"In the woods."
"Doing what?"
"Nothing."
There was a bit of down here and there clinging to his cotton shirt and trousers, and one had caught and stuck at the corner of his mouth.
"See here, Grue," I said, "I don"t want you to kill any birds except for camp purposes. Why do you try to catch and kill birds?"
"I don"t."
I stared at the man and he stared back at me out of his gla.s.sy eyes.
"You mean to say that you don"t, somehow or other, manage to catch and kill birds?"
"No, I don"t."
There was nothing further for me to say unless I gave him the lie. I didn"t care to do that, needing his services.
Evelyn Grey had come up to join us; there was a brief silence; we all stood looking at Grue; and he looked back at us out of his pale, washed-out, and unblinking eyes.
"Grue," I said, "I haven"t yet explained to you the object of this expedition to Black Bayou. Now, I"ll tell you what I want. But first let me ask you a question or two. You know the Black Bayou forests, don"t you?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever see anything unusual in these forests?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
The man stared at us, one after another. Then he said:
"What are you looking for in Black Bayou?"
"Something very curious, very strange, very unusual. So strange and unusual, in fact, that the great Zoological Society of the Bronx in New York has sent me down here at the head of this expedition to search the forests of Black Bayou."
"For what?" he demanded, in a dull, accentless voice.
"For a totally new species of human being, Grue. I wish to catch one and take it back to New York in that folding cage."
His green eyes had grown narrow as though sun-dazzled. Kemper had stepped behind us into the woods and was now busy setting up the folding cage.
Grue remained motionless.
"I am going to offer you," I said, "the sum of one thousand dollars in gold if you can guide us to a spot where we may see this. .h.i.therto unknown species--a creature which is apparently a man but which has, in the back of his head, a _third eye_--"
I paused in amazement: Grue"s cheeks had suddenly puffed out and were quivering; and from the corners of his slitted mouth he was emitting a whimpering sound like the noise made by a low-circling pigeon.
"Grue!" I cried. "What"s the matter with you?"
"What is _he_ doing?" screamed Grue, quivering from head to foot, but not turning around.
"Who?" I cried.
"The man behind me!"
"Professor Kemper? He"s setting up the folding cage--"
With a screech that raised my hair, Grue whipped out his murderous knife and _hurled himself backward_ at Kemper, but the latter shrank aside behind the partly erected cage, and Grue whirled around, snarling, hacking, and even biting at the wood frame and steel bars.
And then occurred a thing so horrid that it sickened me to the pit of my stomach; for the man"s sagging straw hat had fallen off, and there, in the back of his head, through the coa.r.s.e, black, ratty hair, I saw a gla.s.sy eye glaring at me.
"Kemper!" I shouted. "He"s got a third eye! He"s one of them! Knock him flat with your riflestock!" And I seized a shot-gun from the top of the baggage bundle on the ground beside me, and leaped at Grue, aiming a terrific blow at him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""Kemper!" I shouted.... "He is one of them! Knock him flat with your riflestock!""]
But the gla.s.sy eye in the back of his head was watching me between the clotted strands of hair, and he dodged both Kemper and me, swinging his heavy knife in circles and glaring at us both out of the front and back of his head.
Kemper seized him by his arm, but Grue"s shirt came off, and I saw his entire body was as furry as an ape"s. And all the while he was snapping at us and leaping hither and thither to avoid our blows; and from the corners of his puffed cheeks he whined and whimpered and mewed through the saliva foam.
"Keep him from the water!" I panted, following him with clubbed shot-gun; and as I advanced I almost stepped on a soiled heap of foulness--the dead buzzard which he had caught and worried to death with his teeth.
Suddenly he threw his knife at my head, hurling it backward; dodged, screeched, and bounded by me toward the sh.o.r.e of the lagoon, where the pretty waitress was standing, petrified.
For one moment I thought he had her, but she picked up her skirts, ran for the nearest boat, and seized a harpoon; and in his fierce eagerness to catch her he leaped clear over the boat and fell with a splash into the lagoon.
As Kemper and I sprang aboard and looked over into the water, we could see him going down out of reach of a harpoon; and his body seemed to be silver-plated, flashing and glittering like a burnished eel, so completely did the skin of air envelope him, held there by the fur that covered him.
And, as he rested for a moment on the bottom, deep down through the clear waters of the lagoon where he lay p.r.o.ne, I could see, as the current stirred his long, black hair, the third eye looking up at us, gla.s.sy, unwinking, horrible.
A bubble or two, like globules of quicksilver, were detached from the burnished skin of air that clothed him, and came glittering upward.
Suddenly there was a flash; a flurrying cloud of blue mud; and Grue was gone.
After a long while I turned around in the muteness of my despair. And slowly froze.
For the pretty waitress, becomingly pale, was gathered in Kemper"s arms, her cheek against his shoulder. Neither seemed to be aware of me.
"Darling," he said, in the imbecile voice of a man in love, "why do you tremble so when I am here to protect you? Don"t you love and trust me?"
"Oo--h--yes," she sighed, pressing her cheek closer to his shoulder.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, pa.s.sed them without noticing them, and stepped ash.o.r.e.
And there I sat down under a tree, with my back toward them, all alone and face to face with the greatest grief of my life.