LITMIR.BIZ

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wanted to go,” Bernice panted. “He said it was all nonsense, fearing a little body of water because it was black and too treacherous for bathing.”

      Stern drew a long, deep breath. “I don’t suppose Dean told you in his letter about Jimmy Droon, one of the members of the group, did he, Corrin?”

      The reporter shook his head. “What’s the matter with Jimmy? Nice chap as I remember him.”

      “He’s dead. Today is the eighth day!”

      Fifteen minutes later, Larry Corrin was seated on the comfortable veranda of Black Pool Lodge. Sitting about him, eagerly waiting for his story of Frank Mayer’s death, were all that remained of perhaps the greatest single group of men devoted to scientific learning. Dean Wile, holding the pale hand of his wife who reclined in a deck chair, leaned forward. His high dome of a head was bald as an egg. His black brows, contrasting with the white of his skin, beetled over piercing, black-bean eyes. “My brother Perry saw the monster,” he said, addressing Larry, “or rather he saw the fore-feet of the thing. That was when Jim Droon said he was going to break the jinx of Black Pool and go for a swim. That was eight days ago. Does that mean anything to you, Larry?”

      Corrin reflectively examined the tip of his cigarette. “You mean that if Jim Droon had been drowned, he would have risen to the surface today.”

      “Of course he was drowned.” The speaker was Mathew Ince, a fiery haired little man, the only one in the group who was not a scientist. Mathew Ince was the manager of the huge estate that Dr. Jordan had left to the institute bearing his name. A keen business man was Ince, careful and calculating. “I’m inclined to think we’re all a bunch of marbleheads. We got ourselves all worked up because some drunken ass around here said he saw a dragon or something in Black Pool. Nothing would do but what the whole crowd must sneak up here and watch for the damned beast. And have we seen it? Science be damned. Dinosaurs are dead! None of us but Perry have seen it, and we’ve no proof that he wasn’t drunk, too.”

      Perry Wile, his brother’s junior by ten years, but already making a name for himself in anthropology, had just entered the room. “You can’t argue around the eight days, Ince. A body rises to the surface of water after that time just as the body of Jim Droon would have risen had it not been for the fact—well, to put it brutally, the fact that he was devoured.”

      “Exactly!” exclaimed Ivan Stern. Then he asked fearfully, “But what devoured him?”

      “Brontozoum,” Dean Wile muttered.

      Corrin turned, scowling at his host. “What?” Mathew Ince chuckled. “Never mind him.

      Larry. He’s nuts on the subject of genus Brontozoum. Been that way ever since he reconstructed one of the ancient brutes from a footprint or something for the museum.”

      Perry Wile flicked a cigarette stub into an ash tray. “Suppose,” he suggested, “that we let Larry tell us exactly what he saw.”

      Corrin nodded his agreement. “The thing had an oval head, reptilian you might say, but if it had a neck, I didn’t see it.”

      Ince laughed hoarsely. “There goes your Brontozoum, Dean! I’m going to bed, and I’m not going to let any prehistoric monsters interfere with my sweet dreams.” He stretched from his chair and left the room. Ivan Stem and Bernice Wile followed soon after.

      “Frankly, what’s your idea, Corrin?” asked Perry Wile when the others were gone.

      Larry Corrin smiled sadly. “My idea is going to be upsetting. I believe that your monster works through the agent of genus homo or whatever you call mankind. You see, there were some hellish, trouble-begging, impractical provisions in the will of the late Dr. Jordan. As I understand it, this group of scientists to which you belong was chosen by Jordan to carry on his work. His estate was to be used as you saw fit as long as any of you were here on earth to use it. Don’t you see a two million dollar murder motive in this monster business? And why the monster at all? Well, the very suggestion of a dinosaur roaming around these parts was enough to bring you all up here together where the work could be carried on without interference—I mean the work of killing you all, one by one!”

      There was a moment’s silence. Larry Corrin had another theory also—it involved a very lovely woman who did not love her husband and was not above loving others. Naturally, he could not voice that!

      “You know,” he said after a moment, “I keep missing someone. Where is that brilliant bacteriologist, that blond fellow who used to be in your crew? Name was Daniel Palmer.”

      Perry and Dean Wile looked at one another, each waiting for the other to speak. Finally, Dean said, “He was always a hothead. He quarreled with the rest of us. Two weeks ago he came up here—”

      “Then?” Larry prompted.

      “He vanished,” concluded Dean. “Not a trace of him. Perhaps he too was dragged into the pool.”

      Larry raised his eyebrows. “Or perhaps…” he muttered. “Two million dollars. It would buy a lot of jelly beans!”

      Again the two brothers eyed each other solemnly. Perry got up to leave the room. “Show him the tracks, Dean,” he said with an air of finality.

      “Yes,” Dean Wile murmured, “I think you’d better see the tracks.” He got up. “We go outside, Larry.”

      “Just a moment,” said Corrin. “I’m going to get my automatic out of my bag. When I meet your monster next, he’ll wish he’d stayed back in his B. C. century!”

      On the way to his room, Larry Coffin heard a stealthy movement in the hall. He stopped, peering cautiously around a corner of the wall. At the other end of the hall, standing in front of the closed door of Mathew Ince’s room, was Bernice Wile. She took a key from the pocket of her kimono, put it into the lock, and gave it a twist. Then she walked softly back to her room.

      When the hall was empty, Larry entered his own room, procured his automatic and hurried to meet Dean Wile on the front lawn. More than ever he was convinced that monster or no monster, behind the mystery lay human agency and a very human, even sordid motive.

      Together, they walked down to the edge of the pool. The water, so recently churned with the death struggles of Frank Mayer, was now glassy smooth.

      “Just follow along the edge,” directed Wile. “I think I can remember where I found them yesterday.”

      Half way around the pond, they stopped. Wile’s flashlight pointed to the earth. In awe, his eyes followed the beam. In the center of the spot of white light was a footprint—an impression of a gigantic three-toed foot that an eighteen inch circle could not have circumscribed.

      “See?” said Wile excitedly. “There’s the whole trail leading right into the water. Notice the mark of the broad tail. Dinosaurs of the genus Brontozoum walk on powerful hind legs using their ponderous tails to help support them. Now, what do you think?”

      Larry Corrin stammered, “I—I’m not thinking. I—I won’t let myself think!” His gaze drifted out over the placid pool. What sinister creature lived within its secret depths? He turned, and with head bent, walked thoughtfully back to the house.

      * * * *

      In his room, fortified with pipe, tobacco and fertile imagination, Larry looked at the mystery from all angles. The surrounding country was not very populous. Even so, he could not understand how a huge prehistoric “thunder-beast” such as Dean and Perry Wile talked about could spring up over night, unless there had been some slip in the Einstein space-time spirals! He laughed mirthlessly—and the laugh died unfinished.

      Out of the night, up from the Black Pool came shriek after shriek, harsh, strident, throbbing with agony, to be choked off suddenly leaving an awful after-silence.

      Corrin’s pipe dropped unheeded from his mouth. He was on his feet, sweeping up his automatic, then pelting down the hall.

      He switched on the living room light

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