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

Author: Various

Editor: Edwin Baird

Release date: September 11, 2022 [eBook #68957]
Most recently updated: March 14, 2023

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Rural Publishing Corporation,
1923

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WEIRD TALES,
VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1, MARCH 1923: THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE
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Transcriber’s Note: All advertisements have been moved to the back. Stories that were
split over this issue have been recombined.

WEIRD TALES
THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE
Printed in U.S.A.
March, 1923 25 Cents

“OOZE”
An Extraordinary
Novelette
By ANTHONY M. RUD

The Tale of A
Thousand Thrills
Complete in This Issue

WEIRD TALES
THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE

EDWIN BAIRD, Editor
Published monthly by the Rural Publishing Corporation,
934 North Clark Street, Chicago, Ill. Application made for
entry at the postoffice at Chicago, Ill., as second class matter.
Single copies, 25 cents: subscription, $3 a year in the United
States, $3.50 in Canada. The publishers are not responsible for
the loss of unsolicited manuscripts in transit, by fire, or
otherwise, although every precaution is taken with such
material. All manuscripts should be typewritten and must be
accompanied by stamped and self-addressed envelopes. The
contents of this magazine are fully protected by copyright, and
publishers are cautioned against using the same, either wholly
or in part.
Copyright, 1923, by the Rural Publishing Corporation.

VOLUME 1 25 Cents NUMBER 1

Contents for March, 1923

TWENTY-TWO REMARKABLE SHORT
STORIES
The Mystery of Black
Julian Kilman 41
Jean

A story of blood-curdling realism, with a smashing
surprise at the end.

The Grave Orville R. Emerson 47
A soul-gripping story of terror.

Joel Townsley
Hark! The Rattle! 53
Rogers
An uncommon tale that will cling to your memory for
many a day.

The Ghost Guard Bryan Irvine 59
A “spooky” tale with a grim background.

The Ghoul and the
G. A. Wells 65
Corpse
An amazing yarn of weird adventure in the frozen
North.

Fear David R. Solomon 73
Showing how fear can drive a strong man to the
verge of insanity.

Merlin Moore
The Place of Madness 89
Taylor
What two hours in a prison “solitary” did to a man.

The Closing Hand Farnsworth Wright 98
A brief story powerfully written.

The Unknown Beast Howard Ellis Davis 100
An unusual tale of a terrifying monster.

The Basket Herbert J. Mangham 106
A queer little story about San Francisco.

The Accusing Voice Meredith Davis 110
The singular experience of Allen Defoe.

The Sequel Walter Scott Story 119
A new conclusion to Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of
Amontillado.”

The Weaving Shadows W. H. Holmes 122
Chet Burke’s strange adventures in a haunted house.

Nimba, the Cave Girl R. T. M. Scott 131
An odd, fantastic little story of the Stone Age.

The Young Man Who
??? 135
Wanted to Die
An anonymous author submits a startling answer to
the question, “What comes after death?”

The Scarlet Night William Sanford 140
A tale with an eerie thrill.

The Extraordinary Joseph Faus and
Experiment of Dr. James Bennett 143
Calgroni Wooding
An eccentric doctor creates a frightful living thing.

The Return of Paul Capt. George
150
Slavsky Warburton Lewis
A “creepy” tale that ends in a shuddering, breath-
taking way.

The House of Death F. Georgia Stroup 156
The strange secret of a lonely woman.

The Gallows I. W. D. Peters 161

An out-of-the-ordinary story.

The Skull Harold Ward 164
A grim tale with a terrifying end.

James B. M. Clark,
The Ape-Man 169
Jr.
A Jungle tale that is somehow “different.”

THREE UNUSUAL NOVELETTES

The Dead Man’s Tale Willard E. Hawkins 7
An astounding yarn that will hold you spellbound and
make you breathe fast with a new mental sensation.

Ooze Anthony M. Rud 19
A Remarkable short novel by a master of
“gooseflesh” fiction.

The Chain Hamilton Craigie 77
Craigie is at his best here.

A STRANGE NOVEL IN TWO PARTS

The Thing of a Thousand Otis Adelbert
32
Shapes Kline
Don’t start this story late at night.

THE EYRIE THE EDITOR 180

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

For Advertising Rates in WEIRD TALES apply to YOUNG & WARD,
Advertising Managers, 168 North Michigan Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois

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

Weird Tales.

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

Weird Tales.

WEIRD TALES
THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE

Edited by Edwin Baird

VOLUME ONE 25c A COPY MARCH, 1923
NUMBER ONE $3.50 IN CANADASUBSCRIPTION $3.00 A YEAR

For Scalp-prickling Thrills and
Stark Terror, Read

The
DEAD MAN’S TALE
By Willard E. Hawkins
THE curious narrative that follows was found among the papers
of the late Dr. John Pedric, psychical investigator and author of
occult works. It bears evidences of having been received through
automatic writing, as were several of his publications.
Unfortunately, there are no records to confirm this assumption,
and none of the mediums or assistants employed by him in his
research work admits knowledge of it. Possibly—for the Doctor
was reputed to possess some psychic powers—it may have been
received by him. At any rate, the lack of data renders the recital
useless as a document for the Society for Psychical Research. It
is published for whatever intrinsic interest or significance it may

possess. With reference to the names mentioned, it may be added
that they are not confirmed by the records of the War
Department. It could be maintained, however, that purposely
fictitious names were substituted, either by the Doctor or the
communicating entity.

THEY called me—when I walked the earth in a body of dense matter—
Richard Devaney. Though my story has little to do with the war, I was
killed in the second battle of the Marne, on July 24, 1918.
Many times, as men were wont to do who felt the daily, hourly
imminence of death in the trenches, I had pictured that event in my mind
and wondered what it would be like. Mainly I had inclined toward a belief
in total extinction. That, when the vigorous, full-blooded body I possessed
should lie bereft of its faculties, I, as a creature apart from it, should go on,
was beyond credence. The play of life through the human machine, I
reasoned, was like the flow of gasoline into the motor of an automobile.
Shut off that flow, and the motor became inert, dead, while the fluid which
had given it power was in itself nothing.
And so, I confess, it was a surprise to discover that I was dead and yet
not dead.
I did not make the discovery at once. There had been a blinding
concussion, a moment of darkness, a sensation of falling—falling—into a
deep abyss. An indefinite time afterward, I found myself standing dazedly
on the hillside, toward the crest of which we had been pressing against the
enemy. The thought came that I must have momentarily lost consciousness.
Yet now I felt strangely free from physical discomfort.
What had I been doing when that moment of blackness blotted
everything out? I had been dominated by a purpose, a flaming desire——
Like a flash, recollection burst upon me, and, with it, a blaze of hatred—
not toward the Boche gunners, ensconced in the woods above us, but
toward the private enemy I had been about to kill.
It had been the opportunity for which I had waited interminable days and
nights. In the open formation, he kept a few paces ahead of me. As we
alternately ran forward, then dropped on our bellies and fired, I had
watched my chance. No one would suspect, with the dozens who were

falling every moment under the merciless fire from the trees beyond, that
the bullet which ended Louis Winston’s career came from a comrade’s rifle.
Twice I had taken aim, but withheld my fire—not from indecision, but
lest, in my vengeful heat, I might fail to reach a vital spot. When I raised
my rifle the third time, he offered a fair target.
God! how I hated him. With fingers itching to speed the steel toward his
heart, I forced myself to remain calm—to hold fire for that fragment of a
second that would insure careful aim.
Then, as the pressure of my finger tightened against the trigger, came the
blinding flash—the moment of blackness.

II.

I HAD evidently remained unconscious longer than I realized.
Save for a few figures that lay motionless or squirming in agony on the
field, the regiment had passed on, to be lost in the trees at the crest of the
hill. With a pang of disappointment, I realized that Louis would be among
them.
Involuntarily I started onward, driven still by that impulse of burning
hatred, when I heard my name called.
Turning in surprise, I saw a helmeted figure crouching beside something
huddled in the tall grass. No second glance was needed to tell me that the
huddled something was the body of a soldier. I had eyes only for the man
who was bending over him. Fate had been kind to me. It was Louis.
Apparently, in his preoccupation, he had not noticed me. Coolly I raised
my rifle and fired.
The result was startling. Louis neither dropped headlong nor looked up at
the report. Vaguely I questioned whether there had been a report.
Thwarted, I felt the lust to kill mounting in me with redoubled fury. With
rifle upraised, I ran toward him. A terrific swing, and I crashed the stock
against his head.
It passed clear through! Louis remained unmoved.

Uncomprehending, snarling, I flung the useless weapon away and fell
upon him with bare hands—with fingers that strained to rend and tear and
strangle.
Instead of encountering solid flesh and bone, they too passed through
him.
Was it a mirage? A dream? Had I gone crazy? Sobered—for a moment
forgetful of my fury—I drew back and tried to reduce the thing to reason.
Was Louis but a figment of the imagination—a phantom?
My glance fell upon the figure beside which he was sobbing incoherent
words of entreaty.
I gave a start, then looked more closely.
The dead man—for there was no question about his condition, with a
bloody shrapnel wound in the side of his head—was myself!
Gradually the import of this penetrated my consciousness. Then I
realized that it was Louis who had called my name—that even now he was
sobbing it over and over.
The irony of it struck me at the moment of realization. I was dead—I was
the phantom—who had meant to kill Louis!
I looked at my hands, my uniform—I touched my body. Apparently I was
as substantial as before the shrapnel buried itself in my head. Yet, when I
had tried to grasp Louis, my hand seemed to encompass only space.
Louis lived, and I was dead!
The discovery for a time benumbed my feeling toward him. With
impersonal curiosity, I saw him close the eyes of the dead man—the man
who, somehow or other, had been me. I saw him search the pockets and
draw forth a letter I had written only that morning, a letter addressed to——
With a sudden surge of dismay, I darted forward to snatch it from his
hands. He should not read that letter!
Again I was reminded of my impalpability.
But Louis did not open the envelope, although it was unsealed. He read
the superscription, kissed it, as sobs rent his frame, and thrust the letter

inside his khaki jacket.
“Dick! Buddie!” he cried brokenly. “Best pal man ever had—how can I
take this news back to her!”
My lips curled. To Louis, I was his pal, his buddie. Not a suspicion of the
hate I bore him—had borne him ever since I discovered in him a rival for
Velma Roth.
Oh, I had been clever! It was our “unselfish friendship” that endeared us
both to her. A sign of jealousy, of ill nature, and I would have forfeited the
paradise of her regard that apparently I shared with Louis.
I had never felt secure of my place in that paradise. True, I could always
awaken a response in her, but I must put forth effort in order to do so. He
held her interest, it seemed, without trying. They were happy with each
other and in each other.
Our relations might be expressed by likening her to the water of a placid
pool, Louis to the basin that held her, me to the wind that swept over it. By
exerting myself, I could agitate the surface of her nature into ripples of
pleasurable excitement—could even lash her emotion into a tempest. She
responded to the stimulation of my mood, yet, in my absence, settled
contentedly into the peaceful comfort of Louis’ steadfast love.
I felt vaguely then—and am certain now, with a broader perspective
toward realities—that Velma intuitively recognized Louis as her mate, yet
feared to yield herself to him because of my sway over her emotional
nature.
When the great war came, we all, I am convinced, felt that it would
absolve Velma from the task of choosing between us.
Whether the agony that spoke from the violet depths of her eyes when we
said good-by was chiefly for Louis or for me, I could not tell. I doubt if she
could have done so. But in my mind was the determination that only one of
us should return, and—Louis would not be that one.
Did I feel no repugnance at thought of murdering the man who stood in
my way? Very little. I was a savage at heart—a savage in whom desire
outweighed anything that might stand in the way of gaining its object. From
my point of view, I would have been a fool to pass the opportunity.

Why I should have so hated him—a mere obstacle in my path—I do not
know. It may have been due to a prescience of the intangible barrier his
blood would always raise between Velma and me—or to a slumbering sense
of remorse.
But, speculation aside, here I was, in a state of being that the world calls
death, while Louis lived—was free to return home—to claim Velma—to
flaunt his possession of all that I held precious.
It was maddening! Must I stand idly by, helpless to prevent this?

III.

I HAVE wondered, since, how I could remain so long in touch with the
objective world—why I did not at once, or very soon, find myself shut off
from earthly sights and sounds as those in physical form are shut off from
the things beyond.
The matter seems to have been determined by my will. Like weights of
lead, envy of Louis and passionate longing for Velma held my feet to the
sphere of dense matter.
Vengeful, despairing, I watched beside Louis. When at last he turned
away from my body and, with tears streaming from his eyes, began to drag
a useless leg toward the trenches we had left, I realized why he had not
gone on with the others to the crest of the hill. He, too, was a victim of
Boche gunnery.
I walked beside the stretcher-bearers when they had picked him up and
were conveying him toward the base hospital. Throughout the weeks that
followed I hovered near his cot, watching the doctors as they bound up the
lacerated tendons in his thigh, and missing no detail of his battle with the
fever.
Over his shoulder I read the first letter he wrote home to Velma, in which
he gave a belated account of my death, dwelling upon the glory of my
sacrifice.
“I have often thought that you two were meant for each other”
[he wrote] “and that if it had not been for fear of hurting me, you

would have been his wife long ago. He was the best buddie a
man ever had. If only I could have been the one to die!”
Had I known it, I could have followed this letter across seas—could, in
fact, have passed it and, by an exercise of the will, have been at Velma’s
side in the twinkling of an eye. But my ignorance of the laws of the new
plane was total. All my thoughts were centered upon a problem of entirely
different character.
Never was hold upon earthly treasure more reluctantly relinquished than
was my hope of possessing Velma. Surely, death could not erect so absolute
a barrier. There must be a way—some loophole of communication—some
chance for a disembodied man to contend with his corporeal rival for a
woman’s love.
Slowly, very slowly, dawned the light of a plan. So feeble was the
glimmer that it would scarcely have comforted one in less desperate straits,
but to me it appeared to offer a possible hope. I set about methodically, with
infinite patience, evolving it into something tangible, even though I had but
the most indefinite idea of what the outcome might be.
The first suggestion came when Louis had so far recovered that but little
trace of the fever remained. One afternoon, as he lay sleeping, the mail-
distributor handed a letter to the nurse who happened to be standing beside
his cot. She glanced at it, then tucked it under his pillow.
The letter was from Velma, and I was hungry for the contents. I did not
then know that I could have read it easily, sealed though it was. In a frenzy
of impatience, I exclaimed:
“Wake up, confound it, and read your letter!”
With a start, he opened his eyes. He looked around with a bewildered
expression.
“Under your pillow!” I fumed. “Look under your pillow!”
In a dazed manner, he put his hand under the pillow and drew forth the
letter.
A few hours later, I heard him commenting on the experience to the
nurse.

“Something seemed to wake me up,” he said, “and I had a peculiar
impulse to feel under the pillow. It was just as if I knew I would find the
letter there.”
The circumstances seemed as remarkable to me as it did to him. It might
be coincidence, but I determined to make a further test.
A series of experiments convinced me that I could, to a very slight
degree, impress my thoughts and will upon Louis, especially when he was
tired or on the borderland of sleep. Occasionally I was able to control the
direction of his thoughts as he wrote home to Velma.
On one occasion, he was describing for her a funny little French woman
who visited the hospital with a basket that always was filled with cigarettes
and candy.
“Last time” [he wrote], “she brought with her a boy whom she called....”
He paused, with pencil upraised, trying to recall the name.
A moment later, he looked down at the page and stared with
astonishment. The words, “She called him Maurice,” had been added below
the unfinished line.
“I must be going daffy,” he muttered. “I’d swear I didn’t write that.”
Behind him, I stood rubbing my hands in triumph. It was my first
successful effort to guide the pencil while his thoughts strayed elsewhere.
Another time, he wrote to Velma:
“I’ve a strange feeling, lately, that dear old Dick is near.
Sometimes, as I wake up, I seem to remember vaguely having
seen him in my dreams. It’s as if his features were just fading
from view.”
He paused here so long that I made another attempt to take advantage of
his abstraction.
By an effort of the will that it is difficult to explain, I guided his hand
into the formation of the words:
“With a jugful of kisses for Winkie, as ever her....”
Just then, Louis looked down.

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

IV.

“WINKIE” was a pet name I had given Velma when we were children
together.
Louis always maintained there was no sense in it, and refused to adopt it,
though I frequently called her by the name in later years. And of his own
volition, Louis would never have mentioned anything so convivial as a
jugful of kisses.
So, through the weary months before he was invalided home, I worked.
When he left France at the debarkation point, he still walked on crutches,
but with the promise of regaining the unassisted use of his leg before very
long. Throughout the voyage, I hovered near him, sharing his impatience,
his longing for the one we both held dearest.
Over the exquisite pain of the reunion—at which I was present, yet not
present—I shall pass briefly. More beautiful than ever, more appealing with
her vivid, deep coloring, Velma in the flesh was a vision that stirred my
longing into an intense flame.
Louis limped painfully down the gangplank. When they met, she rested
her head silently on his shoulder for a moment, then—her eyes brimming
with tears—assisted him, with the tender solicitude of a mother, to the
machine she had in waiting.
Two months later they were married. I felt the pain of this less deeply
than I would have done had it not been essential to my designs.
Whatever vague hope I may have had, however, of vicariously enjoying
the delights of love were disappointed. I could not have explained why—I
only knew that something barred me from intruding upon the sacred
intimacies of their life, as if a defensive wall were interposed. It was
baffling, but a very present fact, against which I found it useless to rebel. I
have since learned—but no matter. * * *
This had no bearing on my purpose, which hinged upon the ability I was
acquiring of influencing Louis’ thoughts and actions—of taking partial

control of his faculties.
The occupation into which he drifted, restricted in choice as he was by
the stiffened leg, helped me materially. Often, after an interminable shift at
the bank, he would plod home at night with brain so weary and benumbed
that it was a simple matter to impress my will upon him. Each successful
attempt, too, made the next one easier.
The inevitable consequence was that in time Velma should notice his
aberrations and betray concern.
“Why did you say to me, when you came in last night, ‘There’s a blue
Billy-goat on the stairs—I wish they’d drive him out’?” she demanded one
morning.
He looked down shamefacedly at the tablecloth.
“I don’t know what made me say it. I seemed to want to say it, and that
was the only way to get it off my mind. I thought you’d take it as a joke.”
He shifted his shoulders, as if trying to dislodge an unpleasant burden.
“And was that what made you wear a necktie to bed?” she asked,
ironically.
He nodded an affirmative. “I knew it was idiotic—but the idea kept
running in my mind. It seemed as if the only way I could go to sleep was to
give in to it. I don’t have these freaks unless I’m very tired.”
She said nothing more at the time, but that evening she broached the
subject of his looking for an opening in some less sedentary occupation—a
subject to which she thereafter constantly recurred.
Then came a development that surprised and excited me with its
possibilities.
Exhausted, drained to the last drop of his nerve-force, Louis was
returning late one night from the bank, following the usual month-end
overtime grind. As he walked from the car-line, I hovered over him,
subduing his personality, forcing it under control, with the effort of will I
had gradually learned to direct upon him. The process can only be
explained in a crude way: It was as if I contended with him, sometimes
successfully, for possession of the steering-wheel of the human car that he
drove.

Velma was waiting when we arrived. As Louis’ feet sounded on the
threshold of their apartment, she opened the door, caught his hands, and
drew him inside.
At the action, I felt inexplicably thrilled. It was as if some marvelous
change had come over me. And then, as I met her gaze, I knew what that
change was.
I held her hands in real flesh-and-blood contact. I was looking at her with
Louis’ sight!

V.

THE shock of it cost me what I had gained. Shaken from my poise, I felt
the personality I had subdued regain its sway.
The next moment, Louis was staring at Velma in bewilderment. Her eyes
were filled with alarm.
“You—you frightened me!” she gasped, withdrawing her hands, which I
had all but crushed. “Louis, dear—don’t ever look at me again like that!”
I can imagine the devouring intensity of gaze that had blazed forth from
the features in that brief moment when they were mine.
From this time, my plans quickly took form. Two modes of action
presented themselves. The first and more alluring, however, I was forced to
abandon. It was none other than the wild dream of acquiring exclusive
possession of Louis’ body—of forcing him down, out, and into the
secondary place I had occupied.
Despite the progress I had made, this proved inexpressibly difficult. For
one thing, there seemed an affinity between Louis’ body and his personality,
which forced me out when he was moderately rested. This bond I might
have weakened, but there were other factors.
One was the growing conviction on his part that something was radically
wrong. With a faculty I had discovered of putting myself en rapport with
him and reading his thoughts, I knew that at times he feared that he was
going insane.

I once had the experience of accompanying him to an alienist and there,
like the proverbial fly on the wall, overhearing learned scientific names
applied to my efforts. The alienist spoke of “dual personality,” “amnesia,”
and “the subconscious mind,” while I laughed in my (shall I say?) ghostly
sleeve.
But he advised Louis to seek a complete rest and, if possible, to go into
the country to build up physically—which was what I desired most to
prevent.
I could not play the Mr. Hyde to his Dr. Jekyll if Louis maintained his
normal virility.
Velma’s fears, too, I knew were growing more acute. As insistently as she
could, without betraying too openly her alarm, she pressed him to give up
the bank position and seek work in the open air—work that would prove
less devitalizing to a person of his peculiar temperament.
One of the results of debility from overwork is, apparently, that it
deprives the victim of his initiative—makes him fearful of giving up his
hold upon the meager means of sustenance that he has, lest he shall be
unable to grasp another. Louis was in debt, earning scarcely enough for
their living expenses, too proud to let Velma help as she longed to do, his
game leg putting him at a disadvantage in the industrial field. In fact, he
was in just the predicament I desired, but I knew that in time her wishes
would prevail.
The circumstances, however, that deprived me of all hope of completely
usurping his place was this: I could not, for any length of time, face the
gaze of Velma’s eyes. The personified truth, the purity that dwelt in them,
seemed to dissolve my power, to beat me back into the secondary
relationship I had come to occupy toward Louis.
He was sometimes tempted to tell her: “You give me my one grip on
sanity.”
I have witnessed his panic at the thought of losing her, at the thought that
some day she might give him up in disgust at his aberrations, and abandon
him to the formless “thing” that haunted him.
Curious—to be of the world and yet not of it—to enjoy a perspective that
reveals the hidden side of effects, which seem so mysterious from the

material side of the veil. But I would gladly have given all the advantages
of my disembodied state for one hour of flesh-and-blood companionship
with Velma.
My alternative plan was this:
If I could not enter her world, what was to prevent me from bringing
Velma into mine?

VI.

DARING? To be sure.
Unversed as I was in the laws that govern this mystery of passing from
the physical into another state of existence, I could only hope that the plan
would work. It might—and that was enough for me. I took a gambler’s
chance. By risking all, I might gain all—might gain—
The thought of what I might gain transported me to a heaven of pain and
ecstasy.
Velma and I—in a world apart—a world of our own—free from the
sordid trammels that mar the perfection of the rosiest earth-existence.
Velma and I—together through all eternity!
This much reason I had for hoping! I observed that other persons passed
through the change called death, and that some entered a state of being in
which I was conscious of them and they of me. Uninteresting creatures they
were, almost wholly preoccupied with their former earth-interests; but they
were as much in the world as I had been in the world of Velma and Louis
before that fragment of shrapnel ruled me out of the game.
A few, it was true, on passing from their physical habitations, seemed to
emerge into a sphere to which I could not follow. This troubled me. Velma
might do likewise. Yet I refused to admit the probability—refused to
consider the possible failure of my plan. The very intensity of my longing
would draw her to me.
The gulf that separated us was spanned by the grave. Once Velma had
crossed to my side of the abyss, there would be no going back to Louis.

Yet I was cunning. She must not come to me with overpowering regrets
that would cause her to hover about Louis as I now hovered about her. If I
could inspire her with horror and loathing for him—ah! if I only could!
As a preliminary step, I must induce Louis to buy the instrument with
which my purpose was to be accomplished. This was not easy, for on nights
when he left the bank during shopping hours he was sufficiently vigorous to
resist my will. I could work only through suggestion.
In a pawnshop window that he passed daily I had noticed a revolver
prominently displayed. My whole effort was concentrated upon bringing
this to his attention.
The second night, he glanced at the revolver, but did not stop. Three
nights later, drawn by a fascination for which he could not have accounted,
he paused and looked at it for several minutes, fighting an urge that seemed
to command: “Step in and buy! Buy! Buy!”
When, a few evenings later, he arrived home with the revolver and a box
of cartridges that the pawnbroker had included in the sale, he put them
hastily out of sight in a drawer of his desk.
He said nothing about his purchase, but the next day Velma came across
the weapon and questioned him regarding it.
Visibly confused, he replied: “Oh, I thought we might need something of
the sort. Saw it in a window, and the notion of having it sort of took hold of
me. There’s been a lot of housebreaking lately, and it’s just as well to be
prepared.”
And now with impatience I waited for the opportunity to stage my
dénouement.
It came, naturally, at the end of the month, when Louis, after a prolonged
day’s work, returned home, soon after midnight, his brain benumbed with
poring over interminable columns of figures. When his feet ascended the
stairs to his apartment it was not his faculties that directed them, but mine—
cunning, alert, aflame with deadly purpose.
Never was more weird preliminary to a murder—the entering, in guise of
a dear, familiar form, of a fiend incarnate, intent upon destroying the flower
of the home.

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

VII.

WITH utmost caution, I entered the bedroom.
My control of Louis’s body was complete. I felt, for perhaps the first
time, so corporeally secure that the vague dread of being driven out did not
oppress me.
The room was dark, but the soft, regular breathing of Velma, asleep,
reached my ears. It was like the invitation that rises in the scent of old wine
which the lips are about to quaff—quickening my eagerness and setting my
brain on fire.
I did not think of love. I lusted—but my lust was to destroy that beautiful
body—to kill!
However, I was cunning—cunning. With caution, I felt my way toward
the desk and secured the revolver, filling its chambers with leaden
emissaries of death.
When all was in readiness, I switched on the light.
She wakened almost instantly. As the radiance flooded the room, a
startled cry rose to her lips. It froze, unuttered, as—half rising—she met my
gaze.
Her beauty—the raven blackness of her hair falling over her bare
shoulders and full, heaving bosom, fanned the flame of my gory passion
into fury. In an ecstasy of triumph, I stood drinking in the picture.
While I temporized with the lust to kill—prolonging the exquisite
sensation—she was battling for self-control.
“Louis!” The name was gasped through bloodless lips.

Involuntarily, I shrank, reeling a little under her gaze. A dormant
something seemed to rise in feeble protest at what I sought to do. The
leveled revolver wavered in my hand.
But the note of panic in her voice revived my purpose. I laughed—
mockingly.
“Louis!” her tone was sharp, but edged with terror. “Louis—put down
that pistol! You don’t know what you are doing.”
She struggled to her feet and now stood before me. God! how beautiful—
how tempting that bare white bosom!
“Put down that pistol!” she ordered hysterically.
She was frantic with fear. And her fear was like the blast of a forge upon
the white heat of my passion.
I mocked her. A shrill, maniacal laugh burst from my throat. She had said
I didn’t know what I was doing! Oh, yes, I did.
“I’m going to kill you!—kill you!” I shrieked, and laughed again.
She swayed forward like a wraith, as I fired. Or perhaps that was the trick
played by my eyes as darkness overwhelmed me.

VIII.

A FEW fragmentary pictures stand out in my recollection like clear-etched
cameos on the scroll of the past.
One is of Louis, standing dazedly—slightly swaying as with vertigo—
looking down at the smoking revolver in his hand. On the floor before him
a crumpled figure in ebony and white and vivid crimson.
Then a confusion of frightened men and women in oddly assorted
nondescript attire—uniformed officers bursting into the room and taking the
revolver from Louis’s unresisting hand—clumsy efforts at lifting the white-
robed body to the bed—a crimson stain spreading over the sheet—a doctor,
attired in collarless shirt and wearing slippers, bending over her * * *

Finally, after a lapse of hours, a hushed atmosphere—efficient nurses—
the beginning of delirium.
And one other picture—of Louis, cringing behind the bars of his cell,
denied the privilege of visiting his wife’s bedside—crushed, dreading the
hourly announcement of her death—filled with unspeakable horror of
himself.
Velma still lived. The bullet had pierced her left lung and life hung by a
tenuous thread. Hovering near I watched with dispassionate interest the
battle for life. For the time I seemed emotionally spent. I had made a
supreme effort—events would now take their inevitable course and show
whether I had accomplished my purpose. I felt neither anxious nor
overjoyed, neither regretful nor triumphant—merely impersonally curious.
A fever set in lessening Velma’s slender chances of recovery. In her
delirium, her thoughts seemed always of Louis. Sometimes she breathed his
name pleadingly, tenderly, then cried out in terror at some fleeting rehearsal
of the scene in which he stood before her, the glitter of insanity in his eyes,
the leveled revolver in his hand. Again she pleaded with him to give up his
work at the bank; and at other times she seemed to think of him as over on
the battlefields of Europe.
Only once did she apparently think of me—when she whispered the
name by which I had called her, “Winkie!” and added, “Dick!” But, save for
this exception, it was always “Louis! Louis!”
Her constant reiteration of his name finally dispelled the apathy of my
spirit.
Louis! All the vengeful fury toward him I had experienced when my soul
went hurtling into the region of the disembodied returned with thwarted
intensity.
When Velma’s fever subsided, when the long fight for recovery began
and she fluttered from the borderland back into the realm of the physical,
when I knew I had failed—balked of my prey, I had at least this
satisfaction:
Never again would these two—the man I hated and the woman for whom
I hungered—never again would they be to each other as they had been in
the past. The perfection of their love had been irretrievably marred. Never

would she meet his gaze without an inward shrinking. Always on his part—
on both their parts—there would be an undercurrent of fear that the incident
might recur—a grizzly menace, poisoning each moment of their lives
together.
I had not schemed and contrived—and dared—in vain.
This was the thought I hugged when Louis was released from jail, upon
her refusal to prosecute. It caused me sardonic amusement when, in their
first embrace, the tears of despair rained down their cheeks. It recurred
when they began their pitiful attempt to build anew on the shattered
foundation of love.
And then—creepingly, slyly, like a bird of ill omen casting the shadow of
its silent wings over the landscape—came retribution.
Many times, in retrospect, I lived over that brief hour of my return to
physical expression—my hour of realization. Wraithlike, arose a vision of
Velma—Velma as she had stood before me that night, staring at me with
horror. I saw the horror deepen—deepen to abject despair.
How beautiful she had looked! But when I tried to picture that beauty, I
could recall only her eyes. It mattered not whether I wished to see them—
they filled my vision.
They seemed to haunt me. From being vaguely conscious of them, I
became acutely so. Disconcertingly, they looked out at me from everywhere
—eyes brimming with fear—eyes fixed and staring—filled with horrified
accusation.
The beauty I had once coveted became a thing forbidden, even in
memory. If I sought to peer through the veil as formerly—to witness her
pathetic attempts to resume the old life with Louis—again those eyes!
It may perhaps sound strange for a disembodied creature—one whom
you would call a ghost—to wail of being haunted. Yet haunting is of the
spirit, and we of the spirit world are immeasurably more subject to its
conditions than those whose consciousness is centered in the material
sphere.
God! Those eyes. There is a refinement of physical torture which consists
of allowing water to fall, drop by drop, for an eternity of hours, upon the

forehead of the victim. Conceive of this torture increased a thousandfold,
and a faint idea may be gained of the torture that was mine—from seeing
everywhere, constantly, interminably, two orbs ever filled with the same
expression of horror and reproach.
Much have I learned since entering the Land of the Shades. At that time I
did not know, as I know now, that my punishment was no affliction from
without, but the simple result of natural law. Causes set in motion must
work out their full reaction. The pebble, cast into a quiet pool, makes
ripples which in time return to the place of their origin. I had cast more than
a pebble of disturbance into the harmony of human life, and through my
intense preoccupation in a single aim had delayed longer than usual the
reaction, I created for myself a hell. Inevitably I was drawn into it.
Gone was every desire I had known to hover near the two who had so
long engrossed my attention. Haunted, harried, scourged by those dreadful
accusers, I sought to fly from them to the ends of the earth. There was no
escape, yet, driven frantic, I still struggled to escape, because that is the
blind impulse of suffering creatures.
The emotions that had so swayed me when I tried to blast the lives of two
who held me dear now seemed puny and insignificant in comparison with
my suffering. No physical torment can be likened to that which engulfed me
until my very being was but a seething mass of agony. Through it, I hurled
maledictions upon the world, upon myself, upon the creator. Horrible
blasphemies I uttered.
And, at last—I prayed.
It was but a cry for mercy—the inarticulate appeal of a tortured soul for
surcease of pain—but suddenly a peace seemed to have come upon the
universe.
Bereft of suffering, I felt like one who has ceased to exist.
Out of the silence came a wordless response. It beat upon my
consciousness like the buffeting of the waves.
Words known to human ears would not convey the meaning of the
message that was borne upon me—whether from outside source or welling
up from within, I do not know. All I know is that it filled me with a strange
hope.

A thousand years or a single instant—for time is a relative thing—the
respite lasted. Then, I sank, as it seemed, to the old level of consciousness,
and the torment was renewed.
Endure it now I knew that I must—and why. A strange new purpose filled
my being. The light of understanding had dawned upon my soul.
And so I came to resume my vigil in the home of Velma and Louis.

IX.

A BRAVE heart was Velma’s—dauntless and true.
With the effects of the tragedy still apparent in her pallor and weakness,
and in the shaken demeanor and furtive, self-distrustful attitude of Louis,
she yet succeeded in finding a place for him as overseer of a small country
estate.
I have said that I ceased to feel the torment of passion for Velma in the
greater torment of her reproach. Ah! but I had never ceased to love her. As I
now realized, I had desecrated that love, had transmuted it into a horrible
travesty, had, in my abysmal ignorance, sought to obtain what I desired by
destroying it; yet, beneath all, I had loved.
Well I know, now, that had I succeeded in my intention toward her,
Velma would have ascended to a sphere utterly beyond my comprehension.
Merciful fate had diverted my aim—had made possible some faint
restitution.
I returned to Velma, loving her with a love that had come into its own, a
love unselfish, untainted by thought of possession.
But, to help her, I must again hurt her cruelly.
Out of the chaos of her life she had slowly restored a semblance of
harmony. Almost she succeeded in convincing Louis that their old peaceful
companionship had returned; but to one who could read her thoughts, the
nightmare thing that hovered between them weighed cruelly upon her soul.
She was never quite able to look into her husband’s eyes without a
lurking suspicion of what might lie in their depths; never able to compose

herself for sleep without a tremor lest she should wake to find herself
confronted by a fiend in his form. I had done my work only too well!
Now, slowly and inexorably, I began again undermining Louis’ mental
control. The old ground must be traversed anew, because he had gained in
strength from the respite I had allowed him, and his outdoor life gave him a
mental vigor with which I had not been obliged to contend before. On the
other hand, I was equipped with new knowledge of the power I intended to
wield.
I shall not relate again the successive stages by which I succeeded, first
in influencing his will, then in partially subduing it, and, finally, in driving
his personality into the background for indefinite periods. The terror that
overwhelmed him when he realized that he was becoming a prey to his
former aberrations may be imagined.
To shield Velma, I performed my experiments, when possible, while he
was away from her. But she could not long be unaware of the moodiness,
the haggard droop of his shoulders which accompanied his realization that
the old malady had returned. The deepening terror in her expression was
like a scourge upon my spirit—but I must wound her in order to cure.
More than once, I was forced to exert my power over Louis to prevent
him from taking violent measures against himself. As I gained the
ascendancy, a determination to end it all grew upon him. He feared that
unless he took himself out of Velma’s life, the insanity would return and
force him again to commit a frenzied assault upon the one he held most
dear. Nor could he avoid seeing the apprehension in her manner that told
him she knew—the shrinking that she bravely tried to conceal.
Though my power over him was greater than before, it was intermittent. I
could not always exercise it. I could not, for example, prevent his
borrowing a revolver one day from a neighboring farmer, on pretense of
using it against a marauding dog that had lately visited the poultry yard.
Though I knew his true intention, the utmost that I could do—for his
personality was strong at the time—was to influence him to postpone the
deed he contemplated.
That night, I took possession of his body while he slept. Velma lay,
breathing quietly, in the next room—for as this dreaded thing came upon

him they had, through tacit understanding, come to occupy separate
bedrooms.
Partially dressing, I stole downstairs and out to the tool-shed where Louis
—fearing to trust it near him in the house—had hidden the revolver. As I
returned, my whole being rebelled at the task before me—yet it was
unavoidable, if I would restore to Velma what I had wrenched from her.
Quietly though I entered her room, a gasp—or rather a quick, hysterical
intake of breath—warned me that she had wakened.
I flashed on the light.
She made no sound. Her face went white as marble. The expression in
her eyes was that which had tortured me into the depths of a hell more
frightful than any conceived by human imagination.
A moment I stood swaying before her, with leveled revolver—as I had
stood on that other occasion, months before.
Slowly, I lowered the revolver, and smiled—not as Louis would have
smiled but as a maniac, formed in his likeness, would have smiled.
Her lips framed the word “Louis,” but, in the grip of despair, she made no
sound. It was the despair not merely of a woman who felt herself doomed to
death, but of a woman who consigned her loved one to a fate worse than
death.
Still I smiled—with growing difficulty, for Louis’ personality was restive
and my time in the usurped body was short.
In that moment, I was not anxious to give up his body. At this new
glimpse of her beauty through physical sight, my love for Velma flamed
into hitherto unrealized intensity. For an instant my purpose in returning
was forgotten. Forgotten was the knowledge of the ages which I had sipped
since last I occupied the body in which I faced her. Forgotten was
everything save—Velma.
As I took a step forward, my arms outstretched, my eyes expressing God
knows what depth of yearning, she uttered a scream.
Blackness surged over me. I stumbled. I was being forced out—out——
That cry of terror had vibrated through the soul of Louis and he was

struggling to answer it.
Instinctively, I battled against the darkness, clung to my hard-won
ascendancy. A moment of conflict, and again I prevailed.
Once more I smiled. The effect of it must have been weird, for I was
growing weaker and Louis had returned to the attack with overwhelming
persistence. My tongue strove for expression:
“Sorry—Winkie—it won’t happen again—I’m not—coming—back——”

WHEN I recovered from the momentary unconsciousness that accompanies
transition from the physical to spiritual, Louis was looking in affright at the
huddled figure of Velma, who had fainted away. The next instant, he had
gathered her in his arms.
Though I had come near failing in the attempt to deliver my message, I
had no fear that my visit would prove in vain. With clear prescience, I knew
that my utterance of that old familiar nickname, “Winkie,” would carry
untold meaning to Velma—that hereafter she would fear no more what she
might see in the depths of her husband’s eyes—that with a return of her old
confidence in him, the specter of apprehension would be banished forever
from their lives.

OOZE
A Novelette of a Thousand Thrills

By ANTHONY M. RUD
IN THE heart of a second-growth piney-woods jungle of southern Alabama,
a region sparsely settled save by backwoods blacks and Cajans—that queer,
half-wild people descended from Acadian exiles of the middle eighteenth
century—stands a strange, enormous ruin.
Interminable trailers of Cherokee rose, white-laden during a single month
of spring, have climbed the heights of its three remaining walls. Palmetto
fans rise knee high above the base. A dozen scattered live oaks, now belying
their nomenclature because of choking tufts of gray, Spanish moss and two-
foot circlets of mistletoe parasite which have stripped bare of foliage the
gnarled, knotted limbs, lean fantastic beards against the crumbling brick.
Immediately beyond, where the ground becomes soggier and lower—
dropping away hopelessly into the tangle of dogwood, holly, poison sumac
and pitcher plants that is Moccasin Swamp—undergrowth of titi and annis
has formed a protecting wall impenetrable to all save the furtive ones. Some
few outcasts utilize the stinking depths of that sinister swamp, distilling
“shinny” or “pure cawn” liquor for illicit trade.
Tradition states that this is the case, at least—a tradition which antedates
that of the premature ruin by many decades. I believe it, for during evenings
intervening between investigations of the awesome spot I often was
approached as a possible customer by wood-billies who could not fathom
how anyone dared venture near without plenteous fortification of liquid
courage.
I knew “shinny,” therefore I did not purchase it for personal
consumption. A dozen times I bought a quart or two, merely to establish

credit among the Cajans, pouring away the vile stuff immediately into the
sodden ground. It seemed then that only through filtration and condensation
of their dozens of weird tales regarding “Daid House” could I arrive at
understanding of the mystery and weight of horror hanging about the place.
Certain it is that out of all the superstitious cautioning, head-wagging and
whispered nonsensities I obtained only two indisputable facts. The first was
that no money, and no supporting battery of ten-gauge shotguns loaded with
chilled shot, could induce either Cajan or darky of the region to approach
within five hundred yards of that flowering wall! The second fact I shall
dwell upon later.
Perhaps it would be as well, as I am only a mouthpiece in this chronicle,
to relate in brief why I came to Alabama on this mission.
I am a scribbler of general fact articles, no fiction writer as was Lee
Cranmer—though doubtless the confession is superfluous. Lee was my
roommate during college days. I knew his family well, admiring John
Corliss Cranmer even more than I admired the son and friend—and almost
as much as Peggy Breede whom Lee married. Peggy liked me, but that was
all. I cherish sanctified memory of her for just that much, as no other
woman before or since has granted this gangling dyspeptic even a hint of
joyous and sorrowful intimacy.
Work kept me to the city. Lee, on the other hand, coming of wealthy
family—and, from the first, earning from his short-stories and novel
royalties more than I wrested from editorial coffers—needed no anchorage.
He and Peggy honeymooned a four-month trip to Alaska, visited Honolulu
next winter, fished for salmon on Cain’s River, New Brunswick, and
generally enjoyed the outdoors at all seasons.
They kept an apartment in Wilmette, near Chicago, yet, during the few
spring and fall seasons they were “home,” both preferred to rent a suite at
one of the country clubs to which Lee belonged. I suppose they spent thrice
or five times the amount Lee actually earned, yet for my part I only honored
that the two should find such great happiness in life and still accomplish
artistic triumph.
They were honest, zestful young Americans, the type—and pretty nearly
the only type—two million dollars cannot spoil. John Corliss Cranmer,

father of Lee, though as different from his boy as a microscope is different
from a painting by Remington, was even further from being dollar
conscious. He lived in a world bounded only by the widening horizon of
biological science—and his love for the two who would carry on that
Cranmer name.
Many a time I used to wonder how it could be that as gentle, clean-souled
and lovable a gentleman as John Corliss Cranmer could have ventured so
far into scientific research without attaining small-caliber atheism. Few do.
He believed both in God and human kind. To accuse him of murdering his
boy and the girl wife who had come to be loved as the mother of baby Elsie
—as well as blood and flesh of his own family—was a gruesome, terrible
absurdity! Yes, even when John Corliss Cranmer was declared
unmistakably insane!
Lacking a relative in the world, baby Elsie was given to me—and the
middle-aged couple who had accompanied the three as servants about half
of the known world. Elsie would be Peggy over again. I worshiped her,
knowing that if my stewardship of her interests could make of her a woman
of Peggy’s loveliness and worth I should not have lived in vain. And at four
Elsie stretched out her arms to me after a vain attempt to jerk out the
bobbed tail of Lord Dick, my tolerant old Airedale—and called me “papa.”
I felt a deep down choking ... yes, those strangely long black lashes some
day might droop in fun or coquetry, but now baby Elsie held a wistful,
trusting seriousness in depths of ultramarine eyes—that same seriousness
which only Lee had brought to Peggy.
Responsibility in one instant became double. That she might come to
love me as more than foster parent was my dearest wish. Still, through
selfishness I could not rob her of rightful heritage; she must know in after
years. And the tale that I would tell her must not be the horrible suspicion
which had been bandied about in common talk!
I went to Alabama, leaving Elsie in the competent hands of Mrs. Daniels
and her husband, who had helped care for her since birth.
In my possession, prior to the trip, were the scant facts known to
authorities at the time of John Corliss Cranmer’s escape and disappearance.
They were incredible enough.

For conducting biological research upon forms of protozoan life, John
Corliss Cranmer had hit upon this region of Alabama. Near a great swamp
teeming with microscopic organisms, and situated in a semi-tropical belt
where freezing weather rarely intruded to harden the bogs, the spot seemed
ideal for his purpose.
Through Mobile he could secure supplies daily by truck. The isolation
suited. With only an octoroon man to act as chef, houseman and valet for
the times he entertained no visitors, he brought down scientific apparatus,
occupying temporary quarters in the village of Burdett’s Corners while his
woods house was in process of construction.
By all accounts the Lodge, as he termed it, was a substantial affair of
eight or nine rooms, built of logs and planed lumber bought at Oak Grove.
Lee and Peggy were expected to spend a portion of each year with him;
quail, wild turkey and deer abounded, which fact made such a vacation
certain to please the pair. At other times all save four rooms was closed.
This was in 1907, the year of Lee’s marriage. Six years later when I came
down, no sign of a house remained except certain mangled and rotting
timbers projecting from viscid soil—or what seemed like soil. And a
twelve-foot wall of brick had been built to enclose the house completely!
One portion of this had fallen inward!

II.

I WASTED weeks of time at first, interviewing officials of the police
department at Mobile, the town marshals and county sheriffs of Washington
and Mobile counties, and officials of the psychopathic hospital from which
Cranmer made his escape.
In substance the story was one of baseless homicidal mania. Cranmer the
elder had been away until late fall, attending two scientific conferences in
the North, and then going abroad to compare certain of his findings with
those of a Dr. Gemmler of Prague University. Unfortunately, Gemmler was
assassinated by a religious fanatic shortly afterward. The fanatic voiced
virulent objection to all Mendelian research as blasphemous. This was his
only defense. He was hanged.

