VOLUME ONE NUMBER FOUR (cont. 9)

“I’ll make a report today,” he promised, and left the room with a stack of dishes and the folded napkin.

He deposited the dishes in the kitchen sink. The napkin went into his hip pocket. Then he started upstairs for his other clothes. At her bedroom door he paused, listening. The door stood open. Mrs. Peyton, downstairs, was sitting at the breakfast table, absently crumbling a bit of toast in her fingers, a faraway look in her eyes. Barry, at her bedroom door, was remarking the small mahogany desk, where, two nights ago, the “ghost” had written his warning to her.

In three swift strides he crossed to the desk, searched hurriedly among the papers there and neatly pocketed one of these. Then he continued to his room. Mrs. Peyton still sat at the breakfast table in a pensive reverie, her wistful brown gaze lost in the morning sunshine beyond the leaded casements.

* * * * *

An hour later Barry alighted from a train in Chicago and forthwith called on a colleague, whose skill in analyzing handwriting and identifying finger prints had earned him the title of “expert.” He spent considerable time with this man; and then he went to his office and wrote his report for Mrs. Peyton.

And when the report was finished he sat gazing at it musingly—somewhat as Mrs. Peyton had gazed from her breakfast-room window this morning.

With an energetic shrug, as if to shake off his odd mood, he sealed the report in an envelope, and put it in his pocket and started for an office building in lower Michigan Avenue.

Presently he entered a room in this building, luxuriously furnished and unoccupied, and abruptly halted. In the adjoining room he could hear the voices of Scott Peyton and his wife; and since the door between the two offices stood partly open, he could also see their faces. Himself unobserved, Barry stood silently watching and listening.

“I suppose you’re right, Scott,” she said, standing beside her husband’s desk and looking down at him. “After what happened last night, I’m just about ready to do as you say—give the house up and move back to town. But I do so hate to leave that old place. I wish—”

“Why should you?” he interrupted, scowling at his desk and avoiding her eyes.

Mrs. Peyton looked down, biting a corner of her lip and twisting the wedding ring of her finger.

“It’s not so much what _I_ want,” she faltered, her voice tremulously low, “but—the city is no place—not the _best_ place for our—_Oh, Scott!_” she cried passionately, and flung out her hands to him in appeal. “Can’t you _see_?”

Scott Peyton looked up and met his wife’s eyes; and the thing he saw in their liquid brown depths instantly chased the frown from his face and took him to his feet in a swift rush of remorse and gladness.

In the next instant she was sobbing in his arms; and he was tenderly patting her shoulders and saying soothingly:

“It’s all right, honey. We won’t give the place up. I don’t think—the ghost—will bother us again....”

At this juncture Barry quietly departed.

* * * * *

A little later he again sat at his desk, gazing again at the report he had written. And he now knew that this report would never be seen by any eye save his.

But while he is sitting here suppose we look over his shoulder and glance at the thing before he tears it up:

“In Re Peyton ‘ghost’: ... Using a King Lear costume, which he put on and off with lightning agility, the ‘ghost’ hoped, by his nocturnal prowling, to frighten Mrs. Peyton into abandoning the house as her husband desired.... Following his nightly appearances, he quickly removed and concealed his costume, and returned to his bed, careful to make no sound. He varied this procedure, however, night before last, when he visited Mrs. Peyton’s room. Had she left her key in the lock that night, instead of hiding it under her pillow, he would have been unable to call upon her. As it was, he readily unlocked the door and entered. Leaving silently, he hid his costume, then left the house and returned, making considerable noise.... The finger prints he left in glue last night and those he left on his napkin this morning, as well as his real and disguised handwriting positively identify the ‘ghost’ as Mrs. Peyton’s husband, Scott Peyton.”

_Have You Been Reading About King Tut? If so, You’ll be Interested in_

OSIRIS

_The Weird Tale of an Egyptian Mummy_

_By_ ADAM HULL SHIRK

“_Mandrake_”

_By ADAM HULL SHIRK_

_Will appear in the July WEIRD TALES_

_It’s a Strange Yarn of Superstitious Fear_

_Don’t Miss It!_

The recent and lamentable death of Sir Richard Parmenter, F. R. G. S., is too fresh in the public’s mind to warrant further reference, and were it not that I feel myself capable of throwing light upon the incidents contributing to the sudden and apparently unnecessary snuffing out of a valuable life, I should refrain from again alluding to it.

