Page:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 06 (1929-06).djvu/9

lying on its side, mired in the swamps beside the Albemarle Road, but of the young women no trace could be found. Figure to yourself, my friend. What do you make of it?"

"Why——" I began, but the shrill stutter of the office 'phone cut my reply in two.

"Allo?" de Grandin called into the transmitter. "Yes, Sergeant, it is I—grand Diable! Another? You do not tell me so!"

To me he almost shouted as he slammed the receiver back into its hook: "Do you hear, my friend? It is another! Sarah Thompford, an employée of Braunstein frères' department store, left her work at half-past 5 last evening, and has been seen no more. But her hat and cloak were found upon the piers at the waterfront ten little minutes ago. Nom d'un chou-fleur, I am vexed! These disappearances are becoming epidemic. Either the young women of this city have developed a sudden mania for doing away with themselves or some evil person attempts to make a monkey of Jules de Grandin. In either case, my friend, I am aroused. Mordieu, we shall see who shall laugh in whose face before this business of the fool is concluded!"

"What are you going to do?" I asked, striving to keep a straight face.

"Do?" he echoed. "Do? Parbleu, I shall investigate, I shall examine every clue, I shall leave no stone unturned, but"—he sobered into sudden practicality as Nora McGinnis, my household factotum, entered the dining-room with a tray of golden-brown waffles—"first I shall eat breakfast. One can accomplish little on an empty stomach."

A widespread, though fortunately mild, epidemic of influenza kept me busy in office and on my rounds all day. Rainy, fog-bound darkness was approaching as I turned toward home and dinner with a profound sigh of thankfulness that the day's work was done, only to encounter fresh disappointment.

"Trowbridge, Trowbridge, mon vieux," an excited voice hailed as I was waiting for the crosstown traffic lights to change and let me pursue my homeward way, "draw to the curb; come with me—I have important matters to communicate!" Swathed from knees to neck in a waterproof leather jacket, his Homburg hat pulled rakishly down over his right eye and a cigarette glowing between his lips, Jules de Grandin stood at the curb, his little blue eyes dancing with excited elation.

"Name of a little blue man!" he swore delightedly as I parked my motor and joined him on the sidewalk; "it is a fortunate chance, this meeting; I was about to telephone the office in hopes you had returned. Attend me, my friend, I have twisted my hand in the tail of something Of importance!"

Seizing my elbow with a proprietary grip, he guided me toward the illuminated entrance of a café noted for the excellence of its food and its contempt of the XVIIIth Amendment, chuckling with suppressed delight at every step.

"The young Monsieur Wilberding was undoubtlessly right in his surmises," he confided as we found places at one of the small tables and he gave. an order to the waiter. "Parbleu, what he lacked in opportunity of observation he made up by the prescience of affection," he continued, "for there can be no doubt that Madame Mazie was the victim of murder. Regardez-vous: At the police laboratories, kindly placed at my disposal through the offices of the excellent Sergeant Costello, I examined the tattered remnants of the frock they took from the poor girl's body when they fished her from the river, and I did discover what the coroner, cocksure of his suicide theory, had completely overlooked—a small, so tiny stain. Hardly darker than the original