The summer burned away. Chance was a fascinating man and could speak with calm authority on esoteric and recondite matters wherein he and Kirsten shared interest. Moore never learned who it was that told Kirsten about the Luger and holster where dark stains could still be seen of her brother’s blood.
Eventually frantic telegrams from the States had forced him back to Knoxville to give belated attention to his family investments. The Crash did its work too well for his distracted and incapable management. Enough remained to keep him out of the bread lines, but not much more. Ten years of frenzied dissipation had left him with a legacy of debts and bitter memories. Work was out of the question, assuming employment were available — or that he desired it. Moore was a first-rate combat pilot, but other than his wartime experience the closest he had come to working for a living involved no more physical effort than the clipping of stock coupons.
The contents of his safe deposit vault and the sale of family property had allowed him to drift along for a few years—“a gentleman of the world in reduced circumstances.” From time to time he received a letter from old acquaintances, read an item in the papers — enough to know Kirsten von Brocken and John Chance had not outgrown their fascination for one another. When Chance recently returned to Knoxville with news of their engagement, Moore had not troubled to call upon them.
Well that was all over with now, too. Moore drained the last swallow of the pungent liqueur. He reflected that he had gone on living these last few years solely from inertia anyway — that and the faint hope of the gambler that his luck would change. It hadn’t.
He tossed the empty glass at the living room’s non-operable fireplace. As he raised the Luger to his temple he wondered if the pistol’s former owner would rest more easily in his grave knowing his weapon had at last avenged him.
Moore pulled the trigger.
The blast was deafening in the small room, but he never fully heard it. The high-velocity jacketed slug tore through his right temple, barely expanding as it pulped his brain and blew out the left side of his skull. The Luger recoiled from nerveless fingers, as the shock of the bullet flung him sidewise in the overstuffed chair, sprawling him in a heap on the rug.
From a disembodied vantage he seemed to look down over his corpse — blood and gore matting the thin blond hair, the pale blue eyes staring dreamily at nothing, the aquiline features set in a startled grimace, the long-limbed frame sprawled ludicrously half in and half out of the chair, soaking the red carpet with a darker stain. It looked very little like the alert, rangy young man in aviator’s togs who smiled down from the old photograph on the mantel.
The door swung silently open. Silent as a shadow, a figure entered. A man dressed entirely in black. Unhurriedly he crossed the shabby living room, looked down at the grotesquely sprawled corpse.
“Get up,” the figure commanded.
Compton Moore picked himself up, slumped back in the chair — stared at the figure in fear. “Are you death?” he asked in an awestricken whisper.
“I am Dread.”
Shakily Moore raised a hand to his temple. There was no pain, no blood, no wound. In stunned bewilderment he stared at his uncanny visitor.
The stranger stood well over six feet in height and was clad solely in black from boots to turtleneck jersey. Powerful muscles flexed beneath the close-fitting garments, belying the silver-white of his combed-back hair and trim beard. His features were hidden behind a mask of black metal that concealed the upper portion of his face from high forehead to just below the cheekbone. The featureless metal mask reminded Moore suddenly of the robot’s face in that strange movie he had seen in Berlin—Metropolis. The mouth beneath the mask was thin-lipped, the bearded jaw almost pointed. Through slits in the mask, eyes so dark as to seem almost entirely pupil regarded him with unwavering intensity. Moore thought of a cat’s stare across a darkened room.
“I don’t understand,” Moore managed to stammer. “What’s happened? Who are you? I thought…”
The figure extended a black-gloved hand. The long fingers held out a small metallic object, gleaming like gold. It was a copper-jacketed 9 mm. slug, grooved from the rifling of a gun barrel.
Moore reached uncertainly for the bullet. The black fist closed over it, and a cruel laugh stopped his movement.
“That bullet killed you, Compton Moore,” came a mocking whisper. “Have you forgotten?”
“Killed…?”
“You no longer wanted your life, Compton Moore,” the derisive voice continued. “You threw it away. But I have use for your life, Compton Moore — and so I have claimed you.” Moore felt his brain whirling in a vortex of madness. He remembered — vividly remembered — the black despair, the decision, the gun against his temple, the shot exploding his consciousness into dissolving agony, the disembodied vision of his corpse… His fingers clutched the arms of his chair, clinging to reality.
“What are you!”
“But I’ve already told you, Compton Moore. I am Dread. And you are my creature.”
The masked face gazed down at him, lips drawn in a demonic smile. “You thought to die, but I forbade it. What you would cast away, I have claimed. You are mine, Compton Moore. You will obey me without fail — whenever and whatsoever I command. My will is yours and your life is mine, nor shall you again die except by my will.”
The gloved fingers held the grooved bullet before his swimming vision. “Through my power I have altered fate,” the sibilant voice continued. “Fate ordained that this bullet should blow out your pitiful brains. But the hand of Dread has halted fate and plucked the fatal bullet from its course. For so long as it is my will, this bullet shall remain in timeless limbo. For that space, Compton Moore, you shall live to serve me well.
“But listen well, Compton Moore! Fail to obey me — let your heart even think of rebellion — and this bullet will complete the fatal mission on which you yourself have sent it!”
A sudden flame of desperate rebellion stirred through him, and Moore recoiled like a cornered, terror-stricken animal. Clumsily he grabbed for the bullet. Satanic laughter mocked him, as the black-gloved fist checked his lunge with a numbing blow — and Compton Moore sprawled into oblivion.
A knocking at the door aroused him. Automatically Moore picked himself up, pulled his thoughts together. He ran his fingers unthinkingly through his disarranged blond hair — then with a start glanced at his hand. No — no blood, no gobbets of brain and shattered bone.
His head ached. The liqueur? Absinthe was treacherous. On the tile hearth lay the broken glass. The ice cubes were only starting to melt. Beside the chair lay the Luger. Its barrel felt warm. Shuddering, he dropped it into the pocket of his lounge jacket — not daring to check the clip.
The knocking persisted, more forcefully.
Dully he turned toward the door. Something rolled beneath his slipper. Something brass-bright. It was a fired 9 mm. Parabellum case.
“Oh, my God…” Moore swayed, caught himself.
The knocking was louder.
Like an automaton, Moore stumbled to the door. His mind refused to grapple with anything more than the need to answer that summons. He fumbled with the knob.
The door swung open. The full moon was bright in the yard.
John Chance stood on his threshold.
Compton Moore uttered a strangled cry, and the cold circle of the moon swung like a pendulum. He would have fallen — but John Chance leapt forward and caught him.
“Steady, old fellow!” muttered Chance, supporting him as he crumpled. “I’m sorry — I should have prepared you for the shock!” Like a bouncer with a belligerent drunk, he swung the loose-kneed man around and marched him to the chair he had just quit.