Search of Gemmler’s notes and effects revealed nothing save an immense
amount of laboratory data on karyokinesis—the process of chromosome
arrangement occurring in first growing cells of higher animal embryos.
Apparently Cranmer had hoped to develop some similarities, or point out
differences between hereditary factors occurring in lower forms of life and
those half-demonstrated in the cat and monkey. The authorities had found
nothing that helped me. Cranmer had gone crazy; was that not sufficient
explanation?
Perhaps it was for them, but not for me—and Elsie.
But to the slim basis of fact I was able to unearth:
No one wondered when a fortnight passed without appearance of any
person from the Lodge. Why should anyone worry? A provision salesman in
Mobile called up twice, but failed to complete a connection. He merely
shrugged. The Cranmers had gone away somewhere on a trip. In a week, a
month, a year they would be back. Meanwhile he lost commissions, but
what of it? He had no responsibility for these queer nuts up there in the
piney-woods. Crazy? Of course! Why should any guy with millions to
spend shut himself up among the Cajans and draw microscope-enlarged
notebook pictures of—what the salesman called—“germs?”
A stir was aroused at the end of the fortnight, but the commotion
confined itself to building circles. Twenty carloads of building brick, fifty
bricklayers, and a quarter-acre of fine-meshed wire—the sort used for
screening off pens of rodents and small marsupials in a zoological garden—
were ordered, damn expense, hurry! by an unshaved, tattered man who
identified himself with difficulty as John Corliss Cranmer.
He looked strange, even then. A certified check for the total amount,
given in advance, and another check of absurd size slung toward a labor
entrepreneur, silenced objection, however. These millionaires were apt to
be flighty. When they wanted something they wanted it at tap of the bell.
Well, why not drag down the big profits? A poorer man would have been
jacked up in a day. Cranmer’s fluid gold bathed him in immunity to
criticism.
The encircling wall was built, and roofed with wire netting which
drooped about the squat-pitch of the Lodge. Curious inquiries of workmen

went unanswered until the final day.
Then Cranmer, a strange, intense apparition who showed himself more
shabby than a quay derelict, assembled every man jack of the workmen. In
one hand he grasped a wad of blue slips—fifty-six of them. In the other he
held a Luger automatic.
“I offer each man a thousand dollars for silence!” he announced. “As an
alternative—death! You know little. Will all of you consent to swear upon
your honor that nothing which has occurred here will be mentioned
elsewhere? By this I mean absolute silence! You will not come back here to
investigate anything. You will not tell your wives. You will not open your
mouths even upon the witness stand in case you are called! My price is one
thousand apiece.
“In case one of you betrays me I give you my word that this man shall
die! I am rich. I can hire men to do murder. Well, what do you say?”
The men glanced apprehensively about. The threatening Luger decided
them. To a man they accepted the blue slips—and, save for one witness who
lost all sense of fear and morality in drink, none of the fifty-six has broken
his pledge, as far as I know. That one bricklayer died later in delirium
tremens.
It might have been different had not John Corliss Cranmer escaped.

III.

THEY found him the first time, mouthing meaningless phrases concerning
an amœba—one of the tiny forms of protoplasmic life he was known to
have studied. Also he leaped into a hysteria of self-accusation. He had
murdered two innocent people! The tragedy was his crime. He had drowned
them in ooze! Ah, God!
Unfortunately for all concerned, Cranmer, dazed and indubitably stark
insane, chose to perform a strange travesty on fishing four miles to the west
of his lodge—on the further border of Moccasin Swamp. His clothing had
been torn to shreds, his hat was gone, and he was coated from head to foot
with gluey mire. It was far from strange that the good folk of Shanksville,

who never had glimpsed the eccentric millionaire, failed to associate him
with Cranmer.
They took him in, searched his pockets—finding no sign save an
inordinate sum of money—and then put him under medical care. Two
precious weeks elapsed before Dr. Quirk reluctantly acknowledged that he
could do nothing more for this patient, and notified the proper authorities.
Then much more time was wasted. Hot April and half of still hotter May
passed by before the loose ends were connected. Then it did little good to
know that this raving unfortunate was Cranmer, or that the two persons of
whom he shouted in disconnected delirium actually had disappeared.
Alienists absolved him of responsibility. He was confined in a cell reserved
for the violent.
Meanwhile, strange things occurred back at the Lodge—which now, for
good and sufficient reason, was becoming known to dwellers of the woods
as Dead House. Until one of the walls fell in, however, there had been no
chance to see—unless one possessed the temerity to climb either one of the
tall live oaks, or mount the barrier itself. No doors or opening of any sort
had been placed in that hastily-constructed wall!
By the time the western side of the wall fell, not a native for miles around
but feared the spot far more than even the bottomless, snake-infested bogs
which lay to west and north.
The single statement was all John Corliss Cranmer ever gave to the
world. It proved sufficient. An immediate search was instituted. It showed
that less than three weeks before the day of initial reckoning, his son and
Peggy had come to visit him for the second time that winter—leaving Elsie
behind in company of the Daniels pair. They had rented a pair of Gordons
for quail hunting, and had gone out. That was the last anyone had seen of
them.
The backwoods negro who glimpsed them stalking a covey behind their
two pointing dogs had known no more—even when sweated through twelve
hours of third degree. Certain suspicious circumstances (having to do only
with his regular pursuit of “shinny” transportation) had caused him to fall
under suspicious at first. He was dropped.

Two days later the scientist himself was apprehended—a gibbering idiot
who sloughed his pole—holding on to the baited hook—into a marsh where
nothing save moccasins, an errant alligator, or amphibian life could have
been snared.
His mind was three-quarters dead. Cranmer then was in the state of the
dope fiend who rouses to a sitting position to ask seriously how many
Bolshevists were killed by Julius Caesar before he was stabbed by Brutus,
or why it was that Roller canaries sang only on Wednesday evenings. He
knew that tragedy of the most sinister sort had stalked through his life—but
little more, at first.
Later the police obtained that one statement that he had murdered two
human beings, but never could means or motive be established. Official
guess as to the means was no more than wild conjecture; it mentioned
enticing the victims to the noisome depths of Moccasin Swamp, there to let
them flounder and sink.
The two were his son and daughter-in-law, Lee and Peggy!

IV.

BY FEIGNING coma—then awakening with suddenness to assault three
attendants with incredible ferocity and strength—John Corliss Cranmer
escaped from Elizabeth Ritter Hospital.
How he hid, how he managed to traverse sixty-odd intervening miles and
still balk detection, remains a minor mystery to be explained only by the
assumption that maniacal cunning sufficed to outwit saner intellects.
Traverse these miles he did, though until I was fortunate enough to
uncover evidence to this effect, it was supposed generally that he had made
his escape as stowaway on one of the banana boats, or had buried himself in
some portion of the nearer woods where he was unknown. The truth ought
to be welcome to householders of Shanksville, Burdett’s Corners and
vicinage—those excusably prudent ones who to this day keep loaded
shotguns handy and barricade their doors at nightfall.

The first ten days of my investigation may be touched upon in brief. I
made headquarters in Burdett’s Corners, and drove out each morning,
carrying lunch and returning for my grits and piney-woods pork or mutton
before nightfall. My first plan had been to camp out at the edge of the
swamp, for opportunity to enjoy the outdoors comes rarely in my direction.
Yet after one cursory examination of the premises I abandoned the idea. I
did not want to camp alone there. And I am less superstitious than a real
estate agent.
It was, perhaps, psychic warning; more probably the queer, faint, salty
odor as of fish left to decay, which hung about the ruin, made too
unpleasant an impression upon my olfactory sense. I experienced a distinct
chill every time the lengthening shadows caught me near Dead House.
The smell impressed me. In newspaper reports of the case one ingenious
explanation had been worked out. To the rear of the spot where Dead House
had stood—inside the wall—was a swampy hollow circular in shape. Only
a little real mud lay in the bottom of the bowllike depression now, but one
reporter on the staff of The Mobile Register guessed that during the tenancy
of the lodge it had been a fishpool. Drying up of the water had killed the
fish, who now permeated the remnant of mud with this foul odor.
The possibility that Cranmer had needed to keep fresh fish at hand for
some of his experiments silenced the natural objection that in a country
where every stream holds gar pike, bass, catfish and many other edible
varieties, no one would dream of stocking a stagnant puddle.
After tramping about the enclosure, testing the queerly brittle, desiccated
top stratum of earth within and speculating concerning the possible purpose
of the wall, I cut off a long limb of chinaberry and probed the mud. One
fragment of fish spine would confirm the guess of that imaginative reporter.
I found nothing resembling a piscal skeleton, but established several
facts. First, this mud crater had definite bottom only three or four feet below
the surface of remaining ooze. Second, the fishy stench became stronger as
I stirred. Third, at one time the mud, water, or whatever had comprised the
balance of content, had reached the rim of the bowl. The last showed by
certain marks plain enough when the crusty, two-inch stratum of upper
coating was broken away. It was puzzling.

The nature of that thin, desiccated effluvium which seemed to cover
everything even to the lower foot or two of brick, came in for next
inspection. It was strange stuff, unlike any earth I ever had seen, though
undoubtedly some form of scum drained in from the swamp at the time of
river floods or cloudbursts (which in this section are common enough in
spring and fall). It crumbled beneath the fingers. When I walked over it, the
stuff crunched hollowly. In fainter degree it possessed the fishy odor also.
I took some samples where it lay thickest upon the ground, and also a
few where there seemed to be no more than a depth of a sheet of paper.
Later I would have a laboratory analysis made.
Apart from any possible bearing the stuff might have upon the
disappearance of my three friends, I felt the tug of article interest—that
wonder over anything strange or seemingly inexplicable which lends the
hunt for fact a certain glamor and romance all its own. To myself I was
going to have to explain sooner or later just why this layer covered the
entire space within the walls and was not perceptible anywhere outside! The
enigma could wait, however—or so I decided.
Far more interesting were the traces of violence apparent on wall and
what once had been a house. The latter seemed to have been ripped from its
foundations by a giant hand, crushed out of semblance to a dwelling, and
then cast in fragments about the base of wall—mainly on the south side,
where heaps of twisted, broken timbers lay in profusion. On the opposite
side there had been such heaps once, but now only charred sticks, coated
with that gray-black, omnipresent coat of desiccation, remained. These piles
of charcoal had been sifted and examined most carefully by the authorities,
as one theory had been advanced that Cranmer had burned the bodies of his
victims. Yet no sign whatever of human remains was discovered.
The fire, however, pointed out one odd fact which controverted the
reconstructions made by detectives months before. The latter, suggesting
the dried scum to have drained in from the swamp, believed that the house
timbers had floated out to the sides of the wall—there to arrange themselves
in a series of piles! The absurdity of such a theory showed even more
plainly in the fact that if the scum had filtered through in such a flood, the
timbers most certainly had been dragged into piles previously! Some had
burned—and the scum coated their charred surfaces!

What had been the force which had torn the lodge to bits as if in spiteful
fury? Why had the parts of the wreckage been burned, the rest to escape?
Right here I felt was the keynote to the mystery, yet I could imagine no
explanation. That John Corliss Cranmer himself—physically sound, yet a
man who for decades had led a sedentary life—could have accomplished
such destruction, unaided, was difficult to believe.

V.

I TURNED my attention to the wall, hoping for evidence which might
suggest another theory.
That wall had been an example of the worst snide construction. Though
little more than a year old, the parts left standing showed evidence that they
had begun to decay the day the last brick was laid. The mortar had fallen
from the interstices. Here and there a brick had cracked and dropped out.
Fibrils of the climbing vines had penetrated crevices, working for early
destruction.
And one side already had fallen.
It was here that the first glimmering suspicion of the terrible truth was
forced upon me. The scattered bricks, even those which had rolled inward
toward the gaping foundation lodge, had not been coated with scum! This
was curious, yet it could be explained by surmise that the flood itself
undermined this weakest portion of the wall. I cleared away a mass of brick
from the spot on which the structure had stood; to my surprise I found it
exceptionally firm! Hard red clay lay beneath! The flood conception was
faulty; only some great force, exerted from inside or outside, could have
wreaked such destruction.
When careful measurement, analysis and deduction convinced me—
mainly from the fact that the lowermost layers of brick all had fallen
outward, while the upper portions toppled in—I began to link up this
mysterious and horrific force with the one which had rent the Lodge
asunder. It looked as though a typhoon or gigantic centrifuge had needed
elbow room in ripping down the wooden structure.

But I got nowhere with the theory, though in ordinary affairs I am called
a man of too great imaginative tendencies. No less than three editors have
cautioned me on this point. Perhaps it was the narrowing influence of great
personal sympathy—yes, and love. I make no excuses, though beyond a
dim understanding that some terrific, implacable force must have made this
spot his playground, I ended my ninth day of note-taking and investigation
almost as much in the dark as I had been while a thousand miles away in
Chicago.
Then I started among the darkies and Cajans. A whole day I listened to
yarns of the days which preceded Cranmer’s escape from Elizabeth Ritter
Hospital—days in which furtive men sniffed poisoned air for miles around
Dead House, finding the odor intolerable. Days in which it seemed none
possessed nerve enough to approach close. Days when the most fanciful
tales of mediaeval superstitions were spun. These tales I shall not give; the
truth is incredible enough.
At noon upon the eleventh day I chanced upon Rori Pailleron, a Cajan—
and one of the least prepossessing of all with whom I had come in contact.
“Chanced” perhaps is a bad word. I had listed every dweller of the woods
within a five mile radius. Rori was sixteenth on my list. I went to him only
after interviewing all four of the Crabiers and two whole families of
Pichons. And Rori regarded me with the utmost suspicion until I made him
a present of the two quarts of “shinny” purchased of the Pichons.
Because long practice has perfected me in the technique of seeming to
drink another man’s awful liquor—no, I’m not an absolute prohibitionist;
fine wine or twelve-year-in-cask Bourbon whisky arouses my definite
interest—I fooled Pailleron from the start. I shall omit preliminaries, and
leap to the first admission from him that he knew more concerning Dead
House and its former inmates than any of the other darkies or Cajans
roundabout.
“...But I ain’t talkin’. Sacre! If I should open my gab, what might fly out?
It is for keeping silent, y’r damn’ right!...”
I agreed. He was a wise man—educated to some extent in the queer
schools and churches maintained exclusively by Cajans in the depths of the
woods, yet naive withal.

We drank. And I never had to ask another leading question. The liquor
made him want to interest me; and the only extraordinary topic in this
whole neck of the woods was the Dead House.
Three-quarters of a pint of acrid, nauseous fluid, and he hinted darkly. A
pint, and he told me something I scarcely could believe. Another half-pint....
But I shall give his confession in condensed form.
He had known Joe Sibley, the octoroon chef, houseman and valet who
served Cranmer. Through Joe, Rori had furnished certain indispensables in
way of food to the Cranmer household. At first, these salable articles had
been exclusively vegetable—white and yellow turnip, sweet potatoes, corn
and beans—but later, meat!
Yes, meat especially—whole lambs, slaughtered and quartered, the
coarsest variety of piney-woods pork and beef, all in immense quantity!

VI.

IN DECEMBER of the fatal winter Lee and his wife stopped down at the
Lodge for ten days or thereabouts.
They were enroute to Cuba at the time, intending to be away five or six
weeks. Their original plan had been only to wait over a day or so in the
piney-woods, but something caused an amendment to the scheme.
The two dallied. Lee seemed to have become vastly absorbed in
something—so much absorbed that it was only when Peggy insisted upon
continuing their trip, that he could tear himself away.
It was during those ten days that he began buying meat. Meager bits of it
at first—a rabbit, a pair of squirrels, or perhaps a few quail beyond the
number he and Peggy shot. Rori furnished the game, thinking nothing of it
except that Lee paid double prices—and insisted upon keeping the
purchases secret from other members of the household.
“I’m putting it across on the Governor, Rori!” he said once with a wink.
“Going to give him the shock of his life. So you mustn’t let on, even to Joe
about what I want you to do. Maybe it won’t work out, but if it does ...!

Dad’ll have the scientific world at his feet! He doesn’t blow his own horn
anywhere near enough, you know.”
Rori didn’t know. Hadn’t a suspicion what Lee was talking about. Still, if
this rich, young idiot wanted to pay him a half dollar in good silver coin for
a quail that anyone—himself included—could knock down with a five-cent
shell, Rori was well satisfied to keep his mouth shut. Each evening he
brought some of the small game. And each day Lee Cranmer seemed to
have use for an additional quail or so....
When he was ready to leave for Cuba, Lee came forward with the
strangest of propositions. He fairly whispered his vehemence and desire for
secrecy! He would tell Rori, and would pay the Cajan five hundred dollars
—half in advance, and half at the end of five weeks when Lee himself
would return from Cuba—provided Rori agreed to adhere absolutely to a
certain secret program! The money was more than a fortune to Rori; it was
undreamt-of affluence. The Cajan acceded.
“He wuz tellin’ me then how the ol’ man had raised some kind of pet,”
Rori confided, “an’ wanted to get shet of it. So he give it to Lee, tellin’ him
to kill it, but Lee was sot on foolin’ him. W’at I ask yer is, w’at kind of a pet
is it w’at lives down in a mud sink an’ eats a couple hawgs every night?”
I couldn’t imagine, so I pressed him for further details. Here at last was
something which sounded like a clue!
He really knew too little. The agreement with Lee provided that if Rori
carried out the provisions exactly, he should be paid extra and at his
exorbitant scale of all additional outlay, when Lee returned.
The young man gave him a daily schedule which Rori showed. Each
evening he was to procure, slaughter and cut up a definite—and growing—
amount of meat. Every item was checked, and I saw that they ran from five
pounds up to forty!
“What in heaven’s name did you do with it?” I demanded, excited now
and pouring him an additional drink for fear caution might return to him.
“Took it through the bushes in back an’ slung it in the mud sink there!
An’ suthin’ come up an’ drug it down!”
“A ’gator?”

“Diable! How should I know? It was dark. I wouldn’t go close.” He
shuddered, and the fingers which lifted his glass shook as with sudden chill.
“Mebbe you’d of done it, huh? Not me, though! The young fellah tole me to
sling it in, an’ I slung it.
“A couple times I come around in the light, but there wasn’t nuthin’ there
you could see. Jes’ mud, an’ some water. Mebbe the thing didn’t come out
in daytimes....”
“Perhaps not,” I agreed, straining every mental resource to imagine what
Lee’s sinister pet could have been. “But you said something about two hogs
a day? What did you mean by that? This paper, proof enough that you’re
telling the truth so far, states that on the thirty-fifth day you were to throw
forty pounds of meat—any kind—into the sink. Two hogs, even the piney-
woods variety, weigh a lot more than forty pounds!”
“Them was after—after he come back!”
From this point onward, Rori’s tale became more and more enmeshed in
the vagaries induced by bad liquor. His tongue thickened. I shall give his
story without attempt to reproduce further verbal barbarities, or the
occasional prodding I had to give in order to keep him from maundering
into foolish jargon.
Lee had paid munificently. His only objection to the manner in which
Rori had carried out his orders was that the orders themselves had been
deficient. The pet, he said had grown enormously. It was hungry, ravenous.
Lee himself had supplemented the fare with huge pails of scraps from the
kitchen.
From that day Lee purchased from Rori whole sheep and hogs! The
Cajan continued to bring the carcasses at nightfall, but no longer did Lee
permit him to approach the pool. The young man appeared chronically
excited now. He had a tremendous secret—one the extent of which even his
father did not guess, and one which would astonish the world! Only a week
or two more and he would spring it. First he would have to arrange certain
data.
Then came the day when everyone disappeared from Dead House. Rori
came around several times, but concluded that all of the occupants had
folded tents and departed—doubtless taking their mysterious “pet” along.

Only when he saw from a distance Joe, the octoroon servant, returning
along the road on foot toward the Lodge, did his slow mental processes
begin to ferment. That afternoon Rori visited the strange place for the next
to last time.
He did not go to the Lodge itself—and there were reasons. While still
some hundreds of yards away from the place a terrible, sustained screaming
reached his ears! It was faint, yet unmistakably the voice of Joe! Throwing
a pair of number two shells into the breech of his shotgun, Rori hurried on,
taking his usual path through the brush at the back.
He saw—and as he told me even “shinny” drunkenness fled his
chattering tones—Joe, the octoroon. Aye, he stood in the yard, far from the
pool into which Rori had thrown the carcasses—and Joe could not move!
Rori failed to explain in full, but something, a slimy, amorphous
something, which glistened in the sunlight, already had engulfed the man to
his shoulders! Breath was cut off. Joe’s contorted face writhed with horror
and beginning suffocation. One hand—all that was free of the rest of him!
—beat feebly upon the rubbery, translucent thing that was engulfing his
body!
Then Joe sank from sight....

VII.

FIVE days of liquored indulgence passed before Rori, alone in his shaky
cabin, convinced himself that he had seen a phantasy born of alcohol. He
came back the last time—to find a high wall of brick surrounding the
Lodge, and including the pool of mud into which he had thrown the meat!
While he hesitated, circling the place without discovering an opening—
which he would not have dared to use, even had he found it—a crashing,
tearing of timbers, and persistent sound of awesome destruction came from
within. He swung himself into one of the oaks near the wall. And he was
just in time to see the last supporting stanchions of the Lodge give way
outward!

The whole structure came apart. The roof fell in—yet seemed to move
after it had fallen! Logs of wall deserted retaining grasp of their spikes like
layers of plywood in the grasp of the shearing machine!
That was all. Soddenly intoxicated now, Rori mumbled more phrases,
giving me the idea that on another day when he became sober once more,
he might add to his statements, but I—numbed to the soul—scarcely cared.
If that which he related was true, what nightmare of madness must have
been consummated here!
I could vision some things now which concerned Lee and Peggy, horrible
things. Only remembrance of Elsie kept me faced forward in the search—
for now it seemed almost that the handiwork of a madman must be
preferred to what Rori claimed to have seen! What had been that sinister,
translucent thing? That glistening thing which jumped upward about a man,
smothering, engulfing?
Queerly enough, though such a theory as came most easily to mind now
would have outraged reason in me if suggested concerning total strangers, I
asked myself only what details of Rori’s revelation had been exaggerated by
fright and fumes of liquor. And as I sat on the creaking bench in his cabin,
staring unseeing as he lurched down to the floor, fumbling with a lock box
of green tin which lay under his cot, and muttering, the answer to all my
questions lay within reach!

IT WAS not until next day, however, that I made the discovery. Heavy of
heart I had reexamined the spot where the Lodge had stood, then made my
way to the Cajan’s cabin again, seeking sober confirmation of what he had
told me during intoxication.
In imagining that such a spree for Rori would be ended by a single night,
however, I was mistaken. He lay sprawled almost as I had left him. Only
two factors were changed. No “shinny” was left—and lying open, with its
miscellaneous contents strewed about, was the tin box. Rori somehow had
managed to open it with the tiny key still clutched in his hand.

Concern for his safety alone was what made me notice the box. It was a
receptacle for small fishing tackle of the sort carried here and there by any
sportsman. Tangles of Dowagiac minnows, spoon hooks ranging in size to
silver-backed number eights; three reels still carrying line of different
weights, spinners, casting plugs, wobblers, floating baits, were spilled out
upon the rough plank flooring where they might snag Rori badly if he
rolled. I gathered them, intending to save him an accident.
With the miscellaneous assortment in my hands, however, I stopped
dead. Something had caught my eye—something lying flush with the
bottom of the lock box! I stared, and then swiftly tossed the hooks and other
impedimenta upon the table. What I had glimpsed there in the box was a
loose-leaf notebook of the sort used for recording laboratory data! And Rori
scarcely could read, let alone write!
Feverishly, a riot of recognition, surmise, hope and fear bubbling in my
brain, I grabbed the book and threw it open. At once I knew that this was
the end. The pages were scribbled in pencil, but the handwriting was that
precise chirography I knew as belonging to John Corliss Cranmer, the
scientist!
“ ... Could he not have obeyed my instructions! Oh, God!
This....”
These were the words at top of the first page which met my eye.
Because knowledge of the circumstances, the relation of which I pried
out of the reluctant Rori only some days later when I had him in Mobile as
a police witness for the sake of my friend’s vindication, is necessary to
understanding, I shall interpolate.
Rori had not told me everything. On his late visit to the vicinage of Dead
House he saw more. A crouching figure, seated Turk fashion on top of the
wall, appeared to be writing industriously. Rori recognized the man as
Cranmer, yet did not hail him. He had no opportunity.
Just as the Cajan came near, Cranmer rose, thrust the notebook, which
had rested across his knees, into the box. Then he turned, tossed outside the
wall both the locked box and a ribbon to which was attached the key.
Then his arms raised toward heaven. For five seconds he seemed to
invoke the mercy of Power beyond all of man’s scientific prying. And

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

VIII.

THIS is a true transcription of the statement I inscribed, telling the sequence
of actual events at Dead House. The original of the statement now lies in
the archives of the detective department.
Cranmer’s notebook, though written in a precise hand, yet betrayed the
man’s insanity by incoherence and frequent repetitions. My statement has
been accepted now, both by alienists and by detectives who had entertained
different theories in respect to the case. It quashes the noisome hints and
suspicions regarding three of the finest Americans who ever lived—and
also one queer supposition dealing with supposed criminal tendencies in
poor Joe, the octoroon.
John Corliss Cranmer went insane for sufficient cause!

AS READERS of popular fiction know well, Lee Cranmer’s forte was the
writing of what is called—among fellows in the craft—the pseudo-scientific
story. In plain words, this means a yarn, based upon solid fact in the field of
astronomy, chemistry, anthropology or whatnot, which carries to logical
conclusion unproved theories of men who devote their lives to searching
out further nadirs of fact.
In certain fashion these men are allies of science. Often they visualize
something which has not been imagined even by the best of men from
whom they secure data, thus opening new horizons of possibility. In a large
way Jules Verne was one of these men in his day; Lee Cranmer bade fair to
carry on the work in worthy fashion—work taken up for a period by an
Englishman named Wells, but abandoned for stories of a different—and, in
my humble opinion, less absorbing—type.

Lee wrote three novels, all published, which dealt with such subjects—
two of the three secured from his own father’s labors, and the other
speculating upon the discovery and possible uses of interatomic energy.
Upon John Corliss Cranmer’s return from Prague that fatal winter, the
father informed Lee that a greater subject than any with which the young
man had dealt, now could be tapped.
Cranmer, senior, had devised a way in which the limiting factors in
protozoic life and growth, could be nullified; in time, and with cooperation
of biologists who specialized upon karyokinesis and embryology of higher
forms, he hoped—to put the theory in pragmatic terms—to be able to grow
swine the size of elephants, quail or woodcock with breasts from which a
hundredweight of white meat could be cut away, and steers whose dehorned
heads might butt at the third story of a skyscraper!
Such result would revolutionize the methods of food supply, of course. It
also would hold out hope for all undersized specimens of humanity—
provided only that if factors inhibiting growth could be deleted, some
method of stopping gianthood also could be developed.
Cranmer the elder, through use of an undescribed (in the notebook)
growth medium of which one constituent was agar-agar, and the use of
radium emanations, had succeeded in bringing about apparently unrestricted
growth in the paramœcium protozoan, certain of the vegetable growths
(among which were bacteria), and in the amorphous cell of protoplasm
known as the amœba—the last a single cell containing only neucleolus,
neucleus, and a space known as the contractile vacuole which somehow
aided in throwing off particles impossible to assimilate directly. This point
may be remembered in respect to the piles of lumber left near the outside
walls surrounding Dead House!
When Lee Cranmer and his wife came south to visit, John Corliss
Cranmer showed his son an amœba—normally an organism visible under
low-power microscope—which he had absolved from natural growth
inhibitions. This amœba, a rubbery, amorphous mass of protoplasm, was of
the size then of a large beef liver. It could have been held in two cupped
hands, placed side by side.
“How large could it grow?” asked Lee, wide-eyed and interested.

“So far as I know,” answered the father, “there is no limit—now! It
might, if it got food enough, grow to be as big as the Masonic Temple!
“But take it out and kill it. Destroy the organism utterly—burning the
fragment—else there is no telling what might happen. The amœba, as I have
explained, reproduces by simple division. Any fragment remaining might be
dangerous.”
Lee took the rubbery, translucent giant cell—but he did not obey orders.
Instead of destroying it as his father had directed, Lee thought out a plan.
Suppose he should grow this organism to tremendous size? Suppose, when
the tale of his father’s accomplishment were spread, an amœba of many
tons weight could be shown in evidence? Lee, of somewhat sensational cast
of mind, determined instantly to keep secret the fact that he was not
destroying the organism, but encouraging its further growth. Thought of
possible peril never crossed his mind.
He arranged to have the thing fed—allowing for normal increase of size
in an abnormal thing. It fooled him only in growing much more rapidly.
When he came back from Cuba the amœba practically filled the whole of
the mud sink hollow. He had to give it much greater supplies....
The giant cell came to absorb as much as two hogs in a single day.
During daylight, while hunger still was appeased, it never emerged,
however. That remained for the time that it could secure no more food near
at hand to satisfy its ravenous and increasing appetite.
Only instinct for the sensational kept Lee from telling Peggy, his wife, all
about the matter. Lee hoped to spring a coup which would immortalize his
father, and surprise his wife terrifically. Therefore, he kept his own counsel
—and made bargains with the Cajan, Rori, who supplied food daily for the
shapeless monster of the pool.
The tragedy itself came suddenly and unexpectedly. Peggy, feeding the
two Gordon setters that Lee and she used for quail hunting, was in the
Lodge yard before sunset. She romped alone, as Lee himself was dressing.
Of a sudden her screams cut the still air! Without her knowledge, ten-foot
pseudopods—those flowing tentacles of protoplasm sent forth by the
sinister occupant of the pool—slid out and around her putteed ankles.

For a moment she did not understand. Then, at first suspicion of the
horrid truth, her cries rent the air. Lee, at that time struggling to lace a pair
of high shoes, straightened, paled, and grabbed a revolver as he dashed out.
In another room a scientist, absorbed in his note-taking, glanced up,
frowned, and then—recognizing the voice—shed his white gown and came
out. He was too late to do aught but gasp with horror.
In the yard Peggy was half engulfed in a squamous, rubbery something
which at first glance he could not analyze.
Lee, his boy, was fighting with the sticky folds, and slowly, surely, losing
his own grip upon the earth!

IX.

JOHN CORLISS CRANMER was by no means a coward. He stared, cried
aloud, then ran indoors, seizing the first two weapons which came to hand
—a shotgun and hunting knife which lay in sheath in a cartridged belt
across a hook of the hall-tree. The knife was ten inches in length and razor
keen.
Cranmer rushed out again. He saw an indecent fluid something—which
as yet he had not had time to classify—lumping itself into a six-foot-high
center before his very eyes! It looked like one of the micro-organisms he
had studied! One grown to frightful dimensions. An amœba!
There, some minutes suffocated in the rubbery folds—yet still apparent
beneath the glistening ooze of this monster—were two bodies.
They were dead. He knew it. Nevertheless he attacked the flowing,
senseless monster with his knife. Shot would do no good. And he found that
even the deep, terrific slashes made by his knife closed together in a
moment and healed. The monster was invulnerable to ordinary attack!
A pair of pseudopods sought out his ankles, attempting to bring him low.
Both of these he severed—and escaped. Why did he try? He did not know.
The two whom he had sought to rescue were dead, buried under folds of
this horrid thing he knew to be his own discovery and fabrication.

Then it was that revulsion and insanity came upon him.
There ended the story of John Corliss Cranmer, save for one hastily
scribbled paragraph—evidently written at the time Rori had seen him atop
the wall.
May we not supply with assurance the intervening steps?
Cranmer was known to have purchased a whole pen of hogs a day or two
following the tragedy. These animals never were seen again. During the
time the wall was being constructed is it not reasonable to assume that he
fed the giant organism within—to keep it quiet? His scientist brain must
have visualized clearly the havoc and horror which could be wrought by the
loathsome thing if it ever were driven by hunger to flow away from the
Lodge and prey upon the countryside!
With the wall once in place, he evidently figured that starvation or some
other means which he could supply would kill the thing. One of the means
had been made by setting fire to several piles of the disgorged timbers;
probably this had no effect whatever.
The amœba was to accomplish still more destruction. In the throes of
hunger it threw its gigantic, formless strength against the house walls from
the inside; then every edible morsel within was assimilated, the logs, rafters
and other fragments being worked out through the contractile vacuole.
During some of its last struggles, undoubtedly, the side wall of brick was
weakened—not to collapse, however, until the giant amœba no longer could
take advantage of the breach.
In final death lassitude, the amœba stretched itself out in a thin layer over
the ground. There it succumbed, though there is no means of estimating
how long a time intervened.
The last paragraph in Cranmer’s notebook, scrawled so badly that it is
possible some words I have not deciphered correctly, read as follows:
“In my work I have found the means of creating a monster. The
unnatural thing, in turn, has destroyed my work and those whom
I held dear. It is in vain that I assure myself of innocence of
spirit. Mine is the crime of presumption. Now, as expiation—
worthless though that may be—I give myself....”

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

Extraordinary, Unearthly Things
Will Thrill and Amaze You
In This Strange Story

The Thing
of a
Thousand
Shapes
By OTIS ADELBERT KLINE
UNCLE JIM was dead.
I could scarcely believe it, but the little yellow missive, which had just
been handed to me by the Western Union messenger boy, left no room for
doubt. It was short and convincing:
“Come to Peoria at once. James Braddock dead of heart
failure.
Corbin & His. Attorneys.”
I should explain here that Uncle Jim, my mother’s brother, was my only
living near relative. Having lost both father and mother in the Iroquois
Theatre Fire at the age of twelve years, I should have been forced to
abandon my plans for a high school and commercial education but for his
noble generosity. In his home town he was believed to be comfortably well
off, but I had learned not long since that it had meant a considerable
sacrifice for him to furnish the fifteen hundred dollars a year to put me
through high school and business college, and I was glad when the time

came for me to find employment, and thus become independent of his
bounty.
My position as bookkeeper for a commission firm in South Water Street,
while not particularly remunerative, at least provided a comfortable living,
and I was happy in it—until the message of his death came.
I took the telegram to my employer, obtained a week’s leave-of-absence,
and was soon on the way to the Union Depot.
All the way to Peoria I thought about Uncle Jim. He was not old—only
forty-five—and when I had last seen him he had seemed particularly hale
and hearty. This sudden loss of my nearest and dearest friend was,
therefore, almost unbelievable. I carried a leaden weight in my heart, and it
seemed that the lump in my throat would choke me.
Uncle Jim had lived on a three-hundred-and-twenty acre farm near
Peoria. Being a bachelor, he had employed a housekeeper. The farm work
was looked after by a family named Severs—man, wife and two sons—who
lived in the tenant house, perhaps a thousand feet to the rear of the owner’s
residence, in convenient proximity to the barn, silos and other farm
buildings.
As I have said, my uncle’s neighbors believed him to be comfortably well
off, but I knew the place was mortgaged to the limit, so that the income
from the fertile acres was practically absorbed by overhead expenses and
interest.
Had my uncle been a business man in the true sense of the term, no doubt
he could have been wealthy. But he was a scientist and dreamer, inclined to
let the farm run itself while he devoted his time to study and research. His
hobby was psychic phenomena. His thirst for more facts regarding the
human mind was insatiable. In the pursuit of his favorite study, he had
attended seances in this country and abroad with the leading spiritualists of
the world.
He was a member of the London Society for Psychical Research, as well
as the American Society, and corresponded regularly with noted scientists,
psychologists and spiritualists. As an authority on psychic phenomena, he
had contributed articles to the leading scientific publications from time to
time, and was the author of a dozen well-known books on the subject.

Thus, grief-filled though I was, my mind kept presenting to me memory
after memory of Uncle Jim’s scientific attainments and scholarly life, while
the rumbling car wheels left the miles behind; and the thought that such a
man had been lost to me and to the world was almost unbearable.
I arrived in Peoria shortly before midnight, and was glad to find Joe
Severs, son of my uncle’s tenant, waiting for me with a flivver. After a five-
mile ride in inky darkness over a rough road, we came to the farm.
I was greeted at the door by the housekeeper, Mrs. Rhodes, and one of
two men, nearby neighbors, who had kindly volunteered to “set up” with
the corpse. The woman’s eyes were red with weeping, and her tears flowed
afresh as she led me to the room where my uncle’s body lay in a gray
casket.
A dim kerosene lamp burned in one corner of the room, and after the
silent watcher had greeted me with a handclasp and a sad shake of the head,
I walked up to view the remains of my dearest friend on earth.
As I looked down on that noble, kindly face, the old lump, which had for
a time subsided, came back in my throat. I expected tears, heartrending
sobs, but they did not come. I seemed dazed—bewildered.
Suddenly, and apparently against my own reason, I heard myself saying
aloud, “He is not dead—only sleeping.”
When the watchers looked at me in amazement I repeated, “Uncle Jim is
not dead! He is only sleeping.”
Mrs. Rhodes looked compassionately at me, and by a meaning glance at
the others said as plainly as if she had spoken, “His mind is affected.”
She and Mr. Newberry, the neighbor whom I had first met, gently led me
from the room. I was, myself dumfounded at the words I had uttered, nor
could I find a reason for them.
My uncle was undoubtedly dead, at least as far as this physical world was
concerned. There was nothing about the appearance of the pale, rigid corpse
to indicate life, and he had, without doubt, been pronounced dead by a
physician. Why, then, had I made this unusual, uncalled for—in fact,
ridiculous—statement? I did not know. I concluded that I must have been
crazed with grief—beside myself for the moment.

I had announced my intention to keep watch with Mr. Newberry and the
other neighbor, Mr. Glitch, but was finally prevailed upon to go to my
room, on the ground that my nerves were overwrought and I must have rest.
It was decided, therefore, that the housekeeper, who had scarcely slept a
wink the night before, and I should retire, while the two neighbors
alternately kept two-hour watches, one sitting up while the other slept on a
davenport near the fireplace.
Mrs. Rhodes conducted me to my room. I quickly undressed, blew out
the kerosene light and got into bed. It was some time before I could
compose myself for sleep, and I remember that just as I was dozing off I
seemed to hear my name pronounced as if someone were calling me from a
great distance:
“Billy!” and then, in the same far-away voice: “Save me, Billy!”
I had slept for perhaps fifteen minutes when I awoke with a start. Either I
was dreaming, or something about the size and shape of a half-grown
conger eel was creeping across my bed.
For the moment I was frozen with horror, as I perceived the white,
nameless thing, in the dim light from my window. With a convulsive
movement I threw the bedclothes from me, leaped to the floor, struck a
match, and quickly lit the lamp. Then, taking my heavy walking-stick in
hand, I advanced on the bed.
Moving the bedclothing cautiously with the stick and prodding here and
there, I at length discovered that the thing was gone. The door was closed,
there was no transom, and the window was screened. I therefore concluded
that it must still be in the room.
With this thought in mind, I carefully searched every inch of space,
looking under and behind the furniture, with the lamp in one hand and stick
in the other. I then removed all the bedding and opened the dresser drawers,
and found—nothing!
After completely satisfying myself that the animal I had seen, or perhaps
seemed to see, could not possibly be in the room, I decided that I had been
suffering from a nightmare, and again retired. Because of my nervousness
from the experience, I did not again blow out the light, but instead turned it
low.

After a half hour of restless turning and tossing, I succeeded in going to
sleep; this time for possibly twenty minutes, when I was once more
aroused. The same feeling of horror came over me, as I distinctly heard a
rolling, scraping sound beneath my bed. I kept perfectly still and waited
while the sound went on. Something was apparently creeping underneath
my bed, and it seemed to be moving toward the foot, slowly and
laboriously.
Stealthily I sat up, leaned forward and peered over the foot-board. The
sounds grew more distinct, and a white, round mass, which looked like a
porcupine rolled into a ball with bristles projecting, emerged from under my
bed. I uttered a choking cry of fright, and the thing disappeared before my
eyes!
Without waiting to search the room further, I leaped from the bed to the
spot nearest the door, wrenched it open, and started on a run for the living-
room, attired only in pajamas. As I neared the room, however, part of my
lost courage came back to me, and I slowed down to a walk. I reasoned that
a precipitate entrance into the room would arouse the household, and that
possibly, after all, I was only the victim of a second nightmare. I resolved,
therefore, to say nothing to the watchers about my experience, but to tell
them only that I was unable to sleep and had come down for company.
Newberry met me at the door.
“Why what’s the matter?” he asked. “You look pale. Anything wrong?”
“Nothing but a slight attack of indigestion. Couldn’t sleep, so I came
down for company.”
“You should have brought a dressing-gown or something. You may take
cold.”
“Oh, I feel quite comfortable enough,” I said.
Newberry stirred the logs in the fireplace to a blaze, and we moved our
chairs close to the flickering circle of warmth. The dim light was still
burning in the corner of the room, and Glitch was snoring on the davenport.
“Funny thing,” said Newberry, “the instructions your uncle left.”
“Instructions? What instructions?” I asked.

“Why, didn’t you know? But of course you didn’t. He left written
instructions with Mrs. Rhodes that in case of his sudden death his body was
not to be embalmed, packed in ice, or preserved in any way, and that it was
not to be buried under any consideration, until decomposition had set in. He
also ordered that no autopsy should be held until it had been definitely
decided that putrefaction had taken place.”
“Have these instructions been carried out?” I asked.
“To the letter,” he replied.
“And how long will it take for putrefaction to set in?”
“The doctors say it will probably be noticed in twenty-four hours.”
I reflected on this strange order of my uncle’s. It seemed to me that he
must have feared being buried alive, or something of the sort, and I recalled
several instances, of which I had heard, where bodies, upon being exhumed,
were found turned over in their coffins, while others had apparently torn
their hair and clawed the lid in their efforts to escape from a living tomb.
I was beginning to feel sleepy again and had just started to doze, when
Newberry grasped my arm.
“Look!” he exclaimed, pointing toward the body.
I looked quickly and seemed to see something white for an instant, near
the nostrils.
“Did you see it?” he asked breathlessly.
“See what?” I replied, wishing to learn if he had seen the same thing I
had.
“I saw something white, like a thick vapor or filmy veil, come out of his
nose. When I spoke to you it seemed to jerk back. Didn’t you see it?”
“Thought I saw a white flash there when you spoke, but it must have
been imagination.”
The time had now arrived for Glitch to watch, so my companion
wakened him, and they exchanged places. Newberry was soon asleep, and
Glitch, being a stoical German, said little. I presently became drowsy, and
was asleep in my chair in a short time.

A cry from Glitch brought me to my feet. “Vake up and help catch der
cat!”
“What cat?” demanded Newberry, also awakening.
“Der big vite cat,” said Glitch, visibly excited. “Chust now he came der
door through and yumped der coffin in.”
The three of us rushed to the coffin, but there was no sign of a cat, and
everything seemed undisturbed.
“Dot’s funny,” said Glitch. “Maybe it’s hiding someveres in der room.”
We searched the room, without result.
“You’ve been seeing things,” said Newberry.
“What did the animal look like?” I asked.
“Vite, und big as a dog. It kommt der door in, so, und galloped across der
floor, so, und yumped in der casket chust like dot. Ach! It vos a fierce-
looking beast.”
Glitch was very much in earnest and gesticulated rapidly as he described
the appearance and movements of the feline. Perhaps I should have felt
inclined to laugh, had it not been for my own experience that night. I
noticed, too, that Newberry’s expression was anything but jocular.
It was now nearly four o’clock, time for Newberry to watch, but Glitch
protested that he could not sleep another wink, so the three of us drew
chairs up close to the fire. On each side of the fireplace was a large window.
The shades were completely drawn and the windows were draped with
heavy lace curtains. Happening to look up at the window to the left, I
noticed something of a mouse-gray color hanging near the top of one of the
curtains. As I looked, I fancied I saw a slight movement as of a wing being
stretched a bit and then folded, and the thing took on the appearance of a
large vampire bat, hanging upside down.
I called the attention of my companions to our singular visitor, and both
saw it as plainly as I.
“How do you suppose he got in?” asked Newberry.
“Funny ve didn’t see him before,” said Glitch.

I picked up the fire tongs and Newberry seized the poker. Creeping softly
up to the curtain, I stood on tiptoe and reached up to seize the animal with
the tongs. It was too quick for me, however, and fluttered out of my reach.
There followed a chase around the room, which lasted several minutes.
Seeing that it would be impossible for us to capture the creature by this
method, we gave up the chase, whereupon it calmed down and suspended
itself from the picture molding, upside down.
On seeing this, Glitch, who had taken a heavy book from the table,
hurled it at our unwelcome visitor. His aim was good, and the thing uttered
a squeak as it was crushed against the wall.
At this moment I thought I heard a moan from the direction of the casket,
but could not be certain.
Newberry and I rushed over to where the book had fallen, intent on
dispatching the thing with poker and tongs, but only the book lay on the
floor. The creature had completely disappeared.
I picked up the book, and noticed, as I did so, a grayish smear on the
back cover. Taking this over to the light, we saw that it had a soapy
appearance. As we looked, the substance apparently became absorbed,
either by the atmosphere or into the cloth cover of the book. There
remained, however, a dry, white, faintly-defined splotch on the book cover.
“What do you make of it?” I asked them.
“Strange!” said Newberry.
I turned to Glitch, and noticed for the first time that his eyes were wide
with fear. He shook his head and cast furtive glances toward the casket.
“What do you think it is?” I asked.
“A vampire, maybe. A real vampire.”
“What do you mean by a real vampire?”
Glitch then described how, in the folk lore of his native land, there were
stories current of corpses which lived on in the grave. It was believed that
the spirits of these corpses assumed the form of huge vampire bats at night,
and went about sucking the blood of living persons, with which they would
return to the grave from time to time and nourish the corpse. This

proceeding was kept up indefinitely, unless the corpse were exhumed and a
stake driven through the heart.
He related, in particular, the story of a Hungarian named Arnold Paul,
whose body was dug up after it had been buried forty days. It was found
that his cheeks were flushed with blood, and that his hair, beard and nails
had grown in the grave. When the stake was driven through his heart, he
had uttered a frightful shriek and a torrent of blood gushed from his mouth.
This vampire story seized on my imagination in a peculiar way. I thought
again of my uncle’s strange request regarding the disposition of his body,
and of the strange apparitions I had seen. For the moment I was a convert to
the vampire theory.
My better judgment, however, soon convinced me that there could not be
such a thing as a vampire, and, even if there were, a man whose character
had been so noble as that of my deceased uncle would most certainly never
resort to such hideous and revolting practices.
We sat together in silence as the first faint streaks of dawn showed in the
east. A few minutes later the welcome aroma of coffee and frying bacon
greeted our nostrils, and Mrs. Rhodes came in to announce that breakfast
was ready.
After breakfast, my newly-made friends departed for their homes, both
assuring me that they would be glad to come and watch with me again that
night.
However, I read something in the uneasy manner of Glitch which led me
to believe that I could not count on him, and I was, therefore, not greatly
surprised when he telephoned me an hour later, stating that his wife was ill,
and that he would not be able to come.

II.

I STROLLED outdoors to enjoy a cigar, comforted by the rays of the
morning sun after my night’s experience.
It was pleasant, I reflected, to be once more in the realm of the natural, to
see the trees attired in the autumn foliage, to feel the rustle of fallen leaves

underfoot, to fill my lungs with the spicy, invigorating October air.
A gray squirrel scampered across my pathway, his cheek pouches bulging
with acorns. A flock of blackbirds, migrating southward, stopped for a few
moments in the trees above my head, chattering vociferously; then resumed
their journey with a sudden whirr of wings and a few hoarse notes of
farewell.
“It is but a step,” I reflected, “from the natural to the supernatural.”
This observation started a new line of thought. After all, could anything
be supernatural—above nature? Nature, according to my belief, was only
another name for God, eternal mind, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient
ruler of the universe. If He were omnipotent, could anything take place
contrary to His laws? Obviously not.
The word “supernatural” was, after all, only an expression invented by
man in his finite ignorance, to define those things which he did not
understand. Telegraphy, telephony, the phonograph, the moving picture—all
would have been regarded with superstition by an age less advanced than
ours. Man had only to become familiar with the laws governing them, in
order to discard the word “supernatural” as applied to their manifestations.
What right, then, had I to term the phenomena, which I had just
witnessed, supernatural? I might call them supernormal, but to think of
them as supernatural would be to believe the impossible; namely, that that
which is all-powerful had been overpowered.
I resolved, then and there, that if further phenomena manifested
themselves that night, I would, as far as it were possible, curb my
superstition and fear, regard them with the eye of a philosopher, and
endeavor to learn their cause, which must necessarily be governed by
natural law.
A gray cloud of dust and the whirring of a motor announced the coming
of an automobile. The next minute an ancient flivver, with whose bumps of
eccentricity I had gained some acquaintance, turned into the driveway and
stopped opposite me. Joe Severs, older son of my uncle’s tenant, stepped
out and came running toward me.
“Glitch’s wife died this morning,” he panted, “and he swears Mr.
Braddock is a vampire and sucked her blood.”

