LITMIR.BIZ

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a rat, then it had more substance, like some large creature crawling along the walls, bat-like. She fought down panic, but loneliness and the darkness had left its mark, and she could not long resist. She pressed the lever on the flashlight and a thin beam of yellow light cut through the darkness. A glad cry escaped from her throat.

      Phil stood there, blinking in the light, holding by the throat the little native. He lifted him from the floor and shook him like a terrier with a rat.

      “Where is it?” he snarled, exposing his even white teeth. “I’ll get it if I have to tear your arms out of their sockets and bash your head in with them.”

      * * * *

      The dark face of the native became a dull maroon, and his eyes threatened to pop from his head, but he stubbornly shook his head. Suddenly, he lashed out with his feet and caught Phil in the pit of the stomach. The aerialist gasped and relaxed his hold. In a moment, the brown man was on him, his fingers searching out the larger man’s windpipe, while his other hand whipped out a large knife. He bared, his sharp teeth in a snarl.

      Terror transfixed the girl. She felt unseen horror strangling her. Subconsciously she knew she must do something, but she lacked the power to command her muscles. Suddenly, almost as though impelled by some outside force, she felt herself lashing out with the gun. The first blow caught the little man across the side of the head, laying the bone bare, while blood gushed out and ran down the side of his face. He had barely time to turn his face when her hand descended again, this time crushing in the top of his head like an eggshell. His hand fell from Phil’s throat and he collapsed into a heap at the girl’s feet.

      Nausea gripped her, and her senses started to reel. She leaned against the wall for support; it gave way under her and she fell into what felt like a bottomless abyss. Some large black hand blotted out consciousness, and when she awoke, once again Phil was at her side, bathing her face with water. She sat up with a shuddering sigh.

      “Guess I’m not much help always passing out like I do,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m such a sissy.”

      “Not much help indeed,” he smiled. “You only saved my life, that’s all.” He brushed her hair out of her face. “Feel better?”

      She nodded. “Guess it’s because he’s the first man I ever killed,” she said. “He is dead, isn’t he?”

      “Couldn’t be deader,” the man agreed. “For a minute there looked like it was going to be me, and it would have been if it weren’t for you.”

      The girl sat up and looked around. “Where are we, and how did we get here? Did you find the key on him?”

      “No,” Phil told her. “I don’t exactly know what this room is. After you conked him, you got a little dizzy and leaned against the wall for support and evidently touched some kind of a hidden switch. That door over there opened and here we are. This isn’t the room I saw last night, though, because this has no windows in it and that one had.”

      “Maybe there’s another secret door?” the girl suggested.

      “That’s what I’m hoping,” the man admitted, his eyes running over the rough-hewn wall of the room. “I figure it must be over on that side, and lead into that chamber that’s padlocked.” He got up and ran his finger over the rough rock. He put his shoulder against the wall and pushed, but nothing happened. At each interval of two feet he continued to push against the wall, and as he came to the corner of the room, he felt the wall give.

      His voice was strange when he turned to the girl. “I’ve found it,” he said. “I’m going in. I think you’d better stay here.” He pushed the door open and stared into the black void beyond.

      The girl was at his side in an instant. “You’re not going in alone. We’re in this together. Even if I did turn into a Fainting Fanny, I think I’ve been a little help.”

      Phil patted her hand. “You’ve been more than a little help,” he said. “That’s not the reason I don’t want you to go in there. I just want to spare you the sight of what I think we’re going to find.”

      “I want to go,” the girl said simply.

      “All right,” he agreed, “but I hope I’m wrong about what I expect to find—” He took the flashlight and pressed the button. The long finger of light split the black of the chamber beyond, revealing a long, rough-hewn table bearing a lamp. Keeping the lamp focused on that lamp, Phil led the way into the chamber.

      He paused a moment before lighting the lamp, then with a deep breath he bathed the chamber in light. Miriam let out a squeal of fright, then buried her head in his shoulder.

      Along the wall, mounted like the heads of wild animals in some sportsman’s study were the heads of over a score of women, staring glassy eyed into the room below. Two new plaques had recently been added. From one glared the head of the stout woman lecturer, from the other a head, with the drugstore reddened hair of the magician’s assistant, grinned inanely.

      Miriam felt insanity closing in on her in a black cloud and fought it off. She straightened up and kept her eyes from the ghastly display on the wall.

      “That’s what they brought back last night,” she said in a low voice. “The beasts, the insane beasts! They murdered those women in cold blood, then mutilated their bodies for this mad display of cruel degeneracy.”

      Phil stopped before the head of a once-beautiful brunette. Her long hair hung limply from her bodiless head and fine dark eyes stared sightlessly down at the man staring at her.

      “That was my sister,” Phil said quietly. “She was lovely. I’ve come all the way to this fever infested hell-hole to avenge her, and now that I’m certain what her fate was, I’m going to carry out that promise.”

      The tears stood in Miriam’s eyes at the vision of a brother standing before the desecrated body of his sister swearing vengeance. The horror of the situation was never more apparent than at that moment.

      “Avenge her or join her?” a voice from the doorway asked. Both swung around to see the hated face of their host in the doorway. “So she was your sister, eh? She was a fine specimen. Gave me quite a chase. Through treetops and all. When I finally sent an arrow right through her, she fell to earth like a mortally wounded bird—”

      With a roar Phil sprang at his tormentor. The narrow room rang with the sound of a shot as he charged. Miraculously, it only creased his shoulders. He was on the bearded man before he could squeeze the trigger again. A big hand closed over the gun hand and crushed the gun to the floor. Then with a mighty swing he hit the big game hunter flush on the fat lips with his fist. Blood spouted in all directions and he hit the wall with a dull thud and slid to the floor. Phil pulled him to his feet again, and there was the dull crunch of shattered bone as he hit him again.

      As Martinez sank to the floor, from another pocket he pulled a second gun. “You shall yet die to join her on my wall,” he said with difficulty, the blood cascading from his badly mutilated mouth. “Or maybe I turn you over to my faithful Wasiri, and we watch while they eat your quivering flesh?” He started to pull himself to his feet. When finally he had gained his feet, he fell heavily back against the wall in exhaustion—and then the miracle happened!

      The plaque bearing the head of Phil’s sister fell, and the base of the plaque sheared the hunter’s skull neatly in two.

      Phil and Miriam ran to the man’s side, but he had been killed instantly, and the head on the plaque, the lip torn away from the teeth by the jar, seemed to grin at them.

      “We’ve got to find where he keeps his ammunition or dynamite to blow this Satan’s headquarters back to the Hell that spawned it,” he said. “You find your way to the pier, and I’ll join you in a little while.”

      The sunlight seemed like a clean breath of heaven and Miriam sat limply down to await Phil’s coming.

      Suddenly a black spiral of smoke came from the old house, and from deep in the forest came the beat of drums in ever growing volume. Over the

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