It is well known that the physicians at the time decided that valvular weakness of the heart must have been responsible for the death of the noted Egyptologist, but the statement of his own doctor that Sir Richard had never theretofore exhibited indications of such weakness, and that he was, to all appearances, in the best of health just prior to his death, caused considerable wonder.

I had thought to let the facts remain buried, but, for certain reasons, I shall reconsider my determination and tell what I know.

I shall always remember the night on which Sir Richard summoned me, as his counselor, to attend him at his apartments in the Albermarle. It was a night of storm, and the London streets were a mass of slime and slush. A beastly wind had sprung up, and as I left my chambers at the Temple it almost took me off my feet. Therefore, it was with no little satisfaction that I found a cheery log fire awaiting me in the library of my distinguished client’s home, and the nip of brandy he provided was a life saver.

I noted, however, that for all his assumption of cheerfulness, something was preying upon his mind, and I determined to get at the root of the matter without delay:

“How can I serve you, Sir Richard?” I asked, briskly. “I see there is something troubling you.”

“Is it as apparent as that?” he asked, trying to appear unconcerned: but his strong, homely features belied his effort at calmness.

Before I could reply, he went on:

“But never mind that: I want you to write my will—now.”

“Your will?” My expression of surprise and incredulity was natural, for since I had been retained by him I had marked it as one of his few idiosyncrasies that he had never made his will. When I had mentioned to him the advisability of doing so, he had put it by with a whimsical remark about being superstitious.

“I am in earnest,” he declared, “and it will be very simple—just a brief form, and I’ll sign it with my man as witness.”

“But why the haste?” I said. “Why not wait till I can have the document properly drawn up at my office tomorrow—”

“No; now!” he said, and there was such finality in his tone I had no choice.

My concern for my client, whom I really liked and respected immensely, prompted me to ask:

“You’re not ill, Sir Richard?”

He shook his head, with the ghost of a smile on his rugged face.

“Physically—no. But—”

He paused, and after a moment he again urged me to proceed with the making of the will.

I drew up the document, which was a simple one, leaving the bulk of his large properties to his sister in Surrey, with numerous small bequests to friends and distant relatives, and a handsome sum and his private collection to the British Museum and the Imperial Museum of Egyptology. We had in his man, and the document was duly signed, after which he drew a long breath of relief and, with a return of something like his natural manner, passed me his cigar-case and leaned back in his chair, smoking comfortably.

“I’ve a story to tell you, Madden,” he said between puffs, “and it’s a queer yarn, too. You’ll think—but never mind. Listen first, and say what you like afterward. Only—” he glanced about him with an apprehensive expression that fairly set my nerves atingle. “I hope we have time.”

“Time for what?” I asked.

He relaxed again and smiled:

“It’s all right,” he declared. “I’m a bit nervous, I guess, but it’s all right. Have another brandy.”

We drank solemnly together. Then he settled back once more and I prepared to listen.

“Madden,” said he, “perhaps you’ll smile at what has seemed to me serious enough to warrant the steps I have just taken—making my will, I mean—but, however you look at it, I want you to know it’s true—every word of it.

“My last trip to Egypt—from which I just returned a fortnight ago—was to have been my final one, anyway. I’ve made six trips out there in my life, and I’ve collected enough information to fill a dozen volumes. Also, I’ve contributed many fine specimens to the museum and corrected many misapprehensions concerning the interpretation of some of the hieroglyphs. So, all in all, I think I’ve done pretty well.

“This last visit was in many respects the most satisfactory, and indeed it witnessed a triumph in my career as an Egyptologist that would be a crowning achievement, were it not for—but we won’t speak of that—yet.

“I wonder, Madden, if you know anything about the ancient Egyptian religious ceremonies and forms of worship? Anyway, I may tell you that the Nile dwellers, as they were called, recognized as their supreme deity, Osiris, lord of the underworld. By some he has been identified with the Sun and, with the forty assessors of the dead, he was supposed to have judged the souls brought before him by Horus in the double halls of truth, after their good and evil deeds had been weighed by Anubis.

“The Egyptians reverenced Osiris with as devout worship as the Chinese give to Buddha, and the high priests of Osiris were regarded with almost as much awe as the deity himself.

