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Title: Weird Tales, Volume 1, Number 1, March 1923
       The unique magazine

Author: Various

Editor: Edwin Baird

Release Date: September 10, 2022 [eBook #68957]

Language: English

Produced by: Eric Schmidt (This file was produced from images generously
             made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEIRD TALES, VOLUME 1, NUMBER
1, MARCH 1923 ***

[Illustration]




Weird Tales Volume 1 Number 1

The Strange Magazine

March 1923

Edited by Edwin Baird

[Transcriber's Note: The original magazine's
advertisements for future stories have been preserved.]




Contents for March, 1923


Twenty-Two Remarkable Short Stories

 “The Mystery of Black Jean”--by Julian Kilman
      A story of blood-curdling realism,
      with a smashing surprise at the end.
 “The Grave”--by Orville R. Emerson
      A soul-gripping story of terror.
 “Hark! The Rattle!”--by Joel Townsley Rogers
      An uncommon tale that will cling to your memory for many a day.
 “The Ghost Guard”--by Bryan Irvine
      A “spooky” tale with a grim background.
 “The Ghoul and the Corpse”--by G. A. Wells
      An amazing yarn of weird adventure in the frozen North.
 “Fear”--by David R. Solomon
      Showing how fear can drive a strong man to the verge of insanity.
 “The Place of Madness”--by Merlin Moore Taylor
      What two hours in a prison “solitary” did to a man.
 “The Closing Hand”--by Farnsworth Wright
      A brief story powerfully written.
 “The Unknown Beast”--by Howard Ellis Davis
      An unusual tale of a terrifying monster.
 “The Basket”--by Herbert J. Mangham
      A queer little story about San Francisco.
 “The Accusing Voice”--by Meredith Davis
      The singular experience of Allen Defoe.
 “The Sequel”--by Walter Scott Story
      A new conclusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado”
 “The Weaving Shadows”--by W. H. Holmes
      Chet Burke’s strange adventures in a haunted house.
 “Nimba, the Cave Girl”--by R. T. M. Scott
      An odd, fantastic little story of the Stone Age.
 “The Young Man Who Wanted to Die”--by ? ? ?
      An anonymous author submits a startling answer to the question,
      “What comes after death?”
 “The Scarlet Night”--by William Sanford
      A tale with an eerie thrill.
 “The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni”
           --by Joseph Faus and James Bennett Wooding
      An eccentric doctor creates a frightful living thing.
 “The Return of Paul Slavsky”--by Capt. George Warburton Lewis
      A “creepy” tale that ends in a shuddering, breath-taking way.
 “The House of Death”--by F. Georgia Stroup
      The strange secret of a lonely woman.
 “The Gallows”--by I. W. D. Peters
      An out-of-the-ordinary story.
 “The Skull”--by Harold Ward
      A grim tale with a terrifying end.
 “The Ape-Man”--by James B. M. Clark, Jr.
      A Jungle tale that is somehow “different.”
 “The Eyrie”--by The Editor
      A Letter from the Editor.

Three Unusual Novelettes

 “The Dead Man's Tale”--by Willard E. Hawkins
      An astounding yarn that will hold you spellbound and make
      you breathe fast with a new mental sensation.
 “Ooze”--by Anthony M. Rud
      A Remarkable short novel by a master of “gooseflesh” fiction.
 “The Chain”--by Hamilton Craigie
      Craigie is at his best here.


A Strange Novel in Two Parts

 “The Thing of a Thousand Shapes”--by Otis Adelbert Kline
      Don’t start this story late at night.


Also a number of odd facts and queer fancies, crowded in for good measure.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




“Goose-flesh” Stories

Tales of horror--or “goose-flesh” stories--are commonly shunned by
magazine editors. Few, if any, will consider such a story, no matter
how interesting it may be. They believe that the public doesn’t want
this sort of fiction. We, however, believe otherwise. We believe there
are tens of thousands--perhaps hundreds of thousands--of intelligent
readers who really enjoy “goose-flesh” stories. Hence--

WEIRD TALES.

* * *

The Unique Magazine

WEIRD TALES offers such fiction as you can find in no other
magazine--fantastic stories, extraordinary stories, grotesque stories,
stories of strange and bizarre adventure--the sort of stories, in
brief that will startle and amaze you. Every story in this issue of
WEIRD TALES is an odd and remarkable flight of man’s imagination. Some
are “creepy,” some deal in masterly fashion with “forbidden” subjects,
like insanity, some are concerned with the supernatural and others
with material things of horror--all are out of the ordinary,
surprisingly new and unusual. A sensational departure from the beaten
track--that is the reason for--

WEIRD TALES.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




[Illustration]




For Scalp-prickling Thrills and Stark Terror, Read

The Dead Man’s Tale

By Willard E. Hawkins




_The curious narrative that follows was found among the papers of the
late Dr. John Pedric, psychical investigator and author of occult
works. It bears evidences of having been received through automatic
writing, as were several of his publications. Unfortunately, there are
no records to confirm this assumption, and none of the mediums or
assistants employed by him in his research work admits knowledge of
it. Possibly--for the Doctor was reputed to possess some psychic
powers--it may have been received by him. At any rate, the lack of
data renders the recital useless as a document for the Society for
Psychical Research. It is published for whatever intrinsic interest or
significance it may possess. With reference to the names mentioned, it
may be added that they are not confirmed by the records of the War
Department. It could be maintained, however, that purposely fictitious
names were substituted, either by the Doctor or the communicating entity._




They called me--when I walked the earth in a body of dense
matter--Richard Devaney. Though my story has little to do with the
war, I was killed on the second battle of the Marne, on July 24, 1918.

Many times, as men were wont to do who felt the daily, hourly
imminence of death in the trenches, I had pictured that event in my
mind and wondered what it would be like. Mainly I had inclined toward
a belief in total extinction. That, when the vigorous, full-blooded
body I possessed should lie bereft of its faculties, I, as a creature
apart from it, should go on, was beyond credence. The play of life
through the human machine, I reasoned, was like the flow of gasoline
into the motor of an automobile. Shut off that flow, and the motor
became inert, dead, while the fluid which had given it power was in
itself nothing.

And so, I confess, it was a surprise to discover that I was dead and
yet not dead.

I did not make the discovery at once. There had been a blinding
concussion, a moment of darkness, a sensation of
falling--falling--into a deep abyss. An indefinite time afterward. I
found myself standing dazedly on the hillside, toward the crest of
which we had been pressing against the enemy. The thought came that I
must have momentarily lost consciousness. Yet now I felt strangely
free from physical discomfort.

What had I been doing when that moment of blackness blotted everything
out? I had been dominated by a purpose, a flaming desire----

Like a flash, recollection burst upon me, and, with it, a blaze of
hatred--not toward the Boche gunners, ensconced in the woods above us,
but toward the private enemy I had been about to kill.

It had been the opportunity for which I had waited interminable days
and nights. In the open formation, he kept a few paces ahead of me. As
we alternately ran forward, then dropped on our bellies and fired. I
had watched my chance. No one would suspect, with the dozens who were
falling every moment under the merciless fire from the trees beyond,
that the bullet which ended Louis Winston’s career came from a
comrade’s rifle.

Twice I had taken aim, but withheld my fire--not from indecision, but
lest, in my vengeful heat, I might fail to reach a vital spot. When I
raised my rifle the third time, he offered a fair target.

God! how I hated him. With fingers itching to speed the steel toward
his heart, I forced myself to remain calm--to hold fire for that
fragment of n second that would insure careful aim.

Then, as the pressure of my finger tightened against the trigger, came
the blinding flash--the moment of blackness.




II.

I had evidently remained unconscious longer than I realized.

Save for a few figures that lay motionless or squirming in agony on
the field, the regiment had passed on, to be lost in the frees at the
crest of the hill. With a pang of disappointment, I realized that
Louis would be among them.

Involuntarily I started onward, driven still by that impulse of
burning hatred, when I heard my name called.

Turning in surprise, I saw a helmeted figure crouching beside
something huddled in the tall grass. No second glance was needed to
tell me that the huddled something was the body of a soldier. I had
eyes only for the man who was bending over him. Fate had been kind to
me. It was Louis.

Apparently, in his preoccupation, he had not noticed me. Coolly I
raised my rifle and fired.

The result was startling. Louis neither dropped headlong nor looked up
at the report. Vaguely I questioned whether there had been a report.

Thwarted, I felt the lust to kill mounting in me with redoubled fury.
With rifle upraised, I ran toward him. A terrific swing, and I crashed
the stock against his head.

It passed clear through! Louis remained unmoved.

Uncomprehending, snarling, I flung the useless weapon away and fell
upon him with bare hands--with fingers that strained to rend and tear
and strangle.

Instead of encountering solid flesh and bone, they too passed through him.

Was it a mirage? A dream? Had I gone crazy? Sobered--for a moment
forgetful of my fury--I drew back and tried to reduce the thing to
reason. Was Louis but a figment of the imagination--a phantom?

My glance fell upon the figure be side which he was sobbing incoherent
words of entreaty.

I gave a start, then looked more closely.

The dead man--for there was no question about his condition, with a
bloody shrapnel wound in the side of his head--was myself!

Gradually the import of this penetrated my consciousness. Then I
realized that it was Louis who had called my name--that even now he
was sobbing it over and over.

The irony of it struck me at the moment of realization. I was dead--I
was the phantom--who had meant to kill Louis!

I looked at my hands, my uniform--I touched my body. Apparently I was
as substantial as before the shrapnel buried itself in my head. Yet,
when I had tried to grasp Louis, my hand seemed to encompass only space.

Louis lived, and I was dead!

The discovery for a time benumbed my feeling toward him. With
impersonal curiosity, I saw him close the eyes of the dead man--the
man who, somehow or other, had been me. I saw him search the pockets
and draw forth a letter I had written only that morning, a letter
addressed to----

With a sudden surge of dismay, I darted forward to snatch it from his
hands. He should not read that letter!

Again I was reminded of my impalpability.

But Louis did not open the envelope, although it was unsealed. He read
the superscription, kissed it as sobs rent his frame, and thrust the
letter inside his khaki jacket.

“Dick! Buddie!” he cried brokenly. “Best pal man ever had--how can I
take this news back to her!”

My lips curled. To Louis, I was his pal, his buddie. Not a suspicion
of the hate I bore him--had borne him ever since I discovered in him a
rival for Velma Roth.

Oh, I had been clever! It was our “unselfish friendship” that endeared
us both to her. A sign of jealousy, of ill nature, and I would have
forfeited the paradise of her regard that apparently shared with Louis.

I had never felt secure of my place in that paradise. True, I could
always awaken a response in her, but I must put forth effort in order
to do so. He held her interest, it seemed, without trying. They were
happy with each other and in each other.

Our relations might be expressed by likening her to the water of a
placid pool, Louis to the basin that held her, me to the wind that
swept over it. By exerting myself, I could agitate the surface of
nature into ripples of pleasurable excitement--could even lash her
emotions into a tempest. She responded to the stimulation of my mood,
yet, in my absence, settled contentedly into the peaceful comfort of
Louis’ steadfast love.

I felt vaguely then--and am certain now, with a broader perspective
toward realities--that Velma intuitively recognized Louis as her mate,
yet feared to yield herself to him because of my sway over her
emotional nature.

When the great war came, we all, I am convinced, felt that it would
absolve Velma from the task of choosing between us.

Whether the agony that spoke from the violet depths of her eyes when
we said good-by was chiefly for Louis or for me, I could not tell. I
doubt if she could have done so. But in my mind was the determination
that only one of us should return, and--Louis would not be that one.

Did I feel no repugnance at thought of murdering the man who stood in
my way? Very little. I was a savage at heart--a savage in whom desire
outweighed anything that might stand in the way of gaining its object.
From my point of view, I would have been a fool to pass the opportunity.

Why I should have so hated him--a mere obstacle in my path--I do not
know. It may have been due to a prescience of the intangible barrier
his would always raise between Velma and me--or to a slumbering sense
of remorse.

But, speculation aside, here I was, in a state of being that the world
calls death, while Louis lived--was free to return home--to claim
Velma--to flaunt his possession of all that I held precious.

It was maddening! Must I stand idly by, helpless to prevent this?




III.

I have wondered, since, how I could remain so long in touch with the
objective world--why I did not at once, or very soon, find myself shut
off from earthly sights and sounds as those in physical form are shut
off from the things beyond.

The matter seems to have been determined by my will. Like weights of
lead, envy of Louis and passionate longing for Velma held my feet to
the sphere of dense matter.

Vengeful, despairing, I watched beside Louis. When at last he turned
away from my body and, with tears streaming from his eyes, began to
drag a useless leg toward the trenches we had left. I realized why he
had not gone on with the others to the crest of the hill. He, too, was
a victim of Boche gunnery.

I walked beside the stretcher-bearers when they had picked him up and
were conveying him toward the base hospital. Throughout the weeks that
followed I hovered near his cot, watching the doctors as they bound up
the lacerated tendons in his thigh, and missing no detail of his
battle with the fever.

Over his shoulder I read the first letter he wrote home to Velma, in
which he gave a belated account of my death, dwelling upon the glory
of my sacrifice.


      _“I have often thought that you two were meant for each other”_
      [he wrote] _“and that if it had not been for fear of hurting me,
      you would have been his wife long ago. He as the best buddie a
      man ever had. If only I could have been the one to die!”_


Had I known it, I could have followed this letter across seas--could,
in fact, have passed it and, by an exercise of the will, have been at
Velma’s side in the twinkling of an eye. But my ignorance of the laws
of the new plane was total. All my thoughts were centered upon a
problem of entirely different character.

Never was hold upon earthly treasure more reluctantly relinquished
than was my hope of possessing Velma. Surely, death could not erect so
absolute a barrier. There must be a way--some loop, hole of
communication--some chance for a disembodied man to contend with his
corporeal rival for a woman’s love.

Slowly, very slowly, dawned the light of a plan. So feeble was the
glimmer that it would scarcely have comforted one in less desperate
straits, but to me it appeared to offer a possible hope. I set about
methodically, with infinite patience, evolving it into something
tangible, even though I had but the most indefinite idea of what the
outcome might be.

The first suggestion came when Louis had so far recovered that but
little trace of the fever remained. One afternoon, as he lay sleeping,
the mail-distributor handed a letter to the nurse who happened to be
standing beside his cot. She glanced at it, then tucked it under his
pillow.

The letter was from Velma, and I was hungry for the contents. I did
not then know that I could have read it easily, sealed though it was.
In a frenzy of impatience, I exclaimed:

“Wake up, confound it, and read your letter!”

With a start, he opened his eyes. He looked around with a bewildered
expression.

“Under your pillow!” I fumed. “Look under your pillow!”

In a dazed manner, he put his hand under the pillow and drew forth the
letter.

A few hours later, I heard him commenting on the experience to the
nurse.

Something seemed to wake me up,” he said, “and I had a peculiar
impulse to feel under the pillow. It was just as if I knew I would
find the letter there.”

The circumstances seemed as remarkable to me as it did to him. It
might be coincidence, but I determined to make a further test.

A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a very slight
degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he
was tired or on the borderland of sleep. Occasionally I was able to
control the direction of his thoughts as he wrote home to Velma.

On one occasion, he was describing for her a funny little French woman
who visited the hospital with a basket that always was filled with
cigarettes and candy.

_“Last time”_ [he wrote], _“she brought with her a boy whom she
called. . . .”_

He paused, with pencil upraised, trying to recall the name.

A moment later, he looked down at the page and stared with
astonishment. The words, _“She called him Maurice,”_ had been added
below the unfinished line.

“I must be going daffy.” he muttered. “I’d swear I didn’t write that.”

Behind him, I stood rubbing my hands in triumph. It was my first
successful effort to guide the pencil while his thoughts strayed
elsewhere.

Another time, he wrote to Velma:


      _“I’ve a strange feeling, lately, that dear old Dick is near.
      Sometimes, as I wake up. I seem to remember vaguely having seen
      him in my dreams. It’s as if his features were just fading from
      view.”_


He paused here long that I made another attempt to take advantage of
his abstraction.

By an effort of the will that it is difficult to explain. I guided his
hand into the formation of the words:


      _“With a jugful of kisses for Winkie, as ever her. . . .”_


Just then. Louis looked down.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, as if he had seen a ghost.




IV.

“Winkie” was a pet name I had given Velma when we were children together.

Louis always maintained there was no sense in it, and refused to adopt
it, though I frequently called her by the name in later years. And of
his own volition, Louis would never have mentioned anything so
convivial as a jugful of kisses.

So, through the weary months before he was invalided home, I worked.
When he left France at the debarkation point, he still walked on
crutches, but with the promise of regaining the unassisted use of his
leg before very long. Throughout the voyage, I hovered near him,
sharing his impatience, his longing for the one we both held dearest.

Over the exquisite pain of the reunion--at which I was present, yet
not present--I shall pass briefly. More beautiful than ever, more
appealing with her vivid, deep coloring, Velma in the flesh was a
vision that stirred my longing into an intense flame.

Louis limped painfully down the gangplank. When they met, she rested
her head silently on his shoulder for a moment, then--her eyes
brimming with teal’s--assisted him with the tender solicitude of a
mother, to the machine she had in waiting.

Two months later they were married. I felt the pain of this less
deeply than I would have done had it not been essential to my designs.

Whatever vague hope I may have had, however, of vicariously enjoying
the delights of love were disappointed. I could not have explained
why--I only knew that something barred me from intruding upon the
sacred intimacies of their life, as if a defensive wall were
interposed. It was baffling, but a very present fact, against which I
found it useless to rebel. I have since learned--but no matter. * * *

This had no bearing on my purpose, which hinged upon the ability I was
acquiring of influencing Louis’ thoughts and actions--of taking
partial control of his faculties.

The occupation into which he drifted, restricted in choice as he was
by the stiffened leg, helped me materially. Often, lifter an
interminable shift at the bank, he would plod home at night with brain
so weary and benumbed that it was a simple matter to impress my will
upon him. Each successful attempt, too, made the next one easier.

The inevitable consequence was that in time Velma should notice his
aberrations and betray concern.

“Why did you say to me, when you came in last night, ‘There’s a blue
Billy-goat on the stairs--I wish they’d drive him out’?” she demanded
one morning.

He looked down shamefacedly at the tablecloth.

“I don’t know what made me say it I seemed to _want_ to say it, and
that was the only way to get it off my mind. I thought you’d take it
as a joke.” He shifted his shoulders, as if trying to dislodge an
unpleasant burden.

“And was that what made you wear a necktie to bed?” she asked, ironically.

He nodded an affirmative. “I knew it was idiotic--but the idea kept
running in my mind. It seemed as if the only way I could go to sleep
was to give in to it. I don’t have these freaks unless I’m very tired.”

She said nothing more at the time, but that evening she broached the
subject of his looking for an opening in some less sedentary
occupation--a subject to which she thereafter constantly recurred.

Then came a development that surprised and excited me with its
possibilities.

Exhausted, drained to the last drop of his nerve-force, Louis was
returning late one night from the bank, following the usual month-end
overtime grind. As he walked from the car-line, I hovered over him,
subduing his personality, forcing it under control, with the effort of
will I had gradually learned to direct upon him. The process can only
be explained in a crude way: It was as if I contended with him,
sometimes successfully, for possession of the steering-wheel of the
human car that he drove.

Velma was waiting when we arrived. As Louis’ feet sounded on the
threshold of their apartment, she opened the door, caught his hands,
and drew him inside.

At the action, I felt inexplicably thrilled. It was as if some
marvelous change had come over me. And then, as I met her gaze, I knew
what that change was.

I held her hands in real flesh-and-blood contact. I was looking at her
with Louis’ sight!




V.

The shock of it cost me what I had gained. Shaken from my poise, I
felt the personality I had subdued regain its sway.

The next moment, Louis was staring at Velma in bewilderment. Her eyes
were filled with alarm.

“You--you frightened me!” she gasped, withdrawing her hands, which I had
all but crushed. “Louis, dear--don’t ever look at me again like that!”

I can imagine the devouring intensity of gaze that had blazed forth
from the features in that brief moment when they were mine.

From this time, my plans quickly took form. Two modes of action
presented themselves. The first and more alluring, however, I was
forced to abandon. It was none other than the wild dream of acquiring
exclusive possession of Louis’ body--of forcing him down, out, and
into the secondary place I had occupied.

Despite the progress I had made, this proved inexpressibly difficult.
For one thing, there seemed an affinity between Louis’ body and his
personality, which forced me out when he was moderately rested. This
bond I might have weakened, but there were other factors.

One was the growing conviction on his part that something was
radically wrong. With a faculty I had discovered of putting myself on
rapport with him and reading his thoughts, I knew that at times he
feared that he was going insane.

I once had the experience of accompanying him to an alienist and
there, like the proverbial fly on the wall, overhearing learned
scientific names applied to my efforts. The alienist spoke of “dual
personality,” “amnesia.” and “the subconscious mind,” while I laughed
in my (shall I say?) ghostly sleeve.

But he advised Louis to seek a complete rest and, if possible, to go
into the country to build up physically--which was what I desired most
to prevent.

I could not play the Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll if Louis maintained
his normal virility.

Velma’s fears, too, I knew were growing more acute. As insistently as
she could, without betraying too openly her alarm, she pressed him to
give up the bank position and seek work in the open air--work that
would prove less devitalizing to a person of his peculiar temperament.

One of the results of debility from overwork is, apparently, that it
deprives the victim of his initiative--makes him fearful of giving up
his hold upon the meager means of sustenance that he has, lest he
shall be unable to grasp another. Louis was in debt, earning scarcely
enough for their living expenses, too proud to let Velma help as she
longed to do, his game leg putting him at a disadvantage in industrial
field. In fact, he was in just the predicament I desired, but I knew
that in time her wishes would prevail.

The circumstances, however, that deprived me of all hope of completely
usurping his place was this: I could not, for any length of time, face
the gaze of Velma’s eyes. The personified truth, the purity that dwelt
in them, seemed to dissolve my power, to beat me back into the
secondary relationship I had come to occupy toward Louis.

He was sometimes tempted to tell her: “You give me my one grip on sanity.”

I have witnessed his panic at the thought of losing her, at the
thought that some day she might give him up in disgust at his aberrations,
and abandon him to the formless “thing” that haunted him.

Curious--to be of the world and yet not of it--to enjoy a perspective
that reveals the hidden side of effects, which seem so mysterious from
the material side of the veil. But I would gladly have given all the
advantages of my disembodied state for one hour of flesh-and-blood
companionship with Velma.

My alternative plan was this:

If I could not enter her world, what would prevent me from _bringing
Velma into mine?_




VI.

Daring? To be sure.

Unversed as I was in the laws that govern this mystery of passing from
the physical into another state of existence, I could only hope that
the plan would work. It might--and that was enough for me. I took a
gambler’s chance. By risking all, I might gain all--might gain--

The thought of what I might gain transported me to a heaven of pain
and ecstasy.

Velma and I--in a world apart--a world of our own--free from the sordid
trammels that mar the perfection of the rosiest earth-existence. Velma
and I--together through all eternity!

This much reason I had for hoping!

I observed that other persons passed through the change called death,
and that some entered a state of being in which I was conscious of
them and they of me. Uninteresting creatures they were, almost wholly
preoccupied with their former earth-interests; but they were as much
in the world as I had been in the world of Velma and Louis before that
fragment of shrapnel ruled me out of the game.

A few, it was true, on passing from their physical habitations, seemed
to emerge into a sphere to which I could’ not follow. This troubled
me. Velma might do likewise. Yet I refused to admit the
probability--refused to consider the possible failure of my plan. The
very intensity of my longing would draw her to me.

The gulf that separated us was spanned by the grave. Once Velma had
crossed to my side of the abyss, there would be no going back to Louis.

Yet I was cunning. She must not come to me with overpowering regrets
that would cause her to hover about Louis as I now hovered about her.
If I could inspire her with horror and loathing for him--ah! if I only
could!

As a preliminary step, I must induce Louis to buy the instrument with
which my purpose was to be accomplished. This was not easy, for on
nights when he left the bunk during shopping hours he was sufficiently
vigorous to resist my will. I could work only through suggestion.

In a pawnshop window that he passed daily I had noticed a revolver
prominently displayed. My whole effort was concentrated upon bringing
this to his attention.

The second night, he glanced at the revolver, but did not stop. Three
nights later, drawn by a fascination for which he could not Have
accounted, he paused and looked at it for several minutes, fighting an
urge that seemed to command: “Step in and buy! Buy! Buy!”

When, a few evenings later, he arrived home with the revolver and a
box of cartridges that the pawnbroker had included in the sale, he put
them hastily out of sight in a drawer of his desk.

He said nothing about his purchase, but the next day Velma came across
the weapon and questioned him regarding it.

Visibly confused, he replied: “Oh, I thought we might need something
of the sort. Saw it in a window, and the notion of having it sort of
took hold of me. There’s been a lot of housebreaking lately, and it’s
just as well to be prepared.”

And now with impatience I waited for the opportunity to stage my
denouement.

It came, naturally, at the end of the month, when Louis, after a
prolonged day’s work, returned home, soon after midnight, his brain
benumbed with poring over interminable columns of figures. When his
feet ascended the stairs to his apartment it was not his faculties
that directed them, but mine--cunning, alert, aflame with deadly purpose.

Never was more weird preliminary to a murder--the entering, in guise
of a dear, familiar form, of a fiend incarnate, intent upon destroying
the flower of the home.

I speak of a fiend incarnate, even though I was that fiend, for I did
not enter Louis’s body in full expression of my faculties. Taking up
physical life, my recollection of existence as a spirit entity was
always shadowy. I carried through the dominating impulses that had
actuated me on entering the body, but scarcely more.

And the impulse I had carried through that night was the impulse to kill.




VII.

With utmost caution, I entered the bedroom.

My control of Louis’s body was complete. I felt, for perhaps the first
time, so corporeally secure that the vague dread of being driven out
did not oppress me.

The room was dark, but the soft, regular breathing of Velma, asleep,
reached my ears. It was like the invitation that rises in the scent of
old wine which the lips are about to quaff--quickening my eagerness
and setting my brain on fire.

I did not think of love. I lusted--but my lust was to destroy that
beautiful body--to kill!

However, I was cunning--cunning. With caution, I felt my way toward
the desk and secured the revolver, filling its chambers with leaden
emissaries of death.

When all was in readiness, I switched on the light.

She wakened almost instantly. As the radiance flooded the room, a
startled cry rose to her lips. It froze, unuttered, as--half
rising--she met my gaze.

Her beauty--the raven blackness of her hair falling over her bare
shoulders and full, hearing bosom, fanned the flame of my gory passion
into fury. In on ecstasy of triumph, I stood drinking in the picture.

While I temporized with the lust to kill--prolonging the exquisite
sensation--she was battling for self-control.

_“Louis!”_ The name was gasped through bloodless lips.

Involuntarily, I shrank, reeling a little under her gaze. A dormant
something seemed to rise in feeble protest at what I sought to do. The
leveled revolver wavered in my hand.

But the note of panic in her voice revived my purpose. I
laughed--mockingly.

“Louis!” her tone was sharp, but edged with terror, “Louis--_put down
that pistol!_ You don’t know what you are doing.”

She struggled to her feet and now stood before me. God! how
beautiful--how tempting that pure white bosom!

_“Put down that pistol!”_ she ordered hysterically.

She was frantic with fear. And her fear was like the blast of a forge
upon the white heat of my passion.

I mocked her. A shrill maniacal laugh burst from my throat. She had
said I didn’t know what I was doing! Oh, yes, I did.

“I’m going to kill you--_kill you!”_

I shrieked, and laughed again.

She swayed forward like a wraith, as I fired. Or perhaps that was the
trick played by my eyes as darkness overwhelmed me.




VIII.

A few fragmentary pictures stand out in my recollection like
clear-etched cameos on the scroll of the past.

One is of Louis, standing dazedly--slightly swaying as with
vertigo--looking down at the smoking revolver in his hand. On the
floor before him a crumpled figure in ebony and white and vivid crimson.

Then a confusion of frightened men and women in oddly assorted
nondescript attire--uniformed officers bursting into the room and
taking the revolver from Louis’s unresisting hand--clumsy efforts at
lifting the white-robed body to the bed--a crimson stain spreading
over the sheet--a doctor, attired in collarless shirt and wearing
slippers, bending over her. * * *

Finally, after a lapse of hours, a hushed atmosphere--efficient
nurses--the beginning of delirium.

And one other picture--of Louis, cringing behind the bars of his cell,
denied the privilege of visiting his wife’s bedside--crushed, dreading
the hourly announcement of her death--filled with unspeakable horror
of himself.

Velma still lived. The bullet had pierced her left lung and life hung
by a tenuous thread. Hovering near I watched with dispassionate
interest the battle for life. For the time I seemed emotionally spent.
I had made a supreme effort--events would now take their inevitable
course and show whether I had accomplished my purpose. I felt neither
anxious nor overjoyed, neither regretful nor triumphant--merely
impersonally curious.

A fever set in lessening Velma’s slender chances of recovery. In her
delirium, her thoughts seemed always of Louis. Sometimes she breathed
His name pleadingly, tenderly, then cried out in terror at some fleeting
rehearsal of the scene in which he stood before her, the glitter of
insanity in his eyes, the leveled revolver in his Hand. Again she pleaded
with him to give up his work at the bank; and at other times she seemed
to think of him as over on the battlefields of Europe.

Only once did she apparently think of me--when she whispered the name
by which I had called her, _“Winkie!”_ and added, _“Dick!”_ But, save
for this exception, it was always “Louis! Louis!”

Her constant reiteration of his name finally dispelled the apathy of
my spirit.

_Louis!_ All the vengeful fury toward him I had experienced when my
soul went hurtling into the region of the disembodied returned with
thwarted intensity.

When Velma’s fever subsided, when the long fight for recovery began
and she fluttered from the borderland back into the realm of the
physical, when I knew I had failed--balked of my prey, I had at least
this satisfaction:

Never again would these two--the man I hated and the woman for whom I
hungered--never again would they be to each other as they had been in
the past. The perfection of their love had been irretrievably marred.
Never would she meet his gaze without an inward shrinking. Always on
his part--on both their parts--there would be an undercurrent of fear
that the incident might recur--a grizzly menace, poisoning each moment
of their lives together.

I had not schemed and contrived--and dared--in vain.

This was the thought I hugged when Louis was released from jail, upon
her refusal to prosecute. It caused me sardonic amusement when, in
their first embrace, the tears of despair rained down their cheeks. It
recurred when they began their pitiful attempt to build anew on the
shattered foundation of love.

And then--creepingly, slyly, like a bird of ill omen casting the
shadow of its silent wings over the landscape--came retribution.

Many times, in retrospect, I lived over that brief hour of my return
to physical expression--my hour of realization. Wraithlike, arose a
vision of Velma--Velma as she had stood before me that night, staring
at me with horror. I saw the horror deepen--deepen to abject despair.

How beautiful she had looked! But when I tried to picture that beauty,
I could recall only her eyes. It mattered not whether I wished to see
them--they filled my vision.

They seemed to haunt me. From being vaguely conscious of them, I
became acutely so. Disconcertingly, they looked out at me from
everywhere--eyes brimming with fear--eyes fixed and staring--filled
with horrified accusation.

The beauty I had once coveted became a thing forbidden, even in memory.
If I sought to peer through the veil as formerly--to witness her pathetic
attempts to resume the old life with Louis--again those eyes!

It may perhaps sound strange for a disembodied creature--one whom you
would call a ghost--to wail of being haunted. Yet haunting is of the
spirit, and we of the spirit world are immeasurably more subject to
its conditions than those whose consciousness is centered in the
material sphere.

God! Those eyes. There is a refinement of physical torture which
consists of allowing water to fall, drop by drop, for an eternity of
hours, upon the forehead of the victim. Conceive of this torture
increased a thousandfold, and a faint idea may be gained of the
torture that was mine--from seeing everywhere, constantly,
interminably, two orbs ever filled with the same expression of horror
and reproach.

Much have I learned since entering the Land of the Shades. At that
time I did not know, as I know now, that my punishment was no
affliction from without, but the simple result of natural law. Cause
set in motion must work out their full reaction. The pebble, cast into
a quiet pool, makes ripples which in time return to the place of their
origin. I had cast more than a pebble of disturbance into the harmony
of human life, and through my intense preoccupation in a single aim
had delayed longer than usual the reaction, I had created for myself a
hell. Inevitably I was drawn into it.

Gone was every desire I had known to hover near the two who had so
long engrossed my attention. Haunted, harried, scourged by those
dreadful accusers, I sought to fly from them to the ends of the earth.
There was no escape, yet, driven frantic, I still struggled to escape,
because that is the blind impulse of suffering creatures.

The emotions that, had so swayed me when I tried to blast the lives of
two who held me dear now seemed puny and insignificant’ in comparison
with my suffering. No physical torment can be likened to that which
engulfed me until my very being was but a seething mas of agony.
Through it, I hurled maledictions upon the world, upon myself, upon
the creator. Horrible blasphemies I uttered.

And, at last--I prayed.

It was but a cry for mercy--the inarticulate appeal of a tortured soul
for surcease of pain--but suddenly a neat peace seemed to have come
upon the universe.

Bereft of suffering, I felt like one who has ceased to exist.

Out of the silence came a wordless response. It beat upon my
consciousness like the buffeting of the wave.

Words known to human ears would not convey the meaning of the message that
was borne upon me--whether from outside source or welling up from within,
I do not know. All I know is that it filled me with a strange hope.

A thousand years or o single instant--for time is a relative
thing--the respite lasted. Then. I sank, as it seemed, to the old
level of consciousness, and the torment was renewed.

Endure it now I knew that I must--and why. A strange new purpose
filled my being. The light of understanding had dawned upon my soul.

And so I came to resume my vigil in the home of Velma and Louis.




IX.

A brave heart was Velma’s--dauntless and true.

With the effects of the tragedy still apparent in her pallor and
weakness, and in the shaken demeanor and furtive, self-distrustful
attitude of Louis, she yet succeeded in finding a place for him as
overseer of a small country estate.

I have said that I ceased to feel the torment of passion for Velma in
the greater torment of her reproach. Ah I but I had never ceased to
love her. As I now realized, I had desecrated that love, had
transmuted it into a horrible travesty, had, in my abysmal ignorance,
sought to obtain what I desired by destroying it; yet, beneath all, I
had loved.

Well I know, now, that had I succeeded in my intention toward her,
Velma would have ascended to a sphere utterly beyond my comprehension.
Merciful fate had diverted my aim--had made possible some faint
restitution.

I returned to Velma, loving her with a love that had come into its
own, a love unselfish, untainted by thought of possession.

But, to help her, I must again hurt her cruelly.

Out of the chaos of her life she had slowly restored a semblance of
harmony. Almost she succeeded in convincing Louis that their old
peaceful companionship had returned: but to one who could read her
thoughts, the nightmare thing that hovered between them weighed
cruelly upon her soul.

She was never quite able to look into her husband’s eves without a
lurking suspicion of what might lie in their depths; never able to
compose herself for sleep without a tremor lest she should wake to
find herself confronted by a fiend in his form. I had done my work
only too well!

Now, slowly and inexorably, I began again undermining Louis’ mental
control. The old ground must be traversed anew, because he had gained
in strength from the respite I had allowed him, and his outdoor life
gave him a mental vigor with which I had not been obliged to contend
before. On the other hand, I was equipped with new knowledge of the
power I intended to wield.

I shall not relate again the successive stages by which I succeeded,
first in influencing his will, then in partially subduing it, and,
finally, in driving his personality into the background for indefinite
periods. The terror that overwhelmed him when he realized that he was
becoming a prey to his former aberrations may be imagined.

To shield Velma, I performed my experiments, when possible, while he
was away from her. But she could not long be unaware of the moodiness,
the haggard droop of his shoulders which accompanied his realization
that the old malady had returned. The deepening terror in her
expression was like a scourge upon my spirit--but I must wound her in
order to cure.

More than once, I was forced to exert my power over Louis to prevent
him from taking violent measures against himself. As I gained the
ascendancy, a determination to end it all grew upon him. He feared
that unless he took himself out of Velma’s life, the insanity would
return and force him again to commit a frenzied assault upon the one
he held most dear. Nor could he avoid seeing the apprehension in her
manner that told him she knew--the shrinking that she bravely tried to
conceal.

Though my power over him was greater than before, it was intermittent.
I could not always exercise it. I could not, for example, prevent his
borrowing a revolver one day from a neighboring farmer, on pretense of
using it against a marauding dog that had lately visited the poultry yard.

Though I knew his true intention, the utmost that I could do--for his
personality was strong at the time--was to influence him to postpone
the deed he contemplated.

That night, I took possession of his body while he slept. Velma lay,
breathing quietly, in the next room--for as this dreaded thing came
upon him they had, through tacit understanding, come to occupy
separate bedrooms.

Partially dressing. I stole downstairs and out to the tool-shed where
Louis--fearing to trust it near him in the house--had hidden the
revolver. As I returned, my whole being rebelled at the task before
me--yet it was unavoidable, if I would restore to Velma what I had
wrenched from her.

Quietly though I entered her room, a gasp--or rather a quick,
hysterical intake of breath--warned me that she had wakened.

I flashed on the light.

She made no sound. Her face went white as marble. The expression in
her eyes was that which had tortured me into the depths of a hell more
frightful than any conceived by human imagination.

A moment I stood swaying before her, with leveled revolver--as I had
stood on that other occasion, months before.

Slowly, I lowered the revolver, and smiled--not as Louis would have
smiled but as a maniac, formed in his likeness, would have smiled.

Her lips framed the word “Louis,” but, in the grip of despair, she
made no sound. It was the despair not merely of a woman who felt
herself doomed to death, but of a woman who consigned her loved one to
a fate worse than death.

Still I smiled--with growing difficulty, for Louis’ personality was
restive and my time in the usurped body was short.

In That moment, I was not anxious to give up his body. At this new
glimpse of her beauty through physical sight, my love for Velma flamed
into hitherto unrealized intensity. For an instant my purpose in
returning was forgotten. Forgotten was the knowledge of the ages which
I had sipped since last I occupied the body in which I faced her.
Forgotten was everything save--Velma.

As I took a step forward, my arms outstretched, my eyes expressing God
knows what depth of yearning, she uttered a scream.

Blackness surged over me. I stumbled. I was being forced out--out--

That cry of terror had vibrated through the soul of Louis and he was
struggling to answer it.

Instinctively, I battled against the darkness, dung to my hard-won
ascendancy. A moment of conflict, and again I prevailed.

Once more I smiled. The effect of it must have been weird, for I was
growing weaker and Louis had returned to the attack with overwhelming
persistence. My tongue strove for expression:

_“Sorry--Winkie--it won’t happen again--I’m not--coming--back----”_




When I recovered from the momentary unconsciousness that accompanies
transition from the physical to spiritual, Louis was looking in
affright at the huddled figure of Velma, who had fainted away. The
next instant, he had gathered, her in his arms.

Though I had come near failing in the attempt to deliver my message, I
had no fear that my visit would prove in vain. With clear prescience,
I Knew that my utterance of that old familiar nickname. _“Winkie”_
would carry untold meaning to Velma--that hereafter she would fear no
more what she might see in the depths of her husband’s eyes--that with
a return of her old confidence in him, the specter of apprehension
would be banished forever from their lives.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Ooze

A Novelette of a Thousand Thrills

By Anthony M. Rud




In the heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern
Alabama, a region sparsely settled save by backwoods blacks and
Cajans--that queer, half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of
the middle eighteenth century--stands a strange, enormous ruin.

Interminable trailers of Cherokee rose, white-laden during a single
month of spring, have climbed the heights of its three remaining
walls. Palmetto fans rise knee high above the base. A dozen scattered
live oaks, now belying their nomenclature because of choking tufts of
gray, Spanish moss and two-foot circlets of mistletoe parasite which
have stripped bare of foliage the gnarled, knotted limbs, lean
fantastic beards against the crumbling brick. Immediately beyond,
where the ground becomes soggier and lower--dropping away hopelessly
into the tangle of dogwood, holly, poison sumac and pitcher plants
that is Moccasin Swamp--undergrowth of titi and annis has formed a
protecting wall impenetrable to all save the furtive ones. Some few
outcasts utilize the stinking depths of that sinister swamp,
distilling “shinny” or “pure cawn” liquor for illicit trade.

Tradition states that this is the case, at least--a tradition which
antedates that of the premature ruin by many decades. I believe it,
for during evenings intervening between investigations of the awesome
spot I often was approached as a possible customer by wood-billies who
could not fathom how anyone dared venture near without plenteous
fortification of liquid courage.

I knew “shinny,” therefore I did not purchase it for personal
consumption. A dozen times I bought a quart or two, merely to
establish credit among the Cajans, pouring away the vile stuff
immediately into the sodden ground. It seemed then that only through
filtration and condensation of their dozens of weird tales regarding
“Daid House” could I arrive at understanding of the mystery and weight
of horror hanging about the place.

Certain it is that out of all the superstitious cautioning,
head-wagging and whispered nonsensities I obtained only two
indisputable facts. The first was that no money, and no supporting
battery of ten-gauge shotguns loaded with chilled shot, could induce
either Cajan or darky of the region to approach within five hundred
yards of that flowering wall! The second fact I shall dwell upon later.

Perhaps it would be as well, as I am only a mouthpiece in this
chronicle, to relate in brief why I came to Alabama on this mission.

I am a scribbler of general fact articles, no fiction writer as was
Lee Cranmer--though doubtless the confession is superfluous. Lee was
my roommate during college days. I knew his family well, admiring John
Corliss Cranmer even more than I admired the son and friend--and
almost as much as Peggy Breede whom Lee married. Peggy liked me, but
that was all. I cherish sanctified memory of her for just that much,
as no other woman before or since has granted this gangling
dyspeptic even a hint of joyous and sorrowful intimacy.

Work kept me to the city. Lee, on the other hand, coming of wealthy
family--and, from the first, earning from his short-stories and novel
royalties more than I wrested from editorial coffers--needed no
anchorage. He and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to Alaska,
visited Honolulu next winter, fished for salmon on Cain’s River, New
Brunswick, and generally enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.

They kept an apartment in Wilmette, near Chicago, yet, during the few
spring and fall seasons they were “home,” both preferred to rent a
suite at once of the country clubs to which Lee belonged. I suppose
they spent thrice or five times the amount Lee actually earned, yet
for my part I only honored that the two should find such great
happiness in life and still accomplish artistic triumph.

They were honest, zestful young Americans, the type--and pretty nearly
the only type--two million dollars cannot spoil. John Corliss Cranmer,
father of Lee, though as different from his boy as a microscope is
different from a painting by Remington, was even further from being
dollar conscious. He lived in a world rounded only by the widening
horizon of biological science--and his love for the two who would
carry on that Cranmer name.

Many a time I used to wonder how it could be that as gentle,
clean-souled and lovable a gentleman as John Corliss Cranmer could
have ventured so far into scientific research without attaining
small-caliber atheism. Few do. He believed both in God and human kind.
To accuse him of murdering his boy and the girl wife who had come to
be loved as the mother of baby Elsie--as well as blood and flesh of
his own family--was a gruesome, terrible absurdity! Yes, even when
John Corliss Cranmer was declared unmistakably insane!

Lacking a relative in the world, baby Elsie was given to me--and the
middle-aged couple who had accompanied the three as servants about
half of the known world. Elsie would be Peggy over again. I worshiped
her, knowing that if my stewardship of her interests could mate of her
a woman of Peggy’s loveliness and worth I should not have lived, in
vain. And at four Elsie stretched out her arms to me after a vain
attempt to jerk out the bobbed tail of Lord Dick, my tolerant old
Airedale--and called me “papa.”

I felt a deep-down choking. . . yes, those strangely long black lashes
some day might droop in fun or coquetry, but now baby Elsie held a
wistful, trusting seriousness in depths of ultramarine eyes--that same
seriousness which only Lee had brought to Peggy.

Responsibility in one instant became double. That she might come to
love me as more than foster parent was my dearest wish. Still, through
selfishness I could not rob her of rightful heritage; she must know in
after years. And the tale that I would tell her must not be the
horrible suspicion which had been bandied about in common talk!

I went to Alabama, leaving Elsie in the competent hands of Mrs.
Daniels and her husband, who had helped care for her since birth.

In my possession, prior to the trip, were the scant facts known to
authorities at the time of John Corliss Cranmer’s escape and
disappearance. They were incredible enough.

For conducting biological research upon forms of protozoan life, John
Corliss Cranmer had hit upon this region of Alabama. Near a great
swamp teeming with microscopic organisms, and situated in a
semi-tropical belt where freezing weather rarely intruded to harden
the bogs, the spot seemed ideal for his purpose.

Through Mobile he could secure supplies daily by truck. The isolation
suited. With only an octoroon man to act as chef, houseman and valet
for the times he entertained no visitors, he brought down scientific
apparatus, occupying temporary quarters in the village of Burdett’s
Corners while his woods house was in process of construction.

By all accounts the Lodge, as he termed it, was a substantial affair
of eight or nine rooms, built of logs and planed lumber bought at Oak
Grove. Lee and Peggy were expected to spend a portion of each year
with him; quail, wild turkey and deer abounded, which fact made such a
vacation certain to please the pair. At other times all save four
rooms was closed.

This was in 1907, the year of Lee’s marriage. Six years later when I
came down, no sign of a house remained except certain mangled and
rotting timbers projecting from viscid soil--or what seemed like soil.
And a twelve-foot wall of brick had been built to enclose the house
completely! One portion of this had fallen _inward!_




II.

I wasted weeks of time at first, interviewing officials of the police
department at Mobile, the town marshals and county sheriffs of
Washington and Mobile counties, and officials of the psychopathic
hospital from which Cranmer made his escape.

In substance the story was one of baseless homicidal mania. Cranmer
the elder had been away until late fall, attending two scientific
conferences in the North, and then going abroad to compare certain of
his findings with those of a Dr. Gemmler of Prague University.
Unfortunately, Gemmler was assassinated by a religious fanatic shortly
afterward. The fanatic voiced virulent objection to all Mendelian
research as blasphemous. This was his only defense. He was hanged.

Search of Gemmler’s notes and effects revealed nothing save an immense
amount of laboratory data on _karyokinesis_--the process of chromosome
arrangement occurring in first growing cells of higher animal embryos.
Apparently Cranmer had hoped to develop some similarities, or point
out differences between hereditary factors occurring in lower forms of
life and those half-demonstrated in the cat and monkey. The
authorities had found nothing that helped me. Cranmer had gone crazy;
was that not sufficient explanation?

Perhaps it was for them, but not for me--and Elsie.

But to the slim basis of fact I was able to unearth:

No one wondered when a fortnight passed without appearance of any
person from the Lodge. Why should anyone worry? A provision salesman
in Mobile called up twice, but failed to complete a connection. He
merely shrugged. The Cranmers had gone away somewhere on a trip. In a
week, a month, a year they would be back. Meanwhile he lost
commissions, but what of it? He had no responsibility for these queer
nuts up there in the piney-woods. Crazy? Of course! Why should any guy
with millions to spend shut himself up among the Cajans and draw
microscope-enlarged notebook pictures of--what the salesman
called--“germs?”

A stir was aroused at the end of the fortnight, but the commotion
confined itself to building circles. Twenty carloads of building
brick, fifty bricklayers, and a quarter-acre of fine-meshed wire--the
sort used for screening off pens of rodents and small marsupials in a
zoological garden--were ordered, _damn expense, hurry!_ by an
unshaved, tattered man who identified himself with difficulty as John
Corliss Cranmer.

He looked strange, even then. A certified check for the total amount,
given in advance, and another check of absurd size slung toward a
labor _entrepreneur,_ silenced objection, however. These millionaires
were apt to be flighty. When they wanted something they wanted it at
tap of the bell. Well, why not drag down the big profits? A poorer man
would have been jacked up in a day. Cranmer’s fluid gold bathed him in
immunity to criticism.

The encircling wall was built, and roofed with wire netting which
drooped about the squat-pitch of the Lodge. Curious inquiries of
workmen went unanswered until the final day.

Then Cranmer, a strange, intense apparition who showed himself more
shabby than a quay derelict, assembled every man jack of the workmen.
In one hand he grasped a wad of blue slips--fifty-six of them. In the
other he held a Luger automatic.

“I offer each man a thousand dollars for _silence!”_ he announced. “As
an alternative--_death!_ You know little. Will all of you consent to
swear upon your honor that nothing which has occurred here will be
mentioned elsewhere? By this I mean _absolute_ silence! You will not
come back here to investigate anything. You will not tell your wives.
You will not open your mouths even upon the witness stand in case you
are called! My price is one thousand apiece.”

“In case one of you betrays me _I give you my word that this man shall
die!_ I am rich. I can hire men to do murder. Well, what do you say?”

The men glanced apprehensively about. The threatening Luger decided
them. To a man they accepted the blue slips--and, save for one witness
who lost all sense of fear and morality in drink, none of the
fifty-six has broken his pledge, as far as I know. That one bricklayer
died later in delirium tremens.

It might have been different had not John Corliss Cranmer escaped.




III.

They found him the first time, mouthing meaningless phrases concerning
an amoeba--one of the tiny forms of protoplasmic life he was known to
have studied. Also he leaped into a hysteria of self-accusation. He
had murdered two innocent people! The tragedy was his crime. He had
drowned them in ooze! Ah, God!

Unfortunately for all concerned, Cranmer, dazed and indubitably stark
insane, chose to perform a strange travesty on fishing four miles to
the west of his lodge--on the further border of Moccasin Swamp. His
clothing had been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and he was coated
from head to foot with gluey mire. It was far from strange that the
good folk of Shanksville, who never had glimpsed the eccentric
millionaire, failed to associate him with Cranmer.

They took him in, searched his pockets--finding no sign save an
inordinate sum of money--and then put him under medical care. Two
precious weeks elapsed before Dr. Quirk reluctantly acknowledged that
he could do nothing more for this patient, and notified the proper
authorities.

Then much more time was wasted. Hot April and half of still hotter May
passed by before the loose ends were connected. Then it did little
good to know that this raving unfortunate was Cranmer, or that the two
persons of whom he shouted in disconnected delirium actually had
disappeared. Alienists absolved him of responsibility. He was confined
in a cell reserved for the violent.

Meanwhile, strange things occurred back at the Lodge--which now, for
good and sufficient reason, was becoming known to dwellers of the
woods as Dead House. Until one of the walls fell in, however, there
had been no chance to see--unless one possessed the temerity to climb
either one of the tall live oaks, or mount the barrier itself. No doors
or opening of any sort had been placed in that hastily-constructed wall!

By the time the western side of the wall fell, not a native for miles
around but feared the spot far more than even the bottomless,
snake-infested bogs which lay to west and north.

The single statement was all John Corliss Cranmer ever gave to the
world. It proved sufficient. An immediate search was instituted. It
showed that less than three weeks before the day of initial reckoning,
his son and Peggy had come to visit him for the second time that
winter--leaving Elsie behind in company of the Daniels pair. They had
rented a pair of Gordons for quail hunting, and had gone out. That was
the last anyone had heard of them.

The backwoods negro who glimpsed them stalking a covey behind their
two pointing dogs had known no more--even when sweated through twelve
hour of third degree. Certain suspicious circumstances (having to do
only with his regular pursuit of “shinny” transportation) had caused
him to fall under suspicious at first. He was dropped.

Two days later the scientist himself was apprehended--a gibbering
idiot who sloughed his pole--holding on to the baited hook--into a
marsh where nothing save moccasins, an errant alligator, or amphibian
life could have been snared.

His mind was three-quarters dead. Cranmer then was in the state of the
dope fiend who rouses to a sitting position to ask seriously how many
Bolshevists were killed by Julius Caesar before he was stabbed by
Brutus, or why it was that Roller canaries sang only on Wednesday
evenings. He knew that tragedy of the most sinister sort had stalked
through his life--but little more, at first.

Later the police obtained that one statement that he had murdered two
human beings, but never could means or motive be established. Official
guess as to the means was no more than wild conjecture; it mentioned
enticing the victims to the noisome depths of Moccasin Swamp, there to
let them flounder and sink.

The two were his son and daughter-in-law, Lee and Peggy!




IV.

By feigning coma--then awakening with suddenness to assault three
attendants with incredible ferocity and strength--John Corliss Cranmer
escaped from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital.

How he hid, how he managed to traverse sixty-odd intervening miles and
still balk detection, remains a minor mystery to be explained only by
the assumption that maniacal cunning sufficed to outwit saner intellects.

Traverse these miles he did, though until I was fortunate enough to
uncover evidence to this effect, it was supposed generally that he had
made his escape as stowaway on one of the banana boats, or had buried
himself in some portion of the nearer woods where he was unknown. The
truth ought to be welcome to householders of Shanksville. Burdett’s
Corners and vicinage--those excusably prudent ones who to this day
keep loaded shotguns handy and barricade their doors at nightfall.

The first ten days of my investigation may be touched upon in brief. I
made headquarters in Burdett’s Corners, and drove out each morning,
carrying lunch and returning for my grits and piney-woods pork or
mutton before nightfall. My first plan had been to camp out at the
edge of the swamp, for opportunity to enjoy the outdoors comes rarely
in my direction. Yet after one cursory examination of the premises I
abandoned the idea. I did not _want_ to camp alone there. And I am
less superstitious than a real estate agent.

It was, perhaps, psychic warning; more probably the queer, faint, salty
odor as of fish left to decay, which hung about the ruin, made too
unpleasant an impression upon my olfactory sense. I experienced a distinct
chill every time the lengthening shadows caught me near Dead House.

The smell impressed me. In newspaper reports of the case one ingenious
explanation had been worked out. To the rear of the spot where Dead
House had stood--inside the wall--was a swampy hollow circular in
shape. Only a little real mud lay in the bottom of the bowl-like
depression now, but one reporter on the staff of _The Mobile Register_
guessed that during the tenancy of the lodge it had been a fish pool.
Drying up of the water had killed the fish, who now permeated the
remnant of mud with this foul odor.

The possibility that Cranmer had needed to keep fresh fish at hand for
some of his experiments silenced the natural objection that in a country
where every stream holds gar pike, bass, catfish and many other edible
varieties, no one would dream of stocking a stagnant puddle.

After tramping about the enclosure, testing the queerly brittle,
desiccated top stratum of earth within and speculating concerning the
possible purpose of the wall, I cut off a long limb of chinaberry and
probed the mud. One fragment of fish spine would confirm the guess of
that imaginative reporter.

I found nothing resembling a piscal skeleton, but established several
facts. First, this mud crater had definite bottom only three or four
feet below the surface of remaining ooze. Second, the fishy stench
became stronger as I stirred. Third, at one time the mud, water, or
whatever had comprised the balance of content, had reached the rim of
the bowl. The last showed by certain marks plain enough when the crusty,
two-inch stratum of upper coating was broken away. It was puzzling.

The nature of that thin, desiccated effluvium which seemed to cover
everything even to the lower foot or two of brick, came in for next
inspection. It was strange stuff, unlike any earth I ever had seen,
though undoubtedly some form of scum drained in from the swamp at the
time of river floods or cloudbursts (which in this section are common
enough in spring and fall). It crumbled beneath the fingers. When I
walked over it, the stuff crunched hollowly. In fainter degree it
possessed the fishy odor also.

I took some samples where it lay thickest upon the ground, and also a
few where there seemed to be no more than a depth of a sheet of paper.
Later I would have a laboratory analysis made.

Apart from any possible bearing the stuff might have upon the
disappearance of my three friends, I felt the tug of article
interest--that wonder over anything strange or seemingly inexplicable
which lends the hunt for fact a certain glamor and romance all its
own. To myself I was going to have to explain sooner or later just why
this layer covered the entire space within the walls and was not
perceptible _anywhere_ outside! The enigma could wait, however--or so
I decided.

Far more interesting were the traces of violence apparent on wall and
what once had been a house. The latter seemed to have been ripped from
its foundations by a giant hand, crushed out of semblance to a
dwelling, and then cast in fragments about the base of wall--mainly on
the south side, where heaps of twisted, broken timbers lay in
profusion. On the opposite side there had been such heaps once, but
now only charred sticks, coated with that gray-black, omnipresent coat
of desiccation remained. These piles of charcoal had been sifted and
examined most carefully by the authorities, as one theory had been
advanced that Cranmer had burned the bodies of his victims. Yet no
sign whatever of human remains was discovered.

The fire, however, pointed out one odd fact which controverted the
reconstructions made by detectives months before. The latter,
suggesting the dried scum to have drained in from the swamp, believed
that the house timbers had floated out to the sides of the wall--there
to arrange themselves in a series of piles! The absurdity of such a
theory showed even more plainly in the fact that _if_ the scum had
filtered through in such a flood, the timbers most certainly had been
dragged into piles _previously!_ Some had burned--_and the scum coated
their charred surfaces!_

What had been the force which had torn the lodge to bits, as if in
spiteful fury? Why had the parts of the wreckage been burned, the rest
to escape?

Right here I felt was the keynote to the mystery, yet I could imagine
no explanation. That John Corliss Cranmer himself--physically sound,
yet a man who for decades had led a sedentary life--could have
accomplished such destruction, unaided, was difficult to believe.




V.

I turned, my attention to the wall, hoping for evidence which might
suggest another theory.

That wall had been an example of the worst snide construction. Though
little more than a year old, the parts left standing showed evidence
that they had begun to decay the day the last brick was laid. The
mortar had fallen from the interstices. Here and there a brick had
cracked and dropped out. Fibrils of the climbing vines had penetrated
crevices, working for early destruction.

And one side already had fallen.

It was here that the first glimmering suspicion of the terrible truth
was forced upon me. The scattered bricks, even those which had rolled
inward toward the gaping foundation lodge, _had not been coated with
scum!_ This was curious, yet it could be explained by surmise that the
flood itself had undermined this weakest portion of the wall. I
cleared away a mass of brick from the spot on which the structure had
stood; to my surprise I found it exceptionally firm! Hard red clay lay
beneath! The flood conception was faulty; only some great force,
exerted from inside or outside, could have wreaked such destruction.

When careful measurement, analysis and deduction convinced me--mainly
from the fact that the lowermost layers of brick all had fallen
_outward,_ while the upper portions toppled _in_--I began to link up
this mysterious and horrific force with the one which had rent the
Lodge asunder. It looked as though a typhoon or gigantic centrifuge
had needed elbow room in ripping down the wooden structure.

But I got nowhere with the theory, though in ordinary affairs I am
called a man of too great imaginative tendencies. No less than three
editors have cautioned me on this point. Perhaps it was the narrowing
influence of great personal sympathy--yes, and love. I make no
excuses, though beyond a dim understanding that some terrific,
implacable force must have made this spot his playground, I ended my
ninth day of notetaking and investigation almost as much in the dark
as I had been while a thousand miles away in Chicago.

Then I started among the darkies and Cajans. A whole day I listened to
yarns of the days which preceded Cranmer’s escape from Elizabeth
Ritter Hospital--days in which furtive men sniffed poisoned air for
miles around Dead House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in which
it seemed none possessed nerve enough to approach close. Days when the
most fanciful tales of mediaeval superstitions were spun. These tales
I shall not give; the truth is incredible enough.

At noon upon the eleventh day I chanced upon Rori Pailleron, a
Cajan--and one of the least prepossessing of all with whom I had come
in contact. “Chanced” perhaps is a bad word. I had listed every
dweller of the woods within a five mile radius. Rori was sixteenth on
my list I went to him only after interviewing all four of the Crabiers
and two whole families of Pichons. And Rori regarded me with the
utmost suspicion until I made him a present of the two quarts of
“shinny” purchased of the Pichons.

Because long practice has perfected me in the technique of seeming to
drink another man’s awful liquor--no, I’m not an absolute
prohibitionist; fine wine or twelve-year-in-cask Bourbon whisky
arouses my definite interest--I fooled Pailleron from the start. I
shall omit preliminaries, and leap to the first admission from him
that he knew more concerning Dead House and its former inmates than
any of the other darkies or Cajans roundabout.

“. . . But I ain’t talkin’. _Sacre!_ If I should open my gab, what
might fly out? It is for keeping silent, y’r damn’ right! . . .”

I agreed. He was a wise man--educated to some extent in the queer
schools and churches maintained exclusively by Cajans in the depths of
the woods, yet naive withal.

We drank. And I never had to ask another leading question. The liquor
made him want to interest me; and the only extraordinary topic in this
whole neck of the woods was the Dead House.

Three-quarters of a pint of acrid, nauseous fluid, and he hinted darkly.
A pint, and he told me something I scarcely could believe. Another
half-pint. . . But I shall give his confession in condensed form.

He had known Joe Sibley, the octoroon chef, houseman and valet who
served Cranmer. Through Joe, Rori had furnished certain indispensables
in way of food to the Cranmer household. At first, these salable
articles had been exclusively vegetable--white and yellow turnip,
sweet potatoes, corn and beans--but later, _meat!_

Yes, meat especially--whole lambs, slaughtered and quartered, the
coarsest variety of piney-woods pork and beef, all in immense quantity!




VI.

In December of the fatal winter Lee and his wife stopped down at the
Lodge for ten days or thereabouts.

They were en route to Cuba at the time, intending to be away five or
six weeks. Their original plan had been only to wait over a day or so
in the piney-woods, but something caused an amendment to the scheme.

The two dallied. Leo seemed to have become vastly absorbed in
something--so much absorbed that it was only when Peggy insisted upon
continuing their trip, that he could tear himself away.

It was during those ten days that he began buying meat. Meager bits of
it at first--a rabbit, a pair of squirrels, or perhaps a few quail
beyond the number he and Peggy shot. Rori furnished the game, thinking
nothing of it except that Lee paid double prices--and insisted upon
keeping the purchases secret from other members of the household.

“I’m putting it across on the Governor, Rori!” he said once with a
wink. “Going to give him the shock of his life. So you mustn’t let on,
even to Joe about what I want you to do. Maybe it won’t work out, but
if it does. . . ! Dad’ll have the scientific world at his feet! He
doesn’t blow his own horn anywhere near enough, you know.”

Rori didn’t know. Hadn’t a suspicion what Lee was talking about.
Still, if this rich, young idiot wanted to pay him a half dollar in
good silver coin for a quail that anyone--himself included--could
knock down with a five-cent shell. Rori was well satisfied to keep his
mouth shut. Each evening he brought some of the small game. And each
day Lee Cranmer seemed to have use for an additional quail or so. . .

When he was ready to leave for Cuba, Lee came forward with the
strangest of propositions. He fairly whispered his vehemence and
desire for secrecy! He would tell Rori, and would pay the Cajan five
hundred dollars--half in advance, and half at the end of five weeks
when Lee himself would return from Cuba--provided Rori agreed to
adhere absolutely to a certain secret program! The money was more than
a fortune to Rori; it was undreamt of affluence. The Cajan acceded.

“He wuz tellin’ me then how the ol’ man had raised some kind of pet,”
Rori confided, “an’ wanted to get shet of it. So he give it to Lee,
tellin’ him to kill it, but Lee was sot on foolin’ him. W’at I ask yer
is, w’at kind of a pet is it w’at lives down in a mud sink _an’ eats a
couple hawgs every night!”_

I couldn’t imagine, so I pressed him for further details. Here at last
was something which sounded like a clue!

He really knew too little. The agreement with Lee provided that if
Kori carried out the provisions exactly, he should be paid extra and
at his exorbitant scale of all additional outlay, when Lee returned.

The young man gave him a daily schedule which Rori showed. Each
evening he was to procure, slaughter and cut up a definite--and
growing--amount of meat. Every item was checked, and I saw that they
ran from five pounds up to _forty!_

“What in heaven’s name, did you do with it?” I demanded, excited now
and pouring him an additional drink for fear caution might return to him.

“Took it through the bushes in back an’ slung it in the mud sink
there! An’ suthin’ come up an’ drug it down!”

“A ‘gator?”

_“Diable!_ How should I know? It was dark. I wouldn’t go close.” He
shuddered, and the fingers which lifted his glass shook as with sudden
chill. “Mebbe you’d of done it, huh? Not _me,_ though! The young
fellah tole me to sling it in, an’ I slung it.

“A couple times I come around in the light, but there wasn’t nuthin’
there you could see. Jes’ mud, an’ some water. Mebbe the thing didn’t
come out in daytimes. . .”

“Perhaps not,” I agreed, straining every mental resource to imagine
what Lee’s sinister pet could have been. “But you said something about
_two hogs a day?_ What did you mean by that? This paper, proof enough
that you’re telling the truth so far, states that on the thirty-fifth
day you were to throw forty pounds of meat--any kind--into the sink.
Two hogs, even the piney-woods variety, weigh a lot more than forty
pounds!”

