Title: Black Talons

Author: Robert E. Howard

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Title: Black Talons

Author: Robert E. Howard







Joel Brill slapped shut the book he had been scanning, and gave

vent to his dissatisfaction in language more appropriate for the deck

of a whaling ship than for the library of the exclusive Corinthian

Club. Buckley, seated in an alcove nearby, grinned quietly. Buckley

looked more like a college professor than a detective, and perhaps it

was less because of a studious nature than a desire to play the part

he looked, that caused him to loaf around the library of the

Corinthian.



"It must be something unusual to drag you out of your lair at this

time of the day," he remarked. "This is the first time I ever saw you

in the evening. I thought you spent your evenings secluded in your

rooms, pouring over musty tomes in the interests of that museum you're

connected with."



"I do, ordinarily." Brill looked as little like a scientist as

Buckley looked like a dick. He was squarely built, with thick

shoulders and the jaw and fists of a prizefighter; low browed, with a

mane of tousled black hair contrasting with his cold blue eyes.



"You've been shoving your nose into books here since six o'clock,"

asserted Buckley.



"I've been trying to get some information for the directors of the

museum," answered Brill. "Look!" He pointed an accusing finger at the

rows of lavishly bound volumes. "Books till it would sicken a dog--and

not a blasted one can tell me the reason for a certain ceremonial

dance practiced by a certain tribe on the West African Coast."



"A lot of the members have knocked around a bit," suggested

Buckley. "Why not ask them?"



"I'm going to." Brill took down a phone from its hook.



"There's John Galt--" began Buckley.



"Too hard to locate. He flits about like a mosquito with the St.

Vitus. I'll try Jim Reynolds." He twirled the dial.



"Thought you'd done some exploring in the tropics yourself,"

remarked Buckley.



"Not worthy of the name. I hung around that God-forsaken Hell hole

of the West African Coast for a few months until I came down with

malaria--Hello!"



A suave voice, too perfectly accented, came along the wire.



"Oh, is that you, Yut Wuen? I want to speak to Mr. Reynolds."



Polite surprise tinged the meticulous tone.



"Why, Mr. Reynolds went out in response to your call an hour ago,

Mr. Brill."



"What's that?" demanded Brill. "Went where?"



"Why, surely you remember, Mr. Brill." A faint uneasiness seemed

to edge the Chinaman's voice. "At about nine o'clock you called, and I

answered the phone. You said you wished to speak to Mr. Reynolds. Mr.

Reynolds talked to you, then told me to have his car brought around to

the side entrance. He said that you had requested him to meet you at

the cottage on White Lake shore."



"Nonsense!" exclaimed Brill. "This is the first time I've phoned

Reynolds for weeks! You've mistaken somebody else for me."



There was no reply, but a polite stubbornness seemed to flow over

the wire. Brill replaced the phone and turned to Buckley, who was

leaning forward with aroused interest.



"Something fishy here," scowled Brill. "Yut Wuen, Jim's Chinese

servant, said _I_ called, an hour ago, and Jim went out to meet me.

Buckley, you've been here all evening. _Did_ I call up anybody? I'm so

infernally absent-minded--"



"No, you didn't," emphatically answered the detective. "I've been

sitting right here close to the phone ever since six o'clock. Nobody's

used it. And you haven't left the library during that time. I'm so

accustomed to spying on people, I do it unconsciously."



"Well, say," said Brill, uneasily, "suppose you and I drive over

to White Lake. If this is a joke, Jim may be over there waiting for me

to show up."



As the city lights fell behind them, and houses gave way to clumps

of trees and bushes, velvet black in the star-light, Buckley said: "Do

you think Yut Wuen made a mistake?"



"What else could it be?" answered Brill, irritably.



"Somebody might have been playing a joke, as you suggested. Why

should anybody impersonate you to Reynolds?"



"How should I know? But I'm about the only acquaintance he'd

bestir himself for, at this time of night. He's reserved, suspicious

of people. Hasn't many friends. I happen to be one of the few."



"Something of a traveler, isn't he?"



"There's no corner of the world with which he isn't familiar."



"How'd he make his money?" Buckley asked, abruptly.



"I've never asked him. But he has plenty of it."



