Date: 1919-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Murder; Horror
Description: “… those two deadly little volumes which formerly crouched between the kindlier books in my library like crime-besmirched dwarfs — have they vanished entirely from the memory of man? Vivid, poisonous growths of mental fungi, those tales sprang to life only to die before the sun. Quite perfect they were, and quite malign. Handbooks of assassins …” The brilliant and sinister Burgess Martin writes a novel from the perspective of a murderer — and then arises a wave of murders, as the border between art and reality fades, and some readers are infected with the impulse to kill. The influence of Robe
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

FOR ART’S SAKE

(1920)

TOD ROBBINS

MobileRead Edition
2023

“… those two deadly little volumes which formerly crouched between the kindlier books in my library like crime-besmirched dwarfs — have they vanished entirely from the memory of man? Vivid, poisonous growths of mental fungi, those tales sprang to life only to die before the sun. Quite perfect they were, and quite malign. Handbooks of assassins …”

The brilliant and sinister Burgess Martin writes a novel from the perspective of a murderer — and then arises a wave of murders, as the border between art and reality fades, and some readers are infected with the impulse to kill. The influence of Robert W. Chambers’ “The King in Yellow” seems apparent in this macabre tale.

Clarence Aaron Robbins (25 June 1888 – May 10, 1949), billed as C. A. Robbins and better known as Tod Robbins, was an American author of horror and mystery fiction, particularly novels and short story collections. Writing for mainstream pulp magazines, he specialized in horror fiction dealing with themes of madness and cruelty. His work often contains bizarre and frightening plots, sometimes influenced by writers like Oscar Wilde and Robert W. Chambers. His novel The Unholy Three (1917), about side-show performers on a crime spree, was twice adapted for the screen, starring Lon Chaney both times. His short story “Spurs” was the basis for the 1932 cult film Freaks.

“…good pulp fiction, with a note of whimsy and sophistication that is unusual in the form.” —E. F. Bleiler

A revised and expanded version of Mysterious Martin (1912), this novella was first published in 1920. This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

FOR ART’S SAKE

I

Burgess Martin! That was a name to conjure with in literary circles a score of years ago. But how many are there now to whom it means more than an echo fast receding in the somber caverns of time? Not many, surely. And yet there was a period in New York’s police annals when he juggled the sphere of art before the amazed eyes of the world, playing on the emotions of his readers with the deft touch of a master, instilling in our minds the strange, crimson thoughts which blossomed so abundantly on the twisted branch of his philosophy. And stepping back from life, calm and smiling, a famous toreador, he waved the red flag before the aroused, infuriated beast and waited. Those horns should gore sensitive humanity as a tribute to genius; while art, like a Nero, peered down from the balcony.

And the man’s works — those two thin little volumes bound in red morocco, those two deadly little volumes which formerly crouched between the kindlier books in my library like crime-besmirched dwarfs — have they vanished entirely from the memory of man? Vivid, poisonous growths of mental fungi, those tales sprang to life only to die before the sun. Quite perfect they were, and quite malign. Handbooks of assassins, they — But I must begin at the beginning.

•   •   •

My younger brother, Paul, was responsible for bringing Martin and me together. He had picked him up in some Bohemian restaurant which he frequented and from that time forward was so loud in his praises that natural curiosity prompted me to see this paragon for myself.

“You must meet Burgess Martin, Charley,” Paul said one evening. “He’s just the sort of chap you’d want to room with in Paris. He’s an artist to the core.”

But I was not inclined to take my brother’s statements without a pinch of salt. My four years experience in college ways — I was then a senior at Columbia University — had made me slightly intolerant of freshman enthusiasm. Besides Paul had already shown a marked tendency toward strong drink and the false friendships that went with it. On more than one occasion he had brought back to our apartment “a good fellow” who needed considerable moral persuasion to depart in the morning without a few valuables. I have even known Paul’s bibulous friends to pocket salt cellars and spoons, so it is no wonder that his laudatory statements about Martin at first did not move me.

“But I tell you he’s an artist,” Paul repeated belligerently.

“What kind of an artist? Does he mix drinks artistically?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Charley. Burgess Martin is the most intelligent chap I ever met. He’s in my class in English literature and he knows more about the subject than Professor Brent himself.”

“So you have discovered a genius in the freshman class,” I said with all the weary tolerance of a senior. “What a strange anomaly! This year I thought they seemed especially unripened.”

“Martin isn’t. He makes what he says alive, somehow. You must really meet him, Charley. I’m going over to his rooms tonight. Why don’t you come along?”

“You say he’s going to Paris next fall to take up painting?”

“Yes, he’ll study under Verone. If you two fellows hit it off, you might room together. Get your hat, Charley.”

I could see that Paul had set his heart on my meeting his new friend and so I could no longer resist. “Now I’m in for a boring evening,” I thought as I followed my brother out of the apartment.

Burgess Martin at that time lived in one of those dilapidated old boarding houses still to be found in the down-town section of New York City. This particular building seemed to be tottering on its foundation. It had a sodden, dissipated air about it — the air, in fact, of a femme de monde who realizes that she is aging. Here was the tomb of dead intrigue, of soiled romance.

We were admitted by a slatternly landlady and mounted two flights of rickety stairs. On the second landing Paul came to a halt and thundered on a door which was peeling like the face of a florid man who has sat too long in the sun. Almost immediately it swung open and I confronted that strange individual whose personality was one day to overshadow both our lives.

Burgess Martin was a tall man, well over six feet. He had one of those faces which seem to challenge time — a face that when young, looks old; and when old, seems young. It was long, lean, ascetic — the lips, colorless and thin; the nose, hooked and warlike; the eyes, small and gray with the piercing quality of gimlets; the forehead, a threatening protuberance which over shadowed the rest and hinted at phenomenal intellectual powers. His body was thin, almost to the point of emaciation; yet, for all that, one sensed a great virility stirring in that skeleton frame.

I was immediately conscious of this virility and of something which perhaps sprang from it. The man exuded an unpleasant atmosphere, an atmosphere very difficult to resist. His personality, like an octopus, wound its many cold arms of reason about one. To struggle against it was useless and yet one struggled automatically. Genius is one of the most irritating traits in others. To acknowledge it, one must bend the stiff neck of self-pride.

Perhaps my nerves were a trifle out of tune at the time. It is the only way I have of accounting for that strange sensation which ran through me as Martin’s thin, cool hand slipped into mine. I felt as though I had a precious secret which must be guarded at all costs and which even now was threatened. The man’s unfeeling gray eyes were fixed intently on me; those eyes which, like magnets, seemed drawing my ego out of my body.

“Have a seat, gentlemen. And help yourselves to those cigarettes.”

Martin turned to Paul and I felt instant relief. Seating myself in one of the rickety chairs the room afforded, I lit a cigarette and passed the box to my host.

“No, thank you,” he said a trifle brusquely. “I don’t smoke. It wastes too much time.”

“Are you so busy as all that?” I asked. “I had no idea the freshman requirements were especially stiff. In my time, one could squeeze through without much work.”

Martin’s thin lips drew up at the corners like a cat’s. It was his nearest approach to a smile. “My dear fellow,” said he, “I hadn’t my college work in mind. Of course, that’s childishly simple. I am trying to perfect myself in one or two of the arts and that requires time when one hasn’t the proper guidance.”

“The proper guidance!” I murmured. “Surely Professor Brent is a competent teacher of English literature. He’s had several books of essays published.”

Again Martin’s lips drew up at the corners. “A small man,” said he “ — a small man with a small mind. His work fairly bristles with penny-whistle platitudes. All his sunny little essays are woven out of the worsted mottoes our grandmothers used to frame and hang on the wall: ‘Be good and you’ll be happy’, ‘Virtue is its own reward’, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, why try, try again’. What sickening, sentimental slop! Teach me literature? Why, he can’t even teach himself!”

Martin’s words and the sneering contempt with which they were uttered, made me boil inwardly. My college career had formed me into the usual type of undergraduate to whom the institutions of the university were sacred matters not lightly to be tampered with. Professor Brent had grown gray in service and had even made his voice heard in the outer world; yet here was a green freshman attempting to overthrow him! What consummate conceit! But I would put this young ass in his place.

“Perhaps you can tell me how Professor Brent’s essay on man could be improved upon,” I said coldly. “I happen to have the book with me.”

“Oh, I say, Charley,” Paul broke in, running his hand through his hair, “that’s his very best essay! Of course, there’s nothing much wrong with it.”

But Martin’s gray eyes brightened as he took the small leather volume I offered him. “Without doubt the ideas expressed in it are puerile,” said he, opening the book to the essay in question. “Let us examine the style. Ah, just as I thought — stiff, laborious — a very poor flow of words.”

“Could you do as well?” I asked ironically. The man’s insufferable egotism grated on my nerves like sandpaper.

“Much better,” he answered simply. “Come, I’ll prove it. You are familiar with his essay, I presume?”

“I know it by heart.”

“So much the better. Now I’ll read it as it should have been written, transposing as I go along.”

Martin bent his brows over the essay while my brother and I interchanged glances. Although I tapped my forehead with a meaning forefinger, Paul smiled triumphantly. Evidently he had perfect confidence in his new-found acquaintance.

Now our host’s voice broke the silence — a voice, rich, vibrant, which carried one along with it as on a swiftly moving stream. And, strange to say, although the meaning of the essay was in no manner changed, the style was entirely altered. New life seemed to have been infused into every line. The sentences glowed with poetic fire. My artistic sense was stirred by such a perfect phraseology. It seemed well nigh impossible that any man could read on without hesitation and transpose so remarkably.

“Splendid!” I cried when he had done. “But surely you worked that out before?”

“I never even read it until just now,” he answered, smiling at Paul. “Really, I wouldn’t waste my time over such material. Well, did I improve upon it?”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” I muttered, overcoming my admiration with a mighty effort. “Personally, I’ve always liked Brent’s style.”

“Own up when you’re beaten, Charley,” Paul cried. “There’s no comparison. I’m a dub about most high-brow matters, but even I realize that Martin has improved it.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” I repeated stubbornly.

Martin raised his eyebrows and regarded me quizzically. “You don’t appear to have much literary taste,” said he. “However, that won’t hold you back as a painter. Paul tells me that you intend studying under Verone. Perhaps we can hire a studio together.” He rose to his feet. “I’ve a painting in my bedroom which might interest you.”

“Yes, indeed, I would like to see it.”

Martin strode into an adjoining room and returned almost immediately with a canvas under his arm. Placing it in a position where the light touched it effectively, he stepped back.

“There you have it,” said he. I uttered an exclamation of surprise at what I saw.

To my as yet untrained eye, it seemed a truly remarkable piece of work. And it affected me strangely. Although it was very warm in the room, I felt a wave of intense cold pass through my frame, followed almost immediately by a sensation of acute nausea.

The painting which affected me thus was startling in its conception. It depicted a young girl lying dead on a country road blocked with snow. Desolate and forsaken, she lay there, her white face upturned to the leaden sky. Blood was streaming from her neck and slowly sinking into the snow. And all about her the tiny flakes were still falling — a thick veil of them which shut in this tragedy completely from the outer world. Somewhere in the swirling background, a dark shape lurked — an evil, twisted shape, vague and unreal as a distant dream. Was it the assassin, or was it merely the shadow of approaching night? As I watched, it seemed to stir slightly.

“Why, this is the work of a great artist!” I cried in amazement. “Did you paint it?”

“Yes,” he answered slowly. “But it won’t do. It’s very crude.”

“Crude! Why, it fairly stands out of the canvas, I think it’s a masterpiece; You’re too modest.”

“That’s what I say,” Paul chimed in. “He’s entirely too modest.”

“I’m nothing of the sort,” Martin said contemptuously. “No one is actually modest and only fools pretend to be.”

“But where did you get the idea?” I asked. “It’s a remarkable conception.”

“The girl was a friend of mine. One afternoon I found her lying dead in the road with her throat sliced from ear to ear. Of course, I was thoroughly shocked; but I realized perfectly what an excellent model she made. I couldn’t resist making a sketch of her just as she was.”

“Who murdered her?” I asked.

“No one knows.”

“And you mean to say, Burgess, that you made a sketch of her while she lay bleeding there!” Paul cried. “Don’t tell me that you’re such a hard-hearted brute as all that! I don’t believe a word of it.”

Martin regarded him for a moment with a kind of cold curiosity in his gray eyes. “I see that you read me like an open book, Paul,” he murmured.

“Not at all. But no one could sit down calmly beside a murdered friend and make a sketch of her. The thing is impossible.”

“Perhaps. But that is exactly how she looked when I found her.”

“What was the motive for the crime?” I asked.

“Apparently no motive,” Martin answered with a shrug of his shoulders. “Or, at least, none that could be discovered But let’s say no more about it. It’s a nasty story and brings back unpleasant recollections.”

Soon the talk drifted into other channels. Martin gave us a glimpse into his childhood which must have been far from a happy one. At an early age he had lost both parents and had been adopted by an eccentric aunt who had taken him to live with her in a lonely house far out in the country. This aunt had had many peculiarities. A firm believer in spiritualism, considering herself a medium, she had often taken her small nephew into a dark room at the top of the house where she carried on ghostly conversations with the dead.

“I was only six years old at the time,” Martin finished, “and you can readily understand what effect such treatment had on my forming mind.”

“What became of her?” I asked.

“She died at last and went to join her spirit friends. But long before that I knew the whole thing to be a farce. She left me ten thousand a year which is some recompense for all she made me suffer.”

At that time ten thousand a year seemed to me a princely income. I would willingly have put up with a dozen eccentric aunts to have secured it. Something of this must have been written on my face, for Martin’s lips once more curled up at the corners into a grimace which was half smile and half sneer.

“Yes, ten thousand a year,” he repeated slowly. “Much more than I spend, for I believe that an artist should live without the luxuries of life. I tell you all this, of course, because I would like to have you with me in Paris and I don’t think you would readily room with a pauper.”

“After seeing your work, I would room with you if you hadn’t a cent,” I said warmly. “The thing is settled as far as I am concerned.”

II

During the remainder of the college year Paul saw Burgess Martin daily. A close friendship sprang up between the two which was to me, at least, unaccountable. They were such direct opposites that such an alliance seemed altogether beyond the bounds of reason. Perhaps, after all, real warmth is obtained only by rubbing together two quite dissimilar substances.

Paul had been going downhill steadily ever since entering college the previous fall. He was one of those unfortunate men over whom alcohol in any form has a deadly influence. High spirited, generous to a fault, full of the joy of life, my younger brother was a delightful companion and one of the most popular fresh men in the university. But let him have a few drinks and soon a startling transformation would take place. He would become morose, intolerant, prone to fly into a rage at the slightest provocation. Then would follow a period of deep depression which bordered on melancholia — a dangerous mental state when I have known him to contemplate suicide.

But Martin, in some miraculous fashion, succeeded in curing him. Paul no longer returned at night the worse for liquor. He gave up café life altogether and took up reading seriously. I often saw him in the college library browsing over some book which Martin had recommended. In those last few weeks of the spring term, he succeeded in passing his examinations.

The following autumn found Martin and me snugly ensconced in a comfortable apartment in Paris. My father provided me with an ample income to pursue my artistic studies and I was not slow in spending it and making acquaintances in the Latin quarter.

Those were happy days. Our studio soon became the meeting-place of congenial spirits. Martin struck the one jarring note in an otherwise perfect harmony. Among those gay chattering magpies of art, he seemed as somber and solitary as a crow. He avoided my guests as much as possible; behind his back, they called him “Monsieur la Nuit.” He had an especial detestation of women, alluding to them very much as a man might speak of some deadly and prevalent disease. When he heard the swish of their skirts on our landing, he would lock himself in his bedroom and not come out again until they had gone. “A true artist can have but one mistress — his art,” he was wont to say. “The rest are leeches.”

Although I failed to share my roommate’s views, I never allowed friends to interfere with my work. I improved rapidly. Often our instructor, the famous Verone, stood before my easel longer than was his wont with the other students. Martin’s drawings alone overshadowed mine; yet I felt vaguely that they were disappointing to the master.

One bright sunshiny afternoon in May, Emile Verone rested his hand for a moment on my shoulder. “Ah, monsieur,” he murmured, “you have talent and your heart is in it. There is life in that figure. You have caught it in a web of youth. Bravo!”

Leaving me jubilant, he passed on to Martin’s easel. Here he remained motionless for several moments, a frown of perplexity creasing his forehead, gazing at my roommate’s canvas in the manner of a man attempting to read a riddle.

“It is good — very good,” I heard him mutter. “And yet there is something lacking. It is not technique, it is feeling. It — Ah, I have guessed your little secret. Your heart is not in your task. Am I not right, Monsieur Martin?”

“Perfectly,” Martin answered, glancing up. “The model is not to my taste. That big, fat peasant with a face like a pumpkin does not inspire me.”

I knew of Verone’s hasty temper and was prepared for some manifestation of it. My roommate’s answer had been rather unceremonious. But the little Frenchman did not appear to be the least bit ruffled. His voice suddenly sank into a soothing murmur.

“Quite so,” he said mildly. “Every artist has his likes and his dislikes. But I have a plan. Absent yourself from the class for a month and choose a model for yourself. I will be anxiously awaiting the result. Does that satisfy you, monsieur?”

“Yes, indeed,” Martin answered with a strange glint in his gray eyes. “Nothing could suit me better.”

During the days that followed I saw very little of my roommate. He would leave the studio each morning, his portfolio under his arm, and not return again till the shadows of nightfall. And the few hours which he did spend in the apartment were spent in the privacy of his bedroom behind a locked door.

To tell the truth, I was relieved by his absence. The man was like a wet blanket thrown on the bonfire of good-fellowship which I was attempting to kindle in the studio. My guests were ill at ease in his company; and I, myself, felt a strange irritation at his every word and gesture. Now, as I look back on it, I think it was his atmosphere — that ever-present atmosphere of personal power — which we could not forgive him and which was as gall and wormwood to our own growing personalities.

One night, while champagne corks were popping merrily and laughter echoed through the studio, Martin’s bedroom door swung open and he stepped into our midst. His face was a deathly white and there were great, black hollows under his eyes. Instantly our laughter died away.

“Pour yourself a glass of wine,” I said with forced heartiness. “Have you come to join the merry-makers?”

“Just that,” Martin muttered.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” one of my guests asked. “You’re as pale as a ghost, monsieur.”

“I’ve been living with a corpse for a month,” Martin said slowly. “Would you like to see the results?”

He turned and re-entered his bedroom. A moment later he glided out again with a canvas under his arm. Placing it on the mantlepiece where we could all get a good view of it, he turned toward us and said in his deep, sonorous voice: “Allow me to introduce to you the results, gentlemen.”

Again there was silence, broken only by the deep breathing of those about me. All eyes were fixed on the painting. For many moments we stared at it, spellbound, motionless. It was the most sincere tribute I have seen paid to a living artist. There were two or three men present that night who afterward became international figures; but, at the moment, we knew in our souls that there was but one great master and that he now stood before us.

What was there in this painting to move us so? It is beyond my feeble pen to describe adequately the sensations of horror with which it filled me — horror, overmastering and vaguely sinister; horror whose breath was cold and damp as the tomb. One seemed to enter that picture bodily; to enter it and lose oneself in the shadows.

The painting represented the morgue in the dim twilight and more especially the body of a man lying on one of the marble slabs. The upturned face of the corpse was a mottled green shade; the protruding eyes were covered with a kind of fungus. And to add to its horror, the bristling chin had dropped, disclosing two yellow fangs in a ghastly grin. On either side of this grim figure, partly revealed in the semi-gloom, were other slabs — each the bed of some new fantastic terror. Underneath this revolting conception was written in English these four words, “He Laughs at Death.”

We toasted Martin with brimming glasses, we shook him by the hand, we called him “master.” And he, for once, shook off his cloak of aloofness. Indeed, he put himself out to amuse us, telling us stories so intensely droll that we roared with laughter till all unconsciously our eyes returned to the painting. Then, as the laughter died in our throats, as the smiles faded from our faces, I thought I saw his lips curl in triumph.

III

Emile Verone went into ecstasies over Martin’s painting, calling it “a masterpiece of the terrible”; and soon it became noised abroad that my room mate was one of those rare freaks of nature, a genius. Art students now began to seek Martin out as a profitable acquaintance. But he refused to be drawn out of his cocoon of solitude and mystery. His personality, as always, enwrapped him like an impenetrable coat of mail. Would-be friends and admirers flinched when they met his cold gray eyes. Soon the first fine edge of their excitement wore off; they gave him up as impossible with a shrug of the shoulders and a muttered “Monsieur la Nuit.”

Time passed quickly. Almost before I realized it, a year rolled by. Martin had worked diligently; now the walls of our studio were covered with morbid masterpieces. As one might imagine, a highly strung person could not have entered this apartment for the first time without an inward tremor. Indeed, when the lights burned low, the room seemed to be a veritable charnel-house.

One gloomy afternoon in autumn, these paintings were too much for my self-control. I was on the brink of a serious sickness at the time; and, as I sat alone before the dying fire, the flickering flames would reveal first one stiffening horror and then another till my overtaxed nerves could stand no more. Leaping to my feet with a muttered curse, I began turning those ghastly painted faces to the wall.

