The Place Called Dagon by Herbert Gorman

The Reverend George Burroughs stretched his long yellow hand out and grasped a slice of bread. He made it a point to take the fattest cut. Dreeme, watching from beneath lowered lids, noted that the preacher's hand was shaped like a claw. The fingers curled back like the crazy-shaped bits of driftwood he had seen washed up on the tip of Cape Cod years ago, when, as a boy, he had made a vacation trip to those rolling dunes of white sand. Indeed, the Reverend George Burroughs himself was very like something that had been washed up on the beach. Some sort of skinny sea-monster, an old merman who was half seahorse. It was time to keep an eye on the preacher. Dreeme looked up at Burroughs and discovered that the man of God apparently was thinking the same thought, for his expressionless eyes were fastened upon the young doctor over the bread that he was cramming into his capacious mouth. Burroughs masticated loudly and continued to stare at Dreeme. The pupils of his eyes were like two black shoe buttons. He had never done that before. He had always averted his eyes or dropped them to the heaped plate above which he constantly hovered so eagerly. Dreeme was less startled than amused. If he had entered into the old hypocrite's line of vision at last so much the worse for the old hypocrite. He would give him something to look at. Something to think about. The old night-wanderer! The old fool who poked his horse-like face into burned mills to see what he might see! The withered employment agency for the Westcott farm! Dreeme remarked calmly:

"You enjoy evening strolls, preacher."