"If you say that I'll tear your jugular out!" Evelyn screamed; Donnelly grabbed Bain ponderously and banged him back
into his chair with no overly gentle touch, and Kirowan laid a hand
lightly on Gordon's shoulder. The man seemed to crumple into himself. He sank back into his chair and held out his hands gropingly toward his
wife. "Evelyn," he said, his voice thick with laboring emotion, "you know I
love you. I feel like a dog. But God help me, it's true. If we go on
this way, I'll be a dead man, and you----"

"Don't say it!" she screamed. "I know you wouldn't lie to me, Jim. If
you say I tried to kill you, I know I did. But I swear, Jim, I didn't
do it consciously. Oh, I must be going mad! That's why my dreams have
been so wild and terrifying lately----"

"Of what have you dreamed, Mrs. Gordon?" asked Kirowan gently. She pressed her hands to her temples and stared dully at him, as if
only half comprehending. "A black thing," she muttered. "A horrible faceless black thing that
mows and mumbles and paws over me with apish hands. I dream of it every
night. And in the daytime I try to kill the only man I ever loved. I'm
going mad! Maybe I'm already crazy and don't know it." *       *       *       *       *

"Calm yourself, honey." To Doctor Donnelly, with all his science, it
was only another case of feminine hysteria. His matter-of-fact voice
seemed to soothe her, and she sighed and drew a weary hand through her
damp locks. "We'll talk this all over, and everything's goin' to be okay," he said,
drawing a thick cigar from his vest pocket. "Gimme a match, honey." She began mechanically to feel about the table, and just as
mechanically Gordon said: "There are matches in the drawer, Evelyn." She opened the drawer and began groping in it, when suddenly, as if
struck by recollection and intuition, Gordon sprang up, white-faced,
and shouted: "No, no! Don't open that drawer--don't----"

Even as he voiced that urgent cry, she stiffened, as if at the feel of
something in the drawer. Her change of expression held us all frozen,
even Kirowan. The vital intelligence vanished from her eyes like a
blown-out flame, and into them came the look Gordon had described as
blank. The term was descriptive. Her beautiful eyes were dark wells of
emptiness, as if the soul had been withdrawn from behind them. Her hand came out of the drawer holding a pistol, and she fired
point-blank. Gordon reeled with a groan and went down, blood starting
from his head. For a flashing instant she looked down stupidly at the
smoking gun in her hand, like one suddenly waking from a nightmare. Then her wild scream of agony smote our ears. "Oh God, I've killed him! Jim! _Jim!_"

She reached him before any of us, throwing herself on her knees and
cradling his bloody head in her arms, while she sobbed in an unbearable
passion of horror and anguish. The emptiness was gone from her eyes;
they were alive and dilated with grief and terror. I was making toward my prostrate friend with Donnelly and Bain, but
Kirowan caught my arm. His face was no longer immobile; his eyes
glittered with a controlled savagery. "Leave him to them!" he snarled. "We are hunters, not healers! Lead me
to the house of Joseph Roelocke!" I did not question him. We drove there in Gordon's car. I had the
wheel, and something about the grim face of my companion caused me to
hurl the machine recklessly through the traffic. I had the sensation
of being part of a tragic drama which was hurtling with headlong speed
toward a terrible climax. I wrenched the car to a grinding halt at the curb before the building
where Roelocke lived in a bizarre apartment high above the city. The
very elevator that shot us skyward seemed imbued with something of
Kirowan's driving urge for haste. I pointed out Roelocke's door, and he
cast it open without knocking and shouldered his way in. I was close at
his heels. *       *       *       *       *

Roelocke, in a dressing-gown of Chinese silk worked with dragons,
was lounging on a divan, puffing quickly at a cigarette. He sat up,
overturning a wine-glass which stood with a half-filled bottle at his
elbow. Before Kirowan could speak, I burst out with our news. "James Gordon
has been shot!" He sprang to his feet. "Shot? When? When did she kill him?" "_She?_" I glared in bewilderment. "How did you know----"

With a steely hand Kirowan thrust me aside, and as the men faced
each other, I saw recognition flare up in Roelocke's face. They made
a strong contrast: Kirowan, tall, pale with some white-hot passion;
Roelocke, slim, darkly handsome, with the saracenic arch of his slim
brows above his black eyes. I realized that whatever else occurred, it
lay between those two men. They were not strangers; I could sense like
a tangible thing the hate that lay between them. "John Kirowan!" softly whispered Roelocke. "You remember me, Yosef Vrolok!" Only an iron control kept Kirowan's
voice steady. The other merely stared at him without speaking. "Years ago," said Kirowan more deliberately, "when we delved in the
dark mysteries together in Budapest, I saw whither you were drifting. I drew back; I would not descend to the foul depths of forbidden
occultism and diabolism to which you sank. And because I would not,
you despised me, and you robbed me of the only woman I ever loved; you
turned her against me by means of your vile arts, and then you degraded
and debauched her, sank her into your own foul slime. I had killed you
with my hands then, Yosef Vrolok--vampire by nature as well as by name
that you are--but your arts protected you from physical vengeance. But
you have trapped yourself at last!" Kirowan's voice rose in fierce exultation. All his cultured restraint
had been swept away from him, leaving a primitive, elemental man,
raging and gloating over a hated foe. "You sought the destruction of James Gordon and his wife, because she
unwittingly escaped your snare; you----"

Roelocke shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "You are mad. I have not
seen the Gordons for weeks. Why blame me for their family troubles?" Kirowan snarled. "Liar as always. What did you say just now when
O'Donnel told you Gordon had been shot? 'When did _she_ kill him?' You were expecting to hear that the girl had killed her husband. Your
psychic powers had told you that a climax was close at hand. You were
nervously awaiting news of the success of your devilish scheme. "But I did not need a slip of your tongue to recognize your handiwork. I knew as soon as I saw the ring on Evelyn Gordon's finger; the ring
she could not remove; the ancient and accursed ring of Thoth-amon,
handed down by foul cults of sorcerers since the days of forgotten
Stygia. I knew that ring was yours, and I knew by what ghastly rites
you came to possess it. And I knew its power. Once she put it on her
finger, in her innocence and ignorance, she was in your power. By your
black magic you summoned the black elemental spirit, _the haunter
of the ring_, out of the gulfs of Night and the ages.