“We set out immediately for Cruth’s house to investigate the matter of the two missing men. My own interests centered around the strange sound, and I think the sheriff’s did too. But it was all so hopelessly jumbled that none of us knew just where to start. As the car roared down the road toward the ancient abode I happened to glance at the local officer. His gaze, instead of resting on the rapidly approaching house, was fastened longingly on the forbidding wooded slopes. He had not mentioned that a brother of his had been among the missing five…
“When we pulled up at the ramshackle dwelling, the only sign of life was a thin ribbon of smoke rising from the leaning chimney. Far above loomed the dark hills and rugged outcroppings of black rock. About the place were tall, moss-covered pines which seemed to shroud the house in a blanket of perpetual gloom.
“We approached the house and the sheriff rapped on the door. For several moments no sound came from within—then a hobbling movement and the door creaked open. An age-wrinkled face glared out at us. Cruth’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and he braced himself feebly against the warped door jamb.
‘“What do you want?’ he asked weakly, his lined hands clasped tightly around his cane.
“Sargent stepped forward. ‘We want to know if you have seen your two neighbors this morning.’
“‘My neighbors,’ he croaked, ‘those damned thieves aren’t no neighbors of mine! I haven’t seen ’em and I don’t want to!’
“‘Why not?’ queried Sargent.
“‘Why?’ wheezed the old man. ‘Because they wanted me to tell them how to get to the tomb of my girl—my little girl—and her pretty stones!’ His voice grew weaker and trailed off. Then suddenly: ‘But I told ’em! I told ’em!—and last night—last night…’ His breath was failing. ‘…the chime—rang—again! The chime! The golden chime! My…’
“‘Come on, let’s go!’ the sheriff whispered.
“We complied, but the old fellow still stood in the doorway gibbering, half to himself. We heard his last words faintly, and I shall never forget them.
“‘—and I think soon the chime will ring—again, for—I know the way well… Through the ancient gate—and beyond—where… in Yith my Charlotte will not—be broken—and I shall pass…’
“The roar of the motor drowned out further words—words I wish we had listened to—words which might have been the key to the whole thing. As the faded dwelling passed from sight around a curve in the road, I felt a queer tinge of sorrow course through me. The sheriff stared straight into the weaving road. He, too, had heard.
“We stopped momentarily at the shack where the two fugitives had lived, but found it completely empty, with signs of recent habitation quite evident. The decrepit hut seemed too empty and suggestive after the visit with the old man, and we left hurriedly. It soon disappeared from sight as the car sped down the winding road, and I was relieved to be gone from the mouldering thing that hinted at something wholly alien and sinister; something that should be left undisturbed. It was strange how I felt, for some unexplainable reason, that the former occupants would never return to their lowly dwelling.
“I left that evening on an outgoing stage—I don’t know whether they ever solved the secret or not; at least nothing ever appeared in the papers. So far as I’m concerned it can stay hidden. The look in old man Cruth’s eyes still lingers hauntingly with me. There was a deep wisdom behind that ancient voice—a wisdom which perhaps should not be discussed.
“That night as the stage swung up and around the many turns of highway which leads out of Hampdon, I watched the flickering lights of the tiny city fade away in the distance. Far to the west, the afterglow bathed the beetling hills in rosy splendor, and below, deep shadows were gathering in ravines and gulleys. And as the panorama faded slowly from view, I heard, above the roar of the motor, a single haunting, and never to be forgotten, chime that echoed and reechoed faintly in the gathering dusk.”
THE LETTERS OF COLD FIRE
BY MANLY WADE WELLMANN
THE EL HAD ONCE CURVED AROUND A CORNER AND ALONG THIS block of the narrow rough-paved street. Since it had been taken up, the tenements on either side seemed like dissipated old vagabonds, ready to collapse without the support of that scaffolding. Between two such buildings of time-dulled red brick sagged a third, its brickwork thickly coated with cheap yellow paint that might well be the only thing holding it together. The lower story was taken up by the dingiest of hand laundries, and a side door led to the lodgings above. Rowley Thorne addressed a shabby dull-eyed landlord in a language both of them knew:
“Cavet Leslie is—” he began.
The landlord shook his head slowly. “Does not leave his bed.”
“The doctor sees him?”
“Twice a day. Told me there was no hope, but Cavet Leslie won’t go to a hospital.”
“Thanks,” and Thorne turned to the door. His big hand was on the knob, its fingertips hooked over the edge. He was a figure inordinately bulky but hard, like a barrel on legs. His head was bald, and his nose hooked, making him look like a wise, wicked eagle.
“Tell him,” he requested, “that a friend was coming to see him.”
“I never talk to him,” said the landlord, and Thorne bowed, and left, closing the door behind him.
Outside the door, he listened. The landlord had gone back into his own dim quarters. Thorne at once tried the knob—the door opened, for in leaving he had taken off the night lock.
He stole through the windowless vestibule and mounted stairs so narrow that Thorne’s shoulders touched both walls at once. The place had that old-clothes smell of New York’s ancient slum houses. From such rookeries the Five Points and Dead Rabbits gangsters had issued to their joyous gang wars of old, hoodlums had thronged to the Draft Riots of 1863 and the protest against Macready’s performance of Macbeth at Astor Place Opera House… The hallway above was as narrow as the stairs, and darker, but Thorne knew the way to the door he sought. It opened readily, for its lock was long out of order.
The room was more a cell than a room. The plaster, painted a dirt-disguising green, fell away in flakes. Filth and cobwebs clogged the one backward-looking window. The man on the shabby cot stirred, sighed and turned his thin fungus-white face toward the door. “Who’s there?” he quavered wearily.
Rowley Thorne knelt quickly beside him, bending close like a bird of prey above a carcass. “You were Cavet Leslie,” he said. “Try to remember.”
A thin twig of a hand crept from under the ragged quilt. It rubbed over closed eyes. “Forbidden,” croaked the man. “I’m forbidden to remember. I forget all but—but—” the voice trailed off, then finished with an effort:
“My lessons.”
“You were Cavet Leslie. I am Rowley Thorne.”
“Rowley Thorne!” The voice was stronger, quicker. “That name will be great in hell.”
“It will be great on earth,” pronounced Rowley Thorne earnestly. “I came to get your book. Give it to me, Leslie. It’s worth both our lives, and more.”
“Don’t call me Leslie. I’ve forgotten Leslie—since—”
“Since you studied in the Deep School,” Thorne finished for him. “I know. You have the book. It is given to all who finish the studies there.”
“Few finish,” moaned the man on the cot. “Many begin, few finish.”