Chapter 1_Drome

Drome

By John Martin Leahy

Illustrated By John Martin Leahy

FANTASY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

Manufactured in the U. S. A.

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any

evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Contents

Preface

Prolegomenon

1. The Mysterious Visitor

2. What He Told Us

3. The Mystery of Old He

4. "Voices"

5. "Drome!"

6. Again!

7. "And Now Tell Me!"

8. "Drome" Again

9. "To My Dying Hour"

10. On The Mountain

11. The Tamahnowis Rocks

12. We Enter Their Shadow

13. "I Thought I Heard Something"

14. The Way To Drome

15. The Angel

16. "Are We Entering Dante's Inferno Itself?"

17. Like Baleful Eyes!

18. "That's Where They Are Waiting For Us!"

19. The Angel And Her Demon

20. The Attack

21. Into The Chasm

22. What Did It Mean?

23. That We Only Knew The Secret

24. What Next?

25. The Labyrinth--Lost

26. Through The Hewn Passage

27. The Monster

28. I Abandon Hope

29. The Ghost

30. The Moving Eyes

31. "Gogrugron!"

32. "Lepraylya!"

33. Face To Face

34. Another!

35. A Scream and--Silence

36. Gorgonic Horror

37. As We Were Passing Underneath

38. Something Besides Madness

39. The Golden City

40. Before Lepraylya

41. A Human Raptor

42. He Strikes

43. Drorathusa

44. We See The Stars

"For there is one descent into this region."--Josephus: Discourse

to the Greeks Concerning Hades.

Drome

Preface

by Darwin Frontenac

"But please to remember that although we can prove to our own

satisfaction that some things really exist, we can not prove that

any imaginable thing outside our experience can not possibly exist.

Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not

induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as

an absolute."--F. Marion Crawford: Whosoever Shall Offend.

On my return from the Antarctic, it was with surprise and grief that

I learned of the very strange and wholly inexplicable disappearance

of Milton Rhodes and William Carter. The special work of Rhodes was

in a department of science very different from that to which my own

pertains; but we were much interested in each other's investigations

and problems, and, indeed, we even conducted some experiments together.

It will be quite patent, then, that, as the _Multnomah_ made her

way northward, I was looking forward with much pleasure anticipated

to the meeting with my friend--with all that I had to tell him of

our adventures and discoveries in the region of the Southern Pole,

picturing to myself the astonishment that would most certainly be his

on seeing some of the things brought from that mysterious region; above

all, imagining his reaction when we would behold our poor Sleeping

Beauty in her crystal coffin, in which she had lain (neither living nor

dead, as I believe; or as my friend Bond McQuestion has it, in a living

death) from some awful day in that period men call the Pliocene.

And then to come back and find that Milton Rhodes had disappeared, and

with him William Carter!

They had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as though a secret

departure had been made for the moon or Mars or Venus.

It was very little, I was surprised to learn, that any one could tell

me. And that very little presented some very singular features indeed.

This was certain: Milton Rhodes had planned to begin in a very few

days a series of experiments (the exact nature of which was unknown)

that would claim his close and undivided attention for weeks, possibly

months, experiments that would keep him imprisoned, so to speak, in

his laboratory. But he had not even begun those experiments; he had

vanished. What had caused the sudden change? What had happened?

As for William Carter, he was about to start on a journey which would

take him as far as Central America. Again, what had happened? What had

caused _him_ to give over all that he had purposed and go and disappear

along with Milton Rhodes?

Here there was but one bit of light, but that light seemed to make the

problem the more perplexing. The very day before that on which Rhodes

and Carter got into the automobile and started for Mount Rainier, some

visitor had come and had been received by Rhodes in the library, Carter

being present at this meeting. Some of the concomitants of this visit

had been a little unusual, it was remembered, though at the time no one

had given that a thought.

