Part 6

At this moment Dr. Gresham made a move to leave the promontory. Laying a detaining hand swiftly upon his arm, I whispered:

“_Wait! Stand still!_”

Unquestioningly the astronomer obeyed; and for a couple of minutes I watched the neighboring clump of rocks out of the corner of my eye. Presently I saw a darkly-clad figure crawl out of the shadow of the pile, cross a patch of moonlight, and join two other figures at the edge of the timber. The trio stood looking in our direction a moment, while apparently holding a whispered conference. Then all three disappeared into the shadow of the woods.

Immediately I announced to my companion:

“We have been discovered! There are three Chinamen watching us from the timber, not a hundred yards away!”

The scientist was silent a moment. Then:

“Do they know you saw them?” he asked.

“I think not,” I replied.

Still without looking around, he asked:

“Where are they—directly behind us?”

“No; well to the side—the side nearest the power plant.”

“Good! Then we’ll move back toward the timber at once—go leisurely, as if we suspected nothing. If we reach the cover of the woods all right, we’ll make a dash for it. Head straight up for the top of the ridge—cross over and descend into the gulch on the other side—then detour back toward the _Albatross_. Stick to the shadows—travel as fast as we can—and try to throw off pursuit!”

Moving off as unconsciously as if we were totally unaware that we had been observed, we struck out for the timber—all the time keeping a sharp lookout, for we half expected the spies to head us off and attempt a surprise attack. But we reached the darkness of the woods without even a glimpse of the Celestials; and instantly we broke into a run.

The ascent was too steep to permit much speed; moreover, the roughness of the ground and the down-timber hampered us greatly—yet we had the consolation of knowing that it equally hampered our pursuers.

For nearly an hour we pressed on. The mountaintop was crossed, and we descended into a canyon on the other side. No sight or sound of the Chinamen had greeted us. Could they have surmised the course we would take, and calmly let us proceed, while they returned for reinforcements to head us off? Or were they silently stalking us to find out who we were and whence we came? We could not tell. And there was the other chance, too, that we had shaken off pursuit.

Gradually this latter possibility became a definite hope, which grew as our overtaxed strength began to fail. Nevertheless, we pushed on until we were so spent and winded that we could scarcely drag one foot after the other.

We had now reached a spot where the floor of the canyon widened out into a tiny level park. Here the timber was so dense that we were swallowed up in almost complete darkness; and in this protecting mantle of shadow we decided to stop for a brief rest. Stretching out upon the ground, with our arms extended at our sides, we lay silent, inhaling deep breaths of the cool, refreshing mountain air.

We were now on the opposite side of a long and high mountain ridge from the Chinese village, and, as nearly as we could estimate, not more than a mile or two from the _Albatross_.

Lying there on the ground, we could feel the earthquakes with startling violence. We noticed that they no longer occurred only at intervals of eleven minutes and a fraction—although they were particularly severe at those periods—but that they kept up an almost continuous quivering, as if the globe’s internal forces were bubbling restlessly.

Suddenly, in the wake of one of the heavier shocks of the eleven-minute period, the intense stillness was broken by a sharp report, followed by a ripping sound from the bowels of the earth, that seemed to start close at hand and rush off into the distance, quickly dying out. From the mountainside above us came the crash of a falling tree and the clatter of a few dislodged rocks bounding down the slope. The earth swayed as if a giant gash had opened and closed within a few rods of us.

The occurrence made Dr. Gresham and myself sit up instantly. Nothing, however, was visible through the forest gloom of any changes in the landscape. Again silence settled about us.

Several minutes passed.

Then abruptly, from a short distance away, came the sound of something stirring. Sitting motionless, alert, we listened. Almost immediately we heard it again, and this time the sound did not die out. Something off there in the timber was moving stealthily toward us!

Dropping back at full length upon the ground, with only our heads raised, we kept a sharp watch.

Only a few more moments were we kept in suspense; then, across a slit of moonlight, we saw five Chinamen swiftly moving. They were slinking along almost noiselessly, as if following a scent—and, with a shock, we realized that it was ourselves they were tracking! We had not shaken off our pursuers, after all!

