Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/51

194 of my question, as my gaze followed the line of his pointing

A young woman in evening dress, tear-stains on her cheeks and stark, abject terror in her eyes, was running stumblingly toward us.

"Lieber Gott!" she cried in a horrified whisper, shrill and thin-edged as a scream, then struggled for breath in a paroxysm of sobs and glanced frightenedly behind her. "Ach, lieber Himmel!"

"Favoris d'un rat," murmured de Grandin wonderingly, "a woman of the boche?

"Enschuldige mich, Fraulein," he began, making a wry face, as though the German words were quinine on his tongue, "bitte"

The result of his salutation was as forceful as it was unexpected. Throwing her hands before her eyes, as though to shut out a vision too terrible for mortal sight, the girl uttered a terrified, despairing shriek, swerved sharply away and dashed past him with a bound like that of a rabbit startled by a hound. Half a dozen fear-spurred steps farther down the path her knees seemed to melt under her, she wavered uncertainly a moment, then collapsed to the pavement with a pitiful little moan, huddled in a lovely heap of disordered dark hair and disarranged costume, shuddered tremblingly, then lay still.

"Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle"—de Grandin flung the girl's native tongue aside—"you seem in trouble. Is there anything ?" He felt her wrists for a feebly fluttering pulse, then laid a tentative hand on her breast. "Morbleu, Trowbridge, my friend," he exclaimed, "she has fainted unconscious! Assist me, we must take her home for treatment. I think"

"Exguse me, zur," a thick-toned voice cut through his words as a big young man in dinner clothes emerged from behind a clump of shrubs with the suddenness of a Jack-in-the-box popping from its case, "exguse me, zur, but I know the young lady, und I zhall be ver-ee gladt her to dake home if you will so kind be as to call me a cab. I"

"Ha, do you say so?" The little Frenchman dropped the swooning girl's wrist and bounded to his feet, glaring up into the other's face with a fierce, unwinking stare. "Perhaps, then, Monsieur, you can tell us why Mademoiselle is running through the park at this hour of night, and why she becomes unconscious on our hands. N'est-ce-pas?"

The stranger drew himself up with an air of sudden hauteur. "I am not obliged to you exblanations make," he began. "I dell you I know the young lady, und vill"

"Nom d'un chat, this is too much!" de Grandin blazed. "I make no doubt you know her entirely too well for her comfort, Monsieur, and that you should demand that we turn her over to you — parbleu, it is the insult to our intelligence; it is "

"Look out, de Grandin!" I cried, springing forward to intercept the sudden thrust the other aimed at my friend’s face with a queer-looking, shining instrument. My move was split-second too late, but my warning shout came in time. Even as I called, the little Frenchman wrenched himself back as though preparing to turn a reversed handspring, both his feet flew upward, and his assailant collapsed to the grass with an agonized grunt as de Grandin’s right heel caught him a devastating blow left in the solar plexus.

"Trowbridge, mon vieux," he remarked matter-of-factly as he regarded his fallen foeman, "behold the advantage of la savate. At hand-grips I should have been as nothing against this miscreant. In the foot-boxing"—he paused, and his little round eyes shone with a momentary