7 best short stories by Otis Adelbert Kline E-Book

Otis Adelbert Kline

• Herausgeber: Tacet Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Serie: 7 best short stories
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 284

Beschreibung

Otis Adelbert Kline was a songwriter, an adventure novelist and literary agent during the pulp era. Much of his work first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. Kline was an amateur orientalist and a student of Arabic, like his friend and sometime collaborator, E. Hoffmann Price. The critic August Nemo selected seven short stories by this remarkable author for your enjoyment: - The Corpse on the Third Slab. - The Man from the Moon. - The Cup of Blood. - Mignight Madness. - The Malignant Entity. - The Bird-People. - The Thing of a Thousand Shapes.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Author

The Corpse on the Third Slab

The Man from the Moon

The Cup of Blood

Midnight Madness

The Malignant Entity

The Bird-People

The Thing of a Thousand Shapes

About the Publisher

The Author

Kline is best known for an apocryphal literary feud with fellow author Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which he supposedly raised the latter's ire by producing close imitations (The Planet of Peril (1929) and two sequels) of Burroughs's Martian novels, though set on Venus; Burroughs, the story goes, then retaliated by writing his own Venus novels, whereupon Kline responded with an even more direct intrusion on Burroughs's territory by boldly setting two novels on Mars. Kline's jungle adventure stories, reminiscent of Burroughs's Tarzan tales, have also been cited as evidence of the conflict.

While the two authors did write the works in question, the theory that they did so in contention with each other is supported only circumstantially, by the resemblance and publication dates of the works themselves. The feud theory was originally set forth in a fan press article, "The Kline-Burroughs War," by Donald A. Wollheim (Science Fiction News, November, 1936), and afterward given wider circulation by Sam Moskowitz in his book Explorers of the Infinite (1963). Richard A. Lupoff debunked the case in his book Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965).

Among the evidence cited by Lupoff discounting the feud:  no comment from either writer acknowledging the feud is documented, and  family members of the two authors have no recollection of ever hearing them mention it. In response to Lupoff's investigations Moskowitz identified his original source as Wollheim's article, while Wollheim stated, when questioned on the source of his own information: "I made it up!"

The Corpse on the Third Slab

OFFICER RYAN walked slowly along between two rows of cold, moist slabs on which reposed the chill, grisly remains of what had once been human beings.

He essayed a few bars of "River Shannon" in his rich, Killarney baritone, not loudly, yet with volume enough to drown the weird uncanny echoes that rang back from the walls and sloping ceiling of the morgue each time his heavy, hobnailed shoes came in contact with the floor.

Though he knew himself to be alone in the room, those echoes somehow gave him a feeling that he was being followed—a queer, creepy sensation that was far % from agreeable. He stopped his humming abruptly. What was that? The sound of many voices mimicking his own? Suddenly he realized—and laughed. A myriad hollow cackles answered him.

His face grew sober again, and he roundly cursed his superior who had detailed him for special duty in this ghastly place, all because a corpse which nobody could identify, and consequently nobody wanted, had been stolen the night before.

He glanced at the dial of his watch.

It was nearly one o'clock. Five long, dreary hours must pass, before he could go home to the wife and kiddies.

An attendant had thoughtfully placed a chair from the office for him at the far end of the room. His instructions were to patrol the place every half hour. As it took him only five minutes to make the rounds, there was twenty-five minute intervals of rest twice in every hour. He hurried his pace a little as he neared the chair. Once seated thereon, he would at least be rid of the sound of those haunting footsteps.

He was walking along, swinging his night-stick with attempted jauntiness, when, out of the tail of his eye, he saw, or imagined he saw a slight movement of the sheet covering the corpse at his right.

He stopped, petrified with amazement, and stared at the thing on the cold, gray slab, while a strange prickly feeling coursed the length of his dorsal vertebrae.

With forced bravado he stepped up beside the still figure and turned back the sheet. The corpse, which lay on the third slab from the end, was that of a middle aged man, gray-haired, slightly bald, and dressed in the garb of a laborer. No doubt the face had not been unpleasant to look at in life but in death it was hardly a thing of beauty, with its glassy, staring eyes, sagging lower jaw, and protruding, blue-white tongue.