“In all our studies and investigations, however, we have never been able actually to identify Osiris, but it is now generally conceded that he was believed to have lived on earth at one time and that it was only after his death that he assumed deific prerogatives. In this respect the modern Christian theology may be said to resemble the more ancient form to some extent.

“Osiris was pictured on many of the tablets as a creature with the head of a bull, though there is some disagreement on this score. In any event, his tomb was said to exist near Heliopolis, and it was to investigate this tradition that I made my last trip to Egypt.”

Sir Richard paused to relight his cigar and listened to the storm which raged without. Again he gave that hasty, apprehensive glance about him, then proceeded:

“It would be impossible for me to explain to you, a layman, my inordinate joy at finding—by what means and after what tedious labor, I won’t stop to tell now—a deserted tomb which I knew, from certain hieroglyphic markings I found, was the very one of which I had been in search for the best part of half a year.

“Understand that this whole tradition of the tomb of Osiris was regarded by my fellow scientists as a myth, and if it had been publicly known that I was giving it sufficient credence to spend a lot of time and money searching for it I should have been looked upon as a madman and laughed out of the societies. This may enable you to appreciate more fully my sensations on actually locating at least the tomb. What I should find within, I hardly dared conjecture!

“The tomb of a God! Can you imagine it, Madden?

“And yet, if I had only stopped there! If only I had been content to pause with the knowledge I already possessed, without proceeding further and desecrating with sacrilegious hands that lonely sarcophagus in the desert!

“How I succeeded in penetrating this tomb, of the horrors of bats and crawling things that failed to stop me—of the almost supernatural awe that came upon me—I can not pause to tell. It is enough to say that I stood at last beside the tremendous coffin of stone, trembling from an unknown dread. And, as I stood there, something white fluttered by me and up through the opening into the outer air. A sacred Ibis—but how it had penetrated there and how it had lived, I can not say.

“Pour out another brandy, Madden—and throw that other log on the fire, too, if you don’t mind. My, how the wind blows! Did you speak?... Pardon me—I’m nervous tonight as I said before, very nervous.... Where was I? Oh, yes—

“That great sarcophagus stood before me, and on it I saw inscribed the sacred scarabæus and the feather of truth, while in the center was the word—the one, wonderful name—‘Heseri’—which is the Egyptian for Osiris!

“Insatiable curiosity now took the place of the reverential awe that should have possessed me, and with vandal hands I forced the stone lid from the casket. One glance I had of a great, bovine face, a _living_ face, whose eyes looked into the depths of my soul—and then I fled as though all the devils of Amenti were at my heels....

“That is all Madden, except that I am nervous—fearfully so. It is so unlike me. You know how small a part fear has played in my life. I have faced the dreaded simoon; I have been lost among savage tribes, I have confronted death in a hundred forms—but _never_ have I felt as I do now. I tremble at a sound; my ears trick me into believing that I am always hearing some unusual noise; my appetite is failing, and I am feeling my age as I have never felt it until.... Good God! Madden! What was that sound?... Oh! _look behind you_, Madden! _Look!_...”

* * * * *

And now I come to that portion of my statement that will probably be refused credence by those who read; but, as I live, it is the truth.

As Sir Richard uttered his last words, he felt forward to his full length upon the hearth rug, even as I turned in obedience to his command. The shadows were heavy in the far corner of the spacious room, but I could see a great, bulky something that swayed there, something that was a part, and yet, seemingly, was independent, of the shadows.

I had a vision of two burning eyes and a black shining muzzle—a heavy, misshapen head. A strange, animal-like, fetid odor was in my nostrils.

I shrieked, and, turning, ran madly from the room, stumbled to the stairs and fled into the wind-swept night.

Failure to Keep Tab on Quitting Time Kills Two

Troy Hocker and Hugh Simpson, linemen for the Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company, were repairing wires on top of a pole in Oklahoma one afternoon recently. As they worked, they engaged in banter. It was nearly five o’clock—their quitting time—but neither looked at his watch. The engineer down at the power house saw it was ten minutes past five, time to turn on the city’s arc lights. He pulled down the switch and sent 2,300 volts out to light the city. The men up on the pole ceased their banter. Their bodies became stiff. Those on the ground laughed. This must be some new prank of the boys. Then someone noticed smoke issuing from Hocker’s shoes. Back at the power plant the amperage was fluctuating back and forth, and the engineer knew something was amiss. He threw off the current—but the men were already dead.

