Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/97

240 "You!" Griswold cried. "At last you!"

"What—what are you talking about?"

"So you don’t know me?"

"I don’t. I never saw you before."

"I know that. But you ought to know who I am."

"Who are you?"

Griswold laughed—the sound sardonic, horrible. Pluto, the wolf-dog, out there on the Gorgon, was watching; but (as regards things like this meeting and what followed) wolfdogs, like dead men, can tell no tales. But (what Griswold never dreamed) fairies can. And this was the Isle of the Fairy Morgana.

"Who am I?" Griswold said. "Can't you guess?"

"No."

"Well, well! He can't guess. Handsome Ferdy Chantrell, that devil with the ladies—so he can't guess who I am! Well, well! But why should I be surprized at that? For, of course, I am not the only one who has a score to settle with Handsome Ferdy, and he's wondering which one it can be. Of course! I might have known that. She wasn't the only one."

"She?" exclaimed Ferdinand Chantrell. "Whom do you mean?"

"See there, you hovering angels!" cried Griswold. "He admits it. He doesn't know whom I mean. If there had been only one, he wouldn't be puzzled the least; he would know who I am."

"Can't you tell me?"

"Yes!" half screamed Griswold. "I can tell you, all right! Her name was Amanda!"

Chantrell recoiled a step, and his haggard face went pale as ashes.

"You—you!"

"Yes! It is I—I! It is Cuthbert Griswold!"

"I thought that you were dead." Griswold laughed.

"So that's your explanation? And, I suppose, that isn't the only thing that you thought. But you see that I am not dead, that I am very much alive. And at last I've got you—got you right where I want you. There is no one here to see, and Flang will hold its secret well. Why, it couldn't have been better if I had had the ordering of it all myself. It is almost too good to be true!"

Chantrell's look became hard, defiant.

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? That I am going to kill you," Griswold told him, "kill you and feed you to the fishes. Before I am done with you, Handsome Ferdy, you will wish that you had gone down with that schooner—wish to God that you had never been born."

"So you are going to murder me?"

"Call it what you like. No!" Griswold cried, whipping out a revolver. "Don't edge an inch nearer, or I'll drill you through this very instant. I intend to let you live a while, but that, of course, is contingent upon your good behavior."

"I am indeed grateful," said Chantrell, bowing with mock gravity.

Cuthbert Griswold stared, and then he laughed.

"You don't know what you are grateful for!"

"You!" exclaimed the other. "You! Millions of men—this island in the sea—and it had to be you that came!"

"Well, Handsome Ferdy, they say that truth is stranger than any fiction, you know. And who can guess what Nemesis may do? Handsome Ferdy! Well, well, and at last he stands before me. You know, I often wondered what you were like. What did Amanda see so wonderful in you, anyway? Well, well."

And he eyed Chantrell down and up and from this side and from that