Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 1 (1925-07).djvu/48

"My lord Luke! You here?"

Gasping the words, Ed Bosworth halted, thunderstruck, at the door.

"Come in, old fellow. You look upset. What's wrong?" Luke A. Lucas—he of the mighty brain and the intellectual dome—cleared a stack of law books from a chair and placed it for his caller. Bosworth, without taking his astonished eyes from the attorney, slowly seated himself.

"Let me feel of you," he said, extending a hand and grasping the arm of Lucas. "You are here, ain't you?"

"And why shouldn't I be? These are my office hours."

"But I heard you was dead! Came in to congratulate your partner—I mean, condole him. Excuse me."

"Eh—what's that you say?" Luke leaned forward. his brows knit. "Heard I was dead? Where'd you hear such nonsense as that?"

"On the street. Three or four folks spoke of it. Said it was too bad about poor Luke."

"I've been at home with a touch of rheumatiz for a day or two. But I don't even look sick—do I?"

"No, Luke, you don't."

"Who told you I was dead?"

"Well, old Bill Marsh, for one. Said it was your heart. Henry Bass thought it was acute indigestion. Mel Barker heard you had a shock. Otto Rummelfinger understood—"

Lucas, very much alive, sprang to his feet and reached for his hat.

"I'll go see Marsh about this," he declared. "You come along, Ed."

They hurried up the village street to the office of Luke's chief professional rival. Bill was at his desk.

"What do you mean, you old scoundrel," demanded Lucas, "by spreading rumors that I am dead?"

"Why—I—I heard you was!" The surprize betrayed by Marsh was unmistakably genuine.

"Where in the devil did you hear that stuff?"

Marsh reflected.

"I think Si Latham was the first who told me. Then Joel Burke—"

But Lucas was gone, Bosworth at his heels.

In Latham's grocery store Si was weighing out a sack of flour for a customer. At sight of the supposedly dead he lowered the scoop, and its contents whitened the floor.

"Luke Lucas!" he groaned. "Ed. be I seein' things? Or is that Luke standin' there beside you?"

"It's Luke," testified Bosworth.

"I felt of him to make certain sure."

From Latham, the trail was followed to Smith's Sanitary Barber Shop; thence to Whitney's drug store; across the street to Atherton's Dry Goods Emporium; next to Mrs. Garrison's millinery parlors; up the hill to the cottage of Miss Parker, the spinster dressmaker; and finally to the office of the Weekly Argus.

Orman Holt, the editor "and prop.", took one look at Luke A. Lucas and bolted out of the rear door.

Thirty seconds later he returned.

"I've stopped the press, Luke," he announced.