The clumps on each side of the road grew denser, and scattered

pinpoints of light that marked isolated farm houses faded out behind

them. The road tilted gradually as they climbed higher and higher into

the wild hill region which, an hour's drive from the city, locked the

broad crystalline sheet of silver that men called White Lake. Now

ahead of them a glint shivered among the trees, and topping a wooded

crest, they saw the lake spread out below them, reflecting the stars

in myriad flecks of silver. The road meandered along the curving

shore.



"Where's Reynolds' lodge?" inquired Buckley.



Brill pointed. "See that thick clump of shadows, within a few

yards of the water's edge? It's the only cottage on this side of the

lake. The others are three or four miles away. None of them occupied,

this time of the year. There's a car drawn up in front of the

cottage."



"No light in the shack," grunted Buckley, pulling up beside the

long low roadster that stood before the narrow stoop. The building

reared dark and silent before them, blocked against the rippling

silver sheen behind it.



"Hey, Jim!" called Brill. "Jim Reynolds!"



No answer. Only a vague echo shuddering down from the blackly

wooded hills.



"Devil of a place at night," muttered Buckley, peering at the

dense shadows that bordered the lake. "We might be a thousand miles

from civilization."



Brill slid out of the car. "Reynolds must be here--unless he's

gone for a midnight boat ride."



Their steps echoed loudly and emptily on the tiny stoop. Brill

banged the door and shouted. Somewhere back in the woods a night bird

lifted a drowsy note. There was no other answer.



Buckley shook the door. It was locked from the inside.



"I don't like this," he growled. "Car in front of the cottage--

door locked on the inside--nobody answering it. I believe I'll break

the door in--"



"No need." Brill fumbled in his pocket. "I'll use my key."



"How comes it you have a key to Reynolds' shack?" demanded

Buckley.



"It was his own idea. I spent some time with him up here last

summer, and he insisted on giving me a key, so I could use the cottage

any time I wanted to. Turn on your flash, will you? I can't find the

lock. All right, I've got it. Hey, Jim! Are you here?"



Buckley's flash played over chairs and card tables, coming to rest

on a closed door in the opposite wall. They entered and Buckley heard

Brill fumbling about with an arm elevated. A faint click followed and

Brill swore.



"The juice is off. There's a line running out from town to supply

the cottage owners with electricity, but it must be dead. As long as

we're in here, let's go through the house. Reynolds may be sleeping

somewhere--"



He broke off with a sharp intake of breath. Buckley had opened the

door that led to the bedroom. His flash played on the interior--on a

broken chair, a smashed table--a crumpled shape that lay in the midst

of a dark widening pool.



"Good God, it's Reynolds!"



Buckley's gun glinted in his hand as he played the flash around

the room, sifting the shadows for lurking shapes of menace; it rested

on a bolted rear door; rested longer on an open window, the screen of

which hung in tatters.



"We've got to have more light," he grunted. "Where's the switch?

Maybe a fuse has blown."



"Outside, near that window." Stumblingly Brill led the way out of

the house and around to the window. Buckley flashed his light,

grunted.



"The switch has been pulled!" He pushed it back in place, and

light flooded the cottage. The light streaming through the windows

seemed to emphasize the blackness of the whispering woods around them.

Buckley glared into the shadows, seemed to shiver. Brill had not

spoken; he shook as with ague.



Back in the house they bent over the man who lay in the middle of

the red-splashed floor.



Jim Reynolds had been a stocky, strongly built man of middle age.

His skin was brown and weather-beaten, hinting of tropic suns. His

features were masked with blood; his head lolled back, disclosing an

awful wound beneath his chin.



"His throat's been cut!" stammered Brill. Buckley shook his head.



"Not cut--torn. Good God, it looks like a big cat had ripped him."



The whole throat had literally been torn out; muscles, arteries,

windpipe and the great jugular vein had been severed; the bones of the

vertebrae showed beneath.



"He's so bloody I wouldn't have recognized him," muttered the

detective. "How did you know him so quickly? The instant we saw him,

you cried out that it was Reynolds."



"I recognized his garments and his build," answered the other.

"But what in God's name killed him?"



Buckley straightened and looked about. "Where does that door lead

to?"



"To the kitchen; but it's locked on this side."



"And the outer door of the front room was locked on the inside,"

muttered Buckley. "Doesn't take a genius to see how the murderer got

in--and he--or _it_--went out the same way."



"What do you mean, _it_?"



"Does that look like the work of a human being?" Buckley pointed

to the dead man's mangled throat. Brill winced.