It was believed that this man had remained there with Rhodes and Carter

for a period somewhat extended. But who had this mysterious visitor

been? It was, of course, held as certain that something told by this

man to the scientist and his companion was the key to the mystery. But

what had the visitor told them?

We knew that Rhodes and Carter had gone to Mount Rainier. But why had

they so suddenly abandoned all their plans and gone to the mountain? On

the mountain they had disappeared. More than that no man could tell.

And now we come to another enigma. Rhodes seldom drove a car himself.

On this trip, however, he was at the wheel. The only other occupant of

that car was Carter. And Rhodes had left with his chauffeur, Everett

Castleman, instructions over which I puzzled my head a good deal

but without my ever becoming any the wiser. These instructions were

somewhat extraordinary.

They were these:

If Rhodes had not returned, or if no word had been received from him,

within a period of ten days, then Castleman was to go to Mount Rainier.

He was to go to Paradise, and he was to go on the eleventh day. And

he was to maintain a strict silence about everything appertaining to

this whole proceeding. At Paradise he was to remain for another period.

This was one of eight days. If, at the expiration of that time, neither

Rhodes nor Carter had appeared, Castleman was, on the ninth day, to

take the car back to Seattle, and then the imposition of silence

regarding that part which Castleman had played was at an end.

_The_ mystery, of course, was what had become of Milton Rhodes and

William Carter. Had some fatal accident occurred? Had they, for

instance, fallen into a crevasse and perished? Or had they just gone

off on some wild mountain hike and would they be returning any day?

As to this last hypothesis, those instructions given to Castleman

should have shown its utter untenability.

And so the time passed. And Milton Rhodes and William Carter never

came back. Week followed week. Month followed month. All hope was

abandoned--had been abandoned long before the _Multnomah_ entered

Elliott Bay.

And that mysterious visitor? Why had he not spoken? Why had he not come

forward and told what he knew? Where was he? Had he too vanished? Had

he joined Rhodes and Carter on the mountain, and had the three vanished

together? And what had he told them there in Rhodes' library on that

fateful day?

Thus matters stood when one afternoon an automobile came gliding into

my place, and there in it were Milton Rhodes and William Carter!

With respect to the mystery of their disappearance, I could for some

time elicit from them no enlightenment whatever.

Instead:

"Where is she, Darwin?" asked Milton Rhodes, looking about. "Let me see

her! Let me meet her! Quick!"

"So you know about my Sleeping Beauty in the Ice?"

"Of course. The first thing that I did," he told me, "was to get a copy

of _Zandara_[1]. We've just finished reading it. And, if it hadn't

been for what has happened to us, to Bill here and me, then I might

have been inclined, Darwin old _tillicum_, to fancy that Bond had been

romancing in that book of his instead of setting forth an account of

actual adventure and discovery."

[Footnote 1: _Zandara_ by John Martin Leahy, Fantasy Publishing

Company, Inc., 1953.]

"But, Milton," I asked, "what in the world did happen?"

"We'll come to that soon, Darwin old top. What Bill and I want now is

to see your Zandara."

"Well, you'll have to wait till she gets back. That should be in an

hour or so.

"But, again, what on earth happened? _Where_ have you two been all this

time?"

But I must not go on like this, or I will find that I am writing a book

myself instead of a preface to William Carter's narrative.

You will see it mentioned in his Prolegomenon that his manuscript was

to be placed in my keeping, to be given by me to the world when the

time fixed upon had expired. All that I need say on that point is that

the _raison d'être_ of this prospective measure will be quite obvious

to you ere you have read to the last page of _Drome_.

Save for three very brief footnotes, and to those my name is appended,

every word in the pages that follow is from the hand of William

Barrington Carter.

I hasten to conclude, that you may proceed to learn who that mysterious

visitor was, what he told them, _where_ Rhodes and Carter went--_where

they are now_.

Seattle, Washington,

September 18, 1951.

