Moon of Skulls by Robert E. Howard Page B

is this house of the Master’s?”
    “Soho, 48. You must summon the police and send many men to surround it, but you must not go yourself —”
    Hansen sprang up quivering for action, but I turned to him. My brain was clear now, or seemed to be, and racing unnaturally.
    “Wait!” I turned back to Zuleika. “When is this sacrifice to take place?”
    “At the rising of the moon.”
    “That is only a few hours before dawn. Time to save him, but if we raid the house they’ll kill him before we can reach them. And God only knows how many diabolical things guard all approaches.”
    “I do not know,” Zuleika whimpered. “I must go now, or the Master will kill me.”
    Something gave way in my brain at that; something like a flood of wild and terrible exultation swept over me.
    “The Master will kill no one!” I shouted, flinging my arms on high. “Before ever the east turns red for dawn, the Master dies! By all things holy and unholy I swear it!”
    Hansen stared wildly at me and Zuleika shrank back as I turned on her. To my dope-inspired brain had come a sudden burst of light, true and unerring. I knew Kathulos was a mesmerist — that he understood fully the secret of dominating another’s mind and soul. And I knew that at last I had hit upon the reason of his power over the girl. Mesmerism! As a snake fascinates and draws to him a bird, so the Master held Zuleika to him with unseen shackles. So absolute was his rule over her that it held even when she was out of his sight, working over great distances.
    There was but one thing which would break that hold: the magnetic power of some other person whose control was stronger with her than Kathulos’. I laid my hands on her slim little shoulders and made her face me.
    “Zuleika,” I said commandingly, “here you are safe; you shall not return to Kathulos. There is no need of it. Now you are free.”
    But I knew I had failed before I ever started. Her eyes held a look of amazed, unreasoning fear and she twisted timidly in my grasp.
    “Steephen, please let me go!” she begged. “I must — I must!”
    I drew her over to the bed and asked Hansen for his handcuffs. He handed them to me, wonderingly, and I fastened one cuff to the bedpost and the other to her slim wrist. The girl whimpered but made no resistance, her limpid eyes seeking mine in mute appeal.
    It cut me to the quick to enforce my will upon her in this apparently brutal manner but I steeled myself.
    “Zuleika,” I said tenderly, “you are now my prisoner. The Scorpion cannot blame you for not returning to him when you are unable to do so — and before dawn you shall be free of his rule entirely.”
    I turned to Hansen and spoke in a tone which admitted of no argument.
    “Remain here, just without the door, until I return. On no account allow any strangers to enter — that is, anyone whom you do not personally know. And I charge you, on your honor as a man, do not release this girl, no matter what she may say. If neither I nor Gordon have returned by ten o’clock tomorrow, take her to this address — that family once was friends of mine and will take care of a homeless girl. I am going to Scotland Yard.”
    “Steephen,” Zuleika wailed, “you are going to the Master’s lair! You will be killed. Send the police, do not go!”
    I bent, drew her into my arms, felt her lips against mine, then tore myself away.
    The fog plucked at me with ghostly fingers, cold as the hands of dead men, as I raced down the street. I had no plan, but one was forming in my mind, beginning to seethe in the stimulated cauldron that was my brain. I halted at the sight of a policeman pacing his beat, and beckoning him to me, scribbled a terse note on a piece of paper torn from a notebook and handed it to him.
    “Get this to Scotland Yard; it’s a matter of life and death and it has to do with the business of John Gordon.”
    At that name, a gloved hand came up in swift assent, but his assurance of haste died out behind