Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 57: what you’re looking at

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

the Jightnings ceased; all the flitting radiances paled and the sea of flaming splendors grew thin as moving mists. The storming shapes dulled with them, seemed to darken into the murk. | Through the fast-waning light and far, far away—miles it seemed on high and many, many miles in length—a broad band of fluorescent amethyst shone. From it dropped curtains, shimmering, nebulous as the marching folds of the aurora; they potired, cascaded, frorn the ame- thystine band. | Huge and purple-black against their opalescence bulked what at first I thought a mountain, so like was it to one of those fantastic buttes of our desert Southwest when their castellated tops are silhouetted against the setting sun; knew instantly that this was but subconscious striving to translate into terms of reality the incredible. — It was a City! A city full five thousand feet high and crowned with countless spires and turrets, titanic arches, stupendous domes! It was as though the man- made cliffs of lower New York were raised scores of times their height, stretched a score of times their length. And weirdly enough it did sug- gest those same towering masses of masonry when one sees them black- en against the twilight skies. The pit darkened as though night were filtering down into it; the vast, purple-shadowed walls of the city sparkled out with countless lights. From the crowning arches and turrets leaped broad filaments of flame, flashing, electric. _ | 7 Was it my straining eyes, the play of the light and shadow—or were those high-Aung excrescences shifting, changing shape? An icy hand stretched out of the unknown, stilled my heart. For they were shitting arches and domes, turrets and spires; were melting, reappearing; in ferment; like the lightning-threaded, rolling edges of the thunder- cloud. tipon a broad and silvery ledge close to the curving frame of the portal and not a yard from where upon her block stood Norhala, her arm clasped about the rigid form of Ruth. I heard a sigh from Ventnor, an exclamation from Drake. Pe Oo | Before one of us could cry out to Ruth, the cube glided to the edge of the shelf, dipped out of sight. — | | That upon which we rode trembled and sped after it. There came a sickening sense of falling; we lurched-against each other: for the first time the pony whinnied, fearfully. Then with awful speed we were flying down a wide, a glistening, a steeply angled ramp into.the Pit, straight toward the half-hidden, soaring escarpments flash- ing afar. 7 | I wrenched my gaze away; saw. that our platform had come to rest. ECOMC OOO (GO)