Occurrence on Kelvin's Bluff
by
Gene Tipton
Kelvin's Bluff reared its massive bulk against the red afterglow, looking out over the sea like a stern and immovable sentinel. The narrow road which my auto followed began a sudden ascent. With the rise in elevation, the winding strip gradually became shrouded in mist.
A short distance up the fog-enveloped slope, I noted that the road's guard railing was shattered at one spot. Obviously, this was the site of the disasterous auto mishap I had read about less than a month before. The vehicle, in plunging onto the desolate strip of seacoast below, had brought death to its driver. A second occupant was believed to have also perished, although the latter's body had never been recovered. The missing victim had presumably been swept out to sea by the tide. I recalled that my friend, Dr. David Garth, who lived atop Kelvin's Bluff, had reported the accident, having been first to arrive on the scene.
It was David Garth's residence, in fact, toward which I was now headed. The pressure of work had prevented my calling on Garth for a period of several months. Noted as a brilliant neurosurgeon and physiologist, Garth devoted his spare time to research work in the latter field. On the occasion of our last meeting, he had spoken of experiments he was conducting toward the preservation of animal tissue in a special nutritive serum he allegedly had perfected. I remembered that an article of his had recently appeared in a medical journal dealing with his attempts to keep alive in this fluid the disembodied organs of animals.
I abruptly swerved the auto to the left as a human form walking along the road caught my eye. Here was a road little frequented by motor vehicles, and to see someone traversing it on foot was an even rarer phenomenon -- especially with night coming on. So far as I could tell, the figure trudging up the that of a man, although the wayfarer was largely an indistinct blur in the swirling fog and thickening shadows. I was impressed