Ryan replaced the sheet with a shudder and hurried to his chair. The place certainly got on his nerves. He had known that it would when Chief Howell assigned him to it and, in observation of the old proverb, "Forewarned is forearmed," had made due preparation for the exigency. The preparation was very simple. He had poured some pale amber liquid from a large round bottle into a small flat bottle. The flat bottle reposed snugly in his hip pocket.

The large, round bottle, a gallon of "moon," had been a present from a bootlegger friend.

"Don't be afraid to drink it like water, Ed," his friend had told him. "I know it's all right 'cause I made it myself. You won't find no slivers in that hooch."

Despite the admonition of his friend, the bottle had reposed in the Ryan basement for six months, untouched. Ryan was not an habitual drinker, but he believed in "kapin' a nip in the house for emergency."

He glanced slyly toward the office door, then extracted the bottle from his hip pocket, pulled the cork, and held it up to the light to admire its color and lucidity as a connoisseur admires rare old wine. With some dismay, he noticed that it was nearly two thirds empty, whereas the night was scarcely more than half gone. He must cut down the size of his drinks, or go without during the wee, small hours. He would cut down, too, after this one. Just this once he must have a man's size shot.

He needed it sorely. The staring eyes and lolling tongue of that corpse on the third slab had set his nerves on edge. Placing the bottle to his lips, he drank deeply, corked it, and returned it to his hip pocket with a sigh.

"Sure, and that Wop knows how to build booze," he muttered. "Goes down as smooth as oil, and it has a flavor like ten-year- old bottled in bond."

He sat in silence until his watch told him that it was time to make the rounds again, then rose reluctantly to perform his distasteful duty.

WHEN he arrived opposite the third slab he resolutely looked straight ahead. Thus, he reasoned, if the thing should move he would not see it, and there would be no harm done. Ryan had overlooked the fact that he had a pair of perfectly good ears, and that they were in excellent working order. A slipping, sliding, soul-sickening sound from the direction of the third slab acted as a forcible reminder.

With a gasp of horror, he fairly flew to the chair. He sat down weakly, mopped the cold perspiration from his forehead, and finished the contents of his bottle at one gurgling gulp.

Ryan had made up his mind not to look in the direction of that slab again, and when he made up his mind he was a hard man to change. With stubborn determination to carry out his plan, come what might, he pivoted his swivel chair a half turn and settled down to await the dreary passage of another twenty-five minutes.

"Now let the damn' thing turn over all it wants to, or do a toe-dance, for all of me. Oi'll not give it the satisfaction of watchin' its devilish capers," he resolved, half aloud.

That last drink had been a stiff one. In fact, it would have made four good husky drinks for as many hearty lumberjacks or longshoremen.

Ryan grew drowsy. Decorators had been at work in the morgue that day, white-enameling the walls, and he told himself that the smell of the turpentine made him sleepy—that and the cursed dank, musty odor of the place itself. His head nodded until his chin rested on one of the gold buttons that adorned the front of his uniform.

Some time later he awoke with a start and looked at his watch. He looked again, rubbing his eyes to make sure that he was awake. Surely he had not slept more than ten minutes, yet the hands told him it was four-thirty.

He wondered what had awakened him. There had been a noise of some sort. He dimly remembered that much, but, try as he would, he could not recall the nature of the sound.

Suddenly, and with startling distinctness, the noise was repeated. It was the sharp click of a heavy shoe on the hard concrete floor. Scarce had the hollow echoes died when he heard it again.

Someone was walking toward him with slow, dragging footsteps from the direction of the third slab!

RYAN was no coward. On the contrary, he had shown marked bravery in many encounters with desperate bandits and thugs of the underworld. Neither was he superstitious. He believed that when a man was dead he was gone; and that was that. His soul might go to purgatory, and thence to heaven or hell, but never return to earth. Yet, despite his inherent bravery and his firm theological convictions, he could not bring himself to swing his chair about and face the thing that was approaching.

