Page:Weird Tales volume 24 number 03.djvu/95

366 several discharged soldiers and sailors who had been disabled in the war. But they all seemed too intelligent for my purpose—I simply dared not risk having a man on the premises who might so much as guess at the nature of the work on which I was employed. Things were at a deadlock when Fate brought to my door the very man I needed.

"No doubt you will call to mind how severe the weather was in the winter of '16-'17. It was by far the worst winter in the war. The ponds and wells were frozen solid, and the very earth seemed blighted with the intense cold. Toward evening, on one of the bitterest days, I was working in the laboratory when there came a light, timid tap on the front door. The sound was so unusual in that desolate region that for a moment I attributed it to a fall of half-melted snow from the roof; but presently there came another tap, this time accompanied by a low, half-articulate moan. I caught up the nearest weapon handy—which happened to be a short iron bar which I had been using as a poker for my furnace—and made my way to the door. Outside was a man dressed in a ragged and mud-plastered khaki uniform. The badges and buttons had been roughly torn off, so that the tunic was open, showing the gray shirt beneath. He wore no cap, and his hands and face were blue with the cold.

"'Hullo!' I said, staring at him. "He was leaning against the door-post, as though for support, and at the sound of my voice he raised two deeply sunken, lack-luster eyes to mine.

"'Hullo, matey,' he responded weakly. "'What are you doing here?' I demanded. 'You'll catch your death of cold if you go about half dressed in this weather.' "'I'm half dead already, matey;' and as though to prove his words, he staggered forward and would have fallen if I had not caught him in time.

"When I put my arms round him I got a shock. The man was nothing but skin and bone, and when I lifted him he weighed no heavier than a large child. He was starved—not 'starved with the cold,' as they say hereabouts, but literally starved with hunger. I got him into the living-room, pulled him round with a stiff glass of brandy, then ransacked the larder and watched him eat. Eat!—I thought he would never stop eating, and as he wolfed the platefuls I took a good look at him.

age could not have been more than eighteen or twenty, but he was tall and big-made and when in his usual health he must have been unusually strong. His hair was fair and inclined to be curly, and I judged by its length that some considerable time had elapsed since it had last received the attentions of a military barber. His features were prominent, but not unpleasing—indeed, had it not been for the curious expression in his eyes he might have been considered handsome. I find it difficult to convey that expression in words. It was at once wary, alert, shifting, and restless. But the only way in which I can make my meaning clear is to describe it as an animal look—not that which one sees in the eyes of an intelligent dog, or even a cat, or any domesticated animal; rather was it the look of instinctive hostility and distrust which one may see in the eyes of a wild beast, untamed and untamable, as it roams its native wilds. I took but little heed of this strange trait at the time, naturally attributing it to the hardships which he had obviously undergone. Later on I had good reason to recall it to mind.

"When he had cleared his plate for