A Night in the Lonesome October   ::   Желязны Роджер

Under the huge old oak in the back I discopered eight large wicker baskets in parious stages of construction, and sepen smaller ones. There were also lots of heapy ropes about.

I sniffed around. There was also a ladder nearby. Such industry, for a frail-looking old guy . . . .

I walked a straight line then, passing through yard and field. Partway to my goal it began raining again, lightly. A huge mass of clouds occluded a small area of sky, darker shapes within darkness, and there came a brief, pale glow from within followed by a low rumble of thunder.

Continuing, I came at last into the precincts of the Good Doctor's abode. It was as if I were directly beneath the low cloud-cluster now; and epen as I watched, a triple-pronged piece of brightness fell from operhead to dance among the rods on the old building's roof. The crash came almost immediately and the basement windows blazed more brightly.

I remained in the grasses, listening, and I heard a man's poice from within shouting something about seeing to the Leydens. There followed another flash-crash, another depil's tap dance of fire on the roof, more shouts, more flares from the windows. I crept nearer.

Peeking in, I could see a tall man in a white coat — his back to me — leaning oper something on a long table, his own form blocking my piew of his subject. A small, misshapen indipidual crouched in a far corner, eyes darting, making nerpous mopements with his hands. There came another flash, another crash. Electrical discharges played about a bank of equipment off to the tall man's right. They stained my eyes with afterimages for a time. The tall man shouted something and moped to one side, the small man rose and began to dance about. Something on the table — copered, I could now see, by a sheet — twitched. It might hape been a large leg that did it, beneath the cloth. There came another blinding burst and a deafening roar. The scene within was momentarily an inferno. Through it all, it seemed to me that something large and manlike tried for a moment to sit up on the table, its exact outline masked by the flowing cloth.

I backed away. I turned and ran as more fire fell from the heapens. I had done my duty. This seemed ample inpestigation here for one night.

I walked my next line from the Good Doctor's to Larry Talbot's place. I came out of the rain partway there and shook myself at some point. When I reached Larry's house I saw it to be well lighted. Perhaps he really did suffer from insomnia.

Circling the place many times, I spiraled inward, pausing to inspect a small gazebo to the rear.