Even before we could decide, in a whispered debate, what our next move should be, our nerves again were whipped taut by other sounds close at hand—but now on the opposite side of the little valley from the first ones. This time the sounds grew fainter—only to become louder again almost immediately, as if the intruders were searching back and forth across the flat. In a short while it became plain that they were drawing closer to us.

“What fools we were to stop to rest!” the astronomer complained.

“I have a hunch we would have run into some of those spies if we had kept on,” I rejoined. “They must have headed us off and found that we didn’t pass on down this canyon, else they wouldn’t be searching here so thoroughly.”

“Right!” my friend agreed. “And now they’ve got us in a tight place!”

“Suppose,” I suggested, “we slip across the valley and climb part way up that other mountainside—then try to work along through the timber up there until we’re near the ship?”

“Good!” he assented. “Come on!”

Lying at full length upon the ground and wriggling along like snakes, we headed between two groups of the searchers. It was slow work, but we did not dare even to rise to our knees to crawl. Twice we dimly made out, not fifty feet away, some of the Chinamen slinking along, apparently hunting over every foot of the region. We could not tell how many of them there were now.

After a time that seemed nearly endless we reached the edge of the flat. Here we rose to our feet to tackle the slope in front of us.

As we did so, two figures leaped out of the gloom close at hand and split the night with cries of “_Fan kuei! Fan kuei!_” (“Foreign devils!”)

Then they sprang to seize us.

Further concealment being impossible, we darted back into the valley, no longer avoiding the patches of moonlight, but rather seeking them, so we could see where we were going. We were heading for the fiord.

In a few seconds other cries arose on all sides of us. It seemed we were surrounded and that the whole region swarmed with Chinamen. Dark forms began to plunge out of the woods ahead to intercept us; the leading ones were not sixty feet away.

“We’ll have to fight for it!” called Dr. Gresham. And our hands flew to our revolvers.

But before we could draw the weapons a great ripping and crashing sound burst forth upon the mountainside above us—the terrifying noise of rocks splitting and grinding—an appalling turmoil! Terrified, pursued and pursuers alike paused to glance upward.

There, in the brilliant moonlight, we saw a monster avalanche sweeping downward, engulfing everything in its way!

Abandoning the astronomer and myself, the Chinamen turned to flee further from the path of the landslide—and we all began running together down the valley.

Only a few steps had we gone, however, when above the roaring of the avalanche a new sound rang out—short, sharp, booming, like the report of a giant gun.

As I glanced about through the blotches of moonlight and shadow, I saw several of the sorcerers just ahead suddenly halt, stagger and then drop from sight.

Dr. Gresham and I stopped instantly, but not before we beheld other Chinamen disappearing from view.

_The earth had opened and they were falling in!_

Even as we stood there, hesitating, the black maw yawned wider—to our very feet—and with cries of horror we tried to stagger back. But we were too late. The sides of the crack were crumbling in, and in another instant the widening gash overtook us.

As his eyes met mine, I saw the astronomer topple backward and disappear.

A second later the ground gave way beneath my own feet and I was plunged into the blackness of the pit.

_This extraordinary novel will be concluded in the June issue of WEIRD TALES._

_Tell your newsdealer to reserve a copy for you._

THE SECRET FEAR

_A “Creepy” Detective Story_

By KENNETH DUANE WHIPPLE

The night was hot and breathless, as had been the day, and the humid _tang_ of the salt air smote my nostrils as, envying Martin his vacation respite from the grind of police reporting, I turned off the broad, paved thoroughfare of Washington Avenue and started down Wharf Street, narrow and dimly lighted, toward my lodgings beyond the bridge.

As I passed the second dirty-globed street light I halted suddenly, with the staccato sound of hurrying footsteps in my ears. Homeward bound from the Journal office, where Martin’s work had kept me until after midnight, I had yielded to the temptation offered by the short cut. Now, with the peculiar emphatic insistence of the footfalls behind me, I began to wonder if I had chosen wisely.

