Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/43

Rh scum like that any more than you need even numbers when you set the beagles on a flock of rabbits!"

"À merveille!" de Grandin cried. "I knew that I should win my bet. Before you told us of your uncle's actions you recall I made a wager with myself? Bien. I bet me that he would not let that lot of monkey-faces commit murder. Très bon. Jules de Grandin, pay me what you owe!" Solemnly he extracted a dollar from his trouser pocket, passed it from his right hand to his left, and stowed it in his waistcoat. "And now—the curse?" he prompted.

"Quite so, the curse. They took Sarastai from the funeral pyre and carried her to safety at the station, but before they went a guru put a curse on all of them. None should die in bed, he swore. Moreover, none of them should ever take inheritance of land or goods till kinsman had shed kinsman's blood upon the land to be inherited.

"And the maledictions seemed to work," he ended gloomily. "My Uncle Albert married Sarastai shortly after he had rescued her, and though she was as beautiful as any English girl, he found that he was ostracized, and had to give up his commission. English folk were no more cordial when he brought his 'tar-brush' bride back home to Surrey. So he emigrated to the States, fought the full four years of your great Civil War, and founded what has since become one of the largest fortunes in New Jersey. Still, see the toll the thing has taken. Not one of Albert Pemberton's descendants has long enjoyed the estate which he built, and death by fire has come to all his heirs. Looks as if I'm next in line."

De Grandin looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Death by fire, Monsieur?"

"Quite. Foxcroft's been burned down eight times, and every time it burned one or more of Albert Pemberton's descendants died. The first fire killed old Albert and his wife; the second took his eldest son, and"

"One would think rebuilding with materials impervious to fire would have occurred to them"

Our visitor's short laugh was far from mirthful. "It did, sir. In 1900 Robert Pemberton rebuilt Foxcroft of stone, with cement walls and floors. He was sitting in his libr'y alone at night when the curse took him. No fire was burning on the hearth, for it was early summer, but somehow the hearth-rug got afire and the flames spread to the armchair where he dozed. They found him, burned almost to a crisp, next morning. Cyril Pemberton, from whom I take the estate, died in his motorcar three months ago. The thing caught fire just as he drove in the garage, and he fried like an eel before he could so much as turn the handle of the door.

"See here, Doctor de Grandin, you've just got to help me. When little Jim was born I resigned from the army so I could be with Avis and the kid. I bought a little farm in Hampshire and had settled down to be a country gentleman of sorts when Cyril died and news of this inheritance came. I sold the farm off at a loss to raise funds to come here. If I fail to meet the will's provisions and complete the twelve months' residence I'm ruined, utterly. You see the fix I'm in?"

"Completely," Jules de Grandin nodded. "Is there any other of your family who could claim this estate?"

"H'm. Yes, there is. I've a distant cousin named John Ritter who might be next in line. We were at Harrow together. Jolly rotten chap he was, too. Sent down from Oxford when they caught him cheatin' in a game o' cards, fired out o' the Indian Civil Administration for a lack of recognition of meum