eyes smarted with fixed staring, their tongues and throats were
parched to desert dryness; yet only after hours of endless watching,
only after the last victim had climbed the steps, did the edge of
terror dull, and a modicum of control return to their bodies.

Stiffly Cliff looked over his shoulder. A faint tinge of gray rimmed
the sea on the eastern horizon.

"Almost daylight," he whispered hoarsely.

Vilma nodded, her gaze still held by that chamber of horror. Cliff
followed the direction of her eyes; and saw Corio standing like a
great bat in his hooded cape close to the far wall. He raised his
four-piped horn to his lips. And the instrument's fourth note crept
through the room.

* * * * *

It was a doleful sound, a cry like the cry Death itself might possess;
yet oddly--and horribly--it was soothing, promising the peace of
endless sleep. And touched by its power, the columns of undead
stiffened, thinned to wraiths, flowed as water flows down the stone
steps, vanished!

The dead-alive--those five vampires in crimson cowls--looked upward
uneasily. The shadows under the roof were graying with the light of
dawn. Cliff could sense their thought. Before sunrise they must be in
their tombs under the castle, to sleep until another night. With one
accord they strode down the stairs, past Corio who had prostrated
himself, and entered a black opening in the wall. With their departure
the altar fire dimmed to a sullen ember.

Corio arose. He was alone in the chamber save for that dead, broken
body lying in a twisted heap at the foot of the stairs, and those
other half-alive wretches stretched out before the altar. Now, Cliff
told himself, was the time for him to get in there at Corio; now was
the time to rescue his friends--but he continued to crouch, unmoving.

Again Corio blew on his silver horn, and a faint cry leaped from
Vilma's tensed lips. The luring note that had drawn her, Cliff thought
hazily; then he thought of nothing save the sound, the sound that
promised him all he could desire. Earth and its dominion, his for the
taking--if he answered that call!... Then even the sound eluded his
senses, and he heard only the promise.... He must answer, must claim
what was rightfully his!

But those half-dead creatures--sight of their stirring steadied his
staggering sanity. Here and there heads lifted and bloodless husks of
bodies tried to rise. In the pallid light they seemed like cor