Prolegomenon

"_Our world has lately discovered another: and who will assure us

it is the last of his brothers, since the demons, the Sibyls and we

ourselves have been ignorant of this till now?_"

"_Nostre monde vient d'en retrouver un autre: et qui nous rêpond si

c'est le dernier de ses frêres, puisque les dêmons, les sibylles et

nous avons ignorê cettui-ci jusqu'à cette heure?_"--_Montaigne._

"There is," says August Derleth, "an element of the unnecessary about

even the most apparently needed introduction."

What with that element, and what with my own experience, as a reader,

with introductions, it was my intention to write nothing in the

species of a foreword to this my narrative of those amazing adventures

and discoveries in which Milton Rhodes and I so unexpectedly and

so suddenly found ourselves involved. I thought that I would most

certainly have set down in the account itself everything that I should

wish to write upon the subject.

But, now that my manuscript is finished, and now that the time draws

on apace when it is to be placed in the keeping of our valued friend

Darwin Frontenac, by whom, when the period fixed upon has elapsed, it

will be given to the world, I feel that there are some points anent

which it would be well to say a few words.

In the first place, apropos of the shortcomings, of which, in some

instances, I am painfully sensible, of this work when viewed through

the glasses of the literary artist, I may say in extenuation that this

is the first book that I have ever written--and certainly, by the by,

it will be the last.

Whether the fact that this is an initial venture in authorship excuses

my deficiencies as a craftsman with pen, paper and words I can not say;

but, at any rate, it is an explanation.

Furthermore, far outweighing (so it seems to me) any artistic

desiderata, is this: the following narrative does not come to you from

any secondhand source or from any source even farther removed; it is

written by one who was an eye-witness of, and an actor in, the scenes,

adventures and discoveries described in it--an actor that, I do assure

you, would at times have given much to be some place else.

Also, in the writing of this book, I placed above all other things

the endeavor to attain the utmost accuracy possible; the style was,

therefore, in a great measure, left to take care of itself. With old

Anatomy Burton, though very likely he quoted,[2] I can say:

[Footnote 2: This surmise of Mr. Carter's is correct. The above

quotation is taken from a modernized _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Burton,

though from what Latin writer he took the words I can not say, wrote:

"_Animis haec scribo, non auribus._"--_Darwin Frontenac._]

"I write for minds, not ears."

Too, more than once when disposing of difficulties obtruded upon me

by the noncoincidence of thought with words, have I had in mind this

observation of Saint Augustine:

"For there are but few things which we speak properly, many things

improperly; but what we may wish to say is understood."

And, similarly, when reminding myself that I had not set out to

produce a work of art but merely to put down upon paper a plain and

straightforward account of actual happenings and discoveries, many a

time did I think of these words of John Stuart Mill:

"For it is no objection to a harrow that it is not a plough, nor to a

saw that it is not a chisel."

And so it should be no objection to this my account of our discovery

of another world that it has not the charm of Dante's _Hell_ or the

delicate beauties of Kipling's _Gunga Din_.

In the second place, I wish that I could say more about that mysterious

phenomenon the firedrake, Saint Elmo's fire, or whatever it should be

called, light-cloudlet, light-cloud, light-mass, light-ghost--sometimes

it looks like luminous _mist_--but I know no more at this date about

the origin of that most remarkable manifestation than I did after

seeing the first "ghost," nor does Milton Rhodes himself, and Milton

Rhodes, as everybody knows, is a scientist.

Of course, if people were like Trimalchio in the _Satyricon_ of

Petronius (and many people are) authors or scientists would not need

to bother their heads about explanations, conjectures, theories,

hypothesis or such sort when telling about strange phenomena or events;

for, when some matter was being expounded by one of his guests, a

gentleman by the name of Agamemnon, Trimalchio disposed of the whole

business in this simple and summary fashion:

"If the thing really happened, there is no problem; if it never

happened, it is all nonsense."

But, in the present instance--not to the Trimalchios, of course, but to

any person with an iota of the scientific spirit in his encephalon--the

fact is the very converse of this; for, if the firedrakes, the

light-clouds, did not "happen," there would be no problem at all.

