Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 115: what you’re looking at

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MYSTERY FARM. people, there is something distinctly, star- tlingly sinister about them. Besides, you say you noticed the earthy, cold cellar air. So did I when I first arrived. I am afraid there is something very radically wrong.” ‘So am I,” replied Ruth gravely. ‘“‘ But —but what are we to do?” Dick picked up the shotgun and quietly filled the magazine. ‘I’m going to search the house again, thoroughly,” he said grim- ly, “and if I don’t find them before to- morrow I’ll have the house pulled down and the foundations torn out. Will you - wait for me here?” “T’ll go with you,” replied Ruth, with so much decision in her tone that Dick refrained from offering any objection. In- deed, though he would not confess it, he was very glad of human companionship. “YT feel responsible,” she continued self- reproachfully as she followed him into the library. “I feel guilty. It was my fault that your brother took this house. It was through me that Elinor heard of it. We were classmates—chums—at Holyoke,” she added, answering Graham’s glance of sur- prise. ‘‘ She had visited me before she was married. But I should not have allowed her to take this place.” “Tf I know my brother, you couldn’t have kept it away from him—once he’d heard of it,’ returned Dick absently, as he walked to the fireplace, took down a heavy service revolver that hung in its holster over the mantel, and began buckling the belt around his waist. ‘“ He is keen for— Good Lord, what’s that?” A weird, mournful howl, coming seeming- ly from nowhere in particular, yet filling the house with uncanny sound, rose and swelled louder and louder, until, having reached the highest pitch the human ear can stand, it died away slowly, like the dying wail of a lost soul. For a moment Graham and Ruth stood staring at each other, wide-eyed and pale of cheek. 3 ‘“‘ What—what was it?” gasped the girl in a hoarse whisper. “‘ Oh, there it is again! It sounds like—” Again the awful wail echoed through the house, and Dick’s pale face suddenly flushed with annoyance. 741 “Great Scott!” he exclaimed with a shamefaced laugh. “It’s the cat. I shut her in the kitchen.” | But the girl did not laugh nor seem par- ticularly reassured. ‘A cat doesn’t howl like that for noth- ing,” she replied, ‘‘ and that sound is not from the kitchen—it’s—it’s from beneath our feet—from the cellar, I think. Wait— I’ll get lanterns.” She hurried away, and Dick, pausing only to pick up his shotgun, followed her to the kitchen. “Tt is the cat,” he insisted, while Ruth was lighting the lanterns. “She isn’t here, you see, and the cellar door is open,” Ruth handed him one of the lanterns without answering, and together they de- scended the stairs. The cellar under the kitchen ell was lighted by two slits of win- dows in the foundation, and connected with the cellar of the main house only by a narrow arched opening in the thick wall. There were no windows in the main cellar. It was merely a huge black cavern, with a dirt floor and ordinary masonry walls on three sides, but on the fourth side was a long slope of solid granite. Evidently the Dennet house was literally founded upon a rock. No attempt had been made to blast out or square this natural wall; it ran appar- ently in its natural, irregular form, from the end of the heavy hand-hewn beams sup- porting the floors above, at an incline of about forty-five degrees, to almost the mid- dle of the dirt floor of the cellar. Graham raised his lantern and peered searchingly about. ‘“ Nothing. here,” he began. ‘“ Absolutely empty. I guess—” “Look!” interrupted Ruth sharply; and following the direction of her pointed fin- ger, he saw at the top of the incline of rock, close against the beams, two greenish points of light that. burned with a steady sinister glow. Dick laughed a little nervously. “It is the cat,” he said, “ but what the dickens is she doing up there? Here, kittie, kittie, kittie!”’ he added coaxingly. A low purring answered him, but the animal did not move. “Tm going up.” Graham handed Ruth EComicbooks co