Unable to understand his appearance, I hissed a warning at him there in the shadows.

  “You fool!” I cried. “Go back! I didn’t call.”

  My words had no effect. Slowly, stiffly, with the same mechanical sleep-walking pace that had marked his entrance to the grounds the night the harpy-woman wrote her name in chalk, he passed me and continued parallel to the wall. Straight to the iron gate-door he moved, then stopped motionless.

  “Celaeno!” he called softly. “Where are you?”

  For a moment there was silence, broken only by the moaning of the wind. Then mounting into the night air, wavering and hideous, came once again that wailing scream. From the other side of the frog wall it sounded, rushing nearer.

  An instant later I had leaped to my feet and was staring above me. In the gloom, high over the manor grounds, circled that mighty shape—a giant, vulture-like bird with great pointed black wings and the head and breast of a woman. A harpy!

  I watched it hover there, carried back and forth by the raging wind. Then my eyes turned farther to the left, and I jerked back with a shriek of horror. There were two more of the loathsome creatures, and those two were swooping down straight toward me.

  I caught a glimpse of female faces with exquisite features, long, streaming black hair and crimson, evil lips. Then a sharp claw ripped across my chest and tore my coat. I struck out madly, felt my fists pound deep into the feathery wings, struck again and went down, overwhelmed by their bodies.

  I fought with every ounce of strength I possessed, with terror striking deep into my very soul. I rolled over and over, sought frantically to free my right hand and draw forth the bottle of holy water.

  A stench of death and decay seared into my nostrils. My face and body were bleeding from a hundred places, and I was fast losing my strength. But suddenly one of those razor claws yielded to my frenzied blows and with a lunge I whipped my hand sideward, grasped the bottle, uncorked its spout and showered the water out before me.

  The harpies leaped back and stood gazing at me, women faces twisted in expressions of stark hate. Again I whirled the bottle, this time spilling part of the contents into their eyes.

  There was a double shriek of rage. The monsters ran clumsily backward, then swooped into the air and fled.

  I leaned gasping against the trunk of a tree. Then as the realization that the horror still was not finished filtered into my bewildered senses, I turned, seized the bow and silver-headed arrows and ran on into the grounds.

  Near the end of the property, far beyond the gate, I saw them again. They were flying high above me, three huge shapes etched black against the moonlit sky. And in the claws of one of them, held by his hair, dangled the body of Peter Woodley.

  With shaking hands I fitted an arrow to the bow-string and pointed it upward. Back until the bow was bent almost double I pulled, then released it. It whined upward, shot past one of the monsters—and missed.

  Panting, mumbling a prayer aloud, I seized the second shaft and made ready to fire again. But the harpies had sensed their danger, ceased their circling and with enraged cries were heading high toward the frog wall and the distant marsh.

  I gave a last frenzied look above me, took quick aim and let fly that last arrow. Upward it sped, a gleaming streak in the moonlight.

  And suddenly the night was hideous with the cries and shrieks of the wounded monster. The creature fluttered and spun like a top. It opened its claws as it wobbled off toward the marsh, and the body of Woodley, released, dropped downward, fell like a meteor straight onto the jagged top of the frog wall.

  An instant later I was at the boy’s side, bending over his broken and blood-covered body. He rose up as I lifted his head in my arms.

  “Thanks, Mr. Hampstead,” he whispered. “It was—it was the only way.”

  He fell back with a sigh, and I was alone with the corpse of Peter Woodley.

  There is little more to tell. No one believes me. The villagers stare curiously at my whitened hair and shrink away shuddering as I meet their gaze. The district doctor feels of my pulse, looks into the cornea of my eye and shakes his head perplexedly. And the police continue to search the countryside for some trace of Classilda Haven.

  Fools! I have taken them to the gardener’s cottage and shown them the empty black silk dress, nailed as it is to the center of the floor by a silver-headed arrow. I have led them to that section of the frog wall near the iron gate-door and traced slowly, letter for letter, the faint, almost obliterated lines that one moonlight night spelt so clearly the word “Celaeno.” And I have placed on the table the wall mirror and Woodley’s painting, which had been found somewhere in the depths of the marsh—placed them at their proper angles and pointed out the strange woman face that looked back silently from the changed perspective.