“Them was after--after he come back!”

From this point onward, Rori’s tale became more and more enmeshed in
the vagaries induced by bad liquor. His tongue thickened. I shall give
his story without attempt to reproduce further verbal barbarities, or
the occasional prodding I had to give in order to keep him from
maundering into foolish jargon.

Lee had paid munificently. His only objection to the manner in which
Rori had carried out his orders was that the orders themselves had
been deficient. The pet, he said had grown enormously. It was hungry,
ravenous. Lee himself had supplemented the fare with huge pails of
scraps from the kitchen.

From that day Lee purchased from Rori whole sheep and hogs! The Cajan
continued to bring the carcasses at nightfall, but no longer did Lee
permit him to approach the pool. The young man appeared chronically
excited now. He had a tremendous secret--one the extent of which even
his father did not guess, and one which would astonish the world! Only
a week or two more and he would spring it. First he would have to
arrange certain data.

Then came the day when everyone disappeared from Dead House. Rori came
around several times, but concluded that all of the occupants had
folded tents and departed--doubtless taking their mysterious “pet”
along. Only when he saw from a distance Joe, the octoroon servant,
returning along the road on foot toward the Lodge, did his slow mental
processes begin to ferment. That afternoon Rori visited the strange
place for the next to last time.

He did not go to the Lodge itself--and there were reasons. While still
some hundreds of yards away from the place a terrible, sustained
screaming reached his ears! It was faint, yet unmistakably the voice
of Joe! Throwing a pair of number two shells into the breach of his
shotgun, Rori hurried on, taking his usual path through the brush at
the back.

He saw--and as he told me even “shinny” drunkenness fled his
chattering bones--Joe, the octoroon. Aye, he stood in the yard, far
from the pool into which Rori had thrown the carcasses--_and Joe could
not move!_

Rori failed to explain in full, but _something,_ a slimy, amorphous
something, which glistened in the sunlight, already had engulfed the
man to his shoulders! Breath was cut off. Joe’s contorted face writhed
with horror and beginning suffocation. One hand--all that was free of
the rest of him!--beat feebly upon the rubbery, translucent thing that
was engulfing his body!

Then Joe sank from sight. . .




VII.

Five days of liquored indulgence passed before Rori, alone in his
shaky cabin, convinced himself that he had seen a phantasy born of
alcohol. He came back the last time--to find a high wall of brick
surrounding the Lodge, and including the pool of mud into which he had
thrown the meat!

While he hesitated, circling the place without discovering an
opening--which he would not have dared to use, even had he found it--a
crashing, tearing of timbers, and persistent sound of awesome
destruction came from within. He swung himself into one of the oaks
near the wall. And he was just in time to see the last supporting
stanchions of the Lodge give way _outward!_

The whole structure came apart. The roof fell in--yet seemed to move
after it had fallen! Logs of wall deserted retaining grasp of their
spikes like layers of plywood in the grasp of the shearing machine!

That was all. Suddenly intoxicated now, Rori mumbled more phrases,
giving me the idea that on another day when he became sober once more,
he might add to his statements, but I--numbed to the soul--scarcely
cared. If that which he related was true, what nightmare of madness
must have been consummated here!

I could vision some things now which concerned Lee and Peggy, horrible
things. Only remembrance of Elsie kept me faced forward in the
search--or now it seemed almost that the handiwork of a madman must be
preferred to what Rori claimed to have seen! What had been that
sinister, translucent thing? That glistening thing which lumped upward
about a man, smothering, engulfing?

Queerly enough, though such a theory as came most easily to mind now
would have outraged reason in me if suggested concerning total
strangers, I tucked myself only what details of Rori’s revelation had
been exaggerated by fright and fumes of liquor. And as I sat on the
creaking bench in his cabin, staring unseeing as he lurched down to
the floor, fumbling with a lock box of green tin which lay under his
cot, and muttering, the answer to all my questions lay within reach!




It was not until next day, however, that I made the discovery. Heavy
of heart I had reexamined the spot where the Lodge had stood, then
made my way to the Cajan’s cabin again, seeking sober confirmation of
what he had told me during intoxication.

In imagining that such a spree for Rori would be ended by a single
night, however, I was mistaken. He lay sprawled almost as I had left
him. Only two factors were changed. No “shinny was left--and lying
open, with its miscellaneous contents strewed about, was the tin box.
Rori somehow had managed to open it with the tiny key still clutched
in his hand.

Concern for his safety alone was what made me notice the box. It was a
receptacle for small fishing tackle of the sort carried here and there
by any sportsman. Tangles of Dowagiac minnows, spoon hooks ranging in
size to silver-backed number eights; three reels still carrying line
of different weights, spinners, casting plugs, wobblers, floating
baits, were spilled out upon the rough plank flooring where they might
snag Rori badly if he rolled. I gathered them, intending to save him
an accident.

With the miscellaneous assortment in my hands, however, I stopped
dead. Something had caught my eye--something lying flush with the
bottom of the lock box! I stared, and then swiftly tossed the hooks
and other impedimenta upon the table. What I had glimpsed there in the
box was a loose-leaf notebook of the sort used for recording
laboratory data! And Rori scarcely could read, let alone _write!_

Feverishly, a riot of recognition, surmise, hope and fear bubbling in
my brain, I grabbed the book and threw it open. At once I knew that
this was the end. The pages were scribbled in pencil, but the
handwriting was that precise chirography I knew as belonging to John
Corliss Cranmer, the scientist!


      _“...Could he not have obeyed my instructions! Oh, God! This...”_


These were the words at top of the first page which met my eye.

Because knowledge of the circumstances, the relation of which I pried
out of the reluctant Rori only some days later when I had him in
Mobile as a police witness for the sake of my friend’s vindication, is
necessary to understanding, I shall interpolate.

Rori had not told me everything. On his late visit to the vicinage of
Dead House he saw more. A crouching figure, seated Turk fashion on top
of the wall, appeared to be writing industriously. Rori recognized the
man as Cranmer, yet did not hail him. He had no opportunity.

Just as the Cajan came near, Cranmer rose, thrust the notebook, which
had rested across his knees, into the box. Then he turned, tossed
outside the wall both the locked box and a ribbon to which was
attached the key.

Then his arms raised toward heaven. For five seconds he seemed to
invoke the mercy of Power beyond all of man’s scientific prying. And
finally he leaped, _inside_. . .!

Rori did not climb to investigate. He knew that directly below this
portion of wall lay the mud sink into which he had thrown the chunks
of meat!




VIII.

This is a true transcription of the statement I inscribed, telling the
sequence of actual events at Dead House. The original of the statement
now lies in the archives of the detective department.

Cranmer’s notebook, though written in a precise hand, yet betrayed the
man’s insanity by incoherence and frequent repetitions. My statement
has been accepted now, both by alienists and by detectives who had
entertained different theories in respect to the case. It quashes the
noisome hints and suspicions regarding three of the finest Americans
who ever lived--and also one queer supposition dealing with supposed
criminal tendencies in poor Joe, the octoroon.

John Corliss Cranmer went insane for sufficient cause!




As readers of popular fiction know well, Lee Cranmer’s _forte_ was the
writing of what is called--among fellows in the craft--the
pseudo-scientific story. In plain words, this means a yarn, based upon
solid fact in the field of astronomy, chemistry, anthropology or
whatnot, which carries to logical conclusion unproved theories of men
who devote their lives to searching out further nadirs of fact.

In certain fashion these men are allies of science. Often they
visualize something which has not been imagined even by the best of
men from whom they secure data, thus opening new horizons of
possibility. In a large way Jules Verne was one of these men in his
day; Lee Cranmer bade fair to carry on the work in worthy
fashion--work taken up for a period by an Englishman named Wells, but
abandoned for stories of a different--and, in my humble opinion, lees
absorbing--type.

Lee wrote three novels, all published, which dealt with such
subjects--two of the three secured from his own father’s labors, and
the other speculating upon the discovery and possible uses of
inter-atomic energy. Upon John Corliss Cranmer’s return from Prague
that fatal winter, the father informed Lee that a greater subject than
any with which the young man had dealt, now could be tapped.

Cranmer, senior, had devised a way in which the limiting factors in
protozoic life and _growth_, could be nullified; in time, and with
cooperation of biologists who specialized upon _karyokinesis_ and
embryology of higher forms, he hoped--to put the theory in pragmatic
terms--to be able to grow swine the size of elephants, quail or
woodcock with breasts from which a hundredweight of white meat could
be cut away, and steers whose dehorned heads might butt at the third
story of a skyscraper!

Such result would revolutionize the methods of food supply, of course.
It also would hold out hope for all undersized specimens of
humanity--provided only that if factors inhibiting growth could be
deleted, some method of stopping gianthood also could be developed.

Cranmer the elder, through use of an undescribed (in the notebook)
growth medium of which one constituent was _agar-agar,_ and the use
of radium emanations, had succeeded in bringing about apparently
unrestricted growth in the paramoecium protozoan, certain of the
vegetable growths (among which were bacteria), and in the amorphous
cell of protoplasm known as the amoeba--the last a single cell
containing only nucleolus, nucleus, and a space known as the
contractile vacuole which somehow aided in throwing off particles
impossible to assimilate directly. This point may be remembered in
respect to the piles of lumber left near the outside wall surrounding
Dead House!

When Lee Cranmer and his wife came south to visit, John Corliss
Cranmer showed his sone an amoeba--normally an organism visible under
low-power microscope--which he had absolved from natural growth
inhibitions. This amoeba, a rubbery, amorphous mass of protoplasm, was
of the size then of a large beef liver. It could have been held in two
cupped hands, placed side by side.

“How large could it grow?” asked Lee, wide-eyed and interested.

“So far as I know,” answered the father, “there is _no_ limit--now! It
might, if it got food enough, grow to be as big the Masonic Temple!

“But take it out and kill it. Destroy the organism utterly--burning
the fragments--else there is no telling what might happen. The amoeba,
as I have explained, reproduces by simple division. Any fragment
remaining might be dangerous.”

Lee took the rubbery, translucent giant cell--but he did not obey
orders. Instead of destroying it as his father had directed, Lee
thought out a plan. Suppose he should grow this organism to tremendous
size? Suppose, when the tale of his father’s accomplishment were
spread, an amoeba of many tons weight could be shown in evidence? Lee,
of somewhat sensational cast of mind, determined instantly to keep
secret the fact that he was not destroying the organism, but
encouraging its further growth. Thought of possible peril never
crossed his mind.

He arranged to have the thing fed--allowing for normal increase of size
in an abnormal thing. It fooled him only in growing much more rapidly.
When he came back from Cuba the amoeba practically filled the whole of
the mud sink hollow, he had to give it much greater supplies. . . .

The giant cell came to absorb as much as two hogs in a single day.
During daylight, while hunger still was appeased, it never emerged,
however. That remained for the time that he could secure no more food
near at hand to satisfy its ravenous and increasing appetite.

Only instinct for the sensational kept Lee from telling Peggy, his
wife, all about the matter. Leo hoped to spring a _coup_ which would
immortalize his father, and surprise his wife terrifically. Therefore,
he kept his own counsel--and made bargains with the Cajan, Rori, who
supplied food daily for the shapeless monster of the pool.

The tragedy itself came suddenly and unexpectedly. Peggy, feeding the
two Gordon setters that Lee and she used for quail hunting, was in the
Lodge yard before sunset. She romped alone, us Lee himself was dressing.

Of a sudden her screams cut the still air! Without her knowledge,
ten-foot _pseudopods_--those flowing tentacles of protoplasm sent
forth by the sinister occupant of the pool--slid out and around her
putteed ankles.

For a moment she did not understand. Then, at first suspicion of the
horrid truth, her cries rent the air. Lee, at that time struggling to
lace a pair of high shoes, straightened, paled, and grabbed a revolver
as he dashed out.

In another room a scientist, absorbed in his notetaking, glanced up,
frowned, and then--recognizing the voice--shed his white gown and came
out. He was too late to do aught but gasp with horror.

In the yard Peggy was half engulfed in a squamous, rubbery something
which at first glance he could not analyze.

Lee, his boy, was fighting with the sticky folds, and slowly, surely,
losing his own grip upon the earth!




IX.

John Corliss Cranmer was by no means a coward. He stared, cried aloud,
then ran indoors, seizing the first two weapons which came to hand--a
shotgun and hunting knife which lay in sheath in a cartridged belt
across hook of the hall-tree. The knife was ten inches in length and
razor keen.

Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an indecent fluid something--which as
yet he had not had time to classify--lumping itself into a six-foot-high
center before his very eyes! It looked like one of the micro-organisms
he had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amoeba!

There, some minutes suffocated in the rubbery folds--yet still apparent
beneath the glistening ooze of this monster--were two bodies.

They were dead. He knew it. Nevertheless he attacked the flowing,
senseless monster with his knife. Shot would do no good. And he found
that even the deep, terrific slashes made by his knife closed together
in a moment and healed. The monster was invulnerable to ordinary attack!

A pair of _pseudopods_ sought out his ankles, attempting to bring him
low. Both of these he severed--end escaped. Why did he try? He did not
know. The two whom he had sought to rescue were dead, buried under
folds of this horrid thing he knew to be his own discovery and
fabrication.

Then it was that revulsion and insanity came upon him.

There ended the story of John Corliss Cranmer, save for one hastily
scribbled paragraph--evidently written at the time Rori had seen him
atop the wall.

May we not supply with assurance the intervening steps?’

Cranmer was known to have purchased a whole pen of hogs a day or two
following the tragedy. These animals never were seen again. During the
time the wall was being constructed is it not reasonable to assume
that he fed the giant organism within--to keep it quiet? His scientist
brain must have visualized clearly the havoc and horror which could be
wrought by the loathsome thing if it ever were driven by hunger to
flow away from the Lodge and prey upon the countryside!

With the wall once in place, he evidently figured that starvation or
some other means which he could supply would kill the thing. One of
the means had been made by setting fire to several piles of the
disgorged timbers; probably this had no effect whatever.

The amoeba was to accomplish still more destruction. In the throes of
hunger it threw its gigantic, formless strength against the house
walls _from the inside;_ then every edible morsel within was
assimilated, the logs, rafters and other fragments being worked out
through the contractile _vacuole._

During some of its last struggles, undoubtedly, the side wall of brick
was weakened--not to collapse, however, until the giant amoeba no
longer could take advantage of the breach.

In final death lassitude, the amoeba stretched itself out in a thin
layer over the ground. There it succumbed, though there is no means of
estimating how long a time intervened.

The last paragraph in Cranmer’s notebook, scrawled so badly that it is
possible some words I have not deciphered correctly, read as follows:


      _“In my work I have found the means of creating a monster. The
      unnatural thing, in turn, has destroyed my work and those whom I
      held dear. It it in vain that I assure my self of innocence of
      spirit. Mine is the crime of presumption. Now, as
      expiation--worthless though that may be--I give myself. . .”_


It is better not to think of that last leap, and the struggle of an
insane man in the grip of the dying monster.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A New Story of Horror

By Anthony M. Rud

“The Square of Canvas”

In the April Issue of

Weird Tales




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




_Extraordinary, Unearthly Things Will Thrill and Amaze You

In This Strange Story_

The Thing of a Thousand Shapes

By Otis Adelbert Kline




Uncle Jim was dead.

I could scarely believe it, but the little yellow missive, which had
just been handed to me by the Western Union messenger boy, left no
room for double. It was short and convincing:

      _“Come to Peoria at once. James Braddock dead of heart failure.
      Corbin & His Attorneys.”_

I should explain here that Uncle Jim, my mother’s brother, was my only
living near relative. Having lost both father and mother in the
Iroquois Theatre Fire at the age of twelve years, I should have been
forced to abandon my plans for a high school and commercial education
but for his noble generosity. In his home town he was believed to be
comfortably well off, but I had learned not long since that it had
meant a considerable sacrifice for him to furnish the fifteen hundred
dollars a year to put me through high school and business college, and
I was glad when the time came for me to find employment, and thus
become independent of his bounty.

My position as bookkeeper for a commission firm in South Water Street,
while not particularly remunerative, at least provided a comfortable
living, and I was happy in it--until the message of his death came.

I took the telegram to my employer, obtained a week’s
leave-of-absence, and was soon on the way to the Union Depot.

All the way to Peoria I thought about Uncle Jim, he was not old--only
forty-five--and when I had last seen him he had seemed particularly
hale and hearty. This sudden loss of my nearest and dearest friend
was, therefore, almost unbelievable. I carried a leaden weight in my
heart, and it seemed that the lump in my throat would choke me.

Uncle Jim had lived on a three-hundred-and-twenty acre farm near
Peoria. Being a bachelor, he had employed a housekeeper. The farm work
was looked after by a family named Severs--man, wife and two sons--who
lived in the tenant house, perhaps a thousand feet to the rear of the
owner’s residence, in convenient proximity to the barn, silos and
other farm buildings.

As I have said, my uncle’s neighbors believed him to be comfortably
well off, but I knew the place was mortgaged to the limit, so that the
income from the fertile acres was practically absorbed by overhead
expenses and interest.

Had my uncle been a business man in the true sense of the term, no
doubt he could have been wealthy. But he was a scientist and dreamer,
inclined to let the farm run itself while he devoted his time to study
and research. His hobby was psychic phenomena. His thirst for more
facts regarding the human mind was insatiable. In the pursuit of his
favorite study, he had attended seances in this country and abroad
with the leading spiritualists of the world.

He was a member of the London Society for Psychical Research, as well
as the American Society, and corresponded regularly with noted
scientists, psychologists and spiritualists. As an authority on
psychic phenomena, he had contributed articles to the leading
scientific publications from time to time, and was the author of a
dozen well-known books on the subject.

Thus, grief-filled though I was, my mind kept presenting to me memory
after memory of Uncle Jim’s scientific attainments and scholarly life,
while the rumbling car wheels left the miles behind; and the thought that
such a man had been lost to me and to the world was almost unbearable.

I arrived in Peoria shortly before midnight, and was glad to find Joe
Severs, son of my uncle’s tenant, waiting for me with a flivver. After
a five-mile ride in inky darkness over a rough road, we came to the farm.

I was greeted at the door by the housekeeper, Mrs. Rhodes, and one of
two men, nearby neighbors, who had kindly volunteered to “set up” with
the corpse. The woman’s eyes were red with weeping, and her tears
flowed afresh as she led me to the room where my uncle’s body lay in a
gray casket.

A dim kerosene lamp burned in one corner of the room, and after the
silent watcher had greeted me with a hand-clasp and a sad shake of the
head, I walked up to view the remains of my dearest friend on earth.

As I looked down on that noble, kindly face, the old lump, which had
for a time subsided, came back in my throat. I expected tears,
heartrending sobs, but they did not come. I seemed dazed--bewildered.

Suddenly, and apparently against my own reason, I heard myself saying
aloud, “He is not dead--only sleeping.”

When the watchers looked at me in amazement I repeated, “Uncle Jim is
_not dead!_ He is only sleeping.”

Mrs. Rhodes looked compassionately at me, and by a meaning glance at
the others said as plainly as if she had spoken, “His mind is affected.”

She and Mr. Newberry, the neighbor whom I had first met, gently led me
from the room. I was, myself dumfounded at the words I had uttered,
nor could I find a reason for them.

My uncle was undoubtedly dead, at least as far as this physical world
was concerned. There was nothing about the appearance of the pale,
rigid corpse to indicate life, and he had, without doubt, been
pronounced dead by a physician. Why, then, had I made this unusual,
uncalled for--in fact, ridiculous--statement? I did not know. I
concluded that I must have been crazed with grief--beside myself for
the moment.

I had announced my intention to keep watch with Mr. Newberry and the
other neighbor, Mr. Glitch, but was finally prevailed upon to go to my
room, on the ground that my nerves were overwrought and I must have
rest. It was decided, therefore, that the housekeeper, who had scarely
slept a wink the night before, and I should retire, while the two
neighbors alternately kept two-hour watches, one sitting up while the
other slept on a davenport near the fireplace.

Mrs. Rhodes conducted me to my room. I quickly undressed, blew out the
kerosene light and got into bed. It was some time before I could
compose myself for sleep, and I remember that just as I was dozing off
I seemed to hear my name pronounced as if someone were calling me from
a great distance:

“Billy!” and then, in the same faraway voice: _“Save me. Billy!”_

I had slept for perhaps fifteen minutes when I awoke with a start.
Either I was dreaming, or something about the size and shape of a
half-grown conger eel was creeping across my bed.

For the moment I was frozen with horror, as I perceived the white,
nameless thing, in the dim light from my window. With a convulsive
movement I threw the bedclothes from me, leaped to the floor, struck a
match, and quickly lit the lamp. Then, taking my heavy walking-stick
in hand. I advanced on the bed.

Moving the bedclothing cautiously with the stick and prodding here and
there, I at length discovered that the thing was gone. The door was
closed, there was no transom, and the window was screened. I therefore
concluded that it must still be in the room.

With this thought in mind, I carefully searched every inch of space,
looking under and behind the furniture, with the lamp in one hand and
stick in the other. I then removed all the bedding and opened the
dresser drawers, and found--nothing!

After completely satisfying myself that the animal I had seen, or
perhaps seemed to see, could not possibly be in the room, I decided
that I had been suffering from a nightmare, and again retired. Because
of my nervousness from the experience, I did not again blow out the
light, but instead turned it low.

After a half hour of restless turning and tossing, I succeeded in
going to sleep; this time for possibly twenty minutes, when I was once
more aroused. The same feeling of horror came over me, as I distinctly
heard a rolling, scraping sound beneath my bed. I kept perfectly still
and waited while the sound went on. Something was apparently creeping
underneath my bed, and it seemed to be moving toward the foot, slowly
and laboriously.

Stealthily I sat up, leaned forward and peered over the foot-board.
The sounds grew more distinct, and a white, round mass, which looked
like a porcupine rolled into a ball with bristles projecting, emerged
from under my bed. I uttered a choking cry of fright, and the thing
_disappeared before my eyes!_

Without waiting to search the room further. I leaped from the bed to
the spot nearest the door, wrenched it open, and started on a run for
the living-room, attired only in pajamas. As I neared the room,
however, part of my lost courage came back to me, and I slowed down to
a walk. I reasoned that a precipitate entrance into the room would
arouse the household, and that possibly, after all, I was only the
victim of a second nightmare. I resolved, therefore, to say nothing to
the watchers about my experience, but to tell them only that I was
unable to sleep and had come down for company.

Newberry met me at the door.

“Why what’s the matter?” he asked. “You look pale. Anything wrong?”

“Nothing but a slight attack of indigestion. Couldn’t sleep, so I came
down for company.”

“You should have brought a dressing-gown or something. You may take cold.”

“Oh. I feel quite comfortable enough.” I said.

Newberry stirred the logs in the fireplace to a blaze, and we moved
our chairs close to the flickering circle of warmth. The dim light was
still burning in the corner of the room, and Glitch was snoring on the
davenport.

“Funny thing,” said Newberry, “the instructions your uncle left.”

“Instructions? What instructions?” I asked.

“Why, didn’t you know? But of course you didn’t. He left written
instructions with Mrs. Rhodes that in case of his sudden death his
body was not to be embalmed, packed in ice, or preserved in any way,
and that it was not to be buried under any consideration, until
decomposition had set in. He also ordered that no autopsy should be
held until it had been definitely decided that putrefaction had taken
place.”

“Have these instructions been carried out?” I asked.

“To the letter,” he replied.

“And how long will it take for putrefaction to set in?”

“The doctors say it will probably be noticed in twenty-four hours.”

I reflected on this strange order of my uncle’s. It seemed to me that
he must have feared being buried alive, or something of the sort, and
I recalled several instances, of which I had heard, where bodies, upon
being exhumed, were found turned over in their coffins, while others
had apparently torn their hair and clawed the lid in their efforts to
escape from a living tomb.

I was beginning to feel sleepy again and had just started to doze,
when Newberry grasped my arm.

“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing toward the body.

I looked quickly and seemed to see something white for an instant,
near the nostrils.

“Did you see it?” he asked breathlessly.

“See what?” I replied, wishing to learn if he had seen the same thing
I had.

“I saw something white, like a thick vapor or filmy veil, come out of
his nose. When I spoke to you it seemed to jerk back. Didn’t you see it?”

“Thought I saw a white flash there when you spoke, but it must have
been imagination.”

The time had now arrived for Glitch to watch, so my companion wakened
him, and they exchanged places. Newberry was soon asleep, and Glitch,
being a stoical German, said little. I presently became drowsy, and
was asleep in my chair in a short time.

A cry from Glitch brought me to my feet. “Vake up and help catch der cat!”

“What cat?” demanded Newberry, also awakening.

“Der big vite cat,” said Glitch, visibly excited. “Chust now he came
der door through and yumped der coffin in.”

The three of us rushed to the coffin, but there was no sign of a cat,
and everything seemed undisturbed.

“Dot’s funny,” said Glitch. “Maybe it’s hiding someveres in der room.”

We searched the room, without result.

“You’ve been seeing things,” said Newberry.

“What did the animal look like?” I asked.

“Vite, und big as a dog. It kommt der door in, so, und galloped across
der floor, so, und yumped in der casket chust like dot. _Ach!_ It vos
a fierce-looking beast.”

Glitch was very much in earnest and gesticulated rapidly as he
described the appearance and movements of the feline. Perhaps I should
have felt inclined to laugh, had it not been for my own experience
that night. I noticed, too, that Newberry’s expression was anything
but jocular.

It was now nearly four o’clock, time for Newberry to watch, but Glitch
protested that he could not sleep another wink, so the three of us
drew chairs up close to the fire. On each side of the fireplace was a
large window. The shades were completely drawn and the windows were
draped with heavy lace curtains. Happening to look up at the window to
the left, I noticed something of a mouse-gray color hanging near the
top of one of the curtains. As I looked, I fancied I saw a slight
movement as of a wing being stretched a bit and then folded, and the
thing took on the appearance of a large vampire bat, hanging upside down.

I called the attention of my companions to our singular visitor, and
both saw it as plainly as I.

“How do you suppose he got in?” asked Newberry.

“Funny ve didn’t see him before,” said Glitch.

I picked up the fire tongs and Newberry seized the poker. Creeping
softly up to the curtain, I stood on tiptoe and reached up to seize
the animal with the tongs. It was too quick for me, however, and
fluttered out of my reach. There followed a chase around the room,
which lasted several minutes. Seeing that it would be impossible for
us to capture the creature by this method, we gave up the chase,
whereupon it calmed down and suspended itself from the picture
molding, upside down.

On seeing this, Glitch, who had taken a heavy book from the table,
hurled it at our unwelcome visitor. His aim was good, and the thing
uttered a _squeak_ as it was crushed against the wall.

At this moment I thought I heard a moan from the direction of the
casket, but could not be certain.

Newberry and I rushed over to where the book had fallen, intent on
dispatching the thing with poker and tongs, but only the book lay on
the floor. The creature had _completely disappeared._

I picked up the book, and noticed, as I did so, a grayish smear on the
back cover. Taking this over to the light, we saw that it had a soapy
appearance. As we looked, the substance apparently became absorbed,
either by the atmosphere or into the cloth cover of the book. There
remained, however, a dry, white, faintly-defined splotch on the book
cover.

“What do you make of it?” I asked them.

“Strange!” said Newberry.

I turned to Glitch, and noticed for the first time that his eyes were
wide with fear. He shook his head and cast furtive glances toward the
casket.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

“A vampire, maybe. A _real_ vampire.”

“What do you mean by a real vampire?”

Glitch then described how, in the folk lore of his native land, there
were stories current of corpses which lived on in the grave. It was
believed that the spirits of these corpses assumed the form of huge
vampire bats at night, and went about sucking the blood of living
persons, with which they would return to the grave from time to time
and nourish the corpse. This proceeding was kept up indefinitely,
unless the corpse were exhumed and a stake driven through the heart.

He related, in particular, the story of a Hungarian named Arnold Paul,
whose body was dug up after it had been buried forty days. It was
found that his cheeks were flushed with blood, and that his hair,
beard and nails had grown in the grave. When the stake was driven
through his heart, he had uttered a frightful shriek and a torrent of
blood gushed from his mouth.

This vampire story seized on my imagination in a peculiar way. I
thought again of my uncle’s strange request regarding the disposition
of his body, and of the strange apparitions I had seen. For the moment
I was a convert to the vampire theory.

My better judgment, however, soon convinced, me that there could not
be such a thing as a vampire, and, even if there were, a man whose
character had been so noble as that of my deceased uncle would most
certainly never resort to such hideous and revolting practices.

We sat together in silence as the first faint streaks of dawn showed
in the east. A few minutes, later the welcome aroma of coffee and
frying bacon greeted our nostrils, and Mrs. Rhodes came into announce
that breakfast was ready.

After breakfast, my newly-made friends departed for their homes, both
assuring me that they would be glad to come and watch with me again
that night.

However, I read something in the uneasy manner of Glitch which led me
to believe that I could not count on him, and I was, therefore, not
greatly surprised when he telephoned me an hour later, stating that
his wife was ill, and that he would not be able to come.




II.

I strolled outdoors to enjoy a cigar, comforted by the rays of the
morning sun after my nights experience.

It was pleasant, I reflected, to be once more in the realm of the
natural, to see the trees attired in the autumn foliage, to feel the
rustle of fallen leaves underfoot, to fill my lungs with the spicy,
invigorating October air.

A gray squirrel scampered across my pathway, his cheek pouches bulging
with acorns. A flock of blackbirds, migrating southward, stopped for a
few moments in the trees above my head, chattering vociferously; then
resumed their journey with a sudden _whirr_ of wings and a few hoarse
notes of farewell.

“It is but a step,” I reflected, “from the natural to the supernatural.”

This observation started a new line of thought. After all, could
anything be supernatural--above nature?” Nature, according to my
belief, was only another name for God, eternal mind, omnipotent,
omnipresent, omniscient ruler of the universe. If He were omnipotent,
could anything take place contrary to His laws? Obviously not.

The word “supernatural” was, after all, only an expression invented by
man in his finite ignorance, to define those things which he did not
understand. Telegraphy, telephony, the phonograph, the moving
picture--all would have been regarded with superstition by an age less
advanced than ours. Man had only to become familiar with the laws
governing them, in order to discard the word “supernatural” as applied
to their manifestations.

What right, then, had I to term the phenomena, which I had just
witnessed, supernatural? I might call them supernormal, but to think
of them as supernatural would be to believe the impossible: namely,
that that which is all-powerful had been overpowered.

I resolved, then and there, that if further phenomena manifested
themselves that night, I would, as far as it were possible, curb my
superstition and fear, regard them with the eye of a philosopher, and
endeavor to learn their cause, which must necessarily be governed by
natural law.

A gray cloud of dust and the whirring of a motor announced the coming
of an automobile. The next minute an ancient flivver, with whose bumps
of eccentricity I had gained some acquaintance, turned into the
driveway and stopped opposite me. Joe Severs, older son of my uncle’s
tenant, stepped out and came running toward me.

“Glitch’s wife died this morning,” he panted, “and he swears Mr.
Braddock is a vampire and sucked her blood.”

“What rot!” I replied. “Nobody believes him, of course?”

“I ain’t so sure of that,” said Joe. “Some of the farmers are takin’
it mighty serious. One of the Langdon boys, first farm north of here,
was took sick this mornin’. Doctor don’t know what’s the matter of
him. Folks say it looks mighty queer.”

Mrs. Rhodes appeared on the front porch.

“A telephone call for you, sir,” she said.

I hastened to the ‘phone. A woman was speaking.

“This is Mrs. Newberry,” she said. “My husband is dreadfully ill, and
asked me to tell you that he cannot come to sit up with you tonight.”

I thanked the lady, offered my condolences, and tendered my sincere
wishes for her husband’s speedy recovery. This done, I wrote a note of
sympathy to Mr. Glitch, and dispatched Joe with it.

Here, indeed, was a pretty situation. Glitch’s wife dead, Newberry
seriously ill, and the whole countrywide frightened by this impossible
vampire story. I knew it would be useless to ask any of the other
neighbors to keep watch, with me. Obviously, I was destined to face
the terrors of the coming night alone. Was I equal to the task? Could
my nerves, already unstrung by the previous night’s experience,
withstand the ordeal?

I must confess, and not without a feeling of shame, that at this
juncture I felt impelled to flee, anywhere, and leave my deceased
uncle’s affairs to shape themselves as they would.

With this idea in mind, I repaired to my room and started to pack my
grip. Something fell to the floor. It was my uncle’s last letter,
received only the day before the telegram arrived announcing his
death. I hesitated--then picked it up and opened it. The last
paragraph held my attention:


      “And, Billy, my boy, don’t worry any more about the money I
      advanced you. It was, as you say, a considerable drain on my
      resources, but I gave it willingly, gladly, for the education of
      my sister’s son. My only regret is that I could not have done
      more.
            “--Affectionately,
                  “Uncle Jim.”


A flush of guilt came over me. The reproach of my conscience was keen
and painful. I had been about to commit a cowardly, dishonorable deed.

“Thank God, for the accidental intervention of that letter.” I said
fervently.

My resolution was firmly made now. I would see the thing through at
all costs. The noble love, the generous self-sacrifice of my uncle,
should not go unrequited.

I quickly unpacked my bag and walked downstairs. The rest of the day
was uneventful, but the night--how I dreaded the coming of the night!
As I stood on the porch and watched the last faint glow of sunset
slowly fading, I wished that I, like Joshua, might cause the sun and
moon to stand still.

Twilight came on all too quickly, accelerated by the bank of heavy
clouds which appeared on the western horizon; and darkness succeeded
twilight with unwanted rapidity.

I entered the house and trod the hallway leading to the living-room,
with much the same feeling, no doubt, that a convict experiences when
entering the death cell.

The housekeeper was just placing the lamp, freshly cleaned and filled,
in the room. Joe Severs’ younger brother, Sam, had placed logs in the
fireplace, with kindling and paper beneath them, ready for lighting.
Mrs. Rhodes bade me a kindly “Good-night, sir,” and departed noiselessly.

At last the dreaded moment had arrived. I was alone with the nameless
powers of darkness.

I shuddered involuntarily. A damp chill pervaded the air, and I
ignited the kindling beneath the logs in the fireplace. Then, drawing
the shades to shut out the pitchy blackness of the night. I lighted my
pipe and stood in the warm glow.

Under the genial influence of pipe and warmth, my feeling of fear was
temporarily dissipated. Taking a book from the library table, I
settled down to read. It was called “The Reality of Materialization
Phenomena,” and had been written by my uncle. The publishers were
Bulwer & Sons, New York and London.

It was apparently a record of the observations made by my uncle at
materialization seances in this country and Europe. Contrary to usual
custom on starting a book, I read the author’s introduction. He began
by expressing the wish tat those who might read the work should first
lay aside all prejudice and all preconceived ideas regarding the
subject, which were not based on positive knowledge; then weigh the
facts as he had found them before drawing a definite conclusion.

The following passage, in particular, held my attention:


      “While it is to be admitted, with regret, that there are many
      people calling themselves mediums, who deceive their sitters
      nightly and whose productions are consequently mere optical
      illusions, produced my chicanery and legerdemain, the writer has
      nevertheless gathered, at the sittings recorded in this book,
      where all possibility of fraud was excluded by rigorous
      examination and control, undeniable evidence that genuine
      materializations are, and can be, produced.

      “The source and physical composition--if indeed it be
      physical--of a phantasm materialized by a true medium, remains,
      up to the present time, inexplicable. That such manifestations
      are not hallucinations, has been proved time and again by
      taking photographs. One would indeed be compelled to strain his
      credulity to the utmost, were he to believe that a mere
      hallucination could be photographed.

      “As I have stated, the exact nature and source of the phenomena
      are apparently inscrutable; however, it is a notable fact that
      the strongest manifestations take place when the medium is in a
      state of catalepsy, or suspended animation. Her hands are
      cold--her body becomes rigid--her eyes, if open, appear to be
      fixed on space--”


A roll of thunder, quickly followed by a rush of wind, rudely
interrupted my reading. The housekeeper appeared in the doorway, lamp
in hand.

“Would you mind helping me close the windows, sir?” she asked. “There
is a big rainstorm coming, and they must be closed quickly, or the
furnishings and wall paper will be soaked.”

Together we ascended the stairs. I rushed from window to window, while
she lighted the way with the dim lamp. This duty attended to, she
again bade me “Good night,” and I returned to the living-room.

As I entered, I glanced at the casket: then looked again while a
feeling of horror crept over me. Either I was dreaming, or it had been
completely draped with a white sheet during my absence.

I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, and advanced to confirm the evidence
of my eyesight by the sense of touch. As I extended my hand, the
center of the sheet rose in a sharp peak, as if lifted by some
invisible presence, and the entire fabric traveled upward toward the
ceiling. I drew back with a cry of dread, watching it with perhaps the
same fascination that is experienced by a doomed bird or animal
looking into the eyes of a serpent that is about to devour it.

The point touched the ceiling. There was a crash of thunder,
accompanied by a blinding flash of lightning which illuminated the
room through the sides of the ill-fitting window shades, and I found
myself staring at the bare ceiling.

Walking dazedly to the fireplace, I poked the logs until they blazed,
and then sat down to collect my thoughts. Torrents of rain were
beating against the window panes. Thunder roared and lightning flashed
incessantly.

I took up my pipe and was about to light it when a strange sight
interrupted me. Something round and flat, about six inches in
diameter, and of a grayish color, was moving along the floor from the
casket toward the center of the room. I watched it, fascinated, while
the blood seemed to congeal in my veins. It did not roll or slide
along the floor, but seemed rather to _flow_ forward.

It reminded me, more than anything else, of an amoeba, one of those
microscopic, unicellular animalcule which I had examined in the study
of zoology: An amoeba magnified, perhaps, several million diameters. I
could plainly see, it put forth projections, resembling pseudopods,
from time to time, and again withdraw them quickly into the body mass.

The lighted match burned my fingers, and I dropped it on the hearth.
In the meantime the creature had reached the center of the room and
stopped. A metamorphosis was now taking place before my eyes. To my
surprise, I beheld, in place of a magnified amoeba, a gigantic
trilobite, larger, it is true, than any specimen which has ever been
found, but, nevertheless, true to form in every detail.

The trilobite, in turn, changed to a brilliantly-hued star-fish with
active, wriggling tentacles. The star-fish became a crab, and the crab,
a porpoise swimming about in the air as if it had been water. The
porpoise then became a huge green lizard that crawled about the floor.

Soon the lizard grew large webbed wings, its tail shortened, its jaws
lengthened out with a pelicanlike pouch beneath them, and its body
seemed partially covered with scales of a rusty black color. I
afterward learned that this was a phantasmic representation of a
pterodactyl, or prehistoric flying reptile. To me, in my terrified
condition, it looked like a creature from hell.

The thing stood erect, stretched its wings and beat the air as if to
try them; then rose and circled twice about the room, flapping lazily
like a heron, and once more alighted in the middle of the floor.

It folded its wings carefully, and I noticed many new changes taking
place. The scales were becoming feathers--the legs lengthened out and
were encased in a thick, scaly skin. The claws thickened into two-toed
feet, like those of an ostrich. The head also looked ostrich-like,
while the wings were shortened and feathered, but not plumed. The bird
was much larger than any ostrich or emu I have ever seen, and stalked
about majestically, its head nearly touching the ceiling.

Soon it, too, stopped in the center of the room--the neck grew shorter
and shorter--the feathers became fur--the wings lengthened into arms
which reached below the knees, and I was face to face with a huge,
gorilla-like creature. It roared horribly, casting quick glances about
the room, its deep-set eyes glowing like coals of fire.

I felt that my end had come, but could make no move to escape. I
wanted to get up and leap through the window, but my nerveless limbs
would not function. As I looked, the fur on the creature turned to a
thin covering of hair, and it began to assume a manlike form. I closed
my eyes and shuddered.

When I opened them a moment later, I beheld what might have been the
“missing link,” half man, half beast. The face, with its receding
forehead and beetling brows, was apelike and yet manlike. Wrapped
about its loins was a large tiger skin. In its right hand it
brandished a huge, knotted club.

Gradually it became more manlike and less apelike. The club changed to
a spear, the spear to a sword, and I beheld a Roman soldier, fully
accoutered for battle, with helmet, armor, target and sandals.

The Roman soldier became a knight, and the knight a musketeer. The
musketeer became a colonial soldier.

At that instant there was a crash of glass, and the branch of a tree
projected through the window on the right of the fireplace. The shade
flew up with a snap, and the soldier disappeared, as a brilliant flash
of lightning illuminated the room.

I rushed to the window, and saw that the overhanging limb of an elm
had been broken off by the wind and hurled trough the glass. The rain
was coming in torrents.

The housekeeper, who had heard the noise, appeared in the doorway.
Seeing the rain blowing in at the window, she left and returned a
moment later with a hammer, tacks and a folded sheet. I tacked the
sheet to the window frame with difficulty, on account of the strong
wind, and again pulled down the shade.

Mrs. Rhodes retired.

I consulted my watch. It lacked just one minute of midnight.

Only half of the night gone! Would I be strong enough to endure the
other half?




This Story Will be Concluded in the Next Issue of WEIRD TALES.




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_You Will Find Blood-Curdling Realism and a Smashing Surprise in_

The MYSTERY of BLACK JEAN

By JULIAN KILMAN




Aye, sir, since you have asked, there has been many a guess about
where Black Jean finally disappeared to.

He was a French-Canadian and a weed of a man--six-feet-five in his
socks; his eyes were little and close together and black; he wore a
long thin mustache that drooped; and he was as hairy as his two bears.

He just drifted up here to the North, I guess, picking up what scanty
living he could by wrestling with the bears and making them wrestle
each other. ‘Twas in the King William hotel that many’s the time I’ve
seen Black Jean drink whisky by the cupful and feed it to the bears.
Yes, he was interesting, especially to us boys.

Along about the time the French-Canadian and his trick animals were
getting to be an old story, there come--begging your pardon--a Yankee,
who said he would put up a windmill at Morgan’s Cove if he could get
the quicklime to make the mortar with.

Black Jean said he knew how to make lime and if they would give him
time he would put up a kiln. So the French-Canadian went to work and
built that limekiln you see standing there.

I was a youngster then, and I know how Black Jean, a little later,
built his cabin. I used to hide and watch him and his bears. They
worked like men together, with an ugly-looking woman that had joined
them. They put up the cabin, the bears doing most of the heavy lifting
work.

The place he picked for the cabin--over there where that clump of
trees. . . . No, not that way--more to the right, half a mile
about--that place is called “Split Hill,” because there is a deep
crack in the rock made by some earthquake. The French-Canadian built
his cabin across the crack, and as the woman quarreled with him about
the bears sleeping in the cabin he made a trap-door in the floor of
the building and stuck a small log down it, so the bears could climb
up and down from their den below.

The kiln, you can see for yourself, is a pit-kiln. So called because
it is in the side of a hill and the limestone is fed from the top and
the fuel from the bottom. Like a big chimney it works, and when Black
Jean got the fire started and going good it would roar up through the
stone and cook it. You could see the blaze for a mile.

One day Black Jean came to the King William looking for that Yankee.
Seems that individual hadn’t paid for his lime. When Black Jean didn’t
find him at the tavern he started for the Cove.

I have never known who struck first; but they say the Yankee called
Black Jean a damn frog-eater and there was a fight; and that afternoon
the French-Canadian came to the tavern with his bears and all three
of them got drunk. Black Jean used to keep a muzzle on the larger of
the bears, but by tilting the brute’s head he could pour whisky down
its throat. They got pretty drunk, and then someone dared Black Jean
to wrestle the muzzled bear.

There was a big tree standing in front of the tavern, and close by was
a worn-out pump having a big iron handle. Black Jean and the bear went
at it under the tree, the two of them clinching and hugging and
swearing until they both gasped for air. This day the big bear was
rougher than usual, and Black Jean lost his temper. It was his custom
when he got in too tight a place to kick the bear in the stomach; and
this time he began using his feet.

Suddenly we heard a rip of clothing. The bear had unsheathed his
claws; they were sharp as razors and tore Black Jean’s clothing into
shreds and brought blood. Black Jean broke loose, his eyes flashing,
his teeth gritting. Like lightning, he grabbed his dirk and leaped at
the brute and jabbed the knife into its eye and gave a quick twist.
The eyeball popped out and hung down by shreds alongside the bear’s jaw.

Never can I forget the human-sounding shriek that bear gave, and how
my father caught me up and scrambled behind the tree as the bear
started for Black Jean. But the animal was near blinded, and Black
Jean had time to jerk the iron handle out of the pump; and then, using
it as if it didn’t weigh any more than a spider’s thought, he beat the
bear over the head. He knocked it cold.

Then my father said: “That bear will kill you some day, Jean.”

Black Jean stuck the iron pump handle back into its place.

“_Bagosh!_ you t’ink dat true?” he sneered. “Mebbe I keel _her_, eh?”

Our place was next to the piece where Black Jean lived, and it was
only next morning we heard a loud yelling over at Split Hill. I was a
little fellow but spry, and when I reached Black Jean’s cabin I was
ahead of my father. I saw the French-Canadian leaning against a stump
all alone, the blood streaming from his face.

“By God, M’sieu!” he blurted, when my father came up. “She scrat’ my
eye out!”

My father thought he meant the woman.

“Who did?” he asked.

“Dat dam’ bear,” said Black Jean. “She just walk up an’ steeck her
foots in my eye.”

Father caught hold of Black Jean and helped him to the cabin.

“Which bear was it?” he asked.

Black Jean slumped forward without answering. He had fainted.

I helped father get him into the house--he was more than one man could
carry--and just as we went inside there was a growling and snarling, and
the big muzzled bear went sliding down that pole to her nest.

Well, we looked all around for the woman, expecting to get her help:
but we couldn’t find her, which was the first we knew that she had
left Black Jean.

It took the French-Canadian’s eye two or three months to heal, and
then he came to our place to get something to wear over the empty
socket. So father hammered out a circular piece of copper about twice
the size of a silver dollar and bored a hole in opposite sides for a
leather thong to hold it in place. Black Jean always wore it after
that. He seemed vain of that piece of copper, for he used to keep it
polished and shined until it glowed on a bright day like a bit of fire.




That fall the settlers opened up the first school in the district and
imported a woman teacher from “The States.”

I must tell you about that teacher. She was a thin, little mite of a
thing that you would think the wind would blow away. Some said she was
pretty and some that she wasn’t. I could have called her pretty if her
eyes hadn’t been so black--hereabouts you don’t see many eyes that are
black--brown, maybe, and blue and gray, but not black. Fact is, there
were just two people in these parts having those black eyes: Black
Jean and the little mite of a school teacher.

Well she came. And she hadn’t been hero a month before it was noticed
that Black Jean was coming to town more regular. And, what is more, he
was coming down by the school and waiting around there with his bears.

This went on. They say that at first she didn’t pay any attention to
him, but I can’t speak for that as I was too young. But in time there
was talk and it came to me: then I watched. And I remember one
afternoon after the teacher let us out we all went over to where the
bears were. The teacher followed.

Black Jean was grinning and showing his white teeth.

“Beautiful ladee,” says he. “Sooch eyes, mooch black like the back of
a water-bug.”

Teacher smiled and said something I couldn’t understand. It must have
been French. I had never seen a Frenchman around women before, and
Black Jean’s manners were new to me. Here was a big weed of a man
bowing and scraping and standing with his cap in his hand. We boys
laughed at that--holding his cap in his hand.

The long and short of it was the French-Canadian was sparking the
school teacher. And everybody talked about it, of course; they said it
was a shame: they said if she didn’t have sense enough to see what
kind of a man he was, someone should tell her.

I have often wondered since what would have happened if anybody _had_
gone to that woman with stories of Black Jean. I know I’d never dared
to, because, without knowing why, I was afraid of her. I guess maybe
that is why the others didn’t either.

There was no mistaking she was encouraging to Black Jean. She didn’t
seem to object in the slightest to his attentions, and I can see them
yet: her, little and pretty and in a white dress, and Black Jean
lingering there with his bears, dirty, and towering head and shoulders
above her.




Black Jean kept coming and people went on talking, and finally
somebody said she had been to Split Hill.

And one day I began to understand it, too. It was the time she was
punishing some pupils. Three of them were lined up before her, and she
started along whacking the outstretched hands with a stout ruler.
Right in front of where I was sitting stood Ben Anger. He was the
smallest of the lot and was trembling like a leaf.

Her first clip at him must have raised a welt on his hands, because he
whimpered. She hit him again, and he closed his fingers. At that she
caught up the jackknife he’d been whittling at his desk with and pried
at his fingers until the blood came.

Sitting where I was, I saw her face while she was at it. It had the
expression of a female devil. I didn’t say anything to my folks about
that: but I wasn’t surprised when word came next week that we were to
have a new teacher--the little one had gone to live with Black Jean.

Well, there was more talk--talk of rail-riding the pair of them out of
the district. But nothing was done, and one evening, a mouth later,
there was a rap at our door and the French-Canadian staggered in. He
was carrying the school teacher in his arms.

“What has happened?” my father demanded.

“Dat dam’ leetle bear,” snarled Black Jean--“She try to keel Madam.”

He laid the woman on the bed. She looked pretty badly cut up, and we
sent for the doctor. Mother would only let her stay in the house that
night, being shocked at the way she was living with the French-Canadian.

It turned out she wasn’t much hurt, and father kept trying to find out
just what had happened. But he couldn’t. _I_ knew, however. Most of my
time, when I wasn’t in school or running errands for the folks, I was
spending watching that couple, and only that afternoon I had seen her
stick a hot poker into the side of the smaller bear and wind it up
into his fur until he screamed. And the bear must have bided his time
and gone for her--those brutes were just like folks.

Next morning Black Jean came and got his woman, and I stole out and
followed. I knew there would be more to it. I was right. The two of
them went into the cabin, and pretty soon I heard a rumpus and out
comes Black Jean with the smaller bear and behind them the woman, she
was carrying a cowhide whip.

The French-Canadian had a chain roped about each forepaw of the
animal, and, pulling it under a tree, he tossed the free end of the
chain over a stout branch and yanked the bear off his feet. Then he
wound the end of the chain about the trunk of the tree and sat down.
So the bear hung, his feet trussed, and squirming and helpless.

And there in that clear day and warm sunshine, the woman started at
the bear with the whip. She lashed it until it cried like a child.
Black Jean watched the proceedings and grinned.

“Bah!” he shouted, after the woman had begun to tire. “She t’ink you
foolin’. Heet harder. Heet the eyes!”

Again the woman went at it and kept it up until the bear quit moaning,
and its head drooped and its body got limp. I was feeling sick at the
sight, and I stole away.

But next morning, when I crawled back, there was the bear still
hanging. It was dead.




That woman was a fair mate for Black Jean.

She kept him working steady over here to this kiln--most any night you
could see the reflection of the blaze--and it was something to watch
Black Jean when he was feeding his fire with the light playing on that
copper piece and making it look like a big red eye flashing in the
night. I saw it many times.

And it was noticed that Black Jean wasn’t getting drunk any more, and
he wasn’t wrestling the one-eyed bear any more. He had good reason for
that. I began to believe Black Jean was afraid of that brute.

But he made it work for him in the kiln, using the whip, and it was a
curious animal, growling and snarling most of the time, as it pulled
and lifted big sticks of wood and lugged them to the kiln.

When Black Jean wasn’t working he was over at the cabin where he would
follow the woman around like a dog. She could make him do anything.
She was getting thinner and crosser, and I was more afraid of her than
ever I was of Black Jean.

Once she caught me watching her from my spying-place in a tree. She
had been petting the one-eyed bear, rubbing his snout and feeding him
sugar. She ran to the house and got a rifle and, my friends, I came
down out of that tree lickety split.

When I reached the ground she didn’t say a word--just let her eyes
rest on mine. After that I was more careful.




Then something happened.

I was hoeing corn one afternoon in a field next the road when I spied
a woman coming along from the village. She was big and blowsy and was
wearing a shawl. I knew she was headed for Black Jean’s, because she
climbed through the fence on his side of the road.

Keeping her in sight, I followed along my side and crossed over when I
came to a place where she couldn’t see me. I followed her because I
knew she was the woman who had come to Black Jean when he first landed
in the district. She walked up to the cabin, and I was wondering who
she would find home, when out comes Black Jean.

_“Sacre!”_ he exclaimed, putting one hand to his eve. “Spik queeck!
Ees it Marie?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “I have come back.”

Black Jean looked around fearfully.

“Wat you want?” he demanded.

“I’d like to know who knocked your eye out,” she laughed.

Black Jean did not laugh.

“You steal hunder’ dollar from me an’ run ‘way,” he snarled.
“_Bagosh!_ You give me dat monee.”

“You fool!” said the woman. “You think I don’t know where you got that
money? You killed--”

A sound of rustling leaves in the wood nearby interrupted.

_“Ssh!”_ hissed Black Jean, his face blanching. “For de love o’ God,
nod so loud.”

He listened a moment; then his expression grew crafty. His teeth
showed, and he went close to the woman and said something and started
into the cabin.

The next instant I knew someone else had seen them. It was no other
than the little ex-school teacher--and she was running away! I lay
still a moment, scared out of my wits. Then I went home.

“Did you see Black Jean’s wife?” my mother asked.

“You mean the school teacher woman?” I said.

“Yes,” my mother said. “Who else?”

“I did.” I said, “a while ago.”

“I mean just now,” said my mother, breathing quick. “She rushed in
here, right into the house, and before I could stop her she snatched
your father’s rifle from the wall and ran out.”




I didn’t wait to hear more.

I set off through the fields for Black Jean’s. Before I had run half
the distance, I heard shooting, and it was father’s rifle--I knew the
sound of her only too well.

When I got to my spying-place it was all quiet at Black Jean’s. I
could not see a thing stirring about the cabin.

Then I thought of mother and started home. Father had gone over to the
Cove that morning, with a load of wheat for the Yankee’s mill, and
wasn’t to get back until late. So mother and I waited.

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when we heard father’s wagon,
and I rushed outside.

“Hello, son,” he exclaimed. “You’re up late. And here’s mother, too.”

Father listened to what we told him, without saying a word.

“Well,” he said, when we had finished, “I don’t really see anything to
worry about. Black Jean can take care of himself. Look there!”

He was pointing over here to this limekiln.

“Jean’s had her loaded for a week,” said father, “waiting for better
weather.”

Later, in the house, my father said: “It is none of our business, anyway.”

And in a little he added, as if worried some: “But I am going over
there after my rifle.”




The following Sunday--three day later--father and I went to Black
Jean’s to get the rifle.

The door of the cabin opened, and the little woman came out. She was
carrying the rifle. Somehow, she looked thin and old and her hands
were like claws. But her eyes were bright and as sharp as the teeth of
a weasel trap.

“I suppose,” she said, as cool as a cucumber and as sweet as honey,
“you have come after the rifle.”

“That is what,” said my father, sternly.

She handed it over.

“Please apologize to your wife for me,” she said, “for the sudden way
I took it. I was in a hurry. I saw a deer down by the marsh.”

“Did you get the deer?” I piped in. “No,” she said. “I missed it.”

Father and I started away. But he stopped and called: “Where is Black
Jean this morning?”

“Black Jean!” she laughed. “Oh, he’s got another sweetheart. He has
gone away with her.”

“Good-day,” said father.

“Good-day,” said she.

And that was the end of that.

Neither Black Jean nor the big blowsy woman was ever seen again, nor
hide nor hair of them. But there was lots of talk. You see, there
hadn’t been any deer in these parts for many years; and besides it
just was not possible for so well known a character as Black Jean to
vanish so completely, without leaving a single trace.

Well, finally someone laid information in the county seat and over
comes a smart young chap. He questioned father and mother and made me
tell him all I knew, and took it all down in writing; then he gets a
constable and goes over and they arrest the little black-eyed woman.

There was no trouble about it. They say she just smiled and asked what
she was being arrested for--and they told her for the murder of Black
Jean. She didn’t say anything to that; only asked that someone feed
the big one-eyed bear during the time she was locked up.

Then the people started coming. They came on horseback, they came
afoot, they came in canoes, they came in lumber wagons--no matter how
far away they lived--and brought their own food along. I calculate
near every soul in the district turned out and made it a sort of
general holiday and lay-off, for certain it is that no one cared
anything about Black Jean himself.

Every inch of the land hereabouts was searched; they poked along the
entire length of that earthquake crack, and in the clearings, and in
the bush, looking for fresh-turned earth. But they could not find a
thing--not a thing!

Now you gentlemen know that you can’t convict a person for murder
unless you have got positive proof that murder’s been done--the dead
body itself. Which was the case here, and that smart youth from the
county seat had to let the little woman go free. So she came back to
the cabin, living there as quiet as you please and minding her own
precise business.




Here is a pocket-piece I have had for some time. You can see for
yourself that it is copper.

It is the thing my father mode for Black Jean to wear over his bad
eye. I found that piece of copper two years after the little woman
died--near twelve years after Black Jean disappeared. And I found it
in the ashes and stone at the bottom of the limekiln standing there,
half-tumbled down.

A lot of people hereabouts say it doesn’t follow that Black Jean’s
body was burned in the kiln--cremated, I guess you city chaps would
call it. They can’t figure out how the mischief a little ninety-pound
woman could have lugged those two bodies after she shot them with my
father’s rifle, the distance from the cabin to the kiln--a good half
mile and more.

They point out that the body of Black Jean must have weighed over two
hundred pounds, not to mention that the other woman was big and fat.
But they make me weary.

It is as simple as the nose on your face: _The big one-eyed bear did
the job for her!_




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Julian Kilman Will Have Another Story In

The April WEIRD TALES

“The Affair of the Man in Scarlet”

--It’s a Powerful Tale With a Terrifying Climax--




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The Grave

A Story of Stark Terror

By Orville R. Emerson




The end of this story was first brought to my attention when
Fromwiller returned from his trip to Mount Kemmel, with a very strange
tale indeed and one extremely hard to believe.

But I believed it enough to go back to the Mount with “From” to see if
we could discover anything more. And after digging for awhile at the
place where “From’s” story began, we made our way into an old dugout
that had been caved in, or at least where all the entrances had been
filled with dirt, and there we found, written on German correspondence
paper, a terrible story.

We found the story on Christmas day. 1918, while making the trip in
the colonel’s machine from Watou, in Flanders, where our regiment was
stationed. Of course, you have heard of Mount Kemmel in Flanders: more
than once it figured in newspaper reports as it changed hands during
some of the fiercest fighting of the war. And when the Germans were
finally driven from this point of vantage, in October, 1918, a retreat
was started which did not end until it became a race to see who could
get into Germany first.

The advance was so fast that the victorious British and French forces
had no time to bury their dead, and, terrible as it may seem to those
who have not seen it, in December of that year one could see the
rotting corpses of the unburied dead scattered here and there over the
top of Mount Kemmel. It was a place of ghostly sights and sickening
odors. And it was there that we found this tale.

With the chaplain’s help, we translated the story, which follows:




For two weeks I have been buried alive! For two weeks I have not seen
daylight, nor heard the sound of another person’s voice. Unless I can
find something to do, besides this everlasting digging, I shall go
mad. So I shall write. As long as my candles last, I will pass part of
the time each day in setting down on paper my experiences.

“Not that I need to do this in order to remember them. God knows that
when I get out the first thing I shall do will be to try to forget
them! But if I should not get out! . . .

“I am an Ober-lieutenant in the Imperial German Army. Two weeks ago my
regiment was holding Mount Kemmel in Flanders. We were surrounded on
three sides and subjected to a terrific artillery fire, but on account
of the commanding position we were ordered to hold the Mount to the
last man. Our engineers, however, had made things very comfortable.
Numerous deep dugouts had been constructed, and in them we were
comparatively safe from shellfire.

“Many of these had been connected by passageways so that there was a
regular little underground city, and the majority of the garrison
never left the protection of the dugouts. But even under these
conditions our casualties were heavy. Lookouts had to be maintained
above ground, and once in a while a direct hit by one of the huge
railway guns would even destroy some of the dugouts.

“A little over two weeks ago--I can’t be sure, because I have lost
track of the exact number of days--the usual shelling was increased a
hundred fold. With about twenty others, I was sleeping in one of the
shallower dugouts. The tremendous increase in shelling awakened me
with a start, and my first impulse was to go at once into a deeper
dugout, which was connected to the one I was in by an underground
passageway.

“It was a smaller dugout, built a few feet lower than the one I was
in. It had been used as a sort of a storeroom and no one was supposed
to sleep there. But it seemed safer to me, and, alone, I crept into
it. A thousand times since I have wished I had taken another man with
me. But my chances for doing it were soon gone.

“I had hardly entered the smaller dugout when there was a tremendous
explosion behind me. The ground shook as if a mine had exploded below
us. Whether that was indeed the case, or whether some extra large
caliber explosive shell had struck the dugout behind me, I never knew.

“After the shock of the explosion, had passed I went back to the
passageway. When about halfway along it, I found the timbers above had
fallen, allowing the earth to settle, and my way was effectually
blocked.

“So I returned to the dugout and waited alone through several hours of
terrific shelling. The only other entrance to the dugout I was in was
the main entrance from the trench above, and all those who had been
above ground had gone into dugouts long before this. So I could not
expect anyone to enter while the shelling continued; and when it
ceased there would surely be an attack.

“As I did not want to be killed by a grenade thrown down the entrance;
I remained awake in order to rush out at the first signs of cessation
of the bombardment and join what comrades there might be left on the hill.

“After about six hours of the heavy bombardment, all sound above
ground seemed to ease. Five minutes went by, then ten; surely the
attack was coming. I rushed to the stairway leading out to the air. I
took a couple of strides up, the stairs. There was a blinding flash
and a deafening explosion.

“I felt myself falling. Then darkness swallowed everything.”




How long I lay unconscious in the dugout I never knew.

“But after what seemed like a long time, I practically grew conscious
of a dull ache in my left arm. I could not move it I opened my eyes
and found only darkness. I felt pain and a stiffness all over my body.

“Slowly I rose, struck a match, found a candle and lit it and looked
at my watch. It had stopped. I did not know how long I had remained
there unconscious. All noise of bombardment had ceased. I stood and
listened for some time, but could hear no sound of any kind.

“My gaze fell on the stairway entrance. I started in alarm. The end of
the dugout, where the entrance was, was half filled with dirt.

“I went over and looked closer. The entrance was completely filled
with dirt at the bottom, and no light of any kind could be seen from
above. I went to the passageway to the other dugout, although I
remembered it had caved in. I examined the fallen timbers closely.
Between two of them I could feel a slight movement of air. Here was an
opening to the outside world.

“I tried to move the timbers, as well as I could with one arm, only to
precipitate a small avalanche of dirt which filled the crack. Quickly
I dug at the dirt until again I could feel the movement of air. This
might be the only place where I could obtain fresh air.

“I was convinced that it would take some little work to open up either
of the passageways, and I began to feel hungry. Luckily, there was a
good supply of canned foods and hard bread, for the officers had kept
their rations stored in this dugout. I also found a keg of water and
about a dozen bottles of wine, which I discovered to be very good.
After I had relieved my appetite and finished one of the bottles of
wine, I felt sleepy and, although my left arm pained me considerably,
I soon dropped off to sleep.

“The time I have allowed myself for writing is up, so I will stop for
today. After I have performed my daily task of digging tomorrow. I
shall again write. Already my mind feels easier. Surely help will come
soon. At any rate, within two more weeks I shall have liberated
myself. Already I am half way up the stairs. And my rations will last
that long. I have divided them so they will.”




“Yesterday I did not feel like writing after I finished my digging. My
arm pained me considerably. I guess I used it too much.

“But today I was more careful with it, and it feels better. And I am
worried again. Twice today big piles of earth caved in, where the
timbers above were loose, and each time as much dirt fell into the
passageway as I can remove in a day. Two days more before I can count
on getting out by myself.

“The rations will have to be stretched out some more. The daily amount
is already pretty small. But I shall go on with my account.

“From the time I became conscious I started my watch, and since then I
have kept track of the days. On the second day I took stock of the
food, water, wood, matches, candles, etc., and found a plentiful
supply for two weeks at least. At that time I did not look forward to
a stay of more than a few days in my prison.

“Either the enemy or ourselves will occupy the hill I told myself,
because it is such an important position. And whoever now holds the
hill will be compelled to dig in deeply in order to hold it.

