The Horror Megapack_ 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories ( PDFDrive )

in the smoke house!
Turning on his heel, he hastened to the house, bending his head against the
rising storm wind and breathing fast with exertion and excitement.
“My dear,” he demanded, drawing Rosalie into a corner as soon as he could
extricate her from a languishing bridge game, “do you recognize this?” He
displayed the scrap of pasteboard retrieved from the smoke house half an hour
earlier.
The girl studied the card with wide, thoughtful eyes a moment, then nodded
her golden head slowly in affirmation. “Yes, Uncle Harvey,” she replied. “It is
the twelfth card of the tarot of the homeless ones—the gypsy fortune-teller’s
pack. They call it ‘the Hanged Man,’ and regard it as the emblem of atonement
or revenge satisfied. Where did you find it? It is not well that such things be
spread about.”
“Never mind now where I got it,” he responded, narrowing his eyes intently.
He was thinking, and thinking fast. Things were beginning to take shape in his
mind. A vaguely remembered, but unclassified noise coming apparently from the
ground beneath the smoke house floor where two men had been killed, a fast
motor boat seen one moment, vanished the next, gypsy music emanating from
beneath the earth—Turkish gypsies. Ah, that was it! The recollection of
whispers heard in Stamboul during the reign of “Abdul the Damned,” stories of
men strangled with the bowstring and flung into the Bosphorus at night. The
bowstring! The Turkish executioner’s strangling cord—the purple line about
young Phillips’ dead throat! Ha, he was beginning to get somewhere, now.
“By Jupiter, I’ll do it!” he declared suddenly, leaping to his feet and striding
across the hall, then half turning and beckoning Rosalie to follow. “Stand here,
dear, if you please, and see that I’m not interrupted while I ’phone,” he ordered.
“Tell me the moment any one comes within twice hearing distance of us. I must
talk to Baltimore right away.”
IV
“Excuse me, sir, you’re wanted on the wire,” Procter bowed respectfully
behind the Professor’s chair as the gentlemen lingered over cigars and liqueurs
after dinner that evening.
“Pardon me,” Forrester murmured, rising and making for the hall telephone.
“Probably the school wanting to know when I can come back to mark some
examinations, or something equally silly.” He strolled toward the ’phone with