Part 18

Mechanically he arose from the bed and stumbled onto the floor.

“It tells me to kill, _kill_!” he mumbled. “Kill with my revolver. Kill--who shall I kill?”

Burke silently followed the plodding form of the other. With measured steps Hayden stalked to the stairs and passed down, with Burke close behind.

Hayden led the way directly to the room of his sister and niece. Without hesitating, his fingers grasping a loaded “Billy,” Burke trailed close and waited for the moment when he should be needed.

Hayden appeared unconscious of the light furnished by Burke’s torch, nor did he once turn on the short journey. Reaching the side of the bed in which the women were sleeping, he paused and stared rigidly down.

Burke joined him. His light was now on the two women. He was struck by the horrible contortions of the faces, seemingly drawn in agony.

With a sudden premonition, he bent down and felt the motionless forms. The girl’s hand was limp and lifeless. He felt the pulse of the older woman.

_Both were dead!_

* * * * *

The detective turned to Hayden.

He was staring down, dry-eyed.

“I see,” he said stupidly, “both dead. Kill, _kill_--who was I to kill? Not them. They’re dead. Something still tells me to kill!” He sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands.

Burke lit a lamp that stood on a heavy dresser and put out the torch. He stood looking down at the two women. He then noted that the room was growing shadowy. He glanced at the lamp. It was full of oil and the wick seemed to be burning freely, yet the light continued to lower.

Burke again glanced at the two women. Slowly, almost invisibly, he fancied that the agonized features were changing to the repose of death.

Hayden arose and came to the detective’s side. He was muttering and softly moaning. Burke watched him.

Hayden, with a sudden start, looked across the room.

“They’re coming back!” he mumbled, “weaving and twisting.”

His eyes moved slowly from the opposite side of the room as if he were following some moving object. They came to rest on the women’s faces.

“Streaming down their mouths!” he muttered. “They’re sucking in the twisting rolls. _They’re coming to life!_”

Burke glanced at the women. In the dim light he could have sworn that he saw traces of returning life. At that moment there came a crashing report at his side and a blinding flash.

With that, the light flared up bright, and the dead faces were revealed. Burke whirled around.

Hayden was sinking to the floor, a bullet hole in his head, from which the blood was slowly starting to emerge. Burke sank beside the man and lifted his head.

Slowly the heavy form relaxed. Hayden opened his eyes to stare with bewilderment at the detective.

In another moment he was dead.

Burke placed the body on the floor and went to the bed. Once again he endeavored to find a trace of pulse in the still forms. Both were lifeless. He fancied that both dead faces bore a peaceful look, and on the elder woman’s slightly-opened lips there seemed to hover an exultant smile.

Closing the room, Burke got his coat and belongings, then locked up the house. Some hours later he was sitting with the Chief of Police, relating the tragedy. The Chief drove with Burke to the Sheriff of the county, and together they went to the house. The Sheriff had called up the coroner, and they found him waiting for them.

A brief examination of the women revealed that both had died of heart failure, probably induced by some unexplainable shock. Burke took the Sheriff aside. On the detective’s suggestion, they wrecked the attic room in a thorough search. Burke wanted to locate the source of the dropping blood.

At the conclusion of their quest the mystery was finished, for Burke. But it was to Rhyne that he confessed his failure.

Returning to his apartment in New York, he found Rhyne there.

“Well,” cried the latter, as soon as he appeared, “did you solve the mystery?”

“No,” replied Burke. “I did not.”

Rhyne’s eyes opened. “Well--what did you find?”

“Over the attic room,” said Burke musingly, “we found a small, cryptlike space between the ceiling of the attic room and the roof of the house. It was encased in plaster. As we broke through the ceiling, a mass of human bones came tumbling down. The coroner pronounced them the skeletons of a woman and a girl. Both had been dead for generations.

“Through the shoulder blade of the girl’s skeleton was a jagged hole. When the bones fell, the elder woman’s skull rolled to my feet. I picked it up. Something rattled inside and I worked it out through the eye socket. It was a slug of lead.