“What rot!” I replied. “Nobody believes him, of course?”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” said Joe. “Some of the farmers are takin’ it
mighty serious. One of the Langdon boys, first farm north of here, was took
sick this mornin’. Doctor don’t know what’s the matter of him. Folks say it
looks mighty queer.”
Mrs. Rhodes appeared on the front porch.
“A telephone call for you, sir,” she said.
I hastened to the ’phone. A woman was speaking.
“This is Mrs. Newberry,” she said. “My husband is dreadfully ill, and
asked me to tell you that he cannot come to sit up with you tonight.”
I thanked the lady, offered my condolences, and tendered my sincere
wishes for her husband’s speedy recovery. This done, I wrote a note of
sympathy to Mr. Glitch, and dispatched Joe with it.
Here, indeed, was a pretty situation. Glitch’s wife dead, Newberry
seriously ill, and the whole countryside frightened by this impossible
vampire story! I knew it would be useless to ask any of the other neighbors
to keep watch with me. Obviously, I was destined to face the terrors of the
coming night alone. Was I equal to the task? Could my nerves, already
unstrung by the previous night’s experience, withstand the ordeal?
I must confess, and not without a feeling of shame, that at this juncture I
felt impelled to flee, anywhere, and leave my deceased uncle’s affairs to
shape themselves as they would.
With this idea in mind, I repaired to my room and started to pack my
grip. Something fell to the floor. It was my uncle’s last letter, received only
the day before the telegram arrived announcing his death. I hesitated—then
picked it up and opened it. The last paragraph held my attention:
“And, Billy, my boy, don’t worry any more about the money I
advanced you. It was, as you say, a considerable drain on my
resources, but I gave it willingly, gladly, for the education of my
sister’s son. My only regret is that I could not have done more.
Affectionately,
Uncle Jim.”

A flush of guilt came over me. The reproach of my conscience was keen
and painful. I had been about to commit a cowardly, dishonorable deed.
“Thank God, for the accidental intervention of that letter,” I said
fervently.
My resolution was firmly made now. I would see the thing through at all
costs. The noble love, the generous self-sacrifice of my uncle, should not go
unrequited.
I quickly unpacked my bag and walked downstairs. The rest of the day
was uneventful, but the night—how I dreaded the coming of the night! As I
stood on the porch and watched the last faint glow of sunset slowly fading, I
wished that I, like Joshua, might cause the sun and moon to stand still.
Twilight came on all too quickly, accelerated by a bank of heavy clouds
which appeared on the western horizon; and darkness succeeded twilight
with unwonted rapidity.
I entered the house and trod the hallway leading to the living-room, with
much the same feeling, no doubt, that a convict experiences when entering
the death cell.
The housekeeper was just placing the lamp, freshly cleaned and filled, in
the room. Joe Severs’ younger brother, Sam, had placed logs in the
fireplace, with kindling and paper beneath them, ready for lighting. Mrs.
Rhodes bade me a kindly “Good-night, sir,” and departed noiselessly.
At last the dreaded moment had arrived. I was alone with the nameless
powers of darkness.
I shuddered involuntarily. A damp chill pervaded the air, and I ignited the
kindling beneath the logs in the fireplace. Then, drawing the shades to shut
out the pitchy blackness of the night, I lighted my pipe and stood in the
warm glow.
Under the genial influence of pipe and warmth, my feeling of fear was
temporarily dissipated. Taking a book from the library table, I settled down
to read. It was called “The Reality of Materialization Phenomena,” and had
been written by my uncle. The publishers were Bulwer & Sons, New York
and London.

It was apparently a record of the observations made by my uncle at
materialization seances in this country and Europe. Contrary to my usual
custom on starting a book, I read the author’s introduction. He began by
expressing the wish that those who might read the work should first lay
aside all prejudice and all preconceived ideas regarding the subject, which
were not based on positive knowledge; then weigh the facts as he had found
them before drawing a definite conclusion.
The following passage, in particular, held my attention:
“While it is to be admitted, with regret, that there are many
people calling themselves mediums, who deceive their sitters
nightly and whose productions are consequently mere optical
illusions, produced by chicanery and legerdemain, the writer has
nevertheless gathered, at the sittings recorded in this book, where
all possibility of fraud was excluded by rigorous examination and
control, undeniable evidence that genuine materializations are,
and can be, produced.
“The source and physical composition—if indeed it be
physical—of a phantasm materialized by a true medium,
remains, up to the present time, inexplicable. That such
manifestations are not hallucinations, has been proved time and
again by taking photographs. One would indeed be compelled to
strain his credulity to the utmost, were he to believe that a mere
hallucination could be photographed.
“As I have stated, the exact nature and source of the
phenomena are apparently inscrutable; however, it is a notable
fact that the strongest manifestations take place when the
medium is in a state of catalepsy, or suspended animation. Her
hands are cold—her body becomes rigid—her eyes, if open,
appear to be fixed on space—”
A roll of thunder, quickly followed by a rush of wind, rudely interrupted
my reading. The housekeeper appeared in the doorway, lamp in hand.
“Would you mind helping me close the windows, sir?” she asked. “There
is a big rainstorm coming, and they must be closed quickly, or the
furnishings and wall paper will be soaked.”

Together we ascended the stairs. I rushed from window to window, while
she lighted the way with the dim lamp. This duty attended to, she again
bade me “Good-night,” and I returned to the living-room.
As I entered, I glanced at the casket; then looked again while a feeling of
horror crept over me. Either I was dreaming, or it had been completely
draped with a white sheet during my absence.
I rubbed my eyes, pinched myself, and advanced to confirm the evidence
of my eyesight by the sense of touch. As I extended my hand, the center of
the sheet rose in a sharp peak, as if lifted by some invisible presence, and
the entire fabric traveled upward toward the ceiling. I drew back with a cry
of dread, watching it with perhaps the same fascination that is experienced
by a doomed bird or animal looking into the eyes of a serpent that is about
to devour it.
The point touched the ceiling. There was a crash of thunder, accompanied
by a blinding flash of lightning which illuminated the room through the
sides of the ill-fitting window shades, and I found myself staring at the bare
ceiling.
Walking dazedly to the fireplace, I poked the logs until they blazed, and
then sat down to collect my thoughts. Torrents of rain were beating against
the window panes. Thunder roared and lightning flashed incessantly.
I took up my pipe and was about to light it when a strange sight
interrupted me. Something round and flat, about six inches in diameter, and
of a grayish color, was moving along the floor from the casket toward the
center of the room. I watched it, fascinated, while the blood seemed to
congeal in my veins. It did not roll or slide along the floor, but seemed
rather to flow forward.
It reminded me, more than anything else, of an amœba, one of those
microscopic, unicellular animalcule which I had examined in the study of
zoology: an amœba magnified, perhaps, several million diameters. I could
plainly see it put forth projections, resembling pseudopods, from time to
time, and again withdraw them quickly into the body mass.
The lighted match burned my fingers, and I dropped it on the hearth. In
the meantime the creature had reached the center of the room and stopped.
A metamorphosis was now taking place before my eyes. To my surprise, I

beheld, in place of a magnified amœba, a gigantic trilobite, larger, it is true,
than any specimen which has ever been found, but, nevertheless, true to
form in every detail.
The trilobite, in turn, changed to a brilliantly-hued star-fish with active,
wriggling tentacles. The star-fish became a crab, and the crab, a porpoise
swimming about in the air as if it had been water. The porpoise then became
a huge green lizard that crawled about the floor.
Soon the lizard grew large webbed wings, its tail shortened, its jaws
lengthened out with a pelicanlike pouch beneath them, and its body seemed
partially covered with scales of a rusty black color. I afterward learned that
this was a phantasmic representation of a pterodactyl, or prehistoric flying
reptile. To me, in my terrified condition, it looked like a creature from hell.
The thing stood erect, stretched its wings and beat the air as if to try
them; then rose and circled twice about the room, flapping lazily like a
heron, and once more alighted in the middle of the floor.
It folded its wings carefully, and I noticed many new changes taking
place. The scales were becoming feathers—the legs lengthened out and
were encased in a thick, scaly skin. The claws thickened into two-toed feet,
like those of an ostrich. The head also looked ostrich-like, while the wings
were shortened and feathered, but not plumed. The bird was much larger
than any ostrich or emu I have ever seen, and stalked about majestically, its
head nearly touching the ceiling.
Soon it, too, stopped in the center of the room—the neck grew shorter
and shorter—the feathers became fur—the wings lengthened into arms
which reached below the knees, and I was face to face with a huge, gorilla-
like creature. It roared horribly, casting quick glances about the room, its
deep-set eyes glowing like coals of fire.
I felt that my end had come, but could make no move to escape. I wanted
to get up and leap through the window, but my nerveless limbs would not
function. As I looked, the fur on the creature turned to a thin covering of
hair, and it began to assume a manlike form. I closed my eyes and
shuddered.
When I opened them a moment later, I beheld what might have been the
“missing link,” half man, half beast. The face, with its receding forehead

and beetling brows, was apelike and yet manlike. Wrapped about its loins
was a large tiger skin. In its right hand it brandished a huge, knotted club.
Gradually it became more manlike and less apelike. The club changed to
a spear, the spear to a sword, and I beheld a Roman soldier, fully accoutered
for battle, with helmet, armor, target and sandals.
The Roman soldier became a knight, and the knight a musketeer. The
musketeer became a colonial soldier.
At that instant there was a crash of glass, and the branch of a tree
projected through the window on the right of the fireplace. The shade flew
up with a snap, and the soldier disappeared, as a brilliant flash of lightning
illuminated the room.
I rushed to the window, and saw that the overhanging limb of an elm had
been broken off by the wind and hurled through the glass. The rain was
coming in in torrents.
The housekeeper, who had heard the noise, appeared in the doorway.
Seeing the rain blowing in at the window, she left and returned a moment
later with a hammer, tacks and a folded sheet. I tacked the sheet to the
window frame with difficulty, on account of the strong wind, and again
pulled down the shade.
Mrs. Rhodes retired.
I consulted my watch. It lacked just one minute of midnight.
Only half of the night gone! Would I be strong enough to endure the
other half?

This Story Will be Concluded in the Next Issue of WEIRD TALES.
Tell Your Newsdealer to Reserve a Copy for You.

You Will Find Blood-Curdling
Realism and a Smashing
Surprise in

The MYSTERY of
BLACK JEAN
By JULIAN KILMAN
AYE, SIR, since you have asked, there has been many a guess about where
Black Jean finally disappeared to.
He was a French-Canadian and a weed of a man—six-feet-five in his
socks; his eyes were little and close together and black; he wore a long thin
mustache that drooped; and he was as hairy as his two bears.
He just drifted up here to the North, I guess, picking up what scanty
living he could by wrestling with the bears and making them wrestle each
other. ’Twas in the King William hotel that many’s the time I’ve seen Black
Jean drink whisky by the cupful and feed it to the bears. Yes, he was
interesting, especially to us boys.
Along about the time the French-Canadian and his trick animals were
getting to be an old story, there comes—begging your pardon—a Yankee,
who said he would put up a windmill at Morgan’s Cove if he could get the
quicklime to make the mortar with.
Black Jean said he knew how to make lime and if they would give him
time he would put up a kiln. So the French-Canadian went to work and built
that limekiln you see standing there.
I was a youngster then, and I know how Black Jean, a little later, built his
cabin. I used to hide and watch him and his bears. They worked like men

together, with an ugly-looking woman that had joined them. They put up
the cabin, the bears doing most of the heavy lifting work.
The place he picked for the cabin—over there where that clump of
trees.... No, not that way—more to the right, half a mile about—that place is
called “Split Hill,” because there is a deep crack in the rock made by some
earthquake. The French-Canadian built his cabin across the crack, and as
the woman quarreled with him about the bears sleeping in the cabin he
made a trap-door in the floor of the building and stuck a small log down it,
so the bears could climb up and down from their den below.
The kiln, you can see for yourself, is a pit-kiln, so called because it is in
the side of a hill and the limestone is fed from the top and the fuel from the
bottom. Like a big chimney it works, and when Black Jean got the fire
started and going good it would roar up through the stone and cook it. You
could see the blaze for a mile.
One day Black Jean came to the King William looking for that Yankee.
Seems that individual hadn’t paid for his lime. When Black Jean didn’t find
him at the tavern he started for the Cove.
I have never known who struck first; but they say the Yankee called
Black Jean a damn frog-eater and there was a fight; and that afternoon the
French-Canadian came to the tavern with his bears and all three of them got
drunk. Black Jean used to keep a muzzle on the larger of the bears, but by
tilting the brute’s head he could pour whisky down its throat. They got
pretty drunk, and then someone dared Black Jean to wrestle the muzzled
bear.
There was a big tree standing in front of the tavern, and close by was a
worn-out pump having a big iron handle. Black Jean and the bear went at it
under the tree, the two of them clinching and hugging and swearing until
they both gasped for air. This day the big bear was rougher than usual, and
Black Jean lost his temper. It was his custom when he got in too tight a
place to kick the bear in the stomach; and this time he began using his feet.
Suddenly we heard a rip of clothing. The bear had unsheathed his claws;
they were sharp as razors and tore Black Jean’s clothing into shreds and
brought blood. Black Jean broke loose, his eyes flashing, his teeth gritting.
Like lightning, he grabbed his dirk and leaped at the brute and jabbed the

knife into its eye and gave a quick twist. The eyeball popped out and hung
down by shreds alongside the bear’s jaw.
Never can I forget the human-sounding shriek that bear gave, and how
my father caught me up and scrambled behind the tree as the bear started
for Black Jean. But the animal was near blinded, and Black Jean had time to
jerk the iron handle out of the pump; and then, using it as if it didn’t weigh
any more than a spider’s thought, he beat the bear over the head. He
knocked it cold.
Then my father said: “That bear will kill you some day, Jean.”
Black Jean stuck the iron pump handle back into its place.
“Bagosh! you t’ink dat true?” he sneered. “Mebbe I keel her, eh?”
Our place was next to the piece where Black Jean lived, and it was only
next morning we heard a loud yelling over at Split Hill. I was a little fellow
but spry, and when I reached Black Jean’s cabin I was ahead of my father. I
saw the French-Canadian leaning against a stump all alone, the blood
streaming from his face.
“By God, M’sieu!” he blurted, when my father came up. “She scrat’ my
eye out.”
My father thought he meant the woman.
“Who did?” he asked.
“Dat dam’ bear,” said Black Jean. “She just walk up an’ steeck her foots
in my eye.”
Father caught hold of Black Jean and helped him to the cabin.
“Which bear was it?” he asked.
Black Jean slumped forward without answering. He had fainted.
I helped father get him into the house—he was more than one man could
carry—and just as we went inside there was a growling and snarling, and
the big muzzled bear went sliding down that pole to her nest.
Well, we looked all around for the woman, expecting to get her help; but
we couldn’t find her, which was the first we knew that she had left Black
Jean.

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

THAT fall the settlers opened up the first school in the district and imported
a woman teacher from “The States.”
I must tell you about that teacher. She was a thin, little mite of a thing
that you would think the wind would blow away. Some said she was pretty
and some that she wasn’t. I could have called her pretty if her eyes hadn’t
been so black—hereabouts you don’t see many eyes that are black—brown,
maybe, and blue and gray, but not black. Fact is, there were just two people
in these parts having those black eyes: Black Jean and the little mite of a
school teacher.
Well she came. And she hadn’t been here a month before it was noticed
that Black Jean was coming to town more regular. And, what is more, he
was coming down by the school and waiting around there with his bears.
This went on. They say that at first she didn’t pay any attention to him,
but I can’t speak for that as I was too young. But in time there was talk and
it came to me: then I watched. And I remember one afternoon after the
teacher let us out we all went over to where the bears were. The teacher
followed.
Black Jean was grinning and showing his white teeth.
“Beautiful ladee,” says he. “Sooch eyes, mooch black like the back of a
water-bug.”
Teacher smiled and said something I couldn’t understand. It must have
been French. I had never seen a Frenchman around women before, and
Black Jean’s manners were new to me. Here was a big weed of a man

bowing and scraping and standing with his cap in his hand. We boys
laughed at that—holding his cap in his hand.
The long and short of it was the French-Canadian was sparking the
school teacher. And everybody talked about it, of course; they said it was a
shame; they said if she didn’t have sense enough to see what kind of a man
he was, someone should tell her.
I have often wondered since what would have happened if anybody had
gone to that woman with stories of Black Jean. I know I’d never dared to,
because, without knowing why, I was afraid of her. I guess maybe that is
why the others didn’t, either.
There was no mistaking she was encouraging to Black Jean. She didn’t
seem to object in the slightest to his attentions, and I can see them yet: her,
little and pretty and in a white dress, and Black Jean lingering there with his
bears, dirty, and towering head and shoulders above her.

BLACK JEAN kept coming and people went on talking, and finally
somebody said she had been to Split Hill.
And one day I began to understand it, too. It was the time she was
punishing some pupils. Three of them were lined up before her, and she
started along whacking the outstretched hands with a stout ruler. Right in
front of where I was sitting stood Ben Anger. He was the smallest of the lot
and was trembling like a leaf.
Her first clip at him must have raised a welt on his hands, because he
whimpered. She hit him again, and he closed his fingers. At that she caught
up the jackknife he’d been whittling at his desk with and pried at his fingers
until the blood came.
Sitting where I was, I saw her face while she was at it. It had the
expression of a female devil. I didn’t say anything to my folks about that;
but I wasn’t surprised when word came next week that we were to have a
new teacher—the little one had gone to live with Black Jean.

Well, there was more talk—talk of rail-riding the pair of them out of the
district. But nothing was done, and one evening, a month later, there was a
rap at our door and the French-Canadian staggered in. He was carrying the
school teacher in his arms.
“What has happened?” my father demanded.
“Dat dam’ leetle bear,” snarled Black Jean—“She try to keel Madam.”
He laid the woman on the bed. She looked pretty badly cut up, and we
sent for the doctor. Mother would only let her stay in the house that night,
being shocked at the way she was living with the French-Canadian.
It turned out she wasn’t much hurt, and father kept trying to find out just
what had happened. But he couldn’t. I knew, however. Most of my time,
when I wasn’t in school or running errands for the folks, I was spending
watching that couple, and only that afternoon I had seen her stick a hot
poker into the side of the smaller bear and wind it up into his fur until he
screamed. And the bear must have bided his time and gone for her—those
brutes were just like folks.
Next morning Black Jean came and got his woman, and I stole out and
followed. I knew there would be more to it. I was right. The two of them
went into the cabin, and pretty soon I heard a rumpus and out comes Black
Jean with the smaller bear and behind them the woman. She was carrying a
cowhide whip.
The French-Canadian had a chain looped about each forepaw of the
animal, and, pulling it under a tree, he tossed the free end of the chain over
a stout branch and yanked the bear off his feet. Then he wound the end of
the chain about the trunk of the tree and sat down. So the bear hung, his feet
trussed, and squirming and helpless.
And there in that clear day and warm sunshine, the woman started at the
bear with the whip. She lashed it until it cried like a child. Black Jean
watched the proceedings and grinned.
“Bah!” he shouted, after the woman had begun to tire. “She t’ink you
foolin’. Heet harder. Heet the eyes!”
Again the woman went at it and kept it up until the bear quit moaning,
and its head drooped and its body got limp. I was feeling sick at the sight,

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

THAT woman was a fair mate for Black Jean.
She kept him working steady over here to this kiln—most any night you
could see the reflection of the blaze—and it was something to watch Black
Jean when he was feeding his fire with the light playing on that copper
piece and making it look like a big red eye flashing in the night. I saw it
many times.
And it was noticed that Black Jean wasn’t getting drunk any more, and he
wasn’t wrestling the one-eyed bear any more. He had good reason for that. I
began to believe Black Jean was afraid of that brute.
But he made it work for him in the kiln, using the whip, and it was a
curious animal, growling and snarling most of the time, as it pulled and
lifted big sticks of wood and lugged them to the kiln.
When Black Jean wasn’t working he was over at the cabin where he
would follow the woman around like a dog. She could make him do
anything. She was getting thinner and crosser, and I was more afraid of her
than ever I was of Black Jean.
Once she caught me watching her from my spying-place in a tree. She
had been petting the one-eyed bear, rubbing his snout and feeding him
sugar. She ran to the house and got a rifle and, my friends, I came down out
of that tree lickety split.
When I reached the ground she didn’t say a word—just let her eyes rest
on mine. After that I was more careful.

THEN something happened.

I was hoeing corn one afternoon in a field next the road when I spied a
woman coming along from the village. She was big and blowsy and was
wearing a shawl. I knew she was headed for Black Jean’s, because she
climbed through the fence on his side of the road.
Keeping her in sight, I followed along my side and crossed over when I
came to a place where she couldn’t see me. I followed her because I knew
she was the woman who had come to Black Jean when he first landed in the
district. She walked up to the cabin, and I was wondering who she would
find home, when out comes Black Jean.
“Sacre!” he exclaimed, putting one hand to his eye. “Spik queeck! Ees it
Marie?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I have come back.”
Black Jean looked around fearfully.
“Wat you want?” he demanded.
“I’d like to know who knocked your eye out,” she laughed.
Black Jean did not laugh.
“You steal hunder’ dollar from me an’ run ’way,” he snarled. “Bagosh!
You give me dat monee.”
“You fool!” said the woman. “You think I don’t know where you got that
money? You killed—”
A sound of rustling leaves in the wood nearby interrupted.
“Ssh!” hissed Black Jean, his face blanching. “For de love o’ God, nod so
loud.”
He listened a moment; then his expression grew crafty. His teeth showed,
and he went close to the woman and said something and started into the
cabin.
The next instant I knew someone else had seen them. It was no other than
the little ex-school teacher—and she was running away! I lay still a
moment, scared out of my wits. Then I went home.
“Did you see Black Jean’s wife?” my mother asked.

“You mean the school teacher woman?” I said.
“Yes,” my mother said. “Who else?”
“I did,” I said, “a while ago.”
“I mean just now,” said my mother, breathing quick. “She rushed in here,
right into the house, and before I could stop her she snatched your father’s
rifle from the wall and ran out.”

I DIDN’T wait to hear more.
I set off through the fields for Black Jean’s. Before I had run half the
distance, I heard shooting, and it was father’s rifle—I knew the sound of her
only too well.
When I got to my spying-place it was all quiet at Black Jean’s. I could
not see a thing stirring about the cabin.
Then I thought of mother and started home. Father had gone over to the
Cove that morning, with a load of wheat for the Yankee’s mill, and wasn’t
to get back until late. So mother and I waited.
It was nearly one o’clock in the morning when we heard father’s wagon,
and I rushed outside.
“Hello, son,” he exclaimed. “You’re up late. And here’s mother, too.”
Father listened to what we told him, without saying a word.
“Well,” he said, when we had finished. “I don’t really see anything to
worry about. Black Jean can take care of himself. Look there!”
He was pointing over here to this limekiln.
“Jean’s had her loaded for a week,” said father, “waiting for better
weather.”
Later, in the house, my father said: “It is none of our business, anyway.”
And in a little he added, as if worried some: “But I am going over there
after my rifle.”

THE following Sunday—three days later—father and I went to Black
Jean’s to get the rifle.
The door of the cabin opened, and the little woman came out. She was
carrying the rifle. Somehow, she looked thin and old and her hands were
like claws. But her eyes were bright and as sharp as the teeth of a weazel
trap.
“I suppose,” she said, as cool as a cucumber and as sweet as honey, “you
have come after the rifle.”
“That is what,” said my father, sternly.
She handed it over.
“Please apologize to your wife for me,” she said, “for the sudden way I
took it. I was in a hurry. I saw a deer down by the marsh.”
“Did you get the deer?” I piped in.
“No,” she said. “I missed it.”
Father and I started away. But he stopped and called: “Where is Black
Jean this morning?”
“Black Jean!” she laughed. “Oh, he’s got another sweetheart. He has
gone away with her.”
“Good-day,” said father.
“Good-day,” said she.
And that was the end of that.
Neither Black Jean nor the big blowsy woman was ever seen again, nor
hide nor hair of them. But there was lots of talk. You see, there hadn’t been
any deer in these parts for many years; and besides it just was not possible
for so well known a character as Black Jean to vanish so completely,
without leaving a single trace.
Well, finally someone laid information in the county seat and over comes
a smart young chap. He questioned father and mother and made me tell him

all I knew, and took it all down in writing; then he gets a constable and goes
over and they arrest the little black-eyed woman.
There was no trouble about it. They say she just smiled and asked what
she was being arrested for—and they told her for the murder of Black Jean.
She didn’t say anything to that; only asked that someone feed the big one-
eyed bear during the time she was locked up.
Then the people started coming. They came on horseback, they came
afoot, they came in canoes, they came in lumber wagons—no matter how
far away they lived—and brought their own food along. I calculate near
every soul in the district turned out and made it a sort of general holiday
and lay-off, for certain it is that no one cared anything about Black Jean
himself.
Every inch of the land hereabouts was searched; they poked along the
entire length of that earthquake crack, and in the clearings, and in the bush,
looking for fresh-turned earth. But they could not find a thing—not a thing!
Now you gentlemen know that you can’t convict a person for murder
unless you have got positive proof that murder’s been done—the dead body
itself. Which was the case here, and that smart youth from the county seat
had to let the little woman go free. So she came back to the cabin, living
there as quiet as you please and minding her own precise business.

HERE is a pocket-piece I have had for some time. You can see for yourself
that it is copper.
It is the thing my father made for Black Jean to wear over his bad eye. I
found that piece of copper two years after the little woman died—near
twelve years after Black Jean disappeared. And I found it in the ashes and
stone at the bottom of the limekiln standing there, half-tumbled down.
A lot of people hereabouts say it doesn’t follow that Black Jean’s body
was burned in the kiln—cremated, I guess you city chaps would call it.
They can’t figure out how the mischief a little ninety-pound woman could
have lugged those two bodies after she shot them with my father’s rifle, the
distance from the cabin to the kiln—a good half mile and more.

They point out that the body of Black Jean must have weighed over two
hundred pounds, not to mention that the other woman was big and fat. But
they make me weary.
It is as simple as the nose on your face: The big one-eyed bear did the job
for her!

THE GRAVE

A Story of Stark Terror
By Orville R. Emerson
THE END of this story was first brought to my attention when Fromwiller
returned from his trip to Mount Kemmel, with a very strange tale indeed
and one extremely hard to believe.
But I believed it enough to go back to the Mount with “From” to see if
we could discover anything more. And after digging for awhile at the place
where “From’s” story began, we made our way into an old dugout that had
been caved in, or at least where all the entrances had been filled with dirt,
and there we found, written on German correspondence paper, a terrible
story.
We found the story on Christmas day, 1918, while making the trip in the
colonel’s machine from Watou, in Flanders, where our regiment was
stationed. Of course, you have heard of Mount Kemmel in Flanders: more
than once it figured in newspaper reports as it changed hands during some
of the fiercest fighting of the war. And when the Germans were finally
driven from this point of vantage, in October, 1918, a retreat was started
which did not end until it became a race to see who could get into Germany
first.
The advance was so fast that the victorious British and French forces had
no time to bury their dead, and, terrible as it may seem to those who have
not seen it, in December of that year one could see the rotting corpses of the
unburied dead scattered here and there over the top of Mount Kemmel. It

was a place of ghastly sights and sickening odors. And it was there that we
found this tale.
With the chaplain’s help, we translated the story, which follows:

“FOR two weeks I have been buried alive! For two weeks I have not seen
daylight, nor heard the sound of another person’s voice. Unless I can find
something to do, besides this everlasting digging, I shall go mad. So I shall
write. As long as my candles last, I will pass part of the time each day in
setting down on paper my experiences.
“Not that I need to do this in order to remember them. God knows that
when I get out the first thing I shall do will be to try to forget them! But if I
should not get out!...
“I am an Ober-lieutenant in the Imperial German Army. Two weeks ago
my regiment was holding Mount Kemmel in Flanders. We were surrounded
on three sides and subjected to a terrific artillery fire, but on account of the
commanding position we were ordered to hold the Mount to the last man.
Our engineers, however, had made things very comfortable. Numerous deep
dugouts had been constructed, and in them we were comparatively safe
from shell-fire.
“Many of these had been connected by passageways so that there was a
regular little underground city, and the majority of the garrison never left
the protection of the dugouts. But even under these conditions our
casualties were heavy. Lookouts had to be maintained above ground, and
once in a while a direct hit by one of the huge railway guns would even
destroy some of the dugouts.
“A little over two weeks ago—I can’t be sure, because I have lost track of
the exact number of days—the usual shelling was increased a hundred fold.
With about twenty others, I was sleeping in one of the shallower dugouts.
The tremendous increase in shelling awakened me with a start, and my first
impulse was to go at once into a deeper dugout, which was connected to the
one I was in by an underground passageway.

“It was a smaller dugout, built a few feet lower than the one I was in. It
had been used as a sort of a storeroom and no one was supposed to sleep
there. But it seemed safer to me, and, alone, I crept into it. A thousand times
since I have wished I had taken another man with me. But my chances for
doing it were soon gone.
“I had hardly entered the smaller dugout when there was a tremendous
explosion behind me. The ground shook as if a mine had exploded below
us. Whether that was indeed the case, or whether some extra large caliber
explosive shell had struck the dugout behind me, I never knew.
“After the shock of the explosion had passed I went back to the
passageway. When about half-way along it, I found the timbers above had
fallen, allowing the earth to settle, and my way was effectually blocked.
“So I returned to the dugout and waited alone through several hours of
terrific shelling. The only other entrance to the dugout I was in was the
main entrance from the trench above, and all those who had been above
ground had gone into dugouts long before this. So I could not expect
anyone to enter while the shelling continued; and when it ceased there
would surely be an attack.
“As I did not want to be killed by a grenade thrown down the entrance; I
remained awake in order to rush out at the first signs of cessation of the
bombardment and join what comrades there might be left on the hill.
“After about six hours of the heavy bombardment, all sound above
ground seemed to cease. Five minutes went by, then ten; surely the attack
was coming. I rushed to the stairway leading out to the air. I took a couple
of strides up the stairs. There was a blinding flash and a deafening
explosion.
“I felt myself falling. Then darkness swallowed everything.”

“HOW long I lay unconscious in the dugout I never knew.
“But after what seemed like a long time, I practically grew conscious of a
dull ache in my left arm. I could not move it. I opened my eyes and found

only darkness. I felt pain and a stiffness all over my body.
“Slowly I rose, struck a match, found a candle and lit it and looked at my
watch. It had stopped. I did not know how long I had remained there
unconscious. All noise of bombardment had ceased. I stood and listened for
some time, but could hear no sound of any kind.
“My gaze fell on the stairway entrance. I started in alarm. The end of the
dugout, where the entrance was, was half filled with dirt.
“I went over and looked closer. The entrance was completely filled with
dirt at the bottom, and no light of any kind could be seen from above. I
went to the passageway to the other dugout, although I remembered it had
caved in. I examined the fallen timbers closely. Between two of them I
could feel a slight movement of air. Here was an opening to the outside
world.
“I tried to move the timbers, as well as I could with one arm, only to
precipitate a small avalanche of dirt which filled the crack. Quickly I dug at
the dirt until again I could feel the movement of air. This might be the only
place where I could obtain fresh air.
“I was convinced that it would take some little work to open up either of
the passageways, and I began to feel hungry. Luckily, there was a good
supply of canned foods and hard bread, for the officers had kept their
rations stored in this dugout. I also found a keg of water and about a dozen
bottles of wine, which I discovered to be very good. After I had relieved my
appetite and finished one of the bottles of wine, I felt sleepy and, although
my left arm pained me considerably, I soon dropped off to sleep.
“The time I have allowed myself for writing is up, so I will stop for
today. After I have performed my daily task of digging tomorrow, I shall
again write. Already my mind feels easier. Surely help will come soon. At
any rate, within two more weeks I shall have liberated myself. Already I am
half way up the stairs. And my rations will last that long. I have divided
them so they will.”

“YESTERDAY I did not feel like writing after I finished my digging. My
arm pained me considerably. I guess I used it too much.
“But today I was more careful with it, and it feels better. And I am
worried again. Twice today big piles of earth caved in, where the timbers
above were loose, and each time as much dirt fell into the passageway as I
can remove in a day. Two days more before I can count on getting out by
myself.
“The rations will have to be stretched out some more. The daily amount
is already pretty small. But I shall go on with my account.
“From the time I became conscious I started my watch, and since then I
have kept track of the days. On the second day I took stock of the food,
water, wood, matches, candles, etc., and found a plentiful supply for two
weeks at least. At that time I did not look forward to a stay of more than a
few days in my prison.
“Either the enemy or ourselves will occupy the hill I told myself, because
it is such an important position. And whoever now holds the hill will be
compelled to dig in deeply in order to hold it.
“So to my mind it was only a matter of a few days until either the
entrance or the passageway would be cleared, and my only doubts were as
to whether it would be friends or enemies that would discover me. My arm
felt better, although I could not use it much, and so I spent the day in
reading an old newspaper which I found among the food supplies, and in
waiting for help to come. What fool I was! If I had only worked from the
start, I would be just that many days nearer deliverance.
“On the third day I was annoyed by water, which began dripping from
the roof and seeping in at the sides of the dugout. I cursed that muddy
water, then, as I have often cursed such dugout nuisances before, but it may
be that I shall yet bless that water and it shall save my life.
“But it certainly made things uncomfortable; so I spent the day in moving
my bunk, food and water supplies, candles, etc., up into the passageway.
For a space of about ten feet it was unobstructed, and, being slightly higher
than the dugout, was dryer and more comfortable. Besides, the air was
much better here, as I had found that practically all my supply of fresh air
came in through the crack between the timbers, and I thought maybe the

rats wouldn’t bother me so much at night. Again I spent the balance of the
day simply in waiting for help.
“It was not until well into the fourth day that I really began to feel
uneasy. It suddenly became impressed on my consciousness that I had not
heard the sound of a gun, or felt the earth shake from the force of a
concussion, since the fatal shell that had filled the entrance. What was the
meaning of the silence? Why did I hear no sounds of fighting? It was as still
as the grave.
“What a horrible death to die! Buried Alive! A panic of fear swept over
me. But my will and reason reasserted itself. In time, I should be able to dig
myself out by my own efforts. It would take time but it could be done.
“So, although I could not use my left arm as yet, I spent the rest of that
day and all of the two following days in digging dirt from the entrance and
carrying it back into the far corner of the dugout.
“On the seventh day after regaining consciousness I was tired and stiff
from my unwanted exertions of the three previous days. I could see by this
time that it was a matter of weeks—two or three, at least—before I could
hope to liberate myself. I might be rescued at an earlier date, but, without
outside aid, it would take probably three more weeks of labor before I could
dig my way out.
“Already dirt had caved in from the top, where the timbers had sprung
apart, and I could repair the damage to the roof of the stairway only in a
crude way with one arm. But my left arm was much better. With a day’s
rest, I would be able to use it pretty well. Besides, I must conserve my
energy. So I spent the seventh day in rest and prayer for my speedy release
from a living grave.
“I also reapportioned my food on the basis of three more weeks. It made
the daily portions pretty small, especially as the digging was strenuous
work. There was a large supply of candles, so that I had plenty of light for
my work. But the supply of water bothered me. Almost half of the small
keg was gone in the first week. I decided to drink only once a day.
“The following six days were all days of feverish labor, light eating and
even lighter drinking. But, despite all my efforts, only a quarter of the keg
was left at the end of two weeks. And the horror of the situation grew on

me. My imagination would not be quiet. I would picture to myself the
agonies to come, when I would have even less food and water than at
present. My mind would run on and on—to death by starvation—to the
finding of my emaciated body by those who would eventually open up the
dugout—even to their attempts to reconstruct the story of my end.
“And, adding to my physical discomfort, were the swarming vermin
infesting the dugout and my person. A month had gone by since I had had a
bath, and I could not now spare a drop of water even to wash my face. The
rats had become so bold that I had to leave a candle burning all night in
order to protect myself in my sleep.
“Partly to relieve my mind, I started to write this tale of my experiences.
It did act as a relief at first, but now, as I read it over, the growing terror of
this awful place grips me. I would cease writing, but some impulse urges
me to write each day.”

“THREE weeks have passed since I was buried in this living tomb.
“Today I drank the last drop of water in the keg. There is a pool of
stagnant water on the dugout floor—dirty, slimy and alive with vermin—
always standing there, fed by drippings from the roof. As yet I cannot bring
myself to touch it.
“Today I divided up my food supply for another week. God knows the
portions were already small enough! But there have been so many cave-ins
recently that I can never finish clearing the entrance in another week.
“Sometimes I feel that I shall never clear it. But I must! I can never bear
to die here. I must will myself to escape, and I shall escape!
“Did not the captain often say that the will to win was half the victory? I
shall rest no more. Every waking hour must be spent in removing the
treacherous dirt.
“Even my writing must cease.”

“OH, GOD! I am afraid, afraid!
“I must write to relieve my mind. Last night I went to sleep at nine by my
watch. At twelve I woke to find myself in the dark, frantically digging with
my bare hands at the hard sides of the dugout. After some trouble I found a
candle and lit it.
“The whole dugout was upset. My food supplies were lying in the mud.
The box of candles had been spilled. My finger nails were broken and
bloody from clawing at the ground.
“The realization dawned upon me that I had been out of my head. And
then came the fear—dark, raging fear—fear of insanity. I have been
drinking the stagnant water from the floor for days. I do not know how
many.
“I have only about one meal left, but I must save it.”

“I HAD a meal today. For three days I have been without food.
“But today I caught one of the rats that infest the place. He was a big one,
too. Gave me a bad bite, but I killed him. I feel lots better today. Have had
some bad dreams lately, but they don’t bother me now.
“That rat was tough, though. Think I’ll finish this digging and go back to
my regiment in a day or two.”

“HEAVEN have mercy! I must be out of my head half the time now.
“I have absolutely no recollection of having written that last entry. And I
feel feverish and weak.
“If I had my strength, I think I could finish clearing the entrance in a day
or two. But I can only work a short time at a stretch.
“I am beginning to give up hope.”

“WILD spells come on me oftener now. I awake tired out from exertions,
which I cannot remember.
“Bones of rats, picked clean, are scattered about, yet I do not remember
eating them. In my lucid moments I don’t seem to be able to catch them, for
they are too wary and I am too weak.
“I get some relief by chewing the candles, but I dare not eat them all. I
am afraid of the dark, I am afraid of the rats, but worst of all is the hideous
fear of myself.
“My mind is breaking down. I must escape soon, or I will be little better
than a wild animal. Oh, God, send help! I am going mad!”
“Terror, desperation, despair—is this the end?”

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

AND that was the end of the manuscript. There only remains to tell
Fromwiller’s tale.
At first, I didn’t believe it. But now I do. I put it down, though, just as
Fromwiller told it to me, and you can take it or leave it as you choose.

“Soon after we were billeted at Watou,” said Fromwiller, “I decided to go
out and see Mount Kemmel. I had heard that things were rather gruesome
out there, but I was really not prepared for the conditions that I found. I had
seen unburied dead around Roulers and in the Argonne, but it had been
almost two months since the fighting on Mount Kemmel and there were
still many unburied dead. But there was another thing that I had never seen,
and that was the buried living!
“As I came up to the highest point of the Mount, I was attracted by a
movement of loose dirt on the edge of a huge shell hole. The dirt seemed to
be falling in to a common center, as if the dirt below was being removed. As
I watched, suddenly I was horrified to see a long, skinny human arm
emerge from the ground.
“It disappeared, drawing back some of the earth with it. There was a
movement of dirt over a larger area, and the arm reappeared, together with a
man’s head and shoulders. He pulled himself up out of the very ground, as
it seemed, shook the dirt from his body like a huge, gaunt dog, and stood
erect. I never want to see such another creature!
“Hardly a strip of clothing was visible, and, what little there was, was so
torn and dirty that it was impossible to tell what kind it had been. The skin
was drawn tightly over the bones, and there was a vacant stare in the
protruding eyes. It looked like a corpse that had lain in the grave a long
time.
“This apparition looked directly at me, and yet did not appear to see me.
He looked as if the light bothered him. I spoke, and a look of fear came
over his face. He seemed filled with terror.
“I stepped toward him, shaking loose a piece of barbed wire which had
caught in my puttees. Quick as a flash, he turned and started to run from
me.
“For a second I was too astonished to move. Then I started to follow him.
In a straight line he ran, looking neither to the right or left. Directly ahead
of him was a deep and wide trench. He was running straight toward it.
Suddenly it dawned on me that he did not see it.
“I called out, but it seemed to terrify him all the more, and with one last
lunge he stepped into the trench and fell. I heard his body strike the other

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

A Fantastic Story
With An Odd Twist
At The End

Hark! The Rattle!
By Joel Townsley Rogers
WE SAT in the Purple Lily—Tain Dirk, that far too handsome young man,
with me.
I drank coffee; Tain Dirk drank liquor—secretly and alone. The night was
drenched with sweating summer heat, but I felt cold as ice. Presently we
went up to the Palm Grove Roof, where Bimi Tal was to dance.
“Who is this Bimi Tal, Hammer?” Dirk asked me, drumming his fingers.
“A woman.”
“You’re a queer one, Jerry Hammer!” said Dirk, narrowing his cold
yellow eyes.
Still he drummed his blunt fingers. Sharp—tat! tat! tat! Something deep
inside me—my liver, perhaps—shivered and grew white at hearing that
klirring sound.
I didn’t answer him right away. Slowly I sent up smoke rings to circle the
huge stars. We sat in a cave of potted palms close by the dancing floor. Over
us lay blue-black night, strange and deep. Yellow as roses were the
splotches of stars swimming down the sky.
“It shows you’ve been away from New York, Dirk, if you don’t know
Bimi Tal. She’s made herself more famous as a dancer than ever was
Ynecita. Some mystery is supposed to hang about her; and these simple
children of New York love mysteries.”

“I’ve been away three years,” said Dirk sulkily, his eyes contracting....
“That long? It was three years ago that Ynecita was killed.”
“Well?” asked Dirk. His finger-drumming droned away.
“I thought you might have known her, Dirk.”
“I?” His wide, thin lips twitched. “Why, Ynecita was common to half
New York!”
“But once,” I said, “once, it may be assumed, she was true to one man
only, Tain Dirk.”
“I’m not interested in women,” said Dirk.
That was like him. He drank liquor only—secretly and alone.
“I was interested in Ynecita, Dirk. We used to talk together—”
“She talked to you?” repeated Dirk.
“Strange how she died! No trace, no one arrested. Yet she’d had her
lovers. Sometimes I think, Dirk, we’ll find the beast who killed Ynecita.”
Tain Dirk touched my wrist. His blunt fingers were cold and clammy.
Incomprehensible that women had loved his hands! Yet they were artist’s
hands, and could mold and chisel. Wet clay, his hands!
“What makes you say that, Hammer?”
I looked up at the stars. “It was a beast who killed Ynecita, Dirk. Some
vile snake with blood as cold as this lemon ice. Those marks of teeth on her
upper arm! Deep in, bringing blood! What madman killed that girl? Mad, I
say!”
Dirk twisted. He wiped his brown forehead, on which sweat glistened in
little beads like scales. “Too hot a night to talk about such things, Hammer.
Let’s talk of something else. Tell me about this Bimi Tal.”
“You’ll see her soon enough,” I said, watching him. “A girl of about your
own age; you’re not more than twenty-four, are you?”
“Born first of January, ’99.”
“And famous already!”

“Yes,” said Tain Dirk. “I guess you’ve heard of me.”
“Oh, I’ve heard lots of you,” I said; and saw he didn’t like it.
“You’ve heard I’m fast with women, eh?” asked Dirk, after a pause.
“But Ynecita—”
“Why do you talk of her?” asked Dirk, irritably. “I never knew her.”
“Those marks of teeth on Ynecita’s arm—two sharp canines, sharp and
hooked; barely scratching the skin—like fangs of a snake, Dirk—”
Tain Dirk’s hand crept to his lips, which were thin, red, and dry. The light
in his eyes darkened from yellow to purple. Softly his blunt fingers began to
drum his lips. Tat! tat! tat! But silent as a snake in grass.
“A curious thing about teeth, Dirk—you’re a sculptor; maybe you’ve
observed it—a curious thing that no two are quite alike. We took prints,
Dirk, of those marks in the arm of Ynecita—”
Dirk’s thin lips opened. His coarsely-formed, but marvelously sensitive,
fingers felt the hardness of his teeth. That gesture was sly. At once he knew
I’d seen him. He crouched back in his chair, his strong, broad head drawn in
between his shoulders.
“Who are you?” he hissed.
Again the klirring of his fingertips—a dusty drumming.
“Why, I am only Jerry Hammer—a wanderer, and a soldier of bad
fortune.”
“Who are you!”
“Brother of Stella Hammer, who was known as Ynecita, the dancer.”
Upon the Palm Grove Roof, beneath those gigantic stars the orchestra
began to play. A brass and cymbal tune. The air was hot. From far in the pit
of streets rose up the noises of the city. Loud! Discord shot with flames. I
trembled.
Tain Dirk’s fingers drummed. His head commenced to sway.

II.

BIMI TAL danced barefooted on the glazed umber tiles of the Roof.
Her dark red hair was free on her naked shoulders. Stamp! stamp! stamp!
her feet struck flatly on the tiles. Her head was bent back almost to the level
of her waist. Bracelets jangled on her wrists and ankles.
“I am the daughter of the morning! I shout, I dance, I laugh
away....”
Shaking her clump of red hair; her strong muscled limbs weaving;
laughing at me with all her eyes. How like she looked to a man dead long
years before! How like her glances to the glances of Red Roane! On her
breasts two glittering shields of spangles. About her waist a kirtle seemingly
woven of long strands of marsh grass, rustling, shivering with whispers.
The sinews of her trunk and limbs rippled beneath her clear brown skin.
The head of Tain Dirk swayed sideways, slowly. The drumming of his
fingers on the table was a reiterative rattle. His eyes—liquid, subtle—dulled
with a look near to stupidity, then blazed to golden fire. Thin and wide were
his unsmiling lips. His tongue flicked them. Tat! tat! tat!
“She’s a beauty!” whispered Dirk.
His terrible eyes seemed to call Bimi Tal as they had called other women.
Mesmerism—what was it? Singing, she pranced toward the den of potted
palms where we were sitting. Her skirt rustled like the marshes. Wind of
summer.
Little searchlights, playing colored lights on Bimi Tal, grew darker. Red
and violet deepened to brown and green. Still the hot stars above us. In that
artificial paper Palm Grove, with the silky puffy women and the beefsteak-
guzzling men looking stupidly, was born the mystery of the great
savannahs.
Dirk’s head nodding. Dirk’s thin lips slowly opening. Dirk’s golden eyes
glimmering. Tat! tat! tat! Dirk’s steady fingers.
The great savannahs and the tropic marshes. Bimi Tal dancing. Stealthily,
the music softened from that brass and cymbal tune. It rustled. It crawled. It
reared fanged heads.

