in heaven's name?"

"Keep your promised word; go back to her."

"Good Lord, I can't do that! Go back to a corpse, take her in my
arms--kiss her?"

"_Certainement_, why not?"

"Why--why, she's _dead_!"

"Is she not beautiful?"

"She's lovely and alluring as a siren's song. I think she's the most
exquisite thing I've ever seen, but----" he rose and walked unsteadily
across the room. "If it weren't for Nella," he said slowly, "I might
not find it hard to follow your advice. Julie's sweet and beautiful,
and artless and affectionate as a child; kind, too, the way she stood
between me and that awful snake-thing, but--oh, it's out of the
question!"

"Then we must expand the question to accommodate it, my friend. For
the safety of the living--for Mademoiselle Nella's sake--and for the
repose of the dead, you must keep the oath you swore to little Julie
d'Ayen. You must go back to New Orleans and keep your rendezvous."

* * * * *

The dead of old Saint Denis lay in dreamless sleep beneath the palely
argent rays of the fast-waxing moon. The oven-like tombs were gay with
hardly-wilted flowers; for two days before was All Saints' Day, and no
grave in all New Orleans is so lowly, no dead so long interred, that
pious hands do not bear blossoms of remembrance to them on that feast
of memories.

De Grandin had been busily engaged all afternoon, making mysterious
trips to the old Negro quarter in company with a patriarchal scion of
Indian and Negro ancestry who professed ability to guide him to the
city's foremost practitioner of voodoo; returning to the hotel only
to dash out again to consult his friend at the Cathedral; coming back
to stare with thoughtful eyes upon the changing panorama of Canal
Street while Ned, nervous as a race-horse at the barrier, tramped up
and down the room lighting cigarette from cigarette and drinking
absinthe frappes alternating with sharp, bitter sazarac cocktails till
I wondered that he did not fall in utter alcoholic collapse. By
evening I had that eery feeling that the sane experience when alone
with mad folk. I was ready to shriek at any unexpected noise or turn
and run at sight of a strange shadow.

"My friend," de Grandin ordered as we reached the grass-paved corridor
of tombs where Ned had told us the d'Ayen vaults were, "I suggest that
you drink this." From an inner pocket he drew out a tiny flask of ruby
glass and snapped its stopper loose. A strong a