The Murdered Six and
The Phantom killer

‘Midst The Smoking Ruins of Blazing Barns and Buildings Lay Six Charred
Human Bodies—a Bullet Hole in a Blackened Forehead Gave the Mounties
Their First Clue to the Murdering Frankenstein.

WHOA!” CONSTABLE DAY of the
founted Police reined in his mount and
wzed through the choking convolutions of
noke at the scene of desolation. Already
sporters were delving, notebook in hand,
round the charred ruins of the Skelov
ome on the outskirts of Saskatchewan’s
‘alician settlement of Yavo. Barn, granary,
attle, everything, had gone up in the holo-
rust of the night before, while three
uarters of a mile to the eastward similar
oils of pungent smoke rose lazily into the
rey April sky from the home of Steve
selek.

Elbowing through the ring of close’
nouthed neighbours who welcomed the
lescent of the law with sullen disdain,
Yay picked his way through the burning
lebris and gazed down at the sole body
vrested from the inferno of flames. Covered
vith a tarpaulin, charred and blackened
most to a crisp, frayed overalls and shirt
till clung to the corpse.

Warned by an excited call, Day had
hudded along the rutted roads and snow-
overed prairie with Const. Black to be
-onfronted by a sinister wall of s lence and
he sullen looks of Yavo residents gathered
tbout the spot. It was a silence that pro-
‘laimed the recent immigrant’s distrust of
the Anglo-Saxon, and more especially of
those scarlet-coated police who represented
enforcement of laws of a land with which
they had yet to be assimilated. To Const.
Day the silence by which he found himeelt
surrounded, the unfriendly glances and the
muttered asides in a language that he didn’t
understand, seemed ominous. So did the
fact that two farms, separated by three
quarters of a mile, should suddenly have
erupted into flame. Somewhere, he sensed,
there lay the hand of a hidden assassin. Yet,
amongst those gathered around the smoking
embers was little hint of possible co-opera-
tion in solving the enigma.

As the constable waited for the glowing
coals to burn themselves down so he could
examine the ruins he turned his attention
to the blackened corpse at his feet. Suddenly
he emitted a low whistle. “Look at this,”
he turned to Black. “There’s a bullet hole
in the forehead. This man’s been shot to
death and left to burn.” ;

Locating an interpreter, Day dug from
reluctant bystanders meagre details of the

FOURTEENTH EDITION

tragedy. Attracted by the barking of his
dogs, John Skelov had hurried outside to
find the western sky fiery with the reflected
flames of the conflagration. With pounding
heart the realization struck home that the
farm of his son, Ledur Skelov, was burning.
At that moment another pillar of fire
pierced the velvet curtain of the night. This
time it came from the farm of Steve Belek,
Ledur’s nearest neighbour. Sounding the
alarm, he’d hurried with his neighbours to
the scene. First, they’d passed the blazing
barn and granary of Steve Belek. Fearfully

Inspector Duffus, famed R.C.M. Police officer,
astounded unbelieving officers by his bizarre re-
construction of the crime.

they’d pushed on three quarters of a mile
to the leaping tongues of consuming flame
and white convolutions of smoke that rose
from all that was left of his son Ledur’s
home. Fighting the forked flames, they'd
broken open the side window and dragged
out the blackened corpse that lay beside
him—the body of John Lycheluk.

“What time did you first see the fire?”
Day demandad.

oe
By
PHILIP H. GODSELL

F.R.G.S.

Author of “Romance of the Alaska

Highway’’, etc. etc.

“Between midnight and one o'clock.”

“Who lived here?” he nodded to the
charred walls and skeletal logs that rose
grotesquely into the April sky.

“My son Ledur,” faltered the old man in
a flat, emotionless voice. “His wife Mary,
and the three girls, Pauline, Onosa and the
baby, John,” he cast a sidelong glance at the
blackened corpse on the tarpaulin, “is
Mary’s brother. He stayed with them,
too.”

“God!” the Mountie’s face whitened.
“Five of them dead in there . . . and this
Lycheluk with a bullet in his forehead.
This looks like mass murder. Come on,”
he turned to Black, “we'll take a look
around till those embers cool off.”

Everywhere was visible the hand of an
incendiary. Farm house, granary, and stable
had gone up in a welter of flames along
with a team of draught horses and eight
cattle, only one wall of the dwelling and
the thick puncheon floor having survived
the holocaust. Among the charred ruins of
the stable, still thick with the pungent odour
of scorched flesh, were the charred forms
and skeletal ribs of animals burned to death
in their stalls. Others had escaped from the
blazing barn to collapse among nearby
willows.

“Funny,” Day stepped over and exam-
ined the two dead oxen, “they are hardly
singed at all yet both are stone dead.
Couldn’t be the smoke as they both got out
into the open.”

“Bullets!” exclaimed Black grimly and
pointed. A hasty glance showed that, as the
oxen escaped from the barn, they'd been
struck down by the well-aimed bullets of
the mysterious nocturnal marauder.

At the adjoining farm Steve Belek,
brother-in-law of the owner of the des-
ecrated homestead, had escaped with his
life. But while the hand of the pyromaniac
had spared his dwelling it had taken a de-
vastating toll of granary, barns, animals and
even farm machinery. Again escaping
eattle had been shot down with unerring
precision as they fled.

“Good Lord,” exclaimed Day, sickened
at the sight of wanton destruction, “the
beast that pulled this off isn’t a man—he’s a
monster. Wouldn't even give the animals
a chance. Must’ve stood around listening
to their screams as they roasted in the flames

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