THE FACE IN THE ABYSS: Sci-Fi Classic. Abraham Merritt
unseen multitude persisted. A wave of nervous irritation passed through him. He would force them, whatever they were, to show themselves.
He stepped out boldly into the full moonlight.
On the instant the silence intensified. It seemed to draw taut, to lift itself up whole octaves of stillnesses. It became alert, expectant—as though poised to spring upon him should he take one step further.
A coldness wrapped him, and he shuddered. He drew swiftly back to the shadow of the trees; stood there, his heart beating furiously. The silence lost its poignancy, drooped back upon its haunches—watchful.
What had frightened him? What was there in that tightening of the stillness that had touched him with the finger of nightmare terror? He groped back, foot by foot, afraid to turn his face from the silence. Behind him the fire flared. His fear dropped from him.
His reaction from his panic was a heady recklessness. He threw a log upon the fire and laughed as the sparks shot up among the leaves. Soames, coming out of the tent for more water, stopped as he heard that laughter and scowled at him malevolently.
“Laugh,” he said. “Laugh while you can. Maybe you’ll laugh on the other side of your mouth when we get Starrett up and he tells us what he knows.”
“That was a sound sleep I gave him, anyway,” jeered Graydon.
“There are sounder sleeps. Don’t forget it,” Dancret’s voice, cold and menacing came from the tent.
Graydon turned his back to the tent, and deliberately faced that silence from which he had just fled. He seated himself, and after awhile he dozed.
He awakened with a jump. Halfway between him and the tent Starrett was charging on him like a madman, bellowing.
Graydon leaped to his feet, but before he could defend himself the giant was upon him. The next moment he was down, overborne by sheer weight. The big adventurer crunched a knee into his arm and gripped his throat.
“Let her go, did you!” he roared. “Knocked me out and then let her go! Here’s where you go, too, damn you!”
Graydon tried to break the grip on his throat. His lungs labored; there was a deafening roaring in his ears, and flecks of crimson began to dance across his vision. Starrett was strangling him. Through fast dimming sight he saw two black shadows leap through the firelight and clutch the strangling hands.
The fingers relaxed. Graydon staggered up. A dozen paces away stood Starrett. Dancret, arms around his knees, was hanging to him like a little terrier. Beside him was Soames, the barrel of his automatic pressed against his stomach.
“Why don’t you let me kill him!” raved Starrett. “Didn’t I tell you the girl had enough green ice on her to set us up the rest of our lives? There’s more where it came from! And he let her go! Let her go, the—”
Again his curses flowed.
“Now look here, Starrett,” Soames’s voice was deliberate. “You be quiet, or I’ll do for you. We ain’t goin’ to let this thing get by us, me and Dancret. We ain’t goin’ to let this double-crossin’ louse do us, and we ain’t goin’ to let you spill the beans by killin’ him. We’ve struck somethin’ big. All right, we’re goin’ to cash in on it. We’re goin’ to sit down peaceable, and Mister Graydon is goin’ to tell us what happened after he put you out, what dicker he made with the girl and all of that. If he won’t do it peaceable, then Mister Graydon is goin’ to have things done to him that’ll make him give up. That’s all. Danc’, let go his legs. Starrett, if you kick up any more trouble until I give the word I’m goin’ to shoot you. From now on I boss this crowd—me and Danc. You get me, Starrett?”
Graydon, head once more clear, slid a cautious hand down toward the pistol holster. It was empty. Soames grinned, sardonically.
“We got it, Graydon,” he said. “Yours, too, Starrett. Fair enough. Sit down everybody.”
He squatted by the fire, still keeping Starrett covered. And after a moment the latter, grumbling, followed suit. Dancret dropped beside him.
“Come over here, Graydon,” said Soames. “Come over here and cough up. What’re you holdin’ out on us? Did you make a date with her to meet you after you got rid of us? If so, where is it—because we’ll all go together.”
“Where’d you hide those gold spears?” growled Starrett. “You never let her get away with them, that’s sure.”
“Shut up, Starrett,” ordered Soames. “I’m holdin’ this inquest. Still—there’s something in that. Was that it, Graydon? Did she give you the spears and her jewelry to let her go?”
“I’ve told you,” answered Graydon. “I asked for nothing, and took nothing. Starrett’s drunken folly had put us all in jeopardy. Letting the girl go free was the first vital step toward our own safety. I thought it was the best thing to do. I still think so.”
“Yeah?” sneered the lank New Englander, “is that so? Well, I’ll tell you, Graydon, if she’d been an Indian maybe I’d agree with you. But not when she was the kind of lady Starrett says she was. No, sir, it ain’t natural. You know damned well that if you’d been straight you’d have kept her here till Danc’ and me got back. Then we could all have got together and figured what was the best thing to do. Hold her until her folks came along and paid up to get her back undamaged. Or give her the third degree until she gave up where all that gold and stuff she was carrying came from. That’s what you would have done, Graydon—if you weren’t a dirty, lyin’, double-crossin’ hound.”
Graydon’s anger flared up.
“All right, Soames,” he said. “I’ll tell you. What I’ve said about freeing her for our own safety is true. But outside of that I would as soon have thought of trusting a child to a bunch of hyenas as I would of trusting that girl to you three. I let her go a damned sight more for her sake than I did for our own. Does that satisfy you?”
“Aha!” jeered Dancret. “Now I see! Here is this strange lady of so much wealth and beauty. She is too pure and good for us to behold. He tell her so and bid her fly. ‘My hero!’ she say, ‘take all I have and give up this bad company.’ ‘No, no,’ he tell her, t’inking all the time if he play his cards right he get much more, and us out of the way so he need not divide, ‘no, no,’ he tell her. ‘But long as these bad men stay here you will not be safe.’ ‘My hero,’ she say, ‘I will go and bring back my family and they shall dispose of your bad company. But you they shall reward, my hero, oui!’ Aha, so that is what it was!”
Graydon flushed; the little Frenchman’s malicious travesty had shot uncomfortably close. After all, Suarra’s unasked promise to save him could be construed as Dancret had suggested. Suppose he told them he had warned her that whatever the fate in store for them he was determined to share it, and would stand by them to the last? They would not believe him.
Soames had been watching him, closely.
“By God, Danc’,” he said, “I guess you hit it. He changed color. He’s sold us out.”
He raised his automatic, held it on Graydon—then lowered it.
“No,” he said, deliberately. “This is too big a thing to let slip by bein’ too quick on the trigger. If your dope is right, Danc’, and I guess it is, the lady was mighty grateful. All right—we ain’t got her, but we have got him. As I figure it, bein’ grateful, she won’t want him to get killed. She’ll be back. Well, we’ll trade him for what they got that we want. Tie him up.”
He pointed the pistol at Graydon. Unresisting, Graydon let Starrett and Dancret bind his wrists. They pushed him over to one of the trees and sat him on the ground with back against its bole. They passed a rope under his arms and hitched it securely around the trunk; they tied his feet.
“Now,” said Soames, “if her gang show up in the morning, we’ll let ’em see you, and find out how much you’re worth. They won’t rush us. There’s