Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/106

Rh away from that revolver. Better get that weapon, Captain. No telling what he may try to do when he learns the truth."

Griswold's right hand made a sudden movement toward the piece, but the hand of Captain Spar was swifter, and thus, in a flash, Griswold found himself disarmed.

He laughed defiantly.

"Say, what’s the idea? Is this the Island of?"

Tis the Island of the Fay."

"The fay?" Griswold ejaculated. "What fay?' '" [sic]

"For the present," Guy Oxford answered, "she shall be nameless."

"So there is a fairy here?" And Griswold laughed harshly. "A fairy on Flang? Ha, ha! Why not Circe, Mr. Scientist, and make a good job of it?"

"My fairy," Guy Oxford told him, "did better than even Circe herself could have done."

"Oh, gosh!" Cuthbert Griswold exclaimed. "I suppose I’ll be hearing about gnomes and spooks and goblins next. So Flang is the Island of the Fay? I thought, from the way you fellows are acting, that it was a movie studio in Hollywood. But what’s the meaning of all this hocus-pocus and flubdub, anyway? What's the meaning of this grisly mummery—putting your finger into that gore and pretending you can see that it is human blood? No, you see more than that; you can even tell the sex of this imaginary victim that in reality was Buck. The victim, you say, was a man. Might it not have been a woman, or a baby, or—or a fairy?"

"It might, but it wasn't. And that isn't the only thing that I saw."

"On that bloody finger of yours?" Griswold asked.

Guy Oxford raised his hand and eyed the finger more closely than before.

"Do you want me to tell you?" he asked after some moments of silence.

"Of course. Tell me everything."

"It was not a dog," Guy Oxford said, "that you killed in this spot, Griswold. It was a man, and you murdered him in cold blood, in a manner most brutal and revolting. You felled him with two bullets in, in"

Oxford eyed his finger very keenly.

"Yes, in the chest. Then you proceeded to torture him by smashing—at any rate, I believe that the bullets smashed them—his knee-joints, his elbows and his wrists."

A fierce, inhuman cry burst from Griswold.

"Shall I tell you more?" Guy Oxford queried. "Shall I tell you that you dragged the body over there to the edge and tumbled it off into the sea?"

"You—you cunning fiend!" Griswold cried. "You cunning, cursed fiend! Where were you hiding?"

"Then you confess the deed?"

"Why should I deny it any longer when you—oh, you cunning devil!—when you know everything? You fiend, oh, you crafty fiend! Yes, I confess it. Go over there to the edge and you can see his body."

"We'll do that presently, and we'll recover the body if that is possible. So you admit that you killed him?"

"Yes, I killed Handsome Ferdy—Handsome Ferdy Chantrell. And I would kill him again. Do you hear that? I would kill him again. I glory in the deed! I wish that I had him here so I could torture him once more! I would make a better job of it the second time. But you—you!"

Griswold glanced about a little wildly.

"Where were you hiding? There was no sail in sight. I went up to the very summit and made sure of that before I killed him. This, I thought, was one murder that would never out. But you—you saw it all."

"Yes," said Guy Oxford; "I saw it all."