Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 5 (1926-05).djvu/50

 the last thing that cut the thread of my rationality. Stark, raving mad I rushed from the house. The spell of the canopy of silence was broken. Echo ran rampant throughout the island. The trees began to sway. They seemed to be moaning. Pell-mell I rushed up a white winding road, until I emerged on a shelf of rock overhanging the deep blue lake. Not for a moment did I hesitate, but leaped into space. Death itself was preferable to the unseen horrors of that island. As I plunged into the lake it was like plunging into the sky.

Mercifully at that moment unconciousness closed in about me. It was the end, I thought, and I was glad. Perhaps in death I could join the lovely little Lun Pei Lo.

I again opened my eyes all was blackness about me. I could not see a foot in any direction. My head throbbed' dully and a nauseating sweet fragrance floated to my nostrils. For one wild moment I reflected that I must be at the bottom of the blue lake. But I dismissed that thought almost instantly. My brain was somewhat in balance and I was beginning to think sanely again. I felt about me until my hand encountered that which was evidently a curtain. I pushed it slowly aside and beheld an old Chinaman seated beside a table on which a feeble lamp burned. He was rolling some black gummy pellets. I watched him intently for awhile, then I arose and walked over to his side. My knees were stiff, my legs were as wobbly as though I were a hundred.

"Can you tell me," I asked, "how I happen to be here?"

He shook his head. "How can I?" said he slowly. "Though undoubtedly you are here for the same thing that all others come for—opium."

I was in a quandary. "How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Who knows?" he droned, shrugging his shoulders. "Perhaps two days, perhaps three. What does it matter, anyway? Since that which has gone belongs to the past, why ponder over it?"

I drew two gold pieces from my pocket. He eyed them greedily as I jingled them in my palm. "Who brought me here?" I persisted.

He twisted his shrunken lips with his fingers. His eyes narrowed with the great effort of thinking, then he said, "A man who was tall and thin, so thin that he might have been the shadow of a pestilence."

I slid one of the gold pieces across the table to him and without preliminaries I told him of my adventures on the island of the blue lake.

When I had finished, he eyed me queerly. "Of course you have been steeped in opium for days," he said, "and your story can not be given credence; but at least it is odd, for we of China have an old legend about Lun Pei Lo, who lived over two thousand years ago. She was a great singer. It was she who introduced melody into China. According to the legend a wizard fell in love with her and carried her away. He was captivated by her. He brought her flowers and jewels and wrought gold in profusion but failed to make her happy. He worshiped her as the earth worships the sun, but to no avail. She pined for the lover of her childhood. Daily she grew thinner and thinner until her life was almost extinct. In despair the wizard changed her lover into a reed which ever after grew beside the Blue Lake. Such is the legend. Ton must have been thinking of it when you came to this house and it became entwined in your dreams."

"Perhaps you are right," I said slowly, but I did not tell him that at that very moment I held in my hand a gorgeous blue-purple amethyst which little Lun Pei Lo had once worn upon her breast.