Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

22 THE METAL MONSTER ous rock up and up until it vanished around a far distant shoulder. It was a wide and bulwarked road, a road that spoke as clearly as though it had tongue of human hands which had cut it there in the mountain’s breast. An ancient road weary beyond belief beneath the tread of uncounted years. | From the hollow the blind soul of loneliness groped out to greet us! Never had I felt such loneliness as.that which lapped the lip of the verdant bowl. It was tangible—as though it had been poured from some reservoir of misery. A pool of despair— Half the width of the valley away the ruins began. Weirdly were they its visible expression. They huddled in two bent rows to the bot- tom. They crouched in a wide cluster against the cliffs. From the clus- ter a curving row of them ran along the southern crest of the hollow. A flight of shattered, cyclopean steps lifted to a ledge and here a crumbling fortress stood. | Irresistibly did the ruins seem a colossal hag, flung prone, lying list- lessly, helplessly, against the.barrier’s base. The huddled lower ranks were the legs, the cluster the body, the upper row an outflung arm and above the neck of the stairway the ancient fortress, rounded and with two huge ragged apertures in its northern front was an aged, bleached and withered head staring, watching. I looked at Drake—the spell. of the bowl was heavy upon him, his face drawn. The Chinaman and Tibetan were murmuring, terror writ- ten large upon them. “A hell of a joint!” Drake turned to me, a shadow of a grin lightening the distress on his face. “But I’d rather chance it than go back. What d’you say?” | I nodded, curiosity mastering my oppression. We stepped over the rim, rifles on the alert. Close behind us crowded the two servants and the ponies. | The vale was shallow, as I have said. We trod the fragments of an olden approach to the green tunnel so the descent was not difficult. Here and there beside the path upreared'huge broken blocks. On them I thought I could sce faint tracings as of carvings—now a suggestion of gaping, arrow-fanged dragon jaws, now the outline of a scaled body, a hint of enormous, batlike wings. Now we had reached the first of the crumbling piles that stretched. down into the valley’s center. Flalf fainting, I fell against Drake, clutching to him for support. A stream of utter hopelessness was racing upon us, swirling and eddy- ing around us, reaching to our hearts with ghostly-fingers dripping with despair, From every shattered heap it seemed to pour, rushing down GOMMGIOO .S (GO)