Page:Weird Tales v34n03 (1939-09).djvu/10

Three or four dust-gray wicker chairs stood along the porch. In one of those chairs sat a man.

He was old, and sparsely built. Had he been standing erect he would have measured well over six feet, but he lay back in his chair with his legs extending supinely before him. Tony knew instantly that this was Eileen's great-uncle, Robert Perry.

As he plunged up the dirt-encrusted steps Tony exclaimed hoarsely, "Mr. Perry? I'm Tony Kent. There's a man——"

The old man was leaning slightly forward in his chair. His blue eyes in his deeply lined face had suddenly flamed.

"Have you got a gun?" The words were taut and low.

"No." Tony shook his head impatiently. His mind was full of the horror he had seen working back there in the field. A gun! What did he want of a gun? Did old Robert Perry think he would be dangerous—the story-book rejected-lover type, perhaps? Nonsense. Urgent, staccato words tumbled from his lips as he ignored the question:

"Mr. Perry—there's a man back there with the whole top of his head split open. He's stark mad; he wouldn't speak to me or come with me. But—he'll die if he's left where he is! It's a wonder he isn't dead already."

There was a long silence before the old man answered. "Where did you see this man?"

"Back there—back in the cotton."

Old Robert Perry shook his head, spoke in a muttered whisper, as if to himself, "Die? He can't—die!"

Abruptly he paused. The screen door leading into the house had opened. Two Negroes and a white man had come out on the porch.

The two Negroes were nondescript enough—mere plantation blacks. But the white man! . . .

He was tall and wide as a door. He was so huge that any person attempting to guess his weight would have considered himself lucky if he got the figure within a score of pounds of the truth; he was bigger than any man Tony had ever seen outside of a sideshow. And he was not a glandular freak; he was muscled like a jungle beast; his whole posture, the whole carriage of him, silently shrieked super-human vitality. His gargantuan face, beneath the broad-brimmed, rusty black hat he wore, was pale as the belly of a dead fish, pale with the pallor of one who shuns the sunlight. His eyes were wide-set, coal-black, and staring; Tony had glimpsed that same intensity of gaze before in the eyes of religious and sociological fanatics. His nose was fleshy and well-muscled at the tip; his lips were thin and straight and tightly compressed. Garbed as he was in a knee-length, clerical coat of greenish, faded black, still wearing a frayed, filthy-white episcopal collar, he looked what he must have been, a pastor without a congregation, a prophet without honor, a renegade man of God.

He stood silently there on the porch and looked disapprovingly at Tony. His thin, weak, reformer's lips beneath that powerful, sensual nose tightened. Then, quietly, he spoke, not to Tony but to the paralytic old man:

"Who is this—person, Mr. Perry?"

Tony's fists clenched at the man's insolence. His anger turned to astonishment as he heard the old man answer almost cringingly:

"This is Anthony Kent, Reverend Barnes—Anthony Kent, from New York City. Anthony—the Reverend Warren Barnes, who is stopping with us for a while. He has been very kind to us during my—illness."

Tony nodded coldly. The funereal-clad colossus stared for a long moment at this unexpected guest, and Tony could feel the