Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/23

The woman leant back on her cushioned divan and regarded us through half-dosed eyes as she let a little streamlet of gray smoke flow from her lips. "The question, gentlemen, is, 'What are we to do with you?'" she stated in a voice which held that throaty, velvety quality of the southern races. "I cannot very well afford to let you go; I have no wish to keep you here against your will. Would you care to join our ranks? I can find work for you."

“And if we should refuse, Madame?" de Grandin asked.

Her shrug lifted the creamy shoulders till they touched the jeweled ear-pendants and set their gems to flashing in the lamplight. "There is always el crucifijo," she replied, turning black-fringed, curious eyes upon him. “It would be interesting to see four bodies hanging up at once. You, my friend, would doubtless scream in charming tenor, el Commandante would shriek baritone, I think, while I do not doubt that the old bearded one and the big Irishman would be the bassos of the concert. It should make an interesting quartet. I have more than half a mind to hear it."

A frigid grimace, the mere parody of a smile, congealed upon the Commandant's pale lips. “You make a gruesome jest, Señora," he asserted feebly.

"Cabrón!" she shot the deadly insult at him as a snake might spew its poison. "La Murciélaga never jests!" Her face had gone skull-white, with narrowed, venomous eyes, the chin and mouth thrust forward and the lips pressed taut against the teeth.

"Down," she ordered, "down on your faces, all of you! Lick my feet like the dogs you are, and pray for mercy! Down, I say, for as surely as I reign supreme here I'll crucify the one who hesitates!"

De Grandin looked at Costello, and his Gallic blue eyes met prompt answer in the black-fringed eyes of Irish blue of the detective. With one accord they turned to me, and instinctively I nodded The little Frenchman rose, heels clicked together, and faced the termagant she-fiend with a glance as cold and polished as a leveled bayonet. "Madame" he announced in a metallic voice, "we are men, we four. To men there are things worse than death."

"Bueno, my little one," she answered; "then I shall hear your quartet after all. I had hoped that you would choose to play the hero." Turning to her guards she ordered sharply: "Take them away."

"No, no; not me, Señora!" the Commandant implored, falling on his knees before her. “Do not crucify me, I beseech you!"

Across his shoulder he cried frenziedly: "Save yourselves, amigos. Beg mercy. What good is honor to a corpse? I saw a man whom they had crucified—they flung his body in the city square at night. It was terrible. His wounds gaped horribly and the middle fingers had been torn away where his hands had ripped loose from the spikes!"

"You would have mercy, little puppy?" asked the woman softly, regarding him with a slow, mocking smile.

"Yes, yes, Señora! Of your pity spare me——"

"Then, since you are a cringing dog, deport yourself becomingly." With the condescension of a queen who graciously extends her hand for salutation, she stretched out a slim, ring-jeweled foot.

It was shocking to behold him stultify his manhood. "Misericordia muy Señora graciosa—have mercy, gracious lady!" he whimpered, and I turned away my head with a shudder of repulsion as he put his hand beneath her instep, raised the gemmed foot to his mouth, and, thrusting forth his tongue, began to lick it as a famished dog might lap at food.