Past Masters 27
Author: Various
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Something of a "Weird Tales" issue of Past Masters, with several stories by a Weird Tales writer now largely forgotten, Harold Ward, who also wrote under the name Ward Sterling. There is also a non-fiction article about the pulps, published anonymously in the late 30s by a pulp author, and a fascinating read it is. The identity of the anonymous author is still unknown. The ever-growing cumulative index to Past Masters is included. 1: The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin / Anonymous 2: The Tale of the Tangled Telegram / Wilbur D. Nesbit 3: Laugh Maker / James Oliver Curwood 4: A Penny a Word

PAST MASTERS

TWENTY-SEVEN

May 2021

Produced by Terry Walker

("Pulpmeister")

Contents

1: The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin / Anonymous

2: The Tale of the Tangled Telegram / Wilbur D. Nesbit

3: Laugh Maker / James Oliver Curwood

4: A Penny a Word / Anonymous (non-fiction)

5: Parson Shaw / Halliwell Sutcliffe

6: An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension / Farnsworth Wright

7: Deadlock / Arthur Leo Zagat

8: The Place of Hairy Death / Anthony M Rud

9: The Comeback / William J. Elliott

10: The Grave / Orville R. Emerson

11: The Long Arm of God / Ward Sterling

12: The Man Who Would Not Die / Harold Ward

13: The Devil Takes a Hand / Ward Sterling

14: The Deviltry of Dr. Waugh / Christopher B. Booth

15: The Skull / Harold Ward

16: The  Thing of a Thousand Shapes / Otis Adelbert Kline

17: The Germs of Death / Harold Ward

18: The Undelivered Sermon / Harold Ward

19: The Dare / Harold Ward

20: The Life-Eater / Harold Ward

21: House of the Lizard / Harold Ward

Cumulative Index to Number 27

________________

1: The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin

Anonymous

The Olio, or, Museum of Entertainment, 23 Feb, 1828

The time of the events is around 1520, during the reign of Francois 1er, (Francis I), son of the Count of Angoulême. Poictu is the old spelling of Poitou; St. Yrieux, scene of the story, now spelled St. Yrieix, is between Perigeaux and Limoges. This is possibly the first fictional tale of the werewolf.

The Wolf! the Wolf!

Æsop’s Fables

‘Twas smoothly said, in olden hours,

That men were oft with wondrous powers,

Endow’d their wonted forms to change,

And Wehr-Wolves wild abroad to range!

So Garwal roams in savage pride,

And hunts for blood and feeds on men,

Spreads dire destruction far and wide,

And makes the forests broad his den.

Marie’s “Lai Du Bisclavaret”

THE ANCIENT PROVINCE of Poictou, in France, has long been celebrated in the annals of Romance, as one of the most famous haunts of those dreadful animals, whose species is between a phantom and a beast of prey; and which are called by the Germans, Wehr-Wolves, and by the French, Bisclavarets, or Loups Garoux. To the English, these midnight terrors are yet unknown, and almost without a name; but when they are spoken of in this country, they are called by way of eminence, Wild Wolves!

The common superstition concerning them is, that they are men in compact with the Arch Enemy, who have the power of assuming the form and nature of wolves at certain periods. The hilly and woody district of the Upper Limousin, which now forms the Southern division of the Upper Vienne, was that particular part of the Province which the Wehr-Wolves were supposed to inhabit; whence, like the animals which gave them their name, they would wander out by midnight, far from their own hills and mountains, and run howling through the silent streets of the nearest towns and villages, to the great terror of all the inhabitants; whose piety, however, was somewhat increased by these supernatural visitations.

There once stood in the suburbs of the Town of St. Yrieux, which is situate in those dangerous parts of ancient Poictou, an old, but handsome, Maison-de-Plaisance, or, in plain English, a country-house, belonging by ancient descent to the young Baroness Louise Joliedame; who, out of a dread of the terrible Wehr-Wolves, a well-bred horror at the chambres à l’antique which it contained, and a greater love for the gallant Court of Francis I., let the Chateau to strangers; though they occupied but a very small portion of it, whilst the rest was left unrepaired, and was rapidly falling to decay.

One of the parties by whom the old mansion was tenanted, was a country Chirurgeon, named Antoine Du Pilon; who, according to his own account, was not only well acquainted with the science of Galen and Hippocrates, but was also a profound adept in those arts, for the learning of which some men toil their whole lives away, and are none the wiser; such as Alchemy, converse with spirits, Magic, and so forth.

Dr. Du Pilon had abundant leisure to talk of his knowledge at the little Cabaret of St. Yrieux, which bore the sign of the Chevalier Bayard’s Arms, where he assembled round him many of the idler members of the town, the chief of whom were Cuirbouilli, the Currier; Malbois, the Joiner; La Jacquette, the Tailor, and Nicole Bonvarlet, his Host, together with several other equally arrant gossips, who all swore roundly, at the end of each of their parleys, that Doctor Antoine du Pilon was the best Doctor, and the wisest man in the whole world!

To remove, however, any wonder that may arise in the reader’s mind, how a professor of such skill and knowledge should be left to waste his abilities so remote from the patronage of the great, it should be remarked, that in such cases as had already come before him, he had not been quite so successful as could have been expected, or desired; since old Genifréde Corbeau, who was frozen almost double with age and ague, he kept cold and fasting, to preserve her from fever; and he would have cut off the leg of Pierre Faucille, the reaper, when he wounded his right arm in harvest time, to prevent the flesh from mortifying downwards!

In a retired apartment of the same deserted mansion where this mirror of Chirurgeons resided, dwelt a peasant and his daughter, who had come to St. Yrieux from a distant part of Normandy, and of whose history nothing was known, but that they seemed to be in the deepest poverty; although they neither asked relief, nor uttered a single complaint. Indeed they rather avoided all discourse with their gossiping neighbours, and even with their fellow inmates, excepting so far as the briefest courtesy required; and as they were able, on entering their abode, to place a reasonable security for payment in the hands of old Gervais, the Baroness Joliedame’s Steward, they were permitted to live in the old Chateau with little questioning, and less sympathy.

The father appeared in general to be a plain rude peasant, whom poverty had somewhat tinctured with misanthropy; though there were times when his bluntness towered into a haughtiness not accordant with his present station, but seemed like a relique of a higher sphere from which he had fallen. He strove, and the very endeavour increased the bitterness of his heart to mankind, to conceal his abject indigence, but that was too apparent to all, since he was rarely to be found at St. Yrieux, but led a wild life in the adjacent mountains and forests, occasionally visiting the town, to bring to his daughter Adéle a portion of the spoil, which, as a hunter, he indefatigably sought for the subsistence of both.

Adéle, on the contrary, though she felt as deeply as her father the sad reverse of fortune to which they were exposed, had more gentleness in her sorrow, and more content in her humiliation. She would, when he returned to the cottage, worn with the fatigue of his forest labours, try, but many times in vain, to bring a smile to his face, and consolations to his heart. “My father,” she would say, “quit, I beseech you, this wearisome hunting for some safer employment, nearer home. You depart, and I watch in vain for your return; days and nights pass away, and you come not! while my disturbed imagination will ever whisper the danger of a forest midnight, fierce, howling wolves, and robbers still more cruel.”

“Robbers! girl, sayest thou?” answered her father with a bitter laugh, “and what shall they gain from me, think ye? is there aught in this worn-out gaberdine to tempt them? Go to, Adéle! I am not now Count Gaspar de Marcanville, the friend of the royal Francis, and a Knight of the Holy Ghost; but plain Hubert, the Hunter of the Limousin; and wolves, thou trowest, will not prey upon wolves.”

“But, dear my father,” said Adéle, embracing him, “I would that thou would’st seek a safer occupation nearer to our dwelling, for I would be by your side.”

“What would’st have me to do, girl?” interrupted Gaspar impatiently; “would’st have me put this hand to the sickle, or the plough, which has so often grasped a sword in the battle, and a banner-lance in the tournament? or shall a companion of Le Saint-Esprit become a fellow-handworker with the low artizans of this miserable town? I tell thee Adéle, that but for thy sake I would never again quit the forest, but would remain there in a savage life, till I forgot my language and my species, and became a Wehr-wolf, or a wild-buck!”

Such was commonly the close of their conversation; for if Adéle dared to press her entreaties farther, Gaspar, half frenzied, would not fail to call to her mind all the unhappy circumstances of his fall, and work himself almost to madness by their repetition. He had in early life been introduced by the Count De Saintefleur to the Court of Francis I., where he had risen so high in the favour of his Sovereign, that he was continually in his society; and in the many wars which so embittered the reign of that excellent Monarch, De Marcanville’s station was ever by his side.

In these conflicts, Gaspar’s bosom had often been the shield of Francis, even in moments of the most imminent danger; and the grateful King as often showered upon his deliverer those rewards, which, to the valiant and high-minded soldier, are far dearer than riches; the glittering jewels of knighthood, and the golden coronal of the peerage. To that friend who had fixed his feet so loftily and securely in the slippery paths of a Court, Gaspar felt all the ardour of youthful gratitude; and yet he sometimes imagined, that he could perceive an abatement in the favour of De Saintefleur, as that of Francis increased.

The truth was, that the gold and rich promises of the King’s great enemy, the Emperor Charles V., had induced De Saintefleur to swerve from his allegiance; and he now waited but for a convenient season to put the darkest designs in practice against his Sovereign. He also felt no slight degree of envy, even against that very person whom he had been the instrument of raising; and at length an opportunity occurred, when he might gratify both his ambition and his revenge, by the same blow. It was in one of those long wars in which the French Monarch was engaged, and in which De Saintefleur and De Marcanville were his most constant companions, that they were both watching near his couch whilst he slept, when the former, in a low tone of voice, thus began to sound the faith of the latter towards his royal master.

“What say’st thou, Gaspar, were not a prince’s coronet and a king’s revenue in Naples, better than thus ever toiling in a war that seems unending? Hearest thou, brave De Marcanville? we can close it with the loss of one life only!”

“Queen of Heaven!” ejaculated Gaspar, “what is it thou would’st say, De Saintefleur?”

“Say! why that there have been other Kings of France before this Francis, and will be, when he shall have gone to his place. Thinkest thou that He of the double-headed black eagle would not amply reward the sword that cut this fading lily from the earth?”

“No more, no more, De Saintefleur!” cried Gaspar; “even from you, who placed me where I might flourish beneath that lily’s shade, will I not hear this treason. Rest secure that I will not betray thee to the King; my life shall sooner be given for thine; but I will watch thee with more vigilance than the wolf hath when he watcheth the night-fold, and your first step to the heart of Francis shall be over the body of Gaspar De Marcanville.”

“Nay, then,” said De Saintefleur aside, “he must be my first victim,” and immediately drawing his sword, he cried aloud, “What, ho! guards! Treason!”— whilst Gaspar stood immoveable with astonishment and horror. The event is soon related, for Francis was but too easily persuaded that De Marcanville was in reality guilty of the act about to have been perpetrated by De Saintefleur; and the magnanimity of Gaspar was such, that not one word which might criminate his former friend could be drawn from him, even to save his own life. The kindhearted Francis, however, was unable to forget in a moment the favour with which for years he had been accustomed to look upon De Marcanville; and it was only at the earnest solicitation of the Courtiers, many of whom were rejoiced at the thought of a powerful rival’s removal, that he could be prevailed on to pass upon him even the sentence of degradation and banishment.

Gaspar hastened to his Chateau, but the treasures which he was allowed to bear with him into exile were little more than his Rosalie and his daughter Adéle; with whom he immured himself in the dark and almost boundless recesses of the Hanoverian Harz, where his fatigues and his sorrows soon rendered his gaunt and attenuated form altogether unknown.

In this savage retirement, he drew up a faithful narration of De Saintefleur’s treachery; and in confirmation of it’s truth, procured a certificate from his Confessor, Father Ægidius,— one of those holy men who of old were dwellers in forests and deserts,—and directing it “To the King,” placed it in the hands of his wife, that if, in any of those hazardous excursions in which he engaged to procure their daily subsistence, he should perish, it might be delivered to Francis, and his family thus be restored to their rank and estates, when his pledge to De Saintefleur could no longer be claimed.

Years passed away, and, in the gloomy recesses of the Hercynian woods, Gaspar acquired considerable skill as a hunter: had it been to preserve his own life only, he had laid him calmly down upon the sod, and resigned that life to famine, or to the hungry wolf; but he had still two objects which bound him to existence, and therefore in the chase the wild-buck was too slow to escape his spear, and the bear too weak to resist his attacks.

His fate, notwithstanding, preyed heavily upon him, and often brake out in fits of vehement passion, and the most bitter lamentations; which at length so wrought upon the grief-worn frame of Rosalie de Marcanville, that about ten years after Gaspar’s exile, her death left him a widower, when his daughter Adéle was scarcely eighteen years of age.

It was then, with a mixture of desperation and distress, that De Marcanville determined to rush forth from his solitude into France, and, careless of the fate which might await him for returning from exile unrecalled, to advance even to the Court, and laying his papers at the foot of the throne, to demand the Ordeal of Combat with De Saintefleur; but when he had arrived at the woody Province of the Upper Limousin, his purpose failed him, as he saw in the broad day-light, which rarely entered the Harz Forest, the afflicting changes which ten years of the severest labour, and the most heartfelt sorrow, had made upon his form.

He might, indeed, so far as it regarded all recollections of his person, have safely gone even into the Court of Francis; but Gaspar also saw, that in the retired forest surrounding St. Yrieux, he might still reside unknown in his beloved France; that under the guise of a hunter, he could still provide for the support of his gentle Adéle; and that, in the event of his death, she would be considerably nearer to her Sovereign’s abode. It was, then, in consequence of these reasons, that De Marcanville employed a part of his small remaining property, in securing a residence in the dilapidated Chateau, as it has been already mentioned.

It was some time after their arrival, that the inhabitants of the Town of St. Yrieux were alarmed by the intelligence, that a Wehr-Wolf, or perhaps a troop of them, certainly inhabited the woods of the Limousin. The most terrific howlings were heard in the night, and the wild rush of a chase swept through the deserted streets; yet the townspeople— according to the most approved rules for acting where Wehr-Wolves are concerned,— never once thought of sallying forth in a body, and with weapons, and lighted brands, to scare the monsters from their prey; but, adding a more secure fastening to every window, which is the Wehr-Wolf’s usual entrance, they deserted such as had already fallen their victims, with one brief expression of pity for them, and many a “Dieu me benit!” for themselves. It was asserted, too, that some of the country people, whose dwellings came more immediately into contact with the Limousin forests, had lost their children, whose lacerated remains, afterwards discovered in the woods, only half devoured, plainly denoted them to have fallen the prey of some abandoned Wehr-Wolf!

It is not surprising, that in a retired town, where half the people were without employment, and all were thorough-bred gossips, and lovers of wonders, that the inroads of the Wehr-Wolves formed too important an epoch in their history, to be passed over without a due discussion. Under pretence, therefore, of being a protection to each other, many of the people of St. Yrieux, and especially the worthy conclave mentioned at the beginning of this history, were, almost eternally, convened at the Chevalier Bayard’s Arms; talking over their nightly terrors, and filling each other with such affright, by the repetition of many a lying old tale upon the same subject, that, too much alarmed to part, they often agreed to pass the night over Nicole Bonvarlet’s wine-flask and blazing fagots. Upon a theme so intimately connected with magical lore as is the history of Wehr-Wolves, Dr. Antoine Du Pilon discoursed like a Solomon; citing, to the great edification and wonder of his hearers, such hosts of authors, both sacred and profane, that he who should but have hinted, that the Wehr-Wolves of St. Yrieux were simply like other Wolves, would have found as little gentleness in his hearers, as he would have experienced from the animals themselves.

“Well, my masters!” began Bonvarlet, one evening when they were met, “I would not, for a tun of malmsey wine now, be in the Limousin forest to-night; for do ye hear how it blusters and pours? By the Ship of St. Mildred! in a wild night like this, there’s no place in the world like your hearth-side in a goodly auberge, with a merry host and good liquor; both of which, neighbours, ye have to admiration.”

“Aye, Nicole,” replied Cuirbouilli, “it’s a foul night, truly, either for man or cattle; and yet I’ll warrant ye that the Wehr-Wolves will be out in’t, for their skin is said to be the same as that the Fiend himself wears! and that would shut you out water, and storm, and wind, like a castle-wall. Mass, now! but it would be simply the making of my fortune, an’ I could but get one of their hides!”

“Truly, for a churl,” began Dr. Du Pilon, “an unlettered artizan, thy wish sheweth a pretty wit; for a cloak made from the skin of a Wehr-Wolf, would for ever defend it’s wearer from all other Wolves, and all animals that your Wolves feed upon: even, as Pythagoras writeth, that one holding the eye of a Wolf in his hand, shall scare away from him all weaker creatures; for like as the sight of a Wolf doth terrify—”

“Hark, neighbours! did ye hear that cry? it is a Wehr-Wolf’s bark!” exclaimed Jerome Malbois, starting from his settle.

“Aye, by the Bull of St. Luke! did I, friend Jerome,” returned Bonvarlet, “surely the great Fiend himself can make no worser a howling; I even thought ‘twould split the very rafters last night, though I deem that they’re of good seasoned fir.”

“There thou errest again,” said the Doctor in a pompous tone to the last speaker, “Oh! ye rustics, whom I live with as Orpheus did with the savages of Thracia, whence is it that ye possess such boundless stupidity? Thou sayest, Jerome Malbois, that they bark, and, could I imagine, that shooting in the dark, thou had’st hit on the Greekish phrase which calls them Dogs of the Night, I could say thou had said wisely: but now I declare that thou hast spoken full ignorantly, right woodenly, Jerome Malbois; thou art beyond thy square, friend joiner; thou hast overstepped thy rule, good Carpenter. Doth not the great Albertus bear testimony, Oh, most illiterate! that Wolves bark not, when he saith,—

‘Ast Lupus ipse vlulat, frendit agrestis aper,’

which for thine edification is, in the vulgar tongue,—

But the Wolf doth loudly howl, and the boar his teeth doth grind.

Where the wildest plains are spread before, and forests rise behind.

Et idem Auctor, and the same Author also saith, which maketh yet more against thee, O mentis inops!

‘Per noctem resonare Lupus, vlulantibus urbes.’

which in the common is

The Wolf by night through silent cities prowls,

And makes the streets resound with hideous howls.

And doth not Servius say the like in a verse wherein I opine he hints at Wehr-Wolves? ‘Vlulare, canum est furiare’— to howl is the voice of dogs and furies:—thus findest thou, Faber sciolus! that here we have an agreement touching the voice of wolves, which is low and mournful, and therefore the word Vlulatus is fitly applied as an imitation thereof. Your Almaine says Heulen; the Frenchman saith Hurler; and the Englishman, with a conglomeration of sounds as bad as the Wolf’s own, calleth it howling.”

“By the holy Dog of Tobias!” ejaculated Bonvarlet, “and I think our Doctor speaketh all languages, as he had had his head broken with a brick from the Tower of Babel, and all the tongues had got in at once. But where think ye Monsieur, that these cursed Loups Garoux came from? Are they like unto other Wolves, or what breed be they?”

“Nicole Bonvarlet,” again began the untired Doctor, after taking a long draught of the flask, “Nicole Bonvarlet, I perceive thou hast more of good literature than thy fellows; for not only dost thou mark erudition when it is set before thee, but thou also wisely distrustest thine own knowledge, and questionest of those who are more learned than thou. Touching thy demand of what breed are the Wehr-Wolves, be this mine answer. Thou knowest, that if ye ask of a shepherd how he can distinguish one sheep from another, he tells you that even in their faces he seeth a distinctio secretio, the which to a common observer is not visible; and thus, when the vulgar see a wolf, they can but say it is a wolf, and there endeth their cunning. But, by the Lion of St. Mark! if ye ask one skilled in the knowledge of four-footed animals, he shall presently discourse to you of the genus and species thereof; make known it’s haunts and history, display it’s occult properties, and give you a lection upon all that your ancient and modern authors have said concerning it.”

“By the Mass now!” interrupted La Jaquette, “and I would fain know the habit in which your Loup Garoux vests him when he is not in his wolfish shape; whether he have slashed cuishes, and—”

“Peace, I pray you peace, good Tailleur,” said Doctor Antoine; “it is but rarely that I speak, and even then my discourse is brief, and therefore I beseech you not to mar the words of wisdom which are seldom heard, with thy folly which men may listen to hourly. Touching your Wolves, honest friends, as I was saying, there are five kinds, as Oppianus noteth in his Admonition to Shepherds; of the which, two sorts that rove in the countries of Swecia and the Visigoths, are called Acmonœ, but of these I will not now speak, but turn me unto those of whose species is the Wehr-Wolf. The first is named the Shooter, for that he runneth fast, is very bold, howleth fearfully—”

“There is the cry again!” exclaimed Malbois, and as the sounds drew nearer, the Doctor’s audience evinced symptoms of alarm, which were rapidly increasing, when a still louder shriek was heard close to the house.

“What, ho! within there!” cried a voice, evidently of one in an agony of terror, “an’ ye be men, open the door!” and the next moment it was burst from it’s fastenings by the force of a human body falling against it, which dropped without motion upon the floor!

The confusion which this accident created may well be imagined; the Doctor, greatly alarmed, retreated into the fire-place, whence he cried out to the equally scared rustics, “It’s a Wehr-Wolf in a human shape, don’t touch him, I tell you, but strike him with a fire-fork between the eyes, and he’ll turn to a Wolf, and run away! You, Cuirbouilli, out with thy knife, and flay me a piece of his neck, and you’ll see the thick wolf-hide under it. For the love of the Saints, neighbours, take care of yourselves, and—”

“Peace, Master Doctor,” said Bonvarlet, the only one of the party that had ventured near the stranger, “he breathes yet, for he’s a Christian man, like as we are.”

“Don’t you be too sure of that,” replied Du Pilon; “ask him to say his Creed, and his Pater-Noster in Latin.”

“Nay, good my master,” returned the humane host, pouring some wine down the stranger’s throat, and bearing his reviving body to the hearth, “he can scarce speak his mother-tongue, and therefore he’s no stomach for Latin, so come, thou prince of all Chirurgeons, and bleed me him; and when he comes too, why e’en school him yourself.”

Doctor Antoine Du Pilon advanced from his retreat, with considerable reluctance, to attend upon his patient, who was richly habited in the luxuriant fashion of the Court of Francis, and appeared to be a middle-aged man, of handsome features, and commanding presence. As the Doctor, somewhat reassured, began to remove the short cloak to find out the stranger’s arm, he started back with affright, and actually roared with pain at receiving a deep scratch from the huge paw of a Wolf, which apparently grew out from his shoulder! “Avaunt thee, Sathanas!’’ ejaculated Du Pilon, “I told ye how it would be, my masters, that this cursed Wehr-Wolf would bleed us first. By the Porker of St. Anthony! Blessed beast! and he hath clawed me from the Biceps Flexor Cubiti, down to the Os Lunare, even as a Peasant would plough up a furrow!”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Bonvarlet, holding up the dreaded Wolf’s paw, which was yet bleeding, as if it had been recently separated from the animal,—"Here’s no Wehr-Wolf, but a brave Hunter, who hath cut off this goodly fore-hand in the forest, with his couteau-de-chasse; but soft,” he added, throwing it aside, “he recovers!”

“Pierre!— Henri!” said the stranger, recovering, “where are ye? How far is the King behind us?— Ha! what place is this? and who are ye?” he continued, looking round.

“This, your good worship, is the Chevalier Bayard’s Arms, in the Town of St. Yrieux, where your Honour fell, through loss of blood, as I guess by this wound. We were fain to keep the door barred, for fear of the Wehr-Wolves; and we half deemed your Lordship to be one, at first sight of the great paw you carried, but now, I judge you brought it from the forest.”

“Aye! yes, thou art in the right on’t,” said the stranger, recollecting himself, “‘twas in the forest! I tell thee, Host, that I have this night looked upon the Arch-Demon himself!”

“Apage, Lucifer!” ejaculated Du Pilon, devoutly crossing his breast, “and have I received a claw from his fore-foot! I feel the enchantment of Lycanthropy coming over me; I shall be a Wehr-Wolf myself shortly, for what saith Hornhoofius, in his Treatise De Diabolis, lib. xiv. cap. 23,—they who are torn by a Wehr-Wolf— Oh me! Oh me! Libera nos Domine! Look to yourselves, neighbours, or I shall raven upon ye all.”

“I pray you, Master Doctor,” said Bonvarlet, “to let his Lordship tell us his story first, and then we’ll hear your’s. How was it, fair sir? but take another cup of wine first.”

“My tale is brief,” answered the stranger; “The King is passing to-night through the Limousin, and, with two of my attendants, I rode forward to prepare for his coming; when, in the darkness of the wood, we were separated, and as I galloped on alone, an enormous Wolf, with fiery flashing eyes, leaped out of a brake before me, with the most fearful howlings, and rushed on me with the speed of lightning.”

“Aye,” interrupted Du Pilon, “as I told ye, they are called, in the Greekish phrase, K——, Dogs of the Night, because of their howlings, and T——, for that they shoot along.”

“Now I pray your honour to proceed, and heed not the Doctor,” said Bonvarlet.

“As the Wolf leaped upon my horse,” continued the stranger, “I drew my couteau-de-chasse, and severed that huge paw which you found upon me; but as the violence of the blow made the weapon fall, I caught up a large forked branch of a tree, and struck the animal upon the forehead; upon which my horse began to rear and plunge, for where the Wolf stood, I saw, by a momentary glimpse of moonlight, the form of an ancient enemy, who had long since been banished from France, and whom I believe to have died of Famine in the Harz Forest!”

“Lo you there now!” cried Du Pilon, “a blow between the eyes with a forked stick;— said I not so from Philo-Daimones, lib. xcii? Oh! I’m condemned to be a Wehr-Wolf of a verity, and I shall eat those of my most intimate acquaintance the first.— Masters look to yourselves;— Oh dies infelix! Oh unhappy man that I am!” and with these words he rushed out of the cottage.

“I think the very Fiend’s in Monsieur the Doctor to-night,” cried the Host, “for here he’s gone off without dressing his honour’s wound.”

“Heed not that, friend, but do thou provide torches, and assistance, to meet the King; my hurt is but small; but when my horse saw the apparition I told you of, he bounded forward like a wild Russian colt, dragging me through all the briars of the forest, for there seemed a troop of a thousand wolves howling behind us; and at the verge of it he dropped lifeless, and left me, still pursued, to gain the town, weak and wounded as I was!’’

“St. Denis be praised now!” said Bonvarlet, “you shewed a good heart, my Lord; but we’ll at once set out to meet the King, so neighbours, take each of ye a good pine fagot off the hearth, and call up more help as you go; and Nicolette and Madelene will prepare for our return.”

“But,” asked the stranger, “where’s the Wolf’s paw that I brought from the forest?”

“I cast it aside, my Lord,” answered Bonvarlet, “till you had recovered, but I would fain beg it of you as a gift, for I will hang it over my fireplace, and have it’s story made into a song by Rowland the Minstrel, and— Mother of God! what is this?” continued he, putting into his guest’s hand a human arm, cut off at the elbow, vested in the worn-out sleeve of a hunter’s coat, and bleeding freshly at the part where it was dissevered!

“Holy St. Mary!” exclaimed the stranger, regarding the hand attentively, “this is the arm of Gaspar de Marcanville, yet bearing the executioner’s brand burnt in the flesh! and he is a Wehr-Wolf!”

“Why,” said Bonvarlet, “that’s the habit worn by the melancholy Hunter, whose daughter lives at the ruined Chateau yonder. He rarely comes to St. Yrieux, but when he does, he brings more game than any ten of your gentlemen-huntsmen ever did. Come, we’ll go seek the daughter of this Man-Wolf, and then on to the forest, for this fellow deserves a stake, and a bundle of fagots, as well as ever Jeanne d’Arc did, in my simple thinking.”

They then proceeded to Adéle, at the dilapidated Chateau, and her distress at the foregoing story may better be conceived than described; yet she offered not the slightest assistance to accompanying them to the forest; though when one of the party mentioned their expected meeting with the King, her eyes became suddenly lighted up, and, retiring for a moment, she expressed herself in readiness to attend them.

At the skirts of the forest they found an elderly man, of a strange quaint appearance, couching in the fern like a hare; who called out to them in a squeaking voice, that was at once familiar to all, “Take care of yourselves, good people, for I am a Wehr-Wolf, and shall speedily spring upon some of ye.”

“Why that’s our Doctor, as I am a sinful man,” cried Bonvarlet, “let’s try his own cure upon him. Neighbour Malbois, give me a tough forked branch, and I’ll disenchant him, I warrant; and you, Cuirbouilli, out with your knife, as though you would skin him:”— and then he continued aloud—"Oh! honest friend, you’re a Wehr-Wolf, are you? why then I’ll dispossess the Devil that’s in you.— You shall be flayed, and then burned for a wizard.”

With that the rustics of St. Yrieux, who enjoyed the jest, fell upon the unhappy Doctor, and, by a sound beating, and other rough usage, so convinced him that he was not a Wehr-Wolf, that he cried out—"Praised be St. Gregory, I am a whole man again! Lo I am healed! but my bones feel wondrous sore. Who is he that hath cured me?— by the Mass I am grievously bruised!— thanks to the seraphical Father Francis, the Devil hath gone out of me!”

Whilst the peasants were engaged in searching for the King’s party, and the mutilated Wolf, the stranger, who was left with Adele de Marcanville, fainted through loss of blood; and, as she bent over him, and staunched his wounds with her scarf, he said, with a faint voice—"Fair one! who is it thinkest thou whom thou art so blessedly attending?’’

“I wot not,” answered she, “but that thou art a man.”

“Hear me then, and throw aside these bandages for my dagger, for I am thy father’s ancient enemy, the Count de Saintefleur!”

“Heaven forgive you, then!” returned Adele, “for the time of vengeance belongs to it only.”

“And it is come,” cried a load hoarse voice, as a large Wolf, wounded by the loss of a fore-paw, leaped upon the Count, and put an end to his existence. At the same moment, the royal train, which the peasants had discovered, rode up with flambeaux, and a Knight with a large partizan made a blow at the Wolf, whom Adele vainly endeavoured to preserve, since the stroke was of sufficient power to destroy both. The Wolf gave one terrific howl, and fell backwards in the form of a tall gaunt man, in a hunter’s dress; whilst Adele, drawing a packet from her bosom, and offering it to the King, sank lifeless upon the body of her father, Gaspar de Marcanville, the Wehr-Wolf of Limousin.

_____________________

2: The Tale of the Tangled Telegram

Wilbur D. Nesbit

1871–1927

The Reader Magazine, May 1905.

i

JAMES TROTTINGHAM MINTON had a cousin who lived in St. Louis. “Cousin Mary,” Lucy Putnam discovered by a process of elimination, was the one topic on which the reticent Mr. Minton could become talkative. Mary was his ideal, almost. Let a girl broach the weather, he grew halt of speech; should she bring up literature, his replies were almost inane; let her seek to show that she kept abreast of the times, and talk of politics— then Jimmy seemed to harbor a great fear in his own soul. But give him the chance to make a few remarks about his cousin Mary and he approached eloquence. For this reason Lucy Putnam was wise enough to ask him something about Mary every so often.

Now, the question arises: Why should Lucy Putnam, or any other girl, take any interest in a man who was so thoroughly bashful that his trembling efforts to converse made the light quivering aspen look like a ten-ton obelisk for calmness? The reason was, and is, that woman has the same eye for babies and men. The more helpless these objects, the more interested are the women. The man who makes the highest appeal to a woman is he whose tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth and who does not know what to do with his hands in her presence. She must be a princess, he a slave. Each knows this premise is unsupported by facts, yet it is a joyous fiction while it lasts. James Trottingham Mipton was not a whit bashful when with men. No. He called on Mr. Putnam at his office, and with the calmness of an agent collecting rent, asked him for the hand of his daughter.

“Why, Jimmy,” Mr. Putnam said good-naturedly, “of course I haven’t any objections to make. Seems to me that’s a matter to be settled between you and Lucy.”

Jimmy smiled confidentially.

“I suppose you’re right, Mr. Putnam. But, you see, I’ve never had the nerve to say anything about it to her.”

“Tut, tut. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing at all. What’s the matter with you, young man? In my day, if a fellow wanted to marry a girl he wouldn’t go and tell her father. He’d marry her first and then ask the old man where they should live.”

Mr. Putnam chuckled heavily. Mr. Putnam was possessed of a striking fund of reminiscences of how young men used to do.

“Of course, Mr. Putnam,” Jimmy said. “But the girls nowadays are different, and a fel—”

“Not a bit of it. No, sir. Women haven’t changed since Eve’s time. You mustn’t get woman mixed up with dry goods stores, Jimmy. Don’t you know there’s lots of fellows nowadays that fall in love with the fall styles? Ha, ha!”

It was not all clear to Minton, but he laughed dutifully. His was a diplomatic errand, and the half of diplomacy is making the victim think you are in agreement with him.

“Yes, sir,” Putnam chuckled on, “I’ll bet that silk and ruffles and pink shades over the lamp have caused more proposals than all the dimples and bright eyes in the world. Eh, Jimmy? But you haven’t proposed yet?”

“I did. You gave your consent.”

“But you’re not going to marry me. You want Lucy. You’ll have to speak to her about it.”

“Now look, Mr. Putnam, I can come to you and ask you for her, and it’s the same thing.”

“Not by a hundred miles, my boy. If I told Lucy you had said that, she wouldn’t be at home next time you called. The trouble with you is that you don’t understand women. You’ve got to talk direct to them.”

Jimmy looked hopelessly out of the window.

“No; what you say to me and what I say to you hasn’t any more to do with you and Lucy than if you were selling me a bill of goods. I like you, Jimmy, and I’ve watched your career so far with interest, and I look for great things from you in the future, and that’s why I say to you to go ahead and get Lucy, and good luck to you both.”

Mr. Putnam took up some papers from his desk and pretended to be studying them, but from the tail of his eye he gathered the gloom that was settling over Jimmy’s face. The elder man enjoyed the situation.

“Well, Mr. Putnam,” Jimmy asked, “why can’t you just tell Lucy for me that I have asked you, and that you say it’s all right? Then when I go to see her next time, it’ll all be arranged and understood.”

“Let me see. Didn’t I read a poem or something at school about someone who hadn’t sand enough to propose to a girl and who got another man to ask her? But it wasn’t her own father. Why, Jimmy, if you haven’t courage enough to propose to a girl, what do you suppose will be your finish if she marries you? A married man has to have spunk.”

“I’ve got the spunk all right, but you understand how I feel.”

“Sure! Let me give you some advice. When you propose to a girl, you don’t have to come right out and ask her to marry you.”

Jimmy caught at the straw.

“You don’t?” he asked.

“Certainly not. There’s half a dozen ways of letting her know that you want her. Usually— always, I may say— she knows it anyway, and unless she wants you she’ll not let you tell her so. But if I wanted a short, sharp ‘No’ from a girl, I’d get her father to ask her to marry me.”

“Then you mean that I’ve got to ask her myself ?”

“To be sure.”

“I can’t do it, Mr. Putnam; I can’t.”

“Write it.”

“Why, I’d feel as if the postman and everybody else knew it.”

“Telephone.”

“Worse yet.”

“Jim Minton, I’m disgusted with you. I thought you were a young man with some enterprise, but if you lose your courage over such an everyday affair as proposing to a girl—”

“But men don’t propose every day.”

“Somebody is proposing to somebody every day. It goes on all the time. No, sir; I wash my hands of it. I’ll not withdraw my consent, and you have my moral support and encouragement, but getting married is the same as getting into trouble— you have to handle your own case.”

“But, Mr. Putnam—”

“You’ll only go over the same ground again. Good morning. I don’t want to hear any more of this until it is settled one way or the other. I’ll not help and I’ll not hinder it— It’s up to you.”

With this colloquial farewell Mr. Putnam waved his hand and turned to his papers. Jimmy accumulated his hat and stick, and left, barren of hope.

That night he took Lucy to see Romeo and Juliet. The confidence and enthusiasm of Romeo merely threw him into a deeper despair of his own ability as a suitor, and made him even more taciturn and stumbling of speech than ever. His silence grew heavier and heavier, until at last Lucy threw out her never-failing life-line. She asked him about his cousin Mary.

“By the way,” he said, brightening up, “Cousin Mary is going through here one day next week.”

“Is she? How I should like to know her. If she is anything like you she must be very agreeable.”

“She isn’t like me, but she is agreeable. Won’t you let me try to bring you two together— at lunch downtown, or something like that?”

“It would be fine.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll arrange it just as soon as I see her.”

Then silence, pall-like, fell again upon them. Jimmy thought of Romeo, and Lucy thought of— Romeo, let us say. When a young man and a young woman, who are the least bit inclined one to another, witness Shakespeare’s great educative effort, the young woman cannot help imagining herself leaning over the balcony watching the attempts of the young man to clamber up the rope ladder.

After he had gone that night, Lucy sat down for a soul communion with herself. Pity the woman who does not have soul communions. She who can sit side by side with herself and make herself believe that she is perfectly right and proper in thinking and believing as she does, is happy. The first question Lucy Putnam put to her subliminal self was: “Do I love Jimmy?” Subliminal self, true to sex, equivocated. It said: “I am not sure.” Whereupon Lucy asked: “Why do I love him?” Then ensued the debate. Subliminal self said it was because he was a clean, good-hearted, manly fellow. Lucy responded that he was too bashful. “He is handsome,” retorted subliminal self. “But there are times when he grows so abashed that he is awkward.” Subliminal self said he would outgrow that. “But there are other men who are just as nice, just as handsome, and just as clever, who are not so overwhelmingly shy,” argued Lucy. Whereat subliminal self drew itself up proudly and demanded: “Name one!” And Lucy was like the person who can remember faces, but has no memory at all for names.

ii

COUSIN MARY came to town as she had promised, and she made Cousin Jimmy drop his work and follow her through the shops half the morning. Cousin Mary was all that Cousin Jimmy had ever said of her. She was pretty and she was genial. When these attributes are combined in a cousin they invite confidences.

The two were standing on a corner, waiting for a swirl of foot passengers, carriages and street-cars, to be untangled, when Mary heard Jimmy making some remark about “Miss Putnam.”

“So, she’s the one, is she, Jimmy?”

“Well— er— I— I don’t know. You see—”

“Certainly I see. Who wouldn’t? Is she pretty, Jimmy?”

Jimmy saw a pathway through the crowd and led his cousin to the farther curb before answering: “Yes, she is very pretty.”

“Tell me all about her. How long have you known her? How did you meet her? Is she tall or short? Is she dark or fair? Is she musical? Oh, I am just dying to know all about her!”

All the way down State Street Jimmy talked. All the way down State Street he was urged or aided and abetted by the questions and comments of Cousin Mary, and when they had buffeted their way over Jackson to Michigan Avenue and found breathing room, she turned to him and asked pointedly:

“When is it to be?”

“When is what to be?”

“The wedding.”

“Whose wedding?” Jimmy’s tone was utterly innocent.

“Whose? Yours and Lucy’s, to be sure.”

“Mine and Lucy’s? Why? Mary, I’ve never asked her yet.”

“You’ve never asked her! Do you mean to tell me that when you can talk about her for seven or eight blocks, as you have, you have not even asked her to marry you? Why, James Trottingham Minton, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Where does this paragon of woman live? Take me to see her. I want to apologize for you.”

“Won’t it be better to get her to come in and lunch with us? She lives so far out you’d miss your train east this afternoon.”

“The very thing. Would she come?”

“Why, yes. I asked her the other night and she said she would.”

“Then, why have you waited so long to tell me. Where are we to meet her?”

“Well, I didn’t know for sure what day you would be here, so I didn’t make any definite arrangement. I’m to let her know.”

“Oh, Jimmy! Jimmy! You need a guardian, and not a guardian angel, either. You need the other sort. You deserve hours of punishment for your thoughtlessness. Now go right away and send her word that I am here and dying to meet her.”

“All right. We’ll have lunch here at the Annex. You’ll excuse me just a moment, and I’ll send her a telegram and ask her to come in.”

“Yes, but hurry. You should have told her yesterday. When will you ever learn how to be nice to a girl?”

Jimmy, feeling somehow that he had been guilty of a breach of courtesy that should fill him with remorse, hastened to the telegraph desk and scribbled a message to Lucy. It read:

“Please meet me and Mary at Annex at 2 o’clock.”

“Rush that,” he said to the operator.

The operator glanced over the message and grinned.

“Certainly, sir,” he said. “This sort of a message always goes rush. Wish you luck, sir.”

The operator has not yet completely gathered the reason for the reproving stare Jimmy gave him. In part it has been explained to him. But, as Jimmy has said since, the man deserved censure for drawing an erroneous conclusion from another’s mistake.

It was then noon, so Jimmy and Mary, at Mary’s suggestion, got an appetite by making another tour of the shops. In the meantime a snail-paced messenger boy was climbing the Putnam steps with the telegram in his hand.

iii

LUCY TOOK the telegram from the boy and told him to wait until she saw if there should be an answer. She tore off the envelope, unfolded the yellow slip of paper, read the message, gasped, blushed and turned and left the patient boy on the steps.

Into the house she rushed, calling to her mother. She thrust the telegram into her hands, exclaiming: “Read that! Isn’t it what we might have expected?”

“Mercy! What is it? Who’s dead?”

“Nobody! It’s better than that,” was Lucy’s astonishing reply.

Mrs. Putnam read the telegram, and then beamingly drew her daughter to her and kissed her. The two then wrote a message, after much counting of words, to be sent to Jimmy. It read: “Of course. Mama will come with me. Telephone to papa.”

When this reached Jimmy he was nonplused. He rubbed his forehead, studied the message, reread it, and then handed it to Mary with the suggestion:

“Maybe you can make it out. I can’t.”

Mary knitted her brows and studied the message in turn. At length she handed it back.

“It is simple,” she decided. “She is a nice, sweet girl, and she wants me to meet her mama and papa. Or maybe she wants us to be chaperoned.”

So Jimmy and Mary waited in the hotel parlor until Lucy should arrive. Reminded by Mary, Jimmy went to the ’phone and told Mr. Putnam that Lucy was coming to lunch with him.

“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it, Jimmy?” Mr. Putnam asked.

“Yes. But she told me to telephone you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But won’t you join us?”

“Is that other matter arranged, Jimmy?”

“N-no. Not yet.”

“I told you I didn’t want to see you until it was. As soon as you wake up, let me know. Good-by.”

Jimmy, red, returned to the parlor, and there was confronted by a vision of white, with shining eyes and pink cheeks, who rushed up to him and kissed him and called him a dear old thing and said he was the cleverest, most unconventional man that ever was.

Limp, astounded, but delighted, James Trottingham Minton drew back a pace from Lucy Putnam, who, in her dainty white dress and her white hat and filmy white veil, was a delectable sight.

“I want you to meet Cousin Mary,” he said.

“Is she to attend?”

“Of course,” he answered.

They walked toward the end of the long parlor where Mary was sitting, but half way down the room they were stopped by Mrs. Putnam. She put both hands on Jimmy’s shoulders, gave him a motherly kiss on one cheek, and sighed: “Jimmy, you will be kind to my little girl?”

Jimmy looked from mother to daughter in dumb bewilderment. Certainly this was the most remarkable conduct he ever had dreamed of. Yet, Mrs. Putnam’s smile was so affectionate and kind, her eyes met his with such a tender look that he intuitively felt that all was right as right should be. And yet— why should they act as they did?

Into the midst of his reflections burst Lucy’s chum, Alice Jordan.

“I’ve a notion to kiss him, too!” she cried.

Jimmy stonily held himself in readiness to be kissed. If kissing went by favor he was pre-eminently a favored one. But Lucy clutched his arm with a pretty air of ownership and forbade Alice.

“Indeed, you will not. It wouldn’t be good form now. After— afterward, you may. Just once. Isn’t that right, Jimmy?”

“Perfectly,” he replied, his mind still whirling in an effort to adjust actualities to his conception of what realities should be.

The four had formed a little group to themselves in the center of the parlor, Lucy clinging to Jimmy’s arm, Mrs. Putnam eyeing them both with a happy expression, and Alice fluttering from one to the other, assuring them that they were the handsomest couple she ever had seen, that they ought to be proud of each other, and that Mrs. Putnam ought to be proud of them, and that she was sure nobody in all the world ever, ever could be as sublimely, beatifically happy as they would be, and that they must be sure to let her come to visit them.

“And,” she cried, admiringly, stopping to pat Jimmy on his unclutched arm, “I just think your idea of proposing by telegraph was the brightest thing I ever heard of!”

It is to be written to the everlasting credit of James Trottingham Minton that he restrained himself from uttering the obvious remark on hearing this. Two words from him would have wrecked the house of cards. Instead, he blushed and smiled modestly. Slowly it was filtering into his brain that by some unusual, unexpected, unprecedented freak of fortune his difficulties had been overcome; that some way or other he had proposed and had been accepted.

“I shall always cherish that telegram,” Lucy declared, leaning more affectionately toward Jimmy. “If that grimy-faced messenger boy had not gone away so quickly with my answer I should have kissed him!”

“I’ve got the telegram here, dear,” said Mrs. Putnam.

“Oh, let’s see it again,” Alice begged. “I always wanted to hear a proposal, but it is some satisfaction to see one.”

Mrs. Putnam opened her hand satchel, took out the telegram, unfolded it slowly, and they all looked at it, Jimmy gulping down a great choke of joy as he read:

“Please meet me and marry at Annex at two o’clock.”

His bashfulness fell from him as a garment. He took the message, saying he would keep it, so that it might not be lost. Then he piloted the two girls and Mrs. Putnam to the spot where Mary had been waiting patiently and wonderingly.

“Mary,” he said boldly, without a tremor in his voice, “I want you to meet the future Mrs. Minton, and my future mother-in-law, Mrs. Putnam, and my future— what are you to me, anyhow, Alice?”

“I’m a combination flower girl, maid of honor and sixteen bridesmaids chanting the wedding march,” she laughed.

“And when,” Mary gasped, “when is this to be?”

“At two o’clock,” Lucy answered.

“Oh, Jimmy! You wretch! You never told me a word about it. But never mind. I bought the very thing for a wedding gift this morning.”

Jimmy tore himself away from the excited laughter and chatter, ran to the telephone and got Mr. Putnam on the wire.

“This is Minton,” he said.

“Who? Oh! Jimmy? Well?”

“Well, I’ve fixed that up.”

“Good. And when is it to be?”

“Right away. Here at the Annex. I want you to go and get the license for me on your way over.”

“Come, come, Jimmy. Don’t be in such precipitate haste.”

“You told me that was the only way to arrange these matters.”

“Humph! Did I? Well, I’ll get the license for you—”

“Good-by, then. I’ve got to telephone for a minister.” The minister was impressed at once with the value of haste in coming, and on his way back to the wedding party Jimmy stopped long enough to hand a five-dollar bill to the telegraph operator.

“Thank you, sir,” said the astonished man. “I have been worrying for fear I had made a mistake about your message.”

“You did. You made the greatest mistake of your life. Thank you!”

___________________

3: Laugh Maker

James Oliver Curwood

1878-1927

Red Book  April 1912

YOU can laugh too much. You can be too cheerful. You can look too much on the sunny side of life. You wont believe this and neither did Bobby McTabb. But McTabb proved.it out. It took the girl to help him— Kitty Duchene was her name— tall and sweet to look upon, with those pure blue eyes, dark with the beauty of violets, that go so well with hair which is brown in the shadow and gold in the sun. They proved it out together, all of a sudden. It is their story. And it will never be believed. But it’s the truth.

Bobby McTabb was born fat. He weighed fourteen pounds at the start— and kept going. He doubled up his avoirdupois at the end of the tenth month, was a fraternity joke at college in his twentieth year, and made the scales groan under two hundred and eighty pounds at the end of his thirtieth— when he came to Fawcettville. But don’t let these facts prejudice you against Bobby McTabb. At least don’t let them give you a wrong steer. For Bobby McTabb, in spite of his fat, was a live one. Fawcettville woke up the day he arrived and began to scrape off the age-old moss from round the hubs of its village institutions. For rumor had preceded Bobby McTabb. It endowed him with immense wealth. He was going to boom Fawcettville. The oldest inhabitants gathered in groups and discussed possibilities, while their sons and younger relations worked in the hay and wheat fields. Some believed a railroad was coming that way. Others that a big factory, like those in the cities, was to be built. A few smelled oil, and Bobby McTabb’s first appearance gave weight to every dream that had been dreamed. The villagers had never seen anything like him, from his patent leather shoes and his gaudily striped waistcoat to his round, rosy, laughing face. He was so fat that he appeared to be short, though he was above medium height, and everyone agreed at first glance that no soul less than that of a millionaire could possibly abide within this earthly tabernacle that disclosed itself to their eyes. But Bobby McTabb quickly set all rumors at rest. He had come to found a bank— the first bank in Fawcettville. At that minute he had just one hundred and twenty-seven dollars in his pocket. But he said nothing of that.

How Bobby McTabb started his bank has nothing to do with this story. But he did it— inside of a week, and prospered. The first part of the story is how he won Confidence— and met the girl. It was his fat, and his round, rosy, laughing face that counted. Within a month all the men liked him, the children loved him, and mothers and daughters were ready to trust him with anything. And never for an instant did Bobby betray one of their trusts. He was lovable from the boots up, and grew fatter in his prosperity as the months rolled by. He discarded his gaudy attire, and did as the other Romans did — wore a broad-brimmed “haying” hat in summer, “wash shirts,” and seamless trousers. He joined the village church, was elected Sunday-school superintendent without a dissenting vote, and was soon the heart and soul of every country rollicking-bee for miles around. Bobby woke up every morning with a laugh in his soul and a smile on his boyish face, and he carried that smile and laugh about with him through every hour of the day. He was happy. Everywhere he preached the gospel of happiness and optimism. If your heart was sick with a heavy burden it would lighten the moment you heard his laugh. And it was a glum face that wouldn’t break into a smile when it met Bobby McTabb’s coming round the corner.

It was at the end of his second year that Bobby met Kitty Duchene. What sweet-eyed, blue-eyed Kitty might not have done with him Fawcettville will never know. She liked him. She would have loved him, and married him, if he hadn’t been so fat. Anyway, grief didn’t settle very heavily upon those ponderous shoulders of B. McTabb. He never laughed a laugh less, and he didn’t stop for a minute in making other people laugh. It was his hobby, and all the women in the world couldn’t have broken it. “Make your neighbors laugh and you shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven,” he used to say. “Drive out worry and care and you are clubbing the devil.” And so it came to pass that by the time he had spent three years in Fawcettville, Bobby McTabb was greater in his community than the governor of the state or the president of the nation. And this was the condition of affairs toward which Bobby had been planning.

And then, one morning, he was missing.

When the odds and ends of things had been counted out, and various columns checked up, it was found that just a hundred and forty thousand dollars had gone with Bobby McTabb.

ii

It was the third of July that Bobby shook the dust of Fawcettville from his feet. So he had the third, and all day the fourth, which was a holiday, in which to get a good start.

Bobby was original, even in robbing a bank. In fact, this is not so much the story of a bank pillage as it is of Bobby’s originality. Europe, Monte Carlo, and Cape Town played as small parts in his plans as did Timbuctoo and Zanzibar. He loved his own people too well to go very far away from them. So he went to Duluth, where a launch was waiting for him. On the Fourth of July he set out alone along the northern shore up Superior, which is unbroken wilderness from Duluth to Fort William. Three days later a fisherman found McTabb’s boat wrecked among the rocks, and on the shore near the launch were Bobby’s coat and hat, sodden and pathetic. Of course there were cards and letters in the pockets of that coat, and also a roll of small bills. So identification was easy. Close on the lurid newspaper tales of Bobby McTabb’s defalcation followed the still more thrilling story of his death. And, meanwhile, Bobby thought this the best joke of his life, and with a kit of supplies on his back was hiking straight North into the big timber.

