Lord of the Silent Death

[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 a forgotten Sumerian king, and not being able to open it, brought it back to this country with him. Morton was an archeologist, on the staff of the Asia Museum, located in South Chicago.

After months of effort, he succeeded, one hot August afternoon, in opening 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 the box--hieroglyphics written in no known language--when the silence came. The first sound to disappear was the rattle of the street cars on the surface line a block distant.

Morton was too engrossed in his work to notice that he could no longer hear the cars.

Then the soft rustle of the blower fan pushing cool air into the hot basement went into silence.

He still didn't notice the cessation of sound, did not realize that incredible death was creeping closer to him every second.

Even when the energetic tick of the alarm clock sitting on a mummy case was no longer audible, Morton did not sense that death was near. He was lost 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 brown by the sun of the Arabian desert, a shock of white hair that for days was undisturbed by brush or comb, he sat in his chair, every sense suddenly alert. His eyes raced over the room, seeking the cause of the uncanny 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 the instrument, the silence hit him.

It had the effect of a physical blow. The smack of a prizefighter's fist would not have rocked him more. As he gasped one word into the telephone, his body seemed to be lifted clear out of the chair. His muscles, tensing involuntarily, hurled him upward, like a grotesque jack-in-the-box that has been suddenly released. He hit the chair as he fell, crashing it to the floor with him.

His body writhed, a slow, tortuous twisting. Muscles swelled in his throat as he screamed in pain. But no sound came.

The threshing of his heavy body on the concrete floor produced no sound. The scream was blotted into utter silence.

Before the muscular writhing had ceased, his flesh began to change color. The tan of his face, stamped with lines of torture, became a reddish pink. Thousands of microscopic pinpoints of color spread in a creeping tide over his body.

The silence held. Viciously, as though making certain no more life was left in his body, the silence held.

When it lifted, went into nothingness, vanished, not more than a minute had passed.

But in that minute Samuel Morton had died.

The Lord of the Silent Death had emerged from the cell which had held him imprisoned for ages.