Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/53

Rh have found the others fastened; so they determined to send their pet before them to prepare the way. He was savage, that one, but so am I, by blue! Come, let us tell our host and hostess of our visitor."

next day was a busy one. Sheriff's deputies and coroner's assistants came in almost ceaseless streams, questioning endlessly, making notes of everything, surveying the thicket where Appleby was killed and the kitchen where old Annie met her fate. At last the dreary routine ended, the mortician took away the bodies, and the Pembertons faced us solemn-eyed across the dinner table.

"I'm for chucking the whole rotten business," our host declared. "They've got two of us"

"And we have one of them," supplied de Grandin. "Anon we shall have"

"We're cutting out of here tomorrow," broke in Pemberton. "I'll go to selling cotton in the city, managing estates or clerking in a shop before I'll subject Avis to this peril one more day."

"C'est enfantillage!" declared de Grandin. "When success is almost in your hand you would retreat? Fi donc, Monsieur!"

"Fi donc or otherwise, we're going in the morning," Pemberton replied determinedly.

"Very well, let it be as you desire. Meantime, have you still the urge to dance, Madame?"

Avis Pemberton glanced up from her teacup with something like a guilty look. "More than ever," she returned so low that we could scarcely catch her words.

"Trés bien. Since this will be our last night in the house, permit that we enjoy your artistry."

Her preparations were made quickly. We cleared a space in the big drawing-room, rolling back the rugs to bare the polished umber tiles of which the floor was made. Upon a chair she set a small hand-gramophone, needle ready poised, then hurried to her room to don her costume.

"Ecoutez, s'il vous plaît," de Grandin begged, tiptoeing from the drawing-room, returning in a moment with the water-filled beer bottle which he had brought from the village, the kukri knife with which he killed the hyena, and a pair of automatic pistols. One of these he pressed on me, the other on our host. "Have watchfulness, my friends," he bade in a low whisper. "When the music for the dance commences it is likely to attract an uninvited audience. Should anyone appear at either window, I beg you to shoot first and make inquiries afterward."

"Hadn't we better close the blinds?" I asked. "Because if we're likely to be watched"

"Mais non," he negatived. "See, there is no light here save that the central lamp casts down, and that will shine directly on Madame. We shall be in shadow, but anyone who seeks to peer in through the window will be visible against the moonlight. You comprehend?"

"I'd like to have a final go at 'em," our host replied. "Even if I got only one, it'd help to even things for Appleby and Annie."

"I quite agree," de Grandin nodded. "Now—s-s-sh; silence. Madame comes!"

The chiming clink of ankle bells announced her advent, and as she crossed the threshold with a slow, sensuous walk, hips rolling, feet flat to floor, one set directly before the other, I leant forward in amazement. Never had I thought that change of costume could so change a personality. Yet there it was. In tweeds and Shetlands Avis Pemberton was British as a sunrise over Surrey, or a Christmas pageant Columbine; this sleekly