_A New Story by Julian Kilman, Master of Weird Fiction_

THE WELL

Jeremiah Hubbard toiled with a team of horses in a piece of ground some distance down the road from his dwelling. When it neared five o’clock in the autumn afternoon, he unwound the lines from his waist, unhooked the traces and started home with his horses.

He was a heavy man, a bit under middle age, with a dish-shaped face and narrow-set eyes. He walked with vigor. One of the horses lagged a trifle, and he struck it savagely with a short whip.

They came presently to the Eldridge dwelling, abandoned and tumbled down, on the opposite side of the road. The farm was being worked on shares by a man named Simpson, who lived five miles away and drove a “tin Lizzie.” An ancient oak tree, the tremendous circumference of its trunk marred by signs of decay, reared splendid gnarled branches skyward.

These branches shaded a disused well—a well that had been the first one in Nicholas County, having been dug in the early fifties by the pioneering Eldridge family. It went forty feet straight down into the residual soil characteristic of the _locale_, but, owing to improved drainage, it had become dry. Nothing remained of the old pump-house, save the crumbling circle of stonework around the mouth, to give evidence of its one-time majesty.

A child of eight ran from the rear of the premises. Hubbard frowned and stopped his team.

“You better keep away from there,” he growled, “or you’ll fall into the well.”

The girl glanced at him impishly.

“You an’ Missus Hubbard don’t speak to each other, do you?”

Hubbard’s face went black. His whip sprang out and caught the girl about the legs. She yelped and ran.

An eighth of a mile farther along the road Hubbard turned in and drove his team to a big barn. He fed his stock. It was after six when he entered the house. This was a structure that, by comparison with the gigantic barn in the rear, seemed pigmy-like.

A sallow, flat-chested woman, with a wisp of hair twisted into a knot, took from Hubbard the two pails of milk he carried. She set them in the kitchen. The two exchanged no words.

Hubbard strode to the washstand, his boots thumping the floor, and performed his ablutions. He rumpled his hair and beard, using much soap and water and blowing stertorously. In the dining-room a girl of twelve sat with a book. As her father came in she glanced at him timorously.

He gave no heed to her as he slumped down into a chair standing before a desk. The desk was littered with papers, among which were typewritten sheets of the sort referred to as “pleadings”; there was a title-search much bethumbed and black along the edges, where the “set-outs” had been scanned with obvious care.

The man adjusted a pair of antiquated spectacles to his dish-face. To do this he was compelled to pull the ends of the bows tight back over the ears as his nose afforded practically no bridge to support the glasses.

Presently he spoke to the girl:

“Tell your mother to bring on the supper.”

The girl hastened out, and shortly thereafter the mother appeared carrying dishes. Food was disposed about the table in silence. The farmer ate gustily and in ten minutes finished his meal. Then he addressed his daughter, keeping his eyes averted from his wife. “Tell your mother,” he said, “that I’ll want breakfast at five o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Where you goin’, Pa?” asked the girl.

“I’m goin’ to drive to the county seat to see Lawyer Simmons.”

Hubbard’s gaze followed the girl as she helped clear the table.

“Look-a here,” he said. “You been a-talkin’ to that Harper child?”

“No,” returned the daughter, with a trace of spirit. “But I jest saw her father over by the fence.”

“What was he a-doin’ there?”

“I didn’t stay. I was afeard he’d catch me watchin’ him.”

Hubbard glowered and reached for his hat.

“I’ll find out,” he snarled.

Walking rapidly, he crossed a field of wheat stubble, keeping his eyes fixed sharply ahead. It was dusk, but presently, at the northern extremity of his premises, he made out the figure of a man.

“Hey, Harper!” he shouted. “You let that fence be.”

He ran forward swiftly.

The men were now separated by two wire-strand fences that paralleled each other only three feet apart. These fences, matching one another for a distance of about two hundred yards—each farmer claiming title to the fence on the side farthest from his own—represented the basis of the litigation over the boundary claim that had gone on between them for four years.

The odd spectacle of the twin fences had come to be one of the show places in the county. It had been photographed and shown in agricultural journals.

“I don’t trust ye, Harper,” announced Hubbard, breathing hard. “You got the inside track with Jedge Bissell, an’ the two of you are a-schemin’ to beat me.”

