Free Priestess of Murder by Arthur Leo Zagat Page A

the
window on which her unseeing stare was fixed, by lightning that split the
sky's black vault with a jagged and blazing fracture. Thunder blast became to
the shocked girl the devastating roar of an enormous beast that leaped on the
house, that battered it, that shook it in huge jaws whose slaver was driving
rain. Storm tumult howled about the old walls, crashed through the empty
rooms, drowned out the whispers that had tortured Leila, drowned out the
whispers in her harried brain. Almost, after the first terrific onslaught,
she was grateful for the fury that would no longer let her hear those
whispers.
    But it could not drown her dreadful thoughts.
    "No," she moaned. "Merciful Lord, no!" as she had moaned when Justin
Monroy's suave attorney had elicited from the bald-pated alienist glib
testimony that had saved his client from the death-chair—and condemned
him to a living hell. "No! It can't be true."
    "I could have done nothing else," the lawyer had answered her reproaches
afterward. "It was your father's axe Foster Corbett found buried in the dead
man's chest. Your father's footprints were traced out of the trampled mess
around the corpse and across the meadow to your back porch. There was the old
boundary line feud between your father and his neighbor, his threats that if
Foster Corbett or his son Stanley or his farm hand, Shean Rourke, stepped on
Monroy land they would regret it. Against that we had only your word that he
was seated in the room with you all evening. And on cross-examination you
admitted that you had fallen asleep."
    The wind pounded against the door as their fists had pounded, coming to
accuse Dad of the awful deed. Foster Corbett, triumphant at last over his
ancient adversary. Stan Corbett—
    Leila's pale lips writhed. Stan! In his arms she had known happiness,
against her lips his lips had thrilled. Defiant of the enmity between their
fathers they had loved. If State Trooper Stanley Corbett had fired his gun
into her heart, he could no more cruelly have slain that love than he had by
saying to her father, "You're under arrest, Mr. Monroy."
    Rain lashed against the window in a spasm of new fury. The world was
ablaze with a flickering electric flare that spilled bluely on the tossing
poplars marching along the tree-marked boundary between the two farms. It was
just there that Shean Rourke's corpse—Something moved
stealthily—vague and black—among the wind-bent trunks!
    Darkness smashed down again! Who was it? Who prowled the storm-drenched
night. The demoniac slayer who had made a ghastly horror of what once had
been a man? The real killer, stalking a new prey? Stalking her? Icy fingers
clutched Leila Monroy's throat, chill prickles tickled her spine. His
blood-thirst still unslaked, inflamed by his terrible crime for which Dad
unjustly had been condemned to terrible expiation, the murderer was creeping
up on her. On her!
    An ancient legend of whispered terror trailed a slimy speculation across
her fear. A name breathed with shudders of apprehension by the gaffers
clustering around the cherry-bellied stove in the village. The Monster of
West Cliff! The traditional phantom that was reputed to haunt the stony
precipice whose sheer rampart rose behind the fertile plain along which, from
north to south, lay the three neighboring farms of the Corbetts, the Monroys
and the Stars! Often of late he had been seen stalking the dark belt of
primeval forest cloaking the base of that cliff, the elusive, appalling
wraith, it was said, of an Indian chief whose tribe had been massacred by the
plain's first settlers. Stalking the ages, waiting for a chance at gruesome
revenge. Every accident, every unexplained disaster of the countryside was
ascribed to him. Was it he who—
    Storm-blaze arched the heavens once more, exploding into momentary
existence the tempest-tormented trees, the downpour-beaten pasture between.
They were deserted, vacant as the house itself.