Suddenly I heard a low laugh behind me. Wheeling about, I encountered Martin who had entered as noiselessly as a cat. His sallow face still wore a crooked, evil smile which creased his right cheek like a scar.

“Emile Verone is right,” he said, moistening his lips with his tongue. “No one will buy my paintings because they are too good, too realistic in their horror. And if they were sold by any chance, they would be banished to the attic. Who would live with the dead but Martin?”

Suddenly I felt sick — deathly sick. I had the strange sensation of having some precious secret drawn from me against my will — the same sensation, in fact, that I had experienced once before. Then followed dizziness and helplessness. Martin’s face appeared to loom above me, gigantic, monstrous. It grew larger and larger — a huge, terrifying mask behind which an evil passion lurked. Suppose he should remove this mask? Ah, it was slipping now, slipping—

Everything grew black before my eyes. I felt a sharp blow on my forehead, then numbness and nothingness. I had fallen over in a swoon.

•   •   •

For the duration of that week I was delirious with typhoid fever. Strange dreams tormented me, and in these dreams Martin was always the central figure. I can still remember one of them distinctly.

I felt that I was lying naked on the scorching sands of a desert beneath the rays of a blistering sun. It was useless to struggle; I was held down by some invisible weight. And over my bare, burning body an army of tiny ants was crawling, causing me acute agony. But just as my sufferings were at their height, Martin’s lean face bent over me, his cold gray eyes peered curiously into mine, and he said earnestly: “How do you feel now?”

When I at last came out of the land of delirium, I was as weak as a newborn child. The sun was streaming through the window, casting its javelins of light on every side. One of them lay across the bed like a bar of molten gold. It occurred to me that I would like to feel its reassuring warmth, but I had scarcely enough strength to reach out my hand.

Suddenly Martin’s voice broke the silence. “How do you feel now?” he asked.

I started at these words which had echoed through my dreams. I had to steady myself before I answered feebly: “Much better, thank you.”

During the next few days I improved rapidly. Martin was a competent nurse. Sitting beside my bed, he whiled away the tedious hours by his remarkable knack of story-telling. It was not the stories themselves which held me — he would often repeat those I had already heard — but his truly remarkable wording which made them flow as smoothly as a river of oil and was as pleasing to the ear as music.

Sometimes I would speak of Paul, and then Martin would be the eager listener. I received several letters from home. One of these worried me. It was from my father and ran as follows:

“Dear Charles: Paul is drinking again. I can do nothing with him. The slightest reprimand drives him into a frenzy of remorse and despondency. At such times he is quite capable of taking his own life. I wish you were home. Perhaps you could manage him.

Affectionately,

Dad.”

This letter came while I was still very weak and I asked Martin to read it aloud to me. I saw his face darken as he perused it. When he had finished, he sat in gloomy silence. At last I heard him mutter: “It’s in his blood. I could handle him, but another might take the wrong way. It would be fatal to—”

“You must think a great deal of Paul,” I broke in.

“A great deal?” he cried vehemently. “Why, Paul means more to me than my art! Do you think I would have wasted my time pulling you out of the valley of death if you weren’t his brother?”

He rose without waiting to hear my response and hurried from the room. Although it may seem surprising, I was relieved by what he had just said. I had never liked the fellow; and to be weighed down under a load of obligations to one heartily disliked, is a very unpleasant experience. If he had nursed me back to health merely on account of his friendship for Paul, surely I did not owe him as much as if he had been actuated solely out of regard for me.

Soon I was strong enough to leave my bed and sit up for an hour or so each day. For three weeks I had been living on a diet of milk and broth, but now the doctor allowed me solid foods. Ah, the joy of eating when one is recovering from typhoid! It repays one for all those earlier sufferings.

One evening as I was waiting impatiently for supper to be served, I heard Martin’s bedroom door open. A moment later he entered, carrying a suitcase. A mutual coldness had sprung up between us, but this unusual sight made me forget everything.

“Why, where are you going?” I cried in astonishment.

“Home,” he answered, placing the suitcase on the floor.

“Not to America, surely?”

“Where else?”

“But your art? How about your painting?”

“Oh, I’m giving that up,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Giving it up!” I cried. “After what you’ve already done! Why, you will be recognized by the world in another year or so! You must be mad!”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so!” I answered with some heat. “What else could you turn your hand to with the same success? Art, such as yours, springs from the soul. By renouncing it, you would be tearing out the best in you.”

“I will have to do that in any case to follow the career which I have planned for myself.”

“What is this precious career?”

“Literature,” he answered calmly. “I took up drawing merely to illustrate my stories. No other man could do them justice.”

“So you are one of those numerous young men who think they can write,” I said in a tone which brought a flush to his sallow cheeks. “What reason have you to suppose so?”

“You must acknowledge that I can tell a story.”

“Yes, but your stories are not original. Have you a keen imagination?”

“Not a vestige of one,” he said simply.

“Then how can you expect to become a successful writer? A literary man without any imagination is doomed to failure from the start.”

“You are wrong — entirely wrong!”

“How so?” I demanded.

“Because a writer does not necessarily need a creative imagination,” he said a trifle wearily. “I, myself, have what is far better — a concise memory and the ability to write in the most perfect wording exactly what I see and feel. There is enough going on in the world at this moment to serve as the substance for a million stories. Of course, one has to branch away from the beaten path to find such material. But that is exactly what I am going to do.”

“But you haven’t mingled enough with other men,” I hastened to add. “You know little or nothing of human nature. A man, to be a successful writer” — I was quoting Professor Brent — “must be a student and admirer of his fellow men. Without companionship, a writer misses the human touch.”

Martin’s lips curled up at the corners in one of his irritating smiles. “My dear Smithers,” he said in a tone which he might have used in speaking to a tiresome child, “you’re entirely at fault in such a surmise. Surely an onlooker, a mere spectator with no party feeling of any kind, can witness the battle of life with better results than can the actual combatants. You say that a writer should study and admire his fellowmen. That is impossible. If we admire a man, we cannot study him. We are prematurely blinded to all but his virtues. By taking that attitude toward mankind at large, we lose the larger half of faults and follies which go into the makeup of the average mortal.”

“I don’t agree with you,” I said coldly. “But even if you were right, you’d be a fool to throw away a certainty for an obscure possibility. Have you stopped to think that the successful writer of today has to cater to the mob as you call them?”

“But I won’t have to do that,” he cried with flashing eyes. “I intend devoting my time exclusively to horror tales. Have you ever witnessed an accident on the street? Well, in a moment, hundreds collect where there was but one. They are drawn thither by that morbid streak in humanity, that overmastering desire to feast one’s eyes on gruesome details. Such a sensation will be gratified in my stories. Men and women will buy them to experience the delightful tremor of tragedy beside their own firesides. Who would not walk many blocks to see a murder committed? Nearly all of us would go if our own precious lives were not endangered. I tell you the public will snatch up my work because it will give them the exact sensation of those who stand about on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of death.”

In spite of myself, his words stirred my imagination. Was it possible that literature could be made as vivid, as this? He had succeeded in portraying horror most realistically with the pigments of the painter, but could he create such an atmosphere with cold words alone? No, it was impossible even laughably absurd.

“You cannot possibly create such an acute feeling in the minds of your readers,” I said at length. “No man could do it.”

“What no man can do, I can do,” Martin replied with insufferable egotism. “I will surely succeed as a writer as surely as you will fail as a painter.”

“Really!” I cried with a sneer. “Emile Verone thinks rather highly of my work.”

“Your work is promising now because you paint as your eye tells you. But later, when you get out into the world, it will be different.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Because a successful portrait painter — bear in mind that I am speaking from the commercial, worldly standpoint when I say successful — must be nothing more or less than a beauty doctor. Men and women do not wish to be painted as they are, but as they think they are. Flatter them cleverly enough, and you’ll soon become what the world considers a successful artist. What a soul-stirring vocation! Your watchword through life shall be: ‘When I touch my patron’s vanity I also touch his pocketbook’.”

“I’ll never do that — not if I have to starve first!” I cried angrily.

But Martin only smiled unpleasantly and picked up his suitcase. With a curt nod, he turned and strode out of the room. A moment late I heard the outer door slam. He had gone.

IV

That same week Martin sailed for home. He left behind him his gruesome paintings which he bequeathed to me in a sarcastic note. I immediately removed those grisly masterpieces and hung up in their place some of my own work. At the time I was living a trifle beyond my means; and so, when I received what I then considered a handsome offer from Emile Verone for my roommate’s morbid creations, I was glad enough to accept it. Of course I intended paying Martin the price I received for them at some future date — a date which, unfortunately, never materialized. These same paintings, I now understand, hang in the Louvre and are worth their weight in gold.

After Martin had left Paris, I began to look around for another room-mate who would share my expenses.

One evening, as luck would have it, I happened to run into an old acquaintance at the Follies Bergere. He had wandered to Paris alone to amuse himself and was delighted at the prospect of living with a former college friend who knew the ropes.

Wilbur Huntington was a plump young man who had made quite a reputation for himself at the university. No one had ever caught him in the act of opening a book, yet he had always glided smoothly through the examinations. He was an anomaly to the professors who claimed that success required effort. His half shut, sleepy, brown eyes, his bland smile, his round, expressionless face, quite belied the man’s intelligence. Although he was lazy to a fault, his mind was as keen as a knife which had just visited the grindstone. I have never met his equal as a psychologist.

I was lucky to have fallen in with him. He came of a very wealthy New York family, who gave him a lavish income — an income which he was not slow in spending. Money meant little or nothing to him. During the months we roomed together we lived like pampered fighting cocks.

There was nothing Huntington liked better than to fill our studio with Emile Verone’s pupils and discuss art. He would start the ball rolling with some titbit of knowledge which he had picked up; start it rolling, and then sink back comfortably on the lounge, close his narrow-lidded eyes and smile blandly at the ceiling. He liked to hear the maniacs rave, as he expressed it. In the Latin Quarter he was called “Le Cochon d’Inde.” They facetiously brought him offerings of lettuce leaves which he devoured solemnly and rapaciously. The man’s appetite was amazing.

With such a companion, the months sped by merrily. Occasionally I received a letter from home. It seemed that Paul had reformed, and that this reformation had been brought about through Martin. Apparently my former roommate had sought him out immediately on his return to America and had once more succeeded where others had failed. The letter, which informed me of this, was written by my mother. It ran as follows:

BLOCKQ

“My Dear Son: You will be glad to know that Paul has given up drinking. What a relief this has been to your father and me! We have been so worried about him since you left home! But now everything seems to be all right.

We owe Paul’s reformation to your friend, Mr. Martin. He has a remarkable influence over the boy. And yet, somehow, I can’t bring myself to like him. When he is in the room, I always feel as though I had a precious secret which I must keep from him at all cost. This is absurd, of course.

My dear boy, I am glad that you are getting along so well in your studies! I hope you will come home soon. Father has not been in good health lately. I believe he has been worrying over business affairs.

Lovingly,

Mother.”

At the time I did not give much heed to the last few lines of my mother’s letter. Father had always been such a strong, robust man that I could not imagine him sick. Death and failure seemed quite remote from him. And so, when I received a letter from Paul two months later, I was quite unprepared for what it had to tell me. The news which it contained was like a bolt from the blue. I quote it here:

BLOCKQ

“Dear Charley: Come home at once. Father died this morning, and we need you. Only yesterday I learned that the firm had failed. Would write more, but mother is calling. Hurry home.

Affectionately,

Paul.”

“What’s the trouble?” Huntington asked. He had come into the studio unnoticed and now stood at my elbow. “What’s the trouble?” he repeated. “You’re as white as a ghost.”

I tried to answer him but couldn’t. Something clicked in my throat like a clock running down. I handed him the letter in silence.

“I don’t know what to say,” he muttered a moment later. “I’m awfully sorry, Charley. I want you to know that.” He offered me his plump hand boyishly.

But I did not see it. There were weak, womanly tears in my eyes. Father was dead — not only dead but ruined! I had pictured to myself two more years in Paris and then a luxurious studio in New York; and now these air castles had crumbled in an instant. But what a selfish brute I was! Father had just died, and I was already thinking of myself. Martin had been right in his estimate of me.

“The Marseillaise sails tomorrow,” Huntington said. “I’ll hustle down and get our staterooms reserved.”

“But surely you’re not going to leave Paris?” I murmured. “I can make it all right by myself.”

Huntington smiled sleepily. “Don’t you worry about that,” he answered. “I’m sick of Paris. When you go, I go. Besides, as you know, queer birds are my hobby; and I’m rather anxious to meet this chap, Martin, of whom you have told me so much.”

On the following day we took passage for New York. The ocean was rather rough for that time of year; to my natural depression were added the qualms of sea sickness. But on that trip I learned the true worth of the plump, sleepy man whom my associates of the Latin Quarter called “Le Cochon d’Inde.” He was indefatigable in his efforts to cheer me up

I found affairs at home even worse than I had imagined. My father had died a bankrupt. He had left nothing except the house which was heavily mortgaged and several debts incurred during his illness. These bills, added to the natural grief attending his death, had aged my mother at least ten years. I had, indeed, come home at the right moment if I could help.

My one pleasant surprise was Paul. He had matured considerably in the last few years. I found him looking splendidly — a handsome, capable fellow, if there ever was one. On the first night of my home coming we had a long talk together after mother had gone to bed.

“They tell me you’re not drinking any more, Paul?” I said casually.

“No,” he answered with a grim smile. “I’m through with that stuff for good. Martin cured me.”

“How did he go about it?” I asked.

“Oh, he showed me a few examples of what it could do to a fellow. You see he’s living in the slums these days, and he has lots of opportunity to study drunks in their last stages.”

“In the slums! Why does he live there?”

“He’s gathering material for a book on murder — studying the criminal types close up. He says it pays to get firsthand knowledge of a subject. When I begin practicing law, he’ll send me a lot of clients.”

“When do you go up for your final examinations?”

“Next month — thanks to Martin. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably be hitting the high life yet. But one night he collared me, dragged me over to his tenement, and introduced me to a bleary-eyed old chap who was fighting imaginary snakes. What a sight he was!” Paul passed his hands across his eyes as though to shut out a picture. “He had been a gentleman, too, in his day — a Harvard man, I believe. Anyone could tell he wasn’t an ordinary drunk by his ravings He quoted a lot of poetry to keep off the snakes. Dante’s Inferno I believe it was. Well, it cured me.”

“I’m glad of that. But you mustn’t give Martin all the credit. A great deal belongs to you.”

“Not a bit,” he answered with a rueful shake of the head. “Martin scared me into it. But what are you going to do now, Charley? Are you going to paint portraits?”

“Yes, if I can get any sitters. I’ve got to look around a bit first. You don’t know any wealthy beauty who wants to have her face immortalized?”

Paul rose yawning. “No,” he answered. “But if I did, I don’t think I’d hand her over to you until I had discovered if there weren’t some legitimate, legal way of separating her from her cash.”

The next day I began writing letters to former acquaintances with the hope that they might know of someone who was anxious to have a portrait painted by a pupil of the famous Emile Verone. I soon learned that I could hope for little from this source. Most of my college friends were so busy or so absent-minded that they failed to answer my note; and the few replies which I did receive were far from encouraging. Evidently the world at large was not at all interested in furthering the future of an aspiring young genius.

The pile of bills in my mother’s desk grew higher day by day. I no longer dared to open them. My spirits were at very low ebb on the morning when I received a note from Wilbur Huntington which gave me a ray of hope. It ran as follows:

BLOCKQ

Dear Charley: The mater wants her portrait painted. She’s not much on looks, but she has a well-lined pocketbook. I have boosted you to the skies. She now thinks that you are a Van Dyke, a Whistler, and a Sargent, all in one. Call on her next Monday and make good.

As ever,

Wilbur.

When I finished this hope-inspiring epistle, I uttered a whoop of joy which brought Paul out on the veranda in no time. “I’ve struck it at last,” I cried.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Have you found a half-dollar or something?”

“I’ve found a good many half dollars,” I answered gleefully. “I’ve been asked to do a portrait of Mrs. Huntington — you know, Wilbur Huntington’s mother. It’s the chance of a lifetime. If I make good, she’ll recommend me to her society friends and it will be smooth sailing after that.”

“Good man!” cried Paul. “You’ve struck it all right. But look here. I’ve got another surprise for you.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s a story by Martin,” he answered. “They’re featuring it this month in the Footstool magazine. Just look it over while I run downtown. I want your opinion of it. It’s the first piece of work he’s had published.”

After Paul had gone, I opened the magazine. On the first page was an illustration by Martin himself. 1 I recognized it instantly. It was a miniature of that first painting I had seen of his — that vivid conception of the girl lying dead in the snow. It had been improved by a few deft strokes of the brush so that now it was a veritable masterpiece of mystery. For a long moment I gazed at it while the well-remembered feeling of intense cold passed through my frame. At last, with an effort, I turned the page. “The Murder of Mary Mortimer” was the title of the story.

“Some melodramatic nonsense, no doubt,” I told myself and began to read.

But from the first page I knew that I was wrong — entirely wrong. I could not blind myself to the truth. If the man’s illustration was gruesome and yet masterful, the man’s story was diabolic and yet a classic.

As I read, I felt the same sensations stirring in me that the deformed idiot in Martin’s story felt when the voice whispered in his ear: “You are losing her! Is it not better to have her dead?” And when he is driven by this voice to strike her down, when she falls like a red ruin in the snow, I saw that scene as though I were standing where the dark shadows of nightfall were closing in.

“I see you like my story,” said a familiar voice.

I looked up with a start and encountered Martin’s cold gray eyes. His thin lips were curling up at the corners in their wonted catlike grimace. For a moment I experienced the unpleasant nervous shock of a somnambulist who is suddenly awakened.

“A remarkable story!” I said at length in a rather unsteady tone. “The most startlingly vivid piece of fiction I ever read! Surely you must have imagination to write like that?”

“On the contrary, not a grain of it. As I told you once before, there are countless themes drifting about and a man has only to get off the beaten path to find them. Without exaggeration I can say that I have done so.”

“Your story proves that,” I assented. “But where did you get the idea?”

Again his lips writhed into an unpleasant smile. “That would be revealing my little secret,” he murmured, wagging his head reprovingly at me. “A wise angler never tells where he caught his last trout.”

“Your story is founded on truth?” I asked.

“It would seem so. A man without imagination cannot lie artistically.”

“But I don’t believe that even a weak-minded person could be turned into a murderer by mental suggestion. It’s preposterous! That’s the weak spot in your story, Martin.”

He threw back his head and burst into a laugh — f you could call a series of sounds so inhuman a laugh. It was as hoarse and guttural as the cawing of a crow. At last he broke off and regarded me solemnly.

“Smithers,” he said, “you amuse me. In fact, you are the one man in the world who can make me laugh.”

By this time I was thoroughly aroused. This man’s colossal egotism was unendurable. “You may laugh as much as you please,” I cried, “but that isn’t answering my criticism of your story. I repeat that mental suggestion cannot form even a weak-minded person into a murderer. Your tale doesn’t ring true to life.”

“Perhaps so,” he murmured. “I thought that it could be managed by mental suggestion — under the right circumstances, of course. But where is Paul this morning?”

“He went downtown,” I said brusquely. “He probably won’t be back for an hour or two.”

“Well, I’ll not wait. Tell him I called, won’t you? Good-bye, Smithers.”

For some time I sat watching his tall, lean figure receding in the distance. Finally I rose, and, moved by a sudden fit of childish irritation, picked up the magazine, entered the library, and deposited it carefully on a bed of glowing coals.

“It’s better out of the way,” I told myself. I never knew until years later how truly I had spoken.

V

It was not long before Martin’s prophecy about my career came true. Spurred on by adversity and a natural desire to please I soon became one of those flourishing society portrait painters who fatten on the vanity of women. Mrs. Huntington’s picture did not suit her until I had touched it up to such an extent that her own son could not recognize any likeness. But when I had beautified her to her heart’s content, she became enthusiastic and recommended me to all her wealthy friends. That was the beginning. Soon I had all I could do to fill the many orders which rained down on me. My work became the vogue — I was no longer a man but a fashion. Prosperity brought the fulfillment of my youthful dreams. I was now able to rent and fit out one of the most artistic studios in Washington Square. But, in spite of this, I was far from happy. I had moments of deep depression when my work galled me cruelly — moments when the only spur that kept me going was the knowledge that before long I could retire and live a life of leisure.

Meanwhile Paul had passed his examinations to the bar and was actually practicing. No sooner had he hung out his shingle than he was besieged daily by a ragged multitude of clients whom he shrewdly suspected Martin had sent his way. A stream of villainous faces passed through his office at all hours — faces which one could imagine as being associated with every crime in the calender. Paul had a keen mind; he soon developed into a criminal lawyer of exceptional reputation. His clients, in spite of their poverty-stricken appearance, paid him well for his services and he soon became affluent.

I saw a great deal of my brother at this time. We had become much closer friends. The four years which divided us, no longer seemed such an insurmountable barrier. Now he would often take me into his confidence.

There was only one topic on which we could not agree. Paul was still an ardent admirer of Martin; while I, although I had to acknowledge the man’s gifts, loathed the very mention of his name. I could not forgive him his prophecy concerning my career. Yes, that afternoon in Paris, he had told me what I would soon become. And because he had seen so clearly into the hidden recesses of my character, I felt that I would hate him till the end. It is primitive but human to resist the prying eyes of genius. The ego — that most precious possession of man — is outraged to find itself held up before the clear, steady flame of psychological insight.

