Vampires of the Desert

by A. Hyatt Verrill

  However, I determined to visit the things after night-fall, and turned my attention to hunting. I returned to my quarters in time for breakfast with a fine bag of ducks and snipe. The rains had now ceased for several days, but the newly formed streams still flowed across the former deserts, and there was sufficient moisture in the soaked earth to keep vegetation going for some time. I mention this, because the cessation of the rains had a very direct bearing upon subsequent events.

  It was while I was eating my breakfast that I had a phone call from Lobitos asking me to come over as soon as possible as a new field was being prospected and they wished me to make microscopic examinations of the samples from the test-holes. I was rather disappointed at thus being summoned away, when I had counted upon witnessing the full development of my strange plants, but I comforted myself with the thought that there would be many more flowers, and that I should not be long absent. So, packing my field outfit, I ordered the car and started for Lobitos. The work, I found, would take me much longer than I had expected, and I wondered if I would be able to return before all the remarkable flowers had blossomed and faded. Little did I dream how soon or in what a remarkable manner I should again meet with those puzzling, amazing productions of the unusual plants I had found.

  It was on the second day of my stay at Lobitos that news of the murders at Negritos reached us. Two Indian or rather Cholo laborers had been found dead in front of their barracks. Apparently they had been garroted or strangled to death, but there was no clue to the murderer and no known incentive for the crime. Both men had been — as for that matter were all the Peruvian Cholos — quiet, peaceful, hard-working and very inoffensive fellows. Their companions declared that neither had been in a brawl, a discussion, or an argument during the preceding evening or night; no one had heard hard or angry words, and as both bodies still had their week's wages upon them, robbery was discarded as a possible motive for the crime.

  But Negritos was terribly stirred up over the tragedy. For years the place had been a model of law and order. There had not been a murder, a robbery, a burglary nor any serious offense committed for fully ten years and the only arrests had been for drunkenness, gambling or petty thefts among the natives and for trespass. And as Negritos and Lobitos were "dry" camps, even drunkenness was very rare. Hence two murders, occurring on one night, and without any known reason, created a great sensation. Moreover, there seemed little doubt that the crimes were committed by some stranger.

  The Peruvian Indian or Cholo is not a particularly brave or desperate character. He abhors bloodshed or violence in any form, and neither I nor any of the officials could imagine a docile Cholo deliberately attacking and successfully strangling two men. And why, it was asked, had there been no outcry? It seemed inconceivable that the two men could have been killed so quickly that they could not have cried out. And why did the second victim remain quietly waiting, while his companion was being killed? In fact, the more we discussed it, the more mysterious it became.

  "In my opinion," declared Sturgis, the chief engineer, who had had a tremendous amount of experience with the natives, "it's the work of a Chilean or a Colombian. Likely as not those two Cholos had worked somewhere where there'd been Chilenos or Colombians, and had got into some sort of trouble with them — maybe won too much at gambling, or it might have been over a woman. Then this bird drops in here, recognizes the fellows, and evens scores. The only thing that bothers me is why they weren't knifed — that's the Chileno method as a rule — and why they weren't robbed — no such a criminal ever lets a chance of pocketing a few dollars get by him.

  "Hmm, in all probability the murderer didn't have time," suggested Henshaw. "He may have been scared off. But how the devil could one man strangle two others?"

  "Maybe they weren't strangled," I put in. "I'll bet no one has made an examination to learn if they weren't knocked over the heads first. You see knifing a man isn't always a safe and quiet method of putting him out of the way — he's liable to yell. And it would have been as hard for a man to knife two Cholos without their giving a cry as it would have been to strangle two of them. In my opinion they were knocked senseless and then garroted. And doesn't it seem more like the work of an East Indian or an Oriental than a South American? Aren't there some coolies — Hindus — working up at Porvenir on the railway? And how about those Chinese and Japs at Talara? I'll bet it was one of those fellows."

  "Maybe you're right," agreed Sturgis. "I hadn't thought of the Hindus or Chinese. But anyhow, Stevens will round 'em up whoever 'twas; he was chief of police in Manila and he's no slouch, even if this camp has got so darned law-abiding that he's grown fat and lazy."

