Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/97

presence from something feared, they turned and made their way back to the dusty road.

"Say, Bill, this poor guy now," said Joe as they hastened on their mission; "there ain't no doubt but he dropped out of a flying-machine, so high up we never heard it, but it's queer—he's dressed all wrong. It ain't the front of a birdman—or even a passenger—no coat, no mitts or helmet, not even goggles, and him all that way up!"

"That's so," said his companion slowly. "And ain't these flyers strapped in their seats, case of accidents?"

"Sure!" confirmed Joe with the easy assurance that another's ignorance often begets. "Though maybe this guy's straps went back on him, or—by Jiminy!—now I wonder!"

"Wonder what?" queried his companion briefly, the unwonted pace having told on him.

"Well—I dunno. But maybe this guy done it himself—jumped out, went bugs or something!" replied Joe hesitatingly.

"Meanin' suicide? I never heard of a birdman taken that way—they being sure to smash some day," said Bill, voicing the pessimistic popular conception of the fate awaiting such intrepid adventurers.

"But Lord, what a nerve! if he done it—miles and miles of dropping through nothing!" mused Joe, loth to relinquish the horrific pictured descent.

"What would he strip his working-rags for, anyway? There ain't no sense to it,” objected his companion with an innate love of debate.

"I dunno—it's a mystery," avowed Joe frankly.

And that was the verdict accorded the occurrence by a coroner's jury and the expert investigators who at once were engaged to elucidate the strange and tragic enigma. For immediately the poor, shattered thing had been identified as one James Symington, a youth in his early twenties, and son of a wealthy shoe manufacturer—a young man of exemplary habit and pleasing personality; quiet, unassuming, and devoted to his parents, his business, and the hobby of photography: in short, a level-headed, estimable young American, and certainly the last one his friends would consider to be afflicted with the insanity of self-destruction—though a most cursory survey of the known facts banished effectually the incipient rumor that possibly the discoverers had thoughtlessly originated.

It appeared that the boy had never ascended a foot save by the aid of his legs or an elevator, and had a natural antipathy to aeronautics. Moreover, on the morning of the tragedy he had left his home for a few days' vacation, and had taken his car and camera out for a ramble along the picturesque Maine coastline, with no particular objective in view but merely to wander as fancy dictated. And the car was found ten miles from the fatal spot, overturned in a ditch bordering a lonely stretch of by-road that there for a space closely parallels the cliffs which for many miles tower a hundred feet or more above the surf-lashed sands.

By what possible means had the victim been transferred from his car, conveyed ten miles, ascended to an unguessable height and there been launched in that terrible descent? It was all inconceivable, both in the mode of its execution and in its object. One might as well endeavor to formulate a plausible explanation of the sudden materialization of a prehistoric monster in the trim flower-beds of a city park! And each detail as it was brought to light but further meshed the affair in a net of mystery.

The little clock in the overturned car had stopped at 6 p. m., and this might reasonably be taken to indicate the moment of capsizing, and