For a little while I did not see Bimi Tal nor Dirk, but the steamy
Everglades. Winter noon. Grass leaves silvered by sea-wind; puddles
stirring at the roots of the grasses. Silence booming like the loud silence of
death.
Bimi Tal was dancing her snake dance. Dirk’s lips quivered.
The marsh wind makes a little stir (it is the whispering flute.) The marsh
waters make a little moan (it is the violin).

III.

WHERE was the soul of Bimi Tal dwelling that tropic winter so many years
ago? On her mother’s breast, a little bud of love, crooned over with the song
of sleep? Or meshed in bleeding poinsettia or rose? Or a soul yet unborn?
I close my eyes. The vision does not fade. Florida; the marshlands; winter
noon. January’s first day, 1899. Where was lovely Bimi Tal on that stifling
day we saw the fanged thing coil, and death struck us there by Okechobee?
Your eyes, Bimi Tal, are the laughing eyes of Red Roane!...
Now the snake dance. The piccolo screams.
Life immortal in your glistening lips, Bimi Tal; in your deep bosom
promise of everlasting fecundity. Passion and power of the earth! Life is
immortal. Your laughing eyes, Bimi Tal, will never dull. Yet I saw Red
Roane die....
Beneath the shifting lights, Bimi Tal leaped and spun, scarcely treading
the floor. Her eyes sparkled at me. She did not see Tain Dirk. Stamp!
Stamp! Stamp! Her bare feet struck the tiles, tightening the muscles of her
calves. Her bangles rang.
I could not keep my eyes from Dirk. His broad brown-and-golden head
swayed continually. His thin lips worked, and I caught the flash of his teeth.
His eyes drowsed, then flashed open with sudden flame. Tat! tat! tat! The
rattling of his fingers was never still.
That swaying head! It was loaded with the wisdom of the serpent that
harkens to the wind, swaying with the marsh grass, winding its golden coils,

curving its neck to the sun—Hark! The rattle!
... Red is the sun. Two men plow through the marshes. O endless pain
(the harsh viol quivers), a life struggles in the womb. Who will die, and
what will die, that this new life may be born? Whimpering agony. And an
old crone singing a song....
All people who sat within the Palm Grove were hushed, watching Bimi
Tal. Fat hands fanning powdered breasts; silk handkerchiefs wiping ox
necks; sweat beneath armpits. Still heat. Far away thunder. The stars going
by.
Music swelled. Beneath its discord sounded a steady drumming rhythm.
The arms of Bimi Tal waved about her head. She shouted for joy of life.
The pale eyes of Dirk, basking in mystery, gleamed into fire, blazed up in
fury and hate undying! His dry lips opened. I saw his teeth.
... Through the breast-high grasses surge on the two marching men. Their
boots sough in the muck. (Softly strums the bass viol.) Something waiting
in the marshes! Something with golden eyes and swaying head. Hark! The
rattle! Beware, for death is in the path!...
Bimi Tal was close to Dirk, not seeing him. She laughed and waved her
jangling arms at me. Dirk’s eyes sparkled with madness, his lips were
tightened terribly. Bimi Tal was almost over him. His fingers drummed.
Louder played the music.
... Hark! The rattle! Gaily the two men plow through the bladed grasses.
The coiled thing waits, hate within its eyes. They are nearer—nearer!
(Drums begin to beat)....
In an avalanche of sound, crashed viol and violin, and stammering drum.
Dirk’s drawn head lunged upward with his shoulders, his lips opened and
lifted.
Venomous his look. Deathly his intensity.

IV.

STRONG and young, fresh from the Cuban wars, Red Roane and I went
north from the keys through the Everglades of Florida.
Through the fens as in God’s first day. Through the reptile age, alive yet
and crawling. Through strangling vegetation, which steams and rots beneath
eternal suns. Through the everlasting Everglades, with their fern and frond
and sorrowful, hoary cypress, Red Roane and I went north. Onward with
laughter. What joy lay in our hearts! We sang many songs.
Fern and flower embracing in fecundity. Grasses thick with sap.
Blossoms wilting at a touch. Mire teeming with creeping life. Above all, the
gay sun. Beneath all, the coiling serpent eyes and the opened fangs. Hark!
The rattle!
We sailed lagoons in crazy craft; dreamt on shady shores through sultry
noons; shouted to the dead logs on river banks till they took fear, and dived
and splashed away. We pitched our tents by black waters. We beat brave
trails through the fens.
“I’d like to stay here forever,” said Red Roane.
By what way I go, with what drinks I drink, in what bed I lie down, I
remember you who got your prayer, Red Roane—you who are in the
swamp grass and swamp water forever.
Beating our way slow and heavily, at high noon, of the new year’s first
day in 1899, near Okechobee in the marshes, came we two on a hidden hut.
It was fashioned of the raff of the slough—dead fronds, rotting branches,
withered marsh grasses. Its sad gray-green were in the living wilderness
like a monument to death. Better the naked swamp. Better the clean
quagmire for bed.
An old crone, moaning within that dreary hut, drowned out the sharp,
short gasps of another woman. Red Roane came up singing, slapping his
deep chest, swinging his muscular arms. Sunlight on his brown face, and
sunlight in his red hair. At the hut’s door, facing us, lounged a man with
yellow eyes. Poor white trash. A gun was in his arm’s crook. He spat
tobacco juice at the earth. There was loathing, murder venom in his face!
Red Roane faltered back from that stare. He stopped short, and laughter
left him. His brave eyes were troubled by that madman’s hate. Yellow eyes
staring—eyes of a rattlesnake!

An old Indian crone peered out beneath the crooked elbow of the ruffian
in the doorway, she who had been dolorously singing. With a scream, she
thrust out her skinny old arm, pointing it at Red Roane.
“He dies!” she screamed. “We want his soul!”
Another woman, hidden, moaning within the hut; a woman in her travail.
New life from the womb—a life must die! I grasped the arm of Red Roane.
“Come away!” I said, “Come away from these mad witches!”
In three steps that gray-green hovel was hidden in the cypresses. A dream
it seemed. But we could yet hear the old witch woman singing. Something
dragged at our heels, and it was not suction of the muck.
Toe to heel, Red Roane paced me, and we sang a song together. A
crimson flower, short-stemmed, yellow-hearted, was almost beneath my
boot. I stooped—who will not stoop to pick a crimson wild flower? A
rattling, like the shaking of peas. A klirring like the drumming of a man’s
fingertips. Hark! The rattle!
A yawning head flashed beneath my hand, striking too low. Heavy as a
hard-flung stone, the snake’s head struck my ankle; yawning gullet, white-
hooked fangs of the deathly rattlesnake. Out of the crimson flower that
beast of gold and brown. Its yellow eyes flickered. Its thin lips were dry.
How near I had touched to death!
“Thank God for those heavy boots, Jerry!”
With blazing eyes the snake writhed, coiling for another strike. Its sharp
tail, pointed upward, vibrated continuously with dusty laughter. Its golden
rippling body was thick as my arm.
Red Roane swung down his heavy marching stock. Crash! Its leaden end
struck that lunging mottled head. Halted in mid-strike, that evil wisdom
splattered like an egg, brain pan ripped wide.
The rattler lashed in its last agony, its tremendously muscular tail beating
the ground with thumping blows, its yellow eyes still blazing with hate, but
closing fast in doom.
I tried to say “Thanks, Red!”

Some mesmerism in those yellow, dying eyes! Shaking with disgust, Red
Roane bent above that foul fen watcher, put down his hand to pick up that
stricken skin, over whose eyes thin eye-membrane already lowered in
death.
“Don’t touch it, Red! Wait till the sun goes down.”
Hark! The rattle! Those opaque eyes shuttered back. Those yellow
glances, though in mortal pain, were still furious and glistening. Those
horny tail-bells clattered. Fangs in that shattered, insensate head yawned,
closing in Red Roane’s arm above the wrist.
I see him. Sweat upon his broad brown forehead; his laughing eyes
astounded; his thick strong body shivering; wind stirring up his dark red
hair. Behind him the brown-green marshes, grasses rippling, a stir going
through their depths. His cheeks had never been so red.
Before I could move, he unlocked those jaws and hollow fangs, gripped
hard in his arm with mortal rigor. He shivered now from the knees. His face
went white.
“Cut!” he whispered. “I’ll sit down.”
With hunting knife I slashed his arm, deep driving four crossed cuts. He
laughed, and tried to shout. Howling would have been more pleasant. I
sucked those wounds, out of which slow blood was spouting from an artery.
We panted now, both of us. He leaned heavily on my shoulder—he, the
strong. I bound his arm, my own fingers so numb I fumbled at the work.
Sweat on Red Roane’s face was cold, and cold his wrists.
My arms clung about him. He swayed, almost toppling, clutching at grass
stems with fading laughter. I picked up his marching stock and beat that
golden, gory thing within the mire. Beat it till clay-white flesh, and bone
and skin were one with the mucky mire of the swamp. But still its heart
ebbed with deep purple pulsing. A smashing blow, and that, too, died.
“It’s over!” Grimly I flung the bloody stave into the swaying grass.
“Yes, Jerry,” whispered Red Roane, “it’s nearly over.”
I could not believe it. Red Roane, the strong man, the shouter, the singer,
the gay-hearted lover! Is death then, so much stronger than life?

“A woman, Jerry,” he whispered, “in Havana—Dolores! She dances—”
“For God’s sake, Red, wake up!”
“Dances at the—”
“Red! Red Roane! I’m here, boy!”
Out from the way, whence we had come, faintly I heard a cry. Who wept
thus for the soul departing, sang paean for the dead? Was it wind over the
stagnant grasses? Frail in the solitude, rose that wail again. The whimper of
new-born life! In the squatter’s hut the child had found its soul!
“Dolores!” whispered Red Roane. Beneath that brazen sky he whispered
the name of love. “Dolores!”
Past a hundred miles of swamp, past a hundred miles of sea, did Dolores,
the dancer, hear him calling her?
“Dolores!”
I hope she heard, for he was a lad, though wild.
With a throat strangling in sobs, I sang to Red Roane. His eyes were
closed, yet he heard me. Old campaign songs, songs of the march and the
bivouac. Marchers’ tunes.
Then he whispered for a lullaby, and, last of all, for a drinking song.

V.

BIMI TAL had danced up to us—Bimi Tal, daughter of Red Roane and of
Dolores, the dancer.
She laughed and tossed her dark red hair. Her broad nostrils sucked in the
hot night wind.
“I am the daughter of the morning!
I shout, I dance. I laugh away.
Follow, lover! Hear my warnings.
I, the laugher, do not stay....”
Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Her body rippled. She cast her eyes at me.

Tain Dirk’s head was rising. His thin, dry, red lips opened wide. His
golden eyes burned with undying hate. Tat! tat! tat! his fingers drummed.
“In a minute, Jerry,” whispered Bimi Tal, not pausing from her dance.
Her lovely eyes looked downward, seeing Dirk. She screamed. The
music silenced. She struck her arm at him, not knowing what she did.
Mad! the Man was mad! His jaw was opened wide. He bit her arm above
the wrist.
Before the rush of frantic people had fallen over us, I struck his
venomous face. With both fists, blow on blow. Blood came from his
damned lips.
What madness had seized him I don’t know. Likely it was memory
surging back through dead life—the venom of the rattler, hate undying. But
of that, who can say? A strange thing is memory.
Yet I knew for sure that to him, the mad sculptor, born in that hut in the
hot savannahs, had passed the soul of the dying rattlesnake.
Hands dragged me back from him. I shouted and tore. He quivered,
wounded heavily. His nervous fingers faintly clattered on the table,
drumming with dreadful music. Police came in.
“Look!” I shouted to them. “Look at those marks of teeth on Bimi Tal’s
wrist. Two deep fangs. There’s the man who killed Ynecita, the dancer!”

A “Spooky” Tale With a
Grim Background

The
GHOST GUARD
By BRYAN IRVINE
IF EVERY one of the sixty guards and officials at Granite River Prison had
been asked for the name of the most popular guard on the force, there
would have been sixty answers—“Asa Shores.” If each of the fifteen
hundred convicts in the prison had been asked which guard was most
disliked by the convicts, fifteen hundred answers would have been the same
—“Asa Shores!”
If some curious person had asked of each convict and each guard, “Who
is considered the most desperate, the hardest, the shrewdest criminal in the
prison?” the answer would have been unanimous, “Malcolm Hulsey, the
‘lifer.’”
True, it does not seem reasonable that Asa Shores should be liked by
every guard and official and disliked by every convict. To those not familiar
with the duties of prison guards it would seem that Asa Shores’ method of
handling the convicts, if disapproved of by fifteen hundred convicts, would
surely be disapproved of by at least one of the sixty guards. But the
explanation is simple.
Asa Shores’ great great-grandfather had followed the prisons as mariners
follow the seas. Then Asa’s grandfather took up the work and followed it,
with an iron hand and an inflexible will, until one day a cell-made knife in
the hands of a long-time “con” entered his back at a point where his

suspenders crossed, deviating enough to the left to pierce his heart. Came
next Asa Shores’ father, who went down in attempting to quell the famous
Stromberg break of 1895.
Asa, therefore, his prison methods impelled perhaps by heredity, looked
upon every wearer of gray behind the walls as a convict, nothing more,
nothing less. He neither abused or favored any convict. A one-year man was
to Asa a convict and no better than the man who was serving a life sentence.
The crime for which any convict was sent up was of little moment to
Asa; neither did he bother about who among the inmates were considered
desperate. The fact that a man wore prison gray was sufficient, whether he
be a six-months sneak-thief or a ninety-nine-year murderer.
When Asa shot and killed Richard (“Mutt”) Allison, when the latter
attempted to escape, the warden had said:
“There was really no need of killing that half-witted short-termer, Asa.
He was doing only a year and was perfectly harmless. A shot in the leg or
foot would have been better.”
And Asa’s reply had been:
“I had no idea who the man was, though I have seen him dozens of times,
and I did not know how long he was doing. But I would have made no
difference if I had known. He was a convict, sir, and he was attempting to
escape. If he was only half-witted, as you say, he should have been in the
insane asylum, not in the penitentiary.”
So that was that.
If Asa ever gave a convict a smile it had never been recorded. It is a
known fact that he was never seen to frown upon a convict. He was, in
short, the smileless, unyielding personification of “duty,” and every convict
hated him for what he was. When Asa shot he shot to kill—and he never
missed. Four little white crosses on the bleak hillside near the prison
proclaimed his flawless marksmanship.
Why was this big sandy-haired, steel-blue-eyed, middle-aged Asa Shores
liked by his brother guards? There were many reasons why. It was as if
Asa’s unnatural, cold, vigilant, unfeeling attitude toward the convicts was
offset each day when he came off duty by a healthy, wholesome desire to

drop duty as a work-horse sheds an irritating harness. He was the life of the
guards’ quarters; a big good-natured, playful fellow, who thoroughly
enjoyed a practical joke, whether he be the victim of the joke or the
instigator. If he had a temper he had never allowed it to come to the surface.
He excelled in all sports in the gymnasium, and somewhere, somehow, he
found more funny stories than any other man on the force. The trite old
saying that “he would give a friend the shirt off his back” fitted him like a
new kid glove. He gave freely to his friends, and, in giving, seemed to find
real joy.
After twelve years’ service on the guardline, Asa was still an ordinary
wall guard. This would seem discouraging to many; but not so to Asa. It
was not generally known that he drew a larger salary than did the other wall
guards. He was an excellent wall guard. Hence, he was kept on the wall,
while newer men on the force were promoted to better positions. But Asa
drew the salary of a shift captain and was therefore content.
He did not even seem to mind when he was taken from comfortable
Tower Number One, morning shift, and detailed permanently to Tower
Number Three on the “graveyard” shift at night from eight P. M. to four A.
M. This change was deemed necessary for several reasons. First, because
Asa positively refused to discriminate between short-termers and long-
termers, or desperate men and harmless “nuts,” when using his rifle to stop
a “break” or the attempt of a single convict to escape.
The men being locked in their cells at night, Asa, as a night guard, would
have little opportunity to practice rifle shooting with a running convict as
the target. Another reason for detailing him to Tower Number Three was
because trouble was expected some night at that point in the yard, and with
sure-fire Asa on the job the officials felt that any attempt of the convicts to
escape would be promptly frustrated.
One of Asa’s wholesome habits, when no convicts were near him, was
singing. It was not singing, really, but Asa thought it was and he shortened
the long, lonesome hours at night on Tower Number Three with songs—
song, rather, because he knew and sang but one. It was not a late or popular
song, and, as Asa sang it, it sounded like the frogs that croak in the marshes
at night:

“When I die and am buried deep,
“I’ll return at night to take a peep
“At those who hated me.
“I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep,
“Chill their blood; the skin will creep
“On those who hated me.”

Not a pretty song; nor did it make cheerful those guards who passed near
Tower Number Three while making the night rounds. But Asa loved that
song.

IT WAS while the wall was being extended another two hundred feet to
make room within the inclosure for a new cell house that Asa shot the
“lifer,” Malcolm Hulsey.
The end wall, extending from Tower Number Three to Tower Number
Four, had been torn down and the stones moved two hundred feet farther
south to be used on the new wall. A temporary barbed-wire fence had been
erected about the area in which the convicts worked on the new wall. Extra
armed guards were stationed at intervals of fifty feet outside the inclosure to
guard the working convicts.
Malcolm Hulsey had successfully feigned illness one day and was
allowed to remain in his cell. Cell house guards had seen him lying in his
bunk, only the top of his head showing above the blankets. At lock-up time
the cell house guards making the count, saw a foot protruding from under
the blankets in Hulsey’s bunk and what they believed to be the top of his
head showing at the head of the bed.
At ten-fifteen that night the eagle-eyed Asa Shores, on Tower Number
Three, saw a dark figure slip under the lower wire of the temporary fence
and run. Asa fired once and saw the man fall.
Then Asa, to comply with the prison rules, yelled “halt!” The command,
of course, was needless, Hulsey having halted abruptly when a thirty-thirty
rifle ball plowed through his shoulder.

After the convict had been carried to the hospital, his cell was opened by
the curious guards. A cleverly carved wooden foot protruded from under the
blankets at the foot of the bed, several bags of old clothing reposed under
the blankets and a thatch of black horse-hair showed at the head of the bed.
Before Hulsey left the hospital the new wall was completed. Tower
Number Four, across from Tower Number Three, had been torn down and a
new Tower Number Four built on the new corner of the wall, two hundred
feet farther south. On the other corner, across from New Tower Number
Four, was New Tower Number Three. Old Tower Number Three was left
standing until further orders. Asa Shores remained on the graveyard shift on
Old Tower Number Three.
While off duty one day Asa, prowling about inside the walls, met
Malcolm Hulsey. The “lifer” was still a bit pale and weak from the gunshot
wound.
“One thing I’d like to have you explain, Mr. Shores,” said Hulsey. “You
plugged me in the shoulder, then yelled ‘halt!’ Why didn’t you command
me to stop before firing?”
“Well, it was this way, Hulsey,” Asa replied, unsmiling and looking the
convict squarely in the eye. “I aimed at the spot where I calculated your
heart ought to be, but the light was poor and I had to shoot quick. I naturally
supposed you were dead when I commanded you to halt, and, believing you
dead, I could see no reason for being in a hurry with the command. Sorry I
bungled the job that way, but my intentions were good.”
“But,” the scowling “lifer” persisted, “you haven’t told me yet why you
shot before commanding me to halt.”
“Oh, that?” Asa drawled with a deprecatory shrug of his massive
shoulders. “That is merely a matter of form with me. I very often, after
shooting a convict, yell ‘halt’ some time the next day—or week. Besides, if
you had a nice chance to bump me off, you wouldn’t say, ‘Beware, Mr.
Shores, I’m about to kill you.’”
For a half minute convict and keeper gazed into each others eyes.
“I get yuh,” Hulsey finally said. “And I guess you’re right. I have an
idear though that my turn comes next, Mr. Shores; and there’ll be no
preliminary command or argument.”

“Fair enough, Hulsey,” Asa replied as he turned away.

AT LAST the big new cell house was completed.
Asa wondered whether he would be left on Old Tower Number Three. It
had been decided, he knew, that the old tower would be left on the wall but
perhaps not used.
To celebrate the completion of the new building, the warden declared a
holiday and issued orders that all the inmates be given the privilege of the
yard that day. There was to be wrestling, boxing, foot-racing and other
sports.
Asa Shores’ sleeping quarters was a low-ceilinged room on the ground
floor in one of the towers of the old cell house. Asa had been warned a
number of times that his room was not a safe place to sleep in the day time.
Convicts in the yard could enter the room at any time during the day,
without being seen by the yard guards or wall guards. Though the one door
to the room was thick and heavy, Asa seldom if ever locked it.
Asa had risen in the afternoon, complaining to himself about the noise
being made by the convicts in the yard. His peevishness vanished, however,
after a cold wash, and he sang as he stood looking out at one of the
windows and brushing his hair:

“When I die and am buried deep,
“I’ll return at night to take a peep
“At those who hated me.
“I’ll ha’nt their homes and spoil their sleep,
“Chill their blood, the skin will creep,
“On those who—”

Asa’s song ended there—ended in a horrible gurgle. A “trusty” found him
an hour later lying in a pool of blood near the open window.
His throat had been cut by a sharp instrument in the hand of a person
unknown.

Hulsey the “lifer” was questioned, of course, but there was absolutely
nothing to indicate that it was he who committed the murder.
The guards looked sadly upon all that remained of Asa Shores and said to
each other in hushed voices:
“It had to come. Asa was too good a convict guard not to be murdered.”
And though the prison stool pigeons kept their ears and eyes opened,
though each guard became a detective, the murder of Asa Shores remained
a mystery.
Old Tower Number Three was closed and the doors locked. There was no
immediate use for it; but the warden was contemplating the advisability of
having another guards’ entrance gate cut through the wall under the tower.
In this case, of course, the tower would be used again.

NIGHT Captain Jesse Dunlap sat alone in the guards’ lookout, inside the
walls, at one o’clock on the morning following the murder of Asa Shores.
Bill Wilton, the night yard guard, was making his round about the buildings
in the yard.
Captain Dunlap lazily watched the brass indicators on the report board
before him. The indicator for Tower Number One made a half turn to the
left and a small bell on the board rang. The captain lifted the receiver from
the telephone at his elbow and received the report, “Tower Number One.
Anderson on duty. All O. K.”
Dunlap merely grunted a response and replaced the receiver on the hook.
Presently the indicator for Tower Number Two turned to the left, the bell
tinkled, and Dunlap again took the receiver from the hook.
“Tower Number Two. Briggs on duty. All O. K.” came the report over the
wire.
Then came New Tower Number Three; next Tower Number Four. From
the three outside guard-posts came the reports, and one from the cell house,
each guard turning in his post number, his name and the usual “O. K.”

All the indicators on the board, except that for Old Tower Number Three,
were now turned. Captain Dunlap relaxed in his chair, sighed heavily and lit
his pipe. Lazily his eyes wandered back to the indicator board.
The unturned indicator for Old Tower Number Three held his gaze and
utter sadness gripped him for a moment. Night after night, promptly on the
hour, he had seen the indicator for Old Tower Number Three flip jauntily to
the left and had heard the tinkle of the little bell on the board. It had always
seemed to him that the indicator for Asa Shores’ tower turned with more
pep than the other indicators, that the bell had tinkled more cheerily, that
good old Asa Shores’ report carried a note of cheerfulness that lightened the
lonesome watches of the night.
Now the old tower was cold, even as poor old Asa was cold; the doors
were locked and barred. Never again, thought Dunlap, would be heard Asa
Shores’ familiar song on the quiet night air. What were the words to that
song?
“When I am dead and buried deep,
“I’ll return at night to take a peep
“At those who hated—”
Captain Dunlap suddenly sat erect in his chair. The pipe fell from his lips
and clattered on the floor, as his lower jaw dropped and his eyes opened
wide to stare at the indicator board; for—
The indicator for Old Tower Number Three was moving—moving, not
with a quick turn to the left, but in a hesitant, jerky way that caused the root
of every hair on Captain Dunlap’s head to tingle. Never before had the
captain seen an indicator behave like that. In fact, the indicator system was
designed and constructed in such a way that, being controlled by electric
contacts, the various indicators would snap into position when a push
button in each tower was pressed by the guard on duty in that tower.
In short, an indicator, in accordance with all the rules of electricity as
applied to the system, must remain stationary or jerk to the left when the
button in the tower was pressed. But here was indicator for Old Tower
Number Three wavering, trembling to the left, only to fall back repeatedly
to a vertical position. Then again, jerkily, hesitantly to the left, as if a
vagrant soul strove to brush aside the veil that banished it from the living.

Captain Dunlap sat rigid and watched the uncanny movements of the
bright brass indicator. Vague, fleeting, chaotic thoughts of crossed wires,
practical jokers, wandering souls tumbled one after another through his
brain.
If only the bell would not tinkle! If it did ring? Well, death then, though it
had taken away what was mortal of Asa Shores, had not conquered his
eternal vigilance and strict attention to duty.
Farther to the left wavered the indicator, hesitatingly, uncertainly, then—
the bell rang!
A weak, slow ring, it was, that sounded strange and unnatural in the
deathlike silence of the dimly lighted lookout.

CAPTAIN DUNLAP was a brave man. He had smilingly faced death a
dozen times in Granite River Prison.
But always his danger was known to be from living, breathing men.
Abject terror gripped him now; a nameless terror that seemed to freeze the
blood in his veins, contract every muscle and nerve of his body, smother his
heart.
But even then reasoning struggled for recognition in his mind. What if it
were a part of Asa Shores, a part of him that remained on earth to defy
death and carry on? Hasn’t Asa always been Captain Dunlap’s friend? Why
should he fear the spirit of a friend?
Dunlap reached forth a trembling hand, took the receiver from the hook
and slowly, reluctantly, placed it to his ear. How he wished, hoped, prayed
that no voice would come over the wire!
But it did come, preceded by a faint whispering sound:
“Old t-t-t-tow—” a long pause, then weakly, almost inaudibly, as if the
message came from a million miles away—“Old t-t-tower n-n-n—three. S-
S-Sho—”

Another pause, a jumble of meaningless words, then a chuckle. God!
Asa’s familiar chuckle!
“On duty. All O-O—all O—”
A light laugh, a sharp buzzing sound, a sigh, the faint tinkle of a bell,
then silence!
Dunlap heard no click of a receiver being replaced on a hook. The line
was apparently still open.
Still holding the receiver to his ear, the captain moistened his dry lips
with the tip of his tongue. His free hand went involuntarily to his forehead
in a vague uncertain gesture and came away damp with perspiration. Must
he answer that ghost call? Must he speak to the thing that held the line.
When he at last spoke his voice was husky, a strange voice even to him:
“Who—who did it, Asa? Who—who—if you are dead—if this is you,
Asa, tell me—who did it.”
Again that queer, unfamiliar buzzing sound. Then, from Old Tower
Number Three, or from beyond the grave perhaps, came a faint, whispering,
uncertain voice:
“He—he—it was....”
The voice ended in a gurgle.
Dunlap replaced the receiver on the hook, and as he did so his eyes rested
on the indicator board and he gasped sharply; for the indicator for Old
Tower Number Three went wavering, trembling back to a vertical position
on the time dial!
This unheard-of behavior of the indicator was the deepest mystery of all.
The indicators, each controlled independent of the others by push buttons in
each tower, were constructed mechanically to turn only from right to left.
The indicator for Old Tower Number Three had turned back from left to
right!

CAPTAIN DUNLAP made no effort to solve the mystery.
Old Tower Number Three was securely locked and could not be
approached except by crossing over the wall from New Tower Number
Three on the Southeast corner of the wall, or from Tower Number Two on
the Northeast corner of the wall. Dunlap himself had closed and locked the
doors and windows of the tower. There was but one key to the tower doors,
and that key was in Dunlap’s pocket.
Unlike the other towers, Old Tower Number Three could not be entered
from the ground outside the wall. It was built solidly of stone from the
ground up, and the only entrances were the two doors communicating with
the top of the wall on either side of the tower.
Besides, strict orders had been given that no one enter the tower unless
ordered there by a shift captain. And, too, in the glare of the arc lights near
the wall, it would be impossible for anyone to cross the wall to the tower,
without being seen by other wall guards.
Could the mysterious report have come from one of the other wall
towers? Impossible for this reason: When the push button in one of the wall
towers—say, that in Old Tower Number Three—was pressed by the man on
duty there, the indicator on the board in the captain’s lookout turned to the
left a quarter-turn on the time dial, the small bell on the board rang and all
telephone connections with the other wall towers were automatically cut off
until the captain had replaced the telephone receiver on the hook after
receiving the report from Old Tower Number Three.
Dunlap said nothing to Bill Wilton when the latter returned to the yard
lookout, after making his round in the yard. It would be best, he reasoned,
to say nothing to anybody about the mysterious call. They would only laugh
at him if he told them about it. If the indicator had not returned to a vertical
position on the time dial he would have some proof on which to base his
wild story of the ghost call. But the indicator had, before his own eyes,
returned to its former position after the call.
An hour later, at two A.M., Dunlap fearfully watched the indicator for
Old Tower Number Three. Reports from all other posts had been received.
Then, just once, the indicator trembled uncertainly, made almost a quarter

turn to the left and snapped back to a vertical position. At three o’clock it
did not move. Nor did it move at four o’clock.
A week passed. Not a tremor disturbed the “ghost tower” indicator.
Then, one morning at one-thirty o’clock, an unearthly, piercing scream in
the cell house awaked half the men in the building and sent the cell house
guard scurrying down to cell twenty-one on the corridor; for it was from
this cell that the blood-chilling scream had come.
The bloodless, perspiration-dampened face of Malcolm Hulsey, the
“lifer,” was pressed against the bars of the cell door when the guard arrived.
The convict’s great hands grasped the bars and his two-hundred-and-fifty-
pound bulk, clad in only a regulation undershirt, twitched, started and
trembled from head to foot. A horrible fear distended his eyes, his teeth
clicked together and the muscles of his face worked spasmodically.
“Sick, Hulsey?” the guard demanded, hardened to such nerve-shattering
outbursts in a building full of tortured souls.
“I saw—I saw—” Hulsey began, his teeth chattering and rendering
speech well-nigh impossible. “I saw—Oh, Mr. Hill, please give me a
cellmate—now, tonight! I—I’m a sick man, Mr. Hill. Nerves all shot to
pieces, I guess. Can’t I have a cellmate to talk to, Mr. Hill?”
“What did you see?” the guard asked.
“He was standing right where you are now,” Hulsey whispered hoarsely.
“Pointing his finger at me, he was, when I opened my eyes and saw him.
Smiling, too. I—I”—a violent shudder—“I could see through him, Mr. Hill;
could see the bars on that window beyond him. I—”
“Who? See who?” the guard interrupted.
Hulsey seemed to realize, then, that he was talking too much; that he was
not conducting himself as the hardest convict in the prison should.
“Why,” he stammered. “I saw—I thought I saw—an old pal o’ mine. He’s
been dead a long time. Nerves, I guess. Thinking too much about my old
pal and the good old days. Nightmare, I guess.”
“Yeah—nightmare is right!” the unsympathetic guard growled. “But
don’t let another blat like that out of you, or we’ll throw you into a padded

cell. Got the whole wing stirred up. Get to bed now and forget that good old
pal of yours.”
“If I only could!” Hulsey whispered huskily to himself, as he got back
into the bunk.

TWO WEEKS passed.
There were no more outbursts from cell twenty-one. The “ghost tower”
on the wall was silent, cold.
Then, at two o’clock one morning, Captain Dunlap saw the indicator
move. It sickened him, made him wish ardently that he was a thousand
miles from Granite River Prison.
The indicator moved slowly, hesitantly, to the left and the bell tinkled
weakly. The captain placed the receiver to his ear, but no sound came; the
line was dead. The indicator fell back to its original position as the captain
replaced the receiver on the crotch.
A few minutes later the yard guard entered the lookout. Bill Wilton, the
regular yard guard on the graveyard shift, was away on leave and the
substitute guard was new at the prison.
“Didn’t I understand you to say, Mr. Dunlap,” the new guard said, “that
there was no one on Old Tower Number Three?”
“You sure did,” Dunlap answered.
The guard pulled his left ear and looked puzzled.
“Funny,” he finally remarked. “Was sure I heard somebody in that tower,
singing soft and low like, when I passed under it a few minutes ago.”
“What was he singing?” the captain asked, bending forward and fixing a
penetrating gaze on the recent arrival at the prison.
“Let me see now,” said the guard meditatively. “Couldn’t make out much
of the song. Something about ‘when I die in the ocean deep,’—No, that
wasn’t it. ‘When I die and am buried deep’—that’s it. Then there was

something in it about this dead guy coming back to ha’nt people, and a lot
of bunk like that.”
“I see,” said Dunlap, as he eased himself out of the chair. “I’m going up
and have a look around in that tower. You stay in here until I return.”
Dunlap went outside the walls and up through New Tower Number
Three, where he questioned Guard Jim Humphrey. Humphrey had not seen
or heard anything unusual in or about Old Tower Number Three.
Captain Dunlap, as he walked over the wall toward the ghost tower,
admitted frankly to himself that he was “scared stiff.” Pausing at the door,
he glanced nervously through the window.
The yard lights lit up the interior of the tower sufficiently to assure him
that no one—or “thing”—was inside. He unlocked the door and entered.
With a flashlight, he thoroughly examined the telephone. Dust had settled
on the instrument. The receiver and the transmitter had apparently not been
touched since Asa Shores left the tower. Dust had settled on the doorknobs
inside. That the knobs had not been touched since Shores’ death was
obvious. The one chair, the window-sills, the small washstand and wash
basin, all were covered with a thin, undisturbed film of fine dust.
There on the telephone battery box reposed Asa’s old corncob pipe and,
near it, a small box of matches. The window latches were just as Dunlap
had left them when he closed and securely locked the tower a month before.
It was a puzzled and nervous prison official that left the tower, relocked
the doors and returned to the inside lookout.
Next day Malcolm Hulsey, the “lifer” was admitted to the hospital. The
doctor’s diagnosis was “nervous breakdown.”

BUT HULSEY, though his nerves were all shot to pieces, was still capable
of shrewd plotting.
His admittance to the hospital had been hastened by a diet of soap.
Hulsey was so anxious to get far away from Granite River Prison, and was

so certain of his ability to do so if he could only be admitted to the hospital,
that he had resorted to the old but effective expedient of soap eating.
Soap, taken internally in small doses, will produce various baffling and
apparently serious physiological changes in the body. Hulsey looked sick
and felt sick, but he was not dangerously ill.
For many months Malcolm Hulsey had been watching closely the
movements of the night guards. During his stay in the hospital, while
recovering from the gunshot wound in his shoulder he had “doped out” a
possible means of escape, and he was on the point of making the attempt
when the doctor pronounced him sufficiently recovered to be returned to the
cell house.
The “lifer’s” plan of escape was simply this: At midnight, while Captain
Dunlap and his crew were on duty, the yard guard made his round, counted
the patients in the hospital and left the yard through the guards’ gate to eat
his lunch in the guards’ dining-room outside the walls. When the yard guard
returned to the inside lookout he carried with him a hot lunch for Captain
Dunlap.
In counting the men in the hospital, the yard guard did not as a rule enter
the building. He merely turned on the lights in the one large ward and
looked through the window. The convict hospital nurse on night duty stood
ready, and when the lights were turned on, proceeded from bed to bed and
partly uncovered each patient so that the yard guard outside could see and
count them.
There were several factors in Hulsey’s favor now, one being that a new
substitute guard was on duty over the guards’ entrance gate during the
absence of the regular guard who was away on vacation. There was only
one patient in the hospital besides Hulsey. The yard guard must be lured
into the hospital, overpowered, his uniform stripped from him, then Hulsey,
garbed in the uniform, would attempt to deceive the guard at the gate and be
given the keys.
At fifteen minutes to midnight, on Hulsey’s first day in the hospital, the
“lifer” quietly rose from his bed while the white-clad convict nurse’s back
was turned. Three minutes later the unsuspecting nurse had been neatly laid
out from a well-directed blow behind the ear, bound with sheets, gagged,

stripped of his white suit and tenderly tucked in the bed recently occupied
by Mr. Malcolm Hulsey.
The other patient, a feeble old convict, was gagged and tied down in his
bed with sheets. Hulsey then donned the nurse’s white suit and, after
arranging the nurse and the old convict in their beds so that they appeared
to be sleeping peacefully, the “lifer” lay face down on the floor and awaited
developments.
At twelve o’clock the new guard appeared at the hospital window and
switched on the lights. Having counted the men in the hospital every hour
since eight o’clock, the guard intended now to give the patients a hasty
glance and proceed to the gate. There were his two patients, apparently
sleeping peacefully. But where was the nurse?
Hulsey’s heart pounded like a riveting hammer as he lay sprawled on the
floor. Would the ruse work? Would the guard enter the hospital to
investigate, or would he report to Captain Dunlap when he saw the white-
clad figure on the floor?
The guard’s eyes then rested on the man on the floor.
“Huh!” he ejaculated. “Funny place for nursie to be sleeping!”
But the nurse’s sprawled form did not indicate slumber. The guard was
puzzled. Perhaps the nurse had fainted, or fallen and hurt himself. The
guard tapped on the window with a key. No answer, no movement of nurse
or patients.
Then the unsuspecting “screw” unlocked the door and entered. An older
guard would have reported to the Captain. He was in the act of bending
over to turn the pseudo-nurse upon his back when his ankles were suddenly
seized and his feet perked from under him.
The guard’s head struck an iron bedstead as he fell, thus relieving Hulsey
of the unpleasant job of beating him into unconsciousness.
Several minutes later the “lifer,” wearing the guard’s uniform, boldly
approached the gate.
“What’s on the menu tonight, Frank?” Hulsey casually asked, pulling his
hat further down over his eyes.

“Same old thing—hash,” the gate guard answered, as he lowered the
keys.
Though the suspense, anxiety and uncertainty were terrible, Hulsey
whistled calmly as he unlocked the first gate. The large bull lock on the
outside gate was not so easily unlocked. Hulsey fumbled, his hands shook,
his whistling, in spite of all he could do to keep it up, wheezed, went off
key, then died in a discordant wail.
“Say!” the gate guard suddenly blurted. “Look up here! By cracky, your
actions don’t look good to me.”

HULSEY did not look up. He gave the key another frantic twist, and the
lock opened.
In that short space of time the wall guard had raced into the lookout and
seized a shotgun. As he stepped to the door of the lookout, a dark figure
disappeared around the corner of a building twenty feet from the gate.
A moment later the alarm in the guards’ quarters rang frantically, and a
dozen sleepy-eyed men tumbled from their beds, slipped on shoes and
trousers and ran out into the yard.
The gate guard could only tell where he last saw the escaping convict. To
capture the man on such a dark night seemed hopeless, considering, too,
that the fleeing man had a seven-minute start. However, the half-dressed
guards scattered and made for a heavy willow thicket several hundred yards
beyond the spot where the convict was last seen.
For five minutes after the pursuing guards disappeared in the darkness,
silence reigned over the prison. Then—
From a distant point in the dark thicket a hair-raising, half-animal, half-
human shriek of mortal terror shattered the stillness of the night and echoed
and re-echoed about the high prison walls.
White faced guards, temporarily unnerved by that fearful wail, crashed
through the brush, their flashlights playing about like the eyes of spending
demons. Then they found Malcolm Hulsey the “lifer.”

Groveling face down in the mud of a little creek bank, hands clutching at
empty air, great spasms of maniacal terror passing through his body, the one
time terror of the prison muttered insane, incoherent things.
Two guards pulled him to his knees. Others turned flashlights on his face
—a face such as is seen in horrible nightmares; a ghastly face, partly
covered with black mud; an avid face where it shown through the grime.
The eyes were wide, protruding, glassy.
“See! See!” the convict rasped hoarsely, pointing a mud-smeared hand at
a dense black nook in the thicket. “See! He stands there and points at me—
and laughs! It’s Asa Shores! He’s been in my cell every night for weeks—
laughing at me! He sang a death song to me—always sang—always
laughed! Wouldn’t let me sleep! He’s coming toward me! Stop him! Please
—”
Then another horrible shriek, a shudder, a gasp, and the guards dropped
the lifeless form of Malcolm Hulsey in the mud.
By some queer whim of fate, the speechless guards involuntarily
switched off their flashlights. Utter darkness, utter silence enveloped them.
Then a faint sound was heard.
“Listen!” came the hoarse voice of Guard Jerry Clark. “Do you hear it?”
Very little of it could be heard. It was a faint sound and growing fainter.
“When I die and am buried deep,
I’ll return at night to ...”
Then it was gone, and all was still again.

Here’s An Extraordinary Yarn—

The Ghoul and
the Corpse
By G. A. WELLS
THIS is Chris Bonner’s tale, not mine. Please remember that.
I positively will not stand sponsor for it. I used to have a deal of faith in
Chris Bonner’s veracity, but that is a thing of the past. He is a liar; a liar
without conscience. I as good as told him so to his face. I wonder what kind
of fool he thinks I am!
Attend, now, and you shall hear that remarkable tale he told me. It was,
and is, a lie. I shall always think so.
He came marching into my igloo up there at Aurora Bay. That is in
Alaska, you know, on the Arctic sea. I had been in the back-country trading
for pelts for a New York concern, and due to bad luck I didn’t reach the
coast until the third day after the last steamer out had gone. And there I was
marooned for the winter, without chance of getting out until spring, with a
few dozen ignorant Indians for companions. Thank heaven I had plenty of
white man’s grub in tins!
As I said, here came Chris Bonner marching in on me the same as you
would go down the block a few doors to call on a neighbor.
“And where the devil did you drop in from?” I demanded, helping him
off with his stiff parka.
“Down there,” he answered, jerking an elbow toward the south. “Let’s
have something to eat, MacNeal. I’m hungry as hell. Look at the pack, will

you!”
I had already looked at the pack he had cast off his shoulders to the fur-
covered floor of the igloo. It was as lean as a starved hound. I heated a can
of beef bouillon and some beans, and made a pot of coffee over the blubber-
fat fire that served for both heat and light, and put these and some crackers
before my guest. He tore into his meal wolfishly.
“Now a pipe and some tobac, MacNeal,” he ordered, pushing the empty
dishes aside.
I gave him one of my pipes and my tobacco-pouch. He filled and lighted
up. He seemed to relish the smoke; I imagined he hadn’t had one for some
time. He sat silent for a while staring into the flickering flame.
“Say, MacNeal,” he spoke at length; “what do you know about a theory
that says once on a time this old world of ours revolved on its axis in a
different plane? I’ve heard it said the earth tipped up about seventy degrees.
What d’you know about it?”
That was a queer thing for Chris Bonner to ask. He was simon-pure
prospector and I had never known him to get far away from the subject of
mining and prospecting. He had been hunting gold from Panama to the
Arctic Circle for the past thirty years.
“No more than you do, probably,” I answered his question. “I’ve heard of
that theory, too. I’d say it is any man’s guess.”
“This theory holds that the North Pole used to be where the Equator is
now,” he said. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Chris,” I replied. “But I do know that
they have found things up this way that are now generally recognized as
being peculiarly tropical in nature.”
“What, for instance?”
“Palms and ferns, a species of parrot, saber-tooth tigers; and also
mastodons, members of the elephant family. All fossils and parts of
skeletons, you understand.”
“No human beings, MacNeal? Any skeletons or fossils of those up this
way?”

“Never heard of it. Prehistoric people are being found in England and
France, however.”
“Huh,” he said.
He pondered, puffing at his pipe, his eyes on the fire. He looked
perplexed about something.
“Look here, MacNeal,” he said suddenly. “Say a man dies. He’s dead,
ain’t he?”
“No doubt of it,” I laughed, wondering.
“Couldn’t come to life again, eh?”
“Hardly. Not if he were really dead. I’ve heard of cases of suspended
animation. The heart, apparently, quits beating for one, two or possibly ten
minutes. It doesn’t in fact, though; it’s simply that its beating can’t be
detected. When a man’s heart stops beating he’s dead.”
Bonner nodded.
“‘Suspended animation,’” he muttered, more to himself than to me. “That
must be it. That’s the only thing that’ll explain it; nothing else will. If it
could cover a period of ten minutes, why not a period of twenty or even a
hundred thousand years—”
“If you’d like to turn in and get some rest, Chris, I’ll fix you up,” I broke
in.
He caught the significance of my tone and grinned.
“You think I’m crazy, eh?” he said. “I’m not. It’s a wonder, though,
considering what I’ve seen and what I—here, let me show you something!”

HE THRUST a hand into his lean pack and brought forth an object that at
first glance I thought to be a butcher’s knife.
He handed it to me and I at once saw that it was not a butcher’s knife as I
knew such knives. It was a curious sort of knife, and one for which a
collector of the antique would have paid good money.