"I've seen black boys mauled by the big cats on the West Coast--"



"And whatever tore Reynolds' gullet out, tore that window screen.

It wasn't cut with a knife."



"Do you suppose a panther from the hills--" began Brill.



"A panther smart enough to throw the electric switch before he

slid through the window?" scoffed Buckley.



"We don't know the killer threw the switch."



"Was Reynolds fooling around in the dark, then? No; when I pushed

the switch back in place, the light came on in here. That shows it had

been on; the button hadn't been pushed back. Whoever killed Reynolds

had a reason for wanting to work in the dark. Maybe this was it!" The

detective indicated, with a square-shod toe, a stubby chunk of blue

steel that lay not far from the body.



"From what I hear about Reynolds, he was quick enough on the

trigger." Buckley slipped on a glove, carefully lifted the revolver,

and scanned the chamber. His gaze, roving about the room again, halted

at the window, and with a single long stride, he reached it and bent

over the sill.



"One shot's been fired from this gun. The bullet's in the window

sill. At least, one bullet is, and it's logical to suppose it's the

one from the empty chamber of Reynolds' gun. Here's the way I

reconstruct the crime: _something_ sneaked up to the shack, threw the

switch, and came busting through the window. Reynolds shot once in the

dark and missed, and then the killer got in his work. I'll take this

gun to headquarters; don't expect to find any fingerprints except

Reynolds', however. We'll examine the light switch, too, though maybe

my dumb pawing erased any fingerprints that might have been there.

Say, it's a good thing you have an iron-clad alibi."



Brill started violently. "What the Hell do you mean?"



"Why, there's the Chinaman to swear you called Reynolds to his

death."



"Why the devil should I do such a thing?" hotly demanded the

scientist.



"Well," answered Buckley, "I know you were in the library of the

club all evening. That's an unshakable alibi--I suppose."



Brill was tired as he locked the door of his garage and turned

toward the house which rose dark and silent among the trees. He found

himself wishing that his sister, with whom he was staying, had not

left town for the weekend with her husband and children. Dark empty

houses were vaguely repellent to him after the happenings of the night

before.



He sighed wearily as he trudged toward the house, under the dense

shadows of the trees that lined the driveway. It had been a morbid,

and harrying day. Tag ends of thoughts and worries flitted through his

mind. Uneasily he remembered Buckley's cryptic remark: "Either Yut

Wuen is lying about that telephone call, or--" The detective had left

the sentence unfinished, casting a glance at Brill that was as

inscrutable as his speech. Nobody believed the Chinaman was

deliberately lying. His devotion to his master was well known--a

devotion shared by the other servants of the dead man. Police

suspicion had failed to connect them in any way with the crime.

Apparently none of them had left Reynolds' town house during the day

or the night of the murder. Nor had the murder-cottage given up any

clues. No tracks had been found on the hard earth, no fingerprints on

the gun other than the dead man's nor any except Buckley's on the

light switch. If Buckley had had any luck in trying to trace the

mysterious phone call, he had not divulged anything.



Brill remembered, with a twinge of nervousness, the way in which

they had looked at him, those inscrutable Orientals. Their features

had been immobile, but in their dark eyes had gleamed suspicion and a

threat. He had seen it in the eyes of Yut Wuen, the stocky yellow man;

of Ali, the Egyptian, a lean, sinewy statue of bronze; of Jugra Singh,

the tall, broad shouldered, turbaned Sikh. They had not spoken their

thoughts; but their eyes had followed him, hot and burning, like

beasts of prey.



Brill turned from the meandering driveway to cut across the lawn.

As he passed under the black shadow of the trees, something sudden,

clinging and smothering, enveloped his head, and steely arms locked

fiercely about him. His reaction was as instinctive and violent as

that of a trapped leopard. He exploded into a galvanized burst of

frantic action, a bucking heave that tore the stifling cloak from his

head, and freed his arms from the arms that pinioned him. But another

pair of arms hung like grim Fate to his legs, and figures surged in on

him from the darkness. He could not tell the nature of his assailants;

they were like denser, moving shadows in the blackness.



