Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

tessence of all light. Beneath it the fog melts into a jeweled-mist, radiant, rainbow-colored of a thousand varied spectra. | “I can see the streets. Why, they are filled with people! The lights are coming closer. They are all around me. I am enveloped. I—” The message stopped abruptly. The wire to Xebico was dead. Beneath my ~ eyes in the narrow circle of light from under the green lamp-shade, the black printing no longer spun itself, letter by letter, across the page. The room seemed filled with a solemn quiet, a silence vaguely impres- sive, powerful. I looked down at Morgan. His hands had dropped nerve- lessly at his sides, while his body had hunched over peculiarly. I turned the lamp-shade back, throwing the light squarely in his face. His eyes were staring, fixed Filled with a sudden foreboding, I stepped beside him and called Chicago on the wire. After a second the sounder clicked its answer. Why? But there was something wrong. Chicago was reporting that Wire . Two had not been used throughout the evening. “Morgan!” I shouted. “Morgan! Wake up, it isn’t true. Some one has been hoaxing us. Why—” In my eagerness I grasped him by the shoulder. His body was quite cold. Morgan had been dead for hours. Could it be that his sensitized brain and automatic fingers had continued to record impressions even after the end? I shall never know, for I shall never again handle the night shift. Search in a world atlas discloses no town of Xebico, Whatever it was that killed John Morgan will forever remain a mystery. 4202 St wlas ey a 2b Stee Sim oe by —