Page:Weird tales v36n07 1942-09.djvu/36

cool, hard laughter. Where the girl had been standing I discerned a faint glow as of a shaded lantern. This light suddenly rose upward like thistledown on the wind, but in a swift, straight movement. It was as if that shaded lantern had been fastened at the end of a rope and had been drawn steadily upward. It paused in mid-air, hanging motionless over the middle of the quarry. I felt a most uncomfortable qualm at that sight, and mentally refused to give entrance to the surmises that crowded upon my troubled mind.

Peter was shouting at me from below, a quaver in his voice that he managed to restrain just above the point where it might have sounded craven. My sympathy was with him, for I felt the way his voice sounded.

"For God's sake, Judge, don't drop that torch!" he was crying at me. "I'm coming up. We couldn't get him out of here in the dark." The torch shook in my trembling hand. It could not have been of much assistance to Peter in his climb up the side of the quarry.

The girl—had no lantern. She had come floating up out of that quarry as if she were lighter than thistledown on the night wind—and through the long pointed cap that enveloped her hair glowed the light from those uncanny locks of flaming red. I mean that. The light came from her hair. It burned and glowed from under the edges of her long tasselled cap, and blazed where it had escaped in occasional locks as if it were living flame. It was unearthly. I was thankful when Peter had scrambled to my side.

"She's gone?" he asked rather than stated.

I touched him and he looked and saw what I was seeing. I could feel his sturdy frame shuddering. And as we stared, she must have drawn the cap closer over her brows and tucked in those fiery, straying locks, for it was as if someone had pushed an extinguisher down upon a flaming torch. Only a faint glow remained, like decaying wood; even that drifted away from us at last, like sea spume in moonlight, driven by a summer zephyr. But I had seen her face in one flashing moment; distinctly. It was unlike the face of any mortal woman I had ever looked upon. Something unearthly—elfish!

Peter was right when he said: "Extraordinary!"

"I don't believe she means us any harm," he whispered as if he feared to be overheard. "I gave her back her cap, didn't I?" he murmured uncertainly. "But I say, Judge, let's light out of here!"

It may have seemed cowardly to go away, leaving the body of my dead partner at the bottom of the black quarry, but perhaps if you had seen what Peter and I saw, you would have run for comparative shelter just as fast as we ran through the wood to my cabin.

The November wind howled and tore at us as we fled, the electric torch lighting our way precariously. Yet we were glad enough that no other light showed itself in our path. All that was ever said between us about that girl, Peter said when we had reached our goal.

"Will-o'-the-wisp," he muttered thickly, breathing hard as he slammed the bolts of the cabin door firmly into place.

And then he went to work nailing blankets over both the windows, nor did I question his action.

Of course, we couldn't tell all our story to the coroner next day. We said that Hank Walters had followed a girl that night and had inadvertently fallen into the quarry in the dark and that we could not locate the girl. The coroner said it was clear enough. He even suggested that the girl might have pushed Hank. Peter and I—well, we knew there was no need to push Hank when he was following the Ignis Fatuus.