Savage Bride

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His Name was Lawrence Kingsley Jones. He was just like any man, like you, like me; and yet, this is what happened to him:

In the room, just darkness, broken by the squared outline of a moonlit window, with its spectral complement lying flat upon the floor beneath it. Outside, silence, a countryside asleep under a star-punctuated sky. Inside and out, both, tension, a brooding hush, as if action were being held in check, waiting for some given signal to start.

Silhouetted against the window was a girl’s hand, holding pinned to one side a curtain that was like smoky chiffon shadow. Just under the hand, the curve of a shoulder could be detected; just over it, the profile of a watching face. But nothing moved, neither hand nor shoulder nor face; they were all motionless, waiting for the signal that had been promised, that was to come.

Suddenly it came. The signal had been given. A car horn blatted just once, in curt interrogation, from the roadway out in the middle distance that ran past the grounds of the house. A splash of yellow, rayed out by the swerving of a pair of headlights, flickered briefly across the darkness in a semicircle, and went out again.

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