Page:Weird Tales Volume 9 Number 5 (1927-05).djvu/119

 should have known better. I should have known—I did know that adventure and mystery have inexplicable and most dreadful charms. Indeed, the more fearful the Unknown, the more eager a man (one who has heard the Siren song which adventure and mystery sing) is to penetrate to its secret places—unless, indeed, the charms of some Lepraylya or Drorathusa entwine themselves about the heart. In my case, that can never be. There is a grave in the valley of the Snoqualmie, under the shadow of old Mount Si—but tears dim the page, and I can not write of that. Even Milton Rhodes does not know.

Here was I in the Golden City; here was everything, it would seem, that could conduce to contentment, to that peace of mind which is dearer than all. Yet I was restless and really unhappy. And the Unknown was calling, calling and calling for me to come. To what? Perhaps to wonders the like of which Science never has dreamed. Perhaps to horrors and mysteries from which the imagination of even a Dante or a Doré would shrink and flee in mad terror—things nameless, worse than a thousand deaths.

But I wanted to go. Yes, I would go. I would go into that fearful Land of Grawngrograr—discover its mysteries or perish in the attempt.

And I am going, too. That journey has not been abandoned, only delayed. It was like this.

I was drawing up, in my mind, tentative plans (my purpose was yet a secret) when one day Rhodes came in, and, after smiling in somewhat enigmatic fashion for some moments, he suddenly asked: "I say, Bill, how would you like to see the stars, the sun again?"

"The sun? Milton, what do you mean?"

"That I am going back to the surface. I thought that you would want to go along."

"What in the world arc you going back for?"

"There are many things that we ought to have here—a book of logarithms, the best in the world, is one of them. We'll get those things, or as many as we can, for it would be impossible to bring them all. We'll wind up our sublunary affairs, and, hurrah, then back to Drome! What do you say to that, old tillicum?"

"What does Lepraylya say?"

"At first she wouldn't even hear of my going. But I have at last gained her consent. With our large party, there can not be any danger."

I was not sure of that, but I kept those thoughts to myself.

"Of course, I want to go," I told him. "But there is something that I don't understand."

"Which is what?"

"We can't keep our great discovery a secret. And, as soon as the world has it, adventurers, spoilers, crooks and parasites will come swarming down that passage. We'll loose upon our poor Dromans a horde of Pizarros."

"Did I think for one single moment that what you say, or anything like it, would follow, never one step Would I take toward the sun. You say that we can not keep the discovery of Drome a secret; we can, and we will—until such time as it will not matter. We will come out onto the glacier in the night-time. Our way of egress—I suppose we'll have to tunnel our way out through the ice, that there will not be any accommodating crevasse there—will be most carefully concealed. No one will sec us come out. No one will know of our journeys to and from the Tamahnowis Rocks, for they will be made under the cover of darkness. No one will know."

"Our long absence?" I queried. "This is the month of July—thanks