“So to my mind it was only a matter of a few days until either the
entrance or the passageway would be cleared, and my only doubts were
as to whether it would be friend or enemy that would discover me. My
arm felt better, although I could not use it much, and so I spent the
day in reading an old newspaper which I found among the food supplies,
and in waiting for help to come. What a fool I was! If I had only
worked from the start, I would be just that many days nearer
deliverance.

“On the third day I was annoyed by water, which began dripping from
the roof and seeping in at the sides of the dugout. I cursed that
muddy water, then, as I have often cursed such dugout nuisances
before, but it may be that I shall yet bless that water and it shall
save my life.

“But it certainly made things uncomfortable; so I spent the day in
moving my bunk, food and water supplies, candles, etc., up into the
passageway. For a space of about ten feet it was unobstructed, and,
being slightly higher than the dugout, was dryer and more comfortable.
Besides, the air was much better here, as I had found that practically
all my supply of fresh air came in through the crack between the
timbers, and I thought maybe the rats wouldn’t bother me so much at
night. Again I spent the balance of the day simply in waiting for help.

“It was not until well into the fourth day that I really began to feel
uneasy. It suddenly became impressed on my consciousness that I had
not heard the sound of a gun, or felt the earth shake from the force
of a concussion, since the fatal shell that had filled the entrance.
What was the meaning of the silence? Why did I hear no sounds of
fighting? It was as still as the grave.

“What a horrible death to die! Buried Alive! A panic of fear swept
over me. But my will and reason reasserted itself. In time, I should
be able to dig myself out by my own efforts. It would take time but it
could be done.

“So, although I could not use my left arm as yet, I spent the rest of
that day and all of the two following days in digging dirt from the
entrance and carrying it back into the far corner of the dugout.

“On the seventh day after regaining consciousness I was tired and
stiff from my unwanted exertions of the three previous days. I could
see by this time that it was a matter of weeks--two or three, at
least--before I could hope to liberate myself. I might be rescued at
an earlier date, but, without outside aid, it would take probably
three more weeks of labor before I could dig my way out.

“Already dirt had caved in from the top, where the timbers had sprung
apart, and I could repair the damage to the roof of the stairway only
in a crude way with one arm. But my left arm was much better. With a
day’s rest. I would be able to use it pretty well. Besides. I must
conserve my energy. So I spent the seventh day in rest and prayer for
my speedy release from a living grave.

“I also reapportioned my food on the basis of three more weeks. It
made the daily portions pretty small, especially as the digging was
strenuous work. There was a large supply of candles, so that I had
plenty of light for any work. But the supply of water bothered me.
Almost half of the small keg was gone in the first week. I decided to
drink only once a day.

“The following six days were all days of feverish labor, light eating
and even lighter drinking. But, despite all my efforts, only a quarter
of the keg was left at the end of two weeks. And the horror of the
situation grew on me. My imagination would not be quiet. I would
picture to myself the agonies to come, when I would have even less
food and water than at present. My mind would run on and on--to death
by starvation--to the finding of my emaciated body by those who would
eventually open up the dugout--even to their attempts to reconstruct
the story of my end.

“And, adding to my physical discomfort, were the swarming vermin
infesting the dugout and my person. A month had gone by since I had
had a bath, and I could not now spare a drop of water even to wash my
face. The rats had become so bold that I had to leave a candle burning
all night in order to protect myself in my sleep. Partly to relieve my
mind. I started to write this tale of my experiences. It did act as a
relief at first, but now, as I read it over, the growing terror of
this awful place grips me. I would cease writing, but some impulse
urges me to write each day.




Three weeks have passed since I was buried in this living tomb.

“Today I drank the last drop of water in the keg. There is a pool of
stagnant water on the dugout door--dirty, slimy and olive with
vermin--always standing there, fed by drippings from the roof. As yet
I cannot bring myself to touch it.

“Today I divided up my food supply for another week. God knows the
portions were already small enough! But there have been so many
cave-ins recently that I can never finish clearing the entrance in
another week.

“Sometimes I feel that I shall never clear it. But I _must!_ I can
never bear to die here. I must will myself to escape, and I _shall
escape!_

“Did not the captain often say that the will to win was half the
victory? I shall rest no more. Every waking hour must be spent in
removing the treacherous dirt.

“Even my writing must cease.”




“Oh, God! I am afraid, _afraid!_ “I must write to relieve my mind.
Last night I went to sleep at nine by my watch. At twelve I woke to
find myself in the dark, frantically digging with my bare hands at the
hard sides of the dugout. After some trouble I found a candle and lit it.

“The whole dugout was upset. My food supplies were lying in the mud.
The box of candles had been spilled. My finger nails were broken and
bloody from clawing at the ground.

“The realization dawned upon me that I had been out of my head. And
then came the fear--dark, raging fear--fear of insanity. I have been
drinking the stagnant water from the floor for days. I do not know how
many.

“I have only about one meal left, but I must save it.”




“I had a meal today. For three days I have been without food.

“But today I caught one of the rats that infect the place. He was a
big one, too. Gave me a bad bite, but I killed him. I feel lots better
today. Have had some bad dreams lately, but they don’t bother me now.

“That rat was tough, though. Think I’ll finish this digging and go
back to my regiment in a day or two.”




“Heaven have mercy! I must be out of my head half the time now.

“I have absolutely no recollection of having written that last entry.
And I feel feverish and weak.

“If I had my strength, I think I could finish clearing the entrance in
a day or two. But I can only work a short time at a stretch.

“I am beginning to give up hope.”




“Wild spells come on me oftener now. I awake tired out from exertions,
which I cannot remember.

“Bones of rats, picked clean, are scattered about, yet I do not
remember eating them. In my lucid moments I don’t seem to be able to
catch them, for they are too wary and I am too weak.

“I get some relief by chewing the candles, but I dare not eat them
all. I am afraid of the dark, I am afraid of the rats, but worst of
all is the hideous fear of myself.

“My mind is breaking down. I must escape soon or I will be little
better than a wild animal. Oh, God, send help! I am going mad!”

“Terror, desperation, despair--is this the end?”




“For a long time I have been resting.

“I have had a brilliant idea. Rest brings back strength. The longer a
person rests the stronger they should get I have been resting a long
time now. Weeks or months, I don’t know which. So I must be very
strong. I feel strong. My fever has left me. So listen! There is only
a little dirt left in the entrance way. I am going out and crawl
through it. Just like a mole. Right out into the sunlight. I feel much
stronger than a mole. So this is the end of my little tale. A sad
tale, but one with a happy ending. Sunlight! A very happy ending.”




And that was the end of the manuscript There only remains to tell
Fromwiller’s tale.

At first I didn’t believe it But now I do. I shall put it down,
though, just as Fromwiller told it to me, and you can take it or leave
it as you choose.

“Soon after we were billeted at Watou,” said Fromwiller, I decided to
go out and see Mount Kemmel. I had heard that things were rather
gruesome out there, but I was really not prepared for the conditions
that I found. I had seen unburied dead around Roulers and in the
Argonne, but it had been almost two months since the fighting on Mount
Kemmel and there were still many unburied dead. But there was another
thing that I had never seen, and that was the _buried living!_

“As I came up to the highest point of the Mount, I was attracted by a
movement of loose dirt on the edge of a huge shell hole. The dirt
seemed to be falling in to a common center, as if the dirt below was
being removed. As I watched, suddenly I was horrified to see a long,
skinny human arm emerge from the ground.

“It disappeared, drawing back some of the earth with it There was a
movement of dirt over a larger area, and the arm reappeared, together
with a man’s head and shoulders. He pulled himself up out of the very
ground, as it seemed, shook the dirt from his body like a huge, giant
dog, and stood erect. I never want to see such another creature!

“Hardly a strip of clothing was visible, and, what little there was,
was so torn and dirty that it was impossible to tell what kind it had
been. The skin was drawn tightly over the bones, and there was a
vacant stare in the protruding eyes. It looked like a corpse that had
lain in the grave a long time.

“This apparition looked directly at me, and yet did not appear to see
me. He looked as if the light bothered him. I spoke, and a look of
fear came over his face. He seemed filled with terror.

“I stepped toward him, shaking loose a piece of barbed wire which had
caught in my puttees. Quick as a flash, he turned and started to run
from me.

“For a second I was too astonished to move. Then I started to follow
him. In a straight line he ran, looking neither to the right or left.
Directly ahead of him was a deep and wide trench. He was running
straight toward it. Suddenly it dawned on me that he did not see it.

“I called out, but it seemed to terrify him all the more, and with one
last lunge he stepped into the trench and fell. I heard his body
strike the other side of the trench and fell with a splash into the
water at the bottom.

“I followed and looked down into the trench. There he lay, with his
head bent back in such a position that I was sure his neck was broken.
He was half in and half out of the water, and as I looked at him I
could scarcely believe what I had seen. Surely he looked as if he had
been dead as long as some of the other corpses, scattered over the
hillside. I turned and left him as he was.

“Buried while living, I left him unburied when dead.”




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Coming!

“The Forty Jars”

A Story of Amazing Adventures

By Ray McGillivray

Will Appear in the Next

WEIRD TALES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A Fantastic Story With An Odd Twist At The End

Hark! The Rattle!

By Joel Townsley Rogers




We sat in the Purple Lily--Tain Dirk, that far too handsome young man,
with me.

I drank coffee; Tain Dirk drank liquor--secretly and alone. The night was
drenched with sweating summer heat, but I felt cold as ice. Presently we
went up to the Palm Grove Roof, where Bimi Tal was to dance.

“Who is this Bimi Tal, Hammer?” Dirk asked me, drumming his fingers.

“A woman.”

“You’re a queer one, Jerry Hammer!” said Dirk, narrowing his cold
yellow eyes.

Still he drummed his blunt fingers. Sharp--_tat! tat! tat!_ Something
deep inside me--my liver, perhaps--shivered and grew white at hearing
that klirring sound.

I didn’t answer him right away. Slowly I sent up smoke rings to circle
the huge stars. We sat in a cave of potted palms close by the dancing
floor. Over us lay blue-black night, strange and deep. Yellow as roses
were the splotches of stars swimming down the sky.

“It shows you’ve been away from New York, Dirk, if you don’t know Bimi
Tal. She’s made herself more famous as a dancer that ever was Ynecita.
Some mystery is supposed to hang about her; and those simple children
of New York love mysteries.”

“I’ve been away three years,” said Dirk sulkily, his eyes contracting.

“That long? It was three years ago that Ynecita was killed.”

“Well?” asked Dirk. His finger-drumming droned away.

“I thought you might have known her, Dirk.”

“I?” His wide, thin lips twitched. “Why, Ynecita was common to half
New York!”

“But once,” I said, “once, it may be assumed, she was true to one man
only, Tain Dirk.”

I’m not interested in women, said Dirk.

That was like him. He drank liquor only--secretly and alone.

“I was interested in Ynecita, Dirk. We used to talk together--”

“She talked to you?” repeated Dirk.

“Strange how she died! No trace, no one arrested. Yet she’d had her
lovers. Sometimes I think, Dirk, we’ll find the beast who killed Ynecita.”

Tain Dirk touched my wrist. His blunt fingers were cold and clammy.
Incomprehensible that women had loved his hands! Yet they were
artist’s hands, and could mold and chisel. Wet clay, his hands!

“What makes you say that, Hammer?”

I looked up at the stars. “It was a beast who killed Ynecita, Dirk.
Some vile snake with blood as cold as this lemon ice. Those marks of
teeth on her upper arm! Deep in, bringing blood! What madman killed
that girl? _Mad,_ I say!”

Dirk twisted. He wiped his brown forehead, on which sweat glistened in
little beads like scales. “Too hot a night to talk about such things,
Hammer. Let’s talk of something else. Tell me about this Bimi Tal.”

“You’ll see her soon enough,” I said, watching him. “A girl of about
your own age; you’re not more than twenty-four, are you?”

“Born first of January, ‘99.”

“And famous already!”

“Yes,” said Tain Dirk. I guess you’ve heard of me.”

“Oh. I’ve heard lots of you,” I said; and saw he didn’t like it.

“You’ve heard I’m fast with women, eh?” asked Dirk, after a pause.

“But Ynecita--”

“Why do you talk of _her?_ asked Dirk, irritably. “I never knew her.”

“Those marks of teeth on Ynecita’s arm--two sharp canines, sharp and
hooked; barely scratching the skin--like fangs of a snake. Dirk--”

Tain Dirk’s hand crept to his line, which were thin, red, and dry. The
light in his eyes darkened from yellow to purple. Softly his blunt
fingers began to drum his lips. _Tat! tat! tat!_ But silent as a snake
in grass.

“A curious thing about teeth, Dirk--you’re a sculptor; maybe you’ve
observed it--a curious thing that no two are quite alike. We took
prints, Dirk, of those marks in the arm of Ynecita--”

Dirk’s thin lips opened. His coarsely-formed, but marvelously
sensitive, fingers felt the hardness of his teeth. That gesture was
sly. At once he knew I’d seen him. He crouched back in his chair, his
strong, broad head drawn in between his shoulders.

“Who are you?” he hissed.

Again the klirring of his fingertips--a dusty drumming.

“Why, I am only Jerry Hammer--a wanderer, and a soldier of bad fortune.”

_“Who are you!”_

“Brother of Stella Hammer, who was known as Ynecita, the dancer.”

Upon the Palm Grove Roof, beneath those gigantic stars the orchestra
began to play. A brass and cymbal tune. The air was hot. From far in
the pit of streets rose up the noises of the city. Loud! Discord shot
with flames. I trembled.

Tain Dirk’s fingers drummed. His head commenced to sway.




II.

Bimi Tal danced barefooted on the glazed umber tiles of the Roof.

Her dark red hair was free on her naked shoulders. _Stamp! stamp!
stamp!_ her feet struck flatly on the tiles. Her head was bent back
almost to the level of her waist. Bracelets jangled on her wrists and
ankles.


      _“I am the daughter of the morning!
      I shout, I dance, I laugh away. . . .”_


Shaking her clump of red hair; her strong muscled limbs weaving;
laughing at me with all her eyes. How like she looked to a man dead
long years before! How like her glances to the glances of Red Roane!
On her breasts two glittering shields of spangles. About her waist a
kirtle seemingly woven of long strands of marsh grass, rustling,
shivering with whispers. The sinews of her trunk and limbs rippled
beneath her clear brown skin.

The head of Tain Dirk swayed sideways, slowly. The drumming of his
fingers on the table was a reiterative rattle. His eyes--liquid,
subtle--dulled with a look near to stupidity, then blazed to golden
fire. Thin and wide were his unsmiling lips. His tongue flicked them.
_Tat! tat! tat!_

“She’s a beauty!” whispered Dirk.

His terrible eyes seemed to call Bimi Tal as they had called other
women. Mesmerism--what was it? Singing, she pranced toward the den of
potted palms where we were sitting. Her skirt rustled like the
marshes. Wind of summer.

Little searchlights, playing colored lights on Bimi Tal, grew darker.
Red and violet deepened to brown and green. Still the hot stars above
us. In that artificial paper Palm Grove, with the silky puffy women
and the beefsteak-guzzling men looking stupidly, was born the mystery
of the great savannahs. Dirk’s head nodding. Dirk’s thin lips slowly
opening. Dirk’s golden eyes glimmering. _Tat!, tat! tat!_ Dirk’s
steady fingers.

The great savannahs and the tropic marshes. Bimi Tal dancing.
Stealthily, the music softened from that brass and cymbal tune. It
rustled. It crawled. It reared fanged heads.

For a little while I did not see Bimi Tal nor Dirk, but the steamy
Everglades. Winter noon. Grass leaves silvered by sea-wind; puddles
stirring at the roots of the grasses. Silence booming like the loud
silence of death.

Bimi Tal was dancing her snake dance. Dirk’s lips quivered.

The marsh wind makes a little stir (it is the whispering flute.) The
marsh waters make a little moan (it is the violin).




III.

Where was the soul of Bimi Tal dwelling that tropic winter so many
years ago? On her mother’s breast, a little bud of love, crooned over
with the song of sleep? Or meshed in bleeding poinsettia, or rose? Or
a soul yet unborn?

I close my eyes. The vision does not fade. Florida; the marshlands;
winter noon. January’s first day, 1899. Where was lovely Bimi Tal on
that stifling day we saw the fanged thing coil, and death struck us
there by Okechobee?

Your eyes, Bimi Tal, are the laughing eyes of Red Roane! . . .

Now the snake dance. The piccolo screams.

Life immortal in your glistening lips, Bimi Tal; in your deep bosom
promise of everlasting fecundity. Passion and power of the earth! Life
is immortal. Your laughing eyes, Bimi Tal, will never dull. Yet I saw
Red Roane die. . . .

Beneath the shifting lights, Bimi Tal leaped and spun, scarcely
treading the floor. Her eves sparkled at me. She did not see Tain
Dirk. _Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!_ Her bare feet struck the tiles,
tightening the muscles of her calves. Her bangles rang.

I could not keep my eyes from Dirk. His broad brown-and-golden head
swayed continually. His thin lips worked, and I caught the flash of
his teeth. His eyes drowsed, then flashed open with sudden flame.
_Tat! tat! tat!_ The rattling of his fingers was never still.

That swaying head! It was loaded with the wisdom of the serpent that
harkens to the wind, swaying with the marsh grass, winding its golden
coin curving its neck to the sun--_Hark! The rattle!_

. . . Red is the sun. Two men plow through the marshes. O endless pain
(the harsh viol quivers, a life struggles in the womb. Who will die,
and what will die, that this new life may be born? Whimpering agony.
And an old crone singing a song. . . .

All people who sat within the Palm Grove were hushed, watching Bimi
Tal. Fat hands fanning powdered breasts; silk handkerchiefs wiping ox
necks; sweat beneath armpits. Still heat. Far away thunder. The stars
going by.

Music swelled. Beneath its discord sounded a steady drumming rhythm.
The arms of Bimi Tal waved about her head. She shouted for joy of life.

The pale eyes of Dirt, basking in mystery, gleamed into fire, blazed
up in fury and hate undying! His dry lips opened. I saw his teeth.

. . . Through the breast-high grasses surge on the two marching men.
Their boots sough in the muck. (Softly strums the bass viol.)
Something waiting in the marshes! Something with golden eyes and
swaying head. _Hark! The rattle!_ Beware, for death is in the path!...

Bimi Tal was close to Dirk, not seeing him. She laughed and waved her
jangling arms at me. Dirk’s eyes sparkled with madness, his lips were
tightened terribly. Bimi Tal was almost over him. His fingers drummed.
Louder played the music.

. . . _Hark! The rattle!_ Gaily the two men, plow through the bladed
grasses. The coiled thing waits, hate within its eyes. They are
nearer--nearer! (Drums begin to beat). . . .

In an avalanche of sound, crashed viol and violin, and stammering
drum. Dirk’s drawn head lunged upward with His shoulders, his lips
opened and lifted.

Venomous his look. Deathly his intensity.




IV.

Strong and young, fresh from the Cuban wars, Red Roane and I went
north from the keys through the Everglades of Florida.

Through the fens as in God’s first day. Through the reptile age, alive
yet and crawling. Through strangling vegetation, which steams and rots
beneath eternal suns. Through the everlasting Everglades, with their
fern and frond and sorrowful, hoary cypress, Red Roane and I went north.
Onward with laughter. What joy lay in our hearts! We sang many songs.

Fern and flower embracing in fecundity. Grasses thick with sap.
Blossoms wilting at a touch. Mire teeming with creeping life. Above
all, the gay sun. Beneath all, the coiling serpent eyes and the opened
fangs. _Hark! The rattle!_

We sailed lagoons in crazy craft; dreamt on shady shores through
sultry noons; shouted to the dead logs on river banks till they took
fear, and dived and splashed away. We pitched our tents by black
waters. We beat brave trails through the fens.

“I’d like to stay here forever,” said Red Roane.

By what way I go, with what drinks I drink, in what bed I lie down, I
remember you who got your prayer, Red Roane--you who are in the swamp
grass and swamp water forever.

Beating our way slow and heavily, at high noon, of the new year’s
first day in 1899, near Okechobee in the marshes, came we two on a
hidden hut. It was fashioned of the raff of the slough--dead fronds,
rotting branches, withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in
the living wilderness like a monument to death. Better the naked
swamp. Better the clean quickmire for bed.

An old crone, moaning within that dreary hut, drowned out the sharp,
short gasps of another woman. Red Roane came up singing, slapping his
deep chest, swinging his muscular arms. Sunlight on his brown face,
and sunlight in his red hair. At the hut’s door, facing us, lounged a
man with yellow eyes. Poor white trash. A gun was in his arm’s crook.
He spat tobacco juice at the earth. There was loathing, murder venom
in his face!

Red Roane faltered back from that stare. He stopped short, and
laughter left him. His brave eyes were troubled by that madman’s hate.
Yellow eyes staring--eyes of a rattlesnake!

An old Indian crone peered out beneath the crooked elbow of the
ruffian in the doorway, she who had been dolorously singing. With a
scream, she thrust out her skinny old arm, pointing it at Red Roane.

“He dies!” she screamed. “We want his soul!”

Another woman, hidden, moaning within the hut; a woman in her travail.
New life from the womb--a life must die! I grasped the arm of Red Roane.

“Come away!” I said. “Come away from these mad witches!”

In three steps that gray-green hovel was hidden in the cypresses. A
dream it seemed. But we could yet hear the old witch woman singing.
Something dragged at our heels, and it was not suction of the muck.

Toe to heel, Red Roane paced me, and we sang a song together. A
crimson flower, short-stemmed, yellow-hearted, was almost beneath my
boot. I stooped--who will not stoop to pick a crimson wild flower? A
rattling, like the shaking of peas. A klirring like the drumming of a
man’s fingertips. _Hark! The rattle!_

A yawning head flashed beneath my hand, striking too low. Heavy as a
hard-flung stone, the snake’s head struck my ankle; yawning gullet,
white-hooked fangs of the deathly rattlesnake. Out of the crimson
flower that beast of gold and brown. Its yellow eyes flickered. Its
thin lips were dry. How near I had touched to death!

“Thank God for those heavy boots, Jerry!”

With blazing eves the snake writhed, coiling for another strike. Its
sharp tail, pointed upward, vibrated continuously with dusty laughter.
Its golden rippling body was thick as my arm.

Red Roane swung down his heavy marching stock. _Crash!_ Its leaden end
struck that lunging mottled head. Halted in mid-strike, that evil
wisdom splattered like an egg, brain pan ripped wide.

The rattler lashed in its last agony, its tremendously muscular tail
beating the ground with thumping blows, its yellow eyes still blazing
with hate, but closing fast in doom.

I tried to say “Thanks, Red!”

Some mesmerism in those yellow, dying eyes! Shaking with disgust. Red
Roane bent above that foul fen watcher, put down his hand to pick up
that stricken sin, over whose eyes thin eye-membrane already lowered
in death.

“Don’t touch it, Red! Wait till the sun goes down.”

_Hark! The rattle!_ Those opaque eyes shuttered back. Those yellow
glances, though in mortal pain, were still furious and glistening.
Those horny tail-bells clattered. Fangs in that shattered, insensate
head yawned, closing in Red Roane’s arm above the wrist.

I see him. Sweat upon his broad brown forehead; his laughing eyes
astounded: his thick strong body shivering; wind stirring up his dark
red hair. Behind him the brown-green marshes, grasses rippling, a stir
going through their depths. His cheeks had never been so red.

Before I could move, he unlocked those jaws and hollow fangs, gripped
hard in his arm with mortal rigor. He shivered now from the knees. His
face went white.

“Cut!” he whispered. “I’ll sit down.”

With hunting knife I slashed his arm, deep driving four crossed cuts.
He laughed, and tried to shout. Howling would have been more pleasant.
I sucked those wounds, out of which slow blood was spouting from an
artery. We panted now, both of us. He leaned heavily on my shoulder--he,
the strong. I bound his arm, my own fingers so numb. I fumbled at the
work. Sweat on Red Roane’s face was cold, and cold his wrists.

My arms clung about him. He swayed, almost toppling, clutching at
grass stems with fading laughter. I picked up his marching stock and
beat that golden, gory thing within the mire. Beat it till clay-white
flesh, and bone and skin were one with the mucky mire of the swamp.
But still its heart ebbed with deep purple pulsing. A smashing blow,
and that, too, died.

“It’s over!” Grimly I flung the bloody stave into the swaying grass.

“Yes, Jerry,” whispered Red Roane, “it’s nearly over.”

I could not believe it. Red Roane, the strong man, the shouter, the
singer, the gay-hearted lover! Is death then, so much stronger than life?

“A woman, Jerry,” he whispered, “in Havana--Dolores! She dances--”

“For God’s sake, Red, wake up!”

“Dances at the--”

“Red! _Red Roane!_ I’m here, boy!”

Out from the way, whence we had come, faintly I heard a cry. Who wept
thus for the soul departing, sang _paean_ for the dead? Was it wind
over the stagnant grasses? Frail in the solitude, rose that wail
again. The whimper of new-born life! In the squatter’s hut the child
had found its soul!

“Dolores!” whispered Red Roane. Beneath that brazen sky he whispered
the name of love. “Dolores!”

Past a hundred miles of swamp, past a hundred miles of sea, did
Dolores, the dancer, hear him calling her?

“Dolores!”

I hope she heard, for he was a good lad, though wild.

With a throat strangling in sobs, I sang to Red Roane. His eyes were
closed, yet he heard me. Old campaign songs, songs of the march and
the bivouac. Marchers’ tunes.

Then he whispered for a lullaby, and, last of all, for a drinking song.




V.

Bimi Tal had danced up to us--Bimi Tal, daughter of Red Roane and of
Dolores, the dancer.

She laughed and tossed her dark red hair. Her broad nostrils sucked in
the hot night wind.


      _“I am the daughter of the morning!
      “I shout. I dance. I laugh away.
      “Follow, lover! Hear my warnings
      “I, the laugher, do not stay. . . .”_


_Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!_ Her body rippled. She cast her eyes at me.

Tain Dirk’s head was rising. His thin, dry, red lips opened wide. His
golden eyes burned with undying hate. _Tat! tat! tat!_ his fingers
drummed.

“In a minute. Jerry,” whispered Bimi Tal, not pausing from her dance.

Her lovely eyes looked downward, seeing Dirk. She screamed. The music
silenced. She struck her arm at him, not knowing what she did.

Mad! the Man was mad! His jaw was opened wide. _He bit her arm above
the wrist._

Before the rush of frantic people had fallen over us, I struck his
venomous face. With both fists, blow on blow. Blood came from his
damned lips.

What madness had seized him I don’t know. Likely it was memory surging
back through dead life--the venom of the rattler, hate undying. But of
that, who can say? A strange thing is memory.

Yet I knew for sure that to him, the mad sculptor, born in that hut in
the hot savannahs, had passed the soul of the dying rattlesnake.

Hands dragged me back from him. I shouted and tore. He quivered,
wounded heavily. His nervous fingers faintly clattered on the table,
drumming with dreadful music. Police came in.

“Look!” I shouted to them. “Look at those marks of teeth on Bimi Tal’s
wrist. Two deep fangs. _There’s the man who killed Ynecita, the dancer!”_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




“Jungle Death”

By Artemus Calloway

Is a “Creepy” Yarn

You will find it in the April

WEIRD TALES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A “Spooky” Tale With a Grim Background

The Ghost Guard

By Bryan Irvine




If every one of the sixty guards and officials at Granite River Prison
had been asked for the name of the most popular guard on the force,
there would have been sixty answers--“Asa Shores.” If each of the
fifteen hundred convicts in the prison had been asked which guard was
most disliked by the convicts, fifteen hundred answers would have been
the Mime--“Asa Shores!”

If some curious person had asked of each convict and each guard, “Who
is considered the most desperate, the hardest, the shrewdest criminal
in the prison?” the answer would have been unanimous, “Malcolm Hulsey,
the ‘lifer.’“

True, it does not seem reasonable that Asa Shores should be liked by
every guard and official and disliked by every convict. To those not
familiar with the duties of prison guards it would seem that Asa
Shores’ method of handling the convicts, if disapproved of by fifteen
hundred convicts, would surely be disapproved of by at least one of
the sixty guards. But the explanation is simple.

Asa Shores’ great-great-grandfather had followed the prisons as
mariners follow the seas. Then Asa’s grandfather took up the work and
followed it, with an iron hand and an inflexible will, until one day a
cell-made knife in the hands of a long-time “con” entered his back at
a point where his suspenders crossed, deviating enough to the left to
pierce his heart. Came next Asa Shores’ father, who went down in
attempting to quell the famous Stromberg break of 1895.

Asa, therefore, his prison methods impelled perhaps by heredity,
looked upon every wearer of gray behind the walls as a convict,
nothing more, nothing less. He neither abused or favored any convict.
A one-year man was to Asa a convict and no better than the man who was
serving a life sentence.

The crime for which any convict was sent up was of little moment to
Asa; neither did he bother about who among the inmates were considered
desperate. The fact that a man wore prison gray was sufficient,
whether he be a six-months sneak-thief or a ninety-nine-year murderer.

When Asa shot and killed Richard (“Mutt”) Allison, when the latter
attempted to escape, the warden had said:

“There was really no need of killing that half-witted short-termer,
Asa. He was doing only a year and was perfectly harmless. A shot in
the leg or foot would have been better.”

And Asa’s reply had been:

“I had no idea who the man was, though I have seen him dozens of
times, and I did not know how long he was doing, but I would have made
no difference if I had known. He was a convict, sir, and he was
attempting to escape. If he was only half-witted, as you say, he
should have been in the insane asylum, not in the penitentiary.”

So that was that.

If Asa ever gave a convict a smile it had never been recorded. It is a
known fact that he was never seen to frown upon a convict. He was, in
short, the smileless, unyielding personification of “duty,” and every
convict hated him for what he was. When Asa shot he shot to kill--and
he never missed. Four little white crosses on the bleak hillside near
the prison proclaimed his flawless marksmanship.

Why was this big sandy-haired, steel-blue-eyed, middle-aged Asa Shores
liked by his brother guards? There were many reasons why. It was as if
Asa’s unnatural, cold, vigilant, unfeeling attitude toward the
convicts was offset each day when he came off duty by a healthy,
wholesome desire to drop duty as a work-horse sheds an irritating
harness. He was the life of the guards’ quarters; a big good-natured,
playful fellow, who thoroughly enjoyed a practical joke, whether he be
the victim of the joke or the instigator. If he had a temper he had
never allowed it to come to the surface. He excelled in all sports in
the gymnasium, and somewhere, somehow, he found more funny stories
than any other man on the force. The trite, old saying that “he would
give a friend the shirt off his back” fitted him like a new kid glove.
He gave freely to his friends, and, in giving, seemed to find real joy.

After twelve years’ service on the guardline. Asa was still an
ordinary wall guard. This would seem discouraging to many: but not so
to Asa. It was not generally known that he drew a larger salary than
did the other wall guards. He was an excellent wall guard. Hence, he
was kept on the wall, while newer men on the force were promoted to
better positions. But Asa drew the salary of a shift captain and was
therefore content.

He did not even seem to mind when he was taken from comfortable Tower
Number One, morning shift, and detailed permanently to Tower Number
Three on the “graveyard” shift at night from eight P.M. to four A.M.
This change was deemed necessary for several reasons. First,because
Asa positively refused to discriminate between short-termers and
long-termers, or discriminate between short-termers and long-termers
or desperate men and harmless “nuts,” when using his rifle to stop a
“break” or the attempt of a single convict to escape.

The men being locked in their cells at night, Asa, as a night guard,
would have little opportunity to practice rifle shooting with a
running convict as the target. Another reason for detailing him to
Tower Number Three was because trouble was expected some night at that
point in the yard, and with sure-fire Asa on the job the officials
felt that any attempt of the convicts to escape would be promptly
frustrated.

One of Asa’s wholesome habits, when no convicts were near him, was
singing. It was not singing, really, but Asa thought it was and he
shortened the long, lonesome hours at night on Tower Number Three with
songs--_song,_ rather, because he knew and sang but one. It was not a
late or popular song, and, as Asa sang it, it sounded like the frogs
that croak in the marshes at night:


      _“When I die and am buried deep,
      “I’ll return at night to take a peep
      “At those who hated me.
      “I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep,
      “Chill their blood: the skin will creep
      “On those who hated me.”_


Not a pretty song; nor did it make cheerful those guards who passed
near Tower Number Three while making the night rounds. But Asa loved
that song.




It was while the wall was being extended another two hundred feet to
make room within the inclosure for a new cell house that Asa shot the
“lifer,” Malcolm Hulsey.

The end wall, extending from Tower Number Three to Tower Number Four,
had been torn down and the stones moved two hundred feet farther south
to be used on the new wall. A temporary barbed-wire fence had been
erected about the area in which the convicts worked on the new wall.
Extra armed guards were stations at intervals of fifty feet outside
the inclosure to guard the working convicts.

Malcolm Hulsey had successfully feigned illness one day and was
allowed to remain in his cell. Cell house guards had seen him lying in
his bank, only the top of his head showing above the blankets. At
lock-up time the cell house guards making the count, saw a foot
protruding from under the blankets in Hulsey’s bunk and what they
believed to be the top of his head showing at the head of the bed.

At ten-fifteen that night the eagle-eyed Asa Shores, on Tower Number
Three, saw a dark figure slip under the lower wire of the temporary
fence and run. Asa fired once and saw the man fall.

Then Asa, to comply with the prison rules, yelled “halt!” The command,
of course, was needless, Hulsey having halted abruptly when a
thirty-thirty rifle ball plowed through his, shoulder.

After the convict had been carried to the hospital, his cell was
opened by the curious guards. A cleverly carved wooden foot protruded
from under the blankets at the foot of the bed, several bags of old
clothing reposed under the blankets and a thatch of black horse-hair
showed at the head of the bed.

Before Hulsey left the hospital the new wall was completed. Tower
Number Four, across from Tower Number Three, had been torn down and a
new tower Number Four built on the new corner of the wall, two hundred
feet farther south. On the other corner, across from New Tower Number
Four, was New Tower Number Three. Old Tower Number Three was left
standing until further orders. Asa Shores remained on the graveyard
shift on Old Tower Number Three.

While off duty one day Asa, prowling about inside the walls, met
Malcolm Hulsey. The “lifer” was still a bit pale and weak from the
gunshot wound.

“One thing I’d like to have you explain. Mr. Shores,” said Hulsey.
“You plugged me in the shoulder, then yelled ‘halt!’ Why didn’t you
command me to stop before firing?”

“Well, it was this way, Hulsey,” Asa replied, unsmiling and looking
the convict squarely in the eye. “I aimed at the spot where I
calculated your heart ought to be, but the light was poor and I had to
shoot quick. I naturally supposed you were dead when I commanded you
to halt, and, believing you dead, I could see no reason for being in a
hurry with the command. Sorry I bungled the job that way, but my
intentions were good.”

“But,” the scowling “lifer” persisted, “you haven’t told me yet why
you shot before commanding me to halt.”

“Oh, that?” Asa drawled with a deprecatory shrug of his massive
shoulders. “That is merely a matter of form with me. I very often,
after shooting a convict, yell ‘halt’ some time the next day--or week.
Besides, if you had a nice chance to bump me off, you wouldn’t say,
‘Beware, Mr. Shores, I’m about to kill you.’”

For a half minute convict and keeper gazed into each others eyes.

“I get yuh,” Hulsey finally said. “And I guess you’re right. I have an
idear though that my turn comes next, Mr. Shores; and there’ll be no
preliminary command or argument.”

“Fair enough, Hulsey,” Asa replied as he turned away.




At last the big new cell house was completed.

Asa wondered whether he would be left on Old Tower Number Three. It
had been decided, he knew, that the old tower would lie left on the
wall but perhaps not used.

To celebrate the completion of the new building, the warden declared a
holiday and issued orders that all the inmates be given the privilege
of the yard that day. There was to be wrestling, boxing, foot-racing
and other sports.

Asa Shores’ sleeping quarters was a low-ceilinged room on the ground
floor in one of the towers of the old cell house. Asa had been warned
a number of times that his room was not a safe place to sleep in the
day time. Convicts in the yard could enter the room at any time during
the day, without being seen by the yard guards or wall guards. Though
the one door to the room was thick and heavy, Asa seldom if ever
locked it.

Asa had risen in the afternoon, complaining to himself about the noise
being made by the convicts in the yard. His peevishness vanished,
however, after a cold wash, and he sang as he stood looking out at one
of the windows and brushing his hair:


      _“When I die and am buried deep,
      “I’ll return at night to take a peep
      “At those who hated me.
      “I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep,
      “Chill their blood, the skin will creep,
      “On those who--”_


Asa’s song ended then--ended in a horrible gurgle. A “trusty” found
him an hour later lying in a pool of blood near the open window.

His throat had been cut by a sharp instrument in the hand of a person
unknown.

Hulsey the “lifer” was questioned, of course, but then was absolutely
nothing to indicate that it was he who committed the murder.

The guards looked sadly upon all that remained of Asa Shores and said
to each other in hushed voices:

“It had to come. Asa was too good a convict guard not to be murdered.”

And though the prison stool pigeons kept their cars and eyes opened,
though each guard became a detective, the murder of Asa Shores
remained a mystery.

Old Tower Number Three was closed and the doors locked. Then was no
immediate use for it; out the warden was contemplating the advisability
of having another guards’ entrance gate cut through the wall under the
tower In this case, of course, the tower would be used again.




Night Captain Jesse Dunlap sat alone in the guards lookout, inside the
walls, at one o’clock on the morning following the murder Asa Shores.
Bill Wilton, the night yard guard, was making his round about the
buildings in the yard.

Captain Dunlap lazily watched the brass indicators on the report board
before him. The indicator for Tower Number One made a half turn to the
left and a small bell on the board rang. The captain lifted the
receiver from the telephone at his elbow and received the report,
“Tower Number One. Anderson on duty. All O.K.”

Dunlap merely grunted a response and replaced the receiver on the
nook. Presently the indicator for Tower Number Two turned to the left,
the bell tinkled, and Dunlap again took the leaver from the hook.

“Tower Number Two. Briggs on duty. All O. K,” came the report over the
wire.

Then come New Tower Number Three; next Tower Number Four. From the
three outside guard-posts came the reports, and one from the cell house,
each guard turning in his post number, his name and the usual “O.K.”

All the indicators on the board, except that for Old Tower Number
Three, were now turned. Captain Dunlap relaxed in his chair, sighed
heavily and lit his pipe. Lazily his eyes wandered back to the
indicator board.

The unturned indicator for Old Tower Number Three held his gaze and
utter sadness gripped him for a moment. Night after night, promptly on
the hour, he had seen the indicator for Old Tower Number Three flip
jauntily to the left and had heard the tinkle of the little bell on
the board. It had always seemed to him that the indicator for Asa
Shores’ tower turned with more pep than the other indicators, that the
bell had tinkled more cheerily, that good old Asa Shores’ report
carried a note of cheerfulness that lightened the lonesome watches of
the night.

Now the old tower was cold, even as poor old Asa was cold; the doors
were locked and barred. Never again, thought Dunlap, would be heard
Asa Shores’ familiar song on the quiet night sir. What were the words
to that song?


      _“When I am dead and buried deep,
      “I’ll return at night to take a peep
      “At those who hated--”_


Captain Dunlap suddenly sat erect in his chair. The pipe fell from his
lips and clattered on the door, as his lower jaw dropped and his eyes
opened wide to stare at the indicator board; for--

The indicator for Old Tower Number Three was moving--moving, not with
a quick turn to the left, but in a hesitant, jerky way that caused the
root of every hair on Captain Dunlap’s head to tingle. Never before
had the captain seen an indicator behave like that. In fact, the
indicator system was designed and constructed in such a way that,
being controlled by electric contacts, the various indicators would
snap into position when a push button in each tower was pressed by the
guard on duty in that tower.

In short, an indicator, in accordance with all the rules of
electricity as applied to the system, must remain stationary or jerk
to the left when the button in the tower was pressed. But here was
indicator for Old Tower Number Three wavering, trembling to the left,
only to fall back repeatedly to a vertical position. Then again,
jerkily, hesitantly to the left, as if a vagrant soul strove to brush
aside the veil that banished it from the living.

Captain Dunlap sat rigid and watched the uncanny movements of the
bright brass indicator. Vague, fleeting, chaotic thoughts of crossed
wires, practical jokers, wandering souls tumbled one after another
through his brain.

If only the bell would not tinkle! If it did ring? Well, death then,
though it had taken away what was mortal of Asa Shores, had not
conquered his eternal vigilance and strict attention to duty.

Farther to the left wavered the indicator, hesitatingly, uncertainly,
then--_the bell rang!_

A weak, slow ring, it was, that sounded strange and unnatural in the
deathlike silence of the dimly lighted lookout.




Captain Dunlap was a brave man. He had smilingly faced death a dozen
times in Granite River Prison.

But always his danger was known to be from living, breathing men.
Abject terror gripped him now; a nameless terror that seemed to freeze
the blood in his veins, contract every muscle and nerve of his body,
smother his heart.

But even then reasoning struggled for recognition in his mind. What if
it were a part of Asa Shores, a part of him that remained on earth to
defy death and carry on? Hasn’t Asa always been Captain Dunlap’s
friend? Why should he fear the spirit of a friend?

Dunlap reached forth a trembling hand, took the receiver from the hook
and slowly, reluctantly, placed it to his ear. How he wished, hoped,
prayed that no voice would come over the wire!

But it did come, proceeded by a faint whispering sound:

“Old t-t-t-tow--” a long pause, then weakly, almost inaudibly, as if
the message came from a million miles away--“Old t-t-tower n-n-n--
three. S-S-Sho--”

Another pause, a jumble of meaningless words, then a chuckle. God!
Asa’s familiar chuckle!

“On duty. All O-O--all O--”

A light laugh, a sharp buzzing sound, a sigh, the faint tinkle of a
bell, then silence!

Dunlap heard no click of a receiver being replaced on a hook. The line
was apparently still open.

Still holding the receiver to his ear, the captain moistened his dry
lips with the tip of his tongue. His free hand went involuntarily to
his forehead in a vague uncertain gesture and came away damp with
perspiration. Must he answer that ghost call? Must he answer that
ghost call? Must he speak to the _thing_ that held the line.

When he at last spoke his voice was husky, a strange voice even to him:

“Who--who did it. Asa? Who--who--if you are dead--if this is you, Asa,
tell me--_who did it.”_

Again that queer, unfamiliar buzzing sound. Then, from Old Tower
Number Three, or from beyond the grave perhaps, came a faint,
whispering, uncertain voice:

“He--he--it was. . .”

The voice ended in a gurgle.

Dunlap replaced the receiver on the hook, and as he did so hie eyes
rested on the indicator board and he gasped sharply; for the indicator
for Old Tower Number Three went wavering, trembling back to a vertical
position on the time dial!

This unheard of behavior of the indicator was the deepest mystery of
all. The indicators, each controlled independent of the others by push
buttons in each tower, were constructed mechanically to turn only from
right to left.

The indicator for Old Tower Number Three had _turned back from left to
right!_




Captain Dunlap made no effort to solve the mystery.

Old Tower Number Three was securely locked and could not be approached
except by crossing over the wall from New Tower Number Three on the
Southeast corner of the wall, or from Tower Number Two on the
Northeast corner of the wall. Dunlap himself had closed and locked the
doors and windows of the tower. There was but one key to the tower
doors, and that key was in Dunlap’s pocket.

Unlike the other towers, Old Tower Number Three could not be entered
from the ground outside the wall. It was built solidly of stone from
the ground up, and the only entrances were the two doors communicating
with the top of the wall on either side of the tower.

Besides, strict orders had been given that no one enter the tower
unless ordered there by a shift captain. And, too, in the glare of
the arc lights near the wall, it would be impossible for anyone to
cross the wall to the tower, without being seen by other wall guards.

Could the mysterious report have come from one of the other wall
towers? Impossible for this reason: When the push button in one of the
roll tower--say, that in Old Tower Number Three--was pressed by the
man on duty there, the indicator on the board in the captain’s lookout
turned to the left a quarter-turn on the time dial, the small bell on
he board rang and all telephone connections with the other wall towers
were automatically cut off until the captain had replaced the
telephone receiver on the hook after receiving the report from Old
Tower Number Three.

Dunlap said nothing to Bill Wilton when the latter returned to the
yard lookout, after making his round in the yard. It would be best he
reasoned, to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious call They
would only laugh at him if he told them about it. If the indicator had
not returned to a vertical position on the time dial he would have
some proof on which to base his wild story of the ghost call. But the
indicator had, before his own eyes, returned to its former position
after the call.

An hour later, at two A.M., Dunlap fearfully watched the indicator for
Old Tower Number Three. Reports from all other posts had been received.
Then, just once, the indicator trembled uncertainly, made almost a
quarter-turn to the left and snapped back to a vertical position. At
three o’clock it did not move. Nor did it move at four o’clock.

A week passed. Not a tremor disturbed the “ghost tower” indicator.

Then, one morning at one-thirty o’clock, an unearthly, piercing scream
in the cell house awaked half the men in the building and sent the
cell house guard scurrying down to cell twenty-one on the corridor;
for it was from this cell that the blood-chilling scream had come.

The bloodless, perspiration-dampened face of Malcolm Hulsey, the
“lifer,” was pressed against the bars of the cell door when the guard
arrived. The convict’s great hands grasped the bars and his
two-hundred-and-fifty-pound bulk, clad in only a regulation
undershirt, twitched, started and trembled from head to foot. A
horrible fear distended his eyes, his teeth clicked together and the
muscles of his face worked spasmodically.

“Sick, Hulsey?” the guard demanded, hardened to such nerve-shattering
outbursts in a building full of tortured souls.

“I saw--I saw--” Hulsey began, his teeth chattering and rendering
speech well-nigh impossible. “I saw--Oh. Mr. Hill, please give me a
cellmate--_now, tonight!_ I--I’m a sick man, Mr. Hill. Nerves all shot
to pieces, I guess. Can’t I have a cellmate to talk to, Mr. Hill?”

“What did you see?” the guard asked.

“He was standing right where you are now,” Hulsey whispered hoarsely.
“Pointing his finger at me, he was, when I opened my eyes and saw him.
Smiling, too. I--I”--a violent shudder--“I could _see through him,_
Mr. Hill; could see the bars on that window beyond him. I--”

“Who? See who?” the guard interrupted.

Hulsey seemed to realize, then, that he was talking to much; that he
was not conducting himself as the hardest convict in the prison should.

“Why,” he stammered. “I saw--I _thought_ I saw--an old pal o’ mine.
He’s been dead a long time. Nerves, I guess. Thinking too much about
my old pal and the good old days. Nightmare, I guess.”

“Yeah--nightmare is right!” the unsympathetic guard growled. “But
don’t let another blat like that out of you, or we’ll throw you into a
padded cell. Got the whole wing stirred up. Get to bed now and forget
that good old pal of yours.”

“If I only could!” Hulsey whispered huskily to himself, as he got back
into the bunk.




Two weeks passed.

There were no more outbursts from cell twenty-one. The “ghost tower”
on the wall was silent, cold.

Then, at two o’clock one morning. Captain Dunlap saw the indicator
move. It sickened him, made him wish ardently that he was a thousand
miles from Granite River Prison.

The indicator moved slowly, hesitantly, to the left and the bells
tinkled weakly. The captain placed the receiver to his ear, but no
sound came; the line was dead. The indicator fell bock to its original
position as the captain replaced the receiver on the crotch.

A few minutes later the yard guard entered the lookout. Bill Wilton,
the regular yard guard on the graveyard shift, was away on leave and
the substitute guard was new at the prison.

“Didn’t I understand you to say. Mr. Dunlap,” the new guard said,
“that there was no one on Old Tower Number Three?’’

“You sure did.” Dunlap answered.

The guard pulled his left ear and looked puzzled.

“Funny,” he finally remarked. “Was sure I heard somebody in that tower,
singing soft and low like, when I passed under it a few minutes ago.”

“What was he singing?” the captain asked, bending forward and fixing a
penetrating gaze on the recent arrival at the prison.

“Let me see now,” said the guard meditatively. “Couldn’t make out much
of the song. . . Something about ‘when I die in the ocean deep,’--No,
that wasn’t it. ‘When I die and am buried deep’--that’s it. Then there
was something in it about this dead guy coming back to ha’nt people,
and a lot of bunk like that.”

“I see.” said Dunlap, as he eased himself out of the chair. “I’m going up
and have a look around in that tower. You stay in here until I return.”

Dunlap went outside the walls and up through New Tower Number Three,
where he questioned Guard Jim Humphrey. Humphrey had not seen or heard
anything unusual in or about Old Tower Number Three.

Captain Dunlap, as he walked toward the ghost tower, admitted frankly
to himself that the was “scared stiff.” Pausing at the door, he
glanced nervously through the window.

The yard lights lit up the interior of the tower sufficiently to
assure him that no one--or “thing”--was inside. He unlocked the door
and entered.

With a flashlight, he thoroughly examined the telephone. Dust had
settled on the instrument. The receiver and the transmitter had
apparently not been touched since Asa Shores left the Tower. Dust had
settled on the doorknobs inside. That the knobs had not been touched
since Shores’ death was obvious. The one chair, the window-sills, the
small washstand and wash basin, all were covered with a thin,
undisturbed film of fine dust.

There on the telephone battery box reposed Asa’s old corncob pipe and,
near it, a small box of matches. The window latches were just as
Dunlap had left them when he closed and securely locked the tower a
month before.

It was a puzzled and nervous prison official that left the tower,
relocked the doors and returned to the inside lookout.

Next day Malcolm Hulsey, the “lifer” was admitted to the hospital. The
doctor’s diagnosis was “nervous breakdown.”




But Hulsey, through his nerves were all shot to pieces, was still
capable of shrewd plotting.

His admittance to the hospital had been hastened by a diet of soap.
Hulsey was so anxious to get far away from Granite River Prison, and
was so certain of his ability to do so if he could only be admitted to
the hospital, that he had resorted to the old but effective expedient
of soap eating.

Soap, taken internally in small doses, will produce various baffling
and apparently serious physiological changes in the body. Hulsey
looked sick and felt sick, but he was not dangerously ill.

For many months Malcolm Hulsey had been watching closely the movements
of the night guards. During his stay in the hospital, when recovering
from the gunshot wound in his shoulder, he had “doped out” a possible
means of escape, and he was on the point of making the attempt when
the doctor pronounced him sufficiently recovered to be returned to the
cell house.

The “lifer’s” plan of escape was simply this: At midnight, while
Captain Dunlap and his crew were on duty, the yard guard made his
round, counted the patients in the hospital and left the yard through
the guards’ gate to eat his lunch in the guards’ dining-room outside
the wall. When the yard guard returned to the inside lookout he
carried with him a hot lunch for Captain Dunlap.

In counting the men in the hospital, the yard guard did not as a rule
enter the building. He merely turned on the lights in the one large
ward and looked through the window. The convict hospital nurse on
night duty stood ready, and when the lights were turned on, proceeded
from bed to bed and partly uncovered each patient so that the yard
guard outside could see and count them.

There were several factors in Hulsey’s favor now, one being that a new
substitute guard was on duty over the guards’ entrance gate during the
absence of the regular guard who was away on vacation. There was only
one patient in the hospital besides Hulsey. The yard guard must be
lured into the hospital, overpowered, his uniform stripped form him,
then Hulsey, garbed in the uniform, would attempt to deceive the guard
at the gate and be given the keys.

At fifteen minutes to midnight, on Hulsey’s first day in the hospital,
the “lifer” quietly rose from his bed while the white-clad convict
nurse’s back was turned. Three minutes later the unsuspecting nurse
had been neatly laid out from a well-directed blow behind the ear,
bound with sheets, gagged, stripped of his white suit and tenderly
trucked in the bed recently occupied by Mr. Malcolm Hulsey.

The other patient, a feeble old convict, was gagged and tied down in
his bed with sheets. Hulsey then donned the nurse’s white suit and,
after arranging the nurse and the old convict in their beds so that
they appeared to be sleeping peacefully, the “lifer” lay face down on
the floor and awaited developments.

At twelve o’clock the new guard appeared at the hospital window and
switched on the lights. Having counted the men in the hospital every
hour since eight o’clock, the guard intended now to give the patients
a hasty glance and proceed to the gate. There were his two patients,
apparently sleeping peacefully. But where was the nurse?

Hulsey’s heart pounded like a riveting hammer as he lay sprawled on
the floor. Would the ruse work? Would the guard enter the hospital to
investigate, or would he report to Captain Dunlap when he saw the
white-clad figure on the floor?

The guard’s eyes then rested on the main on the floor.

“Huh!” he ejaculated. “Funny place for a nursie to be sleeping!”

But the nurse’s sprawling form did not indicate slumber. The guard was
puzzled. Perhaps the nurse had fainted, or fallen and hurt himself.
The guard tapped on the window with a key. No answer, no movement of
nurse or patients.

Then the unsuspecting “screw” locked the door and entered. An older
guard would have reported to the Captain. He was in the act of bending
over to turn the pseudo-nurse upon his back when his ankles were
suddenly seized and his feet perked from under him.

The guard’s head struck an iron bedstead as he fell, thus relieving
Hulsey of the unpleasant job of beating him into unconsciousness.

Several minutes later the “lifer,” wearing the guard’s uniform, boldly
approached the gate.

“What’s on the menu tonight Frank?” Hulsey casually asked, pulling
this hat further down over his eyes. “Same old thing--hash,” the gate
guard answered, as he lowered the keys.

Though the suspense, anxiety and uncertainty were terrible, Hulsey
whistled calmly as he unlocked the first gate.

The large bull lock on the outside gate was not so easily unlocked.
Hulsey fumble, his hands shoot, his whistling, in spite of all he
could do to keep it up, wheezed, went off key, then died in a
discordant wail.

“Say!” the gate guard suddenly blurted “Look up here! By cracky, your
actions don’t look good to me.”




Hulsey did not look up. He gave the key another frantic twist, and the
lock opened.

In that short space of time the wall guard had raced into the lookout
and seized a shotgun. As he stepped to the door of the lookout, a dark
figure disappeared around the corner of a building twenty feet from
the gate.

A moment later the alarm in the guards’ quarters rang frantically, and
a dozen sleepy-eyed men tumbled from their beds, slipped on shoes and
trousers and ran out into the yard.

The gate guard could only tell where he last saw the escaping convict.
To capture the man on such a dark night seemed hopeless, considering,
too, that the fleeing man had a seven-minute start. However, the
half-dressed guards scattered and made for a heavy willow thicket
several hundred yards beyond the spot where the convict was last seen.

For five minutes after the pursuing guards disappeared in the
darkness, silence reigned over the prison. Then--

From a distant point in the dark thicket a hair-raising, half-animal,
half-human shriek of mortal terror shattered the stillness of the
night and echoed and re-echoed about the high prison walls.

White faced guards, temporarily unnerved by that fearful wail, crashed
through the brush, their flashlights playing about the eyes of
spending demons. Then they found Malcolm Hulsey the “lifer.”

Groveling face down in the mud of a little creek bank, hand clutching
at empty air, great spasms of maniacal terror passing through his
body, the one time terror of the prison muttered insane, incoherent
things.

Two guards pulled him to his knees. Others turned flashlights on his
face--a face such as is seen in horrible nightmares; a ghastly face
partly covered with black mud; a horrid face where it shown through
the grime. The eyes were wide, protruding, glassy.

_“See! See!”_ the convict rasped hoarsely, pointing a mud-smeared hand
at the dense black nook in the thicket. _“See!_ He stands there and
points at me--and laughs! _It’s Asa Shores!_ He’s been in my cell
every night for weeks--laughing at me! He sang a death song to
me--always sang--always laughed! Wouldn’t let me sleep! _He’s coming
toward me! Stop him!_ Please--”

Then another horrible shriek, a shudder, a gasp, and the guards
dropped the lifeless form of Malcolm Hulsey in the mud.

By some queer whim of fate, the speechless guards involuntarily
switched off their flashlights. Utter darkness, utter silence
enveloped them. Then a faint sound was heard.

“Listen,” came the hoarse voice of Guard Jerry Clark. “Do you hear it?”

Very little of it could be heard. It was a faint sound and growing
fainter.


      _“When I die and am buried deep,
      I’ll Return at night to. . .”_


Then it was gone, and all was still again.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Here’s An Extraordinary Yarn--

The Ghoul and the Corpse

By G. A. Wells




This is Chris Bonner’s tale, not mine. Please remember that.

I positively will not stand sponsor for it. I used to have a deal of
faith in Chris Bonner’s veracity, but that is a thing of the past. He
is a liar; a liar without conscience. I as good as told him so to his
face. I wonder what kind of fool be thinks I am!

Attend, now, and you shall hear that remarkable tale he told me. It
was, and is, a lie. I shall always think so.

He came marching into my igloo up there at Aurora Bay. That is in
Alaska, know, on the Arctic sea. I had in the back-country trading for
pelts for a New York concern, and due to bad luck I didn’t reach the
coast until the third day after the last steamer out had gone. And
there I was marooned for the winter, without chance of getting out
until spring, with a few dozen ignorant Indians for companions. Thank
heaven I had plenty of white man’s grub in tins!

As I said, here came Chris Bonner marching in on me the same as you
would go down the block a few doors to call on a neighbor.

“And where the devil did you drop in from?” I demanded, helping him
off with his stiff parka.

“Down there,” he answered, jerking an elbow toward the south. “Let’s
have something to eat, MacNeal. I’m hungry as hell. Look at the pack,
will you!”

I had already looked at the pack he had cast off his shoulders to the
fur-covered floor of the igloo. It was as lean as a starved hound. I
heated a can of beef bouillon and some beans, and made a pot of coffee
over the blubber-fat fire that served for both heat and light, and
put these and some crackers before my guest. He tore into his meal
wolfishly.

“Now a pipe and some tobac, MacNeal,” he ordered, pushing the empty
dishes aside.

I gave him one of my pipes and my tobacco-pouch. He filled and lighted
up. He seemed to relish the smoke; I imagined he hadn’t had one for
some time. He sat silent for a while, while staring into the flickering
flame.

“Say, MacNeal, he spoke at length; “what do you know about a theory
that says once on a time this old world of ours revolved on its axis
in a different plane? I’ve heard it said the earth tipped up about
seventy degrees. What d’you know about it?”

That was a queer thing for Chris Bonner to ask. He was simon-pure
prospector and I had never known him to get far away from the subject
of mining and prospecting. He had been hunting gold from Panama to the
Arctic Circle for the past thirty years.

“No more than you do, probably,” I answered his question. “I’ve heard
of that theory, too. I’d say it is any man’s guess.”

“This theory holds that the North Pole used to be where the Equator is
now,” he said. “Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know anything about it, Chris,” I replied. “But I do know
that they have found things up this way that are now generally
recognized as being peculiarly tropical in nature.”

“What, for instance?”

“Palms and ferns, a species of parrot, saber-tooth tigers; and also
mastodons, members of the elephant family. All fossils and parts of
skeletons, you understand.”

“No human beings, MacNeal? Any skeletons or fossils of those up this way?”

“Never heard of it. Prehistoric people are being found in England and
France, however.”

“Huh,” he said.

He pondered, puffing at his pipe, his eyes on the fire. He looked
perplexed about something.

“Look here, MacNeal,” he said suddenly. “Say a man dies. He’s dead,
ain’t he?”

“No doubt of it,” I laughed, wondering.

“Couldn’t come to life again, eh?”

“Hardly. Not if he were really dead. I’ve heard of cases of suspended
animation. The heart, apparently, quits beating for one, two or
possibly ten minutes. It doesn’t in fact, though; it’s simply that its
beating can’t be detected. When a man’s heart stops beating he’s
dead.” Bonner nodded.

“‘Suspended animation,’“ he muttered, more to himself than to me.
“That must be it. That’s the only thing that’ll explain it; nothing
else will. If it could cover a period of ten minutes, why not a period
of twenty or even a hundred thousand years--”

“If you’d like to turn in and get some rest. Chris, I’ll fix you up,”
I broke in.

He caught the significance of my tone and grinned.

“You think I’m crazy, eh?” he said. “I’m not. It’s a wonder, though,
considering what I’ve seen and what I--here, let me show you something!”




He thrust a hand into his lean pack and brought forth an object that
at first glance I thought to be a butcher’s knife.

He handed it to me and I at once saw that it was not a butcher’s knife
as I knew such knives. It was a curious sort of knife, and one for
which a collector of the antique would have paid good money.

It was a very dark color, almost black; corroded, it seemed to me, as
if it had lain for a long time in a damp cellar. It was in one piece,
the handle about five inches long and the blade perhaps ten inches.
Both edges of the blade were sharp and the end was pointed like a
dagger. And it certainly wasn’t steel. I scratched one side of the
blade with my thumb nail and exposed a creamy yellow under the veneer
of black.

“Part of that’s blood you scraped away. MacNeal.” Bonner said. “Now
what’s that knife made of?”

I examined the yellow spot closely. The knife was made of ivory. Not
the land of ivory I was acquainted with, however; it was a very much
coarser grain than any ivory I had ever seen.

“That came out of a mastodon’s tusk, MacNeal,” Bonner said.

I looked at him. He was nodding, seriously. He apparently believed
what he said, at any rate.

“Nice curio, Chris,” I commented, handing the thing bock to him.
“Heirloom, no doubt. Picked it up in one of the Indian villages, eh?”

He did not speak at once. He sat puffing, looking at the fire. Once he
puckered his brows in a deep frown, waited.

“I’ve been prospecting, as usual,” he said at length. “Down there
around the headquarters of the Tukuvuk. It’s an awful place; nobody
ever goes there. The Indians tell me the spirits of the dead live
there. I can believe it; it’s an ideal place for imps and devils. And
I was right through the heart of it. I believe I’m the first. No
matter how I got there; I came up from the south last summer. You see,
I had an idea there was gold in that country.

“The place where I finally settled down was in a little valley on one
of the branches of the Tukuvuk between two ranges of hills running
from five hundred to maybe three thousand feet high. Messy-looking
place, it was; all littered up, as if the Lord had a few sizable
chunks of stuff left over and just threw ‘em down there to be out of
the way.

“But the gold was there; I could almost smell it I’d been getting some
mighty nice color in my pan; that’s what made me decide to stay there.
I got it there about the middle of July, and spent the rest of the
summer sinking holes in the edge of the creek and along the benches
above. What I found indicated that there was a mighty rich vein of the
yellow metal thereabouts, with one end of it laying in a pocket of the
stuff. If I could locate that pocket, I thought, I’d have the United
States treasury backed off the map. But I wasn’t able to run the
pocket down by taking bearings from my holes, because the holes didn’t
line up in any particular direction.

“What with my interest in trying to get a line on that pocket, I
didn’t notice that the season was getting late. But I’d brought in
enough grub to last the winter through, so that didn’t matter. Just
the same it was up to me to get some sort of shelter over my head, so
I hustled up a one-room shack about twelve by twelve I cut from the
timber on the slopes with my hand-ax. Nothing fancy, but tight enough.
I put in a fireplace and cut and stacked a lot of wood outside.

“That done, winter was on me; I simply couldn’t resist the temptation
to have one more try at finding the pocket that spewed the yellow
metal all around there. As I said, I got no information from the holes
sunk, and it was pure guesswork. I guessed I’d find my pocket on the
side of a certain hill, about two hundred feet above creek level. A
glacier flowed down the side of that hill through a little gulley, and
my idea was that the ice ground away at the pocket and brought the
metal down to the creek, and the creek scattered it. This theory was
borne out to some extent by the fact that my best showings of color
always came from a point a little below the conjunction of the creek
and glacier.

“It was snowing the morning I took my pan and shovel and started up
the side of the hill, keeping to the edge of the glacier. It wasn’t
much of a glacier for size; say, about fifteen feet wide. I could see
it winding up the side of the hill until it went out of sight through
a cleft about a thousand feet up. Fed by a lake up there, probably.

“I had climbed the hill maybe a hundred feet, following the edge of
the glacier, when I caught sight of a dark blotch in the edge of the
ice. It was about two feet under the surface. I brushed away the film
of snow to have a look. The ice was as clear as a crystal, of a blue
color. And what d’you think, MacNeal? It was a man’s body!”

He paused and gave me a quick glance. He wanted to see how I took
that, I presume.

“The body of a man,” he went on. “And the queerest-looking man I ever
saw in my life. He was lying on his belly and I didn’t get a look at
the front of him just then, but I knew it was a man all right. He was
covered all over with long hair like a--well, like a bear, say. Not a
stitch of clothes.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Why. I was that surprised I let my pan and shovel drop and started at
the damn thing with the eyes near popping out of my head. What would
anybody do, finding a hair-covered thing like that frozen in a
glacier? I won’t deny I was a bit scared, MacNeal.