Brass buttons, glinting dully under the corner arc, reassured me. The next instant I was roughly ordered to halt. I recognized the hoarse, panting voice of Patrolman Tom Kenton of the fourth precinct, whose beat, as I knew, lay along the wharves.

“It’s me, Kenton—Jack Bowers, of the _Journal_,” I said. “What’s doing?”

Kenton peered at me keenly in the bad light. Then his face relaxed.

“Man killed in Kellogg’s warehouse, just around the corner there,” he replied.

“Killed? How?”

“The sergeant didn’t say. I got it from him just now when I reported. Someone ’phoned in a minute ago. Come along and see, if you want. It’s right in your line, and you’re a good friend of the captain’s.”

I fell into step with him, finding some difficulty in keeping pace.

“Do you know who ’phoned?” I asked.

“No. May be a joke. May be a frame-up. May be anything.”

His deep voice rumbled through the gloom of the dingy street, deserted save for our hurrying figures. We crossed to the opposite side, passing beneath a blue arc which flamed and sputtered naked through a jagged gash in its dirty, frosted globe.

Just around the corner loomed the ramshackle bulk of Kellogg’s warehouse, a four-story, wooden structure squatting above the river piers. On the ground floor a broad entrance gaped blackly. At the left of the doorway, about three feet above street level, the end of a loading platform jutted out of the darkness.

Beyond the warehouse a narrow pier ran out toward midstream. I caught a glimpse of the riding lights of some small vessel, dimly outlined against the gray-black of the oily water.

Kenton stopped at the corner of the warehouse to draw his revolver, motioning me to remain where I was.

“Stay here,” he said under his breath. “I’ll take a look. If it’s a frame-up there’s no need to get anyone else into it. Besides, you’d be more help here.”

He squared his broad shoulders and was swallowed up by the oblong of black. It did not require much urging to persuade me to stay outside. Timidly I peeped through a crack in the warped boarding. The dim ray of light which Kenton cast before him seemed only to accentuate the obscurity.

The light became stationary. I could distinguish Kenton bending over something on the dirt floor not fifteen feet inside the entrance. He looked up and spoke softly.

“Come ahead, Mr. Bowers,” he said. “No joke about this.”

There was a grim edge to his tone. With a shiver, I stepped through the doorway and crossed to where he crouched above a motionless shape huddled against the side of the long loading platform.

The body was that of a man of large stature—more than six feet in height, as nearly as I could judge from the cramped position in which he lay. There were no visible marks of violence, except for a frayed linen collar pulled awry, which dangled by a single buttonhole from the shirt about the powerful, corded neck. But as I bent closer to look at the features, I drew back with a gasp.

The face of the dead man was distorted by an expression of the utmost horror and loathing. Around the dilated pupils of his large, bluish-gray eyes, the ghastly whites showed in a pallid rim of fear. His irregular, reddish features, even in death, seemed fairly to writhe with terror. One long, sinewy arm was thrown up across the lower part of his face, as if to ward off some unseen and terrible menace.

Shuddering, I stared across the body at Kenton’s homely, impassive face.

“In heaven’s name, what happened to him?” I asked.

Kenton’s hands had been moving swiftly over the body. Now he spread them apart in a little puzzled gesture.

“There doesn’t seem to be any wound,” he said. “See if there isn’t a switch around somewhere, Mr. Bowers. There ought to be a way of lighting up here.”

I fumbled along the wall until my fingers encountered the round porcelain knob. A single grimy bulb, pendant from a cobwebbed rafter, threw a dim circle of grewsome yellow light upon the floor of the warehouse.

The body had lain on its left side, facing the doorway. Kenton methodically turned the corpse upon its face, his searching fingers exploring the back. To me, at least, it was a relief that the staring, terrified eyes were hidden from view, rather than gazing fearfully through the arch of the doorway into the narrow, empty street beyond.

“There’s something queer about this,” said Kenton. “No wound at all, Mr. Bowers, that I can find. No blood—not even a bruise, only this mark at the throat.”

