Weird Tales_ Volume 1_ Number 4_ June_ 1923_ The unique magazine Various 65550 downloads.pdf

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Number 4, June, 1923: The unique magazine
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Title: Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 4, June, 1923: The unique
magazine

Author: Various

Editor: Edwin Baird

Release date: December 22, 2022 [eBook #69608]
Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Rural Publishing Corporation,
1923

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEIRD TALES,
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4, JUNE, 1923: THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE ***

Transcriber’s Note: Stories that were originally split over pages, with adverts and/or other stories
in between, have been recombined.

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WEIRD TALES
The Unique Magazine
EDWIN BAIRD, Editor
Published monthly by THE RURAL PUBLISHING CORPORATION, 325 N. Capitol Ave., Indianapolis, Ind.
Application made for entry as second-class matter at the postoffice at Indianapolis, Indiana. Single copies, 25
cents. Subscription, $3.00 a year in the United States; $3.50 in Canada. The publishers are not responsible for
manuscripts lost in transit. Address all manuscripts and other editorial matters to WEIRD TALES, 854 N. Clark
St., Chicago, Ill. The contents of this magazine are fully protected by copyright and publishers are cautioned
against using the same, either wholly or in part.
Copyright, 1923, by The Rural Publishing Corporation.

VOLUME 1 25 Cents NUMBER 4

Contents for June, 1923

Sixteen Thrilling Short Stories
Two Complete Novelettes
Two Two-Part Stories
Interesting, Odd and Weird Happenings
THE EVENING WOLVES PAUL ELLSWORTH TRIEM 5
An Exciting Tale of Weird Events

DESERT MADNESS HAROLD FREEMAN MINERS 19
A Fanciful Novel of the Red Desert

THE JAILER OF SOULS HAMILTON CRAIGIE 32
A Powerful Novel of Sinister Madmen that Mounts to an Astounding Climax

JACK O’ MYSTERY EDWIN MacLAREN 49
A Modern Ghost Story

OSIRIS ADAM HULL SHIRK 55
A Weird Tale of an Egyptian Mummy

THE WELL JULIAN KILMAN 57
A Short Story

THE PHANTOM WOLFHOUND ADELBERT KLINE 60
A Spooky Yarn by the Author of “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes”

THE MURDERS IN THE RUE EDGAR ALLAN POE
MORGUE 64
A Masterpiece of Weird Fiction

THE MOON TERROR A. G. BIRCH 72
Final Thrilling Installment of the Mysterious Chinese Moon Worshipers

THE MAN THE LAW FORGOT WALTER NOBLE BURNS 81
A Remarkable Story of the Dead Returned to Life

THE BLADE OF VENGEANCE GEORGE WARBURTON
LEWIS 86
A Powerful, Gripping Story Well Told

THE GRAY DEATH LOUAL B. SUGARMAN 91
Horrifying and Incredible Tale of the Amazon Valley

THE VOICE IN THE FOG HENRY LEVERAGE 95
Another Thriller by the Author of “Whispering Wires”

THE INVISIBLE TERROR HUGH THOMASON 100
An Uncanny Tale of the Jungle

THE ESCAPE HELEN ROWE HENZE 103
A Short Story

THE SIREN TARLETON COLLIER 105
A Storiette That Is “Different”

THE MADMAN HERBERT HIPWELL 107
A Night of Horror in the Mortuary

THE CHAIR DR. HARRY E. MERENESS 109
An Electrocution Vividly Described by an Eyewitness

THE CAULDRON PRESTON LANGLEY HICKEY 111
True Adventures of Terror

THE EYRIE BY THE EDITOR 113

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Alas! that spring should vanish with the rose!
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When the Sex Function Should Be Used.
Sex Tragedies in Childhood.
The Consummation of Marriage.
The Art of a Beautiful Conception.
Sex Communion.
The Scientific Control of Conception.
Sex Fear Destroyed.
The Frequency of the Sex Act.
The Initiation to Matrimony.
Anatomy and Physiology of the Sex Organs.
The Spontaneous Expression of Love.
Why Women Have Been Subjected.
Men Who Marry in Ignorance.
Hereditary Passion.
Marriage a Joy to the End.

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The Unique Edited by
Magazine
WEIRD TALES Edwin Baird

VOLUME ONE 25c a Copy JUNE, 1923 Subscription $3.00 A YEAR
NUMBER FOUR $3.50 IN CANADA

Paul Ellsworth Triem’s Latest Novel

The Evening Wolves

An Exciting Tale of Weird Events
CHAPTER ONE
AH WING RECEIVES A CLIENT

A taxicab stopped on the corner, and two people got out. They formed a
decidedly incongruous pair; for the first to alight was a diminutive Chinese
boy, scantily dressed, while his companion appeared to be a portly white
man.
It was impossible to be sure of this fact, however, as this second
passenger wore a long overcoat, with its ulster collar turned up around his
face, and a dark cloth cap with the visor drawn down over his forehead and
eyes.
Evidently the cab driver had been paid in advance, for he swung out from
the curb as soon as his fares had dismounted, and was soon out of sight. The

Chinese boy glanced at his companion, then set off silently up a street
whose central portion was paved with cobblestones.
He seemed to know just where he was going. He paused only once, to
cast a fleeting glance over his shoulder. Then he resumed his journey.
He had seen that the man in the ulster was following; and now, after
traversing half a block of squalid, deserted street, the youngster turned
abruptly into a pestilential-looking alley. This alley lay close to the top of a
hill, and for a moment the man and the boy, who appeared to be his guide,
could look down over the roofs to where the gay lights of Chinatown
twinkled alluringly.
Presently the diminutive Oriental paused just outside a doorway. The
man who had been following him came up, with a curious suggestion of
eagerness and suspicion. Looking over the shoulder of the figure before
him, he was able to make out the entrance to a narrow flight of unlighted
stairs, which plunged steeply into the earth beneath a dilapidated building.
“Do we have to go down there, boy?” the man demanded.
“All a-same down here, master,” the youngster replied. “You come close
—I show you!”
He began to descend as he spoke; and the man, after a moment of
hesitation, plunged through the doorway after him. His manner was that of
one who is taking a horribly unpleasant remedy, hoping to cure a still more
horrible disease.
The diminutive Chinaman reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for
his companion. When he felt the man’s heavy hand on his shoulder, he
turned to his right, advancing cautiously through an almost impenetrable
darkness.
There was a smell of dry rot in this basement, and around their feet rats
scampered and squeaked. The man’s hand shook, and his breath came with
a hissing sound through his clenched teeth.
“Now we go down again, master,” the boy announced presently. He had
paused and turned again to the right. “You keep close—I show you!”
A step at a time, they descended a second flight of stairs. On either side
were rough stone walls, powdery with mildew. The man discovered this

with his free left hand. Strange odors came to him. Abruptly a bell rang,
somewhere in the bowels of the darkness below them.
The boy stopped in his tracks.
“Now you go down, master,” he commanded. “Ah Wing waiting for you
—you go slow. Goo’-by!”
He slipped out from under the heavy hand that would have detained him,
and the man heard him go scampering like one of the rats up the stairs and
away through the upper corridors.
Terror gripped the man left alone there on the stairs. He felt that he was
in a trap—and he had been evading traps so long now that they had become
an obsession with him.
He cried out, hoarsely, and as he did so a door opened below and a flood
of light shone out.
“Pray continue your descent, Colonel Knight,” a cultured voice
commanded from somewhere within the lighted room whose door had just
opened. “The stairs are quite secure, and I am awaiting you!”
With a plunge that hinted at desperation, the man addressed as “Colonel
Knight” reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed to the door. He paused
there for a moment, till his eyes adjusted themselves to the change in
illumination. Then he stepped inside, and heard the heavy door close behind
him.
The room he had entered was of considerable extent, but was almost
destitute of furniture. There were bare walls, dusty with green mildew; and
bare floors, covered with layers of dust and litter. There were two chairs,
one of which was already occupied.
And as the newcomer’s eyes rested on the occupant of that chair, all his
doubts and fears returned to him. He had come to this unearthly spot to get
away from almost certain death. Now he was not certain that the remedy
would not prove worse than the disease.
The man sitting there, facing him, was dressed like a Chinaman, in silk
trousers and coat, satin slippers, and black silk cap; but his eyes were of a
metallic gray, and his high, thin-bridged nose spoke of Nordic blood. He

would have been tall had he been standing. His hands were lying passive in
his lap, but they were the hands of a man of great physical power.
And above all these details and beyond them was something the man in
the ulster could not quite define—a radiation of power, as if the intellect
and will of this strange being seated before him saturated the atmosphere of
the empty room.
“Pray be seated, Colonel Knight!” the man in the chair said courteously.
“I am glad to meet you. You have been recommended to me by a former
student of mine—you know that I take only a few cases. It will be best for
you to tell me your story, fully and accurately.”
Colonel Knight lowered himself into the empty chair. His eyes still
peered out through the gap in his collar, and seemed to be fastened on the
face of the man before him.
Then, slowly and grudgingly he removed his cap and turned down his
collar, disclosing the pouchy face of a man well advanced into middle age.
It was a face suggesting daring and resourcefulness, this face of Colonel
Knight; and for a few moments the two sat staring curiously at each other.
“I think I can condense that statement I have to make,” the white man
said finally. “I am a man of wealth. Five years ago, while traveling in
Europe, I had the misfortune to attract the attention of the greatest gang of
international thieves ever organized. Perhaps you have heard of them? They
were called ‘The Evening Wolves,’ and were led by a man who called
himself ‘Count von Hondon’.”
He paused for an instant to regard his companion curiously, but the
Oriental merely bowed and sat impassively waiting.
“These men must have followed me about for some time before they
struck. Finally they saw their chance. I was packed to leave Paris for
Belgium, and they undoubtedly figured that I would have much of wealth
with me.
“I did—but I had other things they had overlooked. I had my pistols, and
I am a dead shot. I killed two of the robbers, and the rest fled. I supposed
that would settle the matter, but I was mistaken. Five members of the gang
were left alive, and they swore to be revenged upon me. They have
followed me—”

A bell rang shrilly somewhere close at hand, and Colonel Knight leaped
from his chair and looked wildly at his companion.
“What was that?” he cried. “That bell rang when I was descending the
stairs—”
“Someone followed you here,” the other replied, “and is now trying to
reach us. Pray continue!”
“But that man upon the stairs—”
“We will come to him presently. Let me ask you to finish!”
“There is nothing more! I have been followed for years, and now a
physical trouble is added—my physician tells me I am going blind. I can’t
see to run—”
The Chinaman eyed his companion deliberately.
“Why lie to me, my friend?” he demanded presently. “You come to me
for help, and you wish to steal my ammunition! Now let me reconstruct
your story for you. You yourself are ‘Count von Hondon.’ You were the
leader of the master crooks called ‘The Evening Wolves.’ Five years ago
you and your men made a rich haul, and you decided that a time had come
to retire, or perhaps to go in by yourself. You departed, taking with you the
loot; and ever since it has been a running fight.
“Your old comrades could have shot you outright, but that would not
restore to them the booty you stole. And you have not dared dispose of it,
because it was the only thing that stood between you and death! You see,
you can’t lie to me. Every lie carries its trade-mark with it, to those who
have eyes to see. Now I shall ask you but one question, and let me warn you
—if you lie now, you will never leave this place alive!”
He stood up and thrust an accusing finger toward the cowering thief.
“Tell me,” said the Chinaman, “the name of the person whom you and
your men robbed!”
The beady eyes of Colonel Knight, or “Count von Hondon” as he had
once been known in every capital in Europe, glittered with suspicion and
fear. His breath caught in his throat, and he unfastened his collar with
trembling fingers.

“The name,” he said hoarsely, “was—was—”
Ah Wing crossed toward the heavy door and laid his hand upon the knob.
His metallic eyes blazed, and he looked down with fierce contempt upon
the man trembling before him.
“Will you answer?” he cried. “Or shall I open this door?”
“It was a woman!” Knight whimpered. “Her name was—Madame Celia
—”
He broke off and stared at the Chinaman, towering there before the door.
Ah Wing had neither spoken nor moved; but there was in the room a
disturbance as if a great voice had shouted out a curse.
Slowly the Chinaman came back toward his visitor. His face now was the
impassive face of a carved Buddha.
“Colonel Knight,” he said gently, “the high gods have undoubtedly
brought you to me. I am the only person in the world who can save you, for
I work outside of the laws of men. And I will take your case, now that I
fully understand it. But first I will ask you to show me the Resurrection
Pendant which you stole from Madame Celia!”
The white man got slowly to his feet, his hands groping at his throat, his
eyes protruding, his face the color of dough.
“The pendant!” he whispered through ashen lips. “The Resurrection
Pendant! You know—you have heard?”
“Show me the Pendant,” repeated Ah Wing inexorably. “I know that you
brought it with you tonight, just as I know that you intended, in case I
refused to take your case, to try to disappear without returning to your hotel.
Show me the Pendant!”
With faltering hands and without removing his fearful eyes from the face
of his companion, the crook reached inside his ulster and drew forth a
package wrapped in brown paper. This he slowly unfastened, disclosing a
jewel case. More and more slowly his fingers fumbled with the catch.
There came a sound from the door—a voice that seemed to have
difficulty in filtering through the heavy panels.
“Come out of that, Count! We got you over a barrel! Come out—”

The massive door shook under a terrific blow, as from a sledge. The man
in the ulster seemed about to crumple to the floor.
Ah Wing spoke coldly.
“Show me the Pendant!” he repeated. “They cannot break down that
door, but if you trifle with me I will open it!”
With hurried fingers the terror-stricken crook threw back the cover of the
jewel case, disclosing a mass of diamonds, intricately and skilfully
assembled into a great pendant.

CHAPTER TWO
UNDER CHINATOWN

Ah Wing took a long stride, which brought him close to the man who
held the jewel case.
The Oriental’s steely eyes were fastened unwaveringly upon the pendant,
whose history for half a century had been transcribed in suffering and death.
Misfortune had followed this unique assemblage of perfect stones: death
and insanity; the breaking of friendships; the treachery of children toward
parents; the murder of lover by lover. And now the mysterious Chinaman
seemed to have fallen under the spell of the gems, for he was taking in
every detail of their perfection.
For a moment the assault upon the door had ceased, but now it was
continued. Heavy blows fell, and the walls of the subterranean apartment
shook.
“It will not take your friends long to discover that they cannot reach us
by that route,” commented Ah Wing tranquilly, turning at last from his
inspection of the Resurrection Pendant. “The door has a middle sheeting of
boiler iron. It is bullet proof.”
He reseated himself, motioning for Colonel Knight to do the same.
Absently he watched the white man close the jewel case, wrap it carefully
in brown paper, and return it to his ulster pocket.
“And now,” continued the Chinaman, “I will ask you to tell me about
these men. You say there are five of them? Please describe them to me, one

at a time. Tell me all that you can remember as to physical and mental
characteristics—I want every detail you can give me.”
Colonel Knight sat down heavily. It was obvious that the assault upon the
door was shaking his nerves so that he could hardly command his voice.
His eyes were the eyes of some hunted thing, which sees itself at the end of
a blind alley.
With an evident effort, he tore his glance from the quivering panels and
fastened it on his companion.
“Yes,” he said hollowly, “there are five of these men, and they have been
chosen from the elite of the criminal world. I myself selected them and
trained them. Each has his special ability. I will begin with the man whom I
considered the brainiest of them all—the one who was almost my equal in
planning and executing a really big robbery. His name is Monte Jerome.”
Suddenly the blows on the door ceased; and the room was so still, after
the ferocious assault, that it seemed to press on the ear drums of the
speaker. He winced and for a moment was silent. Then, resolutely he
continued:
“Monte is thirty-five years old. He is less than five feet six, but is broad
shouldered and powerful. He grew up in the alleys of a large city. He fought
his way to the leadership of gang after gang, and at the time I picked him up
was looking for new worlds to conquer. I chose him because of four
qualities: his physical strength; his native cunning; his lack of sentiment—
or, as it is usually called, ‘mercy’—and his absolute freedom from
superstition. Monte believes in neither God, man, nor the devil. He was my
right-hand man—and it is to his merciless pursuit that I owe my condition!”
Ah Wing had drawn a note-book from his pocket and was jotting down
data. He glanced placidly toward the door, which was again shaking under a
rain of heavy blows.
“Pray continue!” said he.
Something of the Chinaman’s imperturbability was beginning to
influence the white man. He went on with greater assurance:
“Next to Monte Jerome in total ability, I always placed the man we called
‘Doc.’ I never knew his real name. That was not important, as he went

under many aliases. Doc was my means of approach to the wealthy men
and women—and particularly the latter—upon whom I specialized. He is a
university man, and has lived among people of wealth and refinement much
of his life.
“He has brains, but lacks the quality of ruthlessness so important in really
successful commercial crime. He is utterly selfish, I believe, but certain
necessary factors in his profession are revolting to him—and he has never
made the effort to put down this weakness. Physically he is prepossessing:
an inch or two over six feet in height, blue eyes, light brown hair, splendid
carriage; and possessed of the manners of a Chesterfield.”
A thin, faint voice came through the door, upon which the tattoo had
momentarily ceased:
“We’ve got you, Count! Open that door, or we’ll gouge your eyes out
when we break in!”
Ah Wing waved his hand affably toward the source of this ominous
promise.
“And our friend out there?” said he. “Is he one of those whom you have
described?”
“I was just coming to him,” replied Colonel Knight, raising a shaking
hand to his forehead and mopping off the beaded perspiration. “That is
‘Billy the Strangler,’ and I think the ‘Kid’ is with him. Those were my
Apaches—my gun men—my killers. They are much alike. Both have
cunning of a low order; and persistence—they are like bloodhounds, once
they are put on the trail.
“They have been Monte’s most useful tools in his pursuit of me. But both
are superstitious, and their native bloodthirstiness has grown on them till
they are little better than homicidal maniacs. The Strangler is tall and slim,
with high cheek bones and lean arms which seem to be threaded with steel
wires. The Kid is of medium height, with grey eyes and sandy hair.”
The assault on the door had again been discontinued. Suddenly there
came from directly overhead a sound of splintering boards, accompanied by
a rain of dust and bits of plaster. Knight sprang up and retreated, snarling,
toward a corner of the empty room.

“Ah, I have been waiting to see if your old comrades would think of
that,” he commented. “It gives us a line on their resourcefulness.”
Colonel Knight regarded him with drawn lips, which exposed his yellow
teeth.
“For God’s sake, what are we to do?” he cried. “Are you armed? You sit
there like a statue—”
“Pray continue your very interesting description,” suggested Ah Wing.
“There remains one of your band whom you have not described. I must
know about him—and then I will deal with this other matter!”
For an instant the thief glared into the face of the man seated across from
him. What he read there steadied him a little, although the crash of
splintering boards from above told him that the men he had such good
reason to fear were meeting with less resistance in this direction than they
had encountered in their assault upon the door.
“There remains but one,” he said hoarsely. “That is Louie Martin, my
gem expert. Martin is one of the best judges of diamonds and pearls in the
world. He is an expert in recutting and remounting stolen jewelry. And he
has a wide acquaintance among the crooked dealers of this country and
Europe—”
An extensive area of plaster broke away suddenly and crashed down,
tumbling about the heads and shoulders of the two occupants of the room.
At the same instant the end of a heavy gas-pipe crashed through the laths,
and the voices of the men on the floor above were raised in a shout of
ferocious triumph.
Ah Wing stood up deliberately and looked toward the ceiling. He seemed
to be measuring the progress of the men opposed to him. Then, without
hurrying he crossed the room toward a dimly lighted corner, where he
stooped and opened a small door in the wall. This door was built in
segments, like that of a safe; and was hinged with metal plates of enormous
strength.
Colonel Knight, who cowered directly behind the Chinaman, felt a breath
of cool, moist air, smelling strongly of earthy decay, blowing up from this
diminutive doorway.

“Kindly precede me, Colonel,” commanded Ah Wing. “Watch your step
—the going is rather precipitous!”
Knight stooped and made his way through the opening. He found himself
on a stairway which went steeply down into utter darkness.
A cloud of white dust filtered up into the light of the electric bulb; and, as
Ah Wing stood watching, a lithe human figure landed with a crash on top of
the heap of plaster and splintered boards and laths.
In the same instant the Chinaman passed silently through the small
doorway, and his companion heard him slipping the bolts into place.
The darkness which had suddenly clutched them was so intense that it
seemed to have physical substance. A squeaking sound from above brought
Knight’s face swiftly up. Something cold and reptilian flapped into his eyes
and, with another squeak, was gone.
“Only a bat!” said Ah Wing softly. “Rest your hand on my shoulder and
feel your way a step at a time. I will turn on my flashlight!”
A conical beam of light drilled through the darkness below them, and Ah
Wing’s companion saw that they were descending a narrow flight of stone
steps that seemed to terminate in a panel of utter blackness. The walls on
each side were damp; and pallid fungi had taken the place of the mildew of
the cellars above.
“For God’s sake, where are we?” the white man demanded through
chattering teeth. “This looks like the shaft of a mine!”
“This is part of the underground system which made Chinatown famous,
before the disaster of 1906,” replied the Oriental. “Few white men have
ever been down here—particularly of late years!”
He paused. They had reached a narrow landing, from which passages
branched in half a dozen directions. Another descending stairway yawned
ahead.
“If I were to leave you here,” smiled Ah Wing, “you would never find
your way out! You could not go back the way you have come, for there are
acute-angled branches which would confuse you. Most of them end in
masses of rubbish, easily dislodged by the unwary! But with me you are
safe!”

His voice had an ominous softness. Knight followed down along the
second flight of stairs. His heart was pounding. Suppose these crumbling
walls should collapse! Suppose this unearthly being, in whose hands his
safety lay, decided to rob him!
Ah Wing spoke abruptly:
“We have been following down the face of a hill. Now we reach the
level, and here we leave these catacombs!”
He turned sharply to the left and led the way along a short passage which
terminated in a second diminutive door. Ah Wing shot back the bolts and
motioned for his companion to proceed him into the room beyond.
Knight obeyed. Daylight was there—white, blazing daylight! He blinked
as he crept through the opening.
Next moment he tried to cry out. An arm had passed in front of his body,
pinioning him. In the same instant a sinewy hand came close to his face,
and there was a little tinkle of broken glass—a diminutive globule had been
broken under his nose.
The thief struggled to turn his head aside, fought to keep from breathing
in the stupefying fumes; but with a smothering gasp he surrendered.
He breathed deeply, and as he did so a sudden feeling of lightness and of
expansion came upon him. In the act of wondering stupidly what this
substance was that the Chinaman had forced upon him, his mind went
blank.
Ah Wing continued for a moment to hold his hand over the mouth and
nostrils of his victim. Then he carried Knight across the room and laid him
on a divan. Turning deliberately, he pressed an electric button.
Somewhere in the brooding silence of the building, beyond this room, a
deep throated bell rang clamorously.

CHAPTER THREE
THE EVENING WOLVES

High in an apartment house, overlooking a street and something of the
city, Monte Jerome, leader of the Evening Wolves, sat at his ease, a

cigarette in the corner of his thin, merciless mouth, a telephone within
reach.
From the back rooms of the apartment came the sound of heavy
breathing, intermingled with an energetic and unmusical snore. Louie
Martin, gem expert for the gang, and “Doc,” their society specialist, were
sleeping.
Monte listened critically to the heavy breathing. He was an expert in such
matters, and his seasoned judgment told him that neither of his comrades
was faking sleep.
With a nod of satisfaction, he stood up and walked soundlessly into the
corridor connecting the rooms, stopping first in that occupied by “Doc,” and
then in the back room where Louie Martin was sleeping. In each room he
paused long enough to make a thorough search of the clothing of the
sleeping robber.
Monte went expeditiously through all the pockets, and even examined the
linings. Just a little exhibition of the honor that obtains among thieves:
Monte Jerome knew that his leadership depended on his ability to command
his companions’ unwilling respect, and he was taking no chances.
“I got a hunch Doc is thinking of ditching the gang, and going it for
himself,” Monte murmured as he returned toward the front room. “If he
thinks—”
The ’phone bell rang suddenly, and the man on duty crossed to the
instrument.
“Yes?” he said.... “Oh, hello, Billy.... What’s that—Hell’s bells! Got
away! Get busy and find him—”
The voice of the Strangler came to him over the wire.
“Keep your shirt on, Chief!” it commanded. “You better come down here
and see for yourself what we was up against!”
Two minutes later Monte was shaking Louie Martin awake.
“Come to life!” Monte grated. “The Count has made his getaway! You
get into your clothes and tend ’phone! This is one hell of a mess!”
Martin climbed sluggishly and unwillingly out of bed.

“You’ve been running things,” he snarled. “If you’ve got ’em in a mess,
it’s no one’s fault but your own!”

At a corner on the outskirts of Chinatown, Monte alighted from his taxi.
This was a special machine, owned and operated by a crook who dealt
indiscriminately in transportation, dope and bootleg whisky.
Monte commanded this worthy citizen to await his return, and plunged
into a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys.
A shrill whistle sounded presently, and he saw the Strangler beckoning
him from a doorway. Crossing over, Monte followed his henchman into an
alley, down a flight of narrow stairs, and into an unlighted basement. Here
they were joined by the “Kid,” who carried an electric torch.
“Come on, Chief,” the “Kid” commanded. “We’ll show you first what we
was up against—watch your step! If you stub your toe you’ll land in hell!”
They turned and went down another stairway, narrower and steeper than
the first. At the bottom their way was barred by a heavy door, studded with
great iron bolts. In one place the wood had been battered away, disclosing
the gleaming surface of a steel panel.
“We followed the Count here, and thought we had him cornered,” the
“Kid” drawled, rolling his cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the
other and regarding Monte through lazy, sardonic eyes. “When we saw we
couldn’t get through this way, we went up to the floor above and come at
him through the ceiling. Come along—we’ll show you!”
They went back up one flight of stairs and entered a room which
evidently had long been unused. Its walls were crumbling, and in the
middle a great hole had been torn in the floor. The Strangler, who was
leading the way, crossed over to this opening and unhesitatingly
disappeared through it. Next moment a yellow light filtered up through the
opening.
“Down you go, Chief,” commanded the “Kid.” “This was the door we
made!”

Monte made his way down through the opening, landing on the upper of
two chairs which had been piled precariously together to assist in the
descent. He was followed by the “Kid,” and the three crooks stood
examining the room in which Ah Wing and Colonel Knight had held their
conference.
Monte spoke with a snarl.
“All right, you two!” he cried, “Here is where he was! Where is he now?
Come across with your alibi!”
His two companions exchanged significant glances and the “Kid” took a
slouching step closer to Monte.
“Look here, Chief,” said he, “it ain’t gonna be healthy for you to talk that
way to me! I’m not spielin’ no alibi. What I’m givin’ you is straight goods,
and you better get that twist out of your mush and act like a gentleman!”
He paused; and his two crumpled ears, which spoke of vicissitudes in the
prize ring, grew red as a rooster’s comb. His glassy gray eyes glared
unblinkingly at Monte.
The latter was not afraid of either of these men, or of both of them
together. Monte had the unflinching courage of the perfect animal. But he
had no notion of breaking up a gang which might prove useful to him.
“All right, boys,” he agreed, more pacifically, although his dark eyes
continued to glow like coals. “If you can afford to take it easy, you got
nothing on me! Tell me what happened.”
“That’s more like it,” the “Kid” growled. “Now you’re talking like a
gentleman, Chief! Well, we follows the Count here, and thinks we has him
holed up. We can’t bust down that door—this is an old Chink gambling hell,
and everything is stacked against a fellow that wants to get in. But we
comes down through the roof—”
Suddenly the “Kid” paused. From somewhere behind there had come a
sound as of the opening of a door. The eyes of his two companions followed
his and together they stood, rigid and alert.
Slowly the back wall of the room opened out toward them.
Unconsciously, the crooks shrank closer together. Their faces were drawn,
their figures rigid.

The panel swung fully open, and a figure appeared in it. It was the form
of a tall man, clad in black silk.
The three crooks stood staring at him silently. So unexpected had been
his appearance that it had affected them with a sort of paralysis. Their
mouths gaped open and their eyes bulged.
Serenely, the intruder stood looking down upon them; and then, with a
courteous wave of his hand, he spoke.
“Pardon my intrusion, gentlemen!” said he. “My little affairs can wait—I
will return later!”
He turned, and next moment the panel had swung silently shut behind
him.
Monte Jerome was the first of the three to recover.
“Come on—we’ve got to get him!” he cried.
“That was the Chink we saw spieling with the Count,” the “Kid” cried
hoarsely. “But, for the love of cripe, how did he get here?”
Monte snarled wolfishly:
“Ask him that! We’ve got to bust through here—”
His compact body landed against the panel. It shook, but refused to yield.
“Come back here! Now, all together!” bellowed Monte.
The three leaped forward and struck the partition.
This time it swung inward, slowly and without a sound. The crooks
leaped through the opening, and the “Kid” flashed his torch. They were
standing just inside a vast, windowless room, at whose farther side they had
a glimpse of sagging timbers and ruined walls. Nowhere was there a sign of
the man who had eluded them.
“Get a move on!” Monte growled throatily. His lip drew up and he
snarled at his companions. “A hell of a bunch of crooks, we are! Why didn’t
you take a shot at him, when you saw he was going to make a getaway?”
The “Kid” glared back.

“Cut out that kind of talk, Chief! You got a gat, and two hands! He
buffaloed you just like he did us! Be a sport and take your medicine!”
A determined search of the ruined chamber yielded no results. The “Kid”
dropped to his stomach and wormed his way under the mass of timbers at
the farther side. He found the beginning of a stone-lined tunnel, which
dipped abruptly into the earth.
Damp, mouldy air fanned his cheeks; and as he crouched, motionless,
listening, a distant reverberation came to him from the bowels of the earth.
It sounded like the clanking of a great iron door.
“Let me out of this!” he growled, as he backed toward his companions.
“We got a fat chance of following that yellow devil into his hole. You go, if
you want to!”
Monte shook his head. He had regained his poise, and he had been
thinking.
“No use trying to follow,” he admitted. “We got to comb Chinatown for
the two of them. They can’t live down in that burrow forever. But why did
this duck show himself? He must have known we were here—he could hear
us talking!”
The “Kid” smiled craftily.
“Maybe him and the Count left something,” he suggested. “We better
have a look!”
“No, they didn’t leave nothing. I would have seen it if they had. I got an
idea the Chink wanted us to see him! He stood there with his face turned
into the light. Well, we got to find him! That’s flat!”

CHAPTER FOUR
THE MAN IN THE LIGHTED ROOM

The wolves shifted their quarters that night to a rooming-house on the
edge of Chinatown, and the search for Colonel Knight and his mysterious
companion, the tall Chinaman, began.
For three days they worked feverishly. Monte Jerome seemed never to
sleep, and his temper was not at all improved by the ordeal. He drove his

companions fiercely, and only the fact that they were playing for big stakes
prevented open rebellion.
On the fourth day Monte and the “Kid,” who were loitering, alert but
almost hopeless, in the entrance to a building in one of the narrow streets of
the Oriental quarter, caught sight of a figure disappearing through a
doorway. It was a tall figure, partly concealed by a light overcoat; but both
of them leaped forward at the same instant.
“That was the Chink, sure as God made little red apples!” the “Kid”
snapped.
They crossed the street. Several automobiles were drawn up close to the
curb, among them a big blue limousine from which the Chinaman had
stepped a moment before they identified him. Monte approached a well-
dressed gentleman, who had just come out of the building, and asked him
what was going on inside.
“This is the fall exhibition of the Iconoclasts,” the stranger explained
good-naturedly.
He seemed to be sizing up the two crooks.
“I think you boys would enjoy it,” he added mischievously. “The
admission is only fifty cents.”
Monte and the “Kid” bought tickets, and presently they entered a big
room with a high ceiling, upon whose walls were hung a number of gaudy
paintings. The newcomers stared round at the fifty or more spectators who
were making the rounds of the gallery.
“Hell!” growled the “Kid,” “this ain’t no place for an honest strongarm
man—Let’s beat it and send for Doc!”
Monte gripped his arm.
“Look!” he said under his breath. “Over there near the corner!”
The “Kid” looked stealthily as directed, and perceived the tall man in the
gray topcoat. He was standing with his back to them, examining a red and
yellow daub that looked like an omelette liberally seasoned with paprika.
“That’s him!” Monte whispered. “All right, Kid! You have Mike bring
the cab down to the corner where we was waiting. Then, when this duck

beats it out of here, I’ll hop in and we’ll follow him!”
Half an hour later the tall man in the gray coat—who in American garb
looked more like an Oriental than he had when dressed as a Chinaman—
paused to look deliberately at his watch, and then turned to the outer door.
By the time he stepped into the blue limousine, Monte had reached the
corner and was climbing in beside the driver of the taxi. The “Kid” had the
window down, and was kneeling with his head close to the driver’s.
“How ’bout it, Mike!” Monte demanded. “Can you keep ’em in sight?”
“Watch me!” snorted the driver. “There ain’t no Chink going can leave
me behind. Did you see that chauffeur? Got a face like a monkey!”
There was no difficulty, for the present, in keeping the blue limousine in
sight, however. It went sedately down a side street and took the turn toward
the ferry. Five minutes later Monte and the Kid saw the cab in which they
were seated draw in behind the larger car, and roll over the landing
platform. The limousine was stationed on the right, and the cab on the left,
of the big boat.
Monte scrambled down, and with a curt command to the other two made
his way around to where he could see the enclosed car. The man in the gray
overcoat was sealed inside, with a coffee-brown Chinaman in livery at the
wheel. Monte kept them in sight till the ferry was approaching the slip.
Then he hurried back and climbed in again beside the driver.
“Here’s where they’ll try to leave us behind, if they have any idea we’re
following!” he predicted.
“Let ’em,” growled Mike. “If we don’t get took in by a speed cop, I
won’t never let no Chink drive away from me! You boys just hang onto
your bonnets, and watch us!”
The big blue car seemed to have accepted this challenge. The little man at
the wheel swung out and passed half a dozen slower machines, then took
the center of the road and held it.
With the coming of evening, a powdery fog swooped down over the
ridges to the west, and suddenly the tail lights of the limousine shot up in
the gloom ahead. Notch by notch, the Chinese chauffeur was adding to his

speed. The lighter car behind bounced and swayed, and Mike spat through
his teeth.
“Say, that bird must be clear nuts!” he growled. “If we get took in, they’ll
sentence us to about five life-times! What say, gents? Want to let him go?”
“You keep going!” snarled Monte, staring hardeyed into the fog. “If we
get pinched, I pay for it, see? But don’t you let that bird get away, if you
want to sleep in your little bed tonight!”
Mike glanced sideways at the man whose elbow touched his. Something
he saw in the stony face of Monte Jerome caused him to turn all his
attention to the task in hand.
The tail lights had been growing dim, but now, slowly, the cab began to
gain. Other cars, headed for the ferry, shot out of the fog and into it,
honking warning horns at the crazily lurching machine that burned the road
in pursuit of the blue limousine. The stony faces of the three men in the cab
never deviated from their straight glare into the gloom ahead.
The speed of the big car was slackening. The driver of the cab grinned
wryly.
“He knows the ropes. Speed cop in this burg ahead lies awake nights
thinking up new ways of raising hell for speedy drivers,” he explained.
“Now we’ll creep up on ’em a little more!”
They passed through the little town and again were in the open country.
The limousine continued its more leisurely progress, however, and
presently turned to the right into a dirt road. The cab dropped farther
behind, at Monte’s command.
“They can’t get away from us on this road. Probably aren’t going far, and
we don’t want them to spot us. Take it easy!”
The road seemed to be leading gently down, and presently they caught
the gleam of water on each side. Rushes grew up close to the track; and
from somewhere in the dusk the cry of a gull sounded like the wailing of a
lost soul.
Involuntarily, the “Kid” shivered.
“Hell of a country!” he mumbled. “Where you reckon he’s headed for?”

“Wait and see!” snapped Monte. “Hello!—he’s turning in! That must be a
private road! Stop here!”
He slid from the seat and stood swinging his feet alternately, to restore
the circulation in them. Then he jerked his head into the darkness.
“Come on, Kid! We got to see what he’s up to!”
The “Kid” clambered out, and the two crooks struck silently up the road.
They reached the turn and found, as they had guessed, that they were at the
entrance to a private road.
Instinctively, the two men paused and stared in through the trees. Night
pressed thick and damp about them. A wind from the southeast brought to
them the smell of the marshes, and once the booming whistle of a steamer
sounded. In a lull of the wind, the gulls were screaming.
“This ain’t in my line, Chief!” snarled the “Kid,” glaring into the
darkness. “I can bump a guy off under the city lights as nifty as the next
one, but this nature stuff never did set right on my stomach. Let’s go back!”
“You go back if you want to!” Monte said menacingly. “But if you do,
don’t come sniveling around me later on. I’m going in there!”
He struck off along the winding road, and in a moment the “Kid” fell into
step at his side.
Without a word, the two advanced till suddenly the lights of a building
shone upon them. They paused for a moment, then began to creep nearer,
keeping in the shelter of clumps of bushes. In this way they came close
enough to discern the outlines of a large and well-built house, with a broad
frontage and two wings extending from the rear.
“For the love of cripe!” whispered the “Kid,” “would you look at them
windows! Barred, every damn one of them!”
Monte nodded.
“Looks like a private foolish house to me,” he replied in the same
cautious tone. “Come on—we’ll get around behind and see what we can
make out!”
The musty darkness of the night, which had settled down around them,
was now an advantage, as it made it easier for the two Wolves to get close

to the house without being seen. They crept past the massive front, with its
broad steps and wide porch, and continued till they came opposite the west
wing. Most of the windows in this wing were dark, but toward the back
they saw several lighted panels.
“Come on!” commanded Monte. “I hope that Chink doesn’t keep a dog,
but plug him if one comes at you!”
On they crept till they were close to the windows. Massive and sinister
against the light, stood the iron bars which had first caught their attention.
They crept closer, and finally Monte hauled himself up into a gnarly pepper
tree whose lacy branches almost touched the nearest of the lighted
windows.
Next moment he reached down and grasped his companion’s shoulder.
“Come up here!” he grated, speaking half aloud in his excitement. “Don’t
slip—catch that limb! There you are!”
He assisted the “Kid” to a foothold beside himself, and together they
stared through the foliage and into the lighted room beyond.
The curtains were drawn aside and the shade rolled up. Seated in full
view of the two crooks was the man they had been following for five years.
He wore a dressing-gown, and beside his easy chair was a low table on
which rested a leather covered box.
Suddenly he turned, raised the cover of the box—and Monte and the
“Kid” held their breath and stared hungrily. The light was caught and split
up into a cascade of vivid colors. The man in the dressing-gown seemed to
have in his clutching hands a fountain of fire.
“The Resurrection Pendant!” snarled the “Kid,” reaching for his pistol.
“Damn him!”
Monte gripped his companion by the wrist.
“None of that, you fool!” he hissed. “We’ve got to play safe—but the
Count is caught in a trap! That Chink must have kidnapped him!”

CHAPTER FIVE
ONE OF AH WING’S DOOR KEEPERS

Colonel Knight awoke and lay staring at the ceiling. It seemed a
surprisingly long distance from him—and then his glance narrowed.
He turned his head, and suddenly sat up in bed. He had just remembered
the events preceding his loss of consciousness.
Ponderingly, he examined his surroundings. He was in a big room, with a
high ceiling. There were two windows at his right and one straight ahead,
the latter partly open. Several easy chairs, a handsome mahogany house
desk, and a row of bookcases flanking a fireplace came to him as successive
details of his environment. A bar of yellow sunlight streamed through the
end window.
A door behind him opened, and he turned to see a grinning, brown-faced
Chinese boy approaching his bedside, bearing a breakfast tray.
“Ah Wing say he coming to see you by-m-by,” the newcomer commented
placidly. “You hab breakfast now.”
He drew up a table and placed the tray in position, then skillfully
arranged napkin and silverware—which were of the best quality—
convenient to Colonel Knight’s hand. Afterward he withdrew.
Knight’s head felt clear enough, but, mentally and physically, he was
relaxed to the point of incoherence. He wanted to think, but couldn’t.
Mechanically, he lifted to his lips the cup of steaming coffee that the
servant had poured for him. The taste of the hot, bitter fluid—he drank it
without cream or sugar—helped him pull himself together. He remembered
everything now: his visit to the mysterious Chinaman; the coming of his
enemies, and their attack on the basement room; his flight with Ah Wing;
and the latter’s ruse for bringing Knight fully within his power.
Sharply he turned his head and looked again at the end window; it was
barred with heavy iron rods, and so were the two windows at the side. This
room in which he lay was a luxurious prison!
The door opened again, softly, and Colonel Knight turned his head to
find Ah Wing advancing toward him, dressed in white flannel trousers, silk
shirt, and serge coat. In such a rig the newcomer looked every inch a
Chinaman.

“Good morning, Colonel,” Ah Wing greeted his guest courteously. “I am
glad to see you looking so fresh and rested this morning!”
Knight began to tremble.
“You yellow crook!” he croaked, his hands drawing up into knots. “So
that was your scheme—to rob me, and then kidnap me? But don’t think you
can get away with it—”
Ah Wing approached the bed and deftly reached under the nearer of the
two pillows. From this place of concealment he drew two things: the
morocco jewel case, and a revolver that Knight remembered having carried
in his inside coat pocket.
“Here are the principle articles of your property, Colonel Knight,” said
the master of the house. “The other things you will find after you are
dressed.”
He paused to watch the man in the bed open the leather box and stare
hungrily at the flashing jewels. Then he continued.
“There was an ordeal ahead of you, my friend, and you were in no
condition to go through with it. You needed rest, but your nerves were
screwed up to the snapping point. There was only one way to get you safely
out of the city, and I used it.”
“You mean that the Wolves don’t know where I am?” Knight demanded.
“Not yet. I shall remedy that presently.”
Colonel Knight’s voice rose into a snarl:
“Remedy it? You mean you want them to know?”
“Of course I want them to know. I want them here, where I can deal with
them. But never fear, my friend. Your old enemies will never be able to hurt
you!”
He paused and looked around the apartment, then turned again to the man
in the bed.
“These are your quarters. Adjoining your bedroom is the bath. This door
opens into your sitting-room, and adjoining that is my conservatory, which
you are at liberty to visit when you choose. There are no conditions placed

upon your residence here except that you are not to try to leave the house
without my permission—and you are to leave the end window exactly as it
is. Don’t even lay your hand upon it, or upon the sill! This is important!”
Knight stared again at the single end window through which the sun was
shining. He stared from it to the face of the strange being who continued to
regard him with the impersonal interest of a Buddha. A sense of baffled
curiosity arose within him, and he made a nervous, protesting movement
with one of his puffy hands.
“Who the devil are you, anyway?” he broke out. “Ah Wing! That doesn’t
mean anything to me—as well say ‘Mr. X!’ You are not a Chinaman. What
and who are you?”
Ah Wing continued to stare imperturbably down at his guest, but the
ghost of a smile showed at the corners of his usually expressionless mouth.
“No,” he agreed, “I am not a Chinaman. And I am not a Caucasian. You
see that, dressed as I am today, I look unmistakably Oriental. Dressed like a
man of Hong Kong, on the other hand, I look American or English. That has
been my curse, and perhaps my blessing: the mixing of two irreconcilable
blood lines has made me an outcast. I have no place in the government of
any country, and therefore I have organized a government of my own.
“I am the emperor, the president, the king, of an invisible empire. I rule
by right of intellect and will, and my first failure will be my death warrant;
for, judged even by the standards of a thief like you, Colonel Knight, I am
an outlaw—one who is outside the protection of the laws of men!”
He laughed, a short, mirthless laugh. As he crossed toward the door he
said over his shoulder, “Remember about the window. I shall be going out
from time to time, but if you carry out my instructions to the letter, no harm
can come to you even in this house of hidden dangers.”
Try as he would, Colonel Knight could find nothing wrong with his
situation as it had been outlined to him by Ah Wing. He spent most of the
first day in the room in which he had awakened. From the windows in one
direction he could see a landscaped lawn and hillside, dotted with shrubbery
and intersected by winding gravel paths.
From the rear window concerning which he had been so curiously
warned by the master of the house, he looked out over a bit of lawn

bordering a kitchen garden. Beyond the garden lay a marshy field, and in
the distance he made out a canal along which an occasional motor boat
chugged industriously. No, there was nothing wrong here—he could hardly
have hoped for a more peaceful place in which to rest and grow strong.
But—there was an air of brooding watchfulness over the silent house. He
heard an occasional padded footstep passing the door of his sitting-room.
Once he looked out. At the farther side of an extensive conservatory the
brown-faced servant who had brought him his breakfast was spraying some
snaky-looking vines bearing huge orange-colored flowers. Colonel Knight
closed the door. Something about the place—the quiet and the isolation,
perhaps, were getting on his nerves.
The second day passed as the first, but toward noon of the third day Ah
Wing knocked at his door and entered noiselessly. He was dressed in his
Oriental garb, and again looked like a poorly-disguised white man.
“I will be going out for a few hours this afternoon, Colonel,” he
explained, regarding the man before him with his habitual unwinking stare.
“I am taking Lim with me, and I think it will be best for you to remain in
your quarters.”
Although his words had taken the form of a request, there was back of
them the force of a command. The white man eyed him suspiciously, but
presently nodded.
Some time later he heard the whir of a starting motor. Lim had brought
him his luncheon, and now Knight figured the house would be deserted. He
smiled. This would be his opportunity to look around a bit. The instincts of
the crook were strong within him, and he was immensely curious with
regard to the house of Ah Wing.
He waited an hour after he had heard the car leave the garage—from the
back window he had caught a glimpse of it: a gray roadster of moderate size
and power. Now he felt sure that he would not be interrupted.
Crossing to the door of the conservatory, he passed into it. Along one side
were orchids, Colonel Knight realized vaguely that the collection must be
priceless. Many of them were growing in diminutive glass rooms, upon
whose walls he saw heavy drops of moisture.

