Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 3 (1926-09).djvu/44

with me to Glencoombe. On the morrow news reached us of my Uncle Cecil's death; hut his confession had been signed and witnessed, and my father found himself a hero.

For a while we continued to live at Glencoombe. But so constant was the stream of visitors who came to gaze upon the haunted tower, and over the edge of the rock on to the shelflike plateau which had served as a hiding place, that to escape them we moved to Munster Castle, which, since the death of Mrs. Catherall—she had not long survived her favorite son—had become my father's property. And there I lived until my name was no longer Catherall, and someone took me away to another part of the country.

The Lizard's Bite Was Certain Death,
As Le Ristaut Learned to His Sorrow

Monsieur Brécoux arrived in Paris on the fast evening train from Lyons. He was a man of middle height, wearing a stylish, light-brown overcoat, a black derby hat, and a gray traveling suit. His thin face was tanned, and he had a small brownish mustache. His only baggage was a small handbag, which contained nothing but four objects: a small, live lizard about four inches long, a spool of white silk thread, a silver teaspoon, and a tiny bottle of black liquid.

Monsieur Brécoux took a taxicab from the station, directing the driver to an address in the Rue des Pyrénées. As he sat back comfortably, the handbag at his feet, there was an expression of complete satisfaction in the clear, blue eyes under the high, wide forehead and a look of pleasant anticipation on his rather inscrutable features. Nobody in all the world could have guessed what Brécoux was up to now; perhaps several gentlemen in blue clothes would have been interested had they known. But there was one man in Paris expecting him—Pierre Le Ristaut.

After half an hour's driving, the taxicab stopped before the house in the Rue des Pyrénées. Soon Monsieur Brécoux was seated in a brilliantly-lighted and elegantly-furnished room engaged in conversation with the man he had come to visit.

The two faced each other across a fine polished table, in the middle of which rested the handbag. Pierre Le Ristaut was about fifty, tall, thin, and aristocratic-looking. His well-kept black clothes, his handsome features, his attentive manner would have deceived anyone who did not know that he was a criminal of the first order. To the world, he was a gentleman of means; in reality, he