Mistress of the Undead | Page 5

that.
Turner tried to find the tree where he had left the injured girl. He was
afraid she had crawled away and died.
HIS watch pointed to one minute after seven o'clock when he looked at
it. She was dead now. There was a sudden glow at the foot of a tree. He
ran toward it. There was the shallow crypt where he had laid her. It was
empty. From beneath the roots there rose a wraithlike glow through the
fog.

He flung himself face downward on the ground and mourned her death,
groaning in his agony.
A voice said, "That old piece of the plane's undercarriage must have
fallen from the tree and struck him on the head. I saw it hanging up
there yesterday and wondered why someone had not climbed up and
gotten it."
Turner recognized the speaker as one of his hunting companions.
"He must have been lying here for a half hour," another said. "Lucky
how the phosphorous glow from the roots of that old dead tree led us
right to him."
"What time is it?" he managed to ask.
"Ten minutes after seven," one of the party answered.
"She must have died, then," he sighed.
"At exactly seven o'clock." It was Tim Blake's voice, low but steady.
"I'm awfully sorry," Turner said.
"You did your part, son," the old man replied. "You fetched the doctor,
all right. He jist got thar a minute too late."
A minute too late! She would have been saved, if he hadn't been a
minute too late. And he had tried so hard for her.
Frantically, he tried to remember whether he had sent the doctor to
Nancy Blake, or the dying girl. His thoughts were confusing. Then a
peaceful sensation fused through his body. He fainted and dropped
back to the ground. A voice floated calmly toward him from the
direction of the tree, a woman's voice.
"Thank you, so much," it said. "Better luck next time, for us both."
2 RTEXTR*ch

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