One pale green blossom near him had weird markings in white and
yellow, which gave it a disturbing resemblance to a grinning human face.
The man thrust out a curious finger and touched it: the blossom drew itself
together like a conscious thing, and he became aware of a sickening
perfume which in an instant turned him dizzy.
He shrank back and continued his journey. The concrete floor narrowed,
and at his left he saw a lily pond, upon whose surface great white blossoms
showed their buttery yellow centers. Between the pads and blossoms of the
lilies the water showed, deep and dark.
Colonel Knight leaned forward to peer into the pool; then, with a choking
cry he staggered back, his face drained of blood: an ugly black snout had
shot up out of the murky depths, and a huge lizard, with short, powerful
forelegs armed with long claws, stared hungrily up at him.
He found his appetite for exploration losing its edge. He was tempted to
turn back, but he wanted to settle one point: in case he should want to leave
this house, how could he best do it? The windows were securely barred, but
there must be plenty of doors.
A hall opened out from the conservatory, and on either side were rooms,
variously furnished. He hurried on. Ahead, he saw a door which seemed to
give upon the outer world. He grasped the knob. The door was locked, and
the lock was one which a glance told him could be neither picked nor
smashed.
Turning, he explored the rear of the house. In the east wing he found the
kitchens and servants’ quarters, but a door which probably communicated
with the kitchen gardens was locked.
Suddenly his wandering eyes caught the handle of a door in an angle of
the pantry. He approached it and found that it opened upon a stair leading
down. A gust of warm, damp air came up through the stairway, and for a
moment Knight paused, sniffing curiously.
He found himself thinking of a certain sultry afternoon in India, when he
had gone out into the simmering jungle. There was the same wild smell here
—
He had his revolver in his hip pocket. That gave him confidence, and he
must know if it would be possible for him to escape in this direction.

A phrase spoken by Ah Wing came to him—“Even in this house of
hidden dangers!” But what dangers could there be?
Colonel Knight felt his way down into the basement. He found that it lay
almost entirely below the level of the grounds, but presently his eyes
became accustomed to the dusk and he could discern his surroundings.
He was in a broad and deep room, filled with a litter of packing cases,
discarded articles of furniture, and a few garden tools. At its farther side
was a door. Slowly and cautiously, the investigator made his way toward
this.
It opened into a dark and narrow passage. He made his way along this,
trying the handles of two locked doors, one on the right and the other on the
left. Then he came to the end of the passage and to another door.
Cautiously, he opened it and looked inside: before him lay a room
somewhat better lighted than the passage, but absolutely destitute of
furniture. He crossed the threshold and stood for a long moment looking
about him. The smell which he had associated with that hot afternoon in the
jungle came to him almost overpoweringly now, but beyond he saw a door
with an iron-barred transom. He wanted to try that door.
He had crossed halfway toward it when some subtle sense of danger
brought him to a stop. He looked back. Nothing.
Then, with a start, he looked up, into the dusky ceiling. Something was
moving there—he stepped back, drawing in his breath with a sharp hissing
intake of terror. He backed toward the door. It was taking shape, up there
among some uncovered beams and pipes—a huge column that seemed to
have come alive! Slowly it swung down in a great curve.
Colonel Knight stood frozen in his tracks. It was a snake—but such a
snake! He knew that this was no waking vision, but a horrible reality—
With a choking cry, he turned and ran as he had never run before in his
life. Behind him he heard a hissing as of sand being poured from an
elevation into a tin pail. A box was overturned. The thing was gaining on
him—he turned, and with bulging eyes he saw the python strung out along
the floor, its great body undulating, its flat head raised, its unblinking eyes
burning through the dusk.

He could never make the stairs. At the left was a small door. He threw
himself upon it and clutched the handle—it came open and, without looking
before him, he threw himself forward. Something struck against the door as
he jerked it shut, and he could hear that uncanny sand blast louder than
before.
Groping about him in the utter darkness of this refuge, he found a metal
contrivance—a wheel, with a metal stem connecting it with a large iron
pipe. He was in the closet which housed the intake of the water system.
Then he remembered his revolver. It would be of little use to him against
the horrible thing coiled outside.

When Ah Wing returned to the house, several hours later, he went quietly
through the hall and conservatory to the door of Colonel Knight’s
apartment.
Satisfied by a brief inspection that his “guest” was not in his rooms, the
Chinaman turned and made his way to the basement door. His face was as
serene as usual, but his eyes shone with a metallic gleam. He opened the
door and for a moment stood listening.
An angry and prolonged hiss, which sounded like a great jet of steam,
came plainly to him. He stepped into the hallway and deliberately closed
the door behind him. Then he felt his way down the stairs, pausing within a
few steps of the bottom to look unwinkingly about.
Something was moving in the dim shadows at the farther side of the
room. It came slowly toward him, and he could make out the undulating
length of the python. Ah Wing’s glowing eyes rested unwaveringly on the
flat, evil head of the great snake, which came toward him more and more
slowly.
With a final prolonged hiss, the python drew itself up into a huge coil. It
was a tremendous creature, as large as a man’s body at its greatest diameter:
but now it seemed to be turning slowly to stone. Its beady eyes grew dull,
and its swaying head became rigid.

A muffled cry reached the ears of the motionless Chinaman. Without the
flicker of an eyelid, he continued to stare down at the python.
Presently he descended to the foot of the stairs. The snake was still.
Ah Wing crossed to the closet door and threw it open.
“You can leave your retreat now, Colonel Knight,” he said. “My little
playmate is temporarily in a condition of catalepsy—but I would not advise
you to repeat this visit!”

CHAPTER SIX
LOUIE MARTIN LEARNS THE SECRET OF THE
WINDOW

Monte and the “Kid” went back to the city that same evening, but early
next morning the leader of the Wolves returned to the neighborhood where
they had picked up the trail of Colonel Knight.
Monte had caught sight of a “For Rent” sign in the upper window of a
cottage half a mile from the big house, and he wasted no time in hunting up
the rental agent and signing a lease. By evening he had his men with him,
and the battle lines were established for the final conflict.
“We got to get all the dope on this Chink and his layout we can,” Monte
explained to his companions, as they sat smoking in the parlor of their new
home. “We might try to rush the house, but I don’t like the looks of it.
Chances are that Chink’s got a machine gun or a bunch of sawed-off pump
guns there. We’ll have to size things up.”
He paused to stare at his men.
“Any kicks on that? All right, it’s settled. Louie, it’s your turn for sentry
duty, and you better get over to the Chink’s castle now. At two o’clock I’ll
send Doc over to relieve you. You might take a look at the windows, and
see if any of them can be handled without a saw—there may be some loose
bars!”
Louie Martin, the gem expert, was a little tallow-faced man with a
straggling, peaked beard and shifty eyes. He had no real appetite for this

sort of thing, but for personal reasons he was more willing than usual to go
on duty tonight.
Slipping his automatic into the holster under his arm, he struck off along
the road toward the house of Ah Wing, whose gables were visible from the
cottage. A light wind was blowing from the southeast, and he could see the
mist rising over the marshes. Somewhere from the steamy air above a night
heron screamed raucously. Involuntarily, Louie shivered.
He was glad to turn his thoughts to his own immediate affairs. Louie
Martin had made up his mind to strike out for himself. He had always
admired Colonel Knight—or “Count von Hondon”—for the shrewd stroke
of business he had done; and Louie was keen enough to perceive that Monte
Jerome was not equal to the task of holding the Wolves together. At the
present time there was open dissension among them. One of these days one
of them would squeal on the others—that was the way this mob stuff
usually ended.
No, Louie had made up his mind to watch his chance for a crack at the
jewels—and then a clean getaway.
He reached the private road leading to the Chinaman’s house, paused for
a moment to listen and reconnoiter, then stealthily struck into the grounds.
Five minutes later he had skirted the west wing and was peering up through
the shrubbery at the lighted windows of Colonel Knight’s apartment. Their
location had been sketched for him by Monte.
“So that’s where the old devil is!” thought Louie. “Let’s just have a look-
see!”
He climbed into a pepper tree—the same from which Monte and the
“Kid” had seen Knight—and stared into the room. It was lighted, but there
was no one in sight. Then, through a vista of open doors, he saw the man
whom he had been sent to watch, walking slowly about with his hands
clasped behind him, a cigar between his lips.
“Had a good supper, and now he’s enjoying a smoke!” Louie mumbled
enviously. “Well, that’s good enough for me, too! Let’s have a look at that
window!”
He slipped down from the tree and glanced about. At the corner of the
house was a galvanized iron can, evidently used for lawn clippings. Louie

lifted this cautiously and carried it over under the end window. Then he
climbed upon it, raising his head cautiously till he was standing just beside
the half-open window.
A silent inspection of the bars showed him that they were all securely
fastened, with one possible exception: the bottom bar seemed to be loose in
its niche. Louie climbed down, changed the can over to the opposite side,
and examined the opposite end. Sure enough, it showed a crumble of
concrete around the bolt which was supposed to hold it in place. With the
utmost caution, fearing that the loose bar might be connected with an alarm
system, the crook tested it.
A smile twisted his thin lips. It could be moved in and out of its niche.
A sound came from somewhere close at hand; and with the speed and
silence of a wolf Louie Martin leaped to the ground, caught up the can, and
replaced it where he had found it. Next instant he was hidden in a clump of
flowering shrubs.
From this position he could see the top of a flight of steps leading down
to the basement of the house of Ah Wing. He stood listening and watching,
and presently he heard a door open and close, followed by steps ascending
the stairs. Then some one came up out of the basement, and he saw the
figure of a tall Chinaman walking deliberately toward the bush in which he
was hiding. Louie reached under his coat for his pistol—
Ah Wing turned, and Louie saw that he was following a graveled path.
And he was carrying something in one hand—a contrivance of twisted
wires, like an iron basket.
As Ah Wing disappeared into the mist, Louie made up his mind. Tonight,
after Knight had gone to bed, he would strike: he was not to be relieved till
two o’clock, and that would give him time to put through his coup. But now
he meant to follow Ah Wing. He needed all the information he could secure
about the master of this silent house.
The Chinaman had disappeared into the eddying mist, but Louie struck
into the path and soon came within hearing of the crisp footsteps. Ah Wing
reached the edge of the grounds and crossed over into a marshy field.
Instinctively, the crook worked closer to the man he was shadowing.
There was something oddly menacing about this night, with its mist and its

fitful, salt-laden wind.
Suddenly through the swirling fog there appeared a light, which seemed
to be suspended ten feet or so above the ground. It was moving slowly
along in front of them—a murky light, like a blood-red mist.
Then Louie saw that it was the light suspended from the mast of a boat,
and that the boat itself was moving slowly along before them, almost
hidden by the banks of the canal. The tide must be out, he thought.
Ah Wing swung on through the night, and presently the man following
him made out the silhouette of a building, perched above the canal. Louie
slunk cautiously forward and saw that the boat, whose lantern he had
previously observed, was making fast at that wharf.
Ah Wing leaped lightly to the sunken deck and disappeared down the
companionway. Before Louie could decide what he was to do, the
Chinaman reappeared and climbed back to the wharf. Louie had just time to
slip into the shelter of a group of piling when the Chinaman passed the
corner of the building.
And in his hand was another of the wire contrivances, filled with
squirming, squeaking rats!
The white man felt his stomach doing queer antics. He had heard of
Chinamen eating rats. Was that what this fellow was up to? What else could
he want with them?
Ah Wing walked swiftly, and the man behind kept as close as he dared.
Again they entered the grounds surrounding the big house, and the Oriental
crossed to the basement stairs and went down. Louie paused in the bushes.
“I’m going to gamble,” he whispered suddenly to himself. “I’ll just sneak
down those steps, and if he tries to come out before I can duck, I’ll bean
him! I want to know what he’s up to!”
Stealthily, he approached the steps. All that he could see was a murky
hole, into which the cement stairs disappeared. A step at a time he made his
way down—
And then he paused, holding himself bent forward, rigid as a man of
stone. From beyond the door which opened out of this pit came a strange

sound, the like of which he had never before heard. It was like a jet of
steam, or like sand sifting into a tin pail from a considerable height.
Then came another sound—the sing-song voice of the Chinaman,
crooning something in a rhythmic chant. Louie could not understand the
words, but there was a swing and lilt to the thing that had a curious effect
on him: he felt as if he were being rocked to sleep.
He threw off this mood with a start. There had come another sound—the
squealing of many rats. And there was a grating noise, as if a heavy body
were dragging itself about the floor. The rat chorus swelled. The creatures
evidently had been turned loose, and were racing about the floor in an
agony of terror.
The chorus thinned. Something was happening to them. Presently the last
of the rats emitted one long, agonized squeal, and was still.
Louie Martin made his way out of the cellarway and hurried dizzily back
to the shelter of the bushes. He didn’t know what had been happening
behind that horrible door, but he knew that it was something which turned
his flesh to ice. A strange smell had come to him from under the door—
Louie noted with relief that the lights in Colonel Knight’s rooms had
been snapped off. That meant that the Colonel had gone to bed. Soon he
would be sleeping, and then Louie could put his plan into execution—that
would enable him to forget this baffling but vaguely horrible experience.
Somehow, he felt as if great unseen creatures were flying about him,
striking at him with black, featherless wings. The air seemed to be in
motion.
He caught himself firmly.
“Got to cut it out!” he mumbled under his breath. “Getting dippy! Likely
to bite somebody! Got to think about something else!”
He began to think about the jewels; and then his mind shifted, and he was
thinking of the woman from whom he and his companions had stolen the
pendant. She had been called “Mother of the Friendless.” The jewels had
been given to her by a rich patron, to assist in the work of providing for the
many who were dependent on her for charity.

The wolves had done a clever bit of work that time. They had caught the
jewels while they were in process of transfer from the original owner to the
old woman—
Another tangent. Louie was thinking with cold amusement of the fate of
Madam Celia, the “Mother of the Friendless.” Luck had turned against her,
with the loss of the jewels. Others who had helped her in her earlier years
had turned away after that—as if the old woman had suffered contamination
by accepting this gift, bequeathed by a certain rather notorious beauty
whose affairs had upset thrones and dynasties.
Yes, a very good joke on the old woman. And she had died in abject
poverty. That was the way that sort of thing went, Louie realized. One was
really a fool to do anything for anyone but one’s self.
A sound came through the half-open window of Colonel Knight’s suite—
and again Louie Martin grinned. The master crook, who had stolen the
jewels from the “Mother of the Friendless,” was now about to pass them on
—only he didn’t know it!
Louie brought the metal barrel over under the window and set it, bottom
up, so as to form a secure means of approach to the room beyond. He had
thrown off his depression now. But he must work fast.
Cautiously, he stepped upon the barrel and raised his hands to the bottom
bar. Twisting it slowly and at the same time pulling, he drew both bar and
bolts from their sockets and tossed them to the ground. He wanted to laugh!
So this was the wisdom of a Chinaman? He might have known!
There was a stone coping a couple of feet above the top of the thing on
which he stood. Louie rested his foot on this coping and laid his hands on
the sill. Lightly he drew himself up against the face of the wall.
He paused to listen. The man within was breathing heavily and regularly.
Louie thrust his head through the opening—nothing in sight to alarm
him. Then, with a quick spring, he threw his weight upon the sill and was
halfway through the window—
Half-way, but no farther; for as his weight descended fully upon the sill,
the upper sash crashed down like the lever of a great engine. The thief cried

out once, a hideous, choking cry that echoed through the room and on into
the house of Ah Wing.
Then he was silent, drooping there like one who has been broken on the
wheel. Blood dripped from his mouth and nostrils, and he had ceased to
breathe. He was caught like a huge rat in a trap!

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE DEAD MAN SPEAKS

Somewhere beyond the mist-enshrouded marshes the whistle of a grain
ship boomed, to be answered a moment later by the metallic scream of a
siren. Vague and mysterious filaments of sound drifted in with the eddying
night wind.
“Damn such a country!” the “Kid” snarled, as he turned from the door
and tramped back into the house. “How long you going to keep us
rusticating out here, Chief? I’m fed up on nature!”
Monte Jerome scowled at his assistant.
“We’re going to stay here till we get what we came for!” he replied. “If
Martin doesn’t show up by morning, we got to decide what he’s up to!”
An uncanny silence gripped the four Wolves. Nearly twenty-four hours
had passed since Louie Martin went on duty, and nothing had been heard
from him. An uncomfortable idea was developing in the minds of the
various members of the “mob.”
Suddenly the “Kid” voiced this general suspicion. With a snarl, he
pointed accusingly at Monte.
“Fact is, Louie ain’t coming back, Chief, and you know it! He’s grabbed
something—maybe the sparklers—and he’s beat it. Don’t blame him a
damn bit, neither. We’re going to set around here with our mouths open till
the dicks get after us. But Louie ain’t coming back, and you just put that
down in your note-book!”
Monte turned toward the speaker.
“Is that your opinion, you lump-head? Well, keep it till I ask you for it.
The trouble with you is you’ve been thinking of cutting loose, yourself.

Louie will show up all right. Don’t you worry about him.”
“Hell of a lot you know about it!” mumbled the “Kid” angrily.
Monte walked slowly toward him, his eyes blazing.
“Trying to start something?” he demanded. “If you are—”
The Strangler intervened at this critical moment. He and the “Kid” had
had a disagreement earlier in the evening when the latter moved into the
room left vacant by Louie Martin’s unexplained absence. This was a
ground-floor room with an abundance of light and sun, and the “Kid,” with
a loose-lipped grin, announced that his doctor had told him he ought to have
it. The Strangler had protested; but the “Kid” had possession, and made it
plain that he meant to hang on.
Now the Strangler sided maliciously with Monte.
“You’re always belly-aching about something, Kid,” he declared. “You
better lay off and give us a rest. The Chief knows what he is doing!”
Monte paused, thankful for this opportune intervention. He had made up
his mind to square account with the “Kid” just as soon as the real business
which held them together was finished, but a show-down now would be
dangerous to the success of the larger affair.
“Let’s cut it all out, boys!” he suggested pacifically. “I’ll go on duty up to
two o’clock. Doc, you set the alarm. You’ll relieve me. I’ll try to find out
something—that Chink may have grabbed Louie. We ought to know what
has happened before we pull anything!”
He nodded to the others and left the house. The three crooks settled down
to their usual evening: the “Kid” got out a deck of cards and began to play a
one-handed game of his own devising; Billy the Strangler drew his chair
over in front of the fireplace and adjusted his feet on the mantle—in this
position he would smoke and stare into the coals till he grew sleepy—and
“Doc” took from the table an illustrated magazine and turned to the serial
he was reading. Occasionally he glanced covertly at one of his companions:
“Doc” sensed the coming battle between these two gunmen, and had no
intention of being caught within the firing lines.
The wind freshened, and they could hear it wailing around the house and
through the upper windows. The window in the “Kid’s” room rattled and

banged, and he looked abstractedly up.
“Hell of a night!” he mumbled. “Sounds like all the dead men in this
neck of the woods was hanging around outside, wheezing to be took in by
the fire! Listen to that window rattle!”
The Strangler smoked on imperturbably.
From somewhere in the house above there came a sound—low and
uncertain at first, then rising to a sort of scream. The “Kid” threw down his
cards and staggered to his feet. The Strangler hauled his long legs down
from the mantle and reached under his coat for the handle of his automatic.
“Doc” turned pale—he was too sophisticated to be superstitious, but this
unearthly cry was a fact rather than a theory.
“What the devil was that?” the “Kid” demanded hoarsely. “Say, if that
was one of them birds—”
“That must have been it!” “Doc” decided aloud. “A night heron, blown
against the chimney! What a night to be out in!”
He shivered and picked up his magazine, but the zest had gone out of his
reading. From the corners of his eyes he observed that the “Kid” was
gathering up his cards, and that Billy had not again elevated his feet to the
mantle.
“Well, I guess I’ll be going to my room,” the “Kid” drawled presently,
emphasizing the possessive pronoun to tantalize the Strangler. “Kind of feel
like a little snooze would take the wrinkles out of my brains. This place sure
does give me the willies!”
He slouched into the hall communicating with the back rooms—a kitchen
and his bedroom—and they heard him shuffling through the darkness.
Following a moment of silence, his voice sounded in a steady mumble.
Then it was raised in expostulation.
“Who the hell has been fooling with my light? It won’t turn on!”
Another brief interval of silence, then a bellow of rage and fear from the
man in the back bedroom.
“Who’s there? Go way from me! Damn—”

They leaped up at the sound of the “Kid’s” stumbling gallop. He burst
into the room, and they saw that his face was the color of ashes.
“For God’s sake, who’s in that room—my room?” he cried, staring at
them through straining, glassy eyes. “Come on, you fellows! Here, I’ll take
a flashlight—the globe must be burned out!”
He snatched up an electric torch and led the way back through the hall,
the Strangler at his shoulder, “Doc” some distance behind.
“Someone let out a groan when I went inside the door,” the “Kid” was
explaining. “And then he says right in my ear, ‘This ain’t your room, Kid!’
Listen!”
They were within five feet of the bedroom door when the “Kid” paused
and held up a trembling hand. He was directing the light of the torch upon
the doorway. And at that moment there came from it a groan, followed by a
muttered protest.
“My room!” a voice within the room said distinctly.
“Holy Mother!” whispered the Strangler. “That sounds like Louie! He
must be hurt!”
“How in hell would he get in there?” protested the “Kid.” “Come on—
let’s see!”
They stepped inside the room, and the ray of the flashlight began to circle
it. Suddenly the circling beam came to a stop.
“In the bed!” gasped the “Kid.” “He’s there, covered up!”
Slowly and unwillingly, an inch at a time as if drawn by some irresistible
force, the three Wolves crossed the room and approached the bed. They
could all see the huddled form lying there, covered even to the face. There
was something about it—an utter absence of motion—that terrified them.
But they could not turn back.
The “Kid” reached the bedside and for a long moment stood glaring
down. Then, with shaking fingers, he caught the edge of the bedding and
threw it back.
In the concentrated light of the lantern, there stared up at them the livid
face of Louie Martin. His glazed eyes protruded, and there was a trickle of

blood running from his nostril to the left corner of his mouth. And in his
face was an expression of frozen horror which stopped the hearts even of
the hardened crooks who looked down in momentary paralysis.
With a scream, the “Kid” dropped the lantern and turned, treading upon
the toes of the Strangler. Another scream sounded, high and shrill—it came
from the direction of the bed.
“Why can’t you let me rest?” a quavering voice protested. “This is my
room—”
They heard no more. The three swore and sobbed as they raced for the
front room. They slammed doors behind them, and brought up, shaking as if
in ague, directly under the big, brilliantly lighted chandelier.
“Somebody bumped him off—and he came back to tell us about it!” the
“Kid” whispered.

CHAPTER EIGHT
AH WING LISTENS IN

“He’s certainly good and dead!” Monte said, as he stood looking down at
the body of Louie Martin. “Whatever they did to him, it was a plenty! But
you boys must be a little bilious—you can see for yourselves that he hasn’t
been doing any talking for some time. What you heard was the wind,
blowing around the corners of the house!”
The “Kid” drew the back of his hand across his glistening forehead. He
was standing near the door.
“Don’t kid yourself, Chief!” he snarled. “We heard him talk—all of us
did! And there’s another thing: us being bilious wouldn’t account for Louie
Martin walking in on us here, and climbing into that bed!”
Monte was staring down at the dead man.
“You say you heard the windows back here rattling earlier in the
evening?” he demanded.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t they? The whole house was rattling!”

Monte nodded. He had his own ideas on this subject, but he didn’t intend
to spread them before his already demoralized followers.
“Well, the thing we’ve got to decide is what we’re going to do with him,”
he commented. “We’ve got to handle the whole business ourselves, and say
nothing. We can’t afford to have the dicks asking questions around here just
now!”
Tacitly, Monte’s three companions agreed, but there was in their pale
faces a question which none of them had the courage to voice. Monte
continued, apparently unconscious of their emotions.
“Billy,” he said, “you get the spade and dig a grave over close to the
fence. After we get him planted, we’ll move that pile of old bean poles over
the place. It’s kind of tough, but Louie is dead—and we got to look out for
ourselves!”
The Strangler went silently out into the dark. They heard him rummaging
for a spade, and presently the clink of the latter implement came
industriously to them. The grave was finished by the time the first gray light
of dawn began to filter down around the cottage, and presently the body of
the dead crook, wrapped in a blanket, was lowered into it. Then the dirt was
shoveled back till the cavity would hold no more, and the superfluous earth
was scattered over the surface of the garden. The shifting of a pile of bean
poles finished the ceremony.
“I’ll trade rooms with you, Kid,” Monte said to the saturnine strong-arm
man—who for once looked rather cowed. “I never was afraid of a dead man
—just so that he was really dead. I guess you’re kind of soured on that part
of the house!”
“Soured is right,” mumbled the “Kid.” “Say, I wouldn’t sleep in there if
you was to give me all the sparklers in New York! Just let me get my stuff
out!”
As he went back toward the room from which the body had recently been
removed, the “Kid” saw the mocking glance of the Strangler fastened upon
him. Billy was enjoying his discomfiture. He went into the room and turned
on the light—the burned-out bulb had been replaced, so that now he was
able to see into all the corners. He began to gather up his property, staring
nervously about him the while.

Cautiously, he approached the closet, where he had stored his bathrobe
and an extra suit, a couple of pairs of shoes and a pearl gray hat. He opened
the door wide and stepped back. Nothing inside. Hastily he carted the
clothing out. Then he crossed over to the bureau and opened the left-hand
upper drawer, in which he had placed his jewelry—some rings and tie pins.
The “Kid” drew the drawer fully open and stood looking down into it.
Then a startled exclamation escaped him, and he bent nearer, staring wide-
eyed.
All of his possessions were there; but in addition he saw, close to the
back of the drawer, a morocco covered box of peculiar design. The “Kid”
had seen that box once before!
With trembling fingers he undid the clasp and opened the lid. He could
feel his heart pounding in the top of his head, and his throat seemed to
contract, so that he fought for breath. The Resurrection Pendant! A single
glance convinced him of that. But how had it come into this drawer?
The “Kid’s” mind deviated from the line of this natural inquiry. He could
forget that for the moment—the fact was that here it was. But there was no
reason why he should share this discovery with the other Wolves. This
supreme good fortune had come to him, not to them! He quickly shut the lid
of the case and slid the box into an inside pocket.
He removed his property to Monte’s room, hiding the jewel case under
the mattress. His blood had turned to liquid fire. He had that for which they
had all been searching—and it was his alone!...
Monte went on guard that evening, taking “Doc” with him: not that
Monte was afraid, but he realized that the battle had now entered its final
and decisive phase. And it was real war. Monte Jerome had no doubt that
Martin had, in some mysterious way, been done to death in the house of Ah
Wing.
“You boys better get to bed early,” he said. “Billy, you take the clock and
set it for half past one. You wake the Kid as soon as you get up—we’ll
stand double guard from now on!”
The “Kid” hardly heard Monte speaking. He wanted to examine the
jewels again, wanted to figure out just how he was going to make the break
which would free him from his comrades.

For a time, after the other two had departed, he sat around smoking and
cleaning out the barrel of his pistol, which the fogs of this marshy
neighborhood were corroding. He cleaned barrel and chamber and oiled the
action, then replaced the clip of cartridges and slipped the gun into a side
pocket.
“Well,” he mumbled, half aloud, “I guess I’ll be getting to bed. An’ I
hope to God there won’t be no voices around here tonight!”
The Strangler grunted, and the “Kid” slouched off up the stairs and into
the room that had been Monte’s. He closed the door carefully, crossed over
to the light, and then stood listening.
The night wind was stirring around the house, whistling and moaning
down the chimney; but the “Kid” had an antidote for fear tonight: he went
over to his bed and fumbled for the jewels. The touch of the smooth leather-
covered box started his heart to pounding.
He laid the box on the bed and opened it. The light was reflected into his
eyes from a thousand sharp facets, crimson and blue and white—but
perhaps the charm was wearing off: the stones did not look as wonderful to
him tonight as they had in that momentary view he had caught during the
afternoon.
“And that’s the bunch of sparklers men go dippy about!” the “Kid”
mumbled. “Hell, I wouldn’t give two bits for the whole bunch, if I couldn’t
sell ’em! There’s too many of ’em, and they don’t shine so terrible much! I
saw a big buck nigger on State Street once with a solitaire on that would
have made them look phoney—and it was glass! Oh, well, I should worry. I
ain’t going to wear ’em—I’m going to sell ’em! I’ll have to play safe—”
At the ghost of a sound from behind, the “Kid” whirled. He had left the
door closed, but now it was open—and the Strangler stood inside the room,
grinning.
“So, that was the game!” he cried. “You’re a slick one, Kid, but you ain’t
slick enough. I been watching you all evening. You ain’t yourself, old timer.
You’re getting nervous. But I don’t wonder! You grabbed the sparklers, but
how you done it I don’t know. And you was going to hold ’em out, was
you? Well, well—”

The “Kid’s” lips jerked up into a wolfish smile, but he forced himself to
go slow. He needed to think this thing out. He knew the Wolves well
enough to be sure they would hold this affair against him, and sooner or
later would try to play even. No use to try to explain—they wouldn’t
understand.
The Strangler was watching him through chilly eyes. Casually, the Kid’s
hand stole toward his side pocket. Instantly the man standing before him
acted: with a bellow of rage he jerked out his own hand, which he had been
holding under his coat: swinging it up he fired, then struck at the light globe
with the smoking barrel.
To the “Kid” there came the sensation of suffocation and of darkness. His
own gun was out, but his enemy had disappeared—and he himself was
sprawled across the bed. That instant of falling had not registered in his
consciousness: he had been standing, and now he was down; that was all he
knew.
And he was fighting for breath—a great weight seemed to be crushing in
his chest. He raised his left hand and gropingly explored the front of his
shirt: it was already saturated, and from a hole to the left of his breast bone
more blood was coming in a pulsing current.
“The dirty dog!” muttered the “Kid” thickly, pulling himself erect by
grasping the foot of the bed. “He’s croaked me—”
Then suddenly the “Kid’s” whirling senses cleared. Billy the Strangler
had done for him; but he would send Billy on ahead, to tell St. Peter he was
coming! His yellow teeth came together. He felt something welling up in
his throat and spat out a mouthful of blood.
“Not—much—time—left!” he muttered.
He dropped to his knees and for a moment everything went blank. Then
he mastered himself, by a superhuman effort: and began to crawl stealthily
along toward the dimly-lighted panel of the door. The Strangler had run out
there after firing—now, undoubtedly, he was waiting till it should be safe
for him to come back for his booty!
Slowly, the dying crook dragged himself across to the door and out into
the hall. The training of a lifetime stood him in good stead now: he was as
soundless as a shadow. He reached the top of the stairs and paused, leaning

for a moment against the banisters—everything was going black before
him. Then he pulled himself together with a disregard for his own suffering
that in a better cause would have been heroic.
Inch by inch, he drew himself forward till he was sitting on the top step
of the stair. He peered down into the lighted rooms below. Ah! There he
was! The Strangler stood beyond the big chandelier in the front room, the
“Kid” could see him plainly through an open door. His face was smiling,
the crooked smile of a shark.
Resting his automatic across his bent knees, the “Kid” took steady aim at
the man who had done for him.
“A little higher than the pockets!” he told himself, repeating the old
gunman’s formula for a killing shot.
Next moment the pistol roared; and the man standing down there in the
light jerked up his hands and staggered backward. Greedily, the “Kid’s” fast
glazing eyes drank in every detail of the Strangler’s agony. He knew what
that look meant—
Billy the Strangler began to pivot on his heels, staring with blind eyes
into space.
“Where is he?” he cried. “Damn your soul and body—you—”
He pitched forward to his face. And the “Kid,” leaning peacefully back,
felt himself snatched up into a great red cloud that has descended out of the
roof upon him.

In an upper room in the house of Ah Wing, the Chinaman sat at an
instrument that resembled a telephone switchboard. There were on its
surface eight little globes, each with a plug socket beneath.
Ah Wing had an operator’s head-piece in position, and he seemed to be
listening attentively to something that came to him over the wires.
There had been voices, loud and angry. He heard the Strangler
denouncing the “Kid.” Then came the shot—and silence.

Ah Wing waited an appreciable time, then shifted the plug from socket to
socket. Not a sound from any of the rooms in the distant cottage. He
returned the plug to its central position and waited.
Presently another shot sounded, and a scream. He heard the Strangler
curse his enemy.
Without a word, Ah Wing removed the head-piece and glanced up at a
chart fastened to the wall before him. It contained the names of five men,
against one of which a black cross had been inscribed.
Now he picked up a pencil and filled in two additional crosses.
There were but two of the Wolves left!
This Fascinating Story Has An Amazing Climax. It Will Be Concluded in
the Next Issue of WEIRD TALES. Tell Your Newsdealer To Reserve Your
Copy.

Snatched from the Grave, Woman Tells of Death
A weird adventure befell Mrs. Rafaela Mercurio, an Omaha woman who,
after apparently dying, awoke in the land of the living instead of the spirit
world. After her physician had pronounced her dead, her life was restored
by an injection of adrenalin, administered by Dr. W. A. Gerrie.
To all outward appearance, she was quite dead. There was no indication
of breathing or heart action. Prayers for the dead were started in the bed
chamber where her body lay.
Then Dr. Gerrie injected the gland extract in her heart, and after several
days she showed signs of returning life. Upon regaining consciousness, she
was confused and puzzled, uncertain, it seemed, whether she was alive or
dead. Later she described her strange experience.
“I could feel death pulling me,” she said. “I was slipping. I tried to find
something to hold to, but could not. I felt far away and alone, yet it seemed
there was something I must do before I slipped entirely away.
“I had just a few minutes. I must straighten out in bed. I must cross my
hands on my breast. I must smile. My children must know that I died in
peace. From far away there seemed to be people around me. But their
voices grew more distant.
“Then there seemed to come to me the comforting words of a priest.
They added to my peace and content. I was ready for death. I smiled, I
think. I know I wanted to. It was the last thing I remember.”
And then, days after the first injection of adrenalin, the “dead” woman
regained consciousness. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.
“I shall never forget that hour,” she said. “I heard the clock strike four
times—and I realized I was a living person in a living world.”

A Fanciful Novel of the Red Desert Complete In This
Issue

DESERT MADNESS

By HAROLD FREEMAN MINERS
CHAPTER ONE
THE GIRL AND THE HANDCUFFS

For a long moment the man surveyed with tired eyes the queer cleft in
the canon wall and the beaten trail that led into it.
Finally he addressed the nearest of his two burros in a listless, half
humorous voice:
“Well, Archibald, it looks interesting—what say we try it?”
Archibald made no reply. Archibald was asleep. Immediately upon the
halting of the little cavalcade the burro had sunk into a state of dejection
more apathetic than usual and had promptly gone to sleep. In fact, it is
doubtful if Archibald had not been asleep the greater part of the afternoon.

“You don’t care, eh, Archibald? Well, for that matter, neither do I. But
let’s consider this matter, old timer. For the last hundred years, more or less,
we’ve been strolling around this accursed desert, and we have made the
acquaintance of a few cottontail rabbits, one or two coyotes, and a
rattlesnake. The rabbits showed their distaste for our society by running
away; the coyotes did nothing but deride us with mournful voices; the
rattlesnake certainly showed no desire to be friendly. We’ve met no human
being; we’ve discovered no fabulously rich gold mine; we’ve had our fill of
scenery.
“There lies a well-beaten trail, disappearing into the face of solid rock. At
its end lies mystery, adventure. Possibly romance. Also, possibly, cattle
rustlers, who may greet us with anything but enthusiasm. In which case
we’ll throw in our lot with them, and I’ll ride you across the desert to
eternal glory. The idea intrigues me, Archibald. I think we shall
investigate.”
At this moment an over-industrious flea must have launched a
determined attack on one of the few vulnerable parts of Archibald’s
anatomy, for he suddenly nodded his head vigorously.
“Ah, you agree with me? I knew you would. We will now follow the trail
to adventure—or a sheep herder’s camp. Let’s go!”
Percy, the second burro, was with difficulty herded into the narrow trail.
Archibald followed him with great reluctance, but finally the man
succeeded in driving his tiny pack train into concerted action, and they
slowly trudged up the narrow defile.
Stanley Ross had been exiled to the desert country because certain
eminent New York doctors had come to the conclusion that he had
contracted a disease which yields itself to treatment most readily in the dry
desert uplands.
Ross had not been breathing the dry air of the desert for a month before
he was as healthy as a prize fighter. The fact was that Stanley Ross had
over-indulged in a certain pastime known as “reading the tape,” and Nature
had gone on a strike. The New York doctors had provided the first step
toward recovery; the desert had done the rest.

But there had been another hurt that had not healed so readily—or at least
Ross had so convinced himself. Stanley Ross fondly believed that he was
heart-broken. The cause was a blonde bit of New York femininity who had
fancied Ross for a while, but in the end had fancied the millions of an oil
man more.
So he had stayed on in the West. A healthy restlessness had driven him
out to explore the uncharted wastes of the vast Red Desert, and the ever
changing wonders of rock, and sand, and sky, of sagebrush and cactus, of
sparkling night-heavens had beckoned him on. For months now he had been
wandering up and down this immeasurable wonderland, obeying every
vagary of mind, exploring every nook and cranny that caught his itinerant
fancy, his only companions the two burros which he had so whimsically
named.
Mirages had beckoned. Colors so bizarre that no artist had dared to give
them to canvas had soothed his soul. Grotesqueries of rock and sand and
canon had intrigued him.
Ross still believed that the old hurt was still present in his bosom.
Actually he had been having a capital time for months, and the girl no
longer mattered. However, he had allowed himself gradually to fall into a
state of whimsical melancholy. What he needed was adventure. He was
bored, but had he known what lay at the end of the thin twisting trail before
him his boredom might not have been so acute.
The rock defile, through which the trail led, was narrow, and the walls
were nearly perpendicular. The passage was twisting, but a tiny trickle of
water gave promise of a broader canon farther up. The trail, while very
narrow, was well-defined and worn deep. It looked as though it had been in
constant use for years.
Ross had progressed along this strange passage for about a quarter mile
when his attention was suddenly arrested by something on the canon wall.
Involuntarily, he stopped. Instantly the burros halted as though their motive
power was automatically turned off whenever their master stopped walking.
“Great Horned Toads!” ejaculated Ross in a low voice. “Archibald, do
you see what I see, or has the sun gone to my head? Has the world slipped

back three centuries, or is it actually nineteen-twenty-three? ’Tain’t
possible, Archibald, but nevertheless I see what I see!”
There, not thirty feet distant, was a girl—a pretty girl—and she was
shackled to four great iron rings, fastened in the canon wall, by means of
handcuffs, ankle fetters, and four heavy chains!

CHAPTER TWO
BROKEN SHACKLES AND A MYSTERY

Ross stood spellbound. He could not believe his own eyes.
That he should meet a human being in this vast waste of rock and sand
and cactus was possible. That he should find a girl chained to a rock, like a
felon of the black ages, was nothing short of incredible.
There was no denying the girl’s existence, however. She was there, and
she was in need of help.
His incredulity shattered, Ross was beside the girl in a bound. Even a
cursory glance showed her to be undeniably pretty, and it also showed her
to be quite as undeniably in a state of total exhaustion.
At Ross’s approach, the girl raised her head with difficulty. Her eyes
opened and she smiled slowly. Then her whole body suddenly fell forward
against the chains that held her. She had fainted.
No stranger situation could be imagined than the finding of a beautiful
girl chained to a rock in the midst of the great Red Desert. This, however,
was a matter for future consideration. The girl needed immediate attention,
and Ross’s first thought was to release her.
When he examined her shackles Ross realized that release was not going
to be easy. The four rings to which the chains were fastened were secured to
the canon wall by means of heavy iron staples driven deep into fissures in
the rock. A test of strength showed that nothing short of a charge of
dynamite would ever loosen them.
The chains were comparatively heavy and well forged. A file was the
only solution—and Ross did not possess a file.

Not till he examined the handcuffs did he see any hope of releasing the
girl. These were not of the ordinary type. They were not the steel manacles
of the sort used today, but were about two inches wide, heavy in
construction and made of cast iron. The locking device was old-fashioned.
They were a type of handcuff that had been obsolete for nearly three
quarters of a century.
Having satisfied himself that they were really made of cast iron, Ross at
once realized that it would be a comparatively easy task to free the girl.
Securing a small rock for a hammer, he braced the girl back against the
canon wall and held her wrist against the rock. A few well directed blows
with the improvised hammer easily cracked the rusty cast iron and the
handcuff fell away in two pieces.
The girl’s wrist had been freed without more than slightly bruising the
skin. The second handcuff was broken quite as easily. Ross gently lowered
the girl to the ground.
Releasing her ankles was more difficult. The anklets were of heavier
construction and harder to break without injuring the girl. However, by
placing a rock under the anklet and being careful, Ross finally managed to
shatter the cast iron without more than bruising the girl’s slender ankles.
In an instant he had jerked the pack from one of the burros and spread his
blanket roll out on the ground. Picking up the unconscious girl, he placed
her on the blankets and improvised a pillow from his coat.
Almost opposite where the girl had been chained the tiny trickle of water
had formed a miniature pool in the rocks. Seizing a tin cup from his camp
outfit, Ross hurried to this pool, scooped up a cup of water, and in an instant
was kneeling at the girl’s side.
Dipping his fingers in the water, he flicked it across her face, then
carefully bathed her forehead, and then set to chafing her wrists.
It was fully ten minutes before the girl showed any evidence of returning
consciousness. Then her eyelids began to flutter. Finally she sighed deeply,
and her eyes slowly opened.
Stanley Ross thought he had never seen such a look of abject terror as
now appeared in the girl’s eyes. It was as though she had just awakened
from a terrible dream and was still laboring under its terrorizing influence.

Such a look might have appeared in the eyes of a slave girl when Nero ruled
in Rome.
For a moment, consciousness battled with that nightmare that had been
seething through the girl’s brain and finally won. Her eyes opened wide. A
half smile slowly crossed her face. Whatever might have inspired her terror,
the girl evidently recognized in Ross a friend.
Her lips, dry and parched, moved with difficulty, but Ross saw that they
framed the word “Water!”
Lifting her head, he dampened the girl’s lips from the cup and then
allowed her to drink her fill. But weakness still held sway over her body,
and she sank back on the blankets, exhausted. Her eyes closed again.
“Don’t try to talk,” advised Ross. “You just lie there and rest until I fix
something for you. Then you can tell me about this thing.”
For once in his life, Ross was glad that he had taken another man’s
advice. When he had started his desert pilgrimage an old prospector had
advised him to include a few cans of soup in his outfit. Ross had demurred,
seeing no use in packing superfluous weight, but the old desert rat had
insisted.
Ross had included the soup. So far, he had had no use for it, but now it
was to show its worth.
Collecting a few dry sticks from the stubby willows that grew around the
pool, Ross soon had a tiny fire going. Opening a can of soup, he heated it
over the fire and carried a cup of it to the girl.
“Oh, that’s so good!” she murmured after she had drained the cup.
“Thank you.”
“Do you feel like talking?” asked Ross.
For a moment the girl regarded him with frank eyes. Then she shook her
head wearily.
“Not—not just yet—please. I’m—so—tired.” She sank back onto the
blankets.
Realizing that, for the present, rest was the most important thing for her,
Ross covered the girl with a blanket and set about his camp duties.

He finished unpacking his burros and turned them loose to pick at the
scanty tufts of grass that grew along the seeping stream. This done, he set
about preparing his own meal.
It was already dusk, and by the time he had cooked and eaten his supper
darkness had settled down over the little canon. Washing his few dishes in
the pool, Ross set them aside and turned his attention to finding enough
firewood to keep the fire going.
In the darkness this was somewhat of a task, and Ross was absent from
the camp for some little time. When he returned he saw that his strange
guest had evidently fallen asleep.
Ross threw some wood on the fire and sat down with his back against a
rock. Filling his pipe, he lighted it and leaned back to contemplate the
events of the afternoon and evening.
His first mental reaction on finding the girl had been one of intense rage
that any one, no matter what the cause or conditions, could be so utterly
inhuman as to perpetrate such an act. He was still angry now, but he had
cooled off to the extent that he could consider the affair calmly.
There seemed to be no off-hand explanation whatever. As far as Ross
knew, there was no human habitation in all this desert waste, yet this trail
up the little canon had been used frequently and recently, so somewhere up
the winding trail must lie a solution to the mystery. But what it could be, or
whether he could ever solve it, Ross could not imagine.
The whole affair was grotesque, bizarre. Why any one should chain a
young girl to a rock wall in the midst of a heat-scorched desert was utterly
incomprehensible. The girl was not gross or criminal-looking. On the
contrary, she was pretty, delicate, and obviously refined. Her clothes
bespoke a far different environment. How any one could be so inhuman as
to subject her to such treatment was unfathomable.
Sitting there, smoking and watching the girl, mulling the strangeness of
the affair over in his mind, Ross could offer himself no explanation. The
only thing to do, apparently, was to wait for the girl to awaken and then
wait for her to talk.
At any rate, the adventure which he had craved seemed to be at hand.
Where it would lead him he had no idea.

