BRIGHT

SENTINELS

If you're fortune-hunter, never never marry a Limquat!

by CHARLES A. STEARNS

IT WAS RUTHIE MAY'S misfortune, that her fifth, the last husband, turned out to be a Limquat.

Had it not been for the peculiar habits of that species, Ruthie might have gone her merry way forever; but perhaps the law of averages was against her. There are more Limquats upon the face of the earth than most people realize. They look, speak and act like humans; their flesh is soft and viable. Limquats, however, have one definitive characteristic that is shared in common only with high-fashion models and Indian statesmen.

They do not eat.

Limquats claim to be direct descendants of Apollo; however it is considered more likely that they are the degenerate spawn of some ancient, pre-Cambrian star race which once settled on Earth. They also claim immortality, but, as a matter of fact, Limquats breed and reproduce by fission once every- five hundred years or so, and as often as not the adventure kills them just as dead as it would you or me. You may be sure that any trafficking with human beings is just for fun.

None of this would have been intelligible to Ruthie May, even if she had known, for she was all too human, and played the lonely hearts columns the way some people play the horses — single-mindedly, but with more success.

At forty-five, Ruthie May still managed, to be a svelte blonde of thirty-six. A perfect thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-five-and--a-half.

Her technique was not complex. She placed her little advertisements in the proper magazines — demure, ladylike ads which could end in the most torrid sort of personal correspondence. And each time, it was love.

Not, as sister Lavinia said, "a wicked, sinful and mercenary business." Poor Lavinia lived in a chaste, spinster cottage and was incredibly fatuous. Her life, intellect and libido were sublimated to the efforts of raising hollyhocks and the moral standards of the community.

Actually, Ruthie May had given a great deal to each of her husbands, and asked only a little in return. She was an excellent cook. She never scolded or complained about cigar ashes on her rugs. She insisted only upon marital fidelity and prompt payment of the insurance premiums.

Bride's white pointed up her wonderful complexion while widow's black flattered a figure that needed no accentuation. And since she was almost always wearing one or the other, it was no wonder, people said, that Ruthie May could attract men like Arnold Bassett.

AS FOR RUTHIE, she had fallen deeply in love with Arnold the moment she set eyes upon him at the railway station. He had proposed by mail, and she, lonely since her fourth husband's death six months ago, had accepted.

He had stepped down from the Pullman, a tall, ascetic-looking man in a long, black cloak of foreign cut. The gray hair, stern, aquiline visage and dark eyes were more striking, even, than they had seemed in the picture. And from the moment those restless, black eyes met and rested on hers, there could no longer be any doubt that they were meant for each other.

He had taken both her bands in his own, and looked at her so intensely that she thought that she might drown in the bottomless depths of those strange eyes.

"You are more beautiful than I had dreamed," he said. "My Ruth, my dear Ruthie! Believe me, when I say that DuBarry could not hold a candle to your beauty." He had a curious, lisping accent, cultured and compelling, yet faintly suggestive of the alien.

"You're just saying that!" Ruthie whispered.

"Indeed not," Arnold said a bit morosely. "I happen to know. Well, well! This is the sort of quiet village that I had hoped for, my dear. I should not be surprised if it makes a new man of me. Possibly even two of them. But we won't go into that. Are you willing to go through with the ceremony at once."

"Tonight!" she said, and laid her head upon his lapel.

"You poor, young creature!"

"I'm not young, Arnold. Truly, I'm over thirty-six."

"Pah!" he said. "In my day I have had quite enough of ingenues. It wants half a century, at the very least, for a woman's character to develop."

"You're so right," Ruthie May simpered. "And do you know what, Arnold? I feel as if we'd known each other that long, instead of two weeks."

They had gotten into the station wagon, and he leaned over to put his arms around her. "My darling," he said simply, "we have known each other forever. In whatever age, in whatever station your essence may have lived in the past, I was there too. And you may be sure that we found each other."

Arnold Bassett—that was not his real name, of course—was counting upon a phenomenon well known to Limquats. One may make the most bald revelation of fact to a human being without giving away any secrets. They never listen anyway.

Ruthie May took the wedding license and two other papers from the glove compartment.

"What are those?" he said.

"Our insurance policies," Ruthie May said. "When I accepted you, Arnold, I got to thinking. My father left sister Lavinia and me with very little more than the houses over our heads. I got to thinking. One ought to leave something to one's dear husband if she should happen to die. So I took out these policies on both of us."

Arnold laughed shortly. It was almost a bark. "That was thoughtful," he said, "but I shall live a long time. A long, long time."

"We never know," Ruthie said piously. "We truly never know."