“Well, I stood there staring at the thing for I don’t know how long.
It didn’t occur to me, then, to ask myself how the thing got there.
Certainly the idea of fossils or prehistoric men didn’t enter my head.
I didn’t think much about anything; I just stood there gaping.

You know me, MacNeal; I guess I’m pretty soft-hearted in some
respects. I’d stop to bury a dead dog I found in the road. I knew I
wouldn’t rest easy until I’d cut that thing out of the glacier and
given it decent burial. Moreover, I didn’t want it where I’d be seeing
it when I went to work on that hillside in the spring; and it would
surely be there in the spring, because I imagine that glacier didn’t
move an inch a year.

“So I went back to the shack and got my ax, and with none too good a
heart for the job turned to and made the chips fly. It took me about
three hours to get the thing out of the glacier. You see, as I came
down to it I went slow; I don’t care to hack even a dead man.

“Say, MacNeal, can you imagine what it meant to me, digging a corpse
out of a glacier down there on the side of a hill in that devil-ridden
country? No, you can’t, and that’s the truth. You’d have to go through
it to know. It was hell. I don’t want any more of it in mine. Nor what
followed, either.”

“What was that?” I asked when he deliberated.

“You’ll hear,” he answered, and went on: “I got the thing out at last,
little chunks of ice clinging to it, and dragged it ashore, if a
glacier has a shore. It froze me to look at the thing with those
little chunks of ice sticking to the long hair. Once, at Dawson, I’d
seen a man pulled out of the Yukon, ice clinging to him. That was
different, though; at Dawson there was a crowd to sort of buck a man
up. I turned the thing over on its back to see what it looked like in
front.”

“Well?” said I.

“You’ve seen apes, MacNeal?”

“This thing looked like that?” I countered, beginning to connect up
his first queer questions with what he was telling me. “You don’t mean
it, Chris!”

“I’m telling you,” he nodded solemnly. “An ape man, that’s what it
was. More man than ape, if you ask me. For instance, the face was
flatter than an ape’s, and the forehead and chin were more pronounced.
The nose was flat, but it wasn’t an ape’s nose. And the hands and feet
were like those of a man. Oh, it was a man, all right. The thing that
convinced me, I think, was the knife gripped in its hand.”

“The knife you have there?” I inquired.

“This very knife,” he answered.

“What then, Chris?” I urged him to go on.

“I had a good look at that thing and started for my shack. Yes,
MacNeal, I ran, and I’m not ashamed to say so. It scared me. Ugliest
thing I ever saw. Eyes wide open, glaring and glinting and the thick
lips parted to show the nastiest set of fangs I ever saw in the mouth
of man or beast. Why, I tell you the damned thing looked _alive!_ No
wonder I scooted. You would have done the same. Anybody would.

“Back in the shack, I sat down on my bunk to think it over. And it was
while I sat there trying to puzzle it out that I remembered that
theory about the earth tipping over. That gave me a hint of what I had
run up against. Of course, I’d heard about fossils and parts of the
skeletons of prehistoric men being found. Had I found, not a fossil or
part of a skeleton, but the prehistoric man himself? That knocked the
wind out of me. If that were the case my name would go down in history
and I would be asked to give lectures before scientific societies and
such. Consider it, MacNeal.

“I tell you, I couldn’t quite grasp the thing. It was incredible.
There I was in this year of our Lord, with the intact corpse of a man
who had lived God only knows how many centuries ago. That body,
understand, could well be the key to the mystery of the origin of
mankind. It might possibly settle the Darwinian theory forever, one way
or the other. It was a pretty serious business for me, don’t you see?

“Well, I decided to preserve the thing until I could get out and make
a report of the find. But how to preserve it? Of course if I had left
it in the glacier it would have kept indefinitely, like a side of beef
in cold storage. I was afraid to put it back in the hole in the
glacier and freeze it in again with water I carried from the creek;
the creek water might exert some chemical action that would ruin the
thing. And if I let it lay where it was the snow would cover it, form
a warm blanket, and probably cause it to decompose, then I’d have
nothing left but the skeleton.

I wanted to save the thing just as I’d found it; maybe the scientists
would find a way to embalm it.

“I finally hit on the plan of keeping it in an ice pack. That would
turn the trick until the weather took on the job. It hadn’t turned
bitter cold yet I tell you, it was a nasty job keeping that thing iced
with chunks I chopped from the glacier, and to make it worse the
weather stayed moderate for a couple of weeks. Then, suddenly, the
mercury in my little thermometer went down with a rush and it got
stinging cold. I carried the thing to the shack and stood it up
against the wall outside where it couldn’t be covered with snow, and
lashed it there.

“Can you imagine me going to sleep in my bunk in the shack every night
after that, with that thing standing against the wall outside not two
feet away? Of course you can’t. It frazzled my nerves, and more than
once I was tempted to cut a hole in the ice on the creek and chuck the
damn thing in where I’d never see it agin. But no, I had to save it
for the scientists and get my name in history; that idea got to be an
obsession with me. I knew well enough that if ever I told people the
tale I’m telling you now, without some proof of it, I’d get laughed at.”

“No doubt of it.” I sneered.

“The days went by,” he continued, ignoring my sneer, “and more and
more that thing outside kept getting on my nerves. The sun went south,
and from one day to another I never saw it. The never-ending night was
bad enough, but when you add the northern lights and the howling of
the wolves you’ve got a condition that breaks a men if he’s not
careful. Furthermore, there was that ugly-looking devil outside to
think about.

“I was thinking about that thing constantly, and got so I couldn’t
sleep. If I shut my eyes I’d see it, anyhow, and if I went to sleep
I’d have a nightmare over it. Now and then I’d go out and stand there
in the starlight or the aurora looking at it. It fascinated me, yet
the sight of the thing gave me the creeps. Finally I began taking a
club or my rifle along when I went to look at it; got afraid the thing
would come alive and try to murder me with that knife.

“And that’s the way of things for maybe three months and more. My
thoughts all the time on that thing outside.

“Well, that couldn’t go on, you know. One morning I woke up with the
worst headache a man ever had. I thought my head would split wide
open. My blood was like molten iron flowing through my veins. I knew
what it was. Fever. I had thought and worried about that thing outside
until it got me, and I was in for a brain-storm. I was as weak as a
cat, but managed to build up a good fire and pack my bunk with all the
blankets and furs I had and crawl in. I only hoped I wouldn’t freeze
to death when the fire went out.

“I no sooner got all set in the bunk than things let go; I went
completely off. I can’t say positively what happened for a few days
after that. Seems like I remember, though, periods when I was
semi-rational. I think once I got up to put more wood on the fire.
Another time I saw that thing standing in the doorway grinning at me
like the devil it was. I shot at it with my rifle and later found a
bullet in the door. My shooting couldn’t have been a delusion, at any
rate. But the door was still fastened against the wolves and there
were no tracks in the snow outside.”

Bonner paused to light his pipe, and then went on:

“I don’t know exactly how long I was out of my head. I’d wound my
watch before I crawled into the bunk the first time, and I half
remember I wound it again when I got up to put wood on the fire, and
it was pretty well run down. It goes forty hours without winding, yet
when my head cleared it had stopped. I must have been off my nut about
four days.

“Well, you can lay your bottom dollar I’d had enough of prehistoric
men hanging around the shack by that time. Let the scientists be
damned; I was determined to get rid of that thing the quickest way
possible. The quickest way, I thought, would be to get the corpse warm
so it would decompose rapidly, then I’d put it outside where the
wolves and ravens would pick the bones clean. The scientists would
have to be satisfied with the skeleton.

“So I made a big fire in the fireplace and got the shack good and hot,
then went out and brought in the corpse. I got sick at the stomach on
that job, but it was the only way. I didn’t have the heart to leave
the thing outside and build a fire over it out there. I try to respect
the dead, even if the corpse is that of a man who had been dead
several thousand years and looked more like an animal than a human being.

“I laid the thing on the door before the fireplace, then sat down on
the bunk to wait. I watched it pretty close, because, being dead so
long, I thought when it got warm and started to decompose it would go
like butter; I didn’t want the shack to be all smelled up with the
stink of it. Probably half an hour went by, then all of a sudden _I
saw the thing quiver--”_

“Your brain-storm returning,” I interposed.

“Wait,” said Bonner sharply. “It quivered; not much, but enough to
notice. That sort of got me, then I reasoned that anything thawing out
like that would naturally quiver a little. Maybe another fifteen or
twenty minutes passed, then one of the legs moved. Jerked, sort of. It
startled me. Remember, there I was down there in those hills alone
with that thing. I was pretty susceptible to weird influences,
understand. Anyhow, the leg moved, and--”

“It sat up and asked for a drink of water.” I could not help putting
in. Bonner continued, paying no attention to my sarcasm. He seemed to
be talking aloud to himself:

“I watched it like a hawk for some time after that, then as I didn’t
see it move any more I stepped outside to get some more wood for the
fire and to pull a few good breaths of cold air into my lungs. That
shack was like the inside of an oven.

“When I went in again I saw that the damned thing _had turned over on
its back._

“Turned over on its back, I say. And there was a change in the eyes,
too; they had a half-awake sort of look in them; a more alive look,
understand. And breathing! Yes, sir, _breathing!_ Why the thing didn’t
see me when I came in and shut the door I don’t know, but apparently
it didn’t. And, believe me or not, the hand that had held the knife
was open and the knife was lying on the floor apart from the body.

“Crazy? I tell you _no!_ I was as sane as I am now. I tell you I saw
these things with my own two eyes; saw them just as plain as I see you
now. I see you don’t believe me, MacNeal. Oh, well, I don’t blame you;
I hardly believe it myself sometimes.”

He uttered a little laugh.

“But there it was, just as I’m telling you. And I was that gone when I
saw that the thing had turned over on its back that I dropped the wood
I had in my arm. The crash of it on the floor brought the thing to its
feet on the jump. You needn’t look at me like that; I tell you it did.
I take my oath it did! There it was, crouched like a panther ready for
the spring, the eyes of it flashing like fire, its lips pulled back
tight across the gums and the yellow fangs showing. Can you see that?
No, you can’t.”

Bonner made an expressive gesture with one hand.

“Remarkable, but the thing hadn’t seen me yet. It was looking at the
fire: it was half turned toward me so I could see that. Suddenly it
screamed in an outlandish gibberish and leaped to the fireplace and
tried to gather in an armful of flames. I take it the thing had never
seen fire before; didn’t know what it was; probably imagined it some
kind of wild animal. Naturally the only thing it got out of that play
was burned arms and hands, and the long hair sizzled and curled. It
leaped back with a snarl, spitting that funny gibberish. Talk, I guess
if was; it came from way down in the belly and sounded like pigs grunting.

“I tell you, MacNeal, I was fair dared. But I had the sense left to
try to help myself. My rifle was leaning against the bunk and I made a
quick dive for it Then, apparently, the thing saw me for the first
time. The way it glared at me with those glittering eyes was a
caution. I didn’t stop to argue; I snatched up the rifle, cocked it
and made a snap shot. The bullet caught the thing in the left breast
and the blood gushed. Of course you don’t believe it. But blood, I
tell you, gushed from the breast of a thing that had been frozen in a
glacier for thousands of years!

“Well, here it came like a cyclone. I didn’t have time to shoot again.
Smell? That thing smelled like carrion; almost strangled me. Maybe you
know how the cage of a wild animal stinks if it ain’t cleaned out for
a week or two. This thing smelled like that, only worse. I can smell
it yet. Lord!”

Bonner wrinkled his nose and shivered.

“But there we were at grips, the thing making those belly noises and
smelling like a thousand garbage piles. It had the strength of ten
men; I sensed that. It jerked the rifle from me and bent the barrel of
it double with a twist of the wrists. The barrel of a thirty-eight
caliber Winchester rifle--bent it as easy as you or I would bend a
piece of copper wire.

“Then we were at it, fighting like a couple of wild cats all over the
shack. I’m no slouch of a man myself, MacNeal, when it comes to a
rough-and-tumble; but that thing handled me like a baby. I could see
my finish. We threshed about the floor, me fighting like a devil, it
fighting like forty devils. We kicked into the fire and out again and
scattered live coals all over the place, and the shack took fire.

“I was just about gone when my hand accidentally fell on the handle of
the knife the thing had dropped on the floor. I hung on to it and
poked away at that thing for all I was worth, driving the blade clean
up to the hilt with every punch.”

“That knife?” I broke in.

“This knife,” answered Bonner. “There’s the dried blood on it yet. But
I think it was really the bullet that did the work. It, must have cut
an artery. Anyhow, the blood kept gushing out of the thing’s breast;
it got on my hands and made ‘em slippery. I knew the thing couldn’t
pour out blood like that and keep going; that’s what put the heart in
me to keep on fighting. And, as I say, I think it was the bullet that
did the work in the long run. A lucky shot, otherwise I wouldn’t be
here now.

“I felt the thing sagging and going limp in my hands, and its grip
began to relax. I saw my chance and put up a knee and broke the grip
and kicked it away. It staggered around a moment or two, clutching its
breast with its bloody paws, gnashing its fangs and glaring murder at
me; then it crashed down to the floor and fell smack into the flames.

“I saw plain enough there was no chance of saving the shack, so I
snatched up what I could lay my hands on in the way of food and
clothing and blankets, and tore out. I don’t remember putting the
knife in my pocket, but that’s where I found it later. The shack
burned down to nothing, and that thing burned with it; probably not a
bone of it left. The scientists were out of luck and the mystery of
mankind would remain unsolved.

“I didn’t stop to investigate, of course; my job was to make tracks. I
knew about this village and came on. How I got here I don’t know; this
is a terrible country to cross afoot in the winter. I’d turned my ten
huskies adrift to shift for themselves when I reached the valley where
all this happened; I didn’t have the grub to keep them going. I had to
walk here.

“And that’s all, MacNeal. You can say what you please; I know what I
saw with my own eyes and you can’t change my mind about it. Suspended
animation? Yes, for a period covering many centuries. It would be a
mighty fine thing if we could picture what happened away back there
when this old earth tipped over.

“Perhaps we’d see a man, a man that was half ape, crossing a creek
with a knife in his hand on the way to murder an enemy sleeping on the
opposite bank. Then suddenly the earth tipped over--climatic
conditions in those days were such as to freeze things up in a
flash--things are held in the grip of the ice just as the dust and
lava held ‘em in the days of Pompeii, and--

“Well, who’s to say what happened? Anything was possible. We don’t
know the conditions of those days. Anyhow, here I come thousands of
years later and dig a man, with a knife in his hand, out of a glacier.
I heat his body in order to decompose the flesh. Instead of
decomposing; he comes to life and I have to kill him. He’s been
hibernating in a glacier for centuries. I don’t know what to think
about it.”

Bonner refilled and lighted his pipe, then looked at me questioningly.

“Chris,” I said, “I tell you frankly that I don’t believe a word you
have said. You tell me you were out of your head for a few days. That
accounts for it. You had the jim-jams and imagined all that, then try
to spring it on me as actual fact.

He looked hurt. He looked at the knife in his hand steadily for several
long moments, then thrust it toward me, his eyes boring into mine.

“Then where in hell,” he demanded, “did I get this knife?”



---------------------------------------------------------------------------




“The Living Nightmare”

By Anton M. Oliver

In the April Issue of WEIRD TALES

Is a Masterpiece of Goose-flesh Fiction




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Fear

By David R. Solomon




There were only five words.

They neither affirmed nor denied what had gone before. But they
changed the whole trend of the argument.

The men of the engineering gang were lying around the camp-fire,
preparatory to going out on the job. It was cool in the shade of the
thick trees, with the damp feel of early morning hanging over
everything. Farther out, over the river, the sun gave promise of
better weather later in the day.

Smoking, waiting for the laggards to clean up their plates, the
engineering gang--according to invariable man-custom--had begun
experiences, jokes, arguments. Over all hung the pungent smell of
strong, fresh coffee, and much frying bacon.

Baldy Jenkins, the eighteen-year-old had started it.

“Wish I had a million dollars,” he remarked.

Red Flannel Mike gave the ball a roll.

“You do not,” he denied stoutly. “Be givin’ you a million--and the
Lord hisself only knows what you’d be a-doing wid it.”

“Hell I don’t,” said Baldy. “Bet I could tell you right now how I’d
spend every penny of it.”

“Bet you don’t” broke in another of the gang. “Fellow never does know
what he’s goin’ to do till it hits him, square between the eyes.”

“Offer me a million,” insisted Baldy Jenkins.

“Aw, not that way. Take somep’n where two men might act different. You
don’t know what you’d do. I don’t. No man does--no more’s that kid
over there does.”

His lazy gesture indicated a small, khaki-trousered figure. The eyes
of the rest of the gang followed.

At first glance she might have been a lad of ten or eleven years.
Closer inspection, however, showed the mop of flaxen hair, bobbed off
at the level of her ears, and the tender, little-girl face. She was
marching around the camp like an inspector-general of an army, into
this, that, everything.

“‘Cert she wouldn’t,” affirmed Red Flannel Mike. “Coulter’s kid’s just
like you or me. She’d have to be up against it to know--an’ maybe not
then.”

“Huh! Even that kid. . . .” Baldy snatched up the gauntlet.

They were off. Hot and royally waged the battle.

The advocates of the unexpected gained ascendancy. Louder and more
extravagant grew their claims. No man could predict anything. No man
knew what he would do. Put him face to face with any situation, any
danger, and he would act differently from the way he thought he would.

It was then that Coulter spoke.

He did not raise his voice. If anything, it was lowered. Hitherto, he
had sat, silent, listening to the battle of words, his bandaged left
arm swung tightly at his side.

“I don’t know about that,” was all he said.

Sudden quiet fell There came a restless stirring, then tacit agreement
These men of rougher employment--axmen, chainmen, engineer--centered
their gaze upon Coulter’s bandaged left arm.

They knew what he was thinking about. They, too, had seen. They agreed
with him that he could have but one possible reaction to one set of
circumstances.

All of them were employees, of one branch or the other, of the
Consolidated Lumber Company. Coulter was in the legal department.
There had arisen a nice question as to the exact ownership of a
certain tract. Rather than take chances with the heavy statutory
penalties for cutting trees upon another’s land, they had sent a
lawyer upon the ground. His work was finished. He was ready--more than
ready--to return.

City-bred, city born, Coulter had welcomed the chance to see a
Southern swamp. He had read, all his life, of Dixie, the land of the
magnolia and cotton, of the mockingbird and the honeysuckle. He had
welcomed his mission. He had even brought his daughter, Ruth, along.

That was not at all unnatural, however. Wherever Coulter had gone for
the last ten years, there, too, had gone Ruth. They had not been
separated longer than a day since the gray dawn that the other Ruth
had placed the tiny bundle in his arms and turned her face to the wall.

The child was all that was left of their love save memories. She was
Coulter’s sole interest in life.

Coming to this camp, Coulter had clad her in khaki, and turned her
loose in the open. It had done her good.

The eyes of the stained figures around the camp-fire followed his
gaze. They knew something of what he was thinking. They had heard him,
in the midst of his pain, setting his teeth, gasp: “Get--Ruth
away--where she--can’t hear!”

That, from a man whom they had to restrain from killing himself to get
freedom from the torture, was enough.

Coulter’s ignorance of the South and of the woods had been, perhaps to
blame. He did not know. All that he could remember to that he had been
bending over the spring, his left arm resting upon the brink. He had
not seen the moccasin until it was too late.

Vividly, even yet, he saw the darkish head and body, the supple,
writhing, the swift dart and the flash of pain--and then agony; much
agony, deep, soul-biting torture.




There was no doctor at the camp. There had been a delay before,
stupefied, he thought to let them know he had been bit. And then--more
agony; agony piled upon agony.

Not concealing their doubts as to their chances of saving his arm or
him, they had slapped the rough torniquet upon his arm, and had
twisted down upon the stick until he moaned, unwillingly, in pain.
Then they had dipped one of the big hunting knives into boiling water,
and had cut his arm at the bite marks--gashing it across, with great,
free-handed strokes, then back again at right angles; squeezing the
cuts to make him lose the poisoned blood.

Then they had cauterized the wound. Sick, half afaint, to Coulter it
seemed that they were deliberately thinking up additional tortures.
The white-hot iron that seared his flesh, tormenting the agonized ends
of nerves that already had borne past the breaking point, was the
final, exquisite touch of agony.

Coulter was one of those men who bear pain--even a slight pain--with
difficulty. Even the sight of blood made him faint. This was horrible
beyond anything he had ever dreamed. The physical racking; the feel of
the steel blade cutting through his own flesh and sinew, down to the
bone, made him bite his lips till they spurted blood, in the effort to
keep from screaming aloud.

He had not know they were through. He thought they were preparing
additional crucifixion for him.

Red Flannel Mike had slapped the gun from his hands and made him
understand, somehow, that it was all over; that they were through. But
they watched him the rest of the night.

That was why, as the argument rose around the morning camp-fire,
Coulter was very sure that he knew what he would do under one set of
circumstances. He knew one experience that nothing on earth could send
him through again. All that, and more, was in his tone, as he spoke.

At his words there came a restless stirring around the fire. Those men
of the engineering gang had seen something of his experience. They
knew what he was thinking. The abrupt ending of their argument showed
that they agreed with Coulter.

He saw, and understood; and, seeing, smiled bitterly. They knew only a
part of it.

To every man there is his one fear. The bravest man that ever trod the
earth had his one especial dread. To some, it is fire; to others, cold
steel; others still, the clash of physical contact. But, probe deep
enough beneath the skin of any man alive, and you find it.

Snakes were Coulter’s fear.

He could not explain it. He did not know why he, a man city-bred and
born, had this obsession. It had been with him since he could
remember. As a child, once he had gone into a convulsion of fear over
some pictures of snakes in a book.

The old women of the family nodded their heads wisely, and muttered
things about a fright to his mother before his birth. Coulter did not
know. All that he was certain about was that the thought, even, of the
writhing, slippery, squirming bodies, made his whole being shudder
with revulsion, made tingles of absolute horror go up and down his back.

Yes, the gang agreed with him. Yet they had seen only a part of what
he had gone through. They had seen and appreciated only his physical
suffering--and that was the least part.

Coulter’s nerves were in ragged shreds. He started and jumped at the
slightest sound. His experience had intensified a thousandfold his
nervous horror of reptiles.

The woods, the swamp, were full of them. He ran upon them constantly.
All the time he was longing for his hour of liberation, when he could
return to the city and to freedom.

The unexpected flutter of a thrush, as he walked through the woods,
would send his heart into his throat and his pulse to pounding in
fear. Night after night he woke, chained hand and foot with dread that
a snake had crawled up, in the dark, beside him. All the stories he
had ever read of their crawling up into camps and getting into the
bedding, came to him, lingered with him, tortured him. He was no more
asleep before he would awake, bathed in a cold sweat, afraid to move,
afraid to lie still.

All that, subconsciously, was in his words, in his manner, in his
whole expression, as he said:

“I don’t know about that.”




There came the silence of conviction. Even Red Flannel Mike, most
zealous exponent of man’s lack of knowledge of himself, was silenced.

“Somebody said something about the kid.” Baldy, the eighteen-year-old,
seized his advantage. “I’ll bet that even she--”

Baldy stopped abruptly. His whole frame stiffened. His eyes were
riveted upon little Ruth. One by one, the rest of the rang turned to
follow his gaze. Each followed his example.

Ruth’s scream cut the air a moment before Baldy’s rasp of horror:

“My God! The kid’s _got a moccasin on her!”_

The child was close enough for the group to see clearly. Her head was
bent back, straining away from the writhing horror. The sleek head
slithered to and fro, darting, threatening, winding here and there
about her. She seemed frozen with fear.

Baldy had started forward. He stopped.

“I--get me a gun!” he barked. “Get a gun! _Quick!”_

The reptile drew back its head. There came an interruption:

White to his lips, staggering upon his feet, Coulter came forward. His
face was ghastly pale. His unwilling feet buckled under him,
threatening, each moment, to give way and pitch him forward upon his
face.

Slowly he edged closer. The slender head poised, watchful. Coulter’s
movements were scarcely discernible. Suddenly his well arm shot out,
seizing, snatching at that loathsome body.

There was a quick movement of the snake, far too rapid to be
anticipated or avoided. The head drove forward. He felt the white hot
flash of pain.

The rest was a haze of horror to him. It was rather as if he were a
spectator at something concerning someone else. He did not command his
body. He knew only, vaguely, what was happening.

There came the feel of a sleek body in his hands, the lash and
writhing against his arms of something that fought to break away; then
the grinding of his heel upon a head, and the flinging, against him,
in death agony.

Everything faded out, then.




His return to consciousness was marked by a hazy lightness of memory.

In the bitten arm he could feel, mounting higher and higher, the
numbness that had marked the other experience. His heart, too, seemed
to be acting queerly--just as it had done before.

Red Flannel Mike’s brad back was bent from him as he mixed at
something in a basin. They had carried him to his own tent.

Coulter’s holster was hanging from the tent pole. The numbness crept
higher in his arm. Soon would begin the cutting of his flesh, the
darting flames of pain. . .

He could not go through with that again! He could not bear it. Better
far to finish with the gun what Mike had stopped before.

Softly he slid the gun from the holster, and raised it for action. His
finger pressed upon the trigger.

The weapon was dashed suddenly from his hand.

“What the hell!” roared Mike. “You fool, what’s the matter with you?”

“You’re as bad as Baldy Jenkins. Been in the woods all his life--and
mistakes a coach whip for a moccasin, just because both of ‘em are
darkish.

“That wasn’t any more moccasin than a polar bear. . . Yes, ‘course he
struck you. Any snake ‘ll do that--but it ain’t always poison. Your
arm ain’t even go’ner be sore.

“Never mind about this gun. I’ll give it back to you--later on.”




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




You ‘ll Be Thrilled and Mystified

By Hamilton Craigie’s New Novelette

The Chain




I.

Trouble.

Quarrier entered the taxi with an uneasy sense of crisis.

He was not imaginative; his digestion was excellent; even at forty, an
age when most men nowadays have begun to feel the strain of fierce
business competition, Quarrier was almost the man that he had been ten
years in the past.

Nerves and Quarrier were strangers; he smoked his after-dinner cigar
in a rigorous self-denial that made it his sole dissipation; he was in
bed and asleep when other men were comfortably faring forth in search
of such diversion as the metropolis had to offer.

But the face of that taxi-driver--he had seen it somewhere before. It
was a dark, Italian face, with high cheekbones, and a straight, cruel
mouth, like a wedge, between lean cheeks scarred and scabbed with
late-healed cicatricts and pocked blue with powder bums.

Not an inviting face. And the taxi was old. Glancing at the cushions,
as they had roared past an arc-light at the street corner, Quarrier
had thought to see the dingy leather sown thick with stains, broad
patches, as if--as if. . .

But pshaw! As he told himself, he was getting fanciful; perhaps his
liver, at last, had played him false. A migraine, doubtless--he’d have
a look in on old Peterby in the morning. Peterby was a good, plain
old-fashioned practitioner--no nonsense about _him_. . .

He had gone to the offices of the Intervale Steel Company on a
mission, an important one. As a matter of fact, it was vital--almost a
matter of life and death. But he smiled grimly now in the dark
recesses of the cab as he reflected that, as it chanced, his
last-minute decision had left those documents where they would be
beyond the reach of--Hubert Marston, for instance.

He had nothing on his person of any special value; he would be poor
picking, indeed, if, as it chanced, that taxi driver with the face of
a bravo might, behind the sinister mask that was his face, be the thug
he seemed, hired, perhaps, by the Panther of Peacock Alley.

An extravagant appellation, doubtless, but that was Marston: Suave,
sinister, debonair--the social _routourier_ equally with the
manipulator. He had acquired the name naturally enough, for most of
his operations were carried on in the hotels and clubs.

He had an office hard by the “Alley” and it was from its ornate
splendor that he issued, on occasion, gardenia in buttonhole, cane
hooked over his arm, dark face with its inscrutable smile flashing
upon the habitues with what meaning only he could say. And he did not
choose to tell.

And Marston had wanted those documents; they spelled the difference to
him between durance and liberty--aye, between life and death. . .

For Hubert Marston had made the one slip that, soon or late, the most
careful criminal makes: He had, yielding on a sudden to his one rare
impulse of hate, commissioned the murder of a man who stood in his
way, and--he had paid for it, as he had thought, in good crisp
treasury notes, honest as the day, certainly! But the payment had been
made at second--or third-hand--that was Marston’s way. And for once it
had betrayed him.

For those documents--as he had found out, too late--were counterfeit
treasury notes. The go-between had seen to that, paying the hired
killer with them, and pocketing the genuine. And Quarrier, himself the
watch-dog of those interests that Marston would have despoiled, (he
had been retained by them for some time now as their private
investigator) had found, first, the disgruntled bravo himself,
obtained the spurious notes, together with the man’s confession,
traced them backward to the go-between--and now, hard upon the
arch-criminal’s heels, he waited only for the morning, and that which
would follow.

Quarrier had given the driver a number in the West Eighties, but now,
glancing from the window. His eyes narrowed with a sudden, swift concern.

“The devil!” he ejaculated, under his breath. “Now, if I thought--”

But the sentence was never completed. They were in a narrow,
unfamiliar street; a street silent, tenantless, as it seemed, save for
dark doorways, and here and there a furtive, drifting shadow-shape--
the tall fronts of warehouses, with blind eyes to the night, silent, grim.

The echoing roar of the engine beat in a swift clamor against those
iron walls--and suddenly, with a sort of _click,_ he remembered where
it was he had seen that lupine countenance--the dark face of the
driver separated from him by the width of a single pane of glass.

It had been behind glass that he had seen it. A month or so previous,
at the invitation of his friend, Gregory Vinson, captain of detectives
(with whom he had formerly been associated, prior to his present
connection), he had visited headquarters; and it had been there, in
the gallery which is given over to rogues, that he had marked that
face, its features, even among the many crooks, thugs, strong-arm men,
yeggs, hoisters, pennyweighters, housemen, and scratchers. And now he
remembered it when it was too late!

His right hand falling upon the butt of a blunt-nosed automatic, with
which he was never without, with his left he jerked strongly at the
handle of the door. But the door was locked; he could not open it.

Quarrier had been in a tight place more than once; danger he was not
unacquainted with; it had been with him in broad daylight, in
darkness, grinning at his elbow with dirk or pistol in the highways
and byways of Criminopolis. He was a fighter--or he would not have won
to the possession of those documents--the documents so greatly
desired by Hubert Marston--the evidence of the one false step made by
the Master of Chicane, the one slip that was to put him, ere the
setting of another sun, where he would be safe.

Now Quarrier, his mouth a grim line, was reaching with the butt of his
automatic to break that glass when, with a grinding of brakes the taxi
whirled suddenly to a groaning halt.

The door swung open--to the windy night without, and the glimmer of a
dark face at the curb.

“Here you are, sir,” Quarrier heard the voice, with, he was certain, a
mocking quality in the quasi-deferential cadence. But he could see
merely the face, behind it a black well of darkness, velvet black,
save for the dim loom of a lofty building just across.

Quarrier did not know how many there might be, lurking there in the
blackness, nor did he greatly care. The locked door; the face of the
man at the wheel; the unfamiliar street--shanghaied by a land pirate,
at the very least! There could be no doubt of it.

But it was no time for hesitation. If he were in the wrong, and it was
all a mistake--well, he could of afford to pay. But--the face of
Marston arose before him, suave, sinister, smiling . . . . What was it
the man had said, on the occasion of their last meeting at the
Intervale offices:

“Possession, my dear Quarrier--possession is ten points of the
lawless. Remember that!”

Quarrier remembered, and with the remembrance came a swift, sudden
anger. But it was an anger that was controlled, as a flame is
controlled--though it was none the less deadly.

“Here you are, sir,” repeated the voice, and now there was in it a
something more than mockery. There was on edge, a rasp; almost it
sounded like a command, an order.

Quarrier grinned then--a mere facial contraction of the lips. Then,
muscle and mind and body, in one furious projectile, he launched
himself outward through the doorway in a diving tackle.

The white face with its sneering grin was blotted out; there came the
_spank_ of a clean-cut blow; a turgid oath. Quarrier, rising from his
knees, surveyed the limp figure on the cobbles with a twisted smile;
then he tamed, peering under his hand down a long tunnel of gloom,
where, at the far end, a light showed, like a will-o-the-wisp
beckoning him on.

He could not tell where he was. Somewhere where in the Forties, he
judged--Hell’s Kitchen, probably--although there was a curious lack of
the life and movement boiling to full tide in that grim neighborhood
of battle, murder, and sudden death.

But as his eyes became accustomed to the stifling dark he found the
reason. It was a street of warehouses, public stores; and further on,
as he looked, like a ribbon of pale flame against the violet sky, he
saw the river.

He bent his steps away from it, walking carefully, picking his way on
the uneven flagging. Twice, as he went forward, it seemed to him that
he was watched--that eyes gazed at him out of the blackness; and twice
he turned his head, swiftly to face the silence and the emptiness of
the long, lonely way.

And it seemed, too, that as he went, the whispering echo of his hasty
steps went on before him, and behind; he fell to counting them--and
suddenly he knew. They were before him--and, behind. He was in a trap.

There came a leaping, thunderous rush at his back, and a voice,
screaming between the high walls:

“There he is! Now--go get ‘im!”

And it was then that Quarrier, reaching for his pistol, discovered
that it was gone; lost, doubtless, in that encounter with the
taxi-driver. But he braced, spreading his arms wide as a grizzly meets
the onslaught of wolves. But the wolves were many, and they came on
now, a ravening pack; one, before the rest, looming as a black blot
against the starshine, lunged forward with a growling oath.

The rest were yet some little distance away. Quarrier saw the man, or,
rather, he sensed the nearness of that leaning shadow, spread-eagled
like a bat against the dimness. . . Then there came the sudden impact
of fist on flesh--a straining heave--and Quarrier, diving under the
hurtling figure, straightened, and hurled him outward and away.

The flying figure struck among the rest, head on, to a growling chorus
of oaths, imprecations. But still they came on, thrusting, lunging; a
gun crashed almost in Quarrier’s face. . . There came a voice:

“No shooting, you fool! Th’ Big Gun says--”

The rest was lost as the pistol clattered to the cobbles. The center
of a whirling tangle of fist and foot, to Quarrier it seemed that he
fought in a nightmare that would have no end. He had gone to one knee
under the impact of a swinging blow, when, from the far distance,
there sounded the rolling rattle of a night-stick, with the clangor of
the patrol.

Something gripped his ankle--something at once soft and hard. He
lunged, full length, as a football player at the last desperate urge
of his spent strength. Then he was on his feet, running, sidestepping,
circling with the skill and desperate effort of a plunging half-back,
stiff-arming the opposition to right and left.

Just ahead, the black maw of an alley, a deeper blot of blackness,
loomed. In its heart, like a witch-fire, there swam upward a nebulous,
faint glow as from the pit; out of the tail of his eye he saw it: The
dim loom of a house, and an open door.

He reached the turn--and a figure uprose before him, even in darkness
brutish, broad, thewed like a grizzly. The great arm rose, once; it
fell, like the hammer of Thor.

Quarrier lurched, stiffened, buckling inward at the knees in a
loose-jointed, slumping fall.




II.

Hangman’s Hold.

Quarrier came to himself, all his faculties at full tide.

It was smothering dark--a darkness not merely of the night but of a
prison-house, silent, musty with the stale odor of decay and death.
Near at hand, after a moment, he heard a slow, ceaseless dripping,
like the beating of a heart, or the slow drip-drip of a life that was
running out, drop by single drop.

The fancy seemed logical enough; there seemed nothing of the fantastic
in it; Quarrier waited, there in the smothering dark, for the quick
knife-thrust that would mean the end--or the deadening impact of the
slung-shot.

But, unimaginative as he was, like a man who has but lately undergone
the surgeon’s scalpel, he feared to move, to feel, even while he
assured himself that he was unhurt save for the throbbing in his
temples, and the very bruises that he felt upon him, but would no
touch.

But there was something else. After a little his hesitant, exploring
fingers found it. The length of the line bent in a sort of running
bowline about his shoulders and arms. And behind him, from a staple
in the wall, it hung, sliding like a snake in the thick darkness.

He moved his head, slowly, carefully, like a man testing himself for
an invisible hurt. And then--

“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat, the shadow of a cry. For,
moving an inch further to the right, it would have been a noose,
tightening as he moved, strangling him there, choking him out of sound
and sense.

Brave as he was, Quarrier shivered, his shoulders twitching with the
thought. And it was not cold. Moving with an infinite caution, he ran
his exploring fingers along the hempen strands.

Whoever had devised that noose had been a sailor. And only a sailor
could undo it.

And there in the dark, trussed as he was, at the mercy of what other
peril he knew not. Quarrier permitted himself the ghost of a grin. His
hand went up, slowly, carefully, the fingers busy with the rope; there
came a tug, and, coiling at his feet like a snake, the noose slid
slithering along the stones.

Quarrier was not a praying man, in the ordinary sense, but now he sent
heavenward a silent aspiration of gratitude for the impulse which,
years previous, had prompted his signing on as a foremast hand in the
China seas. And the long hours in the doldrums, below the line, had,
as it proved, been anything but wasted.

Now, easing his cramped muscles in a preliminary stretching, he rose
gingerly to his feet, moving with the stealth and caution of an
Indian. He was free of that constricting rope, but as he moved
forward, groping, just ahead there came to him a sudden murmur of
voices, low, like the growling of savage beasts. There was that sort
of note in it: A fierce, avid mutter, and presently, as he advanced,
he made out here and there a word.

“Th’ Big Gun. . . You better watch your step. . . Mar--”

Quarrier found himself in a sort of corridor, at the far end of which
proceeded the voices. It had all been done in the dark, so to speak.
The taxi, that driver with the face familiar and yet unfamiliar, the
attack, and now this. But time pressed. Why they had not murdered him
out of hand he did not pause to consider; he knew only that
Marston--and he was certain that it was Marston’s hand that had been
in it--would, with a clear field, be at the hiding place of those
documents. Even now, doubtless, he was there.

Quarrier felt mechanically for his pistol; and then his hand dropped
hopelessly as he remembered that he was weaponless.

He listened tensely, holding his breath, as the voices receded--or,
rather, one of them; he could hear the other following the departing
man with his complaints.

Evidently they had left a guard of two. One of them was going; the
other left behind, and not especially delighted with his job.

An abrupt turn of the long hallway brought this man suddenly into
plain view.

Quarrier blinked in the glare from the single incandescent, flattening
himself against the wall; then, with a pantherish space, he had
covered the intervening space in three lunging strides.

The man, a broad fellow with a seamed, lead-colored countenance, tamed
his head; his mouth opened, his hand going to his pocket with a
lightning stab of the blunt, hairy fingers.

But Quarrier had wasted no time. Even as the giant reached for his gun
Quarrier’s fist swung in a short arc, and there was power in it. The
blow, traveling a scant six inches, crashed full on the point; the
thickset man, his eyes glazing, swayed, slipped, fell in an aimless
huddle.

“Well--a knockout!” panted Quarrier, reaching for the pistol.

Marston was the “Big Gun”, of course. Quarrier had never doubted it;
but hitherto the President of Intervale Steel had conducted his
brokerage business, on the surface at any rate, without resort to open
violence. And Intervale Steel--You knew really nothing about it until
you took a flyer in it; then, as it might chance, you anew enough and
more than enough.

Quarrier, glancing at the unconscious man and pocketing the pistol,
departed without more ado; proceeding along the hall, he found, with
no further adventure, a narrow door, and the pale stars, winking at
him from, he judged, a midnight horizon.

But a glance at his watch told him that it was but nine-thirty; there
was yet time to get to the hiding place of those documents ahead of
Marston, if, as he was now convinced, it had been Marston’s thugs who
had ambushed him.

Plunging along the shadowy alley, after five minutes’ walk, made at a
racing gait, he found a main-traveled avenue and an owl taxi, whose
driver, leaning outward, crooked a finger in invitation to this
obvious fare, appearing out of the dark.

Quarrier did not hesitate. The fellow might be a gunman or worse; he
must take his chance of that.

“Twenty-three Jones!” he called crisply, with the words diving into
the cab’s interior; then, his head out of the window, as the taxi
turned outward from the curb:

“And drive as if all hell were after you!”




III.

The Shape Invisible.

Quarrier reached his destination without incident, but as he went up
the winding stairway of the office building to his private sanctum he
was oppressed by an uneasy sense that all was not as it should be.
Those elevators--they were seldom out of order. Perhaps. . . .

But, panting a little from his climb, he found his floor, and the door
of his private office.

For just a split second he hesitated; then, unlocking the door, he
flung it wide and went in.

And then, for the third time that evening, he had another shock: for,
almost from the moment of his entry into that sound-proof chamber, he
knew that he was not alone.

For a moment, there in the blaze from the electrolier, lighted by the
opening of the door, he stood rigid, listening, holding his breath;
crouched, bent forward like a sprinter upon his mark.

Quarrier was a big man, and well muscled; in his day he had been an
amateur boxer of repute. For a big man, he was quick, well-poised,
supple and controlled.

A brain of ice and nerves of steel--that was Quarrier. And at that
moment he stood in need of them.

He had heard nothing, felt nothing, seen nobody--and yet he knew,
beyond any possibility of doubt, that someone _or something_ was with
him there in that sound-proof chamber, thirty stories above the
street. And the knowledge--as certain as the fact that he, Quarrier,
as yet lived and breathed--the knowledge that he was not alone was not
reassuring. It was fantastic, it was incredible--but it was _true!_

Everything in that private office was in plain sight; shelter there
was none for any possible intruder; and yet, by the very positive
evidence of his eyes he knew, and his pulses quickened at the thought,
that he was not alone.

It had been Quarrier’s fancy to rent the small suite on the top floor
of the out-of-the-way office building. He liked the view; the rooms
were remote; they suited his purpose; they were private. Anything
could happen here, and no one be the wiser: the crash of a heavy .48,
for instance, would not penetrate an inch outward beyond those
sound-proof walls. And a cry, a shout would be lost there just as a
stone is lost, dropped downward into a deep well of silence--and of
oblivion.

Now, if Quarrier’s man, Harrison, a soft-footed, super-efficient
body-servant, had not kept on his hat; or if, say, he had not had a
particularly abundant shock of hair, added to the fact that although
an excellent servant, he was somewhat deaf; and if, too, he had not,
for once, walked and worked in deviousness--this chronicle would have
had a very different ending--for Quarrier, at any rate.

His hand in the pocket of his coat, the fingers curled about the butt
of the automatic that he had taken from the guard back there in the
cellar, Quarrier, frowning, surveyed the room in a slow, searching
appraisal. Those documents--he had to make certain of them.

From left to right, as his gaze went round the chamber, he saw a
book-case, a full-length canvas, done in oils, the double windows, a
door, locked with a huge, old-fashioned key, leading into a
lumber-room just beyond, a small wall safe, his desk--which completed
the circle.

The room was in itself a safe. It was like a fort: The windows were
protected by sheet-steel aprons similar to the burglar-guards used by
bank tellers; the main entrance door, through which Quarrier had
entered, and which opened upon the corridor and the elevators, was
also of steel, with a patent spring combination lock; the other door,
leading to the lumber-room, was also of steel, locked, however, with a
huge, old-fashioned key, but this latter door had never been in use,
since Quarrier’s occupancy.

Nothing short of an acetylene blowpipe could have penetrated the
walls, the ceiling, the floor, but they were smooth, unmarred by
scratch or tell-tale stain.

Now, to understand events as they occurred:

Quarrier was in his private sanctum, his office; it adjoined the
lumber-room at the right. And a simple diagram may serve perhaps
better than a page of explanation:

[Illustration]

            windows
      ***   *******   ***************************
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *     Lumber-Room    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                     Connecting          *
      *                        door             *
      *     Office         *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *                    *                    *
      *         entrance   *         entrance   *
      ************    *******************    ****
                        corridor
      elevators
      **    ***   *******************************


. . . .

The electrolier, blaring from its four nitro lamps, illumined every
nook and cranny of that office; shed its blaring effulgence upon
Quarrier, standing like a graven image before that wall safe. And as
he stood there, for the first time in his well-ordered existence a
prey to fear, a face rose out of his consciousness; he heard again the
voice of Marston, President of Intervale Steel:

“You have them, my dear Quarrier; keep them--safe.”

Quarrier had never liked Marston; the man was elusive, like an eel;
you never saw his hand: it was impossible to guess what moved behind
the masklike marble of his face, expressionless always, cold, contained.

But Quarrier had the “documents,” or, rather, they were there, in that
wall safe, in itself a small fort of chrome-nickel steel and
manganese against which no mere “can-opener” could have prevailed--no
torch, even.

Now, as he operated the combination, he was abruptly sensible of a
curious sensation of strain; a shock; the short hairs at the back of
his neck prickled suddenly as if at the touch of an invisible, icy
finger. And for a moment he could have sworn to a Presence just behind
him--a something in ambush grinning at his back--a danger, a real and
daunting peril, the greater that it was unmeasured and unknown.

But with his fingers upon that dial, Quarrier half turned as if to
depart. He was getting jumpy, his nerves out of hand--too much coffee
and too many strong cigars, perhaps. That was it. That kidnapping; it
might, after all, have had nothing to with Marston. The documents were
safe--they simply had to be. Unless Marston had been there, and gone;
but he would scarcely have had time.

Perhaps, too, Quarrier might have obeyed the impulsion of that turning
movement, and in that case, also, this story would never have been
written. Quarrier might have done this, but for the moment, practical
and sanely balanced as he was, for a split second he had the fancy
that if he turned his head he would see--something that was not good,
that was not--well--normal.

It was instinctive, elemental, rather than rational, and, getting
himself in hand, he would, doubtless, have turned abruptly, leaving
the room, if, at that moment, out of the tail of his eye, he had not
seen the inescapable evidence of a presence other than his own.




IV.

The Silent Witness.

Quarrier was a large man, and hard-muscled, a dangerous adversary in a
rough-and-tumble, a “good man with his hands,” as we have seen; young,
and a quick thinker.

In the half of a second it came to him that Marston might have
delegated his authority (at second-or third-hand, certainly) to some
peterman, some yegg, say, to obtain possession of those documents. But
the fellow would have to be a boxman par excellence; that strong-box
was the last word in safes, and, Quarrier was certain, the _final_ one.

No ordinary house-man could hope to break into it, and the marauder
would have to depend upon a finger sandpapered to the quick, hearing
microscopically sensitive, to catch, through that barrier of steel and
bronze, the whispering fall of those super-tumblers.

And abruptly following this suggestion, a second and a more daunting
thought obtruded: Suppose--just suppose, that their design held no
intention of on assault upon the safe; suppose that their plan, the
purpose of that nameless, invisible Presence, had included, in the
first place, him--Quarrier? In case, after all, he had managed to
escape the trap back there in the cellar? Why--they would use him;
that was it! They would force him to open the safe. The thing was
simple; there was about it, even, a suggestion of sardonic humor, but
it was a humor that did not appeal to Quarrier.

Upon the instant he swung round, crouching, his hand reaching for his
pocket in a lightning stab, and coming up, level, holding the
short-barreled automatic.

Then his mouth twisted in a mirthless grin as his straining gaze
beheld the square room empty under the lights.

A moment he stood, his keen, strong, thoughtful face etched deep with
new lines of worry, ears strained against the singing silence, eyes
turning from door to door, and from wall to window, a pulse in his
temple throbbing jerkily to his hard-held breath. He began the circuit
of the room. Walking on tiptoe, he approached the door by which he had
entered, thrust into its socket the great bolt. The bolt seemed really
unnecessary; the lock in itself, a spring-latch affair, was devised so
that it held the stronger for pressure from without.

The _snick_ of steel against steel rang startlingly loud in the
speaking stillness; for a moment Quarrier had a curious fancy, a
premonition almost, that it was a wasted precaution--that, in effect,
he was locking and double locking that door upon an empty room--an
empty strong-box. Pistol in hand, however, and starting from the door,
he began his round.

The book-case he passed with a cursory examination; nothing there.
Next the painting; a portrait of his great-uncle; it held him for a
moment; those eyes had always held him; they were “following” eyes;
and now for a moment it seemed to Quarrier that they held a warning, a
message, a command. But he passed on. . .

A heavy leather settle was next in order. With a sheepish grimace he
stooped, peering under it, straightened going on to the double
windows. That settle had been innocent of guile, but as to the
windows--he paused an interval while he thumbed the patent steel
catches. These were shut tight, the windows black, glimmering square
against the windy night without.

Throwing off the locks, one after the other, he pushed up the first
window, released the steel outer apron, and then, in the very act of
leaning outward into the black well beneath, he drew back, with a
quick, darting glance over his shoulder as his spine prickled at a
sudden, daunting thought.

_What was that?_

For a heartbeat at his back he thought to hear a rustle, a movement,
like the shuffle of a swift, stealthy footfall, on the heavy pile of
the Kermanshah rug.

But once more there was nothing--no one.

It was thirty stories to the street beneath, and as he leaned there in
the window his imagination upon the instant had swayed out down to the
dreadful peril of the sheer, sickening fall.

How simple it would have been for someone behind him--how easy. . .

He shivered, the sweat beading his forehead in a fine mist of fear. A
hand on his ankle--a quick heave--and then a formless blur against the
night--the plunge--into nothingness. . .

Turning to the right, he surveyed the heavy door leading to the
lumber-room. He tried the great key, rattling the knob. The door was
locked; it was heavy, solid, substantial. A quick frown wrinkled his
forehead.

“Absurd!” he muttered, but there was an odd lack of conviction in the
word “Impossible!” he said again. “There’s nobody in the room except
myself; there _couldn’t_ be.”

But even as he spoke he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
someone or something _had_ occupied that room but a matter of seconds
prior to his entry, and if he, or whatever it was, was not there now,
where was this invisible presence?

The presence in the room of another than himself was a physical
impossibility, unless, indeed, there was, after all, a fourth
dimension, into which as a man passes from sunlight into shadow, the
intruder had stepped, perhaps now regarding him sardonically from that
invisible plane: A living ghost!

Absurd! And yet, there was that other fact--he had seen it: _the
silent, the voiceless, yet moving witness--the positive and
irrefutable proof of a presence other than his own._




There, in a locked, bolted, impregnable chamber, unmarked by the least
sign of entry--a main door which did not have a key, responding only
to a combination known only to himself--a secondary door most
obviously locked, and from the inside; windows of thick glass, triple
locked with the latest in patent catches--someone or something had
entered, passing, as it seemed, through bolts and bars, through walls,
through steel and stone and concrete, like a djinn, or a
wraith--_through the keyhole?_

Matter-of-fact as he was, hard-headed and practical, Quarrier was
aware for an instant of a flicker of almost superstitious fear.
But--rot! In all the space confined by those four walls and ceiling
and floor there was not room for concealment even for a--cat, for
instance--for nothing human, at any rate. It was beyond him, even as
the Thing that had entered was _beyond him, though at hand._

Quarrier did not believe in the supernatural with his mind; but, brave
as he was by nature and training, in that moment he knew fear. But he
preferred, with his intelligence, to credit Marston with it; Marston,
so far as morals were considered, might have been almost anything: you
saw it in his curious eyes, with their pale irises, the flat, dead
color of his skin, like the belly of a snake; in the grim, traplike
mouth. Quarrier had never deceived himself as to the President of
Intervale Steel. The thing was fantastic, unreal--and yet. It might
easily be a trap, and worse. Peril, the more subtle because unknown,
was all about him; he felt it, like an emanation. What was it that the
psychological sharps would call it? An aura, as of some invisible and
deadly presence, seeing, although unseen.




V.

Through The Keyhole.

The room, or office, as has been written, was impregnable to any but
an assault in force, the doors invincible save by the shattering crash
of a high explosive, the windows almost equally so.

Quarrier’s man, Harrison, even, would be unable to enter the room in
his employer’s absence; so that, knowing the combination of the safe,
he could take nothing from it, or bring anything into it. He left, in
the rare intervals that Quarrier suffered his ministrations, always
with his master, returning likewise, if he returned at all, in
Quarrier’s company.

The recluse had hedged himself about with care. Marston, with his
keen, devising brain, would face a pretty problem in the recovery of
those documents.

But it was when, on an abrupt inspiration, Quarrier removed the telephone
receiver from its hook, that he became certain that it was a trap.

“Give me Schuyler 9000,” he had whispered, his voice hoarse in the
blanketing silence. But even with the words he knew that the line was
dead, yet it was characteristic of Quarrier that, once satisfied that
this was so, he resumed his inventory of the office where he had left off.

He had completed the circuit of the chamber with the exception of the
wall safe and the small, flat-topped writing-desk by the door. From
his position he could see the desk quite easily; there was nothing and
nobody either on or under it. And now, before he twirled the
combination, he laid his hand upon the doors, pulling at the handles
in a perfunctory testing. And then--

He recoiled, stumbling backward, as the doors swung wide with a
jarring _clang._ Fingers trembling, he jerked forward a drawer--put in
his hand. He withdrew it--empty. Confronted with the incredible
truth--the thing which he had feared and yet had not believed--he
stood, stunned. _For the documents had vanished!_

Even in the midst of his excitement and dismay, Quarrier permitted
himself the ghost of a faint, wintry grin. But a few hours before he
had himself bestowed those papers in their particular resting-place;
and, observing a precaution to make assurance doubly sure, he had
stationed a guard at the street level, men whom he could trust. For,
in the morning he had meant to transfer those documents, to that
repository in the West Eighties from which Marston would never be able
to retrieve them, for with their receipt would come the final quietus
of the President of Intervale Steel. And that was why Quarrier had
called that number, which had not answered.

Now the documents were gone and Marston was safe. But there remained a
final thin thread of hope, and it was this:

The building, a new one, stood alone; Quarrier owned it; his enemies
had in some obscure fashion obtained that which they sought. And--this
being so--they were in the building.

Quarrier’s orders to that guard had not included the stoppage or
detention of any seeking ingress. On entering, he had been informed
merely that perhaps half a dozen, all told, had possibly preceded him.
They had trapped him--perhaps they might even succeed in expunging him
from the record together with the evidence, but they--Marston and the
rest--some or all of them were in the building; they _had_ to be.

He grinned again, a swift, tigerish grin, as he considered the
trifling clue which had betrayed them. But for that he would never
have discovered the looting of the safe.

And it was then, as he stood, turned a little from the safe and facing
the heavy door giving on the lumber-room, that he straightened, tense,
bending to the keyhole.

The door was sound-proof, as were the walls, but abruptly, as a sound
heard in dreams, he had heard it: At the keyhole, a sound, or the
shadow of a sound, faint and thin, but unmistakable, like the beating
of a heart.

And that sound had gone on, faint and thin, as though, muffled through
layers of cotton wool, persistent, regular--the faint, scarce-audible
ticking of a watch.

For a moment, even while he considered and dismissed the thought that
they might have planted a time-bomb against that door, Quarrier
hesitated. And then, abruptly, he knew: They were in the lumber-room;
he had surprised them; doubtless they waited, hidden, for his exit. He
had been too quick for them; they had not counted on his escape from
that cellar, and if that were so, he, Quarrier, would have something
to say as to their getaway.

Silent, his automatic ready, he had opened the door into the corridor
with a slow, stealthy caution. Then he was in the corridor, searching
the thick-piled shadows, where, at the far end, a light hung between
floor and ceiling like a star. A silence held, thick, heavy, mournful,
daunting, as he began his advance--a silence burdened with a tide of
threat, sinister, whispering alive.

Just ahead of him was the first of the great batteries of elevators. A
pressure upon the call-bell, and in a moment he would have with him
men upon whom he could rely, men who would execute his least order
without question. And then, remembering, he desisted.

For he found it easy to believe that the same agency which had
silenced his telephone might have cut him off here also from
communication, but his finger, reaching for the signal, jerked
backward, as, out of the corner of his eye, he beheld a lance of light
spring suddenly from the crusted transom of the lumber-room door.

Were they coming out?

“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat.

He did not pause to consider how many of them there might be, or that
his faithful guardians of the gate, thirty stories below, were
probably silenced by the same sinister hand.

Silently, his gun held rigid as a rock, he approached the lumber-room
door; then, a step away, he paused, with a sharp intake of his breath.

Here, six paces at his left, a narrow corridor led to a fire-alarm box
and a window directly overlooking the main entrance and the street.
Quarrier, back to the wall, thrust up a groping hand to where, just
above his head, a light cluster hung. Three of the bulbs he unscrewed;
then, going to the window, opened it, leaned outward, and, with
intervals between, dropped them downward into the dark.

Then, pistol in hand, his feet silent upon the concrete flooring of
the corridor, he approached the lumber-room door.

On hands and knees, he listened a moment at the keyhole; then, still
on his knees, his fingers, reaching, turned the knob, slowly, with an
infinite caution, in his face new creases, grim lines. His face
bitter, bleak, mouth hard, he straightened, got to his feet, thrust
inward the heavy door with one lightning movement; stepped into the
lumber-room, his gun, swung in a short arc, covering the two who faced
him across the intervening space.

“Those documents, Marston,” he commanded bruskly, “I can--use them.”

His gaze, for a fleeting instant, turned to the other man, who, hands
clenched at his sides, his eyes wide with sudden terror and unbelief,
stared dumbly at the apparition in the doorway.

But Marston, his face gray, his hand hidden in his pocket, shrugged,
sneered wryly, his hand thrust out and upward with the speed of light.

But, for the difference between time and eternity, he was not quick
enough. There came a double report, roaring almost as one: Marston’s
sneer blurred to a stiff, frozen grimace; he swayed, leaning forward,
his face abruptly blank; then, in a slumping fall, he crashed downward
to the floor.

Quarrier stooped, swept up the papers where they had fallen from the
dead man’s pocket; then he turned curtly upon his body-servant.

“You may go, Harrison,” he said, as if dismissing the man casually at
the end of his day’s service.

But if Harrison felt any gratitude for the implied reprieve, he turned
now to Quarrier with an eager gesture, his speech broken, agonized:

“He--you must listen, sir--Mr. Quarrier,” he begged. “He--Mr.
Marston--he knew me when--he knew about. . .”

His voice broke, faltered.

“Well--?” asked Quarrier, coldly, his face expressionless.

“Mr. Marston,” continued the man--“he knew--my record--I was afraid to
tell you, sir. He--he found out, somehow, that I’d--been--done time,
sir. . . He scared me, I’ll admit--he threatened me--threatened to
tell you. . . You didn’t know, of course. . .”

“Yes--I _knew,”_ explained Quarrier, simply, and at the expression in
his master’s face the valet’s own glowed suddenly as if lighted from
within.

“You--_knew_--” he murmured.




VI.

Chain of Circumstance

“But there is one thing you can tell me,” Quarrier was saying. “You
had the combination of the safe, of course; we’ll say nothing more
about that--but--how did you get in?”

Harrison bent his head.

“Well, sir,” he explained, after a moment, “it was simple, but I’d
never have thought of it but for--him.” He pointed to the silent
figure on the floor.

“Well--there are just three doors, sir, as you know,” he resumed. “The
entrance door of your office, with the combination lock; the entrance
door of the lumber-room here, both giving on the corridor; and the
inside door between the lumber-room and your office. We couldn’t get
into the office by the entrance door from the hall on account of the
combination lock, but we could and did get into the lumber-room easily
enough from the corridor--the door’s not even locked, as you know,
sir. And that’s how we got into the private office--from the
lumber-room, here, through the door between.”

“But how--?” began Quarrier. “That door is a steel one; it was
locked--I’ll swear to that. You didn’t jimmy it; you didn’t have a
Fourth Dimension handy, did you, Harrison? But--go on; it’s beyond me,
I’ll confess.

Harrison permitted himself the ghost of a grin.

“Why--just a newspaper, and a bit of wire, sir--that was now it was
done. I didn’t dare unlock the connecting door--beforehand, sir--from
the office side; I never had the chance. I was never alone in the
office, sir, even for a second, as you know; but there’s a clearance
of nearly half an inch, sir, beneath that connecting door--just enough
for the newspaper. From the lumber-room here I pushed the paper under
the door, into the office, and then, with the wire, it wasn’t so
difficult to push the key out of the lock; the door was locked from
the office side, of course.

“The key fell on the paper; we pulled the paper with the key on it
back under the door, sir, into the lumber-room here, and--we just
_unlocked_ the connecting door there, and walked into the office.
Afterwards I locked the door again, from the office side, and I just
did make it out the front door of the office, when I heard your step
on the stair. _He_ was waiting for me in the lumber-room; he said it
was safer. Anyway, I just did make it along the hall and into the
lumber-room by the hall entrance before you came.”

He paused, a queer expression in his face.

“But I don’t understand how you _knew,_ if you’ll excuse me, sir--how
you suspected. Afterward, from the corridor, you saw our light when we
were ready to come out; we thought you’d gone for good, of course . . .
But nothing was touched, sir, except--that is--of course--” He stumbled.

Quarrier silenced him with upraised hand.

“I didn’t _suspect,_ Harrison--I _knew,”_ he said. “And I heard,
through the keyhole of that connecting door, the ticking of that watch
of yours; it’s big enough. That helped, of course. But that was
afterward. There was one little thing you overlooked, and, for the
matter of that, so did I--nearly.”

There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the concrete flooring of
the corridor, voices; His guards, summoned by Quarrier’s “light-bombs.”

Quarrier continued, as if he had not heard:

“Well--it was right under my eyes, but I almost missed it, at that I
saw it moving, and I knew that something must have _made_ it move.”

He paused, with a faint grimace of recollection.

“You see--you had your hat on in the office, didn’t you? . . . Yes, I
thought so. You’re a bit deaf, too. . . Well, you should have
been--to Marston. But that’s past. And you have a good, thick crop of
hair--_so far.”_

Quarrier smiled frostily. “Well, you struck against it and set it
moving--that was all. You never noticed it Because it was--_the chain
from the electrolier, Harrison, and that was how--”

“You caught us, sir! I--I’m glad. You might call it a--”

“--Chain of circumstance,” finished Quarrier, his eyes outward, gazing
into the new dawn.




Another story by HAMILTON CRAIGIE will appear in the next issue of
WEIRD TALES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




“THE INCUBUS”

By Hamilton Craigie

In the Next Issue of

Weird Tales

Is an Extraordinary Yarn of

Frightful Adventure in an

Underground Cavern

Don’t Miss It!




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Place of Madness

By Merlin Moore Taylor




“Nonsense. A penitentiary is not intended to be a place for coddling
and pampering those who have broken the law.” Stevenson, chairman of
the Prison Commission, waved a fat hand in the direction of the
convict standing at the foot of the table.

“This man,” he went on, “has learned in some way that the newspapers
are ‘gunning’ for the warden and he is seizing the opportunity to make
a play for sympathy in his own behalf. I’ll admit that these tales he
tells of brutality toward the prisoners are well told, but I believe
that he is stretching the facts. They can’t be true. Discipline mast
be maintained in a place like this even if it requires harsh measures
to do it at times.”

“There is no call for brutality, however,” exclaimed the convict,
breaking the rule that prisoners must not speak unless they are spoken to.

Then, ignoring the chairman’s upraised hand, he went on: “We are
treated like beasts here! If a man so much as opens his month to ask a
civil and necessary question, the reply is a blow. Dropping a knife or
a fork or a spoon at the table is punished by going without the next
meal. Men too ill to work are driven to the shops with the butts of
guns. Petty infractions of the most trivial rules mean the dark cell
and a diet of bread and water.

“Do you know what the dark cell is? ‘Solitary’ they call it here.
‘Hell’ would be a better name. Steel all around you, steel walls,
steel door, steel ceiling, steel floor. Not a cot to lie upon, not
even a stool to sit upon. Nothing but the bare floor. And darkness!
Not a ray of light ever penetrates the dark cell once the door is
closed upon you. No air comes to you except through a small ventilator
in the roof. And even that has an elbow to keep the light away from you.

“Is it any wonder that even the most refractory prisoner comes out of
there broken--broken in mind, in body, in spirit? And some of them go
insane--stark, staring mad--after only a few hours of it. And for
what? I spent two days in ‘solitary’ because I collapsed from weakness
at my bench in the shoe factory.

“See this scar?” He pointed to a livid mark over one eye. “A guard did
that with the barrel of his rifle because I wee unable to get up and
go back to work when he told me. He knocked me senseless, and when I
came to I was in ‘solitary.’ Insubordination, they called it. Two days
they kept me in there when I ought to have been in a hospital. Two
days of hell and torture because I was ill. People prate of reforming
men in prison. It’s the other way around. It makes confirmed criminals
of them--if they don’t go mad first.”

