Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/16

upon the pavement. Then they stripped the prisoner's clothing off and nailed him to the cross while the tom-toms beat so loudly that we could not hear his shrieks, and all the masked bat-people screamed 'Así siempre á los traidores!' over and over again.

"'That's what comes to those who disobey or fail La Murciélaga!' someone whispered in my ear, and I recognized the voice of the man who had brought us out from Tupulo.

"But we don't want to join any such terrible society as this!' I cried. 'We won't——'

"'There are other crosses waiting,' he warned me. 'Will you hang beside that traitor or will you take the oath of fealty to the Bat Mother and become her true and faithful servants?'

"The poor wretch on the cross kept shrieking, and though we couldn't hear him for the tom-toms' noise, we could see his mouth gape open and the blood run down his chin where he gnashed his lips and tongue. He beat his head against the cross and arched his body forward till the spikes tore greater wounds in his pierced hands and feet, and all the time La Murciélaga stood there statue-still with her bat-wings spread out and her fingers curved like talons.

"Finally, when the crucified man's screams had muted to a low, exhausted moan, they led us up to the 'Bat Mother,' and there in the shadow cast by the cross with its writhing, groaning burden, we knelt down on the stones and swore to do whatever we were bidden, promising to give ourselves up for crucifixion if we ever disobeyed an order or attempted to leave the bat society or divulge its secrets. They made us put our hands out straight before us on the ground, and La Murciélaga came and stood on them while we kissed her feet and vowed we were her slaves for ever. Then we were given bat-masks and told to take our places in the ranks which stood about the square before the pyramid."

"And how did you escape that place of torment, Mademoiselle?"

"We didn't have to, sir. In the morning we were wakened and taken to the coast, where they put us on a boat and sent us up to Vera Cruz.

"May I have a cigarette?" she asked; and, as de Grandin passed the box to her, then held his lighter while she set it glowing, "Do you remember how the Spanish freighter Gato apparently sailed off the earth?"

De Grandin and Costello nodded.

"We did that, Rita and I. They told us to make love to the master and chief engineer, and with the memory of that horrid scene out in the jungle to spur us on, we did just as they told us. We teased the engineer to let us go and see his engines, and Rita took a little box they'd given her aboard, and hid it in the bunkers. What was in it we don't know, but when they threw the coal where it had rested in the furnace the whole side of the ship was ripped away, and everyone on board was lost."

"But this is purest idiocy, Mademoiselle!" protested Jules de Grandin. "Why should anyone in wanton cruelty desire to destroy a ship?"

"The Gato carried half a million dollars' worth of jewels," the girl replied. "She sank in less than fifteen fathoms, and the hole blown in her side made it easy for the divers to go in and loot her strongroom."

She took a final long draw at her cigarette, then crushed its fire out in the ash-tray. "You remember when MacPherson Briarly, the insurance magnate's son, was held for ransom in Chihuahua?" she asked. "Rita was the lure—posed as an American girl stranded in El Centro