The fire gradually burned low. The girl slept on. Ross removed the pipe
from his mouth. His head nodded. In half an hour the campfire had wasted
to an ember.
The man’s head had sunk forward onto his breast; his body had relaxed
comfortably against its support. He, too, was asleep.
Hours crept by....
With a start, Ross awoke. The first faint glow of dawn was creeping
down into the little canon. It was morning.
Sheepishly, Ross rubbed his eyes, aware that he had allowed the healthy
fatigue of a day in the desert to conquer his senses and bring sleep when he
had intended to watch throughout the night.
Gradually the events of the evening before came back to him, and he
looked across to where he had wrapped the girl in his blankets. The bed was
empty!
The girl was gone!

CHAPTER THREE
ADVENTURE WITH A VENGEANCE

In an instant Ross was on his feet, the sleep fog automatically cleared
from his brain.
One glance was enough. The dawn was far enough advanced so that he
could see both up and down the canon. It was patent that the girl had
vanished during the darkness.
The whole affair was so utterly impossible, so unreal, so like an Arabian
Nights adventure, that Ross was almost prone to believe that it had been
merely a dream, a desert hallucination. Not until his eyes again sought the
canon wall did he convince himself that he had not been laboring under
some mental aberration.
There could be no denying his eyes, though. There were the four heavy
chains fastened to the canon wall, and there were the four broken shackles,
mute evidence that he had stumbled onto a situation as exotic as one of the
desert’s own mirages.

No, there could be no question that the girl had actually existed. Nor
could there be any question that she had disappeared. The only living thing
in sight was Archibald, who stood with head bowed over the dead embers
of last night’s fire in his usual state of ignoble dejection.
At first thought it seemed impossible that the girl could have left camp,
unaided, and it seemed quite as certain that no one could have taken her
away by force, without rousing Ross.
As he considered it, however, Ross realized that exhaustion would come
quickly to one chained to the rock and exposed to the sun without food or
water. Recuperation would probably come quite as quickly. The girl had
had both water and nourishment the evening before, and it would have been
quite possible for her to have gained sufficient strength to leave, had she so
chosen. There seemed to be no other explanation.
“Well, Archibald,” said Ross, falling into his whimsical habit of
addressing the burro, “when I started this trip I thought that you and Percy
were the only asses in the party. Now I am convinced there are three of us.
Here I have just been craving adventure for months. Yesterday I blundered
right onto the craziest kind of a mystery, and then I go to sleep and let the
whole thing get away from me! Fools can’t think, but I suppose they’ve got
to eat,” he finished to himself.
He set about preparing his breakfast, meanwhile pondering the affair. The
more he pondered the more mysterious it became.
Breakfast finished, he washed his dishes and then stepped over to gather
up his bed-roll. Instantly he stopped short. There before him, scratched in
the level sand of the canon floor, was a message:

“Please go away. There is only great danger if you investigate
further.”

There could be no denying the sincerity of that message. Coupled with
the silent testimony of the inhuman shackles, it meant that the girl, whoever
she might be, was in real peril.
Regaining her strength, she had quietly slipped away in the night, but
before going she had left behind a warning to the man who had released her.

It was evident that she did not wish to draw a stranger into a danger which
she considered hers alone.
The warning, however, reacted on Ross like a red rag on a bull. It was a
challenge to his manhood, to his thirst for adventure. Somewhere up that
narrow canon was mystery; and somewhere, too, was a girl in unknown
danger, a girl who patently enough needed assistance and a friend.
It took but a few minutes to round up the burros and rope on the packs.
“We will now proceed to rescue the fair maiden.”
“Stick ’em up, an’ do it quick!”
Ross whirled at the sound of the gruff voice—and found himself looking
squarely into the muzzle of an ugly six-shooter. Behind it, was the most
villainous-looking countenance Ross had ever seen.
“Come on! H’ist ’em up!” again jerked out the owner of the gun.
The situation was too unreal to be taken seriously.
“Ah, Archibald, the plot thickens! First we meet Beauty; now we meet
the Beast. Point that gun the other way, my friend. It might go off and
frighten my long-eared friend here. He’s delicate, and I don’t like to have
his nerves shocked.”
“H’ist them mits before I drill ya!”
Ross felt the muzzle of the gun jammed into his ribs, and a practised
hand quickly searched his body. His automatic, carried for the sole purpose
of exterminating rattlesnakes, was transferred to the other’s pocket.
The vicious attitude of the gunman was far too real to be taken lightly.
There was no doubt that he meant business.
“Ya can let ’em down now,” said the gunman, stopping back.
Ross turned and surveyed his captor.
“If you don’t mind telling me,” he asked coldly, “to whom am I indebted
for this early morning call?”
“Stow the flip gab. All I know is tha big boss said to bring ya in, an’ I’m
bringin’ ya.”

“Then I’m to understand that I’m a captive?”
“Understan’ anythin’ ya please. Now git travelin’.”
Resistance was hopeless. His air of reckless bravado gone, boiling
inwardly at the indignity forced upon him, Ross swung and trudged off up
the canon trail.
For perhaps a quarter of a mile the narrow canon cleaved straight through
the rock. Then it suddenly began a series of intricate turns, as though it had
attempted a passage and had been baffled and forced to take a new direction
about every fifty feet.
For a while, Ross stalked on without speaking. Suddenly he turned his
head and spoke.
“Just where are you taking me, and who is the ‘big boss’?”
“Never mind askin’ dam’ fool questions. Keep movin’!”
After another quarter mile of sharp turns, the canon suddenly broadened,
and Ross found himself looking out into a basin bounded on all sides by
high, perpendicular rock walls, smooth and straight.
The basin was oval in shape, and near the center was a group of ’dobe
buildings, five in number. Toward these the captor directed their progress.
As he advanced, Ross looked keenly for signs of life, but though he
sought every possible nook and cranny with his gaze, he could see neither
man nor beast. The place seemed to be absolutely deserted.
At the first building, a small ’dobe structure that stood somewhat apart
from the others, Ross was ordered to halt. Opening a heavy door, the man
motioned with his gun for him to enter. Ross stepped over the threshold,
and instantly the door clanged shut behind him.
He heard the heavy bolt drop into place. Then he heard his captor
walking away.
Then, for the first time, it dawned on Ross that he was actually a
prisoner, and that he had been captured with some definite object in view.
The room in which he found himself was about twelve feet square. The
walls were of ’dobe; the floor was of the same material, hard packed and

smooth. There were two small windows, but both were heavily protected
with thick iron bars, set deep in the hard-packed ’dobe. The furniture
consisted of a crude table and chair.
A single test of strength showed Ross that he could never hope to open
the door. A crowbar or an axe would be necessary for that, and there was no
implement of any kind in the room. The walls were fully eighteen inches
thick. Under the fierce heat of the desert the ’dobe had grown as hard as
cement. Unless he received help from outside, there seemed to be no
possibility of escape.
Time passed. Finally he ceased his idle wandering about the room and
sank into the chair.
His pipe and tobacco still remained in his pocket. He took out his pipe,
lighted it, and fell to considering his strange predicament.
It seemed that ages had passed before he detected approaching footsteps.
The bolt was raised. The heavy door swung on its hinges. His captor stood
outside, gun in hand. Behind him was a Chinaman, carrying a tray on which
was food.
The Chinese entered the room, placed the tray on the table and arranged
the food. As he was performing this service, he said in a low whisper, so
low that his companion could not hear, “Missee say Wong flix good
dlinner.”’
“Come on, Chink, make it snappy!” snapped the man with the gun.
The door slammed. The bolt fell into place. Ross was alone again.
Dubiously, he surveyed the food. The words of the Chinese came back to
him, “Missee say Wong flix good dlinner.”
So the girl knew that he was a captive. Well, all he could do was wait.
But who was she? And what did his imprisonment mean?
In the meantime there was no reason for wasting a good dinner. Ross was
hungry, and in twenty minutes the last scrap of food had disappeared.
Settling back in his chair, he again filled his pipe and prepared to await
developments with as good grace as possible.
It was hours later that he heard footsteps nearing his prison.

CHAPTER FOUR
ROSS IS INVITED TO DINE

Ross heard a key in the lock, and a moment later the heavy door swung
open. It was the gunman again. He was evidently not mindful to take any
chances with his prisoner, for he again was holding his revolver ready.
“Come on out!” he barked, motioning with the gun for Ross to step out of
the room. “Tha big boss wants ya.”
“Oh, he does?” returned Ross. “Maybe I’ll find out now what all this is
about.”
“You’ll find out all right. Mebbe find out more’n ya want.”
“You know, I don’t think I’m going to like you at all. I shouldn’t be
surprised if I had serious trouble with you yet. But lead on!”
Ross’s persiflage was far from pleasing to the gunman. He glared
malevolently at Ross for a moment, as if half minded to inflict physical
punishment, finally thought better of it, and then jerked out, “I ain’t leadin’;
I’m followin’. Git movin’!”
Ross was conducted to the largest of the group of ’dobe buildings,
evidently used as a dwelling, and was ushered directly into a bedroom.
He had expected anything except what he now saw. The room was such
as might have been found in a brown-stone mansion on Fifth Avenue. The
floor was covered with a deep soft rug. There was a mahogany bed, with a
spotless white spread, and a dressing-table of the same wood. To one side of
the latter stood a full-length plate mirror.
“The big boss said ya was to shave, an’ then ya was ta dress fer dinner.
Yo’ll find all tha togs there on that bed.” The gunman directed Ross’s
attention to the bed with a flourish of his gun.
Ross looked. The garments on the bed comprised a complete evening
outfit, from studded shirt to patent-leather pumps.
He was surprised to find that the clothes fit him well. The pumps were a
trifle tight and the suit was a bit snug, but a half hour later, when he
surveyed himself in the long pier glass, he was well satisfied.

“All right, keeper, let’s be on our way. I’m curious,” he said.
His captor conducted him down the long veranda, and a moment later he
was ushered into a large room where a table was laid for dinner.

CHAPTER FIVE
A STRANGE DINNER

By this time Ross was prepared for almost anything, yet the room that he
now stepped into was even more astounding than the bedroom.
In the center stood a table arranged for four. It fairly sparkled with
glassware, silver and spotless linen. At one side of the room stood a huge
buffet. Its top was well covered with glasses, liquor shakers and sundry
bottles, the contents of which were obvious.
The occupants of the room chiefly held his attention, though. They were
three, two men and a woman. Here, at last, he was to know the meaning of
the strange events of the preceding twenty-four hours.
The two men were standing close together and had evidently been
conversing. Both were in faultless evening dress. The girl stood apart; aloof,
so it seemed. Despite her evening dress, Ross instantly recognized her as
the girl he had found in the canon.
One of the men was young and exceedingly well built. His wide, heavily
muscled shoulders suggested out-of-the-ordinary strength. His hair was
wiry and red; its color was amply reflected in his ruddy complexion. The
face was strong and would have been attractive but for one feature—the
eyes. The eyes were small, deep-set, and far too close together. They might
have been said to be piggish. The dull glint in them was not reassuring.
Ross knew at once that he did not like this man.
It was the second of the two men, however, who was really striking. He
was, in fact, an amazing figure. His stature was above the average height,
over six feet, and he was thin to emaciation. Ross thought he had never seen
so tall and yet so slender a man. He was so thin as to be ludicrous, yet there
seemed to be a remarkable whipcord strength about him.
His face was narrow and as lean as his body. A thin, high nose divided a
pair of piercing black eyes. It was the eyes that struck instant attention.

Their everchanging lights fairly gleamed. They seemed to be alive with a
thousand fires.
The impression was instantly registered with Ross that here was a man
who was possessed of unusual personal power, or who was stark mad.
Those eyes could allow of no other conclusion.
As Ross was ushered into the room it was this strange individual who
instantly stepped forward.
“Ah, our guest has arrived,” he said. His voice was soft as velvet, yet it
carried an irritating quality that was thin-edged and biting, and scarcely
concealed. “Step right up, Mr. Waring; dinner will be served at once. Wong,
the wine.”
From somewhere the Chinese, Wong, had glided forth and, drawing out a
chair, indicated Ross’s place at the table. Immediately he had filled the
glasses with a sparkling liquid. Ross recognized it as champagne.
There was no chance to reply. In fact, Ross was too bewildered to think
of anything adequate to say. In a moment he would be himself again, but
just now his wits were all at cross purposes.
As the elderly man greeted Ross, the girl and younger man took their
places at the table as if they had only been waiting his arrival to proceed
with the meal. As Ross stepped forward, at the servant’s indication, his host
reached out and lifted the wine glass at his plate.
“We will drink to the health of our guest,” he said evenly.
Automatically, Ross lifted his glass. The others did likewise. For an
instant the four glasses were held aloft, the lights playing on their sparkling
depths. Then the elderly man turned to Ross with a rather elaborate low
bow and said in a voice that was like gray steel:
“Mr. Waring, allow us to drink to your most excellent good health——
for tomorrow you hang!”
The words were like an icy blast. Up to that moment the whole affair had
been rather ludicrous to Ross. He had realized that he was in danger at
times, but that this danger would involve the loss of his life he had not for a
moment imagined.

Now he realized that his very life was at stake; more than that, unless he
could find some way to extract himself from his predicament, that he was
sure to forfeit it. There could be no denying the import of the toast. Ross did
not know why, but he did know that this tall, lean stranger with the mad
eyes meant to kill him as sure as he stood there.
For a moment, the young New Yorker lost his complacency. He stood
with the glass poised in his hand, his brain whirling. But this was only for a
moment. In a second he had regained his poise. Raising the glass to his lips,
he drained it to the bottom and turned to his host.
“Thank you, sir,” he said carelessly, “for your kind wishes for my good
health. I hate to dispute you, but I don’t believe you will hang me in the
morning. And my name is not Waring, either. It happens to be Ross.”
“As you will, Mr. Waring, as you will. Any name would do as well. And I
assure you I shall have the pleasure of hanging you in the morning. Let me
warn you, too, Mr. Waring, not to attempt anything. I want this dinner
peaceful. It is an engagement dinner,” turning with an exaggerated bow to
the girl, “the occasion of the betrothal of my dear niece to Mr. Beebe here. I
know you will be interested in that, Mr. Waring. But just to forestall any
idea you might have of providing any unnecessary entertainment I have
stationed my friends, Mr. Garfin and Mr. Poole, at the door with
instructions to shoot if you get unruly. Now, let us eat.”
Ross glanced over his shoulder to find Garfin lounging in the door by
which he had entered, a malignant smile wrinkling his face. In an opposite
doorway lounged another individual fully as ugly looking as Garfin. This
was evidently Poole. Both had guns. It was obvious that for the present no
break for liberty was possible.
For the most part, that dinner was a nightmare to Ross. Afterward he
wondered how he had managed to get through it.
After the first effusion, the elderly man made no effort to include Ross in
the conversation. Glad of this respite, Ross attempted to collect his wits and
to form some estimate of his predicament and of the people with whom he
had to deal.
The elderly man carried on a continuous animated conversation, mostly
with the man whom he had designated as Beebe. Several times he addressed

himself to Ross, but always in such a manner that it was obvious no answer
was expected. A number of times he included the girl in his conversation,
but the only time she made reply was to answer a question, and then it was
merely to say, “No, Uncle Arthur.”
Once or twice Beebe addressed the elderly man as “Mr. Ward,” so Ross
concluded that his name was Arthur Ward. The girl’s identity he was not
able to learn, except that her first name was Virginia.
Beebe ignored Ross and by his attitude seemed to be currying favor with
Ward. As for the girl, she remained silent, her eyes downcast, palpably
holding herself aloof. Once or twice Ross caught a fleeting message from
her eyes. It seemed to him that she was in utter terror, yet in perfect control
of her nerves.
In those flashing telegrams from her eyes Ross was sure he caught a mute
appeal for help. If this was a betrothal dinner Ross felt sure that the
betrothal was without the consent of one of the parties concerned, and he
was determined then and there not only to effect his own escape but to aid
the girl as well.
The food was excellent and perfectly served by the Chinese, yet Ross
could not have told a single item, and he thought the dinner never would
end. The presence of Garfin and Poole was mute evidence that for the
present he could do nothing. When the meal finally came to an end and
Ward pushed back his chair, it brought a feeling of distinct relief to the
young man. Now at least was the beginning of the end.
“Now, Mr. Waring,” said Ward suavely, “we will repair to my study,
where I have a few things to say to you before we break up this very
pleasant little party. I hardly think my niece will care to accompany us.”
They rose from the table, and Ross was ushered into an adjoining room
which was even more striking in its way than either of the others he had
been in that evening.
A brisk fire burned on a wide hearth from above which looked down a
magnificent ram’s head. Other trophies of a similar nature adorned the other
walls. Interspersed with these were guns, Indian weapons, horsehair lariats
—in fact, every accoutrement and trophy of the old-time West. It was a

rather remarkable collection, one which under different circumstances
would have deeply interested Stanley Ross.
Instantly he knew where those curious antiquated shackles, which had
bound the girl, had come from. Here were several similar pairs.
Ross was directed to a chair in front of the fire. Ward took another, facing
him, while Beebe sat down on a wide bench on the far side of the fire. Ross
waited expectantly.
Ward offered his guest a cigar. Selecting one for himself, he clipped its
end very deliberately and lit it with aggravating leisure. Finally he leaned
back in his chair and gazed steadily at Ross with his mad eyes. A tiny smile,
cynical and cruel, crooked around his thin-lipped mouth.
“I could have had you killed at once, Mr. Waring,” he said deliberately,
his voice soft and well-modulated, yet biting, burning, “but I did not choose
to do that. Instead, I wanted to bring you here this evening so that you could
fully realize just what a serious thing it is, and how useless it is to buck
Arthur Ward. And then, too, I wanted my niece to know that I am to be
obeyed absolutely.”
“I suppose, Mr. Ward,” asked Ross, “that it would be quite useless to tell
you that my name is not Waring at all; that I do not even know any one of
that name, or that I have never seen your niece, until last evening?”
“Quite useless, I can assure you, Mr. Waring. I am absolutely certain of
your identity. I do not make mistakes.
“Mr. Waring, I never forget an injury. I remember forever, and my one
bad trait is the fact that I always have revenge. I would have got you in the
end, Waring, anyway, but your fool stunt of following my niece here saved
me a lot of trouble. Waring, you should have known that of all people on
earth you would have the least chance of marrying my niece.
“Tonight you can have the extreme pleasure of reflecting that you will
hardly be dead before Virginia will be the wife of Beebe.”
“And suppose she refuses?” asked Ross.
“We are a hundred miles from anywhere, Waring. Things could happen
that would make Virginia glad to marry Beebe—or any one.

“One more thing, Waring, and then we will terminate this interview,”
Ward went on dispassionately. “I want you to know that this is only the
beginning. I shall not be satisfied until I have exterminated your entire
family. It may take me years, but I shall certainly have the pleasure of
killing your brother and your father. It does not pay to do injury to Arthur
Ward.
“You will have tonight to reflect on what might have been. In the
morning I shall hang you.
“That is all I have to say, and since it will be quite useless for you to say
anything you may as well return to your room. Mr. Garfin and Mr. Poole
will see that you have safe conduct.”
Ross knew that for the present he would have to submit. Resistance
would be useless just now. He was one against four. The odds were too
great. He could only wait, hoping that the night would bring opportunity.
However, before he went he could not resist a last display of bravado—
bravado which he did not by any means feel.
Rising from his seat, Ross bowed low to Ward.
“Good-night, Mr. Ward. Thank you for a most excellent dinner and a
most entertaining evening. And let me assure you that you will not hang me
in the morning.”
Turning on his heel, Ross passed out of the room.

CHAPTER SIX
A FORLORN HOPE

When Ross stepped out into the darkness his first thought was that he
would make a dash for liberty. This hope died almost before it was born,
though, for he felt the muzzle of a revolver pressed close to his ribs and
Garfin’s rasping voice growled into his ear:
“Make just one move fer a break an’ I’ll plug ya. The boss says he’s goin’
to hang ya in the morning, but I’d like to save him tha trouble.”
Ross knew that Garfin was not indulging in idle words. The gunman
would gladly kill him. Then, too, out in the shadows another form kept

them close company. He knew this was Poole and that should he succeed in
worsting Garfin his chance of escaping the second gunman’s bullets was
very remote. No, the time was not yet.
The three trudged back to Ross’s one-room prison, and it was only a
minute or two until the door had slammed on him, the bolt had fallen into
place and the lock snapped its vicious message.
He was once more a prisoner.
Ross sought in the darkness for the crude chair and threw himself down
into it. He knew that for the time being there was no chance of escape, so he
gave himself up momentarily to a contemplation of his plight.
Who was this strange girl whom he had rescued, only to have her vanish
into the night? Why had she not spoken tonight? Why had she given him no
hint of action? Who was Beebe, that he would accept a betrothal which was
obviously odious to the girl? And, lastly, who was Ward with his mad eyes?
Who was Waring, and what had he done to merit such malicious
vengeance on the part of Ward?
These and many other questions Ross asked himself, but he had no
satisfactory answer to any one of them. Only a jumble of baffling mystery
presented itself. His brain seethed with impossible solutions, but he had to
admit that actually he was completely at sea.
Only a few facts stood out which could be accepted as a basis on which
to work.
He, Ross, had been taken for another man, Waring by name. Ward
evidently hated Waring intensely and was determined to put him to death
for a wrong, either fancied or real. There could be no doubt, too, that Ward
was, in a degree, insane.
What part Beebe was playing Ross could not determine, beyond the facts
that he was in favor with Ward and that he wanted the girl and would take
her on whatever terms he could get her.
The girl was obviously in great peril. It could be seen that she hated
Beebe, but at the same time was powerless to resist any order of her uncle.
Ross could readily see that she was in a position where death might well be
preferable to what she was facing.

And, undeniably, there was the fact that he, Ross, was sure to meet death
in the morning unless he could devise some way out of his dilemma.
The night was far gone when he had finished considering these things. It
was then that a plan of action first suggested itself to him. As it matured in
his mind he realized that it was a forlorn hope; but his circumstances were
so utterly desperate that there seemed nothing to do but give it a trial. He
knew that its success would depend entirely on the element of surprise.
Having once settled in his mind what he should do, Ross threw himself
down on the crude table and was soon sound asleep.
It was hardly daylight when he awoke, but he did not allow himself to
drop back to sleep again. He was going to be ready.
It was fully three hours later that he heard approaching footsteps.
Slipping quietly across the room, Ross flattened himself against the wall
beside the door and waited.
The footsteps drew nearer and nearer. A key grated in the lock. It clicked.
The bolt was raised. Slowly the door swung on its hinges.
Like a flash, Ross slipped from his hiding-place and darted through the
doorway. The only human within sight was Garfin. Like a mad thunderbolt
Ross bore down upon him.
Taken by surprise, Garfin barely had time to fire before Ross was upon
him. Too startled to take definite aim, his bullet went wild. With a force that
was terrific Ross struck him with the full impact of his body. The two went
down in a tangled heap. Garfin’s gun was knocked from his grasp and went
spinning a dozen feet away.
Garfin was not without courage of a kind, but all his life he had depended
on a gun to enforce his arguments. Physical combat had not been one of his
long suits, and now he found himself no match for his younger antagonist.
Stan Ross was far from a weakling physically. Long months afoot in the
desert had made him as hard as nails. Not so long ago he had been known
as a football player of some note. Now he used that knowledge of rough-
and-tumble combat to the fullest extent.
Taking Garfin by surprise, Ross had the initial advantage, and when the
two went down he was on top. Striking, kicking, using the crushing force of

his body, he went at the gunman in a demoniacal storm. For an instant it
looked as though he would beat his enemy into insensibility before he could
offer any material resistance.
But Garfin was fighting for his life and he knew it. He was not to be
vanquished so easily. In a moment the two men were threshing and rolling
on the ground in a fierce struggle.
Youth, however, was not to be denied. Those sledge-hammer blows were
having a telling effect. Garfin was weakening. Gradually Ross was wearing
him down.
Ross sought the throat of his enemy. Garfin’s breath came in gasps. His
eyes were bulging. Gradually Ross brought his knee up until it pressed into
Garfin’s stomach. A final effort would end the struggle. Slowly Garfin’s
head bent backward. Then—
A crashing, blinding blow caught Ross on his head. For a brief instant a
million fires flamed before his eyes. Then utter blackness.
He slumped forward across the body of his antagonist.

CHAPTER SEVEN
WONG INTERVENES

When Ross returned to consciousness it was with a sense of
bewilderment. His head seemed alive with shooting pains: his eyes burned
intensely; his body was sore and stiff.
Gradually he fought the fog from his brain and opened his eyes. He was
dimly aware that he was back in his prison room, stretched out on the table.
Painfully he sat up.
And then he saw that he was not alone. There was another person in the
room. As his eyes pierced the semi-gloom he was aware that the man before
him was Arthur Ward.
Instantly his brain cleared, and he swung himself around to face his
jailor.
Ward was standing in the center of the room, his feet wide apart, his
hands behind his back. A sardonic smile disfigured his face.

“Well,” he inquired, “so you decided not to die?”
“Yes, I decided not to die,” said Ross. “I might remind you, too, that it is
no longer morning and I have not been hung.”
“No, and you’re not going to be, either. I have prepared a much more
pleasant death for you.”
“Thanks!”
“Don’t waste your thanks,” replied Ward. “Before you’re through you’ll
be far from thanking me. You see, Waring, your little outbreak this morning
set me to thinking. If you had taken things quietly I would have hung you,
and it would all be over now. But you had to try to escape and that set me to
thinking that hanging was too pleasant for you. It would be over too
quickly. There would be no time for reflection. So I devised something
really fitting for your case.”
While Ward was speaking the man Poole had entered, carrying a wooden
box which he deposited gingerly in one corner and then quickly withdrew.
He seemed afraid.
“Yes, Waring,” Ward went on, “I’ve planned a death for you that I like
much better than hanging. And, damn your rotten soul to eternity,” he
snarled, “you’ll know what real torture is before you go out!”
With a sudden movement, he whirled, kicked the lid from the box, darted
through the doorway, and had crashed the door shut before Ross fairly
realized what he was doing.
Half bewildered, it was a moment before he could attach any meaning to
Ward’s action. Then it dawned on him that there was a deep significance to
the box which Poole had brought in. Some sinister portent lay in that box of
wood.
Fascinated, Ross sat watching the box, realizing that it held his fate,
scarce knowing what to expect, and certainly not expecting what developed.
For a long minute nothing happened. Ross grew nervous with the strain.
Then a faint buzzing came from the box. Silence. Again came that strange
sound. And again. A slithering rustle as of stiff silk rubbed together.

And then Ross’s scalp prickled with horror and his blood fairly froze in
his veins, for over the edge of the box appeared a hideous, swaying head!
There came a second! A third! And then a fourth!
They were huge diamond-back rattlesnakes!
As Ross recognized the big diamond-backs he knew instantly that he was
trapped. To step down onto the floor meant death, a horrible, grewsome
death. To remain on the table—
Instinctively, he drew his feet up onto the table as the big reptiles left the
box, one by one. He counted eight in all.
Ross gave himself up to black despair. Down there on the floor awaited a
fate too hideous for words....

It must have been fully two hours later, and dusk was already settling
down and darkening the room, when Ross heard footsteps.
They approached his prison. For a moment his heart leaped within him at
the possibility of rescue. But the door did not open. Instead, he heard the
taunting voice of Ward from outside:
“Oh, you’re safe enough so far, Waring. They can’t get you as long as
you stay on that table. I planned that. Wasn’t it kind of me to be so
thoughtful? But there won’t be any food and there won’t be any water, and
all the time you’ll be going through hell. I planned that, too. And then
there’ll come a time when you can’t stand it any longer. You’ll either fall
from the table from weakness, or you’ll go mad and step down onto the
floor. They’ll always be waiting, Waring. And then they’ll get you, damn
you!” The voice, rising to a shrill crescendo of passion, ended in a burst of
wild maniacal laughter.
Receding footsteps told him that Ward had gone away.
As the gloom deepened into utter darkness it seemed to Ross that he
would go mad. His brain seethed with wild impulses. A hundred times he
pictured himself lying there on the floor, a bloated, blackened thing. A
hundred times he went through death. Only that hope which “springs

eternal” kept him from stepping down onto the floor and making an end of
it.
Gradually Ross quieted. He finally settled back against the wall in a state
of apathy, little knowing or little caring when the end would come.
An hour passed.
Suddenly Ross became aware of an unusual sound. From somewhere in
back of him came a low “Hist!” so low as hardly to be heard. Stealthily, he
raised himself to the height of the barred window and peered into the
darkness.
Dimly he could make out a head outlined against the sky. A low,
whispered voice spoke:
“You take!”
Unmistakably it was the voice of Wong. There was a grating sound as of
something being passed between the bars.
Ross reached out his hand and it closed over cold steel.
An automatic!
“You take!” again came the whispered voice.
This time Ross found his hand closing over a cartridge belt.
“Me bring Ga’fin. You shoot!”
Like a ghost, the form at the window was gone without a sound.
With the feel of that cold steel in his hand Ross’s spirits rose like a tide.
All his waning confidence returned. He was instantly his own man again,
confident, cool, without fear.
Quickly he buckled the belt around his waist. With sure fingers, he made
certain that the gun was loaded. Slipping off the safety, he knelt on the
table, facing the door, and waited.
Ross did not know whether he would ever leave that room alive, but he
did know that the first men to open the door would die.

CHAPTER EIGHT
“YOU’LL SETTLE WITH ME”

Arthur Ward stood with his back to the big living-room fire, his feet wide
apart, hands crossed behind his back, head lowered, eyes peering from
beneath shaggy brows. It was a characteristic attitude and one which
peculiarly expressed the man’s calculated cruelty.
Beebe was seated on the wide fireplace bench, his feet stretched far in
front of him. He was slowly smoking, his whole sprawling attitude one of
indolent approval. Things were shaping themselves quite to the liking of
Larson Beebe.
The girl, Virginia, was seated in a chair somewhat in front of her uncle.
The wild look of her eyes and her agitated face told that she was going
through an ordeal that was breaking her bit by bit.
“But, Uncle Arthur,” she burst out, “surely you can’t mean to do this
terrible thing. Why, I don’t love Mr. Beebe at all. I scarcely know him, and I
don’t want to marry anyone.”
“My dear niece,” replied Ward evenly, “love has no part in my scheme of
things. Hate rules the world, and hate is my creed. Love makes people soft
and indolent. Hate is the great inspirator. Hate makes the world go ’round.
“Sentiment has no place whatever in this marriage. It is entirely a
marriage of convenience. Your personal inclinations have no weight
whatever. I wish you to marry Beebe; therefore you will do it.”
The girl’s color had heightened as she listened to her uncle’s ultimatum.
As he finished, a grim expression of defiance settled on his face.
“Well, I won’t!” she answered crisply.
“As you will, Virginia, but if you do not consent to marry Beebe within
twenty-four hours I shall leave you here alone with him. I imagine after a
couple of weeks of that you’ll be quite willing to marry him.”
“Oh, you beast!” For an instant, as Ward’s full meaning became clear to
her, it looked as though the girl would faint.

Then, like a wild beast at bay, she turned on Beebe in a burst of blazing
fury.
“And you, Larson Beebe, what have you to say? Are you going to be a
party to this? Are you as much a beast as my uncle?”
Beebe regarded her tolerantly for a moment out of his piggish eyes
before he spoke. A catlike smile of satisfaction curved his lips. He answered
slowly, indolently:
“Virginia, I am wild about you. I want you, and I am going to have you.
As long as you refuse to love me I’m not at all particular how I get you.
One way suits me as well as another.”
The girl turned back to her uncle. Her hands went out in an imploring
gesture. For an instant she seemed about to plead. Then she evidently
thought better of it.
“I suppose you understand, Uncle Arthur,” she asked in a low cold voice,
“that I will kill myself before I will let this happen?”
“My dear Virginia, you do not seem to understand the situation at all. You
are absolutely in my power. You cannot kill yourself because I will not
permit it. I will not give you the chance. You will do exactly as I say.”
“Not yet, Ward! First, you’ll settle with me!”
Stanley Ross stood in the doorway. But it was not the Stanley Ross,
urbane, bored, carefree, who, a few days before, had whimsically sought
adventure up an unknown canon trail. He had found adventure now, and it
had used him roughly. His face and hands were grimy. His clothes were
dirty and torn. One sleeve had been almost rent from his shoulder. His hair
was riotously disheveled and clotted with blood. Down one side of his face
extended a great splash of dirty dried blood.
In his right hand was an ugly-looking automatic, and in his face and eyes
was a look of savage fury.
At the sound of Ross’s voice, Ward whirled and whipped out a gun. But
he was too late, for Ross, with a steadiness and coldness belied by the
savagery of his face and figure, had fired. A look of unutterable amazement
overspread the face of Arthur Ward. He wavered on his feet for a moment,

and then, when a spot of red began to widen on his shirt front, he toppled
backward, lifeless.
Almost at the same instant a hatchet hurtled through the room and buried
its blade deep in the wall beside Larson Beebe, missing his head by the
merest fraction of an inch. Wong was going into action. Beebe slid forward
from his seat and ducked to temporary safety behind the table.
Ward had not had time to aim, but he had instinctively pulled the trigger.
The bullet caught Ross on the head and cut a long shallow furrow just
above his left temple. The wound itself was not serious, but for a moment it
blinded Ross. That moment was fatal, for as he roused himself from the
shock he knew that he had forgotten Poole.
Instantly Ross whirled to face the other doorway, but was too late. The
heavy bullet spun him half around. For an instant he fought to retain his
balance. Then he pitched forward onto the floor.
Painfully, with almost a superhuman effort, Ross raised himself with one
hand and deliberately shot Poole through the chest.
Then, mercifully, consciousness was blotted out.

CHAPTER NINE
VIRGINIA EXPLAINS

When Ross returned to consciousness it was to a blurred, feverish, pain-
wracked world.
He did not know where he was or what had happened. He only knew that
his head was bandaged and splitting with pain; that his shoulder was stiff
and sore, incapable of being moved even the fraction of an inch, and that it
pained with a dull, throbbing hurt; that his eyes burned and blurred; and that
his entire body burned with ten thousand fires.
Of one thing more was Ross conscious. That was the girl. When she saw
that Ross had temporarily come out of the fog she hurried to his side and
answered the unasked question on his lips by holding a cup of cold water to
them. She seemed to have been waiting for ages to do just that.

Ross drank gratefully, but when he would have questioned her she laid
her finger across his lips and said;
“Sh-h-h-ush! Not now. We’ll talk when you feel better. Just now you
need sleep more than anything else.”
And Stanley Ross obeyed. In an instant he was asleep, a wild, feverish
sleep that brought no rest.
There followed days of half consciousness, half nightmare; days when
Ross neither knew nor cared what happened, when wild delirium alternated
with painful reality.
He was far too ill to make any inquiries about anything that had
happened. In fact, he was only conscious of the fact that whenever the fog
lifted the girl always seemed to be present—a ministering angel who
brought cooling draughts, and soothing applications for his head and
shoulders.
Finally there came a day when Ross awoke to a sane world. The fever
fog had departed from his brain. His head no longer throbbed and beat like
a thousand devils. His shoulder was sore and stiff, but it no longer was
filled with maddening pain. He was weak, very weak, but the world was
once more interesting and he was acutely aware of a most prodigious
appetite.
Ross was aware that he was in the room to which he had been conducted
by Garfin on the night of the strange dinner. Beyond that, he was not
interested. He was aware that the girl was still acting as his nurse.
At meal time the Chinese, Wong, came in with a tray. He was still too
weak to care as to the whereabouts of the others, or what had happened on
the night of the fight.
He did learn that the girl’s name was Virginia Carver, but that was all.
In less than a week he was sitting out on the long veranda every
afternoon. With returning strength came returning curiosity. He wanted to
know the story of this strange habitation in the desert and to learn just what
had happened on the night Wong had aided him to escape.
Several times he broached the subject to the girl, but each time she put
him off with the statement that he was not yet strong enough to talk. The

excuse was obviously becoming threadbare, however, as his health
improved.
One afternoon, while Ross was sitting on the veranda, the girl came out
and took a seat opposite him. It was patent that the time for explanations
had come.
“I suppose, Mr. Ross,” began Virginia Carver, “that you have been
wondering just what this whole thing is about, and you certainly are entitled
to an explanation. I don’t know how I am ever going to thank you for what
you have done for me. You were very brave.”
“Well, suppose you forget about the thanks, Miss Carver,” said Ross,
visibly embarrassed. “I would like to know all about this queer affair,
though. I thought Arabian Nights were ancient history, but I’m about ready
to believe anything.”
“In order for you to understand I’ll have to take you back about seven
years,” explained the girl. “At that time my uncle, Arthur Ward, was one of
the biggest operators in Wall Street. All his life he has been a very peculiar
man; eccentric; always doing queer things for which there seemed no
explanation, and never taking any one into his confidence.
“In the Street he was known as a plunger. He made a great deal of money.
Just how much I have no idea beyond the fact that he was always very
generous with my mother, his sister. But at one time he must have been very
wealthy indeed.
“Seven years ago it seems that he plunged too heavily and got caught.
His fortune was practically wiped out. When everything was settled up he
was still a wealthy man—that is, he was probably worth a half million
dollars—but the great bulk of his fortune was gone.
“He fought fiercely to keep from going under. There were days and
nights at a time when I don’t think he slept at all. He was like a wild man,
but the combination against him was too great and he went under.
“At first we thought he was going to lose his mind. For weeks he acted
very queer. Finally he seemed to get a hold on himself and he appeared
rational.

“He settled up his business, and then suddenly disappeared. He left no
word where he was going—just dropped out of sight. That was seven years
ago, and for two years we heard nothing from him. Five years ago I got a
letter from him asking me to visit him here. I came and found things just
about as you see them now.
“He seemed perfectly rational and contented. Of course, he was queer
and erratic, but he had always been that. He seemed to have forgotten Wall
Street entirely and spent most of his time making a collection of the
accoutrements of horse and man of the old-time West. I doubt if there is a
finer collection in existence.
“He did a lot of entertaining, too, for his old friends, inviting them out for
long visits. Here his eccentricity cropped out, for he insisted on going to
great lengths to have everything just as it would be in New York. There
must be fifteen dress suits in the house, and he always asked every one to
dress for dinner. He imported wines and foods. Wong has been with him
ever since he has been here and he is an excellent cook.
“I came out every year. He was always very kind to me and has made
every effort to entertain me. I thought he acted a little more queer each year,
and I often wondered if he was not a little unbalanced mentally.
“When I came out this year there was a great change. I saw at once that
he was quite mad. He imagined that he was being persecuted by the
Warings, and kept Poole and Garfin, New York gunmen, to protect him. The
Warings were the people who engineered his defeat in Wall Street, and
Uncle Arthur hated them intensely. He not only imagined they were
persecuting him, but he also imagined that the younger Waring, whom I
have never seen, was trying to marry me. This seemed to be an obsession
with him.
“When I got here I found that Larson Beebe was Uncle Arthur’s guest. I
had met Mr. Beebe in New York several times, and I detested him. I had
good reason to. He—well, I have always despised him.
“Just what his hold or influence on Uncle Arthur was I haven’t the
slightest idea, but I had hardly arrived before Uncle Arthur began to insist
that I marry him.

“Of course, I refused, and it was then that Uncle Arthur’s insanity came
to the surface. He had always been kindness itself, but now he suddenly
became the very incarnation of cruelty. While there was no question but that
he was entirely mad, yet in his madness his brain was as shrewd and
cunning as ever.
“When I refused to marry Beebe he began to practice his cruelties on me
in an effort to break my will. I was utterly at his mercy, for there was no
way that I could escape. All I could do was submit.
“The culmination of his indignities was to chain me to the rocks where
you found me. Whether he would have left me there till I was dead I hardly
know, but I think not. His brain was so unbalanced that it would be hard to
tell.
“I ran away that night because I knew he would kill you if he found you
with me. Evidently he had Garfin watching me, or he would not have
learned that you had released me. He was obsessed with the idea that you
were the younger Waring.
“The rest of the story you know. I dare not think of what would have
happened to me if you had not come to my rescue, Mr. Ross.”
“But what really happened the night I escaped?” asked Ross.
“Well—you shot both Uncle Arthur and Poole,” she replied hesitatingly.
“Did I—did I—” he floundered helplessly.
“Yes,” she replied evenly. “Providence helped your aim that night. Wong
buried them both. No, Mr. Ross,” she finished, as she noted the look on his
face, “don’t feel that way about it. If you hadn’t killed them they would
have killed you, and I would have suffered a fate worse than death. Under
the circumstances I cannot feel sorry.”
“What happened to Beebe?” asked Ross, curious as to the fate of that
dubious individual.
“That’s a mystery. He simply disappeared that night and we have not
seen him since. Wong just barely missed him that night with a hatchet. I
think he is deathly afraid of Wong. At any rate, he is gone. And now, Mr.
Ross, I want to ask you a question: How did you manage to escape from

your prison that night? Wong won’t tell me a thing. He just grins when I ask
him, and I suspect I owe a great deal to Wong.”
“You surely do, Miss Carver,” answered Ross fervently. “That Chinaman
is a wonder. In some way he got hold of my automatic and cartridge belt.
He passed them to me through the window, and then, under some pretense,
got Garfin to come and open the door. Then—well, Garfin won’t ever
bother us again.”

CHAPTER TEN
A NEW DANGER

With the passing days, Ross found new strength and new interest. His
head was already healed and his shoulder, beyond being stiff, no longer
bothered him. While still somewhat weak, he was able to walk about as he
pleased.
He found it very pleasant to pass the afternoons away on the long
veranda. Here he was often joined by Virginia Carver, and the two spent
hours together that were very pleasant. In fact, Ross suddenly became
acutely aware that he was taking more than a passing interest in this girl.
Virginia Carver was exceedingly lovely. Moreover, she was of a type and
personality that particularly appealed to Stanley Ross. While she was
nursing him through his illness he had found her presence very pleasing.
Now that he was nearly well, her companionship was becoming even more
delightful, and he realized that, as far as he was concerned, friendship was
ripening into something more definite. As he continued to improve he knew
that the time was fast approaching when they would have to leave this
desert oasis.
He found his mind continually recurring to Larson Beebe. How had he
managed to disappear so completely that night? Where had he gone? What
was he doing now? Ross could not dismiss the idea that they would hear
from Beebe again, and that when they did it would mean trouble.
This conviction was the more firmly fixed in his mind by the actions of
Virginia Carver. Ross felt sure that the girl was deeply worried over
something; she seemed anxious and nervous; she appeared to be continually

watching and listening for something. Intuition told Ross that the cause of
her perturbation was Beebe.
Intuition again told him that perhaps Wong could throw some light on the
situation. The next time that the Chinese appeared on the veranda Ross
stopped him.
“Wong,” he said, “Miss Carver seems to be worried about something. Do
you know what it is? Is it about Beebe? Do you know where he is?”
Wong’s face betrayed not a single glimmer of comprehension.
“No savvy,” he said.
“Yes, you do savvy, too. What’s wrong here? Where’s Beebe?”
Wong glanced hurriedly up and down the veranda as though he feared
some one would overhear him. Then he jerked a meaning finger toward the
mouth of the little canon.
“Him there,” he said in a low voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Him hide in canon. Kill all we go out.”
“We don’t have to go out that way.”
“No other way can go,” explained Wong.
“What! You mean to tell me that’s the only way out of this place? Why
can’t we go out over the cliffs?”
“No can do,” replied the Chinese, and was gone before Ross could
question him further.
So that was it! The canon was the only way out of the basin, and Beebe
was hiding down there, waiting to pot them as they came out. Quite a neat
little idea! So that was why Virginia Carver was carrying that worried look.
Ross went straight to the girl. He found her in the dining-room.
“Miss Carver,” he asked, “why didn’t you tell me that Beebe was down
in that canon?”
“Well, I couldn’t see any use worrying you with that while you were so
ill,” she replied, smiling. “And then, too, Mr. Ross, I think you are a little

inclined to do impulsive things, and it seems to me you have ran risks
enough on my account.”
Ross ignored this last.
“Then he really is there?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Ross, he is, and I am afraid that we are in rather a bad way. He
has all the advantage.”
“But isn’t there any way out of this place except through that canon?”
“None at all. Uncle Arthur selected this place for that very reason. There
was a trail up the cliff, but he dynamited that away. Unless we develop
wings we’ll go out through that canon or not at all.”
Ross pondered for a moment. Finally he asked, “I wonder why he hasn’t
tried to kill Wong and me at night?”
“There are at least two reasons, I think,” answered the girl. “The first is
that Larson Beebe is a very cautious man. He will not risk a single hair of
his head if it is not necessary. If he came up here he might get hurt. If he
stays there he is perfectly safe and we haven’t a single chance of getting by.
“Another thing, I think he is deathly afraid of Wong. He came up in the
night twice and stole provisions. Since then Wong has been watching. I
don’t think he ever sleeps.”
“Well, we can outlast him anyway, Miss Carver.”
“But that’s just what we can’t do, Mr. Ross. Our provisions are very
low.” The girl was gravely serious now. “Unless we can find some solution,
I’m afraid he is going to starve us out very soon. It looks like we were
trapped.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
WONG HAS AN IDEA

Ross woke the next morning keenly aware of the seriousness of their
predicament. As soon as breakfast was over he set out to examine the walls
of the basin.

