Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/36



ITH intently narrowed eyes, lips pursed in concentration, Jules de Grandin stood enveloped in a gayly flowered apron while he measured out the olive oil as an apothecary might decant a precious drug. In the casserole before him lay the lobster meat, the shredded bass, the oysters, the crab-meat and the eel. Across the stove from him Nora McGinnis, my household factotum and the finest cook in northern Jersey, gazed at him like a nun breathless with adoration.

"Mon Dieu," he whispered reverently, "one little drop too much and he is ruined, a single drop too few and he is simply spoiled! Observe me, ma petite, see how I drop l'essence de l'olive"

The door-bell's clangor broke the silence like a raucous laugh occurring at a funeral service. Nora jumped a full six inches, the olive oil ran trickling from the cruet, splashing on the prepared sea-food in the sauce-pan. Small Frenchman and big Irishwoman exchanged a look of consternation, a look such as the Lord Chancellor might give the Lord Chief Justice if at the moment of anointment the Archbishop were to pour the ampulla's entire contents on the unsuspecting head of Britain's new-crowned king.

The bouillabaisse was ruined! "Bring him here!" bade Jules de Grandin in a choking voice. "Bring the vile miscreant here, and I shall cut his black heart out; I shall pull his so vile nose! I shall"

"Indade an' ye'll not," protested Nora. Tis meself as'll take me hand off'n th' side of 'is face "

"I'd better leave you with your sorrow," I broke in as I tiptoed toward the door. "It's probably a patient, and I can't afford to have you commit mayhem on my customers."

"Doctor de Grandin?" asked the young man at the door. "I've a letter to you from"

"Come into the study," I invited. "Doctor de Grandin's occupied right now, but he'll see you in a minute."

The visitor was tall and lean, not thin, but trained down to bone and muscle, and his face possessed that brownish tinge which tells of residence in the tropics. His big nose, high cheekbones and sandy hair, together with his smartly clipped mustache, would have labeled him a Briton, even had he lacked the careless nonchalance of dress and Oxford accent which completed his ensemble.

"Jolly good of Sergeant Costello to give me a chit to you," he told de Grandin as the little Frenchman came into the study and eyed him with cold hatred. "I'm sure I don't know where I could have looked for help if he'd not thought of you."

De Grandin's frigid manner showed no sign of thawing. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Capitaine—or is it lieutenant?" he asked.

The caller gave a start. "You know me?" he demanded.

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