A laugh broke from the other.

“I’ll beat you, all right,” he said coolly. “But it won’t be because Judge Bissell is unfair.”

His manner enraged Hubbard, who rushed swiftly at the first fence and threw himself over. With equal celerity, he clambered over the second fence.

Startled at the sudden outburst of temper, Harper had drawn back. He held aloft a spade. Hubbard leaped at him. The spade descended.

Harper was slightly-built, however, and the force of the blow did not halt the infuriated man, now swinging at him with all his might. They clinched. Hubbard’s fingers caught at the throat of the smaller man, and the two stumbled to the ground, Hubbard atop. The fall broke his grip. With his huge fists he began to hammer the body. He continued until it was limp.

Then, his rage suddenly appeased, he drew back and stared at the inert figure lying strangely quiet.

“So!” he gasped.

There came the sound of someone singing, the voice floating distinctly through the night air. Hubbard recognized it for that of an itinerant Free Methodist minister, whose church in Ovid he and his family occasionally attended.

The song rolling forth, as the Man of God drove along the highway in his rig, was _Jesus, Lover of My Soul_.

* * * * *

For the moment Hubbard shielded his face with an arm as if to ward off an invisible thing.

Then, bending over the prostrate form, he ran his hand inside the clothing to test the action of the heart. He performed the act mechanically, because he knew he had killed his man.

He discovered the handbag. Evidently Harper was on his way to Ovid to catch the train to the county seat for the trial on the morrow. This meant that he would not be missed by his wife for at least twenty-four hours.

The murderer studied his next move. Where to secrete the body? A piece of wood lay back of him, but he was aware that it was constantly combed by squirrel hunters. He thought of the railroad. Why not an accident? Killed by the very train he was bound for?

He started to lug the body toward the track which passed half a mile to the north. Realizing, however, that for the time at hand the distance was too great, he let the body slide to the ground. Next he stole along the twin fences to the highway and peered both ways. No one seemed abroad.

He came back on the dead run, and in twenty minutes he had carried the body to the Eldridge premises and flung it down the ancient well.

When he returned he found his wife and daughter together in the parlor, where with the itinerant preacher, all three were kneeling on the floor in prayer. Hubbard unceremoniously nudged the clergymen.

“That’ll do,” he said.

The minister rose, his tall, lanky figure towering over Hubbard.

“Brother,” he began, in an orotund voice, “come with the Lord—”

“Yes. I know,” returned Hubbard, with a patience that surprised his wife. “But I’ve got something to talk over with my family.” He paused. “Here,” he added, feeling in his pocket and producing a small coin, “take this and go along.”

When the preacher had left, Hubbard called to his daughter.

“Harper was gone when I got over to the fence.”

“What kept you so long?”

“I walked over to the woods. There’s a nest of coons. They’re a-goin’ to play havoc with the corn.” He smiled unnaturally. “Look-a here! If we can catch ’em, I’ll give you the money their pelts bring.”

Hubbard divined that his acting was poor. Both the girl and his wife were frankly regarding him.

“Well!” he shouted. “What’s the matter with ye?”

“Oh, nuthin’, Pa, nuthin’,” whimpered the girl.

“Then go to bed, the two of ye.”

Next morning Hubbard started for the county seat, a ten mile drive. He returned that evening and complained that the case had been adjourned because Harper had failed to appear in court.

The following day he went back to his field far down the road for more ploughing. Twice he was called to the roadside by passersby to discuss the disappearance of Harper.

One morning a week later, when he came along the road with his team, he discovered the Harper child on the Eldridge premises. She was sitting at the edge of the well.

With a suppressed oath, he dropped the lines and half-walked, half-ran, to where the little girl sat.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay away from there!” he exploded.

The girl stared at him, but made no move, though her lips quivered. Hubbard glanced back to observe the road. Then he caught her arm.

“Go home!” he shouted.

He spun her roughly. She continued to stare at him as she retreated homeward.

All that morning Hubbard worked his horses hard. He realized that he was eager to go back by the Eldridge dwelling. Promptly at twelve o’clock, therefore, he tied his team and started up the road. A flash of relief came to him when he did not observe the little girl. It left him cold, however.

“Eatin’ dinner,” he mumbled.

He moved off, without looking into the well. Until four o’clock that afternoon he labored. On his way home he discovered the girl again seated by the well. She was bending over and acting queerly.