“Both the woman and the girl had been murdered.”

Queer Tribe of Savages Found in Africa

One of the strangest tribes in Africa is that of the El Molo. Ruled by a blind chief, they live on an island near the east shore of Lake Rudolf in East Africa, their shelter being crude huts fashioned from palm leaves. They live entirely on fish, which they spear and eat raw, and they drink nothing except the water in the lake, which the white man considers unfit to drink. It is said they cannot live for more than an hour without water, their lips swelling and bleeding if they try to go longer. They use a language of their own, different from that of the other African tribes.

African Brides Must Be Plump

The wild tribes of Africa consider no girl beautiful unless she is abnormally fat. Hence their young girls are fed on milk and fattening foods, and are not permitted to exercise. This forced fattening is not only a necessary preparation for marriage--it is also good business for a girl’s parents. When a girl marries, the bridegroom pays her parents for her, and the amount he pays is based on the degree of plumpness of the bride whom they have fattened for him.

_An Odd, Fantastic Little Story of the Stone Age_

Nimba, the Cave Girl

_By_ R. T. M. Scott

Many thousands of years ago, when the poles of the earth were its pleasant spots and when the tropics were too hot for human life, Nimba grew to her full height and was still a maid.

Many had been her suitors, but, from the time she had pulled down her first wild animal, she had lived much apart from others of her kind and had become known as a mighty traveler and hunter. She could run a hundred miles in one day over the worst kind of country, and she had matched her brains successfully against the most wonderful of animal cunning. Unaided, she could support herself, and she did not want a mate--at least, not yet.

Somewhere, not far south of what is now called James Bay, is a beautiful lake lying between steep-sloping, wood-covered hills. At one end of this lake a great boulder once stood, heaving its huge mass a full hundred feet above the water. At its back the steep hillside gave access to its summit. At its front the water rippled or dashed against one hundred feet of straight wall.

Yet not quite perfect was this wall. In its very center, and slightly overhanging the lake, was a tiny cave, an irregular cavity large enough to shelter two or three people. Fifty feet above the water and fifty feet below the top of the great rock, this natural shelter against rain or enemy seemed inaccessible to anything without wings. But the skin of a long-haired animal was stretched to dry against the back of this little cave--pegged to the cracks and crannies by means of great thorns. Scattered here and there were bleached bones--relics of past meals eaten by Nimba.

* * * * *

It was a hot afternoon, and the sun was beating the earth in its usual relentless fury. To the south the great cloud-masses of steam were rising and tumbling upon themselves in rain, only to revaporize and rise again.

The air was still with a breathless quiet, which presaged continued fine weather and little danger of the hot humidity of the south being blown northward. On the eastern horizon a mighty mountain belched its head off and sent a column of fire into the sky that rivaled the glare of the sun.

Suddenly the bushes parted behind the great rock-sentinel of the lake. Nimba sprang out and ran to the highest vantage point. There she stood, motionless, gazing at the burning mountain. Fire did not frighten her as it did the creatures which ran on four legs; rather it attracted her.

She stood long, viewing the new magnificence of the eastern horizon, her coppery-tanned skin glistening in the sun and her firm young breasts rising and falling as if they, too, saw and wondered in dreamy contemplation. Lithe were her legs and arms, and slender her waist, with hips full big but boy-like in their taper. Her hair was bound with little tendrils into a cue that reached below her waist and then was doubled to keep it off the ground. Sunburned, its hue was a golden glory. A deep scar marked her face, but this only added to its barbaric beauty.

Of a sudden, she bent as in the act of listening and then leaped back into the bushes, only to return with a small animal she had killed, and dragging behind her a stout creeper of great length. Fastening one end of the creeper to a jutting rock, she threw the other end over the face of the great boulder and, holding with one hand the animal’s leg, lowered herself to the cave in the wall with all the agility of a monkey.

