And then Father O'Donnell would cross himself rapidly, just a little guiltily.
It is said that there is a morbid curiosity which forces the murderer to view the place of his crime.
Some psychic reason of the same kind may have caused Stuart McGregor to decorate the walls and corners of his sitting room with the memories of that Africa which he feared and hated, and which, daily, he was trying to forget—with a shimmering, cruel mass of jungle curios, sjamboks and assegais, signal drums and daggers, knobkerries and rhino shields and what not.
Steadily, he added to his collection, buying in auction rooms, in little shops on the water front, from sailors and ship pursers and collectors who had duplicates for sale.
He became a well-known figure in the row of antique stores in back of Madison Square Garden, and was so liberal when it came to payment that Morris Newman, who specialized in African curios, would send the pick of all the new stuff he bought to his house.
It was on a day in August—one of those tropical New York days when the very birds gasp for air,
