Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435001496009; (The Ohio State University) THE SILVER BULLET --------------------------- BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE SILENT HOUSE IN PIMLICO THE BISHOP'S SECRET THE CRIMSON CRYPTOGRAM THE GOLDEN WANG-HO THE TURNPIKE HOUSE A TRAITOR IN LONDON WOMAN--THE SPHINX THE JADE EYE ---------------------------- John Long, Publisher, London THE SILVER BULLET BY FERGUS HUME London John Long 13 & 14 Norris Street, Haymarket THE SILVER BULLET CHAPTER I THE HOUSE IN THE PINE WOOD "We had better lie down and die," said Robin peevishly. "I can't go a step further," and to emphasise his words he deliberately sat. "Infernal little duffer," growled Herrick. "Huh! Might have guessed you would Joyce." He threw himself down beside his companion and continued grumbling. "You have tobacco, a fine night, and a heather couch of the finest, yet you talk as though the world were coming to an end." "I'm sure this moor never will," sighed Joyce, reminded of his cigarettes, "we have been trudging it since eight in the morning, yet it still stretches to the back-of-beyond. Hai!" The pedestrians were pronouncedly isolated. A moonless sky thickly jewelled with stars, arched over a treeless moor, far-stretching as the plain of Shinar. In the luminous summer twilight, the eye could see for a moderate distance, but to no clearly defined horizon; and the verge of sight was limited by vague shadows, hardly definite enough to be mists. The moor exhaled the noonday heats in thin white vapour, which shut out from the external world those who nestled to its bosom. A sense of solitude, the brooding silence, the formless surroundings, and above all, the insistence of the infinite, would have appealed on ordinary occasions to the poetical and superstitious side of Robin's nature. But at the moment, his nerves were uppermost. He was worn-out, fractious as a child, and in his helplessness could have cried like one. Herrick knew his friend's frail physique and inherited neurosis: therefore he forebore to make bad worse by ill advised sympathy. Judiciously waiting until Joyce had in some degree soothed himself with tobacco, he talked of the common-place. "Nine o'clock," said he peering at his watch; "thirteen hour's walking. Nothing to me Robin, but a goodish stretch to you. However we are within hail of civilization, and in England. A few miles further we'll pick up a village of sorts no doubt. One would think you were exploiting Africa the way you howl."