Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Number 02 (1936-02).djvu/56

 request that you try not to give way to temperament on this occasion. It is a bit annoying and makes so much extra work for my servants."

As a waiter brought the cognac, Zaneen rose to his feet.

"I trust you will enjoy your visit here," he observed as he sidled away.

Jan Breedon drank the cognac at a single gulp and ordered another. He felt better than he had felt for months. The cognac cleared his vision. It gave him new strength. Zaneen's gracious attitude had gone a great deal toward reviving his spirits. Perhaps this was the turning-point in his life. From now on there would be no more ghosts.

After the third cognac he began making plans for the future. He would go back to the sea again. Only on ships had he ever been happy. The sea was in his blood.

A great huge hulk of a man came and sat down opposite him. He looked like a Norwegian, yet there was no trace of foreign accent in his words as he spoke.

"Mind if I join you?" he asked pleasantly.

Jan Breedon liked him at once. The cognac was strong and it changed his entire view of life. Yes, it was good to have a companion to drink with.

"I've just come ashore," the man went on, "from the British freighter Caswell, and I don't know a soul in town. I hate to drink alone."

"Same here," said Jan Breedon. "Join me in a cognac?"

"My favorite drink," agreed the other. "My name is Webster. One of my very distant relatives wrote the dictionary and I can't even read. That's what they call evolution. This morning I deserted my ship because I got sick of smoked fish and corned pork. Might have been able to stomach the feed if occasionally they'd switched to corned fish and smoked pork."

"And what are you going to do now?"

"Oh, from now on," was the airy response, "I'm just going to be a killer."

The casual remark was so great a surprize to Jan Breedon that he dropped his glass and it shattered to pieces on the hardwood floor.

"What?" he gasped.

"Be not disturbed, parson," the other assured him. "I merely mean that from now on I'm going to kill time. I've got quite a nest-egg hidden away, enough money to last for some time; so now I'm simply going to draw heaps of leisure about me and forget the absurdities of this world."

"For a man who cannot read," chuckled Jan Breedon, greatly relieved, "you certainly go in for elegant English."

"That is perhaps due to the family heritage," explained Webster. "It is a direct influence from the third cousin of my grand-uncle. Somehow words like that come natural-like to me, but reading is something else again."

an hour had passed, the two were fast friends. They had reached a maudlin stage, and Jan Breedon was telling the history of his life. But even in his sodden condition he had sense enough not to mention the turmoil he had caused in the Grandon family. At Webster's suggestion, they had gone upstairs to a tiny private room where they could drink like gentlemen. Now they were ordering cognac by the bottle and Jan Breedon had long since forgotten how much he drank. Webster very accommodatingly filled up the glasses as soon as they were empty. Thus it was that Jan Breedon did not notice that his companion was actually drinking almost nothing. When he lifted a glass of cognac to his lips he scarcely sipped it. Nor