Lord of the Silent Death

by Robert Moore Williams

LORD of the SILENT DEATH

by ROBERT MOORE WILLIAMS

[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.]

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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.