Darker Than You Think by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page A

she could see again. One of the officers
tried to stop her and fell back from the dog's silent snarl. She
reached the fallen man and knelt to dwell upon his splotched face and
lax hands with her desperately searching fingers. Light shone cold on
her silver rings and bracelets and burned in the tears streaming from
the empty scars under her dark lenses.
    "Marck,
my poor blind darling!" Barbee heard her stricken whisper. "Why
didn't you let me come with Turk to guard you? Couldn't you see them
closing in?"

    CHAPTER
THREE

    The
White Jade Wolf

    The
man sprawled dead on the taxiway didn't answer that bitter whisper,
and the huddled blind woman made no other sound. With a shaken
gesture, Barbee beckoned the other newsmen back. His throat hurt and
something cold had touched his spine. Silently, he turned to Sam
Quain.
    Quain's
blue eyes were staring vacantly at the man on the ground. Beneath a
thin undershirt, his goose-pimpled flesh was shuddering. He didn't
seem aware of the clamoring reporters, and at first he made no sign
when Barbee stripped off his own topcoat to fling around him.
    "Thanks,
Will," he murmured emptily at last. "I suppose it's cold."
    He
caught his breath, and turned to the newsmen.
    "There's
a story for you, gentlemen," he said quietly, his dry voice
oddly flat and slow. "The death of Dr. Lamarck Mondrick, noted
anthropologist and explorer. Be sure you get the spelling right—he
was always particular about the c in
Lamarck."
    Barbee
snatched at his taut arm.
    "What
killed him, Sam?"
    "Natural
causes, the coroner will say." His voice stayed flat and dull,
but Barbee felt him stiffen. "He has had that asthma, you know,
for a great many years. He told me out there in the Ala-shan that he
knew he was suffering from a valvular heart disease—and knew it
before we ever started. Our expedition was no picnic, you know. Not
for a sick man, at his age. We're all pretty tired. When this attack
struck, I guess his old pump just couldn't take the strain."
    Barbee
glanced at the still form on the ground and the woman in black
sobbing silently.
    "Tell
me, Sam—what was Dr. Mondrick trying to say?"
    Sam
Quain swallowed hard. His blue eyes fled from Barbee's face into the
cold gloom, and came back again. He shrugged in the borrowed topcoat,
and it seemed to Barbee that he tried to shake off the horror that
hung like a dark garment on him.
    "Nothing,"
he muttered hoarsely. "Nothing, really."
    "Huh,
Quain?" rapped a hard voice over Barbee's shoulder. "You
can't give us any runaround now."
    Sam
Quain gulped again, hesitant and visibly ill.
    "Spill
it, Quain!" demanded the radio reporter. "You can't tell us
all that build-up was just for nothing."
    But
Sam Quain nodded his sun-bleached head, seeming to make up his mind.
    "Nothing
worth big headlines, I'm afraid." Pity touched and softened the
horror lingering on his square-jawed face. "Dr. Mondrick had
been ill for some time, you see, and I'm afraid his splendid mind had
lost its old acuity. Nobody can question the accuracy and originality
of his work, but we had tried to restrain him from this rather
melodramatic manner of making it public."
    "You
mean," the radio man snarled indignantly, "that all this
talk about your discoveries in Mongolia is just a crazy gag?"
    "On
the contrary," Sam Quain assured him, "Dr. Mondrick's work
is both sound and important. His theories, and the evidences we have
gathered to support them, are worth the attention of every
professional scientist in the anthropological fields."
    Sam
Quain kept his haunted eyes away from the old man's body and the
silent woman. His taut, dry voice was carefully calm.
    "Dr.
Mondrick's discoveries are quite important," he insisted flatly.
"The rest of us tried to persuade him, however, to make the
announcement in the usual way— in a formal paper, presented
before some recognized scientific body. And that, since this tragedy,
is what we shall doubtless do in time."
    "But
the old man kept hinting about