Darker Than You Think (20 page)

But
Barbee shook himself, retreating apprehensively.

"I
don't feel good," he muttered uneasily. "I can't breathe.
That stink must be poisonous. Let's get back to the open."

"You're
no coward, Barbee." The bitch curled her lip, as if to stir him
with a hint of scorn. "The thing in that box must be deadlier
than dogs, or light, or even silver—our people could have dealt
with all of them. We must get rid of it—or else our kind must
die again."

Crouching,
white fur bristled, she moved toward the massive coffer. Unwillingly,
sick with that unknown fetor, Barbee followed her. That lethal reek
seared his nostrils. He swayed, shivering to an insidious chill.

"Padlocked!"
he gasped. "Sam must have expected—"

Then
he saw the narrowed eyes of the crouching bitch fixed upon the carved
side of the green-painted chest, and he remembered her control of
atomic probability. The wooden planks turned misty, revealing all the
iron screws that fastened them. The screws dissolved, and the wide
iron bands, and the heavy hasp. The white wolf growled, quivering to
a cold ferocity.

"Silver!"
she gasped, cowering back against him.

For
inside the vanished wood was a lining, of hammered white metal, which
refused to dissolve. The atoms of silver had no linkage with the web
of mind. The reeking contents of the chest were still concealed.

"Your
old friends are clever, Barbee!" White fangs flashed through the
she-wolf's snarl. "I knew the box was heavy, but I didn't guess
it had a silver lining. Now, I suppose, we must look for the keys and
try the padlock. If that fails, we must attempt to burn the house."

"No!"
Barbee shuddered. "Not while they're all asleep!"

"Your
poor Nora!" The white bitch mocked him. "Why did you let
Sam take her?" Her red grin turned grave. "But fire is the
last resort," she told him, "because the vibrations are so
deadly to us. First we must search for the keys."

They
were creeping back toward the door and the faint murmurings of sleep
from the bedroom beyond, when Barbee started to a sudden drumming
clamor. To his acute senses, it seemed as if the whole house
shuddered. Whimpering with shock, the white bitch sprang back from
him toward Sam Quain's cluttered desk. That preemptory clatter
paused, and he realized that it had been the telephone.

"What
fool is calling now?" the white bitch snarled, hoarse with
urgency and terror. Barbee heard the bed groan again and the
sleep-muffled sound of Sam Quain's voice. That silent room seemed
suddenly a closing trap, and he was frantic to escape. The next ring
of the phone, he knew, would finish waking Quain. He darted toward
the dark opening in the locked door, calling back to his companion:
"Let's get away—"

But
the snarling bitch was already crouching. One clean leap carried her
to the top of the desk. Silently, before the telephone could ring
again, she caught the receiver in her deft forepaws, and lifted it
carefully.

"Quiet!"
she commanded softly. "Listen!"

A
breathless hush filled the tiny house. A clock ticked on the desk,
oddly loud. Barbee heard Sam Quain's sleep-dulled voice again,
uncertainly interrogative, and then his even breathing. The
refrigerator motor in the kitchen stopped its muffled whirring. He
heard the thin voice in the receiver, calling frantically: "Sam?"
It was Rowena Mondrick. "Sam Quain— can you hear me?"

Barbee
heard an uneasy little groan from the bedroom, and then the heavy
breathing of Sam Quain's tired, uneasy sleep.

"Nora,
is it you?" Barbee heard that small voice from the receiver on
the desk, shrill with fright. "Where is Sam? Have him call me,
won't you, Nora? I've a warning for him—tell him it's about
Barbee."

The
white bitch crouched over the receiver, her long fangs bared as if to
slash the instrument. Her silken ears were pricked up delicately to
listen, and her slanted eyes were narrowed greenish slits of hate.

"Who—?"
Terror seemed to choke that tiny voice. "Sam?" it gasped
faintly. "Nora? Won't you— speak—"

A
thin little scream came out of the instrument, so penetrating Barbee
was afraid it would reach the bedroom. The receiver clicked as the
frightened woman at the other end hung up. Leaving the receiver down,
the white bitch sprang back to Barbee's side.

"That
wicked widow of old Mondrick's!" she gasped faintly. "The
woman knows too much about us—she saw too much, before she lost
her eyes. Her knowledge, I'm afraid, could make the thing in that
green box more deadly to us than it is already."

Her
long ears flattened, and she snarled again.

"There's
another job for us, Barbee," she said softly. "I think we
had better dispose of Rowena Mondrick, before she ever talks to Sam
Quain."

"We
couldn't hurt an old blind woman!" Barbee protested sharply.
"And Rowena is my friend."

"Your
friend?" the white bitch whispered scornfully. "You've a
lot to learn, Barbee." Something seemed to clot her whisper, to
turn it thick and slow. "When you're the very one she's trying
to betray—"

She
swayed and sank down on the worn carpet.

"April?"
Barbee touched her icy muzzle anxiously. "What's the trouble,
April?"

The
slender wolf shuddered where she lay.

"—trapped!"
Barbee had to crouch to hear her faint whisper. "Now I see why
your old friend Quain went on to bed and left the back door open so
invitingly. That green box is the bait—he must have known we
couldn't get in it. And that old, evil thing inside it is the
deadfall."

