--he secret panel Miss Elizabeth found!--Buckner snapped.--ome on!-- He ran across the hallway and Griswell followed him dazedly. The flopping and thrashing came from beyond that mysterious door, and now the sounds had ceased.
The light revealed a narrow, tunnel-like corridor that evidently led through one of the thick walls. Buckner plunged into it without hesitation.
--aybe it couldn't think like a human,--he muttered, shining his light ahead of him.--ut it had sense enough to erase its tracks last night so we couldn't trail it to that point in the wall and maybe find the secret panel. There-- a room ahead--the secret room of the Blassenvilles!-- And Griswell cried out:--y God! It-- the windowless chamber I saw in my dream, with the three bodies hanging--ahhhhh!-- Buckner-- light playing about the circular chamber became suddenly motionless. In that wide ring of light three figures appeared, three dried, shriveled, mummy-like shapes, still clad in the moldering garments of the last century. Their slippers were clear of the floor as they hung by their withered necks from chains suspended from the ceiling.
--he three Blassenville sisters!--muttered Buckner.--iss Elizabeth wasn't crazy, after all.----ook!--Griswell could barely make his voice intelligible.--here--over there in the corner!-- The light moved, halted.
--as that thing a woman once?--whispered Griswell.--od, look at that face, even in death. Look at those claw-like hands, with black talons like those of a beast. Yes, it was human, though--even the rags of an old ballroom gown. Why should a mulatto maid wear such a dress, I wonder?----his has been her lair for over forty years,--muttered Buckner, brooding over the grinning grisly thing sprawling in the corner.--his clears you, Griswell--a crazy woman with a hatchet--that-- all the authorities need to know. God, what a revenge!--what a foul revenge! Yet what a bestial nature she must have had, in the beginnin't to delve into voodoo as she must have done--
--he mulatto woman?--whispered Griswell, dimly sensing a horror that overshadowed all the rest of the terror.
Buckner shook his head.--e misunderstood old Jacob-- maunderin't, and the things Miss Elizabeth wrote--she must have known, but family pride sealed her lips. Griswell, I understand now; the mulatto woman had her revenge, but not as we supposed. She didn't drink the Black Brew old Jacob fixed for her. It was for somebody else, to be given secretly in her food, or coffee, no doubt. Then Joan ran away, leavin'tthe seeds of the hell she's sowed to grow.----hat--that-- not the mulatto woman?--whispered Griswell.
--hen I saw her out there in the hallway I knew she was no mulatto. And those distorted features still reflect a family likeness. I--e seen her portrait, and I can't be mistaken. There lies the creature that was once Celia Blassenville.--
Never Beyond the Beast
Rise to the peak of the ladder
Where the ghosts of the planets feast--Out of the reach of the adder--Never beyond the Beast.
He is there, in the abyss brooding,
Where the nameless black fires fall;
He is there, in the stars intruding,
Where the sun is a silver ball.
Beyond all weeping or revel,
He lurks in the cloud and the sod;
He grips the doors of the Devil
And the hasp on the gates of God.
Build and endeavor and fashion--Never can you escape
The blind black brutish passion--The lust of the primal Ape.
Wild Water
Saul Hopkins was king of Locust Valley, but kingship never turned hot lead. In the wild old days, not so long distant, another man was king of the Valley, and his methods were different and direct. He ruled by the guns, wire-clippers and branding irons of his wiry, hard-handed, hard-eyed riders. But those days were past and gone, and Saul Hopkins sat in his office in Bisley and pulled strings to which were tied loans and mortgages and the subtle tricks of finance.
Times have changed since Locust Valley reverberated to the guns of rival cattlemen, and Saul Hopkins, by all modern standards, should have lived and died king of the Valley by virtue of his gold and lands; but he met a man in whom the old ways still lived.
It began when John Brill-- farm was sold under the hammer. Saul Hopkins--representative was there to bid. But three hundred hard-eyed ranchers and farmers were there, too. They rode in from the river bottoms and the hill country to the west and north, in ramshackle flivvers, in hacks, and on horseback. Some of them came on foot. They had a keg of tar, and half a dozen old feather pillows. The representative of big business understood. He stood aside and made no attempt to bid. The auction took place, and the farmers and ranchers were the only bidders. Land, implements and stock sold for exactly $7.55; and the whole was handed back to John Brill.
When Saul Hopkins heard of it, he turned white with fury. It was the first time his kingship had ever been flouted. He set the wheels of the law to grinding, and before another day passed, John Brill and nine of his friends were locked in the old stone jail at Bisley. Up along the bare oak ridges and down along the winding creeks where poverty-stricken farmers labored under the shadow of Saul Hopkins--mortgages, went the word that the scene at Brill-- farm would not be duplicated. The next foreclosure would be attended by enough armed deputies to see that the law was upheld. And the men of the creeks and the hills knew that the promise was no idle one. Meanwhile, Saul Hopkins prepared to have John Brill prosecuted with all the power of his wealth and prestige. And Jim Reynolds came to Bisley to see the king.
Reynolds was John Brill-- brother-in-law. He lived in the high postoak country north of Bisley. Bisley lay on the southern slope of that land of long ridges and oak thickets. To the south the slopes broke into fan shaped valleys, traversed by broad streams. The people in those fat valleys were prosperous; farmers who had come late into the country, and pushed out the cattlemen who had once owned it all.
Up on the high ridges of the Lost Knob country, it was different. The land was rocky and sterile, the grass thin. The ridges were occupied by the descendants of old pioneers, nesters, tenant farmers, and broken cattlemen. They were poor, and there was an old feud between them and the people of the southern valleys. Money had to be borrowed from somebody of the latter clan, and that intensified the bitterness.
Jim Reynolds was an atavism, the personification of anachronism. He had lived a comparatively law-abiding life, working on farms, ranches, and in the oil fields that lay to the east, but in him always smoldered an unrest and a resentment against conditions that restricted and repressed him. Recent events had fanned these embers into flame. His mind leaped as naturally toward personal violence as that of the average modern man turns to processes of law. He was literally born out of his time. He should have lived his life a generation before, when men threw a wide loop and rode long trails.
He drove into Bisley in his Ford roadster at nine o--lock one night. He stopped his car on French Street, parked, and turned into an alley that led into Hopkins Street--named for the man who owned most of the property on it. It was a quirk in the man't nature that he should cling to the dingy little back street office in which he first got his start.
Hopkins Street was narrow, lined mainly with small offices, warehouses, and the backs of buildings that faced on more pretentious streets. By night it was practically deserted. Bisley was not a large town, and except on Saturday night, even her main streets were not thronged after dark. Reynolds saw no one as he walked swiftly down the narrow sidewalk toward a light which streamed through a door and a plate glass window.