The joke lived until about ten o’clock in the morning of the first day, when the whole affair began to appear a little less clever to Bobby McTabb. It was hot, and not one decent half-mile of travel did Bobby find. Up and down ridges of broken rock, through tangled swamps and forests of spruce and cedar he went, hitting it as straight north as a tenderfoot could make it by compass. The water poured down his round, red face, wet his collar first, and gradually soaked him to the tips of his toes. But it was not the heat that troubled him most. He was fat and succulent, as tender as a young chicken, and the black flies gathered from miles around to feast upon him. By noon his face was swollen until he could hardly see. His nose was like a bulb ; his feet were blistered; a thousand bones and joints that he had never supposed were in the human anatomy began to ache, and for the first time in his life his jolly heart went loco, and he began to swear. The railroad was forty miles north. He had planned to reach that, and follow it to some small station, whence he would take a train into the new mining country that was just opening up, westward. It was a terrible forty miles. He would look at his compass, strike out confidently toward the North Pole, and five minutes later discover that he was traveling east or west. Early in the afternoon he got into a swamp of caribou moss that was like a spring bed, three feet thick, under his feet. It held him up nicely for a time, and the softness of it was as balm to his sore feet. Then he came to a place where a caribou would have sniffed, and turned back. But B. McTabb went on— and in. He went in— first to his knees, then to his middle, then to his neck, and by the time he had wallowed himself to the safety of firmer footing there was not a spot of him that was not covered with black mud. At two o’clock Bobby McTabb struck firm ground. He believed that he had traveled thirty-nine miles. But he made up his mind that he would camp, and make the last mile in the cool of the morning. As a matter of fact the lake was only six miles behind him.

When Bobby awoke on the morning of the second day he was so stiff that he waddled and so sore that he groaned aloud, and then he made the discovery— the alarming discovery— that was the beginning of the making of a new man of him. His rubber grub-bag was torn to shreds, and what was left of his provisions could have been gathered into a salt cellar. All about the front of his tent were tracks as big as a hat, and though he had never seen tracks like those before he knew that they were the visiting cards of a very big and a very hungry bear. “My Gawd !” said B. McTabb. “My Gawd!” he repeated over and over again, when he found nothing but crumbs and a bacon string.

Then he reflected that the railroad must be but a short distance away, and that he would surely strike some habitation or town before dinner-time. His shoulders were sore, so he left his tent behind him, stopping every time he came to a saskatoon tree or a clump of wild raspberries. The fruit did very well for a time, but like many another tenderfoot before him, he did not learn until too late that the little red plums, or saskatoons, are as bad as green apples when taken into an uncultivated stomach. He began to suffer along toward noon. He suffered all of that day, and far into the night, and when the dawn of the second day came he was no longer the old Bobby McTabb, but a half-mad man. For three days after this the black flies fed on him and the fruit diet ate at his vitals. On the morning of the sixth day he came to the railroad, nearly blind, bootless, and starving, and was found by a tie-cutter named Cassidy.

For a week he lay in Cassidy’s cabin, and when at last he came to his feet again, and looked into a glass, he no longer recognized in himself the tenderly nurtured Bobby McTabb of Fawcettville. His round face had grown thin. A half-inch stubble of beard had pierced his chin and rosy cheeks. His eyes were wild and bloodshot, and there was a looseness in the waist of his trousers that made him gasp. Three days later he weighed himself at the little station up the line and found that he had lost sixty pounds.

From this day on McTabb was a different man. He had relieved himself of sixty pounds of waste, and the effect was marvelous. A new spirit had entered into him by the time he reached the mining country. He prospered— and grew thinner. Unfortunately there is no moral lesson to this little history of B. McTabb. If he had been an ordinary runaway cashier he would have been caught and sufficiently punished, and all the good world would have been warned by his miserable end. But McTabb was not ordinary. He made money with the savings of Fawcettville. He made it so fast that it puzzled him at times to keep count of it. He turned over three claims in the first six months at a profit of a hundred thousand dollars. This was what optimistic Bobby called a “starter.” He was in a rough country, and once more he found himself doing as the Romans did. He worked, and worked hard; he wore heavy boots and shoe-packs, and the more he worked and the more he prospered the thinner he grew.

He was richer each day. Good things came to him like flies to sugar. At the end of his second year in the new bonanza country he was worth a million. And this was not all. For B. McTabb was no longer short and thick. He was tall and thin. From two hundred and eighty he had dropped to one hundred and sixty pounds, and he was five feet ten and a half in his cowhide boots.

But this is not the story of the beginning or the middle of Bobby McTabb. It is the story of his extraordinary and entirely original end, and of the manner in which pretty blue-eyed Kitty Duchene helped to bring that end about.

McTabb was no longer known by that name. He was J. Wesley Brown, promoter and mine owner, and as J. Wesley Brown he met Kitty Duchene once more, in Winnipeg. Kitty was visiting a friend whose father had joined McTabb in a promoting scheme, and all of Bobby’s old love returned to him, for in reality it had never died. The one thing that had been missing in his life was Kitty Duchene, and now he began to court her again as J. Wesley Brown. There was nothing about J. Wesley Brown that would remind one of B. McTabb, and of course Kitty did not recognize him. One day Bobby looked deep into Kitty’s pure blue eyes and told her how much he loved her, and Kitty dropped her head a little forward, so that he could see nothing but the sheen of her gold-brown hair, and promised to be his wife.

From this day on more and more of the old Bobby began to show in J. Wesley Brown. He was the happiest man in the North. His old laugh came back, full and round and joyous. He often caught himself whistling the old tunes, telling the old stories, and cracking the old jokes that had made Fawcettville love him. One evening when he was waiting for Kitty, he whistled softly the tune to “Sweet Molly Malone,” and when Kitty came quietly into the room her blue eyes searched his questioningly, and there was a gentleness in them which made him understand that the old song had gone straight home, for it was Kitty Duchene herself who had taught him the melody, years and years ago, it seemed. She had told him a great deal about Fawcettville, its green hills and its meadows, its ancient orchards and the great “bottoms,” yellow and black with ox-eyed daisies. And to-night she said, with her pretty face very close to his: “I want to live back in the old home, Jim. Do you love me enough for that?”

The thrill in her voice, the soft touch of her hand, stirred Bobby’s soul until it rose above all fear, and he promised. He would go back. But— what might happen then? Could he always live as J. Wesley Brown? Would no one ever recognize him? Trouble began to seat itself in his eyes. Misgivings began to fill him. And then, in one great dynamic explosion, the world was shattered about Bobby McTabb’s ears.

He had taken Kitty to a carnival, and like two children they were stumbling through a “House of Mystery,” losing themselves in its mazes, laughing until the tears glistened in Kitty’s happy eyes, when they ran up against two mirrors. One of these made tall and thin people short and fat, and the other made short and fat people tall and thin. Before one of these stepped B. McTabb. For a moment he stood there stunned and helpless. Then he gave a sudden quick gasp and faced Kitty. There was no laughter now in the girl’s eyes, but a look of horror and understanding. In that hapless moment Bobby’s leanness was gone. He was the old Bobby again, short and ludicrously fat. The girl drew back, her breath breaking in sobbing agony.

“Robert,” she cried accusingly. “Robert McTabb!”

She drew still farther away from him, and hopelessly he reached out his arms.

“Kitty— My God, let me explain,” he pleaded. “You don’t understand—”

But she was going from him, and he did not follow.

iii

NOW THERE were three things which might have happened to Bobby McTabb. In all justice Kitty should have immediately reported him to the authorities, but she loved him too much for that, and was too loyal to herself ever to see him again. Or, in the despair and hopelessness of the situation, Bobby might have paid penance by drowning himself or hanging himself. There was one other alternative— flight. But, as we have stated, Bobby was an original thief, and he did just what no other thief would have thought of doing.

He turned his properties into cash as quickly as he could, and bought a ticket for Fawcettville. He arrived in the village on a late night train, as he had planned. The place was deserted. People were asleep. With a big throb at his heart he saw that the building which he had once occupied was empty. It was just as he had left it on that third of July morning. Something rose in his throat and choked him as he turned away. After all he loved Fawcetville— loved it more than any other place on earth, and the tears came into his eyes as he passed reverently the old familiar spots, and came at last to Kitty Duchene’s home, with the maples whispering mournfully above him. He almost sobbed aloud when he saw a light in Kitty’s window. For a long time he sat under the maples, until the light went out and he could no longer see Kitty’s shadow against the curtain. All about him were the homes of the people who had loved and trusted him, and he groaned aloud as he turned back.

No one in Fawcettville knew of Bobby McTabb’s visit that night. No one in the world knew of the scheme which Bobby carried away with him. On the second day the owner of the bank building received a letter, signed by a stranger, asking him to clean and repair the old building, and enclosing an one-hundred dollar bill for the first quarter’s rent. It was twice the rent Bobby McTabb had paid in the old days, and the mystery became the talk of the village.

Bobby came again on the late night train, got off at Henderson, three miles west of Fawcettville, and drove over in a rig. The rig was heavily laden with various things, but chiefly with a big gilt and gold lettered sign, such as Fawcettville had never kriowrr. There were a few who heard the driving of the midnight nails in that sign as it was hung over the new building. After that two men went through the village, as stealthily as thieves, and on every barn and store, and even on the fronts of houses, were pasted bills two feet square ; and at dawn other messengers began delivering sealed letters to the farmers for miles around.

The first bright rays of the morning sun lighted up the gilt and gold letters on Bobby’s sign, and those letters read :

ROBERT McTABB

Loans, Real Estate and Insurance

Sile Jenks, the milkman, was the first to read the bill in front of his house, and with a wild yell he began awakening his neighbors. Inside of half an hour Fawcettville was in an uproar.

Men and women came hurrying toward the old bank building, and in front of that building, with a happy smile on his face, stood Bobby McTabb. Men rushed up to him and wrung his hands until it seemed as though they must pull out his arms; women crowded through to his side; children shouted out his old name ; the dogs barked in the old way— he heard the old laughter, the old voices, the old greetings— even deeper and more affectionate now ; and then there came the first rigs from the country, followed by others, until they streamed in from all sides, just as they do when a circus comes to town. For three hours Bobby stood up manfully, and then the climax came; for straight up to him, with glorious, shining eyes and love in her face, came Kitty Duchene. She paid no attention to those about them, but put her arms up about Bobby’s neck and kissed him.

“NOW I understand,” she whispered, looking at him proudly. “But why didn’t you tell me— up there, Robert?”

And for the first time in his life Bobby McTabb’s voice choked him until he could not speak.

This was what the people of Fawcettville and the country round had read on Bobby’s bills and in his letters

Dear old friends —

You will remember one summer day, nearly five years ago, when I came into your town— Bobby McTabb. I was without friends, without introductions, without money — but you will remember, too, how you received me with open arms, and for two years made life for me here happier than any life that I had ever m dreamed might exist for me. You made me love you, as I would have loved my father, my mother, my sister; and I schemed and schemed to think of some way in which I could repay you. At last the time came. I saw an opportunity of making a great deal of money, but to make that money I required a large sum in cash. I believe that most of you would have responded to my call for that cash— but, perhaps foolishly, I had the childish desire TO SURPRISE YOU. So I went away and took your money with me. I have realized, since then, that the joke was not a good one— but never for an instant have I believed that you would lose confidence in me.

Dear old friends, what I went away to achieve I HAVE achieved, and my heart is near bursting with joy at the knowledge that once more I am to be one of you— until the end of life. Friends, I took with me just one hundred and forty thousand dollars of your money, and I have brought you back just six dollars for every one that you have loaned me during that time. Is this work well done? Is it, at last, a proof of the deep love and reverence I hold for you all? I have the money in cash, and every depositor of the old bank, when he calls upon me, will receive just seven dollars in place of every dollar he had deposited.

But it is not money, but love, that counts, dear friends, and I ask that you measure me— not by the gift I am making to Fawcettville— but in that almost immeasurable devotion which I hold for you all.

Affectionately,

Bobby McTabb.

_______________

4: A Penny a Word

Anonymous

American Mercury, March 1936

Entertaining exposé of the world of the pulp magazines by one of the pulp authors, who preferred to remain anonymous. Despite much speculation to this day, the author remains unknown.

I HAVE KILLED a thousand men. In the dark alleys of small towns I have waylaid and slugged them; on the foggy streets of sleeping cities I have clubbed and knifed them; in the dens of the tenderloin and the hideouts of gangsters I have shot them in cold blood; on the rolling pampas of the Argentine I have murdered them with my bola on our own Western plains I have fanned my six-gun; aboard ships on every sea, in waterfront dives of every port, in tall city buildings and in quiet suburban homes, I have wrenched from my victims their last agonized cries, watched expressions of incredulity spread across their tortured faces. I have killed all these men in all these places— for a penny a word.

This diabolical career was entered upon willingly ten years ago, yet it is difficult to decide at whose door the blame should be placed. Certainly Sinclair Lewis and H. L. Mencken are not free from guilt: but for their anti-Babbitt cult, which embraced me upon my emergence from college, I would have followed my friends into sedate, established business, and no doubt would now be enjoying the tranquil boredom of a suburb, the pleasant security of $10,000 a year, and the occasional exercise of golf. Instead, I joined the optimistic literary migration to New York, fleeing all the comforts of home in a quest for self-expression. But the quest led me in a strangely devious direction— into the pages of the pulp-paper magazines whose lurid scare covers I had seen shrieking at me from the railroad newsstands.

The pulps, I learned, dispensed daydreams to hordes of Americans too unimaginative to dream for themselves. Some five million of these morons paid willingly each month for their canned dreams, and the manufacturers were hard pressed to meet the demand. I heard naught of “craftsmanship”, “atmosphere”, “sociological significance”, or any of the lofty generalities that had enveloped literature, for me, in an awesome aura. I was told that I had only to “get in touch with an editor”, “learn the formula”, and “bang it out”. The greedy maw of the pulp industry would devour all I could write, and thus I would be earning money while I served my literary apprenticeship.

Nothing could have sounded simpler. I would acquire through this hack writing a sense of story construction, an easy facility with words, a valuable working knowledge of public taste, and a confidence that would never come to a lonely garret dweller subsisting on rejection slips. Thus convinced that a pulp apprenticeship was an excellent stepping-stone to artistic fame, I eagerly began mastering the literary craft by “knocking out” stories for the cheap magazines which were springing up overnight.

Facility (of a kind) I certainly acquired, as well as confidence, i.e. the confidence to write blandly on almost any subject under the sun. I wrote sea stories, although my longest boat trip had been from Cape Charles to Norfolk; I wrote stories of war in the air, although I had never been within fifty feet of a military aeroplane; I wrote a series of pampas thrillers on the basis of reading one travel book; and I turned out Western thrillers without reading any book. When the editors wanted gangster stories, I produced them; and pseudo-science stories, too, and horror stories, voodoo stories, Northwest Mounted Police stories, and even one thrilling gem for an ill-fated publication called Submarine Stories. Turning occasionally to the love-story pulps, I would draw backgrounds and characters with regard only for the editors' desires: Broadway or Hollywood, racetrack or polo field, Newport or Shantytown— they all became the same for me.

I have written stories for drunken authors who sold them under their own names; I have had other writers turn them out for me when I was so sick of plots that they tasted like castor oil. I was actually one of the writers in a strange literary chain which has since become a famous gag, to be included in the “pulp play" that every pulpster dreams of writing some day. A friend telephoned me one afternoon and offered a cent-and-a-half a word if I would deliver a story to him by three o’clock the following afternoon, so that he could send it to his regular two-cent market later in the day. By the time I had the plot worked out in my mind, my wife returned with some friends who were to spend the evening. So I phoned another pulpster, offering a cent-and-a-quarter if he would write a story for me by two o’clock the following afternoon. He agreed, but became involved with convivial companions and phoned still another writer, promising one cent flat if delivery of the manuscript was made by noon. For some reason this man gave up the job and at midnight telephoned the original writer with a three-quarter cent offer. The creator of the chain had some fiery and uncomplimentary words for the lot of us, but he sat down at his typewriter and wrote the piece himself before morning.

This feat, however, was not a record in pulp writing. I once knew a serial writer who retired to his hotel room with several quarts of whisky, and, between late Friday afternoon and early Monday morning, wrote 60,000 words which he sold before noon. Such speed, while it may mean temporary enrichment, binds the pulpster even more securely to his trade. Veteran hacks are addicted to the one-draft method of production; they never even glance at their copy after it leaves the machine. This of course makes a slap-dash style inevitable— and irremediable. Thus we seldom manage to improve our lot by making the better magazines, or slicks, as they are known to the trade. Occasionally I have put aside two weeks— all the time I can spare from the grind— in which to attempt a slick magazine story: but before the fortnight is over I always discover ingrown pulp habits in my work that would require months to eradicate. Then, discouraged by the enormity of the new task and the possibility of no immediate remuneration, I gratefully return to the trough.

There are writers who do escape, but the percentage is depressingly low. A number of current popular authors who once wrote for the pulps act as unwitting decoys to pulpsters, for the latter fail to realize that there has been a vast change in the craft since the early days. The modern pulps are collateral descendants of the dime novel. Most of them have lowered the age-level of their audiences; some appeal frankly to mental juveniles. Published at less cost than their predecessors, while none enjoys the circulation of the old days, their profits accrue from mass production. With lowered financial risks, new companies have entered the field with sweatshop methods and low standards. The pulps are now an industry, separate and complete, and the breach between them and other literary enterprises has become correspondingly enormous.

The writers who fail to escape face sorry prospects. First, the rates of payment are extremely low: the average pulp pays from one to two cents a word; some less than a cent. A few writers receive more than two cents: they are the successes, and they earn from five to fifteen thousand a year— while they last. But they are surprisingly few in number.

I know I have never made anything like that much money— and I have sold hundreds of thousands of words to almost every important pulp market: Blue Book, Popular, Munsey’s, Street and Smith, Standard, Dell, Clayton, Butterick, Fawcett, Macfadden, and lesser outfits whose names I have forgotten. My career started ten years ago, and I am still working for the same magazines. My stepping-stone became my highest step. Here I am, God help me, still a pulpster.

ii

I STRUCK my stride, in the game of hacking, early. What little there is to learn is apprehended quickly or not at all. The tools of my craft are: (i) an ability to manipulate indefinitely a given number of arbitrary situations into different plots that narrate the same basic story; (2) a knack in diction and prose that gives movement and vividness to action sequences; (3) a certain energy or vitality that endows mechanical concoctions with spurious “life”. (I mention this last tool as distinct from the quality which endows all fiction with life, because the pulp writer has fewer symbols of reality to work with, relying chiefly on the vigor of the writing itself.) There is a minimum of luck in selling one’s output. There are no log-rolling cliques, no reviewers, no sales promotion, no chance capturing of the public fancy. There are no features to carry the reader; no circulation losses for advertising profit; and but few subscriptions. The magazine’s problem is one of cash newsstand sales, depending solely on the entertainment value of its fiction. If a writer’s product sells the magazine, his stuff is bought; if the stories don’t appeal to the morons, he is out of luck. The check-up on the writer is immediate and final.

An average writer will “make about four markets”, or find four magazines receptive to his work. If he sells a 6,000-word story to each every month, or one story a week, he will earn ninety dollars a week— in theory. But in practice he will bump into the law of averages in rejections. It is virtually impossible for a writer to turn out weekly stories of equal quality. The myriad human factors which upset his writing machinery— illness of himself or his wife, toothache or eyestrain, moving or vacations, domestic troubles, visits from out-of-towners or friendly dropper-inners, hangovers from parties, the dreaded staleness which visits every writer — any of these will prove sufficient to halt production temporarily or indefinitely. And when production stops, earning stops.

The greatest hazard outside the writer himself is the constant change in editorial policies. A few magazines enjoy something of a stable audience because they are established and have become a habit with readers : but even they must vary their standards to meet fickle public taste. Most of the others are new and depend solely on immediate appeal: they must serve precisely what the pulp-reading public wants at precisely the right time. As a rule these policy changes are of such fine distinction as to be imperceptible to the outsider. But to the writer they are drastic.

For instance, about ten years ago an entirely new type of story bloomed overnight— the war story. George T. Delacorte, Jr., operating a shoestring outfit, was first in the field with War Stories and several companion books. He made a fortune and founded a successful publishing house. But the war fever is over now. Delacorte has not a single war magazine, and all of us hack writers who learned the phraseology and background of battlefield horror have been forced to enter new fields of which we know equally little. Adventure stories, once big sellers, now barely support a few long-established pulps. Several years ago the detective story was revolutionized almost overnight by Dashiel Hammett and Joseph Shaw, who introduced the hard-boiled private dick. Deduction in criminology became a blight. Every hero had to be tough and strong, had to bull his way into the accumulation of a few clues mainly by conking and being conked. It was an easy style to acquire and soon developed into a blueprint formula. Unfortunately, the hard-boiled dick is now on the wane and as soon as some bright editor starts a new pattern, we will all have to learn something else.

But whatever the style of the story, the pulp reader has rigid likes and dislikes which must be catered to. In the first place, he objects to any and all characterizations, on the ground that they slow the action. Character mutations are anathema to him: he wants types which are instantly recognizable. In Westerns, the hero is invariably tall and wiry, with eyes that can be blue as the desert sky or twin slits of steel. He is grim but he can laugh, usually just a quirk on one side of his tight lips. He pronounces doom in colorful terms and can deliver it with fist or six-gun. The villain must be large, florid, and powerful, or the small, crafty type; he is sneeringly boastful and possesses no trait to endear him to society. The sheriff is either a henchman of the villain, or the old-school, fast-shooting lawgiver. The reader must be able to identify each on his first appearance.

In detective fiction it is much the same. A novelette was once returned for revision to a successful pulp writer because it contained two leading characters who, the editor said, diffused the interest. One was a plodding, honest young lawyer, the other a suave magician: the first used his fists as defense, the second his mystic powers. The writer was ordered to rewrite his opus, playing down the lawyer and building up the magician. The novelette comprised 20,000 words, but in two days the author returned it, rewritten: he had given the lawyer's scenes to the magician by the simple process of transposing their names. In the climax, when they were both fighting in an underground hideout, the magician also was given the lawyer’s fists— again by a substitution of one name for the other.

But the most important variations are to be found in the plots. Strongly plotted stories, developing complicated situations that build genuine suspense, must keep their situations as plausible as possible; they demand but little action and this must appear credible; the idea is always primitive. On the other hand, in the story with enough plot only to hold sequences of action together, the situations are implausible, the action wild, bloodthirsty, and often ridiculous. We have to watch the constant contrast in emphasis between these two extremes of plot. In the writing itself the flux is from simplified, straightforward pulp-prose to an effusion of hyperbolical cliches. As for the taboos of editors, they are multiple and varied. Yet with all these variations, changes, and taboos, we must be glibly familiar. When a magazine’s policy changes we must adapt ourselves to another. Always it is difficult, sometimes impossible. At best we lose time and momentum.

Of course there is one feature of policy change over which we have no control— the mortality of editors, which is high. For each editor has personal, idiosyncratic preferences or hates, usually too petty to make public. A pulpster must be familiar with these. When he is so aware, he will have a “swell market with So-and-So”. But when that editor is bounced, the writer will have to build up another. Frequendy he will not again be as successful as with Old So-and-So. In such ways are writers killed off through sheer wear and tear.

The pulpster does not earn more money by trying to secure higher rates: he must do it by selling more words. The damnedest lure ever devised for committing a man to suicide is the contract for a monthly book-length novel which may pay as high as $1000, or as low as $300. Some authors write one, some two a month. But at the rate of twenty novels a year, it is obvious that only giants can last. And there are few giants.

Without the book-length novel bait, a writer going at full speed will produce a million words a year. This incessant output of imbecilic rubbish is ruinous. Even a congenital pulpster, whose brain is not affected, becomes mechanical. His sole object is to turn out the stuff rapidly; any pride in craftsmanship is lost. Naturally the springs of energy dry: the mechanical concoctions become tired and dated. Then the writer descends the scale of rates and magazines until he is supplanted by younger men. Because of this influx of enthusiastic newcomers the relatively steady seller is always crowded by rivals. As an average writer, I have no security. I can never pause to rest. No matter how I feel, I must keep at the machine in relentless, merciless, deadening toil. The toll on my energy will be inevitably fatal to my work, as it has been to others. Added to this, making my future more uncertain, are those minute variations I have mentioned. They are cumulative, and over a decade prove tremendous. As I grow older it will be progressively more difficult for me to adapt myself to new policies. Past forty, it will be as hard to learn a new approach as for a ham comedian of the same age to become a dramatic actor.

iii

EXCEPT for the outstanding successes, we pulpsters have not earned enough to secure our years past the point of diminishing utility— and no one has ever advocated old-age pensions for writers. Certainly the desk offers us no sanctuary, for the plight of the editor is equally gloomy. Several times I have sought refuge from the writing strain in an editorial office. As assistant, or editor of one or more magazines, I have worked for the companies I sold to, and have bought millions of words for them. Eve had magazines fold under me. Eve seen young hopefuls enter offices for jobs with the same delusions that snared me. They see the pulps as the fringe of their desired world, the passageway to the land of literary self-expression. They tell me of the prominent magazine editors who have served pulp apprenticeships, but they will not listen in turn when I tell them of the very few who escape.

For the pulp editorial worker is trained for pulps and nothing else. These magazines are an entrance to a blind alley, a stepping-stone to oblivion. The editor lacks even the advantage of the writer’s mobility and whatever satisfaction may lie in individual creation. Hence his obscure slavery in the privies of literature is even more ignominious, and the volume and incessancy of his pulp impressions more stultifying. Such men edit in the same mass production manner in which their authors write. Most of the staffs are small. If a magazine is edited by one man, he will be without assistance, and will produce the book singlehanded, from reading manuscripts to checking foundry proofs. He writes his own blurbs for forthcoming features, his own advertising copy for house magazines. But usually he will have two or more magazines, and assistants. One man I know edits more than ten magazines at the same time.

Publishers as a rule prefer young men as editors. Their enthusiasm and fresh ambition will more than compensate for lack of experience; they will work for little, and are capable of great effort. The older editor is less adaptable: by the time he reaches his middle forties, even though a congenital pulpster, he can hardly retain judgment, discrimination, and enthusiasm for new policies, after reading the billionth repetition of the same hoary asininity. The fine edge of enthusiasm and freshness has been blunted forever, usually during his apprenticeship as an assistant. There not only must he read several hundred stories a week, but out of the selected group he must edit copy on those already purchased; later he reads proof on them and, as a final test of his love for his work, checks them in foundry. Try that process on even your favorite author sometime, and imagine the effect of ten years of tripe.

But the doom awaiting younger men in some way could be forestalled if there were not the ever-present specter of losing the job. Every change of policy means a new editor; every poor guess by a publisher means a new editor. Whenever a magazine which the publisher thinks should sell, fails to do so, there is an immediate cry for an editorial shake-up. The incumbent is fired, usually with brief notice. The assistant’s plight is even worse. The first cut in overhead expense falls on him. He does the dirty work, and derives no glory; often the editor jealously guards the door of the publisher’s office against any bright ideas of his underlings. And the editor is the only one who knows the value of the assistant’s work. The latter’s outlets for advancement are only two. If he has stuck to his poorly paid, humble, and harrowing post long enough to bring himself into the publisher’s consciousness, he may get a chance at the editor’s job when the editor leaves; or else, by a fortunate contact, he may make a connection elsewhere as editor. Or, finally, he can do what I have done several times— abandon his grimy security for the uncertainty of free-lancing. But assistant or editor, the mortality is high, the risk great, the pay poor. I saw a man come in one day, arrange his desk, gather supplies, and dictate letters announcing his new connection. The next day he was fired.

The assistant starts at $25 or $30 a week, rarely achieves over $50, averages $35. The editor begins at, say, $45, rarely earns more than $100, averages around $65. His reward is that if he slaves diligently and is fortunate, he may not lose his job. The pay is not commensurate with the training and ability brought to the job, and the responsibility invested in it. Further, when a house is extremely successful, the editors of the magazines are not paid a fair proportion of the money their ability has earned. Publishers assert that salaries are low because of the nature of their investment. And it is true that profits are slim on single magazines and depend on mass production. The cost of the average pulp is around S5000 on a print order of 125,000 copies. This figure varies to a low, in some cases, of $3500; and to a high of $7000 or more. A ten-cent magazine, which grosses the publisher a little better than six cents, must sell 85,000 copies to break even: if it sells 100,000, the publisher nets $1000 an issue. Four months of the year are poor ones for newsstand sales; in this period half the yearly gain may be lost. Thus the publisher may pocket about $4000 a year on a fairly good magazine. But one issue of a flop will wipe out the margin, as will yearly returns on an unpopular magazine. Therefore the wise publisher carries from six to a dozen titles. If he publishes say five, the losses on two-fifths will counter-balance the profits on two-fifths: the remaining one-fifth, selling perhaps 200,000 a month, will net him from fifty to one hundred thousand dollars.

Why does he not eliminate his unprofitable pulps? Economics. The more magazines he prints, the less the overhead on any one. Paper and printing and office and editorial costs are all reduced proportionately. The more magazines one house issues, the better authors it can procure, because more of their work can be purchased. It is worthwhile to carry a magazine which only breaks even, in order to procure exclusively for the successful books the work of several popular authors. Also, bulk circulation wins favoritism from the distributor, and can procure from advertising as much as $25,000 a year net profit.

And then there is always the danger of the lead magazine going into a decline. Many of the recent big successes are now dead. The publisher must have a sound business, producing at least a small profit, to carry the house while a new winner is being developed. Hence his ruthless attitude toward his workers.

But editors, young or old, with wives and children, do not view the loss of their jobs in the broad economic aspect. I have seen them go from job to job, each becoming warped after his own fashion, each cursing pulps in his own dirty, dreary cubicle. Hopeful and hopeless, bitter and pathetic, determined and resigned, we are, writers and editors, in the main a cynical lot. We have for too long purveyed primitive daydreams which do not develop the brain or ennoble the character. The best writers and the best editors are those whose cultural level most closely approximates that of their readers. But unfortunately, there are a number of toilers in fiction’s back-alley, particularly among editors, who are not morons. I know a classicist in the pulps who retires to his exquisite apartment after his day’s labors, and reads Santayana over a glass of Madeira. He is past fifty, a life-hater, a reviler of aspirations. He is, I admit, something of an extreme— chiefly because he has lasted so long. But twenty years from now I will count myself fortunate if I have accumulated an apartment with Madeira and Santayana, and have retained enough sanity to appreciate them....

Some of my colleagues have become resigned, turning to esoteric literature or gin for solace. Others have become resigned without a solace; fear rules their destiny. They are a servile, pitiful lot. Some have become embittered and, deliberately layering their souls with callouses, are striving to get all they can out of it while they last. Others have distorted themselves into an unhealthy adaptation, by turns deluding and reviling themselves. They defend their positions fanatically against outside attack and bemoan their fate amongst themselves. I myself am one of a group of writers either unadaptable or unresignable, all of us grimly determined to fight our way out. We do not allow a pulp-paper magazine in our homes; we refuse to talk shop; we make every effort to forget the whole business when we cover up the typewriter. Our group of maladapts is not typical, however. I know many men who are still young enough or stupid enough to believe they are serving an apprenticeship out of which they will graduate into better work. I know others (of a relatively small group) who have found their ultimate career in the pulps and who actually give themselves airs of importance on the basis of their achievements. The largest single group is composed of congenital pulpsters: but they, too, are dissatisfied; even though fitted by mentality and temperament for pandering rubbish, their desire for security makes them uneasy for the future.

What finally becomes of worn-out pulpsters is a mystery into which none of us dares delve. We prefer to believe that somehow we will beat the game. We are occasionally encouraged by literary contributions from our more erudite friends, on newspapers and in advertising agencies, who believe they can write salable pulp stories any time they are pressed for money. But the most illiterate hack would be ashamed of what they turn out. For success in the pulps is not, as many think, a matter of “writing down”.

That is the real tragedy for us who came to the pulps for training. While we are writing this daydream in which some potential two-fisted barroom fighter or glamorous captivator or gunslick bronco-buster can identify himself, we must believe it at the moment. We must inject some enthusiasm to give it false vitality and spurious reality. It is working oneself into this alien mood, this primitive emotional and cerebral pattern, that poisons the brain like a drug, atrophies the perspective, and dulls the spirit.

And yet I myself have become a dependable purveyor to those five million morons who pay a few nickels each month for their mechanized dreams. I am one of the camp-followers of the writing profession, the ragtag and bobtail of the fiction parade, who, for a bare subsistence, scavenge in the garbage heaps of literature. I am one of those disillusioned hack authors whose hopes lie somewhere back in the dim golden years when everyone believed in self-expression.

__________________

5: Parson Shaw

Halliwell Sutcliffe

1870-1932

World's News (Sydney) 7 June 1919

MARSHCOTES VILLAGE, in those days, was remote from the outer world, and lived its own life, following rough laws of give-and-take that knew nothing of Sheriffs and constables, and the dull routine of statutes of the realm. It had a sturdy church, built four-square to the winds that raved in winter-time across the moors, and a parish priest as sturdy as itself.

Parson Shaw was a man to reckon with. Tall, broad in the beam, tireless in saddle when fee went his round of visits to the scattered farmsteads, he had his own view of what his priesthood asked of him. At his first coming, the church was emptier on Sundays than he relished; so it became his custom to stride into the Black Bull tavern with a riding whip and drive the loiterers to kirk before he donned the black gown of the time, and preached fire and brimstone at them from the pulpit.

They grew to like him, these rough moor-landers, and wished only that he would rid himself of the harshness that was for ever preaching hell at them, instead of remember-ing that they asked for heaven on the Sab-bath, after the hardships of the week gone by. For the Marshcotes farms were no easy lands to till.

Then news came to this outlying hamlet of the moors that the Forty-five was up, and a press of Highlanders was coming to dethrone the reigning King. Parson Shaw still went beating the laggards into church with a riding crop; and he preached a sermon, remembered for all time in the parish, asking all hale, good men to get to arms. He told them that treason to the King was abroad, told them that the Highlanders were an uncouth race of sav-ages, feasting on human flesh. They were led by a youth who named himself Prince Regent, though loyal folk knew him as the Pretender— a Stuart of the Stuarts, striving to bring England under tyranny again. Then the parson grew eloquent as he pleaded with the men to prove their manhood by resisting this assault upon the country's liberties. The Highlanders were already at Carlisle, so rumor said, and their southward march might take them down any of the five Yorkshire Dales.

His flock believed his statement of the case, and afterwards they came, every man among them, into the vestry, and colunteered to fight the Stuart if his line of march came through their own good Dale.

Parson Shaw had a wide parish to tend. There were weeks and weeks on end when a sick man needed him at one end of it, and an ailing woman at the other. New-born babies, too, were apt to sicken untimely; and he had to ride through the harsh, November snows to christen them, lest their lost souls should go for ever crying overhead in times of storm, pursued by Gabriel's hounds.

Yet the parson found time to drill and dis-cipline his volunteers. The Stuart to him, was a pretty fellow, packed full of heresies as to the Divine right of kings; and, if he had an idol in a heart that abjured idolatry, it was Oliver Cromwell. Lake Cromwell, he was a rough and stubborn mystic, this priest of the moors; and to him all grace and charm were rank buffoonery. He forgot that God re-awakened, every spring, the miracle of prim-roses showing dew-washed faces from secret places where they had kept faith alive through the harassed months of winter; and there had charm and grace, and sturdy courage, too.

He drilled his men. And then news came that the Highlanders had marched by way of Lancaster, gaining supporters by the way.

"No doubt we'll kill a few when they come straggling in retreat," said Parson Shaw, disguising his regret that no chance of battle came his way. "To kill these cannibals is the Lord's work, friends, for they stink in all men's sight."

The parson went his usual ways, christening and burying, and marrying, till again news came. The Highlanders had got to Derby, and had retreated, marching north again with a speed incredible.

"The Lord, has smitten them, root and branch," said Shaw, when his sexton brought the news. "We'll set the old bells ringing."

On the next Sabbath his sermon was a hurricane, gathered from the four quarters of the winds. Again the Stuart was stricken, and again the people's will had triumphed. It was the immediate duty of his volunteers to sentry the highroad, day and night, in hope of picking off any stragglers who chanced to come that way.

"They are Amalekites," he thundered, the frenzy of the Old Testament strong about him. "Smite, and spare not, when they come your way."

His men patrolled the highroad, day and night, as he bade them, and met none but farmers driving their sheep from market, or pedlars carrying packs wherewith to tempt the women-folk, or a Merry Andrew trudging along with his drum and fife and cymbals, and bells that jangled every time he moved his head.

Then news came again— from near at hand this time. While the parson and his men had been spoiling for a fight, the sturdiest combat known even to this rough countryside had been fought and won. It seemed that a company of folk had gathered at the Silent Inn, far up the moors, to play music together, as their wont was on a Saturday night. They were playing what was known to them as the "Natty-die-Nathaniel"— though in Italy, where the music was horn, they had a softer phrasing— when a stranger came into the tavern.

All men saw that he was tired and sleep less, and in need of what the inn could give him. He was spent and weary, with great heart-sickness showing through the windows of his eyes. And then, with amazing courage, he drew himself to his full, slim height and smiled at them.

"Friends," he said, "you were playing music I listened to long since in Italy. Lend me a violin, and let me dream that I'm again in the country of good wine and pleasant sunshine."

"But we've practised six months or more at this durned tune," said Ben Shackleton, lift-ing the bass viol to his knee as if it were a baby. "Who are you to come among us and ask to take a part?"

"I've no name nowadays," said the stranger; "but the dear God knows I can get a bow to the fiddle with some success."

He played so well that by-and-by they let their fiddles rest, saying they were tired, and asked him to give them music of his own. And the stranger's tiredness left him as his bow went like a living breath across the strings Highland hopes and sorrows— tread of the marching men— song and jest and throb of ancient battle-lust— wail of the wind in far off glens, where women watched and waited all seemed gathered into the small compass of this violin that had found the master's touch.

And then there came a shouting and the din of hoofs outside; and even Big Shackleton grew pale a little as he heard the Carless cry, the sharp summons to unlock the tavern door. For the Carlesses, secure in their wild glen, had established so long a tyranny of pillage that even Parson Shaw spoke civilly to them when he met them on the road—lest worse befall the parish.

The stranger laid down his violin, and asked If the summons came front friends.

"From friends?" growled the landlord. "You're a stranger to these parts, though you can fiddle like a wizard-man. The Carlesses are at my door, I tell you."

"And who may they be?" asked the other, with the smile that came always when danger threatened.

"Masters of us all, sir, and have been for a tale of years. They rob and they harry, from that lone glen o' theirs, and none strong enough to say 'em nay. D'ye hear their cry— Coo-ee. coo-oo-ee— driving down the wind?'"

"I hear it, friend. So now we'll get that heavy dresser of yours against the door."

"But we dursn't say nay to them— we dursn't. There's few of us, but many of the Carlesses."

"The more reason for the dresser. Why, host, we can stand a week's siege in this stout-built house of yours, once the door is barricaded; and there are fat hams in the rafters overhead, enough to feed us for a twelve month."

Their courage fired. Big Shackleton was already pulling the dresser from its place, and soon they had it, like a bulwark, against the oaken door. Then the stranger made them barricade the kitchen entrance, and asked what arms were in the house. The host found a blunderbuss or two, three fowling-pieces, and, for the rest, six scythe-blades fastened to long poles, that had done duty not long ago in a skirmish with these same Carlesses.

"Good," said the stranger, glancing at the scythes. "I've seen such weapons prove themselves— and these, too, have the pleasant rust of blood about them."

He was a leader of men. Grace, and strength, and charm were round him like a presence that had come into this inn to better all folk's hardihood.

And then the great fight began. It was a stark and outright battle of the few against the many— a fight of this handful of moormen against an enemy grown strong and fat and insolent. The main door was battered down at last; and Parson Shaw should have been there, with his love of the Old Testament, for blood lay thick on the lintels of the door and on the threshold!

Then the Carlesses were driven back, and their strength broken for ever on the moor-side. And the leader of the enterprise bound up a gash in the thigh— by stealth, lest it dishearten these men who had fought gallantly— and went about, binding a wound here and there with a touch as tender as a nurse's. And at dawn he left the Silent Inn, saying that he was needed in the Rylstone country, and so went from them as summer leaves a countryside.

Parson Shaw had ridden out that night to give the Sacraments to an aged woman who was near her journey across the Brig o' Dread. He had no fear for her, because all her life she had given hose and shoes to wayfarers, and could don them with great content when she crossed the stony Bridge. It was of himself be thought, in this tired mood of his; and it seemed to him that he. had done little in this life, after all, save preach tempestuous ser-mons after driving men from the Black Bull tavern to listen to them. Something was amiss with his priesthood, he felt. It was dominant about the moorside, but it lacked the some thing that was salt and wine— the something that made church-going a melody, and not an irksome task.

A little wind was sobbing about the moor, and the grey fingers of the dawn came about old Bouldsworth Hill as he rode by. All was in keeping with his mood, and the heart of him was daunted. He had served his God so fiercely and so well; and at the end of all there was this weary self-contempt.

He rode by wet, sandy by-ways till he came to the wayside Cross this side of Haggart's Hill; and two horsemen rode suddenly at him from the pine wood beyond.

The parson was his own man again. If highwaymen chose to think him prosperous— well, let them find his purse. For his part, though he carried the platter and the chalice, he had arms also of this world's make in his holsters. Two bullets sang overhead, and one of them lifted his hat with nice precision; and he cursed, like any usual man, when his own pistol missed fire, because the night-dews had spoiled the priming.

Parson Shaw took his pistol by the barrel then, and rode at them; and afterwards all was shock of battle and confusion and a thick crown met the butt end of his weapon. Then he heard the spurring of hoof-beats behind him, and a stranger intervened just as the other highwayman had levelled, his second pistol at the head of Parson Shaw. The new-comer knocked up the barrel with his sword, seemed minded to cut down his adversary, and then thought better of it.

"Get from saddle, rogue," he said, in the tone of one accustomed to command—"get down, and see to that fallen friend of yours. I'm tired of succoring wounded folk."

"By your leave, sir," said the parson, dismounting quickly; "I must see if the man is dying. He may need a priest."

The rascal, as it chanced, was bruised and shaken, but able already to look about him with dazed eyes. The parson watched him for a while, and then a smile crept about his rough, weather-beaten face. A great fear had gone from him—fear lest he had taken human life. In any other mood he would have been for haling these vagabonds to the gallows, but a strange charity was with him now.

"Make the best of what life is left you," he said, glancing from one rogue to the other. "You go free, if this gentleman is of my mind too."

The stranger laughed. "There's a price on my own head, sir. Vagabonds do not eat vagabonds."

Parson Shaw and his rescuer jogged forward for a mile in utter silence. Then Shaw, reticent by nature, found speech.

"I have to thank you for my life— so much, as it is worth."

"For myself, life has little meaning at the moment. I'm in your debt, sir— abundantly in your debt. It is luxury to give another what still is sweet to him."

Parson Shaw glanced shrewdly at his com-panion. In person and in speech he was foreign to these uplands. He was gad to his heart's core, and yet he disdained the sorrow. The parson fell to thinking, somehow, of the knights of old, though his rough, moorland gospel had been wont to thrust them aside as popinjays who cared only for ladies' favors and the pageantry of battle.

"But, sir, you're wounded," he said, with a return to practical affairs—"and in my behalf.''

"I took no scratch on your behalf, believe me. There was a fight at the Silent Inn out yonder. Surely you've had news of it?"

"News travels slowly through the moors, and I've been busy."

"We were playing pleasant music together, when there came a cry of 'Coo-oo-ee,' and a wild battering at the door."

"The Carlesses?" asked Parson Shaw, a little note of fear in his voice.

"Aye. They came wild at the door, like my own good Highlanders, and drove it In."

"And afterwards?"

"Why, afterwards there was a grim and stubborn fight; and we broke them."

"Broke the Carlesses?"

"We broke them, sir, and the wound I took there nags me; but I'm glad to have seen how stubborn your men are. They fought with scythe-blades set on long poles— again like many of my Highlanders— with ancient muskets— with anything that served— and we broke them, sir."

"You do not understand, surely? These Carlesses nave been the strong men of the country-side—a constant menace, and a constant dread. You speak a if you came through a light skirmish."

"I've been to Derby Town and back, my moorland priest, and have seen the Stuart in retreat."

Parson Shaw stood back from the present for awhile, and remembered how he had preached damnation on the Stuarts from the pulpit. He was sorry and ashamed.

"Are you of the Pretender's following?" he blurted out, in his rough and ready way.

"Of the Prince Regent's following? Yes. I have been very near him through all this wild campaign."

"But how d'ye come into these lone moor-lands? The retreat was going wide of us, the last we heard."

"The Prince had an errand, as it happened, in the Rylstone country, and I undertook it for him."

Parson Shaw was still bewildered. Here was one of the leaders of an enterprise he had loathed. He was a gentleman, with honor and simplicity written plain as words about his face and bearing.

"Is it true that your Highlanders eat human flesh?" he demanded, bluntly.

"Dear God, sir, must I laugh or weep? My Highlanders were old in gentility before you Southrons ceased to dress in skins."

"Oh, your pardon. Gossip has been busy in these parts, and they said your men roasted babies for their supper."

The stranger was tired, and his wound nagged at him ceaselessly. Perhaps for that reason the sight came to him without warning.

"We have shared peril," he said, "and so we are friends, I take it. Then you will listen. These Carlesses have ridden roughshod over your countryside?"

"To be precise, they have been devils out of the nether hell."

"We have broken them for you; but as yet there is the bigger peril. I was bred in the pleasant land of France, sir, where the German mercenaries your king is bringing overseas against us are known as people a little lower than the savages. Your make-believe king—"

"I pray for him on Sabbaths, sir, and am Staunch for him."

"Granted. But I've little time to spare; and, before we part, I wish to tell you an astound-ing truth, that comes out of the bleak wind nagging at me from your uplands. The Prince has a great battle in the making, somewhere up in Scotland. If we lose it, you may have the men from overseas roasting babies at the fires of your burning homes. If we win— why, friend, the world we know is saved— the dear, good world that loves the Grail, and honor, and its women, who are like flowers planted in a garden."

"But all this is with us now," said the parson, lifted somehow out of the everyday.

"For awhlie; but if we lose this last battle in the Highlands, friend, your free England may well be lost, too, in the days far ahead. Oh, your pardon," he broke off, again with the sad laugh that would haunt Parson Shaw for many a day to come. "Your pardon, I was glamored for the moment by a Highland mist. And now, by your leave, I must get about my business in the Rylstone country."

"Your name, sir, that I may remember it in my prayers?"

"Charles Edward, at your service— Prince Regent for my father. D'ye wish to claim the ransom on my head?"

"I wish only to thank you for this meeting." said the parson, gravely. "I did not understand the Stuart till you came."

____________________

6: An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension

Farnsworth Wright

1888-1940

Weird Tales, October 1923

THE thought of meteors terrifies me. They have a disagreeable habit of coming down and killing people at the most inopportune times. That is why I was so startled when I saw a large object hurtling toward me out of the sky, as I was walking along the lake front recently in my city of Chicago.

I shivered. Was this the end? I began to say my prayers. To my astonishment, the onrushing missile struck the grass beside me without the slightest jar.

I gasped.

Thousands of singular objects began to detach themselves. They bounded from the mass, and suddenly increased in size from one inch to three feet in diameter. They were entirely round, and covered with teeth. On each tooth were ten ears, constantly in motion. Each ear carried a quizzical eye.

The dwarfish creatures rolled rapidly on the ground, the ears serving as legs, hands, tentacles and what not, propelling them with incredible speed. Sometimes they stood on only four or five of their ears, then suddenly pressed hard against the ground with half a thousand ears at once, thus bounding high into the air. They lit without jar, for the ears acted as shock absorbers and broke their fall.

"Surely these are explorers from Mars or Venus," I thought, as the funny bounding creatures filled the air.

"You are wrong. They are Jupiterians," said a voice beside me.

I recognized the voice. It was Professor Nutt. You probably know him.

"Ahem," he said. "Ahem, ahem!" And once more he repeated, "Ahem!"

"Interesting, if true," I remarked. "And what might Jupiterians be?"

"They might be men, but they're not," he snapped. "They are people from the planet Jupiter. Out of your ignorance you thought they might be Martians or Venusians, but you are wrong, for Mars and Venus have people of three dimensions, like ourselves. Jupiterians are entirely different. There are six hundred thousand of them in this Jupiterian airship."

I was so overjoyed at finding someone who could tell me about them, that I didn't think to ask him how he knew all these startling facts.

"Where is the airship you speak of?" I asked.

"There it is," he answered, rather grandiloquently, and pointed to an empty spot on the grass.

I looked carefully, and made out a vast, transparent globe, apparently of glass, which was rapidly becoming visible because of the Chicago dust that was settling upon it. I approached, and touched it with my hand. It gave forth a metallic ring.

"Aha!" laughed the professor. "You thought it was glass, but it is made of Jupiterian steel. Look out!"

I sprang back at his warning, and the last hundred thousand leapt out of the globe, passing right through the transparent metal of which it was composed.

"Nom de mademoiselle!" I exclaimed, in astonishment. This was a swear word I had learned in France when I was in the army.

"Nom de mademoiselle!" I repeated, for I liked to show off my knowledge of the language. "How can they pass through the glass without breaking it?"

"Through the Jupiterian steel, you mean," said Professor Nutt, severely. "I told you before that it is not glass. Jupiterian steel has four dimensions, and they pass through the fourth dimension. That is why you can't see the metal, for your eyes are only three-dimensional."

"Are the Jupiterian people four-dimensional?" I asked, awed.

"Certainly," said Nutt, rather irritably.

"Then how is it that I can see them?" I exclaimed triumphantly.

"You see only three of their four dimensions," he replied. "The other one is inside."

I turned to look again at the Jupiterians, who now covered the whole waterfront. One of them sprang lightly, fifty feet into the air, extended a hundred ears like tentacles, and seized an English sparrow. He crushed the sparrow with some score or more of his teeth, which, as I have said, covered his whole body. In less than a minute the poor bird was chewed to pieces. I looked closer, and saw that the Jupiterian had no mouth.

"Nom de mademoiselle!" I exclaimed, for the third time. "How can it get the bird into its stomach?"

"Through the fourth dimension," said Professor Nutt.

It was true. The chewed-up pieces of the bird were suddenly tossed into the air, and the Jupiterian sprang lightly after them. In midair he turned inside out, caught the pieces of the bird in his stomach, and lit on the grass again right side up with care.

"Did you see that?" I exclaimed, in a hushed voice. "Why can't I turn inside out that way?"

"Because you are not four-dimensional," replied the professor, a trace of annoyance in his voice. "It is a beautiful thing to have four dimensions," he rhapsodized. "Your Jupiterian is your only true intellectual, for he alone can truly reflect. He turns his gaze in upon himself."

"And sees what he had for breakfast?" I gasped. "And what his neighbors had, too?"

"Your questions are childish," said the professor, wearily. "A Jupiterian, of course, can look into the soul of things, and see what his neighbors had for breakfast, as you so vulgarly express it. But Jupiterians turn their thoughts to higher things."

The creatures now surrounded me, their ears turned inward, as if they were supplicating.

"What do they want?" I asked the professor.

"They want something to drink," he replied. "They are pointing their ears toward their stomachs to show that they are thirsty."

"Oh," I said, and pointed toward the lake. "There is the fresh, cool water of the lake, if they are thirsty."

"Don't be fantastic," said Professor Nutt. "It isn't water they want."

He fixed his stern, pitiless gaze on my hip pocket. I turned pale, for it was my last pint. But I had to submit. If you have ever had Professor Nutt's cold, accusing eyes on you, you will know just how I felt.

I drew the flask from my pocket, and handed it to the chief Jupiterian, who waggled his ears in joy. Immediately there was pandemonium, if you know what I mean. Ten thousand times ten thousand ears seized the cork, and pulled it out with a resounding pop. One thirsty Jupiterian passed right through the glass into the bottle in his eagerness to get at the contents, and nearly drowned for his pains.

"You see how useful it is to be four-dimensional," remarked the professor. "You could get into any cellar in the world by merely passing through the walls. And into any beer-keg in the same way."

"But," I argued, "how did this— this insect get through the glass into the whisky bottle? Glass has only three dimensions, like everything else in this world."

"Don't call him an insect!" Nutt sharply reprimanded me. "He is a Jupiterian, and as such he is infinitely superior to you and me. He passed through the glass because he is four-dimensional, even though the glass isn't. If you had four dimensions, you could untie any knot by merely passing it through itself. You could turn inside out, or pass through yourself until your right hand became your left hand, and change into your own image as you see it in the looking-glass."

"Nom de mademoiselle!" I exclaimed, for the fourth time.

A distant noise of barking was borne to my ears by the breeze. All the dogs in the city seemed to have gone wild.

"They are disturbed by the talking o£ the Jupiterians," explained the professor. "It is too high-pitched for clodhopper human ears to hear, unless they have an unusual range, but the dogs can hear it plainly."

I listened, and finally made out a very shrill humming, higher than any sound I had ever heard before in my life, and infinitely sweet and piercing.

"Ah, I am hearing four-dimensional sounds," I thought, aloud.

