Page:Knaves of Diamonds.pdf/221

202 pected to see you in the flesh again; but, since you have manifestly resurrected, I don't quite see the point of that mask of yours—at least, not in private life."

"Resurrected! By thunder, sonny, you've hit it in once. Say, did you ever see anything more like a last year's corpse than me?"

He tore the mask from his face as he uttered the last word. The inspector staggered to his feet and dropped back into the chair with a gasp of amazement and a groan of horror mingled in the same breath. What had been Seth Salter's not uncomely face was now a one-eyed, noseless mass of pits and seams and scars too hideous to imagine.

"Ya-as, looks sorter pretty, don't it? Don't seem to think much of it. Waal, p'raps not, 'tain't likely; but if you an' your chaps didn't exactly do it, them as you was kind enough to leave me to out yonder in the kloof did. Yes, sir, that's vultures' work.