Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/46

696 several passengers gathered in a knot about the seat I had just vacated.

"This is hideux, my friend!" the little Frenchman whispered. "Observe him, if you please."

I looked, and turned sick at the sight. The big countryman who had shared the seat with me was slumped down on the green-plush covered bench, his throat so deeply gashed the head sagged horribly upon one shoulder. A spate of blood from a severed jugular smeared clothing, seat and floor. The window beside which I'd sat was smashed to slivers, and bits of broken glass lay all around.

"How—what" I stammered, and for answer Jules de Grandin pointed to the floor. Midway in the aisle lay something that gleamed dully, the counterpart of the lead-weighted blade which had been thrown at Pemberton as he left my house the night before.

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "if I hadn't gone for water"

"Mais oui," de Grandin interrupted. "For the first time in a long and useful life I find that I can say a word for water as a beverage. Undoubtlessly that knife was meant for you, my friend."

"But why?"

"Are you not a friend of Monsieur Pemberton's?"

"Of course, but"

"No buts, Friend Trowbridge. Consider. There were two of those assassins at your house last night; at least I judge so from the noise they made in flight. You stood directly in the light from the hall lamp when we bid our guest goodnight; they must have made a note of your appearance. Apparently we have been under surveillance since then, and it is highly probable they heard us say that we would visit him today. Voilà."

We descended from the car and walked along the track. "Regardez-vous!" he ordered as we reached the window where I had been seated.

Upon the car-side was the crude outline of a grinning skull drawn in white crayon.

"Good Lord—those brown men at the station!" I jerked out. "They must have drawn this—it seemed to me they were not Negroes"

"But no. But yes!" he nodded in agreement. "Indubitably they were not Africans, but Burmans. And very bad ones, too. This skull is the official signet of the goddess Kali, patron deity of thags, and the cult of thaggee makes its headquarters in Burma. It is useless to attempt to apprehend the thrower of the knife. By now he has had time to run half-way to Burma. But it behooves us to be careful how we step. We know not where to look for it, or when the blow will fall, but deadly peril walks with us from this time on. I do not think this task which we have undertaken is a very healthy one, my friend."

in shabby Oxford bags and a khaki shooting-coat, Pemberton was waiting for us at the little railway station.

"Cheerio!" he greeted as we joined him. "All quiet on the jolly old Potomac, what?"

"Decidedly," de Grandin answered, then told him of the tragedy.

"By Jove!" our host exclaimed; "I'm shot if I don't feel like cutting the whole rotten business. Taking chances is all right for me, just part of the game, but to lug my wife into this hornets' nest" he cranked the antiquated flivver standing by the platform, and we drove in moody silence through the groves of black-boughed, whispering pines that edged the roadway.

British genius for getting order out of chaos was evident as we arrived at Fox-