Barbee
had nearly forgotten that penetrating odor from the box, which at
first had seemed so noxious. He raised his muzzle heavily to sniff
for it again. It seemed fainter now, and it was almost pleasant.
Drowsily, he sniffed again.

"Don't
breathe it!" the she-wolf whispered frantically. "Poison.
Quain left it—to kill us." She shivered on the floor, and
he could scarcely hear her whisper. "We must leave the box—and
pay our visit to your dear friend Rowena. If we ever get out of
here—"

She
lay limp and still.

"April!"
yelped Barbee. "April!"

She
didn't move.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

The
Huntress in the Dark

Barbee
swayed beside the flaccid form of the slim she-wolf and awkwardly
spread his four legs to keep from falling. He sniffed the odor of the
thing in the wooden coffer. That was a secret thing, older than
remembered history, which had lain long-buried under the Ala-shan
with the bones of the race it had killed. It was going to kill him
too. Yet somehow the emanations of it were now fragrantly sweet;
drowsily, he wondered why it had ever seemed so foul. He inhaled
again.

He
was going to sleep beside the sleeping bitch. He felt very tired, and
that old, queer perfume seemed to ease away all his worry and strain
and aching weariness. He breathed it deep, and prepared to lie down.
But white wolf shivered on the floor, and he heard her tiny whisper:
"Leave me, Barbee! Get out—before you die!"

That
awoke a faint awareness of her peril. He liked that ancient, strange
perfume from the box behind them, but it was killing April Bell. He
must get her out, to the open air. Then he could come back, and
breathe it, and sleep. He caught the loose fur at the back of her
neck, and dragged her laboriously toward the opening she had made in
the locked door.

A
vague consternation took hold of him, and her limp body dropped from
his relaxing jaws. For the way was closing. The dark screws and the
metal of the lock appeared again, and then the ghostly outline of the
wooden panels turned suddenly real. This quiet study room indeed had
been a baited trap—his drowsy thoughts grasped that much. And
the trap was sprung.

Weakly,
he blundered against the door. It flung him back, solid as it seemed.
He tried to remember old Mondrick's lecture and that theory of
April's friend. All matter was mostly emptiness. Nothing was
absolute; only probabilities were real. His mind was an energy web,
and it could grasp the atoms and electrons of the door by the link of
probability. It could smooth the random vibrations which made the
door a barrier.

He
pondered that, laboriously—but the door was still a barrier.
The slender bitch lay still at his feet, and he braced himself to
keep from going down beside her. The old, sweet fragrance of that
thing in the box seemed to thicken in the air. He was breathing hard,
his tongue hanging. That old perfume would end all his trouble and
his pain—

Faintly,
the she-wolf whimpered at his feet: "Look at the door. Open the
wood—I'll try to help—"

Reeling,
he stared at the solid-seeming panels. Gropingly, he tried to
dissolve them again. Only probabilities were real, he remembered—but
those were merely words. The door remained solid. He felt a faint
quiver of effort in the she-wolf's body, and he tried to share her
action. Slowly, in a fumbling way, he got hold of a curious, novel
sense of extension and control.

A
misty spot came in the wood. Uncertainly, he widened it. The she-wolf
shuddered at his feet and seemed to stiffen—and still the
opening was too small. He tried again, swaying to the sweet caress of
that perfume. The space came wider. He caught her fur, stumbled at
the door, and sprawled through it with her.

The
effluvium of the box was left behind. For an instant Barbee wanted
desperately to go back to it, and then a sick revulsion seized him.
He lay on the floor in the narrow hallway, shaken with nausea.
Faintly, in the locked room behind him, he heard a telephone
operator's impatient tones in the dropped receiver on Sam Quain's
desk. Then Nora's voice sobbed suddenly through the house, muffled
with terror and sleep: "Sam—Sam!"

The
bed groaned as Sam Quain turned uneasily, but neither quite awoke.
Barbee staggered to his feet, panting gratefully for the clean air.
Muzzling the still white wolf, he caught that foul malodor seeping
under the door, and disgusted nausea staggered him once more.

He
lifted the she-wolf again and flung her limp body over his gaunt,
gray shoulders. Lurching and trembling under her slight burden, he
stumbled back through Nora's clean-smelling kitchen and pushed out
through the unlatched screen.

They
were safely out of Sam's queer trap, he thought, uneasily shaking out
his shaggy fur as he ran with the she-wolf on his back. He couldn't
quite outrun the sickening memory of that lethal effluvium, but the
clean chill of the night wind cleared it from his nostrils. His
strength came back.

He
carried the white bitch back down the street to the campus and laid
her on the white-frosted grass. The zodiacal light was already
lifting its warming pillar of pale silver in the east. On the farms
beyond the town he could hear roosters crowing. A dog was howling
somewhere. The peril of dawn was near—and he didn't know what
to do for April Bell.

Helplessly,
he started licking her white fur. Her slender body shivered, to his
immense relief, and began heaving as she breathed again. Weakly, she
swayed to her feet. She was panting, her red tongue drooping. Her
eyes were dark with terror.