Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 1 (1925-01).djvu/103

102 Ten o'clock came. No sign of Carew. I played sullenly with my cold pipe and cursed his delay. Frank came in; midnight struck; still no Carew.

"Hanged if I can stand this any longer," I said irritably. "I'm going to see what's keeping him."

"I'll go with you," Frank volunteered. "This place is too all-fired spooky to stay in alone."

We set off briskly through the chilly moonlight, keeping a sharp lookout for any signs of Carew and our tobacco. Fifteen minutes' walk brought us to the village tavern, where the sleepy boniface paused long enough in ejecting a gin-soaked farmhand from the tap room to assure us Carew had not been there. Several interested spectators of the eviction proceedings corroborated him profanely. Here was a poser. Carew had been gone almost long enough to walk to Chatsworth, yet no one had seen him. Buying a couple of tins of tobacco, we hurried back along the trail.

Out in the hills, we gave several long halloos, and the barren mounds shouted back our calls mockingly.

"D'ye suppose he could have gone over to the works, and turned his ankle, or something?" Frank hazarded.

"H'm, not likely; but we'll have a look," I answered as we left the path and struck across the hill for the quarry.

"That's where I saw that fellow scratching in the sand." Frank indicated the head of white earth beside our trench. "He was down on his knees, making his hands go like a pair of—hello, what's that?"

He pointed to a dark object lying on the sand pile.

I broke into a run without answering, for I had a presentiment of what we'd find.

Carew sprawled upon his back, his outstretched hands clutching at the yielding sand, one knee slightly flexed, the other leg hanging limply over the lip of the trench. His throat and chest were horribly lacerated, as though he had been worried by some animal of incomparable ferocity. Across his cheeks and brow several hideous gashes wrote the story of his death-struggle. But the most appalling thing was the expression of unspeakable horror stamped on his features. It was as if he had looked one awful moment on the bareboned grisliness of death before the spirit was rent from his body.

"My God!" Frank shrank against me, shivering with panic terror. "His face, man; look at his face!"

I dropped my handkerchief over my poor friend's head. I had no wish to look again.

"We'd best notify the coroner," I said, half leading, half carrying Frank away. The boy was done in with fear; never have I seen a man's nerve fail him so completely.

The fussy, fat little coroner performed his duties with all the punctilio of a rural official today. Strangers in a strange land, we were more than half suspected of our friend's murder, and might have been held for the assizes but for a bit of evidence the post-mortem disclosed. Clinging to poor Carew's nails were a few small tufts of tawny-gray hair. These, together with the terrible mangling of his throat, influenced the jury to return their strange verdict: "That Morgan Carew came to his death at the hands or teeth of some person or animal to your jurors unknown."

The village undertaker has just left. Embalming is about as much a lost art here as it is in modern Egypt, so the coffin has been put in the unused kitchen, where no heat will hasten dissolution. There, beside the skeleton of the thing—man or devil—we dug from the sand last week, is all that is mortal of my old friend. Tomorrow they ship the remains to England for burial. Carew had no near relatives; Frank and I shall go with