THE MORNING came, and it was a bright, peaceful June morning. Ruthie arose and dressed leisurely. Her husband was still asleep, and she kissed him quietly and went out into the yard to lean on the back fence and watch the sun come up over the hollow.

Lavinia was already at work in her flower garden. Her head and shoulders were covered with a shawl and she moved slowly with her sprinkling can, up and down the rows. Lavinia had to move slowly. She had a very bad heart. A heart so timorous and weak that travel, excitement or amorous adventure were impossible for poor Lavinia.

And so she had remained at home with her flowers and become, with the passing years, a little strange. Just now she was gently chiding a' holly hock for failing to stand at attention.

Ruthie May opened the garden gate and went in, stepping on a snapdragon in the process.

The creaking gate gave her presence away. Lavinia turned with a cry. She dropped to her knees beside the snapdragon and tried to straighten it. But it was discouraged, and would not respond.

"Oh, it'll be all right," Ruthie May said.

"It will die," Lavinia said. She always spoke in hollow, impressive tones, like a medium.

"I'm married," Ruthie May stated.

"I always fancy that I hear a supersonic scream of anguish when they die," Lavinia whispered. "Mandrakes scream. Why not snapdragons?" Lavinia was an ardent spiritualist and had frequent contact with the Other Side.

"His name is Arnold—Arnold Bassett."

Lavinia got to her feet. In her face there dwelt a classicality of features, and in her lovely blue eyes, a serenity that Ruthie May long had secretly envied.

"Poor, poor George," Lavinia said.

George had been Ruthie May's fourth husband. He had been kind to Lavinia. Too kind.

Ruthie May smiled without a sign of humor. "You liked George, didn't you, Lavinia?"

Lavinia's eyes were large. She seemed to be in a trance. "I saw George's spirit last evening," she said. "He was crossing the garden toward the churchyard on the hill. I often see him there. He never steps on my snapdragons."

"George was always careful," Ruthie May said. "But he snored something terrible. You'll never know how he used to snore, Lavinia."

"Sometimes Roger passes this way, too," Lavinia said. "But not often. Roger usually takes the back way, back of the chicken house."

Roger had been Ruthie May's second husband.

Lavinia suddenly fixed her with a terrible stare. "Desecration of the spirits is a wicked, wicked thing," she said. "Even the pastoral spirits that hang around gardens and woodlots. They are mischievous, but not really bad. You must not laugh at them."

"Oh, I don't want to hear any more of your nonsense about spirits," Ruthie May said, her good humour suddenly gone.

"What nonsense?" said a voice directly behind her.

IT WAS ARNOLD. He was wearing an old figured wrapper and a quaint skullcap which would have looked ridiculous on a human being.

Still, he was impressively handsome for seven o'clock in the morning, and Ruthie May's heart swelled with pride.

"Arnold dear," Ruthie May said, "this is my sister, Lavinia. She believes in pastoral spirits."

Arnold positively jumped. "Who told her about them?" he demanded.

"Whatever is the matter with you, Arnold?" Ruthie May said.

"Nothing — nothing," he said. His smoldering black eyes were boring into Lavinia. Some hidden, terrible question was in those eyes. But Lavinia's own guileless, blue-eyed mien seemed to present no answer.

"The pastoral spirits cannot harm you," Lavinia said gently. "Except for the dryads, I mean. You have to keep your eye on them."

"Yes, I know," Arnold said.

"Is it possible—it is barely possible that we have met—but no, I suppose not." The way he was looking through Lavinia made Ruthie May uncomfortable, even though it did not appear to bother Lavinia in the slightest degree.

"Come on, Arnold," she said rather petulantly. "Let's go have breakfast."

"A hack that I once knew, said, 'There are more things in heaven and earth...' You go ahead, my dear. I'll be along later."

"But your eggs will be ready in three minute s," Ruthie May protested.

"I shall want no breakfast."

"Nonsense," Ruthie said, and her lower lip quivered. "You need breakfast. It's the most im^portant meal of the day." She tugged at his arm a little. "Lavinia, stop staring that way. It's very rude."

With a sudden movement, Arnold piled loose from her. "There is one thing, my dear," he said, "which must be understood. I will not be buffed or nagged by a woman. I am a nervous, temperamental being, and nagging affects my basal metabolism. I go to pieces. Now run along and do not wait for I never eat any thing at all. For breakfast, I mean."

Ruthie May stared at him, speechless with indignation. Well, I never! she thought. And she never had. Not even Linus, her first husband who had delirium tremens, had talked to her in this way. At least, not on their honeymoon.

