“But that skeleton found in the hole near the Giant’s Stairway was a woman’s skeleton.”
“Me loes!” exclaimed Madame Clementine, miscalling her English as she always did in excitement. “Me handle de big bones, moi-même! Me loes what de doctor who found him say!”
“I was told it was an Indian girl.”
“You have hear lies, madame. Me loes there was a blue man found beyond Point de Mission.”
“But who was it that I saw in your house?”
“He is not in my house!” declared Madame Clementine. “No blue man is ever in my house!” She crossed herself.
There is a sensation like having a slide pulled from one’s head; the shock passes in the fraction of a second. Sunshine, and rioting nasturtiums, the whole natural world, including Clementine’s puzzled brown face, were no more distinct to-day than the blue man and the woman with floating hair had been yesterday.
I had seen a man who shot down to instant death in the pit under the Giant’s Stairway thirty-five years ago. I had seen a woman, who, perhaps, once thought herself intentionally and strangely deserted, seek and meet him after she had been killed at four o’clock!
This experience, set down in my note-book and repeated to no one, remains associated with the Old World scent of ginger. For I remember hearing Clementine say through a buzzing, “You come in, madame—you must have de hot wine and jahjah!”