Page:Weird Tales Volume 29 Number 1 (1937-01).djvu/26

She did. Shielded by the bodies of her executioners and the upright of the cross beside which she had rolled when the gunfire struck the bat-man down, she lay unconscious in a welter of warm blood, and it was not till we had sponged her off that we found her only hurts were those inflicted by the jungle vines the night before.

Carefully they placed the Commandant's shot-riddled body in a plane for transportation back to Tupulo, and a military funeral.

"He died a hero's death, no?" the flight commander asked.

"Was he not an officer and gentleman?" de Grandin answered disingenuously.

"But no, friends," he told us as we lay sprawled out in deck chairs on the steamship Golondrina as she plowed her way toward New York, "it was no magic, I assure you. That commandant at Tupulo, I mistrusted his good sense. There was a weakness in his face, and lack of judgment, too. This one loves himself too much, he is a strutting jackdaw, he has what Friend Costello would call the silly pan,' I say to me while we were talking with him. Besides——

"We knew the countryside was terrified of La Murciélaga; the bare mention of her name drove men indoors and women into swoons. That anyone would have the courage to complain of her—to come to the police and ask that they send out an expeditionary force—pardieu, it had the the smell of fish upon it!

"Furthermore, I am no fool. Not at all, by no means, and it is seldom that I do forget a face. When I saw this Señor Epilar, there was a reminiscence in his features. He reminded me too much of one whom I had seen the night poor Mademoiselle Rita met her tragic death. Also, there was a savage gleam within his eye when it rested on our Nancy—the sort of gleam a cat may show when he finds that he has run the little helpless mouse to earth.

"'Jules de Grandin, my friend, are you going into the jungle with this so idiotic Commandant and this young man who looks uncomfortably like the Lady of the Bat?’ I ask me.

"'Jules de Grandin, my esteemed self, I am going,' I reply to me, 'but I shall take precautions, too!'

"Accordingly, while Monsieur le Capitaine was fitting out his force and you were packing for the trip, I hied me to a telephone and put a call through to the military airport at Merida. 'Monsieur le Commandant,' I tell the officer in charge, 'we are going in the jungle. We go to seek that almost legendary lady, La Murciélaga. I fear it is a foolish thing we do, for it is more than possible that we shall be ambushed. Therefore I would that you make use of us for bait Have flyers fly above the jungle, and if we do not return by tomorrow noon, have them investigate anything suspicious which they may see. And, Monsieur le Commandant,' I tell him in conclusion, 'it might be well to order them to make investigation with machine-gun fire.'

"Eh bien, I think they carried out their orders very well, those ones."

Nancy laid slim fingers on his arm. "We owe our lives to you—all of us—you little darling!" Impulsively, she leant forward and kissed him on the mouth.

Tiny wrinkles crinkled round de Grandin's eyes and in their blue depths flashed an impish gleam.

"Behold, ma chère," he told her solemnly, "I save our lives again.

"Mozo," he hailed a passing deck steward, "bring us four gin slings, muy pronto!"