She started back to the house, with tight-pressed lips and a steadily growing refrigeration of her sympathy cells.

"Please don't forget to close the gate," Lavinia called after her. "We must not let the dryads in."

"Oh shut up!" Ruthie May yelled, and fled, tears streaming down her cheeks.

RUTHIE MAY was essentially a woman of action, however, and she did not brood for more than two or three minutes.

Instead, she came to the sober, sane realization that Arnold must be dispatched at once. He had goaded her beyond endurance and, indeed, had proved to be no better than all the others.

And it hurt desperately, because she loved him so!

Not knowing that Arnold was a Limquat, she was able to set to the task with a better heart than would have been possible had she known of the difficulties that lay ahead.

As it was, she made coffee in the percolator. Percolator coffee was one of her specialties, and she invariably made it good and strong.

There was a small, brown bottle in the medicine cabinet, labeled Paregoric. It contained something a good deal more interesting than harmless paregoric. It contained a powerful barbiturate.

The barbital, however, produced merely an instant, painless narcosis, and Ruthie May desired something with more character this time.

After all, she was a woman scorned, and the expression of her vengeance could not be effected merely by causing Arnold's extinction. He must suffer. It was just and proper that he suffer as she was suffering.

And so, after some deliberation, she chose the prussic acid. The symptoms of prussic acid she knew well enough, and they were gratifying. Fixed, staring eyes with dilated pupils, frothing at the mouth, lockjaw, bright red and purple spots on various parts of the body, particularly under the fingernails. Intense agony.

And good strong coffee could mask the taste of bitter almonds.

She seasoned the coffee with a generous teaspoonful, and met Arnold at the door with a kiss.

He was contrite.

"My darling Ruthie," he said, "forgive me for being harsh with you."

"Oh, don't let it bother you," Ruthie said. "What's done is done, anyway. I suppose Lavinia has been boring you with those silly witch stories of hers."

He stiffened abruptly. "Lavinia is psychic," he said. "Only human, perhaps, but psychic, and even we do not sneeze at such powers in human beings."

"Of course you're right," Ruthie May said. "I have made you some nice hot coffee, Arnold dear."

"I really do not—" began Arnold.

"Just one cup!" pleaded Ruthie May sweetly. "And you don't ever have to eat breakfast if you don't want to."

"Well, I never have," he said, and picked up the cup and saucer. He started to put it to his lips and stopped. "What about lunch and dinner?"

"My goodness," Ruthie May said, "everyone has to eat sometime."

"I do not," he said, and set the cup down.

"Very well, dear," Ruthie May said hastily. "No lunch, no dinner. Not until you want it. Now will you drink your coffee?"

"I can't do it. I am sure that it would upset my metabolism.

"Milk then?"

"No, I think not. Listen carefully, my dear, to what I am about to say. I shall try to make our marriage work, but you must make two concessions. The first is that I must not be prevailed upon to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. It would not be good for me. I should be ill, and I know you wouldn't want that."

"And the other thing?"

"I have left a small, black box beneath the dressing table in our bedroom. You are not to touch it or disturb it. It would be dangerous for you. You must trust me, and perhaps some day I shall be able to explain to you. Indeed, I may introduce you to a life and a knowledge far older and more profound than anything of which you have ever dreamed."

Ruthie May took the coffee pot into the kitchen and emptied it down the drain. There is nothing more unpalatable than cold coffee.

BY THE END of the week, Arnold still had not eaten anything, and she thought she had begun to see a glimmer of the truth. Arnold Bassett was either a detective set upon her trail by one of her disgruntled former in-laws, or else he had become suspicious, and was raiding the icebox while she slept.

She made up her mind that she would not go mad. Instead, she would set a closer watch for another week.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nothing happened, but on Thursday night, shortly before midnight, Arnold got out of bed and went over to the black box.

She sated her eyes and continued to snore softly, but her heart was beating so furiously that it seemed he would surely hear it.

Arnold looked very old in the subdued light of the night lamp. He opened the box and took out a flask that glowed with a golden-white life of its own. He uncorked it and held it up so that a single, radiant drop fell upon his tongue.

The change which occurred in him was subtle, but pronounced. He became straighter, his carriage at once youthful and springy. The agelines in his face seemed to diminish. He replaced the stopper and flash, hiccupped, and came back to bed.

Ruthie May fell asleep, dreaming of wedding marches, marching hollyhocks and chemical formulae.

In the days that followed she observed no signs of actual profligacy between Arnold and Lavinia.

However, Lavinia had begun to leave her shawl in the house when she worked in her garden, and Arnold and she often could be found leaning on the back fence, talking in low tones.

