Page:Weird Tales Volume 02 Number 2 (1937-02).djvu/85

 "You've proved that much of your story at least," he said. "Now can you remember which direction the girl went after leaving the pool?"

"She disappeared up the little winding path that runs directly under the falls," replied Guy. "Every detail is graven on my memory as though cut there with a chisel. I could not forget her if I wished. It is like a splendid scar that always will remain. Thus was the effect of the golden girl upon me."

Jolly Cauldron was not pleased at Guy's enthusiasm. He sniffed contemptuously but he did not voice his displeasure as he made his way to the tiny path Guy had indicated. He strode along as grim and glum as the most joyless of the old Stoic philosophers.

had not continued far before they came to a clearing, a palm grove of surprizing loveliness. In the center of the grove stood a one-storied house, roughly built with a palm-thatched roof. It was of immense size and there were several outhouses standing near by almost equally as large. On the veranda of the house sat a man as repugnant as Jolly Cauldron. At their approach he looked up lazily. He had evidently been basking in the sun like a big beetle. He laughed shortly as they approached.

"Are you apparitions?" he drawled. "Or do you possess warm blood? At first glance you might be taken for monsters. At second glance you wouldn't be taken at all, not for anything."

He laughed gratingly at his own feeble effort at humor.

It was thus that Jolly Cauldron and Guy Sellers first met Fernay Corday, whose chief distinction in life was that he was the father of Kum-Kum, the golden girl.

Fernay Corday was a veritable gargoyle of a man, a monstrous gargoyle, and yet his ponderous size, far from being a mark of strength, gave the impression of extreme weakness. It suggested an enormous over-inflated balloon filled with noxious gases, likely to collapse at any moment, or a body washed up by the sea. His face was mottled, as blotchy as a piebald cow. There was no underglow of health shining through the skin. His eyes were dull, his nose bulbous and purple. His lower lip sagged as though the muscles had slipped and it was falling away from the decayed stumps of teeth.

Once a prosperous trader, he had succumbed to the witchery of languorous South Sea days. Now he dealt solely in copra, and from that alone he was able to reap far more than sufficient for his immediate requirements. He owned several coral islands outright and had contracts for the entire copra output of several others. Had he cared to exert himself he might have been one of the wealthiest men of the islands, for he was a keen trader and the natives liked him because he had almost become one of them.

Years before, he had married a Marquesan princess whose blood was half French and half Marquesan. Of this union Kum-Kum was born, Kum-Kum the little golden pagan, famed from Apia to Papeete. Fernay Corday himself was of mongrel extraction. He was descended from a long line of restless wanderers who had sailed the seven seas and intermarried so often that traces of any one particular race were obliterated. Therefore it was natural for him to be a rover. It was in the blood. Natural also was it for him to drift to Polynesia.

On land he had ever been a spendthrift, a waster, who squandered every cent he could earn. At sea he was forced to save, forced to accumulate a bit of money even against his will. However, he chafed under the constant restraint of