[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet December 40.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Death came out of a box and stalked through the streets of Chicago.
Samuel Morton found the box in Asia Minor, in a niche in the tomb of aforgotten Sumerian king, and not being able to open it, brought it backto this country with him. Morton was an archeologist, on the staff ofthe Asia Museum, located in South Chicago.
After months of effort, he succeeded, one hot August afternoon, inopening the box. But the death that lurked in it did not strike then.It waited.
Morton was alone that night, in the basement of the museum,trying to decipher the hieroglyphics engraved on the lid of thebox—hieroglyphics written in no known language—when the silence came.The first sound to disappear was the rattle of the street cars on thesurface line a block distant.
Morton was too engrossed in his work to notice that he could no longerhear the cars.
Then the soft rustle of the blower fan pushing cool air into the hotbasement went into silence.
He still didn't notice the cessation of sound, did not realize thatincredible death was creeping closer to him every second.
Even when the energetic tick of the alarm clock sitting on a mummy casewas no longer audible, Morton did not sense that death was near. He waslost in his work.
But when he could no longer hear the scratch of his pen on the paper,he realized that something was happening. He looked up.
Morton was a solidly built, craggy giant. His face burned a deep brownby the sun of the Arabian desert, a shock of white hair that for dayswas undisturbed by brush or comb, he sat in his chair, every sensesuddenly alert. His eyes raced over the room, seeking the cause of theuncanny silence.
He saw nothing.
But he recognized the presence of danger and reached for the telephone.It was the last move he ever made. As his fingers closed around theinstrument, the silence hit him.
It had the effect of a physical blow. The smack of a prizefighter'sfist would not have rocked him more. As he gasped one word into thetelephone, his body seemed to be lifted clear out of the chair. Hismuscles, tensing involuntarily, hurled him upward, like a grotesquejack-in-the-box that has been suddenly released. He hit the chair as hefell, crashing it to the floor with him.
His body writhed, a slow, tortuous twisting. Muscles swelled in histhroat as he screamed in pain. But no sound came.
The threshing of his heavy body on the concrete floor produced nosound. The scream was blotted into utter silence.
Before the muscular writhing had ceased, his flesh began to changecolor. The tan of his face, stamped with lines of torture, became areddish pink. Thousands of microscopic pinpoints of color spread in acreeping tide over his body.
The silence held. Viciously, as though making certain no more life wasleft in his body, the silence held.
When it lifted, went into nothingness, vanished, not more than a minutehad passed.
But in that minute Samuel Morton had died.
The Lord of the Silent Death had emerged from the cell which had heldhim imprisoned for ages.
"Rocks" Malone—the name "Rocks" came from his calling—lived twoblocks from the Asian Museum. But that wasn't his fault. He wouldhave lived nearer if he could have found a room. In fact, for onedeliriously happy month, he had slept on a cot in the basement of themuseum. Then Sharp, the thin-faced business manager who had charge ofthe property and the finances, had caugh