Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/88

Rh To Hugh Trenchard, M. D.

Beneath, apparently written by the same hand, though in weak and shaky characters, was the injunction: Only to be opened in the event of the Death or Disappearance of Mr. Silas Marle.

"Pardon my idle curiosity," said Ronnie, trying to speak indifferently in spite of his impatience at his friend's tardiness. "Aren't you going to open the thing?"

Hugh again weighed the letter in his hand; then he shook his head.

"Not here, old chap. Judging by the weight, this is a somewhat lengthy communication. I think it would be more cheerful and comfortable to read it before a nice bright fire. Besides"—Hugh pointed to the single window of the laboratory, already dimming in the early dusk—"probably it will be dark in here before I've finished, and—unless I'm very much mistaken—the contents of this packet will not sound any the better for being read in the gloaming."

ETURNING to the library, they lighted the lamp, drew the curtains and set a match to the fire which was ready laid in the grate. Then and then only did Hugh break the seal, draw forth several closely written sheets of foolscap, and commence to read:

"Dear Doctor:—

"When you read these lines I shall be dead (or I shall have disappeared, which practically amounts to the same thing) and you may regard what I have to state as a revelation coming from the grave. Considering the very short time I have known you, it will undoubtedly come as a surprize to you that I should single you out as my confidant. But you may believe me when I say that I have not reposed this trust in you because my time is short and I have little choice in the matter. I flatter myself that I am a keen and accurate judge of character, and I know that your acceptance of the strange task which I have imposed on you will not be actuated by the mere sordid desire to possess my money. Moreover, I have travelled in the East long enough to have my mentality tinged and more than tinged, with the fatalism of the Orient. I do not believe that it was mere blind chance that led your footsteps through the mist, guiding you to me in my hour of need, sending in you a champion, young, clear-thinking, with sound nerves and a healthy body. Surely it was Fate—maybe a Power even higher—that ordained the appearance, at the very moment I was stricken down, of the very man whom I should have chosen out of all the world as the one best fitted to carry on the work I had begun. That the work is not free from danger, my own fate will be sufficient proof; whether the end justifies the risk you must judge for yourself. But this much I will say here—no mail-clad Crusader knight ever rode forth on a holier or more righteous cause than the one you will follow in ridding the earth of the Terror of the Moor.

"It would be both tedious and unnecessary to give even a brief account of my eventful life; suffice to say that the outbreak of war in 1914 found me a lecturer on chemistry at a university in the North of England. I soon found my post a sinecure, however, for the whole of the students joined the army in a body one afternoon, and I was left facing rows of empty benches. I myself was too old for military service; so I transferred my activities to a munition factory that had been newly opened in the neighborhood, and for the next six months or so I was employed in the simple routine work of checking the purity of the various chemicals used in the manufacture of explosives. The work, though of course