Carter moved across the room to examine the cases at closer range. Halfway to the farther wall he came upon a low, glassed dome that covered a huge pit set in the floor.

He gasped. The pit was filled with dead bodies, red warriors with the tops of their heads neatly sliced off!

Five

CHAMBER OF HORRORS

FAR BELOW, IN THE PIT, John Carter could see forms moving in and about the bodies of the dead red men.

They were rats; and as he watched, the earthman could see them dragging bodies off into adjoining tunnels. These tunnels probably entered the main one which ran into the rats' underground city.

So this was where the beasts got the skulls and bones with which they constructed their odorous, underground dwellings!

Carter's eyes scanned the laboratory. He noted the operating tables, the encased instruments above, the anesthetics. Everything pointed to some grisly experiment, conducted by some insane scientist.

Within a glass case were many books. One ponderous volume was inscribed in gold letters: PEW MOGEL, HIS LIFE AND WONDERFUL WORKS.

The earthman frowned. What was the explanation? Why this well-equipped laboratory buried in an ancient lost city, a city apparently deserted except for apes, rats, and a giant man?

Why the cases about the wall containing the mute, motionless bodies of apes with bandaged heads? And the red men in the pit - why were their skulls cut in half, their brains removed?

From whence came the giant, the monstrous creature whose likeness had existed only in Barsoomian folklore?

One of the books in a case before Carter bore the name "Pew Mogel." What connection had Pew Mogel with all this and who was the man?

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