Paul had a way of referring to Martin which was extremely annoying to me. He would repeat over and over again that he owed everything to him. It used to make me very angry to hear him belittle his own success by such a quixotic statement. Surely he owed a large measure of his practice to his own acuteness and perseverance. Often we would argue about it.

“Yes,” Paul would say, glancing about his well-appointed library, “I owe all this to him. He cured me of drunkenness and sent me my clients.”

“Nonsense! Perhaps he did help to cure you and perhaps he sent you a few clients; but if you hadn’t had strength of will enough to leave the liquor alone and strength of mind enough to win the majority of your cases, his help wouldn’t have amounted to much.”

But Paul would shake his head obstinately and repeat: “He has done everything for me — everything.”

And then I would generally lose my temper and express my true feelings. “How about that book he is writing? He may be able to make you, but he doesn’t seem to be able to make himself. He’s been writing for over two years now and has had only one story in print. Won’t the publishers take his work?”

Now Paul, in his turn, would flush angrily and his blue eyes would grow darker. “How should I know? He never talks about himself. But I’ll tell you this, Charley — when his work is published, the whole world will know about it!”

Often, after one of these heated controversies, I would leave my brother’s apartment in a temper and walk the streets for hours before I regained my habitual calm. It was on one of these midnight rambles that I met Martin, himself, under rather singular and sinister circumstances — circumstances which left a never-to-be-forgotten impression on my mind.

•   •   •

One mild March night I left Paul’s apartment with rather more than my usual irritation. I was so heated, in fact, that I determined to walk it out of my system, if possible, before retiring. As I knew by former experience, a nocturnal ramble has a quieting effect on ruffled nerves. All the poor, petty passions of man flourish best between four walls. They are soon smothered in the sable robe of outer night.

It was a fine evening for a stroll. The aroma of budding spring was strong in the air — spring, that supple, green-limbed goddess whose presence is felt even in the cold, atrophied arteries of the city. A new moon hung lazily in the heavens, riding the small, silver clouds which swept past it like charging breakers. But the stars were not so fortunate. Often they were submerged beneath these foam-flecked billows of the infinite, bobbing up again into view like floating lanterns.

As I walked along toward Washington Square, the irritation, which had been so real a moment before, vanished entirely. It was followed by an almost philosophic calm. I began to take myself to task.

Why should I interfere with Paul in his choice of friends? Surely he was old enough now to choose them for himself. Just because I happened to dislike Martin, that was no reason why I should attempt to influence my brother, against him. And when it came to that, what had the fellow ever done to me that I should so hate the sound of his name? He had told me several truths hard to stomach, indeed; but no doubt they had been intended kindly as a warning. On the other hand, he had nursed me back to health when my life had hung in the balance. What had I ever done to thank him? Nothing — absolutely nothing. Well, I would turn over a new leaf; I would apologize to Paul for what I had said.

By this time I was within a few blocks of home. Seeing an inviting alley which I had not yet explored and which might prove to be a short cut, I wandered into it and into a strange adventure as well. Winding smoothly along for several hundred yards, it was so narrow and tortuous that the old brick houses on either side seemed to be twisted out of normal shape; to be tottering toward each other like drunkards about to embrace. And then suddenly, almost violently, the alley ended in a precipitous, ivy-covered wall.

This wall brought me to an abrupt halt. I experienced a sensation of surprise, of chagrin. I had followed this alley as a man follows an odd and rather attractive philosophy, thinking that in due course it would bring me out into familiar, homely surroundings; and here was this disconcerting wall looming up like an abrupt and positive negative. I could not have been more unpleasantly surprised if a friend, while telling me a whimsical, fantastic tale, had suddenly dropped dead in the middle of a sentence. Indeed there was something brooding and brutal about this wall, like death itself.

The little street was as dark as a subterranean passageway. I might very easily have blundered into the wall without seeing it, had it not been for an antique, iron lantern which was suspended from it and which shed its flickering beams over its rough, red surface. The light, however, was not sufficient to make objects at a short distance discernible. For instance, the houses on either side, and more especially their areaways, were in tottering, unstable shadow.

I came to an enforced halt near the wall and glanced at the house on my right. It seemed to me that the shadowy figure of a man was sitting on the stoop in the attitude of one who is patiently waiting; but I could not be sure of this as the mantle of gloom enshrouding the house was almost impenetrable. Whatever it was, it remained absolutely motionless.

I turned and was about to retrace my steps when I suddenly heard strange shuffling sounds. Flip, flap, flip, flap, the sounds grew nearer and nearer. And for some unaccountable reason I felt a flicker of fear. Through those hurrying footsteps, that flapping of worn-out leather on cobblestones, there sounded the warning of approaching danger. Flip, flap, flip, flap — it was like the frantic beating of terror-stricken wings.

I came to a halt and attempted to pierce the shadows in front of me. At the next moment, I stepped aside with a warning cry.

“Look out!” I shouted. “There’s a wall in front of you.”

But the man who ran swiftly past me, his head thrown back, his broken shoes flapping wildly on the cobblestones, could not stop himself in time. Into the wall he went at full speed; and then, rebounding like a rubber ball, toppled over on his back.

“Are you hurt?” I cried, running forward.

He was on his feet again by the time I reached him — on his feet and staring about him wildly. A ribbon of blood ran down his chin, losing itself in his gray, tangled beard; one of his knees had torn its way through the patched cloth and now projected arrogantly, a globule of raw flesh; his long, green coat, many sizes too big for him, flapped idly in the March breeze.

“Are you hurt?” I repeated, touching him on the arm.

He started and turned a pair of bloodshot eyes on me. “Oh!” he said in a husky voice. “I thought you was one of ’em! I can see you ain’t now. No, mister, there ain’t much wrong with me.”

“But that was quite a fall you took. It must have shaken you up. Look at your knee.”

“To Hell with my knee!” he cried, shaking his head like a restive horse. “I got to get out of here, mister! Ain’t there a gate in this wall? For mercy’s sake, get me out of here before the boss and his gang show up!”

“Who’s the boss and his gang?” I asked, intending to humor him till I ascertained whether he were drunk or mad. “I’m sure everything will be all right.”

“Don’t you hear ’em?” he broke in, cocking his head on one side. “Don’t you hear ’em? They’re comin’ for me now!”

Indeed I did hear a confused, muffled thudding in the distance which gradually grew louder, approaching with the swiftness of hurrying feet. “Probably the police,” I thought to myself. “This fellow has robbed someone and is trying to make a getaway.”

Suddenly I felt his hand on my arm. He was shaking me violently. “It’s them!” he cried. “Give me a boost up on the wall, mister! Give me a leg up and I’ll fool ’em yet!”

But I shook his hand from my arm. My suspicions had now become a certainty. I was not the man to help a criminal escape. I respected the laws of my country too much to see them cheated by this villainous scarecrow in his flapping green coat. If he had attempted to climb the wall, I believe I would have detained him till his pursuers arrived.

“You’d better stay here quietly and face the music,” I said sternly. “If you break the laws, you’ve got to answer for it.”

At that he swung away from me and limped toward one of the dark houses. “Maybe I can get in here,” he muttered.

By now the thudding of a dozen pairs of feet echoed through the alley. They could not be more than a hundred yards away and they were coming fast. I saw the man stop at the bottom step of the shadowy stoop; I saw a dark figure rise slowly to its feet above him — the figure which before I had been unable to make sure of because of the gloom — and then I heard a strange conversation which I shall never be able to forget.

“Let me in your house, mister!” cried the man in the green coat. “Quick! They’re comin’ up the alley now! For God’s sake, open the door and let me in!”

Then I heard a low laugh which rasped on my nerves like sandpaper. “I’m sorry,” said a vaguely familiar voice, “but I don’t happen to have the key.”

What followed then is like the half-remembered figments of a dream. I saw the man in the green coat leap back as though he had come into violent contact with another wall; I heard him scream out like an animal in pain; and the next instant, he was on his knees beside me, clasping me about the waist with emaciated arms.

“Don’t let ’em hurt me, mister!” he muttered. “Don’t let ’em hurt me! The boss thinks I’m going to blab! Tell him—”

The rest of his words were swept away by a storm of men dashing towards us — not policemen, as I had thought, but ragged men with caps drawn down over their eyes; men flourishing cudgels with now and then the sickly gleam of a knife flashing through them like lightning in a forest. For an instant they hovered over us like a breaking wave and then we were overwhelmed and dragged apart.

I heard a shrill scream, a dull thudding of blows falling on flesh, and then a cracking sound as though a solid substance had been shattered. At that I struggled and cried out. The next instant a sickening pain closed my eyes — I knew nothing more.

VI

When I regained consciousness it was to find myself stretched out on the pavement at the foot of the wall. Above my head, the antique iron lantern cast its feeble beams at the impenetrable ebony breast of night. I felt instinctively that someone was standing within a few feet of me, but I lacked the strength of will to sit up.

“How do you feel now?” a familiar voice asked. Turning my head with difficulty, I saw that a man stood near me, leaning up against the wall in an attitude of nonchalant unconcern. There was something in this man’s air of easy indifference which was galling in the extreme. Weak as I was, I managed to sit up and rub my head.

“Oh come now, Smithers,” the voice continued unfeelingly, “you’ve been playing dead long enough. That was the merest tap you got nothing to make a fuss about. They’re all gone now. It’s quite safe to stage a resurrection.”

And now I knew the voice. Who but Martin could show such an utter lack of human feeling? There he stood, as indifferent as Fate, the lamp light accentuating the dark hollows under his eyes and revealing the cruel catlike curve of his lips. Like a pleased spectator at some farce, he leaned against the wall, smiling and playing absently with a small silver-headed cane.

“So it’s you, Martin,” I said, rising weakly to my feet. “How did you happen to find me?”

“I didn’t,” he answered carelessly. “On the contrary, you found me. I was sitting on the stoop of my house when you and your friend began quarreling.”

“You were the man on the stoop then,” I muttered. “I remember now. But what happened to that poor fellow in the green coat?”

“Your friend?” he asked.

“He was no friend of mine. I never saw him before. But what happened to him? You must have seen what happened to him?”

“He’s lying over there,” Martin said lightly, jerking his pointed chin over his shoulder. “And he’s not playing dead, Smithers. You and your other friends finished him off to the queen’s taste.”

“My other friends?” I cried, putting my hand to my throbbing head. “Who do you mean?”

“Why, all those impulsive gentlemen who came charging down the street a few minutes ago,” he answered, “those gentlemen armed with clubs. What a devil’s tattoo they did play on that poor fellow’s ribs! He’s nothing but a bag of broken bones now, Smithers.”

“They were no friends of mine!” I cried angrily.

“No?” he said, raising his eyebrows whimsically. “You seemed rather anxious to keep that poor fellow here till they had played their little game with him. If you had boosted him up on the wall, as he wanted, no doubt he’d be alive this minute.”

“Surely he’s not dead, Martin?” I asked with a heavy heart. “Don’t tell me that he’s dead!”

“As dead as a doornail,” he answered laconically. “But look for yourself.”

He stepped to one side and I saw something which a moment before had been hidden by his shadow. The body of the man in the green coat seemed suddenly to spring out of the gloom. There it lay, like a scarecrow which has been blown over on its face — a grotesque, inhuman figure huddled up against the wall. And from it, dark running puddles of blood crawled away, leaving strange, fern-like traceries on the dusty pavement. Yes, he was undoubtedly dead. Only the green coat seemed still alive. One of its tails stirred slightly as the strong March breeze eddied about it.

And as I looked at this pitiful broken thing which a few minutes before had been so shaken by fear, horror and remorse made me forget my aching head. Martin was right; I had held his life in my two hands and I had let it fall! Why had I not helped him to climb the wall? Why had I been so sure that the police were his pursuers? What a fool I had been! And now I could never forgive myself — never!

“Are you satisfied?” Martin asked. “Personally I should call it a rather thorough job. Look at the back of his head. Your friends, Smithers, seem to be as workmanlike as they are impulsive.”

Shuddering, I turned my back on the corpse. “Please don’t joke about a thing like that!” I cried. “Haven’t you any mercy? I’m too sick to listen to you! I feel as though I were responsible for this!”

“You are, Smithers. Don’t let your natural modesty blind you to the truth. Fully two-thirds of the credit belongs to you. But you’ll allow me the privilege of writing it up, won’t you? I need just one more story to complete my book and this seems excellent material.”

“Did you recognize any of the murderers?” I asked.

“Only you, Smithers.”

“Don’t joke, Martin! I mean would you recognize any of them if you should see them again?”

“No doubt,” he answered carelessly. “I never forget faces. As I told you once before, my memory makes up for my lack of imagination. But I would advise you to get away before the police come. You’ll be mixed up in an unpleasant affair if you don’t.”

“How so?”

“Well, you carried a heavy cane. Now it is broken in half. This man has been beaten to death. You are found near the body with a wound on your head.”

“And you?”

“Why, I live on this street, Smithers. There is some reason why I should be here, while there is no reason under the sun why a society portrait painter should be found up a miserable, blind alley at midnight. If nothing more, it would cause considerable newspaper notoriety which I don’t think would do you any good with your wealthy patrons.”

“But I can’t sneak out of it like this,” I said weakly. “I feel that I’m too much to blame. That poor fellow might have got away if I hadn’t been such a suspicious fool.”

“Don’t take all this so much to heart, Smithers,” Martin murmured with one of his enigmatic smiles. “After all, what is one human life more or less? They are like ants, such men — only not so industrious. This fellow perished tonight in a good cause — for art’s sake, indeed, for I intend to make the description of his murder a masterpiece.”

“You’re not human, Martin,” I said, turning away. “However, I think I’ll accept your advice and be off before the police come.”

“I knew you would,” he said triumphantly. “One can always depend on you, Smithers.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Why, I have modeled myself after the moon,” he cried, raising his cane and pointing fantastically at the heavens. “She and I will keep watch over the dead. My cold sister, I call her. She is wise, Smithers, horribly wise — so wise, indeed, that nothing can change the sad serenity of her face. Think of what she has seen, while looking down; think of the plains dotted with the slain and the purple rivers of blood that she has seen, and then wonder at the calmness of that white face in the sky! Leave the dead to Martin and the moon, Smithers — leave them to Martin and the moon!”

I did not answer him — dizziness and nausea were stealing over me. My only thought was to escape from this dark alley before the police came. Martin’s wild words seemed a fitting climax to such a ghastly business.

At the first bend in the alley I cast a hurried glance over my shoulder. Martin still stood where I had left him, his cane pointing fantastically at the moon, his eyes on the corpse which huddled close to the wall as though seeking an outlet. And the antique, iron lantern dropped its petals of pale, yellow light, like a dying sunflower, on the glistening pavement where tiny, fern-like patterns of crimson were stealing noiselessly away.

VII

For several days following my adventure in the alley, I was confined to my bed. The blow that I received had inflicted a severe scalp wound which called for medical attention; while, added to this, the unnatural excitement had brought me to the verge of a breakdown. At night I was subjected to horrible dreams from which I awoke bathed in a copious sweat.

On the day after the murder I scanned the papers eagerly. My curiosity was finally rewarded by the following paragraph:

BEATEN TO DEATH

Early this morning the body of a man was found at the foot of the wall which terminates Tyndall Place. His death was caused by the heavy blows of some blunt instrument. As yet the body has not been identified.

I laid the paper down with a sigh. So this was all the publicity the Evening Star thought such a ghastly business to be worth! What had shaken me to the depths of my soul, the Evening Star could dismiss in a few lines. I had expected to see the affair written up on the first page with perhaps a full-length picture of the man in the green coat. And I had found it only with difficulty, hidden away among the advertisements. How different it would have been had the victim possessed social prominence or even a moderate income! Then he would have come into his own on the front page in big, glaring type; a host of detectives would by now be hot on the trail of his assassins and the wheels of justice would soon be humming merrily, grinding into chaff those impulsive gentlemen, as Martin called them, who had broken simultaneously the skull of the green-coated man and the Fifth Commandment.

Martin! Evidently he had disappeared from the scene before the police arrived. Otherwise some allusion to him would have appeared in that article. No doubt he, like myself, had avoided getting himself mixed up in the affair on account of the unpleasant newspaper notoriety which was sure to follow. But why could he not have said as much to me? That was like the man — to hide his own frailties under mine; to make it appear that he was going to face the music, while in reality he was only waiting till my back was turned before he beat a hasty retreat. Well, hereafter, I would take what he said with a grain of salt. In spite of his insufferable air of egotism, he evidently had human weaknesses like the rest of us.

For the duration of that week I rested till I regained my mental and physical equilibrium. I had several callers, including Huntington, to whom I told in confidence what had befallen me in the alley. Wilbur listened with more than his customary attention, his eyes half closed and his blunt, shapeless nose twitching slightly. It was at times like these that one appreciated thoroughly the aptness of his sobriquet. Never have I seen a man who so closely resembled a guinea pig.

“Martin must be an unfeeling sort of chap,” he muttered when I had finished. “You say he didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by what had happened?”

“Not the least bit in the world,” I assured him. “Why, he began joking about it! You’d think he was used to seeing murders every night.”

“Used to seeing murders every night!” Huntington repeated thoughtfully. “What an idea!”

“That’s the impression he’d give anyone. There’s something not quite human about the man.”

“You must bring us together, Charley,” Wilbur said abruptly. “I’ve taken an interest in him. Psychology is my hobby, you know. Burgess Martin seems worth studying. If I weren’t so infernally lazy, I’d look him up in that slum where he lives. Why was I born so lazy, Charley?”

“I don’t know. Possibly you’d be a menace to society if you weren’t. Your pleasing plumpness and hibernating habits are the bars of your hutch. Within, you nibble contentedly at your lettuce leaves; but, once out, you might turn carnivorous.”

“A guinea pig turn carnivorous?” he said, rising. “It isn’t done. But I imagine I could have much more fun with my hobby if I weren’t so lazy. If crimes were committed in my back yard, I feel that I would be a famous detective. Why is it that I have a kind honest man for a valet when I long for one who has all the subtle instincts of those famous poisoners of the Renaissance?”

“Personally I should prefer the kind, honest valet, Wilbur. You can eat your lettuce leaves without the fear that they may be colored with Paris green.”

“Well, at any rate, introduce me to Martin, Charley. I’m very anxious to meet him.”

But Huntington was not the only one of my acquaintances who wished to meet Martin. His story, “The Murder of Mary Mortimer,” had excited the interest and the admiration of a young writer who lived in the same apartment house as myself. During the last few months we had become friends; and when he learned that I had roomed with Martin in Paris, he was eager to know him.

Rupert Farrington was one of those young visionaries to be found in the bohemian quarter of any large city. Tall and slender, with large melancholy blue eyes and a girlish coloring, one had but to glance at him to realize that here was a dreamer who was incapable of crystallizing his dreams into a concrete form. There was something disconcertingly vague about his personality; one could forget his presence in the room as though he had no more mental or physical substance than a shadow. And yet, in spite of his apparent weakness, there were fiery depths in his nature capable of being roused into a storm. He loved his art passionately. Although he had never had anything accepted, he still worked on grimly with a firm belief that the editors were at fault. In fact he visualized these magazine monarchs, as he called them, as a kind of unscrupulous aristocracy which should be torn down. He spent his time writing, receiving rejection slips, and railing at the man in the editorial chair. His voice, even when raised, impressed no one — it was like the droning of a harmless fly.

“The Murder of Mary Mortimer” still held this young man’s fancy in an iron grip. He had a copy of the magazine in which it had appeared, now torn and smudged by countless readings, and I often found him poring over it when he thought he was unnoticed. He could quote whole paragraphs of it from memory; and often, when we had a studio soirée, he would be called upon for a ghastly recitation from those well-thumbed pages.

On the day following my nocturnal adventure, he dropped in to see me. As usual, he began to praise Martin to the skies. The unpleasant experience through which I had passed, coupled with the hearty detestation I entertained for my former roommate, made any allusion to the man almost unendurable. It was all I could do to keep a civil tongue in my cheek while the young fool raved.

“You seem to have Martin on the brain,” I said when I could get a word in edgewise. “A man can’t be called a genius just because he has written one fairly decent magazine story.”

“Fairly decent!” Farrington cried, his large eyes flashing dangerously. “Why, it’s a masterpiece, Smithers! It stands alone in literature! It is a picture painted with words, remorseless, vivid—”

“And extremely morbid,” I broke in. “That’s probably the reason he’s never been able to land any of his other work. The magazine editors know that the public doesn’t want to be fed up on horrors. Martin’s writings, like his paintings, aren’t healthy. They shouldn’t be printed.”

Farrington glared at me for a moment in speechless anger. In the same breath, I had committed two unpardonable offenses — I had criticized Martin’s work unfavorably, and I had spoken well of magazine editors. He could not have been more thoroughly aroused if I had slapped him in the face.

“I didn’t expect to hear anything like this from you,” he said at length in a voice which he attempted to make calm. “You had the rare privilege of living with him in Paris, and yet you seem to have absorbed nothing of his Spartan philosophy. Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said: ‘There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.’”

“If I were an editor, I wouldn’t publish any of his stories,” I said stubbornly. “I’ll make you a little bet right here and now — I bet you’ll never see any more of his work in print.”