The Trimalchios, I have no doubt, would at once put the stamp of their

approval upon this statement, which I lift from _Hudibras_:

"But what, alas! is it to us

Whether i' th' moon men thus or thus

Do eat their porridge, cut their corns,

Or whether they have tails or horns?"

But the light in that other world is not the only problem to the

solution of which I wish that I had something to offer. There are many

problems. Here is one: the "eclipses." These are sometimes truly awful.

For instance, just imagine yourself in a forest dense and mysterious,

and, furthermore, imagine that one of those fearful carnivores the

snake-cats, is stealing toward you, stealing nearer and nearer,

watching for the chance to spring; imagine yourself in such a pleasant

pass as that, and then imagine a sudden and total extinction of the

light (which is what, for want of a better word, we call an eclipse) so

that you yourself and everything about you are involved in impenetrable

darkness. How would you like to find yourself in such a place as that

and have that happen to you? Well, as you will see in its proper pages,

that is just where we were, and that, and more too, is just what

happened to us.

And _that_ will give you an idea of what I mean when I say an eclipse

can sometimes be awful indeed.

Why the light at times quivers, shakes, fades, bursts out so brightly,

or why, slowly or all of a sudden, it ceases to be at all, is certainly

an extremely curious and most mystifying business.

But

"To them we leave it to expound

That deal in sciences profound."

A possibility has occurred to Rhodes and me that is by no means

conducive, what with the care and labor that I have expended in the

endeavor to be accurate in the writing of this true history, to

any feeling of happiness on my part. My companion in adventure and

discovery is, however, pleased to entertain the idea that it would

certainly be "funny." Funny?

That possibility is simply this: so very strange is the story which I

tell in the pages that follow, many a reader may be disposed to set

the whole thing down as fiction! And, indeed, many a reader may do just

that!

Fiction, forsooth!

Well, if any one actually is of that opinion or belief when he has

finished reading this book, all I can say is that I wish such a one

had been with us there on that narrow bridge, the yawning black chasm

of unknown profundity, on either side, when the angel and her demon so

suddenly appeared there directly before us!

I have an idea that, if he had been there, he would have wished, and

have wished as hard as he had ever wished anything in his life, that

the whole business would turn out to be fiction or nightmare!

"Why then should witlesse man so much misweene

That nothing is but that which he hath seene?"

But I must hasten to bring this introduction to a close. Already I have

exceeded the space that I had allotted for it, without even mentioning

a number of things that I had in mind, and without having yet set down

that which especially brought me to the decision to write anything

prolegomenary at all.

And, now that I come to it, I feel hesitant. But this will not do.

In my whole narrative, there is, I am sure, but one single allusion,

and that most brief--namely, _Amor ordinem nescit_--to my own

heart-tragedy; and, as that allusion, even, is involved in obscurity,

I will in this place and incontinently make it clear, and I do it by

writing this:

I would rather have, though it were but for one single hour, Drorathusa

as My Only than have for a lifetime any other woman I have ever known.

You will, I have no doubt, smile when you read this; you may think Eros

has put me into a state very similar to the one in which the poor wight

found himself of whom Burton wrote:

"He wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell

to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged if he might be strangled

in her garters."

Well, that busy little imp Venus's son (and he's as busy in that

other world as he is in this) enjoys getting men and women into just

such states of mind and heart. He moved even the rather cold-hearted

Plato--I mean the great philosopher, not one of the poets so named, the

philosopher who banished poets and Love himself from his Republic--the

little imp moved even _him_ to write:

"Thou gazest on the stars, my Life! Ah! gladly would I be

Yon starry skies, with thousand eyes, that I might gaze on thee!"

And I would rather have this heart-tragedy mine--have loved and lost

Drorathusa--than never to have seen my lady.

"The heart has its reasons," says Pascal, "that reason can not

understand."

