4
Complete darkness had fallen when Marlowe turned and made a cautioning gesture.
"We are very near the summit now," he told Hunter, in a whisper. "For God's sake, go quietly."
Together they crept upward, through thick underbrush and over jagged rocks, until they crouched at the edge of the smooth, grassy space that was the hill's summit. This summit was not exactly level, but sloped down from them in a slight grade, and at its center Hunter saw the black, yawning hole Marlowe had mentioned, the pit that held the sand-grain.
Marlowe was tugging at his sleeve. "Powell—down at the other edge," he whispered, excitedly.
Glancing down to that farther edge of the summit, Hunter saw there a thin, spare figure dimly outlined against the stars, the figure of a man who was gazing silently at the twinkling lights of a distant village. And over to their right, at the very edge of the bare summit, was the rough dark mass that he knew must be the small cabin. Again Marlowe twitched his sleeve.
"We must rush him from both sides," he told Hunter. "You crawl around the right side of the summit and I will take the left, and when you get near enough, go for him. Don't give him time to get that cone out." With a whispered "good luck," he wrung Hunter's hand and began to creep stealthily around the left edge of the hilltop.
His heart pounding violently, Hunter crept forward on the right side, toward the man at the summit's edge, who still stood motionless, watching the distant lights. Hunter wondered where Marlowe was, in the darkness. By now he was crawling past the open door of the cabin, keeping close within the shadow of the little building.
From that point he could glimpse, in the starlight, the profile of the man they stalked. A strong, mad face it was, with burning eyes beneath a mass of gleaming, iron-gray hair, a face that was turned toward the south and its distant lights as though fascinated by them.
Suddenly Powell laughed, and at the unexpected sound Hunter stopped short, on hands and knees. A bitter, mocking laughter it was, that sickened the listening student. As it ceased, the man at the hill's edge raised a clenched fist and shook it at the distant lights. And his voice rang out over the silent hilltop like the note of a warning bell.
"O man, take heed!"
Even while Powell voiced that cry of hate and menace, Hunter moved forward again. And at his first movement, his knee pressed down on a small stick that broke with the sound of a pistol-shot.
Instantly Powell turned, his hand flashing down to his pocket and emerging with a small object in its grasp. As Hunter gathered himself for a swift, desperate spring, that object glowed out, a tiny circle of luminous green, and the young student sank back to the ground, deprived of all power of motion by the paralyzing cone. Powell advanced toward him, holding the cone outstretched.
"So you escaped, Marlowe," he said, and Hunter realized that in the darkness the man had mistaken him for his former prisoner. Powell was speaking on. "I think that I'll stop your interference now, for good. Not that I have any personal animus against you, I assure you, but I can't allow you to disrupt the plans I have made." As he said this, mockingly, he carefully placed the cone on a small mound of earth, so that its rays still held Hunter paralyzed. Then he
