Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/80

 swered the call. Who is it this time, Nanah?"

Nanah gathered himself together and ceased whimpering.

"This time it is the Sahib Arnold."

Payne winced. Arnold had been his friend. Of all the little army of adventurers, treasure-seekers and big game hunters the dead man had been nearest his heart.

"How—?" he questioned the Indian.

"The same as always. The Thing had entered like—like—"

He sought a suitable word.

"Like a yaksha or a lost jnana. There is the same look of fear and horror on the sirdar's dead face. The same purple line about the mouth and the limbs are drawn up as though the sirdar's agony had been, indeed, great. Like, Payne, Sahib, all the others."

Payne nodded.

"Like all the others. No marks, nothing disturbed about the camp?"

Nanah shook his turbaned head.

"Not, Sahib."

The white man turned.

"I will go to the tent. You, Nanah, go tell Captain Worthington."

Payne, head bent, walked slowly across the intervening space and entered the tent of his friend.

Every smallest detail was as Nanah had said. Nothing had been disturbed, nothing stolen. No footprint, save Nanah's, marred the dust before the door. Arnold's clothing, money and watch were intact. Payne made sure of all this before he turned to the distorted body on the bed.

For a long time he stood and looked down at the corpse. Again the words of Nanah rang true. Arnold had suffered, terribly. The fear of something worse than death was mirrored in the wide eyes, and written on the cold, dead face. The swollen and clenched hands, the knotted leaders which had drawn the knees up almost to the chin, the cords of the neck indicated it.

And sinister beyond words was the purplish ring about the mouth.

Payne's blood congealed. An indefinable dread shook his soul. What sort of a weapon had the murderer used to leave such a mark? Who, or what, was the Thing? Questions, unanswerable, rioted through his mind.

Silent, shuddering, Payne went over the events of the past six months. The story was, up to a certain point, void of anything dramatic. Rather hackneyed. He, Payne, together with eleven other adventurous spirits, had embarked for India, where, so rumor declared, were great beds of platinum, unworked and worth many times over the proverbial "king's ransom." After a period of prospecting, the beds had actually been located, and with a small army of half caste workmen they had been getting out quantities of metal.

Everything had "come their way," to use Hunt's words. The grains of platinum were thickly scattered through the auriferous sand, and at each washing a small fortune was panned.

The climate, in that particular part of India, was ideal. There was fruit in abundance. Game for the shooting. Fish for the hooking. A stream of pure water. Nature was prodigal with her gifts, and for weeks the adventurers had lived in a sort of paradise.

To the south of them, over in the jungle, the Temple of Indra reared its dome. There a sacerdotal sect chanted hymns to their deity; their white-robed priests moved quietly about; and there, so the white men had heard from their servants, one of the devotees hid, beneath the folds of his snowy turban, the brain of one of the most renowned surgeons the world has ever known.

All these things, taken as a whole, were enthusiastically enjoyed by the platinum hunters. They looked upon the naturally provided food as a godsend. But the priests, even though of an alien tongue and creed, were, beneath the white robes and swathing turbans, men. And, no matter where one may be, human companionship counts.

A sort of acquaintance had been struck up between the white men and the priests. When they chanced to meet there was always a friendly word, a nod or smile. In a strange land the friendship of these men was a real asset.

The first month in camp passed happily. The twelve white men worked, played, ate, slept. There was not a cloud on the horizon.

Then one day Nanah had come screaming to Payne, sobbing and wringing his slim, brown hands, crying hysterically that Borden was dead.

Investigation had proved the words of the Hindoo. Borden had been dead for hours. Examination showed no marks upon the body. He had not died from any sort of bite. No beast had torn him. At night, just before retiring, he had been superabundantly healthy. His spirits were soaring. The whole twelve had indulged in a rough and tumble play. When bedtime came he had laughingly bid his companions goodnight.

When found his body was stiff and cold. His limbs were contorted, his eyes wide open. A purple ring surrounded his mouth.

That was all.

The one medical student among them who acted in capacity of physician, gave, as his opinion, that Borden had died from acute indigestion.

Sorrowfully the survivors buried their friend and heaped stones upon the grave to protect the body from prowling hyena and jackal pack.

Before Borden had been in his grave a month a young medical student was sleeping beside him. His death was, apparently, identically like Borden's.

Then, swiftly, Marlow, James and Radcliff had followed. All just like Borden, even to the smallest detail.

And now Arnold was gone.

Six of the twelve had succumbed to the Thing!

Payne groaned aloud.

"What is it?" he cried brokenly, "this hideous Thing that strikes in the dark?"

An ague shook him. He, like a frightened child, wrung his hands and moaned.

"Who," he sobbed pitifully, “who will be next? Merciful God—who?"

The space in front of the tent filled rapidly. Captain Worthington and the four men, the half-breed laborers and the body servant of the whites gathered closely about. A common horror held them all.

Captain Worthington entered the tent, his friends at his heels.

"What do you make of it?" he asked Payne.

The latter shook his head.

"I—do not know. I am absolutely unstrung. I am beginning to fear—what shall I say? Necromancy—voodooism—witches? Something, Worthington, is terribly wrong. It is not reasonable for each of the six men who have died to possess the exact symptoms naturally. There has not been a particle of difference in the characteristics of these deaths. What killed one killed all."

"Admitted. But what was it?"

The captain mopped his clammy brow.

Again Payne shook his head.

"I—don't know."

Dean withdrew his gaze from the ghastly spectacle upon the bed, caught the eye of Nanah and with a muttered oath turned to Payne.

"I believe it is the work of some of these damned Indian conjurers," he cried. "Strange, isn't it, that Nanah has found every one of the six—like—that?"

He pointed a shaking finger toward the bed.