"Wrong, as usual," exacerbated the professor, with much heat. "Sound has no dimensions. It proceeds in waves, and bends back upon itself until it meets itself at an infinite distance from the starting-point. There are three reasons why you can't hear the music of the spheres: first because it is bent away from the earth by the force of gravity as it passes the sun; second, because your ears are not attuned to so shrill a sound; and third, because there is no music of the spheres. The first two reasons are really unnecessary, in the light of the third, but a scientific mind such as mine is not content with one reason when three can be adduced just as easily,"

"Shades of Sir Oliver Lodge!" I ejaculated.

"Sir Oliver is alive," the professor corrected me. "A man does not become a shade until after his death. Then he becomes a four- dimensional creature like the Jupiterians, only different."

"Nom de mademoiselle!" I commented.

"Say something sensible," he reprimanded me.

"For the love of Einstein, how do you know all these things about the Jupiterians?" I asked, a sudden suspicion flashing across what I am pleased to call my mind.

"Ah, Einstein, yes," exclaimed Nutt, greatly pleased. "My mother's father's name was Einstein."

"Then you are related to—"

"No, I am not related," he interrupted, "but my mother's father is."

"A sort of fourth-dimensional relationship, I suppose," I remarked sarcastically.

At that moment the air became vibrant with an invisible sound. The Jupiterians came rolling from all directions, as if they had suddenly heard the dinner bell. They bounded through the Jupiterian steel of the globe, and immediately shrank in size from three feet to one inch.

"The Jupiterian assembly call just blew," explained the professor. "Notice how the passengers draw into themselves. Six hundred thousand are now packed into that globe. Our elevated railroads miss a great opportunity by not having four-dimensional creatures to deal with."

"They pack us in just as tight," I ventured to remark.

The globe had begun to shoot into the air, when there came from behind me a high-pitched wail of distress— a shriller and higher sound than had ever before been heard by human ears, so the professor assured me. The chief Jupiterian had been left behind. He it was who had passed into the whisky bottle. Not content with getting the lion's share of the contents, he had surrounded the bottle, in his pleasant four-dimensional way, and now he could not get rid of it.

"Why doesn't be turn inside out again, and drop the bottle?" I asked, watching the Jupiterian with interest.

"Because your whisky has paralyzed him," answered the professor. "He is quite helpless."

I looked at the globe, which had alighted again. Each Jupiterian suddenly resumed his full size, in a brave attempt to bound to the assistance of his chief. But the creatures could no longer pass through the four-dimensional metal of which the globe was composed. So thick a layer of Chicago dust had settled upon it, that to all intents and purposes it had become three- dimensional. The sudden impact of six hundred thousand bodies caused it to burst, with a roar as of a hundred peals of thunder exploding simultaneously. The air was filled with dead and dying Jupiterians. A dark cloud, composed of the flying dust shaken from the Jupiterian globe by the explosion, settled over the landscape. Long streamers of electric fire shot from the fragments of the airship, and seemed to curve in upon themselves. Everything ran in curves— the darkness, the cloud, the sounds, the shafts of light— as if bent in by the force of gravity.

I put up my hands and fought the cloud that was settling down upon me. I seemed to be covered with falling feathers, when the cloud began to lift I found myself in my own parlor. The air was full of flying leaves, which I was madly tearing from a book and throwing toward the ceiling. The book was a treatise on the Einstein theory of space, which I had borrowed from a friend that afternoon. I had read nearly a page in it before I fell asleep.

Only twelve men in the whole world understand the Einstein theory, it is said. If I had read the book, I should have been the thirteenth, and that would be unlucky. So it is just as well that it is destroyed. But what excuse am I to give my friend for tearing up his book?

____________________

7: Deadlock

Arthur Leo Zagat

1896–1949

The Spider, April 1934

POLICEMAN Tim Healy poked his nightstick glumly at the jamb of the drugstore door. “Listen,” he muttered, avoiding the white-haired pharmacist’s eyes. “That fish-faced dick, Stockton, is just after bringing Ange Liscio in.”

The smile vanished from Andrew Turner’s eyes, and his lips were straight-lined, grim.

“No!” His voice was sharp. Ange is a good boy. I’ll swear he has done nothing wrong.”

Healy stared at the syrup stains on the little man’s alpaca coat. “Stockton found a hot ring in his pocket, a two-carat diamond that was on the list of stuff swiped from Battista’s jewelry shop last week.” His florid face was expressionless as he went on in a monotone. “Some rat of a stoolie tipped the shoo-foot off, he says. Dumb stunt for Ange to be carryin’ it on him like that.”

“Very stupid. And the kid doesn’t lack brains. Far from it.” He rubbed a smudged spot from the glass with an acid-stained thumb. “It doesn’t sound right, Tim. I’ve known the boy since I sold his mother nipples for him to suck on and he has always run straight. Mischievous of course, but fundamentally decent and honest. Best of the lot around here.”

“Right! An’ he’s sure took good care of old Maria an’ her brood since Tony kicked off.” Healy’s mouth twisted bitterly. “But it’s the old story. What chance has he got? No money to hire a decent mouthpiece an’ the D. A. hot after a conviction. It’ll be assigned counsel fer him, an’ you know what that means. Beside, somethin’ tells me the case against him’s goin’ to be air-tight.”

Hidden meaning seemed concealed in the rumble of that last sentence, and Turner’s head jerked up.

“Oh,” the druggist said, softly. “So that’s it!”

Two white spots appeared on either side of his flaring nostrils and his eyes were agate-hard as they peered up into the policeman’s. Some wordless communication passed between the two, some telepathy born of the long years through which they had watched together over the poverty-stricken families of Morris Street.

“Perhaps someone will find Ange Liscio is not quite as friendless as he appears.”

Very calm, his tone, almost inflectionless. But there was quiet menace in it, a cold threat in strange contrast to the shabby, slight form of the man.

“Well, I’ve got to be gettin’ on.” Tim Healy moved ponderously into the rain. His club swung idly by its thong, but on his weather-seamed countenance there was an odd look of satisfaction that had not been there before.

FOR a long minute Doc Turner stood in the doorway of his store. Before him stretched the bedraggled, rubbish-strewn length of the street to which he had come more years ago than he cared to think. There had been pleasant gardens all about then, and little houses set well back from flower-bordered roads. Now Morris Street and its vicinity was a slum, a teeming warren of swarthy-skinned people whose English was broken and whose eyes were still slightly bewildered at the strange customs of an alien land. Meek eyes that had learned to look to the white-haired druggist under the “L” for advice and help in the physical and mental illnesses of those curious beings who were their children. They were his children, too, the only children he had ever had. And he had been content, happy in serving them.

But of late a shadow had fallen across Morris Street that was blacker than the shadow of the long-legged “L”. Young men and women coming in to buy their shaving creams and lipsticks were pasty-faced, fumbling-handed, noisy. Not gay, but feverishly boisterous, while an unnatural light gleamed in their big-pupilled eyes, and their fingers scratched continuously at inflamed nostrils. One or two drug-takers there had always been. But now the disease was spreading like a plague. All Doc’s probings brought him nothing but the certainty that an organized group was debauching his people, a band directed by some shadowy overlord who was utterly depraved, utterly merciless.

Federal officials and the police made raid after raid, netting shifty-eyed, slinking individuals by the handful. The peddlers. But these were quickly replaced, and the traffic went on, growing insidiously. Somehow the authorities could not, or would, not, reach the main spring of the evil. After all these were only Wops, and Kikes, and Micks on Morris Street. It didn’t much matter what happened to them.

No need for the old druggist to concern himself with all this. He was only a shopkeeper. But these were his children, remember. His children!

A long train thundered by overhead and Doc moved. He did a curious thing then. From a shelf midway down the store he took a bottle of Nastin’s Coughex. Sliding open a panel in the show-window backing he placed it meticulously near a pyramid of hot-water bottles. From the outside it would be almost hidden, surely unnoticed by anyone not looking for it. He slid back the panel and turned away. “Abe,” he called. “Abe, get your cap!”

From the mysterious back precincts of the store came a piping response. “Yez, Meester Toiner?”

“Go up to Two-twenty-one, top floor, rear. Tell Mrs. Liscio I want to see her right away.”

THE door had scarcely closed behind the boy’s scampering form when it opened again to admit a barrel-bodied, long-armed young man whose red hair was uncovered, and whose grease-smeared overalls were powdered with rain. There was black grease across his broad-planed face too, but it could not hide the strength in his square jaw, nor the determination in his gray eyes. Those eyes flicked around the store, registered satisfaction at finding it empty of all save the proprietor.

“Quick work. Jack,” the druggist was saying. “How come?”

“Slow at the garage so I slipped out to the Greek’s for a cup of coffee. Saw you putting out the Nastin’s and came right over. What’s doing?”

“Nothing yet. You’re too early. But I have a feeling there’s a busy night ahead for us.”

Jack’s eyes glowed. “Then you’ve got trace of something at last!”

“Maybe.” Turner was ruminative. “Ange Liscio has been arrested for burglarizing Battista’s store.”

The other gave vent to a long whistle. “Ange! He’s the last one I’d think would...”

“Go crooked. He hasn’t. He is being framed.”

“Why the devil would anyone want to frame him?”

“Precisely what I want to find out. Someone wants to get rid of him. I want to know who, and why.”

The younger man picked up a comb and rasped his thumbnail along it. “His bunch has kept clear of the snow, and I happen to know it’s his doing.”

Doc pulled at his lower lip. “The devils aren’t satisfied with the damage they’ve done already. He’s in their way and they’re railroading him. Does that make sense to you?”

A tense excitement quivered in Jack Ransom’s voice. “Damn good sense, Doc. But how does that give us a track to the number one devil we’re trying to spot?”

“I have a hunch he knows—but here comes his mother. Get behind quick and keep your ears open.”

Jack Ransom dived into the backroom, and the overflowing form of Maria Liscio filled the doorway. A black shawl framed her work-worn face, covered all but the rough-red fingers of her hands. Her little black eyes were reddened with weeping. “Hello, Marie. How are all the bambinos?”

The woman’s lips trembled. “Bambino’s alla right. Boot my Ange...”

“Time to go home, Abie,” Turner interjected to the open-mouthed errand boy. “Skip!”

“Aw chee!” He slid out, grumbling. His employer turned back to Mrs. Liscio.

“What about Ange?”

“He’s arrest’. Da policea come for heem, say he steal. Mio Angelino, heesa no steala, Meester Doc! Heesa gooda figlio. Why da policea taka heem away?” Her hands waved helplessly, and tears squeezed out from beneath her granulated lids. “Whach I do weetout Angelino, weetout he bringa home da mon’ for da eat, for da rent? Heesa got gooda job, no have to steal.”

“I am sure he is no thief, mother.” Turner tried to calm her. “Perhaps I can do something for him if you will help me.”

“Whach you wanta? An’ting, an’ting you want I do.”

“I just want to know if your son was in trouble of any kind, if anyone was bothering him.”

A veil seemed to drop over the woman’s face, through which her eyes peered blankly. “Whach you mean, bodder heem? Ange no bodder nobod’, nobod’ bodder heem.”

He turned away. “All right, Maria. If you won’t help I can do nothing. Go on home.”

A retching sob burst from the woman’s throat, and she clutched his sleeve. “Meester Doc! Meester Doc! Not be mad weeth me. I tella. I tella.” Mother love had conquered racial reticence.

“That’s better. Out with it.”

“Two hour ’go man come. Ange he getta pale when ope’ door. Tella me go eenside. After while I heara both yell loud. I ’fraid they fight, grabba broom an poosh door ope’ little beet. Angelino look so white, an’ hees eyes burna. He say, ‘For lasta time I tella you I no sella your feelty stuff, no letta my boonch sella it. An’ if you no leava me ’lone I tella whach I know.’

“Man standa too. Talk come from heem like ice, so colda, so slow. ‘Yeah,’ he say. ‘You squeala, huh. Mebbe. Worka damn queek. Wop, or you no getta da chance.’

“Ange say, ‘Betcha my life I worka damn queek.’ Man slam door. Ange call me, ‘Mom, I go drug store telephone somebod’.’ He takea hat, somebod’ knocka. Eeet dot detecatife, dot Stockton. ‘You ;want’, Liscio,’ he say. ‘Whach for?’ ‘You find outta. Come ’long.’ An’ he takea my Ange ’way.”

TURNER’S hand fisted, and white spots showed along the knuckles. “Ever see that first man before, mother?”

She spread hands wide. “No! Boot I knowa heem ’gain. Hees got crook’ finger, so, on righta hand an’ nail ees black.”

“Hmmm. Twisted index finger on his right hand, and a black nail. That’s something. All right, Maria. Get back to your bambinos.”

Before the woman was out the pharmacist had already joined Ransom in the prescription room. “Well?” he questioned. “What do you think of that? I was right, but we haven’t got much to work on.”

“Look, Doc!” Jack splurted out. “I seen that guy— tonight. A Caddy stopped for gas and oil at our pump and I noticed that finger on the driver. Big guy he was, with a nose mashed down against his mug and a cauliflower ear. A pug or I miss my guess.”

“A pugilist, eh? I don’t think he’s the one we’re hunting.”

“No. But he’s one step nearer the head of the thing. One step further than we’ve gotten before!”

“That’s true. Did you get the number of the car—anything by which we can trace it?”

Ransom’s face fell. “No. It was a V8 sedan— black— there’s lots of those coming through from the ritzy coops on Garden Avenue. But Ange must know who he is. We’ll get it from him. I...”

The sound of a door being opened came back to them, and Jack’s spate of words checked. There was a spatter of footfalls outside and Doc went out through the curtained doorway.

The man at the counter had a black derby canted back from his forehead, but his mouth was a straight, cruel line and his eyes two hard balls. His lips hardly moved when he talked. “Turner! I’ve got something to say to you.”

“Say it then, Stockton.” There was no warmth in the druggist’s voice.

“I’ll say it all right. You lay off my business or you’ll regret it. You’re getting to be too much of a buttinsky around here.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Cut that !” the dick snapped. “You’ve just had Liscio’s old lady in here for one thing, cooking something up. Lay off, I’m telling you. There’s a lot of dope floating around here and it might be coming from a drug store. Understand?”

Turner’s eyes were suddenly bleak. “I understand. You’ll frame me like you’ve framed poor Ange.”

No expression came into Stockton’s face, but his derby jerked on his scalp. “One more crack like that,” the words dripped from his immobile lips. “And I’ll let you have it.” He wheeled and moved across the floor. At the door he turned again. “As for the Dago,” he squeezed out. “You can quit worrying about him. He hung himself in his cell ten minutes ago.” The door banged, and he was gone.

“God!” A grayish pallor spread over the pharmacist’s wrinkled face. He fumbled around to Ransom, who had come out. “Jack, did you hear that?”

“The poor fellow,” Ransom groaned. “He took the easiest way out. The disgrace....”

“No!” Turner’s fist banged down on the counter. “He never did it. His religion meant too much. Nothing would have made him take the life God gave him. Nothing in the world!”

“Then you think....”

“I don’t dare to say what I think. Ninety-nine per cent of our police force are decent, devoted fellows. But the other one per cent....”

Ransom’s face worked. “That couldn’t have happened to a swell from Garden Avenue.”

“Well, his mouth is stopped. We won’t find out anything from him.” Despair muted the old man’s voice. Then he wheeled to a sound. “Abe! What are you doing here?”

The errand boy was sidling silently in. Mud spattered his thin cheeks and was thick on his clothing. His mouth corners drooped with weariness. But his eyes danced, and there was a little swagger in his walk very different from his usual stoop-shouldered slouch. Without answering his employer he peered into the vacant telephone booth, glanced furtively behind the counters. Then he tiptoed close to Turner.

“Are ve alone ?” he whispered mysteriously.

“What’s all this, Abie?” Despite his perturbation the druggist was forced to smile at the boy’s antics. “What kind of a game is this?”

“Eet’s no game, Meester Toiner. Eet’s serious beesness.”

“Good Lord, Abe, stop fooling around! Can’t you see Mr. Ransom and I are busy?”

“Eet’s vat you vorry about dot’s my beesness. I got inflammation for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I know vare comes from de guy mit de black nail. Abie, de boy detecatiff, dot’s I’m.”

RANSOM and Turner exchanged glances of consternation.

“What do you know about a man with a black nail?” Doc exclaimed.

“Vot dunt I know! You send me avay, baht I got it, the key to the cellar, und I know dere’s a hole in de floor. I go downstairs und leesten vot you talk mit Angie’s mommer.”

“You confounded brat!”

“So I hear vot she says,” the lad went on, unabashed. “Und I teenk de boss vould like to find dat guy bad. Eet’s late und my mommer vill vorry so I start to go home, but foist I moost go een Ginsberg’s delicatessen around de corner for a half a quarter salami. Und vot you teenk I see dere ?” Abe paused and laid a mysterious finger along his muddy nose. “Vot you teenk, hah?”

“Oh, spit it out,” Ransom growled. “Spill it.”

“I see a beeg guy mit a busted feenger vot’s got a black nail talkin’ on de telephone! So I take a bite from a leeverwurst und leesten. ‘Stockton,’ he says een sooch a woice like a dog barks. ‘Stockton, dot droogist ees got de Wop’s dame in hees store. Get beesy.” Den he hangs up and goes oud.

“So I vatch trough de vinder und see him get een a Cadillac. Eet dunt start so kveek und I got time to valk oud und get on de luggage shelf een back. Oi, vass dot uncomfortable!” Abe wriggled a hand around to the small of his back. “Sooch a pain I got.”

“Never mind the pain.” The two oldsters were more than interested now. “Where did he go?”

“Denks Gott not so far! Ofer by dot Moorish Arms on Garten Avenoo. He parks dere und goes eenside.”

“Great, Abie! You’re one first class detective. We ought to be able to find out whom he went up to see, though it will be a little ticklish. The doormen over there are not very talkative.”

“Teeklish?” The youngster shrugged expressively. “Maybe by you ees teeklish, baht by me is Yeedish. A Yeedish head. Alretty I know dot.”

“Holy Moses! You don’t mean to say you found that out too!”

“Und vy nod? I unscrew a hub cap, vait a meenit, und den valk een de lobby. De Roosian cheneral makes a snoot at me, baht I say, ‘Meester, dees fell off from dot Cadillac up de stritt. Maybe you take me to de guy vot owns eet so he should geef me a neekel, hah?’

“Baht he vants de neekel fer heemself, de Momser. He says, ‘Geef eet to me und I vill retoin it to heem,’ und he snatches eet from me. Den he keeks me out.”

“Then you didn’t find out whose it was!”

“No? Aind you always said I got beeg ears ? De cheneral geefs eet to de captain vots runs de elewator und says, ‘Take dees up to Mr. Logan, in feefteen A.”

There was a pregnant silence. Then, “Good boy. Oh, good boy!” Doc Turner said softly.

“Logan!” Jack Ransom’s voice was vibrant. “I’ll be damned! Wendell P. Logan, President of the Morris Street Settlement House!”

“Yes. W. P. Logan. The ‘Big Brother of Morris Street.’ I understand now. He can have all sorts of odd characters calling on him and no remark would be passed....”

“And the House makes a swell recruiting station for him! The damn sanctimonious— But what can we do about it? He’s got all kinds of drag, that bird.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! I have an idea!” Turner drummed on the counter with his thin, almost transparent fingers, while the others watched keenly. Then— “Jack! Is that thing you were working on finished?”

“Huh! Oh the— Yes, all but two connections that’ll take me three seconds to solder.”

“Fine! Do that, and get back here with your flivver quick as you can make it. We’re going calling. Listen—” There was a minute’s whispered conference.

“It may work!” Ransom said slowly. “But I don’t know.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid hell! With my brother over on the Island, screaming for the snow that devil taught him to use. I’d go through hell to get him.”

“Then get busy. I’ll close up, meantime. It is only ten o’clock, but there isn’t much doing on a rainy night like this.”

TWENTY minutes later, the gold-braided dignitary who presided over the entrance to the Moorish Arms advanced haughtily to greet a white-haired, white-mustached little man who came briskly through the ornate portal. The cuffs of the visitor’s overcoat were frayed, his felt hat battered and stained, but there was a peculiar dignity about his diminutive person that won from the lobby-man a grudging deference. “Yes, sir?”

“I wish to see Mr. Wendell P. Logan.”

“Have you an appointment, sir?”

“Yes. I telephoned him ten minutes ago that I was coming.”

“Very well, sir. The elevator is in this direction.”

The mirrored door to the lift-shaft slid shut behind Doc Turner. The doorman turned away—to see Abe, ferret-faced and eager-eyed, standing just within the glass and wrought-iron gate....

The door of apartment 15A opened to Doc Turner’s ring. Wendell Logan’s black, almost clerical garb could not conceal the power in his huge frame. His mouth was unsmiling under his close-clipped, grizzled mustache. “Mr. Turner, I believe,” he rumbled. “You are prompt. Come in, sir.”

Andrew Turner was smaller, meeker and more inoffensive-looking than ever, in a big club-chair in Logan’s study. He held his hat on his lap and fingered the brim nervously. His host pushed an open box of Hoyas across the heavy table. “Smoke?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Turner fumbled a cigar out of the box, made a little ceremony out of lighting it. “Isn’t often I get a chance to puff one of these. Nasty weather, isn’t it.” He shivered. “There seems to be a draft through here. Mind if I shut the door?” Without waiting for a response he slid out of his seat and did just that. Then he was back. Logan glowered.

“You told me over the telephone that you had something of importance to discuss with relation to the Settlement House, something that could not wait till tomorrow.”

“So I did. So I did.”

“Well, what is it?”

Doc licked his lips. “Fact is, I deceived you.”

The other’s beetling eyebrows arched. “Indeed.”

“Yes. I had to see you tonight, but it wasn’t about the House. I— I am in trouble, Mr. Logan. I need help.”

“Help? From me? Why—what....”

The big man tried to throw surprise into his voice, but there was just the slightest thread of gratification.

“Financial help. Er— I own the drug store on Morris Street....”

“Turner’s Pharmacy. I remember noticing it. You have been there a long time, Mr. Turner.”

“A very long time.” The druggist sighed. “The neighborhood would miss me.”

“Is there any prospect that it will have to?” Logan was politely interested, no more. But there was a tiny glow in his cold eyes. “You are not ill, I hope.”

Doc’s eyes flickered to an almost imperceptible scratching at the door, and he spoke more briskly. “Not physically, Mr. Logan. But I might as well be. I have a mortgage-note for three hundred dollars due tomorrow and I haven’t the money. If it is not paid, I shall lose my store.”

“Ah! I take it that is the aid you want from me.”

“I thought— that is— you have been so interested in charitable work on Morris Street— my store has been an influence for good there. The people rely on me. It would be in line with your fine work... ” He maundered into an embarrassed silence.

Logan shifted a desk-phone with long, strong fingers. “You come to me as a last resort, I imagine, quite without hope.”

He seemed to reach some decision. “I may surprise you. I may lend you the money you require—on condition." He repeated it softly. “On condition.”

The pharmacist was imensely relieved. “Thank you. I...”

“I said on condition. You must confine your energies to your business “hereafter. I am more familiar with your affairs than you imagine. Your troubles come from your neglect of your own interests for other matters. Your motives are praiseworthy, no doubt— but you cannot make money in— philanthropy.”

Curiously enough Turner betrayed neither surprise nor indignation at this demand. “I can’t make money in that store anyway,” he said in a dull, hopeless tone. “If only I could find some other source of income. But at my age ... I’d do anything, anything. I cannot work much longer and the poorhouse is staring me in the face.” His voice lifted, at the last, and it was edged with hysteria.

LOGAN’S hand tightened on the table edge. “Do you mean that?” he boomed, “Do you mean that you would do literally anything?” His rumble dropped to a whisper. “Even something —outside the law?”

The old man threw his hands wide, despairingly. “I’ve devoted my life to those people, and I am a pauper. I must take care of number one now, before it is too late. His eyes rose to the other man’s, caught and held them. “I had ideals once. Perhaps you had them too.”

A subtle change came over Logan’s expression. Evil somehow leered in the very lines of the face that had been so benign instants before. “Ideals,” he mouthed. “Ideals put no dollars in your pocket.” He swept a hand around the luxury of the oak-panelled room. “Would I have this if I had— ideals?”

“You needed opportunity too,” Turner said heavily. “Opportunity....”

“Opportunity! Bah! I made my own opportunity—and I’ll make yours too.” The game was in the open at last! “Look here, old man!” He leaned across the table. “I’ll make you rich in a year if you’ll play with me.”

The white-haired druggist was trembling. “You mean it!” he exploded. “You mean it? How?”

“By handling my goods as only you could do! I’ve had my eye on you—the fools told me I couldn’t touch you. Your location, your business, your, reputation, are ideal! They’ll never suspect you— and you know everyone in the neighborhood. You know whom to trust—they trust you.... I’ll get rid of the scum peddling for me now—I’ll sweep them all out and....”

“Wait a minute! What are you talking about? What are these goods of yours?”

“Coke, man! Snow! White gold that makes men rich. Listen—-the set-up is perfect. I’ll supply you with the pure stuff in little packages, easy for me to transport. You’ll spread it with milk sugar—five times—ten times—the suckers don’t know the difference—make up the decks and pass them out at ten thousand per cent profit. They pay anything, anything for it once they get the habit. I’ll attend to that.” A big hand smashed down on the table. “Your fortune’s made, man! And half my problems are solved!”

“Then—then you’re the man....”

“Behind the coke selling on Morris Street. Yes! I am the man....” He checked, leaped to his feet. Something had crashed against the study-door! Logan got across to the door and pulled it open. Two threshing figures rolled in, locked in combat. A fist rose—Turner glimpsed a black nail on it—it crashed sickeningly against bone. The man underneath slumped and lay still. Red hair flamed against sombre carpeting, but Jack’s face was the white of death.

“That’ll hold him fer awhile.” A hulking form heaved up from the floor. Doc saw a mashed nose flat against a pitted face and beady, glittering eyes.

“What’s all this, Carl?” Logan snapped. “What’s this?”

The pug was breathing hard. “I come in quietlike, boss, ’cause Thomas downstairs told me you got comp’ny an’ I sees dis gink humped up against the door here. He had a little black box....”

Logan whirled to Turner. His eyes were slitted, his face contorted with rage. Magically there was a gun in his hand, snouting at the druggist. “A black box, eh! So that was the game! A dictophone!”

DOC shrugged. “Yes, that was the game. You talked enough so that we had you in spite of all your influence. Your voice on that record and what you said.... the Department of Justice would have done the rest.” Color had faded from his cheeks, but there was no quiver of fear in the fatalism of his tone.

“It’s the drug store guy, boss, from Morris Street. I piked him chatterin’ ter the Wop’s old lady, what the dick took care uv fer us. Ain’t had time ter tell yer. This fool’s been pokin’ his nose... .”

“In my affairs just once too often.” The grizzled mustache lifted in a snarl. There wasn’t anything clerical about Logan now. “Well, Mr. Nosybody Druggist, you’ve made your last prescription.” His automatic nosed at Turner threateningly.

“Go ahead. I’m old enough not to be afraid of death.” Turner’s voice was steady. “But how are you going to explain it to the police?”

“The police won’t be too curious. You threatened me with kidnaping unless I paid a ransom. I defied you, and your confederate jumped in with a gun. I grabbed it from him, shot you. Carl came in just in time and overpowered the other fellow. He’ll be sent up for life— and you won’t know about it.

“All right, Carl. Get that dictaphone in here. We’ll get rid of that first, then we’ll finish up with these fellows.”

“Sure, boss.” The thug went through the door. “Save me a crack at the carrot-top.... Hey! What the hell?”

“What’s the matter?”

“The dic— dicto— the black box! It ain’t here.”

Logan’s face tightened. “Nonsense— you must have kicked it away as you fought. Look down the hall.”

“It ain’t here, boss. It ain’t nowheres around!” Carl was back in the room.

“Poppycock. It must be! Here, hold this gun on him while I look.”

“Aw boss. Let’s plug this wise-guy foist. If I can’t find it the cops won’t. They ain’t gonna search. We can take care of it later.”

“Good idea!” Logan’s finger started to tighten on the trigger. And a telephone bell shrilled through the room!

“Hell! What damn fool’s calling me now?” Logan got the instrument to his face with his free hand, kept cold eyes on the momentarily reprieved Turner as he said, “Hello.”

It was a new phone and Doc could hear the shrill metallic voice in the receiver distinctly. “Helloi,” it said. “Ees dees Vendell P. Loigan?”

“Speaking. What is it?”

“I got it a black box here vot you’re looking for.”

"What!" Consternation leaped into the big man’s face.

“I said I got it a box....”

“I heard you. Who are you and what do you know about a block box?”

“Dees ees Abie de boy detecatiff, und nefer mind how I know it aboud de box. Eet’s ah funny box, eet talks. Leesten.”

There was a rasping noise, and then, another voice scraped from the ’phone, a voice oddly like Logan’s own; “... behind the coke-selling on Morris Street. Yes:— I’m...”

“Shut that thing off! For God’s sake shut that thing off!” Logan’s face was livid. “Somebody might hear it!”

“Soooo vat?”

“Listen you. I’ll give you ten grand for that thing. On the nail.”

“Oi. Ten toisand he says. Undt vat shouldt I do it mit ten toisand dollars? Meester, de answer ees no! To you I dunt sell it.”

“What do you want then? Twenty grand? Fifty?”

“Telephone numbers he talks! I’ll told you, meester. Eeef ees still there mein chief Meester Toiner, und he talks to me, I do vot he says. Or else— velil I teenk maybe een de Departmentel from Justeece somebody might like it to hear the box talk, hah? .... “Oi meester, sooch langvich! My mommer she vouldn’t like it for me to hear dot.”

His feelings slightly vented, Logan thrust the instrument into Doc’s hands. “Here, you talk to him.”

“Hello Abe. This is Mr. Turner.”

“Oi, Meester Toiner!” The urchin’s voice was suddenly choked with tears. “Oi’m denks Gott! I— I dittn’t teenk maybe I vos een time. I seen dot gorilla come back und I vos so scared I teenk maybe I shook mein gold toot out. Baht vile he vos talkin’ to de cheneral I found a vay trough de basement, und I got een de compartment yoost ven de screp started up. I grebbed de box ud run.”

“Where are you now? No— wait— don’t tell me!”

“Eet’s all right. I’m een your store mit de door locked und dot Irisher cop Healeh oudside mit hees gun in hees hand.”

“Fine stuff. Now listen Abe. You tell Healy to get a taxi and the two of you take that box right down to the Department....” Logan’s hand struck the ’phone from Turner’s grasp. “Damn it, I’ll plug you if he does! So help me, no matter what happens, I’ll blast you!”

Composedly Doc retrieved the telephone, spoke into it. “Just a minute, Abe.” Then he lifted a pale, set face to Wendell. “What difference do you think that makes to me? A year or two less of life— against the chance to finish you and your devil’s trade— it’s the best bargain I’ve ever struck.”

Logan stared at him. Then— “You mean it, by God! But I’ll put the other bullet into your partner here, right through his heart!”

DOC winced. Ransom was young— had he a right to sacrifice him? He turned back to the telephone. “Abe. I’ve changed my mind. Logan is going to take us downstairs. He’s going to get into Jack’s flivver with us and drive to the store. You wait there and keep Tim Healy with you. If we get there in fifteen minutes you’ll give the box to Logan and he’ll walk home with it. If we’re not there in exactly fifteen minutes from the time I hang up, don’t wait a second longer but start off at once for the Department of Justice. Do you understand?”

“Oi. Und how!”

“Now start counting that fifteen minutes.” He hung up. How about it, Logan?”

“How do I know you won’t go running to the D. J. with what you know?”

“You don’t. You’ll have to rely on my word. But there will be sealed affidavits in my bank’s safe tomorrow morning that will be opened only if any—accident— happens to Abe, or Jack, or myself.”

Logan dropped his gun in his pocket. “All right. You win.”

“No. I don’t win. It is a deadlock. But watch your step, Logan.”

“I see your red-headed partner has come to. Let’s get started.”

The coughing flivver grazed an “L” pillar and clanked to a stop in front of Doc Turner’s drug store. The windows were dark—a shadowy figure stood statuelike in the dim doorway. “Tim!” Doc called and slid out to the wet pavement, watching Logan’s slumped bulk as he did so. Until those affidavits were signed and deposited the man would be dangerous as a poisonous snake. Lucky that Abe had Healy here with his gun.

A cold voice behind him said. “Not Tim, Turner. Not Healy.”

The druggist whirled, saw marble eyes under a canted derby, saw a thin-lipped mouth twisted in a mocking smile. “Stockton! Where’s....”

“Healy? Flatfooting his beat. Good thing I was walking home with the skipper. The captain thought it swell of me to offer to relieve the cop, and ordered him back to patrol. What’s going on? Who’s in there?”

“I, Stockton.” Logan’s voice rang with relief, triumph. “These men stole something from me and have it inside. They’re blackmailing me for its return.” He clambered out. “The policeman was working with them. Lucky you’re here to help me. You used your head and I won’t forget it.”

There was sly obsequiousness in Stockton’s tone. “Thank you, Mr. Logan. Where’s this thing they copped?” There was an automatic in his hand now. The safety clicked off.

“In the store.”

The detective turned his fishface to Doc. “Go in and get it. Then I’ll take you to the house.”

“No,” Logan corrected, softly. “You will not arrest him. We’ll take care of him and his friends right here. I like to pay my debts in person.”

“O. K., sir. Hey you, behind the wheel, crawl out and come along.”

Turner fumbled his key into the lock with icy hands. He had failed. He was too old for this sort of thing, Logan’s organization was too strong.

The door opened and Stockton’s weapon shepherded Jack and the pharmacist inside. There was no sign of the boy, but there was a sound of sobbing from the prescription room. “Abe, is that you?”

The urchin appeared, his face streaked with grimy tears. “Oi, Meester Toiner,” he sniffled. “I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t get oud mit de box ven dees shamus sent Healeh avay.”

“Wipe your nose, Abie,” Doc said mechanically. Then, “Never mind, you did your best.”

They were certain to kill the youngster too, he thought wearily. No use appealing to them; they had no mercy, these men. A vision of the olive-skinned Ange rose up before him, hanging to a bar of a cell-door. Why did he ever permit the little errand-boy to get mixed up in this mess? “Where is it, son?”

“Een de back. On de table by the gallon goods.”

“Quit stalling,” Stockton rapped. “And get it. We ain’t got all night.”

TURNER stumbled behind the partition, his old legs buckling under him. Logan and the detective crowded after him, but stopped just inside the entrance, where they could watch both him and the couple in the store proper. Stockton’s right elbow was crooked and his finger was on the trigger of his gun. Doc got to the other end of the narrow space where a square box of black-painted wood, amateurishly put together, squatted on the work counter before an orderly row of gallon bottles. He hesitated, and his eyes went lovingly along the familiar labels that he would never read again. He read one, printed in scarlet.

“Snap it up, you. Get that box,” Logan growled.

The pharmacist’s gnarled hands reached out, trembling. But they stabbed past the box, seized a brown bottle with a wax-covered cork. He whirled and hurled the container, dropping to the floor as the bottle left his hand. Glass smashed at Stockton’s feet, liquid splashed up, spattered over him, over Logan. A shot blazed past the point where Doc’s head had been an instant before. Another. But the detective was shooting blindly, his eyes were closed and he was reeling.

Logan’s hands were at his throat, his mouth gaped in a frantic struggle for air, his chest heaved spasmodically. The pungent odor of ammonia came back to Turner, his eyes streamed with its searing vapor, and he gasped wheezingly. But he squeezed out.

“Jack, grab him. Hold your breath and grab Logan.”

Stockton turned and reeled out into the store. His weapon crashed and showcase glass shattered. Ransom dived past the staggering figure of the detective and his fist arched to the choking Logan’s jaw. The cocaine seller crashed down into the pool of stronger ammonia, and white blotches appeared on his face, his hands, where the searing liquid burned into flesh. The outer door opened and Abe shrilled, “Moider! Police! Healeh, Healeh! Ah hold-up!"

The dick’s gun cracked again, but there was the pow of a heavier weapon. A body thudded to the floor.

“Pull Logan out of that stuff,” Doc husked. “And tie him up.” He heaved to his feet, weakly, and getting another bottle from the shelf, poured a vinegar-odored fluid into the terrifically strong solution of ammonia. “This acetic acid will calm that down.” He hopped across the mess and made his way to the front of the store.

Jack wound rope around Logan’s feebly threshing body. Stockton’s head was pillowed on an outstretched arm as if he were asleep on the floor, but blood welled from a gaping wound in his chest. Abe leaned against a counter, his eyes rolling, his face green, Tim Healey’s rubber-coated bulk loomed over the prostrate detective.

“Gee, Doc. What with the kid screeching an’ this guy dashin’ out blazin’ away I thought he was a hold-up an’ plugged him. Ain’t that too bad?” Strangely there was a smile on Tim’s face, a smile of grim satisfastion.

Andrew Turner’s mustache twitched. “It was a natural mistake, Tim. The room was dark and you couldn’t make out his face. The three of us will testify to that.” Then his eyes went bleak. “It was an accident, just like Ange Liscio’s hanging was suicide,” A gurgle turned him back to the bound Logan, whose bloodshot eyes were just opening.

“As for you, Logan, death is too good for you. I am calling the Department of Justice now. You weren’t square enough to stick to your bargain so I am released from mine. The deadlock is smashed, and you are smashed with it. There will be no more coke-selling on Morris Street.”

__________________

8: The Place of Hairy Death

Anthony M Rud

1893-1942

Weird Tales, February 1934

AT LEAST not alone, Señor! If I were like you, young, handsome, and with the strength of two men in my arms, I would not venture at all down into those ancient workings. I foresee trouble; and in those horrible dripping tunnels below Croszchen Pahna, where death may lurk in every slime-lined crevice, a comrade who will not flinch is even more necessary than your own great courage.

Ah, it is not a nice place down there! I have been part way, many years ago. I suppose every young mozo in all this district of Quintana Roo once could say as much. For there was a tale of treasure, of a room of gold and skeletons. Not this cheap ore that remains, and that costs more to mine than the ore will yield. A storeroom of the heavy nuggets found in rotten rock. And sealed up with that gold, the bodies of all the Indians who worked down in the bowels of the earth for their masters, the Conquistadores.

Not the first time I ventured there, but the second, death reached out with many hairy fingers and caught its prey. The first time I descended alone, and in terror. I returned to the blessed daylight very quickly—but not alone. A multitude of hairy horrors came with me! Even now after nearly thirty years, when I eat to a fullness of carne at nightfall, I know what will happen. Ever since then, in all my dreams I see—

But the señor shrugs. He is a hothead, like all Americanos. He wishes knowledge, not the fancies of an old man. It shall be so. Even today, the offer of fifty pesos is enough to tempt; for after all, one must eat. If the señor will get a good comrade, and both wish it, I shall guide them halfway. That is as far as my knowledge extends. I will build a fire, then, in the Room of Many Craters, and wait. But I will not go unless I judge the señor has a man of bravery for a comrade.

How do I know the Room of Many Craters is halfway? Well, it is a guess, Señor, but a good guess, I believe. The Indians who slaved in the mine for their Spanish masters never saw daylight. They dwelt in this huge room, which is a great bubble in the rock.

Also, a hundred or more of them worked here in this room. The round craters were worn in the floor by many men pushing against tree trunks, and walking endlessly in circles. This ground the rotten ore, and in time scoured out the craters in the floor.

According to old story, which has much sign of truth, the gold secured from the ore had to be stored many months. Ships came seldom, not every few weeks like today when steam drives ships as legs drive water beetles, wherever they wish to go. There were no strongholds above ground; so the gold was taken a long way through a secret passage, and stored in a barren room where guards watched night and day.

And that room once was found, though its unimaginable store of yellow gold still remains untouched. Unless more slides have come, it is probable that the señor will know the right passage or crevice, for before he may force a way it will be necessary to move a moldered skeleton.

That is not the short and rather frail bone frame of one of my people. That youth was strong, blue of eye like the señor himself. Yellow of hair. Easy to make smile or laugh. But he did not laugh once, from the time he, his companion, and I reached the Room of Craters, where I was to wait. There is a hot, wet atmosphere down there. And among the many things that hang in that heavy air is a queer, fetid stench that sends the heart of man down into his boots.

That time, when I saw the two men leave me by my fire in the Room of Craters, I crossed myself and prayed for their safe return. I did not even think of the gold, then, though they had promised me all I could carry, as my share. The one with blue eyes, the laughing one, was such as my mother’s people worshipped in the old days, you understand. I was loyal to his companion, naturally; but to him I would render any service but one! I would not go farther into that place of hairy death! No, not even loyalty could take me there. That is why I caution the señor to choose his comrade with care.

Those two young men left me, and vanished into the wet dark. And only the wrong one returned. I must tell a little of those men and their story, so the señor can know how that could be. Usually it is the other way. In most struggles with darkness and evil, the strongest and most right it is who comes back to tell the tale. But not this time.

THE tale, the señor must understand, is pieced together from fragments. It may not all be true exactly as I tell it. But the main facts are as I say. There is no need even to imagine a hatred or jealousy between the two men. There was none. One man was strong and poor. The other was weak—and the heir to millions of Americano gold. He, at least, should never have risked health and mind and life for more wealth. But thus it is in this world. No one is satisfied.

The blue-eyed, laughing man had been the superintendent of the great jeniquen rope factory in Valladolid, up north forty miles from here, in Yucatan. The señor doubtless knows the factory, for he came by narrow-gage railway, and Valladolid is the terminus.

The factory, and perhaps two hundred square miles of the great jeniquen plantations, were owned by the Americano father of the second man, the dark-skinned young fellow who was known as Señor Lester Ainslee.

It seems that the great father of Señor Lester did not approve of his boy. It was wished that Señor Lester get out into the jungle and what is called “rough it,” drinking less wine, smoking fewer cigarettes, and learning to work hard with his hands. That was strange to me; for a sharp glance told me that one single day in the broiling sun, cutting jeniquen, would kill the delicate boy. But fathers are strange. They love and marry women who are delicate and nervous, and who die young. Then they demand their own strength in their offspring— when it is well known that Nature orders it otherwise. No breeder of fine horses would be such a fool. He would look for the characteristics of the dam to appear in the male colt; and those of the sturdy sire to show themselves in the female get.

Señor Jim Coulter— he was the blond, laughing one— was perhaps twenty-eight, though he looked not so much older than his companion. The boy, a fortnight or so before, had got drunk to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, and there were purple saucers under his eyes remaining from that bad time.

Then it was that the rich father could endure no more. He sent the boy down from the United States to work in the rope factory, or in the fields. Alongside the most ignorant peons, you understand— mere beasts who have slaved for generations under the lash of the overseers of the haciendados!

It was asking the impossible. The factory superintendent, Señor Jim Coulter, sent many telegraph messages; for the unreasonable father would hold him responsible, and he knew that nothing save quick death could happen to the frail young man in his charge.

In the end it was agreed that Señor Jim would take one month of holiday from the rope factory, and accompany the boy from the north on a trip into the jungle. The Señor Jim somewhere had got hold of a story that told of the treasure vault still remaining deep in this Madre d’Oro Mine, two thousand feet below the ancient temple at Croszchen Pahna. The story was an old one to me, of course, and probably true.

When they came to me, hearing that I had ventured down into these old workings at much risk to my life, and I assured them that no one ever had dared go far enough to find the treasure room, they nearly burst with excitement. What to them were walls that fell at a touch? What were a few deadly vipers, a thousand ten-inch scorpions waving their armored tails, or the horrible hosts of conechos— those great, leaping spiders that Americanos call tarantulas?

True, Señor, you frown impatiently. You will say to me, ah, but everyone knows a tarantula is not deadly poison. Well, perhaps that is true. I once knew a man who was bitten in the lobe of the ear, and lived. But he had a sharp knife. And after all, part of an ear is not so much to sacrifice, when life itself is in hazard.

The conechos, Señor, that dwell in the slimy crevices of this old Madre d’Oro Mine below the wettest cellars of Croszchen Pahna, are of a larger variety than those one finds feeding on bananas. Also they are whitish-pink in color, and sightless. They do not need the eyes. They leap surely through the dark at what they wish to bite…

The way down as far as the Room of Craters is not far, as miles are measured up here in the blessed sunshine. Perhaps there was a day when the bearded Spaniards walked safely enough from the broken shaft mouth, down the steep-slanted manways, helped here and there by rough ladders, in no more than one hour.

I know not if the way remains passable now. But if it is no worse than it was the day those two young Americanos and I descended to the Room of Craters, it will take three active, daring men more than ten times that space of time.

Roped to each other, we crawled and slid down the terrible passages. I led, and carried in my left hand a long and heavy broom of twigs bound with wire. With this I struck ahead before I placed my foot— or cleared a way of vipers and scorpions before lying down and wriggling feet foremost through narrow, low apertures where time and again my coming was the signal for a fall of wet, rotten rock.

I call to your attention, Señor, that the way to enter such unknown passages always is feet first. Then if there are creatures waiting unseen to strike or leap at one from the side, they are apt to waste their venom on the heavy boots, or on the thighs that are wrapped in many thicknesses of paper, under the heavy trousers.

Also it is easier to withdraw, if a serious slide occurs.

Señor Jim, who followed me, carried a strong lantern. Another, smaller one for my use in the Room of Craters was attached to his belt, near the taut rope. Señor Lester, who came last, bore a miner s pick, for use in breaking through walled-up passages.

Once I was knocked flat and pinned down by a flake of rock like a sheet of slate, which fell before I even touched it; jarred free, no doubt, by the vibrations of our footsteps.

With the pick, however, Señor Jim quickly released me. And while he was working there I heard him strike swiftly once, twice, thrice with the pick, though not on the rock which held me.

Then he cursed, and his voice held a note of wonderment.

“Fastest thing I ever saw!” he muttered; while behind him Señor Lester whimpered aloud. I knew he had viewed some frightful thing, and had failed to kill it with the pick.

That was the first of the sickly-white spiders, the conechos. I had warned the two young men, of course; but until one sees those horrible, sightless, hairy monsters, and learns how they can leap and dodge—even a swift bullet, some maintain!—there can be no understanding of the terror they inspire in men.

From then on the conechos, which never appear near the surface, became more numerous. It was necessary for us to shout, and to hurl small rocks ahead of us, to drive them into their crevices. Otherwise they might leap at us. And such is the weird soundless telegraphy of such creatures, that if any living thing is bitten by a spider, all the other spiders know it instantly, and come. Whatever the living thing may be, it is buried under an avalanche of horrid albino hunger.

LONG before we reached the Room of Craters, Señor Lester— the weak one— was exhausted. He was a shivering wreck from terror, the foul air, and the heat, and was pleading with Señor Jim to go back.

The other one would not have it. He kept mocking the dangers, laughing shortly— and how soon that brave laugh was to be stilled! But Señor Lester got to stumbling; weeping as he staggered or crawled after us. He dropped the pick, and neither of us knew, until we reached a place where the enlargement of an opening had to be done. Then we had to retrace many weary steps to secure the tool.

At last we reached the Room of Craters, where a fire may be built from the old logs that were used by the Indian slaves in pushing the ore mill. There was comparative safety, and we rested, while Señor Jim did all he could to revive the courage of his companion.

I could have told him it was of no use; but in those days I too was young, and did not feel it my place to advise. Señor Lester quieted; but every minute or two his whole thin frame would be racked by a fit of shuddering. I was glad I had made it very plain I would go no farther, but would wait for them here. Señor Jim tried every inducement, but I held firm. The few pesos I had earned outright were enough. I did not care much whether or not they found gold. The one time before I had come this far, I had penetrated a few dozen yards farther, into a narrow passage I deemed might be the one leading to the treasure room. And I knew what that passage contained— white, hairy death!

So I huddled over my fire of punk logs, ate food from the small pack I carried, slept, and waited through the weary hours. I thought hideous things, though none was worse than reality. My knowledge of what happened, you understand, Señor, comes in great part from the ravings of a man to which I was forced to listen.

In the narrow, slide-obstructed passage that led on, those two young ones fought their way. How Señor Jim ever made the other follow as far as he did, is not for me to guess. But struggle on they did; and at length they reached a blank ending of the passage— a place where centuries before, the Spaniards had walled in their treasure, and with it the human slaves who had dug, ground, and carried the ore and gold.

There was one small hole pierced in this wall. Quien sabe? Perhaps the prisoners broke through that much. It is likely that the dons would have a swordsman waiting outside as a guard, ready to chop off the groping arms of those dying desperate ones.

But while Señor Lester sank on the rock floor, too spent now to help, Señor Jim set at the wall with the pick. In time, by dint of much sweat, and many pauses in which he used the broom to brush aside the spiders, which were numerous at this low level, he had broken in a hole large enough so that a man could crawl through feet first.

He flashed the lantern into the chamber which opened beyond the wall. It was the treasure house!

His yell at sight of the piles of gold, long since burst from their hide sacks and spilled together, aroused Señor Lester, who was able to stagger to his feet and look. They saw, besides the great mountain of gold, white traceries on the floor that might once have been the moldered human bones of the imprisoned slaves. Yes, it was the storehouse of treasure!

Frantically then, forgetting his caution that had brought him and his companion farther than any other white man, Señor Jim wriggled into the hole he had made. He would have got through, too— only there was a slight movement of the rock, just a subsidence of perhaps six inches.

It squeezed him at the waist! It held him horizontal and helpless, two feet from the rock floor!

Señor Lester cried out in weak terror, but Señor Jim did not lose his head.

“You’ll have to break me out— quick!” he commanded. “It’s slowly squeezing the insides out of me! Quick, the pick! Hit it right up above me—there!” He nodded with his head, both arms being pinioned so that he could not point.

Whimpering, whining, almost unable to lift the pick, the other tried to obey. But that was when the first hairy thing fell or leaped from above. It landed squarely on Señor Jim’s upturned face. He screeched with horror— then with pain and realization that this was the end.

Almost before the sound had left his whitening lips, the others came, leaping, bounding, from the roof, along the walls, from the floor. The albino horde!

And from Señor Lester fled the last vestige of manhood. Jerking back on the rope that held him to his doomed companion, he sawed at it with his knife.

When it broke he fled, screaming himself to drown the awful, smothering sounds from the end of the passage…

THAT is not quite all, Señor. I heard the ghastly tale, though not until I had slept safely many hours, there in the Room of Many Craters. The young Americano had taken at least seven or eight hours to fight his way back to me. There was no hope for the other.

I brought Señor Lester up into the blessed daylight, though because of his complete collapse we were a whole day and night on the way.

Until his father could come from the United States, I cared for the young man, who could not leave his bed. A part of his mind had gone, it seemed, and he raved about the death of his friend, saying the same things over and over. I was very glad to surrender Señor Lester to his saddened father, who took his boy home where good doctors could care for him.

It was almost a year later when a scarecrow came to my hut. It was Señor Lester, dressed now in rags, but with a sheaf of money with which he tried to bribe me to descend with him again into the old mine!

Valgame Dios! I would not have gone then for a million million dollars, Americano gold! The fear was too lately on me. So then he threw back his head, his voice shaking, and said:

“Then I must go alone! I can never rest till I bring up Jim’s body! I— I was a coward! I am a coward!”

“Well, that is the truth,” I admitted, “but there are many cowards. What difference can it make now?”

But he was resolute— in words. In actions, not so resolute. He had made up his mind to go again, this time alone; but days dragged by. He lived in my hut. He jumped each time a gamecock crowed, every time a door was closed. He was a nervous shadow, not even as strong as he had been when I saw him first. He had escaped from a sanatorium up north, and come back here secretly, I discovered. I decided to send a message to his father. When that message did go it was somewhat different from what I intended.

I was a bachelor then, Señor. The little spiders, the malichos, spun their webs where they would on the rafters of my hut. I did not care. The mice played around freely at night; for my striped cat was old and fat, sleeping much and doing little.

To keep the young Americano from those sudden screeching fits, though, I had to climb up with a broom and wipe away the spider webs. They would build new ones. It did not matter.

“I can’t stand them!” he would wail, shuddering all over. I thought to myself then there was little danger he ever would go again into the Madre d’Oro Mine. And that was true. He never went again.

That very night as I slept in my blankets on the floor, I was awakened suddenly. Señor Lester had leapt up, screaming as I hope I never hear another man or woman scream! He jumped around. I could not quiet him. I made a light hurriedly, hearing him fall to the floor.

He was stiffening then, head arched back.

“It bit me! I killed it!” he shrieked. Then came a final shudder, and he went limp— dead!

Now that was too fast even for the bite of a great pit-viper. I tried to find what had killed him. His two hands had been clenched together, but now in death they relaxed. I drew them apart. I knew the truth, and my heart went faint within me. He had been dreaming of the hairy spiders, when—

Crushed between the palms of his thin, nervous hands, was the dead body of a small mouse!

__________________________

9: The Comeback

William J. Elliott

Australian Women's Weekly, 27 Nov 1937

1886-1947

British writer William J Elliott flourished between the Wars, writing for the magazines under a variety of pseudonyms.