In fact, he discovered, to his utter horror, that he was unable to move. He could not so much as lift his nerveless hands from the arms of the chair. Even breathing was difficult, as though great chains had been wound about his body, pinning him against the chair back.

Deliberately, painfully, those weird, echoing footfalls approached. The thing was almost upon him, yet he could not move nor utter a sound. An odd, misshapen shadow appeared on the floor in front of him. Slowly it crawled up the side of the wall, its grotesque outline gradually assuming human form.

Then the thing itself appeared. The invisible chains about Ryan's chest tightened, and icy fingers laid hold of his wildly beating heart and squeezed it until it pounded eccentrically, like an engine with cracked spark plugs, for he recognized the gaunt figure and grisly features of the corpse from the third slab!

It stood there before him, swaying slightly, then extended its gnarled left hand and steadied itself against the wall. As those glassy eyes stared into his, Ryan's palate seemed to shrivel and dry up. It rattled like a dead leaf in a gale with each intake of his breath.

Evidently the corpse was trying to converse with him, for its blue-white tongue and lips moved slightly. Presently it obtained some measure of control over them and spoke in a hoarse, husky whisper:

"G-good evening."

Ryan was too petrified with horror to reply.

The corpse looked at him curiously for a moment Evidently it reached the decision that it had said the wrong thing. It tried again:

"G'morning, oshifer."

The policeman's tongue seemed glued to the roof of his mouth.

"Sha matter? Ya deaf and dumb?"

To his amazement, Ryan heard himself speaking. Anger at the other's insulting insinuation had loosed his tongue.

"No. Oi ain't deaf and dumb. Oi don't talk to the likes of yez, that's all. Now go back and lay down on yer slab and behave yerself, or oi'll kill yez deader than yez are already."

The corpse leered horribly. Then it laughed—a cackling, graveyard laugh that brought on a fit Of coughing.

"Fooled you, too, did I!" it rasped. "Fooled 'em all. Fooled the old woman. Fooled the ash-man. Fooled everybody."

"Go wan. You ain't foolin' nobody."

"Fooled 'em all, I tell you. She put chloroform in my hooch. Wanted to 'lope with the ash-man. Don't care. Let her 'lope an' good riddance. Damned she-devil, anyhow. But I fooled 'em. They think I'm dead, but I ain't no more dead 'n you are."

"The hell you ain't!" growled Ryan.

"Tell you I ain't," wheezed the corpse, testily. "Can't I walk? Can't I talk? Can't I do anything any live person can do?"

"Course yez can," agreed Ryan, who felt that he was beginning to see the light. "Anything can walk in a dream—even a corpse. Oi wance saw a kitchen table do the toddle with a grand piano in a nightmare."

"Who said anything about a dream? I'm not a dream and I can prove it."

"Yez'll have to show me," said Ryan. "Oi'm from St. Louis."

"All right. If I was a dream you could see and hear me, but I couldn't see or hear you. Am I right or wrong?"

"Right."

"F'r instance, I wouldn't know whether you was a bull or a ballet dancer. I wouldn't be able to tell if you was smooth-faced or wore a set of Patsies."

"Sure yez wouldn't, and yez don't."

"Don't I, though. Get this. You're a big, overgrown, dish- faced, bull-necked cop, with a long, loppy carrot-colored set of soup-strainers that makes you look like a seasick walrus."

Ryan tried to rise and smite the presumptuous one but the invisible bonds held him. He gritted his teeth.

"Yez'll suffer for this, dream or no dream, corpse or no corpse," he groaned.

The corpse stared glassily, unmoved by his threat

"You know," he continued, "I've been in better jails than this. No heat—no blankets—nothing. The beds are cold as ice and hard as rocks, and the sheets are thin as paper."

Ryan was astounded. Could it be possible that this corpse didn't know it was in the morgue?

The thing yawned, disclosing its ghastly, blue-white tongue.

"Ho, hum. Gettin' sleepy again. Guess I'll crawl back in the old sheet-rock bunk. G 'night, bottle-nose."