The chairman wriggled in his seat and cleared his throat impatiently.

“We have listened to you for quite a while, my man,” he said
pompously, “but I, for one, have enough. A dozen or more prisoners
have testified here today, and none of them has made a statement to
back up the charges you have made.”

“And why?” demanded the prisoner. “Because they are afraid to tell the
truth. They know that they would be beaten and starved and deprived of
their ‘good time’ on one excuse or another if they even hinted at what
they know. You wouldn’t believe them, anyhow. You don’t believe me,
yet I probably shall suffer for what I have said here. But that
doesn’t matter. They can’t take any ‘good time’ away from me. I’m in
for life.”

His voice grew bitter.

“And that is one reason I have gone into this thing in detail--for my
sake and the sake of others who cannot look forward to ever leaving
this place. The law has decreed that we shall live and die here, but
the law said nothing about torturing us.”

“This board guaranteed its protection to all who were called upon to
testify here,” answered the chairman. “It has no desire to whitewash
any person in connection with the investigation which is being made,
and in order that there might be no reflection upon the manner in
which this hearing is conducted neither the warden, his deputies nor
guards have been permitted to attend. Unless you have tangible
evidence to offer us and can give the names of those who can back up
your charges, you may go.”

“Just a minute.” It was the board member nearest the prisoner who
interrupted. Then, to the convict, “You said, I believe, that only a
few hours in the dark cell often will drive a man insane. Yet you
spent two days there. You are not insane, are you?”

“No, sir.” The convict spoke respectfully. “My conscience was clear
and I was able to serve my time there without breaking. But another
day or so would have finished me. You testified against me at my
trial, didn’t you? I hold no grudge against you for that sir. I give
you credit for doing only what you thought was your duty. Your
testimony clinched the case against me. Yet I am innocent--”

The chairman rapped sharply upon the table.

“I utterly fail to see what all this has to do with the matter under
investigation, “he protested irritably. “We are not trying this man’s
case. The courts have passed upon that. He is just like all the rest.
Any one of them is ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that he is
innocent. Let’s get on with this investigation.”

The convict bowed silently and turned toward the door beyond which the
guards wore waiting to conduct him back to his cell. A hand upon his
arm detained him.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Blalock, the member who had questioned the
prisoner, “I request that this man be permitted to go on with what he
was saying. I shall have no more questions to ask. You were saying--”
he prompted the man beside him.

“I was saying that I was innocent,” resumed the convict “I was about
to add that not even a man who is guiltless of wrongdoing would be
able to withstand the terrors of solitary for any length of time. You,
for instance, are a physician, a man of sterling reputation against
whom no one ever has breathed a word. Yet I doubt that you could
endure several hours in the dark cell. If you would only try it, you
would know for yourself that I have spoken the truth. Gentlemen, I beg
of you to do all in your power to abolish the dark cell. Men can stand
just so much without cracking, and if you will dig into the facts you
will find that nine times out of ten it is men broken in ‘solitary’
who are responsible for the outbreaks in prison. That is all.”

He bowed respectfully and was gone.




“Clever talker, that fellow,” commented the secretary of the
commission, breaking the silence. “He almost had me believing him. Who
is he, Blalock? You had him summoned, I believe.”

The physician nodded.

“I confess it was as much from personal interest in the man as from
any hope that he might give valuable evidence here,” he said. “He
surprised me with his outburst. He _is_ a clever talker. Ellis is his
name--Martin Ellis--and he comes of a splendid and well-to-do family.
University graduate and quite capable of having carved out a wonderful
career. But he was idolized at home and given more money than was good
for him. It made him an idler and a young ne’er-do-well. But whatever
he did he did openly, and I never heard of anything seriously wrong
until he was convicted of the crime which brought him here.”

“Murder, I suppose?” Stevenson, the chairman, was interested in spite
of himself. “He spoke of being in for life.”

“Yes; killing a girl. Agnes Keller was her name. Poor, but well
thought of. Church worker, member of the choir and so on. It was
brought out at the trial--in fact. Ellis told it himself--that he was
infatuated with her and they were together a great deal. Not openly,
of course, because old man Ellis, his father, would have pawed up the
earth. The affair ended like all these clandestine affairs, specially
if the girl is young and pretty and poor. It was the theory of the
prosecution that when she discovered her condition she became frantic
and demanded that Ellis marry her, the alternative being that she
would go to his father with the story. It was charged that he killed
her to avoid making a choice. The evidence against him was purely
circumstantial, but the jury held it was conclusive.

“Ellis admitted on the stand that they often went riding in his
motor-car at night. One damning fact against him was that he was seen
driving, alone and rapidly, along the country lane near where her body
was found. He had nothing to back up his claim that he felt ill and
went for a drive in an effort to relieve a sick headache. Of course he
denied absolutely that he was responsible for her condition, or that
he even knew of it, but the jury was out less than an hour. The only
hitch, I learned later, was whether to affix the death penalty or not.”

“He said you were a witness against him. What part did you play?”
asked Stevenson.

“An unwilling one,” answered Blalock, quickly. “I did not believe that
Ellis was guilty then. I am not convinced of it now. But as the girl’s
physician, and presumably one of those to whom she would go in her
trouble. I was questioned as soon as the coroner had held an autopsy.
I admitted that she had confided in me and that I had agreed that the
man responsible should marry her. She did not tell me his name, but my
evidence added weight to the theory that Ellis killed her to avoid
marrying her.”

The door to the room swung open and the warden stood on the threshold.

“May I come in?” he asked. “Dinner is almost ready and I thought I had
better give you warning.”

He crossed to an empty chair and sat down.

“We concluded the taking of evidence quite a little while ago,” said
the chairman. “Since then Dr. Blalock has been entertaining us with
the story of the crime of that fellow Martin Ellis, who was one of the
witnesses. Quite unusual.”

“Yes, the sheriff who brought him here told me all about it,” answered
the warden. “He’s hard to handle. Had trouble with one of the guards a
while back and we had to discipline him.”

“Two days in the solitary cell on bread and water, wasn’t it?” asked
Blalock. “He didn’t have any good words for it.”

The warden flushed.

“Few of those who taste of it do,” he admitted. “Too much a matter of
being left alone with your thoughts and your conscience. They’ll
punish you as much as anything can do. Well, suppose you take an
adjournment and come on to dinner? Will you want to make the regular
inspection tour of the prison?”

“Oh, sure,” yawned the chairman. “Undoubtedly, everything is all
right, as usual, but if we omitted it the newspapers would have
something to howl about.”

He rose, and, with the rest of the commission trailing them, followed
the warden to the dining-room.

“Well, let’s make the inspection and have it over with,” Stevenson
suggested, when the meal was finished. “Where do we go first, warden?”

“Through the shops and smaller buildings first, then the cells. That
way you’ll end up closest to the administration building and you can
go back into conference with the least delay.”

Uniformed guards stood smartly at attention as the warden piloted the
commission through. “Trusties” ingratiatingly hovered about the party,
eager to be of service. Great steel-barred doors swung open at the
approach of the commission and clanged to noisily behind it. The
afternoon sunlight, slanting through the bars, relieved the somberness
of the cell blocks and revealed them in their spick-and-span-ness,
made ready for the occasion.

“Well, everything seems to be O.K.,” said the chairman, as the party
again drew near to the offices. “Anyone else got any suggestions?”

“Yes, I’d like to see the dark cell,” answered the secretary. “I don’t
recall ever visiting it, and that fellow Ellis interested me. He said
it was a pocket edition of Hades. Where is it, warden?”

The warden assumed a jocular air.

“You’ll be disappointed,” he warned. “It’s down in the basement, where
prisoners who want to do so can yell and scream to their hearts’
content without disturbing anyone. A trifle dark, of course, but if to
some it is hell it is because they choose to make it so. If you really
want to see it, come ahead. It’s not occupied, however.”

He did not mention that he had seen to that. With all this uproar
about the management of the prison, it wasn’t safe to take chances.
The commission, he had foreseen, might decide to make a _real_
investigation, and you never could tell in just what condition a man
would be after several hours in “solitary.”




“There you are gentlemen?” he said, with a flourish of the hand when a
“trusty” had switched on the lights in the basement “Not _one_ dark
cell, but half a dozen.”

He stood back as the members of the commission crowded forward and
peered into the dark recesses. Over each doorway a single electric
bulb shone weakly, far too weakly for the rays to penetrate into the
corners. The solid, bolt-studded doors stood open, formidable and
forbidding.

“Any of you want try it?” asked the warden from the background.

“Sure, let Blalock take a whirl at one of them,” suggested the
secretary. “His conscience ought to be clear enough not to trouble
aim. Go on, doctor; try it and let us know how it feels. I’d do it
myself, but I don’t dare risk my conscience.”

Blalock, Standing just inside the doorway of one of the cells, turned
and for a moment surveyed them in silence.

“Your suggestion, of course, was made in jest,” he said. “But,” a
sudden ring came into his voice, “I am going to take you up on it!
No,” as a chorus of exclamations came from the others, “my mind is
quite made up. Warden, I want this as realistic as possible. You will
please provide me with a suit of the regulation convict clothing.”

“Well, of all the blamed fools,” ejaculated the chairman. Then he gave
his shoulders a shrug. “Go on and get a zebra suit, warden. I only
hope this doesn’t get into the papers.”

A “trusty” was dispatched for the striped suit. When it had been
brought Blalock already had removed his outer garments, amid the
bantering of the others. He did not deign to answer them until he had
buttoned about him the prison jacket and jammed upon his head the
little striped cap.

“I guess I’m ready,” he said then. “You gentlemen have seen fit to
ridicule the experiment I am about to make. But I say to you that I am
doing this in ill seriousness. I do not believe that ‘solitary’ is as
bad as Ellis pictured it to us. I am going to find out. Warden, you
will please see that conditions here are made exactly like those which
surround a prisoner in this place.”

He whirled upon his heel and strode into a cell.

“How long do you want to be left in there?” asked the warden. “Fifteen
minutes or so?”

“Ellis declared his belief that I could not stand it for an hour or
two,” came the reply from the depths of the cell. “Suppose that we
make, it two hours. At the end of that time you may return and release
me. But not a minute before.”

“Very well, Number 9982,” replied the warden. “You now an alone with
your conscience.”

The heavy door clanged shut, and a faint click told Blalock that the
light above the door had been wrapped off. Then the sound of
footsteps, growing fainter and fainter, the clang of the door leading
to the basement--then silence. Blalock was alone.

Feeling with his hands, he made his way to a corner of the cell
and sat down upon the bare, hard floor.




He shut his eyes and set about concentrating his mind upon some
subject other than the fact that he was a prisoner, of his own free
will to be sure, but a prisoner nevertheless.

He always had prided himself upon the fact that he had the ability to
drive from his thoughts at will all topics but the one which he
desired. Now, he chose, at random, to begin preparing an outline of a
lecture which he was scheduled to deliver within two weeks before a
convention of medical men.

Back home in his study, Blalock was accustomed to stretching out at
length in an easy chair, his feet upon a stool, a pillow beneath his
head. Here his legs were stretched out upon the floor at right angles
to his body, held bolt upright by the steel wall at his back. He
sought to relieve the strain by keeping his knees in the air, but the
floor offered no firm foothold and his heels slipped.

Irritated, Blalock slid away from the corner and tried lying upon his
back, his eyes staring up into the darkness above him. Immediately
that position, too, grew irksome and he turned over upon first one
side, then the other, and finally he got upon his feet and leaned
against the wall. Thus another fifteen or twenty minutes passed, he
judged. He found that it was impossible to concentrate his thoughts,
so he resolved to let them wander.

Leaning against the wall speedily proved uncomfortable, and Blalock
began to pace around and around the narrow confines of the cell. Four
paces one way, two at right an glee, then four, then two. It reminded
him of a big bear he once had watched in a zoo, striding back and
forth behind the bars, but never very far from the door which shut him
off from the outside world and freedom.

Suddenly Blalock discovered that he had made that circuit so many
times in the darkness that he was turned around, that he did not know
at which end lay the door to the jail. He began to hunt for it,
feeling with his sensitive surgeon’s fingers for the place where the
door fitted into the wall of the cell.

It annoyed him, after making two trips around, that he had failed to
locate the door. He could tell by counting the corners as he came to
them. The door fitted into its casing so well that he could not
distinguish it from the grooves where the plates of the cell were
joined together.

Immediately it became to him the meet important thing in the world to
know where lay that door. He thought of sounding the walls to see if
at some point they would not give back a different sound and thus tell
him what he felt he must know.

It was becoming a mania with him now. So, gently, he began rapping
with his knuckles against the steel, here, there, in one plane, then
in another. Then he tried it all over with his ear, trained to detect,
even without the aid of a stethoscope, the variations in the beating
of a human heart, pressed close against the walls.

But again he was foiled. Every spot gave forth the same hollow sound.

Angered, Blalock kicked viciously against the insensate steel.
Shooting pains in his maltreated toes rewarded him and, with a growl
of anguish, he dropped to the floor to nurse the injured members.

Then he became aware that his hands were stickily saturated, and he
knew, when he discovered that his knuckles were skinned and raw, that
it was his own blood. Desperately he fought to regain his self-control
in an effort to force himself to be bland and unruffled when the
warden should come to release him, as Blalock felt sure would be the
case in only a few minutes at most.

He caught himself listening intently for the footsteps of the warden,
or some “trusty” or guard sent to release him. He strained his ears to
catch the faraway clang which would indicate that someone was coming
into the basement.

But only the hissing sound of his own breath broke the tense silence.
Funny he thought, how very still things could be. It required no very
big stretch of the imagination to picture himself as really a recalcitrant
prisoner, slapped in ‘solitary’ to ponder upon his misdeeds.

Going further, he recalled a story, which he had read long ago, of a
man who found himself to be the only living human being, the others
having been wiped out in the flicker of an eyelash by tome mysterious
force.

Why didn’t the warden come on and let him out of here? Surely the two
hours were up, and he was getting tired of it!

It would never do, however, to be caught in this frame of mind when he
was released. He must emerge smiling and ready to give the lie to that
clever talker, Ellis.

Once more he got up and began his circuit of the walls. He felt that
he was master of himself again, and it would do no harm to try to
solve the puzzle of the door that would not be found. Perhaps the
warden had been delayed by some unexpected happening. Oh, well, a few
minutes longer wouldn’t make any difference. Suppose that he were in
Ellis’ place! In for life! He didn’t want to think of Ellis. But
somehow the face of the “lifer” kept obtruding itself--his face and
his words.

What was it that Ellis had said? “You, for instance, are a physician,
a man of sterling reputation, against whom no one ever breathed a
word. Yet I doubt if you could endure several hours in the dark cell.”

And the warden had added that in the dark cell a man was alone with
his conscience. Damn that warden! Where was he, anyhow? Blalock began
to dislike him. Perhaps there was something in those stones of
brutality which the newspapers had printed, after all.

Dislike for the warden began to give way to hate. Blalock wondered if
the warden and that fat, pompous little Stevenson, chairman of the
commission, hadn’t got their heads together and decided it would be a
good joke to let him stay in there a great deal longer than he had
ordered. He would show them, once he got out, that he didn’t relish
that kind of a joke, that he wasn’t a man to be trifled with.

Thus another hour passed, as he reckoned it, and his anger and passion
got the best of him. He kicked the walls and hammered upon them with
his clenched fists, insensible to the fact that he was injuring himself.

Then came fear--fear that he had been forgotten!

Suppose that there had been an outbreak in the prison, that the
convicts were in control! Would they release him? Might they not wreak
their vengeance upon him in the absence of another victim?




He began to call, moderately at first and pausing often to listen for
some response; then louder and louder, until he was screaming without
cessation.

He cursed and swore, pleaded and cajoled, threatened and sought to
bribe by turns, demanding only that he be taken from this terrible
place. He was dead to the fact that it was impossible for anyone to
hear him, that only the reverberation of his own voice, thunderous in
that narrow place, answered him. Beating down from the ceiling, thrown
up from the floor, cast back into his teeth by the walls, the noise of
his own making overwhelmed him, crushed him.

Stark terror held him in its icy grip now. His thoughts pounded
through his brain like water in a mill race. The perspiration fell
from him in rivulets as he hammered and smashed at the walls. His
brain was afire. He began to realize that what Ellis had said very
easily could be true. Men _did_ go mad in this place! Why, he was
going mad himself--mad from the torture his body was undergoing, mad
from being alone with his own thoughts.

There were more lucid moments when reason desperately sought to assert
itself. Blalock’s cries became less violent and, moaning and sobbing
softly, he began all over again that endless circuit of the cell in
search of the door. Failing he raved again and staggered from wail to
wall or leaped madly toward the ceiling as if, by some miracle, escape
might lie in that direction.

Exhausted at last, he sank to the floor, poignantly conscious that
interminable nights and days were passing over his head and that
thirst and hunger, keen and excruciating, held him in their grasp.

At intervals, strength would come back to him, strength, backed by
indomitable will power that sent him lunging to his feet to renew his
battering at the walls, his frenzied shouts and screeches, in just one
more effort to make himself heard.

His knuckles were broken and bleeding, his lips cracked and swollen;
his voice came out shrilly from his dry and wracked throat, his body
and legs were succumbing to a great weariness that would not be denied.

Came the time at last when his own voice no longer dinned into his
ears, when his legs refused to obey the will that commanded them to
hoist him upon his feet, when he no longer could lift his hands. His
spirit was broken at last, and he gave up the struggle and sank back
upon the floor. And all around him the darkness shut down--the
darkness and the silence.

Then the door was thrown open, and, framed in silhouette against the
light beyond, stood the warden.

“Got enough, doctor?” he called out cheerily. “Your two hours are up...
Why don’t you answer me? Dr. Blalock! What’s wrong, man?”

He peered into the cell in a vain endeavor to force his eyes to
penetrate the darkness. Failing, he fumbled in his clothes for a match
and, with hands that shook, scratched it against the door.

Then his face went white as a sheet, he staggered where he stood and
the match burned down to the flesh of his hands and scorched it. For
in the far corner he had perceived, flat upon its back, a haggard,
bloodstained, white-haired thing that winked and blinked at him with
vacant eyes and muttered and gibbered incoherently.




Reason came back to Blalock one day many weeks later.

He opened his eyes with the light of understanding in them, and they
told him from his surrounding that he was in a hospital. Outside, the
sun was shining brightly, and in a little park, just beyond, birds
were singing and the breeze brought him the sound of children at play.

“Awake at last, are you?” asked the white-capped nurse who came into
the room just then.

“Yes,” said Blalock, in a rasping whisper. He did not know it then,
but the calm, soothing voice he once had boasted was his best asset in
a sick room, was gone forever. The terrific strain to which he had put
his vocal chords in his paroxysms in the dark cell had shattered them.

“You are doing splendidly,” the nurse assured him brightly. “You have
been seriously ill, but you are recovering rapidly now.”

“No,” said Blalock positively, as one who knows. “I shall never get
well. Give me a mirror, please.”

“I don’t believe there is one handy,” she evaded, loath to let him see
the havoc in his face.

But he insisted.

“Please,” he begged. “I am prepared and I do not think I will be
overcome. I will be brave.”

Reluctantly, then, she started to place the silvered glass in his
hand. As he reached out to take it, he stopped, his hand half-way. The
hand he was accustomed to see, with its tapering fingers and well-kept
nails, the hand that so deftly had performed delicate operations, was
gone. Instead was a slim, clawlike thing, with distorted knuckles and
joints.

Blalock finally extended it, took the mirror and, slowly but steadily,
brought it into line with his eyes. He had expected some changes, but
not the sight that greeted him. The black, wavy hair hod given place
to locks of snowy white. His face was drawn and wrinkled, and
lack-luster eyes stared back at him from cavernous sockets. Long he
gated at this apparition, then silently he let the mirror fall upon
the cover and dosed his eyes.

“Don’t take it so hard, doctor,” begged the nurse. “You have been
through a harrowing experience and your face shows it now. But in a
short time--” The lie did not come easily, and her tongue faltered.

“Never mind that,” whispered Blalock. “It doesn’t matter now. Send for
Stevenson, please.”

The chairman of the Prison Commission came without delay. Compelling
himself to conceal the repulsion he felt at sight of the broken man
upon the bed, he bustled in with forced pleasantries.

“Stevenson,” said Blalock when finally the other had taken a chair and
the nurse had withdrawn. “I have something to tell you. That day I
went into the dark cell--”

“Now, now, old man,” soothed Stevenson, laving a restraining hand upon
the others arm. “Don’t let’s talk about that. We abolished it that
very day. Why bring up that awful experience of yours? No one knows
about it but the commission, the warden and your doctor and nurse
here. We all are pledged not to talk about it, and the newspapers
didn’t have a line except that you were taken ill. Let the past take
care of itself, Blalock, old man, and let us talk of other things.”

A flash of the old will power shone in the sick man’s eyes.

“No,” he said firmly. “No, Stevenson, the past cannot take care of
itself. Bend closer, Stevenson, I must tell you something, and it
seems I’m not strong enough yet to talk out loud.

“That day I so boastfully demanded that I be locked up in ‘solitary.’
I thought I knew myself and my will power. I believed that I had such
control over my mind and my body that I could defy any torture man
might devise, without quailing--despite the knowledge that my
conscience was not the lily-white thing I had led others to believe it
was. For, Stevenson, my conscience was black--as black as hell! It
held the knowledge of a great sin on my part, a huge wrong that had
been done another.

“But I had stifled it by my will power until I believed it a thing
that was dead, that could never throw off the bondage to which I had
doomed it, and arise and accuse me. It was to prove that I was
superior to it that I deliberately chose to be locked up with it
where, alone with my thoughts, I could prove myself the master, once
for all.

“For Martin Ellis had shaken my confidence. Where before I had been
certain I was doubtful, I wanted to prove him a liar and at the some
time satisfy myself that I was a free man and not the galley slave of
that thing which we call a guilty conscience.

“In that cell, that conscience which I believed I had killed rose up
to show me it had been but sleeping. Under other conditions it might
have slept on indefinitely. In there it overwhelmed me with a sense of
its power and made me feel that I was about to meet my God without
even so much as a veil behind which to hide my guilty thoughts. No
matter which way I turned I saw an accusing finger pointing at me out
of the darkness and the solitude was shattered by a voice which cried
out that those who sin must pay and pay and pay until the slate is
wiped dean. And I had sinned, but I had not paid.

“Conscience is a terrible thing once it is aroused, Stevenson. It is
living, vibrant, and it lashes and scourges until it has exacted its
toll. That was what it did to me there in the darkness, alone and at
its mercy, and with no chance to escape. And in my agony and fear I
cursed the God who had created me and saddled me with this thing. I
learned my lesson, though, before I was through. I who had presumed to
place my own puny will above the Great Eternal Will; I who had dared
to believe that the great order of things, the plan by which we all
must live and die, must make an exception of me, learned that I was
wrong.

_“Martin Ellis is innocent,_ Stevenson, and I trust to you to see that
justice is done. He did not kill Agnes Keller and I knew it. And I
stood by and let him be convicted. More, I took the stand against him
and helped to make that conviction certain. I told only the truth in
my testimony, but I did not tell all I knew and what I omitted would
have saved Ellis. I did not want to testify at all, but the
prosecution refused to let me take advantage of the confidential
relation which is supposed to exist between physician and patient.

“The state was right in the theory that the man who strangled Agnes
teller did so because he was responsible for her condition and did not
wish to marry her. She came to me in my study or, the night she met
her death and told me she had discovered she was about to become a
mother.

She refused to take any steps I suggested and she said that her child,
when, it was born, must have the legal right to bear the name of its
father. And that very night she was lured into an automobile with the
promise that the man who was to blame would take her to a nearby town
and make her his wife. But on that lonely country road he turned upon
her and killed her with his bare hands.

And how do I know these things? Because, Stevenson, I was the man
responsible for her condition, _and it was I who killed her!”_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Closing Hand

A Powerful Short Story

By Farnsworth Wright




Solitary and forbidding, the house stared specterlike through scraggly
trees that seemed to shrink from its touch.

The green moss of decay lay on its dank roofs, and the windows, set in
deep cavities, peered blindly at the world as if through eyeless
sockets. So forbidding was its aspect that boys, on approaching its
cheerless gables, stopped their whistling and passed on the opposite
side of the street.

Across the fields, a few huddled cottages gazed through the falling
rain, as if wondering what family could be so bold as to take up its
abode within the gloomy walls of that old mansion, whose carpetless
floors for two years had not felt the tread of human feet.

In an attic room of the house two sisters lay in bed, but not asleep.
The younger sister cringed under the dread inspired by the bleak
place. The elder laughed at her childish fears, but the younger felt
the spell of the old building and was afraid.

“I suppose there is really nothing to frighten me in this dreary old
house,” she admitted, without conviction in her voice, “but the very
feel of the place is horrible. Mother shouldn’t have left us alone in
this gruesome place.”

“Stupid,” her sister scolded, “with all the silverware downstairs,
somebody has to be here, for fear of burglars.”

“Oh, don’t talk about burglars!” pleaded the younger girl. “I am
afraid. I keep imagining I near ghostly footsteps.”

Her sister laughed.

“Go to sleep, Goosie,” she said. “‘Haunted’ houses are nothing but
superstition. They exist only in imagination.”

“Why has nobody lived here for two years, then? They tell me that for
five years every family moved out after being here just a short time.
The whole atmosphere of the house is ghastly. And I can’t forget how
the older Berkheim girl was found stabbed to death in her bed, and
nobody ever knew how it happened. Why, she may have been murdered in
this very room!”

“Go to sleep and don’t scare yourself with such silly talk. Mother
will be with us tomorrow night, and Dad will be back next day. Now go
to sleep.”

The elder sister soon dropped into slumber, but the younger lay
open-eyed, staring into the black room and shuddering at every stifled
scream of the wind or distant growl of thunder. She began to count,
hoping to hypnotize herself into drowsiness, but at every slight noise
she started, and lost her count.

Suddenly she turned and shook her sister by the shoulder.

“Edith, somebody is prowling around downstairs!” she whispered.
“Listen! Oh, what shall we do?”

The elder sister struck a match and lit the candle. Then she slipped
on her dressing-gown, and drew on her slippers.

“You’re not going down there? Edith, tell me you’re not going
downstairs! It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don’t--”
Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the
bed with blanched face and wide, terrified eyes.

“There is something moving around downstairs, and I’m going to find
out what it is,” she said.

Taking the candle, she left the room. Her younger sister lay in the
darkness, listening to the pattering of rain on the roof and straining
her ears to catch the slightest sound. The noise downstairs ceased,
but the wind rose and the rain beat upon the roof in sudden furious
blasts that mode her heart jump wildly.

Ten minutes passed--twenty minutes--and Edith had not returned.

A door slammed, and the younger lister thought she heard something
moving again, but the wind began to sob and drowned out all other
noises. Between gusts, she heard the portentous sound, and each time
it seemed nearer.

Then--she started as she realized that something was coming up the
stairs. Once she thought she heard a cry, to which the wind joined its
plaintive voice in a weird duet.

Nearer and nearer the strange noise came. It mounted the stairs, step
by step, heard only when the wind and rain softened their voices. It
passed the first landing, and moved slowly up the second flight, while
the girl fearfully awaited its coming.

The wind howled until the house quaked; it shrilled past the eaves and
fled across the fields like a hunted ghost.

And now the girl’s pounding pulses drowned out the screaming of the
wind, for the presence had _invaded her bedroom!_

She cowered under the covers, a cold perspiration chilling her body
until her teeth chattered. Her imagination conjured up frightful
things--a disembodied spirit come to destroy her--a corpse from the
grave, gibbering in terror because it could not tear the cerements
from its face--the murdered Berkheim girl, with the knife still
sheathed in her heart--or some escaped beast, licking its lips in
greedy anticipation of the feast her tremulous body would provide. Or
was it a murderer, who, having killed her sister, was now bent on
completing his bloody work?

A flash of lightning split the sky, and the thunder bellowed its
terrifying warning. The girl threw back the bedclothes and shrank to
the wall, her eyes starting from their sockets, fearful lest another
flash reveal some sight too ghastly to contemplate.

Slowly the being dragged itself across the floor, lifted itself onto
the bed, and uttered a choking sound of agony.

The girl sat petrified. Then, timorously, she extended a shaky hand,
but quickly withdrew it in dread of some hideous contact.

Again she thrust her trembling hand into the gloom, farther, farther,
until it touched something shaggy and wet.

A clammy hand closed over hers, and she started to her feet, with a
horrified scream.

The icy hand tightened with a sickening tremor, and dragged her down.
Then her tortured senses gave way, and she fell back unconscious upon
the bed. . . . .




When she awoke, it was day. Beside her, on the bed, lay the bleeding
body of her sister, Edith, stabbed in the breast by the burglar she
had tried to frighten away.

The younger girl was clutching the clotted wisps of hair that had
fallen across the breast of her sister, whose cold hand had closed
over hers in the last convulsive shudder of death.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Farnsworth Wright Has Written Another Story For

WEIRD TALES

“The Snake Fiend”

It Will Appear In The

April Issue




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Howard Ellis Davis Relates

Some Extraordinary Adventures With

The Unknown Beast




At the edge of the little settlement of Bayou le Tor lapped the black
waters from which the village had been named. A mile to the south,
they lost themselves in the Mississippi Sound. Northward, they wound
among somber swamps, to disappear at last into the marshes above.

Giant cypress trees crowded down to the very edge of the settlement,
as if jealous of the small space of cleared land it occupied beside
the bayou, and to one not accustomed to the place it seemed that an
evil boding lurked forever within the depths of those overhanging,
gloomy swamps.

But until the unknown Beast first made its mysterious presence felt,
no harm for the people of Bayou le Tor ever had come out of those
swamps, except the deadly malaria, which clutched its victims in
shaking agues and burning fevers that consumed life as a woods fire
might consume a strip of dried sedge grass.

Before this strange death that had come to haunt the night swamps,
they shrank in helpless terror. Cows were driven in from their
pastures while the sun was yet high. Mothers called in their
sallow-faced children from play as soon as the shadows began to lengthen.

The first victim had been Swan Davis, an old fisherman who lived by
himself on the edge of the bayou above the settlement. He had been
found in the swamp, dead. At first it was thought that he had been
beaten to death, he was so broken about the body.

Finally, however, it was decided he had been crushed by some
mysterious, unknown forte. Something had caught him and squeezed him
until his bones had cracked like dry reeds.

Then the three Buntly boys, driving in a bunch of steers from the
marshes, were overtaken by night on the swamp road. The cattle had
been going peacefully enough, when suddenly they had become frightened
and lumbered off ahead, bellowing madly. Themselves frightened at the
queer behavior of the animals, the boys followed, as fast as they
could on foot.

That is, two of them did; for when Jard and Peter Buntly emerged from
the shadows of the swamp road, they found that their brother, Sims,
was not with them.

Terror-stricken though they were, they had returned into the swamp,
calling his name. When they saw nothing of him, and he did not answer
their calls, they went quickly home and reported what had happened.
All night long, bearing flaming torches, the men of the settlement
beat up and down the swamp. Toward morning, they found the young man’s
body, bruised and broken, but no trace of what had killed him.

When the people of Bayou le Tor gathered to discuss the circumstances
surrounding these two mysterious deaths, the negroes, and some others,
declared that an evil spirit haunted the gloomy fastness to the north
of the settlement, while the mare conservative agreed that some
creature strange to those parts, some unknown beast, was ranging the
night swamps, a creature that killed for the love of killing.

Armed with shotgun and rifle, they hunted him. They set bear-traps,
baited with an entire quarter of beef hung above. But no one ventured
into the swamps after dark, until one night, ten of the best men in
the settlement formed a party and rode out on horseback through the
swamp road.

Armed with pistol and sheath-knife, they rode, two by two, knee to
knee, their horses following each other nose to tail, so that if any
one of the party were attacked they all could turn and fight in a body.

Nothing happened until they were on their way back; then Walter
Brandon--who, because he was one of their bravest, brought up the
rear--grew careless and lagged behind. Suddenly, his horse came
charging in among the others, riderless.

They could find no trace of Walter, and the other nine could only ride
in and break the news to his young wife, who carried a baby at her breast.

The next day, the girl’s father, old Arner Horn, secured the services
of a small, battered automobile and crossed two counties to see Ed
Hardin and beg that he come and deliver them from this unknown beast
that, one by one, was killing the men-folk of Bayou le Tor.




In his own county Ed Hardin was a deputy sheriff, and the reputation
of his prowess had traveled far. Each summer, when the fishing was
best on the Sound, he came to Bayou le Tor. Each winter, he came to
hunt wild turkeys in the swamps that surrounded the settlement. The
people had grown to know him well, and they knew that he feared
neither man, beast, nor the devil.

He returned in the automobile with Arner, bringing with him his young
friend, Alex Rowe. When they reached Bayou le Tor, the news awaited
them that Walter’s body, which bore on it the same marks as those
others who had been killed, had been found floating on the waters of
the bayou, and that it was being held at the water’s edge so that Ed
Hardin might see for himself the nature of death which this creature
inflicted upon its victims.

After he had seen, Ed Hardin came away alone, grim-mouthed. When he
entered Arner’s yard, it already was growing dark, the night breeze
rustling in the liveoaks overhead. He went to the barn and saddled
Arner’s bay mare. Having led her to the front fence, he tied her there
and went into the house.

In the hallway, which divided the house through the middle, he paused
as he heard in the room beside him the low sobbing of a woman. Then he
passed on to the room that had been assigned to him and Alex Rowe. A
small kerosene lamp had been lighted and set upon the dresser, and in
the light of this he was buckling on a belt holding a broad
hunting-knife and a pistol when Alex burst in upon him.

“Ed Hardin,” cried the young man, “what is that mare doin’ at the
front fence? Where be you goin’?”

“I’m goin’ ter hunt that beast, Alex.”

“Yer ain’t goin’ ter do that thing, Ed! Yer don’t know what hit is. How--”

“I’m goin’. Alex.”

“But Ed, hit’s _night._ Wait till daylight. The last two times folks
went out on the swamp road at night they was ‘er man killed.”

Broad-shouldered, sparely-made, the big deputy drew himself up to his
full height and turned to gaze for a moment at his young friend.

“I’m goin’ now,” he said calmly.

“But Ed, you heerd what they said ‘bout the schooner up in the bayou.
Hit’s been layin’ there fer two weeks, ‘thout dealin’s with nobody.
You heerd what Rensie Bucker, the ole nigger what uster be er sailor,
said. He said he paddled up in his dugout by that schooner an’ them
folks on board is India folks. He says that in their lan’ they’s
strange beasts an’ reptiles, an’ that mebbe they’ve sot one of ‘em
loose in the swamp, mebbe put hit ter watch the swamp road.”

“Ef hit’s been sot ter watch the swamp road at night,” said Ed,
“that’s jes wher I want ter go. I want ter meet it.”

“Wait, Ed. Wait till I git holt of er hoss. I’m goin’ with yer.”

A soft smile played for a moment about Ed Hardin’s grim mouth.

“No, Alex,” he said: “I reckon I’ll go by myse’f.”

As he was untying the mare, those who had returned to the house
gathered about him and, as Alex had done, tried to prevent his going
off alone into the swamp at night.

But he swung lightly to the saddle and galloped out through the
settlement, into the shadows of the giant cypress trees.




The mare was a spirited and nervous animal, and she leaped and shied
as she danced among the stagnant pools that lay black in the swamp road.

In thus going out deliberately to use himself as a bait for the
Unknown Beast, Ed felt that he could depend largely upon her agility
and quickness to prevent being taken unawares by a sudden rush from
the darkness. He drew from his holster his heavy Colt’s revolver and
thrust it through his belt in front, within convenient reach.

So dark was the black tunnel of the road that he could see no space in
front of him, and he let the reins lie slack on the mare’s neck, so
that she might be undisturbed in picking her footing. And as he
plunged deeper into the swamp, he experienced a lonely boding that was
new to him.

Time and again, he had gone fearlessly out alone in the pursuit and
capture of desperate men. Now, however, he did not know what nature of
creature it was he sought, and he had to invite an attack from the
darkness in order to get in touch with it.

The night was murky, almost sticky in its heaviness and the swamp
seemed strangely silent. Only the occasional call of some night bird
pierced the stillness. He was familiar with the road, having traveled
it frequently, and the places where violence had occurred had been
described to him in detail.

A few hundred yards to the left of the road, where he now was riding,
the fisherman had met his death. He passed the place where Brandon
last had been seen, and, soon after, entered the deeper recess of the
swamp where the herder had been snatched into the darkness of death.
Plainly, this neighborhood of violence was the creature’s
lurking-place.

Suddenly, the mare shied, snorted, and stood quivering, her head
turned as though she saw or smelled something at the side of the rood.
He raised his pistol, which he now held ready cocked in his hand, and
fired quickly into the darkness. As he had only one hand on the reins,
it was some moments after the report before he could calm the startled
animal sufficiently to proceed on his way.

Twice more, at indications of terror from his horse, guided by her
forward-pointed ears, Ed Hardin fired into the black shadows at the
side of the road, the discharges making lurid flashes in the darkness.

The Unknown Beast evidently was near, following him through the
brush--or over the treetops. If it were on the ground, he hoped for
the slender chance of killing or wounding it before it had an
opportunity to attack.

After each shot, as well as he could for the plunging of the mare, he
listened intently for some cry of pain, some movement of the bushes;
but the silence of the shadows was unbroken. The strain was
nervewracking, and he had a wild desire to whirl the more about and
speed away in mad flight. He could not urge her but of a slow,
hesitating walk, and she frequently shied from one side of the road to
the other, with those periodic halts of trembling fear.

Then the road ran from beneath the arches of the swamp and passed over
a corduroy crossing, bordered on each side by a dense growth of titi.
The mare went more quietly now, and Ed began to hope that some of his
shots had taken effect. He breathed more freely, now that the branches
no longer drooped overhead.

Presently, however, he found himself beneath spreading liveoaks.
These, flanking the road on either side, sent their giant limbs
horizontally across. He peered from side to side, his eyes straining
to penetrate the gloom, each indistinct tree trunk assuming a sinister
outline.

Overhead, the trees towered in cavernous depths, and suddenly, with a
swish of leaves and branches, out of them dropped a great, dark object!




The frightened mare leaped forward; but the nameless creature alighted
behind the saddle.

Hardin snatched out his pistol, only to find that he was unable to use
it. For he had been caught in a giant embrace that pinioned his arms
to his sides, an embrace against which his own great strength was
powerless.

The mare ran desperately, her supple body close to the ground, her
graceful neck outstretched. Out from the swamp she sped, crossing a
reach of flat country, once heavily covered with pines. The timber
long since had been cut, only the stumps remaining, charred by forest
fires--hordes of black ghosts crowding down to the edge of the road on
both sides.

It was a wild ride for the man, with death perched there behind. The
great arms, wound about him, were slowly squeezing the breath from his
body, and beneath that embrace he felt his ribs bend inward to the
point of cracking. Desperately, he maintained his grip on the saddle
with his knees.

Then, just before consciousness would have left him, he raised his
legs and flung himself sideways. The saddle slipped under the mare’s
belly. Carried by the momentum, but with that crushing grip never
relaxing, the man and the terrible creature which held him hurtled
through the air.

They struck with a _thud_ against a shattered stump at the side of the
road, while the frightened mare sped on. The murderous creature was
next the stump and at the impact its hold on Ed Hardin loosened.
Having slipped from the great arms, Ed flung himself over and rolled
for several feet to one side.

The pistol long since had dropped from his nerveless fingers; but he
now quickly drew his hunting-knife. Expecting an immediate attack with
fang and claw, he lay on his back, his feet drawn up, very much in the
position a cat assumes when defending itself. He knew it would be
useless to pit his strength against that of the enormous creature, and
the best he could hope for was to ward off on attack with his feet,
and watch for an opportunity to reach and drive home the knife.

And suddenly it was looming there above him. For an instant it seemed
to hesitate, then it backed slowly away. With a quick, halting motion,
walking upright like a man, it began to circle about him. Its long
arms swung below its knees. A round head was set on a neck so thick
and short that it seemed to spring from the shoulders themselves. As
it circled about him, Ed turned also, keeping his feet always
presented.

Again the creature backed off, up the road. Then it turned and walked
slowly away.

For a moment Ed Hardin lay watching it, unwilling to change his
position. Then, tentatively, he raised himself to a sitting position.

Suddenly, as if, without looking, the creature divined his movement,
it turned about, at a distance of perhaps fifty feet.

And then, with a strangely human shriek of rage, it rushed toward him.




And it came through the gloom, this maddened creature, with its
uncouth, hopping run, swinging its long arms from side to side.

The man dropped back into his former position, feet raised, arm held
ready to strike with the knife.

Before it reached him, it dropped forward, without in the least
pausing, and, propelled by both arms and legs, shot in a great,
froglike leap through the air.

The shock, as it landed upon him, drove Ed Hardin’s knees back against
his chest. His right arm, held ready to strike with the knife, was
pinned and twisted painfully.

The knife slipped from his hand. A long arm shot forward and
talon-like fingers clutched his hair. With his legs doubled back as
they were, once more he was seized in that giant embrace, and he felt
that his knees were being pressed into his chest until it soon must
crush in like a shattered eggshell.

Then consciousness left him.

. . . When his senses slowly returned, he became aware of lights
flashing and horses stamping, and the sound of men’s voices.

Jonas Keil was speaking, and Ed had the rare experience of hearing
himself discussed after he was thought to be dead.

“--’Most on my bended knees ter git ‘im not ter do it. But he said he
wouldn’t feel right ter let Death run loose unhindered, long as he was
livin’ an’ with strength ter fight. An’ when he rid out single-handed
an’ alone, the bravest man what ever drawed breath was kilt.”

From his position, he judged that he had been placed on the grass at
the side of the road. Near him was someone who, from an occasional
quivering intake of breath, seemed to have been sobbing.

He tried to turn and see who it was, and he found that he could not so
much as twitch a finger.

He heard three new arrivals come up the road, a man on horseback and
two runners, the two evidently holding by the rider’s stirrup
leathers. The rider, as soon as he drew up, said:

“We come soon’s we heerd you-all was gone ter foller Ed. Arn’s
bringin’ the waggin. Hit’ll be here terreckly; we passed hit er piece
back. But Arn didn’ git the straights from Cy when he come atter the
waggin what hit was kilt Ed. Po’ ole Ed!”

Old Rensie Bucker, the negro who once had been a sailor, speaking with
the _patois_ of foreign birth, replied to him:

“Hit ees Jonas, de chile-minded neegar who was shanghaed from his
mammy’s shack down on de point ten year back. He had de mind of er
chile an’ de strength ob five men, wid his beeg wide shoulders an’
short neck; wid de hump on his back an’ his arms hangin’ mos’ ter his
ankles. He was gentle in dem days; but de East Indee folks tuck heem
off an’ dey brought heem back er beast. He’s frum de schooner, by his
clothes, an’ dey must have sot heem on de swamp road at night ter
watch an’ keel.

“Dere he lies, dead. De stump ‘gin which he struck when he pull
Meester Ed Hardin frum his hoss had er sliver which stuck mos’ through
heem. Den when he fit wid Meester Ed de hurt must have killed heem,
because there is no other wound.”

The man beside Ed Hardin spoke, and Ed recognized him.

“Alex,” he said huskily.

There was a cry of amazement. Alex called for a light. Someone else,
evidently startled by the voice coming from what all had thought to be
a dead man, started to run, kicked over a lantern, and was cursed
roundly by the others, who were crowding up.

When the wagon arrived, he was so far recovered that, with the
assistance of the others, he was able to clamber painfully in and sink
to the blankets on the bottom, every joint in his body aching.

The two Buntlys had called the younger men to one side and they were
whispering excitedly together. Presently the riding-horses all were
tied at the side of the road, and when the wagon creaked its way
homeward, Ed was accompanied only by Alex, who had refused to leave
him, and by old Arner. Rensie had gone with the others.

Two days later, he was able to creep out to the front porch of Arner’s
little home and sit in the cool of a breeze that swept up from the
bayou. After a space of silence, he asked:

“Arn, what’d them fellers do the yuther night? I can’t git er peep
outen ‘em.”

“They foun’ right smart of stuff in boxes, what Rensie said was some
sorter dope, bein’ unloaded from the schooner. But they th’owed hit in
the water.”

“I ain’t intrusted in no dope, Arn. I say what’d they do?”

“The leader of the gang confessed, after he’d been questioned by
Rensie, an’ when he saw the jig was up, anyhow. They had sot Jonas ter
keep folks skeerd on the swamp road at night, by killin’ whosomever
come there. They was goin’ ter git er truck an’ haul that stuff off
somewheres.”

“Well, what’d the boys do?” Reflectively, Arner stroked his short,
heavy beard. He spat into the yard. Then he turned to the deputy:

“Ed,” he said slowly, “yo’ comin’ down here, an’, single-handed an’
alone, huntin’ out the critter what was killin’ us off will be
remembered an’ talked about in generations ter come--when these here
swamps is cleared off an’ drained an’ producin’ corn an’ taters. But
sich er little matter as er schooner lyin’ at the bottom of the bayou
gatherin’ barnacles is soon forgot, an’ let’s you an’ me fergit that
part of hit, too.”




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Basket

An Odd Little Tale

By Herbert J. Mangham




Mrs. Buhler told him at first that she had no vacancies, but as he
started away she thought of the little room in the basement.

He turned back at her call.

“I have got a room, too,” she said, “but it’s a very small one and in
the basement. I can make you a reasonable price, though, if you’d care
to look at it.”

The room was a problem. She always hesitated to show it to people,
because often they seemed insulted at her suggestion that they would
be satisfied with such humble surroundings. If she gave it to the
first applicant, he would likely be a disreputable character who might
detract from the respectability of her house, and she would have to
face the embarrassment of getting rid of him. So she was content for
weeks at a time to do without the pittance the room brought her.

“How much is it?” asked the man. “Seven dollars a month.”

“Let me see it.”

She called her husband to take her place at the desk, picked up a
bunch of keys and led the way to the rear of the basement. The room
was a narrow cell, whose one window was slightly below the level of a
tiny, bare back yard, closed in by a board fence.

A tottering oak dresser was pushed up close to the window, and a small
square table, holding a pitcher and washbowl, was standing beside it.
An iron single-bed against the opposite wall left barely enough space
for one straight-backed chair and a narrow path from the door to the
window. A curtain, hanging across one corner, and a couple of hooks in
the wall provided a substitute for a closet.

“You can have the use of the bathroom on the first floor,” said Mrs.
Buhler. “There is no steam heat in the basement, but I will give you
an oil stove to use if you want it. The oil won’t cost you very much.
Of course, it never gets real cold in San Francisco, but when the fogs
come in off the bay you ought to have something to take the chill off
the room.”

“I’ll take it.”

The man pulled out a small roll of money and counted off seven
one-dollar bills.

“You must be from the East,” remarked Mrs. Buhler, smiling at the
paper money.

“Yes.”

Mrs. Buhler, looking at his pale hair and eyes and wan mustache, never
thought of asking for references. He seemed as incapable of mischief
as a retired fire horse, munching his grass and dreaming of past
adventures.

He told her that his name was Dave Scannon.

And that was all the information he ever volunteered to anybody in the
rooming-house.




An hour later he moved in. By carrying in one suitcase and
transferring its contents to the dresser drawers he was installed.

The other roomers scarcely noticed his advent. He always walked
straight across the little lobby without looking directly at anyone,
never stopping except to pay his rent, which he did promptly on the
fifth of every month.

He did not leave his key at the desk when he went out, as was the
custom of the house, but carried it in his pocket. The chambermaid
never touched his room. At his request she gave him a broom, and every
Sunday morning she left towels, sheets and a pillowcase hanging on his
doorknob. When she returned, she would find his soiled towels and
linen lying in a neat pile beside his door.

Impelled by curiosity, Mrs. Buhler once entered the room with her
master key. There was not so much as a hair to mar the bare tidiness.
A comb and brush on the dresser and a pile of newspapers were the only
visible evidences of occupancy. The oil stove was gathering dust in
the corner: it had never been used. She carried it out with her: it
would be just the thing for that old lady in the north room who always
complained of the cold in the afternoons, when the rest of the hotel
was not uncomfortable enough to justify turning an the steam.

The old lady was sitting in the lobby one afternoon when he came home
from work.

“Is that your basement roomer?” she asked.

She watched him until he disappeared at the end of the hall.

“Oh. I couldn’t think where I’d seen him. But I remember now--he’s a
sort of porter and general helper at that large bakery on lower Market
Street.”

“I really didn’t know where he worked,” admitted Mrs. Buhler. “I had
thought of asking him several times, out he’s an awfully hard man to
carry on a conversation with.”

He had been at the rooming-house four months when he received his
first letter. Its envelope proclaimed it a hay-fever cure advertisement.

As he was not in the habit of leaving his key at the desk, the letter
remained in his box for three days. Finally Mr. Buhler handed it to
him as he was passing the desk on the way to his room.

He paused to read the inscription.

“You never receive any mail,” remarked Mr. Buhler. “Haven’t you any
family?”

“No.”

“Where is your home?”

“Catawissa, Pennsylvania.”

“That’s a funny name. How do you spell it?”

Scannon spelled it, and went on down the hall.

“C-a-t-a-w-i-double-s-a” repeated Mr. Buhler to his wife. “Ain’t that
a funny name?”




In his room, Scannon removed the advertisement from its envelope and
read it soberly from beginning to end.

Finished, he folded it and placed it on his pile of newspapers. Then
he brushed his hair and went out again.

He ate supper at one of the little lunch counters near the Civic
Center. The rest of the evening he spent in the newspaper room at the
public library. He picked up eastern and western papers with impartial
interest, reading the whole of each page, religiously and without a
change of expression, until the closing bell sounded.

He never ascended to the reference, circulation or magazine rooms.
Sometimes he would take the local papers home with him and read
stretched out on his bed, not seeming to notice that his hands were
blue with the penetrating chill that nightly drifts in from the ocean.

On Sundays he would put on a red-striped silk shirt and a blue serge
suit and take a car to Golden Gate Park. There he would sit for hours
in the sun, impassively watching the hundreds of picnic parties, the
squirrels, or a piece of paper retreating before the breeze. Or
perhaps he would walk west to the ocean, stopping for a few minutes at
each of the animal pens, and take a car home from the Cliff House.

For two years the days came and passed on in monotonous reduplication,
the casual hay-fever cure circulars supplying the only touches of novelty.

Then one afternoon as he was brushing his hair, he gasped and put his
hand to his throat. A sharp nausea pitched him to the floor.

Inch by inch, he dragged himself to the little table and upset it,
crashing the bowl and pitcher into a dozen pieces.

His energy was spent in the effort, and he lay inert.




Mrs. Buhler consented to accompany her friend to the spiritualist’s
only after repeated urging, and she repented her decision as soon as
she arrived there.

The fusty parlor was a north room to which the sun never penetrated,
and in consequence was cold and damp. The medium, a fat, untidy woman
whose movements were murmurous with the rustle of silk and the tinkle
of tawdry ornaments, sat facing her with one hand pressed to forehead,
and delivered mysteriously-acquired information about relatives and
friends.

“Who is Dave?” she asked finally.

Mrs. Buhler hastily recalled all of her husband’s and her own living
relatives.

“I don’t know any Dave,” she said.

“Yes, yes, you know him,” insisted the medium. “He’s in the spirit
land now. There’s death right at your very door!”

She put her hand to her throat and coughed in gruesome simulation of
internal strangulation.

“But I don’t know any Dave,” reiterated Mrs. Buhler.

She regained the street with a feeling of vast relief.

“I’ll never go to one of those places again!” she asserted, as she
said good-by to her friend. “It’s too creepy!”

A great fog bank was rolling in majestically from the west blotting
out the sun and dripping a fine drizzle on the pavements. Drawing her
coat collar closer about her neck, Mrs. Buhler plunged into the
enveloping dampness and started to climb the long hill that led to her
rooming-house.

Her husband’s distended eyes and pale face warned her of bad news.

“Dave Scannon’s dead!” he whispered hoarsely.

_Dave Scannon!_ So that was “Dave!”

“He’s been dead two or three days,” continued Mr. Buhler. “I was
beating a rug in the back yard a while ago when I noticed a swarm of
big blue flies buzzing about his window. It flashed over me right away
that I hadn’t seen him for several days. I couldn’t unlock his door,
because his key was on the inside, so I called the coroner and a
policeman, and we broke it in. He was lying between the bed and the
dresser, and the bowl and pitcher lay broken on the floor, where he
had knocked it over when he fell. They’re taking him out now.”

Mrs. Buhler hurried to the back stairway and descended to the lower
hall. Two men were carrying a long wicker basket up the little flight
of steps between the back entrance and the yard. She remained
straining over the banister until the basket had disappeared.

The coroner had found nothing in his room but clothing, about five
dollars in change, and a faded picture in a tarnished silver frame of
an anemic looking woman who might have been a mother, wife or sister.

Mrs. Buhler answered his questions nervously. Yes, the dead man had
been with them about two years. They knew little of him, for he was
very peculiar and never talked, and wouldn’t even allow the maid to
come in and clean up his room. He had said though that he had no
family and that his home was in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. She
remembered the town because it had such an odd name.

The coroner wrote to authorities in Catawissa, who replied that they
could find no traces of anyone by the name of Scannon. No more mail
ever came for the man except the occasional hay-fever cure circulars.

The manager of the bakery telephoned to ask if the death notice in the
paper referred to the same Dave Scannon who had been working for him.
He knew nothing of the man except that he had been very punctual in
his duties until that final day when he did not appear.




Several weeks later, little Mrs. Varnes, who occupied a room at the
rear of the second floor, stopped at the desk to leave her key. She
hovered there for a few minutes of indecision, then impulsively leaned
forward.

“Mrs. Buhler, I just want to ask you something,” she said, lowering
her voice. “One afternoon several weeks ago I saw some men carrying a
long basket out of the back door, and I’ve been wondering what it was.”

“Probably laundry,” hazarded. Mrs. Buhler.

“No, it was one of those long baskets such as the undertakers use to
carry the dead in. I’ve often thought about it, but I couldn’t figure
out who could have died in this house, so I decided I would ask you. I
told my husband about it, and he said I was dreaming.”

“You must have been,” said Mrs. Buhler.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Accusing Voice

A Strange Tale

By Meredith Davis




“We, the jury, find the defendant, Richard Bland, guilty of murder in
the first degree, in manner and form as charged.

Allen Defoe, foreman of the twelve men, listened with impassive face
as the judge read away the life of the prisoner in the dock--the man
whose death warrant Defoe had signed only a few minutes before. As the
judge finished, Defoe glanced warily toward the prisoner. Somehow, he
preferred to avoid catching his eye.

Bland, a slight, rather uninteresting type of man, stood with bowed
head; Defoe now turned his gaze full upon him.

“Has the prisoner anything to say why judgment should not be pronounced?”

The judge’s voice, coming after the short pause, sent a strange chill
into the heart of Allen Defoe, juror. He hoped the prisoner’s counsel
would make the customary motions for a new trial or for time in which
to file an appeal. He did neither: evidently Bland believed the
verdict inescapable--or else he was out of funds.

Now the judge arose in his place, donning with nervous gesture the
black cap that accompanies the most tragic moment in the performance
of a court’s duties. The judge seemed ill at ease in the cap. It was
the first time he had worn it. The grotesque thought flitted through
Defoe’s mind that perhaps the judge had borrowed the cap from one of
his fellow jurists for the occasion.

The almost level rays of the western sun diffused a sombre, aureate
glow athwart the judge’s bench, so that the dark figure of the
standing man was in mystic indistinctness beyond the shaft of light
from the window. A fly now and then craved the spotlight for a moment
and lazily floated from the growing dusk of the room to the avenue of
ebbing day, streaming in from the west. And always there was a
constant turmoil of dust particles, visible only when they moved into
the bright relief of the sun-shaft.

The handful of spectators stirred restlessly while the judge was
making his preparations. The droning noises of approaching summer
evening in a rural county-seat were smothered by the buzz of
ill-hushed voices. Perhaps that was why the judge, in the midst of
adjusting his headgear, rapped sharply thrice with his gavel--or, it
may have been only his excess of nervousness.

Defoe thought the judge never would stop fumbling with his cap. And
finally the judge lost track of the jury’s verdict and had to mess
through the scattered papers before him until he found it. He didn’t
really require it to pronounce sentence of death upon the man in the
dock. Hunting it, though, delayed the inevitable a few seconds; and
Defoe wondered, since he himself was near to screaming out with
impatience, how the prisoner could stand it without going suddenly mad.

“For God’s sake, read the death sentence!” exclaimed Defoe under his
breath, but loud enough to arouse a nod of approval from the two
jurors nearest him.

A moment later the judge found his voice:

“The prisoner will face the court.”

Slowly, deliberately, the prisoner stepped forward in the dock,
leaning slightly against the railing and letting one hand rest upon
it. He looked squarely at the judge now, although he barely could
distinguish his features in the dimness.

Again the judge spoke, and this time his voice was hurried and strained:

“The sentence of the court is that the prisoner be taken, between the
hours of seven a.m. and six p.m. on Tuesday, in the week beginning
October 22 next, from the place of confinement to the place of execution,
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead--dead--dead!
. . . And may God, in His infinite wisdom, have mercy on your soul!”

The judge sank back heavily into the safety of his chair. His hand
swept up to brush his forehead and with the same motion it whisked off
the detestable little black cap.

The prisoner remained staring at the judge as one who is puzzled at a
strange sight. Perhaps he would have stood there untold minutes if a
woman’s hysterical laugh, half-choked by a sudden upraised hand, had
not broken the tension of the entire room. A bailiff tiptoed to the
woman, and, as if revived to duty by the same cause, a prison guard
strode forward to lead the condemned man away.

Defoe could have reached out and touched Bland as he passed the jury
on his way to the cell across the street. But Defoe had no desire even
to look at Bland: indeed, he did not, until Bland’s back was passing
out of sight through me door on the other side of the jury box.
Mechanically, then, Defoe filed out with the other jurors as the judge
announced adjournment.

And the black cap lay forgotten on the rim of the judge’s wastebasket,
where the janitor found it that evening and crossed himself fervently
as he timidly salvaged it from ignoble oblivion.




II.

Defoe awoke with a shudder.

There was a moment or two, as is always the case when one arouses from
heavy, dream-burdened slumber, during which Defoe could not tell where
his dream ended and realities began. He blinked experimentally into
the smouldering fire in the open grate before him; yes, he was
conscious. For further verification of this he drew forth his watch
and noted the hour. The glow from the fire was scarcely sufficient for
reading the dial and Defoe leaned forward the better to see. He was
still too drowsy even to reach around and turn on the electric lamp on
the table behind him.

Still he was not certain whether he was yet dreaming, until--

“Don’t budge, Defoe! I’ve got you covered!”

The Voice was close to his left ear. Its commanding acerbity quelled
Defoe’s impulse to spring to his feet; and as he gripped the arms of
the chair tensely he managed to challenge his unseen intruder:

“Who are you? What do you want here?”

The Voice moved a little upward and back before it answered:

“You’ve just had a nasty dream, Defoe. Perhaps I--”

“How do you know I did!” interrupted Defoe.

“You did, though, didn’t you?” the Voice insisted.

“Yes, but how did you know?” repeated Defoe.

“Never mind how,” said the Voice. “I’ll wager you’ve had the same
dream pretty often in the last dozen years, too, it must be hell to
have a scene like that forever before your mind, so that you’re always
in dread of dreaming about it--”

“What scene?” demanded Defoe. “Are you a mind reader--a wizard--what
are you?”

The Voice chuckled.

“None of those,” it said. “As I was saying, you must be afraid,
almost, to go to bed at night. _I_ would be, if I thought I might
dream of sending an innocent man to the gallows--”

“Stop!” Defoe fairly shouted. “Damn it all, come around here where I
can see you!” and he made an instinctive move to turn about and
confront his tormentor.

The firm pressure of an automatic barrel against his temple halted him.

“Don’t make the mistake of turning around!” again warned the Voice
incisively.

Then, in a lighter tone, it went on:

“If I were in your place, Mr. Defoe, do you know what I’d do?”

A pause. Defoe mumbled a faint “No.”

“Well, I either would confess my whole knowledge of the
affair--or--I’d commit suicide!”

Defoe started. It was uncanny, eerie, the way this mysterious Voice
put into words the one gnawing thought that had plagued him the last
dozen years of his life.

Of course, you probably have contemplated those alternatives very
often,” the Voice continued. “But have you ever considered doing both?
That is, did you ever think that you might confess first, thereby
clearing an innocent man’s name of murder, and then cheat the law
yourself by committing sui--”

“For God’s sake, stop that infernal suicide talk!” Defoe snapped. “In
the first place. I don’t know what ‘affair’ or what ‘innocent man’
you’re talking about.”

The voice chuckled again. Defoe was beginning to hate that chuckle
more than the feel of the automatic against his head. If the Voice
kept on chuckling it might drive him to desperation to grapple with
his armed inquisitor, even though he would court certain death in
doing it.

“Why, there’s no need to explain the obvious,” the Voice replied, its
chuckle rippling through the words. “Your dream ought to tell you
that. Speaking of your dream again, Mr. Defoe, reminds me of a
question I often wished to ask you: Did you see Bland at all after his
conviction?”

“No, of course--” Defoe’s guard had been down. He was fairly tricked,
so he tried to run to cover again. “What--who is this Bland you’re
talking about?”

“Come, come, Mr. Defoe,” said the Voice. “Think over your dream a
moment. Surely you remember the man in the prisoner’s dock--the man
who took his sentence with head up, facing the judge like a Spartan!
Surely you remember Richard Bland. But did you happen to see him again
after that day?”

“No,” Defoe said. “Why should I have seen him after my connection with
his case ended?”

“But didn’t you even write him a note exposing your regret at having
had to perform the duty of--”

“Certainly not!” interrupted Defoe “Who ever heard of a foreman of a
jury doing such a thing? Besides, he deserved his punishment.”

The Voice was silent a moment or two before it replied:

“We’ll discuss the merits of the case later. . . And you didn’t even
go to see him hanged?”

“What manner of man do you think I am?” exclaimed Defoe. “Of course I
didn’t! I wasn’t even in Chicago where he was hanged.”

“No?” said the Voice. “Where were you?”

“A few weeks after the trial I had to go to Europe on a long business
trip. I was gone a year or so. When I returned to this country I made
my home here in New York City.”

“So you never even read in the newspapers about Bland--” the Voice
persisted. “I don’t suppose the European papers would bother with a
piece of American news like that, though.”

“No. I never read anything about the case after I left this country,”
said Defoe.

“That’s odd. I’d have thought you would have followed the case through
to the end,” the Voice said, half-musingly. “But still, if you had,
perhaps you would not be here tonight.”

“Why not? What difference would it have made?”

“I don’t know. That’s merely my surmise,” said the Voice.

A faint footstep padded through the hall outside the living-room.

“Is that you, Manuel?” Defoe asked, wondering what would happen when
his Cuban valet encountered the intruder behind the chair.

The footstep halted.

_“Si, senor,”_ answered the man-servant, at a respectful distance from
his master’s chair. “I come to see why you, sit up so late, _senor.”_

Defoe laughed mirthlessly. “Well, truth to tell, Manuel, I am detained
on business,” and he wondered again how Manuel had escaped noticing
the other presence in the room.

“You mean you fell asleep, _senor?”_ asked the valet.

“I did, but some friendly caller has kept me pretty well awake the
last ten minutes.”

“But he has gone? And you come to bed now?” inquired the Cuban.

Defoe, after a pause, said. “Yes; I might as well go to bed, I guess.”

The Voice behind the chair broke in:

“Tell your valet you will smoke another cigar before you retire.”

Defoe settled down again in the chair.

“You heard. Manuel?” he asked. “You see, my visitor says he wishes me
to smoke another cigar.”

“But I see no visitor, _senor,”_ said the Cuban.

“You heard what he said, though,” Defoe insisted.

“No, _senor._ I only hear you say he wish you to smoke another cigar,
explained the valet.

“Well, you ought to have your ears examined. Manuel. Get my box from
the table and hand it to my visitor.”

Manuel fumbled in the darkness until he found the box, then handed it
to Defoe. The latter waved it toward the Voice behind him.

“My guest first, Manuel,” he corrected.

The Cuban stood motionless. “I see no one else,” he insisted.

