Page:Weird Tales v01n02 (1923-04).djvu/105

104 "No—there was nothing—to be afraid of, I told him. But Pedro didn't hear.

"Don Juan's career was finished. Apollo had become repulsive. My last debt was paid.

"I packed two bags and caught the early train. That afternoon I said 'Good-bye' to the islands of Boston Harbor as I steamed out for England."

Several minutes dragged past before either of us moved.

"Come, let's go," was all I could find to say.

TOOK Lawrence to his hotel and left him at the entrance with a promise to call the following morning. Unable to keep the appointment, I went around during the afternoon. He was not in his room and could not be located.

Deciding to take one last look about the Old Port before leaving for Paris that night, I strolled down the Rue Noailles, through La Cannebière and the Quai de la Fraternité, into the Quai de Rive Neuve, where a group of excited men were gathered at the water's edge. As I reached the crowd two sailors with grappling hooks were laying a dripping corpse on the pavement. It was the body of Lawrence Bainridge.

The right side of his face was slashed and crushed into a shapeless mass—but the left half was untouched and fair.

E certainly did, according to an ancient Abyssinian manuscript, entitled "The Glory of the Kings," and recently translated by Sir E. Wallis Budge, director of Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum. The manuscript states that Solomon gave to the Queen of Sheba "a vessel wherein one could traverse the air (or wind), which Solomon had made by the wisdom that God had given unto him."

"This ancient manuscript has, of course, been translated many times," said Col. Lockwood Marsh, secretary of the Royal Aeronautical Society, "but the statement about Solomon's airship apparently escaped the notice of the reviewers, and it has been left to a flying enthusiast like myself to discover and proclaim it. Solomon lived in the Tenth century, B. C., so it is quite the earliest reference to flying extant, and as such will be added to our records."

Theosophists, however, believe there were airships a million years ago in lost Atlantis.