Page:Weird Tales Volume 12 Issue 05 (1928-11).djvu/99
that exhibited a most, peculiar condition, being pitted with innumerable minute excrescences which under microscopical examination were found to be of craterlike construction whose vents were in reality but pores greatly distended and ruptured so badly beneath the surface that in their bursting they had lacerated the mesh of tiny veins about them so completely that to the naked eye the tissues appeared merely as a puffed, disorganized mass of macerated pulp. Whether this condition was the result of immense pressures experienced in such a stupendous fall was a matter they lacked the data to affirm or deny, but save for this purely speculative supposition they had no other solution to offer—a pronouncement quite in accord with the cherished traditions of scientific reserve and caution.
As usual, public imagination seized on the sensational, and promptly garbled, misquoted, and maltreated the hesitant speculation, and spoke knowingly of strains and stresses, and vascular tissue, and felt exalted by their perspicacity, and justified in spoiling reams of good paper informing weary editors of absurd and weird conclusions the writers had evolved to account for an impossible, objectless translation to an invisible, untraceable flying-machine.
And there the matter rested; money and brains had collaborated and utterly failed to unearth a single fact upon which to base any rational theory of mode or motive of the killing of James Symington; who being but one man among many millions, each with his bread to earn and his niche to fill in a busy world, it is not surprizing that the millions shortly shelved the tragedy in the dim subconscious vaults where side by side lie every shred of emotion, every fact, everything felt, seen, or heard in a lifetime, be it junk or treasure.
A month later the body of one Harriet Conroy was discovered, face down, on the lonely sands of Ladner Bay, barely three miles distant from the spot where poor Symington’s car had capsized.
Again the public thrilled with horror as it learned the strange and gruesome facts connected with the grim tragedy; and with the odd, illogical intuition of the mass mind in moments of high emotion immediately the two fatalities were associated, though save in one particular there lay no resemblance between the manner of the victims' slaying.
Harriet Conroy, only daughter of a retired sea captain, a widower with a modest competence, was school mistress in her home village of Shaldon. Just turned twenty, healthy, cheerful and level-headed, she was liked and respected by all in the little community. The fact of that solitary stroll to Ladner sands was due to no morbid love of lonely self-commune, but merely the result of a persistent headache. For on that tragic day, after tea with her father, she had remarked that probably a brisk walk along the cliffs to the sands would be better than any medicine; and mentioning that on her return she would likely spend a few minutes at a neighbor's, with a smile of affectionate reassurance to her parent she had gone on her way.
That was the last time her father ever watched the trim figure unlatch the little garden gate. At dusk she had not returned, nor an hour later, when, mindful of her words, the lonely old man had smiled and grumbled fondly, "These women! and their minutes—it seems but yesterday she was snug in bed and hours sleeping by this time." Then, thinking a little sadly that a day might come when another home would claim her, he slipped from revery to slumber; and awoke to find the clock hands were nearly laid together and the house as lonely as ever. Then, with a sudden