"God!" Haller snarled. "What ... what is it?"
"Don't know." Ranson felt a queer irritation growing within him. He strode stiffly to the window, peered out. In the darkness, the broad Han canal lay placid; the stars caught in its jet meshes gently drifted toward the bank, shattered on the white marble. Along the embankment were great fragrant clumps of fayeh bushes. It was among these, he decided, that their unknown serenader lay concealed.
Suddenly the elfin melody changed. Fierce, harsh, it rose, until Ranson felt as though a file were rasping his nerves. He knew that he should dash down, seize the invisible musician below ... but logic, facts and duty, all were fading from his mind. The music was a spur, goading him to wild unreasoning anger. The red mists of hate swirled through his brain, a strange unreasoning bloodlust grew with the savage beat of the wild music. Berserk rage sounded in each shivering note and Ranson felt an insane desire to run amok. To inflict pain, to see red blood flow, to kill ... kill! Blindly he whirled, groping for his gun, as the music rose in a frenzied death-wail.
Turning, Ranson found himself face to face with Jared Haller. But the tall flinty magnate was now another person. Primitive, atavistic rage distorted his features, insane murder lurked in his eyes. The music was his master, and it was driving him to frenzy. "Kill!" the weird rhythm screamed, "Kill!" And Jared Haller obeyed. He snatched the flame-gun from his pocket, levelled it at Ranson.
Whether it was the deadly melody outside, or the instinct of self-preservation, Ranson never knew, but he drove at Haller with grim fury. The flame-gun hissed, filling the room with a greenish glare, its beam passing so close to Ranson's hair as to singe it. Ranson came up, grinning furiously, and in a moment both men were struggling, teeth bared in animalistic grins, breath coming in choked gasps, whirling in a mad dance of death as the macabre music distilled deadly poison within their brains.
The end came with startling suddenness. Ranson, twisting his opponent's arm back, felt the searing blast of the flame-gun past his hand. Jared Haller, a ghastly blackened corpse, toppled to the floor.
At that moment the lethal rhythm outside changed abruptly. From the fierce maddening beat of a few minutes before, the chords took on a yearning seductive tone. A call, it seemed, irresistible, soft, with a thousand promises. This was the song the sirens sang to Ulysses, the call of the Pied Piper, the chant of the houris in paradise. It conjured up pictures in Ranson's mind ... pictures of fairyland, of exquisitely beautiful scenes, of women lovely beyond imagination. All of man's hopes, man's dreams, were in that music, and it drew Ranson as a moth is drawn to a flame. The piping of Pan, the fragile fantasies of childhood, the voices of those beyond life.... Ranson walked stiffly toward the source of the music, like a man drugged.
As he approached the window the melody grew louder. The hypnotism of sound, he knew, but he didn't care. It was enthralling, irresistible. Like a sleepwalker he climbed to the sill, stood outlined in the tall window. Twenty feet to the ground, almost certain death ... but Ranson was lost in the golden world that the elfin melody conjured up. He straightened his shoulders, was about to step out.
Then suddenly there was a roar of atomic motors, a flashing of lights. A police boat, flinging up clouds of spray, swept up the canal, stopped. Ranson shook himself, like a man awakening from a nightmare, saw uniformed figures leaping to the bank. From the shadow of the fayeh bushes a slight form sprang, dodged along the embankment. Flame-guns cut the gloom but the slight figure swung to the left, disappeared among the twisting narrow streets. Bathed in cold sweat, Ranson stepped back into the room, where the still, terrible form of Jared Haller lay. Ranson stared at it, as though seeing it for the first time. Outside, there were pounding feet; the canal-patrolmen raced through the house, toward the study. And then, his brain weary as if it had been cudgelled, Ranson slid limply to the floor.