It was a very dark color, almost black; corroded, it seemed to me, as if it
had lain for a long time in a damp cellar. It was in one piece, the handle
about five inches long and the blade perhaps ten inches. Both edges of the
blade were sharp and the end was pointed like a dagger. And it certainly
wasn’t steel. I scratched one side of the blade with my thumb nail and
exposed a creamy yellow under the veneer of black.
“Part of that’s blood you scraped away, MacNeal,” Bonner said. “Now
what’s that knife made of?”
I examined the yellow spot closely. The knife was made of ivory. Not the
kind of ivory I was acquainted with, however; it was a very much coarser
grain than any ivory I had ever seen.
“That came out of a mastodon’s tusk, MacNeal,” Bonner said.
I looked at him. He was nodding, seriously. He apparently believed what
he said, at any rate.
“Nice curio, Chris,” I commented, handing the thing back to him.
“Heirloom, no doubt. Picked it up in one of the Indian villages, eh?”
He did not speak at once. He sat puffing, looking at the fire. Once he
puckered his brows in a deep frown. I waited.
“I’ve been prospecting, as usual,” he said at length. “Down there around
the headquarters of the Tukuvuk. It’s an awful place; nobody ever goes
there. The Indians tell me the spirits of the dead live there. I can believe it;
it’s an ideal place for imps and devils. And I was right through the heart of
it. I believe I’m the first. No matter how I got there; I came up from the
south last summer. You see, I had an idea there was gold in that country.
“The place where I finally settled down was in a little valley on one of
the branches of the Tukuvuk between two ranges of hills running from five
hundred to maybe three thousand feet high. Messy-looking place, it was; all
littered up, as if the Lord had a few sizable chunks of stuff left over and just
threw ’em down there to be out of the way.
“But the gold was there; I could almost smell it. I’d been getting some
mighty nice color in my pan; that’s what made me decide to stay there. I got
there about the middle of July, and I spent the rest of the summer sinking
holes in the edge of the creek and along the benches above. What I found

indicated that there was a mighty rich vein of the yellow metal thereabouts,
with one end of it laying in a pocket of the stuff. If I could locate that
pocket, I thought, I’d have the United States treasury backed off the map.
But I wasn’t able to run the pocket down by taking bearings from my holes,
because the holes didn’t line up in any particular direction.
“What with my interest in trying to get a line on that pocket, I didn’t
notice that the season was getting late. But I’d brought in enough grub to
last the winter through, so that didn’t matter. Just the same it was up to me
to get some sort of shelter over my head, so I hustled up a one-room shack
about twelve by twelve I cut from the timber on the slopes with my hand-
ax. Nothing fancy, but tight enough. I put in a fireplace and cut and stacked
a lot of wood outside.
“That done, winter was on me; I simply couldn’t resist the temptation to
have one more try at finding the pocket that spewed the yellow metal all
around there. As I said, I got no information from the holes sunk, and it was
pure guesswork. I guessed I’d find my pocket on the side of a certain hill,
about two hundred feet above creek level. A glacier flowed down the side of
that hill through a little gulley, and my idea was that the ice ground away at
the pocket and brought the metal down to the creek, and the creek scattered
it. This theory was borne out to some extent by the fact that my best
showings of color always came from a point a little below the conjunction
of the creek and glacier.
“It was snowing the morning I took my pan and shovel and started up the
side of the hill, keeping to the edge of the glacier. It wasn’t much of a
glacier for size; say, about fifteen feet wide. I could see it winding up the
side of the hill until it went out of sight through a cleft about a thousand feet
up. Fed by a lake up there, probably.
“I had climbed the hill maybe a hundred feet, following the edge of the
glacier, when I caught sight of a dark blotch in the edge of the ice. It was
about two feet under the surface. I brushed away the film of snow to have a
look. The ice was as clear as a crystal, of a blue color. And what d’you
think, MacNeal? It was a man’s body!”
He paused and gave me a quick glance. He wanted to see how I took that,
I presume.

“The body of a man,” he went on. “And the queerest-looking man I ever
saw in my life. He was lying on his belly and I didn’t get a look at the front
of him just then, but I knew it was a man all right. He was covered all over
with long hair like a—well, like a bear, say. Not a stitch of clothes.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Why, I was that surprised I let my pan and shovel drop and stared at the
damn thing with the eyes near popping out of my head. What would
anybody do, finding a hair-covered thing like that frozen in a glacier? I
won’t deny I was a bit scared, MacNeal.
“Well, I stood there staring at the thing for I don’t know how long. It
didn’t occur to me, then, to ask myself how the thing got there. Certainly
the idea of fossils or prehistoric men didn’t enter my head. I didn’t think
much about anything; I just stood there gaping.
“You know me, MacNeal; I guess I’m pretty soft-hearted in some
respects. I’d stop to bury a dead dog I found in the road. I knew I wouldn’t
rest easy until I’d cut that thing out of the glacier and given it decent burial.
Moreover, I didn’t want it where I’d be seeing it when I went to work on
that hillside in the spring; and it would surely be there in the spring, because
I imagine that glacier didn’t move an inch a year.
“So I went back to the shack and got my ax, and with none too good a
heart for the job turned to and made the chips fly. It took me about three
hours to get the thing out of the glacier. You see, as I came down to it I went
slow; I don’t care to hack even a dead man.
“Say, MacNeal, can you imagine what it meant to me, digging a corpse
out of a glacier down there on the side of a hill in that devil-ridden country?
No, you can’t, and that’s the truth. You’d have to go through it to know. It
was hell. I don’t want any more of it in mine. Nor what followed, either.”
“What was that?” I asked when he deliberated.
“You’ll hear,” he answered, and went on: “I got the thing out at last, little
chunks of ice clinging to it, and dragged it ashore, if a glacier has a shore. It
froze me to look at the thing with those little chunks of ice sticking to the
long hair. Once, at Dawson, I’d seen a man pulled out of the Yukon, ice
clinging to him. That was different, though; at Dawson there was a crowd to

sort of buck a man up. I turned the thing over on its back to see what it
looked like in front.”
“Well?” said I.
“You’ve seen apes, MacNeal?”
“This thing looked like that?” I countered, beginning to connect up his
first queer questions with what he was telling me. “You don’t mean it,
Chris!”
“I’m telling you,” he nodded solemnly. “An ape man, that’s what it was.
More man than ape, if you ask me. For instance, the face was flatter than an
ape’s, and the forehead and chin were more pronounced. The nose was flat,
but it wasn’t an ape’s nose. And the hands and feet were like those of a man.
Oh, it was a man, all right. The thing that convinced me, I think, was the
knife gripped in its hand.”
“The knife you have there?” I inquired.
“This very knife,” he answered.
“What then, Chris?” I urged him to go on.
“I had a good look at that thing and started for my shack. Yes, MacNeal, I
ran, and I’m not ashamed to say so. It scared me. Ugliest thing I ever saw.
Eyes wide open, glaring and glinting, and the thick lips parted to show the
nastiest set of fangs I ever saw in the mouth of man or beast. Why, I tell you
the damned thing looked alive! No wonder I scooted. You would have done
the same. Anybody would.
“Back in the shack, I sat down on my bunk to think it over. And it was
while I sat there trying to puzzle it out that I remembered that theory about
the earth tipping over. That gave me a hint of what I had run up against. Of
course, I’d heard about fossils and parts of the skeletons of prehistoric men
being found. Had I found, not a fossil or part of a skeleton, but the
prehistoric man himself? That knocked the wind out of me. If that were the
case my name would go down in history and I would be asked to give
lectures before scientific societies and such. Consider it, MacNeal.
“I tell you, I couldn’t quite grasp the thing. It was incredible. There I was
in this year of our Lord, with the intact corpse of a man who had lived God
only knows how many centuries ago. That body, understand, could well be

the key to the mystery of the origin of mankind. It might possibly settle the
Darwinian theory forever, one way or the other. It was a pretty serious
business for me, don’t you see?
“Well, I decided to preserve the thing until I could get out and make a
report of the find. But how to preserve it? Of course if I had left it in the
glacier it would have kept indefinitely, like a side of beef in cold storage. I
was afraid to put it back in the hole in the glacier and freeze it in again with
water I carried from the creek; the creek water might exert some chemical
action that would ruin the thing. And if I let it lay where it was the snow
would cover it, form a warm blanket, and probably cause it to decompose,
then I’d have nothing left but the skeleton. I wanted to save the thing just as
I’d found it; maybe the scientists would find a way to embalm it.
“I finally hit on the plan of keeping it in an ice pack. That would turn the
trick until the weather took on the job. It hadn’t turned bitter cold yet. I tell
you, it was a nasty job keeping that thing iced with chunks I chopped from
the glacier, and to make it worse the weather stayed moderate for a couple
of weeks. Then, suddenly, the mercury in my little thermometer went down
with a rush and it got stinging cold. I carried the thing to the shack and
stood it up against the wall outside where it couldn’t be covered with snow,
and lashed it there.
“Can you imagine me going to sleep in my bunk in the shack every night
after that, with that thing standing against the wall outside not two feet
away? Of course you can’t. It frazzled my nerves, and more than once I was
tempted to cut a hole in the ice on the creek and chuck the damn thing in
where I’d never see it again. But no, I had to save it for the scientists and
get my name in history; that idea got to be an obsession with me. I knew
well enough that if ever I told people the tale I’m telling you now, without
some proof of it, I’d get laughed at.”
“No doubt of it,” I sneered.
“The days went by,” he continued, ignoring my sneer, “and more and
more that thing outside kept getting on my nerves. The sun went south, and
from one day to another I never saw it. The never-ending night was bad
enough, but when you add the northern lights and the howling of the wolves
you’ve got a condition that breaks a man if he’s not careful. Furthermore,
there was that ugly-looking devil outside to think about.

“I was thinking about that thing constantly, and got so I couldn’t sleep. If
I shut my eyes I’d see it, anyhow, and if I went to sleep I’d have a
nightmare over it. Now and then I’d go out and stand there in the starlight
or the aurora looking at it. It fascinated me, yet the sight of the thing gave
me the creeps. Finally I began taking a club or my rifle along when I went
to look at it; got afraid the thing would come alive and try to murder me
with that knife.
“And that’s the way of things for maybe three months and more. My
thoughts all the time on that thing outside.
“Well, that couldn’t go on, you know. One morning I woke up with the
worst headache a man ever had. I thought my head would split wide open.
My blood was like molten iron flowing through my veins. I knew what it
was. Fever. I had thought and worried about that thing outside until it got
me, and I was in for a brain-storm. I was as weak as a cat, but managed to
build up a good fire and pack my bunk with all the blankets and furs I had
and crawl in. I only hoped I wouldn’t freeze to death when the fire went
out.
“I no sooner got all set in the bunk than things let go; I went completely
off. I can’t say positively what happened for a few days after that. Seems
like I remember, though, periods when I was semi-rational. I think once I
got up to put more wood on the fire. Another time I saw that thing standing
in the doorway grinning at me like the devil it was. I shot at it with my rifle
and later found a bullet in the door. My shooting couldn’t have been a
delusion, at any rate. But the door was still fastened against the wolves and
there were no tracks in the snow outside.”
Bonner paused to light his pipe, and then went on:
“I don’t know exactly how long I was out of my head. I’d wound my
watch before I crawled into the bunk the first time, and I half remember I
wound it again when I got up to put wood on the fire, and it was pretty well
run down. It goes forty hours without winding, yet when my head cleared it
had stopped. I must have been off my nut about four days.
“Well, you can lay your bottom dollar I’d had enough of prehistoric men
hanging around the shack by that time. Let the scientists be damned; I was
determined to get rid of that thing the quickest way possible. The quickest

way, I thought, would be to get the corpse warm so it would decompose
rapidly, then I’d put it outside where the wolves and ravens would pick the
bones clean. The scientists would have to be satisfied with the skeleton.
“So I made a big fire in the fireplace and got the shack good and hot, then
went out and brought in the corpse. I got sick at the stomach on that job, but
that was the only way. I didn’t have the heart to leave the thing outside and
build a fire over it out there. I try to respect the dead, even if the corpse is
that of a man who had been dead several thousand years and looked more
like an animal than a human being.
“I laid the thing on the floor before the fireplace, then sat down on the
bunk to wait. I watched it pretty close, because, being dead so long, I
thought when it got warm and started to decompose it would go like butter;
I didn’t want the shack to be all smelled up with the stink of it. Probably
half an hour went by, then all of a sudden I saw the thing quiver—”
“Your brain-storm returning,” I interposed.
“Wait,” said Bonner sharply. “It quivered; not much, but enough to
notice. That sort of got me, then I reasoned that anything thawing out like
that would naturally quiver a little. Maybe another fifteen or twenty minutes
passed, then one of the legs moved. Jerked, sort of. It startled me.
Remember, there I was down there in those hills alone with that thing. I was
pretty susceptible to weird influences, understand. Anyhow, the leg moved,
and—”
“It sat up and asked for a drink of water.” I could not help putting in.
Bonner continued, paying no attention to my sarcasm. He seemed to be
talking aloud to himself:
“I watched it like a hawk for some time after that, then as I didn’t see it
move any more I stepped outside to get some more wood for the fire and to
pull a few good breaths of cold air into my lungs. That shack was like the
inside of an oven.
“When I went in again I saw that the damned thing had turned over on its
back.
“Turned over on its back, I say. And there was a change in the eyes, too;
they had a half-awake sort of look in them; a more alive look, understand.
And breathing! Yes, sir, breathing! Why the thing didn’t see me when I

came in and shut the door I don’t know, but apparently it didn’t. And,
believe me or not, the hand that had held the knife was open and the knife
was lying on the floor apart from the body.
“Crazy? I tell you no! I was as sane as I am now. I tell you I saw these
things with my own two eyes; saw them just as plain as I see you now. I see
you don’t believe me, MacNeal. Oh, well, I don’t blame you; I hardly
believe it myself sometimes.”
He uttered a little laugh.
“But there it was, just as I’m telling you. And I was that gone when I saw
that the thing had turned over on its back that I dropped the wood I had in
my arm. The crash of it on the floor brought the thing to its feet on the
jump. You needn’t look at me like that; I tell you it did. I take my oath it
did! There it was, crouched like a panther ready for the spring, the eyes of it
flashing like fire, its lips pulled back tight across the gums and the yellow
fangs showing. Can you see that? No, you can’t.”
Bonner made an expressive gesture with one hand.
“Remarkable, but the thing hadn’t seen me yet. It was looking at the fire;
it was half turned toward me so I could see that. Suddenly it screamed in an
outlandish gibberish and leaped to the fireplace and tried to gather in an
armful of flames. I take it the thing had never seen fire before; didn’t know
what it was; probably imagined it some kind of wild animal. Naturally the
only thing it got out of that play was burned arms and hands, and the long
hair sizzled and curled. It leaped back with a snarl, spitting that funny
gibberish. Talk, I guess it was; it came from way down in the belly and
sounded like pigs grunting.
“I tell you, MacNeal, I was fair dazed. But I had the sense left to try to
help myself. My rifle was leaning against the bunk and I made a quick dive
for it. Then, apparently, the thing saw me for the first time. The way it
glared at me with those glittering eyes was a caution. I didn’t stop to argue;
I snatched up the rifle, cocked it and made a snap shot. The bullet caught
the thing in the left breast and the blood gushed. Of course you don’t
believe it. But blood, I tell you, gushed from the breast of a thing that had
been frozen in a glacier for thousands of years!

“Well, here it came like a cyclone. I didn’t have time to shoot again.
Smell? That thing smelled like carrion; almost strangled me. Maybe you
know how the cage of a wild animal stinks if it ain’t cleaned out for a week
or two. This thing smelled like that, only worse. I can smell it yet. Lord!”
Bonner wrinkled his nose and shivered.
“But there we were at grips, the thing making those belly noises and
smelling like a thousand garbage piles. It had the strength of ten men; I
sensed that. It jerked the rifle from me and bent the barrel of it double with
a twist of the wrists. The barrel of a thirty-eight caliber Winchester rifle—
bent it as easy as you or I would bend a piece of copper wire.
“Then we were at it, fighting like a couple of wild cats all over the shack.
I’m no slouch of a man myself, MacNeal, when it comes to a rough-and-
tumble; but that thing handled me like a baby. I could see my finish. We
threshed about the floor, me fighting like a devil, it fighting like forty
devils. We kicked into the fire and out again and scattered live coals all over
the place, and the shack took fire.
“I was just about gone when my hand accidentally fell on the handle of
the knife the thing had dropped on the floor. I hung on to it and poked away
at that thing for all I was worth, driving the blade clean up to the hilt with
every punch.”
“That knife?” I broke in.
“This knife,” answered Bonner. “There’s the dried blood on it yet. But I
think it was really the bullet that did the work. It must have cut an artery.
Anyhow, the blood kept gushing out of the thing’s breast; it got on my
hands and made ’em slippery. I knew the thing couldn’t pour out blood like
that and keep going; that’s what put the heart in me to keep on fighting.
And, as I say, I think it was the bullet that did the work in the long run. A
lucky shot, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now.
“I felt the thing sagging and going limp in my hands, and its grip began
to relax. I saw my chance and put up a knee and broke the grip and kicked it
away. It staggered around a moment or two, clutching its breast with its
bloody paws, gnashing its fangs and glaring murder at me; then it crashed
down to the floor and fell smack into the flames.

“I saw plain enough there was no chance of saving the shack, so I
snatched up what I could lay my hands on in the way of food and clothing
and blankets, and tore out. I don’t remember putting the knife in my pocket,
but that’s where I found it later. The shack burned down to nothing, and that
thing burned with it; probably not a bone of it left. The scientists were out
of luck and the mystery of mankind would remain unsolved.
“I didn’t stop to investigate, of course; my job was to make tracks. I
knew about this village and came on. How I got here I don’t know; this is a
terrible country to cross afoot in the winter. I’d turned my ten huskies adrift
to shift for themselves when I reached the valley where all this happened; I
didn’t have the grub to keep them going. I had to walk here.
“And that’s all, MacNeal. You can say what you please; I know what I
saw with my own eyes and you can’t change my mind about it. Suspended
animation? Yes, for a period covering many centuries. It would be a mighty
fine thing if we could picture what happened away back there when this old
earth tipped over.
“Perhaps we’d see a man, a man that was half ape, crossing a creek with
a knife in his hand on the way to murder an enemy sleeping on the opposite
bank. Then suddenly the earth tipped over—climatic conditions in those
days were such as to freeze things up in a flash—things are held in the grip
of the ice just as the dust and lava held ’em in the days of Pompeii, and—
“Well, who’s to say what happened? Anything was possible. We don’t
know the conditions of those days. Anyhow, here I come thousands of years
later and dig a man, with a knife in his hand, out of a glacier. I heat his body
in order to decompose the flesh. Instead of decomposing; he comes to life
and I have to kill him. He’s been hibernating in a glacier for centuries. I
don’t know what to think about it.”
Bonner refilled and lighted his pipe, then looked at me questioningly.
“Chris,” I said, “I tell you frankly that I don’t believe a word you have
said. You tell me you were out of your head for a few days. That accounts
for it. You had the jim-jams and imagined all that, then try to spring it on
me as actual fact.”
He looked hurt. He looked at the knife in his hand steadily for several
long moments, then thrust it toward me, his eyes boring into mine.

“Then where in hell,” he demanded, “did I get this knife?”

FEAR
By David R. Solomon
THERE were only five words.
They neither affirmed nor denied what had gone before. But they
changed the whole trend of the argument.
The men of the engineering gang were lying around the camp-fire,
preparatory to going out on the job. It was cool in the shade of the thick
trees, with the damp feel of early morning hanging over everything. Further
out, over the river, the sun gave promise of better weather later in the day.
Smoking, waiting for the laggards to clean up their plates, the engineering
gang—according to invariable man-custom—had begun experiences, jokes,
arguments. Over all hung the pungent smell of strong, fresh coffee, and
much frying bacon.
Baldy Jenkins, the eighteen-year-old had started it.
“Wish I had a million dollars,” he remarked.
Red Flannel Mike gave the ball a roll.
“You do not,” he denied stoutly. “Be givin’ you a million—and the Lord
hisself only knows what you’d be a-doing wid it.”
“Hell I don’t,” said Baldy. “Bet I could tell you right now how I’d spend
every penny of it.”
“Bet you don’t,” broke in another of the gang. “Fellow never does know
what he’s goin’ to do till it hits him, square between the eyes.”
“Offer me a million,” insisted Baldy Jenkins.
“Aw, not that way. Take somep’n where two men might act different. You
don’t know what you’d do. I don’t. No man does—no more’n that kid over

there does.”
His lazy gesture indicated a small, khaki-trousered figure. The eyes of the
rest of the gang followed.
At first glance she might have been a lad of ten or eleven years. Closer
inspection, however, showed the mop of flaxen hair, bobbed off at the level
of her ears, and the tender, little-girl face. She was marching around the
camp like an inspector-general of an army, into this, that, everything.
“’Cert she wouldn’t,” affirmed Red Flannel Mike. “Coulter’s kid’s just
like you or me. She’d have to be up against it to know—an’ maybe not
then.”
“Huh! Even that kid....” Baldy snatched up the gauntlet.
They were off. Hot and royally raged the battle.
The advocates of the unexpected gained ascendancy. Louder and more
extravagant grew their claims. No man could predict anything. No man
knew what he would do. Put him face to face with any situation, any danger,
and he would act differently from the way he thought he would.
It was then that Coulter spoke.
He did not raise his voice. If anything, it was lowered. Hitherto, he had
sat, silent, listening to the battle of words, his bandaged left arm swung
tightly at his side.
“I don’t know about that,” was all he said.
Sudden quiet fell. There came a restless stirring, then tacit agreement.
These men of rougher employment—axmen, chainmen, engineers—
centered their gaze upon Coulter’s bandaged left arm.
They knew what he was thinking about. They, too, had seen. They agreed
with him that he could have but one possible reaction to one set of
circumstances.
All of them were employees, of one branch or the other, of the
Consolidated Lumber Company. Coulter was in the legal department. There
had arisen a nice question as to the exact ownership of a certain tract. Rather
than take chances with the heavy statutory penalties for cutting trees upon

another’s land, they had sent a lawyer upon the ground. His work was
finished. He was ready—more than ready—to return.
City-bred, city born, Coulter had welcomed the chance to see a Southern
swamp. He had read, all his life, of Dixie, the land of the magnolia and
cotton, of the mockingbird and the honeysuckle. He had welcomed his
mission. He had even brought his daughter, Ruth, along.
That was not at all unnatural, however. Wherever Coulter had gone for
the last ten years, there, too, had gone Ruth. They had not been separated
longer than a day since the gray dawn that the other Ruth had placed the
tiny bundle in his arms and turned her face to the wall.
The child was all that was left of their love save memories. She was
Coulter’s sole interest in life.
Coming to this camp, Coulter had clad her in khaki, and turned her loose
in the open. It had done her good.
The eyes of the stained figures around the camp-fire followed his gaze.
They knew something of what he was thinking. They had heard him, in the
midst of his pain, setting his teeth, gasp: “Get—Ruth away—where she—
can’t hear!”
That, from a man whom they had to restrain from killing himself to get
freedom from the torture, was enough.
Coulter’s ignorance of the South and of the woods had been, perhaps, to
blame. He did not know. All that he could remember was that he had been
bending over the spring, his left arm resting upon the brink. He had not seen
the moccasin until it was too late.
Vividly, even yet, he saw the darkish head and body, the supple, writhing,
the swift dart and the flash of pain—and then agony; much agony, deep,
soul-biting torture.

THERE was no doctor at the camp. There had been a delay before,
stupefied, he thought to let them know he had been bit. And then—more
agony; agony piled upon agony.

Not concealing their doubts as to their chances of saving his arm or him,
they had slapped the rough tourniquet upon his arm, and had twisted down
upon the stick until he moaned, unwillingly, in pain. Then they had dipped
one of the big hunting knives into boiling water, and had cut his arm at the
bite marks—gashing it across, with great, free-handed strokes, then back
again at right angles; squeezing the cuts to make him lose the poisoned
blood.
Then they had cauterized the wound. Sick, half afaint, to Coulter it
seemed that they were deliberately thinking up additional tortures. The
white-hot iron that seared his flesh, tormenting the agonized ends of nerves
that already had borne past the breaking point, was the final, exquisite touch
of agony.
Coulter was one of those men who bear pain—even a slight pain—with
difficulty. Even the sight of blood made him faint. This was horrible beyond
anything he had ever dreamed. The physical racking; the feel of the steel
blade cutting through his own flesh and sinew, down to the bone, made him
bite his lips till they spurted blood, in the effort to keep from screaming
aloud.
He had not known they were through. He thought they were preparing
additional crucifixion for him.
Red Flannel Mike had slapped the gun from his hands and made him
understand, somehow, that it was all over; that they were through. But they
watched him the rest of the night.
That was why, as the argument rose around the morning camp-fire,
Coulter was very sure that he knew what he would do under one set of
circumstances. He knew one experience that nothing on earth could send
him through again. All that, and more, was in his tone, as he spoke.
At his words there came a restless stirring around the fire. Those men of
the engineering gang had seen something of his experience. They knew
what he was thinking. The abrupt ending of their argument showed that they
agreed with Coulter.
He saw, and understood; and, seeing, smiled bitterly. They knew only a
part of it.

To every man there is his one fear. The bravest man that ever trod the
earth had his one especial dread. To some, it is fire; to others, cold steel;
others still, the clash of physical contact. But, probe deep enough beneath
the skin of any man alive, and you find it.
Snakes were Coulter’s fear.
He could not explain it. He did not know why he, a man city-bred and
born, had this obsession. It had been with him since he could remember. As
a child, once he had gone into a convulsion of fear over some pictures of
snakes in a book.
The old women of the family nodded their heads wisely, and muttered
things about a fright to his mother before his birth. Coulter did not know.
All that he was certain about was that the thought, even, of the writhing,
slippery squirming bodies, made his whole being shudder with revulsion,
made tingles of absolute horror go up and down his back.
Yes, the gang agreed with him. Yet they had seen only a part of what he
had gone through. They had seen and appreciated only his physical
suffering—and that was the least part.
Coulter’s nerves were in ragged shreds. He started and jumped at the
slightest sound. His experience had intensified a thousandfold his nervous
horror of reptiles.
The woods, the swamp, were full of them. He ran upon them constantly.
All the time he was longing for his hour of liberation, when he could return
to the city and to freedom.
The unexpected flutter of a thrush, as he walked through the woods,
would send his heart into his throat and his pulse to pounding in fear. Night
after night he woke, chained hand and foot with dread that a snake had
crawled up, in the dark, beside him. All the stories he had ever read of their
crawling up into camps and getting into the bedding, came to him, lingered
with him, tortured him. He was no more asleep before he would awake,
bathed in a cold sweat, afraid to move, afraid to lie still.
All that, subconsciously, was in his words, in his manner, in his whole
expression, as he said:
“I don’t know about that.”

THERE came the silence of conviction. Even Red Flannel Mike, most
zealous exponent of man’s lack of knowledge of himself, was silenced.
“Somebody said something about the kid.” Baldy, the eighteen-year-old,
seized his advantage. “I’ll bet that even she—”
Baldy stopped abruptly. His whole frame stiffened. His eyes were riveted
upon little Ruth. One by one, the rest of the gang turned to follow his gaze.
Each followed his example.
Ruth’s scream cut the air a moment before Baldy’s gasp of horror:
“My God! The kid’s got a moccasin on her!”
The child was close enough for the group to see clearly. Her head was
bent back, straining away from the writhing horror. The sleek head slithered
to and fro, darting, threatening, winding here and there about her. She
seemed frozen with fear.
Baldy had started forward. He stopped.
“I—get me a gun!” he barked. “Get a gun! Quick!”
The reptile drew back its head. There came an interruption:
White to his lips, staggering upon his feet, Coulter came forward. His
face was ghastly pale. His unwilling feet buckled under him, threatening,
each moment, to give way and pitch him forward upon his face.
Slowly he edged closer. The slender head poised, watchful. Coulter’s
movements were scarcely discernible. Suddenly his well arm shot out,
seizing, snatching at that loathsome body.
There was a quick movement of the snake, far too rapid to be anticipated
or avoided. The head drove forward. He felt the white hot flash of pain.
The rest was a haze of horror to him. It was rather as if he were a
spectator at something concerning someone else. He did not command his
body. He knew only, vaguely, what was happening.
There came the feel of a sleek body in his hands, the lash and writhing
against his arms of something that fought to break away; then the grinding

of his heel upon a head, and the flinging, against him, in death agony.
Everything faded out, then.

HIS RETURN to consciousness was marked by a hazy lightness of memory.
In the bitten arm he could feel, mounting higher and higher, the numbness
that had marked the other experience. His heart, too, seemed to be acting
queerly—just as it had done before.
Red Flannel Mike’s broad back was bent from him as he mixed at
something in a basin. They had carried him to his own tent.
Coulter’s holster was hanging from the tent pole. The numbness crept
higher in his arm. Soon would begin the cutting of his flesh, the darting
flames of pain....
He could not go through with that again! He could not bear it. Better far
to finish with the gun what Mike had stopped before.
Softly he slid the gun from the holster, and raised it for action. His finger
pressed upon the trigger.
The weapon was dashed suddenly from his hand.
“What the hell!” roared Mike. “You fool, what’s the matter with you?”
“Give—give me that gun!”
“You’re as bad as Baldy Jenkins. Been in the woods all his life—and
mistakes a coach whip for a moccasin, just because both of ’em are darkish.
“That wasn’t any more moccasin than a polar bear.... Yes, ’course he
struck you. Any snake ’ll do that—but it ain’t always poison. Your arm ain’t
even go’ner be sore.
“Never mind about this gun. I’ll give it back to you—later on.”

You’ll Be Thrilled and Mystified
By Hamilton Craigie’s New Novelette

The Chain

I.
TROUBLE.

QUARRIER entered the taxi with an uneasy sense of crisis.
He was not imaginative; his digestion was excellent; even at forty, an age
when most men nowadays have begun to feel the strain of fierce business
competition, Quarrier was almost the man that he had been ten years in the
past.
Nerves and Quarrier were strangers; he smoked his after-dinner cigar in a
rigorous self-denial that made it his sole dissipation; he was in bed and
asleep when other men were comfortably faring forth in search of such
diversion as the metropolis had to offer.
But the face of that taxi-driver—he had seen it somewhere before. It was
a dark, Italian face, with high cheekbones, and a straight, cruel mouth, like
a wedge, between lean cheeks scarred and scabbed with late-healed
cicatrices and pocked blue with powder burns.
Not an inviting face. And the taxi was old. Glancing at the cushions, as
they had roared past an arc-light at the street corner, Quarrier had thought to
see the dingy leather sown thick with stains, broad patches, as if—as if....
But pshaw! As he told himself, he was getting fanciful; perhaps his liver,
at last, had played him false. A migraine, doubtless—he’d have a look in on

old Peterby in the morning. Peterby was a good, plain old-fashioned
practitioner—no nonsense about him....
He had gone to the offices of the Intervale Steel Company on a mission,
an important one. As a matter of fact, it was vital—almost a matter of life
and death. But he smiled grimly now in the dark recesses of the cab as he
reflected that, as it chanced, his last-minute decision had left those
documents where they would be beyond the reach of—Hubert Marston, for
instance.
He had nothing on his person of any special value; he would be poor
picking, indeed, if, as it chanced, that taxi-driver with the face of a bravo
might, behind the sinister mask that was his face, be the thug he seemed,
hired, perhaps, by the Panther of Peacock Alley.
An extravagant appellation, doubtless, but that was Marston: Suave,
sinister, debonair—the social roturier equally with the manipulator. He had
acquired the name naturally enough, for most of his operations were carried
on in the hotels and clubs.
He had an office hard by the “Alley” and it was from its ornate splendor
that he issued, on occasion, gardenia in buttonhole, cane hooked over his
arm, dark face with its inscrutable smile flashing upon the habitués with
what meaning only he could say. And he did not choose to tell.
And Marston had wanted those documents; they spelled the difference to
him between durance and liberty—aye, between life and death....
For Hubert Marston had made the one slip that, soon or late, the most
careful criminal makes: He had, yielding on a sudden to his one rare
impulse of hate, commissioned the murder of a man who stood in his way,
and—he had paid for it, as he had thought, in good crisp treasury notes,
honest as the day, certainly! But the payment had been made at second—or
third-hand—that was Marston’s way. And for once it had betrayed him.
For those documents—as he had found out, too late—were counterfeit
treasury notes. The go-between had seen to that, paying the hired killer with
them, and pocketing the genuine. And Quarrier, himself the watch-dog of
those interests that Marston would have despoiled, (he had been retained by
them for some time now as their private investigator) had found, first, the
disgruntled bravo himself, obtained the spurious notes, together with the

man’s confession, traced them backward to the go-between—and now, hard
upon the arch-criminal’s heels, he waited only for the morning, and that
which would follow.
Quarrier had given the driver a number in the West Eighties, but now,
glancing from the window, his eyes narrowed with a sudden, swift concern.
“The devil!” he ejaculated, under his breath. “Now, if I thought—”
But the sentence was never completed. They were in a narrow, unfamiliar
street; a street silent, tenantless, as it seemed, save for dark doorways, and
here and there a furtive, drifting shadow-shape—the tall fronts of
warehouses, with blind eyes to the night, silent, grim.
The echoing roar of the engine beat in a swift clamor against those iron
walls—and suddenly, with a sort of click, he remembered where it was he
had seen that lupine countenance—the dark face of the driver separated
from him by the width of a single pane of glass.
It had been behind glass that he had seen it. A month or so previous, at
the invitation of his friend, Gregory Vinson, captain of detectives (with
whom he had formerly been associated, prior to his present connection), he
had visited headquarters; and it had been there, in the gallery which is given
over to rogues, that he had marked that face, its features, even among the
many crooks, thugs, strong-arm men, yeggs, hoisters, pennyweighters,
housemen, and scratchers. And now he remembered it when it was too late!
His right hand falling upon the butt of a blunt-nosed automatic, with
which he was never without, with his left he jerked strongly at the handle of
the door. But the door was locked; he could not open it.
Quarrier had been in a tight place more than once; danger he was not
unacquainted with; it had been with him in broad daylight, in darkness,
grinning at his elbow with dirk or pistol in the highways and byways of
Criminopolis. He was a fighter—or he would not have won to the
possession of those documents—the documents so greatly desired by
Hubert Marston—the evidence of the one false step made by the Master of
Chicane, the one slip that was to put him, ere the setting of another sun,
where he would be safe.
Now Quarrier, his mouth a grim line, was reaching with the butt of his
automatic to break that glass when, with a grinding of brakes the taxi

whirled suddenly to a groaning halt.
The door swung open—to the windy night without, and the glimmer of a
dark face at the curb.
“Here you are, sir,” Quarrier heard the voice, with, he was certain, a
mocking quality in the quasi-deferential cadence. But he could see merely
the face, behind it a black well of darkness, velvet black, save for the dim
loom of a lofty building just across.
Quarrier did not know how many there might be, lurking there in the
blackness, nor did he greatly care. The locked door; the face of the man at
the wheel; the unfamiliar street—shanghaied by a land pirate, at the very
least! There could be no doubt of it.
But it was no time for hesitation. If he were in the wrong, and it was all a
mistake—well, he could afford to pay. But—the face of Marston arose
before him, suave, sinister, smiling.... What was it the man had said, on the
occasion of their last meeting at the Intervale offices:
“Possession, my dear Quarrier—possession is ten points of the lawless.
Remember that!”
Quarrier remembered, and with the remembrance came a swift, sudden
anger. But it was an anger that was controlled, as a flame is controlled—
though it was none the less deadly.
“Here you are, sir,” repeated the voice, and now there was in it a
something more than mockery. There was an edge, a rasp; almost it sounded
like a command, an order.
Quarrier grinned then—a mere facial contraction of the lips. Then,
muscle and mind and body, in one furious projectile, he launched himself
outward through the doorway in a diving tackle.
The white face with its sneering grin was blotted out; there came the
spank of a clean-cut blow; a turgid oath. Quarrier, rising from his knees,
surveyed the limp figure on the cobbles with a twisted smile; then he
turned, peering under his hand down a long tunnel of gloom, where, at the
far end, a light showed, like a will-o-the-wisp beckoning him on.
He could not tell where he was. Somewhere in the Forties, he judged—
Hell’s Kitchen, probably—although there was a curious lack of the life and

movement boiling to full tide in that grim neighborhood of battle, murder,
and sudden death.
But as his eyes became accustomed to the stifling dark he found the
reason. It was a street of warehouses, public stores; and further on, as he
looked, like a ribbon of pale flame against the violet sky, he saw the river.
He bent his steps away from it, walking carefully, picking his way on the
uneven flagging. Twice, as he went forward, it seemed to him that he was
watched—that eyes gazed at him out of the blackness; and twice he turned
his head, swiftly to face the silence and the emptiness of the long, lonely
way.
And it seemed, too, that as he went, the whispering echo of his hasty
steps went on before him, and behind; he fell to counting them—and
suddenly he knew. They were before him—and behind. He was in a trap.
There came a leaping, thunderous rush at his back, and a voice,
screaming between the high walls:
“There he is! Now—go get ’im!”
And it was then that Quarrier, reaching for his pistol, discovered that it
was gone; lost, doubtless, in that encounter with the taxi-driver. But he
braced, spreading his arms wide as a grizzly meets the onslaught of wolves.
But the wolves were many, and they came on now, a ravening pack; one,
before the rest, looming as a black blot against the starshine, lunged
forward with a growling oath.
The rest were yet some little distance away. Quarrier saw the man, or,
rather, he sensed the nearness of that leaning shadow, spread-eagled like a
bat against the dimness.... Then there came the sudden impact of fist on
flesh—a straining heave—and Quarrier, diving under the hurtling figure,
straightened, and hurled him outward and away.
The flying figure struck among the rest, head on, to a growling chorus of
oaths, imprecations. But still they came on, thrusting, lunging; a gun
crashed almost in Quarrier’s face.... There came a voice:
“No shooting, you fool! Th’ Big Gun says—”
The rest was lost as the pistol clattered to the cobbles. The center of a
whirling tangle of fist and foot, to Quarrier it seemed that he fought in a

nightmare that would have no end. He had gone to one knee under the
impact of a swinging blow, when, from the far distance, there sounded the
rolling rattle of a night-stick, with the clangor of the patrol.
Something gripped his ankle—something at once soft and hard. He
lunged, full length, as a football player at the last desperate urge of his spent
strength. Then he was on his feet, running, side-stepping, circling with the
skill and desperate effort of a plunging half-back, stiff-arming the
opposition to right and left.
Just ahead, the black maw of an alley, a deeper blot of blackness, loomed.
In its heart, like a witch-fire, there swam upward a nebulous, faint glow as
from the pit; out of the tail of his eye he saw it: The dim loom of a house,
and an open door.
He reached the turn—and a figure uprose before him, even in that
darkness brutish, broad, thewed like a grizzly. The great arm rose, once; it
fell, like the hammer of Thor.
Quarrier lurched, stiffened, buckling inward at the knees in a loose-
jointed, slumping fall.

II.
Hangman’s Hold.

QUARRIER came to himself, all his faculties at full tide.
It was smothering dark—a darkness not merely of the night but of a
prison-house, silent, musty with the stale odor of decay and death. Near at
hand, after a moment, he heard a slow, ceaseless dripping, like the beating
of a heart, or the slow drip-drip of a life that was running out, drop by
single drop.
The fancy seemed logical enough; there seemed nothing of the fantastic
in it; Quarrier waited, there in the smothering dark, for the quick knife-
thrust that would mean the end—or the deadening impact of the slung-shot.
But, unimaginative as he was, like a man who has but lately undergone
the surgeon’s scalpel he feared to move, to feel, even while he assured

himself that he was unhurt save for the throbbing in his temples, and the
very bruises that he felt upon him, but would not touch.
But there was something else. After a little his hesitant, exploring fingers
found it. The length of line bent in a sort of running bowline about his
shoulders and arms. And behind him, from a staple in the wall, it hung,
sliding like a snake in the thick darkness.
He moved his head, slowly, carefully, like a man testing himself for an
invisible hurt. And then—
“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat, the shadow of a cry. For, moving
an inch further to the right, it would have been a noose, tightening as he
moved, strangling him there, choking him out of sound and sense.
Brave as he was, Quarrier shivered, his shoulders twitching with the
thought. And it was not cold. Moving with an infinite caution, he ran his
exploring fingers along the hempen strands.
Whoever had devised that noose had been a sailor. And only a sailor
could undo it.
And there in the dark, trussed as he was, at the mercy of what other peril
he knew not. Quarrier permitted himself the ghost of a grin. His hand went
up, slowly, carefully, the fingers busy with the rope; there came a tug, and,
coiling at his feet like a snake, the noose slid slithering along the stones.
Quarrier was not a praying man, in the ordinary sense, but now he sent
heavenward a silent aspiration of gratitude for the impulse which, years
previous, had prompted his signing on as a foremast hand in the China seas.
And the long hours in the doldrums, below the line, had, as it proved, been
anything but wasted.
Now, easing his cramped muscles in a preliminary stretching, he rose
gingerly to his feet, moving with the stealth and caution of an Indian. He
was free of that constricting rope, but as he moved forward, groping, just
ahead there came to him a sudden murmur of voices, low, like the growling
of savage beasts. There was that sort of note in it: A fierce, avid mutter, and
presently, as he advanced, he made out here and there a word.
“Th’ Big Gun.... You better watch your step.... Mar—”

Quarrier found himself in a sort of corridor, at the far end of which
proceeded the voices. It had all been done in the dark, so to speak. The taxi,
that driver with the face familiar and yet unfamiliar, the attack, and now
this. But time pressed. Why they had not murdered him out of hand he did
not pause to consider; he knew only that Marston—and he was certain that
it was Marston’s hand that had been in it—would, with a clear field, be at
the hiding-place of those documents. Even now, doubtless, he was there.
Quarrier felt mechanically for his pistol; and then his hand dropped
hopelessly as he remembered that he was weaponless.
He listened tensely, holding his breath, as the voices receded—or, rather,
one of them; he could hear the other following the departing man with his
complaints.
Evidently they had left a guard of two. One of them was going; the other
left behind, and not especially delighted with his job.
An abrupt turn of the long hallway brought this man suddenly into plain
view.
Quarrier blinked in the glare from the single incandescent, flattening
himself against the wall; then, with a pantherish pace, he had covered the
intervening space in three lunging strides.
The man, a broad fellow with a seamed, lead-colored countenance,
turned his head; his mouth opened, his hand going to his pocket with a
lightning stab of the blunt, hairy fingers.
But Quarrier had wasted no time. Even as the giant reached for his gun
Quarrier’s fist swung in a short arc, and there was power in it. The blow,
traveling a scant six inches, crashed full on the point; the thick-set man, his
eyes glazing, swayed, slipped, fell in an aimless huddle.
“Well—a knockout!” panted Quarrier, reaching for the pistol.
Marston was the “Big Gun”, of course. Quarrier had never doubted it; but
hitherto the President of Intervale Steel had conducted his brokerage
business, on the surface at any rate, without resort to open violence. And
Intervale Steel—You knew really nothing about it until you took a flyer in
it; then, as it might chance, you knew enough and more than enough.

Quarrier, glancing at the unconscious man and pocketing the pistol,
departed without more ado; proceeding along the hall, he found, with no
further adventure, a narrow door, and the pale stars, winking at him from,
he judged, a midnight horizon.
But a glance at his watch told him that it was but nine-thirty; there was
yet time to get to the hiding-place of those documents ahead of Marston, if,
as he was now convinced, it had been Marston’s thugs who had ambushed
him.
Plunging along the shadowy alley, after five minutes’ walk, made at a
racing gait, he found a main-traveled avenue and an owl taxi, whose driver,
leaning outward, crooked a finger in invitation to this obvious fare,
appearing out of the dark.
Quarrier did not hesitate. The fellow might be a gunman or worse; he
must take his chance of that.
“Twenty-three Jones!” he called crisply, with the words diving into the
cab’s interior; then, his head out of the window, as the taxi turned outward
from the curb:
“And drive as if all hell were after you!”

III.
The Shape Invisible.

QUARRIER reached his destination without incident, but as he went up the
winding stairway of the office building to his private sanctum he was
oppressed by an uneasy sense that all was not as it should be. Those
elevators—they were seldom out of order. Perhaps....
But, panting a little from his climb, he found his floor, and the door of his
private office.
For just a split second he hesitated; then, unlocking the door, he flung it
wide and went in.

And then, for the third time that evening, he had another shock: for,
almost from the moment of his entry into that sound-proof chamber, he
knew that he was not alone.
For a moment, there in the blaze from the electrolier, lighted by the
opening of the door, he stood rigid, listening, holding his breath; crouched,
bent forward like a sprinter upon his mark.
Quarrier was a big man, and well muscled; in his day he had been an
amateur boxer of repute. For a big man, he was quick, well-poised, supple
and controlled.
A brain of ice and nerves of steel—that was Quarrier. And at that moment
he stood in need of them.
He had heard nothing, felt nothing, seen nobody—and yet he knew,
beyond any possibility of doubt, that someone or something was with him
there in that sound-proof chamber, thirty stories above the street. And the
knowledge—as certain as the fact that he, Quarrier, as yet lived and
breathed—the knowledge that he was not alone was not reassuring. It was
fantastic, it was incredible—but it was true!
Everything in that private office was in plain sight; shelter there was none
for any possible intruder; and yet, by the very positive evidence of his eyes
he knew, and his pulses quickened at the thought, that he was not alone.
It had been Quarrier’s fancy to rent the small suite on the top floor of the
out-of-the-way office building. He liked the view; the rooms were remote;
they suited his purpose; they were private. Anything could happen here, and
no one be the wiser: the crash of a heavy .45, for instance, would not
penetrate an inch outward beyond those sound-proof walls. And a cry, a
shout would be lost there just as a stone is lost, dropped downward into a
deep well of silence—and of oblivion.
Now, if Quarrier’s man, Harrison, a soft-footed, super-efficient body-
servant, had not kept on his hat; or if, say, he had not had a particularly
abundant shock of hair, added to the fact that although an excellent servant,
he was somewhat deaf; and if, too, he had not, for once, walked and worked
in deviousness—this chronicle would have had a very different ending—for
Quarrier, at any rate.

His hand in the pocket of his coat, the fingers curled about the butt of the
automatic that he had taken from the guard back there in the cellar,
Quarrier, frowning, surveyed the room in a slow, searching appraisal. Those
documents—he had to make certain of them.
From left to right, as his gaze went round the chamber, he saw a book-
case, a full-length canvas, done in oils, the double windows, a door, locked
with a huge, old-fashioned key, leading into a lumber-room just beyond, a
small wall safe, his desk—which completed the circle.
The room was in itself a safe. It was like a fort: The windows were
protected by sheet-steel aprons similar to the burglar-guards used by bank
tellers; the main entrance door, through which Quarrier had entered, and
which opened upon the corridor and the elevators, was of steel, with a
patent spring combination lock; the other door, leading to the lumber-room,
was also of steel, locked, however, with a huge, old-fashioned key, but this
latter door had never been in use since Quarrier’s occupancy.
Nothing short of an acetylene blowpipe could have penetrated the walls,
the ceiling, the floor, but they were smooth, unmarred by scratch or tell-tale
stain.
Now, to understand events as they occurred:
Quarrier was in his private sanctum, his office; it adjoined the lumber-
room at the right. And a simple diagram may serve perhaps better than a
page of explanation:

The electrolier, blazing from its four nitro lamps, illumined every nook
and cranny of that office; shed its blazing effulgence upon Quarrier,
standing like a graven image before that wall safe. And as he stood there,
for the first time in his well-ordered existence a prey to fear, a face rose out
of his consciousness; he heard again the voice of Marston, President of
Intervale Steel:
“You have them, my dear Quarrier; keep them—safe.”
Quarrier had never liked Marston; the man was elusive, like an eel; you
never saw his hand: it was impossible to guess what moved behind the
mask-like marble of his face, expressionless always, cold, contained.
But Quarrier had the “documents,” or, rather, they were there, in that wall
safe, in itself a small fort of chrome-nickel steel and manganese against
which no mere “can-opener” could have prevailed—no torch, even.
Now, as he operated the combination, he was abruptly sensible of a
curious sensation of strain; a shock; the short hairs at the back of his neck
prickled suddenly as if at the touch of an invisible, icy finger. And for a
moment he could have sworn to a Presence just behind him—a something
in ambush grinning at his back—a danger, a real and daunting peril, the
greater that it was unmeasured and unknown.
But with his fingers upon that dial, Quarrier half turned as if to depart.
He was getting jumpy, his nerves out of hand—too much coffee and too
many strong cigars, perhaps. That was it. That kidnapping; it might, after
all, have had nothing to do with Marston. The documents were safe—they
simply had to be. Unless Marston had been there, and gone; but he would
scarcely have had time.
Perhaps, too, Quarrier might have obeyed the impulsion of that turning
movement, and in that case, also, this story would never have been written.
Quarrier might have done this, but for the moment, practical and sanely
balanced as he was, for a split second he had the fancy that if he turned his
head he would see—something that was not good, that was not—well—
normal.
It was instinctive, elemental, rather than rational, and, getting himself in
hand, he would, doubtless, have turned abruptly, leaving the room, if, at that

moment, out of the tail of his eye, he had not seen the inescapable evidence
of a presence other than his own.