Scarcely had she entered her tiny abode before she noticed that her creeper ladder was being violently agitated from above. She leaned far out from her cave in a perilous manner and saw descending toward her a long pair of hairy legs followed by the rest of a man.

Picking up a stout club from the back of her cave, Nimba waited until the legs came within reach and then caught the man a blow on his thigh that caused him to yell lustily and to ascend a few feet with great rapidity.

He did not entirely retreat, however, but, turning around like a caterpillar on a thread, again descended, this time head first in order to keep a bright outlook.

* * * * *

Nimba now saw the man’s face, and she disliked it more than his legs. Her small features convulsed with rage, and she spat at him and beat the wall with her club in a frenzy. She knew him well.

He was Oomba, one of the strong and cruel men of her tribe. When he was fifteen he had killed his grandfather for a stoneheaded club. He had caught the old man unawares, which act of caution had been construed as timidity so that he had few friends until he became too strong to withstand.

When Oomba had descended until his face was within twelve inches beyond the reach of the girl’s club, he hung there, gloating over her with greedy, lustful eyes. For half an hour he hung, face downward, sensuously intoning to the infuriated girl.

“With me hunt! With me eat! With me sleep!”

At the end of half an hour Nimba was still spitting at him and still clubbing the wall with unabated energy.

“Oomba go! Oomba go! Me you will not touch!” she screamed at intervals.

Finally Oomba climbed back to the top of the rock--but he did not give up. He pulled the great creeper up after him. He would trap the little spit-cat, he thought, and so tame her.

But he did not know Nimba.

As soon as the object of her hatred became lost to sight Nimba calmed herself. When she saw her rope of escape withdrawn she waited for some time in silence. Then she stepped to the edge of her cave home--and her body flashed forward through the sunlit air like a gleam of gold. For fifty feet the gleam curved, then struck the water silently like a knife. Fifteen yards from where she struck, Nimba’s face appeared above the surface glancing upward toward the top of the rock.

Oomba peering over the rock, witnessed Nimba’s mighty dive. For a moment he scowled at her before dashing into the bushes just as Nimba swam into shallow water.

* * * * *

Nimba rose near the shore, her club dripping in her hand. She bounded along the rough shore line, keeping at least ankle deep in the water. Rounding a small, wooded point, she came to an overhanging bough upon which she climbed.

Here she broke two or three small branches and sped on into the next tree and the next, throwing herself from limb to limb and breaking small branches in her flight. Finally she broke a very small branch and leaped into a densely foliaged tree without so much as crushing a leaf. And here she ensconced herself from sight.

Her trap was laid. She clung to a limb as silent and watchful as any animal of prey, her long club between her young body and the bark on which she lay.

The minutes passed while Nimba’s dark eyes kept constant watch through the green leaves that formed her mask. Abruptly, as she watched, a young man stepped out and stood beneath her tree. Strong and straight was he. His eyes were bright and the hair on his face was short and soft. Not a leaf rustled as Nimba watched with growing interest. Below her the man stood quietly scenting the air.

Suddenly a twig snapped, and the young man turned like a flash, only to receive Oomba’s mighty club full on the head. So silently had Oomba approached that the listening Nimba had not detected the slightest sound. Now he stood looking down at his victim and contemptuously turning the bleeding head from side to side with his foot, quite unconscious of any lurking danger.

Clinging only by her feet from the bough upon which she had been lying, Nimba reached down and swung her club with vicious force upon the side of Oomba’s head. Beside his own victim he fell, while Nimba dropped lightly to the ground, turning in the air like a cat and landing upon her feet.

Quickly she dragged Oomba to one side, where two rocks abutted, and wedged his head vicelike between them. Then she beat it with her club until it had no shape at all and the leaves and little green things nearby were spattered with blood. There was no doubt about it: Oomba was dead.

* * * * *

Great satisfaction showed on Nimba’s face when her bloody task was done.