If he had any hope that there was a means of escape over the cliffs he was
soon disillusioned. Nowhere was there a break in the walls. They were as
perpendicular as a plumb-line and as smooth as basalt. Nothing but a fly
could have scaled those cliffs.
The only way out led through the narrow twisting canon below. And
there Larson Beebe lay in wait like a cat at a rat-hole. Ross realized that
there was little or no chance for him or Wong to get through the canon
alive. Beebe had all the advantage.
Ross returned to the house and sat down on the veranda. He ran over a
dozen possible schemes for escape, and in the end he had to conclude that
they were all impossible.
In fact, his only conclusion was that he would give what fortune he
possessed to have Larson Beebe’s neck within the grasp of his two hands.
That, however, seemed to be a remote possibility. If anything, the situation
would be reversed.
Ross had about exhausted his whole range of impossible schemes when
Wong appeared on the veranda. The Chinese wore an enigmatical smile on
his usually inscrutable face. It was patent that he was well pleased with
something.
“You come,” he addressed Ross. “Got something show.”
Ross rose and followed Wong, who led the way to one of the ’dobe
outbuildings. Opening the door, he motioned Ross to enter.
The room was a work-shop of sorts, but what instantly attracted attention
were two enormous kites leaning against the wall.
“You see?” inquired Wong.
“Yes, I see,” said Ross, “only I don’t. What’s the idea, Wong?”
“Mlisha Beebe kill everybody we go down canon. No can climb out.
Wong make klite. Klite climb out.”
“Guess I’m pretty thick, Wong. I don’t get it yet.”
“When Wong little bloy China he fly many klites. Not forget how. Fly
klite now. Klite lift lope top cliff. We climb lope. Go ’way.”

“By George, Wong, I believe you’ve got it,” cried Ross in admiration.
“But will it work?”
“Can do” nodded Wong.
“But how will you fasten the rope at the top of the cliff, Wong?”
“Wong good klite flyer. Two klites lift big loop. Drop loop over tree top
side cliff. Two ends hang dlown. Mlake slip knot. Pull one lope. All done.”
“Wong, you’re a wonder! I believe it’ll work. Worth trying anyway.”
“Can do. Try tomollow if wind come.”
Ross hurried away to find Virginia Carver.
“Miss Carver,” he hailed her joyously, “Wong has got a scheme to get us
out of here, and I believe it will work. He has constructed two enormous
kites down there in the workshop. He claims they will lift a rope, and he
says he can drop it over one of those stunted pines at the top of the cliff. We
climb the rope and leave friend Beebe down in the canon to hold the bag.
Are you game?”
“Of course I am,” replied the girl, surprised that he should even question
her gameness.
“I knew you would be. We’re going to try it tomorrow. You had better
make two packs of food.”
“Two packs? Don’t I carry anything?” asked the girl.
“Miss Carver,” said Ross gravely, “it’s a long way to civilization, and it is
going to be a big tax on your strength to make it without carrying
anything.”
“I’ll make it,” said Virginia Carver, as she turned away.
The following morning Ross was eager for the experiment, but it was
nearly noon before a breeze came up strong enough to lift the kites.
Virginia Carver came out, clad in flannel shirt, whipcord breeches and
high laced boots. It was a costume well suited to the work ahead, but it
accentuated the girl’s slimness, made her appear almost frail. There was no
frailty there, though. Rather was she supple with the suppleness of a braided
cable, and the girl had the grace of a fine Toledo blade. Once again Stanley

Ross became acutely aware that Virginia Carver had become an
exceedingly important interest in his life.
Wong had instructed Ross in his scheme for escape. Ross saw at once
that he had not intended to lift a rope heavy enough to hold a human being.
Instead Wong had unearthed from one of the storehouses a very stout light
line.
The plan was to lift the bight of the line with the two kites and drop it
over a stunted pine growing out at an angle near the top of the north cliff. A
heavier rope could then be attached to one end of this and drawn up and
over the tree, making it possible to climb out.
Ross saw instantly that the plan was all right if the kites could be
manipulated. That was Wong’s job, and he seemed quite confident.
All three knew that they must work quickly. If Larson Beebe discovered
their scheme there was no telling what desperate action he might attempt.
Wong and Ross quickly got the first big kite into action. It rose readily,
but on attaining a height of fifty feet flopped drunkenly. It did not fall,
however—merely dipped and darted. This did not appear to bother Wong at
all. He simply gave the kite string to Virginia Carver to hold while he
quickly flew the second kite with Ross’s help.
Wong and Ross each took command of a kite now. Slowly paying out
cord, they allowed the kites to rise. When the kites had risen to a height of
about seventy-five feet the cords attached to the bight of the line suddenly
became taut and the line began to rise from the ground.
It was then that Ross saw that as a designer of kites Wong most
emphatically knew his business, for the instant the weight of the line was
borne by the kites in that instant they ceased their drunken plungings and
flew steadily.
Ross’s heart leaped within him, for he knew now that Wong’s scheme
would work and that they were going to circumvent Larson Beebe. Up, up,
the kites rose. A hundred feet! Two hundred! Five! A thousand!
The two kites were about thirty feet apart, and when it was obvious that
the line was higher than the cliff wall Wong and Ross began to walk slowly
forward. Their objective was a single low pine growing at an outward angle

near the top of the cliff. Aiming carefully at this, Wong and Ross brought
the kites to a position where an end of the line dangled on each side of the
tree and against the cliff. The bight of the line was slightly above the tree,
and the kites were pulling it forward.
“Missee, you grab ropes,” shouted Wong.
Quickly divining what was wanted of her, Virginia Carver grasped the
ends of the dangling lines.
“Let glo!” shouted Wong again.
Instantly he and Ross released the kite cords. The kites plunged
drunkenly down out of sight over the top of the cliff. The bight of the line
dropped neatly over the pine tree and slid down its trunk to the roots. The
thing was done!
Ross wanted to shout for pure joy. Elation showed in Virginia Carver’s
every feature. As for Wong, the author of this daring scheme, he merely
grinned, and went swiftly to work.
Somewhere in one of the buildings Wong had discovered a coil of light
rope. It had undoubtedly been brought in to be made up into lariats, for it
was very pliable and exceedingly strong—strong enough to support the
weight of a heavy man.
One end of this was fastened to a free end of the line over the tree. When
Wong pulled sharply on the opposite end of the smaller line it slipped
readily over the tree trunk. In a minute or two the end of the rope had been
pulled up over the tree trunk and back to the canon floor. Thus was the light
line replaced by the heavier one.
There was no place to anchor one of the rope ends so Wong simply tied a
loop in one end of the rope, passed the other end through it, making a
running noose, and quickly ran it up to the tree. Wong’s kites had proved
their worth. The means of escape was provided and ready.
“Wong go first,” said the Chinese. Without argument or permission, the
intrepid Wong was assuming the risk of proving the safety of the rope. By
way of explanation he added to Ross, “You shoulda no stlong. No can pull
Missee up, Wong can do.”

Wong grasped the rope in his hands, and with the agility of a cat, feet on
the canon wall, passed himself, hand over hand, up the face of the cliff. It
seemed hardly a minute before he was at the top and had scrambled over
the edge.
In a moment his head reappeared and he called down to Ross to send up
the food packs, canteens, and blankets. This was but the work of a moment,
and Wong quickly drew them to the top.
So far everything had gone well, and there was no sign of Beebe. It
looked as though they were going to make good their escape.
When Wong let the rope down again Ross fashioned a loop in the end of
it, which he passed over Virginia Carver’s head and secured it under her
arms.
“Now, Miss Carver, if you will take hold of the rope with both hands I
think Wong can pull you up safely,” he said. “If you hit against the cliff
push yourself away with your feet.”
The girl did not answer him, but she smiled confidently. She accepted her
part in the escape with what appealed to Stanley Ross as being splendid
courage.
Slowly but very steadily, Wong began to raise the girl. The little Chinese
seemed to be made of steel, for, without stopping once or increasing or
decreasing the speed, he drew Virginia Carver to the top of the cliff and
helped her over the edge. It was a feat of which a man twice his size might
have been justly proud.
When the rope came down again Ross lost no time. A hasty glance
toward the mouth of the tiny canon revealed no sight of Beebe. Grasping
the rope, Ross began his ascent.
His shoulder bothered him somewhat, but it was not more than two or
three minutes before he, too, was at the cliff top.
They were free!

CHAPTER TWELVE
AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING

Stanley Ross drew himself over the edge of the cliff, where Virginia
Carver and Wong were waiting, and scrambled to his feet. He was
exuberant.
“Well, Miss Carver, I guess we’re safe all right, thanks to Wong here,” he
exulted. “All that remains now is to make tracks away from this accursed
place.”
“So you think you’re safe, eh?” snarled a cold voice.
Ross whirled to find himself facing Larson Beebe. Beebe was covering
him steadily with a big automatic, and his deep set, piggish eyes had an
insane light in them.
Ross’s heart sank within him. He had expected an attack from Beebe
from below, but that he might be waiting for them on the cliff top never
entered his head. He was utterly helpless now. Beebe had the drop on him
and could kill him twice over before he could draw his own gun. Moreover,
it was certain Beebe intended doing that very thing.
Ross was filled with a sense of futility, impotency. That he was about to
die he did not consider. He was merely disgusted with himself for allowing
himself to be checkmated when the game was practically won.
“So you thought you could get away?” Beebe was going on. It was
obvious that he, too, was nearly insane. “Thought I was asleep, eh? I knew
what was up as soon as I saw the kites. I could have got you then, but I
figured the easiest and safest way would be to slip up here and wait behind
a rock till you were all up. You wouldn’t be looking for me and I could pot
you easily. Well, I’m here and you’re due for a long journey.
“Thought you could outwit Larson Beebe, eh? I’m just going to shoot
you and your precious Chink friend here now and kick you over the cliff.
Then I’m going to take Virginia and——.”
Ross was conscious that Wong’s right hand whipped to the base of his
skull just above the collar of his blouse. In the same instant it came away
again and now it held a long, thin, slender glittering blade!
There was another movement of Wong’s hand so swift that he could not
follow it. Ross only knew that a look of utterably blank amazement had

overspread Larson Beebe’s face. It was as though Beebe had seen a miracle
performed before his eyes and could not fathom it.
Then, suddenly, Ross saw what had happened. The hilt of the knife that
Wong had held was protruding from Larson Beebe’s ribs!
For an instant Beebe wavered on his feet. His fingers relaxed and his gun
clattered to the rocks. He pitched forward onto his face.
“Can do,” muttered Wong. “One day kick Wong. Not kick again.”

That night the three camped beside a little water-hole several miles down
the main canon. Around the tiny campfire they made their plans for getting
out of the desert.
Ross knew the general direction to take, and he felt confident that by
taking it easy the girl would be able to make the journey on foot. Virginia
Carver was confident.
The following morning Ross was awakened by footsteps on the rocks. He
raised up to see two long-eared animals making their way down the trail to
the water-hole. It was Archibald and Percy!
Ross let out a shout that instantly roused his companions.
“There’s your ship of the desert that’s going to carry you back to
civilization,” he called, as Virginia raised up from her blankets.
The girl did not comprehend. She gazed at the two animals in
astonishment for a moment.
“But they’re wild, aren’t they?” she asked.
“Just as wild as two snails,” said Ross. “Those two estimable gentlemen
brought me into this desert, and they’re going to take us out.”
When breakfast had been finished Ross noticed that Wong was busily
engaged in rearranging the weight of the packs.
“Never mind the packs, Wong. Friend Archibald here can carry Miss
Carver and Percy can handle the supplies. You and I will go light, Wong,”

Ross explained.
“No can do,” replied Wong. “Me no go you.”
“What do you mean, Wong?”
“Wong go that way,” answered the Chinese, pointing to the south.
“You go that way,” asked Ross, perplexed. “Why? You’re going with
Miss Carver and me.”
Wong shook his head. “Wong kill man. Think not stay in ’Nited States.
Go Mexiclo.”
“Nonsense, Wong,” said Ross. “Miss Carver and I can easily fix that.”
“Think not. Wong go Mexiclo. Got blother there. Buy li’le res’rant.”
Ross saw that there was no use in trying to dissuade Wong. There was no
combating such a nature. After a few moments Ross asked:
“Wong, where you going in Mexico?”
“Go Wa’lz.”
“Going to Juarez, eh? What’s your full name?”
“Name? Wong Chen Chek.”
“All right, Wong. In about two months you go to the postoffice and
inquire for a registered package. You’ll find enough money in it to buy the
best little restaurant in Juarez.”
Wong grinned. “Thlank you.”
Swinging his pack to his shoulder, he swung down the trail without more
ado.
“Goo’ bye. Goo’ bye, Missee,” came back to Ross and Virginia Carver.
A half hour later the Chinese disappeared from view far down the canon.
Ross turned to the girl.
Virginia Carver was gazing far out over the jumble of rocks and sand that
is the Red Desert to where the mists of the morning were dissolving into the
shifting haze of the rising sun.

For a moment Ross watched her without speaking. Fresh and vibrant
with youth, she was lovely beyond words.
“I guess we had best be going now,” he said. Then his voice stumbled,
“Miss Carver—Virginia—when we get out of here—I’ve—I’ve something
to say to you.”
For a long moment the girl continued to look far into the colorful haze of
the desert. Then she turned toward Ross. A peculiarly tender little smile
wreathed her mouth. Her eyes were swimming pools of unshed tears.
Her voice faltered, “Would—would you mind—saying it now—
Stanley?”

THE END.

Chicago Man Attacked by Fighting Owl
John Casey, night watchman for the Chicago Protective Agency, while
“walking his beat” one night recently, entered a dark passageway in West
Madison Street; and then, all at once—
“Something flew at me from the darkness,” he said later, “and knocked
my cap off and began scratching my face and clawing out my hair by the
roots. I made a pass at it, but found I was fanning the air. Then I saw two
blazing eyes, and struck at them. Before I could get out my gun the monster
jumped on me again. I managed to swing on it with my night-stick—and
that ended the fight.”
To substantiate his story, Watchman Casey exhibited a dead owl
measuring thirty-six inches from tip to tip, also numerous cuts and bruises
on his hands and face.

A Powerful Novel of Sinister Madmen That Mounts
To An Astounding Climax

The Jailer of Souls

Complete In This Issue
By HAMILTON CRAIGIE
CHAPTER ONE
SOUTHWEST OF THE LAW

All the way Westward in the smoker the man in the high-crowned, black
Stetson had taken no part in the conversation. He had appeared to doze,
slumping in the high-backed seat as the train rushed onward into the golden
afternoon.
The three men at his back had been busy with an interminable round of
poker: draw, jack-pot, and stud; deuces wild, and seven-card peak. They
moved across the aisle now, as the long train slowed for the brief stop at
Two-Horse Canyon, facing him obliquely and a little to his left.
Twice or thrice they had essayed to draw him into the talk, but the man in
the black Stetson had been oblivious; he had continued taciturn—morose,
almost, one might have said. But he had not been asleep; rather, he had
listened with all his ears as their voices had reached him between hands:

“... Yes—Dry Bone—been there myself—they run things pretty much to
suit themselves.... Wide-open.... Sure.... You might call it a dead open-and-
shut proposition, I’ll tell a man!”
The laugh that followed had come to the man in the black Stetson with a
curious, grating note:
“Sure-thing gamblers; con-men—it’s a regular crook’s paradise.... And
there’s that fellow, Rook....”
The eyes of the man in the black Stetson narrowed abruptly at the
corners; for a moment, as a curtain is drawn swiftly from right to left,
something arose to peer out of those eyes, glowing, deep-down, like a still,
festering flame. But it was gone upon the instant—
“... And there’s that fellow, Rook....” the man had said.
Of a sudden he had stopped short as if he had been muzzled; presently
his voice had come again, dry, matter-of-fact:
“I’ll see that raise, Carpenter, and it’ll cost you just twenty iron men to
call....”
Plainly, that name, “Rook,” had been taboo; the speaker had been silently
reminded of it.
The man in the black Stetson—he had been known as Black Steve
Annister in the back blocks at Wooloomooloof before he had made of that
name a by-word in the honkatonks and the gambling-hells from San
Francisco northward to the Wind River country, and beyond it—Black
Steve Annister was sitting upright now, but he had retired behind a wide-
spread copy of the Durango County Gazette. He was not reading it,
however, although he was looking through it—at the three men just across
the aisle, studying them through the pin-pricks he had made in it, himself
unseen.
Annister had arrived in New York only the week previous from
Sourabaya, Java, and he had not waited even overnight before he had begun
the long journey, broken at Washington for half a day, which had taken him
now half way southwestward across the State of Texas. Presently the long
train would cross the Pecos, beyond it the serrated ramparts of the
Guadalupes; Dry Bone was just between.

Annister, studying the men, frowned abruptly, yawning behind his hand.
Two of the men he put down for ranchers—sheep men, probably; there was
about them none of the glamor of that West which lingers even now in the
person of a cattleman; and these men were negligible.
But the third man would have been noticeable anywhere. He was a bull’s
bulk of a man, hard-featured, mouth a straight gash above a heavy chin
barbered to the blood; the observer across the aisle would have said
“cowman,” and registered a bull’s eye with it, point-blank.
The two who were with him, evidently with interests in common, were
scarcely friendly with the cowman, if such he was; it was evident in their
attitude, the constraint which had fallen upon them following that mention
of “Rook.”
But the man in the black Stetson continued to study the big fellow
through the holes in his newspaper: the hard face, tanned a rich saddle
color; the nose, flattened to a smudge of flaring nostril; the cauliflower ear.
He had heard the name, “Ellison” once or twice; somewhere, deep down,
it had set vibrating a chord of memory that brought with it, incongruously
enough, an altogether different setting: a padded ring under twin, blazing
arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, brutish, broad, fists
like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very cat for quickness....
He put down his paper now—to find those hard eyes boring into his.
Ellison, or whatever the man’s name was, had shifted in his seat; the glance
that he turned now upon the stranger in the black Stetson was searching,
probing. There was a truculence in it, a fierce, bright, avid staring, like an
animal’s, savage in its very directness, like a challenge—which in effect it
was.
Annister returned the look, eye for eye, with a bitter, brooding insolence
in which there was apparent a certain mockery, his eyes in a veiled
gleaming, like the sun on water. For a long moment their glances engaged,
in a silent duel, like rapier points; then the giant with the cauliflower ear
vented a sound between a grunt and a snort, turning to the window, his gaze
outward across the flat levels of the adjacent prairie in a kind of sightless
stare.

There had been no reason in it—no logic—that Annister could see, but
for the moment he had owned to a sudden sense of crisis; it had seemed to
him for a moment that in the giant’s eyes there had been almost a knowing,
an understanding look. But the man could have no business with him—of
that he was certain.
The fellow was just a bully, probably, a big, hulking lump of beef who
resented, as it might chance, Annister’s undeniably cosmopolitan air; the
sardonic flicker in the gray-green eyes; the cool, contemptuous appraisal.
But, after all, it had been the giant who had begun it.
And yet, somehow, Annister was thinking that he had seen him before,
and, oddly, illogically enough, he found himself liking the man—why, he
could not have told.
Black Steve Annister, “with the heart of a cougar and the conscience of a
wolf,” as a disgruntled enemy had at one time phrased it, could have sat
into that game had he been so minded, with profit to himself, pecuniary and
otherwise, but he had preferred to play the hand that had been dealt him.
Later, at Dry Bone, that would be another matter.
Now, his lean, strong, hawklike face darkened abruptly with the thought
behind his eyes, and then—for Annister had eyes in the back of his head—
he was suddenly aware that the conductor was advancing along the aisle.
The three men opposite had ceased their conversation as if at an order.
Two or three of the remaining passengers stared curiously, after the manner
of their kind (they were small tradesmen, merchants, going on beyond the
border to Tucson), as the conductor halted at Annister’s elbow.
“Excuse me, Mister—Mister—” he began.
“—Annister!” The answer was low, even, controlled, but beneath the
silken tone there ran a hint of iron.
“Mister Annister,” repeated the conductor. “Will you—just a moment,
please?”
Annister rose, following the official outward toward the vestibule. And as
he went he could feel those eyes, avid, curious, boring into his back. He
permitted himself the ghost of a cold grin as the conductor, turning in the
entry, laid a respectful hand upon his sleeve.

“I’m—sorry, sir,” he said, low. “You getting off at Dry Bone, aren’t
you?”
The words were less a question than a statement of fact. Annister nodded.
The conductor, a tall, bronzed man who might have been an old-time line
rider, shot a quick glance over his shoulder. Then he said, his tone even,
matter-of-fact:
“I—wouldn’t—if I was you.”
Annister stared. Then, producing his cigar-case, lighting a long, black
invincible, the twin to which the conductor had selected, he remarked
casually:
“They’re good cigars.... In the trenches we smoked ‘Woodbines’—a
cross between tar-heel and alfalfa; you have a lot of alfalfa out here, eh?
And the ‘third light,’ as we used to call it, most always got his—three men
lighting up from the same match, you know.”
His tone abruptly hardened; the glance that he turned upon the conductor
now was like a lance of flame.
“Well—I’m not superstitious—but—will you tell me why?”
It is significant that the conductor was breaking a rigid Company rule by
joining Annister in a surreptitious cigar. Now he turned guiltily as a voice
sounded from the corridor at his back:
“Ex-cuse me—but could I trouble you for a light?”
The third man, as Annister could see, was tall and heavily built, with
broad shoulders and a curiously small head. He had a sharp, acquisitive
nose, and a mouth tight-lipped and thin. Annister, versed in reading men,
was abruptly conscious of an instinctive and overmastering repugnance. For
the man’s eyes were cold and cruel, sleepy-lidded, like a snake’s, roving
between Annister and the conductor in a furtive scrutiny.
The match was still alight. Annister, his hand steady as a rock, extended
it to the newcomer, who, with an inarticulate grunt, lighted his cigarette,
turning, without further speech, backward along the corridor.
Annister waited a moment until he was certain that the man was out of
earshot. Then:

“The ‘third light,’ eh?” he murmured, his tone abruptly hardened. “Well
—and why shouldn’t I get off?” he asked, grimly.
The conductor for a moment seemed at a loss.
“It’s like this, Mr. Annister,” he said slowly. “I’m a new man on the S. P.,
but I’ve been hearing a lot—no gossip, you understand—but a conductor
hears a good deal, by and large.... And this is a cow country, or it used to be
—pretty wild, in spots. Dry Bone, now—they run things pretty much to suit
themselves—”
He paused, in a visible embarrassment.
“There’s a party of four back there in the diner—I couldn’t help
overhearing what they were saying, and—well—I’m just repeating what
they said, and no offense—”
“That’s all right,” interrupted Annister, evenly. “Go on.”
“Why—they said,” continued the conductor, “that you were an Eastern
gambler—a—confidence-man—that you were not wanted here in Dry
Bone; that it wouldn’t be exactly healthy for you if you stopped off—that’s
all. I thought you’d be wanting to know. And if you’ll take my advice, even
if you haven’t asked it, I’d say: go on to Tombstone—you can figure it out
from there.”
“Thanks,” answered Annister shortly. “I’m getting off—at Dry Bone.
How soon are we due?”
“Fifteen minutes,” replied the conductor, glancing at his watch. “But if I
was you, sir, I’d stay aboard; it’s a bad crowd there, as I happen to know,
and they’ve got a branch of the S. S. S. there, only they work it to suit
themselves: tar-and-feathers is just a picnic with that gang; they’re a
stemwinding bunch of assassins, I’ll say! So far they’ve operated under
cover, mostly, and down here in the Southwest—well—it ain’t a lot
different, in some ways, than it was thirty years ago. You’ll see—because
they’re—”
“—Southwest of the Law—is that it?” Annister laughed shortly. “Well—
much obliged, old-timer,” he said. “I won’t forget it. But I’m getting off.”
The long train was slowing for the station stop. Annister, striding to his
seat, got down his heavy bag. For a moment he stood, considering, his gaze,

under lowered lids, upon the long coach and its passengers in a swift,
squinting appraisal.
The three men were gone.
Somehow, they had found out who he was. Well—that made little
difference, he reflected, grimly, except to force matters to a show-down,
and the sooner the better.
For there was a man in Dry Bone; Annister had known him in the old
time; and it was with this man, unless he was greatly mistaken, that his
business had to do.
He would put it to the touch, then; he would sit into the game, and would
come heeled, and they could rib up the deck on him, and welcome.
He was turning to the door when, of a sudden, there came to him a
second warning: there was a swish of skirts, a sudden odor of violets.
Annister had a glimpse of a blonde head beneath a close-fitting toque, as
the girl passed him, disappearing in the doorway.
And there, on the flooring at his feet, was a square of white.
Annister, stooping, retrieved it, holding the card upward to the light:

“Stay on board. Dry Bone is not safe—for you. Be warned—in
time.”

There was no signature. Annister made a little clucking sound with his
tongue, his face set like flint. He was alone in the car.
The train had stopped now as, bag in hand, he shouldered through the
doorway. And then, abruptly, as if materialized out of the air, a face grinned
into his, lips drawn backward from the teeth in a soundless snarl. It was the
big man with the cauliflower ear.
“Hombre,” he said, without preamble, in a hoarse, carrying whisper,
“take an old-timer’s advice: go back—an’ set down—you savvy? This
place—it ain’t exactly healthy for a young fellow like you, I’m tellin’ yu!
For if you don’t—”
Annister’s cold stare was followed by his voice, low, incisive:

“You’re blocking the doorway,” he said, with a sort of freezing quiet.
The giant’s hard mouth twisted in a sneer; his great paw reaching upward
with a clawing motion, blunt fingers upon Annister’s shoulder. Then—what
followed happened with the speed of light.
“You can’t get off here, Mister—” the giant was continuing, when the
words were blotted out. Annister’s right fist, behind it the full weight of his
two hundred pounds of iron-hard muscle, curved in a short arc; there was a
spanking thud. The big man, lifted from his feet, crashed into the front
door-frame, slumping face downward in an aimless huddle of sprawling
limbs.
“The hell you say!” grinned Black Steve Annister, leaping lightly to the
platform, with never a backward glance.
Such was the manner of his coming.

CHAPTER TWO
THE HAND IN THE DARK

The one hotel in Dry Bone was the Mansion House.
Annister, crossing the lobby, was aware of a veiled hostility in the stares
directed at him from the group of loungers in the doorway; they gave
ground grudgingly, as he came in, with a sort of covert truculence.
Here, as he could see, there was a curious mingling of the Old West and
the New: men, whose attire would have created no remark, say, even in
New York; others, booted and spurred, cartridge-belted and pistolled—but
all, as he noticed, with, for headgear, the inevitable Stetson.
Once in his room, and the door locked and bolted, he busied himself for a
moment with a sheaf of papers, several of them adorned with a huge,
official seal; they crackled as he put them in an inner pocket. Then, dressed
as he was, he lay down upon the bed, but not to sleep.
It was late—hard upon midnight—when the sound for which he had
waited came with the soft whirring of the window-weights. The sound was
not loud; it would not have awakened him had he been asleep; but Annister
could hear it plainly enough.

He had removed his shoes upon retiring. Now, in his stocking-feet, he
approached the window, a black, glimmering oblong against the windy
night without. As he watched, the faint whirring ceased; a pair of hands
appeared suddenly out of the darkness, fingers hooked into the window-sill.
Annister drew a faint, hissing breath. In the star-shine, for there was no
moon, the fingers showed in a luminous grayness against the sill, clawlike,
malformed, like the talons of a beast, which in effect they were.
Annister knew them upon the instant, for, in far-off Java, for instance, he
had seen those hands, or, rather, the same and yet not the same. And in that
instant he had acted.
Both hands upon the window-sash, he brought it down with a crash upon
those fingers; there followed a yelp of pain, inhuman, doglike—a groaning
curse—the slam of a falling ladder—a heavy thud—silence.
Annister smiled grimly in the darkness. Whoever it was, the intruder
would never be certain as to whether that window had crashed downward of
its own accord, or not. And leaning in the window, Annister raised it
cautiously again after a moment. He heard presently the slow drag of
retreating footsteps; after all, it had not been much of a drop.
Closing and bolting the window, he undressed in the darkness, and with
the facility of an old campaigner was asleep and snoring beneath the
blankets between two ticks of the watch.
But in the morning a surprise awaited him.
Always an early riser, he was breakfasting alone in the empty dining-
room when the waitress brought him a note. Beyond noting that she was
pretty, and that she did not look like a waitress, Annister, somewhat
engrossed in the business in hand, for a moment stared at the envelope with
unseeing eyes.
Then, ripping it open, he took in its contents in one swift, flashing
glance:

“My dear Mr. Annister:
“I would be very glad to see you at my office at ten this morning
—if you are able to be there.”

It was signed simply: “Hamilton Rook.”
Annister grinned fleetingly in answer.
“Well—it’s not another warning, at any rate,” he said, half aloud, turning
to the consideration of his breakfast bacon. Then, at a low voice at his back,
he turned:
“Did you—say your coffee needed warming, sir?”
It was the waitress.
Annister had turned the note, face downward, on the table, with a quick
flirt of his thumb. How long she had been there behind him he could not
tell, for he had heard no sound.
“Thanks—no,” he said shortly, his hard eyes boring into hers with an
almost insolent appraisal.
Yes—she was pretty, and more than that, her violet eyes darkening now
under his abrupt, almost savage scrutiny. And her voice—it was like a bell
just trembling out of silence. Annister spoke:
“Have you been here long—in Dry Bone, I mean?” he asked.
The waitress smiled, and it was not the smile of a waitress, Annister was
convinced. Now, with a girl like that for a partner—was his unspoken
thought—he could—well....
“N-no, sir,” the girl made answer, with a sudden affectation of primness.
“I came in yesterday, sir—on the same train with you, sir. I—I’ve just been
—engaged.”
Annister repressed an absurd prompting to ask her how many times she
had been engaged before, and to whom and at what. Her eyes were
assuredly hypnotic, with lashes long and delicately fine.
“Umm,” he rumbled in answer.
Was it possible, after all, that she had been the girl in the crimson toque?
And, with the card in his pocket, for a moment he was tempted to show it to
her. Instead:
“Well—I hope you like it here,” he said. “You’ll know me—the next
time?”

And for a moment he could have sworn that in the face of the girl there
had come all at once a curious, almost a baffling look, at once enigmatic
and self-revealing. But the entrance of the vanguard of breakfasters
interrupted.
He watched her for a little as with a swaying, lilting step she moved off
to minister to the late-comers, his eyes speculative. Then, turning once more
to the letter, he re-read it as a man reading a cipher:
“If you are able to be there.” Could there be a double meaning in that?
For if Rook had sent that midnight visitor, then there were no lengths
indeed to which he might go—for the hand, like a beast’s paw, upon the
window-sill, had been, as Annister had known upon the instant, the hand of
the Thug, the Dacoit, the Strangler.
Warnings, thrice repeated; a hand in the dark; a waitress who was not all
she seemed; an invitation, suave, and, as Annister conceived it, ironic—it
was a situation not without its possibilities for action.
And Black Steve Annister loved action. Perhaps, after all, he was to have
it now, whether he would or no.
Rook he had known aforetime, but he was convinced that the latter would
not recognize him save as Black Steve Annister, wastrel of the wide world,
gentleman adventurer-in-waiting to the High Gods of Adventure and
Derring-do, knight-errant of the highways and byways of Criminopolis,
scarce a black sheep, indeed, but a wolf of the long trail and of the night.
Rook had known him as such in the days when, as jackal for certain
vested interests, the black-bearded lawyer had run foul of young Annister,
just then beginning a hectic career of spending which, but three years in the
past, had abruptly terminated with Annister’s complete disappearance from
joyous jazz-palace and discreetly gilded temple of high hazard.
For he had dropped out of sight, lost, as a stone is lost, in the sea-green
waters of oblivion, save for an occasional ripple thereafter which
proclaimed him blacksander, beachcomber, chevalier d’industrie, until one
memorable evening a twelve-month gone ... but Rook would be knowing
nothing of that.
Annister had come home from the South Seas to find his father gone, and
a note: “Do not look for me, for you are not my son.” And an exhaustive

inquiry had failed even to suggest the slightest clue.
The elder Annister could have written his check for seven figures, and it
appeared, following his disappearance, that he had done so; they had come
in from North and South and East and West, steadily, and, as it seemed,
with purpose. But as a clue to his whereabouts they had been unavailing.
But, from the moment of his discovery of that note, Black Steve Annister,
visiting a certain office in a certain side-street not far distant from the
Capitol, had surprised its guardian with a terse:
“That offer of yours, Childers—I’ve come to take it up.”
The man called Childers had bent a keen look upon his visitor; another
might have described it as unpleasant, stern.
“Well, you know just what that means, eh?” he had said. “You’ll be
merely a cog, a link—remember that!”
“Yes,” Annister had answered, and there the interview had ended.
And so Black Steve Annister, serving two masters, had come to Dry
Bone, and the end, as it might chance, of the long trail leading Westward
into the setting sun.
He rose from the table now, going out into the pale Spring sunshine on
his way to the office of Hamilton Rook. He found the building presently; it
was the court-house; there was a figure of Blind Justice with her scales just
over the entrance. Annister reflected sardonically that, here, in Carter
County, distant from a civilization at present as remote as the moon, she
was probably also deaf—and dumb. And presently, at the head of a dark
flight, there was the office, with the legend:
HAMILTON ROOK
ATTORNEY AND
COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW
There was a small sign at the corner of the door; in obedience to its
invitation to “Walk In,” Annister, his hand upon the knob in a noiseless
pressure, abruptly flung it wide.
A split second before the opening of that door, and while his hand was on
the knob, Annister had seen, or thought that he had seen, a swift shadow

pass suddenly across the ground-glass panel; there was the grating sound of
a chair being moved backward.
Then, standing in the doorway, Annister’s eyes narrowed; he stood rigid,
tense.
For the man facing him across the stained and battered desk, lean head
like a vulture’s set upon wide shoulders; mouth like a straight gash with its
thin, bloodless lips; cold eyes fixed upon him in a silent, ophidian
brightness—was—the “third light,” as he had called him—the man whom
he had met for a moment back there in the smoker of the Transcontinental.

CHAPTER THREE
BEHIND THE ARRAS

“Mister Annister,” greeted the man at the desk. “You didn’t know me, eh?
Well—it’s a long time—three years—and my beard—” he passed a bony
hand across his chin—“I sacrificed that long ago; it is scarcely the fashion.
Now—” he waved a hand, indicating a chair at his left—“sit down, won’t
you? We can—talk better so.”
Annister seated himself, his eyes upon the cold eyes just across. That the
man who sat there had inspired those warnings he had little doubt; that he
had sent that midnight assassin against him, he was convinced. And yet—he
was at a loss to find the reason.
Rook was not aware, could not be aware, of a certain fact known only to
himself, Annister, and a certain man just then twenty-five hundred miles
distant in that dim office hard by the Capitol; it was beyond the bounds of
possibility. No—it could scarcely be that, he told himself.
And of a sudden a cold rage shook him so that he trembled; his hands,
flat upon the desk-top, balled suddenly into fists. This man—this suave,
secret knave with the eyes of ice, and the implacable, grim mouth—sat
there now, removed from him merely by the width of the narrow desk. And
if it were true, that which he suspected, then this man, this jackal, this
Prince of Plunder with the heart of a hyena and the conscience of a wolf—
why, he had earned his quittance a hundred times over.

The flat black shape of the automatic hung in a sling under his left arm-
pit—Annister had forgotten that. He knew merely that he was face to face
with the man whom he had come twenty-five hundred long miles to meet;
he saw him now as through a crimson mist. And for the moment the careful
plan that he had made—that, too, was forgotten, lost in the almost
overmastering impulse to drive his fist into that face so close to his, the cold
eyes, the pallid, sneering mouth....
Something of this must have showed in his face, plainly visible to the
man who faced him across the desk.
There was a semi-twilight in the room even by day. Now the lean head
thrust forward like a striking snake; there came a sudden, brief explosion of
movement, a darkening flash, as the hand, holding the heavy automatic,
swung upward level with his visitor, point-blank.
At such a distance it would be impossible to miss.
There was a curtain just behind him; Annister had noticed it upon
entering. Now at his back it rippled suddenly along its length as if at the
passage of a heavy body just behind. The lawyer smiled thinly.
“Ah, my friend,” he said, “it is so easy to be indiscreet! And one must
meet force with force. This—it is theatrical, if you like—but—it is just a
little demonstration of my—preparedness. I thought—you see....”
There came a sardonic flicker in the nearset eyes; the voice purred now in
the semi-darkness like a cat’s:
“I must protect myself.... There are—reasons.... You see, I thought, for a
moment, that you—ah—meditated a resort to—violence. And violence is
something that I deplore, my friend; and here I am surrounded by violent
men, ‘sudden and quick in quarrel,’ as the poet has it; sometimes they are
difficult to control.”
Annister had himself in hand. The veiled threat with which the lawyer
had ended bothered him not at all. Now, casually as it seemed, but with the
lightning riposte of a duellist, his hand reached out; there came a sudden
wrench, a twist, a snarling oath from Rook; and Annister, pocketing the
pistol, smiled grimly now in answer.

“Now—‘we can talk better so’!” he mocked. “The balance of power, ha?
Now, let me tell you something: You left the big town—for your health; that
was three years ago, wasn’t it? I didn’t recognize you, but it was a pretty
close shave, at that!”
He laughed, but there was a ring of menace in it. His hard eyes held the
pale ones of the lawyer with a chill malevolence.
“Rook,” he said, low, “you’re as crooked as a ram’s-horn; you’re a bent
twig; I wouldn’t trust you this side of hell further than I could see you, and
not even then. Now—” his voice cracked suddenly in the thick silence like
the cracking of a whip—“you had the infernal gall to send me—here—after
you’d have accounted for me—by the left hand, ha?
“I left that window open, because, if you want to know, I was expecting
something of the sort. And now—”
The hand holding the pistol became rigid as a rock.
“—I want the reason why—in a holy minute, Mister Hamilton Rook—or
else—”
For a heart-beat the face of the lawyer seemed swollen to a poisonous
whiteness; the veins in his neck and temples stood out in ridges. Then—the
long, spatulate fingers spread wide with a curious, flicking motion, thumbs
downward; the curtain bellied outward suddenly as if in answer.
Abruptly Annister felt for a heart-beat a something that was like a cold
wind blowing upon the back of his neck, and it was a wind of death.
Something slid past his shoulder with the speed of light; talons of steel,
thumbs downward, pressing at the base of his brain. He heard a hoarse,
whistling croak—a sound that was nothing human. Then—
There is but one answer to that strangler’s grip, and it is a secret known
only to a few. Annister had learned it, no matter where, and in the learning
he had paid....
Now, an infinitesimal split second before the beast paws had encircled
his throat, his forefinger and thumb had flashed upward, hooked, as steel
gaff is hooked, between those fingers and his throat.
There followed a straining heave; a cry, inhuman, beastlike, like the
mewing of a cat. Annister, rising to his feet, leaned abruptly to the left—

straightened, with one quick, explosive heave of his powerful shoulder-
muscles—and the body of his antagonist catapulted over his head.
Flung clear of the desk, he landed, heavily, on one shoulder-point,
twitched a moment, lay still. It was the “flying-mare,” and none but a
master could have summoned it.
Annister turned the unconscious man over with his foot.
“Jivero!” he muttered, between set teeth.
He shivered slightly in the humid air of the warm room. For the man was
an Ecuadorian savage—a jungle-beast; once, in Quito, Annister had seen
two or three: flat-faced, rather handsome savages; how or where Rook had
acquired the fellow only the lawyer could have said.
According to his savage code, he had been faithful—as a tiger is faithful
to his trainer, his keeper. Annister, brave as he was, would have preferred a
rattler, a fer-de-lance, for company. He turned now with an abrupt
movement to Rook, who, slumped in his chair, sat staring at the huddled
figure of the Indian where he had fallen.
“Now,” said Annister, “I’ve a notion, Mister Hamilton Rook, to shoot
first, and ask questions afterward.... However, I confess I’m still a trifle
curious as to your motive—more so, since this second pleasant little
interlude with your man Friday here. Now—may I ask you—why?”
The lawyer’s lips were moving, fumbling together, without sound.
Fingers trembling, like a man in a fit, at length he lifted dull eyes to his
interrogator:
“This,” he enunciated thickly, gesturing toward the huddled figure on the
carpet. “It was to save my—life—that is the truth, Annister—you must—
believe. The reason—for the others.... I did not know it was you there in the
smoker; I thought—that is—” he appeared to breathe of a sudden like a man
who had been running—“we had a report—that you were quite another man
—one who was—ah—would be antagonistic, in fact, to certain operations
—and so—”
He spread his hands wide with a little, flicking gesture.
“—That is why—but now, of course, you will understand—?”

“Yes,” answered Annister, bluntly. “I understand. You thought I was—an
operative, ha? Well—I’m not—that kind of an operative. But—” his manner
became all at once sharp, incisive; the gaze that he bent upon Rook was the
shrewd look of a man who sees his opportunity ready to his hand. Cunning
was in that look, and an infinite guile; the lawyer did not miss it.
Here was something that he could deal with. He had known of Annister’s
reputation as of old; it had been none of the best, certainly, and with that
knowledge now there came a measure of reassurance. And if he was any
judge of men, here was one whom he could use: the acquisitive gleaming in
the eyes; the hard, incisive mouth, the predatory, forward-thrusting tilt of
the head—if he, Rook, was any judge of men, here was a man whom he
could use.
Old Travis Annister had disinherited him: the son who had been a waster
in the far places of the earth—that was an added reason. And at the thought
there came a pale gleaming in the lawyer’s close-set eyes, like the sun on
water. Travis Annister ... and Travis Annister had disappeared ... well, of
course, he had heard of it. His voice reached the younger man in a purring
whisper:
“As I have hinted, Mr. Annister, I am interested in—certain operations;
shall we call them—speculative? For some time now I have been in need of
a sort of silent partner, or, rather, the Doctor—”
He caught himself with a click of his strong, white, even teeth. Annister’s
face continued impassive, save for the keen eyes, veiled now under lowered
lids. Rook continued:
“Annister,” he said suddenly, as if he had abruptly come to a decision,
“I’ll lay my cards on the table with you: I need a man, and he can not afford
to be too—scrupulous, do you understand? The—the doctor tells me I have
been overdoing it.” He gave a faint, wintry smile. “We are—out of the
beaten track here—southwest of the law, as you might call it....”
He lowered his voice to a faint, hissing sibilance:
“I will expect you to ask no questions. You have been a cow-man; there
are certain interests to the north and the north-east of us; I am naming no
names, understand? There is a good deal of range left, as you know, and—
now, listen to me....”

His voice went on. For perhaps five minutes Annister listened in a heavy
silence. And all that time, although the lawyer had not once called a spade a
spade, the thing that he had unfolded was clear enough:
It was the old story; with something of a novel twist. First, there were the
outfits scattered north and north-east, as Rook had said. The running off of
a few cows, for instance, re-branding, and the rest of it—it was an old story
to Annister—but there was something more. Annister, as he listened,
realized that the thing was big, worthy, indeed, of the keen, devising brain
that had evolved it.
A good many of the ranches had, for some time past, been owned and
operated by the packers themselves; three of these: the Bar T, the Cross
Circle L, the Flying U, were northward from Dry Bone scarce a hundred
miles. But there were still other outfits. And, as Annister listened, he was
hearing again a name, or, rather, a symbol, the name and the symbol of
masked and hooded violence, and it was “S. S. S.”
Rook, it appeared, was the moving spirit of it, in Dry Bone, at any rate,
but as the tale unfolded Annister, putting two and two together, supplied for
that cryptic symbol a name, nation-wide and respected: the name of a great
Company, an Octopus indeed, which, with Hamilton Rook as its agent,
planned nothing less than the ruthless despoiling of those independent cattle
men who, out of a desert of sand and sage, had won a living for their stock
and for themselves, the rear guard of the order, now, as it seemed, indeed,
caught in the far-flung tentacles of a monster, unscrupulous and without
soul.
Annister’s part in it was to be simple. He was to do nothing as yet until
the lawyer should give the word. But a man was wanted: a gun-fighter; a
man bred to violence who would not consider too closely the method or the
means. For, as Rook had said, his eyes upon Annister in a sudden, biting
scrutiny:
“If, as a first step, say, the owners of these outfits should—ah—
disappear....”
There was to be no outright violence, it appeared; murder—that was an
ugly word; but it was of course possible that there might be—resistance.
But—there would be a fortune in it.

Annister’s part would be comparatively simple. He would merely carry
out his orders. Rook, eying him now in a close-lipped silence, watched as a
spider watches from his ambush. Annister would be needing money; if the
lawyer knew his man, and he thought that he did, here was something that
would be a lever, and a powerful one.
Annister lifted his head, then he brought his hand, palm downward, to the
desk-top. It was a movement, slow, even, controlled.
“I’m with you,” he said.
“Good!” exclaimed the lawyer. “Now—I want you to go over to the club;
there are a few men there I’d like you to meet. Ha!”
At his exclamation Annister, turning, followed his rigid, pointing finger.
The huddled figure on the carpet had disappeared. There had been no
sound, no sign. The Indian had vanished.

