Quests of Simon Ark Read Free Page B

done,” he said. “In the meantime, if you would desire to help me, there are one or two things you could find out.”
    “Sure. Anything for a story.”
    They were interrupted then by the sound of an approaching truck. Down the single road that led to civilization, an ancient mail truck was coming toward them.
    “This must be the man who found the bodies yesterday,” Simon Ark said.
    And it was. A fairly tall, middle-aged man named Joe Harris. “They haven’t buried them yet, huh?” he asked us.
    “No,” I answered. “The bodies are under canvas at the bottom of the cliff, a short distance from the rocks. The funeral is to take place today. I understand they’ve decided to bury them here in a mass grave rather than try to remove all the bodies to another town.”
    “Gee,” he said, “I near died of shock yesterday morning when I drove up and found them all down there. Why do you think they jumped?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It would make a great story if I did.”
    There were other trucks and cars coming now, with a gleaming State Police car in the lead. There were workers with shovels, who would soon bury the remains of the Gidaz Horror. And there were more photographers and reporters, from all over the country, coming to record forever the strange happening in this forgotten village.
    They took pictures of Joe Harris and his battered mail truck; they took pictures of Shelly Constance, and questioned her about her life in the village. She talked to them at length, but she did not mention the strange man, Axidus, again; I suspected that Simon Ark had suggested she keep silent about this part of it.
    Simon Ark himself kept in the background during most of the morning, and went unnoticed in the crowd of curiosity seekers who poured over the scene in growing numbers throughout the early hours of the day.
    It was nearly noon before Simon Ark and I could make our escape in my car. I wondered briefly how this strange man had arrived the previous night when he had no car, but the thought passed from my mind as we watched them lowering the last of the seventy-three into the long grave at the base of the cliff.
    For a moment, there was silence over the scene, as the last rites of various religions were spoken over the grave. Then, once again, a murmur of voices arose, as I turned my car away from the village.
    Simon Ark was in the seat next to me, and I was glad I had managed to avoid the other reporters who’d ridden out to the village with me the previous day. For I had a feeling that the answer to this riddle rested somehow with Simon Ark, and with the white figure we’d seen on the cliff.
    I turned into the highway that led north, toward the state capitol. “What did you want me to do?” I asked.
    “Do? Oh, I would like you to look up some information in the old newspaper files. I would like you to find out if any priests or ministers have been killed in the Gidaz area within the past few years …”
    I thought about that for a while. “All right, I’ll get the information for you on one condition. That you tell me just who you are, and just who this Axidus is.”
    “I am just a man,” he answered slowly. “A man from another age. You would not be interested in where I came from, or in what my mission is. I need only tell you that I am searching for the ultimate evil—for Satan himself. And perhaps, in Gidaz, I have found him at last.”
    I sighed softly. “What about Axidus?”
    “Axidus is also from the past. I knew him long ago, in North Africa, as St. Augustine did …”
    “Are you crazy? Are you trying to tell me we’re dealing with people who’ve been dead over fifteen hundred years?”
    “I do not know,” Simon Ark replied. “But I intend to find out tonight when we return to the village of the dead—”
    I left the strange man near the capitol building an hour later, having agreed to meet him there again at five o’clock. It did not take me long to gather the information Simon