The Dirigibles of Death by A. Hyatt Verrill Page A

amazement I saw that the door of the body or car was wide open. Moore and I stepped close and peered inside, expecting to see dead or injured men, although looking back upon it I cannot understand why we should have thought the crew of the ship should be harmed when there was no sign of injury or even of an abrupt descent about the car. But we were so confident that we would find wounded occupants or bodies, that when we found it absolutely empty, we were completely flabbergasted.
    I say the car was empty, but I must qualify that statement slightly. It was empty of human beings, of furnishings, but the floor was covered with a thick layer of filthy straw or hay.
    "Lor' love me, hif it aint a blinkin' fly in' cow-shed!" exclaimed the constable.
    Then, removing his helmet and scratching his red head reflectively: "No sign hof them as came hin hit," he observed. "Gone off, they 'ave, an' left the bloomin' thing 'ere. Now what the blinkin' blazes ham Hi to do with hit, sir?
    "You might put it in the village pound," I suggested with a grin. "But, seriously, I imagine whoever arrived with it are within the Antelope. Having landed in an inn's yard the most natural thing would be for them to patronize the said inn. I suppose—"
    My words were interrupted by a shout and someone yelling for the constable, and I turned to see a man standing in the rear entrance to the inn, his face pale, his eyes wide and evidently greatly frightened.
    "Hi, constable!" he yelled again. "Ye're wanted. The's been murder done!"
    Murder! At the dread word we dashed to the inn. "What, who's murdered?" demanded Moore as we sprang up the steps.
    "Everyone!" gasped the wild-eyed fellow at the door, who, I now saw, was Chris Stevens from over Clacton way. "Jim Thorne, Jerry, Ellen the bar-maid, and, and—"
    We waited to hear no more. Into the hallway we rushed and came to an abrupt and sudden halt as we almost tripped over the body of Jerry the porter and man-of-all-work lying on the floor. I stopped and felt his pulse. He was dead, cold, and the pool of blood that surrounded his head had coagulated and hardened. Evidently he had been dead for several hours. Proceeding more cautiously, we passed through the bar-parlor to the room where old Jim Thorne had always slept. One glance was enough. Thorne's body lay sprawled on the floor, the face blood-covered, mutilated beyond recognition. The room was a mess. The bed-clothes were scattered about, chairs were upset, and it was obvious that a severe struggle had taken place. We hurried upstairs to find the body of Ellen, the bar-maid, a middle-aged woman, lying dead in the upper hallway, and gray-haired old Martha, the cook, stretched lifeless just within the door to her room.
    "Hell's bells!" ejaculated Moore in a half-whisper. "Hit's like a blinkin' slaughter 'ouse so 'tis. Four o' 'em dead an' a bloomin' noise they must 'a made an' not a body hin the village havin' 'eard 'em. What make 'e on it. Doc?"
    I shook my head. "Wholesale murder," I replied as I examined Martha's body. "And no sign of robbery or any motive. And the wounds! I've never seen any just like them. Look at poor old Martha's face, and at her chest—covered with cuts and slashes—cut to ribbons— as if she'd been hacked with a buzz-saw. And old Jim's face, did you notice it?"
    "Did Hi!” exclaimed the constable. "Well, Hi should s'y! Looked 'e'd been chawed, 'e did; garstly, Hi call hit."
    "Ellen, too," I remarked. "Her right hand and arm were torn to shreds. And that awful hole in Jerry's head! Whoever committed these crimes was a fiend— a giant in strength and used some strange weapon— perhaps a rake or a pitchfork. I should say, offhand, it was the work of a maniac—"
    Moore seized my arm and I could feel him trembling. "Lor' love me. Doc, think' 'e hit might 'a been the bodies out of yon Zep?"
    "Scarcely," I replied. "But it's damnably mysterious. And it surely is a remarkable coincidence that the airship should have descended in the