CHAPTER FOUR
THE FACE IN THE MOONLIGHT

Annister had thrown in with Rook, but he trusted him no further than he
would have trusted a cougar, a mountain cat.
At the club, as the afternoon wore on to evening, he had met four or five
men: Beaton, the county judge, a red-faced tippler with, on the surface, a
heartiness that was repellant; Lunn, the hotel proprietor, a vast, asthmatic
man with a small, porcine eye; Daventry, the Land Commissioner, whose
British accent, Annister noticed, would on occasion flatten to a high, nasal
whining that was reminiscent of Sag Harbor or Buzzards Bay.
The rest, hard-faced, typical of their environment, Annister put down for
the usual lesser fry; hangers-on, jackals, as it might chance, “house-men,”
in the parlance of the “poker-room”—Annister knew the type well enough.
They seemed hospitable, but once or twice Annister had thought to detect
in their glances a grimly curious look: of appraisal, and of something more.
There had been a game going, but he had not sat in, nor had the lawyer
invited him. The visit had been meant, plainly enough, as a sort of
introduction.

“We’re all here,” Rook had said.
But it was apparent, too, that there were one or two others who were
absent; Annister heard several references to “Bull”; but for the most part
there was a silence, beneath which Annister could feel the tension; it was
like a fine wire, vibrating, deep-down; almost, he might have said, a certain
grimly quiet anticipation of that which was to come.
Presently the telephone tinkled, loud in the sudden stillness; Annister
could hear the voice at the other end: harsh, strident, with a bestial growl
that penetrated outward into the close room.
“He can’t come,” came from the man at the telephone. “Bull—yeah—an’
I reckon he seems some disappointed.”
Annister noticed that the tension had all at once relaxed, and with it, as
he could see, there was plainly visible in the faces about him a certain
disappointment. It was as if they had been waiting for something—
something, well, that had not materialized. There was a laugh or two; a
word stifled in utterance; one or two of the men, glancing at Annister and
away, gave an almost imperceptible head-shake. Even Rook, as Annister
could tell, appeared relieved as the newcomer rose, turning to the company
with a conventional good-night.
For just a split second it seemed to Annister that something was about to
happen; for a moment he saw, or fancied that he saw, a quick, silent signal
flash, then, from eye to eye; Lunn, the hotel man, had half risen in his chair;
out of the tail of his eye, as he was turning toward the door, Annister was
aware of a quick ripple, a movement, the shadow of a sound, like the
movement of a conjuror manipulating his cards, white hands flashing in a
bewildering passade.
But nothing happened.
Leaving, he had walked slowly toward the hotel, turning over in his mind
the story that had been told him by the lawyer. And there was one more
question he wanted to ask him: a question that had to do with a square of
paper that he had come upon among his father’s papers in New York, for it
had been this chance discovery that had sent him, post-haste, to Dry Bone,
and the lawyer’s office.

Thinking these things, he was turning the corner to the hotel when, out of
nowhere as it seemed, a man had passed him, walking with a peculiar,
dragging shuffle. Seen under the moon for a moment, this man’s face had
impressed itself upon Annister: it was dark and foreign, with high cheek-
bones, and—what seemed curiously out of place in Dry Bone—a black
moustache and professional Van Dyke.
Annister, watching the man, saw him turn into the doorway he had just
quitted; it was the entrance to the “club”—two rooms above a saddler’s
shop at the corner of the street.
Halting a moment to look after the man, Annister was wondering idly
who he might be—certainly not the man called “Bull,” if there was
anything in a name. And then, abruptly, he was remembering what the
lawyer had let fall about the “doctor”; perhaps that was who he was; he had
had a distinctly professional air.
The man’s eyes had lingered upon Annister for a moment, and for a
moment the latter had been conscious of a curious shock. For it had been as
if the man had looked through rather than at him; those eyes had glowed
suddenly in the darkness, gray-green like a cat’s, in an abrupt, ferocious,
basilisk stare.
Annister, in his day, had seen some queer corners and some tight places;
in Rangoon, for example, he had penetrated to a certain dark house in a dim
backwater stinking and dark with the darkness of midnight even at high
noon.
And it was there, in that dark house, with shuttered windows like blind
eyes to the night, that he had seen that which it is not good for any white
man to have seen: the rite of the Suttee; the blood-stone of Siva, the
Destroyer, reeking with the sacrifice—ay—and more.
And something now, at that time half-perceived and dimly understood,
came again with the sight of the dark face with its high cheek-bones, and
black, forking beard; for he had seen a creature with a face and yet without
a face, mewling and mowing like a cat, now come from horrors, and the
practitioner had been—
The man who but just now passed him at the corner of the street, the man
with the dark, foreign visage, and the eyes of death.

CHAPTER FIVE
PARTNERS OF THE NIGHT

Annister, pausing a moment at the corner of the street, was conscious of a
feeling of coldness, like a bleak wind of the spirit, as if death, in passing,
had touched him, and gone on.
For the face of the man whom he had seen had been like the face of a
damned soul, unhuman, Satanic in its sheer, visible malevolence. So might
Satan himself have looked, after the Fall.
Somehow, although the man had looked straight ahead, seeming to see
merely with the glazed, indwelling stare of a sleepwalker, Annister had felt
those eyes upon him; he was certain that he had been seen—and known.
But now he had other things to think about.
He had intended going to the hotel. Now, on an impulse he bent his steps
away from it, turning to the building in which were the offices of Rook.
But he did not enter by the main doorway. There was an alley further
along; into this he melted with the stealth and caution of an Indian, feeling
his way forward in the thick darkness to where, as he had marked it earlier
in the day, there was a rusty fire-escape; its rungs ran upward in the
darkness; they creaked now under his hand as he went slowly up.
Rook’s office was on the second floor. Annister, reaching the window,
found it locked, but in a matter of seconds had it open, with the soft snick of
a steel blade between sash and bolt; the thing was done with a professional
deftness, as if, say, the man who had opened that window had done that
same thing many times before.
Now, crouched in the darkness by that dim square of window, the
intruder stood silent, listening, holding his breath. A sound had come to
him, faint and thin, as if muffled by many thicknesses of walls; it penetrated
outward from the private office, with the snick and slither of rasping steel
on steel.
And at the instant that Annister, with a grim smile in the darkness,
recognized it for what it was, he knew, too, that someone had been
beforehand with him; someone interested, also, in Hamilton Rook; for the

sound that he heard now, loud in the singing silence, was the sound of a
steel drill upon a safe.
Annister had seen that safe; it was scarcely more than a strong-box, a
sheet steel, but thin; a “can-opener” could have ripped it from end to end,
easily, in no time at all. Rook must feel secure indeed, he thought, to put his
trust in so flimsy a repository unless, perhaps, he had other means. The
Indian, for instance; the savage who, but a few hours ago, had missed with
his long talons for Annister’s throat by inches.
But somehow Annister did not think that the Jivero would be on guard.
There was no burglar-alarm protection; he had made certain of that; but the
man who was now busy with that safe must have come up by the stairway;
doubtless he was on familiar ground. Perhaps he might be some disgruntled
confederate of the lawyer’s; well, he’d have a look-see, at any rate.
Advancing silently, on the balls of his feet, Annister traversed the length
of the outer office, peering around the doorway to where, under the dim
glow of a single drop-light, a figure, back toward Annister, knelt before the
safe.
The drop-light, carefully shaded, would not be visible from without;
under its cone-shaped radiance Annister could see merely that the man was
wearing a cap, pulled low over his forehead; but something in the attitude
of that kneeling figure: the turn of the head, the deft, darting movement of
the hand, was strangely familiar.
Annister grinned in the darkness at the same moment that he was aware
of a curious contraction of the heart. This lone-hand cracksman worked
evidently without confederates, unless, possibly, he might have a lookout
posted on the sidewalk below. He spoke, barely above a whisper:
“Hello!” he said. “Pretty careless, aren’t you? Now, do you think it’s—
safe?”
The figure whirled; the hand, holding an automatic, came upward with
the speed of light; then dropped limply at her side as the girl surveyed him
with a stony look.
It was the waitress of the Mansion House.

“Well,” she said, “you’ve caught me, but it looks to me as if I beat you to
it, Black Steve Annister.... Oh, I’ve heard of you, Mister Black Steve....
Well, now you’ve caught me, what are you going to do about it?”
The darkly beautiful face was scornful; the violet eyes, under the light,
stormy with a something that Annister could not all define.
Annister bit his lip. To find her like this! And, all at once, realization
came to him with a sudden tightening of the heart.
This girl, waitress or not, crook or not—he had to confess that, in all his
wanderings up and down the earth, he had never met her like. A girl in a
thousand, he had decided, back there in the dining-room of the Mansion
House. What a partner she would make! Now, with a girl like that for a
partner...!
On a sudden impulse he leaned forward, his eyes upon the safe door; it
swung outward now; somehow she had opened it.
“Pretty smooth,” he commented. “The combination, after all, ha? You
worked it. Now, before we have a look, I want to tell you something. I—I’m
looking for a partner, Miss—ah—Miss—”
“—Allerton,” she told him, in her eyes a sudden, leaping spark, the brief,
baffling, enigmatic look that he had seen back there in the hotel dining-
room. But it was gone again even as she spoke:
“All right—partner!” she said, low. “When do we start?”
“Right now!” answered Annister, his gaze upon the girl frankly admiring.
He had expected the usual feminine evasions, a play for time, hesitation—
anything but this ready acquiescence in his abrupt proposal.
He was not entirely sure of her; his admiration for her beauty, her poise,
had nothing to do with the cold judgment whispering now that the whole
affair might, after all, be a blind, a trap, devious and crooked as the devious
and crooked turnings of Hamilton Rook.
But with Annister to decide was to act.
Bending, he swung wide the safe door, groping forward with exploring
hand. His back was toward the girl; consequently he did not see the sudden,
revealing gleam in the violet eyes, the quick hardening of the mouth.

Swinging forward his pocket flash, the light danced, glimmering, upon a
packet of papers, a sheaf of documents. Annister, running over them swiftly,
gave a quick exclamation, his hand, in a lightning movement, palming
something which he secreted in an inner pocket.
He turned sidewise to the girl.
“Lord!” he exclaimed disgustedly. “Nothing but papers! Partner, we’re
out of luck!”
Evidently the girl had been oblivious. Now, however, her quick, flashing
fingers sorted the contents of that safe as with a practiced hand, to leave
them, as had Annister, inviolate, save for that oblong of paper reposing now
in the pocket of his coat.
In the shadow of the entrance it was black dark as they parted. The girl
did not live in the hotel, she told him; that had been a part of her plan. They
would meet again, of course. But once in his room, and with the shades
drawn and the door locked and bolted, Annister, taking the paper from his
pocket, smoothed it out under the light.
He looked; then looked again, breath indrawn sharply through clenched
teeth.
For that paper was a canceled check; it had been drawn to “Cash”; and
the signature, in a hand that he knew upon the instant, was the signature of
his father, Travis Annister.

CHAPTER SIX
THE LIVING GHOST

Annister had heard nothing from Rook other than that he had been again
invited to a further session of the “Club” for that evening.
Alone in his room on the morning following his adventure in Rook’s
office, his eye had been caught and held by a news item printed on an inside
page of the Durango County Gazette: he had nearly passed it over; but now
the lines leaped out at him as if they had been blazoned across the paper in
a double-column spread:

Travis Annister Still Strangely Missing—Retired Capitalist Gone
Since January—Foul Play Feared

And, separated from it by the width of a single column, he read:

Retired Banker Disappears—Newbold Humiston a Suicide?—
Friends Fear for Safety

But it was at a third item, tucked away in an obscure corner that Annister
stifled a quick word in his throat. Newbold Humiston had been a friend of
his father’s; it was an odd coincidence, to say the least of it. And the story
went on to say that three other men, all nationally known, had, so to speak,
between suns, disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and
swallowed them.
And that third news item, irrelevant as it might have been, told of an
incident, odd and unusual enough; it had happened in Palos Verde, distant
from Dry Bone a long twenty miles of hazardous mountain trail:
A man had come in, in rags and tatters; at first they had thought him a
desert rat, a prospector, light-headed from starvation, for his incoherent
babble had proclaimed him no less a personage than Rodman Axworthy,
prominent banker of Mojave. The sheriff of Palos Verde, on the off chance,
had wired Mojave, and the word had come back that Axworthy had been
missing; they were sending a man.
With the arrival of this man, however, the mystery deepened, for it
appeared that the derelict was indeed Axworthy, and yet not Axworthy at
all, for whereas the true Axworthy had had a high, aquiline nose and a wide,
generous mouth, the derelict was snub-nosed, swarthy, where the banker
had been fair; he was, simply, another man.
But there had been this about it: on the banker’s left forearm, underneath,
there had been a curious birth-mark; the derelict had spoken of it, but upon
examination the arm showed smooth and bare. The investigator from
Mojave had been obviously skeptical until, abruptly, the ragged claimant
had taken from his pocket a curious, removable bridge; a dentist in Mojave
who had made it, he said, could identify it. It fitted perfectly.

This looked like proof, but the thing was obviously impossible. And then,
as “Axworthy” was being taken back to Mojave, he went suddenly stark,
staring crazy, repeating over and over, with reference to the bridge:
“It’s the one thing they didn’t get—the one thing....”
And there the matter rested, save that, upon arrival in Mojave, the bridge
was found to be missing. The emissary from Mojave seemed to remember a
dark-faced stranger who had been seated opposite them in the train, but that
was all; the man had jostled against his charge upon alighting; the last
proof, if indeed it might be called a proof, was gone.
Annister frowned thoughtfully, his mind upon that canceled check in his
pocket. And he was remembering one other thing, and that was the square
of paper which he had found among his father’s effects, for on it had been a
name, or, rather, two: the name of Hamilton Rook, and of another, unknown
to Annister. And as to that Axworthy case, it was common knowledge that
lunatics, for instance, entertained frequently the delusion that they were
people of importance. There was nothing new in that.
Somehow, it seemed to him that he held in his hands the pieces of a jig-
saw puzzle that, even if put together, made but a patchwork of motives and
design, which yet, if he could but find the key, would be as clear as crystal.
That paper found in his father’s office; the interview with Childers, at
Washington; the long trip westward; the warning message on the train; the
big man with the ice-blue eye and the square jaw of a fighter; the attack in
the hotel; the meeting with Rook, and the meeting with the girl; the finding
of that canceled check—and, last, the matter of those queerly related news
items just under his hand—these made a pattern to be unraveled only by the
warp and woof of Fate.
And the chance meeting with the bearded stranger at the corner of the
street: consider how he would, Annister’s mind kept turning backward to
that meeting and those eyes that were like the eyes of a damned soul,
malignant, cold, in their abysmal, cold cruelty of discarnate Evil.
Discarnate! That was it; that would express it; for the man, as he recalled
him, seemed somehow less than human; there had been about him an aura,
an emanation, that was like a tide rising from the depths, from darkness
unto darkness....

Annister was scarcely superstitious, but he was again conscious of that
icy chill; he shivered, as a man is said to shiver when, according to an
ancient superstition, someone is said to be walking over his grave.
He rose, walking to the window, to peer outward into the sunwashed
street. The coil was tightening; he felt it; and he was but one man against
many. And knowing what he knew, or suspecting what he suspected, it
seemed to him all at once that the sunlight had flattened to a heatless
flaming of pale radiance; there seemed a menace in it, even as there seemed
a menace in the very air, a waiting, a tension, like a fine wire drawn and
singing at a pitch too low for sound.
Abruptly he heard a sound; it was like the scratching of a rat in the
wainscot, faint and thin. His door was locked.
Now, looking at it, the knob turned, slowly, stealthily. He could see it
turning.
Then, faint but unmistakable, came a knock.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THROUGH THE DOOR

The knocking was not loud; it was merely a discreet tap; but there was a
quality of hurry in it.
Annister, moving without sound on the thick pile of the rug, almost with
the same motion turned the key and flung wide the door.
At first he could see nothing. The corridor, thick-piled with shadows even
at high noon, showed merely as a darkling glimmer out of which there
sprang suddenly a face, like a white, glimmering oval; a voice came, with a
quick, hissing sibilance:
“Ssh! Quiet! I must not be seen! Or else he.... Close the door!”
The girl stepped inward swiftly, her white face turned to the man before
her in a sort of frozen calm. Annister had a vague impression of having seen
her somewhere before: that golden head beneath its close-fitting toque; the
faint, remembered odor of fresh violets; the face, with a piquant loveliness

just now, however, white and drawn; it was like a strain of music, heard and
then forgotten.
Closing the heavy door and locking it, he turned swiftly to the girl.
“Well—?” he said, his gaze upon her in a cold, searching scrutiny. “Isn’t
this a trifle—sudden?”
But the girl lifted a stony face.
“I have little time,” she said, with a curious, spent breathlessness, as if
she had been running. “I am Cleo Ridgley, secretary to Hamilton Rook—
that is, I was; I am his secretary no longer, but he does not know about it—
yet.”
She paused, again with that hard-held breathing, moistening her stiff lips.
“I warned you that day on the train; do you remember? I warned you
because I knew Hamilton Rook.... I know him even better now. He meant to
kill you, Mr. Annister, and now he schemes—”
“—To use me—is that it?” interrupted Annister dryly; then, at her slow
head-shake, he stiffened.
“He would have finished you even after your—agreement—but that is
not his way. But he will not make use of you in the way that you think. That
careful plan of which he told you—that was just a blind; there are no
ranches near enough. The S. S. S.—that, too, was just a part of the story.
You see, he wants to keep you here, that is all, until such time as he thinks it
necessary to—remove you. But his real motive, his actual plan I know
nothing about. I may suspect, but I do not think about it.”
She paused again, her expression rigid, as there sounded a faint, half-
audible footfall from the corridor without. It passed.
“He would—kill me—if he knew,” she continued tonelessly. “That
warning on the train—I did that at his order. If he could have frightened you
off, he would have been satisfied with that, but now, it will be—different, I
tell you this on my own account. And now—”she laid a slim hand on his
arm—“don’t go to that rendezvous tonight, Mr. Annister. Ellison will be
there; you remember him? He was the man who tried to keep you on that
train.”

She smiled faintly with her lips, but her eyes were sombre.
“Ellison is Rook’s jackal, just as Rook is—”
The sentence was never completed. There came a coughing grunt from
just outside the door, a streak of flame from the half-open transom just
above; the girl stiffened, her face went blank; she slid downward to the rug,
even as Annister, snapping back the lock, had flung wide the door.
Gun out, he burst into the corridor, as, from the shadows at a far corner,
he fancied that he heard the faint echo of a taunting laugh.
But there was no one there.
Rushing to the stair-head, he found nothing, nobody. The man who had
fired that shot had used a silencer; he had disappeared, either into one of the
bed-chambers to right and left, or down the stair. But it was no time for
speculation. The girl would be needing attention, if, indeed, she was not
already past all aid.
Annister had wasted no time. But, for a heart-beat, as he raced backward
along the hall, his eye was caught and held by the quick glint of metal from
the carpet at his feet. Stooping as he ran, he swept up the object, possibly an
empty shell; then, on the threshold of his room, recoiled with a gasping
oath.
For the girl had vanished!
Stunned, Annister stood silent, mechanically unclosing his stiff fingers
upon the object which they held. He stared at it now, rigid with
remembrance, and a growing fear.
Oddly twisted and distorted, its dull gold surface glinting dully under the
light, the thing that he had found lay on his open palm.
It was a dentist’s bridge.

CHAPTER EIGHT
ODDS—AND THE MAN

Annister had been absent from that room not longer than ten racing
seconds. It was unthinkable that the girl had vanished of her own volition,

even had it been physically possible.
Glancing around the room, he saw that the windows were closed and
bolted; the flooring was solid, substantial; there could be no ingress save by
the door through which he had just come.
There was another door; it led to the next room; but Annister, with a habit
of inbred caution, had tried it, and found it locked. Now, in two swift
strides, he had covered the space between, had tried that door, setting his
weight against it as he turned the knob.
Under his weight it gave outward with a sudden slatting clatter. They,
whoever they might be, had unlocked it; it had been through this adjoining
room that they had taken the girl.
Annister, glancing swiftly around this room, saw that it was obviously
unoccupied; the bed had been made up; there was no sort of clue that he
could see. The invisible assassin had had a key; that was it, of course.
But as to the rest of it, Annister could only speculate. It was an impasse,
and a mystery.
Going downward to the dining-room, as it was now past noon, he
glanced toward the desk, but if he had had any thought of reporting the
attack upon the girl, or her disappearance, he thought better of it; he would
keep his own counsel; a decision helped by a sight of Lunn, the hotel
proprietor, who, lounging at the desk, raised his sleepy-lidded, vulture gaze
at Annister as the latter was turning toward the dining-room.
Annister, in that brief glance, thought to detect in those eyes, milky-pale,
a veiled, sardonic flicker. If, behind this latest happening, there was the fine,
Italian hand of Hamilton Rook, Lunn was in cahoots with the lawyer, of
that there could be little doubt. For, as Annister was convinced, there had
been a menace in those eyes half turned to his, an insolence, a bright,
burning truculence, that, as he turned into the long dining-hall, brought the
swift blood to his cheek in a dark tide.
But at his table another surprise awaited him. Mary Allerton was gone.
The heavy-handed Swede who served him told him that she had left,
suddenly, that morning; a message had come for her, it appeared, but the
substitute could tell him nothing further. Annister let it go at that.

Rising from the table, he went outward to the long bar, a cool, pleasant
oasis, indeed, in the fierce heat of the drowsy afternoon. He greeted the
bartender, a tall man with the wide shoulders of a cowman, with a smile.
The man had been friendly; in fact, he had been the sole friend that
Annister appeared to have made since his arrival in Dry Bone. Now the
bartender leaned forward, speaking in a whisper behind his hand:
“Watch your step, Mr. Annister,” he said.
Annister gave an almost imperceptible nod. Then, his drink before him
upon the stained and battered mahogany, he glanced sidewise along the rail,
to where, at the far end, two men stood together, eying him under lowered
brows.
To Annister it seemed that there had fallen a sudden quiet. Just prior to
his entrance he had heard talk and laughter, the clink of glasses, a thick,
turgid oath. Now there appeared to rise and grow a tension, as of something
electric in the air; Annister felt it in the white face of the knight of the
apron, the sudden silence, the rigid figures of the two men at the end of the
long bar.
Behind him, and a little to his left, three men were seated at a table:
Bristow, sheriff of Dry Bone, a big man with a bleak, pale eye, and a mouth
like a straight gash above a heavy chin barbered to the blood. With him
were two others whom he did not know.
Lunn was nowhere in sight.
The taller of the two men standing at the bar turned, and Annister
recognized him as Tucson Charlie Westervelt, a gunman with a dangerous
record. Westervelt was wearing a high-crowned, white Stetson; Annister
marked it at the distance, beneath it the fierce, hawklike face, turned now in
his direction, the thin lips set stiffly in a sullen pout.
The old West had passed with the passing of the remuda, the trail herd,
the mining camps; the wide, free range of the long-horned cattle was no
more; but Dry Bone had not changed save that the loading-pens had gone; a
cow would be a curiosity. But the lawless spirit of the ancient West
remained. “Southwest of the Law,” indeed, Dry Bone was a law unto itself,
and now about him Annister felt the menace; it appeared that he had walked
into a trap.

The judge, the sheriff—what mockery of law there was—Annister knew
that it would be against him, either way, attacking or attacked. He was
certain of it as Westervelt, moving slowly along the bar, halted when
perhaps three paces distant, elbow raised, right hand extended, clawlike, in
a stiff, thrusting gesture above his guns.
It was the gesture of the killer, the preliminary for the lightning down-
thrust of the stiff fingers; Annister knew that well enough. Now the
gunman’s gaze, sleepy-lidded like a falcon’s, bored into his; his voice came
with a snarling violence:
“Mister Black Steve Annister,” he said, without preamble. “I understand
you’re some wizard with a canister, ha? A bad hombre! Musta been a little
bird done told me, an’ that bird was sure loco, I’ll tell a man! But me—” his
tone hardened to a steely rasp—“I’m not thinkin’ you’re such-a-much!”
It was a trap; Annister knew that now, just as behind the gunman he could
almost see the dark face of Rook, with its sneering grin; the lawyer had
inspired it.
His automatic hung in a sling under his left arm-pit, but even if he could
beat Westervelt to the draw, he knew well enough what the result would be:
a shot in the back, say, from the men sitting just behind, or—arrest, and the
mockery of a trial to follow it. Either way, he was done.
His own eyes held the gunman’s now, glancing neither to the right nor to
the left. He was conscious of a movement from the three men at the table;
Westervelt’s companion, a short, bowlegged man, with the pale eyes of an
Albino, had stepped backward from the bar; Annister felt rather than saw
his hand move even as his own hand came up and outward with lightning
speed; flame streaked from his pistol with the motion.
Once in a generation, perhaps, a man arises from the ruck who, by an
uncanny dexterity of hand and eye, confounds and dazzles the common run
of men. As a conjurer throws his glass balls in air, swifter than eye can
follow, so Annister, crouching sidewise from the bar, threw his bullets at
Westervelt.
The gunman, bending forward at the hips, crashed to the sawdust in a
slumping fall, as the Albino, firing from the hip, whirled sidewise as
Annister’s second bullet drilled him through the middle. For the tenth of a

second, like the sudden stoppage of a cinematograph, the tableau endured;
then Annister, whirling, had covered Bristow where he sat; the two men
with him, white-faced, hands pressed flat upon the table-top, stared, silent,
as Annister spoke:
“You saw, Bristow,” he said, low and even, his eyes upon the cold eyes of
the sheriff in a bright, steady, inquiring stare. “Now—what about it?”
For a moment a little silence held; then Bristow, moistening his stiff lips,
nodded, his gaze upon Annister in a sudden, dazed, uncomprehending look.
“All right, Mr. Annister,” he said heavily. “They came lookin’ f’r it, I
reckon.... Well, you were that quick!”
Annister smiled grimly, pocketing his pistol. Westervelt lay where he had
fallen, a dead man even as he had gone for his gun, lips still twisted in a
sullen pout. The bowlegged man, stiff fingers clutching his heavy pistol,
lay, face downward, in the sawdust. The bartender, with an admiring glance
at Annister, leaned forward as Bristow and the two men with him went
slowly out.
“They may try to get me for it, Mr. Annister,” he said, “but I’m no man’s
man; well, not Rook’s, and you can lay to that! Bristow and his friends kept
out of it, you noticed? Bristow’ll do nothing, now; not yet a while, at any
rate, but—mebbe they sort of savvied me a-watchin’ t’ see they didn’t run
no whizzer on you!”
He lifted the heavy Colt, where it had lain hidden by the bar-rail,
thrusting it in its scabbard with a grin.
“Well, sir, I aimed t’ see that they was sittin’ close, an’ quiet, Mr.
Annister,” he said.
“Thanks, old timer,” said Annister. “I’ll not forget.”
But as he went outward into the waning afternoon he was thinking of that
rendezvous of the night. For Rook would be there, and it had been Rook, he
was certain, who had engineered that ambush in the Mansion House bar.

CHAPTER NINE
THE BATTLE IN THE “CLUB”

The time was nearly ripe. The clue of those newspaper items; the
canceled check; the somewhat repellant evidence of the battered piece of
goldwork picked up in the corridor of the Mansion House—Annister had
been able to put two and two together, to find a sum as strange, as odd, say,
as five, or seven, or even one.
But that name that had trembled on the lips of Rook’s secretary remained
a secret; with it, Annister was convinced, he would be able to pull those
threads together with a single jerk, to find them—one.
He had had news from Mojave: the dentist had identified the insane man
as his patient by means of his chart, but, with that face, the man could not
be Banker Axworthy—it simply could not be. And yet he was!
It was something of a riddle, and more, even, than that, for the thing
savored of the supernatural, of necromancy, of a black art that might, say,
have had for its practitioner a certain personage with the eyes of a damned
soul and a black, forking beard, curled, like Mephisto’s; Annister thought
that it might.
Further, the conductor of that train had been able to describe, somewhat
in detail, the man who had jostled the derelict and his companion; the man
had been a stranger to the conductor; he had been tall and thin, with a small,
sandy moustache, and a high-arched, broken nose, and he had been wearing
the conventional Stetson. The fellow might have been disguised, of course,
but if Annister could find the black-bearded man, discover his identity, he
was reasonably certain that he would not draw blank.
It was no certainty, of course, but it was worth the risk, he told himself. It
would be a desperate hazard that he was about to face, he knew. Thinking of
his father, together with the remembrance of that unholy and unspeakable
horror that he had witnessed, born of the stinking shadows of that dark
street in a city foul and old, its people furtive worshipers of strange gods,
Annister felt again that crawling chill which had assailed him with the
passing of the tall man with the eyes of death.
With Annister, to decide was to act. Dispatching a brief telegram in code
to a certain office in a certain building in Washington, he went now to keep
his rendezvous with Rook and the rest. It was yet early, scarce eight in the

evening, and the street was full of life and movement, before him, and
behind.
And before him and behind, as he went onward, he was conscious that
those who walked there walked with him, stride for stride; they kept their
distance, moving without speech, as he turned the corner of the dusty street.
If he had had any doubt about it, the doubt became certainty as, wheeling
sharply to the left, they kept him company now, still with that grim,
daunting silence: a bodyguard, indeed, but a bodyguard that held him
prisoner as certainly as if the manacles were on his wrists.
It was not yet dark, but with a rising wind there had come a sky overcast
and lowering; low down, upon the horizon’s rim to the eastward, the violet
blaze of the lightning came and went, with, after a little, the heavy salvos of
the thunder, like the marching of an armed host.
But Annister, his gaze set straight ahead, turned inward at the entrance of
the saddler’s shop, mounting the stairs, as, behind him he heard the heavy
door slam shut.
Perhaps it had been the wind, but as Annister went upward he heard, just
beyond that door, the murmur of voices; they reached him in a sing-song
mutter against the rising of the wind, in a quick, growling chorus.
There had been something in that snarling speech to daunt a man less
brave than the man on that narrow stair, but Annister went upward, lightly
now, to meet whatever waited behind the door set with its narrow panel that
he could see merely as a dark smudge of shadow in the encircling gloom.
He rapped, twice, and the door fell open silently, disclosing the long
room in which, as he remembered, he had sat, but a few nights in the past,
to listen as the lawyer and his crowd had waited for the man called “Bull.”
The room was brightly lighted. At a long table, midway between door
and windows, five men were seated: Lunn, his fat face gray with a sort of
eager pallor, was chewing nervously at an unlighted cigar; he glanced up
now at Annister’s entrance, turning to a big man on his right. At the head of
the table, his veiled glance like the stare of a falcon, sat Rook, but it was
upon the big man next to Lunn that Annister’s glance rested with an abrupt
interest as the lawyer spoke:

“Welcome to our city, Mr. Annister!” he said, in a voice that reminded
Annister of molasses dripping from a barrel. “I want you to meet—Mr. Bull
Ellison; he’s been right anxious to meet you, haven’t you, Bull?”
Annister, in the passage of an eye-flash, understood. This was the man
whom he had encountered in the vestibule of the smoker, and, of a sudden,
memory rose up out of the past, and, with it, a picture: a padded ring under
twin, blazing arcs; the thud and shuffle of sliding feet; a man, huge, brutish,
broad, fists like stone mauls, yet, for all his bulk, a very cat for quickness.
“Bruiser” Ellison, they had called him then; a heavyweight whose very
brute strength had kept him from the championship; that, and a certain easy
good nature which was not apparent now in the bleak staring of the eyes
turned now upon Annister, remorseless, under lowered brows.
Now, as if at a signal, the men about the table rose; the table was hauled
backward to the wall, leaving a wide, sanded space under the lights.
And then, even as Rook spoke, Annister abruptly understood: this gang
of thieves, as he knew now—“Plunder, Limited,” as Cleo Ridgley had
called them—Annister knew them now, under the leadership of Rook, for
an outfit which would stop short of nothing to attain its ends. His eyes,
roving the long room up and down, searched now for that dark face, with its
black, forking beard, but he was not really expecting to see it, but that, if
Rook was the actual leader, Black Beard was “the man higher up,” Annister
was, somehow, convinced.
They had failed with Westervelt and his segundo; now, as the man called
“Bull” came forward across the floor, Rook spoke:
“Ellison hasn’t forgotten his meeting with you, Annister; he says you
played him a dirty trick; hit him when he wasn’t looking; that right, Bull?”
he asked, with a certain sly malice directed at the giant with the cauliflower
ear.
“And now,” Rook’s purring tones continued, “he wants satisfaction; he’ll
get it, won’t he, Mister Annister?”
For a moment, as Annister’s eyes bored into his, the lawyer’s face
showed, like an animal’s, in a Rembrandtesque shading of high light and
shadow beneath the lights. Stripped of its mask, it was like the face of a
devil; now the mouth grinned, but without mirth, the lips drawn backward

from the teeth in a soundless snarl. He laughed suddenly, and there was
nothing human in it, as Annister, his back to the wall, smiled grimly now in
answer.
He had been somewhat less than discreet, he reflected; Rook’s purpose
had shown in his eyes; he, Annister, had walked into a trap from which, this
time, there could be no escape. He had meant to beard them to their faces,
wring from Rook an admission as to his father, perhaps more; then shoot his
way out, if need be.
But now—he would have to fight this giant, a ring veteran of a hundred
battles, with bare fists, surrounded by an encircling, hostile cordon, who, if
by any chance he might prove the victor, would see to it that he paid for that
victory with his life.
Annister knew that it was on the cards that Rook, for instance, would
shoot him down as remorselessly as a man would squeeze a mosquito, say,
out of life between thumb and finger. But it was the lawyer’s humor,
doubtless, to see him manhandled, perhaps killed beneath the drumming
impact of those iron fists.
Calmly, he removed his coat, bestowing his automatic in the pocket of
his trousers. He did it openly, turning to face Ellison, who, stripped to an
athletic undershirt and trousers, regarded Annister with a grinning
assurance.
He was big; perhaps twenty pounds heavier than Annister, with wide
shoulders and a deep arching chest; with his forward-thrusting jaw and
bullet head, with its stiff fell of pig’s-bristles, the long arms like a gorilla’s,
he towered over his antagonist like a cave bear, a grizzly waiting for the
kill, and like a cave bear, at Rook’s snarling call of “Time!” he was upon
the lesser man like a thunderbolt, fists going like flails.
Annister, in his day and generation, had absorbed the science of hit, stop,
and getaway under masters of the art who pronounced him, as an amateur,
the equal of many a professional performer of the squared circle; he was
lean and hard, whereas Ellison’s waistline showed, under the thin shirt, in
folds of fat.
If the onlookers expected to see Annister annihilated by that first, furious
rush, they were mistaken. Crouching, lightly, on the balls of his feet, he

drove forward a lightning straight left, full on the point. Ellison, coming in,
took it, grunting; the blow had traveled a scant six inches, but there had
been power in it.
It set him back upon his heels, from which, as he rose, raging, he dove in
with a ripping one-two punch, which, partly blocked by his antagonist, yet
crashing through the latter’s guard, landed high upon his cheek-bone with a
spanking thud.
It had been a grazing blow; otherwise, the fight might have ended then
and there. Annister, backing nimbly before the giant’s rush, realized that he
must avoid a clinch; at in-fighting the giant would have the edge: those
mast-like arms and massive shoulders, the huge bulk—they would, at close
quarters, with the drumming impact of the great fists, have spelled a quick
ending with the sheer, slugging power of the attack.
He heard Rook snarl as, side-stepping like a sliding ghost, he countered
with a long, curving left.
So far, he had been holding his own. If he could keep the giant at his
distance, he might wear him out. For this was not a fight by rounds; a
professional pugilist, fighting in the pink, would have had bellows to mend
at the end, say, of five minutes of a give-and-take encounter moving at high
speed.
Circling, feinting, ducking, Annister kept that long left in his adversary’s
face, forcing the pace, yet keeping out of harm’s way save for an overhand
swing, which, landing high up upon his cheek-bone, turned him half round
with the impact, throwing him off balance to a slumping fall.
Up like a flash, however, he ducked, dodged, evading those mighty arms
that strove desperately to reach him through that impenetrable guard.
A fight with four-ounce gloves can be a bloody affair enough, but with
nature’s weapons, under London Prize Ring rules, it can be a shambles.
Armed with the cestus or the mailed fist, Ellison might have wreaked havoc
as a gladiator of old Rome punished his adversary to the death. As it was,
Annister, his face a bloody mask, where that socking punch had landed,
gave Rook and his supporters heart of grace.
“Take him, Bull!”

The screaming advice was in the high voice of Lunn; the others echoed
it. But if Annister was in desperate case, the giant, sobbing now with the
fury of his spent strength, was weaving on his feet.
Legs like iron columns upbore that mighty strength, but a pile-driving
right, behind it the full weight of Annister’s two hundred pounds of iron-
hard muscle, sinking with an audible “plop!” in his adversary’s midriff,
brought from the giant a quick, gasping grunt.
Ellison’s endurance was almost done. He could “take it,” but, hog-fat
from a protracted period of easy living, professional fighter as he had been,
this amateur, with the arching chest of a greyhound and the stamina of a
lucivee of the long trail, was wearing him down.
Trading punch for punch now, Annister abruptly cut loose with pile-
driving right and lefts; they volleyed in from every angle; there was a cold
grin on his lips now as he went round the giant like a cooper round a barrel,
bombarding him with a bewildering crossfire of hooks and swings, jabs and
uppercuts.
Annister, at the beginning of the fight, had expected the usual tricks of
the professional: holding in the clinches; butting; the elbow; the heel of the
hand against the face; but Ellison had fought fair.
Now, as the giant, boring in against that relentless attack, faltered, mouth
open, labored breath sucked inward through clenched teeth, Annister
stepped backward, hands dropping at his sides.
Ellison, almost out, stood, weaving on his feet, fronting his adversary, a
queer look of surprise in his face, and a something more. Annister, strangely
enough, as has been mentioned, had, in spite of his encounter with Ellison
in the smoker, conceived something for the man that had been close to
liking. Somehow, rough as the man was; crooked, by all the signs; the tool
of Rook and of his minions, he had the blue eye of a fighter—the straight,
level look of a man who, though an enemy, would yet fight fair.
Annister, breathing heavily, thrust out his hand.
“A draw, ha?” he said. “Well—suppose we let it go at that.”
For a moment Ellison appeared to hesitate; there came again the queer
look in his eyes, as of surprise, wonder, and a something more. There came

a grating curse from Lunn; a sudden movement from the onlookers
roundabout.
Ellison’s great paw closed on the extended hand with a grip of iron, as
Rook’s voice rose, strident, under the lights:
“Bull—are you crazy? This man—he’s just—a dam’ dick!”

CHAPTER TEN
“IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!”

It was out. Rook, his hand in a lightning stab for Annister’s coat, turned
over the lapel, holding it forward for all to see.
On it was a small gold badge—the symbol of the Secret Service. The
secret was a secret no longer.
How long Rook had known of it Annister could not be certain, but now,
at the growling chorus of swift hate, he whirled. His pistol came up and out,
as there came a startling interruption, or rather, two.
He heard Ellison’s voice, roaring in the narrow room:
“Hell’s bells, young fellow, I’m with you, and you can lay to that! For
this once, anyway! You sure can handle yourself!”
He turned to Rook and the rest. “Now—you bums, get goin’! Dick or no
dick, I’ll play this hand as she lays. Get goin’!”
The great hand, holding a heavy Colt, swung upward on a line with
Annister’s as the door burst inward with a crash; and, framed in the
opening, there showed on a sudden the flaming thatch of the bartender, Del
Kane.
His cowboy yell echoed throughout the room, eyes blazing upon the
hotel man where he sat.
In two strides, he had joined Annister and Bull; guns on a line, the three
fronted the five who faced them, silent, tense. Kane’s voice came clear:
“I followed you, Mr. Annister; thought they’d try t’ run a whizzer on yuh;
I’m pullin’ m’ freight after today, anyway; Mister Lunn can have his job,
an’ welcome! Now—I ben keepin’ cases on Mister Rook, he’s a curly wolf,

ain’t you, Rook? A real bad hombre, an’ you can lay to that! But he ain’t
goin’ northwest of nothin’, he ain’t.... Now, you dam’ short-horns, show
some speed!”
But there was no fight in Rook, Lunn and Company. Glowering, their
hands in plain sight, weaponless, they sat in a sullen silence, as Annister,
backing to the doorway, was followed by Ellison and Kane. Outside, under
pale stars, the giant spoke:
“I don’t aim to be too all-fired honest, Mister Annister,” he said. “I
throwed in with Mister Rook, that’s so, but he’s played it both ends against
the middle with me, I guess.... I reckon I’ll be movin’ out o’ Dry Bone in
two—three hours.”
He grinned, wryly, out of the corner of his mouth.
“You sure pack a hefty wallop, young fellow! I wish I could tell you
somethin’, but that man Rook, he’s as close-mouthed as an Indian, and
that’s whatever! His game—nobody knows what it is—Lunn, maybe—but
they sure got a strangle-hold on th’ county; it won’t be healthy for me here
after tonight.”
The three men separated at the hotel, Annister entering the lobby with a
curious depression that abruptly deepened to a sudden, crawling fear as a
call-boy brought him a note. The fear was not for himself, but for another,
for, although he had never seen the handwriting before, he knew it upon the
instant.
Ripping open the envelope with fingers that trembled, he read, and at
what he saw his face paled slowly to a mottled, unhealthy gray:

“Partner:
“If you get this in time, please hurry. I’m in the toils, at Dr.
Elphinstone’s—it’s the stone house at the right of the road leading
north from Dry Bone—twenty miles, I think. I’ve bribed a man to
take this to you, and if he fails me, God help me!—God help us all!
If you fail me, you’ll never see me again—as Mary Allerton,
because the Devil’s in charge here, and they call him the Jailer of
Souls. I’ll be watching for you, at the south window—you’ll know it
by the red ribbon on the bars. And now—be careful. If you get here

at night beware of the guards—there are three. And if it’s night
there’ll be a rope hanging from the window—you can feel for it in
the dark. Now hurry.
“MARY ALLERTON (No. 33).”

“You’ll never see me again—as Mary Allerton.” Annister was aware
again of that crawling fear. “The red ribbon on the bars.” The place was in
effect a prison, then.
But—“No. 33”! Annister’s heart leaped up. He knew the meaning of
those numerals well enough; he had been blind not to have suspected it. But
“Dr. Elphinstone,” and “The Jailer of Souls!”
Who could be the jailer of souls but the Devil? And Annister fancied that
he had seen the Devil at the corner of that street under the moon, with his
black, forking beard, and the cold eyes of death.
The trail was warm now, as he thought, but—if he were too late? He put
the thought from him, turning to the perusal of a telegram in code which he
had found waiting for him at the desk; translated, it read:

“With you Thursday with four, six, twenty-one, and the others.
Look for thirty-three.
“CHILDERS.”

But there was no time to be lost. Thursday was tomorrow. He would have
to take his chance of their finding him, for there was nobody whom he
could trust. Ellison had gone, even if he might have chanced the giant in so
delicate a matter; Del Kane, likewise. He must take his chance. Striding to
the door, he stiffened abruptly at a drumming rap, and a hoarse voice in the
corridor without:
“Open up in there; open up!”
Annister, a pulse in his temple beating to his hard-held breath, jerked
back the door, to face—
Bristow, behind him three men whom he recognized as hangers-on at the
hotel bar. They had something of the look of long-riders, villainous, hard-

bitten; as one man, they grinned now, but without mirth, as the sheriff
spoke:
“Annister—I arrest you for the murder of Tucson Charlie Westervelt and
Bartley Pattison. In th’ name of th’ Law!”
Annister knew that if he resisted they would shoot him down; in fact, he
knew, too, that was what they wanted; it would be the easiest way. Under
the menace of the guns, he spread his hands, palms downward, preceding
the four men down the stairs outward to the jail.
But as the heavy door clanged shut behind him, Annister, his gaze in a
sightless staring into the north, groaned, in bitterness of spirit.
Mary was needing him: she was in peril, the greater because it was
unknown—and—he would not be there.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE HOUSE OF FEAR

A house of silence, broken at times by a weird wailing as from the Pit; a
house of dreams, gray in the moonlight, under the leprous-silvered finger of
the moon, brooding now, a grim, gray fortress of the damned: the
stronghold of the Beast.
Dense pines grew about it, so that when the wind wailed among them,
like the wailing of a lost soul, it met and mingled with an eerie ululation
rising as if muffled by many thicknesses of walls, to end, after a little, with
a quick shriek and a sudden hush, with, after a moment, the faint echo of a
taunting laugh.
That laugh would have struck terror to the swart soul of a lucivee, if
lucivees have souls, for it was like an eldritch howling, faint and thin; like
the thin, tinkling laughter of a fiend, without pity and without ruth.
Here, in the sanitarium of Doctor Elphinstone, there were secrets within
secrets, walls within walls, downward, as in Dante’s Seventh Hell, and from
this monastery of the hopeless there penetrated, on occasion, outward from
its battlemented walls, wild, frantic laughter, but there was nothing
demoniac about it, because it was the laughter of the insane.