I had not seen the mark before, and even now I had to look closely to find it. It was scarcely more than a discoloration of the skin in a broad band beneath the chin. But there was no abrasion, much less a wound sufficient to cause the death of a powerful man like the one who lay before us.

With a shrug of his shoulders, Kenton rolled the body back to its original position. At once the ghastly eyes renewed their unwinking stare at the empty street.

* * * * *

A sound from the doorway caused us both to turn. Only Kenton himself can say what his imagination pictured there. For my part, I owned a feeling of distinct relief at sight of nothing more startling than a pair of ragged-looking men peering in at the open door.

As we looked, a third derelict of the wharves joined them, pressing inquisitively forward toward the body on the floor.

“Whassa trouble here?” asked one, curiously. “Somebody croak a guy?”

“Yes,” said Kenton tersely. “Know him, any of you?”

His companion, who had been staring at the body, suddenly spoke in a startled tone:

“By gorry, it’s Terence McFadden! I’d never have known the boy with that look on his face, except for the scar over his right eye. Look, Jim! Sure, and he looks as if the divil was after him!”

A confirmatory murmur came from the others. The grind of a street car’s wheels on the curve of Washington Avenue cut clearly across the low lapping of the waves against the rotting piles outside the warehouse. The humid air, impregnated with the foul odors of the waterfront, was stifling.

The three men huddled closer, with fearful glances over their shoulders, as if striving to glimpse that which the eyes of the dead man watched. Kenton alone seemed unaffected by the tension.

“Know where he lives?”

“Over on Twenty-fourth Street,” volunteered the third man. “But he’d been on the Tiger yonder this evening. I saw him go aboard. Why not call Captain Dolan? Him and Terry was pals.”

“What’s his name?”

“Dolan—Captain Ira Dolan.”

“Go and get him,” ordered Kenton, removing his cap and mopping his forehead.

The man, not unwillingly, passed out of the circle of light. We heard his footsteps on the planking of the pier, and his hail to the ship anchored there.

Kenton turned to me, a worried look on his face.

“Would you mind going down to Patton’s place on the corner and ’phoning in, Mr. Bowers?” he asked. “I wouldn’t ask it, but the captain knows you well. Tell him I’m staying with the body. And ask him to have Doctor Potts come, if he’s there. I’d like to get to the bottom of this.”

I was only too glad to get out of the warehouse, for the eerie atmosphere was beginning to get on my nerves. When I returned, two of the somnolent loafers from Patton’s greasy lunch room, roused by my telephone message to Captain Watters of the fourth precinct, followed in my wake, muttering and rubbing their bleared eyes.

Less than ten minutes had passed since we had found the dead man in Kellogg’s old warehouse. Yet now a dozen frowsy wharf-rats fringed the doorway, brought thither by some mysterious telepathic message borne on the murky night air.

“Be here in ten minutes,” I said, nodding to Kenton.

Suddenly a man made his way through the crowd and hastened toward us. His rugged, weather-beaten face took deeper lines from the dim light overhead, its high lights gleaming in the ghastly radiance like pieces of yellowed parchment. Yet there was power in the piercing blue eye, and strength in every line of the tall, gaunt figure, now stooping suddenly over the body of the dead man.

“Terence!” he cried, his voice harsh with grief. “Terence, lad!”

Kenton bent over and touched him on the shoulder.

“Are you Captain Dolan?” he asked.

The old man looked up, one hand still resting upon the motionless body beside which he knelt.

“I am,” he said simply.

“I understand this man—Terence McFadden, his name is?—”

Captain Dolan nodded.

“I understand he was on board your ship tonight?”

“Yes,” said Captain Dolan, rising to his feet.

“What time did he leave?”

“’Twas not more than half an hour ago, officer. Shortly after midnight, I would say. He was just aboard for a little farewell banquet, y’understand—just a friendly visit, eating and drinking and the like, before I leave at daybreak for another trip. I’m going down the coast.”

Kenton shook his head.

“Never mind that. Have you any idea how he met his death? Had he any enemies that you know?”

Captain Dolan ran his bony fingers through his grizzled locks, his eyes still on the body of his friend.