The Voice interrupted:

“Tell him I don’t care to smoke. Mr. Defoe.”

“I can see no one, _senor,”_ the Cuban repeated.

“But didn’t you just hear him?” Defoe cried, leaning forward nervously.

“No, _senor,_ I hear no one speak but you.”

Defoe stared up at his valet, then half rose from his chair.

“Sit down, Defoe!” commanded the Voice sharply.

Defoe sank back once more.

“There!” he exclaimed to his valet “Now tell me you didn’t hear any
one order me to sit down just then!”

The Cuban shook his head. “No, _senor,_ I hear no one talk but you
since I come in.”

His master swore helplessly. “Are you trying to make a fool of me,
Manuel? Do you dare stand there and tell me no one spoke to me?”

“I don’t know, _senor._ I only know I hear no one speak but you.”

Again the Voice intruded:

“It may be that Manuel thinks you are trying to make a fool of him, it
suggested.

“Do you?” Defoe asked the Cuban.

“Do I what, _senor?”_ the valet asked, placidly.

“Do you think I’m trying to make a fool of you?”

“I do not say so, do I, _senor?”_ the servant replied, deprecatingly.

“No, but you heard--or did you hear?--this visitor say it!”

The Cuban, almost tearfully, denied it, becoming verbose in his
protestation.

Defoe flapped his arms on the wings of his easy chair and bade his
valet hush.

“Get out of here, you brown-skinned dumbbell! One of us has gone crazy
tonight!”

The Cuban moved off, keeping a suspicious eye upon his master. His
retreating footstep presently was heard dying away in the hall
outside.

“Well, what do you think of that damned little Cuban?” Defoe asked the
Voice. “I wonder what made him lie so brazenly?”

There was no response. Defoe repeated his second question.

Still silence answered him.

“Have you gone, my friend?” Defoe asked, turning part way in his chair
to test the other’s watchfulness. This time no automatic punched his
head and no command wilted him into the depths of his chair again.

Still doubtful of his good luck, Defoe called out once more:

“I say, stranger, have you gone?”

The only sound that greeted his ears was the faint creaking of a
window in the adjoining dining-room. Defoe rose and darted to the
connecting door, snapping on the electric light at the entrance to the
dining-room.

The room was vacant of any soul but himself.

All he could see was the slight movement of the lace curtain at the
dining-room window--and when he examined the window he found it
latched.




III.

The next day Defoe went to his doctor. He wished to take stock of
himself; perhaps he had been applying himself too closely to his
business.

“You are badly run down, Allen,” the physician said, almost before he
had sat down with his patient. “You look mentally distressed.”

“I am,” admitted Defoe. “Working too hard. I guess.”

The doctor eyed him keenly.

“Anything else troubling you?” he asked.

Defoe insisted there really was nothing at all beside his work that
was affecting him. So the doctor gave the usual diagnosis: Too much
nerve tension, not enough sleep, not the proper kinds of food. He
ended by advising more rest and quiet.

“And avoid excitement, too,” he warned. “That old heart palpitation
might crop up again, you know.”

It was all very well for the doctor to advise more rest and more
sleep, but how was a man to sleep beneath a Damocles sword of mystery,
of weird forebodings?

It was three weeks before Defoe felt that he was succeeding in obeying
the doctor’s instructions, partly, at least. Then--.

It happened late one night. Defoe lay in bed, his back to the lighted
electric lamp on the table: he had fallen asleep, reading. Suddenly he
stirred at a touch on his shoulder.

“That you, Manuel?” he asked, drowsily. “All right, put out the li--”

“No, it is not Manuel--and don’t bother to turn around, Defoe!” this
last sharply, as Defoe made a movement to arise in bed.

“You again!” Defoe exclaimed. “What--how did you get in?”

“That’s my problem, not yours,” said the Voice. “I merely dropped in
again to inquire if you had thought any more of doing what I
suggested.”

Defoe checked an insane desire to leap out of bed and make a break for
the door--anything, to escape this tormentor at his back! But he
remembered the automatic. . . .

He got himself under a semblance of control before he answered:

“Your suggestions were ridiculous. Why should I have anything to
confess about the Bland trial, or why should I commit suicide over
it?” He even essayed a laugh meant to be derisive.

But the intruder chose to ignore Defoe’s evasions. His next remark was
as startling as it was illuminating:

“Did you know,” said the Voice, “that of the other eleven jurors who
convicted Bland, only seven are living--still?”

“No; I haven’t kept track of the other eleven men,” replied Defoe,
annoyed subconsciously by the detachment that the Voice gave to the
word “still.”

“Well, I have,” said the Voice. “Two of the surviving seven are in
insane asylums; two of the four dead committed sui--.”

Defoe could brook it no longer. He wrenched around in bed to grapple
with his antagonist, forgetful, in his madness, of the automatic. But
before he could free himself from the bedclothes the lamp was snapped
out, and Defoe was left ignominiously tumbled in the darkness on the
floor.

A chuckle from the vicinity of the bedroom door told him of his
guest’s departure. . . .

When morning came, after the nerve-racking night, Defoe found it hard
to realize that his two experiences with the Voice really had taken
place. None the less, he knew they were preying on his vitality, on
his brain-functions.

Repeatedly the thought came to him that it was all a dream like his
recollection of the murder trial out of which he had awakened the
night of the Voice’s first visit. But always against the theory of the
dream he placed his remembrance of the feel of the automatic revolver:
and, too, the fact that he had talked with Manuel and with the Voice
at the same time argued against the dream explanation.

Left, then, was conscience--that is, if the visits of the Voice were
simply hallucinations of a distracted mind. But why should conscience
wait for twelve years to haunt and harass him?

The more he pondered it all, the greater became the dread of another
visit from the Voice. The greater grew his fear, too, of losing his
reason, as he sought to analyze the situation from every conceivable
standpoint. With every new bit of theorizing. Defoe felt himself
giving way more and more to melancholia such as he knew is frequently
but the prelude to insanity. Was it possible, he wondered, for a man’s
conscience to drive him to imbecility?

Defoe finally accepted the inevitable.

“Manuel,” he ordered, the second morning after the bedroom encounter
with the Voice, “pack my things, we’re going away.”

“Away, _senor?_ Where?”

Defoe’s brain groped vainly for an instant, then seized upon the only
chance.

“The sea--a sea voyage. My nerves. . . .”

Manuel busied himself among Defoe’s clothes. “Do you need many things,
_senor?_ Do you go far a way--Europe, perhaps?”

“No, no. Just down the coast--Old Point Comfort, I guess. Yes, that’s
it. A week or so of rest. Jus my steamer trunk and a suitcase will do.”

The day of the trip down the coast was as perfect as he could have
wanted for his own satisfaction. All during the forenoon the Old
Dominion steamer skirted the Jersey shore line, and Defoe sat out on
deck basking in the sun and already feeling better for the salt-laden
air that he breathed in deeply. In the afternoon he napped most of the
time and when nightfall chilled the deck promenades he descended with
the rest to the dining-saloon.

It was while sitting in the smoking-saloon, after dinner, that Defoe
first had the impression that he was being watched. A poker game was
going on, lackadaisically, in one corner of the saloon; scattered in
chairs and cushioned seats along the windows were perhaps a dozen or
fifteen men. But, for the life of him, Defoe could not pick out any
one in the room who might be watching him, now he gave his fleeting
impression indulgence long enough to look about him.

Finishing a cigar. Defoe decided on a deck stroll before retiring. It
was too cold and damp, with a fog beginning to gather, to permit of
sitting on deck, so he paced to and fro briskly up near the fore deck
beneath the pilot’s tower. The nervousness of the few moments in the
smoking-saloon, when he imagined himself being watched, transmuted
itself into a shiver as the foggy dampness penetrated to his marrow.
He lit a fresh cigar and puffed at it jerkily as if to generate bodily
warmth. Presently the shiver developed into a veritable shudder such
as precedes chills or certain forms of ague.

Defoe, thoroughly miserable and alarmed now at the fear of sickness on
board ship, chafed his cheeks with his hands and, on his way to the
entrance to the stateroom, he flailed his arms about himself to stem
the onrush of the chill. Once inside the passageway of the staterooms,
however, he felt warmer, and by the time he reached his stateroom door
the chill had subsided almost completely.

He was still uncomfortably cold, though, as he opened the door. With
one hand he unbuttoned his overcoat and with the other he reached
gropingly for the electric light button on the wall. He fumbled around
for it a few seconds, then swore softly in vexation because he had not
noticed by daylight just where it was located.

Groping with both hands, now, he stumbled around the
none-too-commodious room, feeling for the push button on the wall. He
paused once and took inventory of his pockets and cursed his luck for
lack of another match.

Then he went to hunting in the dark again--until his hand came full
against a living body. . . .




IV.

The body stirred, eluding Defoe’s contact.

Defoe fell to quaking once more, but it was not the trembling of the
chill this time. He opened his mouth to challenge the intruder, and
all he could do was swallow and gag at the words that stuck in his
throat.

A pressure against the pit of his stomach--a firm shove of a hand upon
his shoulder--and Defoe found himself stepping backward until it
seemed he must have walked the length of the ship. But of course he
hadn’t--he hadn’t even left the stateroom--and suddenly he was tumbled
on to the edge of the berth, the pressure against his abdomen increasing.

A vague nausea gripped him He clutched at his abdomen and his fingers
wrapped themselves around the barrel of an automatic pistol. The
pressure against his body became unbearable, piercing. . . . Defoe
crumpled back into the berth and the convulsive effort restored his
speech.

“What the hell are you doing?” he exploded. “Get out of here! What are
you trying to do--stab me with a pistol?”

The incongruity of his question aroused a titter of amusement from the
invisible presence.

“No, I only wished to make sure you weren’t trying to get away.”

That Voice again!--_here!_ Defoe cringed in a sort of abject fear.

“What are you--_who are you?”_ Defoe struggled to keep his voice
steady, struggled, indeed, to keep his reason from flying out of
balance and shattering into a thousand pieces of driveling idiocy.

“Call me anything you care to,” replied the Voice in the dark.

“I don’t believe you are _anything_ at all! I think you are all a
dream, a nightmare, a damnable hallucination that I can’t get rid of!
To hell with you! I’m going to go down to the smoking-room and--smoke
you out of my mind! I’m going to stay in the light from now on, day
and night, until I get over this morbid dreaming!”

Defoe really thought he meant it all, until the pressure against his
stomach made him doubt his courage and defiance.

Perhaps it was the nausea--maybe seasickness; he never had thought of
that!--that was griping at his vitals like the insistent pressure of a
steel-barreled weapon.

“Sit down, Mr. Defoe!” commanded the Voice. “I’ve got something to say
to you.”

“To hell with you!” Defoe repeated, almost hysterically now. His hands
clutched at the pressure again--and once more the pistol barrel sent
him squirming back into the recesses of the berth.

“I want to talk to you some more about the Bland case,” went on the
Voice, unperturbed by the other’s outburst, “When are you going to
confess?”

“Confess?” Defoe parried. “Confess what?”

“Confess that you knew Bland was innocent when you convicted him,”
said the Voice.

“But I didn’t.” It was like wrestling with one’s conscience. Defoe
thought, this interminable denying of Bland’s innocence. He was
wearying of it all; his mind was revolting at the repeated “third
degree” of this mysterious Voice. Soon, he feared, his brain would
refuse to function.

“But you’ve said you did,” the Voice insisted.

“When? It’s a lie!” exclaimed Defoe.

The Voice chuckled, sending a shudder through the man crouching in the
corner of the berth.

“You probably don’t know, Mr. Defoe, that for a number of years you
have had the treacherous habit of talking in your sleep--talking
volubly, excitedly, sometimes almost reconstructing entire incidents
in your talk for the benefit of anyone who might happen to be listening.”

“Well?” asked Defoe.

“Simply this: Manuel has overheard enough to--”

“Manuel? broke in Defoe. “What’s he got to do with it!”

“I forgot to tell you,” the Voice apologized. “The Cuban is my
confederate--former member of the Secret Police of Havana, you know. I
saved his life during the Spanish war and--well, he’s paving back an
old debt as he calls it. He let me in and out of your house, and
tipped me off about this trip. You see, Manuel had overheard you say,
in your sleep, that you convicted an innocent man of murder. So I knew
your conscience--”

“Are you trying to be my conscience? Are you trying to plague me into
confessing? Are you--”

“No,” answered the Voice, “unless you choose to call me your
conscience. I’m willing. You seem to be in need of one. Do you know,
Mr. Defoe,” and the Voice took on a more affable tone, “you have been
fearfully distracted the last few weeks or months. You need a rest--_a
long rest!”_

Defoe was silent, hunched in the retreat of the berth. He had no fight
left in him. Presently he fell to whimpering quietly, as a child does
when it is punished beyond endurance and is too frightened to cry. The
Voice, it seemed, missed the old combativeness, gone so quickly after
Defoe’s late outburst, so it prodded the hunted man with its chief
weapon--not its pistol, but its chuckle. This time it chuckled
devilishly, aggravatingly, and it rasped against the tender
sensibilities of the sniveling Defoe like salt in an open wound.

Then something broke what little bonds of restraint remained in Defoe.
He sprang, catlike, to the outer edge of the berth and lunged for the
arm that held the pistol. In the darkness his head struck the
cross-support of the berth above and he slumped forward, half dazed by
the blow.

Again the chuckle sounded in his ears, now ringing with the stunning
impact; and again Defoe lurched forward, only to fall dizzily to the
floor. He clambered clumsily to his feet, gripping the berth for a
momentary prop.

Soon his head began to clear. He was assembling out of the maze of
ache and buzzing in his ears and brain some sort of coherent idea of
where he was and what had been happening.

“Now I know what it all means!” he burst forth presently. “You--you
sneaking, cackling little conscience, get out of here! I’m going to
cheat you if I have to become a drunkard or a dope fiend the rest of
my life! I’m not going to let a conscience, or a voice or a chuckle,
drive me to insanity--or to confessing--or to suicide!”

Defoe was steady enough now, supporting himself against the upper
berth. His voice grew more strident.

“No, I’m not going to let my conscience get the best of me! You
thought you could keep after me endlessly, but I’ll get rid of you.
I’m never going to be bothered with you or your voice again! Never!
Now get out of here! Get out of here, I say!”

The chuckle--a croaking, sepulchral chuckle it was now--answered him
out of the darkness.

“You might tell me, before I go, if you know who really did kill the
man Bland was convicted of murdering,” said the Voice. “I’m curious
enough to wish to know his name.” And the voice chuckled once more.

“Damn that cackle! I’ll tell you, if you choke off that infernal
cackling! I’ll tell you--_yes! I_ can tell you, because _I did it! I_
committed that murder, you understand? _I_ did it! Now cackle all you
want to! And I convicted Bland of it! Cackle, you damned little
shriveled conscience! _Ho, ho, ho-ho-ho!_ I think it’s my
turn--to--cackle--now!”

The words of the hysterical man rose to a maudlin scream “that
reverberated piercingly in the little stateroom.

“Now get out of here for good!” the raving Defoe shouted, recovering
coherence of speech after a time. “Get out--before--I--”

A blinding glare of light came as Defoe reached for the door. The
intruder had found the push button.

Defoe stared--then toppled to the floor.

“Bland! _Bland! You! It’s you. . . .”_

And before the stranger that was Bland passed from the room he felt
again of the heart of the craven hulk at his feet. The doctor had been
right: The tumult in the breast of the twelfth juror had been too much.

If only Defoe had known that the Governor had pardoned Bland, his
secret might have been safe forever.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A New Story of Horror

By Anthony M. Rud

“The Square of Canvas”

In the April Issue of

WEIRD TALES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Walter Scott Story offers

A New Conclusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s

“Cask of Amontillado” in

The Sequel




Sobered on the instant--the padlock had clicked when Montresor passed
the chain about my waist and thus fastened me to the wall--I stood
upright in the little dungeon, the blood running cold in my veins.

With maniacal laughter, he withdrew from the niche, whipped a trowel
from under his robe and began to wall up the narrow opening. I knew it
was not a joke, a drunken jest. I saw that his drunkenness had fallen
from him. The dying flambeau fell from my nerveless hand and cast a
fitful bloody glow upon the whitened, dripping walls, shook the chain
frenziedly.

“For God’s sake, Montresor!” I cried. He replied with a horrible,
mocking laugh, and, like a devil from hell, lifted his voice with mine
to show that it was idle to call for help.

I had always distrusted Montresor. I knew him to be a serpent. He
feared me and was jealous of my person and attainments. In spite of
all his fawning and his smiles, I knew he hated me deeply for the
injuries I had heaped upon him and for the open insults I had added to
them. And yet I swear he had never in the slightest suspected that it
was not Giovanna, the tenor, who was successful with his wife, but _I!_

“Fortunato!” he called, and his hoarse tone echoed in a ghastly way
through the gloomy catacombs of his ancestors and re-echoed along the
winding crypt.

I made no reply. Cold beads of fear started from my brow as I strained
against the chain and listened to the soft thud of the stones he was
building into the opening to make my tomb and the accompanying tinkle
of his trowel. Even then, I admired, perforce, the cleverness with
which he had secured his revenge.

It was the night of the carnival. He had found me in the streets,
dazed with wine, and, pretending that he wanted my judgment on a cask
of sherry, had lured my staggering feet into the gloomy passages under
his _palazzo._ And he had brought me into this narrow niche in the
castle walls to entomb me alive where no one would ever find me. It
was _clever!_

My memory fails me now, but I doubt not I cried out many times for
pity and mercy; and I take no shame in thinking this may have been so.
I recall his words and his horrible mouthings as he worked with more
haste and zeal than skill.

But I was a brave man always. I did not yield myself to fate. It was
unthinkable. I, _Fortunato,_ to die wailed in by Montresor! I cursed
him and his line. I wrenched at the chain with ferocious strength,
more eager to have him by the throat than to be free to live, I called
upon all the saints and particularly to my patron saint. You shall see
that I was not unheard.

The wall grew high--to his breast--and in the light of his flambeau
set somewhere in the wall outside I could see Montresor’s sweating
face as he labored with the stones.

Suddenly he thrust his torch through the opening, now no larger than
his head--and to deceive him I prostrated myself upon the floor and
laughed the laugh of a dying man.

I heard the _thud_ of another stone, and looked up quickly. My
flambeau had died out: Montresor’s had disappeared. And there was no
opening! I was in a tomb of stone!

Absolute darkness surrounded me, and the walls seemed to press in upon
me like icy blankets. And silence as absolute as the darkness reigned.

I leaped to my feet. Silence! Silence, absolute silence, save for my
own labored breathing. Maria! Suppose the mortar hardened ere I could
throw my weight against the poor wall he had built. Then I were lost!

I called out aloud to my holy saint. Lucky it was that I had the
bodily strength of two. I strained upon the chain wildly; I seized it
in my hands and tore at it with savage determination. I would not die
thus! In desperation, frantic with rage and fear, I made one last
violent, prodigious effort to free myself, with strength enough to
make the palazzo tremble, and in that last great effort the staples of
the chain tore loose from the half-rotten stone in which they were
fastened.

Hot tears of joy welled in my eyes.

I vowed a hundred candles to the Virgin: but I could not then take
time to give thanks.

Throwing myself upon the wall Montresor had just reared, my feet
desperately braced on the rough floor. I fought for liberty like a
tiger. Heavens! It _gave!_--the wall gave!

It yielded like a stiff canvas against the push of a hand, gave
slowly, but surely--bulged outward, then went rumbling down! I thrust
myself through the jagged opening into’ the catacombs. I was free!

What joy if Montresor had been there, even though he wore his rapier
and I had but my poniard!

It was very dark, and yet I could see a gleam of light in the
“direction from which we had come. Montresor crazed with the thought
of sweet revenge. I drunk with wine. I paused and thought. Should I
find him in the streets in this gay time and slay him. No! I laughed
insanely, yet clearly. No! There was a better thing to do.

With haste and no mean skill, I builded up the wall anew, closing the
opening of what might have been my tomb--had I been a weak man--and
against this new wall erected a rampart of old bones: then, thrusting
the dangling ends of the chain within my doublet, began to retrace my
feet toward freedom.

I struck my foot against some small, soft object, and halted with a
start. I leaned over. I had kicked against Montresor’s mask, and I put
it over my face.

I knew that all of his servants were away to enjoy the carnival, but
it would do no harm to wear this mask--and it served my purpose. I
passed through the crypt and walked back swiftly and steadily through
the range of low arches through which I had come staggering to an
awful doom.

Soon I was above in my false friend’s rich suites in the cheerful glow
of many lights. But all was quiet. No one stirred. I was alone--safe!

I went light-footed through the deserted house--I could hear the
shouts and laughter of the merry people in the street--until I came to
the passage leading to the plaza.

There I stopped, with the blood jumping through my veins, like
wildfire. In this hall, in the corner upon a low settee, lay
Montresor, sprawling in a heavy stupor, as drunk with wine as I had
been when I had trustfully entered within his doors. I paused over his
body. Within my bosom was the dagger with which I never part. And yet
I let him lie there unharmed.

When I elbowed my way, masked, through the square, it was twelve
o’clock. I was in time to keep my appointment with his wife! I
laughed. What a jest!

And Montresor’s wife was awaiting me in the usual place. Such a
beautiful woman! I really loved her--and I hoped he did.

I was as clever as I was brave--I was, indeed, an exceedingly clever
man. I had seen my creditors pressing and all things turning toward
ruin, and that was why I had converted everything possible into gold
and precious stones.

That night I crept unseen into my own house, from which my servants,
like Montresor’s, had stolen away to enjoy the carnival, and, securing
all the wealth I had secreted, was up and away, my chain stricken off
by an obscure armorer. I have no doubt that my body-servant was
executed for the theft of my fortune--as indeed he should have been
for watching my belongings so poorly. But I know not.

Then we left the city while the streets were still crowded and
gay--Montresor’s wife and I--and went to England, where we have lived
a long life very happily.

Years ago I heard a vague rumor that Montresor believed his beautiful
wife had gone away with Giovanna, the tenor, who disappeared at about
that time. But it was not so. As for Lady Fortunato--she may have
guessed the truth.

And Montresor will believe until he dies that my bones lie crumbling
in the little walled-in dungeon below his palazzo.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




COMING!

“The Bodymaster”

A Hair-raising Novelette

By Harold Ward

Will Be Published Complete

In the Next Issue of

WEIRD TALES




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Weaving Shadows

By W. H. Holmes




Chet Burke was lazily reclining in his favorite easy chair, absorbed
in a rare book on alchemy and black magic, when his sister answered a
summons at the door.

In addition to managing the household affairs of the apartment in
which she and Burke lived alone, her duties also consisted in
scrutinizing the many visitors. Most of them could be persuaded to
call at the book stall, which Burke conducted when not devoted to some
criminal mystery that held him until it was solved. Others, whose
cases were urgent, were admitted to the apartment, thus infringing on
Burke’s only recreation, reading and study.

The visitors were Chief Rhyne, a friend of Burke’s, of the Rhyne
Detective Agency, and a stranger.

Burke laid aside his book and greeted the callers with a friendly nod.
Rhyne, a portly, flushed man, settled his sturdy body into a
convenient chair. The stranger an intelligent-looking man, appeared
ill at ease. He stood self-consciously beside Rhyne, absently running
the brim of his soft hat through browned, muscular-looking fingers.

“Burke,” grunted Rhyne heavily, “meet Mr. Hayden. He is bothered about
a very mysterious affair. It has worked on his nerves until he has
decided to consult an expert. It’s beyond me, so I brought him around
to you.”

Rhyne sighed with relief, and eased back in his chair.

Hayden stuck out a rough, calloused hand to Burke. His bronzed face
flushed slightly at Rhyne’s statement.

“I am more concerned,” he said, in a surprisingly agreeable voice,
“about how you will receive what I have to relate. I can hardly
believe yet that the things exist, although I have seen them three
nights in succession.”

He shook his head in doubt, and sat down mechanically in the chair
that Burke drew up.

While Hayden was gathering his thoughts. Burke quietly sized him up.
Hayden appeared to be a man of about forty-five. His face was deeply
tanned, and his appearance suggested many hours spent out of doors.
Burke noted at once his trait of eying one direct from warm brown
eyes. He was garbed quietly, and evidently in his best. His dark suit
was set off by square-toed shoes, above which glared white socks. A
low, soft, white collar, with a black string tie completed his
obviously habitual concession to dress. On the whole, Hayden struck
the detective as a wholesome type of the practical mechanic.

“Now. Mr. Hayden,” said Burke musingly, his eyes half closed and
vacant, “state your case fully. We will try not to interrupt you.”

The detective lounged down in his chair, his heavy lips slightly
drooping, and his long legs crossed indolently in front of him. His
eyes had their customary vague stare through the tortoise-shell
glasses that veiled them.

Hayden drew a long breath, then exhaled it in a long sigh. With a
brisk straightening of his shoulders he said:

“I am a carpenter. Until recently, or, to be exact, until four days
ago, I lived in New Orleans. I am a bachelor, and it doesn’t make much
difference to me where I live, so long as I can find work at my trade.
Therefore I came up here, to Sunken Mine, in the Highlands of the
Hudson, to live with a widowed sister and her daughter.”

He paused, and his eyes grew reflective. For a moment he was evidently
measuring his words. With a quick intake of his breath, he resumed:

“My sister lives in an aged, pre-revolutionary house, deep in the
mountains. It is a lonely place, and a secluded dwelling. At one time
it was probably a restful appearing country farmhouse. Today it is a
weathered frame building, set in a grove of dead and whitened chestnut
trees.

“The house is a one-story-and-attic affair, with rough stone
fireplaces at the side, and a long sloping roof that pitches low at
the rear. Owing to its age and the condition of the place, it is a
dreary spot for one used to the city. My sister affects ancient,
antique furnishings, which does not lesson the impression of living in
the past. As soon as I crossed the door-sill I was affected by this
vague, misty remembrance of being there before.

“It may strike you as strange that my sister picked out a place of
this type to spend the remainder of her days, but she had, to her and
her daughter, good reasons. Both she and my niece are earnest
spiritualists. Both receive messages, and are, in truth, sincere
mediums. For some reason, my sister claims that the atmosphere of the
old dwelling helps them to materialize those that have gone before. I
myself have considerable faith in those things, although I treat it in
a practical manner. I only believe what I actually see. What I am
about to relate, I have both seen and _felt.”_

Hayden paused for an instant to stare earnestly at Burke. The
detective nodded to him to continue.

“I have read deeply,” went on Hayden, and in my spare time I could be
called a bookworm. I work at my trade, but live much in the past,
especially in books. For this reason, I could be sympathetic to my
sister’s idea of living close to her life’s hobby, or her “mission,”
as she calls it.

“There is one more reason why my sister purchased the place, six weeks
ago. It was the original settling place of the family, before the
Revolution. As the result of a family tragedy, some hundred years or
more ago, the place passed into other hands. Few new buildings are
constructed in that sparsely settled, unfertile section, and most of
the houses have stood for generations. Consequently, the old Hayden
house was never disturbed. At the time it came back into the family it
was vacant and for sale.

“They had been living there about two months when I came there to live
with them. The room I occupied Sunday night is on the second floor. It
is a semi-attic room, lit by one window. Before I came, the room was
occupied by my niece. On my arrival it was arranged for me, and the
girl and her mother occupied a bedroom downstairs.

“It was around eleven-thirty Sunday night when I went to bed, and was
soon asleep. I awoke with the feeling that something was stifling me.
It was as if I had a heavy cold and found difficulty in breathing.
This peculiar sensation of suffocation finally caused me to rouse into
complete wakefulness. The strange smothering seemed to ease as I got
more fully awake. Unable to fall asleep again, I lay looking out of
the window at the stars. The bed is at the end of the room, and the
window was in direct sight.

“The house was intensely still. I noticed this in particular, as I
remarked the absence of the city noises I had been used to. I can’t
recollect that there was so much as an insect stirring. My own
breathing, as in imagination I still struggled for breath, was the
only sound. It appeared to fill the room with a hoarse, rasping
murmur. I likened myself to a dying man, gasping his last breath. This
fancy, to one of my usual practical trend, was perplexing to myself.
Still, in the few moments before the things appeared, my thoughts
apparently dwelt on uncanny ideas. At the same time. I was conscious
of a queer, tingling of my body.

“As I lay staring at the faint light of the sky, I slowly became
conscious of a singular illusion, or, as I am at times led to believe,
a startling visitation. The dark shadows of the room appeared to be
dancing rapidly before my eyes. They were streaming in long wreaths,
coiling in fantastic spirals, and wafting through the room in wide,
level films of blackness.

“I don’t know how I could see this, but it was plainly visible. Yet
the room, except for the faint light that came from the clear,
moonless sky, was in fairly deep darkness. It seemed that the moving
shadows that formed before my eyes were only discernible because of
their greater density. I can only liken this uncanny movement of the
shadows to swaying and floating clouds of tobacco smoke, when one is
smoking slowly and freely.

“For some moments I watched the movements of the shadows. Then I
observed that they were forming in a more stable order. They were now
lying in long, round coils of blackness, horizontally across the room,
and twisting rapidly. For several moments they lay motionless, except
for their rapid turning, then, as if stirred by a firm direct breeze,
they undulated toward the head of the stairs. This drift brought
several horizontal layers into contact. At the moment of their
touching, the shadows seemed to weave into huge rolls, which streamed
from sight rapidly down the stairs. The room now appeared to grow
lighter, and the air clearer. Also, all sensation of smothering had
left me.

“I lay there quietly after the disappearance of the shadows, pondering
over the strange affair. So far, I was fairly calm, except for the
wonderment of the thing. The return of the shadows was the cause of my
fears and suspense as to the final outcome.

“My eyes were gazing absently out of the window, as I had not turned
my eyes from the stairs after the black roll’s had streamed down them.
Slowly, so slowly that it scarcely seemed to move, I saw a black,
humanlike form rise above the sill of the window. I could just see the
top of it as it mounted the stairs. I watched it with a keen
realization that it had something to do with the shadows.

“Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, the round, headlike shape
continued to rise. I could now see it plainly, outlined against the
lighter sky. The shape now rose to its full height. It had the form of
a shapeless human figure. That is, I could distinguish the smaller
head shadow above, and what would answer for a body, if one were at
all imaginative. The thing passed beyond the window and drifted into
the darkness at the end of the room. Yet, I could still make out its
vague form by its greater blackness.

“My eyes went back to the window. Another figure was slowly blocking
the cheerful light of the sky. Again a black form emerged to its full
height. It joined the first. I am not a coward. I lay quiet, wondering
what the thing presaged.

“The two figures advanced to the center of the room. They were now
fairly discernible. One of them walked to an old-fashioned dresser at
one side of the room, stood there a moment, then joined the other
figure. With this, both shapes turned and passed down the stairs.

“As they were disappearing, I called. The forms were so clear, and I
was by this time so far from sleep, that my mind hit on a logical
reason to explain the thing. It was evidently my sister and my niece.
They had wanted something from the dresser, and, not wishing to
disturb me, had come up quietly, got what they wanted, and then
returned to their room.

“Getting no answer to my call, I sprang out of bed to convince myself
the truth of my belief. I went downstairs, and to their room. Both
were in bed and fast asleep. I awoke them. Neither one had been up
since retiring. I did not tell them of the black forms, but made some
excuse for awakening them. The remainder of the night I spent in the
kitchen, sleeping in a large rocking chair.”

Hayden paused and stared at Burke.




“Go on,” said Burke shortly. “This would not have brought you to me.”
Hayden shook his head.

“No,” he said, “it was what came after. This same night, as I arose
from the bed, following the disappearance of the two forms down the
stairway, I had reached the center of the room when I became conscious
of standing in something that was wet to my feet. I was barefooted,
and when I looked at my feet I found them soiled with blood.

“Naturally I thought that I had cut myself; but a close examination
revealed no cut or bruise of any sort I lit a lamp and went back
upstairs. My first glance was at the spot where I had first felt the
wetness. A glance revealed the cause. Directly in the center of the
bare board floor was a large pool of fresh, blood. It was slowly
spreading out over the floor, and sinking into the dry wood. I cleaned
it up as much as possible, and then searched the room thoroughly.
There was absolutely nothing that I could find that would explain the
blood.

“The next morning, both my sister and my niece complained of feeling
languid and fagged. My niece, a very white, frail girl was even more
colorless than usual, and her mother, noticeable for her deep intense
eyes and the black rings that encircle them, seemed listless and
indifferent to everything. Noting this, I scrubbed up the bloodstains
before they made up the room, and said nothing of what I had seen.

“Things were normal until Monday night. Again, about the same hour, I
was awakened by a smothering sensation. Once more I heard my own
breathing as I gasped for air. As I got more fully awake, I found that
the smothering sensation grew more intense.

I sat up in bed, crouched over like one suffering with the asthma, and
striving to fill my lungs with air. But this did not relieve my distress.

“Unconsciously, my eyes were fixed across the dark room. Again
occurred the weaving of the shadows. Panting, stifling, and seemingly
unable to arouse myself enough to get out of bed, I watched the
repetition of the scene of the previous night. Once the horizontal
streams of shadows were formed, my breathing became more normal, and I
seemed to regain the power to move and think clearly.

“I then deliberately waited to see the finish of the affair. The banks
of twisting shadows disappeared down the stairway, and the two figures
repeated their previous trip. As soon as they had descended past the
window, I sprang from bed and lit my lamp. My eyes went at once to the
floor. The pool of fresh blood was there for the second time. I let it
lay and tiptoed down stairs, and to the women’s room. Both were in a
sound sleep, but I was struck at once by the haggardness of their
features.

“I did not awake them. Getting a basin and water, I returned upstairs.
I again scrubbed up the floor, this time with much care, as the stain
had now gone deep into the aged boards. Leaving the lamp lit, I went
back to bed. Finally I fell asleep. Nothing occurred during the
remainder of the night.

“The morning after this second visitation,” resumed Hayden. “I again
remarked the extreme pallor of my niece and the haggard, gaunt face of
her mother. Still, I remained silent, determined to solve this riddle
for myself.

“Last night I retired early, and I took several precautions. First, I
secured an electric flashlight. Next I powdered the stairs with flour.
I also sprinkled the floor on the attic room. I now had a trap that no
human being, or any mechanical figure, could tread over without
leaving a trace. This done, I blew out the lamp and went to bed.

“I lay awake for a matter of two or three hours. I was determined to
stay awake until the shadows commenced to form, or until I began to
feel the smothering sensation. In this way, I would have a grasp on it
from beginning to end. But in spite of my resolution, I fell asleep.

“I was again awakened by an uncanny feeling. Firm bands, or, rather,
some peculiar force, seemed to hold my arms down on the bed. I sought
to draw up my legs in order to slip out of bed, but found them held by
an unyielding power. Finally, I discovered that I was unable to move
any part of my body. I was certainly awake, yet I was as helpless as a
person in a nightmare, who fancies that his body is totally
paralyzed.

“Forced to lay motionless, I saw the black shadows stream from various
parts of the room. This time they formed over my bed. I could feel
them drift across my face, spinning, waving, and twisting and
contorting. It was an unearthly feeling, lying there helpless to avert
anything that might happen. There is nothing I can describe that would
be similar to the feeling of those black forms, ceaselessly in motion.
It might be likened to some invisible force that presses on one, or to
a heavy fog that a person seems to feel in a material manner, with a
strong impression of its dampness and chill.

“This helplessness and the weaving of the shadows went on for perhaps
five minutes. Then, as the twisting rolls started to stream down the
stain, I could feel my body regaining its power. With the
disappearance of the materializing forms, I became physically and
mentally myself again.

“I then got the electric torch in my hand, ready to flash it at the
proper moment. The figures rose above the stair, and I directed the
bulb of the light toward them. I waited until they advanced to the
center of the room, then I threw on the light.”




Hayden wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. His lips were dry, and
his face flushed.

Then, with a slight shudder, he went on:

“At the instant of the flash, the darkness of the figures was gone.
Instead, I saw two faces. They were inhuman, horrible, and impossible
to describe. They leered at me with their shadowy, devilish faces,
scarcely discernible in the glow of the torch. They seemed to be
mocking me. They were corpse-looking and repulsive, but the eyes were
terrible. They were full and real, and glowing, with a hellish,
vengeful fire. But with all the horribleness of the faces, it was not
they that held me motionless.

“It was at that moment that I discovered the source of the blood. It
was dripping out of the air, and falling in a steady patter. I glanced
up at the ceiling, but it was firm and unbroken. While I watched--it
was scarcely a second--the drops seemed to form in the air above the
floor. They were rapidly ceasing when my nerves gave way for the
moment, and I let out an involuntary yell. With the cry, the dripping
blood suddenly ceased and the faces vanished.

“This brought me to my senses. I sprang from bed, determined to see
the thing through. My first act was to scan my trap. I followed the
flour down the stairs, but it lay in a white, unbroken dust, as I had
scattered it. That night, also, I looked in on the women. Both were
sound asleep. But I was deeply shocked by their distorted faces.
Shaken both mentally and bodily, I once more spent the rest of the
night in the kitchen rocker.

“And now I want some one to go up there with me, examine the house,
and spend the night in the room. I am troubled, nervous, and
frightened: both for myself and for those with whom I live.”

“I will go there with you,” replied Burke evenly, “and I think the two
of us should accomplish something. We can probably handle two shadowy
forms.”

Hayden smiled dolefully.

“They handled me last night,” he said ruefully. “I’m a pretty strong
man, but something held me as helpless as a baby.”




Burke alighted at a lonely way-station, standing on a strip of land
between a wide marsh and the Hudson.

The marsh ran to the foot of the mountains, and lay sear and rippling
in the September breeze. Hayden had stated that the dwelling stood
back in the hills, a distance of some five miles. On Burke’s
suggestion, they started to walk. Burke wanted to study the country,
and, incidentally, study his companion.

The country he found to be sparsely settled. The road wound up through
forest-clad rocky hills. The dwelling stood beside a wide stretch of
woods, with cleared fields to the north.

Burke scanned the dwelling as he approached it, and found it to be the
usual type of farm house of a century ago, buried among dead trees.

The interior of the house was in keeping with the exterior. Oval
frames held old prints, norse-hair upholstered, massive dark furniture
contrasted with tables and stands covered with white marble tops, the
chairs squatted grimly in the quiet rooms and rested on dull rag
carpets. The woman and her daughter struck Burke like beings
transported from the misty past.

The mother was a tall, sparse woman, with heavy black rings about the
eyes. The eyes, black and dreamy, held Burke with a steady, unwinking
stare. The daughter was the opposite of her dark, sallow mother. She
seemed a lifeless, colorless sprite, seemingly alive by the power and
vigor of her mere intense mother. She was about twenty years of age,
although her chalky face, and thin, bloodless hands, together with her
slight frame and indolent movements, seemed to signify an older age,
or some wasting disease. Both were of the dreaming, musing type,
speaking softly and briefly, and moving silently about the quiet
house, and both were garbed in dresses of white material.

Burke’s first act was to visit the room upstairs. There was nothing to
warrant his attention except the stained floor. He ripped up several
splinters and put them in his pocket. He then announced his intention
of visiting the nearest town, several miles to the south.

Hayden asked no questions, evidently placing the affair entirely in
Burke’s hands. He remarked that he would “walk down a ways” with the
detective, and await his return.

The two women were still unaware of Burke’s vocation, and accepted
without comment Hayden’s statement that Burke was a friend that was to
remain over night.




As soon as Burke arrived in town, he went at once to the Chief of
Police. Here he inquired for some one qualified to make an examination
of the bloodstained splinters. He was directed to a doctor who
maintained a laboratory. The latter, after a lengthy analysis,
confessed himself puzzled. Something was missing in the composition.
He could not account for the peculiar results he obtained. It was
human blood--and yet it was not.

Burke returned to the Chief of Police and inquired about the Haydens.
The Chief was unable to give Burke any satisfaction, but directed him
to an old settler in the vicinity who could probably furnish the
desired information.

Burke found the family without trouble. They were willing to talk, but
they knew very little about the Haydens--though a good deal about the
house.

Over a hundred years before, they said, a widow and her niece had
lived in the then new dwelling. The place, a flourishing farm, which
had since been cut up and sold off, was managed by the woman’s
step-brother. The family were more or less secluded, and seldom seen.

In the course of weeks it was noticed that no one had seen the two
women. The brother was at the house alone, and refused to talk. This
led to an investigation. No trace of the women was found. The brother
was never brought to trial, continued to live on the place until he
died of old age, and had prospered. His heirs had taken over the
place, and it had been gradually dissipated, until only the house and
on acre or so of land remained.

Burke listened politely, then, thanking the old couple, returned to
the Hayden house. Hayden was awaiting him.

That evening, Burke sat beside the open fireplace, listening to the
low, earnest conversation of the others. The woman and her daughter he
observed closely. They seemed to be possessed of some restless emotion
that caused them to wander aimlessly around. On the contrary. Hayden
appeared to be sluggish and incapable of extended speech. This struck
Burke as queer, as he had remarked the vivid description Hayden had
given of the attic room.

At ten o’clock the women announced their intention of retiring.
Bidding the two men good-night, they withdrew to their rooms. Burke
and Hayden, the latter almost stupid and listless in his movements,
went up the narrow stairs to the room above.

Both lay on the bed fully robed. Burke saw Hoyden take a revolver from
his pocket and shove it under his pillow.

“What shall we do?” asked Hayden heavily, seemingly unconscious of
anything around him and staring vacantly at the ceiling.

“Well,” replied Burke quietly, “first, we will blow out the lamp.

He got out of bed and put out the light. Returning, he crawled on the
further side of Hayden, leaving Hayden on the outside. Burke had no
desire to be on the firing side of the revolver in the event that
Hayden should start shooting.

The detective lay for an hour, pondering over the strange case.
Finally he spoke to Hayden. The latter did not reply. He was
apparently fast asleep. Yet, as Burke listened closely, he could
discern no signs of the latter’s breathing.

Burke now experienced a singular emotion aroused by the intense
silence of the room. The longer he lay the more impressive it became.
Downstairs he heard the low chime of a clock. It struck eleven. The
minutes lagged along in the forbidding silence.

The clock chimed the half hour. Fifteen more minutes passed. Hayden,
breathing heavily now, commenced to move. Burke half arose on his
elbow and listened. Hayden was muttering in his sleep.

Burke eyed the dark shadows of the room with keen eyes. Nothing met
his gaze. He glanced to the window. Nothing there. Hayden was
suffering tortures in his struggle for breath.

The detective was on the point of shaking him, when, with a heavy,
prolonged gasp, Hayden sat up. Burke sensed the horror of the man, yet
he remained motionless. His eyes were fixed on the dark, silent room,
wandering frequently to the window.

Nothing unusual was to be seen, and he watched the vague form of his
bedmate. The latter was now rigid, struggling with the weight that
oppressed his lungs, and apparently staring off into the room. Then,
to Burke’s amazement, Hayden started to breathe normally.

“Burke,” he whispered hoarsely, “did you see it? Did you see them pass
down the stairs?”

“Eh?” grunted Burke sleepily.

“My God!” muttered Hayden, “you were to watch, and you fall asleep.
They have gone down the stairs. They’ll come back again in four or
five minutes. Watch!”

Burke made no reply. He, with his wide-awake companion, was staring
intently at the window. Suddenly he felt Hayden stiffen.

“The head is just coming up the stairs!” whispered Hayden.

Burke felt the movement of Hayden’s arm as it slid under the pillow.
Then came the blinding flash of the revolver and its roar. Twice
Hayden pulled the trigger. By that time Burke had flashed on his
electric torch. The room was empty. Burke glanced at the floor. No
blood was visible.

Hayden was panting and rocking back and forth.

“I feel awful queer,” he groaned. “Something is dragging me.”

Mechanically he arose from the bed and stumbled onto the floor.

“It tells me to kill. _Kill!”_ he mumbled. “Kill with my revolver.
Kill--who shall I kill?”

Burke silently followed the plodding form of the other. With measured
steps Hayden stalked to the stairs and passed down, with Burke close
behind.

Hayden led the way directly to the room of his sister and niece.
Without hesitating, his fingers grasping a loaded “Billy.” Burke
trailed close and waited for the moment when he should be needed.

Hayden appeared unconscious of the light furnished by Burke’s torch,
nor did he once turn on the short journey. Reaching the side of the
bed in which the women were sleeping, he paused and stared rigidly
down.

Burke joined him. His light was now on the two women. He was struck by
the horrible contortions of the faces, seemingly drawn in agony.

With a sudden premonition, he bent down and felt the motionless forms.
The girl’s hand was limp and lifeless. He felt the pulse of the older
woman. _Both were dead!_




The detective turned to Hayden.

He was staring down, dry-eyed. “I see,” he said stupidly, “both dead.
Kill, _kill_--who was I to kill? Not them. They’re dead. Something
still tells me to kill!” He sank into a chair and buried his face in
his hands.

Burke lit a lamp that stood on a heavy dresser and put out the torch.
He stood looking down at the two women. He then noted that the room
was growing shadowy. He glanced at the lamp. It was full of oil and
the wick seemed to be burning freely, yet the light continued to
lower.

Burke again glanced at the two women. Slowly, almost invisibly, he
fancied that the agonized features were changing to the repose of
death.

Harden arose and came to the detective’s side. He was muttering and
softly moaning. Burke watched him.

Hayden, with a sudden start, looked across the room.

“They’re coming back!” he mumbled, “weaving and twisting.”

His eyes moved slowly from the opposite side of the room as if he were
following some moving object. They came to rest on the women’s faces.

“Streaming down their mouths,” he muttered. “They’re sucking in the
twisting rolls. _They’re coming to life!”_

Burke glanced at the women. In the dim light he could have sworn that
he saw traces of returning life. At that moment there came a crashing
report at his side and a blinding flash.

With that, the light flared up bright, and the dead faces were
revealed. Burke whirled around.

Hayden was sinking to the floor, a bullet hole in his head, from which
the blood was slowly starting to emerge. Burke sank beside the man and
lifted his head.

Slowly the heavy form relaxed. Hayden opened his eyes to stare with
bewilderment at the detective.

In another moment he was dead.

Burke placed the body on the floor and went to the bed. Once again he
endeavored to find a trace of pulse in the still forms. Both were
lifeless. He fancied that both dead faces bore a peaceful look, and on
the elder woman’s slightly-opened lips there seemed to hover an
exultant smile.

Closing the room. Burke got his coat and belongings, then locked up
the house. Some hours later he was sitting with the Chief of Police,
relating the tragedy. The Chief drove with Burke to the Sheriff of the
county, and together they went to the house. The Sheriff had called up
the coroner, and they found him waiting for them.

A brief examination of the women revealed that both had died of heart
failure, probably induced by some unexplainable shock. Burke took the
Sheriff aside. On the detective’s suggestion, they wrecked the attic
room in a thorough search. Burke wanted to locate the source of the
dropping blood.

At the conclusion of their quest the mystery was finished, for Burke.
But it was to Rhyne that he confessed his failure.

Returning to his apartment in New York, he found Rhyne there.

“Well,” cried the latter, as soon as he appeared, “did you solve the
mystery?”

“No,” replied Burke. “I did not.”

Rhyne’s eyes opened. “Well--what did you find?”

“Over the attic room,” said Burke musingly, “we found a small,
cryptlike space between the ceiling of the attic room and the roof of
the house. It was encased in plaster. As we broke through the ceiling,
a mass of human bones came tumbling down. The coroner pronounced them
the skeletons of a woman and a girl. Both had been dead for
generations.

“Through the shoulder blade of the girl’s skeleton was a jagged hole.
When the bones fell, the elder woman’s skull rolled to my feet. I
picked it up. Something rattled inside and I worked it out through the
eye socket. It was a slug of lead.

“Both the woman and the girl had been murdered.”




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Queer Tribe of Savages Found in Africa

One of the strangest tribes in Africa is that of the El Molo. Ruled by
a blind chief, they live on an island near the east shore of Lake
Rudolf in East Africa, their shelter being crude huts fashioned from
palm leaves. They live entirely on fish, which they spear and eat raw,
and they drink nothing except the water in the lake, which the white
man considers unfit to drink. It is said they cannot live for more
than an hour without water, their lips swelling and bleeding if they
try to go longer. They use a language of their own, different from
that of the other African tribes.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




African Brides Must Be Plump

The wild tribes of Africa consider no girl beautiful unless she is
abnormally fat. Hence their young girls are fed on milk and fattening
foods, and are not permitted to exercise. This forced fattening is not
only a necessary preparation for marriage--it is also good business
for a girl’s parents. When a girl marries, the bridegroom pays her
parents for her, and the amount he pays is based on the degree of
plumpness of the bride whom they have fattened for him.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




An Odd, Fantastic Little Story of the Stone Age

Nimba, the Cave Girl

By R. T. M. Scott




Many thousands of years ago, when the poles of the earth were its
pleasant spots and when the tropics were too hot for human life, Nimba
grew to her full height and was still a maid.

Many had been her suitors, but, from the time she had pulled down her
first wild animal, she had lived much apart from others of her kind
and had become known as a mighty traveler and hunter. She could run a
hundred miles in one day over the worst kind of country, and she had
matched her brains successfully against the most wonderful of animal
cunning. Unaided, she could support herself, and she did not want a
mate--at least, not yet.

Somewhere, not far south of what is now called James Bay, is a
beautiful lake lying between steep-sloping, wood-covered hills. At
one end of this lake a great boulder once stood, heaving its huge mass
a full hundred feet above the water. At its back the steep hillside
gave access to its summit. At its front the water rippled or dashed
against one hundred feet of straight wall.

Yet not quite perfect was this wall. In its very center, and slightly
overhanging the lake, was a tiny cave, an irregular cavity large
enough to shelter two or three people. Fifty feet above the water and
fifty feet below the top of the great rock, this natural shelter
against rain or enemy seemed inaccessible to anything without wings.
But the skin of a long-haired animal was stretched to dry against the
back of this little cave--pegged to the cracks and crannies by means
of great thorns. Scattered here and there were bleached bones--relics
of past meals eaten by Nimba.




It was a hot afternoon, and the sun was beating the earth in its usual
relentless fury. To the south the great cloud-masses of steam were
rising and tumbling upon themselves in rain, only to revaporize and
rise again.

The air was still with a breathless quiet, which presaged continued
fine weather and little danger of the hot humidity of the south being
blown northward. On the eastern horizon a mighty mountain belched its
head off and sent a column of fire into the sky that rivaled the glare
of the sun.

Suddenly the bushes parted behind the great rock-sentinel of the lake.
Nimba sprang out and ran to the highest vantage point. There she
stood, motionless, gazing at the burning mountain. Fire did not
frighten her as it did the creatures which ran on four legs; rather it
attracted her.

She stood long, viewing the new magnificence of the eastern horizon,
her coppery-tanned skin glistening in the sun and her firm young
breasts rising and falling as if they, too, saw and wondered in dreamy
contemplation. Lithe were her legs and arms, and slender her waist,
with hips full big but boy-like in their taper. Her hair was bound
with little tendrils into a cue that reached below her waist and then
was doubled to keep it off the ground. Sunburned, its hue was a golden
glory. A deep scar marked her face, but this only added to its
barbaric beauty.

Of a sudden, she bent as in the act of listening and then leaped back
into the bushes, only to return with a small animal she had killed,
and dragging behind her a stout creeper of great length. Fastening one
end of the creeper to a jutting rock, she threw the other end over the
face of the great boulder and, holding with one hand the animal’s leg
lowered herself to the cave in the wall with all the agility of a
monkey.

Scarcely had she entered her tiny abode before she noticed that her
creeper ladder was being violently agitated from above. She leaned far
out from her cave in a perilous manner and saw descending toward her a
long pair of hairy legs followed by the rest of a man.

Picking up a stout club from the back of her cave, Nimba waited until
the legs came within reach and then caught the man a blow on his thigh
that caused him to yell lustily and to ascend a few feet with great
rapidity.

He did not entirely retreat, however, but, turning around like a
caterpillar on a thread, again descended, this time head first in
order to keep a bright outlook.




Nimba now saw the man’s face, and she disliked it more than his legs.
Her small features convulsed with rage, and she spat at him and beat
the wall with her club in a frenzy. She knew him well.

He was Oomba, one of the strong and cruel men of her tribe. When he
was fifteen he had killed his grandfather for a stoneheaded club. He
had caught the old man unawares, which act of caution had been
construed as timidity so that he had few friends until he became too
strong to withstand.

When Oomba had descended until his face was within twelve inches
beyond the reach of the girl’s club, he hung there, gloating over her
with greedy, lustful eyes. For half an hour he hung, face downward,
sensuously intoning to the infuriated girl.

“With me hunt! With me eat! With me sleep!”

At the end of half an hour Nimba was still spitting at him and still
clubbing the wall with unabated energy.

“Oomba go! Oomba go! Me you will not touch!” she screamed at intervals.

Finally Oomba climbed back to the top of the rock--but he did not give
up. He pulled the great creeper up after him. He would trap the little
spit-cat, he thought, and so tame her.

But he did not know Nimba.

As soon as the object of her hatred became lost to sight Nimba calmed
herself. When she saw her rope of escape withdrawn she waited for some
time in silence. Then she stepped to the edge of her cave home--and
her body flashed forward through the sunlit air like a gleam of gold.
For fifty feet the gleam curved, then struck the water silently like a
knife. Fifteen yards from where she struck, Nimba’s face appeared
above the surface glancing upward toward the top of the rock.

Oomba peering over the rock, witnessed Nimba’s mighty dive. For a
moment he scowled at her before dashing into the bushes just as Nimba
swam into shallow water.




Nimba rose near the shore, her club dripping in her hand. She bounded
along the rough shore line, keeping at least ankle deep in the water.
Rounding a small, wooded point, she came to an overhanging bough upon
which she climbed.

Here she broke two or three small branches and sped on into the next
tree and the next, throwing herself from limb to limb and breaking
small branches in her flight. Finally she broke a very small branch
and leaped into a densely foliaged tree without so much us crushing a
leaf. And here she ensconced herself from sight.

Her trap was laid. She clung to a limb as silent and watchful as any
animal of prey, her long club between her young body and the bark on
which she lay.

The minutes passed while Nimba’s dark eyes kept constant watch through
the green leaves that formed her mask. Abruptly, as she watched, a
young man stepped out and stood beneath her tree. Strong and straight
was he. His eyes were bright and the hair on his face was short and
soft. Not a leaf rustled as Nimba watched with growing interest. Below
her the man stood quietly scenting the air.

Suddenly a twig snapped, and the young man turned like a flash, only
to receive Oomba’s mighty club full on the head. So silently had Oomba
approached that the listening Nimba had not detected the slightest
sound. Now he stood looking down at his victim and contemptuously
turning the bleeding head from side to side with his foot, quite
unconscious of any lurking danger.

Clinging only by her feet from the bough upon which she had been
lying, Nimba reached down and swung her club with vicious force upon
the side of Oomba’s head. Beside his own victim he fell, while Nimba
dropped lightly to the ground, turning in the air like a cat and
landing upon her feet.

Quickly she drugged Oomba to one side, where two rocks abutted, and
wedged his head vicelike between them. Then she beat it with her club
until it had no shape at all and the leaves and little green things
nearby were spattered with blood. There was no doubt about it: Oomba
was dead.




Great satisfaction showed on Nimba’s face when her bloody task was done.

She washed the blood from her body in the lake and returned to examine
the young man who had first been struck down. Apparently satisfied
with his condition, she picked him up and, trailing her bloody club,
returned to her great rock at the head of the lake. Here she found the
creeper where Oomba had left it and experienced little difficulty in
climbing down to the privacy of her cave with the senseless man under
one arm.

Two trips she made for water, which was carried in a gourd and stored
in a hollow in the cave floor. This done, Nimba washed the young man’s
face, wet his hair and propped him in a corner to recover his senses.

Her work of mercy finished, Nimba turned her attention to the animal
which she had killed earlier in the day. Dragging it from its corner,
she placed both feet upon the body while she tore off a leg with one
furious wrench. As the sun was setting and the deep purple of the
hills became bordered with gold, Nimba commenced the one meal of the
day to which she was accustomed. It would soon be time to sleep.

Almost as the last shaft of sunlight shot over the distant hills
consciousness returned to the young man as he sat propped in the
corner of the cave. Slowly he looked about him. He rose to his feet
and walked to the edge of the cave, where he gazed down at the lake
and examined the dangling creeper down which he had been carried.

Finally the young man approached Nimba, who had stopped eating and was
silently watching him, her mouth bloody from her raw repast. He
dragged the animal from her side and shoved her into a corner, where a
jagged stone cut her shoulder, causing the blood to flow. Having eaten
his fill, the man lay down to sleep.

The great moon rose and silvered the sleeping lake. A night-bird
screeched as it swept by the entrance to the cave and Nimba crept from
her corner. Still bleeding, she stretched herself beside the sleeping
man. Her body touched his and some blood from her shoulder mingled
with his in a tiny pool.

Below them, in the water, a reptile splashed its way among the reeds.
Nimba and her master slept.

Nimba had taken her mate.




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NEXT MONTH


------------------


“The Bodymaster”

A Novelette by Harold Ward


------------------


“The Square of Canvas”

By Anthony M. Rud


------------------


“The Affair of the Man in Scarlet”

By Julian Kilman


------------------


“The Incubus”

By Hamilton Craigie


------------------


“The Living Nightmare”

By Anton M. Oliver


------------------


And other strange tales



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What Comes After Death?

An Anonymous Author Gives a Startling Answer in

The Young Man who Wanted to Die

By ? ? ?




FIRST EPISODE

In a mean, miserable, two-dollar-a-week bedroom in a Chicago
lodging-house a young man was calmly and deliberately preparing to
kill himself.

He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness--and yet he was
preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room
of a shabby hovel.

With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging
them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as
near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing
and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:


      _“As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to
      know why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as
      much as they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my
      identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and
      stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not
      one who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead.

      “A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else--something
      equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may appear to
      others. I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from
      childhood, but always there has been this thing that stood
      between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am about
      to do. It is not drink--nor gambling, nor hereditary disease.

      “It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable
      Curiosity. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible
      desire to know what follows death. As I grew up, this craving
      increased until it was a positive mania. I devoured every book
      on theosophy and kindred subjects I could lay hands on; I
      attended meetings of psychic societies; at college my avidity
      for psychology was remarked by everybody. At length I had
      reached the point where I yearned to tear aside the black veil
      of death and discover her secret. Why wait? I asked myself.
      Since you are bound to go some day, why not go now?

      “One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It
      led to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night
      she left the town where we both lived.

      “I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For
      three years now I have searched the city for her, but not a
      trace have I found. And so I hare given it up. It is hopeless.
      I shall never see her again.

      “Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is
      very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is
      living even as I write these words--perhaps miles away--perhaps
      in the next block--perhaps. . . God alone knows, and God protect
      her!”_


He stopped, put down his pencil, and placed his hand before his eyes.
Thus he sat for several minutes. The yellow gas flames flickered
weirdly at either side of the shoddy bureau; the clangor of a distant
street car reached him faintly; a motor-truck rumbled heavily in the
street below; a bickering couple jawed and wrangled ceaselessly in the
next room.

After awhile he picked up the pencil and went on:


      _“Well anyway, I’m going to gratify that Curiosity. In a few
      hours I shall be in an unknown country I have always longed to
      explore. I’ve an idea I’ll find a happiness there I have never
      known on this earth.

      “In any event, I shall leave some good front page stuff for the
      newspapers. It ought to make an interesting story: ‘Rich young
      man, seeking his lost sweetheart in the great city, gives way to
      despair and kills himself.’ If the girl is found next door,
      without money to buy food or pay her room rent--”_


He arose abruptly with a sharp curse, and tore up what he had written.
Then he turned off both gas jets, then turned them on full, and then
lay down upon the cot in a corner of the room. . .

It was perhaps some twenty minutes before his body began to twitch
convulsively.

“Lily May!” he murmured huskily. Then more hoarsely still, “Lily
May--forgive--Lily May!”

. . . His body was writhing and twisting horribly now. His hands were
clutching at the air, at his clothing, at the mattress; his legs were
contracting and relaxing spasmodically. His face turned purple: he
choked and gasped.

“Lily May!” he cried in a stifling whisper, and attempted to lift his
arms.

But he could not, and his lips ceased moving and his head fell back,
and he lay very still.




SECOND EPISODE.

When the deadly gas fumes reached the youth on the cot he turned over
on his back, threw his arms out, and breathed long and deeply of the
poisoned air.

His head throbbed and pounded; his heart pumped madly; his eyes
started from their sockets. Yet still he lay with outstretched arms,
inhaling evenly and steadily.

Then everything within him seemed to warp and become distorted and
askew. His veins tied themselves in knots. His blood choked and
clogged. An awful weight crushed and crunched his breast.

But he set his teeth and clenched his fists, and continued to gulp in
the murderous air.

Then he felt himself dropping, gently, gently--down, down, down--as
though invisible hands were lowering him into some bottomless, pitch
black cavern.

But suddenly there burst upon his vision a dazzling golden light, and
far above him he saw a blazing throne, sparkling and flashing with a
strange brilliancy, and on the throne a girl, her hair undone, her
body clothed in a virginal robe. And she gazed down upon him with eyes
full of sadness and reproach. And he tried to call out to her, and
tried to lift his arms to her. . . .

And the fiendish darkness swept all away and closed in upon him and
crushed him, and he knew no more.




THIRD EPISODE.

Eons of time had passed.

All was impenetrable blackness. With incredible velocity, he was
whizzing through infinite space. Nothing supported him; nothing
touched him. Some unseen, unfelt, unthinkable Force was hurling him
outward into a Stygian, unbounded void.

Then, so gradually that it was scarcely perceptible, the blackness was
dyed a pallid, ghastly hue. And with a shocking suddenness it became
alive with a horrible larvae. Bloodless and transparent things, they
seemed, filling the air with a swarming, wriggling magnitude of
loathsome life. And he was a part of this!

He put out his hand: and though he felt no touch, he saw the squirming
mass of worms pass through his flesh as though nothing were there. And
he knew his body swarmed with them as though it were decayed cheese,
and an unspeakable, revolting nausea surged through him.

Then the paleness vanished, and the larvae with it, and he was still
shooting through the horrible darkness.




Another eon had passed.

Nor had his terrible flight abated. Outward, through unlighted
infinitude, he swept untiringly. Unearthly sounds now filled the
air--voices screaming in agony, cries and moans as of tortured souls,
insane laughter and maniacal shrieks. Anon, with a howl and a hiss,
some shrieking air dragon would roar past him. And, all around, he
could hear the bellow and screech of monsters of the air in terrible
conflict.

Then all turned to an ocean of living blood; and great crimson bellows
belched over him, wave upon horrid wave. And the frightful aerial
mammals, invisible a moment before, were now seen leaping and plunging
through that scarlet sea.

Under him and over him they ducked and bounded--gigantic, green-hued
monsters extravagantly hideous. Now and again one would dart for him,
mouth distended. But the next second he would be far away, with the
ghastly creature in hopeless pursuit.

Slowly the liquid redness merged into a shimmering rainbow of vivid
colors. Yellow and green, and purple and blue and orange, streaked the
air with a prismatic glory, glittering and scintillating with a
marvelous beauty.

Then, with a terrific suddenness, like a noiseless thunderclap, the
blackness rushed in and blotted out the dazzling iridescence, and
cloaked all in Cimmerian darkness.




FOURTH EPISODE.

Another eon.

So far away it seemed a distant star, the lone traveler through the
infinite Void discerned a dull red glow. Larger and larger it grew as
he soared toward it with lightning velocity.

And now it seemed a great mass of flameless fire, shedding its cold
rays for millions of miles. With every second it grew in size until it
was come to inconceivable proportion. And then it seemed to shrivel
up, and turn ashen and wrinkled, and become as a dead and crumbling sun.

But suddenly the husk burst open, and the wayfarer described, dimly at
first, what seemed the outermost rim of some gorgeous, primeval world.

Awhile it was as though he were watching it from afar off; but he
traversed thousands of leagues in as many seconds, and swiftly it took
definite shape as he flew nearer and yet nearer.

And then his journey through illimitable space was at an end, and he
had alighted upon this unknown world, and was wandering through a
dense jungle of some marvelous fungus that attained a wondrous
height.

Seemingly without his own volition, he at length found himself lying
on a verdant mound overlooking a vast tropical morass that reached off
on all sides into endless vista.

And while he lay there he witnessed in that untracked wilderness a
diabolical spectacle appalling as hell itself!

