Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/133



ROM start to finish the whole thing was almost unbelievable. In the first place it seemed ridiculous that Harvey Grayham should go to San Marco if he expected to rest his nerves.

Grayham was a wreck; he admitted it. In spite of the fact that he was only middle aged, possessed a fine six-foot physique, a keen untroubled face and no more than the usual amount of life's worries, he was afraid.

He was afraid of everything; afraid of his business, which naturally suffered; afraid of himself. As he often said, "If I were younger I'd be afraid to go home in the dark." And when a man begins to call himself a coward, he is in a bad way.

So the lonely beach town of San Marco, with a bar-bound harbor that attracted only the scum of the sea's ships and men, was not exactly the environment Grayham needed.

But he liked the rocky coast-line, with its hills rising straight from the water's edge, and he thought he might come across some interesting scenes for his painting, a neglected hobby. Consequently, he rented a ramshackle house which stood on an isolated promontory some distance from the village, and settled there hoping to rest.

He was alone save for his old housekeeper, Marge; a woman with thin gray hair, three front teeth, and frequent hallucinations.

In the second place Grayham's adventurous friend, Doctor Jack Holt should not have chosen that time to return from an eventful crusade among the savages of the Raphael Islands. Not that Jack himself was to be considered harmful; on the contrary, the bond of friendship between the two men had steadily tightened ever since its beginning in college days, and Jack's deep concern for Grayham should have made his visit seem desirable—had it not been for something he brought with him from the Islands.

He came into San Marco harbor on a rusty, stumpy-looking tramp steamer, and hunted up Grayham soon after his arrival. At that time Grayham had been in the beach town for about a month, growing more timid with each day of his restless inactivity.

It was on Sunday that Jack went out to the isolated house of his friend, taking with him a collection of thrilling tales, some photographs—and this present for Grayham. The thing looked harmless enough; simply a small pouch made of black leather, peculiarly marked by a cross within a circle. But it had a gruesome history.

Jack was somewhat younger than Grayham, slighter of build, with a dark well-set face that was usually alight with a happy, carefree smile. That smile was the first thing Grayham missed, then he noticed that a strained, haunted look had come into his friend's face, and he wondered. Somehow, when he saw this evident weakness in the other man, he was glad that his own reason for coming to San Marco was apparently unknown to Jack.

They spent a day or two renewing their old friendship, exchanging experiences of the years past; Jack doing most of the talking. It was not until in the evening of the third day that he brought out the leather pouch.

"I'm going to make you a present of this," he said, "but perhaps you won't want the thing after you've heard its story."

"I'll take the chance," replied Grayham, laughing.

"Wait." There was a seriousness in Jack's expression, and a warning tension in his voice that cut short Grayham's merriment.

"This black leather," Jack continued, "is human hide, from the chest of a native. And this design is a brand, burned into the flesh. It is supposed to have some great supernatural power—a mystery no white man has learned—and all tribesmen branded with it are bound to each other forever, even after death.

"When the body dies the soul is believed to live on within the limits of that mark—as far as I can make out that cross and circle is the soul. It is always cut from a dead body and preserved.

"Don't ask me to explain. I don't understand it. All I can tell you is how I got the pouch and what its effect has been on me. Laugh if you want to—I'm not crazy.

"Strange, isn't it, how some things simply get you? One would think that I have been through enough wild dangers to harden me to anything. And I am—to anything I can see or feel. But when there is only a noise and a smell, that's different."

HEY were sitting before a fireplace in which a log burned with a dull red glow, casting its color upon their faces, sending grotesque shadows of their bodies to dance upon the wall behind them. The only other light came from two candles placed upon a table near the opposite end of the room.

Grayham moved a little closer to the fire. The evenings always chilled him.

"I wrote to you, didn't I," Jack continued, "just before I started from Miamoa to cross one of the islands afoot? Old 'Chew Back' was my guide. I called him that because his one desire was for chewing tobacco, 'chew 'bac' he called it, and he would do anything for a plug of the stuff.

"He was not one of the branded natives, in fact he was from an enemy tribe. But he knew all parts of the island, and for two plugs of tobacco a day he consented to lead me across it.

"For three days we had nothing more exciting than swarms of bugs, sweltering heat and a devil of a job cutting our way through a jungle canyon. I began to believe that people back in the States were right, when they had told me there were no real savages left on the Raphael Islands.

"Then one evening when we were almost across, the thunder of the surf not far away, something went whispering past my head and I saw the shaft of a spear slither into the brush.

"I ducked for cover. Chew was already behind a tree, opening up with a forty-five automatic on a bunch of natives that had slipped along the trail behind us. Civilization had certainly taught that brown man how to use a gun! By the time I was ready for action he had cleared the trail. One poor devil lay dead on the ground. His tribesmen tried to carry the body as they fled away, but they dropped it and ran as if the devil himself was after them when Chew jumped from behind the tree and started in again with his automatic.

"He stopped beside the body of the dead man, which was lying face down.