She washed the blood from her body in the lake and returned to examine the young man who had first been struck down. Apparently satisfied with his condition, she picked him up and, trailing her bloody club, returned to her great rock at the head of the lake. Here she found the creeper where Oomba had left it and experienced little difficulty in climbing down to the privacy of her cave with the senseless man under one arm.

Two trips she made for water, which was carried in a gourd and stored in a hollow in the cave floor. This done, Nimba washed the young man’s face, wet his hair and propped him in a corner to recover his senses.

Her work of mercy finished, Nimba turned her attention to the animal which she had killed earlier in the day. Dragging it from its corner, she placed both feet upon the body while she tore off a leg with one furious wrench. As the sun was setting and the deep purple of the hills became bordered with gold, Nimba commenced the one meal of the day to which she was accustomed. It would soon be time to sleep.

Almost as the last shaft of sunlight shot over the distant hills consciousness returned to the young man as he sat propped in the corner of the cave. Slowly he looked about him. He rose to his feet and walked to the edge of the cave, where he gazed down at the lake and examined the dangling creeper down which he had been carried.

Finally the young man approached Nimba, who had stopped eating and was silently watching him, her mouth bloody from her raw repast. He dragged the animal from her side and shoved her into a corner, where a jagged stone cut her shoulder, causing the blood to flow. Having eaten his fill, the man lay down to sleep.

The great moon rose and silvered the sleeping lake. A night-bird screeched as it swept by the entrance to the cave and Nimba crept from her corner. Still bleeding, she stretched herself beside the sleeping man. Her body touched his and some blood from her shoulder mingled with his in a tiny pool.

Below them, in the water, a reptile splashed its way among the reeds. Nimba and her master slept.

Nimba had taken her mate.

_What Comes After Death?_

_An Anonymous Author Gives a Startling Answer in_

_The_ YOUNG MAN _who_ WANTED TO DIE

_By ? ? ?_

FIRST EPISODE.

In a mean, miserable, two-dollar-a-week bedroom in a Chicago lodging-house a young man was calmly and deliberately preparing to kill himself.

He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness--and yet he was preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room of a shabby hovel.

With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:

“_As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to know why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as much as they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not one who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead._

“_A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else--something equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may appear to others. I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from childhood, but always there has been this thing that stood between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am about to do. It is not drink--nor gambling, nor hereditary disease._

“_It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable Curiosity. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible desire to know what follows death. As I grew up, this craving increased until it was a positive mania. I devoured every book on theosophy and kindred subjects I could lay hands on; I attended meetings of psychic societies; at college my avidity for psychology was remarked by everybody. At length I had reached the point where I yearned to tear aside the black veil of death and discover her secret. Why wait? I asked myself. Since you are bound to go some day, why not go now?_

“_One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It led to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night she left the town where we both lived._

“_I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For three years now I have searched the city for her, but not a trace have I found. And so I have given it up. It is hopeless. I shall never see her again._

“_Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is living even as I write these words--perhaps miles away--perhaps in the next block--perhaps ... God alone knows, and God protect her!_”

He stopped, put down his pencil, and placed his hand before his eyes. Thus he sat for several minutes. The yellow gas flames flickered weirdly at either side of the shoddy bureau; the clangor of a distant street car reached him faintly; a motor-truck rumbled heavily in the street below; a bickering couple jawed and wrangled ceaselessly in the next room.

After awhile he picked up the pencil and went on:

“_Well anyway, I’m going to gratify that Curiosity. In a few hours I shall be in an unknown country I have always longed to explore. I’ve an idea I’ll find a happiness there I have never known on this earth._

“_In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: ‘Rich young man, seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to despair and kills himself.’ If the girl is found next door, without money to buy food or pay her room rent--_”

He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written. Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room....

It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch convulsively.

“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily May--forgive--Lily May!”

... His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple; he choked and gasped.

“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his arms.

But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back, and he lay very still.

SECOND EPISODE.

When the deadly gas fumes reached the youth on the cot he turned over on his back, threw his arms out, and breathed long and deeply of the poisoned air.

