Page:Weird Tales Volume 23 Issue 5 (1934 05).djvu/105

 "But what have I done to you? Wh-what have I——"

"Silence now!" commanded Smith. "I will explain a little more in detail why you are here—though deep in your cowardly heart you know, well enough. You never had the nerve for the jungle. I wanted to help you, naturally, so I took over those dangerous trips which were really your job. My kid brother could not travel with me, of course. I thought—as any white man would naturally think—that the very least you could do in return would be to take extra care that nothing happened to crippled little Dick, while I was chancing my life for you.

"Instead of that you left him here by himself——"

"My Indies were in revolt!" cried Landrigan wildly.

"In revolt—because you were too yellow to refuse them rum," gritted Smith. "Yes, that is the whole truth. All—except that when they ran amok, you fled for the protection of the penal colony, and did not even try to protect my brother.

"I only found out these details long afterward. And right then I swore that sometime you would be paid, in a coin you could understand. Now is the time of payment. Prepare yourself, coward!"

Up swung the bright machete in the moonlight. Up—and back. Ready for the swift, powerful beheading stroke!

Inarticulate horror, choked screams burst from the throat of the manager. No use now to scream!

The stroke started. It came, swift as light.

Through the forest sounded the mournful bellow of the slashed bamboo, then the gathering crash as the top of the stalk fell away. Landrigan knew no more.

minutes later he came to limp, sweating consciousness. Bonds severed, he lay at the foot of the bamboo stump. It took him one whole minute of staring, aimless incomprehension, before memory returned and brought him completely from his faint, and to his feet with a raucous shriek of realization.

The stroke had missed his throat!

He was free. He stared, stupid. There was the bamboo stump. He felt his own head, and gaped to know it was still on his shoulders.

Something had happened to his long, chestnut hair. The waved tuft which had been looped to the bamboo seemed to be missing. There was a tender spot of scalp, moist with blood, at the crown of his head. The keen blade had cut that close.

Yes, Smith had swung at him—and missed!

But where was Smith?

Flinching at a shadow among the bamboos, staring wildly at a sudden, unreasoning fear that the man might return to finish his job, Landrigan crouched back. Small, choked, animal-like noises of terror came from his throat. His shoulders touched the bamboo stump.

With a shriek he leapt away from the horrid thing. Then he turned and sped as fast as his legs would carry him, in the direction of the shando.

He was gibbering, out of his mind with sheer terror, when Natheshire and Bisbee Alden met him. They seized him by the arms, shook him, and made him return with them to the inn. There they poured French brandy down his throat, and tried to bring him to himself.

It was little use. Even with a half-pint of the strong liquor inside him, Landrigan still moaned, and shook from head to foot as though with a seizure of the dengue fever. He had said nothing