The Vampire Master and Other Tales of Horror by Edmond Hamilton

Author:Edmond Hamilton [Hamilton, Edmond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

IT WAS after three when our car turned in at the Ralton estate again. The big house was quiet, only a few lights glowing.

A sleepy-looking Smart admitted us and James Ralton was just coming down the stairs into the dim-lit hall as we entered.

“You succeeded?” he cried eagerly. “You found the coffins and bodies?”

Dale shook his head, and Ralton’s haggard face became more drawn as he heard how Gelsert had eluded us.

“We came back in because we feared Gelsert might have come again,” Dale said. “Nothing’s happened, though? I mean to Olivia’s body?”

“No, Edward has been watching it and hasn’t left the library,” Ralton said. “I looked in on him two hours ago and was just coming down again when you came.”

He walked back with us to the door of the library and opened it. We started through the door, then cried out together.

The window of the dim-lit library was swinging open to the night! The coffin of Olivia Ralton was gone from the stand that had supported it! And Edward Harmon lay in a crushed, crumpled heap near the window, blood flowing from his mouth and nose.

We sprang across the room to him, Dale bending over him and raising him in his arms. Harmon stirred a little in Dale’s arms and opened his eyes. His lips moved, and from them came a choking whisper.

“Sorry—got me,” he whispered. “Came an hour ago—Gelsert—Olivia——”

“Gerritt Gelsert took Olivia’s body and coffin?” Dale asked him fiercely. “He did this to you?”

Harmon’s head nodded weakly. He seemed to gather his strength to speak. “I was watching Olivia’s coffin,” he whispered. “Had a cross in my hand, and another cross lay on the coffin where you’d left it. I was thinking of Olivia as she’d been when alive, when I heard Olivia speaking, inside the coffin!

“She was crying out faintly to me from inside the coffin. ‘Edward, let me out!’ she cried. ‘I’m smothering here!’

“I sprang to the coffin. ‘Good God, Olivia!’ I cried. ‘Is it you that’s speaking?’

“Her faint voice came from inside. ‘Yes, Edward—you must let me out, at once!’

“My hands flew to open the coffin when I remembered suddenly what you’d said about Olivia becoming vampire and waking tonight after death, and your orders not to open the coffin in any case.

‘ “I can’t let you out, Olivia!’ I cried. ‘You’re dead—Dale said you were dead!’

‘ “He was wrong!’ her voice answered. ‘Edward, I’m as alive as you are—I woke just now in this terrible thing and I’m stifling, suffocating! Edward, if you love me, save me, let me out!’

“I could stand it no more, for it was Olivia, whom I had loved, crying to me to save her from a horrible death. I unfastened the coffin’s bolts, flung open the lid, the cross on it falling to the floor and my own cross dropping from my hand in my haste.

“Olivia sat up in the coffin! She seemed as alive as ever and in better health than I had seen her for weeks, her cheeks flushed and her eyes brilliant.

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