mured as he balanced the crude weapon in his palm. "Ah-ha-ha! One begins to understand. Tell me, Monsieur, was the other knife thrown at you like this one?"
"Yes, sir, just exactly!" gasped the Englishman.
"One sees, one comprehends; one understands. You may be out of India, my friend, but you are not away from it."
"What d'ye mean?"
"Me, I have seen the knife-blade weighted in this manner for assassination, but only in one place."
"Where?" asked Pemberton and I in chorus.
"In the interior of Burma. This weapon is as much like those used by dakaits of Upper Burma as one pea is like another in the pod. Tell me, Monsieur le Capitaine, did you ever come to grips with them in India?"
"No, sir," Pemberton replied. "All my service was in the South. I never got over into Burma."
"And you never had a quarrel with Indian priests or fakirs?"
"Positive. Fact is, I always rather liked the beggars and got on with 'em first rate."
"This adds the moutarde piquante to our dish. The coincidence of strange deaths you relate might be the workings of a fakir's curse; this knife is wholly physical, and very deadly. It would seem we are attacked on two sides, by super-physical assailants operating through the thought-waves of that old one's maledictions, and by some others who have reasons of their own for wishing you to be the center of attraction at a funeral. Good-night again, Monsieur, and a healthy journey home."
Foxcroft lay among the mountains almost at the Pennsylvania border, and after consulting road maps we voted to go there by train. It was necessary to change cars at a small way station, and when the local finally came we found ourselves unable to get seats together. Fortunately for me there was a vacant place beside a window, and after stowing my duffle in the rack I settled down to read an interesting but not too plausible article on the use of tetraiodophenol-phthalein in the diagnosis of diseases of the gall bladder.
Glancing up from my magazine once or twice while the baggage car was being filled, I noticed several young yokels, white and black, lounging on the station platform, and wondered idly why two young Negroes failed to join the laughing group. Instead, they seemed intent on something down the track, finally rose from the luggage truck on which they lounged and walked slowly toward the train. Beneath the window where I sat they paused a moment, and I noticed they were thin almost to emaciation, with skins of muddy brown rather than the chocolate of the Negro full-blood. Their hair, too, was straight as wire, and their eyes slate-gray rather than the usual brown of Africans.
"Odd-looking chaps," I mused as I resumed my reading.
Like most trains used in strictly local service, ours was composed of the railway's almost cast-off stock. Doors would not stay shut, windows would not open. Before we'd gone two miles the air within our coach was almost fetid. I rose and staggered up the swaying aisle to get a drink of water, only to find the tank was empty. After several unsuccessful efforts I succeeded in forcing back the door to the next coach and was inserting a cent in the cup-vending machine when a furious hissing forward told me someone had yanked the emergency cord. The train came to a bumping stop within its length, and I stumbled back to our coach to find de Grandin, a trainman and