THE long bar in the French Club was certainly the most cosmopolitan spot in the islands— possibly it was the most cosmopolitan social centre in the whole of the world. For there, over long glasses of whisky straight, gin pink,  lager or Pilsener there met and mingled French, Germans, Dutch, Dagoes, Britishers, Yanks, Lithuanians, Slavs, Chinese, Japs, and a weird and heterogeneous collection of half-castes and mixed breeds. They had just two things in common— they were mostly thirsty, and they were all connected with the sea in some way or another.

There, on a certain day in May, a big, red, beefy-looking individual, in an expensive Shantung suit, with silk shirt and bright scarlet cummerbund, stood and surveyed, over the rim of his upraised lager glass, his companion, with a slightly contemptuous expression in his small, deep-set and beady-looking brown eyes.

"That's what beats me about you fellers!" he remarked, with a shake of his head, as he lowered his empty glass.

"What fellers?" queried his companion. a small, skinny little man, dressed m immaculate ducks.

"You Yanks!"

"Yeah? And what is it beats you about us. brother?"

" All this family stuff," said the big man. I mean, you get married, and you have kids— and from that time on you become just bally slaves. Work yourselves to death— live work, think work, eat work and bally well dream work. And for what? Just to keep your wife and kids in luxury! And what d'you get back for it? Just nothing! Do they think any more of you— they do not! They reckon it's a privilege for you to work yourself to death just to supply them with silk frocks, jewels, motor cars and what notand if they think of you with any sort of feeling at all. it's the sort of feeling one has for a poor imbecile— in which, for once, they're right!"

The American shrugged: "I guess it's the way we're made!"

"Bilge!" said Beefy, and spat contemptuously on the floor. "It's not natural! What do the animals do? They bring up their young until they're old enough to fend for themselves and then kick em out to do it. A cat has a kitten. It teaches it to wash it's own face, drink milk, and catch mice— and then it gives it a smack across the nose, and sends it off to fend for itself. Quite right, too! Look at me, now! I'm a rich man— as we go in the Old Country. I got three kids— two boys and a girl— all grown up. What have I done for em? Given em a sound education, had em taught a trade— and slung em out to follow it. And that's all I'm going to do for em! 'Cos why? Ill tell you— they've got just as much respect for me as if I kept 'em in luxury— more, perhaps. I've got pals who've got families. Brought 'em up in luxury. Given em everything they could wish for. Kept em in gilded idleness. And what's the result? There are the kids, regarding their old man as a darn fool, waiting for him to die so's they can have his hard-earned money, and play merry jinks with it their own way! I tell you there's no come-back from modern kids— no love, no gratitude— no nothin'!"

The American opened his mouth to protest against this heresy, but before he could do so a harsh voice broke in:

"You're wrong, sir— dead wrong! Wrong as the devil!"

Beefy swung round sharply, and surveyed the interrupter with a keen and comprehensive glance from his bright, beady eyes. What he saw did not tend to make him take the interruption kindly.

The speaker was a tail lean in-dividual, with blue eyes which once might have been keen and clear, but were now bleared and blood-shot; loose, flaccid, yellow skin, a three-days' growth of stubble on a chin which showed a certain determination or aggressiveness and long, lank, untidy hair. He was dressed in an old suit of soiled and frayed dungarees, with a badgeless "cheese-cutter" cap on his head, which suggested that his calling was that of the sea.

"And who the devil might you be, and what has our conversation to do with you, anyway?" Beefy asked, coldly.

"Name of Tann— master-mariner— at your service." was the reply. "I butted m because— well, you see. I happen to have a daughter of my own at home. She's grown up. too. And I want to say you're wrong, because— well, because, all her life. I've done my best for that kid— worked hard for her. and given her all she could reasonably expect, and perhaps a bit more. Then— just when she was grown up and ready to start in life— I let her down. Let her down darned badly. All my own fault— no excuse! Let her— and the missus-down so badly that I just never had the pluck to go back and face em! I wrote one letter— and I got a reply from the kid. Did she blame me? Did she turn on me as she had every right to? No, she didn't! She wrote me a letter— well, that ought to have made a better man of me. That it hasn't isn't her fault-it's just mine! But when I heard you saying that kids are all ungrateful and hard and selfish— well, I just had to tell you you were wrong, for her sake! Get me?"

Coldly, and with a nasty sneer curling his thick blubber lips. Beefy looked the piece of human wreckage up and down. Noted the bleared eye; the loose, tremulous mouth; the shaking hand. Then he shrugged:

"Well, there's exceptions to every rule. I suppose. You're a lucky man to have found one, that's all. Now— Just buzz off. and leave two gentlemen to their private conversation, will you? You can call a drink on me. if that's what you were really after!"

It was brutal enough; provocative enough. But the man who had described himself as a master-mariner hesitated for a moment, and then, with a muttered word of thanks, called for whisky, and, being served with it. moved away. The beefy man sneered:

"I thought as much!" Then hearing a man standing near snig-ger, turned on him: Who's the poluka?" he asked, with a jerk of the head in the direction of the man in dungarees

"Cappie Tann? Oh, it's the old story. Too fond of the bottle-piled his ship up on a reef when he was tight. Got his ticket dirtied, of course, and then just let himself go. Swimming to hades now through a sea of Scotch— and won't be long 'fore he makes port, neither'"

The beefy man grunted:

"Huh! His daughter's got something to be grateful for. I don't think!"

And he turned back to his American companion.

IN a small office two men sat with a desk between them, its main content being a half emptied bottle of whisky. Said the shifty-eyed man:

"It's easy. Skipper. Your ticket's clear now— you're entitled to take charge again. Well, here's th e chance of a life-time. You take her out on the homeward trip, and, somewhere in the Pacific— not too far from land— you blow a bit of her bottom out. Take to the boats, make land, and there you are. The owners collect the insurance— and you get a clear two hundred for yourself! That's dinkum, ain't it?'

George Tann looked at the shiftyeyed man with a certain distaste. Mechanically he reached for the whisky, and half-filled his glass.

"Fine-for the owners!" he said acidly. "But I'll never get another ship as long as I live!"

The shifty-eyed man sneered openly:

"D'you think you ever will as you're going now?' he asked pointedly.

Tann looked at him, and it was plain that the whisky was doing its work on him:

"No!" he said, slowly. "I guess not! And I can send that two hundred to the missus and the kid. But dash it, no— I don't like it!"

The shifty-eyed man leaned across and put a little roll of notes on the table right under Tann's nose

"You can have this to keep going on till she comes Cappie. Not an advance, mark you— buckshee."

TANN looked at the money, then at the tempter. Last and longest, he looked at the whisky bottle. His thoughts could be read like a book. Enough there to keep him comfortably drunk until the time came to start on his nefarious adventure— no need to think, or mope...

"All right!" his voice was thick and harsh at the same time. "I'm on— shove across the articles, and I'll sign now I"

He signed-a sprawling, spidery signature, without reading the type-script above it. He poured out more whisky, and tossed it off. Then he said:

"By the way, what's the name of this old hooker I've got to take charge of?"

"She's called the Brenda— the old Maharajah renamed!"

"Good heavens!" Tann was staring at him In amazement. "But the Maharajah— she's a fine craft— nearly new...!"

The shifty-eyed man grinned:

"Sure!" he said. "It doesn't do to scuttle old craft in these days. The insurance companies are too fly. But with a faked cargo, and so on, this'll pay all right. Pay you, anyway. Well, good afternoon, captain!"

At the door Tann, swaying slightly on his heels, turned for a moment:

"What did you say her new name was?"

"The Brenda!"

"Good heavens !" gasped Tann, and his face went a dirty, greenish white.

For Brenda was the name of his daughter.

HUDSON, chief officer of the s.s. Brenda, looked a trifle surprised when the new skipper stepped on board. He knew the man's reputa-tion, and this tall, spare figure, in spotless drill, with cheese-cutter cap pulled slightly over one eye, was not quite what he had expected. Mouth and jaw were set firm, but he noted the bleariness of the eyes and the shakiness of the hand.

"I'm Hudson, slr, the mate," was the greeting he vouchsafed. "You'll be Captain Tann, I take it?"

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Hudson!" was the formal reply. "Hope we'll have a pleasant run together!"

"I hope so, I'm sure, sir!" As he took the proffered hand Hudson noted how moist was the palm.

"I'll thank you to show me my cabin, and the ship's safe, Mister!" said the new skipper briskly. "I want to get rid of this!" He touched, rather gingerly, a black Japanned box he held under his arm. "Important papers belonging to the owners," he added.

"Very good, sir— this way!"

As soon as he had stowed his dunnage and taken a look at his cabin the new skipper went on deck again.

"Well weigh anchor and get clear right away, Mister!" was his curt direction as he took the bridge. The mate, before descending to go forward, gave him another curious glance.

The crew, a polyglot crowd, had also heard of the new skipper's reputation, and were slacker than usual, occasionally casting sneering or grinning glances at the tall, spare figure on the bridge.

As soon as they were clear of harbor with the open Pacific ahead of them, Captain Tann left the bridge In charge of the second mate and invited Hudson to his cabin. There he produced a bottle of whisky and two glasses, and Hud-son, noting how his hand shook as he handled the bottle, gave a little silent sigh and an unnoticed shake of the head.

Captain Tann poured out two stiff pegs, and lifted his to the mate:

"Successful voyage, Mister!" he said.

"Amen, slr!" said the mate, and drank his off at a gulp. Captain Tann just touched his own with his lips, and then tossed the rest through the open port.

Hudson stared, and raised his eyebrows.

"That sip was just to show willing!" said Tann. "I'm T.T. for the rest of this trip!"

"Oh!" said the mate. Then he added, with apparent irrelevance: "I wonder, precisely, what 'successful voyage' means. In this case?"

The skipper started, and shot a look at him. "I may say, sir," Hudson explained, "that I am in the owner's confidence as to the-ahobject of this voyage, and also, if I may say so, as regards your past— er— record I"

"I see!" said Captain Tann, and his voice had the edge of sharpened steel. "You mean, you know this hooker's to be chucked away for her insurance, and that I'm broken skipper who piled his boat up when he was drunk, have agreed to do it!"

"THATS about lt, slr!" agreed the mate, a trifle sheepishly.

"Good!" was the curt retort. "Watch out and you'll see things!"

That night two men of the port watch were drunk while on duty. Tann had them both put in irons, and stood over a slightly unwilling quartermaster while he did the job. The next morning he mustered all hands and spoke to them:

"You've heard things about me, my lads, I can see that! Well, you'd best forget 'em— pronto! I'll have no nonsense while I command here— get that, and keep it. Now get forrard!"

There was no more trouble with the men! When they had gone forrard, the captain spoke a word to his mate:

"You heard that, Mister? Well, that goes for you, too! Whatever my orders are, and whatever you know, I'm skipper here! It may pay you to remember that!"

And he went below, leaving a very thoughtful mate to take charge of the bridge.

During the next few days a remarkable change was visible in the attitude and appearance of Captain George Tann. He was like a man who, having been sick of a malignant disease, had at last found the right medicine. For Captain Tann, with his hair clipped, his chin shaved, his wasted body clothed in spotless drill, with a good ship beneath his feet, and a crew at his command, was a very different man from the drink-sodden beachcomber who had signed on to throw away the Brenda!

One day the mate ventured to broach that subject to him:

"By the way, sir, when do you propose to carry out your secret orders?"

Captain Tann gave him an enigmatic but certainly rather ominous glance:

"I take it you are aboard to see them carried out properly? Is that the idea?"

"I— I suppose it is, sir!"

"Good!" said Tann. "Now watch out!"

He went below, to return shortly with the black japanned box under his arm, and a bulge in his right pocket:

"This, as I suppose you know, is the bomb that's to do the Job!" said Tann, tapping the box. The mate nodded.

"Good ! Well, it's going to be done right now!"

"Butland, sir...?"

"We'll not be needing land. Mister!" The skipper's hand went to the bulge in his right side-pocket, and showed a Smith and Wesson 38. "The job's going to be done right now— and I advise you not to interfere! It won't be healthy!"

Captain Tann took the box in both hands, walked to the starboard end of the bridge and flung it far out into the sea. He watched it disappear, and then, rubbing his hands together as though to clean them, he walked back to the mate and looked him steadily in the eyes:

"When the owners gave me this job," he said, quietly, "they made two mistakes. They'll find out what those were in due course, because I shall tell 'em! Anything to say?"

The mate, goggling at him, shook his head:

"And what now, sir?" he asked.

"Port o' London, Mister! And then I'll report to the owners!"

With shoulders back and head well in the air, the Captain descended the bridge-ladder and went below. He would have been a little surprised if he could have seen the mate execute several steps of a dance as soon as he was out of sight!

Tann, who was an observant man, certainly did notice signs of unusual excitement in the manner of his first officer as they drew near home. And the nearer they got, the more that excitement increased— until, by the time they got into the Albert Docks, the mate could hardly keep still. Tann decided, a little wistfully, that he was going to meet his girl. The Captain sighed at the thought, for a far grimmer meeting awaited him! And it came sooner than he expected.

As they berthed he observed a short, portly, pompous-looking man ashore, who looked decidedly incongruous amidst the stevedores and sailors who thronged the place. Furthermore, this gentleman appeared to take considerable interest in the Brenda— a mystery that was dispelled by the mate, who pointed the fellow out to Tann:

"There's the owner waiting for us, sir! That's Mr. Hudd, head of the firm!"

"The devil he ls!" commented Captain Tann, grimly.

The moment they were berthed the fat man came bustling aboard. Captain Tann met him on the deck.

"I am Mr. Hudd, of Hudd, Son and Thomson, Captain!" the fat man gave the captain a keen once-over as he introduced himself. "I see you have arrived— er— safely!"

"Yes, sir!" said Tann, grimly. "All safe and sound! Would you care to step into my cabin, sir?"

The owner inclined his head, and Captain Tann led the way. The moment they were inside, and the door was shut, he swung quickly round on his visitor, determined to get his word in first:

"When you gave me this rotten job to do, Mr. Hudd," he commenced, aggressively, "you made two mistakes! The first was to give an old sailor, however low he might have fallen, as fine a vessel as this to chuck away! The second was to name her after my daughter Brenda! Get that? Now, what have you got to say?"

To Tann's amazement the face of the owner was wreathed In smiles.

"In the first place, Captain Tann," said he, "I should like to shake your hand! Thank you! In the second, I should like to explain. You see, my son met your daughter. They fell in love. But she, being a loyal girl, and knowing he was in a position to do lt, refused to marry him until he had seen to it that you had one more chance. He consulted me! We decided on the little test you have just been through. Brenda approved it. She said you'd make good— frankly, I thought you wouldn't. I apologise for that thought! Your future son-in-law, by the way, is your recent mate! The box that was to blow the Brenda to perdition was a fake— in fact, the only genuine things about the whole affair were the case of whisky which, I gather, you threw overboard— or, at any rate, never touched—  and your daughter's loyalty! Had you carried out your instructions, you would have been sent back to the Islands, with your two hundred pounds, to drink yourself the rest of the way to perdition ! As it is the command of the Brenda is yours for as long as you want it! Now, that's a mighty long speech for me, Captain— and your wife, daughter, and future son-in-law will by now be waiting for you on deck! I beg your pardon— what did you say?"

Captain Tann, who had muttered something, colored and then ex-plained-somewhat cryptically:

"I said If I ever meet that beefy bloke again...!" said Captain Tann. And then he turned towards the door of the cabin with a wonderful light in his eyes.

_____________________

10: The Grave

Orville R. Emerson

1894-1945

Weird Tales, March 1923

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 to tell, 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 a while 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 the 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 ghastly 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 cease. 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 halfway 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 friends or enemies 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 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 on my own efforts.

"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 my 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 impluse 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 floor— dirty, slimy and alive 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 fingernails 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 infest 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 Fromwillwer'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, gaunt 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 anf fall 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."

_________________

11: The Long Arm of God

Ward Sterling (Harold Ward)

(1879-1950)

Black Mask, September 1920

IN A ROCK-BOUND gulch, half-buried under the sands of summer, covered beneath ten feet of snow in winter, six skeletons lie, grinning mockingly. In the hollow skulls of two are smooth, round holes. In one a tiny, leaden pellet leaps and bumps with each heave and groan of the sun-kissed ice in spring. The whitened ribs of two are seamed and scarred as by a knife. Upon the sixth there is no mark. Nor comes there any answering rattle when some loathsome reptile, scurrying from its lair amongst the rocks and crevices, jars against the whitened shell that once encased as foul a brain as e’er polluted God’s green footstool. It lies far apart from the others, denied, even in death, the solace of their companionship.

It is of the tenant of that sixth grim remnant, gazing, hollow-eyed, toward the heavens it can never enter, that this story is written. The flesh that once covered his weather-bleached bones has long since been carried away by carrion birds; his malignant soul is now frying in hell— unless, by chance, the devil, fearing the corruption of his powers of darkness, has denied the spirit admittance.

He mocked God and spit upon His Commandments. And the long arm of God reached out and found him— even in the chill, cold arctic hell, where he had hidden himself away.

i

LEE was the first to die. They found him, a month after they had discovered that they were rich— cold and stiff, his face twisted into an indescribable grimace, as if he had died in awful agony. Yet there had been no outcry. Nor was there any mark upon his body to show how he had been struck down.

The six of them— Lee, the profane; Halligan, the religious; Mason, the student; Wentworth, ill-tempered and moody; Kelly, the hot-blooded Celt; and good-natured, plodding, old Drew— were from the same Mid-Western town. They had grown up together, attended the same school, soldiered in the same squad. The same girl had driven them to the land of long winters to seek their fortune. And, smarting under the same misfortune, they had been drawn together, forgetting, for the time, their differences, sharing one another’s dangers, living out of a common purse, laughing at hardships— yet each praying that he might be the one upon whom Fortune’s smile would fall— buoyed up by the memory of a beautiful girl far, far from their adopted home.

After a fashion, they were happy. They were filled with primitive vigor and pulsing with life. They lived constant romances and did not know it. For such is the way of the far countries. And the lure of the North had gripped their heartstrings.

They had been prospecting, without results, all summer, when they chanced upon the unmapped, blind canyon which was destined to be their burial place. Following the noisy little creek up the gulch to the spot where it bubbled from the side of the rocky wall which blocked the farther end of the canyon, between two gray, grim mountains, they decided to “hole in” for the winter.

There were signs of gold everywhere. A cabin, old and weatherbeaten— one of the unsolved mysteries of the ever-mysterious North— stood ready for their occupancy with a small amount of repairing. Near by were a dozen mounds— grim reminders of a tragic past. In the cabin were bags filled with nuggets, their coverings rotted away. The whole place breathed of mystery— of mystery and treasure untold. Wood was plentiful and game was abundant.

Halligan and Lee were sent back for supplies. The others divided their time between prospecting the gulch and putting in shape their shack— a four-roomed affair— for they intended spending the winter in comfort.

Two weeks after the return of the two, the partners awoke to the realization that they were rich. Before they could even estimate the extent of their find winter arrived, with its long, cold nights, burying the old cabin almost to the eaves under a mass of snow which filled the gulch, tying them up effectually for the remainder of the season.

There is no stronger test of friendship than the placing of strong, vigorous men for several long, weary months in enforced confinement. With little to do save eat and sleep, forced to gaze at each other day after day, they are apt to fall into a physical lethargy which eventually creates a nervous tension like nothing else in the world. Petty quarrels become serious matters. Molehills are magnified into mountains. They grow to hate the sight of each other—to become suspicious of what, under other circumstances, would not be noticed. And, when each looks upon his companions as his rivals for the hand of a beautiful woman, hell is bound to break loose sooner or later. It is as inevitable as fate.

ii

WHEN THEY found the grisly horror that was Lee, lying stark and stiff in his bunk, gazing, glassy-eyed, toward the ceiling, there was no thought of foul play. It was Halligan who, in straightening out the cold, clinched fingers, discovered the tiny thread of gray wool in the doubled-up fist and called the attention of the others to it.

Wentworth was the owner of the only gray shirt in the camp. The others wore khaki or blue. It had been a cold night and he had slept in it. Instantly all eyes were turned upon him, although no word was spoken.

He turned upon his silent accusers, his lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl.

“Damn it! If you think I done it, say so!” he growled. “If I killed him, how did I do it— and when? You, Halligan, slept in the same room with us.”

Halligan shook his head sadly:

“When I went to bed, the two of you, and Kelly, were soldering that hole in the old coffee-pot. I went to sleep before either of you turned in.”

Kelly looked at Halligan angrily, then cast a sympathetic glance at Wentworth.

“I’m sorry to say, boys, that I ‘hit the hay’ before the other two. I wish now that I hadn’t, because I’m confident that if Lee was killed—and I don’t think that he was— it wasn’t Wentworth that done it. He’s not that stripe. In fact,” he hastened on, “none of the bunch is.”

Wentworth snorted.

“Keep your blasted sympathy to yourself! I don’t want it!” he growled.

Halligan shook his head mournfully.

“It’s the visitation of God upon Lee for his blasphemy,” he muttered. “I warned him against it many a time— poor boy.”

They sat around all day discussing their companion’s sudden taking away— all but Wentworth. He sat alone in a corner, silently nursing his grievances. They had searched the body; there was not a mark upon it. The other four were loud in their statements that Lee must have died a natural death. But there was a feeling of coldness— an indescribable something that cast a pall over them all— a feeling toward their once-trusted comrade—a feeling that the long, lonely days of idleness and soundless nights of the past now magnified into an unspoken suspicion.

Late in the afternoon they carried Lee’s body up the gulch a few yards and buried it in a shallow grave dug in the ice and snow, where it would have to lie until spring opened up again. The ground was frozen too hard to dig a grave being covered by a dozen feet of hard-packed snow and ice.

Only Wentworth remained away from the simple funeral, sitting glumly by himself inside the cabin while Halligan mumbled, brokenly, as much as he could remember of the burial service.

It was late when they retired that night. All but Wentworth. He refused to eat any supper, throwing himself onto his bunk immediately after the others had finished eating, where he lay, scowling, his eyes staring into vacancy.

iii

THEY SLEPT fitfully. It was nearly morning when they were awakened by the sharp explosion of a gun. They leaped to their feet and one of them struck a match and lighted a flickering tallow candle.

Wentworth lay dead in his blankets. Over him hung a pall of acrid smoke.

He lay upon his back, a bullet hole in his temple, his lips drawn back in the same wolfish snarl he had worn during the day. On the floor beside him, where it had dropped from his nerveless hand, lay his revolver.

Next morning they buried him in the snow beside the man who they were now sure had been his victim. And once more it was Halligan who was called upon to say a prayer.

Again he repeated his warning.

“Can’t you see, boys,” he mourned, “that the Lord visited his wrath upon Wentworth for his sins— just as he did upon Lee. A man’s evil deeds will find him put. It’s a warning for you all to repent before it’s too late.”

There was no work done that day. Even the dishes were allowed to go greasy and unwashed while they discussed again and again the various phases of the second tragedy that had befallen their little community. Wentworth had never been popular with the others, his moroseness and general tone of surly indifference to everything keeping him from being the general favorite that the profane but good-natured Lee had been. Yet it was hard to believe that he had stooped to murder.

As usual, it was Halligan, the born leader, who aroused them from their apathy. Putting the others to cleaning up the dishes, he cooked a hasty supper and compelled the three to eat with him.

“There’s no use getting the doldrums,” he admonished them. “They’re dead, and sitting around mooning won’t bring ’em back. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Of course, it’s up to us to see that their heirs get their share of the mine after we’ve taken our wages out for working it. When we’ve fed and cleaned up the shack we’ll have a game of cards and turn in early. I, for one, am sleepy.”

So were they all, for, within an hour after they had eaten, the four of them were yawning vigorously. They crawled into their bunks, Halligan, who refused to sleep in the room where Lee and Wentworth had met their deaths, climbing into a spare bunk with the others.

Mason was the first to awaken next morning. He shouted for the others as he leaped out of his blankets and crawled into his clothes. Replenishing the logs in the fireplace in the living-room, he again yelled at the other three and turned his attention to breakfast.

A second later a loud cry from Kelly brought Halligan to his feet, while Mason ran in from the outer room.

For Drew lay dead in his bunk. Between his ribs, buried to the hilt, was a hunting-knife. And it was Mason’s knife.

iv

KELLY CAREFULLY drew the knife from the wound and looked at the initials carved on the handle.

“So, ’twas you, after all, was it, you skunk?” he snarled at Mason. “You with your damned sneaking ways and your smooth, oily manner, eh? Though why you were fool enough to leave your knife stickin’ in him is what I can’t understand. Scared away, were you?”

Mason stepped back a pace, a look of amazement on his proud face. “I swear by the ever-living God, boys, that I am innocent!” he declared. “Why would I kill Drew?”

“Why— yes, why?” snorted Kelly, his eyes glittering. “For the same reason that you killed Lee and threw the blame for it onto poor Wentworth, damn your soul! I suppose that Halligan and I were to be the next, eh?” he went on. “With us out of the way you’d be a rich man. And then you could go back and marry Cora Hunter. Oh, I’m no fool.”

Halligan, sitting on the edge of his bunk putting on his moccasins, said nothing. Kelly, his Celtic temper leaping to the surface, was intensely angry. Mason, too, was a man of hot passions, although he held them under better restraint than did the Irishman. He took a half-step toward his accuser.

“Kelly— and Halligan,” he began in a level voice, “I didn’t kill Drew, nor had I a hand in the death of Lee. It’s just as much of a mystery to me how my knife got there as it is to you.”

“’Tis no mystery to me,” snapped Kelly. “You put it there, you cur.”

“You’re a damned liar!”

Kelly leaped upon him, the knife he still held in his hand upraised. Mason’s fist met him half-way, striking him squarely in the face, but failing to stop his rush.

With a lurid oath the burly Irishman jabbed the weapon into the other’s side half a dozen times. With his bare fists Mason fought the other as best he could for a second or two. His fingers clutched weakly about his antagonist’s windpipe. He struggled blindly for a second, fumbling feebly for a hold. Then his knees doubled under him and, with a dull moan, he sank to the floor at Kelly’s feet.

Without a sign of undue haste, Halligan buckled his belt and holster about his waist. Coolly he unbuttoned the holster and drew the gun. He cocked the weapon and, with his finger on the trigger, waited for the others to settle their argument.

“Did you get him?” he asked, as Kelly stepped back and wiped the blood from his streaming nose.

“Yes, an’ I’m damned glad of it— the swine!”

Before he could turn around, Halligan placed the muzzle of his gun against the back of the Irishman’s head and pulled the trigger. A dazed expression crept over Kelly’s face. The knife dropped from his hand. Then he fell in a heap across the body of his late antagonist.

Halligan replaced the weapon in its holster and felt of the Irishman’s heart. Assuring himself that it had ceased to beat, he raised his eyes to Mason, who was staring at him dazedly.

“You saved my life, Halligan,” the wounded man muttered thickly; “but you took so long doing it that he got me anyway. Much obliged— just— same.”

Halligan grinned.

“If I did, I’m sorry,” he remarked, cheerfully. “’Cause then I’ll have to finish you myself. It wouldn’t do for you to live, you see, because you know too much. And, besides, I want everything for myself— the girl and the money both.”

The dying man looked at him curiously. “You don’t mean that it was you, Halligan? Great God! And I never suspected!”

Halligan sat down on the edge of his bunk and laughed good-humoredly as he unbuckled his gun and threw it across the foot of the bed.

“I don’t mind telling you about it,” he said quietly, “because you’ll soon be where you can never tell.”

He rolled a cigarette and, lighting it, inhaled a whiff before he continued: “You see, Mason, I figured out long ago that as soon as we struck it rich— and I felt sure that we would sooner or later— it would be a survival of the fittest. I knew that there was no chance for any of us with Cora until we had money. She’s a selfish little devil, but she’s worth fighting for. And, with all of us rich, we would be just where we started. But now it’ll be me alone— just me.

“When we struck pay here, you remember it was me that suggested putting in here for the winter. I knew that it would be easy for me to plant the seed of suspicion in all of you, for, deep down in your hearts, you all felt as I did and each one of you suspected the other. And you were as jealous as a bunch of chorus girls.

“Wentworth killed Lee all right. I watched him do it from the other room, where I was supposed to be asleep. I suggested the idea of it to him without him knowing it several days before. He and I were doing a job of soldering and I told him a story I got from my grandmother— about a man who had murdered his wife by pouring a drop of hot lead in her ear.

“After Kelly turned in that night, Lee and Wentworth sat up soldering, you remember. Finally Lee dropped off to sleep with his head on the table. It was too good an opportunity for Wentworth to miss— for he hated Lee’s guts— so he drops a bit of the hot solder into Lee’s ear. He died without a struggle, as I knew he would— for the infernal stuff paralyzes every faculty. Afterward Wentworth took off his boots and sneaked in to see if we were asleep. Finding that we were, he carried Lee in and laid him on his bunk.

“You remember how Wentworth tore his shirt on a nail there by the door? I recollected that there was a scrap of wool hanging onto it. When Wentworth went back into the other room to put away his tools, I jumped out, took the little piece of wool from the nail and got it into Lee’s clenched fingers and jumped back into bed before Wentworth returned. Pretty smooth, eh?

“Wentworth couldn’t stand the gaff. He imagined that I knew that he had killed Lee, so he killed himself.”

Mason groaned.

“I killed Wentworth!” he blurted out. “You told me that he had— that, he— he— about what he done to— to Cora. I saw that this was a good opportunity to get rid of him and let you fellows think he had done it himself? You put me up to it, you devil!”

Halligan laughed.

“So it was you, after all, eh?” he chuckled. “I knew that you had swallowed my little story, but I’ll confess that I didn’t think you would get busy so quick.”

“But the letter you showed me from her— from Cora?”

Halligan chuckled again. “Mason, I don’t mind telling you that when I went after supplies with Lee I fixed up five letters, all identical except the names. I put one of your names in each letter. I showed each one of you a different letter, playing each one of you against the other. That’s why Kelly knifed you. He didn’t care a cuss for Drew— he was itching for an opportunity to get you. See? I stuck Drew myself, using your knife to throw suspicion on you, knowing that it would start the Irishman. Where I miscalculated was in thinking that you’d be armed. I didn’t want to stain my own hands with murder any more than I had to. I put some dope in all of your grub last night when I got supper so that I could pull off the stunt without arousing you.

“That idea of mine of playing each one of you against the other was pretty slick, wasn’t it? No one knows of the existence of this blind gulch here. I’ll have a pretty good nest egg, and, after I marry Cora, I can always take a run back here for more if I need it. Of course, I’ll bury all of you fellows nice and shipshape and I’ll tell them back home about our separating and each going in a different direction. Oh, I’ve got a food yarn cooked up, all right.”

The wounded man glared at him malignantly.

“Damn you!” he cried. “God’s long arm will get you yet— even out here in the ice and snow of this God-forsaken country.”

Halligan smiled. “God? Bah! If I’d believed in such foolishness I’d never won out over the rest of you. But I made you think I did— and that’s how I got the best of you.”

v

HE AROSE and stretched himself. Then, seizing the dead man, he dragged his victim out of doors and buried him alongside of the others.

Mason watched him at his work with glaring eyes. Then, as he left the room, the wounded man dragged himself across the few feet that separated him from the bunk. Carefully, every movement filled with pain, he reached up and took the gun. He tried to lift himself to his feet and felt himself going.

“O God,” he murmured, “help me— help me— get him— don’t let him get— away with it. Help me for Cora’s sake.”

He succeeded in getting the weapon cocked— in hiding it inside his trousers pocket.

His jaw dropped and, with a convulsive twitch, he died.

Halligan finished burying Kelly and returned to the cabin for warmth. Replenishing the fire, he entered the other room and found Mason dead. Throwing him across his shoulder, he staggered out into the gulch again and laid him on the snow crust while he hastily scooped another shallow grave.

He bent over the body to roll it into the hole. As he did so there was a flash and a report. The bullet swept across his lids, searing them with its heat. His eyes were filled with the powder.

Blinded, sobbing with his misery, he tried to grope his way back to the cabin. He lost his sense of direction. He stumbled and fell, arose and stumbled again. His snowshoes dropped from his feet. Too miserable to care, he tried to go on without them. He broke through the crust to his waist. On and on he floundered his way, whimpering with pain— chilled to the marrow— thinking to reach the cabin, but ever getting farther from it.

And finally, exhausted, blinded, freezing, he fell into the stupor which marks the beginning of the end in the Land of Eternal Snow.

For the sudden cold, grasping hold of the dead body of Mason, had hastened rigor mortis. The dead fingers, stiffening suddenly, had tightened about the trigger of the hidden revolver.

It was the long arm of God.

___________________

12: The Man Who Would Not Die

Harold Ward

(1879-1950)

Black Mask, September 1920

A WOMAN, young, handsome, richly dressed, lay dead on the sidewalk. Over her stood a young man, hatless, his hair mussed, his face bruised and bleeding. Around them— the living and the dead— the crowd surged, held back by a little cordon of blue-coated policemen. A police automobile, its gong clanging raucously, dashed up to the curb and a tall, broad-shouldered man in plain clothes leaped out and elbowed his way through the throng of curiosity seekers to the sergeant in charge.

“Great Heavens, Casey!” he exclaimed, as his glance fell upon the face of the woman. “Do you know who she is?”

Casey touched his cap respectfully. “This chap here says that she’s Mrs. Augustus Winters, the young wife that old Winters, the millionaire, married a couple of years ago. Used to be an actress before she married him, I understand. I don’t know the lady myself, inspector.”

The big man nodded. “He’s right, Casey. It’s Mrs. Winters all right.” He caught himself with a start. “No, by George, it isn’t!”

The bareheaded young man with the bruised face interrupted. “You are wrong, sir. I know that it is Mrs. Winters.”

The inspector gave him a quick look. “You mean that you think it is she. The fact of the matter is that Mrs. Winters died suddenly yesterday afternoon.”

“You must be wrong,” argued the other stubbornly. “I have waited on Mrs. Winters hundreds of times. I know her as well as I know myself. And she was alive and well ten minutes ago.”

“Couldn’t you be mistaken? I’ll admit that this woman looks enough like her to be her double. Must be her sister.”

“I insist that you are wrong, sir. I’ll take my oath that this is Mrs. Winters lying there.”

Inspector Des Moines scratched his chin reflectively. “It’s got me beat!” he declared. “There’s only one thing to do, under the circumstances, Casey—get the body to the morgue and send for old Winters to identify it. Ask him if his wife was a twin. And,” turning to the young man, “you get your hat and come on with me to the station. I want to have a talk with you.”

ii

SEATED at the big, flat-top desk in his well appointed office, Des Moines lighted a cigar in silence, offered another to his companion, then suddenly demanded:

“Now, come clean, young fellow. What’s the story behind this affair? Let’s have the straight of it.”

The lad— he was scarcely more than a boy— gulped to hide his agitation.

“I– I–” he stammered.

The inspector smiled kindly. “Don’t get scared, my boy. Don’t get scared. Bless your heart, sonny, I know that you didn’t kill the woman. I only want to get at the facts in the case as speedily as possible. Just forget my gruff way of speaking— it’s my natural voice.”

“I hardly know how to start,” began the other, his fears vanishing under the inspector’s kindly manner. “The lady— Mrs. Winters— came into Harden & Company’s store, where I am employed as head salesman in the jewelry department, and asked to be shown something rather ‘nifty’ in a diamond brooch. That was yesterday afternoon. She looked at a number of pieces, finally selecting one valued at thirty thousand dollars. She asked me to lay it aside for her, stating that she wanted her mother, who was buying it for her for a birthday present, to look at it before she made her final decision.

“This morning, she returned and, coming into the store, requested that I accompany her to the curb with the brooch, as her mother, who was an invalid, was outside in the limousine. Of course it was irregular, but she is an old customer— you know Harden & Company’s policy— so I did as requested. I handed her the jewel case just as we reached the machine and she passed it in to the woman— whom I supposed was her mother— who was leaning back against the cushions. The curtains were down and the interior was in semi-darkness, so I did not get a clear view of the face of the lady.

“Just as she handed the other the jewel, the chauffeur, who had been keeping his engine running, leaned out and slugged me with something—a sandbag, I imagine. At the same time Mrs. Winters made a quick leap for the interior of the machine. But, involuntarily, as I fell I grasped her, and we went down in a heap together.

“The chauffeur immediately started his machine and, before I recovered my wits, which had been largely knocked out of me, he was around the corner. I didn’t even have an opportunity to get the number of the auto.”

“We have already attended to that,” interrupted the inspector. “Casey’ll have it down in his notebook if anyone in the vicinity chanced to notice it. Were there many people on the sidewalk at the time?”

“They were constantly passing— the usual ten o’clock crowd.”

“Um-m-m. All right, go ahead with your story.”

“There is nothing more to tell. When I came to my senses— and I couldn’t have been dazed more than a second or two— the machine was disappearing around the corner, as I just told you, and the woman was lying on the sidewalk beside me— dead. It must have-been apoplexy, inspector, for I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that I didn’t seize her hard enough to kill her.” He hesitated, then continued, haltingly: “But what puzzles me is why Mrs. Winters— a woman of untold wealth— would stoop to aid in a crime like that.”

He looked at the inspector for an answer to his question. The latter smoked in silence for a second. “That’s what we’ve got to find out, my boy. You said your name was—”

“Johnson— Adolph Johnson.”

“Oh, yes. And she got away clean with the jewelry did she? The other woman— the one in the machine— and the chauffeur?”

Johnson nodded.

They were interrupted by a rap at the door. In response to Des Moines’ gruff “Come in!” Casey entered, his good-natured, red face glowing with excitement.

“What the dickens do you know about it, sir?” he exploded. “Winters has identified the body, positively, as being that of his wife.”

“But Mrs. Winters died yesterday afternoon.”

“She did. But sometime during the night her body disappeared. And this morning they found the body of her maid, dead, in the casket from which the mistress had been taken!”

“Good God! Murdered?”

“Not a mark on her body.”

iii

BEFORE the inspector could recover from his astonishment, the door burst open and a man, grey-haired, tall, angular— beyond the middle age—rushed in without the formality of rapping. His wrinkled face was drawn and haggard, his eyes bloodshot and red from weeping, his whole appearance that of a man almost bereft of his senses.

“Inspector,” he shrieked, “who is the guilty man? Who has desecrated the poor, dead body of my wife? Who stole it from the casket? Damn them! Damn them! Damn them! Who murdered Dolly, her maid? She was murdered, I say! I know it! I know it!”

He glared about him for a second. Then: “Give him to me, I say! I’ll tear the scoundrel to pieces with my naked hands! Give him to me! I demand justice!”

He dropped into a chair and burst into hysterical sobs. For an instant there was silence. Des Moines chewed thoughtfully on his cigar. Johnson, white-faced, unused to scenes such as this, fidgeted nervously, his fingers twitching. Assuming the quieting tone of a mother addressing her child, the inspector turned to the weeping man.

“Calm yourself, Mr. Winters,” he began, slowly. “I know that it’s hard— it’s awful, terrible. But we’ll get at the bottom of it some way. I promise you on my word as a man that I’ll capture the guilty wretch and hang him. Yes, curse him! I’ll hang him higher than a kite, or I’ll quit the force! But the affair is growing more puzzling every minute. I can’t make head nor tail out of it as it stands now. Won’t you let me hear your story?”

Winters sat up and dried his eyes. “What can I tell you?” he sobbed. “How shall I begin?”

“Start with the death of your wife.”

“There is little to tell. She was stricken, suddenly, yesterday afternoon while dressing to go out. Dolly Matthews, her maid, who was with her at the time, hastily summoned assistance. But she passed away before the doctor arrived— in fact, even before the servants, who responded to Miss Matthews’ cries, could reach her. The physician— Doctor Bennett, the well known specialist— gave as his opinion that the cause of death was heart failure.

“The body was prepared for burial in the usual way. I sat beside the casket until nearly morning. Then, in response to the urgent appeals of the friends and relatives who had rushed to my side in my hour of trouble, I surrendered my post to Miss Matthews. The poor girl loved my wife devotedly and was terribly grief stricken over her untimely death. And now she’s gone, too!” He burst into another paroxysm of sobbing. Des Moines waited until he regained control of himself, then motioned for him to continue.

“I could not content myself. My nerves were nearly at the breaking point, although the physician had given me an opiate to quiet me. After lying on the bed and tossing around for an hour or two, I arose and again sought the side of my dear one. I was surprised not to find Miss Matthews in the room, which was empty, although there, were several people in the study just across the hall.

“I stepped to the casket. As there is a God in Heaven, the body of my wife was gone! In its place was the body of Dolly, her maid, cold in death!”

“There was no evidence of foul play in the case of the maid?”

“No, although I am certain, under the circumstances, that she was murdered. She couldn’t have died a natural death and crawled into the casket herself, could she?” He glared at the inspector as if expecting a denial. Receiving no answer, he continued:

“My cries brought those who were in the other room and we immediately summoned Doctor Bennett, who made an examination. He would not even venture an opinion as to what caused death.

“Meanwhile, I was almost beside myself. Can you blame me? We searched the house from cellar to garret, looking for the remains of my wife. Failing to find her body, we were about to call up police headquarters— which we should have done in the beginning— when I received the call to go Jo the morgue. There I found the poor dear. I demand that immediate steps be taken to bring the perpetrator of the hellish deed to justice! I am a wealthy man. I will spend every cent I possess to hang the wretch. Damn him!”

Inspector Des Moines scratched his chin reflectively. “It’s got me beat, Mr. Winters. I’ll confess that I never came across a case like this in all of my twenty years on the force. You are ready to swear that your wife died yesterday afternoon and that you saw her body in the coffin. A reputable physician made an examination and pronounced her dead. Yet—Are you sure that the body you examined in the morgue is that of Mrs. Winters?”

“Positively. I identified it, not only by her sweet girlish face, but by a small birthmark on her left shoulder.”

“She had no sister? She was not a twin?”

“She was an only child.”

“Then, Mr. Winters, how do you reconcile your story with that of Mr. Johnson, here, who swears that the woman whose body you saw in the morgue, and have identified as your wife, was alive and well at ten o’clock this morning? Yes, he even goes farther and asserts that he talked to her and that she, aided by two others, robbed Harden & Company of a valuable diamond brooch.”

Winters leaped to his feet, his eyes blazing, his face aflame with rage. “He’s an infernal liar and a blackguard—”

Before he could continue, there was a rap at the door. Des Moines’ secretary entered. He handed the inspector an envelope marked “Important. Winters Case.”

The policeman tore the envelope open and glanced hastily over the contents. Then, with an oath, he read it aloud to the others:

My dear Inspector:

I have just started. I am Lessman, the man who laughs at death! I killed Mrs. Winters! I killed her as I have killed others— and as I will kill again— by the power of thought alone! Unravel that if you can.

What is death, my dear inspector? Who knows? No one but me. What is the human body? Only a prison in which the soul is confined— a piece of clay to be discarded at will. God kills when he wishes. Why not I? It suited my purpose to use the mortal form of Mrs. Winters, and I took it.

Hereafter, I will give you due and timely notice of each crime I commit—and I assure you that they will be numerous.

With best wishes, I sign myself

Lessman, The Man Who Will Not Die.

iv

THE WINTERS’ mystery was the most interesting news event of the day and the afternoon papers made the most of it. At its best, the city administration was not a favorite with the press. Augustus Winters was wealthy and popular, his wife had been one of the leaders of the faster young society set. As a result, the police department was grilled to a turnover for what was termed the laxity of its methods.

Inspector Des Moines, accustomed to the vagaries of journalism, used to being praised one day and reviled the next, gave little heed to what was said or written about him or his department. Yet he read every detail carefully in the hope that the reporters had gathered some new evidence that would tend to help in working out the solution of the puzzle. For in the past he had secured much valuable help from the newspaper men. But this time he was doomed to disappointment. They could find nothing— absolutely nothing— that gave him any additional light.

Nothing had been left undone. Men from the inspector’s office had combed the city in search of a clew to the mysterious Lessman. But without avail. Only the machine used in the Harden & Company robbery had been found. Stolen earlier in the day from a garage in the outskirts of the city, it had been abandoned by the side of a country road when the users were through with it. Beyond that one small detail, no headway had been made.

The newspapers had assigned their best man to the case. They could secure not even a trace of the unknown perpetrator of the startling crimes— for Des Moines had not thought it advisable to take the press into his confidence in so far as the threatening letter he had received was concerned.

Tired and disgruntled, he was about to leave the office, for the night, when the ’phone on his desk thrilled. He picked the receiver from its hook and answered.

“Inspector Des Moines?” queried a heavy, male voice.

Des Moines answered in the affirmative. The man at the other end of the line chuckled to himself.

“Well?” growled the Inspector. “Did you call me to the ’phone at this time of the night to tell me a joke?”

Instantly, the quiet laughter ceased and the voice came clear and strong across the space. “No, inspector, I beg your pardon. This is Lessman speaking! Lessman, the Man Who Will Not Die! I imagined that I would catch you in your office. I had a notion to call around and see you, then thought better of it. Can you understand me all right?

“Now, listen to me carefully, Des Moines. I told you that I would give you fair warning when I was ready to make my next move. I always keep my word. Are you listening? Tomorrow morning, on the stroke of ten, I am going to kill a man! Where? Oh, no, I have no objection to telling you where— on the street in front of 1416 Broadway— yes, 1416 Broadway! Probably a policeman! No, no, not you. But be on the job, inspector. I am doing this for a purpose. I hate the police, damn them! But it will give you an opportunity of studying my methods. Ha, ha! You and I will match wits frequently from now on.

“Oh, yes. Before I say good night, I’ll make you a promise. If you’ll be present tomorrow, I’ll promise you that I will do my best to hunt you up and talk with you. You need not go to— the trouble of notifying the papers, for I have done that myself. I’ve asked them all to send their best men. That’s all for this time. Good-bye!”

The receiver at the other end was hung up with a click.

Then Des Moines was galvanized into action. Frantically he jiggled the hook up and down until Central answered sharply.

“Quick!” he demanded. “This is Inspector Des Moines at Headquarters. Where did that call come from just now? Get on the job and find out. Fifty dollars in it for you if you’ll find out immediately!”

“Hold the line, please!”

Thirty seconds later his vigilance was rewarded.

“This is the Chief Operator. The call you inquired about came from booth number fourteen at the Biltmore. Send the reward to Operator One-hundred-and-Six, please.”

To secure a connection with the switchboard operator at the Biltmore required only an instant.

“Inspector Des Moines, Headquarters, speaking. A man just called me up from booth number fourteen. There’s a ten in it for you if you’ll get a description of him for me inside of a minute. Do you understand? Move fast!”

“You can send the ten right along, inspector. The man who used booth number fourteen stopped at the desk and gave me a tip as he passed out. He just went through the door a second ago.”

“Fine! Fine! His description? Quick!”

“You know him, inspector. It was Augustus Winters, the millionaire!”

v

INSPECTOR Des Moines was a man of action. While even his best friends did not claim for him the brilliancy of a Sherlock Holmes, a Cleek of The Forty Faces, an Arsène Lupin, or any of the other celebrated sleuths of fiction, yet, once given the slender thread of a clew, he followed it to the end. The taunting telephone call led him to believe that, in Augustus Winters, he had the master mind who was directing the crimes in the millionaire’s own household. Why Winters would make way with his wife and her maid— for the detective was firmly of the belief that both women had been murdered— he did not attempt to reason out. He only knew that a crime had been committed and that he, as an officer of the law, was pledged to find the murderer, regardless of who he might be. Just now all straws pointed to Augustus Winters himself.

He believed that Winters had overlooked a point in telephoning from a public booth in a hotel where he was so well known; that he was likely to recall his indiscretion and, in an effort to retrieve his lost ground, hasten home in order to provide himself with an alibi, the officer believed, would be his next move. Consequently, to checkmate that alibi and prove it false from its very inception was the obvious thing to do.

He reached for the telephone again and called the number of the millionaire’s residence. Not over three or four minutes had elapsed since Winters— or Lessman, as the inspector believed him to be— had talked to him from the Biltmore. To drive from the hotel to his home would take the better part of an hour, even with a fast car. It would take nearly as long to go from Headquarters. And there was always the danger of an accident. Des Moines thought rapidly, then made his decision. The telephone was faster and better than making the trip in person and standing the possible chance of having the aged criminal— and the inspector now had no doubts on that score— reach there first.

A sleepy voice answered his ring. “Augustus Winters’ residence,” it said.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“Wilkins, the butler, sir.”

“Has Mr. Winters returned, yet?”

“He has not been out, sir.”

“Let me talk to him then.” Des Moines chuckled softly to himself as he made the demand. He knew that there was no possibility of the millionaire replying. And the testimony of Wilkins would support his charges when the time came to prove the falsity of the alibi.

“I’ll connect you with his room, sir,” answered the butler. A second later the inspector was astonished to hear the clear, calm voice of Winters at the other end of the wire. It nearly floored him. He was almost too nonplussed to reply. For Winters, obviously, could not be in two places at once. If this was Winters, then the man who had called him up from the Biltmore must, necessarily, be an impostor. And what manner of man was he who could disguise himself so cleverly that even those who were personally acquainted with the millionaire mistook the counterfeit for the real?

“Des Moines speaking. When did you get back?” he asked casually, making an effort to hide the agitation that he felt.

“When did I get back? I was not aware that I had been away!” answered the other testily. “What was it you wanted, inspector? Must be something important to call up at two o’clock in the morning. Have you secured some new information? Or, possibly you have the guilty wretch under arrest?”

Des Moines knew that he was defeated. The least he could do was back out gracefully. It was not necessary to divulge his suspicions. He informed Winters as casually as he was able of the telephone message he had received from “The Man Who Would Not Die,” reserving, however, the information that the other had been masquerading as Winters. Then, he abruptly hung up the phone.

The case was growing more puzzling every minute. Instead of the telephone call clearing up the mystery, he was forced to confess to himself that it only made it darker.

vi

WHO WAS Lessman, the man who termed himself “The Man Who Would Not Die”? Was there such a person, or was it an alias? Des Moines, humped up in his chair, chewing his dry cigar, went over the case detail by detail. Figuratively speaking, he held it up to the light and dissected it bit by bit, piece by piece. And, when he had completed the process, he was obliged to confess himself as much in the dark as ever.

Who was Lessman? Who was the man of iron nerve and diabolical cunning? Could it be Winters? The inspector had been inclined to suspect the aged moneybags— was still disposed to do so— but what was his motive? Was he insane? Had he the ability— and the nerve— to carry out such a plot? And there, too, was his alibi, cast-iron, puncture proof.

If Winters was not Lessman, who was? Could it be Doctor Bennett? The physician admittedly had more opportunity to commit the murders than any one else. But, in his case, too, there was lacking the motive. Could young Johnson, the diamond salesman, be the man? In his case there was a motive— the theft of the brooch. But, on the other hand, there was nothing to show that he had ever visited the Winters home under any pretext. And it was natural to suppose that the person who could cause the death of both the mistress and the maid must have had, sometime at least, entrée to the millionaire’s residence. Des Moines had had both the physician and the salesman investigated. The reports of his men, lying on the desk before him, showed nothing against them.

Who had spirited the body of Mrs. Winters from its casket? How could she, a dead woman, be alive? And Johnson, as well as other employees of Harden & Company, swore that she had been? They had seen her— talked with her— nearly twenty-four hours after her reported death. How had the body of the maid been placed in the casket the mistress had occupied? Who was the disguised man who had so cleverly passed himself off on the employees of the Biltmore as Augustus Winters?

It was not until dawn was breaking that Des Moines gave up wrestling with the problem. And when, at last, tired and stiff from his long vigil, he arose and stretched himself, he was forced to admit that he knew no more than when he had first been called into the case.

There was nothing to do but wait.

vii

HUMAN NATURE is peculiar. A circus always advertises a thriller as its chief attraction; people attend in the hope of seeing the performer make the one little miscalculation that will end fatally. The newspapers had heralded the announcement sent them by Lessman in huge type. Their front pages shrieked forth in colored ink and huge type the news that at ten o’clock the mysterious man who in his letter confessed to the murder of Mrs. Winters and her maid would take another life.

For miles people came for the purpose of enjoying what promised to be a thrilling spectacle. A score of policemen attempted to stem the tide, but without success. Around 1416 Broadway, the street was packed for blocks in either direction. Even the reserves were called into action.

In front of 1416 a knot of policemen, headed by Inspector Des Moines in person, waited stolidly, silently, in a suppressed fever of excitement, like soldiers waiting the signal for an attack. About them the crowd surged and stormed. But bent upon keeping the fiend from carrying out his threat, Des Moines had cleared the street for a space of nearly a hundred feet, holding the curiosity seekers back with his cordon of bluecoats.

