Part 6

For a moment Lamontaine made no answer. Then he nodded solemnly.

"True," he answered finally. "And the thing that's agitating my mind, my friend, is the reason for all this? Why should Kronk wreak such diabolical vengeance upon this little village?"

Le Front helped himself to the rum. Then, as the fiery liquor raced through his veins, he grew more loquacious.

"I theenk I know," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

He leaned forward and poured forth his story to Doctor Lamontaine. The big man listened quietly; then, when Le Front had finished, he burst forth.

"May a just God burn his damned soul in hell!" he snarled. "God! Le Front! Can a man be so cold-blooded for the sake of gold?"

"Zat ees my opinion," the constable said earnestly. "I haff reason' eet out een my head."

Lamontaine wagged his long red beard solemnly. That for which he had been groping for so long was gradually filtering through his brain. He was beginning to see a bright and shining light.

"In the morning I will go to N'Orleans and look into that," he promised.

The little constable nodded and, helping himself to the rum again, left to take up his lonely vigil in the bachelor quarters of the schoolmaster.

Neither of them noticed the sinister figure that had been standing in the darkness close beside the open window listening to their conversation. Now, as the constable left, he darted to the shadow of a near-by bush, his sunken eyes gleaming malevolently at the big man who sat just inside the window, his long beard resting on his breast, his head bowed in thought.

It was Aaron Kronk.

* * * * *

Lamontaine was weary--horribly so. All of the night before he had sat by the bedside of one of the dying villagers. The day had been spent in study and in making his rounds. Now, sitting with his feet upon the desk again, his chair tilted backward, he tried to concentrate--to reason out the horrible events of the past few days. What Le Front told him had placed things in a new light. If it proved correct, he might be able to win yet over the monster from beyond the pale.

Then outraged nature finally gave way, and he slept.

Someone was looking at him. He knew it--felt it. He was aware, too, of a feeling of bodily discomfort--a peculiar sensation that, beginning in his brain, crept down through his nerves and muscles, leaving him cramped and paralyzed. His subconscious physician's mind automatically analyzed it as a sort of rigor. It constricted his throat, twisting itself around his huge limbs like hoops of steel, crushing him like an incubus. He fought with himself in an effort to open his eyes. A voice was commanding him to sleep. He mastered the desire and raised his eye-lids. A mocking face was glaring into his own. It was that of Aaron Kronk.

Hugo Lamontaine had yet to know the meaning of fear. He had faced death laughingly in a thousand ways on modern battlefields. Yet, gazing into the malevolent eyes of Aaron Kronk, bound hand and foot by invisible bands, he realized now what it meant. The thin man was gazing at him with malignant ferocity. His eyes, bearing a message of hatred, seemed to tear the physician's brain from its very roots. He tried to struggle against them, but in vain. They dissolved themselves into a single, glittering orb--an eye that whirled and grew closer and closer like the headlight of an oncoming locomotive.

A voice commanded him to sleep ... sleep ... sleep....

Then consciousness left him.

In spite of the command that had chiseled itself into his brain, he was subconsciously fighting against it. He floated back from his hebetude ... wondered if he was dreaming. At first he believed that he was--that he would soon wake up and find that he suffered from a nightmare. Then, by slow gradations, realization crept over him....

He was surrounded by something. It enveloped him like a thin cloud, pressing him down like a weight, inhibiting his breathing. He tried to struggle against it--to open his eyes. But that commanding voice continued to order him to sleep ... sleep....

His throat and chest seemed to constrict. He attempted to summon his laggard will-power--in vain. The slow, relentless pressure continued. The breath was being slowly pumped from his body, from his lungs, his heart....

He knew that he was on the verge of asphyxiation--that his huge frame was being slowly deflated--robbed of its vitality as surely and inexorably as it had been stolen from the emaciated body of old Jacques d'Arcy. He tried to open his eyes. They were held down by invisible fingers.

He did not realize that he had succeeded. Yet he suddenly found himself looking into two gleaming orbs--red, blood-shot, filled with hatred and demoniac fury. Upon his breast rested a thing--a horrible, nauseous, formless monstrosity, shapeless, faceless, headless. Yet it had a face and head, for its eyes were the eyes that were glaring into his own. And, too, it had a mouth--a red gash framed by leathery lips. It was pressed against his own in a clammy, vacuum-like kiss. It was lapping his breath, sucking the vitality from his great body, deflating it until it was rapidly growing as flat as a bursted tire. Its long, sinuous arms were fastened about him, its legs wrapped, leech-like, about his own.

And, knowing these things, Lamontaine brought to his aid all of the tremendous will-power that was his heritage. He tried to push the incubus from him, but he could not lift his arms. But as he struggled, he felt the mental influence that was oppressing him gradually lessen.

A sort of inertia swept over him and he ceased his struggles for an instant. The incubus, which had been driven back a pace, sprang forward again, once more pressing him to his chair.

Somewhere in the distance a dog howled dolefully. It awakened him from his lethargy. Subconsciously he knew that it foretold the death of someone. Was he to be the victim? Like a man in a dream, he threw his arms about. His twitching fingers came in contact with something cold and hard. A thrill went through his benumbed body. It was his gun snugly tucked away in the open drawer of his desk.

His fingers clutched the weapon spasmodically. He felt the thing that was smothering him shrink away. With a tremendous effort of will, he drew the weapon from the drawer, pressed it protectingly to his breast. Again the loathsome spirit form shrank back.