His head throbbed and pounded; his heart pumped madly; his eyes started from their sockets. Yet still he lay with outstretched arms, inhaling evenly and steadily.

Then everything within him seemed to warp and become distorted and askew. His veins tied themselves in knots. His blood choked and clogged. An awful weight crushed and crunched his breast.

But he set his teeth and clenched his fists, and continued to gulp in the murderous air.

Then he felt himself dropping, gently, gently--down, down, down--as though invisible hands were lowering him into some bottomless, pitch black cavern.

But suddenly there burst upon his vision a dazzling golden light, and far above him he saw a blazing throne, sparkling and flashing with a strange brilliancy, and on the throne a girl, her hair undone, her body clothed in a virginal robe. And she gazed down upon him with eyes full of sadness and reproach. And he tried to call out to her, and tried to lift his arms to her....

And the fiendish darkness swept all away and closed in upon him and crushed him, and he knew no more.

THIRD EPISODE.

Eons of time had passed.

All was impenetrable blackness. With incredible velocity, he was whizzing through infinite space. Nothing supported him; nothing touched him. Some unseen, unfelt, unthinkable Force was hurling him outward into a Stygian, unbounded void.

Then, so gradually that it was scarcely perceptible, the blackness was dyed a pallid, ghastly hue. And with a shocking suddenness it became alive with a horrible larvae. Bloodless and transparent things, they seemed, filling the air with a swarming, wriggling magnitude of loathsome life. And he was a part of this!

He put out his hand; and though he felt no touch, he saw the squirming mass of worms pass through his flesh as though nothing were there. And he knew his body swarmed with them as though it were decayed cheese, and an unspeakable, revolting nausea surged through him.

Then the paleness vanished, and the larvae with it, and he was still shooting through the horrible darkness.

* * * * *

Another eon had passed.

Nor had his terrible flight abated. Outward, through unlighted infinitude, he swept untiringly. Unearthly sounds now filled the air--voices screaming in agony, cries and moans as of tortured souls, insane laughter and maniacal shrieks. Anon, with a howl and a hiss, some shrieking air dragon would roar past him. And, all around, he could hear the bellow and screech of monsters of the air in terrible conflict.

Then all turned to an ocean of living blood; and great crimson bellows belched over him, wave upon horrid wave. And the frightful aerial mammals, invisible a moment before, were now seen leaping and plunging through that scarlet sea.

Under him and over him they ducked and bounded--gigantic, green-hued monsters extravagantly hideous. Now and again one would dart for him, mouth distended. But the next second he would be far away, with the ghastly creature in hopeless pursuit.

Slowly the liquid redness merged into a shimmering rainbow of vivid colors. Yellow and green, and purple and blue and orange, streaked the air with a prismatic glory, glittering and scintillating with a marvelous beauty.

Then, with a terrific suddenness, like a noiseless thunderclap, the blackness rushed in and blotted out the dazzling iridescence, and cloaked all in Cimmerian darkness.

FOURTH EPISODE.

Another eon.

So far away it seemed a distant star, the lone traveler through the infinite Void discerned a dull red glow. Larger and larger it grew as he soared toward it with lightning velocity.

And now it seemed a great mass of flameless fire, shedding its cold rays for millions of miles. With every second it grew in size until it was come to inconceivable proportion. And then it seemed to shrivel up, and turn ashen and wrinkled, and become as a dead and crumbling sun.

But suddenly the husk burst open, and the wayfarer described, dimly at first, what seemed the outermost rim of some gorgeous, primeval world.

Awhile it was as though he were watching it from afar off; but he traversed thousands of leagues in as many seconds, and swiftly it took definite shape as he flew nearer and yet nearer.

And then his journey through illimitable space was at an end, and he had alighted upon this unknown world, and was wandering through a dense jungle of some marvelous fungus that attained a wondrous height.

Seemingly without his own volition, he at length found himself lying on a verdant mound overlooking a vast tropical morass that reached off on all sides into endless vista.