“I’ll take that,” Farrington said, rising. “You’re forgetting, Smithers, that there’s another road to the public besides the magazine route. Martin’s next thing may be a novel or a book of short stories.”

“Perhaps,” I answered, “but I’ll not retract. On the contrary, I’ll make another bet with you. I’ll bet you that if he does publish anything, someday you’ll wish that you hadn’t wasted your time reading it.”

“What do you want to bet?”

“I’ll lay a hundred on both.”

“All right; I’ll take both,” he said with a contemptuous laugh. “Martin couldn’t write anything that wasn’t worth reading. Good night, Smithers.”

“You’re young yet,” I called after him. “Someday you may outgrow this silly hero-worship.”

“I might live to be a thousand,” he said over his shoulder, “but I’ll never regret reading Martin.”

Both Farrington and I were to remember those parting words of his on a certain dramatic occasion several years later. But at the time, they seemed of no more importance than the crackling of dry shells underfoot.

VIII

Although I religiously scanned the papers for the next month or so, I found no further reference to the murder of the man in the green coat. No doubt the police considered the solution of such an insignificant mystery scarcely worth their best efforts; and the press, siding with them and quite indifferent as to the fate of the victim, very obligingly let the matter drop. The old saying, “Murder will out,” like many another old saying, has little or no foundation of truth. It is a matter for speculation as to how many unsolved murder mysteries, like submerged derelicts, are buried deep under the waters of time.

After my week’s vacation I returned to work, refreshed in body and mind. There were several portraits which had to be finished before I received the generous checks that they were thought to be worth. For the next month I was so busy that I had no time to brood over the tragedy. However, I was not yet done with the man in the green coat, as future events proved.

One night, fully two months after my adventure, Paul dropped in to see me. He had come to find out why I had not visited him since our last altercation. I had left his house in such a rage on that never-to-be-forgotten evening that he feared an estrangement in our relations might grow out of this silly quarrel. He came to straighten matters out.

“I can’t help liking the man, Charley,” he said, regarding me with his steady blue eyes. “Of course, if you’d rather not have me talk about him when we are together, I won’t. He seems to be an inflammatory topic of conversation between us.”

“I think it just as well if we don’t argue about him,” I agreed. “He rubs me the wrong way, Paul.”

“Then we will say nothing more about him.”

“Very well.”

But Paul and I were soon to realize that such a compact was impossible to keep. Hardly had we agreed to it, before the studio door was pushed violently open and Rupert Farrington strode in. His face was flushed, his hair stood on end, his eyes were shining with excitement. He flourished a volume bound in red morocco under my nose as though it were some kind of new and deadly weapon.

“I win, Smithers!” he cried excitedly. “I win!”

My first thought was that the young poet had gone mad. There he stood, coatless, collarless, hatless — a pair of pink worsted slippers adorning his flat feet, his flannel shirt open at his bony throat — waving the book about his head as though it were a tomahawk. No doubt Paul would think that such an apparition was quite a customary sight in Washington Square. I glanced at him and saw that his lips were twitching in their attempt to restrain a smile.

“You’re not much of a prophet, Smithers,” Farrington continued excitedly. “I told you there were more ways than one of finding recognition.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re driving at, Rupert,” I said reprovingly. “Your words and your gestures convey nothing to my mind. If you will kindly refrain from dashing my brains out with that crimson tome, I’ll introduce you to my brother.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” Farrington muttered, evidently seeing Paul for the first time. “Glad to meet you, I’m sure. This book got me so worked up that I’m not quite myself.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Paul murmured in the tone of a man saying: “Oh, don’t mind me! I know this is bohemia — so be just as wild as you want.”

“Now sit down, Rupert,” I continued, “and explain what you mean. You say that you win. What do you win? You say that I am a poor prophet. When did I ever prophesy to you?”

Farrington seated himself and smiled triumphantly. “I win a hundred dollars from you,” said he, “And I win it, because you made a false prophecy about Burgess Martin.”

Paul and I started and interchanged glances. We had just agreed to drop the man’s name from our conversation; yet here it was, popping up again with the obstinacy of a cork submerged for an instant under water! Evidently we could not so easily dismiss him from our intercourse as we had imagined.

“What has Burgess Martin to do with it?” I asked sharply.

“Everything,” Farrington replied. “His book, ‘Many Murders,’ is being brought out by the Brainsworth Publishing Company next week. I have an advance copy which Williamson of the Evening Star loaned me. I believe you made a little bet, Smithers, that Martin wouldn’t get any more of his work into print. I brought this book along as proof.”

As he finished, he handed me the volume bound in red morocco. I had a feeling of extreme irritation as I examined it an irritation which did not spring solely from the fact that I had just lost a bet. Any allusion to Martin was like the lash of a whip falling on my sensitive self-pride.

“So he has succeeded in having his work published at last,” I muttered.

“And I feel that it will be a classic!” Paul cried enthusiastically.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” I replied. “It’s more likely to be highly sensational melodrama. ‘Many Murders!’ Why, the thing bears the hallmark of the dime novel!”

Farrington flushed angrily. “You’re wrong, Smithers,” said he. “The Brainsworth Publishing Company doesn’t bring out dime novels.”

“But I presume you’ll acknowledge that even the Brainsworth Publishing Company can make mistakes. We’ll see what the critics have to say about it.”

Farrington burst out into a laugh. “That’s like you, Smithers. You’d never acknowledge anything was good till a band of learned asses told you so. Have you ever heard of Sir Vivian Gerard?”

“The famous London critic? Of course! Who hasn’t?”

“Well, the Brainsworth Publishing Company sent the manuscript of ‘Many Murders’ to him for his opinion. He wrote a glowing review of it which they are now using for advertising purposes. Here’s a selection from it which they enclosed with each review copy.”

Farrington fumbled in his pocket and drew out a small wrinkled sheet of printed matter. Adjusting his spectacles on his bony nose, he began to read the review. It ran as follows:

A MASTER OF HORROR.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce to the world an undoubted master of the horror tale. Not since the days of Poe has America produced such a consummate craftsman. I do not hesitate to say that even the immortal creator of ‘The Gold Bug’ had not the power of description which makes Burgess Martin’s work unforgettable.

“Many Murders” — Mr. Martin’s first book — is a masterpiece of the terrible. Simple, direct, quite free from any attempt to mystify the reader, each one of these weird sketches stands out like a finely carved cameo. While reading them, one thrills to a sensation of the actual. It is almost as though the reader were an eyewitness of those scenes which have flowed so vividly from their creator’s fertile imagination. Morbid they may be; but, for all that, they deserve a lasting place in modern fiction.

“What have you got to say to that, Charley?” Paul cried.

“Not a thing,” I answered a trifle shamefacedly. “When Sir Vivian Gerard makes such a statement, it is not for me to contradict. Have you read the book, Rupert?”

“Yes,” said Farrington enthusiastically. “I read it last night and I couldn’t get to sleep till morning. There’s one sketch in it which I think is even better than ‘The Murder of Mary Mortimer.’”

“What’s that?” Paul asked.

“He calls it ‘In a Blind Alley.’ It’s the last sketch in the book.”

“What’s the theme?” I inquired with a sudden suspicion of the truth.

“It hasn’t a plot or any conventional theme,” Farrington replied rather contemptuously. “The narrator sees a man beaten to death by a band of thugs. There’s a kind of bitter irony running through it. The victim pleads with the narrator to help him over the high brick wall which terminates the street — his pursuers are right on his heels, you understand — but the narrator is a conventional fool who, because the victim wears rags, thinks that he must be a crook trying to escape from the police. He refuses to help; a crowd of thugs dash up; and it’s all over with the poor devil. By the way, Smithers, that chap who wouldn’t help the other reminds me of you.”

“Thanks,” I murmured with a wildly beating heart. “Perhaps I would have acted so under the same circumstances. But I don’t see anything remarkable about that story.”

“It isn’t the theme!” cried Farrington impatiently. “It’s the way it’s treated. Why, you can see the whole thing the obstinate stone wall partly illumined by an antique lantern; the poor, cowering wretch, on his hands and knees, begging for mercy; and then the mob, with their cudgels, approaching like a many-headed monster. But the death of the man in the green coat! How vivid that is! You can see him squirming beneath a forest of clubs, you can hear the dull thudding blows! And when it’s all over, when the many-headed monster crawls back into its lair, you have a vivid impression of the scene — the body crumpled up against the wall, the moon peering down with her enigmatic smile, and the conventional fool striding off before the police come, to avoid unpleasant notoriety.”

“And what happened to Martin?” I cried out incautiously. “Didn’t he sneak away, too?”

“Martin?” said Paul. “Why, what do you mean, Charley? This is only a story!”

“To be sure,” I said with a forced laugh. “Rupert told it so vividly that it made me forget. Lend me the book, will you?”

“Certainly, Smithers,” Farrington answered, eyeing me curiously. “I’ll be very glad to have you read it. At last you seem to be interested in Martin. You’d better read it tonight while you’re in the right mood.”

I acted on his suggestion. After he and Paul had gone, I took up “Many Murders” and turned to the last story. There it was, my adventure in the alley, so vivid, so remorseless, that it was as though I were living once again those terrible moments. And as I read on, great drops of sweat gathered on my forehead — gathered there and trickled down into my smarting eyes. Martin had indeed succeeded in painting a picture with words.

IX

“Many Murders” set the whole literary world agog for several months. Critical articles concerning it appeared in all the leading newspapers and magazines. It is to be noted that none of these referred to it as an average work of fiction. No, this volume of sketches was called a masterpiece or else the sensational night mare of a disordered brain.

Soon the public became excited and bought the book by the thousands, thereby proving that Martin had been right when he had said that his stories would prove popular. Sir Vivian Gerard wrote an article for one of the periodicals in which he claimed that it was the first classic to become a best-seller immediately after publication.

Farrington kept me well posted as to the success of Martin’s book. Not contented with winning his bet, he had an irritating way of gloating over my discomfiture. If “Many Murders” had been his own work, he could not have taken a greater pride in its reception by the world.

He would drop into the studio of an evening with a laudatory criticism of the book. “Well, when will you acknowledge that you have lost the other bet too, Smithers?” he would ask.

“What other bet?”

“Why, the bet you made the other day that at some future date I would regret having read Martin’s work.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about it. But I won’t have to pay that bet for a long time. You might regret having read Martin’s work when you were on your deathbed.”

“Don’t be a piker, Smithers. Name some definite date.”

“Oh, very well. Let’s say about twenty years from now.”

“You are a piker, Smithers. But have it your own way.”

I saw very little of Martin during the months which followed the publication of his book. Sometimes I met him at Paul’s apartment where, in spite of the fact that he was now one of the shining literary lights of the world, he was a frequent visitor. Naturally I avoided him whenever I could. Beside my inherent repulsion for the man which had grown since our adventure in the alley, I felt instinctively that he was laughing inwardly to see his prophecy about my career turning out to be so true.

One bright October afternoon, Paul and Martin paid me a visit. As chance would have it, the studio door stood ajar and they entered without the formality of a knock. At the moment I was retouching a portrait of Mrs. Vanderveer, a prominent figure in the society world, and was so intent on my work that I did not notice their presence till Martin spoke.

“And who is that supposed to be?” he asked in his cold impersonal way.

At the sound of his voice I started like a guilty schoolboy. “Mrs. Vanderveer,” I muttered. “But it isn’t finished yet.”

“Really?” said he. “I’ve known her for some time. My sight must be failing.”

“No, it’s not that!” I cried bitterly. “I know it looks no more like her than her own daughter! But a man must live!”

Martin eyed me ironically and his lips curled up at the corners. “That’s what people think down on my street,” he murmured. “It’s a fine old saying, and many a brave man has adorned the end of a rope because of it.”

“Cut out the shop talk!” Paul broke in, seeing the embarrassment and hot anger written on my face. “Burgess and I are going on a little trip to the Maine Woods. We’ve both got a vacation coming to us.”

“When do you leave?” I asked, turning my back on Martin.

“Saturday morning. It will be corking in the woods now. We should get some good shooting. Why don’t you join us, Charley?”

“No, I’ve a lot of work on hand. I’ve got to finish five portraits by Christmas. Remember me, Paul, if you get a buck and smuggle a few nice steaks back with you. You know how I like venison.”

Although I was not looking at Martin when I refused Paul’s invitation, I felt instinctively that he was pleased to know that I would not accompany them. And so what was my surprise when he seconded by brother’s proposal. There was a genuine ring in his voice which I had never heard before.

“You’d better come, Smithers,” he said. “An artist should find delight in the woods at this time of year. The foliage will be ablaze with color. You’ll regret it if you don’t come, Smithers.”

I stared at him in amazement. There was a propitiatory air about the man, quite foreign to his usual manner. It was almost as though he were pleading with me to go.

What possible reason could he have for applying balm to my wounded sensibilities at this late date? Well, I would give him a taste of his own medicine — I would show him, once and for all, that I was not the sort of man one could take liberties with and then expect to jog along behind at a kind word like a whipped dog. He might have won the fawning flattery of the world, but he could not win my esteem if he were the most masterful writer of all time. What was a genius, after all, but a mental abnormality — a creature bordering on insanity and tolerated only because it could amuse? Was not a keen, capable man of affairs on a far higher plane? Healthy thought, irrespective of its originality, to my mind, at least, was preferable to those brilliant poisonous inspirations which sprout from the oozing mire without apparent source and are called the fruits of genius.

“No, Martin,” I said coldly, “your blazing, autumnal foliage does not tempt me. As you have often said, I am preeminently a society portrait painter who takes more pleasure in rustling banknotes than in rustling leaves. I’ve got to stay here and stick to business.”

His long, lean face which had worn a strange, almost wistful expression, suddenly stiffened into its habitual sneering aloofness. “Very well, Smithers,” he said quietly. “Have it your own way. Stay home and stick to business. Let’s be going, Paul.”

“I’m sorry you won’t come with us, Charley,” Paul said, gripping my hand in leave-taking. “I’ll not forget what you said about venison. We’ll be back in two months, Charley.”

X

After they had left the studio, I strode to one of the windows and looked out. A moment later I saw them on the street. They were walking side by side. As never before, the contrast between the two men caused me a sensation of amazement. Paul was so flushed with health, so alive, so virile; Martin, gliding beside him with a catlike tread, his sallow face turned toward me, was so ethereal by comparison, so ghostlike, so unwholesome! It was as though Life and Death were walking in the bright October sunshine.

“That man is like an evil shadow,” I muttered. “What can Paul see in him? Surely they won’t stay up in the woods for two months. Paul will grow tired of it before then and come home.”

Several days after Paul and Martin had left the city, I went out of town for a weekend with Wilbur Huntington. He had a country place on Long Island; and we spent Saturday, Sunday, and the better part of Monday, sauntering about a nearby golf course and sipping cool drinks afterward in the shade of the veranda.

On Monday afternoon Wilbur insisted on driving me into town in his racing car. I arrived at the studio in due course, wind-swept and dusty, with the dazed feeling of one who has been shot through space with the velocity of a falling star. Huntington’s laziness did not extend to his motor. He had entered it in the Vanderbilt Cup and I was confident that afternoon that it had every chance of winning.

I was attempting to get some of the Long Island dust out of my eyes, when I heard a loud knocking on the studio door. “Come in,” I shouted. “I’m washing up. I’ll be there in a moment.”

My caller proved to be Rupert Farrington. He did not wait for me to complete my ablutions, but hurried into the bathroom and handed me a telegram.

“It came while I was at lunch,” he explained. “You told me that you’d be home for dinner, so I signed the book for you.”

“I’m much obliged,” I answered, drying my hands. “It’s probably from Mrs. Dyer. She’s been pestering me to death about having her portrait finished before Christmas. This will be her third telegram.”

“It must be a wonderful feeling to know that one is so necessary to society at large,” Rupert said unpleasantly. “You’re a lucky dog, Smithers. But I’ve got to be going. Drop in and see me when art’s not beckoning.”

I made a rather careful toilet before I opened the yellow envelope. Telegrams were no novelty to me. I had learned by bitter experience that a certain class of women send them with no more urgent reason than so many children scribbling notes behind their teacher’s back.

At last I strode back into the studio where the red light from the setting sun touched one of the canvases as though with fire. Striding to the window, I tore open the telegram and glanced at it. The next instant it fluttered from my hand to the floor.

“Good God!” I muttered.

Unconsciously I looked down at the piece of yellow paper which lay in a band of crimson light that seemed to stain it as though with blood. The black letters leaped up from it into my brain. Once more I read their purport:

PAUL IS DEAD. AM BRINGING HIM HOME ON THE FOUR-FIFTEEN. — MARTIN.

“Paul is dead,” I repeated. But it meant nothing to me then — nothing! It seemed as impossible as the wildest dream. Like a tongue-tied actor attempting to make his lines clear and convincing, I repeated those few words over and over again: “Paul is dead — Paul is dead.”

But still that thin partition standing between me and the realization of the truth, resisted the dull pounding of those hammerlike words. And suddenly a brain-numbing fear stole over me, a fear that I could never be more than a puppet which had been wound up to repeat endlessly that meaningless phrase: “Paul is dead.”

“Come now!” I told myself. “You must make yourself realize what this telegram means. You must suffer. It is right that you should suffer. Other men would suffer in your place. Can you not understand? Paul is dead!”

But still that thin partition was standing bravely against those hammerlike words. And wonderingly, fearfully, like a child in the dark, I looked out over the city.

XI

The sun was slowly setting far away over those dingy housetops which were like uneven stepping stones above the murmur of a brook. The sky hung over them like a sea of blood dotted here and there with floating islands of ice. Somewhere in the distance the shrill voice of a siren drifted, melancholy, forlorn, tearing its way like a projectile through a muttering multitude of other sounds. Surely it was pain incarnate — pain which I sought and which evaded me.

And as I gazed wonderingly at the passionate sky, a thought edged its way into my benumbed brain. Surely it was after five o’clock. What was it that this yellow, wrinkled piece of paper at my feet warned me of? Something which Martin was bringing home on the four-fifteen. It was already an hour past that time. But what was this inanimate thing of which he spoke? Why, it was Paul — my brother Paul, dead, already cold — Paul who had joked and laughed with me, who had fought and forgiven me — Paul!

And like a weary swimmer who has dived from a high cliff into the sea, slowly true realization fought its way up through the dark depths. I was no longer a mere puppet, squeaking a meaningless phrase. Pain was born in an instant — blinding, unbearable pain.

Paul was dead! I, who had known him so intimately, who had loved him so dearly, realized that fully now. Striding to and fro, quite careless of the furniture which stood in my way, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing but, this unforgettable fact, I was driven back and forth by the painful lash of memory like a wild animal in its cage.

I do not know how long I wandered aimlessly about the room. Suddenly I was brought to normal consciousness by loud knocking on the studio door.

“Come in,” I muttered. “Come in.”

The door opened and Martin strode swiftly into the room. In spite of my abnormal mental condition, I could not help noticing his altered appearance. The man seemed to have grown years older in those few short days. His face was heavily lined and as gray as a death’s head; the whites of his eyes were threaded with tiny crimson veins as though from prolonged weeping; and his voice was as hoarse as the cawing of a crow.

“How’s this?” he asked. “Didn’t you get my telegram?”

I pointed mutely to where it lay on the floor and once more began to pace the room.

“Well, why didn’t you meet me?” he cried angrily. “But it’s like you to dodge all your responsibilities!”

“Where is Paul?” I asked dully.

“I’ve had him taken to his apartment. Go there and you’ll find him.”

“I’ll go right away,” I said weakly. “Wait till I get my hat.”

“Don’t you want to know how he was killed?” he cried in a kind of rage. “I bring your only brother home dead and you treat the whole affair as a matter of course! Why, common curiosity should prompt you to ask a few questions!”

“You don’t understand me, Martin,” I said with a brave attempt at dignity. “What do I care about such details now? He’s dead — that’s all I care to know. Later, perhaps. Poor old Paul! If I’d gone with him—”

But Martin interrupted me with a quick, authoritative gesture. “Listen, Smithers,” he ordered. “It happened this way: Our guide had a gallon of whiskey. Paul began drinking again heavily. You know how it was when the stuff was in reach; he simply couldn’t resist it. I tried to reason with him, but it wasn’t any use. After the whiskey was all gone, he had an attack of melancholia. You remember how depressed he used to get after a drinking bout at college?”

“Yes,” I muttered.

“Well, this time it was far worse. He refused to be dragged out of the depths. One night the guide and I awoke with the sound of a gunshot in our ears. We ran out of the cabin to find Paul lying on the ground.”

“Dead?”

“I should think so!” Martin answered brutally. “Why, he had a hole in his side that you could stick your arm into!”

The coroner bore out Martin’s statement in regard to Paul’s death. There was no doubt that the poor fellow, suffering from acute melancholia, had taken his own life. Tying a piece of string about the trigger of his shotgun, he had leaned his weight upon the muzzle and discharged it by pressing his foot down hard upon the loose, dangling cord. His death must have been almost instantaneous. The heavy buckshot had ripped its way through his heart.

My mother was prostrated by the news. Ever since father’s death she had been in poor health, and this was the last straw. On the day of the funeral she was so weak that the doctor refused to allow her to leave her bed. I was the only member of the family to attend the solemn ceremony. But Wilbur Huntington, although he knew Paul only slightly, was kind enough to accompany me.

