"Move not, _m'sieu_!" The voice was low and silky. "Move not, or I will
scatter your few brains over the room." The Puritan, raging inwardly, stood with his hands in air while l'Armon
slipped his pistols and sword from their sheaths. "Now you can turn," said Gaston, stepping back. Kane bent a grim eye on the dapper fellow, who stood bareheaded now,
hat in one hand, the other hand leveling his long pistol. "Gaston the Butcher!" said the Englishman somberly. "Fool that I was
to trust a Frenchman! You range far, murderer! I remember you now, with
that cursed great hat off--I saw you in Calais some years agone." "Aye--and now you will see me never again. What was that?" "Rats exploring yon skeleton," said Kane, watching the bandit like a
hawk, waiting for a single slight wavering of that black gun muzzle. "The sound was of the rattle of bones." "Like enough," returned the other. "Now, M'sieu Kane, I know you carry
considerable money on your person. I had thought to wait until you
slept and then slay you, but the opportunity presented itself and I
took it. You trick easily." "I had little thought that I should fear a man with whom I had broken
bread," said Kane, a deep timbre of slow fury sounding in his voice. The bandit laughed cynically. His eyes narrowed as he began to back
slowly toward the outer door. Kane's sinews tensed involuntarily; he
gathered himself like a giant wolf about to launch himself in a death
leap, but Gaston's hand was like a rock and the pistol never trembled. "We will have no death plunges after the shot," said Gaston. "Stand
still, _m'sieu_; I have seen men killed by dying men, and I wish to
have distance enough between us to preclude that possibility. My
faith--I will shoot, you will roar and charge, but you will die before
you reach me with your bare hands. And mine host will have another
skeleton in his secret niche. That is, if I do not kill him myself. The
fool knows me not nor I him, moreover----"

The Frenchman was in the doorway now, sighting along the barrel. The
candle, which had been stuck in a niche on the wall, shed a weird and
flickering light which did not extend past the doorway. And with the
suddenness of death, from the darkness behind Gaston's back, a broad,
vague form rose up and a gleaming blade swept down. The Frenchman went
to his knees like a butchered ox, his brains spilling from his cleft
skull. Above him towered the figure of the host, a wild and terrible
spectacle, still holding the hanger with which he had slain the bandit. "Ho! ho!" he roared. "Back!" Kane had leaped forward as Gaston fell, but the host thrust into his
very face a long pistol which he held in his left hand. "Back!" he repeated in a tigerish roar, and Kane retreated from the
menacing weapon and the insanity in the red eyes. The Englishman stood silent, his flesh crawling as he sensed a deeper
and more hideous threat than the Frenchman had offered. There was
something inhuman about this man, who now swayed to and fro like some
great forest beast while his mirthless laughter boomed out again. "Gaston the Butcher!" he shouted, kicking the corpse at his feet. "Ho! ho! My fine brigand will hunt no more! I had heard of this fool who
roamed the Black Forest--he wished gold and he found death! Now your
gold shall be mine; and more than gold--vengeance!" "I am no foe of yours," Kane spoke calmly. "All men are my foes! Look--the marks on my wrists! See--the marks on
my ankles! And deep in my back--the kiss of the knout! And deep in my
brain, the wounds of the years of the cold, silent cells where I lay
as punishment for a crime I never committed!" The voice broke in a
hideous, grotesque sob. Kane made no answer. This man was not the first he had seen whose brain
had shattered amid the horrors of the terrible Continental prisons. "But I escaped!" the scream rose triumphantly, "and here I make war on
all men.... What was that?" Did Kane see a flash of fear in those hideous eyes? "My sorcerer is rattling his bones!" whispered the host, then laughed
wildly. "Dying, he swore his very bones would weave a net of death for
me. I shackled his corpse to the floor, and now, deep in the night, I
hear his bare skeleton clash and rattle as he seeks to be free, and I
laugh, I laugh! Ho! ho! How he yearns to rise and stalk like old King
Death along these dark corridors when I sleep, to slay me in my bed!" Suddenly the insane eyes flared hideously: "You were in that secret
room, you and this dead fool! Did he talk to you?" Kane shuddered in spite of himself. Was it insanity or did he actually
hear the faint rattle of bones, as if the skeleton had moved slightly? Kane shrugged his shoulders; rats will even tug at dusty bones. The host was laughing again. He sidled around Kane, keeping the
Englishman always covered, and with his free hand opened the door. All
was darkness within, so that Kane could not even see the glimmer of the
bones on the floor. "All men are my foes!" mumbled the host, in the incoherent manner of
the insane. "Why should I spare any man? Who lifted a hand to my aid
when I lay for years in the vile dungeons of Karlsruhe--and for a
deed never proven? Something happened to my brain, then. I became as
a wolf--a brother to these of the Black Forest to which I fled when I
escaped. "They have feasted, my brothers, on all who lay in my tavern--all
except this one who now clashes his bones, this magician from Russia. Lest he come stalking back through the black shadows when night is
over the world, and slay me--for who may slay the dead?--I stripped his
bones and shackled him. His sorcery was not powerful enough to save
him from me, but all men know that a dead magician is more evil than
a living one. Move not, Englishman! Your bones I shall leave in this
secret room beside this one, to----"

The maniac was standing partly in the doorway of the secret room, now,
his weapon still menacing Kane. Suddenly he seemed to topple backward,
and vanished in the darkness; and at the same instant a vagrant gust
of wind swept down the outer corridor and slammed the door shut behind
him. The candle on the wall flickered and went out. Kane's groping
hands, sweeping over the floor, found a pistol, and he straightened,
facing the door where the maniac had vanished. He stood in the utter
darkness, his blood freezing, while a hideous muffled screaming came
from the secret room, intermingled with the dry, grisly rattle of
fleshless bones. Then silence fell. Kane found flint and steel and lighted the candle. Then, holding it in
one hand and the pistol in the other, he opened the secret door. "Great God!" he muttered as cold sweat formed on his body. "This thing
is beyond all reason, yet with mine own eyes I see it! Two vows have
here been kept, for Gaston the Butcher swore that even in death he
would avenge his slaying, and his was the hand which set yon fleshless
monster free. And he----"

[Illustration: "This thing is beyond reason, yet with my own eyes I see
it."]