Page:Weird Tales Volume 6 Number 6 (1925-12).djvu/67

he couldn't quite suppress a sigh of relief as he murmured a courteous pleasure at my decision and turned to lead the way into the kitchen.

Lighting a lamp in a brass bracket on the wall, he turned to the window, where there was a deep white-granite pan covered with a clean blue cloth. I'd noticed that the whole place was clean as a whistle.

Lifting the cloth, he asked me: "Do you like mushrooms?"

And I saw that the pan was filled to the brim with mushrooms of all colors, shapes and sizes. I was used only to the common white mushroom of the city markets at that time, and I felt an involuntary start of repulsion. Some of these were really beautiful. But most of them presented an ugly, slimy, even deadly appearance.

"Good Lord!" I said, bending over the dish for a closer inspection. "Are those things fit to eat?"

He nodded emphatically. "They certainly are. See this?"

He held up a mushroom perhaps three inches across the top, somewhat concave in the center, and the orange-yellow of a carrot. Pretty enough, oh, yes! But it had been bruised here and there, and the abrasions had turned a dull, dirty green. Me turned it over in his fingers, explaining:

"This is the Orange Milk Lactor." Taking a sharp paring knife from the table he cut the top across. Instantly a milky red fluid oozed from the severed edges. He rubbed it with his finger and the stain lay across his flesh like blood. "This juice makes the Lactor very rich, probably the most delicious species that grows. And this Boletus. Isn't it a beauty?" He held up a large heavy-stemmed specimen with white base, yellow tubes and a round, brilliant crimson top.

"That's a matter of individual taste," I answered. "Frankly—it may be a beauty, as you say, but I shouldn't consider it an enticing edible. Where do you get those weird things?"

"Down below the timber line under the pines." The hermit smiled as he went on with his explanations. "This small slimy brown one is the Bermuda Boletus. Of course, there are many poisonous species, but if you know your fungi—you're safe. And I know them."

He lifted the pan to the table, and began to clean and slice the heterogeneous collection without regard to size, coloring or shape. And as he continued his voluble description of each one, his sudden garrulity seemed to me more deliberately significant than incidental. I realized that he was trying to impress me with his expert knowledge of mushrooms. And to what end? I've always been a touchy cuss, and I couldn't help a feeling of slight uneasiness.

He worked swiftly, and in an incredibly short space of time had laid on the table a steaming and inviting dinner, of which the pièce de resistance was jerked venison and mushrooms.

As I seated myself to the excellent meal, resolving to enjoy it to the full, I saw once again that flash of eagerness in his eyes. And as I ate, with great appreciation of his culinary skill, I was analyzing the situation I had found in that cabin. It wasn't in the book that a hermit should prove to be a man of refinement and culture. It wasn't in the book that a log cabin on a mountain top should contain the East hung on polished myrtle walls and the poets of all time bound in limp leather. It wasn't in the book, either, that his cordial reception should be born of an ulterior motive—but I hadn't yet decided