Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/35

 Something clicked in Roger Benton's brain. "Slime?"

The little man nodded. "You know, the slime that covers the whole lake this time o' year. There wasn't none on her. The body should've been covered with it, by rights, after bein' over a week in th' water. Don't seem natteral like, does it?" He grinned rather sheepishly. "'Course, I don't hold with what them Injuns says 'bout it."

With an effort the other murmured, "What do they say about it?"

"Some heathen stuff 'bout th' d'ceased bein' a friend of the lake sperits, an' them savin' her from th' deefilement o' th' slime." He chuckled. "What stuff them dumb savages do think up!"

Roger Benton didn't answer. He sat very still, listening to the chant that drummed against his ears through the open window.

II

S HE paddled evenly through the water the copper-skinned boatman rested a stolid gaze upon the back of the cringing figure who sat in the center of his canoe.

A very different look burned from the eyes of the expensively dressed blonde woman who reclined beside the cringing figure—a look of disgust and contempt which soon took form in rancid words; "If you could only see yourself!" she sneered. "You're white as a sheet and trembling like a frightened dog."

Benton turned bloodshot, pleading eyes upon her. "Won't you change your mind, Hilda? Please tell him to take us back."

"When we're nearly there?" Her jaw set grimly. "Not much I won't! It's taken me two years to get you this far—and now you're going the rest of the way; you won't cheat me any longer out of the pleasure of swelling it over my old neighbors in that swanky island bungalow."

He stretched a quivering hand toward her, "Hilda, I'll buy you a nicer place. I'll buy you anything you like, if you won't make me go back there."

She knocked his hand aside roughly. "You could buy me the most expensive mansion on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't give me the kick of living on that island across from Paw's farm where I used to be so poor."

A flash of forgotten spirit was in his voice as he leaned toward her out of earshot of the oarsman: "Haven't you done enough to me already? Have you forgotten the reason you're not poor now is that you made me commit a murder you had planned?"

"Shut up, you fool!" she hissed through clenched teeth, "And get this through your head, once and for all: I planned nothing—I knew nothing—I did nothing! And you or nobody else can prove otherwise!"

The canoe slid to a stop upon the island shore. "We're here. Get up and help me out," she commanded.

For a long moment he remained motionless, glaring at her with a burning hatred. Under her own steady stare, his gaze wavered, dropped. When he raised it again it was a vacant, hopeless thing.

As his wife picked a fastidious way through the shells and weed that covered the shore, old Nahma waddled down the hilly path toward them. Hilda peered past her at the coveted bungalow. Satisfied with what she saw she turned patronizingly to the squaw.

"Well old woman looks from here like you've taken pretty good care of things." Nahma returned an impassive nod then gazed silently into her eyes. Hilda felt vaguely uncomfortable and abruptly ordered:

"I want you to go back to the mainland