Page:Weird Tales v02n04 (1923-11).djvu/28



R. KING WAYLAND, the eminent brain specialist, so far forgot his professional dignity as to lean tensely forward and gaze at Anne Norman in horror and amazement, intermingled with incredulity.

The eyes that looked back at him did not gleam with the light of insanity; yet had the story with all its gruesome details fallen from other lips, without hesitancy he would have pronounced it nothing more nor less than a grotesque hallucination. Now he mentally tabulated it the frenzy of a tortured brain. He noted the quivering lips, but the eyes were the same steadfast, unwavering eyes that had won him ten years before when her husband, Richard Norman, and he were pals in medical college.

At the time of his graduation, which preceded that of King Wayland by a year, Dick Norman had married Camille West, the gay college widow, and had left shortly for a year of travel in America and abroad. He had already come into his father's vast estate, and had studied medicine merely for the love of it.

Three months later came the terrible tragedy in his life. While crossing the Great American Desert his party had been overtaken by a severe sand storm, and in some unaccountable manner Norman and his wife were separated from their guides. They had wandered on and on for days, without food or water, until Mrs. Norman could go no farther. Norman staggered toward the alluring, ever-elusive mirage, or the visionary gray spiral of smoke he imagined he saw in the dim distance. Later he was found in an unconscious condition by two prospectors who took him to their shack in the foot-hills and nursed him back to life. It was a year later, when all that remained of the beautiful dashing Camille Norman was found and identified by a few shreds of clothing, her wedding ring, and a string of emerald beads.

In the meantime Norman had returned to Denver and won from Wayland the woman he loved, Anne Paddington. King Wayland took his loss like a man, going abroad immediately for his two years of study in Berlin.

For eight years he had toiled incessantly