Grisly, indescribable Things--satyrs and ogres and demons and
fiends--appeared in countless numbers, and held orgies that were
Madness intensified. Now they were reveling and cavorting in wanton
abandon; anon battling among themselves in murderous ferocity.

Alter a time he viewed a sight still more horrible. Off to the right,
he saw a monstrous snake’s head, as huge as the body of a
hippopotamus, rise up from the swamp and gaze on ravenously at the
riotous revel.

An instant later the licentious carousal was become wildest terror.
The forest was alive with frightful reptiles--gigantic, stupendous
things that passed the extent of all imagination. Down they swooped
upon their terrified prey, their enormous, slippery bodies undulating
in great writhing leaps.

The horde of unearthly Things, disporting in hellish debauchery a
moment before, were swiftly swallowed up by the serpents. Left in
possession of the swamp, they flopped about venomously for a time,
demolishing and laying waste all about them.

They then fell upon one another in unspeakable combat, wriggling and
squirming slimily together, their repulsive, green-black lengths
intertwined like enormous angle worms. And they killed and devoured
each other, until at last there was left but one hideous, swollen
monster.

It leaped and dashed about, lashing its great tail furiously, tearing
down giant trees as though they were weeds. And as the young man
watched, the incredible thing seemed to swell larger and larger. And
then he saw it stop suddenly in its Brobdingnagian gambol and rigidly
poise its hideous head. And he looked straight into its horrifying
eyes!

They were fixed steadily upon him. But a moment it staid thus; then
its head dropped, and he saw its mammoth body undulating swiftly
toward him through the swamp.

He strove to cry out, but could utter no sound. He tried to move, but
his body was as lead.

On came the thing with frightful rapidity; parts of its writhing
length now sinking in the quagmire, now towering high above it. Now he
could see that massive head swinging from side to side. Now only a
dark, slimy greenish mass, describing an arch above the swamp, showed
its location.

Now it was close upon him. Its vast head swooped up a scant distance
away. Its fulsome eyes blazed upon him with a furious fire. Its great
drooping jaws swung open. They bristled with venomous fangs.

The monster gathered itself in a dozen gigantic coils and leapt through
the air--

“GOD!” he shrieked.

“There, there,” soothed a tender voice. “Don’t excite yourself. You’ll
be all right presently. Just remain quiet, that’s all.”

A cool hand was laid gently upon his brow. He looked up at the young
nurse who sat beside his cot.

Without saying a word, he stared for quite a long time at her face,
until her cheeks were as crimson as the ribbon at her throat. When at
length he spoke, he was half laughing, half sobbing, and the syntax of
his utterance would scarcely have delighted a professor of English at
Harvard University.

“Well, I’ve been, girl,” said he. “Got a round trip ticket. But never,
never again. What’d you run away for? Yep, I’ve had my fill; no more
metaphysics. _Phew!_ Such reptiles! Big as this room, some of ‘em. I
looked three years, and it ran me crazy. _Ugh!_ those snakes and
lizards. Hired detectives, too, but it was no use. And I thought it
was all sunshine and flowers and sweet music. You won’t ran away
again, will you? Could you get me a little brandy. Lily May? I’m
feeling a bit faint.”




LAST EPISODE

The young man made a mistake about the newspapers. One inch was all he
got, tucked snugly between a patent medicine advertisement and the
notice of a sheriff’s sale. It read:


      _“An unidentified youth attempted to take his life in a North
      Side rooming-house last night by inhaling gas. The landlady
      smelled the odor of gas and called the police. Miss Lily May
      Kettering, a nurse at the National Emergency Hospital, who seems
      to know the young man, although refusing to divulge his
      identity, reports that he is on the road to recovery.”_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




There’s an Eerie Thrill in

The Scarlet Night

By William Sanford




Dr. Langley was in love with my wife.

This had been very evident to me for many weeks. Also it was most
evident to me that his love was entirely reciprocated.

The doctor was a young and handsome fellow, who bore the reputation of
being more or less unscrupulous. An unpleasant story had followed him
from another city--the story of the drowning of a young girl. Although
the coroner’s verdict had been that of accidental drowning, there were
those, it was said, who thought that the doctor knew much more of the
matter than had been brought to light, and rumor had it that he had
left the place because he was no longer popular there.

The doctor had a pleasing personality, however, and a way with him
that had the effect of disarming any prejudice against him. He was, in
brief, a ladies’ man, possessing all of the little attentions and
flatteries so dear to the heart of women. And he gave them all with a
subtle manner of sincerity that made them doubly potent.

The doctor’s practice was fairly large, and he had also succeeded in
having himself appointed local medical examiner for our town. He was
deeply interested in his chosen profession, and still fascinated by
the dissecting-room. He owned a handsome touring-car with which, as I
knew, my wife was very familiar.

My wife was twenty-five--fifteen years my junior--pretty and with much
charm of manner, yet possessed of a certain hardness of nature and
lack of sympathy for the suffering of others, unusual in a young woman
of good breeding. She came of excellent family, was well educated and
always had associated with good people.

I had been somewhat addicted to strong drink before we were married,
but had managed to keep it from her to a certain extent. She knew that
I drank, but thought that it was no more than many men do at their
clubs. Of my several wild sprees out of town she had never heard.

We had been married two years when Dr. Langley took up his practice in
our town, and from the moment he made a professional call on my wife,
for some minor ailment, they had become intensely interested in each
other.

My drinking habits had increased, rather than diminished, since my
marriage, and I no longer made any effort to keep occasional lurid
fits of intoxication from her. My love for liquor became as much a
part of my life as food or sleep. My position as assistant manager in
a large wholesale house was fairly secure, however, and one not easy
to fill, which perhaps accounted for the firm still holding me.

One cold, bleak evening in November, while I was playing cards at my
club--and, thanks to the rum-runners who thrived in our town, drinking
whisky--I heard a strangely-familiar voice call my name in greeting,
and, looking up, I was overjoyed to behold an old friend of bygone
days, whom I had not seen in several years. He had dropped off on his
way to another city.

The time was ripe for a celebration in honor of our meeting. My friend
produced a quart flask of whisky from his suitcase, saying that it was
the duplicate of one he had already sampled, and spoke to me of its
age, strength, fine quality, and the high price he had been obliged to
pay for it. Thereupon he presented it to me. I thanked him heartily
and opened the flask, and we all drank a couple of rounds from it. All
of that day, and the day previous, I had been drinking more or less
heavily.

Cards were resumed and we played until after midnight, when, with many
a handshake, I bade good-by to my friend, who was obliged to catch a
train to reach his destination the following noon. The card game being
broken up, we had a farewell round of drinks, and I stumbled out into
the night.

The cool air soon revived my somewhat befuddled brain. Also, I was
soon shaking with the cold. Remembering the generous sized flask of
whisky in my pocket, the gift of my friend. I uncorked it and took a
long drink, rejoicing in the fact that the bottle was still almost
two-thirds full.

Ranching home. I went at once to my bedroom. My wife was seated in a
chair by the window in her dressing-gown. As I entered, she rose and,
without any preliminaries of speech, she asked that I at once give her
a divorce so that she might marry Dr. Langley. She said there was no
reason why I should not do this, since I might then marry some woman
who cared for me, and that she would be happy with the man she had
learned to love.

The abruptness of her request, together with the cold, matter-of-fact
way in which she put it dumfounded me, but, hastily regaining my
composure, I flatly refused any such action, told my wife that she
must remain true to her marriage vows, and that nothing would ever
induce me to give her the divorce she wanted. Furthermore, I told her
that the doctor was a scoundrel--that many people believed he had
murdered a girl before coming to our town.

At this, my wife became livid with fury, accused me of deliberately
besmirching the doctor’s character because of jealousy, and declared
she would never live with me again.

The next day, however, she seemed much changed. She was very
agreeable, even tender to me. We walked about the little garden of our
home, as we had often done in the early days of our marriage, and I
felt confident that she had decided to put the doctor out of her mind
and allow our married life to go on as usual.

We chatted pleasantly together at the dinner table that evening, and
as usual I drank a cup of strong coffee after the meal.

A few moments later a heavy drowsiness came over me and I knew no more.




I awoke with a feeling of suffocation--as if a thousand tons of weigh;
were resting on my chest.

I gasped for breath. I was suffering torture. All about me was
blackness--impenetrable blackness. I moved my hands and encountered
boards, above and on every side. Gradually, to my numbed senses, the
horrible realization came to me, and the cold sweat started out on my
body--_I had been buried alive!_

The terrible realization had a tendency to clear my mind somewhat, in
spite of the difficulty I encountered in breathing. I saw it all now.
My wife had given me some powerful drug in my coffee, a drug obtained
from the doctor. They had planned and plotted the thing in case I
refused to consent to a divorce.

They probably had known I was still alive when I was buried. The
doctor, as medical examiner, had filed some fictitious report of death
from natural causes, and they had contrived to have a hasty funeral.
How I had managed to breathe for so long in the coffin, while under
the power of the drug. I did not know. Now that I was fully conscious
again I felt myself stifling.

No power of imagination can picture the horror and torture of mind
that my terrible predicament forced upon me. I must die a slow,
terrible death, while those who were responsible for the hellish crime
enjoyed themselves and went unpunished. The minutes seemed to drag
into hours, as I lay there struggling for breath.

Suddenly, out of the horrible black stillness, I heard a noise above
me. Listening, with every racked nerve on edge, I heard it come
nearer--nearer. At first I could not make it out--could not
understand--and then, suddenly, the truth dawned upon me with a
horrible intensity: _The body snatchers were after me for the
dissecting-room!_

I tried to cry out, but was unable to make a sound, because of my
stifling condition. They reached the coffin, and I heard the shovel
scraping against it. Then I felt myself being slowly lifted upward,
and the coffin was dumped on the ground.

Now I heard a voice, and my blood ran cold, _for it was the voice of
Dr. Langley._

“The drug was an Oriental one,” he was saying. “It causes a semblance
of death that lasts a long time, but he probably died a few minutes
after he was buried. I am anxious to dissect to see what effect such a
drug has on the human body!”

And then, with a terrible shock, I heard the voice of my wife:

“I don’t care. Do as you wish. I hated him from the moment he refused
to give me a divorce. I could even watch you cut up his body!”

I struggled to rise in the coffin, gasping for the breath of life, and
then the lid was pried off, and, summoning all my dying strength. I
rose to my feet, waving my arms wildly back and forth and inhaling a
great breath of life-giving night air.

The doctor let the shovel fall to the ground without a word, and
staggered and sank to his knees, while my wife gave a hideous scream
of terror. Then she snatched a knife from his kit of dissecting
instruments and drew the razor-sharp blade across her throat. She then
threw herself upon the prostrate doctor, her blood drenching his body.

My senses reeling, I staggered forward, tripped over my coffin and
fell swooning to the ground.




None believe my story. Neither will you. I have told it to them all,
but they will not believe it.

I am in a hospital, where they tell me I have been for several days.
It is a prison hospital, where guards in uniform patrol the corridors,
lest even the sick try to escape.

They ask me if I cannot remember that I came home that night from the
club in a ‘blind frenzy of drink and found my wife and Dr. Langley
together. They tell me that I choked him with such ferocity and
strength that my fingers broke into the flesh of his neck. They tell
me that my wife, screaming with terror, tried to escape, and that,
just as the people in the adjoining apartment burst into the room, I
seized a razor from the bureau and slashed her throat from ear to ear,
and threw her body, with the blood streaming from the wound, across
that of the doctor.

Are they going to hang me for this double crime that I did not commit?

They will not believe my story. Yet every detail of it is as clear to
me as the stars that shine in the heavens.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Read of the Frightful Thing That Came from

The Extraordinary Experiment of Dr. Calgroni

By Joseph Faus and James Bennett Wooding




There is much concerning the queer Dr. Calgroni that I can not give to
the world.

It should be remembered that I had never been inside his house until
after I beheld him frantically emerge from its big front door, that
rainy night, his wizened face as white as death, and, scantily-clad,
rush headlong for the depot.

That he was a surgeon of extraordinary ability I readily acknowledge.
But Belleville was the last place where one would expect to find a man
of such surgical skill, and, most undoubtedly, the last place one
would choose for the scene of the startling events brought about as a
result of the doctor’s purchase of the ape “Horace” from Barber’s
World-famous 3-Ring Show.

Had the doctor merely put up at the hotel I might have believed him,
like myself, merely summering at Belleville. For it was a restful
hamlet, situated in a mountainous valley, something like a day’s run
from New York. But his renting of the Thornsdale place aroused latent
suspicions in my mind, probably instilled there by that strange
article I had read in _The Surgical Monthly._

Large enough for a hotel or boarding-house, but out-of-the-way
located--also because of the enormous rent demanded by its heirs--the
Thornsdale place had stood vacant since the last of the Thornsdale
line had died ten years before. Its doors had been closed and
padlocked, and its windows barricaded.

It had been the finest residence in the old town in its day, but was
now regarded as a sort of historic oddity. On the whole, it afforded a
formidable appearance, crouching behind its great elms, looming huge
and weather-beaten, with its board-shuttered and frowning windows. But
just the sort of place the eccentric Dr. Calgroni could work in,
unmolested.

I saw the peculiar doctor one morning as I was leaving the small post
office. It was just after train time, and many of the villagers were
loitering about the place, among them a young man named Jason Murdock.

Murdock was of that type one always hears of in a small community--the
village “devil.” He came of a good family, and had plenty of money and
all that; but had succeeded, despite rich heritage-blood, in igniting
more fire and brimstone than all five of the village preachers had in
their imagination conceived. He was coarsely good-looking, and big and
husky.

Aristocratic hoodlum though he was, all rather secretly admired the
fellow, probably because he injected “pep” into the lazy old town.

I beheld Jason Murdock pointing to a shriveled-up figure of a little
man, stooped of shoulder.

“There he goes--that Dr. Can-groan-ee, who’s movin’ into the
Thornsdale place. I wonder if there’s any good liquor in his cellar?
That old Thornsdale dump has a good wine cellar.”

Dr. Calgroni paid not the slightest attention to Jason’s insolent
babble, but walked hurriedly along, his clean-shaven, dried-up
countenance turning neither to the right nor left.

“Who is that man?” I asked the postmaster, who had now come to the
door for air.

“I dunno, excepting his mail is addressed Dr.--I’ll have to spell
it--C-A-L-G-R-O-N-I--and it is mostly foreign, out of Vienna,
forwarded here from New York.”

“Sort of a man of mystery, eh?” I hazarded.

“I should say he’s sort of a fool for rentin’ that old Thornsdale
rat-trap, for God-knows-what. That’s stood vacant these ten years.”

I nodded and left in the direction taken by the doctor.

Here, was an element of mystery; for I alone, of all the villagers,
knew that this eminent surgeon’s presence in Belleville boded ill.




I soon caught sight of the doctor.

For a man of his age and physique, his gait was exceedingly fast--as
though propelled by a nervous dynamo.

Stretching my legs, I kept a safe distance between him and myself,
until he swung open the tall wooden gate and quickly vanished through
the wilderness of tall bushes and low trees into the Thornsdale house.
I halted safe from observation and lighted my pipe.

Leaning against a tree there, I ran over in my mind the odd
significance of that remarkable article I had recently read in the
staid and ever-authentic _Surgical Monthly._

This Dr. Calgroni, it appeared, had stated to the interviewer that he
was here from Austria on a vacation--and to feel out the opinions of
American surgeons anent his new theory. One _Herr_ von Meine, a noted
surgeon of Vienna, he added with some asperity, had scoffed at the
absurdity and unorthodox idea of the unprecedented theory advanced by
him, and had declared that his, Calgroni’s, operation was extremely
impossible, not to say foolish--that it would never be a success.

Dr. Calgroni claimed that he could prolong a human life indefinitely
by the insertion of a live thigh gland from a young quadrumanous
mammal, such as the _Pithecoid._

Much discussion and argument had been provoked throughout the entire
medical world by the famous doctor’s The Extraordinary Experiment of
Dr. theory, and consensus was that he was an impracticable theorist
gone mad.

And now here was Dr. Calgroni, living in the quiet little town of
Belleville, where none was aware of his sensational hypothesis,
renting this immense old ramshackle place, and his remarkable intent
known to no one but himself.

I had taken a seat on a tree stump, in front of the gate, which had a
ring stapled to it, used in former days as a hitching post. Time hung
heavily upon me in Belleville, but this new element of mystery
promised some possible interest and excitement.

Having sat there until my pipe was empty and cold. I was aroused by
the noise of the gate opening behind me, followed by the _tap-tap_ of
a hammer. I turned.

There stood the doctor in his shirt sleeves, tacking a sign to the
crate post. Crudely painted in black on white cardboard I read:


            _POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE!
      Anyone entering here does so at his own risk.
                                    T. Calgroni._


Without even casting a glance my way, the doctor closed the gate
behind him and seemed about to depart up the weed-grown gravel walk,
when, glancing down the dusky street, he checked himself.

My gaze followed the direction of his eyes. A wagon was approaching.
It drew up at the stump and halted. Loaded with big boxes, the mules
were sweating after the pull. Their surly-faced driver stopped twenty
feet away and turned to the doctor:

“I know I’m late,” I overheard him grumble, “but I handled the boxes
carefully as you said. Shall I drive in?”

“You’d better,” returned Calgroni in crisp English, still not noticing me.

“And remember, if there’s a thing broken not a cent do you get” And he
wheeled up the path.

“Dam’ him!” swore the teamster, turning to me. “Did you ever see such
an old crab?”

“Glass inside the boxes?” I suggested.

The fellow looked at me suspiciously, then his lips contracted like a
vise and he turned to his mules. I watched him drive through the wagon
gate, and on up through the moss-covered trees to the house.




II.

The next morning I arose early, with the intention of strolling pass
the old Thornsdale place. I found Main Street lifeless, except for two
men busily engaged in posting up the glaring announcement of the
coming of:


      “BARBER’S WORLD-FAMOUS 3-RING SHOW”


Pausing. I watched them swab the long multi-hued strips of paper with
their paste brush and sling them upon the billboard. A small crowd of
big-eyed youngsters and loafers gradually congregated about the busy
circus advance men.

The most glaring and conspicuous poster represented two gorillas
peering angerly out from behind the bars of their cage. Beneath it was
lithographed in huge, red letters:


      “MIMMIE AND HORACE
      “ONLY WILD GORILLAS IN CAPTIVITY!”


I turned to leave--and, momentarily startled, faced what seemed to be
one of the gorillas at large! Only it wore clothes. Gazing at the
poster with a look of blank curiosity, was a man, short in stature,
immense of shoulder and deep of chest, his hair thatching his forehead
almost to his bushy eyebrows. He was hideous to look upon. I
recognized him, though, after an instant, as the village half-wit,
known as “Simple Will.”

I had seen him before, a poor, weak-minded creature, wandering
helplessly about the village, pitied, but spurned except when someone
needed the help of powerful hands and a strong back.

Drooling and muttering, Will followed the circus men as they started off.

I idly strolled down the first street; then, reaching the outskirts of
town, I found myself in the rear of the Thornsdale place. To my
surprise, I beheld another warning notice similar to the one that Dr.
Calgroni had tacked to his front gate last evening. Not only in one
but many places, on trees and the high fence, I saw the warning signs
of “No Trespassing.” The doctor himself was nowhere to be seen.

A week slipped by and nothing happened further than gossip concerning
the queer doctor. Occasionally Dr. Calgroni, in person, purchased
supplies and called for his mail. Although I contrived to be near him
whenever possible, he seldom uttered more than half a dozen words--and
never to me. Once, though, I thought I caught him peering
surreptitiously at me in a queer manner.

Obviously, the doctor was his own servant, housekeeper and cook. No
one took the risk of entering his place--not even the daring Jason
Murdock.

Several days before the circus arrived, I noticed what I considered a
peculiarly significant happening--Dr. Calgroni walking toward his
abode, with Simple Will tagging, doglike, a few paces behind.

At discreet distance, I followed them. Arriving at the Thornsdale
place, I was surprised to see the doctor close the gate behind him,
leaving Will standing outside. The half-wit stood there until Dr.
Calgroni disappeared.

The day before the snow came, I saw the doctor clapping Will on the
shoulder and talking to him.

That night such a terrible conclusion shaped itself in my mind as to
the meaning of the singular boxes, the hostile notices, Will’s
attitude toward the doctor, and the latter’s interest in him that it
kept me wide awake.

In ill humor at myself, I rose at the first appearance of the sun.
Remembering the circus, I strolled over to the tracks to watch it
unload.

Some villagers had gathered about the few wretched travel-scarred cars
that made up the second-rate circus train, and particularly in front
of the car containing the cage of Mimmie and Horace.

Doctor Calgroni was there, and, at his heels, Simple Will. The doctor
was talking very earnestly to the trainer.

“You say Mr. Barber has offered to sell either of these animals,” the
doctor was saying, as I drew up on the outer fringe of the curious
crowd.

“Yes sir. He will sell one because they fight continually. They have
to be carefully watched, or they might kill each other. You don’t know
what ferocious beasts gorillas are--”

The doctor smiled.

“I would like to talk to Mr. Barber,” he interposed.

The gorilla trainer hesitated, then, pulling shut the sliding doors of
the animal car:

“Sure; just follow me,” he said.

The doctor, at the man’s side, walked to a coach ahead, the
combination ticket-and-executive office of the Barber Shows. For an
instant, Simple Will seemed to hesitate, but he didn’t trail Dr.
Calgroni--the unseen things inside of the gigantic cage nearby seemed
to hold his hypnotic attention. Several big drops of rain splashed
upon the cinder-strewn ground. The heavens hung black and dismal; the
sun had completely vanished.

I watched Simple Will. He was ill-at-ease, hovering uneasily about the
gorillas’ car. The other people nearby paid no attention to the
half-wit. Presently the trainer and Dr. Calgroni returned, accompanied
by another man, who was counting a roll of bills.

“You say,” the latter remarked as they passed me, “that you want
‘Horace’ delivered at once?”

“Yes,” replied the doctor concisely.

“All right. Hank, call the gang, unload the cage and put Horace in
that red single cage. Dr. Calgroni has relieved us of him!”

At this, Simple Will approached the surgeon and touched his sleeve.

“You buy hairy animal-man?” he mumbled.

The doctor laid his blue-veined and thin old hand upon Will’s broad
shoulder.

“Yes, Will, and I’m going to give you a job--a job as his valet!” The
show men exchanged winks, and from the car rolled an empty,
iron-barred cage. Will’s expressionless features twisted into what on
his idiot countenance registered pleasure.

Dr. Calgroni beckoned to the man whom I had seen deliver the
strange-appearing boxes that first afternoon.

“Got your team?”

The fellow nodded.

A scene of bustle had sprung up about me. An excited and larger crowd
of villagers had assembled.

The big cage containing Mimmie and Horace was lowered to the track
side. They were two of the finest animals of their type I have ever
looked upon.

Horace was transferred to the single cage and its strong door doubly
padlocked upon him. The mule team drew up with the wagon.

“Here, Will,” said the doctor to the half-wit, “climb into the wagon.
We’re going before we get wet.” The doctor appeared highly elated.

Simple Will, who had stood by as if in a stupor, swung his heavy body
up behind the gorilla’s cage.

No sooner had the wagon drawn out of sight than the heavens seemed to
loosen in wrath. Rain fell in torrents, driving the spectators in a
wild rush for shelter. As I reached the hotel, the water dripping from
my drenched garments, the storm increased its fury. All that day it
rained--and the next.

As I lay on my bed that night and listened to the roar of wind and
rain beating upon the roof and window panes, my mind kept drifting to
the inmates of Thornsdale place--the queer doctor, Simple Will and his
ward, Horace, the gigantic gorilla.




III.

It was three days later that I learned Dr. Calgroni had wired to New
York, and on the next morning an exceptionally well-dressed stranger,
whose goatee, bearing and satchel smacked of a medical man, stepped
off the train.

Espying me, he asked:

“Will you kindly direct me to the Thornsdale place?”

I told him the best way to reach Dr. Calgroni’s without wading in mud,
and he departed, with a brief “Thank You.”

The next night I saw the stranger, ashen of face and decidedly
inwardly shaken, hurriedly purchase a ticket and leave on the 9:45
train for New York.

Immediately I sought the telegraph dispatcher.

“You are aware of the queer actions of Dr. Calgroni--”

“I should say! He’s a nut.”

“I can’t say as to that, but to whom did he send the message the other
night?”

“You won’t let it out I tipped you off?”

I solemnly held up my right hand. “Well,” in a whisper, “he wired a
hospital for their best surgical man.”

So the assistant had gone back, frightened. And why?

Several weeks later Barber’s World-famous 3-Ring Show gave a return
exhibition at Belleville. That night I wandered toward the Thornsdale
place.

Again the clouds had banked for a storm, fitful rays of the moon now
and then shifting through, only to be absorbed in mist.

Drawing around in front of the old homestead, looming dark behind the
gloom-shadowed trees, I seated myself on the stump hitching-post. I
was glad that in my coat pocket nestled a neat automatic. Why I
lingered there in front of the quiet old place I do not know. Not a
light glimmered in the house; not a noise issued from its muffled
depths.

Then to my ears came a shriek and to my startled gaze a light flared
in the house. I could dimly see that a figure appeared at its open
door. It looked behind it for an instant, then madly bolted toward me.

Upon the wet gravel came the tread of rapidly-moving feet, and the
gate in front of me swung abruptly back. In the hazy reflected light,
I got one look at Dr. Calgroni who, hat and raincoat in his hands, the
muscles of his face quivering, his face deathly pale, emerged and
turned, running madly toward town.

I drew back, automatic in hand, waiting for whatever might follow the
doctor. Nothing happened. Obeying an impulse, I took out after the
fleeing surgeon. Over soggy soil I followed him, around corners, down
Main Street to the depot. I got there in time to see him swing on the
platform of the rear coach of the 9:45 train, bound for New York.

Throbbing with excitement, scarce knowing what I was doing, I made my
way back toward the Thornsdale place. Several blocks away, I caught a
glimpse of a broad-shouldered, thick-set disheveled figure in
breech-clout, running--or, rather, prancing and hopping--toward the
circus grounds. The automatic in my hand, I followed.

A block from the circus grounds, under the street lamp, I saw a figure
on horseback that I recognized as Jason Murdock, evidently bound for home.

Then, snarling, the Thing I had seen hopped out from behind a tree
trunk, on all fours. Gaining its hind feet; it made a flying leap at
Jason, knocking him from his horse. On the ground they rolled, the
powerful Jason helpless in the Thing’s clutch. Its fingers closed
chokingly about the man’s throat.

I tried to shoot, only to find my gun jammed; tried to shout, and
could not.

At that instant the brass band struck up “There’ll Be A Hot Time In
The Old Town Tonight!” As the quick, dancing strains smote the
night-air, the Thing suddenly ceased in the act of strangling Jason,
looking attentively up. There seemed to be a responsive, obedient look
on its horrible countenance. I could see its wild-eyes and bearded
face--God! _It was Simple Will!_

Bounding first on all fours, then half-upright on his feet, the crazed
idiot was making for the show grounds just as the clouds broke in a
downpour. To the rear of the big tent bounded Will, as the crowd
scattered for home.

As if familiar with his surrounding, he made for a side-show tent in
front of which sputtered a gas torch. The crowd, fleeing in the rain,
had in the confusion failed to see the half-wit and myself on the mad
run. But several men were following me, as Will tore aside the
entrance flaps.

Inside, poorly-lighted though it was, I could plainly see the cage of
Mimmie, the female-gorilla. Her trainer turned at the noise of our
entrance, and hastily reached for his knife-pointed pole--but too
late. Uttering a cry piercing and antagonistic, Will flung himself at
Mimmie’s cage, who, with an answering cry of battle, reached both her
long hairy arms through her cage, clawing and tearing at the fiercely
struggling man on the outside.

The trainer rushed in with his prong, thrusting it at Mimmie. For an
instant she drew back; then several of us quickly pulled Will,
bleeding profusely, back from the enraged animal, who again lurched
forward as though recognizing in Will the reincarnation of her mate,
Horace.

Foaming at the mouth, Will sank limply to the floor. From the hue of
the blood, ebbing from the side of his neck, I saw at a glance that he
was done for--Mimmie’s claws had severed his jugular vein.

Among the men who had helped me thrust the poor fellow out of Mimmie’s
reach, was the sheriff of the county.

“What does this mean?” he demanded, grasping my shoulders.

“Follow me!” I cried.

A crowd of excited men, headed by the sheriff and myself, made for the
Thornsdale place. The light still dimly illuminated the hall through
the open door.

“I’ll go in first, sheriff,” I offered. “Have your men surround the
place.”

I stole into the hall. A terrible stench greeted me. I found it came
from a door opening out into the hall. A feeble light burned within.
About me stood several boxes, with the sides torn open, and excelsior
hanging and strewn about them.

Before me, completely assembled in every detail, stood what the boxes
had contained--an operating table and all its many surgical
accessories. Out of a long box in the corner sprawled the hairy limbs
of the fast-decaying Horace, the male gorilla.

Taking a small oil lamp from the stand, I turned to examine the dead
body; and I noticed a paper, which fell to the floor. A quick look at
the side of the beast’s head revealed a great gash, rottening at the
edges, through which, it was evident, the brain had been removed.

I hastily recalled Dr. Calgroni’s theories. Could it be--

My eyes chanced to drop to the floor. Holding forth the lamp, I saw
there was handwriting on the bit of paper.

I picked it up and read the note, which, even at the last stand.
Calgroni had directed to _me,_ Von Meine, chief disparager of his wild
theories:


_“Herr, Von Meine, of Vienna, you said I could not do it. You berated
me for my endeavors to alleviate the distress of the insane and
feeble-minded. Yet I know now that I have accomplished it, without
killing the subject as you claimed would be the result of such an
operation. That’s why I followed you here, to show you! It was
successful, Von Meine, I could tell by the way his eyes looked into
mine when he finally came to. But I could see the brain I had
substituted for Will’s atrophied one was too vigorous--that expression
didn’t belong to Simple Will. I am fleeing before he gains his
strength. I admit my fear; for after this operation the former
half-wit will be a dangerous customer, with the too vigorous and
ferocious brain of the Gorilla Horace in his head!”_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Ten Pallbearers For This Mammoth Woman

When Mrs. Martha Carmas, of Middle Village, Queensboro, New York, died
of elephantiasis, ten men were required to carry her body from the
hospital to Lutz Church for funeral services. She weighed 710 pounds.
A special coffin of immense size was made for the body. Mrs. Carmas
was only thirty-three years of age, and, until she contracted the
dreadful elephantiasis, she was not unusually heavy.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Woman Starves Herself To Feed Cats

In a mean neighborhood in New York City dwelt Mary Bosanti, the “Cat
Woman.” The neighbors gave her that name because of her excessive love
for cats. All the cats in that part of town seemed to be attracted to
her house. Every day she went to the corner grocery and bought six
quarts of milk, which she carried back to her room. Twenty or more
cats always tagged at her heels, and when she spoke to them in a
lowered tone they seemed to know what she said. They obeyed her every
command. Then, one morning, a neighbor heard groans issuing from the
“Cat Woman’s” room and called the other tenants of the house. They
broke the door in--and found the “Cat Woman” starving, surrounded by a
great swarm of cats and more than 200 empty milk bottles.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Here’s a “Creepy” Tale That Ends In a Shuddering, Breath-taking Way

The Return of Paul Slavsky

By Capt. George Warburton Lewis

Author of “Trailing the Jungle Man,” “Wine of the Wilderness,” Etc.




From Petrograd came Paul Slavsky, with what his Nihilist associates
might have styled a clean record and no bungled jobs, but what Larry
Brandon classified as a criminal record _de luxe._

It was natural that such a record should bring about Slavsky’s early
acquaintance with Inspector Brandon, of the Central Office and it
followed, as day follows dawn, that the Terrorist should become the
object of the shrewdest surveillance the Chief Inspector could design.

Whether Paul Slavsky actually discovered, or merely suspected, that he
was being shadowed, matters little. A notation on an old blotter shows
that he boldly attempted to pave the way for future criminal
enterprises by calling at the Central Office in the role of a
persecuted citizen, who had journeyed here from his native land to
escape the hell which he declared the Russian Secret Police had made
his life.

It took three months of intensive investigation to convince Larry
Brandon that Slavsky was all the Secret Police had painted him and
more, and that the Terrorist had not emigrated to America with even
the remotest intention of reforming. It took the detective three
months more to satisfy himself beyond all doubt that Slavsky had,
marvelously enough, established an active branch of his old order and
was undoubtedly spreading the doctrine of Gorgias and Fichte under the
very noses of the Central Office experts. However, the evidence
necessary to a conviction was lacking, so nothing could be done.

A little later the men of the same nationality as the Nihilist, whom
Brandon had used to great advantage on the case, began, one by one, to
drop quietly out of existence. This was not only mysterious--it was
uncanny. Finally the decomposed bodies of some of these operatives
were found and unmistakably identified.

In each instance _the head had been completely severed from the trunk._

Recollecting that the Terrorist order, to which Paul Slavsky had
belonged, had signalized its outrages by decapitating its victims,
Brandon was enabled to initiate definite plans which, in due course,
culminated in his running his man to earth.

But Paul Slavsky never beheld the fatal Chair nor served time. He
chose the other route. He had elected to live in rebellion against
man’s orderly institutions, and in this same unreasoning revolt he
resolved to die. Like most of his ilk, the Terrorist in physical
combat was a hard man, and he really fought a great fight, but he
fought it with a master craftsman in the conquering of such as he, and
inevitably he lost, with many of Larry Brandon’s bullets in his great
body and only life enough left in him to greet--and almost at once to
take final leave of--his favorite sister, Olga, who had arrived in
Europe, a little late as it transpired, to join her brother in his
sinister calling.

Olga Slavsky, years younger than her lamented brother, was as pretty a
little specimen of dark-eyed femininity as ever enchanted fastidious
masculine eye. Yet so is the tigress beautiful.

Still, that is not quite the idea I wish to convey. If you can think
of a woman in repose being as beautiful as a tigress and, in
smoldering hate and loathing as repulsive, as hideous as a preying
vampire, then you will get nearer my meaning. Olga like her brother,
was a staunch exponent of the Terrorist doctrine.

What Brandon expected soon came to pass. The strange girl, whom men
called beautiful and women envied, was promptly elected to her
brother’s place in what was known in the underworld of unlawful secret
orders as the “League.” In this way she immediately crossed swords
with the man who had ended the career of her brother Paul, and ere
long she became aware, through members of the League detailed as
spies, that still another noted criminologist, Joe Seagraves, was
unpleasantly hot on her trail.

But Olga was undaunted. For daring and ingenuity, she by far eclipsed
her cunning and resourceful brother, who had blazed the path of her
iconoclastic pilgrimage.

Since little could thus far be proved against Olga, Seagraves believed
that it might be better to declare a sort of armistice and, if
possible, gradually win her over to the side of law and order. To this
end, he openly called and laid his ideas before her. She frankly
flouted his implied interest in her well-being, but showed a spirit of
compromise by offering the crime specialist a cigarette.

In such a mood Olga became a docile and purring tiger kitten, only one
never quite forgot her claws. She was highly superstitious, Seagraves
discovered; but then her whole character was so anomalous and so
replete with unexpectedly outcropping traits and wildly illogical
beliefs that it was almost to be expected she would believe in ghosts.

She clung tenaciously to the belief, so Brandon told Seagraves, that
some day Paul would _return_ and end the life of the man who--the
Terrorist had told his sister shortly before his death--had done him
to death.

“Do you still believe, Olga, that Paul is going to come back one day
and carry Brandon away with him into the Unknown?” asked Seagraves.

Olga’s dark eyes grew suddenly darker as she slowly removed a
cigarette from between her too red lips.

“Not only is he coming,” she answered, “but he is coming _soon._ Only
night before last I talk with him. I tell him hurry. You see his
spirit cannot rest until his murder is--ah, my very bad
English!--avenge’.”

“You’re a very foolish woman, Olga,” admonished Seagraves. “If you
refuse to listen to my warning you’re going to find yourself in lots
of trouble. I want you to understand that.”

Then the drowsing tigress put out her claws.

“You threaten me!” she fairly hissed, tossing away her cigarette and
rising. “I am a free woman. You are, after all, like my own people.
You would make slaves of all who cannot buy their freedom of--of
thought and action.”

She glanced about queerly before she concluded:

“Don’t interest yourself too far. You may be great, but remember--I am
no longer to be despised. You have waited too long. Should I choose,
for example, I could have shot you where you sit.”

Joe Seagraves leaped out of his chair, an automatic in his experienced
hand and menacing the mysterious woman steadily.

But already the allegorical vampire, which the detective had seen
reflected in Olga’s piercing eyes and heard in her studied but crisp
and stinging words, had spread its skinny wings and flown. Olga was
laughing in such sincere, or well-feigned, mockery at his alarm that
the dignified detective momentarily felt abashed.

He put his weapon away, nevertheless, only after a searching glance
about the very ordinary little room in which the extraordinary woman
had received him. He recalled that the last victim of Olga’s brother,
mutilated, headless and repellant, had been found in this same
neighborhood, if not in this same house.

“Please--_please_ forgive me,” the strange girl was pleading. “You
see, I forgot that you are not like--like Brandon. For him there is no
forgiveness. He must perish. But we--you and I--why must we be enemies?”

“There’s but one reason, Olga,” replied Seagraves seriously, “and that
is a strong one. It is simply the nature of our respective callings.”

“Then I can only be sorry,” she said in a low voice. “Still, my
principles are more--what word?--more sacred than your friendship.”

As the woman paused. Seagraves could have taken an oath that he caught
the sound of whispering voices through a door standing slightly ajar
not three paces from his elbow. Of a sudden, he stepped forward and
flung the door wide with a resounding _bang._

A gray-walled room, quite empty, was all that rewarded his
examination. He turned and found Olga smiling again.

“Did you surprise them?” she inquired sweetly.

“Surprise whom?” demanded the detective.

“The rats,” she said ingenuously, still smiling.

“I’ve seen but one rat here,” murmured Seagraves in an impersonal
tone; “I see it now. It has wings that fold up like an umbrella. It is
called a vampire.”

Olga smiled on placidly, even after Joe Seagraves had closed the door
on her and was gone.




In the language of the man who knotted the noose, Olga, as her kind
are certain to do, came at last to the end of her rope.

Conspiracy, blackmail and extortion were at last brought home to her;
and it chanced that the same eminent crime expert who had hurried the
career of her brother to an inglorious finish was likewise destined to
be the instrument of fate in the undoing of Olga.

In time the pursuit narrowed down to the end of a most imperfect day
for both quarry and hunters. Then all night, as Brandon and Seagraves
gradually drew their web closer and ever closer about the elusive
Terrorist, she tricked them at every angle and turn with the cunning
of a fox, and it was not until three sleepless days and nights that
the two renowned sleuths effected her capture more than five hundred
miles distant from the field of her long-continued operations.

“She’ll be as slippery as an eel,” Brandon warned Seagraves, when they
were ready to start back with their prisoner. “I’ll never consent to
any Pullman for _her,_ even though we ignore the law and handcuff her
to the seat. One of us is going to have to keep his eyes on her
constantly.”

“Only one of us could sleep at a time, anyhow,” said Seagraves; “and
surely we can stand it one more night, don’t you think? Suppose we
both sit it out with her.”

They at length did decide to “sit it out” with their prisoner, and
with that understanding they took her aboard the train.

At the moment of entering the train, a telegram was handed to Brandon,
and as soon as the three were comfortably seated in their section the
inspector read it with lips compressed and eyes oddly squinted. Then
he handed the message to Seagraves, who read:


      _“Police record Olga Slavsky arrived. Wanted in three countries
      for complicity in murder nine counts. Escaped Russian Secret
      Police three times. At present fugitive from justice. Keep close
      watch on her.
            --Renfrow, Chief Inspector.”_


Seagraves returned the telegram to Brandon, winking an eye
disparagingly and smiling at what the Chief Inspector had evidently
considered a necessary precaution.

The afternoon waned. Early evening found the train three-quarters of
an hour behind time. If this kept up they would not arrive before two
in the morning.

Olga sat besides Seagraves facing Brandon.

“I would give much for a cigarette,” she announced out of a long
silence at ten o’clock, addressing herself to Seagraves.

“This isn’t a smoker,” observed the crime specialist, glancing around,
“but there are only two other passengers in the car. Try it.”

He offered her his box, and she took one and lighted it. Filling her
lungs with the comforting smoke, she exhaled it in a great cloud and,
after a meditative pause, murmured:

“At last. I am to see poor Paul.”

She looked Seagraves steadily in the eye and added in a queer tone
that she felt her brother was very near tonight.

It was a mixed train, and the day couches appeared to have much the
better of the sleepers as to occupancy. Seagraves noted casually that,
besides themselves, their car boasted but two other passengers, and
though they might have been snugly asleep in their respective berths,
they had apparently elected to sit out the short run, evidently
preferring reclining to rising and dressing at 1:30 or 2 o’clock A.M.

“Do you see the man sitting all alone in the last seat with the
handkerchief over his face, to keep the light out of his eyes?” Olga’s
ruminant voice finally broke in upon the monotonous _clackety-clack_
of wheels upon rail-joints.

“Yes--what about him?” asked Seagraves.

“Nothing, only he--he looks like Paul,” she answered in a guarded
voice as though she feared Brandon, cat-napping now, might overhear
her strange language.

“Olga!” ridiculed the detective, “get a grip on yourself.”

Having thus counseled the prisoner, Seagraves was thoughtful for a
long space; then he looked over at Olga, saw an odd, uneasy expression
on her pretty face and quickly said:

“Here--have another cigarette, Olga. Burn ‘em up!”




At midnight the conductor passed through the car.

“We’ll make the city a little before two o’clock,” he said in answer
to a sleepy-voiced interrogation from Brandon, who seemed to have
banished sleep and was blinking about the car.

“What--we all alone?” he asked Seagraves. Then he caught sight of the
two lonely passengers at the far end of the car. “No; two others,” he
murmured, answering his own question.

He was turning his gaze away from the man with the handkerchief over
his face when something, Seagraves noted, drew his eyes inquiringly
back to the sleeper’s hunched figure. The movement caused Seagraves to
follow Brandon’s scrutiny. He marked the fact that the handkerchief
had fallen from their fellow-passenger’s face, and--was it because of
Olga’s suggestion, or was it merely a silly midnight fancy?--he
assuredly seemed to trace a certain vague resemblance between the
solitary sleeper and the notorious Paul Slavsky, long ago dead.

The idea brought with it a queer, though distinct, sense of
unpleasantness. The booming voice of Brandon, breaking in upon his
wholly disagreeable train of thought, was highly reassuring.

“Huh!” laughed the Inspector, “I thought I recognized that chap.”

At a quarter to one, Seagraves shook Brandon out of a doze and said,
“Keep the lady company for a few minutes. I’m going into the smoker.”

“All right, Joe,” drawled Brandon, opening his slightly reddened eyes
and seeming to be perfectly wide awake.

Seagraves disappeared into the smoking-room, returning some ten or
fifteen minutes later. To his surprise he noted that Brandon,
evidently not caring to take a chance on Olga’s diving out of the open
window, had handcuffed her fast to the seat and had once more fallen
asleep. Olga herself appeared a trifle more cheerful. She even smiled,
though somewhat wearily, as Seagraves resumed his scat beside her.

“I told you it would be Paul,” the woman whispered to Seagraves, as
though determined to share no part of her secret with the despised
Brandon. “See,” she insisted, growing almost jubilant, “it is my
brother Paul--come back to me at last!”

“For God’s sake. Olga,” cried Seagraves disgustedly, “stop that
foolishness. It gets on my nerves.”

Stillness then for several minutes.

Of a sudden Seagraves felt cold. He turned up his coat collar and,
somehow rather depressed, sat looking across at the muffled figure of
Brandon who, also evidently having felt the night chill, had wound a
great muffler about his neck and pulled his ample Stetson low over his
face. Seagraves reflected that this would be a fitting case with which
to crown a long list of his old friend’s successes. Tomorrow he would
congratulate him.

A long wild shriek from the locomotive startled Seagraves like an
unexpected blow.

“Ha!” he said, “I must be developing nerves after all these years.
Anyhow, we’re getting in.”

Then he raised his eyes and saw that the man, who, he had imagined,
resembled Paul Slavsky, had disappeared. So had the only other
passenger who had occupied a seat near him. It struck Seagraves as
singular.

Another long wail from the locomotive blent dissonantly with the
dreary _clackety-clack, clackety-clack_ of the car-wheels, and at the
same instant the vestibule door was smashed open. Through it came
stumbling, covered with blood, clothing torn to tatters, the identical
man who had resembled Paul Slavsky.

His hands were securely cuffed, and he was being partly shoved and
partly dragged forward along the aisle for all the world as though he
were a wax dummy. His captor was no other than the traveler whom the
detective had seen sitting near the dead Terrorist’s double.

“He fought like a tiger, Mr. Seagraves, but I finally got him. He’s
one of Olgas bunch--a second brother of hers, in fact. He heard that
she was hard pressed and just landed from Europe to help her escape.”

Joe Seagraves sat like one stupefied. Jim McLean, of the Central
Office, cleverly disguised as an innocent-looking rustic, had captured
a third Slavsky, but how--where?

“It’s all right,” McLean was explaining. “You see, Renfrow got wind of
this fellow’s game, got hold of a picture of him and sent me out to
ride back with you and Brandon and the lady. I fell asleep in earnest,
while pretending to be, and waked up just as my man was slipping out
of the car. I got a good look at his face then and, recognizing him,
made the first move in a scrap that lasted through six coaches and
clear up to the coal-tender.”

“Why was the man slipping out?” demanded Seagraves, perplexedly.

“Ah! that’s it. I missed you from the car and suspected something
wrong. Brandon seemed to be asleep and the woman was laughing. That
was enough. I collared my man.”

Joe Seagraves reached over and gently shook Brandon, who, still
sleeping like a rock, had slumped low down in the angle formed by the
scat and the window.

“Come out of it!” the detective bawled at his companion, “we’re
getting in.”

But Brandon slept on. Seagraves waited a moment, then shook him again,
almost violently.

“Come on, Larry!” he said, himself rising.

But Brandon did not stir, and Seagraves darted a questioning glance at
Olga, still handcuffed fast, to the seat. To his amazement and alarm
the woman was smiling, triumphantly, terribly. A vogue surmise, which
had come into Seagrave’s head hours before, was now confirmed.

There was no doubting that leering and awful smile. She had bitten the
blood from her carmine lips. Olga Slavsky had gone stark mad!

In all the years that followed, Joe Seagraves was never able to free
his memory from the haunting horror of the thing he beheld when,
Brandon not reacting to violent shakes, he grew suspicious and lifted
his unresponsive friend’s big hat off his head--or rather off--_a
vacant-eyed and staring dummy head!_




Paul Slavsky had not _returned_ as Olga had predicted he would, but a
last gruesome reminder of his own hideous handiwork was nevertheless
present.

When the first shock of horror had passed, and Seagraves and McLean
again focused their incredulous eyes on Olga Slavsky, they knew that
the woman, though handcuffed, had herself participated in this last
act of terrorism in America. It was incredible, but there, before the
detectives’ eyes, were the facts themselves.

The blood from her bitten lips streaking her Patrician chin, Olga sat
composedly folding and unfolding her daintily-patterned hands, quite
as a vampire folds and unfolds its repellent wings; toying, as might a
child, with the polished handcuffs which supposedly had held her a
prisoner, and--before the amazed eyes of her beholden--_slipping the
locked manacles on and off over her tiny, flexible hands!_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




Unearth Vast Wealth in Egyptian Tomb

Rare treasures of art, priceless gems and the royal trappings of
ancient times were discovered by archaeologists when they tunneled
their way into the funeral chambers of King Tutankhamen [1358-1350, B.
C.] in the Valley of Kings near Luxor, Egypt. Describing the
discovery, Lord Carnarvon wrote to a Chicago newspaper correspondent:

“At last a passage was cleared. We again reached a sealed door or
wall. We wondered if we should find another staircase, probably
blocked, behind this wall, or whether we should get into a chamber. I
asked Mr. Carter to take out a few stones and have a look in. He
pushed his head partly into the aperture. With the help of a candle,
he could dimly discern what was inside. . . . ‘These are marvelous
objects here,’ he said.

“I myself went to the hole, and I could with difficulty restrain my
excitement. At the first sight, with the inadequate light, all that
one could see was what appeared to be gold bars. On getting a little
more accustomed to the light, it became apparent that there were
colossal gilt couches with extraordinary heads, boxes here and boxes
there. We enlarged the hole and Mr. Carter managed to scramble in--the
chamber is sunk two feet below the bottom passage--and then, as he
moved around with a candle, we knew we had found something unique and
unprecedented.”

Among the many treasures which they found in the tomb were royal
robes, embroidered with precious stones, the state throne of King
Tutankhamen, portraits of the king and queen, incrusted with
turquoises, lapsis lazulli and other gems, two life-sized golden
statues of the king, with gold scepter and mace, and four gem-studded
chariots.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The House of Death

A Strange Tale

By F. Georgia Stroup




The three women looked about the little kitchen. For some reason, each
seemed to avoid the eyes of the other.

“My land, but it’s hot in here!” Mrs. Prentis moved to the north
window to raise it.

As she propped up the heavy sash with a thin board that lay on the
sill, a gust of hot wind swept through the room from a drought-parched
Kansas cornfield.

Seeking relief in action, her daughter, Selina, hastened to the
opposite window and pushed it up, as a cloud of dust thickened in the
road in front of the house. A small herd of bawling cattle were
milling past the house in the heat and glare of the August sun. Their
heads drooped dejectedly and their tongues lolled from parched mouths.

“My land. Seliny, there goes another bunch of cattle out west. Does
beat all how hard ‘tis to get water in this country. Jes’ seems to me
sometimes like I’d die for a sight of mountains an’ green things an’ a
tumblin’ little stream that’d run an’ ripple all summer.”

Motherly Mrs. Collins wiped the perspiration from her large, red face
and fanned herself with her blue sunbonnet.

“Didn’t Mamie Judy come from the mountain country?” she asked.

“Yes: we went to the same school. When she was a girl she had the
blackest eyes and the prettiest red cheeks of any girl you ever did
see. Didn’t look much like she does now! A farmer’s wife soon goes to
pieces. She was such a lively girl, too--so full of fun. An’ now jes’
to think what the poor thing’s come to!”

Again the three women avoided each other’s eyes. Then Selina spoke
nervously:

“Do you ‘spose she did it, Ma?”

“There you go with your ‘sposin’ again! Better get to work and
straighten up this house. That’s what we come over for, ain’t it?”

Mrs. Collins rose heavily from her chair and unrolled and donned a
carefully-ironed, blue-checked apron.

“Seems kinda funny to have the funeral here, don’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The graveyard’s handy an’ it’s so far to the church.”

“Yes, that’s so; ‘tain’t far to the cemetry. Always seemed to me that
Mamie’d found it kinda spooky, always seein’ the graveyard right
through that window there over the stove. Bein’ up on top of that
rise, an’ only half a mile away, would make it seem to me kinda like
livin’ in a graveyard.”

“Selina, take this here bucket an’ bring in some water. My land, I
don’t see how Mamie ever got through with all her work an’ took care
of the baby. Her bein’ so old, an’ it her first, made it harder, too.
Never thought her an’ Jed would have any children.”

“Things do need reddin’ up pretty considerable,” spoke Mrs. Collins,
as she picked up some odds and ends of clothing from a corner, where
they had lain long enough to accumulate a coating of acrid dust.

“My jes’ look at the linin’ in this firebox! How d’you ever ‘spose
Mamie managed to cook on it?”

“Must have been pretty hard. She didn’t have things fixed as handy as
some of the rest of us, even. You see, they didn’t have much money to
spend on things. Farmin’ in Kansas ain’t been a payin’ business the
last few years. When ‘tain’t too wet, it’s too dry, or too hot, or too
cold, or somethin’.”

“Yes, it seems like there’s always somethin’. There--I’ve got that
sweepin’ done. We’ll let Selina scrub, while we fix up the front room.”

The two women opened the door into the “front” room. The blinds were
tightly drawn and the musty odor testified to its lengthy isolation.




“My land! look at that, will you?” Mrs. Prentis pointed to a cheap
colored glass on the center-table, which held a pitiful little bouquet
of one immortelle, six pale spears of a rank grass and a
carefully-cut-out letterhead of a printed spray of orange blossoms.

“Who’d a thought of tryin’ to make a bouquet out o’that? I remember,
when we were back in Tennessee, that Mamie was always findin’ the
first deer’s tongues and other kinds of little early flowers. Us big
girls always helped fill her little hands. Seemed like she never could
get all she wanted. An’ then think of livin’ out here where there
ain’t water enough for things that has to have it, let alone flowers.
Why, I remember one summer when we even saved the dishwater to use
several times, and then fed it to the pigs ‘cause water was so scarce.”

“Yes: the way farmer’s wives have to worry ‘long, ‘tain’t much wonder
so many of ‘em go crazy. I read in th’ paper that was ‘round a bundle
that come from the store that a bigger part of farmers’ wives went
crazy than any other kind of women.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that too. Let’s jes’ step in an’ pick up in the
bedroom, and then sweep both these rooms out together. The wind’s in
th’ right direction.”

“Yes, you come with me. We--we could get done sooner, workin’
together. That must be the pallet an’ this th’ pillow. They say the
baby had been dead for several hours when Jed found it.”

“Yes, an’ Mamie settin’ out there in the barn door, with her head in
her lap. Not cryin’ nor nothin’.”

The two women hesitated, lingered at their task. Something kept them
from moving the things that the coroner had kept in so rigidly exact a
position.

“Yes; there’s somethin’ mighty queer about it. My land, jes’ think,
she might be--HUNG!” in a hoarse whisper.

Both faces blanched at the hitherto unspoken possibility. A
woman--neighbor and friend, and the childhood acquaintance of one of
them--was imprisoned on the charge of killing her baby.

They felt that they ought to have a feeling of horror. It was a
terrible crime, with seemingly only one explanation, but to both there
arose visions of the unexpected satisfying of the craving mother heart
of the work-worn farm drudge; of her seeming happiness and joy at the
little cuddling head in the hollow of her arm and the soft lips on the
breast, as the little form was held tightly to its mother’s bosom.

“I don’t care what the coroner’s jury said, I don’t believe Mamie
could ‘a’ done it. But still--if she didn’t, who _did?”_

“Yes, an’ then, if she didn’t do it, why don’t she say so? She knows
they might hang her.”

“They say she ain’t said one word since Jed found her out there in the
barndoor. My land, but ain’t it hot?”

“Yes, there bein’ no trees ‘round here, jes’ seems like the sun bakes
right through the roof. Well, we might as well begin to pick up. The
funeral’s at ten tomorrow. I can come over early; can you?”

“Yes, I’ll be here. I’m goin’ to stay an’ set up tonight. Mr. and Mrs.
Shinkle said they’d come over. Selina can get supper for her pa an’
th’ boys.”

“We’d better change them cloths.”

The women tiptoed into the little lean-to, with that expectant hash
that the presence of death always causes.

On on improvised table, a little form lay covered with a sheet, above
a box of slowly melting ice. The country ministrations of neighborly
service were completed, and the women left the room and returned to
their task of cleaning in the front of the little farmhouse.

“My land, but it’s quiet here! Bein’ so far off the main road, seems
like a person never sees nor hears nobody. It’s enough to drive a
person crazy.”




The older woman had been standing for several minutes, with her mind
preoccupied by struggling thought. At last she spoke:

“See here, Mis’ Prentis, if this pillow’d been standing up like this,
it could’ve fell over on the baby. See?”

Both women bent over the carefully-folded bedclothing, placed upon the
floor for the sake of a slightly cooler strata of air and also to
obviate the possibility of the baby rolling off, while the mother was
busy in some of the many tasks of the unaided farmer’s wife.

Little by little, the bedroom was straightened and the two rooms swept
and dusted. Then Mrs. Prentis paused as she gave a final look around
the rooms, walked to one of the windows on the south and ran a
speculative finger over the glass. It was so heavily coated with dust
as to be practically opaque. Then she stepped to the two windows on
the east side of the room and looked at them. The panes of glass in
both were clean and carefully polished.

“Now why do you suppose that is?” she asked.

“Now why do you suppose that is?”

Mrs. Collins, who had been following her moves, shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she answered, “Did you notice that the one in the
kitchen, on the south ride above the stove, hadn’t been washed,
either? I noticed it when I went over to look at the firebox when you
spoke.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said Mrs. Prentis, standing in the kitchen door and
glancing at the south windows of one room and then at the other.

“See here, do you ‘spose--that is--I mean both of these windows on the
south side are toward the graveyard--do you ‘spose that Mamie left ‘em
that way _on purpose?”_

“Well, there’s a good deal to do on a farm, and mebbe she got as far
as the south side washin’ windows some day, and then had to quit for
some reason.”

“Yes, but these ain’t been washed for _months._ Poor little Mamie!
Mebbe she just couldn’t stand to be everlastingly seein’ them
gravestones.”

“I wish, oh _how_ I wish, I’d ‘a ‘come over here oftener! We don’t
live so far away; but seems like I never get time to get all my work
done, and when I do there’s not time to walk, or I’m too tired, an’ o’
course the horses are always busy.

“What with fruit cannin’, and hayin’ hands, an’ threshin’, an’ little
chickens, the summer’s gone ‘fore you know it, an’ then the winter’s
too cold and snowy, or too wet an’ muddy to get out, an’ the first
thing you know another year’s slipped by.”

Motherly Mrs. Collins nodded her head in sympathy. An older and a
heavier woman, all that Mrs. Prentis had said applied better than
equally well to her.

“No wonder Mamie loved the baby so,” she said, “though she ain’t been
overly strong since it was born. Jes’ think of the years and years she
was here all alone, for Jed used to work out a good deal an’ she done
all the work here. Years an’ years of stillness--an’ then the baby
she’d never give up wantin’ and hopin’ for.”

“Yes, when I think what a woman’s got to go through here on a farm, I
don’t never want Selina should get married. Seems like it’s enough
sometimes to make a mother wish her girl baby could die when it’s
little--”

She gasped. Both women gave a frightened start.

“No; ‘course I don’t mean that,” she added hastily. “I jes’ mean you
love ‘em so that it don’t seem no ways right for ‘em to have to grow
up to what you see in front of ‘em.”

“Well, we better quit talkin’ an’ lay out th’ baby’s things. ‘Spose we
look in the bureau in the bedroom.”

They moved again to the inner room and pulled out the top drawer of
the old-fashioned marble-topped bureau.

A few shirts, a pile of carefully mended underwear and some socks,
rolled and turned together in two’s, met their gaze.

“That’s Jed’s drawer. Let’s see what’s in the next one.”

The second drawer revealed a freshly-ironed white waist carefully
folded above a meager pile of woman’s underwear. Without a word, Mrs.
Prentis pushed it shut.

The third drawer proved to be the one they wanted. Small piles of
carefully made baby clothing of cheap material but workmanship of
infinite pains, met their view.

Mrs. Collins wiped the tears from her cheeks with the corner of her apron.

“See--they’re nearly everyone made by hand and all white. Most of ‘em
jes’ flour sacks, but look how Mamie’s bleached ‘em. An’, see this
drawn-work.”

As she spoke, she placed a work-reddened hand beneath a narrow strip
of openwork.

“Yes, you can go home now,” in answer to a question from Selina in the
kitchen.

“My, the pain? she’s took on all these little things! Seems ‘s if she
must ‘a’ been gettin’ ‘em ready all these years, an’ now--” Her voice
trailed off into silence.

The little clothing was laid on the bed in readiness for the morrow,
and the women looked about as though hunting something more to do.
Used to the busy hours of farm life, they felt impelled to some task
that would occupy the passing hours.

“Let’s see if there’s anything we ought to do upstairs.”

They climbed the narrow ladderlike stairway to an unfinished
half-story garretlike room above.




“My land, she was house-cleanin’ this hot weather!”

Half of the stuffy little room had been thoroughly overhauled and the
other end begun. A little old horsehair trunk stood in the middle of
the floor, with portions of its contents scattered about.

“I’ll bet she was goin’ to empty that for the baby’s things. I showed
her mine, jes’ like it, that I fixed up for Selina when she was little.”

“Well, we might as well pick up the things and put ‘em back,” said
orderly Mrs. Collins, who suited the word to the action by laboriously
bending with a slight grunt.

Mrs. Prentis pushed her back.

“Here, let me pick ‘em up. There ain’t no call for you to go stoopin’
‘round in this heat. First thing you know you’ll be havin’ a stroke.”

Some clothing and small articles were collected, and several bundles
of yellowed old letters lay on the floor. From one of the packages the
string had broken, evidently when it had been lifted from the trunk.
One letter lay crumpled near its empty envelope, where it had been
dropped.

With a wondering glance, the two women smoothed it out. The first
paragraph was so yellowed and faded as to illegible, but part of the
second paragraph had been protected by the folded paper and they could
read:


      _“. . . will say that your wife is hopelessly insane. She may
      live for years, but will never regain her mentality, as cases
      like hers are incurable. We find upon investigation that the
      women of her family, for several generations, have become
      hopelessly insane at her age.

      “In view of the fact that your small daughter is tainted with
      this inherited insanity, we strongly advise you to take her to
      some new environment and, when she grows older, explain to her
      why marriage should be considered impossible for her.

      “As we can see the matter now, it is too bad that her mother was
      not warned of the same fact, and in view of all our information
      it would seem to have been better if we had not pulled her
      through that severe illness. If you--”_


The remainder of the letter was undecipherable. The two neighbors
looked at each other, their eyes wide with horror. At last Mrs.
Prentis gasped hoarsely:

“Do you ‘spose that bundle broke open and Mamie read this letter? Her
father died ‘fore she was old enough to marry and left her this place
partly paid for, and I remember when her and Jed was married how they
planned to pay the rest of it off jes’ as soon as possible.”

“But,” interrupted Mrs. Collins, “the coroner’s jury said yesterday
that they wasn’t any manner of doubt but that she _wasn’t_ crazy. She
jes’ set there, with her solemn big eyes, and looked straight ahead
and never said a word.

“I wonder how a woman’d feel to know that the baby girl she loved
better’n her own life would have to grow up in this drudgery and then
finally spend the last of her years in a ‘sylum?”

“Yes and ‘spose Mamie went crazy herself long ‘fore the little girl
grew up?”

“I wonder if a woman really loved her baby girl if she wouldn’t
rather--” she stopped once more with a frightened look.

Wheels were heard coming down the lane.

Mrs. Prentis spoke quickly: “Sarah Ann Collins, we’re goin’ right
downstairs and stick this letter in that cook-stove, quick!”




In the little kitchen below, the women were cooking supper when the
county attorney and another man entered.

“Good evening, ladies,” said the attorney. “We decided to come out
again and go carefully over the field to see if we could find any
evidence. You haven’t, by chance, found anything, have you?”

Mrs. Prentis looked covertly at Mrs. Collins, then answered:

“No; we jes’ been cleanin’ up. We ain’t been lookin’ for no evidence.”

“Well, Walters,” said the attorney, “you know juries when it comes to
women. If there never is found a definite reason for her wanting the
baby to die, no jury will ever believe she is guilty.”




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




“Evil Demon” Drives Man to Orgy of Crime

Spurned by his young niece, Estanislao Puyat, a Filipino, ran amuck in
the streets of Manila, after throwing the girl from an upper window to
the ground and almost killing her. Grabbing his bolo, he rushed down
the street, stabbed an aged woman in the eye, cut off the hands of two
other women, slashed another, stabbed a Chinese merchant and a cart
driver, cut another woman on the forehead, wounded a child and a young
Filipino girl, and then, reaching the Bay, threw himself into the
water in an effort to commit suicide. Capt. H. H. Elarth threw a noose
over his head and dragged him ashore. The Filipinos say that Puyat was
“de malas,” meaning he was possessed of an evil demon.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A Five-minute Story

The Gallows

By I. W. D. Peters




Tomorrow morning, at sunrise, I am to hang for the murder of a man.

At sunrise on the ninth of June, the anniversary of my wedding day, I
am to be hanged by the neck until I am dead.

I am glad this state has not yet adopted the use of electricity in
executions. I prefer to spend my last moments out in the open under
the sky.

The building of the gallows is finished; the workmen are gone, and it
seems that the execution at sunrise is certain to take place; but
every step along the corridor sends my heart into my mouth. Gladys is
working for a reprieve. I am praying she will not succeed.

The Governor is off on a fishing trip, away from railroad and
telegraph. It they do not locate him in the next few hours I shall be
hanged. God grant they fail to find him!