The old fool.

The die was cast, however. Her mind was made up, and only the opportunity was wanting.

It came one day when Arnold drove into, the city to hear an Indian diplomat give a speech at the Grange Hall. Arnold seemed to believe that the Indian might be someone that he had known a long time ago.

Ruthie May went at once to get the black box. It was harder to open than she had expected, but eventually she was able to release its ingenious locking mechanism and get at the flask inside.

The luminosity was not from the flask, but from its contents, which shone through the transparent container. It was a white-fire liquid, warm to the touch, and it tingled on the tongue. She was careful not to swallow any of it.

She decided that it must be a potent vitamin concentrate. Its usefulness in her plan, however, derived from its appearance. She knew of one other substance which looked exactly like this concentrate, and that substance was far from being succulent.

When Arnold Bassett returned that afternoon his decline, though he did not yet know it, had already begun, and it was gradual and relentless.

In three weeks he took to his bed, and could not get up.

Ruthie had called a doctor, and was sitting at Arnold's bedside. "How do you feel now, Arnold dear?" she asked.

"I can't move my arms or legs," he gasped. "I can't breathe. I do not understand what is happening to me. At first I thought it might be a fission, but now it seems that I am getting vastly older instead. My dear, I am afraid that I shall not be with you much longer."

"I'll try to be brave," Ruthie May said, and reached for a chocolate.

"There is only one chance. Go and get the flask from the black box."

"But you told me not to touch it."

"Hurry!"

She went and got it, and poured a liberal portion down his throat. He gasped weakly for a moment, then lay pale and limp upon his pillow. She thought that he was gone.

Presently he revived, however, and opened his eyes.

She gave him a little more. "Is that better?" Ruthie May said.

"Strange ...doesn't seem to help...bit..."

"Did you think it would?"

"Should have told you, my dear. I am...nonhuman... must have life-prolonging ambrosia. Potent elixir... in flask."

"Not now, there isn't," Ruthie May said.

DOCTOR LUCAS came an hour later, and though he was somewhat drunker than usual, he was still able to walk from his car to the house and sign the death certificate.

Arnold had waited until he arrived to die, and Ruthie May was very grateful, for a post mortem might have revealed that Arnold was so saturated with white phosphorus that it was a positive wonder he didn't glow in the dark.

Actually, although she did not know it, the effect of the poison had been practically negligible. It was only the deprivation of the elixir, coupled with that continued and frantic dosage, which had taken its toll.

The undertaker came and got Arnold and brought him back the same afternoon in a plush coffin. Ruthie was old-fashioned and sentimental; she believed in wakes.

A few neighbors came late in the afternoon, eyed Ruthie May's tears and black lace cynically, and left again. Only Lavinia came for a moment to shed a tear over the remains of Arnold Bassett, and then the lid was shut and fastened forever.

The undertaker presented his bill and left. It was very quiet and very oppressive.

Ruthie May left Arnold to his dreamless sleep, went out and got into her station wagon, and drove to town to see the insurance agent.

Having retired for the night he was not happy to see her.

"I am calling about my husband's insurance. Arnold Bassett. He passed away this morning. I thought you might like to know."

"I was dying to hear about it," the agent, an irritable bald-head man, said. "Are you Lavinia?"

"No, of course not. You remember me—Ruthie May. I was his wife."

"Then I'm sorry to inform you, Mrs. Bassett, that your husband changed his beneficiary a week ago. He was planning divorce, he said. The new beneficiary is your sister, Lavinia."

Looking back, Ruthie May could see that the affair had been going on right under her nose all of the time.

Twice, when she had returned from the village, Arnold had been coming through the gate from the garden, but she had not guessed that it could have progressed so far in this short time. Now she was doubly glad of what she had done.

The funeral expenses must be met, however, and there was not much money in the cookie jar in the pantry. She had lived high after George's death, and since her tastes were discriminating, she had spent a lot of money. Now she must be dependent upon the largesse of Lavinia.

Lavinia was fussy and would demand an exact accounting for every cent that Ruthie May spent. There was always the possibility of putting Lavinia away in an asylum, of course, but she had already tried this two or three times, and it had never come to much.

Ruthie May had a few bleak moments before she rallied. Something had to be done with Lavinia. That was the problem. With her out of the way, the insurance would revert to nearest kin.

And presently the plan was born, slowly, deliberately, horrifyingly, in her mind.

She toyed with it awhile, speculatively. It seemed sound. She went over it, step by step, developing the details, and each detail, in its turn, was deemed plausible and safe. There could be no slip-up. It must be perfectly executed.

