Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 1 (1925-07).djvu/34

As the door yielded, the two men staggered inside. Broadway paused while his eyes grew accustomed to the bright light, and then rubbed his eyes and looked again at the man before him. He shuddered violently, and had the Spotter not been directly behind him, he would have turned and fled.

Was this thing human? Broadway felt a cold chill creep up from his spine to the roots of his hair. Was this a dope dream, or was it reality? If this was La Forne and this place was his office, Broadway wished that he was miles away. Yet here was this little man smiling at them over a blood-bespattered apron—smiling and nodding like a manikin! And such a face! Broadway had never seen a face like this one, not even in the terrible dreams and visions that his drug sometimes brought him. It was a small shrunken face overshadowed by a huge skull. The eyes were veiled behind heavy-lensed spectacles, but the mouth was fascinating. A close student would have called it a cruel mouth, but at present the thin lips were writhed into a smile. Broadway looked at the yellow skin stretched over the horrible mask, and shivered. It looked like parchment.

"Come in, gentlemen," said the doctor in a voice that made his visitors think of the clink of iron on ice. "What can I do for you at this late hour?"

He smiled again, as he closed the door, but when he had turned and scrutinized his strange callers, the distortion faded.

"Suppose you take the iron bar, or whatever it is, out of your coat pocket. I'm sure you will find no use for it here."

The Spotter started, looked guilty, and placed a trembling hand on his lead pipe. Broadway held his breath, and waited for the sickening impact. It never came. The morphine addict's eyes were held for an instant like a bit of iron in a vise. What he read in the doctor's eyes he never told, but he withdrew his weapon and placed it gently on the table. Broadway breathed easier.

"There, that will do," murmured the doctor. "That's fine. Now I suppose you two drug addicts came here after—dope?"

The two men cast anxious glances toward the closed door.

"You want morphine, don't you?" he asked, staring at Tim the Spotter through his heavy glasses. Then as the derelict gulped nervously: "It's easy enough to fathom," smiled the doctor, unpleasantly, "to the professional eye. Your pupils are contracted and very unequal and your skin, facies, and manner also point to morphinism. It's just as easy to diagnose your companion's case. Cocaine! Pupils dilated, face clammy, hallucinations of perception—you are digging at imaginary parasites at your fingertips, I see. Quite common—these delusions."

Broadway felt as if he were being slowly dissected beneath the searching eyes of the scientist. He coughed uneasily. How did this man know of those little bugs crawling through his tissues! It was uncanny. Tim the Spotter was not so easily frightened.

"Don't kid us, doc," he spoke up, in a husky voice. "You're right. We do need the dope, and we need it bad. Do we get it—just a little!"

He was pleading now.

"We'll do anything for you—anything, doc, if you'll only—"

The doctor shook his head, and smiled sarcastically.

"You'd do anything!" he sneered. "No matter what I asked—for a few grains of morphine!"

"God, yes," whimpered the wreck before him. "Anything—but I've got to hove a shot, doc!"

The doctor's face underwent a change. His high forehead wrinkled into a thoughtful frown. Drumming