Staggering, fighting for balance, he lashed out blindly, felt the

jolt of a solid hit shoot up his arm, and saw one of the shadows sway

and pitch backward. His other arm was caught in a savage grasp and

twisted up behind his back so violently that he felt as if the tendons

were being ripped from their roots. Hot breath hissed in his ear, and

bending his head forward, he jerked it backward again with all the

power of his thick neck muscles. He felt the back of his skull crash

into something softer--a man's face. There was a groan, and the

crippling grip on his imprisoned arm relaxed. With a desperate wrench

he tore away, but the arms that clung to his legs tripped him. He

pitched headlong, spreading his arms to break his fall, and even

before his fingers touched the ground, something exploded in his

brain, showering a suddenly starless night of blackness with red

sparks that were engulfed abruptly in formless oblivion.



Joel Brill's first conscious thought was that he was being tossed

about in an open boat on a stormy sea. Then as his dazed mind cleared,

be realized that he was lying in an automobile which was speeding

along an uneven road. His head throbbed; he was bound hand and foot,

and blanketed in some kind of a cloak. He could see nothing; could

hear nothing but the purr of the racing motor. Bewilderment clouded

his mind as be sought for a clue to the identity of the kidnappers.

Then a sudden suspicion brought out the cold sweat on his skin.



The car lurched to a halt. Powerful hands lifted him, cloak and

all, and he felt himself being carried over a short stretch of level

ground, and apparently up a step or so. A key grated in a lock, a door

rasped on its hinges. Those carrying him advanced; there was a click,

and light shone through the folds of the cloth over Brill's head. He

felt himself being lowered onto what felt like a bed. Then the cloth

was ripped away, and he blinked in the glare of the light. A cold

premonitory shudder passed over him.



He was lying on the bed in the room in which James Reynolds had

died. And about him stood, arms folded, three grim and silent shapes:

Yut Wuen, Ali the Egyptian, and Jugra Singh. There was dried blood on

the Chinaman's yellow face, and his lip was cut. A dark blue bruise

showed on Jugra Singh's jaw.



"The _sahib_ awakes," said the Sikh, in his perfect English.



"What the devil's the idea, Jugra?" demanded Brill, trying to

struggle to a sitting posture. "What do you mean by this? Take these

ropes off me--" His voice trailed away, a shaky resonance of futility

as he read the meaning in the hot dark eyes that regarded him.



"In this room our master met his doom," said Ali.



"_You_ called him forth," said Yut Wuen.



"But I didn't!" raged Brill, jerking wildly at the cords which cut

into his flesh. "Damn it, I knew nothing about it!"



"Your voice came over the wire and our master followed it to his

death," said Jugra Singh.



A panic of helplessness swept over Joel Brill. He felt like a man

beating at an insurmountable wall--the wall of inexorable Oriental

fatalism, of conviction unchangeable. If even Buckley believed that

somehow he, Joel Brill, was connected with Reynolds' death, how was he

to convince these immutable Orientals? He fought down an impulse to

hysteria.



"The detective, Buckley, was with me all evening," he said, in a

voice unnatural from his efforts at control. "He has told you that he

did not see me touch a phone; nor did I leave his sight. I could not

have killed my friend, your master, because while he was being killed,

I was either in the library of the Corinthian Club, or driving from

there with Buckley."



"How it was done, we do not know," answered the Sikh, tranquilly.

"The ways of the _sahibs_ are beyond us. But we _know_ that somehow,

in some manner, you caused our master's death. And we have brought you

here to expiate your crime."



"You mean to murder me?" demanded Brill, his flesh crawling.



"If a _sahib_ judge sentenced you, and a _sahib_ hangman dropped

you through a black trap, white men would call it execution. So it is

execution we work upon you, not murder."



Brill opened his mouth, then closed it, realizing the utter

futility of argument. The whole affair was like a fantastic nightmare

from which he would presently awaken.



Ali came forward with something, the sight of which shook Brill

with a nameless foreboding. It was a wire cage, in which a great gaunt

rat squealed and bit at the wires. Yut Wuen laid upon a card table a

copper bowl, furnished with a slot on each side of the rim, to one of

which was made fast a long leather strap. Brill turned suddenly sick.



"These are the tools of execution, _sahib_," said Jugra Singh,

somberly. "That bowl shall be laid on your naked belly, the strap

drawn about your body and made fast so that the bowl shall not slip.

Inside the bowl the rat will be imprisoned. He is ravenous with

hunger, wild with fear and rage. For a while he will only run about

the bowl, treading on your flesh. But with irons hot from the fire, we

shall gradually heat the bowl, until, driven by pain, the rat begins

to gnaw his way _out_. He can not gnaw through copper; he can gnaw

through flesh--through flesh and muscles and intestines and bones,

_sahib_."



