The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

got to find your sister.” She sceptically eyed him.
“Then you don’t want me? But you paid—”
Crane shrugged. “If you knew, you’d understand.”
“Oh…” Very slowly, like a dying echo. She caught him by the shoulders,
stared him full in the face; and bit by bit she read that the sombre riddle in his
gray eyes concerned her missing sister.
“I didn’t realize you knew Diane…” Her arm slipped about his neck and she
drew closer as she continued, “I’ll go with you. I’ll help.”
She had guts. Crane’s smile lost his bleakness. For a long moment their
glances blended. She sighed, and her breasts crept through their screen of dark
curls. Her smile was a revelation, and suddenly Crane’s blood quickened from
the soft caress of her arm and the warmth of her body.
“Tenez!” protested Crane. “Stop it, you damn’ little fool. I’ve got some business
to attend to—”
“You wouldn’t buy me,” she whispered. “Somehow, that’s rather wonderful…
but you like me just a little, don’t you? Wouldn’t that make it different?”
Somehow, it did; and Crane’s sensible effort to break away failed. She was
lonely and worried. He couldn’t repulse her friendliness.
“Cut it out!” he growled, though his protest was weakening. He laughed
harshly, thinking of the one about the mail-carrier who hiked on Sundays; but
Madeline seemed no longer one of those who lined up in that mirrored hell glare.
She had become a bright flame in the foulness that crept through the mists of
that fiend-haunted gray city.
Those were not bought lips that clung thirstily to Crane’s mouth, and the shudder
that rippled down her throbbing body was instinctive…and as her arms
closed about him, Crane defied the peril that was gathering outside. He could not
repulse the first glow of friendliness in that drab lupanar…
Madeline’s eyes were tear-sparkling when she slipped from Crane’s arms and
said, “I know now that she is dead.”
“The devil you do!”he snapped, feeling decidedly stupid about the interlude
that might in the end cost him all but his head—literally, as they use the guillotine
in France.
“Yes. Or you’d not have lingered, with that wrath in your eyes. So I know you
can’t find her alive.”
No use explaining his true motives. He took a key from his pocket.
“Go to the Panier-Fleuri. Stay under cover. What you told me about an Arab
has entirely upset my assumption. I thought you could tell me about someone