A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

- THE SMOKING LAND should be dead up here at the cold end of nowhere, and all report of me would simply be some vague and indefinite hint, traveling far south from Point Barrow, about a fantastic fool who called himself _ Cassidy, and who walked out over the ice of the northern ocean, and never was heard of again! Yes, that was all that would be left of me, and of my discovery and all that the world would know of Sylvia, the priestess, would be nothing at all! I TELL you, the thought that my world of people would not even see an epitaph to remember me by fairly sickened me, and then it stung me so deep that I writhed back and forth. I was still writh- ing when the door of my chamber opened and someone stepped inside. The stranger stood still in the blackness. I howled out: “If the time has come for me to go, turn on the lights, and I’m ready. I only want to leave a little message behind me for Dr. Darrell—plague his soul!” Then the light clicked, and the ample current of the light filled the room, and there was Cleveland Darrell just inside the door. He was still wearing the robe and the wig which he had sported as a judge. He took them both off, saying nothing, while I looked up at him, wondering how my heart could be so filled with hatred and contempt mingled with the ache of an old affection. And then he leaned over me, and touched the ropes that tied me with the edge of a knife; they snapped away, and he gave me a strong hand to help me to my feet. While I stood there, wavering and sick, I was stunned and delighted, all together. “It was all a play, Cleve. You never intended to desert me!” I said finally. He nodded. “I’m a hound ever to have doubted you,” said I. “Man, said he, “remember that you’re still a long distance from being free. And you probably will die, Smoky.” I waved my hand. Dying, as a matter of fact, did not seem a matter of impor- tance, just then. “I knew that the real man was behind you. Something down inside of me was working and telling me that Cleve Darrell never could have changed. When I first saw you—you were play-acting in that room among the test tubes, and all of that. Am I wrong?” He shook his head. Not a ghost of a smile had touched his mouth or his eyes. ‘But he was resting his hand upon my sleeve, and his mournful, deep eyes stared at me as though I were a ghost—a thing raised by his own thought. “What was it, Cleve?” said I. “Sit down here. Tell me everything—or should I start now to try to break away?” “‘The time hasn’t come for that,” he said. “TI should have waited till the last moment. But it seemed to me that it would be worth the extra risk, if I could talk to you for this time. There’s a long hour before we make the try.” “To get away?” “Yes,” he said. ‘“‘And the girl?” I asked. _ He-smiled at me, for the first time. “I haven’t forgotten her,” said he. “It will be three of us, or none. ‘“That’s all.*’ I nodded at him, with my heart swelling. To think that I had doubted him was enough to choke me, of course. ‘God bless you, Cleve,” said I. He shrugged his shoulders. ““We have about one chance in two or three hundred.” That damped my spirits a shade, I must admit. But now that he was with me, I felt that we could cut our way through anything. “No matter what happens, it’ll be worth while to tackle the job together, Cleve. We can’t do any more than die trying.” He nodded. “But if we miss,” said he, “‘we won’t have an easy death, Smoky. The greatest brains in the world are here in this mountain, and if they catch us, they’ll give us a death that will be so complete and so perfect, old fellow, that Apaches would turn green with envy to watch it.” “Go on, Cleve,” said I. “Tell me every- thing. What was wrong in that room, the first time I saw you?” “In that room,” said he, “everything that I did and said was heard—and seen! Every whisper, every change of ex- pression. In this room, you’ve been watched in the same way. Until a few minutes ago—when I think I put the if = COMicaoo® S Eo iin