A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 38: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ELIXIR OF HATE s 37 in a vain attempt to fathom the invisible. Hastily he pulled from his inner coat- pocket a sheaf of papers and personalia. From among them he chose a long, rather thin book, bound in red-leather—a costly treatise, stamped in gold letters : “Dietetics and Senility, by H. K. Hoffman-Browne, A.M., M.D.” The other papers he re- placed. “Deuce take him and his musty old asceticism, too,”? growled Dennison as he ripped the hyndred-odd pages clean out of the binding, which he flung away. “I’ve got a better use for all this poppycock now than to read it!” Speaking, he rolled a couple of the leaves into a spill. This he quickly lighted with a match from his silver case; and now, for the moment provided with a feeble though sufficient light continued down- ward. The spill guided him down a dozen steps or more. When it was almost out he lighted a fresh leaf. And so, one by one, burning the pages of this most erudite monograph—which but the day before had been like Holy Writ to him—he then made good progress. Presently he began to note a chill in the dead air, a damp and sickly odor. The walls grew patched with leprous fungi. On the stairs a slippery moisture increased as he went down. Here, there, through some vein or fault in the volcanic rock, seeping water made weird, discolored patches, sulfurous and slimy. “Uh!” he exclarmed, disgusted, lighting still another paper. “This place hasn’t been visited for centuries. Small wonder! Next time ] start for a sea-bath I'll go round some way or other. Nice place, isn't it? I’m rather glad, on the whole, there’s not much more of it ahead!” Down, still down, he kept. He must have made some hundred and fifty steps or more, when all at once he perceived a little draft of air. Slight, almost unnotice- able at first yet it attracted his attention by flickering the flame of his improvised torch. He paused, sniffing. A musty smell came to his sharpened senses. “H-m!” thought he. ‘That can’t be any sea air, working up through this passage !”’ And for a moment he remained there, at- tentive, wondering, while the raw flame cast his dancing sh&dow grotesquely against the fetid walls surrounding him. Again he went on. Then all at once he saw whence this air current came. Off to the right and below him, opening down into the stairway at an angle so obtuse that it was almost parallel, he saw the dim, uncertain mouth of another stair. ‘“‘What ?”’ cried he, startled. ‘““Sogthen, this cliff is worm-eaten with runways like a rabbit-hutch? That’s odd! Why—why, there may be dozens of them!” A few steps lower down he came to the entrance of the other stairway. But though he lighted half a dozen pages at once, and held the flambeau high above his head, he could make little of it. Just a dark, curv- ing, sinister cleft in the rock, entirely similar to the one wherein he stood, and, like it, leading upward. So—since his supply of paper was far from unlimited— he wasted no more time on speculation. “‘No matter, after all, where it goes or doesn’t go,” he told himself. “I’m after that salt bath; and if this stair ever gets to the bottom of the cliff I’m going to have it!”’ Down, down, down he clambered. Now the other passageway lay very far behind. Now the drip and moisture were rapidly increasing. “‘How much farther, I’d like to know ?” exclaimed the doctor, with growing im- patience. AN Odes turn. Then, quite sudden- ly, he whiffed the freshness of outer air. To his ears penetrated a dull, muffled, _ hooming ebb and flow of sound, seemingly | far away, murmuring idly like the echo in a conch. ““Ah!”? exclaimed Dennison, and has- tened on. Five minutes later he emerged, blinking in the sudden light of day, from a cleft at the base of the precipice. Before him layea tiny cove, let into the massive crag. There, pools among the rocks re- flected the calm sky, while over an outer ledge of rocks, in periodic ebb and flow, the surges tumbled in bursting chaos of white, hissing beauty. Dennison lost scant time in admiration. Hastily reconnoitering the spot, he flung off his clothes, and a moment after stood there, naked and glad, glorying in the new power of his arms, the fresh, return- ing vigor of his frame. nn) (C 6)(0)O) (C(O)