Page:Weird Tales Volume 09 Issue 02 (1927-02).djvu/10

 into the avenue when I saw him driving away from the Plaza. He was with some ladies.”

"No doubt,” de Grandin responded dryly. ‘‘Did you notice him particularly?"

"Can’t say that I did, especially,” I answered, "but it seems to me he looked older than the day we met him at Mrs. Norman’s.”

"Yes?” the Frenchman leaned forward eagerly. “Older, do you say? Parbleu, this is of interest; I suspected as much!"

“Why——” I began, but he turned away with an impatient shrug. “Pah!” he exclaimed petulantly. “Friend Trowbridge, I fear Jules de Grandin is a fool, he entertains all sorts of strange notions.”

I had known the little Frenchman long enough to realize that he was as full of moods as a prima donna, but his erratic, unrelated remarks were getting on my nerves. “See here, de Grandin,” I began testily, “what’s all this nonsense——”

The sudden shrill clatter of my office telephone bell cut me short. “Dr. Trowbridge,” an agitated voice asked over the wire, “can you come right over, please? This is Mrs. Norman speaking.”

“Yes, of course,” I answered, reaching for my medicine case; “what is it—who’s ill?”

“It’s—it’s Guy Eckhart, he’s been taken with a fainting fit, and we don’t seem to be able to rouse him.”

“Very well,” I promised, “Dr. de Grandin and I will be right over.

“Come on, de Grandin,” I called as I shoved my hat down over my ears and shrugged into my overcoat, “one of Mrs. Norman’s house guests has been taken ill; I told her we were coming.”

“Mois oui,” he agreed, hurrying into his outdoors clothes.' “Is it a man or a woman, this sick one?”

“It’s a man,” I replied, “Guy Eckhart.”

“A man,” he echoed incredulously. “A man, do you say? No, no, my friend, that is not likely."

“Likely or not,” I rejoined sharply, “Mrs. Norman says he’s been seized with a fainting fit, and I give the lady credit for knowing what she’s talking about.”

“Eh bien,” he drummed nervously on the cushions of the automobile seat, “perhaps Jules de Grandin really is a fool. After all, it is not impossible.”

“It certainly isn’t,” I agreed fervently to myself as I set the car in motion.

Eckhart had recovered consciousness when we arrived, but looked like a man just emerging from a lingering fever. Attempts to get a statement from him met with no response, for he replied slowly, almost incoherently, and seemed to have no idea concerning the cause of his illness.

Mrs. Norman was little more specific. “My son Ferdinand found him lying on the floor of his bath with the shower going and the window wide open, just before dinner,” she explained. “He was totally unconscious, and remained so till just a few minutes ago.”

“Ha, is it so?” de Grandin murmured half heedlessly, as he made a rapid inspection of the patient.

“Friend Trowbridge,” he called me to the window, “what do you make of these objective symptoms: a soft, frequent pulse, a fluttering heart, suffused eyes, a hot, dry skin and a flushed, hectic face?”

“Sounds like an arterial hemorrhage,” I answered promptly, “but there’s been no trace of blood on the boy’s floor, nor any evidence of a stain on his clothing. Sure you’ve checked the signs over?”

“Absolutely,” he replied with a vigorous double nod. Then to the