Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/14

 watched the foul-breezed aperture and the impious objects of nourishment they had flung on the pavement before it. Though the staircase was huge and steep, fashioned of vast porphyry blocks as if for the feet of a giant, the ascent seemed virtually interminable. Dread of discovery and the pain which renewed exercise had brought to my wounds combined to make that upward crawl a thing of agonizing memory. I had intended, on reaching the landing, to climb immediately onward along whatever upper staircase might mount from there; stopping for no last look at the carrion abominations that pawed and genuflected some seventy or eighty feet below—yet a sudden repetition of that thunderous corpse-gurgle and death-rattle chorus, coming as I had nearly gained the top of the flight and showing by its ceremonial rhythm that it was not an alarm of my discovery, caused me to pause and peer cautiously over the parapet.

The monstrosities were hailing something which had poked itself out of the nauseous aperture to seize the hellish fare proffered it. It was something quite ponderous, even as seen from my height; something yellowish and hairy, and endowed with a sort of nervous motion. It was as large, perhaps, as a good-sized hippopotamus; but very curiously shaped. It seemed to have no neck, but five separate shaggy heads springing in a row from a roughly cylindrical trunk; the first very small, the second good-sized, the third and fourth equal and largest of all, and the fifth rather small, though not so small as the first. Out of these heads darted curious rigid tentacles which seized ravenously on the excessively great quantities of unmentionable food placed before the aperture. Once in a while the thing would leap up, and occasionally it would retreat into its den in a very odd manner. Its locomotion was so inexplicable that I stared in fascination, wishing it would emerge farther from the cavernous lair beneath me.

Then it did emerge it did emerge, and at the sight I turned and fled into the darkness up the higher staircase that rose behind me; fled unknowingly up incredible steps and ladders and inclined planes to which no human sight or logic guided me, and which I must ever relegate to the world of dreams for want of any confirmation. It must have been dream, or the dawn would never have found me breathing on the sands of Gizeh before the sardonic dawn-flushed face of the Great Sphinx.

The Great Sphinx! God!—that idle question I asked myself on that sun-blest morning before what huge and loathsome abnormality was the Sphinx originally carven to represent? Accursed is the sight, be it in dream or not, that revealed to me the supreme horror—the Unknown God of the Dead, which licks its colossal chops in the unsuspected abyss, fed hideous morsels by soulless absurdities that should not exist! The five-headed monster that emerged the five-headed monster as large as a hippopotamus the five-headed monster—and that of which it is the merest fore-paw

But I survived, and I know it was only a dream.





MONG the children," says that active philanthropist, the Hon. Grey Bennet, in his evidence before the Police Committee, "whom I have seen in prison, a boy of the name of Leary was the most remarkable. He was about thirteen years of age, good looking, sharp, and intelligent, and possessing a manner which seemed to indicate a character very different from what he really possessed. When I saw him, he was under sentence of death for stealing a watch, chain and seals, from Mr. Princep's chambers in the Temple. He had been five years in the practice of delinquency, progressively from stealing an apple off a stall, to housebreaking and highway robbery. He belonged to the Moorfields' Catholic Chapel, and there became acquainted with one Ryan in that school, by whom he was instructed in the various arts and practices of delinquency. His first attempts were at tarts, apples, etc., next at loaves in bakers' baskets; then at parcels of halfpence on shop counters and money-tills in shops; then to breaking shop windows and drawing out valuable articles through the aperture, picking pockets, housebreaking, etc. Leary has often gone to school the next day with several pounds in his pockets, as his share of the produce of the previous day's robberies. He soon became captain of a gang, generally since known as Leary's gang, with five boys and sometimes more, furnished with pistols, taking a horse and cart with them; and, if they had an opportunity in their road, they cut off the trunks of gentlemen's carriages, when, after opening them and according to their contents, so they would be governed in prosecuting their further objects in that quarter; they would divide into parties of two, sometimes only one, and leaving one with the horse and cart, go to farm and other houses, stating their being on the way to see their families and begging for some bread and water; by such tales, united with their youth, they obtained relief and generally ended by robbing the house and premises. In one instance Leary was detected and taken and committed to Maidstone gaol, but the prosecutor not appearing against him, he was discharged. In these excursions he has stayed out a week and upward, when his share has produced him from 50 pounds to 100 pounds. He has been concerned in various robberies in London and its vicinity, and has had property at one time amounting to 350 pounds; but when he had money, he either got robbed of it by elder thieves who knew he had so much money about him, or he lost it by gambling at flash houses, or spent it among loose characters of both sexes. After committing innumerable depredations, he was detected at Mr. Derrimore's at Kentish Town, stealing some plate from that gentleman's dining room; when several other similar robberies coming against him in that neighborhood he was, in compassion to his youth, placed in the Philanthropic Asylum; but being now charged with Mr. Princep's robbery, he was taken, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, but was afterward respited, and returned to that Institution. He is little, and well-looking; and has robbed to the amount of 3,000 pounds during his five years' career. This surprising boy has since broke out and escaped from the Philanthropic, went to his old practices, and was again tried at the Old Bailey, and is transported for life." 