Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/100

black fear clutching at his heart, the lost fire of his seafaring youth returned to him, and hatless he ran into the darkness, and pounded fiercely at the doors of sleeping neighbors.

Shortly two friends and the distracted man set off with lanterns the way she had taken—and found her, face downward, cold and dead, in the soft, dry sand above high water. With dreading touch they sought for evidence of foul murder, but failed to discover wound or mark of evil clutch upon her. Then by the yellow light of a lantern they searched the vicinity for trace of assailant; for it was evident there had been a struggle, or rather a defense against something that had overtaken her.

The crooked, rigid fingers, the outthrust arms, and the deep depression in which the victim lay spoke eloquently and horribly of the short, desperate struggle she had waged to protect herself against a merciless antagonist who had leaped and hurled her headlong. While the frenzied old man bent over his darling, moaning and calling piteously to the cold, unhearing ears, his two companions tramped the vicinity and examined closely the soft, shifting sand. Though so loose that the imprint of their steps was at once half filled and blurred beyond identification, nevertheless it was plain enough that the poor girl had come from the steep descent in the ravine at the head of the bay and strolled toward the firm, smooth floor left by the receding tide. Half-way to it she had halted, then apparently returned a few paces, and there suddenly turned and run for the line of great boulders that strewed the foot of the sheer cliff, the nearest of the two giant black arms enclosing her.

This absurd turning and haste was so apparent that it was obvious something had intercepted her return and she had madly raced for the only shelter at hand. But not a third of the distance had been covered when a most astounding thing had happened, for the tracks vanished! Not a trace of her step was visible in the space of at least a dozen feet that lay between the last deep slurred indentation and the dead girl.

But for these two searchers the strange fact would have escaped notice, for at dawn the feet of many shocked friends had quite obliterated every trace of her movements. At the inquest the affair was sworn to by the discoverers, but excited little comment, for other even stranger matters occupied the attention of the astounded and baffled inquiry; yet to the two witnesses that void space, the visible evidence of a thing unknown and inconceivable, was the most appalling memory they retained. And for many a night they pondered over it and spoke darkly of things evil and malignant that of old they had heard their fathers' fathers declare roamed such desolate places; and the cheery lamplight within seemed more comforting than ever they had known it.

But men of learning and those skilled in the murky labyrinths of evil vainly sought to elucidate the matter; even a great surgeon from the city had willingly found time to assist at the autopsy, summoned by a wire from an humble country medico, who nevertheless in college had ranked higher than his famous chum. And in terms unintelligible to the lay mind the two had agreed and wrangled throughout one whole night, until the gray of dawn had sent the visitor hastening back to waiting patients. His last words as he pressed the starter were, "Thanks, Slater; the most amazing case I ever encountered—most interesting. But what the deuce caused it I haven't a notion."

As with an earlier verdict, those few curt words summed the facts the strictest probing had elicited. Well they might, for never a bruise or the least abrasion lay upon the poor body, yet of blood not a drop remained within it; and as in the case of young Symington the staggering complete-