Avon Murder Mystery Monthly No. 41 — page 87: what you’re looking at

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

A. MERRITT 89 stently—and 1 wondered whether my face was as grim and drawn as “It appears,” he said at last, curtly, “that it’s up to you and me for powwow quick. I hope you’re not sleepy.” : | “T am not,” I answered as curtly; the edge of nerves in his manner of questioning doing nothing to soothe my own, “and even if I were I would hardly expect to put all the burden of the present problem upon you by going to sleep.” | “For God’s sake don’t be a prima donna,” he flared up. “I meant no oftense.” “Pm sorry, Dick,” I said. “We’re both a little jum Jl ks nodded; gripped my hand. . — te ~ “It wouldn’t be so bad,” he muttered, “if all four of us were all right. But Ventnor’s down and out, and God alone knows for how long. And Ruth—has all the trouble we have and some special ones of her own. I’ve an idea”—he hesitated—“an idea. that there was no exaggera- tion in that story she told—an idea that if anything she underplayed it.” “I, too,” I replied somberly. “And to me it is the most hideous phase of this whole situation—and for reasons not all connected with Ruth,” I added. | “Hideous!” he repeated. “Unthinkable—yet all this is unthinkable. And still—it is! And Ventnor—coming back—that, way. Like a lost soul finding voice. _ “Was it raving, Goodwin? Or could he have been—how was it he put it—in touch with these Things and their purpose? Was that mes- sage—truth?” | | “Ask yourself that question,” I said. “Man—you know it was truth. Had not inklings of it come to you even before he spoke? They had to me. His message was but an interpretation, a synthesis of facts I, for one, lacked the courage to admit.” | | | “T, too,” he nodded. “But he went further than that. What did he mean by the Keeper of the Cones—and that the Things—were vul- nerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could he know—how could he?” “There’s nothing inexplicable in that, at any rate,” I answered. “Ab- normal sensitivity of perception due to the cutting off of all sensual im-. pressions. There’s nothing uncommon in that. You have its most fa- miliar form in the sensitivity of the blind. You’ve watched the same thing at work in certain forms of hypnotic experimentation, haven't our “Through the operation of entirely understandable causes the mind gains the power to react to vibrations that normally pass unperceived; is able to project itself through this keying up of perception into a GOGO .S (GO)