This was too much for Ryan. His naturally florid countenance turned purple with anger as he watched the ghoulish figure stagger slowly toward the third slab. If he could only move! He concentrated his gaze on his little finger. Even it was incapable of motion, he thought. He tried to wiggle it, nevertheless, and lo, it wiggled. He essayed to lift his hand. It lifted. He was overcome with joy.

Rising carefully and noiselessly from the chair, he tiptoed stealthily after the corpse. First he thought to lay a heavy hand on its shoulder, but he could not bring himself to touch it Revenge—sweet revenge—was almost within his grasp, yet he dared not grasp it. Then came an inspiration. Shifting his bulk to his left foot, he poised his right and took careful aim at the tattered hip-pocket.

Somehow—perhaps because the pocket was moving, or mayhap because the amber liquid had befuddled his vision he miscalculated the range. The heavy, hob-nailed boot traveled upward to where a solid target should, have been but wasn't, and kept on traveling. It would probably have soared upward to the ceiling had it not been most intimately connected with Ryan's anatomy. As it was, it jerked his left foot from under him, the back of his head collided with the floor, and he caught a momentary glimpse of a hitherto unheard of, gloriously brilliant stellar constellation.

Then a curtain of dismal darkness descended around him, dragging him down to oblivion.

RYAN'S first approach to consciousness after that was a half-dreaming, half-waking state. He was under the impression that he was a corpse, lying on a cold, gray slab.

He put out his hand, then jerked it back hastily. He was lying on something cold and hard. This discovery quickly and thoroughly awakened him. He sat up and groaned, as a sharp pain shot through his head. Surely something had laid it wide open in the back. He felt it tenderly, and discovered a beautifully rounded contusion.

Suddenly he heard the hum of voices. One voice in particular sounded like that of Chief Howell.

He rose hastily, picked up his cap, and dusted his uniform. His watch told him it was six o'clock. He tried to recall how and why he was lying on the floor with a goose-egg on the back of his head. At length he remembered, and glanced suspiciously toward the third slab. It was occupied, nor had the corpse apparently been disturbed, for it lay just as he had seen it when he passed at one o'clock, with the sheet draping its angular figure.

The sound of voices grew more distinct. Someone had opened the office door. Chief Howell was holding it open while two attendants entered, bearing a litter on which lay the body of a coarse, thick-featured woman. Her face was horribly mutilated and her hair and clothing were stained and matted with blood.

The attendants, casting about for a vacant slab, noted that the fourth was unoccupied, and conveyed the body thither.

Chief Howell called to someone who had just entered the office through the outer door.

"Come in, Coroner. I guess we've got this thing straightened out for you now."

Coroner Haynes entered, and the two walked over to the third slab. The chief drew a photograph from his pocket and, raising the sheet, compared it with the features of the corpse.

"It's him, all right," said Howell.

"Who?"

"This woman's husband, Frank Merlin. She killed him night before last—put chloroform in a bottle of moonshine whisky he had so she could elope with the ash-man. As soon as he was dead she called up her affinity, who carried the body out to his cart, wrapped in gunny-sacks, and hauled it to another part of the city where he dumped it in a dark alley.

"Last night she and her sweetheart got into a drunken argument and he almost cut her to ribbons. Neighbors, hearing the rumpus, called the officer on the beat. When he arrived the woman was dead and the man, beastly drunk, had to be clubbed almost into insensibility before he would submit to arrest. When he was brought in I doused him with cold water and sobered him up. After a severe grilling he confessed all."

RYAN listened to the story with bulging eyes. He had regarded his experience of the night before as a dream. What if, after all, it was a reality!

He started for the office, when something arrested his attention—f a human hand on the newly enameled wall, as if someone had leaned against it. He recalled the attitude of the corpse as it stood by that wall the night before, and curiosity, drew him irresistibly to the third slab.

The left hand was lying palm downward, and he turned it with difficulty, for rigor mortis had set in. Then he cried out in amazement at what he saw.

The palm of the dead man was smeared with sticky, half- dried, white enamel!

The Man from the Moon

WE stood on the eastern rim of Crater Mound—my friend Professor Thompson, the noted selenographer, and I. Dusky shadows lengthened and grew more intense in the great, deep basin before us, as the Sun, his face reddened as if from his day's exertions, sank slowly beyond the western rim.