Brill wet his lips three times before he found voice to speak.



"You'll hang for this!" he gasped, in a voice he did not himself

recognize.



"If it be the will of Allah," assented Ali calmly. "This is your

fate; what ours is, no man can say. It is the will of Allah that you

die with a rat in your bowels. If it is Allah's will, we shall die on

the gallows. Only Allah knows."



Brill made no reply. Some vestige of pride still remained to him.

He set his jaw hard, feeling that if he opened his mouth to speak, to

reason, to argue, he would collapse into shameful shrieks and

entreaties. One was useless as the other, against the abysmal fatalism

of the Orient.



Ali set the cage with its grisly Occupant on the table beside the

copper bowl--without warning the light went out.



In the darkness Brill's heart began to pound suffocatingly. The

Orientals stood still, patiently, expecting the light to come on

again. But Brill instinctively felt that the stage was set for some

drama darker and more hideous than that which menaced him. Silence

reigned; somewhere off in the woods a night bird lifted a drowsy note.

There was a faint scratching sound, somewhere--



"The electric torch," muttered a ghostly voice which Brill

recognized as Jugra Singh's. "I laid it on the card table. Wait!"



He heard the Sikh fumbling in the dark; but he was watching the

window, a square of dim, star-flecked sky blocked out of blackness.

And as Brill watched, he saw something dark and bulky rear up in that

square. Etched against the stars he saw a misshapen head, vague

monstrous shoulders.



A scream sounded from inside the room, the crash of a wildly

thrown missile. On the instant there was a scrambling sound, and the

object blotted out the square of starlight, then vanished from it. _It

was inside the room._



Brill, lying frozen in his cords, heard all Hell and bedlam break

loose in that dark room. Screams, shouts, strident cries of agony

mingled with the smashing of furniture, the impact of blows, and a

hideous, worrying, tearing sound that made Brill's flesh crawl. Once

the battling pack staggered past the window, but Brill made out only a

dim writhing of limbs, the pale glint of steel, and the terrible blaze

of a pair of eyes he knew belonged to none of his three captors.



Somewhere a man was moaning horribly, his gasps growing weaker and

weaker. There was a last convulsion of movement, the groaning impact

of a heavy body; then the starlight in the window was for an instant

blotted out again, and silence reigned once more in the cottage on the

lake shore; silence broken only by the death gasps in the dark, and

the labored panting of a wounded man.



Brill heard some one stumbling and floundering in the darkness,

and it was from this one that the racking, panting was emanating. A

circle of light flashed on, and in it Brill saw the blood-smeared face

of Jugra Singh.



The light wandered erratically away, dancing crazily about the

walls. Brill heard the Sikh blundering across the room, moving like a

drunken man, or like one wounded unto death. The flash shone full in

the scientist's face, blinding him. Fingers tugged awkwardly at his

cords, a knife edge was dragged across them, slicing skin as well as

hemp.



Jugra Singh sank to the floor. The flash thumped beside him and

went out. Brill groped for him, found his shoulder. The cloth was

soaked with what Brill knew was blood.



"You spoke truth, _sahib_," the Sikh whispered. "How the call came

in the likeness of your voice, I do not know. But I know, now, what

slew Reynolds, _sahib_. After all these years--but they never forget,

though the broad sea lies between. Beware! The fiend may return. The

gold--the gold was cursed--I told Reynolds, _sahib_--had he heeded me,

he--"



A sudden welling of blood drowned the laboring voice. Under

Brill's hand the great body stiffened and twisted in a brief

convulsion, then went limp.



Groping on the floor, the scientist failed to find the flashlight.

He groped along the wall, found the switch and flooded the cottage

with light.



Turning back into the room, a stifled cry escaped his lips.



Jugra Singh lay slumped near the bed; huddled in a corner was Yut

Wuen, his yellow hands, palms upturned, limp on the floor at his

sides; Ali sprawled face down in the middle of the room. All three

were dead. Throats, breasts and bellies were slashed to ribbons; their

garments were in strips, and among the rags hung bloody tatters of

flesh. Yut Wuen had been disemboweled, and the gaping wounds of the

others were like those of sheep after a mountain lion has ranged

through the fold.



