Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

114 THE METAL MONSTER “I thought we had been going along: the way They went,” I said in amazement. “So did I,” he answered. “We must have circled. They never went through that unless—unless—” He hesitated. “Unless what?” I asked sharply. | “Unless it opened and let them through,” he said. “Have you for- gotten those great ovals—like cat’s eyes that opened in the outer walls?” he added quietly. | | I had forgotten. I looked again at the wall. Certainly it was smooth, — lineless. In one unbroken, shining surface it rose, a facade of polished metal. Within it the deep set points of light were duller even than they had been in the pillars; almost indeed indistinguishable. “Go on to.the left,” I said none too patiently. “And get that absurd notion out of your head.” “All right.” He flushed. “But you don’t think I’m afraid, do you?” “If what: you’re thinking were true, you’d have a right to be,” I replied tartly. “And I want to tell you /’d be afraid. Damned afraid.” For perhaps two hundred paces we skirted the base of the wall. We came abruptly to an opening, an oblong passageway full fifty foot wide by twice as high. At its entrance the mellow, saffron light was cut off as though by an invisible screen. The tunnel itself was filled with a dim grayish blue luster. For an instant we contemplated it. “I wouldn’t care to be caught in there by any rush,” I hesitated. “There’s not much good in thinking of that now,” said Drake, grimly. “A few chances more or less in a joint of this kind is nothing between friends, Goodwin; take it from me. Come on.” We entered. Walls, floor and roof were composed of the same sub- stance as the great pillars, the wall of the outer chamber; filled like them with dimmed replicas of the twinkling eye points. “Qdd that all the places in here are square,” muttered Drake. “They don’t seem to have used any spherical or pyramidal ideas in their building—if it is a building.” . | | It was true. All was mathematically straight up and down and across. It was strange—still we had seen little as yet. There was a warmth about this passageway we trod; a difference in the air of it. The warmth grew, a dry and baking heat; but stimulative _ rather than oppressive. I touched the walls; the warmth did not come from them. And there was no wind. Yet as we went on the heat in- creased. The passageway turned at a right angle, continuing in a corridor half its former dimensions. Far away shone a high bar of pale yellow radiance, rising like a pillar of light from floor to roof. Toward it, per- force, we trudged. Its brilliancy grew greater. GOGO .S (GO)