Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/33

door, and the chair which had been placed against it, crashed into the room. As the door splintered he had glimpsed a man in the room—a lithe, compact man with his face toward the window. Then the light, which streamed from an electric torch, flashed out. When he got into the room he had to feel about on the bureau for matches before he could get a light.

The murderer had gone—through an open window, beneath which a small shed was built against the side of the hotel; on to this he had evidently dropped from the window-sill.

On the bed lay the man he had killed—a Chinaman. About his throat deepened a crimson smear. The crumpled bedding, red-blotted here and there as with the splashings of an unruly pen, suggested the terrific struggle that must have terminated only with that dreadful scream.

Wilde went to the window again and peered into the blackness, but a hundred murderers could have hidden within a dozen yards of him. The mountains, their presences felt rather than seen, seemed nearer; more than ever did they suggest black brooding personalities pondering the impertinence of this intrusion into their solitude.

On the floor was a traveling bag, and a satchel of the sort used for carrying legal documents. Both had been slashed with a knife as if the murderer suspected the existence of some secret compartment. Clothing, and papers covered with Chinese characters, were strewn around the room.

Wilde scrutinized the Chinaman intently, his big hands clasping and unclasping, a vast indignation boiling within him. The man's face must have been placid and smooth and expressionless before the dreadful realization of his danger had come upon him. But now it was contorted in the sharp agony of death. The narrow, dark eyes, forced wide open, stared upward appealingly. The man's hair was spare and gray, and Wilde estimated his age at sixty. His broad flat face was dignified, even in death. That he was no common coolie Wilde could see at a glance.

The man's head had sagged to one side and Wilde raised it and pillowed it. As he did so the man's pajama coat opened, the two top buttons having come out of their loops, and Wilde noticed that the breast of his undervest bulged slightly as if some object lay beneath it. Unbuttoning it gently, he found a pocket sewn on to the inner side of the vest, fastened with a tiny button, and filled with papers which he took out. It was fortunate that he did so, for they were blood-soaked and would soon have been indecipherable.

Wilde spread them on the dressing table so they could dry out. All of them but one were covered with Chinese characters and were as unintelligible as those scattered on the floor. This one he took up with an exclamation of surprize. It was a rough map of the inlet. But when he discovered a small cross upon it, his surprize deepened into amazement. The cross was marked squarely on the center of the waterfront of the copper property Wilde had come north to inspect!

At that moment he heard the patter of feet on the stairs, and thrusting the paper into the pocket of his pajama coat, he strode into the corridor, marveling at the variety of emotions one may experience in the space of three minutes; for no more than that space of time had elapsed since the Chinaman had screamed in his death

Nolan, the proprietor of the hotel, a lanky, thin man in a very short gray flannel nightgown and dilapidated