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Roy J. Snell
Panther Eye
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066210397
Table of Contents
“FIFTEEN MEN ON THE DEAD MAN’S CHEST”
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS DEATH
“He is dead!”
Johnny Thompson felt the grip of the speaker’s hand on his arm and started involuntarily. How could this strange fellow know that Frank Langlois was dead—if he was dead? And was he? They were surrounded by inky blackness. It was the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern, a mine. This was a gold mine. Three minutes ago their electric torch had flickered out and they had been unable to make it flash again.
“C’mon,” said the other man, “Pant,” as the laborers called him, “we don’t need that thing.”
To his utter astonishment, Johnny had felt himself urged forward by this Pant with the easy, steady, forward march of one who is certain of every step. Twice they had turned to avoid mine-props. They had gone back into the mine perhaps a hundred feet. Now, with not a spark of light shining out of the gloom, they had paused and his companion had uttered those three words:
“He is dead.”
Was the man they had come to seek really dead? If he was, who had killed him? How did Pant know he was dead? Surely in that Egyptian midnight no man could see.
As Johnny threw an involuntary glance to the spot where Pant’s face should be, he gasped. Had he caught a yellow glow from one eye of the man? He could not be sure about it, for at that instant the electric torch flashed on again as suddenly as it had gone out.
Johnny’s eyes followed the yellow circle of light. Then with a low exclamation he sprang forward. There, not ten feet before them, lay the form of Frank Langlois. To all appearances he was dead. Again through Johnny’s mind there flashed the telegraphic questions: