Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/23
charming suburb I will leave you to your duties while I pursue mine, and, if the imposition is not too great, I will dwell at your house while on this case. You consent? Good!
"Until tonight, then," he hailed as he leaped agilely from the car at the village limits. "I shall attempt to be at the house before you have—how do you say?—hit into the straw? Bien, au revoir, cher ami."
It was somewhere about 8 o'clock when de Grandin returned to my house, laden with almost enough bundles to tax a motor truck's capacity. "Great Scott, professor," I exclaimed as he laid his parcels on a convenient chair and gave me a grin which sent the waxed points of his mustache shooting upward like a miniature pair of horns, "have you been buying out the town?"
"Almost," he admitted as he seated himself and lit a vile-smelling French cigarette. "I have talked much with the grocer, the druggist, the garage keeper and the tobacconist, and at each place I make purchases. I am, for the time, a new resident of your so pleasant suburb, anxious to find out about my neighbors and my new home. I have talk, talk, talk. I have milled over much wordy chaff, hélas! But from it I have extracted some good meal, grâce à dieu!
He fixed his curiously unwinking cat-stare on me and asked: "You have a Monsieur Kalmar resident here, have you not?"
"Yes," I replied, "I believe we have."
"And you can tell me of him?"—he paused, raising eyebrows questioningly.
"No," I answered, "I'm afraid I can't. He's lived here about a year, and kept very much to himself. As far as I know, he has made friends with no one in the village, and has been visited by no one but the tradesmen. I've been given to understand he is a scientist of some sort, and took the old Means place, out on the Andover Road, so he could pursue his experiments in quiet."
"Ah, yes, I see," de Grandin tapped his cigarette case thoughtfully with his finger tips, "that much I have already gathered from my talks this day. Now tell me, if you can, is this Monsieur All-Unknown a friend of the young Manly's—the gentleman whose wound from gunshot you treated this morning?"
"Not that I know," I replied. "I've never seen them together. Manly is a queer, moody sort of chap, never has much to say to anyone. How Millicent Comstock came to fall in love with him I've no idea. He rides well, and is highly thought of by her mother, but those are about the only qualifications he has as a husband, that I've been able to see."
"He is very strong, no?" de Grandin queried.
"I don't know," I had to confess.
"Well, then," he returned, "listen at me. You think de Grandin is a fool, eh? Perhaps yes; perhaps no. This day I make other business besides talk. I go to that Comstock lady's house and reconnoiter. In an ash-can I find one pair of patent leather dress shoes, much scratched. I grease the palm of a servant and find out they are that Monsieur Manly's. I also look farther and find one white-linen dress shirt, with blood on it. It is torn about the cuffs and split at the shoulder, that shirt. It, too, I find, belong to Monsieur Manly. I am like a Jewish second-hand man when I talk with that servant of Madam Comstock—I buy from him that shirt and those shoes. Behold!"
Undoing a parcel, he exhibited a pair of dress shoes and a shirt, as though they were curios of priceless value. "In Paris we have ways of making the inanimate talk," he asserted as he thrust his hand into his pocket and drew forth a bit of folded