The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard by Robert E. Howard Page A

again.
    “I was wondering how m’sieu could bring himself to sleep in the room with a stranger! Ha! Ha! All right, m’sieu Englishman, let us go forth and take a bar from one of the other rooms.”
    Taking the candle with them, they went into the corridor. Utter silence reigned and the small candle twinkled redly and evilly in the thick darkness.
    “Mine host hath neither guests nor servants,” muttered Solomon Kane. “A strange tavern! What is the name, now? These German words come not easily to me–the Cleft Skull? A bloody name, i’faith.”
    They tried the rooms next to theirs, but no bar rewarded their search. At last they came to the last room at the end of the corridor. They entered. It was furnished like the rest, except that the door was provided with a small barred opening, and fastened from the outside with a heavy bolt, which was secured at one end to the door-jamb. They raised the bolt and looked in.
    “There should be an outer window, but there is not,” muttered Kane. “Look!”
    The floor was stained darkly. The walls and the one bunk were hacked in places, great splinters having been torn away.
    “Men have died in here,” said Kane, somberly. “Is yonder not a bar fixed in the wall?”
    “Aye, but ’tis made fast,” said the Frenchman, tugging at it. “The–”
    A section of the wall swung back and Gaston gave a quick exclamation. A small, secret room was revealed, and the two men bent over the grisly thing that lay upon its floor.
    “The skeleton of a man!” said Gaston. “And behold, how his bony leg is shackled to the floor! He was imprisoned here and died.”
    “Nay,” said Kane, “the skull is cleft–methinks mine host had a grim reason for the name of his hellish tavern. This man, like us, was no doubt a wanderer who fell into the fiend’s hands.”
    “Likely,” said Gaston without interest; he was engaged in idly working the great iron ring from the skeleton’s leg bones. Failing in this, he drew his sword and with an exhibition of remarkable strength cut the chain which joined the ring on the leg to a ring set deep in the log floor.
    “Why should he shackle a skeleton to the floor?” mused the Frenchman. “Monbleu! ’Tis a waste of good chain. Now, m’sieu,” he ironically addressed the white heap of bones, “I have freed you and you may go where you like!”
    “Have done!” Kane’s voice was deep. “No good will come of mocking the dead.”
    “The dead should defend themselves,” laughed l’Armon. “Somehow, I will slay the man who kills me, though my corpse climb up forty fathoms of ocean to do it.”
    Kane turned toward the outer door, closing the door of the secret room behind him. He liked not this talk which smacked of demonry and witchcraft; and he was in haste to face the host with the charge of his guilt.
    As he turned, with his back to the Frenchman, he felt the touch of cold steel against his neck and knew that a pistol muzzle was pressed close beneath the base of his brain.
    “Move not, m’sieu!” The voice was low and silky. “Move not, or I will scatter your few brains over the room.”
    The Puritan, raging inwardly, stood with his hands in the air while l’Armon slipped his pistols and sword from their sheaths.
    “Now you can turn,” said Gaston, stepping back.
    Kane bent a grim eye on the dapper fellow, who stood bareheaded now, hat in one hand, the other hand leveling his long pistol.
    “Gaston the Butcher!” said the Englishman somberly. “Fool that I was to trust a Frenchman! You range far, murderer! I remember you now, with that cursed great hat off–I saw you in Calais some years agone.”
    “Aye–and now you will see me never again. What was that?”
    “Rats exploring yon skeleton,” said Kane, watching the bandit like a hawk, waiting for a single slight wavering of that black gun muzzle. “The sound was of the rattle of bones.”
    “Like enough,” returned the other. “Now, M’sieu Kane, I know you carry