A blackjack still stuck in Yut Wuen's belt. Ali's dead hand

clutched a knife, but it was unstained. Death had struck them before

they could use their weapons. But on the floor near Jugra Singh lay a

great curved dagger, and it was red to the hilt. Bloody stains led

across the floor and up over the window sill. Brill found the flash,

snapped it on, and leaned out the window, playing the white beam on

the ground outside. Dark, irregular splotches showed, leading off

toward the dense woods.



With the flash in one hand and the Sikh's knife in the other,

Brill followed those stains. At the edge of the trees he came upon a

track, and the short hairs lifted on his scalp. A foot, planted in a

pool of blood, had limned its imprint in crimson on the hard loam. And

the foot, bare and splay, was that of a human.



That print upset vague theories of a feline or anthropoid killer,

stirred nebulous thoughts at the back of his mind--dim and awful race

memories of semi-human ghouls, of werewolves who walked like men and

slew like beasts.



A low groan brought him to a halt, his flesh crawling. Under the

black trees in the silence, that sound was pregnant with grisly

probabilities. Gripping the knife firmly, he flashed the beam ahead of

him. The thin light wavered, then focused on a black heap that was not

part of the forest.



Brill bent over the figure and stood transfixed, transported back

across the years and across the world to another wilder, grimmer

woodland.



It was a naked black man that lay at his feet, his glassy eyes

reflecting the waning light. His legs were short, bowed and gnarled,

his arms long, his shoulders abnormally broad, his shaven head set

plump between them without visible neck. That head was hideously

malformed; the forehead projected almost into a peek, while the back

of the skull was unnaturally flattened. White paint banded face,

shoulders and breast. But it was at the creature's fingers which Brill

looked longest. At first glance they seemed monstrously deformed. Then

he saw that those hands were furnished with long curving steel hooks,

sharp-pointed, and keen-edged on the concave side. To each finger one

of these barbarous weapons was made fast, and those fingers, like the

hooks clotted and smeared with blood, twitched exactly as the talons

of a leopard twitch.



A light step brought him round. His dimming light played on a tall

figure, and Brill mumbled: "John Galt!" in no great surprise. He was

so numbed by bewilderment that the strangeness of the man's presence

did not occur to him.



"What in God's name is this?" demanded the tall explorer, taking

the light from Brill's hand and directing it on the mangled shape.

"What in Heaven's name is that?"



"A black nightmare from Africa!" Brill found his tongue at last,

and speech came in a rush. "An Egbo! A leopard man! I learned of them

when I was on the West Coast. He belongs to a native cult which

worships the leopard. They take a male infant and subject his head to

pressure, to make it deformed; and he is brought up to believe that

the spirit of a leopard inhabits his body. He does the bidding of the

cult's head, which mainly consists of executing the enemies of the

cult. He is, in effect, a human leopard!"



"What's he doing here?" demanded Galt, in seeming incredulity.



"God knows. But he must have been the thing that killed Reynolds.

He killed Reynolds' three servants tonight--would have killed me, too,

I suppose, but Jugra Singh wounded him, and he evidently dragged

himself away like a wild beast to die in the jungle--"



Galt seemed curiously uninterested in Brill's stammering

narrative.



"Sure he's dead?" he muttered, bending closer to flash the light

into the hideous face. The illumination was dim; the battery was

swiftly burning out.



As Brill was about to speak, the painted face was briefly

convulsed. The glazed eyes gleamed as with a last surge of life. A

clawed hand stirred, lifted feebly up toward Galt. A few gutturals

seeped through the blubbery lips; the fingers writhed weakly, slipped

from the iron talons, which the black man lifted, as if trying to hand

them to Galt. Then he shuddered, sank back and lay still. He had been

stabbed under the heart, and only a beast-like vitality had carried

him so far.



Galt straightened and faced Brill, turning the light on him. A

beat of silence cut between them, in which the atmosphere was electric

with tension.



"You understand the Ekoi dialect?" It was more an assertion than a

question.



Brill's heart was pounding, a new bewilderment vying with a rising

wrath. "Yes," he answered shortly.



"What did that fool say?" softly asked Galt.



Brill set his teeth and stubbornly took the plunge reason cried

out against. "He said," he replied between his teeth, "'Master, take

my tools to the tribe, and tell them of our vengeance; they will give

you what I promised you.'"



Even as he ground out the words, his powerful body crouched, his

nerves taut for the grapple. But before he could move, the black

muzzle of an automatic trained on his belly.



