Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 4 (1926-04).djvu/69

500 Let us leave this sad house to its sorrow. Tomorrow, or the next, day, perhaps, you will have more of these so mysterious cases, and we can study them together. Meanwhile, let us leave what we can not help."

The three of us, Johnston, de Grandin and I, were about to pass from the house when the Frenchman paused, gazing intently at a life-sized half-length portrait in oils hanging on the hall wall. "Monsieur Drigo," he asked, "forgive my unseemly curiosity, but that gentleman, who was he?"

Something like terror appeared in the othe'’s face as he answered, "My grandfather, sir."

"Ah, but Monsieur," de Grandin objected, "that gentleman, he wears the British uniform, is it not so?"

"Yes," Drigo replied. "My mother's father was a British officer, her mother was a Portuguese lady."

"Thank you," de Grandin replied with a bow as he followed me through the front door.

buried Ramalha Drigo in the little graveyard of the Catholic chapel the following day. It was a dreary ceremony, no one but the old priest, the Drigo family, de Grandin and I were in attendance, and the wailing March wind seemed echoing our own somber thoughts as it soughed through the branches of the leafless Lombardy poplars.

"It is old, that cemetery?" de Grandin hazarded as we drove from the church to my house following the brief committal service.

"Very old," I assented. "St. Benedict's is one of the earliest Roman Catholic parishes in New Jersey, and the cemetery is one of the few in this neighborhood dating back to Colonial days."

"And have you noticed any strange colored mem in, the neighborhood lately?" he asked irrelevantly.

"Strange colored men?" I echoed. "What in the world are you driving at, de Grandin? First you ask me if the cemetery is old, then you go off at a tangent, and want to know if there are any strange negroes in the neighborhood. You"

"Tell me, my friend," he interrupted, "how did the poor dead lady spend her time? Did she walk much in the country, or go from home much in the night?"

"For heaven's sake!" I looked at him in wonderment, and almost ran the car into the roadside ditch. "Have you lost your senses completely, or are you trying to see how foolish you can be? I never heard such rambling questions!"

"Nor have you ever heard that the longest way round is usually the shortest way home, apparently," he added. "Believe me, my friend, I do not ask aimless questions. But no, that is not my method. Come, if you will set me down I shall walk through the village and attempt to collect some information. My regards to your amiable cook, if you please, and request that she will prepare some of her so excellent apple pie for dinner. I shall be home by meal time, never fear."

as good as his word. It lacked twenty minutes of the dinner hour when he hurried into the house, his cheeks reddened from brisk walking in the chilly March air. But something in his mannor, his nervously quick movements, his air of suppressed excitement, told rao he was on the track of some fresh mystery.

"Well, what is it?" I asked as we adjourned to the library after dinner. "Have you heard anything of the strange colored men you were so anxious about this afternoon?" I could not forbear a malicious grin as I reminded him of his senseless question.

"But of course," he returned evenly as he lighted a French cigarette