The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

Or had the two spectral assailants already arranged to frame him?
Half way to the sombre Lachepaillet Gate he noted the spot where her bare feet
first marked the moat-bottom sand. He entered the walled city and hastened to
his room at the Panier-Fleuri. The concièrge regarded him with bleary eyes that
suddenly sharpened. But she said nothing.
Once in his room, he cleaned up, then stretched long legs toward rue
Lachepaillet. He should report to the police; but who would believe such a story,
told by an insane American, trying to implicate one who wore that coveted
purple decoration the size of an A.E.F. campaign badge?
Crane jabbed a pushbutton. A trim, sharp-eyed girl in black admitted him and
led the way to a spacious hall whose walls and ceiling were a solid expanse of
mirror.
A bell tinkled, and a half a dozen girls lounging on upholstered benches lined
up on parade as several others emerged from a rear apartment to join them.
They wore satin slippers and knee length silk hosiery. Their professional
smiles, and the flimsy chiffon shawls draped from right breast to left hip
completed their costume. Not a bad array; though some had over-plump legs,
and breasts that would have been the better for a brassiere. A few were lovely in
face and body, but there was something infinitely repulsive about that grotesque
multiplication of bare flesh in those mirrored panels whose angles probed the
concealment of chiffon shawls and made the glaring room a patchwork of
feminine curves.
Crane caught a freshly mirrored whiteness and turned toward the door. The
shock for an instant numbed him. A full moment elapsed before he realized that
he was not looking at the girl who had vanished from the moat.
She had the same gracious inward dip at the waist, the same heart-warming
flare of the hips, and one lovely breast peeped alluringly through the heavy
strands of hair that trailed down over her left shoulder. Her blue eyes were
almost black. Their troubled darkness matched the sombre droop of her lips.
Tears had smudged the mascara of her lashes and a trace of redness lingered.
Crane perceived the tensity of her body and saw her fingers twisting the trailing
fringe of her shawl.
Why had she been reserved from the lineup? Why that startling resemblance to
that savagely mutilated girl in the moat? Why that black fear in her eyes?
The girl’s fingers sank insistently into his wrist, and he felt the firm pressure of
her hip and shoulder against him as she paused in the doorway.
More than her resemblance to the girl in the moat told Crane that this was the