Unless the cave-dweller whom I wished not to meet were near, there was no other smoking creature within miles.
But stay! I suddenly remembered the men from Penybont, repairing the one sole path to the uplands. If they had succeeded in establishing a new trackway, there was my best route back to Highglen House, toward which I must be tending, since the hour was nearer five than four. And one of them must have a match. If only they had not given over work for the day!
I had still a little distance to go north along the edge of Mynydd Tarw before reaching the top of the path. Signs of the landslide were not apparent here; yet I had made but one of the hairpin bends when I saw a broad scar and scoop where both earth and rock had torn asunder from the hill. Not until I was half-way to the floor of the Vale did the course of the landslide obliterate the zigzag path. The workers had not dug all the earth and stone away, but had made a substantial walking-surface some feet above the original one. And going a little further down, I saw to my joy that the men had not yet departed. They were not working, indeed, but standing about some object on the ground at the foot of the hill—and I had a premonition like a sword-cut what that object was.
It was the ill-clad, coatless body of the gorilla-man.
Not a quarter of an hour before, the men who had worked to the very bottom of the path, where the wreckage of the avalanche tailed away, had seen protruding from the earth a long and hairy arm and purplish hand. A large stone weighted down the body when it was found, and it appeared from the position of the corpse, and particularly from the writhen expression of the features, that the stranger had not been stricken instantly to death. Instead, he may even have been some way up the path when he had seen the hillside falling, and may have fled and nearly escaped. The groping arm upthrust seemed an indication that had not the heavy stone pinned him under, he might have struggled to the air, instead of being buried alive.
“Did any of you know him?” I asked, looking down at the face with its long, uncouth jaw and narrow temples.
“No, sir. He must have been a foreigner in these parts.”
“This is a bit sickening.” I certainly needed a pipe now. “Who has a match?”
They were quite as doleful as I. “Sorry, sir, our matches was all wet in the rain just now. Our coats was lyin’ up beyond, and the shower got to ’em before we did. Matches are fair ruined.”
I looked down at the ill-clad body. “By thunder, if I wouldn’t rob a dead man for a match now. Were there any on him?”