LITMIR.BIZ

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did not interfere. I doubt if all of us could have torn away the hands of the madman from Tala Mag’s throat.

      Her face turned blue. The thrashing of her body ceased. And still Bob Spaulding held on.

      In the end we had to pull him away from the dead woman. He struggled with us, raving that he wanted to tear Tala Mag’s body apart, but at last we quieted him and led him downstairs.

      Our wives waited out on the terrace while we went for the last time into the torture chamber and took down Inez Spaulding’s body and gathered up the clothing. While the women dressed we found the switches which controlled the ponderous gates. Then silently we got into our cars and drove away in the night from that living hell.

      THE SHRIEKING POOL, by G. T. Fleming-Roberts

      Staring at the crooked cross of a sign that marked the fork in the road, an unaccountable shudder rippled along Corrin’s spine. It was a very unprepossessing sign, all mottled where old white paint had peeled off. One arm of the cross pointed out that three miles to the east lay Ottville. The other arm; pointing in the opposite direction, carried the words, “To Black Pool.”

      When he had asked the old wattle-necked farmer, who ran the roadside filling station, the way to Black Pool, the soul had dropped out of the old man’s eyes. Nor would a ten dollar bill buy the desired information. “Ef you get there, young feller,” he had said, “you get there because the Devil hisself guided you. I ain’t hankerin’ for to have your blood on my hands by tellin’ you how to get there!”

      And Larry remembered the incoherent note that Dean Wile, owner of Black Pool Lodge, had sent him:

      Black Pool has fallen into ill repute. It is thought to have an insatiable appetite for human flesh. But if you’re willing to gamble on getting a story for your paper, we’d be glad to have you join us for the week-end. Frankly, we need your help. I can’t tell you anything more without giving you the impression that I am a little unbalanced.

      And the trip along the Ottville road had been anything but pleasant. A pall of black sky had draped the dying sun; night was born too soon. Pale lightning reveled thunderously around the horizon. Little breezes that wandered above the waste land, stirred the frail, plumose pines, brought exotic, unpleasant perfumes from the moldering swamp that lay hidden in the shadows.

      There was a vague, unfamiliar quality in the gathering darkness that no searchlight could dispel.

      Then the forks in the Ottville road came in the most unexpected places. The last one had resulted in the bogging of his car. He had proceeded on foot, stumbled across the wreck of a sign that pointed out his destination. But instead of that sense of relief that normally follows the completion of a tiresome journey, Larry Corrin felt an inexplicable dread. Black Pool! An insatiable appetite for human flesh!

      To the west, the road mounted slowly to higher and consequently drier ground; the trees became more vigorous, hedging in the road until it was scarcely more than a path. Parting a veritable curtain of vines, Larry came suddenly upon Black Pool. Instantly he recalled how Dean Wile had described it: “A jewel in the hand of a Titan.” He understood now. The five little knolls that surrounded the onyx-like surface of the water were like five stubby fingers. Larry was standing on what he imagined to be the thumb of the giant hand. He could look across the pond at the lights gleaming cheerfully from the lodge.

      Floating out over the water came soft music. A woman was singing a haunting, minor melody. Her voice had a strange, fascinating quality, yet its huskiness was not altogether pleasant. Larry listened. There was another sound, that of heavy feet plodding through sticky mud. Tall grasses waved. A splash, and again the night belonged to a woman’s singing.

      The black surface of the pool tippled gently in the wake of a punt moving slowly twenty feet from the shore. In the prow stood a long, thin man, poling. In the stern, wrapped in white, was the lovely form of the singing woman—Dean Wile’s young wife, perhaps.

      The singing stopped. “You know, Frank,” the woman said, “you may well wonder how I put up with him day after day. I don’t love him. I never could love a man whose mind is completely wrapped up in his work.”

      The man in the stern of the punt dropped his pole, crouched in the bottom of the drifting boat, and crawled toward the woman. “Bernice!” The name barely audible from his lips throbbed with passion.

      It was the last word he ever spoke. Directly behind the little boat, something marred the black surface. From where Larry stood, it looked like a little watersnake, swimming with head erect. It was rapidly overhauling the craft. Suddenly, the water behind the boat was cleaved by a great, round, reptilian head. A black, three-taloned member fully twelve inches across slashed up through the water, fastened to the edge of the boat, and gave it a sudden lurch.

      The man in the boat uttered a strange, terrorful cry and pitched over the side. For a moment, Larry saw his face raised in frantic appeal. Then huge talons struck down in a blow of tremendous power that caught the man full in the face, obliterating his features, turning his face into a gory pulp that uttered shriek after shriek until it was dragged burbling beneath the water.

      Larry Corrin shook himself from a paroxysm of horror that had rooted him to the spot. The woman—what had become of her? He raced down the hill, plowed through long grasses and plunged into the water. The woman was swimming toward him, her breath coming in tortured gasps. Larry’s flashlight sought her face. She was very beautiful. His arm went beneath her bare, wet arm, encircled her back. He lifted her bodily and carried her to the shore.

      She clung closely to him, murmuring over and over, “Frank…Frank” in her dreamy, caressing voice.

      Larry stood the woman somewhat roughly upon her feet. Her wide blue eyes sought his face inquiringly. “You saw it? You saw the monster. You’ll believe?”

      Larry scowled. “I—I don’t know what to believe, Mrs. Wile.”

      Perhaps she read a second meaning into his words. A frown of displeasure flitted across her face. “You—you’re Larry Corrin?”

      He nodded.

      “Bernice! Bernice!” A man’s voice was shouting from the other side of the pool. A yellow lantern bobbed along the shore. “Bernice, are you all right?”

      “Call out to him. Tell him you’re all right,” Larry commanded.

      The girl raised her quivering voice and called back. Then holding to Larry’s arm she ran toward the man with the light.

      The man who met them was short, sturdily built, and bearded. He gave the woman’s arm a quick pinch as if to assure himself that she was flesh and blood, then extended his hand to Larry.

      “Remember me, Corrin? You’ve arrived a day ahead of schedule, haven’t you?”

      * * * *

      Larry Corrin clasped Ivan Stern’s hand. He remembered Stern, one of the oldest of Dean Wile’s associates in the Jordan Scientific Institute Larry said, “If I had come tomorrow, I would have been too late then, too.”

      “Too?” Ivan echoed. Then his keen, questioning eyes searched the woman’s face. His voice dropped to an apprehensive whisper. “Where’s Frank Mayer?”

      Bernice clutched Larry Corrin’s arm. “Tell him,” she implored.

      “They were in a boat together, Mayer and—this is Mrs. Wile, I presume?”

      Stern nodded. “I heard a shriek coming from the pool. I ran here. And Frank…?”

      “Any conjecture you can draw will be as good as mine,” said Larry.

      “Then—then the pool sucked him under?” Stem persisted.

      “Not the pool. Something else. But we can’t stand here imagining things! Mrs. Wile is wet, and—and nervous.” He remembered the brief scrap of conversation he had heard between Frank Mayer and Bernice Wile. Bernice did not love her husband. Perhaps she had loved Frank Mayer.

      He shrugged away the

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