Behind us, Alamo Edwards, the dude wrangler who had brought us out from Canyon Diabolo two weeks before, was dividing his time between the chuck wagon and our outdoor cookstove in the preparation of our evening meal, while our hobbled horses wandered about near-by, searching out clumps of edible vegetation.

"How is the story progressing, Jim?" asked the professor, referring to a half finished novel I had brought out with me to occupy my time with, while my friend puttered among the stones and rubble in the vicinity.

"I've reached an impasse—" I began.

"And so have I," rejoined my friend dejectedly, "but of the two, mine is far the worst, for yours is in an imaginary situation, while mine is real. You will eventually solve your problem by using your imagination, which has no fixed limitations. I can only solve mine by using my reason, which is limited to deductions from facts. If I do not find sufficient facts either to prove or disprove my theory, what have I? A hypothesis, ludicrously wobbling on one puny leg, neither able to stand erect among established scientific truths nor to fall to dissolution among the mistaken ideas of the past."

"What single, if weak, leg supports your theory that the craters of the moon were caused by meteorites?" I asked.

"You are standing on it," replied the professor. Then, seeing me look around in perplexity, he added: "Crater Mound is the only known Terrestrial formation that exactly resembles in shape the great ring mountains of the moon. If Crater Mound was caused by the impact of a gigantic meteorite with the earth, there is a strong probability that the numerous ringed craters of the moon were created in a like manner."

"But was it?" I asked.

"That is something I can neither prove nor disprove," he replied. "The evidence I have thus far discovered leads me to believe that many relatively small meteoric fragments have fallen here. But they could not have fallen singly, or by twos and threes to make this dent three-quarters of a mile in diameter and more than four hundred feet below the surrounding earth level, to say nothing of throwing up the ring on which we now stand to a mean height of a hundred and fifty feet above the plain."

"Then how could they have fallen?"

"If this great earthen bowl was caused by them, they must have struck this plain in an immense cluster at least a third of a mile in diameter, probably more."

"In that case, what has become of the cluster?"

"Part of it is probably buried beneath the soil. Part of it, exposed to the air, would have been burned to a fine ash, having generated a terrific heat in its passage through the atmosphere and still having, before it cooled, an opportunity to unite with oxygen. There should, however, be an intermediary residue which I have been unable to find."

"Maybe it was carted off by prehistoric Americans for the metals it contained," I feebly ventured to suggest.

"Improbable as that statement may seem," said the professor, "there is a small amount of evidence in favor of it, for I have found a number of meteoric fragments miles from the rim of the crater. By Jove! We appear to have a visitor!"

He clapped his powerful binoculars to his eyes, and looking in the direction in which they pointed, I saw a tall, bent figure, apparently attired in a robe or gown, leaning on a long staff and carrying a bundle of poles under one arm, slowly descending the slope opposite us.

"Seems to be a Chinaman," he said, passing the glasses to me. "What is your opinion?"

I LOOKED and saw an undeniably Mongolian face, with slanting eyes, prominent cheek bones, and a long, thin moustache, the ends of which drooped at least four inches below the chin. The voluminous garments, though badly tattered, were unquestionably Chinese, as was the cap with a button in the center, which surmounted the broad head.

"A Chinaman or an excellent makeup," I replied. "Wonder what he's doing out here in his native costume?"

Our speculations were interrupted by the clarion supper call of Alamo from the camp behind us:

"Come an' get it, or I'll feed it to the coyotes."

"You go down and eat," said the professor. "I'm not hungry, anyway, and I want to stay here and watch this curious newcomer. Bring me a bacon and egg sandwich and a bottle of coffee when you have finished."

Knowing my friend's disposition—for once he had made up his mind, a fleet of tractors could not drag him from his purpose—I did not argue with him, but descended to the camp.

While Alamo grumbled about dudes that were too interested in rocks to come for their chow while it was hot, I finished my evening meal. Then, taking my binoculars, I carried his light snack to the professor as requested.