  At this moment the telephone rang, and Henshaw, who answered, turned to me. "You're wanted at Negritos, Barry," he said. "Stevens wants you to help him on this murder case. Says he needs a microscopist and asks if you're not a doctor of sorts — Doctor Samuels is off on leave, and that interne Rogers refuses to conduct a post-mortem unless he has a competent man — biologist or M.D. or anatomist or some kind of an 'ist' — along with him."

  I was surprised, of course. But after all it was not surprising. I was the only microscopist available, and I had at one time taken a course in anatomy with the idea of becoming a surgeon. But I was not sorry to leave Lobitos. It was an unpleasant spot at best, and I was wishing I might have a chance to examine my remarkable flowers. Still I could not leave at once, I had to complete my work at Lobitos, for that, after all, was my real job, and taking the 'phone I told Stevens I would go over to Negritos the next morning early. He swore and raved a bit — he was a testy old chap — but I pointed out that I was employed to conduct paleontological studies and not police-court investigations, and that I was answerable only to the New York office. In fact, I grew a bit peeved myself and added as a clincher that I was coming only to oblige him and out of curiosity, and that unless I were requested politely and not ordered, I wouldn't go at all. This quieted him. He apologized, begged me to hurry, and rang off.

  Poor old Major Stevens! I was fated never to hear his voice again, never to see his ruddy face grow apoplectically purple as he sputtered, fumed and swore. And I and all the others were fated to have the shock of our lives before another twenty-four hours had passed.

  I was aroused from a deep sleep by the furious ringing of the 'phone, and lifting the receiver heard an agitated, excited voice. "For God's sake, get back here!" it cried. "This is Merivale speaking. It's terrible — three more men murdered here last night — two women killed at Talara and — when we went to call Major Stevens we found him dead — strangled like the others. We need every white man we can get — there's a fiend incarnate here somewhere. We must find him and stop this thing. And, Barry, bring Henshaw with you."

  I was aghast. What did it mean? Seven, no, eight murders within two days — and Major Stevens among them. It seemed incredible. What was the motive? Who was the murderer? How could he have committed the crimes without detection, when, as I felt sure, the camps had been patrolled and policed after those first two deaths? Of course, the motive for killing Major Stevens was plain. The murderer feared him and took this means of getting him out of the way. But the others — the Cholos. Only on the theory of a homicidal maniac could I explain it. Henshaw and Sturgis were as shocked and horrified as I was, and both agreed that some crazed native must be at the bottom of the killings, unless, as Sturgis suggested, some Oriental had run amuck. But when we reached Negritos in record time, and learned more of the details of the crime, we were at an utter loss.

  Merivale was in charge, and though he was a competent enough young chap, and an excellent executive, he was so flabbergasted and upset over the Major's death that he didn't know which way to turn. In fact, he could scarcely give an intelligible account of the events that had occurred, and I found McGovern, the boss driller, far more lucid. He had been a little of everything in his day and at one time had been a New York policeman with a beat in one of the toughest sections of Manhattan's lower East Side.
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  Major Stevens, knowing of his police record, and cognizant of McGovern's ability to handle men, had sworn him in as a deputy, and had placed him in charge of policing the camp. He was a huge, burly fellow; red-haired, freckle-faced, and was personally acquainted with every man, woman and child in the district. He had known the two Cholos killed on the first night, and he assured me as he said he had assured the Major, that both were the most industrious and law-abiding of natives.