But that other laughter, like a sound heard in dreams—passers-by, if there
were any such, hearing it, would shudder, and pass on. For the secret of that
house of doom was a secret, terrible and grim; a secret, for him who might
have guessed at it, to be whispered behind locked doors and with bated
breath. And there had been those who had whispered of the lost souls within
those walls, and the whisper ran that they were, indeed, madmen who had
not been always mad, because—they had become such after their
commitment to the bleak house within the wood.
These were but whispers, merely, for the power upon that house was not
alone the power of Evil, rising like a dark tide among the pines; for in Dry
Bone, and beyond it, in Palos Verde and Mojave, it was rumored that the
strong arm of the Law upheld it, or such law, say, as might have issued from
the devious hand of Hamilton Rook.
Once—and it was never repeated—a man had come there from the
capital; he had demanded to see the doctor’s patients; that had been a long
time in the past.
And as the investigator had stood there, viewing with a faint, creeping
horror the nondescripts paraded before him, gibbering, mouthing, in an
inarticulate, furious babble, a man had burst suddenly from the line with a
strangled cry:
“Jerry—don’t you know me? I’m Humiston—Newbold....”
The voice had been the voice of Humiston, but the face—it had been the
face of another, totally unlike; there had been no possible resemblance. But
the man had been—sane. The investigator was persuaded of that; suffering
under a peculiar delusion, indeed, but sane.
The man had rushed forward then, baring his arm; and there, on that thin,
pitiful flesh that had once been healthy and hard, there ran a curious design
in red; the investigator sucked in his breath as that tell-tale birth-mark
sprang, livid, under his gaze. For he had seen it before.
The doctor’s eyes had narrowed to slits; somehow, the man from the
capital had gained the impression that it was the first time that he had seen
that mark. But the investigator could do nothing. Birth-marks can be
duplicated. He had waited then, in a curious indecision as the bearded
doctor had interposed a suave:

“Well, of course, Commissioner, you’re quite aware, or you should be,
how it is: these paranoiacs are noted for their delusions—ah—
megalocephalic tendencies, I should say.... They believe themselves to be—
someone else, and always a bank president, say, a famous actor, an author, a
great general.... Now—Mr. Humiston—you knew him, I believe?” Beneath
the silken tone there ran suddenly a hint of iron, of menace, veiled but
actual; the investigator felt it. “This patient knew your name, of course,” the
suave voice had continued. “Poor fellow—we must be gentle with him.”
And there the matter had ended. Curiously enough, the man who had
claimed to be Banker Humiston had, after that first burst of frenzied speech,
kept silent. Perhaps that mordant gleaming in the doctor’s eyes had
telegraphed a warning, a message, a command.
But the investigator went home, oddly shaken, to dream, like Pilate’s
wife, of a white face with staring eyes which changed, even as he gazed,
into the face of his friend, Newbold Humiston; to hear, even in his dream, a
voice, and it was the voice of the living, and of the dead.

In a bare cell, six feet by six—a cubicle in which there was barely
sufficient head room for a tall man to stand upright—a figure stood with its
hands clenched upon the bars, staring outward at the grim wood visible to
the south.
Travis Annister had abode here in this living tomb three weeks now, three
centuries, in which, as in a nightmare of cold horror, he had been aware
merely of a face, three-pointed, bearded, the eyes active with a malign
intelligence, the lips smiling always with the cold smile of death.
Twice a day the small panel in his cell door had slid backward without
sound, to frame, in the opening, the face of Dr. Elphinstone, like a face
without a body, and without a soul.
The father of Black Steve Annister knew that it was not a dream that
would pass, because, on the second day, the head had spoken. Travis
Annister was scarcely a coward; he had fought like a baited grizzly when

surprised in his Summer camp by the men who had brought him, under
cover of the night, to this prison-house beyond the pale.
Now, at the voice, like the slow drip of an acid, Annister stared straight
before him, with the gaze of a man who has abandoned hope.
“My dear Mr. Annister,” the voice had whispered, “the little matter of
that check, if you please.... You will make it out to ‘Cash’.... Ah, that is
good; I perceive you are—wise.”
It had not been the pistol in the lean, clawlike hand; nor the eyes, even,
brooding upon him with the impersonal, cold staring of a cobra; Travis
Annister might have refused if it had not been for those sounds that he had
heard, the sights that he had seen when, taken at midnight from his cubicle,
he had beheld the administration of the Cone.
And, like Macbeth, with that one sight, and the sight of that which came
after, he had “supped full of horrors,” until now, at the bidding of that
toneless voice, he had obeyed. Three times thereafter, at the command of
his dark jailer, he had paid tribute, nor had he been, of all that lost battalion,
the single victim; there had been others....
Now, separated from him scarce a dozen feet, a girl with golden hair sat,
huddled, eyes in a sightless staring upon the stone floor of her cell. Cleo
Ridgley had not been killed; she had been saved for a fate—beside which
death would be a little thing—a fate unspeakable, even as had—Number
Thirty-three.
Mary Allerton, removed from the others by a narrow corridor running
cross-wise in the cell-block, watched and waited now for the signal of the
man to whom she had dispatched that message, it seemed, a century in the
past.
That morning they had found the rope; they had removed it without
comment, while the ophidian gaze of the dark Doctor had been bent upon
her with what she fancied had been a queer, speculative look: a look of
anticipation, and of something more. So far she had been treated decently
enough; her cell was wide and airy, plainly but comfortably furnished; but
as to that look in the gray-green eyes of the Master of Black Magic—she
was not so sure.

There came a sudden movement in the corridor without; a panting, a
snuffling, and the quick pad-pad of marching feet. Mary, her eye to the
keyhole of that door, could see but dimly; she made out merely the sheeted
figures, like grim, gliding ghosts; the figure, rigid, on the stretcher, moving,
silent, on its rubber-tired wheels. Then, at an odor stealing inward through
the key-hole, she recoiled.
That perfume had been sickish-sweet, overpowering, dense and yet sharp
with a faint, acrid sweetness; the odor of ether. And then, although she
could not see it, a man in the next cell had risen, white-faced, from his cot,
to sink back limply as the dark hand, holding that inverted cone, had swept
downward to his face.
A choked gurgle, a strangled, sharp cry, penetrating outward in a vague
shadow of clamor—and then silence, with the faint whisper of the wind
among the pines, the brool of the rushing river, the faint, half-audible
footfalls passing and repassing in that corridor of the dead.

Travis Annister sprang to his feet as the narrow door swung open to press
backward against the window-bars as the High-Priest of Horror, followed
by his familiars, cowled and hooded, entered with a slow, silent step. The
Doctor spoke, and his voice was like a chill wind:
“My friend, I bring you—forgetfulness.... A brief Lethe of hours.... And
then—ah, then, you will be a new man, a man re-born, my friend.... Now....”
Annister, his face gray with a sort of hideous strain, stared silent, white-
lipped, as, at a low-voiced order, the attendants came forward.
The lean hand reached forward; it poised, darted, swooped; and in it was
the Cone.

CHAPTER TWELVE
CASTLE DANGEROUS

Alone in his cell beneath the court-house, Black Steve Annister sat in
silence, gazing northward through the barred window to where, invisible in

the thick darkness just across the street, the road ran, straight as an arrow
from the bow, to that dark forest brooding in a changeless silence where lay
the House of Fear.
Childers would have had his wire long since; but by the time that help
could come it would be—too late. Annister, fatalistic after a fashion, felt
this to be the fact even as he hoped against hope.
But they were many, and he was but one. Tomorrow—it would be too
late.
Head bowed in his hands, oblivious, at first he had heard it as a thin
whisper, like a knife blade against the silence; it penetrated inward now,
with the dull rasp of metal upon metal from without:
“Sit tight, old-timer; I’m comin’ through!”
There came a muffled thud, a twist; Annister, reaching forth a hand,
found it clasped in thick groping fingers. Then, as he thrust head and
shoulders through the sundered bars, a Shadow uprose, gigantic, against the
stars; the voice came again, in a quick, rumbling whisper:
“It’s me, old-timer—Bull.”
Annister, crawling through the opening, alighted upon soft turf. He heard
Ellison’s low chuckle as, following the giant, he passed along the lee of the
building to where, showing merely as a black blot against the night, there
stood an automobile, its engine just turning over, with the low, even purr of
harnessed power; at twenty paces it was scarcely audible above the rising of
the wind.
“Tank’s full,” said Ellison. “Now—”
He turned abruptly as a dim figure rose upward just beyond. For a
moment Annister set himself for the onslaught; then his hand went out; it
gripped the hard hand of Del Kane.
“Ellison done told me, Mr. Annister,” he said. “An’ so I come a-fannin’
an’ a-foggin’ thisaway from Mojave; certain-sure I don’t aim to leave no
friend of mine hog-tied in no calaboose!”
Annister, his heart warming to these friends, debated with himself; then
turned to Ellison with a sudden movement.

“Bull,” he said. “I’m putting my cards on the table with you and Del,
here.”
He told them briefly of the message from Mary, the need of haste; then,
of his mission, and of the help that was even now due, or would be, with the
morning. If they were coming with him, northward along that road of peril,
word must be left behind.
Kane thought a moment; then, wheeling swiftly, with muttered word, he
disappeared in the darkness, to return presently with the good news that he
had fixed it with the station-agent. The latter had just come on; he was a
friend of Kane’s, and no friend of Rook and Company; he would see to it,
Kane said, that the reinforcements would be warned.
Boarding the car, they swung out cautiously along the silent street, under
the pale stars, northward along that shadowy road. Presently there would be
a moon, but just now they went onward in a thick darkness, with, just
ahead, the dim loom of the road, flowing backward under the wheels, which
presently ran like a ribbon of pale flame under the bright beam of the lights.
A half mile from the town, and Bull, who was driving, opened up, and
the car leaped forward with the rising drone of the powerful motor, thirty,
forty, fifty miles an hour; the wind of their passage drove backward like a
wall as the giant’s voice came now in a rumbling laugh:
“Some little speed-wagon, Mr. Annister, ha?” he said. “An’ that’s
whatever! It ought to be. The man who owns it—who did own it half an
hour ago—he’s some particular, I’ll say! Because—it’s Mister Hamilton
Rook’s!”
Annister laughed grimly in answer, speaking a low word of caution as,
after perhaps a half hour of their racing onrush the lights glimmered on dark
trees to right and left.
“Somewhere about here, I think,” he said, low. “Three outside guards, I
understand. We’d better stop a little way this side, Bull ... that’s it. Now,
look!”
As the big car slid slowly to a halt, the moon, rising above the trees,
showed them, perhaps a hundred yards just ahead, a low, rambling, stone
house, its windows like blind eyes to the night. Upon its roof the moonlight
lay like snow, and even at that distance it was sinister, forbidding, as if the

evil that was within had seeped through those stones, outward, in a creeping
tide.
“Looks like a morgue,” offered Ellison, with a shrug of his great
shoulders, as the three, alighting, pushed the car before them into the wood.
Then, guns out, they went forward slowly among the trees.
Annister had formed no definite plan of attack. The red ribbon at that
window-bar might or might not be visible under the moon, but, the guards
eliminated, it seemed to him that, after all, they would have to make it an
assault in force. Pondering this matter, of a sudden he leaped sidewise as a
dim figure rose upward almost in his face.
Spread-eagled like a bat against the dimness, the figure bulked, huge,
against the moon as Annister, bending to one side, brought up his fist in a
lifting punch, from his shoe-tops.
It was a savage blow; it landed with the sound of a butcher’s cleaver on
the chopping-block; there came a gasping grunt; the thud of a heavy body,
as the guard went downward without a sound.
“One!” breathed Ellison, as, trussing their victim with a length of stout
line brought from the car, they left him, going forward carefully, keeping
together, circling the house.
But it was not until they were half way round it, with, so far, no sign of
that signal for which he looked, that they encountered the second guard.
He came upon them with a swift, silent onrush, leaping among the trees,
a great, dun shape, spectral under the moon, fangs bared, as, without a
sound, the hound drove straight for the giant’s throat.
A shot would bring discovery; they dared not risk it. Annister could see
the great head, the wide ruff at the neck, the grinning jaws.... Then, the
giant’s hands had gone up and out; there came a straining heave, a wrench,
a queer, whistling croak; Ellison, rising from his knees, looked downward a
moment to where the beast, its jaw broken by that mighty strength, lay
stretched, lifeless, at his feet.
By now they had come full circle, when, all at once, Annister, peering
under his hand, sucked in his breath with a whispered oath.

Fair against the bars of a window, low down at their right, there was a
dark smudge; the ribbon, black under the moon. Annister’s heart leaped up
in answer, as, with a quick word, he halted his companions in the shadow of
a tree. A moment they conferred; then Ellison—and Annister could almost
see his grin in the darkness—spoke beneath his hand:
“Why, that’ll be easy! I’ve got m’ tools; they’re right here in my pocket,
Mr. Annister! Those bars ought to be easy! For a fair journeyman sledge-
swinger, it’ll be easy an’ you can lay to that!”
“Good!” whispered Annister in answer. “But—hurry!”
The moonlight lay in a molten flood between them and the house. But it
was no time now for deliberation. Crossing that bright strip at a crouching
run, the three were at the window; Annister’s harsh whisper hissed in the
silence, through those iron bars:
“Mary!”
For a heart-beat silence answered him; then, faint and thin, in a faint,
tremulous, sobbing breath, there came the answer:
“Steve—thank God!”
Annister had spoken the girl’s name without thought. At that high
moment forms had been futile; that whisper had been wrung from him,
deep-down, as had her answer. And then the soft rasp of steel on steel told
that Ellison was at work.
But the giant was working against time. At any moment now might come
the alarm; they had no means of knowing the number of those within those
walls; perhaps even now peril, just behind, might be stalking them, out of
the dark.
And still that soft rasp went on, until, at a low word from the girl, the
giant, laying down his file, bent, heaved, putting his shoulder into it; and the
bars sprang outward, bent and twisted in that iron grasp.
Annister, his hand reaching for the hand of the girl, went inward silently,
to stand a moment, without speech, in the thick darkness of the little cell.
But it was no time for dalliance.

Kane and Ellison behind him now, he set his shoulder against the door,
as, Ellison aiding, it splintered outward with a soft, carrying crash. Ahead of
them, along a dark, narrow corridor, there had come on a sudden sound of
voices, murmurs; Annister, going toward that sound, saw suddenly an open
door; light streamed from it as the murmur of voices rose:
“My friend, I bring you—forgetfulness....”
The words came in a sort of hissing sibilance as Annister, reaching that
doorway, halted a moment as the tableau was burned into his brain:
He saw his father, helpless, his face gray with the hideous terror of that
which was upon him, in the grasp of two cloaked and hooded figures, their
dark faces grinning with a bestial mirth.
And before him, hand upraised and holding a curious, funnel-shaped
object at which the man in the corner shrank backward even as he looked,
he saw a tall man with a black, forking beard—the same that he had seen
that evening at the corner of the street; the same that he had seen in that dim
backwater of Rangoon, the Unspeakable—the man with the dark, foreign
visage, and the eyes of death.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE JAILER OF SOULS

Annister’s gun went up and out as the black-bearded man, turning, saw
him where he stood.
Travis Annister, parchment-pale, took two forward, lurching steps, as the
doctor, backing stiffly against the wall, hands upraised, called something in
a high sing-song, savage, inarticulate.
Then—everything seemed to happen at once. A snarling, animal outcry
echoed from the passage just without; it rose, as there came a far, gobbling
mutter of voices, and the pad-pad of running feet.
The hooded Familiars, as one man, turned, and the long knives flashed,
luminous, under the lights, as Kane and Ellison, meeting them half way,
raised their heavy guns.

Annister, covering the Doctor, froze suddenly in motion as that gobbling
horror mounted, and then, filling that narrow way like figures in a dream,
they came: the outcasts, the lost battalion, the Men Who Had no Right to
Live.
In their van, but running rather as if pursued than as if in answer to that
snarling call, there came three men, guards by their dress, their faces
contorted, agonized, upon them the impress of a crawling fear. They
streamed past that door, pursuers and pursued, as Black Steve Annister,
finger upon the trigger of his pistol, saw that lean hand sweep upward; it
flicked the thin lips; the dark face grayed, went blank; the Dark Doctor, his
gaze in a queer, frozen look upon Eternity, pitched forward upon his face.
In some way, as Annister could understand, the madmen had won free,
but—how?
Turning, he saw a white face at his elbow as there sounded from without
the staccato explosions of a motor, and a swift, hammering thunder upon
the great door.
“I am—Newbold Humiston,” said the face, “and I am not mad, or, rather,
I am but mad north-north-west when the wind is southerly,” he quoted, with
a ghastly smile. “This devil—” he pointed to the body of Elphinstone—“has
gone to his own place, but the evil that he did lives after him—in us.”
His voice rose to a shriek as there came a rush of feet along the corridor:
a compact body of men, at their head a tall man at sight of whom Stephen
Annister flung up a hand.
“Well, Childers,” he said. “I’m glad!”
Childers spoke pantingly, in quick gasps:
“We just made it, old man,” he said. “A day ahead at that. The station
agent put us on the track. We got ’em all—Lunn, and the rest; all but Rook
—”
He paused, at Annister’s inquiring look, turning his thumb down with an
expressive gesture.
“We found him—strangled—in his office ... a queer business....”
Annister gave an exclamation.

“The Indian!” he said. “Well, Rook was the ‘Third Light,’ sure enough!”
Again he was seeing the lean, avid face in the vestibule of the smoker,
the lighted match; himself, and the conductor, and Rook, the lawyer’s pale
eyes brooding above the glowing end of his cigarette.... And again, as the
picture passed, he was aware of the white face at his elbow as Mary
Allerton, her hand in his, behind her the golden hair and the wide eyes of
Cleo Ridgley, turned to Childers with a smile that yet had in it a hint of
tears.
He that had been Newbold Humiston continued:
“The others—they’re quiet now. The guards have gone—to follow him—
the others saw to that.”
He gestured toward the silent figure on the floor.
“His plan was worthy of his master, the Devil, because it was diabolically
simple: Rook was his procurer and his clearing-house; you see, Rook found
the victims, and cashed the checks that Elphinstone wrung from them; and
then, when they had cleaned up, or when they deemed the time was ripe, the
victims—disappeared. Rook’s secretary they kidnapped for revenge; Miss
Allerton because she knew much; they suspected that she was in the Secret
Service. And so—these others disappeared.”
He laughed; the laugh of a dead man risen from the tomb.
“They disappeared—yes—but—they remained, as you see—myself—a
living ghost!”
“But how?” asked the younger Annister, in the sudden quiet, the
realization of what his father and Mary had escaped burning like a quick
fire in his veins. The toneless voice went on:
“Elphinstone was a surgeon, a master.... You’ve heard of Dermatology?
Well, it’s been done in India, I believe; practiced there to an extent
unknown here, of course. An anesthetic, and then an operation: new faces
for old, forged faces; the thing was diabolically simple. And so when they,
the victims, saw themselves in a mirror, sometimes they went mad, for who
could prove it? Who would be believed?”
His voice rose, died, gathered strength, as a candle flames at the last with
a brief spark of life:

“It’s done,” he muttered. “He’s gone—but his work lives after him, even
as he called himself—the Jailer of Souls!”

THE END.

Editor Baffled by Weird Seance
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s lecture tours in the United States have created
wide discussion and considerable difference of opinion, some persons
contending that he is really in communication with the spirit world, while
others declare that he is the victim of tricksters. In order to conduct an
impartial investigation, J. Malcolm Bird, associate editor of The Scientific
American, attended several of Sir Arthur’s seances, and afterward declared
that he had observed psychic phenomena that could hardly be explained by
any known natural cause. He could discover no physical connection
between the medium or the spectators and the phenomena, and he saw
mysterious self-luminous lights, attributed by Sir Arthur to ectoplasm, and
heard strange noises that defied his efforts to establish a natural cause.
“My best judgment would be that both in direction and subject matter
much of the ‘communicated’ material of the seance would be quite beyond
the normal ability of the medium,” he said. “The seance entered a phase
which seems to me to prove, without question, that telepathy or some other
force with intelligence behind it was at work.
“The trumpet began to talk, loudly and distinctly and coherently, in a
voice that had not yet been heard.... It was not ordinary ventriloquism,
because the ventriloquist cannot work in the dark. He doesn’t deceive your
ears, but rather your eyes, by directing your attention to the point whence he
wishes you to infer that the sound came. The voice really came from the
center of the circle.”

JACK O’ MYSTERY

A Modern Ghost Story
By EDWIN MacLAREN
The limousine came to a glistening stop before an office building in
Monroe Street, and a handsome woman of thirty, expensively and stylishly
gowned, emerged from the car and entered the building, her mien
bespeaking nervousness.
Furtively, as one who fears pursuit, she hastened across the marble
rotunda, edged hurriedly into an elevator and ascended to the ninth floor,
where she approached a door bearing upon its opaque glass panel the gilt
lettering:
BARRY DETECTIVE AGENCY
She paused here for a moment, in an effort to recover her equanimity;
and then, with a brave assumption of self-assurance, she opened the door
and entered the room and closed the door behind her.

The room was quite deserted; but promptly from an adjoining chamber
there came a lean-faced young man of inquiring blue eyes, who courteously
greeted her.
“Is Mr. Barry in?” she asked. “Mr. Herbert Barry?”
“I am Herbert Barry,” he said.
“Oh!” Surprised, she eyed the slim young man half incredulously. He
seemed scarcely more than a boy. “Mrs. Franklin Parker told me about you
—recommended you very highly. Perhaps that is why,” she added, with a
smile, “I expected to find an older man.... I suppose most of the people who

come to see you are in trouble of some sort. I am not in trouble, exactly, but
—” She glanced around the office. “May I have a word with you in
privacy?”
He held open the door to the adjoining room. “Suppose we step in here?
My stenographer is at lunch. There’s no danger of our being disturbed.”
Preceding him into the inner office, she bade him lock the door; and, thus
assured of their safety from interruption, she sat nervously on the edge of a
chair and faced him across the flat-top desk. There clung to her, somehow, a
subtle suggestion of wealth and luxury, and her well-chiseled features
denoted good breeding. Subtle, too, was the delicate odor of violets that
fragrantly touched his nostrils as she leaned toward him across the desk.
Then he noticed she wore a rich cluster of the flowers upon her mauve silk
waist.
He observed, also, the purplish shadows beneath her large brown eyes,
her half-frightened, half-worried demeanor and her air of suppressed
excitement, as though she were struggling to control some inner
perturbation.
“Perhaps I’ve made a mistake,” she began, “in coming here. I don’t
know. But I’ve been so perplexed, so utterly mystified, by some strange
things that have happened lately—Did you ever hear of Willard Clayberg?”
she broke off suddenly to ask.
Barry knitted his brows. The name had a familiar sound.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause, “I seem to remember him. Wasn’t he the
North Shore millionaire who went insane last winter and killed his wife and
himself?”
She nodded. Her elbows were resting on the desk and her slender fingers,
interlaced beneath her small white chin, were twitching.
“Exactly. They lived, as you probably recall, in a quaint old-fashioned
home near Hubbard Woods—just the two of them; no children. Following
the tragedy, the house was closed up and for a long while remained
unoccupied. Despite the scarcity of dwelling places, nobody apparently
cared to live there. For one thing, it is not a modern residence, and for
another—and this really seemed the most serious objection—it had
acquired a reputation of being ‘haunted.’

“Of course,” she went on, with a nervous little laugh, “you will say—just
as I said—that such a thing is perfectly absurd. You’d think that no normal
person would take it seriously. And yet there were so many strange things
told about the house—creepy stories of weird sounds in the dead of night
and unearthly things seen through the windows—that people, ordinarily
level-headed, began to shun the place.
“I have never believed in ghosts, Mr. Barry, and I’ve always ridiculed
people who did; but now—Do you know my husband, Scott Peyton?”
“I’ve heard of him,” said Barry. “Architect, isn’t he?”
“A very successful one. He has designed some of the finest buildings in
Chicago. But he’s the most superstitious man alive! He’s a Southerner, born
in Georgia, and at childhood his negro ‘mammy’ filled his mind with all
manner of silly superstitions, including a deathly fear of ‘ha’nts.’ He has
never been able to overcome this, although both of us have tried.
“About three weeks ago,” Mrs. Peyton continued, her voice betraying her
agitation, “he and I were motoring along the North Shore when we espied
this old Clayberg estate. The quaint charm of the old-fashioned place at
once enchanted me; and when we alighted and strolled through the grounds
my enchantment grew. It seemed as if Nature had outdone herself in
lavishing picturesque beauty there. Mr. Peyton was as fascinated as I.
“We were planning, at that time, to give up our town apartment and buy a
suburban home; and this seemed to be just the thing we were looking for.
We inquired of the neighbors concerning it, and it was then we discovered
its tragic history. When my husband was told of the hideous thing that had
happened there last winter, and of its evil reputation since, his enthusiasm
vanished, and I immediately saw he would never consider buying it.
“But I had set my heart on having that place; and later—after I had
pleaded and argued with him in vain—I decided to buy it myself and, by
compelling him to live there, perhaps cure him permanently of his
superstitious fear. I saw the agent next day, learned the old home could be
bought at a bargain, and had my father buy it and deed it to me.
“My husband was furious when I told him what I had done. He declared
he would never enter the house and urged me to sell it forthwith. But I was
as firm as he; and finally, after a rather violent argument and by taunting

him with being a coward, I contrived to get his reluctant consent to make
our home in the ‘haunted house’.”

“We moved in last Thursday,” said Mrs. Peyton sitting nearer the desk
and lowering her voice, “and on Thursday night, and every night since then
—” She exhaled audibly, her lip quivering.
“What happened?” asked Barry.
“It’s been a nightmare!” she exclaimed with sudden vehemence. “Ever
since that first night the most peculiar things have happened. I don’t know
what to make of it, or what to think, or do. It’s baffling! I’m not in the least
superstitious; and yet—”
“Start at the beginning,” suggested Barry, “and tell me exactly what
happened.”
“Well, the first night we slept in the master’s bedroom—a large front
room on the second floor—and about midnight I was awakened by my
husband, who was sitting up in bed, gasping and trembling with terror.
Before I could speak, he sprang from bed and switched on the light and
began frantically searching the room, looking into the closets and under the
bed and peering into the hall.
“‘For heaven’s sake!’ I cried. ‘What’s the matter?’
“He pointed to the corridor door. His hand was trembling and his face
was as white as paper. For a moment he seemed unable to speak.
“‘It came right through that door!’ he said at last. ‘I woke up just as it
came in the room—a ghastly-looking old man with white hair and a long
beard. It didn’t open the door, but came right through it!’
“‘Nonsense!’ I laughed. ‘You’ve been thinking about ghosts until you
imagine you’re seeing them. Now come back to bed and go to sleep.’
“But he indignantly insisted he had actually seen the thing.
“‘I saw it cross the room,’ he declared, ‘and stop at the bed and stand
there looking down at me. When I sat up it disappeared—vanished into air.’

“I couldn’t believe such a preposterous thing, of course, but, to humor
him, I offered to get up and help him search the house.
“‘What good would that do?’ he objected. ‘I tell you the thing was a
spirit!’
“Finally he went back to bed. But he slept no more that night. At
breakfast next morning I could see he hadn’t closed his eyes.
“On the following night I again was awakened by my husband, who
seemed even more frightened than before.
“‘It came back again!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘It was puttering around
your desk over there.’
“Then he jumped out of bed and ran to the desk and lit the lamp there. A
moment later he uttered a sharp cry and came hurrying back to my bed,
with a sheet of writing paper in his hand.
“‘Look at that!’ he exclaimed, and thrust the paper before my eyes.
“I saw written on the paper, in a sprawling hand, the words, ‘Leave this
House!’ and I knew then that somebody had been in the room.
“I got up and tried the door. It was still locked and the key was in the
hole, just as I had left it. The windows hadn’t been touched, apparently.
How, then, had the person entered our room?
“My husband, of course, insisted it was not a living being, but a ghost,
who could pass through a locked door as though it didn’t exist. And, as
before, he refused to look for it.
“Next day, however, with our cook and houseman, I thoroughly searched
the house from top to bottom—and found nothing. No trace of anybody
having entered the house. Nothing wrong anywhere.
“On Saturday night I was awakened again—this time by a frantic
knocking on our bedroom door. I sat up, startled. My husband was sleeping
soundly, exhausted after two sleepless nights.
“I slipped quietly from bed, without disturbing him, and tiptoed to the
door and whispered through the panel:
“‘Who’s there?’

“The cook’s voice answered, and I could tell by her tone she was terribly
frightened:
“‘It’s me, ma’am. I’m leavin’ this house tonight. I won’t stay here
another minute!’
“I opened the door and stepped out in the hall—taking care not to awake
Mr. Peyton—and found Clara fully dressed and holding her traveling-bag. It
was evident she had dressed in considerable haste, and it was equally plain
that she was almost paralyzed with fear.
“‘I just seen a spook!’ she gasped. ‘An old man with white hair and
whiskers. He come right in my room while I was asleep. I woke up and seen
’im. And he writ somethin’ on my dresser. You c’n see for yerself, ma’am,
what he writ there.’

“Fearful of awakening my husband, I had drawn her away from the
bedroom door; and now, with some difficulty, I persuaded her to follow me
to her room, where I found, written in white chalk across the bureau mirror,
the command: ‘Leave here at once!’
“Clara was determined to obey this ‘message from the dead’ by leaving
instantly. I couldn’t induce her even to stay until morning. Despite my
protests and entreaties, she fled from the house and passed the remainder of
the night, as I later discovered, in the Hubbard Woods railroad station,
taking an early train for Chicago.
“I tried to keep the occurrence from my husband, inventing an excuse for
Clara’s hasty departure, but he wormed the truth from me, and of course
that further harassed his already overwrought nerves. Also, it gave him the
right to say, ‘I told you so!’
“He renewed his pleading to abandon the house; but I still refused to give
it up—still refused to admit that it was ‘haunted,’ or that there was anything
supernatural in what he and Clara had seen.
“It didn’t end there, unhappily. On the very next night—that was night
before last—the houseman was visited by the mysterious ‘thing.’ He said he

saw it in his room, after midnight, stooping over his table, that he shouted at
it and it disappeared. Then, so he told us, he got up and struck a light and
discovered the ‘ghost’ had been trying to send a message to him by
arranging some matches on the table.
“He showed us these matches, saying he had left them just as they were
found. They were so placed as to spell the word, ‘LEAVE,’ in capital letters.
Evidently the ‘ghost’ was frightened away before he could finish his
sentence. Needless to say, the houseman left us.
“Well, in spite of all these things, I simply couldn’t bring myself to
believe that the mysterious visitations were supernatural. I was sure there
must be some logical explanation. But last night—!”
“What happened last night?” asked Barry, as Mrs. Peyton paused.
Mrs. Peyton, still sitting forward in her chair, was searching in her
reticule. Barry noticed her fingers were unsteady and that her underlip was
caught between her teeth to still its quivering.
“Last night,” she went on, with a transparent effort at lightness, “I saw
the ‘ghost’! Please don’t smile! I was quite wide awake when I saw it—as
wide awake as I am this moment—and in full possession of all my wits.
And I can’t understand yet how it got in my room, or how it got out, or even
what it was.
“I was alone in the house, too,” she continued, taking a photograph from
the reticule and placing it, face down, on the desk. “Yesterday afternoon Mr.
Peyton telephoned from his office that he must stay downtown rather late to
attend a meeting of building contractors and suggested that I come in to the
city for dinner, and bring a friend and ‘take in a show,’ and meet him
afterward. But I wasn’t in the mood and told him I’d prefer to stay at home.
“‘But I won’t be home before twelve o’clock,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like
the idea of your being all alone in that house at night, without even a
servant on the place.’
“I reminded him that the chauffeur and gardener were still with us (they
sleep in the garage and hadn’t been alarmed by the ‘spook’), and with these
two and Mitch, our Scotch collie, to guard me I felt perfectly safe. As for
the ‘ghost,’ I laughingly told him, I really would enjoy meeting it and
having a chat on its astral adventures.

“He declined to unbend from his seriousness and became irritated when I
refused to leave the house. We had quite a tiff, but I finally had my way, and
the best he could get was a promise from me to lock myself in before going
to bed. He said he would sleep in one of the guest chambers.
“After a pick-up meal in the kitchen, I went upstairs to our room and
wrote letters until ten o’clock. Then I prepared for bed.
“For a moment I regretted not having done as my husband asked. The
house did seem eerie; no denying that—big and dark and silent, and not a
living creature in it except myself.
“But I quickly shook off this feeling, assuring myself there was no such
thing as a ghost, and, even if there was, that it couldn’t possibly harm me.
However, remembering my promise, I locked the door and put the key
under my pillow, and bolted all the windows, and, as an additional
precaution, I looked under the bed and inspected both closets. And I knew
absolutely, when I put out the light and got into bed, that I was the only
person in that room.
“I was soon asleep,” said Mrs. Peyton, again feeling in her handbag, “and
it seemed only a few minutes later—though I know now it was several
hours—when I found myself wide awake. I suppose it was the lack of fresh
air that awoke me. I’m accustomed to sleeping with the windows open.
“I was on the point of getting up to open a window when, all at once, my
blood seemed to freeze. I discovered, quite suddenly, I was not alone in the
room!”

Mrs. Peyton paused and drew from the handbag a sheet of blue linen
notepaper. Nervously creasing the paper in her slender white fingers, she
continued, with heightening agitation, her large brown eyes earnestly
watching the detective’s face: “I won’t deny, Mr. Berry, that I was
frightened. In fact, I confess that I was so terrified I seemed utterly
powerless to move or speak. I had always supposed if I ever should see a
ghost I would feel no fear whatever. But now that I found myself actually

looking at one—or at least looking at what, in that frightful moment, I
potently believed to be one—I was petrified with terror.
“It was sitting at my desk, right where I’d been sitting all evening, and its
back was toward me. The moon had risen and was shining through the
windows, brightening the room with a pale half-light.
“The figure at the desk appeared to be writing. In fact, I could hear the
scratching of the pen. I could also hear the ticking of a small clock on the
desk. That’s how still everything was.
“Well, it sat there writing—a blurred, shapeless object in the silvery
moonlight—for I don’t know how long. It seemed an age! And all the time I
was conscious—terrifyingly so—that I was alone in that great house with
it!”
Mrs. Peyton paused and took the photograph from the desk.
“Instinctively, I tried to scream,” she went on, “but my throat was
parched and I seemed unable to utter a sound. However, I must have made
some sort of noise, for the thing suddenly turned and looked at me over its
shoulder. And for the first time, I saw its face.”
“What was the face like?” asked Barry.
She handed him the photograph.
“That’s a picture of it,” she said.
It was a kodak “snapshot” of an aged man with flowing white hair and a
patriarchal beard. Turning it over, Barry saw written on the back, “Willard
Clayberg, December, 1922.”
“It’s Mr. Clayberg’s last picture,” said Mrs. Peyton. “I obtained it this
morning from one of his grandsons. It was taken last winter, shortly before
the dreadful tragedy at our house.”
“Getting back to last night?” reminded Barry.
“Oh, yes! Well, the thing sat there, quite silent and motionless, staring at
me through the moonlight. Its face was the same as the one in that picture,
only, somehow, it didn’t seem real. It was peculiarly pallid and lifeless—
like the face of a dead person.

“Finally I found my voice and cried out: ‘Who are you? What are you
doing here?’
“Instantly the thing rose from the desk, without making a particle of
sound, and glided swiftly and silently across the room—and disappeared!
“That seemed to revive my courage—the thought that I had frightened it
away—and I sprang from bed and ran to the door.
“The door was still locked! I tried the windows. They were still bolted.
Neither the door nor the windows had been touched. Everything in the
room, in fact, was just as I had left it upon going to bed.
“Then I crossed to my desk and lit the lamp there and found—this!” Mrs.
Peyton offered the sheet of note paper, which she had been nervously
fingering.
Barry unfolded it and read the words scrawled upon its blue surface:

“Again I warn you to leave this house. This is the last—”

“When I interrupted him,” explained Mrs. Peyton, “he apparently had
just written the word, ‘last.’”
Barry nodded and narrowly examined the handwriting. It was old-style
script, angular and shaky, indicative of a very aged and infirm person.
“Have you the notes received by Mr. Peyton and the cook?”
“No; but I saw them. Both were written in the same hand as that,”
indicating the sheet of blue paper.
Barry again looked at the photograph, holding it to the light and
inspecting it closely. Suddenly he asked:
“What sort of clothing did your visitor wear?”
“Why, as I remember, he wore a sort of long gray robe and a queer little
cap—a skullcap, maybe. But it was all very blurred and indistinct. He
seemed to be enveloped in a kind of gray mist. With his white hair and
beard, the effect was quite ‘creepy.’”
“Anything else happen last night?”

“Nothing—except that I passed the rest of the night trying to solve the
riddle. The first thing I did, after finding the note, was to try the door and
windows again—and I again made sure they hadn’t been touched. I knew
positively that nobody could get in the room except through the door or
windows, so how had the old man entered?
“I was still hunting an answer to that question, and growing more
perplexed than ever, when I heard a heavy footfall on the front porch; then
the front door opened and closed with a bang, and my husband came
bounding noisily upstairs. I knew from this he had seen the light at my
window, even before he called to me reprovingly through the bedroom
door: ‘Haven’t you turned in yet? It’s ’way after one o’clock.’
“It was then I decided to say nothing to him about what happened. And I
haven’t.
“But this morning, as soon as he’d left for the office, I called on Mrs.
Parker and told her everything. She suggested that I see you. I hesitated at
first to do this, because only yesterday I spoke to Mr. Peyton about calling
in the police or employing a detective to investigate the mystery, and he
vigorously objected. He really believed the thing was supernatural and
declared that no living person could overcome it. The only thing to do, he
said, was to leave the house as the ‘spirit’ commanded.
“I finally decided, however, to follow Mrs. Parker’s suggestion,
particularly as she recommended you so highly—and so, quite unknown to
my husband, here I am!
“And now, Mr. Barry,” said Mrs. Peyton, sitting back in her chair for the
first time and moving her white hands in a pretty gesture of relief, “what do
you make of it all?”

Barry, examining the feeble handwriting beneath a reading-glass,
discerned what appeared to be a startling solution of the mystery; but,
deeming it best for the moment to say nothing of this, he offered an obvious
answer to her question:

“From what you have told me, Mrs. Peyton, it would seem that an
unknown person, concealed in your house, is bent on frightening you
away.”
“But I’ve thoroughly searched the house,” she protested, “not once, but
several times; and I know positively that nobody is hidden there—and that
nobody has broken in. Besides, even if the old man was in the house, or had
broken in, how did he enter my room last night?”
“Perhaps, after I’ve inspected the room—”
“Can you do it, without Mr. Peyton knowing?”
“Quite easily, I think, with our help. Since you are in need of servants,
my presence can readily be explained—”
“Why, of course!” she eagerly interrupted. “Our new houseman! It will
seem quite plausible, too,” she added, rising and glancing at her watch,
“particularly since I’ve just engaged a new cook—who is waiting for me
now, by the way, in my car. We had best start at once, Mr. Barry. It’s nearly
one, and my husband is usually home before six.”
... A little later, as the Peyton limousine smartly threaded its way through
the downtown streets, Barry, sitting on the front seat beside the chauffeur,
planned a procedure that would either substantiate, or explode, his tentative
explanation of the white-bearded “ghost.”
His first step was taken immediately: At a State Street department store
he secretly bought a pad of cheap writing paper, a package of ungummed
envelopes, ten two-cent stamps, a thick lead pencil, a jar of mucilage and an
oblong carton of sterilized gauze.
Later still, upon reaching the “haunted house,” he saw no cause to revise
his plan, and no reason to doubt that the solution he already had formed,
although amazing, was essentially correct.
With the new cook installed in the kitchen, Mrs. Peyton conducted him to
the second-floor front bedroom—a commodious south chamber—where she
had seen the “ghost” last night. Barry looked at the small mahogany desk,
surveyed the white-enameled twin beds, measured their distance from the
corridor door and carefully examined the lock thereon.

Then, swiftly though systematically, he searched the rest of the house and
afterward strolled outdoors. Sauntering across the velvety lawns, beneath
the aged trees, he casually approached the garage some two hundred feet
from the house. He had found nothing in the house, and now saw nothing in
the surrounding grounds, to suggest the weird things he had heard. Here, to
all appearance, was only an old-fashioned suburban home dozing
peacefully in the mellow sunshine of a midsummer afternoon.
At the garage, which aforetime had been a stable, he engaged in back-
stairs gossip with Frank Dominick, the chauffeur—in the presence of the
gardener, John Hart, an uncommunicative person—and learned that both
were preparing to “give notice.”
“We ain’t actually seen old Clayberg’s ghost—at least not yet,” said
Dominick, “but we’ve heard enough about ’im and I guess he’ll be callin’
on us next. I guess the only reason we ain’t seen ’im before is because we
sleep up there,” pointing to the upper floor of the garage. “Take my advice,
friend, and don’t stay here over night. Am I right, John?”
John Hart, a senile man, shifted his cud of tobacco and expectorated
lavishly, thus contributing a fresh stain to his ragged white beard.
“You’re right,” said he, and spoke no more.
Returning to the house, Barry was given a white jacket and a pair of blue
trousers by Mrs. Peyton; and at six o’clock, wearing these garments and a
servile mien, he was laying the dinner table when the master of the house
arrived. Barry, with a plate and napkin in his hands, observed him through
the doorway—a trim-looking man of thirty-five—and remarked the
harrowing fear that sat upon his countenance.
His haggard eyes, like those of his wife, denoted loss of sleep; and he
evinced no interest in her “luck in finding two perfect servants.” In the
same troubled preoccupation, he acknowledged the introduction of Barry,
who was presented as Thomas Field. Clearly, he was too frightened and
worried to be conscious of his environment.
Dinner over, Barry went to his room. It was a tiny chamber tucked under
the eaves at the rear of the top floor, and it was here that his predecessor had
beheld the “apparition” night before last. Upon the small table, where the

word, “LEAVE” had been spelled with matches, Barry spread the articles
which he had bought this afternoon.
Then he drew the table to the window, and lighted the lamp, and sat
down and began writing letters to mythical persons in Iowa. His door stood
open, and so did the window, and anybody passing in the hall, or standing
north of the house, could have watched him at his employment.
For upward of two hours he sat steadily writing, his back to the door, his
face silhouetted against the window; and when he had written five letters,
and had stamped and directed them to his imaginary correspondents, he
uncorked the mucilage pot and sealed the flaps of the envelops.
And then, somehow, he awkwardly upset the bottle of mucilage, and the
stuff oozed stickily over his pencil and paper.
It was at this moment, or perhaps a little earlier, that he heard a slight
rustle in the hall behind him, as of somebody moving away from his door,
but, apparently intent only upon cleaning the mucilage from the table, he
never looked round or gave any sign that he heard.
Presently he extinguished the light and, disrobing in the darkness, looked
from his window. The old Clayberg stable, now Peyton’s garage, loomed
like a great dusky shadow in the starlit night; and at a small upper window,
almost on a direct line with his, a yellow light glowed.
Feeling through the dark, Barry removed the sterilized gauze from the
carton, snipped off a ten-inch length, and returned the gauze and box to his
pocket. Then he stretched his length on the narrow iron bed, his face to the
window, his door ajar.
Wide awake, he lay staring into the darkness, his mind alert, sharpened
by expectancy.

The moon rose in the southeast, bathing the outdoors in a silvery sheen
and mitigating, somewhat, the darkness of his room. The minutes
lengthened into hours; and as the hours dragged slowly by Barry fought off
the desire to sleep.

The fight became increasingly difficult; and finally—he judged it was
long past midnight—it seemed as though he could no longer force himself
to stay awake. His eyelids drooped. He dozed....
And then, all at once, he was wide awake again, his pulse tingling.
Somebody had entered his room and was standing now at the table, between
the bed and window, so near that Barry could have touched him by reaching
forth his hand.
Barry, however, remained motionless, simulating sleep; and beneath
lowered lids he watched the intruder—a blurred gray figure—take up the
pencil and start writing on the pad of paper. The moon had climbed to the
zenith, and by its pale reflection Barry distinguished the salient marks of his
visitor; the long gray robe, the flowing white hair and beard, the white
skullcap.
Then the figure put down the pencil and vanished—gliding to the hall as
swiftly and noiselessly, it seemed, as a shadow leaving the room.
Still Barry did not move. Silence ensued. Then, from some point down
the hall, came a woman’s piercing scream.
Barry rose, wrapped the lead pencil in the strip of gauze, and enclosed it
in the cardboard box and replaced the box in his pocket.
Then, wearing coat and trousers, he stepped into the hall and lit a gas jet
there—just as the new cook, screaming with terror, emerged from her room.
Hysterical with fright, she frantically flourished a scrap of wrapping paper.
And when she could speak coherently:
“I just seen a spook in my room—an old man wid white whiskers. I
won’t stay in this house! He writ somethin’ here—”
She broke off to examine the bit of paper by the fluttering gas flame; and
when she saw the words written on her paper she uttered another terrified
shriek and, heedless of her scant attire, fled toward the front staircase. She
was met at the head of the stairs by Mr. and Mrs. Peyton—he in pajamas
and bathrobe, she in a peignoir, and both visibly alarmed—and to them she
told, or tried to tell, the reason for her mad flight.
“Now lemme get outa here!” she ended, attempting to brush past them.
“He told me to leave tonight—and I’m goin’!”

