Page:Weird Tales Volume 25 Number 05 (1935-05).djvu/5
or laughter, no animation or gayety such as in years past in summer seasons. The low structure with its several wings stood silent and grim in the night. Lights shone from a few of its windows, but the lights seemed lifeless; and over the great white rambling building a shroud of impenetrable silence seemed to hang. Encompassing this shroud of silence was the sense of some indefinable dread, stark and ominous and eery.
Craig Kennedy brought his roadster to an abrupt stop in front of the hotel.
The big wide veranda was lighted, but no one sat in any of the numerous chairs scattered over it. Lights came from the first-floor windows. On the second floor a window here and there was lighted, but most of them were dark.
Kennedy stepped out of his roadster and stood in the shadows of the trees along the road. For some time he remained immovable, his body tense and his eyes on the second-floor windows.
Suddenly he caught his breath. A window in the upper part of the building opened. It was the window of an unlighted room. The dull scraping of the frame going up broke the stillness of the night. In the moonlight Kennedy could see the white outline of the window as it went up slowly.
The long, dark form of a man—or was it a woman?—protruded far out the window. The hands went down to the ledge that ran along the front of the hotel beneath the second-floor windows. Someone walked out on the porch. The dark form darted back into the darkened room. The window thudded down.
Kennedy shrugged and walked across the road and up on the porch. The person who had come out on the porch was gone. Kennedy went directly into the lobby and up to the desk.
● The name of Craig Kennedy is as well known to readers of detective fiction as is Sherlock Holmes. But never before have Kennedy's great deductive powers been employed in a murder mystery so weird and creepy as this unusual novelette. One after another, guests at the Three Pines Hotel are mysteriously murdered under circumstances suggesting vampirism: but the murders have a perfectly natural explanation. We challenge you to guess the solution of this baffling mystery before the author reveals it to you.
A tall, pale-faced man with the air and the voice and the clothes of a successful hotel clerk stood behind the desk.
"The manager of the hotel, Mr. Condon," said Kennedy. "I have an appointment with him."
The eyes of the clerk appraised Kennedy coldly. "You—you are Mr. Kennedy?"
Kennedy nodded.
"Ah—then, Mr. Kennedy, you may go right up into Mr. Condon's private office. He is waiting for you. First door, right."
Kennedy turned and started for the door to the right. He looked around the lobby. Everything about it bespoke luxury and comfort. A few people were sitting in chairs, staring silently at him. Their faces were set and drawn; they had little of the demeanor or ease of guests of an exclusive summer hotel.
Kennedy opened the door to the manager's office. A young man, not far past thirty, sat behind a desk. His face was frank and pleasant-looking, though there were lines on it from worry and lack of sleep.
"Kennedy!" he exclaimed as he got up