“Huh!” growled the Doctor triumphantly. “Do you think I come trailing a maniac without some protection? Especially a vicious one like you?”
Nicholas Devine turned his eyes on his opponent. He stared long and intently.
“Drop it!” he commanded at length. Pat felt a surge of chaotic terror as the weapon clattered to the floor. She turned a frightened glance on Horker’s face, and her fright redoubled at the sight of his straining jaw, the perspiration-beaded forehead, and his bewildered eyes. The demon kicked the gun carelessly aside.
“Puerile!” he said contemptuously. He backed away from them, reseating himself on the couch whence he had risen. He surveyed the pair in sardonic mirth.
“Pat!” muttered the Doctor huskily. “Get out of here, Honey! He’s got some hellish trick of fascination that’s paralyzed me. Get out and get help!”
The girl moved as if to rise. Nicholas Devine shifted his eyes for the barest instant to her face; she felt the strength drain out of her body, and she sank weakly to her chair.
“It’s useless,” she murmured hopelessly to the Doctor. “He’s—he’s just what I told you—a devil!”
“I guess you were right,” mumbled Horker dazedly.
There was a burst of demonic mirth from the being on the couch. “Merely a matter of synapses,” he rasped, chuckling. His face changed, took on the familiar coldness, the stony expression Pat had observed there before. “This palls!” he snapped. “I’ve better amusement—after we’ve rendered your friend merely an interested onlooker.” He narrowed his red eyes as if in thought. “Take off a stocking,” he ordered. “Tie his hands to the back of the chair.”
“I won’t!” said the girl. The eyes shifted to her face. “I won’t!” she repeated tremulously as she kicked off a diminutive pump. She shuddered at the gleam in the evil eyes as she stripped the long silken sheath from a white, rounded limb. She slipped a bare foot into the pump and moved reluctantly behind the chair that held the groaning Horker. She took one of the clenched, straining hands, and drew it back, fumbling with shaking fingers as she twisted the strip of thin chiffon. The demon moved closer, standing over her.
“Loose knots!” he snarled abruptly. He knocked her violently away with a stinging slap across her cheek, and seized the strip in his own hands. He drew the binding tight, twisting it about the lowest rung of the chair’s ladder back. Horker was forced to lean awkwardly to the rear; in this unbalanced position it was quite impossible to rise.
Nicholas Devine turned away from the straining, perspiring Doctor, and advanced toward Pat, who cowered against the shattered cabinet.
“Now!” he muttered. “The experiment!” He chuckled raspingly. “What delicacy of degradation! Your lover and your guardian angel—both helpless watchers! Excellent! Oh, very excellent!”
He grasped her wrist, drawing her after him to the center of the room, into the full view of the horrified, staring eyes of Horker.
“Always before,” continued her tormentor, “these hands have prepared you for the rites—the ceremony that failed on two other occasions to transpire. Would it add a poignancy to the torture if I made you strip this body of yours with your own hands? Or will they suffer more watching me? Which do you think?”
Pat closed her eyes in helpless resignation to her fate. “Nick!” she moaned. “Oh, Nick dearest!”
“Not this time!” sneered the other. “Your friend and protector, the Doctor, has thoughtfully eliminated your sweetheart as a factor. He struggles too feebly for me to feel.”
“Nick!” she murmured again. “Dr. Carl!”
But the Doctor, now pulling painfully at his bonds, could only groan in distraction, and curse the unsuspected strength of sheer chiffon. He writhed miserably at the chafing of his wrists; his strange paralysis had departed, but he was quite helpless to assist Pat.
“I think,” said the cold tones of Nicholas Devine, “that the more delicate torture lies in your willingness. Let us see.”
He drew her into his arms. He twisted a hand in her hair, jerked her head violently backward, and pressed avid lips to hers. She struggled a little, but hopelessly, automatically. At last she lay quite passive, quite motionless, supported by his arms, and making not the slightest response to his kiss.
“Are you mine?” he queried fiercely, releasing her lips. “Are you mine now?”
She shook her head without opening her eyes. “No,” she said dully. “Not now, or ever.”
Again he crushed her, while the Doctor looked on in helpless, bewildered, voiceless anger. This time his kiss was painful, burning, searing. Again that unholy fascination and unnatural delight in her own pain stirred her, and it took what little effort she was able to make to keep from responding. After a long interval, his lips again withdrew.
“Are you mine?” he repeated. She made no answer; she was gasping, and tears glistened under her closed eyelids, from the pain of her crushed lips. Again he kissed her, and again the wild abandonment to evil suffused her. She was suddenly responding to his agonizing caress; she was clinging fiercely to his torturing lips, feeling an unholy exaltation in the pain of his tearing fingers in the flesh of her back.
“Yours!” she murmured in response to his query. She heard her voice repeat madly, “Yours! Yours! Yours!”
“Do you yield willingly?” came the icy tones of the demon.
“Yes—yes—yes! Willingly!”
“Take off your clothes!” sounded the terrible, overpowering voice. He thrust her from him, so that she staggered dizzily backward. She stood swaying; the voice repeated its command.
The girl’s eyes widened wildly; she had the appearance of one in an ecstasy, a religious fervor. She raised her hand with a jerky impulsive gesture to the neck of her frock, still pinned together in the makeshift repairs of the evening.
There came a strange interruption. The Doctor, helpless onlooker, had at length evolved an idea out of the bewilderment in his mind. He opened his mouth and emitted a tremendous, deep, ear-shattering bellow!
Nicholas Devine sent the girl spinning to the
