Page:Strange Tales Volume 02 Number 03 (1932-10).djvu/20

 beyond. But listen, mister." He seized me by the arm as I was about to stride down the weed-grown road. "Ye won't never come back. None of them done, who opened the graves in which them mummies lay. Only Mr. Farrant, and that was because he was a healer. Mr. Burke and Mr. Watrous, and that English lord whose name I fergit—all of them died, because of the curse that was put upon anyone opening them dead princes' and princesses' graves.

"Folks think we don't know down to Tap's Point, but we seen it all in the Sunday newspapers, and we ain't minded to have them dead mummies prowling round our homes and killing our children. I'm warning you, mister, the first person who's killed on Pequod Island, there's going to be a reckoning. Excepting you. If you want to commit suicide, you're welcome to it. But keep them mummies out of our homes."

He leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. "When you see them hawks, look out for trouble," he whispered. "The hounds knows, and we knows. You'd better not have come."

"You talk like a madman," I retorted. It irked me to think that the silly legend of a curse, fostered by the admittedly strange deaths of so many members of the expedition, had become known among these clowns. But the old man only went on chewing tobacco and grinning at me derisively; and I turned from him and, with my suitcase in my hand, went striding down the track of a road that ran toward Tap's Point.

EQUOD ISLAND was more picturesque than I had supposed from the sight I had obtained of it from the flat shore opposite. In a few minutes I was passing between stretches of juniper and stunted cypress. Then I saw, far back through the trees, a great building, a cluster of buildings, which I knew must be Doctor Coyne's private sanitarium. There was an open space with tennis nets, and men were playing. Others were strolling in the grounds. Everything was open and unfenced—why shouldn't it be, with the Bay on one side, and that stretch of muddy water on the other, and the bloodhounds.

I passed the grounds of the sanitarium and came to a straggling village beside the water, where a few fishing boats, drawn up, proclaimed the nature of the livelihood of the occupants. Two or three men, slouching about, stared at me sullenly, and a woman glared defiantly from an open doorway, and muttered something as I went by. Another clutched a small child to her, as if I were some kidnaper.

I passed the clowns, head erect, carrying my suit-case, I was still filled with indignation at the monstrous stories in circulation, all due to the fact that Neil Farrant had managed to bring back, in some unauthorized way, three or four of the mummy cases from the tomb of the kings that had recently been opened in Upper Egypt. And from what I remembered of Neil, I didn't for a moment suppose that he placed any stock in the absurd stories of a curse.

I had never known a more hard-headed fellow than my classmate. In fact, I had wondered a good deal at the guarded nature of his letter, and his remarks about certain experiments.

Well, the village was past me, and Tap's Point lay behind. The thread of foul water had broadened into a bay, on which three or four of the fishing boats were engaged in hauling in their booty. The sun was quite low in the west. The scene had suddenly become wild