with one agile bound sprang to the window, seized DeeDee and slung her under one arm. Wheeling, he glared jealously at the shrinking Watt and reached for Erika. In a trice he had the struggling forms of both girls captive, one under each arm. His wicked little eyes glanced from one to another. Then, playing no favorites, he bit each quickly on the ear.
“Nick!” Erika cried. “How dare you!”
“Mine,” Mammoth-Slayer informed her hoarsely.
“You bet I am,” Erika said, “but that works both ways. Put down that hussy you’ve got under your other arm.”
Mammoth-Slayer was observed to eye DeeDee doubtfully.
“Well,” Erika said tartly, “make up your mind.”
“Both,” said the uncivilized playwright. “Yes.”
“No!” Erika said.
“Yes,” DeeDee breathed in an entirely new tone. Limp as a dishrag, the lovely creature hung from Martin’s arm and gazed up at her captor with idolatrous admiration.
“Oh, you hussy,” Erika said. “What about St. Cyr?”
“Him,” DeeDee said scornfully. “He hasn’t got a thing, the sissy. I’ll never look at him again.” She turned her adoring gaze back to Martin.
“Pah,” the latter grunted, tossing DeeDee into Watt’s lap. “Yours. Keep her.” He grinned approvingly at Erika. “Strong she. Better.”
Both Watt and DeeDee remained motionless, staring at Martin.
“You,” he said, thrusting a finger at DeeDee. “You stay with him. Ha?” He indicated Watt.
DeeDee nodded in slavish adoration.
“You sign contract?”
Nod.
Martin looked significantly into Watt’s eyes. He extended his hand.
“The contract release,” Erika explained, upside-down. “Give it to him before he pulls your head off.”
Slowly Watt pulled the contract release from his pocket and held it out. But Martin was already shambling toward the window. Erika reached back hastily and snatched the document.
“That was a wonderful act,” she told Nick, as they reached the street. “Put me down now. We can find a cab some—”
“No act,” Martin growled. “Real. Till tomorrow. After that—” He shrugged. “But tonight, Mammoth-Slayer.” He attempted to climb a palm tree, changed his mind, and shambled on, carrying the now pensive Erika. But it was not until a police car drove past that Erika screamed. …
“I’ll bail you out tomorrow,” Erika told Mammoth-Slayer, struggling between two large patrolmen.
Her words were drowned in an infuriated bellow.
Thereafter events blurred, to solidify again for the irate Mammoth-Slayer only when he was thrown in a cell, where he picked himself up with a threatening roar. “I kill!” he announced, seizing the bars.
“Arrrgh!”
“Two in one night,” said a bored voice, moving away outside. “Both in Bel-Air, too. Think they’re hopped up? We couldn’t get a coherent story out of either one.”
The bars shook. An annoyed voice from one of the bunks said to shut up, and added that there had been already enough trouble from nincompoops without—here it paused, hesitated, and uttered a shrill, sharp, piercing cry.
Silence prevailed, momentarily, in the cellblock as Mammoth-Slayer, son of the Great Hairy One, turned slowly to face Raoul St. Cyr.
Where the World Is Quiet
Fra Rafael drew the llama-wool blanket closer about his narrow shoulders, shivering in the cold wind that screamed down from Huascan. His face held great pain. I rose, walked to the door of the hut and peered through fog at the shadowy haunted lands that lifted toward the sky—the Cordilleras that make a rampart along Peru’s eastern border.
“There’s nothing,” I said. “Only the fog, Fra Rafael.”
He made the sign of the cross on his breast. “It is the fog that brings the—the terror,” he said. “I tell you, Señor White, I have seen strange things these last few months—impossible things. You are a scientist. Though we are not of the same religion, you also know that there are powers not of this earth.”
I didn’t answer, so he went on: “Three months ago it began, after the earthquake. A native girl disappeared. She was seen going into the mountains, toward Huascan along the Pass, and she did not come back. I sent men out to find her. They went up the Pass, found the fog grew thicker and thicker until they were blind and could see nothing. Fear came to them and they fled back down the mountain. A week later another girl vanished. We found her footprints.”
“The same canyon?”
“Si, and the same result. Now seven girls have gone, one after the other, all in the same way. And I, Señor White—” Fra Rafael’s pale, tired face was sad as he glanced down at the stumps of his legs—“I could not follow, as you see. Four years ago an avalanche crippled me. My bishop told me to return to Lima, but I prevailed on him to let me remain here for these natives are my people, Señor. They know and trust me. The loss of my legs has not altered that.”
I nodded. “I can see the difficulty now, though.”
“Exactly. I cannot go to Huascan and find out what has happened to the girls. The natives—well, I chose four of the strongest and bravest and asked them to take me up the Pass. I thought that I could overcome their superstitions. But I was not successful.”
“How far did you go?” I asked.
“A few miles, not more than that. The fog grew thicker, until we were blinded by it, and the way was dangerous. I could not make the men go on.” Fra Rafael closed his eyes wearily. “They talked of old Inca gods and devils—Manco Capac and Oello Huaco, the Children of the Sun. They are very much afraid, Señor White. They huddle together like sheep and believe that an ancient god has returned and is taking them away one by one. And—one by one they are taken.”
“Only young girls,” I mused. “And no coercion is used, apparently. What’s up toward Huascan?”
“Nothing but wild llamas and the condors. And snow, cold, desolation. These are the Andes, my friend.”
“Okay,” I said. “It sounds interesting. As an anthropologist I owe it to the Foundation to investigate. Besides, I’m curious. Superficially, there is nothing very strange about the affair. Seven girls have disappeared in the unusually heavy fogs we’ve had ever since the