The last pink glow of the sun was fading in the west, and the moon was rising when I reached the top of the ridge.

"Sit down here beside me," whispered the professor. "Our visitor seems to be preparing for a religious ceremony of some sort, and I dislike disturbing him."

While my friend munched his sandwich and sipped his coffee, I used my binoculars to watch the Chinaman. He had erected four poles supporting four others which formed a square above a low, flat-topped rock near the center of the crater. Suspended from the horizontal poles by cords were many small objects which were apparently very light in weight, for they stirred like leaves in the breeze. A lighted taper stood in the center of the flat rock, which was surrounded by a ring of thin sticks that had been thrust into the ground. The Oriental was on his knees before the stone, immobile as the rock itself, his face turned in our direction.

"Seems to be keeping his eyes on us," I said.

"I think he is waiting for the moon to rise above the crater rim," replied the professor, once more applying his eyes to his own binoculars.

My friend was right, for as soon as the first shaft of moonlight entered the crater the kneeling figure was galvanized into action.

Bursting into a singsong chant, quite audible, if unintelligible to me, the Celestial applied the flame of the taper to each of the thin sticks he had planted around the stone, all of which were soon glowing like burning punk. Then he stepped beneath one of the objects suspended from a horizontal pole, made a short speech in the direction of the moon, and lighted it with the taper. It burned out in a few seconds, casting a weird, yellow light over the scene. Stepping beneath the next suspended object he made another speech and lighted that object also. This one burned with a blue flame. He continued thus for several minutes until all the dangling objects had been consumed— each with a different colored flame. Then he extinguished the taper and knelt once more before the stone, resuming his chant, and prostrating himself from time to time with his forehead touching the stone. The breeze, blowing in our direction, was laden with the sweet, heavy odor of burning sandalwood and musk.

A half hour passed with no change in the ceremony. Then the burning joss sticks winked out, one by one. When the last went dark, the kneeling man made a final obeisance, then rose, took down his framework of poles, tucked them under his arm, and leaning heavily on his long staff departed toward the west.

"Show's over," I said. "Shall we go back to camp?'

"Hardly," replied my friend. "I'm going to follow him. In this bright moonlight it should be easy. By Jove! What has become of him? Why the fellow just now disappeared before my eyes!"

"Maybe he fell into a ditch," I hazarded.

"Ditch, fiddlesticks!" snapped the professor. "I've explored every square foot of this crater and know there is no depression of any kind where he was walking."

"Eastern magic," I ventured. "Now you see it, now you don't."

"Rot! You stay here and watch the western slope with your binoculars. I'm going down to investigate."

I watched, while the professor stumbled hastily across the crater and frantically searched the vicinity of the place where he had declared the Celestial had disappeared. After a twenty minute hunt, he gave it up and came back.

"Queer," he panted as he came up beside me. "Deucedly queer. I couldn't find hide nor hair of the fellow—not even the burnt ends of his joss sticks. Must have taken everything with him."

We returned to camp, squatted beside the fire, and lighted our pipes.

Alamo had stacked the dishes, putting off to the last the one camp job he hated—washing them—and was picketing the horses. Suddenly we heard him sing out: "Well, look who's here! Hello, Charlie. You wantee come along washee dishee, gettee all same plenty much chow?"

Looking up in surprise, I saw the tall, ragged Oriental who had disappeared so mysteriously a few moments before, coming toward us. He was still leaning on his long staff, but minus the poles he had previously carried.

THE professor and I both leaped to our feet from places beside the fire.

The Chinaman paused and looked at Alamo in evident bewilderment.

"I beg a thousand pardons," he said in excellent English, "but your speech is quite unintelligible to me."

"Well I'll be damned!" Alamo tilted his broad Stetson to one side and scratched his head in amazement.

By this time my excited friend had reached the side of our Celestial visitor.

"He was only inviting you to sup with us, in the patois of the West," explained the professor.

The Chinaman bowed gravely to Alamo.

"Your magnificent hospitality is duly appreciated," he said, "but I beg to be excused, as I may not partake of food in the presence of the mighty Magong." As he uttered the last word he extended his left hand toward the moon, then touched his forehead as if in salute. There was something majestic about his bearing that made one forget the tattered rags in which he was clad.

