Read Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1940 for Free Online Page A

biding our time, for
orders are orders until there comes strength for disobedience. And so he seeks
to rule us by happiness. Confess it, Lisa. For a moment you, too, would have
wanted love between us!"
    She gave me her sweet little smile, with unparted lips,
but shyness had covered her again and she did not answer me.
    "We cannot, Lisa," I said earnestly. "It
might be sweet, and for me at least, it would be the easiest course in the world.
But Guaracco's touch upon our love—heaven forefend that we be obligated to
him!"
    "Eloquently said, Leo, my kinsman!" It was the voice of Guaracco. I spun quickly around, ready to strike out at
him. But he was not there. Only his laughter, like the whinnying of a very
cunning and wicked horse was there, coming from the empty air of the room.
    "Do not strive against nothingness, young hero,"
his words admonished me out of nowhere, "and do not anguish me by spurning
my poor, tender ward. She loves you, Leo, and you have just shown that you love
her."
    Such words made it impossible for me to look at Lisa, and
therefore I looked the harder for Guaracco. In the midst of his mockery, I
located the direction of the sound. He spoke from the room's very center, and I
moved in that direction.
    At once he fell silent, but I had come to a pause at the
point where the final syllable still echoed, almost in my ear. I glared around
me, down, and upward.
    A cluster of lamps hung just above my head, held by
several twisted cords to the ceiling. Among the cupped sconces I spied what I
suspected—a little open cone of metal, like a funnel.
    I am afraid that I swore aloud, even in Lisa's presence,
when I saw and knew the fashion of Guaracco's ghostly speaking. But I also acted.
    With a single lunge and grasp I was upon the lamps, and
pulled with all my strength,
    THEY came away and fell crashing, but not they alone. For
with them came a copper tube that had been suspended from cords and concealed there.
I tore it from its place in the ceiling. Beyond that ceiling, I knew, went
another tube that went to the lips of Guaracco, in hiding. I cast the double
handful of lamps upon the planks of the floor.
    Once
again Guaracco laughed, but this time from behind me in the room itself. Again
I turned. A panel of the woodwork had swung outward, and the man himself
stepped through, all black velvet and flaming beard and sneering smile.
    "You are a quick one," he remarked. "I have
fooled many a wise old grandfather with that trick."
    I gathered myself to spring.
    "Now nay, Leo," he warned me quickly. "Do
nothing violent, nothing that you would not have set down as your last act on
earth." His hand lifted, and in it was leveled a pistol, massively but
knowingly made. I stared for a moment, forgetting my rage and protest at his
villainous matchmaking. Surely pistols were not invented so early. . . .
    "It is of my own manufacture," he informed me,
as though he read my mind. "Though short, it throws a ball as hard and as
deep as the longest arquebus in Christendom. Do not force me to shoot you. Kinsman." His lips writhed scornfully over the irony of
our pretended relationship.
    "Shoot if you will," I bade him. "I have
said to Lisa, and I also say to you, that I shall not be led by love into your
deeper hateful service."
    He shook his rufous head with a great show of melancholy. "Alas, young Cousin! You do great and undeserved wrong
to Lisa and to me. Only this morning she was disposed to thank me for the
thought, to scan by way of rehearsal the marriage service. . . . Ah, I have
it!" He laughed aloud. "You do not think that a poor art student like
yourself can support a wife and household."
    He held out his free hand, as warmly smiling as any
indulgent father. "Take no further thought of it. I myself shall provide a
suitable dowry for the bride!"
    Even poor wretched Lisa exclaimed in disgust at his evil
humor, and I started forward suddenly, coming so close to Guaracco that I found
the hard muzzle of his pistol digging into