It is Glady’s will against mine. She usually wins, but every passing
minute lessens her chance to have her way in this. It is now ten
minutes to midnight. Dr. Brander, the prison chaplain, has just left
me, gratified, poor fellow, that he has succeeded in reconciling me to
my fate. If he had known that the tall skeleton of wood outside, with
its lank line of rope, was in my mind a refuge, he would have turned
from me in horror.

The next five hours will be the longest of my life. Every step in the
corridor strikes fear to my heart. It is not because I am guilty of
the crime, for which I was sentenced, that I am glad to die. I _am_
guilty, but that doesn’t mean that I deserve to die.

I am going to hang tomorrow at sunrise because _I want to be hung!_

I could have saved myself, but refused to do so, solely because life
had lost its savor, a great wave of disgust with living possessed and
still possesses me. I am writing these words now that Gladys may know
the truth. She has tried to see me, ever since I was brought here, and
I have refused to be seen. That is one right a condemned man has--to
refuse to see visitors.




From the day we were married. Gladys demanded to know my every
thought, my every act every hour of the day.

If every one of them was not concerned with her she criticised,
condemned or cried. She resented, in bitterly-spoken words and equally
bitter acts, the small recesses of my soul that I, for the sake of my
own self-respect, kept to myself.

Finally she determined to show me that there were other men who
appreciated her, if I did not. For a while, after that, all hours of
the day and evening my home was infested with lounge lizards. I
endured it without a word, which infuriated her.

Lester Caine, a young fellow, honest and simple, was her first victim.
The first time I found him seated close beside her on the dimly lit
porch I welcomed him warmly. We smoked and talked of our days in the
army together.

I felt that Gladys could safely enough flirt with such as Lester, if
that was what she wanted: but Lester called only a few times after that.

For two months there was a succession of young fellows about the
place. Our house was not far from the Westmoor Country Club, and the
golf links came almost up to our side-yard. Our porch was a convenient
place to “drop in.”

Suddenly all that sort of thing ceased. Gladys was away a great deal,
but as her mother lived in a town just a few miles away I thought
nothing of that. She became very quiet, was thoughtful, absent-minded,
flushed easily, seemed not herself.

At first I was a good deal puzzled, then, suddenly an explanation for
the change in her dawned on me. Joy filled my soul. I was inordinately
gentle with her, bought her a small automobile for her birthday, did
everything I could think of for her comfort and pleasure.

After all. I told myself, the emotional phase she had passed through
was natural. Marriage is a more difficult readjustment with some than
others. It had evidently been so with Gladys. If a child came to us it
would make everything right.

A child--_our child!_ It was wonderful to think of. She had always
refused to consider the subject saying she wished to enjoy life while
she was young. But she knew I wanted a son to bear my name, a daughter
to inherit her beauty, and she had accepted the inevitable. A wave of
exaltation made me feel as if I were treading on clouds. I longed to
mention the subject to her, but I felt that the first word about it
should come from her.

I spent hours thinking of tender, loving things to do for her. She
accepted everything quietly, sometimes with averted face and flushed
cheeks. I would draw her inert figure into my arms and hold her close,
but she made no response to my demonstrative affection.

At this stage of affairs my firm sent me on a ten-day trip to close a
Western deal. It was hard to leave Gladys but now, more than ever, I
felt that we would need money, and lots of it.

We arranged for Gladys to go to her mother’s, and I was to join her
there on my return.

It is the same old story. I came home before I was expected, and went
straight to our cottage, with the intention of having Gladys room
redecorated before bringing her home.

At the gate stood Gladys’ car. I rushed into the house, but there was
no one on the lower floor, nor in Gladys’ room, nor mine. I was about
to descend the stairs when I heard a low laugh--a man’s laugh--from
the third floor. I dashed up there and stood gazing at the closed door
of the spare room.

“What’s the idea, running away from me? asked the man. “You can’t blow
hot and cold with me.”

“I told you not to come here again It’s not safe.”

“I’m not afraid of that husband of yours. You’re mine, and you’re
going to stay mine.”

I had listened intently, but could not recognize the man’s voice.

“Go now,” pleaded Gladys, “and I’ll come to your rooms this evening.”

“Not on your life! I’m here now, and I am going to stay.”

“Let go of me--you are hurting my shoulder.”

There was a sound of scuffling. I tried the door. It was locked. I put
my shoulder to it. The lock snapped.

Gladys gave a cry, leaped away from the man--a man whom I had never
seen before. The full-lipped, black-browed type, big, soft. As I took
in the scene--the tousled woman, the flushed-faced man--a great wave
of disgust almost overwhelmed me.

“Well,” said the man, sneeringly, “what are you going to do about it?”

“If you take her away now and treat her right--nothing.”

“And if I don’t take her away?”

“I’ll meet that situation when it comes.”

“It has come,” he said, with a laugh, and walked out.

I am tall, slender, delicate-looking, but I knew I was a match for
that overfed brute.

I listened to the clatter of his feet on the stairs. Then I followed him.




The man was hastening toward a street car.

I cranked Gladys’ car and followed.

It was easy to keep the street car in sight and to keep an eye on his
sleek black head.

He left the car at Hanson Street. I, without a glance toward him, kept
on ahead. I turned at the corner, in time to see him enter an office
building. I was not far behind him when he took the elevator. The man
in the elevator gave me the number of his office.

He was telling a joke to his typist as I entered, but his laughter
died when he saw me.

“You dirty thief! You’ll never cheat another man out of money!”

His look of astonishment, as I shouted these words, was amusing. He
tried to give blow for blow, but I meant what I said when I shouted at
him “I’ve come here to kill you!”

To choke the life out of an overfed beast is not so hard to an
infuriated man. In less than a quarter of an hour he was dead. The
police, for whom the typist had called, filled the room even before I
had straightened my disheveled clothing.

I practically tried my own case, and I was skillful enough to make every
word, apparently uttered in my own defense, sound black against me.

Gladys tried to save me by telling the true story of the affair, but I
made a picture of her as a devoted, self-sacrificing wife, willing to
ruin even her spotless name to save her husband. I enjoyed seeing her
cringe as I did this.

So skillfully had she and the big brute managed that there was not a
bit of evidence to substantiate her story. On the other hand, there
was the typist’s story to help me, and, too, it was known I had
speculated in the past, and that I had lost some money.

I made the most of everything against me, and it was enough. I was
sentenced to hang on the ninth day of June at sunrise.

Gladys came to the jail to see me while the trial was going on, but I
managed to act just as if my story were the true one and hers the
false, and, though she pleaded with me to let the truth come out, I
would not admit that the truth had not come out. The sentence was a
terrible shock to her. Her mother carried her from the court-room in a
faint. Before she recovered I was in prison.




I shall welcome the hour of sunrise as I never welcomed any moment of
my life.

Not until then will the fear of a reprieve leave me. Gladys is moving
heaven and earth to locate the Governor. God grant that she does not
succeed!

It is four forty-five. I have spent much time at the window, gazing
out into the darkness. What comes after death? That is the question, I
suppose, that all men ask at the end of life. I have never done so. It
is a futile question--one which none of as can answer. But I believe
there will be surcease from the nausea that comes to those who have
known disillusion and disappointment.

Ten minutes of five--now surely I am safe from even a chance of a reprieve!

Footsteps in the corridor! Is it my escort to the gallows, or--what I
fear most on earth?




A statement by the warden of Larsen Penitentiary:


      _“If Traylor had spent the brief period, always allotted to a
      criminal for a few last words, his reprieve would have reached
      us in time to stay the execution; but he walked calmly,
      unfalteringly up to the gallows and helped us, with steady
      hands, adjust the cap and ropes--and he was dead two minutes
      before the Governor’s message reached us.”_




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




For a Grim Tale With a Terrifying End We Recommend

The Skull

By Harold Ward




Kimball held up his hand, warningly.

“Listen!” he exclaimed in a whisper.

Then he shoved the bottle back from his elbow and reached for his
revolver, which hung just above the table. Buckling the belt about his
waist, he leaped for the door and threw it open.

The house, raised on pile foundations a dozen feet above the ground,
shook beneath the rush of retreating footsteps. With the swiftness of
a wild animal, he gathered himself for the spring--and landed squarely
astride the back of the last of the blacks to quit the place.

The weight of the white man brought the native to the ground. Seizing
the black by the hair, he jerked him to his feet, keeping the naked
body between himself and the crowd that lurked in the darkness, just
beyond the ring of light that shone down through the open door.

“What name?” he demanded in the _beche-de-mer_ of the Islands. “What for
you come around big fella house? I knock seven bells out of you quick!”

Still grasping the man’s kinky wool with his left hand, his right shot
out, landing a terrific blow on the native’s mouth. The black,
spitting blood and broken teeth, squirmed in agony and attempted to
give a side glance at his fellows. Seeing that none intended to aid
him, he jerked his head to one side in an effort to escape. The white
man straightened it with another blow.

“What name?” he demanded again.

“Me good fella boy,” the black answered with an effort. “Me fella
missionary!”

“Then you say one fella prayer damn quick!”

Kimball rained blow after blow on his face. The savage shrieked with
agony. In the shadow, the blacks shuffled uneasily, like a herd of
cattle ready to stampede, but the white man seemingly gave them no
heed.

At last, the punishment completed, he jerked the bow and arrows from
the unresisting hand of his victim and, whirling him suddenly, gave
him a kick and a shove which landed him on all fours in the midst of
the others. Then, turning, seemingly ignoring the thoroughly
frightened blacks, he re-entered the house.

Throwing the bow and arrows on the table, he poured himself a stiff
drink of gin and downed it at a gulp. And then, sitting down beside
the table, he picked up the weapon and examined it gingerly.

“Poisoned!” he remarked casually to the man king on the bed. “I
knocked bloody hell out of Tulagi as a lesson to the rest of ‘em.
They’re getting insolent, with only one of us to handle ‘em. Wish to
heaven you were up and around again.”

“Upon the platform, eh?” the sick man listlessly inquired.

Kimball nodded.

“They’re gettin’ bold,” he said shortly. “Five hundred niggers are too
many for one man to keep straight. It’s been plain hell since you went
down--and then the dog had to turn up his toes. When Donaldson comes
in next week with the _Scary-Saray_ we’ll have to send after a new
nigger-chaser. Chipin’s got a couple extra ones he’s been trainin’
over at Berande.”

The sick man rolled over with a groan.

“Thank heaven I was taken sick!” he remarked bitterly. “It’s hard, God
knows, but it gave me a chance to find out just what sort of a cur you
are. Kimball.”

Kimball scowled. He half opened his mouth as if to answer. Then,
thinking better of it, he poured himself another drink and resumed his
occupation of examining the weapon he had taken from the native. He
swayed slightly in his chair under the load of liquor he was carrying,
yet his voice was unblurred as, after a minute’s silence, he looked
across at the other.

“Can’t you get that out of your head. Hansen?” he remarked. “I’m
getting bloody well fed up on it.”

Hansen raised himself on an elbow and angrily shook his fist at the
other.

“Oh, you’re ‘getting bloody well fed up on it,’ are you?” he mimicked.
“I should think you would be! I suppose I’m hurtin’ your delicate
feeling by mentioning it to you, eh? It’s nothing a man should howl
about, is it?--having one he thought was his best friend pull off a
dirty stunt like that!”

Kimball poured himself another drink. His hand shook slightly as he
raised the glass to his lips.

“Oh, forget it and go to sleep!” he growled.

“Yes, ‘forget it,’ you damned crooked, lyin’, double-crosser! I’m apt
t’ forget how you wrote to Gladys and told her I’d taken a nigger
wife! Wanted her yourself, didn’t you, you low-down, gin-guzzling
rat! It was just a piece of luck that I was taken sick and you had t’
look after the plantation instead of goin’ after th’mail last time, or
I’d never have got that letter from her telling me why she’d turned me
down.”

“I’m telling you now, for th’ last time, that I didn’t write that
stuff to her!” Kimball snarled back. “I’m tellin’ you it’s a lie. I
showed you the letter I wrote to her, giving her my word of honor that
somebody’d been doin’ you dirt.”

“Who else is there here on the Islands that knew her back home?”
Hansen demanded, dropping back onto the pillows again. “And who else
knew that we were engaged?”

“How in hell do I know?” Kimball answered thickly, reaching unsteadily
for the bottle. “You’re a sick man, Hansen, or I’d beat you up for th’
way you’re talkin’ to me.”

The sick man raised himself from the pillows again with a snort of
anger, his face flushed, his eyes gleaming feverishly.

“It’s a long road that’s got no turn in it!” he muttered. It’s my
money that’s in this plantation. Kimball--my money against your
experience. And keep that damned arrow pointed th’ other way, you
fool! You’re drunk--too drunk to be monkeyin’ with weapons. You’d just
as soon shoot me as not; if you do. I’ll get you if I have to come
back from th’ grave to do it! And remember this, Kimball: Soon’ I’m
able to be up and around again, we’ll have a settlement. And out
you’ll go from this plantation, you--” Whether it was an accident, or
plain murder nobody knows. Kimball was drunk--beastly so. The arrow
was loaded in the bow and clasped between his trembling fingers, the
bow-string taut. And Hansen had annoyed him, angered him, bullied him,
cursed him. At any rate, as he slumped forward in his chair, the
bow-string slipped from between his thumb and finger, and--

Hansen dropped back onto the pillows with a smothered scream, the
arrow buried deep in his temple!




II.

It was past midnight when Kimball awoke from his drunken stupor.

For an instant, he had no recollection of what had happened. The oil
lamp still burned brightly, throwing the figure of the man on the bed
in bold relief.

Kimball half arose on his tiptoes so as not to awaken Hansen. His foot
touched the bow lying on the floor. Then a flood of realization swept
over him. He suddenly remembered that he was a murderer.

Whether he had killed Hansen intentionally or not he was unable to
recall. Memory had ceased on the second he sprawled forward, his tired
brain benumbed with the liquor he had consumed during the evening. He
knew that they had quarreled--that Hansen had been more abusive than
usual and had cursed him.

He stepped across to the bed. A single glance at the bloated face
already turning black--at the glassy eyes staring back at him
fixedly--told him that his surmise had been correct: the arrow had
been dipped in poison. He shuddered as he pushed the remaining arrows,
which he had taken from Tulagi, to the back of the table and poured
himself another drink.

He must act at once. Donaldson and the _Scary-Saray_ would arrive
within a few days. And Donaldson was no fool. Nor was Svensen, his
mate. Both of them knew that there was bad blood between the partners.
And should one of the house boys find the body in the morning it would
cause no end of talk among the niggers. Some of them would be certain
to talk to Donaldson. The big trader might be able to put two and two
together and take his suspicions to the authorities.

Reaching up, he pulled down his revolver and, buckling the belt around
his waist, tiptoed to the door. The rain was falling in torrents, and
the sound of the surf was booming loudly. The sky was split by
lightning, while the thunder rolled and grumbled.

It was a typical island squall; he knew it would last but a short
time. Yet, while it lasted, the blacks would all be under cover,
making him safe from spying eyes if he acted at once.

But fear--fear of he knew not what--caused him to pull down the shades
until not a vestige of light showed at sides or bottom.

Then, nerving himself with another pull at the bottle, he turned down
the lamp until the room was in semi-darkness. Again he stepped to the
door and, holding it open an inch or two, listened.

Satisfied, he returned to the bed and picked up the dead form of
Hansen and threw it across his shoulder with a mighty effort. He
extinguished the lamp with a single puff as he passed the table.

Then, feeling his way carefully with his feet lest he strike against
some piece of furniture in the darkness, he sought the door.

Bending his body against the force of the wind, he gained the steps
and dodged around the corner of the house opposite the blacks’
quarters. At the edge of the cocoanut grove, he again paused to
listen.

Not a sound came from the direction of the black barracks. Presently,
beating against the wind, he see-sawed through the grove for a quarter
of a mile.

Satisfied that he was far enough from the house, he dropped his
ghastly burden to the ground and turned back. The storm would
obliterate his tracks by morning. With the coming of daylight, he
would give the alarm, as if he had just discovered the absence of
Hansen.

He had gone over the whole thing in his mind as he struggled along. It
would be easy enough to foist his story upon the simple-minded blacks.
He would tell them that the sick man had gotten up, in the night and
wandered away. Fevers are common in the Islands; so, too, is delirium.
And, when the body was found with the arrow in the skull, they would
believe that their master had fallen a victim to some wandering
savage.

There were half a dozen runaways--deserters from the
plantation--hiding back in the bush, afraid to go into the hills for
fear of the ferocious hill men and, at the same time, fearful of the
punishment certain to be meted out to them should they return to the
plantation. One of them would be blamed for Hansen’s death. The blacks
would vouch for such a story when he told it to Donaldson and Svensen
upon their arrival.

He had covered a small part of the distance back to the house, his
head bent low in thought, when a rustling among the palms at his right
caused him to turn suddenly. As he did so, a spear whizzed past his
head, imbedding itself in the tree beside him.

Whirling, he drew his revolver and pumped the clip of shells in the
direction from which the spear had been thrown. It was too dark to
make for good shooting and an instant later a flash of lightning
showed him a naked figure dodging behind a tree in the distance. Too
late, he realized that he had left the house without an extra clip of
cartridges. Unarmed, he broke into a run, dodging here and there among
the long avenues of trees until he reached the edge of the grove.

The blacks were already tumbling out of their quarters, chattering
excitedly.

“Ornburi!” he snapped at one of the houseboys. “You tell ‘m fella boys
sick marster, him run away. Got devil-devil in head. Me go after him.
Meet bad black fella. Black fella kill him mebbe you look. You catch
‘m black fella, plenty _kai-kai_ in morning, no work, plenty
tobacco--plenty everything!”

As Ornburi stepped forward, proud of being singled out from among his
fellows and explained to the late comers what had happened. Kimball
dashed back up the steps and into the house. Returning an instant
later with his rifle and bandolier of cartridges, he found the blacks
arming themselves with their native weapons, squealing and chattering
their glee at the prospect of the man-hunt and the holiday to follow
in case of their success.

In spite of his efforts to maintain some semblance of order, however,
assisted by the elated Ornburi, it was nearly daylight when the
expedition was ready to start. The rain was nearly over, but a glance
showed him that the night’s downpour had completely washed out the
trail he had made. Dodging here and there among the trees, savagely
alert for their hidden enemies, it was almost an hour before the
natives had covered the distance that Kimball, loaded down as he had
been, had covered in twenty minutes.

The body of Hansen lay where he had thrown it.

_But the head had been hacked off!_




III.

In his own mind, Kimball had no doubt as to the identity of the black
who had hurled the spear at him in the darkness, for a checkup of the
laborers showed Tulagi missing.

Bitter at the trouncing Kimball had administered, the native had
bolted. Hiding in the darkness, nursing his anger, fate had thrown in
his way the man who had whipped him. The same fate had caused him to
miss his mark when he had thrown the spear.

And Tulagi was of a tribe that believed in taking heads for souvenirs.

With the coming of Donaldson and Svensen in the _Scary-Saray_ three
days later, giving him enough white aid to handle the plantation
without fear of an uprising, Kimball renewed the search for the
runaway. Tulagi, at large, would be a constant menace, not only to his
own safely, but to the peace and quiet of the blacks. The runaway was
a man of considerable influence among the others, and there was
already too much dissatisfaction among the laborers to allow any
additional trouble to creep in.

The body of the murdered Hansen had been decently buried close to the
edge of the cocoanut grove under Kimball’s direction.

Donaldson and Svensen never for a moment doubted his story, which was
corroborated by Ornburi and the blacks. Such things are not uncommon
among the Islands. Both volunteered to aid him in running down the
supposed murderer. For the supremacy of the white man must be
maintained for the common good of all.

It was near the end of the second day that they found that for which
they were searching. Beside a skeleton lay a skull, the point of an
arrow driven through the temple. A great ant hill close by told a
grisly story.

That one of Kimball’s bullets had found its mark there was little
doubt. Tulagi, wounded nigh unto death, had, nevertheless stopped long
enough to hack off the ghastly souvenir, then made his way back toward
the hills as best he could.

Exhausted from loss of blood, he had dropped, only to fall a victim to
the ants.




IV.

As the three white men made their way toward the clearing, the sight
of a schooner anchored close to the _Scary-Saray_ met their gaze.
Drawn up on the beach, close to the house, was a whale boat.

“From the looks of her, that’ll be Captain Grant’s _Dolphin_ from
Mala-tita.” Donaldson remarked, shading his eyes from the glare of the
sun. Didn’t know he ever got this far. Wonder if his daughter’s with
him? Ever see her, Kimball? She’s a peach!”

Before Kimball, walking slightly behind the others and carrying the
skull, could make a reply, a man and woman emerged from the house to
meet them. Donaldson turned quickly.

“That’s her!” he exclaimed. “Prettiest girl on the Islands. Hide that
damned skull. Kimball! It’s no sight for a woman of her breeding to see.”

They were a scant hundred yards apart now, the girl waving her
handkerchief to them.

“It’s a wonder you wouldn’t stay at home to welcome your guests,
Karl,” she called out. “And Fred Hansen--where is he?”

Kimball strode ahead of the others.

“Gladys!” he exclaimed.

“Hide that damned skull. I tell you!” Donaldson growled in an undertone.

They were almost together now. Kimball shoved the skull under his
coat. As he did so, it nearly dropped from his sweaty hands and, in an
effort to hold it, his finger slid into one of the eyeless sockets.

The point of the arrow, protruding through the bone, scratched his
skin. For the moment he forgot it in the happiness of meeting the
woman he loved.

“Dad wanted to make a trading trip out this way, and brought me along
for company,” she was saying, as he stepped forward to grasp her
outstretched hand. “Say that you’re surprised to see me.”

Before she could reach him, his legs doubled under him and he fell
forward. The skull, dropping from beneath his coat, rolled and bounded
half a dozen yards away, bringing up at the foot of a little hummock.

They leaped forward to catch him as he fell. But to late. With a
mighty effort he raised himself to his knees.

“Hansen!” he screamed. “I killed him! He swore that he’d get even, and
he has! _The--damned--thing--was poisoned!_

He pitched forward onto his face.

At the foot of the hummock, the skull grinned sardonically.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




A Novelette of Weird Happenings--

The Ape-Man

By J. B. M. Clarke, Jr.




“Let’s go and call on him now then,” said Norton in his impulsive way,
rising and crossing to the window.

The fine rain, which had been swishing intermittently against the
panes with each gust of wind, had ceased for some time, and as Norton
lifted the blind and peered forth he got the first glimpse of a wan
moon struggling through an uneven copper-edged break in the
swift-moving clouds.

“I was to have gone over there this evening,” he said, “but ‘phoned the
engagement off on account of the storm. However, it’s not too late...”

It did not take much persuasion to induce Meldrum to consent, for,
although a year or two Norton’s senior and inclined in consequence to
give him paternal advice now and again, he generally indulged his whims.

“You can’t break a teacher of the lecturing habit,” was the way Norton
expressed it.

He himself was an architect, and both were single men, although Norton
was striving hard to build up a connection that would enable him to
marry one of the prettiest girls in town, with whom he was then
“keeping company.” Meldrum locked the door of his apartment behind
him, and the pair sallied forth into the fresh damp air of a night in
early spring.

“After all you have told me. I am rather curious to see your South
African friend again,” said Meldrum, setting his pace with his
friend’s. “While no doubt an interest in animals is wholesome enough,
his particular taste seems to run unpleasantly to apes and monkeys.
Some of those experiments of his, of which you spoke, seem rather
purposeless--making baboons drunk for instance. . .”

“It you could have seen him when he was telling me about that baboon
business you would have taken a dislike to him too,” said Norton,
making a gesture of displeasure with his hand. “Although I will admit
I had on aversion toward him from the first--I didn’t quite know why.
He had a trick of laying his hot heavy hand on my shoulder that used
to irritate me dreadfully when we were in the Inspection Department in
Washington.”

“What was he doing there?” asked Meldrum.

“He had been inspecting aeroplane spruce in British Columbia,” replied
Norton, “and he had a desk in our office. I was there for about three
months after being invalided home, before I was sent to New York.”

After a few moments silence, Norton added:

“He is more than queer. He is a throw-back.”

“A what?” said Meldrum, puzzled.

“A throw-back--an atavistic specimen,” said Norton firmly. “A mixture
of old and new, and a bad one at that.”

“That’s a pretty nasty accusation, Harry,” said Meldrum.

“You may think so,” said Norton obstinately, “but I tell you I’m not
simply guessing. Apart from his peculiar build, with his monstrous
length of arm and leg, short body, and small head, and his perpetual
and unnatural theories and experiments with apes and things, there is
still further evidence that I saw with my own eyes when we went to New
York together one weekend and visited the zoo. It was not my fancy, I
can assure you, Meldrum, that made me imagine the very brutes were
interested in my companion. I tell you, there was scarcely one of
those creatures that did not show excitement of some kind, some of
rage, others of fear, but generally of anger.

“One big chimpanzee went simply wild for a time--so much so that an
attendant came along to see what the trouble was. It capered
furiously, thundered at the bars of its cage, and then executed a
hideous kind of cluttering dance, beating its hands and feet on the
floor with extraordinary rapidity. Yet all Needham had done was to
make a peculiar kind of clucking noise in his throat and smile his
sinister smile. I’ll bet the brutes recognized him as one of their
kind. Some of them looked as if they expected him to open the cage
doors. . .”

“What is he doing here in Burlington now?” asked Meldrum.

“Something in connection with lumber, I believe,” said Norton, as they
entered North Avenue and turned in the direction of the park. “He has
rented a small house out here on this street and lives there alone. He
seems to prefer being alone always.”

They walked on for some little distance, and then Norton said, “This
is the place,” and indicated a small two-story residence standing
alone in a neat garden some twenty yards from the thoroughfare.

It was quite dark save for one lighted window upstairs. The pair went
up the path to the front door and Norton, after a little fumbling,
found and pressed an electric button, without, however, producing any
effect as far as could be observed.

“The bell doesn’t seem to ring,” said Norton, pressing again and
again. “Perhaps it’s out of order.”

He knocked at the door and listened. Everything was quiet inside.
Heavy drops of water splashed down from the roof, intensifying the
silence. A trolley-car hummed past on the street, throwing a brilliant
light on the trees and shrubs of the garden, and then leaving them
darker than ever. Again Norton knocked loudly, but without result.

“That’s not his bedroom, I know,” he said, nodding up at the lighted
room, “for he told me he hated the noise of the cars passing under his
window. He must have fallen asleep over a book or something. I might
throw a stone at the window.”

“No I wouldn’t do that,” said Meldrum, walking back a few paces and
staring up. “Perhaps we had better just go away. I can meet him again.”

“But I would like you to see him, now that you’ve come,” said Norton.
“Wait a minute.”

He tried the door and found it unlocked. Entering the hall, he called:

“Needham, Ho. Needham!”

Again they listened, and again nothing happened. As he groped in the
darkness, Norton’s hand encountered the electric switch and he turned
on the light. A narrow stairway was revealed, leading overhead.

“Just wait a minute,” he said to Meldrum, “and I’ll run upstairs. I’m
sure he’s there.”

He disappeared swiftly, and, after an internal of a few moments, came
quietly down again.

“Come up,” he said, beckoning to his friend. “He is sound asleep in
his chair. Come and look.”




II.

Together they crept up. The room door was ajar, and they noiselessly
entered what was evidently a sitting-room. Needham sat in a large
armchair with his back to the window, sleeping quietly. A reading lamp
on the table was the sole source of illumination, and, since it was
fitted with a heavy red shade, the upper portion of chamber was in
comparative darkness.

The full light of the lamp, however, fell upon the form of the
sleeping man, who had sunk low in his chair and was indeed in an
extraordinary attitude. His book had fallen to the floor, and his long
arms hung over the sides of the chair, the hands resting palm upwards
on the rug. His huge thighs sloped upward from the depths of the chair
to the point made by his knees, and his long shins disappeared below
the table.

Norton glanced at Meldrum, who was looking at the sleeper curiously.

“Ho, Needham!” said Norton, loudly. “Wake up!”

The slumberer was roused at last, but in a startling manner. With a
lightning movement, he sat bolt upright and clutched the arms of the
chair, his features working convulsively, while a stream of horrible
gibberish, delivered in a high piercing tone, burst from his lips.
Norton went as pale as death, while Meldrum remained rooted to the
spot where he stood.

Then, recovering himself. Norton ran forward and, seizing Needham by
the arm, shook him violently, exclaiming:

“It’s all right, Needham! It’s only Norton come to see you.”

The man in the chair regained his composure as quickly as he had lost
it, and, if unaware that anything unusual had happened, got to his
feet and said:

“Hullo. Norton, old chap! Take a seat. I must have fallen asleep and
had some beastly dream or something. Sit down.”

He crossed to the wall near the fireplace and switched on some lights
that illuminated the whole room. Then, seeing Meldrum for the first
time, he advanced toward him and shook hands.

“It’s not quite the right thing to steal into a man’s house in his
way, I know,” said Meldrum. “I am sorry if we startled you. We rang
and raised a rumpus down below, but without effect. I was taking a
walk with Norton after the storm, and it occurred to him to come up
and see you and apologize for his absence this evening. So we came
together.”

“It’s quite all right,” said Needham, in his peculiar nasal tones. “I
am glad came. I sleep pretty heavily and had a beastly dream just when
you came in. I was back in Africa.”

He was moving about as he spoke, placing a box of cigars, a bottle of
whisky, some glasses and a siphon of soda-water on the table, and
Meldrum observed him carefully. His peculiar build was not so
noticeable when he was on his feet, the design of his loose tweed suit
seeming to make him appear better proportioned. At times he looked
almost handsome, but at other times, with a different perspective, the
extraordinary length or his arms and legs was very apparent, while
still another view made him appear almost grotesque, the singular
shape of his small head, with its closely-cropped black hair,
offending the sense of just proportions. His eyes were brown with
muddy whites, and the sinister effect of his high cackling laugh
(which was very frequent), accompanied as it was by a downward
movement of his large hooked nose and an upward twist or his little
black mustache, was not lost upon the observant teacher.

The room itself was dirty and untidy in the extreme. Stale tobacco
fumes filled the air, and articles of wearing apparel were scattered
around. Some unwashed dishes stood on a small table near the
fireplace, and remnants of food lay on the floor. Books, papers and
magazines were flung about in disorder and Needham’s huge muddy boots
lay where he had thrown them, below the chair on which Norton sat.

“What were you doing back in Africa?” asked Meldrum pleasantly,
helping himself to a cigar.

“Back amongst those beastly baboons,” said Needham, with his
unpleasant laugh, at the same time proceeding to fill the doses. “You
know, I once ran into a bunch of them when I was out alone on a
hunting trip, and I saw a curious sight. There was a big fight on
among them--there would be about twenty of them. I should think. I saw
the whole business, and it was some fight, I can tell you. Rocks and
chunks of wood were flying in all directions, and they were clubbing
one another in great shape. As far as I could judge, they were roughly
divided into two lots, but it was pretty much of a mix-up.

“But there was one old gray fellow that took my fancy rather. He
seemed to be the chief egger-on. Whenever things looked like calming
down a bit, he stirred them up again by means of a number of curious
calls. I could not quite make out what part he was playing, or what
side he favored, for he seemed to keep pretty well outside of the
fight, only concerning himself with those that went down. He finished
them up in the most methodical manner as they lay. And if two were
attacking one he would throw himself in on the side of the two to help
finish the odd fellow--and then he seemed to set the remaining two
fighting one another I think he gave false signals at times. At any
rate, he was the freshest of the three or four survivors when it was
all over. And then they sat down and had a kind of powwow.”

Norton glanced again at Meldrum, who smiled at him slightly, then said
to Needham:

“Really? How very extraordinary that you should witness all this. Did
they not attempt to molest you?”

“No,” said Needham, with his evil smile. “They didn’t attempt to
interfere with us--didn’t seem to mind me at all, which is rather
unusual for them, for they are shy of humans as a rule. I stood on a
big boulder and watched the whole business. The old chap had his eye
on me, but either he understood firearms (I had my rifle and revolver,
of course), or else I was lucky when I imitated some of his peculiar
noises. He seemed quite scared when I came away with one of his
favorite calls, and when they finally cleared out, after covering up
the dead with branches and leaves, he gave me a most significant
look--seeming to beg that I would not give him away.

“At least that’s how it appealed to me. And, strangely enough, I was
instrumental, in capturing the very same animal later on, together
with some others, during a hunt. I lured them to a certain spot by
that very noise.”

He had thrown himself down in his easy chair again, and as he laughed
afresh his crooked yellow teeth uncovered, and his little eyes
glittered unpleasantly. Meldrum was filled with a strong sense of
repulsion.

“What was that particular noise like?” Norton struck in for the first
time.

Needham put down his glass and, laying his head back slightly, made a
peculiar kind of clucking gurgle in his throat. In a instant, from the
corner behind Norton’s chair, came a shrill chatter of terror, and a
little red figure hurried across the floor and dived below the table.
Norton almost dropped his glass, and Meldrum gave a startled
exclamation. Needham alone was calm.

“Ah Fifi, you rascal!” he said. “Did I scare you again? That’s too
bad. Come here.”

A small long-tailed monkey, clad in a little red jacket, came slowly
from below the table and advanced timidly toward Needham, who spoke
coaxingly to it and finally made a kind of rippling noise with his
tongue that seemed to reassure it, for it jumped on the arm of his
chair and sat quietly blinking at the visitors. Needham tickled its
head with his large forefinger.

“I bought Fifi from an Italian,” he said, noting his guests’ look of
astonishment. “She is good company--catches flies, switches the lights
on and off, and does other useful thing--eh, Fifi?”

The little animal looked up at him intelligently, and with a sudden
movement Needham wound his great fingers about its throat. With a
plaintive cry, the little creature made futile efforts to tear away
the strong hand about its neck, plucking frantically with its small
paws.

“Don’t!” said Norton in a sharp voice. “I can’t bear to see animals
tormented.”

“I’m not hurting her,” said Needham, removing his hand. “She’s a
nervous little thing and must be taught not, to be so frightened. I
think the Italian must have ill-used her. But she is clever, for all
that,” continued Needham, laughing. “She is learning to play the piano.”

Lifting the little monkey, crossed the room with long strides to the
corner, where a small cottage piano stood, and seated himself on the
stool. “Now play, Fifi,” he said.

The intelligent creature leant forward and commenced striking sharply
here and there among the notes, producing a curious kind of tinkling
resemblance to certain bars from “Old Black Joe”. Meldrum was
conscious of a strange prickling sensation--he did not quite know why.

After a few moments, Needham rose again and, putting the monkey in a
box in the corner of the room, returned again to his chair.




III.

It was late before the friends took their departure, Needham holding
their interest with stories of his adventures in different parts of
the world. Indeed, it was only when Meldrum became aware, by the
restless movements of his friend, that Norton was not enjoying himself
that he recollected the lateness of the hour and suggested it was time
they took their leave.

“You fellows mustn’t be too critical of my quarters, you know,” said
Needham, laughing, as they descended the stairs together. “I confess I
am not a tidy person. I have led the rough bachelor life too long. But
you fellows should understand something about that.”

He accompanied them to the sidewalk, and after some desultory remarks
about the weather, the visitors set off toward Norton’s home. The moon
was shining brightly and after the heavy rain and wind the air smelt
fresh and moist. Meldrum inhaled it with evident pleasure.

“Now that I have seen your friend at close quarters,” he said. “I mast
confess that I do not feel so strongly inclined in his favor. The
state of that room was disgraceful even for a bachelor, and there is
no excuse for anyone at all shutting out the fresh air. But, although
his tastes seem to run unpleasantly to monkeys, I hardly think he
deserves the appellation you bestowed on him.”

“Perhaps not,” said Norton, who seemed in better spirits, now that he
was in the free fresh air again. “As far as the atmosphere of his
house is concerned, he once explained that to me by saying that since
he had been in Africa he had to keep the temperature up. I think he
said he had rheumatism. But I don’t like him.”

There was silence for several minutes, and then he burst out:

“And of course he pays attention to Elsie.”

“Ah!” said Meldrum significantly. “Perhaps a lover’s jealousy has
something to do with the case.”

“We met him one day on Church Street,” said Norton, “and of course I
had to introduce him. He made himself very agreeable, and yet it
seemed to my fancy that he was not so much taken up with the girl as
anxious to do me an ill turn. Other fellows pay attention to her, too,
of course, but that’s because they admire her. It was not so in his
case. I am convinced. After we left him Elsie said: ‘What a
fine-looking man!’ And then she added: ‘No he isn’t--he’s a horror!’“

“Well,” said Meldrum heartily, “apparently you do not need to fear her
falling in love with him, however it may be in his case. I really am
afraid it’s a case of ‘I do not like thee. Dr. Fell.’ Meldrum laughed.
“But I hardly think,” he wound up, “you have any solid grounds for
quarreling with him. The world is wide enough to hold both of you.”

Often in the days that followed. Meldrum, moved by a curiosity he
could not quite account for, took his evening walk out on North Avenue
past Needham’s house. Of Needham himself he saw nothing. Once he heard
the weird tinkling of the piano, but generally the form of the little
monkey in its red jacket could be seen sitting motionless at the upper
front window looking out on the street. It struck Meldrum as strange
that the creatures should sit so quietly. In the course of his
progress past the house he did not observe it stir or alter its
position. Its gaze seemed fixed on that point of the rood where
Meldrum fancied its master would first come into sight on his way home
from town.

“Never knew they were such devoted things,” Meldrum ruminated. “What a
queer kind of a pet to keep! And what a queer life to live, anyway,
alone in that house. He doesn’t even get anyone to clean it up
apparently. Some strange people in this old world!”

With this philosophical reflection, Meldrum passed on in the direction
of the park.

Term examinations kept Meldrum busily occupied during the days that
followed, and the friends did not have occasion to see one another for
nearly two weeks. Then, when they did meet, it was again through the
instrumentality of Needham, after the evening of the party at the
Miner home. The Miners were neighbors of Norton’s sweetheart and lived
out some distance beyond Ethan Allen Park.

Thus it came about that after seeing his young lady to her home Norton
found himself, some time after midnight, at a point perhaps a couple
of miles from his rooms and with the area of the Park lying almost
directly between himself and his objective. He determined to cut
across it, a thing he did quite frequently.

The night was cool and cloudy, with fitful bursts of moonlight which
tended rather to accentuate the blackness of the intervening spells of
darkness. Had Norton not been thoroughly familiar with the topography
of the land he might have had some difficulty in keeping his
direction. But he kept going forward confidently, noting certain
well-known landmarks. He skirted the base of the hill on which the
tower is situated, and was just on the point of plunging into a thick
grove of trees, leading down toward the main gateway, when he chanced
to look behind. And there he saw rather a disquieting sight.

The moon had just struggled through again and its pale light revealed
to the apprehensive Norton the gigantic form of Needham perched on the
top of a large boulder in a crouching position as if about to spring
down. It might have been perhaps fifty yards from the spot where
Norton stood. Even as he gazed Needham leapt down (from a height of
some ten feet) and disappeared. Norton stood waiting, but there was no
further sound. He walked on again, wondering uneasily what Needham
might be doing in the park at such an hour--unless perhaps he, too,
was taking a short cut. But Norton felt uneasy nevertheless.

Entering the grove he pushed forward briskly. It was very dark now,
the moon being hidden once more, and the gloom and whispering of the
trees made his flesh creep. Several times he looked behind him, but
could see nothing. Then a crackling of branches, this time much
nearer, brought him to a dead halt, and, facing about, he called
loudly:

“Hello, Needham! Is that you?”

There was no response, and Norton stood with straining ears and eyes,
his heart thumping in alarm. And even as he stood the horrible thing
happened.

He was almost directly under a huge gnarled oak tree, and as he laid a
hand on the trunk for a moment to steady himself he happened to glance
up, and the hair bristled on his scalp to find a pair of luminous
yellow eyes gazing down upon him.

Ere he could recover, a form seemed to detach itself from the shadows
and a pair of great hands reached down and clutched at his throat,
while a chuckling voice said:

“Aha! You would give me away, would you!”




IV.

In his terror. Norton did what was possibly the best thing in the
circumstances--fell to the ground. For this action seemed to upset the
equilibrium of the figure in the tree (which seemed to be suspended by
the lower limbs) and caused it to relax its hold and draw up its arms
for an instant. And in that instant Norton had recovered and was off,
running as he had never run before, slipping, dashing, plunging,
colliding, but never stopping and never looking back.

How he ever found his way out to the street was always a mystery to
him, but he became aware, presently, that he was on North Avenue once
more, and in the light of the first arc lamp he slowed down and
finally stopped to recover. There was no sign of Needham, although
Norton had heard him crashing along in pursuit.

Everything was still, and not a soul was in sight. Fear overcoming him
again, Norton hurried on and did not stop until he was safe in his
room and had locked the door. But he enjoyed little sleep during the
remainder of that night.

Next evening Norton hastened to Meldrum’s apartment and poured the
whole story into his friend’s sympathetic ear.

“You see,” he said excitedly “I was right about him, after all. He is
a throw-back--he came at me from the trees. His instincts drove him there.
Talking, too, about my giving him away! He knows I know what he is. . .”

“He possibly played a practical joke on you, said Meldrum cheerily.
“He tried to give you a fright and succeeded. You called him, and he
came--although not quite in the manner you expected, eh?”

“Well I am not such a nervous person as all that, either,” said
Norton. “I admit, however, that in sober daylight it does not look
quite so bad, it did not seem like a joke at the time, though. I am
convinced he meant me harm.”

“I do not think you are justified in that belief, Harry,” said Meldrum
decisively. “The man is trying to be friendly to you and you keep
rebuffing him. And as for ‘giving him away’ that’s nonsense, and you
know it. What have you to give away? Simply that you don’t like him
and have strange ideas about him? That won’t hold water, you know. You
had better forget your fancies and come along with me and see this new
circus that has just struck the town. I notice by the placards they
have some baboons and I am rather curious about the creatures since
hearing Needham’s stories. Come along! You need something to take you
out of yourself. And if I were you I would not mention that business
the next time you see Needham, unless he broaches the subject. . .”

Tasker’s, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” had pitched its camp some
distance from the town over toward Winooski, and after a brisk walk
the friends found themselves in the enclosure in which the curious
were beginning to gather. There were the usual games of hazard,
cocoanut shies, roundabouts, candy stalls, and side shows of all kinds
clustered round the main tent, where the grand performance was held
later in the evening. Presently they discovered the whereabouts of the
baboons, which did not, when viewed, present quite the appearance of
the monstrous creatures portrayed in vivid colors on the outside of
the tents.

Meldrum and Needham stood observing the animals in silence for some
moments when Norton, happening to glance in the direction of the tent
opening, saw the tall form of Needham in the act of paying his
admission fee. Norton’s heart beat faster with the recollection of his
experience on the previous evening, but Needham smiled and waved a
greeting, as if nothing unusual had happened. Norton turned again to
the cage--to discover that there were others interested in the arrival
of the newcomer.

There were three baboons in all, two apparently not yet full grown,
and an old fellow of hoary aspect, who sat by himself for the most
part near the front of the cage, watching the passers-by. He was
treated with great respect by the two younger ones and was evidently
still strong enough to be reckoned with. The old baboon had risen to
its feet and was gazing intently at the approaching figure.

For some moments it stood thus, then, seizing the bars of the cage in
its hands, it rattled the framework with tremendous force, at the same
time giving vent to a peculiar sound. At its cry, the other two ran
forward and the extraordinary spectacle was seen of all three
creatures staring fixedly at Needham as he made his way toward them.

There were not many people in the tent--the hour being early--but the
few who were there turned toward the spot. Needham laughed and shook
hands with Meldrum, at the same time waving one of his hands playfully
in the direction of the old baboon, like lightning, a long hairy arm
shot forth toward him, but the distance was too great for the
creature. Again it thundered on the bars.

“Hey Kruger, what’s the matter now?” shouted an attendant,
approaching. “Quit that! Do you want to bring the house down?”

He struck with a pole at the hands of the animal on the bars, making
it shift them from place to place. But it was not to be driven back,
and it still continued to stare at Needham.

The attendant drew away, saying in a sulky tone: “Don’t meddle with
the animals, please.”

“It’s all right, old chap,” said Needham pleasantly. “He wanted to
shake hands with me, but I declined with thanks.”

“Don’t do nothin’ to annoy him, please,” said the man in surly tones,
preparing to depart. “God knows what might happen if he got loose. He
did once, and we had a hell of a time. He nearly killed a man.”

“Ah, _did_ he?” said Needham, with interest. “He’s pretty strong, I
take it?”

“You can bet your sweet life he is!” the man called back over his
shoulder. “We take no chances with him.”

“By Jove!” said Needham, gazing at, the baboon. “He’s mighty like the
old fellow in the fight I told you about, now that I look at him
closely.”

The three walked away from the spot at Meldrum’s suggestion, but,
looking back every now and then, the teacher noted, with some
uneasiness, that the creature still retained its position and still
followed Needham’s figure with attentive eyes. There were a few other
cages in the tent containing smaller monkey, and other animals and,
having strolled past these, they soon found themselves once more
opposite the baboons.

The place was now clearer than before, and Needham, glancing around to
see that he was not observed, made a swift cross-wise motion with his
hand and emitted the peculiar noise that Meldrum had heard him make on
the night of their visit. Its effect was electrical. The two younger
baboons, who had seat themselves near their older companion, ran at
once to the back of the cage, where they cowered, whimpering and
exhibiting every indication of alarm.

But the old baboon acted differently. The tension, which had up to
this point kept its figure severely rigid, now relaxed. It squatted
down on the floor of the cage and commenced nodding its head briskly
up and down, its features distorted by what, to Meldrum’s fancy,
looked extraordinarily like a grin. Needham smiled, too, and, glancing
from one to the other, Meldrum felt his flesh creep slightly.

“Let us go,” he said hastily. “We have seen enough of these brutes.”

Needham acquiesced, and they made their way to the exit.




V.

“Beastly clever things, though,” said Needham, as, they passed out
into the dear night air. “And strong as the very devil. I think myself
there is something in the old idea of the African natives that apes
pretend not to understand speech for fear they should be made to
work.” He laughed his unpleasant laugh, and again Meldrum felt
squeamish.

“You seem to have given them some study,” said Meldrum, as they made
their way toward the main tent.”

“I have seen a good deal of them one way and another,” said Needham
carelessly, “and read a little, too. A curious thing I discovered was
that when under the influence of liquor (and it’s some sight to see,
believe me!) they are peculiarly receptive to autosuggestion. I
believe a fortune could be made by putting them through tricks in this
way--if the authorities allowed it. As for thieving, they would ‘steal
the milk out of your tea’ as the old song says.”

In the excitement of the extensive and elaborate circus performance
provided by Tasker’s, Needham and Meldrum soon forgot about the
baboons, and it was late in the evening when the three made their way
back to Burlington. Emerging from Church Street, Norton and Meldrum
turned up toward the University, while Needham strode off in the
direction of the lake.

“Better lay aside your prejudice and think the best of the man,” said
Meldrum to Norton as they parted. “He is a mighty interesting fellow,
and has a fund of knowledge that is remarkable.”

Two days later found all Burlington in a state of excitement. Through
a piece of carelessness the door of the baboon’s cage hod been left
unlocked and the old gray baboon had made a successful dash for
liberty and got clear away. It happened in the evening, and the fading
light hampered pursuit. When last seen, the brute was heading away
from Winooski toward the lake shore.

Search was kept up throughout the night without result, and then, next
day, word came that the creature had been seen in a tree near the
entrance to Ethan Allen Park. As soon as possible the entire park was
surrounded, and a contracting circle of hunters and curious people
scoured the woods and shrubbery, but apparently the animal had moved
on again to fresh quarters.

Word was sent all over the surrounding countryside, and no effort was
spared to locate the missing animal, but several days passed without
result. Numerous stories got into, circulation regarding supposed
escapades on the part of the missing baboon, and there were no end of
rumors as to its being seen--at one time on the railway near the
freight yard, at another waving from the tower in the park; and,
again, far along the lake shore. Nervous persons kept to busy
thoroughfares after dark. But the actual whereabouts of the creature
remained a mystery.

Fresh stories went around of stealthy prowlings round houses and
mysterious rattling of doors in the small hours of the morning.
Chancing to see some of this in one of the evening papers, Meldrum’s
attention was again drawn to the subject, and there returned to his
mind his encounter with Needham at the circus. Obeying a sudden
impulse, he set off in the direction of Needham’s dwelling in North
Avenue. He had not been near it for some time, but he found himself
possessed of a curious desire to see whether the little monkey still
sat looking out of the front window.

Walking sharply, Meldrum soon came in view or the quaint wooden house
with its trees and grass plots. The sun had not yet set, and in the
clear evening light Meldrum could see the small crouching figure
sitting in its accustomed place. He stopped, as he reached the house,
and stood watching a moment, and then, suddenly became petrified with
astonishment.

For there came all at once into view, over and beyond the head of the
small monkey, the great gray face of the old baboon with its long lips
curled back and its doglike tusks displayed!

It gazed forth for an instant, seeming to hold back with one hand the
lace curtain that overhung the window, and then disappeared as
suddenly as it had come. Needham rubbed his eyes, then continued
staring stupidly. The little monkey made no sign.

Thinking that perhaps the baboon had found its way into the house
through an open window during Needham’s absence, Meldrum felt that he
ought to warn the South African, without delay, of his unpleasant
visitor. He went up the path to the house and rang the bell. He
thought that at the sound he detected a far off scampering, but no one
came in answer to his summons. He tried the door and found it locked.

In some perplexity, Meldrum came down the garden path to the sidewalk,
wondering exactly what course to pursue. He looked again at the
window. The little monkey still sat gazing intently at the street. Of
the baboon there was no sign.

“It may have been imagination,” mused Meldrum. “But it looked
uncommonly real.”

He had turned his steps back in the direction of the town, and was
meditating whether or not to communicate his fears to the authorities,
when to his relief he saw the tall figure of Needham striding toward
him. They stopped to greet one another, and Meldrum hastened to tell
the other what he had seen.

“Oh, nonsense!” said Needham, his mustache twitching. “They don’t come
around houses like that--not in the day time, anyway. The place was
all right at midday and has been locked up tight ever since. No; you
must have imagined it.”

He laughed lightly, and in a subconscious kind of way Meldrum seemed
to get the impression that the tall man was more anxious to laugh the
story off than to continue to discuss it. However, he offered to
accompany Needham home and help search the house.

“Just wait there for a moment if you don’t mind,” said Needham (again
with nervous haste, it seemed to Meldrum) “and I’ll walk around and
have a look at the windows. If they are all right I’ll give you a wave.”

He hastened off, and after a short interval again made his appearance
at the front of the house and waved his hand. Meldrum waved back.

“Everything O.K.?” he asked.

“Quite O.K.,” called Needham. “So long, old man. See you later.”

Somewhat puzzled, Meldrum set off in the direction of the town.

On the evening of the next day the telephone in Meldrum’s sitting room
tinkled briskly and Norton’s voice came over the line.

“Needham has just ‘phoned down,” he said. “and has asked me to go
round to his place tonight to get some old African stamps he has
hunted out for me. I once asked him if he had any and he promised to
get me some. I wish now that I hadn’t asked him.”

He laughed rather nervously, and then added:

“I wish I’d just said ‘no,’ for I don’t much want to go. However I
promised to look in for a few minutes. Would you care to come along if
I come round for you?”

“Too busy with examination papers just at the moment,” said Meldrum.
“and it would bring you out of your way to come over here. It’s after
eight o’clock now. I might be free about ten and pick you up when I
take my usual stroll. How would that do?”

Norton said. “All right,” and Meldrum hung up the receiver.

As he did so, a strange sense of foreboding came upon him and the
vision of the baboon rushed back to his mind. He shook himself in
annoyance and resumed his work.

But he could not regain his ease of mind, and after spending nearly an
hour in a vain attempt to concentrate on some problems in algebra he
closed up his books impatiently and sought his hat and coat.

He stood irresolutely in the hallway for some moments, and then, with
a laugh, opened a drawer and drew forth a revolver, which he slipped
into his overcoat pocket, after seeing that all its chambers were
filled. He laughed again as he descended to the street, but drew some
comfort, nevertheless, from the touch of the cold steel upon his hand.




VI.

The night was dark, but the air was clear and invigorating. Meldrum
walked smartly in a direction away from Needham’s residence, since he
was earlier than usual and had but plenty of time to meet Norton,
finding that he could not free his mind from an unaccountable anxiety,
he swung round presently and made his way to North Avenue.

It did not take him long to reach the house, and as he drew near he
observed, with a slight feeling of surprise, that one of the
downstairs rooms was illuminated--a room he had never yet seen
lighted. It lay toward the rear of the house, its windows facing a
bread gallery.

Obeying a sudden impulse, Meldrum, instead of going to the front door,
walked quietly along the gallery and peeped through a corner of the
blind into the room. What he saw there made his blood run cold.

The room was about fifteen feet square, with blue paper on the walls
and plain oak furniture. A square table stood in the center at which
several figures were seated. Needham sat with his back to the window,
and in the chair on his left sat Norton, a pile of postage stamps on
the table before him, and over opposite Needham, directly facing the
window, sat, or rather sprawled, the figure of the gray baboon!

On the table was a decanter of whisky, and all three had tumblers.
Norton’s glass was half empty, standing beside the postage stamps, but
Needham and the creature were both drinking, the animal seemingly
following the movements of the man, lifting the tumbler to its lips
and setting it down again as Needham did, as fur as Meldrum could
judge by the movements of his right arm, which was visible. The
brute’s eyes were fixed upon the man across the table, and from its
appearance and the limpness of its figure Meldrum decided it was in an
advanced state of intoxication.

Norton seemed to be spell-bound, staring fixedly at the scene before
him. Occasionally he passed his hand in a bewildered way over his
forehead, or looked stupidly at the half empty tumbler before him. But
he seemed incapable of either speech or action.

In horror and indignation, Meldrum continued to gaze. As fast as the
baboon’s whisky was gulped down Needham filled its glass again. From
the fact that he did not fill his own very frequently, Meldrum
concluded that he did not drink every time he pretended to do
so--apparently deceiving the befuddled creature.

Like a flash, Meldrum remembered Needham’s remark about the
intoxicated baboon and autosuggestion. And with a fast beating heart
he gripped his revolver and waited.

From being limp and sluggish, the ape now began to show signs of
animation. It sat more erect, its eyes began to glitter, and
occasionally it turned its head and gazed at Norton who still sat in
apparent stupefaction. Every time it did this it seemed to grin at
Needham with frightful suggestiveness, nodding its head as it had done
when in the cage at the menagerie.

Fearing he knew not what mischief, Meldrum went quietly and hurriedly
to the front door, opened it with extreme caution, and managed to make
his way undetected to the door of the room in which the trio sat.
Through the half open doorway, he could now get a view of Needham’s
face, and its diabolical contortions were dreadful to behold. It was
apparent that he was working the animal up to something, but what that
something was the creature apparently did not quite seem to grasp.

Presently Needham made the strange clucking noise in his throat, at
the same time stretching out his arms toward Norton. That gave the
brute its clue. It rose unsteadily to its feet, and turning its evil
eyes toward the recumbent figure of Norton, seemed about to spring at
his throat.

With a crash, Meldrum kicked open the door and entered the room,
covering Needham with his revolver. The baboon, its attention
distracted by the noise of Meldrum’s entry and apparently finding
Needham’s influence withdrawn, now appeared to feel the full effect of
the whisky fumes once more, and sank back into the armchair more
fuddled than ever. Norton had by this time fallen back in his seat,
his head tilted toward the ceiling. Needham, however, has his wits
about him, and his ghastly yellow face, convulsed with fury, attempted
to force a sickly smile.

“Needham,” said Meldrum sternly, “I don’t know what abominable
deviltry you are up to, but it must stop here and now. If you can
right things here go ahead. If not, I shoot--either you or the brute,
I am not particular which.”

Although outwardly calm, Meldrum’s heart was beating furiously and he
was hunting desperately in his mind for the proper way to handle the
situation. It was not clear to him as yet.

“Why, Meldrum!” said Needham in a thick voice, cunningly feigning
drunkenness, although he was perfectly sober. “What’s all this?
Revolvers? We are all friends. Norton had a drop too much--old man
baboon dropped in and joined the party--I was going to get him to do
some tricks. . .”

“That’s quite enough,” said Meldrum sharply. “You are no more drunk
than I am. Open that window and let Norton have some air. Loosen his
collar--”

A sudden chattering caused him to pause and drew his attention for a
moment to the mantel over the fireplace, on to which the little monkey
had suddenly jumped from some nearby corner.

“Ha, Fifi!” said Needham quickly. “Lights!” The switch was within easy
reach of the creature’s hand, and in an instant the room was plunged
in darkness.

The hallway being also without illumination, the blackness was
profound. Utterly unable to tell what might happen, and fearing the
baboon to be the principal danger point, Meldrum came to a swift
decision and fired in the direction of the creature’s chair. A
frightful scream broke the silence followed by a wild gibbering,
punctuated at times by what appeared to be Needham’s voice shouting
commands.

Then there came a loud crash of glass, as the table was overturned,
followed by snarling, cursing and pandemonium. Stumbling blindly in
the darkness, Meldrum endeavored, without success, to locate the
switch in the hallway, but finally a faint glimmer showed him the
outline of the front door, and he dashed forth into the street.

Several people had collected on hearing the shot, and aid was quickly
forthcoming. Together with several neighbors and others, Meldrum again
entered the house, and the light in the hall was turned on. The door
of the occupied room had been swung shut and the dreadful snarling din
still continued.

“The baboon must have broken in an attacked my friends,” was Meldrum’s
hurried explanation, as they forced open the room door and finally got
the lights turned on.

A hideous litter of broken furniture, pieces of glass, liquor, and
bloodstains were everywhere revealed. Needham and the baboon, locked
in a death grapple, were rolling among the ruins. By a curious chance,
Norton’s chair had been left standing, and he still sat there, limp
and motionless, unaffected by all the noise.

With difficulty, the baboon was overpowered and secured. It was still
bleeding copiously from the bullet wound in its shoulder, but it
gnashed and tore at its captors with undiminished fury. Needham was
bleeding from many wounds and presented a dreadful spectacle, much of
his clothing being torn to shreds. In addition to receiving many cuts,
he had been badly mauled by the infuriated animal, whose wrath, by
some strange combination of circumstances, had been turned against
himself. He sat breathing heavily, too exhausted to talk to those
around him.

The removal of the animal drew off most of the curious and some sort
of order was restored. Realizing that Norton had apparently been
drugged, but not wishing just then to say anything of what he had
seen, Meldrum made the plea that his friend had evidently been
overcome as a result of the terrible scene he had just witnessed, and,
procuring a cab, took him first to his own chambers and then to his
home, where he was prostrated for some weeks as the result of the
shock.

Needham disappeared almost immediately, and Norton’s relatives did not
deem it expedient to search for him. He was never heard of again in
that city, and later it transpired that he had returned to Africa.

The baboon lived for some years after its strange adventure, but on
dying it made no confession. And such mysteries as to how long it had
been the guest of the South African, whether or not it was the same
creature that he had once betrayed into captivity, to what extent the
two understood one another, and whether or not it was incited to
murder on that dreadful evening, were never solved.

And, indeed, nobody had any great desire that they should be.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------




The Eyrie




WEIRD TALES is not merely “another new magazine.” It’s a brand new
type of new magazine--a sensational variation from the established
rules that are supposed to govern magazine publishing.

WEIRD TALES, in a word, is unique. In no other publication will you
find the sort of stories that WEIRD TALES offers in this issue--and
will continue to offer in the issues to come. Such stories are tabooed
elsewhere. We do not know why. People like to read this kind of
fiction. There’s no gainsaying that. Nor does the moral question of
“good taste” present an obstacle. At any rate, the stories in this
issue of WEIRD TALES will not offend one’s moral sense, nor will the
stories we’ve booked for subsequent issues. Some of them may horrify
you; and others, perhaps, will make you gasp at their outlandish
imagery; but none, we think, will leave you any the worse for having
read it.

We do believe, however, that these stories will cause you to forget
your surroundings--remove your mind from the humdrum affairs of the
workaday world--and provide you with exhilarating diversion. And,
after all, isn’t that the fundamental purpose of fiction?

Our stories are unlike any you have ever read--or perhaps ever will
read--in the other magazines. They are unusual, uncanny, unparalleled.
We have no space in WEIRD TALES for the “average magazine story.”
Unless a story is an extraordinary thing, we won’t consider it.

If the letters we have already received, and are still receiving
(weeks before the magazine goes to press), are an augury of success,
then WEIRD TALES is on the threshold of a tremendously prosperous
career. Some of these letters are accompanied by subscriptions, others
request advertising rates and specimen copies; all predict great
things for us and express enthusiastic anticipation of “something
different” in magazine fiction.

Anthony M. Rud, whose amazing novelette. “Ooze,” appears in this
issue, wrote to us as follows:


“Dear Mr. Baird: Delighted to hear that you contemplate WEIRD TALES! I
hope you put it through--and without compromise. Stories of horror, of
magic, of hypernatural experience, strike home zestfully to nine
readers out of ten. There is no other magazine of this sort. Yarns
somewhat of the type published in book form--for instance, ‘The Grim
Thirteen’--invariably are recommended from one reader to a fellow,
with gusto.

WEIRD TALES need not be immoral in slightest degree. Fact, ninety from
one hundred generally contain wholesome moral, at least, derivable.
Even studies of paranoia or fear hysteria, pure and simple, generally
are clean from start to finish. The Poe type of yarn invariably makes
me shiver--and then for a week I prefer the grape-nut road, shunning
the dark places after curfew. But I come back avidly for more shock!

“I wrote a story ‘way back in college days, which three editors have
proclaimed the best horror yarn they have read. The story I have with
me now. It has been most thoroughly declined--and now, myself, I see
many amateurish spots. I cherish the yarn, however, for of all the
millions of published words I have written I consider this idea and
its development my most finished work.

“I’ll write that story for you--thus far called ‘The Square of
Canvas’--again from start to finish, and polish it as I would polish a
jewel. The amount of money involved is no spur: I’d like to have it
printed, even gratis. My honest hunch is that, when all is said and
done, you’ll like this yarn as well as any of your choice five.

“Please put me down as a subscriber to the new magazine. I am buried
deep in the heart of piney woods, 36 miles from the nearest news-stand
selling even a Sunday paper, and I want to make sure of seeing each
issue of WEIRD TALES.

“It’s a corking title, and it will get all the boosting I can give.
Herewith a clipping of my last platform appearance. I told ‘em of the
coming magazine, and that it offered a field of reading unique. At
Atlanta and Montgomery, where I speak later in the winter, I’ll give
the sheet a hand. I have two more dates in Mobile, and I’ll mention
your project.

“In a month or so I’ll fix up ‘A Square of Canvas’ and shoot it in for
consideration for WEIRD TALES.”


We got “A Square of Canvas” and promptly read it--and it will appear
in the next issue of WEIRD TALES. Don’t miss it! It’s all that Mr. Rud
says it is, and more besides! It’s a terrifying, hair-raising tale,
and no mistake! It’s a bear! You can read it in twenty minutes, but
those twenty minutes will fairly bristle!

Of “The Dead Man’s Tale,” which opens this issue, Willard E. Hawkins
wrote us:


“......The idea for that story came to me in a flash one evening when
my wife and I were returning from the theatre. I outlined the whole
thing to her, and followed that outline without deviation in writing
the story later. It struck me that I had never seen the
Dr.-Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde type of situation developed from the point of
the obsessing entity, and I was fascinated by the attempt to do it.”


And we think you’ll agree that Mr. Hawkins did a mighty fine job.

We assume you’ve read the stories in this, our first issue, before
arriving upon this page back here, and we are eager to know what you
think of them. Why not write and tell us? Mention the stories you
liked, and those you didn’t like, and tell us what you think of our
attempt to do something new and different in the magazine field. We
shall be delighted to hear from you; and we will print your letters on
this page--unless you decree otherwise.

If you get the next issue of WEIRD TALES--as we hope you will--you’ll
read some strange and remarkable stories. Elsewhere in this number
we’ve told you something about these stories, and we need only add
here that each is a striking example of unusual fiction. Whatever
effect they may have upon you--whether they make you shudder or set
your nerves tingling pleasurably--we can emphatically promise you this:

You will not be bored!

--THE EDITOR.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEIRD TALES, VOLUME 1, NUMBER
1, MARCH 1923 ***

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