When she arrived home she lost no time in finding a screw-driver and setting to work on the casket. She removed three dozens brass screws and lifted the lid.

Arnold was lying there, splendid as life.

"I could spit in your face," Ruthie May said, "but I've got a better idea."

IT WAS ALREADY quite dark when Ruthie May went to the woodshed. It was after nine o'clock, and she knew that Lavinia would be long since sound asleep. Nothing less than a tornado could awaken Lavinia.

She found a wheelbarrow, a piece of oilcloth and a spade. These she took to the back door and left them there while she went in to get Arnold out of the casket.

He was not very heavy, but it took her ten minutes to get him out of the door and into the wheelbarrow. His feet dragged along the ground unceremoniously, but that was nothing.

She covered him with the oilcloth, put the spade on top, and wheeled her burden along the stone walk until she came to Lavinia's garden fence. She opened the gate.

The wheelbarrow scraped through narrowly, and she pushed it between rows of hollyhocks until she reached the southwest end of the garden. Here was the corner which Lavinia always reserved for her annual planting of Chinese flags. For some reason Lavinia always planted the flags in this exact spot, on the same day of the year—Flag Day—and the flags responded in identical manner each time by refusing to come up.

Flag Day was day after tomorrow.

Ruthie May dumped Arnold on the ground, spread the oilcloth out beside him, and went to work.

First she carefully removed the sod from a two-by-six foot area. These squares of sod were carefully placed upon the oilcloth, and then she began to dig in earnest. Soon the wheelbarrow was filled with soft loam, and she had excavated a trench two feet in depth at one end, and a little over a foot at the other. At the upper end she had excavated a trench two feet in depth at one end, and a little over a foot at the other. At the upper end she struck an ancient tile and chipped it, but that did not matter.

She placed Arnold in the trench, feet downhill, replaced a little dirt, and began to fit the sod back in place. At last only a single square of raw earth was left, and here Arnold's pale face looked up, like chiseled marble, at the moon. She replaced the last piece of sod.

Lavinia's first shovelful of earth would be certain to turn up this very bit of sod, and though Ruthie May, personally, was not squeamish, she was aware that the effect on Lavinia would be profound. Lavinia's weak heart would have its rest at last.

Afterward, it would only remain to replace the sod on Arnold, and call Doctor Lucas, who would be too late as usual.

So considering, Ruthie May took her wheelbarrow-load of dirt, her oilcloth and spade, and went home. And the rows of hollyhocks, like impotent sentinels of Lavinia, seemed to watch her in grudging admiration as she went through the gate.

Ruthie May deposited the dirt behind the garage, restored the tools, and went into the house.

SHE TURNED on the lamp in the front room, but the house still seemed dark and cheerless. It was a curious thing, a maddening thing, but she still had the feeling that there was something more that must be done. Something she had forgotten. Some slight evidence that she had overlooked, perhaps. But there was nothing.

She got her box of chocolates and a copy of Wide Screen Movie Monthly and sat down to read.

She could not concentrate. The house was stuffy and too empty; it seemed to be closing in upon her. She knew what she would do.

She would go away from here—at once. Right after the funeral. Right after it happened. The magazine had given her the idea; she would go to Hollywood. There must be enough money for a bus ticket, and to last her until the insurance came through.

But she remembered the look in Arnold's eyes just before he died. It was as though he had sworn his undying vengeance with those terrible, bottomless, black orbs.

"You are just being a silly girl, Ruthie May," she said aloud.

She went into the pantry and got down the cookie jar. It amounted to a hundred and seventy-three dollars. Enough.

Then she saw the elixir. It was sitting on the top shelf in a fruit jar. She had put it there and forgotten it.

She could not leave it there. Then she emptied the flask.

Thoughtlessly, she poured it into the sink.

The elixir flowed down the drain to the sewer tile. Then it trickled along the tile until it came to a place where someone had inadvertently broken the tile, and allowed it to become clogged with dirt. At this point it began to soak into the earth, and upward by capillary action. It is amazing how far a half-pint of ambrosia will go.

Ruthie had begun to pack her suitcase. It did not take her ten minutes, but that was too long. While she was packing, the kitchen door seemed to blow open and a cool wind swept through the house.

Investigation revealed that the kitchen door was indeed open. She closed it.

The kitchen was dark, but she felt, somehow, that she was not alone. She stool very still for half a minute, listening.

"Is that you, Lavinia?" she said.

Someone said, "You left the gate open."

And she turned to look, but there was something very black and very tall, and smelling of damp earth, standing between her and the window. There was really no place to run.

"Not that gate, my dear," he said.

THE END