Anthony Melville Rud

“ If only she would grant him a glance at her eyes she might do her worst with Noah Lacey and his millions. Cube had no expectation of being remembered in anyone’s will, and had no intention of toadying to secure such recognition.
To his surprise he saw a door opening before him. He glanced back, to see the girl nod at him to enter. The second he did so the tall panel— a door without knob or hinges that he could discern— fell silently and swiftly back into place. An exclamation rose to his lips. No one in sight in the great chamber beyond. ”

“ If you telephoned Uncle Midas you’d be just as apt to tell him to trot around here and hand you his business on a gold plate. Nope! You hustle out, grab a motor bus if you won’t take a taxi, and don’t waste a minute! Somehow I feel the squirmings of a life-sized poker hunch deep down inside me. I know I’m not much good at five-card whist, but—” He ended his sentence with a comical gesture, half shrug and half peremptory nod.
“Oh, all right,” acceded Cube Lacey. ”

“ Masters finally broke in. “Have you had the same set all the time?”
“No, confound them!” answered Crosby angrily. “Servants are the dickens of a problem out in the country! We haven't had a single one, except Esther Stearns, more than eight or nine months. They all get lonesome for the city. The last I had quit in a body after Esther died; they said the house was haunted, and that some one would have to die every October! There are none out there now.” ”

“ Then I started among the darkies and Cajans. A whole day I listened to yarns of the days which preceded Cranmer's escape from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital—days in which furtive men sniffed poisoned air for miles around Dead House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in which it seemed none possessed nerve enough to approach close. Days when the most fanciful tales of medieval superstitions were spun. These tales I shall not give; the truth is incredible enough. ”

“ It was necessary for us to shout, and to hurl small rocks ahead of us, to drive them into their crevices. Otherwise they might leap at us. And such is the weird soundless telegraphy of such creatures, that if any living thing is bitten by a spider, all the other spiders know it instantly, and come. Whatever the living thing may be, it is buried under an avalanche of horrid albino hunger.
Long before we reached the Room of Craters, Señor Lester — the weak one — was exhausted. He was a shivering wreck from terror, the foul air, and the heat, and was pleading with Señor Jim to go back. ”