"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 Zoölogical 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 hitherto 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 coarse, black, ratty hair, I saw a
glassy 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.
[Illustration: "'Kemper!' I shouted.... 'He is one of them! Knock him
flat with your riflestock!'"]
But the glassy 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 shore 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 prone, I could see, as the current
stirred his long, black hair, the third eye looking up at us, glassy,
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, passed them without noticing them, and
stepped ashore.
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.
But which it was--the loss of her or the loss of Grue, I had not yet made
up my mind.