It was one of those dismal days in late autumn, I remember — a day when all nature is solemn, melancholy, as though mourning for the wasteful abandonment of her youth. A gray drizzle of rain was falling which seemed to curtain us off from the outer world. Like strange, solemn ships, the funeral procession drifted slowly toward its goal. Our snail’s pace through the glistening streets grated on my overtaxed nerves. I had a wild impulse to shout to the man on the box, to order him to whip up his horses and drive us faster.

Suddenly Huntington’s voice broke in upon my thoughts. “When a man takes a bitter dose of medicine, he takes it in a hurry. He doesn’t sip it for the taste, does he?”

“No,” I answered, at a loss for his meaning.

“Then why all this?” he asked, pointing at my black clothes. “And why is it that we can’t rattle along the streets at a livelier pace?”

“Custom,” I explained.

“Custom be damned! The decent, sensible thing is to hide one’s inner feelings from the world — not to parade them through the streets, as we are doing now, for the mob to gibber at. A funeral procession is a relic of barbarism; and there goes another.”

We were entering the cemetery as he spoke, and the dull tolling of a bell rang out on the still air. Like the beating of a grief-stricken heart, solemnly, sadly, it uttered its message of misery to the living. And on every side, where tiny crosses held out their weary arms, where tombstones seemed kneeling phantoms, where long flat slabs of granite crouched like lizards, a sad echo seemed to rise and steal away on noiseless wings.

“All this,” Huntington continued, “your friend Martin would very truly call toys made for the mass mind. They hide true feeling and, like wine, intensify the emotions. But here we are.”

“Poor old Paul!” I murmured.

The carriage came to a halt and we got out. Soon a number of my brother’s friends assembled at the open grave and the simple service was well under way. Once, moved by an unaccountable impulse, I turned my head and saw Martin standing directly behind me. His face was as expressionless as though it had been hewn out of marble; his bloodshot eyes were staring straight at the coffin.

At last the ceremony was over. Now two men were filling up the grave with damp earth which fell on the lid of the casket with a dismal, reverberating sound. It was at this moment that I heard Martin speak in a low, muffled voice which seemed to come from deep down underground.

“It is done!” he murmured.

“What is done?” I asked in a low voice. “Surely, for Paul, it is just the beginning.”

“I have buried my heart with your brother,” he said.

But there was a strange exultation in his tone which scarcely tallied with his words. I saw Huntington glance at him curiously.

XII

After Paul’s funeral, Martin passed out of my life completely. Occasionally Rupert Farrington would refer to him in glowing terms and prophesy that he would soon startle the world with another gruesome masterpiece. But, at these times, I was careful to lend a deaf ear to his eulogies.

Poor Farrington! I grew very attached to him as the years went by. He was one of those unfortunate mortals who have the inclination to do big things in art and yet never have the ability to perform them. A tongue-tied dreamer, he would have starved years before, if his father had not sent him a generous allowance. And it was a pitiful thing to see him circling round and round the flame of genius with no hope of gaining the inner sanctuary — a poor moth doomed to outer darkness, struggling for recognition till his wings were singed.

Day after day he fought valiantly to compose one stirring line; day after day, bitter disappointment was his lot. Like many another man of his type, he could not criticize what he had written. To him, each poem was good — perhaps a masterpiece. The editors were at fault. They could not recognize genius when they saw it. Hatred of them had become an overmastering obsession. He would rail against them till he grew purple in the face.

I remember distinctly one Christmas morning, a month before Martin’s second book came out. Rupert broke in on me while I was having breakfast, his eyes wild and staring, his face suffused with blood. Stamping up and down the room, he gave vent to such a blind, ungovernable fit of fury that I feared for his reason.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked when I could make myself heard.

“Trouble?” he fairly shouted. “Trouble? I’d like to wring his damn neck!”

“Whose neck?”

“Why, Hubbard’s neck — Hubbard of the Firefly.”

“What’s he done to you?” I asked mildly.

Farrington came to an abrupt halt and fixed his blazing eyes on my face.

“I’ll tell you what he’s done,” he said in a voice which he attempted to make calm but which trembled on a sob. “Do you remember my last poem, ‘The Sea-Gull’? Well, it was a pretty smooth piece of work, although you didn’t seem to appreciate it.”

“What has ‘The Sea-Gull’ got to do with Hubbard?” I inquired.

“I sent it to him for his magazine,” he answered bitterly. “That was a month ago. They’ve had it ever since. I thought that I’d landed something at last. What’s today, Smithers?”

“Today? Why, it’s Christmas morning.”

“To be sure — Christmas morning! Well, I got it back in the first mail, tied up with red ribbons. Now maybe you think that’s a joke, Smithers — a damn good joke?”

“No, I don’t,” I hastened to assure him.

“Well, I don’t either,” said Farrington grimly. “I’ve worked too hard for that. It seems to me a contemptible thing to do — a low-down, contemptible thing! To keep it so long that I had hope and then to send it back tied up with red ribbons on Christmas day! I wish I had him here, that’s all! I could beat him to death without the slightest compunction. A man who would do such a thing, should be beaten to death! Why, Smithers, I tell you it—”

“But how do you know that Hubbard is responsible for this?” I broke in. “It sounds more like one of his office force to me — some silly little stenographer playing a practical joke.”

But Farrington shook his head stubbornly. “No, it was Hubbard — undoubtedly it was Hubbard. It’s his kind of humor. Have you ever seen the man? Have you ever talked to him?”

“No.”

“Well, he’s a pompous jelly bag with a silly, secretive smile — a sly man and a cruel man, a man who sits in his office like a round-bellied spider waiting to pounce on the flies. He makes game of us, Smithers — we poor fellows who try so hard and get so little! But he and his kind are driving me too hard! There are things that I won’t stand, things that—”

“I think you’re mistaken, Rupert,” I broke in. “Calm yourself. This magazine proposition is driving you dotty. What possible reason could Hubbard have for doing such a thing?”

“Oh, just a little recreation,” Rupert muttered. “His humor has to be tickled ever so often. But he’s driving me too far, Smithers — a damn sight too far!”

I did not see Farrington again for several days. I was called out of town on an important business engagement; and when I returned, it was to find that he had gone home for the weekend.

One night, ten days later, I walked past his door and noticed that it was ajar. Glancing in, I saw Rupert seated in his favorite rocking-chair. As usual, when alone, he wore a faded brown smoking jacket and crimson worsted slippers. But tonight there was something incongruous about the man which drew my attention. Perhaps it was the rigid way he sat, or perhaps it was natural curiosity to learn what had transpired since I had seen him last, but something prompted me to enter. Glancing at him again, as I did so, I noticed a volume bound in red morocco resting on the arm of his chair.

“Rupert,” I said, “what have you been doing with yourself?”

But he did not answer me. Silent, immovable, he sat staring into space.

“What’s the matter with you, Rupert?” I said in a louder tone. “You’re not sick, are you?” I bent forward and touched him on the shoulder.

At that, he started and looked up. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins on his forehead were black and bulging, his thick red lips were extended in an animal pout.

“What’s the trouble?” he said thickly. “Is that you, Smithers?”

By this time I was thoroughly alarmed. “You’re not sick, are you?” I repeated, shaking him by the arm. “What’s the matter, Rupert?”

“Matter?” he repeated dazedly, shaking his head as though to rid himself of an unpleasant thought. “There’s nothing the matter, Smithers. I’ve been thinking, that’s all.”

“You were in a kind of coma when I first came in.”

He laughed a trifle shamefacedly it seemed to me. “Thoughts carry me away sometimes,” he said in a more natural tone. “They drag my ego out of my body by the hair.” He paused and ran his hand across his forehead. “At least, Martin’s thoughts do,” he finished with a faint smile.

“Martin’s thoughts? Has his new book come out yet? Is that it?” I pointed to the red morocco volume on the arm of his chair.

“Yes, that’s his new book,” Rupert answered. “This is another advance copy. I believe it is to be published in a few days.”

“What’s the title?”

“‘The Confessions of Constantine.’”

“Do you like it as well as ‘Many Murders’?”

“Like it?” he cried with a nervous start. “That’s scarcely the word, Smithers. You can’t like a book of this kind — you can only marvel at it!”

“Own up now, Rupert,” I said quickly, thinking that the man was quibbling to defend his idol. “Own up, this book has fallen below your expectations. In a word, it disappoints you.”

“Good Lord, no!” he cried almost fiercely. “If ‘Many Murders’ were a masterpiece, ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ is a super-masterpiece! It is so great that one fears it; so great that it conquers one’s mind! Can there be such a thing as hypnotic writing, Smithers?”

“Of course not,” I answered irritably. “The trouble with you is that you’re mentally sick. What you need is a long vacation somewhere. Why don’t you go home for a month or so?”

“Perhaps I will,” he muttered. “Perhaps I will.” He picked up the book and began to turn the leaves. “I know I ought to go home,” he added a trifle wistfully.

“Have you forgiven Hubbard yet?” I asked, turning toward the door. “Or have you found out that he wasn’t responsible for that Christmas present?”

But Farrington did not answer me. Evidently he had once more become engrossed in Martin’s new book. Oblivious to everything about him, he sat with a strange, rigid attention, slowly turning the leaves. And, as I glanced back at him over my shoulder, it seemed to me that his face suddenly underwent a change that the whites of his eyes were suffused with blood; that the veins in his forehead became black and bulging; that his moist, red lips puffed out at each long breath. And I left him thus, alone with “The Confessions of Constantine.”

XIII

Martin’s new book was published the following week. If his first volume had caused a breeze of public comment, his second created a whirlwind. Those who were unfortunate enough to have read “The Confessions of Constantine” before it was suppressed by the government, can still remember the terrifying sensations with which it inspired them. Sir Vivian Gerard aptly phrased it in a newspaper article which ended in these words:

“I trembled when I read ‘Many Murders’ as though I were actually witnessing the terrible crimes which it described; but when I perused ‘The Confessions of Constantine,’ my hand was steady and my brain on fire with the blood lust of the murderer as he strikes the fatal blow. I felt no repulsion at the savagery of it; only the great, unholy joy of brute rage. I cannot criticize this book; I can only wonder at it.”

It was shortly after “The Confessions of Constantine” made its appearance that the still well-remembered crime wave swept New York from end to end. The police fought valiantly to hold it in check, but failed. In vain they made countless arrests; new murderers sprang up on all sides. It was as though it were some kind of contagious disease — a “murder microbe” as some learned fool maintained.

One afternoon, while this dangerous plague was at its height, Wilbur Huntington dropped into the studio on his way to the Cap and Gown Club. I was delighted to see him and stopped work for a time to chat.

“Well, what do you think of this murder scourge we’re having?” I asked, laying my brush aside.

“It’s rather interesting, don’t you think?” he said, half closing his eyes. “I see you have a new bolt on your door, Charley.”

“Yes,” I answered, flushing slightly. “One has to nowadays. Bolts and locks are the fashion. They tell me the chief of police has himself guarded like a feudal baron.”

“Strange that everyone should be murdering someone,” Huntington continued, his nose twitching slightly. “But seriously, Charley, the baffling fact about these crimes is the manner in which they are perpetrated.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean just that. A man goes out and murders someone without any real reason and without any skill. Murder is committed everywhere these days; and no one seems to care whether he’s found out or not. Murder used to be shrouded in mystery; now it walks brazenly in the sunlight, inviting the attention of any passer-by. Do you know how many murderers gave themselves up last week?”

“No. How many?”

“Forty-nine. Forty-nine out of fifty! And they all seem proud of it! That’s strange, isn’t it, Charley?”

“Yes, it is,” I answered. “It would seem that Professor Knolls might be right about the murder microbe.”

Huntington threw back his head and laughed. “No, I think not, Charley,” he said. “But what does your friend Martin say about all this?”

“How should I know? I haven’t seen him now in nearly two years.”

“You haven’t, eh?” Huntington settled back on the lounge and closed his eyes. “What’s the matter with that Farrington fellow?” he asked after a pause.

“Nothing, that I know of. Why?”

“I just met him as I was coming up the street. He seemed to be in a devilish hurry — his face red as a beet, his eyes staring. He looked as if he had gone dotty. I shouted to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me just went scooting by on those long legs of his. He left me staring, I can tell you.”

“Rupert hasn’t been himself lately,” I hastened to explain. “You’ve got to make allowances for the poor fellow. All his life he’s tried to become a famous poet and he’s no further advanced now than he was ten years ago.”

“That’s a shame!” Huntington muttered. “I never knew he had worked so hard. Isn’t there anything we could do for him — bribe some publisher to bring out his poems, for instance?”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good,” I answered. “You see, he really hasn’t got the stuff. It would be a mistaken kindness. What he ought to do, would be to—”

“Who’s that laughing in the hallway?” Huntington broke in suddenly. “That’s a devil of a racket! Have you got a crazy man about the premises?”

“I don’t hear anything. You must be mistaken.”

But Huntington cautioned me to silence with a lifted finger. “Listen!” he whispered.

Then I heard it. And what a laugh it was, starting deep down in the throat in a kind of horrid chuckling and rising higher and higher till it ended in a dismal howl! Nearer and nearer it came, rising and falling, battering on the eardrums with a savage insistence. Finally the studio door flew open and we caught a glimpse of him who laughed.

Rupert Farrington stood on the threshold, swaying back and forth as though shaken by that inhuman merriment which tore his lips apart. His face was a deep crimson; beneath the flushed skin, all the muscles were a-quiver like a handful of worms. But the man’s eyes were what caused me to utter an ejaculation of dismay. The pupils seemed mere pinpoints while the areas of white had grown enormous and were threaded with vivid veins. And as one looked at those eyes, a strange transformation seemed to take place; they were no longer eyes but spiders — spiders crouching in a crimson web.

I ran forward and took his arm. “What’s the matter, Rupert?” I cried. “What’s wrong with you?”

But he continued to shake with laughter — laughter which made every muscle in his body writhe as though in pain.

“What’s the matter?” I repeated. “Are you mad? Stop that laughing or I’ll shake it out of you! Haven’t you any self-control?”

But still he laughed, painfully, immoderately, with his head thrown back and his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. Apparently he did not hear me.

Now Wilbur Huntington took a hand in the game. Stepping forward with unwonted briskness, he tapped Rupert on the chest with a commanding forefinger. “Burgess Martin wants to know what you think of ‘The Confessions of Constantine,’” he said in a loud, authoritative voice. “Do you hear what I am saying, Rupert Farrington? Burgess Martin wants to know what you think of ‘The Confessions of Constantine.’”

Then a strange thing happened. Rupert’s discordant laughter died away. It was as though it had been bottled up in his throat. His bloodshot eyes left the ceiling and became fixed on Huntington’s face.

“Tell him I like it,” he said thickly. “Tell him it’s true — damn true! A dull knife makes no difference — even a paper cutter will serve. To have one beneath you whom you hate; and then to strike to strike not once or twice but a hundred times!”

Farrington raised one of his long arms above his head and I saw with horror that his coat-sleeve was stained with blood.

“Tell Burgess Martin that I have read ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ over and over again,” he continued in a singsong voice. “Tell him that I have often crept into its pages. It is such a small book; yet I feel that I can find my way into it at will. That door is never locked. It opens readily. Sometimes before one knows it, one is inside. This afternoon I took a walk with ‘The Confessions of Constantine. We walked till I met a man who should not live — an editor who should not live!”

“He means Hubbard of the ‘Firefly’.” I whispered to Huntington. “Do you think he has—”

But Farrington broke in upon me. He had lifted his voice to a shout. “The book opened its leaves to me, you understand. I entered a small room. He was sitting with his back turned toward me. There was an inviting ripple of flesh above his collar. Like a luscious bun it bulged out anxiously to receive the knife’s sharp kiss. I hated this man and I approached. But did I hate him after all? Ah, no. Surely I loved him with a great if transitory love! Does the butcher hate the sheep that is bleating in its death agonies? Does the tiger hate the fawn which has fallen to its lot? Surely it is not hatred which makes us kill, but love — love for—”

Farrington broke off suddenly. The color receded from his face; his eyes seemed to be covered with a thin coating of glass. He swayed forward.

“Catch him!” Huntington cried sharply. “He’s going off into a swoon!”

Hardly had he spoken before Rupert fell into my arms. He was a light man, and I had no difficulty in supporting him to the lounge where he promptly collapsed into a senseless heap of humanity. Then I turned to Wilbur with a dawning suspicion of the truth.

“What did he mean?” I cried. “Do you think he has killed anyone?”

Huntington nodded grimly. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he muttered. “Who was the man in the room? Has he quarreled with an editor?”

“Yes and no. He thinks he has a grudge against Hubbard of the ‘Firefly.’ But it was nothing serious — nothing to make a man commit murder.”

Wilbur shook his head. “That doesn’t seem to matter nowadays. Murders are committed for the merest trifles. Yesterday an old chap killed his housekeeper because she forgot to put sugar on his grapefruit. Did you know that Farrington was quoting from ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ just before he caved in?”

“No, I didn’t. I haven’t read the book.”

“Well, he was. I remember the passage distinctly. It’s the most unpleasant thing in the whole damn book. It’s a description of a murder which is supposed to be written by the murderer himself; and while you’re reading it, you feel that you’re sticking the knife in with your own hand!”

“Do you think Rupert’s insane?”

“I don’t know. It seems to me more like a fit — or a hypnotic trance. The man was not responsible for what he did, that’s certain. But I’m going to look into this new book of Martin’s — by Heaven, I am!”

For some time longer we talked in lowered voices with an occasional side-long look at Farrington who had apparently sunk into a deep sleep. The young poet lay on his back — one of his hands dangled nearly to the floor; the other rested on his breast, protruding from the bloodstained coat-sleeve like a white flower from an earthen jug. His small, rather girlish face had regained its habitual calm; now a smile hovered about the lips.

“I shouldn’t wonder if he awoke in his right mind,” Huntington whispered.

At that moment, Rupert opened his large, melancholy eyes. “Where am I?” he murmured.

“It’s all right,” I hastened to assure him. “You’re in my studio. You’ve been sick, Rupert.”

“Sick?” he repeated. “I had a terrible dream. I thought I had killed Hubbard and that I had actually enjoyed doing it.” He smiled weakly.

“Don’t talk too much,” Huntington warned him. “You’re still very weak. You’ll need your strength later. Why, what’s the matter?”

“My God!” Farrington muttered. His wandering eyes had rested for an instant on his coat-sleeve. Staring at the bloodstained cuff, he repeated dully: “My God! It’s true then — all true!”

“Oh, probably you’ve just cut your wrist a bit,” Huntington said kindly.

“No, it all comes back to me now,” Farrington cried, moistening his lips with his tongue. “I had been reading ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ and somehow I had lost my identity in those pages. I didn’t murder Hubbard — it was someone else who had climbed into my body while my soul was asleep; some red, roaring beast from ‘The Confessions of Constantine’! I know that you fellows can’t understand what I mean! You think I’m trying to get out of this, but I’m not! I’m willing to pay the price!”

“Hush,” said Huntington, “I hear footsteps in the corridor.”

Suddenly the sound of heavy knocking echoed through the room. Someone was pounding on the studio door.

“Come in,” I called.

Now the door swung slowly open and two policemen stepped into the room. Glancing about curiously, their eyes finally rested on Farrington.

“Well?” said Huntington sharply.

“Is Mr. Farrington here?” the taller policeman asked.

Rupert rose and confronted them. “That’s my name,” he said quietly. “What do you want of me?”

“You’re wanted for the murder of J. E. Hubbard, editor of the ‘Firefly,’” the officer answered, stepping up to Rupert and slipping a pair of handcuffs on his slender wrists. “You’d better go quietly, sir.”

“Very well,” Farrington answered. And then turning to me with a brave smile which wrung my heart, he said in a voice that trembled only very slightly: “Smithers, you have won our last bet. I am sorry — damn sorry! — that I ever read any of Martin’s work!”

XIV

Weeks passed and still the crime wave swept the city. One had but to glance at the papers to see how widely this homicidal plague had spread. Other towns soon became infected. Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago suffered even more severely than New York; and, strange to say, the police annals proved that these modern murderers sprang, not from the illiterate, uneducated classes as one might fancy, but from the reading public and more especially from the highest intellectual types.

It was during those ill-fated days that college professors, school-teachers, and literary critics began to run amuck. There was poor old Professor Brent of the university, for instance — Professor Brent who had written so many sugar-coated essays on the brotherhood of man. Who would have thought it possible that this kindly old fellow — this senile optimist whose work had always been well sweetened before it went to press — should attempt to do away with a whole class of college students one bright spring morning? And yet one had to believe it. There it was in the papers, with a host of other incomprehensible crimes as well.

But perhaps the Southern States suffered most of all. Of late years lynching parties had been rather few and far between; now they happened again with almost machinelike regularity. Scarcely a day passed in any of those towns on the other side of the Mason and Dixon’s line when some negro did not dance out his life at the end of a rope. And the leaders of these lynching parties — the men who adjusted the noose about the cowering wretch’s neck or lit the fagots which had been piled up against his knees — were invariably men of keen sensibilities and higher education — men who would have shrunk from such a task a few months before.