Hurrying his horses to the roadside, he looped the lines over one of the posts in the old “snake” fence. As he approached, he saw her toss a piece of stone down the hole.

Hubbard waited until he was sure of his voice.

“Come with me,” he said.

Gripping the girl he started with her toward her home but a short distance away. When they arrived the front door was ajar. A woman, with eyes red from weeping, looked at Hubbard in silence.

“Here!” he said gruffly. “This child ought to be kept to home. She’ll fall into the well.”

Mrs. Harper merely reached out her arms for her daughter. Hubbard remained standing awkwardly.

“Have you heard anything of Harper yet?” he asked.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” replied the woman.

Hubbard turned on his heel. Waiting for him by his horses, was the deputy sheriff. The two further discussed the disappearance.

“If you yourself wasn’t so well known, Jeremiah,” finally declared the official, “they’d sure be thinkin’ you was in it some way.”

“Why?” grunted the farmer, as he untied the lines.

“Well, everybody knows you an’ Harper been lawin’ it for years over that boundary line.”

Hubbard achieved a laugh.

“I’ll tell ye where Harper is. He’s cleared out, that’s what I think—deserted his family.”

That night, and many following nights, Hubbard did not sleep. Some weeks later a tremendous electric storm broke in the night. One particularly heavy clap so startled the wakeful Hubbard that he leaped from his bed and dressed. In the pouring rain he started out.

Inevitably his steps took him toward the well. It was black, and he could not see at first. But another flash came, and he observed a strange thing:

The huge oak, standing at the side of the well, had been split in two by lightning, and one portion of the tree had fallen over the mouth of the hole.

* * * * *

Next morning Simpson, the man with the “tin Lizzie,” stopped at Hubbard’s place. He was a blunt-spoken, red-faced man whom Hubbard hated.

“That was a bad storm last night,” he said. “The lightning struck the big oak tree by the well.”

“What of it?” snapped Hubbard.

“There was a skeleton in the center of that tree,” explained Simpson. “I was talking this morning with the sheriff over the telephone. He said seventy-five years ago a man was murdered in Ovid, and they never found his body. This skeleton must be his.”

Hubbard cleared his throat sharply.

“What did you do with it?”

“The skull and one of the leg bones fell down into the well when I tried to gather them up. I want to borrow some rope so I can get down in there.”

For a bare second Hubbard was silent.

“What you ought to do,” he said, gathering himself, “is to fill up that hole. It’s dangerous.”

“Yes. That’s so. But I’m goin’ to get that skull first. It’ll be a good exhibit. I’m wonderin’ whether we’ll ever find Harper’s skeleton.”

“Wait a moment,” said Hubbard huskily, starting for the barn. “I’ll get some rope and help you.”

The two returned to the Eldridge farm. They found there the dead man’s child. She had perched herself on the fallen tree.

“Damn fool!” muttered Hubbard. “Her mother lettin’ her play around here!”

A pulley was rigged over the branch and the rope inserted with a board for a rest.

“I’ll go down,” vouchsafed Hubbard.

Simpson looked his surprise as he assented.

It took Hubbard five minutes or so to retrieve the missing skeleton parts. He brought them up, the leg bone and the grinning skull. He was pale when he hauled himself over the edge.

“I’m a-goin’ to fill up that hole myself,” he said.

“All right,” retorted Simpson, handling the skull curiously. “Go to it.”

Word traveled of the finding of the ancient skeleton, and the inhabitants began driving thither to see the sight. Simpson, a man of some ingenuity, had wired the bleached white bones together and suspended them from one of the branches of the fallen tree. The skeleton dangled and swung in the wind.

Hubbard, maddened by the delay and publicity, felt himself wearing away. He had become obsessed with conviction that if the hole were filled his mind would be at rest.

The nights of continued sleeplessness were ragging his nerves, and he was by this time unable to remain in bed. He would throw himself down, fully dressed, waiting until the others were asleep. Then he would steal out.

At first he had merely walked the roads, swinging his arms and mumbling. But as the night progressed his stride would quicken, and frequently he would take to running. He would run until his lungs were bursting and a slaver fed from his mouth. Late travelers began to catch glimpses of the fleeting figure, and the rumor grew that a ghost was haunting the locality of the well—that the skeleton walked.