  But in each case they only look at me sadly and murmur: “Poor man, there is nothing there.”

  Rails of the Yellow Skull

  There was thunder in the air as Frank North stepped into the smoky gloom of the Denver depot train shed. He guided the girl at his side through a crowd of disembarking passengers to the last coach of the Coast Ex­press.

  “This is it, darling,” he said. “Brooks Delfield’s private car. We ride in style tonight.”

  Madge Lane jerked nervously at the collar of her trim traveling suit. “I wish we weren’t going, Frank. I . . . I wish we could stay here at least until tomorrow.”

  North nodded. Yesterday they had looked forward to taking this train. Tonight, with the trip changed from a carefree honeymoon to a serious business mission, death loomed before them.

  Inside the private car a sweet, sickish odor assailed their nostrils. The smell of new varnish and new furnishings, perhaps, it made North clear his throat. He felt somehow as though he had entered a coffin—a coffin on wheels that was waiting to carry him to doom and destruction.

  “Nerves,” he growled. “Dammit, this thing is getting me down.”

  Two persons were in the car. Marc Delfield, hollow-cheeked son of the president of the Colorado, North & Western, leered back at them through horn-rimmed spectacles. At his side sat a smallish man with patent leather hair and a cream fedora hat.

  “You’re early,” Marc said thickly. “The rest of the gang won’t be here for fifteen minutes.”

  Unconsciously North felt a chill course down his spine as he answered the second man’s gaze. Armand Guise was the fawning suitor of Garnet Delfield, the president’s daughter. There was something about the Frenchman’s womanish face and beady eyes that reminded one of a harpy, poised, ready to strike.

  Nodding and striding to the end of the car, North tossed down his pigskin bag.

  “Can I get you something?”

  Madge shook her head. “Frank, I’m afraid. I have a premonition something’s going to happen this trip.”

  He smiled slowly. “Nothing’s go­ing to happen, sweetheart. You’re tired, that’s all.”

  But his voice sounded without emphasis. Even now he wasn’t sure why he was here. He guessed, of course, that Brooks Del­field had decided at the last moment to look over that proposed right-of-way to Rock River, up near the Wyoming line. Informa­tion had come through that a government dam was to be erected there as part of a federal project. The in­flux of traffic which would follow would make the laying of trackage to the mountain town a worthwhile investment.

  As chief detective-investigator for the C.N.&W., North would be in charge of the policing of this spur construction-job. He had worked for the railroad for three years now. And during that time his friendship for Madge Lane, Delfield’s private secretary, had grown into a deep love.

  He drew a pipe from his pocket. “Going out for a smoke,” he told Madge. “Back in a moment.”

  He paced down the aisle, swung open the rear door and stepped out on the observation platform. He wanted to be alone, to collect his black thoughts. Dropping into a chair, he lit his pipe and sucked smoke savagely.

  The whole thing went back to those damnable cards. There had been ten of them, and Madge Lane had found one each morning along with Delfield’s mail it was her duty to open and sort. Ten postcards, grey in color, the address neatly typed, each bearing that design.

  On the reverse side, like a maca­bre coat of arms, a death-head was engraved in yellow ink!

  Delfield had sworn good-naturedly at first and muttered something about the work of a crank. But the cards kept coming.

  Yesterday the routine was broken; two cards arrived. Madge had uttered a short, terrified cry as she saw that one was addressed to Frank North, the man she was going to marry.

  Delfield’s card bore writing this time. Above the death-head was scrawled:

  YOU ARE THE FIRST. YOU HAVE FORTY-EIGHT HOURS TO LIVE. THE YELLOW SKULL IS CLOSING IN ON YOU.

  The president of the C.N.&W. was not a man to be frightened by unsigned correspondence. But he had turned the cards over to North.

