LITMIR.BIZ

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let them go!” Larry jumped through the cellar door. Running down toward the pool was a shadowy form that he recognized as Perry. Larry broke into a run and Stern was close behind, waving the shotgun and shouting.

      At the little landing, they came upon Perry. He was trying to get one of the canoes untied, but as Stern and Larry appeared not ten feet from him, he leaped to his feet. Stern raised the gun, shouted a warning. Perhaps he pulled the trigger accidentally. Both barrels of the shotgun roared at once. Perry uttered a cry like an injured animal, staggered and pitched back into the black waters.

      Another wail broke out of the night. A white, wraith-like figure came running toward the spot where Perry had vanished. Bernice! Quickly comprehending her intention, Larry leaped for her and fell sprawling, feet caught by a tangle of vine.

      Bernice Wile sprang into the water. For a moment her white, upturned face lingered near the surface, gleaming like an ivory cameo modeled after the face of some Grecian fury. Suddenly, an unseen hand seized her, dragging her down… down.… Black waters bubbled above.

      “Good God!” Larry breathed. “There’s an undercurrent right there! It drags them down. And that lower current is cold as ice. That’s why the bodies don’t rise to the surface. The cold delays decomposition!” He kicked off his shoes, stepped to the edge of the pool.

      Ivan Stern’s hand shot out, seizing Larry by the collar. “Isn’t it better so?” he demanded. “A murder trial is a torturous thing. There has been justice.”

      “Perhaps you’re right,” Larry said thoughtfully. “It was a damnable plot. They would both suffer full penalty. Perry Wile knew where the deep and shallow parts of the pool were. He would drag his victims down until the undercurrent caught them—and kept them! He had no fear of police interference because he had half convinced your group of scientists that there was some prehistoric monster in the pool. Yet if the story of the monster was made public and found to be false, the Jordan Institute would be laughed at.”

      Ivan nodded. “I see. Then if we decided that human agency was behind all this, Perry was also well prepared to throw suspicion on Dan Palmer. Palmer had to disappear, had to be murdered and his body hidden.

      “His body would not be found with the others if the pool was dragged. He had quarreled with the rest of us. Motive enough for a hot-head like Palmer!”

      Larry stared down at the waters, now innocently smooth, covering the treacherous undercurrent. “God!” he muttered. “They’re down there together. Dead, but always moving, circling around and around, an endless journey. Never resting. Tortured souls!”

      “One thing,” added Ivan. “Dean will never know his brother’s treachery, or his wife’s infidelity. When the bomb knocked him over, his skull was fractured. He can’t live.”

      Larry turned back toward the house. “That, too, is justice!”

      DEATH MATES FOR THE LUST-LOST, by Hugh J. Gallagher

      There was something eerie about the unbroken line of trees along the shore, Miriam Daly decided, something forbidding, something frightening. She tried to shake off the uneasy awakening of apprehension and marked it down to fatigue, but as the cocky little launch wound its way down the murky river the feeling of uneasiness increased in intensity. She began to wish now that she had refused this booking, began to wish she had taken the counsel of more experienced minds.

      “I don’t know what kind of a place they’re booking you into,” Eve Gale had drawled when Miriam told her about it, “but I know this, when you’re that far away from civilization and something happens—it won’t do you any good to wave your Equity card in the face of those savages down there.”

      “Savages?” Miriam had chided. “Don’t be silly. There are no savages in the part of South America where I’m going.”

      Now she wasn’t so sure.

      She glanced at the other occupants of the launch, and read the same anxiety in their faces. Opposite her sat a young blonde with petulantly soft lips, and large liquid blue eyes that now seemed clouded with some nameless fear. The greenness of her eye shadow stood out in startling contrast to the pallor of her face, and she nervously rolled and unrolled a little kerchief in her well-kept hands.

      Miriam leaned across. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I wonder if you’re on your way to the Martinez’?”

      A gleam of hope lighted up the girl’s beautiful eyes. “Then you’re going there, too?” she asked in a husky voice. “I’m so glad. All this,” she indicated the tree-adorned shore, “was beginning to get me down.”

      Miriam smiled sympathetically. “Yes, I know. Me, too.” She, too, felt strangely reassured by the fact that the girl opposite was also on her way to Martinez’. “What is it, a casino, or a theatre, or what?”

      The fear crept back into the blonde’s face. “I—I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve been hitting a bad streak of luck, and then when an agent offered me this, I—I snapped at it.”

      An invisible band seemed to tighten about Miriam’s chest. She turned to the other occupants of the launch, who had seemed to listen to the conversation with interest. “Is anybody else here going to the Martinez place?” she asked. Every one of them nodded. “Does anybody know anything about it?”

      A mannish, heavy-shouldered brunette at her side grinned, showing even, white teeth. “I’ve been wondering myself what they’d want with an aerialist all the way down here, but,” she shrugged eloquently, “a job’s a job.”

      An uneasy silence fell over the group, to be broken by the huge aerialist. “I don’t suppose anybody has noticed it,” she said, “but does it strike you as strange that there’s not a man in the whole group?”

      “That’s right,” Miriam admitted, “but maybe the management wants an all girl show. There’s nothing very strange in that, is there?”

      “Maybe not,” the aerialist conceded, “if it were for a floor show. I’m an air performer and nobody’s taken the trouble to catch my act. How about the rest of you?”

      A hurried census of the passengers revealed that aside from Miriam, whose specialty was a tap-toe dance, the blonde was a blues singer, the drugstore redhead was a magician’s assistant, the nervous-looking thin woman in the severe dress admitted to being a concert pianist while the stout woman was a lecturer on public health.

      “Rather a queer floor show our friend Martinez is planning, eh?” the broad-shouldered female smiled, but the coldness of her eyes belied the warmth of the grin.

      * * * *

      Darkness hid the house proper as the boat snaked its way to the shore, but against the dark sky, Miriam could catch the faint outline of spires and a turret. On all sides was the death-like quiet of an unbroken jungle, and behind her in the water she could hear the angry swirling of some large amphibian as it splashed its way past the boat. “We’re on an island,” the aerialist, who had identified herself as Phyllis, told Miriam. She nodded, something in her throat making speech undesirable.

      The little party, huddled together, followed the pilot of the boat up a winding path, through a heavy iron gate to the entrance of what appeared to be an old ivy covered castle. At a knock, the heavy door swung open, revealing a long, dimly lit hall.

      The servant who bowed them in announced, “Mr. Martinez will see you directly in the library,” and turned to lead the way.

      Martinez was a short squat man, tanned the color of old mahogany. His thick, sensuous lips were only half concealed by an untidy Vandyke that straggled toward his chest. His hair, combed in the semblance of a pompadour, was coarse and wiry, matched only by the fierce bristling of eyebrow that served to hide the pigginess of his eyes. His voice, when he spoke, was harsh and guttural.

      “Good evening, ladies,” he greeted them. “I trust you have had a comfortable trip.” His lips parted in an oily smile, revealing the blackened stumps of his teeth. “You shall

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