Weird Tales volume 31 number 03 by Wright Farnsworth 1888–1940

Author:Wright, Farnsworth, 1888–1940
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: pulp; pulps; pulp magazine; horror; fantasy; weird fiction; weird tales
Publisher: Popular Fiction

cJJjdry Ones Shall Dance

By GANS T. FIELD

r A novel of a hideous, stark honor that struck during a spirit seance — a tale of

terror and sudden death, and the frightful thing that

laired in the Devil's Croft

The Story Thus Far: where, says Zoberg, lives a medium who

will prove the case for spiritism.

TALBOT WILLS, the narrator, is a The medium is an attractive girl, Susan former stage magician. Skeptical Gird. At a seance, a bestial shape appears of psychic phenomena, he goes in the darkened room and kills John with Doctor Zoberg to an isolated hamlet, Gird, the medium's father. The town

WEIRD TALES

constable accuses Wills, as the onjy person able to escape the manacles which confined everyone in the room. A mob gathers to lynch the supposed murderer, and he manages to escape from a cell, fleeing for shelter to a grove on the edge of town. This is called the Devil's Croft, and custom and local law forbid anyone to enter it.

Once inside, he finds, though a blizzard rages without, the grove is as warm and green as the tropics. In its depths he encounters and fights with the same beast-shape that killed John Gird. By a lucky blow he stuns it, and is horrified to see it turning gradually human. He flees from the grove and meets Judge Keith Pursuivant, a scholarly recluse, who shelters him and shows him, by logic and by quotation of distinguished authorities, that a werewolf can be explained by the spiritist theory of ectoplasmic materialization.

The following day Judge Pursuivant goes to town to observe conditions, and sends Susan Gird to his home to talk to Wills. The two are beginning to be drawn to each other, though in Wills' mind lingers the possibility that Susan Gird may have a complex personality that sometimes materializes the beast-thing.

Returning from town, the judge tells them that the mysterious monster, apparently still in the forbidden grove, has claimed another victim.

The story continues:

11. "To Meet that Monster Face to Face!"

I think that both Susan and I fairly reeled before this news, like actors registering surprize in an old-fashioned melodrama. As for Judge Pursuivant, he turned to the table, cut a generous wedge of the meat pie and set it, all savory and steaming, on a plate for himself. His

calm zest for the good food gave us others steadiness again, so that we sat down and even ate a little as he described his day in town.

He had found opportunity to talk to Susan in private, confiding in her about me and finally sending her to me; this, as he said, so that we would convince each other of our respective innocences. It was purely an inspiration, for he had had no idea, of course, that such conviction would turn out so final. Thereafter he made shift to enter the Gird house and talk to Doctor Zoberg.

That worthy he found sitting somewhat limply in the parlor, with John Gird's coffin in the next room. Zoberg, the judge reported, was mystified about

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