CHAPTER IThe gaunt man was running. His footsteps echoed hollowly on weed-grown stretches of sunken masonry, and his breath came in long, wheezing gasps. He was running across a lakeside pier, his hands pressed to his face as if to shut out some intolerable sight. The pier was abandoned, old, crumbling at its base.
The fleeing man was old, too. His long white hair and beard streamed in the wind, and there was a stiffness, a crookedness, in the slope of his shoulders as a spasm of terror caused him to swing abruptly about, and lower his hands for the barest instant—a figure of madness poised for a leap.
He turned and ran on again for a few paces. Then he was at the edge of the pier and he did leap—straight out from the side of the pier with a scream that echoed loudly through the night. H
