Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/79

Rh melon patch. You got away, but I was collared and had to work for him two days a week the rest of the vacation to keep him from denouncing me to Aunt Malvina."

Amazement conquered Abernathy's fear. Never, so far as he remembered, had he or Foster told of that unfortunate experiment in petty larceny; yet this Cairene woman mentioned it as casually as if it happened yesterday and she had been a party to it. "Do you recall the names of any of our—my classmates?" he stammered.

"Yes, there was Charley Ellis—Froggy, everybody called him. He went to Harvard Law School and was making a big name in practise out in South Dakota when I last heard of him. Then there was Dickie Walker who sang bass in the Glee Club—one night he let out the air from Prexy's tires and was caught at it—and Stinky Davis who won seven dollars from Jack Oberman by eating nineteen hot dogs at a sitting. Jack had promised him a dollar bonus for every one he ate above a dozen, you remember? They had old Stinky in infirmary for a week"

The chill had gone from Abernathy's back and stomach, but little freezing ripples chased each other up his neck and through his scalp. Ismet, his beloved, bore a tantalizingly faint likeness to his boyhood chum and college room-mate.

Where Lynne's hair had been sandy hers was palest gold, her eyes were amber while his had been light hazel, her mouth was soft and slightly bulbous-lipped and passionate, where his had been firm-set and rather humorous; but there was resemblance. Not close enough for her to be his sister, but possibly a cousin. Could it be that

"Tell me all you know about Lynne Foster, especially what you know about him now," he heard her saying.

"I don't know anything about him now. You seem to know as much, and more, than I. We went to grammar school and high school, called on the same girls"

"Sue Carberry and Elsie Bradshaw," Ismet interrupted. "Sue married Willie Bates and went to live in Indianapolis; Elsie took graduate work at Hopkins and married an instructor there—Phelps, I think his name was. Go on, please."

"We matriculated the same year at Amherst and took our P.G. work at Harvard. I came to the museum as assistant Egyptologist, he went out to dig near"—deliberately, he falsified the name—"near Dashur"

"Saqqara," she corrected quickly, and he flinched inwardly as he realized how accurate her information was. Then:

"The last time Lynne was heard of was when he went in to Cairo on a two-days' leave. Police reported that a white man was involved in some affray down in the native quarter, and the car he drove was later found; but no one, neither the police, the sirdar's office nor our consul, ever found a trace of him. Most likely he was robbed and killed, then thrown into the Nile, where crocodiles disposed of any evidence of the murder. Can you supply the ending of the story?"

"Here is the ending!" She knotted her small, painted hands to fists and struck herself upon the breast. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were flushed with tears. "I am, or was—I don't know which—Lynne Foster "You must believe me, Hugh!" She leaned toward him and turned her eyes up pleadingly. "You must believe me, Hugh, you must, you must; you must!