Page:Weird Tales Volume 25 Number 05 (1935-05).djvu/6

quickly and rushed to meet him. "I'm glad you've come!"

Craig took his hand, smiled, then sat down on the desk.

"Yes, Condon, thanks! The head office of the hotel in the city asked me to get up here as quickly as I could. What's happened? Your place looks like a funeral parlor!"

"It will be a cemetery in another week if things don't change!" exclaimed Condon. "Did they tell you anything yet?"

"Only to get up here as quickly as I could and find out what was the trouble, cost what it might. No; they gave me no particular information. Said it would come better from you."

Condon sat down wearily.

"I guess maybe," he said, "it mightn't have got under my skin so much if it wasn't that this is my first year as manager. And it looks as if it will be my last."

"Oh, come now," broke in Kennedy. "There may be someone who wants this to be your last year."

Condon merely shook his head.

"I'll give you an idea of what has happened. The season opened with every prospect of a big summer. The hotel filled rapidly. Then on Thursday of the first week came the first intimation of what was to come. It was a trivial thing and I thought nothing of it at the time.

"Miss Worthington, an old maid, was awakened about three in the morning by the sound of someone in her room. Miss Worthington is very hysterical and she fan out in the hallway screaming, woke up all the other guests. We investigated but could find no evidence of anyone having been in her room. I put it down to a bad dream. But the following night George Branford, an old guest, complained that someone was in his room.

"Branford didn't make much of a scene, but he did tell the other people. Of course Miss Worthington talked about nothing but the man in her room. At first the guests took it as a joke. But when Branford told his story, people began to get puzzled. You know, Kennedy, how such things grow with the telling. In a few days Miss Worthington had been attacked—and Branford's life had been threatened, so it seemed.

"Well, five days passed and nothing happened. Then came that ungodly scream. I heard it. Everyone in the hotel heard it. I can't describe it. It was inhuman, terrifying. It lasted for a full minute. Coming as it did in the dead of night and waking everybody from sleep, it was nerve-racking in view of the nervous state of the guests already.

"This week, Kennedy, it came again! Philip Coulter, an old guest of the hotel, was awakened by someone moving in the dark. But when he turned on the lights he was the only person in the room. Yet on the bed-clothes there was blood! He felt his neck. There was blood there!

"Now, the strange part of all this. Coulter's door was locked and bolted from the inside. No key could have moved that night bolt. His window was up only a few inches. There is a ledge along the front of the building. But this ledge is only a few inches wide, and round on the top. Only a bird could have walked this ledge. How that person entered Coulter's room is the greatest mystery of the whole thing."

Kennedy merely shrugged. It was obvious why they had said nothing at the city office. "I see. The scream and the attack on this man Coulter have driven away all your guests."

"All but eight," nodded Condon wearily. "Just eight left—and we are right in the middle of the season."

"You have checked up on all the