Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 42: what you’re looking at

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

44 THE METAL MONSTER She pointed to the huddled heaps strewing the hollow. And then I saw whence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like’ galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns. From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted. “No—no,” she gasped. “I weep for—Aim.” She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown bietch at the edge of the shattered men. “For—him?” There was puzzlement in the faint voice. “For—that? But why?” | She looked at Chiu-Ming—and I knew that to her the sight of the crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when at last she turned them back to us. Long she considered us. “Now,” she broke the silence, “now something stirs within me that it seems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!” Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each other; seeking council, decision. | “Chiu-Ming,” Drake spoke. “We can’t leave him like that. At least let’s cover him from the vultures.” | “Come.” The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure. “[’m afraid! Oh, Martin—I’m afraid.” Ruth reached little trembling hands to her tall brother. “Come!” Norhala called again. There was an echo of harshness, a clanging, peremptory and inexorable, in the chiming. Ventnor shrugged his shoulders. “Come, ther,” he said. | With one last look at the Chinese, the ammergeiers already circling about him, we walked to the crevice. Norhala waited, silent, brooding until we passed her; then glided behind us. Before we had gone ten paces I saw that the place was no fissure. It was a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands, its walls covered with the writhing dragon lines, its roof the mountain. The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain, a full mile away. | | Now it was close; we passed through it and were out of the tunnel Betore us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of the towering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was the ribbon of the sky. The sides were dark, but it came to me that hete were no trees, no verdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark. GOGO .S (GO)