Page:Weird tales v36n07 1942-09.djvu/30

long when everybody else has shingled theirs?" I suggested, too smartly perhaps, for Peter bestowed upon me a long look of acute scorn.

"There was something absolutely extraordinary about that girl's hair," he repeated inanely.

"You've said that before, Peter," I reminded him dryly.

"Extraordinary. You know, not—not quite normal," Peter seemed to be analyzing his sensations. "As if—as if it was all alive in every strand. Why, when he pulled off her cap it was like uncovering the darting flame of a glowing torch."

"Very poetic, Peter. I wonder how Magda would relish such absorbed interest in this strange young woman's Titian locks?"

"Magda's human," retorted Peter strangely. "Now, this girl—"

And he began going over it again, as if he couldn't let the subject rest. And in that fashion we had tramped along behind Hank, who strode blackly ahead of us, actually, in his preoccupation, slamming the lodge door shut in our faces when he'd entered.

And now, after a couple of hours' stewing and simmering of their emotions, Hank—the older man, who should have been the one to control himself—burst out incontinently.

"Hell of a fine party," said he again, and shot at Peter such a look—

That look made me feel a bit sickish with apprehension, for I knew Hank capable of meannesses when he'd lost control of himself. It was only his unusual intuitions along legal lines that had constrained me to continue in partnership with him after Edith's sad death, Edith whom Peter and I both loved.

"Sorry, Walters," Peter began to apologize manfully. "But the girl—"

"To hell with the girl!" snarled Hank, tensing his crouched figure with the suggestiveness of a huge wild beast about to make its spring.

That Peter saw this movement and interpreted it clearly I realized when the boy got to his feet with a lithe, guarded movement, and stood in a position of vantage, looking down upon us both as we sat before the smoldering logs on the rude stone hearth.

"I said I was sorry," repeated the boy with gravity. "I was taken off my guard by the girl's scream. I rather thought she—"

"You'd no business thinking anything about her," growled Hank, and his nostrils dilated, then pinched whitely.

I know the signs. I'd seen him once, when in a cold fury of anger against an unfortunate stenographer at whom he had not dared bluster in my presence, he thrust his black countenance down into hers until she had shrunk back speechless, every drop of blood fled from her pallid and terrified face; there had been something infinitely worse about that silent thrust of his thunderous gaze into her intimate nearness than a dozen bellowed curses. So now he looked up at Peter, and I knew that back of that concentrated fury Hank's mind was working with the alert subtlety of a writhing cobra insinuating itself into the right position to strike. I began to tell myself that it was better to lose money than continue our law partnership much longer; Hank's faults had increased enormously since Edith's death.

Peter disregarded the signs, not knowing Hank as I did. He knew, of course, that Hank was boiling over with repressed emotion, with hate and fury, but Peter could not believe even what he knew, for to his ingenuous nature there had been no sound reason for such an ebulition of uncontrolled frenzy.

"She didn't like it when you uncovered her hair," Peter explained, with that