“Where they knew him?”
“The Stranger on the train recognized him at first glance. But that chap had a copy of the Geographic Magazine and he’d found where they were from that. He had learned about them just as we did.”
Gray frowned. Then he looked respectfully at Cunningham.
“You’re right. They knew him somewhere, a couple of years ago. But where?”
Cunningham shrugged.
“The article says nowhere.”
And the article did. According to the writer, the Strange People were an enigma, an anomaly, and a mystery. And they had just proved that they could be a threat as well.
The livery team drew up before Coulters’ solitary building. It was a crossroads post-office and summer hotel with a dreary general store tucked under one wing.
A man was sitting on the porch, smoking. He was watching them intently and as they alighted he rose to greet them.
One glance made Cunningham exclaim under his breath. This man was the counterpart of the foreigner on the train—the one who had been killed. The same olive skin, the same keen and venomous eyes, and even the same too-full lips with their incongruous suggestion of cruelty. He was dressed, too, in the same immaculate fashion from meticulously tailored clothes to handmade boots.