Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/53

 wall of the pen. "Five!" I heard him mutter. "Yes, by God, five!"

I waited no longer, but ran back to the house where I arrived soaked and breathless.

Annette met me at thhethe [sic] door, pale and frightened. "Wasn't the lightning ghastly? Where's Uncle Alfred?"

"Isn't he here?" And then it occurred to me where he must have gone. "Oh!" I said. "He's in the barn, of course—though how he got away so quickly, I can't imagine."

Harris came striding out of the rain and joined us on the porch. I noticed he was carrying the hand saw he had mentioned, and I asked, "Did you go into the barn?"

"Yes."

"Was Mr. Fry there?"

He looked at me in what I thought was a very curious way, but he made no answer, and I asked the question again. "Did you see Mr. Fry when you got your saw out of the barn?"

A strange, almost mocking smile spread over Harris' angular face; slowly he dropped the lid over one eye in an adagio wink, and at last he uttered the one syllable: "No."

"Then where is he?"

"If you don't know," said Harris, "I don't know."

Annette said, "You'd both better come in and dry your clothes. Anyhow, darling, you can't possibly get to the airport in this weather."

"No—these clay roads will be impassable for at least several hours. I suppose I had better phone Uncle Alfred's office to have them cancel the plane reservation—but I wish he'd come back here! I don't really know what to do."

Harris chuckled deep in his chest, and then I remembered what he had said about the telephone. I told him that he must be mistaken about it, because Uncle Alfred was making a call just a few minutes before.

Harris said, "Try it if you want to."

As I started out of the room, he asked, "Did you notice how many hogs there was in that pen we was leaning over?"

"Four," I said. "There are four in each of the pens. You know that better than I."

"There's five in that pen, now," Harris told me. "And next time you go down, I'll ask you to look close at one hog in particular—he's the biggest, and the fattest—and he's got no ring in his nose!"

Apparently this meant much more to Harris than to me. To me, the explanation seemed obvious: simply that Uncle Alfred had bought a new hog during Harris' absence. I did not begin to take the man seriously until I raised the telephone receiver to my ear. The line was dead.

HE discovery of the severed telephone was the first link in a chain of astonishing revelations. As soon as the condition of the road permitted, Annette, Harris and I drove down to the village of Oaktree. Through the drug store telephone I began to learn some of the truth about my missing uncle. Uncle Alfred had never spoken to the minister whom he had been expecting. I called the North-South Continental Company, which was Uncle Alfred's New York headquarters. They had never heard of an Alfred Fry. I called the airport and found, somewhat to my surprise, that there was a reservation in my name. In canceling it, I asked when the ticket had been bought, and whether there was more room on the plane. There was more room, and the passage had been reserved three days in advance. While I still sat in the telephone booth, Annette and Harris waiting outside, I tore open the elaborately sealed envelope Uncle Alfred had given me. It was addressed to "Carlos Diaz, Hotel Geneva, Mexico City," and it