Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 4 (1925-10).djvu/24

paper. "That shirt and those shoes I put through the third degree, and I find this." Opening the paper he disclosed three coarse, dull-brown hairs, varying from a half-inch to three inches in length.

I examined them curiously. From their appearance they might have been from a man's head, for they were too long and insufficiently curved to be body-hairs, but their texture seemed too harsh for human growth.

"Um," I commented non-committally.

"Um," he mocked. "You cannot classify them, eh? No?"

"No," I admitted. "They are entirely too coarse to have come from Manly's head. Besides, they are almost black; his hair is a distinct brown."

"My friend," de Grandin leaned forward suddenly, staring me straight in the eyes, "those hairs, I have seen such before. So have you, but you do not recognize. They are from a gorilla!"

"Impossible!” I jerked back. "How could a gorilla's hair get on Manly's shirt?"

"Not on," he corrected, still gazing directly at me. "They were in it, below the neck line, where a bullet had torn through the linen and wounded him. The hairs were embedded in the dried blood. Look at this garment"—he held the shirt before me for inspection—"behold how it is split. It has been upon a body too big for it. Monsieur Trowbridge, that shirt was worn by the thing—the monster—which killed that pitiful girl dead on the links last night, which attacked the young Maitland a few minutes later—and which got this paint from the side of Madam Comstock's house on these shoes when it climbed that house last night.

"You start, you stare? You say to yourself, 'De Grandin, he is caduc—mad?' Listen, I prove each step in the ladder:

"This morning, while you examine Monsieur Manly's wound, I examine him and his room. On his window sill I note a few scrapes—such scrapes as one who drag his legs and feet might make climbing over the window ledge. I look out at the window, and on the white-painted side of the house I find fresh paint-scratches. Too, also, I find marks on the painted iron pipe which carry the water from the roof down in rainy weather. That pipe runs down the corner of the house, near Manly's window, but too far away for a man to reach it from the sill. But if that man have arms as long as my leg, what then? Ah, he could make the reach most easy.

"Now, when I buy these shoes, that shirt, from the Comstock servant, I note the paint on the shoe, and the scratch also thereon. I compare the paint on the shoe with the paint on the house-sides. He are the same.

"I note that shirt, how he are blood-stained, how he are all burst, as though the man who wear him suddenly grow great and break him out. I find the beast-hairs in the bloodstain on the shirt. I take that shirt to the laundry and ask the excellent Chinois, 'Whose shirt are this?'

"He reply, 'Not know.'

"I say, 'You are liar, but I give you this'—I show him a bill of ten dollair—'to tell the truth.'

"He take my bill and smile like summer as he reply, 'Mr. Manly's.' Voilà! You see?"

"No, I'll be hanged if I do," I denied.

He bent forward again, speaking with rapid earnestness: "That servant, he tell me more. Last night the young Manly was nervous—what you call ill at ease. He complain of headache, of backache—he feel r-r-rotten. He go to bed early, and his amoureuse, she go without him to the country club dance. The old madam, she, too, go to bed.