He had risen to leave me, anger flaring from his eyes.
"Wait," I said, and a curious hesitation seemed to hold him. "The museum people sent me down there. They weren't satisfied with your explanation. I followed your trail to your last camp. It took me three days to find the cave—and the body. The spiders were there, but I managed to remove the body. And I found what you would have found had you recovered it. Seton was not killed by his fall or by the spiders. He had been shot through the brain with a bullet fired from a special 30-30 rifle."
For a long time Graves gazed at me. I do not know whether anyone around us noticed him. I don't think so. His face—I could never describe it, but it was as grim as death. There was some mental struggle going on within. He seemed to be conscious of many aching sensibilities. To have gone wrong and to have been set right makes a double trial for man's vanity. The realization of his own weakness and unfaith had staggered him to the heart and increased the bitterness of surprize.
Finally he stuck out his hand and said: "Thanks, old man!" Then he was gone.
The next morning I received two telegrams, one to the effect that Graves was on his way to California and the other that Clara Seton had been taken into custody.
8. The Creatures
I saw great shadows cross a gibbous moon;
The mandrakes moaned along the black lagoon,
And in the sky, there hung a baleful glare.
Terror and death seemed stalking everywhere,
And still those vast wings beat that sullen tune;
Were they strange creatures from Outside that soon
Would seize their prey and seek their cosmic lair?
And through the riven air, there harshly swept
The charnel sounds of awful slaughtering.
At first I deemed it some mad nightmare-dream,
But from the sundered room I never crept—
My face was eaten by a red huge Thing.
