Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/124

, I found, had heard Norden's voice after he had joined Colby in the supposed hypnotic stage. So, it was as I thought: Dureen's power had blanked out the sound of Norden's voice for them completely. Nor did they recall seeing any object in Norden's hand.

But, in less than a week, even these memories had faded from them. They fully believed that Norden had died in an accident after an unsuccessful attempt on the part of Dureen to hypnotize Colby. Prior to this, their explanation had been that Dureen had killed Norden, for reasons unknown, and that we had been his unwitting accomplices. The hypnotic experiment had been a blind to gather us all together and provide a means of disposing of the body. That Dureen had been able to hypnotize us, they did not doubt then. The illusion of the abyss, they said, was just a cruel joke

T IS NO USE telling them what I learned a few days later, what I learned from Norden's notes which explain Dureen's arrival. Or to quote sections from the Song of Yste to them. Yet, I must set these things down. In that accursed book is a section dealing with an utterly alien race of entities known as the adumbrali.