The Dark Other. Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
He frowned in thought. "I haven't indulged much."
"The Picador?" she suggested. "The music's good, and it's not too expensive. But it's 'most across town, and besides, Saturday nights we'd be sure to run into some of the crowd."
"What of it?"
"I want to dance with you, Nick—all evening. I want to be without distractions."
"Pat, dear! I could kiss you for that."
"You will," she murmured softly.
They moved aimlessly south with the traffic, pausing momentarily at the light-controlled intersections, then whirring again to rapid motion. The girl leaned against his arm silently, contentedly; block after block dropped behind.
"Why so pensive, Honey?" he asked after an interval. "I've never known you so quiet before."
"I'm enjoying my happiness, Nick."
"Aren't you usually happy?"
"Of course, only these last two or three days, ever since our last date, I've been making myself miserable. I've been telling myself foolish things, impossible things, and it's only now that I've thrown off the blues. I'm happy, Dear!"
"I'm glad you are," he said. His voice was strangely husky, and he stared fixedly at the street rushing toward them. "I'm glad you are," he repeated, a curious tensity in his tones.
"So'm I."
"I'll never do anything to make you unhappy, Pat—never. Not—if I can help it."
"You can help it, Nick. You're the one making me happy; please keep doing it."
"I—hope to." There was a queer catch in his voice. It was almost as if he feared something.
"Selah!" said Pat conclusively. She was thinking, "Wrong of me to refer to that accident. After all it was harmless; just a natural burst of passion. Might happen to anyone."
"Where'll we go?" asked Nick as they swung into the tree-shadowed road of Lincoln Park. "We haven't decided that."
"Anywhere," said the girl dreamily. "Just drive; we'll find a place."
"You must know lots of them."
"We'll find a new place; we'll discover it for ourselves. It'll mean more, doing that, than if we just go to one of the old places where I've been with every boy that ever dated me. You don't want me dancing with a crowd of memories, do you?"
"I shouldn't mind as long as they stayed merely memories."
"Well, I should! This evening's to be ours—exclusively ours."
"As if it could ever be otherwise!"
"Indeed?" said Pat. "And how do you know what memories I might choose to carry along? Are you capable of inspecting my mental baggage?"
"We'll check it at the door. You're traveling light tonight, aren't you?"
"Pest!" she said, giving his cheek an impudent vicious pinch. "Nice, pleasurable pest!"
He made no answer. The car was idling rather slowly along Michigan Boulevard; half a block ahead glowed the green of a traffic light. Faster traffic flowed around them, passing them like water eddying about a slow floating branch.
Suddenly the car lurched forward. The amber flame of the warning light had flared out; they flashed across the intersection a split second before the metallic click of the red light, and a scant few feet before the converging lines of traffic from the side street swept in with protesting horns.
"Nick!" the girl gasped. "You'll rate yourself a traffic ticket! Why'd you cut the light like that?"
"To lose your guardian angel," he muttered in tones so low she barely understood his words.
Pat glanced back; the lights of a dozen cars showed beyond the barrier of the red signal.
"Do you mean one of those cars was following us? What on earth makes you think that, and why should it, anyway?"
The other made no answer; he swerved the car abruptly off the avenue, into one of the nondescript side streets. He drove swiftly to the corner, turned south again, and turned again on some street Pat failed to identify—South Superior or Grand, she thought. They were scarcely a block from the magnificence of Michigan Avenue and its skyscrapers, its brilliant lights, and its teeming night traffic, yet here they moved down a deserted dark thoroughfare, a street lined with ramshackle wooden houses intermingled with mean little shops.
"Nick!" Pat exclaimed. "Where are we going?"
The low voice sounded. "Dancing," he said.
He brought the car to the curb; in the silence as the motor died, the faint strains of a mechanical piano sounded. He opened the car door, stepped around to the sidewalk.
"We're here," he said.
Something metallic in his tone drew Pat's eyes to his face. The eyes that returned her stare were the bloody orbs of the demon of last Wednesday night!
8
Gateway to Evil
Pat stared curiously at the apparition but made no move to alight from the vehicle. She was conscious of no fear, only a sense of wonder and perplexity. After all, this was merely Nick, her own harmless, adoring Nick, in some sort of mysterious masquerade, and she felt full confidence in her ability to handle him under any circumstances.
"Where's here?" she said, remaining motionless in her place.
"A place to dance," came the toneless reply.
Pat eyed him; a street car rumbled past, and the brief glow from its lighted windows swept over his face. Suddenly the visage was that of Nick; the crimson glare of the eyes was imperceptible, and the features were the well-known appurtenances of Nicholas Devine, but queerly tensed and strained.
"A trick of the light," she thought, as the street car lumbered away, and again a faint gleam of crimson appeared. She gazed curiously at the youth, who stood impassively returning her survey as he held the door of the car. But the face was the face of Nick, she perceived, probably in one of his grim moods.
She transferred her glance to the building opposite which they had stopped. The strains of the mechanical piano had ceased; blank, shaded windows faced them, around whose edges glowed a subdued light from within. A drab, battered, paintless shack, she thought, dismal and unpleasant; while she gazed, the sound of the discordant music recommenced, adding, it seemed, the last unprepossessing item.
"It doesn't look very attractive, Nick," she observed dubiously.
"I find it so, however."
"Then you've been here?"
"Yes."
"But I thought you said you didn't know any place to go."
"This one hadn't occurred to me—then."
"Well," she said crisply, "I could have done as well as this with my eyes closed. It doesn't appeal to me at all, Nick."
"Nevertheless, here's where we'll go. You're apt to find it—interesting."
"Look here, Nicholas Devine!" Pat snapped, "What makes you think you can bully me? No one has ever succeeded yet!"
"I said you'd find it interesting." His voice was unchanged; she stared at him in complete bafflement.
"Oh, Nick!" she exclaimed in suddenly softer tones. "What difference does it make? Didn't I say anywhere would do, so we went together?" She smiled at him. "This will do if you wish, though really, Honey, I'd prefer not."
"I do wish it," the other said.
"All right, Honey," said Pat the faintest trace of reluctance in her voice as she slipped from the car. "I stick to my bargains."
She winced at the intensity of his grip as he took her arm to assist her. His fingers were like taunt wires biting into her flesh.
"Nick!" she cried. "You're hurting me! You're bruising my arm!"
He released her; she rubbed the spot ruefully, then followed him to the door of the mysterious establishment. The unharmonious jangle of