Page:Weird Tales Volume 36 Number 06 (1942-07).djvu/15

membership as a very humble figure in a coven.”

I shook my head, to show that I did not know what a coven was.

“It’s an old-country word. Scotch, maybe. It means a gathering of thirteen witches or wizards or devil-worshippers, twelve rank-and-file, and a chief devil. Maybe that’s where we got the unluckiness of the number thirteen. Peter was of the twelve rank-and-file, and he pleaded for mercy. I referred him to the Lord, and asked who were his mates. He said he’d pray courage into himself to tell me. Tonight he must have been coming to see me. And his comrades beat him to death.”

“One of his comrades has wings, then,” I said.

JAEGER tugged his beard thoughtfully. “I have seen that shape against the full moon before this. Full moon-time is their meeting time, as with the underground cults of old Greece and Rome. The full moon makes wolves howl, and turns weak minds mad. I don’t like the full moon. Anyway, that creature is the chief devil of which I spoke.”

“Chief devil?” I repeated. “I thought that probably—”

“That probably some human leader dressed up for the part?” he finished for me. “Not here, at least. Hark!”

I, too, heard what his ear had caught—the flip-flop of great membranes, and the faraway chatter of strange inhuman jaws.

Then a knock at the door, sharp and furtive.

With shame I remember how I flinched and looked for a way out. Jaeger rose, flipped open a drawer in his work-table, and took out a big cap-and-ball revolver. He walked heavily toward the door.

Pausing with his hand on the knob, he spoke clearly:

“If you seek trouble, your search ends here. Too long have I borne with the ungodly,

meekly turning my other cheek. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, I will repay.”

He opened the door, took one look, and lowered his weapon. A girl came stumbling in.

She wore a dark dress of coarse wool,