Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/20

"Why," I interrupted, grasping his hand, "you are Professor Jules de Grandin, author of Accentuated Evolution?"

He shrugged deprecatingly. "Yes, I am he," he admitted with a smile; "but at present our inquiries lie in another field. You have a patient, one young Monsieur Paul Maitland, is it not? He was set upon last night in the Andover Road?"

"I have a patient named Paul Maitland," I admitted, "but I don't know where he received his injuries."

"Nor do we," he answered with a smile, "but we shall inquire. You will go with us while we question him? No?"

"Why, yes," I acquiesced. "I should be looking in on him this morning, anyhow."

"And now, Monsieur," Professor de Grandin began when introductions had been completed, "you will please to tell us what happened last night to you. Yes?"

Paul looked uncomfortably from one of us to the other and swallowed nervously. "I don't like to think of it," he confessed, "much less talk about it; but here's the truth, believe it or not:

"I took Gladys home from the club about 11 o'clock, for she had developed a headache. After I'd said good-night to her I decided to go home and turn in, and had gotten nearly here when I reached in my pocket for a cigarette. My case was gone, and I remembered laying it on a window ledge just before my last dance.

"The Mater gave me that case last birthday, and I didn't want to lose it, so, instead of telephoning the club and asking one of the fellows to slip it in his pocket, like a fool, I decided to drive back for it.

"You know—or at least Dr. Trowbridge and Sergeant Costello do—the Andover Road dips down in a little valley and curves over by the edge of the golf course between the eighth and ninth holes. I was just in that part of the road nearest the links when I heard a woman scream twice—it really wasn't two screams, more like one and a half, for her second cry was shut off almost before it started.

"I had a gun in my pocket, a little .22 automatic—good thing I did, too—so I yanked it out and drew up at the roadside, leaving my engine running. That was lucky, too, believe me.

"I ran into the woods, yelling at the top of my voice, and there in the path I saw something dark, like a woman's body, lying. I started toward it when there was a rustling in the trees overhead and—plop!—something dropped right into the path in front of me.

"Gentlemen, I don't know what it was, but I know it wasn't anything human. It wasn't quite as tall as I, but looked about twice as broad, and its hands hung down—clear down to the ground.

"I yelled, 'Hey, what're you doin'?' and pointed my gun at it, and it didn't answer, just started jumping up and down, bouncing with its feet and hands on the ground at once. I tell you, it gave me the horrors.

"'Snap out of it!' I yelled again, 'or I'll blow your head off.' Next moment—I was so nervous and excited I didn't really know what I was doing—I let fly with the pistol, right in the thing's face.

"That came near being my last shot, too. Believe me or not, that thing, whatever it was, reached out, snatched the gun out of my hand and broke it. Yes, sir, snapped that pistol in two with its bare hands as easily as I could break a match stick.

"And then it was on me. I felt one of its hands go clear over my shoulder, from breast to back in a single clutch, and it pulled me toward it. Ugh! It was hairy, sir. Hairy as an ape!"