Page:Weird Tales Volume 26 Number 01 (1935-07).djvu/24

Chatham Kearns and Pierce Harkness walked leisurely toward the two chairs in the center of the Fifth Avenue window of the Console Club.

They were two choice chairs, but no one ever took them save Kearns and Harkness. Since the two had joined the club a dozen years ago, they had taken an unwritten lien on those chairs. No one ever disputed the lien: Harkness was worth nearly six hundred million dollars, and Kearns was cautiously rated at four hundred and fifty millions, though everyone knew his actual holdings totaled more than that.

The two men sat down—Kearns spare and small, like an undersized chicken hawk with frosty gray eyes and lank gray plumage; Harkness tall and corpulent, with small blue eyes like diamond points in a round, good-natured face.

"The same, Kearns?" said Harkness.

"The same," Kearns nodded, his voice dry and precise.

Harkness' big laugh boomed through the vaulted room of the Console Club.

"Vermouth! Is that a drink for a luncheon appetite? A martini would be more to the point."

"Not with my blood-pressure," said Kearns. "And not when I discuss matters of the importance of those to be decided in your board room this afternoon."

Harkness merely laughed again and flicked his gaze toward a figure in the wine-red livery of the club service near by.

The figure came toward their chairs, head inclined deferentially, face pleasant but blank. The man had an extraordinary face. It was very pale, and emaciated. His body was very thin, too, with a thinness which was exaggerated by the fact that he was nearly six feet tall.

Kearns gave the order, frowning a little as he did so.

"A vermouth and a martini. Serve them here, please. And tell the chef well lunch, a little later, on the fish I had shipped up here from my Florida place."

"Very good, sir," the man murmured, bowing a little. His voice was dull, pitched in a monotone.

He started toward the club bar.

"Just a minute," Kearns' dry voice rasped.

The man came back.

"You're new here, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," the man said. "That is, I am new to most of the members, sir. I worked here many years ago—till 1917, when I left the club service to enlist."

He stood there, thin pale face impassive under Kearns' deepening frown.

"Anything else, sir?" he said finally.

"No. I——" Kearns waved his hand irritably. "No. That's all."

The man left. Harkness stared at the irascible line between Kearns' frowning brows.

"What's the matter?" he asked carelessly.

"That man!" snapped Kearns. "That