Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/39

689 cockerel's ruff within its depths, was smoothly parted in the middle and brought down each side her face across the small and low-set ears, framing an oleander-white forehead. Her wide-spaced, large, dark eyes and her full-lipped mouth were exquisite. Her nose was small and straight, with fine-cut nostrils; her chin, inclined to pointedness, was cleft across the middle by a dimple. Brows of almost startling black curved in circumflexes over her fine eyes in the "flying gull" formation so much prized by beauty connoisseurs of the early eighteen hundreds. Pearl-set pendants dangled from her ear-lobes nearly to the creamy shoulders which her low-necked gown exposed. One hand was laid upon her bosom, and the fingers were so fine and tapering that they seemed almost transparent, and were tipped by narrow, pointed nails almost as red as strawberries. She was younger than her husband by some three or four years, and her youthful look was heightened by the half-afraid, half-pleading glance that lay in her dark eyes.

"Que e'est belle; que e'est jeune!" de Grandin breathed. "And it was through her"

Our caller started forward in his chair. "Yes! How'd you guess it?"

I looked at them in wonder. That they understood each other perfectly was obvious, but what it was they were agreed on I could not imagine.

De Grandin chuckled as he noticed my bewilderment. "Tell him, mon ami," he bade the Englishman. "He cannot understand how one so lovely—morbleu, my friend," he turned to me, "I bet myself five francs you do not more than half suspect the lady's nationality!"

"Of course I do," I answered shortly. "She's English. Anyone can see that much. She was Mrs. Pemberton, and"

"Non, non," he answered with a laugh, "that is the beauty of the tropics which we see upon her face. She was—correct me if I err, Monsieur"—he bowed to Pemberton—"she was an Indian lady, and, unless I miss my guess, a high-caste Hindoo, one of those in whom the blood of Alexander's conquering Greeks ran almost undefiled. N'est-ce-pas?"

"Correct!" our visitor agreed. "My great-great-uncle met her just before the Mutiny, in 1856. It was through her that he came here, and through her that the curse began, according to the family legend."

Lights were playing in de Grandin's eyes, little flashes like heat-lightning flickering in a summer sky, as he bent and tapped our caller on the knee with an imperative forefinger. "At the beginning, if you please, Monsieur," he bade. "Start at the beginning and relate the tale. It may help to guide us when we come to formulate our strategy. This Monsieur Albert Pemberton met his lady while he served with the East India Company in the days before the Sepoy Mutiny. How was it that he met her, and where did it occur?"

smiled quizzically as he lighted the cigar the Frenchman proffered. "I have it from his journal," he replied. "They were great diarists, those old boys, and my uncle rated a double first when it came to setting down the happenings of the day with photographic detail. In the fall of '56 he was scouting up Bithoor way with a detail of North Country sowars—mounted troops, you know—henna-bearded, swaggering followers of the Prophet who would cheerfully have slit every Hindoo throat between the Himalayas and the Bay of Bengal. They made temporary camp for tiffin in a patch of wooded land, and the