Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER Ill Ruth Ventnor HE dawn, streaming into the niche, awakened us. A covey of partridges venturing too close yielded three to our guns. We breakfasted well, and a. little later were pushing on down the cleft. Its descent, though gradual, was continuous, and therefore I was not surprised when soon we began ta come upon evidences of semi-tropical vegetation. Giant rhododendrons and tree ferns gave way to occasional clumps of stately Ropek and clumps of the hardier bamboos. We added a few snow cocks to our larder—although they were out of their habitat, flying down into the gorge from their peaks and table-lands for some choice titbit. All that day we marched on, and when at night we made camp, sleep came to’ us quickly and overmastering. An hour after dawn we were on our way. A brief stop we made for-lunch; pressed forward. It was close to two when we caught the first sight of the ruins. The soaring, verdure-clad walls of the canyon had long been steadily marching closer. Above, between their rims the wide ribbon of sky was like a fantastically shored river, shimmering, dazzling; every cove and headland edged with an opalescent glimmering as of shining pearly beaches, » | And as though we were sinking in that sky. stream’s depths its light kept lessening, darkening imperceptibly with luminous shadows of ghostly beryl, drifting veils of pellucid aquamarine, limpid mists of glaucous chrysolite. — Fainter, more crepuscular became the light, yet never losing its crystalline quality. Now the high overhead river was but a brook; be- came a thread. Abruptly it vanished. We passed into a tunnel, fern walled, fern roofed, garlanded with tawny orchids, gay with carmine fungus and golden moss. We stepped out into a blaze of sunlight. Before us lay a wide green bowl held in the hands of the clustered hills; shallow, circular, as though, while plastic still, the thumb of God had run round its rim, shaping it. Around it the peaks crowded, cran- ing their lofty heads to peer within. It was about a mile in its diameter, this hollow, as my gaze then measured it. It had three openings—one that lay like a crack in the northeast slope; another, the tunnel mouth through which we had come. The third lifted: itself out of the bowl, creeping up the precipitous bare scarp of the western barrier straight to the north, clinging to the ochre- 21 ECOMC OOO (GO)