  “If there’s something behind it,” Delfield had said, “you figure it out. As a railroad bull, it may be a little out of your line, but you always did have a flair for things out of the ordinary.”

  The thunder was crashing louder now. North turned his gaze out over the train shed. Abruptly he stiffened.

  Thirty feet away a baggage-cart was standing, piled high at one end with labeled trunks and gripsacks. A man, garbed in company overalls, was spraying that baggage with an automatic force-pump, shooting a thick mist out before him.

  It was Dustneer, North’s own in­vention, a chemical he had devised to protect the passengers’ luggage from grime and grit while traveling. Only recently placed on the market, the product was already bringing him good returns.

  But the man with the spray gun didn’t act like a company employee. He kept well to the side of the baggage cart. From time to time he looked furtively toward the depot proper.

  Abruptly the man’s head twisted about, and North’s eyes jerked wide. He was gaping at a face that was a horrible expanse of featureless flesh. The eyes were black, oblong holes. A drooling hole, without lips or teeth, formed the mouth. The skin was wrinkled like parchment, colored a gleaming yellow.

  The yellow skull! North jerked to his feet. Before he could throw himself over the railing to the platform a locomotive far down the track screeched its whistle. Simultaneously through the iron gate of the train shed a tall man with a cane appeared. Behind him came two other men and a young woman.

  The figure with the spray gun leaped into action. Thrusting the nozzle up, he sent a jet of thick vapor shooting forward.

  North, lunging forward, shrieked a warning: “Delfield! Look out!”

  His words were drowned in an ear-searing hiss. Ahead a blinding sheet of flame appeared, issuing from the mouth of the spray gun. A river of red, that flame lashed across sixty feet of space toward the advancing railroad president.

  In the split second before North reached the baggage cart, hell broke loose. He heard screams, terrified shouts. Then his outstretched hands reached one end of the cart. He vaulted over it and rammed into the overall-clad figure.

  He sent a hard blow into the squat neck. A startled oath blasted from the skull-faced man’s throat. With a snarl he swung, swiveling the flame gun. North grasped the man’s wrists, fought to turn the liquid blaze aside.

  There was but a split second to act. The detective lunged down, slammed headlong into his opponent’s legs. The man reeled. The spray gun shot from his hand and crashed to the platform. He twisted, raced for the depot.

  “Stop him!” North, stumbling to his feet, kicked the flaming nozzle into the lower level between the tracks and lunged in pursuit. Ahead he saw horrified passengers open a lane before them.

  “Stop him!”

  The man with the skull face zigzagged, ran in long leaping strides. He reached the gate, wheeled. Whipping out a revolver he sent three shots thundering through the train shed.

  Something hot thudded into North’s shoulder. He ran on faster. But when he reached the gate he saw only a huddle of paralyzed men and women. Madly he charged into the brighter light of the waiting room. At the street entrance he stopped, a moan of defeat on his lips.

  The man with the yellow face had disappeared!

  For two minutes North stood there, leaning weakly against the wall. A moment later he saw Conrad Kyle, the C.N.&W.’s construction engineer, approach.

  “He got away,” Kyle panted. “I chased him into the Street. He vanished in thin air.”

  North nodded, swayed. Gripping the engineer’s arm, he gasped, “Del­field! Was . . . was he hurt?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Not a blister. All four of us—Delfield, the old man’s daughter, Doctor Gage, and myself—would have been burned to a cinder if it hadn’t been for you. But . . . by the Lord Harry, you’ve been shot! Come out here. I’ll get Gage!”

  Supported by Kyle, North let himself be guided back into the train shed. The pain had left his shoulder now, but his arm felt numb and feverish. His legs stumbled beneath him.

  On the platform all was confusion. Passengers talked excitedly in strained voices. Two depot guards fired a steady stream of questions.

  And then North saw a blond figure run forward to throw herself in his arms.

  “Oh, Frank, you’ve been hurt!”

  He shook his head weakly. “It’s nothing, Madge. I’ll be all right.”