Hundreds of automobiles were caught in the vortex of humanity, their drivers unable to either go forward or to back out. The officers were forced to let well enough alone; to handle the jam was a task beyond the power of the guardians of the law.

In one of the machines Des Moines recognized the pale, haggard face of Augustus Winters. The millionaire, huddled up in the back seat, his every movement showing the mental strain under which he was laboring, caught the inspector’s eye and beckoned. Des Moines shouldered his way through the mass of humanity to the side of his automobile.

“I’ve been caught in the crowd, inspector, and we’re unable to get out. Can’t you help us? You can understand the awful agony that I am suffering at such a time.”

Des Moines shook his head. “Don’t you realize, Mr. Winters, that if it were humanly possible, I’d have this street cleared and keep it cleared? My men are working in from the outside— but it’ll be a job of hours, I’m afraid.”

“But, my God, man! You are not going to allow this murder to take place, are you?”

Des Moines shrugged his shoulders. “Out of the hundreds of thousands of people packed in this vicinity, Mr. Winters, show me how to pick out the one man— the man I want. My hands are tied. There is nothing for me to do. I must bide my time and wait for the fiend to strike.”

Suddenly, the aged millionaire clutched the other’s shoulder. His eyes dilated. He leaned forward, his muscles twitching, his face ashen and drawn. “Oh, God!” he shrieked. “It’s happening! Look! Look!”

His long, skinny forefinger pointed far out over the heads of the crowd. And then he fell in a heap on the bottom of the car in a dead faint.

Des Moines leaped upon the running board of the machine and gazed in the direction Winters had pointed. Then, with a yell, he jumped to the ground, and, hurling people to the right and left, plunged through the mass of humanity like a maddened bull.

For Officer Ryan, a strapping figure of a man, with the muscular figure of an athlete, who, a second before, had been in the prime of health, had suddenly thrown his arms in the air. For an instant he wove backwards and forwards, his face twisted, every muscle tensed, as if struggling against the unseen hands that were pulling him down. Then he gave voice to a shrill, hideous, agonized scream, and, lurching like a drunken man for a pace or two, crumpled up in a heap on the pavement.

A dozen of his brother officers leaped to his assistance. They were hurled back as if by an electric shock. Arising, they fought against the invisible force that held them in its power, but without avail. Open-mouthed, their feet fastened to the pavements as by steel bands, they were forced to stand and watch the torture of their comrade.

As Des Moines broke through the, edge of the crowd, the unknown power that held them in check lessened. In a body they dashed to the stricken man’s side and turned him on his back. His eyes were already glazing. His hands were cold and clammy. On his forehead was the sweat of death. He shivered spasmodically. Then his jaw dropped. Lessman had struck. “The Man Who Would Not Die” had won another victory.

Silence. Tense, nerve-racking silence. Eyes were peering, heads moving. On all sides excitement was visible on every face. But no one spoke a word. The agony was too great.

“Boom!” High up in a tower a clock was striking. Every eye was turned towards it. But still no word. Only the soul-straining, awful silence.

“Boom!”

“Boom!”

The clock was striking ten. Lessman had kept his word to the minute. A woman screamed. Her shrill, hysterical shriek broke the spell.

Then over the heads of the silent, awe-filled crowd rang a burst of laughter— cold, haunting, diabolical laughter— weird, mysterious— the gloating of a fiend.

Pandemonium broke loose. Those in the front lines, frozen with supernatural terror, turned, white-faced, from the horror that they had witnessed and sought an avenue of escape. None knew but the arch-fiend might continue— that, any moment, others might fall, blasted like a tree after a lightning stroke.

Men fought and struggled to flee from the invisible. Who knew? Lessman might be he who stood beside you. Even now he might be seeking another victim! Nothing could stop him. He was omnipotent! Every man suspected his neighbor. The police labored with club and fist. It was like stemming the ocean’s-tide with a shovel. It was a panic, a riot in which the stronger trampled the weaker under foot. There was no mercy— only a desire to escape from the spot. Men and women dropped, fainting, exhausted, dying where they fell, beneath the feet of their maddened fellows. Their dying screams only added to the fright of those who rushed over them. Automobiles, their drivers stricken by the fear that mastered all, dashed madly ahead, slaughtering and crippling. The pavement, covered with dead and wounded, was like a battlefield. It was a miniature hell— an inferno created by the diseased brain of a devil in human form.

When the officers had finally completed their task and the street was cleared— when the last ambulance had departed with its ghastly load—Des Moines looked about him for Winters. He was gone. An officer remembered seeing the millionaire’s machine driving away, its owner huddled up in the back seat, shrieking and babbling, his shoulders shaking with hysterical sobs, his face wearing the look of a man who has just escaped from Hades.

The inspector stood deep in thought. “He said that he’d speak to me! And yet— dammit all! The man never lived who could act such a part. It can’t be him!” And, with a shake of his head, he returned to his duties.

viii

IN A LONELY house in one of the outlying districts— a house set down in the midst of great trees and gardens, surrounded by a high stone wall— dwelt a man of extraordinary powers. To his neighbors he was merely an Oriental gentleman of wealth and refinement, who preferred solitude in an alien country to a position of magnificence and power in his own. But to the initiate—that little band of followers selected from every walk of life— he was the ambassador of a tiny group of learned men who, for centuries before Jesus, the Christ, walked upon this earth, have been striving to bring about the regeneration of the world. Their representatives are to be found in every large center of population, working quietly, unostentatiously, teaching, preaching, gaining an occasional recruit, ever content to bide their time, knowing that years are but seconds in the general scheme of the universe.

Mohammed Gunga, the Master, as he was known to those who loved and obeyed him, was a truly wonderful man. Taken, when a child, by The Holy Ones, his life had been dedicated by them to the service of his fellow creatures. Masters of mystery, delving far beyond the comprehension of ordinary humans into the phenomena of life, they had poured their combined wisdom into his open ears. And, their task completed, they had sent him out into the world, as they had sent many others before him, to spread the propaganda of the great work to which they had pledged themselves.

None knew the limits of his power, none the depths of his great learning. To him all things were possible. To him life’s mysteries were but commonplaces. Master of theosophy, philosophy, and the sciences, what, to the novitiate, seemed to savor of the weird, the mysterious, the occult, was to his mighty mind but the working of nature’s laws.

It was to the shrine of The Master that Des Moines always journeyed when confronted by a puzzle past his comprehension. For the clear, reasoning power of the sage untangled riddles which, to the ordinary mind, appeared beyond solution.

So, it was to The Master that the inspector hurried as rapidly as his high-powered car would carry him after the Broadway horror had shown him the futility of his reasoning.

ix

HE FOUND The Master walking in the garden, a faraway look in his soft, dreamy eyes, in silent communion with nature. Upon the policeman’s arrival, however, his face lighted up and he shook hands warmly. For Mohammed Gunga had none of the methods of the charlatan: to his friends his life was an open book to be read by all who cared to take the time.

“Greetings, my friend,” he smiled. “What new problem brings you here this morning? For I dare not hope that so busy a man as yourself would deign to make a purely social call. Come walk beside me and tell me all about it.” He laughed sadly as he continued: “Will you never remember, my friend, that every atom has its master and recognizes his intelligence? Have we not been taught to know that we have but to seek the way by making the profound obeisance of the soul to the bright star that burns within?”

Des Moines fell into step at his side and hastily sketched the events of the past thirty-six hours. For Mohammed Gunga did not keep in touch with the world; newspapers never passed his doorway.

When the inspector completed his tale, The Master turned in his tracks and, placing his hands on the big man’s shoulders, said in a voice that quivered with emotion:

“Dear friend, you have rendered the cause a greater favor than you realize by bringing your problem to me. For Lessman, in his egotism, has at last unmasked himself. Now we can fight him in the open. But I forget that you do not understand. Sit here on this bench with me and let me explain.

“Professor Darius Lessman is, without a doubt, the greatest intellect this or any other century has produced. He was employed at one time as teacher of psychology in a small, inland college. His great ability soon brought him to the attention of The Holy Men to whose cause we are all devoted. You know the lengths to which they will go to further the spreading of the great work. They sought him out. He became the favorite pupil of one in whose footsteps even I am not fitted to walk. He was tried in various ways and found not wanting. He was taught all— everything. His wonderful brain grasped in a few years that which others have spent a lifetime in learning. So proficient did he become that plans were made to send him across the waters for final instruction from those, the hem of whose garments you and I may never hope to touch.

“The Creator of all things never intended that a man should have the brain that was bestowed upon Darius Lessman. The man is an anomaly. The devil must have had a hand in his making and, when his training was completed, took him for his own. For Lessman, crazed by the power he found was within him, conceived the idea of living forever. He believed that he was greater than the God who created him.

“For months, he practised in secret, attempting to transfer his soul from one human body to another at the command of his will. Failing, he sought his old Master, told him his secret and begged him for help. When the Master turned upon him in horror and loathing, he killed the good old man to protect his own devilish secret.

“Then he fled with a woman he had captivated by means of his diabolical wiles— a pure girl named Meta Vanetta, who, too, had been an humble pupil of the murdered Master. She became Lessman’s tool— his accomplice.

“Together, they worked out Less-man’s plans in some secret place, spreading death and destruction wherever they Went in order to gain the human clay with which to work. We have followed them, tracking them from country to country, yet seldom daring to strike because of our knowledge that he was our superior. For Lessman is a monster—a man who laughs at death. And none has been found strong enough to kill his twisted soul. The cell was never made that could hold him. For he has but to discard his body and seize upon that of another. Many men of our faith have met him. He has killed them all by the power of his will.

“The brain has not been made that can match his in a duel of wills. Even I am fearful of him— and I am backed by the united intelligence of the Holy Men who are with me in spirit night and day. His is a mind gone wild— amuck, as you would say in the vernacular. For years I have prepared myself for the meeting. Am I fitted for the ordeal?

“I tell you, my friend, the time has come. Lessman must die! We must kill him for the sake of humanity! Not as one man kills another. We must kill his soul, even though we are forced to call upon the Holy Ones for aid. For the time you must forget that you are the policeman, and become the protector of mankind. We must gird ourselves for the battle, trusting in God to protect the right. Now do you understand?”

Des Moines drew a trembling hand across his brow, from which the sweat was pouring. “God,” he muttered, hoarsely. “It’s horrible— unbelievable.”

The Master patted his shoulder affectionately. “I realize it, my friend. Yet, to a certain extent, you have been trained to see that which, to the ordinary mind, appears obtuse. Multiply that which you know, and understand, by hundreds, and you comprehend my wisdom. And I am but an infant in intellect compared to Darius Lessman.”

“The man cares for but two things— riches and power. Seek for the man who would profit most by the death of Augustus Winters. And, when you have found him, return to me. Further than that I can tell you nothing. I must go now and, in prayer and meditation, prepare myself for the inevitable meeting.”

x

INSPECTOR Des Moines left the home of The Master, his head in a whirl. Although his years of experience in grappling with criminality in all of its sickening forms had made him a man far beyond the ordinary in point of intellect, his brain was too well acquainted with the wonder-worker he had just left to doubt his veracity.

He had seen the terrible power of Lessman in the case of the unfortunate Ryan. The other officers who had battled against the unseen force were unable to add any information to what he already knew. They could only say that, for the instant, a will more powerful than their own had held them in check. What it was, they could not explain. Nor could they describe their sensations. Pondering over the matter as he whirled city-wards the inspector could only shake his head. He was face to face with the greatest mystery he had ever tackled— a mystery so big that only The Master himself could fathom it.

As he came to a cross street, he suddenly changed his mind and directed the chauffeur to drive to the Winters home. He would again study the millionaire at close range. He was unable to reconcile himself to the belief that the slow-witted, hysterical man of money was the enormous intellect described by Mohammed Gunga. Yet, everything fitted in to make a case against Winters— only to tumble to pieces at the next turn.

There was the telephone call. His men had investigated. Not only was the operator ready to swear that it had been Winters who called from booth number fourteen, but the cigar girl as well. The man had stopped at the cigar stand for an instant. He was well known to the girl in charge, who had addressed him by name, as had the clerk on duty at the time. Yet, three minutes later, Winters had answered the telephone at his own home ten miles away. Clearly, a man could not be in two places at the same time. Nor was it within the power of any human being, by any modern means of transportation, to transport himself that distance within the time given.

Wilkins answered the inspector’s ring. His master was in the parlor sitting beside the body of his beloved wife. He would announce the inspector.

A second later he returned and ushered Des Moines into the big reception hall. The inspector shook hands with the millionaire. Then, his eyes on the other’s face, he plunged immediately into the reason for his call.

“Mr. Winters,” he said. “I believe that I am on the right track at last. But I need some information which only you can give me. Will you do it?”

There was no hesitancy on the part of the man of wealth. “Ask me anything you wish, inspector. I will answer your question lo the best of my ability.”

Des Moines bored on.

“Winters,” he said, sharply, “who is your heir?”

The millionaire started.

“Why, er— I don’t understand what you are getting at?” he exclaimed.

“Just this. If I am correct in my guess, your life is in danger. In view of this morning’s happenings, I am at last firmly convinced that Mrs. Winters’ death was nothing more or less than a coldblooded murder! So, too, was the death of the maid! I will admit that several times I have had my doubts. Now I know!”

Winters started back, aghast. “Horrible! Horrible!” he cried. “It is hard to believe— yet it must be true. But who could have so hated my poor wife as to take her life?”

The inspector continued relentlessly. “With Mrs. Winters out of the way, it is my belief that you will be the next to go. We must protect you. Now who is going to profit by all this deviltry? Have you made a will?”

Winters put his hand to his head. “Surely, it cannot be true. You cannot believe that they— mere children—”

“Who are they, man? Speak up!”

“My nephew, Thomas De Pew, and my niece, Cora Dayton, his cousin. Everything I have will go to them. Mrs. Winters had no near relatives. My will has been made for months. Of course, had my wife lived, she would have inherited all.”

“Do they live in the city?”

“They make their home with me. They have lived here since childhood. Both are orphans.”

“I would like to talk with them, question them, without their knowing the reason. Will you kindly summon them? Tell them that I am merely seeking additional data for my report.”

Winters, white-faced, arose. “I will do as you wish, inspector,” he said, slowly. “But you are wrong in suspecting those children. Thomas is but nineteen years of age. His cousin is nearly a year younger. Theirs cannot be the brains that planned this horrible outrage.”

He stepped into the adjoining room, only to reappear, an instant later, with the information that both of the young people had driven downtown for the afternoon.

Inspector Des Moines left the Winters home feeling that he had made no material progress.

xi

THE FUNERAL services for the late Mrs. Winters had been held and the body tenderly laid away in the family vault in Rose Hill cemetery. At the same hour, in another part of the city, amid more humble surroundings, was held the funeral of Dolly Matthews, the maid.

Alone in his office, Inspector Des Moines sat scanning the afternoon papers. They were still filled with criticisms of the police administration. Nor did the inspector blame them greatly. For he was obliged to confess himself beaten— defeated at every turn of the road. He had attended the funeral of Mrs. Winters in person. Several of his best plain clothes men had mingled with the crowd. Others had been present at the funeral of the maid. Their reports were one and the same. There was nothing— absolutely nothing— to report.

Over the telephone, he had given The Master the results of his interview with Winters. Mohammed Gunga had advised him to say nothing, do nothing, until Lessman again showed his hand.

Lost in reverie, he went over every phase of the case. A stone wall confronted him. There was nothing upon which he could even base a theory. Even though he succeeded in pinning the crimes on Winters, what jury would believe the incredible story? There was not even a motive. He would be laughed out of court. Mohammed Gunga was his only hope.

The telephone tinkled jarringly, startling him oat of his day dreams. The voice which answered his gruff “Hello!” was that of a stranger, agitated, jerky.

“Inspector, this is Thomas De Pew, Augustus Winters’ nephew. For the love of God, come out here quick! Something awful has happened.

“I don’t know what it is. I can’t explain. I only know that a stranger called here shortly after we returned from the funeral and inquired for my uncle. Wilkins, the butler, heard him request a private interview. Uncle Gus took him into his study and closed the door. We supposed that he had departed, for, later, my uncle left the house for a short stroll— or, at least, we so imagined.

“A few minutes ago Wilkins entered the study. He found the body of the stranger lying on the floor—stone dead! No, there is not a mark of violence on him. The physician— Doctor Bennett— has just completed his examination. “And my uncle has not yet returned.”

xii

OVER the telephone, Des Moines reported the latest angle of the case to Mohammed Gunga. Then he drove to the latter’s residence and picked him up on his way to the Winters home.

The white-faced butler admitted them, trembling like a leaf as he ushered them into the presence of young De Pew, a slender youth trying hard to appear manly in spite of his agitation. A moment later they were joined by Miss Dayton, the niece, a beautiful girl whose eyes were swollen and red from weeping, although she seemed to hold herself under better control than did the boy. The inspector briefly introduced The Master as one of his men versed in subtle poisons, brought along for the purpose of detecting if any such had been used in making away with the stranger found in the study.

A hasty examination of the dead man proved the correctness of young De Pew’s report. He was a rough appearing individual, evidently a laborer, far from the sort of person a man of Winters’ refinement and wealth would be likely to be on intimate terms with.

Mohammed Gunga arose from the stooping position over the dead man and turned to De Pew.

“Darius Lessman,” he said, in the conversational tone of one polished gentleman addressing another, “the time for unmasking is at hand! We meet at last! It is your soul or mine! Prepare yourself for the ordeal! Summon, if you are able, the powers of darkness. I warn you that behind me lies all of the great strength of the Holy Ones— and only you know what that means. Are you ready for the trial?”

For an instant there was silence. Then, with a wild shriek, the girl ran screaming from the room. Des Moines stepped back a pace, startled by the sudden accusation. Yet he knew the Master too well to doubt the correctness of his charges.

De Pew’s eyes glared angrily. He seemed about to leap at the throat of his accuser. Then, with a shrug of his thin shoulders, he chuckled— a throaty, diabolical, gleeful burst of mirth.

“As you wish, my dear Mohammed Gunga! As you wish. I will warn you, as you have warned me. I intend to kill you, damn you! Yes, and the infernal meddler with you, too. I’ll kill you as I killed the others.”

He rubbed his hands together gleefully, giving way again to his unholy mirth. “Yes, and, by God, I’ll use your carcasses as I used this piece of carrion on the floor, there. Think you that you can stop me— that you, in your littleness, can end a career such as mine? I am Lessman, The Man Who Can Not Die! I’ll be chief of police for a day! Ha! Ha! Yes, and I’ll wear the robes of The Master.

“Listen, fools. Meta, the woman I love, is she who has just left the room. Together, we killed Mrs. Winters— blasted her as we will blast you. Yes, I’ll blast you, curse you! I can throw my will across the continent. Think you, then, that you can defeat me? I got Des Moines here to end him, knowing that he would bring you along. With you gone, the world is mine!

“In the body of Mrs. Winters, Meta left this house. She came here in the body of Dolly, Ha! Ha! It was a puzzle for the fools of policemen, trying to figure out how the body of the maid got into the coffin of the mistress. I love puzzles. I worked it all out to attract your attention— as I knew it eventually would— my dear Mohammed Gunga. You were getting too close to my tracks— you and your hellish gang! With you gone, none will be left on this side of the water who can hope to match their strength with mine.

“My only regret is that I didn’t blast that damned salesman, Johnson, who blocked our game when we stole the brooch. I was the chauffeur, as you have already guessed. I grew tender-hearted— fool that I am. When he seized Meta, he forced her to quit the body she was occupying and enter that of the dead woman we had in the machine, ready for just such an emergency. I’ll get him yet, though, damn him!

“I killed Winters, inspector, the same night that I telephoned to you. Ha, it was funny. I left his body hidden in a room I keep downtown for just such purposes. Then I threw my soul across the space and into the body I now occupy in time to answer your telephone call. I knew that you would trace the call and seek to trap me. I wanted to puzzle you. It has been a real pleasure for me to play with you. For I give you credit for having more intelligence than the average detective. I knew that sooner or later, though, you would get beyond your depth and call for aid from Mohammed Gunga.

“Where is Winters’ body hidden now? That’s my business, fools! It’s hidden away where I can use it again if the occasion ever demands— after Meta and I get through using the Winters millions, possibly. Your policeman? O, yes, I killed him— blasted him from the automobile while I was talking to you. I kept my promise, did I not?

“And now, both of you, prepare to die! I, Lessman, the Man Who Will Not Die, will it!”

xiii

DES MOINES felt an icy sensation creep over him. Then came a peculiar numbness. He struggled against it. Clammy fingers seemed to clutch his throat! He was choking! He staggered like a drunken man, seeking an avenue of escape. A veil of darkness seemed to weigh upon his eyes. Tighter and tighter grew the bands about him. And, then, screaming like an hysterical woman, he fell to the floor, unconscious.

How long he lay there he never knew. Probably only a few seconds. He awakened suddenly. For an instant he imagined himself dead. He opened his eyes. Over him stood the Master, calm, self-reliant, facing the monster. Silently the two men, only a few yards apart, waged the greatest battle the world will ever know— the battle of wills— a duel between the Powers of Darkness and the forces of Good.

Slowly— slowly— slowly, Lessman seemed to weaken. Great drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. His breath came in asthmatic pants. He struggled to save himself, to concentrate his powerful will for a final effort, but in vain. Opposed to him was a will greater than his own—the united will of the thousands who had devoted their lives to the work of uplifting mankind—the will of the holy men of India.

His legs trembled. His fingers twitched jerkily. Then, as he sank to the floor, he made a final effort to escape. From his body emanated a thin vapor— an aura. It was his soul attempting flight. It spread across the room like a nauseous miasma, smoke-like, cloudy, repellent— hellish!

In response to The Master’s will, it drew itself together. Slowly— oh, so slowly— as if fighting to the very last, it drew nearer and nearer to the man to whose mind it acknowledged the mastery.

At last, it was but a tiny, smoky, grey ball of vapor. The Master held forth his hand and it hovered over his palm. He pressed his fingers together. When he opened them, a tiny particle of grayish power lay within his hand.

Through the house rang the bloodcurdling shriek of a woman—a single, despairing wail of anguish! Then, through the door floated another wraith. For a second it hesitated. Then it mingled with the ashes of its lover in the Master’s hand.

Mohammed Gunga blew upon his palm. The powder vanished into nothingness.

He extended his hand to Des Moines and assisted him to his feet.

“That is the end! Only you and I know the truth. Let us depart. The Monster is dead!”

___________________

13: The Devil Takes a Hand

Ward Sterling (Harold Ward)

Black Mask, September 1920

TENNANT STOPPED outside the door of his wife’s room and went over the details of his plan for the last time. The thing was so absurdly simple that he wondered why he had not thought of it months before. There was not the least chance of a failure. He had only to plant the idea in her diseased brain and she, with the cunning that all maniacs possess, would do the rest.

Everyone knew her suicidal mania. It had been brought out at the time of the hearing. No blame could possibly be attached to him for her death. Had not the nurse frustrated her in half a dozen different attempts? Damn that fool nurse anyway! She had too exalted an idea of the importance of her position.

But, after all, it was, possibly, a good thing that she had been so vigilant. People couldn’t say that it was carelessness, then. He smiled to himself as he recalled the kind things their friends had said when he refused to send his wife to an asylum after the court had pronounced her insane. They imagined that it was his great love that made him keep her with him. It was laughable how easily people could be fooled. How were they to know that he had made a careful investigation and found that too close a watch was kept on the inmates of such institutions? There was a better chance of her making a successful attempt right here at home. Accidents are always liable to happen in private houses; in public institutions people are paid to guard against such things.

Curse the fool law that prohibited a man getting a divorce from an insane wife. Such laws made a criminal of a person. Otherwise, he could have married Helen a year ago. He must guard against his love for her being found out. It might cause someone to cast suspicion his way.

Of course, they would never be able to confirm their conjectures. But his position in the community was too high to have even the finger of scorn pointed in his direction. It would never do for a deacon in the church and a prominent professional man to let people know that he was guilty of evil, even in thought.

No, he must keep away from Helen until he had shown the proper amount of respect for his deceased wife— for he had begun to think of her as already dead! After a period of hypocritical mourning, they could be quietly married— and he would still retain the love and respect of his fellow townsmen. Of course it meant several months’ waiting. It would be hard— but they would have the rest of their lives together— and both of them were young.

And there was the matter of Grace’s inheritance to be considered, too. Good thing they had never had a child. It would be all his now— that is, after the proper formalities had been gone through. Naturally, he would erect an expensive headstone to her memory and give her an elaborate funeral. Some people measured a man’s love for his wife by the amount of money he spent on her funeral.

Yes, the scheme was simply Machiavellian in its magnitude, and, with the requisite amount of attention paid to the details, there was not the least bit of danger.

He turned the knob and entered the room. With a tender kiss for the woman with lusterless eyes, who sat mumbling to herself in the low wicker chair, nervously picking at the folds of her dress, he turned to the middle-aged woman in nurse’s garb who sat in the window near by.

“Better take an hour’s walk, Miss Gorman,” he said kindly. “You look fagged out. I’ll look after Mrs. Tennant until you return.”

The nurse arose wearily.

“It’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Tennant. I am tired. She’s been bad again today,” she ended, significantly.

Tennant’s face took on a worried look.

“She’ll probably settle down again in an hour or so,” he responded. “I’ve a little work to do— I can do it just as well in the other room and still keep an eye on my poor little girl. There’s nothing around that she can get hold of, is there?”

He settled himself in a chair beside his wife and patted her white hand affectionately. With a tear in her kindly Irish eyes for the little, unostentatious display of love. Miss Gorman left the room and, a minute later, Tennant, from his place in the window, saw her swinging down the street.

The time was at hand.

ii

PRESSING his wife’s hand tightly between his own, Tennant addressed her in the tone one uses in talking to a little child.

“I’ve often wondered,” he said quietly, “why you didn’t commit suicide, Grace? Of course, I know that you’ve tried it, but your methods have been all wrong. Do you understand what I am getting at? I want to help you.”

He looked at the woman keenly. He imagined that her dull eyes took on an added brightness— that she was not plucking at the hem of her dress so nervously. He hurried on:

“Now, I’m going to show you how to do it, sweetheart. Then, when the nurse is out of the room, some day, for a few minutes, you can put one over on her. It’ll be a good joke on her, won’t it? Come on, and I’ll show you how to do it.”

Apathetically she arose and followed him across the floor to where the big, old-fashioned bed stood in the distant corner.

“Now, watch me, dearie, and see how I do it,” he continued. “The nurse thinks that she’s got you cheated by removing everything that you might use— but we’ll show her, won’t we?”

He removed the light counterpane from the bed and twisted it into a rope. “See, girlie, how it’s done? Just the right size to hang one’s self with, isn’t it? Now, then, we carry this chair across the room and put it under this chandelier. Get the idea?”

The demented woman made no answer. But Tennant knew that her suicidal mind was attracted by the scheme— that the seed planted in her brain was already sprouting. She followed close behind him, her dull, impassive eyes watching his every move.

He stepped upon the chair and attached the improvised rope to the chandelier.

“See how easy it is, dear?” he went on. “Now, next, we make a noose in the rope, like this— see? It’s just as easy as rolling off a log. Then we put the noose over our head and pull it up tightly about our neck. Understand, now? All that’s left is to kick the chair out from underneath— and the devil and all couldn’t keep a person from choking to death, could he?”

From his height atop the chair, he looked down upon the woman.

She was gazing up at him, fascinated, her eyes burning brighter now.

“The idea pleases you, doesn’t it, sweetheart?” he smiled.

She nodded understandingly.

Then, suddenly, she made a leap for the chair and tore it from beneath his feet! With a frightened yell, the man dropped to the end of the rope, his toes almost— but not quite— touching the floor.

The maniac stepped back with a shrill little cry of delight and watched him gyrate and whirl as the improvised rope twisted and untwisted itself. His mouth was open! His eyes bulged from their sockets! His tongue stuck out oddly. His breath came gurglingly, sobbingly, gaspingly. His face grew black and mottled. His legs and arms danced about curiously, twitchingly...

His peculiar antics filled her with delight. She forgot her depression in her new-found happiness. He was teaching her some new game. She clapped her hands together and shouted for more. And when he hung quiet, she seized him by the legs and swung him to and fro, yelling joyously.

And thus the nurse found them— the living and the dead— an hour later when she returned from her walk.

_____________________

14: The Deviltry of Dr. Waugh

Christopher B. Booth

1889-1950

Black Mask, September 1920

THE LEAKY RADIATOR of a flivver was responsible for the discovery. Judson Wheaton, a farmer living in the lower end of the county, was driving to the city when he shut off his overheated engine and climbed down into the dusty roadway. Some distance from the highway stood the Thatcher farmhouse, bleak, ugly and deserted, its pitiful shabbiness charitably hidden by the thick foliage of many maple trees.

Wheaton cursed again that people should build their houses so far from the thoroughfare.

“Now I’ve got to tramp all th’ way up that hill for water,” he lamented. A stranger in the neighborhood, he did not know that the place was deserted until he reached the top of the knoll and saw the windows staring vacantly down upon him.

“Just my luck!” he mourned; “probably not a bucket on the place.”

The hapless driver made his way along the weed-choked path around the side of the building. Suddenly, rooted in his tracks by horror, he let forth a yell of surprised terror.

Underneath one of the large trees was the body of a man, face turned to the sky. The eyes bulged wide and the muscles of the face were frozen into an expression of wild and livid fright.

A few feet from the body stood a smart limousine, an automobile of expensive make; on the doors were the neatly stenciled initials “K. A. W.”

Wheaton raced down the hill, stood in the centre of the roadway as he flapped his long arms up and down in a frantic signal to the motorist who was, at that moment, approaching from the north.

“Dead man up at that house!” he shrieked. “Dead man— think he’s murdered!”

Brake bands protesting, Dr. John Lake, a young practicing physician of a nearby suburb, brought his car to a grinding halt.

“Dead man you say? Up at the Thatcher place? That’s strange; it’s been deserted for two or three years.”

He eyed Wheaton with appraising eye; there were a number of road-houses along the highway which took no cognizance of the federal statute framed by a certain Mr. Volstead; the man was not intoxicated.

“I’m a doctor,” he added. “I’ll go up and see if he is dead.”

Wheaton shivered.

“Oh, he’s dead all right; I ain’t a doctor, but— I saw his face; I think he was— murdered.”

“You don’t live hereabouts, do you?” queried Dr. Lake. “Well, I would advise you to stick around until the coroner is called; it may save you another trip. Let’s go up and look things over.”

“I– I’ve seen enough, thank you,” said Wheaton, but, nevertheless, he plodded up the hill at Dr. Lake’s heels.

As the two men reached the open spot in the trees. Lake’s eyes widened in surprise as he caught sight of the luxurious limousine.

“Phew!” he whistled. “This is somewhat out of the ordinary; I thought it was just a common tramp.”

He hurried his steps; as he reached the body, the doctor’s head jerked forward in astonishment.

“Great Heavens!” he whispered in amazed awe. “Doctor Waugh!”

In the medical world the name of Dr. Kensaw Arlington Waugh was one to conjure with. A specialist of renown, he had lectured at the medical school from which Doctor Lake had been graduated and, although he did not know him except as a student would be expected to know a class instructor, it made death more of a personal matter and, for a moment, shattered his professional calm. He had always had a great admiration for the somewhat eccentric specialist.

“What a horrible death!” shuddered Dr. Lake. “I never saw such an expression on a human face!”

Mastering his emotions, he became at once his professional self. With deft fingers he searched for signs of violence; to his perplexity there was no wound, no laceration, not a single mark. Even the clothing bore no evidence of a violent struggle.

He decided that some instantaneous poison must have been used, probably cyanide, which, while it acts so quickly that the victim’s life is snapped like a tight-drawn thread, seizes the body in one quick, horrible convulsion and leaves the muscles as of stone. But he failed to find the tell-tale rigidity of tissues which he had expected.

“Not cyanide, that is certain,” he said in abstracted monologue. “Confounded queer business, eh, Wheaton?”

Farmer Weaton stood some feet away, back turned; it was apparent that he had no morbid liking for gruesome things.

Dr. Lake bent forward, his attention attracted by a faint abrasion on Dr. Waugh’s neck, a place less than two inches long under the chin and slightly below the ear where the skin had been rubbed nearly raw by some rough surface. Shaking his head in frank bewilderment, he walked over to Farmer Wheaton.

“Wheaton,” he said sternly, “why did you tell me that this man was murdered?”

Startled by the accusing, suspicious note in the young doctor’s voice, the farmer flushed.

“Because,” he said angrily, “a man with an expression like that on his face never died a natural death. Why— you don’t mean to tell me that he wasn’t murdered?”

“There’s not a single mark of violence, Mr. Wheaton.”

“Mebbe not, Doctor, but his face... it looks... it looks—” His voice dropped to a sepulchral whisper... like he had been scared to death!

“Nonsense!” snapped Dr. Lake impatiently. “Men aren’t scared to death— outside of book covers.”

“You’re a doctor, sir; I guess you know,” admitted the farmer humbly.

Dr. Lake absently creased his leather automobile gauntlets.

“Something devilish mysterious about this,” he said. “What could Dr. Waugh be doing out here at an old deserted farmhouse? A first-rate mystery, I call it. I tell you what you do: There’s a farm a quarter of a mile or so down the road. You go down there and telephone to Coroner Hopkins. I’ll look around a bit and wait for him. I feel quite an interest in this; Dr. Waugh was one of my instructors at medical college. I might be able to help a bit; the coroner is a feeble old man with a brain about as palsied as his hands. I’m afraid that if we depend on him, the law will be a long time in getting this thing solved.”

As Farmer Wheaton made his way back to the road again, Dr. Lake began a survey of the premises.

He mounted the rotting porch steps, the boards creaking under his weight. The branches of the trees, moved by a breeze, rustled against the weather-boarding of the old house.

“A fine, cheerful place at night, I’ll bet,” he muttered. “Somehow this begins to get on my nerves.”

The door which led into the tiny reception hall was ajar. From this old-fashioned entrance were three doors leading into as many rooms. As he opened the sagging door to the right, Dr. Lake paused in startled bewilderment, wondering if his imagination was playing him a trick.

The wall between two rooms had been ripped out, making of them one long apartment. The debris, chunks of plastering and scraps of lath, still littered the floor.

Across the length of the enlongated room had been laid what seemed a miniature railway track, perhaps half the width of a standard gauge railroad. The light steel rails were bolted to heavy pieces of lumber which served as cross-ties.

Resting on the rails were two cars, about seven feet in height, apparently constructed of steel. From where he stood in the doorway, Dr. Lake could see the facing end of one of the cars; from it protruded hundreds of sharp points, almost needle-like in their sharpness.

“Now wouldn’t this stump you!” exclaimed the doctor. “I’ll say that is a queer business— damned queer!”

In a confusion of uncertainty he advanced cautiously. The steel cars stood perhaps five feet apart. As he stepped nearer another gasp of surprise escaped his lips. The end of one of the cars, hidden from view until this moment, was caved in; the gaping hole exposed a crude framework of light lumber.

“Just a toy,” mused Dr. Lake. “Papier-mâché, or I miss my guess—just cardboard painted to look like steel.”

He examined the sharp steel points; they bent back harmlessly at the touch of his finger—also merely cardboard.

Closer examination showed, geared to the rear wheels of both cars, a toy motor such as might have delighted the heart of a child at Christmas time. The electric current for the motors was supplied by two wires which ran along the floor and connected with the track. The wires led to the wall and contact was completed by means of a massive switch which might easily have carried a high-voltage current instead of the weak stream of electricity which was generated by the dozen dry-cell batteries hidden in an adjoining closet.

Dr. Lake threw in the switch, the tiny motors hummed slowly and the mysterious cars edged forward; edged is the proper word, for the motion was barely perceptible. The cars made a speed of only one foot per minute.

“Huh! Nuttiest outfit I ever saw,” Lake mused. “Dr. Waugh dead as a hammer and this— this damned foolishness— I wonder what the answer is?”

As he slowly paced the floor, hands deep in his pockets and his face creased by thoughtful lines, he was suddenly aware of a further detail. Fastened from the ceiling was an iron ring and from the ring dangled a short length of rope, the end frayed as if parted under heavy strain. Fastened to the floor, in direct line with that in the ceiling, was another steel ring.

The young doctor started suddenly.

“By Jove!” he gasped. “Somebody was tied in the middle of that track— feet to the floor, rope from his neck to the ceiling.”

He remembered the faint abrasion under Dr. Waugh’s chin; a rope could have made that mark!

“Great God! The fiends!” shouted Dr. Lake, his voice echoing through the empty rooms. “They tied poor old Dr. Waugh to this track and—”

He shuddered at the picture which his mind swiftly drew—the picture of a man, ignorant of the make believe harmlessness, bound helpless as those cars creeped upon him.

The floor was thick with accumulated dust and the dirt film was broken by footprints, blurred in the spot about the steel ring in the floor, as if someone had nervously scraped his feet back and forth. The young doctor’s heart leaped with hope as he saw, also, the clear-cut impression of a man’s hand spread flat, fingers and thumb extended.

“Here’s where I turn detective,” mused Lake, remembering the camera in his car. “I’ll try my hand at a bit of photography. I’ve a notion that the hand, fingerprints and all, will photograph very well.”

At that moment a bit of sunshine, breaking through an open space between the maple trees, streamed into the room, lighting the shadows under the strange make-believe cars and glinting against a bit of yellow metal that lay there. Dr. Lake reached for it and found it to be a stickpin of rather fantastic design, something European without a doubt— the gold fashioned into a claw which grasped a blood ruby.

“Now,” breathed Lake with satisfaction, “if I’m going to turn detective, I think I’ve got something to work on.”

Lake had just finished taking his photograph of the fingerprints—and a glance at Dr. Waugh’s slim, tapering fingers was sufficient to tell him that the impression in the dust was not that of the dead man’s hand— when Coroner Hopkins, a bearded old patriarch who had held his office for many years, arrived, peering nearsightedly through a pair of thick-lensed glasses and shaking his head hopelessly.

“Oh, yes,” he greeted Dr. Lake; “you’re the young doctor from Alamont. They tell me that Doctor— Doctor Waugh is— is dead. Terrible business— can’t understand it— what would Dr. Waugh be doing out here? Answer me that! Terrible business— can’t understand it. And— what the devil is this contraption?”

His eyes, for the first time, caught sight of the cars. The young doctor explained what he had found.

“I am told that you have already examined, Doctor— the body,” pursued the aged coroner. “What do you find?”

Dr. Lake told him.

“Humph!” mourned the coroner sadly. “Queer business; I knew Dr. Waugh by reputation— a wonderful specialist, he was. Great loss to the medical profession— can’t understand it.”

“What do you propose to do?” ventured Dr. Lake.

Coroner Hopkins shook his head.

“I’m not so young as I used to be, young man. I generally name an assistant to perform an autopsy.”

“But,” protested Dr. Lake, “won’t you proceed with some sort of an investigation?”

“I’m not a detective, young man; I’m the coroner. I shall perform the autopsy, turn my findings over to the state’s attorney and examine what witnesses can be found. So far, Mr.— er— Wheaton, who found the body, is the only witness.”

Dr. Lake frowned impatiently.

“But, Mr. Coroner,” he insisted, “there’s a mystery here to be cleared up; we are outside of the city where expert detective talent is available. Of course the reporters for the city newspapers will take a hand at Sherlocking, but really something should be done.”

“What would you suggest?” demanded the coroner dryly.

Dr. Lake accepted the invitation eagerly.

“If you would deputize me, I would be glad to serve,” he replied. “Dr. Waugh was one of my instructors at medical school and I feel a very deep personal interest in this case. I should like to see no stone unturned—”

“You’re deputized, my young friend,” cut in Coroner Hopkins. “Be sworn.”

ii

DR. JOHN LAKE jeopardized his slim but growing practice by abruptly deserting his patients and plunging headlong into the Dr. Waugh mystery. He rushed to the city to delve into the incidents which had preceded the specialist’s death. Nor was he alone; a small army of reporters was encountered at every turn; he bumped into feature writers at every step. The city editors had gone frantic over the Dr. Waugh mystery; they printed columns upon columns of entertaining description and fruitless deductions; they plastered their pages with photographs of the Thatcher farmhouse and the mysterious “steel” cars.

The real estate agent who had the renting of the Thatcher farm in charge was able to throw no light on the mystery. He had rented the place by phone. He had received a money order for a year’s rent, sent in the name of “Julius Smith.” The lessee had never showed up to sign the papers. The Julius Smiths listed in the directory furnished ample proof that it must be some other “Julius Smith.”

The autopsy verified Dr. Lake’s first examination; there had been no violence done, no poison administered; there was no clot on the brain, no heart lesion.

It remained for Dr. Lake, armed with the stickpin which he had found at the Thatcher farmhouse, to find the only real clue and, for reasons of his own, this clue never got to the newspapers.

Dr. Waugh had no family; he lived alone in a house on Belden Avenue, attended by a servant named Samuels, a reticent and rather wooden-headed and non-observing man of near sixty.

The body of Dr. Waugh had been discovered on Thursday morning. Samuels related, for the benefit of Dr. Lake and reporters alike, that on Tuesday Dr. Waugh had brought home a young man of very shabby and disreputable appearance. The young man had worn a bandage about his eyes and Dr. Waugh had explained to Samuels that he was a patient, suffering from temporary blindness. This was unusual, for Dr. Waugh seldom treated charity patients and never at his home.

Samuels, due to the bandage about the young man’s face, could not supply any sort of an adequate description; about all that he was able to say was that he believed the man’s hair had been brown and that his chin was black with an untidy stubble of beard.

On Wednesday afternoon Dr. Waugh had dispatched Samuels to the bank with a check for five thousand dollars. This amount, in cash, Samuels had brought home and turned it over to the doctor. No trace of the money was found; it had vanished utterly.

Still later on Thursday Samuels was dispatched on another errand. When he departed, Dr. Waugh and his blind patient were in the house; when he returned both were gone. The specialist’s chauffeur furnished another link in the far from complete chain.

Dr. Waugh seldom drove his own car, but, at the time he left his Belden Avenue home for the last time, he had summoned his car from the nearby public garage where it was kept, dismissed the chauffeur, saying that he preferred to do his own driving that afternoon.

When Dr. Lake and Samuels were alone, the young doctor produced the stickpin which he had found in the Thatcher farmhouse.

“Samuels,” he said, “did this belong to Dr. Waugh?”

“No, sir,” said Samuels promptly, “but I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

“Well, sir, I ain’t much hand to notice things, but I did notice that pin. The blind young man that the doctor brought home with him was in a terrible condition, sir; his shoes were very badly broken and his clothing hung to him only in shreds. His linen was actually black, sir; he actually looked the tramp—a bum. Yet I noticed that he wore that stickpin; perhaps the reason I noticed it was that I could tell by the glance at it that it was a bit valuable and I wondered why he didn’t pawn it and get himself a clean shirt and a pair of shoes.”

Dr. Lake grinned triumphantly.

“My hunch wins!” he exulted. “Something told me the minute I found this pin that it was going to be a clue. By the way, Samuels, don’t say anything to the newspaper men about this stickpin. I want to work this out in my own way— if I can.”

“Very well, sir,” agreed Samuels obediently.

After a time the city editors began to lose interest in the Dr. Waugh case; the city detective bureau which had tried to render some little assistance soon found troubles of their own more pressing. Yet once and sometimes twice a week there appeared in the want-ads columns of the newspapers, under the “Lost and Found” classification, this advertisement:

FOUND—Gold stickpin, animal’s claw holding a stone. Will be returned to owner for cost of this advertisement.

The advertisement brought no response.

After several weeks had passed, Dr. Lake called upon Coroner Hopkins.

“Mr. Coroner,” he explained, “I’ve still got this stickpin that I found out at the Thatcher farmhouse, and I want your permission to keep it a while longer; I want to wear it in my necktie just as long as you will allow me to keep it.”

Coroner Hopkins stared at the young doctor in perplexity.

“I fail to grasp just what you mean,” he retorted. “If you are asking me to give you property which—”

“No, I don’t want the stickpin, Mr. Coroner; but it belonged to the man who knows how Dr. Waugh died. He wore that pin when he was ragged and perhaps hungry. I want to wear that pin three hundred and sixty-five days in the year and ten years if need be and give its owner the chance to see it in my tie. If the law of averages breaks my way, and if he’s still in the city, he’s going to see it— and the man who thought enough of that pin to wear rags rather than pawn it will make some effort to get it back.”

“Oh, I see,” snorted the coroner not without a sneer; “I see; you are still playing detective. Well, you are a persistent young fool, but it occurs to me that you’d better be spending a little more time with your medical practice.”

“Then I may keep the pin for a while longer?” asked Dr. Lake, eagerly.

“I’d forgotten you had it,” grunted the coroner. “By thunder. Doc, I do admire persistency!”

Dr. Waugh’s death occurred in June; it was the following September when Dr. Lake, his automobile in the repair shop with a cracked crank case, was forced to make a trip to the city, via trolley. His business took him to the north side and he boarded a crowded surface car at the interurban station. He did not observe that a well-dressed young man— apparently young despite the snow-white streaks through his hair— who had been going in the opposite direction, wheeled suddenly about and swung aboard just as the car got into motion.

Passengers were packed on the rear platform like proverbial sardines, and it might have easily been accidental that the young man lurched against John Lake just as the latter fished a handful of small coins from his pocket to pay his fare. The money fell in a shower to the floor and Lake glanced back in anger.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” murmured the young man in polite accents as he stooped to aid in collecting the spill.

“My fault,” he added. “Mighty sorry; matter of fact, though it’s a shame the way they pack the cars— seven cent fare, too.”

Lake growled agreement on this point.

“Fine weather, isn’t it?” pursued the young man— he was perhaps in his middle thirties— in the trite manner of the man who wished to drum up a conversation. Lake, ordinarily a friendly soul, was not in a conversational mood; he was on the point of turning his back coldly, when he saw that the stranger’s eyes were feasting hungrily on the stickpin; his heart skipped a beat.

“Yes,” he agreed, “fine weather, indeed. Live here?”

The stranger nodded.

“I was just noticing that pin in your tie,” he broke out eagerly. “Reminds me of one I saw once in Europe— belonged to a friend of mine; odd, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lake laconically agreed; “I presume that it is a trifle unusual; several people have commented on it. I got it in a rather odd way, too.”

The other man waited.

“Yes, bought it from a fellow who was down and out— got it rather cheap, but since I’ve had it I’ve become quite fond of it.”

“Oh,” said the other in evident disappointment, “you wouldn’t care to part with it then?”

“Probably not for what it’s worth.”

“W-what do you consider it— worth?” asked the white-haired young man.

“I hadn’t thought of pricing it; did you want to buy it?”

“Well, frankly, yes; you see I don’t care much for jewelry, but when I saw that pin— er— its counterpart in Europe— I fell quite in love with it. I might be willing to pay your price. Name it.”

“I don’t believe I’d care to part with it for less than five hundred—and that’s more than it’s worth, probably twice over.”

“I’ll take it,” replied the stranger with a contented sigh. “If you’ll get off the car with me, we’ll go to the bank and get the money.”

“Very well,” agreed Dr. Lake. “What bank?”

“The Liberty National.”

At the next block Dr. Lake and his companion left the car and Lake, suddenly remembering that he must telephone that he would be late for an appointment, hurried into a telephone booth at a corner drug store. He called the detective bureau and hastily explained matters.

When Dr. Lake and Justin Graham, as the young man had introduced himself, reached the Liberty National, two plainclothes men met them at the entrance. At a signal from Lake, they seized Graham’s arms.

“You are under arrest,” one of them announced with proper official solemnity.

Young Graham’s eyes widened and an unmistakable pallor crept into his cheeks.

“Under arrest!” he echoed. “What for?”

“For the murder of Dr. Kensaw Arlington Waugh,” declared John Lake.

Graham took a grip on himself; he glanced at the stickpin in the doctor’s tie and smiled.

“I see,” he said, smiling wryly, “you’re rather clever. Well, suppose we go to the station and talk it over. I’ll tell you about it— but it wasn’t murder.”

iii

IN THE OFFICE of the Chief of Detectives sat the Chief, Dr. Lake and Justin Graham. The prisoner was, perhaps, the coolest of the three, for both the Chief and Lake were excitedly eager— especially Lake.

“I’m glad to get it off my mind; glad to get it all cleared up,” Graham began without urging. “I’d better begin right at the beginning and tell you the whole thing. I’d be a fool to deny knowledge of the affair, for I read the newspaper accounts and I know that someone found and photographed my fingerprints; I suppose you still have them. It would be only silly for me to make a denial, for that would indicate that I have something to fear; I haven’t.”

He paused and turned to Dr. Lake.

“I remember you now from the pictures that appeared in the papers at the time; not very good pictures either. You are the doctor who first examined Dr. Waugh’s body. You found no evidence of foul play, did you?”

“You’re the man who’s being questioned, not I,” reminded Lake curtly.

“Yes, that’s true,” agreed Graham with a short laugh. “But you didn’t; you found no wound, no laceration, no evidence of a blow being struck, no poison, no diseased organism— nothing but failure of the heart to function. Isn’t that true?”

“Go ahead with your story,” growled Lake.

“I will,” pursued Graham, “hut I just wanted to remind you, in the beginning, that you are accusing me of murder when you have no evidence that a murder was committed.”

“We have evidence that something queer happened out at the Thatcher farm,” said John Lake with spirit.

“Yes, that’s true, and I’m going to clear that up for you; it’s a mighty queer business, as you say. Well, here goes; I’ll make it as much to the point as possible.”

“On the sixth of June I was broke and hungry— starving. I could starve but I couldn’t beg. My life was a failure; I was in debt. It began when I wandered out to Lincoln Park; I was walking along the lagoon and, as I came to a bridge a couple passed me; they were talking about the bridge.”

“That’s ‘Suicide Bridge’ and they’re going to tear it down next month; more than fifty people have jumped from it since it was built during the Chicago World’s Fair.”

“Until that moment, I had not thought of suicide, but the idea took hold of me and, try as I would, I could not shake it off. I tried to walk away from ‘Suicide Bridge,’ but the power of suggestion was too strong. A park policeman came along; ‘Don’t do it, buddy,’ he said. I pretended that I didn’t know what he meant and he went on. When he disappeared I began to climb the steps to the bridge. A voice behind me stopped me.

“I turned around, and there was a well-dressed man of about sixty, with a close-cropped vandyke beard, hurrying toward me—”

“Dr. Waugh!” interjected Lake.

“Exactly,” agreed Graham. “I waited for him to come up.”

“‘Why are you going to kill yourself?’ he asked me.

“‘None of your damn business,’ I told him.

“‘Come with me,’ he said; ‘you need a square meal.’

“I went along with him. After the meal, as we sat in a quiet corner of the rather cheap restaurant, he made me his proposition. As near as I can remember it, he said:

“‘Life means nothing to you, for you were about to kill yourself. I want to make a bargain with you. I want to engage in a sort of an adventure; it may cost you your life, it may not— you’ll have to take that chance. If you live through it, you will be five thousand dollars the richer; if it costs you your life the five thousand will be disposed of as you see fit. That’s my proposition; I shall tell you no more. Take it or leave it.’

“I thought it over. He was right; life meant nothing to me. He was offering me the chance to at least quit the world with a clean slate—it would square up my debts and a little besides. I accepted his proposition.

“He telephoned for his automobile and, while we waited, took me into the washroom of the restaurant where he bandaged my eyes.

“‘I’ll have to blindfold you,’ he explained; ‘it’s part of the agreement.’

“When we got into the car we drove for a short time and stopped. We went up some steps; it was the house where he lived. I heard him tell a servant, whose name was Samuels, that I was blind and that he was going to treat me. I might as well have been blind, for there wasn’t a ray of light through those bandages.

“Almost at once he had me undress and put me through a physical examination, especially testing my heart.

“‘Sound as an ox,’ I heard him say after he used the stethoscope. ‘Perfect heart; that’s fine.’

“I spent the night at the house and the next day he sent to the bank for the five thousand dollars. An hour or so after that he gave me some decent clothes— some of his I think they were, for we were of about the same build— and led me out to his automobile. He drove himself and I sat on the front seat with him. We went downtown and he allowed me to remove the bandages from my eyes. Then I went into a bank— alone— and deposited the five thousand dollars with instructions as to where to send it if I did not call for it within a week. I got back into the car with him and he seemed much relieved.

“‘I was afraid you’d try to give me the slip after you had the money,’ he said. That hadn’t occurred to me; I had too much curiosity anyway—I had to see it through.

“After we left the downtown districts he wrapped the bandages on again and we drove for a long time. I could tell by the atmosphere that it was nightfall. We had left the boulevards and were jolting over rough country roads. At last we stopped and he led me through high grass and weeds; my feet got all tangled up in them.

