“Well, maybe it was lightning.”
“There’s too many things that still don’t follow. Like the identification of the bodies.”
“Well, surely with your logic you convinced them you weren’t one of the victims,” Moore commented acidly. His head was throbbing suddenly and his stomach was knotting itself.
“On going back over the crash site we found Wingfield’s dinner jacket with his billfold inside — must have had it off, and it flew off under the rhododendron when they rolled. That might have been an honest mistake in identification.”
“Kirsten?” Moore asked finally.
“The girl they say is Kirsten — well, there’s not much left to identify. Skull and jaw were completely crushed — forget dental work.” Chance drew a breath and thrust his hands in the pockets of his rumpled tweeds. “But they’d made a token effort at autopsy there. They’d opened the chest and abdominal cavities. Heat may char limbs to ashes and bone to cinder — but the internal organs maintain relative integrity. At least their positions don’t shift.”
Chance paused for understanding to light. Moore had been one of Kirsten’s intimate circle of friends, and this had been an amusement to her.
“Good lord!” Moore exploded in sudden awareness. “Kirsten had complete situs inversus! Her heart was on the right side of her body — she always thought it was a fine jest!”
Chance nodded. “This girl’s body had the heart on the left side. It was a blunder they couldn’t possibly have allowed for.”
“But why! Why this ghastly charade!”
“Because Kirsten is still alive — and she knows something important enough to kill for!” said Chance grimly. “Cullin Shelton ‘left town’ last night, no forwarding address. No one knows a thing. But there’s a sooty smear of burned animal grease on the curb in front of the Dillon Hotel where Shelton had his room. And wedged between the passenger door and the running board of the wreck I found this.” Chance tossed a knotted handkerchief to the kitchen table.
Gingerly Moore unwrapped it. Inside was a charred human finger — a man’s gold wedding band fixed into the cindered flesh.
“Wingfield’s?”
“Not hardly.”
Moore pushed the thing away. His stomach had endured enough.
Chance struggled to pull together the pieces of the puzzle for him. “Ever since I’ve been back I’ve been hearing vague hints of trouble in the mountains — strange things you can’t quite pin down. I wouldn’t have paid attention if it weren’t my life’s work to note and study the inexplicable and the unusual. Lately I’ve learned someone has been making serious efforts to learn the secrets of the lost mines of the Ancients. Sure there have been a lot of people interested in this legend — except there appears to be a sinister purpose behind this exploration. Shelton was a mining engineer hired by someone to delve into this matter. Shelton, I’m convinced, is dead.
“Cullin Shelton had something to tell me,” Chance counted it off. “Something important enough that he died horribly trying to tell it. He met Kirsten and Wingfield — they must have discovered something from him. So the thing killed again — whoever and whatever it is. But somehow Kirsten escaped. To prevent a search for her, someone went to a great deal of effort to make it appear she had died in the crash along with, supposedly, me.”
“But why haven’t you heard from Kirsten in all this time?”
Chance’s blue eyes smouldered. “Because she’s either trapped somewhere hiding from them — or else they’ve got her and…”
No need to finish that, assuming Chance’s logic, Moore reflected. “But why all this inhuman murder and mysterious plotting?” he protested. “Who would do it?”
Chance sighed and dug out a cheroot. “I suppose it’s time to try to tell you about a creature who calls himself Dread.”
Moore choked on a sudden rush of bile and collapsed on the floor.
Kirsten von Brocken pressed her slim body closer against the angle of the rock, staring back toward the direction of the sound. It had come from back upstream, an eerie ululation echoing down the boulder-strewn ravine. The small mountain stream along which she fled roared and rushed down its rocky bed, making it difficult to hear sounds of pursuit.
There — again. That uncanny howl, closer now at hand.
Kirsten shivered. Her bruised and weary limbs were barely capable of holding her erect after hours of clambering over rocks and tree trunks. She pulled herself further into the crevice of overturned boulders, knowing there possibly was no hope either of eluding or hiding from the thing that hunted her in the deepening twilight.
The night before was impressed in her memory with the blurred unreality of a nightmare.
The moment of horror on the mountain road — the salamander glowing in its elemental flame — John Wingfield’s hideous death as the fire-elemental turned its wrath on him. Kirsten’s inbred fear of fire made the terror of the crash dwindle in comparison — for she had escaped Wingfield’s fate by an instant when the Packard veered and hurtled from the roadway.
The heavy roadster had clipped the guardrail and pitched nose-first down the steep incline. A tree smashed into its hood almost instantly, overturning the Packard and sending it rolling and bounding over the rocky slope. That first collision threw Kirsten from the open car and into the dense thicket of rhododendron that covered the mountainside. The resilient tangle of rhododendron cushioned her impact as the car bounded and flung itself past her, narrowly missing her limp form. The girl’s head struck the soft earth with stunning force. Blackness engulfed her terror and pain, and she never heard the heavy car careen past her and smash itself into twisted wreckage down the slopes of the ravine far below.
After an indefinite space of deep blackness, Kirsten awoke to the sound of distant voices. Men’s voices, calling back and forth. Slowly she opened her eyes, trying to collect her thoughts. From instinct she remained still.
Her forehead ached terribly and she seemed bruised in every limb, but the thick branches of the rhododendron had broken her fall onto the dense leafmold of the hillside. Carefully she touched her fingers to her forehead. She winced. A branch had left a bad bruise there, but she was lucky she hadn’t broken her neck. Gingerly she moved her other limbs. She was sore, but no bones seemed broken.
Memory came back to her in a rush of horror. The salamander — was it…? But no. The night was chill and dark. No loathsome creature of flame sought her through its mists. The elemental had vanished, and instead men’s voices pierced the mists. Someone had found the wreck; they would help her.
Kirsten started to call out, but her voice felt too shaky for words. She paused a moment to compose herself — and had time to grasp the words of the unseen searchers.
“Chance is finished right enough!” someone shouted nasally from the slope far below. “What’s left of him is jammed against the steering column like a piece of shish kebab! No sign of the skirt though!”
“Sure she’s not in the wreckage?” another voice demanded, not too many yards from where she lay.
“Damn right I’m sure!” came the answer. “Ain’t nowhere in this heap of scrap iron she could be stuck! Ain’t even any blood I can see!” The nearer voice swore. “Then she must’ve been thrown out when they rolled. Bring your lights back up and look careful for the body. We got to find it before anyone else stops to see about that busted guardrail.”