IV.
The Silent Witness.

QUARRIER was a large man, and hard-muscled, a dangerous adversary in
a rough-and-tumble, a “good man with his hands,” as we have seen; young,
and a quick thinker.
In the half of a second it came to him that Marston might have delegated
his authority (at second- or third-hand, certainly) to some peterman, some
yegg, say, to obtain possession of those documents. But the fellow would
have to be a boxman par excellence; that strong-box was the last word in
safes, and, Quarrier was certain, the final one.
No ordinary houseman could hope to break into it, and the marauder
would have to depend upon a finger sandpapered to the quick, hearing
microscopically sensitive, to catch, through that barrier of steel and bronze,
the whispering fall of those super-tumblers.
And abruptly following this suggestion, a second and a more daunting
thought obtruded: Suppose—just suppose, that their design held no
intention of an assault upon the safe; suppose that their plan, the purpose of
that nameless, invisible Presence, had included, in the first place, him—
Quarrier? In case, after all, he had managed to escape the trap back there in
the cellar? Why—they would use him; that was it! They would force him to
open the safe. The thing was simple; there was about it, even, a suggestion
of sardonic humor, but it was a humor that did not appeal to Quarrier.
Upon the instant he swung round, crouching, his hand reaching for his
pocket in a lightning stab, and coming up, level, holding the short-barrelled
automatic.
Then his mouth twisted in a mirthless grin as his straining gaze beheld
the square room empty under the lights.

A moment he stood, his keen, strong, thoughtful face etched deep with
new lines of worry, ears strained against the singing silence, eyes turning
from door to door, and from wall to window, a pulse in his temple throbbing
jerkily to his hard-held breath. He began the circuit of the room. Walking on
tiptoe, he approached the door by which he had entered, thrust into its
socket the great bolt. The bolt seemed really unnecessary; the lock in itself,
a spring-latch affair, was devised so that it held the stronger for pressure
from without.
The snick of steel against steel rang startlingly loud in the speaking
stillness; for a moment Quarrier had a curious fancy, a premonition almost,
that it was a wasted precaution—that, in effect, he was locking and double
locking that door upon an empty room—an empty strong-box. Pistol in
hand, however, and starting from the door, he began his round.
The book-case he passed with a cursory examination; nothing there. Next
the painting; a portrait of his great-uncle; it held him for a moment; those
eyes had always held him; they were “following” eyes; and now for a
moment it seemed to Quarrier that they held a warning, a message, a
command. But he passed on....
A heavy leather settle was next in order. With a sheepish grimace he
stooped, peering under it, straightened, going on to the double windows.
That settle had been innocent of guile, but as to the windows—he paused an
interval while he thumbed the patent steel catches. These were shut tight,
the windows black, glimmering squares against the windy night without.
Throwing off the locks, one after the other, he pushed up the first
window, released the steel outer apron, and then, in the very act of leaning
outward into the black well beneath, he drew back, with a quick, darting
glance over his shoulder as his spine prickled at a sudden, daunting thought.
What was that?
For a heartbeat at his back he thought to hear a rustle, a movement, like
the shuffle of a swift, stealthy footfall, on the heavy pile of the Kermanshah
rug.
But once more there was nothing—no one.
It was thirty stories to the street beneath, and as he leaned there in the
window his imagination upon the instant had swayed out down to the

dreadful peril of the sheer, sickening fall.
How simple it would have been for someone behind him—how easy....
He shivered, the sweat beading his forehead in a fine mist of fear. A hand
on his ankle—a quick heave—and then a formless blur against the night—
the plunge—into nothingness....
Turning to the right, he surveyed the heavy door leading to the lumber-
room. He tried the great key, rattling the knob. The door was locked; it was
heavy, solid, substantial. A quick frown wrinkled his forehead.
“Absurd!” he muttered, but there was an odd lack of conviction in the
word. “Impossible!” he said again. “There’s nobody in the room except
myself; there couldn’t be.”
But even as he spoke he knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
someone or something had occupied that room but a matter of seconds prior
to his entry, and if he, or whatever it was, was not there now, where was this
invisible presence?
The presence in the room of another than himself was a physical
impossibility unless, indeed, there was, after all, a fourth dimension, into
which as a man passes from sunlight into shadow, the intruder had stepped,
perhaps now regarding him sardonically from that invisible plane: A living
ghost!
Absurd! And yet, there was that other fact—he had seen it: the silent, the
voiceless, yet moving witness—the positive and irrefutable proof of a
presence other than his own.

THERE, in a locked, bolted, impregnable chamber, unmarked by the least
sign of entry—a main door which did not have a key, responding only to a
combination known only to himself—a secondary door most obviously
locked, and from the inside; windows of thick glass, triple locked with the
latest in patent catches—someone or something had entered, passing, as it
seemed, through bolts and bars, through walls, through steel and stone and
concrete, like a djinn, or a wraith—through the keyhole?

Matter-of-fact as he was, hard-headed and practical, Quarrier was aware
for an instant of a flicker of almost superstitious fear. But—rot! In all the
space confined by those four walls and ceiling and floor there was not room
for concealment even for a—cat, for instance—for nothing human, at any
rate. It was beyond him, even as the Thing that had entered was beyond
him, though at hand.
Quarrier did not believe in the supernatural with his mind; but, brave as
he was by nature and training, in that moment he knew fear. But he
preferred, with his intelligence, to credit Marston with it; Marston, so far as
morals were considered, might have been almost anything: you saw it in his
curious eyes, with their pale irises, the flat, dead color of his skin, like the
belly of a snake; in the grim, traplike mouth. Quarrier had never deceived
himself as to the President of Intervale Steel. The thing was fantastic, unreal
—and yet. It might easily be a trap, and worse. Peril, the more subtile
because unknown, was all about him; he felt it, like an emanation. What
was it that the psychological sharps would call it? An aura, as of some
invisible and deadly presence, seeing, although unseen.

V.
Through The Keyhole.

THE ROOM, or office, as has been written, was impregnable to any but an
assault in force, the doors invincible save by the shattering crash of high
explosive, the windows almost equally so.
Quarrier’s man, Harrison, even, would be unable to enter the room in his
employer’s absence; so that, knowing the combination of the safe, he could
take nothing from it, or bring anything into it. He left, in the rare intervals
that Quarrier suffered his ministrations, always with his master, returning
likewise, if he returned at all, in Quarrier’s company.
The recluse had hedged himself about with care. Marston, with his keen,
devising brain, would face a pretty problem in the recovery of those
documents.

But it was when, on an abrupt inspiration, Quarrier removed the
telephone receiver from its hook, that he became certain that it was a trap.
“Give me Schuyler 9000,” he had whispered, his voice hoarse in the
blanketing silence. But even with the words he knew that the line was dead,
yet it was characteristic of Quarrier that, once satisfied that this was so, he
resumed his inventory of the office where he had left off.
He had completed the circuit of the chamber with the exception of the
wall safe and the small, flat-topped writing-desk by the door. From his
position he could see the desk quite easily; there was nothing and nobody
either on or under it. And now, before he twirled the combination, he laid
his hand upon the doors, pulling at the handles in a perfunctory testing. And
then—
He recoiled, stumbling backward, as the doors swung wide with a jarring
clang. Fingers trembling, he jerked forward a drawer—put in his hand. He
withdrew it—empty. Confronted with the incredible truth—the thing which
he had feared and yet had not believed—he stood, stunned. For the
documents had vanished!
Even in the midst of his excitement and dismay, Quarrier permitted
himself the ghost of a faint, wintry grin. But a few hours before he had
himself bestowed those papers in their particular resting-place, and,
observing a precaution to make assurance doubly sure, he had stationed a
guard at the street level, men whom he could trust. For, in the morning he
had meant to transfer those documents to that repository in the West
Eighties from which Marston would never be able to retrieve them, for with
their receipt would come the final quietus of the President of Intervale
Steel. And that was why Quarrier had called that number, which had not
answered.
Now the documents were gone and Marston was safe. But there remained
a final thin thread of hope, and it was this:
The building, a new one, stood alone; Quarrier owned it; his enemies had
in some obscure fashion obtained that which they sought. And—this being
so—they were in the building.
Quarrier’s orders to that guard had not included the stoppage or detention
of any seeking ingress. On entering, he had been informed merely that

perhaps half a dozen, all told, had possibly preceded him. They had trapped
him—perhaps they might even succeed in expunging him from the record
together with the evidence, but they—Marston and the rest—some or all of
them were in the building; they had to be.
He grinned again, a swift, tigerish grin, as he considered the trifling clue
which had betrayed them. But for that he would never have discovered the
looting of the safe.
And it was then, as he stood, turned a little from the safe and facing the
heavy door giving on the lumber-room, that he straightened, tense, bending
to the keyhole.
The door was sound-proof, as were the walls, but abruptly, as a sound
heard in dreams, he had heard it: At the keyhole, a sound, or the shadow of
a sound, faint and thin, but unmistakable, like the beating of a heart.
And that sound had gone on, faint and thin, as though muffled through
layers of cotton wool, persistent, regular—the faint, scarce-audible ticking
of a watch.
For a moment, even while he considered and dismissed the thought that
they might have planted a time-bomb against that door, Quarrier hesitated.
And then, abruptly, he knew: They were in the lumber-room; he had
surprised them; doubtless they waited, hidden, for his exit. He had been too
quick for them; they had not counted on his escape from that cellar, and if
that were so, he, Quarrier, would have something to say as to their getaway.
Silent, his automatic ready, he had opened the door into the corridor with
a slow, stealthy caution. Then he was in the corridor, searching the thick-
piled shadows, where, at the far end, a light hung between floor and ceiling
like a star. A silence held, thick, heavy, mournful, daunting, as he began his
advance—a silence burdened with a tide of threat, sinister, whispering,
alive.
Just ahead of him was the first of the great batteries of elevators. A
pressure upon the call-bell, and in a moment he would have with him men
upon whom he could rely, men who would execute his least order without
question. And then, remembering, he desisted.
For he found it easy to believe that the same agency which had silenced
his telephone might have cut him off here also from communication, but his

finger, reaching for the signal, jerked backward, as, out of the corner of his
eye, he beheld a lance of light spring suddenly from the crusted transom of
the lumber-room door.
Were they coming out?
“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat.
He did not pause to consider how many of them there might be, or that
his faithful guardians of the gate, thirty stories below, were probably
silenced by the same sinister hand.
Silently, his gun held rigid as a rock, he approached the lumber-room
door; then, a step away, he paused, with a sharp intake of his breath.
Here, six paces at his left, a narrow corridor led to a fire-alarm box and a
window directly overlooking the main entrance and the street. Quarrier,
back to the wall, thrust up a groping hand to where, just above his head, a
light cluster hung. Three of the bulbs he unscrewed; then, going to the
window, opened it, leaned outward, and, with intervals between, dropped
them downward into the dark.
Then, pistol in hand, his feet silent upon the concrete flooring of the
corridor, he approached the lumber-room door.
On hands and knees, he listened a moment at the keyhole; then, still on
his knees, his fingers, reaching, turned the knob, slowly, with an infinite
caution, in his face new creases, grim lines. His face bitter, bleak, mouth
hard, he straightened, got to his feet, thrust inward the heavy door with one
lightning movement; stepped into the lumber-room, his gun, swung in a
short arc, covering the two who faced him across the intervening space.
“Those documents, Marston,” he commanded bruskly, “I can—use
them.”
His gaze, for a fleeting instant, turned to the other man, who, hands
clenched at his sides, his eyes wide with sudden terror and unbelief, stared
dumbly at the apparition in the doorway.
But Marston, his face gray, his hand hidden in his pocket, shrugged,
sneered wryly, his hand thrust out and upward with the speed of light.

But, for the difference between time and eternity, he was not quick
enough. There came a double report, roaring almost as one: Marston’s sneer
blurred to a stiff, frozen grimace; he swayed, leaning forward, his face
abruptly blank; then, in a slumping fall, he crashed downward to the floor.
Quarrier stooped, swept up the papers where they had fallen from the
dead man’s pocket; then he turned curtly upon his body-servant.
“You may go, Harrison,” he said, as if dismissing the man casually at the
end of his day’s service.
But if Harrison felt any gratitude for the implied reprieve, he turned now
to Quarrier with an eager gesture, his speech broken, agonized:
“He—you must listen, sir—Mr. Quarrier,” he begged. “He—Mr. Marston
—he knew me when—he knew about....”
His voice broke, faltered.
“Well—?” asked Quarrier, coldly, his face expressionless.
“Mr. Marston,” continued the man—“he knew—my record—I was afraid
to tell you, sir. He—he found out, somehow, that I’d—been—done time,
sir.... He scared me, I’ll admit—he threatened me—threatened to tell you....
You didn’t know, of course....”
“Yes—I knew,” explained Quarrier, simply, and at the expression in his
master’s face the valet’s own glowed suddenly as if lighted from within.
“You—knew—” he murmured.

VI.
Chain of Circumstance.

“BUT there is one thing you can tell me,” Quarrier was saying. “You had
the combination of the safe, of course; we’ll say nothing more about that—
but—how did you get in?”
Harrison bent his head.

“Well, sir,” he explained, after a moment, “it was simple, but I’d never
have thought of it but for—him.” He pointed to the silent figure on the
floor.
“Well—there are just three doors, sir, as you know,” he resumed. “The
entrance door of your office, with the combination lock; the entrance door
of the lumber-room here, both giving on the corridor; and the inside door
between the lumber-room and your office. We couldn’t get into the office
by the entrance door from the hall on account of the combination lock, but
we could and did get into the lumber-room easily enough from the corridor
—the door’s not even locked, as you know, sir. And that’s how we got into
the private office—from the lumber-room, here, through the door between.”
“But how—?” began Quarrier. “That door is a steel one; it was locked—
I’ll swear to that. You didn’t jimmy it; you didn’t have a Fourth Dimension
handy, did you, Harrison? But—go on; it’s beyond me, I’ll confess.”
Harrison permitted himself the ghost of a grin.
“Why—just a newspaper, and a bit of wire, sir—that was how it was
done. I didn’t dare unlock the connecting door—beforehand, sir—from the
office side; I never had the chance. I was never alone in the office, sir, even
for a second, as you know; but there’s a clearance of nearly half an inch, sir,
beneath that connecting door—just enough for the newspaper. From the
lumber-room here I pushed the paper under the door, into the office, and
then, with the wire, it wasn’t so difficult to push the key out of the lock; the
door was locked from the office side, of course.
“The key fell on the paper; we pulled the paper with the key on it back
under the door, sir, into the lumber-room here, and—we just unlocked the
connecting door there, and walked into the office. Afterwards I locked the
door again, from the office side, and I just did make it out the front door of
the office, when I heard your step on the stair. He was waiting for me in the
lumber-room; he said it was safer. Anyway, I just did make it along the hall
and into the lumber-room by the hall entrance before you came.”
He paused, a queer expression in his face.
“But I don’t understand how you knew, if you’ll excuse me, sir—how
you suspected. Afterward, from the corridor, you saw our light when we

were ready to come out; we thought you’d gone for good, of course.... But
nothing was touched, sir, except—that is—of course—” He stumbled.
Quarrier silenced him with upraised hand.
“I didn’t suspect, Harrison—I knew,” he said. “And I heard, through the
keyhole of that connecting door, the ticking of that watch of yours; it’s big
enough. That helped, of course. But that was afterward. There was one little
thing you overlooked, and, for the matter of that, so did I—nearly.”
There came the sound of heavy footsteps on the concrete flooring of the
corridor, voices: His guards, summoned by Quarrier’s “light-bombs.”
Quarrier continued, as if he had not heard:
“Well—it was right under my eyes, but I almost missed it, at that. I saw it
moving, and I knew that something must have made it move.”
He paused, with a faint grimace of recollection.
“You see—you had your hat on in the office, didn’t you?... Yes, I thought
so. You’re a bit deaf, too.... Well, you should have been—to Marston. But
that’s past. And you have a good, thick crop of hair—so far.”
Quarrier smiled frostily. “Well, you struck against it and set it moving—
that was all. You never noticed it. Because it was—the chain from the
electrolier, Harrison, and that was how—”
“You caught us, sir! I—I’m glad. You might call it a—”
“—Chain of circumstance,” finished Quarrier, his eyes outward, gazing
into the new dawn.

The
Place of Madness
By Merlin Moore Taylor
“NONSENSE. A penitentiary is not intended to be a place for coddling and
pampering those who have broken the law.”
Stevenson, chairman of the Prison Commission, waved a fat hand in the
direction of the convict standing at the foot of the table.
“This man,” he went on, “has learned in some way that the newspapers
are ‘gunning’ for the warden and he is seizing the opportunity to make a
play for sympathy in his own behalf. I’ll admit that these tales he tells of
brutality toward the prisoners are well told, but I believe that he is
stretching the facts. They can’t be true. Discipline must be maintained in a
place like this even if it requires harsh measures to do it at times.”
“There is no call for brutality, however,” exclaimed the convict, breaking
the rule that prisoners must not speak unless they are spoken to.
Then, ignoring the chairman’s upraised hand, he went on: “We are treated
like beasts here! If a man so much as opens his mouth to ask a civil and
necessary question, the reply is a blow. Dropping a knife or a fork or a
spoon at the table is punished by going without the next meal. Men too ill to
work are driven to the shops with the butts of guns. Petty infractions of the
most trivial rules mean the dark cell and a diet of bread and water.
“Do you know what the dark cell is? ‘Solitary’ they call it here. ‘Hell’
would be a better name. Steel all around you, steel walls, steel door, steel
ceiling, steel floor. Not a cot to lie upon, not even a stool to sit upon.
Nothing but the bare floor. And darkness! Not a ray of light ever penetrates
the dark cell once the door is closed upon you. No air comes to you except

through a small ventilator in the roof. And even that has an elbow to keep
the light away from you.
“Is it any wonder that even the most refractory prisoner comes out of
there broken—broken in mind, in body, in spirit? And some of them go
insane—stark, staring mad—after only a few hours of it. And for what? I
spent two days in ‘solitary’ because I collapsed from weakness at my bench
in the shoe factory.
“See this scar?” He pointed to a livid mark over one eye. “A guard did
that with the barrel of his rifle because I was unable to get up and go back
to work when he told me. He knocked me senseless, and when I came to I
was in ‘solitary.’ Insubordination, they called it. Two days they kept me in
there when I ought to have been in a hospital. Two days of hell and torture
because I was ill. People prate of reforming men in prison. It’s the other
way around. It makes confirmed criminals of them—if they don’t go mad
first.”
The chairman wriggled in his seat and cleared his throat impatiently.
“We have listened to you for quite a while, my man,” he said pompously,
“but I, for one, have enough. A dozen or more prisoners have testified here
today, and none of them has made a statement to back up the charges you
have made.”
“And why?” demanded the prisoner. “Because they are afraid to tell the
truth. They know that they would be beaten and starved and deprived of
their ‘good time’ on one excuse or another if they even hinted at what they
know. You wouldn’t believe them, anyhow. You don’t believe me, yet I
probably shall suffer for what I have said here. But that doesn’t matter.
They can’t take any ‘good time’ away from me. I’m in for life.”
His voice grew bitter.
“And that is one reason I have gone into this thing in detail—for my sake
and the sake of others who cannot look forward to ever leaving this place.
The law has decreed that we shall live and die here, but the law said nothing
about torturing us.”
“This board guaranteed its protection to all who were called upon to
testify here,” answered the chairman. “It has no desire to whitewash any
person in connection with the investigation which is being made, and in

order that there might be no reflection upon the manner in which this
hearing is conducted neither the warden, his deputies nor guards have been
permitted to attend. Unless you have tangible evidence to offer us and can
give the names of those who can back up your charges, you may go.”
“Just a minute.” It was the board member nearest the prisoner who
interrupted. Then, to the convict, “You said, I believe, that only a few hours
in the dark cell often will drive a man insane. Yet you spent two days there.
You are not insane, are you?”
“No, sir.” The convict spoke respectfully. “My conscience was clear and I
was able to serve my time there without breaking. But another day or so
would have finished me. You testified against me at my trial, didn’t you? I
hold no grudge against you for that, sir. I give you credit for doing only
what you thought was your duty. Your testimony clinched the case against
me. Yet I am innocent—”
The chairman rapped sharply upon the table.
“I utterly fail to see what all this has to do with the matter under
investigation,” he protested irritably. “We are not trying this man’s case.
The courts have passed upon that. He is just like all the rest. Any one of
them is ready to swear on a stack of Bibles that he is innocent. Let’s get on
with this investigation.”
The convict bowed silently and turned toward the door beyond which the
guards were waiting to conduct him back to his cell. A hand upon his arm
detained him.
“Mr. Chairman,” said Blalock, the member who had questioned the
prisoner, “I request that this man be permitted to go on with what he was
saying. I shall have no more questions to ask. You were saying”—he
prompted the man beside him.
“I was saying that I was innocent,” resumed the convict. “I was about to
add that not even a man who is guiltless of wrongdoing would be able to
withstand the terrors of solitary for any length of time. You, for instance, are
a physician, a man of sterling reputation against whom no one ever has
breathed a word. Yet I doubt that you could endure several hours in the dark
cell. If you would only try it, you would know for yourself that I have
spoken the truth. Gentlemen, I beg of you to do all in your power to abolish

the dark cell. Men can stand just so much without cracking, and if you will
dig into the facts you will find that nine times out of ten it is men broken in
‘solitary’ who are responsible for the outbreaks in prison. That is all.”
He bowed respectfully and was gone.

“CLEVER TALKER, that fellow,” commented the secretary of the
commission, breaking the silence. “He almost had me believing him. Who
is he, Blalock? You had him summoned, I believe.”
The physician nodded.
“I confess it was as much from personal interest in the man as from any
hope that he might give valuable evidence here,” he said. “He surprised me
with his outburst. He is a clever talker. Ellis is his name—Martin Ellis—and
he comes of a splendid and well-to-do family. University graduate and quite
capable of having carved out a wonderful career. But he was idolized at
home and given more money than was good for him. It made him an idler
and a young ne’er-do-well. But whatever he did he did openly, and I never
heard of anything seriously wrong until he was convicted of the crime
which brought him here.”
“Murder, I suppose?” Stevenson, the chairman, was interested in spite of
himself. “He spoke of being in for life.”
“Yes; killing a girl. Agnes Keller was her name. Poor, but well thought
of. Church worker, member of the choir and so on. It was brought out at the
trial—in fact, Ellis told it himself—that he was infatuated with her and they
were together a great deal. Not openly, of course, because old man Ellis, his
father, would have pawed up the earth. The affair ended like all these
clandestine affairs, specially if the girl is young and pretty and poor. It was
the theory of the prosecution that when she discovered her condition she
became frantic and demanded that Ellis marry her, the alternative being that
she would go to his father with the story. It was charged that he killed her to
avoid making a choice. The evidence against him was purely circumstantial,
but the jury held it was conclusive.

“Ellis admitted on the stand that they often went riding in his motor-car
at night. One damning fact against him was that he was seen driving, alone
and rapidly, along the country lane near where her body was found. He had
nothing to back up his claim that he felt ill and went for a drive in an effort
to relieve a sick headache. Of course he denied absolutely that he was
responsible for her condition, or that he even knew of it, but the jury was
out less than an hour. The only hitch, I learned later, was whether to affix
the death penalty or not.”
“He said you were a witness against him. What part did you play?” asked
Stevenson.
“An unwilling one,” answered Blalock, quickly. “I did not believe that
Ellis was guilty then. I am not convinced of it now. But as the girl’s
physician, and presumably one of those to whom she would go in her
trouble, I was questioned as soon as the coroner had held an autopsy. I
admitted that she had confided in me and that I had agreed that the man
responsible should marry her. She did not tell me his name, but my
evidence added weight to the theory that Ellis killed her to avoid marrying
her.”
The door to the room swung open and the warden stood on the threshold.
“May I come in?” he asked. “Dinner is almost ready and I thought I had
better give you warning.”
He crossed to an empty chair and sat down.
“We concluded the taking of evidence quite a little while ago,” said the
chairman. “Since then Dr. Blalock has been entertaining us with the story of
the crime of that fellow Martin Ellis who was one of the witnesses. Quite
unusual.”
“Yes, the sheriff who brought him here told me all about it,” answered
the warden. “He’s hard to handle. Had trouble with one of the guards a
while back and we had to discipline him.”
“Two days in the solitary cell on bread and water, wasn’t it?” asked
Blalock. “He didn’t have any good words for it.”
The warden flushed.

“Few of those who taste of it do,” he admitted. “Too much a matter of
being left alone with your thoughts and your conscience. They’ll punish you
as much as anything can do. Well, suppose you take an adjournment and
come on to dinner? Will you want to make the regular inspection tour of the
prison?”
“Oh, sure,” yawned the chairman. “Undoubtedly, everything is all right,
as usual, but if we omitted it the newspapers would have something to howl
about.”
He rose, and, with the rest of the commission trailing them, followed the
warden to the dining-room.
“Well, let’s make the inspection and have it over with,” Stevenson
suggested, when the meal was finished. “Where do we go first, warden?”
“Through the shops and smaller buildings first, then the cells. That way
you’ll end up closest to the administration building and you can go back
into conference with the least delay.”
Uniformed guards stood smartly at attention as the warden piloted the
commission through. “Trusties” ingratiatingly hovered about the party,
eager to be of service. Great steel-barred doors swung open at the approach
of the commission and clanged to noisily behind it. The afternoon sunlight,
slanting through the bars, relieved the somberness of the cell blocks and
revealed them in their spick-and-spanness, made ready for the occasion.
“Well, everything seems to be O. K.,” said the chairman, as the party
again drew near to the offices. “Anyone else got any suggestions?”
“Yes, I’d like to see the dark cell,” answered the secretary. “I don’t recall
ever visiting it, and that fellow Ellis interested me. He said it was a pocket
edition of Hades. Where is it, warden?”
The warden assumed a jocular air.
“You’ll be disappointed,” he warned. “It’s down in the basement, where
prisoners who want to do so can yell and scream to their hearts’ content
without disturbing anyone. A trifle dark, of course, but if to some it is hell it
is because they choose to make it so. If you really want to see it, come
ahead. It’s not occupied, however.”

He did not mention that he had seen to that. With all this uproar about the
management of the prison, it wasn’t safe to take chances. The commission,
he had foreseen, might decide to make a real investigation, and you never
could tell in just what condition a man would be after several hours in
“solitary.”

“THERE you are gentlemen?” he said, with a flourish of the hand when a
“trusty” had switched on the lights in the basement. “Not one dark cell, but
half a dozen.”
He stood back as the members of the commission crowded forward and
peered into the dark recesses. Over each doorway a single electric bulb
shone weakly, far too weakly for the rays to penetrate into the corners. The
solid, bolt-studded doors stood open, formidable and forbidding.
“Any of you want to try it?” asked the warden from the background.
“Sure, let Blalock take a whirl at one of them,” suggested the secretary.
“His conscience ought to be clear enough not to trouble him. Go on, doctor;
try it and let us know how it feels. I’d do it myself, but I don’t dare risk my
conscience.”
Blalock, standing just inside the doorway of one of the cells, turned and
for a moment surveyed them in silence.
“Your suggestion, of course, was made in jest,” he said. “But,” a sudden
ring came into his voice, “I am going to take you up on it! No,” as a chorus
of exclamations came from the others, “my mind is quite made up. Warden,
I want this as realistic as possible. You will please provide me with a suit of
the regulation convict clothing.”
“Well, of all the blamed fools,” ejaculated the chairman. Then he gave his
shoulders a shrug. “Go on and get a zebra suit, warden. I only hope this
doesn’t get into the papers.”
A “trusty” was dispatched for the striped suit. When it had been brought
Blalock already had removed his outer garments, amid the bantering of the

others. He did not deign to answer them until he had buttoned about him the
prison jacket and jammed upon his head the little striped cap.
“I guess I’m ready,” he said then. “You gentlemen have seen fit to
ridicule the experiment I am about to make. But I say to you that I am doing
this in all seriousness. I do not believe that ‘solitary’ is as bad as Ellis
pictured it to us. I am going to find out. Warden, you will please see that
conditions here are made exactly like those which surround a prisoner in
this place.”
He whirled upon his heel and strode into a cell.
“How long do you want to be left in there?” asked the warden. “Fifteen
minutes or so?”
“Ellis declared his belief that I could not stand it for an hour or two,”
came the reply from the depths of the cell. “Suppose that we make it two
hours. At the end of that time you may return and release me. But not a
minute before.”
“Very well, Number 9982,” replied the warden. “You now are alone with
your conscience.”
The heavy door clanged shut, and a faint click told Blalock that the light
above the door had been snapped off. Then the sound of footsteps, growing
fainter and fainter, the clang of the door leading to the basement—then
silence. Blalock was alone.
Feeling with his hands, he made his way to a corner of the cell and sat
down upon the bare, hard floor.

HE SHUT his eyes and set about concentrating his mind upon some subject
other than the fact that he was a prisoner, of his own free will to be sure, but
a prisoner nevertheless.
He always had prided himself upon the fact that he had the ability to
drive from his thoughts at will all topics but the one which he desired. Now,
he chose, at random, to begin preparing an outline of a lecture which he was
scheduled to deliver within two weeks before a convention of medical men.

Back home in his study, Blalock was accustomed to stretching out at
length in an easy chair, his feet upon a stool, a pillow beneath his head.
Here his legs were stretched out upon the floor at night angles to his body,
held bolt upright by the steel wall at his back. He sought to relieve the strain
by keeping his knees in the air, but the floor offered no firm foothold and
his heels slipped.
Irritated, Blalock slid away from the corner and tried lying upon his back,
his eyes staring up into the darkness above him. Immediately that position,
too, grew irksome and he turned over upon first one side, then the other, and
finally he got upon his feet and leaned against the wall. Thus another fifteen
or twenty minutes passed, he judged. He found that it was impossible to
concentrate his thoughts, so he resolved to let them wander.
Leaning against the wall speedily proved uncomfortable, and Blalock
began to pace around and around the narrow confines of the cell. Four
paces one way, two at right angles, then four, then two. It reminded him of a
big bear he once had watched in a zoo, striding back and forth behind the
bars, but never very far from the door which shut him off from the outside
world and freedom.
Suddenly Blalock discovered that he had made the circuit so many times
in the darkness that he was turned around, that he did not know at which
end lay the door to the cell. He began to hunt for it, feeling with his
sensitive surgeon’s fingers for the place where the door fitted into the wall
of the cell.
It annoyed him, after making two trips around, that he had failed to locate
the door. He could tell by counting the corners as he came to them. The
door fitted into its casing so well that he could not distinguish it from the
grooves where the plates of the cell were joined together.
Immediately it became to him the most important thing in the world to
know where lay that door. He thought of sounding the walls to see if at
some point they would not give back a different sound and thus tell him
what he felt he must know.
It was becoming a mania with him now. So, gently, he began rapping
with his knuckles against the steel, here, there, in one place, then in another.
Then he tried it all over with his ear, trained to detect, even without the aid

of a stethoscope, the variations in the beating of a human heart, pressed
close against the walls.
But again he was foiled. Every spot gave forth the same hollow sound.
Angered, Blalock kicked viciously against the insensate steel. Shooting
pains in his maltreated toes rewarded him and, with a growl of anguish, he
dropped to the floor to nurse the injured members.
Then he became aware that his hands were stickily saturated, and he
knew, when he discovered that his knuckles were skinned and raw, that it
was his own blood. Desperately he fought to regain his self-control in an
effort to force himself to be bland and unruffled when the warden should
come to release him, as Blalock felt sure would be the case in only a few
minutes at most.
He caught himself listening intently for the footsteps of the warden, or
some “trusty” or guard sent to release him. He strained his ears to catch the
far-away clang which would indicate that someone was coming into the
basement.
But only the hissing sound of his own breath broke the tense silence.
Funny he thought, how very still things could be. It required no very big
stretch of the imagination to picture himself as really a recalcitrant prisoner,
slapped in ‘solitary’ to ponder upon his misdeeds.
Going further, he recalled a story, which he had read long ago, of a man
who found himself to be the only living human being, the others having
been wiped out in the flicker of an eyelash by some mysterious force.
Why didn’t the warden come on and let him out of here? Surely the two
hours were up, and he was getting tired of it!
It would never do, however, to be caught in this frame of mind when he
was released. He must emerge smiling and ready to give the lie to that
clever talker, Ellis.
Once more he got up and began his circuit of the walls. He felt that he
was master of himself again, and it would do no harm to try to solve the
puzzle of the door that would not be found.
Perhaps the warden had been delayed by some unexpected happening.
Oh, well, a few minutes longer wouldn’t make any difference. Suppose that

he were in Ellis’ place! In for life! He didn’t want to think of Ellis. But
somehow the face of the “lifer” kept obtruding itself—his face and his
words.
What was it that Ellis had said? “You, for instance, are a physician, a man
of sterling reputation, against whom no one ever breathed a word. Yet I
doubt if you could endure several hours in the dark cell.”
And the warden had added that in the dark cell a man was alone with his
conscience. Damn that warden! Where was he, anyhow? Blalock began to
dislike him. Perhaps there was something in those stories of brutality which
the newspapers had printed, after all.
Dislike for the warden began to give way to hate. Blalock wondered if
the warden and that fat, pompous little Stevenson, chairman of the
commission, hadn’t got their heads together and decided it would be a good
joke to let him stay in there a great deal longer than he had ordered. He
would show them, once he got out, that he didn’t relish that kind of a joke,
that he wasn’t a man to be trifled with.
Thus another hour passed, as he reckoned it, and his anger and passion
got the best of him. He kicked the walls and hammered upon them with his
clenched fists, insensible to the fact that he was injuring himself.
Then came fear—fear that he had been forgotten!
Suppose that there had been an outbreak in the prison, that the convicts
were in control! Would they release him? Might they not wreak their
vengeance upon him in the absence of another victim?

HE BEGAN to call, moderately at first and pausing often to listen for some
response; then louder and louder, until he was screaming without cessation.
He cursed and swore, pleaded and cajoled, threatened and sought to bribe
by turns, demanding only that he be taken from this terrible place. He was
dead to the fact that it was impossible for anyone to hear him, that only the
reverberation of his own voice, thunderous in that narrow place, answered
him. Beating down from the ceiling, thrown up from the floor, cast back

into his teeth by the walls, the noise of his own making overwhelmed him,
crushed him.
Stark terror held him in its icy grip now. His thoughts pounded through
his brain like water in a mill race. The perspiration fell from him in rivulets
as he hammered and smashed at the walls. His brain was afire. He began to
realize that what Ellis had said very easily could be true. Men did go mad in
this place! Why, he was going mad himself—mad from the torture his body
was undergoing, mad from being alone with his own thoughts.
There were more lucid moments when reason desperately sought to
assert itself. Blalock’s cries became less violent and, moaning and sobbing
softly, he began all over again that endless circuit of the cell in search of the
door. Failing, he raved again and staggered from wall to wall or leaped
madly toward the ceiling as if, by some miracle, escape might lie in that
direction.
Exhausted at last, he sank to the floor, poignantly conscious that
interminable nights and days were passing over his head and that thirst and
hunger, keen and excruciating, held him in their grasp.
At intervals, strength would come back to him, strength, backed by
indomitable will power that sent him lunging to his feet to renew his
battering at the walls, his frenzied shouts and screeches, in just one more
effort to make himself heard.
His knuckles were broken and bleeding, his lips cracked and swollen; his
voice came out shrilly from his dry and wracked throat, his body and legs
were succumbing to a great weariness that would not be denied.
Came the time at last when his own voice no longer dinned into his ears,
when his legs refused to obey the will that commanded them to hoist him
upon his feet, when he no longer could lift his hands. His spirit was broken
at last, and he gave up the struggle and sank back upon the floor. And all
around him the darkness shut down—the darkness and the silence.
Then the door was thrown open, and, framed in silhouette against the
light beyond, stood the warden.
“Got enough, doctor?” he called out cheerily. “Your two hours are up....
Why don’t you answer me? Dr. Blalock! What’s wrong, man?”

He peered into the cell in a vain endeavor to force his eyes to penetrate
the darkness. Failing, he fumbled in his clothes for a match and, with hands
that shook, scratched it against the door.
Then his face went white as a sheet, he staggered where he stood and the
match burned down to the flesh of his hands and scorched it. For in the far
corner he had perceived, flat upon its back, a haggard, bloodstained, white-
haired thing that winked and blinked at him with vacant eyes and muttered
and gibbered incoherently.

REASON came back to Blalock one day many weeks later.
He opened his eyes with the light of understanding in them, and they told
him from his surrounding that he was in a hospital. Outside, the sun was
shining brightly, and in a little park, just beyond, birds were singing and the
breeze brought him the sound of children at play.
“Awake at last, are you?” asked the white-capped nurse who came into
the room just then.
“Yes,” said Blalock, in a rasping whisper. He did not know it then, but
the calm, soothing voice he once had boasted was his best asset in a sick
room, was gone forever. The terrific strain to which he had put his vocal
cords in his paroxysms in the dark cell had shattered them.
“You are doing splendidly,” the nurse assured him brightly. “You have
been seriously ill, but you are recovering rapidly now.”
“No,” said Blalock positively, as one who knows. “I shall never get well.
Give me a mirror, please.”
“I don’t believe there is one handy,” she evaded, loath to let him see the
havoc in his face.
But he insisted.
“Please,” he begged, “I am prepared and I do not think I will be
overcome. I will be brave.”

Reluctantly, then, she started to place the silvered glass in his hand. As he
reached out to take it, he stopped, his hand half-way. The hand he was
accustomed to see, with its tapering fingers and well-kept nails, the hand
that so deftly had performed delicate operations, was gone. Instead was a
slim, clawlike thing, with distorted knuckles and joints.
Blalock finally extended it, took the mirror and, slowly but steadily,
brought it into line with his eyes. He had expected some changes, but not
the sight that greeted him. The black, wavy hair had given place to locks of
snowy white. His face was drawn and wrinkled, and lack-luster eyes stared
back at him from cavernous sockets. Long he gazed at this apparition, then
silently he let the mirror fall upon the cover and closed his eyes.
“Don’t take it so hard, doctor,” begged the nurse. “You have been
through a harrowing experience and your face shows it now. But in a short
time—” The lie did not come easily, and her tongue faltered.
“Never mind that,” whispered Blalock. “It doesn’t matter now. Send for
Stevenson, please.”
The chairman of the Prison Commission came without delay. Compelling
himself to conceal the repulsion he felt at sight of the broken man upon the
bed, he bustled in with forced pleasantries.
“Stevenson,” said Blalock when finally the other had taken a chair and
the nurse had withdrawn. “I have something to tell you. That day I went
into the dark cell—”
“Now, now, old man,” soothed Stevenson, laying a restraining hand upon
the other’s arm. “Don’t let’s talk about that. We abolished it that very day.
Why bring up that awful experience of yours? No one knows about it but
the commission, the warden and your doctor and nurse here. We all are
pledged not to talk about it, and the newspapers didn’t have a line except
that you were taken ill. Let the past take care of itself, Blalock, old man,
and let us talk of other things.”
A flash of the old will power shone in the sick man’s eyes.
“No,” he said firmly. “No, Stevenson, the past cannot take care of itself.
Bend closer, Stevenson, I must tell you something, and it seems I’m not
strong enough yet to talk out loud.

“That day I so boastfully demanded that I be locked up in ‘solitary.’ I
thought I knew myself and my will power. I believed that I had such control
over my mind and my body that I could defy any torture man might devise,
without quailing—despite the knowledge that my conscience was not the
lily-white thing I had led others to believe it was. For, Stevenson, my
conscience was black—as black as hell! It held the knowledge of a great sin
on my part, a huge wrong that had been done another.
“But I had stifled it by my will power until I believed it a thing that was
dead, that could never throw off the bondage to which I had doomed it, and
arise and accuse me. It was to prove that I was superior to it that I
deliberately chose to be locked up with it where, alone with my thoughts, I
could prove myself the master, once for all.
“For Martin Ellis had shaken my confidence. Where before I had been
certain I was doubtful, I wanted to prove him a liar and at the same time
satisfy myself that I was a free man and not the galley slave of that thing
which we call a guilty conscience.
“In that cell, that conscience which I believed I had killed rose up to
show me it had been but sleeping. Under other conditions it might have
slept on indefinitely. In there it overwhelmed me with a sense of its power
and made me feel that I was about to meet my God without even so much
as a veil behind which to hide my guilty thoughts. No matter which way I
turned I saw an accusing finger pointing at me out of the darkness and the
solitude was shattered by a voice which cried out that those who sin must
pay and pay and pay until the slate is wiped clean. And I had sinned, but I
had not paid.
“Conscience is a terrible thing once it is aroused, Stevenson. It is living,
vibrant, and it lashes and scourges until it has exacted its toll. That was
what it did to me there in the darkness, alone and at its mercy, and with no
chance to escape. And in my agony and fear I cursed the God who had
created me and saddled me with this thing. I learned my lesson, though,
before I was through. I who had presumed to place my own puny will above
the Great Eternal Will; I who had dared to believe that the great order of
things, the plan by which we all must live and die, must make an exception
of me, learned that I was wrong.

“Martin Ellis is innocent, Stevenson, and I trust to you to see that justice
is done. He did not kill Agnes Keller and I knew it. And I stood by and let
him be convicted. More, I took the stand against him and helped to make
that conviction certain. I told only the truth in my testimony, but I did not
tell all I knew and what I omitted would have saved Ellis. I did not want to
testify at all, but the prosecution refused to let me take advantage of the
confidential relation which is supposed to exist between physician and
patient.
“The state was right in its theory that the man who strangled Agnes
Keller did so because he was responsible for her condition and did not wish
to marry her. She came to me in my study on the night she met her death
and told me she had discovered she was about to become a mother.
“She refused to take any steps I suggested and she said that her child,
when it was born, must have the legal right to bear the name of its father.
And that very night she was lured into an automobile with the promise that
the man who was to blame would take her to a nearby town and make her
his wife. But on that lonely country road he turned upon her and killed her
with his bare hands.
“And how do I know these things? Because, Stevenson, I was the man
responsible for her condition, and it was I who killed her!”

The Closing Hand

A Powerful Short Story

by Farnsworth Wright
SOLITARY and forbidding, the house stared specterlike through scraggly
trees that seemed to shrink from its touch.
The green moss of decay lay on its dank roofs, and the windows, set in
deep cavities, peered blindly at the world as if through eyeless sockets. So
forbidding was its aspect that boys, on approaching its cheerless gables,
stopped their whistling and passed on the opposite side of the street.
Across the fields, a few huddled cottages gazed through the falling rain,
as if wondering what family could be so bold as to take up its abode within
the gloomy walls of that old mansion, whose carpetless floors for two years
had not felt the tread of human feet.
In an attic room of the house two sisters lay in bed, but not asleep. The
younger sister cringed under the dread inspired by the bleak place. The
elder laughed at her childish fears, but the younger felt the spell of the old
building and was afraid.
“I suppose there is really nothing to frighten me in this dreary old house,”
she admitted, without conviction in her voice, “but the very feel of the place
is horrible. Mother shouldn’t have left us alone in this gruesome place.”
“Stupid,” her sister scolded, “with all the silverware downstairs,
somebody has to be here, for fear of burglars.”

“Oh, don’t talk about burglars!” pleaded the younger girl. “I am afraid. I
keep imagining I hear ghostly footsteps.”
Her sister laughed.
“Go to sleep, Goosie,” she said.
“‘Haunted’ houses are nothing but superstition. They exist only in
imagination.”
“Why has nobody lived here for two years, then? They tell me that for
five years every family moved out after being here just a short time. The
whole atmosphere of the house is ghastly. And I can’t forget how the older
Berkheim girl was found stabbed to death in her bed, and nobody ever
knew how it happened. Why, she may have been murdered in this very
room!”
“Go to sleep and don’t scare yourself with such silly talk. Mother will be
with us tomorrow night, and Dad will be back next day. Now go to sleep.”
The elder sister soon dropped into slumber, but the younger lay open-
eyed, staring into the black room and shuddering at every stifled scream of
the wind or distant growl of thunder. She began to count, hoping to
hypnotize herself into drowsiness, but at every slight noise she started, and
lost her count.
Suddenly she turned and shook her sister by the shoulder.
“Edith, somebody is prowling around downstairs!” she whispered.
“Listen! Oh, what shall we do?”
The elder sister struck a match and lit the candle. Then she slipped on her
dressing-gown, and drew on her slippers.
“You’re not going down there? Edith, tell me you’re not going
downstairs! It might be that murdered Berkheim girl! Edith, don’t—”
Edith shot a glance of withering scorn at her sister, who lay on the bed
with blanched face and wide, terrified eyes.
“There is something moving around downstairs, and I’m going to find
out what it is,” she said.

Taking the candle, she left the room. Her younger sister lay in the
darkness, listening to the pattering of rain on the roof and straining her ears
to catch the slightest sound. The noise downstairs ceased, but the wind rose
and the rain beat upon the roof in sudden furious blasts that made her heart
jump wildly....
Ten minutes passed—twenty minutes—and Edith had not returned.
A door slammed, and the younger sister thought she heard something
moving again, but the wind began to sob and drowned out all other noises.
Between gusts, she heard the portentous sound, and each time it seemed
nearer.
Then—she started as she realized that something was coming up the
stairs. Once she thought she heard a cry, to which the wind joined its
plaintive voice in a weird duet.
Nearer and nearer the strange noise came. It mounted the stairs, step by
step, heard only when the wind and rain softened their voices. It passed the
first landing, and moved slowly up the second flight, while the girl fearfully
awaited its coming.
The wind howled until the house quaked; it shrilled past the eaves and
fled across the fields like a hunted ghost.
And now the girl’s pounding pulses drowned out the screaming of the
wind, for the presence had invaded her bedroom!
She cowered under the covers, a cold perspiration chilling her body until
her teeth chattered. Her imagination conjured up frightful things—a
disembodied spirit come to destroy her—a corpse from the grave, gibbering
in terror because it could not tear the cerements from its face—the
murdered Berkheim girl, with the knife still sheathed in her heart—or some
escaped beast, licking its lips in greedy anticipation of the feast her
tremulous body would provide. Or was it a murderer, who, having killed
her sister, was now bent on completing his bloody work?
A flash of lightning split the sky, and the thunder bellowed its terrifying
warning. The girl threw back the bedclothes and shrank to the wall, her eyes
starting from their sockets, fearful lest another flash reveal some sight too
ghastly to contemplate.

