Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/46

556 said abruptly, as soon as we'd shaken hands. 'I've the Devil's own wine-jug in there, and I want to show it to you.' He grasped my arm and actually tried to pull me along.

"I'd got a whiff of his breath as he greeted me, and it was enough to knock a man down. 'What's the matter with you?' I said, as I followed him into the living-room. 'You smell like a two-legged brewery. You're drunk.'

"He looked me squarely in the eye, and I saw that, though his face was flushed and his eyes were bloodshot, he was actually in complete command of his faculties. The liquor he had drunk—and obviously he had been drinking for days—had merely bolstered him up. Of course, I had no way of knowing, then, why his nerves were so utterly shattered.

Drunk?' he repeated. 'Doc, I was never soberer in my life. And I've lapped up a quart of whisky a day ever since we left Bagdad. Sit down.'

"I sat down on a newly polished chair. Fothergill stood before the fireplace looking at me. He seemed too nervous to relax.

But why?' I asked, perplexed. 'You never were a boozer'

"He kicked out his right foot savagely. 'That'—and he swore a stream of indigo, sulphurous profanity—'that   thing!'

followed his unorthodox gesture. He'd always had a lot of outlandish bric-à-brac cluttering up his living-room; I suppose that is why I'd missed noticing the object directly I came into the room. I looked at it now.

"It was a crude, vase-shaped vessel, of exceedingly primitive workmanship and made, I assumed from its appearance, of unglazed fire-baked clay. It stood about eighteen inches high, and its greatest circumference was at the throat; it was, in fact, just a jug—a plain, ordinary, though certainly very ancient receptacle for liquids. You've probably seen pictures—most likely in illustrated Bibles—of desert women carrying similar jugs on their heads or on their shoulders. I stared at the thing—and I can't say that I was particularly impressed.

Look at the way it's stopped up,' Fothergill said suddenly.

"I got up from my chair and went over to the jug; I saw then that its neck had been sealed with a wax-like plug. I reached down and scratched the stuff with my fingernails; it was as hard as stone and of a yellowish-gray color; it reminded me of petrified beeswax.

"Fothergill understood perfectly what I was thinking. 'Sure,' he nodded, 'there's something inside. That's why I sneaked the damned thing into my tent; I wanted to open it up myself. There were only two native diggers with me at the time; it was easy. I had no intention of stealing the jug then; that notion came later.'

"He paused, then said thickly, 'I stole the  jug because there's something alive in it!'

"I looked at him, then at the vessel. 'You're cuckoo,' I said.

"He stared at me with owl-eyed seriousness. 'Listen,' he said, 'I've transported that  jug six thousand miles, and I tell you there's something alive in it. I'll tell you how I tried to open the thing.

First I dug at that plug with my pocket-knife, but I couldn't even scratch it; it's as hard as stone. Later on I got a brace and bit from the