Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 01.djvu/66

. It was only that I went for a walk, too, saw the pair of you ahead, and hurried to catch up. I couldn't help but hear the final words you were saying, and I couldn't help but warn you."

We relaxed, but Judge Pursuivant repeated "Warn?" in a tone deeply frigid.

"May I amplify? First of all, Varduk certainly does not intend to harm either of you. Second, he isn't the sort of man to be crossed in anything."

"I suppose not," I rejoined, trying to be casual. "You must be pretty sure, Davidson, of his capabilities and character."

He nodded. "We've been together since college."

Pursuivant leaned on his stick and produced his well-seasoned briar pipe. "It's comforting to hear you say that. I mean, that Mr. Varduk was once a college boy. I was beginning to wonder if he wasn't thousands of years old."

Davidson shook his head slowly. "See here, why don't we sit down on the bank and talk? Maybe I'll tell you a story."

"Very good," agreed Pursuivant, and sat down. I did likewise, and we both gazed expectantly at Davidson. He remained standing, with hands in pockets, until Pursuivant had kindled his pipe and I my cigarette. Then:

"I'm not trying to frighten you, and I won't give away any real secrets about my employer. It's just that you may understand better after you learn how I met him.

"It was more than ten years ago. Varduk came to Revere College as a freshman when I was a junior. He was much the same then as he is now—slender, quiet, self-contained, enigmatic. I got to know him better than anyone in school, and I can't say truly that I know him, not even now.

"Revere, in case you never heard of the place, is a small school with a big reputation for grounding its students hock-deep in the classics."

Pursuivant nodded and emitted a cloud of smoke. "I knew your Professor Dahlberg of Revere," he interjected. "He's one of the great minds of the age on Greek literature and history."

Davidson continued: "The buildings at Revere are old and, you might say, swaddled in the ivy planted by a hundred graduating classes. The traditions are consistently mellow, and none of the faculty members come in for much respect until they are past seventy. Yet the students are very much like any others, when class is over. In my day, at least, we gave more of a hoot for one touchdown than for seven thousand odes of Horace."

He smiled a little, as though in mild relish of memories he had evoked within himself.

"The football team wasn't very good, but it wasn't very bad, either. It meant something to be on the first team, and I turned out to be a fairish tackle. At the start of my junior year, the year I'm talking about, a man by the name of Schaefer was captain—a good fullback though not brilliant, and the recognized leader of the campus.

"Varduk didn't go in for athletics, or for anything else except a good stiff course of study, mostly in the humanities. He took a room at the end of the hall on the third floor of the men's dormitory, and kept to himself. You know how a college dorm loves that, you men. Six days after the term started, the Yellow Dogs had him on their list."

"Who were the Yellow Dogs?" I asked.

"Oh, there's a bunch like it in every school. Spiritual descendants of the Mohocks that flourished in Queen Anne's reign; rough and rowdy undergraduates, out for Halloween pranks every night.