The Midnight Queen - Page 34/177

"Oh, not in the least!" said the dwarf, with a hoarse chuckle. "Only,

instead of wasting your breath asking this good man, who professes such

utter ignorance, you had better apply to me for information."

Again Sir Norman surveyed the little Hercules from head to foot for a

moment, in silence, as one, nowadays, would an intelligent gorilla.

"You think so--do you? And what may you happen to know about it, my

pretty little friend?"

"O Lord!" exclaimed the landlord, to himself, with a frightened face,

while the dwarf "grinned horribly a ghastly smile" from ear to ear.

"So much, my good sir, that I would strongly advise you not to go near

it, unless you wish to catch something worse than the plague. There have

been others--our worthy host, there, whose teeth, you may perceive, are

chattering in his head, can tell you about those that have tried the

trick, and--"

"Well?" said Sir Norman, curiously.

"And have never returned to tell what they found!" concluded the little

monster, with a diabolical leer. And as the landlord fell, gray and

gasping, back in his seat, he broke out into a loud and hyena-like

laugh.

"My dear little friend," said Sir Norman, staring at him in displeased

wonder, "don't laugh, if you can help it. You are unprepossessing enough

at best, but when you laugh, you look like the very (a downward gesture)

himself!"

Unheeding this advice, the dwarf broke again into an unearthly

cachinnation, that frightened the landlord nearly into fits, and

seriously discomposed the nervous system even of Sir Norman himself.

Then, grinning like a baboon, and still transfixing our puissant young

knight with the same tiger-like and unpleasant glare, he nodded a

farewell; and in this fashion, grinning, and nodding, and backing, he

got to the door, and concluding the interesting performance with a third

hoarse and hideous laugh, disappeared in the darkness.

For fully ten minutes after he was gone, the young man kept his eyes

blankly fixed on the door, with a vague impression that he was suffering

from an attack of nightmare; for it seemed impossible that anything so

preposterously ugly as that dwarf could exist out of one. A deep groan

from the landlord, however, convinced him that it was no disagreeable

midnight vision, but a brawny reality; and turning to that individual,

he found him gasping, in the last degree of terror, behind the counter.

"Now, who in the name of all the demons oat of Hades may that ugly

abortion be?" inquired Sir Norman.

"O Lord I be merciful! sir, it's Caliban; and the only wonder is, he did

not leave you a bleeding corpse at his feet!"

"I should like to see him try it. Perhaps he would have found that is a

game two can play at! Where does he come from and who is he!"