Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 4 (1926-10).djvu/39

 "and that was but a ruse to feel her pulse," he continued. "Parbleu, my friend, her heart did race like the engine of a moteur! Not with emotion for me—never think it, for I did talk to her like a father or an uncle, well, perhaps more like a cousin—but because it is of an abnormal quickness. Had I a stethoscope with me I could have told more, but as it is I would wager a hundred dollars that she suffers a chronic myocarditis, and the prognosis of that ailment is always grave, my friend. Think you a moment—what would happen if that young girl with a defective heart should see what she took to be the face of the great god Pan peering at her from the leaves, as the lady we first saw declared she did? Remember, these children believe in the deities of old, my friend."

"By George!" I sat bolt upright. "Do you mean—you don't mean that"

"No, my friend, as yet I mean nothing," he replied evenly, "but it would be well if we emulated the cat, and slept with one eye and both ears open this night. Perhaps"—he shrugged his shoulders impatiently—"who knows what we may see in this house where the dead gods are worshiped with song and the dance?"

pavement is a poor substitute for a bed, even when the sleeper is thoroughly fatigued from a long day's tramp, and I slept fitfully, troubled by all manner of unpleasant dreams. The forms of lithe, classically draped young girls dancing about a fire-filled urn alternated with visions of goat-legged, grinning satyrs in my sleep as I rolled from side to side on my hard bed; but the sudden peal of devilish laughter, quavering sardonically, almost like the bleating of a goat, was the figment of no dream. I sat suddenly up, wide-awake, as a feminine scream, keen-edged with the terror of death, rent the tomblike stillness of the early morning, and ten white-draped forms came rushing in the disorder of abject fright into the room about us.

Torches were being lighted, one from another, and we beheld the girls, their tresses unloosed from the classic fillets which customarily bound them, their robes hastily adjusted, huddled fearfully in a circle about the glowing urn, while outside, in the moonless night, the echo of that fearful scream seemed wandering blindly among the evergreens.

"Professor, Professor!" one of the girls cried, wringing her hands in an agony of apprehension. "Professor, where are you? Chloe's missing, Professor!"

"Eh, what is it that you say?" de Grandin demanded, springing up and gazing questioningly about him. "What is this? One of your number missing? And the professor, too? Parbleu; me, I shall investigate this! Do you attend the young ladies, Friend Trowbridge. I, Jules de Grandin, shall try conclusions with whatever god or devil accosts the missing one!"

"Wait a minute," I cautioned. "The professor will be here in a moment. You can't go out there now; you haven't any gun."

"Ha, have I not?" he replied sarcastically, drawing the heavy, blue-steel pistol from his jacket pocket. "Friend Trowbridge, there are entirely too many people of ill repute who desire nothing more than the death of Jules de Grandin to make it safe for me to be without a weapon at any time. Me, I go to investigate."

"Never mind, sir," the smooth, oily voice of Professor Judson sounded from the door at the rear of the room as he marched with short-legged dignity toward the altar. "Everything is all right, I assure you.