  "Sure, Pablo an' Gonzalez was hard-working, dacint lads," he declared. "Didn't I have thim worrkin' over to thoity-two week afore last. Niver the gamblin' nor drinkin' sort, sor, an' peaceful as lambs. Now who the divvil, I'm askin' ya, would have raison for bumpin' of thim two lads off? An' they weren't robbed, neither. No, sor, 'tis not robbery nor a row nor nothin' of that kind that caused it. 'Twas some extr'o'd'nary motive, as ye might say, an' ye'll have to find the motive afore ye find the murderer, if ye ask me. Who do I think it might be? B'gorra, how should I know? And then these others last night. Yes, sor, the camp was lit bright as day and the gang of us patrollin' the place. Sure, there was fourteen of us all gumshoin' about, an' meself wit' three boys on duty fernist the Cholos' quarters. An niver a sound of a foight nor a cry nor nothin'. Thin with the comin' av day loight come a scream from Block Wan, an' another yell from Block Foive, an' wimmen a-runnin' an' me an' the boys beatin' it to find what the trouble was an' all, an' there they be — the three of thim, deader'n busted drills, an' never a mark onto 'em savin' of the red marks about their necks. B'gorra, no' I'm mistook. Wan of thim had marks on his chest an' another on his face like they'd been shot wit' rock salt, if ye know what I mean. An' then off I goes to tell da Major — God rest his soul — and to find him dead by the same token. 'Tis downright unnat'ral, sor. Damned uncanny. An' I don't mind admittin' it's got me goat, sor."

  "What about the women killed at Talara?" I asked.

  But McGovern had no definite information about them. They had, so it was reported, been found dead, obviously killed, on the desert just outside the town, and as they had been alive and well at a late hour the preceding evening, and had started for their homes on the hillside beyond the cemetery, about eleven, it was certain they had been murdered sometime between that hour and daybreak.

  "I'll be damned if I see how a man could kill three Cholos and the Major up here and two women at Talara at the same time," cried Henshaw. "McGovern and his men didn't see a soul on the street or on the road, there was no car out and it's a sure bet the murderer didn't travel by airplane. And everyone swears those three men in Blocks One and Five were not dead at midnight. And there's the Major — he was all right at two o'clock this morning."

  "I don't consider that part of the affair as remarkable as the other facts," I told him. "A man could walk to Talara in a couple of hours. But why should the fiend kill five men here and two women there? How did he manage it without being seen or heard by McGovern or his men, and why didn't any one of the five — or rather, eight — cry out? And how did he kill them? I tell you, Henshaw, there's something deep in this that we haven't thought of yet. In my opinion the murdered people have been killed by some means we haven't suspected — that strangling is just a bluff — it's some terrible poison or something of that sort — perhaps administered hours before the men die."

  "How about that knocking them on the head theory of yours?" asked Henshaw.

  "That might be it if it was not for the Major," I said. "I can't imagine anyone sneaking up on him."

  "It would have been easy enough," declared Henshaw. "He was sitting close to his open door and very likely fell asleep. If I were in your place I'd get on with the post-mortem and see if you can find any signs of any injury or of poison. But I don't envy you your job."

  "It's not mine," I informed him. "And if you don't look out, I'll call you in to help. We've got to get into this. I'm going to do all I can and Merivale wants me to take charge as senior here. I wish to Heaven old Doctor Daniels were here. Young Rogers is a good doctor — good enough for his routine or hospital work, but he's never made a post-mortem in his life and I know very little about such things. However, I suppose Rogerscan find out if there are injuries and if there was poison given. I'm merely going to be present and make microscopic examinations of the stomach contents and blood."

  But the results of the post-mortems left us as much in the dark as ever — in fact more puzzled than ever. The Cholos all seemed to have been victims of pernicious anemia, or to have bled to death, although there were no wounds that would have accounted for any considerable loss of blood. The marks upon their faces and chests that McGovern had mentioned were punctures, but seemed barely to penetrate the skin, and there were no blood stains of any considerable extent upon the men's garments. In two cases there were severe contusions on the heads, but these might have been caused by falling upon the stones. The third man, however, had a small puncture in his jugular vein, and the left eye was injured and appeared as though the eyeball had been pierced and the liquid had run out. Yet there was no blood upon the fellow's clothes. We did not make a post-mortem upon the Major, but externally there were no marks upon his body that seemed adequate to have caused death, aside from the red line about the throat that was present on all the bodies. And, unlike the Cholos, he appeared to have lost little, if any, blood. We got into telephonic communication with the resident doctor at Talara who reported that the dead women bore no marks of violence aside from numerous small punctures on the breasts and backs, which marks he compared to the marks that might have been caused by bird-shot fired from a distance, yet there were no shot in the wounds. Neither did my microscopic examination of the stomach contents, the tissues or the blood reveal the presence of recognizable poison, and Rogers' chemical tests showed no toxic reactions.