Hubbard grew haggard. But he found himself unable to discontinue his nocturnal prowls, some of which took him miles, but all of which invariably wound up at one place—the well.

Here, fagged and exhausted, he would sit until the approach of dawn, staring at the swinging skeleton, mouthing incoherencies, praying, singing hymns beneath his breath, laughing. At the approach of dawn he would steal home.

At last, after interest in the skeleton had subsided and Simpson had consented to its removal, Hubbard loaded his wagon with stones and small boulders and started for the well. That first forenoon he made three trips, dumping each time a considerable quantity of stones.

Next morning he worked in an additional trip. He began to experience surcease. But on the afternoon of the second day, when he made another trip, Simpson came over from his work in an adjoining field.

“I wanted to see you yesterday,” he said, quizzically regarding Hubbard. “Mrs. Harper was here. She said her little girl was playin’ around here and dropped a pair of andirons down the well.”

“What of it?” Hubbard jerked out.

“You got to get ’em out.”

“Why?”

“Because them andirons is relics.”

“But you gave me permission to fill the hole.”

“I was kiddin’ you,” laughed Simpson. “I’m only rentin’ the farm. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with the house and yard.”

Without a word Hubbard turned to his wagon. He got onto the seat and drove off. In an hour he came back with the same rope that had been used to recover the missing portions of the skeleton. Also, he brought with him a farm laborer who did occasional work for him.

Simpson regarded Hubbard amusedly as the latter adjusted once more the pulley, arranged a bucket and then hitched his team to the end of the rope.

Patiently, bucketful by bucketful, the stones were elevated and dumped. Down below in the black interior, Hubbard labored for an hour. At six o’clock he had not found the andirons. Twice he had been compelled to come up for fresh air.

His last trip up left him so white-faced and weak that he was forced to go home.

That night he resorted to sleeping powders. But he lay and tossed, wide-eyed, through the dark hours. Sometime after midnight he got up. A light was still burning in his wife’s room, and, tiptoeing down the hall, he paused at her door. In low voices the mother and daughter were conversing. To his heated imagination it seemed certain they were talking of Harper’s disappearance.

Mumbling to himself he left the house. He ran down the lane to the highway and along this until he came to the Eldridge place. He determined not to stop, and succeeded in running by, like a frightened animal.

His gait accelerated. It was one best described as scurrying, as he ran crouched and low. He thought he saw some one approaching. This turned him. Back he fled with the speed of the wind.

Drawn by an irresistible force, he made straight for the Eldridge pathway. He came to the well, the entrance of which gaped at him. For a moment he stood, with eyes wide open, staring into the black depths.

Then, screaming, he plunged in head-first.

His cry, long-drawn and eerie, hung quivering on the night air.

In the Hubbard home, a quarter of a mile away, the mother and daughter heard it. The two listened with palpitating hearts. They caught one another’s hands.

In a hoarse whisper the mother exclaimed:

“_What’s that?_”

_Otis Adelbert Kline, Author of “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes,” Spins Another “Spooky” Yarn for the Readers of WEIRD TALES_

The Phantom Wolfhound

Doctor Dorp reluctantly laid aside the manuscript on which he had been working, capped and pocketed his fountain pen, and rose to meet his callers.

He was visibly annoyed by this, the third interruption of the afternoon, but his look of irritation changed to a welcoming smile when he saw the bulky form that was framed in the doorway. He recognized Harry Hoyne of the Hoyne Detective Agency, a heavy-set, florid-faced man whose iron gray hair and moustache proclaimed him well past middle age.

The slender, stoop-shouldered individual who accompanied him was a total stranger. He had pale, hawklike features, small snaky eyes that glittered oddly from cavernous sockets, and long, bony fingers that suggested the claws of a bird.

“Hello, Doc,” boomed the detective genially, crushing the hand of his host in his great, muscular paw. “Meet Mr. Ritsky.”

The doctor was conscious of a cold, clammy sensation as he took the hand of the stranger and acknowledged the introduction. Was it the contrast between those chill fingers and the strong warm ones of the detective that had caused this feeling? He did not know; but somehow, instinctively, he disliked Mr. Ritsky.

