



Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





                        Transcriber's Note:

             This is only an excerpt from the novel.



                           All-Story Weekly

                      _July 13-August 10, 1918_


                           PALOS OF THE DOG

                              STAR PACK


                            by J. U. Giesy

       *       *       *       *       *




1. OUT OF THE STORM


It was a miserable night which brought me first in touch with Jason
Croft. There was a rain and enough wind to send it in gusty dashes
against the windows. It was the sort of a night when I always felt
glad to cast off coat and shoes, don a robe and slippers, and sit down
with the curtains drawn, a lighted pipe, and the soft glow of a lamp
falling across the pages of my book. I am, I admit, always strangely
susceptible to the shut-in sense of comfort afforded by a pipe, the
steady yellow of a light, and the magic of printed lines at a time of
elemental turmoil and stress.

It was with a feeling little short of positive annoyance that I heard
the door-bell ring. Indeed, I confess, I was tempted to ignore it
altogether at first. But as it rang again, and was followed by a rapid
tattoo of rapping, as of fists pounded against the door itself, I
rose, laid aside my book, and stepped into the hall.

First switching on a porch-light, I opened the outer door, to reveal
the figure of an old woman, somewhat stooping, her head covered by a
shawl, which sloped wetly from her head to either shoulder, and was
caught and held beneath her chin by one bony hand.

"Doctor," she began in a tone of almost frantic excitement. "Dr.
Murray--come quick!"

Perhaps I may as well introduce myself here as anywhere else. I am Dr.
George Murray, still, as at the time of which I write, in charge of
the State Mental Hospital in a Western State. The institution was not
then very large, and since taking my position at the head of its staff
I had found myself with considerable time for my study along the lines
of human psychology and the various powers and aberrations of the
mind.

Also, I may as well confess, as a first step toward a better
understanding of my part in what followed, that for years before
coming to the asylum I had delved more or less deeply into such
studies, seeking to learn what I might concerning both the normal and
the abnormal manifestations of mental force.

There is good reading and highly entertaining, I assure you, in the
various philosophies dealing with life, religion, and the several
beliefs regarding the soul of man. I was therefore fairly conversant
not only with the Occidental creeds, but with those of the Oriental
races as well. And I knew that certain of the Eastern sects had
advanced in their knowledge far beyond our Western world. I had even
endeavored to make their knowledge mine, so far as I could, in certain
lines at least, and had from time to time applied some of that
knowledge to the treatment of cases in the institution of which I was
the head.

But I was not thinking of anything like that as I looked at the
shawl-wrapped face of the little bent woman, wrinkled and wry enough
to have been a very part of the storm which beat about her and blew
back the skirts of my lounging-robe and chilled my ankles. I lived in
a residence detached from the asylum buildings proper, but none the
less a part of the institution; and, as a matter of fact, my sole
thought was a feeling of surprise that any one should have come here
to find me, and despite the woman's manifest state of anxiety and
haste, a decided reluctance to go with her quickly or otherwise on
such a night.

I rather temporized: "But, my dear woman, surely there are other
doctors for you to call. I am really not in general practice. I am
connected with the asylum--" "And that is the very