"Help yourselves, my friends," he said. "I dined hours ago."
We lost no time in accepting his offer. Despite our weariness, we were very hungry, for we had not eaten since noon and our strength had been sapped by the hardships we had gone through. The wine dissipated the chill that had permeated to our bones, racing through our veins like molten metal, filling us with a delicious warmth that was succeeded by a feeling of lassitude.
In spite of my efforts to control myself, I caught myself yawning and a great desire for sleep swept over me. I glanced at Betty; her curly blond head was pressed against the cushion of the chair and her eyes were closed. From the rise and fall of her breast, I knew that she had given way to the stupor I was fighting against. Bixby was watching us, his saturnine face twisted into a grin of triumph. I tried to speak to him; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth...
Then consciousness left me.
I WAS in a great pit from which I was struggling to escape. Time after time I almost reached the top; my fingers reached up to pull myself out, but I always slipped back again... down... down... never reaching the bottom. Sometimes I floated on thin air—a gossamer, wraith-like thing of feathery lightness; again I was stone-heavy, sinking like a plummet.
Someone was screaming—shrieking wildly for help. I knew subconsciously that it was Betty calling to me—that I was fruitlessly trying to get to her. I tried to open my eyes. The lids seemed glued down. Again and again I almost succeeded, only to sink back again into that bottomless pit of abysmal blackness from which I was struggling to escape. I was unable to move hand or foot; I wondered in a hazy, impersonal sort of way if I was paralyzed.
Something within my brain suddenly snapped and I was awake, pulling at the bonds which held me. Somewhere in the distance Betty was screaming. This time there was no hallucination—it was real. As consciousness swept over me I realized that I was bound; I was lying in the darkness, trussed like a fowl for the market.
And Betty—my wife of a day—was appealing to me, begging me to come to her assistance.
"Bob! Help me, Bob! Please... please help me!"
The inertia was dragging me down again. I fought it off and struggled to collect my scattered faculties. A tiny buzzer in my brain kept telling me to wake up—to go to her rescue. Yet I was unable to move a muscle. It was an effort to even think. She screamed again as if in pain. I jerked at my thongs with a desperation born of despair. Something gave way and I felt myself dropping... .
I BROUGHT up with a thud, my head crashing against some solid object that stunned me for a second. The realization swept over me that my bindings were a bit looser. I twisted my body; every movement sent a twinge of pain racing through my muscles, but each jerk added to my freedom. Finally I managed to get one hand free. I reached out exploringly. My groping fingers told me that I had been tied to an ancient iron bedstead, the rope was looped around the head posts. In my struggles I had pulled the rickety affair apart.
It took me but an instant to untwist the thongs with which I had been bound. I dragged myself out of the wreck and stood swaying in the darkness, my head spinning like a gyroscope. A feeling of horrible nausea swept over me and I toppled forward. My outstretched hand brought up against the wooden panels of a door. I slid to my knees, my fingers twisted around the knob. The door opened at the touch; I stumbled, face downward, into a dimly lighted hallway.
For an instant I lay there, too sick and weak to move. Then, as my breath came back to me, I dragged myself to a sitting position.
Betty was shrieking madly.
"Please... oh, please!" she sobbed. "Please... for the love of God, have mercy!... Oh, Bob... come!"
The sound came from a room a short distance down the hall. The terror-stricken voice of my wife pleading for mercy went through me like an electric shock, galvanizing me into action. I shook off the nausea and, pulling myself to my feet, charged like an angry bull.
The door of the room was open, the light streaming out into the hallway. I halted at the threshold, my faculties paralyzed for an instant at the unholy sight which met my horrified eyes.
It was a huge room into which I gazed, made, it appeared, by tearing the partition from between two smaller rooms. Fitted as a laboratory, painted a spotless white, the walls were lined with shelves overflowing with bottles, beakers and test tubes.
In the center was a low divan. Upon it Betty was stretched. She had been nearly divested of her garments. Her slender white arms were drawn above her head. There was scant concealment of any secret of her slim body. Beside her, fastened by a long rope attached to a leather girdle about its middle, was the creature that had attacked us in the darkness. I saw now that it was a monster gorilla.
The rope, attached to a ring in the wall, held it away from her. Its hair-covered, stubby fingers reached out for her—tried to caress her smooth, satiny flesh—tried to fondle her in a diabolical and unholy embrace. It whimpered appealingly, its tiny, bloodshot eyes gloating over her youthful beauty as it strove with all its gigantic strength to stretch the rope which held it from her.
At a table close beside them stood Bixby, a long white smock clothing his emaciated form. He hovered over the delicate apparatus, his long, skinny fingers darting here and there, his cavernous eyes glancing gloatingly at the terrible scene that was being enacted before him.
"In a moment," he crooned soothingly to the whining monstrosity at the end of the rope. "In a moment, my pet. Then I will wield the knife. Her blood will be in your veins and your rich, red corpuscles will go charging through her slim, white body, mixing with her blood. Then... then she will be yours..."
The accursed thing whimpered understandingly. It turned its shaggy head to him for an instant and whined like a dog.
Bixby selected a slender knife from the glittering array on the table. For an instant he held it aloft, examining its razor-sharpness. Nodding with satisfaction, he took a step forward and bent over the nude form on the divan, his sunken eyes searching for the vein he was about to open.
Betty screamed again. In her agony, she turned her head. Her eyes met mine. In them was a look of pathetic appeal. She sensed my weakness—knew that there was but little I could do to save her. Yet her movement broke the spell that seemed to have been cast over me and I charged forward with an angry bellow. Bixby turned as my hands reached for his scrawny throat The blade dropped from his fingers and he lunged for the revolver that lay in an open drawer beside him. Betty screamed. "Bob! Watch out!" she shrieked. I whirled. But too late. I caught an indistinct glimpse of the huge black as he struck. His great fist crashed against my head and I went down like an ox.