As this crimson wave passed over the country, leaving horror and desolation in its track, the creative thinkers, who had as yet remained untouched, began to ask themselves a multitude of questions: What would be the final outcome of this catastrophe? If the higher type of intelligence fell victim to this homicidal mania, what could one expect from the illiterate, unimaginative masses who were born to follow like so many sheep? For the first time in human history, education had joined hands with crime. What would be the final dénouement? Possibly we were now facing the end of the world — a bloody end of order, a return to those primeval days when every man’s hand was raised against the other.

It was during these days of dark despair, days when our modern civilization seemed tottering in the balance, that a young man gained access to the chief of the New York police force and pointed out a simple cure which had been overlooked by all the criminal experts.

Wilbur Huntington, for it was he, had some difficulty at first in securing an interview. The chief of police, on account of the many attempts made on his life, was taking no more chances with strangers. If Huntington’s family had not been so prominent in the city, so influential in political circles, it is doubtful if Wilbur would have been able to gain access to that official’s office. As it was, the meeting was arranged and the following conversation took place:

“Well, what can I do for you?” asked the chief, fixing a vigilant eye on his visitor.

“I came to see you about this crime wave.”

“Well?”

“You want these murders stopped, don’t you?” Wilbur asked simply.

For the first time in many days the chief burst out into a laugh. “Of course!” he answered.

“Well, I know how to stop them — or at least, the great majority.”

Now the chief regarded his visitor with a look of fatherly pity, a look which seemed to say: “Too bad, too bad! Another madman to deal with. I’d better humor him a bit.”

“It will be all right, Mr. Huntington,” he said aloud. “Don’t you worry your poor head about it. Just you go home and—”

But at this point, Wilbur interrupted him by stepping forward and placing a book bound in red morocco on his desk. “Here’s the root of the whole matter,” he declared.

“My dear young man,” the chief said wearily, “I can’t be bothered by this sort of thing. The State pays competent men to—”

But again Wilbur broke in upon him with scant ceremony. “I know you think I’m a crank!” he cried. “But I’m going to prove that I’m not. Will you give me five minutes of your time?”

The chief glanced at his office clock and nodded. “Fire away,” said he. “Five minutes and no more.”

“Students of crime know that a diseased brain often prompts murder,” Huntington began quickly. “Yesterday I visited the homes of the fifty murderers who were apprehended in this city last week and in forty-five of them I found the book which I have just placed on your desk. Are you familiar with it? It is called ‘The Confessions of Constantine.’”

“No,” the chief answered, becoming interested in spite of himself. “But how can a book have anything to do with crime? It was merely coincidence that you found it in their homes.”

“Perhaps,” Huntington agreed. “But a book such as this can incite crime and I’m going to prove it. You, yourself, must have noticed that if an unusual murder is committed, is given publicity by the press, other murders of almost identically the same nature are sure to follow. What causes these other crimes? The answer seems obvious — mental suggestion; or, in other words, a printed description of the ghastly details which appeals to the brutal instinct in man.”

“Very well put,” the chief said approvingly, a note of respect creeping into his voice. “I had never thought of such a thing, but it sounds quite plausible. And you think this book could possibly—”

“I know it!” Wilbur broke in. “Just think, chief. If the description of a murder crudely written by some inartistic cub reporter can excite crime, what could not a book like ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ accomplish? It is a work of undoubted genius and gives one a vivid portrayal of both the murder and the sensations of blood-lust in the brain of the murderer. Why, this book can overmaster the sensitive dreamer; can hypnotize him into crime as though by the beckoning of a bloodstained finger! And here is another clue which should not be overlooked: All of these assassins are inveterate readers who live their real lives between the covers of countless books. Such people can be ruled by the printed words of a genius. A sensitive bookworm is easily excited to laughter or tears by a well-written story, so why can he not be excited to brute rage as well?”

“There is a great deal in what you say,” the chief admitted. “I read quite a bit myself. Do you think this book would have any effect on me?”

“No doubt,” Huntington replied. He picked up “The Confessions of Constantine” and opened it at random. “Read this short chapter,” he said, handing the book to the official. “See how it affects you.”

The chief, impressed in spite of himself by his guest’s bizarre theory, glanced at the page Huntington indicated. Then, as Wilbur told me afterward, his attention became riveted on the book, the veins on his forehead bulged out, and a strangely sinister look crept into his eyes. Breathing heavily like a man running a race, he read page after page. At last Huntington touched him on the shoulder. Then he looked up dazedly, the whites of his eyes threaded with crimson veins.

“What is it?” he asked thickly.

But before Wilbur could answer him, the chief shook off the insidious atmosphere of the book and was himself once more. “By Heaven, you’re right!” he cried, springing to his feet. “I felt like a murderer myself just now!”

“If it could affect you that way,” Huntington said, “imagine how it would affect a nervous, high-strung man who has an enemy or a dull, brutish man who has a wrong to avenge! It seems to me that it would overthrow the brain of the one and feed the roaring beast in the other, till both would one day break through the bars of civilization!”

“You’re right!” the chief repeated. “You’re undoubtedly right! I can still feel the brute in me licking its lips. But what can we do? This murder propaganda is scattered all over the world by now.”

“That is your problem,” Huntington said, rising. “No doubt ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ can be traced through the Brainsworth Company and the various stores. Have the book condemned by the government, secure every copy printed, apply some kerosene and a lighted match — that’s my advice. You’ll soon find that, after ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ is done away with, this murder microbe will no longer be a menace to society. Good afternoon.”

It is needless to say that his advice was taken and acted upon. Before six months had passed there were only two copies of “The Confessions of Constantine” in existence — one in Wilbur Huntington’s possession, the other at police headquarters — and manslaughter had once more become a comparatively rare crime.

Indirectly Huntington’s discovery saved Rupert Farrington’s life. It led to a very thorough examination of the prisoners on trial for murder and a suspension of sentence when it was found that they had been mentally unbalanced by Martin’s book. Rupert was transferred to Matteawan for several months where he was under the personal supervision of several eminent brain specialists. Finally he was liberated. He returned home, thoroughly cured of his literary aspirations.

The chief of police got all the glory when the crime wave was broken, but Wilbur Huntington was allowed to keep “The Confessions of Constantine” as a souvenir. The book soon became his evil genius.

XV

“I tell you the man is a menace to society and should be exterminated!”

It was Huntington who spoke. He had been living with me at the studio for over two weeks while his bungalow on Long Island was being renovated. Wilbur had brought “The Confessions of Constantine” with him. In spite of my protests, he had been reading portions of the condemned book aloud during the last hour and railing at the author between breaths. I did not like his air of unusual excitement and sought to calm him.

“Martin could hardly have guessed that his work would cause so much suffering and crime,” I ventured.

“He couldn’t, eh?” Huntington cried. “Well, I think he could. In fact, I’m sure of it. A genius never underestimates his work. I believe he knew exactly what effect ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ would have on the reading public.”

“Oh, come now, Wilbur! That’s a little bit too much!”

“I believe he planned it!” Huntington continued stubbornly. “Any man who could formulate in his brain such terrible thoughts and who had such a brutally vivid imagination, would delight in the results. Each murder would seem like a new leaf in his crown of victory; they would whisper in his ear that he, alone, was master of his art. I can fairly see him chuckling over the gruesome headlines of the papers, I can fairly hear him saying to himself, ‘This — all this — is my work’!”

He paused for breath. His heightened color and flashing eyes once more indicated an unhealthy excitement entirely foreign to the man. Again I sought to calm him.

“I don’t like Martin any better than you do, Wilbur. But I think you do him an injustice in this. You just alluded to his brutally vivid imagination. Well, the truth is that he has no imagination at all. He clearly told me as much when we were in Paris together. No doubt he gets his themes secondhand, from the riffraff he associates with.”

“No imagination?” Huntington muttered. “No imagination?”

“No, not a grain of it — or so he says. He told me that he had a remarkable memory which served him as well.”

“That’s strange! Then how does he describe so vividly what is taking place in the murderer’s brain? ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ is brimming over with the psychological sensations of the assassin.”

“No doubt he knows many murderers,” I answered. “Possibly they confide in him.”

Huntington threw back his head and laughed. “The sensations of an assassin must be difficult to describe,” he said at length. “The ordinary criminal could not express them. Have you ever been in love, Charley?”

“In a very mild way, perhaps.”

“Well, let me hear you describe the sensations of love.”

I hesitated for a minute. “I don’t believe I can do it,” I said. “At least, not clearly. I felt very happy and that sort of thing.”

“Of course, you can’t describe them. It takes genius to portray vividly any of the great passions. Hate is just as difficult as love. Martin can portray hate. You say he does it without imagination — that means without the knack of climbing into anyone else’s skin. Are you sure that he told you he had no imagination, Charley?”

“Quite sure. I remember distinctly everything he said.”

Wilbur closed his eyes, and, interlacing his pudgy fingers over his paunch, sank back on the lounge. Such an attitude of abandon meant that he was thinking deeply. It was quite characteristic of the man to sink into a kind of coma and then come to the surface again grasping an illusive fact, As I sat watching his recumbent figure, I was prepared for some startling manifestation of uncanny insight.

At last Huntington sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Have you got Martin’s first book about the premises?” he asked.

“‘Many Murders’? Yes. Do you want to see it?”

“Yes, indeed, Charley,” he murmured. “Perhaps we can read between the lines.”

I took “Many Murders” out of the bookcase and handed it to him. He opened it at random and read a portion of “In a Blind Alley” aloud. At length he closed the book and picked up “The Confessions of Constantine.”

“He didn’t have to have imagination to write that story, Charley,” he said. “You shared the adventure with him, I believe?”

“Yes, it was that murder in the alley I told you about. He saw it all.”

Huntington nodded and opened “The Confessions of Constantine.” For some time he read silently, moving his lips. He seemed to be weighing each word. Finally he spoke again.

“‘Many Murders’ came out before your brother’s death, didn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ about two years after his death?”

“I believe so.”

“Then I have a little theory which, if it stands the acid test of truth, will put Martin hors de combatfor good and all. Perhaps the world has little more to fear from him.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at, Wilbur.”

“Have patience, Charley. Listen! I think I hear someone tapping on your door.”

When I flung the door open, I found a freckled messenger boy in the corridor. He had a registered letter for Wilbur, addressed in very small but legible writing — writing which, for some unaccountable reason, seemed familiar. Signing for the letter, I returned to Huntington.

“Here’s a letter for you,” I said, handing him the note. “Whoever addressed this envelope has a confoundedly steady hand. It’s like engraving.”

“You’re an inquisitive cuss!” Huntington murmured. “Perhaps it’s from a lady friend.”

He tore open the envelope and glanced at its contents. The next moment, his eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. “Speaking about the devil!” he cried. “Well, what do you know about this!”

“Nothing. But I’d like to. That handwriting interests me. There’s something familiar about it. Is it from your mother?”

“Not exactly!” Huntington replied. “Just listen to this.” Holding the letter on a level with his eyes, he began to read as follows:

BLOCKQ

“My Dear Mr. Huntington: I understand that you have recently become a literary critic. Allow me to congratulate you on your judgment in regard to my book, ‘The Confessions of Constantine.’ No doubt, as you so wisely pointed out to the police, it was a work which proved rather detrimental to the morals of the reading public. By condemning it, the government paid me the highest tribute which can fall to the lot of any artist — the tribute of taking my mental creations seriously.

I have just finished another book of short stories, and I should like your opinion of it before it goes to press. As you have constituted yourself a moral censor, a Mother Grundy of literature, I feel obliged to be guided by your advice. Will you do me the honor of calling at eight o’clock tonight?

Very sincerely,

Burgess Martin.”

“You evidently have him worried,” I said. “Are you going?”

Huntington paused for a moment before he answered. Finally he raised his eyes to my face and I saw that they were flashing like slits in a furnace door.

“Yes, I’m going!” he cried. “This time I see my way clear. I’ll strike him down, Charley; I’ll put my foot on his neck! Perhaps I can suggest a new idea for his book — something that even he has never thought of. He has described crime from the standpoint of the spectator, from the standpoint of the criminal; but are there not other lengths to which he could go? Martin’s mind must be like an overladen camel. One more straw, and then But we’ll see, Charley; we’ll see.”

Huntington rose to his feet with the intention of leaving the apartment. I was in a bewildered state as I followed him to the door. My friend’s incomprehensible words made me fear for his reason. Was it possible that “The Confessions of Constantine” was conquering his mind as it had conquered Rupert Farrington’s?

“When will you be back?” I asked as he slipped on his coat.

“Not for two days. I promised my mother to visit her for a while.” He took my hand in leave-taking and pressed it warmly. “We’ve been good friends, you and I,” he said with one of his rare smiles. “We’ve had lots of fun together. That’s pleasant to think over, isn’t it? Good night, Charley.”

What could have come over Huntington, I wondered as the door closed behind him. Something had changed him utterly He, the most undemonstrative of men, had actually held my hand like a lovesick schoolgirl. He had said good-bye to me as though we were parting for years instead of for days. What could it all mean?

XVI

A week passed and I saw nothing of Huntington. This was strange, to say the least, as he had promised to look me up in a day or so and let me know how his interview with Martin had turned out. Vague misgivings began to torment me as I remembered his rather bewildering statements in regard to “The Confessions of Constantine.” Had the book thrown him off his mental balance as it had Rupert Farrington, Professor Brent, and so many others?

On the following Tuesday Mrs. Huntington phoned me. No sooner did I hear her high, fretful voice than I had a premonition of disaster.

“Yes, Mrs. Huntington,” I answered. “This is Mr. Smithers. What can I do for you this morning?”

“You might send Wilbur home. I haven’t seen him in months.”

“Send Wilbur home?” I repeated dazedly. “Why, he left here last week, Mrs. Huntington! He told me then that he intended staying with you the rest of the time he was in New York.”

There came a long-drawn silence and then a deafening volley of words. “Why, he never came! I haven’t seen him for over two months. Do you suppose anything could have happened to the poor boy? Oh, I’m so frightened! He was such a reckless driver! He might have driven his car out into the country and had a smash-up on some lonely road. What shall I do, Mr. Smithers?”

“Please be calm,” I told her. “No doubt Wilbur is all right. Probably he’s gone out to Long Island. Have you called up his bungalow?”

“No, of course not! I thought he was with you.”

“Well, phone there and I’m pretty sure you’ll find him. If not, call me up. I’ll find him for you.”

“Thank you so much! Probably you’re right. But he should have let me know. Good-bye, Mr. Smithers.”

“Good-bye,” I answered and hung up the receiver with a feeling of uncertainty.

For the rest of that morning I attempted to paint, but made a miserable failure of it. Try as I would, I could not fix my attention on the work at hand. Huntington’s incomprehensible words about Martin kept ringing through my head. At last I tossed the brush aside and left the studio with the intention of inquiring for Wilbur at the Cap and Gown Club. I was descending the stairs and had reached the first landing when I came face to face with a small man who was coming up. I was about to stand aside so as to give him room to pass, when he addressed me.

“Are you Mr. Smithers?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said in surprise. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to ask you a few questions about a friend of yours. You know Wilbur Huntington, I presume?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Well, I think we’d better have our talk in your apartment, if you don’t mind.”

I led the way back to the studio with the feeling that something quite unexpected was about to happen. In fact, my brain was in a whirl. Who could this rather common-looking little man be? And what could he possibly want to know about Huntington?

But my visitor gave me no time to compose myself. No sooner had the door closed behind us than he spoke.

“I understand that Mr. Huntington was here on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth?”

“Yes, he was.”

“I’m Greene from police headquarters,” the little man continued, opening his coat and displaying a metal badge. “As I believe you know, Mr. Huntington has been missing now for several days. His mother has just put the case in our hands.”

“He wasn’t at his bungalow, then?”

“No, he hasn’t been there in over a month. Mrs. Huntington thought you might be able to give us valuable information. Where was he going when he left your apartment, Mr. Smithers?”

“He was going to the house of Mr. Burgess Martin on Tyndall Place.”

“Burgess Martin, eh? That’s interesting! Was there anything unusual about Mr. Huntington’s manner — anything which would lead you to suspect that he wasn’t in a normal state of mind?”

Then I did a very foolish thing — a thing which I have regretted ever since. I revealed everything to the detective, answering his questions with the candor of a child. I told him of the letter Huntington had received, of his wild words about Martin, and of his final threat. And when I had finished, my visitor thanked me heartily.

“If other people were as willing to give evidence as you, Mr. Smithers,” said he, “the work of a detective would soon dwindle down to nothing. What you say about Burgess Martin is especially interesting. Word has just come to us that he, too, is missing.”

“What?”

“Yes, his landlady hasn’t seen him in days.” The detective turned toward the door. “I’ve got to be off on this new clue you’ve given me, Mr. Smithers,” he called back over his shoulder. “It’s just possible, if we can lay our hands on Mr. Huntington, that he’ll be able to tell us something about Burgess Martin.”

When the detective had gone, I realized fully what I had done. I had branded my best friend as a murderer. I had slipped the halter about his neck. Then, for the first time, I saw clearly the significance of Wilbur’s threatening words when coupled with the disappearance of Martin. Yes, I had made an ass of myself. But there was no helping that now. The damage was done. I could do nothing more — only wait as patiently as possible for the results.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, but the two men still remained missing. Meanwhile the newspapers made much of the mystery and soon it became the sensation of the year. It was remembered that it was through Wilbur Huntington’s efforts that Martin’s last book had been condemned by the government. From that fact, they argued that there was bad blood between the two men, and this gave rise to all manner of wild conjectures. Possibly they had fought a duel to the death; or perhaps it had been a suicide pact. The yellow journals knew how to make hay while the sun shone.

Nearly two months after the detective visited me, a body was found floating in the East River. The face had been beaten into an unrecognizable condition by some heavy weapon and the corpse generally was so disfigured by its long submersion in the water, that, had it not been for a ring on the second finger of the left hand, identification would have proved impossible. This ring was engraved with the initials B. M.

The news spread quickly through the city. Newspaper extras appeared with startling headlines. For a time excitement quickened the most feeble pulse. On all sides, one heard this question — “But where is Wilbur Huntington?”

On the following day the rumor was verified. Martin’s tailor, a little Russian Jew who had made his clothes for many years, visited the morgue and identified the corpse’s water-soaked suit by his own initials which he had sewed into the sleeve. After this there could no longer be any doubt; it was indeed Burgess Martin’s body.

But if Martin had been murdered, as the wounds on his face and head evinced, what had become of his companion, Wilbur Huntington, on the night when they had both disappeared? Had Huntington killed Martin and then fled? If he were innocent, would he not come forward and prove it?

Questions like these appeared in all the papers. But the missing man still remained missing; the mystery was no nearer its solution than before. No doubt the chief of police at this time was pestered daily by hundreds of letters from cranks who had worked themselves up into a frenzy over this insoluble riddle. At last he wrote an article for the Gazette which ended in these words:

BLOCKQ

“It is not possible that Wilbur Huntington, after saving the world from a thousand crimes, failed to take his own cure and fell a victim to that brain malady from which he had rescued so many others?”

After this opinion was published, there could be but one verdict. The world regarded my friend as a murderer and a madman.

XVII

Several years passed and the mystery still remained unsolved. It was as though Wilbur Huntington had vanished into thin air. Although many of the leading criminal experts had taken up the search, no clew to his whereabouts was forthcoming. One by one these detectives acknowledged themselves beaten and went back to the solving of less difficult problems. Meanwhile new sensational mysteries arose to attract the attention of the public; soon the affair was practically forgotten.

During that time, I prospered exceedingly. Each year brought me greater wealth, a larger circle of acquaintances, and more material luxuries of every kind. I had won the respect of a great many people who envied me my position in the world — people who little guessed what I had sacrificed in order to climb.

I soon learned that the respect of the mob was of small value. The world, as a whole, judges an artist as it judges a business man — not by the excellence of his work, but by the size of his bank account. I was a symbol to them of the golden image and they prostrated themselves accordingly. Little guessing the bitter irony their words conveyed, they called me to my face “the painter who had made good.” Sometimes it gave me a kind of brutal satisfaction to realize how completely I had sold the public. But now and then another thought would steal into my brain — the thought that I had not sold the public but had, in reality, sold myself. On these occasions, I was far from a happy man.

Ten years after Wilbur Huntington’s disappearance, I laid my brush aside for the last time. I was now forty and had amassed a comfortable fortune. It seemed to me that I had earned the right to play. But those years of drudgery at the easel had taken away all youthful buoyancy. My health was not what it should have been. I consulted a physician and he advised me to take a vacation in the wilds of Florida.

“Why not come along with me to Naples?” Dr. Street suggested. “I’m going to make the trip, as usual, on the fifteenth. You’ll want someone with you who knows the ropes.”

I agreed to his proposition with pleasure. I had known him long enough to realize that he would make an excellent camping companion. But, unfortunately for our plans, when the day arrived Doctor Street was detained in New York much against his will. As all my preparations were made, I decided not to wait for him. He was careful to point out the exact locality of the hotel where I should meet him a week later.

“By the way,” he said as we parted, “don’t forget to hire Bill Pete when you get to the hotel. He’s the best guide in all Florida. Make him take you over to his hut on the other side of the bay and give you some fishing. What you need is exercise and fresh air.”

The trip to Florida was uneventful. I got off the train at Fort Myers and engaged a dilapidated Ford to take me to Naples. The driver gave me a hand with my numerous belongings, climbed back on his seat, and we were off.

