Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 3 (1925-09).djvu/6

Luke Porter had just ordered supper. His waitress, a chatty and pert young country woman, hesitated before departing for the kitchen; it was obvious that she had something on her mind. Luke's light gray eyes twinkled at her half confusion; he was enjoying the play of expression over her face and had no intention of helping her out. At his open amusement she took heart.

"There's a party outside who wants to know if he can have his supper with you," she told him finally. "He says you don't know him, but he thinks he has something interesting to tell you."

"He does, eh?" Luke laughed softly. "Why does he think I will be interested in his information?"

The young woman put her hand into her gingham apron pocket and drew out a newspaper clipping which she held toward him. She waited in silence until the young man had read it, and when he looked up, his face alight with interest, she had her turn at laughter.

"Huh! Changed your mind, didn't you, mister? Shall he come in?"

"Tell him if he doesn't come, I'll go out and pull him in," exclaimed Luke, and once more bent his gaze upon the clipping.

It was a rather astonishing advetisement:

As Luke stared incredulously, something happened to the print; it went blurry, and then cleared up to a few words in an expanse of white. For a moment he could not understand what had happened; then he read the visiting card that had been laid upon the clipping, and lifted his eyes to see the owner of that formidable and mysterious Cagliostro Moderno, Initiate Occultist.

Imagination had conjured up almost instantaneously a tall and slender figure of fearsome dignity, with flashing black eyes. What confronted him as he rose instinctively to his feet was a black-cloaked form of hardly middle height but of heavy build. The individual enveloped in the cloak was so holding it that his face was almost hidden; all that showed was a small,