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

wearing the Order of Saint Léon. But no matter—I’ve got a fresh hunch. Now
run along.”
They waited for the cessation of laughter and footsteps in the hall. A latch
click. Silence, except metallic voices from the reception room on the ground
floor.
Crane watched Madeline slip toward the further stairway. A moment later,
looking from the window that overlooked the narrow black alley that skirted the
rear of the house, he saw the white blur of her face, and caught the gesture of her
hand.
She was on her way. He slammed the door and strode down the main stairway.
He forced a laugh at the doorkeeper’s vulgar farewell; but as he crossed the
threshold, he began to see that his investigation, despite the delay, had gained
him an ally if the police should catch up with him.
But that silver peacock was an ominous hint. Devil worship…some damnable
Asiatic cult. He’d heard it existed in the mountains of Kurdistan.
Yet for all that thickening menace, the riddle in some respects was less baffling
in the light of reflection.
Diane had been headed off by the monsters that had swooped down on Crane
from the lip of the moat. They must have held to a straight line across the
parkway. That gave him a start toward tracing the point from which she had
made her futile break.
The mist was thinning, yet enough remained to envelop Crane in a spectral veil
that protected and at the same time hampered him. He was unarmed; but he
paused long enough to remove his socks, stuff one inside the other, and then slip
in a rock the size of his fist. Very pleasant, if he got the edge on the two who had
laid him out.
For half an hour he circled, trying to pick a course that the two monsters would
have used to head off the mangled fugitive.
“Her instinct would drive her to the closest route to safety,” he reasoned. “To
her sister. Then if the Gate of Spain was the closest, her direction must have
been more to my left. Otherwise she’d have gone through the Lachepaillet
Gate.”
Half an hour search vindicated the hunch. A shred of scarlet chiffon. A splash
of blood.
He looped left. He found footprints heading toward the Gate of Spain—her
pursuers, eager to cut off a flight that would betray their rendezvous.
Ahead of him a masonry lunette loomed low in the mist. One of the outer