It was a forty mile drive from Fort Myers over a road sadly needing repair. Two hours later I caught sight of the wooden structure which my driver assured me was the hotel. In spite of my natural fatigue, I warmed to the majestic scene which had appeared with the startling suddenness of a vision.

There, stretching away as far as the eye could see, was the Gulf of Mexico, now reflecting on its slightly agitated bosom the last scattered rays of the setting sun. Already the dark shadows of approaching night stole out from the palm trees which lined the beach. The melancholy call of an owl suddenly rose on the still air and was thrown to and fro by a multitude of echoes before it was allowed to die away.

Naples was known to only a limited number of sportsmen. There were not more than a dozen people at the hotel when I arrived. I felt fairly certain that I could secure the services of Bill Pete. After dinner I inquired about him at the desk.

“No, he’s not here now,” the clerk informed me. “But he generally paddles over for his newspaper about eight o’clock. I’ll let you know when he arrives.”

I nodded and, lighting a cigar, strolled out on the veranda. The moon, by now, was slowly rising over the treetops — a blood-red moon which, as it ascended, gradually lost its vivid coloring and became a pale silver. Under its magic touch, the surface of the water was transformed into a sea of drifting sparks. The wind had risen. Now and then the crest of a wave was illumined, becoming for an instant a curling, foam flecked lip. It was a night of ebony and silver.

“How beautiful it is,” I murmured half-aloud.

“It may be beautiful,” said a voice at my elbow, “but it is horrible as well!”

I started, for I had thought myself alone. Now I could see the tall, dark figure of a man leaning against the railing of the veranda within arm’s reach of me. How was it that I had not heard his footsteps? He had not been there a moment before; of that I was certain.

“Horrible?” I repeated slowly. “Why is it horrible?”

“Look!” he cried, pointing at the sky with a dramatic gesture. “What do you see? That is no smile on the moon’s face, although there are fools who think it is. No, it is a grimace of despair like one sees on a death’s-head when the jaw drops down. And how white she is, how ghastly white! True, the moon has a round face; but it is the more terrible for that. She has the bloated look of decomposing flesh. And what have become of her eyes? Have the vultures picked out her eyes?”

I moved my feet uneasily. What an unpleasant imagination this fellow had! How could people turn such a beautiful night into a charnel house? Probably this man was some crack-brained poet or other. There was something familiar about his voice something which I could not account for and which irritated me.

“It is though Nature had placed that death’s-head in the heavens as a warning to all mankind,” he continued solemnly. “Oh perhaps She hung it there to kindle the imagination, to beckon us on to unparalleled achievement, to blow into flame a glowing spark of curiosity. What is death and what are the sensations of death? Who can answer? And yet mankind is unwilling to learn. They hide the truth from themselves, disguising it under many different masks. They play with the moon as a baby might play with the face of its dead mother. They even write songs about her, calling her the jolly, smiling moon! And all these years that great, white face has looked down upon them in frozen horror!”

I felt the mental itch of curiosity as I listened. Where had I heard that voice before? He had been speaking in a very low tone, but each word had a familiar ring.

“I think I must have met you before,” I said. “You’re a poet, aren’t you? I used to know a good many poets when I lived in Washington Square.”

“I am no poet,” he said curtly.

“But you write,” I insisted. “I’m sure I’ve heard your voice before. I used to know several novelists. There was—”

“I don’t write,” he broke in rather brusquely. “My name’s Bill Pete and I’ve lived around here nearly all my life.”

“Not Bill Pete, the guide?” I cried in amazement.

“The very same. The clerk told me that you were looking for me. If you want a guide, I think you’ll find that I know my business. I’m familiar with every rookery in these parts and I’ve got a snug little cabin across the bay if you were thinking of camping out.”

“So you’re Bill Pete,” I muttered under my breath. “Well, you’ve got a most astonishing vocabulary for a backwoodsman!” Aloud, I said: “You’ve worked for Doctor Street?”

“Yes, frequently. He always engages me when he comes to the hotel.”

“Then, you’re the man I want. You may consider yourself engaged from now on. I think I’ll use your cabin tomorrow night. Is it comfortable?”

“Yes, sir,” Bill Pete murmured. “I think you’ll find it very comfortable.”

Once more I shot a quick look at that tall, shadowy figure beside me. I had heard him speak before; each moment I grew surer of it. When was it and where? I would find out in the course of the next two or three days — that was certain.

“You’ll pardon me if I ask a rather personal question, Mr. Pete?” I said. “You didn’t get your education in the woods, did you? Your choice of words seems to be rather fine, rather—”

I broke off suddenly. A moonbeam had touched the side of his face. I could see that his heavily bearded cheeks and chin were trembling as though from suppressed merriment, and yet his voice was quite steady when he answered me.

“I’m a college man, sir,” he replied, moving his head slightly so that his face was once more veiled in shadow. “I’ve had my chances and I’ve thrown them away. There are lots of us like that.” He paused for an instant and then added: “Good night, sir. I’ll paddle over for you in the morning.”

XVIII

The following morning, Bill Pete paddled me across the bay to his cabin with the deft, silent strokes of an Indian. Sitting in the bow of the canoe and facing him, I studied the man, attempting to account for the impression I had had the night before. But, try as I would, my memory failed me.

Certainly there was nothing familiar in that bronzed, heavily bearded face. And yet there was something about Bill Pete which struck a long disused, discordant note in my breast. What was it? His eyes? They were hidden behind dark-blue spectacles which resembled the cavernous sockets in a skull. Perhaps the answer to the riddle was concealed by these spectacles. For one mad moment I was tempted to spring forward and jerk them off his nose.

“Why do you wear those things?” I said at length.

“What things?” he asked blankly. Although his face was half turned away from me, I felt instinctively that his eyes were boring into mine.

“Why, those spectacles,” I said testily. “They make your face look like a skull.”

“My eyes are very weak. These glasses protect them from the sun.”

“Oh, I see.”

Not another word was said till the canoe grounded on the beach. I assisted Bill Pete in moving the provisions we had brought with us into the shade; then he showed me his cabin.

It was an ordinary woodsman’s shack, built of rough-hewn logs and containing two bunks. There was a crudely constructed table in the center of the single room, some pots and pans hanging on the wall, a wood stove in one corner, and a doorway without any vestige of a door. To a city-bred man, no building is complete without a door. This architectural omission bothered me till I learned that no wild animal availed itself of it with the single exception of a razor-back hog that each night entered after we had gone to bed and gnawed savagely at one of the logs.

Barely a hundred yards from the cabin, which stood on a slight rise of ground, the bay stretched out like a luminous shawl of bright spangles. Encircling it, was a dark somber army of tropical trees which stood like sentinels about a treasure. On windy nights, the lapping waves on the beach and the murmuring of the branches overhead mingled in a soothing melody which soon wafted one off to the land of dreams.

Bill Pete proved to be a very silent man, speaking very rarely and then always to the point. A smile seldom brightened his somber face. But although he was a poor companion, he proved to be an excellent guide. He knew the woods like the creatures of the woods; his tread was so noiseless that he could creep up to within a few feet of a feeding deer before the animal sprang away in fright; and he knew with unfaltering intuition where the largest tarpon glided. Under his guidance, I had some excellent fishing.

This healthy, outdoor life worked wonders with my shattered nerves. The long tramps through the woods, the invigorating air, the nights of unbroken repose, were fast making a new man of me. Before the week had passed I felt an entirely different individual from the broken-down portrait painter who had left New York under the doctor’s orders. It is no telling how healthy I would have become, had it not been for that night of unparalleled horror through which I passed — that night when I saw a black soul stripped bare and writhing out its life alone.

It had been a hard day’s tramp through the forest. I felt deliciously tired as I lay before the log fire. Bill Pete sat a few feet from me. His corncob pipe was gripped between his teeth; his face, as usual, was veiled in shadow. The wind had been rising steadily for upward of an hour; now and then I could hear the rumble of thunder far off. Our fire would spring up fiercely at each eddying gust; and, as the bright curling fingers of flame grasped at the upper darkness, the encircling tree trunks would seem to take a long stride forward and then leap back again.

“It looks as though we were going to have a stormy night,” I said at length.

Bill Pete nodded and puffed silver rings of smoke skyward. His spectacles for an instant reflected the firelight as he turned his face toward me.

“Doctor Street will be here tomorrow,” I continued in a desperate attempt to make the man talk. “You’d better paddle over to the hotel in the morning.”

Again Bill Pete merely nodded his head.

“You remind me of a man I used to know a good many years ago,” I said irritably. “Like you, he had unpleasant theories about the moon and for days together would scarcely say a word.”

“Who was he?” Bill Pete asked, with a sudden note of interest in his tone.

“A man by the name of Martin — Burgess Martin.” I heard something snap like a dry twig. Glancing at Bill Pete, I saw the red glowing bowl of his pipe lying on the ground at his feet. He had bitten through the stem.

“And what became of Burgess Martin?” he asked after a moment.

“Why, you must know!” I said in surprise. “He was that famous writer who was murdered several years ago. Surely you remember the case?”

“I believe I did read something about it,” he answered in a low voice. “He was murdered by a literary critic, wasn’t he? The murderer’s name was Huntington, I believe; and he had previously had one of Martin’s books condemned by the government.”

“That’s never been proved,” I said with some heat. “Wilbur Huntington was a personal friend of mine and one of the finest fellows in the world. If he did kill Martin, it was because he was mentally deranged at the time.”

Bill Pete burst out into an unpleasant laugh. “Why do the masses believe that a murderer must be insane?” he cried. “Surely to kill is the natural instinct of man. You say that Huntington was a fine fellow. Well, what has that got to do with it? How can anyone gain the fineness and fullness of living without first feasting on the lives of others?”

“I disagree with you,” I said with a yawn; “but I’m too tired to argue. I think I’ll turn in.”

“Don’t let me keep you up,” he muttered.

I took a last look at the shadows which played under the trees and entered the cabin. As I moved about, getting ready for bed, I could see Bill Pete’s dark figure silhouetted against the firelight. Like a carved idol of wood, he sat perfectly motionless.

It did not take me long to fall asleep that night. Hardly had I crawled between the blankets and closed my eyes, before I was swept far out on the sea of dreams. And in these dreams, I was conscious of something which was approaching steadily and relentlessly — something which threatened my very existence. I felt that I must escape. I tried to struggle but I was held down by bands of steel. Nearer and nearer that relentless presence approached. Now I could feel its warm breath on my cheek.

I awoke, bathed in perspiration, to a sensation of supernatural dread. The oil lamp on the table was lit. I could see every object distinctly. There, with his back toward me, stood Bill Pete. What was he doing at this hour of the night? Why, he was shaving! He was standing before the small mirror I had hung on the wall and was shaving! He held one of my razors; I could see the blade glimmer faintly as he lowered his arm for an instant.

Still in a mental daze of sleep, I stared at his back. Then I glanced at the shaving glass. What I saw there, will live in my memory always. I tried to rise, but I could not; I tried to cry out, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.

“Who are you?” I gasped.

And now the tall figure was turning toward me. I saw that well-remembered face, thin, ascetic, with lips that curled upward like a cat’s; I saw those cold, gray eyes which held in their depths a speculative stare; I saw the man, himself, approaching with a stealthy, noiseless tread. The mirror had not lied. It was Burgess Martin!

XIX

There is no fear which man can experience so gripping, so subduing, as fear of the supernatural. When the mind cannot explain, when all the rivers of thought are frozen at their source, we become children again in the imagination, children who people the dark with living phantoms. Life is then no longer the familiar highway, brightly lighted, with the kindly signposts of convention at every crossing, but a shadowy cave of horrors through which we must grope blindly. What lies waiting for us in the gloom? We do not know, we cannot guess — and therein lies the fear. Such a sensation is indeed terrible.

Here, in this dimly lighted cabin, far from all the reassuring realities of life, I was looking into the face of a man whom I had every reason to believe dead and buried years ago! Was it any wonder that I could neither move nor cry out, that I stared silently at this apparition like a terror-stricken child?

Although my brain was spinning dizzily like a top, although Burgess Martin’s steadfast eyes held mine like magnets, I was instinctively aware of the objects immediately surrounding me. For instance, I knew that a blanket had been fastened securely across the doorway to keep out the wind which now howled in baffled fury about the cabin; and yet I had not even glanced in that direction.

The long-threatening storm had risen. Now the first drops of rain were pattering on the roof like tiny fingers tapping for admittance. Suddenly there came a blinding flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a deafening peal of thunder. Again there was silence. Nature seemed to hold her breath.

“Why do you fear me, Smithers?” said a voice which I knew only too well. “I am no ghost.”

By now Burgess Martin was standing beside my bunk, looking down on me with a gleam of derision in his eyes. Mustering all my courage, I attempted to sit up. Then, for the first time, I realized that I was tied hand and foot with strong leather straps which a giant could scarcely have broken.

“It is useless to struggle, Smithers,” Martin continued coldly; “not only useless but dangerous. My patience is worn thin. When I think of what I have suffered, when I think of what art has suffered, I can have no more tolerance for stupidity.”

“Then you weren’t murdered after all?” I muttered through dry lips.

“Most assuredly not,” he answered with one of his catlike grimaces. Seating himself on the side of the bunk, he regarded me with a speculative stare. “Why is man invariably blinded by the obvious?” he continued. “A chain of circumstantial evidence can so easily be forged by a master mind that one should test it thoroughly before one believes. Why should you think that Wilbur Huntington murdered me?”

“I never thought so,” I muttered.

“Ah, but you did, Smithers,” he said lifting one of his long, thin hands in expostulation. “You did and the world did. And why? Simply because a body was found floating in the East River — a decomposing, unrecognizable body which wore my ring and clothes. And because he visited me that night, because he disliked my works, because he disappeared — you, his best friend, branded him a murderer. What a trifling thing I renounced when I sacrificed friendship on the altar!”

He paused as another reverberating peal of thunder shook the cabin. For an instant his sallow face was illumined by a sickly flash of lightning; I saw a tiny, pendulous drop of blood on his chin where the razor had slipped and nicked the flesh. Strange to say, the sight of this single crimson bead of blood was reassuring; it spurred my flagging courage. If he could bleed, surely he was human.

“And what became of Wilbur Huntington?” I asked.

“Why, it was his body which was floating down the river,” Martin answered coldly. “He wore my clothes and ring, and the water had changed him somewhat — that was all.”

Once more horror overmastered me. I caught a glimpse of the truth. “Who murdered him?” I cried. “Good God, Martin, did you—”

He bowed and I saw a smile crease his cheek like a scar. “Of course, Smithers. Wasn’t it the natural outcome of his visit to me that night? This man stood in my path — in the path of art. I had to destroy him, or else my ambition was doomed. He had become an insurmountable obstacle in my path. I could go no further until I had forcibly removed him. How simple, how true! Why, even he had a premonition of the truth. He came to my rooms as a hero goes to battle. He was a brave man, Smithers.”

Once more Martin paused and stroked his chin. I saw the pendulous drop of blood stain his fingertips. And now this blood was no longer reassuring. It revolted me. Those vibrating crimson fingertips were a symbol — a symbol of the stealthy assassin who slays by night. Soon they might be fastened about my throat — or, perhaps, they would grasp the hilt of the hunting knife suspended from his belt. No matter how death came, those fingertips would play their part in it.

I felt that life and I were soon to part. Like a fallen tree trunk, I was at the mercy of this forester of lives. He confided in me so readily because he judged me as one already dead. It amused him to play on my emotions before he cut the thin thread which held me to existence. He was confessing to me now as a cat might confess to the mouse between its paws.

But I would keep a stiff upper lip! I was afraid — yes, deadly afraid — but he should never know it. He had laughed at me many times. He had called me a weakling. He had held me up to ridicule. But I would show him that I could face death. Perhaps I did not have the courage to brave life, but I had the courage to brave death. I would show him that — I would show him that even a weakling knew how to die.

“Why did you tie me?” I asked at length. “Are you going to murder me?”

He started and glanced up. “Not necessarily. Perhaps you will want to go. Man lives to learn; why cannot he die to learn? Is it not strange that human curiosity cannot overcome human fear? Are you afraid of the dark, Smithers? Will you not open the door for truth? What is the exact sensation of death, Smithers? Tell me — has that question never worried you?”

“Never,” I muttered. “Why should it?”

Martin shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps it shouldn’t. But to me, it — well, you wouldn’t understand. Only the moon understands. But you must listen to my story. No doubt you will think it one long, red road of wanton cruelty and mad blood lust. No doubt you will be unable to appreciate the supreme sacrifice of a strong nature — the sacrifice of human flesh, of human love, on the altar of the muse — that sacrifice to kindle the immortal flame of genius and create the indestructible. What I have done for art no man has done; what I will do for art you must bear witness to. I have chosen you as my messenger to the world.”

At that instant a shaft of lightning flashed between us like a lifted sword blade. It was immediately followed by such a deafening peal of thunder that the tiny cabin echoed it like a hollow drum. Now the rain came down in a silver deluge, tapping on the boards overhead as though a multitude of hammers were at work. Several drops trickled through a chink between the logs and fell on my upturned face. And they kept on falling relentlessly while I listened to Martin’s confession.

XX

“As you already know, Smithers,” Martin began, “my parents both died when I was very young and my aunt took me to live with her. In that great, gloomy house, the books were my only companions. And what a collection! I believe every great horror tale ever written found a permanent resting place on the shelves which circled her library. And beside these, there were scores of volumes dealing with spiritualism and necromancy — volumes, gray with the dust of centuries, between whose covers lay many a forgotten tragedy like vivid, crimson flowers. And how I loved them all! How I lingered over them, forgetting time and place, drinking in great drafts of knowledge, reading on and on till often the pallid face of morning peered in at me through my window!

“But soon ambition began to lash me. Why could I not create horror tales which in no way would be inferior to those I now devoured with such avidity? Perhaps I might write even better. Certainly I had the will to persevere. No one could be more pains taking, no one could be more thorough. Surely, if Carlyle were right in his definition of genius, I might aspire to any heights.

“Thinking thus, I sat down in the library one sunny afternoon to start my career as a short-story writer, to create my first horror tale. Gradually, as the minutes passed, bright optimism flickered like the flame of a candle one breathes upon. I had thought that inspiration would envelope me like a fiery mantle, that I would be lifted out of myself and borne away to some strange kingdom of fancy where I could pick and choose from an unlimited treasure. But nothing of the kind happened. On the contrary, my mind seemed a vacuum. And then I realized the sickening truth: I was attempting to write and I had no imagination!

“Then I suffered, Smithers, as only the very young can suffer. Ambition was already planted deep in my soul and I felt that it could never flower without imagination. Tears gushed from my eyes; I was a plaything for grief. No doubt my literary career would have ended there and then, had it not been for the strange occurrence which befell on that same, sunshiny afternoon.

“My aunt had been very sick for over a month. Now she was dying. As I sat with weak tears running down my face, her nurse entered the library and took me to the sick room to say a last farewell. No doubt she considered that my emotion was caused by natural grief at the expectation of losing a near relative. She wiped my eyes and attempted to console me, before she led me to my aunt’s bedside.

“The old lady was almost at her last gasp. Her thin, yellow hands were fluttering over the coverlet, resembling the fallen, windswept leaves of autumn; the death rattle rasped harshly in her wizened throat with the mechanical vibration of an engine running down; her heavy, blue-veined eyelids were closed and did not open as I knelt beside her. Soon her breathing stopped. She was dead.

“On my way back to the library, the scene which I had just witnessed was pictured in glowing colors in my brain. Nothing could wipe it out. Wherever I looked, I saw my aunt lying in her great four-poster bed like a fallen branch on a snowbank.

“Once more I picked up my discarded paper and pencil and began idly to picture in words what I had just seen. And then a strange thing happened. I seemed to be again in the sickroom which I had just quitted — alone there with the dying woman, listening to her wheezing breath and watching her dry, shriveled hands fluttering about like autumn leaves circling in the wind.

“How long this strange mental hallucination possessed me, I do not know. When I regained normal consciousness, it was to find both sides of the paper covered with my microscopic writing. With amazement, I read aloud what I had written.

“You cannot imagine my feelings, Smithers, when I realized that what I was reading was a masterpiece of description. As clear-cut and convincing as an ivory carving, it had a vividness of detail, a charm of style, which held the attention in an iron grip. To be sure, it was merely a sketch — a word-painting of my aunt’s death — but, for all that, it was worthy of immortality.

“And there could be no mistake — I had composed this morbid masterpiece. It was my writing without a doubt. What did it matter that I had been unconscious of the manual effort which guided the pencil? Surely true inspiration lifted the artist out of the shell in which he lived his normal days. And yet was this true inspiration? Surely not. This was no flight of the imagination. It was a realistic description of something I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. My aunt’s death had been photographed on the film of my brain and I had developed it with all the art of a stylist into this perfect picture.

“Now true realization of the truth was born in upon me. I was, indeed, a writer without imagination and therefore I must rely solely on what I saw with my own eyes and what I heard with my own ears. I had determined to devote myself to horror tales. Very well. But in order to be a master of tragedy, I must steel my heart against all weakness, all feeling; I must, perhaps, witness the perpetration of crime so as to impress my readers with its reality. It was necessary for an unimaginative artist to associate with the scum of the world in order to rise above the world. Therefore I must tear out my heart so that my head might rise above the stars. All this I realized, but I did not turn back.”

