Page:Weird Tales Volume 24 Number 06 (1934-12).djvu/68

 for the first time since I have been here, a thing happened that frightened me. And I am sure it would have alarmed anybody.

I was strolling about in the twilight, when all of a sudden a frightful scream burst out from somewhere. I thought I saw Velitcho run out of the lodge and dash into the thicket.

When I reached the lodge, I saw Ossip standing with his eyes on the darkening jungle. When I asked him what had happened, he said that Velitcho had been in pursuit of a curlew. The next day Velitcho brought me one that he had killed.

It was a strange little creature with an immense beak as long as a dagger. But why had they made such a fuss over this poor little bird?

I laughed as I felt of its ash-colored plumage, but I knew my laugh rang false, and I haven't recovered from the shock yet.

am not as well as I ought to be, although I am eating like a wolf and Ossip is outdoing himself. In the morning, there is still a strange sort of torpor over me, and I can hardly drag myself out of bed, even when the sun beats on the window and I can hear the cracking of Velitcho's gun and the rattling of Ossip's pots and pans.

I have begun to notice a dull pain behind my left ear. When I look closely in the mirror, I can see a little wound back there, and the flesh is red all around it. It is scarcely more than a scratch, but it hurts me a good deal

Today, as I was beating the bush in the hope of scaring up a pigeon or a woodcock, I saw something move in the branches near me. It was a splendid cock pheasant, thrusting his delicate head out between two twigs. It was a wonderful chance. I fired, and the wounded bird struggled away with one wing drooping.

I rushed excitedly after him, and a long pursuit began. All of a sudden I stopped and let my prey escape me. I had heard someone. It was a hoarse, plaintive voice, speaking in a foreign tongue, words that sounded infinitely sad and almost like an entreaty.

I looked out from my bushes, and behind a massive wall of cypress and spruce I saw the outlines of a gloomy building. It was the tomb of the Duchess.

I was on forbidden ground.

Velitcho had given me a warning I was not likely to forget. I got out of there in a hurry, just in time to see this same Velitcho emerge from the wood, bare-headed and pale as death.

When I glanced at him in the evening, I noticed a long livid scar across his right cheek. It seemed that he was trying hard to keep me from seeing it.

nearly midnight. My two companions are throwing dice. All of a sudden my heart stops beating. Right beside the house, only a few steps away, I hear a curlew cry.

What a frightful noise the thing makes! It sounds as if the whole Saint-Guitton cemetery screamed in terror.

Velitcho has frozen into a statue, the leather dice box in his fingers. Ossip, with a muffled cry, runs to the dish in which the chur is heating. He fairly pushes the cup into my hands, and I can see that his hands are trembling.

terrible I feel this morning! The red swollen wound behind my ear is larger. In the center, it is bleeding a little.

I'm sick—I'm sick.