"We accept your excuse without question," said the professor, quickly. "Permit me to welcome you to our campfire circle."

Our guest bowed low, moved into the circle of firelight, and laying his staff on the ground, squatted before the fire. Then he took a long stemmed pipe with a small, brass bowl, from one of his capacious sleeves, and the professor and I both proffered our tobacco pouches.

"I'll use my own, with your indulgence," said our visitor, filling his pipe from a small lacquered box he carried. Before closing the box, he threw a pinch of tobacco into the fire, raised his left hand toward the moon, and muttered a few words unintelligible to me. Then, after touching his forehead, he lighted his pipe with the glowing end of a stick from the fire.

After puffing in meditative silence for a few minutes, he said:

"As I have thanksgiving devotions to perform, my time is limited. I will therefore, as briefly as possible, explain the reason for my visit, and convey to you the communication of the great one, whose humble messenger I am.

"Twenty years ago I was a Buddhist priest in T'ainfu. It was expected of every member of our order that at least once during his lifetime he should make a pilgrimage to a certain monastery in Tibet, there to perform mystic rites in a secret sanctuary, where a sacred stone of immemorable antiquity was kept. I made the pilgrimage, fully expecting to return to T'ainfu, as my brother priests had done and take up the duties of my humdrum existence there for the term of my natural life.

"There are things which I may tell you, and things which I may not disclose, so let me explain, briefly, that the whole course of my life was changed when first I viewed the sacred stone. It was graven with mystic characters, similar to, yet unlike Chinese writing. According to tradition, none but a living Buddha could decipher this sacred writing, which might not be transmitted to any of his followers, however great or wise.

"Now I had, from the days of my youth, made a study of our ancient writings, and had learned the meanings of many characters since wholly obsolete, as well as the former meanings of those whose significance had been entirely changed. I firmly believed, with my fellow priests, that none but the living Buddha might translate the writings on the stone. You may judge, therefore, of my surprise, when I found myself able to translate several of the ideographs graven on its sacred surface. I instantly believed myself the true possessor of the karma of Buddha, and that the living Buddha of my order was an impostor. On attempting to translate other characters, I found the majority of them unintelligible to me.

"One of the requirements of my pilgrimage was that I was to spend four hours a day for a period of seven days alone on my knees before the sacred stone. A guard, posted outside the door, saw to it that but one pilgrim was admitted at a time. On the day following, I secreted writing materials in my clothing, and spent the time allotted to me on that day, and the five days following, in carefully copying the writings on the stone.

"I carried my prize away without detection, but did not return to T'ainfu. Instead, I wandered from monastery to monastery, from temple to temple, conversing with the learned men and reading the ancient records to which I, as a pilgrim priest, was usually given access without question. The task of translation, which had at first appeared easy, took me ten years to complete.

"When it was finished I knew that it had not been written by God, as was supposed, but by the first earthly ancestor of my race, and I found myself charged with a trust which appeared as difficult of fulfillment as the translation itself. The crater which you have been investigating was described to me—yet its location was unknown to the writer. I was charged to find it and to find you. It took me nine years to find the crater, during which time I visited thousands, none of which exactly fitted the description. It took me a year more to find you and to receive the sign."

"May I ask what sign you refer to?" inquired the professor.

"My illustrious ancestor, who charged me with the task of conveying his message to you, said in the writing that his spirit would be watching me from Magong. He prophesied that you would appear at this place, and when you did, he would flash a brilliant signal to me from his Celestial abode."

"And you have seen the signal?"

"I have and do, for it is still visible. Look!" He pointed toward the full moon.

The professor looked, then raised his binoculars to his eyes and focused them.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "You have unusually sharp eyes. There is a brilliant, star-like light in the crater, Aristarchus. A rare occurrence, too."

"I have studied Magong for many years," replied our guest, "and have trained my eyes to see things hidden from the sight of ordinary mortals. I could have used a telescope or binoculars, but for my purpose I have no need of them."