Slowly the being dragged itself across the floor, lifted itself onto the bed,
and uttered a choking sound of agony.
The girl sat petrified. Then, timorously, she extended a shaky hand, but
quickly withdrew it in dread of some hideous contact.
Again she thrust her trembling hand into the gloom, farther, farther, until
it touched something shaggy and wet.
A clammy hand closed over hers, and she started to her feet, with a
horrified scream.
The icy hand tightened with a sickening tremor, and dragged her down.
Then her tortured senses gave way, and she fell back unconscious upon the
bed....

WHEN she awoke, it was day. Beside her, on the bed, lay the bleeding body
of her sister, Edith, stabbed in the breast by the burglar she had tried to
frighten away.
The younger girl was clutching the clotted wisps of hair that had fallen
across the breast of her sister, whose cold hand had closed over hers in the
last convulsive shudder of death.

Howard Ellis Davis Relates
Some Extraordinary
Adventures With

The UNKNOWN
BEAST
AT THE EDGE of the little settlement of Bayou le Tor lapped the slack
waters from which the village had been named. A mile to the south, they
lost themselves in the Mississippi Sound. Northward, they wound among
somber swamps, to disappear at last into the marshes above.
Giant cypress trees crowded down to the very edge of the settlement, as
if jealous of the small space of cleared land it occupied beside the bayou,
and to one not accustomed to the place it seemed that an evil boding lurked
forever within the depths of those overhanging, gloomy swamps.
But until the unknown Beast first made its mysterious presence felt, no
harm for the people of Bayou le Tor ever had come out of those swamps,
except the deadly malaria, which clutched its victims in shaking agues and
burning fevers that consumed life as a woods fire might consume a strip of
dried sedge grass.
Before this strange death that had come to haunt the night swamps, they
shrank in helpless terror. Cows were driven in from their pastures while the
sun was yet high. Mothers called in their sallow-faced children from play as
soon as the shadows began to lengthen.
The first victim had been Swan Davis, an old fisherman who lived by
himself on the edge of the bayou above the settlement. He had been found
in the swamp, dead. At first it was thought that he had been beaten to death,
he was so broken about the body.

Finally, however, it was decided he had been crushed by some
mysterious, unknown force. Something had caught him and squeezed him
until his bones had cracked like dry reeds.
Then the three Buntly boys, driving in a bunch of steers from the
marshes, were overtaken by night on the swamp road. The cattle had been
going peacefully enough, when suddenly they had become frightened and
lumbered off ahead, bellowing madly. Themselves frightened at the queer
behavior of the animals, the boys followed, as fast as they could on foot.
That is, two of them did; for when Jard and Peter Buntly emerged from
the shadows of the swamp road, they found that their brother, Sims, was not
with them.
Terror-stricken though they were, they had returned into the swamp,
calling his name. When they saw nothing of him, and he did not answer
their calls, they went quickly home and reported what had happened. All
night long, bearing flaming torches, the men of the settlement beat up and
down the swamp. Toward morning, they found the young man’s body,
bruised and broken, but no trace of what had killed him.
When the people of Bayou le Tor gathered to discuss the circumstances
surrounding these two mysterious deaths, the negroes, and some others,
declared that an evil spirit haunted the gloomy fastness to the north of the
settlement, while the more conservative agreed that some creature strange
to those parts, some unknown beast, was ranging the night swamps, a
creature that killed for the love of killing.
Armed with shotgun and rifle, they hunted him. They set bear-traps,
baited with an entire quarter of beef hung above. But no one ventured into
the swamps after dark, until, one night, ten of the best men in the settlement
formed a party and rode out on horseback through the swamp road.
Armed with pistol and sheath-knife, they rode, two by two, knee to knee,
their horses following each other nose to tail, so that if any one of the party
were attacked they all could turn and fight in a body.
Nothing happened until they were on their way back; then Walter
Brandon—who, because he was one of their bravest, brought up the rear—
grew careless and lagged behind. Suddenly, his horse came charging in
among the others, riderless.

They could find no trace of Walter, and the other nine could only ride in
and break the news to his young wife, who carried a baby at her breast.
The next day, the girl’s father, old Arner Horn, secured the services of a
small, battered automobile and crossed two counties to see Ed Hardin and
beg that he come and deliver them from this unknown beast that, one by
one, was killing the men-folk of Bayou le Tor.

IN HIS own county Ed Hardin was a deputy sheriff, and the reputation of
his prowess had traveled far. Each summer, when the fishing was best on
the Sound, he came to Bayou le Tor. Each winter, he came to hunt wild
turkeys in the swamps that surrounded the settlement. The people had
grown to know him well, and they knew that he feared neither man, beast,
nor the devil.
He returned in the automobile with Arner, bringing with him his young
friend, Alex Rowe. When they reached Bayou le Tor, the news awaited
them that Walter’s body, which bore on it the same marks as those others
who had been killed, had been found floating on the waters of the bayou,
and that it was being held at the water’s edge so that Ed Hardin might see
for himself the nature of death which this creature inflicted upon its victims.
After he had seen, Ed Hardin came away alone, grim-mouthed. When he
entered Arner’s yard, it already was growing dark, the night breeze rustling
in the liveoaks overhead. He went to the barn and saddled Arner’s bay
mare. Having led her to the front fence, he tied her there and went into the
house.
In the hallway, which divided the house through the middle, he paused as
he heard in the room beside him the low sobbing of a woman. Then he
passed on to the room that had been assigned to him and Alex Rowe. A
small kerosene lamp had been lighted and set upon the dresser, and in the
light of this he was buckling on a belt holding a broad hunting-knife and a
pistol when Alex burst in upon him.
“Ed Hardin,” cried the young man, “what is that mare doin’ at the front
fence? Where be you goin’?”

“I’m goin’ ter hunt that beast, Alex.”
“Yer ain’t goin’ ter do that thing, Ed! Yer don’t know what hit is. How—”
“I’m goin’, Alex.”
“But, Ed, hit’s night. Wait till daylight. The last two times folks went out
on the swamp road at night they was er man killed.”
Broad-shouldered, sparely-made, the big deputy drew himself up to his
full height and turned to gaze for a moment at his young friend.
“I’m goin’ now,” he said calmly.
“But, Ed, you heerd what they said ’bout the schooner up in the bayou.
Hit’s been layin’ there fer two weeks, ’thout dealin’s with nobody. You
heerd what Rensie Bucker, the ole nigger what uster be er sailor, said. He
said he paddled up in his dugout by that schooner an’ them folks on board is
India folks. He says that in their lan’ they’s strange beasts an’ reptiles, an’
that mebbe they’ve sot one of ’em loose in the swamp, mebbe put hit ter
watch the swamp road.”
“Ef hit’s been sot ter watch the swamp road at night,” said Ed, “that’s jes
wher I want ter go. I want ter meet it.”
“Wait, Ed. Wait till I git holt of er hoss. I’m goin’ with yer.”
A soft smile played for a moment about Ed Hardin’s grim mouth.
“No, Alex,” he said: “I reckon I’ll go by myse’f.”
As he was untying the mare, those who had returned to the house
gathered about him and, as Alex had done, tried to prevent his going off
alone into the swamp at night.
But he swung lightly to the saddle and galloped out through the
settlement, into the shadows of the giant cypress trees.

THE MARE was a spirited and nervous animal, and she leaped and shied as
she danced among the stagnant pools that lay black in the swamp road.

In thus going out deliberately to use himself as a bait for the Unknown
Beast, Ed felt that he could depend largely upon her agility and quickness to
prevent being taken unawares by a sudden rush from the darkness. He drew
from its holster his heavy Colt’s revolver and thrust it through his belt in
front, within convenient reach.
So dark was the black tunnel of the road that he could see no space in
front of him, and he let the reins lie slack on the mare’s neck, so that she
might be undisturbed in picking her footing. And as he plunged deeper into
the swamp, he experienced a lonely boding that was new to him.
Time and again, he had gone fearlessly out alone in the pursuit and
capture of desperate men. Now, however, he did not know what nature of
creature it was he sought, and he had to invite an attack from the darkness
in order to get in touch with it.
The night was murky, almost sticky in its heaviness, and the swamp
seemed strangely silent. Only the occasional call of some night bird pierced
the stillness. He was familiar with the road, having traveled it frequently,
and the places where violence had occurred had been described to him in
detail.
A few hundred yards to the left of the road, where he now was riding, the
fisherman had met his death. He passed the place where Brandon last had
been seen, and, soon after, entered the deeper recess of the swamp where
the herder had been snatched into the darkness of death. Plainly, this
neighborhood of violence was the creature’s lurking-place.
Suddenly, the mare shied, snorted, and stood quivering, her head turned
as though she saw or smelled something at the side of the road. He raised
his pistol, which he now held ready cocked in his hand, and fired quickly
into the darkness. As he had only one hand on the reins, it was some
moments after the report before he could calm the startled animal
sufficiently to proceed on his way.
Twice more, at indications of terror from his horse, guided by her
forward-pointed ears, Ed Hardin fired into the black shadows at the side of
the road, the discharges making lurid flashes in the darkness.
The Unknown Beast evidently was near, following him through the brush
—or over the treetops. If it were on the ground, he hoped for the slender

chance of killing or wounding it before it had an opportunity to attack.
After each shot, as well as he could for the plunging of the mare, he
listened intently for some cry of pain, some movement of the bushes; but
the silence of the shadows was unbroken. The strain was nervewracking,
and he had a wild desire to whirl the mare about and speed away in mad
flight. He could not urge her out of a slow, hesitating walk, and she
frequently shied from one side of the road to the other, with those periodic
halts of trembling fear.
Then the road ran from beneath the arches of the swamp and passed over
a corduroy crossing, bordered on each side by a dense growth of titi. The
mare went more quietly now, and Ed began to hope that some of his shots
had taken effect. He breathed more freely, now that the branches no longer
drooped overhead.
Presently, however, he found himself beneath spreading liveoaks. These,
flanking the road on either side, sent their giant limbs horizontally across.
He peered from side to side, his eyes straining to penetrate the gloom, each
indistinct tree trunk assuming a sinister outline.
Overhead, the trees towered in cavernous depths, and suddenly, with a
swish of leaves and branches, out of them dropped a great, dark object!

THE frightened mare leaped forward; but the nameless creature alighted
behind the saddle.
Hardin snatched out his pistol, only to find that he was unable to use it.
For he had been caught in a giant embrace that pinioned his arms to his
sides, an embrace against which his own great strength was powerless.
The mare ran desperately, her supple body close to the ground, her
graceful neck outstretched. Out from the swamp she sped, crossing a reach
of flat country, once heavily covered with pines. The timber long since had
been cut, only the stumps remaining, charred by forest fires—hordes of
black ghosts crowding down to the edge of the road on both sides.

It was a wild ride for the man, with death perched there behind. The great
arms, wound about him, were slowly squeezing the breath from his body,
and beneath that embrace he felt his ribs bend inward to the point of
cracking. Desperately, he maintained his grip on the saddle with his knees.
Then, just before consciousness would have left him, he raised his legs
and flung himself sideways. The saddle slipped under the mare’s belly.
Carried by the momentum, but with that crushing grip never relaxing, the
man and the terrible creature which held him hurtled through the air.
They struck with a thud against a shattered stump at the side of the road,
while the frightened mare sped on. The murderous creature was next the
stump and at the impact its hold on Ed Hardin loosened. Having slipped
from the great arms, Ed flung himself over and rolled for several feet to one
side.
The pistol long since had dropped from his nerveless fingers; but he now
quickly drew his hunting-knife. Expecting an immediate attack with fang
and claw, he lay on his back, his feet drawn up, very much in the position a
cat assumes when defending itself. He knew it would be useless to pit his
strength against that of the enormous creature, and the best he could hope
for was to ward off an attack with his feet and watch for an opportunity to
reach and drive home the knife.
And suddenly it was looming there above him. For an instant it seemed
to hesitate, then it backed slowly away. With a quick, halting motion,
walking upright like a man, it began to circle about him. Its long arms
swung below its knees. A round head was set on a neck so thick and short
that it seemed to spring from the shoulders themselves. As it circled about
him, Ed turned also, keeping his feet always presented.
Again the creature backed off, up the road. Then it turned and walked
slowly away.
For a moment Ed Hardin lay watching it, unwilling to change his
position. Then, tentatively, he raised himself to a sitting position.
Suddenly, as if, without looking, the creature divined his movement, it
turned about, at a distance of perhaps fifty feet.
And then, with a strangely human shriek of rage, it rushed toward him.

AS IT came through the gloom, this maddened creature, with its uncouth,
hopping run, swinging its long arms from side to side.
The man dropped back into his former position, feet raised, arm held
ready to strike with the knife.
Before it reached him, it dropped forward, without in the least pausing,
and, propelled by both arms and legs, shot in a great, froglike leap through
the air.
The shock, as it landed upon him, drove Ed Hardin’s knees back against
his chest. His right arm, held ready to strike with the knife, was pinned and
twisted painfully.
The knife slipped from his hand. A long arm shot forward and talon-like
fingers clutched his hair. With his legs doubled back as they were, once
more he was seized in that giant embrace, and he felt that his knees were
being pressed into his chest until it soon must crush in like a shattered
eggshell.
Then consciousness left him.
... When his senses slowly returned, he became aware of lights flashing
and horses stamping, and the sound of men’s voices.
Jonas Keil was speaking, and Ed had the rare experience of hearing
himself discussed after he was thought to be dead.
“—’Most on my bended knees ter git ’im not ter do it. But he said he
wouldn’t feel right ter let Death run loose unhindered, long as he was livin’
an’ with strength ter fight. An’ when he rid out single-handed an’ alone, the
bravest man what ever drawed breath was kilt.”
From his position, he judged that he had been placed on the grass at the
side of the road. Near him was someone who, from an occasional quivering
intake of breath, seemed to have been sobbing.
He tried to turn and see who it was, and he found that he could not so
much as twitch a finger.

He heard three new arrivals come up the road, a man on horseback and
two runners, the two evidently holding by the rider’s stirrup leathers. The
rider, as soon as he drew up, said:
“We come soon’s we heerd you-all was gone ter foller Ed. Arn’s bringin’
the waggin. Hit’ll be here terreckly; we passed hit er piece back. But Arn
didn’ git the straights from Cy when he come atter the waggin what hit was
kilt Ed. Po’ ole Ed!”
Old Rensie Bucker, the negro who once had been a sailor, speaking with
the patois of foreign birth, replied to him:
“Hit ees Jonas, de chile-minded neegar who was shanghaed from his
mammy’s shack down on de point ten year back. He had de mind of er chile
an’ de strength ob five men, wid his beeg wide shoulders an’ short neck;
wid de hump on his back an’ his arms hangin’ mos’ ter his ankles. He was
gentle in dem days; but de East Indee folks tuck heem off an’ dey brought
heem back er beast. He’s frum de schooner, by his clothes, an’ dey must
have sot heem on de swamp road at night ter watch an’ keel.
“Dere he lies, dead. De stump ’gin which he struck when he pull Meester
Ed Hardin frum his hoss had er sliver which stuck mos’ through heem. Den
when he fit wid Meester Ed de hurt must have killed heem, because there is
no other wound.”
The man beside Ed Hardin spoke, and Ed recognized him.
“Alex,” he said huskily.
There was a cry of amazement. Alex called for a light. Someone else,
evidently startled by the voice coming from what all had thought to be a
dead man, started to run, kicked over a lantern, and was cursed roundly by
the others, who were crowding up.
When the wagon arrived, he was so far recovered that, with the
assistance of the others, he was able to clamber painfully in and sink to the
blankets on the bottom, every joint in his body aching.
The two Buntlys had called the younger men to one side and they were
whispering excitedly together. Presently the riding-horses all were tied at
the side of the road, and when the wagon creaked its way homeward, Ed

was accompanied only by Alex, who had refused to leave him, and by old
Arner. Rensie had gone with the others.
Two days later, he was able to creep out to the front porch of Arner’s
little home and sit in the cool of a breeze that swept up from the bayou.
After a space of silence, he asked:
“Arn, what’d them fellers do the yuther night? I can’t git er peep outen
’em.”
“They foun’ right smart of stuff in boxes, what Rensie said was some
sorter dope, bein’ unloaded from the schooner. But they th’owed hit in the
water.”
“I ain’t intrusted in no dope, Arn. I say what’d they do?”
“The leader of the gang confessed, after he’d been questioned by Rensie,
an’ when he saw the jig was up, anyhow. They had sot Jonas ter keep folks
skeerd off the swamp road at night, by killin’ whosomever come there.
They was goin’ ter git er truck an’ haul that stuff off somewheres.”
“Well, what’d the boys do?”
Reflectively, Arner stroked his short, heavy beard. He spat into the yard.
Then he turned to the deputy:
“Ed,” he said slowly, “yo’ comin’ down here, an’, single-handed an’
alone, huntin’ out the critter what was killin’ us off will be remembered an’
talked about in generations ter come—when these here swamps is cleared
off an’ drained an’ producin’ corn an’ taters. But sich er little matter as er
schooner lyin’ at the bottom of the bayou gatherin’ barnacles is soon forgot,
an’ let’s you an’ me fergit that part of hit, too.”

The Basket

An Odd Little Tale

By HERBERT J. MANGHAM
MRS. BUHLER told him at first that she had no vacancies, but as he started
away she thought of the little room in the basement.
He turned back at her call.
“I have got a room, too,” she said, “but it’s a very small one and in the
basement. I can make you a reasonable price, though, if you’d care to look
at it.”
The room was a problem. She always hesitated to show it to people,
because so often they seemed insulted at her suggestion that they would be
satisfied with such humble surroundings. If she gave it to the first applicant,
he would likely be a disreputable character who might detract from the
respectability of her house, and she would have to face the embarrassment
of getting rid of him. So she was content for weeks at a time to do without
the pittance the room brought her.
“How much is it?” asked the man.
“Seven dollars a month.”
“Let me see it.”
She called her husband to take her place at the desk, picked up a bunch of
keys and led the way to the rear of the basement. The room was a narrow

cell, whose one window was slightly below the level of a tiny, bare back
yard, closed in by a board fence.
A tottering oak dresser was pushed up close to the window, and a small
square table, holding a pitcher and washbowl, was standing beside it. An
iron single-bed against the opposite wall left barely enough space for one
straight-backed chair and a narrow path from the door to the window. A
curtain, hanging across one corner, and a couple of hooks in the wall
provided a substitute for a closet.
“You can have the use of the bathroom on the first floor,” said Mrs.
Buhler. “There is no steam heat in the basement, but I will give you an oil
stove to use if you want it. The oil won’t cost you very much. Of course, it
never gets real cold in San Francisco, but when the fogs come in off the bay
you ought to have something to take the chill off the room.”
“I’ll take it.”
The man pulled out a small roll of money and counted off seven one-
dollar bills.
“You must be from the East,” remarked Mrs. Buhler, smiling at the paper
money.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Buhler, looking at his pale hair and eyes and wan mustache, never
thought of asking for references. He seemed as incapable of mischief as a
retired fire horse, munching his grass and dreaming of past adventures.
He told her that his name was Dave Scannon.
And that was all the information he ever volunteered to anybody in the
rooming-house.

AN HOUR later he moved in. By carrying in one suitcase and transferring
its contents to the dresser drawers he was installed.
The other roomers scarcely noticed his advent. He always walked straight
across the little lobby without looking directly at anyone, never stopping

except to pay his rent, which he did promptly on the fifth of every month.
He did not leave his key at the desk when he went out, as was the custom
of the house, but carried it in his pocket. The chambermaid never touched
his room. At his request she gave him a broom, and every Sunday morning
she left towels, sheets and a pillowcase hanging on his doorknob. When she
returned, she would find his soiled towels and linen lying in a neat pile
beside his door.
Impelled by curiosity, Mrs. Buhler once entered the room with her master
key. There was not so much as a hair to mar the bare tidiness. A comb and
brush on the dresser and a pile of newspapers were the only visible
evidences of occupancy. The oil stove was gathering dust in the corner: it
had never been used. She carried it out with her: it would be just the thing
for that old lady in the north room who always complained of the cold in
the afternoons, when the rest of the hotel was not uncomfortable enough to
justify turning on the steam.
The old lady was sitting in the lobby one afternoon when he came home
from work.
“Is that your basement roomer?” she asked.
She watched him until he disappeared at the end of the hall.
“Oh. I couldn’t think where I’d seen him. But I remember now—he’s a
sort of porter and general helper at that large bakery on lower Market
Street.”
“I really didn’t know where he worked,” admitted Mrs. Buhler. “I had
thought of asking him several times, but he’s an awfully hard man to carry
on a conversation with.”
He had been at the rooming-house four months when he received his first
letter. Its envelope proclaimed it a hay-fever cure advertisement.
As he was not in the habit of leaving his key at the desk, the letter
remained in his box for three days. Finally Mr. Buhler handed it to him as
he was passing the desk on the way to his room.
He paused to read the inscription.

“You never receive any mail,” remarked Mr. Buhler. “Haven’t you any
family?”
“No.”
“Where is your home?”
“Catawissa, Pennsylvania.”
“That’s a funny name. How do you spell it?”
Scannon spelled it, and went on down the hall.
“C-a-t-a-w-i-double-s-a,” repeated Mr. Buhler to his wife. “Ain’t that a
funny name?”

IN HIS room, Scannon removed the advertisement from its envelope and
read it soberly from beginning to end.
Finished, he folded it and placed it on his pile of newspapers. Then he
brushed his hair and went out again.
He ate supper at one of the little lunch counters near the Civic Center.
The rest of the evening he spent in the newspaper room at the public library.
He picked up eastern and western papers with impartial interest, reading the
whole of each page, religiously and without a change of expression, until
the closing bell sounded.
He never ascended to the reference, circulation or magazine rooms.
Sometimes he would take the local papers home with him and read
stretched out on his bed, not seeming to notice that his hands were blue with
the penetrating chill that nightly drifts in from the ocean.
On Sundays he would put on a red-striped silk shirt and a blue serge suit
and take a car to Golden Gate Park. There he would sit for hours in the sun,
impassively watching the hundreds of picnic parties, the squirrels, or a
piece of paper retreating before the breeze. Or perhaps he would walk west
to the ocean, stopping for a few minutes at each of the animal pens, and
take a car home from the Cliff House.

For two years the days came and passed on in monotonous reduplication,
the casual hay-fever cure circulars supplying the only touches of novelty.
Then one afternoon as he was brushing his hair, he gasped and put his
hand to his throat. A sharp nausea pitched him to the floor.
Inch by inch, he dragged himself to the little table and upset it, crashing
the bowl and pitcher into a dozen pieces.
His energy was spent in the effort, and he lay inert.

MRS. BUHLER consented to accompany her friend to the spiritualist’s only
after repeated urging, and she repented her decision as soon as she arrived
there.
The fusty parlor was a north room to which the sun never penetrated, and
in consequence was cold and damp. The medium, a fat, untidy woman
whose movements were murmurous with the rustle of silk and the tinkle of
tawdry ornaments, sat facing her with one hand pressed to forehead, and
delivered mysteriously-acquired information about relatives and friends.
“Who is Dave?” she asked finally.
Mrs. Buhler hastily recalled all of her husband’s and her own living
relatives.
“I don’t know any Dave,” she said.
“Yes, yes, you know him,” insisted the medium. “He’s in the spirit land
now. There’s death right at your very door!”
She put her hand to her throat and coughed in gruesome simulation of
internal strangulation.
“But I don’t know any Dave,” reiterated Mrs. Buhler.
She regained the street with a feeling of vast relief.
“I’ll never go to one of those places again!” she asserted, as she said
good-by to her friend. “It’s too creepy!”

A great fog bank was rolling in majestically from the west, blotting out
the sun and dripping a fine drizzle on the pavements. Drawing her coat
collar closer about her neck, Mrs. Buhler plunged into the enveloping
dampness and started to climb the long hill that led to her rooming-house.
Her husband’s distended eyes and pale face warned her of bad news.
“Dave Scannon’s dead!” he whispered hoarsely.
Dave Scannon! So that was “Dave!”
“He’s been dead two or three days,” continued Mr. Buhler. “I was beating
a rug in the back yard a while ago when I noticed a swarm of big blue flies
buzzing about his window. It flashed over me right away that I hadn’t seen
him for several days. I couldn’t unlock his door, because his key was on the
inside, so I called the coroner and a policeman, and we broke it in. He was
lying between the bed and the dresser, and the bowl and pitcher lay broken
on the floor, where he had knocked it over when he fell. They’re taking him
out now.”
Mrs. Buhler hurried to the back stairway and descended to the lower hall.
Two men were carrying a long wicker basket up the little flight of steps
between the back entrance and the yard. She remained straining over the
banister until the basket had disappeared.
The coroner had found nothing in his room but clothing, about five
dollars in change, and a faded picture in a tarnished silver frame of an
anemic looking woman who might have been a mother, wife or sister.
Mrs. Buhler answered his questions nervously. Yes, the dead man had
been with them about two years. They knew little of him, for he was very
peculiar and never talked, and wouldn’t even allow the maid to come in and
clean up his room. He had said though that he had no family and that his
home was in Catawissa, Pennsylvania. She remembered the town because it
had such an odd name.
The coroner wrote to authorities in Catawissa, who replied that they
could find no traces of anyone by the name of Scannon. No more mail ever
came for the man except the occasional hay-fever cure circulars.
The manager of the bakery telephoned to ask if the death notice in the
paper referred to the same Dave Scannon who had been working for him.

He knew nothing of the man except that he had been very punctual in his
duties until that final day when he did not appear.

SEVERAL weeks later, little Mrs. Varnes, who occupied a room at the rear
of the second floor, stopped at the desk to leave her key. She hovered there
for a few minutes of indecision, then impulsively leaned forward.
“Mrs. Buhler, I just want to ask you something,” she said, lowering her
voice. “One afternoon several weeks ago I saw some men carrying a long
basket out of the back door, and I’ve been wondering what it was.”
“Probably laundry,” hazarded Mrs. Buhler.
“No, it was one of those long baskets such as the undertakers use to carry
the dead in. I’ve often thought about it, but I couldn’t figure out who could
have died in this house, so I decided I would ask you. I told my husband
about it, and he said I was dreaming.”
“You must have been,” said Mrs. Buhler.

The
ACCUSING VOICE

A Strange Tale

By MEREDITH DAVIS
“WE, THE JURY, find the defendant, Richard Bland, guilty of murder in
the first degree, in manner and form as charged.”
Allen Defoe, foreman of the twelve men, listened with impassive face as
the judge read away the life of the prisoner in the dock—the man whose
death warrant Defoe had signed only a few minutes before. As the judge
finished, Defoe glanced warily toward the prisoner. Somehow, he preferred
to avoid catching his eye.
Bland, a slight, rather uninteresting type of man, stood with bowed head;
Defoe now turned his gaze full upon him.
“Has the prisoner anything to say why judgment should not be
pronounced?”
The judge’s voice, coming after the short pause, sent a strange chill into
the heart of Allen Defoe, juror. He hoped the prisoner’s counsel would
make the customary motions for a new trial or for time in which to file an
appeal. He did neither: evidently Bland believed the verdict inescapable—
or else he was out of funds.
Now the judge arose in his place, donning with nervous gesture the black
cap that accompanies the most tragic moment in the performance of a

court’s duties. The judge seemed ill at ease in the cap. It was the first time
he had worn it. The grotesque thought flitted through Defoe’s mind that
perhaps the judge had borrowed the cap from one of his fellow jurists for
the occasion.
The almost level rays of the western sun diffused a sombre, aureate glow
athwart the judge’s bench, so that the dark figure of the standing man was in
mystic indistinctness beyond the shaft of light from the window. A fly now
and then craved the spotlight for a moment and lazily floated from the
growing dusk of the room to the avenue of ebbing day, streaming in from
the west. And always there was a constant turmoil of dust particles, visible
only when they moved into the bright relief of the sun-shaft.
The handful of spectators stirred restlessly while the judge was making
his preparations. The droning noises of approaching summer evening in a
rural county-seat were smothered by the buzz of ill-hushed voices. Perhaps
that was why the judge, in the midst of adjusting his headgear, rapped
sharply thrice with his gavel—or, it may have been only his excess of
nervousness.
Defoe thought the judge never would stop fumbling with his cap. And
finally the judge lost track of the jury’s verdict and had to mess through the
scattered papers before him until he found it. He didn’t really require it to
pronounce sentence of death upon the man in the dock. Hunting it, though,
delayed the inevitable a few seconds; and Defoe wondered, since he himself
was near to screaming out with impatience, how the prisoner could stand it
without going suddenly mad.
“For God’s sake, read the death sentence!” exclaimed Defoe under his
breath, but loud enough to arouse a nod of approval from the two jurors
nearest him.
A moment later the judge found his voice:
“The prisoner will face the court.”
Slowly, deliberately, the prisoner stepped forward in the dock, leaning
slightly against the railing and letting one hand rest upon it. He looked
squarely at the judge now, although he barely could distinguish his features
in the dimness.
Again the judge spoke, and this time his voice was hurried and strained:

“The sentence of the court is that the prisoner be taken, between the
hours of seven a.m. and six p.m. on Tuesday, in the week beginning
October 22 next, from the place of confinement to the place of execution,
and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead—dead—dead!... And may
God, in His infinite wisdom, have mercy on your soul!”
The judge sank back heavily into the safety of his chair. His hand swept
up to brush his forehead and with the same motion it whisked off the
detestable little black cap.
The prisoner remained staring at the judge as one who is puzzled at a
strange sight. Perhaps he would have stood there untold minutes if a
woman’s hysterical laugh, half-choked by a sudden upraised hand, had not
broken the tension of the entire room. A bailiff tiptoed to the woman, and,
as if revived to duty by the same cause, a prison guard strode forward to
lead the condemned man away.
Defoe could have reached out and touched Bland as he passed the jury on
his way to the cell across the street. But Defoe had no desire even to look at
Bland; indeed, he did not, until Bland’s back was passing out of sight
through the door on the other side of the jury box. Mechanically, then,
Defoe filed out with the other jurors as the judge announced adjournment.
And the black cap lay forgotten on the rim of the judge’s wastebasket,
where the janitor found it that evening and crossed himself fervently as he
timidly salvaged it from ignoble oblivion.

II.

DEFOE awoke with a shudder.
There was a moment or two, as is always the case when one arouses from
heavy, dream-burdened slumber, during which Defoe could not tell where
his dream ended and realities began. He blinked experimentally into the
smouldering fire in the open grate before him; yes, he was conscious. For
further verification of this he drew forth his watch and noted the hour. The
glow from the fire was scarcely sufficient for reading the dial and Defoe
leaned forward the better to see. He was still too drowsy even to reach
around and turn on the electric lamp on the table behind him.

Still he was not certain whether he was yet dreaming, until—
“Don’t budge, Defoe! I’ve got you covered!”
The Voice was close to his left ear. Its commanding acerbity quelled
Defoe’s impulse to spring to his feet; and as he gripped the arms of the chair
tensely he managed to challenge his unseen intruder:
“Who are you? What do you want here?”
The Voice moved a little upward and back before it answered:
“You’ve just had a nasty dream, Defoe. Perhaps I—”
“How do you know I did!” interrupted Defoe.
“You did, though, didn’t you?” the Voice insisted.
“Yes, but how did you know?” repeated Defoe.
“Never mind how,” said the Voice. “I’ll wager you’ve had the same
dream pretty often in the last dozen years, too. It must be hell to have a
scene like that forever before your mind, so that you’re always in dread of
dreaming about it—”
“What scene?” demanded Defoe. “Are you a mind reader—a wizard—
what are you?”
The Voice chuckled.
“None of those,” it said. “As I was saying, you must be afraid, almost, to
go to bed at night. I would be, if I thought I might dream of sending an
innocent man to the gallows—”
“Stop!” Defoe fairly shouted. “Damn it all, come around here where I
can see you!” and he made an instinctive move to turn about and confront
his tormentor.
The firm pressure of an automatic barrel against his temple halted him.
“Don’t make the mistake of turning around!” again warned the Voice
incisively.
Then, in a lighter tone, it went on:
“If I were in your place, Mr. Defoe, do you know what I’d do?”

A pause. Defoe mumbled a faint “No.”
“Well, I either would confess my whole knowledge of the affair—or—I’d
commit suicide!”
Defoe started. It was uncanny, eerie, the way this mysterious Voice put
into words the one gnawing thought that had plagued him the last dozen
years of his life.
“Of course, you probably have contemplated those alternatives very
often,” the Voice continued. “But have you ever considered doing both?
That is, did you ever think that you might confess first, thereby clearing an
innocent man’s name of murder, and then cheat the law yourself by
committing sui—”
“For God’s sake, stop that infernal suicide talk!” Defoe snapped. “In the
first place, I don’t know what ‘affair’ or what ‘innocent man’ you’re talking
about.”
The Voice chuckled again. Defoe was beginning to hate that chuckle
more than the feel of the automatic against his head. If the Voice kept on
chuckling it might drive him to desperation to grapple with his armed
inquisitor, even though he would court certain death in doing it.
“Why, there’s no need to explain the obvious,” the Voice replied, its
chuckle rippling through the words. “Your dream ought to tell you that.
Speaking of your dream again, Mr. Defoe, reminds me of a question I often
wished to ask you: Did you see Bland at all after his conviction?”
“No, of course—” Defoe’s guard had been down. He was fairly tricked,
so he tried to run to cover again. “What—who is this Bland you’re talking
about?”
“Come, come, Mr. Defoe,” said the Voice. “Think over your dream a
moment. Surely you remember the man in the prisoner’s dock—the man
who took his sentence with head up, facing the judge like a Spartan! Surely
you remember Richard Bland. But did you happen to see him again after
that day?”
“No,” Defoe said. “Why should I have seen him after my connection
with his case ended?”

“But didn’t you even write him a note expressing your regret at having
had to perform the duty of—”
“Certainly not!” interrupted Defoe. “Who ever heard of a foreman of a
jury doing such a thing? Besides, he deserved his punishment.”
The Voice was silent a moment or two before it replied:
“We’ll discuss the merits of the case later.... And you didn’t even go to
see him hanged?”
“What manner of man do you think I am?” exclaimed Defoe. “Of course
I didn’t! I wasn’t even in Chicago where he was hanged.”
“No?” said the Voice. “Where were you?”
“A few weeks after the trial I had to go to Europe on a long business trip.
I was gone a year or so. When I returned to this country I made my home
here in New York City.”
“So you never even read in the newspapers about Bland—” the Voice
persisted. “I don’t suppose the European papers would bother with a piece
of American news like that, though.”
“No. I never read anything about the case after I left this country,” said
Defoe.
“That’s odd. I’d have thought you would have followed the case through
to the end,” the Voice said, half-musingly. “But still, if you had, perhaps
you would not be here tonight.”
“Why not? What difference would it have made?”
“I don’t know. That’s merely my surmise,” said the Voice.
A faint footstep padded through the hall outside the living-room.
“Is that you, Manuel?” Defoe asked, wondering what would happen
when his Cuban valet encountered the intruder behind the chair.
The footstep halted.
“Si, senor,” answered the man-servant, at a respectful distance from his
master’s chair. “I come to see why you sit up so late, senor.”

Defoe laughed mirthlessly. “Well, truth to tell, Manuel, I am detained on
business,” and he wondered again how Manuel had escaped noticing the
other presence in the room.
“You mean you fell asleep, senor?” asked the valet.
“I did, but some friendly caller has kept me pretty well awake the last ten
minutes.”
“But he has gone? And you come to bed now?” inquired the Cuban.
Defoe, after a pause, said, “Yes; I might as well go to bed, I guess.”
The Voice behind the chair broke in:
“Tell your valet you will smoke another cigar before you retire.”
Defoe settled down again in the chair.
“You heard, Manuel?” he asked. “You see, my visitor says he wishes me
to smoke another cigar.”
“But I see no visitor, senor,” said the Cuban.
“You heard what he said, though,” Defoe insisted.
“No, senor. I only hear you say he wish you to smoke another cigar,”
explained the valet.
“Well, you ought to have your ears examined, Manuel. Get my box from
the table and hand it to my visitor.”
Manuel fumbled in the darkness until he found the box, then handed it to
Defoe. The latter waved it toward the Voice behind him.
“My guest first, Manuel,” he corrected.
The Cuban stood motionless. “I see no one else,” he insisted.
The Voice interrupted:
“Tell him I don’t care to smoke, Mr. Defoe.”
“I can see no one, senor,” the Cuban repeated.
“But didn’t you just hear him?” Defoe cried, leaning forward nervously.
“No, senor, I hear no one speak but you.”

Defoe stared up at his valet, then half rose from his chair.
“Sit down, Defoe!” commanded the Voice sharply.
Defoe sank back once more.
“There!” he exclaimed to his valet. “Now tell me you didn’t hear any one
order me to sit down just then!”
The Cuban shook his head. “No, senor, I hear no one talk but you since I
come in.”
His master swore helplessly. “Are you trying to make a fool of me,
Manuel? Do you dare stand there and tell me no one spoke to me?”
“I don’t know, senor. I only know I hear no one speak—”
Again the Voice intruded:
“It may be that Manuel thinks you are trying to make a fool of him,” it
suggested.
“Do you?” Defoe asked the Cuban.
“Do I what, senor?” the valet asked, placidly.
“Do you think I’m trying to make a fool of you?”
“I do not say so, do I, senor?” the servant replied, deprecatingly.
“No, but you heard—or did you hear?—this visitor say it!”
The Cuban, almost tearfully, denied it, becoming verbose in his
protestation.
Defoe flapped his arms on the wings of his easy chair and bade his valet
hush.
“Get out of here, you brown-skinned dumbbell! One of us has gone crazy
tonight!”
The Cuban moved off, keeping a suspicious eye upon his master. His
retreating footstep presently was heard dying away in the hall outside.
“Well, what do you think of that damned little Cuban?” Defoe asked the
Voice. “I wonder what made him lie so brazenly?”
There was no response. Defoe repeated his second question.

Still silence answered him.
“Have you gone, my friend?” Defoe asked, turning part way in his chair
to test the other’s watchfulness. This time no automatic punched his head
and no command wilted him into the depths of his chair again.
Still doubtful of his good luck, Defoe called out once more:
“I say, stranger, have you gone?”
The only sound that greeted his ears was the faint creaking of a window
in the adjoining dining-room. Defoe rose and darted to the connecting door,
snapping on the electric light at the entrance to the dining-room.
The room was vacant of any soul but himself.
All he could see was the slight movement of the lace curtain at the
dining-room window—and when he examined the window he found it
latched.

III.

THE NEXT day Defoe went to his doctor. He wished to take stock of
himself; perhaps he had been applying himself too closely to his business.
“You are badly run down, Allen,” the physician said, almost before he
had sat down with his patient. “You look mentally distressed.”
“I am,” admitted Defoe. “Working too hard, I guess.”
The doctor eyed him keenly.
“Anything else troubling you?” he asked.
Defoe insisted there really was nothing at all beside his work that was
affecting him. So the doctor gave the usual diagnosis: Too much nerve
tension, not enough sleep, not the proper kinds of food. He ended by
advising more rest and quiet.
“And avoid excitement, too,” he warned. “That old heart palpitation
might crop up again, you know.”

It was all very well for the doctor to advise more rest and more sleep, but
how was a man to sleep beneath a Damocles sword of mystery, of weird
forebodings?
It was three weeks before Defoe felt that he was succeeding in obeying
the doctor’s instructions, partly, at least. Then—.
It happened late one night. Defoe lay in bed, his back to the lighted
electric lamp on the table: he had fallen asleep, reading. Suddenly he stirred
at a touch on his shoulder.
“That you, Manuel?” he asked, drowsily. “All right, put out the li—”
“No, it is not Manuel—and don’t bother to turn around, Defoe!” this last
sharply, as Defoe made a movement to arise in bed.
“You again!” Defoe exclaimed. “What—how did you get in?”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” said the Voice. “I merely dropped in
again to inquire if you had thought any more of doing what I suggested.”
Defoe checked an insane desire to leap out of bed and make a break for
the door—anything, to escape this tormentor at his back! But he
remembered the automatic....
He got himself under a semblance of control before he answered:
“Your suggestions were ridiculous. Why should I have anything to
confess about the Bland trial, or why should I commit suicide over it?” He
even essayed a laugh meant to be derisive.
But the intruder chose to ignore Defoe’s evasions. His next remark was
as startling as it was illuminating:
“Did you know,” said the Voice, “that of the other eleven jurors who
convicted Bland, only seven are living—still?”
“No; I haven’t kept track of the other eleven men,” replied Defoe,
annoyed subconsciously by the detachment that the Voice gave to the word
“still.”
“Well, I have,” said the Voice. “Two of the surviving seven are in insane
asylums; two of the four dead committed sui—.”

Defoe could brook it no longer. He wrenched around in bed to grapple
with his antagonist, forgetful, in his madness, of the automatic. But before
he could free himself from the bedclothes the lamp was snapped out, and
Defoe was left ignominiously tumbled in the darkness on the floor.
A chuckle from the vicinity of the bedroom door told him of his guest’s
departure....
When morning came, after the nerve-racking night, Defoe found it hard
to realize that his two experiences with the Voice really had taken place.
None the less, he knew they were preying on his vitality, on his brain-
functions.
Repeatedly the thought came to him that it was all a dream like his
recollection of the murder trial out of which he had awakened the night of
the Voice’s first visit. But always against the theory of the dream he placed
his remembrance of the feel of the automatic revolver; and, too, the fact that
he had talked with Manuel and with the Voice at the same time argued
against the dream explanation.
Left, then, was conscience—that is, if the visits of the Voice were simply
hallucinations of a distracted mind. But why should conscience wait for
twelve years to haunt and harass him?
The more he pondered it all, the greater became the dread of another visit
from the Voice. The greater grew his fear, too, of losing his reason, as he
sought to analyze the situation from every conceivable standpoint. With
every new bit of theorizing, Defoe felt himself giving way more and more
to melancholia such as he knew is frequently but the prelude to insanity.
Was it possible, he wondered, for a man’s conscience to drive him to
imbecility?
Defoe finally accepted the inevitable.
“Manuel,” he ordered, the second morning after the bedroom encounter
with the Voice, “pack my things. We’re going away.”
“Away, senor? Where?”
Defoe’s brain groped vainly for an instant, then seized upon the only
chance.
“The sea—a sea voyage. My nerves....”

Manuel busied himself among Defoe’s clothes. “Do you need many
things, senor? Do you go far away—Europe, perhaps?”
“No, no. Just down the coast—Old Point Comfort, I guess. Yes, that’s it.
A week or so of rest. Just my steamer trunk and a suitcase will do.”
The day of the trip down the coast was as perfect as he could have
wanted for his own satisfaction. All during the forenoon the Old Dominion
steamer skirted the Jersey shore line, and Defoe sat out on deck basking in
the sun and already feeling better for the salt-laden air that he breathed in
deeply. In the afternoon he napped most of the time and when nightfall
chilled the deck promenaders he descended with the rest to the dining-
saloon.
It was while sitting in the smoking-saloon, after dinner, that Defoe first
had the impression that he was being watched. A poker game was going on,
lackadaisically, in one corner of the saloon; scattered in chairs and
cushioned seats along the windows were perhaps a dozen or fifteen men.
But, for the life of him, Defoe could not pick out any one in the room who
might be watching him, now he gave his fleeting impression indulgence
long enough to look about him.
Finishing a cigar, Defoe decided on a deck stroll before retiring. It was
too cold and damp, with a fog beginning to gather, to permit of sitting on
deck, so he paced to and fro briskly up near the fore deck beneath the pilot’s
tower. The nervousness of the few moments in the smoking-saloon, when
he imagined himself being watched, transmuted itself into a shiver as the
foggy dampness penetrated to his marrow. He lit a fresh cigar and puffed at
it jerkily as if to generate bodily warmth. Presently the shiver developed
into a veritable shudder such as precedes chills or certain forms of ague.
Defoe, thoroughly miserable and alarmed now at the fear of sickness on
board ship, chafed his cheeks with his hands and, on his way to the entrance
to the stateroom, he flailed his arms about himself to stem the onrush of the
chill. Once inside the passageway of the staterooms, however, he felt
warmer, and by the time he reached his stateroom door the chill had
subsided almost completely.
He was still uncomfortably cold, though, as he opened the door. With one
hand he unbuttoned his overcoat and with the other he reached gropingly

for the electric light button on the wall. He fumbled around for it a few
seconds, then swore softly in vexation because he had not noticed by
daylight just where it was located.
Groping with both hands, now, he stumbled around the none-too-
commodious room, feeling for the push button on the wall. He paused once
and took inventory of his pockets and cursed his luck for lack of another
match.
Then he went to hunting in the dark again—until his hand came full
against a living body....

IV.

THE BODY stirred, eluding Defoe’s contact.
Defoe fell to quaking once more, but it was not the trembling of the chill
this time. He opened his mouth to challenge the intruder, and all he could
do was swallow and gag at the words that stuck in his throat.
A pressure against the pit of his stomach—a firm shove of hand upon his
shoulder—and Defoe found himself stepping backward until it seemed he
must have walked the length of the ship. But of course he hadn’t—he hadn’t
even left the stateroom—and suddenly he was tumbled on to the edge of the
berth, the pressure against his abdomen increasing.
A vague nausea gripped him. He clutched at his abdomen and his fingers
wrapped themselves around the barrel of an automatic pistol. The pressure
against his body became unbearable, piercing.... Defoe crumpled back into
the berth and the convulsive effort restored his speech.
“What the hell are you doing?” he exploded. “Get out of here! What are
you trying to do—stab me with a pistol?”
The incongruity of his question aroused a titter of amusement from the
invisible presence.
“No, I only wished to make sure you weren’t trying to get away.”
That Voice again!—here! Defoe cringed in a sort of abject fear.

“What are you—who are you?” Defoe struggled to keep his voice steady,
struggled, indeed, to keep his reason from flying out of balance and
shattering into a thousand pieces of driveling idiocy.
“Call me anything you care to,” replied the Voice in the dark.
“I don’t believe you are—anything at all! I think you are all a dream, a
nightmare, a damnable hallucination that I can’t get rid of! To hell with
you! I’m going to go down to the smoking-room and—smoke you out of
my mind! I’m going to stay in the light from now on, day and night, until I
get over this morbid dreaming!”
Defoe really thought he meant it all, until the pressure against his
stomach made him doubt his courage and defiance.
Perhaps it was the nausea—maybe seasickness; he never had thought of
that!—that was griping at his vitals like the insistent pressure of a steel-
barreled weapon.
“Sit down, Mr. Defoe!” commanded the Voice. “I’ve got something to
say to you.”
“To hell with you!” Defoe repeated, almost hysterically now. His hands
clutched at the pressure again—and once more the pistol barrel sent him
squirming back into the recesses of the berth.
“I want to talk to you some more about the Bland case,” went on the
Voice, unperturbed by the other’s outburst. “When are you going to
confess?”
“Confess?” Defoe parried. “Confess what?”
“Confess that you knew Bland was innocent when you convicted him,”
said the Voice.
“But I didn’t.” It was like wrestling with one’s conscience, Defoe
thought, this interminable denying of Bland’s innocence. He was wearying
of it all; his mind was revolting at the repeated “third degree” of this
mysterious Voice. Soon, he feared, his brain would refuse to function.
“But you’ve said you did,” the Voice insisted.
“When? It’s a lie!” exclaimed Defoe.

