Free Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath by Brian Lumley

doubt suddenly inundating my mind once more. ‘But it’s all so difficult to believe, Titus, and for a number of reasons.’
    ‘Good!’ he instantly replied. ‘In resolving your own incredulity, which I intend to do, I might also allay the few remaining doubts which I myself yet entertain. It is a difficult thing to believe, Henri - I’ve admitted that -but we certainly can’t afford to ignore it. Anyhow, what reasons were you speaking of just now, when you voiced your reluctance to accept the thing as it stands?’
    ‘Well for one thing’ - I sat back in my chair - ‘couldn’t the whole rigmarole really be a hoax of some sort? Wendy-Smith himself hints of just such a subterfuge in that last paragraph of his, the “police report”.’
    ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed. ‘A good point, that - but I’ve already checked, Henri, and that last paragraph was nor part of the original manuscript! It was added by the author’s publisher, a clever extract from an actual police report on the disappearances.’
    ‘Then what about this Bentham chap?’ I persisted. ‘Couldn’t he have read the story somewhere? Might he not simply be adding his own fancies to what he considers an intriguing mystery? He has, after all, admitted to a certain interest in weird and science-fiction cinema. Perhaps his taste also runs to macabre literature! It’s possible, Titus. The Wendy-Smith story may, as you seem to suspect, be based on fact - may indeed have been drawn from life, a veritable diary, as the continuing absence of Sir Amery and his nephew after all these years might seem to demand - but it has seen print as a fiction!’
    I could see that he considered my argument for a moment, but then he said: ‘Do you know the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, Henri? Of course you do. Well, I’ve a feeling that Paul Wendy-Smith’s last manuscript was dealt with on a similar principle. He had written a fair number of macabre stories, you see, and I’m afraid his agent and executor - despite some preliminary doubts, as witness the delay in publishing - finally saw this last work as just another fiction. It puts me disturbingly in mind of the Ambrose Bierce case. You know the circumstances to which I refer, don’t you?’
    ‘Hmmm?’ I murmured, frowning as I wondered what he was getting at. ‘Bierce?
    Yes. He was an American master of the macabre, wasn’t he? Died in 1914 …?’
    ‘Not “died”, Henri,’ he quickly corrected me. ‘He simply disappeared, and his disappearance was quite as mysterious as anything in his stories - quite as final as the vanishment of the Wendy-Smiths!’
    He got down on his hands and knees on the floor and began to collect up some of the books and maps. ‘But in any case, my friend, you’ve either not been listening to me as well as you might, or’ - he smiled up at me - ‘you have very little faith in what I’ve sworn to be the truth. I’m talking about my dreams, Henri - think about my dreams!’
    He gave me time to consider this, then said, ‘But there, just supposing that by some freak those nightmares of mine were purely coincidental; and suppose further that

    Mr Bentham is, as you suggest, “a hoaxer”. How do you explain away these eggs?
    You think perhaps that Bentham, who appears to be a reasonably down-to-earth Northeasterner, went down to his workshop and simply put them together, out of a bucket or two of common-or-garden chrysolite and diamond-dust? No, Henri, it won’t wash. Besides’ - he stood up and took one of the things from the box, weighing it carefully in his hand - ‘I’ve checked them out. So far as I can determine they’re the real thing, all right. In fact I know they are! I’ve had little time to test them as fully as I would like to, true, but one thing is sure - they do defy X-rays! Very strange when you consider that while they’re undeniably heavy there doesn’t appear to be any lead in their makeup. And something else, something far more definite