Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/9



LAN, that man has followed us here! Look!"

Alan Buell glanced guardedly in the direction indicated by the frightened blue eyes of his dancing partner. He saw two men seated at a table edging the dance floor. The one nearest him did not appear extraordinary—just a plain man-about-town, middle-aged and a bit portly—the kind one meets at every turn in Chicago's places of amusement. The other presented a striking figure. He was tall and broad-shouldered and sat with the erect carriage of a soldier. A black, square-cut beard hid the lower part of his features, accentuating the prominence of his aquiline nose, above which his heavy eyebrows met in a straight line. In his piercing black eyes as they swept the room was the look of one accustomed to command.

Alan's eyes returned to those of his troubled fiancée as the intervening dancers shut the black-bearded man from view, and he smiled slightly.

"I don't know that we can do anything about it, Doris," he said. "This is a free country, you know, and we're in a public café."

Doris Lee pouted prettily.

"I wish you would be serious for just one minute, Alan. You know that man has stared at me across the orchestra pit all season. I haven't been able to enjoy the opera one bit