Out of the Dark: Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers. Robert W. Chambers

dealers, and by iron workers. All day long the place rings with the clink of hammers, and the clang of metal bars.

      Unsavory as it is below, there is cheerfulness, and comfort, and hard, honest work above.

      Five flights up are the ateliers of architects and painters, and the hiding-places of middle-aged students like myself who want to live alone. When I first came here to live I was young, and not alone.

      I had to walk awhile before any conveyance appeared, but at last, when I had almost reached the Arc de Triomphe again, an empty cab came along and I took it.

      From the Arc to the rue de Rennes is a drive of more than half an hour, especially when one is conveyed by a tired cab horse that has been at the mercy of Sunday fête makers.

      There had been time before I passed under the Dragon’s wings, to meet my enemy over and over again, but I never saw him once, now refuge was close at hand.

      Before the wide gateway a small mob of children were playing. Our concierge and his wife walked about among them with their black poodle, keeping order; some couples were waltzing on the side-walk. I returned their greetings and hurried in.

      All the inhabitants of the court had trooped out into the street. The place was quite deserted, lighted by a few lanterns hung high up, in which the gas burned dimly.

      My apartment was at the top of a house, half way down the court, reached by a staircase that descended almost into the street, with only a bit of passage-way intervening. I set my foot on the threshold of the open door, the friendly, old ruinous stairs rose before me, leading up to rest and shelter. Looking back over my right shoulder, I saw him, ten paces off. He must have entered the court with me.

      He was coming straight on, neither slowly, nor swiftly, but straight on to me. And now he was looking at me. For the first time since our eyes encountered across the church they met now again, and I knew that the time had come.

      Retreating backward, down the court, I faced him. I meant to escape by the entrance on the rue du Dragon. His eyes told me that I never should escape.

      It seemed ages while we were going, I retreating, he advancing, down the court in perfect silence; but at last I felt the shadow of the archway, and the next step brought me within it. I had meant to turn here and spring through into the street. But the shadow was not that of an archway; it was that of a vault. The great doors on the rue du Dragon were closed. I felt this by the blackness which surrounded me, and at the same instant I read it in his face. How his face gleamed in the darkness, drawing swiftly nearer! The deep vaults, the huge closed doors, their cold iron clamps were all on his side. The thing which he had threatened had arrived: it gathered and bore down on me from the fathomless shadows; the point from which it would strike was his infernal eyes. Hopeless, I set my back against the barred doors and defied him.

      There was a scraping of chairs on the stone floor, and a rustling as the congregation rose. I could hear the Suisse’s staff in the south aisle, preceding Monseigneur C— to the sacristy.

      The kneeling nuns, roused from their devout abstraction, made their reverence and went away. The fashionable lady, my neighbor, rose also, with graceful reserve. As she departed her glance just flitted over my face in disapproval.

      Half dead, or so it seemed to me, yet intensely alive to every trifle, I sat among the leisurely moving crowd, then rose too and went toward the door.

      I had slept through the sermon. Had I slept through the sermon? I looked up and saw him passing along the gallery to his place. Only his side I saw; the thin bent arm in its black covering looked like one of those devilish, nameless instruments which lie in the disused torture chambers of mediaeval castles.

      But I had escaped him, though his eyes had said I should not. Had I escaped? That which gave him the power over me came back out of oblivion, where I had hoped to keep it. For I knew him now. Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him – they had changed him for every other eye, but not for mine. I had recognized him almost from the first; I had never doubted what he was come to do; and now I knew that while my body sat safe in the cheerful little church, he had been hunting my soul in the Court of the Dragon.

      I crept to the door; the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens; and the wet winds from the Lake of Hali chilled my face.

      And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon.

      Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!’

       THE MAKER OF MOONS

      ‘I have heard what the Talkers were talking – the talk

      Of the beginning and the end;

      But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.’

      I

      Concerning Yue-Laou and the Xin I know nothing more than you shall know. I am miserably anxious to clear the matter up. Perhaps what I write may save the United States Government money and lives, perhaps it may arouse the scientific world to action; at any rate it will put an end to the terrible suspense of two people. Certainty is better than suspense.

      If the Government dares to disregard this warning and refuses to send a thoroughly equipped expedition at once, the people of the State may take swift vengeance on the whole region and leave a blackened devastated waste where today forest and flowering meadowland border the lake in the Cardinal Woods.

      You already know part of the story; the New York papers have been full of alleged details. This much is true: Barris caught the ‘Shiner’ red-handed, or rather yellow-handed, for his pockets and boots and dirty fists were stuffed with lumps of gold. I say gold, advisedly. You may call it what you please. You also know how Barris was – but unless I begin at the beginning of my own experiences you will be none the wiser after all.

      On the third of August of this present year I was standing in Tiffany’s, chatting with George Godfrey of the designing department. On the glass counter between us lay a coiled serpent, an exquisite specimen of chiseled gold.

      ‘No,’ replied Godfrey to my question, ‘it isn’t my work; I wish it was. Why, man, it’s a masterpiece!’

      ‘Whose?’ I asked.

      ‘Now I should be very glad to know also,’ said Godfrey. ‘We bought it from an old jay who says he lives in the country somewhere about the Cardinal Woods. That’s near Starlit Lake, I believe—’

      ‘Lake of the Stars?’ I suggested.

      ‘Some call it Starlit Lake – it’s all the same. Well, my rustic Reuben says that he represents the sculptor of this snake for all practical and business purposes. He got his price too. We hope he’ll bring us something more. We have sold this already to the Metropolitan Museum.’

      I was leaning idly on the glass case, watching the keen eyes of the artist in precious metals as he stooped over the gold serpent.

      ‘A masterpiece!’ he muttered to himself, fondling the glittering coil, ‘look at the texture! whew!’ But I was not looking at the serpent. Something was moving – crawling out of Godfrey’s coat pocket – the pocket nearest me – something soft and yellow with crablike legs all covered with coarse yellow hair.

      ‘What