Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 1 (1927-01).djvu/20

 of insanity, of murder even. This was the crudest wound of all, and my grandfather carried the scar of it to his grave."

"Probably it would have been better," said Rhodes, "had he given them the whole of the story, down to the minutest detail."

"I do not see how. When they did not believe the little that he did tell, how on earth could they have believed the wild, the fantastic, the horrible thing itself?"

"Well, you may be right, Mr. Scranton. And here is a strange thing, too. It is inexplicable, a mystery indeed. For many years now', thousands of sightseers have every summer visited the mountain—this mountain that your grandfather found so mysterious, so hellish—and yet nothing has ever happened."

"That is true, Mr. Rhodes."

"They have found Rainer," said Milton, "beautiful, majestic, a sight to delight the hearts of the gods; but no man has ever found anything having even the remotest resemblance to what your grandfather saw—has ever even found strange footprints in the snow. I ask you: where has the mystery been hiding all these years?"

"That is a question I shall not try to answer, Mr. Rhodes. It is my belief. however, that the mystery has never been hiding,—using the word, that is, in its literal signification."

"Of course," Milton said. "But you know what I mean."

The other nodded.

"And now, Mr. Rhodes, I am going to tell you why I have this day so suddenly found myself anxious to come to you and give you this story."

Milton Rhodes leaned forward, and the look which he fixed on the face of Scranton was eager and keen.

"I believe. Mr. Rhodes, I at one point said enough to give you an idea of what"

"Yes, yes!" Mil ton interrupted. "And now tell me!"

"The angel," said Scranton, "has come again!"

Scranton produced a clipping from a newspaper.

"This," he told us, "is from today's noon edition of the Herald. The account, you observe, is a short one; but it is my belief that it will prove to have been (at any rate, the precursor of) the most extraordinary piece of news that this paper has ever printed."

lie looked from one to the other of us as if challenging us to doubt it.

"What," asked Rhodes, "is it about?"

"The mysterious death (which the writer would have us believe was not mysterious at all) of Miss Rhoda Dillingham, daughter of the well-known landscape painter, on the Cowlitz Glacier, at the Tamahnowis Rocks, on the afternoon of Wednesday last."

"Mysterious?" queried Milton Rhodes. "I remember reading a short account of the girl's death. There was, however, nothing to indicate that there had been anything at all mysterious about the tragedy. Nor was there any mention of the Tamahnowis Rocks even. It only said that she had been killed, by a fall, on the Cowlitz Glacier."

"But there was something mysterious, Mr. Rhodes, how mysterious no one seems to even dream. For again we have it, that word which White heard the angel speak—that awful word 'Drome'!"

"Drome!" Milton Rhodes exclaimed.

"Yes," said Scranton. "And you will understand the full and fearful meaning of what has just happened there on Rainier when I tell you that knowledge of that mysterious word has always been held an utter secret by the Scrantons. No living man but