Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 03 (1935-09).djvu/5

weeping; but she made no explanation. By daylight, he was unable to observe that bluish radiance. But her face was pale and haggard. Steadily, month after month, Mona had been losing the freshness which, as an out-of-work chorus girl, she had possessed. Now her thinness was pronounced. His heart was pinched with pity as he left her at the breakfast table, staring at space with brooding eyes. All that day while he repaired antique furniture in his little shop below their living-quarters, Meusel thought of his young wife . . . and wondered.

Three months before, she had been working for the Kindall Watch Company. She had been brought home one day by a company doctor, and she was sobbing. Meusel was too dazed by his wife's strange behavior to comprehend much of what the doctor had told him about poisoning and "six months to live." Afterward, company officials had come with papers. They had explained, too, but Meusel had not understood very well. Mona had told him to sign a paper which she had referred to as a "release," and he had signed because he had trusted her knowledge of American ways. Then, to his amazement, they had given him a check for thirty thousand dollars. He had cashed it, but without a clear understanding of why it had been given to her. Something about illness; but he had not believed it serious.

He had built a little secret drawer behind the bureau, and put the money there. Mona had tried to talk to him about the thing later, making plans for her children; plans he was to carry out when she was gone. Meusel had told her to be still. It was not good, this talk of death! He put it down to some silly woman's notion. He would not permit her to discuss it. She was sick, perhaps, but she would be well again. He knew her better than any doctor.

Still, it came to Meusel as he went about his work that a change had come over Mona since that day the doctor had brought her home. She had brooded overmuch, and some mornings she had not gotten up. He had humored her, thinking she would get over her silly notion sooner or later. Now he wondered if she had tricked him about that thirty thousand dollars. Had she sold her soul for money? Why should a good woman be paid so much for an illness which did not impress him as being very genuine? Meusel was troubled.

That night the glowing electric blueness of her body was unmistakable. . . . So for three weeks the strain between them grew into a higher and higher barrier, and Meusel did not dare unburden himself.

Then one day when the visiting doctor had left, she looked more tired than usual. There was a grim quality about her mouth, a strange determination in her eyes.

Harassed by doubt and fear, he could not sleep that night. When she believed him asleep, however, she arose. Meusel watched through half-closed eyes—watched in an agony of indecision. He saw her slip across the room to the bureau and silently pull it away from the wall. She was taking money from its secret hiding-place—but still he did not dare say anything. She slipped it into her purse, wrote something on a piece of paper, and then dressed.

To Meusel, this was the last staggering proof of her guilt. A vampire or witch she must be! He wanted to leap from bed to accuse her, but a paralyzing fear restrained him. If she possessed some evil power of which he knew nothing, she would not hesitate to bring that infernal power to use against him.

Not until she had left silently, closing