“He took me into a house and I knew by the musty smell that no one had lived there for some time and I knew by the hollow way that our footsteps echoed through the place that it was unfurnished. We had not walked very far when I stumbled over something which barked my shin. Before I knew what happened, a rope dropped over my neck and was drawn tight. Instinctively I clawed at the thing which was cutting into the flesh of my neck, but he seized my arms and, although I struggled, he succeeded in tying them behind me. Of course that made me helpless. I couldn’t offer much resistance when he grabbed my legs and tied my ankles— tied my feet to the floor.

“I hadn’t bargained for anything like this and, to be frank, I was very much afraid— afraid of an unknown something that I could not see. I imagine that I screamed in my fright, but he only laughed at me.

“‘Shout all you want,’ he said; ‘no one can hear you.’

“Then he took off the bandages. The room was in semi-darkness, lighted only by two flickering candles and, for a moment, I could not make things out clearly. You know what I saw— those railroad cars, looming up in the gloom and the candlelight shining on those points which stuck out from the end of each car. I was tied, standing upright, in the middle of the track. I couldn’t move, for the rope about my neck kept me in one position.

“‘Great God!’ I shouted. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

“‘I am going to kill you,’ he said. ‘Oh, come, my young friend; you were willing enough to die yesterday. I am cheating you of nothing; you will get the five thousand dollars— and death.’

“‘Perhaps you realize what will happen,’ he went on. ‘Those steel cars will move toward you at the rate of one foot per minute; in fifteen minutes those steel points will prick your flesh and then— they will slowly, slowly— Ha! I see you understand—’

“He was right; I did understand. I won’t burden you gentlemen with the horrors of it. I won’t try to tell you the torment that was mine— I couldn’t and I don’t like to think of it. I— sometimes I dream of it now; it’s hell!

“I begged him to shoot me— anything. I knew that he was a madman— some impossible creature in real life stepped right out from a page of Poe. As I begged for mercy he snapped on the electric switch and I could see those cars vibrate a little; they seemed to leap toward me.

“He left the room without a word, leaving me there with that devilish death trap, as ingenious a thing of torture as the ‘Pit and the Pendulum.’

“It could not have been long, but it seemed like hours. At last those cars were close enough that, had my arms been free, I could have reached out and touched them. I began to pray and as I prayed I strained at my bonds until the rope cut into my wrists and into the flesh of my neck. I was slowly choking myself to death and, just as I was losing consciousness, I had the sensation of falling. Suddenly the breath rushed back into my bursting lungs and the blackness before my eyes cleared. I had, indeed, fallen; the rope from the ceiling must have been very rotten for it had parted under the strain. The weight of my body had smashed in one of those fiendish make-believe cars.

“Something pricked my wrists; it was a nail and I patiently worked away, severing strand after strand, until my numbed arms were free. It was then but the matter of a moment to loosen the knots which bound my ankles.

“There isn’t much more to tell, gentlemen; I—”

“But Dr. Waugh—” eagerly broke in John Lake. “How did he—”

Young Graham smiled shrewdly.

“Oh, yes, I’m getting to that, doctor. When I slipped out of the house, Dr. Waugh was sitting in his limousine, calmly smoking and— reading! In a sudden burst of anger, I made up my mind to kill him!”

“Ah!” breathed the Chief of Detectives; “so you admit—”

“That I killed him? Indeed, no, Chief,” denied Justin Graham. “I— er— changed my mind.

“The door of the limousine was open and I slipped across the grass and had seized him before he knew it. Even as my fingers were about his throat I realized that he must be an irresponsible lunatic and that there could be no justice in slaying him. I decided to truss him up, drive him to the city and turn him over to the authorities that a test might be made of his sanity.

“He begged me not to kill him and— then he told me.

“He told me that he was a physician; he said that he had always taken the position that a normal, sound man could literally be scared to death. He told me that other physicians differed with him, arguing that so-called death from fright could occur only when there was a weak heart.

“The desire to prove his contention became an obsession with Dr. Waugh and he decided to prove it. He rented this farm, and set up his play railroad and began to search for a subject. He was hunting, in fact, when he stopped me from jumping from ‘Suicide Bridge.’ He justified himself on the ground that I would have ended my life anyhow and that I had lost nothing.

“When I realized that Dr. Waugh was not, after all, an irresponsible maniac, my anger returned. That a physician whose life should be dedicated to the relief of human suffering should subject any man— regardless of how lightly he valued life— to the inhuman mental torture that I had endured, all for the sake of proving a silly, unimportant medical theory!

“I had pinned Dr. Waugh to the ground. There was a rope in his tool box. Quickly I passed one end of it about his neck and fastened it to a tree; the other end I tied to his feet and to the rear axle of the automobile.”

“Great God!” cried John Lake. “You were going to—”

Justin Graham did not answer.

“I got into the car,” he continued; “I put my foot on the electric starter button; the engine roared and then— I shut off the engine, but—”

Doctor Lake jumped to his feet.

“But Dr. Waugh was dead!” he finished the sentence. “You killed him; you murdered him— in cold blood! You— you scared him to death!”

Graham met the accusing gaze calmly.

“I think that most doctors will contend that a man— a man with a normal heart— cannot be frightened to death,” he said quietly.

Doctor Lake eyed the prisoner intently.

“You’re a medic yourself,” he accused.

“Do you think so?” smiled Graham.

“Do I think so?” thundered John Lake. “I know so! Naturally I have read between the lines of your story— just as you intended that I should. Oh, you’re a clever fiend! You gave Dr. Waugh the same chance that he gave you; you tested his heart as he lay there on the ground—probably you used his own stethoscope. You got into the automobile, started the motor with the deliberate intention of— of letting Dr. Waugh prove his own theory. It was deliberate murder!”

“I hardly think you can prove that in— in court,” suggested Graham.

“I know damned well I can’t,” shouted Lake. “You, as cold-blooded a slayer as a man who ever fired a pistol, are safe from the law. So far as the law is concerned, the Waugh case is closed— he died from heart failure. Here’s your stickpin. Get out!”

The Chief of Detectives was nodding his agreement with Lake’s position; the Chief was eyeing Graham curiously.

“Hum!” he rumbled. “Mr. Graham has your— er— hair been white long?”

“Since— since that night,” Justin Graham replied.

The door closed.

“Do you know, Lake, I don’t blame Graham— much,” muttered the Chief.

John Lake stared out of the window.

“Well, Chief,” he said, “perhaps I don’t either— much.”

__________________

15: The Skull
Harold Ward

Weird Tales, March 1923

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 quite 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 frighted blacks, he reëntered 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 lying 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 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 supposed I'm hurtin' your delicate feelings 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'd 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 his 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 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 starring 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  vistage  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, the 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 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 check up 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 safety, 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 Malatita," Donaldson remarked, shading his eyes from the glare of the sun.  "Didn't know he ever got this far. 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 guest, 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 the 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 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.

_______________________

16: The  Thing of a Thousand Shapes

Otis Adelbert Kline

1891-1946

Weird Tales Vol 1, Nos 1 and 2, 1923

Text from Wikisource

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 doubt. 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 comer of the room, and after the silent watcher had greeted me with a handclasp 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 physican. 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 far-away 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 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 awakened 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 gallped 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 thongs, 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 glaces 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.

The 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 telephone 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 night's 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 countryside, 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 help my attention:

And, Billy, my boy, don't worry any more about the mony I advanced you. It was, as you say, a considerable drain 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 the sunset slowly fading, I wished that I, Joshua, might cause the sun and moon to stand still.

Twilight came on all too quickly, accelerated by a 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-nigh, 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 pitch 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 my usual custom on starting a book, I read the author's introduction. He began by expressing the wish that 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 materialization 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 a 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 experience by a doomed bird or animal looking 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 , form time to time, and again withdraw them quickly in 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, knitted club.

Gradually it became more manlike and less apeliek. The club changed to a spear, the spear to a sword, and I beheld a Roman soldier, full 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 windows 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 through the glass. The rain was coming in 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 windows 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?

iii

THE STORM slowly abated, and finally died down altogether, succeeded by a dead calm.

An hour passed without incident, to my inestimable relief. I believed that the phenomena had passed with the storm. The thought soothed me. I became drowsy, and was soon asleep.

Fitful dreams disturbed my slumber. It seemed that I was walking in a great primeval forest. The trees and vegetation about me were new and strange. Huge ferns, some of them fifty feet in height, grew all about in rank profusion. Under foot was a soft carpet of moss. Giant fungi, colossal toadstools, and mushrooms of varying shades and forms were everywhere.

In my hand I carried a huge knotted club, and my sole article of  clothing seemed to be a tiger skin, girded about my waist and falling half way to my knees.

A queer-looking creature, half rhinoceros, half horse, ran across my pathway. Following closely behind it, in hot pursuit was a huge reptilian monster, in outline something like a kangaroo, in size larger than the largest elephant. Its monstrous serpentlike head towered more than twenty-five feet in the air as it suddenly stopped and stood erect on its hind feet and tail, apparently giving up the chase.

Then it spied me. Quick as a flash, I turned and ran, dodging hither and thither, floundering in the soft moss, stumbling over tangled vines and occasionally overturning a mammoth toadstool. I could hear the horrible beast crashing through the fern brakes, only a short distance behind me.

At last I came to a rocky hillside, and saw an opening about two feet in diameter. Into this I plunged headlong, barely in time to escape the frightful jaws which closed behind me with a terrifying  snap. I lay on the ground, panting for breath, in the far corner of the cave and just out of reach of the ferocious monster. It appeared to be trying to widen the opening with its huge front feet...

Someone had laid a hand on my arm and was gently trying to awaken me. The cave and the horrible reptile disappeared, and I was again in my uncle's living-room. I turned, expecting to see Mrs. Rhodes, but saw no one.

There was, however, a hand on my arm. It ended at the wrist in a sort of indescribable, filmy mass. I was now fully awake, and somewhat startled, as may be imagined. The hand withdrew and seemed to float through the air to the other side of the room.

I now observed in the room a sort of white vapor, from which other hands were forming. Soon there were hands of all descriptions and sizes. They were constantly in motion, some of them flexing the fingers as if to try the newly-formed muscles, others beckoning, and still others clasped in pairs, as if in greeting.

There were large, horny masculine hands, daintily-formed womanly hands, and active, chubby little hands like those of children. Some of them were perfectly modeled. Others, apparently in the process of formation, looked like floating bits of chiffon, while still others had the appearance of flat, empty gloves.

Two well-developed hands now emerged from the mass and moved a few feet toward me. They waved as if attempting to attract my attention, and then I could see they were forming letters of the deaf and dumb alphabet. They spelled my name:

"B-I-L-L-Y."

Then:

"S-A-V-E  M-E B-I-L-L-Y."

I managed to ask, "Who are you?"

The hands spelled:

"I  A-M—"

Then they were withdrawn, with a jerk, into the group.

I could now see a new transformation taking place. The hands were drawn together, dissolving into a white, irregular fluted column, surmounted by a dark, hairy looking mass. A bearded face seemed to be forming at the top of the column, which was now widening out considerably, taking on the semblance of a human form. In a moment a white-robed figure stood there, the eyes turned upward and inward as if in fear and supplication, the arms extended toward me.

The apparition began slowly to advance in my direction. It seemed to glide along as if suspended in the air. There was no movement of walking, just a slow, floating motion.

The phantom, when at the other end of the room, had seemed frightful enough, but to see it coming toward me was unnerving— terrifying.  The nearer it approached, the more horrible it seemed, and the more firmly I appeared rooted to the spot.

Soon it was towering above me. The eyes rolled downward and seemed to look through mine into my very brain. The arms were extended to encircle me, when the instinct of self-preservation came to my rescue.

I acted quickly, and apparently without volition. Overturning my chair and rushing from the room, I ran out the front door and down the pathway. I did not dare look back, but rushed blindly forth into the night.

Suddenly there was a brilliant glare of light. Something stuck me with considerable force, and I lost consciousness.

When I regained my senses I was lying in a bedroom, the room I had occupied in my uncle's house.

A beautiful girl was bending over me, bathing my fevered forehead from time to time with cold water. Sunlight was streaming in at the window. Outside, a robin was singing his morning song, his farewell to the Northland, no doubt, as the stinging snow-laden winds of winter must soon drive him southward.

I attempted to sit up, but sank back with a groan, as a sharp pain shot through my right side.

My fair attendant laid a soft hand on my brow.

"You mustn't do that again," she said. "The telephone wires are down, so father has driven to town for the doctor."

Memories of the night returned. The apparition— my rush down the pathway— the blinding light— the sudden shock— and then oblivion.

"Do you mind telling me," I asked, "what it was that knocked me out, and how you came so suddenly to my rescue?"

"It was our car that knocked you out," she replied, "and it was no more than right that I should do what I could to make you comfortable until the doctor arrives."

"Please tell me your name— won't you?— and how it all happened."

"My name is Ruth Randall. My father is Albert Randall, dean of the local college. We had motored to Indianapolis, intending to spend the week-end with friends, when we were notified of your uncle's death. He and my father were bosom friends, and together conducted many experiments in psychical research. Naturally we hurried home at once, in order to attend the funeral.

"We expected to make Peoria by midnight, but the storm came, and the roads soon were almost impassable. It was only by putting on chains and running at low speed most of the time that we were able to make any progress. Just as we were passing this house, you rushed in front of the car.

"Father says it is fortunate that we were compelled to run at low speed, otherwise you would have been instantly killed. We brought you to the door and aroused the housekeeper, who helped us get you to your room. Father tried to phone for a doctor, but it was no use, as the lines were torn down by the storm, so he drove to town for one. I think that is he coming now. I hear a motor in the driveway."

A few moments later two men entered— Professor Randall, tall, thin, slightly stooped, and pale of face, and Doctor Rush of medium height and rather portly. The doctor wore glasses with very thick lenses, through which he seemed almost to glare at me. He lost no time in taking my pulse and temperature, pushing the pocket thermometer into my mouth with one hand, and seizing my wrist with the other.

He removed the thermometer from my mouth, then, holding it up to the light and squinting for a moment said  "Humph,"  and proceeded to paw me over in search of broken bones. When  he started manhadling my right side I winced considerably. He presently located a couple of fractured ribs.

After a painful half-hour, during which the injured ribs were set, he left me with instructions to keep as still as possible, and let nature do the rest.

The professor lingered for a moment and I asked him to have Doctor Rush examine my uncle's body for signs of decomposition, as it was now more than three days since his death.

Miss Randall, who had left the room during the examination, came in just as her father was leaving, and said nice, sweet, sympathetic things, and fluffed up my pillow for me and smoothed back my hair; and if the doctor had taken my pulse at that moment he would have sworn my auricles and ventricles were racing each other for the world's championship.

"After all," I thought, "having one's ribs broken is not such an unpleasant experience."

Then her father, entered— and my thoughts were turned into new channels.

"Doctor Rush has made a thorough examination," he said, "and can find absolutely no sign of decomposition on your uncle's body. He frankly admits that he is puzzled by this condition, and that it is a case entirely outside his previous experience. He states that, from the condition of the corpse, he would have been led to believe that death took place only a few hours ago."

"If you can spare the time," I said, "and if it is not asking too much, I should like to have you spend the day with me. I have much to tell you, and many strange things have happened on which I sorely need your advice and assistance. Joe Severs can take the doctor home."

The professor kindly consented to stay, and his daughter went downstairs to locate Joe and his flivver.

"The things of which I am about to tell you," I began, "may seem like the visions of an opium eater, or the hallucinations of a deranged mind. In fact, they have even made me doubt by own sanity. However, I must tell someone, and as you are an old and valued friend of my uncle's, I feel that whether or not you accept my story as a verity you will be a sympathetic listener, and can offer some explanation— if, indeed, it be possible to explain such singular happenings."

I then related in detail everything that had happened since my arrival at the farm up to the moment when I rushed head long in front of his automobile.

He listened attentively, but whether he believed my narrative or not I could not tell. When I had finished, he asked many questions about the various phenomena I had witnessed, and seemed particularly interested when I told him about the disappearance of the bat. He asked me where the book, which had been used to dispatch the creature, might be found, and immediately went downstairs, bringing it up a moment later.

A dry, white smudge was still faintly discernible on the cover. This he examined carefully with a pocket microscope, then said:

"I will have to put this substance under a compound microscope, and also test it chemically in my laboratory. It may be the means of explaining all of the phenomena you have witnessed. I will drive home this afternoon and make a thorough examination of this sample."

"I should be very glad indeed," I replied, "to have even some slight explanation of these mysteries."

"You are undoubtedly aware," he said "that there are no vampires or similar bats indigenous to this part of the world. The only true vampire bat is found in South America, although there is a type of frugivorous  bat slightly resembling it, which inhabits the southeast coast of Asia and Maylayan Archipelago, and is sometimes erroneously called a vampire or spectre bat. You have described in detail a creature greatly resembling the true vampire bat, but it is probable that what you saw was no bat at all. What it really was, I hesitate to say until I have examined the substance on this book cover."

"Well, whatever it was, I am positive it was no real vampire, as Glitch says," I replied.

"I don't like this vampire story that is being circulated by Glitch," said the professor. "It may lead to trouble. It is most surprising to find such crude superstition prevailing in these modern times."

At this juncture there was a rap at my door. I called, "come in," and Joe Severs entered.

"Well, Joe, did you get the doctor home without shaking any of his teeth loose?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, I got him home all right, but that ain't what I come to tell you about," he replied. "There's a heap of trouble brewin' around these parts an' I thought I better let you know. Somebody's sick in nearly every family in the neighborhood, an' they're sayin' Mr. Braddock is the cause of it. They're holdin' an indignation meetin' up to the school house now."

"This is indeed serious," said the professor. "Do you know what they propose to do about it?"

"Can't say as to that, but they're sure some riled up about it," replied Joe.

Mrs. Rhodes came in with my luncheon, and announced to the professor that Miss Ruth awaited him in the dining-room below, whereupon he begged to be excused. Joe went out murmuring something about having to feed the horses, and I was left alone to enjoy a very tasty meal.

iv

A HALF hour later the housekeeper came in to remove the dishes, and Miss Randall brought me a huge bouquet of autumn daisies.

"Father has driven to town to analyze a sample of something or other that he has found," she said, "and in the meantime I will do my best to make the hours pass pleasantly for you. What do you want me to do? Shall I read to you?"

"By all means," I replied. "Read or talk, or do anything you like. I assure you I am not hard to amuse."

"I think I shall read," she decided. "What do you prefer? fiction, history, mythology, philosophy? Or perhaps," she added, "you prefer poetry."

"I will leave the selection entirely to you," I said. "Read what interests you, and I will be interested."

"Don't be too sure of that," she answered, and went down to my uncle's library.

She returned a few moments later with several volumes. From a book of Scott's poems, she chose "Rokeby" and soon we were conveyed, as if by a magic carpet, to medieval Yorkshire with its moated castles, dense forests, sparkling streams, jutting crags and enchanted dells.

She had finished the poem, and we were chatting gaily, when Mrs. Rhodes entered.

"A small boy brought this note for you, sir," she said, handing me a sealed envelope.

I tore it open carelessly, then read:

Mr. William Ansley.

Dear Sir:

Owing to the fact that at least one member of nearly every family in this community has been smitten with peculiar malady, in some instances fatal, since the death of James Braddock, and in view of the undeniable evidence that the corpse  of the aforesaid had become a vampire, proven by certain things which you, in company with two respected and veracious neighbors witnessed, an indignation meeting was held today, attended by more than one hundred residents, for the purpose of discussing ways and means of combating this terrible menace to the community.

Tradition tells us that there are two effective ways for disposing of a vampire. One is by burning the corpse of the offender, the other is by burial with a stake driven through the heart. We have decided on the latter as the more simple and easily carried out.

You are therefore directed to convey the corpse to the pine grove which is situated a half mile back from the road on your uncle's farm, where you will find a grave ready dug, and six men who will see that the body is properly interred. You have until eight o'clock his evening to carry out these instructions.

To refuse to do as directed will avail you nothing.  If you do not bring the body we will come and get it.  If you offer resistance, you do so at your peril, as we are armed, and we mean business.

The Committee.

P.S. No use to try to telephone or send a messenger for help. Your wires are out of commission and the house is surrounded by armed sentinels.

As the professor had predicted, this was indeed a most serious turn of events. I turned to Mrs. Rhodes.

"Where is the bearer of this letter?' I asked. "Did he wait for a reply?"

"It was given to me by a small boy." she answered. "He said that if you wished to reply, to put your letter in the mail-box, and it would be given to the right party. There was a closed automobile waiting for him in front of the house, and he ran back to it and was driven away at high speed."

"I must dress and go downstairs at once," I said.

"You must do no such thing," replied Miss. Randall. "The doctor's orders are that you must keep perfectly quiet until your ribs heal."

I heard a swift footfall on the stairs, and a moment later the professor entered the room, very much excited.

"Two farmers," he said, "poked shotguns in my face and searched me on the public highway. That's what just happened to me!"

"What do you suppose they were after?" I asked.

"They did not make themselves clear on that point, and they didn't take anything, so I am at a loss to explain their conduct. They merely stopped me, felt through my pockets and searched the car: then told me to drive on."

"Perhaps this will throw some light on their motive," I said, handing him the letter.

As he read it a look of surprise came over his face.

"Ah! It is quite plain, now. These were the armed guards mentioned in the postscript. It seems incredible that such superstition should prevail in this enlightened age; however, the evidence is quite too plain to be questioned. What is to be done?"

"Frankly, I don't know," I replied. "We are evidently so well watched that it would be impossible for anyone to go for help. Of course, they cannot harm my deceased uncle by driving a stake through the corpse, but to permit these barbarians to carry out their purpose would be to desecrate the memory of the best friend I ever had."

"What are they going to do?" asked Miss Randall in alarm. I handed her the letter. She read it hastily, then ran downstairs to see if the telephone was working.

"What would you say if I were to tell you there is a strong possibility that your uncle's body is  not  a corpse; or, in other words, that he is not  really dead?" asked the professor.

"I would say that if there is the slightest possibility of that, they will make a corpse of me before they stage this vampire funeral," I replied, starting to dress.

"I am with you in that," said he, extending his hand, "and now let us examine the evidence."

"By all means," I answered.

"According to the belief of most modern psychologists," he began, "every human being is endowed with two minds. Ones is usually termed the objective, or conscious mind, the other the subjective, or subconscious mind. Some call it the subliminal consciousness. The former controls our waking hours, the latter is dominant when we are asleep.

"You are, no doubt, familiar with the functions and powers of the objective mind, so we will not discuss them. The powers of the subjective mind, which are not generally known or recognized, are what chiefly concern us in this instance.

"My belief that your uncle is not really dead started when I first heard your story. It was later substantiated by two significant facts. I will take up the various points in their logical order, and you may judge for yourself as to whether or not my hypothesis is fully justified.

"First, upon seeing him lying in the casket, you involuntarily exclaimed, 'He is not dead— only sleeping.' This apparently absurd statement, unsubstantiated by objective evidence, was undoubtedly prompted by your subjective mind. One of the best know powers of the subjective mind is that of telepathy, the communication of thoughts or ideas form mind to mind, without the employment of physical means. This message was apparently impressed so strongly on your subjective mind that you spoke it aloud, automatically, almost without the subjective knowledge that you were talking. Assuming that it was a telepathic message, it must necessarily have been projected by  some other mind.  May we not, therefore, reasonably supposed that the message came from the subjective mind of you uncle?

"Then the second message. Was it not plainly from someone who knew you intimately, someone in dire need? You will recall that, just before you fell asleep, you seemed to hear the words, 'Billy! Save me, Billy.'

"And now, as to the phenomena: I must confess that I was somewhat in doubt, at first, regarding these. Not that I questioned your veracity in the least, for no man rushed blindly in front of a moving automobile without sufficient cause, but the sights which you witnessed were so striking and unusual that I felt sure they must have been hallucinations. On second thought, however, I decided that it would be quite out of the ordinary for you and two other men to have the same hallucinations. It was therefore, apparent that you had witnessed genuine materialization phenomena.

"The key to the whole situation, however, lay in the seemingly insignificant smudge on the book cover. Two years ago your uncle advanced a theory that materialization phenomena were produced by a substance which he termed 'psychoplasm.' After listening to his argument, I was convinced that he was right. Since then, we have attended numerous materialization seances, with the object of securing a sample of this elusive material for examination. It always disappears instantly when bright light is flashed upon it,  or when the medium is startled or alarmed, and our efforts in this direction have always been fruitless.

"Needless to say, when you described the deposit left on the book by the phantasmic bat, I was intensely interested. Microscopic examination and analysis show that this substance is something quite different from anything I have ever encountered. While it is undoubtedly organic, it is nevertheless remarkably different, in structure and composition, from anything heretofore classified, either by biologists or chemists. In short, I am convinced it is that substance which has eluded us for so long, namely, psychoplasm.

"No doubt you will wonder what bearing this has on the question under discussion-that is, whether or not your uncle still lives. As far as we are able to learn, psychoplasm is produced only by, or through,  living  persons, and in nearly every instance it occurs only when the person acting as medium is in a state of catalepsy, or suspended animation. As most of the manifestations took place in the room where your uncle's body lay, and as he is the only one in the house likely to be in that state, I assume that your uncle's soul still inhabits his body.

"The final point, and by no means the least important is that in spite of the time which has elapsed since his alleged death— in spite of that fact that it lay in a warm room without refrigeration or embalming fluid— our uncle's body shows absolutely no sign of decomposition."

"But how is it possible," I asked, "for a person in a cataleptic stated to simulate death so completely as to deceive the most competent physicians?"

"How such a thing is possible, I cannot explain any more than I can tell you how psychopalsm is generated. The wonderful powers of the subjective entity are truly amazing. We can only deal with the facts as we find them. Statistics show that no less that one case a week of suspended animation is discovered in the United States. There are, no doubt, hundreds of other cases which are never brought to light. As a usual thing, nowadays, the doctor no sooner pronounces the patient dead than the undertaker is summoned. Needless to say, when the arteries have been drained and the embalming fluid injected, there is absolutely no chance of the patient coming to life."

Together, we walked downstairs and entered the room where Uncle Jim lay. We looked carefully, minutely, for some sign of life, but none was apparent.

"It is useless," said the professor, "to employ physical means at this time. However, I have an experiment to propose, which, if successful, may prove my theory. As I stated previously, you are, no doubt, subjectively in mental  enrapport  with your uncle. Your subjective mind constantly communicates with his, but you lack the power to elevate the messages to your objective consciousness. My daughter has cultivated to some extent the power of automatic writing. You can, no doubt, establish rapport with her by touch. I will put the questions."

Miss Randall was called, and upon our explaining to her that we wished to conduct an experiment in automatic writing, she readily consented. Her father seated her at the library table, with pencil and paper near her right hand. He then held a small hand mirror before her, slight above the level of her eyes, on which she fixed her gaze.

When she had looked steadily at the mirror for a short time he made a few hypnotic passes with his hands, whereupon she closed her eyes and apparently fell into a light sleep. Then, placing the pencil in her right hand, he told me to be seated beside her, and place my right hand over her left. We sat thus for perhaps  ten minutes, when she began to write, very slowly at first, then gradually increasing in speed until the pencil fairly flew over the paper. When the bottom of the sheet had been reached a new one was supplied, and this was half covered with writing before she stopped.

The professor and I examined the resulting manuscript. Something about it seemed strangely familiar to me. I remember seeing those words in a book I had picked up in that same room. On making a comparison, we found that she had written, word for word, the introduction to my uncle's book, "The Reality of Materialization Phenomena."

"We will now ask some questions," said the professor.

He took a pencil and paper and made a record of his questions the answers to which were written by his daughter. I have copied them verbatim, and present them below.

Q: "Who are you that writes?"

A: "Ruth."

Q: "By whose direction do you write?"

A: "Billy."

Q: "Who directs Billy to direct you to write as you do?"

A: "Uncle Jim."

Q: "How are we to know that it is Uncle Jim?"

A: "Uncle Jim will give proof."

Q: "If Uncle Jim will tell us something which he knows and we do not know, but which we can find out, he will have furnished sufficient proof. What can Uncle Jim tell us?"

A: "Remove third book from left top shelf of book case. Shake book and pressed maple leaf will fall out."

(The professor removed and shook it as directed, and a pressed maple leaf fell to the floor.)

Q: "What further proof can Uncle Jim give?"

A: "Get key from small urn on mantle. Open desk in corner and take out small ledger. Turn to page sixty and find account of Peoria Grain Company. Account balanced October first by check for one thousand two hundred forty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents."

(Again the professor did as directed, and again the written statement was corroborated.)

Q: "The proof is ample and convincing. Will Uncle Jim tell us where he is at the present time?"

A: "Here in the room."

Q: "What means shall we use to awaken him?"

A: "Uncle Jim is recuperating. Does not wish to be awakened."

Q: "But we want Uncle Jim to waken some time. What shall we do?"

A: "Let Uncle Jim alone, and he will waken naturally when the time comes."

The professor propounded several more queries, to which there were no answers, so we discontinued the sitting. Miss Randall was awakened by suggestion.

"We now have conclusive proof that your uncle is alive, and in a cataleptic state," said the professor.

"Is there no way to arouse him?" I asked.

"The best thing to do is to let him waken himself, as he directed us to do in the telepathic message. He is, as he says, recuperating from his illness and should not be disturbed. You are, perhaps, unaware that catalepsy, although believed by many people to be a disease, is really no disease at all. While it is known as a symptom of certain nervous disorders, it may accompany any form of sickness, or may even be caused by a mental or physical shock of some sort.

"It can also be induced in hypnotization by suggestion. Do not think of  it as a form of sickness, but, rather, as a very deep sleep, which permits the patient much needed rest for an overburdened body and mind; for it is a well-known fact that when catalepsy intervenes in any form of sickness, death is usually cheated."

"Would it be dangerous to my uncle's health if we were to remove him to his bedroom?" I asked. "It seems to me that a coffin is rather a gruesome thing for him to convalesce in"

"Agreed," said the professor, "and I can see no particular harm in moving him, provided he is handled very gently. Ruth, will you please have Mrs. Rhodes make the room ready? Mr. Ansley and I will then carry his uncle upstairs."

While Miss Randall was doing her father's bidding we tried to contrive a way to outwit the superstitious farmers, who would arrive in a few minutes if they made good their threat.

My eye fell upon two large oak logs, which young Severs had brought for the fireplace, and I said,

"Why not weight the casket with these logs and screw the lid down? No doubt they will carry it out without opening it, and when they are well on their way we can place my uncle in your car and be out of reach before they discover the substitution."

"A capital idea," said the professor. "We will wrap the logs well so they will not rattle, and, as the casket is an especially heavy one, they will be non the wiser until it is opened at the grave."

I ran upstairs and tore two heavy comforters from my bed, and with these we soon had the logs well padded. Miss Randall called that the room was ready. The professor and I carefully lifted my uncle from the casket and were about to take him from the room, when a gruff voice commanded:

"Schtop!"

A dozen masked men, armed indiscriminately with shotguns, rifles and revolvers, were standing in the hall. We could hear the stamping of many more on the porch. I recognized the voice and figure of the leader of those of Glitch.

"Back in der coffin," he said, pointing a double-barreled shotgun at me. "Poot him back, or I blow your tam head off."

Then several other men came in and menaced us with their weapons.

v

I DROPPED  my uncle's feet and rushed furiously at Glitch, but was quickly seized and overpowered by two stalwart farmers.

The professor, however, was more calm. He laid my uncle gently on the floor and faced the men.

"Gentlemen," he said, "may I ask the reason for this sudden and unwarranted intrusion in a peaceful home?"

"Ve are going to bury dot vampire corpse wit a stake t'rough its heart. Dot's vot," replied Glitch.

"What would you do if I were to tell you that this man is not dead, but alive?" asked the professor.

"Alive or dead, he's gonna be buried tonight," said a burly ruffian, stepping up to my uncle. "One o' you guys help me get this in the coffin."

A tall, lean farmer stepped up and leaned his gun against the casket. The the two of them roughly lifted my uncle into it and screwed down the lid.

In the meantime, another had discovered the wrapped logs, to which he call the attention of his companions.

"Well, I'll be blowed!" he said. "Thought yuh was pretty slick, didn't yuh? Thought yuh could fool us with a coupla logs? Just for that we'll take yuh along to the part so yuh don't try no more fancy capers."

"Gentlemen," said the professor, "do you realize that you will be committing a murder if you bury this man's body?"

"Murder, Hell!" exclaimed one. "He killed my boy."

"He sucked my daughter's blood," cried another.

"An' my brother is lyin' in his death bed on account of him," shouted a third.

"Come one, let's go," said the burly ruffian. "Some o' you boys grab hold o' them handles, an' we'll change shifts goin' out."

"Yah. Ve vill proceed," said Glitch. "Vorwarts!"

"If you will permit me, I will go and reassure my daughter before accompanying you," said the professor. "She is very nervous and may be prostrated with fear if I do not calm her."

"Go ahead and be quick about it," said the ruffian. "Don't try no funny stunts, though, or we'll use the stake on you, too"

The professor hurried upstairs and, on his return a moment later, the funeral cortege proceeded.

It was pitch dark outside, and therefore necessary for some of the men to carry lanterns. One of these led the way. Immediately after him walked six men bearing the casket, behind which the professor and I walked with an armed guard on either side of us.

Following, we were the remainder of the men, some twenty-five all told. There was no talking, except at intervals when the pall-bearers were relieved by others. This occurred a number of times, as the burden was heavy and the way none too smooth.

I walked as one in a trance. It seemed that my feet moved automatically, as if directed by a power outside myself. Sometimes I thought it all a horrible nightmare from which I should presently awaken. Then the realization of the terrible truth would come to me, engendering a grief that seemed unbearable.

I mentally reviewed the many kindnesses of my uncle. I thought of his generous self-sacrifice, that I might be educated to cope with the world; and now that the time had come when I should be of service to him—when his very life was to be taken-I was failing him, failing miserably.

I cudgeled my numb brain for some way of outwitting the superstitious farmers. Once I thought of wrestling the gun from my guard and fighting the mob alone, but I knew this would be useless. I would merely delay, not defeat, the grisly plans of these men, and would be almost sure to lose my own life in the attempt. I was faint and weak, and my broken ribs pained incessantly.

All too soon, we arrived at the pine grove, and moved toward a point from which the rays of a lantern glimmered faintly through the trees. A few moments more, and we were beside a shallow grave at which the six grim sextons, masked like their companions, waited.

The casket was placed in the grave and the lid removed. Then a long, stout stake, sharply pointed with iron, was brought forward, and two men with heavy sledges moved, one to each side of the grave.

Here a discussion arose as to whether it would be better to drive the stake through the body and then replace the lid, or to put the lid on first and then drive the stake through the entire coffin. The latter plan was finally decided upon, and the lid replaced, when we were all startled by a terrible screaming coming from a thicket, perhaps a hundred yards distant. It was the voice of a woman in mortal terror.

"Help!  Save me-save me!" she cried. "Oh, my God, will nobody save me?"

In a moment, all was confusion. Stake and mauls were dropped, and  everyone rushed toward the thicket. The cries redoubled as we approached. Presently we saw a woman running through the underbrush, and after a chase of several minutes over took her. My heart leaped to my throat as I recognized Ruth Randall.

She was crouching low, as if in deadly fear of something which she seemed to be trying to push away from her— something invisible, imperceptible, to us. Her beautiful hair hung below her waist, and her clothing was bedraggled and torn.

I was first to reach her side.

"Ruth! What is the matter?"

"Oh, that huge bat— that terrible bat with the fiery eyes! Drive him away from me! Don't let him get me! Please!  Please!"

I tried to soothe her in my arms. She looked up, her eyes distended with terror.

"There he is— right behind you! Oh, don't let him get me! Please don't let him get me!"

I looked back, but could see nothing resembling a bat. The armed men stood around us in a circle.

"There is no bat behind me." I said. "You are overwrought. Don't be frightened."

"But there  is  a bat. I can  see  him. He is flying around us in a circle now. Don't you see him flying there?" and she described an arc with her hand. "You men have guns. Shoot him. Drive him away."

Glitch spoke, "It's der vampire again. Ve'll put a schtop to dis business right now. Come one, men."

We started back to the grove. I was nonplussed— mystified. Perhaps there was such a thing as a vampire, after all. But no, that could not be. She was only the victim of overwrought nerves.

Once more we stood beside the grave. Two men were screwing down the coffin lid. The three with the stake and sledges stood ready. I saw that Miss Randall was trembling with the cold, for she had come out without a wrap, and, removing, my coat, I placed it around her.

The professor stood at the foot of the grave, looking down calmly at the men. He appeared almost unconcerned.

The stake was placed on the spot, calculated to be directly above the left breast of my uncle, and the man nearest me raised his sledge to strike.

I leaped toward him.

"Don't strike! For God's sake, don't strike!" I cried, seizing his arm.

Someone hit me on the back of the head, and strong arms dragged me back. My senses reeled, as I saw first one heavy sledge descend, then another. The stake crashed through the coffin and deep into the ground beneath, driven by the relentless blows.

Suddenly, apparently from the bottom of the grave, came a muffled wailing cry, increasing to a horrible, blood-curdling shriek.

The mob stood for a moment as if paralyzed, then, to a man, fled precipitately, stopping for neither weapons nor tools. I found temporary relief in unconsciousness....

My senses returned to me gradually. I was walking, or, rather, reeling, as one intoxicated, between Miss Randall and her father, who were helping me toward the house. The professor was carrying a lantern which one of the men had dropped and fantastic, swaying, bobbing shadows stretched wherever its rays penetrated.

After what seemed an age of painful travel we reached the house, Miss Randall helped me into the front room, the professor following. Sam and Joe Severs were there, and someone reclined in the large morris chair facing the fire. Mrs. Rhodes came bustling in with a steaming tea wagon.

I moved toward the fire, for I was chilled through. As I did so, I glanced toward the occupant of the morris chair, then gave a startled cry.

The man in the chair was Uncle Jim!

"Hello, Billy," he said. "How are you, my boy?"

For a moment I was speechless. "Uncle Jim!" I managed to stammer. "Is it really you, or am I dreaming again?"

Ruth squeezed my arm reassuringly. "Don't be afraid. It is really your uncle."

I knelt by the chair and felt Uncle Jim's arm about my shoulders. "Yes, it is really I, Billy. A bit weak and shaken, perhaps, but I'll soon be as sound as a new dollar."

"But how— when— how did you get out of that horrible grave?"

"First I will ask Miss Ruth if she will be so kind as to preside over the tea wagon. Then I believe my friend Randall can recount the events of the evening much more clearly and satisfactorily than I."

"Being, perhaps, more familiar with the evening's deep-laid plot than some of those present, I accept the nomination," replied the professor, smiling, "although, in doing so, I do not want to detract one iota from the honor due to my fellow plotters for their most efficient assistance, without which my plan would have been a complete failure."

Tea was served, cigars were lighted, and the professor began.

"In the first place, I am sure you will all be interested in knowing the cause of the epidemic on account of which some of our neighbors have reverted to the superstition of the dark ages. It is explained by an article in  The Peoria Times, which I brought with me this afternoon, but did not have time to read until a moment ago, which states that the countryside is being swept by a new and strange malady known as 'sleeping sickness,' and that physicians have not, as yet, found any efficient means of combating the disease.

"Now for this evening's little drama. You will, no doubt, recall, Mr Ansley, that before we joined the funeral procession, I requested a moment's conversation with my daughter. The events which followed were the result of that conversation.

"In order that the plan might be carried out, it was necessary for her first to gain the help of Joe and Sam here, and then make a quick detour around the procession. I know that there are few men who will not rush to the rescue of a woman in distress and I asked her to call for help in order to divert the mob from the grave. She thought of the bat idea herself, and I must say it worked most excellently.

"While everyone was gone, Joe and Sam, who had stationed themselves nearby, came and helped me remove your uncle from the casket. As we did so, I noticed signs of returning consciousness, brought about in some measure, no doubt, by the rude jolting of the casket. Then the boys carried him to the house, while I replaced the lid. You are all familiar with what followed."

"But that unearthly shriek from the grave," I said. "It sounded like the cry of a dying man."

"Ventriloquism," said the professor, "nothing more. A simple little trick I learned in my high school days. It was I who shrieked."

UNCLE JIM  and I convalesced together.

When my ribs were knitted and his strength was restored, it was decided that he should go to Florida for the winter, and that I should have charge of the farm. He said that my education and training should make me a far more capable manager than he, and that the position should be mine as long as I desired it.

He delayed his trip, however, until a certain girl, who had made me a certain promise, exchanged the name of Randall for that of Ansley. Then he left us to our happiness.

__________________

17: The Germs of Death

Harold Ward

Weird Tales, March 1933

IT HAD been a hard day at the laboratory and every nerve in my body shrieked for rest. I drowsed through dinner like a man in a trance, attempted to read afterward and, catching myself napping, finally threw down my book in disgust and retired.

I awoke with a start. An alien presence seemed to permeate the room. Shuddering, I attempted to reach the cord on the reading-lamp by the side of my bed, but some strange power held me back;.

Every faculty was paralyzed. I wanted to shriek—to summon my servant— but my vocal cords would make no sound. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. Only my brain seemed alive and it was a seething mass of panicky terror— an inferno of overmastering horror of the unknown.

What was it? What evil spell was oppressing me like an incubus? I was lying on my side facing the window. The night was dark and starless; even as I gazed into the blackness the room commenced to fill with a soft, phosphorescent light. It grew stronger and stronger. I tried to tell myself that it was the moon filtering through some fleecy cloud, but my fear-filled subconsciousness refused to swallow the lie.

Slowly the strange, weird glow divided itself into two rays. They darted here and there like beacon-fires, circling and dancing from place to place until they finally settled full upon my face. My eyes glared back at them unblinkingly, for their peculiar brightness had no effect upon my pupils. It seemed as if I could trace them on and on through the starless sky to where they found birth on a mountain peak protruding above the clouds.

Somewhere outside a night bird shrieked raucously. The grating sound startled me out of the panic which gripped me. I tried to bring cold logic and reasoning to bear upon my condition, but in vain. The very atmosphere seemed filled with evil.

Slowly the scene changed. My vision, following the twin beams to their source, saw the rocky eminence dissolve into a human face partly hidden behind a mass of black, scurrying clouds. A human face, I say, but what a face! Hard, ruthless, crafty, age-weathered, demoniacal, it glared at me through slanting, almond-shaped eyes, that glittered like fires of hell, piercing the darkness like projectiles of molten metal. I tried to close my lids against them, but in vain. They burned themselves into my pupils until they seared the very core of my brain.

An urge crept over me— an overmastering desire to hurl myself through space. Invisible hands seemed to tear me from my bed. I fought against them with every bit of will-power at my command; but those glittering, menacing orbs dragged at me, pulling at me as a magnet attracts a bit of iron. I felt myself lifted... I was floating....

The window-screen was jerked from its hooks by strange hands; they were my hands— I noted my seal ring on one of the fingers— yet they were the hands of some one else. How can I describe my sensations? I was myself, John Dolby, yet I was another person. I was like a man who sees his own figure projected upon the screen.

I dropped. Down... down... down...

Then sudden blackness engulfed me.

I opened my eyes and gazed wonderingly at the crushed and bleeding figure that lay upon the cold, hard pavement beneath my window. I knew that it was I—that I had succumbed to the urge of those cruel eyes and had committed suicide. Yet— and here comes again one of the strange oddities of my fantastic tale — it was not I. I was divided again; I was two separate and distinct entities. I was lying, a battered heap, upon the stones of the street, yet I was standing beside my own body looking at myself as one gazes upon an old suit of clothes that he has discarded. A huge policeman came running up; he muttered a startled curse. Then, jerking his whistle from his pocket, he shrilled for help. He paid no attention to me. It was my body that attracted his attention. I floated around him like vapor....

Again I was drifting through space, dragged onward and upward and yet held to earth. I felt myself stretching like a rubber band. Two attractions were at work, one holding me back, the other pulling me upward....

Next I was standing by the side of a rude bed. Around me danced those hard, cruel eyes. There were thousands of them now; they filled the space, it seemed, for millions and millions of miles. Yet there was a man upon the bed. And he, too, was twain, for he stood beside me, a tall, wraith-like figure in flowing robes, his saffron face convulsed with fury.

"Back! Back!” he shrieked. "I will not die to make a place for you!”

I gazed down at the quiet form upon the bed. I knew that it was not I— that it belonged to this lemon-skinned man who sought to hold me away— yet it was also I. The dancing eyes pulled me closer. A quiet voice whispered in my ear that I must claim my own. The vaporish figure gnashed his teeth. His hands were against my shoulders. He attempted to push me away. Slowly the pressure relaxed, and he dissolved into nothingness....

Again I awoke with a start. For a moment I lay stretching and yawning, wondering at my strange dream. I was still weary, and for an instant I was tempted to roll over and go to sleep again. Then, remembering the task that I had left unfinished at the laboratory, I forced myself to open my eyes. I sat up with an exclamation of surprise.

God in heaven! It was not a dream!

The morning sun was shining through the window. The room was strangely unfamiliar— a huge, Oriental-appearing chamber with stone walls. It was overflowing with lavish trappings and rare draperies. Even the bed was not my own. What had happened? Where was I? Had I met with an accident? Was my fantastic nightmare the result of an ether-fuddled brain? Was this a hospital?

A movement beside me brought my ruminations to a sudden close. I turned my head, expecting to be greeted by a white-clad nurse. Instead, a man was sitting by my bedside. He looked up from the book he was reading and greeted me with a slight nod.

"Good morning!” he said. The voice was harsh, stilted and metallic. I gazed at him wonderingly. His face, distinctly Mongolian, was thin, seamed with age, ruthless. He was unusually tall, emaciated; his yellow skin as dry as parchment; his eyes, sunken into their sockets, black as coals; they glittered like those of a snake. His left arm hung useless by his side. I noted, too, that his left leg was withered and twisted and that the side of his face twitched and jerked spasmodically. A crutch leaned against the chair. He was clad in a loose, flowing garment of white, arid a black skullcap adorned his hairless head.

There was something strangely familiar about the fellow. I blew that I had seen him before. I strove to recollect.

Then, suddenly, it flashed over me. His was the face that I had seen in the night —the face behind the mass of clouds high in the heavens. His were the eyes— those cruel, evil-filled eyes—that had dragged at me....

ii

HAD my senses tricked me? Was I still dreaming? For an instant longer I lay there gazing at the hideous face. Then I pulled myself to a sitting position.

"Where the devil am I?” I demanded. "And, by the same token, who are you?”

The aged yellow man chuckled low, mockingly.

"I am Yah Hoon,” he rasped. "Doubtless the name is unfamiliar to you, but
fame is only a fleeting thing at best; so what matters whether you know me or not? We will grow better acquainted as time goes on. As to your whereabouts— you are in Tibet—”

"Tibet?” I gasped.

He nodded. Then he went on, his rasping voice fairly crackling with energy.

"I needed you; what I need I take. Like yourself, I am a scientist. And science, as you, a scientist, must admit, refuses to be bound by the so-called human law.”

I leaped out of bed in a spasm of fury.

“What chicanery is this?” I roared.

He held up his gaunt right hand in a gesture of impatience.

“Dress!” he commanded curtly. “And cease arguing.” He indicated a loose robe similar to the one he was wearing. "Unfortunately I could not transport your clothes through the ether, so you will have to content yourself with those you find. The man whose body I borrowed for you did not find them uncomfortable, I assure you. At least, he was loth to give them to you.”

He chuckled grimly at his jest. Then, with a jerk of his thumb, he indicated a long mirror set into the rocky wall. I took a step toward it, only to leap back with an exclamation of horror. The man who stared back at me was a Mongolian —a slant-eyed, yellow-skinned creature with high forehead. It was he whose body I had seen lying upon the bed. It was the wraith-like thing who had tried to drive me back.

My brain was whirling. Who was I? I knew that I was Doctor John Dolby, the man who had discovered and segregated the previously unsuspected paranoiac germ and made it possible for medical science to combat that dread disease successfully. I knew that I was a well-known figure in the world of medicine and science because of my researches in the field of bacterioscopy and pathogeny. Yet how could I be Doctor John Dolby when I was this strange being whose reflection scowled back at me from the glass? I turned to Yah Hoon, my lips drawn back over my fangs in a wolfish snarl.

"Explain!” I demanded, a wave of anger surging over me.

He spread his right hand out, palm up, in a gesture of impatience.

“You, one of the world’s greatest scientists, asking for an explanation?” he mocked with an amused glitter in his snake-like eyes. "All right, my friend, you shall have it. You are in Koko-Nur, a lost city on an island in the Chaidam marsh in the province of Tasidam in Tibet. A glance through the window will prove my statement. As to how you got here— there you have a question more difficult for me to answer.”

He arose and, leaning on his crutch, pointed down to his crippled side.

"I am old— very old,” he said with a touch of sadness in his voice, "so old that death long ago marked me for his own. I fear death— hate it! Only by force of will have I staved it off. And I will cheat it yet, even though it creeps upon me like a wolf in the dark, seeking to catch me unawares.”

He cackled mirthlessly at his own words.

"You ask me how you got here,” he went on. "You demand an explanation. Listen: Broken and withered though my body is, within this skull of mine is stored the wisdom of the ages. With the power of thought man can do anything, even fight off death for a short space of time. But with your help, my friend, I will renew my life. I will live for ever!

"I have heard of your work,” he went on. "For even here in this God-forsaken hole news seeps in; my agents are everywhere seeking out that which they think will aid me in my experiments. There are thousands of other scientists, any one of whom would make me an efficient laboratory assistant. But you—ah, my friend, I have not forgotten your outstanding work in pathogenic bacteria. It has made you an outstanding figure in the world of vaccinotherapy. No one else has the technical learning for my advanced needs. I, crippled and pain-racked, could not go to you. So I willed that you should come to me. You answered my call.”

"I do not understand?” I gasped, still bewildered. "One can not transport a body through the ether.”

"No,” he smiled. "But remember that there is no life, intelligence or substance in matter. All is mind— thought. I captured your intellect— your soul, as it were. I care not a whit for your carcass. By the power of my will I threw Huang, the man whose body you wear, into a deathlike trance last night. Perhaps he is dead as we know death. Be that as it may, your thought—your intelligence— obeyed my command and took possession of his stalwart young frame. And it is your intellect that will finish this great experiment for me.

"Understand me,” he went on, "after death intellect still functions, for it is the soul— the germ of everything. But I fear dissolution and do not wish to go that route. I would live for ever— on and on to the very end of time. Perhaps I may even allow you to taste the fruits of my discovery. Who knows?”

His face was twisted into a sardonic grin. He cackled mirthlessly in a cracked treble, his almond eyes narrowed and twitched. The effort was too great for him, and he dropped back into his chair with a groan of pain.

"Old age! Old age!” he shrieked. "God, what a tragedy! Power! I shall have power when death has ceased to be. The world will worship at my feet. Eventually I will rule the earth. Kings and dictators will bow to me; thrones will totter and fall. That is why I came here. They would kill me rather than allow me to continue. That is why I buried myself in this forgotten hole, that I might work undisturbed. There was another reason, too, a reason that you will soon understand. But I must rest for a moment. The strain is too great for me.”

He leaned back against the cushions, his breath coming in great gasps.

"Death!” he murmured to himself. "Death! God, what a filthy thing it is! I hate it—hate it with an intensity such as man has never had before. I—”

His voice died away in a tired whisper. He closed his eyes. For a moment I thought that he slept.

I stepped softly across the room to where a narrow window was carved out of the rock. For a moment I devoured the scene spread out before me. Then I, too, dropped into a chair with a groan. Great heavens! It was not a dream. Around me on all sides, as far as the eye could see, stretched a strange city— a city of quaint, box-like, white, almost windowless buildings— a city of distinctly foreign aspect. Men and women in outlandish garb walked its streets and jostled in the market-place: Mongols, Tibetans, Chinese, Burmese—a mixture of many nationalities.

Little wonder I gasped again as it all flashed over me. I, John Dolby, Master of Science, Doctor of Medicine, Bachelor of Arts, Doctor of Laws, possessor of many degrees, had gone to sleep in my own apartment in New York, only to wake up next morning in a strange bed in this far-off city. And, even worse, I was not John Dolby. I was some one else— a man called Huang— a saffron-skinned man with crafty, slanted eyes and cunning, tricky features.

Yet I was not this creature. I was John Dolby.

iii

YAH HOON was mad. That much was apparent to me from the very first. Yet he was a genius— a Chinaman of rare intelligence who had, in some manner, found his way to this city hidden in the marshes, to use it for his own foul purposes. He was bewildering, horrifying, like a walking dead man with the face of a devil.

