Moon of Skulls by Robert E. Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

Hassim, who had joined us. “Saunter across natural-like. Don’t act suspicious. The place may be watched. The driver knows what to do.”
    Then he and Yussef Ali drifted back into the bar and I took a single step toward the curb.
    “Steephen!”
    A voice that made my heart leap spoke my name! A white hand beckoned from the shadows of a doorway. I stepped quickly there.
    “Zuleika!”
    “Shhh!”
    She clutched my arm, slipped something into my hand; I made out vaguely a small flask of gold.
    “Hide this, quick!” came her urgent whisper. “Don’t come back but go away and hide. This is full of elixir — I will try to get you some more before that is all gone. You must find a way of communicating with me.”
    “Yes, but how did you get this?” I asked amazedly.
    “I stole it from the Master! Now please, I must go before he misses me.”
    And she sprang back into the doorway and vanished. I stood undecided. I was sure that she had risked nothing less than her life in doing this and I was torn by the fear of what Kathulos might do to her, were the theft discovered. But to return to the house of mystery would certainly invite suspicion, and I might carry out my plan and strike back before the Skull-faced One learned of his slave’s duplicity.
    So I crossed the street to the waiting automobile. The driver was a Negro whom I had never seen before, a lanky man of medium height. I stared hard at him, wondering how much he had seen. He gave no evidence of having seen anything, and I decided that even if he had noticed me step back into the shadows he could not have seen what passed there nor have been able to recognize the girl.
    He merely nodded as I climbed in the back seat, and a moment later we were speeding away down the deserted and fog-haunted streets. A bundle beside me I concluded to be the disguise mentioned by the Egyptian.
    To recapture the sensations I experienced as I rode through the rainy, misty night would be impossible. I felt as if I were already dead and the bare and dreary streets about me were the roads of death over which my ghost had been doomed to roam forever. A torturing joy was in my heart, and bleak despair — the despair of a doomed man. Not that death itself was so repellent — a dope victim dies too many deaths to shrink from the last — but it was hard to go out just as love had entered my barren life. And I was still young.
    A sardonic smile crossed my lips — they were young, too, the men who died beside me in No Man’s Land. I drew back my sleeve and clenched my fists, tensing my muscles. There was no surplus weight on my frame, and much of the firm flesh had wasted away, but the cords of the great biceps still stood out like knots of iron, seeming to indicate massive strength. But I knew my might was false, that in reality I was a broken hulk of a man, animated only by the artificial fire of the elixir, without which a frail girl might topple me over.
    The automobile came to a halt among some trees. We were on the outskirts of an exclusive suburb and the hour was past midnight. Through the trees I saw a large house looming darkly against the distant flares of nighttime London.
    “This is where I wait,” said the Negro. “No one can see the automobile from the road or from the house.”
    Holding a match so that its light could not be detected outside the car, I examined the “disguise” and was hard put to restrain an insane laugh. The disguise was the complete hide of a gorilla! Gathering the bundle under my arm I trudged toward the wall which surrounded the Frenton estate. A few steps and the trees where the Negro hid with the car merged into one dark mass. I did not believe he could see me, but for safety’s sake I made, not for the high iron gate at the front, but for the wall at the side where there was no gate.
    No light showed in the house. Sir Haldred was a bachelor and I was sure that the servants were all in bed long ago. I negotiated the wall with ease and stole