The Voice chuckled, sending a shudder through the man crouching in the
corner of the berth.
“You probably don’t know, Mr. Defoe, that for a number of years you
have had the treacherous habit of talking in your sleep—talking volubly,
excitedly, sometimes almost reconstructing entire incidents in your talk for
the benefit of anyone who might happen to be listening.”
“Well?” asked Defoe.
“Simply this: Manuel has overheard enough to—”
“Manuel?” broke in Defoe. “What’s he got to do with it!”
“I forgot to tell you,” the Voice apologized. “The Cuban is my
confederate—former member of the Secret Police of Havana, you know. I
saved his life during the Spanish war and—well, he’s paying back an old
debt, as he calls it. He let me in and out of your house, and tipped me off
about this trip. You see, Manuel had overheard you say, in your sleep, that
you convicted an innocent man of murder. So I knew your conscience—”
“Are you trying to be my conscience? Are you trying to plague me into
confessing? Are you—”
“No,” answered the Voice, “unless you choose to call me your
conscience. I’m willing. You seem to be in need of one. Do you know, Mr.
Defoe,” and the Voice took on a more affable tone, “you have been fearfully
distracted the last few weeks or months. You need a rest—a long rest!”
Defoe was silent, hunched in the retreat of the berth. He had no fight left
in him. Presently he fell to whimpering quietly, as a child does when it is
punished beyond endurance and is too frightened to cry. The Voice, it
seemed, missed the old combativeness, gone so quickly after Defoe’s late
outburst, so it prodded the hunted man with its chief weapon—not its pistol,
but its chuckle. This time it chuckled devilishly, aggravatingly, and it rasped
against the tender sensibilities of the sniveling Defoe like salt in an open
wound.
Then something broke what little bonds of restraint remained in Defoe.
He sprang, catlike, to the outer edge of the berth and lunged for the arm that
held the pistol. In the darkness his head struck the cross-support of the berth
above and he slumped forward, half dazed by the blow.

Again the chuckle sounded in his ears, now ringing with the stunning
impact; and again Defoe lurched forward, only to fall dizzily to the floor.
He clambered clumsily to his feet, gripping the berth for a momentary prop.
Soon his head began to clear. He was assembling out of the maze of ache
and buzzing in his ears and brain some sort of coherent idea of where he
was and what had been happening.
“Now I know what it all means!” he burst forth presently. “You—you
sneaking, cackling little conscience, get out of here! I’m going to cheat you
if I have to become a drunkard or a dope fiend the rest of my life! I’m not
going to let a conscience, or a voice or a chuckle, drive me to insanity—or
to confessing—or to suicide!”
Defoe was steady enough now, supporting himself against the upper
berth. His voice grew more strident.
“No, I’m not going to let my conscience get the best of me! You thought
you could keep after me endlessly, but I’ll get rid of you. I’m never going to
be bothered with you or your voice again! Never! Now get out of here! Get
out of here, I say!”
The chuckle—a croaking, sepulchral chuckle it was now—answered him
out of the darkness.
“You might tell me, before I go, if you know who really did kill the man
Bland was convicted of murdering,” said the Voice. “I’m curious enough to
wish to know his name.” And the Voice chuckled once more.
“Damn that cackle! I’ll tell you, if you choke off that infernal cackling!
I’ll tell you—yes! I can tell you, because I did it! I committed that murder,
you understand? I did it! Now cackle all you want to! And I convicted
Bland of it! Cackle, you damned little shriveled conscience! Ho, ho, ho-ho-
ho! I think it’s my turn—to—cackle—now!”
The words of the hysterical man rose to a maudlin scream that
reverberated piercingly in the little stateroom.
“Now get out of here for good!” the raving Defoe shouted, recovering
coherence of speech after a time. “Get out—before—I—”
A blinding glare of light came as Defoe reached for the door. The intruder
had found the push button.

Defoe stared—then toppled to the floor.
“Bland! Bland! You! It’s you....”
And before the stranger that was Bland passed from the room he felt
again of the heart of the craven hulk at his feet. The doctor had been right:
The tumult in the breast of the twelfth juror had been too much.
If only Defoe had known that the Governor had pardoned Bland, his
secret might have been safe forever.

Walter Scott Story offers
a new conclusion to
Edgar Allen Poe’s
“Cask of Amontillado”

The Sequel
SOBERED on the instant—the padlock had clicked when Montresor passed
the chain about my waist and thus fastened me to the wall—I stood upright
in the little dungeon, the blood running cold in my veins.
With maniacal laughter, he withdrew from the niche, whipped a trowel
from under his robe and began to wall up the narrow opening. I knew it was
not a joke, a drunken jest. I saw that his drunkenness had fallen from him.
The dying flambeau fell from my nerveless hand and cast a fitful bloody
glow upon the whitened, dripping walls. I shook the chain frenziedly.
“For God’s sake, Montresor!” I cried.
He replied with a horrible, mocking laugh, and, like a devil from hell,
lifted his voice with mine to show that it was idle to call for help.
I had always distrusted Montresor. I knew him to be a serpent. He feared
me and was jealous of my person and attainments. In spite of all his
fawning and his smiles, I knew he hated me deeply for the injuries I had
heaped upon him and for the open insults I had added to them. And yet I
swear he had never in the slightest suspected that it was not Giovanna, the
tenor, who was successful with his wife, but I!
“Fortunato!” he called, and his hoarse tone echoed in a ghastly way
through the gloomy catacombs of his ancestors and re-echoed along the
winding crypt.

I made no reply. Cold beads of fear started from my brow as I strained
against the chain and listened to the soft thud of the stones he was building
into the opening to make my tomb and the accompanying tinkle of his
trowel. Even then, I admired, perforce, the cleverness with which he had
secured his revenge.
It was the night of the carnival. He had found me in the streets, dazed
with wine, and, pretending that he wanted my judgment on a cask of sherry,
had lured my staggering feet into the gloomy passages under his palazzo.
And he had brought me into this narrow niche in the castle walls to entomb
me alive where no one would ever find me. It was clever!
My memory fails me now, but I doubt not I cried out many times for pity
and mercy; and I take no shame in thinking this may have been so. I recall
his words and his horrible mouthings as he worked with more haste and
zeal than skill.
But I was a brave man always. I did not yield myself to fate. It was
unthinkable. I, Fortunato, to die walled in by Montresor! I cursed him and
his line. I wrenched at the chain with ferocious strength, more eager to have
him by the throat than to be free to live. I called upon all the saints and
particularly to my patron saint. You shall see that I was not unheard.
The wall grew high—to his breast—and in the light of his flambeau set
somewhere in the wall outside I could see Montresor’s sweating face as he
labored with the stones.
Suddenly he thrust his torch through the opening, now no larger than his
head—and to deceive him I prostrated myself upon the floor and laughed
the laugh of a dying man.
I heard the thud of another stone, and looked up quickly. My flambeau
had died out: Montresor’s had disappeared. And there was no opening! I
was in a tomb of stone!
Absolute darkness surrounded me, and the walls seemed to press in upon
me like icy blankets. And silence as absolute as the darkness reigned.
I leaped to my feet. Silence! Silence, absolute silence, save for my own
labored breathing. Maria! Suppose the mortar hardened ere I could throw
my weight against the poor wall he had built. Then I were lost!

I called out aloud to my holy saint. Lucky it was that I had the bodily
strength of two. I strained upon the chain wildly; I seized it in my hands and
tore at it with savage determination. I would not die thus! In desperation,
frantic with rage and fear, I made one last violent, prodigious effort to free
myself, with strength enough to make the palazzo tremble, and in that last
great effort the staples of the chain tore loose from the half-rotten stone in
which they were fastened.
Hot tears of joy welled in my eyes. I vowed a hundred candles to the
Virgin: but I could not then take time to give thanks.
Throwing myself upon the wall Montresor had just reared, my feet
desperately braced on the rough floor, I fought for liberty like a tiger.
Heavens! It gave!—the wall gave!
It yielded like a stiff canvas against the push of a hand, gave slowly, but
surely—bulged outward, then went rumbling down! I thrust myself through
the jagged opening into the catacombs. I was free!
What joy if Montresor had been there, even though he wore his rapier
and I had but my poinard!
It was very dark, and yet I could see a gleam of light in the direction from
which we had come, Montresor crazed with the thought of sweet revenge, I
drunk with wine. I paused and thought. Should I find him in the streets in
this gay time and slay him. No! I laughed insanely, yet clearly. No! There
was a better thing to do.
With haste and no mean skill, I built up the wall anew, closing the
opening of what might have been my tomb—had I been a weak man—and
against this new wall erected a rampart of old bones; then, thrusting the
dangling ends of the chain within my doublet, began to retrace my feet
toward freedom.
I struck my foot against some small, soft object, and halted with a start. I
leaned over. I had kicked against Montresor’s mask, and I put it over my
face.
I knew that all of his servants were away to enjoy the carnival, but it
would do no harm to wear this mask—and it served my purpose. I passed
through the crypt and walked back swiftly and steadily through the range of
low arches through which I had come staggering to an awful doom.

Soon I was above in my false friend’s rich suites in the cheerful glow of
many lights. But all was quiet. No one stirred. I was alone—safe!
I went light-footed through the deserted house—I could hear the shouts
and laughter of the merry people in the street—until I came to the passage
leading to the plaza.
There I stopped, with the blood jumping through my veins like wildfire.
In this hall, in the corner upon a low settee, lay Montresor, sprawling in a
heavy stupor, as drunk with wine as I had been when I had trustfully entered
within his doors. I paused over his body. Within my bosom was the dagger
with which I never part. And yet I let him lie there unharmed.
When I elbowed my way, masked, through the square, it was twelve
o’clock. I was in time to keep my appointment with his wife! I laughed.
What a jest!
And Montresor’s wife was awaiting me in the usual place. Such a
beautiful woman! I really loved her—and I hoped he did.
I was as clever as I was brave—I was, indeed, an exceedingly clever
man. I had seen my creditors pressing and all things turning toward ruin,
and that was why I had converted everything possible into gold and
precious stones.
That night I crept unseen into my own house, from which my servants,
like Montresor’s, had stolen away to enjoy the carnival, and, securing all
the wealth I had secreted, was up and away, my chain stricken off by an
obscure armorer. I have no doubt that my body-servant was executed for the
theft of my fortune—as indeed he should have been for watching my
belongings so poorly. But I know not.
Then we left the city while the streets were still crowded and gay—
Montresor’s wife and I—and went to England, where we have lived a long
life very happily.
Years ago I heard a vague rumor that Montresor believed his beautiful
wife had gone away with Giovanna, the tenor, who disappeared at about
that time. But it was not so. As for Lady Fortunato—she may have guessed
the truth.

And Montresor will believe until he dies that my bones lie crumbling in
the little walled-in dungeon below his palazzo.

The Weaving
Shadows
By W. H. HOLMES
CHET BURKE was lazily reclining in his favorite easy chair, absorbed in a
rare book on alchemy and black magic, when his sister answered a
summons at the door.
In addition to managing the household affairs of the apartment in which
she and Burke lived alone, her duties also consisted in scrutinizing the
many visitors. Most of them could be persuaded to call at the book stall,
which Burke conducted when not devoted to some criminal mystery that
held him until it was solved. Others, whose cases were urgent, were
admitted to the apartment, thus infringing on Burke’s only recreation,
reading and study.
The visitors were Chief Rhyne, a friend of Burke’s, of the Rhyne
Detective Agency, and a stranger.
Burke laid aside his book and greeted the callers with a friendly nod.
Rhyne, a portly, flushed man, settled his sturdy body into a convenient
chair. The stranger, an intelligent-looking man, appeared ill at ease. He
stood self-consciously beside Rhyne, absently running the brim of his soft
hat through browned, muscular-looking fingers.
“Burke,” grunted Rhyne heavily, “meet Mr. Hayden. He is bothered
about a very mysterious affair. It has worked on his nerves until he has
decided to consult an expert. It’s beyond me, so I brought him around to
you.”
Rhyne sighed with relief, and eased back in his chair.

Hayden stuck out a rough, calloused hand to Burke. His bronzed face
flushed slightly at Rhyne’s statement.
“I am more concerned,” he said, in a surprisingly agreeable voice, “about
how you will receive what I have to relate. I can hardly believe yet that the
things exist, although I have seen them three nights in succession.”
He shook his head in doubt, and sat down mechanically in the chair that
Burke drew up.
While Hayden was gathering his thoughts, Burke quietly sized him up.
Hayden appeared to be a man of about forty-five. His face was deeply
tanned, and his appearance suggested many hours spent out of doors. Burke
noted at once his trait of eying one direct from warm brown eyes. He was
garbed quietly, and evidently in his best. His dark suit was set off by square-
toed shoes, above which glared white socks. A low, soft, white collar, with a
black string tie, completed his obviously habitual concession to dress. On
the whole, Hayden struck the detective as a wholesome type of the practical
mechanic.
“Now, Mr. Hayden,” said Burke musingly, his eyes half closed and
vacant, “state your case fully. We will try not to interrupt you.”
The detective lounged down in his chair, his heavy lips slightly drooping,
and his long legs crossed indolently in front of him. His eyes had their
customary vague stare through the tortoise-shell glasses that veiled them.
Hayden drew a long breath, then exhaled it in a long sigh. With a brisk
straightening of his shoulders he said:
“I am a carpenter. Until recently, or, to be exact, until four days ago, I
lived in New Orleans. I am a bachelor, and it doesn’t make much difference
to me where I live, so long as I can find work at my trade. Therefore I came
up here, to Sunken Mine, in the Highlands of the Hudson, to live with a
widowed sister and her daughter.”
He paused, and his eyes grew reflective. For a moment he was evidently
measuring his words. With a quick intake of his breath, he resumed:
“My sister lives in an aged, pre-Revolutionary house, deep in the
mountains. It is a lonely place, and a secluded dwelling. At one time it was

probably a restful appearing country farmhouse. Today it is a weathered
frame building, set in a grove of dead and whitened chestnut trees.
“The house is a one-story-and-attic affair, with rough stone fireplaces at
the side, and a long sloping roof that pitches low at the rear. Owing to its
age and the condition of the place, it is a dreary spot for one used to the city.
My sister affects ancient, antique furnishings, which does not lessen the
impression of living in the past. As soon as I crossed the door-sill I was
affected by this vague, misty remembrance of being there before.
“It may strike you as strange that my sister picked out a place of this type
to spend the remainder of her days. But she had, to her and her daughter,
good reasons. Both she and my niece are earnest spiritualists. Both receive
messages, and are, in truth, sincere mediums. For some reason, my sister
claims that the atmosphere of the old dwelling helps them to materialize
those that have gone before. I myself have considerable faith in those
things, although I treat it in a practical manner. I only believe what I
actually see. What I am about to relate, I have both seen and felt.”
Hayden paused for an instant to stare earnestly at Burke. The detective
nodded to him to continue.
“I have read deeply,” went on Hayden, “and in my spare time I could be
called a bookworm. I work at my trade, but live much in the past, especially
in books. For this reason, I could be sympathetic to my sister’s idea of
living close to her life’s hobby, or her ‘mission,’ as she calls it.
“There is one more reason why my sister purchased the place, six weeks
ago. It was the original settling place of the family, before the Revolution.
As the result of a family tragedy, some hundred years or more ago, the
place passed into other hands. Few new buildings are constructed in that
sparsely settled, unfertile section, and most of the houses have stood for
generations. Consequently, the old Hayden house was never disturbed. At
the time it came back into the family it was vacant and for sale.
“They had been living there about two months when I came there to live
with them. The room I occupied Sunday night is on the second floor. It is a
semi-attic room, lit by one window. Before I came, the room was occupied
by my niece. On my arrival it was arranged for me, and the girl and her
mother occupied a bedroom downstairs.

“It was around eleven-thirty Sunday night when I went to bed, and was
soon asleep. I awoke with the feeling that something was stifling me. It was
as if I had a heavy cold and found difficulty in breathing. This peculiar
sensation of suffocation finally caused me to rouse into complete
wakefulness. The strange smothering seemed to ease as I got more fully
awake. Unable to fall asleep again, I lay looking out of the window at the
stars. The bed is at the end of the room, and the window was in direct sight.
“The house was intensely still. I noticed this in particular, as I remarked
the absence of the city noises I had been used to. I can’t recollect that there
was so much as an insect stirring. My own breathing, as in imagination I
still struggled for breath, was the only sound. It appeared to fill the room
with a hoarse, rasping murmur. I likened myself to a dying man, gasping his
last breath. This fancy, to one of my usual practical trend, was perplexing to
myself. Still, in the few moments before the things appeared, my thoughts
apparently dwelt on uncanny ideas. At the same time I was conscious of a
queer tingling of my body.
“As I lay staring at the faint light of the sky, I slowly became conscious
of a singular illusion, or, as I am at times led to believe, a startling
visitation. The dark shadows of the room appeared to be dancing rapidly
before my eyes. They were streaming in long wreaths, coiling in fantastic
spirals, and wafting through the room in wide, level films of blackness.
“I don’t know how I could see this, but it was plainly visible. Yet the
room, except for the faint light that came from the clear, moonless sky, was
in fairly deep darkness. It seemed that the moving shadows that formed
before my eyes were only discernible because of their greater density. I can
only liken this uncanny movement of the shadows to swaying and floating
clouds of tobacco smoke, when one is smoking slowly and freely.
“For some moments I watched the movements of the shadows. Then I
observed that they were forming in a more stable order. They were now
lying in long, round coils of blackness, horizontally across the room, and
twisting rapidly. For several moments they lay motionless, except for their
rapid turning, then, as if stirred by a firm direct breeze, they undulated
toward the head of the stairs. This drift brought several horizontal layers
into contact. At the moment of their touching, the shadows seemed to
weave into huge rolls, which streamed from sight rapidly down the stairs.

The room now appeared to grow lighter, and the air clearer. Also, all
sensation of smothering had left me.
“I lay there quietly after the disappearance of the shadows, pondering
over the strange affair. So far, I was fairly calm, except for the wonderment
of the thing. The return of the shadows was cause of my fears and suspense
as to the final outcome.
“My eyes were gazing absently out of the window, as I had not turned my
eyes from the stairs after the black rolls had streamed down them. Slowly,
so slowly that it scarcely seemed to move, I saw a black, humanlike form
rise above the sill of the window. I could just see the top of it as it mounted
the stairs. I watched it with a keen realization that it had something to do
with the shadows.
“Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, the round, headlike shape continued
to rise. I could now see it plainly, outlined against the lighter sky. The shape
now rose to its full height. It had the form of a shapeless human figure. That
is, I could distinguish the smaller head shadow above, and what would
answer for a body, if one were at all imaginative. The thing passed beyond
the window and drifted into the darkness at the end of the room. Yet, I could
still make out its vague form by its greater blackness.
“My eyes went back to the window. Another figure was slowly blocking
the cheerful light of the sky. Again a black form emerged to its full height.
It joined the first. I am not a coward. I lay quiet, wondering what the thing
presaged.
“The two figures advanced to the center of the room. They were now
fairly discernible. One of them walked to an old-fashioned dresser at one
side of the room, stood there a moment, then joined the other figure. With
this, both shapes turned and passed down the stairs.
“As they were disappearing, I called. The forms were so clear, and I was
by this time so far from sleep, that my mind hit on a logical reason to
explain the thing. It was evidently my sister and my niece. They had wanted
something from the dresser, and, not wishing to disturb me, had come up
quietly, got what they wanted, and then returned to their room.
“Getting no answer to my call, I sprang out of bed to convince myself of
the truth of my belief. I went downstairs, and to their room. Both were in

bed and fast asleep. I awoke them. Neither one had been up since retiring. I
did not tell them of the black forms, but made some excuse for awakening
them. The remainder of the night I spent in the kitchen, sleeping in a large
rocking chair.”
Hayden paused and stared at Burke.

“GO ON,” said Burke shortly. “This would not have brought you to me.”
Hayden shook his head.
“No,” he said, “it was what came after. This same night, as I arose from
the bed, following the disappearance of the two forms down the stairway, I
had reached the center of the room when I became conscious of standing in
something that was wet to my feet. I was barefooted, and when I looked at
my feet I found them soiled with blood.
“Naturally I thought that I had cut myself; but a close examination
revealed no cut or bruise of any sort. I lit a lamp and went back upstairs.
My first glance was at the spot where I had first felt the wetness. A glance
revealed the cause. Directly in the center of the bare board floor was a large
pool of fresh blood. It was slowly spreading out over the floor, and sinking
into the dry wood. I cleaned it up as much as possible, and then searched
the room thoroughly. There was absolutely nothing that I could find that
would explain the blood.
“The next morning, both my sister and my niece complained of feeling
languid and fagged. My niece, a very white, frail girl, was even more
colorless than usual, and her mother, noticeable for her deep intense eyes
and the black rings that encircle them, seemed listless and indifferent to
everything. Noting this, I scrubbed up the bloodstains before they made up
the room, and said nothing of what I had seen.
“Things were normal until Monday night. Again, about the same hour, I
was awakened by a smothering sensation. Once more I heard my own
breathing as I gasped for air. As I got more fully awake, I found that the
smothering sensation grew more intense. I sat up in bed, crouched over like

one suffering with the asthma, and striving to fill my lungs with air. But this
did not relieve my distress.
“Unconsciously, my eyes were fixed across the dark room. Again
occurred the weaving of the shadows. Panting, stifling, and seemingly
unable to arouse myself enough to get out of bed, I watched the repetition
of the scene of the previous night. Once the horizontal streams of shadows
were formed, my breathing became more normal, and I seemed to regain
the power to move and think clearly.
“I then deliberately waited to see the finish of the affair. The banks of
twisting shadows disappeared down the stairway, and the two figures
repeated their previous trip. As soon as they had descended past the
window, I sprang from bed and lit my lamp. My eyes went at once to the
floor. The pool of fresh blood was there for the second time. I let it lay and
tiptoed down stairs, and to the women’s room. Both were in a sound sleep,
but I was struck at once by the haggardness of their features.
“I did not awake them. Getting a basin and water, I returned upstairs. I
again scrubbed up the floor, this time with much care, as the stain had now
gone deep into the aged boards. Leaving the lamp lit, I went back to bed.
Finally I fell asleep. Nothing occurred during the remainder of the night.
“The morning after this second visitation,” resumed Hayden, “I again
remarked the extreme pallor of my niece and the haggard, gaunt face of her
mother. Still, I remained silent, determined to solve the riddle for myself.
“Last night I retired early, and I took several precautions. First, I secured
an electric flashlight. Next, I powdered the stairs with flour. I also sprinkled
the floor on the attic room. I now had a trap that no human being, or any
mechanical figure, could tread over without leaving a trace. This done, I
blew out the lamp and went to bed.
“I lay awake for a matter of two or three hours. I was determined to stay
awake until the shadows commenced to form, or until I began to feel the
smothering sensation. In this way, I would have a grasp on it from
beginning to end. But in spite of my resolution, I fell asleep.
“I was again awakened by an uncanny feeling. Firm hands, or, rather,
some peculiar force, seemed to hold my arms down on the bed. I sought to
draw up my legs in order to slip out of bed, but found them held by an

unyielding power. Finally, I discovered that I was unable to move any part
of my body. I was certainly awake, yet I was as helpless as a person in a
nightmare, who fancies that his body is totally paralyzed.
“Forced to lay motionless, I saw the black shadows stream from various
parts of the room. This time they formed over my bed. I could feel them
drift across my face, spinning, waving, and twisting and contorting. It was
an unearthly feeling, lying there helpless to avert anything that might
happen. There is nothing I can describe that would be similar to the feeling
of those black forms, ceaselessly in motion. It might be likened to some
invisible force that presses on one, or to a heavy fog that a person seems to
feel in a material manner, with a strong impression of its dampness and
chill.
“This helplessness and the weaving of the shadows went on for perhaps
five minutes. Then, as the twisting rolls started to stream down the stairs, I
could feel my body regaining its power. With the disappearance of the
materializing forms, I became physically and mentally myself again.
“I then got the electric torch in my hand, ready to flash it at the proper
moment. The figures rose above the stair, and I directed the bulb of the light
toward them. I waited until they advanced to the center of the room, then I
threw on the light.”

HAYDEN wiped his mouth with a trembling hand. His lips were dry, and
his face flushed.
Then, with a slight shudder, he went on:
“At the instant of the flash, the darkness of the figures was gone. Instead,
I saw two faces. They were inhuman, horrible, and impossible to describe.
They leered at me with their shadowy, devilish faces, scarcely discernible in
the glow of the torch. They seemed to be mocking me. They were corpse-
looking and repulsive, but the eyes were terrible. They were full and real,
and glowing, with a hellish, vengeful fire. But with all the horribleness of
the faces, it was not they that held me motionless.

“It was at that moment that I discovered the source of the blood. It was
dripping out of the air, and falling in a steady patter. I glanced up at the
ceiling, but it was firm and unbroken. While I watched—it was scarcely a
second—the drops seemed to form in the air above the floor. They were
rapidly ceasing when my nerves gave way for the moment, and I let out an
involuntary yell. With the cry, the dripping blood suddenly ceased and the
faces vanished.
“This brought me to my senses. I sprang from bed, determined to see the
thing through. My first act was to scan my trap. I followed the flour down
the stairs, but it lay in a white, unbroken dust, as I had scattered it. That
night, also, I looked in on the women. Both were sound asleep. But I was
deeply shocked by their distorted faces. Shaken both mentally and bodily, I
once more spent the rest of the night in the kitchen rocker.
“And now I want some one to go up there with me, examine the house,
and spend the night in the room. I am troubled, nervous, and frightened:
both for myself and for those with whom I live.”
“I will go there with you,” replied Burke evenly, “and I think the two of
us should accomplish something. We can probably handle two shadowy
forms.”
Hayden smiled dolefully.
“They handled me last night,” he said ruefully. “I’m a pretty strong man,
but something held me as helpless as a baby.”

BURKE alighted at a lonely way-station, standing on a strip of land
between a wide marsh and the Hudson.
The marsh ran to the foot of the mountains, and lay sear and rippling in
the September breeze. Hayden had stated that the dwelling stood back in the
hills, a distance of some five miles. On Burke’s suggestion, they started to
walk. Burke wanted to study the country, and, incidentally, study his
companion.

The country he found to be sparsely settled. The road wound up through
forest-clad rocky hills. The dwelling stood beside a wide stretch of woods,
with cleared fields to the north.
Burke scanned the dwelling as he approached it, and found it to be the
usual type of farm house of a century ago, buried among dead trees.
The interior of the house was in keeping with the exterior. Oval frames
held old prints, horse-hair upholstered, massive dark furniture contrasted
with tables and stands covered with white marble tops, the chairs squatted
grimly in the quiet rooms and rested on dull rag carpets. The woman and
her daughter struck Burke like beings transported from the misty past.
The mother was a tall, sparse woman, with heavy black rings about the
eyes. The eyes, black and dreamy, held Burke with a steady, unwinking
stare. The daughter was the opposite of her dark, sallow mother. She
seemed a lifeless, colorless sprite, seemingly alive by the power and vigor
of her more intense mother. She was about twenty years of age, although
her chalky face, and thin, bloodless hands, together with her slight frame
and indolent movements, seemed to signify an elder age, or some wasting
disease. Both were of the dreaming, musing type, speaking softly and
briefly, and moving silently about the quiet house, and both were garbed in
dresses of white material.
Burke’s first act was to visit the room upstairs. There was nothing to
warrant his attention except the stained floor. He ripped up several splinters
and put them in his pocket. He then announced his intention of visiting the
nearest town, several miles to the south.
Hayden asked no questions, evidently placing the affair entirely in
Burke’s hands. He remarked that he would “walk down a ways” with the
detective, and await his return.
The two women were still unaware of Burke’s vocation, and accepted
without comment Hayden’s statement that Burke was a friend that was to
remain over night.

AS SOON as Burke arrived in town, he went at once to the Chief of Police.
Here he inquired for some one qualified to make an examination of the
bloodstained splinters. He was directed to a doctor who maintained a
laboratory. The latter, after a lengthy analysis, confessed himself puzzled.
Something was missing in the composition. He could not account for the
peculiar results he obtained. It was human blood—and yet it was not.
Burke returned to the Chief of Police and inquired about the Haydens.
The Chief was unable to give Burke any satisfaction, but directed him to an
old settler in the vicinity who could probably furnish the desired
information.
Burke found the family without trouble. They were willing to talk, but
they knew very little about the Haydens—though a good deal about the
house.
Over a hundred years before, they said, a widow and her niece had lived
in the then new dwelling. The place, a flourishing farm, which had since
been cut up and sold off, was managed by the woman’s step-brother. The
family were more or less secluded, and seldom seen.
In the course of weeks it was noticed that no one had seen the two
women. The brother was at the house alone, and refused to talk. This led to
an investigation. No trace of the women was found. The brother was never
brought to trial, continued to live on the place until he died of old age, and
had prospered. His heirs had taken over the place, and it had been gradually
dissipated, until only the house and an acre or so of land remained.
Burke listened politely, then, thanking the old couple, returned to the
Hayden house. Hayden was awaiting him.
That evening, Burke sat beside the open fireplace, listening to the low,
earnest conversation of the others. The woman and her daughter he
observed closely. They seemed to be possessed of some restless emotion
that caused them to wander aimlessly around. On the contrary, Hayden
appeared to be sluggish and incapable of extended speech. This struck
Burke as queer, as he had remarked the vivid description Hayden had given
of the attic room.
At ten o’clock the women announced their intention of retiring. Bidding
the two men good-night, they withdrew to their rooms. Burke and Hayden,

the latter almost stupid and listless in his movements, went up the narrow
stairs to the room above.
Both lay on the bed fully robed. Burke saw Hayden take a revolver from
his pocket and shove it under his pillow.
“What shall we do?” asked Hayden heavily, seemingly unconscious of
anything around him and staring vacantly at the ceiling.
“Well,” replied Burke quietly, “first, we will blow out the lamp.”
He got out of bed and put out the light. Returning, he crawled on the
further side of Hayden, leaving Hayden on the outside. Burke had no desire
to be on the firing side of the revolver in the event that Hayden should start
shooting.
The detective lay for an hour, pondering over the strange case. Finally he
spoke to Hayden. The latter did not reply. He was apparently fast asleep.
Yet, as Burke listened closely, he could discern no signs of the latter’s
breathing.
Burke now experienced a singular emotion aroused by the intense silence
of the room. The longer he lay the more impressive it became. Downstairs
he heard the low chime of a clock. It struck eleven. The minutes lagged
along in the forbidding silence.
The clock chimed the half hour. Fifteen more minutes passed. Hayden,
breathing heavily now, commenced to move. Burke half arose on his elbow
and listened. Hayden was muttering in his sleep.
Burke eyed the dark shadows of the room with keen eyes. Nothing met
his gaze. He glanced to the window. Nothing there. Hayden was suffering
tortures in his struggle for breath.
The detective was on the point of shaking him, when, with a heavy,
prolonged gasp, Hayden sat up. Burke sensed the horror of the man, yet he
remained motionless. His eyes were fixed on the dark, silent room,
wandering frequently to the window.
Nothing unusual was to be seen, and he watched the vague form of his
bed-mate. The latter was now rigid, struggling with the weight that
oppressed his lungs, and apparently staring off into the room. Then, to
Burke’s amazement, Hayden started to breathe normally.

“Burke,” he whispered hoarsely, “did you see it? Did you see them pass
down the stairs?”
“Eh?” grunted Burke sleepily.
“My God!” muttered Hayden, “you were to watch, and you fall asleep.
They have gone down the stairs. They’ll come back again in four or five
minutes. Watch!”
Burke made no reply. He, with his wide-awake companion, was staring
intently at the window. Suddenly he felt Hayden stiffen.
“The head is just coming up the stairs!” whispered Hayden.
Burke felt the movement of Hayden’s arm as it slid under the pillow.
Then came the blinding flash of the revolver and its roar. Twice Hayden
pulled the trigger. By that time Burke had flashed on his electric torch. The
room was empty. Burke glanced at the floor. No blood was visible.
Hayden was panting and rocking back and forth.
“I feel awful queer,” he groaned. “Something is dragging me.”
Mechanically he arose from the bed and stumbled onto the floor.
“It tells me to kill, kill!” he mumbled. “Kill with my revolver. Kill—who
shall I kill?”
Burke silently followed the plodding form of the other. With measured
steps Hayden stalked to the stairs and passed down, with Burke close
behind.
Hayden led the way directly to the room of his sister and niece. Without
hesitating, his fingers grasping a loaded “Billy,” Burke trailed close and
waited for the moment when he should be needed.
Hayden appeared unconscious of the light furnished by Burke’s torch,
nor did he once turn on the short journey. Reaching the side of the bed in
which the women were sleeping, he paused and stared rigidly down.
Burke joined him. His light was now on the two women. He was struck
by the horrible contortions of the faces, seemingly drawn in agony.
With a sudden premonition, he bent down and felt the motionless forms.
The girl’s hand was limp and lifeless. He felt the pulse of the older woman.

Both were dead!

THE detective turned to Hayden.
He was staring down, dry-eyed.
“I see,” he said stupidly, “both dead. Kill, kill—who was I to kill? Not
them. They’re dead. Something still tells me to kill!” He sank into a chair
and buried his face in his hands.
Burke lit a lamp that stood on a heavy dresser and put out the torch. He
stood looking down at the two women. He then noted that the room was
growing shadowy. He glanced at the lamp. It was full of oil and the wick
seemed to be burning freely, yet the light continued to lower.
Burke again glanced at the two women. Slowly, almost invisibly, he
fancied that the agonized features were changing to the repose of death.
Hayden arose and came to the detective’s side. He was muttering and
softly moaning. Burke watched him.
Hayden, with a sudden start, looked across the room.
“They’re coming back!” he mumbled, “weaving and twisting.”
His eyes moved slowly from the opposite side of the room as if he were
following some moving object. They came to rest on the women’s faces.
“Streaming down their mouths!” he muttered. “They’re sucking in the
twisting rolls. They’re coming to life!”
Burke glanced at the women. In the dim light he could have sworn that
he saw traces of returning life. At that moment there came a crashing report
at his side and a blinding flash.
With that, the light flared up bright, and the dead faces were revealed.
Burke whirled around.
Hayden was sinking to the floor, a bullet hole in his head, from which the
blood was slowly starting to emerge. Burke sank beside the man and lifted
his head.

Slowly the heavy form relaxed. Hayden opened his eyes to stare with
bewilderment at the detective.
In another moment he was dead.
Burke placed the body on the floor and went to the bed. Once again he
endeavored to find a trace of pulse in the still forms. Both were lifeless. He
fancied that both dead faces bore a peaceful look, and on the elder woman’s
slightly-opened lips there seemed to hover an exultant smile.
Closing the room, Burke got his coat and belongings, then locked up the
house. Some hours later he was sitting with the Chief of Police, relating the
tragedy. The Chief drove with Burke to the Sheriff of the county, and
together they went to the house. The Sheriff had called up the coroner, and
they found him waiting for them.
A brief examination of the women revealed that both had died of heart
failure, probably induced by some unexplainable shock. Burke took the
Sheriff aside. On the detective’s suggestion, they wrecked the attic room in
a thorough search. Burke wanted to locate the source of the dropping blood.
At the conclusion of their quest the mystery was finished, for Burke. But
it was to Rhyne that he confessed his failure.
Returning to his apartment in New York, he found Rhyne there.
“Well,” cried the latter, as soon as he appeared, “did you solve the
mystery?”
“No,” replied Burke. “I did not.”
Rhyne’s eyes opened. “Well—what did you find?”
“Over the attic room,” said Burke musingly, “we found a small, cryptlike
space between the ceiling of the attic room and the roof of the house. It was
encased in plaster. As we broke through the ceiling, a mass of human bones
came tumbling down. The coroner pronounced them the skeletons of a
woman and a girl. Both had been dead for generations.
“Through the shoulder blade of the girl’s skeleton was a jagged hole.
When the bones fell, the elder woman’s skull rolled to my feet. I picked it
up. Something rattled inside and I worked it out through the eye socket. It
was a slug of lead.

“Both the woman and the girl had been murdered.”

Queer Tribe of Savages Found in Africa
ONE of the strangest tribes in Africa is that of the El Molo. Ruled by a
blind chief, they live on an island near the east shore of Lake Rudolf in East
Africa, their shelter being crude huts fashioned from palm leaves. They live
entirely on fish, which they spear and eat raw, and they drink nothing
except the water in the lake, which the white man considers unfit to drink. It
is said they cannot live for more than an hour without water, their lips
swelling and bleeding if they try to go longer. They use a language of their
own, different from that of the other African tribes.

African Brides Must Be Plump
THE wild tribes of Africa consider no girl beautiful unless she is
abnormally fat. Hence their young girls are fed on milk and fattening foods,
and are not permitted to exercise. This forced fattening is not only a
necessary preparation for marriage—it is also good business for a girl’s
parents. When a girl marries, the bridegroom pays her parents for her, and
the amount he pays is based on the degree of plumpness of the bride whom
they have fattened for him.

An Odd, Fantastic Little Story
of the Stone Age

Nimba, the
Cave Girl
By R. T. M. Scott
MANY thousands of years ago, when the poles of the earth were its
pleasant spots and when the tropics were too hot for human life, Nimba
grew to her full height and was still a maid.
Many had been her suitors, but, from the time she had pulled down her
first wild animal, she had lived much apart from others of her kind and had
become known as a mighty traveler and hunter. She could run a hundred
miles in one day over the worst kind of country, and she had matched her
brains successfully against the most wonderful of animal cunning. Unaided,
she could support herself, and she did not want a mate—at least, not yet.
Somewhere, not far south of what is now called James Bay, is a beautiful
lake lying between steep-sloping, wood-covered hills. At one end of this
lake a great boulder once stood, heaving its huge mass a full hundred feet
above the water. At its back the steep hillside gave access to its summit. At
its front the water rippled or dashed against one hundred feet of straight
wall.
Yet not quite perfect was this wall. In its very center, and slightly
overhanging the lake, was a tiny cave, an irregular cavity large enough to
shelter two or three people. Fifty feet above the water and fifty feet below
the top of the great rock, this natural shelter against rain or enemy seemed
inaccessible to anything without wings. But the skin of a long-haired animal

was stretched to dry against the back of this little cave—pegged to the
cracks and crannies by means of great thorns. Scattered here and there were
bleached bones—relics of past meals eaten by Nimba.

IT WAS a hot afternoon, and the sun was beating the earth in its usual
relentless fury. To the south the great cloud-masses of steam were rising and
tumbling upon themselves in rain, only to revaporize and rise again.
The air was still with a breathless quiet, which presaged continued fine
weather and little danger of the hot humidity of the south being blown
northward. On the eastern horizon a mighty mountain belched its head off
and sent a column of fire into the sky that rivaled the glare of the sun.
Suddenly the bushes parted behind the great rock-sentinel of the lake.
Nimba sprang out and ran to the highest vantage point. There she stood,
motionless, gazing at the burning mountain. Fire did not frighten her as it
did the creatures which ran on four legs; rather it attracted her.
She stood long, viewing the new magnificence of the eastern horizon, her
coppery-tanned skin glistening in the sun and her firm young breasts rising
and falling as if they, too, saw and wondered in dreamy contemplation.
Lithe were her legs and arms, and slender her waist, with hips full big but
boy-like in their taper. Her hair was bound with little tendrils into a cue that
reached below her waist and then was doubled to keep it off the ground.
Sunburned, its hue was a golden glory. A deep scar marked her face, but this
only added to its barbaric beauty.
Of a sudden, she bent as in the act of listening and then leaped back into
the bushes, only to return with a small animal she had killed, and dragging
behind her a stout creeper of great length. Fastening one end of the creeper
to a jutting rock, she threw the other end over the face of the great boulder
and, holding with one hand the animal’s leg, lowered herself to the cave in
the wall with all the agility of a monkey.
Scarcely had she entered her tiny abode before she noticed that her
creeper ladder was being violently agitated from above. She leaned far out

from her cave in a perilous manner and saw descending toward her a long
pair of hairy legs followed by the rest of a man.
Picking up a stout club from the back of her cave, Nimba waited until the
legs came within reach and then caught the man a blow on his thigh that
caused him to yell lustily and to ascend a few feet with great rapidity.
He did not entirely retreat, however, but, turning around like a caterpillar
on a thread, again descended, this time head first in order to keep a bright
outlook.

NIMBA now saw the man’s face, and she disliked it more than his legs. Her
small features convulsed with rage, and she spat at him and beat the wall
with her club in a frenzy. She knew him well.
He was Oomba, one of the strong and cruel men of her tribe. When he
was fifteen he had killed his grandfather for a stoneheaded club. He had
caught the old man unawares, which act of caution had been construed as
timidity so that he had few friends until he became too strong to withstand.
When Oomba had descended until his face was within twelve inches
beyond the reach of the girl’s club, he hung there, gloating over her with
greedy, lustful eyes. For half an hour he hung, face downward, sensuously
intoning to the infuriated girl.
“With me hunt! With me eat! With me sleep!”
At the end of half an hour Nimba was still spitting at him and still
clubbing the wall with unabated energy.
“Oomba go! Oomba go! Me you will not touch!” she screamed at
intervals.
Finally Oomba climbed back to the top of the rock—but he did not give
up. He pulled the great creeper up after him. He would trap the little spit-
cat, he thought, and so tame her.
But he did not know Nimba.

As soon as the object of her hatred became lost to sight Nimba calmed
herself. When she saw her rope of escape withdrawn she waited for some
time in silence. Then she stepped to the edge of her cave home—and her
body flashed forward through the sunlit air like a gleam of gold. For fifty
feet the gleam curved, then struck the water silently like a knife. Fifteen
yards from where she struck, Nimba’s face appeared above the surface
glancing upward toward the top of the rock.
Oomba peering over the rock, witnessed Nimba’s mighty dive. For a
moment he scowled at her before dashing into the bushes just as Nimba
swam into shallow water.

NIMBA rose near the shore, her club dripping in her hand. She bounded
along the rough shore line, keeping at least ankle deep in the water.
Rounding a small, wooded point, she came to an overhanging bough upon
which she climbed.
Here she broke two or three small branches and sped on into the next tree
and the next, throwing herself from limb to limb and breaking small
branches in her flight. Finally she broke a very small branch and leaped into
a densely foliaged tree without so much as crushing a leaf. And here she
ensconced herself from sight.
Her trap was laid. She clung to a limb as silent and watchful as any
animal of prey, her long club between her young body and the bark on
which she lay.
The minutes passed while Nimba’s dark eyes kept constant watch
through the green leaves that formed her mask. Abruptly, as she watched, a
young man stepped out and stood beneath her tree. Strong and straight was
he. His eyes were bright and the hair on his face was short and soft. Not a
leaf rustled as Nimba watched with growing interest. Below her the man
stood quietly scenting the air.
Suddenly a twig snapped, and the young man turned like a flash, only to
receive Oomba’s mighty club full on the head. So silently had Oomba
approached that the listening Nimba had not detected the slightest sound.

Now he stood looking down at his victim and contemptuously turning the
bleeding head from side to side with his foot, quite unconscious of any
lurking danger.
Clinging only by her feet from the bough upon which she had been lying,
Nimba reached down and swung her club with vicious force upon the side
of Oomba’s head. Beside his own victim he fell, while Nimba dropped
lightly to the ground, turning in the air like a cat and landing upon her feet.
Quickly she dragged Oomba to one side, where two rocks abutted, and
wedged his head vicelike between them. Then she beat it with her club until
it had no shape at all and the leaves and little green things nearby were
spattered with blood. There was no doubt about it: Oomba was dead.

GREAT satisfaction showed on Nimba’s face when her bloody task was
done.
She washed the blood from her body in the lake and returned to examine
the young man who had first been struck down. Apparently satisfied with
his condition, she picked him up and, trailing her bloody club, returned to
her great rock at the head of the lake. Here she found the creeper where
Oomba had left it and experienced little difficulty in climbing down to the
privacy of her cave with the senseless man under one arm.
Two trips she made for water, which was carried in a gourd and stored in
a hollow in the cave floor. This done, Nimba washed the young man’s face,
wet his hair and propped him in a corner to recover his senses.
Her work of mercy finished, Nimba turned her attention to the animal
which she had killed earlier in the day. Dragging it from its corner, she
placed both feet upon the body while she tore off a leg with one furious
wrench. As the sun was setting and the deep purple of the hills became
bordered with gold, Nimba commenced the one meal of the day to which
she was accustomed. It would soon be time to sleep.
Almost as the last shaft of sunlight shot over the distant hills
consciousness returned to the young man as he sat propped in the corner of
the cave. Slowly he looked about him. He rose to his feet and walked to the

edge of the cave, where he gazed down at the lake and examined the
dangling creeper down which he had been carried.
Finally the young man approached Nimba, who had stopped eating and
was silently watching him, her mouth bloody from her raw repast. He
dragged the animal from her side and shoved her into a corner, where a
jagged stone cut her shoulder, causing the blood to flow. Having eaten his
fill, the man lay down to sleep.
The great moon rose and silvered the sleeping lake. A night-bird
screeched as it swept by the entrance to the cave and Nimba crept from her
corner. Still bleeding, she stretched herself beside the sleeping man. Her
body touched his and some blood from her shoulder mingled with his in a
tiny pool.
Below them, in the water, a reptile splashed its way among the reeds.
Nimba and her master slept.
Nimba had taken her mate.

What Comes After Death?
An Anonymous Author Gives a
Startling Answer in

The
YOUNG MAN
who
WANTED TO
DIE
By ? ? ?

FIRST EPISODE.

IN A MEAN, miserable, two-dollar-a-week bedroom in a Chicago lodging-
house a young man was calmly and deliberately preparing to kill himself.
He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness—and yet he was
preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room of a
shabby hovel.
With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging
them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as near
gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing and sat down
at the battered bureau and began to write:

“As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want
to know why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as
much as they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my
identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and
stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not one
who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead.
“A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else—
something equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may
appear to others. I loved and do still love a girl whom I have
known from childhood, but always there has been this thing that
stood between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am
about to do. It is not drink—nor gambling, nor hereditary
disease.
“It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable
Curiosity. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible
desire to know what follows death. As I grew up, this craving
increased until it was a positive mania. I devoured every book on
theosophy and kindred subjects I could lay hands on; I attended
meetings of psychic societies; at college my avidity for
psychology was remarked by everybody. At length I had reached
the point where I yearned to tear aside the black veil of death
and discover her secret. Why wait? I asked myself. Since you are
bound to go some day, why not go now?
“One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It
led to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night she
left the town where we both lived.
“I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For
three years now I have searched the city for her, but not a trace
have I found. And so I have given it up. It is hopeless. I shall
never see her again.
“Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is
very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is
living even as I write these words—perhaps miles away—perhaps
in the next block—perhaps ... God alone knows, and God protect
her!”