There came another crash of thunder which drowned him out. His next few words were lost, swallowed up by the rattling of the pots and pans on the wall, the tapping fingers of rain, and a gust of wind which went howling about the cabin.

“For many months I trained myself for my future career,” Martin resumed. “Fortunately, at that time, I had no friends except a few household pets on which I had centered my affections. Because I loved them, I knew that they must go. I must have no human weaknesses to hold me back — nothing which could later interfere with art by making my will subordinate to mercy.

“So, coldly, methodically, but with unparalleled mental anguish, I tortured to death each one of my poor pets. My brain reeled, but my hand was steady; and, after each atrocious act, I felt the natural repulsion for these cruelties growing less and less. I slowly conquered myself.

“It was about this time that I first took up drawing with the intention of illustrating my future work. As in writing, it came naturally to me when death was my model. Sitting before one of my slaughtered pets, I would first write a vivid description of its demise and then draw a striking, realistic picture of the scene. I kept a child’s diary, illustrated with no little skill, depicting the various crimes I had committed and portraying my various emotions with such clarity of vision that I am sure it would have had a disastrous effect on the minds of other children had it been published. Like ‘The Confessions of Constantine,’ it might have created a wave of crime.

“Shortly after this, I entered a nearby school and almost immediately obtained the theme for my first short story. One afternoon, while walking home, I saw one of my classmates — a rather pretty girl whom I had unconsciously grown quite fond of — on the arm of an overgrown yokel whose vacant eyes and moving lips indicated a weak mentality. That evening I made inquiries in town and discovered that this yokel often carried her books home from school and that she tolerated him only out of kindness. It was plain to see that he adored her and that he was extremely jealous as are most weak-minded persons.

“On the following day, I won the affections of the poor fellow by some small kindness and ascertained that my theory was correct. His brain was like a clouded mirror, but he loved the girl devotedly. You know the rest, Smithers. I wrote it up in ‘The Murder of Mary Mortimer.’

“I was the voice which drove the poor idiot on, the voice which turned the love in his undeveloped nature into a seething inferno of jealous hatred. And then, when he murdered her, when I saw her fall bleeding on a carpet of soft white snow, I stole out of the bushes where I had concealed myself and made a sketch of her. You remember the painting, I think. It was a vivid portrayal, but rather crude in its color scheme.”

Martin broke off and regarded me intently. Seeing the horror written on my face, no doubt, he attempted to explain and thereby made his crime all the more revolting.

“To say that I felt no compassion for her would be to lie,” he continued. “As I told you, Smithers, I was fond of the girl — dangerously fond. Otherwise I would not have driven the idiot to kill her. A dozen times I was on the point of leaping forward, of rescuing her before it was too late; and a dozen times the voice of reason whispered: ‘Fool, fool, would you refuse art your first human sacrifice? It is necessary to tear out the heart so that the head may rise above the stars.’ That voice spoke the truth, Smithers; it was the voice of my destiny.

“When the girl was lifeless, strange to say, all compassion vanished. I was once more the artist, calm and smiling; she, the model who might inspire me to herculean effort. I strode forward to where she lay in an ever-widening stain of blood and, drawing out paper and pencil, went to work in a mental daze of creation. The idiot had fled. I had nothing to disturb me — only the white snow-petals which fell softly on her upturned face and formed themselves into a spotless bandage for her severed throat. The shadows of night were gathering in before I left her. Already she was partly covered by a glistening counterpane which would hide all telltale traces by dawn.

“But now you are trembling, Smithers! Why are you trembling? Are you cold? Perhaps I had better not speak of Paul.”

“Yes, tell me of Paul!” I cried in a kind of desperation. “You murderer, tell me of Paul! You killed him because you were fond of him, I presume? Oh, if my hands weren’t tied!”

“Calm yourself, Smithers,” Martin said. “You must hear me out before you can judge. I did not kill Paul because I was merely fond of him. Ah, no. You, who have shared your affections with the mob, can scarcely understand the feeling I had for him. He was as wife, brother and friend to me the personification of all my earthly affection — the single link which still held me to humanity.

“From the first, I knew that this friendship was fatal to art. To develop the ego, one must travel alone. Loving hands hold us back; they seek to bind us with the ropes of affection, mercy, generosity. We must thrust them aside, we must crush them if need be, to reach our goal. All tender emotions clog the stream of inspiration. I could only create by forming myself into a machine devoid of all the warmer instincts of nature. Paul must go!

“But I was weak. I lacked the resolution to leave him. I dodged the issue. Why could I not follow my career and still keep this single affection, I asked myself. Surely it was possible. Before now many a man had led a double life. Art would not demand a complete excommunication from my fellows. As long as Paul remained, I would never be quite alone.

“Thinking that I could serve two masters at once, I engaged lodgings on Tyndall Place and soon was on intimate terms with the scrapings of the neighborhood — men who would slice a throat for slight compensation and often for the merest whim. Before many weeks had passed, I gathered about me a band of the most bloodthirsty rascals unhung. They nicknamed me ‘The Boss’ and were overjoyed to have a leader who could plan their little escapades skillfully and who sought no material gain for himself.

“Under my leadership a dozen murders were perpetrated and the police in every case failed to apprehend the assassin. I witnessed all of these crimes and they are reported faithfully in my first book. Yet each murder was a torture to me; and the remorse I felt when I visited Paul, was almost more than I could bear. You scarcely realized my true emotions, Smithers, on the night when we met on Tyndall Place. No doubt you thought I was calm and collected; but, in reality, I was suffering far more than you. Every blow which descended on that writhing body, fell on my soul as well. As never before, Paul’s influence was about to gain the ascendancy. For one mad moment I was tempted to throw myself beneath that shower of clubs and perish with my victim.

“Although ‘Many Murders’ was acclaimed a great success by the leading critics, it was in reality a miserable failure. I had succeeded in writing several vivid descriptions of violent death, but they were written from the standpoint of the spectator. I had only succeeded in portraying the sensations of an eyewitness — the commonplace form of narration in horror writing. Surely there was room for great improvement in my next book. Could I not probe far deeper into the subject? Now, if I could describe accurately and vividly the thoughts and sensations of the assassin as he struck the fatal blow, I would be accomplishing a unique effect in literature. But, unfortunately, I was not blessed with an imagination. In order to write a series of such stories, I must first commit a series of such crimes. I could no longer depend on my band of cutthroats to create models for me; I must shed human blood with my own hands. Who could know the sensations of the assassin but the assassin? It was necessary for me to become an actual murderer.

“Several days after I had come to this decision, I attempted to kill a man. He had been drugged and was lying unconscious in my crime studio on Tyndall Place. I was alone with him. Stealing up beside the bed where he lay, I poised a needle-pointed stiletto above his heart. A single movement of my arm and he would have been a corpse; yet, try as I would, this simple act was beyond me. Thinking that I saw a resemblance to Paul on his white, upturned face, I sank to my knees and burst out into uncontrollable sobs. Defeated, broken, I crouched there until my intended victim awoke.

“That night I fought a great and final battle. All through the dark hours the struggle raged. At one moment my love for Paul, and all the human weaknesses which followed in its train, would gain the ascendancy; at the next, the calm and radiant goddess, Art, would hold my will in the hollow of her hand. It was not until the gray light of dawn descended on the city that the victory was won.

“‘I must sever the last link which holds me to humanity,’ I told myself. ‘Paul must be sacrificed, as others have been sacrificed, on the funeral pyre of genius. Brave men have starved for it, shall I turn back? Kind men have forfeited their loved ones for it, shall I be weak? No, Paul, my dear friend, you must die!’”

XXI

Martin paused and passed his hand across his forehead. Great drops of perspiration had formed there, which at any moment threatened to run down into his eyes. Evidently the memory of these mental sufferings could still move him. I might have pitied the man, had I not had such a hearty detestation and horror of him.

“Three weeks later Paul and I went to the woods together,” he continued. “I had shipped a barrel of whiskey to the camp several days before. It was child’s play for me to overcome your brother’s scruples and start him drinking again. For five days I kept him in a drunken stupor by passing him my flask when he showed signs of returning reason. On the sixth day I hid the barrel in the spring and refused to give him any more whiskey. When he came to himself, he had an attack of violent melancholia. Sick in body, he was sicker yet in mind.

“As you know, Paul’s fits of mental depression were rather dangerous. Before this he had always had someone to cheer him up, someone to drag him bodily out of the slough of despondency. But now I did just the opposite. Instead of trying to lighten his mind, I burdened it with all the weary weight of remorse. I gave him no hope to cling to. I told him that what had happened here in the woods would happen again and again; that there was no hope of ultimate cure for a drunkard; that he was predestined to die with delirium tremens. I even described his death rather vividly. I had always had a mental ascendancy over Paul; now I used this ascendancy as a weapon to destroy him. When I left him by the camp fire that night, I knew that the thought of immediate suicide was implanted in his whiskey-soaked brain.

“But how I suffered as I lay in the dark cabin waiting for the end! All my other sufferings were as nothing compared to this. When I finally saw his hand slide silently in through the doorway and clutch the barrel of a shotgun which stood against the wall, I seized the sides of my bunk and literally held myself down. ‘Only a moment now,’ I told myself. ‘Only a moment!’

“And then, when I heard the loud report of the gun, something seemed to snap in my brain — some chord of feeling which, having parted, left me as cold as ice. Since that day I have felt nothing — neither love nor pity, fear nor hate. Strange, isn’t it, Smithers? What was it that died with Paul? Whatever it was, it left me free to go my own way.”

“Your way shall lead to the gallows if I once get out of here alive!” I cried defiantly. “You’d better murder me now and have done with it!”

“I doubt if the courts would hold me responsible for your brother’s death,” he said quite calmly. “Crimes committed by the mind are beyond the reach of the law. However, hear me out, Smithers, and you’ll have iron-bound proof.

“After Paul’s death, I began creating material for my new book. Patiently, cleverly, I arranged a murder in which I played the chief role and did the actual killing with my own hand. I committed that crime, calmly, coolly, without the slightest compunction. The description of it appeared in ‘The Confessions of Constantine.’ That book, if you remember, described my sensations — the sensations of the murderer — in the most minute and realistic fashion,

“During the next three days I committed twelve murders in all. I limited myself to that number because I was not actuated by a love for shedding blood alone. Ah, no, I destroyed life merely for art’s sake. And I naturally refrained from wholesale slaughter, as I feared that my sensations would soon become dulled by over-usage and that I would no longer be able to record them so vividly and with such artistic feeling. In a word, I fostered my talent.

“Soon after ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ was published, I began to read the papers with avidity. But I never turned to the literary sheet — the book reviews. I was tired of words; I wanted deeds. And I was not disappointed, as you know. ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ passed the supreme test; it was responsible for a wave of crime that swept the country from end to end. This was a triumph for art. I not only appealed to the minds of my readers; I conquered their minds. I was the maker of men’s destinies, the angel of death.

“What exultation filled me during those few short months when ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ wandered through the world and whispered its red secrets to all mankind! How I gloated over this signal victory — a victory which no other artist had accomplished.” Surely I was destined to dwell forever on the sunlit heights of great achievement. And then, just as the world seemed mine to play with at will, the roof of the heavens fell on my proudly lifted head. You know what happened, Smithers. ‘The Confessions of Constantine’ was condemned by the government!

“I made inquiries and soon learned who was responsible for my downfall. I did not underestimate Wilbur Huntington for an instant. The man was a brilliant psychologist and capable of doing big things as a criminal expert. He had already traced the crime-wave to ‘The Confessions of Constantine,’ would he not soon compare it with ‘Many Murders’ and make some startling deduction? Suppose he should learn that I had no imagination? Would I be safe?

“Thoughts such as these, prompted me to write that letter which he received in your studio. Before he came that night, I made my preparations. Securing the services of three murderers who could be relied upon, I hid them behind the portières in my apartment. No sooner was he well inside, before they leaped upon him and pinioned his arms behind his back. He was helpless.

“‘So you decided to get me out of the way, Martin,’ he said with surprising calmness. ‘I thought it might come to this.’

“In spite of the great wrong the man had done me, I could not help showing him a certain amount of respect. There he stood, with a boyish smile on his face, while those assassins were nearly tearing his arms out of their sockets. He seemed as careless to pain as he was to death. Your friend cut an heroic figure, Smithers.

“‘You are quick to see the truth,’ I said. ‘If you wished to live, you should not have treated a great book in such a manner. It may be years before I can write another equally as good.’

“‘That’s what I came to see you about — your art!’ he cried with strange enthusiasm. ‘You’re going to kill me immediately, I presume?’

“‘Most certainly,’ I answered. ‘I never waste time when I am anxious to be at work.’

“‘Then hear me first,’ he broke in excitedly. ‘I want to speak of your work.’

“‘Well?’ I asked.

“‘You have described crime from the standpoint of the onlooker and from the standpoint of the assassin,’ he said. ‘That is true, is it not?’

“‘Yes,’ I assented.

“‘But you have missed the great situation — the truly artistic situation!’ he continued quickly.

“‘How so?’ I demanded hotly.

“‘Why, you have never written a story from the standpoint of the victim!’ he cried. ‘In other words, what is the exact sensation of death?’

“‘What is the exact sensation of death?’ I repeated dully.

“‘To be sure!’ he shouted almost gleefully. ‘You’re worse than a failure, Martin, for you are only a partial success! You, whom they call the recorder of sensations, have missed the only unknown sensation — that mysterious sensation of death! There is material beyond your reach. Till you have mastered it, you will remain a living lie. I will know that secret, but it will not be mirrored in my dead eyes! You will have to go further, Martin — further!’

“And then, Smithers, the truth of his words flashed through my brain like lightning. What was the sensation of death? All my life I had been straining toward that unknown knowledge without realizing it; all my life I had known instinctively that dead things guard a precious secret. Without this secret, I was a mere scribbler forced to give shopworn offerings to the muse. What was the sensation of death? If I knew that, unborn millions would live to fear me; my shadow would rest like black plumage over the world; and life, once gay and carefree, would shudder on the brink of the tomb!

“But now red rage flamed up in me — blind rage at my own impotence. How I hated this man who had pointed out the truth! My only thought was to destroy that brain which had grappled and was grappling with mine.

“Grasping the heavy poker which leaned against the grate, I struck him on the head with all my might. The iron bit into his skull and he fell senseless at my feet. But blind fury still possessed me. I struck again and again till his face was beaten into an unrecognizable mass.

“And then I stopped, ashamed. I knew that he had escaped; that my first blow had opened the door for him; that he was now safe from me, quite safe and the possessor of a priceless knowledge. And I dared not look into his eyes for fear that I would see that relentless question: ‘What was the sensation of death?’

“You know the rest, Smithers. I dressed his body in my clothes. I slipped my ring on his finger and later that night I had him thrown into the river. Then I left the city by stealth. Solitude has always appealed to me. I took to the woods, grew a beard and soon became familiar with my new life.”

He paused and regarded me solemnly for a moment. “Tell me,” he muttered, “why did Huntington call me a failure? Do you think that I am a failure, Smithers? I have tried so hard and now—” He shook his head sadly. “We, who serve, must give everything — everything!”

And now a new terror was added to my others. There remained no doubt in my mind. Looking up into his thin, convulsed face, I realized that Burgess Martin was mad. There he sat, his eyes fixed on mine with a speculative stare — a madman with the red stain of murder in his brain! How long before his slender, crimson fingertips would be at their wonted trade? How long had I to live?

XXII

“All that I have told you happened such a long, long time ago,” Martin resumed in a weary voice. “Now nothing amuses me — nothing! For ten unbearable years that relentless question has burned my brain like molten lava. The world, no doubt, would think me mad, but the moon knows better. Tonight, as I sat by the fire, she bent down from the heavens and whispered to me, telling me how I could find the answer and be as wise as she and other cold things. Just think what it must mean to be wise as the moon!

“But do not imagine that I seek to learn this truth for myself alone. Ah, no, I do it for Art — I do it so that she may become all-powerful, so that she may rule over the dead as over the living. I shall leave a message behind which will open those dark portals. No longer shall the breath from the tomb be heavy-laden with mystery. The time has come for my last sacrifice!”

All this time his eyes had been fixed on me; his face had been so close to mine that I could feel his hot breath on my cheek. But now he rose and straightened himself to his full height. Slowly his right hand stole downward till it rested on the hilt of the hunting knife suspended from his belt. A moment later I saw the sharp blade gleam dully in the feeble lamplight.

“Tell me,” he said softly, bending forward as a mother might stoop to caress her sleeping child. “Tell me, would you not like to go? Paul has trod that path; Huntington laughed as I struck him down. Surely you will not remain behind?”

And then, for the first time in all that terrible night, my courage deserted me. “Help!” I shouted. “Help!” But the moaning of the wind, that everlasting mourner, was my only answer.

“You were always a weakling,” Martin said with a sneer strong in his voice. “But I will not press you. You shall be my messenger to the world.”

Now he bent down lower still, and, with the speed of lightning, passed the sharp blade of the hunting knife across the arteries in his left wrist. Instantly a warm stream of blood fell on my upturned face. At this new horror, everything grew black before my eyes. I fainted.

When I regained consciousness, Martin still lived, although his blood was dry on my cheek. He sat beside the table in the center of the room, bending over it and writing hurriedly. His left arm hung motionless by his side. From the wrist a dark ribbon of blood stole downward over the hand and, separating at each finger, dripped to the floor. The storm had died down, the rain had ceased. I could distinctly hear the scratching sound his pencil made while traveling over the paper, the intermittent pattering of blood-drops on the loose boards at his feet.

For the moment I was incapable of thought. I stared stupidly at this absorbed figure, scarcely realizing the struggle going on between mind and body, between life and death. And then the pencil — that swiftly moving pencil riveted my gaze. I felt that it was being pursued, that pencil; that it was a tiny terror-stricken creature, fleeing, dodging this way and that, leaping forward in a frenzy to escape. But what pursued it? What implacable destiny waited for it silently at the end of the page? Now it faltered, now it sped on again, now it moved jerkily forward for an inch or two. And then — why, then it stopped! The race was over!

Burgess Martin sank lower and lower in his chair. The pencil slipped from his fingers to the floor. He tried to reach for it, to pick it up again; but strength was lacking. Soon his chin rested on his breast.

But how long he took to die! The lamplight was dying with him, slowly, surely, while dark shadows, clustering in the corners, grew bolder now and crept out in solemn, hovering groups. I saw them gathering about the doomed man, silently stealing forward, bending and bowing, mocking his weakness and futility of effort like evil marionettes. And once I distinctly heard a low laugh as though one were merry in the presence of death and would hide it from the world.

But now, as though spurred to final effort, Burgess Martin raised his head. He moved; he shook off death; he arose unsteadily to his feet. For an instant he stood there, grim and silent, his arms outstretched as though awaiting the cold embraces of his mistress.

“I have not the strength,” he murmured. And then in a louder tone: “Forgive me if I have failed in this. I have tried so hard!”

And now there came a gust of wind from the lake. It tore the blanket from the doorway. It entered. It breathed upon the lamp and there was blackness. There followed the sound of a heavy fall and then silence.

•   •   •

I have but little more to tell. On the following day Doctor Street arrived at Naples, and, hearing that I was in Bill Pete’s cabin, hired a canoe and paddled across. He found me tied to my bunk and raving in a high fever. On the floor, within a few feet of the table, lay the stiffening remains of Burgess Martin.

Several weeks later, after I had recovered my health and strength, Dr. Street gave me further details. It seems that Martin’s usually somber face was transfigured by a strange, unearthly smile and that he held in his right hand, crumpled up into a ball, a sheet of paper on which he had succeeded in writing several sentences. I have that sheet of paper before me now and, as I am convinced that his last message can do no harm in its unfinished state, I quote from it verbatim:

I am dying, slowly, painlessly. From me are falling, one by one, the dry husks of life. A great weakness, which clarifies the senses, is stealing over me. I am a child again — a child who stands on the tiptoe of expectancy. Something is about to happen. What? I do not know. And yet I feel so sure of approaching freedom. I have lived my life behind iron bars; and now — why, now I smell the sea!

Yes, and I see it — that sea of eternity, that sea which holds a million, million souls! I hear it. My ears catch up the refrain and hold it like shells on life’s shore. All my life I have sought to probe its mystery — that beautiful, sparkling sea of death.

Why am I so weak? The pencil is falling from my hand. I must hold it tighter — tighter! I have lived my life for Art’s sake; I must die for Art’s sake. But hush! She is coming! My love is coming, my cold bride! And who is that beside her? Who is that who holds her hand in his? It is Death — proud Death! I behold you and I am not afraid. I will tell the world of you, Death. You cannot hide your face from me. I see the answer to my question written in your eyes. Well, I shall speak! I—

Here this strange manuscript broke off abruptly. No doubt at this moment the pencil had slipped from his hand. He had failed. But having failed, having sacrificed his life in vain, how was it that he was found with that strange, transfiguring smile on his face?

It is now five years since Martin’s death. I have had plenty of time for thought. But there is a question which still puzzles me. Was he right in claiming that he had no imagination? Perhaps he had too much imagination; perhaps it was his gnawing imagination which drove him on, which turned him into a murderer and then into a madman, which finally made him cut into his own life with that sharp, inquisitive blade. Curiosity and imagination — surely they go hand in hand.

Revised and expanded version of Mysterious Martin (1912)

Silent, White and Beautiful
and Other Stories (1920)