There, in the X-ray's black and greys, he could see the bones of Nancy Sawyer's ankle and, tightly clenched around them, deep under the skin and flesh, the slender bones of a human hand.
SPIDER MANSION
A tremendous splash of lightning gave us our first glimpse of the pillared front of the Old Orne House— a pale Colonial mask framed by wildly whipping leaves. Then, even before the lightning faded, it was blotted out by a solid sheet of muddy water sloshing up against the windshield.
“But I still don't like midgets,” Helen said for the third time, “and besides—” Close thunder, like thick metal ripping drowned out the rest.
“It's gotten beyond a question of your or my personal taste in heights,” I argued, squinting for a sight of the road between mud splashes. “Sure Malcolm Orne's a midget, but you don't know how slippery the road is ahead or how deep those Jersey salt marshes are on either side of it. And no garages or even houses for miles. Too risky, in this storm. Anyway, we figured all along we might visit him on the way. That's why we took this road."
“Yes, this lonely, god-forsaken road.” Helen's voice was as strained and uneasy as her face, pallidly revealed by another lightning flash. “Oh, I know it's silly of me, but I still feel that—"
Again cracking thunder blanketed her words. Our coupe was progressing by heaves, as if through a gelatinous sea. I spotted the high white posts a little ahead, and swung out for the turn-in.
“Still really want to go on?” I asked.
Maybe it was the third blast of thunder, loudest of the lot, that decided her against further argument. She gave me a “You win” look, and even grinned a little, being a much better sport that I probably deserved for a wife.
The coupe slithered between the posts, lurched around squishily on a sharp slippery rise, made it on the last gasp, and lunged toward the house through a flail of lasting, untrimmed branches.
The windows in front were dark and those to the right were tightly shuttered, but light flickered faintly through the antique white fanlight above the six-paneled Colonial door. Helen hugged my arm tight as we ducked through the drenching rain up onto the huge porch, with its two-story pillars. I reached for the knocker.
Just at that moment there came one of those brief hushes in the storm. The lightning held off, and the wind stopped. I felt Helen jump at the ugly rustling, scraping sound of a branch which, released from the wind's pressure, brushed against a pillar as it swung back into place. I remembered noting that the paint was half-peeled away from the pillar.
Then things happened fast. Groping for the knocker, I felt the door give inward. There was a deafening blast from inside the house. A ragged semi-circle of wood disappeared from the jamb about a foot from the ground. Splinters flew from a point in the floor eight inches from my shoe. The door continued to swing slowly open from the first push I had given it, revealing a Negro with grizzled hair and fear-wide eyes, clad in the threadbare black of an out-dated servant's costume. Despite his slouching posture he still topped six feet. Smoke wreathed from the muzzle of the shotgun held loosely in his huge pink- palmed hands.
“Oh, Lordy,” he breathed in quaking tones. “Dat rustlin’ soun’—I t'ought it was—"
Something, then, checked my angry retort and the lunge I was about to make forward for the weapon. It was the appearance of another face—a white man's—over the Negro's shoulder. A saturnine face with aristocratic features and bulging forehead. Judging from the way he towered over the gigantic Negro, the second man could hardly be more than a few inches short of seven feet. But that wasn't what froze me dead in my tracks. It was that the face was unmistakably that of Malcolm Orne, the midget.
The Negro was grasped and swung aside as if he were a piece of furniture. The gun was lifted from his nerveless fingers as if it were a child's toy. Then the giant bowed low and said, “A thousand pardons! Welcome to Orne House!"
Helen's scream, long delayed, turned to hysterical laughter. Then the storm, recommencing with redoubled fury, shattered the hush and sent us hurrying into the hall.
The giant's teeth flashed in a smile. “One moment, please,” he murmured to us, then turned and seized the cowering Negro by the slack of the coat, slapped his face twice, hard.
“You are never to touch that gun, Buford!” Again the Negro's head was buffeted by a solid blow. “You almost killed my guests. They would be well within their rights if they demanded your arrest."
But what caught my attention was the fact that the Negro hardly seemed to notice either the words or the stinging blows. His eyes were fixed in a peculiarly terrified way on the open door, seemingly staring at a point about a foot from the floor. Only when a back-draft slammed it shut, did he begin to grovel and whine.
The giant cut him short with a curt, “Send Milly to show my guests their room. Then stay in the kitchen.” The Negro hurriedly shambled off without a backward glance.
The giant turned to us again. He looked very much in place in this darkly wainscoted hall. On the wall behind him were a pair of crossed sabers of Civil War vintage.
“Ah, Mrs. Egan, I am glad to see that you are taking this deplorable affair so calmly.” His smile flashed at Helen. “And I am delighted to make your acquaintance, though just now you have every reason to be angry with me.” He took her hand with a courtly gesture. His face grew grave. “Almost—a hideous accident occurred. I can explain, though not excuse it. Poor Buford lives in abnormal terror of a large mastiff I keep chained outside—an animal quite harmless to myself or my guests, I hasten to add. A little while ago it broke loose. Evidently Buford thought it was attempting to force its way in. His fear is irrational and without bounds—though otherwise he is a perfect servant. I only hope you will let my hospitality serve as an apology."
He turned to me. “Your wife is charming,” he said. “You're a very lucky man, Tom."
Then he seemed to become aware of my dumbfounded look, and the way my gaze was stupidly traveling up and down his tremendous though well-proportioned form. A note of secret amusement was added to his smile.
Helen broke the silence with a little laugh, puzzled but not unpleased.
“But, excuse me, who are you? ” she asked.
The wavering candlelight made queer highlights, emphasizing the massive forehead and the saturnine features.
“Malcolm Orne, Madam!” he answered with a little bow.
“But I thought,” said Helen, “that Malcolm Orne was...” An involuntary expression of disgust crossed her face.
“A midget?” His voice was silky. “Ah, yes. I can understand your distaste.” Then he turned slowly toward me. “I know what's bothering you, Tom,” he said. “But that is a long and very strange story, which can best wait until after dinner. Milly will take you up to your room. Your luggage will be brought up. Dinner in about three-quarters of an hour? Good!"
An impassive-faced Negress had appeared silently from the back of the hall, bearing in her ebony hands a branched candlestick. There were a dozen questions hammering at my brain, but instead of asking them I found myself following the Negress up the curving stairs, Helen at my side, watching the fantastic shadows cast by the candles.
As soon as we were alone, Helen bombarded me with a dozen incredulous questions of her own. I did my best to convince her that the giant downstairs was really Malcolm Orne—there was the birthmark below his left ear and curious thin scar on his forehead to back up the rest of the evidence—and that Malcolm Orne had been, when I last saw him, a midget who missed four feet by several inches.