That night we planned to make a break for it, on
the camel that remained to us. But it was evident to me that the beast
could not carry us both to safety. One man might have a chance. When
darkness fell, I struck Grimm from behind with my gun-butt, knocking
him senseless. Then I mounted the camel and fled----"

He did not heed the look of sick amazement and abhorrence growing in
the girl's lovely face. Her wide eyes were fixed on her uncle as if
she were seeing the real man for the first time, and was stricken by
what she saw. He plunged on, too obsessed and engulfed by fear to care
or heed what she thought of him. The sight of a soul stripped of its
conventional veneer and surface pretense is not always pleasant. "I broke through the lines of the besiegers and escaped in the night. Grimm, naturally, fell into the hands of the devil-worshippers, and for
years I supposed that he was dead. They had the reputation of slaying,
by torture, every alien that they captured. Years passed, and I had
almost forgotten the episode. Then, seven months ago, I learned that
he was alive--was, indeed, back in America, thirsting for my life. The monks had not killed him; through their damnable arts they had
_altered_ him. The man is no longer wholly human, but his whole
soul is bent on my destruction. To appeal to the police would have been
useless; he would have tricked them and wreaked his vengeance in spite
of them. I fled from him up and down across the country for more than a
month, like a hunted animal, and finally, when I thought I had thrown
him off the track, I took refuge in this God-forsaken wilderness, among
these barbarians, of whom that man Kirby Garfield is a typical example." "_You_ can talk of barbarians!" she flamed, and her scorn would
have cut the soul of any man who was not so totally engrossed in his
own fears. She turned to me. "Mr. Garfield, please come in. You must not try to
traverse this forest at night, with that fiend at large." "No!" shrieked Brent. "Get back from that door, you little fool! Ashley, hold your tongue. I tell you, he is one of Adam Grimm's
creatures! He shall not set foot in this cabin!" She looked at me, pale, helpless and forlorn, and I pitied her as I
despised Richard Brent; she looked so small and bewildered. "I wouldn't sleep in your cabin if all the wolves of hell were howling
outside," I snarled at Brent. "I'm going, and if you shoot me in the
back, I'll kill you before I die. I wouldn't have come back at all, but
the young lady needed my protection. She needs it now, but it's your
privilege to deny her that. Miss Brent," I said, "if you wish, I'll
come back tomorrow with a buckboard and carry you to the village. You'd
better go back to New York." "Ashley will take her to the village," roared Brent. "Damn you,
_will_ you go?" *       *       *       *       *

With a sneer that brought the blood purpling his countenance, I turned
squarely upon him and strode off. The door banged behind me, and I
heard his falsetto voice mingled with the tearful accents of his niece. Poor girl, it must have been like a nightmare to her; to have been
snatched out of her sheltered urban life and dropped down in a country
strange and primitive to her, among people whose ways seemed incredibly
savage and violent, and into a bloody episode of wrong and menace and
vengeance. The deep pinelands of the Southwest seem strange and alien
enough at any time to the average Eastern city-dweller; and added to
their gloomy mystery and primordial wildness was this grim phantom out
of an unsuspected past, like the figment of a nightmare. I turned squarely about, stood motionless in the black trail, staring
back at the pin-point of light which still winked through the trees. Peril hovered over the cabin in that tiny clearing, and it was no
part of a white man to leave that girl with the protection of none but
her half-lunatic uncle and his servant. Ashley looked like a fighter. But Brent was an unpredictable quantity. I believed he was tinged with
madness. His insane rages and equally insane suspicions seemed to
indicate as much. I had no sympathy for him. A man who would sacrifice
his friend to save his own life deserves death. But evidently Grimm was mad. His slaughter of Jim Tike suggested
homicidal insanity. Poor Jim Tike had never wronged him. I would have
killed Grimm for that murder, alone, if I had had the opportunity. And I did not intend that the girl should suffer for the sins of her
uncle. If Brent had not sent that telegram, as he swore, then it looked
much as if she had been summoned for a sinister purpose. Who but Grimm
himself would have summoned her, to share the doom he planned for
Richard Brent? Turning, I strode back down the trail. If I could not enter the cabin,
I could at least lurk in the shadows ready at hand if my help was
needed. A few moments later I was under the fringe of trees that ringed
the clearing. Light still shone through the cracks in the shutters, and at one
place a portion of the window-pane was visible. And even as I looked,
this pane was shattered, as if something had been hurled through it. Instantly the night was split by a sheet of flame that burst in a
blinding flash out of the doors and windows and chimney of the cabin. For one infinitesimal instant I saw the cabin limned blackly against
the tongues of flame that flashed from it. With the flash came the
thought that the cabin had been blown up--but no sound accompanied the
explosion. Even while the blaze was still in my eyes, another explosion filled
the universe with blinding sparks, and this one was accompanied by a
thunderous reverberation. Consciousness was blotted out too suddenly
for me to know that I had been struck on the head from behind,
terrifically and without warning. _3. Black Hands_


A flickering light was the first thing that impressed itself upon my
awakening faculties. I blinked, shook my head, came suddenly fully
awake. I was lying on my back in a small glade, walled by towering
black trees which fitfully reflected the uncertain light that emanated
from a torch stuck upright in the earth near me. My head throbbed, and
blood clotted my scalp; my hands were fastened together before me by a
pair of handcuffs. My clothes were torn and my skin scratched as if I
had been dragged brutally through the brush. A huge black shape squatted over me--a black man of medium height
but of gigantic breadth and thickness, clad only in ragged, muddy
breeches--Tope Braxton. He held a gun in each hand, and alternately
aimed first one and then the other at me, squinting along the barrel. One pistol was mine; the other had once belonged to the constable that
Braxton had brained. I lay silent for a moment, studying the play of the torchlight on the
great black torso. His huge body gleamed shiny ebony or dull bronze as
the light flickered. He was like a shape from the abyss whence mankind
crawled ages ago.