Читать книгу The Day the World Ended - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 7

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Steep paths, tree-shadowed, led me upward. At one point I could look down upon many roofs of Baden-Baden flooded with the blue amber of the moon rays. At another, I walked through a tunnel, rarely and irregularly patched with dim light.

Ere long, the human element—jazz and laughter—was left behind. I approached the frowning buttresses of the Forest. I met never a soul from the moment I turned aside off the main road. My right hand rested on the butt of the Colt.

Several villas I passed, perched fascinatingly above the paths upon rocky foundations. But in none did any light show.

I wondered if this was the road by which M. Paul had come.

Once, some time before I reached the long, low wall of the cemetery, I paused to light my pipe. In the act of striking a match I hesitated ... and listened.

An echo, I told myself.

Stock still I stood for thirty seconds or more. Then I determined that unhealthy memories had been responsible for the idea that someone was following me.

At last I reached my goal. I could see the guardian trees. A strain of deathless but deathful music, Poe’s “Through an alley Titanic of cypress,” swept eerily across my brain. Beyond a low wall, below me lay the white tenements, pure in moonlight; some stately as perhaps befitted their occupants, others simple, but of equal dignity. The whole quiet acre was mantled lovingly in those gay flowers which make this valley a poet’s garden.

By the gate I paused.

It was locked. But it offered no barrier to an active man.

I was on the point of climbing over—for in this nocturnal expedition I had a definite plan—when I observed, plainly visible in the moonlight, a cigarette lying at my feet.

Perhaps the fact may seem insignificant. Nevertheless I picked it up. It was a common French caporal, and it had not been lighted. Again, perhaps not extraordinary. Such cigarettes could be bought in the town. I slipped it into the pocket of my dinner jacket.

Resting my hands on the gate, I was again about to scale it, when a second circumstance arrested me.

From high above my head, out of the deep blue, came a rhythmic whirring; not that of a flight of birds nor that of an airplane propeller: rather the amplified hum of a mosquito.

I stood still, and stared upward.

For a long time I could detect nothing. The sound had ceased, abruptly. Then ... I saw it.

Descending with a hawklike motion was a gigantic bat!

Literally, horror froze me to the spot. Yard by yard the thing swooped down, silently, effortlessly.

It had a sort of vague luminosity. The incredibly long body as well as the extended wings were of a gleaming purplish-gray colour: I can only liken it to that of a meat fly or common “bluebottle.”

The wing span, I was prepared to swear, was no less than four yards; the legless body of the thing, which, as it descended, resembled less a bat than a monstrous dragon fly, was close upon six feet!

Somewhere among the tombs it settled. I heard, or thought I heard, a dim, muffled rumbling....

I removed my hands from the gate. I had been clutching it grimly. My palms were clammy.

“Merciful heaven!” I whispered. “What does it all mean?”