Swiftly now the time draws on, on towards that final journey which

Milton Rhodes and I are to make, and to make with glad hearts, that

journey from which there is never to be a return, that journey back to

another world, a world where there is no sun, no moon, no skies, no

stars--a world where there is neither day nor night.

Vale.

William Barrington Carter

Chapter 1

THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

The forenoon of that momentous August day (how momentous time, like

unto some spirit-shaking vision, was soon and swiftly to show us) had

been bright and sunny. Snowy cumuli sailed along before a breeze from

the north. When the wind comes from that quarter here in Seattle, it

means good weather. But there was something sinister about this one.

As the day advanced, the clouds increased in number and volume; by noon

the whole sky was overcast. And now? It was midafternoon now; a gale

from the south was savagely flinging and dashing the rain against the

windows, and it had become so dark that Milton Rhodes had turned on one

of the library-lamps. There was something strange about that darkness

which so suddenly had fallen upon us.

"Too fierce to last long, Bill," observed Milton Rhodes, raising his

head and listening to the beating of the rain and the roar of the wind.

He arose from his chair, went over to one of the southern windows and

stood looking out into the storm.

"Coming down in sheets, Bill. It can't keep this up for very long."

I went over and stood beside him.

"No," I returned; "it can't keep this up. But, rain or sun, our trip is

spoiled now."

"For today, yes. But there is tomorrow, Bill."

But, in the sense that Milton Rhodes meant, there was to be no

tomorrow: at the very moment, in the midst of the roar and the rage of

the elements, Destiny spoke, in the ring of a telephone-bell--Destiny,

she who is wont to make such strange sport with the lives of men. I

sometimes wonder if stranger sport any man has ever known than she was

to make with ours.

"Wonder who the deuce 'tis now," muttered Milton Rhodes as he left the

room to answer the call.

I remained there at the window. Of that fateful conversation over the

wire, I heard not so much as a single syllable. I must have fallen into

a deep reverie or something; at any rate, the next thing I knew there

was a sudden voice, and Milton Rhodes was standing beside me again, a

quizzical expression on his dark features.

"What is it, Bill?" he smiled. "In love at last, old _tillicum_? Didn't

hear me until I spoke the third time."

"Gosh," I said, "this is getting dreadful! But--"

"Well?"

"What is it?"

"Oh, a visitor."

I regarded him for a moment in silence.

"You don't seem very enthusiastic," I observed.

"Why should I be? Some crank, most likely. Must be, or he wouldn't set

out in such a storm as this is."

"Great Pluvius, is he coming through this deluge?"

"He is. Unless I'm mighty badly mistaken, he is on his way over right

now."

"Must be something mighty important."

"Oh, it's important all right, important to _him_," said Milton Rhodes.

"But will it interest _me_?"

"I'll tell you that before the day is done. But who is this queer

gentleman?"

"Name's Scranton, Mr. James W. Scranton. That's all that I know about

him, save that he is bringing us a mystery. He called it a terrible,

horrible _scientific_ mystery."

"That," I exclaimed, "sounds interesting!"

It was patent, however, that Milton Rhodes was not looking forward to

the meeting with any particular enthusiasm.

"It may sound interesting," he said; "but will it prove so? That is

the question, Bill. To some people, you know, some very funny things

constitute a mystery. Mr. James W. Scranton's mystery may prove to

belong to that species. We must wait and see. Said that he had heard of

me, that, as I have a gift (that is what he called it, Bill, a gift)

of solving puzzles and mysteries, whether scientific, psychic, spooky

or otherwise--well, he had a story to tell me that would eclipse any

I ever had heard, a mystery that would drive Sherlock Holmes himself

to suicide. Yes, that's what he really said, Bill--the great Sherlock

himself to suicide."

"That's coming big!" I said.

Milton Rhodes smiled wanly.

"We haven't heard his yarn yet. We can't come to a judgment on such

uncertain data."

