Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 12.djvu/26

1104 and even leaned over to observe how the anklets were adjusted to his legs.

A certain air of politeness about the Incan at last constrained Pethwick to say:

“You understand, Mr. Three, we are forced to do this—it is the law.”

“And you rather dislike me anyway, do you not, Mr. Pethwick?” added Three genially.

The engineer flushed, but kept his eyes steadily on Mr. Three's.

“I dislike you, but I dislike to do this more.”

After the shackling the captors stood undecidedly. So they had captured the murderer of Cesare Ruano.

“We'll have to carry him before a magistrate,” pondered M. Demetriovich. “It's very annoying.”

“M. Demetriovich,” said Mr. Three, still smiling in his chains, “you have studied physiology?

“Yes.”

“And perhaps vivisection?”

“Certainly.”

“Then why all this disturbance about killing a lower animal for scientific ends?”

The old Rumanian looked at Mr. Three steadfastly. “I cannot accept your point, Mr. Three. We are all human beings together, even if Cesare Ruano did not have the culture—”

The rather pointless proceedings were interrupted by a burst of snorting and braying from the corral. Pethwick hurried outside, for the pack animals were really of more importance than the prisoner. The engineer got out just in time to see Pablo go at full speed toward the enclosure. The Indian had a epeating rifle and no doubt feared the attack of a puma or jaguar.

On Pethwick's heels came both M. Demetriovich and the white-haired secretary. The valley was strewn with boulders big and little and the men had difficulty in running over broken ground. From a far off Pethwick saw that the down-river side of the corral had been knocked down, and all the llamas and mules came storming out, flying down toward the camp as if the fiends pursued them.

Pablo fired his rifle in the air in an effort to turn them. As he did so, the Zambo reeled as if he had received a mighty but invisible blow. Mules and llamas plunged straight past their staggering master and for a moment Pethwick was afraid they would run him down.

Next moment the engineer heard the secretary and the professor shouting at the top of their voices. He looked around and saw the comb of his tent on fire.

Thought of his prisoner likely to burn up, sent Pethwick sprinting breathless toward the tent. As the flames rushed over the oiled canvas Pethwick jerked up the ground-pins of the rear wall and shoved under.

Mr. Three still sat in the chair with arms and legs bound to the posts. He slumped queerly. His hat dropped down on his shirt. Half suffocated, the engineer grabbed up chair, manacles, man and all and rushed into the open.

Once outside, he dropped his burden and began to slap at the fire on his own clothes. The other men began to put out the fire on Mr. Three's garments. At their strokes the garments collapsed.

Inside Cesare Ruano's clothes was an empty human skin cut off at the neck. M. Demetriovich drew it out of the burning rags. It had a cicatrice across its breast from nipple to nipple. It had bullet wounds in legs and buttocks. It tallied exactly with the police description of the marks on the skin of Cesare Ruano.

With colorless faces the men stood studying the ghastly relic of the murderer in the brilliant sunshine.

The pack-animals were just disappearing down the river valley. A few remaining shreds of cloth burned where their tent once stood. About them the sinister landscape lay empty.

ROF. DEMETRIOVICH held up the gruesome relic.

“Gentlemen,” he stated in his matter-offact voice, “somebody—something has been stalking us masked in this.”

“But why masked?” Standifer's voice was tinged with horror.

“He was stalking us in a human skin, exactly as a hunter stalks a deer in a deer robe,” returned M. Demetriovich.

“Then wasn't he a human being?” gasped the secretary.

“It certainly was the devil,” gasped Pablo Pasca with a putty face. “The prefect told us not to come here.”

“He knows he is a human being,” accented Pethwick irritably, “but he doubts if we are. Did you notice his manner? Did you observe the supercilious, egotistical, conceited air of everything he did or said? He put us down as Darwin's connecting link. We are animals to him. He puts on one of our skins to hunt us down. Otherwise, he was afraid we would go scampering off from him like rabbits.”

“Then he is a fool if he thought white men are animals,” declared Pablo angrily.

“Well, he's not exactly a fool either,” admitted Pethwick grudgingly, “but every single thing he said was a knock at us. I never heard—” The engineer's angry voice trailed off into angry silence.

The party stood puzzling over the extraordinary tactics of the man from One. As they buffeted the problem in their brains, a rabbit dashed almost under their feet bound down the valley. They paid no attention to it.

“I'll give you my guess,” offered Pethwick. “I still believe we have encountered one of the ancient Incans. In Prescott's account of them, you notice the highest arts of civilization mingled with the grossest barbarities. A custom of wearing an enemy's skin may have grown up among them, just as our North American Indians used to take scalps. No doubt this fellow was spying on our number. I expect him to return soon with a band and attempt our capture.”

“What a curious fate for the DeLong Geographical Expedition,” mused the white-haired young secretary.

“Still,” objected M. Demetriovich, “it might be a Bolshevist method of spreading terror.”