"Death is a disease,” he remarked, leaning back in his chair and refilling his long-stemmed pipe from a bowl of tobacco at his side. He lit it from a brazier suspended from the ceiling and, puffing slowly, gazed at me cynically through half-closed eyes. His spasm of weakness had passed away and he was, apparently, himself again. "Death causes sickness. Wrong, did I hear you say? But I am not wrong. Let me explain. Stricken down with this accursed paralysis at the very height of my experiments, I have had plenty of time to reflect.

"The atmosphere which surrounds us is filled with germs of death. We draw these tiny bacteria into our systems with every breath. They are constantly at work seeking to undermine our bodies. Every blow we strike, every step we take, every thought that flashes through our brains is accompanied by the disintegration of a certain amount of muscular or nervous fiber. Thus each action of our corporeal life, from its beginning to its end, takes place at the expense of the vitality of a part of our organized structure.”

He smiled at my look of incredulity. Then, with a gesture of impatience, he went on.

"These germs of death fill every lung cell. They course through our veins. They find resting-places amid our bones and tissues, waiting an opportunity to strike. Perhaps years pass before the chance comes. But when it does come, they are lightning-like in their rapidity. Sometimes they strike in childhood; often not until we have reached mature years. But once they gain a foothold, disease invariably follows— a war to the finish between the body and the germ —a conflict in which the Grim Reaper is always the victor.”

"Old age?” I interrupted, interested in spite of myself in his weird philosophy. "Your own case, for instance?”

"Ah!” he snarled, his right hand resting on the arm of the chair closing until the knuckles showed white under the saffron skin. For an instant there was silence— dreadful, awesome. Then he leaned forward, his jet-black eyes glaring into my own.

"The natural decay of the organs brought about by these germs of death,” he rasped. "That is my answer to your question regarding old age. My brain has been too active. I weakened certain cells by over-thinking. The bacteria were in my system; they found my weakness and commenced their accursed work. That is why you are here. You can do things, while I can only think, and think and think— of death.”

He refilled his long-stemmed pipe again and relighted it with an almost defiant glance at me as if he dared me to dispute his statement.

"You have read Jenner?” he demanded.

“Naturally,” I answered.

"Then you understand my theory. I propose to cope with death as Jenner coped with smallpox,” he resumed. "With your help I will isolate these germs of death of which I spoke. After segregating them, I will prepare a virus from them for the prevention and treatment of death. Jenner’s theory of vaccination has been extended to several other diseases, among them asthma, typhoid fever, pneumonia, hay-fever and others. Jenner was right in his hypothesis, but he, to use one of your Americanisms, got off on the wrong foot. He sought to prevent the disease that caused death. He should— and he is not the first physician to err— have vaccinated against the death which created the disease. If we inoculate against disease, we have simply halted death for an instant; if we inoculate against death, there will be no disease. Have I made myself clear?”

I stared at him aghast.

"Then there will be no death,” I said in an awed whisper.

He nodded.

"Once this bacterium is discovered and prepared in the form of virus, its injection will stop all human ills and life will be prolonged for ever,” he answered.

He raised his clenched right fist and shook it in a sudden spasm.

"Life! Eternal life!” he shrieked. "God, how I long for it! I feel the Grim Reaper creeping upon me. We must work fast.”

The man’s mood changed. He got up from his seat with an effort and, adjusting his crutch beneath his arm, indicated that I was to follow him.

"My efforts have, so far, been mere gestures in the right direction,” he went on. "But let us start at the beginning. I will first show you the laboratory. It is best that you inspect the tools with which you will work.”

A flush of anger mounted to my face at his tone and I doubled my fists until the nails bit into the flesh.

"I am not yours to command!” I snarled. "I—”

He turned his head slowly in my direction, his beady eyes glaring at me. A cold chill chased up and down my spine. I halted midway in my speech, my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth. A nebulous haze appeared in front of my face. I tried to fight it off, but in vain.

It seemed to me that the world was filled with age-worn faces and sulfurous eyes. They danced around me, dragging me forward against my will. The room swan, in circles, the floor swaying up and down like the deck of a ship in a choppy sea. I swayed and would have fallen had I not clutched the carved back of one of the chairs.

"Fool!” Yah Hoon snapped. "Now follow me.”

The mist cleared away. I rubbed my
eyes sleepily. He was hobbling painfully toward a narrow door at the end of the room without giving me a second glance. And I, like a dog that has been chastised, followed in his wake.

He opened the door. From it a circular flight of steps led downward, ending in a passageway cut in the stone. It, in turn, led to a second door. Yah Hoon threw it open and, stepping inside, halted and waited for me to enter. I stepped past him, then paused in astonishment.

It was a large room— as big, in fact, as that used for laboratory purposes in some of our best colleges— a compartment seemingly carved out of solid rock and lighted by braziers set in wrought-iron sconces fastened to the walls. Its shelves and benches and tables were also of stone; they were covered with flasks and beakers and bottles of every size and description. I drew closer and inspected them. There were chemicals of which even I, with my long experience, had no knowledge. Here, too, were microscopes of the finest quality, test-tubes, pipettes, Bunsen burners— everything needed for research work. Even my own workshop in the college was a paltry thing compared to this gigantic scientific array.

My face must have betrayed the excitement under which I labored, for Yah Hoon’s countenance twisted into a wry smile as I turned to him.

"You like it?” he questioned.

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed. "To think that such a magnificent laboratory is buried so far from civilization.”

"I am a Chinaman,” he answered proudly. "From the beginning of time the Chinese have been the leaders in scientific research. I have been years gathering this collection. As I told you before, my agents have searched the globe for the latest in apparatus and chemicals. I am old, Dolby, much older than you imagine, and wealthy, too, beyond the dreams of avarice. Yet the greater part of my life has been spent in this very room. I have dedicated myself to the one objective— the search for eternal life. For what value has gold, and what does my more precious store of knowledge avail me, if my bones are moldering in the tomb?”

He stopped suddenly.

"We scientists are all alike,” he grunted with a shrug of his thin shoulders. "We are what you in America call 'nuts.’ But enough. I have other wonders to show you— the reservoir from which you will draw your material.”

He hobbled over to what looked like a solid section of the wall and pressed against one of the shelves. A portion of rock slid noiselessly to one side, revealing another flight of steps leading to the bottom of a narrow well. We followed them downward; the end of the shaft disclosed a tunnel hewn out of the rocks. Yah Hoon led the way along this tunnel, lighting braziers set in the walls from the taper which he carried. At the end of the defile was another set of steps leading downward. They ended in a cul-de-sac.

The Chinaman turned to me again.

"This workshop of mine is, like many others in Tibet, built into the side of a hill,” he said. "I selected it from many when I came here because of its peculiar location. The rocky mountain into which it is cut is hollow— perhaps a small, extinct volcano. Be that as it may, they have a curious custom of burial here— a custom I never encountered before. I brought many of my countrymen with me. Under my direction they hewed these steps and tunnels into the very womb of the hill. Later they died— for it is not well that too many should share my secret. So now you, of all the world, possess the knowledge of this entrance.”

Again he stopped, a twisted grin creeping over his leathery face. I shuddered in spite of myself, for it was easy to guess the meaning of his words.

"As I just told you, because of the custom of the inhabitants of this place of burying their dead en masse in the hollow mountain, I picked this town for the center of my activities,” he went on. "And, now, Dolby, gaze upon my treasure trove.”

He chuckled mirthlessly as he stuck the lighted taper into a niche in the wall.

“Note where I press,” he warned, touching a certain spot in the stone.

A slab of rock in front of us rolled away. I stepped back with an exclamation of horror as a draft of fetid air struck me full in the face. Then, at a sign from Yah Hoon, I drew closer.

We were standing at the edge of an enormous cavern, many acres in extent and towering upward several hundred feet. In the roof was a small hole through which the sun was streaming, bringing out the horrors of the place in curious highlights and shadows.

It was a gigantic charnel-house. The floor was covered with human skeletons—  thousands of them. Upon them, piled almost to the ceiling, were corpses— men, women, children— in various stages of dissolution. They formed a huge pyramid caused by the slipping down of the bodies from the apex as fresh ones were dropped in from above.

There they lay, the new-dead mingling with the bones of their ancestors, naked corpses with glassy eyes and twisted limbs. They glared at us from all sides — horrible, grotesque caricatures of humanity. Even as we gazed, a fresh body was dropped in from above. It rolled down at us, bounding, dancing, arms flopping like those of a scarecrow, bringing down an avalanche of other carcasses with it. Singularly, it ceased movement almost at our feet and, rolling on its back as it stopped, stared up at us icily, its lips drawn back in a leering grin.

"God!” I shrieked, dropping back with a shudder.

Yah Hoon cackled gleefully.

"Yet you wonder why I fear death,” he said grimly. "Can you blame me, knowing as I do that I shall soon be as that thing unless I can find a way to stave off the king of terrors? How do you know, my friend, that you are not dead even now? It is in my mind that the body of John Dolby lies in some American undertaker’s shop. Yet you are here, and the body you inhabit is that of another man. Explain that.”

Again he chuckled. His voice echoed and re-echoed through the cavern.

The world was swimming before my eyes. I turned away, drawn by another will than my own. It seemed as if another man— the one whose body I wore— was standing beside me, warning me, trying to drag me back....

iv

THERE IS one puzzling thing about these memories of mine. The time element is vague, indistinct. I can only tell the passage of time by going back over the newspapers dating from my death up to the present. Sometimes it seems as if I had always been Huang, a native of Koko-Nur; again I have misty recollections of a former life in Tibet. My only explanation is that, in inheriting the body of Huang, Yah Hoon’s assistant, I also came into possession of a bit of his brain that had not died with him and that this piece of gray matter functions subconsciously.

And yet another thought comes to me. Was Huang really dead when I took possession of his framework? Or was he merely in a trance? Is it not possible that he, in striving to regain his mortal body, sometimes gains possession of my thoughts? Who knows? But why speculate? It gets me nowhere. I am a creature accursed.

Fear! God, what a reign of fear I went through in the great stone house of Yah Hoon the Chinaman in Koko-Nur— a procession of nightmares in which the parchment-like face of Yah Hoon was intermingled with the spawn of the charnel-house. Even now I wake up with a start, the cold sweat standing out on my forehead in great globules, imagining that I am back there in that huge laboratory hewn in the solid rock, a dozen dead bodies surrounding me, while on the other side of the door the carrion is piled high within the cavern. And over everything is the sickening stench of death and dissolution. Would I have these dreams if I had not passed through the horrors of which I write?

I was a prisoner within that rock-bound cavern. Not a prisoner in the sense that I was guarded, for I was not; but nevertheless I was confined within the four walls as securely as if surrounded by a million armed guards, for I was tied down by the power of thought. Time after time I tried to break away—to get out— to shriek my fantastic story to the world; for even in Koko-Nur, in far-off Tibet, I believe that there were men of brains— men who would listen to reason. Yet I was never able to combat the superior will of Yah Hoon— the will that ordered me to remain.

From the time I arrived until the fatal day when Yah Hoon died I never left that grim, stone building with its rear cut into the hillside. Yah Hoon, wise old fox that he was, sensed my feelings, without a doubt, yet he said nothing. Only many, many times I have seen him gazing at me from under his drooping lids, a cynical smile twisting across his wrinkled face. He reminded me of some huge gargoyle— some unclean monster carved out of the rock from which his dwelling was made. Yet he held me in a mesmeric spell, just as a serpent hypnotizes a bird. There must have been a touch of cruelty in his make-up, for I am certain that he got a quiet satisfaction out of watching me writhe beneath the pressure of his thought.

I am not going into detail. Suffice to say that day after day I bent over my test-tubes and burners, experimenting, testing, laboring like a work-horse at Yah Hoon’s command. Under the impetus of his powerful will I carried on the work that he had started. But since I was under the dictation of Yah Hoon’s mind, how was it possible for me to carry on my experiments independent of him? For had I not been allowed to use my own scientific knowledge— had Yah Hoon suggested every move I made— I would have been nothing more than a mere laboratory assistant. And, remember, Yah Hoon had seized me for what I knew. Perhaps I can explain, even though the task is a difficult one. Yah Hoon held me in his spell, he forced me to work; yet he merely presented the problem to be solved, never interfering with the methods used. Results were what he demanded, caring not how they were obtained. I was a machine which, started in the right direction, went on and on and on until I reached the end of the road.

And the dead! Ugh! That charnel-house filled with stark, naked bodies, their fishy eyes glaring at me from out of the darkness. I was a ghoul, a despoiler of graves, the lowest thing that mortal man can sink to. I surrounded myself with cadavers. The tables were covered with them; they were stacked on all sides like cordwood. The great laboratory was permeated with their horrible stench.

And Yah Hoon— may his foul soul burn in hell!—forced me to do these things. His beady eyes were always upon me. Hunched up in his great armchair by the side of the dissecting-table, he watched my progress day by day. He drove me. He knew that his life was fast ebbing away— that he was living on borrowed time— and he was ever in a rush to finish the task and stave off death before it struck him down. There was a panicky look on his aged face at every failure. Under his direction I cut and experimented— wallowing like a hog amid the filth of the charnel-house. At his command I distilled, brewed, segregated and refined. He scarce allowed me time to eat and sleep. I became an automaton— a machine— my brain so dulled by loss of sleep that I worked in a trance.

Yah Hoon ate little. There were no servants. From some unknown source he obtained provisions of a sort for my use, and I prepared my own simple meals.

Guinea-pigs! The place teemed with them. Upon them we tried the results of our experiments, inoculating them with the virus we made. And the result was always the same—death. With each failure he pushed me the harder, forcing me on and on in his mad search for the germ that snuffed the divine spark, but which, he believed, when properly prepared, would result in eternal life.

Time after time it seemed that success was almost within our grasp. Once a guinea-pig we inoculated lived for hours. It was only by sheer force of will that Yah Hoon kept from toppling over in the excess of his joy. From somewhere his powerful thought brought a man through the door—a poor, slinking creature of the dregs of Koko-Nur. He attempted to draw back when his terror-filled eyes fell upon the pile of dead. But Yah Hoon’s will held him. Slowly, reluctantly, like a man walking in his sleep, he advanced until he stood before us cringing and fawning like a mongrel dog.

I leaped forward like a tiger that smells blood. I tried to hold myself back, but the urge was communicated to me by my master’s will. I had no control over myself as I seized the frightened creature’s arm and, jabbing the needle to the hilt in the flabby flesh, shot home the plunger that injected into his throbbing veins the virus we had made.

For a full sixty seconds the poor devil made no move. Then he gave a sudden shriek as the death vaccine struck his heart. He plunged forward and fell in a heap upon the smooth, stone floor. I turned my head to see how the guinea-pig fared. It, too, had died.

Yah Hoon filled his pipe with fingers that trembled.

"Another failure!” he snarled, applying a lighted taper to the soothing weed. "Another failure—and my time is almost up. I feel it—sense it.”

From that time on he worked me harder than ever.

v

THE TIME element was entirely lacking in my life in Koko-Nur. I was there for ten years. I learned this upon my return when I checked through the files of the newspapers from the time of my "death” up to the present. Time existed for me only as a hazy, misty fantasmagoria of horrors, each one more dreadful than the preceding. There are great blanks in my memory. I recall only the highlights of what happened in that inferno of Yah Hoon’s. The details are missing.

There was never a time during my stay there that I was not John Dolby. My thoughts were those of John Dolby. It was his brain that directed me in the final act of the tragedy, even though my body was that of Huang, the Tibetan.

What caused me to attempt suicide? That is a question I am unable to answer. I only know that I ran amuck— that something in John Dolby’s brain finally snapped under the strain. A man temporarily deranged can not be hypnotized, nor can an unconscious man become a hypnotist. There are but two solutions: either I was mad or Yah Hoon had suffered another stroke which, for the nonce, caused him to lose his mental hold over me. The preceding events are missing from my memory and, strive as I will, I can not recall them.

I know that I found myself standing in the middle of the great laboratory. That is my first recollection of what happened. Around me was the wreckage of the costly apparatus that Yah Hoon had accumulated through the years.

We had completed an experiment a short time before. How long before I do not know, since, as I have already stated, I have no remembrance of details. The body of our latest victim— a pink-nosed guinea-pig— lay upon the table. Beside it was a cadaver from which we had extracted the poison for the virus sealed in the test-tube almost at my elbow.

The door opened and Yah Hoon hobbled in. As his beady eyes viewed the scene of destruction, he gave a gasp of astonishment. For the nonce I was free from his domination. The thought made me wild. I shrieked with maniacal laughter as I hurled a beaker at his snarling face. It crashed against the stone wall. Seizing the syringe, half filled with the vaccine we had made, I jabbed the needle into my arm and pressed the plunger home.

The eyes of Yah Hoon danced around me. They dazzled me. I felt my senses slipping. My ears rang with the command to desist. As well argue with the devil as with me just then. I believed that I was to die; I leaned against the stone dissecting-table and waited for death to strike.

But instead of death came a renewal of life. We had succeeded at last. Something— some one of the elements we had used—needed only time to develop. As the virus ranged through my veins a sense of exultation surged over me— a peculiar feeling of lightness. I seemed to be floating in midair.

"At last!” Yah Hoon shouted gleefully, forgetting in seeing me still alive the destruction I had wrought. "We have succeeded! Life is for ever mine! Mine!”

With his words came recollection again. The thought flashed over me that Yah Hoon would, after all these years, inherit eternal life— that he would be free to work his hellish will upon an unsuspecting world.

Already his palsied hand was stretched forth to seize the test-tube. I jerked it from him and hurled it to the floor. It broke into a thousand fragments.

Yah Hoon shrieked. God, how he shrieked! It was the wail of a lost soul. A look of grim despair came into his face. For an instant he stood swaying; then the crutch dropped from his nerveless grasp and he sprawled in a heap at my feet. The shock had killed him. Then recollection left me.

How did I return to America? I do not know. I only know that I am here and that I am John Dolby. I did not die in Koko-Nur, nor did I die in that fall from the window ten years ago. I can never die. The virus I injected into my veins that mad day will force me to live for ever. I must spend an eternity behind the bars of this dreadful place...

Huang is with me again. He is standing beside me as I write, reading each word as my pen puts it down. He whispers that I am wrong—that freedom is mine if I but claim it. He has told me the way. He waits to claim his body....

But the intellect never dies. Yah Hoon claimed. I do not understand it all. Why should Huang wish his mortal body, since he can live in it but a few short years, while his soul goes on and on? Why does something keep drawing me to the crypt in the mausoleum at Riverview Cemetery wherein the body of John Dolby lies?

Huang bids me hasten....

NOTE: A Mongolian known as Huang, a patient in this institution, believed to be a native of Tibet, committed suicide in his cell this morning by opening a vein in his wrist. The foregoing manuscript was found hidden beneath the blankets of his bunk.

(Signed) ROBERT MONTGOMERY,

Managing Officer, Stateville

Hospital for the Insane.

____________________

18: The Undelivered Sermon

Harold Ward

10 Story Book, December 1921

THE Reverend Joshua Williams Butler, D. D., believed that his coming sermon on “The Social Evil" would be the crowning effort of his long and useful career. Several of the prominent members of his congregation had volunteered the information that it was expected to create a profound sensation. A number of the leading newspapers had given it flattering advance notices. His condemnation of the Scarlet Woman was to be bitter, scathing. He had every reason to think, without egotism, that the fashionable church of which he was pastor would be packed to the doors.

A conscientious worker at all times, a student of psychology and social science as well as a reformer, writer and lecturer, Dr. Butler threw his whole soul into the subject. Every possible authority was consulted. Statistics were gathered from far and near. Obliged to rewrite and revise, it was not until the Thursday before its delivery that he breathed a sigh of satisfaction, drew the final sheet from his typewriter and, with a feeling of relief, turned out his study lamp and prepared to retire.

Sleep, however, failed to come. The clock struck two and the minister still wooed Morpheus in vain. Finally, weary of rolling and tossing, he arose, dressed and, without awakening Mrs. Butler, slipped out into the deserted street.

It was a beautiful night. He walked aimlessly, running over the important points of his discourse in his mind. Time slipped along unheeded until, with a start, he realized that he was far from home and in an unknown part of the city. He turned to retrace his steps, when, from a nearby alley, came a rush of men. Something hit him over the head. A sensation of falling — falling — falling — then oblivion.

He awoke, bewildered. His body ached. He drew his hand across his forehead. It was covered with blood. Groaning with pain, he arose from the sidewalk and staggered down the street, his head whirling.

A woman stepped out of the shadow. A soft hand was laid on the minister's arm.

“Honey, don’t you want to—”

The woman's pleading stopped suddenly as he turned his face towards her “My Gawd,” she exclaimed, “you've been slugged.” She wiped the blood from his face with her tiny handkerchief. Vaguely he realized that she was pretty, but she was of a species new to him. The incongruity of her being on the streets at that hour, alone, never struck him.

“Better come over to the room until I fix up that cut in your head. I live just opposite here,” she explained.

He submitted, weakly. Still in a trance, he allowed her to lead him into a nearby doorway and up a narrow flight of stairs. He had a hazy recollection of meeting people. Someone remarked that “Daisy’s caught another live one,” but his condition was such that he paid no attention. Later he remembered.

The girl drew him into a cheaply-furnished room. An oil lamp burned dimly. From somewhere near came the racket of a piano. Raucous voices were raised in song. A smell of liquor perfumed the air. Faint from the loss of blood, bewildered, he dropped into a chair. As one watches a performance on a far away stage, he watched her, fascinated, slip out of her coat and hat and light a cigarette. It’s peculiar, Oriental odor soothed him. Never before had he been in contact with a woman who smoked. His sub-consciousness told him that it was wrong. Yet it seemed the natural thing for this girl to do. He admitted to himself that he rather enjoyed the sensation of watching her. While he half dozed, she heated water over a small alcohol burner and cleansed the wound in his head. A feeling of dreamy security surrounded him. A lock of her hair brushed across his face. He forgot, for the second, his religious restraints. Her soft fingers hovering about him brought a pleasant inner warmth and an indifference to the pain.

The blood pounded through his veins. His hand reached up and took hers. He felt something within him telling him that he must draw this peculiar woman to his lap, to press her slim, loosely clad body against his own, to bury his face in her fragrant hair. Her fingers curled in light, instinctive response about his, then, with a questioning look in her eyes, she withdrew them and again busied herself with his injuries. With small pieces of adhesive plaster she drew the edges of the cut together as neatly as a physician could have done. Pulling himself together, he mentioned this to her.

“I was a nurse once,” she explained.

His head was clearing under her ministrations. He attempted to arise. It was only by a strong effort that he could stand erect.

“I’m afraid that I’m still pretty weak,” he admitted with a wan smile. “Perhaps, if it is not imposing too much on your kindness, I can get you to ’phone for a taxi.” He reached into his pocket to hand her a coin for the telephone. His pocket- book was gone. Gone, too, were his watch and his cuff links. “I have been robbed!” he exclaimed. He continued to search his pockets. One of his visiting cards fell to the floor. The girl stooped to pick it up. As she read the name, the card fell from her fingers. She straightened up and looked at the preacher curiously. She recognized him then, from his published likeness.

“You, a preacher, here— here of all places!” There was a ripple of quiet amusement in her voice. “A fine sensation if the newspapers find out that Butler, the reformer, has been here— alone— with me!”

Butler knew that the girl was mocking him, although, in his befogged condition, he failed to see the reason. Dizziness again overcame him. He seized hold of the girl for support. Her manner changed. Again she was the woman of the streets, her eyes gazing languorously, amorously, seductively into his. They hypnotized him. His faintness left him. He drew her to him and she seemed to melt into his arms. Their lips met. Her pretty hands rose, encircled his neck and held him fast. His mind became a blur of vague, fragmentary thoughts. Gone were the resolutions of a life time. Gone was the veneer of civilization. The preacher gave way to the man, passionate, sexual, conquering. He only knew that her magnificent, slender young body was pressing against his, that her ripe, red lips were thrilling him with their kisses, that his body was vibrating with passion. He was the Cave man who had found his mate. Her eyes gleamed beneath her lowered lashes—gleamed with triumph and hate. She was flaming with exultation at the ease of her conquest. How easily he had fallen into her trap. She held him closer. Every vein in his body seemed ready to burst.

Her eyes fell upon the card still lying on the floor where it had fallen. Something— perhaps a thought of other and happier days— flashed through her brain. Her manner changed. She drew away from him suddenly and stepped back. He attempted to seize her again in his mad embrace, but she fended him away with her little hands. They struggled about the room. Her hair became loosened in the scuffle and fell about her shoulders. One sleeve of her dress was torn, but she fought on, grimly. With a sudden twist of her body she freed herself. He staggered backwards and panting from his efforts, sank back into the chair. Her voice came to him as from a great distance.

"I’m sorry— terribly sorry— that I let you go so far,” she was saying, gaspingly. “I had no business to tempt you. No! No!” as he started to rise— “I am going to save you— save you from yourself!”

“Save me?” He repeated the words stupidly.

She was talking rapidly now. “Can't you see what would happen if anyone here recognized you? Look about you! Surely, man, you must realize where you are!”

The piano stopped. The realization of his predicament swept over him. The tawdry room, the girl leaning back on the bed, cigarette in mouth, her forehead pursed in thought, her hair loose, one bare, white arm thrown above her head, the beautiful lines of her figure displayed through her garments, her skirts, slightly too high, revealing a pair of neatly turned ankles. She was still breathing hard from her struggle with him. As she gazed at him, her big eyes filled with wonderment.

“After all,” she murmured, “a preacher's only a man.”

He heard people passing through the hall. Snatches of whispered conversation reached him. He knew, only too well, what the result would be if these inhabitants of the Red Lights found him here. The newspapers! How the reporters would smack their lips over the juicy morsel of scandal. He wondered what the members of his congregation would say. And his wife! Oh, the disgrace of it all! He turned to the girl, pleadingly, seeing in her his only hope of escape.

His appealing look stirred her into action. “Come on,” she exclaimed. Hastily she knotted up her hair and donned her street attire. She assisted him with his overcoat and turned up the collar. With a little jerk, she pulled his cap down over his eyes.

“Stagger,” she whispered, as they passed out into the hallway. He realized that he was to play the part of a drunken man and he did his best. Curious faces gazed at them from dimly lighted rooms, but with her hand holding him tightly by the arm, she piloted him safely down the stairs and onto the street gray with the first light of dawn.

Half an hour later, when he was safely out of the danger zone, she slipped back, suddenly, into the shadows.

“I'd better beat it,” she whispered. “Here comes Casey, the bull.”

The preacher attempted to restrain her, but she had disappeared — swallowed up in the darkness.

Casey, hastening up the street, stopped as he reached the minister. “Why, good mornin' Rever'nd,” he exclaimed, wonderingly, touching his cap. “Sure, and me eyes must be failing me, for I'd have sworn I glimpsed ‘The English Daisy’ standing here only a minute ago.”

“And who might ‘The English Daisy’ be?” asked Butler, pulling his cap further down over his battered forehead. He knew that the law, as embodied in Casey, was against the woman who had just left him. He had the highest respect for the law, but he felt that it was his duty to protect her.

Casey laughed. “She’s one of them females that you’re going to preach about Sunday. I've ordered her to stay off my beat and she's got to do it or take a ride down the line. Bad as they make 'em. Used to be a nice girl, I've heard. Preacher's daughter back in England, I understand. Was a nurse in one of the hospitals until she met a young doctor and went bad—like they all do.”

“I'm afraid your eyes are growing weak,” smiled the minister. “I was unable to sleep and I’ve been walking up and down here for the last half hour and I have seen nothing of the person you mention. I would like to meet the— ahem— lady, however. I am sure from what you say that she would make an interesting character study.”

And with the first lie of his life on his lips, the Man of God walked slowly towards his home. Far down the street he saw a slim, girlish figure flitting through the shadows. He slipped quietly into the house, undressed and retired. Mrs. Butler was still snoring peacefully.

Those who heard the Reverend Joshua Williams Butler, D. D., preach on “The Social Evil” the following Sunday, were surprised at the tone of the gentleman's remarks. His sermon was an eloquent appeal for charity towards the woman of the Red Lights.

In his study, among the discarded sermons, lay his masterpiece.

___________________

19: The Dare

Harold Ward

Saucy Stories, Feb 1921

BETTY BURCH, known to the Police of two continents as “The girl who never was caught,” stood before a jewelry shop inspecting with womanly curiosity the glittering display in the window.

“Not figuring on lifting the Duke’s diamond, are you, Betty?” drawled a masculine voice at her elbow. She turned suddenly to gaze into the laughing eyes of “Adonis” Brown, of Headquarters.

“Thanks for the idea,” she retorted laughingly. “I hadn’t thought of it before, but now that you mention it, I do have half an idea that I could find a use for the jewel.”

“Think again,” Brown retorted. “If you want to retain that sobriquet of yours, let the bauble alone. I’m going to be on the job myself the night of the wedding, and while I wouldn’t mind having the distinction of being the first man to pinch you, I hate to see you stick your head in the lion’s mouth. Not only will the regular force be represented, but old Van Twiller’s hired the Pinkertons to send over a squad of their crack operatives to guard his daughter’s presents. So you see, young lady, there’s no chance for you.”

Betty Burch arched her eyebrows prettily. “Really, Mr. Brown, you interest me,” she smiled. “Do you know that I’ve half a notion to take a sporting chance, just for the pleasure it gives me in putting something over on you bulls. I’ll wager you the best dinner that money will buy that I can lift the diamond and get away without being caught. Are you on?”

Brown looked at her quizzically. Then a flush of anger mounted to his cheeks.

“You little devil,” he exclaimed brusquely, “I’d like to slip the bracelets on you, on general principles. I’d take the bet, only—”

She wrinkled her nose saucily. “Only what?” she asked with an air of injured innocence that belied the twinkle in her roguish eyes.

“Why, I’m not such a fool as to think that you’d come to me and confess that you’d stolen the sparkler— if it was taken,” Brown answered.

Betty thought deeply for a second.

“Tell you what we’ll do, Brownie,” she said seriously, “We’ll make it what is called a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between the two of us. If you pinch me in the act, all right. If not, and I make a clean getaway, you are to forget this little conversation and act as if it had never taken place.”

She hesitated. Then suddenly she leaned over toward him and whispered:

“Of course, I’ll not dare to tell you that I stole the diamond, but if I do I’ll let you know that I did— by giving you a kiss. Do you take the dare?”

The big detective shrugged his shoulders. “Have your own way, Betty, have your own way,” he laughed. “Only, remember, I’ve warned you.”

He plunged into the passing throng and a second later had disappeared from sight around the corner.

For an instant longer Betty Burch stood gazing at the big diamond blazing in the rays of sun in the jeweler’s window. Then, with her brows puckered in thought, she, too, wended her way down the street.

ii

THE VAN TWILLER ball was a social affair which promised in every way to eclipse all other events of the season. For Louise Van Twiller, the acknowledged season’s beauty and only daughter of old Gaunt Van Twiller, the lumber king, was to wed the Duke of Kentmore and Bilderstand.

Society had left no stone unturned to make the international alliance a memorable affair. Party had followed party, each, in turn, outdoing its predecessor in magnificence. And, as the crowning event, on the wedding eve, came the Van Twiller ball where, according to all newspaper accounts, old Gaunt Van Twiller was expected to empty his barrel and give his only daughter a send-off that for sheer lavishness and expenditure of money would make those that had gone before look small in comparison.

The Duke’s gift to his fiancée was a magnificent diamond— one of his ancestral jewels. A replica of the great stone had been on exhibition in the window of a prominent jeweler where Betty Burch had seen and coveted it, and where her conversation with “Adonis” Brown had taken place.

That she had never been caught was, she realized, not the result of her luck, but because she never went into a deal until every detail had been planned and rehearsed until the possibility of a slip had been practically eliminated.

Now, conversant as she was with the way in which the diamond would be guarded, she realized that, unless something unforeseen happened, there was little likelihood of her making good her boast to Brown.

It was not that she needed the money, for she already had enough— the proceeds of previous escapades— to keep her in luxury for several years to come. It was the patronizing air that Brown had bestowed upon her that had angered her despite her smiling exterior.

She hated Brown, the big detective— and he knew it. And knowing, he had assumed that attitude of solicitude in the hope of baiting her on to do just what she had done— plan to steal the Duke’s gift to his bride.

Viewed from every angle, the chances for success were extremely slim. Yet hers was the nature that refuses to accept defeat; it was a game of wits between the detective and herself, with her liberty at stake against the Duke’s diamond.

Rather than confess herself beaten she went ahead with her plans. Only she was more careful to plan every minute detail— to see that there was no possibility of a mistake— than she had ever been before in her long and, from the standpoint of crookdom, brilliant career.

iii

THE BRIDE’S wedding-gifts were laid out on a long table in one room of the Van Twiller mansion: cut-glass which sparkled and scintillated with myriad colors under the brilliant electric lamps; richly carved silver worth a king’s ransom— all surrounding the wonderful diamond which reposed in its velvet-lined case like a queen in the midst of her court.

Near the table, his clear, gray eyes never leaving it for an instant, save to scrutinize the face of each guest, stood Detective Edward Brown, tall, handsome in evening clothes, fitting in perfectly with his surroundings.

Close to the door stood another Headquarters man; there were others stationed here and there about the house. Among the guests mingled the skilled operatives from the Pinkerton Agency, men and women who had reached the very top of their profession and to whom the face of every one in crookdom was an open book.

As Detective Brown completed the detail of stationing his assistants, taking the post of greatest danger himself, he smiled inwardly as he thought of the boast that Betty Burch had made only a few days before. Would she attempt to steal the jewel? He hoped so.

His arrangements had been so made that not one man nor woman, nor a hundred, could get through the net. He was inclined to think that the fair Betty, who was wise beyond her years, would think better of the bargain after mature reflection, and not make the attempt. But if she did— he was ready for her!

A stream of guests passed through the room constantly, hovering over the lavish outlay of money represented on the table. For all of The Four Hundred were here tonight.

From the distant ballroom came the rich, mellow strains of the orchestra and the silvery tinkle of women’s laughter.

Close by the detective stood a woman, young, handsome, black of hair and darkly brunette of skin, faultlessly clad in a gown which showed off to perfection the lines of her graceful figure. Unescorted, she stood at the table admiring the gifts until the room was emptied for a second. Then she turned quickly to Brown.

“Quick!” she whispered. "I'm from Pinkerton’s.” She showed him the badge cupped in the palm of her hand, then slipped it quickly out of sight in the bosom of her dress.

“I’ve been mingling with the guests and overheard a few words which led me to believe that an attempt is to be made to 'lift’ the big sparkler tonight. Do you get me ?”

“Adonis” Brown lifted his eyebrows inquiringly and smiled.

“Thanks for the tip,” he drawled, “but I guess that we’ll be able to handle anything that comes our way without the help of you private ‘Dicks’!”

“But you don’t understand me,” she hurried on. “We’re hired to look out for such things and tip you off if we get wise to anything. You get the credit— we don’t. It’s Betty Burch and her gang. She’s out to show you up. Some sort of a dare, I understand....

“From what I’ve learned, one of her confederates is to cut the light wires and they’re planning to rush you in the darkness. Watch out for it. Watch your opportunity and, if my tip is right and the lights do go out, grab the diamond and stick it in your pocket. It’s that and nothing else they want. And they’ll have to work fast.”

Brown was about to reply when another party of guests entered the room. With a knowing look toward him, the girl turned away to the table and mingled among them. From where he stood Brown could see that she was listening to every word they said without apparently seeming to do so.

iv

SUDDENLY the lights went out. The entire house was engulfed in darkness— black, impenetrable darkness.

From the ballroom came shrieks and hysterical laughter. One or two of the women surrounding the table tittered in the darkness. Brown, his every faculty alert, leaped to the edge of the table and, with a map of the contents in his mind’s eye, laid his hand on the case containing the big diamond. Snapping it shut, he thrust it into his pocket.

“Keep your places!” he shouted as he sprang to the door and blocked it with his huge body. Remain where you are until lights are brought.”

A second later servants emerged with candles, lighting the gas chandeliers. Brown ran to the switch and tried it. There was no response. The wires had been tampered with.

Into the room where the jewels reposed rushed old Gaunt Van Twiller, followed by the Duke of Kentmore and Bilderstand. After them came a troupe of servants with lights. A second later the room was again ablaze.

The lumber king’s face was bathed with perspiration. “Quick!” he snapped. “The electric lights were deliberately tampered with. It was the work of thieves. Did they get anything? Speak up, damn it! Say something!”

Brown overlooked the rich man’s explosion. “From certain sources,” he smiled, “I learned that a well-known female crook was to make an attempt to steal the Duke’s diamond and—”

The old man’s glance strayed toward the table.

“And, by God, she did!” he yelled, pointing to the empty space from which the case had been taken. Several of the women shrieked while there was a rumbling explosion from the Duke.

Again Brown smiled with a knowing air. Reaching into his pocket, he drew forth the case and handed it to Van Twiller. “You mean, she tried,” he corrected, “only I was on the job and—”

He was startled by a loud bellow from the lumber king who had clicked open the catch. Brown gave one look toward the case and then recoiled a step, his face white and drawn.

For, tucked away in the depression made for the diamond, lay— a candy kiss!

Half an hour later in her own apartment, a black wig lying on the table before her, Betty Burch washed off the brunette cosmetic which covered her fair skin, and imagined Brown’s expression, when he discovered the trick she had played on him.

Occasionally her glance stole toward the big diamond which winked saucily up at her from the dresser where it lay beside a Pinkerton Detective Agency badge.

_____________________

20: The Life-Eater

Harold Ward

Weird Tales, June, 1937

1. The Terror

DEATH stalked through the little village of La Foubelle at the edge of the great swamp. Again and again it struck, fattening the tiny, cypress-draped graveyard until there was scarcely a house that was not in mourning.

No ordinary calamity this, but a horror. Men talked of it in awed, hushed whispers. Women, hollow-eyed and gaunt from worry, pressed their little ones to their flaccid breasts as they busied themselves with their household tasks. The coming of night found the streets deserted, the townspeople huddled, white-faced and frightened, behind closed doors.

"La maladie sans maladie," they called it, this dark, formless, unspeakable terror that always came at night, striking down young and old alike—leaving in its wake a body shriveled and deflated, the skin puckered into a thousand wrinkles. They had seen their loved ones die, had these simple folk of La Foubelle— seen them twist and writhe in excruciating agony at the very last. Sometimes, when the victim was very strong, the thing took toll of him for days.

Jules Delatour, it was, who whimpered of having seen the horror hovering over the body of his dying mother— a black, transparent thing, he babbled, smoke-like and shapeless, its bestial face filled with malignant ferocity. But Jules was the village drunkard and had been in his cups the night his mother passed away, so no one believed his tale.

Doctor Lamontaine, sipping rum from a battered tin cup and poring over a volume of Cagliostro, noted the shadow that fell across the book as a man entered the cubbyhole of an office.

"Drink?” he growled without looking up, and shoved a second cup across the desk. “Rum. Good Jamaica rum. Help yourself.”

The green-and-yellow parrot, swinging on its perch at his elbow, opened its filmy eyes and echoed its master’s invitation.

"Rum!” it shrieked drowsily. "Good Jamaica rum! Hotter 'n hell! Hotter  'n hell!"

Lamontaine looked up when his visitor made no response to the double overture. Then he leaped to his feet, his hand outstretched, his eyes smiling a welcome under their bushy red brows.

“The dominie, by all that’s holy!” he roared.

He dumped a pile of magazines from a chair, kicked them into the corner, and shoved it to his guest.

"No wonder you refused my invitation to guzzle,” he chuckled. "You, the only teetotaler in the village. Sit down, my friend, and take a load off your feet.”

The schoolmaster dropped wearily into the proffered seat and gazed at his host curiously.

"Will you never grow up?” he demanded whimsically.

Lamontaine shrugged his shoulders and returned the other’s smile with a broad grin.

"I hope not,” he chuckled. "The devil of it, dominie, is that I’ve sipped the nectar from the cup of knowledge and now all that’s left for me is the dregs. But come, my friend, what brings you, a sick man, out in the heat of the day? Have I not warned you repeatedly against it?”

The little dominie smiled wanly.

"Evelyn l’Brest was stricken today,” he said finally. "She is like— the others....”

There was silence for a moment. Lamontaine wagged his big head sagely; then he drew himself into his shell of professional reserve, for he knew that Noel Pelletier loved this slip of a girl who had been his pupil.

"I have already seen her,” he said finally.

"There is nothing that you can do for her?”

Again the physician was silent. Then he arose and took a short turn about the tiny room. Returning to his desk, he dropped back into his seat and, filling the tin cup from the rum-jug at his elbow, he downed the contents at a gulp.

"I have told you before, my friend,” he said finally, "that this is a case for a priest and not a physician.”

The schoolmaster crossed himself.

"Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed. "Then you still insist?”

Lamontaine nodded.

"It is a question of exorcism, not physic,” he growled. "AH night and all this day, when I have had the opportunity, I have pored over my books. I am more convinced now than before. Listen, my friend.”

He leaned across the desk and tapped the jumble of books with his long forefinger.

"There is much knowledge in these,” he said quietly, "knowledge that you men with religion in your souls will not admit. Black Magic? Certainly. You say that there is no such thing. I insist that it exists today just as it did in the beginning. True, the church has stamped it out to a large degree. But, nevertheless, there are many isolated cases— places far from the ken of men, such as here in La Foubelle— where it flourishes like the grass after a spring rain. Your people here are superstitious. They have given the devil fertile soil in which to plant his seeds.”

"Admitted! Admitted!” the little schoolmaster said excitedly. "Against such ignorance one man can do nothing; a dozen could not handle the situation efficiently. Yet—”

Lamontaine held up a restraining hand.

"Books such as these of mine tell of strange, weird things,” he interrupted, "horrible things —things of which the average man never dreams. Our ancestors knew more about spirit life— the life beyond the veil— than we shall ever know. Why? Because they lived closer to it.

"I have traveled in many lands and I have studied in innumerable out-of-the-way places,” he went on heatedly, "but never have I seen such a rare opportunity for the devil and his imps as here in La Foubelle. And he has taken advantage of it, dominie. There is a terrible influence at work here — under our very noses.”

The schoolmaster crossed himself again.

"Disoriente!” he exclaimed with a shudder. "Do you mean—”

"That there are many things the average man cannot— will not— understand,” Lamontaine interrupted. "There are innumerable forms of spirit life— forms that function in various ways. Some of them— most of them, I might say— are kindly disposed toward us. Others are malignant. We have to deal with one of the latter in this case.”

He filled and lighted his pipe, the little schoolmaster gazing at him with eyes that betrayed his horror and astonishment.

"Desoriente!” he said again. "You are beyond my depth, my friend. Explain yourself."

Lamontaine scratched his red beard reflectively.

"Primal earth forces,” he said shortly, "elementals—spirit forms that have never evolved—subhuman nature spirits. They exist, together with innumerable other spirit forms, on the other side of the veil.”

"Mon Dieu!” the schoolmaster gasped. "I can hardly believe it, my doctaire.”

"These things are jealous of mankind, hating living beings because mankind has evolved,” Lamontaine went on. "Why? Because they have never developed beyond the rudimentary stages. Consequently, they consider mankind their natural prey. One of these things is loose in our peaceful little village. Because it is out of its natural habitat, it must have vitality on which to live—human vitality. Otherwise, it ceases to be. So it feeds upon the vitality of those with whom it comes in contact, just as a vampire feeds upon human blood.”

The face of the little schoolmaster turned a ghastly white. He half rose from his chair, then dropped back again, his teeth chattering.

"Horrible! Horrible! Blasphemous!” he ejaculated.

Lamontaine shrugged his broad shoulders.

“In order to obtain this sustenance— this vitality to prolong its existence,” he continued, "an elemental must, necessarily, in its early stages, prey largely upon the sick, the weak— those who are at a low physical stage. But eventually it satiates itself with their vitality and becomes stronger. Then it seeks its victims among the more powerful. That is the cause of this plague among the members of our community.”

The schoolmaster leaned back in his chair, his thin face drawn and haggard.

"Dieu avec nous!” he said in a low, awed whisper. "Then Jules Delatour told the truth! And it is this— this horrible thing— that my little Evelyn is faced with, my doctaire? Is there nothing that we can do to combat it?”

Lamontaine patted the pile of books in front of him, his eyes wearing a strange, far-away look.

"That is what I have been studying,” he said finally. "But, first, let us consider how this unholy thing chanced to come to us. There must be a reason. What caused it to break through the veil?"

The schoolmaster’s hands trembled like those of a man with the ague.

"Explain!” he said hoarsely.

"Alone and unassisted, these primal forces cannot come to us,” Lamontaine told him. "They must be aided by someone who is already here— someone who has the vitality to support them for the nonce. It must be one with mediumistic powers. Now do you understand?”

The little schoolmaster crossed himself again.

"It is unbelievable, horrible!” he said. Then, leaning forward, his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper:

"I would willingly give my life, doctaire, in order to save the woman I love. You, who know everything, perhaps can show me the way.”

Lamontaine combed his long beard with his fingers, reflectively.

"My books have already told me that much,” he said after a brief pause. "If you... care to take... the chance.”

The other nodded, a hectic spot appearing in each cheek.

"Proceed!” he commanded hoarsely.

Lamontaine rose and, walking to the little medicine cabinet, filled a hypodermic with clear, colorless liquid.

"An injection of this liquid will lower your vitality to a point where you will be an easy victim,” he said quietly; "far easier than Evelyn, who is strong and healthy and able to resist it. Why? Because you are already a sick man. I have a plan to trap this thing— it must be a secret between us— if you are willing to trust me and take the only way out.”

For an instant there was silence. Then the little schoolmaster bared his frail arm to the needle.

2. The Thing

RUM-GUZZLER though he was, a soldier  of fortune—a wild, barbaric throwback, born a hundred years too late— Doctor Hugo Lamontaine was yet an occultist of international reputation and a physician of extraordinary ability. Possessed of a fortune which made him independent of his fellow-men, he followed the dictates of his own conscience, caring not a whit for the conventions. To him the esoteric practises of voodoo, obeah and demonology were open books; to study them he had followed his beard to the end of the world.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his hair as red as the blood that he had shed on a dozen foreign fields, possessing the whiskers of a Viking, slovenly in his attire, constantly spoiling for a fight or a frolic, he was a man to be reckoned with under any conditions.

His insatiable craving for knowledge had brought him to the little village of La Foubelle. Slumbering at the very edge of the gigantic morass, uncontaminated by the presence of outsiders, its French-Creole inhabitants had clung, leech-like, to the customs and superstitions of their ancestors. Close association with the blacks who, brought from West India as slaves at an early day, had revolted and fled to the interior of the swamp, had intensified these weird beliefs. La Foubelle was a virgin vein of folklore and heterodoxies, witchcraft and bizarre customs. Lamontaine had deliberately thrown himself into the midst of the lives of these near-barbarians. He had ingratiated himself to them and, by degrees, had been accepted as one of them. Eventually he had become not only their physician, but their confessor as well.

The day had brought more than its accustomed load of suffering. The heat had made the afflicted ones worse. Making his evening rounds, Lamontaine was filled with a premonition of death lurking close at hand. He had the narrow street to himself. Men and women talked in low, hushed whispers, huddling together, sheep-like, fearful of the darkness that had dropped like a pall. Frightened children clung to their mothers’ skirts, their black eyes beady with terror. From inside a tiny cottage came the sound of muffled sobs as a young mother rocked her first-born, slowly wasting away.

The bell in the little schoolhouse at the end of the lane clanged dolefully. Lamontaine halted in his tracks, his broad shoulders drooping like those of a defeated man. For the schoolhouse was also the church.

"Bong !... bong!... bong!... bong!”

He counted the strokes. When they passed sixteen, he breathed a deep sigh of relief. It meant that little Evelyn l'Brest was not the victim.

"Bong!... bong!... bong!"

He counted on until the strokes passed fifty. Then, as they continued their doleful monody, he lifted his shoulders and took up his walk again. It would be old Kenny Tolan, he told himself— Kenny Tolan, eighty-two and long ago marked as a victim by the grim reaper.

And deep in his pagan heart, Doctor Hugo Lamontaine breathed a little prayer of thanksgiving.

Evelyn l’Brest, the schoolmaster’s sweetheart, still lived. There was yet a chance.

Again he was halted by an agonized scream. It came from a cottage close at hand— the abode of Jacques d’Arcy, at the end of the side road. He whirled and dashed through the darkness in the direction of the low, thatched house with its single lighted window. A white, scared face stared at him through the darkness as a man rushed around the corner, his gun drawn, almost colliding with him in his mad rush. It was Pierre Le Front, the village constable.

"Mon Dieu!” the little man exclaimed. "You heard it, doctaire?’’

Lamontaine nodded grimly. The constable by his side, he padded noiselessly over the soft earth between the rows of trees, covered with Spanish moss, that led to the d’Arcy home.

A man dashed toward them from the direction of the house. He saw them and, whirling, leaped into the thicket that banked the roadside. As he disappeared, he turned. Even though the moon was dead in the leaden sky, Lamontaine caught a glimpse of a lean, cadaverous face, of teeth over which the lips were drawn in a wolfish snarl, of deeply sunken eyes that glittered ominously.

The big physician seized the little constable by the shoulder, halting him with a violence that almost jerked him off his feet. "Your gun! Quick!” he snarled.

He jerked the weapon from the officer’s hand and emptied it in the direction the fleeing man had taken. Then, dropping it at the astonished constable’s feet, he dashed madly in the same direction.

Le Front followed. He heard Lamontaine crash through the dank grass and underbrush that bordered the fetid swamp. Then came the sound of a bateau as it swung out into the water... the creak of oars in their locks....

Lamontaine, his feet bogged by the mud, met the little man as he struggled through the tangled growth, and cursed fluently.

"Mon Dieu!" the constable panted. "Who was it? And what happened?”

"It was Aaron Kronk!” Lamontaine snarled.

From far out in the fetid waters of the swamp came a harsh, sinister laugh.

Constable Le Front dropped to his knees and crossed himself.

Aaron Kronk! Little wonder Pierre Le Front turned a shade paler under his coating of tan. Aaron Kronk! Master of diablerie and king of devils! He it was who, only a few weeks earlier, masquerading as the infamous Gilles de Laval, Baron de Betz, the blue-bearded monster of the Middle Ages, had involved himself in a saturnalia of blood from which only the bravery and occult knowledge of Lamontaine had rescued the community. Even now, two of his intended victims were in the hospital at New Orleans recovering from their injuries; the old house on the peninsula where he had made his headquarters was a mass of charred embers and smoke-stained masonry.

They hurried back toward the house of Jacques d’Arcy. Once more the wild shrieks assailed their ears, speeding their footsteps. Mingled with the screams was a low, gurgling moaning. It grew fainter as they approached. By the time they reached the low, whitewashed gate, it had ceased.

The front door was thrown hurriedly open and a white face peered out at them, terror written in every lineament.

In a rustic wicker chair in the low-ceilinged room an old woman was weaving backward and forward, shrieking hysterically. Around her stood three other women— two of them neighbors, one a daughter. A fourth had opened the door.

They greeted the newcomers with gasps of relief.

"On connait l'ami au besoin —a friend is known in time of need!” the younger woman exclaimed. "Eet ees ze doctaire!”

Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder.

"What happened?” he snapped.

She twisted her tattered handkerchief about her fingers nervously,

"Zat I do not rightly know,” she finally managed to ejaculate. "Pere d’Arcy, he ees dying, we theenk. We were weeth heem. We hear a noise outside. We look through ze window. Zere was a face peering een at us—a horrible face, doctaire. Eet was ze face of le Diable.”

She stopped, shuddering like one who suffers from the ague. Lamontaine glared at her and she continued.

"We scream. Zen ze awful face disappear’ and through ze window come ze shape— ze shapeless shape! Lak’ a ghos' eet was— wizout form, yet eet had ze form! Oui, I cannot explain eet, doctaire!"

She broke off her recital and gave way to shuddering sobs, her face buried in her hands. Lamontaine seized her by the shoulder again and shook her roughly. The old woman recommenced her hysterical howling.

"Talk!” Lamontaine snapped, shaking the woman until her teeth chattered. "Time is of value now. Talk!”

The woman ceased her convulsive sobbing and looked at the big physician pathetically.

"Eet was awful— horrible!” she said finally. "Pere d’Arcy, he give ze wild scream. Ze theeng— ze awful theeng— drop upon heem like ze great veil. Jacques, he moan again and again. Zen, ze moan, eet, too, stop. We have rush out and we are here. We are afraid of ze theeng. Zen you come—”

Lamontaine shoved her aside and, darting to the door of the sickroom, seized the knob and jerked it open.

