Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

28 THE METAL MONSTER “The next morning. we caught sight of another band—or the same. We turned again. We stole through a tree-covered plain; we struck an ancient road. It led south, into the peaks again. We followed it. It brought us here. “It isn’t, as you observe, the most comfortable of places. We struck across the hollow to the crevice—we knew nothing of the entrance you came through. The hollow was not pleasant, either. But it was penetra- ble, then. | “We crossed. As we were about to enter the cleft there issued’ out of it a most unusual and disconcerting chorus of sounds—wailings, crash- ings, splinterings.” | I started, shot a look at Dick; absorbed, he was drinking in Vent- nor’s every word. “So unusual, so—well, disconcerting is the best word I can think of, that we were not encouraged to proceed. Also the peculiar unpleasant- ness of the hollow was increasing rapidly. “We made the best time we could back to the fortress. And when next we tried to go through the hollow, to search for another outlet— we couldn’t. You know why,” he ended abruptly. _ “But men in ancient armor. Men like those of Darius.” Dick broke the silence that had followed this amazing recital. “It’s incredible!” | “Yes,” agreed Ventnor, “isn’t it. But there they were. Of course, I don’t maintain that they were relics of Darius’s armies. They might have been of Xerxes before him—or of Artaxerxes after him. But there they certainly were, Drake, living, breathing replicas of exceedingly ancient Persians. - | “Why, they might have been the wall carvings on the tomb of Khosroes come to life. I mention Darius because he fits in with the most plausible hypothesis. When Alexander the Great smashed his empire he did it rather thoroughly. There wasn’t much sympathy for | the vanquished in those days. And it’s entirely conceivable that a city or two in Alexander’s way might have gathered up a fleeting regiment or so for protection and have decided not to wait for him, but to hunt for cover. “Naturally, they would have gone into the almost inaccessible heart of the high ranges. There is nothing impossible in the theory that they found shelter at last up here. As long as history runs this has been a well-nigh unknown land. Penetrating some mountain-guarded, easily defended valley they might have decided to settle down for a time, have rebuilt a city, raised a government; laying low, in a sentence, wait- ing for the storm to blow over. . | “Why did they stay? Well, they might have found the new life more pleasant than the old. And they might have been locked in their valley GOGO .S (GO)