  Spots swirled before his eyes. Vaguely he felt supporting hands lift him, heard Doctor Gage, Delfield’s physician, give a command.

  Then blackness came, and he knew no more.

  CHAPTER II

  The Voice of the Yellow Skull

  The steady staccato of the wheels over the rail joints was drumming in North’s ears when he returned to consciousness. He was lying on a couch in Brooks Delfield’s private car, and Madge Lane was bending over him.

  “Frank”—her voice was filled with latent fear—“I saw it from the car. In heaven’s name, what was it?”

  For a moment he lay there, fighting to collect his strength. Abruptly he sat erect.

  They were all there, standing in a huddled, terrified group. Brooks Delfield chewed a cold cigar savagely. Marc, his son, was pale and trembling. Garnet Delfield, the president’s daughter, leaned against Armand Guise, her rouged cheeks glowing like fever-spots. Conrad Kyle, the company en­gineer, stood stiffly erect, staring like a man who did not believe what he had seen. Of them all, Doctor Gage seemed unmoved.

  “You’ll have to take it easy for a time,” Doctor Gage warned. “That bullet went through the fleshy part of your arm, but it took quite a lot of blood.”

  North gnawed his lips. “That man,” he said huskily, “used one of my Dustneer spray guns. But he had it filled with some inflammable chemical. When he ignited it, it changed to a wall of flame. Practically the same as liquid fire used during the war. If he . . .”

  “If you hadn’t acted when you did,” Brooks Delfield said, “we wouldn’t be here now. We’re grateful, North. I’ll see that you’re repaid for this.”

  North stepped forth unsteadily and peered out a window. The train was roaring through the night. Outside the bark of the locomotive’s exhaust mingled with the snarl of thunder. Slanting rain swished through the panes.

  “Where are we?” he demanded.

  Delfield sank into a chair. “Somewhere between Bald Canyon and Deerhorn,” he answered. “We stay with the Coast Express as far as Harmony. The local waits for us there, and we take a special engine to Benton. We’ll spend the night in Benton. It’s the nearest point on rails to Rock River.”

  The president of the C.N.&W. twist­ed about. “Have you found anything?” he asked. “Know what all this means, North?”

  North frowned. “I haven’t learned much. Those cards were mailed from different parts of the city. They bore no finger prints, and the addressing in each case was done by a different typewriter. I’ve got a man checking up on all engravers to see about that yellow skull. If he finds anything he’ll wire me.”

  In the chair opposite, Madge Lane sat, hands opening and closing convulsively.

  The roar of the storm and the clatter of the speeding train surged louder to drown further conversation. North swept his eyes across the car, scowled as his gaze centered on Ar­mand Guise. The Frenchman, he knew, had a double reason in worming himself into the Delfield graces. He too was a construction engineer, with wide experience on the Continent. Disgraced in France because of faulty bridge planning, he had asked Del­field to place him in charge of the proposed Rock River spur. So far the railroad president had refused.

  As for Doctor Gage, North admitted he didn’t like him either. He was hawk-featured, and there was an unmistakable leer in his eyes when he looked at Madge Lane.

  A lull came momentarily in the storm. North stiffened, listening.

  Then he relaxed, smiling grimly. He had heard only the wailing scream of the locomotive whistle.

  But a moment later he was sitting rigid, staring at the varnished ceiling of the car. Vaguely he realized the others had sensed it too. A ninth presence was in the car. The air was suddenly thick with an aura of brooding evil.

  North’s eyes trailed across the ceiling, past two lighting fixtures to an oblong panel directly overhead. That panel was a ventilator opening, and the cover was ajar now, letting in a draft of air.

  Stereoscopically, like a picture slowly brought into focus, something moved in that opening. And then Garnet Delfield threw back her head and uttered a jangling scream of terror.

  “My God!” she gasped. “Look!”

  It was a face, leering down at them, the face of a yellow skull, hideously without expression, without detail. The same face North had seen on the man with the spray gun. Then it was gone, leaving a blank square of onyx sky.

 

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