The room was in darkness, yet the light, shining through the open door from the outer room, was strong enough to reveal the scene that was being enacted. Even Lamontaine, inured though he was to death and violence, shrank back.

Old Jacques d’Arcy lay upon the floor by the side of the bed. His face, glaring up at them, was twisted into a horrible contortion, the eyes protruding as if they had been squeezed from their sockets. His body was shriveled into a million wrinkles; it was like a toy balloon that has been deflated.

Over the dead man was a form— a strange, gossamer-like wraith, vague, shadowy, indistinct. The physician had an impression of malignant eyes glaring at him— of a slit of a mouth drawn back into a wolfish snarl. Yet there were no eyes— no mouth. The thing was shapeless.

Recovering himself, Lamontaine took a step forward. The hellish thing seemed about to spring at him. Then it drew back as if reluctant to leave the body of its victim.

Slowly it dissolved itself—floating away like a bit of vapor, through the open window.

Lamontaine turned to the others who stood shuddering in the doorway. The old woman took up her hysterical wailing again.

A faint odor filled the room. It was strange, indistinguishable, horrible, nauseating. It was the odor of death.

The thing from beyond, gorged with vitality, had reached a point in its development where it was visible to human eyes.

3. Out of the Night

IT WAS APPARENT to Lamontaine that Aaron Kronk was the medium by which the horrific spirit form from the other world had been materialized. Yet  the burly physician was puzzled. What sinister motive did the diabolical Kronk have in thus wreaking his vengeance upon the inoffensive, simple-minded inhabitants of the sleepy little village? They had done him no harm. Until a few weeks earlier, when Lamontaine had met and bested him in his struggle for the de Laval fortune, these people had never known of his existence.

Yet in Lamontaine’s mind there was no doubt that Kronk was possessed of more than ordinary mediumistic ability and that it was through him that the terrible primal force had been developed. But why? He asked himself the question a hundred times as he completed his rounds of the sick, following the horrible death of Jacques d’Arcy.

It was late when he had finished. Now, even though it was well past midnight, he still sat in his darkened office, his feet upon the desk, his eyes, half closed, gazing out of the open window. He had kicked off his shoes and thrust his toes into carpet slippers. His shirt was tossed carelessly into the corner and his suspenders hung down over his hips.

The little village had long since quieted down for the night. Here and there a dim light glimmered in a curtained window, marking the home of some helpless victim who was fighting the horror that was hovering over the peaceful little hamlet like a great pall—a horror that he, the man in whom these simple village folk had learned to place their trust, was unable to combat.

Lamontaine cursed aloud as he realized the futility of his struggle against the thing from beyond. He had found in his books no surcease of sorrow— no way to scotch the demon. It was something that he must think out— reason out for himself.

His only chance lay in the trap he had laid by means of the little schoolmaster. Had he done right in thus exposing Noel Pelletier to the terrible danger? There was no other way. He consoled himself with the thought that Pelletier had no desire to live if Evelyn l’Brest died. And unless he was successful in his assault on the malevolent spirit through the little dominie, Evelyn l’Brest must surely go.

And yet he had no set plan. He was trusting to luck — blind luck — hoping against hope that he would succeed.

There was a light footstep on the gravel outside the window. He looked out. It was Pierre Le Front, the constable, making his midnight rounds. Seeing the physician sitting in the open window, he had entered the yard. Now, at Lamontaine’s invitation, he stepped inside.

The physician picked the rum-jug from the floor and, filling a cup for himself, tossed another across the desk to the officer and jerked his thumb toward the jug.

"Drink?” he growled. "Jamaica rum. It’ll do you good on a night like this— a night when the very atmosphere tingles with death.”

"Mon Dieu! Yes, yes!” Le Front ejaculated. "I, too, feel eet een ze air, doctaire.”

He filled the cup and tossed off the contents with an appreciative smack of his lips.

"Ze dominie ees worse,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I am go zere and stay ze night weeth heem w'en I feenish my round. He ees fear to stay alone.”

Lamontaine cursed again— full, man-sized oaths.

"And there’s not a damned thing that I can do,” he mourned. "Not a damned thing!”

Le Front leaned forward, the better to see through the darkness the face of the man on the other side of the desk.

"Zen eet ees true, zat wheech ze dominie wheesper to me— zat ze theeng wheech we see awhile ago at d’Arcy’s ees not a ghost— zat eet navaire lived Iak’ you an’ me?”

For a moment Lamontaine made no answer. Then he nodded solemnly.

"True,” he answered finally. "And the thing that’s agitating my mind, my friend, is the reason for all this? Why should Kronk wreak such diabolical vengeance upon this little village?”

Le Front helped himself to the rum. Then, as the fiery liquor raced through his veins, he grew more loquacious.

"I theenk I know,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

He leaned forward and poured forth his story to Doctor Lamontaine. The big man listened quietly; then, when Le Front had finished, he burst forth.

"May a just God burn his damned soul in hell!” he snarled. "God! Le Front! Can a man be so cold-blooded for the sake of gold?”

"Zat ees my opinion,” the constable said earnestly. "I haff reason’ eet out een my head.”

Lamontaine wagged his long red beard solemnly. That for which he had been groping for so long was gradually filter ing through his brain. He was beginning to see a bright and shining light.

"In the morning I will go to N'Orleans and look into that," he promised.

The little constable nodded and, helping himself to the rum again, left to take up his lonely vigil in the bachelor quarters of the schoolmaster.

Neither of them noticed the sinister figure that had been standing in the darkness close beside the open window listening to their conversation. Now, as the constable left, he darted to the shadow of a near-by bush, his sunken eyes gleaming malevolently at the big man who sat just inside the window, his long beard resting on his breast, his head bowed in thought.

It was Aaron Kronk.

Lamontaine was weary—horribly so. All of the night before he had sat by the bedside of one of the dying villagers. The day had been spent in study and in making his rounds. Now, sitting with his feet upon the desk again, his chair tilted backward, he tried to concentrate— to reason out the horrible events of the past few days. What Le Front told him had placed things in a new light. If it proved correct, he might be able to win yet over the monster from beyond the pale.

Then outraged nature finally gave way, and he slept.

Someone was looking at him. He knew it— felt it. He was aware, too, of a feeling of bodily discomfort— a peculiar sensation that, beginning in his brain, crept down through his nerves and muscles, leaving him cramped and paralyzed. His subconscious physician’s mind automatically analyzed it as a sort of rigor. It constricted his throat, twisting itself around his huge limbs like hoops of steel, crushing him like an incubus. He fought with himself in an effort to open his eyes. A voice was commanding him to sleep. He mastered the desire and raised his eyelids. A mocking face was glaring into his own. It was that of Aaron Kronk.

Hugo Lamontaine had yet to know the meaning of fear. He had faced death laughingly in a thousand ways on modem battlefields. Yet, gazing into the malevolent eyes of Aaron Kronk, bound hand and foot by invisible bands, he realized now what it meant. The thin man was gazing at him with malignant ferocity. His eyes, bearing a message of hatred, seemed to tear the physician’s brain from its very roots. He tried to struggle against them, but in vain. They dissolved themselves into a single, glittering orb—an eye that whirled and grew closer and closer like the headlight of an oncoming locomotive.

A voice commanded him to sleep… sleep... sleep....

Then consciousness left him.

In spite of the command that had chiseled itself into his brain, he was subconsciously fighting against it. He floated back from his hebetude... wondered if he was dreaming. At first he believed that he was—that he would soon wake up and find that he suffered from a nightmare. Then, by slow gradations, realization crept over him....

He was surrounded by something. It enveloped him like a thin cloud, pressing him down like a weight, inhibiting his breathing. He tried to struggle against it —to open his eyes. But that commanding voice continued to order him to sleep... sleep...

His throat and chest seemed to constrict. He attempted to summon his laggard will-power— in vain. The slow, relentless pressure continued. The breath was being slowly pumped from his body, from his lungs, his heart....

He knew that he was on the verge of asphyxiation— that his huge frame was being slowly deflated— robbed of its vitality as surely and inexorably as it had been stolen from the emaciated body of old Jacques d’Arcy. He tried to open his eyes. They were held down by invisible fingers.

He did not realize that he had succeeded. Yet he suddenly found himself looking into two gleaming orbs— red, blood-shot, filled with hatred and demoniac fury. Upon his breast rested a thing— a horrible, nauseous, formless monstrosity, shapeless, faceless, headless. Yet it had a face and head, for its eyes were the eyes that were glaring into his own. And, too, it had a mouth— a red gash framed by leathery lips. It was pressed against his own in a clammy, vacuum-like kiss. It was lapping his breath, sucking the vitality from his great body, deflating it until it was rapidly growing as flat as a bursted tire. Its long, sinuous arms were fastened about him, its legs wrapped, leech-like, about his own.

And, knowing these things, Lamontaine brought to his aid all of the tremendous will-power that was his heritage. He tried to push the incubus from him, but he could not lift his arms. But as he struggled, he felt the mental influence that was oppressing him gradually lessen.

A sort of inertia swept over him and he ceased his struggles for an instant. The incubus, which had been driven back a pace, sprang forward again, once more pressing him to his chair.

Somewhere in the distance a dog howled dolefully. It awakened him from his lethargy. Subconsciously he knew that it foretold the death of someone. Was he to be the victim? Like a man in a dream, he threw his arms about. His twitching fingers came in contact with something cold and hard. A thrill went through his benumbed body. It was his gun snugly tucked away in the open drawer of his desk.

His fingers clutched the weapon spasmodically. He felt the thing that was smothering him shrink away. With a tremendous effort of will, he drew the weapon from the drawer, pressed it protectingly to his breast. Again the loathsome spirit form shrank back.

His breath was returning to him now. And with the fresh night air came realization. He remembered that elementals fear the touch of iron; the steel from which the gun was made had been manufactured from this element.

He thrust the weapon forward until it touched the horrible monstrosity pressing him down—passed through its vaporish body. It squeaked like a cornered rat as it darted away.

Then it slowly floated out through the open window, leaving him gasping and panting....

4. Exorcism

CONSCIOUSNESS returned to Doctor Lamontaine slowly. For a few moments he lay in a daze trying to recollect
what had happened. He opened his eyes. The first gray of dawn was breaking in the east. He straightened up, almost overturning the chair in which he was still sitting.

He wondered if it had all been a dream. The sight of the gun lying on the floor beside the chair told him that such was not the case. His throat and lungs ached; the pressure on his windpipe had been such that breathing was still difficult. He leaned across the desk, and picking up the rum-jug, managed to pour himself a drink. The potion strengthened him. He staggered back to the living-quarters in the rear of the house and brewed himself a pot of strong coffee. Mixing rum with the black coffee, he gulped down several cupfuls. Feeling better, he returned to his little office and, filling and lighting his pipe, sat down to think the problem out.

Bit by bit the happenings of the night were coming back to him. Somewhere in the hidden fastness of the fetid swamp the man who called himself Aaron Kronk had his habitat. From this hiding-place he was directing the campaign which was rapidly laying waste the little hamlet of La Foubelle and which would, unless speedily checked, make of it another deserted village. In the red-headed physician he had recognized the only barrier in his way; therefore he had set upon Lamontaine the dreadful thing that his sorcery had conjured from behind the veil. His hypnotic power had paved the way for the monstrosity’s attack. Only the chance finding of the gun with its content of iron had kept him from glutting his vengeance to the full.

Why? Lamontaine believed that he knew the reason and could bring the orgy of horror to a stop. It was a question of obtaining the evidence. Little use to search for Kronk in the midst of the swamp. It was filled with tiny islets and oases where a man might hide for weeks without being found. No, there were other ways of laying the fiend by the heels.

The red-haired physician’s battered car was in the shed at the rear of the house. Scribbling a hasty note to Le Front, telling him that he had been called away for the day, he hurried out and climbed painfully beneath the wheel. Five minutes later the little village lay behind him and he was on his way to New Orleans.

IT WAS late in the evening when he returned. Instead of stopping at his own home, he skirted the village, coming in from the opposite direction. The streets were deserted, with only an occasional light showing in the windows behind which the afflicted lay fighting their battle for life. He drove straight to the little cottage of the schoolmaster and, parking his car in the rear, hastened inside.

Le Front was there. The dominie looked up at the newcomer with feverish eyes in which there was no light of recognition. Lamontaine hastily mixed him a sleeping-potion, then turned to the constable.

“Worse,” he said non-committally.

Le Front nodded.

“I theenk zat devil weel come for heem tonight,” he answered, crossing himself hastily.

Lamontaine gave him his instructions.

He made several trips to the car, returning each time bending under the weight of many packages. Laying them on the floor, he turned to the physician.

“You are determin’ to see thees theeng through?” he asked.

Lamontaine nodded.

Le Front turned and, without a single backward glance, hurried out of the house like a man laboring under a great fright.

Turning the kerosene lamp down low, Lamontaine busied himself in the semi-darkness with the packages that Le Front had carried in from flic car. Most of them contained long strips of iron rolled as thin as tin. Using a small tack-hammer, he nailed them over all the doors and windows except one. He took great precautions to see that all the holes were covered, not even a keyhole being left open. The window that he did not close, he stripped with iron so that when it was pulled down, the strips protruded over the edges.

His task completed, he opened the window again and, leaving the lamp turned low, settled down to his lonely vigil. In his hand was a small pentagon made of iron, attached to a handle. This was his only weapon.

The sick man on the bed breathed heavily, the result of the sleeping-potion Lamontaine had given him. The physician was weary after what he had gone through the night before and the activities of the day; yet he did not sleep. Then that for which he had been waiting made its appearance.

Lamontaine drew a quick breath. There had been no sound, yet its dim shadow was easily discernible as it lurked for a moment in the darkness. The big physician, his eyes apparently closed, watched it with a queer, tingling sensation creeping up and down his backbone as it waited, seemingly planning its attack.

It finally drew itself slowly through the window, a cloud-like, shapeless monstrosity, almost formless, yet having the general outlines of a human being. It was horrible, grotesque, diabolical.

For a moment it floated in midair as if debating which of the two men to attack. Then, its mind— if mind it had— made up, it settled down over the bed where the little schoolmaster lay.

Lamontaine’s hand moved slowly to the window. He was about to pull it down.... From outside came a muffled report. Lamontaine slid slowly from the chair as a bullet grazed his head.

The window crashed shut. The automatic latch clicked. He was locked inside the room, unconscious, with the sick man and the horrible thing from the beyond, caught in the trap of his own making.

The monstrosity hovered, bat-like, over the form of the little dominie for an instant. Then it settled like a malignant miasma. Its vaporish arms wrapped themselves about the sick man; its cruel slash of a mouth was pressed against the lips of its victim. Sleeping though he was, his senses dulled by the potion Lamontaine had given him, Pelletier, nevertheless, groaned in agony. Lamontaine, who had tasted the power of the hellish thing and lived, alone knew the torture the other’s stupefied body was undergoing. He was dizzy from his own injury, his head spinning like a gyroscope. Yet he managed to drag himself to his feet, the handle of the pentagon in his hand.

It took him a moment to see things clearly— to make out the outlines of the diabolical creature crouched upon the dominie's breast. Then something within his brain exploded like a bomb. He charged forward, roaring angrily.

The spirit form squealed like a cornered rat as the cold iron touched its vaporish body. Then it whirled away, turning on Lamontaine, its serpentine arms stretched forward like tentacles.

Lamontaine dodged around the bed, the pentagon extended like a sword. For a moment the creature crouched close to the floor, its smudgy, shapeless face turned toward its attacker. Every detail of its exaggerated deformity was brought out in bold relief. Its dead, slate-like eyes glared malevolently. Its incredibly horrible mouth snapped like that of an angry cuttle-fish.

Lamontaine charged again. The thing dodged toward the window through which it had entered, only to bound back again with a squeal of fright as it came in contact with the iron bands. It twisted in midair like a vortex and bounded toward Lamontaine. The big man held it off with the pentagon. It floated through the air with incredible speed, touching the form on the bed again as if loth to be cheated of its victim. But once more Lamontaine warded it off with his exorcistical pentagon. It squealed wildly and darted away again.

Little by little, he drove it into a distant corner. It dodged from side to side, but the five-sided iron emblem always stood in its way. It shrieked like a cornered rat....

Suddenly it changed tactics. Leaping high into the air, it crashed against the ceiling and bounded back upon the bed. Its long, spiderish legs wrapped themselves about the body of its victim again. In spite of his stupor, the sick man shrieked with misery as the monstrosity strove to lap the last of his vitality. Its slit of a mouth was pressed close to the face of the dying man. One attenuated arm was twisted about the frail body. The other was stretched forth in an effort to seize Lamontaine. It succeeded... the big physician felt himself jerked through the air.

He swung the pentagon forward. The weight of the physician’s body as he was thrown through the air worked to the undoing of the monstrosity. The iron pentagon pierced the vaporish body— went through it and touched against the bared breast of the man on the bed.

The wraith-like form faded into nothingness. All that was left was the horrible, stifling odor of diabolical hatred....

Upon the white flesh of the dominie’s breast was a five-sided mark where the pentagon had touched....

Lamontaine whirled as he heard the crash of glass. The shade was pushed aside, and through the opening peered a saturnine countenance, the sunken eyes gleaming with malevolence. In the claw-like fingers was a revolver.

The physician threw himself sideways as the gun crashed. The bullet missed him by the fraction of an inch. He brought the iron pentagon down across the wrist of the other with a wild, overhand blow.

Aaron Kronk uttered a scream of rage as the weapon dropped from his fingers. He leaped away from the window, his broken arm hanging uselessly by his side. Turning, he raced madly in the direction of the swamp.

A second report split the darkness as Constable Pierre Le Front, lying in ambush in accordance with Lamontaine’s orders, fired. Kronk’s cadaverous form crashed to the ground. He rolled over and over, then lay still.

Le Front ran forward. Bending over the crumpled form of his victim, he strove to gaze into the twisted face. The other’s long arm reached out and, seizing him by the ankle, gave a sudden jerk. He went down like a log, his weapon exploding harmlessly in the air, all the wind knocked from his body.

Kronk bounded to his feet like a rubber ball. Then, kicking the weapon from the unconscious man’s hand, he charged through the long, dank grass that lined the edge of the swamp.

5. Denouement

LAMONTAINE, climbing through the broken window, saw what had happened and increased his speed. As he reached Le Front, the little constable pulled himself to a sitting position and reached for the gun on the ground. Lamontaine seized it and emptied its contents after the fleeing man.

Kronk chuckled derisively as he leaped into his boat and pushed it out into the blackness of the swamp.

Lamontaine returned to the house, the crestfallen little constable at his heels. Hastily mixing a potion, he raised the sick man’s head and forced a few drops between his lips. Pelletier stirred weakly, then opened his eyes.

"Did it—come?’’ he asked finally. Lamontaine nodded.

The dominie winced as he straightened himself in bed.

"Mon Dieu!” he gasped. "My entire body aches.” Then he noticed for the first time the mark of the pentagon on his breast. "That?” he exclaimed. "What is it?”

"The brand of a man who was willing to go through hell for the sake of the woman he loved," Lamontaine answered.

"Your worries are over, my friend. Evelyn Brest will live—to make you a good wife. The horror is ended.

"It is easily explained, once we understand,” Lamontaine said enigmatically, stretching forth his hand for the rum-jug and filling the battered cup. He waited until the constable had poured a libation. The two men touched cups silently and drank.

"You gave me the idea,” he continued. "In N’Orleans today I confirmed my suspicion. A man answering the description of Kronk has secured title to the whole of the swamp. It is wanted for a paddy by the rice corporation. Kronk—or Koshier, as he is known there— stands to make a cool million if the swamp can be drained.

"Unfortunately— for him— the natural watercourse leads through the site of the village and thence to the creek which empties into the peninsula. There is no other way. It was necessary, therefore, for him to get rid of the village. But you La Foubellites are stubborn and superstitious. You would never leave your homes, nor sell them, knowing that the dead in your cemetery would be disturbed—"

"Tout au contraire!” Le Front interrupted excitedly.

"Exactly. Therefore he took this method of frightening you to a point where you would leave your homes.”

Le Front scratched his grizzled head wonderingly.

"Eet does not seem possible,” he said. "I can scarcely believe it.”

Lamontaine massaged his bruised throat tenderly.

"Perhaps it was all a bad dream,” he said with a wry grin. "Kronk is a mesmerist of ability. Maybe we were all hypnotized en masse."

He jerked his thumb toward the rum-jug.

"Drink?” he queried. "Rum. Good Jamaica rum. Good liquor hurts nobody.”

The parrot opened its filmy eyes and gazed at its master languidly.

"Rum!” it croaked. "Good Jamaica rum! Hotter’n hell! Hotter’n hell!”

_________________

21: House of the Lizard

Harold Ward

Weird Tales July 1932

THE place was little more than a dugout set in the brow of the hill. The exposed portion was of limestone, stained and yellowed with age. A creeping vine, tangled and untrimmed, clung tenaciously to the fissures in the rocky wall alongside and flung its rebellious tendrils across the bit of roof in a riotous mass. The afternoon’s rain had covered everything with moisture; above the swamp rose a foggy, stinking vapor. Located at the end of a prolongation of the mainland, the miserable habitation reminded one of the abiding-place of some poisonous denizen of the swampy morass which surrounded it on three sides. The gathering darkness was dropping down over everything like a black mantle; yet there was still light enough for me to get a good view of the old man who stood in the doorway and blinked at me drowsily as if just awakened from a sound sleep.

I stated my mission. The old man, his huge head cocked to one side, chuckled throatily. Short, pot-bellied, bandy-legged and fat, his eyes droopy and heavy-lidded, his lipless mouth a great slit extending, it seemed, almost from ear to ear, he reminded me, somehow, of a big frog that had escaped from the near-by muck and assumed the form of a man. Now, as he spoke for the first time, his voice added to the illusion, for it was deep and rumbling.

"Newspaper man, eh?” he gurgled in his hoarse bass. "Sent down to get a feature story for your Sunday paper, eh?” He chuckled again. "Maybe I—”

He stopped in the middle of the sentence as if struck by a sudden thought.

"Come in,” he commanded, throwing the door open a trifle wider. "Maybe there has been some queer goings-on around here— things that seem odd to other people. But me— I’m used to ’em.”

He led the way iato the single, tiny room. It was gloomy as a tomb. Feeling his way, he scratched a match and lighted a candle, which he stuck in a sconce above the huge, stone fireplace. Its feeble glare threw the interior into a sort of semi-darkness. As I took the seat he indicated, I glanced about. Two chairs, a rude table and a pallet of straw in the corner were all the furniture the room contained. On the farther wall were a number of box-like shelves; strangely enough, they reminded me of crypts.

For a single instant the old man stood gazing at me. Then, with a word of apology, he lighted a second candle from the flame of the first and, pulling up a trapdoor in the floor, descended into the cellar. He returned almost immediately with a platter of cold meat, half a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine.

" ’Tain’t likely you’ve et, seein’s you said your car broke down a ways bade,” he rumbled, placing the frugal meal on the table before me.

To tell the truth, I was hungry; for, as he had said, I had hurried On account of the breakdown. And, too, I wanted to get back to the city to keep an appointment.

He sat in silence until I had completed my repast. Then, my pipe filled and lighted, I turned to him.

"I—"

He stopped me with a gesture.

"Hear it?” he whispered. "It’s at it again.”

I listened. With the coming of night the noises of the day had died out. Now there was silence—silence unbroken save for a peculiar cl-u-u-u-unk... cld-u-u-u-unk... cl-u-u-u-unk. It sounded like the efforts of a plumber to force a sink with a vacuum pump. For a moment it puzzled me.

"It’s the swamp,” the old man whispered tremulously. "Nights like this you can hear it plainer than when there’s a moon. It’s getting closer an’ closer— just eatin’ an’ suckin' away at the ground the way a cancer works on human flesh. It used to be more’n a quarter of a mile away. Now it’s almost here.”

For a moment I smoked in silence.

There was something about the odd fellow—something sinister, foreboding; yet I was forced to admit to myself that he had been courteous enough. I glanced across the table at him. His face, half in the shadow, was more frog-like and repulsive than ever. He made a peculiar clucking noise. A small lizard darted out from a crack in the floor and, running up the old man’s trousers leg, perched itself upon his breast. He ducked again. The creature’s head raised; it seemed to balance itself upon the end of its tail and its hind legs. The yellow and light green of its belly writhed aid twisted snakishly as the old man stroked the top of its head with his stubby forefinger.

"This one’s the tamest of the bunch,” he went on as if breaking into his own chain of thought. "See her little collar?”

He set the reptile atop the table, where it lay blinking its tiny eyes at me contentedly. Lizards and snakes and spiders and the like have always been especially repugnant to me. To touch one of the creatures invariably sends a chill down my spine. Yet for the sake of the coming story, I held a crumb of meat between my thumb and forefinger and allowed the green-coated horror to nibble at it daintily, then, conquering my nerves a bit more, I made shift to examine the thin circlet of metal about the tiny neck. Corroded, covered with greenish mold, there were yet traces of engraving upon it. Interested in spite of myself, I bent my head for a better view of it.

It was a woman’s wedding ring, without a doubt.

The old man, noting my interest, blinked his froggish eyes excitedly.

"It was a woman’s finger ring, all right,” he explained, sensing my unspoken question. "I found it layin’ outside one day—”

He dropped his voice to a rumbling whisper.

" 'Twas on a bit of bone washed up by the swamp,” he went on. "Maybe it was Laura’s in the beginning— I always call her Laura— the lizard, I mean. She knows her name and answers to it. That was the name of Laspard’s wife. Maybe Laura, here, is her.”

He scratched the lizard’s head again with his stubby forefinger.

"She was a little thing, then, and the ring slipped down over her little head fine. It’s a tight fit, now, but she doesn’t seem to mind it.”

The lizard cocked her head sideways as if listening. The old man stopped suddenly, and he, too, listened for an instant.

"She hears the swamp calling,” he said in a low tone. "It’s suckin’ an’ eatin’ all the time— gettin’ closer an’ closer.”

The atmosphere, the darkened interior— everything— was beginning to get on my nerves. I shuddered in spite of myself.

"The story they tell about this bit of swamp land?” I reminded him gently.

He shrugged his pudgy shoulders.

"I was just coming to that,” he answered. "You see, Laura sort of fits in.”

Again he stopped. From a distant corner came a rasping squeak. I turned my head in time to see another lizard dart across the stone floor and disappear in the darkness. Laura slid from the table onto the old man’s lap and thence to the floor.

An instant later she joined her companion in the corner.

"I have to put up with ’em,” the old man ruminated. "And maybe they’re as human as you and me.”

He pushed the wine-bottle across the table to me. As an act of courtesy I drank.

"This was his house— the house of Pierre Laspard,” he said suddenly. "That is, all that’s left of it. A storm took the rest years ago.”

He hesitated an instant. Then, as I made no response: "It was here— right here in this very room— that he killed ’em: Laura, his wife, and John Davis, her lover. They were sitting in that very chair you’re sittin’ in, she on his lap, her arms about him, kissing and loving, when Pierre Laspard came in suddenly and caught them.  He shot them.”

I stirred uneasily. The old man chuckled mirthlessly.

"Their blood was on the floor where your feet are. I scrubbed most of it up, but it sunk into the stone. You can see it when the light’s good.”

The candle guttered, almost went out from some faint draft. I felt a chill pass over me. The dancing light threw grotesque shadows upon the walls. The old man, hunched over the table, looked more frog-like than ever. His voice, dropping to a rumbling whisper, took on the deep bass of a bullfrog.

"He killed himself here in this room, too,” he said suddenly. "They say that he comes back— that he returns to the scene of his crime every night— that he is tied to this bit of old stone house until the swamp swallows it up and releases him.”

I filled and lighted my pipe nervously. The old man’s head dropped to his breast. His eyes closed as if he slept.

"Cl-u-u-u-unk... cl-u-u-u-unk...”

It was the swamp. The lizards squeaked in the darkness. The old man stirred from his revery.

"Hear it?” he questioned. "Laura hears it.” He held up his finger for silence. "It’s gettin’ closer an’ closer—nearer and nearer to old Pierre Laspard. It won’t be long now.

“He was an old man, Pierre Laspard was,” he said, changing the subject suddenly. "Much too old for a girl like Laura La Rue. But he loved her and with his money he always got what he wanted. She was a beautiful girl— the belle of the countryside. All of the young fellows were after her, but she’d have nothing to do with them, loving only one— a gay young blade named John Davis. She and Davis were secretly engaged. But in those days the word of the parents was law. They forced her to marry old Pierre Laspard and his money. And she —she obeyed in spite of her love for John Davis.

"You can’t keep young love apart. One day Pierre Laspard went away expecting to be gone for a day or two. He returned unexpectedly. He found his wife sitting on her lover’s lap. He had his gun with him. You can imagine the rest, for Pierre Laspard was a hot-tempered man in spite of his years.”

Again he bowed his head in thought. Then:

"He carried the bodies across the fields and threw them into the swamp. It was the same then as it is now, always sucking and dragging and pulling like a live thing. It’s the quicksand as does it. It swallowed ’em up. Laspard gave it out that they had run away together. People wagged their heads and said nothing, knowing as they did, how Laura and her lover had been carrying on behind old Pierre’s back.”

"Cl-u-u-u-nk ... cl-u-u-u-unk .

"Hear it?” he whispered. "It’s getting closer all the time— just gnawing away at the ground in order to get at old Pierre.”

Again I had a feeling of coldness. Involuntarily I shuddered. The old man leaned closer.

"Old Pierre couldn’t stand it,” he went on. "One day they found him sittin’ in that chair you’re sittin’ in. His throat was cut from ear to ear. He had committed suicide.

"On the table, here, he’d left a confession telling how he had killed them.”

He rose to his feet and stood leaning over the table, his fat, pasty face gray with terror. Great beads of perspiration stood out upon his forehead.

"She wasn’t dead when he threw her into the swamp!” he said in an awed whisper. "Think of it, she wasn’t dead!

"She recovered consciousness just before the mud and ooze sucked her down. There she lay, just her face and breast above the water, the blood flowing from the gaping wound in her white breast and coloring the wet, soggy sand around her, and cursed him— cursed Pierre Laspard, the man who had killed her.

" 'It’ll get you!' she shrieked with her dying breath. 'It will get you just as it’s getting me! You can’t get away from it, Pierre Laspard! Try as you will, you can’t escape it! It will get you. I’m coming back—John and I—to see that my curse comes true! It will get you... suck you in... in... in...’

"Then the swamp gave a heave and a gurgle and she was gone. But the curse still remains.”

The old man dropped back into his chair again, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Then, for the first time, I saw it.

There was a white scar across his throat—a scar extending amongst the folds of fat from ear to ear! Suddenly the full horror of the thing swept over me! This man— this fat, paunchy, frog-like thing with the bandy legs— was the shade of Pierre Laspardt.

I attempted to leap to my feet. I was chained to the floor as by invisible bands. I tried to shriek. My mouth was dry and parched. I could make no sound.

"Cl-l-u-u-u-unk... cl-u-u-u-unk...”

The sound was closer now. It was almost at the door. The floor was writhing and twisting and squirming as the water undermined it. In the corner the lizards squeaked excitedly. The old man was on his feet now, his arms extended toward the swamp in an attitude of devotion.

"Hear it? Hear it?” he croaked exultingly. "It comes— it comes for me. The curse will soon be ended.”

Stone was grinding upon stone. The front of the place fell with a terrific crash. I looked out through the opening upon a starless, moonless night. Another grinding! A smashing crash! Mote stone fell. And still I sat there, unable to move.

A portion of the hillside fell as the water undermined it. Then the swamp was upon me. The sticky, oozy flood closed about my legs. I was drawn down... down... down.... Then consciousness left me.

I was awakened by the feel of arms beneath my shoulders. I opened my eyes. A man was standing, waist-deep, in the mud. Naked, his muscular arms were about me and he was straining to drag me out of the vortex that was suddng me in. I heard a woman's voice.

"Hurry!” she seemed to say. "The time is almost up!”

I managed to turn my head. Tall, slender, her white skin showing plainly against the darkness of die night, she stood close beside me and stretched forth her hand. My fingers grasped hers. She gave a pull. The man gave a mighty heaye. The sticky flood groaned and sighed. Then I felt myself being dragged to safety.

From the swamp came a shriek. It was bass and throaty and rumbling. It sounded like the thunder of a bullfrog that has been frightened. Yet, too, it had the tone of a man who has just escaped from hell.

"Laura! Laura! I come! I come! The swamp has taken me at last!”

The woman squeaked like a lizard. The soft hand was jerked from my grasp. Then came oblivion again.

IT was daylight when I awoke. The sea was shining brightly through the foliage atop the hill. For a moment I lay there. Then recollection swept over me and I leaped to my feet.

Of the old stone house there was not a trace. The swamp swept along the rocky base of the hill.

"WHAT SORT of story are you trying to feed me?” the Sunday editor demanded angrily, glaring at me over his glasses. "Have you been on another bender? You promised me that the last one would be—”

I interrupted him with a gesture. Taking something from my pocket, I handed it to him.

"I found this in my hand when I woke up," I answered. "I must have jerked it from the girl's finger when she pulled her hand from my grasp.”

The Sunday editor swore fluently as he examined the thing that I had handed to him.

"She had to leave me when the curse was fulfilled,” I went on.

The thing I had handed him was a woman’s wedding ring. Green and corroded though it was, inside one could still see the engraved initials, "L. L.”

___________________

Cumulative Index to Past Masters 27

May 2021

An Author Index to the short stories in the Past Masters series produced by "Pulpmeister", in which the issues are identified as follows:

P:  Past Masters

M:  More Past Masters

3:  Past Masters Three

4:  Past Masters Four
etc

__________

Cleve F. Adams

Flowers For Violet 4

Forty Pains 4

Punk 22

Shrinking Violet 22

A.J. Alan

The Diver  5

My Adventure at Chislehurst  5

The Hair  5

H2, etc.  5

My Adventure In Norfolk  5

W. L. Alden

Hopkins' Safe  15

Monty's Friend  15

Starkweather's Circular Hotel  15

Grant Allen

The Conscientious Burglar  P

Raymund Allen

Allah Knows Best  13

The Black Knight  13

A Happy Solution  16

The Winning Move  13

Mark Allerton

Price of Office  17

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews:

The Butler  6

Anonymous

Adventure of the Rubber Pipe  11

The Banshee 21

By a Miscalculation  12

A Detective's Story  12

The Fatal Trapdoor  15

Martin Guerre  12

My Gifted Young Friend 25

A Penny a Word 27

The Walled Chamber  15

The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin 27

Arthur Applin

Overdue  17

Paul Arène

Uncle Sambuq's Fortune  15

Alice and Claude Askew:

Aylmer Vance and the Vampire  M

The Empty Chair  8

In Masquerade  16

Francis Henry Atkins

The Broken Sword  9

The Third Figure 10

Stacy Aumonier

George  M

A Source of Irritation  7

Where Was Wych Street?  8

F Britten Austin

An Affair Of Honour  5

Buried Treasure  5

Diamond Cut Diamond  11

The Fourth Degree  5

The Inca's Treasure  5

The Other Side  5

Well Lost?  11

W. E. Aytoun

The Glenmutchkin Railway  M

John Kendrick Bangs

Mr. Homes Shatters an Alibi  8

Robert Barr

The Great Pegram Mystery  M

H Bedford-Jones

All Talk 20

The Devil’s Fire 21

The Four Red Circles  4

Gallegher of Beaver  4

Harbor Hazard 21

The Luck of a Cowboy  4

The Million-Dollar Certificate  23

A Scriptural Quotation  26

The Trail of Death 23

J. J. Bell

The Great Corkscrew Mystery  17

Stella Benson

The Man Who Missed The 'Bus  18

J. D. Beresford

Cut-Throat Farm  15

Leslie Beresford

Black Cats For Luck  15

Diamonds for the Duchess  15

Feminine Feathers  15

Light-Fingered Looting  15

The Man in Khaki  15

Murder in Oils  14

Poker Hand  15

Understudy  15

John Bickerdyke

A Fearful Night 12

Earl Derr Biggers

Volcano-Mad 3

Harold Bindloss

The Evicting of Grainger  9

The Tempter  6

Ottwell Binns

Phantom Gold 15

The Prodigal Son, V.C. 11

The Remittance Man  15

M. McDonnell Bodkin

A Bolt from the Blue 7

Diamond Cut Diamond 9

A Drop of Blood 9

Find the Forger  8

Hide And Seek 9

The Matchmaker 6

Murder by Proxy 7

Only a Voice 8

Over-Ruled  8

Safe Bind, Safe Find

The Slump in Silver 9

The Torpedo 8

Under His Own Hand  9

A Wrong Turning  8

Rolfe Boldrewood

Five Men's Lives for One Horse 8

The Mailman's Yarn  8

Charles G. Booth

Stag Party 11, 18

Christopher B. Booth

The Deviltry of Dr. Waugh  27

Guy Boothby

The Family Honour 10

The Great Dives Elopement 10

A Strange Goldfield 10

Through Toil and Tribulation 13

Max Brand

The Silent Witness P and 7

Percy James Brebner

The Cobbler 6

The Lady's Glove 6

The Man with the Carnation 6

The Missing Signorina 6

Miles J. Breuer

The Amazing Power  21

Thomas Charles Bridges

Wingfield's White Elephant 10

Heywood Broun

The Fifty-First Dragon  17

K. R. G. Browne

For One Night Only 20

The Soft Spot 20

Two on the Roof 20

Ellis Parker Butler

The Detective Club 7

Geoffrey's Panklaggephone 6

Wadsworth Camp

The Obscure Move 18

Sir Gilbert Campbell, Bt

The White Wolf of Kostopchin  26

Egerton Castle

The Guinea Smuggler 17

Christopher Caudwell

Four Friends and Death  5

Mrs. W. K. Clifford

The Last Touches  24

J. Storer Clouston

The Fortunate Lord Fabrigas 13

Magic 13

The Trials of Tony 13

Arthur Conan Doyle:

The Disintegration Machine  10

The Mystery of Sasassa Valley 24

The New Catacomb  P

When the World Screamed  12

Frank Condon

A New Year's Surprise 13

Richard Connell

Flash!  7

Loser Wins All  9

Man of a Few Words  9

One-Trip Darling  5

The Solid Gold Article  9

Dorothea Conyers

Sir Hector Devereux's Bet 17

When Rogues Fall Out 17

Mrs. George Corbett

Spoofing a Detective  7

Heath Crichton

A Country House Surprise  15

The Gold Mummy  15

The Midnight Guest 15

The Mystery of the Hotel Royal  15

Clarence L. Cullen

An Alibi for Altogether Al  25

Tourists Three for Tampa   25

Colonel Henry Curties

A Summer Night's Weird  6

James Oliver Curwood

Laugh Maker  27

The Match 20

Richard Harding Davis

In the Fog  9

Aidan de Brune

Cocaine Smugglers' Catspaw 25

Drug Running Extraordinary 25

The Empty Match Box  P

The Fifth Domino (as by John Morris)  12

The Elusive Mr Chon 24

The Gift to See Ourselves as Others See Us  8

Proof of the Pudding 24

A Question of Coke 24

The Wedding Cake 24

Wiles of  Cho Chun 24

Sir George B. Douglas, Bart.

The Adonis of Slagborough  17

Patience  15

Peter Pirnie's Prison-House  16

William J. Elliott

The Comeback  27

Orville R. Emerson

The Grave  27

George Allan England

Arson in the Jungle  10

The Longest Side  14

Lost: An Echo  26

Pod Flits 24

The Tenth Question 23

Glyn Evans

"The Man Who Was—"  5

Gwyn Evans

The Croucher 18

Francis Flagg

The Dancer in the Crystal 21

The Machine Man of Ardathia 21

The Mentanicals 21

The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds 21

The Superman of Dr Jukes 21

J S Fletcher

Comedy of the Grand Canal  8

The Cracksman's Catspaw  7

The Honour of Two  16

The Yellow Dog  P

The Judge Corroborates 23

Sewell Ford

The Impressing of Looney Fipps  17

R Austin Freeman

The Great Portrait Mystery  P

Jacques Futrelle

Room 666   14

Tom Gallon

The Vengeance of Adam Rook  11

John Galsworthy

Acme  3

J. U. Giesy

Ashes of Circumstance 24

The Gravity Experiment 21

Not on the Bill  21

The Return  23

William Schwenck Gilbert

Diamonds  25

Guy Gilpatric

Gabriel's Trumpet 18

The Glasgow Smasher 21

The Lost Limerick  20

Mary, Queen of Scots  18

Pardon the French 23

Scotch and Water 20

Kenneth Grahame

The Burglars  16

George Griffith

Five Hundred Carats  18

Harlan Halsey

Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist 18

William H Hamby

Cal Wood's First Case  16

Cosmo Hamilton

The Golden Fleece 26

The Mirror of Nature 12

Proofs of  Guilt 10

The Silent Witness 5

Frances Noyes Hart

"Contact!"  18

Julian Hawthorne

The Golden Fleece  26

Greaves' Disappearance 20

Floyd Hamilton Hazard

Front!  13

Headon Hill

Behind the Cupboard 16

The Dragon Casket 16

The Fierce Eyes 16

The Gunman from the Underworld 16

The Sapient Monkey  9

H. Hesketh-Prichard

Tartas the Terrible  23

Robert J Horton:

The Ninety-Ninth Proposal 4

Eric Howard

The Miracle Man  22

Fergus Hume

Tragic Voyage  14

The Seaside Girl 15

The Blue Vase  15

C J Cutcliffe Hyne

The Anarchist's Scheme 6

Anchored 10

Beauty and the Beast 4

Confounded 3

Gregory Of Byzantium 3

Guaranteed Countess  8

A Lottery Duel 3

A Marriage of Convenience 3

The Men in Stone 3

Mrs. Seal McIntosh 3

Paradise Coal Boat 3

The Perfumer 3

A QC's Confession 3

The Ransom 4

The Settler-ess 3

The Ship-Breaker's Yard 3

The Tragedy of a Third Smoker P

The Traitor: 3

The Trinidad Treasure 3

A. A. Irvine:

The Fountain of Light 5

Violet Jacob

Secret Intelligence  17

W. W. Jacobs

A Will and a Way 21

Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace:

Mr. Belton's Immunity 7

The Tea-Leaf P

Lord Kilmarnock

A Man's Hand  14

Albert Kinross

He Stoops To Conquer  21

Otis Adelbert Kline:

The Corpse on the Third Slab 20

The Demon of Tlaxpam 24

The Malignant Entity 24

The Phantom Wolf-Hound 4

The Robot Beasts 23

The Thing of a Thousand Shapes  27

Stephen Leacock:

The Prince of Wurttenburg P

William Le Queux

Cheating The Spies!  14

The Mysterious Englishman  16

The Open Eye 11

The Secret of the Fox Hunter  17

Sheer Profit  P

The Wrong Road  17

Bruno Lessing

As It Happened To Moey  16

Moritsky's Ward  16

John K. Leys

The Letter With The Black Seal  24

John Luther Long

Madame Butterfly 14

Sir William Magnay, Bt.

Mrs. Brotherton's Adventure  17

William J. Makin

Flight From Teheran 8

Four Guests 7

The Horror of the Loch 7

Murder off the Map 7

Supper at Midnight 5

Arthur W. Marchmont

The Bolchester Bank Robbery  17

Don Marquis

The Locked  Box  17

Richard Marsh

Giving him his Chance  16

"I Have Killed a Man!"  16

The Other Man's Boots  16

A E W Mason

The Affair at the Semiramis Hotel P

The Ginger King P

Rev. C. R. Maturin

Leixlip Castle 25

L T Meade

Warned by a Mouse 10

L. T. Meade and Clifford Halifax

A Doctor's Dilemma  11

A Race with the Sun 10

L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

The Arrest of Captain Vandaleur 10

The Dead Hand 3

The Face in the Dark 7

Finger Tips 3

The Secret of Emu Plain 10

Sir Penn Carlyll's Engagement 3

The Yellow Flag 10

Bannister Merwin

Silenced  23

Alice Duer Miller

Slow Poison  18

Lucy Gertrude Moberly

Black Paws 6

C. S. Montanye

Come Back to Aaron 14

Cricket's Last Hop 18

Death With Music 14

Fog is Necessary  14

Frozen Stiff 18

Hoodwinked 18

In Deep Purple 22

Ink  13

Ivan’s Foe 13

Merry Month of Mayhem 14

Opals Are Unlucky 18

A Shock for the Countess 13

This Will Kill You 13

Wings For An Angel 18

Charles Leonard Moore

The Lion Rug 16

F. Frankfort Moore

The Crock 17

Joan's Two-seater  17

W. C. Morrow

The Mated Rubies of Kyat Pyen  16

Lawrence Mott

Nab  13

Ethel Watts Mumford

The Intruder 25

The Masque of Tragedy 25

Talbot Mundy

Making £10,000 3

Edith Nesbit

The Mystery of the Semi-Detached  M

Wilbur D. Nesbit

The Tale of the Tangled Telegram 27

Frederick Niven

The Queer Place  24

William Edward Norris

The Willingham Van Dyke 6

The Elusive Coronet  26

David Wright O'Brien

The Money Machine M

Rats in the Belfry 9

Rayhouse in Space 25

Till Death Do Us Part 26

Owen Oliver

Destiny  18

Her Account  6

The Last Laugh 6

A Rapid Conveyance  7

The Specialist 6

E. Phillips Oppenheim

The Lady of the Morass 9

The Man Who Lifted the Blind  16

Mr. Senn's Past P

A Royal Dilemma 3

A Strange Conspiracy 13

The Tower Ghost 8

"Ouida"

The Eldest Born 13

John Oxenham

The Missing Q.C.s  18

Frank L Packard

Corporal Bob  12

Barry Pain

Albert Theodore Parish 11

Amphistamium Formosum  10

The Centenarian 25

Clubs and Hearts  7

The Dog's Understudy 11

Hasheesh 11

"If"  13

Rose Rose 18

Some Imitations 6

Twelve Minutes 6

Frederick C Painton

The Dead Speak Once 22

Murder Suspect 22

Stool Pigeon 22

Hugh Pendexter

At the Belton Arms  26

The Dogs of Purgatory 20

Henry Pettitt

The Poet’s Ghost 26

Marjorie Pickthall

Mannering's Men 6

Marmaduke Pickthall

The Poultry Yard  16

Lilian Quiller-Couch

An Exciting Week  16

Mabel Quiller-Couch

A Condoned Crime  11

Frederic Reddale

Galleon Gold 12

C E Bechhofer Roberts

The English Filter 7

The Last Lap 8

The Man Who Lost His Memory 7

Mrs Carnaby's Dairies 8

Murder of a Matchmaker 8

The Mystery of the Chaffeur's Suicide 7

The Radium Robbery 8

Virgin Snow 7

Morley Roberts

The Anarchist 12

The Anticipator 12

The Arbitrator 12

An Edited Story 12

The Figure-head of the "White Prince" 12

The Judgment Of Paris 12

A Man's Death 12

Her Memory 7

A Pawned Kingdom 12

The Pedestal 6

Round the World in a Hurry 12

Two Men and a River 12

The Wedding Eve 12

Will Rogers

Spring is Here  24

William J Rollins Jr

Chicago Confetti  21

Clarence Rook

The Stir Outside the Café Royal  17

Theodore Roosevelt

The Wendigo M

Anthony M. Rud

Green for Danger 20

The Place of Hairy Death 27

The Molten Bullet 20

The October Blight 22

Ooze 7

A Square of Canvas 20

Damon Runyon

Tobias the Terrible P

Charles  ('Chic') Sale:

The Specialist M

"Sapper" (H C McNeile):

Will You Walk Into My Parlour? P

Dallas Lore Sharp

The Professor's Panther 16

Perley Poore Sheehan

Chicken King 22

The Hands of Killian 12

The Hank of Yarn 20

Monsieur De Guise 24

The Murdered Wife 11

The Red Road to Shamballah 22

Spider Tong  M

The “Smuggler’s Daughter”—Five Reels 12

Tiger Trail 4

Adam Hull Shirk

The Bearded Men 20

Mandrake 20

Osiris 4

George R. Sims

Doctor Mazeppa  18

Lance Warrener's Crime 11

The Man With the Wild Eyes 20

The Silver Fox 18

Under the Mistletoe Bough  18

Howard Dwight Smiley

Smokeless Tobacco  16

Junius B. Smith

An Arc of Direction 24

Thorne Smith

Yonder's Henry! M

John Philip Sousa

The Conspirators M

Andrew Soutar

Courage  20

The Doctor Takes a Hand  6

The Story without a Title  16

Raymond S. Spears

Demons of the Cold  24

Henry Spicer

Called To The Rescue 18

Frank Stanton Jnr

The Mahogany Garden  25

F St Mars

Shadows  16

There and Back  8

Arthur Stringer

In the Wireless Room 18

Halliwell Sutcliffe

At The Road Top  17

Parson Shaw  27

Annie Swan

Aunt Caroline  14

Robert Keene Thompson

The Barber-Shop Riddle  25

Sir Basil Thomson

The Vanishing of Mrs. Fraser  P

Guy Thorne / C Ranger Gull

The Flirt 10

"General Utility" 22

Major Marlowe's System  13

On Christmas Night  13

Puzzle Phyllis  6

Reward of Revenge  12

Unforeseen 5

Katharine Tynan

His Lordship and Kitty-for-Short  17

A Knight-Errant 21

E. Charles Vivian

Locked In P

Other Gods 6

Edgar Wallace

Bill of Scotland Yard  4

Christmas Eve at the China Dog M

A Present for Evans M

The Slane Mystery P

R. A. J. Walling

Public Sap-Head Number One 26

"Waif Wander" (Mary Helena Fortune)

Bridget's Locket  26

The Dead Man in the Scrub  17

The Dead Witness  17

Ike's Sin 23

Monk's Mark 13

The Phantom Hearse 10

The Spirits of the Tower 10

Harold Ward (aka Ward Sterling)

The Dare  27

The Devil Takes a Hand 27

The Germs of Death 27

House of the Lizard  27

The Life-Eater  27

The Long Arm of God 27

The Man Who Would Not Die  27

The Skull  27

TheUndelivered Sermon  27

Henry Brereton Marriott Watson

The Devil of the Marsh M

Mrs. Baillie Weaver

The Scarecrow  16

F A M Webster

No Leopards in Surbiton 5

The Schimmel Sets the Pace 6

The Secret of the Singular Cipher 6

Carolyn Wells

The Silent Model  17

Albert Richard Wetjen

Cannibal Isle 22

The Sovereign of the Sea  24

The Strange Adventure of Tommy Lawn 24

Ethel Lina White

Cheese P

Wax Works 7

Fred M. White

According to the Statute M

The Azoff Diamonds P

Victor L. Whitechurch

Stopping an Execution 12

Raoul Whitfield

Death in the Pasig 14

Enough Rope 25

The Great Black  14

Inside Job  14

Nagasaki Bound 26

Red Hemp 23

Signals of Storm 24

West of Guam 20

Oscar Wilde

The Canterville Ghost  8

Charles Michael Williams

The Case of Minna Lang  24

Valentine Williams

Blind Guess M

C N and A M Williamson

The Dazzle Plot  8

John Strange Winter

Hunks 12

P. C. Wren

Simple 6

Farnsworth Wright

An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension  27

The Snake Fiend 25

May Wynne

The Tiara   16

Leroy Yerxa

Through the Asteroids— to Hell! 15

Arthur Leo Zagat

Beyond the Spectrum  M

Deadlock  27

Israel Zangwill

Cheating the Gallows  9

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

Table of Contents

- 1: The Wehr-Wolf: A Legend of the Limousin / Anonymous

- 2: The Tale of the Tangled Telegram / Wilbur D. Nesbit

- 3: Laugh Maker / James Oliver Curwood
- 4: A Penny a Word / Anonymous (non-fiction)
- 5: Parson Shaw / Halliwell Sutcliffe

- 6: An Adventure in the Fourth Dimension / Farnsworth Wright

- 7: Deadlock / Arthur Leo Zagat
- 8: The Place of Hairy Death / Anthony M Rud
- 9: The Comeback / William J. Elliott
- 10: The Grave / Orville R. Emerson
- 11: The Long Arm of God / Ward Sterling
- 12: The Man Who Would Not Die / Harold Ward
- 13: The Devil Takes a Hand / Ward Sterling

- 14: The Deviltry of Dr. Waugh / Christopher B. Booth

- 15: The Skull / Harold Ward

- 16: The  Thing of a Thousand Shapes / Otis Adelbert Kline

- 17: The Germs of Death / Harold Ward
- 18: The Undelivered Sermon / Harold Ward
- 19: The Dare / Harold Ward
- 20: The Life-Eater / Harold Ward
- 21: House of the Lizard / Harold Ward
- Cumulative Index to Number 27