Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Issue 4 (1934-10).djvu/66

 Joan Endean play in this weird tangle? Appearing like a wraith out of the storm-tortured night, she disappears after entrusting Hugh with a sealed packet which, after it has been stolen from him, she confesses to have contained only blank papers.

With the aid of a former fellow-student, Ronnie Brewster, Hugh avows his determination to solve the riddle of the Terror of the Moor—a resolution that is strengthened when he learns that Silas Marie has bequeathed his entire fortune to him on that very condition.

Accompanied by Ronnie, he motors to the lonely house on the Moor which was Marie's home, and there finds a letter addressed to himself, by which he learns that the murdered scientist had discovered a method whereby the nitrogen of the atmosphere, combined with the natural elements contained in every living body, might be utilized as a means of wholesale slaughter. The secret of the manner by which this may be effected is contained in a sealed envelope, which the letter begs Hugh to guard as a sacred trust.

Detective-Inspector Renshaw, of the C. I. D., arrives on-the scene, and in his presence Hugh resumes the reading of Marie's letter. He had (the letter states) taken into his employment a half-witted lad named Crazy Jake, who, having discovered the formula of the human detonator, was about to betray it to Professor Felger, a suspected secret agent in the pay of a foreign power. As the only means by which the secret may be preserved, Marie uses his discovery on Jake as he makes his way across the Moor.

Having satisfied himself that Jake has received injuries from which no human being could recover, Marie thinks he has effected his purpose. Some six months later, however, he is horrified to see the

face of his victim gazing at him through the library window.

paused to turn over another sheet of the closely written manuscript. The tense, almost breathless silence in which his two companions had listened so far, proved that their interest had been gripped by the simple yet grimly dramatic narrative that had been penned by Silas Marie before he disappeared. When Hugh resumed reading, they could not help feeling an even greater sense of eeriness at the thought that the events he was describing took place in the very room in which they were sitting.

"It is useless for me to attempt to describe my feelings at that moment," the narrative continued. "I should judge you to be a man of some imagination: put yourself in my place, and ask yourself what your own emotions would be on. finding yourself suddenly confronted with a man whom you had last seen injured—shattered would be a better term—beyond all possibility of recovery. Knowing as I did that one-half of his body had been totally destroyed, I was more ready to believe that the figure before my eyes was an accusing phantom, than to admit the bare possibility of his having recovered from sure (I can call it nothing else) semi-annihilation.

"At a moment such as that, time seems to stand still. I have not the faintest idea how long I remained twisted in my chair, gazing with distended eyes at the apparition. And Jake, or the Thing that had been Jake, remained equally immobile, with its arms raised above its head and resting on the transom that crossed the diamond-paned window. As we glared at each other, without speech or 2em