"Scranton," said I. "Scranton. Hold on a minute."

"What is it now?"

"Wonder if he belongs to the old Scranton family."

"Never heard of it, Bill."

"Pioneers," I said. "Came out here before ever Seattle was founded.

Homesteaded down at Puyallup or somewhere, about the same time as Ezra

Meeker. It seems to me--"

"Well?" queried Milton Rhodes after some moments, during which I tried

my level best to recollect the particulars of a certain wild, gloomy

story of mystery and death and horror that I had heard long years

before--in my boyhood days, in fact.

"I can not recollect it," I told him. "I didn't understand it even

when I heard the man, an old acquaintance of the Scrantons, tell the

story--a story of some black fate, some curse that had fallen upon the

family."

"So that's the kind of mystery it is! From what the man said, though

that was vague, shadowy, I thought that it was something very

different. I thought that it was _scientific_."

"Maybe it is. We are speculating, you know, if one may call it that, on

pretty flimsy data. One thing: I distinctly remember that Rainier had

something to do with it."

"What Rainier?"

"Why, Mount Rainier."

"This is becoming intriguing," said Milton Rhodes, "if it isn't

anything else. You spoke of a black fate, a curse: what has noble

Old He, as the old mountain-men called Rainier, to do with such

insignificant matters as the destinies of us insects called humans?"

"According to the old fellow I mentioned, that old acquaintance of

the Scrantons, it was there, on Rainier, that this dark and mysterious

business started."

"What was it that started?"

"That's just it. The man didn't know himself what had happened up

there."

"Hum," said Milton Rhodes.

"That," I went on, "was many years ago. It was just, I believe, after

Kautz climbed the mountain. Yes, I am sure he said 'twas just after

that. And this man who told us the story--his name was Simpson--said

'twas something that Scranton learned on Kautz's return to Steilacoom

that led to his, Scranton's, visit, to Old He. Not from Kautz himself,

though Scranton knew the lieutenant well, but from the soldier

Hamilton."

"What was it that he learned?"

"There it is again!" I told him. "Simpson said he could tell what that

something was, but he told us that he would not do so."

"A very mysterious business," smiled Milton Rhodes. "I hope that our

visitor's story, whatever it is, will prove more definite."

"Wasn't it," I asked, "in the fifties that Kautz made the ascent?"

"In July, 1857. And pretty shabbily has history treated him, too. It's

always Stevens and Van Trump, Van Trump and Stevens. Why, their Indian,

Sluiskin, is better known than Kautz!"

"But I thought," said I, "that Stevens and Van Trump were the very

first men to reach the summit of Mount Rainier."

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Bill," answered Milton Rhodes. "All honor

to Stevens and Van Trump, the first of men to reach the very top of the

mountain; but all honor, too, to the first white man to set foot on

Rainier, the discoverer of the great Nisqually Glacier, the first to

stand upon the top of Old He, though adverse circumstances prevented

his reaching the highest point."

"Amen," said I--as little dreaming as Kautz, Stevens and Van Trump

themselves had ever done of that discovery which was to follow, and

soon now at that.

For a time we held desultory talk, then fell silent and waited.

There was a lull in the storm; the darkness lifted, then suddenly it

fell again, and the rain began to descend with greater violence than

ever.

Milton Rhodes had left his chair and was standing by one of the eastern

windows.

"This must be our visitor, Bill," he said suddenly.

I arose and went over to his side, to see a big sedan swinging in to

the curb.

"Yes!" exclaimed Rhodes, his face beginning to brighten. "There is Mr.

James W. Scranton.

"Let us hope, Bill," he added, "that the mystery which he is bringing

us will prove a real one, real and scientific."

The next moment a slight figure, collar up to ears, stepped from the

car and headed swiftly up the walk, leaning sidewise against the wind

and rain.

"'Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson'," quoted Milton Rhodes

with a smile as he started towards the door, "'when you hear a step

upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not

whether for good or ill'."