find anything, she could hide and witness the coming meeting. With that plan in mind, the girl crept up the slope.
Lois hadn't bargained with her own imagination. At the shore, the purr of motors, the lap of the lake ripples, had been contact with life. All that was gone. Wooded silence was deadly. She felt dwarfed by the giant California pines towering above her.
The Castle reared up like an awaiting monster. Its stony hulk resembled a crouching sphinx come suddenly to life, ready to devour her. Shuddering, Lois took a while to regain her nerve; then she advanced, careful not to use her flashlight.
She found the front door too formidable. Skirting the Castle, she was nearing a rear door, feeling along the stone walls, which had a clammy touch. Her head brushed a strip of wood. Lifting her hand, she found the strip to be the ledge of a small window. Probing, it swung inward and upward; even better, it was loose!
Lois paused long enough to reassure herself that no one could see her enter. She was wearing a dark-blue dress; her rubber-soled camp shoes were dark too, like her stockings. Her black hair helped; no one could see her face if she turned toward the window.
Drawing herself up to the high ledge, the girl pushed her hands through and swung the sash inward. Its hinges creaked; then Lois was gripping the sill within. She was halfway through the window, when a horror froze her.
In the thick gloom of that room, Lois was staring into a face that looked back with a gaze as petrified as her own!
The face was chalkish, but it couldn't have been whiter than the girl's. Teetered on the window ledge, Lois felt balanced between life and death. With a valiant shove of her numbed fingers, she gave herself an outward thrust, landing on the turf beneath the window.
She had a fleeting glimpse, as she went, of the other face, recoiling deeper into the room. That recollection saved her nerve. The horror, whatever it was, had been afraid of her; therefore, it couldn't have been as terrible as it looked.
Was it an artificial spook, placed there by Scorpio to scare off prowlers? A thing actuated by the lift and fall of the sash, so that it came forward and then returned?
Perhaps it was simpler than that. It could have been her own reflection, from a mirror that Scorpio had set inside the window. Yet Lois could hardly believe that her imagination had rendered her own face as hideous as the visage she had seen.
Satisfied, however, that trickery was the answer, she resolved to try another entry, this time using the flashlight. Pushing her hand through the window, she pressed the switch. The light showed a small, square room, empty except for a cot in the corner.
No mechanical ghost; no mirror. But Lois dropped outside again. There had been something in that room; something that lived. Perhaps the human horror was more afraid than she was.
Lois listened. She heard it creep inside the house, along a passage. It was moving toward the rear door, past a corner of the irregularly shaped Castle. Lois could hear the grating noise of a bolt being drawn; the click of a big doorknob. A wave of triumph seized the girl.
The horror was trying to escape her!
Quickly, Lois rounded the corner, just as the door creaked open. She saw an upright oblong of blackness, then a white face that shifted outward. The door was creaking shut when Lois pressed her flashlight switch again. The beam spread squarely on the closing door.
Against the shutting barrier. Lois saw the pasty, haggard face of Edward Barcla!
THE man gave a snarl that carried fear with its challenge. Wildly, he hurled a missile toward Lois. The thing was a big ball, black and twirling, that some people would have mistaken for a bomb; but Lois had seen a similar thing at one of Scorpio's lectures.
The sphere was a star globe, showing the constellations, like a map of the world. Barcla had evidently grabbed it as an improvised weapon.
Glancing from the wall, well wide of Lois' head, the globe bounded with a tinny plunk and struck the ground. By then, Barcla was in full flight, tearing through the underbrush like a maddened deer.
Lois hadn't a chance to follow him. She extinguished the flashlight and listened to his dwindling crashes.
He was keeping to the back woods, traveling as if he expected a horde of demons on his trail.
It wasn't all cowardice on Barcla's part, though Lois did not realize it. Barcla simply thought that he had met the living ghost of the night before; otherwise, The Shadow.
As for Lois, she was considerably scared herself. She started to run, but she did not follow Barcla. Her feet simply took control and chose the easiest path-past the Castle and down the slope. Next, Lois was stumbling, rolling, fortunately escaping the trees. She wound up, laughing half-hysterically, near the water's edge.
Sounds from the lake sobered her. Feeling safe, she considered what she had learned. This much was certain: Professor Scorpio had been harboring Edward Barcla, a fugitive from justice. Barcla was one of Scorpio's tools; probably the most important one.
It wouldn't do to stay here for the meeting. Lois needed help; the one person she thought of was Niles Rundon. He was across the lake, at his cabin, expecting friends for a poker game. They always came on nights when Scorpio gave lectures, after leaving their wives at the community house.
There was a way to get to Rundon's in Scorpio's speedboat. Lois knew the craft well; she had driven it when it belonged to Paula. It had no ignition lock, merely a switch that anyone could press.
There it lay waiting some twenty yards from shore, a canvas already removed from the cockpit and lying over the stern. Probably Scorpio had intended to use it this evening, before the cabin cruiser came for him.
Reaching the dock, Lois looked for a rowboat and found one, but it was chained and locked. There was a quicker and quieter way to reach the speedster: by swimming to it. Once in the motorboat, Lois could come back and scoop her clothes from the end of the dock.
Lack of the dark dress wouldn't matter, for the lake, like the dock, was almost black and Lois expected no lights to come her way. She felt quite secure while preparing for her swim, for it was easy to watch the lake and make sure that no one approached. The speedboat was only twenty yards away; Lois could reach it easily.
Lights of moving boats all were distant; in fact, the nearest of such craft was loitering at Paula Lodi's dock, almost a mile away. Lois heard its idling motor throb louder just as she was diving into the water.
With the splash, there were sudden shouts from the shore, close by. Coming to the surface, Lois saw a flashlight lick from the direction of Scorpio's Castle toward the dock that she had just left. Some of the crooks had arrived for the meeting!
They were rushing out along the dock while Lois made quick strokes to the speedboat. Nearing the boat, the girl took an underwater dip, came up beneath and gripped the boat's far side. The mooring rope was handy; Lois worked at it.
She knew that the men with the flashlights had spotted the garments that she had left on the dock; but she had dived from the end and was sure that they would look in that direction first. They wouldn't know that she had veered to the left when she began her swim.
The boat that had been at Lodi's dock was throbbing this way, but it wasn't operating its searchlight. Lois still had the benefit of blackness all about her.
Two men were growling from the deck; Rufus and another. They had flashed their light straight out; deceived by the ripples, they thought that Lois had gone under the pier, as the nearest hiding place.
Their light did sweep the speedboat while the girl was undoing the mooring rope on the other side; it moved away again. They did not think that Lois could have reached the boat so quickly.
Then the rope was loose. Rolling over the low side, Lois drew back the sheltering canvas as she kicked the starter. The craft snapped into motion. There were snarls, as the light came its way. Over the stern, the men could see Lois' sleek back and shoulders as she crouched at the wheel. They yanked out revolvers and began to fire.
Bullets ricocheted from the water like skipping stones. Rufus and his crony were hoping to explain murder by claiming that they were preventing the theft of Scorpio's boat; but they didn't come anywhere near a hit. The speedster was a whisking thing, as it shot out into the lake under Lois skillful guidance.
The girl knew the boat. She veered it one direction, then the other. Even the flashlight lost its course temporarily. Then the foiled marksmen spotted it, whipping off to the straightaway, out of range. Over the stern, a girl's long, slender arm gave them a derisive wave.
