The horror expert

Ten minutes later Helen Lathrup sat alone in the most private of private offices, a sanctuary where interruptions were infrequent even when permitted, and intrusion under other circumstances absolutely forbidden.

The office was in all respects in harmony with the prestige and dignity of an editorial director of a nationally famous group of magazines. Large and paneled in oak, its main furnishings consisted of a massive oak desk, three chairs, one facing the desk, and a circular table with a glass top and nothing on it at all.

If the décor was a little on the severe side and there was something distinctly unbending about the woman who now sat facing the door upon which, in gilt lettering, her name was inscribed, a visitor entering the office for the first time would not have felt ill at ease.

Not, at any rate, if that visitor happened to be a man. Great feminine beauty, however much it may be combined with qualities intimidating to the male, is seldom intimidating at first glance. The glow, the warmth, the splendor of it is too instant and overwhelming. Even when it is allied with a harsh coldness which is quick to manifest itself, it is so very easy to believe that a miracle will occur, that secret delights are in store for any man bold enough to make light of obstacles which are certain to prove transitory ... if just the right technique is applied.

Though it is impossible to judge beauty by any rigid set of rules, though tastes may differ and the experts disagree, it is doubtful if one man in a hundred would have failed to be dazzled by the absolute perfection of Helen Lathrup's face and figure. She had only to cross a room, walking slowly and with no accentuation of movements which were as natural to her as breathing, to transport men into another world, where the sun was brighter, the peaks higher, and unimaginable delights awaited them.

Even in moments when she herself felt empty and drained, completely unstirred by the close presence of a man, there were few of her suitors who would not have stopped before a door marked "Danger--Enter at Your Peril," pressed a button, and walked into a room as chill and depressing as the gas chamber at San Quentin, solely for the pleasure of keeping a dinner date with her.

By whatever yardstick her friends or enemies might choose to judge her by, Helen Lathrup remained what she was--an extraordinary woman. And by the same token, extraordinary in her profession, with accomplishments which inspired admiration and respect, however grudgingly accorded.

There was another aspect of Helen Lathrup's personality which she seldom talked about and which made her unusual in a quite different way.

At times, her thoughts would take a very morbid turn; she would fall into restless brooding and seek out a kind of diversion which most people looked upon as pleasurable only when it remained completely in the realm of entertainment. To her, it was something more.

The darkly sinister and terrifying in literature and art disturbed and fascinated her. She had long been a reader of supernatural horror stories and there were a dozen writers in that chilling branch of literature to whose work she returned again and again. Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, M. R. James and H. P. Lovecraft--all supreme masters in the art of evoking terror--occupied an entire shelf in her library, along with scholarly studies of witchcraft, medieval demonology and Satanism.

Another shelf was entirely taken up with modern psychological studies of crime in its more pathological and gruesome aspects, including those often brutal departures from normalcy in the sphere of sex that appall even the most sophisticated minds.

She never missed an outstanding screen production of a terrifying nature. Mystery films which dealt with criminal violence in a somber setting never failed to excite her. The psychopathic young killer, haunted, desperate, self-tormented and guilt-ridden, had a strange fascination for her, whether in books or on the screen, and she experienced a pleasure she would not have cared to discuss as she watched the net closing in, the noose swinging nearer ... and then darkness and despair and the terrible finality of death itself.

But always there was a price which had to be paid. With the ending of the picture or the closing of the book a reaction would set in, and she would sit shivering, fearful, visualizing herself, not in the role of the furtive, tormented slayer--even when that slayer was a woman--but as the victim.

The victim of the very violence she had welcomed and embraced, with wildly beating heart, when she had thought of it as happening to someone else.

She could not have explained this aberration even to herself, and the impulse to succumb to it, to make herself agonizingly vulnerable by seeking out a certain movie or a certain book, would come upon her only at times.

This Friday morning, however, Helen Lathrup was in an entirely different mood.

She was almost trembling now in her impatience to get on with the day's work, to make every minute count, precisely as she had determined to do on the long, frustrating ride from her home to the office.

She picked up the mail which lay before her, looked through it, and leaned toward the intercom to summon her secretary. The door of the office opened then, and someone she was not expecting to see until later in the morning, someone whose presence at that exact moment was distasteful to her, stared at her unsmilingly and closed the door again very firmly by backing up against it.

The intruder made no attempt to apologize for the outrageousness of such behavior--made no effort, in fact, to speak at all.

The gun in the intruder's hand was long-barreled, black and ugly-looking and capped by a silencer. It was pointed directly at her. The intruder's eyes were half-lidded, but when the light in the room shifted a little the lids went up, disclosing a cold rage and a firmness of purpose that told Helen Lathrup at once that she was in the deadliest kind of danger.

It was not in her nature to remain immobile when a threat confronted her. Neither was it in her nature to remain silent.

She rose slowly, keeping her eyes trained on the intruder's face, displaying no visible trace of fear. Her voice, when she spoke, was coldly contemptuous and tinged with anger.

"Why are you pointing that gun at me?" she demanded. "What do you want? I'm not afraid of you."

Still without uttering a word the intruder grimaced vindictively, took a slow step forwards, raised the gun a little and shot Helen Lathrup through the head.

The gun's recoil was violent, the report quite loud. A silenced gun is not silent. It can be heard from a considerable distance. But the intruder appeared either willing to accept that risk, or had discounted it in advance as of no great importance.

Helen Lathrup did not cry out, and the impact of the bullet did not hurl her backwards, for the bullet passed completely through her head and the weapon had been fired at no more than medium-close range.