Barry, following sleepily in her wake, rubbing his eyes as one newly
awakened from slumber, heard Peyton saying: “This is dreadful, dreadful!”
and Mrs. Peyton entreating the cook to “stay at least till morning.”
Unable to persuade the cook to remain, Mrs. Peyton turned appealingly
to Barry. “Did you see anything in your room, Field?”
“No, mem,” said Barry, hiding a yawn. “I was fast asleep when she woke
me up, mem.”
This, however, exerted no influence on the cook. Like Clara who went
before her, she departed immediately for the railroad station, there to pass
the rest of the night.
Peace at last returned to the house—and Barry returned to his room,
locked the door and observed on his pad the same angular scrawl, “Leave
this house tonight!” which had frightened her away. Then he went to bed
and slept soundly until after sunrise.
He was up and dressed at seven o’clock; and when the Peytons came
downstairs about eight he had an appetizing breakfast awaiting them. As
soon as her husband had left for his office, Mrs. Peyton, returning from the
front door, looked at the detective with anxious inquiry in her large brown
eyes.
“Have you discovered anything at all, Mr. Barry?”
Barry took a crumpled napkin from the breakfast table and folded it
thoughtfully between his long fingers. He was thinking: “Yes, Mrs. Peyton;
I’ve discovered the identity of your ‘ghost,’ and you alone have the power
to ‘kill’ it.” Aloud, however:
“I’ll make a report today,” he promised, and left the room with a stack of
dishes and the folded napkin.
He deposited the dishes in the kitchen sink. The napkin went into his hip
pocket. Then he started upstairs for his other clothes. At her bedroom door
he paused, listening. The door stood open. Mrs. Peyton, downstairs, was
sitting at the breakfast table, absently crumbling a bit of toast in her fingers,
a faraway look in her eyes. Barry, at her bedroom door, was remarking the
small mahogany desk, where, two nights ago, the “ghost” had written his
warning to her.

In three swift strides he crossed to the desk, searched hurriedly among
the papers there and neatly pocketed one of these. Then he continued to his
room. Mrs. Peyton still sat at the breakfast table in a pensive reverie, her
wistful brown gaze lost in the morning sunshine beyond the leaded
casements.

An hour later Barry alighted from a train in Chicago and forthwith called
on a colleague, whose skill in analyzing handwriting and identifying finger
prints had earned him the title of “expert.” He spent considerable time with
this man; and then he went to his office and wrote his report for Mrs.
Peyton.
And when the report was finished he sat gazing at it musingly—
somewhat as Mrs. Peyton had gazed from her breakfast-room window this
morning.
With an energetic shrug, as if to shake off his odd mood, he sealed the
report in an envelope, and put it in his pocket and started for an office
building in lower Michigan Avenue.
Presently he entered a room in this building, luxuriously furnished and
unoccupied, and abruptly halted. In the adjoining room he could hear the
voices of Scott Peyton and his wife; and since the door between the two
offices stood partly open, he could also see their faces. Himself unobserved,
Barry stood silently watching and listening.
“I suppose you’re right, Scott,” she said, standing beside her husband’s
desk and looking down at him. “After what happened last night, I’m just
about ready to do as you say—give the house up and move back to town.
But I do so hate to leave that old place. I wish—”
“Why should you?” he interrupted, scowling at his desk and avoiding her
eyes.
Mrs. Peyton looked down, biting a corner of her lip and twisting the
wedding ring of her finger.

“It’s not so much what I want,” she faltered, her voice tremulously low,
“but—the city is no place—not the best place for our—Oh, Scott!” she cried
passionately, and flung out her hands to him in appeal. “Can’t you see?”
Scott Peyton looked up and met his wife’s eyes; and the thing he saw in
their liquid brown depths instantly chased the frown from his face and took
him to his feet in a swift rush of remorse and gladness.
In the next instant she was sobbing in his arms; and he was tenderly
patting her shoulders and saying soothingly:
“It’s all right, honey. We won’t give the place up. I don’t think—the ghost
—will bother us again....”
At this juncture Barry quietly departed.

A little later he again sat at his desk, gazing again at the report he had
written. And he now knew that this report would never be seen by any eye
save his.
But while he is sitting here suppose we look over his shoulder and glance
at the thing before he tears it up:

“In Re Peyton ‘ghost’: ... Using a King Lear costume, which he
put on and off with lightning agility, the ‘ghost’ hoped, by his
nocturnal prowling, to frighten Mrs. Peyton into abandoning the
house as her husband desired.... Following his nightly appearances,
he quickly removed and concealed his costume, and returned to his
bed, careful to make no sound. He varied this procedure, however,
night before last, when he visited Mrs. Peyton’s room. Had she left
her key in the lock that night, instead of hiding it under her pillow,
he would have been unable to call upon her. As it was, he readily
unlocked the door and entered. Leaving silently, he hid his costume,
then left the house and returned, making considerable noise.... The
finger prints he left in glue last night and those he left on his napkin
this morning, as well as his real and disguised handwriting

positively identify the ‘ghost’ as Mrs. Peyton’s husband, Scott
Peyton.”

Have You Been Reading About King Tut? If so, You’ll
be Interested in

OSIRIS

The Weird Tale of an Egyptian Mummy
By ADAM HULL SHIRK

“Mandrake”
By
ADAM HULL SHIRK
Will appear in the July WEIRD TALES
It’s a Strange Yarn of Superstitious Fear

Don’t Miss It!

The recent and lamentable death of Sir Richard Parmenter, F. R. G. S., is
too fresh in the public’s mind to warrant further reference, and were it not
that I feel myself capable of throwing light upon the incidents contributing
to the sudden and apparently unnecessary snuffing out of a valuable life, I
should refrain from again alluding to it.
It is well known that the physicians at the time decided that valvular
weakness of the heart must have been responsible for the death of the noted
Egyptologist, but the statement of his own doctor that Sir Richard had never
theretofore exhibited indications of such weakness, and that he was, to all
appearances, in the best of health just prior to his death, caused
considerable wonder.

I had thought to let the facts remain buried, but, for certain reasons, I
shall reconsider my determination and tell what I know.
I shall always remember the night on which Sir Richard summoned me,
as his counselor, to attend him at his apartments in the Albermarle. It was a
night of storm, and the London streets were a mass of slime and slush. A
beastly wind had sprung up, and as I left my chambers at the Temple it
almost took me off my feet. Therefore, it was with no little satisfaction that
I found a cheery log fire awaiting me in the library of my distinguished
client’s home, and the nip of brandy he provided was a life saver.
I noted, however, that for all his assumption of cheerfulness, something
was preying upon his mind, and I determined to get at the root of the matter
without delay:
“How can I serve you, Sir Richard?” I asked, briskly. “I see there is
something troubling you.”
“Is it as apparent as that?” he asked, trying to appear unconcerned: but
his strong, homely features belied his effort at calmness.
Before I could reply, he went on:
“But never mind that: I want you to write my will—now.”
“Your will?” My expression of surprise and incredulity was natural, for
since I had been retained by him I had marked it as one of his few
idiosyncrasies that he had never made his will. When I had mentioned to
him the advisability of doing so, he had put it by with a whimsical remark
about being superstitious.
“I am in earnest,” he declared, “and it will be very simple—just a brief
form, and I’ll sign it with my man as witness.”
“But why the haste?” I said. “Why not wait till I can have the document
properly drawn up at my office tomorrow—”
“No; now!” he said, and there was such finality in his tone I had no
choice.
My concern for my client, whom I really liked and respected immensely,
prompted me to ask:
“You’re not ill, Sir Richard?”

He shook his head, with the ghost of a smile on his rugged face.
“Physically—no. But—”
He paused, and after a moment he again urged me to proceed with the
making of the will.
I drew up the document, which was a simple one, leaving the bulk of his
large properties to his sister in Surrey, with numerous small bequests to
friends and distant relatives, and a handsome sum and his private collection
to the British Museum and the Imperial Museum of Egyptology. We had in
his man, and the document was duly signed, after which he drew a long
breath of relief and, with a return of something like his natural manner,
passed me his cigar-case and leaned back in his chair, smoking comfortably.
“I’ve a story to tell you, Madden,” he said between puffs, “and it’s a
queer yarn, too. You’ll think—but never mind. Listen first, and say what
you like afterward. Only—” he glanced about him with an apprehensive
expression that fairly set my nerves atingle. “I hope we have time.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
He relaxed again and smiled:
“It’s all right,” he declared. “I’m a bit nervous, I guess, but it’s all right.
Have another brandy.”
We drank solemnly together. Then he settled back once more and I
prepared to listen.
“Madden,” said he, “perhaps you’ll smile at what has seemed to me
serious enough to warrant the steps I have just taken—making my will, I
mean—but, however you look at it, I want you to know it’s true—every
word of it.
“My last trip to Egypt—from which I just returned a fortnight ago—was
to have been my final one, anyway. I’ve made six trips out there in my life,
and I’ve collected enough information to fill a dozen volumes. Also, I’ve
contributed many fine specimens to the museum and corrected many
misapprehensions concerning the interpretation of some of the hieroglyphs.
So, all in all, I think I’ve done pretty well.

“This last visit was in many respects the most satisfactory, and indeed it
witnessed a triumph in my career as an Egyptologist that would be a
crowning achievement, were it not for—but we won’t speak of that—yet.
“I wonder, Madden, if you know anything about the ancient Egyptian
religious ceremonies and forms of worship? Anyway, I may tell you that the
Nile dwellers, as they were called, recognized as their supreme deity, Osiris,
lord of the underworld. By some he has been identified with the Sun and,
with the forty assessors of the dead, he was supposed to have judged the
souls brought before him by Horus in the double halls of truth, after their
good and evil deeds had been weighed by Anubis.
“The Egyptians reverenced Osiris with as devout worship as the Chinese
give to Buddha, and the high priests of Osiris were regarded with almost as
much awe as the deity himself.
“In all our studies and investigations, however, we have never been able
actually to identify Osiris, but it is now generally conceded that he was
believed to have lived on earth at one time and that it was only after his
death that he assumed deific prerogatives. In this respect the modern
Christian theology may be said to resemble the more ancient form to some
extent.
“Osiris was pictured on many of the tablets as a creature with the head of
a bull, though there is some disagreement on this score. In any event, his
tomb was said to exist near Heliopolis, and it was to investigate this
tradition that I made my last trip to Egypt.”
Sir Richard paused to relight his cigar and listened to the storm which
raged without. Again he gave that hasty, apprehensive glance about him,
then proceeded:
“It would be impossible for me to explain to you, a layman, my
inordinate joy at finding—by what means and after what tedious labor, I
won’t stop to tell now—a deserted tomb which I knew, from certain
hieroglyphic markings I found, was the very one of which I had been in
search for the best part of half a year.
“Understand that this whole tradition of the tomb of Osiris was regarded
by my fellow scientists as a myth, and if it had been publicly known that I
was giving it sufficient credence to spend a lot of time and money searching

for it I should have been looked upon as a madman and laughed out of the
societies. This may enable you to appreciate more fully my sensations on
actually locating at least the tomb. What I should find within, I hardly dared
conjecture!
“The tomb of a God! Can you imagine it, Madden?
“And yet, if I had only stopped there! If only I had been content to pause
with the knowledge I already possessed, without proceeding further and
desecrating with sacrilegious hands that lonely sarcophagus in the desert!
“How I succeeded in penetrating this tomb, of the horrors of bats and
crawling things that failed to stop me—of the almost supernatural awe that
came upon me—I can not pause to tell. It is enough to say that I stood at
last beside the tremendous coffin of stone, trembling from an unknown
dread. And, as I stood there, something white fluttered by me and up
through the opening into the outer air. A sacred Ibis—but how it had
penetrated there and how it had lived, I can not say.
“Pour out another brandy, Madden—and throw that other log on the fire,
too, if you don’t mind. My, how the wind blows! Did you speak?... Pardon
me—I’m nervous tonight as I said before, very nervous.... Where was I?
Oh, yes—
“That great sarcophagus stood before me, and on it I saw inscribed the
sacred scarabæus and the feather of truth, while in the center was the word
—the one, wonderful name—‘Heseri’—which is the Egyptian for Osiris!
“Insatiable curiosity now took the place of the reverential awe that should
have possessed me, and with vandal hands I forced the stone lid from the
casket. One glance I had of a great, bovine face, a living face, whose eyes
looked into the depths of my soul—and then I fled as though all the devils
of Amenti were at my heels....
“That is all Madden, except that I am nervous—fearfully so. It is so
unlike me. You know how small a part fear has played in my life. I have
faced the dreaded simoon; I have been lost among savage tribes, I have
confronted death in a hundred forms—but never have I felt as I do now. I
tremble at a sound; my ears trick me into believing that I am always hearing
some unusual noise; my appetite is failing, and I am feeling my age as I

have never felt it until.... Good God! Madden! What was that sound?... Oh!
look behind you, Madden! Look!...”

And now I come to that portion of my statement that will probably be
refused credence by those who read; but, as I live, it is the truth.
As Sir Richard uttered his last words, he felt forward to his full length
upon the hearth rug, even as I turned in obedience to his command. The
shadows were heavy in the far corner of the spacious room, but I could see
a great, bulky something that swayed there, something that was a part, and
yet, seemingly, was independent, of the shadows.
I had a vision of two burning eyes and a black shining muzzle—a heavy,
misshapen head. A strange, animal-like, fetid odor was in my nostrils.
I shrieked, and, turning, ran madly from the room, stumbled to the stairs
and fled into the wind-swept night.

Failure to Keep Tab on Quitting Time Kills Two
Troy Hocker and Hugh Simpson, linemen for the Oklahoma Gas and
Electric Company, were repairing wires on top of a pole in Oklahoma one
afternoon recently. As they worked, they engaged in banter. It was nearly
five o’clock—their quitting time—but neither looked at his watch. The
engineer down at the power house saw it was ten minutes past five, time to
turn on the city’s arc lights. He pulled down the switch and sent 2,300 volts
out to light the city. The men up on the pole ceased their banter. Their
bodies became stiff. Those on the ground laughed. This must be some new
prank of the boys. Then someone noticed smoke issuing from Hocker’s
shoes. Back at the power plant the amperage was fluctuating back and forth,
and the engineer knew something was amiss. He threw off the current—but
the men were already dead.

A New Story by Julian Kilman, Master of Weird
Fiction

THE WELL
Jeremiah Hubbard toiled with a team of horses in a piece of ground some
distance down the road from his dwelling. When it neared five o’clock in
the autumn afternoon, he unwound the lines from his waist, unhooked the
traces and started home with his horses.
He was a heavy man, a bit under middle age, with a dish-shaped face and
narrow-set eyes. He walked with vigor. One of the horses lagged a trifle,
and he struck it savagely with a short whip.
They came presently to the Eldridge dwelling, abandoned and tumbled
down, on the opposite side of the road. The farm was being worked on
shares by a man named Simpson, who lived five miles away and drove a
“tin Lizzie.” An ancient oak tree, the tremendous circumference of its trunk
marred by signs of decay, reared splendid gnarled branches skyward.
These branches shaded a disused well—a well that had been the first one
in Nicholas County, having been dug in the early fifties by the pioneering
Eldridge family. It went forty feet straight down into the residual soil
characteristic of the locale, but, owing to improved drainage, it had become
dry. Nothing remained of the old pump-house, save the crumbling circle of
stonework around the mouth, to give evidence of its one-time majesty.
A child of eight ran from the rear of the premises. Hubbard frowned and
stopped his team.
“You better keep away from there,” he growled, “or you’ll fall into the
well.”
The girl glanced at him impishly.
“You an’ Missus Hubbard don’t speak to each other, do you?”

Hubbard’s face went black. His whip sprang out and caught the girl about
the legs. She yelped and ran.
An eighth of a mile farther along the road Hubbard turned in and drove
his team to a big barn. He fed his stock. It was after six when he entered the
house. This was a structure that, by comparison with the gigantic barn in the
rear, seemed pigmy-like.
A sallow, flat-chested woman, with a wisp of hair twisted into a knot,
took from Hubbard the two pails of milk he carried. She set them in the
kitchen. The two exchanged no words.
Hubbard strode to the washstand, his boots thumping the floor, and
performed his ablutions. He rumpled his hair and beard, using much soap
and water and blowing stertorously. In the dining-room a girl of twelve sat
with a book. As her father came in she glanced at him timorously.
He gave no heed to her as he slumped down into a chair standing before a
desk. The desk was littered with papers, among which were typewritten
sheets of the sort referred to as “pleadings”; there was a title-search much
bethumbed and black along the edges, where the “set-outs” had been
scanned with obvious care.
The man adjusted a pair of antiquated spectacles to his dish-face. To do
this he was compelled to pull the ends of the bows tight back over the ears
as his nose afforded practically no bridge to support the glasses.
Presently he spoke to the girl:
“Tell your mother to bring on the supper.”
The girl hastened out, and shortly thereafter the mother appeared carrying
dishes. Food was disposed about the table in silence. The farmer ate gustily
and in ten minutes finished his meal. Then he addressed his daughter,
keeping his eyes averted from his wife. “Tell your mother,” he said, “that
I’ll want breakfast at five o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Where you goin’, Pa?” asked the girl.
“I’m goin’ to drive to the county seat to see Lawyer Simmons.”
Hubbard’s gaze followed the girl as she helped clear the table.
“Look-a here,” he said. “You been a-talkin’ to that Harper child?”

“No,” returned the daughter, with a trace of spirit. “But I jest saw her
father over by the fence.”
“What was he a-doin’ there?”
“I didn’t stay. I was afeard he’d catch me watchin’ him.”
Hubbard glowered and reached for his hat.
“I’ll find out,” he snarled.
Walking rapidly, he crossed a field of wheat stubble, keeping his eyes
fixed sharply ahead. It was dusk, but presently, at the northern extremity of
his premises, he made out the figure of a man.
“Hey, Harper!” he shouted. “You let that fence be.”
He ran forward swiftly.
The men were now separated by two wire-strand fences that paralleled
each other only three feet apart. These fences, matching one another for a
distance of about two hundred yards—each farmer claiming title to the
fence on the side farthest from his own—represented the basis of the
litigation over the boundary claim that had gone on between them for four
years.
The odd spectacle of the twin fences had come to be one of the show
places in the county. It had been photographed and shown in agricultural
journals.
“I don’t trust ye, Harper,” announced Hubbard, breathing hard. “You got
the inside track with Jedge Bissell, an’ the two of you are a-schemin’ to beat
me.”
A laugh broke from the other.
“I’ll beat you, all right,” he said coolly. “But it won’t be because Judge
Bissell is unfair.”
His manner enraged Hubbard, who rushed swiftly at the first fence and
threw himself over. With equal celerity, he clambered over the second
fence.
Startled at the sudden outburst of temper, Harper had drawn back. He
held aloft a spade. Hubbard leaped at him. The spade descended.

Harper was slightly-built, however, and the force of the blow did not halt
the infuriated man, now swinging at him with all his might. They clinched.
Hubbard’s fingers caught at the throat of the smaller man, and the two
stumbled to the ground, Hubbard atop. The fall broke his grip. With his
huge fists he began to hammer the body. He continued until it was limp.
Then, his rage suddenly appeased, he drew back and stared at the inert
figure lying strangely quiet.
“So!” he gasped.
There came the sound of someone singing, the voice floating distinctly
through the night air. Hubbard recognized it for that of an itinerant Free
Methodist minister, whose church in Ovid he and his family occasionally
attended.
The song rolling forth, as the Man of God drove along the highway in his
rig, was Jesus, Lover of My Soul.

For the moment Hubbard shielded his face with an arm as if to ward off
an invisible thing.
Then, bending over the prostrate form, he ran his hand inside the clothing
to test the action of the heart. He performed the act mechanically, because
he knew he had killed his man.
He discovered the handbag. Evidently Harper was on his way to Ovid to
catch the train to the county seat for the trial on the morrow. This meant that
he would not be missed by his wife for at least twenty-four hours.
The murderer studied his next move. Where to secrete the body? A piece
of wood lay back of him, but he was aware that it was constantly combed
by squirrel hunters. He thought of the railroad. Why not an accident? Killed
by the very train he was bound for?
He started to lug the body toward the track which passed half a mile to
the north. Realizing, however, that for the time at hand the distance was too
great, he let the body slide to the ground. Next he stole along the twin
fences to the highway and peered both ways. No one seemed abroad.

He came back on the dead run, and in twenty minutes he had carried the
body to the Eldridge premises and flung it down the ancient well.
When he returned he found his wife and daughter together in the parlor,
where with the itinerant preacher, all three were kneeling on the floor in
prayer. Hubbard unceremoniously nudged the clergymen.
“That’ll do,” he said.
The minister rose, his tall, lanky figure towering over Hubbard.
“Brother,” he began, in an orotund voice, “come with the Lord—”
“Yes. I know,” returned Hubbard, with a patience that surprised his wife.
“But I’ve got something to talk over with my family.” He paused. “Here,”
he added, feeling in his pocket and producing a small coin, “take this and
go along.”
When the preacher had left, Hubbard called to his daughter.
“Harper was gone when I got over to the fence.”
“What kept you so long?”
“I walked over to the woods. There’s a nest of coons. They’re a-goin’ to
play havoc with the corn.” He smiled unnaturally. “Look-a here! If we can
catch ’em, I’ll give you the money their pelts bring.”
Hubbard divined that his acting was poor. Both the girl and his wife were
frankly regarding him.
“Well!” he shouted. “What’s the matter with ye?”
“Oh, nuthin’, Pa, nuthin’,” whimpered the girl.
“Then go to bed, the two of ye.”
Next morning Hubbard started for the county seat, a ten mile drive. He
returned that evening and complained that the case had been adjourned
because Harper had failed to appear in court.
The following day he went back to his field far down the road for more
ploughing. Twice he was called to the roadside by passersby to discuss the
disappearance of Harper.

One morning a week later, when he came along the road with his team,
he discovered the Harper child on the Eldridge premises. She was sitting at
the edge of the well.
With a suppressed oath, he dropped the lines and half-walked, half-ran, to
where the little girl sat.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from there!” he exploded.
The girl stared at him, but made no move, though her lips quivered.
Hubbard glanced back to observe the road. Then he caught her arm.
“Go home!” he shouted.
He spun her roughly. She continued to stare at him as she retreated
homeward.
All that morning Hubbard worked his horses hard. He realized that he
was eager to go back by the Eldridge dwelling. Promptly at twelve o’clock,
therefore, he tied his team and started up the road. A flash of relief came to
him when he did not observe the little girl. It left him cold, however.
“Eatin’ dinner,” he mumbled.
He moved off, without looking into the well. Until four o’clock that
afternoon he labored. On his way home he discovered the girl again seated
by the well. She was bending over and acting queerly.
Hurrying his horses to the roadside, he looped the lines over one of the
posts in the old “snake” fence. As he approached, he saw her toss a piece of
stone down the hole.
Hubbard waited until he was sure of his voice.
“Come with me,” he said.
Gripping the girl he started with her toward her home but a short distance
away. When they arrived the front door was ajar. A woman, with eyes red
from weeping, looked at Hubbard in silence.
“Here!” he said gruffly. “This child ought to be kept to home. She’ll fall
into the well.”
Mrs. Harper merely reached out her arms for her daughter. Hubbard
remained standing awkwardly.

“Have you heard anything of Harper yet?” he asked.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” replied the woman.
Hubbard turned on his heel. Waiting for him by his horses, was the
deputy sheriff. The two further discussed the disappearance.
“If you yourself wasn’t so well known, Jeremiah,” finally declared the
official, “they’d sure be thinkin’ you was in it some way.”
“Why?” grunted the farmer, as he untied the lines.
“Well, everybody knows you an’ Harper been lawin’ it for years over that
boundary line.”
Hubbard achieved a laugh.
“I’ll tell ye where Harper is. He’s cleared out, that’s what I think—
deserted his family.”
That night, and many following nights, Hubbard did not sleep. Some
weeks later a tremendous electric storm broke in the night. One particularly
heavy clap so startled the wakeful Hubbard that he leaped from his bed and
dressed. In the pouring rain he started out.
Inevitably his steps took him toward the well. It was black, and he could
not see at first. But another flash came, and he observed a strange thing:
The huge oak, standing at the side of the well, had been split in two by
lightning, and one portion of the tree had fallen over the mouth of the hole.

Next morning Simpson, the man with the “tin Lizzie,” stopped at
Hubbard’s place. He was a blunt-spoken, red-faced man whom Hubbard
hated.
“That was a bad storm last night,” he said. “The lightning struck the big
oak tree by the well.”
“What of it?” snapped Hubbard.
“There was a skeleton in the center of that tree,” explained Simpson. “I
was talking this morning with the sheriff over the telephone. He said

seventy-five years ago a man was murdered in Ovid, and they never found
his body. This skeleton must be his.”
Hubbard cleared his throat sharply.
“What did you do with it?”
“The skull and one of the leg bones fell down into the well when I tried
to gather them up. I want to borrow some rope so I can get down in there.”
For a bare second Hubbard was silent.
“What you ought to do,” he said, gathering himself, “is to fill up that
hole. It’s dangerous.”
“Yes. That’s so. But I’m goin’ to get that skull first. It’ll be a good
exhibit. I’m wonderin’ whether we’ll ever find Harper’s skeleton.”
“Wait a moment,” said Hubbard huskily, starting for the barn. “I’ll get
some rope and help you.”
The two returned to the Eldridge farm. They found there the dead man’s
child. She had perched herself on the fallen tree.
“Damn fool!” muttered Hubbard. “Her mother lettin’ her play around
here!”
A pulley was rigged over the branch and the rope inserted with a board
for a rest.
“I’ll go down,” vouchsafed Hubbard.
Simpson looked his surprise as he assented.
It took Hubbard five minutes or so to retrieve the missing skeleton parts.
He brought them up, the leg bone and the grinning skull. He was pale when
he hauled himself over the edge.
“I’m a-goin’ to fill up that hole myself,” he said.
“All right,” retorted Simpson, handling the skull curiously. “Go to it.”
Word traveled of the finding of the ancient skeleton, and the inhabitants
began driving thither to see the sight. Simpson, a man of some ingenuity,
had wired the bleached white bones together and suspended them from one

of the branches of the fallen tree. The skeleton dangled and swung in the
wind.
Hubbard, maddened by the delay and publicity, felt himself wearing
away. He had become obsessed with conviction that if the hole were filled
his mind would be at rest.
The nights of continued sleeplessness were ragging his nerves, and he
was by this time unable to remain in bed. He would throw himself down,
fully dressed, waiting until the others were asleep. Then he would steal out.
At first he had merely walked the roads, swinging his arms and
mumbling. But as the night progressed his stride would quicken, and
frequently he would take to running. He would run until his lungs were
bursting and a slaver fed from his mouth. Late travelers began to catch
glimpses of the fleeting figure, and the rumor grew that a ghost was
haunting the locality of the well—that the skeleton walked.
Hubbard grew haggard. But he found himself unable to discontinue his
nocturnal prowls, some of which took him miles, but all of which invariably
wound up at one place—the well.
Here, fagged and exhausted, he would sit until the approach of dawn,
staring at the swinging skeleton, mouthing incoherencies, praying, singing
hymns beneath his breath, laughing. At the approach of dawn he would
steal home.
At last, after interest in the skeleton had subsided and Simpson had
consented to its removal, Hubbard loaded his wagon with stones and small
boulders and started for the well. That first forenoon he made three trips,
dumping each time a considerable quantity of stones.
Next morning he worked in an additional trip. He began to experience
surcease. But on the afternoon of the second day, when he made another
trip, Simpson came over from his work in an adjoining field.
“I wanted to see you yesterday,” he said, quizzically regarding Hubbard.
“Mrs. Harper was here. She said her little girl was playin’ around here and
dropped a pair of andirons down the well.”
“What of it?” Hubbard jerked out.
“You got to get ’em out.”

“Why?”
“Because them andirons is relics.”
“But you gave me permission to fill the hole.”
“I was kiddin’ you,” laughed Simpson. “I’m only rentin’ the farm. I ain’t
got nothin’ to do with the house and yard.”
Without a word Hubbard turned to his wagon. He got onto the seat and
drove off. In an hour he came back with the same rope that had been used to
recover the missing portions of the skeleton. Also, he brought with him a
farm laborer who did occasional work for him.
Simpson regarded Hubbard amusedly as the latter adjusted once more the
pulley, arranged a bucket and then hitched his team to the end of the rope.
Patiently, bucketful by bucketful, the stones were elevated and dumped.
Down below in the black interior, Hubbard labored for an hour. At six
o’clock he had not found the andirons. Twice he had been compelled to
come up for fresh air.
His last trip up left him so white-faced and weak that he was forced to go
home.
That night he resorted to sleeping powders. But he lay and tossed, wide-
eyed, through the dark hours. Sometime after midnight he got up. A light
was still burning in his wife’s room, and, tiptoeing down the hall, he paused
at her door. In low voices the mother and daughter were conversing. To his
heated imagination it seemed certain they were talking of Harper’s
disappearance.
Mumbling to himself he left the house. He ran down the lane to the
highway and along this until he came to the Eldridge place. He determined
not to stop, and succeeded in running by, like a frightened animal.
His gait accelerated. It was one best described as scurrying, as he ran
crouched and low. He thought he saw some one approaching. This turned
him. Back he fled with the speed of the wind.
Drawn by an irresistible force, he made straight for the Eldridge pathway.
He came to the well, the entrance of which gaped at him. For a moment he
stood, with eyes wide open, staring into the black depths.

Then, screaming, he plunged in head-first.
His cry, long-drawn and eerie, hung quivering on the night air.
In the Hubbard home, a quarter of a mile away, the mother and daughter
heard it. The two listened with palpitating hearts. They caught one another’s
hands.
In a hoarse whisper the mother exclaimed:
“What’s that?”

Otis Adelbert Kline, Author of “The Thing of a
Thousand Shapes,” Spins Another “Spooky” Yarn for
the Readers of WEIRD TALES

The Phantom Wolfhound
Doctor Dorp reluctantly laid aside the manuscript on which he had been
working, capped and pocketed his fountain pen, and rose to meet his callers.
He was visibly annoyed by this, the third interruption of the afternoon,
but his look of irritation changed to a welcoming smile when he saw the
bulky form that was framed in the doorway. He recognized Harry Hoyne of
the Hoyne Detective Agency, a heavy-set, florid-faced man whose iron gray
hair and moustache proclaimed him well past middle age.

The slender, stoop-shouldered individual who accompanied him was a
total stranger. He had pale, hawklike features, small snaky eyes that
glittered oddly from cavernous sockets, and long, bony fingers that
suggested the claws of a bird.
“Hello, Doc,” boomed the detective genially, crushing the hand of his
host in his great, muscular paw. “Meet Mr. Ritsky.”
The doctor was conscious of a cold, clammy sensation as he took the
hand of the stranger and acknowledged the introduction. Was it the contrast
between those chill fingers and the strong warm ones of the detective that
had caused this feeling? He did not know; but somehow, instinctively, he
disliked Mr. Ritsky.

“I’ve got a queer case for you, Doc,” said Hoyne, taking a proffered cigar
and inserting it far back in his cheek, unlighted. “Just your specialty—
ghosts and all that. I told Mr. Ritsky you’d be the only man to unravel the
mystery for him. Was over to his house last night and the thing got me—too
unsubstantial—too damned elusively unreal. And yet I’ll swear there was
something there. I heard it; but it got away and didn’t leave a trace. When it
comes to finger prints and things like that you know I ain’t exactly a dumb-
bell, but I gotta admit this thing, whatever it is, had me hopelessly horn-
swoggled.”
Ritsky declined a cigar, saying he didn’t dare smoke because of heart
trouble. The doctor selected one with care, lighted it slowly, puffed it with a
relish, and settled back with a look of eager anticipation in his eyes.
“What happened last night?” he asked.
“Maybe we better begin at the beginning,” said Hoyne. “You see, there’s
quite a story goes along with this case, and Mr. Ritsky can tell it better than
I. Don’t be afraid to give him all the dope, Mr. Ritsky. The doctor knows all
about such things—wrote a book about ’em, in fact. Let’s see. What was the
name of that book, Doc?”
“‘Investigations of Materialization Phenomena.’”
“Righto! I never can remember it. Anyhow, Mr. Ritsky, tell him your
story and ask him all the questions you want to. He’s headquarters on this
stuff.”
Ritsky studied his clawlike hands for a moment, clasping and unclasping
the bony fingers. Suddenly he looked up.
“Do animals have immortal souls?” he asked, anxiously.
“I’m afraid you have sadly overrated my ability as a recorder of scientific
facts,” replied the doctor, smiling slightly. “Frankly, I do not know. I don’t
believe anyone knows. Most people think they haven’t, and I incline toward
that belief.”
“Then such a thing as a ghost of a—a hound could not be?”
“I would not say that. Nothing is impossible. There are undoubtedly more
things in heaven and earth, as Shakespeare said, than we have dreamed of in
our philosophy. However, I would consider a materialization of the

disembodied spirit of a canine, or any of the other lower animals, as highly
improbable.”
“But if you saw one with your own eyes—”
“I should probably be inclined to doubt the evidence of my senses. Have
you seen one?”
“Have I seen one?” groaned Ritsky. “Good Lord, man, I’d give every
cent I own to be rid of that thing! For two years it’s turned my nights into
hell! From a perfectly healthy, normal human being I’ve been reduced to a
physical wreck. Sometimes I think my reason is slipping. The thing will
either kill me or drive me mad if it is not stopped.”
He buried his face in his hands.
“This is most strange,” said the doctor. “You say the apparition first
troubled you two years ago?”
“Not in its present form. But it was there, nevertheless. The first time I
saw it was shortly after I killed that cursed dog. A month, to be exact. I shot
him on the twenty-first of August, and he, or it, or something, came back to
haunt me on the twenty-first of September.
“How vividly I remember the impressions of that first night of terror!
How I tried, the next day, to make myself believe it was only a dream—that
such a thing could not be. I had retired at eleven o’clock, and was awakened
from a sound sleep some time between one and two in the morning by the
whining, yapping cry of a dog. As there were no dogs on the premises, you
can imagine my surprise.
“I was about to get up when something directly over the foot of my bed
riveted my attention. In the dim light it appeared a grayish white in color,
and closely resembled the head and pendant ears of a hound. I noticed, with
horror, that it was moving slowly toward me, and I was temporarily
paralyzed with fright when it emitted a low, cavernous growl.
“Driving my muscles by a supreme effort of will, I leaped from the bed
and switched on the light. In the air where I had seen the thing hanging
there was nothing. The door was bolted and the windows were screened.
There was nothing unusual in the room, as I found after a thorough search.
Mystified, I hunted through the entire house from top to bottom, but

without finding a trace of the thing, whatever if was, that had made the
sounds.
“From that day to this I have never laid my head on a pillow with a
feeling of security. At first it visited me at intervals of about a week. These
intervals were gradually shortened until it came every night. As its visits
became more frequent the apparition seemed to grow. First it sprouted a
small body like that of a terrier, all out of proportion to the huge head. Each
night that body grew a little larger until it assumed the full proportions of a
Russian wolfhound. Recently it has attempted to attack me, but I have
always frustrated it by switching on the light.”
“Are you positive that you have not been dreaming all this?” asked the
doctor.
“Would it be possible for some one else to hear a dream of mine?”
countered Ritsky. “We have only been able to retain one servant on account
of those noises. All, with the exception of our housekeeper, who is quite
deaf, heard the noises and left us as a result.”
“Who are the members of your household?”
“Other than the housekeeper and myself, there is only my niece and
ward, a girl of twelve.”
“Has she heard the noises?”
“She has never mentioned them.”
“Why not move to another apartment?”
“That would do no good. We have moved five times in the last two years.
When the thing first started we were living on the estate of my niece near
Lake Forest. We left the place in charge of care-takers and moved to
Evanston. The apparition followed us. We moved to Englewood. The thing
moved with us. We have had three different apartments in Chicago since. It
came to all of them with equal regularity.”
“Would you mind writing for me the various addresses at which you have
lived?”
“Not at all, if they will assist in solving this mystery.”

The doctor procured a pencil and a sheet of note paper, and Ritsky put
down the addresses.
Doctor Dorp scanned them carefully.
“Villa Rogers,” he said. “Then your niece is Olga Rogers, daughter of
millionaire James Rogers and his beautiful wife, the former Russian dancer,
both of whom were lost with the Titanic?”
“Olga’s mother was my sister. After the sudden death of her parents, the
court appointed me her guardian and trustee of the estate.”
“I believe that is all the information we need for the present, Mr. Ritsky.
If you have no objection I will call on you after dinner this evening, and if
Mr. Hoyne cares to accompany me we will see what we can do toward
solving this mystery. Please take care that no one in your home is apprised
of the object of our visit. Say, if you wish, that we are going to install some
electrical equipment.”
“I’ll be there with bells,” said Hoyne as they rose to go.

II.

Shortly after his guests’ departure, Doctor Dorp was speeding out
Sheridan Road toward Villa Rogers.
The drive took nearly an hour, and he spent another half-hour in
questioning the care-takers, man and wife. He returned home with a well-
filled notebook, and on his arrival he began immediately assembling
paraphernalia for the evening’s work. This consisted of three cameras with
specially constructed shutters, several small electrical mechanisms, a coil of
insulated wire, a flash-gun, and a kit of tools.
After dinner he picked up Hoyne at his home, and they started for the
“haunted house.”
“You say you investigated this case last night, Hoyne?” asked the doctor.
“I tried to, but there was nothing to it, so far as I could see, except the
whining of that dog.”
“Where were you when you heard the noises?”

“Ritsky had retired. I slept in a chair in his room. About two o’clock I
was awakened by a whining noise, not loud, yet distinctly audible. Then I
heard a yell from Ritsky. He switched on the light a moment later, then sat
down on the bed, trembling from head to foot, while beads of perspiration
stood out on his forehead.
“‘Did you see it?’ he asked me.
“‘See what?’ I said.
“‘The hound.’
“I told him I hadn’t seen a thing, but I heard the noise all right. Between
you and me, though, I did think I saw a white flash for a second beside his
bed, but I can’t swear to it.”
“We won’t trust our eyes tonight,” said the doctor. “I have three eyes in
that case that will not be affected by hysteria or register hallucinations.”
“Three eyes? What are you talking about?”
“Cameras, of course.”
“But how—”
“Wait until we get there. I’ll show you.”
A few moments later they were admitted to the apartment by the
housekeeper, a stolid woman of sixty or thereabout. Ritsky presented them
to his niece, a dreamy-eyed, delicately pretty school girl with silky golden
curls that glistened against the pale whiteness of her skin.
“If you don’t mind,” said the doctor, “we will look things over now. It
will take some time to install the wiring and make other necessary
preparations.”
Ritsky showed them through the apartment, which was roomy, furnished
in good taste and artistically decorated. The floor plan was quite simple and
ordinary. First came the large living-room that extended across the front of
the house. This opened at the right into the dining-room and at the center
into a hallway which led through to the back of the building. Behind the
dining-room was the kitchen, and behind that the servant’s room. Ritsky’s
bedroom was directly across the hall from the dining-room. Then came his

niece’s bedroom, a spare bedroom and a bathroom. Each of the three front
bedrooms was equipped with a private bath and large clothes-closet.
The doctor began by installing the three cameras in Ritsky’s room,
fastening them on the wall in such a manner that they faced the bed from
three directions. After focusing them properly, he set the flash-gun on a
collapsible tripod and pointed it toward the bed.
The room was lighted by an alabaster bowl that depended from the
ceiling and could be turned on or off by a switch at the bedside. There were,
in addition, two wall lights, one on each side of the dresser, and a small
reading lamp on a table in one corner. These last three lights were operated
by individual pull-cords.
Ritsky procured a step-ladder for him, and, after switching off the drop
light, he removed one of the bulbs from the cluster and inserted a four-way
socket. From this socket he ran wires along the ceiling and down the wall to
the three cameras and the flash-gun. By the time these preparations were
completed Miss Rogers and the housekeeper had retired.
Hoyne surveyed the finished job with frank admiration.
“If there’s anything in this room when Ritsky turns the switch those three
mechanical eyes will sure spot it,” he said enthusiastically.
“Now, Mr. Ritsky,” began the doctor, “I want you to place yourself
entirely in our hands for the night. Keep cool, fear nothing, and carry out
my instructions to the letter. I suggest that you go to bed now and endeavor
to get some sleep. If the apparition troubles you, do just as you have done in
the past—turn on the light. Do not, however, touch the light switch unless
the thing appears. The photographic plates, when developed, will tell
whether you have been suffering from a mere hallucination induced by
auto-suggestion or if genuine materialization phenomena have occurred.”
After closing and bolting the windows they placed the step-ladder in the
hallway beside Ritsky’s door. Then they obtained a duplicate key from him
and asked him to lock himself in, removing his key so they might gain
entrance at any time.
When everything was ready they quietly brought two chairs into the hall
from the spare bedroom and began their silent vigil.

III.

Both men sat in silence for nearly three hours. The doctor seemed lost in
thought, and Hoyne nervously masticated his inevitable unlighted cigar. The
house was quiet, except for the ticking of the hall clock and its hourly
chiming announcements of the flight of time.
Shortly after the clock struck two they heard a low, scarcely audible
moan.
“What was that?” whispered the detective, hoarsely.
“Wait!” the doctor replied.
Presently it was repeated, followed by prolonged sobbing.
“It’s Miss Rogers,” said Hoyne, excitedly.
Doctor Dorp rose and softly tiptoed to the door of the child’s bed
chamber. After listening there for a moment he noiselessly opened the door
and entered. Presently he returned, leaving the door ajar. The sobbing and
moaning continued.
“Just as I expected,” he said. “I want you to go in the child’s room, keep
quiet, and make a mental note of everything you see and hear. Stay there
until I call you, and be prepared for a startling sight.”
“Wh—what is it?” asked Hoyne, nervously.
“Nothing that will hurt you. What’s the matter? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid, hell!” growled Hoyne. “Can’t a man ask you a question—”
“No time to answer questions now. Get in there and do as I say if you
want to be of any assistance.”
“All right, Doc. It’s your party.”
The big detective entered the room of the sobbing child and squeezed his
great bulk into a dainty rocking chair from which he could view her bed.
She tossed from side to side, moaning as if in pain, and Hoyne, pitying her,
wondered why the doctor did not awaken her.
Presently she ceased her convulsive movements, clenched her hands, and
uttered a low, gurgling cry, as a white, filmy mass slowly emerged from

between her lips. The amazed detective stared with open mouth, so
frightened that he forgot to chew his cigar. The filmy material continued to
pour forth for several minutes that seemed like hours to the tense watcher.
Then it formed a nebulous, wispy cloud above the bed, completely detached
itself from the girl, and floated out through the half-opened door.
Doctor Dorp, standing in the hallway, saw a white, misty thing of
indefinite outline emerge from the bedroom. It floated through the hall and
paused directly in front of Ritsky’s door. He approached it cautiously and
noiselessly, and noticed that it grew rapidly smaller. Then he discovered the
reason. It was flowing through the keyhole!
In a short time it had totally disappeared. He waited breathlessly.
What was that? The whining cry of a hound broke the stillness! He
mounted the step-ladder in order to view the interior of the room through
the glass transom. He had scarcely placed his foot on the second step when
the whining noise changed to a gurgling growl that was followed by a
shriek of mortal terror and the dull report of the flash-gun.
Leaping down from the ladder, the doctor called Hoyne, and they entered
the “haunted” bed chamber. The room was brilliantly lighted by the
alabaster bowl and filled with the sickening fumes of flash-powder.
Hoyne opened the windows and returned to where the doctor was
thoughtfully viewing Ritsky, who had apparently fainted. He had fallen half
out of bed, and hung there with one bony arm trailing and his emaciated
face a picture of abject fear.
“My God!” exclaimed Hoyne. “Look there on his throat and chest. The
frothy slaver of a hound!”
The doctor took a small porcelain dish from his pocket, removed the lid,
and with the blade of his pocket knife, scraped part of the slimy deposit into
the receptacle.
“Hadn’t we better try to bring him to?” inquired Hoyne.
After they had lifted him back in bed the doctor leaned over and held his
ear to the breast of the recumbent man. He took his stethoscope from his
case and listened again. Then he straightened gravely.
“No earthly power can bring him to,” he said, softly, “Ritsky is dead!”

IV.