“Enemies he had aplenty, officer, like any two-fisted man with the disposition of Terence McFadden. ’Twas only last week he cleaned up two of the Jerry Kramer gang that tried to hold him up with a pistol down on this very street. But his worry tonight had nothing to do with them. A man like Terence could take care of himself against any man. Truth to tell, he was his own worst enemy.”

Kenton broke in sharply.

“What’s that? He was worried tonight, you say?”

There seemed to be a trace of evasion in Captain Dolan’s manner.

“It was a piece he read in the paper. It fair spoiled his supper for him.”

“What was it about?”

“It was an item from the Zoo,” replied Captain Dolan.

Kenton fingered a button puzzledly, casting a mystified glance at me. It was evident that his inquiries were not getting him anywhere.

Before he could question Captain Dolan further, the group about the doorway behind us was thrust roughly aside, and Patrolman Corcoran, the new officer from the adjacent beat, shouldered his way in. His right hand was twisted in the lapels of a short, squat foreigner with a swarthy face half hidden by a coarse, reddish-brown beard. The neck of his sweat-soaked undershirt was open, and his sleeves were rolled above hairy, muscular forearms.

Corcoran stared at the group about the lifeless body of Terence McFadden.

“So it’s true, is it?” he curiously asked. “I thought ‘Big Jim’ here was trying to give me a wrong steer.”

“Who?” asked Kenton.

“Dobrowski, or some such name—‘Big Jim,’ they call him. He’s one of the Kramer gang, they say.”

“Where’d you get him?”

“Caught him coming out of a basement over on Efton Street. He took one look at me and ran like hell. So I rounded him up and asked him what was the big idea of running. He just looked dumb, but I knew he’d been up to something. So I frisked him, and found—these!”

He pulled a watch and purse from the side pocket of his coat. Captain Dolan leaned forward eagerly.

“Terence’s!” he cried. “See if his initials are not in the back!”

He fairly snatched the watch from Corcoran’s hand. The younger patrolman turned to Kenton.

“Who’s the old bird, anyway?” he asked in an undertone.

Kenton established the captain’s connection with the affair in a few words. In the meantime the old man had pried open the gold case with his heavy thumbnail and was squinting inside.

“See!” he affirmed, pointing to the initials “_T. J. M._” engraved there.

Corcoran nodded carelessly.

“‘Big Jim,’ all right,” he said decisively. “He’s the man that killed McFadden here.”

“Big Jim” stared at his captor, chewing vigorously.

“No kill!” he exclaimed. “No kill!”

Kenton had been frowning perplexedly. Now he turned to Corcoran.

“Say, Bill,” he demanded, “how did you get over here, anyhow? Who told you there’d been a man killed?”

To our utter amazement, Corcoran jerked his thumb toward “Big Jim.”

“He did,” he said.

“_He_ did?” repeated Kenton incredulously. “Then you were the one that ’phoned in to the sergeant?”

Corcoran nodded, taking a tighter grip on the captive’s lapels.

“I was going to call the wagon and go straight in with ‘Big Jim’ here. Then he told such a funny story that I thought maybe he was trying to string me, so I marched him over here to make sure.”

Kenton shook his head.

“That was no way to go,” he muttered under his breath. “Well, no matter. What does he say?”

“Says he took this stuff away from McFadden, but didn’t kill him,” sneered Corcoran. “Doesn’t know who killed him, but he didn’t. Fishy? Well, I’ll tell the world!”

Captain Dolan again bent over the body of Terence McFadden. Then he looked up at “Big Jim.”

“Tell us what happened,” he commanded.

Words popped turbulently from “Big Jim.” Either he was actually telling the truth, or he had committed his story to heart.

“No Kill!” he vociferated, gesticulating. “No kill! Take watch, but no kill! Hide for man—pull him in—fight—he dead! Take money—run—hide—”

Fear shone in his shifting eyes and on his swarthy, perspiring face. As he glanced nervously about the building, the fantastic idea occurred to me that his fear was less of the police than of some unseen, intangible force beyond his comprehension. I caught myself looking apprehensively over my own shoulder.