Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/40

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It is now ten months since my old friend Stephen Grayton, the eminent archeologist, sailed for Belize. It is ten months since I have heard from him. An expedition, composed of scientists and friends of Grayton, has been organized and sails from Boston June 26th, on the Scotia. The purpose is to rescue Grayton, if he is still alive, and to destroy the Thing in the Pyramid. It is in the interests of science and archeology that I am publishing this. I have the manuscript as proof. Anyone interested in this expedition and desiring to aid either financially or in person, please communicate with me at 19 Tremont Street, Boston, before June 15th.

The story follows, word for word as told to me by Stephen Grayton the night before he sailed:

Of course you know that ever since my days at Harvard I have been interested in archeology, particularly in that of Central America. Fifteen years ago, five years after we left college, I inherited a sufficient amount of money to allow me to devote my entire time to research and expeditions. At first it was the Aztec and Toltec ruins which fascinated me; but gradually I turned to the Mayan civilization, which is even more mysterious and more unknown. Two years ago I spent several months on the Yucatan peninsula, most profitable and interesting months. I began to devote more and more of my time in the attempt to decipher the undecipherable Mayan hieroglyphics. After some study I decided that these inscriptions at Chi-Chien were written in a bastard dialect, a corrupted and degenerated form. The pure Mayan inscriptions must be elsewhere. I had not succeeded in really deciphering, understand, and so I could not be sure; but that feeling persisted. The architecture, what remained of it, also conveyed this impression; it seemed a weak copy of some far loftier conception. This fever, to read these inscriptions, took firm hold on me; I have not lost it. But I had no idea where I could find what I sought.

When I first went into Yucatan I had picked up and attached as my personal servant an Indian boy with just enough mixture of blood to make him more intelligent than the average. I taught him English and gradually