The detective remained in the house, pending the arrival of the coroner
and undertaker, while Doctor Dorp hurried home with his paraphernalia and
the sample of slime he had scraped from the corpse. Hoyne was puzzled by
the fact that the doctor searched the house and the clothing of the dead man
before departing.
The detective was kept busy at the Ritsky apartment until nearly ten
o’clock. After stopping at a restaurant for a bit of breakfast and a cup of
coffee, he went directly to the doctor’s home.
He found the psychologist in his laboratory, engrossed in a complicated
chemical experiment. He shook a test tube, which he had been heating over
a small alcohol lamp, held it up to the light, stood it in a small rack in which
were a number of others partly filled with liquid, and nodded cordially to
his friend.
“Morning, Doc.,” greeted Hoyne. “Have you doped out what we are
going to tell the coroner yet?”
“I knew the direct cause of Ritsky’s death long ago. It was fear. The
indirect cause, the thing that induced the fear, required careful examination
and considerable chemical research.”
“And it was—”
“Psychoplasm.”
“I don’t get you, Doc. What is psychoplasm?”
“No doubt you have heard of the substance called ectoplasm, regarding
which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has delivered numerous lectures, or an
identical substance called teleplasm, discovered by Baron Von Schrenck
Notzing while attending materialization seances with the medium known as
Eva.
“While the baron was observing and photographing this substance in
Europe, my friend and colleague, Professor James Braddock, was
conducting similar investigations in this country. He named the substance
psychoplasm, and I like the name better than either of the other two, as it is

undoubtedly created or generated from invisible particles of matter through
the power of the subjective mind.
“I have examined and analyzed many samples of this substance in the
past. The plate I now have under the compound microscope, and the
different chemical determinations I have just completed, show conclusively
that this is psychoplasm.”
“But how—where did it come from?”
“I learned something of the history of Ritsky and his ward yesterday. Let
me enlighten you on that score first:
“The man told the truth when he said he was appointed guardian of his
niece, and also when he said that he had shot a dog. The dog, in question,
was a Russian wolfhound, a present sent to the girl by her parents while
they were touring Russia. He was only half grown when he arrived, and the
two soon became boon companions, frolicking and playing about the
grounds together or romping through the big house.
“Some time after the death of Olga’s parents, Ritsky, then editor of a
radical newspaper in New York, took up his abode at Villa Rogers. The dog,
by that time full grown, took a violent dislike to him and, on one occasion,
bit him quite severely. When he announced his intention of having the
animal shot the girl wept violently and swore that she would kill herself if
Shag, as she had named him, were killed. It seemed that she regarded him
as a token of the love of her parents who had sailed away, never to return.”
“Shag! That’s the name!” broke in Hoyne, excitedly. “After that white
thing floated out of the room she made noises like a dog and then answered
them, saying ‘Good old Shag,’ and patting an imaginary head. She sure
gave me the creeps, though, when she let out that growl.”
“The vengeful Ritsky,” continued the doctor, “was determined that Shag
should die, and found an opportunity to shoot him with a pistol when the
girl was in the house. Shortly after, the faithful creature dragged himself to
the feet of his mistress and died in her arms. He could not tell her who had
taken his life, but she must have known subjectively, and as a result
entertained a hatred for her uncle of which she objectively knew nothing.
“Most people have potential mediumistic power. How this power is
developed in certain individuals and remains practically dormant in others

is a question that has never been satisfactorily explained. I personally
believe that it is often developed because of intense emotional repressions
which, unable to find an outlet in a normal manner through the objective
mind, find expression in abnormal psychic manifestations.
“This seemed to be the case with Olga Rogers. She developed the power
subjectively without objective knowledge that it existed. One of the most
striking of psychic powers is that of creating or assembling the substance
called psychoplasm, causing it to assume various forms, and to move as if
endowed with a mind of its own.
“Olga developed this peculiar power to a remarkable degree. Acting
under the direction of her subjective intelligence, the substance assumed the
form of her beloved animal companion and sought revenge on its slayer. We
arrived a day too late to save the object of her unconscious hatred.”
“Too bad you were not there the night before,” said Hoyne. “The poor
devil would be alive today if you had been on hand with me the first night
to dope the thing out.”
“We might have saved him for a prison term or the gallows,” replied the
doctor, a bit sardonically. “You haven’t seen this, of course.”
He took a small silver pencil from the table and handed it to the
detective.
“What’s that got to do with—”
“Open it! Unscrew the top. Careful!”
Hoyne unscrewed it gingerly and saw that the chamber, which was made
to hold extra leads, was filled with a white powder.
“Arsenic,” said the doctor, briefly. “Did you notice the sickly pallor of
that girl—the dark rings under her eyes? Her loving uncle and guardian was
slowly poisoning her, increasing the doses from time to time. In another
month or six weeks she would have been dead, and Ritsky, her nearest
living relative, would have inherited her immense fortune.”
“Well I’ll be damned!” exploded Hoyne.
Doctor Dorp’s laboratory assistant entered and handed a package of
prints to his employer.

“Here are the proofs of last night’s photographs,” said the doctor. “Care
to see them?”
Hoyne took them to the window and scrutinized them carefully.
All showed Ritsky leaning out of bed, his hand on the light switch, his
face contorted in an expression of intense horror—and, gripping his throat
in its ugly jaws, was the white, misshapen phantasm of a huge Russian
wolfhound!

MASTERPIECES OF WEIRD FICTION

No. 2—The Murders in the Rue Morgue

By EDGAR ALLAN POE
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when
he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not
beyond all conjecture.—Sir Thomas Browne, Urn-Burial.

The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves,
but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects.
We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their
possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment.
As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises
as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity
which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of
conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree
of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His
results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method have, in truth,
the whole air of intuition. The faculty of resolution is possibly much
invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by the highest branch of
it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has
been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to
analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the
other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character,
is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply
prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at
random; I will therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of
the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the
unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.
In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, the

various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not
unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully
into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in
injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute,
the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it
is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers.
In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little
variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere
attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are
obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less
abstract—Let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced
to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is
obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal)
only by some recherche movement, the result of some strong exertion of
intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the
spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently
sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometimes indeed absurdly simple
ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.
Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the
calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been
known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing
chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so
greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best chess-player in
Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but
proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all these more important
undertakings where mind struggles with mind. When I say proficiency, I
mean that perfection in the game which includes a comprehension of all the
sources whence legitimate advantage may be derived. These are not only
manifold but multiform, and lie frequently among recesses of thought
altogether inaccessible to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively
is to remember distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do
very well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the
mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally
comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by “the
book,” are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing. But
it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is
evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So,

perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the
information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in
the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to
observe. Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the
object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game. He
examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of
each of his opponents. He considers the mode of assorting the cards in each
hand; often counting trump by trump and honor by honor, through the
glances bestowed by their holders upon each. He notes every variation of
face as the play progresses, gathering a fund of thought from the differences
in the expression of certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or chagrin. From the
manner of gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can
make another in the suit. He recognizes what is played through feint, by the
air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or inadvertent word; the
accidental dropping or turning of a card, with the accompanying anxiety or
carelessness in regard to its concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the
order of their arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or
trepidation—all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of
the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been played, he
is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and thenceforward puts
down his card with as absolute a precision of purpose as if the rest of the
party had turned outward the faces of their own.
The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity;
for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often
remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining power, by
which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the phrenologists (I
believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ, supposing it a
primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in those whose intellect
bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have attracted general observation
among writers on morals. Between ingenuity and the analytic ability there
exists a difference far greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the
imagination, but of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in
fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never
otherwise than analytic.
The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the
light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18—, I
there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young
gentleman was of an excellent—indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a
variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the
energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir
himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes. By courtesy
of his creditors, there still remained in his possession a small remnant of his
patrimony; and upon the income arising from this, he managed, by means
of a rigorous economy, to procure the necessaries of life, without troubling
himself about its superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in
Paris these are easily obtained.
Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where
the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very
remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. We saw each other
again and again. I was deeply interested in the little family history which he
detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever
mere self is the theme. I was astonished, too, at the vast extent of his
reading; and above all, I felt my soul enkindled within me by the wild
fervor, and the vivid freshness of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the
objects I then sought, I felt that the society of such a man would be to me a
treasure beyond price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at
length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and
as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his
own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a
style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-
eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through superstitions into
which we did not enquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate
portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.
Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we
should have been regarded as madmen—although, perhaps, as madmen of a
harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors. Indeed
the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own
former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to
know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone.
It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be
enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all

his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect
abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we
could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed
all the massy shutters of our old building; lighted a couple of tapers which,
strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the
aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams—reading, writing, or
conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness.
Then we sallied forth into the street, arm and arm, continuing the topics of
the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild
lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement
which quiet observation can afford.
At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from
his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar analytic ability
in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise—if not
exactly in its display—and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus
derived. He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in
respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow
up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs of his intimate
knowledge of my own. His manner at these movements was frigid and
abstract; his eyes were vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich
tenor, rose into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the
deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing him in
these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-
Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the
creative and the resolvent.
Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am detailing any
mystery, or penning any romance. What I have described in the Frenchman,
was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of a diseased intelligence.
But of the character of his remarks at the periods in question an example
will best convey the idea.
We were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the vicinity of the
Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us
had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke
forth with these words:—

“He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Theatre
des Varietes.”
“There can be no doubt of that,” I replied unwittingly, and not at first
observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary
manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations. In an
instant afterward I recollected myself, and my astonishment was profound.
“Dupin,” said I gravely, “this is beyond my comprehension. I do not
hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses. How
was it possible you should know I was thinking of——?” Here I paused, to
ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought.
——“of Chantilly,” said he, “why do you pause? You were remarking to
yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy.”
This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections.
Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming
stage-mad, had attempted the role of Xerxes, in Crebillon’s tragedy so
called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.
“Tell me, for Heaven’s sake,” I exclaimed, “the method—if method there
is—by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter.” In
fact, I was even more startled than I would have been willing to express.
“It was the fruiterer,” replied my friend, “who brought you to the
conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for Xerxes
et id genus omne.”
“The fruiterer!—you astonish me—I know no fruiterer whomsoever.”
“The man who ran up against you as we entered the street—it may have
been fifteen minutes ago.”
I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a large
basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we passed
from the Rue C⸺ into the thoroughfare where we stood; but what this
had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.
There was not a particle of charlatanerie about Dupin. “I will explain,”
he said, “and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will first retrace the
course of meditations, from the moment in which I spoke to you until that
of the rencontre with the fruiterer in question. The larger links of the chain

run thus—Chantilly, Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street
stones, the fruiterer.”
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives,
amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of
their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest;
and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently
illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
What, then, must have been my amazement when I heard the Frenchman
speak what he had just spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging
that he had spoken the truth. He continued:
“We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before leaving
the Rue C⸺. This was the last subject we discussed. As we crossed into
this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon his head, brushing quickly
past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving-stones collected at a spot where the
causeway is undergoing repair. You stepped upon one of the loose
fragments, slipped, slightly strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky,
muttered a few words, turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in
silence. I was not particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has
become with me, of late, a species of necessity.
“You kept your eyes upon the ground—glancing, with a petulant
expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you were
still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley called
Lamartine, which had been paved, by way of experiment, with the
overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened up, and
perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you murmured the word
‘stereotomy,’ a term very affectedly applied to this species of pavement. I
knew that you could not say to yourself ‘stereotomy’ without being brought
to think of atomies, and thus of the theories of Epicurus; and since, when
we discussed this subject not very long ago, I mentioned to you how
singularly, yet with how little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek
had met with confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you
could not avoid casting your eyes upward to the great nebula in Orion, and I
certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was now
assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that bitter tirade
upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday’s ‘Musee,’ the satirist, making
some disgraceful allusions to the cobbler’s change of name upon assuming

the buskin, quoted a Latin line about which we have often conversed. I
mean the line

Perdidit antiquum litera prima sonum.

I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written Urion;
and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation, I was aware
that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear, therefore, that you would
not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion and Chantilly. That you did
combine them I saw by the character of the smile which passed over your
lips. You thought of the poor cobbler’s immolation. So far, you had been
stooping in your gait; but now I saw you draw yourself up to your full
height. I was then sure that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of
Chantilly. At this point I interrupted your meditation to remark that as, in
fact, he was a very little fellow—that Chantilly—he would do better at the
Theatre des Varietes.”
Not long after this we were looking over an evening edition of the
“Gazette des Tribunaux,” when the following paragraphs arrested our
attention.
“EXTRAORDINARY MURDERS.—This morning, about three o’clock,
the inhabitants of the Quartier St. Roch were aroused from sleep by a
succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently, from the fourth story of a
house in the Rue Morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy of one
Madame L’Espanaye, and her daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye.
After some delay, occasioned by a fruitless attempt to produce admission in
the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with a crowbar, and eight or
ten of the neighbors entered, accompanied by two gendarmes. By this time
the cries had ceased; but, as the party rushed up the first flight of stairs, two
or more rough voices, in angry contention, were distinguished, and seemed
to proceed from the upper part of the house. As the second landing was
reached, these sounds, also, had ceased, and everything remained perfectly
quiet. The party spread themselves and hurried from room to room. Upon
arriving at a large back chamber in the fourth story, (the door of which,
being found locked, with key inside, was forced open,) a spectacle
presented itself which struck every one present not less with horror than
with astonishment.

“The apartment was in the wildest disorder—the furniture broken and
thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from this
the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the floor. On a
chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth were two or three
long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also dabbled in blood, and
seeming to have been pulled out by the roots. Upon the floor were found
four Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three large silver spoons, three smaller
of metal d’ Alger, and two bags, containing nearly four thousand francs in
gold. The drawers of a bureau, which stood in one corner, were open, and
had been, apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them.
A small iron safe was discovered under the bed (not under the bedstead). It
was open, with the key still in the door. It had no contents beyond a few old
letters, and other papers of little consequence.
“Of Madame L’Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual
quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made in the
chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the daughter, head
downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus forced up the
narrow aperture for a considerable distance. The body was quite warm.
Upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned
by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. Upon the
face were many severe scratches, and, upon the throat, dark bruises, and
deep indentations of finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to
death.
“After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without
farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear
of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so
entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as
well as the head, was fearfully mutilated—the former so much so as
scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity.
“To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the slightest
clew.”
The next day’s paper had these additional particulars.
“The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue. Many individuals have been examined
in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful affair.” [The word
‘affaire’ has not yet, in France, that levity of import which it conveys with

us,] “but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light upon it. We give
below all the material testimony elicited.
“Pauline Dubourg, laundress, deposes that she has known both the
deceased for three years, having washed for them during that period. The
old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms—very affectionate
towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not speak in regard to
their mode or means of living. Believed that Madame D. told fortunes for a
living. Was reputed to have money put by. Never met any persons in the
house when she called for the clothes or took them home. Was sure that
they had no servant in employ. There appeared to be no furniture in any part
of the building except in the fourth story.
“Pierre Moreau, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit of
selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to Madame L’Espanaye for
nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood, and has always resided
there. The deceased and her daughter had occupied the house in which the
corpses were found, for more than six years. It was formerly occupied by a
jeweller, who under-let the upper rooms to various persons. The house was
the property of Madame L. She became dissatisfied with the abuse of the
premises by her tenant, and moved into them herself, refusing to let any
portion. The old lady was childish. Witness had seen the daughter some five
or six times during the six years. The two lived an exceedingly retired life—
were reputed to have money. Had heard it said among the neighbors that
Madame L. told fortunes—did not believe it. Had never seen any person
enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, a porter once or twice,
and a physician some eight or ten times.
“Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. No
one was spoken of as frequenting the house. It was not known whether
there were any living connections of Madame L. and her daughter. The
shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. Those in the rear were
always closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth story. The
house was a good house—not very old.
“Isidore Muset, gendarme, deposes that he was called to the house about
three o’clock in the morning, and found some twenty or thirty persons at the
gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance. Forced it open, at length, with a
bayonet—not with a crowbar. Had but little difficulty in getting it open, on

account of its being a double or folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom
nor top. The shrieks were continued until the gate was forced—and then
suddenly ceased. They seemed to be screams of some person (or persons) in
great agony—were loud and drawn out, not short and quick. Witness led the
way upstairs. Upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and
angry contention—the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller—a very
strange voice. Could distinguish some words of the former, which was that
of a Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman’s voice. Could
distinguish the words, ‘sacre’ and ‘diable.’ The shrill voice was that of a
foreigner. Could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a
woman. Could not make out what was said, but believed the language to be
Spanish. The state of the room and of the bodies was described by this
witness as we described them yesterday.
“Henri Duval, a neighbor, and by trade a silversmith, deposes that he was
one of the party who first entered the house. Corroborates the testimony of
Muset in general. As soon as they forced an entrance, they reclosed the
door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very fast, notwithstanding the
lateness of the hour. The shrill voice, the witness thinks, was that of an
Italian. Was certain it was not French. Could not be sure that it was a man’s
voice. It might have been a woman’s. Was not acquainted with the Italian
language. Could not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the
intonation that the speaker was an Italian. Knew Madame L. and her
daughter. Had conversed with both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice
was not that of either of the deceased.
“⸺ Odenheimer, restaurateur. The witness volunteered his testimony.
Not speaking French, was examined through an interpreter. Is a native of
Amsterdam. Was passing the house at the time of the shrieks. They lasted
for several minutes—probably ten. They were long and loud—very awful
and distressing. Was one of those who entered the building. Corroborated
the previous evidence in every respect but one. Was sure that the shrill
voice was that of a man—of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish the words
uttered. They were loud and quick—unequal—spoken apparently in fear as
well as in anger. The voice was harsh—not so much shrill as harsh. Could
not call it a shrill voice. The gruff voice said repeatedly ‘sacre,’ ‘diable’ and
once ‘mon Dieu.’

“Jules Mignaud, banker of the firm of Mignaud et Fils, Rue Deloraine. Is
the elder Mignaud. Madame L’Espanaye had some property. Had opened an
account with his banking house in the spring of the year ⸺ (eight years
previously). Made frequent deposits in small sums. Had checked for
nothing until the third day before her death, when she took out in person the
sum of 4000 francs. This sum was paid in gold, and a clerk sent home with
the money.
“Adolphe Le Bon, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the day in
question, about noon, he accompanied Madame L’Espanaye to her
residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon the door being
opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from his hands one of the bags,
while the old lady relieved him of the other. He then bowed and departed.
Did not see any person in the street at the time. It is a bye-street—very
lonely.
“William Bird, tailor, deposes that he was one of the party who entered
the house. Is an Englishman. Has lived in Paris two years. Was one of the
first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice
was that of a Frenchman. Could make out several words, but cannot now
remember all. Heard distinctly ‘sacre’ and ‘mon Dieu.’ There was a sound
at the moment as if of several persons struggling—a scraping and scuffling
sound. The shrill voice was very loud—louder than the gruff one. Is sure
that it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a
German. Might have been a woman’s voice. Does not understand German.
“Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the
door of the chamber in which was found the body of Mademoiselle L. was
locked on the inside when the party reached it. Everything was perfectly
silent—no groans or noises of any kind. Upon forcing the door no person
was seen. The windows, both of the back and front room, were down and
firmly fastened from within. A door between the two rooms was closed, but
not locked. The door leading from the front room into the passage was
locked, with the key on the inside. A small room in the front of the house,
on the fourth story, at the head of the passage, was open, the door being
ajar. This room was crowded with old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were
carefully removed and searched. There was not an inch of any portion of the
house which was not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up and down the
chimneys. The house was a four story one, with garrets (mansardes). A trap-

door on the roof was nailed down very securely—did not appear to have
been opened for years. The time elapsing between the hearing of the voices
in contention and the breaking open of the room door, was variously stated
by the witnesses. Some made it as short as three minutes—some as long as
five. The door was opened with difficulty.
“Alfonso Garcio, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue Morgue.
Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who entered the house. Did not
proceed upstairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive of the consequences of
agitation. Heard the voices in contention. The gruff voice was that of a
Frenchman. Could not distinguish what was said. The shrill voice was that
of an Englishman—is sure of this. Does not understand the English
language, but judges by the intonation.
“Alberto Montani, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first to
ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in question. The gruff voice was that of a
Frenchman. Distinguished several words. The speaker appeared to be
expostulating. Could not make out the words of the shrill voice. Spoke
quick and unevenly. Thinks it the voice of a Russian. Corroborates the
general testimony. Is an Italian. Never conversed with a native of Russia.
“Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all the
rooms on the fourth story were too narrow to admit the passage of a human
being. By ‘sweeps’ were meant cylindrical sweeping-brushes, such as are
employed by those who clean chimneys. These brushes were passed up end
down every flue in the house. There is no back passage by which any one
could have descended while the party proceeded up stairs. The body of
Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was so firmly wedged in the chimney that it
could not be got down until four or five of the party united their strength.
“Paul Dumas, physician, deposes that he was called to view the bodies
about day-break. They were both then lying on the sacking of the bedstead
in the chamber where Mademoiselle L. was found. The corpse of the young
lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact that it had been thrust up
the chimney would sufficiently account for these appearances. The throat
was greatly chafed. There were several deep scratches just below the chin,
together with a series of livid spots which were evidently the impression of
fingers. The face was fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls protruded. The
tongue had been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered

upon the pit of the stomach, produced apparently, by the pressure of a knee.
In the opinion of M. Dumas, Mademoiselle L’Espanaye had been throttled
to death by some person or persons unknown. The corpse of the mother was
horribly mutilated. All the bones of the right leg and arm were more or less
shattered. The left tibia much splintered, as well as all the ribs of the left
side. Whole body dreadfully bruised and discolored. It was not possible to
say how the injuries had been inflicted. A heavy club of wood, or a broad
bar of iron—a chair—any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would have
produced such results, if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. No
woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon. The head of the
deceased, when seen by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and
was also greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some
very sharp instrument—probably with a razor.
“Alexandre Etienne, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to view the
bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of M. Dumas.
“Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other
persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its
particulars, was never before committed in Paris—if indeed a murder had
been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault—an unusual
occurrence in affairs of this nature. There is not, however, the shadow of a
clue apparent.”
The evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement still
continued in the Quartier St. Roch—that the premises in question had been
carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations of witnesses instituted, but all
to no purpose. A postscript, however, mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had
been arrested and imprisoned—although nothing appeared to criminate him,
beyond the facts already detailed.
Dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair—at least
so I judged from his manner, for he made no comments. It was only after
the announcement that Le Bon had been imprisoned, that he asked me my
opinion respecting the murders.
I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble
mystery. I saw no means by which it would be possible to trace the
murderer.

“We must not judge of the means,” said Dupin, “by this shell of an
examination. The Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are
cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond the
method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but, not
unfrequently, these are so ill adapted to the object proposed, as to put us in
mind of Monsieur Jourdain’s calling for his robe-de-chambre—pour mieux
entendre la musique. The results attained by them are not unfrequently
surprising, but, for the most part, are brought about by simple diligence and
activity. When these qualities are unavailing, their schemes fail. Vidocq, for
example, was a good guesser, and a persevering man. But, without educated
thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations. He
impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps,
one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily,
lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too
profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more
important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The
depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain tops
where she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are well
typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To look at a star by
glances—to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior
portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than
the interior), is to behold the star distinctly—is to have the best appreciation
of its lustre—a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our
vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in
the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined capacity for
comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and
it is very possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by
a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
“As for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for ourselves,
before we make up an opinion respecting them. An inquiry will afford us
amusement,” [I thought this an odd term, so applied, but said nothing] “and,
besides, Le Bon once rendered me a service for which I am not ungrateful.
We will go and see the premises with our own eyes. I know G⸺, the
Prefect of Police, and shall have no difficulty in obtaining the necessary
permission.”

The permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the Rue
Morgue. This is one of those miserable thoroughfares which intervene
between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue St. Roch. It was late in the
afternoon when we reached it; as this quarter is at a great distance from that
in which we resided. The house was readily found; for there were still many
persons gazing up at the closed shutters, with an objectless curiosity, from
the opposite side of the way. It was an ordinary Parisian house, with a
gateway, on one side of which was a glazed watch-box, with a sliding panel
in the window, indicating a loge de concierge. Before going in we walked
up the street, turned down an alley, and then, again turning, passed in the
rear of the building—Dupin, meanwhile, examining the whole
neighborhood, as well as the house, with a minuteness of attention for
which I could see no possible object.
Retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling, rang,
and, having shown our credentials, were admitted by the agents in charge.
We went up stairs—into the chamber where the body of Mademoiselle
L’Espanaye had been found, and where both the deceased still lay. The
disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered to exist. I saw nothing
beyond what had been stated in the “Gazette des Tribunaux.” Dupin
scrutinised every thing—not excepting the bodies of the victims. We then
went into the other rooms, and into the yard; a gendarme accompanying us
throughout. The examination occupied us until dark, when we took our
departure. On our way home my companion stopped in for a moment at the
office of one of the daily papers.
I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and that Je les
menageais—for this phrase there is no English equivalent. It was his
humor, now, to decline all conversation on the subject of the murder, until
about noon the next day. He then asked me, suddenly, if I had observed
anything peculiar at the scene of the atrocity.
There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word “peculiar,”
which caused me to shudder, without knowing why.
“No, nothing peculiar,” I said; “nothing more, at least, than we both saw
stated in the paper.”
“The ‘Gazette,’” he replied, “has not entered, I fear, into the unusual
horror of the thing. But dismiss the idle opinions of this print. It appears to

me that this mystery is considered insoluble, for the very reason which
should cause it to be regarded as easy of solution—I mean for the outre
character of its features. The police are confounded by the seeming absence
of motive—not for the murder itself—but for the atrocity of the murder.
They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling the
voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered up
stairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and that there were no
means of egress without notice of the party ascending. The wild disorder of
the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the
frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady; these considerations, with
those just mentioned, and others which I need not mention, have sufficed to
paralyze the powers, by putting completely at fault the boasted acumen, of
the government agents. They have fallen into the gross but common error of
confounding the unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations
from the plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its
search for the true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should
not be so much asked ‘what has occurred,’ as ‘what has occurred that has
never occurred before.’ In fact, the facility with which I shall arrive, or have
arrived, at the solution of this mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent
insolubility in the eyes of the police.”
I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.
“I am now awaiting,” continued he, looking toward the door of our
apartment—“I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the
perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure implicated
in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of the crimes committed, it is
probable that he is innocent. I hope that I am right in the supposition; for
upon it I build my expectation of reading the entire riddle. I look for the
man here—in this room—every moment. It is true that he may not arrive;
but the probability is that he will. Should he come, it will be necessary to
detain him. Here are pistols; and we both know how to use them when
occasion demands their use.”
I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing what I heard,
while Dupin went on, very much as if in a soliloquy. I have already spoken
of his abstract manner at such times. His discourse was addressed to myself;
but his voice, although by no means loud, had that intonation which is

commonly employed in speaking to some one at a great distance. His eyes,
vacant in expression, regarded only the wall.
“That the voices heard in contention,” he said, “by the party upon the
stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was fully proved by
the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon the question whether the old
lady could have first destroyed the daughter, and afterwards have
committed suicide. I speak of this point chiefly for the sake of method; for
the strength of Madame L’Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the
task of thrusting her daughter’s corpse up the chimney as it was found; and
the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of
self-destruction. Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and
the voices of this third party were those heard in contention. Let me now
advert—not to the whole testimony respecting these voices—but to what
was peculiar in that testimony. Did you observe anything peculiar about it?”
I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the gruff
voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much disagreement in regard to
the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the harsh voice.
“That was the evidence itself,” said Dupin, “but it was not the peculiarity
of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinctive. Yet there was
something to be observed. The witnesses, as you remark, agreed about the
gruff voice; they were here unanimous. But in regard to the shrill voice, the
peculiarity is—not that they disagreed—but that, while an Italian, an
Englishman, a Spaniard, a Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to
describe it, each one spoke of it as that of a foreigner. Each is sure that it
was not the voice of one of his own countrymen. Each likens it—not to the
voice of an individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant
—but the converse. The Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard, and
‘might have distinguished some words had he been acquainted with the
Spanish.’ The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a Frenchman; but
we find it stated that ‘not understanding French this witness was examined
through an interpreter.’ The Englishman thinks it the voice of a German,
and ‘does not understand German.’ The Spaniard ‘is sure’ that it was that of
an Englishman, but ‘judges by the intonation’ altogether, ‘as he has no
knowledge of the English.’ The Italian believes it the voice of a Russian,
but ‘has never conversed with a native of Russia.’ A second Frenchman
differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice was that of an

Italian; but, ‘not being cognizant of that tongue,’ is, like the Spaniard,
‘convinced by the intonation.’ Now, how strangely unusual must that voice
have really been, about which such testimony as this could have been
elicited!—in whose tones, even, denizens of the five great divisions of
Europe could recognize nothing familiar! You will say that it might have
been the voice of an Asiatic—of an African. Neither Asiatics nor Africans
abound in Paris; but, without denying the inference, I will now merely call
your attention to three points. The voice is termed by one witness ‘harsh
rather than shrill.’ It is represented by two others to have been ‘quick and
unequal.’ No words—no sounds resembling words—were by any witnesses
mentioned as distinguishable.
“I know not,” continued Dupin, “what impression I may have made, so
far, upon your own understanding; but I do not hesitate to say that
legitimate deductions even from this portion of the testimony—the portion
respecting the gruff and shrill voices—are in themselves sufficient to
engender a suspicion which should give direction to all farther progress in
the investigation of the mystery. I said ‘legitimate deductions;’ but my
meaning is not thus fully expressed. I designed to imply that the deductions
are the sole proper ones, and that the suspicion arises inevitably from them
as the single result. What the suspicion is however, I will not say just yet. I
merely wish you to bear in mind that, with myself, it was sufficiently
forcible to give a definite form—a certain tendency—to my inquiries in the
chamber.
“Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. What shall we
first seek here? The means of egress employed by the murderers. It is not
too much to say that neither of us believe in praeternatural events, Madame
and Mademoiselle L’Espanaye were not destroyed by spirits. The doers of
the deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately,
there is but one mode of reasoning upon the point, and that mode must lead
us to a definite decision. Let us examine, each by each, the possible means
of egress. It is clear that the assassins were in the room where
Mademoiselle L’Espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining,
when the party ascended the stairs. It is then only from these two
apartments that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the floors,
the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every direction. No secret
issues could have escaped their vigilance. But, not trusting to their eyes, I

examined with my own. There were, then, no secret issues. Both doors
leading from the rooms into the passage were securely locked, with keys
inside. Let us turn to the chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for
some eight or ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout their
extent, the body of a large cat. The impossibility of egress by means already
stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows. Through those
of the front room no one could have escaped without notice from the crowd
in the street. The murderers must have passed, then, through those of the
back room. Now, brought to this conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as
we are, it is not our part, as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent
impossibilities. It is only left for us to prove that these apparent
‘impossibilities’ are, in reality, not such.
“There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is unobstructed by
furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower portion of the other is hidden
from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust close up
against it. The former was found securely fastened from within. It resisted
the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise it. A large gimlet-hole
had been pierced in its frame to the left, and a very stout nail was found
fitted therein, nearly to the head. Upon examining the other window, a
similar nail was seen similarly fitted into it; and a vigorous attempt to raise
this sash, failed also. The police are now entirely satisfied that egress had
not been in these directions. And, therefore, it was thought a matter of
superogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows.
“My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for the
reason I have just given—because here it was, I knew, that all apparent
impossibilities must be proved to be not such in reality.
“I proceeded to think thus—a posteriori. The murderers did escape from
one of these windows. This being so, they could not have re-fastened the
sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened—the consideration
which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in
this quarter. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power
of fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion. I
stepped to the unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some
difficulty, and attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts, as I had
anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now knew, exist; and this
corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises, at least, were

correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances attending the
nails. A careful search soon brought to light the hidden spring. I pressed it,
and, satisfied with the discovery, forebore to upraise the sash.
“I now replaced the nail and regulated it attentively. A person passing out
through this window might have reclosed it, and the spring would have
caught—but the nail could not have been replaced. The conclusion was
plain, and again narrowed in the field of my investigations. The assassins
must have escaped through the other window. Supposing, then, the springs
upon each sash to be the same, as was probable, there must be found a
difference between the nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture.
Getting upon the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the headboard
minutely at the second casement. Passing my hand down behind the board,
I readily discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed,
identical in character with its neighbor. I now looked at the nail. It was as
stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same manner—driven in
nearly up to the head.
“You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have
misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sporting phrase, I had
not been once ‘at fault.’ The scent had never for an instant been lost. There
was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced the secret to its ultimate
result—and that result was the nail. It had, I say, in every respect the
appearance of its fellow in the other window; but this fact was an absolute
nullity (conclusive as it might seem to be) when compared with the
consideration that here, at this point, terminated the clew, ‘There must be
something wrong,’ I said, ‘about the nail.’ I touched it; and the head, with
about a quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of
the shank was in the gimlet-hole, where it had been broken off. The fracture
was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and had apparently
been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had partially imbedded,
in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion of the nail. I now carefully
replaced this head portion in the indentation whence I had taken it, and the
resemblance to a perfect nail was complete—the fissure was invisible.
Pressing the spring, I gently raised the sash for a few inches; the head went
up with it, remaining firm in its bed. I closed the window, and the
semblance of the whole nail was again perfect.

“The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped through
the window which looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own accord upon
his exit (or perhaps purposely closed), it had become fastened by the spring
and it was the retention of this spring which had been mistaken by the
police for that of the nail—farther inquiry being thus considered
unnecessary.
“The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this point I had
been satisfied in my walk with you around the building. About five feet and
a half from the casement in question there runs a lightning rod. From this
rod it would have been impossible for anyone to reach the window itself, to
say nothing of entering it. I observed, however, that the shutters of the
fourth story were of the peculiar kind called by Parisian carpenters ferrades
—a kind rarely employed at the present day, but frequently seen upon very
old mansions at Lyons and Bordeaux. They are in the form of an ordinary
door, (a single, not a folding door) except that the upper half is latticed or
worked in open trellis—thus affording an excellent hold for the hands. In
the present instance these shutters are fully three feet and a half broad.
When we saw them from the rear of the house, they were both about half
open—that is to say, they stood off at right angles from the wall. It is
probable that the police, as well as myself, examined the back of the
tenement; but, if so, in looking at these ferrades in the line of their breadth
(as they must have done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or,
at all events, failed to take it into due consideration. In fact, having once
satisfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this quarter,
they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination. It was clear
to me, however, that the shutter belonging to the window at the head of the
bed, would, if swung fully back to the wall, reach to within two feet of the
lightning-rod. It was also evident that, by exertion of a very unusual degree
of activity and courage, an entrance into the window, from the rod, might
have been thus effected. By reaching to the distance of two feet and a half
(we now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent) a robber might have
taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work. Letting go, then, his hold upon the
rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and springing boldly from it,
he might have swung the shutter so as to close it, and, if we imagine the
window open at the time, might even have swung himself into the room.

“I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a very
unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so hazardous and so
difficult a feat. It is my design to show you, first, that the thing might
possibly have been accomplished—but, secondly and chiefly, I wish to
impress upon your understanding the very extraordinary—the almost
praeternatural character of the agility which could have accomplished it.
“You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that ‘to make out
my case’ I should rather undervalue than insist upon a full estimation of the
activity required in this matter. This may be the practice in law, but it is not
the usage of reason. My ultimate object is only the truth. My immediate
purpose is to lead you to place in juxta-position that very unusual activity of
which I have just spoken, with that very peculiar shrill (or harsh) and
unequal voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be found to
agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected.”
At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of
Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon the verge of
comprehension, without power to comprehend—as men, at times, find
themselves upon the brink of remembrance, without being able, in the end,
to remember. My friend went on with his discourse.
“You will see,” he said, “that I have shifted the question from the mode
of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to suggest that both were
effected in the same manner, at the same point. Let us now revert to the
interior of the room. Let us survey the appearances here. The drawers of the
bureau, it is said, had been rifled, although many articles of apparel still
remained within them. The conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere guess—a
very silly one—and no more. How are we to know that the articles found in
the drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? Madame
L’Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life—saw no
company—seldom went out—had little use for numerous change of
habiliment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any likely to be
possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why did he not take the
best—why did he not take all? In a word, why did he abandon four
thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with a bundle of linen? The
gold was abandoned. Nearly the whole sum mentioned by Monsieur
Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags, upon the floor. I wish you,
therefore, to discard from your thoughts the blundering idea of motive,

engendered in the brains of the police by that portion of the evidence which
speaks of money delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times
as remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed
within three days upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us every hour
of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences, in
general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who
have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that
theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted
for the most glorious of illustration. In the present instance, had the gold
been gone, the fact of its delivery three days before would have formed
something more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of
this idea of motive. But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we are
to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine the
perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold and his
motive together.
“Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your
attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling
absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance
at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual
strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinarily assassins
employ no such modes of murder as this. Least of all, do they thus dispose
of the murdered. In the manner of thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you
will admit that there was something excessively outre—something
altogether irreconcilable with our common notions of human action, even
when we suppose the actors the most depraved of men. Think, too, how
great must have been that strength which could have thrust the body up
such an aperture so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was
found barely sufficient to drag it down!
“Turn now to other indications of the employment of a vigor most
marvelous. On the hearth were thick tresses—very thick tresses—of grey
human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You are aware of the great
force necessary in tearing thus from the head even twenty or thirty hairs
together. You saw the locks in question as well as myself. Their roots (a
hideous sight!) were clotted with fragments of the flesh of the scalp—sure
token of the prodigious power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps
half a million hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady was not merely cut,

but the head absolutely severed from the body—the instrument was a mere
razor. I wish you also to look at the brutal ferocity of these deeds. Of the
bruises upon the body of Madame L’Espanaye I do not speak. Monsieur
Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne, have pronounced that
they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument; and so far these gentlemen
are very correct. The obtuse instrument was clearly the stone pavement in
the yard, upon which the victim had fallen from the window which looked
in upon the bed. This idea, however simple it may now seem, escaped the
police for the same reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them—
because, by the affair of the nails, their perceptions have been hermetically
sealed against the possibility of the windows having ever been opened at
all.
“If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected upon
the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to combine the
ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a ferocity brutal, a
butchery without motive, a grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from
humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to the ears of men of many nations,
and devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllabification. What result, then,
has ensued? What impression have I made upon your fancy?”
I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. “A
madman,” I said, “has done this deed—some raving maniac, escaped from a
neighboring Maison de Sante.”
“In some respects,” he replied, “your idea is not irrelevant. But the voices
of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to tally with
that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of some nation, and
their language, however incoherent in its words, has always the coherence
of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a madman is not such as I now hold
in my hand. I disentangled this little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of
Madame L’Espanaye. Tell me what you can make of it.”
“Dupin!” I said, completely unnerved; “this hair is most unusual—this is
no human hair.”
“I have not asserted that it is,” said he; “but before we decide this point, I
wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here traced upon this paper. It
is a fac-simile drawing of what has been described in one portion of the
testimony as ‘dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails,’ upon the

throat of Mademoiselle L’Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs. Dumas and
Etienne,) as a ‘series of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.’
“You will perceive,” continued my friend, spreading out the paper upon
the table before us, “that this drawing gives the idea of a firm and fixed
hold. There is no slipping apparent. Each finger has retained—possibly until
the death of the victim—the fearful grasp by which it originally imbedded
itself. Attempt, now, to place all your fingers, at the same time, in the
respective impressions as you see them.”
I made the attempt in vain.
“We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial,” he said. “The paper is
spread out upon a plane surface; but the human throat is cylindrical. Here is
a billet of wood, the circumference of which is about that of the throat.
Wrap the drawing around it, and try the experiment again.”
I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before.
“This,” I said, “is the mark of no human hand.”
“Read now,” replied Dupin, “this passage from Cuvier.”
It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large
fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic stature, the
prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the imitative
propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. I
understood the full horrors of the murder at once.
“The description of the digits,” said I, as I made an end of reading, “is in
exact accordance with this drawing. I see that no animal but an Ourang-
Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed the
indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair, too, is
identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But I cannot possibly
comprehend the particulars of this frightful mystery. Besides, there were
two voices heard in contention, and one of them was unquestionably the
voice of a Frenchman.”
“True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost
unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice—the expression, ‘mon Dieu!’
This, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized by one of the
witnesses (Montani, the confectioner) as an expression of remonstrance or

expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I have mainly built my
hopes of a full solution of the riddle. A Frenchman was cognizant of the
murder. It is possible—indeed it is far more than probable—that he was
innocent of all participation in the bloody transactions which took place.
The Ourang-Outang may have escaped from him. He may have traced it to
the chamber; but, under the agitating circumstances which ensued, he could
never have re-captured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue these guesses
—for I have no right to call them more—since the shades of reflection upon
which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth to be appreciable by
my own intellect, and since I could not pretend to make them intelligible to
the understanding of another. We will call them guesses then, and speak of
them as such. If the Frenchman in question is indeed, as I suppose,
innocent, of this atrocity, this advertisement, which I left last night, upon
our return home, at the office of ‘Le Monde,’ (a paper devoted to the
shipping interest, and much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our
residence.”
He handed me a paper, and I read thus:

CAUGHT—In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of the
⸺ inst., (the morning of the murder), a very large, tawny Ourang-
Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, who is ascertained to be
a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel, may have the animal again,
upon identifying it satisfactorily and paying a few charges arising
from its capture and keeping. Call at No. ⸺, Rue ⸺, Faubourg
St. Germain—au troisieme.

“How was it possible,” I asked, “that you should know the man to be a
sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel?”
“I do not know it,” said Dupin. “I am not sure of it. Here, however, is a
small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from its greasy appearance,
has evidently been used in tying the hair in one of those long queues of
which sailors are so fond. Moreover, this knot is one which few besides
sailors can tie, and is peculiar to the Maltese. I picked the ribbon up at the
foot of the lightning-rod. It could not have belonged to either of the
deceased. Now if, after all, I am wrong in my induction from this ribbon,

that the Frenchman was a sailor belonging to a Maltese vessel, still I can
have done no harm in saying what I did in the advertisement. If I am in
error, he will merely suppose that I have been misled by some circumstance
into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. But if I am right, a great
point is gained. Cognizant although innocent of the murder, the Frenchman
will naturally hesitate about replying to the advertisement—about
demanding the Ourang-Outang. He will reason thus:—‘I am innocent; I am
poor; my Ourang-Outang is of great value—to one in my circumstances a
fortune of itself—why should I lose it through idle apprehensions of
danger? Here it is, within my grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne—
at a vast distance from the scene of that butchery. How can it ever be
suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? The police are at
fault—they have failed to procure the slightest clew. Should they even trace
the animal, it would be impossible to prove me cognizant of the murder, or
to implicate me in guilt on account of that cognizance. Above all, I am
known. The advertiser designates me as the possessor of the beast. I am not
sure to what limit his knowledge may extend. Should I avoid claiming a
property of so great value, which it is known that I possess, I will render the
animal, at least, liable to suspicion. It is not my policy to attract attention
either to myself or to the beast. I will answer the advertisement, get the
Ourang-Outang; and keep it close until this matter has blown over.’”
At this moment we heard a step upon the stairs.
“Be ready,” said Dupin, “with your pistols, but neither use them nor show
them until at a signal from myself.”
The front door of the house had been left open, and the visitor had
entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the staircase.
Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard him descending.
Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again heard him coming
up. He did not turn back a second time, but stepped up with decision and
rapped at the door of our chamber.
“Come in,” said Dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone.
A man entered. He was a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-
looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not
altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half
hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel,

but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us
“good evening,” in French accents, which, although somewhat
Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of a Parisian origin.
“Sit down, my friend,” said Dupin. “I suppose you have called about the
Ourang-Outang. Upon my word, I almost envy you the possession of him; a
remarkably fine, and no doubt a very valuable animal. How old do you
suppose him to be?”
The sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some
intolerable burden, and then replied, in an assured tone:
“I have no way of telling—but he can’t be more than four or five years
old. Have you got him here?”
“Oh no; we had no conveniences for keeping him here. He is at a livery
stable in the Rue Dubourg, just by. You can get him in the morning. Of
course you are prepared to identify the property?”
“To be sure I am, sir.”
“I shall be sorry to part with him,” said Dupin.
“I don’t mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing, sir,” said
the man. “Couldn’t expect it. Am very willing to pay a reward for the
finding of the animal—that is to say, anything in reason.”
“Well,” replied my friend, “that is all very fair, to be sure. Let me think!
—what should I have? Oh! I will tell you. My reward shall be this. You
shall give me all the information in your power about these murders in the
Rue Morgue.”
Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just as
quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it, and put the key in his
pocket. He then drew a pistol from his bosom and placed it, without the
least flurry, upon the table.
The sailor’s face flushed up as if he were struggling with suffocation. He
started to his feet and grasped his cudgel; but the next moment he fell back
into his seat, trembling violently, and with the countenance of death itself.
He spoke not a word. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart.

“My friend,” said Dupin, in a kind tone, “you are alarming yourself
unnecessarily—you are indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I pledge
you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we intend you no
injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of the atrocities in the
Rue Morgue. It will not do, however, to deny that you are in some measure
implicated in them. From what I have already said, you must know that I
have had means of information about this matter—means of which you
could never have dreamed. Now the thing stands thus. You have done
nothing which you could have avoided—nothing, certainly, which renders
you culpable. You were not even guilty of robbery, when you might have
robbed with impunity. You have nothing to conceal. You have no reason for
concealment. On the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor
to confess all you know. An innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with
that crime of which you can point out the perpetrator.”
The sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure, while
Dupin uttered these words; but his original boldness of bearing was all
gone.
“So help me God,” said he, after a brief pause, “I will tell you all I know
about this affair;—but I do not expect you to believe one half I say—I
would be a fool indeed if I did. Still, I am innocent, and I will make a clean
breast if I die for it.”
What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage to
the Indian Archipelago. A party, of which he formed one, landed at Borneo,
and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure. Himself and a
companion had captured the Ourang-Outang. This companion dying, the
animal fell into his own exclusive possession. After great trouble,
occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive during the home
voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it safely at his own residence in
Paris, where, not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his
neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover
from a wound in the foot, received from a splinter on board ship. His
ultimate design was to sell it.
Returning home from some sailor’s frolic on the night, or rather in the
morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room,
into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was