  Of course all this took time, and it was late in the afternoon when the disagreeable work had been completed. All ordinary work had come to a complete standstill. No one could put his mind on work; the executives and bosses were all too much engrossed with the procession of mysterious tragedies to carry on, and the Cholos had a glorious loaf, apparently quite unmoved and undisturbed by the uncanny fate of their friends and companions. And naturally the camps were in a tremendous state of excitement and nervous tension. The women were frightened almost out of their wits, no children were allowed out of doors, and even in broad daylight everybody acted as if they expected to be struck down by some invisible hand at any moment.

  The men too seemed to be filled with superstitious dread. The mere fact that men were murdered — even had there been three times as many — would not have troubled the hard-boiled rough-necks who made up the working force of white men. Most of them had led wild lives. They had been in many a mining camp where human life was held cheap and murders were everyday matters, and the majority of them had been in the World War. A score of men — either native or white — killed in a riot, a strike, a quarrel or a drunken brawl would not have caused them a moment's thought. But the mysterious manner of the eight deaths, the inexplicable reason for the murders, and the fact that there seemed no clues in the murderer filled these tough, case-hardened old-timers with the fear of the supernatural. Indeed, more than one openly expressed his opinion that the men had not been killed by anything human, that some old Incan devil or evil spirit had had a hand in the tragedies, and that the only safe course was for everyone to clear out and stay out.

  Of course, the intelligent population scoffed at such ideas. We knew well enough that murders had been committed, and we felt confident that whoever had so far eluded us would be captured if he attempted to repeat his crimes. And we arranged such a complete cordon of guards, sentries and police about the camp — that we felt positive that if the murderer put in an appearance that night he would never escape us.

  Looking back upon it now, I can realize how really silly and amateurish our plans were. On the previous evening the murderer had committed his fiendish crimes despite the brilliant illumination of electric lights and the p
resence of a large force of men, and had escaped unseen. And yet we thought that by darkening the streets, by hiding in the shadows, and by giving orders that no inhabitant was to be on the streets after eleven, that we could apprehend a murderer who had shown such devilish ingenuity in eluding everyone hitherto.

  It was a dark, starless night, and only enough lights had been left burning to enable us to see moving figures, should they appear upon the streets.

  Fully fifty men were on duty in the camp, and I had also posted a dozen men outside the limits of the camp where they could watch the surrounding desert. These men were carefully hidden, some in the dense shadows of the oil derricks, others behind piles of pipe, and still others back of rocks or other objects. It seemed to us at the time that it would be utterly impossible for any living creature to approach the camp undetected or to make a way through the streets unseen by the armed watchers. Of course there was the chance that the maniac or fiend or whoever he was would not appear, that he had satiated his lust for killing, or that, knowing we were awaiting him, he would keep away until the excitement and watchfulness had died down, or perhaps forever. But we reasoned that he must be a maniac or a drug-fiend and that in such case he would continue his attacks and, moreover, would not reason that he was courting disaster by reappearing.

  Nothing had occurred up to midnight. I had gone the rounds several times, all the men reported on duty, thoroughly wide awake, and not a sign of anyone other than the patrols had been seen. One o'clock, two o'clock passed, and then suddenly echoing horribly through the darkness — came a frenzied scream of deadly terror. Instantly, with chills running up and down my back, I dashed in the direction of the cry, and I heard the racing footsteps of half a dozen of my men behind me. But we had not gone fifty yards before we were met by a flying figure rushing madly towards us from the desert. It was McGovern, and never have I seen mad terror and fear so depicted as upon the big Irishman's face. His eyes rolled, his mouth twisted and slobbered, his teeth chattered and his bulky muscular frame shook and trembled like that of a frightened child. He was almost bereft of his senses. He actually clung to me, and he babbled and mumbled incoherently. With the utmost difficulty we finally got him to talk intelligibly. And the tale he told was incredible.