. Her eyes were angry pools of smouldering flame and her features were hardening into a cold white mask of fury.
“W-who are you?” he quavered weakly.
“The Leanhaun Shee!” the word sounded like the hiss of a whip. “I live on love. My life is sustained by the devotion of men. Devotion that is as fatal to them as the sting of the adder. But I received one curse from my father that decrees that any man who resists me shall become my master. As long as you were indifferent to my charms I was your slave. Now, by your weakness and capitulation, you have become mine.”[2]
“That’s illegal,” Howie said, desperately clutching at straws. “Lincoln abolished all that sort of stuff. You’re—”
“Silence,” the girl commanded. “Rise.”
“N — no,” Howie objected weakly.
“Rise!”
Howie stood up. He didn’t want to, but some power other than his own trembling legs did the job for him.
“What do you want?” he stammered.
“Your love and your life,” the Leanhaun Shee answered softly, moving toward him. “The only man who resisted me as long as you, was Marc Antony. I didn’t mind that so much because he was occupied with Cleopatra and that was respectable competition even for me. But you, you sniveling worm, preferred that washed-out horror at the drug store to me. For that poor taste you will pay bitterly.”
“No,” Howie cried, backing from the creature.
She was growing taller before his eyes, it seemed. Her beauty was vanishing, and in its place a cold, ruthless passion was appearing. In the whiteness of her face her eyes were large saucers of violet flame.
“You are mine,” she whispered.
In desperation Howie’s distracted senses brought one name before his mind, forced one name through his terror-stiffened lips.
“Mazie!” he howled. “Mazie. Help me!”
As if this cry were the cue to invisible stage hands in invisible stage wings, the door to the drawing room was flung violently open and Mazie’s lumpy, belligerent figure marched onto the scene.
Nothing could have shocked Howie to a greater extent. His cry had been an instinctive, hopeless appeal and now, it was miraculously answered.
“Mazie,” he choked, “save me.”
Mazie surveyed the situation with a jealous glare.
“Like I thought,” she snapped. “The minute my back is turned this thing,” she paused to flick a contemptuous glance at the dark-haired enchantress, “tries to steal you right from my arms.” The Leanhaun Shee was as still and silent as if she were carved from cold white marble. Only her eyes were alive and they were like the windows of hell.
“Tell her to go,” she said tonelessly to Howie. “We are leaving.”
“Oh, no you ain’t,” Mazie cried shrilly. “If you think I’m lettin’ Howie slip away from me a second time you’re nuttier than a fruit cake.”
She wheeled to Howie.
“When I seen your pictures in the paper at home, telling about how you was to become a movie big-shot I suddenly realized that I was wrong about you. If I’d known that I would have gone to that show with you. I followed you to — to tell you that.”
Howie was a simple soul and in his tormented state this sounded logical and — wonderful.
“Gosh,” he said. “Would you, Mazie?”
“Sure, Honey,” Mazie cooed. “You’re just my type, Big Boy.”
Howie clasped her to his breast fervently. With her in his arms he felt as strong as Hercules — or Mark Antony.
“Come!” the Leanhaun Shee said softly.
Howie wavered. Mazie snuggled her peroxided head closer to him.
“We’re goin’ to be awful happy out here,” she sighed. “In pictures and everything.”
“You bet we are,” Howie said decisively. He felt as if he had emerged from a nightmare into a sane and sunny world again. He felt strong and sure of himself.
“Get out,” he said to the Leanhaun Shee. “Can’t you see we’d like to be alone?”
For a silent instant the Leanhaun Shee glared at him furiously. Then her expression softened. She shrugged her beautiful shoulders wearily.
“I must be slipping,” she said thoughtfully. “When Marc turned back to Cleo, there was some excuse for it. But,” she looked distastefully at the back of Mazie’s streaky blonde head, “in this case there’s no consolation for me at all. I might have known better than to choose a soda jerker, though.”
With a quick angry motion she whipped the white gown about her shoulder, stepped back and — vanished!
Howie blinked his eyes incredulously. There was no doubt of it. She had disappeared as completely as a whiff of white smoke in a breeze.
But he had no time to wonder about that.
For an impatient fist was pounding on the door and a loud voice was demanding.
“Hurry up in there. We’re waiting for you.”
Howie recognized Potterson’s voice with a chill start of terror.
The star, the Leanhaun Shee was gone. There was no one to take her place. His knowledge of the law was fuzzy, but he realized guiltily that he had signed contracts and legal documents guaranteeing the appearance of the glamorous brunette in pictures.
And she was gone. Vanished forever, he knew intuitively.
That was a relief, but what about the contracts he had signed? Panic mounted in his breast. He was out of one frying pan into another. As things stood, Potterson could throw him in the bastile and then throw the key away.
“Oooooh,” he groaned.
“What’s the matter?” Potterson yelled anxiously. “Anything wrong in there?”
It was then that the change came over Howie Lemp. His jaw hardened and his spine stiffened. For he suddenly though somewhat irrelevantly, remembered that he and Marc Antony had something in common. And no man with a kinship to a hero of Marc Antony’s caliber can be bluffed by a simple matter of pulling a fullgrown and fullblown movie star from his sleeve.
“There’s nothing wrong,” he snapped, and there was new authority in his voice. “I’ll — we’ll be right with you.”
2
The Leanhaun Shee is a legendary Irish enchantress, who lives on love. Her very life and existence depend on love, and being loved. It is said that any man who loves her becomes her slave, and finally pays with his life for loving her — because she uses the life force that makes him live to sustain her own body! Thus, she steals, vampirelike, the life from her lovers and goes on living eternally. However, she too has a restriction, one that has never (say the legends) caused her any trouble: namely a curse placed on her by her own father that any man who could resist her charms would turn the tables on her, and she would become