Free The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes by Sterling E. Lanier

faded into silence. I checked my watch and found ten minutes had gone by.
     
                  "Suddenly, as if out of an indefinite distance, I heard his voice. I recognized it instantly, for it was a long quavering call, sonorous and bell-like, very similar to what I had heard when he rescued me in the afternoon. The sound came from far down in the earth, echoing faintly up the dank stairs and died into silence. Then it came again, and when it died, yet again.
     
                  "My heart seemed to stop. I knew that this brave man was summoning something no man had a right to see and calling a council in which no one with human blood in his veins should sit.
     
                  "Silence, utter and complete, followed. 1 could hear nothing, save for an occasional faint drop of water falling somewhere out of my range of vision.
     
                  "I glanced at my watch. Twenty-one minutes had gone by. The minutes seemed to crawl endlessly, meaninglessly. I felt alone and in a strange dream, unable to move, frozen, an atom caught in a mesh beyond my comprehension.
     
                  "Then far away, I heard it, a faint sound. It was faint but regular, and increasing in volume, measured and remorseless. It was a tread, and it was coming up the stair in my direction.
     
                  "I glanced at my watch, thirty-four minutes. It could be my friend, still within his self-appointed limits of time. The step came nearer, nearer still. It was, so far as my straining ear could judge, a single step. It progressed further, and suddenly into the circle of light stepped Nyderstrom.
     
                  "He was alone and as he came up he waved in greeting. He was dripping wet and the light gleamed on his shining body. I threw the door wide and he stepped through.
     
                  "As his head emerged into the light, I stepped back, almost involuntarily. There was a look of exhaltation and wonder on it, such as I have never seen on a human face. The strange green eyes flashed, and there was a faint flush on the high cheekbones. He looked like a man who has seen a vision of Paradise.
     
                  "He walked rather wearily, but firmly, over to the switch box, which he closed and locked. Then he turned to me, still with that blaze of radiance on his face.
     
                  " 'All is well, my friend. They are again at peace with men. They have accepted me and the story of what has happened. All will be well now, with my house, and with me.
     
                  "I stared at him hard, but he said no more and began to divest himself of his incredible regalia. He had one more thing to say, and I can hear it still as if it were yesterday, spoken almost as an afterthought.
     
                  " 'They say the blood of the guardians is getting too thin again. But that also is settled. I have seen my bride.' "
     
    -
     

HIS COAT SO GAY
     
                  There had been a big spread in the newspapers about a British duke going through bankruptcy proceedings and his third divorce simultaneously. The divorce was contested, the evidence was sordid and those giving it equally so. The nobleman in question came out of the whole thing very badly, it being proved, among other things, that he had run up huge debts to tradesmen, knowing damn well he couldn't hope to pay. There was lots more, though, including secret orgies, which seem to have been dirty parties of the sort to have passed quite unnoticed in Los Angeles.
     
                  One of the members tapped his newspaper. A few of us were sitting upstairs in the library after dinner. It was a hot night in New York, but the club was air-conditioned and very pleasant.
     
                  "Good thing," said the man with the paper, "that Mason Williams isn't here to shout about this. He'd love to give General