Page:Weird Tales Volume 14 Issue 3 (1929-09).djvu/80
had participated in that campaign; in fact he was for a period in control of operations over a considerable area. Possibly he may have been the immediate instrument of their punishment, or in some way been prominently identified with it. That such punishment was well merited would be to the sufferers a mere insignificant detail.
The two facts are suggestive; there lies indeed a vast gap between, which likely may never be bridged, but the correlation is at present the only solution to what otherwise is inexplicable.
As for the unique agents, those devilish little specks of winged death, no more was ever seen or heard of them. Either we accounted for them all—Alice had killed the last of the three that had so nearly got me—or they had perished in the chill nights that immediately succeeded their advent. Whether their virulence, left to run its course, would have effected a fatal termination is of course entirely a matter of conjecture. An examination of the blood of the sufferers has indeed been made by experts, but beyond the fact that the corpuscles exhibited slight structural changes in isolated groups and unusual cohesive tendencies for a few days after the attack, there were no data obtained of any recognizable compound that would account for the terrible effects resulting.
Trent and I still frequently visit the Norrises, and yet another is always of our little party; and if I was of a jealous disposition I might be excused, for they all make such a fuss over my wife Alice.
Lilith in the Red Land
By Harvey W. Flink
Great Ashatar is silent as the stars:
The dragon and the cormorant possess
The streets that end in desert emptiness;
And all its men have perished in glad wars.
In silver clouds vast herds of unicorns
Descend upon the city in the night;
They battle with the savage bulls, and fight
Until the blood drips from their pointed horns.
A serpent, writhing in the sickly light,
Uncoils its length above the scarlet flood;
And staring at the wounded bulls in flight
It laps with avid lips their ravished blood;
A mottled serpent with a woman’s face,
The first and last of all its loathly race.