“I’ve got a queer case for you, Doc,” said Hoyne, taking a proffered cigar and inserting it far back in his cheek, unlighted. “Just your specialty—ghosts and all that. I told Mr. Ritsky you’d be the only man to unravel the mystery for him. Was over to his house last night and the thing got me—too unsubstantial—too damned elusively unreal. And yet I’ll swear there was something there. I heard it; but it got away and didn’t leave a trace. When it comes to finger prints and things like that you know I ain’t exactly a dumb-bell, but I gotta admit this thing, whatever it is, had me hopelessly horn-swoggled.”

Ritsky declined a cigar, saying he didn’t dare smoke because of heart trouble. The doctor selected one with care, lighted it slowly, puffed it with a relish, and settled back with a look of eager anticipation in his eyes.

“What happened last night?” he asked.

“Maybe we better begin at the beginning,” said Hoyne. “You see, there’s quite a story goes along with this case, and Mr. Ritsky can tell it better than I. Don’t be afraid to give him all the dope, Mr. Ritsky. The doctor knows all about such things—wrote a book about ’em, in fact. Let’s see. What was the name of that book, Doc?”

“‘Investigations of Materialization Phenomena.’”

“Righto! I never can remember it. Anyhow, Mr. Ritsky, tell him your story and ask him all the questions you want to. He’s headquarters on this stuff.”

Ritsky studied his clawlike hands for a moment, clasping and unclasping the bony fingers. Suddenly he looked up.

“Do animals have immortal souls?” he asked, anxiously.

“I’m afraid you have sadly overrated my ability as a recorder of scientific facts,” replied the doctor, smiling slightly. “Frankly, I do not know. I don’t believe anyone knows. Most people think they haven’t, and I incline toward that belief.”

“Then such a thing as a ghost of a—a hound could not be?”

“I would not say that. Nothing is impossible. There are undoubtedly more things in heaven and earth, as Shakespeare said, than we have dreamed of in our philosophy. However, I would consider a materialization of the disembodied spirit of a canine, or any of the other lower animals, as highly improbable.”

“But if you saw one with your own eyes—”

“I should probably be inclined to doubt the evidence of my senses. Have _you_ seen one?”

“Have I _seen_ one?” groaned Ritsky. “Good Lord, man, I’d give every cent I own to be rid of that thing! For two years it’s turned my nights into hell! From a perfectly healthy, normal human being I’ve been reduced to a physical wreck. Sometimes I think my reason is slipping. The thing will either kill me or drive me mad if it is not stopped.”

He buried his face in his hands.

“This is most strange,” said the doctor. “You say the apparition first troubled you two years ago?”

“Not in its present form. But it was there, nevertheless. The first time I saw it was shortly after I killed that cursed dog. A month, to be exact. I shot him on the twenty-first of August, and he, or it, or _something_, came back to haunt me on the twenty-first of September.

“How vividly I remember the impressions of that first night of terror! How I tried, the next day, to make myself believe it was only a dream—that such a thing could not be. I had retired at eleven o’clock, and was awakened from a sound sleep some time between one and two in the morning by the whining, yapping cry of a dog. As there were no dogs on the premises, you can imagine my surprise.

“I was about to get up when something directly over the foot of my bed riveted my attention. In the dim light it appeared a grayish white in color, and closely resembled the head and pendant ears of a hound. I noticed, with horror, that it was moving slowly toward me, and I was temporarily paralyzed with fright when it emitted a low, cavernous growl.

“Driving my muscles by a supreme effort of will, I leaped from the bed and switched on the light. In the air where I had seen the thing hanging there was nothing. The door was bolted and the windows were screened. There was nothing unusual in the room, as I found after a thorough search. Mystified, I hunted through the entire house from top to bottom, but without finding a trace of the thing, whatever if was, that had made the sounds.

“From that day to this I have never laid my head on a pillow with a feeling of security. At first it visited me at intervals of about a week. These intervals were gradually shortened until it came every night. As its visits became more frequent the apparition seemed to grow. First it sprouted a small body like that of a terrier, all out of proportion to the huge head. Each night that body grew a little larger until it assumed the full proportions of a Russian wolfhound. Recently it has attempted to attack me, but I have always frustrated it by switching on the light.”

“Are you positive that you have not been dreaming all this?” asked the doctor.

“Would it be possible for some one else to hear a dream of mine?” countered Ritsky. “We have only been able to retain one servant on account of those noises. All, with the exception of our housekeeper, who is quite deaf, heard the noises and left us as a result.”