"Too bad you had to understand that death-bed confession, Brill,"

said Galt, coolly. "I don't want to kill you. I've kept blood off _my_

hands so far through this affair. Listen, you're a poor man, like most

scientists--how'd you consider cutting in on a fortune? Wouldn't that

be preferable to getting a slug through your guts and being planted

alongside those yellow-bellied stiffs down in Reynolds' shack for them

to get the blame?"



"No man wants to die," answered Brill, his gaze fixed on the light

in Galt's hand--the glow which was rapidly turning redder and dimmer.



"Good!" snapped Galt. "I'll give you the low down. Reynolds got

his money in the Kameroons--stole gold from the Ekoi, which they had

stored in the ju-ju hut; he killed a priest of the Egbo cult in

getting away. Jugra Singh was with him. But they didn't get all the

gold. And after that the Ekoi took good care to guard it so nobody

could steal what was left.



"I knew this fellow, Guja, when I was in Africa. I was after the

Ekoi gold then, but I never had a chance to locate it. I met Guja a

few months ago, again. He'd been exiled from his tribe for some crime,

had wandered to the Coast and been picked up with some more natives

who were brought to America for exhibition in the World's Fair.



"Guja was mad to get back to his people, and he spilled the whole

story of the gold. Told me that if he could kill Reynolds, his tribe

would forgive him. He knew that Reynolds was somewhere in America, but

he was helpless as a child to find him. I offered to arrange his

meeting with the gold-thief, if Guja would agree to give me some of

the gold his tribe hoarded.



"He swore by the skull of the great leopard. I brought him

secretly into these hills, and hid him up yonder in a shack the

existence of which nobody suspects. It took me a wretched time to

teach him just what he was to do--he'd no more brains than an ape.

Night after night I went through the thing with him, until he learned

the procedure: to watch in the hills until he saw a light flash in

Reynolds' shack. Then steal down there, jerk the switch--and kill.

These leopard men can see like cats at night.



"I called Reynolds up myself; it wasn't hard to imitate your

voice. I used to do impersonations in vaudeville. While Guja was

tearing the life out of Reynolds, I was dining at a well-known night

club, in full sight of all.



"I came here tonight to smuggle him out of the country. But his

blood-lust must have betrayed him. When he saw the light flash on in

the cottage again, it must have started a train of associations that

led him once more to the cottage, to kill whoever he found there. I

saw the tag-end of the business--saw him stagger away from the shack,

and then you follow him.



"Now then, I've shot the works. Nobody knows I'm mixed up in this

business, but you. Will you keep your mouth shut and take a share of

the Ekoi gold?"



The glow went out. In the sudden darkness, Brill, his pent-up

feelings exploding at last, yelled: "Damn you, no! You murdering dog!"

and sprang aside. The pistol cracked, an orange jet sliced the

darkness, and the bullet fanned Brill's ear as he threw the heavy

knife blindly. He heard it rattle futilely through the bushes, and

stood frozen with the realization that he had lost his desperate

gamble.



But even as he braced himself against the tearing impact of the

bullet he expected, a sudden beam drilled the blackness, illuminating

the convulsed features of John Galt.



"Don't move, Galt; I've got the drop on you."



It was the voice of Buckley. With a snarl, Galt took as desperate

a chance as Brill had taken. He wheeled toward the source of the

light, snapping down his automatic. But even as he did so, the

detective's .45 crashed, and outlined against the brief glare, Galt

swayed and fell like a tall tree struck by lightning.



"Dead?" asked the scientist, mechanically.



"Bullet tore through his forearm and smashed his shoulder,"

grunted Buckley. "Just knocked out temporarily. He'll live to decorate

the gallows."



"You--you heard--?" Brill stuttered.



"Everything. I was just coming around the bend of the lake shore

and saw a light in Reynolds' cottage, then your flash bobbing among

the trees. I came sneaking through the bushes just in time to hear you

give your translation of the nigger's dying words. I've been prowling

around this lake all night."



"You suspected Galt all the time?"



The detective grinned wryly.



"I ought to say yes, and establish myself as a super sleuth. But

the fact is, I suspected _you_ all the time. That's why I came up here

tonight--trying to figure out your connection with the murder. That

alibi of yours was so iron-clad it looked phony to me. I had a

sneaking suspicion that I'd bumped into a master-mind trying to put

over the 'perfect crime.' I apologize! I've been reading too many

detective stories lately!"







THE END